Sunshine Punch: The Cuff Links: "Tracy"

And so the 70s begin, not overnight but trailing along in the wake of '69, like baby partridges following their mama partridge (as one tv show's opening credits would have it). The first few songs here - before the 70s start properly and the colors of this blog change - are about separation and unity in their ways, and as a nod to the happy face that beams out amidst the still-disconcerting chaos the 60s left, I am starting with an NME #2 from that haven of thumbs-up American goodness, bubblegum.

The biggest non-human (so to speak) single of '69 was "Sugar Sugar" - by The Archies, who in reality were a studio band put together by Don Kirshner, who wanted a band that wouldn't rebel on him like The Monkees did. Ron Dante was the main man in The Archies, but since no one knew who he was, he could just as easily become the lead singer (or really, the only one) of another band, and thus were born The Cuff Links.

And this is textbook bubblegum, ba-ba-bababa-ing along, horn-heavy and high on sugar and sunshine like a third-grader drinking his/her first Coke on a warm day at lunchtime. But it's also very much a product (written by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss, who had written "Catch A Falling Star" amongst other hits) and with Dante doing all vocals it was done very quickly; and since it was a huge hit, a whole Cuff Links album was recorded in a matter of days, done as quickly as possible to capitalize on "Tracy"'s success. All the songs were by Vance and Pockriss, who had written more than enough songs for the purpose, and they hired a young guy, Rupert Holmes, to arrange the songs, just to speed things up even more*.

If the whole thing sounds commercial - or even like a commercial, as if it's pop made just to make money and nothing else, then that's true; and you'd think that this music, as opposed to The Monkees, would be reviled by the baby boomers who take music so seriously (at least The Monkees wanted to be real; The Archies/Cuff Links were just musicians getting paid for studio time).

But they didn't, and still don't, as this is music so ephemeral as to be trapped in its time period (I began seriously listening to AM radio in '78 and never heard this, not even on good old KRLA, who would play anything), evocative of that cheery sunny time when the decade was shiny and had that new decade naivete to it. The Cuff Links, as you can see, were a real band, as such, but they were put together by the songwriters, and Dante was forbidden by his new solo contract with Kirshner to tour with them; Dante had to get his considerable royalties for his work by confronting Vance in person; a second Cuff Links album was recorded with a new singer, and that was pretty much that for Ron Dante and The Cuff Links, whose second album featured Rupert Holmes, instead.

So much ugliness sits behind this bouncy song, and yet it is a bubblegum classic, not that anyone thought what they were doing was anything special - just simple pop for kids, kids only vaguely aware of the more 'serious' music forms, content to eat their Pop Tarts and drink Tang and so on. Nothing that nourishing, but pleasurable and now nostalgia-inducing, churned out just as mechanically but feeling like sunshine, with that longing that fuels all bubblegum...

Next up: a song that has no end.






*Holmes also wrote songs as well as arranged them - working with everyone from The Partridge Family to Dolly Parton, Gene Pitney to a new singer on the New York scene, Barry Manilow. He eventually had a #1 hit in the US at the other end of the 70s, virtually inventing yuppies before they existed.

Turn Around: Kenny Rogers And The First Edition: "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town"

She looks in the mirror, tousling her hair a little it, just to make sure it doesn't look too much like a helmet. She still does her hair, unlike those hippie girls; she's not one of them. She wears short skirts, sure, but everyone does by now; but she goes out wearing stockings and heels, not bare-legged with sandals. She is looking for a man - who he is, she's not sure yet, she'll know him when she sees him. She dresses this way once a week, doing her nails and powdering her face more regularly - he knows mainly by her hairdo where she is going. She has heard his protests before, is inured to them - but what is she supposed to do? Where is she supposed to go?

Her lipstick and nails match; her stockings are straight; she has chosen her necklace to go with her dress, and thence her earrings to go with all of that. She is young and needs attention - the kind of attention that he can't, or won't, give her any more. If only he understood. For him it's that he thinks she wants sex, but sex is only really part of it. There is so much that leads up to it, so much flirting and small talk and just the good feeling of being with someone who is paying attention to you. Doesn't he notice these romances don't really go anywhere? It's not like she has a lover, another man, in particular. And it's not like she does this every Saturday night, either, though lately...it's been that way.

It's familiar, this feeling. She feels as if she is two places at once. She knows she should be with him, that he really doesn't have long, and then she can do as she pleases. Perhaps she should stay home with him; she sees a vet on crutches going down the main road and has to stop and pause, because he's not alone - his woman's with him, and there they are, talking away, going to a movie or restaurant maybe. Sigh. It's his legs that make him want to stay home she thinks, and he can't really go anywhere in his wheelchair.

She pauses again and continues on, refusing to go back. She will sleep on it and resolve herself, give herself up for now, and quit acting like he doesn't exist. Like the war existed just to ruin their relationship, which was a good one. She will try to have a good time, though tonight her heart is in her mouth; that song is on the jukebox, the meanest one in town, but she will withstand its sting one more time, daring fate to give her a better man. If he turns up tonight, then that's that...if not, I'll live with him until he's gone. She is not one for giving up, but she cannot live without romance. Without that zing in the air, that fun. He's got to understand that, right?

He sits and waits. He's murderous; he's resigned - if she dies, then that will be on his conscience too. Doesn't she know he still loves her, still needs her around? Maybe tonight she'll change her mind, come back at a reasonable time, and not late and drunk. As long as she comes back early, he can stand it, just. One day he'll be dead and she'll be sorry, she's got to understand that. She is his soul; his living link to the rest of the world. Sure she can have fun, but he needs her far more than she can comprehend. Maybe tonight he'll tell her nicely, not get angry. Can he do that? He's tried before...he'll have to try again. There is nothing else he can do, and silently suffering is not for him. Neither is breaking up, there's no point.

******************************************

How hopeless they both are; how he said vs. she said are their views; how has this war and decade changed them both. The old world is slipping away, the madness of war has come into their own home. Both armed for battle, one way or another. She is silent, determined; he sounds older than his years, weary, vaguely threatening and scary. This is the anger of the decade bubbling up, a deathly decade that has to end. Maybe he will live longer than they said; maybe she will be faithful. Both will grow either tired of the same routine, or become like stone, unable to move, to grow, to evolve. Perhaps one day she will push him down the street, they will go out and begin to be a couple again. But that's for the spring, when it's warm enough and the flowers are out, the ones he once planted for her.

End of An Era: Stevie Wonder: "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday"

For many, the end of the 60s must have been something of a cross between the ending of a particularly good party and the physical uneasiness after getting off a twisting and turning funfair ride - wobbliness and an odd feeling of being slightly above the ground, feet only sort of connecting with it. There was disappointment as well, a haplessness - that so much went wrong, that the warmth and optimism and high hopes instilled by JFK - his death being the first of many blows - were as transitory and disorienting as that ride, a ride that (if you will) included just about everyone who cared about anything in the 60s, from the students in Paris to the antiwar protesters to civil rights activists. You did not have to be involved directly in the 60s to have this unease; the 60s, even for the most mild-mannered of bystanders, was compelling and involving, inspiring and exhausting.

Here Stevie Wonder sings as if it is the decade itself that he is breaking up with; it is as if the time and the people are bound into one, so much so that when he sings, acutely, "I had a dream" you know he is signifying more than just his own dream, but Dr. King's as well; while Wonder might well be singing specifically to his American audience, it's not as if people in the UK didn't pay attention - everyone did, and this song is big enough to include them, and also big enough to realize that there were "games" played that were more destructive than constructive; and that the world "we once knew" has been lost, a world where everything seemed to turn out right, where everything seemed possible.

That is an awful feeling, I think you will agree, dear readers - and this song, while a bit cloying with its use of "yester"s, gets to the point. The decade is gone; hopes have vanished; time has inevitably passed. Did anyone at this time actually look forward to the 1970s? I do wonder about that, but as so often happens, a decade ends and another begins, with not much noticeable difference at first. One person, however, who was looking forward to the next decade was Wonder himself - still a teenager at this point, he had to do things the way Berry Gordy wanted them done; and for that matter, the sing the songs he wanted him to sing. (Compare this pretty ballad with what Norman Whitfield was doing with the Temptations ["I Can't Get Next To You"] at this time, and Wonder comes off as a little old-fashioned, though not as melancholy as Robin Gibb or stoic as The Bee Gees.) For Motown Wonder was the prodigal teenager, but soon he would be old enough to do what he wanted, and his work would change drastically.

But this is a bittersweet farewell, a goodbye baby and amen to a relationship, a time, a tumultuous ride that I expect more than a few were glad to see end, at least chronologically. Souvenirs are packed away, sights and sounds are bid adieu, and crying starts, or stops. That is that, Wonder says, and it's sad. But it's gone, and the puzzle is, as another Motown group sang once, where did our love go?

Happiness Is Not At Home: The Tremeloes: "Call Me (Number One)"

We are now at the end; as the 60s become the 70s things are starting to unravel, new threads are opening up for the next decade. If the most of the 60s is dominated by The Beatles - who by this time only really exist in name - then this is but a small fragment of what they were taken to stand for at this time, just as psychedelia flourished when they released "Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever."

The Beatles play on the roof of the Apple building in early '69, as if to prove they still exist*, and here we have the Tremeloes playing in Trafalgar Square, mostly to tourists and a few passers-by and local office workers. Hey! they seem to be saying with their long hair, beards and plain clothing, we are hip to the whole back to the basics thing now, we wrote this song and everything! And there is a stomp-stomp simplicity to this that makes this a product of a near Venn diagram intersection of proto-stompy rock, European appeal (they stayed popular in Europe long after having lost favor in the UK) and bubblegum catchiness. The song is all about wanting to be on the road, despite knowing that she is miserable at home (rain, as ever, is shorthand for misery here) and wanting to bring her out with him on the road, where he is happy and presumably the sun always shines. They will be happy and she will be happier with him than without him.

Whether this reflected the lives of the band members I don't know, but the tug-of-war lyrically reflects that late 60s/early 70s trope of home vs. the road, with some resolving to make the road their home, only to find they then really have no home. (The rather uneasy can of worms here is what bands get up to when they are on the road, which I will get to in the fullness of time.) The sing-a-long (lead by Dave Munden, on drums) is cheery and a bit laddish and it sounds to me as if sure, they miss their wives/girlfriends, wouldn't it be cool to bring them along, but can you imagine the reaction any of these women would have to the idea? Why can't they call their guy number one as it is?

I almost feel as if I am making too much of a simple song, but there is a tension here that Alan Blakely and Chip Hawkes have revealed about musicians' lives once they have families and obligations, and that is that the gang comes first. Maybe a romance is being rekindled here, but why is he afraid to go home? And if she is miserable there, can't he go home and fix it there? Nope; he's on the road, and if she wants him, she can just go and meet up with him there, at the hotel/inn/motel wherever the band is staying. Can she do this happily? Will she enjoy being on the road? Hmmm...

This is a jaunty song that has many awkward sides to it, revealing just how little has changed in the 60s; how profoundly masculine the music business was (and, some might say, still is), for instance...and the video shows how straight-laced the public was in general, compared to the band, who look almost immediately suspect, as if they have been photoshopped in at a later time**.

The 70s, whether we like it or not, are upon us; next up is a goodbye to what once was, as the pastels turn to hues and people try to grapple with the new realities once more. That it's sung by someone who will be huge in the 70s makes it all the more complicated...


*Nearly two decades later U2 do the same sort of thing, also to prove they are 'real'; "Call Me (Number One)" is at #2 behind a completely unreal group, The Archies, which leads me to wonder who the Archies of 1988 were.

**They look, quite frankly, like they could be extras for this classic video.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There Were Two: The Bee Gees: "Don't Forget To Remember"

And now the pace picks up, if only a little. We are in the world of Barry and Maurice Gibb, with Barry, I believe, taking the lead. And it's a country weepie; strings, acoustic guitars, hurtin' lyrics, a piano to ground it all. If Robin has left, to stray into increasingly odd and baroque areas, the other two are playing it utterly straight, ignoring that whole scene altogether. I cannot help but think this song must go back to the country they grew up hearing (in Manchester and Brisbane), the plain-talking that's-the-way-hearts-break music that was the root of so much to come, the seemingly paradoxical no-nonsense attitude it has matched equally with sentimentality.

"You're the mirror of my soul so take me out of my hole" is perhaps a bit much, but unlike so many Bee Gees songs there are no awkwardnesses here, no lines broken down or phrased so oddly as to sound translated from French. Nope, this is about as plain-speaking as The Bee Gees ever got, depicting the smooth misery of an aching heart, a photo on the wall, a whole world that is both present and remote as the stars themselves. The two do a fine job with this song; if it was written to get them a hit, then it did its job; though it wasn't a hit in the U.S. (this is the first time I've heard the song - and the first time I've heard the previous entry's song as well). It was the single from Cucumber Castle (there was a UK tv special to go along with its release, starring Lulu and Vincent Price amongst others) and proved the two could get along just fine without Robin if they had to...though they didn't, as it turned out, have any success with the next single in the U.S. either, which caused Barry and Maurice to part ways themselves for a bit, though by the end of 1970 all three were together again.

So much of what was happening with these three brothers was happening with so many families; fights, reconciliations, experiments and triumphs...the 60s emboldened folks to go it alone, and then being alone was the thing; but the pull for a home is always there, and after one too many strange and disturbing nights, too many bad trips and so on, the pull to go back home looked less like giving up and more like common sense. Maybe the brothers Gibb had to pull themselves apart to appreciate each other more, to sense their own strengths and weaknesses; to realize indeed that for them three was the magic number and what they could do together was far greater than what they could do apart. I can imagine Robert Stigwood shaking his head at them fondly, wondering what took them so long to figure this out.

From these rather slow songs things start to pick up, as '69 comes to a close*...


*I should note here that I won't be writing about M. Gainsbourg et Mlle. Birkin as the same recording that got them to #2 also got to #1; I will eventually write about French music here, but not just yet.