Very Strange Vibration: Gloria Gaynor: "Never Can Say Goodbye"

There are few moments better than the one where confusion and doubt are conquered, even eliminated.  We are in disco when this particular and precise emotion happens to make sense, as disco is about that joy, a joy that magnetic and crushing and inexplicable, an energy that cannot be denied.  That it comes in with Max Roach-inspired drumming, swirling strings and an I’ve-lived-this-and-we-can-share-it vocal from Gloria Gaynor (who sounds as caught up in the song as anyone) is just as well.  We are far from the laid-back pleasures of "Rock Your Baby" or the get-down Miami horn blasts of KC & the Sunshine Band here.  Gaynor is singing to be heard, and that this is a Jackson 5 song seems to make no impression on her whatsoever.  She is making this her own.

What those who bought this en masse may or may have not known was that “Never Can Say Goodbye” was the middle of a trilogy from her album of the time – a “mix” really – by Tom Moulton*, which starts with “Honey Bee” and ends with “Reach Out I’ll Be There.**”  This mix was the first to appear on an album – let’s just pause to ponder this – and capitalized on Moulton’s ability as a mixer to really get into the songs – not in a complicated way, just in a way that was supposed to elongate the song, and have Gaynor’s voice in your head *even when she wasn’t audibly there*. Dancing in your head? That the very male world of disco (I have been reading Peter Shapiro’s book on it and early discos were definitely male territory, with disco becoming a more female-friendly phenomenon later on) should have a woman taking on Levi Stubbs’ aria of a song and making it sound like the veritable audio version of the last helicopter out of Vietnam is, to say the least, quite something. 

The power of the song is to worry away in the verses and then dismiss these worries in the chorus with a rising "I love you ssssooooooooooo" that has in it right there a real vulnerability/strength moment which disco (when it wasn't just exhorting you the listener to dance, which it often did) does so well.  Can you stop?  Is stopping on the dancefloor possible?  Tom Moulton didn't want you to stop, and put this together with oh say Eddie Kendricks' "Girl You Need A Change Of Mind" and it won't stop.

 

Next:  A radio, a woman, a man. 

 *Tom Moulton is the first person to use a 12" single to do the pressing of a song, giving the song more space to breathe, sound better and of course have more time to let the song be itself. That he found this out by accident is charming. 

**We are not done with Motown yet and in a few entries the topic of jazz will appear, with Motown popping up unexpectedly.

Root Down: Ike and Tina Turner: "Nutbush City Limits"

If the whole late 60s/early 70s vibe, in albums anyway, was the constant longing for home - to find a home, to go back home, to be confused as to where or what "home" meant anymore - well, for Tina Turner her hometown was Nutbush, Tennessee, and she has her own song here (Ike Turner wrote the music but for whatever reason let Tina have the full credits) to explain just why she isn't there anymore.  Or does she?

It wasn't known to the general public at the time, but is now very well known - that Tina was in an abusive and volatile marriage with Ike*, and during those last years (things were bad at this time, and about to get worse, with Ike's alcoholism and cocaine addiction) I have no doubt this song played a big part of her eventual self-liberation.  Because, famously (and not too long after this clip from the Cher show) she left Ike with almost nothing to her name, nothing but her Buddhist belief and a sense that she had had more than enough.  "Nutbush City Limits" is a song about roots, beginnings, what makes a person a person - in this case, growing up in a small town (it's not actually a city).  You get the idea it was a place where not much happened (it's a "quiet little community") where people went certain places on certain days ("You go to store on Friday/You go to church on Sunday") and yet the song is so funky that you just know the rest of the week is a push-and-pull between self-respecting neatness and propriety ("Twenty-five is the speed limit") and the gin house where, if you are arrested for drunkenness, you don't get bail, just salt pork and molasses.  There are clear lines in Nutbush ("You go to fields on weekdays/And have a  picnic on Labor Day") and if you are young Anna Mae Bullock then you either fit in or you don't; but as someone once said, a beginning is a place to start and how many musicians have come from places like this?  Almost all of them, I imagine (and even if they didn't, they will say they felt as if they did).  Tina sings this with pride - this is her town, her roots, something Ike cannot take away from her - and as narrow and regulated as it sounds, this is where she is from, quite literally - and while there is no way she could go back to it, it's within her.  The most significant line for me is "You have to watch what you're putting down" - i.e., if you don't conform in some way then you just have to leave, though as it happened Tina left due to family turmoil and was brought up in several different towns, Nutbush being one of them.  Maybe Tina wrote this as a reminder that she was, before she'd gotten onstage in St. Louis to sing with Ike, a person of her own, shaped by experiences and places and that that was worth remembering, in and of itself. 

That this song was done by her several times more (and was done as part of Brian Johnson's audition for AC/DC, and was covered by Bob Seger - it brings the rock and the funk**) shows how important it is to her, how maybe writing it was her first step in finding herself (if I can use 70s psychology speech) and liberating herself from Ike.  Is she still there?  I can't help but think it's a fond song, a proud one, a song about overcoming limitations and actually appreciating those limitations as solid, near-tangible things.  It's not nostalgic in any way, but a badge of toughness; if I survived there, I can survive this.  Life outside the sequin/high-heel shimmy does exist; and sure enough, she learns about Buddhist prayer and somehow makes it through.

Next up:  even doing a cover, he's all the rage. 

*Summed up for me and countless others in the movie What's Love Got To Do With It? in the "Eat the cake, bitch" scene. 

**This was a #2 Radio Luxembourg hit, and the last real hit the couple had in the US pop chart - a bigger hit in the UK, despite/because of its subject matter, I think.

Guessing Game: Carly Simon: "You're So Vain"

The Glam Slam is now momentarily interrupted by this mysterious piece of music; mysterious, famously, because Simon has never actually said directly, to the public, who it is about.  Oh, it’s about “men” in general she says at one time; then at another, it’s about one man, or three…but who it’s about doesn’t really concern me.

What interests me more than who it is?  Why was it such an absolute hit in the first place (here because of good old Radio Luxembourg yet again)?  A woman who was born into cultured wealth gets dumped by a man who moves in the same circles is not exactly hit song material, but if that was all the song was really about, then…but of course, it isn’t.  This song is riding the crest of a mighty wave of feminism, particularly of the consciousness-raising variety, the kind that asks participants to speak out – to say what they have never said before, couldn’t even contemplate saying, that they have kept to themselves.  To look at the bigger picture, and the small; the public and private intersecting – how men are, as well as how their relationships with men they know are.

The focus here is on the man and his vanity, as a symbol for men in general; the anger at this solipsism particularly comes in Simon’s growling of “sevv--veral years ago” and “blew your living up to Nova Scotia.”  She was “quite naïve”, she was trusting; but now she is out there on the curb with whatever else he feels he doesn’t need anymore, her lovely dreams of his being loyal and their happy future adventures going up, vanishing like steam.  The whole thing is a sham, because he is in love with himself.  Why, even this song is about him, not her; even in her misery, her anger, he can only see himself reflected, and what a flattering reflection it is – to him*.  He knows how to dance a gavotte!  His horse won at Saratoga!  All the girls dream about him, man.  He is the man of mystery, hanging out with spies and friends’ wives.  He is the stuff of gossip columns**, racy romance novels, you name it. 

Simon could have kept this to herself, but something else was happening alongside feminism at this point, and that was the singer-songwriter movement, wherein women (primarily) could have their voices heard and express themselves – make the private public, and the public, private.  Even if a woman didn’t know where the local consciousness-raising group was, if she had the latest albums by Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Laura Nyro, Dory Previn and Carly Simon – then she could hear something of her own life reflected in them.  Ultimately who this song is about isn’t as important as the fact that it came hot on the heels of Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” (not a hit at all in the UK, but a US #1) and reflects that time, when women were stepping into rock, so to speak, with their own voices, their own views, their own experiences.  (It didn’t hurt the song to have Mick Jagger appear on it either, and goodness knows it’s a better than anything on Goats Head Soup.) 

This is a song for all women, and for that matter anyone who has been dumped (men like this song too, after all); there are few songs as righteously angry as this one, which has been covered and discussed and which still retains that mystery, which at its heart isn’t such a mystery, after all.

Next up:  till the day you die?  Really?             

*Warren Beatty actually phoned Carly Simon to thank her for writing this song about him.  I think this is, in its own way, proof that the song is indeed about him, whether it actually is or not.  If he has realized the stupidity of this call yet, we may never know.

**Though not directly related to this song, I have to say that while gossip columns existed before the 70s, the 70s saw the rise of People magazine and celebrity-obsessed journalism, and this song reminds me of that Rona Barrett-dominated time, when the comings and goings of the famous became standard news, more or less.

How Dare They: 10cc: "Donna"

The whole story of music in the 70s seems - even at this early stage - to be one where people either are working within some kind of framework as to what music could be/has been and those who just blindly do whatever they think is right.  Which is to say, there are art school grads who have ideas, and there are those who know when a song has a hook and a melody and is bound to be a hit.  It is very rare to have both of those represented in one group, but 10cc were that group, and from the start they were going with/against the grain at almost all times. 

10cc were basically Hotlegs - remember them? - with Graham Gouldman, now returned from his foray into American bubblegum and ready to work with his fellow Mancunian friends to subvert what rock 'n' roll was and perhaps make way for The New.  They were named by Jonathan King (he wanted something a bit subtler than Shag, I guess) and encouraged by him to become a group, though that looked to be something the others - Kevin Godley, Lol Creme and Eric Stewart - were going to do anyway.  Hotlegs did have other singles, one of which was heard by one Neil Sedaka, who went all the way to work with them in Strawberry Studios - first on Solitaire and then on The Tra-La Days Are Over, a final album with his co-writer Howard Greenfield; thus the Brill Building came to them, so to speak.  By the time that album was out, 10cc were a going concern. (Thus, 10cc played on the original of "Love Will Keep Us Together" which would eventually be answered by another Mancunian band who also recorded in Strawberry Studios a few years hence.) 

10cc were an unpredictable bunch; not really glam, not proto-punk, certainly not, though they wore enough denim, HRS*; they get compared to Steely Dan these days, but the supercool elegance of that duo was a whole different thing altogether.  10cc were what they were, and got away with things because no one could quite figure them out.  Prog rock is where some slot them, Art rock others, but they weren't like Yes or Roxy Music, both of whom were starting to make waves at this time. I point all this out to show that excessive categorization of bands ultimately leads nowhere, as every band essentially is different, and that near-arthritic care to categorize takes all the fun out of things, after a while.

"Donna" is a song that both celebrates and subverts the old style; you can't do that without loving the old style of pop and being able to do it well - unlike, oh, Frank Zappa (whom 10cc are also compared to) there is no sense of snideness or meanness to the song.  "Donna" is a song which they did in part because they could see the 50s revival all around them and wanted to gently poke fun at it/head it off at the pass, and make it modern.  Thus the frankly ridiculous lyrics:  "You make me stand up/You make me sit down" and the usual angst about the phone.  Lol Creme is utterly straight when he is singing...just about...as is the reply from drummer Kevin Godley, who provides a second perspective on the girl in question:  "Donna waiting by the telephone/Donna waiting for the phone to ring."  Donna waits for that phone to ring (as it does in the song) and the declarations of love are there, complete with the touching "Donna I'd stand on my head for you."

Number two hits can and do stand as correctives to the number one songs; but this song seems to stand for The New as oppposed to being The Old.  Friendly Forebears that they were, the song had to not just be accurate but good, and not just those but also successful; maybe people bought this because they thought it was like "Oh! Darling" by The Beatles (yet another group 10cc get compared to) and indeed some people mistakenly thing of this as a riff on that and nothing else.  But it's not, because this isn't some simple tribute - it's pop being used, in a sense, against itself, the 50s ballad being warped sweetly to show how silly it is, and how complex even a simple phone call can be.  In the nicest way possible, they are basically saying we cannot go back; as much as some might want to, alas.**     

10cc were to go on subverting and inventing song ideas/conventions for some time; using Strawberry Studios as their lab, they would mess around and try things out and push boundaries, both politically and sonically.  Sadly I don't get back to them here, but know that for the next few years they are always there somewhere, an active agent against dullness and mediocrity, against simple nostalgia and 'normal' perspectives.  I hear their legacy in a few bands from Manchester - Everything Everything have their inventiveness, The Smiths their sense of going against the grain.  (Hot Chip owe a lot to them too, especially in their lyrics and genial non-glam looks.)  In their original line-up they only lasted a few years, but they showed what could be done, and how ambition and playfulness can lead to some pretty amazing songs.

Next up:  automobile armageddon! 

 

*Hard Rockin' Shit, which was more Allman Brothers/Foghat territory.

**I wonder sometimes what the Teddy Boys thought of Glam and of this song too - did they feel as if they were being...mocked?  Or were they too busy hating people for buying a (not very good) song by Chuck Berry? (With the Teds it's actually a question as to whether they ever mentally left the 50s in the first place.)

Prophet/Profit: T. Rex: "Children of the Revolution"

Without any doubt, the biggest star of '72 was Marc Bolan of T. Rex; there may be up-and-coming ones, he may have been eclipsed here by Slade, but here he is, caught up in...revolutionary ecstasy?  This is a serious bump-and-grind of a song, with an indefinite 'you' that is contrasted with an equally indefinite subject.  Just who are these children, and what revolution is going on? 

Bolan never intended his songs to just be jolly rave-ups to get pissed to; he wanted to make songs that would last, not necessarily message songs but ones that had some content to them.  Here, with purple glittery eyes, he proudly and even snarlingly states his prophecy; you can twist and shout, you can let it all hang out, but the children - well, they won't be fooled.  He seems absolutely sure of this, as if he has somehow already seen the future and knows what is going to happen.  If he is singing to his generation (the 'you') then they (and his younger fans) were upset and even offended by the line about the Rolls-Royce being good for his voice*.  He said that because he meant it; and if people were turned off by his workshy fop aestheticism, well, too bad.  In truth, it was his one obvious luxury; it wasn't a brand new custom job but one from 1960, but the kids may not have known about that, or cared.  He's showing off in a time when being a rock star meant (especially in the UK, I'd guess) that sure you had money, but you didn't talk openly in a song about your wealth or status.  Whereas in the US, that was more or less acceptable; if you came from nothing - like, oh, Elvis for instance - you had every right to sing about being able to afford nice things, to viva your Las Vegas.  But in the UK in '72, it wasn't exactly okay.  And so I think this song suffered, because T. Rex's audience wanted to be caught up in the revolutionary ecstasy too, only to find themselves tripping over a car, so to speak. 

Of course another place where Bolan's line would make sense is in hip hop; particularly the kind of self-knowing hip hop where material excess and aestheticism do battle, where achieving something good materially can indeed be good for you, but then how much bling is really needed to fill up that hole of need?  I don't sense Bolan knew that hip hop was about to start in NYC in '73; but his prophecy about the children of the revolution isn't just about the kids who all found themselves being described by Mott the Hoople in "All The Young Dudes" (particularly in Ian Hunter's totally endearing ad-lib lyrics at the end - how many kids took hope in "You in the glasses - I want you - I want you in the front**" - a lot, I'd bet). 

The children are, well, us - those kids who discovered hip-hop; the ones who didn't know a firsthand thing about the 60s, the younger and wiser ones, the ones who at the time were playing with a Spirograph and learning to tie our shoes; ones who, if their parents had participated in the revolutionary 60s, had nothing but artifacts and stories to absorb as the slogans and messages and lessons learnt were passed on.  We can't twist and shout; that time is gone, and anyone trying to bring back that time (as it will eerily be happening in the 70s) will get some attention from us, but in a different way - different because it is the hazardous and somehow incomplete 70s now, when anything of lasting value will be ignored or derided.  I know I'm making some big statements here, but at this juncture the world of MSBWT is moments away from the funhouse ride/haunted house that is 1973, and this strutting song of revolutionary fervor would give hope to us and to Bolan's loyal fans who were impatient to have a revolution of their own. 

Not that revolution is always going to happen; think of Elton John and Pete Doherty doing this at Live8 and wonder just who is actually more revolutionary, and how in order to give confidence and strength to others, you first have to have it for yourself.  That is what Bolan is doing; as much as Gen X is going to be that tough generation he's talking about, the real answer is that the children are everywhere, as long as they are genuine and willing to take up the fight. 

Next up:  It's not art rock, it's not prog rock, it's four guys from Manchester.         



*Bolan couldn't drive, so for him the car was an art object as much as anything else; I have no idea if, had he bothered to learn to drive, he would have avoided his accident just five years later.

**Not to mention the "I've wanted to do this for years" line.  I have no idea what he's talking about, but it's heartening all the same.

The Grounding Emotion: Elton John: "Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)"

If nature abhors a void, then I wonder what nature made of the departure of the Beatles in 1970; there had to be someone as versatile and transatlantically famous as them, as willing to sing ballads as rock out, willing to be over-the-top odd and yet for all that, perfectly normal.  Just as it's hard to think of the 60s without the Beatles, it's hard to think of the 70s without Elton John.  And he, rather quietly at first, but determinedly, became famous first in the US in 1970, just a man and a piano playing ballads, songs which were maybe love songs ("Your Song" is a song about finding the words to say something as much as the saying it) and maybe weren't (I have yet to figure out what "Levon" is actually about, but Elton sings it with so much passion, it doesn't matter). 

It is that passion I'd like to focus on; the earnestness in David Cassidy's songs is magnified here, because Elton has a better voice and in his songwriting parter Bernie Taupin he has someone who is trying to express the inexpressible, which maybe works sometimes, and maybe doesn't.  "Rocket Man" is one such song, one of their best, mainly because it presents itself so much as one man's thoughts as he is alone in space, thinking of that morning's events.  Some might compare it to "Space Oddity" but here the secret subject/inspiration isn't Syd Barrett; the passion Taupin and Elton have is poured forth to...the Every(wo)man who is doing something extraordinary but somehow is also being taken for granted.  The narrator of the song knows he's special, but what he is doing also cruelly separates him from his family, and the acres of space between how he sees himself and what he does.  Sure he's an astronaut; it's "just his job five days a week"; but he's also "not the man they think I am at home" and maybe it's in space where he feels he can best be himself; where the mundane world literally falls away and he floats, unencumbered, for a "long long time."  That others don't understand him, that he himself doesn't understand the science around him - there is a very recognizable ordinariness to his life - he doesn't regard himself as a hero, neither do others.  If the 70s were in some way a comedown from the heights of the 60s, this song describes how split the decade was; split between that 60s specialness and uniqueness and a kind of routine drabness that tends to grow around that specialness once the wonder and spectacle have worn off. 

The songwriting partnership of Elton and Taupin is interesting, if only because the lyrics come first here, as always; because they were written first, and Elton then had to pick out a melody and tempo and chords and bring the lyrics to life.  That he could find hooks as well goes without saying; their songwriting rests on both of them - Taupin to express something, something inspiring enough for Elton to go to the piano and figure out what it's going to sound like.  Here the music is serious, soaring into nothingness at the chorus and then arching back down again, much like the astronaut will eventually come back down to Earth; the heavenly and mundane in a cycle.  This isn't a song about Major Tom, hopelessly cut off and floating around; this is a man who misses his kids (that he feels he has to note that there's no one on Mars to raise his kids just shows how grounded he is, in a way) and can only take solace in the fact he's doing something most other people will never get to do. 

It is not a long stretch to take this song and use it to reflect on Elton and Taupin themselves; Elton as the Rocket Man (there's even a best of by him with that title) and Taupin as the normal guy who helps him as he gets ready to go, writing the lyrics so that the music has a basis from which to soar*.  In the 70s Elton John was simply the biggest star there was, especially in the US - but it is important to remember he didn't do it by himself, that each ballad or rocker or funky groove was inspired by lyrics, lyrics provided by someone who wasn't there in the room with him (they didn't work in the Brill Building fashion, to say the least), someone who knew Elton's capabilities as a composer and pretty much pushed them to the limit.  Elton then took those lyrics and formed a song around them, stretching words or cushioning them or scrunching them to suit his needs (his late stretching of "man" emphasizing the regular-guy aspect of the song, as well as how elevated, literally, the narrator is).  So all of Elton's songs are attempts to make the lyrics sing, and it is noticeable how the better the lyrics are, the more inspired Elton's melodies will be.  (The middle part of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is meh because of this, just as the end and beginning are great.)

That Elton John took over the 70s - well, by 1972 he was well on his way to getting popular everywhere, including his native UK - is undisputed; but at this time he was still the relatively modest figure who was friends with David Bowie and Marc Bolan, who sang plaintive songs and had to (with Taupin's inspiration of course) produce two albums a year, and who maybe wasn't quite ready to be as famous as he was; but he of course took the fame ball and ran with it, making the word superstar come to life.  That he earned and kept so much public goodwill is remarkable, and it was mainly because he was always true to himself, and truly loves music in a way few famous musicians do.  That dedication and heart was always evident; a willingness to take emotion and put it to music.  (I always think of Elton as a pianist first, btw, and singer second.) 

This blog will return to Elton in time; but next...well, there's only one time I'm going to do this, and thus I will be writing about all of one man's eligible songs here, instead of spreading them out - why will become obvious.  It's going to be a long essay, and may take a little while to write; bear with me.    



*I know I'm making Taupin sound like the wife here, but I also think there's a yin/yang balance here, and that in order for this songwriting relationship to work so well the two had to fundamentally like and understand each other, and there is an openness and sympathy evident in their work that makes the more personal songs very touching; that girls loved Elton straight off was due to that emotional openness in his songs. 

A Higher Love: Lou Christie: "I'm Gonna Make You Mine"

Now, a zen question. When is a bubblegum song not a bubblegum song? When it comes accompanied by this startling video. There is nothing colorful about it; you can imagine that even if it were in color, it would be a palette of grays, blues and browns - and yet here we are in an industrial landscape, with a song about romantic determination, a handsome young man ambling about, in the cold evidently, with no one else around...

...and since he is from Pittsburgh, I am guessing that this is where the video was shot; as if to say, this is where I'm from. The song doesn't need the visuals of course, but the utter groundedness here points to something Christie would do in a couple years' time - release an album about the US called Paint America Love. Tony Romeo, a bubblegum producer straight out of the Buddah Records corral, wrote "I'm Gonna Make You Mine" and contributed two songs to Paint America Love; the rest were written by Christie and his constant co-writer, Twyla Herbert, a songwriter/mystic in the best Stevie Nicks tradition. I point to the album in part because there's only so many songs about romantic love anyone can sing (Christie's biggest hit being the octave-leaping "Lightning Strikes" where he indeed sounds as if he's being controlled by Mother Nature*), even songs as slightly intimidating as this one. (To those who are free souls, he sounds awfully controlling; but it's not that far from Motown's "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," for instance.)

But Paint America Love is about Christie's love for a beleaguered and polluted nation, one that needs a big hug and even if it's not SMiLE, exactly, it is a statement, and a moving one, that I didn't expect to be nearly as good as it is. ("Campus Rest" and "Waco" are my favorites but all the songs are great, even the ecological "Paper Song.") Bubblegum-like as this song might be, Christie had greater ideas in mind for his music than others, and there is a warmth to his voice (even at his high range) that is somehow reassuring.

Not everyone stepped from doing a Buddah pop song to a disarmingly great album, but he did; the young man from Pittsburgh stayed true to himself, and moved that romantic love up to embrace a whole country. Never mind that not everyone heard it at the time; it has and will keep finding the right ears.

Next, a return to the underworld, before all hell breaks loose.

*Funny how Dr. Paglia, who champions all things Italian-American in particular, never mentions Lou Christie, who by 1971 was putting his real last name, Sacco, after his stage name.

Perfectly Imperfect: The Monkees: "Daydream Believer"

(This is an edited version of a piece I wrote several years ago I'm posting in the wake of the death of Davy Jones. It was a #2 in the NME.)


"We did play, we did perform, we did make music and we made music recently. It's not like we weren't anything. We weren't nothing. We were something."

Peter Tork

If anyone ever stopped me on the street (politely) and asked me what I thought of Rolling Stone, I would have to say that it is run by someone who hates The Monkees. Everything it fundamentally stands for flows out of that...

Back in the 90s I was interested in the idea of the 'canon' and I read as many lists of books as I could find, including the Harold Bloom tome The Western Canon. What I discovered surprised me. At first, going way back to the Greeks and Romans, everyone agreed, almost monolithically, maybe differing a little here or there. But once the lists got closer and closer to the 20th century, the more and more the various lists began to diverge. The 20th century (when attempted) was always indicative of the truth of all canons: they are founded on the personal taste of the compiler.

The same thing stands with music, only music seems much more hasty as of late to make itself canonical instead of waiting for time itself to sort out what will last and what won't. There is a good reason for this of course; music (even with the longer cds) is a much more compact experience - somehow much more immediate - than a novel. And a lot of music writers (I am thinking of how Hornby described how he chose what to write about while at the New Yorker) are not willing to take chances, chances that they are supposed to take on behalf of their readers, not to mention themselves. Thus the phenomenon of the 'instant classic' and the presumed genius of people, which sometimes is correct and sometimes, not. Thus also a dislike of music for music's sake, as the horrible onerous burden of writing about music dictates that you take yourself and the music very seriously, that you be provocative (kind of) and portentous (sometimes) and even when praising pop, say that it 'rises above' the usual mish-mash of pop already available. 21 is the new catch of the day; clearly superior; it merits time spent with Adele as she goes about her penchant for black clothing and medical woes, instead of actually thinking about the songs and how they might compare to other female artists in an associative way, as opposed to making up football-style leagues or tiers...oh but that is tiresome; one must sit down and listen, flatter some, make comforting noises, as if no other great albums by British women had been released in the year, after all pop's memory is so short...

...so short that if The Monkees somehow happened now, there could be no backlash. Every artist of any worth who is somehow discovered on a reality show owes something to The Monkees. They are like the pioneers who were noble and struggled and and bickered amongst themselves and others and turned a Hollywood version of a town into a real actual place to live, a place others could inhabit in their own ways, in their own times. You only have to look at the various Idol winners to see how real talent will win out over time (Kelly Clarkson vs. Clive Davis shows just how short the leash is, even now, and how what the Monkees fought for has to be fought for again and again; once more, short memory)...

The Monkees themselves imploded & expanded - the series (apparently never a big ratings-grabber, only watched by their fans) ended in 1968, Head was released haphazardly to mixed reviews, and the band was more or less done by 1970. But in another sense, they never really went away. Just as The Beatles meant something to people - something maybe a bit too complex to put into words - so did The Monkees. There's no way their music could have lasted otherwise, with or (as it stands) without the help of the 'canonical' folks at Rolling Stone.

"Daydream Believer" was the soundtrack to happy Christmas shopping in 1967 and it again balances the cold, stinging realities of life with the more rosy, idealistic tenor of the year. Yet there is some sadness to it, a sadness that has to be seen as warm and perspective-widening. The chorus - "Cheer up sleepy Jean! Oh what can it mean to a/Daydream believer and a homecoming queen?" both acknowledges that the world isn't perfect, but little problems should remain just that - little- the quotidian problems and situations are always there, but what can they mean to those who have bigger ideas and hopes and each other to nestle in? Despite what I have read here & there, this is not a hard song to understand. Is the world perfect? No. But why should it be? The Monkees, to start, weren't a 'real' band. Well, why should they have to be one in the first place? (The deepest irony in the whole business is that even though they did gain a remarkable amount over control over their music, they still couldn't please the rockists. Real rock bands, in the meantime, paid close attention to them, the ones who could learn from them, anyway.) Kevin Rowland did a cover of this on My Beauty that digs into the song and shows how much it meant to him, and to many others. It is a warm song, heralding perfectly imperfect happiness, a determination to be joyous - this song represents 1967 every bit as much as all the others I've written about.

I wish I could write more about The Monkees, but I have yet to see Head and have yet to hear more of their music. But I will leave things for now with one more Davy Jones-lead song. Come on, pilgrim you know you love them...

No group ever had a theme song that so foreshadowed what they were going to do. They didn't just come to your town, kids, they built it. Yay Monkees! And rest in peace to Davy Jones, whose cuteness combined with a sweet toughness that girls of all ages fell for, and will always fall for.

A Kind of Seizure: Barry Ryan: "Eloise"

We have had songs before where, clearly, a line was being drawn between the present and the past; songs which, once they get out into the general world of pop, charts and listeners' ears, prepare them for what is to come, and inspire a few to follow...this is one of those songs; it's a dangerous song, as well.

Songs like this usually come from bands that are already fairly well known (The Beatles did it several times) or from the most unexpected of corners, those who are brand new or are determined, to quote Ezra Pound, to make it new.

Avant-MOR, a term I've used enough, is simply taking regular middle-of-the-road balladry down a strange lane or two, until something like "MacArthur Park" or "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" - songs that take lyrical and emotional flight, whether they are anguished or secure. This takes guts - in a way it is too easy to just sing the same songs, essentially, over and over again - and the skill to pull it off. There is no halfway point here, no way to just say 'let's just be a little avant-garde' - this is unvarnished stuff emotionally despite the high production values.

Twins Paul and Barry Ryan were popstar pin-up types in the mid-60s; Paul suffered too much stress performing live, though, so the two decided that Paul would write the songs and Barry would sing them; in this way there is already a doubling effect, as if two men had one voice. Paul had heard and absorbed "MacArthur Park" and wanted to do something like it; not a neat song that would be something a mailman would hum, but a proper EPIC song that would unashamedly give voice to something far bigger and uncontrollable, that would gallop along, at first dramatically, then pause as if to recall reality, if only for a second or two, and then speed into a maelstrom that makes much of UK music in '68 sound as if it is asleep.

Which is to say, this is not baroque at all but romantic, the kind of romanticism where emotions are high-pitched to the point of hysteria; wild, as if she has loved him and spurned him but he will not give up, he cannot give up as he has no other point in living.

This is a dangerous song. I'll explain what I mean: we've had Cupid before, and The Casuals had that experience too, if a bit stronger, but I must go back to Joseph Campbell to explain the difference between those and "Eloise":

“The troubadours were the nobility of Provence and then later other parts of France and Europe. In Germany they’re known as the Minnesingers, the singers of love. Minne is the medieval German word for love. The period for the troubadours is the 12th century. The troubadours were very much interested in the psychology of love. And they’re the first ones in the West who really thought of love the way we do now — as a person-to-person relationship.

Before that, love was simply Eros, the god who excites you to sexual desire. This is not the experience of falling in love the way the troubadours understood it. Eros is much more impersonal than falling in love. You see, people didn’t know about Amor. Amor is something personal that the troubadours recognized.

The troubadours recognized Amor as the highest spiritual experience. With Amor we have a purely personal ideal. The kind of seizure that comes from the meeting of the eyes, as they say in the troubadour tradition, is a person-to-person experience. That’s completely contrary to everything the Church stood for (in medieval Europe).

You know, the usual marriage in traditional cultures was arranged for by the families. It wasn’t a person-to-person decision at all. In the Middle Ages, that was the kind of (impersonal) marriage that was sanctified by the Church. And so the troubadour idea of real person-to-person Amor was very dangerous.”

Or, as Bill Moyers summed it up: "The point of all these pioneers in love is that they decided to be the author and means of their own self-fulfillment, that the realization of love is to be nature’s noblest work, and that they were going to take their wisdom from their own experience and not from dogma, politics, or any current concepts of social good.”

Even if Barry Ryan didn't know it, Paul had written a troubadour's song for him, a song of obsession, which didn't care for taste, politeness or anything modest. People think of courtly love as being stuffy and formal, but once the true origins of it are recalled and understood, the whole notion of The Summer of Love as revolutionary begins to make sense. Love goes against everything here, including common sense and even sanity (at the end when he sings about not being "there" I am not sure if he means not with her or not in her heart). Ryan sings like there's pretty much no tomorrow, attacking the song and freaking out at the end, passionate and fierce, the go-faster guitars and AAAAHHHHs of the backing singers forever egging him on.

Because it was now nearly 1969 and with that finality ahead, there was nothing to lose. Revolution wasn't just in the air, it was the air; the cute, the maudlin, the merely okay were not enough now. Not when songs like this and this* were in the top ten at the same time; not when Hendrix was singing about a coming apocalypse.

"Eloise" was a huge hit not just in the UK but all across Europe, in part because it was so unhinged ("Kitsch" was a later hit for Ryan, it being "a beautiful word"), and its follow-up, "Love Is Love" goes beyond even this lyrically to sum up love so totally that it's almost embarrassing. But that was the point; to go beyond what had come before, and belatedly to inspire those to come. Years later a certain band, wanting to do something big and memorable themselves, would be inspired by "Eloise" to write their own EPIC tune that would not just stomp all over their rivals but become one of the best-loved UK songs of all time; which is how Queen got to "Bohemian Rhapsody," itself a song that drew a line neatly between old and new rock, not to mention deliberate kitsch. The only way in which it differs is that the narrator there claims that nothing really "matters" to him, whereas the narrator in "Eloise" is so utterly focused that nothing besides her matters to him.

The drama of this song cannot be ignored; the sense that something out of the ordinary is happening, the sense that in hearing it you are participating, sharing his desperate need. Certainly a couple of boys in Dundee heard and absorbed it, coming up with their own 'popera' years later, with songs such as this. Here, as with "Eloise" I can only feel awe: this is what music is, what it is capable of, something beautiful and fearless and intense. Music that comes from somewhere else.

In a way there is nothing after this, though as '68 comes to a close there are a few more songs, pointers this way and that. But with this the Ryans abruptly took UK pop into a different world, a world that others would and did find inspiring, and I thank them for that.



*The Motown resurgence was due to Tony Blackburn on Radio 1 and the saintly Dave Godin, who were determined to get as much Motown in the charts as possible.

Psychedelia Has A Right To Children: Keith West: " Excerpt From 'A Teenage Opera'"

Throughout the late summer a song has been steadily climbing up the charts, to rest at #2; it had the advantage of being played a lot (esp. on pirate radio) and being a narrative that could be understood by anyone - the sad passage of time, as experienced by not just one or two people, but a whole community. The sob stories that have just passed are merely personal - this is about a whole village losing its grocer.

How on earth could this have happened? Well, this is 1967 and we find ourselves at none other than Abbey Road with one Mark Wirtz, who had been hired by - remember him? - Norrie Paramor to work as an in-house producer for EMI. Wirtz was hip; he was responsible for Pink Floyd being signed by EMI and dug another underground group he saw playing at the same time - The In Crowd (soon to change its name to the even more underground Tomorrow), featuring guitarist Steve Howe and singer Keith West. He had had the musical idea of a teenage opera for some time and mentioned the Grocer Jack character to West, who promptly wrote the lyrics; the group recorded the song and it was a hit - (such a hit that for a while Keith West was a pin-up, much to his & Tomorrow's discomfort).

The song is as lush and orchestral and Beatles/Kinks inspired as you'd expect; West sings with compassion about an 82-year-old grocer who dies, the village's lack of food and the funeral, where the folks realize they should have been nicer to the old man. The most poignant and influential part of the song is the children's chorus - little girls who wonder where Grocer Jack is and want him back, even though their moms tell them he won't be back. I can't help it, their voices tug at me - the children are the voice of the village, missing Jack, helpless to change the way the whole village is going to have to operate. (The premise of the opera is that the songs are all sung to a young woman who must stay awake after a motorcycle accident; they are almost all songs about people in a village who are antiquated, about to disappear, if not gone already.)

That a song such as this did so well shows that the public maybe wasn't so scared of psychedelia as previously reported, if it's focused on an understandable narrative and has little kids singing on it. There was also the tantalizing idea of it being an 'excerpt' - that there was a lot to come and that a teenage opera was indeed possible. Wirtz found out, however, that the audience was maybe more fickle than expected (and he lost West's involvement, as he wanted to focus on Tomorrow), and while other singles appeared, none of them did that well and he soon stopped working on it in '68 to work on other things.

This is a pity, because had it been released (as it was in '96) it would have been the first real rock opera, complete with a whole cast of characters ("Auntie Mary's Dress Shop," "The Paranoiac Woodcutter," "[He's Our Dear Old] Weatherman," "Shy Boy*" to name a few). This year pretty much saw the flowering of the concept album - not to mention the album market in general, as the kids so happy to buy 45s in '63 had grown up and wanted something a bit more substantial. This - for all I know - would have done really well, but as Brian Wilson could have told Wirtz, doing something so concentrated and thematic is not easy. (The other lost album of 1967, The Beach Boys' SMiLE, surfaced first as bootlegs, then as a Brian Wilson album in 2004, and just now as an actual Beach Boys album.) A Teenage Opera was for some just as legendary - who knows what the talented Wirtz & Co. were getting up to at Abbey Road? (One Pete Townsend was certainly curious, and this in part inspired Tommy.)

What this song also cements is psychedelia's interest in and sympathy with children. This might seem a bit odd, but at heart it is the siding with the young instead of the old, the naive and hopeful as opposed to the tired and traditional. Children were to a point romanticized, but their spirit of adventurousness and tendency to blunt speech - then as now - meant they could at least be trusted, unlike the older generation who were - not to make a big point of it - square and didn't approve of anything the counterculture believed in, from pirate radio on down**.

There is also nostalgia; a whole world is disappearing and the spirit of the times is to reflect on this, to bring the old and new together in a mish-mash (think of the military-style jackets worn by The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix) that somehow liberates the culture from the past, even as it's being remembered (anti-vintagizing). The village is changing, old customs and ways are going, ones that may be going for good, for all anyone knows.

Rock 'n' roll has now split between pop and rock; avant-MOR as pioneered by Scott Walker is appearing, alongside a new station the BBC is putting together to play what the pirates did - sort of. Its name is Radio 1, and with it the chances of Wirtz' concept album took a dive, as its listeners weren't as adventurous as the pirate ones. What did they want? The answer is next.



*Done by Kippington Lodge, with the lead singer, one Nick Lowe, making his debut.

**A personal anecdote: When I was two-and-a-half I 'ran away' (the gate was open and I left to walk down the sidewalk). My mother predictably was concerned and called the cops, who found me not that far away being guarded as I walked by...some counterculture guy who was looking after me on my little escapade. No one famous, though this was in Hollywood, so you never know.

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.

You're Going My Way: Bobby Darin: "Lazy River"

And now, some glamour; some snazziness; some swingin' goodness. But since this is the 60s, there is a ticking clock in the background, one that in this case ticks rather loudly. Bobby Darin (as is known now, but wasn't known in '61) knew he didn't have the best health and was determined to make as much of his life as he could. This condition might drive some to despair, but Darin took it the opposite direction to a kind of rabid joy which must have been incandescent in person.

The vitality here comes from Darin himself, of course, but also from the equally snazzy duo of Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler at Atlantic, who produced the song and no doubt gave Darin the freedom to start quietly and take this song (by Hoagy Carmichael) - grab it more, really - to the point where he can exclaim "From the halfway mark YEAH!" near the end and make it sound like the 50s are well over and done, that his lion's way of 'rrRROOORRing' his words (like a thick smear of jam on toast) is going to cast off any chains that are left over from the previous decade. This is a man who paid attention to James Brown and Ray Charles, and these influences show, as much as the Catskills swagger he learned when younger. This is young, fresh America, smiling and confident, taking pleasure when and wherever it can...but elsewhere...a young woman - she is still in her teens at this point - must have heard this and admired Darin's freedom to roam over a standard at will, anchored as she was to Mitch Miller's style of singing dutifully and moderately (a style which followed a bouncing ball, just as many tv viewers also did), dimming and shading any signs of ecstatic or erotic experience. She was still stuck, against her will, in the 50s, as so many were at this time, toiling away in jazz standards, having some success but not enough to satisfy her ambition. I mention her to show what Darin accomplished in such a short time was a yardstick for others, a sunny beacon to black and white singers alike.

No Matter What: Shirley Bassey: "As Long As He Needs Me"

Even though we are now in the fall of 1960 (Kennedy newly elected; Lady Chatterley's Lover is cleared of obscenity, and in a few weeks Coronation Street is about to begin), in my mind's eye this song is played out on a stage that starts in the Victorian period with Charles Dickens acting out the death of Nancy (for this is her song, from Oliver!) in 1868, an experience he puts so much of himself into that he has to stop doing his readings on doctor's orders. Nancy is of course a sacrificial character, and while I don't know enough about Dickens to know why he would put himself through this time after time, he did, and his early death was perhaps due to these readings (not to mention the general headlong way he went about treating, or mistreating, his body). In the song Nancy's need for Sikes is so great that she cannot contemplate being without him, she is loyal and yet dies because that loyalty is falsely suspected. It is something of a doormat song, but Nancy, after her death, is triumphant - Oliver is safe and Fagin's gang are found out.

Bassey's voice, sounding youngish here, nevertheless are those of a woman who is determined to do the right thing, even if she suffers; a kind of nobility creeps in, the nobility of someone who perhaps has her doubts and might reveal them if you ask her carefully - but will not, as the phrase goes, give face. It is a big voice and needs big sentiments. (The problem with having a big voice like hers is getting those songs, as well as ones that work skilfully against it, as Bassey's latest album shows.) One man who was a figurative Oliver to Bassey's Nancy was just a toddler when this song was a hit; some 25 years later he would work with her in Switzerland (too excited for words and almost shy, not his usual self) on a song of profound and deep emotions - not to mention a cool sensuality. The man was Billy Mackenzie. So "As Long As He Needs Me" leads me directly to Switzerland, a recording studio, an hour of magic and nerves; and I wonder if Nancy isn't half singing to Oliver himself, that Bassey might have some story to tell about Mr. Mackenzie and that glorious day, when his voice blended with hers.

Escalator To Transcendence: Elvis Presley: "Heartbreak Hotel" pt. 2

With this list of number two UK singles, there are a few that I call ‘oppositional’ singles; which is to say, they stand far away – in opposition – to the number one song. The number one song for “Heartbreak Hotel” is “I’ll Be Home” by Pat Boone – a song that I’m sure has its merits (I haven’t heard it yet) – but there is no way it is anything like Elvis, either in style or performance. Indeed, looking at the chart, it’s clear that there is everyone else…and then there’s Elvis. (I am also aware that his first try in the charts, “Blue Suede Shoes,” only made it to #9 – Carl Perkins’ original version got to #10, making their friendly contest a draw, which is about right.) So clearly there were those who preferred the good-boy sentiments of Boone in the UK (in the US it only got to #6, tellingly), but there were those clearly caught up in Elvis, without the benefit of seeing him on tv – just by mere photos of him, and hearing the song. The UK’s…oppositional…attitude towards Elvis (as opposed to the US’ reaction, which was to have him at #1 for a very long time indeed) could be due to lack of tv exposure – it is, from this distance, hard to know, but I would guess his roughness (the guitar with a twine strap; the sense that he is enjoying himself and likes to dance) might have caused more than a few English girls to uncontrollably scream as well.

In any case, Elvis has arrived. He has, so to speak, entered the MSBWT building and will be here for a good long time, though there will be times when he seems to be absent. I say seems because, like it or not, Elvis was a prototype, not to mention an inspiration, to just about everyone who wanted something a little bit more raw than the polished and likable and grown-up perfomers we have met so far. Elvis was all of twenty-one when he recorded this (to give some perspective, performers who are twenty-one as of this writing include Joss Stone, Kate Nash and Hilary Duff – with Rihanna coming around the bend) and his youth and style brought an undoubted wave of freshness to the scene. (Not long after him, Gene Vincent comes back to the chart, and Fats Domino and Chuck Berry and Little Richard also begin to chart.)

But to the song!

It is stark and dirty. The hotel in question is dark, illuminated only by the barest of lightbulbs and staffed by the most miserable and indeed funereal of attendants. And yet the song is not a lament. He is miserable and lonely (so lonely he could die: hello, Burt Bacharach, hello Morrissey) and yet he is not alone – how could he be? – and if she – the Other – becomes heartbroken, well, she knows where to go. Where to find him. They can be together in their misery…

…which isn’t really too miserable, as it sounds more like pouting, sexy misery, like an audible James Dean. Elvis was a good boy, but he looked and sounded bad. As if he wasn’t always what society or The Man wanted him to be, that his rebellion was in that he was always himself, twisting and jerking and Buh-Bay-Being for fun. How dare a man shake and show passion? How dare a man inhabit the song as he does, taking his loneliness and throwing it in the listeners’ faces? (He sounds as if he enjoys being miserable, even as he is miserable; hello, David Gedge and hello emo, for that matter.) The piano tinkles and the stand-up bass thumps, the guitar solo is stark and hardcore and not at all interested in being pretty. Elvis’ voice is handsome, as handsome as he is; and I cannot leave out the fact that he is from the South, the poor-grew-up-in-a-shack South that is an exotic plus for any UK listeners. Put plainly, everything here is different and confusing and there are no choirs or string sections or messages of genial consolation. The world is a dark, lonely and unhappy place, Elvis says; but everything else implies that this can be overcome, even mined for its own kind of gold.