After the sad news of Prince’s death this week, I wanted to
take a moment to share how I discovered him. While I always knew his name, it
wasn’t until I watched him playing While
My Guitar Gently Weeps at the 2004 Hall of Fame induction that I truly
appreciated him as an artist:
He comes out of nowhere with fantastic playing, charisma, and
a great hat. In every way, he stands out on a stage packed with talent. He does
this not by being as outrageous as possible (though he certainly had his moments in his own act) but by doing everything just a
little bit differently. His guitar looks like a Fender Telecaster, but is
actually a Hohner copy. His playing is just that bit out there, with a modern
tone, and less bluesy style than Eric Clapton’s on the original recording. And
then of course, there is the showmanship - leaning back into a roadie as he
tears through his solo, and ending the song by throwing his guitar into the
air! Seeing this for the first time blew me away.
Prince was the consummate creative artist, he was talented,
eccentric, and had the flair to carry it all off in style. All this is
encapsulated in this video, alongside the outstanding guitar playing that first
caught my attention. Rest In Peace.
Just a quick post for today - this is a song from 1997's Bridges to Babylon. It's come round on shuffle a lot for me recently, so I thought I would post it here. It's an interesting hybrid, coming in 1997, it comes after the Stones reinvented themselves and got back on tour after a 7 year hiatus, but the driving guitar and Watts' drums are reminiscent of their late 60's energy. It's a real rocker, enjoy!
Bruce Springsteen became topical a couple of weeks ago, but I promise I liked him before it was cool. One of the things that has always drawn me to Springsteen has been the romance in his lyrics – Born to Run, No Surrender,She’s the One – all communicate a sense of freedom in love. Songs like 4th of July, Ashbury Park (Sandy) take you on a journey to a mythical New Jersey summer of beaches, motorbikes, and kisses under the boardwalk.
But Springsteen also doesn’t shy away from the feeling of emptiness and loss that emerges when love fades, romance is lost, and dreams don’t come true. These songs are when he is at his most powerful, and what makes him such a compelling songwriter. I want to highlight three of his songs: Thunder Road (1975), Racing In the Streets (1978), and Wrecking Ball (2012). The first two are songs I have have a long connection with – I first heard them at about 13 on Springsteen’s Live 1975 – 1985 album If you haven’t heard the album, go listen, it ranks up there with The Who’s Live at Leeds and the Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out. The third comes from a much later album 2012’s, Wrecking Ball. Yet all of these song are compelling because they are human stories - the contain hopes, dreams, and the possibility of redemption
Thunder Road is a Springsteen classic, and it offers redemption to its heroine almost immediately, if only ‘beneath this dirty hood.’ But the redemption comes at a price: throughout Mary struggles to keep her purity. The lyrics mix a sense of youth, idealism and purity, seen in visions dancing ‘across the porch’, freedom of ‘two lanes [that] can take us anywhere,’ and learning to make a guitar ‘talk’ with disappointment, a ‘graduation gown in rags,’ ‘burned out Chevrolets,’ and Mary feeling ‘scared [thinking] we ain’t that young anymore.’ But Mary isn't the only one hurting, the song's speaker begs her not to turn him down confessing ‘I just can’t face myself alone.’ The song is a compelling exploration of the hopes and dreams love provides. In true Springsteen fashion, love comes at a cost, but the song ends hopeful note offering Mary a chance of escape from her dilemma:
But when you get to the porch they're gone
On the wind so Mary climb in
It's town full of losers
And I'm pulling out of here to win
Rather than love, Racing in the Streets starts with friendship, and youthful freedom before facing the crush of reality. The song’s speaker has a ’69 Chevy with a 396,’ put together ‘straight out of scratch’ with his partner and friend Sonny which they raise across the North East. Thunder Road does not explore friendship and here it fades quickly, as ‘some guys just give up living / and start dying little by little, piece by piece’ yet there is hope: love. The speaker wins a girl’s heart in a race, and yet, just as soon she is won ‘there's wrinkles around my baby's eyes / and she cries herself to sleep at night.’ Her dreams are shattered and ‘torn,’ and all she can do is stare into the distance ‘with the eyes of one who hates for just being born.’ The heartbreak is palpable, but there is some hope, at the end, which gives the song a bittersweet feeling, rather than a forlorn one:‘tonight my baby and me we're gonna ride to the sea / and wash these sins off our hands.’ The chorus is repeated, as if the earlier love and youth may still be rediscovered:
Finally we come to Wrecking Ball. A modern song, its lyrics have a more contemporary focus. It is inspired by Giant’s Stadium, which was demolished in 2010 and replaced by what is now the Metlife Stadium. Despite the more concrete (pun intended) subject the song still echoes themes found in much earlier tracks. There is consistent sense of nostalgia from the opening ‘misty years ago’ to the ‘champions come and go’ and of course ‘victories and glories’ paired with ‘hopes and desires.’ And as is the case with two other songs I have discussed in Wrecking Ball those hopes are ‘scattered to the wind’ while the victories are ‘turned into parking lots.’ This is where Wrecking Ball is different from the previous two songs: there is a more tangible destroyer of aspirations. More so than earlier songs, Wrecking Ball questions whether or not the march of time is as inevitable as it seems. ‘Bring on your wrecking ball’ Springsteen dares, but this is aimed to an actual antagonist. Wrecking Ball's lyrics address a ‘mister’ bringing about the change. Change doesn’t just appear in the next verse as it does in Racing in the Streets, it is the direct result of the actions of others. Instead, Wrecking Ball is a protests against a system that equates change and progress, no matter what it loses in sacrificing the past.
Altogether, there is an evolution across these songs – something you would probably expect given there is a 37-year gap between them – nonetheless it is worthy of thought. In Springsteen’s early songs, dreams are crushed without thought; it is just how it goes. In his later songs, he is more accusatory. In Wrecking Ball, dreams aren’t crushed; Springsteen dares his antagonist to come crush them only ‘if you’ve got the balls.’ It is, perhaps, representative of a change in his view of the American Dream, always so central to Springsteen’s song writing. The Dream is no longer just a lie if it doesn’t come true; it is something being actively destroyed by outside forces that profit from its destruction.
Not many people have heard of the West Coast Pop Art
Experimental Band – I only found out about them because their album Part One (which in true 60's fashion is actually
their second) was the b-side of my dad’s cassette recording of Dire Straits – but they are easily one
of psychedelic music’s hidden gems, even Sean Lennon thinks
so!
Active between 1966 and 1970, it’s hard to describe exactly what it is about the band that
is so compelling. Their music combines some of the extremes of mid to late
60's psychedelic music with a pop sensibility creating a unique sound. This combination means that while their songs all have an edge they remain relatable. For instance, even the cover of
the Mothers of Invention Help I’m Rock (below
this paragraph), which is a truly weird track, maintains a driving beat you could dance to if you wanted to. That’s quite impressive when the song's main lyrics are the words‘help I’m a
rock’ repeated ad nauseam.
Part One pairs
freak outs like Help I’m a Rock with
much calmer songs like Transparent Day,
which has more of a Cream (think Anyone for Tennis) than a Zappa vibe.
Transparent Day feels like a floating love song when it opens, asking ‘tell
me what to tell you / tell me how high to go,’ but soon the lyrics take a
darker turn. Stating ‘you want me for your collection / but you can't see
through your reflection’ the song encapsulates the darker side of the 1960’s, coming a
year before the dramatic events of 1968. This, it turns out, is not a love
song, but an expression of frustration, ‘don’t be surprised when I leave you’
warns Bob Markley.
The final song I want to highlight is my personal favourite
from the album ‘Scuse Me Miss Rose.Opening with a guitar riff that propels
the song into the verses. More pop than psychedelic, Miss Rose is everything I love about 60’s garage rock. Fuzzy
guitar, vocal harmony, and of course, slightly weird lyrics!
Today’s selection is less about the song itself and more
about the trivia that surrounds it. Although the opening chords of Waiting On A Friend, from 1981’s Tattoo You, will always stick in my
mind, the music video is a melting pot of musical history and in many ways is
as cool as the song itself.The video
opens at 96 – 98 St. Mark’s Place in NYC, made famous on the cover of Physical Graffiti. Have a look for
yourself:
Note Peter Tosh hanging out on the steps with Mick and Keith
– he would later sign to the Rolling Stones’ record label. Possible even better,
that is Sonny Rollins playing the saxophone! On a sadder note, the bar the band
walk to is the St. Marks Bar & Grill, now gone, and lamented as another
victim of NYC gentrification.
