Ooh My Soul: David Essex: "Rock On"

The drums beat like someone who is announcing their presence by rattling some candy in a box.  The space of the sound is huge; it seems as if the song is intimate and large at the same time, like the song is admitting that there is a lot of space, emptiness.  The bass beckons; it lets you know that something's up, that if you're willing to listen, then here it is...

...and here is David Essex's voice, a knowing call, a stamp of approval; it almost sounds as if he is talking to the past, that near past of rock 'n' roll that by 1973 was being revived everywhere, from King's Road to Hollywood, trying to get back to the primal moment when someone in a pub or bar or basement or living room said, enough, things have got to change*.  And along came rock 'n' roll to save the kids from being younger versions of their parents, of being pod people.  All the signifiers, as the French thinkers would call them, are here - James Dean, blue suede shoes, the girl in blue jeans who is the real queen - but though he is recalling all this, he knows that there is something wrong.  It is as if he is confronting The Fog as it happens, asking "And where do we go from here?  Which is the way that's clear?" Because the simple dream of liberation that rock 'n' roll presented is now muddy, tie-dyed, and way overdue for something, but what?  Essex (who wrote this song, a Luxembourg #2) may not know in the song besides the heroic call to "rock on" but the music tells a different story.  It slinks around, horns and strings appear and disappear, the Real Thing come in to reaffirm that the girl is indeed the prettiest girl, and all at a pace that is entirely more to do with dub or even avant garde music than what bands like Slade or Wizzard were doing at the time.  Producer Jeff Wayne and Essex wanted to make something new here, a song that pauses to ask just what on earth is rock 'n' roll for and what can it do?  And as Essex exhorts us all to rock on, there he is talking to the kid - the one with the radio under the pillow, perhaps - as the song's space increases and echoes, as if to say that there is space here for you, whoever you are.  Essex sounds as though he knows that yeah, being cool is good and everything, but there is something at stake here just besides watching old James Dean movies and looking for the girl.   I see him calling out to the faithful, the ones who still don't fit in, the ones who maybe were too young to know about Beatlemania firsthand, let alone psychedelic freak-outs, and maybe those who love Glam but can sense that spangly stomping isn't going to last.  The punches of quiet rock as hard as any guitar solos ("Jimmy Dean!" he calls out, as if to invoke him, bring him back to life) - is this the beginning of trip-hop?  Of "quiet is the new loud"?  This song takes rock 'n' roll and strips it back, not back to some kind of "authentic realness" but to the sense that it belongs to those who need it, the kids.  If The Carpenters wanted to go back in time, only to find that maybe it wasn't all that great, then Essex is saying that maybe it can be great in the future, sure, but in the meantime there's a lot of work to be done - "Rock on!" being as much a call to action as anything.  Persist and something will happen, spaces will appear, as dark and scary as things are getting (and with this you can hear the dreaded quiet of The Fog approaching, almost as a physical thing). 

The emphasis on rhythm here is important too - the song comes up from the floor, there is no guitar, just a rumble, as if to say, this is the future - bass and drums, the beat, too slow to be a heartbeat but something tangible, sensual even.  (Essex was a pin-up at the time and I can't ignore this, nor that this was included in the That'll Be The Day soundtrack.)  As things get tougher, the essence of rock 'n' roll will remain, will be remade, will once again surprise and delight, nod it's head and say "Rock on" like a morse code, go UP and Down at just the right moments.  It still stands as a call, a prophecy from here; and hip-hop begins, disco begins, the rhythms and beats and breathless pauses are all in here, in a song that can still be scary, a dare, a challenge - "Rock ON!"
 
Next up:  what happens after you do get satisfaction.


*The recent success Richard & Adam's The Impossible Dream shows that there is still a segment of the music-buying public that maybe thinks that rock 'n' roll is okay but has had its day ("rebel rock has had its day...it has") and now is the time to turn back to what came before.  I am not against this sort of thing if it is done well (pre-rock songs are pretty awesome, for the most part) but if it simply a recital or could be described in any way as "bonny wee" or "aw wee" and there isn't something a little...off about it (i.e. Neil Reid) , then that's not making it new.  That's vintagizing repetition and a living death.  "Rock On" is about keeping a hold on what has been and radically jumping into something new at the same time,

Grrl Power: Suzi Quatro: "48 Crash"

It is something of a truism that a lot of the things people talked about in the 60s didn't actually happen - for better or for worse - until the 70s.  In truth though, if the promise of rock 'n' roll - that it is democratic and therefore everyone can, if willing, participate - was delivered in the 60s, then there would have been a lot more Suzi Quatros around at this time.  But there was just the one, due to circumstances it is all too easy, forty years later, to understand.  The general idea then as now was, you girls can be pop singers or folk singer-songwriters or general light entertainment always-available-for-variety show singers, or even country singers, if you like.  But leave rock 'n' roll to the boys.

Suzi looked at this and said, fuck that.

I cannot emphasize how bad things were back in the early 70s, what with Janis Joplin gone and so on, but Suzi Quatro up in Detroit had a band with her sisters and they gigged and recorded singles and were known on the scene; Suzi taught herself bass and was known to not take crap off of anybody, not Alice Cooper, not Iggy Pop*.  Mickie Most was in Detroit, saw her all-sisters band (The Pleasure Seekers) and figured he had a star-in-the-making on his hands, and convinced Suzi to move to London to become famous, just like Hendrix.  And like restless American girls before and after, she moved, got her band together, wrote songs and found herself in the midst of the Glam Slam, and added its influence to her Detroit sound.  She wore a leather suit (her idea, not Most's) for convenience first, and had a low-slung bass as she is tiny and basses are rather heavy, as anyone who's played one knows.  Most got Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman to write songs for her, and this is song is one of them.  That it's about male menopause is something the boys of '73 (and girls, for that matter) may not have understood, but it got to #2 on the Luxembourg chart anyway, and it is inadvertently therefore one of the most feminist songs of this blog so far.  That so many of the Glam Slam affected femininity they could hardly complain when an actual woman - an outsider, to boot! - came along and rocked just as hard as they did.  Suzi has always seen herself as a musician first, an entertainer second, and if she was a sex symbol for the times, well that was nice, but not her first intention.

Nowadays some might think that this thunderous music/high-pitched singing might be a bit dated, and I have noticed that this song doesn't tend to get played on UK radio (hmmm, I wonder why).  But then the music industry, which includes rock radio, has always been a bit ambivalent to that general category of women who play rock 'n' roll; whole books have been written about the subject, and it is still observable (especially in the UK) how rock in general is a male preserve, with an invisible "No Girls Allowed" sign hanging outside the treehouse**.  Suzi Quatro helped to start a wave of young women who also played and sang and sweated in small clubs and were looked down on, in more ways than one, but who succeeded as they believed in themselves and in the music they were making;  and this has continued since, from the Runaways to Deap Valley, with stops everywhere from Girlschool to L7, The Go-Go's to Haim.  Certainly Joan Jett credits Suzi for inspiration, but as the wave has moved forward I wonder if anyone else in the US remembers her at all.  Perhaps the riot grrls did, in the early 90s; but for girls my age, Suzi was Leather Tuscadero in Happy Days and had that "Stumblin' In" hit song and that was about it.  I grew up not knowing about this fierce song of male ascension and swift decline, and so my teenage version of If You Knew Suzi was Jett's Bad Reputation.  I have left one woman out of this as I have written about her already, but suffice it to say when Chrissie Hynde got to London two years after Quatro she had to look to her just as Jett did as an example of what could be done, even if Hynde didn't want to exactly do it the same way***.  Also, I am loathe to call Suzi a pioneer - Wanda Jackson, anyone? - but for the UK scene, she was one.  That she played songs written by others (though she did write songs for albums and b-sides) was perhaps the only hitch in this story; but in this case, with "48 Crash" what Chinn and Chapman wrote would have been silly as sung by Mud or Sweet.  Suzi attacks this song and sings it like...well, like a woman who knows that one day there will be a lot more women on the stage, just like her, and "the Industry" would just have to deal.  On the whole, I think things aren't quite so bad as they can sometimes seem; not when Kate Nash is running bandcamps for teenage girls and Pussy Riot are getting support from all over the world (their version of this song would no doubt be "Putin Crash").  Quatro still performs, and is proud that she was the first, though she knows that it was inevitable.  At some point, a young woman was bound to lead a band, sing and play an instrument.  All she had to do was have the skill, determination and energy to do it, and it was Suzi who happened to be the first.   

Next up:  the endless loop of Baby Boomers, explained.    

*Some guy in the audience stuck his tongue out in a rude way to her and she promptly took her bass and hit him on the head with it.  That's just how things were in Detroit.  
 
** I am trying and failing to remember if a female musician has made any recent covers of Q, Uncut or Mojo. 

***Hynde interviewed Quatro for the NME and was generally impressed by her, on and offstage. 

Let Yourself Go: David Bowie: "The Jean Genie"

Suddenly - though he has been making music for years by this point - we have stumbled across a vital figure in music; not that I would have known about him, at the time.  By now I am six years old, in kindergarten, learning the alphabet and colors and numbers, not to mention tetherball* and the restorative powers of a cup of milk, a graham cracker and a nap.  In kindergarten we had to dress up like our ancestors, so I dressed like a little Mennonite girl one day; in sober black and white, no doubt the most sober of any outfits that day.

I don't remember much in the way of music in kindergarten; indeed for this year I have a kind of vacuum where music is concerned - other than Sesame Street songs, I don't recall learning very much, though I did have a toy piano, given to me in the hopes that I would somehow take to it, but it sounded like a toy piano, not a real one, and I was much more interested in actual music, not toy music.  Thus, I am not sure how I would have reacted to hearing David Bowie; I don't remember him from the time itself, obviously, and seeing him on our little black and white tv wouldn't have given me the full spectacle of the man; a sense that the 70s had well and truly begun.

By the time I got back to Los Angeles in '77 (yes, I leave, later in '73 - I'll explain when we get there) and I was in Grade 6, I got to know a tall, dark girl called Joy who said to me that she liked David Bowie; she said this proudly, and as if to mark a difference between her and the girls who all liked Andy Gibb or Shaun Cassidy.  Bowie was for those, I inferred, who liked music first and foremost, those who wanted something of substance.  I was impressed, though at the time I didn't know much beyond his big US #1 singles and if I was told that he and Iggy Pop (who? I would have politely asked) used to hang around L.A. and helped to create, just by their presence, the punk/new wave scene of right that minute, I wouldn't have known what you were talking about.

And so we come to this song, which Bowie wrote while hanging out with Cyrinda Foxe, one of the Warhol set, and what seems so complex in reality is so simple; he wrote it to impress her.  The subject is your average American guy, inspired by his friend Iggy Pop, though not directly about him.  It is a straight-up blues rock, a la The Yardbirds, but if you'd just heard it and not seen him perform it with his band, you'd miss how Bowie was taking the ordinary and the extraordinary and mixing them up to create a new thing - a song that was rock, inspired by another rock musician, that was cool and warm and distanced and intimate somehow all at the same time.  This is the solid gold easy action that Bolan was looking for.  The man - Jean Genie (a pun on Jean Genet, not a great one but I'm sure that the kids who got the pun would have enjoyed it) is one who screams and bawls, who is simple-minded (hence, Simple Minds got their name from this song), who sounds almost more like some kind of wild animal than a person; but it was that kind of wildness that must have attracted Bowie to the US in the first place - the kind of place that could produce an Iggy Pop or Lou Reed was something to be admired, and it doesn't surprise me that Bowie has lived in the US for some time now, the energy and possibilities of New York City and thus all of the country being an inspiration for him.

This song comes from Aladdin Sane, which Bowie describes as "Ziggy goes to America"; it is hard to know how much of David Bowie's life at this time was given to being Ziggy Stardust, but no one had ever created a persona in rock and had it more or less take over his life in such a way that he had to just stop - as he did six months after now - and finish being Ziggy.  We will back get to him before this happens, but it's important to note again how with this persona Bowie somehow inspires and liberates so many kids, in the UK and the US as well, to become musicians, and his affection for Jean Genie and even pity for him - he is so powerful and yet so powerless at the same time - makes this bluesy stomp quite different from HRS or Bolan; sure if you're a kid you can pretend you're Bowie or guitar foil/mate Mick Ronson, his yang to Bowie's yin, but somehow something big has happened; I'll get to what that might be soon, with another song from Aladdin Sane.    

 

*From what I can tell tetherball doesn't exist in the UK, which is too bad as it is excellent for hand-eye coordination, the fun of hitting things, and it rewards those who are good at jumping/who are tall anyway.  Play it badly and you get hit in the head, so you learn to wise up pretty quickly.

Energy Burst: T.Rex: "Ride A White Swan"

After the earnestness of 1970, we get a break at long last; a break that is like a bridge between the hippy 60s and the modern 70s.  It takes ambition to do this, but in Marc Bolan’s case I am guessing it was frustration as much as anything; always a confident musician, his 60s duo Tyrannosaurus Rex were well-respected and well-known, but never chart-toppers, more of a cult, and perhaps Bolan felt slighted by this; so he decided to up the ante.  He was going to keep the mystical lyrics, sure, but now the acoustic duo was going to go electric, and the sometimes obscure and intricate music would be groovier, hand-clappier, and proudly become rock ‘n’ roll in the best sense of the term.

It is as if Chuck Berry and Oscar Wilde were somehow melded into one and had just attended a Wicca ceremony; there is a roughness to the elegance, a polished grit. 

This song begins the glam era, one that reclaimed the right to rock and wear shiny clothing and have FUN; and this song celebrates Beltane, the spring, new life bursting out everywhere after a long winter.  It doesn’t hurt that Bolan looks a bit like a Druid himself, wide-eyed and wise, the sort of guy who could say (from an interview in Voxpop) that in the mid-60s he “boogied around for about a year doing nothing” and that if this song wasn’t a hit he was going to leave music and be a writer.  This song was his last shot at music at the time, as “the business as such was at a very low ebb at that point, there was really nothing going down.”  He expected to get flak for it, but obviously it was a success, and he quickly had to get a band together and before he was perhaps ready for it, T. Rex was a rock band, no longer a hippy duo. 

Sometimes things get to such a low point that something new has to be done, as the old is indeed the old and must make way for the new; and the lyrics – which Bolan is proud of – herald this new time, a time for flights of fancy and wisdom, all to a beat and a rocking guitar.  Bolan’s voice is  pretty – not an adjective I use lightly – with a vibrato that is somewhat like a bird, high and nearly androgynous, the vocal equivalent of a cool breeze.  Even if you don’t have any interest in Wicca and have never danced around a maypole this is a seductive and inspiring song, and amongst the angst and anger it was like the return of flower power, a big hint that elegance can rock too.  I do not know if it was coincidence or not that glam anticipated a period when people would need something groovy to boogie to – as a way of escape – but this is as noble and serene as a swan itself, admirable at any time, a mixing up of so many things that it was open to all to love.  Bolan had rolled the dice and finally won; this blog will get back to him once he is a star at last, and many musicians of the time as well as future ones will be inspired by him.  But for now:  “and I wanted to get on there and make some changes in a way that wouldn’t hurt anyone.”  Change is the word; we shall see, dear readers, how much change there is in ’71.

Rock and Roll: Deep Purple: "Black Night"

As the late 60s wound down, two genres of rock began to evolve; one was the HRS way of boogie, keeping rock free from any sort of pretence beyond the willingness to ‘get down’ ‘the road.’  But there were those who heard the blues and wanted to expand them or extend them in ways beyond the norm, beyond laddishness, beyond going down to the pub (even though they were pub fans themselves, of course)…

Figuring out just where heavy metal starts, what constitutes it, and what its true heart lies is difficult, but not impossible to figure out.  The phrase ‘heavy metal’ is in “Born To Be Wild” (a fairly metal sentiment, I think) and is thus Canadian*; metal itself happened when The Beatles recorded “Ticket To Ride” (or maybe it was Jimi Hendrix or Cream or any other heavy band of the period; theories and accounts vary).  However, Marshall stacks arose, volumes and eardrums were tested, and heavy metal was fully underway by 1968, when Led Zeppelin appeared, and Deep Purple began at the very same time.  It’s impossible to mix up the two bands, though, as Led Zeppelin were behemoths intent on devouring the world, while Deep Purple were more intent on bringing a paradoxical heaviness and lightness to rock, as they do here.

The purpose of metal is to describe, as best can be done (in this case with lead guitar, bass, organ, drums and lead singer) the perils and pitfalls of being an outsider, alone, forever on the move lest something worse happen.  There are lots of variants of course, but I think that aloneness counts; that perpetual sense of threat, whether natural or manmade.  Here the narrator is alone, it’s dark, he cannot see, and desperately wants to get home – not to rest under a tree or on the beach, but home, real home, wherever that is.  There is something vaguely existential hanging over all this (notice that there are no references, as I feel there would be, to women if Led Zeppelin had written this song) – and that if you mishear it, as I did, as ‘black knight’ then there is already a medieval element here, though the Purps were as modern as you like, not given to singing about fairies or may queens like Black Sabbath or Zep themselves. 

Ian Gillan sings the song straight, with perhaps a smile of sympathy here or there; Blackmore hammers out the riff he picked up from Ricky Nelson’s version of “Summertime**“; classically-trained Jon Lord, leader of the group, demonically keeps up with Roger Glover on bass and Ian Paice*** on drums.  This is already one tough unit who can pretty much outrock everybody (everyone involved had been playing in bands for years; Blackmore had worked with Joe Meek when he was fifteen).   That they do so naturally and even swing a little doesn’t detract from their crunch, but certainly helped this song do as well as it did; a lot of people must have felt themselves to be lost in darkness a long way from home at this time, longing to get there and wary of traps and dead ends.  It’s a simple, anxious and noisy song, perfect for both The Fall and Metallica to cover, unpretentious and lovable in its own way.

This was the beginning of Deep Purple’s inroads into heavy metal (and the first single they’d written themselves); Deep Purple In Rock was a hit, as were Fireball and Machine Head  – their classical and psychedelic sides were put aside for hard rock, though there is always a classical aura about them, compared to other groups.  (It’s not a great leap to assume that the other music metal heads love is classical, particularly the more heavy symphonic and operatic corners, where walls of tormented noise are pierced by the shrieks of one or several singers.) 

There is hope and determination here, a kind of grit, that is typical of the group; not so much of the ‘woe is me’ complaining that can make some metal wearisome, if not out-and-out scary or depressing****.  Deep Purple never set out to carry the world on their shoulders or confront tyrannical evil; theirs was a sleeker, more elegant version of metal that could appeal to not just self-appointed outsiders, teenagers and nerds but everybody who wanted to rock on, not mellow out, in the early 70s.  For that they tend to not get the props that they deserve; which is a shame, as out of all the early bands it’s the one I find the easiest to listen to, the most surprising and likeable.  The band’s sensibilities were not just in rock but in classical, soul and jazz, even; with this song they manage to get heard by everyone, not just albums-only-buying fans, to hook who-knows-how-many fresh ears to what they are doing, to a style of rock that will not just succeed but prevail over the decades, as they themselves did, changing line-ups but continuing, defying expectations as usual. 

Next up:  another young man lost, way out, out beyond the woods.      

*As are everyone’s favourite metal band, Anvil.

**The living here is the exact opposite of 'easy.'

***To see a drummer with glasses as normal as him is pleasing in a way; he reminds me a bit of my friend Benet, though Benet isn’t a metal fan, per se.

**** Note how ultimately groovy "Smoke On The Water" is as compared to the  Zep's completely insane "Achilles' Last Stand" and then reflect again on how non-mythological the Purps are in comparison.  Deep Purple can make something out of nothing, can make even disaster sound attractive.

A Real Boy: The Jackson 5: "I Want You Back"

When I was a pre-schooler, probably still in nursery school, I was taken to see a movie. (This was before DVDs, before videos, when the only ways to see a movie were on tv or in a movie theatre; only rich cinephiles had home movie theatres, then.) My father’s job was as an animator, so of course he would take me to see animated movies, Fantasia being one that was (as was Disney’s wont) re-released for a new generation to enjoy. I got through that one just fine.

But Pinocchio? Like my mother, as I much later found out, I could not take it. I began crying – I forget at which part, it’s a distressing movie and so there could be many – and would not stop. My father, always respectful of the audience, led me out of the theatre, and we went home. If the part that started me crying had been one of suspense – something I’m not good at dealing with, in life or cinema – then that would make sense. But maybe I was more horrified at the idea of a little boy being made of wood, period. That, my crying, shocked self would have explained, if I’d been able to speak, is the worst thing. Death-in-life; a life given to others completely, who can do what they like with you, including throw you in a trunk if you don’t behave…how can he be real and not real at the same time? What horrors does he have to endure just to be a real boy?

Both of these were 1940 Disney classics, and I wonder if Michael Jackson saw either of them at the time – or perhaps as a superstar, he had other things to do. I was all of four when I saw it; Michael, had his parents taken him to see it, would have been thirteen. The very edge of adolescence, when the rigors of school, the absence or presence of any crushes, the whole bildungsroman of life starts out. Teenagers are supposed to be dumb, arrogant, passionate creatures that make mistakes. Even if you spent most of your adolescence either in school or at home doing homework, otherwise preoccupied with music and pop culture, that is more than enough to figure out a whole lot of things; add in friends, dances, movies, trips, and so on, and some kind of path will present itself, even one that says that staying true to yourself is not going to be easy, but that life (whatever it is) is a living death, as easy as it is for others to follow. It’s not yours, and no one is going to reward you with becoming ‘real’ at the end; you already are real, and it’s your main job to stay that way. (Michael, as you may already know, wasn't really allowed to make mistakes.)

But if you show signs of being gifted, then adults – the whopping majority of whom are talented perhaps but not ‘gifted’ – will treat you differently, with a kind of awe on one hand and impatience on the other. I was never regarded as ‘gifted’ myself; I and a few others got to skip Grade 4 as we were tested and judged able to do so, and we were a happy little flock the day we got our letters and told the good news. We still went to school just as usual, but had a year taken off, to stifle boredom, more than anything else. (In Grade 6 I wanted to know how to spell déjà vu and my teacher, Mrs. Myers, dutifully went to the classroom where the gifted children were being taught to find out. A year later I was in junior high, reading a learn-as-you-go book of French wishing I could take a class in it, and maybe wishing I was gifted.)

Michael Jackson’s gift was his voice, though; and as it was part of his body it was available to improve upon day and night. He had no chance to skip a year, to want to study something just because it was pleasurable, in and of itself. The voice is there, something that dominates a singer’s life, which they have to protect and train as best they can. Control over the voice becomes a big thing, using it to surprise others, to surprise yourself. But if you are a child and your gift is your voice, then you’re going to have adults – parents, coaches, any other interested parties – wanting you to become ready, skilled, and adept. In Jackson’s case he had a whole family to please, from his father on down, and multiply that awe and impatience several times and there’s Michael, having to learn fast, learn from his mistakes, to work hard and be the star of the Jackson 5, out there gigging and trying to get someone’s attention, and then being signed and groomed by Motown in 1968.

A child has some control over himself, but is still the ward of his parents; a gifted child is monitored hourly and as the gifts are honed and refined, possibilities become realities and what was first hailed as near-miraculous now has to be produced on a regular basis. I don’t know how much of this song could be called improvised or spontaneous, on the part of the performers or the songwriters (who went by the retrospectively kinda-creepy name The Corporation). Motown prided itself on being like a factory, the musicians working long hours, songwriters ditto, the whole thing very professional and demanding. So of course they would want these kids to rehearse and polish and rehearse some more, until they were ready and could do this complex song so easily, it sounds as if it just came to them, more or less.

That the whole thing kicks the 70s off is the least of the surprises – the backwards piano like curtains being flung open, the window opened to this most welcome dawn chorus, Michael leading the way, his four brothers harmonizing behind him, as he tells this story of love, which sounds awfully mature for someone who is only eleven. “When I had you to myself, I didn’t want you around” is adolescent arrogance, and his admitting he was wrong to dismiss her, blind to let her go. So many pretty girls, so little time, already. Trying to live without her is unbearable, and he wants to show her that “I know wrong from right.” (Even here Michael has to show that he is good and worthy, and his voice is as loud and insistent as a robin*.)

The song stops and starts and leaps all over the place, piano and strings in front, the song constructed so it has hope and determination and freshness built right in, along with anxiety and flat-out fear. Will he get her back? Can he convince her he’s changed? There is no resolution, just yelping and screaming of Michael at the end, after he climbs up the word “go” as if he is swooping up to the top of the tree, a feat that is astonishing in anyone so young and afterwards disconcerting. How did he learn about how to do this? What is he calling upon – beyond sheer talent – to get that desperate? His “hah” towards the end is more a signal that he has done what he wanted to get done singing than any real confidence that he can get the girl back. Because he hasn’t had time for even the most childish of romances, this song can’t help but feel premature, unbelievable – he sees his girl in another man’s arms? This is not playground love, hopscotching and jump-rope rhymes (though the music makes it seem that way) but adult stuff, or at least adolescent, but what can Michael know of this?

I don’t know, but day-in day-out rehearsing and training can make anything happen, can make a voice – obviously young, haplessly able to dominate, even if he doesn’t want to – do anything, if only for the time it takes to sing a song. (How many songs sound convincing that were sung with no real passion and in some cases utter dislike?) The care and consideration undertaken in launching the group with this song (which took a long time to write – well over a year) meant they could not fail, they could only succeed; and they did, taking over pop and launching Michael out like a satellite (he had his first #1 US hit in 1972 with a song about a boy’s love for a rat – who thought this was a good idea, exactly?) and yet keeping him close, still that gifted student who has to be hot housed on the one hand and forced to prove his worth on the other.

The pressures on Michael pushed him towards life faster than he could assimilate it, towards the 70s before they had even begun; this fresh breeze of a song knocks the late 60s out like a cartoon character, as if to say “I’m the 70s, get out of my way!” That a child who has been all but exploited is leading the way should give anyone pause, but cuteness and naiveté are disarming things, to say the least. Michael Jackson was five when his gift was apparent, and by now he’s a pro at twelve. How can he keep up this momentum without something going wrong? Will he ever get to be a real boy?



“A bird mostly sings to hold a territory, and most birds hold a territory only in spring when they breed; at other times of the year they adopt a different strategy. But the robin’s game plan is to hold a territory throughout the year: a place where he, or she, can feed and stay safe, and survive throughout the hard weather.” (A Bad Birdwatcher’s Companion, Simon Barnes, 2005.) It may seem odd to compare a child to a bird, but why else would he do “Rockin’ Robin”? Michael had to hold his territory all the time.

Guiding Hand: Fleetwood Mac: "Oh Well Part 1 & 2"

There are times - they are rare - when, in the midst of turmoil and dissatisfaction, there is nevertheless a startling and still subtle sense of change. Something, you might feel, is going to happen; it is in the air; a harbinger or sign appears and it is as if all the molecules in the room shift, ever so slightly, in a different direction. Things may appear the same on a day-to-day level, but really, deep down, something is happening.

At times like these, people, ideas, chords seem to manifest, disappear, and reappear; the future reaches back to reassure the present that no matter how things look now, everything will turn out as it should. That doesn't always mean it will be pleasant; in fact, terrible things can occur along the way. But the promise of the present will be fulfilled.

Fleetwood Mac practically embody this with this single (I count it as one song on two sides of a single) to an uncanny degree. From the start they sound utterly on it, demonically all in gear, Fleetwood hitting the cowbell as if he's hitting a glass at a wedding for a speech. Peter Green pulls no punches: he knows he isn't much and warns you that if you want his opinion, he's going to give it, warts and all. There is nowhere to hide here, as the band rocks along tightly to the last verse - that he is close to God, God cares for him, but again, don't ask God his opinion either; you might not like what he thinks.

Then things take an utterly backwards - or is it forwards? - turn. The drums disappear, leaving only guitars and a cello, which meander along poetically, then dramatically, a recorder coming in now and then, kind of like Ravel meeting the Shadows. All is slow, meditative, very beautiful. It's not really rock or the blues as such; even as the piano climbs in to widen the scene, this is more cinematic than anything else; fit for a western, maybe one where there's no good guys, just lesser bad men.

Then a crash, the drums come in, the single solitary figure coming back, maybe from the near dead. It is as if it is a soundtrack to a soul lost and then found; someone who has suffered and survived.

Only Fleetwood Mac could have pulled this off, this split single, schizophrenic you may call it, and it sounds as if the future Fleetwood Mac is coming into shape with part 1, and part 2 is a more delicate, female forecast of what is to come. And yes, this all comes from the underworld of Peter Green, so it is prophetic in that way too - the sudden, unpredictable side of him, the one which wanted to be holy, to give money away. Green had been taking LSD and changing, changing so much that on one trip he went with a roadie to a party in a commune in Germany (where the band was touring at the time) and wouldn't leave the commune afterwards. The band got him out eventually, but Green left the band a few weeks later, as spiritual experiences were what he was after, and not musical fame and fortune. So by spring 1970, just a few months from "Oh Well"'s success, he was gone.

He did continue to make music, even touring with his old band when they needed him, but by 1973 he...disappeared*. Fleetwood Mac brought in Christine McVie and Bob Welch for a while; another original member, Danny Kirwan, left in 1972. Things got so strange for the band that a fake band claiming they were the 'real' Fleetwood Mac popped up, which didn't exactly help the tense and troubled group, who managed to keep recording and touring anyway. And then...

...Bob Welch (who basically made them a California-centered group) left, tired of the legal and touring hassles (the fake group being dismissed), left. Enter Mick Fleetwood, scouting for a good recording studio in Los Angeles, and enter soon after Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who had recorded their album there. Fleetwood heard it, liked Buckingham's playing and asked him to join; he said yes, but only if you take Stevie on as well. Christine was delighted to have another female to talk to on the road and elsewhere, and the rest is pretty much history. That Buckingham was another guitar demon who grew up listening to early Fleetwood Mac is either destiny or fate, however you look at it.

Here is the new Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well"; this is the sound of a band reborn, claiming its roots, realizing; yeah, this is going to work; this song was made for us. It's a link from the past that the group keep doing, no matter who is there; a gift from Peter Green for the ages...

But what about the second part? The eerie quiet, as if something is about to happen...well, Green was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, given treatment for it (electroshock therapy, I believe) and generally had a troubled 70s, he managed, with his brother's help, to get himself together enough to get a record deal; he was friendly with Fleetwood and Fleetwood invited him to help out on Tusk's "Brown Eyes"; and thus the spiritual father of the group came by, amidst his own troubles (his first and only marriage was breaking down at the time) played and then left. He turned down a big contract (the band was eager to have him record again for Warner Brothers) - Green was happier to work on a smaller, humbler level. To stay out of trouble was enough for him, I suspect; having big deals after gaining some sanity would be too much for him. He was always helped out by his family and Fleetwood when needed, and he continues to play now and then, content to devote himself to the blues.

That is the second part - the trials, travails, and eventual welcome return, a return that not all ex-band members from 60s groups could handle**. This no-nonsense song, about truth, about being an outsider, about judging others but knowing you are also being judged just as fiercely by God - has a joy to it as well, a freedom, not just in the first part but the second; as if after turmoil there is peace. Green wrote this song perhaps to show there was more to him than the blues; perhaps to give a coda to the 60s, a hint that things were going to change, for himself and his band, and that ultimately all would be reunited, in ten years' time. The promise was fulfilled, after all...


*Jeremy Spencer, another original member, just up and left the group to join the Children of God, so Green stepped in.

**I tend to think Syd Barrett's prescence on Wish You Were Here is audible, even though he didn't play on it. For Green to help, even a little, on Tusk shows that the band still cared for Green, and maybe needed his own subtle influence while making the album.

Fantastic!: The Move: "Flowers In The Rain"

Imagine it's the early morning of September 30, 1967. It's 7am; you are just waking up when you hear this.

A whole world - save for rebellious Radio Caroline - has ended. The future - as brought to you by George Martin himself - has begun. Before I get to the main song here, I'm going to pause a bit and remember my own reaction to hearing Martin's piece...I must have first heard it in 2007, when I was haphazardly planning, along with Marcello's help, the music for our wedding. I wanted it to be launched with something dramatic, of my year, but also something warm and cozy. Something to say: a whole new world has been achieved, something that was a mere notion has grown into this - true love and hence, marriage. And I cried when I first heard it, so of course it was the only choice...

The first song played on the station was this one; thunder booms give way to a chirpy song which is about flowers, trees...and escaping the commitments of the world by immersing yourself in nature, even to the point of sleeping outdoors. Lost in fantasy, taking a break to realign priorities - all done to a typical march-beat that sounds anything but dreamy. In the video you can see them in their psychedelic finery, eating apples and reading comic books - there is something deliberately regressive going on here, another facet of the rebellious/childish part of UK 'hippie' music (as opposed to the more confrontational US version).

Or perhaps this nyah-nyah I'm going to watch flowers business is more rebellious than it seems? Perhaps some notions of a greater society will occur as the day passes? It is a huge leap to go from this to the current occupations across the UK - the only thing they have in common is their refusal to go 'indoors' and 'behave' normally. (Well, these ideas have to start somewhere.) But the group's manager promoted the single with a controversial postcard illustrated with a drawing of a naked Harold Wilson (then the Prime Minister) linking him to his secretary. The band were sued and forced to give their royalties from the song to charity, which shows that maybe egging The Man plc on isn't always the best idea. (To this day the group don't make any money from the song, which considering Wilson died in 1995 is kind of unfair.)

This, if you were to believe in omens, was a mixed one at best for Radio 1, and The Move themselves got rid of their manager and were shy to do anything quite so bold promotionally again. This song did give a certain young producer fresh from NYC - Tony Visconti - experience in arranging however (he did the woodwind and strings). And thus we take a step from the mid-60s to the late 60s and the increasing strangeness on one side of pop, just as the other becomes more and more uniform*. This got stuck behind new heartthrobs The Bee Gees' "Massachusetts" - the second record played that morning - and while it found friends in the chart ("Homburg" by Procol Harum, "From The Underworld" by The Herd) it must have seemed something of an understandable disappointment to the group, who (like so many 60s groups of this time) mutated away until The Move had a parallel band, Electric Light Orchestra, as a Wood side project. Psychedelia turned out to be much harder for groups to adapt than you might think - The Who didn't really 'go' psychedelic beyond clothes; The Rolling Stones' late '67 album wasn't...very...good...[though it has its champions]; The Kinks were busy with writing about English life in its strange normalcy.

The genteel oddballness of UK psychedelia is undoubtedly because the UK wasn't involved in Vietnam, and thus the listeners did not have the ugly fact of the war beyond news reports - whereas it was the daily life of every American, because of the draft and so on. (If you didn't know someone who was over there, chances were good you knew someone who did, and draft dodgers were rampant, as well.)

So a song about kipping in the garden and evading the requirements of daily life was all that was required or needed; sooner rather than later, though, the true cost of being on the outside of society was going to make for some astonishing music, music that more than lives up to the golden promise of "Theme One." The village of A Teenage Opera, the disturbing tidiness of "Penny Lane" suddenly come to life on tv, as if its creator was also creating his own psychedelic masterpiece, trying like Wilson, Wirtz or Wood to keep a handle on it, lest it suddenly gets scattered and lost...what, was that the sound of thunder again?


*"King Midas In Reverse" by The Hollies is a good example of this; it was Graham Nash's last stab at making the band more hip, but they - and their producer - weren't interested in getting further out, and so Nash left them the following year for the welcoming hippie world of Laurel Canyon.

You Are Free: The Beatles: "Strawberry Fields Forever"

"It was as though the usual gap between desire and necessity had been bridged during some freakish fit to absent-mindedness on the part of old Father Reality, temporarily indisposed with sunspots. His first sensation could not be anything but pleasure, for here were all his pumpkins turned into carriages with the gilt still fresh and the price tags in full view. But if one is not willing to believe in fairy godmothers, such pleasures burst at a finger's touch: they are not real.

What then, with any certainty, was?"

The Prisoner, Thomas M.Disch




"What thou lov'st well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, mine or theirs
or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage,
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee."

Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI



He floated there, into the nearby woods, to get out of the town, for some peace; to be with the birds and beasts, sure, but also to connect as best he could with the actual world again, away from others. One day he would return to his old turf, there in London; but not just yet. This was the other world he wanted so badly? It would take some getting used to...



...and out of the fuzzy brightness the bright colors dim slightly, and as the focus sharpens an object - a balloon? - seems to come down slowly and unsteadily, resting and being pushed aside by a very light breeze. The flip side of the solidity of "Penny Lane" begins, uncertain and yet beckoning, quiet and compelling. The singer is so isolated, so alone, that the effect is that he is singing to just one other person - you, perhaps, or his Other, who he is away from, at the moment.

A man gazes out into the garden of his house and is reminded of his childhood haunt, where he would go and play no matter what. That Lennon was away from the rest of The Beatles when he started this song in the fall of '66 (he was in Spain doing How I Won The War) is one thing; that he had just met Yoko Ono was another. Her effect on him was immediate; and where he stayed in Spain did indeed remind him of Strawberry Field, where he played as a kid. But this is as far from the jauntiness of "Penny Lane" as is possible.


There is nothing to hold on to here.


It's not enough to say that the narrator is unreliable (as in the previous song) as it is that there is barely a narration that happens. It is because he sees things so indecisively that you have to accept the invitation of the song - to guide him in a way, even though he is the one who is going, is taking you, and as the song intensifies and grows darker (as if you were now in the woods and the sunlight was blocked by the trees' density), "nothing is real" becomes a promise and a threat. His indifference - "it doesn't matter much to me" - is also ambivalent, as if the old polarities and labels no longer really count. If this song is a gift, it is one you have to figure out the value of; a kit, if you like, rather than the thing itself. And then he disappears, it seems...

...then returns, turning back on itself, goofing off, getting lost, seemingly saying that every way here is the right way, again it is your choice - he has brought you here, back to his childhood, to how it was for him; your empathy gives the song life, makes it into an experience...that he got to this experience himself through taking LSD is interesting but ultimately not the point. The swirling, changing and near-classical drama of the song is to make you remember your own Strawberry Field, your own place of creativity and imagination; maybe unhappiness pushed you there, or boredom, or just the desperate need to escape. And that place returns, things inevitably happen to remind you that that place exists, even if only in your head; that liberation and creativity - freedom - can be confusing things, but they are the essential things, too.

And that was the gift of 1967, which may be submerged or lost but always, inevitably, shows up when you least expect it. It is as if once it was released, it was impossible to think of anything before it as modern; just as once you take LSD or have a similar transformative experience, the world does not look or feel the same. There is more than one way to experience the world, and once seen you cannot go back; and there is no way of knowing what your experience will bring to you - there is no guarantee it will be wholly "good."

That was a relief to some, a deep threat to others, and effectively divided the pop music audience. It was one thing to copy The Beatles in '63/'64 - that effort launched a thousand garage bands - but this? Once again they had leapfrogged everyone, even Brian Wilson, who had to pull the car over and listen, dumbfounded, as he heard what he wanted to do with The Beach Boys had already been achieved. (The Smile sessions continued on, but the album was effectively running out of steam by this time; though I must point out the tremendous "Surf's Up*" as something Wilson should have regarded as being just as good.)

As you might expect, UK radio didn't play this too much - psychedelic music was not going to fit in well with the light programme. It got equal airplay in the more open US market, getting to #8 as a b-side - such was the power of the song, the popularity of The Beatles, and the readiness of a large segment of people for this kind of song. (Note that neither this nor their previous double A side were 'love' songs as such, unless you count "Yellow Submarine" as one, in a way.) But there was a percentage who would rather have those conventional love songs - happy or sad, glad or mopey - over anything as quietly disturbing as this song.

It would be facile to say it was all housewives and secretaries who loved Englebert and only hippies and counterculture types who loved The Beatles; my mom, for one, loves this and she was busy looking after me, at the time. My aunt was (and is!) a confirmed fan and she was 12 when she first heard this; for her it was a logical continuation from Revolver, the album Brian Wilson had been trying to beat at the time. Pop music had come a long way in a short time, though, and some were finding things hard to keep up with, found this song a little too strange to love.

The psychedelic box was now open for all who wanted it; but even those who just wanted the licence to make noises that were fuzzy or backwards or just...not...steady had freedom granted to them as well. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that shoegazing gets its emotional start here, as well as its sonic roots; and the space here is vital, the space to explore the inner world as well as the outer. The split starts here, floating and swimming on invisible currents.



...and so he floated; the shock of it was that it had made him free, but seemingly free from nothing. He could observe, see, but could not do, act. And it was tiring; he could travel but never rest, lest he be discovered. He could spy on others, but what could he do with the knowledge? No one could hear him. Only his music was audible now, when anyone bothered to listen to it. He stopped by a house and heard a song coming from the radio in the kitchen; he could not quite make out who it was first. Those boys, he thought, are so lucky. Do they appreciate life?

A cat hissed at him, and he ran, though he didn't need to. It wasn't even a black cat, but he was scared. And yet weren't ghosts supposed to scare others? Back to the town he floated, as night fell...


*This was going to be on the Smile album but then was shelved until '71, when they released an album of the same name.

Back to the Future: Donovan: "Sunshine Superman"

The term "psychedelic" comes from two Greek words - "psyche" (the soul) and "deloun" (to manifest). With this song the psychedelic era comes to this blog, though in truth psychedelic music had existed for at least a year if not more (Pet Sounds is psychedelic in the sense that it is a soul-manifesting album, for instance). It was recorded a year earlier but due to record company problems was a hit in the UK long after it got to #1 in the US. (Trust a Scotsman to be ahead of the curve musically.)

The term psychedelic was coined in 1957* - ten years earlier - to describe what LSD actually (they hoped) would do. It was never meant to be used outside of psychotherapy, originally, and many doctors and scientists did experiments to see what effect it would have on patients and 'artistic'** types. By the mid-60s they had determined that it was a drug with a rather unpredictable effect on people, and was much tougher to obtain, which didn't stop those in the know from getting it and giving it to those who felt they needed to go on their own trip. Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary and other respected folks encouraged those who were disenchanted to take it and enlighten themselves - to see the world in a new way and thence evolve.

Suffice it to say this Utopian idea - tuning in, turning on and dropping out - appealed to many who felt that just about everything going on in the 60s was wrong - the war, racism, sexism, the boring straight world with its hierarchies and tragic lack of soul. Others took it to prove they were brave enough to do so - Ken Kesey's acid tests had turned many on the West Coast on in '66-'65 - though taking it was never supposed to be about posing or boasting. It is also true that musicians who took LSD had to have a strong constitution to survive doing so, and that many tried to get their experiences into their songs, via words and/or music. It naturally appealed to those who were bored, restless, experimental - John Lennon and George Harrison were the LSD heads in The Beatles, for instance, as opposed to McCartney (who by this time still hadn't tried it). In the UK it was an American import and was one of those scandalous drugs that led to drug busts, even though it was not a crime to possess it (other ones, such as pot or cocaine, yes).

If you are wondering why I am going on about a drug as opposed to a song, that is because this year is unlike any others. This is the crossroads; this is the tightrope moment when musicians - particularly UK ones - begin to break down barriers and experiment and really listen to each other. LSD has a way of breaking down barriers as well of course, of making what is there simply more intense or perceptible in a way close to a mystical experience. It's a Utopian time all right, but with drugs there is always the risk that something will go wrong, that the classic "good idea at the time" will evaporate and what seems to be glaringly obvious to the tripper will be fuzzy or incoherent to those straighter folk who are trying to understand what the heck is going on.

1967 is unlike any other years in that so many musicians did their best to express the inexpressible and give the world a chance to hear what they heard, see what they saw, with uniformly stunning results. Apart from the strobe lights, fluorescent posters and the like, the music is what really lasts from this period; that a huge generation experienced it and gave it its popularity in the first place means I have always known it, almost have over-heard it, if that's possible.

Donovan's proud boasting that he can outdo Superman and Green Lantern in his exploits in order to win his girl are one thing, but a video with no lip-syncing is another, not to mention those psychedelic hallmark: distorted pictures, kites and random wackiness (avec kitten). This is psychedelic courting, full of pearls and rainbows and a sly wink in the song that doesn't take away from its seriousness. I grew up in a house full of Donovan's records and so this is as familiar to me as The Beach Boys. That it could be heard as an invitation from the hip to the straights to succumb to the ennobling and beautiful world post-trip is also there, the appeal as warm and enriching as, well, sunshine itself. But as we all know, too much sunshine can be dangerous, and LSD was never meant to be taken for that long.

This is the sunny introduction to a year that will transform a great deal of what can be thought of as 'rock' (in just about every way possible). It brings Jimmy Page (electric guitar) into this saga as well, then just a session musician who was still (at the time of recording) to join The Yardbirds. A whole world is opening up, erratically but inevitably, as the counterculture/flower power movement moves in from the fringes and starts to get noticed; hippies spring up wildflower-like and the enchanting strangeness and startling humor - not to mention rebelliousness - give The Man plc a big headache. The laid-back mood of the year is set, with barely one or two club hits managing to make it to #2, and none make it to #1 (save "I'm a Believer"). The torrid excitements of '66 are fading, to be replaced by musicians who are starting to slow down so they can hear each other better, who are becoming - for now - a real community. Their souls, if you like, are staring to manifest.



*LSD itself was invented in 1943, though its psychedelic properties weren't discovered for a few years.

**My father was the subject of an experiment, along with another painter, in Los Angeles in 1959. Everything he saw was brighter than usual, so the painting he did was darker, just to give his eyes a break. He later saw Hollywood Boulevard and thought it was on fire. He didn't show any interest in LSD afterwards, though we had old Psychedelic Reviews around the house, so he must have been curious...

The New World: The Beach Boys: "Sloop John B"

If you look at a globe you will see the world, but if you are from California you will see the world mostly as either this or that - land or sea. The Pacific Ocean is the largest and most mind-boggling thing on the Earth, and if you look at a globe in a certain position it is literally all you can see. To live on the edge of it in what the rest of your country considers to be a paradise is a profound experience; as an Angeleno myself I can't say I spent a lot of time at the beach, but knowing it was there made everything seem...different. It was a tangible cold wash of infinity right there, not stormy like the Atlantic but deep and peaceful, hypnotizing, even....and growing up in Canada with the perpetual roll-down map of the world for geography lessons (an old map, showing all countries with UK ties as red), the Pacific itself stretched and went on in a way that almost laughed at the idea of humans ever really truly taking over the planet. Empires come and go; the vast remains...

We've had The Big Four already in this blog, but now comes the US band that leapt up from being merely another surf band to giving voice to that land/sea division, out of which blossoms everything from fun and more fun to a growing appreciation of what actually matters in life.

The Beach Boys were the band - the only one, I'd argue - who could do this, as it was they who sang so loudly and rocked so hard about cars and girls and the majesty of California itself in the first place. With them, life in California made life anywhere else sound boring and routine; it made surfing a national right and having the right car the key to happiness itself. Perpetual recess sounds like a good idea, but on those foggy, rainy (the song is wrong - it does rain in southern California) days a man can get to wondering if there is more to life...

...and if you are Brian Wilson, steeped in American music from Stephen Foster to George Gershwin, you are going to want to do something big. Something that can bring the California sublime to a point and then present it and give it dimensions and richness. It was a huge project, but he had to start somewhere. In July 1965 he was at the piano when Al Jardine, a folk music fan, sat down next to him and presented him with this song. Wilson wasn't much for folk and Jardine had to then show him how it could be done in the Beach Boys style.

Wilson still didn't seem all that enthused, but what did Jardine find the next day but all the musicians, from Carol Kaye and Hal Blaine on down, there in the studio ready to play, Wilson building on Jardine's arrangement and slightly changing the lyrics to suit the band (Wilson sings the first and third verses, Mike Love the second; of course Jardine wanted to sing it but Wilson was boss).

Something mythic in the song - its sadness balanced with hope (surely the captain will let them go home) must have called out to him; and the tension between the misery of being at sea to the joy of being back on land is there too...though the song just fades out, with no resolution. It's the worst trip, and yet it continues...and yet the song (compared to this, much closer to the original calypso) is almost by definition cheery because of the music - glockenspiel, baritone saxophone and flutes will give something extra to the song, wider dimensions, a feeling that all will be well...

...that Wilson did this amidst doing more 'standard' Beach Boys music (for Beach Boys' Party!) shows that his ambitions were rising - let's do some Beatles songs and then - boom! - he heard Rubber Soul and vowed he would make the greatest album of all time. He was just 23, but had been working like crazy for years writing songs, and now he was inspired...

...and "Sloop John B" got caught up in the madness, coming out as a single as the band were still working on their new album, and put on that album as that is what happened to singles - they just got stuck on whatever album was coming out next. Wilson must have known this and realized he had to be at least this good in order to be cohesive; but then everything he did was of a piece, so incredibly focused he was, bringing the rest of the band along to make music that wasn't just unlike anything they had done before, but unlike anything anyone had done before. The one-off folk song became a template, the music itself at one point stopping...

...for the voices.

Oh, the voices!

At this point the harmonies were well known, but in this song they come to the fore, from high to low, as if they are all on that damn ship, somehow tethered to the song just enough to keep with it, but also flying high above it*. There is so much going on in just a few seconds that - though of course all their songs have harmonies - that in the context of this blog, a new standard has been set, the Pacific has been reached and oh, what are other groups going to do now.

There is rippling brightness and terrible fights, loneliness and gorgeousness, rock sweeping up folk and its history and making the old new, by bringing new and old together. Foster and Gershwin were next, but there would be a lot of praying beforehand.



*I tend to think of the The Beach Boys' harmonies as a stunning Californian scenery like Yosemite or Big Sur - of course it was a product of a lot of luck and hard work, but it epitomizes the overwhelmingness of Californian life, at once ordinary and extraordinary, normal and abnormal. Brian Wilson learned from The Four Freshmen as much as from Chuck Berry, but was after something...new here. He more than got it.

Now Is The Time: Manfred Mann: "If You Gotta Go Go Now"

There has been a man stalking the charts all this year; sometimes he is there himself, sometimes it's others covering his songs or being inspired to sing or write songs like him. If there is a simple divide - state vs. pirate radio - then there is another one - those who know and dig Bob Dylan, and those who don't. He isn't now (and I'm guessing wasn't then) to everyone's liking, but those who embraced his casual twangy sound and sharp lyrics could not help wanting to be him; even Lennon succumbed for a while, inspired by the sheer exuberant noise of his songs, not to mention the fact that he was usually saying something - something complex, never simple.

The Manfreds were the first UK band to cover Dylan and get him near to the top (they would get a number one with "The Mighty Quinn" a few years from now) and they have just the right blend of roughness and odd tenderness to make this work. He wants her, but not if it's going to put her off her stride; she's got to make up her mind, not him. He is happy no matter what. And that is the undercurrent here - happiness. He's poor, it's late, he's tired - but there is no Stonesy condescension or smugness, nor is he going to miss her and whine about it next day to his friends. There is - can I say this? - an American plain-speaking here that is quite refreshing and the candid way Dylan had in all songs of saying what needed to be said must have hit all UK bands and songwriters quite hard (not to mention his dress sense and general gnomic nonchalance).

I don't know if the Manfreds were the first UK band to record a Dylan song, but they were the right group to do so. Dylan's work is certainly a challenge to The Beatles (whom he has already met); they start to go more acoustic and self-reflective just as he takes up the electric mantle. This is a crossroads in pop to be sure, one that not every singer or band could step into, but once again the line has been drawn between us and them, in attitude as well as style. That attitude would soon explode, but for now all remains quiet...

Lend Your Voice: Petula Clark: "Downtown"

The man, in the dark, after he cries and perhaps is a bit cold and numb, turns on the radio, and hears this.

He is perhaps warmed by it, by the simple piano and then the unveiled band behind her, as if the city's core itself were made of music, bright and shiny and capable of lifting even the most tired and bedraggled soul. Of course he resists and tries to pretend that what is on offer - all the distractions - are beneath him or beside the point. But then it filters through slowly that it is just being out there that matters. He does not have to do anything but go and walk and look, really look and let himself become part of a greater whole. There is no great mystery to it, or conspiracy. Yes, the city is yours too. Do with it as you will. And yes, I am there, you might meet me, and we can exist, if only for a while. The city knows no time or particular emotion; it is what it is, and it accepts you, whoever you are.

It is easy to feel as if you don't mean very much, but then you can turn it around and say, it's just a city, of course; and cities are made of people. The idea of "life" making you lonely is no joke, and the city can only act as a bandage at first, while the real work goes on underneath. But all reviving souls need a distraction, and the city is there for you, if you can stand the "noise and the hurry."

Losing yourself to find yourself; getting rid of loneliness by becoming part of the lonely crowd - these are primal Sixties ideas and gathering together in order to do something good is a natural when there is a sudden boom in people who are young and don't have much else to do; but this song goes deeper than just addressing gawky, awkward wallflowers and hermits to go out and learn to socialize. In Canada a man the same age as Clark heard this song and was struck by it, and it was something of a soundtrack to his own outings, wherein he began to think of the voices of others - the sound of the crowd, if you will - as instruments in and of themselves, interweaving, contradicting, supporting, that the flow of life itself was music.

This was far beyond producer/songwriter Tony Hatch's idea of course - he simply wanted to get the song finished (it was, in the men's room minutes before recording) and give Clark a hit in English (she was doing much better in France than the UK at this point). It was a fragment he played for her at first, something he'd written hoping it would be recorded by The Drifters; Clark immediately recognized it was for her, and Hatch had only a few days to finish it. So in a way she is pouring herself into this song, singing directly to you to join her, in a way that is not just pretty or elegant but a personal invitation. There is a small clause in her "might" at the end, but this is because so many will turn out that she may not be able to see you. The song gives confidence to the listener that s/he will not be alone, whatever happens, and that includes the shattered man, gathering pieces of himself, recognizing himself in others, and others in himself.

Loud Hard Fast Rules: The Kinks: "All Day and All Of The Night"

The origins of genres of music are always murky; from the primordial mud that is this song - which rattles the foundations of rock itself - many things will flow, aided and abetted by other songs from The Beatles and bands we have yet to meet in this blog. This song the LEAPS out at you, it cannot and will not be resisted; there is something more than a little obsessive about the lyrics and the choppy way they are sung (choppy to go with the power chords) in what sounds like a big broom closet. This is rock pounced upon with glee (you can hear their joy in the break, in Dave Davies' no-holds-barred solo), as if rock itself was just invented last week and its almighty power to stun ears and energize listeners was there for the taking by anybody, even some young men from Muswell Hill.

And what are the results? Screaming chaos, at first, but you just know that garage bands across the world made yet another racket to bug their parents, some digging the speed (and thence to punk) and others the distortion and LOUDNESS (punk again but also heavy metal). Nobody knew about the latter at the time and a 'punk' was someone usually found on American cop shows (wearing a windbreaker/sneer and up to no good). The sheer attack of this song must have taken The Beatles and DC5 aback; but The Kinks themselves probably knew they could not just write knock-'em-out songs like this for long without being bored and/or out of fashion. Meanwhile I can see Mods dancing to this, future guitar heroes jumping on their beds with their air guitars, lots of play on pirate radio and lots of screaming girls caught between the relentless energy of the song and the slight smile in Ray Davies' voice, as if he knows he's wrong, but OH how it feels so right. Is obsession always such a bad thing?

Not Now But Now: The Beatles: "Please Please Me"

"I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after."

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" Wallace Stevens


"So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP."

"Annus Mirabilis" Philip Larkin


"The men there all looked as though they distrusted him, and, as for the women, they were all intent on showing their contempt for this rather odd creature, but no one seemed quite sure how to do it...I knew I was taking on more than I was ever likely to be capable of bearing, but there never seemed to be any choice..."

"He thinks he's got a sort of genius for love and friendship - on his own terms. Well, for twenty years I'd lived a happy, uncomplicated life, and suddenly, this - this spiritual barbarian - throws down the gauntlet at me."

Look Back In Anger, John Osborne


The word novelty is used to connote things which are new at the time but then quickly wear off, to be remembered as a passing phase or craze but embarrassing and childish in retrospect. But novelty means new, and music doesn't move ahead without newness.

George Martin was in the business of taking what was most difficult - comedy - and somehow getting it committed to tape. Parlophone was the label for comedy at EMI, whether it was The Goons, Sellers & Loren or Bernard Cribbins; if you were at all strange or different, such as Mrs. Miller or Rolf Harris, this is where you ended up - being produced by a frank but polite man who knew how to get the best out of what could be best called a unique group of people.

And in come the newcomers to Parlophone - The Beatles.

The story of their first meeting is well-known, just as is the song Martin predicted would go to number one (it did, but not on the chart I'm following) is well known as the song that started Beatlemania, a song that had its roots in Orbison's longing and long vowels (sped up to Everly Brothers harmony-bearing levels) and the Bing Crosby line "Please lend a little ear to my pleas" which Lennon took and then altered in his own way. Martin didn't want a ballad*, hence it was sped up, but the lyrics didn't change and this is where the watershed is - though for the listening public, it was all in the alternately breezy and urgent playing and singing and above all eager noises emanating from their wireless that gave the impetus to lifelong loyalty.

And it could have been heard as a novelty, at the time; as something that would blaze up and die down in a matter of months; but enthusiasm like this cannot and does not fade away easily, zipping through the air like lightning and refreshing a rather parched public like nothing else. (That it was a hit once spring had finally arrived after a bleak winter is most fitting.) Indeed the public responded to this so strongly that I wonder if they ever stopped to notice what the lyrics were about (or to put it another way, how did this ever get on the BBC)...it is almost as much as what isn't being sung/said here as what is that counts, the desires and urges that have been denied or scheduled or just plain tucked away as wrong or bad or immoral are here, the urgent "Come on" calling forth not just those urges but seemingly the rest of the 60s to get on with it, it's not the 50s any more, happen already.

Where did this urgency come from? From the United States, of course! It is somewhat odd to realize this, but The Beatles were essentially making their own version of American music. Now, I know I should know better in this regard, that they had been churning out the US and UK chart hits for years on the club circuit, playing any number of favorites and songs they may not have liked but had to play in order to please the punters...but I can guess this was not the easiest or most pleasant of lives, and to sustain it and not get tired of the music is an achievement in and of itself; to take a girl group*** (The Shirelles) as an example of great songwriting (not forgetting Motown) and championing that sound and feel and putting their own particular stamp on that is, as Bob Dylan said in a different context, outrageous. No one in the UK could have done this, at this point**; written an original song that was utterly loyal to its American roots and yet not come off as a rip-off or lame imitation but be its own thing, quickly altering the direction of influence (once they reached the US in a year's time) and giddily asking for the audience's love and attention.

It could be that this song did so well because of the producer; because it was utterly new; in part because a laugh was hiding in the song as well as pleading eyes; but for whatever reason, music in the UK and thereafter the rest of the world would and did change. Just how much is to be shown by this blog, amongst so much other music writing, and when we return to them, it will be with something so different from this as to be from a whole other band altogether.


*At EMI George Martin was in competition with Cliff Richard & The Shadows producer Norrie Paramor and the last thing he wanted was something like what Paramor did (it is hard to imagine The Beatles doing a cover of "I'm Looking Out The Window", for example). The Beatles could have recorded a song they wrote but didn't think was quite for them ("How Do You Do It" which they gave to Gerry and the Pacemakers) for Martin instead - he thought it was much better than the "dreary" original version of this song - instead they worked on "Please Please Me" until Martin approved of it.

**I realize there are those who believe that if The Beatles hadn't come along then someone would have - The Man plc would have found some group that did the same thing - but as it stands there were no rivals and in many ways, if I may say so, the rivals they did have would not have gotten as far as they did without the example of The Beatles in the first place. The lyrics of this song matter not just because they suggest so many interpretations, but that they were written by the group and not a couple of people hunched over a piano somewhere (that said, The Beatles paid a great deal of attention to the Brill Building, of course)...

*** Between their love of girl groups and their long hair, The Beatles also bring in ye olde feminisation of rock, which is perhaps why this song only caught on in the US once the Beatles were not just heard but seen on tv; parents may have approved of them at first, but the moptops irked (and as I know from personal experience) continue to irk those who thought the tidy early 60s needed no change or improvement.

The Choice Is Yours: Del Shannon: "Swiss Maid"

As it sometimes happens, there are strange and lovely things to be found in the most unexpected places, places that seem almost innocuous, at first...

So here we are, after a couple of sweaty dances, bumping along in a thump-a-thump way through Switzerland. "One time, a long time ago" a young woman sits/stands atop a mountain and wonders and waits for someone to notice her - her father tells her one day she'll go down to the valley and meet someone; but instead she ups and dies unhappy, pining her heart out. A simple enough story, save for the ending...

And this is where the figurative floor of the swimming pool, if we are walking along it, slips; we are floating; we are still in water, still upright, but the floor of the song is gone...

And it's all because Del (covering a Roger Miller song here, btw), after causing us listeners to care about a fictional woman's death as only he can, sings...

"If she did or not I really don't know...I'd rather think she'd found her love, wouldn't you rather think she did find love, somewhere, someway..."

And thus the fourth wall is not just acknowledged but the regular way of telling a story in a song is casually and deliberately broken down. To say this is extraordinary is putting it mildly; suddenly to turn to his audience and ask them to think of this woman and her story and think of it differently, to in essence ask them to write their own ending - these are not exactly new in storytelling, but it nevertheless feels as if something new - postmodernism? - is in the air. Del's clear compassion for this lonely girl (oddly emphasized by all the girls yodelling behind him) makes us agree with him - it would be better if somehow she had met someone, gone to the valley and found her man.

When I first heard this song it just sounded strange; but this is the point - before I expected it - that a song can in effect double up against itself, that the imaginative power of the songwriter opens up to include his audience. It is practically an invitation for others to write their own songs, which is the big difference in the 60s. And it starts here.

If You Get The Notion: Little Eva: "The Locomotion"

In the fall of 1962 the world was at a crisis point; it in just such circumstances that people either take music very, very seriously or throw themselves into one craze or another, if only to distract themselves for a few moments from what is actually taking place. Enter one young girl, a babysitter who could sing, who was fortunate enough to work for two young songwriters at the Brill Building; add also a new dance craze (so new it was actually created by the song, which somehow I think is a first) and lots of oohing and hand clapping and horns like trains in the back and here you have it - "The Locomotion". If only music was as simple as that! But the more I think about it, the more I find here - not just another song signifying the innocent US swinging and chugging towards (possible) oblivion - but the start of something big.

This is the first song in this blog both sung and (co-)written by a woman, and also therefore represents the tip of the rather large iceberg known as the Girl Groups, a phenomenon that sadly I hardly get to write about here, as much as I love it. (Can anyone vouch for the greatness of this box set? I intend to get it, now that we live somewhere big enough to store it.) After the big titan men of rock seemingly disappeared, it was in part these girls who kept it all going, Little Eva included. As unlikely as it seems, not is this song the historical first for women for this blog, but in its own way as a kind of...civil rights song. Not an anthem, maybe, but you don't call someone Little Eva and have her sing about (underground) railroad trains without some forethought - and there is something powerful in this song, a kind of "Let's make a chain NOW!" exuberance and vitality that doesn't just speak to the dance floor but to something in US/UK culture; a need to distract yourself by choo-chooing away, maybe, but also a sense that a release of energy is in itself energizing.

It is not just a commonplace to note that the 50s were a time of pent-up feelings and notions and that the 60s gradually saw a lot of the formality of the 50s evaporate - you can hear it happening here, a song heard 'round the world as tensions grew more and more. That it was a babysitter who sang this call to rise and march (as I interpret it, anyway) is amazing - having been a nanny myself once, I can only imagine the gulf between her old life and new one, not that she got to sing for so long. But as vital as this song is, Little Eva is immortal, a warm, encouraging voice in the impending nuclear darkness.

Right Hand, Left Hand: Pat Boone: "Speedy Gonzales"

The world of music, as we have seen so far, can be a puzzling and wondrous thing to behold; voices, concepts and ideas get passed back and forth, noises and mistakes and casual asides become more, not less, important over time. A success for one person of a certain...persuasion can be funneled to make something else entirely different happen, without much public knowledge.

And so it is here; a song wherein the singer is upstaged by a far more interesting and charismatic cartoon character (Speedy sounds more human, weirdly, than Boone does), a song bought by and large by kids and summer-crazed parents of kids (it was number two for a good while) generated enough funds (along, to be fair, with all of Boone's other hits) to start Impulse! jazz label. To put it mildly, I do not think Boone's children had any idea - how could they? - of what their pence and ha'pennys were helping to create; but there it is.

Let me be personal for a moment here - I grew up in a jazz household, so I grew up as a little girl looking at Impulse! spines with their warm orange glow attracting me to look at their vivid covers; and even then I could sense that these were all albums worth my parents' time and mine as well, if I ever got around to them. I feel that the one area of music from this time (by August of '62 they had been married for two and a half years or so and I still wasn't a glint in either of their eyes) that simply trumps most popular music is jazz; whether it's Gil Evans & Orchestra, John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus Charlie Hayden and the Liberation Music Orchestra, Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders....in short, if it was avant garde jazz you wanted in the 60s, Impulse! was the label to watch.

There are probably some who think that taking the money raised by Boone and starting a label (done in 1960, but by the time of "Speedy Gonzales" it was starting to make a name for itself) was simply poetic justice - this is the man who took the punctum out of "Tutti Frutti", after all; and now the yang was merely catching up with the yin, so to speak. It is also a reminder that if something - here it is the 50s and all it stands for - is waning (this is the last time I write about Boone) then something else will not exactly takeits place, but a new vehicle will be built so that those who want to escape from the bossy, square Boone and into more interesting spaces and dimensions can do so. The 60s will start to flood in soon, after the hot summer of '62 recedes; and about to enter the chart is a song (I will mention it when I get to the number two it stops) that would give even John Coltrane a sense that not all in the charts was sophomoric or dull; the future is indeed here, orbiting the globe.

The One and Only: Roy Orbison: "Dream Baby"

The singer for once is happy. As happy as he will ever be? Perhaps. Once upon a time he wanted to give a song, to sell it, to Elvis, to the Everlys, but neither were in need of it, so he sang it himself; by the time this song was a hit, he was undoubtedly in his stride, a stride it took him a long time to find, just as sometimes the less showy but more beautiful flower will bloom after others have faded. If he has suffered before, if he will suffer again, he is exempt in this song; without sounding at all righteous or brave. He is dreaming night and day, you can see the clock's hands swing and become meaningless as he dreams; he sings as if he is enjoying dreaming about his beloved, his Other, as much as he undoubtedly loves her. At the same time, he knows she is dreaming too, maybe of him, maybe not, it doesn't matter (and what a relief, when at some times in his songs it seems as if the whole world rests on whether she will be his or no, right down to whether she even looks at him - there is nothing frivolous in Orbison's songs, they are practically Greek in their insistence on the essence of things). Still, how long must he dream? When will she make his dreams come true? His voice hangs between pure pleasure and the longing for the realization of that pleasure, and since Orbison is also earthy and direct (how many girls fell for him, glasses and all, just because of his voice?), his longing is getting to be overpowering, his dreams feverish in trying to keep up with them. The song grows more intense and crowded with other voices and instruments as it goes, echoing his need, and his knife-keen Tarzan call rises at the end, showing that perhaps his dreams will be fulfilled, that she will wake up and the dream will become a reality.

That Orbison was the last of the Sun label's boys to prosper makes sense, as he was the shyest and not given to much showbusiness action onstage; instead he found power in stillness, in writing songs to match the grain and grandeur of his voice, to literally give of himself in his singing without fanfare or references to others. (It's impossible to think of his doing a twist song, for instance.) Hearing him sing is like hearing a short story compacted even further, told from perfect memory with every feeling and nuance intact. With this song he might be looking at a girl, at a girl he knows or hopes to know; he gives us the power to enter into that world, to inhabit it, in an intimate way, not to mention an inspirational one. That he got a second chance to bring that vulnerable and noble voice to us is something of a miracle; the first being his faith in that voice and patience with it, over many years. Orbison died the same year my father did, and in some ways I see him as a father of rock to anyone who needs him, who needs to know someone else felt just this way, once.

The One: Billy Fury: "Jealousy"

In the history of music there are a few figures here and there who are what I call Friendly Forebears - those who foreshadow, who inspire, who give hope - a possibility, a chance. Billy Fury is by definition one of these figures for New Pop (he was the original man in the gold lame suit, pace Martin Fry) and yet he also inspired his own peers as well - the Silver Beatles tried and failed to be his backup band on tour, a job the Tornados (yes, the "Telstar" band) got for a while instead.

It is singularly unfortunate, for the case of this blog, that the song here in question - his only number two (and inexplicably, he never got to number one) was not his best song (whole Oxford debates could be held on that topic), but as a performance it has all his hallmarks - his commitment to the song as a song, his believability - his charisma comes through loud and clear, despite all strings, backing singers and other 1961 necessities for 'all-round entertainment'. (These were the days, lest we forget, that 'rock 'n' roll was seen as a two-year 'event' in a performer's career - that difficult awkward stage - before they 'grew up' and 'matured' into actual respectable recording artists. This is just what Fury was doing at this time - proving he could make music for grown-ups, essentially.)

What Fury (rechristened by Larry Parnes - his real name was Ronald Wycherley) had at this time is what no other UK performer had - an ability to stun and amaze on record and in person, to appeal to girls (who wanted to be his baby and baby him - girls can tell when a man is vulnerable) and to guys as well - he didn't hold back in performance (indeed he had to tone his live act down; early on he would end up on the floor...just what he did to get there and what he did there, I don't know). In short he was everything Cliff Richard wasn't, and was the first signal here of impending Liverpool magic - that combination of shyness, dynamism and sheer ability (Fury wrote a lot of his songs, thus the added injustice of his only appearance in this blog being a cover of a Danish song from the 20s) that ease - not to mention what Smash Hits, had it existed at the time, would call his quiffstastic looks and general charm (in full effect here).

He was in the midst of a comeback when he died in 1983, having lived to see his figurative children conquer the charts as he once did; and he still stands as the genuine, real article, a man who loved animals as much as he loved people, a gentleman whose example proved to an almost-there generation that there was far more to singing a song than just singing a song.

(Gratuitous extra version of "Jealousy" for those who like a certain Italian tv host/singer - there is a certain amount of cheese in this song inherently, I believe, and the only ways to deal with it are either to be noble and compassionate, or to just dive into the mozzarella and let it rock.)