I've Got a Feeling

What else is there to say about the famous rooftop concert? Just this: every time you watch it, you pick up something new. And that something new usually can be summed up thusly: good GOD what a band.

Paul McCartney's critical reputation has been on the upswing since before this century started, so it's sometimes surprising to remember just how much the critics savaged him and his music in the 1970s. He was often lumped into with other saccharine popsters of the day, writing and singing empty confectionaries, just chasing chart success. And to be fair, that's not entirely inaccurate. Except you know which of his peers up there at #1 could sing balls to the wall rock and roll like he so casually does at about 0:29 there? None of them. (Well...Rod the Mod. But he doesn't count.)

John Lennon, of course, is at his coolest here—and when he was cool, there was absolutely no one cooler—obviously emotionally invested, and just gliding through the proceedings with that amazing voice, playing some sweet guitar, and occasionally (such as at 1:54) unleashing that zillion watt smile of his. Obviously, he was one of the great rock and roll screamers of all time, but here he goes the smooth route, gliding above everything casually, knowing that's the most musically effective way to provide counterpoint to Paul's grit.

Even the famously unhappy by this point George Harrison mainly looks pleased, and outright happy a bunch of places—usually but not always when smiling at Ringo, and who can really blame him?—all while playing that frankly weird-ass guitar part that no one else would have come up with and with fits absolutely perfectly.

Speaking of, notice the way Ringo Starr is pounding those toms. There's a very clear difference in timbre between drums hit hard and drums not hit hard, and Ringo is bashing those poor things, getting the best possible tones out of them. And check out that brief, tight and not terribly characteristic fill at 1:28, with its sweet syncopated hi-hat bark. But most of all, listen to the way he brings them back in after the breakdown, around 1:17, as George smiles and Paul hits that perfect high note. They're on a damn rooftop, having not played live in years, they're freezing--several of them wearing their wives' coats in an attempt to keep warm—and them come back in at precisely the right millisecond. If the top studio musicians in New York or Los Angeles stumbled upon these guys playing in some dingy club and heard that bit, they would have turned to each other in shock. "Did you just hear that?" "Of course I did. Good god, who are these guys?"

Easily the best band ever, that's who.

That's All Right, Mama / Blue Moon of Kentucky / Glad All Over

It's always so pleasant—if (or perhaps because it's?) rare—to see footage of George Harrison openly happy. But it's not surprising that so much of that rare footage tends to happen when he's playing with one of his idols.

Such as this great clip of George—along with Ringo, Eric Clapton, Dave Edmunds, a pair of Stray Cats, a David Bowie lead guitarist and Roseanne Cash—harmonizing with Carl Perkins on "It's All Right,  Mama" before playing a remarkable version of the original Scotty Moore guitar solo. Later, Clapton plays one of his more country solos ever, which is great, of course.

But the star is George. I mean, sure, the star is Perkins. But George's harmony vocals are fantastic throughout, and he takes over for "Glad All Over," easing the older master into the song, seldom taking his eyes off his hero, and seldom not grinning.

Here Comes the Sun

Here's a lovely little something from the famous Concert for Bangladesh.

Pete Ham, the Badfinger guitarist who's George's only accompanist here, said George only asked him about playing the song the day before...and they never even rehearsed. Yet if there's a single clam anywhere in there, I can't hear it. They even manage to negotiate the tricksy measures in 11/8 and 15/8 seamlessly.

Blow Away

This is such a horrible video. Even granting that the medium was in its relative infancy, it's still pretty terrible, thanks to George looking typically tense and awkward as he's being forced to mime in extreme close-up, dance, and frolic with, among other absurdities, a giant bath toy duck.

If you've never seen this before, no, that's not a typo. A giant bath toy duck.

But saying he was "forced to," despite appearances, isn't actually right. The video's director was Neil Innes, best known for sharing a birthday with me and for working extensively with Monty Python—so much so that he was sometimes known as The Seventh Python, and not without reason, writing or co-writing many of their songs, and appearing as (among other characters) the lead minstrel following Brave Sir Robin around in Monty Python and— the Holy Grail. Oh, and of course, he was the creative mastermind behind something called The Rutles. So I guess it's safe to say George—producer of (and actor in) Monty Python's Life of Brian, had some idea what he was getting into when he tapped Innes to direct this thing.

But that's not why I posted it. I posted it because it came up in my playlist this morning and listening the opening few seconds I realized that while no one in the world would put George Harrison in a list of the Top 10 Best Slide Guitarists, I will say that he very well may be the single most distinctive slide guitarist ever. His tone, his style, his melodic approach bears no resemblance I can hear to Elmore James or Duane Allman, leaning instead on his pop instincts, as well as perhaps his beloved Indian music—which, given the slide's ability to glide to or lightly touch upon notes a regular fretted guitar can't, might have allowed him to more closely approach Indian music's use of microtones.

Also, the goofy smile he gives the very first time he sings "be happy" is itself reason enough for this video. This horrible, horrible, wonderful, glorious video.

Taxman

Dear Dhani—

You've done a marvelous job with your father's legacy. But it's really time for a spiffy official video release of this tour.

Best,

Reason to Believe

PS: I really like "Staring Out to Sea."

Favorite Song Friday: You

The conventional wisdom has it that George Harrison, with his first proper solo album, All Things Must Pass, recorded not only his best LP, but in the view of many, the best solo record by any former Beatle ever. It sounds crazy, the idea of anyone recording an album better than something John Lennon or Paul McCartney could put out—sorry, Ringo; you know I love you—until you actually listen to All Things Must Pass, at which point a coherent, convincing rebuttal becomes significantly harder.

The conventional wisdom has it that George was then more or less tapped out. His next album, Living in the Material World, was good, maybe even very good, but not great, and certainly not the masterpiece All Things Must Pass was. And from then on, more or less, each album got weaker and weaker, some featuring a few good tracks and lots of filler, and a few not even that.

It's not entirely without merit. When Harrison played his one (sadly all too brief) post-Dark Horse tour in the early 90s, the bulk of the set was drawn from his Beatles days, his first solo LP and (unfortunately) his most recent, Cloud 9, with the 7 albums that came in between represented by at most a song each, and in most cases, none at all. Which would seem to indicate George himself had a pretty decent idea of the relative merits of each of his releases.

But then there's this utterly perfect pop gem. Originally written for Ronnie Spector, and recorded for but not released on All Things Must Pass, it sat in a drawer, forgotten, for half a decade before George finished it off for 1975's Extra Texture. Which just.

How could anyone lose track of a song as flawless as this? Its sparse lyrics say all that need be said, which manages to avoid Harrison's tendency to get a tad preachy. And while Phil Spector could undoubtedly have made it sound like, well, a Spectorian grand production, it actually doesn't sound all that much like a Spector song at its base. Instead, it sounds like the perfect missing link between vintage mid-60s Motown and soon to be released smash hit with all-time great bassline "Silly Love Songs," by fellow former fab Paul McCartney.

Although a hit at the time, "You" has been forgotten over the years, which is a shame. (On the other hand, given what a punchline "Silly Love Songs" has become, maybe there are worse fates.)

Favorite Song Friday: Handle With Care

“This is the greatest album of its kind ever made,” Rolling Stone crowed in 1988 about the release of the first Traveling Wilburys album. And then added, “It’s also the only album of its kind ever made.”

As my partner here at RTB would say: Yes. And yes.

It was such a delicious experiment. Look at the names—George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, (and Jeff Lynne…de-emphasis added). Three of the, what, 15 most important figures in rock-n-roll history up to that point, plus someone (Petty) destined to not quite reach that level, but become a rock-n-roll legend in his own right? That is a Murderer’s Row to end all Murderer’s Rows. Oh, and Jeff Lynne. Who yeah, knew how to produce (and over-produce) and had some weird success with ELO back in the 70s and made all the right friends. But even though he doesn’t approach the stratospheric levels of his four Wilbury counterparts, this was a collection of talent too good even for the term supergroup.

And it was an experiment the likes of which we will almost certainly never see again. Not just because two of the Wilburys—George Harrison and Roy Orbison—are no longer with us. I’m talking about ever happening again with any other artists, period. Because it’s just so damn unlikely to get such upper-echelon Hall of Fame-level talent not only in one room together, but in a studio for a complete album. And to have it work so well.

I mean, sure. I suppose, say, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen and Bono and Chuck Berry (and Jeff Lynne) could get together and call themselves “The Wandering Rizzos” or something like that, and release an album as delightful and (miraculously) ego-free as the Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 was. And when that happens, call me and I’ll offer my apology for the blanket “this will never happen again” statement. But until then, my assertion stands.

So there.

Favorite Song Friday – “Handle With Care” – Traveling Wilburys

So let’s get onto the music. 

This album came out in the Fall of 1988, by junior year of college and, as I have mentioned many times before, at the nadir of a period of rock-n-roll defined and dominated by neo-glam rock. Even though R.E.M. and U2 and The Cure and The Pixies were at their creative peaks, that kind of music wasn't dominating the charts and the airwaves the way Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, Winger, Cinderella and The Swinging Genitals were (I may have made one of those up, I’m not sure). And that sucked. Because there was great music being made. It was just being overshadowed on much of commercial radio and MTV by a cloud of Aqua Net, peroxide and penicillin.

Along came the Wilburys. No, they didn’t change rock-n-roll. I mean yes, they did, but they’d already done that—at least George, Roy and Bobby had. But instead they came in to have a little fun. Five singer-songwriter guitarists came in to turn back the clock a little bit and show us that the old guard was still capable of getting the job done. They rode into town wearing the white hats and while they didn't demolish this awful glammed up legacy (Nirvana and friends would do that a couple years later), they simply reminded us that there was still joy to be found.

For me the album, while not perfect, had a little bit of everything that I loved so much about these guys. Roy turned the tear ducts up to 11 with his glorious “Not Alone Anymore.” Bob practically poked his tongue through his cheek with a giddy and sinister “Dirty World” and with his, um, “tribute” to Springsteen, “Tweeter and the Monkey Man.” And Tom Petty, somewhat surprisingly (consider the comedic talent in the room with him, namely George and Bob), turned in the funniest song on the album, the Latin/country rumblefest that was “Last Night,” the story of groupie love that ends about as badly as it possibly could. Just great, first rate stuff from a few rock-n-roll legends. Nothing more.

But the album, in my occasionally humble opinion, really belonged to George Harrison. It was George who was out front on three songs worthy of him at his very best. “Heading For the Light” was a callback to his early solo days with a bouncing lead guitar and some perfect Beatle-esque harmonies, not to mention a nifty Ringo impression by drumming savant Jim Keltner. “End of the Line,” written by George but giving everyone a chance to step forward to the microphone, reminded us just how much he had to do with the birth and refinement of “country rock.”

And then there is this week’s pick for Favorite Song Friday, the track that led off the album and a song that I can’t help but smile like an idiot whenever I hear it, “Handle With Care.”

It’s true that all five of the Wilburys had a hand in all of the album’s songs. And the other four (particularly Roy) are given their chance to shine on this track. But this was George’s show, really. His chance to look back, now at 45, at all those years behind him and a legacy he left that literally only three other people on earth could ever understand. Not even a titan like Bob Dylan could have gotten, I don’t think, what it was like to be in the Beatles. To create what they created, the way they created it, over and over again.

“Handle With Care” doesn’t delve too deep; it’s more of a fond recollection, not unlike John Lennon had 23 years earlier with “In My Life.” It’s not confessional and it’s not the least bit blue or maudlin. It’s more a way of saying, “Geez, what a ride this was,” as he strolls down a generalized Memory Lane with his loved one.

Been beat up and battered around

Been sent up and I’ve been shut down

You’re the best thing that I ever found

Handle me with care

Reputations’s changeable

Situation’s tolerable

But baby you’re adorable

Handle me with care

I’m so tired of being lonely

I still have some love to give

Won’t you show me that you really care?

Everybody’s got somebody to lean on

Put your body next to mine and dream on

I’ve been fobbed off, and I’ve been fooled
I’ve been robbed and ridiculed
In day care centers and night schools
Handle me with care

Been stuck in airports, terrorized
Sent to meetings, hypnotized
Overexposed, commercialized
Handle me with care

I’ve been uptight and made a mess
But I'll clean it up myself, I guess
Oh, the sweet smell of success
Handle me with care

Having been caught (albeit willingly) in the Lennon-McCartney shadow for so long, George didn’t always have the chance to showcase himself as a first-rate lyricist. But he was indeed—“If I Needed Someone” and “I Want To Tell You” and “Here Comes the Sun” and, of course, “Something” proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. And “Handle With Care” is nothing more than a top-level songwriter totally at ease with himself. Having the confidence to toss off a line like “Baby you’re adorable” (my favorite line in the song, BTW) proves that, as does the absolute unobstructed sunshine in George’s voice as he sings.

What the song really seems to be, with its gentle caution to please, go easy on him, he’s been through a lot, is a grown-up version of another song John Lennon wrote (and George had a hand in making immortal) two decades earlier, “Help!” But whereas a young John was agreeing to “open up the door’ at asking for some assistance in doing so, George was simply asking, through all the mess and success he's created, to “handle me with care.” Similar sentiments, just separated by a generation of growth.

The song propels along with a simple folk-rock chord progression that is an exercise in sweet simplicity, with some great twangy fills that George always did so well and even a neat harmonica that Dylan throws in towards the end. And again, everyone joins in the fun—Roy’s aching plea on the “I’m so tired…” bridge soars above everything like a panoramic John Ford establishing shot. And the harmonies from Dylan, Petty and Lynne—strange as that idea seems—give rich, emphatic layers to the chorus.

Roy died not long after the album, song and video were released. So the Wilburys existence was a fleeting as it was memorable. But the album and the project had a nice reach nonetheless. After this Petty set himself on another creative roll that produced some of his best work over the next 8-10 years. Bob Dylan re-invigorated his career after a somewhat ambivalent 1980s and put out some truly great records. And George kept kicking around, even getting back with Paul and Ringo (and Jeff Lynne…hee!) on the Beatles Anthology project a few years later. From this one fun little project, it seemed, plenty of good things blossomed.

“Handle With Care” started an awful lot of that, it seems. First single, first track on the album, first video, first rate all around.

Baby, it was adorable. In the truest sense of the word.

Homeward Bound

There aren't many musicians as accomplished and distinguished as Paul Simon. Only by teaming up with a singer as angelic as Art Garfunkel could he be considered the "lesser" vocalist in any group. He, like Joni Mitchell, quickly became as or more interested in odd chords, voicings and changes than lyrical explorations. And his backing musicians were never less the creamiest of the cream of the crop. But like Eric Clapton post-Cream/Blind Faith, he never really collaborated with a musician who could truly push him as only a legitimate equal could.

Which brings us to the following clip. I don't know the backstory of how or why Paul Simon invited George Harrison to join him on Saturday Night Live, but the pair played a pair of songs, both of which are gems. George was never the strongest singer—it's no insult to say he was no Lennon or McCartney or Garfunkel—but his rough, nasally voice blends gorgeously with Paul Simon's much purer croon. But even more than the pleasant novelty of his different timbre, it's the freedom of his phrasing that lifts this performance into the realm of something truly special.

As the hours and hours of early live Beatles performances make crystal clear, George could not only harmonize beautifully, but he could do so—as could they all—with impossibly perfect timing, all three singers synchronizing absolutely flawlessly.

He doesn't do that here, not even close. Instead, he feels free to lag a bit behind the beat at times, and add little flourishes here and there. And although I'm not enough of a Paul Simon scholar to be able to state definitely, I'm pretty sure this is one of the very, very few times any of his post-Garfunkel partners felt free enough do so. Which, of course, he should have. Because here's the thing: Paul Simon is a hugely important musician, and insanely talented and accomplished. And he can stack his catalog up against absolutely anyone in the history of the music with confidence.

Except that George could pull out "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Taxman" and "If I Needed Someone" and so on and so forth and oh by the way I was in the fucking Beatles did I mention that? And he wins.

Now, I get the impression that George would sooner have pulled out one of his own molars than actually do or say any of that. But the point is, of course, that he didn't have to. There was never any need to, 'cuz everyone always knew it at all times.

Which is how you get a performance like this. George's verse is ever so lovely, the way he plays ever so slightly with the melody, although, really, it's more the way his phrasing is so very him. The way he toys with the dynamics here and there, getting softer or louder, and his timbre, getting rougher or smoother, and most of all the way he sings the title the second time after Simon joins in again, the little roulade he drops, is just subtly spectacular. How he weaves in and out of Simon's vocals so assuredly...it's just...well, listen.


Just check out that "oooh...sweet!" look Paul gets on his face at 2:30, as George plays his little blues run to close things out; it's clear Simon himself knows something special just happened.