Give Blood

The Crickets. The Beatles. Creedence Clearwater Revival. Led Zeppelin. The Ramones. P-Funk. The Smiths. R.E.M. Nirvana. Radiohead. There have been an awful lot of great bands.

This is not one of them. But only because it wasn't a real band—it was a solo artist with as good a backing band as has ever existed. If had been a real band? The core of Pete Townshend on vocals and rhythm guitar, Dave Gilmour on lead, Pino Palladino on bass and Simon Phillips on drums...well, the mind reels at what they could have created.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering, yes, this is maybe the most perfect drum performance ever, when it comes to the combination of staggering technique, brilliant inventiveness, off-the-chart energy and yet remarkable taste and restraint, including (at 3:44) the single greatest use of the double bass drums ever.

Terrible editing, of course. Hey, it was the 80s.

[ETA: ...huh. Turns out I wrote about this four years ago, and said pretty much the same thing, although I used a different version of what I think is the exact same performance.]

After the Fire

DT and I were talking a while back about post-Keith Moon Who LPs, as well as subsequent solo albums from various Who members. And I recalled that the Pete Townshend-written Roger Daltrey track "After the Fire" was really good.

But what I didn't recall was that the video itself gives Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" a serious run for its money when it comes to Most 80s Video Ever.

Sure, that's some earnest damn emoting at the beginning there, but then, Roger's always been a heart-on-the-sleeve singer. (And, if biographies are to be believe, guy.) And, yeah, you might think that one dramatic whiparound was enough, never mind seven. That's right, seven; I slowed the video down to half-speed, just to make sure my tally was right—although, admittedly, on the last one, he does a 270, rather than a 180, so I'm not positive if it counts. But what makes the opening work for me is how much drama he gets out of...lighting a match. Yeah, he later uses that match to spark a genuine conflagration, but that's in the future. At the moment the match is lit, it's just a surprise Spanish Inquisition-like appearance of...a match. And not even one of them really big mamajamas, neither; it's just a simple bog standard match, like used to be on the counter for the taking in restaurants and hotels and convenience stores. And yet the gravitas, the drama—it is simply glorious.

And I remembered right: pretty sweet tune.

Face Dances, Pt. 2

I had neither heard this song nor seen this video in several decades, and yet I was amazed at how well I remembered so much of it, from the melody to some of the lyrics to a lot of the visuals: I always especially loved the screeching guitar part at 2:25, neverminding the fact that his hands should be moving down the neck and not up.

But what I don't remember ever knowing is that the song is in 5/4 but that during the choruses, the drummer—either Mark Brzezicki or Simon Phillips, the credits aren't clear—plays as though the signature has switched to 4/4.

Also, are guys really supposed to use that much aftershave?

White City Fighting/Hope

When Pete Townshend learned, back in 1983, that David Gilmour was working on a new solo album, he offered his assistance, knowing how difficult it could be to step out from the shadow as large as that of a band such as Pink Floyd (or the Who). Gilmour took him up on it, asking him to write lyrics for three songs. Townshend did, but Gilmour only used two of them, the third being too different, thematically for him.

Gilmour then sent the song to his friend Roy Harper, singer of Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar," and asked him to write lyrics. Harper did but, again, Gilmour didn't think they'd work for him, so he simply dropped the track from About Face, his second (good but not great but better than Gilmour thinks) solo album.

Both Townshend and Harper ended up using their own lyrics, recording the songs themselves, the former with guitar help from Gilmour, the latter with guitar by some guy named Jimmy Page (whose band had also relatively recently dissolved).

There are many intriguing "what if" questions in rock and roll. What if Lennon hadn't been killed: would the Beatles have ever gotten back together? What if Kurt Cobain hadn't killed himself: what would have done musically? What if Jimi Hendrix hadn't died so young: where might he have gone musically?

This doesn't rise to that level. And after decades of listening to Townshend's, it's disorienting but fascinating to hear Harper's version. But I surely do wish Gilmour had perserved and written his own set of lyrics, so we could hear yet a third varation, and hear what it would have sounded like if he himself had recorded a version.

Lucille

What's the greatest thing about this?

Is it the truly staggering lineup of musicians, with the likes of Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremner and Pete Townshend on guitars, Paul McCartney, Bruce Thomas, Ronnie Lane and John Paul Jones on bass and Kenney Jones and John Bonham on drums? Is it McCartney's outstanding vocal turn? Is it perhaps one of the very few sightings ever of Robert Plant on guitar? (That's right, you heard me: Robert Plant. Playing. Guitar. Led Zeppelin is here as a power trio and the guitarist isn't Jimmy Page.)

It is none of those. No, it is the utterly transcendent performance of a presumably completely hammered Townshend as he leeringly approaches McCartney at 1:27, like a drunken Hannibal Lector ogling a fresh meal, while Macca appears significantly more amused than Clarice Starling ever was. Townshend then drifts off to rip into a typically awesome solo...at first, before seeming to lose the key and getting blessedly mixed out. Now that's what I call charity.

Give Blood

I almost certainly listen to the pristine pop gem that is "Let My Love Open the Door" more, but "Give Blood" may just be my favorite solo Pete Townshend song.

I'd always loved David Gilmour's playing on it, but just found out the song's insane origin:

"'Give Blood' was one of the tracks I didn't even play on. I brought in Simon Phillips, Pino Palladino and David Gilmour simply because I wanted to see my three favourite musicians of the time playing on something and, in fact, I didn't have a song for them to work on, and sat down very, very quickly and rifled through a box of stuff, said to Dave, 'Do one of those kind of ricky-ticky-ricky-ticky things, and I'll shout "give blood!" in the microphone every five minutes and let's see what happens.' And that's what happened. Then I constructed the song around what they did."

I guess that is the kind of thing that tends to happen when you have a pretty much perfect band—and it simply doesn't get better than Gilmour, Palladino and Phillips—and toss them a decent scrap of a song idea and start the tapes rolling. Of course, it does hurt to then have one of the world's great lyricists—who's also a fine singer—write over the resulting results.

Turned out pretty well, I'd say.

Gilmour's "Run Like Hell" guitar is so integral, as are Townshend's own acoustic flourishes, but (beyond the lyrics and melody, of course, and great as the horns are, and they are) the real star here is Simon Phillips' mad drumming.

Simon Phillips is what you'd get if you were to create a drummer in the laboratory using Steve Gadd's unsurpassed technique and Keith Moon's unshakable belief that the drummer should be the primary lead instrument in a rock band. Check out the sixteenth notes Phillips plays during the first few choruses, but notice just how he arranges them: his left hand is playing the hi-hat with the opening and closing disco beat so beloved by the aforementioned Gadd, while his right hand splits duties between the ride cymbal and the snare, with the occasional visit to a passing tom.

Or note the (for him) simple tension-building he does before the third verse, the back and forth on the double bass drums before two syncopated flams on the snare and a cymbal crash. There are an awful lot of drummers who could more or less pull that off. There are almost none who would have written it, and none who would have written it and played it so savagely yet crisply.

The Supergroup That Should Have Been

I've always thought a truly spectacular supergroup could have been formed by Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend. All three are obviously amazing, multi-faceted artists, have been close admirers of each other since the mid-60s, and have worked together in various configurations at least occasionally. And while all three have almost always been very much the dominant musical forces in whatever settings they've been in for most of that time—with one very obvious exception—all three have also proven they can step back and simply be the very finest of supportive musicians, at least in the short term.

Clapton, of course, has often taken on the sideman role, whether it was as touring guitarist for Delaney & Bonnie or for Roger Waters, or as very much the minor partner, to everyone's surprise (including, I suspect, Steve Winwood's) in Blind Faith.

Meanwhile, Pete Townshend, never one to suffer fools gladly, still seems to be in awe of Clapton, as this clip shows—his entire demeanor is remarkably deferential, considering what an outstanding guitarist and singer he is himself (and how much better a songwriter he is, even conceding Clapton's own songwriting is sometimes under-appreciated).

And then there's Paul McCartney, whose musical and personal/professional dominance is one of the things that broke up the Beatles. (Although if he hadn't been so aggressive in wanting the band to keep working, they probably would have broken up out of sheer ennui anyway.) And yet even George Harrison, at a time when he and Paul weren't getting along and while dismissing some of McCartney's more whimsical songs, praised the brilliance Paul's playing on other people's songs. The contributions he made to "Tomorrow Never Knows," "And Your Bird Will Sing," "If I Needed Someone" or "Come Together," to name only a very few of John's and George's songs, are massive.

And then there's this.

When Paul and Eric sing the bridge together, watching each other, just after the 7:00 mark is spine-tingling, and makes me sorry they never did more more extensively, and wonder what might have been.

Going Mobile

My imaginary friend Chris is an interesting guy. When it comes to musical tastes, we have a lot of crossover, being huge fans of Elvis, the Beatles, R.E.M. and Übërsphïnctër, as well as various and sundry other artists. But we also diverge wildly in a lot of places, in no small part thanks to our earliest musical experiences. We both grew up listening to lots of Top 40 as little kids, but whereas I grew up thoroughly steeped in classic rock, thanks to the influence of my older siblings, my imaginary friend Chris shifted into punk at roughly the same time. So we can geek out over Revolver minutiae until the cows come home, or the glory that was the Captain & Tennille, but I can't really knowledgeably discuss, say, Minor Threat and he isn't really all that familiar with Lynyryd Skynyrd or Steve Miller or the J. Geils Band.

He's also an outstanding musician, playing all the major rock instruments, including being a great drummer, so when I found this, I thought, like me, he'd find it powerful interesting.

As usual, I was right. But to my semi-surprise and kind of delight...he'd never heard the song before. This song that I'm sure I've listened to at least 200 times was completely new to him. And his first exposure to was by listening to simply Keith Moon's incredible isolated drums.

Listening to it with my ears, ears that always know exactly where Moon is at any point, really emphasizes Roger Daltrey's assertion, of how Moon sounded chaotic but was actually playing along to the lyric. You can hear how weird some of his playing is, like when he kinda turns the beat around for eight bars, or how he'll occasionally abandon the cymbals entire (if briefly). You can marvel to just how tight his quick triplet rolls are, how often he syncopates his crashes, as well as how his spots of, let's be honest, slop are just on the right side of feel.  It's lovely and something of a revelation. And as my imaginary friend Chris perceptively noted, Moon's like a Dixieland instrumentalist, where he's soloing 95% of the time and yet rather than it causing everything to fall apart, it somehow actually holds everything together.

And then Chris listened to the drums in context. And he was amazed, never having guessed from the sound of Moon's drums what the final product would sound like. And he said that if you pulled out Moonie's drums, "Going Mobile" might just sound like an early 70s singer-songwriter tune that lopes along merrily.

Well, thanks to the magic of YouTube we can check out that assertion.

...and yeah. Until the guitar freakout starting almost exactly halfway through the song, it actually wouldn't have been terribly out of place as the uptempo track on an early 70s singer-songwriter LP. (Also, that's some asskickery being doled out to Pete's poor acoustic, and we are all the better for it.)