Tune in Saturday June 14th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.
Phone #: 844-686-5863
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
Friday, 13 June 2025
Thursday, 12 June 2025
Tyler Childers At The Hollywood Bowl
1
How did everybody know?
It's a big city, but you run into people you know everywhere. You can't go to a show without seeing someone you went to school with, someone you met at a party, but on Wednesday night I didn't recognize ANYBODY! Other than a handful of music business insiders, but there was not a plethora of the usual suspects down front, it was like they imported a whole new audience that I wasn't even aware of.
This was not the Riverside crowd... Leave the city center and you don't exactly get rural people, but those more roots oriented, more country, but that was not this crowd, they were positively middle class, scrubbed-up, dressed well, HOW DID THEY KNOW?
Tyler Childers has not had a hit, but he can sell out the Hollywood Bowl?
Now the dirty little secret is the Bowl has turned into the Garden. Acts many have never heard of play Madison Square Garden and sell out, or close, and ditto with the Hollywood Bowl. Is this one and done? If Tyler Childers played another venue within a fifty mile radius could he sell this number of tickets? I mean I've gone to the Bowl to see household names and there are empty seats, but not the other night.
His agent told me that Childers normally plays amphitheatres. But with lawns he can sell up to 20,000 tickets. And he's reciting other numbers and it's clear this is a veritable phenomenon. How exactly did this happen? There are theories, but nobody's really sure. But one thing is for sure, the music business revolution we anticipated at the turn of the century is now here. There are fewer hits, and they're not ubiquitous, but there are acts most people don't even know with huge fanbases making beaucoup bucks. It's got to do with the internet, but it doesn't have to do with the label.
Childers was playing bars, as far as Missouri from his hometown in Kentucky. Hell, he'd never even BEEN to the west coast until he played his first gig at the Echo, where 180 people attended.
Did the label blow him up? THERE WAS NO LABEL!
He and his manager met with Keith Levy at Wasserman and it was decided it would be best to do an album with Sturgill Simpson, whom the agency represented. That took a while to happen. But the record came out and the audience built and it did not happen overnight, theory is it happened DURING Covid. When everybody was at home with time on their hands and looking for something to listen to, word of mouth broke Tyler Childers.
Who is truly country. I don't mean country like the massaged hits that come out of the Nashville hit factory. In many ways, not even Americana. This guy SOUNDS like he came from the country. That voice, you don't hear that in hit music. This is not what Beyoncé and Post Malone think of when they decide to go country. This is closer to the fifties than it is to today. Then again, it's about the songwriting, which speaks to the audience.
And who is the audience?
Used to be there was a clear divide between north and south, everybody below the Mason-Dixon Line was considered an inferior redneck. But that's not how people view the country or music these days. We're all in it together. Sure, there are political prejudices, but those are mainly fights between politicos that the average person feels estranged from. When it comes down to living your life, today most people are surprisingly on the same page, despite media trying to divide us. Just like you don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's, you don't have to be from the holler to like Tyler Childers.
2
Most acts are concerned with the economics. They don't want to spend money, they want to make it. But including Tyler himself, there were eight musicians on stage. And projection and other production. This was not overwhelming, this was not the bells and whistles of today's arena acts, the production complimented as opposed to overwhelmed, but still...someone was spending money.
So the first number begins and after a couple of verses, they go all instrumental, they start to IMPROVISE! ON THE VERY FIRST NUMBER!
Sure, the Dead might do that, but almost no one else. Maybe Dave Matthews Band, but that act appealed to a more upwardly mobile crowd, which also likes Chiders, but you don't have to be an educated intellectual to get on the train.
And Tyler comes out in a sweater that resembles nothing so much as that ratty green one Kurt Cobain wore in Nirvana's MTV "Unplugged." But Tyler's was new, and it didn't seem to be ironic.
And he's playing an acoustic, got another acoustic player on stage, got a guy with a Les Paul...
This is not Keith Urban, this is not a rock show. Then again, there was occasionally wailing.
And it wasn't down home country either. It was an amalgam of those sounds, and more. A melting pot of Childers's own creation.
AND THIS GUY HASN'T EVEN HAD A HIT! Tyler's success is not the result of a label push, hell, the breakthrough record was put out by David Macias and Thirty Tigers.
And now Childers has made a record with Rick Rubin. Does this portend further success?
Rubin lets acts be true to themselves, he doesn't force them to sell out, he tries to hone their essence, will this be a breakthrough?
Not everybody is going to like Childers. Zach Bryan sounds like you and me, Childers does not. You hear that voice and it says rural south. Natural if you live there, but if you don't...there's a decent chance you'll consider it hick and don't want to hear it.
And the band is firing on all cylinders and then Childers employs the modern country trope of going out to play in the audience, Morgan Wallen has been doing this for a while, never mind a slew of other acts. But it illustrated that Childers does not need support to do his act. This is not a studio concoction, this is raw and from the heart.
And then Childers introduced the band...
3
Normally band introductions are a simple going from player to player, maybe mentioning their hometown and who else they've played with. But Tyler turned it into a whole routine. Like a cross between a carnival barker and an auctioneer. Usually it takes years and years for acts to develop their stage patter, never mind be comfortable in their skin and deliver their words with ease. You felt like you were at a revival meeting, albeit with a preacher with a sense of humor. The bit about the keyboard player having sat in with Lynyrd Skynyrd... Tyler said he'd known this guy since he was fourteen, how come he's just hearing about it now? Is it true?
This is when Childers controlled the audience.
Now the cheaper the seat, the more people were standing and involved. But when the music got quiet, you could not hear a pin drop, there was an undercurrent of noise, of people talking. Were people diehards, paying rapt attention? Some were. Some were singing along. I was trying to judge fan involvement and passionate devotion, then again a night out under the stars is a unique environment.
And I was wondering which side of the political spectrum Childers was on, after all, merely a few miles away law enforcement and protesters were battling it out, and the majority of Nashville acts are firmly on the right, or busy staying out of the fray for fear of losing their audience. But the words of Martin Niemöller's legendary "First They Came" poem were put up on the video screens and Childers performed a live version of his song "Long Violent History" for the very first time. So there was an underlying current of politics, it all wasn't just a good time, you've got to take a stand, where on the spectrum are you? And when do you stand up and say NO MAS!
4
Like I said, this guy has no hits, not a single one! And let's be clear, his music is not Spotify Top 50 friendly, it's far from hip-hop and pop. But if you go on Spotify Childers's songs average hundreds of millions of streams. One has 600 million. Another 522, another 421... What is driving this? Certainly not radio play. Sure, there's been some ink, but nothing of the volume given to Jason Isbell during his ascension.
No, the audience decided they liked this music. All by their lonesome. And I doubt it was playlists, they were looking for THIS GUY! Who is certainly unique. And playing rock and roll, but the music is closer to Nashville's roots than Crosby, Stills and Nash and the rest of the country rockers.
The AUDIENCE decided they liked this music, and not only did they listen, they had to go to the show.
Do you get it? Every record business rule has been broken here. Childers doesn't sound like anybody else. He didn't gain attention via the traditional avenues of exposure like radio and media onslaught, rather he made the music, went on the road and the public embraced him.
Which doesn't mean the audience will embrace you. Anybody can pick up a guitar, but not anybody can be Tyler Childers, with talent and a vision.
Childers might not be your thing, but I'm telling you we're now reaping the benefits of the internet revolution in music. You don't have to sound like anybody else, you don't have to have a hit and recordings are just documents, entry points for people to become fans and attend the live show. We keep reading that people are economically-challenged. You wouldn't have known it on Wednesday night, people didn't think twice about paying to show up.
And there were no hard drives. And the show is not the same every night. It's a living, breathing thing. Sans compromise.
It might not be for you, but you don't have be for everybody to make it these days. As a matter of fact, the truer you are to yourself, the more people are attracted to you. They don't want what everybody else is selling, they want authenticity, credibility, and those are at the heart of Tyler Childers.
I'm just hipping you.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
How did everybody know?
It's a big city, but you run into people you know everywhere. You can't go to a show without seeing someone you went to school with, someone you met at a party, but on Wednesday night I didn't recognize ANYBODY! Other than a handful of music business insiders, but there was not a plethora of the usual suspects down front, it was like they imported a whole new audience that I wasn't even aware of.
This was not the Riverside crowd... Leave the city center and you don't exactly get rural people, but those more roots oriented, more country, but that was not this crowd, they were positively middle class, scrubbed-up, dressed well, HOW DID THEY KNOW?
Tyler Childers has not had a hit, but he can sell out the Hollywood Bowl?
Now the dirty little secret is the Bowl has turned into the Garden. Acts many have never heard of play Madison Square Garden and sell out, or close, and ditto with the Hollywood Bowl. Is this one and done? If Tyler Childers played another venue within a fifty mile radius could he sell this number of tickets? I mean I've gone to the Bowl to see household names and there are empty seats, but not the other night.
His agent told me that Childers normally plays amphitheatres. But with lawns he can sell up to 20,000 tickets. And he's reciting other numbers and it's clear this is a veritable phenomenon. How exactly did this happen? There are theories, but nobody's really sure. But one thing is for sure, the music business revolution we anticipated at the turn of the century is now here. There are fewer hits, and they're not ubiquitous, but there are acts most people don't even know with huge fanbases making beaucoup bucks. It's got to do with the internet, but it doesn't have to do with the label.
Childers was playing bars, as far as Missouri from his hometown in Kentucky. Hell, he'd never even BEEN to the west coast until he played his first gig at the Echo, where 180 people attended.
Did the label blow him up? THERE WAS NO LABEL!
He and his manager met with Keith Levy at Wasserman and it was decided it would be best to do an album with Sturgill Simpson, whom the agency represented. That took a while to happen. But the record came out and the audience built and it did not happen overnight, theory is it happened DURING Covid. When everybody was at home with time on their hands and looking for something to listen to, word of mouth broke Tyler Childers.
Who is truly country. I don't mean country like the massaged hits that come out of the Nashville hit factory. In many ways, not even Americana. This guy SOUNDS like he came from the country. That voice, you don't hear that in hit music. This is not what Beyoncé and Post Malone think of when they decide to go country. This is closer to the fifties than it is to today. Then again, it's about the songwriting, which speaks to the audience.
And who is the audience?
Used to be there was a clear divide between north and south, everybody below the Mason-Dixon Line was considered an inferior redneck. But that's not how people view the country or music these days. We're all in it together. Sure, there are political prejudices, but those are mainly fights between politicos that the average person feels estranged from. When it comes down to living your life, today most people are surprisingly on the same page, despite media trying to divide us. Just like you don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's, you don't have to be from the holler to like Tyler Childers.
2
Most acts are concerned with the economics. They don't want to spend money, they want to make it. But including Tyler himself, there were eight musicians on stage. And projection and other production. This was not overwhelming, this was not the bells and whistles of today's arena acts, the production complimented as opposed to overwhelmed, but still...someone was spending money.
So the first number begins and after a couple of verses, they go all instrumental, they start to IMPROVISE! ON THE VERY FIRST NUMBER!
Sure, the Dead might do that, but almost no one else. Maybe Dave Matthews Band, but that act appealed to a more upwardly mobile crowd, which also likes Chiders, but you don't have to be an educated intellectual to get on the train.
And Tyler comes out in a sweater that resembles nothing so much as that ratty green one Kurt Cobain wore in Nirvana's MTV "Unplugged." But Tyler's was new, and it didn't seem to be ironic.
And he's playing an acoustic, got another acoustic player on stage, got a guy with a Les Paul...
This is not Keith Urban, this is not a rock show. Then again, there was occasionally wailing.
And it wasn't down home country either. It was an amalgam of those sounds, and more. A melting pot of Childers's own creation.
AND THIS GUY HASN'T EVEN HAD A HIT! Tyler's success is not the result of a label push, hell, the breakthrough record was put out by David Macias and Thirty Tigers.
And now Childers has made a record with Rick Rubin. Does this portend further success?
Rubin lets acts be true to themselves, he doesn't force them to sell out, he tries to hone their essence, will this be a breakthrough?
Not everybody is going to like Childers. Zach Bryan sounds like you and me, Childers does not. You hear that voice and it says rural south. Natural if you live there, but if you don't...there's a decent chance you'll consider it hick and don't want to hear it.
And the band is firing on all cylinders and then Childers employs the modern country trope of going out to play in the audience, Morgan Wallen has been doing this for a while, never mind a slew of other acts. But it illustrated that Childers does not need support to do his act. This is not a studio concoction, this is raw and from the heart.
And then Childers introduced the band...
3
Normally band introductions are a simple going from player to player, maybe mentioning their hometown and who else they've played with. But Tyler turned it into a whole routine. Like a cross between a carnival barker and an auctioneer. Usually it takes years and years for acts to develop their stage patter, never mind be comfortable in their skin and deliver their words with ease. You felt like you were at a revival meeting, albeit with a preacher with a sense of humor. The bit about the keyboard player having sat in with Lynyrd Skynyrd... Tyler said he'd known this guy since he was fourteen, how come he's just hearing about it now? Is it true?
This is when Childers controlled the audience.
Now the cheaper the seat, the more people were standing and involved. But when the music got quiet, you could not hear a pin drop, there was an undercurrent of noise, of people talking. Were people diehards, paying rapt attention? Some were. Some were singing along. I was trying to judge fan involvement and passionate devotion, then again a night out under the stars is a unique environment.
And I was wondering which side of the political spectrum Childers was on, after all, merely a few miles away law enforcement and protesters were battling it out, and the majority of Nashville acts are firmly on the right, or busy staying out of the fray for fear of losing their audience. But the words of Martin Niemöller's legendary "First They Came" poem were put up on the video screens and Childers performed a live version of his song "Long Violent History" for the very first time. So there was an underlying current of politics, it all wasn't just a good time, you've got to take a stand, where on the spectrum are you? And when do you stand up and say NO MAS!
4
Like I said, this guy has no hits, not a single one! And let's be clear, his music is not Spotify Top 50 friendly, it's far from hip-hop and pop. But if you go on Spotify Childers's songs average hundreds of millions of streams. One has 600 million. Another 522, another 421... What is driving this? Certainly not radio play. Sure, there's been some ink, but nothing of the volume given to Jason Isbell during his ascension.
No, the audience decided they liked this music. All by their lonesome. And I doubt it was playlists, they were looking for THIS GUY! Who is certainly unique. And playing rock and roll, but the music is closer to Nashville's roots than Crosby, Stills and Nash and the rest of the country rockers.
The AUDIENCE decided they liked this music, and not only did they listen, they had to go to the show.
Do you get it? Every record business rule has been broken here. Childers doesn't sound like anybody else. He didn't gain attention via the traditional avenues of exposure like radio and media onslaught, rather he made the music, went on the road and the public embraced him.
Which doesn't mean the audience will embrace you. Anybody can pick up a guitar, but not anybody can be Tyler Childers, with talent and a vision.
Childers might not be your thing, but I'm telling you we're now reaping the benefits of the internet revolution in music. You don't have to sound like anybody else, you don't have to have a hit and recordings are just documents, entry points for people to become fans and attend the live show. We keep reading that people are economically-challenged. You wouldn't have known it on Wednesday night, people didn't think twice about paying to show up.
And there were no hard drives. And the show is not the same every night. It's a living, breathing thing. Sans compromise.
It might not be for you, but you don't have be for everybody to make it these days. As a matter of fact, the truer you are to yourself, the more people are attracted to you. They don't want what everybody else is selling, they want authenticity, credibility, and those are at the heart of Tyler Childers.
I'm just hipping you.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
Fred Mollin-This Week's Podcast
Fred Mollin has a new book, "Unplugged: Stories and Secrets from a Life of Making Records, Scoring Film, and Working with the Legends of Music."
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fred-mollin/id1316200737?i=1000712571474
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5egJAf4YslS2HrgxCTwsc8?si=OeoCtJptRomvjYQaPxw1DA
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/fred-mollin-280683637/
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/183387c9-112a-48ca-96e9-3cdaa4107a16/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-fred-mollin
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fred-mollin/id1316200737?i=1000712571474
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5egJAf4YslS2HrgxCTwsc8?si=OeoCtJptRomvjYQaPxw1DA
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/fred-mollin-280683637/
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/183387c9-112a-48ca-96e9-3cdaa4107a16/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-fred-mollin
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
Wednesday, 11 June 2025
Brian Wilson
Spotify playlist: https://shorturl.at/neBm0
1
The Beach Boys were selling the California Dream.
And I bought it hook, line and sinker.
Today California is a pejorative. The whipping boy of the right. And many on the left too. They have contempt for the Golden State, primarily because living here is SO F*CKING GOOD!
Sure, real estate is expensive. But unless you live in the boonies, prices are high where you live too.
As for taxes? They're high, but you get services in return. Sure, we can debate red tape all day long, but the bottom line is if the government doesn't protect you, who will? Certainly not real estate developers, who will cut corners willy-nilly. That building collapsed in Miami, not Los Angeles. And that luxury tower in New York leans, but we don't hear constant complaints about construction in California.
As for Los Angeles... There's famously no there there.
A New Yorker comes to L.A., looks around and says "I don't get it, New York City, greatest city in the world!"
An Angeleno goes to New York, looks around and says "New York City, greatest city in the world! But I'd rather live in California."
And that's all you need to know.
But most people don't know, because they've never been here. The goal is no longer to get in your car and drive cross-country, no one moves anymore, it's too expensive. But back in the day...
If you read the news you'll learn Hollywood is imploding. But that's not really the case, the movie studios are not moving headquarters, productions are just going to far away places because of insane financial incentives. And Netflix? Which now rules visual entertainment? That's based in CA. As are two of the three major record labels.
It's all here baby, not only entertainment, but tech. Sure, there's a bit up in Seattle, but Miami flopped as a tech hub and New York City has always been an also-ran, and why is this so?
The California ethos.
Everybody in California is so into their own trip that they leave you free to be on yours. Nobody's in your business. And no one judges you for your choice of career/interest. Everybody's equal. Sure, there's racism, and homelessness, but even the unhoused got the memo. I mean if you're living on the street wouldn't you rather do so in L.A., where the weather suits your clothes?
Now a bunch of people moved to California in the aftermath of World War II. They moved to the west coast for deployment to Japan and assessing the landscape, they never moved back. And they had children who grew up California natives in the fifties and sixties. And we in the rest of the nation felt left out, dreamed of moving to California, primarily because of the Beach Boys. They were selling a better life. A carefree one where you had fun, fun, fun in the sun and there were pretty girls on every corner and there was the ocean and surfing and WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?
Nothing. We dreamed of moving to California. As I've always testified, I moved here because of the Beach Boys, and this is 100% true.
2
So Brian Wilson grew up in Hawthorne. Which we knew from the "Beach Boys Concert" album. A suburb in a suburban era. Today young people are moving back to the city, but in the fifties and sixties the goal was to exit the concentration and move to the brand new suburbs, where everybody had a piece of land and the schools and even the books were brand new. You were usually the first family to live in your house. And there were two cars in the driveway and your mother didn't work... Sure, there was sexism, but the truth is wives didn't have to work because their husbands earned enough money to provide for the family. So there was a wholesome element, of picnics and sports, and the Beach Boys' music embodied this. This was not hot town, summer in the city. This was sand between my toes, I'm cooling off in the water and at night I'm cruising to the burger stand with my buds. Sounds great just writing that!
And that's what the Beach Boys did, write that music, catalogue the life of the teenager. But ones who didn't grub grades to get into a good college, who weren't afraid of working on the assembly line, but those who had confidence things would work out, they were OPTIMISTIC!
Then again, so were the sixties, unlike today.
Now my first exposure to the Beach Boys was actually through Jan & Dean. Brian Wilson co-wrote "Surf City." His name appeared in so many credits.
And then I heard "I Get Around" on the jukebox at the Nutmeg Bowl.
In the fall it was the Four Seasons' "Walk Like a Man."
Then Kennedy got shot, the Beatles took over the jukebox and it was all British Invasion until the spring hit and then we had "I Get Around" and ultimately "Rag Doll." "Rag Doll" was great, but in the vein of what had come before. "I Get Around"?
"Round, round, get around
I get around, yeah
Get around, round, round, round, I get around"
Talk about hooking you from the very first note...
And then there were the harmonies, the multipart vocals and that dancing lead guitar and...
"I'm getting bugged driving up and down this same old strip
I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip"
This definitely wasn't Liverpool. It's like the Beatles hadn't even happened. This band was cruising the boulevards in California and...
This was radically different from wanting to hold your hand and the darkness of England. This was America. If we weren't already, we wanted to live THIS LIFE!
Then there was "When I Grow Up," with the counting of age numbers in the background. And those lush vocals there too.
And "Dance, Dance, Dance." And the remake of "Do You Wanna Dance?" And the hit single version of "Help Me, Rhonda," which was not on the "The Beach Boys Today."
And then, in the heat of the summer of 1965, in July, just after school let out, came "California Girls."
3
By this point everybody was music crazy. Imagine everybody who's an influencer today, everybody on YouTube, everybody bingeing Netflix, by 1965 all those people were addicted to music, which they received on their Japanese transistor radios, which no kid was without. They were exotic once, like the original iPods, but then you could buy one for ten bucks. It may not say "Sony," but you could dial in your favorite station and it's on my no-name device that I first heard...
That intro. Orchestral. Not the rock of the time, but from a previous era, ethereal, and then with a sense of majesty, and then it started to gallop along like a calliope, like a horse going up and down on the merry-go-round. And this intro was so long, nearly half a minute, that it couldn't be sliced off by deejays in their usual style.
And then...
"Well, east coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear"
When every band was trying to sound like they were born in the U.K., the Beach Boys were doubling-down, they were California proud. And you only had to listen to the sound of the record to ultimately be enraptured by the chorus:
"I wish they all could be California girls"
This is the masterpiece, this is the breakthrough, too much credit is given to "Good Vibrations," which was great, but "California Girls" too was unlike anything we'd heard previously. The Beatles weren't employing an intro like that. And the lyrics might sound simplistic, but the best things usually are.
"California Girls" didn't jump out of the radio. It quieted everything down, relaxed you, and after hearing it once you listened in rapt attention waiting for the explosion of the lyrical part of the song.
I remember riding my Raleigh with my transistor strung over the handlebars listening to WABC so I wouldn't miss "California Girls," and the day the album came out I rode said bike down to the local discount store, Topps, came home, broke the shrinkwrap and became INFATUATED!
"Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)" had the hit version of "Help Me, Rhonda," and of course "California Girls," but it also had one of my top three Beach Boys songs ever, "Girl Don't Tell Me."
"Hi little girl, it's me
Don't you know who I am
I met you last summer
When I came up to stay with my gran'"
If you ever had a summer camp girlfriend...
"Girl Don't Tell Me" reveals the greatness of Carl Wilson. Yes, we hear it again in "Good Vibrations," but Al Jardine sang "Help Me, Rhonda," Denny played the drums and sang the lead on "Do You Wanna Dance," and Mike Love was the frontman and Brian Wilson wrote, played and sang...the Beach Boys were a MONOLITH! This was not a studio creation whose strings were pulled by faceless cigar-chomping fat cats, this was the younger generation, in control, singing their truth and it was MAGIC!
It was quite a trick.
4
And then I started working my way back, buying the catalog.
I started with 1963's "Surfin' USA." Sure, the music of the title track might have been written by Chuck Berry, but there was the recital of all those SoCal surfing locations. We had no idea, we LEARNED them from this song. A surfing craze exploded. And sure, there were surf instrumentals previously, but really it was all driven by the Beach Boys (and Jan & Dean) with songs like these.
And when you bought albums back then you played them over and over and over until the grooves turned gray from the heavy tonearms on our all-in-one record players. We knew every note, every lick.
And "Surfin' USA" contained "Shut Down." Today's youngsters may not even get their license until they're in their twenties, but the car culture of yore, based in California? Every male could tell you every car model by model, year by year.
But really, there is magic in the album tracks. The exquisite "Farmer's Daughter." With Brian Wilson's falsetto. In this era of streaming availability more people are aware of this track, but back in the singles era, it was a secret. Almost as good was "Lonely Sea." Which summoned up the mood of looking out over the ocean like...this is the magic of music.
From there, I went to the original 1962 album, "Surfin' Safari."
Not quite as polished as what came thereafter, "Surfin' Safari" was the kind of song you heard once and knew by heart. And the original first single, "Surfin'," was there too. But on this very first album, there was a car song, "409." The Beach Boys were already plotting their switch from the water to land.
And then 1964's "Shut Down Volume 2," which began with "Fun, Fun, Fun."
"Well, she got her daddy's car
And she cruised through the hamburger stand, now
Seems she forgot all about the library
Like she told her old man, now"
I was addicted, I'd play these records all day and all of the night, to the point where even my father knew the lyrics, and he HATED rock music! But he sang these words with a smile because...
My sister kept saying she was going to the library in his T-Bird.
And I'd stand in front of the mirror and try to comb my limp hair like Dennis Wilson's, unsuccessfully.
And when we went to Atlantic City's Steel Pier that summer I insisted we go to see "The Girls on the Beach," since it included a scene with the Beach Boys.
I was all in.
5
I bought "In Concert," but "Beach Boys' Party!" I skipped. Hell, I wasn't even a teenager, I didn't have much cash! But even at that age I perceived that the LP was a dash for just that, cash.
As for "Pet Sounds"? A legend now, a blip on the radar screen back in '66. "Sloop John B" was a monster, but they didn't write it, which hearkened back to the bad feeling of "Party!" "God Only Knows" got only scattered airplay and it wasn't until "Shampoo" that most people even HEARD "Wouldn't It Be Nice."
But then came "Good Vibrations." His pocket symphony? It needs no appellation, it's as great as the legend. But what people forget is context, by this time everybody was testing limits, all the action was in music.
I got "Smiley Smile" as a gift. I liked "Vegetables."
Surprisingly, the Beach Boys had a hit with "Darlin'" when the band seemed to have been plowed under by competitors and the sound was changing, after all, Jimi Hendrix asked us if we were experienced in that same year of 1967. But that album, "Wild Honey"? The title track was not really a hit, but the theremin and Carl's vocal made it indelible. And speaking of Carl, have you heard the version of "I Was Made to Love Her" on this LP? A much rocker take than Little Stevie Wonder's.
I skipped "Friends," which Brian in his later years said was his favorite. And then when I went to buy it, it was no longer in the stores. Ah, the days of physical retail.
And from thereafter, starting with "20/20," I bought them all upon release. And there was one more hit, "Do It Again," but the Beach Boys were seemingly locked out of the chart.
But then they switched labels and... "Sunflower" is a stone cold masterpiece. "Surf's Up" was more commercially successful, and good, but not as good. But it did contain the second of my three favorite Beach Boys cuts, "'Til I Die," which I thought no one even knew until Don Was testified about it in his 1995 Brian Wilson documentary. By that time the Beach Boys narrative had changed, there was Brian Wilson and then the rest of the group.
6
He was a mad genius. Eccentric. Was he damaged by drugs? Sure, fans like me knew that he'd had an episode and had refused to go on the road, but with the success of 1974's "Endless Summer," the only way forward was to bring Brian back. And they tried and tried, but it never really worked.
There had been isolated moments in the seventies, like "Marcella" and "Sail on Sailor." But "15 Big Ones"? I bought it, but it was akin to "Party!," you could see the hope of cash registers ringing in the background. And then came 1977's "Love You." Brian was handed the reins, he was in complete control, and I won't say the result was execrable, but it was confounding. Brian seemed to be living in an alternative universe. He made the record he wanted to hear, but it seemed simplistic and childish and was not so listenable.
And then it was over. Brian was pushed into the background, and Carl and Mike took back control of the band.
But there was one last hurrah, "Good Timin'," the opening track on "L.A. (Light Album)," but this sixties magic had no place on the radio in the AOR heyday, never mind all the press being about the disco version of "Here Comes the Night." The Beach Boys were in the rearview mirror except for the non-Brian "Kokomo" and the story became about Brian himself, constantly.
We had the 1977 documentary with Belushi and Aykroyd imploring Brian to go surfing, he was cited under a California law, and they brought a bloated Brian to the beach where he flailed around on a surfboard in his bathrobe.
And then the Eugene Landy years.
And the endless solo albums that were billed as comebacks but really never were.
We got the legend, we got lawsuits, and at the center was this lost man who you could only feel sorry for, who oftentimes just made you wince.
7
Brian and his legend were public. And you'd run into him. For me, the first time was at a movie theatre in Westwood. I've lived in L.A. long enough now to know that you don't talk to famous people unless you're introduced, but I just couldn't hold back, I had to go up and testify. Brian didn't turn away, but he didn't do much more than grunt in response.
And then there was that BMI awards dinner where he sat through the entire evening with his head on our table until he got up to accept his award.
And then I went out to the Canyon Club and the also dearly departed Jeffrey Foskett took me on the bus to talk to Brian, who was vocal, and somewhat upbeat, but when he spoke it was in a staccato fashion and his eyes were looking nowhere close to mine and Jeffrey confided in me as we walked away that Brian was truly fearful of being shot on stage.
They talk about all those drugs he took negatively affecting Brian, but schizophrenia shows up just about the time he lost it. What was the cause of his mental issues? Does it even really matter at this point?
But I saw Brian performing live time and time again, notably at the Wiltern, when he put out "Imagination," which recaptured the classic sound.
Brian was on the road constantly. The advance press was adoring, but the shows... The rest of the band were covering up for him.
And then fewer and fewer people would go.
Was his wife pushing him? To be on the road? Whose idea was it to adopt five more children? Brian could barely cope with himself. It seemed like a sad story, everybody was depending on Brian, who had a hard time depending on himself.
8
I think the best insight into Brian is delivered in Jason Fine's 2021 documentary, "Long Promised Road," when they drive around L.A. and Brian talks about the early days, you get his true, unfiltered thoughts, even though he seems far from normal.
But the truth is at this point unless you're very young, everybody knows Brian Wilson's story. Which is tragic on so many levels. Should we start with Murry? Once again, you know, so I won't.
And I hate to say it, but on some level Brian was already dead. You can't go on the road if no one will buy a ticket. Yes, this was the guy, but he was a shell of himself.
So, the internet is full of obituaries. Telling the story. Of Brian's genius.
But Mike Love has been unjustly overlooked for his lyrics. Van Dyke Parks gets all this credit, but really it's Mike's words that embodied the California dream. But Mike is not a tragic figure. And however talented Mike is and Carl was, it's clear that Brian was on a whole 'nother level. Do we call it genius? What exactly does "genius" mean? You can employ the label, but you can't truly quantify it.
But Brian Wilson came up with these songs out of thin air. They were in his head and he had to convey what he thought to those in the studio to concoct these dreams that infected listeners all over the world. Beach Boys music is forever, younger generations are exposed to it via Disney. And if you want pure Americana...
9
So...
My third favorite Beach Boys song is "Catch a Wave," which I first heard as Jan & Dean's "Sidewalk Surfin'." Jan's long gone, Dean's still here. All the Wilsons are now six feet under. We're not going to get any more Brian Wilson music. But I think all this focus on the Brian saga was evidence of what he once did. People wanted him to know how much they appreciated his work. And people wanted to marvel. But unlike so many rock heroes, Brian was still around.
A bunch die. Others go on the road and use tricks to cover up for their declining vocals. But Brian contained no artifice, he was this bumbling, smiling man 24/7. You could get an enthusiastic quote from him, he still loved music, and you could get him to show up, but was he ever really there? In many cases, I'd say no.
And now he's gone.
10
What do you want me to say? Testify as to Brian's gifts and leave out all the messy elements? This guy lived until 82, which seems to be the new 27, with Sly Stone having just died at this age.
And the truth is as regularly as they've been dropping in the past few years, the wheel is going to speed up, until all the original heroes are gone and then those who were around to experience them in their heyday will be gone and history will be rewritten, California will be seen as a hellhole and pundits will tell you that the Beatles were successful because people were yearning to be upbeat and optimistic in the wake of the assassination of JFK, when nothing could be further from the truth.
You see the Beatles were just that good. You only had to be exposed, and you were all-in. We don't have acts like that today. Taylor Swift, the Weeknd? Give me a break. The Beatles fired on all cylinders.
And they never took their eye off Brian Wilson, because they knew he could always be a threat. They weren't fooled by the in many cases adolescent lyrics. The music underneath, where did that come from? Certainly not from playing endless gigs in bars in Germany. And I knew Nick Venet, nice guy, but if you think he was in control of these records, you're wrong.
No, it was all Brian. Not all the lyrics, and not every song, but the lion's share.
And as he went along, he became more childlike Even more raw. Being in touch with himself he delivered an insider's take that we could all relate to. Everybody else was too self-conscious, but Brian could sing about being in his room.
"There's a world where I can go
And tell my secrets to
In my room
In my room"
We've all got 'em, we're in our heads all the time, we don't dare verbalize our thoughts, but Brian encapsulated them in his music. He may not have written the lyrics, but when he sings them, and the arrangement...it's a peek into someone's brain, you can relate, it's not in-your-face, it's life itself.
"Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday"
It was all a dream. The music in Brian's head, which he then made real. Which entranced all of us, causing some of us to come to California to get closer to living this life.
"Now it's dark and I'm alone
But I won't be afraid"
Brian was very afraid. Which is why he wanted to be alone. But when he was most alone is when he connected with us most.
When it's all said and done, there's a body of work. Sure, there's the story of the man himself, but this is the case with every human, albeit not publicized, never mind the trials and tribulations. But how many people can say not only that they left a body of work, but it encapsulated not only a location, but a whole generation?
Brian Wilson is now a state of mind. The body may be gone, but his feelings, his thoughts, are still palpable, still as fresh as when they were committed to wax. And we still can't figure out how he did it.
And it wasn't like he was living a highfalutin' rich and famous TMZ life, lording it over us, rather when you listen to his music you get the feeling that he's living right next door. And you'd invite him over for a barbecue, but you'd rather not interrupt him, not bug him, but leave him alone in his world, where he captured our world in his music.
Once upon a time he was a typical teenager, seemingly anyway. Playing football. But he couldn't resist the sound. It wasn't about money and fame, but as he gained traction and gained the ability to express himself unfettered his talent flowered even more, not that everybody could always understand it, not that everybody was on his team.
NOW we say "Pet Sounds" is a masterpiece. During the heyday of Brian Wilson's creative output there were not endless stories about the man, most people listening to the records had no idea who he was, never mind his personality, his identity. And now we know too much. But does that change the magic of the records?
If you want to honor Brian's memory, listen to the records. And the funny thing is as soon as you press play you will be involved, they are not at a distance, like so many legendary tracks.
At the end of the day Brian was human. And we could relate. Because we are too. Did he truly know we appreciated him? Well, he had a desire to create great works of art to impress us, but he never really basked in the adulation, he even seemed somewhat checked-out when bathed in applause when he played live. But one thing you can say is whether he was playing his piano or not, whether his vocals were covered up by the background singers or up front and center and out of tune, he was into it. It's like Brian stepped into another land, where music was everything and he stayed there. He seemed oblivious to others' wants and desires. He couldn't deliver what you thought you wanted. But then he'd reach back and deliver something completely unexpected, that you needed. Over and over and over again.
Good vibrations? He picked up on them, hearing what regular humans could not. And then he'd deliver these feelings to us and when we heard his music, we felt good.
And we still do.
He gave us good vibrations.
We picked up excitations.
Come here, California girls are really something special.
And the Pacific roils in a way the Atlantic does not.
And it is sunny almost all the time.
It's the California Dream.
And Brian Wilson is the one who hipped us to it.
I cannot thank him enough.
And I'm not the only one.
Sure, it's a physical place, but it's also a state of mind, and it's baked into those legendary records. Every emotion was covered, but underneath it all was an optimism. Brian was a product of the sixties, he digested the culture and fed us back to us, one step ahead, he led us. And we are continuing to march to his beat.
Gone, but never to be forgotten.
That's Brian Wilson.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
1
The Beach Boys were selling the California Dream.
And I bought it hook, line and sinker.
Today California is a pejorative. The whipping boy of the right. And many on the left too. They have contempt for the Golden State, primarily because living here is SO F*CKING GOOD!
Sure, real estate is expensive. But unless you live in the boonies, prices are high where you live too.
As for taxes? They're high, but you get services in return. Sure, we can debate red tape all day long, but the bottom line is if the government doesn't protect you, who will? Certainly not real estate developers, who will cut corners willy-nilly. That building collapsed in Miami, not Los Angeles. And that luxury tower in New York leans, but we don't hear constant complaints about construction in California.
As for Los Angeles... There's famously no there there.
A New Yorker comes to L.A., looks around and says "I don't get it, New York City, greatest city in the world!"
An Angeleno goes to New York, looks around and says "New York City, greatest city in the world! But I'd rather live in California."
And that's all you need to know.
But most people don't know, because they've never been here. The goal is no longer to get in your car and drive cross-country, no one moves anymore, it's too expensive. But back in the day...
If you read the news you'll learn Hollywood is imploding. But that's not really the case, the movie studios are not moving headquarters, productions are just going to far away places because of insane financial incentives. And Netflix? Which now rules visual entertainment? That's based in CA. As are two of the three major record labels.
It's all here baby, not only entertainment, but tech. Sure, there's a bit up in Seattle, but Miami flopped as a tech hub and New York City has always been an also-ran, and why is this so?
The California ethos.
Everybody in California is so into their own trip that they leave you free to be on yours. Nobody's in your business. And no one judges you for your choice of career/interest. Everybody's equal. Sure, there's racism, and homelessness, but even the unhoused got the memo. I mean if you're living on the street wouldn't you rather do so in L.A., where the weather suits your clothes?
Now a bunch of people moved to California in the aftermath of World War II. They moved to the west coast for deployment to Japan and assessing the landscape, they never moved back. And they had children who grew up California natives in the fifties and sixties. And we in the rest of the nation felt left out, dreamed of moving to California, primarily because of the Beach Boys. They were selling a better life. A carefree one where you had fun, fun, fun in the sun and there were pretty girls on every corner and there was the ocean and surfing and WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?
Nothing. We dreamed of moving to California. As I've always testified, I moved here because of the Beach Boys, and this is 100% true.
2
So Brian Wilson grew up in Hawthorne. Which we knew from the "Beach Boys Concert" album. A suburb in a suburban era. Today young people are moving back to the city, but in the fifties and sixties the goal was to exit the concentration and move to the brand new suburbs, where everybody had a piece of land and the schools and even the books were brand new. You were usually the first family to live in your house. And there were two cars in the driveway and your mother didn't work... Sure, there was sexism, but the truth is wives didn't have to work because their husbands earned enough money to provide for the family. So there was a wholesome element, of picnics and sports, and the Beach Boys' music embodied this. This was not hot town, summer in the city. This was sand between my toes, I'm cooling off in the water and at night I'm cruising to the burger stand with my buds. Sounds great just writing that!
And that's what the Beach Boys did, write that music, catalogue the life of the teenager. But ones who didn't grub grades to get into a good college, who weren't afraid of working on the assembly line, but those who had confidence things would work out, they were OPTIMISTIC!
Then again, so were the sixties, unlike today.
Now my first exposure to the Beach Boys was actually through Jan & Dean. Brian Wilson co-wrote "Surf City." His name appeared in so many credits.
And then I heard "I Get Around" on the jukebox at the Nutmeg Bowl.
In the fall it was the Four Seasons' "Walk Like a Man."
Then Kennedy got shot, the Beatles took over the jukebox and it was all British Invasion until the spring hit and then we had "I Get Around" and ultimately "Rag Doll." "Rag Doll" was great, but in the vein of what had come before. "I Get Around"?
"Round, round, get around
I get around, yeah
Get around, round, round, round, I get around"
Talk about hooking you from the very first note...
And then there were the harmonies, the multipart vocals and that dancing lead guitar and...
"I'm getting bugged driving up and down this same old strip
I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip"
This definitely wasn't Liverpool. It's like the Beatles hadn't even happened. This band was cruising the boulevards in California and...
This was radically different from wanting to hold your hand and the darkness of England. This was America. If we weren't already, we wanted to live THIS LIFE!
Then there was "When I Grow Up," with the counting of age numbers in the background. And those lush vocals there too.
And "Dance, Dance, Dance." And the remake of "Do You Wanna Dance?" And the hit single version of "Help Me, Rhonda," which was not on the "The Beach Boys Today."
And then, in the heat of the summer of 1965, in July, just after school let out, came "California Girls."
3
By this point everybody was music crazy. Imagine everybody who's an influencer today, everybody on YouTube, everybody bingeing Netflix, by 1965 all those people were addicted to music, which they received on their Japanese transistor radios, which no kid was without. They were exotic once, like the original iPods, but then you could buy one for ten bucks. It may not say "Sony," but you could dial in your favorite station and it's on my no-name device that I first heard...
That intro. Orchestral. Not the rock of the time, but from a previous era, ethereal, and then with a sense of majesty, and then it started to gallop along like a calliope, like a horse going up and down on the merry-go-round. And this intro was so long, nearly half a minute, that it couldn't be sliced off by deejays in their usual style.
And then...
"Well, east coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear"
When every band was trying to sound like they were born in the U.K., the Beach Boys were doubling-down, they were California proud. And you only had to listen to the sound of the record to ultimately be enraptured by the chorus:
"I wish they all could be California girls"
This is the masterpiece, this is the breakthrough, too much credit is given to "Good Vibrations," which was great, but "California Girls" too was unlike anything we'd heard previously. The Beatles weren't employing an intro like that. And the lyrics might sound simplistic, but the best things usually are.
"California Girls" didn't jump out of the radio. It quieted everything down, relaxed you, and after hearing it once you listened in rapt attention waiting for the explosion of the lyrical part of the song.
I remember riding my Raleigh with my transistor strung over the handlebars listening to WABC so I wouldn't miss "California Girls," and the day the album came out I rode said bike down to the local discount store, Topps, came home, broke the shrinkwrap and became INFATUATED!
"Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)" had the hit version of "Help Me, Rhonda," and of course "California Girls," but it also had one of my top three Beach Boys songs ever, "Girl Don't Tell Me."
"Hi little girl, it's me
Don't you know who I am
I met you last summer
When I came up to stay with my gran'"
If you ever had a summer camp girlfriend...
"Girl Don't Tell Me" reveals the greatness of Carl Wilson. Yes, we hear it again in "Good Vibrations," but Al Jardine sang "Help Me, Rhonda," Denny played the drums and sang the lead on "Do You Wanna Dance," and Mike Love was the frontman and Brian Wilson wrote, played and sang...the Beach Boys were a MONOLITH! This was not a studio creation whose strings were pulled by faceless cigar-chomping fat cats, this was the younger generation, in control, singing their truth and it was MAGIC!
It was quite a trick.
4
And then I started working my way back, buying the catalog.
I started with 1963's "Surfin' USA." Sure, the music of the title track might have been written by Chuck Berry, but there was the recital of all those SoCal surfing locations. We had no idea, we LEARNED them from this song. A surfing craze exploded. And sure, there were surf instrumentals previously, but really it was all driven by the Beach Boys (and Jan & Dean) with songs like these.
And when you bought albums back then you played them over and over and over until the grooves turned gray from the heavy tonearms on our all-in-one record players. We knew every note, every lick.
And "Surfin' USA" contained "Shut Down." Today's youngsters may not even get their license until they're in their twenties, but the car culture of yore, based in California? Every male could tell you every car model by model, year by year.
But really, there is magic in the album tracks. The exquisite "Farmer's Daughter." With Brian Wilson's falsetto. In this era of streaming availability more people are aware of this track, but back in the singles era, it was a secret. Almost as good was "Lonely Sea." Which summoned up the mood of looking out over the ocean like...this is the magic of music.
From there, I went to the original 1962 album, "Surfin' Safari."
Not quite as polished as what came thereafter, "Surfin' Safari" was the kind of song you heard once and knew by heart. And the original first single, "Surfin'," was there too. But on this very first album, there was a car song, "409." The Beach Boys were already plotting their switch from the water to land.
And then 1964's "Shut Down Volume 2," which began with "Fun, Fun, Fun."
"Well, she got her daddy's car
And she cruised through the hamburger stand, now
Seems she forgot all about the library
Like she told her old man, now"
I was addicted, I'd play these records all day and all of the night, to the point where even my father knew the lyrics, and he HATED rock music! But he sang these words with a smile because...
My sister kept saying she was going to the library in his T-Bird.
And I'd stand in front of the mirror and try to comb my limp hair like Dennis Wilson's, unsuccessfully.
And when we went to Atlantic City's Steel Pier that summer I insisted we go to see "The Girls on the Beach," since it included a scene with the Beach Boys.
I was all in.
5
I bought "In Concert," but "Beach Boys' Party!" I skipped. Hell, I wasn't even a teenager, I didn't have much cash! But even at that age I perceived that the LP was a dash for just that, cash.
As for "Pet Sounds"? A legend now, a blip on the radar screen back in '66. "Sloop John B" was a monster, but they didn't write it, which hearkened back to the bad feeling of "Party!" "God Only Knows" got only scattered airplay and it wasn't until "Shampoo" that most people even HEARD "Wouldn't It Be Nice."
But then came "Good Vibrations." His pocket symphony? It needs no appellation, it's as great as the legend. But what people forget is context, by this time everybody was testing limits, all the action was in music.
I got "Smiley Smile" as a gift. I liked "Vegetables."
Surprisingly, the Beach Boys had a hit with "Darlin'" when the band seemed to have been plowed under by competitors and the sound was changing, after all, Jimi Hendrix asked us if we were experienced in that same year of 1967. But that album, "Wild Honey"? The title track was not really a hit, but the theremin and Carl's vocal made it indelible. And speaking of Carl, have you heard the version of "I Was Made to Love Her" on this LP? A much rocker take than Little Stevie Wonder's.
I skipped "Friends," which Brian in his later years said was his favorite. And then when I went to buy it, it was no longer in the stores. Ah, the days of physical retail.
And from thereafter, starting with "20/20," I bought them all upon release. And there was one more hit, "Do It Again," but the Beach Boys were seemingly locked out of the chart.
But then they switched labels and... "Sunflower" is a stone cold masterpiece. "Surf's Up" was more commercially successful, and good, but not as good. But it did contain the second of my three favorite Beach Boys cuts, "'Til I Die," which I thought no one even knew until Don Was testified about it in his 1995 Brian Wilson documentary. By that time the Beach Boys narrative had changed, there was Brian Wilson and then the rest of the group.
6
He was a mad genius. Eccentric. Was he damaged by drugs? Sure, fans like me knew that he'd had an episode and had refused to go on the road, but with the success of 1974's "Endless Summer," the only way forward was to bring Brian back. And they tried and tried, but it never really worked.
There had been isolated moments in the seventies, like "Marcella" and "Sail on Sailor." But "15 Big Ones"? I bought it, but it was akin to "Party!," you could see the hope of cash registers ringing in the background. And then came 1977's "Love You." Brian was handed the reins, he was in complete control, and I won't say the result was execrable, but it was confounding. Brian seemed to be living in an alternative universe. He made the record he wanted to hear, but it seemed simplistic and childish and was not so listenable.
And then it was over. Brian was pushed into the background, and Carl and Mike took back control of the band.
But there was one last hurrah, "Good Timin'," the opening track on "L.A. (Light Album)," but this sixties magic had no place on the radio in the AOR heyday, never mind all the press being about the disco version of "Here Comes the Night." The Beach Boys were in the rearview mirror except for the non-Brian "Kokomo" and the story became about Brian himself, constantly.
We had the 1977 documentary with Belushi and Aykroyd imploring Brian to go surfing, he was cited under a California law, and they brought a bloated Brian to the beach where he flailed around on a surfboard in his bathrobe.
And then the Eugene Landy years.
And the endless solo albums that were billed as comebacks but really never were.
We got the legend, we got lawsuits, and at the center was this lost man who you could only feel sorry for, who oftentimes just made you wince.
7
Brian and his legend were public. And you'd run into him. For me, the first time was at a movie theatre in Westwood. I've lived in L.A. long enough now to know that you don't talk to famous people unless you're introduced, but I just couldn't hold back, I had to go up and testify. Brian didn't turn away, but he didn't do much more than grunt in response.
And then there was that BMI awards dinner where he sat through the entire evening with his head on our table until he got up to accept his award.
And then I went out to the Canyon Club and the also dearly departed Jeffrey Foskett took me on the bus to talk to Brian, who was vocal, and somewhat upbeat, but when he spoke it was in a staccato fashion and his eyes were looking nowhere close to mine and Jeffrey confided in me as we walked away that Brian was truly fearful of being shot on stage.
They talk about all those drugs he took negatively affecting Brian, but schizophrenia shows up just about the time he lost it. What was the cause of his mental issues? Does it even really matter at this point?
But I saw Brian performing live time and time again, notably at the Wiltern, when he put out "Imagination," which recaptured the classic sound.
Brian was on the road constantly. The advance press was adoring, but the shows... The rest of the band were covering up for him.
And then fewer and fewer people would go.
Was his wife pushing him? To be on the road? Whose idea was it to adopt five more children? Brian could barely cope with himself. It seemed like a sad story, everybody was depending on Brian, who had a hard time depending on himself.
8
I think the best insight into Brian is delivered in Jason Fine's 2021 documentary, "Long Promised Road," when they drive around L.A. and Brian talks about the early days, you get his true, unfiltered thoughts, even though he seems far from normal.
But the truth is at this point unless you're very young, everybody knows Brian Wilson's story. Which is tragic on so many levels. Should we start with Murry? Once again, you know, so I won't.
And I hate to say it, but on some level Brian was already dead. You can't go on the road if no one will buy a ticket. Yes, this was the guy, but he was a shell of himself.
So, the internet is full of obituaries. Telling the story. Of Brian's genius.
But Mike Love has been unjustly overlooked for his lyrics. Van Dyke Parks gets all this credit, but really it's Mike's words that embodied the California dream. But Mike is not a tragic figure. And however talented Mike is and Carl was, it's clear that Brian was on a whole 'nother level. Do we call it genius? What exactly does "genius" mean? You can employ the label, but you can't truly quantify it.
But Brian Wilson came up with these songs out of thin air. They were in his head and he had to convey what he thought to those in the studio to concoct these dreams that infected listeners all over the world. Beach Boys music is forever, younger generations are exposed to it via Disney. And if you want pure Americana...
9
So...
My third favorite Beach Boys song is "Catch a Wave," which I first heard as Jan & Dean's "Sidewalk Surfin'." Jan's long gone, Dean's still here. All the Wilsons are now six feet under. We're not going to get any more Brian Wilson music. But I think all this focus on the Brian saga was evidence of what he once did. People wanted him to know how much they appreciated his work. And people wanted to marvel. But unlike so many rock heroes, Brian was still around.
A bunch die. Others go on the road and use tricks to cover up for their declining vocals. But Brian contained no artifice, he was this bumbling, smiling man 24/7. You could get an enthusiastic quote from him, he still loved music, and you could get him to show up, but was he ever really there? In many cases, I'd say no.
And now he's gone.
10
What do you want me to say? Testify as to Brian's gifts and leave out all the messy elements? This guy lived until 82, which seems to be the new 27, with Sly Stone having just died at this age.
And the truth is as regularly as they've been dropping in the past few years, the wheel is going to speed up, until all the original heroes are gone and then those who were around to experience them in their heyday will be gone and history will be rewritten, California will be seen as a hellhole and pundits will tell you that the Beatles were successful because people were yearning to be upbeat and optimistic in the wake of the assassination of JFK, when nothing could be further from the truth.
You see the Beatles were just that good. You only had to be exposed, and you were all-in. We don't have acts like that today. Taylor Swift, the Weeknd? Give me a break. The Beatles fired on all cylinders.
And they never took their eye off Brian Wilson, because they knew he could always be a threat. They weren't fooled by the in many cases adolescent lyrics. The music underneath, where did that come from? Certainly not from playing endless gigs in bars in Germany. And I knew Nick Venet, nice guy, but if you think he was in control of these records, you're wrong.
No, it was all Brian. Not all the lyrics, and not every song, but the lion's share.
And as he went along, he became more childlike Even more raw. Being in touch with himself he delivered an insider's take that we could all relate to. Everybody else was too self-conscious, but Brian could sing about being in his room.
"There's a world where I can go
And tell my secrets to
In my room
In my room"
We've all got 'em, we're in our heads all the time, we don't dare verbalize our thoughts, but Brian encapsulated them in his music. He may not have written the lyrics, but when he sings them, and the arrangement...it's a peek into someone's brain, you can relate, it's not in-your-face, it's life itself.
"Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday"
It was all a dream. The music in Brian's head, which he then made real. Which entranced all of us, causing some of us to come to California to get closer to living this life.
"Now it's dark and I'm alone
But I won't be afraid"
Brian was very afraid. Which is why he wanted to be alone. But when he was most alone is when he connected with us most.
When it's all said and done, there's a body of work. Sure, there's the story of the man himself, but this is the case with every human, albeit not publicized, never mind the trials and tribulations. But how many people can say not only that they left a body of work, but it encapsulated not only a location, but a whole generation?
Brian Wilson is now a state of mind. The body may be gone, but his feelings, his thoughts, are still palpable, still as fresh as when they were committed to wax. And we still can't figure out how he did it.
And it wasn't like he was living a highfalutin' rich and famous TMZ life, lording it over us, rather when you listen to his music you get the feeling that he's living right next door. And you'd invite him over for a barbecue, but you'd rather not interrupt him, not bug him, but leave him alone in his world, where he captured our world in his music.
Once upon a time he was a typical teenager, seemingly anyway. Playing football. But he couldn't resist the sound. It wasn't about money and fame, but as he gained traction and gained the ability to express himself unfettered his talent flowered even more, not that everybody could always understand it, not that everybody was on his team.
NOW we say "Pet Sounds" is a masterpiece. During the heyday of Brian Wilson's creative output there were not endless stories about the man, most people listening to the records had no idea who he was, never mind his personality, his identity. And now we know too much. But does that change the magic of the records?
If you want to honor Brian's memory, listen to the records. And the funny thing is as soon as you press play you will be involved, they are not at a distance, like so many legendary tracks.
At the end of the day Brian was human. And we could relate. Because we are too. Did he truly know we appreciated him? Well, he had a desire to create great works of art to impress us, but he never really basked in the adulation, he even seemed somewhat checked-out when bathed in applause when he played live. But one thing you can say is whether he was playing his piano or not, whether his vocals were covered up by the background singers or up front and center and out of tune, he was into it. It's like Brian stepped into another land, where music was everything and he stayed there. He seemed oblivious to others' wants and desires. He couldn't deliver what you thought you wanted. But then he'd reach back and deliver something completely unexpected, that you needed. Over and over and over again.
Good vibrations? He picked up on them, hearing what regular humans could not. And then he'd deliver these feelings to us and when we heard his music, we felt good.
And we still do.
He gave us good vibrations.
We picked up excitations.
Come here, California girls are really something special.
And the Pacific roils in a way the Atlantic does not.
And it is sunny almost all the time.
It's the California Dream.
And Brian Wilson is the one who hipped us to it.
I cannot thank him enough.
And I'm not the only one.
Sure, it's a physical place, but it's also a state of mind, and it's baked into those legendary records. Every emotion was covered, but underneath it all was an optimism. Brian was a product of the sixties, he digested the culture and fed us back to us, one step ahead, he led us. And we are continuing to march to his beat.
Gone, but never to be forgotten.
That's Brian Wilson.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
Tuesday, 10 June 2025
Mailbag
RE: The Stax Documentary
In your review of the Stax documentary you mentioned Stax being "screwed by Jerry Wexler" such that "Atlantic ends up with all the Masters." However, technically, the latter statement is incorrect.
When Jim Stewart made the deal with Jerry Wexler, Stax (now Concord) actually retained ownership of the Masters. But that was because the deal was really a lifetime distribution deal (IN PERPETUITY) in which Atlantic (now Warner Brothers) received 50% of all income from Stax Masters as a distribution fee.
Meanwhile, the contracts Stax had with their artists (who were almost all Black) provided for a 50/50 split of income from Master use licenses (including uses of the Masters in film, television and advertisements, which are primary sources of income for the artists these days).
The result is that for every dollar that comes in today for the use of a Stax master, Warner takes 50% of that dollar (per the Wexler deal) and then sends 50 cents to Concord. Concord, under the artist's label deal, then takes 50% of that amount and sends the artist 25 cents. So Stax artists are only being paid 25 cents on the dollar - half of what most artists, even those with bad contracts from the 1960s, are being paid for income from Master use licenses.
To add insult to injury, Concord was a partner in "Soulsville USA," which showed how Jerry Wexler took advantage of Jim Stewart's trust to pull a fast one on Jim. Watching the documentary, I was struck by the fact that my client William Bell is still living with the effects of this onerous deal almost 60 years later. Of course, almost every label has voluntarily updated their record royalty rates to modern equivalencies, but this particular situation has not been remedied in spite of repeated requests over the course of years. I can personally vouch for the efforts of Zelma Redding on behalf of her late husband's estate, and my efforts on behalf of William Bell who, despite writing songs like 'You Don't Miss Your Water," "Born Under A Bad Sign," and "I Forgot To Be Your Lover" (which has over 50 million streams on Spotify), was not mentioned in the documentary.
This outdated deal is a grave injustice to Stax artists and should be corrected!
PS, It's ironic that your review came out on the same day Concord announced the release of a new John Fogerty album. In Fogerty's case, Concord 'did the right thing' and restored the song copyrights he lost under a bad deal with Fantasy Records, such that the press release touts the upcoming album as 'a personal reclamation of artistic ownership.' Would that they would do the right thing for the Black artists from Stax!
Charles Driebe
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Driebe
blindambitionmgt.com
__________________________________
Subject: Re: Swift?
"So what's forever, "Desperado" or "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"? "Hotel California" or "Cruel Summer"?"
Perfect!
I'm a Substitute Teacher and several ago, I asked an elementary school class what they wanted to be and several kids said "Influencer!". Nobody said "Musician".
Always enjoy your newsletter!
Jim Moulder
__________________________________
Subject: Re: The Stax Documentary
I had several heartfelt and fascinating conversations with Al Bell when I interviewed him for the Library of Congress. The film "Wattstax" was added to the National Film Registry in 2020.
He is truly a passionate and caring man who supported those artists out of sheer love for the music and the community. He wanted fans to share the experiences even when most had no money. He said they found ways to charge $1 for tickets to Wattstax, most of which went to charity.
He's also a songwriter. He wrote "I'll Take You There," made famous by The Staple Singers.
He told me that he wrote it after the murder of his brother. He sat crying in an abandoned school bus in his parent's backyard. While the song only has one verse, he said it was the music that rang so clear in his head. He is soulful to his core.
I adore that man. If you get the chance to meet him or interview him, take it. It will be one of the most inspiring and uplifting conversations you will ever have.
Stacie Seifrit-Griffin
__________________________________
Subject: Re: The Stax Documentary
I thought it was very good as well. However our family was very disappointed that when Steve Cropper was describing how the MGs cut "Green Onions", he failed to mentioned that Stax house bass player, Lewie Steinberg was actually the bass player and credited co/writer on the session. To make it even worse, they showed a photo of Donald "Duck" Dunn while describing this session. Duck wouldn't join the MGs for another year after that hit.
Lewie is my wife, Diane Steinberg's uncle. This fact always gets swept under the rug because Duck went on to do great things in his career, while Lewie, who played on several early Stax hits, including "Last Night" by the Mar Keys, was sort of swept under the rug over time.
Kenny Lee Lewis
__________________________________
From: Doug McClement
Subject: Re: Billy Joel
Back in December 1977, Billy Joel was playing his first big Toronto arena show at Maple Leaf Gardens. I was running a recording studio downtown at the time. A student from the University of Toronto weekly newspaper interviewed him at his hotel using a portable micro cassette player, and brought the tape to my studio to transfer it to a regular cassette to make it easier to transcribe. When we hooked everything up and she pressed the play button, the tape was blank!!
She started to cry. But she gathered herself together, and phoned her contact at CPI, the local promoter, and got a call back from Billy's road manager saying that he was willing to DO THE WHOLE INTERVIEW OVER AGAIN for her. Keep in mind, this was not the Toronto Star, just a little University weekly. I don't think many artists, then or now would do something like that. A classy move. I've never forgotten it. (and my future wife and I went to see his show that night, and were blown away by Billy and his incredible band. A true showman! Such great songs. Good songwriting always wins.)
A few years later, I had to drive from Toronto to Long Island to take a Sound Workshop console back to the factory in Hauppauge for modifications. As I drove south along Hwy 87 in the Bronx the sun was setting on Manhattan on my right, and suddenly "New York State of Mind" was playing on the radio. A New York moment I'll never forget.
__________________________________
Subject: Re: A Complete Unknown
10 seconds into A Complete Unknown Timothy Chalamet is riding in a car taking him into New York City for the first time. A voice on the radio in the car mentions the "NFC East New York Giants". Dylan moved to NYC in 1961. The NFL and AFL were separate leagues until 1970, therefore there were no NFC of AFC until then, only the NFL and the AFL. I saw the movie in the theater and my first thought was "okay quit nitpicking" but again, it was 10 seconds in and turned out to be the gateway to the many other inaccuracies you mentioned. Overall it was sloppy.
https://youtu.be/Ciaymc1yZMk
Jim Blaney
__________________________________
From: Ron Farber
Subject: GARLAND JEFFREYS
Hi Bob,
A couple of pertinent comments/corrections on Garland Jeffreys. First off, scores of people still around can verify that waaay back in the 1970's yours truly was 100% responsible for bringing him to A&M. Had been a fan since his only Atlantic lp years before. with a great track, "She Didn't Lie." The original single of "Wild In The Streets" came later. FYI, it was actually a legit hit 45 in a few markets, particularly Cleveland and Boston. Also, it received major airplay on fm album rock radio throughout the northeast! Between his Atlantic & A&M signings, Arista released a weak 7 inch single by Garland, "The Disco Kid." And it deservedly bombed. Song was an insult to his artistic integrity!
Garland's A&M debut, "Ghost Writer" had some good original songs like "35mm Dream" and "Spanish Town."
Both garnered much AOR play. "Wild..." had never been in an album and was actually then unavailable. I conspired with Garland (who owned the master) that we HAD to get it on his lp. Jerry Moss did not want this 'old song' used and initially rejected it. Finally, Garland had to reshuffle all the tracks (including "Wild") when he presented his 'final mix' in a 'one on one' meeting with Moss. Jerry gave the whole thing a yes. as he ok'd the mix. After that, Garland mentioned that "Wild" was in there! Moss smirked realizing he had been had and allowed it to happen!
BTW, without the benefit of anything near a hit single, this album did initially sell over 100,000 units. Having "Wild on the album made it sell! Song later became an anthem.
Also, as you wrote, the two later A&M releases did not do anything. Yet, this great performing talent was able to then record three albums with the giant Epic label. Throughout his A&M and Epic tenure, he toured Europe; where he became a major live draw in France, Germany and elsewhere. Yes, his 'star' actually did rise in Western Europe far more than here. Soooo Garland did indeed achieve success and was able to enjoy it!
I look forward to seeing the documentary about him.
Stay well Bob.
Ron Farber
__________________________________
Subject: Re: The Zombies Documentary
I once had a very revealing conversation with Paul Atkinson when he worked with us at CBS Records. He told me that when The Zombies ended he was really in a bad way for a very long time. He was used to being a rock star, that's how he defined himself. He said he just couldn't stand the idea of having a real job. He just couldn't be a regular bloke.
I totally understood it. In the 50's everyone wanted to write the great American novel, From the late 60's through the 80's everyone wanted to be a rock star. It was just so big and beautiful, held so much gravitas. So, once you are that how can you just allow yourself to be folded into the mainstream?
For some reason he wanted, or needed, to share with me just how much pain he was in for so long, like his soul was being ripped from him. Eventually he found his way through being a great A&R man and as time passed realized that life had more to offer than just being that rock star. Finding a great wife really helped. He finally made it to another side where he could be equally proud of himself. But it was a long time getting to that place. It was a heavy life's story that I was honored to hear.
Paul Rappaport
__________________________________
From: Kenny Lee Lewis
Subject: Re: The Zombies Documentary
It's a common story. When Steve Miller took has break in 2001 for 4 years disgruntled with Napster, SFX Live Venue management, his label Capitol, and about a dozen other factors, the band had to all go find work.
I ended up at Guitar Center Hollywood as an Artist Relations sales manager working with Dave Weiderman and helping with the Rock Walk inductions.
The ironic part is that many of my so called "celebrity" clients had also had to get other jobs to support their music "habit". One former pop star I recall had become a sheriff out in Riverside and would actually come buy recording gear from me wearing his uniform after getting off work. Whatever pays the bills man.
__________________________________
From: Jane Millan
Subject: Re: Tegan And Sara At Departure
Re Tegan and Sara and Canadian bands
My daughter and son in law are in two Canadian bands. Stars (you are stars.com) and Broken Social Scene (see their history in recent award winning Canadian documentary It's All Gonna to Break if you enjoy watching commitment and love of the art blossom into love for and of the artists).
They make a living enough to support their family with two kids and their own home in Montreal at a comfortable if not lavish lifestyle. They've been doing it for twenty years and love it in spite of tough challenges and their own ups and downs with the industry.
They play at festivals and they still sell out clubs doing what they love in Canada, USA, and Europe and more. They once toured with Tegan and Sara as opening act and were impressed with not only their talent and but also their ethics.
It can be difficult to hold on to one's ethics in the music business but I think you'll find many Canadian bands (e g The Tragically Hip) hold on well to theirs and gain respect and loyalty from and yes they talk to their fans.
My daughter Amy Millan went to a public high school for the arts determined to be on a stage for her life and a wise teacher once said to me. "Don't tell her to get a back up career. You're telling her she'll fail. " That teacher said the hard work obtaining and sustaining success in the arts is understated.
Hard for a parent to not advise their kid to get a back up income to being in a band but I have a feeling Tegan and Sara's parents had similar advice.
If a parent is fully supporting their kid in the arts they are also supporting him or her or whatever pronoun used in their own core values.
J.Millan
__________________________________
From: Thomas Cussins
Subject: Re: Tegan And Sara At Departure
I was promoting a Tegan and Sara show in Santa Cruz in 2008 and they were in the green room stuffing their own CDs into sleeves. Manufacturing the sleeves separately had gotten them a better deal and then putting them together themselves before shows saved even more. I will always remember that hustle, the kind that keeps a band viable for over 20 years.
Keep telling it like it is thanks Bob
__________________________________
From: noah bailin
Subject: Re: Dave Chappelle At Queen Elizabeth Theatre
I was once working on a Chappelle tour years ago (for YONDR, which I believe he is an investor in..) and afterward he invited me and 5 others to the movie theatre next door (at 12:30 am) to watch a private screening of GET OUT. He talked about it in his show that night and is a huge fan of the movie. During the movie he set up a mic and did commentary throughout the movie (mystery science theatre style!) for this small group of us. He then passed the mic around and asked for our comments/jokes. For the first time in my life I was speechless (if you know me, it's rare) and I definitely regret freezing up..sigh. Super special sh*t though. He is always performing, simply because he loves it. I also just adore his true love of music. He always has to have bluetooth speakers with him and DJ whenever he can.
__________________________________
Subject: Ron Delsener
Bob:
A couple of Delsner stories. In 1993 I was VP Of Music and Movies at The Wiz and one of our owners asked why no one was selling CDs or videos of the bands performing at all of the venues around town. I called around and got an introduction to Ron and Mitch. We met a couple of times and eventually worked out a deal to sell product at Jones Beach. The first show we did was Poison. I get to venue and find that Ron wouldn't be there because he had to be at a little Paul McCartney show he was promoting at The Meadowlands that same evening. His assistant met me and told me we had a big problem. Poison's management would not give us permission to sell at the show because they thought it would cut into their merchandise sales. They shot down any argument I'd make and insisted we shut the booth down. End of story...Until Ron and I spoke on the following Monday and he told me problem solved and I would never have that problem again. I have no idea what he said or did but from that point on we sold CDs at every show without any problem.
Our deal also included access to a VIP Area where we would entertain our vendors and friends. The one rule was no liquor was to be consumed in the open. That was pretty tough to enforce and one evening the state troopers shut us down and confiscated all the liquor on site which Ron had actually supplied. Ron calls me and tells me to meet him backstage before the next show. He has two milk crates full of bottles of liquor. He covers them with a blanket and the two of us proceed to carry them past a bevy of state troopers to our reserved area. Ron had one comment.."Don't get caught."
We eventually expanded our deal to include a couple of clubs that Ron operated in the city and events like Simon and Garfunkle's run at The Felt Forum, Johnny Mathis at Carnegie Hall, ect.
I once asked Ron and Mitch the secret to their succesful relationship. The answer was simple. Trust...Ron didn't trust Mitch and Mitch didn't trust Ron....
Jay Rosenberg
__________________________________
Subject: Jill Sobule
Bob—
I'm surprised you haven't written about the tragic passing of Jill Sobule in a house fire.
Unfortunately, to many she was best known for "Supermodel" and the real, original "I Kissed a Girl." But there was so much more to Jill—she was a truly gifted songwriter and performer. Her catalog explored depression, teen angst, war, lost love, and so many other deeply personal and social topics—often through intimate, character-driven stories that somehow felt both specific and universal.
Her Jewish identity and LGBTQ themes were often at the core of her work, but she never hit you over the head with any of it. More often, her songs invited you to see the world through someone else's eyes.
During COVID, I had the chance to take two hands-on songwriting workshops with Jill and got to know her a bit personally. The small classes included musicians of all skill levels, and I'll never forget how Jill treated everyone with kindness, humor, and thoughtful encouragement. When something wasn't great (trust me, I had my moments), she'd always find something positive to say first—then gently guide us with questions like:
"Could you make that line more personal?"?"Does the melody really match the emotion of the lyric?"
It was actually amazing how much of a mentor she became to this group when clearly few of us would ever go on to make a living as a songwriter.
I was lucky enough to see her perform live many times—once with Lloyd Cole's short-lived band The Negatives—but more often solo, strumming an amped-up travel guitar. (She was actually a pretty great guitarist.) Jill had this rare ability to command a room, to get the audience to really listen and hang on every word and nuance.
Years ago, when she was still workshopping "Mary Kay" (yes, a song about that Mary Kay Letourneau—so perfectly Jill), she invited my son onstage to hold her laptop because she hadn't memorized the lyrics yet. It was a vulnerable, human moment. And classic Jill.
She was only 66 (hey, that's my age!), and it breaks my heart to know there were so many more songs in her. She deserves far more recognition than she ever received.
Rich Madow?
Baltimore, MD
__________________________________
From: russ wilson
Subject: Re: Cauliflower Pizza
Hi Bob, I wanted to comment on your comments on medical testing. I had a friend who's father-in-law had prostate cancer. They caught it and he recovered fine. He reached seventy and they told him that he didn't need testing anymore. About five years later he died a painful death from the cancer returning in it's virulent form. My doctor tried the same approach with me about my age and not needing it. This is after a scarce three years before when my number was almost eleven! It came down and we believe it was an infection but, after I told her to include the test or I would go back to the urologist she conceded. You are right. Don't let them talk you out of a test!
__________________________________
Subject: Re: More When Did An Artist Peak?-SiriusXM This Week
There should be a companion episode, Bob, about When Did The Audience Peak?
When did they stop listening to anything but their favorites?
Is there a general growth of Attention Deficit Disorder in the listeners?
When did they stop caring who wrote/performed their new favorite song?
Why is it harder than ever in the past 50 years for a musician to build an audience?
Why are brilliant musicians/showmen who should be playing stadiums instead finding work as Tom Rush's accompanists?
Stuff like that.
Tom Rush
In your review of the Stax documentary you mentioned Stax being "screwed by Jerry Wexler" such that "Atlantic ends up with all the Masters." However, technically, the latter statement is incorrect.
When Jim Stewart made the deal with Jerry Wexler, Stax (now Concord) actually retained ownership of the Masters. But that was because the deal was really a lifetime distribution deal (IN PERPETUITY) in which Atlantic (now Warner Brothers) received 50% of all income from Stax Masters as a distribution fee.
Meanwhile, the contracts Stax had with their artists (who were almost all Black) provided for a 50/50 split of income from Master use licenses (including uses of the Masters in film, television and advertisements, which are primary sources of income for the artists these days).
The result is that for every dollar that comes in today for the use of a Stax master, Warner takes 50% of that dollar (per the Wexler deal) and then sends 50 cents to Concord. Concord, under the artist's label deal, then takes 50% of that amount and sends the artist 25 cents. So Stax artists are only being paid 25 cents on the dollar - half of what most artists, even those with bad contracts from the 1960s, are being paid for income from Master use licenses.
To add insult to injury, Concord was a partner in "Soulsville USA," which showed how Jerry Wexler took advantage of Jim Stewart's trust to pull a fast one on Jim. Watching the documentary, I was struck by the fact that my client William Bell is still living with the effects of this onerous deal almost 60 years later. Of course, almost every label has voluntarily updated their record royalty rates to modern equivalencies, but this particular situation has not been remedied in spite of repeated requests over the course of years. I can personally vouch for the efforts of Zelma Redding on behalf of her late husband's estate, and my efforts on behalf of William Bell who, despite writing songs like 'You Don't Miss Your Water," "Born Under A Bad Sign," and "I Forgot To Be Your Lover" (which has over 50 million streams on Spotify), was not mentioned in the documentary.
This outdated deal is a grave injustice to Stax artists and should be corrected!
PS, It's ironic that your review came out on the same day Concord announced the release of a new John Fogerty album. In Fogerty's case, Concord 'did the right thing' and restored the song copyrights he lost under a bad deal with Fantasy Records, such that the press release touts the upcoming album as 'a personal reclamation of artistic ownership.' Would that they would do the right thing for the Black artists from Stax!
Charles Driebe
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Driebe
blindambitionmgt.com
__________________________________
Subject: Re: Swift?
"So what's forever, "Desperado" or "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"? "Hotel California" or "Cruel Summer"?"
Perfect!
I'm a Substitute Teacher and several ago, I asked an elementary school class what they wanted to be and several kids said "Influencer!". Nobody said "Musician".
Always enjoy your newsletter!
Jim Moulder
__________________________________
Subject: Re: The Stax Documentary
I had several heartfelt and fascinating conversations with Al Bell when I interviewed him for the Library of Congress. The film "Wattstax" was added to the National Film Registry in 2020.
He is truly a passionate and caring man who supported those artists out of sheer love for the music and the community. He wanted fans to share the experiences even when most had no money. He said they found ways to charge $1 for tickets to Wattstax, most of which went to charity.
He's also a songwriter. He wrote "I'll Take You There," made famous by The Staple Singers.
He told me that he wrote it after the murder of his brother. He sat crying in an abandoned school bus in his parent's backyard. While the song only has one verse, he said it was the music that rang so clear in his head. He is soulful to his core.
I adore that man. If you get the chance to meet him or interview him, take it. It will be one of the most inspiring and uplifting conversations you will ever have.
Stacie Seifrit-Griffin
__________________________________
Subject: Re: The Stax Documentary
I thought it was very good as well. However our family was very disappointed that when Steve Cropper was describing how the MGs cut "Green Onions", he failed to mentioned that Stax house bass player, Lewie Steinberg was actually the bass player and credited co/writer on the session. To make it even worse, they showed a photo of Donald "Duck" Dunn while describing this session. Duck wouldn't join the MGs for another year after that hit.
Lewie is my wife, Diane Steinberg's uncle. This fact always gets swept under the rug because Duck went on to do great things in his career, while Lewie, who played on several early Stax hits, including "Last Night" by the Mar Keys, was sort of swept under the rug over time.
Kenny Lee Lewis
__________________________________
From: Doug McClement
Subject: Re: Billy Joel
Back in December 1977, Billy Joel was playing his first big Toronto arena show at Maple Leaf Gardens. I was running a recording studio downtown at the time. A student from the University of Toronto weekly newspaper interviewed him at his hotel using a portable micro cassette player, and brought the tape to my studio to transfer it to a regular cassette to make it easier to transcribe. When we hooked everything up and she pressed the play button, the tape was blank!!
She started to cry. But she gathered herself together, and phoned her contact at CPI, the local promoter, and got a call back from Billy's road manager saying that he was willing to DO THE WHOLE INTERVIEW OVER AGAIN for her. Keep in mind, this was not the Toronto Star, just a little University weekly. I don't think many artists, then or now would do something like that. A classy move. I've never forgotten it. (and my future wife and I went to see his show that night, and were blown away by Billy and his incredible band. A true showman! Such great songs. Good songwriting always wins.)
A few years later, I had to drive from Toronto to Long Island to take a Sound Workshop console back to the factory in Hauppauge for modifications. As I drove south along Hwy 87 in the Bronx the sun was setting on Manhattan on my right, and suddenly "New York State of Mind" was playing on the radio. A New York moment I'll never forget.
__________________________________
Subject: Re: A Complete Unknown
10 seconds into A Complete Unknown Timothy Chalamet is riding in a car taking him into New York City for the first time. A voice on the radio in the car mentions the "NFC East New York Giants". Dylan moved to NYC in 1961. The NFL and AFL were separate leagues until 1970, therefore there were no NFC of AFC until then, only the NFL and the AFL. I saw the movie in the theater and my first thought was "okay quit nitpicking" but again, it was 10 seconds in and turned out to be the gateway to the many other inaccuracies you mentioned. Overall it was sloppy.
https://youtu.be/Ciaymc1yZMk
Jim Blaney
__________________________________
From: Ron Farber
Subject: GARLAND JEFFREYS
Hi Bob,
A couple of pertinent comments/corrections on Garland Jeffreys. First off, scores of people still around can verify that waaay back in the 1970's yours truly was 100% responsible for bringing him to A&M. Had been a fan since his only Atlantic lp years before. with a great track, "She Didn't Lie." The original single of "Wild In The Streets" came later. FYI, it was actually a legit hit 45 in a few markets, particularly Cleveland and Boston. Also, it received major airplay on fm album rock radio throughout the northeast! Between his Atlantic & A&M signings, Arista released a weak 7 inch single by Garland, "The Disco Kid." And it deservedly bombed. Song was an insult to his artistic integrity!
Garland's A&M debut, "Ghost Writer" had some good original songs like "35mm Dream" and "Spanish Town."
Both garnered much AOR play. "Wild..." had never been in an album and was actually then unavailable. I conspired with Garland (who owned the master) that we HAD to get it on his lp. Jerry Moss did not want this 'old song' used and initially rejected it. Finally, Garland had to reshuffle all the tracks (including "Wild") when he presented his 'final mix' in a 'one on one' meeting with Moss. Jerry gave the whole thing a yes. as he ok'd the mix. After that, Garland mentioned that "Wild" was in there! Moss smirked realizing he had been had and allowed it to happen!
BTW, without the benefit of anything near a hit single, this album did initially sell over 100,000 units. Having "Wild on the album made it sell! Song later became an anthem.
Also, as you wrote, the two later A&M releases did not do anything. Yet, this great performing talent was able to then record three albums with the giant Epic label. Throughout his A&M and Epic tenure, he toured Europe; where he became a major live draw in France, Germany and elsewhere. Yes, his 'star' actually did rise in Western Europe far more than here. Soooo Garland did indeed achieve success and was able to enjoy it!
I look forward to seeing the documentary about him.
Stay well Bob.
Ron Farber
__________________________________
Subject: Re: The Zombies Documentary
I once had a very revealing conversation with Paul Atkinson when he worked with us at CBS Records. He told me that when The Zombies ended he was really in a bad way for a very long time. He was used to being a rock star, that's how he defined himself. He said he just couldn't stand the idea of having a real job. He just couldn't be a regular bloke.
I totally understood it. In the 50's everyone wanted to write the great American novel, From the late 60's through the 80's everyone wanted to be a rock star. It was just so big and beautiful, held so much gravitas. So, once you are that how can you just allow yourself to be folded into the mainstream?
For some reason he wanted, or needed, to share with me just how much pain he was in for so long, like his soul was being ripped from him. Eventually he found his way through being a great A&R man and as time passed realized that life had more to offer than just being that rock star. Finding a great wife really helped. He finally made it to another side where he could be equally proud of himself. But it was a long time getting to that place. It was a heavy life's story that I was honored to hear.
Paul Rappaport
__________________________________
From: Kenny Lee Lewis
Subject: Re: The Zombies Documentary
It's a common story. When Steve Miller took has break in 2001 for 4 years disgruntled with Napster, SFX Live Venue management, his label Capitol, and about a dozen other factors, the band had to all go find work.
I ended up at Guitar Center Hollywood as an Artist Relations sales manager working with Dave Weiderman and helping with the Rock Walk inductions.
The ironic part is that many of my so called "celebrity" clients had also had to get other jobs to support their music "habit". One former pop star I recall had become a sheriff out in Riverside and would actually come buy recording gear from me wearing his uniform after getting off work. Whatever pays the bills man.
__________________________________
From: Jane Millan
Subject: Re: Tegan And Sara At Departure
Re Tegan and Sara and Canadian bands
My daughter and son in law are in two Canadian bands. Stars (you are stars.com) and Broken Social Scene (see their history in recent award winning Canadian documentary It's All Gonna to Break if you enjoy watching commitment and love of the art blossom into love for and of the artists).
They make a living enough to support their family with two kids and their own home in Montreal at a comfortable if not lavish lifestyle. They've been doing it for twenty years and love it in spite of tough challenges and their own ups and downs with the industry.
They play at festivals and they still sell out clubs doing what they love in Canada, USA, and Europe and more. They once toured with Tegan and Sara as opening act and were impressed with not only their talent and but also their ethics.
It can be difficult to hold on to one's ethics in the music business but I think you'll find many Canadian bands (e g The Tragically Hip) hold on well to theirs and gain respect and loyalty from and yes they talk to their fans.
My daughter Amy Millan went to a public high school for the arts determined to be on a stage for her life and a wise teacher once said to me. "Don't tell her to get a back up career. You're telling her she'll fail. " That teacher said the hard work obtaining and sustaining success in the arts is understated.
Hard for a parent to not advise their kid to get a back up income to being in a band but I have a feeling Tegan and Sara's parents had similar advice.
If a parent is fully supporting their kid in the arts they are also supporting him or her or whatever pronoun used in their own core values.
J.Millan
__________________________________
From: Thomas Cussins
Subject: Re: Tegan And Sara At Departure
I was promoting a Tegan and Sara show in Santa Cruz in 2008 and they were in the green room stuffing their own CDs into sleeves. Manufacturing the sleeves separately had gotten them a better deal and then putting them together themselves before shows saved even more. I will always remember that hustle, the kind that keeps a band viable for over 20 years.
Keep telling it like it is thanks Bob
__________________________________
From: noah bailin
Subject: Re: Dave Chappelle At Queen Elizabeth Theatre
I was once working on a Chappelle tour years ago (for YONDR, which I believe he is an investor in..) and afterward he invited me and 5 others to the movie theatre next door (at 12:30 am) to watch a private screening of GET OUT. He talked about it in his show that night and is a huge fan of the movie. During the movie he set up a mic and did commentary throughout the movie (mystery science theatre style!) for this small group of us. He then passed the mic around and asked for our comments/jokes. For the first time in my life I was speechless (if you know me, it's rare) and I definitely regret freezing up..sigh. Super special sh*t though. He is always performing, simply because he loves it. I also just adore his true love of music. He always has to have bluetooth speakers with him and DJ whenever he can.
__________________________________
Subject: Ron Delsener
Bob:
A couple of Delsner stories. In 1993 I was VP Of Music and Movies at The Wiz and one of our owners asked why no one was selling CDs or videos of the bands performing at all of the venues around town. I called around and got an introduction to Ron and Mitch. We met a couple of times and eventually worked out a deal to sell product at Jones Beach. The first show we did was Poison. I get to venue and find that Ron wouldn't be there because he had to be at a little Paul McCartney show he was promoting at The Meadowlands that same evening. His assistant met me and told me we had a big problem. Poison's management would not give us permission to sell at the show because they thought it would cut into their merchandise sales. They shot down any argument I'd make and insisted we shut the booth down. End of story...Until Ron and I spoke on the following Monday and he told me problem solved and I would never have that problem again. I have no idea what he said or did but from that point on we sold CDs at every show without any problem.
Our deal also included access to a VIP Area where we would entertain our vendors and friends. The one rule was no liquor was to be consumed in the open. That was pretty tough to enforce and one evening the state troopers shut us down and confiscated all the liquor on site which Ron had actually supplied. Ron calls me and tells me to meet him backstage before the next show. He has two milk crates full of bottles of liquor. He covers them with a blanket and the two of us proceed to carry them past a bevy of state troopers to our reserved area. Ron had one comment.."Don't get caught."
We eventually expanded our deal to include a couple of clubs that Ron operated in the city and events like Simon and Garfunkle's run at The Felt Forum, Johnny Mathis at Carnegie Hall, ect.
I once asked Ron and Mitch the secret to their succesful relationship. The answer was simple. Trust...Ron didn't trust Mitch and Mitch didn't trust Ron....
Jay Rosenberg
__________________________________
Subject: Jill Sobule
Bob—
I'm surprised you haven't written about the tragic passing of Jill Sobule in a house fire.
Unfortunately, to many she was best known for "Supermodel" and the real, original "I Kissed a Girl." But there was so much more to Jill—she was a truly gifted songwriter and performer. Her catalog explored depression, teen angst, war, lost love, and so many other deeply personal and social topics—often through intimate, character-driven stories that somehow felt both specific and universal.
Her Jewish identity and LGBTQ themes were often at the core of her work, but she never hit you over the head with any of it. More often, her songs invited you to see the world through someone else's eyes.
During COVID, I had the chance to take two hands-on songwriting workshops with Jill and got to know her a bit personally. The small classes included musicians of all skill levels, and I'll never forget how Jill treated everyone with kindness, humor, and thoughtful encouragement. When something wasn't great (trust me, I had my moments), she'd always find something positive to say first—then gently guide us with questions like:
"Could you make that line more personal?"?"Does the melody really match the emotion of the lyric?"
It was actually amazing how much of a mentor she became to this group when clearly few of us would ever go on to make a living as a songwriter.
I was lucky enough to see her perform live many times—once with Lloyd Cole's short-lived band The Negatives—but more often solo, strumming an amped-up travel guitar. (She was actually a pretty great guitarist.) Jill had this rare ability to command a room, to get the audience to really listen and hang on every word and nuance.
Years ago, when she was still workshopping "Mary Kay" (yes, a song about that Mary Kay Letourneau—so perfectly Jill), she invited my son onstage to hold her laptop because she hadn't memorized the lyrics yet. It was a vulnerable, human moment. And classic Jill.
She was only 66 (hey, that's my age!), and it breaks my heart to know there were so many more songs in her. She deserves far more recognition than she ever received.
Rich Madow?
Baltimore, MD
__________________________________
From: russ wilson
Subject: Re: Cauliflower Pizza
Hi Bob, I wanted to comment on your comments on medical testing. I had a friend who's father-in-law had prostate cancer. They caught it and he recovered fine. He reached seventy and they told him that he didn't need testing anymore. About five years later he died a painful death from the cancer returning in it's virulent form. My doctor tried the same approach with me about my age and not needing it. This is after a scarce three years before when my number was almost eleven! It came down and we believe it was an infection but, after I told her to include the test or I would go back to the urologist she conceded. You are right. Don't let them talk you out of a test!
__________________________________
Subject: Re: More When Did An Artist Peak?-SiriusXM This Week
There should be a companion episode, Bob, about When Did The Audience Peak?
When did they stop listening to anything but their favorites?
Is there a general growth of Attention Deficit Disorder in the listeners?
When did they stop caring who wrote/performed their new favorite song?
Why is it harder than ever in the past 50 years for a musician to build an audience?
Why are brilliant musicians/showmen who should be playing stadiums instead finding work as Tom Rush's accompanists?
Stuff like that.
Tom Rush
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
Monday, 9 June 2025
Sly Stone
1
This is weird. Because I just started watching the Questlove documentary last night. I planned to finish up today and give you my take on it and I'm gassing up my car and my sister texts me that Sly died and... What am I gonna do, write about the doc, write about the man, not write at all?
I can't do that. Because of one night back in February 1970 when I went with Ellen to see Sly and the Family Stone at Madison Square Garden.
This was mere months before the Woodstock movie blew Sly into the stratosphere. Today everybody talks about Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" that finished the festival, but acolytes already knew he was performing the anthem live and it was no longer the Experience and in the film it was early in the morning on the last day, but...
In the middle of the night, Sly and the Family Stone blew the place apart. Sure, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were featured, after all "Déjà Vu" had recently been released and was ubiquitous, but Sly... This was a black man entering a white man's world and stealing the show. Not only the performance, but the images in the movie, if I remember correctly Sly's set ended in a freeze frame. I could check on it, but the memory is better. Yet checking on that Madison Square Garden show...
The internet tells me it was on February 13, 1970.
As for the set list, setlist.fm tells me it's incomplete, but it does say these numbers started the show:
1. "Stand!"
2. "Dance to the Music"
3. "M'Lady"
4. 'Everyday People"
5. "I Want to Take You Higher"
6. "Hot Fun in the Summertime"
7. "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)"
A murderer's row of hits. Unbridled energy.
2
"Dance to the Music" was released in November 1967, and nobody had any idea who Sly or the band were. The first issue of "Rolling Stone" came out the same month. Music news was sparse, never mind deep history on an act that hadn't broken through. But that record?
You only had to hear it once. Because of its power.
In 1967 horns were not rare. Blood, Sweat & Tears made them ubiquitous and Chicago followed up but horns and strings were mostly absent from rock in the seventies. Maybe you had a sax solo, but...the flourish of a horn intro, it heralds something important, the king is coming. And he did, after the music broke down, when it exploded again. And then there was the call-out to the various members, but even better the solos, the bass and then the organ and those horns lending emphasis once again...
"Hello Goodbye" was dominating the chart. Radio was playing stuff like "Daydream Believer," "The Rain, the Park and Other Things" and "Incense and Peppermints." The original version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," the Gladys Knight take which was soon eclipsed by Marvin Gaye's and and promptly forgotten was on the chart, along with Smokey's "I Second that Emotion," but...you can see that "Dance to the Music" stood out, was completely different, created a lane that no one even saw.
By time Sly and the Family Stone had their next hit a year later the whole nation had blown up. Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., both cut down before their time. There'd been riots. And then Sly and the band come out with a record that brings us together, "Everyday People."
"Everyday People" was not a dance number. But it did have an infectious beat. And a nursery rhyme verse and the cliché "Different strokes for different folks."
"Sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm wrong"
You can't get a politician to admit this today, nor the entertainers either. They've got a posture and they're sticking with it. Projecting strength instead of vulnerability. But those who can admit their mistakes are the ultimate winners. And we took our lessons from our acts and their records.
"There is a yellow one that won't accept the black one
That won't accept the red one that won't accept the white one
Different strokes for different folks"
This message is anathema today, everybody's in their corner hating everybody else. Blacks, Jews, Bros, it's open season on our citizens.
Needless to say "Everyday People" went to number one.
And then came "Stand!" Which literally exploded on the airwaves. Sly was selling optimism in a dark era, you could not help but move to this music. Not that the message was original, but everybody else was coming from a negative position.
"There's a permanent crease in your right and wrong"
People were baked into their positions, and this was back when not only races were fighting, but generations. There was a huge gulf between the parents and the boomers. The oldsters wanted decorum, a return to the fifties, when America was supposedly great, whereas the youngsters were constantly pushing the envelope, questioning EVERYTHING!
But "Hot Fun in the Summertime" was something completely different. Released at the end of July 1969 it immediately blasted out of transistors, car radios, and took us back to school in the fall. Back when classes didn't start until September and we could luxuriate in joy and contemplation in August. It was not like today, everybody heard and knew "Hot Fun in the Summertime," I distinctly remember hearing it blasting from a series of radios in a park in downtown Chicago.
And at the end of the year into the next, 1970, there was the popping bass of "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)." So funky that you couldn't concentrate on the lyrics, other than the chorus/refrain, because your body was too busy movin', whether you be white, black or brown.
And then came that Madison Square Garden show.
3
Now even though Wikipedia will tell you "Sing a Simple Song" was not a chart hit, the truth was I knew it from the radio. But not a whole hell of a lot more.
But Ellen said she was a fan of the band and I saw they were playing at MSG and I called her and asked her if she wanted to go.
SHE WAS IN!
Which meant this was the first time I'd see her outside of school.
Now the New Haven Railroad did not show up, but I called my parents who happened to be going into the city that night themselves and they picked us up and gave us a ride. But there was no time to have dinner. It was straight to the Garden, which at this point was still pretty new.
And if you had seats in the upper ring you were screwed. Because you couldn't climb down to a lower level. But if you were below that, LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
And we had the seats the promoters hold back for guests today, in the lower loge.
Now check out this bill...
Richard Pryor opened. But this was before most people knew who he was, and the audience was talking and you couldn't really hear him over the rabble-rousing.
Next came Fleetwood Mac.
And then Grand Funk Railroad. I remember their performance. This was the time of the red album, they seemed to be everywhere.
And then after a break came Sly and the Family Stone. Who started, as you can see above, with STAND!
We jumped up immediately. As did the rest of the assembled multitude. But this was before the dreaded "festival seating," a blank floor where people push and shove and if you're vertically challenged, good luck being able to see.
Everybody had a seat. But many rushed the stage. So we hopped over the plastic wall down to the floor, ran to empty seats in the middle, stood on the chairs and grooved the whole night long.
THIS was unexpected.
I was more of a white rock guy. I knew the Black AM hits but I didn't buy the albums and didn't go to the shows. I HAD NO IDEA!
Sure, I was expecting the hits, but this was so much more!
And the highlight was "I Want to Take You Higher," which I'd never heard before, but it didn't take long to catch on and participate, throwing our arms into the air as Sly Stone exhorted us to do so. I mean we're twisting and dancing, working up a sweat, it was a full workout.
And then it was over.
4
I immediately had to buy the album, "Stand!" And then came the Woodstock movie. And it wasn't that long thereafter that Sly not only started showing up late, but sometimes not at all, and he lost the momentum of the Woodstock film and no one would promote him and no one would go...this was not Live Nation, a no-show could put a promoter out of business and good luck getting your ticket money back.
But there was another hit. "There's a Riot Goin' On" was billed as a masterpiece, but I couldn't figure out why. I played it and it was dark and introspective and lacking hooks except for the sotto voce, almost mumbled lead vocal on this song "Family Affair."
Now that's a number that did not sound like anything else on the radio. But its individuality was so powerful it broke through the noise and went to number one and held its own with the FM rock monoliths. They played the track on Top Forty, yet it was anything but disposable tripe. It sounded like it was being made in the next room over and you were privileged to be included as you strained to listen.
And this was an unexpected comeback. By this time there was a vibrant rock press and new hit acts to fill it and Sly was seen as a drugged-out has-been.
There was one more hit, "If You Want Me to Stay"... It was the same guy but the number was upbeat like the tracks from the sixties as opposed to a drug stupor like "Family Affair." "If You Want Me to Stay" was infectious and undeniable.
And then it was over. I kept buying the albums but not only were there no hits, the records did not demand they be played.
And by time corporate rock dominated and disco was surging, Sly was forgotten.
5
Which brings us to the Questlove documentary, "Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). I expected the usual hagiography (which according to the Oxford dictionary means "the writing of the lives of saints" or derogatorily "adulatory writing about another person") and that's why I don't bother with most rock docs, but the title really tells it all, you do get a lot of Sly, but you also get a lot of talking heads speaking about the burden of Black genius, that's the through thread.
Is it harder for a Black person? Do they have to work two or three times harder than someone white? Are expectations higher after success, are they carrying the hopes and dreams of their entire race? There's a lot of erudite takes, D'Angelo displays intellectual faculties, as do André 3000 and Vernon Reid, and I wish all white people were forced to watch this doc, just to see that their preconceived notion of who these Black musicians are may be wrong.
And the analysis! Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis break down the numbers (never mind telling the story of how Sly was sampled for Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation") and you know what they're talking about, but...you feel inadequate. We tend to believe all pop musicians can't read music and are doing it all on feel, but that is patently untrue.
Now I knew the Sly legend. I knew he produced those Beau Brummels records and was a successful radio DJ, but what I did not know was all the dues he paid before that, primarily in church, where he performed six, sometimes seven days a week. That's so different from today's model, where the effort goes into the marketing more than the musical creativity, where we're supposed to adore barely pubescent acts who have no knowledge, no education, no chops at all.
What I'm saying here is Sly didn't rise up out of thin air. He paid his dues, in groups playing live... That was a whole life that's now history, lounge acts, club acts performing the hits of the day sans scrutiny. That's where you learn how to do it.
As for Sly blowing himself up...
Sly went deep into drugs. There have been others who've done so and survived, like David Crosby, but most don't, they either die or clean up. Sure, you chase that initial high, but if you're successful you're also trying to soothe yourself. Everybody wants your attention and you're working overtime and the only people who seem to understand are in the same boat you are. Sly yearned for normality, as quoted in today's "New York Times" obituary:
"'I wanted to go fishing, man. Or drive my own car. For a long time, I didn't understand anywhere but hotel rooms, the inside of airplanes, and trying to figure out a way that I didn't come off wrong to human beings.'"
But the machine wants more, the people want more, and everybody tells you to make another one like the last one, but in truth that's not what the audience is looking for, they want something unexpected and fresh, and that's a bar that's just too high for most. Then again, most are just producing regurgative pablum anyway. Did any Beatle really push the envelope after the band broke up? Maybe John Lennon with the initial Plastic Ono Band album with "Mother," et al, but there was little innovation thereafter, some great tunes, but nothing that would blow your mind like "Strawberry Fields Forever" (and that's just one of many).
They chew you up and spit you out and then where are you? NOWHERE!
So when Sly tries to come back it's just too late. He doesn't fit in, doesn't know what to do and goes back to the camper.
Except for that one bleak moment at the Grammys, where he showed up for a few bars and then exited immediately. That didn't do him any favors, that didn't burnish his image.
The Questlove documentary does.
But really it comes down to the records.
6
If you do it right, the records survive, they even eclipse the act, which is why Journey can continue to sell all those tickets with a substitute singer. People love the songs, they just want to hear them.
Sure, Sly had cultural impact. Sure, he inspired many musicians thereafter. But really, it's all in the grooves.
And every single one of those hits sounds as fresh today as it did yesterday. Maybe a little out of time, but they exist in their own world where era is not really important. It's about the creativity and the ENERGY!
That's what the layperson can't fathom, how these geniuses come up with this stuff. Sometimes the songs are stone simple, but it's not like anybody else created them. It's an amalgam of so many elements, practice, musical knowledge, a knowledge of the landscape and an environment that stimulates you to be all you can be. (Then again, most truly great acts are rebelling against a culture that won't accept them as they are. They've got something to prove.)
So what do we say?
It's a sad story. But it's also a glorious story.
There are lessons to be learned, but is Sly so unique that ultimately his arc was singular?
Now those Sly and the Family Stone hits were fifty years ago, over half a century. Believe me, we were not listening to the music of our grandparents in the sixties. But the sixties were a time of exploration. And expression. And the best way to get your message across was via music.
And sure, you've got all the white acts, from the Beatles to the aforementioned Crosby, Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young). But the Black acts? They existed in a separate world, the Motown hits, even the Aretha Franklin hits on Atlantic, it was about singles more than albums. They did not sound like rock acts.
But the thing with Sly Stone is he sounded both rock and R&B. And as great as the singles were, you had to buy the albums too, which made him an anomaly.
It was a group, which is demonstrated clearly in Questlove's doc, but Sly was the visionary.
And how exactly did he come up with those Beau Brummels hits? How did he get that dark feel that only the Brits had been able to capture on wax before this?
To survive you have to reinvent yourself.
But that usually means losing half your audience and starting over. And most people are not willing to do this, hell, when Garth Brooks made a rock record he employed a pseudonym.
But the sixties and early seventies were different. Acts could go through a lifetime of changes in only a few years. As Sly did. But then what?
The landscape is littered with geniuses who were driven to climb the mountain to the top and then became disillusioned and lost. Look at Bobby Fischer. Sure, he might have been crazy, but most of your iconic heroes are. Maybe not bipolar, but broken inside. Our legendary stars are the other, and Sly Stone was too.
And now he's gone.
Kinda like Keith Richards, we didn't expect Sly to live to 82. Back in the sixties that was a ripe old age, today people might live longer, but 82 is still a pretty good ride. And what exactly was he doing all these years?
If you want your heroes to come back to the charts know that it's almost always impossible. Because having been to the top and seeing that it doesn't solve all your problems, the inspiration, the drive is lost.
So another one bites the dust as Freddie sang.
Sure, it's sad. But somehow this one's different. Because Sly was so different. He never mellowed and came out as grandpa, making the talk show rounds and singing some dumb song with Jimmy Fallon or doing an interview to explain the songs and events from decades before. After his hits Sly became even MORE of an enigma than he was during his heyday, and usually it's the opposite.
But when I was standing on that chair on the floor of Madison Square Garden, soaked in the sound, having an experience that couldn't be caught on a smartphone, that was one and done...
These are the peaks that make up a life.
And Sly Stone provided one of mine.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
This is weird. Because I just started watching the Questlove documentary last night. I planned to finish up today and give you my take on it and I'm gassing up my car and my sister texts me that Sly died and... What am I gonna do, write about the doc, write about the man, not write at all?
I can't do that. Because of one night back in February 1970 when I went with Ellen to see Sly and the Family Stone at Madison Square Garden.
This was mere months before the Woodstock movie blew Sly into the stratosphere. Today everybody talks about Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" that finished the festival, but acolytes already knew he was performing the anthem live and it was no longer the Experience and in the film it was early in the morning on the last day, but...
In the middle of the night, Sly and the Family Stone blew the place apart. Sure, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were featured, after all "Déjà Vu" had recently been released and was ubiquitous, but Sly... This was a black man entering a white man's world and stealing the show. Not only the performance, but the images in the movie, if I remember correctly Sly's set ended in a freeze frame. I could check on it, but the memory is better. Yet checking on that Madison Square Garden show...
The internet tells me it was on February 13, 1970.
As for the set list, setlist.fm tells me it's incomplete, but it does say these numbers started the show:
1. "Stand!"
2. "Dance to the Music"
3. "M'Lady"
4. 'Everyday People"
5. "I Want to Take You Higher"
6. "Hot Fun in the Summertime"
7. "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)"
A murderer's row of hits. Unbridled energy.
2
"Dance to the Music" was released in November 1967, and nobody had any idea who Sly or the band were. The first issue of "Rolling Stone" came out the same month. Music news was sparse, never mind deep history on an act that hadn't broken through. But that record?
You only had to hear it once. Because of its power.
In 1967 horns were not rare. Blood, Sweat & Tears made them ubiquitous and Chicago followed up but horns and strings were mostly absent from rock in the seventies. Maybe you had a sax solo, but...the flourish of a horn intro, it heralds something important, the king is coming. And he did, after the music broke down, when it exploded again. And then there was the call-out to the various members, but even better the solos, the bass and then the organ and those horns lending emphasis once again...
"Hello Goodbye" was dominating the chart. Radio was playing stuff like "Daydream Believer," "The Rain, the Park and Other Things" and "Incense and Peppermints." The original version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," the Gladys Knight take which was soon eclipsed by Marvin Gaye's and and promptly forgotten was on the chart, along with Smokey's "I Second that Emotion," but...you can see that "Dance to the Music" stood out, was completely different, created a lane that no one even saw.
By time Sly and the Family Stone had their next hit a year later the whole nation had blown up. Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., both cut down before their time. There'd been riots. And then Sly and the band come out with a record that brings us together, "Everyday People."
"Everyday People" was not a dance number. But it did have an infectious beat. And a nursery rhyme verse and the cliché "Different strokes for different folks."
"Sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm wrong"
You can't get a politician to admit this today, nor the entertainers either. They've got a posture and they're sticking with it. Projecting strength instead of vulnerability. But those who can admit their mistakes are the ultimate winners. And we took our lessons from our acts and their records.
"There is a yellow one that won't accept the black one
That won't accept the red one that won't accept the white one
Different strokes for different folks"
This message is anathema today, everybody's in their corner hating everybody else. Blacks, Jews, Bros, it's open season on our citizens.
Needless to say "Everyday People" went to number one.
And then came "Stand!" Which literally exploded on the airwaves. Sly was selling optimism in a dark era, you could not help but move to this music. Not that the message was original, but everybody else was coming from a negative position.
"There's a permanent crease in your right and wrong"
People were baked into their positions, and this was back when not only races were fighting, but generations. There was a huge gulf between the parents and the boomers. The oldsters wanted decorum, a return to the fifties, when America was supposedly great, whereas the youngsters were constantly pushing the envelope, questioning EVERYTHING!
But "Hot Fun in the Summertime" was something completely different. Released at the end of July 1969 it immediately blasted out of transistors, car radios, and took us back to school in the fall. Back when classes didn't start until September and we could luxuriate in joy and contemplation in August. It was not like today, everybody heard and knew "Hot Fun in the Summertime," I distinctly remember hearing it blasting from a series of radios in a park in downtown Chicago.
And at the end of the year into the next, 1970, there was the popping bass of "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)." So funky that you couldn't concentrate on the lyrics, other than the chorus/refrain, because your body was too busy movin', whether you be white, black or brown.
And then came that Madison Square Garden show.
3
Now even though Wikipedia will tell you "Sing a Simple Song" was not a chart hit, the truth was I knew it from the radio. But not a whole hell of a lot more.
But Ellen said she was a fan of the band and I saw they were playing at MSG and I called her and asked her if she wanted to go.
SHE WAS IN!
Which meant this was the first time I'd see her outside of school.
Now the New Haven Railroad did not show up, but I called my parents who happened to be going into the city that night themselves and they picked us up and gave us a ride. But there was no time to have dinner. It was straight to the Garden, which at this point was still pretty new.
And if you had seats in the upper ring you were screwed. Because you couldn't climb down to a lower level. But if you were below that, LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
And we had the seats the promoters hold back for guests today, in the lower loge.
Now check out this bill...
Richard Pryor opened. But this was before most people knew who he was, and the audience was talking and you couldn't really hear him over the rabble-rousing.
Next came Fleetwood Mac.
And then Grand Funk Railroad. I remember their performance. This was the time of the red album, they seemed to be everywhere.
And then after a break came Sly and the Family Stone. Who started, as you can see above, with STAND!
We jumped up immediately. As did the rest of the assembled multitude. But this was before the dreaded "festival seating," a blank floor where people push and shove and if you're vertically challenged, good luck being able to see.
Everybody had a seat. But many rushed the stage. So we hopped over the plastic wall down to the floor, ran to empty seats in the middle, stood on the chairs and grooved the whole night long.
THIS was unexpected.
I was more of a white rock guy. I knew the Black AM hits but I didn't buy the albums and didn't go to the shows. I HAD NO IDEA!
Sure, I was expecting the hits, but this was so much more!
And the highlight was "I Want to Take You Higher," which I'd never heard before, but it didn't take long to catch on and participate, throwing our arms into the air as Sly Stone exhorted us to do so. I mean we're twisting and dancing, working up a sweat, it was a full workout.
And then it was over.
4
I immediately had to buy the album, "Stand!" And then came the Woodstock movie. And it wasn't that long thereafter that Sly not only started showing up late, but sometimes not at all, and he lost the momentum of the Woodstock film and no one would promote him and no one would go...this was not Live Nation, a no-show could put a promoter out of business and good luck getting your ticket money back.
But there was another hit. "There's a Riot Goin' On" was billed as a masterpiece, but I couldn't figure out why. I played it and it was dark and introspective and lacking hooks except for the sotto voce, almost mumbled lead vocal on this song "Family Affair."
Now that's a number that did not sound like anything else on the radio. But its individuality was so powerful it broke through the noise and went to number one and held its own with the FM rock monoliths. They played the track on Top Forty, yet it was anything but disposable tripe. It sounded like it was being made in the next room over and you were privileged to be included as you strained to listen.
And this was an unexpected comeback. By this time there was a vibrant rock press and new hit acts to fill it and Sly was seen as a drugged-out has-been.
There was one more hit, "If You Want Me to Stay"... It was the same guy but the number was upbeat like the tracks from the sixties as opposed to a drug stupor like "Family Affair." "If You Want Me to Stay" was infectious and undeniable.
And then it was over. I kept buying the albums but not only were there no hits, the records did not demand they be played.
And by time corporate rock dominated and disco was surging, Sly was forgotten.
5
Which brings us to the Questlove documentary, "Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). I expected the usual hagiography (which according to the Oxford dictionary means "the writing of the lives of saints" or derogatorily "adulatory writing about another person") and that's why I don't bother with most rock docs, but the title really tells it all, you do get a lot of Sly, but you also get a lot of talking heads speaking about the burden of Black genius, that's the through thread.
Is it harder for a Black person? Do they have to work two or three times harder than someone white? Are expectations higher after success, are they carrying the hopes and dreams of their entire race? There's a lot of erudite takes, D'Angelo displays intellectual faculties, as do André 3000 and Vernon Reid, and I wish all white people were forced to watch this doc, just to see that their preconceived notion of who these Black musicians are may be wrong.
And the analysis! Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis break down the numbers (never mind telling the story of how Sly was sampled for Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation") and you know what they're talking about, but...you feel inadequate. We tend to believe all pop musicians can't read music and are doing it all on feel, but that is patently untrue.
Now I knew the Sly legend. I knew he produced those Beau Brummels records and was a successful radio DJ, but what I did not know was all the dues he paid before that, primarily in church, where he performed six, sometimes seven days a week. That's so different from today's model, where the effort goes into the marketing more than the musical creativity, where we're supposed to adore barely pubescent acts who have no knowledge, no education, no chops at all.
What I'm saying here is Sly didn't rise up out of thin air. He paid his dues, in groups playing live... That was a whole life that's now history, lounge acts, club acts performing the hits of the day sans scrutiny. That's where you learn how to do it.
As for Sly blowing himself up...
Sly went deep into drugs. There have been others who've done so and survived, like David Crosby, but most don't, they either die or clean up. Sure, you chase that initial high, but if you're successful you're also trying to soothe yourself. Everybody wants your attention and you're working overtime and the only people who seem to understand are in the same boat you are. Sly yearned for normality, as quoted in today's "New York Times" obituary:
"'I wanted to go fishing, man. Or drive my own car. For a long time, I didn't understand anywhere but hotel rooms, the inside of airplanes, and trying to figure out a way that I didn't come off wrong to human beings.'"
But the machine wants more, the people want more, and everybody tells you to make another one like the last one, but in truth that's not what the audience is looking for, they want something unexpected and fresh, and that's a bar that's just too high for most. Then again, most are just producing regurgative pablum anyway. Did any Beatle really push the envelope after the band broke up? Maybe John Lennon with the initial Plastic Ono Band album with "Mother," et al, but there was little innovation thereafter, some great tunes, but nothing that would blow your mind like "Strawberry Fields Forever" (and that's just one of many).
They chew you up and spit you out and then where are you? NOWHERE!
So when Sly tries to come back it's just too late. He doesn't fit in, doesn't know what to do and goes back to the camper.
Except for that one bleak moment at the Grammys, where he showed up for a few bars and then exited immediately. That didn't do him any favors, that didn't burnish his image.
The Questlove documentary does.
But really it comes down to the records.
6
If you do it right, the records survive, they even eclipse the act, which is why Journey can continue to sell all those tickets with a substitute singer. People love the songs, they just want to hear them.
Sure, Sly had cultural impact. Sure, he inspired many musicians thereafter. But really, it's all in the grooves.
And every single one of those hits sounds as fresh today as it did yesterday. Maybe a little out of time, but they exist in their own world where era is not really important. It's about the creativity and the ENERGY!
That's what the layperson can't fathom, how these geniuses come up with this stuff. Sometimes the songs are stone simple, but it's not like anybody else created them. It's an amalgam of so many elements, practice, musical knowledge, a knowledge of the landscape and an environment that stimulates you to be all you can be. (Then again, most truly great acts are rebelling against a culture that won't accept them as they are. They've got something to prove.)
So what do we say?
It's a sad story. But it's also a glorious story.
There are lessons to be learned, but is Sly so unique that ultimately his arc was singular?
Now those Sly and the Family Stone hits were fifty years ago, over half a century. Believe me, we were not listening to the music of our grandparents in the sixties. But the sixties were a time of exploration. And expression. And the best way to get your message across was via music.
And sure, you've got all the white acts, from the Beatles to the aforementioned Crosby, Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young). But the Black acts? They existed in a separate world, the Motown hits, even the Aretha Franklin hits on Atlantic, it was about singles more than albums. They did not sound like rock acts.
But the thing with Sly Stone is he sounded both rock and R&B. And as great as the singles were, you had to buy the albums too, which made him an anomaly.
It was a group, which is demonstrated clearly in Questlove's doc, but Sly was the visionary.
And how exactly did he come up with those Beau Brummels hits? How did he get that dark feel that only the Brits had been able to capture on wax before this?
To survive you have to reinvent yourself.
But that usually means losing half your audience and starting over. And most people are not willing to do this, hell, when Garth Brooks made a rock record he employed a pseudonym.
But the sixties and early seventies were different. Acts could go through a lifetime of changes in only a few years. As Sly did. But then what?
The landscape is littered with geniuses who were driven to climb the mountain to the top and then became disillusioned and lost. Look at Bobby Fischer. Sure, he might have been crazy, but most of your iconic heroes are. Maybe not bipolar, but broken inside. Our legendary stars are the other, and Sly Stone was too.
And now he's gone.
Kinda like Keith Richards, we didn't expect Sly to live to 82. Back in the sixties that was a ripe old age, today people might live longer, but 82 is still a pretty good ride. And what exactly was he doing all these years?
If you want your heroes to come back to the charts know that it's almost always impossible. Because having been to the top and seeing that it doesn't solve all your problems, the inspiration, the drive is lost.
So another one bites the dust as Freddie sang.
Sure, it's sad. But somehow this one's different. Because Sly was so different. He never mellowed and came out as grandpa, making the talk show rounds and singing some dumb song with Jimmy Fallon or doing an interview to explain the songs and events from decades before. After his hits Sly became even MORE of an enigma than he was during his heyday, and usually it's the opposite.
But when I was standing on that chair on the floor of Madison Square Garden, soaked in the sound, having an experience that couldn't be caught on a smartphone, that was one and done...
These are the peaks that make up a life.
And Sly Stone provided one of mine.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
Re-Becoming Led Zeppelin
Surprised you did not mention they all got sick of being interviewed, and that's why this drops dead where it does, at the second album. I so wanted to hear them talk about "How the West Was Won," because I'd argue that's the greatest Zep album, with "Since I've Been Loving You" their best ever track. Calling Bonzo civilized is absolute revisionist history. He was a brute. Lifted me over his head as if he were pressing iron, and threw me down the stairs to their plane. And poor Danny Goldberg was at the foot of the stairs yelling, "no, Bonzo, no; he's the journalist on the road with us…"
Tom Zito
____________________________________
I haven't seen the doc yet but it will have to, as a teen rock reporter for Tiger Beat magazine in the 1960's. I got to go to every single concert at The Rock Pile in Toronto, the infamous former Masonic Temple at 888 Yonge Street the major North/ South street in Toronto. Yes it's very haunted. I got to see everyone and I mean everyone who came through there, two nights a weekend, different acts from 1967 onwards.some in early 60's too.
I had been a Yardbirds fan from the For your Love Days,and Shape of Thing's To Come, I'd been a John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers fan when Eric Clapton played with them, the Yardbirds were in the popular film Blow Up with Jeff Beck smashing his guitar. I knew Jimmy was in the YB's.
I got to see the Zep play at the Rock Pile on a very hot August night in 1969 it was packed to the rafters. I was standing on the floor a few feet from the stage and me and everyone had their minds blown. I went backstage. Robert Plant and the guys are hanging out. I'm wearing a black lace see-through shirt with strategic pockets and a nude body stocking underneath, I'm 17. Robert Plant came up to me grabbed my shirt and pulled me over to him, the buttons ripped open on the front of my shirt, I was stunned and holding onto my shirt and walked my way backwards out. Other people in the room were like. Wow Robert Plant ripped your shirt open! You're so lucky.
Got to see Zep later in 1970s play at a college campus in the suburbs. They were good but the energy wasn't as raw as the that first 1969 album was. Still I'm a fan. I watch every ls live performances on YouTube now.
So glad I was born when I was to live through seeking the Beatles live 4 times and all the great rock acts many of whom I met.
That time and that music will never repeated.
Tara Greene
____________________________________
In 1969, I was 15 living near Springfield Mass. my sister somehow got the first Zep album with Communications Breakdown etc and we played it over & over. So when we heard on local Fm radio that Zeppelin would be playing the Springfield Municipal auditorium, a few of us got tickets and our parents to drive us. But the place was 2/3 empty so I/we went down and sat in the front row in front of Page (and as the joke goes, I haven't heard well ever since). It was a great show and plant was over the top with his lemon dong . The next week the 2 nd Zep album was issued in. The disc with Whole lotta Love and the rest is history . It's possible that the Springfield Mass show may have been one of their first in the US but it was far from crowded.
Ironically later in life-after law school in my first job with a small boutique firm that handled US taxes for British entertainers, I was handed 100 pages of depositions to summarize- about 25 pages of sworn statements by each member of Zepelin as they appealed the UsGov IRS going after them for US performance income sheltered in the British Virgin Islands. (The US gov didn't buy it, but the depositions were an entertaining read for a 25 year old newbie lawyer/ fan and insights into what the band members actually knew or didn't about the business they were in.)
bkatchinson
____________________________________
I saw Led Zeppelin on Halloween evening, October 31, 1969 at Symphony Hall in Springfield, Massachusetts. A venerable blue blood 2500 seat venue not accustomed to British rockers.
I believe Led Zeppelin 2 had just been released. Taj Mahal opened the show. Taj grew up in Springfield and had a tremendous welcome as I recall.
At that time he had already recorded a few records of his own.
While i had seen a few live shows ( Dave Clark 5
being the most notable) the Led Zeppelin show simply blew everyone away both sonically and culturally. We had simply not experienced anything like this before in our young 15 years and knew intuitively that our world was going to get a lot more interesting, and fast.
I spent the summer before on a ranch near Snowflake, Arizona. There was a turntable and one record on the property. The first Led Zeppelin LP. So by the time I got to Symphony Hall I was quite familiar with the music but not the explosive experience of a full out live rock and roll show.
For the next 55 years I measured every live performances against this first live experience, not unlike a first love who always stays with you.
Whatever you want to say about Led Zeppelin, they were certainly one of the best rock and roll acts to hit American shores, ever.
PS, my oldest son is a professional musician who has backed Terry "superlungs"Reid on some of his solo tours over the past 10 years.
Terry is of course best known as the vocalist that was asked by Jimmy Page to join the new band. Terry passed because he was at the time committed to going out on tour opening for the Stones and i believe Cream. He recommended Page speak to his buddy Robert Plant. The rest is history. If you haven't had Terry on your podcast you should. I don't think there are many others out there who intersected so many lives in Rock N Roll. Happy to make an introduction.
Jonathan Plotkin
Chief Imagination Officer
The Spontoonist
____________________________________
As I watched this documentary I realized that Jimmy Page is a Rock and Roll genius along with Brian Wilson, Phil Spector and Lennon/McCartney.
Peace
Tim Clary
____________________________________
I was NOT there. But in the 90s when I was a teenager my guitar teacher started teaching me Zeppelin in my second lesson, and when I put Led Zeppelin II on my dad's Klipsch Heresies my world was transformed. Then when I studied music in college, they made us read books about the blues and how Zeppelin appropriated black musicians' work. Well, that's a topic for the classroom and it's part of the story, but Zeppelin was not a cover band, and the way they make you feel in their live performances is the essence of rock and roll, based on the blues but so much more. Very few bands have done it like they did. I like rock from all eras, but 80s rock all sounds corny by comparison, and 90s rock sounds almost unmusical. Jimmy Page really did have the touch. There are a lot of great guitarists out there, and my favorite is Hendrix for his unique style, but Page and maybe Brian May are the only other popular rock guitarist on that level technically, musically, harmonically who could communicate so much with a single melodic line.
Mitchell Maddox
____________________________________
I was fortunate to see Led Zeppelin on their first US tour.
They opened for Country Joe and the Fish at the Fillmore West in SF.
And, of course, they were remarkable.
Best,
Michael Wright
____________________________________
What I loved about it was the early focus on how being born in England during or just after WW2 shaped all of them. And Page's and Jones's descriptions of their early days as session musicians and arrangers.
Also, I never knew Plant was homeless for a time because of his utter commitment to becoming a singer.
Seeing it at a French cinema early this year with a special sound system was revelatory. I thought I knew every note of these songs, but I heard sounds I'd never heard before. I want a sequel that covers the next two albums.
Alison Bracker
____________________________________
Was lucky to see them perform live at The Forum when I was 11 or 12. My sister took me — I never took Physical Graffiti off the record player. Just played it over and over and over.
-Lesley Bracker
____________________________________
Thanks for writing about this. I was waiting... Zep was my band. Being on the "younger" side I saw them twice, LA Forum '77 and Knebworth in '79. Seeing the band on their home turf and the British audience was an unforgettable experience to say the least.
I loved the movie. I learned some things I did not know and saw some amazing unseen footage! I absolutely love how John Bonham was given a voice for the film and to watch the other three being filmed listening to the interview for the first time was magical! Seeing their faces and the emotion it brought, priceless! My wife is not a fan fan but loved it nonetheless. I must say this film deserved to be seen and heard via the IMAX experience. On TV at home would not have done it justice.
Cheers, Mark Southland
____________________________________
I was there too, too young for their breakthrough but an early fan and was 10th row at the MSG run in '77 I believe. I know the story but love doco's that show a slice of an artist's history rather than a chronological career film.
The reason I watched it was Bonham, the clips of him in the trailers blew me away. I know all of Jimmy's playing and moves, the raw power of Bonham is what I enjoyed the most.
Barry Ehrmann
____________________________________
I saw Led Zeppelin at the Baltimore Civic Center in 1971 and Rod Stewart and Faces in 1972. Jimmy Page played a guitar solo on "Dazed and Confused" for 20 minutes with a bow on a double neck guitar. I still go to shows today and see groups who are technically more talented than the groups back then but they don't have the inner drive or creativity that people like Jimmy Page had. Like you, I was fortunate to see most of the great acts of the 1970's for a couple of bucks a show. It was an experience. Thanks for all that you do to keep the spotlight on the industry.
Tom Fitzsimmons
____________________________________
Facts:
"The Doors renaissance was unexpected, yet I don't hear any kids talking about the band today. But Led Zeppelin?"
Anecdotally I can attest: My students have never heard of the Doors of Jim Morrison. Honestly, if I play "Light My Fire" for them, they can't connect. I see a student or two wearing a Zep shirt daily.
I told one student who loves music about Jim Morrison singing the lyric on Ed Sullivan show even though he was supposed to change it. My student said, "How do you know so much obscure music knowledge?"
Obscure…
Heck, my World Lit class just read Julia Keller's editorial about 9/11. No one knew who Dan Rather or David Letterman were. (They did know The Wrinkle in Time reference.)
Mike Vial, from the trenches
____________________________________
I didn't want it to ever end. I may have to watch that doc as I do Cameron Crowe movies - over and over and over and over again.
I remember the first time I ever heard a Zeppelin song - I was 12 and visiting my friend's house. I heard music coming from her older sister's room and the sound crushed my heart and gave me butterflies (she was playing Houses of the Holy). I never felt that way ever before about anything. It shook me and made me want to cry. I think it was my first love. Their music has owned me completely ever since. It still makes my heart hurt and my stomach shake but it also reminds me of everything wonderful I've seen and every joy I've experienced. For the past 40 years my favorite place to be is in my headphones listening to Led Zeppelin - my happy place. I have to thank Denise Casillas for listening to them in her Orange County bedroom back in 1984 - I will never forget that moment ever.
Denise Alvarado
____________________________________
Led Zep's first tour was my first concert. I was 12 years old. I begged my mom to let me go. We lived on West Street, literally just a couples blocks from the concert venue, the brand new Anaheim Convention Center (which had been an orange grove we rode our Sting Ray bikes in). My dad had just bought me a used Strat at Garden Grove Music ('58 Mary Kaye, I still have it) because, after 5 years playing a Japanese log, we couldn't afford a new Strat.
I arrived early with anticipation. I had LZ's first album months before I heard of the tour, and wore it out on my parents' Packard Bell console. The opening act was some unknown British band named ..... Jethro Tull. Talk about hitting your first-concert lottery. Then Zep. It was an era where you could rush the stage, without any security, and I did. I was on the right, just under JPJ, Page was on the left playing thru a pair of trapezoidal Rickenbacker Transonic cabinets, JPJ had Acoustic 150s. They played most of the record, and I was enthralled. If anything cemented my next 12 years playing in L.A. rock and prog bands (Gazelle, Pegasus), it was this show. This band.
John LaGrou
____________________________________
Well said, maestro. I was a huge fan, Jimmy page is my spirit animal as a player… What I took away from the film, besides seeing footage that I hand never before — and I didn't think that was possible — was, and this is why the title "becoming Led Zeppelin" is so great, you actually see these four guys, and it had to be THOSE four guys, that's where the alchemy lies, become the biggest band in the world in a minute, in ONE YEAR between Led Zeppelin 1 and 2, it coalesces, takes off into the stratosphere and becomes a band for the ages. Fascinating. Hard to imagine it could ever happen again. Also the way Page imagined the albums as full albums, like each a novel, created to be ingested as a piece, not as a list of easy to swallow, bite sized snacks (which dovetails with his solo on "Stairway to Heaven" — far from my favorite song of theirs, but it contains the greatest guitar solo of all time, and I'm not the only gunslinger who thinks that, it's perfect in every way and primarily its genius is the story it tells, with a beginning middle and end, not just hot licks strung together. I defy anyone from the rock era to be unable to hum the beginning of that solo, iconic is too soft a word for this work of art). I was also struck while watching the film by the love between these guys, still, and watching them listen with big smiles, wryly and in some cases joyfully, to the sound of Bonham's disembodied, nonchalant voice was wonderful and at times really emotional… I think it's a great film, even for those not in the cult. It's like watching the Eiffel Tower being built in a year.
Steve Jones
____________________________________
Thanks for the stroll down Memory Lane. I was at that Faces Rod Stewart show too! But I still have my Fillmore East program that lists when Led Zep shared the stage with Woody Herman and his Thundering Heard. I so wanted to go to the but maybe it was a scool night or I couldn't scrape up three bucks for a Fillmore East ticket. Years later, I'm working at Scholastic Magazines as a writer/music editor and I was, like you, and remain a music fanatic. So thanks to Atlantic Records publicity department I got a free ticket to a double bill of Bad Company and Led Zep. Atlantic Records knew what they had with Swan Song (if memory serves) there was a show So at Madison Square Garden and it was Bad Company opening up for Led Zep. You mentioned Jimmy's geetars. Love my Telecaster but that double neck Gibson guitar blew me away. The only time I'd ever seen the double neck Gibson 12-25 was in the hands of John McLaughlin. A six string and a 12 string in the same guitar! As a guitar collector I'd love to own one of those two in one guitars but I'm not sure my aging back could handle the weight. I sold off my Les Paul cause it weighed as much as a boat anchor. Led Zep changed music, the concert biz in so many ways! Glad I got to see them! Thanks for the memories.
Chip Lovitt
____________________________________
Thanks for your excellent perspectives on Becoming Led Zeppelin. Generally quite agreeable.
A few things to add: the Yardbirds released one LP where Page was to sole lead guitarist - "Little Games". Unfortunately a second rate effort save for a few highlights but listen carefully and you'll hear much of Page's Good Times Bad Times guitar solo, the opening chords of The Song Remains the Same, and use of the violin bow on his Tele…all rehashed as innovations on LZ songs.
But what I really like about Becoming Led Zeppelin is it helps us forget their Song Remains the Same movie ever existed. The performances recorded in that movie should have never been released. Even a hardcore fan like me cannot excuse them for the dreadful Dazed and Confused performance.
Anyway, Becoming Led Zeppelin is a wonderful film - bravo to the producers and director!
markv
____________________________________
Thank you for your thoughts Bob...they have spurred me to respond.
I approached this film with a certain amount of trepidation caused by my highly personal opinion that the "before fame" chapters of biographical works are usually not what interests me. I always want to get straight to the blood and guts chapters.
But in the theater Becoming Led Zeppelin immediately fascinated me. I mean it's always interesting to see where the people came from - what kind of roots and environments influenced them - but seeing the milieu that all four members came through was a moving experience. To hear Johnny Kidd & The Pirates doing "Shaking All Over" in the theater with a modern sound system created a palpable excitement for me not unlike it must have hit Page et al in their salad days. So as I watched the disparate stories of these four working musicians with their influences, struggles, and successes I began to understand just how rebellious and explosive what was simmering and waiting for its moment to explode really must have been. It blew my mind to realize just how little time elapsed between Page & JOJ performing on Lulu's "To Sir With Love" and the sonic assault that "Communication Breakdown" unleashed upon the world. It must have felt like a musical atomic bomb during those days. Revolutionary, rude, cacophonous, almost punk, and most importantly FRESH.
And you are correct Bob when you speak of the way Zeppelin's music made people FEEL. The first Zeppelin song I heard was "Dancing Days" when I was in 4th grade on a friend's older brother's record player. It was an excitement unlike anything I had felt before and I am sure it changed the course of my life. I am definitely on record as saying that seeing Jimmy Page work the MSG stage in The Song Remains The Same film (at the Ridge Cinemas in Richmond VA) was the impetus for me wanting to be a musician. I mean who else gets to go to work in black silk dragon pajamas?
After seeing Becoming Led Zeppelin I was discussing my thoughts with another ancient LZ fan like myself and I mentioned the other aspect of the film that truly affected me: I said that it really got me right in the feels to see the surprise, joy, and amusement Page, Plant, and Jones displayed while being shown performance footage of themselves as "young gods." Their reactions to their younger selves simply made me happy. It was an unexpected by-product for me.
But to see their loving and almost tearful reactions upon hearing the shockingly civilized tone with which John Bonham speaks in that last and lost interview was mind blowing. It's not that I expected some kind of different reaction from them it's just that their reaction was what any NORMAL person's feeling for a tragically lost comrade would be. And I know that I am not alone in saying that I NEVER once considered the members of Led Zeppelin to be normal people.
I told my Zeppelin loving friend how amazed by the modern interview segments I had been upon seeing the film. And he simply responded, "It humanized them." Nuff said.
And he was right. Becoming Led Zeppelin brought these gods down from Mt Olympus and put them back on Earth as gentlemen and elder statesmen. This is a remarkable accomplishment when the film could have been a predictably simple and complete fluff job.
One last thought: I was hoping for an announcement of a second film that might be entitled BEING LED ZEPPELIN that would detail the days of their ascension. But now I think I am happy with what we have. I do wish Jimmy Page would just fling open the vault and give us what he knows every Zeppelin fan like myself wants: MORE!
Cheers,
Dave Schools
____________________________________
You forgot Coverdale/Page (1993).
Josh Valentine
Longmont, CO
____________________________________
I ran our high school radio station. A good friend, came in with a block of hash at 10am, and Physical Graffiti. We locked the doors, and played it for hours. Got in sh*t for it since the jocks who had a speaker in their room didn't like it. One of my greatest life moments ever.
Jim Carroll
____________________________________
Love Led Zeppelin. Bought II when it was released. Saw them live in Stockholm in 72(?).
Anyhow, Becoming Led Zeppelin is NOT streaming in Sweden. What a bummer.
Thought that Netflix was world-wide. But, alas, no. Every itsy-bitsy country has their own catalogue.
So I guess it's off to the Torrents.
Bye Bob, dig your writing.
Chris Bell
____________________________________
It made me cry with joy more than once. Fucking glorious!
Hugo Burnham
Tom Zito
____________________________________
I haven't seen the doc yet but it will have to, as a teen rock reporter for Tiger Beat magazine in the 1960's. I got to go to every single concert at The Rock Pile in Toronto, the infamous former Masonic Temple at 888 Yonge Street the major North/ South street in Toronto. Yes it's very haunted. I got to see everyone and I mean everyone who came through there, two nights a weekend, different acts from 1967 onwards.some in early 60's too.
I had been a Yardbirds fan from the For your Love Days,and Shape of Thing's To Come, I'd been a John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers fan when Eric Clapton played with them, the Yardbirds were in the popular film Blow Up with Jeff Beck smashing his guitar. I knew Jimmy was in the YB's.
I got to see the Zep play at the Rock Pile on a very hot August night in 1969 it was packed to the rafters. I was standing on the floor a few feet from the stage and me and everyone had their minds blown. I went backstage. Robert Plant and the guys are hanging out. I'm wearing a black lace see-through shirt with strategic pockets and a nude body stocking underneath, I'm 17. Robert Plant came up to me grabbed my shirt and pulled me over to him, the buttons ripped open on the front of my shirt, I was stunned and holding onto my shirt and walked my way backwards out. Other people in the room were like. Wow Robert Plant ripped your shirt open! You're so lucky.
Got to see Zep later in 1970s play at a college campus in the suburbs. They were good but the energy wasn't as raw as the that first 1969 album was. Still I'm a fan. I watch every ls live performances on YouTube now.
So glad I was born when I was to live through seeking the Beatles live 4 times and all the great rock acts many of whom I met.
That time and that music will never repeated.
Tara Greene
____________________________________
In 1969, I was 15 living near Springfield Mass. my sister somehow got the first Zep album with Communications Breakdown etc and we played it over & over. So when we heard on local Fm radio that Zeppelin would be playing the Springfield Municipal auditorium, a few of us got tickets and our parents to drive us. But the place was 2/3 empty so I/we went down and sat in the front row in front of Page (and as the joke goes, I haven't heard well ever since). It was a great show and plant was over the top with his lemon dong . The next week the 2 nd Zep album was issued in. The disc with Whole lotta Love and the rest is history . It's possible that the Springfield Mass show may have been one of their first in the US but it was far from crowded.
Ironically later in life-after law school in my first job with a small boutique firm that handled US taxes for British entertainers, I was handed 100 pages of depositions to summarize- about 25 pages of sworn statements by each member of Zepelin as they appealed the UsGov IRS going after them for US performance income sheltered in the British Virgin Islands. (The US gov didn't buy it, but the depositions were an entertaining read for a 25 year old newbie lawyer/ fan and insights into what the band members actually knew or didn't about the business they were in.)
bkatchinson
____________________________________
I saw Led Zeppelin on Halloween evening, October 31, 1969 at Symphony Hall in Springfield, Massachusetts. A venerable blue blood 2500 seat venue not accustomed to British rockers.
I believe Led Zeppelin 2 had just been released. Taj Mahal opened the show. Taj grew up in Springfield and had a tremendous welcome as I recall.
At that time he had already recorded a few records of his own.
While i had seen a few live shows ( Dave Clark 5
being the most notable) the Led Zeppelin show simply blew everyone away both sonically and culturally. We had simply not experienced anything like this before in our young 15 years and knew intuitively that our world was going to get a lot more interesting, and fast.
I spent the summer before on a ranch near Snowflake, Arizona. There was a turntable and one record on the property. The first Led Zeppelin LP. So by the time I got to Symphony Hall I was quite familiar with the music but not the explosive experience of a full out live rock and roll show.
For the next 55 years I measured every live performances against this first live experience, not unlike a first love who always stays with you.
Whatever you want to say about Led Zeppelin, they were certainly one of the best rock and roll acts to hit American shores, ever.
PS, my oldest son is a professional musician who has backed Terry "superlungs"Reid on some of his solo tours over the past 10 years.
Terry is of course best known as the vocalist that was asked by Jimmy Page to join the new band. Terry passed because he was at the time committed to going out on tour opening for the Stones and i believe Cream. He recommended Page speak to his buddy Robert Plant. The rest is history. If you haven't had Terry on your podcast you should. I don't think there are many others out there who intersected so many lives in Rock N Roll. Happy to make an introduction.
Jonathan Plotkin
Chief Imagination Officer
The Spontoonist
____________________________________
As I watched this documentary I realized that Jimmy Page is a Rock and Roll genius along with Brian Wilson, Phil Spector and Lennon/McCartney.
Peace
Tim Clary
____________________________________
I was NOT there. But in the 90s when I was a teenager my guitar teacher started teaching me Zeppelin in my second lesson, and when I put Led Zeppelin II on my dad's Klipsch Heresies my world was transformed. Then when I studied music in college, they made us read books about the blues and how Zeppelin appropriated black musicians' work. Well, that's a topic for the classroom and it's part of the story, but Zeppelin was not a cover band, and the way they make you feel in their live performances is the essence of rock and roll, based on the blues but so much more. Very few bands have done it like they did. I like rock from all eras, but 80s rock all sounds corny by comparison, and 90s rock sounds almost unmusical. Jimmy Page really did have the touch. There are a lot of great guitarists out there, and my favorite is Hendrix for his unique style, but Page and maybe Brian May are the only other popular rock guitarist on that level technically, musically, harmonically who could communicate so much with a single melodic line.
Mitchell Maddox
____________________________________
I was fortunate to see Led Zeppelin on their first US tour.
They opened for Country Joe and the Fish at the Fillmore West in SF.
And, of course, they were remarkable.
Best,
Michael Wright
____________________________________
What I loved about it was the early focus on how being born in England during or just after WW2 shaped all of them. And Page's and Jones's descriptions of their early days as session musicians and arrangers.
Also, I never knew Plant was homeless for a time because of his utter commitment to becoming a singer.
Seeing it at a French cinema early this year with a special sound system was revelatory. I thought I knew every note of these songs, but I heard sounds I'd never heard before. I want a sequel that covers the next two albums.
Alison Bracker
____________________________________
Was lucky to see them perform live at The Forum when I was 11 or 12. My sister took me — I never took Physical Graffiti off the record player. Just played it over and over and over.
-Lesley Bracker
____________________________________
Thanks for writing about this. I was waiting... Zep was my band. Being on the "younger" side I saw them twice, LA Forum '77 and Knebworth in '79. Seeing the band on their home turf and the British audience was an unforgettable experience to say the least.
I loved the movie. I learned some things I did not know and saw some amazing unseen footage! I absolutely love how John Bonham was given a voice for the film and to watch the other three being filmed listening to the interview for the first time was magical! Seeing their faces and the emotion it brought, priceless! My wife is not a fan fan but loved it nonetheless. I must say this film deserved to be seen and heard via the IMAX experience. On TV at home would not have done it justice.
Cheers, Mark Southland
____________________________________
I was there too, too young for their breakthrough but an early fan and was 10th row at the MSG run in '77 I believe. I know the story but love doco's that show a slice of an artist's history rather than a chronological career film.
The reason I watched it was Bonham, the clips of him in the trailers blew me away. I know all of Jimmy's playing and moves, the raw power of Bonham is what I enjoyed the most.
Barry Ehrmann
____________________________________
I saw Led Zeppelin at the Baltimore Civic Center in 1971 and Rod Stewart and Faces in 1972. Jimmy Page played a guitar solo on "Dazed and Confused" for 20 minutes with a bow on a double neck guitar. I still go to shows today and see groups who are technically more talented than the groups back then but they don't have the inner drive or creativity that people like Jimmy Page had. Like you, I was fortunate to see most of the great acts of the 1970's for a couple of bucks a show. It was an experience. Thanks for all that you do to keep the spotlight on the industry.
Tom Fitzsimmons
____________________________________
Facts:
"The Doors renaissance was unexpected, yet I don't hear any kids talking about the band today. But Led Zeppelin?"
Anecdotally I can attest: My students have never heard of the Doors of Jim Morrison. Honestly, if I play "Light My Fire" for them, they can't connect. I see a student or two wearing a Zep shirt daily.
I told one student who loves music about Jim Morrison singing the lyric on Ed Sullivan show even though he was supposed to change it. My student said, "How do you know so much obscure music knowledge?"
Obscure…
Heck, my World Lit class just read Julia Keller's editorial about 9/11. No one knew who Dan Rather or David Letterman were. (They did know The Wrinkle in Time reference.)
Mike Vial, from the trenches
____________________________________
I didn't want it to ever end. I may have to watch that doc as I do Cameron Crowe movies - over and over and over and over again.
I remember the first time I ever heard a Zeppelin song - I was 12 and visiting my friend's house. I heard music coming from her older sister's room and the sound crushed my heart and gave me butterflies (she was playing Houses of the Holy). I never felt that way ever before about anything. It shook me and made me want to cry. I think it was my first love. Their music has owned me completely ever since. It still makes my heart hurt and my stomach shake but it also reminds me of everything wonderful I've seen and every joy I've experienced. For the past 40 years my favorite place to be is in my headphones listening to Led Zeppelin - my happy place. I have to thank Denise Casillas for listening to them in her Orange County bedroom back in 1984 - I will never forget that moment ever.
Denise Alvarado
____________________________________
Led Zep's first tour was my first concert. I was 12 years old. I begged my mom to let me go. We lived on West Street, literally just a couples blocks from the concert venue, the brand new Anaheim Convention Center (which had been an orange grove we rode our Sting Ray bikes in). My dad had just bought me a used Strat at Garden Grove Music ('58 Mary Kaye, I still have it) because, after 5 years playing a Japanese log, we couldn't afford a new Strat.
I arrived early with anticipation. I had LZ's first album months before I heard of the tour, and wore it out on my parents' Packard Bell console. The opening act was some unknown British band named ..... Jethro Tull. Talk about hitting your first-concert lottery. Then Zep. It was an era where you could rush the stage, without any security, and I did. I was on the right, just under JPJ, Page was on the left playing thru a pair of trapezoidal Rickenbacker Transonic cabinets, JPJ had Acoustic 150s. They played most of the record, and I was enthralled. If anything cemented my next 12 years playing in L.A. rock and prog bands (Gazelle, Pegasus), it was this show. This band.
John LaGrou
____________________________________
Well said, maestro. I was a huge fan, Jimmy page is my spirit animal as a player… What I took away from the film, besides seeing footage that I hand never before — and I didn't think that was possible — was, and this is why the title "becoming Led Zeppelin" is so great, you actually see these four guys, and it had to be THOSE four guys, that's where the alchemy lies, become the biggest band in the world in a minute, in ONE YEAR between Led Zeppelin 1 and 2, it coalesces, takes off into the stratosphere and becomes a band for the ages. Fascinating. Hard to imagine it could ever happen again. Also the way Page imagined the albums as full albums, like each a novel, created to be ingested as a piece, not as a list of easy to swallow, bite sized snacks (which dovetails with his solo on "Stairway to Heaven" — far from my favorite song of theirs, but it contains the greatest guitar solo of all time, and I'm not the only gunslinger who thinks that, it's perfect in every way and primarily its genius is the story it tells, with a beginning middle and end, not just hot licks strung together. I defy anyone from the rock era to be unable to hum the beginning of that solo, iconic is too soft a word for this work of art). I was also struck while watching the film by the love between these guys, still, and watching them listen with big smiles, wryly and in some cases joyfully, to the sound of Bonham's disembodied, nonchalant voice was wonderful and at times really emotional… I think it's a great film, even for those not in the cult. It's like watching the Eiffel Tower being built in a year.
Steve Jones
____________________________________
Thanks for the stroll down Memory Lane. I was at that Faces Rod Stewart show too! But I still have my Fillmore East program that lists when Led Zep shared the stage with Woody Herman and his Thundering Heard. I so wanted to go to the but maybe it was a scool night or I couldn't scrape up three bucks for a Fillmore East ticket. Years later, I'm working at Scholastic Magazines as a writer/music editor and I was, like you, and remain a music fanatic. So thanks to Atlantic Records publicity department I got a free ticket to a double bill of Bad Company and Led Zep. Atlantic Records knew what they had with Swan Song (if memory serves) there was a show So at Madison Square Garden and it was Bad Company opening up for Led Zep. You mentioned Jimmy's geetars. Love my Telecaster but that double neck Gibson guitar blew me away. The only time I'd ever seen the double neck Gibson 12-25 was in the hands of John McLaughlin. A six string and a 12 string in the same guitar! As a guitar collector I'd love to own one of those two in one guitars but I'm not sure my aging back could handle the weight. I sold off my Les Paul cause it weighed as much as a boat anchor. Led Zep changed music, the concert biz in so many ways! Glad I got to see them! Thanks for the memories.
Chip Lovitt
____________________________________
Thanks for your excellent perspectives on Becoming Led Zeppelin. Generally quite agreeable.
A few things to add: the Yardbirds released one LP where Page was to sole lead guitarist - "Little Games". Unfortunately a second rate effort save for a few highlights but listen carefully and you'll hear much of Page's Good Times Bad Times guitar solo, the opening chords of The Song Remains the Same, and use of the violin bow on his Tele…all rehashed as innovations on LZ songs.
But what I really like about Becoming Led Zeppelin is it helps us forget their Song Remains the Same movie ever existed. The performances recorded in that movie should have never been released. Even a hardcore fan like me cannot excuse them for the dreadful Dazed and Confused performance.
Anyway, Becoming Led Zeppelin is a wonderful film - bravo to the producers and director!
markv
____________________________________
Thank you for your thoughts Bob...they have spurred me to respond.
I approached this film with a certain amount of trepidation caused by my highly personal opinion that the "before fame" chapters of biographical works are usually not what interests me. I always want to get straight to the blood and guts chapters.
But in the theater Becoming Led Zeppelin immediately fascinated me. I mean it's always interesting to see where the people came from - what kind of roots and environments influenced them - but seeing the milieu that all four members came through was a moving experience. To hear Johnny Kidd & The Pirates doing "Shaking All Over" in the theater with a modern sound system created a palpable excitement for me not unlike it must have hit Page et al in their salad days. So as I watched the disparate stories of these four working musicians with their influences, struggles, and successes I began to understand just how rebellious and explosive what was simmering and waiting for its moment to explode really must have been. It blew my mind to realize just how little time elapsed between Page & JOJ performing on Lulu's "To Sir With Love" and the sonic assault that "Communication Breakdown" unleashed upon the world. It must have felt like a musical atomic bomb during those days. Revolutionary, rude, cacophonous, almost punk, and most importantly FRESH.
And you are correct Bob when you speak of the way Zeppelin's music made people FEEL. The first Zeppelin song I heard was "Dancing Days" when I was in 4th grade on a friend's older brother's record player. It was an excitement unlike anything I had felt before and I am sure it changed the course of my life. I am definitely on record as saying that seeing Jimmy Page work the MSG stage in The Song Remains The Same film (at the Ridge Cinemas in Richmond VA) was the impetus for me wanting to be a musician. I mean who else gets to go to work in black silk dragon pajamas?
After seeing Becoming Led Zeppelin I was discussing my thoughts with another ancient LZ fan like myself and I mentioned the other aspect of the film that truly affected me: I said that it really got me right in the feels to see the surprise, joy, and amusement Page, Plant, and Jones displayed while being shown performance footage of themselves as "young gods." Their reactions to their younger selves simply made me happy. It was an unexpected by-product for me.
But to see their loving and almost tearful reactions upon hearing the shockingly civilized tone with which John Bonham speaks in that last and lost interview was mind blowing. It's not that I expected some kind of different reaction from them it's just that their reaction was what any NORMAL person's feeling for a tragically lost comrade would be. And I know that I am not alone in saying that I NEVER once considered the members of Led Zeppelin to be normal people.
I told my Zeppelin loving friend how amazed by the modern interview segments I had been upon seeing the film. And he simply responded, "It humanized them." Nuff said.
And he was right. Becoming Led Zeppelin brought these gods down from Mt Olympus and put them back on Earth as gentlemen and elder statesmen. This is a remarkable accomplishment when the film could have been a predictably simple and complete fluff job.
One last thought: I was hoping for an announcement of a second film that might be entitled BEING LED ZEPPELIN that would detail the days of their ascension. But now I think I am happy with what we have. I do wish Jimmy Page would just fling open the vault and give us what he knows every Zeppelin fan like myself wants: MORE!
Cheers,
Dave Schools
____________________________________
You forgot Coverdale/Page (1993).
Josh Valentine
Longmont, CO
____________________________________
I ran our high school radio station. A good friend, came in with a block of hash at 10am, and Physical Graffiti. We locked the doors, and played it for hours. Got in sh*t for it since the jocks who had a speaker in their room didn't like it. One of my greatest life moments ever.
Jim Carroll
____________________________________
Love Led Zeppelin. Bought II when it was released. Saw them live in Stockholm in 72(?).
Anyhow, Becoming Led Zeppelin is NOT streaming in Sweden. What a bummer.
Thought that Netflix was world-wide. But, alas, no. Every itsy-bitsy country has their own catalogue.
So I guess it's off to the Torrents.
Bye Bob, dig your writing.
Chris Bell
____________________________________
It made me cry with joy more than once. Fucking glorious!
Hugo Burnham
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)