Here Comes Everybody: T. Rex: "20th Century Boy"

Lately I have been reading Rob Sheffield’s Talking To Girls About Duran Duran, and in it he discusses how girls respond differently than music in their fandom than boys; that girls, fickle as they can be, are hugely loyal to artists and bands they love – that love, even if slightly ironized by time, never really goes away.  (This kind of love can verge on the possessive; certainly in the 50s and 60s it did.)  Sheffield’s book concerns itself with the 80s, so I have no idea how loyal T. Rex’s female fans were, or even if they had many female fans – I am guessing they did, or how else would “Trextasy” happen?  If fandom is like an addiction - it needs new singles all the time to feed it and keep it going – then this was the last ecstatic song, one that was rock enough for the boys (more on them in a minute) and feline enough for the girls.  (Of course, many girls were caught up in this time in the David vs. Donny brouhaha, and I will be addressing the latter’s whole family in the next entry.) 

“I walk like a rat, crawl like a cat, sting like a bee*” he claims, and while I am not sure any girl would be interested in someone even remotely like a rat, but there is such swagger in the song that it doesn’t matter; the growling guitar announces itself immediately, and the band and backing singers (including a very audible Gloria Jones) make a wall of noise that could break down anyone’s resistance.  Is he trying too hard?  It can seem that way (to those who prefer the more laidback T.Rex of yore) but this is not a song that could be done with subtlety.  Who the friends are who are saying “it’s just like Robin Hood” are or just what is like Robin Hood is beyond me – and doesn’t it sound like he’s saying “rock ‘n’ roll” almost, instead?  This is about as pagan as Bolan gets here – after all, the song is about the 20^th century, it’s about being a “toy”** - an object of fun and desire, created for mischief (maybe this is where Robin Hood fits in).  If he is screaming at the end, he ends it by drawling the lyrics, as if he is Elvis and for sure this time he’ll get to the top spot…only to be confounded by little girls who want a nice ballad on one hand, and boys who want to make noise on the other.  (This was an NME #2.)  But the older girls needed that pure adrenaline wave of a hit, and this song - which is like an essence of T. Rex - was more than enough, for now... 

But the boys who were his fans were loyal, perhaps more loyal than the girls; an amazing number of them went on to form bands, as if imprinted by Bolan at some important stage in their development.  What they went on to do varied from Goth (Peter Murphy) to Socialist Pop (Dr. Robert), from Stadium Rock (U2) to Indie Subversives (Mark E. Smith, Johnny Marr) to Punk itself (practically everyone).  Glam was a movement as such, but there always has to be a heart of a movement, someone who can appeal to girls and boys, who can epitomize what it’s all about – and this song for me is at the center of it all, of the whole Glam Slam. 

Serious, funny, sexy – this song has been covered all over the place, even by good ol’ 80s Canadian band Chalk Circle, a band who were usually quite serious but here they cut loose - well, as loose as they were ever going to get.  Even if you make fun of the whole rock ‘n’ roll concept (and Chalk Circle certainly know this is an Elvis song, through and through) it’s still an effortless song, with the kind of swagger that can be heard right down to Suede and Oasis. 

But for now this is one for the girls; even if they’re not screaming anymore, this song was theirs once too, and not just the dreamy boys who would go on to make a very different noise to come.

Next up:  just a normal family from Utah, that’s all.

*Or is it “Crawl like a rat, talk like a cat”?  That’s what I think he’s singing, but since he switches it around, I’m not sure. 

**I just realized what this song is leading to, but we won’t get to that song for some time.  That song was at the center of a whole other movement, which I will be discussing in a while over at Then Play Long.    

Behold The Colins: The Faces: "Cindy Incidentally"

Lately I have been pondering the term "bloke":  and while there are many varieties of bloke out there, I tend to think of some of them as Colins.  Colins are traditionalists, no matter what tradition it is they are following, and they tend to look with suspicion at any music that isn't traditional (I think they would use the word "authentic".)  If the Housewives of Valium Court long to be swept away in some sort of masculine cry of emotion, the Colins* regard music as something of a large mirror, reflecting and refracting their lives, lives too big for mere singles.  No, the Colins like albums** - they like the odd single here and there enough, but for their tastes and habits the album is the thing; a collection of songs that let him see himself, that are his soundtrack, the melodies and lyrics to his daily life. 

There is nothing wrong with this, of course; a lot of what makes music enthusiasts makes the Colins what they are, save that the Colins tend to stick to very particular areas, sounds, artists.  And they don't really evolve or change, once they are in their mid-20s.  Not all blokes are Colins, but all Colins are blokes and thus we come, dear readers, to this song. 

This is an anthem to change, to moving on, to leaving your dull town for somewhere else; and I can imagine it resonating with a lot of people, way beyond the Colins (who would have waited for the album Ooh La La to come out, being album people and whatnot).  It is hard not to hear it now as a song Rod Stewart is singing to himself, that he has to leave The Faces and indeed the UK; and this was to be the last album he did with them; on his own he was a star and the roughness of The Faces was something he wanted to leave behind***.  (Greil Marcus calls Stewart's albums with the band "let's go get drunk" music, and is willing to accept that far more than Stewart at the time did.)  Long before he did his Great American Songbook stuff, Stewart wanted to immerse himself in that smooth American soul sound, to make music in that tradition.  As much as the Colins love The Faces, they respect Stewart's need to do this - to adhere to tradition - and I suppose this makes Stewart a Colin himself. 

This song, where he tells the girl in question to pack up and move out with him, could be heard (I guess) as his wishing he could take The Faces along for the ride.  But what if it's otherwise?  How mean would it be to write a song about how dull your band is, and have them play on it?  As mean as calling the resulting album a "stinking rotten" one, and then saying that it could have been done better.  There is so much goodwill and bonhomie in the early 70s, but by now it is starting to disintegrate; and Stewart, who no doubt regards himself by now as a "professional" is eagerly anticipating the day when he leaves town, leaves his old once-friends behind and starts his life anew.

That life, according to Marcus, is one in which "he exchanged passion for sentiment, the romance of sex for a tease, a reach for mysteries with tawdry posturing" and thus betrays his talent.  Stewart isn't the only rock star who leaves the UK for the US but his decision to do so seems to me to be one he would have made even he actually liked what he and the The Faces were doing; that he didn't think they could do what he wanted them to just made it easier for him.

But what of the non-Colins who bought this?  Were they just as eager to leave their own dingy corners and head off to places elsewhere?  Anyone would have heard this at the time and felt some sympathy with the urge to go somewhere more exciting; a few though, would stay right at home and try to make excitement for themselves.  Rod Stewart is his own weathervane here, and his fans long for that freedom to move, which some may take up, others, not...the Colins will understand, even if their escape is mostly pub talk and their main dream is owning a shed or two.

Next up:  the Glam Slam continueth.           



*Named after one man who was niggling a point on a nationwide radio show, most likely Radio 2, which is in part a Colin-friendly station.

**The recent BBC tv and radio shows heralding the album were either wrong-headed (re-recording Please Please Me) or mind-boggling (one BBC broadcaster said that disco was the anti-r&b).

***It is interesting to note that the whole pub rock movement kind of takes off once Stewart leaves and The Faces break up; and that whole idea of dismissing a band because it can't play will rebound in a few years as well...

If You Want To Defeat Your Enemy: The Strawbs: "Part Of The Union"

There are few, if any, entries here that I sense you, dear readers, are more interested in than this one;  though now thoroughly in The Void, it most certainly is remembered and even cherished as a song with extraordinary meaning.

I do remember hearing this, sometime in the fall of '73 perhaps, sitting at my place at the dining table, which meant I was facing the stereo itself.  I imagine the CBC were playing it as part of a news report, maybe something about unions in the UK exercising their right to strike.  Though I was just six-and-a-half years old, I could sense something a bit odd about the song; I didn't like it.

Of course, had I known that the songwriters were Tories then my gut reaction would have been reinforced*.  Until now I had assumed (wrongly) that there were no Tories in the folk movement...but here we are, the once-named Strawberry Hill Boys who had worked with Sandy Denny and Rick Wakeman were by 1972 a harder-edged band once Dave Lambert became their lead singer and guitarist.  He didn't write this song though: Richard Hudson and John Ford did, with the latter doing the lead singing in this case.

What to make of this song, which makes fun of the power in a union?  Why did I frown, if only to my girlhood self, when I heard it back then?  The whole 1973-1974 period was one of strike after strike, mining disaster after mining disaster, the effects of the oil crisis, inflation and so on.  I wasn't aware of any of this at the time; I think I just noticed the trace of smugness in the singer's voice, the ugly stompy-stompy nature of the melody, the assumption that the (wo)man with the union card was immune to anything and anyone, superior - almost like Superman! - to the interests of Scotland Yard, contemptuous of the factory bosses and factory laws, loyal only to the union, where s/he was always guaranteed higher pay and if something didn't suit the union, why, they'd strike.  That's what they'd do.  If I could tell this at six-and-a-half, I am pretty sure those old enough to buy this single could tell...that this was a pro-union sounding song that was in fact making fun of them.

Well now.

But a funny thing happened during this time leading up to and including three-day weeks and no tv after 10:30 at night; the unions themselves - the miners I'd guess, but others too - took this song as their own.  The miners worked to rule; an election was called and eventually (after a result leading to a hung parliament) the Tory government was replaced by a Labour one in 1974.  These were, as some of you readers know, a decisive and divisive times, when the nerve of the unions and their leaders was up against the government's brinkmanship; a literally dark time, and in dark times people need songs to give them energy and purpose.  This song - with the bitterest of ironies - became that song for the unions, by which time Hudson and Ford had left the Strawbs to form their own group, Hudson Ford (later they made fun of punks with their band The Monks - enough said).   These two thought they could put down a noble and necessary thing - union power - and get away with it; but they didn't.  Folk music is music that belongs to the people, after all; and here the people sang the song back to the group, effectively reversing its power and meaning.  I wonder if this sort of thing could ever happen again?

Next up: Honey, let's quit this town.    

*I am, as you might expect, a Democrat; my parents were, as were theirs...
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up:  till the day you die?  Really?             

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

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

High Expectations: Wings: "Hi Hi Hi/C Moon"

When I think of Paul McCartney, I tend to remember two things first:  both of them immediate and heartfelt reactions.  One was during the Oscars back in '02 when he was performing the title song of Vanilla Sky and a friend yelled at the tv set, in exasperation, "You used to be a BEATLE!"

The other reaction was from my best friend, Gemma, who was taken by her then boyfriend around 1990 to see McCartney in concert.  Her review was mixed, at best; she didn't (and still doesn't) hate the man per se, but the show went on for so very long, and it was fine when he was doing Beatles songs...but his own...

In the 70s people had the right to expect the same levels of genius from the now ex-Beatles as they did when they were still a group; that they all devolved into their constituent parts is one of those letdowns the 70s were so very, very good at.  Lennon cut his losses, as such, by just stopping altogether in 1975; no one expected much from Ringo and thus he didn't make out all that badly; and George kept going, though more and more of his attention was towards making movies, namely in helping to produce them, than trying to have hit singles.

McCartney though, on evidence, really needed to keep himself busy churning out single after single; he was, according to Dellio and Woods, "a Top Forty automaton, a three-minute warlord in an LP combat zone, a human jukebox run amok."  From what I gather in Fab by Howard Sounes, McCartney is the kind of musician who most definitely needs someone who could talk back to him, or else what he would record would be, to put it kindly, not very good.  A George Martin or Lennon to say "No."  McCartney sadly didn't have this in Wings (Denny Laine?  Linda*?  Anyone else?) and thus he would do songs like this one, a song Sounes calls, frankly, "stupid**."  I can only agree, and note that it only did well in the UK as it was banned for clearly being about drugs.  (It is here as it got to #2 on the Radio Luxembourg chart.)  McCartney had recently had a problem with the law about pot plants found on his Scottish farm; and this rockin' tune man is a "So what, I'm still Paul MF McCartney, suck it" sort of reaction that probably sounded like a good idea at the time***, but has no more impact than pushing over an outhouse while someone's in it and running away.  Our Macca, I can hear his fans say, no one tells him what to do!

That it was a hit shows how many adolescents sympathized with him, wanted to own a sh-sh banned single, and maybe how this mild nyah-nyahing was easier to absorb into pop culture than tougher songs which were sold in the wrong shops.  In McCartney's view, it was another hit, proof (sad proof, I'd say) that the public were perfectly happy with the post-Beatle letdown, or that maybe they didn't think they had that right to genius after all.  If "Hi Hi Hi" is bad, then "C Moon" is the kind of genial inanity that he does very well; a kind of reggae-ish love song that lilts and glides along, the sort of thing I imagine McCartney can do in his sleep, practically.  It was played on the BBC instead of the a-side (which was played on Luxembourg); both of these songs have, as far as I can tell, fallen into The Void, which is rare for McCartney but understandable; his big ballad "My Love" came next, followed by the crazed (and Martin-produced) "Live And Let Die."  Those were both songs I'm sure Gemma heard back in the day, and songs he likely still performs; "Hi Hi Hi" is the kind of song that quietly was shelved once the counterculture 70s were gone, and McCartney had grown up.  A little...

I will return to Wings in the fullness of time, with a song that by them that I actually like, believe it or not.   

Next up:  gossip girl.


*Is it just me or was it somehow mean for Paul to make Linda join the band?  Did he really feel so embattled by the end of The Beatles that he needed his wife to be there in the studio with him? 

**Get you ready for my polygon" is enough to make me say "Block that metaphor!"

***I know I don't need to say it, but once you're on drugs so many, many things do seem like good ideas; seem is the key word here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Thoughts Of A King: T. Rex: "Solid Gold Easy Action"

With this, Marc Bolan enters his kingly phase; there is no other way of putting it.  I can see him on his throne, clapping and stomping and demanding that something that is "solid gold"; a demand that comes from him just not being satisfied with what else is going on. 

Now, when I say kingly I don't so much mean noble but the notion of being on top; and that is where T. Rex are at this point - top of the Glam Slam heap, all shiny silver and feather boas and glittery makeup.  By this time Born To Boogie was in the film theatres and "TRextacy" was afflicting hundreds of thousands of people, but with this frenetic stop-start song there is the plea from the new king that even this isn't enough; he isn't happy to share his "wondrous walk and my telephone dialing" with anyone, not even the "woman from the east" who "eased my pain."  He wants "easy action" (whatever that means) and he wants it now; the song is basically a kind of strolling tantrum, a refusal of what is available, of the people who are around him.  "I know you're shrewd and she's a dude" Bolan sings, but that isn't what he wants. (I'm not sure if this woman dressed like a dude is the Jane Slade were singing about, or what.  Did women think of themselves as dudes back then?)

If rock 'n' roll is about dissatisfaction, about demanding more - even if that more isn't (especially if it isn't) explainable or reachable or even possible, then this is right up there with the great two-minute anthems of wanting, yearning, protesting for more; but how odd to have Bolan sing this now, as opposed to when he started.  And in speeding his boogie up, he sounds both desperate and proto-punk; as if he knows what goes up must come down ("Life is the same and it always will be" is how the song starts, and he must know he is at his peak now*).  But rock 'n' roll is about more than being perpetually dissatisfied; it is about democracy at its heart, about how anyone can get onstage and do it, and that goes against any idea of any band or musician being kingly at all.  Thus there's no reason (in that sense) to hear this as anything other than Bolan being a whiny royal, again clapping his hands and demanding to be entertained, with wild cats on golden leashes or apes or peacocks or whatever pleasures take his fancy.  For those who identify with such a haute mien, well, this is their song.  To the stomping hordes who find their pleasures more easily - in the pub, the football grounds, or elsewhere - this is another T.Rex song that means about as much to them as Prince Charles' next polo match.  In this year of complexities and difficulties, the public starts to slowly grow disinterested in T.Rex (this is the last #2 on the 'official' chart they have) just as others who are goofier or cheerier - less demanding - come along to take their place.  1973 is a whirlwind year, a year when just stomping, wearing boas and singing about how unsatisfied you are is not going to last.  Glam is rock 'n' roll in a British sense; Bolan brought that aristocratic edge to it, but there is more to the UK than aristocracy, as we shall see. 

Next up:  he may look like that but really, he's a Mod.            

*He also mentions "picking foxes from a tree" which may be Bolan slang for something (or nothing) but in my brief experiences with foxes I have yet to see them in any trees whatsoever.  If folks were turning against T.Rex, or tiring of them, it was due to lines like this one.