And you thought corporations and money held all the power.
For far too long in America we've been told that the rich are knowledgeable and powerful and our only hope is to try and imitate them in their capitalistic ways.
This came along with income inequality. To anyone who lived through the sixties...today's landscape is incomprehensible. The sixties philosophy was love your brother, today's philosophy is pee on your brother. Yes, Reagan legitimized greed and ever since people have gone for it. One of the worst examples is musicians. Musicians used to be considered artists, who spoke truth to power, who weren't in it for the money, but to make a statement. Turns out anybody with intellect today avoids the arts, because it's no better than a casino, and enters the business world, to our national cultural detriment. All we've got is money-grubbers, just the way the rich like it. Come on, the goal in music is to sell out! To get endorsement deals, to play privates... Standing up to these people? That's unfathomable, everybody wants to be these people, when the truth is you just can't make that kind of money in music, but you do have a lot of power, if you choose to exercise it.
In case Navalny is off your radar, he was a dissident poisoned by Putin who was treated in Germany, but then returned to Russia. Talk about balls! Americans are all about excuses...someone else did it, it's not my fault, let me off the hook. There's little personal responsibility. Everybody lies, everybody cheats, so why not me? Our values are screwed up. As for religious institutions... The preachers live lavish lifestyles and are caught breaking the law and in addition, these "believers" want to dominate choice as a result of their religion, and not only biologically. Betsy DeVos was all about religious schools. But where are the underlying values of the Bible that everybody says they read, that they quote all the time, turns out the religious too often hate instead of love.
And if you've got no money, you're seen as irrelevant. But this is patently wrong. Never underestimate the power of one.
This used to be the American spirit, its mantra, the rugged individual, the unrestrained cowboy who does it his way. You don't see that here anymore. As for those bubbling up online...they're all mercenaries, trying to sell, sell, sell...message is either nonexistent or vacant.
So, yesterday in court Navalny made his statement. The "New York Times" printed it in full in the Op-Ed pages, and you have to read it:
"Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants - It's the duty of every person to defy you'": https://nyti.ms/2YJH6Ca
But since it's in the "New York Times," at least half the country won't read it, even though it's just Navalny's words, with no edits. Why does the right hate the "Times" so much? BECAUSE IT PRINTS THE TRUTH AND TRIES ITS HARDEST TO BE UNBIASED!
There, I said it. Is the "New York Times" flawed? Absolutely. But we're all flawed. Do you see Fox apologizing when it gets it wrong? No way! But the "Times" does this on a regular basis. And forget opinion, when it comes to the news there's no better outlet.
But the right doesn't want the truth. It's the right that has truly brainwashed its constituents, to vote against their own interests, to hate truth, to believe that Trump won the presidency.
Did you catch today's Fox story?
"Voting technology company Smartmatic files $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell over 'disinformation campaign'": https://cnn.it/2MqTogx
You won't find this story on Fox News, it doesn't appear, I just checked. The "Times" gets sued and prints it, but the "fair and balanced" (a term no longer used for obvious reasons) outlet does not.
Smartmatic is hitting them where it hurts, the pocket book. And Smartmatic's case is nearly lock tight. After all, when threatened Fox corrected its false news, but the message didn't get through and Smartmatic was hurt.
But Smartmatic is not only interested in compensation, it wants to make a point. This is how you fight in today's world, you get the enemy on the front page, you hash out the issues!
Now Putin's approval rating is at an all time low, it has shrunk from 36% to 20% in a year. And it appears the screw is now turning, that Putin is on the run:
"Aleksei Navalny Is Resisting Putin, and Winning - The opposition leader was sentenced to prison, but he has mobilized a vast movement that's not done growing": https://nyti.ms/3oJ2Rgc
This is not a big enough story in America. Because most people haven't been anywhere and don't care about the rest of the world, to their detriment. And Trump never criticized Putin, he lauded Putin!
To tell you the truth, I've been able to relax a bit, it's back to business as usual a bit, I'm not thinking about the news all the damn time. Biden and his team are competent and they're taking swift action in the right direction, he's trying to turn the ship around, even better than anybody could have hoped for.
First and foremost Biden has jettisoned the conciliatory policy of the Obama era. This is why I'm not 100% positive on St. Obama. Afraid of pissing someone off, Obama constantly tried to appease the right, which constantly stonewalled. Everybody knew it, but he kept on trying. Biden and his team are not doing this. They've got the votes, as Obama had for his first two years, and they're taking no prisoners. You don't play to un-American nincompoops who are trying to destroy this country.
Yes, pay attention, Republicans are trying right now to make voting harder. Like Trump said, if everybody votes the Republicans can't win.
But Biden is not enough. America needs to be remade.
Let's start with the election process itself, the ridiculous Electoral College. Or the Senate, where North Dakota gets as many seats as California. The right keeps clinging to the Constitution that the framers would even agree was and certainly is imperfect.
But we've got no one leading the charge. And we're constantly told to get inside the system if we want change, but sometimes the system itself needs to be changed. As for the Democrats...too many of its constituents are told to be quiet, that compromise is key, when they are starving and their economic opportunities are low.
We need Mr. Smith in Washington. But we haven't had that spirit here since 1969! Truly!
And while Navalny is fighting for freedom in Russia, Trump and his cronies are fighting for fascism in America. If that does not spin your head, I don't know what will. At this late date I still have people e-mailing me that the election was stolen, that Trump really won. And they quote discredited information, but in their bubble it's put forth as true!
But screw politics. There's a bigger issue at work here.
The power of one.
One person can make a difference, can move mountains, can change people's perceptions, can alter the course of history. But in America we've been taught we're powerless without money and connections when this is patently untrue! Never mind that if you don't have money you are not respected, never mind paid attention to.
But you must be telling the truth. You can't be compromised. And the powers-that-be do their best to silence you. Because you threaten them. Because business is based on relationships and illegalities and they don't want them exposed. THIS IS HOW THE RICH LIKE IT!
And they keep telling us how good it is.
And too many Americans are nitwits, who think that not having to work and living on a tropical island is happiness. IT'S NOT!
Ray Davies sang that unemployment was unenjoyment. We need a purpose, we need a personal higher calling, otherwise life is meaningless. All this veneration of partying... Sure, everybody likes to cut loose now and again, but every night? Do you know any of these people? I do. Their lives are scaringly empty, they hang with their brethren elite where life is about getting loaded and being ridiculous. I pity them.
But there cannot be unions because stockholder value is the greatest goal, and the company might not make as much.
It all comes down to values. And America is morally bankrupt.
You can make a difference. You truly can. And even if you don't want to lead, you can follow in the footsteps of those who do. Don't let anyone ever tell you you're powerless. They just want to keep you in line or have had their optimism eviscerated by too many defeats.
It comes down to message, not marketing. It comes down to credibility. It comes down to truth. These are not only the building blocks of society, they're the building blocks of art! Come on, try and find modern artists who tick all these boxes. They're few and far between. Meanwhile, the system, the agents, the studios, the labels, have a separate agenda, they just want to sell sell sell when sometimes you've got to say no, you've got to leave some money on the table.
Pay attention to Navalny. He's putting his life on the line, literally. He's standing up and making a difference. Where are these uncompromised people in America?
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Thursday, 4 February 2021
Steve Lillywhite-This Week's Podcast
Steve Lillywhite checks in all the way from Jakarta, where he runs the largest music label for KFC, I kid you not! We delve into Steve's production of U2, Peter Gabriel, the Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews, Thompson Twins and more. But in addition to the stories you'll be captivated by the insight! Steve is quite the raconteur and if you want to know how a famous music producer makes records, this is the place!
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/#
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steve-lillywhite/id1316200737?i=1000507699311
https://open.spotify.com/show/3QQChyYncANduSOs72eCbV
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/The-Bob-Lefsetz-Podcast
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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/#
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steve-lillywhite/id1316200737?i=1000507699311
https://open.spotify.com/show/3QQChyYncANduSOs72eCbV
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/The-Bob-Lefsetz-Podcast
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Wednesday, 3 February 2021
Mailbag
I first met Leslie West when I produced the first Crystal Palace garden Party in 1971. Mountain were the US guest band on the bill with Pink Floyd and The Faces. The group were fabulous and were well received.
Leslie West then returned as West Bruce and Laing in 1973 and I took them around Europe. The first concert was at the Chatelet in Paris. We duly arrived and as a treat to start the tour I booked the band into the Hotel Georges Cinq.
I explained before we all retired that all the trappings in the room were real so don't trash them.
The next morning we left for Hamburg. Leslie had had a tough night drinking and was not in the best of moods.
We landed in Hamburg and as we got to the bottom of the steps two gentlemen in raincoats were waiting for us.
They asked me to introduce them to Leslie. "What for" I asked.
They said they were from Interpol and had a warrant for his arrest for stealing a Persian antique rug from the George Cinq.
We were taken to the customs desk and sure enough there was the rug neatly rolled up in Leslie's case.
After a lot of waffling and explanation and autographs, tickets and apologies we managed to get Leslie off.
He was terribly grumpy and said that they should not leave such expensive items in Hotel Rooms.
Such is the world of rock and roll.
Harvey Goldsmith
_____________________________________
Subject: Funny Hilton Valentine yarn
Hi Bob,
during the mid-90s I happened to be scouting an act in Connecticut and by chance I read in Goldmine that the Hartford record show was on. As I'm a huge vinyl collector I altered my plans and made a point of dropping by the venue. I found some good records including on one table a guy selling a number of English pressings from the late sixties/seventies and bought a few of near mint condition albums including Free's debut 'Tons Of Sobs' on the original UK Pink 'eye' Island label. A snip at $20. We chatted and it turned out he was a British silver haired fox, like me. I thought nothing of it until I overheard someone on another table talking about Hilton Valentine selling his record collection. I thought little more about it but when I got back to my apartment that evening I started to examine the albums. I opened the gatefold sleeve of 'Tons Of Sobs' and noticed that one of the inner band pics had been autographed by Paul Kossoff, my all-time guitar hero. I wish I'd have engaged Hilton in deeper conversation but by then it was, of course, too late.
Best,
Derek Oliver
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Tesla/Volkswagen
Very astute. Few see the potential and you draw interesting parallels here.
Tesla is a software, storage, and energy company being compared by the Wall Street nerds to automobile manufacturers who are still operating like it is 1960. Tesla's lead in data collection - billions of miles per year now (EVERYTHING is captured) - and autonomous driving could be insurmountable. Storage innovation could end up being the biggest thing since the invention of the laser. SpaceX delivering the Starlink satellite network will allow autonomous driving to become a global reality. People in sunny places will get completely off the grid with a solar roof, battery pack and an EV. Climate change? Musk has that covered.
Every time I see a car commercial on TV, I think to myself - they just don't get it. Hell, Tesla doesn't need to advertise.
Dave Murphy
_____________________________________
From: Randall Wixen
Subject: RE: Tesla/Volkswagen
I know your article was really about music and the electric car thing was only an analogy, but I wanted to comment on the analogy itself. I was an early adopter of hybrid vehicles, and then electric ones. I've owned 6 EVs now: Volt, RAV4 EV, Bolt, Ioniq, eTron, and Model Y. I never wanted to have a Tesla, because to me, owning a Tesla said "I'm an asshole." But the VW/Audi eTron I had was such a dysfunctional piece of crap that I had to get rid of it before I even had 2,000 miles on it. The Tesla Model Y (so far) seems to be light years ahead of any of my previous EVs so I'm just resigned to ignoring how I feel about what the nameplate might say about the driver and driving something that actually works. There are new and better technologies, and as much as it is tempting to resist them, we have to embrace them when they're actually better.
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Tesla/Volkswagen
Amazon will never be able to compete with Barnes and Noble and Borders!!
I remember those days well.
Brian Lukow
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Mailbag
Phil called me out of the blue one day when I was developing The Chrysalis Music Group USA.
I was extremely surprised and didn't really know how to handle such a well known producer, but I ended the conversation abruptly when he started talking to me about guns.
I have used rifles for shooting cans, but am officially anti gun.
Phil was a legend and incredibly creative.
Sad that a mental disorder destroyed such a creative genius.
Ann P Munday
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Mailbag
Phil Spector
In the mid-90s, I received a call from Dave Marsh that Phil wanted to do some college lectures and would I be interested in having him come to the university. Of course, he was just shy of three hours late and told me that he was late because he took a "Prozac Lite" and lost track of time. From a stack of yellow legal pad pages he lectured for two hours on the great American songwriters, and recited tons of lyrics by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter etc. The words were just flowing out of him (and over the heads of most of the students). His point was that these writers were great in their own time and if alive, their style would not be great today. He was of course, referring to himself and made the point. Not one word about the "wall of sound"!
He stayed late, signed album jackets for the students was all around gracious.
It's a shame what happened to him........
steve marcone
wayne, nj
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Mailbag
My client said to me: "These digital sales are like being a hooker. You sell it, but you still got it." Well, said.
Willie Perkins
_____________________________________
From: Hennie Hugo
Subject: RE: More Quarantine
Covid19 is a real and killing virus. So many of my friends and family have been infected and died. About 10 members of our extended family contracted. Covid19 over Christmas having a huge gathering. They thought they were beyond the Covid19 gathering. It can easily happen to others. I am so pissed of with them. A family member checked himself out of hospital today and decided to receive oxygen at home. Thank God he can afford it.
Day by day people are dying from it. It is easy to compare it to HIV. But the problem of spreading the different diseases are so totally different.
Remember our esteemed leader, Thabo Mbeki, actually denied AIDS/MIV. If there was something like it, it can be treated with garlic and beetroot. What a ficking moron
After Mbeki the plundering got an extra head of steam. It was all for nothing and everything for the total crooks. Difficult for me to say but Ramaphosa at the time when these terrible looting was taking place, was The Vice President of SA. How could he have not seen what was happening? Takes me to lines in "Tommy" Rock Opera by The Who. "Deaf and blind living in his quiet vibration land. Same as it seems his music isn't quite so bad...."
Not being negative, I honestly believe my relative in hospital is not going to make it. Sad to say.
They had a huge party the day after Christmas with many many people attending with absolutely no social distancing or sanitizing.
Regards
Hennie
_____________________________________
Bob,
Maybe it isn't about people not knowing Middlebury. In the '70s, my family moved from Long Island to Essex Junction, Vermont, where I spent two years in high school. We then moved to NorCal, where I attended college, and where I stayed post-graduation.
Can't tell you how many times people have since asked me "Which state is Vermont in?"
So maybe it's about geography.
-- Maxx
_____________________________________
Dear Bob,
You probably know this already, but Mountain's manager at the time they played Woodstock was my father, the late Gary Kurfirst. I'm not sure if Gary was "management" who opted the band out of being featured in the Woodstock film. If he was, I am sure he had good reasons for declining the offer. Probably was a bad deal for the band, or bad timing in terms of building the band's brand (ie wasn't considered a good look) or all of the above.
I can assure you the decision was not flippant. Everything Gary did as a manager was strategic and his intention was always to protect the artist and promote the long terms growth of the brand.
Maybe he got it wrong this time.
Maybe not.
I was told another story about Mountain's experience at Woodstock. As the story goes Mountain was to play an earlier slot on the Main Stage, but when Gary arrived (after navigating the endless traffic jam the artists and fans faced trying to reach the festival grounds) he noticed how disorganized the event was and that essentially the producers/stage manager were throwing any band out on the stage to perform that they spotted together backstage fully intact.
So Gary, always thinking strategy and impact, instructed the band members of Mountain to scatter, sending them to different areas of the festival grounds and told them not to be seen together until X time where they were to conveniently reconvene backstage in full view of the stage managers who were on the endless hunt to wrangle talent. (I always visualized the band huddling up backstage like a football team listening to the QB (Gary) calling the next play... a Hail Mary to win the game.)
The plan worked. Mountain reconvened backstage and were "spotted" together just in time to play the coveted, primetime, 9pm slot on Saturday night. The crowd was estimated to be over 500,000 at this point, but no one really knows - the fences were pulled down on Friday and kids from all over the country were flooding the festival grounds and the rest is history....
Many attribute Mountain's triumphant Woodstock set as their breakout moment, regardless of whether the film would have pushed them even higher up in the history books and who ultimately made that decision – they would not have even been in that position if not for the plan.
I felt inclined to respond here because Managers, who play such a pivotal role in the growth of artist/band, are often omitted from the history books. Its no accident that great bands/artists more often than not have great managers. Managers make the tough decisions. The great ones are able to see beyond in the instant glory (or money) and make decisions based on the long term growth of the brand.
Gary once infamously turned down the cover of Rolling Stone for one his clients (Talking Heads) telling the magazine it "was not the right time" for them to be on cover - that it would hurt their credibility with the underground (remember the Talking Heads first broke out of CBGB's - they were considered a punk rock band and at the time, punk rock bands did not pose for the cover of Rolling Stone). He seems to have gotten that one right. The Talking Heads brand remains iconic, and they haven't played a gig or released any new music since the mid-80's (and eventually they were featured on the cover - timing is everything).
If you haven't read Chris Frantz memoir - Remain in Love - you should do it, now. It's a great read. Chris (and his lovely wife, Tina Weymouth) recognized the importance of great management. They loved Gary because he protected them and allowed them to be artists, and the feeling was mutual.
Gary took over managing the Ramones around 1978 and was their manager to the very end. One of their last gigs was the Lollapalooza Festival on Randalls Island in New York City in 1996 (other acts on the bill that day included Metallica, Soundgarden, Wu-Tang Clan). There is no better example of a band whose brand has completely transcended their music, or the music business in general. I see more young kids wearing Ramones T-shirts today than rock music legends like Led Zeppelin or the Beatles. Ramones brand is badass. Timeless. And forever will be the flag of punk.
Ironically, I've made my career in festivals. My job as Global Head of Festivals for WME has me negotiating set times, artist fees, streaming rights, billing positions etc. etc., with the top festival promoters for some of the biggest artists on the planet. I don't know if it's 'in the blood' as they say, but as I got older I realized that the music business was the only business where I fit and that music festivals were my calling.
I often think about the earlier pioneers of music festivals, like Gary, and what they endured to put on their events without all the modern technology we rely on to help produce them. From simple tech like walkie talkies to sophisticated festival apps, scan-able wristbands and whatever tech will be needed post-pandemic to ensure the Artist and Fans have a great time and safe experience at festivals of the future.
But all of that was absent at original Woodstock - they didn't even have set times!
Josh Kurfirst
Leslie West then returned as West Bruce and Laing in 1973 and I took them around Europe. The first concert was at the Chatelet in Paris. We duly arrived and as a treat to start the tour I booked the band into the Hotel Georges Cinq.
I explained before we all retired that all the trappings in the room were real so don't trash them.
The next morning we left for Hamburg. Leslie had had a tough night drinking and was not in the best of moods.
We landed in Hamburg and as we got to the bottom of the steps two gentlemen in raincoats were waiting for us.
They asked me to introduce them to Leslie. "What for" I asked.
They said they were from Interpol and had a warrant for his arrest for stealing a Persian antique rug from the George Cinq.
We were taken to the customs desk and sure enough there was the rug neatly rolled up in Leslie's case.
After a lot of waffling and explanation and autographs, tickets and apologies we managed to get Leslie off.
He was terribly grumpy and said that they should not leave such expensive items in Hotel Rooms.
Such is the world of rock and roll.
Harvey Goldsmith
_____________________________________
Subject: Funny Hilton Valentine yarn
Hi Bob,
during the mid-90s I happened to be scouting an act in Connecticut and by chance I read in Goldmine that the Hartford record show was on. As I'm a huge vinyl collector I altered my plans and made a point of dropping by the venue. I found some good records including on one table a guy selling a number of English pressings from the late sixties/seventies and bought a few of near mint condition albums including Free's debut 'Tons Of Sobs' on the original UK Pink 'eye' Island label. A snip at $20. We chatted and it turned out he was a British silver haired fox, like me. I thought nothing of it until I overheard someone on another table talking about Hilton Valentine selling his record collection. I thought little more about it but when I got back to my apartment that evening I started to examine the albums. I opened the gatefold sleeve of 'Tons Of Sobs' and noticed that one of the inner band pics had been autographed by Paul Kossoff, my all-time guitar hero. I wish I'd have engaged Hilton in deeper conversation but by then it was, of course, too late.
Best,
Derek Oliver
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Tesla/Volkswagen
Very astute. Few see the potential and you draw interesting parallels here.
Tesla is a software, storage, and energy company being compared by the Wall Street nerds to automobile manufacturers who are still operating like it is 1960. Tesla's lead in data collection - billions of miles per year now (EVERYTHING is captured) - and autonomous driving could be insurmountable. Storage innovation could end up being the biggest thing since the invention of the laser. SpaceX delivering the Starlink satellite network will allow autonomous driving to become a global reality. People in sunny places will get completely off the grid with a solar roof, battery pack and an EV. Climate change? Musk has that covered.
Every time I see a car commercial on TV, I think to myself - they just don't get it. Hell, Tesla doesn't need to advertise.
Dave Murphy
_____________________________________
From: Randall Wixen
Subject: RE: Tesla/Volkswagen
I know your article was really about music and the electric car thing was only an analogy, but I wanted to comment on the analogy itself. I was an early adopter of hybrid vehicles, and then electric ones. I've owned 6 EVs now: Volt, RAV4 EV, Bolt, Ioniq, eTron, and Model Y. I never wanted to have a Tesla, because to me, owning a Tesla said "I'm an asshole." But the VW/Audi eTron I had was such a dysfunctional piece of crap that I had to get rid of it before I even had 2,000 miles on it. The Tesla Model Y (so far) seems to be light years ahead of any of my previous EVs so I'm just resigned to ignoring how I feel about what the nameplate might say about the driver and driving something that actually works. There are new and better technologies, and as much as it is tempting to resist them, we have to embrace them when they're actually better.
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Tesla/Volkswagen
Amazon will never be able to compete with Barnes and Noble and Borders!!
I remember those days well.
Brian Lukow
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Mailbag
Phil called me out of the blue one day when I was developing The Chrysalis Music Group USA.
I was extremely surprised and didn't really know how to handle such a well known producer, but I ended the conversation abruptly when he started talking to me about guns.
I have used rifles for shooting cans, but am officially anti gun.
Phil was a legend and incredibly creative.
Sad that a mental disorder destroyed such a creative genius.
Ann P Munday
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Mailbag
Phil Spector
In the mid-90s, I received a call from Dave Marsh that Phil wanted to do some college lectures and would I be interested in having him come to the university. Of course, he was just shy of three hours late and told me that he was late because he took a "Prozac Lite" and lost track of time. From a stack of yellow legal pad pages he lectured for two hours on the great American songwriters, and recited tons of lyrics by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter etc. The words were just flowing out of him (and over the heads of most of the students). His point was that these writers were great in their own time and if alive, their style would not be great today. He was of course, referring to himself and made the point. Not one word about the "wall of sound"!
He stayed late, signed album jackets for the students was all around gracious.
It's a shame what happened to him........
steve marcone
wayne, nj
_____________________________________
Subject: Re: Mailbag
My client said to me: "These digital sales are like being a hooker. You sell it, but you still got it." Well, said.
Willie Perkins
_____________________________________
From: Hennie Hugo
Subject: RE: More Quarantine
Covid19 is a real and killing virus. So many of my friends and family have been infected and died. About 10 members of our extended family contracted. Covid19 over Christmas having a huge gathering. They thought they were beyond the Covid19 gathering. It can easily happen to others. I am so pissed of with them. A family member checked himself out of hospital today and decided to receive oxygen at home. Thank God he can afford it.
Day by day people are dying from it. It is easy to compare it to HIV. But the problem of spreading the different diseases are so totally different.
Remember our esteemed leader, Thabo Mbeki, actually denied AIDS/MIV. If there was something like it, it can be treated with garlic and beetroot. What a ficking moron
After Mbeki the plundering got an extra head of steam. It was all for nothing and everything for the total crooks. Difficult for me to say but Ramaphosa at the time when these terrible looting was taking place, was The Vice President of SA. How could he have not seen what was happening? Takes me to lines in "Tommy" Rock Opera by The Who. "Deaf and blind living in his quiet vibration land. Same as it seems his music isn't quite so bad...."
Not being negative, I honestly believe my relative in hospital is not going to make it. Sad to say.
They had a huge party the day after Christmas with many many people attending with absolutely no social distancing or sanitizing.
Regards
Hennie
_____________________________________
Bob,
Maybe it isn't about people not knowing Middlebury. In the '70s, my family moved from Long Island to Essex Junction, Vermont, where I spent two years in high school. We then moved to NorCal, where I attended college, and where I stayed post-graduation.
Can't tell you how many times people have since asked me "Which state is Vermont in?"
So maybe it's about geography.
-- Maxx
_____________________________________
Dear Bob,
You probably know this already, but Mountain's manager at the time they played Woodstock was my father, the late Gary Kurfirst. I'm not sure if Gary was "management" who opted the band out of being featured in the Woodstock film. If he was, I am sure he had good reasons for declining the offer. Probably was a bad deal for the band, or bad timing in terms of building the band's brand (ie wasn't considered a good look) or all of the above.
I can assure you the decision was not flippant. Everything Gary did as a manager was strategic and his intention was always to protect the artist and promote the long terms growth of the brand.
Maybe he got it wrong this time.
Maybe not.
I was told another story about Mountain's experience at Woodstock. As the story goes Mountain was to play an earlier slot on the Main Stage, but when Gary arrived (after navigating the endless traffic jam the artists and fans faced trying to reach the festival grounds) he noticed how disorganized the event was and that essentially the producers/stage manager were throwing any band out on the stage to perform that they spotted together backstage fully intact.
So Gary, always thinking strategy and impact, instructed the band members of Mountain to scatter, sending them to different areas of the festival grounds and told them not to be seen together until X time where they were to conveniently reconvene backstage in full view of the stage managers who were on the endless hunt to wrangle talent. (I always visualized the band huddling up backstage like a football team listening to the QB (Gary) calling the next play... a Hail Mary to win the game.)
The plan worked. Mountain reconvened backstage and were "spotted" together just in time to play the coveted, primetime, 9pm slot on Saturday night. The crowd was estimated to be over 500,000 at this point, but no one really knows - the fences were pulled down on Friday and kids from all over the country were flooding the festival grounds and the rest is history....
Many attribute Mountain's triumphant Woodstock set as their breakout moment, regardless of whether the film would have pushed them even higher up in the history books and who ultimately made that decision – they would not have even been in that position if not for the plan.
I felt inclined to respond here because Managers, who play such a pivotal role in the growth of artist/band, are often omitted from the history books. Its no accident that great bands/artists more often than not have great managers. Managers make the tough decisions. The great ones are able to see beyond in the instant glory (or money) and make decisions based on the long term growth of the brand.
Gary once infamously turned down the cover of Rolling Stone for one his clients (Talking Heads) telling the magazine it "was not the right time" for them to be on cover - that it would hurt their credibility with the underground (remember the Talking Heads first broke out of CBGB's - they were considered a punk rock band and at the time, punk rock bands did not pose for the cover of Rolling Stone). He seems to have gotten that one right. The Talking Heads brand remains iconic, and they haven't played a gig or released any new music since the mid-80's (and eventually they were featured on the cover - timing is everything).
If you haven't read Chris Frantz memoir - Remain in Love - you should do it, now. It's a great read. Chris (and his lovely wife, Tina Weymouth) recognized the importance of great management. They loved Gary because he protected them and allowed them to be artists, and the feeling was mutual.
Gary took over managing the Ramones around 1978 and was their manager to the very end. One of their last gigs was the Lollapalooza Festival on Randalls Island in New York City in 1996 (other acts on the bill that day included Metallica, Soundgarden, Wu-Tang Clan). There is no better example of a band whose brand has completely transcended their music, or the music business in general. I see more young kids wearing Ramones T-shirts today than rock music legends like Led Zeppelin or the Beatles. Ramones brand is badass. Timeless. And forever will be the flag of punk.
Ironically, I've made my career in festivals. My job as Global Head of Festivals for WME has me negotiating set times, artist fees, streaming rights, billing positions etc. etc., with the top festival promoters for some of the biggest artists on the planet. I don't know if it's 'in the blood' as they say, but as I got older I realized that the music business was the only business where I fit and that music festivals were my calling.
I often think about the earlier pioneers of music festivals, like Gary, and what they endured to put on their events without all the modern technology we rely on to help produce them. From simple tech like walkie talkies to sophisticated festival apps, scan-able wristbands and whatever tech will be needed post-pandemic to ensure the Artist and Fans have a great time and safe experience at festivals of the future.
But all of that was absent at original Woodstock - they didn't even have set times!
Josh Kurfirst
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Morgan Wallen
Does this mean Trump really didn't win the election?
Wallen was too stupid to know that when you're a celebrity all eyes are upon you. That's the price you pay. If you wanted to be a rock star and do rock star things you should have made it before smartphone cameras. Today your bad behavior is documented, and there are always people looking to take you down.
Wallen's been caught twice. Used to be three strikes and you're out. But that was before the cops killed George Floyd and Covid ravaged the country.
Meanwhile, we've got a huge sector of the public telling us to forgive and unite, wondering how we just can't get along... THIS IS WHY!
Not that Wallen's behavior would have been any better if it wasn't documented, the point is he was brazen and ignorant, and for far too long that's been the image of Nashville and country music.
"The news out of Nashville tonight does not represent country music..."
Kelsea Ballerini
"When I read comments saying 'this is not who we are' I laugh because this is exactly who country music is. I've witnessed it for 10 gd years. You guys should just read some of the vile comments hurled at me on a daily basis. It's a cold hard truth to face but it is the truth."
Mickey Guyton
Whew! Just because Charley Pride sucked it up and Hootie/Darius crossed over there's this whitewashing that there's no racism in Nashville anymore. Like everyone is supposed to be like Hank Aaron, never mind Jackie Robinson, and suck it up. Did you read Aaron's obits? The white man did not want Hank to break the Babe's record! Yes, Blacks are supposed to be quiet and subservient, obey their masters, not raise their voices and get out of hand, that's not how subordinates behave. But you've got too many whites calling Black men boys. It's only been a hundred and fifty years since slavery, we've got to give these white men a break, the wheels of progress turn slowly, you can't hold them accountable, it's just the way they grew up.
Meanwhile, the right keeps talking about the woke left, about the word police. About political correctness. Did you see Rupert Murdoch himself weigh in on this last week? The 89 year old who is now getting his hands dirty at Fox News once again?
And sure, it's a spectrum. But not to the right, it's always black and white, always clear, and they're always on the correct side. After all, if you elect Democrats, the world as you know it will end. Grandma will die and you house will be taken away and if you don't stand up and protect your rights now, it'll be too late!
But we've got one ace in our pocket, one corrective company, one entity that has consistently stood up for truth, justice and the American Way. I'm speaking, of course, of Cumulus Media. Yes, the company that told its on-air hosts that they had to stop saying Trump won the election. Where are the rest of the communication companies?
Well, iHeart got on board with Wallen. As well as CMT and Wallen's own record label, and that's good. But what about the cable companies and Fox? We have to marginalize hatred and bigotry.
Meanwhile, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said yesterday that NBA players should be inoculated first, because they're role models for the Black community: https://nyti.ms/3cLarnY Some people can see through the morass, some people proffer solutions to problems, some people are taking action. Then again, if you're Black it's always an uphill battle.
I don't think Morgan Wallen can recover from this. If Billy Squier was canceled in the eighties for wearing a pink shirt in a video... You see the music business does not need any specific star, it just needs some stars. And it can motor along quite well without Morgan Wallen.
But he's a good ole boy in a mullet, can't we cut him a break?
Yeah, just like Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio. The message is if you're a prominent white and you cross the line your brethren will rescue you. They're organized, it's a club, and one thing is for sure, Blacks and immigrants are not members.
It's good to see the establishment push back against heinous behavior. But we haven't seen right wing media and Republican elected officials do so whatsoever.
The officials say they're beholden to the populace, those who elected them. THESE PEOPLE, MORGAN WALLEN'S PEOPLE!
Meanwhile, Colin Kaepernick is banished from the NFL for taking a knee. A white person shoots someone and if they're even arrested, they get bail and get off. They were overheated, they didn't mean it.
"It actually IS representative of our town because this isn't his first 'scuffle' and he just demolished a huge streaming record last month regardless. We all know it wasn't his first time using that word. We keep them rich and protected at all costs with no recourse."
Maren Morris
And isn't it interesting that women are standing up for truth and equality while the men mostly stay silent and...
Word has always been that you need to stay quiet, you don't want to hurt your career. Politics do not belong on stage. Instead, we have a wink... Come on, to this day, have you heard some of these country lyrics?
But they're just good ole boys, they didn't mean it.
OF COURSE THEY MEANT IT!
The tail has to stop wagging the dog. Corporations and elected officials can't keep saying their hands are tied.
Even worse is Facebook, the scourge of society. Sheryl Sandberg stands up and says it was not the driver of the January 6th riot and then it turned out it was. OF COURSE IT WAS! But that's the world we now live in, where you can lie with impunity!
As for the surge on the Capitol... How many Blacks did you see there? They are the ones truly hurt by the government, getting the short end of the stick. The Supreme Court, THE SUPREME COURT, got rid of the Voting Rights Act because it said there was no racism anymore (just like Tucker Carlson!) Meanwhile, the right is now emboldened in its efforts to suppress voting while racism is not only rampant, it rears its ugly head on a national level on a regular basis and "there are good people on both sides."
Broadcasting has a responsibility. And that's got nothing to do with freedom of speech. Contrary to people's beliefs, you can't say anything anywhere.
Turns out the twenty first century is a reckoning on racism and democracy. Some want to isolate and return to an era where skin color was king and the rest of the world didn't matter, not understanding, or even knowing, that back then so many were oppressed, women and people of color and immigrants and... The only way through this is by going forward.
Used to be artists were arbiters of truth, handing down engraved tablets to their listeners. Today they're just money machines. Then again, they've still got power.
Morgan Wallen has been in the public eye for years. If we give this guy a pass, is there a line at all?
Meanwhile, this cancelation sends a message to Nashville and country music fans that this behavior will not be tolerated. And while we're at it, get rid of the Confederate flags.
Change happens at the top. Trump tries to steal an election in plain sight and his party endorses the falsehood. To the point where seemingly half the country believes he's the rightful President. Who is going to stand up for the truth? Not only do we need to shut up those uttering taboos, we need people to lead us out of the wilderness. It's time for Nashville and country music to step up. This is just the beginning. NO EXCUSES!
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Wallen was too stupid to know that when you're a celebrity all eyes are upon you. That's the price you pay. If you wanted to be a rock star and do rock star things you should have made it before smartphone cameras. Today your bad behavior is documented, and there are always people looking to take you down.
Wallen's been caught twice. Used to be three strikes and you're out. But that was before the cops killed George Floyd and Covid ravaged the country.
Meanwhile, we've got a huge sector of the public telling us to forgive and unite, wondering how we just can't get along... THIS IS WHY!
Not that Wallen's behavior would have been any better if it wasn't documented, the point is he was brazen and ignorant, and for far too long that's been the image of Nashville and country music.
"The news out of Nashville tonight does not represent country music..."
Kelsea Ballerini
"When I read comments saying 'this is not who we are' I laugh because this is exactly who country music is. I've witnessed it for 10 gd years. You guys should just read some of the vile comments hurled at me on a daily basis. It's a cold hard truth to face but it is the truth."
Mickey Guyton
Whew! Just because Charley Pride sucked it up and Hootie/Darius crossed over there's this whitewashing that there's no racism in Nashville anymore. Like everyone is supposed to be like Hank Aaron, never mind Jackie Robinson, and suck it up. Did you read Aaron's obits? The white man did not want Hank to break the Babe's record! Yes, Blacks are supposed to be quiet and subservient, obey their masters, not raise their voices and get out of hand, that's not how subordinates behave. But you've got too many whites calling Black men boys. It's only been a hundred and fifty years since slavery, we've got to give these white men a break, the wheels of progress turn slowly, you can't hold them accountable, it's just the way they grew up.
Meanwhile, the right keeps talking about the woke left, about the word police. About political correctness. Did you see Rupert Murdoch himself weigh in on this last week? The 89 year old who is now getting his hands dirty at Fox News once again?
And sure, it's a spectrum. But not to the right, it's always black and white, always clear, and they're always on the correct side. After all, if you elect Democrats, the world as you know it will end. Grandma will die and you house will be taken away and if you don't stand up and protect your rights now, it'll be too late!
But we've got one ace in our pocket, one corrective company, one entity that has consistently stood up for truth, justice and the American Way. I'm speaking, of course, of Cumulus Media. Yes, the company that told its on-air hosts that they had to stop saying Trump won the election. Where are the rest of the communication companies?
Well, iHeart got on board with Wallen. As well as CMT and Wallen's own record label, and that's good. But what about the cable companies and Fox? We have to marginalize hatred and bigotry.
Meanwhile, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said yesterday that NBA players should be inoculated first, because they're role models for the Black community: https://nyti.ms/3cLarnY Some people can see through the morass, some people proffer solutions to problems, some people are taking action. Then again, if you're Black it's always an uphill battle.
I don't think Morgan Wallen can recover from this. If Billy Squier was canceled in the eighties for wearing a pink shirt in a video... You see the music business does not need any specific star, it just needs some stars. And it can motor along quite well without Morgan Wallen.
But he's a good ole boy in a mullet, can't we cut him a break?
Yeah, just like Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio. The message is if you're a prominent white and you cross the line your brethren will rescue you. They're organized, it's a club, and one thing is for sure, Blacks and immigrants are not members.
It's good to see the establishment push back against heinous behavior. But we haven't seen right wing media and Republican elected officials do so whatsoever.
The officials say they're beholden to the populace, those who elected them. THESE PEOPLE, MORGAN WALLEN'S PEOPLE!
Meanwhile, Colin Kaepernick is banished from the NFL for taking a knee. A white person shoots someone and if they're even arrested, they get bail and get off. They were overheated, they didn't mean it.
"It actually IS representative of our town because this isn't his first 'scuffle' and he just demolished a huge streaming record last month regardless. We all know it wasn't his first time using that word. We keep them rich and protected at all costs with no recourse."
Maren Morris
And isn't it interesting that women are standing up for truth and equality while the men mostly stay silent and...
Word has always been that you need to stay quiet, you don't want to hurt your career. Politics do not belong on stage. Instead, we have a wink... Come on, to this day, have you heard some of these country lyrics?
But they're just good ole boys, they didn't mean it.
OF COURSE THEY MEANT IT!
The tail has to stop wagging the dog. Corporations and elected officials can't keep saying their hands are tied.
Even worse is Facebook, the scourge of society. Sheryl Sandberg stands up and says it was not the driver of the January 6th riot and then it turned out it was. OF COURSE IT WAS! But that's the world we now live in, where you can lie with impunity!
As for the surge on the Capitol... How many Blacks did you see there? They are the ones truly hurt by the government, getting the short end of the stick. The Supreme Court, THE SUPREME COURT, got rid of the Voting Rights Act because it said there was no racism anymore (just like Tucker Carlson!) Meanwhile, the right is now emboldened in its efforts to suppress voting while racism is not only rampant, it rears its ugly head on a national level on a regular basis and "there are good people on both sides."
Broadcasting has a responsibility. And that's got nothing to do with freedom of speech. Contrary to people's beliefs, you can't say anything anywhere.
Turns out the twenty first century is a reckoning on racism and democracy. Some want to isolate and return to an era where skin color was king and the rest of the world didn't matter, not understanding, or even knowing, that back then so many were oppressed, women and people of color and immigrants and... The only way through this is by going forward.
Used to be artists were arbiters of truth, handing down engraved tablets to their listeners. Today they're just money machines. Then again, they've still got power.
Morgan Wallen has been in the public eye for years. If we give this guy a pass, is there a line at all?
Meanwhile, this cancelation sends a message to Nashville and country music fans that this behavior will not be tolerated. And while we're at it, get rid of the Confederate flags.
Change happens at the top. Trump tries to steal an election in plain sight and his party endorses the falsehood. To the point where seemingly half the country believes he's the rightful President. Who is going to stand up for the truth? Not only do we need to shut up those uttering taboos, we need people to lead us out of the wilderness. It's time for Nashville and country music to step up. This is just the beginning. NO EXCUSES!
--
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Tuesday, 2 February 2021
Trick Or Treat
Playlist: https://spoti.fi/3pVbwh7
1
It's the best Bonnie Raitt song you've never heard.
With fewer places to go, fewer obligations to meet, I've been allowed to web surf and let my mind drift. You know how it is, you look up people from your past life, arcane subjects only you are interested in, and let the music play in the background. And if you go down the rabbit hole long enough, marinating in the tunes, your identity reveals itself to you, you remember your entire life, the songs make entire eras come alive in color.
I was listening to Paul Simon solo tracks. In "Herrens Veje" the two brothers sang "Still Crazy After All These Years" and it resonated, whereas it never had previously, I could see the old lovers meeting in the street, and it made me go to "Rhymin' Simon," which is my favorite, and I was astounded how good they sounded, as in sound. No one spends the time, which costs money, to get pristine sound anymore. But that was the goal back then, to nail the essence, to make it true to life such that if you had a good enough stereo you could feel like you were right in the studio. But that was back before the era of boom boxes, back before headphones with boosted bass, back when accuracy was king and people cared about it. It's funny, today most people listen to music on systems barely better than the speaker in the dash of the old AM radios in Oldsmobiles and Fords, never mind Chevys. How far we've devolved.
And then I went back to Simon's first solo after Simon & Garfunkel, the hits were the reggae inflected numbers that opened each side, but they were not the best. "Duncan" was haunting. "Everything Put Together Falls Apart" insightful. "Peace Like a River"...was a drift down a lazy river in the winter, when the album came out. But the absolute best cut was "Armistice Day."
"On Armistice Day
The Philharmonic play
But the songs that we sing
Will be sad"
And maybe that's why Simon's first solo has disappeared from consciousness. It was oftentimes sad. And it was so personal. But, the playing on "Armistice Day" is positively ASTOUNDING! Jerry Hahn plays the guitar like a master. You remember him and his Brotherhood, right? No, probably not, but this was back when there were only a couple of thousand albums released a year, and the ones you did not buy you saw in the bins, you were familiar with.
But Hahn is not the only legend on "Paul Simon." There's Hal Blaine, Ron Carter, Stéphane Grappelli, Larry Knechtel, Fed Lipsius, Airto Moreira, Joe Osborn, David Spinozza, even Cissy Houston! Back when we knew the players, back when you could make a living as a studio musician making pop records.
And it's all embodied on a pristine recording by Roy Halee, and on one cut Phil Ramone, who ultimately became Paul's main man.
And to tell you the truth, I'm listening to "Armistice Day" right now and I can't take it off, it's so damn good, I'm listening to Amazon Music HD via the Genelecs and..."Paul Simon" is encoded in Ultra HD so it's like the old days, feeling like a fly on the wall in the studio.
So, on a Simon sound kick, I decided to listen to his and Artie's most beautiful song ever, "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her," and it too was in Ultra HD, but it was not quite as present. So then I went to "Bookends," but it didn't sound as good either, even though "America" brought me back to a different era when road trips were king and we were all on a journey of personal development.
So then I'm sitting in front of the computer contemplating the best engineered, best sounding records, and I think of Bonnie Raitt's "Luck of the Draw." It's her best album, even though critics never acknowledge this. All the attention went to her breakthrough "Nick of Time," which came before. "Luck of the Draw" got accolades, but people seem to only remember it for its opening cut, "Something to Talk About," but that's nothing compared to what comes thereafter.
And my old friend Ed Cherney cut "Luck of the Draw," I always used to tell him how great it sounded. He's no longer with us. I remember hanging in Rio three years ago, what a great guy. Tears come to my eyes as I write this.
And for a long time my favorite track on "Luck of the Draw" was "One Part Be My Lover." But I felt it would bring me down, so I played my present favorite, the title cut.
"These things we do to keep the flame burnin'
And write our fire in the sky
Another day to see the wheel turnin'
Another avenue to try"
"Luck of the Draw" is the best song I know about the process of making it as a writer in Hollywood. When you've moved to the city and are working a day job to pay the bills while you keep trying and trying...people have no idea how hard it is to make it.
"Luck of the Draw" was written by Paul Brady. He wrote a lot of Bonnie's classics. And listening to the song I got a hankering to hear "Trick or Treat."
2
Paul McGuinness was flush with the success of U2. He decided to make Ireland's native son, songwriter Paul Brady, known in his country but far from everywhere, into a star. Paul pushed the button, he got Gary Katz to produce Brady's 1991 album "Trick or Treat."
Now subsequent to loving the LP I had to go deep into Brady's catalog, the songs were there, but not the sound, the legendary Steely Dan producer elevated Brady into the stratosphere, forget that nobody paid attention.
Katz called the A-list.
Jeff Porcaro played drums.
Freddie Washington and Jimmy Johnson played bass.
There were a slew of keyboard players, from David Paitch to Betsy Cook to Paul Griffin.
And the guitars were played by Elliott Randall and Michael Landau.
AND IT SOUNDS LIKE IT!
And the push single, the focus was on the title track.
As far as the rest of the LP, you got into it after devouring the single. You got deep into the other cuts. And "Nobody Knows" is great, but "Can't Stop Wanting You" is stellar, SUPERIOR! And unlike Brady compositions like "Steel Claw," made famous by Tina Turner, there's never been a breakthrough cover of "Can't Stop Wanting You."
It's the heat of the summer, and you've had a few too many drinks, you're not quite loaded, but the emotions are flowing, and you start to argue but you can't stop loving each other, you know there was makeup sex when the song was over.
But the emphasis was on "Trick or Treat."
There was a pregnant intro, that birthed an immediate groove, with Elliott Randall's guitar zooming all over the track, like a falling star with a SpaceX engine attached. And then...
"Sometimes the things that you say
Can hurt me so bad
You know that it's true
Sometimes your love lifts me up
So high I could cry
Can't live without you"
The duality. That's the nature of love, there are highs and lows, otherwise you're not doing it right, someone's holding back, you're too busy trying to get along to truly bond.
"Like a knock on the door
Open it up
What do you see
Could be a trick or a treat
Bitter or sweet
Which one you gonna be"
You've got to play to get the rewards. Unfortunately, the lows come along with the highs. But that's the nature of love. Don't be afraid, partake, it's the most important game you will play, it's the essence of life.
And Paul Brady sings the first verse. He and Bonnie Raitt the second. And then Bonnie takes over the third.
"Sometimes I fill up your cup
So your river flows
You know that it's true
Sometimes my love makes you pay
Though baby I swear I'm not wanting to"
Bonnie Raitt built a whole career on this. On being present. Being real. Being willing to play. Not a passive romantic like too many Top Forty pop singers, but a real person. And it's true, you don't intentionally try to hurt the other person, but that's what happens.
And then it's a duet, Paul then Bonnie and then Paul and then both together, like Sonny & Cher, but better.
"Look at what this love can do
Send us out into a world that's new
You no compass baby me no map
No one to show us where they laid the trap
Trick or treat baby that's the game
One day passion one day pain
You can try to change the rules but
Trick or treat make you the fool"
Just to hear Bonnie sing "compass," WHEW! Love is an adventure, brand new, and the key is to stay the course to experience the highs, the rewards and the pitfalls.
"Sometimes a moment of bliss
That starts with a kiss
Can end up so blue
'Cause I might say something wrong
And then comes along
A whole different you"
And now you know why Paul Brady is a legendary songwriter. We all say something wrong sometimes, and then our significant other's facial expression changes and the situation becomes completely different!
But even back in 1991, there was no place on the radio for this magic. "Trick or Treat" was not hard enough for AOR, not soft enough for AC, and this is not what Top Forty was ever looking for. "Trick or Treat" is just music, great music, before it became solely about money and this was enough. This is what listeners listened for!
3
Now to tell you the truth as I was grooving on the "Trick or Treat" album, switching to the big rig to truly make the room reverberate, my emotions started to sink. You see I realized that was thirty years ago. When I played this album incessantly. I can remember what I was thinking when I was doing so. The music put me in a good mood, but back then my life was a mess. And continued to be for quite sometime.
And now I'm on the back nine. When you've got to fight to make headway, when you can choose to rest on your laurels, retire and give up, or continue to try and break new ground.
But even if you plow deep grooves, people still might not pay attention, especially in today's cacophonous online society.
And too much of today's music is not good enough. Either it's rote. Or the elements are substandard...a great band can never supersede a mediocre singer, and a great band can't make a mediocre song a classic. Then again, back then it was about getting it exactly right, that last 1%. You spent a fortune to nail it, to get to the zenith, to resonate with the listening public.
You'd read about a record. There'd be a buzz. Something in the scuttlebutt resonated. And you'd decided to wade in and take a chance.
But you never knew exactly what you'd get. You'd drop the needle and might end up smiling or wincing, angry you blew your dough.
That's life. You've got to take the risks to get the rewards. But your efforts do not always pay off.
Trick or treat indeed!
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1
It's the best Bonnie Raitt song you've never heard.
With fewer places to go, fewer obligations to meet, I've been allowed to web surf and let my mind drift. You know how it is, you look up people from your past life, arcane subjects only you are interested in, and let the music play in the background. And if you go down the rabbit hole long enough, marinating in the tunes, your identity reveals itself to you, you remember your entire life, the songs make entire eras come alive in color.
I was listening to Paul Simon solo tracks. In "Herrens Veje" the two brothers sang "Still Crazy After All These Years" and it resonated, whereas it never had previously, I could see the old lovers meeting in the street, and it made me go to "Rhymin' Simon," which is my favorite, and I was astounded how good they sounded, as in sound. No one spends the time, which costs money, to get pristine sound anymore. But that was the goal back then, to nail the essence, to make it true to life such that if you had a good enough stereo you could feel like you were right in the studio. But that was back before the era of boom boxes, back before headphones with boosted bass, back when accuracy was king and people cared about it. It's funny, today most people listen to music on systems barely better than the speaker in the dash of the old AM radios in Oldsmobiles and Fords, never mind Chevys. How far we've devolved.
And then I went back to Simon's first solo after Simon & Garfunkel, the hits were the reggae inflected numbers that opened each side, but they were not the best. "Duncan" was haunting. "Everything Put Together Falls Apart" insightful. "Peace Like a River"...was a drift down a lazy river in the winter, when the album came out. But the absolute best cut was "Armistice Day."
"On Armistice Day
The Philharmonic play
But the songs that we sing
Will be sad"
And maybe that's why Simon's first solo has disappeared from consciousness. It was oftentimes sad. And it was so personal. But, the playing on "Armistice Day" is positively ASTOUNDING! Jerry Hahn plays the guitar like a master. You remember him and his Brotherhood, right? No, probably not, but this was back when there were only a couple of thousand albums released a year, and the ones you did not buy you saw in the bins, you were familiar with.
But Hahn is not the only legend on "Paul Simon." There's Hal Blaine, Ron Carter, Stéphane Grappelli, Larry Knechtel, Fed Lipsius, Airto Moreira, Joe Osborn, David Spinozza, even Cissy Houston! Back when we knew the players, back when you could make a living as a studio musician making pop records.
And it's all embodied on a pristine recording by Roy Halee, and on one cut Phil Ramone, who ultimately became Paul's main man.
And to tell you the truth, I'm listening to "Armistice Day" right now and I can't take it off, it's so damn good, I'm listening to Amazon Music HD via the Genelecs and..."Paul Simon" is encoded in Ultra HD so it's like the old days, feeling like a fly on the wall in the studio.
So, on a Simon sound kick, I decided to listen to his and Artie's most beautiful song ever, "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her," and it too was in Ultra HD, but it was not quite as present. So then I went to "Bookends," but it didn't sound as good either, even though "America" brought me back to a different era when road trips were king and we were all on a journey of personal development.
So then I'm sitting in front of the computer contemplating the best engineered, best sounding records, and I think of Bonnie Raitt's "Luck of the Draw." It's her best album, even though critics never acknowledge this. All the attention went to her breakthrough "Nick of Time," which came before. "Luck of the Draw" got accolades, but people seem to only remember it for its opening cut, "Something to Talk About," but that's nothing compared to what comes thereafter.
And my old friend Ed Cherney cut "Luck of the Draw," I always used to tell him how great it sounded. He's no longer with us. I remember hanging in Rio three years ago, what a great guy. Tears come to my eyes as I write this.
And for a long time my favorite track on "Luck of the Draw" was "One Part Be My Lover." But I felt it would bring me down, so I played my present favorite, the title cut.
"These things we do to keep the flame burnin'
And write our fire in the sky
Another day to see the wheel turnin'
Another avenue to try"
"Luck of the Draw" is the best song I know about the process of making it as a writer in Hollywood. When you've moved to the city and are working a day job to pay the bills while you keep trying and trying...people have no idea how hard it is to make it.
"Luck of the Draw" was written by Paul Brady. He wrote a lot of Bonnie's classics. And listening to the song I got a hankering to hear "Trick or Treat."
2
Paul McGuinness was flush with the success of U2. He decided to make Ireland's native son, songwriter Paul Brady, known in his country but far from everywhere, into a star. Paul pushed the button, he got Gary Katz to produce Brady's 1991 album "Trick or Treat."
Now subsequent to loving the LP I had to go deep into Brady's catalog, the songs were there, but not the sound, the legendary Steely Dan producer elevated Brady into the stratosphere, forget that nobody paid attention.
Katz called the A-list.
Jeff Porcaro played drums.
Freddie Washington and Jimmy Johnson played bass.
There were a slew of keyboard players, from David Paitch to Betsy Cook to Paul Griffin.
And the guitars were played by Elliott Randall and Michael Landau.
AND IT SOUNDS LIKE IT!
And the push single, the focus was on the title track.
As far as the rest of the LP, you got into it after devouring the single. You got deep into the other cuts. And "Nobody Knows" is great, but "Can't Stop Wanting You" is stellar, SUPERIOR! And unlike Brady compositions like "Steel Claw," made famous by Tina Turner, there's never been a breakthrough cover of "Can't Stop Wanting You."
It's the heat of the summer, and you've had a few too many drinks, you're not quite loaded, but the emotions are flowing, and you start to argue but you can't stop loving each other, you know there was makeup sex when the song was over.
But the emphasis was on "Trick or Treat."
There was a pregnant intro, that birthed an immediate groove, with Elliott Randall's guitar zooming all over the track, like a falling star with a SpaceX engine attached. And then...
"Sometimes the things that you say
Can hurt me so bad
You know that it's true
Sometimes your love lifts me up
So high I could cry
Can't live without you"
The duality. That's the nature of love, there are highs and lows, otherwise you're not doing it right, someone's holding back, you're too busy trying to get along to truly bond.
"Like a knock on the door
Open it up
What do you see
Could be a trick or a treat
Bitter or sweet
Which one you gonna be"
You've got to play to get the rewards. Unfortunately, the lows come along with the highs. But that's the nature of love. Don't be afraid, partake, it's the most important game you will play, it's the essence of life.
And Paul Brady sings the first verse. He and Bonnie Raitt the second. And then Bonnie takes over the third.
"Sometimes I fill up your cup
So your river flows
You know that it's true
Sometimes my love makes you pay
Though baby I swear I'm not wanting to"
Bonnie Raitt built a whole career on this. On being present. Being real. Being willing to play. Not a passive romantic like too many Top Forty pop singers, but a real person. And it's true, you don't intentionally try to hurt the other person, but that's what happens.
And then it's a duet, Paul then Bonnie and then Paul and then both together, like Sonny & Cher, but better.
"Look at what this love can do
Send us out into a world that's new
You no compass baby me no map
No one to show us where they laid the trap
Trick or treat baby that's the game
One day passion one day pain
You can try to change the rules but
Trick or treat make you the fool"
Just to hear Bonnie sing "compass," WHEW! Love is an adventure, brand new, and the key is to stay the course to experience the highs, the rewards and the pitfalls.
"Sometimes a moment of bliss
That starts with a kiss
Can end up so blue
'Cause I might say something wrong
And then comes along
A whole different you"
And now you know why Paul Brady is a legendary songwriter. We all say something wrong sometimes, and then our significant other's facial expression changes and the situation becomes completely different!
But even back in 1991, there was no place on the radio for this magic. "Trick or Treat" was not hard enough for AOR, not soft enough for AC, and this is not what Top Forty was ever looking for. "Trick or Treat" is just music, great music, before it became solely about money and this was enough. This is what listeners listened for!
3
Now to tell you the truth as I was grooving on the "Trick or Treat" album, switching to the big rig to truly make the room reverberate, my emotions started to sink. You see I realized that was thirty years ago. When I played this album incessantly. I can remember what I was thinking when I was doing so. The music put me in a good mood, but back then my life was a mess. And continued to be for quite sometime.
And now I'm on the back nine. When you've got to fight to make headway, when you can choose to rest on your laurels, retire and give up, or continue to try and break new ground.
But even if you plow deep grooves, people still might not pay attention, especially in today's cacophonous online society.
And too much of today's music is not good enough. Either it's rote. Or the elements are substandard...a great band can never supersede a mediocre singer, and a great band can't make a mediocre song a classic. Then again, back then it was about getting it exactly right, that last 1%. You spent a fortune to nail it, to get to the zenith, to resonate with the listening public.
You'd read about a record. There'd be a buzz. Something in the scuttlebutt resonated. And you'd decided to wade in and take a chance.
But you never knew exactly what you'd get. You'd drop the needle and might end up smiling or wincing, angry you blew your dough.
That's life. You've got to take the risks to get the rewards. But your efforts do not always pay off.
Trick or treat indeed!
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Legendary Acts That Never Had a Top Forty Hit-SiriusXM This Week
Tune in today, February 2nd, 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
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Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863
Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive
Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive
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Monday, 1 February 2021
Re-Hilton Valentine
Well since I've been Steve Miller's partner in harmony on and off for over 39 years, figure I'd weigh in on this one on the shirt tails of your comments here.
Leslie and Steve were tight. They dug each other. The double cut Les Paul Special with the psychedelic mint green paint job Leslie had commissioned was given to Steve as a gift. Glad you got to see them share a Bill. I saw Steve around that same time but it was just the trio with Lonnie Turner and Tim Davis. Steve played harmonica almost the whole show.
I will agree with you. After Your Saving Grace, there was a creative lull in Steve's catalog. And the Joker actually pissed me off more than it rocked my plimsoul, but like you inferred, you couldn't kill it with a stick. He gave up the Revolution for a wolf whistle! I get it.
Even Rockin Me appearing in 1977 didn't get my attention while we were all diggin the funk and r&b.
But then there was Fly Like an Eagle. It crossed over and the renaissance of Miller began and he ruled the airwaves for a decade. I was fortunate enough to ride that wave when we did Abracadabra the album.
The title track was actually going to be thrown off the album but we kept working on it and Steve had another hit that Europe championed and the US played catch up and you couldn't kill it with a stick.
Then came the compact disc in 87, Classic rock radio programming and he ruled once again.
Regardless of what our individual tastes in music may be, one fact remains. Long after we are gone and many golden era artists and their songs are forgotten, Steve Miller's catalog will still be playing in space stations throughout the quadrant of this galaxy.
Kenny Lee Lewis
__________________________________
Leslie West loved Valentines guitar work and we played House of the Rising Son every night in the Leslie West Band circa 1976... with ( future) Foreigner's
Mick Jones holding down rhythm as Leslie shredded lead with his own blues.... great music in the hands of great talent...... some of us survive!
Marty Simon
( drummer)..
Toronto
__________________________________
Producer, writer Jerry Goldstein gave me my first job in the music business, first selling posters on the road with artists he'd sign for rights that no one was paying them for. I then went on to sign and work with Zeppelin, Doors, Rolling Stones and fifty other monster acts, but it was Eric Burdon that I became very close friends with. No Animals or touring, Hilton lived in the downstairs basement apartment of Eric's Laurel Canyon home.
After Eric hooked up with WAR (then the back-up band, The Night Shift for Deacon Jones off season revue show.
Eric immediately enlisted Hilton to become the guitar roadie and later production manager for Eric Burdon and WAR… then Eric after he split (a mistake) from WAR. I used to watch Hilton tuning and playing the guitars at pre-sound check set-up. I could feel his desire to be back out in front of a crowd and it bothered me to share his pain in silence.
He was a gentle, thoughtful soul who was dedicated to his craft and Eric. A good hang along with Eric's longtime tour manager Terry McVey who passed quite a few years ago.
I'm glad that you thoughtfully honored Hilton. Boy oh boy, the fourth quarter can really stink at times.
Bruce Garfield
__________________________________
Throughout this draftee's tour in Vietnam (1969-71), "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" was THE nationwide theme song, the "automatic" encore of every performance by Vietnamese musicians playing to allied troops -- or else! Failure to oblige would incite a shower of beer, sometimes still in the can or bottle. Although many of these players neither spoke nor understood English, they all seemed to grasp the sentiments behind every band's most-requested song.
Second-most-requested? By the time this unwilling soldier arrived , Scott McKenzie's 1967 cover of John Phillips's "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" was popular because of that city's proximity to Travis Air Force Base, where departing US personnel landed in "The World" -- dead or alive, alas.
Dave Wallace, Jr.
__________________________________
Thank you for the great piece on Leslie West. I met Leslie in July of 1969 when I walked into a rehearsal room in Manhattan on my 1st day of being hired as road crew for a 3 week US tour to promote the album "Leslie West Mountain"
All I can remember is the physical image of the huge Jewish kid from Forest Hills with the tiny Les Paul smiling and asking me to go out for a food run and telling me he wanted a meat ball hero and a chocolate egg cream... an unknown language to my English brain but soon my daily ritual. The tour started at the Fillmore West where the band opened for Steve Miller and Albert King and Leslie told me the story of Bill Graham calling Leslie a f***ing psychedelic canary describing Leslie's outfit when Leslie's earlier band The Vagrants played the Fillmore East. After we played San Francisco, LA and Chicago we made our way to Bethel New York and the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Our showtime was scheduled for a morning slot but our agent, Ron Terry pulled his trump card ( Jimi Hendrix) and we went on as the sun went down when a very loud rock band could score bigger and better with the audience. Leslie lived up to the moment and delivered a performance that the 500,000 who saw the band remembered and overnight the band became a headliner up and down I 95 including Leslie's hometown at the Fillmore East. Mountain went on to headline the Fillmore East for the next 2 years playing more times than any act except Dead. Not bad for the psychedelic canary from Queens !! One more trip down memory lane that will stay with me forever...April or May 1070 around 1 a.m. and I am hanging out in the rehearsal room where I have been staying in between tour dates...on the West Side in the warehouse district and when someone knocks you don't open the door... I look out of the 2nd floor window and see a Cadillac Fleetwood limousine and Leslie so I go down to the heavily locked door and Leslie says.."Mickey say hi to Jimi..." and out of the car comes Jimi Hendrix and they go upstairs to get guitars for a late night jam at Unganos club uptown...but first they sit at the end of my "bed" and noodle while I roll a few joints...thank you Leslie for that night and so many others...you had a great touch on that Junior and you were a truly funny man...( and my 3 week tour with Leslie lasted 3 years and kick started my 50 years plus career )
Mick Brigden
__________________________________
Bob, thank you so very much for taking time to remember Hilton. I was hoping you would.
I've produced Beatles & British Invasion themed concerts in Syracuse & Liverpool NY since 2004. Gerry Marsden RIP was here in 2007, and Hilton in 2016. By popular demand, I brought him back in April 2017....and again, an hour west to the Geneva NY Opera House in October 2017 for a Lennon birthday concert.
Each time, myself and 2 pro level musicians backed HV on "It's My Life", "We Gotta", and of course, "House". It was the honor of a lifetime to sing "House" along with Hilton's perfectly-toned riff on his Gretsch Tennessean.
It's quite possibly the last time he played his riff with a band in public, before his health issues kicked in (which I'll keep private, in respect).
In Geneva, he was in very bad pain...but didn't say a word about it at all. Just like the two previous shows, he happily signed items and took photos with fans afterwards, smiling and thumbs ups.
But, the most poignant "Hilton moment" each time, was his solo acoustic version of Lennon's "Working Class Hero". Before playing, he explained his connection to the song, as his teenage life was similar to John's. Losing his mother early...an emotionally absent father...the cruel British school teachers.
As he played this gem (ironically, in a waltz fashion in A minor, like "House"), Hilton allowed himself to be vulnerable. You could hear his voice shaking with emotion. And with that, the audience connected so that you could both hear a pin drop, and then seconds later loud roars at the "til you're so fuckin' crazy" line. Standing O's.
And he used my acoustic guitar for it. I'll never sell it. After "House", he said in the northern Brit dialect, "aye lad, ya gave Eric ah roon foor his mooney!" A greater gift, I could not ask for.
Paul Davie
BeatleCuse - Executive Producer
__________________________________
With my band, Colorway, I was lucky enough to get to open for
The Yardbirds on three separate occasions at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, MA (my adopted hometown for almost 30 years). And at every soundcheck, sitting in the same chair near the stage, would be a silver-haired gent. Yep, it was Hilton Valentine. Him and Jim McCarty (original drummer for the Yardbirds) were buddies, of course, and Hilton lived somewhere in Connecticut, so he'd make the trip up for their shows.
I was lucky enough to get to tell him how much his opening riff on "House Of The Rising Sun" meant to me as a kid learning guitar way back in the early 80s. I'm sure I was one of many but it still made him smile and thank me for saying so. We exchanged pleasantries at the next two shows we did with The Yardbirds.
At the third show together the incredible Johnny A had been replaced with a "new" guitarist named Godfrey Townsend (John Entwistle/Jack Bruce/Denny Laine) and I sort of joked around after our sound check was done and said, "Hey there, so . . . you're the *new* guy, eh?" and they all laughed. I mean, the band does have a bit of a track record.
Hilton piped up from his chair and pointed to me and said, "be careful, lad, you might be next . . . "
That was a funny, awkward, and unforgettable moment.
My mom taught me at a very young age that if you get the chance, thank the people who inspired you, however big or small. Let them know they made a difference in your life.
I'm glad I took her advice.
Thanks, Hilton. Rest in peace.
F Alex Johnson
Kyoto, Japan
__________________________________
Hilton was a really nice chap and was always underestimated
But thank you for telling everyone
I will miss him and his skiffle
Nice stuff bob until you talk about our age. Or mine
Peter Noone
__________________________________
Well put, Bob - I always loved the Animals; but "we're next"? Nope. My guitar-player died a year ago tomorrow. Our own mortality usually starts truly getting into our faces with the death of a parent (eldest son/father? I'm still not over it after 14 years); but your own original band mate? Whatever the rifts and complications over the years...we're here. Right here, right now. Not "next".
Best,
Hugo Burnham
Leslie and Steve were tight. They dug each other. The double cut Les Paul Special with the psychedelic mint green paint job Leslie had commissioned was given to Steve as a gift. Glad you got to see them share a Bill. I saw Steve around that same time but it was just the trio with Lonnie Turner and Tim Davis. Steve played harmonica almost the whole show.
I will agree with you. After Your Saving Grace, there was a creative lull in Steve's catalog. And the Joker actually pissed me off more than it rocked my plimsoul, but like you inferred, you couldn't kill it with a stick. He gave up the Revolution for a wolf whistle! I get it.
Even Rockin Me appearing in 1977 didn't get my attention while we were all diggin the funk and r&b.
But then there was Fly Like an Eagle. It crossed over and the renaissance of Miller began and he ruled the airwaves for a decade. I was fortunate enough to ride that wave when we did Abracadabra the album.
The title track was actually going to be thrown off the album but we kept working on it and Steve had another hit that Europe championed and the US played catch up and you couldn't kill it with a stick.
Then came the compact disc in 87, Classic rock radio programming and he ruled once again.
Regardless of what our individual tastes in music may be, one fact remains. Long after we are gone and many golden era artists and their songs are forgotten, Steve Miller's catalog will still be playing in space stations throughout the quadrant of this galaxy.
Kenny Lee Lewis
__________________________________
Leslie West loved Valentines guitar work and we played House of the Rising Son every night in the Leslie West Band circa 1976... with ( future) Foreigner's
Mick Jones holding down rhythm as Leslie shredded lead with his own blues.... great music in the hands of great talent...... some of us survive!
Marty Simon
( drummer)..
Toronto
__________________________________
Producer, writer Jerry Goldstein gave me my first job in the music business, first selling posters on the road with artists he'd sign for rights that no one was paying them for. I then went on to sign and work with Zeppelin, Doors, Rolling Stones and fifty other monster acts, but it was Eric Burdon that I became very close friends with. No Animals or touring, Hilton lived in the downstairs basement apartment of Eric's Laurel Canyon home.
After Eric hooked up with WAR (then the back-up band, The Night Shift for Deacon Jones off season revue show.
Eric immediately enlisted Hilton to become the guitar roadie and later production manager for Eric Burdon and WAR… then Eric after he split (a mistake) from WAR. I used to watch Hilton tuning and playing the guitars at pre-sound check set-up. I could feel his desire to be back out in front of a crowd and it bothered me to share his pain in silence.
He was a gentle, thoughtful soul who was dedicated to his craft and Eric. A good hang along with Eric's longtime tour manager Terry McVey who passed quite a few years ago.
I'm glad that you thoughtfully honored Hilton. Boy oh boy, the fourth quarter can really stink at times.
Bruce Garfield
__________________________________
Throughout this draftee's tour in Vietnam (1969-71), "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" was THE nationwide theme song, the "automatic" encore of every performance by Vietnamese musicians playing to allied troops -- or else! Failure to oblige would incite a shower of beer, sometimes still in the can or bottle. Although many of these players neither spoke nor understood English, they all seemed to grasp the sentiments behind every band's most-requested song.
Second-most-requested? By the time this unwilling soldier arrived , Scott McKenzie's 1967 cover of John Phillips's "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" was popular because of that city's proximity to Travis Air Force Base, where departing US personnel landed in "The World" -- dead or alive, alas.
Dave Wallace, Jr.
__________________________________
Thank you for the great piece on Leslie West. I met Leslie in July of 1969 when I walked into a rehearsal room in Manhattan on my 1st day of being hired as road crew for a 3 week US tour to promote the album "Leslie West Mountain"
All I can remember is the physical image of the huge Jewish kid from Forest Hills with the tiny Les Paul smiling and asking me to go out for a food run and telling me he wanted a meat ball hero and a chocolate egg cream... an unknown language to my English brain but soon my daily ritual. The tour started at the Fillmore West where the band opened for Steve Miller and Albert King and Leslie told me the story of Bill Graham calling Leslie a f***ing psychedelic canary describing Leslie's outfit when Leslie's earlier band The Vagrants played the Fillmore East. After we played San Francisco, LA and Chicago we made our way to Bethel New York and the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Our showtime was scheduled for a morning slot but our agent, Ron Terry pulled his trump card ( Jimi Hendrix) and we went on as the sun went down when a very loud rock band could score bigger and better with the audience. Leslie lived up to the moment and delivered a performance that the 500,000 who saw the band remembered and overnight the band became a headliner up and down I 95 including Leslie's hometown at the Fillmore East. Mountain went on to headline the Fillmore East for the next 2 years playing more times than any act except Dead. Not bad for the psychedelic canary from Queens !! One more trip down memory lane that will stay with me forever...April or May 1070 around 1 a.m. and I am hanging out in the rehearsal room where I have been staying in between tour dates...on the West Side in the warehouse district and when someone knocks you don't open the door... I look out of the 2nd floor window and see a Cadillac Fleetwood limousine and Leslie so I go down to the heavily locked door and Leslie says.."Mickey say hi to Jimi..." and out of the car comes Jimi Hendrix and they go upstairs to get guitars for a late night jam at Unganos club uptown...but first they sit at the end of my "bed" and noodle while I roll a few joints...thank you Leslie for that night and so many others...you had a great touch on that Junior and you were a truly funny man...( and my 3 week tour with Leslie lasted 3 years and kick started my 50 years plus career )
Mick Brigden
__________________________________
Bob, thank you so very much for taking time to remember Hilton. I was hoping you would.
I've produced Beatles & British Invasion themed concerts in Syracuse & Liverpool NY since 2004. Gerry Marsden RIP was here in 2007, and Hilton in 2016. By popular demand, I brought him back in April 2017....and again, an hour west to the Geneva NY Opera House in October 2017 for a Lennon birthday concert.
Each time, myself and 2 pro level musicians backed HV on "It's My Life", "We Gotta", and of course, "House". It was the honor of a lifetime to sing "House" along with Hilton's perfectly-toned riff on his Gretsch Tennessean.
It's quite possibly the last time he played his riff with a band in public, before his health issues kicked in (which I'll keep private, in respect).
In Geneva, he was in very bad pain...but didn't say a word about it at all. Just like the two previous shows, he happily signed items and took photos with fans afterwards, smiling and thumbs ups.
But, the most poignant "Hilton moment" each time, was his solo acoustic version of Lennon's "Working Class Hero". Before playing, he explained his connection to the song, as his teenage life was similar to John's. Losing his mother early...an emotionally absent father...the cruel British school teachers.
As he played this gem (ironically, in a waltz fashion in A minor, like "House"), Hilton allowed himself to be vulnerable. You could hear his voice shaking with emotion. And with that, the audience connected so that you could both hear a pin drop, and then seconds later loud roars at the "til you're so fuckin' crazy" line. Standing O's.
And he used my acoustic guitar for it. I'll never sell it. After "House", he said in the northern Brit dialect, "aye lad, ya gave Eric ah roon foor his mooney!" A greater gift, I could not ask for.
Paul Davie
BeatleCuse - Executive Producer
__________________________________
With my band, Colorway, I was lucky enough to get to open for
The Yardbirds on three separate occasions at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, MA (my adopted hometown for almost 30 years). And at every soundcheck, sitting in the same chair near the stage, would be a silver-haired gent. Yep, it was Hilton Valentine. Him and Jim McCarty (original drummer for the Yardbirds) were buddies, of course, and Hilton lived somewhere in Connecticut, so he'd make the trip up for their shows.
I was lucky enough to get to tell him how much his opening riff on "House Of The Rising Sun" meant to me as a kid learning guitar way back in the early 80s. I'm sure I was one of many but it still made him smile and thank me for saying so. We exchanged pleasantries at the next two shows we did with The Yardbirds.
At the third show together the incredible Johnny A had been replaced with a "new" guitarist named Godfrey Townsend (John Entwistle/Jack Bruce/Denny Laine) and I sort of joked around after our sound check was done and said, "Hey there, so . . . you're the *new* guy, eh?" and they all laughed. I mean, the band does have a bit of a track record.
Hilton piped up from his chair and pointed to me and said, "be careful, lad, you might be next . . . "
That was a funny, awkward, and unforgettable moment.
My mom taught me at a very young age that if you get the chance, thank the people who inspired you, however big or small. Let them know they made a difference in your life.
I'm glad I took her advice.
Thanks, Hilton. Rest in peace.
F Alex Johnson
Kyoto, Japan
__________________________________
Hilton was a really nice chap and was always underestimated
But thank you for telling everyone
I will miss him and his skiffle
Nice stuff bob until you talk about our age. Or mine
Peter Noone
__________________________________
Well put, Bob - I always loved the Animals; but "we're next"? Nope. My guitar-player died a year ago tomorrow. Our own mortality usually starts truly getting into our faces with the death of a parent (eldest son/father? I'm still not over it after 14 years); but your own original band mate? Whatever the rifts and complications over the years...we're here. Right here, right now. Not "next".
Best,
Hugo Burnham
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The Kobalt Sale
It only took Sony two decades to wake up.
Kobalt was built to be sold. Haven't we seen this same paradigm over the last two decades in the internet sphere? Independents gain headway, needle the big 'uns, and then sell out at a high price. And eventually, the big 'uns get so big, they can't be challenged...can you say FACEBOOK and GOOGLE?
The music business has changed dramatically in the past half decade, despite no acknowledgement of this whatsoever. For ten plus years the conversation centered around distribution, i.e. the journey from Napster to Spotify. And since Spotify and its streaming cohorts turned revenue around, in other words so it started going back up, all the conversation has been about payments. Ironically, almost all of this jawing is from oldsters who were disrupted by technological change, you don't hear the youngsters bitching, unless they're complete wannabes. Why is it those with the smallest purchase make the biggest noise? Why is it these wankers get paid attention?
Anyway, the story of the last five years in music has been its complete Balkanization. There may be three major labels, but they control less of the landscape than ever before. You see the barrier to entry is nonexistent, and so many are playing and...
Let me give you an analogy. TV. There were nearly five hundred shows made in the past year, a giant multiple of those produced in the pre-streaming era. However, shows are expensive to make, and distribution is key, there are a limited number of outlets. In music, creation has exploded, but distribution is easy, therefore there are oodles of new acts, some with traction, some with less.
Going back to the oldsters versus the young 'uns... The young 'uns harnessed the new internet tools. They uploaded to Soundcloud, gave it away for free. Promoted for free online via social media, never mind having made the music on the cheap, employing computers. The young 'uns bought fully into the new world. You either do so or die. Remember that.
But now there are so many acts and so many labels that the landscape is incomprehensible. As is the chart. Sure, there are a number of very successful songs, but they mean less than ever before, they reach a smaller percentage of the population than ever before. And their share of the aggregate is going down, yes, that's what the latest reports have said, income is being distributed to more acts.
So...
If you're a modern label, your best way to survive is to hoover up all the small players, get that revenue for yourself, control that revenue.
Consolidation is the way of business. And this Sony/Kobalt deal is evidence of this. Sony just entered the present. Its competitors have shrinking release schedules looking for hits, that's a different game.
Meanwhile, the customer is completely confused. What should they listen to?
So Kobalt came up with a better mousetrap. AWAL. Giving partners just what they needed at a rock bottom price. Genius. As was Kobalt itself. Kobalt revolutionized publishing, from the ground up it was based on the internet, and transparency. You could see where your music was being played and what you should get paid, whenever you wanted. This was anathema to the old players, whose business model is based on obfuscation and theft. And sure, the old players eventually modernized, adding client computer dashboards, but the truth is they're part of major labels operating under old rules, they've got no vision. So, Round Hill, Primary Wave and Hipgnosis swooped in and bought key assets, revolutionizing the business as well as driving catalog prices up.
Now the dirty little secret is the majors and their associated publishing companies like the way things are, they want no change. You see it's one big tent, and therefore the labels don't really care about the publishing share of streaming. Yes, the split is inequitable, songwriters get screwed. But this is going to change. BECAUSE MERCK OWNS TOO MANY HITS! Yes, Hipgnosis and its independent compatriots are going to lobby for changes, to right the wrong, to raise songwriter royalties, and they've got an excellent case, and now they've also got leverage.
The major labels could have had this leverage, but they were asleep. These new publishers had vision. Why do we not have new labels with this vision?
Catalog. The music business runs on catalog. New hits are sexy, they get all the ink, but the catalog drives profits. It costs nothing to make and market and the revenue keeps pouring in, especially in these days of streaming, where there's no manufacturing and distribution.
Will someone ever build a new label powerhouse?
It turns out no one is willing to play the long game. Which is necessary here. Although unlike in the past, the opportunity has never been larger. You've got to build a catalog. But with so much content available, so much to bet on, the opportunities are rife. But music is seen as a secondary business that got trounced by the internet, never to recover. WRONG! The internet has been the best thing that has ever happened to the music business. There are umpteen new revenue streams, marketing is cheap and if you don't understand this you're an oldster who believes direct consumption of recordings is the only thing that matters in music. It is not. Widen your horizons or get out of the way, the future continues to be built.
But now Sony has done what I told Roger Ames and the rest of the CEOs to do almost twenty years ago, they've cast a wide net, knowing that the aggregate is key, nothing is as big as before so you've got to be the pipeline for more.
This is a bad sign for artists. The more power major labels get, the worse it is for them.
But the race is not over, it is still being run.
But now the people who left major label distribution to go to AWAL...are back where they started, and there's no viable alternative.
Never ever forget that distribution is king. And Sony has just amped up its distribution power. Think about that.
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Kobalt was built to be sold. Haven't we seen this same paradigm over the last two decades in the internet sphere? Independents gain headway, needle the big 'uns, and then sell out at a high price. And eventually, the big 'uns get so big, they can't be challenged...can you say FACEBOOK and GOOGLE?
The music business has changed dramatically in the past half decade, despite no acknowledgement of this whatsoever. For ten plus years the conversation centered around distribution, i.e. the journey from Napster to Spotify. And since Spotify and its streaming cohorts turned revenue around, in other words so it started going back up, all the conversation has been about payments. Ironically, almost all of this jawing is from oldsters who were disrupted by technological change, you don't hear the youngsters bitching, unless they're complete wannabes. Why is it those with the smallest purchase make the biggest noise? Why is it these wankers get paid attention?
Anyway, the story of the last five years in music has been its complete Balkanization. There may be three major labels, but they control less of the landscape than ever before. You see the barrier to entry is nonexistent, and so many are playing and...
Let me give you an analogy. TV. There were nearly five hundred shows made in the past year, a giant multiple of those produced in the pre-streaming era. However, shows are expensive to make, and distribution is key, there are a limited number of outlets. In music, creation has exploded, but distribution is easy, therefore there are oodles of new acts, some with traction, some with less.
Going back to the oldsters versus the young 'uns... The young 'uns harnessed the new internet tools. They uploaded to Soundcloud, gave it away for free. Promoted for free online via social media, never mind having made the music on the cheap, employing computers. The young 'uns bought fully into the new world. You either do so or die. Remember that.
But now there are so many acts and so many labels that the landscape is incomprehensible. As is the chart. Sure, there are a number of very successful songs, but they mean less than ever before, they reach a smaller percentage of the population than ever before. And their share of the aggregate is going down, yes, that's what the latest reports have said, income is being distributed to more acts.
So...
If you're a modern label, your best way to survive is to hoover up all the small players, get that revenue for yourself, control that revenue.
Consolidation is the way of business. And this Sony/Kobalt deal is evidence of this. Sony just entered the present. Its competitors have shrinking release schedules looking for hits, that's a different game.
Meanwhile, the customer is completely confused. What should they listen to?
So Kobalt came up with a better mousetrap. AWAL. Giving partners just what they needed at a rock bottom price. Genius. As was Kobalt itself. Kobalt revolutionized publishing, from the ground up it was based on the internet, and transparency. You could see where your music was being played and what you should get paid, whenever you wanted. This was anathema to the old players, whose business model is based on obfuscation and theft. And sure, the old players eventually modernized, adding client computer dashboards, but the truth is they're part of major labels operating under old rules, they've got no vision. So, Round Hill, Primary Wave and Hipgnosis swooped in and bought key assets, revolutionizing the business as well as driving catalog prices up.
Now the dirty little secret is the majors and their associated publishing companies like the way things are, they want no change. You see it's one big tent, and therefore the labels don't really care about the publishing share of streaming. Yes, the split is inequitable, songwriters get screwed. But this is going to change. BECAUSE MERCK OWNS TOO MANY HITS! Yes, Hipgnosis and its independent compatriots are going to lobby for changes, to right the wrong, to raise songwriter royalties, and they've got an excellent case, and now they've also got leverage.
The major labels could have had this leverage, but they were asleep. These new publishers had vision. Why do we not have new labels with this vision?
Catalog. The music business runs on catalog. New hits are sexy, they get all the ink, but the catalog drives profits. It costs nothing to make and market and the revenue keeps pouring in, especially in these days of streaming, where there's no manufacturing and distribution.
Will someone ever build a new label powerhouse?
It turns out no one is willing to play the long game. Which is necessary here. Although unlike in the past, the opportunity has never been larger. You've got to build a catalog. But with so much content available, so much to bet on, the opportunities are rife. But music is seen as a secondary business that got trounced by the internet, never to recover. WRONG! The internet has been the best thing that has ever happened to the music business. There are umpteen new revenue streams, marketing is cheap and if you don't understand this you're an oldster who believes direct consumption of recordings is the only thing that matters in music. It is not. Widen your horizons or get out of the way, the future continues to be built.
But now Sony has done what I told Roger Ames and the rest of the CEOs to do almost twenty years ago, they've cast a wide net, knowing that the aggregate is key, nothing is as big as before so you've got to be the pipeline for more.
This is a bad sign for artists. The more power major labels get, the worse it is for them.
But the race is not over, it is still being run.
But now the people who left major label distribution to go to AWAL...are back where they started, and there's no viable alternative.
Never ever forget that distribution is king. And Sony has just amped up its distribution power. Think about that.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Sunday, 31 January 2021
Hilton Valentine
Playlist: https://spoti.fi/39zSPtp
This is bringing me right down.
Now it's getting out of control, every week seems to bring the passing of a rock star of yore, some that you recognize, some that you've hardly even heard of.
Leslie West. I bought the first Mountain album, which was really a Leslie West solo LP. Yes, I knew he was in the Vagrants, but I never heard any of their music. This was when you read about records and had to buy them to hear them, but you couldn't buy all of them. Not that I'm exactly sure what made me buy the first Mountain album, maybe I heard it at a friend's house, because I certainly never heard it on the radio.
It was on Windfall Records. Distributed by Bell Records. Let's see, Bell was a powerhouse of rock and roll, famous for releasing Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" and Climax's "Precious and Few." No, not the Climax Blues Band, and if you wanted the really heavy stuff on Bell you listened to Tony Orlando and Dawn. Bell was a singles label. And either it got on the airwaves or it disappeared. What room was there for Leslie West? Essentially none. Especially in an era where all the good stuff came out on Warner Brothers and Columbia.
Upon Leslie's death I was stunned to find out about the reputation of "Long Red," how many times it was sampled. Actually, my favorite song on the LP was "Baby, I'm Down," and "Storyteller Man" was great, as was the finale, "Because You Are My Friend." This was before anybody knew who Leslie was, so he could be both noisy and soft, bombastic and sensitive, all on the same album. And I played that album over and over, it was fun to be into something only you knew about.
So I had to go see Mountain at the Fillmore East. The headliner was the Steve Miller Band, supporting their new album "Your Saving Grace," which I did not purchase. I love the title track, but at that point, I was off the Steve Miller bandwagon, ultimately "Number 5" was worse. Then people stopped buying Steve's albums, I saw "Rock Love" in the bins, just like the ridiculously titled follow-up, "Recall the Beginning...A Journey from Eden," but no one I knew owned them. And then, out of the blue, Miller had a monster hit with "The Joker" and he was everywhere. My favorite album was always the third, "Brave New World." Sure, it's got "Space Cowboy," but it also had "Kow Kow" and "Seasons" and Paul McCartney on "My Dark Hour." I still play "Brave New World" today, even though diehards believe it was already over by then. You see Boz Scaggs was already gone, to purists it was about "Sailor," with the indelible "Quicksilver Girl," which too many people still don't know, and preferably the debut, when the band was supposedly still pure.
I'll tell you, Miller delivered, but he was just a bonus, I wanted to see Mountain. And by this time, there was a band. With Felix Pappalardi and Corky Laing and Leslie sang like he meant it, there was incredible power, this was an offshoot of Hendrix and what had come before, today's heavy music is sans melody, but not Leslie West, not Mountain. Mind you, this was months before the second album, "Climbing!," came out in March. "Mississippi Queen" was an immediate success. In bedrooms and basements. You never heard it on AM radio. But by this point, if you lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, you were listening to FM, New York was only fifty miles away.
I remember being stoned listening to "Climbing!" in the basement of someone I did not really know and feeling that the album was passé, it was already June, there was new stuff. And I'd heard enough of "Mississippi Queen" within weeks of release. Actually, my favorite cut on the album was "Silver Paper." And I knew "Theme for an Imaginary Western" from Jack Bruce's solo and "For Yasgur's Farm" was one of the Woodstock songs, but ultimately Mountain was not in the Woodstock movie, a decision made by management, when you used to say no instead of yes, and West carried this chip on his shoulder for the rest of his life. If only...
And then Mountain got heavier and heavier, more bombastic, and when that avenue ran out of steam there was a supergroup with drummer Laing and Jack Bruce and that was the height of bombasticity and corporate rock came in and then disco and Leslie West was a gunslinger with no saloon within which to show his chops. MTV was about synths. A few hotshots survived, but only a few, like Eric Clapton...even Jeff Beck was struggling for attention. Music is funny. Have enough hits and you can trade on them forever, playing them to smaller and smaller audiences. But people come to hear the hits, you're a prisoner of your past.
But now that past is receding further and further, to the point where unless you're the Beatles or the Stones, your work from the sixties may be fading away, and the seventies and eighties too. At least in the sixties there were all these big AM hits. But the seventies were about FM staples, so there were a lot of acts that got airplay but were not known by absolutely everybody so their paint has faded so much as to almost be unknowable.
Then there's Gerry Marsden. His band had gigantic hits. But it seems no young 'un knows them, they'll never get chills when they finally see the Mersey and have the words of his song play in their heads. And you'd think in this era where pop rules, someone could have a huge hit with a cover of "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'"...then again, that can't happen until the chart migrates from beats back to melody.
As for Sylvan Sylvain... He had the privilege of being in a cult band. With cult fans. The Ramones never had a hit, and now you see their t-shirts on babies. The Dolls have lived on because they pushed the envelope, so you saw a lot of ink about Sylvain's death, but most people had no idea who he was, never mind his music.
Tim Bogert? A monster supporting player in no bands that were iconic hitmakers. Sure, Vanilla Fudge's version of "You Keep Me Hanging On" was the precursor to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," an extended number for stoners, but there was never a hit single version, unlike the Iron Butterfly number. I saw Cactus multiple times, I can't say they deserved to break through, and they didn't. As for Bogert's work with Jeff Beck... Finally his moniker was in the headline, in the name of the group, but Stevie Wonder had the hit version of "Superstition." So, if you knew Bogert, you felt his loss. But he was never the member of a sexy band so he got a hell of a lot less ink than Sylvain Sylvain.
And now Hilton Valentine.
Quick! Name the guitarist in the Animals!
Very few can do so. Their hits were 55 years ago, over half a century. To give you some perspective... That would be like kids in the sixties, the Animals' heyday, knowing the hits of 1910, which they most certainly didn't.
Now the Animals were hobbled by being on MGM Records, which was never cool. We knew that back then, we saw the labels on the 45s, we knew the orange and yellow of Capitol, the red of Columbia...MGM was a lame label, without the infrastructure of its big time competitors.
But the Animals were giants.
It was the summer of '64. The summer of "A Hard Day's Night." The British Invasion was in full swing, our minds had expanded to encompass the work of seemingly everything from the U.K., assuming it was good. And the Animals were.
At that point most people had no idea "House of the Rising Sun" was a Dave Van Ronk staple, never mind being on Bob Dylan's first LP, it was the rock sound that put the Animals' version over the top. Of course you had Eric Burdon's vocal, but there is not a boomer alive, that's how ubiquitous hit songs were back then, who doesn't know the opening guitar lick to "House of the Rising Sun." That lick was played by Hilton Valentine.
Now the original incarnation of the Animals only lasted until 1966. Sure, their hit-making era was only three years, from '64-'66, but they'd paid dues before that, beginning in '62, in Newcastle upon Tyne, an industrial area without the hipness of Liverpool, never mind London. The Animals had a dark name and they were perceived as dark. But they had a slew of hits.
Sure, "House of the Rising Sun" was a breakthrough, and went to #1, but "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," which only went to #13 in the U.S., was a bigger song, probably better remembered. Barry Mann and Cynthia Well wrote it, but the Animals made it their own, and it did not have the legacy of a standard, it was fresh, brand new.
As for "It's My Life"...
Eric Burdon was gonna ride that serpent, he was gonna break loose, because..
"It's my life and I'll do what I want
It's my mind and I'll think what I want"
This was the ethos of the sixties, it's not the ethos of today. Our parents were not fighting us for attention, there was no question of them being our best friends, we were throwing off the chains of society, of expectations, we were gonna forge our own path.
It's a great song, Burdon delivers it, but never underestimate the importance of Hilton Valentine's twelve string guitar.
And the Animals had other hits, but "Don't Bring Me Down" is my favorite.
"When you complain and criticize
I feel I'm nothing in your eyes
It makes me feel like giving up
Because my best just ain't good enough"
The hormones had awoken. Puberty was in full swing. What you wanted was too often unattainable. You had crushes. But to them you barely existed, if at all. But to you, they were everything. The only thing you had to soothe yourself was this music.
"Oh, oh no
Don't bring me down"
Give me a chance. I'll show you, you'll see, I'll have this music playing in the back of my mind, I'll be emboldened, I'll be undeniable.
Now in the case of "Don't Bring Me Down" one cannot underestimate the importance of Dave Rowberry's organ, and Eric Burdon sings with nuance, something absent from too much of today's music, and it's a great Gerry Goffin/Carole King song, but what truly makes "Don't Bring Me Down" a hit is Hilton Valentine's fuzz guitar. It's a bedrock element of rock history. And you probably had no idea who Hilton Valentine was. He's that guy!
They no longer die before their time, they don't O.D., their bodies give out and they're gone, and there are so many of them these days that their deaths are less shocking and get less attention, after all, nobody lives forever.
But if you lived through the era... These people were everything. They took over from sports stars. They broke new ground. And we followed them. The Beatles were not the only pied pipers.
Now the truth is we're next. These musicians are a decade older than so many of us. But the Grim Reaper is coming for us, we're next on the chopping block. Everything that was so important, everything that we lived for, is fading away, probably never to return. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
This is bringing me right down.
Now it's getting out of control, every week seems to bring the passing of a rock star of yore, some that you recognize, some that you've hardly even heard of.
Leslie West. I bought the first Mountain album, which was really a Leslie West solo LP. Yes, I knew he was in the Vagrants, but I never heard any of their music. This was when you read about records and had to buy them to hear them, but you couldn't buy all of them. Not that I'm exactly sure what made me buy the first Mountain album, maybe I heard it at a friend's house, because I certainly never heard it on the radio.
It was on Windfall Records. Distributed by Bell Records. Let's see, Bell was a powerhouse of rock and roll, famous for releasing Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" and Climax's "Precious and Few." No, not the Climax Blues Band, and if you wanted the really heavy stuff on Bell you listened to Tony Orlando and Dawn. Bell was a singles label. And either it got on the airwaves or it disappeared. What room was there for Leslie West? Essentially none. Especially in an era where all the good stuff came out on Warner Brothers and Columbia.
Upon Leslie's death I was stunned to find out about the reputation of "Long Red," how many times it was sampled. Actually, my favorite song on the LP was "Baby, I'm Down," and "Storyteller Man" was great, as was the finale, "Because You Are My Friend." This was before anybody knew who Leslie was, so he could be both noisy and soft, bombastic and sensitive, all on the same album. And I played that album over and over, it was fun to be into something only you knew about.
So I had to go see Mountain at the Fillmore East. The headliner was the Steve Miller Band, supporting their new album "Your Saving Grace," which I did not purchase. I love the title track, but at that point, I was off the Steve Miller bandwagon, ultimately "Number 5" was worse. Then people stopped buying Steve's albums, I saw "Rock Love" in the bins, just like the ridiculously titled follow-up, "Recall the Beginning...A Journey from Eden," but no one I knew owned them. And then, out of the blue, Miller had a monster hit with "The Joker" and he was everywhere. My favorite album was always the third, "Brave New World." Sure, it's got "Space Cowboy," but it also had "Kow Kow" and "Seasons" and Paul McCartney on "My Dark Hour." I still play "Brave New World" today, even though diehards believe it was already over by then. You see Boz Scaggs was already gone, to purists it was about "Sailor," with the indelible "Quicksilver Girl," which too many people still don't know, and preferably the debut, when the band was supposedly still pure.
I'll tell you, Miller delivered, but he was just a bonus, I wanted to see Mountain. And by this time, there was a band. With Felix Pappalardi and Corky Laing and Leslie sang like he meant it, there was incredible power, this was an offshoot of Hendrix and what had come before, today's heavy music is sans melody, but not Leslie West, not Mountain. Mind you, this was months before the second album, "Climbing!," came out in March. "Mississippi Queen" was an immediate success. In bedrooms and basements. You never heard it on AM radio. But by this point, if you lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, you were listening to FM, New York was only fifty miles away.
I remember being stoned listening to "Climbing!" in the basement of someone I did not really know and feeling that the album was passé, it was already June, there was new stuff. And I'd heard enough of "Mississippi Queen" within weeks of release. Actually, my favorite cut on the album was "Silver Paper." And I knew "Theme for an Imaginary Western" from Jack Bruce's solo and "For Yasgur's Farm" was one of the Woodstock songs, but ultimately Mountain was not in the Woodstock movie, a decision made by management, when you used to say no instead of yes, and West carried this chip on his shoulder for the rest of his life. If only...
And then Mountain got heavier and heavier, more bombastic, and when that avenue ran out of steam there was a supergroup with drummer Laing and Jack Bruce and that was the height of bombasticity and corporate rock came in and then disco and Leslie West was a gunslinger with no saloon within which to show his chops. MTV was about synths. A few hotshots survived, but only a few, like Eric Clapton...even Jeff Beck was struggling for attention. Music is funny. Have enough hits and you can trade on them forever, playing them to smaller and smaller audiences. But people come to hear the hits, you're a prisoner of your past.
But now that past is receding further and further, to the point where unless you're the Beatles or the Stones, your work from the sixties may be fading away, and the seventies and eighties too. At least in the sixties there were all these big AM hits. But the seventies were about FM staples, so there were a lot of acts that got airplay but were not known by absolutely everybody so their paint has faded so much as to almost be unknowable.
Then there's Gerry Marsden. His band had gigantic hits. But it seems no young 'un knows them, they'll never get chills when they finally see the Mersey and have the words of his song play in their heads. And you'd think in this era where pop rules, someone could have a huge hit with a cover of "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'"...then again, that can't happen until the chart migrates from beats back to melody.
As for Sylvan Sylvain... He had the privilege of being in a cult band. With cult fans. The Ramones never had a hit, and now you see their t-shirts on babies. The Dolls have lived on because they pushed the envelope, so you saw a lot of ink about Sylvain's death, but most people had no idea who he was, never mind his music.
Tim Bogert? A monster supporting player in no bands that were iconic hitmakers. Sure, Vanilla Fudge's version of "You Keep Me Hanging On" was the precursor to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," an extended number for stoners, but there was never a hit single version, unlike the Iron Butterfly number. I saw Cactus multiple times, I can't say they deserved to break through, and they didn't. As for Bogert's work with Jeff Beck... Finally his moniker was in the headline, in the name of the group, but Stevie Wonder had the hit version of "Superstition." So, if you knew Bogert, you felt his loss. But he was never the member of a sexy band so he got a hell of a lot less ink than Sylvain Sylvain.
And now Hilton Valentine.
Quick! Name the guitarist in the Animals!
Very few can do so. Their hits were 55 years ago, over half a century. To give you some perspective... That would be like kids in the sixties, the Animals' heyday, knowing the hits of 1910, which they most certainly didn't.
Now the Animals were hobbled by being on MGM Records, which was never cool. We knew that back then, we saw the labels on the 45s, we knew the orange and yellow of Capitol, the red of Columbia...MGM was a lame label, without the infrastructure of its big time competitors.
But the Animals were giants.
It was the summer of '64. The summer of "A Hard Day's Night." The British Invasion was in full swing, our minds had expanded to encompass the work of seemingly everything from the U.K., assuming it was good. And the Animals were.
At that point most people had no idea "House of the Rising Sun" was a Dave Van Ronk staple, never mind being on Bob Dylan's first LP, it was the rock sound that put the Animals' version over the top. Of course you had Eric Burdon's vocal, but there is not a boomer alive, that's how ubiquitous hit songs were back then, who doesn't know the opening guitar lick to "House of the Rising Sun." That lick was played by Hilton Valentine.
Now the original incarnation of the Animals only lasted until 1966. Sure, their hit-making era was only three years, from '64-'66, but they'd paid dues before that, beginning in '62, in Newcastle upon Tyne, an industrial area without the hipness of Liverpool, never mind London. The Animals had a dark name and they were perceived as dark. But they had a slew of hits.
Sure, "House of the Rising Sun" was a breakthrough, and went to #1, but "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," which only went to #13 in the U.S., was a bigger song, probably better remembered. Barry Mann and Cynthia Well wrote it, but the Animals made it their own, and it did not have the legacy of a standard, it was fresh, brand new.
As for "It's My Life"...
Eric Burdon was gonna ride that serpent, he was gonna break loose, because..
"It's my life and I'll do what I want
It's my mind and I'll think what I want"
This was the ethos of the sixties, it's not the ethos of today. Our parents were not fighting us for attention, there was no question of them being our best friends, we were throwing off the chains of society, of expectations, we were gonna forge our own path.
It's a great song, Burdon delivers it, but never underestimate the importance of Hilton Valentine's twelve string guitar.
And the Animals had other hits, but "Don't Bring Me Down" is my favorite.
"When you complain and criticize
I feel I'm nothing in your eyes
It makes me feel like giving up
Because my best just ain't good enough"
The hormones had awoken. Puberty was in full swing. What you wanted was too often unattainable. You had crushes. But to them you barely existed, if at all. But to you, they were everything. The only thing you had to soothe yourself was this music.
"Oh, oh no
Don't bring me down"
Give me a chance. I'll show you, you'll see, I'll have this music playing in the back of my mind, I'll be emboldened, I'll be undeniable.
Now in the case of "Don't Bring Me Down" one cannot underestimate the importance of Dave Rowberry's organ, and Eric Burdon sings with nuance, something absent from too much of today's music, and it's a great Gerry Goffin/Carole King song, but what truly makes "Don't Bring Me Down" a hit is Hilton Valentine's fuzz guitar. It's a bedrock element of rock history. And you probably had no idea who Hilton Valentine was. He's that guy!
They no longer die before their time, they don't O.D., their bodies give out and they're gone, and there are so many of them these days that their deaths are less shocking and get less attention, after all, nobody lives forever.
But if you lived through the era... These people were everything. They took over from sports stars. They broke new ground. And we followed them. The Beatles were not the only pied pipers.
Now the truth is we're next. These musicians are a decade older than so many of us. But the Grim Reaper is coming for us, we're next on the chopping block. Everything that was so important, everything that we lived for, is fading away, probably never to return. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
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