The Beat Goes On: Cozy Powell: "Dance With The Devil"

And so Music Sounds Better With Two returns, to an insistent drumbeat; and with that rocking start the mid-70s begins as well...

Cozy Powell - a drummer from the Midlands who ordinarily played with various groups as a drummer - at this point he'd been with Jeff Beck and his own band Bedlam - was striking out on his own with this tribute (a #2 hit on Radio Luxembourg), on RAK records (meaning - that's probably Suzi Quatro in the back on vocals and bass).  This song is overtly a tribute to Jimi Hendrix, however; and with "Third Stone From The Sun" being the melody to the insistent beat*, the 70s once again remind the listening public of what has been and how the beating of drums can somehow summon them back again, drumming as a medium's way of bringing the dead back to life...

...and what a life!  Trying to even sum up Jimi Hendrix's importance to those who don't know him (astonishingly I tried to do this once and was frustrated even then with how indescribable his music is, how dangerous and ecstatic and in-your-face it is all at the same time - frustrated with myself, I should hasten, not Jimi).  The Olympian heights he reached inspired so many people, some of whom were copyists, others more their own innovators in their own areas (Freddie Mercury's vocals were deeply influenced by Hendrix's bravado guitar solos).  I am not, as a rule, one to sit around going "whoa dude" at guitarists in general, being more into the groove and feel of things, but Hendrix is someone I have a lot of time for; listening to a certain BBC station in the morning and hearing yet more news about Led Zeppelin is enough to make me shake my head at the bagel I am slicing, but somehow anything Hendrix grabs my attention.  He is still ahead, still the way forward, still actual news.  And it is no good wondering where the next Hendrix is (as Chrissie Hynde did back in the 90s, esp. wondering where the female Hendrix was) as one was quite enough and is still very much here, with no need for a "next."

As for Powell, he continued to work at RAK for a while as well as forming his own band, and then joined Rainbow in 1975; he continued to drum in various bands until his death in 1998.  He took his nickname (his actual name was Colin Flooks; you'd change it too) from the US jazz drummer Cozy Cole, who'd had huge hits with "Topsy" and "Topsy Part 2" - both songs that were mainly drum solos, a rare thing at any time.  And so jazz makes a sideways wink into this song as well, as if to say - to Hendrix and to Powell - that it is the umbrella underneath which all other musics stand.  Let the music play, and we can all beat the devil.      

Next up:  The kids, the kids, and possibly some more roots of punk?

*The beat on the original was far more laid back, as befits 1967, man.

Marie's The Name: Redbone: "The Witch Queen of New Orleans"

Although they have been around for centuries, one way or another, we have now reached the decade where witches (or women who dabble with the supernatural in general) are sung about more than any other.  I’m not sure why the 70s was such fertile witch-song territory, but so it was; and these are scary witches for the most part, far away from Samantha on Bewitched.  Without knowing it, here it is, late October, a time of lengthening shadows and chilly mornings, rustlings of leaves and eerie quiet.  The charms of early fall are gone; the dread winter approaches...so it’s an appropriate time for the witching season to begin, but I have to ask once more – why now? 

Some might say it’s some kind of reaction to feminism; witches are powerful figures, independent, mysterious…and feminism may have prodded the psyches of some to remember them, as actual flesh-and-blood women gained more and more of their own independence.  Others might say that the late 60s opened up a veritable box of occult and esoteric information – made things like the Tarot and astrology and so on more hip.  The witch arts of casting spells and brewing up potions fits in very well with this, though I can’t say I’m personally very familiar with these activities.  (The I Ching is more my thing, overall.)  This song is about not just a witch but a witch queen; a super-powerful figure, and since she’s in New Orleans, voodoo (again not something I know much about, besides the dolls) is in her repertoire, as well.

But what men fear about witches is their beauty and sexual power; that it is tapping into Mother Nature itself, and cannot be overcome.  Some songs may dread this power, others may celebrate it; Redbone’s funkiness suggests that they’re down with this witch – better to be for her than against her – but still you’ve got to watch out for her, as she glamorously goes about her business.  (For reasons too complex to explain here, the 70s were glamorous times, or at least times when glamor was pursued, and sometimes achieved; as a reaction to the power-cut squalor that persisted through most of the decade.)  I can’t say this is a feminist song, pro- or anti-; but the muddy funk here sounds as if it’s a lot older than rock ‘n’ roll in a way – Redbone are a Native American group, and this adds to the sense of another time, another place, a wisdom that extends centuries back, on the part of the group as well as their subject.  “Black Magic Woman” (as done originally by Fleetwood Mac and covered very successfully by Santana) is about a woman who belongs to a man, but this woman belongs to no one; she is free.  But how free is any witch, really?  This one, plainly hip-deep in voodoo and able to help anyone for a "dime or a nickel" is possessed alright - by devils themselves.  She is evil, therefore, and even when she's gone, she's not dead; just departed.  With "hate in her eyes" she goes, like one of the Furies, grumbling and reluctant...practising her crafts elsewhere, maybe somewhere else in the swamp, where all is muddy, humid and pungent...

Redbone wrote this song, which was a bigger hit in the UK than in the US; I'm not sure if they wrote this out of some personal experience or because songs about witches in general were in vogue*.  But it does strike me as a song that reaches back in time to tell a story, and it's a true one, about this woman, Marie Laveau; the fact that she lived to be 98 and that very little can be proven doesn't stand in the way of legend, not to mention its younger relatives, rumor and hearsay.  This song is typical in making witches seem much, much worse than they really are, and maybe (just maybe) reflecting something of those primal fears that in reality are more nightmares than actual fears.   The songs about witches will continue, though, from Cher's future hit "Dark Lady" to Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon."  There is always one corner of the 70s where there's a powerful woman of the night, a strange woman who is more allied with - and tied to - Mother Nature than others feel is right.  Whether this is due to feminism, a general public awareness of the occult or what, it's a theme that marks the decade, as surely as the more cold and rational aspects elsewhere. 


*Maybe they were hip to Dr. John, whose Gris-Gris album came out in '68; funk of all sorts was getting into the charts and gaining popularity about now...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Will The Circle Be Unbroken?: Elvis Presley: "In The Ghetto"

And now, a year after he staged a dramatic comeback - as if to remind everyone, including himself, that he was the King and there could be no doubt about it - Elvis nearly reaches #1 again, stopped only by a song that was automatically taken up by the IRA as their anthem. What is going on here? The top two songs in the land are classics - anyone who hears them can tell that - and neither are love songs? Some might find this odd, but this is just what pop music can do - bend and alter to address what the public wants and needs, and from Elvis they had had enough of the songs about girls for now.

This is the King addressing his subjects, singing as if he has to be persuaded to do so, sombre and compassionate, narrating a story that (without having to explain) he knows all too well himself. Elvis grew up poor, he was looked down upon, he didn't fit in - but he had his music as a shield and an escape. A way out: and his way out turned out to be an open door, a door so many walked or ran through afterwards.

If his comeback was all about showing he still could rock the house, this song came afterwards, written by one Mac Davis*. Its original title was "The Vicious Circle" and it depicts a life of misery, first for the mother who doesn't need another child and then for the violent and early end for the young man, who learns about violence young and ends up a victim of it, not even being able to get out of the ghetto, and as he is mourned another boy is born to a mournful woman, possibly his own, though that's not directly inferred...

And yet some don't like this song! Maybe they think beneath it all it's kind of cheesy; there is some distinctly American pathos about it just because it's Elvis and in the real world Elvis is rich and has been for some time, and oh look here he is condescending towards social commentary. But that line of thinking ignores what Elvis actually did, which was rebel and make money on his own terms, and if that let him make a bunch of rather silly movies which barely had any real rock 'n' roll in them, well, he could always make a great gospel album (he did, in 1967), then show everyone that he was still able to justify his wealth by getting down in a way that revived rock 'n' roll all by itself.

If Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper's "Elvis is Everywhere" states that "Elvis is everybody" then it's only rock logic to conclude that Elvis himself had a bit of everyone in him, including this poor ghetto boy who got a gun and a car one night and had high ambitions and desperation, just as Elvis had himself, once upon a time...Elvis mourns that ambition as much as anything else, that waste, and while this song is set in Chicago there are ghettos everywhere, and thus the song resonated in the UK as well, where Belfast was ever in the back of people's minds, and this song too could be seen as an anthem of sorts, a lament, of what had happened before and was now happening again, rooted in sectarianism, this time.

All this has been heard and comprehended from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds (a cover of it was their first single) to Three Six Mafia, from Dolly Parton to Cartman from South Park. In truth the song does have a streak of pathos in it, in that the story itself never ends (and is thus pathetic) and yet Elvis is able to take the song on as his own, maybe because he's experienced his own pathetic 60s, as epitomized by his increasingly unnecessary movies; and so he looks at himself here obliquely, remembering his own daring ambition and mourning the death of a symbolic young man. It is like he has come back to first prove he can rock, and then recognize the fact that all are not as lucky as he is, and that this is a cycle which should end, as it brings nothing but misery to those who experience it. And yet it reflects the lives of so many of his audience; he is coming to them, so to speak, to show he does understand, even if in his own life he is removed from the circumstances...that there is a bit of himself here, a bowing down to those who still struggle, a recognition that what separates them isn't that wide a gap as you'd expect. The explosive power of Elvis is toned down here, as if to say: there but for the grace of God...and so it is also a hymn, though a different one from before.

Next up: a bedroom in Montreal and a 'happening' caught on tape, for all time.


*Who also wrote the the "satisfactionin'" "A Little Less Conversation" for Elvis and went on to fame for himself in the 70s, with songs like "Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me" and "Stop And Smell The Roses."

He's Got The Whole World... : Fleetwood Mac: "Man of the World"

And now the focus shifts from the loud, sometimes obnoxious world of pop - a world where Peter Noone unfortunately can't find a jukebox - to something deeper, more primal. I am strongly tempted to say this is music coming from the very roots of all this music to begin with, as if the listener just went down a rabbit hole and was cast into sudden darkness, or descended into a cave. Why?

The blues boom of the late 60s in the UK was a reaction against things, as well as a continuation of what made those things possible in the first place. The blues is primal - John Lennon compared it to a chair; I tend to think of it as more like bread - and there were those who started in blues bands before going on to other things, those who remained loyal and those who never really could leave the blues in the first place. For so many UK musicians the blues was their first love, and after the Summer of Love that weirded so many out, that first love asserted itself as both a reaction and a return. Every town worth its yeast had at least once decent blues band, some going on to worldwide fame once they got going (Black Sabbath were a blues band originally, Led Zeppelin obviously came out of the blues, as did Free, Ten Years After, Deep Purple, etc*.)

At this point however, there was one band that held sway, and it was Fleetwood Mac, a band from south and west of London that had a woozy instrumental, "Albatross" already go to #1 in the chart. The blues scene - or at least some of it - might of thought of this as 'selling out' (i.e. having hit singles) but at this time record companies still wanted them to help get the word out and of course to make money, even if the leader and main guitarist of Fleetwood Mac was becoming increasingly alienated from the whole process of recording, touring, recording, touring...

For this is Peter Green's song.

It is quiet; pretty, like the girls he has seen, but guarded, unnerving. And then that line: "I just wish I'd never been born." But there he is, in his cave full of melody and longing, the clamor of life around him as he nakedly sings about how he wishes he was in love. But there is no one there. There is no Other, not even in the past. The pretty girls are just part of the outer world, but not his inner world of experience. That inner world is scarily barren and full at the same time, like a glittering cave of riches that serves no purpose as there is no one to share its beauty with...clearly this is Pluto before Persephone, miserable, alone, wishing he did not exist, living only to tell others how down he is, the wry guitar lines mangled and yet still beautiful, but overwhelmingly different.

That such a cry of anguish got to #2 is remarkable, to say the least; I imagine some bought it as they were fans, some because they identified all too well with the lyrics (not everyone enjoyed the Summer of Love) and some because the song just stood out from the rest of the chart, bracingly intimate and close - no big production here, no cheery message, no real aspirations to pop stardom. One man and his tale of having the world and having nothing; a palpable emptiness that portends something bigger...

For those who wanted the real sourdough thing, Fleetwood Mac were it; but Peter Green's growing alienation (not unlike Syd Barrett's, in some ways) would push the band's fate in ways they would barely comprehend at this time, including a young Californian who was listening to them and copying Peter Green, as if writing his own fate. There are big things afoot here, things that even in the self-mythologizing world of blues/rock are strange, as the 60s relentlessly grinds everything down to its essence, and ordinary songs of love (for the purposes of this blog) are no longer enough.

Next up: we go to the other root of popular music, and the other side of the equation.


*One other band I should mention is Chicken Shack, whose lead singer was one Christine Perfect. She liked Fleetwood Mac and was attracted to Peter Green but sensed he would be a little difficult, so she got to be friendly with their bass player, John McVie.