He's following what Grace Slick did when she retired from music. "All rock and rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire." As much we argue that the muse for some rock musicians keeps on bringing on new ideas and new perspectives, rock, and roll are the music of the young which means being confused, prone to emotional extremes, being naive, arrogant, self-loathing, the entire gamut of lesson-learning all of us suffer through on the way to becoming adults, citizens, parents, taxpayers. For someone in their fifties to be singing old songs about being a rebel and such and writing newer tunes that don't have much to add to what they've already committed to chord progressions indicates someone who hasn't learned anything. 

That's why novelists and poets have the advantage in the aging process, as they are allowed to get older, become grumpy, maybe more confused and fatalistic, so long as the language they choose to write in, the quality of the actual writing, sustains the narrative. So, bravo Rollins. Of course, we are speaking broadly here, and there are more than a few songwriters who can negotiate to age and write engaging material. I can think of a dozen artists who are like that, and likely another dozen after pausing to consider a second round. But I think the output becomes more erratic as you get older, more difficult, perhaps if you've already created a large body of work over a several-decade span. There is that need to keep producing work even though you're aware that you have more misses than hits. 

Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, dozens of others pursued new work into their later years, and there is that aspect where the fresh ideas reappear as recognizable formulas in newer songs. But this aspect of the aging artist, that later work will, in most cases, not be consistent in quality, is evident in the other arts, whether fiction, poetry, film making, drama. There are poets such as John Ashbery who likely published ten books beyond his best days as a bard, Clint Eastwood's movies have become more minimalist and brutally efficient in terms of film storytelling, sometimes to the extent that some of his later flicks seem like parodies of his best days, and novelists like Updike, promiscuously productive, had an extended string of novels and short story collections and poetry that were, at best, exercises in keeping oneself busy. 

We do have to tread carefully in this area and temper our expectations for older artists who continue to create new work since it should surprise none of us that artist styles, approaches, subjects of concern change over years of living experience and that judgment of new material over what's considered their "best" work needs the context of the long view. Often enough the new approaches, new designs are valid in their own right and are powerful statements of where an artist happens to be at a later stage in their life. This does not imply that the work is bullet-proof from critique or that it works aesthetically. It requires a more nuanced discussion than the rate-a-record approach most of us grew up with.

From the vault, a too short favorable review of My Aim is True published in my college newspaper

 If nothing else, one of the things that the Seventies have given rock and roll is the chance for a new artist to regurgitate the most glaring of cliches and be considered by older critics who long for their youthful heyday (first cigarette, the first bout with sex, first visit the free clinic) as something in the vanguard of the movement, a "fresh and invigorating voice that outlines the future of rock and roll," and so on. Bruce Springsteen combines elements from Phil Spector records, old rhythm and blues tracks, and bare rock and roll with the lyrical free form-ism of Dylan, resulting in a pastiche of styles that sounds forced, histrionic and bone dry of motivation. Patti Smith wants to merge early Sixties rock, ala Stones, and "Louie Louie" with the legends of dead poets, sounding in the end merely silly. Tom Waits combines black jazz hep jive with Jack Kerouac and sounds stupid. The more jaded among us from this parade of pretenders are leery of anyone trying the same thing. 

My Aim is True by Elvis Costello takes one by surprise. Like Springsteen, the backbone of Costello's music is old rock and roll. But apart from that, they differ radically. Springsteen has a tendency to stretch his material to the breaking point, pouring crescendo upon crescendo, verse upon verse, trying to create an epiphany that never culminates into prosaic glory. Costello, though, is stripped down to a vernacular toughness, and Costello's singing, similar to Springsteen's but more tactful, is full of buoyancy, emotion, and conviction, without any overkill. The songs number twelve in all on the disc, unusual for a rock disc, and each exists as polished lyrical gems of a cynical, penetrating working-class intelligence.

Costello's strength, a virtue that Springsteen, Smith, and Waits lack, is his ability to use rock cliches for their total value. Costello gets the heat to the meat instead of brandishing them like a set of museum pieces that one is supposed to bow to in historical awe and respect. The rockability stuff is done with a verve that equals Buddy Holly, his use of reggae captures the required gloomy, sinister mood, and his boogie material does a lot more than plot the course for the band. His lyrics, though, are imbued with a seventies sensibility, an awareness of absurdity works minor miracles with motifs that one might have considered as resources of comedic irony in this current,post-hip climate. The gifts would be nothing less than restoring to all the old rock and roll and pop music styles the capacity for emotional impact. Though not notable for originality or innovation, My Aim is True is a real piece of work, and Elvis Costello has an intelligence that can develop into something more complex and rewarding. My aim, for now, suffices as an excellent example of rock revisionist traditionalism.

THE BYRDS AND THEIR PUNK VERSION OF HEY JOE

 

Hey, Joe by the Byrds on their 1966 Fifth Dimension album. This song was recorded by too many bands over the decade, and there is not much difference among the 50 or so versions I'm aware of. The reason I was drawn to the song as a naive teen was because it broke the mode the cycle of love-sick Gene Pitney/Leslie Gore pop melodies and melodramas that dominated my conscious mind at the time and gave me and other unsuspecting youth a taste of a real tragedy concerning the consequences of cheating on one's partner. 

In this case, the cuckold wasn't going to sob and bleed all over the carpet as would be the metaphorical case for Pitney or Gore. Instead, this fellow answers questions from an inquiring pal about what his game plan is, and Joe makes it plain, he's going to get a gun and shoot her dead. That's getting proactive in the worst sense of the word. I was aware that it didn't put women in the best light and would hardly suffice as an example in problem resolution. Years later, after bitter experience and summary reeducation by sharp females who tolerated my foibles, I became aware of the idea of misogyny, the outright hatred of women. I've been trying to mend my ways ever since. 

But at the time, I was engrossed by the sheer drama of it all, the portrait of a lonely guy so anemic in self-esteem that he would rather kill his cheating girlfriend than calm down, feel the feelings, and seek another less destructive path. The one thing I would say as regards anything resembling a defense of the song's treatment of women was that it was an introduction to the idea that emotions are not only dramatic but infinitely and witlessly complex as it goes. It was part of education. But as we say, quantity changes quality, and the surfeit of versions of the renditions leeched the drama from the lyrics and made the ascending chord progression less a measure of tension building than it was a model of metronomic monotony. 

 But the Byrds version is unique concerning the tempo, which is jacked to nearly punk-pogo dynamics and David Crosby's vocal, which is breathless and sounds winded and excited on adrenaline as would a criminal who had, as the lyrics let on, shot his wife. Forget the sultry and soulful writer of the ballads Everyone's Been Burned or Guinivere, the tunes of sensitive minstrels rhyming away life's ironies. Hey Joe is a blunt revenge fantasy, and Crosby sounds wicked, a man who wants blood. But the biggest payoff is Roger McGuinn's twelve-string work, which aligns itself with that Coltrane-inspired note clustering he did for Eight Miles High. He riffs throughout the tune, swift, jabbing riffs, odd chord accents, more jabbing and dissonant riffing, a busy counterpoint to the pulsing bass, the earnest cowbell throughout, the bated vocalisms: this has the drama that comes at that moment when watching a two-story house on fire and the structure collapses in unredeemable sparks. This is the best version of the song ever released.

BLUE CHEER DESTROYED ALL POWER TRIOS

 

It wasn't hip at all to like Blue Cheer when their 1968 debut Vincibus Eruptum was released. It was the usual accusations as the established critics expressed their disgust. Out of tune, they cannot play their instruments, unbelievably bad imitations of Hendrix and Cream. Some of us liked what these three guys were doing, though.I liked them precisely for the reason that others hated them for, for being atonal, loud, feedback, distorted in ways that had nothing to do with conventional ideas of texture and musical color and everything to do with making you aware of the nature of the sound, which sheer electricity wielded by some angry and impatient men eager to make a noise where there was stultifying silence previously. Blue Cheer was the perfect band for the coming age of speed freakery. The chemical essence wants to take things apart and then reassemble them rapidly, haphazardly, inspired, and excited momentarily by new combinations of components be had from that which was gutted. Like it or not, something new was occurring here, and it was something that could only happen if the players--Dickie Peterson bass and vocal, Leigh Stephens guitar, Paul Whaley drums--had more than a competent grasp of their instruments.

I was introduced to the solar skronk and abrasive swing of Sun Ra at the time through many visits to the Grande Ballroom and developed a taste for the mind fuckery of free-jazz that came from Coltrane Pharaoh Sanders, Ayler, Coleman. It helped that WABX, the FM underground station in Detroit, played some black Avant grade music. So I found similarities between what Blue Cheer was doing and the esteemed black musicians who (may have ) influenced them. The band may well have had no idea of what they were doing conceptually, and the conceit is mine alone. Still, all the same, Blue Cheer handily deconstructed the entire power trio format, pushing into to its three or four-chord limit with long jams that were groaning, grainy, belching, aggressive nonlinear improvisations keyed to only emotion.

They were to the power trio what Neal Cassady was to drive. I consider Dick Peterson an able, if not great, bassist. Still, unquestionably, one of the most terrific white-blues screamers of all time--his singing was rage, self-pity, and uncontrollable impulse fused in each frayed, corrosive syllable he spat out.  His bandsaw -on-steel vocals, joined with guitarist Leigh Stephens' PULVERIZING ATONAL GUITAR SOLOS and drummer Paul Whaley's trash can demolition, Peterson and crew lay the groundwork for a generation of metal and punk bands to come: MC5, STOOGES, MOUNTAIN, LED ZEP, RAMONES, MOTORHEAD, DEAD BOYS. Even the Velvet Underground, with their feedback skronk, couldn't match Blue Cheer's steel-belted forays into electrified abandon; the Velvets merely taunted the strings of their guitar, Blue Cheer sounded like they punched holes in oil tankers. And Peterson's vocalizations were the perfect match, screech, rasp, and banshee wail all rolled into one bag of verbal outrage, maintaining a punk's slouch. His was the rusty yowl that deserved to be praised and dreaded for the unflinching combination of fear and rage it represented. 

Leigh Stephens' broadsides were genuinely beautiful cascades of dissonance, pulverizing atonal breaks, the emphasis on pulverizing. I saw these guys at the Grande as well. It seems to me that I think about it decades later that this was not a man of sub-competence flailing and noodling about the frets, but someone who knew what he wanted to sound like and could get the result he desired, and that he was someone who could duplicate that sound on command.

Paul Whaley, in turn, had the most expansive, most enormous, most sledgehammer-like drumming style of the period. His sound was of every building and bridge that ever collapsed under its own weight. This is to say that I think the first two Blue Cheer albums need to be reconsidered.

MADE IN OJAI

Soulful, soul searching, soul-bearing, soul matching, all terms to describe the singer-songwriters who write tunes less as candidates for hard rotation on the radio or various streaming services and more like updates on their status psyches. Much of it is endearing and attractive, depending on the artist's melodic craft and canny poetics we might be considering. Joni Mitchell? Yes. Paul Simon? Of course. Jackson Brown? Perhaps, provided what here from him is low dosage and brief. A little bit of information from the annals of someone’s psychic equilibrium goes a long way. There is a propensity among many a self-revealing artist to overshare, to dwell, to paint their remembrance in thick coats of idealized colors. Ecstasy or perpetual despair. 

Made in Ojai by the duo Smitty and Julija (Smitty West and Julija Zonic), it is a tuneful disc, well-produced, lushly arranged, and highlighting the soulful vocals from the pair. The record is a mixed bag of results, with a few of the songs taking a long time to evolve into something more intriguing. “I Just Wanna Sing this Song with You” begins with doleful piano, simple arpeggio figures that dwell a shade too long, with the song easing in slowly to some crystalline vocal harmonies from West and Zonic. It is, though, a longish ballad of laying one’s heart to the glorious presence of another. The duo’s harmonies elevate the words and soar over the hesitant piano in the choruses, infusing the lyrics with heartfelt emotion. This song, though, drags when, I think, it should pick up the pace and rhythmically engage a listener in their joy, and regrettably, this is an element that hampers many of the other songs. Particularly the next song, “Let Her Go,” where the philosophical lesson of letting go of past loves, regrets, and missed opportunities to grow are lost in what becomes inevitable tedium.

Zonic has a fascinatingly vulnerable voice, suggesting a quiver, a quake, a certain fragility that suggests a trammeled soul that has gathered its wits and finds the words, the voice, the eventual wisdom to push on over the horizon. One wishes the song were more melodically proactive in the sentiment and less dirge-like. A listener exhausted by the excess of earnestness through these songs can take a rest with a nice bit of amusement, a tune called  “Trust Fund Hippy.”This is a  suitably and incisive dig into an obnoxious hipster indulging his counter-culture aesthetic with inherited money, oblivious to his own absurdity. Following suit, the music is up-tempo, with an old-time feeling, rather remindful of the Phil Ochs classic “Outside a Small Circle of Friends.” There is quite a bit to enjoy and admire in Made in Ojai, but one does wish they would have varied the fare, taken it beyond the confession box they seem comfortable in, and engaged their wittier instincts.

Originally published in the San Diego Troubadour. Used with permission.

MY LYRICS CAN BEAT UP YOUR LYRICS

 

In a feature in the current issue of Slate, Jack Hamilton adds some lighter fluid to the controversy slowly boiling over who was the better wordsmith for the Beatles, Paul McCartney or John Lennon. Not coincidental with the release of the pricy two-volume, slip-cased set The Lyrics where McCartney describes his authorship of  150 songs both for the Beatles and other projects, Hamilton, as one could expect, bucks conventional wisdom and argues that Sir Paul was the superior lyricist. Do you remember any time in your younger life when you wax incessantly, continuously, and oppressively about one album, one particular album, was the greatest album ever made and that super-great album is a work of art unlike any other we've ever seen as a species and the likes of which we will ever seen again? Do you remember forgetting about that extra-fantastic disc and then listening to years , maybe decades later, and then realizing it hasn't traveled through the ages as well as you claimed? And remember what you said at the time? 

I remember my hyperbolic tantrums arguing the genius of many records I have since abandoned to resale shops long ago. That is what Hamilton's defense of McCartney's lyrics for the Beatles read like, a gushy mash note. Of course, the man had a way with words, but...please calm down... Like anyone else obsessed with what the Beatles have accomplished and how it was that they created a body of work without peer, I've dived into the weeds to determine who had the more outstanding mind and pen, John or Paul. After much scrutiny, cogitating, late nights scanning lyric sheets wearing headphones while the Beatles blared loudly and made my hearing even worse than it was, my conclusion is that it's a draw between the two. 

As for songwriting partners and as lone authors of single songs while in the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney seemed an evenly matched pair as lyricists, with McCartney having a substantial edge for composing engaging and deceptively simple melodies. Lennon, to be sure, could write a lovely song as well and do so throughout the band's lifetime, but  McCartney has the advantage. As Beatle lyricists,  one can strongly argue that the two were equal for fluidity and agility of expression. Their distinct personalities gave the metaphorical Beatle Universe (with some exemplary additional contributions from George Harrison) a remarkably fresh and finally unpredictable take on the human experience.  McCartney was a fine lyricist with the Beatles, and I'd even agree brilliant at times. Still, I believe the old saw that Sir Paul's best abilities as lyricist and melodist may well have remained dormant if Lennon hadn't become such a significant presence in his creative undertakings. And yes, I would agree Lennon might have remained yet another Rocker doomed for inevitable anonymity if he hadn't made McCartney's acquaintance.  This will, without doubt, be argued about till the end of time.  Notably, McCartney has been showing concern over his legacy as he approaches his final curtain, wanting the world to realize the weight of actual contribution to the Beatles' longevity, perhaps even a desire to take Lennon's reputation as the superior lyricist and intellect down a peg or two. 

'Though fueled by resentment, I suspect,  there is no getting away from the fact that the solo efforts by Lennon and McCartney, including struggles with Plastic Ono Band and Wings respectively, are depressingly substandard considered against the work they'd done for the Beatles.  Of course, both bodies of post-Beatles music have pockets of the old magic, charisma, wit, and melodic bite. Still, Lennon had descended from the ranks of an artist to becoming merely a Professional Celebrity, an amazingly clueless personality whose lyric acumen was now little else but sloganeering no more subtle than a bumper sticker. McCartney, in turn, couldn't seem to write a cohesive song anymore; his song structures were erratic, jarring, disjointed, too often coming less well than office buildings abandoned during construction. His lyric writing was gibberish, and those who want to defend the words he wrote for Wings are doomed to come off as foolish wishful thinkers. 

BARRETT, SYD

 

The late Syd Barrett, founder of Pink Floyd and probable acid casualty at the age of 60 in 2006. His time in the limelight, as a creative force, was brief, barely a blip in the scheme of things. Although his tenure with the band was brief, very brief, it's a legacy that cannot be dismissed, nor one that we can afford to forget. Syd Barrett did one thing very brilliantly in his musical career, co-founding Pink Floyd and being the central creative for their debut album, The Piper at the Gate of Dawn. 

Usually, someone who starts off the bright star and budding genius who flames out early is consigned to the ain't-it-a-shame file and only recalled in diminishing rounds of generational recollection. Still, Barrett's name has remained constant in discussions of Pink Floyd's career in the years since his deterioration and departure from the band. Although Roger Waters, Gilmour et al. found their own voice and peculiar sense of combining experimentation with mainstream expectation, Barrett's influence on the unit was never transcended, forgotten, or obscured; it's more like the groundbreaking work Barrett did in the short time at the band's start was rather refined, expanded, nuanced and tweaked in subtle, often sublimely achieved ways. Although it doubtlessly gores Roger Waters' ego to confront this, the Barrett imprint on Pink Floyd was never erased. 

Waters' claim to greatness is that he had taken Barrett's diffuse template and personalized it into a cryptic, caustic world view, just as the band maintained the blurred eclecticism and made music that was individually achieved yet contiguous with Barrett's briefly realized genius. Barrett may have been one short wonder, but the bullet he fired went far and pierced many layers of armored conservative sensibility regarding music. His achievement for such a short production time casts a longer shadow than a few dozen others who've had decades to make music.

THE ROLLING STONES DITCH "BROWN SUGAR"

 It's not that the Rolling Stones have suddenly become "woke" and aware of social injustice, but it did make news that the aging Bad Boys of British rock have dropped the tune  "Brown Sugar" from the playlist of their current tour. With the recent death of drummer and founding band member Charlie Watts, there appears to be a sense of an ending emerging quickly for the band. It was released as a single in 1971 and later included on their Sticky Fingers album that same year. It's one of those tunes that you hate yourself loving. On the surface, it has all that one loves and expects from a Rolling Stones song, including brash guitar chords powering grabbing your attention, a rhythm section that kicks in hard and sways and swings without relief until one comes to the chorus, a rousing anthem of droogish vigor, a sassy saxophone solo, all of which supports a hectoring, lively, dually insinuating and braying vocal by singer Mick Jagger. It's the kind of song that makes you want to put your shoulder to the wheel and take command of something. But under the adorably gritty rock and roll, the text, the lyrics, the sordid spectacle of it all, a tribute to racism, slavery, sadomasochism, rape, misogyny. It's a violent little white supremacist fantasy whether the Rolling Stones intended it or not:

Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in the market down in New Orleans
Skydog slaver know he's doin' all right
Hear him whip the women just around midnight

Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should

Drums beatin' cold, English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin' when it's gonna stop
House boy knows that he's doin' all right
You should have heard him just around midnight

Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good?
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should

Brown Sugar, how come you dance so good?
Brown Sugar, just like a black girl should

I bet your mama was a tent show queen
And all her boyfriends were sweet 16
I'm no school boy but I know what I like
You should have heard them just around midnight

Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should

I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, wooo!
How come you, how come you dance so good
Yeah, yeah, yeah, wooo!
Just like a, just like a black girl should

© Mirage Music Int. Ltd. C/o Essex Music Int. Ltd

Pretty miserable stuff, this. Most of us of a certain age knew the song was a racist, sexist, misogynist male chauvinist wet dream when it was released. Most of us, I trust, are hidden behind the flimsy veil of irony, and some of us, in print, rationalized how Mick and the Boys were, in fact, bringing America's great sin, slavery, into a larger and more honest conversation among the fanhood. Perhaps they did, but I don't think that was their intention, and I don't think the largest segment of their fan base, young white males still trying to determine how to be adults, either got whatever subtle lesson the Stones were casting or gave a damn. It was the Stones, damn it, and it had a great riff, a badass rhythm, and it made you strut. If you were male, the song momentarily made you feel like you were in control of things, whether an imaginary plantation with a slave or a captain of Indus, try or a general of a tank division. 

All the apologetics, defenses, rationalizations, and furtive intellection couldn't quiet the nagging suspicion that the tune was a deliberate and arrogant slap in the face to a great many people." Brown Sugar" was and is a mean-hearted song. They were called out for their demeaning depictions by feminists, black activists, and prematurely "woke" males at the time of its release. I doubt there was a single of us who hadn't wondered at some time or other when the Stones would ditch the tune. When they wrote and performed it, there was a kind of vulgarly hip cache in being a roving cocksman who could get loving whenever he wanted it. But this is an attitude, a pose, a stance that hasn't aged well through the decades. It remains an example of how embedded racism was in rock and roll and within the counter-culture at large despite whatever legal advances had been accomplished. I don't think the Stones are personally racist in their politics or core value systems (whatever they happen to be or have been). However, they carried habits acquired through generational legacy, which, it seems, they are still trying to shed. So maybe 'Brown Sugar" is a start, and they will continue to reconsider their song list for objectionable content. Perhaps that would reduce their sets to a quick and tight 40 minutes or fill out the rest of the time with Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters covers.

No subject is off-limits so far as narrative art goes. Still, we have to realize that out of millions of would-be Nabokovs and Jaggers , on a handful can anything so artful with the subject matter--sex with minors, rape--that the work transcends the gaminess and has an effect that forces concerned readers/listeners to think on issues more prominent than the indulgence in lust. I consider Jagger's song "Back Street Girl" to be a masterpiece. He cannily, concisely, convincingly gets at the rationale of a moneyed male, making it clear to his mistress that she is nothing other than a mistress; she is not to try to be a part of his more prominent, more public life. It's a cruel scenario, but it is sharply told against Parisian atmospherics that create a legitimately ironic outcome, an air of romanticism in the city of light slamming up against the harsh exchange that is the subject of the song. It's an influential character sketch where one can argue with some certitude that Jagger has done the world some delicate favor by tackling this seamy storyline.Brutal, yes, and that was Jagger's intention I believe. Writers with the instincts to create particular personas that are convincing albeit repelling generally avoid the instinct to moralize or provide sermons of any sort rendering judgment; it's more effective to have the character reveal themselves in their voices. What got my attention about the song was that it wasn't a tune talking about the glories of bedding dumb women and then disposing of them, nor was it an ove-rromanticized ballad, a tribute, a pedestal-placing tribute to a perfect woman who captured the protagonist's heart. It was instead the narrator undisguised, unfiltered, plainly asserting what he expects, what he requires of the anonymous woman on the back street. It's an ugly appraisal, but an honest one and in some way seems an attempt by Jagger to deal with the malevolence of his persona as a libertine.

 Yes, I agree. Musical styles, genres, you name, need to change to remain relevant in the march of history scurries towards an always uncertain future. The idea is that whatever art one loves that had its origins in the marketplace will remain relevant and, dare we say, the word? suitable. That's the hope, and it's a fact that popular music styles have been altered, adapted, extended, made more straightforward by younger artists picking up the task of creating sounds for the ears of the buying public. Still, the mergings of whatever "old school" with the taste of the current crop of teens currently glutting the marketplace haven't always been smooth, pleasant, or, bottom line, interesting.  Cold to say, but heavy metal under any of its specialized micro-genres is a dead end. Rap and hip-hop are fashion cliches these days. Jazz, it can be said, is graduating to the classical concert hall, elevated as art music, which means smaller audiences and grants from whatever federal or local government agencies. Speaking of the evolution of country-rock fusion, it seemed some years ago that the movement has gotten to the point where the songs, the arrangements, are painted by numbers affair, a kind of assembly line professionalism where songs contain elements of rock and country--power chords, blues guitar licks, hard backbeats for rock, pedal steel guitars, fiddles, harmonica flourishes for the country--that lack all authenticity or conviction. I am thinking specifically of Shania Twain, a Canadian who is an outstanding example of country pop-rock that has been grimly calculated to appeal to a broad audience. Quantity, remember, reduces quality. It seems the same thing that happened to the exhilarating genre of jazz-rock when in a short period, it got formalized to a very recognizable set of riffs, solos and resolutions, all-flash, speed, and no improvisation. "Rock this Country" likewise is all riffs and no heart, teeter-tottering between the rock accents and the country lilts. It is a Frankenstein monster, neither alive nor dead, merely ganglia of nerves pulling the beast in different confusing directions. It's an apt metaphor; the producers are so obsessed with making sure the distinct parts are balanced that we think of the hulking movie monster learning to walk.

Music to Twitch By

 I don't pay much attention to original film music, and I admit I may be missing some quality listening. Some scores catch my attention, though, especially when the music is better than the movie. David Cronenberg's 1991 film adaptation of Burrough's novel Naked Lunch was a dreary and humorless indulgence that failed to "get" any of the hilarious horror and delirium the book so readily conveyed. The Ornette Coleman-Howard Shore collaboration on the soundtrack, though, is rather magnificent in the way it combines orchestral tone-poetics with Coleman's outer-rim saxophone improvs. Therein lies the true heart of Burrough's world, the struggle for control as the material world dissolves.

Worth mentioning is a dizzying soundtrack from Shirley Clark's 1961 film about a room full of junkies in a dirty, cramped flat waiting for their drug dealer to show up, The Connection. The soundtrack by Freddie Redd is fragmented bop that agitates and exhilarates and turns up the volume as these fellows in dire need of a fix sift their lives and lies in a string of sketchy monologues. Bear in mind what William Burroughs had to say about these situations when one is Waiting for the Man: "The Man is always late..."

It's easy to think that Zappa once assumed that he could make movies the way he made music. If that's the case, then he succeeded with his feature 200 MOTELS, which was an inert, shrill, abrasive, incoherent hodgepodge of musical and visual styles that were meant, I suppose, to mock every nit-witted conceit of American culture within earshot. Zappa never impressed me as a trenchant satirist-- his jibes are less potent than those of George Carlin or even Mad Magazine--but I always found much to admire in his music, his compositional chops. However, the music here is merely a mess, as irredeemably ugly as the movie they accompanied.

A Faint Recollection of Fairport Convention

 

It seems to be a reasonable expectation that people of genius with extraordinary lives and stories to relate would be able to tell their tale in a manner as robust as the lives they've lived. A slight sour truth to accept is that not all extraordinary songwriters aren't the best narrators of their journeys. My expectations were raised by the revelatory musings of Rolling Stone guitarist and songwriter Keith Richards' memoir Life, a memoir that was all sex and sizzle and jaw-dropping revelations.  Richard's witty, regaling truth-telling about his life on the edges of rock and roll had me insisting that any future musical remembrance be equally careening and in your face. The demands were cooled considerably by other biographies I read after the vicarious thrill of Richard's enthused embrace of his wild ways. Bob Dylan's book Chronicles, Vol. 1 had the Maestro speaking obliquely about his life, influences, not revealing much that wasn't already in the dedicated fan's knowledge base. That wasn't wholly unexpected since Dylan has been cagey about talking about his personal life.

 When he wasn't making things up, he simply out large chunks of his coming of age.   Similarly, Jorma Kaukonen wrote of his time as lead guitarist for the San Francisco's iconic Jefferson Airplane in Been So Long: My Life and Music, a memoir of his life growing up in the fifties and thriving as an artist in the swirling 60s counterculture. His prose was flat, and his feelings influences, friends, politics, and the free-love spirituality of that pugnacious decade are soft-spoken. The detachment from his history made it seem like he talked about someone else's life and career. Kaukonen, perhaps, would instead have not been charged with writing about them at all.

 I suppose the lesson was that although there's an overabundance of rock stars with stories as horrid, funny, and chaotic as Keith Richard's. Some of the stories are quieter in the telling, deservedly so.

  Beeswing: Fairport, Folk Rock, and Finding My Voice, 1967–75, a new book by acclaimed Richard Thompson, guitar hero, songwriter, and singer and co-founder of the influential British folk-rock band Fairport Convention Richard Thompson, is appealing, soft-spoken but overly cautious telling of the facts of his life. Not without sin, sizzle, disaster, or tragedies that need to be overcome as eventual success comes to the music and the music maker. His style is reflective, meditative to a degree, choosing his words and descriptions carefully. There's also a tangible air of hesitancy while he recounts his story, a seeming concern to avoid the dramatic, the sensational. Too much caution, however, as there are moments where eloquent rumination on incidents would have given Beeswing greater philosophical heft. To this day, it's one of my low expectations that old guard rock stars have something resembling a pearl of elegant and lengthy wisdom that's formed over their years of music-making on an international scale. Thompson is the soft-spoken sort, it seems, and the soft written as well. Elegant in his brevity and occasionally minimalist prose, he trades not in scandal, gossip, or revenge snark; he goes forth like Joe Friday in Dragnet, just the facts as best he remembers them, told as well as he can manage. The album sold meagerly, but it was a fruitful starting point for the legendary band as they progressed. Sandy Denny, a woman blessed with an ethereal and silver-toned voice, replaced original co-lead singer Judy Dyble, Thompson's girlfriend. The addition of Denny to share lead vocals with singer, guitarist, and songwriter Ian Matthews coincided with Fairport's burgeoning desire to grow conspicuous American influence and instead explored and made use of their own rich of British and Celtic music folk styles. The following three records-- What We Did On Our Holidays, Unhalfbricking, Liege, and Lief—marked a band that had invented a new kind of folk-rock, based on a fascinating combination of blues, jazz, and rock filtered through the gossamer textures of British and Celtic melodic construction and overtone. Fired by the unique sensibilities of Thompson's guitar work, the songwriting collective in this band gave the world that singular thing in pop music history, a distinct body of work.

Thompson doesn't belabor song meanings or origins nor deep dive into the tricks and techniques of his laudable guitar skills, preferring to limn lightly through the scuffling days of the years 1967 through 1975. Again, there isn't much in the way of sordid detail, strong opinion, or linguistic scene-chewing, but the book does provide a breezy, montage-like feel of Fairport and the bands they knew gigged in the same towns at the same clubs, pubs, and meeting halls. The elements of low paying gigs, the band's eventual adapting an abandoned, unheated pub as band living quarters and rehearsal space, creative tensions in the band, and having a singer in Sandy Denny who was as strong-willed and undisciplined as she was brilliant, and alluring are the ingredients of a rich tale that here seems told only by a third. Beeswing has concise and breezy pacing that the book gives off the feeling of being a treatment for a motion picture music biopic. The chronology of events has the air of a "greatest hits" list with the details scantily fleshed out to satisfy the requirements of a screen screenwriter who can squeeze everything into an entertaining and pat 120 feature. After reading, you're left wanting to know more and can't but feel a bit cheated. 

What might deeper feelings there have been within Thompson when he had to fire Denny from the band? He makes a note of the difficulty in weighing Denny's great talent against her insecurity and hard-drinking. At this point in a much-detailed story, we witness a conflicted choice to make sure that the band he co-founded remains a stable entity for the sake of his free expression and reason to exist. It's apparent that as much as he loved Denny and cherished her talent, he felt it better that he and the rest of Fairport move ahead without her. Thompson writes of this deftly but is sketchy on the emotional details. 

The book is full of matters that cry for a fuller accounting, episodes such as Thompson's eventual conversion to Sufism, meeting his eventual wife and songwriting-performing partner, encounters, and music with John Lee Hooker and Van Dyke Parks, and Linda Ronstadt. Incidents get mentioned, briefly described, sometimes with significant poetic effect, but too often being a glancing overview of a crowded with meaningful encounters and musical landmarks. In the end, the style and amount of details are suitable for a making-of-the-band movie or an outline for a limited series for a streaming service. As a book, though, it's a slight effort often poetically expressed. Thompson has a reputation as a potent lyricist who condenses emotional states and situations to brief, evocative epiphanies. It may be the case that his habit of compositional mind influenced his decision to avoid revealing too much of his inner life.  The subtitle of Beeswing: Fairport, Folk Rock, and Finding My Voice, 1967–75, tells us that the book covers only eight years of the author's career, hinting that there's another part of the story to be told, another volume forthcoming. With one book done, it would be a sweet deal if Thompson warms up to the idea that he's now a writer and composes the next volume fearlessly, with verve, detail, and nuance.  Thompson is a magnificent talent, and the world needs him to tell his tale of a critical and endlessly enthralling time in popular music history with the vividness it deserves. 

(Originally published in the San Diego Troubadour. Used with permission).

 

 

 

HOSED DOWN WITH E.L.P.

 Overall, the whole phenomenon of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer was a fever that took too long to run its course. For all their mechanical onanism, they did at times amuse or impress me to an extent.  After all, musicians as good as these fellows were had to be do something appealing from time to time. Tarkus, their second studio album, was such an extreme example of unplayable, undanceable, unlistenable, jig-sawing time signatures that I wound up respecting it as something wherein we have a band that accomplished exactly what they set out to do, produce a loud, grinding, smoke and spark belching bit of unloveable Avant gard music. I would assert that if a college music department had their resident experimental music ensemble take up this album as a proposed project in search of some grant money, it would come pouring it. That is to say that its very unlovability fits right in with much more contemporary noisemakers at the edges of listenability. Also, these fellows had the chutzpah to take Copeland's sacrosanct "Hoe-Down" and turn it into a keyboard-dominated speed metal blitz. We must all insist that Copeland be played as Copeland wished, and yet one must also admit that it's often great fun to speed something up from it's intended tempo and observe how well the framework holds.

MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD, ORIGINAL GUITAR HERO

 Those hungering for a history of rock and roll's glory days, ala the Sixties, should latch onto a copy of Ed Ward's book Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero. Ward, a long-time music historian, and journalist, was one of the original record reviewers in the early days of Rolling Stone is direct, concise, accurate in detail and brimming with breathtaking insights for their clarity. Ward's no-fuss, no-frills style serves his subject well, as Michael Bloomfield, arguably the first guitar hero, is a nearly forgotten man in the discussion of how rock guitar evolved.

While Eric Clapton won praise and glory for his chops in 1966 as the featured player on John Mayall's Blues Breakers album, Bloomfield was already turning heads with this spiky fretwork on Dylan's 1965 effort Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan had abandoned folk for rock, and Bloomfield was instrumental in creating a new kind of music; it was nothing anyone had heard before. Later that same year, he was highlighted on the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band record, an integrated band out of Chicago that brought black blues back into the spotlight.

It was an unbeatable and volatile combination. Bloomfield's fluid, biting style dominated the disc; audiences and reviewers raved and wrote about the guitarist, not the bandleader. Bloomfield was the marvel, the toast among fans and critics, a white Jewish kid from Chicago suburbs who'd learned his trade from the Masters. It's an old story; somewhat stale as you approach it to create a narrative, but it has the benefit of being accurate in considerable measure. Bloomfield was that good a musician; he was that important an innovator, his blend of blues-raga-jazz-and traditional was that far ahead of its time. It was a fast rise to the top, a sequence of memorable albums and live dates, and then a long slide into comparable obscurity. Ward makes the case that Mike Bloomfield is an artist whose influence still matters today.

Ward accomplishes setting up a story of the young Bloomfield, a young man in the Chicago suburbs and the son of a successful businessman, discovering the blues and seeking out the musicians who played it, Muddy Waters, Hubert Sumlin, and B.B.King. Always restless and impatient with his progress, Bloomfield jumped between many styles, from Chuck Berry rock and roll to Chicago Blues, country blues, and jazz, learning the riffs, the phrases, and the subtle embellishments of each style. Particularly fascinating are the variety of circumstances with which he became acquainted with other white musicians obsessed with black blues music, in Paul Butterfield, Nick Gravesites, Charlie Musselwhite. In quick succession, the guitarist was in the spotlight for his work with Dylan and the acclaimed he drew for his blistering fretwork on the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band album. With the release of that band's second album, East/West, the consensus seemed to be that Bloomfield was the finest guitarist on the planet, with the band in considerable measure leaving the traditional blues styles they'd been interpreting behind and extending themselves in extended improvisations. Key to this was a swinging workout on Nat Alderfly's "The Work Song" elevated by Bloomfield's fluid single-note lines. But what closed the deal on Bloomfield's reputation was the title track, a 13-minute raga/drone improvisation influenced by John Coltrane's integration of Indian classical music techniques into his register-jumping flights. The center of the piece was Bloomfield, extemporizing in a manner that was a curious but entrancing mixture of both his jazz and raga influences; this was the guitar solo that raised the bar perilously high for other players.

Ward goes through Bloomfield's career highlights and low points, using a series of effectively placed quotes from those who knew and worked with him to contextualize the problematic musician's life. He was a manic personality, perpetually ill at ease, starting projects and abandoning projects in quick order, blazing through stints with Butterfield, The Electric Flag, Muddy Waters, Al Kooper, KGB, John Hammond Jr., and Dr.John. There were so many promising starts, so many abrupt departures. Audiences took him for granted; critics started awarding him negative reviews. By his admission, Bloomfield's heroin use eroded his skills as a guitarist to the extent that he ceased playing altogether for a period. Ward details the effects of drugs on his work and admirably resists the urge to sermonize, lecture, or otherwise wring his hands over the murky circumstances about Bloomfield's death from a drug overdose in 1981. The loss of a gifted musician too early in his life is effectively conveyed. Ward has laid out the progress of Bloomfield's life of music-making, from a naïve but engaged kid from the suburbs seeking out his heroes in the bars of Southside Chicago to an artist making his way through the mad eddies and inviting distractions of the Sixties to counter culture. Detailed, wise, free of babble and cant, Ward represents this master musician wonderfully and respectfully. He does not sensationalize this life but celebrates the music; Michael Bloomfield played a blues that still moves the soul.

A NOTE

 Bob Dylan performed at New York's esteemed Carnegie Hall, for which he additionally wrote the program notes.  Titled My Life in a Stolen Moment, it's a long, rambling length of free verse poetry that is an intriguing example of Dylan juvenilia. A self- conscious and entirely awkward combination of Beat style first-thought-best-thought idea and the unlettered eloquence of the deep feeling poor white, it purports to be the true telling of Dylan's upbringing in small-town Minnesota.It's not a reliable document. As an autobiography, I wouldn't trust a word of it. Dylan embellished his story from the beginning. Inconsistencies and incongruities in his stated timeline were noted early on. I remember that Sy and Barbara Ribakove were suspicious of Dylan's accounting of his life back in 1966 with their book "Folk-Rock: The Bob Dylan Story." All the fabulation has certainly given a couple of generations of Dylan obsessives much to sift through and write books about. It's a poem, of course, but not a good one. What had always irritated me about Dylan's writing was his affectation of the poor, white rural idiom. It's dreadful, unnatural sounding as you read it (or listen to it from his early recordings). While it's one thing to be influenced by stories of hobo life, the Great Depression, and to use the inspiration to find one's uniquely expressive voice as a writer or poet, what Dylan does here ranks as some of his most pretentious, awkward, and preening writing. One can argue in Dylan's defense with the vague idea of negative capability, but that holds water only if the writing is great and the writer is possessed by genius. Of course, Dylan is/was a genius, but this was something he wrote when he was merely talented and audacious. Genius hadn't bloomed yet. This bucolic exercise has always been an embarrassment, juvenilia that sounds juvenile.

PAGE WORTH BOOK MARKING

 (Originally published in the San Diego Troubadour  in 2017. Used with kind permission).

It’s an often-told tale that young Gregory Page, having no interest in academics or a future in business, developed a fascination with his grandfather’s 78 rpm records. It’s a quirky tidbit, hardly worth the mention for the more conventional lives of lawyers, clerks, and cashiers, but it merits attention in discussing the intriguing Mr. Page. 

No mere rocker or folkie savant, he’s an agile channeler of music styles gone by. Jazz ballads, torch songs, gospel-tinged testimonials, elements of folk, and such things, Page is a man of constant dreaming, yearning, pining for the better day, one who succinctly expresses the perceived failures of his romantic expectations with a sense of irony and wit. 

So It Goes, his newest release, is a rich and textured set of original songs by Page. Each piece radiates a soft-focused nostalgia, the softly curving turns of Page’s melodies framing his supple voice that reveals his capacity as an expressive singer. He is a crooner in the grand tradition of vocalists who perform their songs not as professional renditions of harmony and lyric but as a short drama, inspiring short story.

The aspect of Page’s singing that grabs me is the way he varies his emphasis, line by line, never losing the golden tone but seeming to sense how a change how a line is sounded, waxing poetic with a quivering warble on one image and then undercutting his own regret with an ironic aside by lightening his approach, lifting his voice up to an optimistic pitch. It is, over and over, Page’s theme that we’re wedded to the past and cannot forget who and what we have loved and lost, but those memories cannot be allowed to turn us into bitter and grouchy layabouts.

 More than once, he declares the fundamental lesson that our experiences make us who we are and that there is nothing to do but go on and embrace the life that unfolds in front of us. He is, of course, and speaking for himself and his own fanciful recollections and insights, but the songwriter-songwriter is so adept at his craft and presentation that there isn’t a hint of self-pity. Page is a fatalist, perhaps, but he is not a defeatist. 

The album’s title, So It Goes, is a refrain from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse 5, repeated at various points when the story’s events undermine the vain philosophies of the protagonists; despite plans and preparation, life itself upsets one’s agenda and puts one in a position to reflect and rethink and create a reason to get back in the game. 

TWO ALBUMS FROM 1979 I GAVE SHORT AND NEGATIVE REVIEWS TO

 Obscure Alternatives - Japan (Ariola)

Japan, from Great Britain, sounds like a forced marriage between Mott the Hoople and Booker T and the MG's, and they look like holdouts from the glitter rock movement. They don't impress me too much, though I suspect that their attempt to revive various teenage wasteland cliches will make many listeners think of The Who at their best (Who's Next). The smart ones will realize that they've heard this jive before and done better at that. Rock and roll at this volume and swagger is all posturing jive, guitars, and chest hairs front and center, all of which means that its driving force is stupidity, the resolute confidence of the hard-macho dunce plunging ahead into grotty behavior with cliches and erections as the sum total of a world view. But even here there are those bands that do it better and who seem to back their skewed morality with some reading, D.H. Lawrence to Ayn Rand. I say that with the need to believe that some of our dumb rock stars can at least read.

No Escape - The Marc Tanner Band (Elektra)

Simpering love-lorn rock and roll mannerisms aimed straight at the heartstrings. Marc Tanner has one of those whispering, overly sensitive crooning voices that send an annoying shiver down your spine, a voice coated in self-pity, fake piety, and hallow insight. Tanner reminds one of the kinds of "liberated male" ·who, though willing to "deal" with his feelings more openly than his more hard-shelled comrades, remains an unchanging pit of preconceived notions of how he wants his social relations to go. I suspect that Tanner may have attended some male "consciousness-raising" groups not to grow as a human being but to secure a new batch of sure lire pick-up lines. In other words, I rarely trust singer-songwriters who are this nakedly "open," The reason I'll put up with Paul Simon or James Taylor is that they hold back. I respect anyone who'll tell me that there are matters that are none of my business. Tanner bears all because he's on the make. If you must buy

this, keep a box of tissue at hand to blow the poor boy's nose.

A brief on Metheney's noise machines

The video shows guitarist Pat Metheney performing a four-plus minute improvisation with a completely mechanized, computer-programmed musical ensemble. Termed The Orchestration Project, the goal seems to simulate a "human feel" into these digitally calculated grooves and responses.  This fills me with dread and furthers my frustration with Metheney. He is an original and striking musician, a resourceful improviser with an impressive line of PM Group releases, and works as a support player on the albums of other bandleaders. His fascination with effects, foot pedals, phase shifters, all things digital, leaves me cold, however, and has rarely struck me as especially musical. An earlier post mentioning Metheney reminds me of a finicky musician trying out every effect they have in a Guitar Center. 

 I saw him three years ago with his group, a brilliant array of players. I was relieved that a relatively small portion of a two-hour show was dedicated to Metheney's honking electronic Farago's. Those long lines of bleating squawks, squeaks, and echolated distortion left me wondering how beautiful those notes, forming spontaneous melodies, might have been hadn't been mugged by angry static on their way to the audience's ears.

Angry electronics have their place in jazz, I'll say in a spirit of compromise, and I will admit that sometimes gives us a more fitting and rousing context. 1986's Song X, a collaboration with Harmolodic logician and "out" playing genius Ornette Coleman, is a perfect context for extemporizing an argumentative contrast to drums, basses, and saxophones that overlap, clash, blur and scream at different pitches. Knowing when to start and when to cease production is the key. 

 

There’s a telling scene in Don’t Look Back, D.A. Pennebaker’s grainy 1967 documentary of Bob Dylan’s stormy 1965 tour of England. Dylan is in a hotel filled with tour members, local celebs, musicians, and varieties of hangers-on. The Maestro is rifling through a British paper and happens upon an article on Donovan, the Scottish singer-songwriter who’d been gigging around the folk scene in the Isles and had recently scored a sizeable with his song “Catch the Wind.”

He was about 19 years old, and the influence of Dylan on the younger singer was obvious in the hit with its acoustic guitar and Donovan’s nasal, twangy singing of the especially poetic lyrics. The only article missing from the song was a wheezy, crestfallen harmonica break. The tune's success led journalists to call him “the new Dylan” or “England’s answer to Bob Dylan.” Dylan was reportedly bemused at how the press seemed to call for younger folkies to knock him from his supposed throne. This is where we find him in Don’t Look Back, staring at Donovan’s picture in the paper. Alan Price, the former keyboardist for the Animals, who was along for much of the tour, sits next to Dylan, a bit drunk, and gives the American the lowdown on the man in the newspaper. 

“…He’s a perfect guitar player,” says Price as he weaves to and fro. “He’s better than you.” 

“Yeah,” says Dylan. “Right away, I hate him.”

It’s not likely Dylan hated Donovan in any sense. Donovan instead became part of the entourage that followed the charismatic Maestro around. Later, a scene has the Scottish minstrel in another crowded hotel room with Dylan. Donovan plays guitar and sings “To Sing for You,” which earns him a round of friendly applause. The guitar winds up in Dylan’s hands, who then gives a snarling version of “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.” Eyes are on Dylan, and the room is rapt as the harsh surrealism rings from Dylan’s mouth. 

Donovan didn’t fall prey to the fate of many other “new Dylans” who wound up in relative obscurity after an initial flash of attention. In short order, over the next couple of years, he shed his emulation of the Man from Hibbing and evolved into a diverse artist. His lyrics remained on the poetic side but gone were the feigned mannerism of rural expression. Rather than pretend he was from the backwoods, he became more urbane, worldly. His voice matured, becoming more supple, melodic, versatile, and expressive in the wide swath of styles in the eclecticism that became his calling card. His songwriting came to us elements of jazz, pop, blues, a distinct form of acid-rock, and alluring takes on what soon would be called world music. Fans and pundits stopped comparing him to Dylan as Donovan’s personality and broad style came into their own There was a time in the artist’s career when other local pop music snobs and I thought Donovan had jumped the shark a bit with his 1967 release From a Flower to a Garden, notable, among other things, for being rock’s first double studio album. Though, the two discs stressed the nerve endings of too-serious teens like yours truly who wanted it grim, dark, and bleakly existential. Donovan had caught the Summer of Love virus with this release, appearing to go off the rails. He was now the Uber Hippie, transcendental in all matters in the Age of Aquarius. Flowing robes that dragged along the floor, an overkill of love beads, an equal overkill of fresh-cut flowers, bare feet, a haircut that made it looked like the man had combed his mane with an eggbeater—all this plus an expensive acoustic guitar are clues to someone of considerable talent who had started to take himself too seriously. 

His career, however, has been remarkable for his capacity to change styles and meld diverse ways of writing and singing about the world and the larger spiritual universe. The musical baseline was in continual flux, morphing in sound, mood, attitude. And there is, to be sure, a refreshing strain of skepticism, aesthetic distance, and a firm grasp of irony in much of his songwriting that has gone overlooked. The image of Donovan, the counterculture seer, still tends to cloud much of the public reception when we approach his songwriting craft. His oeuvre needs a major reappraisal by professional critics and high-minded fans, as there are wonderfully made and even sardonic masterpieces among the glitzy paraphernalia of the Youth Quake. Let’s take a look at three songs: “Sunny Goodge Street” (from his second album’s1965 Fairytale), “Epistle to Dippy” (a single released in 1967), and “Young Girl Blues” (from the Mellow Yellow disc in 1966) are quite a bit more cynical and knowing than his later reputation suggests. 

“Sunny Goodge Street” is a panorama of a particular urban hip scene commonly portrayed in flashy and groovy terms in the ’60s. Still, Donovan’s version of it makes it seem unpredictable, violent, paranoid, and incoherent. It is closer to William Burroughs than to Scott McKenzie’s version of John Phillip’s saccharine paean to hippiedom, “If You’re Going to San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair).” As with Burroughs, the air appears to depict a drugged-out state on its own terms. Donovan seemed to understand that the counterculture was as much a creep scene as it was a gathering moment for truth seekers, poets, and sensualists who desired both sex and innocence. While the cost of reaching all sorts of forbidden knowledge, drugs, and the attending hype was unknown, and Donovan had a foreboding rarely expressed by a generation of musicians that was self-infatuated. It has a jazz-ballad feel—slow, swaying, almost precariously—the lyrics suggesting a denizen who’s smoked too much trying to stay awake until he finishes saying what he’s determined to get out. 

On the firefly platform on Sunny Goodge Street

Violent hash smokers shook a chocolate machine

Involved in an eating scene 

Smashing into neon streets in their stoned ness

Smearing their eyes on the crazy Kali goddess

Listenin’ to sounds of Mingus mellow fantastic 

My, my, they sigh, my, they sigh 

In dollhouse rooms with colored lights swingin’

Strange music boxes sadly tinklin’

Drink in the sun, shining all around you 

My, my, they sigh

My, my, they sigh 

The magician, he sparkles in satin and velvet

You gaze at his splendor with eyes you’ve not used ye

I tell you his name is love, love, love 

My, my, they sigh

My, my, they sigh 

Nothing specific, profound, or stirring uttered, though, as each sentence chops off the sentence that came before, one idea and detail of the street canceling out the other, the details are blurred rather than a vivid impression of the neighborhood. This probably is what Donovan meant, preferring to give us an indefinite scenario rather than words extolling drug use or hippie culture. We find here that Donovan has mastered the Great Poet’s superpower, as did Eliot and Ashbery and Elizabeth Bishop, which is to rise to the challenge of not making literal sense in the subject matter yet still giving us a sense of what the experience was like. No lecture, no propaganda, an accord shattered and pieced back together. Under the sweet music of the lyrics lurks a dead zone of imagination; it is among the more disturbing I remember from ’60s FM radio. 

“Epistle to Dippy” is nothing less than a direct address of a try-anything scene maker who dashes from drug to scene to fad in an irrational attempt to outrun their own vacuity, their utter lack of soul or genuine sensibility. In his liner notes for a Donovan box-set Troubadour, writer Brian Hogg relates the song, written in letter form to a friend, which abounds with a strong pacifist message while teeming with psychedelic imagery. Hogg further writes that the song's actual subject, who was serving in the British military, soon resigned from the service after hearing Donovan’s words that convey a strong extolling of pacifist philosophy. That is the story behind the headline, but I felt something darker into the song since my first listen decades ago. This is a cutting critique, more potent than the Beatles’ polite poo-poohing tune along the same theme, “Nowhere Man.” 

Look on yonder misty mountain.

See the young monk meditating rhododendron forest

Over dusty years, I ask you

What has it’s been like being you?

Through all levels, you’ve been changing.

Getting a little bit better, no doubt

The doctor bit was so far out

Looking through crystal spectacles

I can see I had your fun

Doing us the paperback reader.

Made the teacher suspicious about insanity

Fingers always touching, girl.

Through all levels, you’ve been changing.

Getting a little bit better, no doubt

The doctor bit was so far out

Looking through all kinds of windows

I can see I had your fun

Looking through all kinds of windows

I can see I had your fun

Looking through crystal spectacles

I can see I had your fun

Looking through crystal spectacles

I can see I had your fun

Rebelling against society,

Such a tiny speculating whether to be a hip or

Skip along quite merrily

Through all levels, you’ve been changing.

Elevator in the brain hotel

Broken down but just as well-a

Looking through crystal spectacles,

I can see you’ve had your fun…

“Young Girl Blues” is a doleful, world-weary observation, a bittersweet recollection of an ingenue who had gotten tired of her own hipness and the chronic scene-making. The details are spare, bone tired. They create a bleak view of such a noisy and hip scene of the fever-pitched Sixties. Donovan senses the isolation—none of the scene makers can break away from or cure with brand names, loud music, and chemicals. There is through it all. An implied yet emphatic sense that youth and beauty fade and that the impulsiveness and egocentricity of being young must evolve into maturity lest someone, a young girl or young man, remain stunted, incomplete in their humanity.

It’s Saturday night

It feels like a Sunday in some ways

If you had any sense

You’d maybe go ‘way for a few days

Be that as it may

You can only say you were lonely

You are but a young girl

Working your way through the phonies

Coffee on, milk gone

Such a sad light unfading

Yourself you touch

But not too much

You hear it’s degrading

The flowers on your stockings

Wilting away in the midnight

The book you are reading

Is one man’s opinion of moonlight

Your skin is so white

You’d like maybe to go to bed soon

Just closing your eyes

If you’re to rise up before noon

High heels, car wheels

All the losers are grooving

Your dream, strange scene

Images are moving

Donovan is a perceptive witness to what unfolded. He skillfully sets a scene with telling details, artfully establishes the era's mood, and is not reluctant to examine the emotional and psychic dead ends that fester under the utopian hoopla. Donovan realized he was observing a generation waste its potential on trivial frolics. “Young Girl Blues” crystalizes the unwelcome truth that beauty and youth fade and the weight and of existence must be faced. This is The Bard’s way of letting listeners know that one can grow up or grow old. He has the skill to insinuate an anonymous narrator, privy to and sympathetic with the character’s internal struggles, and adroitly outline a small cataclysm as the protagonist journeys from self-delusion to an inevitable rueful clarity. Donovan is a master of compressed tragedy. 

Donovan has been given the short shrift among the immensely popular songwriters who emerged from the Sixties revolution. Hardly ignored, of course, but it’s a mystery that there hasn’t been much in the way of broadly circulated critical reappraisals of his music and lyrics considering his extraordinary evolution as an artist. The work has varied in quality over the decades, but what good musician’s work hasn’t run hot and cold in a career that lasted five and a half decades? Donovan very much merits another visit. A closer look, another listen, a reacquaintance of this man’s remarkable oeuvre will bring more masterpieces to the fore, a better sense of what a bright young talent comprehended during a complicated era. It’s my hope that his best and most interesting music, created through fad and fancy of a great many years, finds a broader listenership.

The songwriter’s best work holds up, and it holds up for the same reason Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night or Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test hold up; each is an exquisitely etched portrait of the Sixties that bypassed the mass-mediated brainwashing fostered by Time and Life magazines, which spoke of Youth Culture and revolution that was as problematic as the Establishment activists and idealists said needing radical changing.