One of the things which never gets old about being a music fanatic (well, so far, at least) is how way can lead to way. You're reading a piece about a favorite artist and they mention some other artist, whom you've never even heard of before. And because we currently live in the age of miracles, you can just search for this new artist—the band Mount Eerie, which is apparently largely the work of Phil Elverum—and you discover he's been recording since the beginning of the century and you've just missed him. So you zip on over to YouTube and not only the song mentioned but indeed the entire album (2017's A Crow Looked at Me) is available, thanks to the artist himself. And you dive in and a bit later you hear a song and it just hits like a gosimer wrecking ball.
And thanks to that websearch, you know that this album was not only written in the wake of his young wife's death but indeed in the room where she died, using her own instruments.
Today I just felt it for the first time
Three months and one day after you died
I realized that these photographs we have of you
Are slowly replacing the subtle familiar
Memory of what it's like to know you're in the other room
To hear you singing on the stairs
A movement, a pine cone, your squeaking chair
The quite untreasured
In between times
The actual experience of you here
I can feel these memories escaping
Colonized by photos narrowed down and told my mind erasing
The echo of you in the house dies down
October wind blows
It makes a door close
I look over my shoulder to make sure
But there is nobody here
I finally took out the upstairs bathroom garbage that was sitting there forgotten since you were here
Wanting just to stay with us
Just to stay living
I threw it away
Your dried out, bloody, end-of-life tissues
Your toothbrush and your trash
And the fly buzzing around the room
Could that possibly be you too?
I let it go out the window
It does not feel good
I can't say I enjoy this song and yet at the same time I love it.
It's weird to see Seger relegated to the AOR arena-rock dinosaur category by people who've listened to music made since 1990; sometimes it feels like the only ones who give ol' Bob his due are the ones who loved him in the 70s and 80s and have pretty much stopped listening to anything since. And it's jarring, because he was so big—in the late 70s, he was more commercially successful than Bruce Springsteen, despite really only breaking through because (the younger) Springsteen paved the way.
But Seger is an authentic artist and a true believer; he was already making records when the Beatles were putting out Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he wrote one of the all-time great anti-war songs, "2+2=?" (which is an absolute banger), and his first authentic hit, "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" came out in 1969. He was a local star who time and again almost seemed like he might hit the big time without ever actually doing so. Until the kid from New Jersey sent the record labels looking for the Next New Dylan™ and lo and behold Capitol discovered they had a real live peer already signed to their roster. Live Bullet set the stage and Night Moves blew the damn thing wide open.
And why not? As Dave Marsh wrote, only Springsteen and Jackson Browne could write as well as Seger, but Seger could obviously sing rings around them both. Which is no slight on either of them: Bob Seger can sing rings around all but a tiny handful of white rock and roll singers ever. As Bruce Springsteen himself said recently, "Really great singers, people who have a really great instrument, like...Bob Seger has a great instrument."
Ironically, that long-ago chart success and that amazing voice may have actually served to ultimately obscure just how excellent a writer Bob Seger is. In fact, I think Bob Seger may be the most underrated great writer ever. There are a number of reasons for that. In part, I suspect his midwestern roots didn’t allow him to seriously discuss his writing, the way Springsteen or Browne did theirs. (In this way, he reminds me, oddly, of The Replacements.)
He wasn’t nearly as prolific as Springsteen—again, that's not a slight, since there have been very few artists ever who were as prolific as Springsteen was for the first few decades of his recording career—nor as obviously erudite as Browne. And unlike those guys Seger almost always had at least a few covers per LP, which I suspect had a psychological effect on the listeners and their view of the artist.
And when you heard Seger sing a song, the very first thing you noticed wasn't the guitar or the drums or the arrangement or the lyrics: it was that amazing voice.
Finally, his final few songs to really capture the public's attention were the likes of the absolutely terrible "Shakedown," one of his worst songs ever, and which naturally therefore went to #1. Then there was "Like a Rock," which was turned into a commercial at the exact time that things like "selling out" were a topic among passionate rock fans. And finally, there was "Old Time Rock and Roll," which he co-wrote but didn't take a songwriting credit for, meaning he wasn't able to stop it from being used for...well, everything, including more terrible commercials.
(And then he took years off to hang out with his family, and disappearing from the public eye at that point in time certainly wasn't the best move from a critical point of view.)
All of which means that while Bob Seger was ginormous in the late 70s and early 80s, he's basically unknown by younger listeners, unless they know him as the guy who sang that cheesy reactionary "Old Time Rock and Roll" that's been used to hawk burgers and such. Which is a shame, because he should be viewed as a rock and roll Willie Nelson or Muddy Waters or something: an artist who once upon a time was one of the very greatest ever, whose best work absolutely stands the test of time.
"Feel Like a Number" perfectly captures how powerless and faceless one can feel in modern society. "Night Moves" is a remarkably powerful yet unsentimental look back at the freedom and naivete of youth. "Turn the Page" allows the listener to actually sympathize with how difficult being a traveling musician can be, while not denying the benefits. "Rock and Roll Never Forgets" pulls off the difficult feat of paying tribute to the music itself while not sentimentalizing it and yet managing to be a great example of its power. "Against the Wind" is a simply devastating look back at the roads not taken, and which really probably should have been. And there are a dozen other examples just as good.
But as I said, it seems as though he's perhaps done with that, and if anyone's earned the right to retire, it's Bob Seger. He created some of the greatest American rock and roll songs and albums ever—Night Moves and Stranger in Town are both nearly flawless—and he seems to have always stayed true to himself.
So. So long, Bob, and thanks for all the fish. Here's hoping the afterparty is everything you could ever want.
Think in terms of bridges burned Think of seasons that must end See the rivers rise and fall They will rise and fall again Everything must have an end Like an ocean to a shore Like a river to a stream Like a river to a stream It's the famous final scene
And how you tried to make it work Did you really think it could How you tried to make it last Did you really think it would Like a guest who stayed too long Now it's finally time to leave Yes, it's finally time to leave Take it calmly and serene It's the famous final scene
It's been coming on so long You were just the last to know It's been a long time since you've smiled Seems like oh so long ago Now the stage has all been set And the nights are growing cold Soon the winter will be here And there's no one warm to hold
Now the lines have all been read And you knew them all by heart Now you move toward the door Here it comes the hardest part Try the handle of the road Feeling different feeling strange This can never be arranged As the light fades from the screen From the famous final scene
You know, for all the fecal matter slung his way, even some of Phil Collins's most popular ballads were really kinda weird structurally and harmonically.
"Against All Odds," with its rising chord progression that methodically works its way through almost every chord in the key of A minor, skipping E minor only to return to it later, unexpectedly, after G major, and shifting the D minor chord to a D major chord for the chorus, is, well, weird. The lack of a bridge or solo, the ever shifting lyrics, which reuse lines but rarely exactly...it really does sound like what it was, a guy in pain playing just for himself in his empty house as way to try to ameliorate or at least work through his issues. It's just that, in this case, the guy in question turned into a major pop star and was able to rework some of his musical therapy sessions and turn them into massive worldwide hits. But the unusual elements and the pain remains.
For years I thought about how great a medley of these two songs would be, notwithstanding Elvis Costello's lack of affection for his own song. And then lo and behold the bespectacled one went and did it himself and brilliantly. Going acoustic may not have been a huge leap, but moving it into a country shuffle with a backing choir? Genius.
One of my favorite songs he ever wrote is, in fact, one of
his greatest: 1968's “America,” from the wondrous Bookends album.
It’s such a beautiful piece of music and a such a personal and moving story;
two young lovers making their way across the country in search of…something. It’s
a heartfelt travelogue where the search is everything, to the point where we
really don’t even know what the destination is. Nor do we need to, I don’t
think.
And as much as any Simon and Garfunkel song, "America" I think truly shows just how essential Arthur Garfunkel was to the final product. Sure, Paul did the songwriting, played guitar, took an awful lot of the lead vocals. But listen to what Arthur's voice does to this song. His harmonies make it soar and lend it a level of soul that is almost impossible to imagine would be there without him.
But a recent listen of the song had me thinking about the songwriting first and foremost, and what an unusual turn it was for Paul Simon. This is one of the best examples I have ever heard of blank verse, minimalist songwriting, and it's not something Paul did too often.
Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes
And Mrs. Wagner pies
And we walked off to look for America
"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've come to look for America
Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said, "Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera"
"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"
"We smoked the last one an hour ago"
So I looked at the scenery
She read a magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
"Kathy I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why"
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America
Now one of Paul's trump cards has always been to take an array of songwriting styles and make them work.
"Homeward Bound" is more of a straightforward
rhyme scheme, with some internal rhyme for good measure ("...all my work
comes back to me in shades of mediocrity...").
"The Boxer" goes
for poetic flourish, particularly in the final verse, which is astounding when positioned with the straight narrative that largely proceeds it. It is also largely unrhymed until the end of each verse, which
is incredibly difficult in its own right.
"The Sounds of Silence" has no chorus (like "Homeward Bound" does and which the "Lie la lie" part ably represents on "The Boxer") and instead depends on a series of couplets which lead up to a steady reveal at the end of each verse.
"Graceland" embraces pop as much as it does its African sensibilities and stands as a more traditional, middle-aged update of the search we first hear about in "America."
But "America"
is written blankly as a straightforward narrative, not a rhyme in
sight, and it works to a tee. It sounds like something Hemingway would write, if Hemingway were a songwriter.
Just look at the fourth stanza as a perfect example. It's downright journalistic, no images or metaphors to describe what's happening, just plain voice, first-person reporting, and it's staggering in its simplicity. Particularly considering Paul Simon's gift for being such an intricate and imagistic writer.
"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat."
"We smoked the last one an hour ago."
So I looked at the scenery,
She read a magazine,
And the moon rose over an open field.
It's helped, of course, by an irresistible melody and, again, some of the most breathtaking interplay between the two singers we've ever heard. And it sets up for what follows; one of the saddest and most devastating lines rock-n-roll has ever produced. No drama, no bombast, just one more simple statement. And it hits like a hammer.
"Kathy I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."
It's a gift to write like this, because it's so hard to mesh blank verse with melody and make it work. It's an even greater gift to have this be only one of the types of writing at which you excel. Paul Simon, flaws and annoyances aside, once occupied some very rare, very special terrain as a songwriter. He surely did.
I know I know I know. I'm not supposed to like Edie Brickell. She's an easy touchstone of all that's clichéd about her decade. She's a ripoff of Rickie Lee Jones (who was herself originally accused of borrowing a bit too heavily from Joni Mitchell). Her lyrics—"philosophy is the talk on a cereal box/religion is the smile on a dog"—could arguably verge on what's the word I'm looking for oh yes absolutely mortifying. Her mouth could swallow Toledo.
I'll grant you all of it. Still, she wrote catchy melodies and may have been not entirely displeasing to the eye and what can I say? I'm shallow.
But also honest enough to admit that if she looked like this guy I wouldn't have given her the time of day, and that'd have been a shame. 'cuz even though I suspect there's at least a little bit of irony in his choice of cover here, it doesn't matter, because it works anyway.
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.)
And it's a good list. It's not perfect, it's not the one I would have put together, but then I repeat myself. But it's good, really good. And while a few personal faves have been omitted—I not only prefer "Watching the Wheels" to "Staring Over," I think it's superior, but can see the reverse argument—I really only have one major beef, and that's that any list which omits this is seriously flawed.
The lyrics aren't my favorite of Lennon's—considering his (deservéd) reputation as one of the greatest lyricists ever, they tread perilously close to a sorta lovesick zen version of a McCartney song—but they're fine, effective even, and the music...oh, the music. As a guy who knows a thing or two about both music and lyrics said not too long ago:
"There have been many great songs which have had really appalling lyrics, but there have been no great songs which have had appalling music."—Peter Gabriel
These lyrics are lightyears away from appalling—they are, in fact, quite appealing and have a certain painting on rice paper ephemeralness—and the music is simply transcendent. "Oh My Love" is the single prettiest song John Lennon ever wrote, and that's saying something.
Nothing revelatory in this cover, at least, not in the sense that it sheds light on the composition. But it is revelatory in how much it would seem to indicate Jackson Browne learned from Ray Davies. Other than the fact that so much of the song—which is to say any of the song—focuses on external characters, this sounds like it could have been written by Browne, down to the melody.
As is well known to any fan of rock and roll, it's such a fine line between stupid and clever. But the line between exquisite melancholy and maudlin treacle is much thinner and much more treacherous for a songwriter. Damien Jurado takes a subject and approaches it in a manner that could easily signal a quick descent into the latter. Instead, he carves out space in the former with a sparse, incisive deftness that's heartbreaking.
I would come out just see you Dancing freely by the sunset Like the sun you'd shine brightly
We'd spend hours by the curbside Telling stories under streetlights How your words would amaze me
Now those days are gone Slowly they'd slipped away
I still go out by the old house Where I met you our first summer Where are you now, you're with another
I am sitting by the curbside Where we'd hang out under streetlights How those times still are with me
I first saw Suzanne Vega at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston in 1990, just
after graduating from college. It was entirely done on a whim – a friend and I
were having dinner in Hartford,
for some reason we knew the concert was happening that night, so we decided to
head 90 minutes north to go see her. It’s funny—I have no recollection as to
how we even knew where we were going. This was, of course, before GPS and
cellphones and Google Maps and I’m not even sure we had a roadmap in the car.
My guess is I knew how to get to Boston,
and once there we just winged it.
The point is this is often the most enjoyable way for me to
see a show—without much anticipation and, often times, without much
expectation. Scott and I saw a show by the Smithereens in much the same way at
Toad’s Place in 1988 and we were both very impressed. When I saw NRBQ for the
first of many times at UConn in 1990, it was a decision I literally made after
midnight for a show that started, I think, at 1 am, and I became a fan from that moment forward. Suzanne Vega that night in Boston
wasn’t the best show I ever saw, nor was it the most memorable or even deliver
anything unexpected. What is was was an excellent two hour show by a woman
whose music I always liked and, from that night on, appreciated more and more
as the years went by.
This was on her Days of Open Hand Tour, many albums and
(eep!) decades ago. What struck me that night about Suzanne Vega is what still
impresses me all these years down the road. That total lack of pretense with
which she carried herself onstage, even as a younger performer just on the cusp
of stardom that night, and the good humor and graceful…I guess the word would
be approachability that she brought with her.
All are ingredients for an engaging, likable performer, and
it made the night for me. And starting that night and ever since, one song of
hers stood out. One song became, hands down, my favorite song she ever did. And
remains so today. And it is today’s choice for Favorite Song Friday.
Favorite Song Friday –
Suzanne Vega – “Gypsy”
“Gypsy” appears towards the end of Vega’s breakthrough
second album Solitude Standing, and all these years later it strikes me that it
never became a hit. It had what her other hits had—easy and lovely melody, a
hummable chorus and lyrics that were instantly relatable. Alas, it was a
straight-ahead ballad, slower paced than that album’s biggest hit “Luka” and
without the social commentary that song came armed with. And it didn’t have
that subversive a cappella seduction that the album’s other hit, “Tom’s Diner,”
had. So perhaps for the same reason I thought it could have been a hit—its
simple accessibility—it wasn’t destined to be.
No matter. “Gypsy” remains a masterpiece.
Suzanne Vega wrote a love letter with “Gypsy” to a boy she knew for a short time while they worked together at a summer cap, and it actually stands as one of the first songs she ever
wrote, when she was still a teenager in the late 1970s. That fact alone is what gives the song its
heartbeat. “Gypsy” is not written as a look back, but is told in the present,
as it happening to her. The affection, the kindness, the kinship are all
experienced in real time. Even the parting of the ways, forecast at the end
though never witnessed, is presented as something that will happen, not something that has. She finally released
the song a decade after she wrote it, but the immediacy she lends to the story
creates a layer of timelessness. And that is what makes the story told in “Gypsy”
resonate so deeply.
You come from far away
With pictures in your eyes.
Of coffee shops and morning streets
In the blue and silent sunrise.
But night is the cathedral
Where we recognized the sign.
We strangers know each other now
As part of the whole design.
Oh, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep.
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat.
Oh…
You’re the jester of this courtyard
With a smile like a girl's.
Distracted by the women
With the dimples and the curls.
By the pretty and the mischievous
By the timid and the blessed.
By the blowing skirts of ladies
Who promise to gather you to their breast.
Oh, hold me like a baby...
You have hands of raining water
And that earring in your ear.
The wisdom on your face
Denies the number of your years.
With the fingers of the potter
And the laughing tale of the fool
The arranger of disorder
With your strange and simple rules.
Yeah now I've met me another spinner
Of strange and gauzy threads,
With a long and slender body
And a bump upon the head.
Oh, hold me like a baby...
With a long and slender body
And the sweetest softest hands.
And we'll blow away forever soon
And go on to different lands.
And please do not ever look for me
But with me you will stay.
And you will hear yourself in song
Blowing by one day.
But now hold me like a
baby
That will not fall
asleep.
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat.
Oh…
Vega delivers “Gypsy” to us with a poet’s soul and a
romantic’s heart. Aided along by a gorgeous acoustic guitar and some
rich-yet-tempered production from indy god Mitch Easter and punk forerunner Lenny
Kaye, the lyrics are image-rich and personal without being bogged down by
sentimentality. She paints a stunning picture—“…the blue and silent sunrise,” “…night
is the cathedral,” …hands of raining water…fingers of the potter…”—of a love
story that has grown past infatuation and into something deeper. And embedded
in the chorus (“Hold me like a baby…”) are the pervasive themes of the song:
comfort, closeness and contentment.
Despite her talents as a songwriter, Suzanne Vega greatest
strength (to me) comes in her voice—bell-clear and affectation free. Rather
than depending on crutches like tremolo or vibrato, she attaches an almost
minimalist ease to her singing voice, generating a tonal clarity that is wholly
unique and perfectly suited to her meticulously crafted lyrics. It’s not a
voice that can break glass or even knock you over (thank God), but in the way
Vega employs it, it remains one of the most perfect and powerful voices in music
over the last 25 years. Without question.
“Gypsy” also conveys a happiness to it that belies the inevitable
breakup it foretells; one more trump card in Suzanne Vega’s storytelling. She tells
her story with a mixture of whimsy and wonder, clearly smitten with the one she
sings about yet seeing much more than the surface reveals. We don’t have to
know the color of his hair or what a knockout he may have been when we know
this instead:
You’re the jester of
this courtyard
With a smile like a girl's.
The wisdom on your face
Denies the number of your years.
Yeah now I've met me
another spinner
Of strange and gauzy threads,
With a long and slender body
And a bump upon the head.
Suzanne Vega has always had the eye for detail that allows
her to tell a story with subtlety and depth, rather than relying on convention
or any sort of standard form. To wit: “Gypsy” is a love song, indeed, yet one
that never mentions the word “love.” It doesn’t have to.
Finally, there’s way it ends. Vega uses that rather unusual
turn of looking into a future that is, in effect, still the past. And in doing
so she so beautifully engages a mechanism that, if done correctly, stands as
one of my favorite songwriting tropes—a promise to one day write about these
times.
Maybe you’ll be out
there on that road somewhere,
Some bus or train
traveling along.
In some motel room there’ll
be radio playing,
And you’ll hear me
sing this song.
-Bruce Springsteen, “Bobby Jean”
Things I can never
tell you,
Down the line someday,
You’ll be a song I
sing.
A thing I give away.
- Paul Westerberg. “Things”
Please do not ever
look for me,
But with me you will
stay.
And you will hear
yourself in song
Blowing by one day.
- Suzanne
Vega, “Gypsy”
This is exactly how Suzanne Vega says goodbye in “Gypsy.” In
a way that extends that warm, lasting affection far past any notion of melancholy,
far beyond any tearful parting of the ways that we never even see and really don’t
need to. Instead she brings it all to some place in the distant future, where
it will remain as alive as ever. And where she promises to not only never
forget, but to tell the story.
“Gypsy” may not have been written to
us, but it is indeed, all these years later, for us. All of us.
Sometimes stuff just don't make sense. When you consider she had a smash hit as the singer of "What the World Needs Now Is Love," and was the writer of "When You Walk in the Room," "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" and, yes, "Bette Davis Eyes," and that she was cute as a damn button—check out the way she comes in early in this clip and the embarrassed look she gets—how on earth was Jackie DeShannon not a much, much, much bigger star? It's as if Reese Witherspoon wrote great pop songs.
Such is life. As sweet solace, at least we have guitars playing lovely tunes.
So I’m watching Hard Rock Calling 2012 and I’m hit all over again, as I am not infrequently, with the thought: how great is John Fogerty?
I mean, pretty much any way you slice it, the guy was the real deal, the complete package: phenomenal writer, great guitarist, distinctive and effective singer, rock-solid producer, and prolific as few others have ever been. How great was John Fogerty? So great that this boy from the Bay Area made most folks really and truly believe, without even trying, that he was from the deep south. How great was John Fogerty? This great: he not only wrote a song with the word “chooglin’” in the title, he then went on to sing the word in the song nearly seventeen thousand times—and he almost made it work, even. Oh, and in his spare time, he casually invented the grunge look 20+ years ahead of schedule.
Creedence Clearwater Revival released a stunning seven albums in under four years—but even that’s deceptive, as the final album was a thrown together mess released after what was, for them, a crazy long quiet period of nearly a year and a half. In other words, just looking at what could be considered their middle period, CCR released great five albums in two years. That is, to quote the great Luke Skywalker, highly unlikely. And yet.
From CCR’s first (of three!) 1969 album, Bayou Country, with “Proud Mary” and “Born on the Bayou” to their second 1970 album, Pendulum, with “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” Creedence’s run is virtually unsurpassed. And with Fogerty writing and singing the overwhelming majority of the band’s output—as well as producing, playing the guitar solos, the keyboards and even the damn horns—this was very clearly his band.
And then it was over. CCR broke up acrimoniously in 1972. John Fogerty released a pair of solo albums that were pleasant enough and then he disappeared, reemerging with a new album in the 80s, a record that at the time seemed like a glorious return to form but which hasn’t aged terribly well. He’s released a few things since then, but nothing that can even approach his glory days.
And it’s an incredible shame. A shame of almost unparalleled proportions in rock and roll.
Is that overstating the situation a bit? Well, let’s put it like this: consider another rocker, almost exactly the same age and who came up at very nearly the same time.
In a bit over five years, from very late 1966 to early 1972, Neil Young released seven albums: three with Buffalo Springfield, ranging from okay to great—and on which he wrote only about a third of the songs—and then four solo records, ranging from good to great. Like Fogerty, Young wrote, sang, played and produced. Unlike Fogerty, Young was in not one, but two bands, and left both because he was too strong a presence and too determined to do his own thing to fit comfortably within the confines of a band, an organization which by design requires a certain amount of compromise.
Think about the solo career Neil Young has had. From the commercial success of Harvest to the dark night of the soul that is Tonight’s the Night. From the apocalyptic scenarios of On the Beach to the gentle country-rock of Comes a Time. From the gutbusting crunch of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere to the more subtle explorations of After the Gold Rush. From the I’ll-see-your-punk-and-raise-you blistering of Rust Never Sleeps to the live exploration of his back catalog with the same focus of Live Rust. And that’s just his output of the 70s.
Since then he’s gone on to release records which, improbably yet really do, equal his best work, albums such as Freedom and Ragged Glory. He’s had more than his fair share of failures, but to be sure, but most of those came from a surfeit of ambition, and if you’re reading Reason to Believe, there’s a better than even chance you’re as big a fan of the noble failure as we are.
So. Two guys with similar musical background come up at the same time with the same skill set and find roughly equal commercial and critical and artistic success. One of them goes on to hit even higher heights while the other just sorta…fades away. Sure, he still tours and he still sounds pretty darn good and from time to time he'll even release a new album. But compared to his initial four year burst of supernova-like power, well, to misquote the great Stevie Wonder, he hasn’t done nothin’.
That’s harsh but it’s also unfortunately true. And don’t get me wrong: anyone who created “Green River,” “Fortunate Son,” “Bad Moon Risin'” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” can rest with complete and total comfort on any laurels they want—that’s an oeuvre right there of which anyone could and should be insanely proud, the kind of catalog most very good artists would sell their souls to be able to claim after a lifetime of hard work. That Fogerty did that at all means he’s earned every right to consider his work here done. That he’s got twice that many again that could easily have been named is just mind-boggling.
And yet clearly he himself doesn’t feel that way, otherwise he wouldn’t have released as many solo albums as he has over the years. He’s tried to equal or top his best work, and good on 'im for doing so. And the result is that he hasn’t even made it out of base camp, much less summited again the very peaks he used to scale so effortlessly.
Why not? Who can say? People are complex and people are a mystery. Some just burn incredibly brightly and then are done, like (to switch to sports) Bo Jackson. Some artists are good but have one truly monumental work in them, like Roger Maris in 1961. (Hello Matthew Sweet!) Sometimes artists just get on a hot streak and, as they say, the baseball looks like it’s the size of a basketball. Fogerty has said that the legal issues around CCR, both with the label and his former bandmates, caused enormous problems for him, emotionally, and surely that’s much, maybe even most, of it. It also seems as though Fogerty had a sort of hip-hop like immediacy to his stuff, reacting to and commenting on his times, and once he hopped off that merry-go-round, he found it hard, if not impossible, to get back in the groove—another thing he has in common with even the greatest of athletes and coaches.
But what I think it comes down to is this: the auteur theory started to gain traction in the late 60s with the rock press. And it certainly does seem to make more sense in rock and roll than in film, at least to me. Someone like John Fogerty or Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen or Paul Westerberg writes, sings, plays and produces their own music and at least two of those three artists have produced full band recordings all on their own, playing all the instruments themselves, with some terrific results.
But judged in the context of their careers, those recordings can be seen for what they are: wonderful anomalies. Because rock and roll is about many things—for a pleasant diversion, google “rock and roll is about” and see just how many things it’s apparently about—but two of those things come down to the seemingly mutually exclusive but actually inherently intertwined individualism and community. It’s about finding a community where you can be yourself, and finding people who can help you find yourself and your own voice, and who care what you have to say.
If a great artist like Fogerty or Young writes a song and brings it to ten different bands, it’s going to sound recognizably the same yet very different, depending upon whether the drummer is Al Jackson or Ringo Starr or Keith Moon or Stewart Copeland or Manu Katché. And if that great artist has been writing songs for that same drummer for ten years, well, that drummer is going to be part of the song the artist hears in his head as he’s first writing, before he ever brings it to the studio. John Lennon may not—couldn’t possibly—have known what Ringo was going to play on “Come Together,” but the sound of Ringo’s drums, the feel he was going to bring, if not the exact pattern, was already in John’s mind, already ingrained in his DNA.
That’s what the rest of Creedence Clearwater Revival did for John Fogerty. They gave him a sounding board, a launching pad from which he could and did for a brief while go almost anywhere: blues, country, R&B, pure rock and roll. And without them, it turns out, he was lost.
Neil Young was never part of a band anywhere near as long as CCR was together—Fogerty met Stu Cook and Doug Clifford when they were all in high school, nine years before their debut album finally came out—bouncing from group to group as a kid. And Buffalo Springfield was only together for just over two years, and even then the band was less a reality than a creatively fruitful business arrangement. Instead, Young has always been a solo artist, albeit one who sometimes finds it interesting to be part of a theoretical group dynamic.
Yet even Neil Young, classic solo artist, has found himself drawn back, again and again, to the somewhat ham-handed ragged glory that is Crazy Horse. Why? Because while there’s never the slightest doubt who the creative shot caller is, Young understands that there are certain times you need the magic brought about by the bone deep familiarity playing with certain musicians over a long period of time will generate, and that for the most part there’s no equal for that spark when it comes to creating the very greatest rock and roll. No one is ever going to confuse Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot with the late, great Donald "Duck" Dunn, with whom Young also worked, or Jack Bruce or Stanley Clarke or Paul McCartney. And Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina is almost certainly the least good drummer Neil Young ever chose to record with, by a very, very long shot. And yet ol' Neil just can't quit them—time and again he goes back to them, to these less than technically stunning musicians, clearly recognizing that they give him something no one else can or does, and that he at least sometimes needs in order to create the very best music he can, to bring out the best he has to offer and make it sound just the way he hears it in his head.
Creedence Clearwater Revival was a great band. Stu Cook, Doug Clifford and Tom Fogerty were a great rhythm section—an unusual rhythm section, but a great one. But more than that, they were the right rhythm section, the right band, the perfect foundation for Fogerty to build his masterpieces upon, and the spark that helped Fogerty conceive those masterpieces in the first place. That’s why John Fogerty created a remarkably large, diverse and powerful body of work in the brief period Creedence Clearwater Revival was a recording band, and why in the thirty years since Fogerty's done nothing that even approaches it, not even close. Because clichéd though it may be, it's nonetheless true: sometimes the whole is ever so much greater than the sum of the parts and because, as Pete Townshend wrote but didn’t sing, sometimes it really is the singer and not the song—and that applies to the band as well.
As in, 10 examples of why he was the finest songwriter of his generation. Someone who could be sad while being funny, lonely while being whimsical, and achingly poetic without being sappy or trite.
While he wrote many terrific songs as a solo artist and continues to do so ("Dyslexic Heart," "First Glimmer," "Century," "These Are the Days" and "It's a Wonderful Lie" being some of my favorites), for the sake of simplicity...and a touch of laziness...I am limiting this 10-song sampling to his days with the Replacements.
So here we go. Ten examples of why there will never be another Paul Westerberg.
10) "I'll write you a letter tomorrow; tonight I can't hold a pen."—"Can't Hardly Wait" (Pleased to Meet Me, 1986) Such a terribly lonesome line, we can hear in Paul's voice how difficult it is to get this idea across. "Can't Hardly Wait" is an easy candidate for being among the greatest Replacements songs ever; this opening line is sorrowfully and graphically perfect.
9) "There was liquor on my breath, you were on my mind."—"If Only You Were Lonely" (B-Side to "I'm In Trouble," 1981) The first time they ever slowed it down; a B-side to a single that went nowhere. This acoustic country shuffle is probably the first tale of longing in a career that would come to be defined by longing, fear and emptiness. Paul's wordplay genius surfaces for the first time here, blending in nicely (if not ironically) with the alcohol-fueled problems that played such a large part in the band never exploding into the mainstream as they should have.
8) "Staying out late tonight, won't be getting sleep. Giving out their word, 'cause it's all that they won't keep."—"Color Me Impressed" (Hootenanny, 1983)There is some serious prose at work here, what with the word-trickery and turning a well-worn idiom appropriately on its head. It played into the band's nihilism, as if to say, "Sure, I can tell you what you want to hear, but I won't mean a word of it."
7) "If being afraid is a crime we hang side by side at the swinging party down the line."—"Swinging Party" (Tim, 1985) As much as any, I always hear this song as the band's statement of purpose in stepping away from their earlier, more reckless incarnation and into the post-punk world they would shape and reign over. The move also coincided with Bob Stinson's being sacked from the band. But this gorgeous ballad lays out the legendary fear that so often stood in the band's way, embraces it, and swings back and forth with it, over and over again.
6) "How young are you? How old am I? Let's count the rings around my eyes."—"I Will Dare" (Let It Be, 1984) The band's first anthem, and one of the best. More word games and tuneful cheekiness, this song (and album) announced to the world that music was changing, courtesy of this foursome from Minneapolis.
5) "You're still in love with nobody. And I used to be nobody...I ain't anymore."—"Nobody" (All Shook Down, 1990) Technically this could maybe even be called a solo track, because so little of All Shook Down involved the entire band. But this mid-tempo rocker, a lamentation on watching an old flame take to the altar with someone else, pours straight from his jagged heart.
4) "Everything you dream of is right front of you. And everything is a lie."—"Unsatisfied" (Let It Be, 1984) This song is so sad and so lost that it would probably even leave Leonard Cohen bummed out. But Paul channels his inner Leonard as well as his inner Lennon in this aching cry of honest defeat, the song that very well may be (as Scott suggests) the long-awaited answer to the Rolling Stones "Satisfaction." Not to mention the kind of lyric that wouldn't seem out of place in a Nirvana song a few years later.
3) "Well, you wish upon a star that turns into a plane."—"Valentine"(Pleased to Meet Me, 1986) How great is this line? Seriously. It's wry and it's dour and it's just so very, very Paul Westerberg. A remarkably underrated track in the middle of a great album, this opening line gets things moving in inimitable fashion.
2) "A dream too tired to come true, I'm left a rebel without a clue."—"I'll Be You" (Don't Tell a Soul, 1988) He said it first. Many would come to use "rebel without a clue" in the years that followed (including, unfortunately, 1989 tourmate Tom Petty) but it's all Paul's. And this knockout little couplet sums up the very best of the kind of wordsiness constantly kicking around inside Paul's head. Gotta dream? Nah, too tired—I'd rather just rebel. Against what?No idea. Ladies and gentlemen, The Replacements.
1)"If I don't see you there for a long, long while, I'll try to find you left of the dial."—"Left of the Dial" (Tim, 1985) The very essence of the band, and everything that made them great and seminal and everything that held them back from the bigtime, can be found here, in very likely the finest song Paul ever wrote. It was inspired out of, no surprise, a sad story—driving on tour with the band in the early days and hearing a friend's song come on the radio, only to have the station fade before the song finished. "Left of the Dial" became an anthem for the college rock genre, a reassurance that somewhere out there was a place for the music we like, the music that moves us. "Which side are you on?" Paul asks over and over again. Whatever the answer may be, we always know where we can find the Replacements. On the left side of the dial, playing their hearts out. For us.
So Scott and I, as our cryptic little bios on the side of this page indicate, have known each other since high school, and have been talking music for most of those years. We share similar tastes with most things, and have introduced each other to important artists over the past 30 years.
He told me to get Before the Flood in high school and I did, and listened with the amazement and awe the live album merits. I told him to get Rattle and Hum a few years later and he did, and went from being a non-U2 fan to a big one. He got me into Dinosaur Jr. long after I should have known, and I like to think I got him listening to the Kinks again.
When added to the bands/artists we simultaneous count among our very favorites—The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Bob Dylan, the Who, Nirvana, Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison—this has been a healthy experiment we’ve conducted over the last 30 years. And the fact that we’ve barely had to see each other in the last 20? Bonus!
Not all of them have worked, mind you. I will never love Brian Eno and Genesis the way he does—appreciate, yes, but love? Not really. He will never feel the love I do for Little Feat and Warren Zevon. Stuff like that.
Oh, and we both think the Wallflowers and John Mayer suck. Which is a quite good thing.
But here is the reason Scott will always be able to lord his musical education of me over mine of him – The Replacements.
He brought me to the Replacements, made me a fan of theirs. I never saw it coming, but once it happened, I was sold instantaneously. And considering how the Mats are now on a plain for me with the Fabs, Bruce and R.E.M. and no one else? Yeah, my Reason to Believe partner wins this round. Dammit, he wins! [Editor's note: by "wins," DT clearly means "crushes like a grape."]
Because it wasn’t that he said, “Dan, you should listen to this band” and I slowly acquiesced over time. No. I literally remember exactly where we were when it happened, and I became a lovestruck devotee (to the band, not to him…what?...WHAT???) in a heartbeat.
It was late 1988. We were home on break from college—me in Connecticut, him in Virginia—and were driving in his LTD across the Bissell Bridge over the Connecticut River, north of Hartford. We were probably going to see a movie or something. He said, “You gotta hear this. You will love.” And he popped in a tape into the car’s cassette deck.
A mid-tempo acoustic guitar came on, melodic and cool. Then within seconds a ragged voice started to sing:
In my waxed up hair and my painted shoes Got an offer that you might refuse Tonight tonight we’re gonna take a stab Come on along we’ll grab a cab We ain’t much to look at, so Close your eyes, here we go We’re playin’ at the talent show
I. Was. Dumbstruck.
“Who are these guys?” I asked, not believing what I was hearing.
“The Replacements. Their new album, Don’t Tell A Soul. This is the first song, 'Talent Show.' Pretty groovy, huh?”
“It’s…amazing!”
Scott nodded and smiled. Maybe he didn’t know then, maybe he did. But I was hooked. All it took were those first few chords, some great throaty vocals with some delicious little wordplay effortlessly thrown in (“We ain’t much to look at, so close your eyes here we go.”—I mean, that’s brilliant!) and I was on board with the Mats forever. Right then and there, on a bridge over the Connecticut River, eight miles from my home but a million miles away from anything I had ever heard before.
Yes, I know now it wasn’t their best song. It wasn’t their best album. And it wasn’t even their “best” lineup (or at least their original lineup). Didn’t matter. This was music for me. It rocked, it wept, it presented honesty and effort, and spoke nothing of glamour or conquest or glory. Instead it was about outcasts and ne’er-do-wells, about self-discovery and self-realization and even a little bit of self-loathing. It was amazing songwriting, something I looked for heavily back then. It was angry and defiant, but didn’t sound like young punks. Instead it sounded like punks and/or geeks who’d grown up a bit, were a bit wiser, but still needed to be heard. It was for me.
Within weeks I owned their entire collection. I would see them open a year later for Tom Petty on their ill-fated tour with him. I'd see them in the front row in Springfield on their final tour and on their last legs—still a thrill with nearly no equal for me. And every time I would mention my love for the band to Scott in the 24 years that have followed—whether in person, via email or on the phone—he would smirkingly say, at some point, "You're welcome."
Bastard.
But he's right.
See, that moment when I first heard "Talent Show" left me with something all music fans should have, yet I fear many do not. It gave me a freeze-frame moment that I recall crystal clear, a moment when I knew I was hearing pure greatness for the first time. When I knew I was hearing something that was going to change my life. I wish, for example, I could recall the first time I heard, say, "Backstreets" or "Tomorrow Never Knows" and knew it was among the greatest things I have ever heard. But I can't. With the Mats, though? I can. It's quite something to have, really.
Truth was, I felt like an idiot after that for not hearing the Replacements sooner. But I was so consumed with Springsteen and R.E.M. and Gabriel—they were pretty much all I was listening to at the time—that I didn’t have time for anything else. And I was so disgusted by the overproduced, underwritten, crotch-grabbing glam metal that ruled the day that I pretty much shut my eyes to everything else around.
Until that night that Scott popped in the tape, the night my musical DNA changed—forever. And I had no choice—the Replacements gave me no choice. This was my band now, formed and created for me. And I was hooked forever.
After all, as they sang in that first song I heard that night, it’s too late to turn back, so here we go.
"I'm drinking Heartbreak Motor Oil and Bombay Gin...straight from the bottle, I'm twisted again." - Warren Zevon, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" (1976)
While working in a country club kitchen in Simsbury, CT in 1986 during my freshman year of college, a co-worker lent me this odd orange-covered album that came out in the late 1970s, with a sorta creepy looking bespectacled man leering – and I do mean leering – out from the cover like a craven stalker.
“You gotta hear this. There’s a song about a rapist. And a song about monsters. Oh! And a song about a guy with no head!” I was told, excitedly.
Ooo-kay, I thought. Can’t I just keep listening to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-85? Or Abbey Road? Or even the somewhat new-ish Bob Dylan Biograph?
Trust me, he said.
I did. And I am glad I did.
The album, if you haven’t guessed, was Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy, a 1978 release from mayhap the wildest man rock-n-roll had seen to date. Not only is it Zevon’s best-known album, but it is also lauded by many as his best.
It’s hard to argue against that (though more on this in a minute). Zevon was a songwriter extraordinaire out of the explosive Southern California collective of the 1970s, one who lived as hard a life as anyone who ever graced FM radio in the rock-n-roll era. Born the son of a Russian gangster, he was the oddball brooding in the back of the classroom while writing pulp horror and devouring long-forbidden comics and the most craven forms of comedy known in the pre-hippy 1960s. And it all showed up in his wonderfully perverse lyrics – murderers and mercenaries, screwups and ne’er-do-wells, outlaws and outcasts and no one who ever sat at the popular kids’ table in school.
The songs on his Excitable Boy album were as off the wall as he was known to be, but their disparate nature was equally perplexing. “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” was a sinister piano ballad about, well, a headless Thompson gunning-mercenary named Roland, seeking vengeance on the man who blew his head off. Meanwhile, “Tenderness on the Block” was an irony-free Jackson Browne-tinged tale of letting your little girl grow up. “Excitable Boy,” the title track and his most infamous song, was about a rapist murderer, performed gleefully as a jaunty pop singalong, while “Veracruz” was a tender and lovely historic-based ballad.
Best of all were the two songs towards the end of Sides 1 and 2, back when “album sides” was actually a thing. “Werewolves of London” – his most famous tune – was a galumphing romp about scary hairy monsters roaming the Soho streets, while “Lawyers Guns and Money” – which closed the record – could have actually read as a Zevon biography, an unrepentant fuckup who kept finding himself in peril and begging for rescue. (“I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk. Send lawyers, guns and money – Dad get me out of this!”)
And then there was this – man, could this guy play! His voice was whiskey baroque, deep and menacing yet bell-clear and, when he needed it to be, vulnerable. A virtually peerless piano and keyboard player and a wildly underrated guitarist, Zevon created songs with arrangements were at once spare yet perfectly melodic, with subtle nuances and hooks to always keep you guessing. This wasn’t shredder rock-n-roll to be played to pumped up stadium crowds – Warren Zevon was more brooding gunfighter than rock star. He was the guy sipping whiskey in the back of the saloon that you were always a little hesitant to approach, because while he looked harmless, something seemed deeply dangerous about him.
He relished the persona, and while the masses never took to him the way they did direct contemporaries like Jackson Browne (one of his greatest friends and supporters) and the Eagles (or for that matter Linda Ronstadt, who turned a few of Zevon’s songs into megahits), he was beloved in the industry and treated as a jewel, self-destructiveness aside. Recently I read I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, written somewhat affectionately but 100% honestly by his ex-wife Crystal. You know the little misfit kid who begs his parents or teachers for one last chance to do right? Warren Zevon seemed to live his life banking on chance number 500. Like Bullwinkle with the magic hat, this time for sure!
I’ve gone on for a bit now, probably too long – hey, you should have stopped me! But really want to focus for a few minutes on the album hardly anyone ever thinks about when they think about Warren Zevon (those that even do, anyway). If they don’t think about Excitable Boy, they probably think of his 1987 comeback (from a near-decade drug haze) Sentimental Hygiene, a brilliant record ably backed by the members of R.E.M. Or maybe they think of his sad, strident farewell, The Wind, released just before he died in 2003 and with tracks filled with such hard-earned beauty you can practically hear the breath leaving his body.
But seldom do people talk about his first album in 1976, Warren Zevon. And all it was at the time was the most audacious debut by any American artist since Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? a decade earlier.
Largely piano-based and produced by Jackson himself with a lushness Bob Dylan never dreamed of before hooking up with The Band, Warren Zevon was the masterpiece before the masterpiece. An 11-song collection that zigged and zagged across the forboding Southern California coastline – with occasional stops in the heartland yet ultimately landing on the Pacific’s edge – traipsing constantly between hopefulness and despair.
The album attacked myths and legends – angrily rebuking Norman Mailer (whose gonzo life no-doubt mirrored Zevon’s in some ways) with “The French Inhaler” about Mailer’s savaging book on Marilyn Monroe, and offering a mighty defense of the James Gang – stalwarts of the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War – with the sympathetic album-opener “Frank and Jesse James.” He examined despondent addiction with “Carmelita,” yet did so against the backdrop of the sweetest little love story you could imagine. He sent up California living over and over again, from the rabid self-obsession (“Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” which Linda later devoured) to the apocalyptic allure of the closing one-two punch of “Join Me In L.A.” (with Bonnie Raitt’s singing behind him) and the masterful tale of woe that closed the record, “Desperados Under the Eaves.” He even sent up faux evangelism with “Mohammed’s Radio,” yet did so in gorgeous, radio-friendly fashion (no pun intended), featuring none other than Stevie Nicks on backing vocals just before she would take part in the recording of a little record called Rumours.
How the album has been set-aside and largely forgotten about through time is beyond me – Zevon never really hit it big, I know, so perhaps the listening public only had room for one of his records. But no other great debut in rock’s glorious history ever gave the listener a clearer message on what the artist was capable of doing than his first record.
He could make you laugh with nihilistic rants like “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” he could make you cry with aching ballads of loss like “Hasten Down the Wind.” Or he could make you feel joy and pain, comfort and confusion, empathy and disgust all at once on tracks like “Carmelita” and “Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded” and the formerly mentioned “Desperados Under the Eaves.” Every note played with earnestness and conviction. Even if you wouldn’t trust the guy around anything more deadly than a toaster, you somehow believed him when he sang, “Some may have and some may not, God I’m thankful for what I’ve got” on the shuffling “Backs Turned Looking Down the Path.” Because you wanted to believe him, even if you knew he would eventually let you down.
Warren Zevon admittedly let a lot of people down in his too-short life. But seldom the listener. And back when it all started, on his unforgettable debut record, there was no telling what he might do next. And that was a good, good thing. Even from poor, poor pitiful him.
