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,

Osmondmania: Little Jimmy: "Tweedle Dee," The Osmonds: "Let Me In," Marie: "Paper Roses," Donny and Marie: "I'm Leaving It (All) Up To You"

There are few phenomenons so closely linked to the 70s that have fallen quite solidly into The Void as the Osmondmania that gripped the globe in the first half of that nostalgic decade.  And in hearing all these songs, that is what strikes me most - we are technically in the '73-'74 period, but the Osmonds are going backwards. 

The group, as you know, were first discovered at Disneyland after having been rejected from the Lawrence Welk show; they worked for and with Disney for a while, and then were on the Andy Williams show for a few years.  Then Mike Curb came along and saw potential in them beyond mere harmony singing; he booked them in at Muscle Shoals in the fall of '70, where Rick Hall figured out how to make their sound a lot more contemporary.  It worked:  "One Bad Apple" was recorded there and went to #1 in the US, and Osmondmania was born.

Osmondmania spread around the globe, striking particularly hard in the UK; by this time, the spring of '73, it was a genuine mania, with seemingly any family member able to get a big hit...even Little Jimmy Osmond, who is about to turn ten and does stuff that is...well...cute.  I think the whole point of Little Jimmy was to be cute, although some might just think of him as bothersome or even a cause for minor despair.  The Osmonds were and are an industrious bunch and they all had to do something;  if growling and singing like a miniature Jimmy Durante (the song is from 1954) was going to charm the grannies in Arbroath, well, so be it.  (It wasn't a hit in the US, however; such rinky-dinkism was where the line was drawn, so to speak.)  It got to #2 on the Luxembourg chart, as a follow up to his also rather unnecessary but popular "Long Haired Lover From Liverpool" got to #1, earlier this year. 

The smooth sound of the Osmonds - such a toothy and together family, four square and utterly undisturbing or threatening - was just what girls wanted; I was far too young to know about them at the time, so their appeal isn't really something I can understand, save for there will always be nice boys for good and not-so-good girls to go utterly crazy over, and the Osmonds were those boys at this time.  (They were rivals with the Partridge Family, specifically David Cassidy, about now, as we shall see.)  "Let Me In" is a song that the band wrote itself for their progressive rock album The Plan; by now they were ambitious enough to want to join the ranks of Yes, Pink Floyd etc. and while it may indeed be a head trip, this song sounds anything but far-out; it is a very typical love song, with Merrill doing the lead vocals and the rest coming in for a warm, gentle barbershop-ish harmony.  It screams "I'm a nice guy and you don't have to worry with me, oh please love me" that would of course have girls flocking to their local record emporium to buy the single, if not the album.  (The Plan was a hit of course, though it too has fallen into The Void; I doubt if Radio 2 will ever have a show featuring it as a 'classic' album.)  "Let Me In" was #2 behind...the older and more introspective David Cassidy, who did get a number one album as well (Dreams Are Nothin' More Than Wishes) and whose own fanatical fans would overwhelm him; the Osmonds had power and faith in numbers that got them through some utterly insane times.  (How insane?  Girls tried to mail themselves to the Osmonds.) 

In the midst of all this boyband hysteria came Marie Osmond; the second-youngest and still just thirteen when she recorded "Paper Roses" - a song of maturity and knowledge, a song of disappointment, that maybe other girls...understood?  I am always wary of songs of such world-weariness being sung by girls who probably haven't even had a boyfriend yet, but here we are, it's the 70s and a girl born in 1959 is singing a song from 1960, originally a hit for well-known-for-many-things Anita Bryant.  Seeing her do it, made up to look a lot older than her age, makes me wonder just who did buy this, beyond country fans, Osmond maniacs and...?

By now, it must have seemed to the UK public that the Osmonds would not go away, would never in fact stop having hits; and I am sure those ideas filled some with happiness and others with angst.  However, there is only one more #2 hit for the family to discuss here; and that is the even more confusing/disturbing "I'm Leaving It (All) Up To You" - a hit for Donny and Marie in '74.  It's disturbing because...are a brother and sister supposed to be singing a song like this to each other?  And to those who remember the song from 1963, when it was a #1 in the US...well, it was #1 just before the Kennedy assassination*.  There is something odd in bringing back these memories, though I imagine most of the girls buying this single had no idea about its first sorry fate. 

I think you can see, dear readers, that apart from their own works the songs here are all from the pre-Beatles era; effectively, before those awful 60s happened, when things were nice and serene and uncomplicated.  An awful lot of the early 70s is caught up, one way or another, with nostalgia for this time, a time before not just The Beatles but Dylan, hippies, miniskirts, and all kinds of other moral outrages that middle America (the Osmonds are from Utah, that state where Bill Bryson, in The Lost Continent, finds his utopian nice USA town, or comes closest to it) never had much time for**.  The Osmonds are miles away from any genderbending glam platform progress, and yet were just as popular during the Glam Slam era, causing hordes of female fans to scream so loud that they had to play louder than anybody outside of The Who to be heard.  But the screaming pretty much ended in '75 for The Osmonds; Donny and Marie had a variety tv show starting in '76 and the rest worked on the show with them, behind the scenes. 

That so many girls and guys loved the Osmonds and that they have effectively been written out of UK pop radio (save for chart countdown shows) is a shame; they were the well-scrubbed conservative face of US pop, to be sure, but they were just as much part of this time as anyone; and nowadays it is Glam that gets the respect and museum exhibitions, while the nice Osmonds, with their Mormon concept album and puppy-doggish charms are consigned to the "you had to be there" whitebread nostalgia corner, alongside the Patridge Family and so on.  But it's hard to feel too much nostalgia for songs that were themselves covers of songs from before things got messy.  I can sense the UK's lasting preference for Glam over the US family-style pop is due to Glam's being British and therefore tough and ridiculous and ironic - and in effect more masculine, as opposed to the sweet feminine "girly" US pop of the time.  And I can imagine girls waiting for the Osmonds to appear on TOTP, just as the guys were waiting for...well...you know...

Next up:  popcorn double feature.                 


*And it's not just these songs; think of Donny's solo hits, all of them from the early 60s/50s, from "Young Love" to "The Twelfth of Never."  I have no idea if these songs were picked for their nostalgia factor, or just because Donny could sing them.  The Osmonds were a kind of smiley-face-button of pop, albeit one that tugged heartstrings pretty mercilessly, particularly ones of young girls. 

**Dale and Grace were in Dallas that day, young and in love with a number one single, and a few moments after having waved to the President & First Lady everything changed; radio went silent for days, their single was obviously no longer popular, and they broke up a few months later, instantly outdated by the arrival of The Beatles.  

Green Bubblegum: The Osmonds: "Crazy Horses"

As many of you who read me will know, I was far too young to be caught up in the whole fanatical David Cassidy vs. Donny Osmonds/The Osmonds imbroglio, and in coming to think of it I doubt that even if I was the right age, I would have been all that interested; neither are my type.  So I can write here with some objectivity about this rivalry, mainly that it was an ersatz Cowsills vs. the white Jackson 5 and that this is how the 60s were evolving into the 70s.  This is odd in retrospect, and produced some remarkable singles.

One of them was this song – the only hit song in a genre full of car worship to be actively against them.  The environmental movement – pardon me, the ecological movement – was still fresh at this time and it mainly looked at everything and said that it was polluted.  Visual pollution, noise pollution and a host of variants were all in the news, perhaps to distract from something else in American life?  The still-going Vietnam war, perhaps, or…something happening right there in D.C. itself?  The car – in my experience the early 70s car was a huge station wagon or a big hulking thing that used a lot of gas, took up a lot of space (I think of the car Cannon used to drive around) and was a kind of symbol of US dominance.  In our own family we had a French car, a Renault 16, which my father bought as he was tall and needed the legroom, plus it was French and that always counted for something with him.  There were compact VW beetles that were noisy and reliable and got good mileage, not to mention VW vans, but for Americans a car was a second home by now, and the roomier and sleeker, the better. 

So it is a surprise to hear these clean-cut Mormons talking about the insanity of cars, their never-ending proliferation and how many there are and how many more there will be.  This was before the oil crisis, before the gas guzzlers were traded in for the smaller cars (the Pinto being one that, um, didn’t last) – so this is actually a prescient call for a more reasonable way of getting around, if not giving up driving a car for good and using some other means of transportation.  The US was about to haplessly go into a period of confusion and recession and general breakdown the likes of which had never been contemplated; faced with such big problems, they started to take little things seriously, perhaps realizing that in fact they weren’t that little to begin with.  In the 70s the personal became the political (and after assassination after assassination and Vietnam dragging on, that attitude is understandable) and everyone can agree on the importance of clean streets*, bald eagles and ‘Turn down that music, if that’s what you call music.’  Indeed in retrospect this aspect of the 70s is the one that has had the biggest effect (outside of various liberation movements) in making the modern world the bicycle-friendly pesticide-free use-your-own bag no artificial anything paradise it is today.  (Cough.)  The horses are still out there (SUVs, for the most part) and they are still crazy, even if going at the 55mph speed limit, which in my experience is about how fast they can go without losing traction.

If anyone is reading this wants to know, I don’t drive, I don’t know how to drive (terribly glamourous I know) mainly because my spatial relations w/r/t a car/van/truck would be useless; I bump into enough pedestrians as it is and would no doubt bump into vehicles too, and seeing how other drivers drive here in London (either in a slackerly way as if it’s a Sunday or in a way that can best be described as ‘opportunistic’) doesn’t make me confident I could learn here either.  (My main spatial skill as such is map-reading; I am a born navigator, as is my mom, who never got her licence, as driving in Silverlake is…scary**.)  But I digress…

Apart from the ecological aspects, this was and is a rockin' song in the best sense; loud, weirdly noisy (that horse's neigh done by Donny Osmond himself and later sampled by Pop Will Eat Itself for their epic "Def Con One" and just plain exciting in a way that a little kid could understand.  This is rock 'n' roll just as much as any of the big Four, and by itself it fully justifies the Osmond mania of the time (complete with the band having to be smuggled in to the Top of the Pops studios to perform it).  I would love to hear Neil Young cover it. 

Next up:  what is he saying?  Steve McQueen? What?

*A lot of environmental songs from this era have other meanings in them, such as the Philadelphia All-Stars’ “Let’s Clean Up The Ghetto” which about a lot more than beautifying your block by planting a garden, though it’s about that too.

**Those of you who know how hilly it can get know what I’m talking about.  Imagine being at the very top of Baxter Drive and feeling the ground give way and you can see why my mom said ‘no thank you.’  I was in the backseat at the time, of course (and this was in 1972).     

The Importance of Being Earnest: David Cassidy: "Could It Be Forever/Cherish"

We are now in the very flush of spring; in this year of promise and brightness, or this season, anyway, a young man is about to step outside of his figurative nest and become a global superstar; a teen idol.  It’s not what he wants, but it’s what he is, and thousands upon thousands of girls bought “Could It Be Forever” because he is capturing (via songwriter-producer Wes Farrell and fellow-bubblegum songwriter Danny Janssen) that moment of maybe-crazy optimism after a good first date:  maybe this one is it, is going to be my Other.  If in “I Think I Love You” he is afraid of his actual feelings, of taking the plunge and saying it and risking everything – here he is pondering the leap from a moment’s tenderness to something which by definition has no limit.  He sounds remarkably like Cliff Richard here, wondering if that certain tangible kiss is going to be his last, or be the first of many – and the prospect of the future is really what concerns him, almost as if he isn’t really ready for anything so permanent.  But Cassidy’s voice – a perfectly fine one, though he doesn’t have a great range – sings the song, if you know what I mean; I do not get any real feeling from it beyond his general unease (she likes him, and yet is he just wasting his time?), though I am sure that if I was an impressionable 12-year-old girl then, I would have felt quite differently about him and this song.  I can’t ignore the Partridge Family element to this, that he was on tv and girls crushed on him as a singer and an actor*; a double-whammy that even Marc Bolan wouldn’t be able to equal. 

I was far too young to watch the show at the time – I was at nursery school and watched Sesame Street and the odd episode of Julia Child or The Galloping Gourmet back then – so I had to catch up later on in the 70s, when it was in reruns and the show just struck me as …odd.  To quote Dellio & Woods, Cassidy and Shirley Jones were “a real-life stepson/mother combination that added a tense Freudian background” to the show, which I didn’t understand as a kid, let alone their manager, played by Dave Madden, the immortal Ruben Kinkaid, “who mugged and whined and sweated with frightening intensity.” I remember an entire show about the ecology, particularly whales; I remember another where Laurie (Susan Dey, “who was beautiful and wispy and fake-played the organ with reckless abandon”) had new braces that somehow picked up radio waves, messing up her playing and thus causing havoc in the always-on-edge band, whose bus had “Caution:  Nervous Mother Driving” on it, just in case you were wondering if it was the early 70s or not.  By the late 70s the show looked hopelessly quaint, in other words, and I had no idea it was based on an actual family band (The Cowsills).  Which is to say the anxiety in “Could It Be Forever” fit in perfectly with the show even if it was just David going solo and proving he was all grown up now, and was David, not Keith Partridge.

“Could It Be Forever” wasn’t such a big hit in the US, but “Cherish” was; and this is where things start to show their cracks.  “Cherish” was of course The Association’s first big hit, and let me just pause to say I don’t think The Association get nearly as much respect or attention as they deserve; no one ever namechecks them or says they were just as important as anyone else from L.A. at the time, and their influence is more difficult to trace because…well, just listen to the original of “Cherish” and you’ll see what I mean. Written by band member Terry Kirkman, it’s a complex song both melodically and lyrically; it is a mediation on language, on the language of love in particular, and how language is hopeless at finding “the right amount of letters, just the right sound” that will somehow convey this man’s emotional intensity, which has been growing steadily and isn’t just like the love offered by “a thousand other guys.”  He wants his feelings to be reciprocated too, and with all the complex six-voice harmonies and chord changes, The Association made something delicate and tough, and incredibly hard to copy**.  Wes Farrell chose it for Cassidy as no cover version had been done yet, and you’d think that would have been something of a hint; but they did it anyway, with more of that same super-sincere gusto that served Cassidy so well; but the subtleties of the song are lost, he can’t reach those aching high notes that the song needs.  It becomes a regular love song, the chorus being yelled out again and again as if the Other is somewhat deaf and can’t quite believe what she is hearing.  “Cherish” is about description, about attempted description of a feeling anyway, and ends hushed, as if the word itself is at least compensation for the experience.  But Cassidy just lays down his love like a bricklayer making a wall, and that is that.  He cherishes her; the voices in the background – the same ones you’d hear on a Partridge Family record – make it a family sing-a-long, theatrical, instead of the ocean of sound The Association build up, one that even Madonna had to nod to in her song of the same name. 

Since The Association were too busy touring and recording in the US at the time “Cherish” was never a hit in the UK; so Cassidy was able to avoid any of these problems with this song, as his fans were too young to know it in the first place.  A change of generation has happened with fans, after all; the girls who were part of Beatlemania or who screamed for the Stones were all grown up now, and the new generation of girls were now coming, and they had to have their long-haired boys to idolize, too; Cassidy was a favourite, I’m guessing, as he was undoubtedly a Nice Guy and a Sensitive Guy as well; and as mentioned elsewhere, he grew up a showbiz kid who tried as best he could to hang on to who he was in the maelstrom of pop stardom, wherein he caused riots, had to be smuggled in to Top of the Pops, and had to come to terms with being a teen idol, when he really wanted to be a rock star.  That he more often dramatized his songs as opposed to singing them was only to be expected of him; that so many girls have fond memories of him now shows that he was one of the better ones in the whole teen idol mix.  There is no side to him; there are no itchy feelings of unease attached to him, unless he felt them about himself.  So even though the whole pop star/actor thing was beyond me at the time, and kind of puzzling when I got to it, now I can see that Cassidy was doing the best he could, and maybe “Cherish” shouldn’t have been chosen for him, but he was only 21; he didn’t have enough experience to dig down to the roots of the song, and his audience most likely wouldn’t care anyway. 

The “frightening intensity” that did make many itch will be arriving very soon; but first we will be soaring into space with another utterly direct and sincere man.

*I am sure there were a number of boys who crushed on him too; he was chosen to play Keith because of his androgynous looks, after all.    

**This is probably why they don't get name-dropped that much; six-part harmony groups are harder to form than your average duo/trio/quartets, after all.

 

Being Bold: T. Rex: "Jeepster"

And now, dear readers, we have reached the end of 1971; some may rue this, but some may not, knowing full well what is to come.  The brown suede maxi-skirtedness of this year, loved by some, is about to be replaced by a new year, and to see us into this different time is…T. Rex.  Yes, they started out ’71 and here they are to finish it, with a boogie so simple and even off-handed that the band didn’t want it put out as a single, didn’t even considerate single material, but the label felt otherwise, mainly because by this time T. Rex were huge.  I cannot even begin to imagine the legions of kids and pre-teens who latched on to T.Rex, real fans, ones who were not about to be conned into thinking anyone else really mattered.  T.Rex inspired them, many of them becoming musicians as a result, all going their very different paths but all starting here. 

T. Rex by this time, lest we forget, had already had two number one singles, a number one album with Electric Warrior , and one of those singles was even a hit in the US (I grew up knowing it as “Bang A Gong”); all this with a style that went right back to the essence of what rock ‘n’ roll was about – cars, girls, boogie with an extra added sense that Bolan was not quite like everyone else.  Not superhuman, just different, glamorous – as glamorous as the vampire he is at the end of this song, wanting to “Ssssssss-suck ya!” (apply own metaphor of your choice).

But the beat for me is the primal thing – just off-kilter, not quite the Bo Diddley beat but not that far away from the clave either; a seductive waltz of sorts, a kind of roughness that sounds paradoxically smooth as well, due to the long notes both sung and played in the song*.  The total effect is a knockout:  Bolan could be singing anything here and it would be a smash, but his lyrics are the icing – from the title on down.  The elegance of “I’ll call you jaguar if I may be so bold” – (Bolan considered this song to be “very funky” and a step above general love song lyrics**) must have had some effect as well, if only to show that rock/pop did not have to be predictable, clichéd, generic.  The self-consciousness that rock/pop has about itself now – one that will be dramatized in this blog in the coming year – is best dealt with by just making good music, and Bolan was writing songs that he hoped would last.

Number two hits are often in opposition to the number ones, and this one is a fine example, for many reasons.  Benny Hill had the Christmas number one with a song that was silly and full of double meanings (as you’d expect) – strictly for the kids, kids too young to need or understand the grooviness of T.Rex, the importance of Bolan’s hair, the glamor.  Hill went right for the obvious, Bolan took the obvious and made it fresh, made it new. 

Rock ’n’ roll has lasted long enough to be considered its own art form; regular pop, for lack of a better term, continues right alongside the fall-and-rise drama to come, as rock increasingly is albums-only stuff and pop, which, if I can put it this way, is the essence of the whole thing, (the beating heart, as Huey Lewis sort-of sings later) has to figure out what the hell to do with itself.  T.Rex stand as the inspiration to not just another generation but to other musicians and songwriters, who figure this glamor thing doesn’t just belong to elves, but belongs to everyone.  The battle coming up is between those who rue the past and those too busy looking for a new costume to think about anything else; in the meantime, T.Rex remind everyone just what it is they are fighting about, in the first place. 

Next up:  when in doubt, get your own tv show.   

*It is more than possible that he picked up some of this from the Os Mutantes hit “A Minha Menina”; Bolan spent a lot of time and money buying and listening to records, when he wasn’t busy writing and recording his own.

**Bolan goes back to Gene Vincent, as he says, for “The wild winds blow/upon your cheek/the way you flip your hip/always leaves me weak.”

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.

The Black Sheep: Robin Gibb: "Saved by the Bell"

And now, dear readers, we turn away from big statement singles recorded live to the more mundane world of family struggles and "you're too beautiful to suffer" sentiments. Despite all the big happenings of the summer, there were still those who wanted a sad ballad and a pin-up for their locker; Robin Gibb was as likely a candidate as anyone (so he felt) and he was tired of having to squabble over who sang lead on Bee Gees songs. When a song of his was demoted to a b-side (the a-side being Barry's quite good "First of May"), he left, determined to have a solo career, knowing the audience for him was already out there. He was the runaway child of the group, the one his parents threatened to have made a ward of the state. His parents must have had second thoughts on this, and instead the whole family watched as he went his own way, musically and otherwise.

Thus, I cannot be too harsh over this song. Sure it's clunky; sure, Robin is as usual singing like a particularly lost lamb.

Even if there was no evidence of drug use, no one puts out a single like this totally straight; and the more I think about it, the stranger the song gets. Who is this "two" he mentions - him and his ex-girlfriend, or himself and some other guy? Has he had to lie about who he is in order for her life - a "carousel" of men - to continue peacefully? The whole aura here is of a man who is sacrificing himself to someone and then bleating about it, as if that would, or could, change things. Will this other man love her? He is crying for both of them, just in case he doesn't. Oh Robin, where will you go? "Now I'll walk down heartbreak lane" he sings at the end, needlessly*, rhyming with nothing else in the song. (Is it me, or does he also sing "heartbreak place" as well? And are either of these near a certain hotel on lonely street? Ah the mysteries of music.)

This is, in essence, a wail of a song that was simple enough to be a big hit and yet, for all that, not quite enough. Robin's Reign came next but was not a success; and Gibb doesn't recall making his next album, Sing Slowly Sisters at all, which may well point to stresses that the music itself was unable to ease. "Saved by the Bell" was the whole high point (commercially, at any rate) for Gibb, who returned to the Bee Gees in 1970, having had his say and said his piece (even if Sing Slowly Sisters wasn't ever officially released; I think bootlegs of it must have appeared in the 90s, but I'm not sure).

For a while, Robin Gibb got to make his own music, pained and melancholy and beautiful, in its own way. The weight of the world is on his shoulders, walking alone; a mixed-up kid, learning the hard way that independence means sacrifice and isn't always the joyous thing it's made out to be. For now he walks alone, apart from his brothers...who are next.


*By the overly orchstrated near funeral march pace, we already know this is a song of heartbreak, though not in the Housewives of Valium Court style, exactly.

Baffled Dancers: Cat Stevens: "Matthew And Son"

The hijacking of pop music for other ends is commonly called New Pop, and New Pop has its forbears - those who came before it to act as examples and inspirations for those to come. Cat Stevens may be best known for his early 70s folk anthems, but here in '67, he's a friendly forbear.

This is a pop song - the horns and tinkling piano and sparkling melody all make sure of that - it's a commercial pop song and sounds like it comes from a musical (West Side Story was a big influence on Stevens). But as you can see here, the public - namely, the kids - who heard it were unsure what the heck to make of it. There is Stevens, a junior member of the swinging London scene, all velvet and lacy frills, singing about crushing capitalism as if he was Heaven 17 or something. The audience is baffled and confused, because this kind of thing...is not done. This, to borrow a phrase, is not a love song. Stevens dances about and smiles as if he knows exactly what he's doing, and the kids who are used to happy songs to dance to hear lyrics like "There's a five minute break and that's all you take/For a cup of cold coffee and a piece of cake" which is the precise opposite of 'groovy' or 'cool' or 'far out'. "They've been working all day, all day, all day!" he sings as if the workers were as happy as the seven dwarfs, when in reality they are wage slaves and take their work home, unable (due to their boss' orders?) to get it out of their heads.

That Stevens is doing this and having a hit with it comes from several things - he was a pin-up of the time (believe it or not); it's a darn catchy number; and the drudgery portrayed here is the very thing that the psychedelic scene is trying so hard to push against - the all-work no-play straight world that gives no importance or space to anything approaching enjoyment, adventure or even rest. In a way all of Stevens' other songs are a reproach to this one, and to see him a-swingin' away here is poignant. He, the artist, is able to escape what he is depicting, whereas how many in the audience actually work in such places? What is it like to have your life portrayed in a seemingly-cheery-sounding song while you're trying to dance to it? Art is supposed to be a mirror held up to nature, and here the mirror is being held up to them. This is Art, to be sure, and the audience look as if they are still trying to make up their minds about it*.

That the song is a mere depiction and not overtly a protest song is even more confusing - rock 'n' roll ("Summertime Blues" "Yakety Yak") is all about protest, always has been, always will be. But this is pop, isn't it? The crossroads are getting bigger all the time, with crumbs of cake leading trails to who knows where.


*I wonder if the '67 audience in general listened to lyrics and got them or just wanted something to whistle/dance to as they did in the 50s. Certainly the careers of the balladeers depended on lyrics, so I tend to think they were heard, if not always understood.

You Can't Play That On The BBC part 3: The Troggs: "I Can't Control Myself"

"AAAwwwwOOOOOOOHHHHHHH NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screams Reg Presley, as if he is doing something he likes maybe a little bit too much and also maybe has done something wrong.

But it's not his fault!

This man is on fire, after all, and possesses (or is possessed by, more accurately) something way beyond anything he's experienced before. Unlike "Wild Thing" where he bosses the girl around, here she is an idol, a figure with naked hips and long hair and a way of breaking him down until he's helpless, swamped by a fervor so big it could "move a nation" (whatever thatmeans). In such a state he of course is going to scream and the bubblegum "ba bas" are like so much background noise to his passion. He is swamped by something he can't control (and this loss of control is fun, of course, as long as she's faithful) and if only she knew how it felt, her hair would curl. Well! He may be ridiculous to others but what the hell does he (or should he) care?

I can't say this is the beginnings of ye olde punk rock*, but I can't say this band (beloved of Lester Bangs, mais oui) isn't getting back to the basics even as the baroque and (shh-it's just starting now) psychedelic modes are beginning to take hold of the more famous bands. The Troggs knew where their bread could be buttered, so to speak, and it wasn't in anything that would take long to write or record. Mutant energies were working elsewhere; here the thudding bass and hapless howls are enough to make sure that rock 'n' roll stayed just as degenerate and disrespectable as it should be. His scream of pure pleasure at the end is miles away from anything normal radio would play. I wonder if it will return?

Next: more uncontrollable behavior, believe it or not.



*Chrissie Hynde dedicated this to Sid Vicious at the Pretenders' first gig; before the concert she found out he had died.

Taking Off: The Yardbirds: "Heart Full of Soul"

And now, an important crossroads...this blog has, effectively, reached the mid-point of the Sixties itself. Merseybeat is effectively gone, folk rock is on the rise, and guitarists are starting to buy gadgets that make their instruments sound different - the days of slashing speakers are over, and the fuzz box becomes the first of many pedal effects every band either has already or is going to get soon. Not only are guitars amplified now, but they are sounding warmer, fuzzier and dirtier, in part because guitarists like to experiment and in part because other instruments are starting to attract their attention. In the case of The Yardbirds, they wanted a sitar on this song, but Jeff Beck couldn't quite master it in time, so he got a fuzz box and made his guitar sound like one instead. Clearly, merely playing a song in the suddenly old-fashioned way isn't quite enough anymore.

And thus at this near-legendary point in time, the blues roughness that so many UK bands (The Yardbirds coming up following the wake of The Rolling Stones, who are about to launch their own fuzz box anthem) wanted to get into their songs is just there, and every garage band everywhere immediately saves up its nickles to get one, either in sheer imitation or because they want to make themselves sound even dirtier and rougher than their UK counterparts.

The song itself is by Graham Gouldman* and it has odd echoes and a rather menacing vocal from Keith Relf - his girl is gone, he has no idea where she is and he seems to be talking to someone - WHO? - about how he will never make her sad, "if she'll have me back again." Pretty basic stuff, but between the acidity of the guitar and Relf's voice there is something indeed beyond mere love here - it is as if his pleading is desperate yet cool at the same time, Relf trying to be suave behind his sunglasses while he's actually nearly crying. There is a creeping aloofness coming into rock at this time** and the tensions here for once aren't between a squaresville singer and his band but within the singer's psyche itself, as his band dutifully try to play what he can't sing. And the screaming girls want to put him out of his misery, as they do with all groups at nearly any time. But it's now that the whole decade slides into a harder, louder and rougher phase and the concepts of what is "pop" and what is "rock" start to become more and self-evident - though at this time it's all still pop, no matter what effects are used. For now.



*He also wrote their hit "For Your Love" which has a harpsichord on it (you see what I mean?) - a song that one member of the group deemed too "pop" and so he left in a huff to play the blues for a year amongst other purists. His name? Eric Clapton.

**Check out the near-magisterial aloofness of The Byrds, who were #1 at this time.

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?

End of An Era: Gerry and the Pacemakers: "I'm The One"

It is odd to hear a song for the first time - as I have with this one - and know almost to the minute when it was a hit, and seeing this (with Gerry looking like a relative of Mike Myers; for all I know they are related) confirms that this was the era when people would sing about loneliness and possible broken hearts with smiles on their faces, because though he is down he's confident she will indeed see that he is the one; the upbeat smiley Mersey sound almost insisted on smiling no matter what, after all.

I wonder sometimes if the naturally more modest or shy folks ever really cottoned on to the bright cheer of this period, instead clutching their folk records and staying away from the raucous sounds from upstairs; or perhaps they were into the blues, man, and had no time for mere pop (though they may have bought this, out at the same time). These good-natured professional Liverpudlians were huge - only The Beatles could eclipse them - and yet by now there are a myriad of new bands flooding into the charts in The Beatles' wake, and the new is driving out the old with alarming swiftness. Gerry and the Pacemakers only had two other hits beyond this, fading out just as the other bands began to take hold; The Beatles must have seen this happen and heard a clock ticking on their own careers, but were too busy dealing with endless recording and touring to maybe comprehend the change. The party had just begun, with some of the arrived-early-leave-early types going elsewhere, and for the first time for a while, we go back to London next for a new band who have their own sound.

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.

Raw Not Cooked: Del Shannon: "Hey! Little Girl"

By 1962, Roland Barthes was probably already working on the idea of the grain of the voice; the punctum of the voice, if you will. Some songs work because the lyrics are so good; others work because the voice that sings is so, well, grainy that there is no way to ignore it. Del Shannon's voice is one that sounds almost perpetually on the edge of being too rough and out-of-key for proper singing; unlike the operatic Orbison, he jumps over the idea of a 'normal' or 'average' voice that could be expected from a pop single. It's not a non-voice as such, or an anti-voice, but there is a certain punctum here that takes a song as nominally average as this one and makes it into a virtual short story. He is walking the street; he sees her crying; he remembers wanting her and not being able to talk to her, even to learn her name. His open and honest growls and cries makes his desperation more than credible (and makes him the godfather to emo, along the way) and his addressing this girl is far more intense and anguished than the easy-going Bruce Channel - suddenly with this song the story* here deepens, the plaintive tone that probably started in the chansons of yore has come back with a vengeance.

Otis Blackwell (the song's writer) must have been happy that this was a much bigger single here than in the US; and it almost goes without saying that a certain group still to be accepted by a record label must have listened to him with keen interest, their own directness coming in part from Shannon's brave example.


*The story of the 60s in this case; a decade that is about to change in ways that were unthinkable to most, including a lot of musicians who were unaware that something big was about to happen. Shannon wasn't one of them.

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 Next Best Thing: Ricky Nelson: "Hello Mary Lou/Travelin' Man"

If you ever wondered where the music video started, you would be wrong to think it was in the late 60s, though certainly by then the idea was gaining some ground; no, it is right here in the summer of '61 that the first music video appears, appropriately watched (though surreally) by the performer's own parents on the performer's show - the performer being one Ricky Nelson, and his parents Ozzie and Harriet. That Nelson was gifted musically was something not too much of a surprise - his father was as well - but young Ricky had a rebellious streak (though he & James Burton here all look as if they are the fathers of flannel-flying grunge, when in fact they are helping to create country rock, not to mention Chris Isaak) and made rock music when rock music was going through what could best be called a 'phase'; the major players all away for various reasons, someone young, familiar, distinctly good-looking without being overwhelmingly handsome - that is, a younger version of Elvis without the oomph - was inevitably going to appear, and that he came out of Hollywood makes perfect sense, since Hollywood is all about (amongst many things) making popular things even more popular. That Nelson turned out to be better than expected was a bonus, not doing anything other than what he wanted to do, and doing it well. (Being enormously rich and having his father's help in these matters was essential, of course, but talent wills out in all matters, no matter what the connections are.)

"Hello Mary Lou"'s b-side was the rather risque (if I do say so myself) "Travelin' Man", a song is as casual in its promiscuity as "Hello Mary Lou" is in its faithfulness; there is a kind of yin-yangness to this double a-side (yea and verily that is the definition of a good one) that is the answer to the teenage girl's question - "Yes, but what is he really like?" Is he able to give his heart to one girl, or does he just aimlessly wander around, like, y'know, guys do? Nelson lets the girls decide here, (though I should note that "Hello Mary Lou" was the hit in the UK , the other the hit in the US...hmmmm).

I should also note that "Hello Mary Lou" was written by one Gene Pitney (fear not, dear readers, I do get to him in time), thus the line about 'wild horses' was no doubt heard by, amongst many others, a couple of young men just south of London who were still teenagers themselves and who for all I know were fans of good-bad boy Nelson himself; indeed Nelson lived a life that was a bit rough and casual and yet somehow, his rather innocent bull-in-the-heather good looks could make you forgive him for all that; and as a product of The Man (Hollywood also tends to be just that, despite itself) he was far more successful than anyone had a right to expect*. He wasn't Elvis, but then he was far more Elvis than Frankie Avalon, and for that rock 'n' roll must say thanks.


*Just think of all the rather lamentable albums tv actors have recorded over the years, some of which I will, even more lamentably, have to write about.

We Love You Cliff, Oh Yes We Do: Cliff Richard And The Shadows: "Fall In Love With You"

If there is one dynamic in popular culture that can always be relied upon, it is that of the teen idol. Young, shiny, handsome/pretty, unthreatening - a teen idol is by necessity accessible (yet slightly mysterious), humble and obliging, one of those obligations being that they take up only so much time and trouble in popular culture. Teen idols can grow up and continue to be successful in what they do, mainly because they change as their audience changes; or they can break up (if a band) or wander off into other things, such as politics, business or other arts. However I am guessing many teen idols either go on as they believe they can serve the industry or they are a little tired of being screamed at and retreat and are able to reinvent themselves.

Cliff Richard was a genuine teen idol in the UK in '60, singing directly to the girls in the audience here about how this was his first romance and how easily he could fall in love - though of course the song was objectively about young longings and hopes in general, especially on that crucial first date. I don't want to say that Richard was directly courting his audience here, but his coolness and silkiness - a kind of cat's eyes sound to his voice - certainly doesn't hurt.

My one question here is about teen idols in general - why did so many spring up at this time? Was it just because of sheer generational pressure - all the baby boomers hitting those crucial Tiger Beat times of lots of wall/locker space with so much room for posters? I suppose so - that mass media makes celebrities sounds like such an obvious answer that I am almost suspicious of it. Young people, girls in particular, have always had adolescent crushes of all kinds: royalty, movie stars, characters in books, portraits...all standing in for the real thing, helping them get to the stage where they are, in fact, ready for the real thing.

I guess my real question is: why Cliff? It comes down to the UK sensibility I suppose (at this time he was trying to break the US but didn't spend enough time there to really have an impact), the UK preferring their own nice boy to the rougher types, including one man I have yet to reach who was simply The Man when it came to rock 'n' roll at this time, a man so legendary that the Beatles (then called the Silver Beatles) tried and failed to be his backing band. Once you hear him, the original man in gold lame, the unfairness of Richard's success compared to his (at least on this blog) is inexplicable. But that is the teen idol business for you: the girls want who they want, and a pleasant vanilla milkshake was preferred over the crunchy tin roof sundae nearly every time.

To Be True To One Woman: Cliff Richard and The Shadows: "A Voice In The Wilderness"

And now, the 60s. Specifically January 1960, which happens to be when my parents got married, when Plath and Hughes were back in London, and when young Cliff Richard was busy being the number one pop star in the UK.

Every decade begins tentatively, with a kind of happy apprehension - things may get better, will definitely change, hope for all the best. And yet decades rarely 'end' right at their chronological end; it takes a while for any decade to really find itself, so to speak. (Though some might argue, and I'd agree with them, that the 30s and the 90s were pretty definite from the start - and of course with the change of the millennium, the 00s have been fairly separate as well.) Being caught between two sides is far more the usual in these '0' years, and 1960 is no exception, and this song, which I expected from its title to be fairly straightforward, fits right in.

"A Voice In The Wilderness": it comes from the Bible, to be sure. But it also comes from a movie called Expresso Bongo and already you can sense something's up. The song starts out in a descending and vaguely sultry way (I can't help but think of Hank Marvin in this manner, especially after seeing a certain cover of his), and then the heartaches begin - his heart is heavy, his arms are blue, he is all alone thinking of you - you the girl who has left him in what can only be called 'lover's quarrel' circumstances. Except this may be more than just a quarrel...

"Have faith in your darling, the voice seemed to say
Be true to her memory, she'll come back one day
And though there was no-one, nobody to see
A voice in the wilderness brought comfort to me"

How odd that someone who is missing someone isn't either looking for her or being consoled by an actual human being, or even a dog. This voice is, by the way, "the voice of true love" so at least he's not, well, crazy; but the phrase "her memory" made me think of how maybe in this quarrel he was more than just "unkind"; maybe this quarrel led to the poor girl's death. I see Cliff sitting in an empty room, desperate with loneliness, not unlike Heathcliff (who he would portray on stage in the 90s), blank with grief and arrogant with heavenly consolation. She will come back, she will; in a song I don't get to write about directly so I'll have to mention it here. Meanwhile the song's sultry despair and late-night aura carry on, and Cliff is happy to wait and be attended on by...somebody.

(I should also note at this time Cliff realized he could have a girlfriend or he could have lots of female fans. Being ever-industrious, he chose his fans, a choice he has yet to reverse.)

Friendly Forebear #1: Marty Wilde: "A Teenager In Love"

We are now in the summer of '59; the last summer of the 50s and a time when the charts were very slow...and also the time when the UK started to have its own idols battling for the hearts (and pocketbooks) of those new creatures, teenagers. They were powerful (so many of them!) and yet powerless; brave enough to fall in love, to cry, to sigh...and understandably myopic enough to have a song boldly empathize with their sometimes sorry plight. Being in love is hard work, Pomus and Shuman remind us, but the narrator in question is loyal and true, long-suffering and ultimately philosophical.

Why must he be in love? Is it to fight and make up, only to fight again? To learn to be more forgiving, perhaps? Love here is one big starry-eyed existentialist ordeal, and while Dion and the Belmonts* do a more than fine version of this song, Wilde's version is about as close to New Pop as the song could possibly get; his is the right proper way of saying all at once "this is a fine life alright, being a teenager, SIGH" and "you know this song is sort of meta, right?" His performance of this practically gives this away, his minimalism as striking as anything coming out of Swedish furniture design at the time. He makes Cliff look like the earnest worker bee that he was (and is). It should be no surprise, then, that Wilde is a literal father to New Pop (via his son Ricky and daughter Kim) as well as a friendly forebear of it here, looking like a cross between Edwyn Collins and Martin Fry, just barely moving and yet saying it all, just as teenagers always want to do.

*If anyone was wondering if I was able to fully appreciate the work of Phil Spector, well, I do! And not just for his work with girl groups, either. In 1975 he produced Dion's tremendously awesomesauce Born to Be With You, which deserves more praise and attention (such as it gets here).

The Glad Eye: Johnny Otis and His Orchestra with Marie Adams: "Ma He's Making Eyes At Me"

When it comes to the senses in lyrics, the eyes have it: though hearing and touching are there too, the ability to see far outstrips them and for good reason; it is the first sense to register another person, the Other, and the one that can be responded to most directly. (That said, if you don't like how the Other smells on a regular basis, I would suggest you find another; chemistry has a lot to say about love via the nostrils.)

When a man looks at a woman in a song and falls for her instantly, that song (if it is good, that is) has a swooping, sweeping quality to it, the singer stunned and amazed and perhaps a bit in disbelief - but mainly there is a gratifying intensity to the whole thing, an OMG this is big and my whole life has changed and even if I try to deny it, it won't go away-ness that leads to...well, whatever comes next. Does the Other even know she is the object? Certainly by the end of the song she does, as his delirious love declaration cannot be ignored - not if he is sincere and eloquent enough. (Recent UK #1 "Number One" by Tinchy Stryder & N-Dubz is a fine example of this kind of song.)

But love isn't just words but gestures - and it starts with the eyes.

"Mama!" the singer cries out, "he's making EYES at me!!" This is responded to (yes) by a bunch of screaming girls - this is the first live #2, after all - and the singer (Marie Adams) goes on to sing such deathless lines as "Mercy! Let his conscience guide him!" and "Ma I'm meeting with resistance/I shall holler for assistance/Ma, he's kissing me!"

Now, no girl in the history of the universe ever actually says such things; they are thought. So what's here? Besides a riotous good time with your standard doo wop provided by the Johnny Otis, there's nothing less than the female interior becoming the near-screamed female experience, shared with lots of young women who are shrieking in recognition and response (though maybe some in the Orchestra are making eyes at them?) No wonder there's a call-and-response from the audience to Ms. Adams; no wonder a song that makes the implicit explicit got to #2 and stayed in the charts for a good while, only stopped by such luminaries as Harry Belafonte, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis from getting to the top spot. I can well imagine those who disapproved of the Everly Brothers' hit tut-tutting this as well; the freedom for a girl to scream in public with joy is rare indeed, and having what they feel being said aloud must have been liberating in a time when girls were not supposed to express themselves in such an explosive way. Screaming girls, I salute you - this song from 1921 has just been launched into the atomic age and thing are, as I said before, accelerating far faster than any censor could imagine.