Music Industry News: 2020-11-29

Thursday, 3 December 2020

I Got You Babe

I didn't like it.

Now you've got to remember, we were in the heyday of the British Invasion, rock ruled, and if you look at the songs on the hit parade in the summer of '65 your jaw will drop. Yes, there was "Satisfaction." But also "Help" and my personal favorite, "California Girls." Motown was represented too, with "It's the Same Old Song," "Nothing But Heartaches" and "Tracks of My Tears," and this was when Dylan finally hit the Top Forty airwaves, with "Like a Rolling Stone," and the number one record was...I GOT YOU BABE?

And it was never really a Top Forty, barely twenty records got played, and the top five were played over and over again, which you kinda liked, because if you missed a favorite you just kept your transistor tuned to the station and soon enough it would come back on, meanwhile, you're twisting the dial trying to find the track on another outlet, fearful you'll miss it on the station you left, and while twirling the dial or pushing buttons you'd be subjected to number one over and over and over again. Which meant that I heard "I Got You Babe" many more times than I ever wanted to, and to tell you the truth, I don't ever remember listening to it all the way through.

I didn't think Sonny & Cher were their real names. Come on, Cher with a "C"? At this point naming your act was important, and who would live their lives with these monikers? And then I saw them on TV, I can still vividly remember it, they were singing "All I Really Want to Do," actually Cher was singing, Sonny was just hanging out on stage in this fur vest that was so bogus, so ersatz, I never ever cottoned to the act...NEVER!

Not that you could evade their songs, but really the only two giant ones thereafter were "The Beat Goes On," which Vanilla Fudge covered well on their very disappointing second LP, and Sonny's "Laugh at Me," which we did.

But then the act turned to TV. That's what you did when you were running out of gas. Thank god I didn't have a television set at that time, so I wasn't subjected to their visages. But the show was such a hit that it was all over the press, back when we knew who the people were in the gossip pages, and the divorce story was interesting...who wouldn't leave Sonny? And then I ran into Sonny and Chastity on their way out of the sporting goods store I was working at in Hollywood, he was driving a Porsche 911, we talked a bit, and I never forgot it.

And by this time I knew Sonny had worked for Phil Spector.

My friend Andrew Loog Oldham says the worst thing that ever happened to Phil was that Tom Wolfe article, "The First Tycoon of Teen," Phil believed his press, and didn't have that much success after, although he did work with the Beatles, but the Beatles were older, they remembered his wall of sound.

And I ultimately knew that originally the act did have fake names, as in Caesar and Cleo, but this was the deep trivia that came out in rock magazines, and dedicated readers ate it up and memorized it, but we weren't going back and listening to their records, hell, we'd have to buy them, there was no streaming, no YouTube, and that was never going to happen. Furthermore, I don't remember the Caesar and Cleo records being in the bins. Yes, people forget how bad the physical era was. Distribution was king and there was a good chance the record you wanted was out of print, unavailable, although you did constantly try and search for the ones you wanted, like I did with "Lumpy Gravy," which I finally had to buy on import.

And, of course, as the seventies progressed, Cher had AM hits and then she became a movie star, never mind marrying Gregg Allman, and the last hurrah happened on Letterman, which I actually saw the evening of, on my VCR, I taped the show every night, it was a club, and when Dave moved to 11:30 it just wasn't the same. So I was aware of the performance and then it exploded, became legendary, you can see it here: https://bit.ly/3lFrzwu And while I'm proffering links, this was not the show I saw, but here you can see the fur vest: https://bit.ly/2JAdeEn And ultimately, with help from Diane Warren, John Kalodner and a tattoo on her ass, Cher had a gigantic hit in the MTV era, turning back time, and when the internet came along I paid neither the deceased Sonny nor the still extant Cher any mind. But the other night I was listening to the top hits of 1965 on Spotify and I heard..."I Got You Babe."

Do you fast-forward or not. Come on, you've experienced this problem. You're listening to a playlist, or you're shuffling your tracks, and you hit a bummer, a bad song, or one that does not suit your mood, and if you click past it...then you start clicking through other songs and the mood is broken, you've got to listen to the bummers, and sometimes they reveal themselves to you. "I Got You Babe" revealed itself to me Tuesday night.

"They say we're young and we don't know
We won't find out until we grow
Well I don't know if all that's true
'Cause you got me and baby I got you"

It was a different era. There was a huge middle class. You could survive on minimum wage, you could make beaucoup bucks with your hands, especially on the assembly line, and everybody did not believe they could become famous and..."I Got You Babe" was evidencing optimism, it's the opposite of the paranoia and pessimism of today. And, the youthquake had started to tremble, we were aware of an unjust war in Vietnam, boys might get their ass shot off for no good reason and we stopped respecting our elders, we were young and we believed we knew.

"I got you babe, I got you babe"

By this time I'd had camp girlfriends, two in fact, but I really knew nothing about relationships, the power of two, oftentimes against the world, you only have each other, you lean on and rely on each other to forage forward. And the truth is life is scary, and no one really listens to you after you leave school, you're lucky if you have anyone at all.

"They say our love won't pay the rent
Before it's earned our money's all been spent
I guess that's so, we don't have a pot
But at least I'm sure of all the things we got"

You didn't need to buy career insurance. Doctors were rich people. You needed no safety net, you could enter the landscape with your eyes open and odds were you were gonna make it.

And the track had the feel of the Byrds, with the jangly guitar, and even though the vocals were right up front there was a wall of sound behind, and then just an organ or some instrument that sounded like a carnival and then came a bridge.

"I got flowers in the spring, I got you to wear my ring"

It's hard to explain the era, with its sports and traditions hanging over from earlier days. Glenn Frey loved football, and the truth was you wanted to give your letter sweater to your girl, assuming you had one to begin with, and your fraternity pins and rings...

"And when I'm sad, you're a clown
And if I get scared, you're always around"

And this was when Cher became Cher. She reached deep down and bellowed, and it seemed like she was really in love, that she truly believed what she was singing, and we became convinced she and Sonny were actually together, this was not a studio concoction, and Sonny did write the lyrics.

"So let them say your hair's too long
'Cause I don't care, with you I can't go wrong"

Hair. It was a constant battle. How long were you allowed to grow it, what did your parents say, what did the school say, I remember coming back from the barber shop and my mother insisting I go right back because they hadn't taken enough off, and she was liberal! But there was a dividing line, between us and them, you can say it's akin to tattoos and hip-hop, but tattoos are permanent and back in the sixties things fashion was moving so fast you didn't want to get stuck in some backwater, unable to switch your look to avoid being made fun of, there was no nerd culture, i.e. nerds were not lionized and embraced, either you were cool or you didn't even exist, so people constantly tried to be cool. And sure, hip-hop may piss off boomers like rock pissed off boomers' parents, but the funny thing was the rock songs were so good that they ended up being remade as AC numbers, my father knew "For Once In My Life" having never heard the Stevie Wonder version, he knew it as "beautiful music," no one's cutting adult versions of hip-hop, actually a lot of hip-hop is built on samples from the rock canon.

"Then put your little hand in mine
There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb"

This was not nihilism, this was not destruction, this is one thing that has been lost in the rewrite of the sixties, boomers wanted to be nonviolent, there was a whole anti-football contingent, boomers only turned to violence and destruction when their elders insisted they go overseas to risk getting shot while having no choice in the matter, ergo the lowering of the voting age.

"I got you to hold my hand
I got you to understand"

UNDERSTAND! We want someone to talk to who listens and gets us, that's more important than how the other person looks or how rich they are.

"I got you to walk with me
I got you to talk with me"

The word "rap" was pulled from the inner city, it meant talking, we were rapping constantly, conversation drove the sixties, after all we had no internet, no social media, there was no other way to connect.

So I'm hiking in the mountains and a whole picture develops in my brain as I'm listening to "I Got You Babe." There were people just a bit older than I was who embraced this as their anthem, and those who'd made their choices and felt, or wanted to feel good about them. I didn't expect to see the sixties encapsulated in "I Got You Babe."

"I got you babe
I got you babe
I got you babe
I GOT YOU BABE!"

The song did not fade out, it doubled-down on its essence, having each other was enough, and even though they were singing to each other we were empowered too, that was the magic of the music, sure, people listen to music today, but music does not drive the culture the way it used to, it was just about all we had, these pied pipers were leading us to new lands, they were opening our minds, they were showing us there was another way to live our lives, we just didn't have to repeat the steps of our parents.

And I'd like to tell you I'm getting the same sensation listening to "I Got You Babe" right now, two days later, inside, in my office, but serendipity oftentimes plays a part in the listening experience, right song, right time and not only are memories made, but insights generated, feelings kindled.

So many songs I know by heart I was too young to understand so this late date discovery process is enlightening and satisfying, but that's the entrancing element of music, you can always peel back the layers, you can always go deeper.

"Babe
I got you babe"

1965 is set in amber. I'm no longer pissed that "I Got You Babe" is keeping the Beatles from being number one, eliminating space for something more palatable to me, it can be evaluated on its own terms. And at the time I thought "I Got You Babe" was a throwback, but it was squarely placed in the culture of the day. Sure, Sonny may have been old, but Cher was preternaturally young. she wasn't even twenty! She was truly one of us, how did she grab the brass ring at such a young age? And Cher was the alternative to the blond beach bunnies, you could have dark hair and be attractive and sexy and Sonny and Cher might have started the bell-bottom craze.

And the funny thing is this fifty-five year old track survives, in an era where what happened last year is completely forgotten, where music goes by so fast you can't even remember the songs you liked, and a lot less is known by heart.

There's not a boomer alive who doesn't know every lick of "I Got You Babe." That's right, the biggest Stones fans, the darkest personages, they know this song, because they were forced to listen to it on the radio, and at this late date even I can smile and feel good listening to "I Got You Babe," that's the power of a great song and great production.

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Re-Satisfaction

"Satisfaction" is still my favorite Stones song. Dino, Desi & Billy covered it on our first album in '65. I chose it and sang the lead vocal - our Producer, Lee Hazlewood, was reluctant to explain what the lyric "Baby, baby come back / Maybe next week / 'Cause you see / I'm on a losing streak" meant - I was only 14 at the time and didn't get it ...

Stones fan for life,

Billy (DD&B)

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Nice one on the Stones, Bob --

Since rock concerts had been banned in my hometown of Boston, my first concert was the Beatles at Carnegie Hall (row M on the aisle for $7.50) in 1964. At the later of 2 performances we heard the band quite clearly – they were tight as a drum.

The Stones at the Academy of Music (2nd row balcony for $5) came about a year later. They were sloppy but fabulous, but played for only a half hour. I was so disappointed I insisted on complaining to the promoter. Turned out to be my first meeting with Sid Bernstein. Sid was very gracious and said "I'd like to help you, lad, but if Mick Jagger wants to play for only 30 minutes there's not much I can do."

4 years later I scalped 2 second row seats at Madison Square Garden for $18.50 each. My friends thought I overpaid.
Mick Taylor was brilliant – I think most of Side 2 on "Get Yer Yayas Out" was recorded that night, and he played a wonderful guitar break on "Midnight Rambler", so different from any Keith Richards solo. The crowd rushed the stage and overwhelmed the meager security staff, and when my wife and I stood up, fans from behind displaced us by standing on our seats. Compared to the well-behaved Carnegie Hall crowd, in1969 it seemed like a full blown riot. At times you couldn't disagree with their claim that they are (were) the greatest rock and roll band in the world.

Tom Werman

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I was there for there first gig at the Marquee club on July 12th 1962. This was a jazz club at the time, in London and it had started to introduce R and B. A successful group run by Cyril Davis, a fine blues harmonica player, gigged there frequently. On that night Cyril Davis and his band was offered a gig at the BBC, so Mick and the boys filled in. My school friend and I set in the front row, and I can still can remember, 58 years later, Mick and Brian. They were teenagers, but they had this attitude and it was 'we are playing for ourselves and we don't give a toss if you like us our not'. It was a great night of Chuck Berry numbers and American Blues.
Several months later, I had left school and got a job in advertising on the Kingsway in Central London. One afternoon my boss, a South African called David Diamond, came
back from lunch in a bad mood. He was a jazz purist and he had spent an hour or so with a jazz drummer friend of his trying to convince him not to join ' this ghastly rock and roll band'. I asked who his friend was and he told me it was Charlie Watts. I gives Charlie didn't listen.
Three months later at the same agency, we all noticed that there wasn't a female to be found in all 5 or 6 floors of the agency. After a while they all suddenly appeared flushed, and red faced. Turned out the Stones were recording in the agency basement at De Lane Lea studio.
One minor correction. They did wear mod type suits on stage for a while, but the media hounded them about their scruffy appearance off stage, so they decided to be the anti-( fill in band name-Beatles, Searchers, Dave Clark Five, Moodys etc).
Great memories,

Andrew Butcher

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I still vividly recall playing "Satisfaction" in my early Top 40 radio days and the emotional, unfiltered feedback that came back through the 'request lines' was amazing !

Bob Sherwood

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what a sweet piece, bob.

obviously, girlie action is named after one of the most misheard lyrics of all time... "i can't get no girl reaction." i always thought is was "girlie action."

i remember when i was trying to finalize the name of my new biz in 1993... i was walking down hudson st and leaning against someone's trash can was a framed ROCK DREAMS poster of The Stones in drag circa 1973. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/377317275001024457/.

i snatched that baby up and girlie action media was born. it has been hanging in my office ever since.

xo felice ecker

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Long time reader, 1st time emailer. Your story of getting off the subway @ the World's Fair and Satisfaction was blaring reminded me of this. I was on a bus trip to Washington DC with the Builders Club. One of the guys had a giant transistor radio sort of early Boom Box size and it was cranked the entire trip. Satisfaction was the Hit and when we lost a station and found another, it wasn't long before we heard Satisfaction again. We were in DC, The Rolling Stones were blaring on the radio and we were lost in it. Someone noticed we were entering Arlington National! We killed the radio out of respect but the irony of that in the mid 60's is still a strong memory today!

David Britton

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As a musical footnote to your post, the power of the intro is in the syncopated double riff. that not only comes from Keith's fuzz guitar (started on the 5th note of the scale)...... but from the tension of Bill Wyman's bass against it.

You could always tell when a band didn't really know the song, if they played the riff as bass and guitar in unison....from the E up.

Hiding in plain sight.

Steve Chrismar

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Then came the tsunami. Get Off My Cloud, As Tears Go By, 19th Nervous Breakdown, and THEN, Paint It Black! Kapow, I was forever fully hooked.

Les Garland

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When I was in high school our music teacher told us that the beat of Satisfaction runs opposite of your heart beat. He told us that this discordance has a tiring effect on you when you listened to the song. I have absolutely no clue if this was/is true but we kind of believed it and always schemed that we would somehow pipe the song into the locker rooms of our opponents for track meets or football games.

Ed Dilworth

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Came home from Jewish summer camp in '64 with enough bronchitis to keep me away from the Beatles' first concert in Toronto. To make it up to me my parents saw to it that I saw the Brian Jones' Stones three times before I turned 13. Thusly, I became a rabid Stones fan and eventually a critic. Yeah, Satisfaction was the game changer in the summer of '65 and it cemented a bad boy image that they traded pretty well on for fifty years!

However the desert island Stones set is Some Girls. Guys making that kind of noise in their 30s is what I call immortality. On another note, please check out Mick Jagger and Arcade Fire tearing up The Last Time on SNL a few years ago. Speaking of immortality.

Last, I took my daughter to see The Stones at Metlife last year. Well worth the schlep.

Thank you for bringing up the great memories.

Jonathan Gross

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Loved your piece on Satisfaction even the little reference to Trump. Anyone who hasn't listened to your Andrew Loog Oldham podcast would be well advised to if they want to know a little more about this song. And if I may be so presumptuous as to suggest if you want to see an example of what this song can do to an audience in the hands of Aretha I highly recommend checking out her 1968 concert in Amsterdam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvnyW71yJtM

Gary Cormier

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I am sure you will hear music experts dangling their reviews of Stones albums. The ultimate single was Satisfaction. i loved all of went before (because i am same age as you) but you encapsulated the essence of what it was to hear this song. it was everywhere and had a BIG impact, for me and others. I don't think Rolling Stones do justice to it live either. But they try. Stones sold me with Last Time and that compilation album in 1970. I saw them in concert in 1972 MSG and thought I had seen GODS. With Stevey Wonder? Forget it. It was incredible!
I saw them when talent went to outdoor stadiums and they still delivered! They will always be 'the greatest rock n roll band in the world' no doubt in my opinion!!

David Bodnar

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Great stuff here. Always loved Otis Redding's version. As a kid, I heard that version before I ever knew it was originally a Stones song.

Paul Cantor

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But what about Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man...... and I think one of the great songs is the young Mick singing Under the Boardwalk....... try it again if you haven't heard it in a while... Sky

Sky Bishop

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How many fuzz boxes did Satisfaction sell? I bought my first (from Lafayette Radio Electronics) so I could play Satisfaction.

Michael Alex

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At the 1969 shows at the Forum where the second set started after midnight it was Satisfaction at the end of the first set where everyone went crazy...only time I saw people jumping down to the floor from the second level

Jim McElwee
Menlo Park

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As ubiquitous as this song is, for me it's the '69 version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpWVkVtMUP8 - THAT band is on FIRE. Listen to what Mick Taylor and Keith are doing on the breaks? Where did that even COME FROM?

And then this, at the tail end of that run, in England: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPAiF_HyIkY - THIS is closer to what Keith probably had in mind…feels more like a Stax tune (the drums, anyway). Keith said the riff was just a place holder for a horn line. So cool.

Jesse Lundy

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Excellent piece Bob about my #1 favorite single—you really nailed their breakout moment here. And what a glorious moment it was!

Credit should also go to Jack Nitzsche, whose piano sits so crucially back in the track and makes the whole song roll along smoothly—

you can hear Jack's piano clearly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHcm4m225rk

And of course, big props to the great Andrew Loog Oldham, who drove the guys hard to write their own material and become a non-stop hit machine,

and without whom they might have foundered as primarily an r&b covers band.

all the best

Gary Lucas

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I remember my elementary school class in the 1970s was chosen to take part in a study being done by college students. They played "Satisfaction" on a turntable over and over while we did a writing assignment. The next day, they played no music and we did a similar writing assignment.
Of course no one followed up, so I don't know what became of the research, other than Keith's riff etched in my brain.
Years later, I find it remarkable the nuns allowed any Rolling Stones to be played in Our Lady of Angels elementary school. Maybe they didn't know the song in advance?

Mike Huber, Albany NY

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Satisfaction has always been the epicenter.
Bob Beru

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Black and Blue. Tattoo You. I would love to see both those albums live. But Satisfaction started me into the Stones. Never forgot it.

Todd Devonshire

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Complicated on Between the Buttons - one of the early greats! Love the organ

artgei

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Couldn't agree with you more about the impact of "Satisfaction" on the music and the culture, but especially on the fortunes of scruffy bar bands of the era. We were blessed with a plethora of danceable cover songs that everybody could sing along with and, as Dick Clark observed, dance to, and the Stones were only too happy to oblige.

I read an interview with Mick sometime after the dust had settled down on "Satisfaction" that he was personally pleased that he had managed to slip a questionable lyric by the censors:
"And I'm tryin' to make some girl, who tells me,
'Baby, better come back maybe next week.
Can't you see I'm on a losing streak?'"
Mothers all over Ohio would have been aghast to have read between those lines.

Larry Butler

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Good one. When I heard Satisfaction within weeks I took the train into the city went to Manny's on 48th Street and bought a cool red Maestro Fuzz Tone (wish I still had it). To this day my favorite Stones albums are the run from 12x5 thru Beggars Banquet. They were dangerous then.
Peter Roaman

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Satisfaction just may be the greatest rock n' roll song ever!
I've seen The Stones a dozen times... never were they able to relay
the "fuzz" from the record.....

Jeff Laufer

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satisfaction was a mainstay-crowd-pleasing-centerpiece-featured-set-piece for my '85 (i was 15) cover band.

moonlight mile is my all time favorite. strange, i know.
Gary W. Mendel

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Between the Buttons was, and still is, my favorite Stones album. Maybe it was because I was in a college band when it came out, and we played several of the tunes on the album - maybe because it was a significant break from what came before in the world of albums....maybe it's because the Stones played a concert on my college campus that year and I got to see Brian Jones with the band.....no matter the reason, it's a marker in time for me, and I think quite a few others.

R Lowenstein

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My first Stones record was indeed BIg Hits (High Tide and Green Grass), but I had heard Satisfaction on the radio when it first came out - had never heard anything like it. To this day, all these years later, I still turn up the radio anytime I hear "Satisfaction":. That riff absolutely mesmerizes me every time.

Tim Mays

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55 years after its release, I STILL turn up the volume when I hear that opening riff.

Gene Oberto
Stockholm, Sweden

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All true. And then Devo brilliantly deconstructed it, with their performance on Saturday Night Live (1978?) bringing the New Wave into the mainstream.

Tony Saunders

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But who was the first cover band to do Satisfaction? I believe it was my crappy high school band, The Missing Links, of Arlington, VA. We were all complete Stones fanatics and did all of their songs off the first 2 albums, which gave us about half of all the songs we played at gigs. At that time, most teens were just barely familiar with the Stones. We all wore black derby hats so kids would think we were English. One night the Stones played their current hit The Last Time on Ed Sullivan, and as the credits rolled by, they played their new song, Satisfaction, which I taped on my little reel to reel recorder. The band learned the song at our next rehearsal, and the following weekend we played it at a church dance. We said it was an original tune, since no one had heard it by then. And we played it 3 times, because of the kid's demand. So, that shows you it was destined to be a hit, and within another 2 weeks it was number 1 on local station WEAM.

Sterling Howard

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"It's hard to overstate the impact of "Satisfaction," technically known as "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," but this was when labels were wary buyers would not be able to find the record they desired."

I recall searching for a record called "Feelin Groovy" as a young boy at my local E.J. Korvette's in suburban Philadelphia. I bought a 45 with an A-side titled Groovin by the Rascals as it was the closest I could find and was convinced it had to be the song I was looking for.

Wrong! Literally, it was years later I learned "Feelin Groovy" was actually titled "The 59th Street Bridge Song" by Simon & Garfunkel. What the heck!?!

Both great songs though.

Andrew Paciocco

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I can't describe how it felt to hear it the first time, when I was 12 or 13, but you just did.
Larry Fisher

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Otis Redding opened his Ready Steady Go set with Satisfaction. He's fronting his road band: guitar, bass, drums, and six horns. Paul Lanning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT694IeA7Lc

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Good 'un, Bob. What a start to remember hearing it for the first time as I pressed Mennen stick into my pits in prep to see them in San Jose, early, 1965.
Thanks.

Dennis Brent

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Thank you.

Thank you for writing.

Thank you for such great music historical writing.

And thank you for writing about "Satisfaction."

I was 16 when "Satisfaction" hit, camping at the beach with my family for a month at Refugio State Park in Santa Barbara County. I have a vivid memory of tanning on a beach blanket, the sun so warm, watching friends surf, with "Satisfaction" blaring from our portable radio. It was the sound of the summer. It was the raw and passionate sound of the rebel in me - and in so many of my generation.

I am now 72, and still have that rebel fire in me (proud of it, too).

And I'm proud to say that I see that rebel fire in my grown daughters, in my two grandsons, and in the youth of today. Thank God!

I usually don't write you, but I just HAD to respond to your spot-on writing about "Satisfaction". I was there. I know. That song truly started an era.

B Ross

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There is no way for to adequately convey what the double negative (our high school English teacher hated it), puberty-making-self-aware, testosterone driven SATISFACTION meant to a 15 year old boy discovering he could self-satisfy himself with PLAYBOOK magazine stuffed under his pillow.

The song in a hot Pittsburgh summer roared through open car windows from AM KQV Radio and that year saw the scraggly Stones live at the old Civic Arena......but, you're right, didn't sound the same live...that DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN....just didn't sound the same live that first time in '65....nor really anytime of the dozen or so times I heard it again in person.

No song ever defined a time, a place and a band.

Tom Rooney

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My dad was in charge of public relations and special events at BMI for many years and was on the list for promo copies of the latest releases from many labels from the '50s through the '80s. I remember when he brought the Satisfaction album home in the summer of 1965. I immediately became a Stones over the Beatles advocate for the very reasons you outlined.

Fast forward to 1987 when I was at BMI myself and assigned to dealing with Allen Klein regarding the ABKCO publishing catalog. We hit it off well and he invited me to go to a Knicks game with him. When I got in his limo, he was with his longtime associate Iris Keitel whom I already knew from our meetings, and introduced me to Andrew Loog Oldham. I tried to hide my excitement as we at BMI were trained to do, but couldn't help effusing over the Satisfaction album.

After dinner Allen's limo descended down the Garden's bus and truck ramp to the backstage area. We got out, walked 20 feet, and pulled a curtain that opened to an entrance on the Garden floor directly behind the Knick's bench. The team was finishing its shoot-around just before tip-off. We were led to four empty folding chairs immediately behind the Knicks bench where we could almost hear the conversation between coaches and players.

Sometime during the first quarter I asked Allen how he got the seats. He replied that he'd tell me at the right time. When the horn sounded, the public address system blared Keith's opening riffs from Satisfaction sending the packed Garden into wild cheers. Allen smiled and replied to my question, "That's how." He explained that he had seats further up until he called and told a Garden official that they didn't have a license. I wondered if Keith and Mick ever got to use the seats but didn't ask.

For the next 20 years or so until Allen died, whenever I watched a Knicks game on TV, which was as often as possible, I looked to see if he was there. After he died in 2009, the seats disappeared. But they still played Satisfaction.

Rick Sanjek
Nashville

______________________________________

Thanks, Bob. I am a person who thinks that Satisfaction is the best rock 'n' roll song ever. There is competition, but that's the one. One of the reasons I went to see the Stones in 2019 was I wanted to hear a 77 year old Mick Jagger sing Satisfaction and Keith, Ronnie, Charlie, and Darryl play it. If I recall correctly, they did it as the last song and it rocked. No, they weren't the Stones of 1969, 1972, 1981, or any other year, but they were still the Rolling Stones. I watched Keith as they played it and realized that this might be the last time I ever hear them, some of my rock and roll anti heroes, play this. Many memories of them and this song and all the years I've heard them live, on video, on the radio, mix tapes, covers etc. All the words I've read about them and ways I and everyone else have thought about them from Stanley Booth to Chet Flippo to Jann Wenner to Martin Scorsese. It was much more emotional than I was expecting. And when that solo came out, Keith, who was not having the best night (not a bad one, but he wasn't as on as I've seen him) ripped a fucking great solo that I still remember now. There were no pyrotechnics nor theatrics. It had that perfect mix of feel, tone, rhythm, and mystique that he, the band, and all transcendent rock and roll has. He finished it up and I could not help but yell at the top of my lungs. I have chills thinking of it now. If that is the last time I see them live, that is the best way for them to bow out to me. Man...

And if you have not seen it, find the ode to Mick Jagger that Todd Snider wrote a couple years ago.

David Kunian
New Orleans

______________________________________

Christ, that was an exciting read.

From a guy in a generation who'll never quite know the feeling. Makes you wonder...

All the best,
Sid Glover

______________________________________

Interesting... I hate the song and love the stones... but knowing the lyrics and reading the lyrics kind of changes my mind!

Brian Lukow

______________________________________

Yessir. Yessirree.

Hugo Burnham

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Tom Werman-This Week's Podcast

Tom Werman produced hit albums for Cheap Trick, Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, Molly Hatchet, Ted Nugent and Poison and then chucked it all to run a B&B in the Berkshires! Listen to hear how Tom lived up to his parents' expectations, even getting an MBA, before jumping ship for CBS Records and a legendary career in music.

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tom-werman/id1316200737?i=1000501202597

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6mEl2QKBeV0Vp2SKvbacrk?si=fJHv18QERuitlkBsbhcMmw

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/The-Bob-Lefsetz-Podcast

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast

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Wednesday, 2 December 2020

Satisfaction

It's hard to overstate the impact of "Satisfaction," technically known as "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," but this was when labels were wary buyers would not be able to find the record they desired.

The British Invasion started with the Beatles, and the acts that followed in their footsteps...some were dark in image, the records could have an undercurrent of danger, but they were all shy of the line, "Satisfaction" crossed it.

Many claim "Between the Buttons" deserves to be seen as an entire LP, of a piece, but the truth is the Rolling Stones did not truly begin their album run until "Beggars Banquet," although they tried with its predecessor, the unjustly maligned "Their Satanic Majesties Request." "Beggars Banquet" got stellar reviews, and was aided by the initial and definitive version of "Sympathy for the Devil," as well as the legendary mostly in hindsight, but with less than universal impact "Street Fighting Man." "Let it Bleed" turned the dial up to ten, it's a definitive statement, the Stones have been touring on its nuggets ever since. But the Stones didn't truly become a legendary album band until "Sticky Fingers," "Brown Sugar" was ubiquitous and the album was a staple, in an era where it was about the collection as opposed to the single, but before this run...the band's singles ruled. Sure, there were people who owned Stones albums, but you did not readily see them at your friends' houses.

The Stones started in the U.S. with "Not Fade Away." Unlike the Beatles, they didn't wear suits, they were not lovable, but scruffy, and they didn't write their initial singles, not that "Not Fade Away" was a hit in the States, it only reached #48 on the "Billboard" chart, which means it got far less than universal airplay. But then came the original "Tell Me," a ballad, with dark undertones, that was anything but dangerous, other than in its underlying sexual tension. But "Tell Me" only made it to #24.

Then there was another cover, of Bobby Womack's "It's All Over Now," only possibly superseded as the definitive version by Rod Stewart's take on "Gasoline Alley." "It's All Over Now" made it to #26, which was very good for a cover. But the Stones didn't hit the Top Ten until they covered the Ragavoy/Norman song "Time is On My Side," and it soon superseded the Irma Thomas's version to become the definitive rendition in the mind of the audience, the song is forever associated with the Stones.

The Stones wrote their next successful cut, "Heart of Stone," but this too was a ballad, most people were unaware of the explosive energy of the band, but then came "The Last Time" with Brian Jones's indelible riff. At this time we all had guitars, and this was easy to play, and we all did, the sound was ethereal, and dark, but with a ray of hope if you were a fan, Stones fans were outsiders, not like the insiders in the Beatles camp...and then came "Satisfaction."

The Stones were part of the firmament, they were not one or two hit wonders like so many of the acts, be it from the U.K. or U.S., but they were still a sideshow, they weren't the main event, never mind not being anointed the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band.

"Satisfaction" was made for the radio, back when people did not buy albums previously unheard, when the airwaves were the primary method of exposure, and we were all addicted, it was akin to sports, we followed the countdown, the younger generation, our generation, had taken over the radio from our predecessors, we'd squeezed out all the antiques, and it started with the Beatles but we were not prepared for "Satisfaction."

It was the riff. We were aware of distortion from "I Feel Fine," but the sound of this guitar was beyond that, it was like a spike in your eye, unfiltered, the Stones were no longer holding back, they were being themselves, no holds barred...AND WE LOVED IT!

And, this was in an era when if something was a hit, it was played incessantly, and there was no way you could sit quietly when it came over the radio, you were squirming in your seat, you were pounding the dashboard, "Satisfaction" was a drug we were all instantly hooked on, and we were never going back to our safe, ignorant ways, as a matter of fact, without "Satisfaction" you get no Hendrix, no Cream, none of the album acts that emerged in the latter part of the decade who operated without limits, unafraid of blowback by the arbiters of yore.

Keith Richards, occasionally labeled "Richard" at the time, says the riff came to him in a dream, and the truth is your best creative work is done when you're not paying attention, when you're not working, when your mind is elsewhere, asleep, in the shower, when your mind is a blank slate and ideas can penetrate and percolate.

The truth is I've never heard Keith play this riff properly live. The last tour it was closest, but the truth is it's more than the sound, it's the rhythm, it's just not a run of notes, there's the sustain in the middle, the swing, that was the key to the track, that's what was embedded in your brain, that's what you needed to hear like a junkie needs his dope, it was distorted yet pure, it bended both body and brain.

And then came Mick.

At this point we did not know he went to the London School of Economics, this was long before he hung with the glitterati, prior to this point he was just another singer, who was not classically beautiful, and this was before he danced like a ballerina on stage, he'd hold on to the mic and spit the lyrics and even if you were on his side you were on guard, because he really MEANT IT!

"I can't get no satisfaction"

This was revolutionary, this was the essence of the youthquake, we were not satisfied, we'd been told to obey since birth but we weren't taking it anymore, WE WANTED MORE!

And we had disposable time and disposable income, we could contemplate whether we were having a good time, and that's what we wanted. We were trying, and trying and trying.

"When I'm driving in my car
And a man comes on the radio
He's telling me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination"

They weren't buying it. I hate to say it, but it's kind of like Trump, the Stones and the generation they lifted into the future didn't care about norms, they were speaking English, and we all knew the truth. Polite society...you hold back, you behave a certain way, and even though everyday discourse is more base today, the truth is as you climb the social ladder you conform, it's one of the things I hate about the modern music business, the wearing of suits by executives, the Stones PAVED THE WAY FOR US NOT TO WEAR SUITS! Sure, the Beatles opened the door, but the Stones came out with dynamite to blow the entire edifice to high heaven, so we could start over, doing it the way we wanted to.

"When I'm watching my TV
And a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
Well he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me"

TV was the internet of its day. Our parents labeled it the "Idiot Box," but we were addicted. We'd gone from the "Mickey Mouse Club" to "Bonanza," from black and white to color, to developing sexuality, and it was all powered by commercials in an era before clickers, i.e. remotes. And now the Stones were biting the hand that fed them, the whole enterprise was based on commercials, not only TV, but radio, newspapers too, kind of like we pay for the internet through our information fed to cookies today, and we hate that too.

"When I'm riding 'round the world
And I'm doing this and I'm signing that
And I'm trying to make some girl
Who tells me baby, baby come back, maybe next week
'Cause you see I'm on a losing streak"

This was when they were inventing the rock star paradigm, musicians who lived without rules, who were as rich as anybody in the world and behaved however they wanted to, carousing all over the world getting laid all the while. WHEW!

Sure, the pill started the sexual revolution. But the truth is everybody wanted to model their lives on the rock stars, they wanted that experience, which is why they flooded concert venues, which is why so much mazuma was being generated.

But even if you had it all, you still couldn't be satisfied. Despite being a rock star, Jagger couldn't get laid, at least by the person he desired. As David Lee Roth ultimately said, being a rock star means you can get laid every night, but not necessarily by the person you want to get laid by.

Meanwhile, it's summer. Most people were not working, they were not old enough, they were addicted to the radio. And unlike today, with boomers trying to hold on to control, our elders, the so-called "Greatest Generation," not that I buy that, threw their arms up in the air and surrendered. I'm not saying they did not try to exert any influence, tell girls to wear their skirts over the knee, boys hair above the ears, but the truth was once you walked out the front door you could do what you wanted to.

And this was when a hit was a hit. Not like today, when half of America is unaware of #1, never mind having not even heard it. Everybody knew "Satisfaction," because the entire younger generation was addicted to the radio and since the baby boomers represented the largest bulge of the population their music, this revolutionary music, was blasted from public address systems, speakers everywhere, I remember getting off the monorail at the New York World's Fair just before midnight and hearing "Satisfaction" over the sound system, and with so few people around at that time, it was the soundtrack of the entire fairgrounds.

And with this giant success under their belts, the Stones continued to push the envelope. Next came "Get Off of My Cloud," with a similar message as "Satisfaction," but delivered even more self-satisfiedly.

And then the band was truly on a roll, there was no governor on the engine, there was "19th Nervous Breakdown," "Paint It Black," "Mother's Little Helper," "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?," "Let's Spend the Night Together" and two hit ballads for leavening, "As Tears Go By" and "Ruby Tuesday," enough hits that the Stones could fill out a greatest hits album, entitled "Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)," which was the first Stones album most people bought, but listening indoctrinated you, such that you were ready for the album run to come.

At this point, "Satisfaction" is almost seen as a parody, quaint, but it was anything but that back then, "Satisfaction" was a statement, a line in the sand, both musically and culturally, it was now our world, we were adults, we were getting drafted and shot, we no longer obeyed authority, we divined our own truth, we were looking for our own satisfaction.

To the point so many of us refused to jump through the hoops. We didn't want dreary jobs, a paint-by-numbers future, we wanted to investigate, we wanted to experiment, we wanted to find ourselves. We were set free...to say we wanted different, we wanted more, and we were not gonna take less, we were always, continually, looking for SATISFACTION!

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Tuesday, 1 December 2020

Gallows Pole

I bought "Led Zeppelin III" the day it came out. I overpaid for it, by a dollar, when a dollar used to be a dollar, at the Vermont Bookshop in downtown Middlebury, I trudged up the hill and broke the shrink-wrap, put the vinyl on the turntable and dropped the needle.

Of course, you can't mention "Led Zeppelin III" without talking about the cover. Sure, there was the rotating wheel inside of it, but also there was a brass rivet holding it all together and that brass rivet dug into all the other copies of "Led Zeppelin III" in the bin, leaving an impression, and it did so in my record collection, as did the zipper from "Sticky Fingers," so I placed a cardboard spacer between these records and my others to prevent future damage.

Talk about OCD.

It had been a complete year since "Led Zeppelin II," one in which so many acts broke, when the radio was overflowing with music, such that when "Led Zeppelin III" was released people weren't salivating in anticipation, waiting with bated breath, then again, maybe I couldn't accurately take the temperature of the collective mind, I was residing in the middle of nowhere, in Vermont.

Where I couldn't quite relate to the people.

You go to college, you're thrown in with a whole new group, you do your best to make friends, but you wonder...are those you left behind closer to your identity/mentality? After all, I grew up fifty miles from New York City, many of the Middlebury students went to prep schools, which were their own little environments, detached from reality, or students were from the hinterlands, music meant something to nearly everybody, but not as much as it did to me, I needed "Led Zeppelin III" to root me, to connect me to who I once was, in the maelstrom, where I belonged.

I'd seen the band in August, at the Yale Bowl, it was raining, but the show went on, but not forever. They began with "The Immigrant Song," when the sound was not perfect, when the song was new to the ears of the assembled multitude, and from there they seemed to punch the clock. It was kind of a letdown. I hate to tell you this, but bands usually save their best efforts for the metropoli, like New York and Los Angeles, when everybody is paying attention, when the press is in attendance, when their entire tour will be judged by this one performance. Used to be bands saved New York and L.A. for last, when they got the bugs ironed out, when their chops were up, but in the era of modern day tour routing oftentimes they begin in one of these two burgs and that's always a mistake, but if you want to see the band at its best go see them where it matters, especially today, when bands get overall touring deals and go on endless slogs of over a hundred dates, sure they're well paid, but can you imagine doing gig two or six and seeing an endless road of dates in front of you, how do you do it, it's disheartening, in the old days this was not the case, there were endless one-nighters, but you had to go back to the studio to cut another LP, and before the Police went everywhere almost nobody did, you toured America and England and maybe did a few dates on the continent, but most American acts left Europe on the table, because it was hard to emerge with a profit.

So, the first track I heard on "Led Zeppelin III" was "Immigrant Song." I loved the line about the land of the ice and snow, but this was not "Whole Lotta Love," this was not a monster that would dominate the airwaves instantly. And then the album turned into "Led Zeppelin III," the album derided at the time and now embraced, because it was a left turn, into folk and experimentation, not obvious like what had come before. To tell you the truth, the folky song I liked first was "Tangerine," the descending chord pattern, the picking, it was like a walk in the countryside, yet with more than a pinch of darkness, yet the chorus added a bit of optimism so you didn't get completely bummed out. But that intro, that first verse, listening now it reminds me exactly of that first college semester, being off-kilter, studying hard, since all my high school teachers had said "wait until you get to college," and interacting with others but wondering where my place was, this was long before I realized I never belonged there, that almost no one had relationships, since we were all in such tight quarters, because there were more grinds than hipsters, and the hipsters advertised their self-professed identity, wearing overalls, akin to farmers, and then everybody on campus embraced the look and I was never born to follow, I believed in going my own way, I was brought up to question authority, but this was not the educational institution of the suburbs, this was rigid, the professors demanded respect, and unfortunately it was hard to give it to most of them, they were too self-impressed.

And now you know why the intro to "Tangerine" resonated so, I could slip through the curtain and marinate in the sound, feel I belonged somewhere.

And I played "Led Zeppelin III" over and over again, I know every lick by heart, but mostly it didn't satisfy, it was a bit of a dud, back when you could still say that, before poptimism, when you must laud everything by an artist, everything on the charts, otherwise you're not only a naysayer, but an ignorant naysayer. Let's take "Friends" for example... It sounded like it was cut in Eastern Europe, that the boys had gone on an hejira to the hinterlands and they wanted to express the feeling they experienced, and it might sound good lying on your bed, listening on headphones, maybe stoned, but this was not the celebration of "Led Zeppelin II," all comers were not embraced.

But "Gallows Pole"... That was the one track that stood out, that captured the essence of what had come before, even if it was essentially a cover.

It started with the pregnant poignant acoustic guitar intro. As if you were on a midnight ride, evading Jack the Ripper.

"Hangman, hangman"

This was the Robert Plant of 1970, not the Robert Plant of today, Jimmy was the leader, the dark force, but Robert was the singer, with his shirt open to the navel and the long blond ringlets, from the country, not London...talk about locking up your daughters. Today Robert Plant is seen as soft, an international treasure, he's hiding in plain sight, he's not Jimmy Page locked up in a castle with Aleister Crowley.

"What did you bring me my dear friends
To keep me from the gallows pole"

The onus was on us, the listeners, what could we bring to Robert to save him from hanging. Yes, Led Zeppelin were pied pipers, in their own space, there was not a similar band, on "Led Zeppelin III" they were not playing to casual acolytes, but true believers, what did we have to offer?

"I couldn't get no silver, I couldn't get no gold
You know that we're too damn poor to keep you from the gallows pole"

Most of our English musician heroes had come from nothing, this was not America, where you could depend on Mommy & Daddy, where you watched the NFL on your color television, in the U.K. you were flying by your wits, wide awake.

And now Robert and the band are on the horse, you can feel the tension, they're trying to escape the noose, Robert's mind is racing. You know, when everything is at stake, when you're contacting everyone you know, wanting someone to SAVE YOU! You've exhausted all of your own personal powers, you're caught, your back is against the wall, and someone might save a damsel in distress, but a long-haired rocker?

And now it's pure rock and roll. They've torn the roof off that sucker, even though you get the impression they're out on the tiles, but there are no longer any limits, Robert is screaming, he can see his fate right before his eyes, his demise is imminent, his voice is rising, it's almost like he's crying WHO IS GONNA SAVE ME!

And then I dropped the needle and heard it all over again. Because I wanted to hear it, but I also needed to learn it on the guitar. Sure, by this point a lot of people had given up, after picking up axes after seeing the Beatles, but then there were professionals, and then there were the rest of us, that's how we got closer to the music, by learning it, so I sat by the turntable, dropping the needle again and again, figuring out the key, the chords, and ultimately getting to the point where I could jam through this number and feel good, even though nobody else in my dorm owned "Gallows Pole."

Now we all know Led Zeppelin returned to dominate the charts with "Stairway to Heaven" and the rest of "ZOSO" or "IV," whatever you want to call it, killed, fired on all cylinders, "Black Dog" and "Rock and Roll" hit the notes that "The Immigrant Song" just could not, and "Battle of Evermore" was superior to all the acoustic stuff on "III," as was "Going to California," and the reworked cover, "When the Levee Breaks," finished the LP as if you were the mole being whacked over the head, it was so heavy, nothing else mattered, Zeppelin dominated your mind and the airwaves. And people forgot about "Led Zeppelin III."

And, to be honest, to a great degree so did I, I knew it, but I rarely played it. I'd been there, done that, back when you could only afford one album at a time and played it to death and waited to scrounge up enough money to buy a new LP.

And when I listen to "Gallows Pole" now, I'm brought back to the fall of freshman year, it captures my mood, my environment so well. I might have been off-kilter, but I was game, I was not giving up, I retained my identity, and ultimately I escaped Middlebury College without my neck in a noose, but barely...

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Your Desert Island Act-SiriusXM This Week

You can only take the work of one act to the desert island.

This idea was e-mailed to me by reader/listener Steve Langford, here's what he had to say:

You're going to a desert island alone for 1 year. The only music you can listen to (and there is no TV or internet) is the artist you choose. If you choose a band you don't get their solo stuff. If you choose Paul McCartney you don't get his Beatle stuff.

Tune in today, December 1st, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive

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Monday, 30 November 2020

All The Nasties

https://spoti.fi/3mozEGU

1

I have a scratch in my copy of "Tiny Dancer." Which was never a hit. Cameron Crowe shot "Tiny Dancer" into the stratosphere with that scene in "Almost Famous," but you've got to know, if you wanted to hear "Tiny Dancer" back then you'd better have purchased the album, "Madman Across the Water," which was seen as somewhat of a stiff, as it didn't contain an AM radio smash, as a matter of fact many people were overloaded on Elton, with four LPs in a year, they didn't want him to succeed, they thought he was overexposed, but then he had his comeback hit, "Rocket Man," in the spring of '72, from "Honky Chateau," and then it was an endless streak of successes, one of the greatest runs ever, up there with those of Stevie Wonder and the Beatles, he didn't release a stiff until '76's "Blue Moves," and starting with "Honky Chateau" that's six albums in a row, before "Blue Moves," all containing tracks that are embedded in the culture.

Okay, everything's relative, "Madman Across the Water" was not a disaster, but at that point to get into the economic/mindshare stratosphere you needed to cross over to AM, like Neil Young with "Harvest" in early '72, otherwise you were just another album act, putting out records, sustained by the road. But, despite Elton's pooh-poohing it, saying it was just a blip on the radar screen, his coming out as bisexual did ultimately hurt sales of "Blue Moves," it did not live up to the prior double album, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," artistically or commercially.

But this is about "Madman Across the Water.

But you can't tell this tale without mentioning what came before. Not "Empty Sky," no one in America had it, no one knew it, I ultimately bought it on import, but the American debut, the eponymous "Elton John." Sure, today the story is all about the Troubadour shows, and if you were an insider, a rabid fan, you knew about them from the rock press, but it was "Your Song" that instantly put Elton on the map. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who needed to change their sound to cross over to AM radio, Elton was built to straddle AM and FM, which is one of the reasons he became so gigantic, as for "Your Song"...you only had to hear it once to get it, if only today's acts had such chops. But "Your Song" was never my favorite cut on the LP, which is the album I play most these days, for decades now, because of the sound, it's dark, it's just for you. And I'll tell you the track that reached me first, that I could not get out of my head, that I had to play every day after coming back from skiing, and that's "Take Me to the Pilot." Elton was spitting the lyrics, he was truly rocking, he grabbed you by the throat immediately. And then came that pre-chorus and ultimately the chorus itself, which you could not help but sing along with. This is rock and roll, because it squeezes out every other thought when you listen to it, and Elton's piano flourishes between the verses, and the strings...positively MAGICAL! And the other hit from "Elton John" was "Border Song," but once again it was not the one I preferred on the second side, it could never adequately follow "Sixty Years On."

"Who'll walk me down to church when I'm sixty years of age"

When I first heard this I was eighteen. Sixty was way off. But now I'm past it, Elton too. And I hope you have a great stereo, or great headphones, so you can listen to "Sixty Years On" in high quality, to hear the strings, this is why we bought big rigs, component stereos, to get closer to the music.

And at this point "Sixty Years On" is my favorite cut on the LP, but it used to be the closer, "The King Must Die."

"And sooner or later
Everybody's kingdom must end"

If you're my age in the music business, you're running it, you're the head of the label, a bigwig at the touring company, otherwise you're out. But you'd be surprised who is out, in many cases still alive, they were giants, we hung on their every word, they were starmakers. But those days are through, there's not a single act in the charts today who is anywhere near as big as Elton was, he was worldwide famous, everybody knew him and his music.

But back in '71, when Elton was dominating, the album that got all the press, that I thought was the best, was "Tumbleweed Connection." And my favorite track at the time opened the second side and no one ever talks about it, "Where to Now St. Peter?" Elton took that blue canoe and floated downstream like a leaf and you were another leaf beside him in the water, just the two of you, it was so enchanting.

The other killer was the second cut on side two, "Come Down in Time," which people talk about today, but it took decades for people to recognize how great it was, kind of like Brian Wilson/The Beach Boys' "'Til I Die." But the most famous songs were the long ones, especially the two ending each side, "My Father's Gun" and "Burn Down the Mission," however I can't leave out "Amoreena," and can I be sacrilegious here and admit I prefer Rod Stewart's version of "Country Comfort"? Then again I heard it first. And no, I don't prefer Spooky Tooth's version of "Son of Your Father."

Then came "11/17/70." This was long before the release of radio shows was de rigueur. Actually, it never really was. Music was scarce back then, acts dribbled their tunes out, it wasn't until Napster that all those live radio shows really surfaced. And what made "11-17-70" was the energy, the sound put out by this three piece band. Now the version in circulation today has bonus cuts, but on the initial release the keepers were the new, unknown cuts, "Bad Side of the Moon" and "Can I Put You On," the latter of which is my favorite from the LP, actually one of my favorite Elton John cuts, that to this day most people still don't know.

"I work for the foundry for a penny and a half a day
Like a blind street musician I never see those who pay
It's dirty work in Birmingham
Better deal for a Sheffield man
If he can rivet then his kids can buy
Candy from the candy man"

It was so PERSONAL! It was an aural movie, you could see the images in your mind, and this was just for dedicated listeners, not everybody, but the definitive version was on Elton John's fourth album in less than a year, the soundtrack to the movie "Friends."

"I hope the day will be a lighter highway
For friends are found on every road"

"Friends" is one of the best tracks Elton John has ever recorded, but it was not a hit, and most people didn't hear it...most people still have not heard it. Actually, I had a scratch in "Friends" too, that was the problem with the turntables of yore, they had arms to steady a stack of records, and I never used it, but still, removing the LP occasionally the edge of the record, the opening cut, would get caught on the edge of the arm and you'd end up with a scratch. And I OCD'ed over that for decades, on my copy of "Friends" the track actually skipped, whereas on "Tiny Dancer" there was just a pop every time the vinyl circled, but finally in the CD era "Friends" was released as part of a boxed set.

"Elton John" was released in April of 1970, but the truth is no one really heard it until October of that year. And just when everybody became conscious of Elton, he put out "Tumbleweed Connection" at the end of October of that same year. And finally, in March of 1971, both "11-17-70" and "Friends"...and now you know why some people were burned out on him

2

But then came "Madman Across the Water." Which was released at the beginning of November 1971.

There's nothing like breaking the shrinkwrap and dropping the needle on an unheard record. I bought "Hotel California" on the day it was released, do you know what an experience it was dropping the needle on my new Technics SL1300 and hearing the music emanating from the JBL L100's? It was godhead, it was a private experience, I needed to tell everybody about it. Same deal with McCartney's "Band on the Run." And "Tiny Dancer," I loved it from the very first note, and it was a long number not obviously made for the radio, but for fans, you could feel Elton and Bernie reaching for the brass ring, trying to lift their work one step higher.

But it was the second side I preferred at first. I liked "Razor Face" better than "Levon," the cut that was played on the radio if any was at all, and the title track closer of the first side was melancholy but...it was "Indian Sunset," the opening cut on side two, that truly resonated, maybe because I'd heard Elton play it at Carnegie Hall the previous spring, before it was released. "Indian Sunset" has the feel of "Sixty Years On," it's haunting.

But then the record switches gears completely, into "Holiday Inn," which has the swing of "Take Me to the Pilot," albeit slower and less bombastic.

And after that came "Rotten Peaches," another magical cut.

The second side closer was "Goodbye," almost an afterthought, barely exceeding a minute, but what came before was...ALL THE NASTIES!

"If it came to pass
That they should ask
What could I tell them"

Elton's vocal is exquisite, it's hard to believe someone has a voice this pure, it's positively angelic and then...all of a sudden they throw in everything, including the kitchen sink, and then there's a retreat to the quiet of Elton and his piano.

"All the Nasties" is really the final cut on "Madman Across the Water." And I'd never heard anything like it other than "Tea for the Tillerman," the title number, the closing track of the album, just over a minute long, which starts off with just Cat and his piano and then...he too throws in the kitchen sink, the assembled multitude is singing and the effect is so joyous you want it to continue...but it doesn't.

Elton just released "Jewel Box," a collection of demos and unreleased tracks, and as I scanned the song listing what intrigued me, what I had to hear first, were the demos from "Tumbleweed Connection." They're shocking, so good, they could have been released by themselves back in the heyday. But then there are two demos from "Madman Across the Water," the title track and...ALL THE NASTIES??

It was like coming across an unexpected piece of gold. Of all the cuts to include there's a personal favorite, a track it seems only I know??

"If it came to pass
That they should ask
What could I tell them"

It's the same, yet different. You truly feel you're in the room with Elton, maybe with your elbow on the piano. It's completely different from today's music, it's rich, it's made to be heard in pristine fashion, it's anything but a throwaway, it's the essence of what attracted us to Elton, to music, back in the early seventies.

Today they do it with tricks, auto-tune, hard drives, but it used to be you had to be able to do it all by your lonesome to even get a deal, never mind make it. There was no lip-synching in concert. This is truly Elton John's voice, you can only bow down and pay fealty.

We used to want to know how these records were made, to be in the studio, a fly on the wall, would be a wet dream, truly, it would be an explosion of inner goodness, the nougat inside the chocolate, something you looked forward to that was even better than your preconception. You have that experience listening to the demo of "All The Nasties."

3

"Oh, my soul
Oh, my soul
Oh, my soul
Oh, my soul"

That's what music does, touch souls. When it's done right. And nothing can touch souls as much as wooden music, real people playing and singing, the humanity shines through.

"But I know the way
They want me"

They wanted us a certain way, they wanted us to be doctors and lawyers, professionals, but we couldn't do that, because we'd heard this music.

It's hard to jump the rails of your parents' expectations. I even went to law school. But I never wanted to practice law, it didn't interest me whatsoever, what I needed was to get closer to this music.

Forget the badge of honor of going to a show, back then there was no internet to publicize your attendance, and oftentimes people had no idea who the acts were that I went to see.

But in music you could be accepted. You'd be at the show, sitting in your seat, because back then all venues had seats, and you sat, except maybe for the encore, and you'd turn your head and look at the person next to you and you'd be singing the lyrics and they'd be singing the lyrics and you felt like you...

Belonged.

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