"Like A Rolling Stone" is the single defining song of the rock'n'roll genre. With this one song
a lacerating set of imagery was sitting at the top of the US singles charts. The song strips all pretentions and artifice away and challenges the listener to confront the raw, basic realities of existence. It reminds a lost materialistic Western world that "when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose".
In Dylan's definitve studio original the song is a defiant claim of victory on the part of the disenfranchised, contemptuously stripping away the defences of the worldly. Napoleon In Rags cannot be ignored. Dress codes and fine schooling are irrelevant in the face of our true natures. Ultimately there are no secrets to conceal. This is powerful stuff in a world which is even more repressed and materialistic now than in 1965.
Dylan himself never bettered the studio original. Jimi Hendrix took it on at Monterey, adding the cry of black America to the cry for honesty. It continued to sound confrontational and triumphant, set ablaze by his searing guitar. He was to do even greater things with "All Along The Watchtower" in 1968, bringing the Biblical apocalypse alive in sound.
The next major cover of "Like A Rolling Stone", by the remarkable Spirit, gave a whole new slant on the song. It comes at the end of Side Two of "Spirit Of '76", a double album which celebrates the forthcoming bicentenary in terms of a rock'n'roll retrospective. It features covers of Hendrix and The Stones which outstrip the originals while kicking off with a heartbreaking "America The Beautiful / The Times They Are A Changin'". In the midst of all this "Like A Rolling Stone" is presented as a sad contemplation of the battles which have been fought, and a weary acknowledgement of just how hard a road it is for those of us who want to follow the promise of rock and live more honest lives. The mood is poignant and the guitar solo is heartbreaking. This is an elegy for the hope that things could be better.
California repeats the feat on Side 4 with an epic, slow, brooding version of "Hey Joe". The sadness is eeked out via a hush, reverent vocal and a series of lingeringly lyrical guitar solos which lament the dying of the light. What else can follow this apart from "The Star-Spangled Banner", this time done not as per Hendrix but straight and sincerely. This brings to a close an album which is massive in scope and a vital post-sixties statetement.
So Dylan cut the peerless original, but Randy California made it meaningful all over again. Just one of the many workd of genius by that great artist.
Sunday, 25 August 2013
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
"That's my life you're singing about !"
Robert Christgau's great book "Any Old Way You Choose It" contains an article wherein he's driving across America in the wake of a broken relationship. As he goes along he admires various songs on AM radio which have similar themes. "So what happens,", he muses, "when that piece of well-constructed schlock on the radio is actually your life ?". A question I often find myself asking right now as I listen to various songs by, in particular, Richard Thompson and Neil Young.
Rock'n'roll has always been based upon a notion of authenticity. When you hear a popular song from the pre-Elvis era you know that it's insincere and fake. When you listen to an orchestra playing classical music you know that to the players it's just a job. Elvis blew all that to pieces; he merged two forms, black r'n'b and white country, to form rockabilly and then rock'n'roll. Both forms are ethnic musics where the real experiences of people on the wrong side of the American Dream are expressed. Authenticity is a given. We believe that Robert Johnson really did suffer "stones in my passway".
Elvis planted this raw honesty onto the stages, TV screens, and radio stations of an affluent 1950s America. It changed the Western world. In Britain a generation brought up on Victorian moral values by parents who still in large number paid lip-service to being Christians heard something in American rock'n'roll which struck chords of truth and liberation. We were taught when we were young to bury our feelings (Richard Thompson :- "where I come from feeling is a crime"), tow the line, and be respectable. Elvis spoke to malcontents like John Lennon whose hearts were screaming to escape the repression of the time. Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed made sense to the likes of Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, Eric Burden etc. Authenticity was the key.
That is why it is genuinely problematical when songwriters try to claim that the characters in their songs are not them. They are writing and performing in a medium based on the singer really meaning what they're saying. That's not to say that every single line has to be taken as strict autobiography - there's no need to reprimand Randy Newman because he actually isn't God - but there has to be a basic trust between performer and audience. If a singer is "acting" when performing a song then it really isn't rock music.
Throughout the 1960s none of this was an issue. People in their millions identified with the joy and sarcasm of the Beatles, the raw aggression of the Stones, the naked anger and honesty of Bob Dylan, the intensity of The Who, the questing spirituality of the Grateful Dead etc. The problems started during the singer-songwriter boom at the end of the 1960s, when a group of artists develop an entire aesthetic around their personal sufferings.
So were they for real ? Exhibit no. one : Neil Young. His breakthrough album was "After The Goldrush", containing lines such as "I am lonely but you can free me" as well as a cover of "Oh Lonesome Me". The next album, "Harvest", cemented the image of what Nick Kent calls the "world's most lonesome boy" (e.g. "Out On The Weekend", "Old Man"). But we know that Neil Young's own life has never been anything like that. Does that make him a fake ? It's very hard to say anything against probably the most talented single performer and writer in the entire genre, but I think it does make him a little suspect. The credibility of seminally raw, insightful albums like "Tonight's The Night" and "On The Beach" is undeniable - these records establish a whole new vocabulary of untarnished, direct rock music. But when he gets sad and pretty he does sound phoney.
By contrast there is Lou Reed. Lou has consistently adopted the persona of a journalist "saying the unsayable" about the urban world around him. No-one thinks he was a heroin addict in 1966, yet that, of course, is the title of probably his strongest song. Ellen Willis captured it brilliantly in her article in the "Stranded" book - the song makes you simultaneously sorry for the poor guy and want to reach out for the needle. The addict's perspective is used to make genuine statements about the corrupt, impersonal world outside and the singer's attitude towards it. Since then Lou has made a lot of trashy, disposable music ("Transformer" is a dreadful album), yet he has never been a phoney.
Exhibit no. two : Richard Thompson. The man as portrayed in the BBC's "A Solitary Life" documentary is a mild, affable, and humorous chap married to a lovely warm lady, tending his garden, and happily playing with his young son. He writes songs when he has to, working from nine to five in a room away from the family. His wife cannot reconcile the writer of such bleak, dark material with the gentle and cheerful man she knows. This is disturbing. Thompson's work has been consistently bleak througout his career, filled with sentiments such as "the world has no comfort to bring", "the world's no place when you're on your own", and "there's nothing at the end of the rainbow". There have been many times recently when these sentiments have directly echoed my own feelings.
And there's the rub. Feelings such as these don't do anyone any good, least of all the disenfranchised and isolated people who experience them on a regular basis. Isn't there something rather cynical about a happily-married man with a stable career writing all these bleak songs which feed off and reinforce the negative emotions of people less fortunate than himself ? Of course it's absurd to maintain that you have to be miserable in order to write a sad song, but to create an entire portfolio of bleak, dark, bitter songs which have nothing to do with your own life - isn't that a bit suspect ? Thompson is an amazing guitarist, an acute lyricist, and a very great song-writer, but isn't there something a bit cynical about the whole deal ? All I know is that I've actually been to the world which his darkest songs inhabit and it's not a place to visit often.
It's rock'n'roll. You've got to walk it like you talk it.
Rock'n'roll has always been based upon a notion of authenticity. When you hear a popular song from the pre-Elvis era you know that it's insincere and fake. When you listen to an orchestra playing classical music you know that to the players it's just a job. Elvis blew all that to pieces; he merged two forms, black r'n'b and white country, to form rockabilly and then rock'n'roll. Both forms are ethnic musics where the real experiences of people on the wrong side of the American Dream are expressed. Authenticity is a given. We believe that Robert Johnson really did suffer "stones in my passway".
Elvis planted this raw honesty onto the stages, TV screens, and radio stations of an affluent 1950s America. It changed the Western world. In Britain a generation brought up on Victorian moral values by parents who still in large number paid lip-service to being Christians heard something in American rock'n'roll which struck chords of truth and liberation. We were taught when we were young to bury our feelings (Richard Thompson :- "where I come from feeling is a crime"), tow the line, and be respectable. Elvis spoke to malcontents like John Lennon whose hearts were screaming to escape the repression of the time. Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed made sense to the likes of Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, Eric Burden etc. Authenticity was the key.
That is why it is genuinely problematical when songwriters try to claim that the characters in their songs are not them. They are writing and performing in a medium based on the singer really meaning what they're saying. That's not to say that every single line has to be taken as strict autobiography - there's no need to reprimand Randy Newman because he actually isn't God - but there has to be a basic trust between performer and audience. If a singer is "acting" when performing a song then it really isn't rock music.
Throughout the 1960s none of this was an issue. People in their millions identified with the joy and sarcasm of the Beatles, the raw aggression of the Stones, the naked anger and honesty of Bob Dylan, the intensity of The Who, the questing spirituality of the Grateful Dead etc. The problems started during the singer-songwriter boom at the end of the 1960s, when a group of artists develop an entire aesthetic around their personal sufferings.
So were they for real ? Exhibit no. one : Neil Young. His breakthrough album was "After The Goldrush", containing lines such as "I am lonely but you can free me" as well as a cover of "Oh Lonesome Me". The next album, "Harvest", cemented the image of what Nick Kent calls the "world's most lonesome boy" (e.g. "Out On The Weekend", "Old Man"). But we know that Neil Young's own life has never been anything like that. Does that make him a fake ? It's very hard to say anything against probably the most talented single performer and writer in the entire genre, but I think it does make him a little suspect. The credibility of seminally raw, insightful albums like "Tonight's The Night" and "On The Beach" is undeniable - these records establish a whole new vocabulary of untarnished, direct rock music. But when he gets sad and pretty he does sound phoney.
By contrast there is Lou Reed. Lou has consistently adopted the persona of a journalist "saying the unsayable" about the urban world around him. No-one thinks he was a heroin addict in 1966, yet that, of course, is the title of probably his strongest song. Ellen Willis captured it brilliantly in her article in the "Stranded" book - the song makes you simultaneously sorry for the poor guy and want to reach out for the needle. The addict's perspective is used to make genuine statements about the corrupt, impersonal world outside and the singer's attitude towards it. Since then Lou has made a lot of trashy, disposable music ("Transformer" is a dreadful album), yet he has never been a phoney.
Exhibit no. two : Richard Thompson. The man as portrayed in the BBC's "A Solitary Life" documentary is a mild, affable, and humorous chap married to a lovely warm lady, tending his garden, and happily playing with his young son. He writes songs when he has to, working from nine to five in a room away from the family. His wife cannot reconcile the writer of such bleak, dark material with the gentle and cheerful man she knows. This is disturbing. Thompson's work has been consistently bleak througout his career, filled with sentiments such as "the world has no comfort to bring", "the world's no place when you're on your own", and "there's nothing at the end of the rainbow". There have been many times recently when these sentiments have directly echoed my own feelings.
And there's the rub. Feelings such as these don't do anyone any good, least of all the disenfranchised and isolated people who experience them on a regular basis. Isn't there something rather cynical about a happily-married man with a stable career writing all these bleak songs which feed off and reinforce the negative emotions of people less fortunate than himself ? Of course it's absurd to maintain that you have to be miserable in order to write a sad song, but to create an entire portfolio of bleak, dark, bitter songs which have nothing to do with your own life - isn't that a bit suspect ? Thompson is an amazing guitarist, an acute lyricist, and a very great song-writer, but isn't there something a bit cynical about the whole deal ? All I know is that I've actually been to the world which his darkest songs inhabit and it's not a place to visit often.
It's rock'n'roll. You've got to walk it like you talk it.
Monday, 29 April 2013
Exile On Main Street - The Best Ever
Like a lot of music fans I'm constantly making lists in my head of "greatest ever" albums. My top two are, pretty consistently, "Blonde On Blonde" and "Exile On Main Street". Throughout most of my life Mr. Dylan's opus was my no. one, and I've probably played it more than anything else in my collection. However in recent years I've gravitated towards "Exile".
On this album the Stones cover all the fundamental basics of post-Elvis music. It is a totally American album, embracing rock'n'roll, R'n'B (by which I mean hard, souped-up blues, not the soft porn which goes by that name now), blues, gospel, and country. It is unlike any other Stones album in that each track has the raw, basic, yet intricate Stones groove. There's no "Angie" or "I Got The Blues" to soften it up. Nor are there knockabout tracks in the "Country Honk" vein. Instead there are hard rockers ("Rocks Off", "Soul Survivor", "All Down The Line"), outright rock'n'roll ("Rip This Joint"), classic Stones lurchers like "Tumbling Dice" and "Soul Survivor", and wierd, angular blues riffs such as "Casino Boogie" and "Ventilator Blues".
In amongst all the great rockers is a "slow side" which is an absolute gem. "Sweet Virginia" is the best country Stones track ever and is genuinely encouraging and uplifting. "Torn And Frayed" is, on one level the story of the Stones in the early Seventies, yet also applies universally to anyone who's been through the mill.
"Sweet Black Angel" is an anomaly for the Stones - an explicit piece of political comment - yet stays current through its refusal to make propaganda. It's also kept musically simple and has an element of Stones humour on it. "Lovin' Cup" is an older song but fits right into context, and also has a sense of relief and euphoria about it which balances the darker mood of much of the album. Nicky Hopkins' playing here is a musical highlight of the album.
Four other tracks merit particular attention - "Rocks Off" is a song of boredom and desperation, and a simply brilliant arrangement. The blaring horns carry the cry of the chorus; the middle section is full of murk, matching the confused tone, before we jump out into "The sunshine bores the daylights out of me". "Happy" and "Turd On The Run" is an incredible sequence of songs; the former is a pure Keith rocker with nods to Creedence and carries one of the album's key messages ("I need a love to keep me happy"). The latter has a raw blues riff with braying harp and picks over the scars.
Finally there is "Shine A Light", probably the most compassionate song in the Stones repertoire along with "You Can't Always Get What You Want". The lyrics tell of a drugs casualty and hold a prayer for Grace. They could be about Brian Jones, Gram Parsons, or Janis Joplin, but more importantly they show Jagger at his absolute sharpest in terms of surveying the culture around him. The music is uplifting in the manner of the very best gospel music, and features Billy Preston's finest contribution to the Stones. The track pulls together all the key themes of the album - decay, stoicism, the need for love but also the hassle - into a prayer for strength for a 60s generation entering the fragmentation of the seventies. After this track, "Soul Survivor" is a defiant expression of the will to press on.
There's one further factor here - the sheer rythmic complexity and subtlety in the music makes the album endlessly playable. It works in all contexts - the many brilliant rockers make it great driving music, yet it also rewards close listening on headphones. There is not an inch of sentimentality or sloppy thinking on this record, and not a wasted moment. Even "Blonde On Blonde", for all its lyrical wildness and virtuoso Dylan vocals, has the sloppy "Sad Eyed Lady" on it (albeit the performance rescues the song). "Exile On Main Street" is hard stuff - pure, essential American-based music with a twist. And that's rock'n'roll.
On this album the Stones cover all the fundamental basics of post-Elvis music. It is a totally American album, embracing rock'n'roll, R'n'B (by which I mean hard, souped-up blues, not the soft porn which goes by that name now), blues, gospel, and country. It is unlike any other Stones album in that each track has the raw, basic, yet intricate Stones groove. There's no "Angie" or "I Got The Blues" to soften it up. Nor are there knockabout tracks in the "Country Honk" vein. Instead there are hard rockers ("Rocks Off", "Soul Survivor", "All Down The Line"), outright rock'n'roll ("Rip This Joint"), classic Stones lurchers like "Tumbling Dice" and "Soul Survivor", and wierd, angular blues riffs such as "Casino Boogie" and "Ventilator Blues".
In amongst all the great rockers is a "slow side" which is an absolute gem. "Sweet Virginia" is the best country Stones track ever and is genuinely encouraging and uplifting. "Torn And Frayed" is, on one level the story of the Stones in the early Seventies, yet also applies universally to anyone who's been through the mill.
"Sweet Black Angel" is an anomaly for the Stones - an explicit piece of political comment - yet stays current through its refusal to make propaganda. It's also kept musically simple and has an element of Stones humour on it. "Lovin' Cup" is an older song but fits right into context, and also has a sense of relief and euphoria about it which balances the darker mood of much of the album. Nicky Hopkins' playing here is a musical highlight of the album.
Four other tracks merit particular attention - "Rocks Off" is a song of boredom and desperation, and a simply brilliant arrangement. The blaring horns carry the cry of the chorus; the middle section is full of murk, matching the confused tone, before we jump out into "The sunshine bores the daylights out of me". "Happy" and "Turd On The Run" is an incredible sequence of songs; the former is a pure Keith rocker with nods to Creedence and carries one of the album's key messages ("I need a love to keep me happy"). The latter has a raw blues riff with braying harp and picks over the scars.
Finally there is "Shine A Light", probably the most compassionate song in the Stones repertoire along with "You Can't Always Get What You Want". The lyrics tell of a drugs casualty and hold a prayer for Grace. They could be about Brian Jones, Gram Parsons, or Janis Joplin, but more importantly they show Jagger at his absolute sharpest in terms of surveying the culture around him. The music is uplifting in the manner of the very best gospel music, and features Billy Preston's finest contribution to the Stones. The track pulls together all the key themes of the album - decay, stoicism, the need for love but also the hassle - into a prayer for strength for a 60s generation entering the fragmentation of the seventies. After this track, "Soul Survivor" is a defiant expression of the will to press on.
There's one further factor here - the sheer rythmic complexity and subtlety in the music makes the album endlessly playable. It works in all contexts - the many brilliant rockers make it great driving music, yet it also rewards close listening on headphones. There is not an inch of sentimentality or sloppy thinking on this record, and not a wasted moment. Even "Blonde On Blonde", for all its lyrical wildness and virtuoso Dylan vocals, has the sloppy "Sad Eyed Lady" on it (albeit the performance rescues the song). "Exile On Main Street" is hard stuff - pure, essential American-based music with a twist. And that's rock'n'roll.
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