RIP Eddie Van Halen

I confess that I have never really been a fan of Van Halen. I love some of their songs, don't get me wrong ("Dance the Night Away" is a perfect song, as an example), but despite growing up exactly during the time when they hit it huge, my VH phase really didn't last that long.

I mean sure, I remember owning the first three albums and getting into it at my musical awakening when I was 12-13. But my tastes later veered in other directions and I kinda left Van Halen in the rearview mirror. Not that this had any impact on the band, of course.

But while the music didn't thrill me, Eddie Van Halen usually did. How could he not? Just the way he made guitar fans out of so many Gen Xers was impressive enough. Wickety-wickety guitar playing is touch and go with me (no pun intended...no, you know what? Screw it, that was pretty good. Pun intended!). Which is why Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen just never got me excited. But when it was melodic and not just going for land speed records? Yeah, I could dig that. And that's what Eddie Van Halen always seemed to bring. Sure it could be lightning fast, but it was tuneful and even, often times, soulful.

"Eruption" was a sonic revelation. His work on "And the Cradle Will Rock" sounded like the guitar version of impending doom. "Atomic Punk." The aforementioned "Dance the Night Away." His epic turn on "Beat It." Eddie could play, and part of being a music fan is respecting those artists who could, even if maybe you don't love their stuff. That was Eddie Van Halen to me.

The other thing? I loved how he always seemed to have so much fun when he played. I ever saw the band live in concert (again, not a big enough fan for that), but I've seen plenty of clips and he has always seemed to belie the classic "lay back and let the frontman preen" guitar God persona. Think about the detached cool of Jimmy Page or (once long long ago) Keith Richards or Jeff Beck. That wasn't Eddie. Even though he had a life-sized, manshaped peacock in David Lee Roth dominating the stage, and later a hardly gunshy Sammy Hagar doing same, Eddie was still out there and seemingly having a blast. Never upstaging the showy glitter Gods at the microphone, but just smiling and hustling and laughing and looking like this was what he always wanted to do, this and only this. Bravo for that. Seriously.

RIP Eddie Van Halen, gone too young at 65.

California Stars

Having first heard this song very shortly before we moved to California, it's long been one of my favorite Wilco songs—I won't claim it's one of their very best, but it's definitely got a very special place in my heart.

But this live version from a few years ago, featuring the great Jason Isbell guesting on guitar, is really something else. While, sure, it could have been even better if Isbell had joined in on vocals, even without that, it's a lovely version of a lovely song.

Until the end. Isbell plays a nice if occasionally meandering solo. But then impossibly fantastic guitarist Nels Cline—who's already played a sweet solo earlier in the song—joins in, and the two guitarists engage in an absolutely perfect dialogue, reminiscent of the end of "Sultans of Swing," if that were a meditatively melancholy duet. Absolutely the only flaw is that it doesn't go on for another hour.

Stairway to Heaven

Talk about What Might Have Beens.

Every few years I rewatch this video and it's pretty much always the same. Or, well, the video's always exactly the same, but my reaction is pretty much always the same. Which is that with Steve Winwood on keyboards, Bill Wyman on bass and Simon Phillips on drums, this instrumental version of "Stairway" should be phenomenal.

But, sadly, Jimmy Page was deep in the throes of his heroin addiction and his playing—which even at his most incendiary and risk-taking best was rarely precise live, to put it mildly—is shockingly sloppy. Just listen and you'll hear fumbled notes, slurred chords, terrible timing, and some embarrassing intonation.

What's more, the recording itself isn't always as clear as would be ideal. Or, perhaps, given that Jimmy wasn't at his finest here, maybe that's not the end of the world. Still, a bit of clarity would have been nice, and having the audio properly synched with the video would definitely be a plus.

And yet. And yet when Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck come in at the end of the solo, it can't help but become nearly glorious, as Beck plays and plays with the last phrases of Jimmy's famous solo over and over on his Tele, and Clapton plays Robert Plant's original vocal line on his Strat. In some ways, it makes it all the sadder how much greater this could have and should have been. On the other hand, we get to see Clapton, Beck and Page, all three of the Yardbirds famous lead guitarists, playing the most famous song any of them ever wrote, and even at sub-optimal conditions, that's pretty damn cool.

Gentle on My Mind

I'm not sure I recall a time when I didn't love Glen Campbell's music: "Rhinestone Cowboy" was probably the first song of his I really knew, or maybe "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"? Later, of course, "Galveston" and, most of all, "Wichita Lineman" became favorites. And as a music-obsessed teenager, I knew that he was a hotshot session guitarist before he became a country-pop superstar. But I never actually heard any of his playing. Thanks to YouTube, that sort of research became easier by a magnitude of precisely 28949. And yet, for quite a while, video evidence of Campbell's chops were in short supply. Fortunately, not anymore.

This might not have seemed like an obvious example at first glance: it's Campbell's lovely take on the John Hartford classic, later covered by Elvis during his late 60s resurgence. Except he skips the second verse in order to rip off a solo in its place. And what a solo! How good is it? Well, just look at the legends sitting around, laughing at how ridiculously good it is, and under that kind of pressure: Willie Nelson, Roy Clark, Chet damn Atkins and is that Waylon Jennings shown briefly?

Campbell gives a laughing nod to the greatness assembled around him at the end...and yet his face as he's playing seems to indicate he knows he's got this puppy in the bag, as indeed he damn well does. Check out Clark studying Campbell's playing: when a player of his greatness pays that close attention, you know something serious is happening. As indeed it damn well was. The way Willie's head shoots up when Glen says he's about to play a solo? Willie doesn't react that quickly to something unless it's damn worthy.

She's Always in My Hair

There are so many things to be said about this performance: what an amazing singer Prince was, what a phenomenal guitarist, what an unsurpassed bandleader, how physically graceful he was. We could discuss what an odd choice it was to put that huge symbol right there, frequently obscuring his guitar playing. How interesting it was that he veered towards hard rock towards the end of his career.

But one thing kept leaping out at me as I watched—or, really, listened to—this performance and that was that there is absolutely no reason for a band like The Eagles or even R.E.M. to bring so many extra backing musicians on tour. Two guitars, bass, drums and keyboard—that's clearly all that's required for the richest, most massive of sounds. Those five musicians create an elegant sufficiency of the numerous harmonic and melodic delicacies; any more would be an unsophisticated superfluity.

Oddfellows Local 151

I mentioned the other day that the show in Charlottesville on R.E.M.'s Work tour was one of the best I'd ever seen. And this song—from a different show—was one of the highlights. It's one of the very, very few times Michael Stipe played guitar on stage, which alone made the performance special. But it's more than just that rarity. There's so much to love about this, from the murkiness of the lighting, which suits the music so perfectly, to the way the geometric lights blaze on the chorus, to the way Mike Mills and Bill Berry add harmony vocals on only the words "boy and girl" and only the second time through.

And yet, bizarrely, one of the things which is really vital to the song taking off is the style with which he plays guitar. He doesn't play at all while singing, and only some of the time during the instrumental sections, and yet his contributions are significant. He plays like a rhythm guitarist who's rarely played guitar. Which isn't to say he plays badly, just that he approaches his parts almost like a percussionist or keyboardist, adding textures without following a set pattern. When strumming, he concentrates more on sharp upstrokes, or vicious sixteenth note triplets, adding not so much a chordal bedding for Peter Buck's distorted but cutting leads, as an almost Sonic Youth-like din. Check out the way he stiffly but rapidly walks over to Buck at one point, mimicking (perhaps mocking) the traditional stage mannerisms of stadium rocker guitarists such as Keef and Woody or Don Felder and Joe Walsh, gunslingers staring each other down, or perhaps smiling in brotherly bonhomie.

It all works so well. And while I loved R.E.M.'s later tours, and understand why they brought more and more auxiliary musicians on tour with them, I often find myself wishing that they'd instead found ways to arrange the songs so they didn't sound just like the amazing studio recordings but were transmogrified so they could be performed by the original four members. Since, as this clip (amongst so many others) shows, there was a magic that happened when these four guys got together to play. Just look at how in this one song, Stipe's guitar—again, the first and only time he played it on an R.E.M tour—added more to the performance than all the times Mick Jagger or Bono played guitar on all those songs on all those tours combined.

Don't Do It

Look at these jamokes. If you were drinking in your local dive, or maybe a guest at the wedding of a distant acquaintance, and these guys got up to play, what would you think? I mean, really. Just look at them.

Levon looks like the really good mechanic you're pleased to have finally found, even though you can't help but feel—accurately—that he's always looking down at you because you don't know as much about cars as he does. Rick looks like the guy who works the counter at the autoparts store. Richard looks like the guy who stocks the shelves at the autoparts store: there's something about his smile that freaks out the customers too much, even the most manly ones, so they don't let him work the register. Robbie looks like the guy who mixes paint at the hardware store and tries to chat up the housewives, most of whom see right through him, and don't so much enjoy the attention as feel a bit creeped out and like they need a shower. And then there's Garth—in the end, there's always Garth. He's the guy who works in the stacks at the local university library, the one you hope the librarian won't have to go to for help when you ask your question, even though they always do, 'cuz he always knows, and there's no reason you hope they won't, as he's never said or done anything weird to you or anyone you know: in fact, he never does anything weird, other than never doing anything but studying old, arcane tomes and feeding his fish. It's just that he always stares at your shoes as he mumbles the answer to even the most esoteric of queries.

And then they start playing.

Would you get it right away? Would Levon's jittery yet slinky beat immediately clue you in that you're in the presence of a master, of a man who got as much funk, as much soul in his DNA as guanine? I'm not sure you would. What about when Rick starts in with that bassline? I like to think so, but I'm still not sure; the goofy way he bops might distract you. Sure, you'd think, okay, this might not be totally embarrassing, but I don't think you'd quite realize yet what you're in for.

It's Richard's piano that prepares you. His chording is simple, sweet, tasteful...but quiet as it is, it's got that tang of the roadhouse about it—but a roadhouse down New Orleans way—that subtly shifts your thoughts and expectations and even though you haven't fully grokked it yet, you're already starting to think, well...huh. This might just

And then Robbie starts playing. And the slightly sad lounge lizard reveals himself to be the greatest guitarist you've ever actually seen in person, with just a few chords. They're not difficult chords; this isn't Jim Hall playing some bizarre inversed voicing. They're just your standard rock and roll chords...but they're rock and roll chords played with that distorted Strat tone that bypasses your aural canal and goes directly into your very being and makes it clear that the guy making those sounds knows rock and roll and he knows the guitar and suddenly the smugness seems entirely justified.

And then they start singing. And it hits you, first, that this sweaty funk workout is somehow Marvin Gaye's boppy classic. And, secondly, you realize, accurately, that if this isn't the best group vocals you've ever heard, well, you never heard better. Never. Not by the Beach Boys, not by the Beatles, not even by the Everlys. Never.

Robbie's guitar solo only confirms what you could tell by his opening chords, which is that this superior bastard is indeed superior—he's got the technical ability, but he's more than just flash: he's got the spirit. And behind him, supporting them all, is that intense research librarian who, it turns out, plays the church organ like Bach, if Bach had been raised as a tobacco farmer in Kentucky.

Turns out, and who knew? that looks can be deceptive. And that the rock, the funk, the soul, can take root in the most unlikely of places, whether a guy who looks like a smarmy bastard or a creepy stockboy. And that the proof is always in the sound. And god-a-mighty, what a sound.

Egg Radio

I think the first time I heard Bill Frisell was on the Disney covers collection, Stay Awake, featuring wonderful covers by the likes of NRBQ, Suzanne Vega, Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant, and best of all, the Replacements demolishing "Cruella De Ville," still one of my favorite covers of anything ever, as well as a demented version of "Heigh Ho" by Tom Waits.

Since then I've become a fan of Frisell's jazz work, including his series of live albums, all of which are enjoyable and many of which are superb, including his covers of John Lennon, in which he proves (as if it were needed) that Paul McCartney wasn't the only Beatle with a knack for writing insanely gorgeous melodies.

This may be my favorite Frisell original, and after playing it roughly three dozen times over the past week, I finally realized why: it sounds like the beautiful child of "Moon River" and Ritchie Valens' "Donna."

Even Flow

Eddie Vedder on Prince:

"People know him from the ways he looked, and the different ways he looked, and different things he said – a lot of incredible things to remember him by. But I gotta tell you, and you just saw some great guitar playing. Prince was probably the greatest guitar player we've ever seen."

A little overstated perhaps? Let's go to the tape:


Yeah, okay. I'm sold.

J. Mascis/Bob Stinson

I came to Dinosaur Jr. way too late.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I came to them just in time for their glorious 2007 reunion record, Beyond. Just before that, really, which gave me time to devour the perfect Green Mind and other magnificent records like Bug and You're Living All Over Me. But in terms of the late 80s, early 90s? I missed it all. I knew who they were, just didn't pay attention.

That was dumb.

What's funny is the first time I ever heard Dinosaur Jr. or J. Mascis incendiary guitar (I wish I could remember what song it was) was in the early 1990s. And my first thought, upon hearing it, was, "Since when does Bob Stinson play in another band?"

I was (still am, of course) an avowed Replacements nut and this wasn't too long after they'd shuffled off that mortal coil in 1991. Bob was long deposed, naturally, as their lead guitar player and, well, I just plain missed the band like crazy. And couldn't believe their eight record output would be all I would ever have of them.

So imagine my surprise when I thought (erroneously) that Bob Stinson had joined a new band. It was like, "Dammit! No one tells me anything anymore!" (Which isn't true. Scott tries to tell me stuff. I just don't listen. To him. Except when I do. Like here.)

Anyways, this is the Replacements song that popped to mind when I first heard what J. Mascis could do to a guitar. This was exactly what his guitar style and playing reminded me of. It's as early Mats as you get, and while it's a rager of a tune, it's not even the best known song on the single it spawned; the lovely and forlorn country shuffle "If Only You Were Lonely" was its B-side and seemed to always delight fans even more.

But just five seconds in, listen to Bob's guitar. That heavy, hyperbaric sound, menacing as hell and yet clear as a damn bell. That was Bob Stinson's sound, when he did it right. And that is J. Mascis sound. Who always does it right.

Bob Stinson's been dead 20 years this year, which is crazy enough to think about. The Replacements legendarily continue to not get the mainstream props they deserve, even as the non-essential masses continue to love them and laud them. (Another year snubbed by the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame! Yippee!)

But man did Bob Stinson create a very distinct and very essential sound for them. And man did J. Mascis pick up the ball and run with it with Dinosaur Jr.

(Here's an example of a great J. solo that reminds me of Bob Stinson. J. starts right in with that sound from the very beginning, and then we hear it again with a solo at the 2:01 mark. Obviously this isn't that one I first heard; this came out at least 15 years later. But I think it's a good example of what two peas in a pod these two really mighta been.)

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.

Maggot Brain

Because, really, can one have too much "Maggot Brain"?

I love Nels Cline. (Pace Mark Kozelek.) I love his sounds, I love his style, I love his...well, okay, I'm not sure I love his guitar face. But given the way he pours his all into his shredding, I'm not sure it's possible to fault him for excessive grimacing. (Also, I'm not sure he even comes close to competing for the title of Most Guitar Face Guitar Face Ever.)

Man. Nels Cline, Mike Watt and Stephen Perkins. That's some talent right there.

Maggot Brain

Let us be very clear about something: this is not better than the original. Eddie Hazel's original solo is one of the most incendiary yet heartfelt and nakedly emotional pieces of music—not just guitar solos—ever committed to tape. The legend has it that Funkadelic mastermind George Clinton told Hazel—a mere pup at 21 years old—to play as though he'd just learned his mother had died...and then learned she hadn't actually. Whether or not that story's apocryphal is almost beyond the point, because that is exactly what Hazel's solo sounds like.

This cannot surpass Hazel's original, because it's not possible to. But it is an amazing tribute, paying homage to Hazel while very clearly allowing J Mascis's own personality shine through: but in the process making it obvious just how big an influence Hazel had on Mascis's style.

If I owned a business, I would make this the hold music. (This shows pretty definitively why I don't own a business.)

In addition to Watt's admirably restrained bass, it's a neat touch to have Funkadelic's Bernie Worrell on keys.

Horizons

I fell in love with this song the very first time I heard it—in fact, it may have been the first Peter Gabriel-era Genesis song I loved unreservedly. I've heard it hundreds of times since and if anything that's only grown stronger.

But watching Steve Hackett play it now, I don't understand how it was written. How do you write something like this? I honestly don't understand. I get how "Hey Jude" was written, or "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or even "So What" but this is just beyond me.

Lovely little trolling of his erstwhile bandmates at the very beginning too.

(And, yes, I know its genesis, if you will, in the prelude to Bach's first cello suite. I still don't get it.)

Sultans of Swing

This makes me perhaps unreasonably happy.

Okay, sure, maybe there are a few places where his fingering isn't quite as clean as Mark Knopfler's—but on the other hand, let's see Knopfler play the solo this well while casually and cheerfully chatting with the crowd and thanking them for each contribution.

Little Martha

Yesterday afternoon was a lovely early summer New England day, and with our son out of town and nothing really on the agenda, the Prime Minister and I decided to take a drive. No particular place to go, as the man said, so we just set out on a 90-minute car excursion, something we do oh so rarely yet provides such a nice and tranquil break in the day.

Our brief travels took us both to and past a few hidden Connecticut gems, off-the-beaten path places that you really need to live here to know about.

Like here, Old Newgate Prison, which amazingly enough was just two prisons ago for Connecticut:

And here, Enders State Forest, which is a stunning little hollow located fewer than 100 steps from a main road:

And ultimately to here, Barkhamsted Reservoir, which is a pretty breathtaking place all unto itself, in part because it kind of feels like it comes upon you out of nowhere:

 

So anyway, these sites plus the Prime Minister's wondrous company really did make for just an awesome 90 or so minute jaunt to parts not so far away, yet far enough away to remind you of how pleasant these drives can be.

But of course this is not a Connecticut Travel blog; it's a music blog. So now I shall get to it.

As I often do when we drive together, I put my much better half in charge of the music. And on this trip she chose one of her favorites to play:

Right on.

It's such an eclectic and oddball album, Eat a Peach, the last Allman Brothers Band album that guitar savant Duane Allman would appear on before he died (actually he died a few months prior to the record's February 1972 release, which adds an even greater haunting feeling to it all). The record is sui generis in the rock-n-roll world for a few reasons. Start with its sprawling nature (nearly 70 minutes in length) and the posthumous release. Then mix in the fact that it bounces between live and studio. And finally consider the content; its indelible mix of some of the band's most popular tracks ever ("Melissa," "Blue Sky," "One Way Out") with some of its most innovative and, let's face it, experimental (Dickie Betts' nine-minute "Les Brers in A Minor" seems like advanced calculus, but the band's 33-minute stemwinder "Mountain Jam" makes the former track practically sound like a pop ditty).

So we took all of this in, even every second of "Mountain Jam" which, seriously, needs to be played in the background as such, because it simply cannot be a song you sit down to simply listen to the way you would, say, "Ain't Wasting Time No More" or "Melissa." And it provided the letter perfect soundtrack to our brief but delightful journey.

And it all wrapped up, as we pulled back into town, with the last song that Duane Allman ever wrote, as well as the only song he ever wrote just by himself for the Allmans. It's the song that, sadly but fittingly, serves as his elegy:

"Little Martha," despite it being just Duane all by his lonesome just a few weeks before his fatal motorcycle crash, has so much to it. It's bouncy and playful, while at the same time (perhaps due to the tragedy that would soon come) possessing a mournful and melancholy pull. It's got a typical Allman Brothers backstory to it, funny and dreamy and perverse, something about how this song came to Duane in a dream he had of Jimi Hendrix using bathroom faucets to play the melody. And it has this gentle, unpolished and, really, unfinished soul about it. A meditation on not only the magic Duane Allman was capable of, but also on just how fleeting that magic can be.

And on a beautiful early summer Sunday afternoon in northern Connecticut, "Little Martha" served the simple but essential purpose of bringing us home.

Youngstown

So the great Nils Lofgren, the second (of three) 2nd guitarists in the E Street Band, offers online guitar lessons.

This

is considered "intermediate."

Stayin' Alive

Well. Learn something new every day.

Despite having heard this I don't even know how many hundreds of times, and unapologetically loving it every single time, I had no idea that it was Barry on guitar and Maurice on bass. That's some seriously funky playing. If this were your first time hearing it, you wouldn't be surprised if Curtis Mayfield started singing, or perhaps (after 12 minutes) Isaac Hayes.

Glen Campbell, shredder

Been on a tiny Glen Campbell kick of late—tiny because as I really only know his half-dozen or so greatest hits. But I've long known he's a killer guitarist—but have never really seen any evidence of it. Not that I'm doubting, it's just that, you know: it's one thing to learn that Jimi Hendrix was an amazing guitarist and another thing to actually watch video of him playing.

Yet while there are thousands of Glen Campbell videos on YouTube, most of them are like this:

or this:

Which, hey, groovy. I unapologetically enjoy me some Bread and goodness knows I'm interested in Toni Tennille's love, muskrat or otherwise. (I'm pretty sure she's saying the final four words direct to me, for instance.) And he does get some sweet playing off there—if you can stomach the dialogue—but when you're looking for evidence of Glen Campbell's abilities as a shredder, well, neither of those are going to help you out much.

This, on the other hand...

It's still not really what I was looking for, but, yeah. Damn, yo. Boy could play.

Ålesund

Mark Kozelek has said that he recorded the Sun Kil Moon album Admiral Fell Promises after listening to a lot of Andrés Segovia. That's as may be but boy howdy but it sounds like he'd listened to a lot of Steve Hackett in his day as well. (The fact that he's covered both Peter Gabriel-era Genesis and post-PG Genesis also makes me suspect this.)