May 17 – Turntable Talk 26 : The Single That Was More Like A Home Run

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 26^th round. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first off, welcome! I hope you find it interesting and check back from time to time here – new posts go up daily and we run the ‘Turntable Talk’ feature usually once a month. And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. We have an index of past topics, with the final one of each in the link, others could be found going back day by day from each of those.

This month, our topic is Music Music. We asked our contibutors to write about a song that is about music – either about music itself, or the art of making it or the lifestyle of a musician. I’m intrigued to see what people come up with. Today we have Max from Power Pop blog. He’s played in bands himself, so he should come up with an interesting pick for a song about music…

Thank you Dave for posting this on your site. Below is the request that we wrote about.

There are many great songs about music, so let’s highlight them. Pick a song you like either about music itself (eg, ‘I love Music’ and so on)  or about the life of a musician making music . Or anything else you can think of about music… about music! 

I sometimes go for the B-sides or ones that aren’t heard as much. Not this time! This 1971 song remains a classic. It was the first single I bought that you had to flip over to listen to the other side. The song was 8:42 long.

I remember when I was 5-6 years old and listening to this song. The verses I ignored at the time and enjoyed the chorus immensely going around singing it and being told to shut up already by my sister. I guess a six-year-old singing Bye, bye ‘Miss American Pie, Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry, And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye, Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die, This’ll be the day that I die…” Would get old but hey…I had good taste anyway (better than my sister).

It’s a song that I don’t get tired of…ever. When I think of it I think of my childhood and also a big dose of pop culture. We all know that the day the music died was pointing to the Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper plane crash. The rest builds up and between the lines, he sings about a lot of events and artists. 

Where do I begin with this one? The song has so many references that it acts as a pop culture index by itself. I have read about college classes just on this song. It has been inspected and dissected since its release. Long after Don McLean leaves this earth…the song will be inspected and dissected again and again.

We do know the song was inspired by Buddy Holly… What does it all mean? While being interviewed in 1991, McLean was asked for probably the 1000th time “What does the song ‘American Pie’ mean to you?,” to which he answered, “It means never having to work again for the rest of my life.” Now that is a great and honest answer by McLean.

In 2015 he opened up about the song and sold the original lyrics for $1.2 million . This time he answered the question seriously.“It was an indescribable photograph of America that I tried to capture in words and music.” He also said that “American Pie” was Buddy Holly’s airplane that crashed…it was a made-up name by McLean because the company that owned the plane didn’t name any of them. “People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity, of course, I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time.”

In later years I would buy the single and try to figure out who he was talking about. Some of the lyrics include references to Karl Marx (or Groucho Marx), Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (or John Lennon), the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, The Byrds, James Dean, Charles Manson, the Rolling Stones, the “widowed bride,” Jackie Kennedy (or María Elena Holly), Jimi Hendrix, the Vietnam War, The Fillmore East, and more.

This song peaked at #1 in the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #1 in New Zealand, and #2 in the UK in 1972. If you want more… here is a website PDF that breaks down the song line by line of their interpretation.

I’ll let Don McLean talk about the song: “For some reason, I wanted to write a big song about America and about politics, but I wanted to do it in a different way. As I was fiddling around, I started singing this thing about the Buddy Holly crash, the thing that came out (singing), ‘Long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.’

I thought, Whoa, what’s that? And then the day the music died, it just came out. And I said, Oh, that is such a great idea. And so that’s all I had. And then I thought, I can’t have another slow song on this record. I’ve got to speed this up. I came up with this chorus, crazy chorus. And then one time about a month later I just woke up and wrote the other five verses. Because I realized what it was, I knew what I had. And basically, all I had to do was speed up the slow verse with the chorus and then slow down the last verse so it was like the first verse, and then tell the story, which was a dream. It is from all these fantasies, all these memories that I made personal. Buddy Holly’s death to me was a personal tragedy. As a child, a 15-year-old, I had no idea that nobody else felt that way much. I mean, I went to school and mentioned it and they said, ‘So what?’ So I carried this yearning and longing, if you will, this weird sadness that would overtake me when I would look at this album, The Buddy Holly Story because that was my last Buddy record before he passed away.”

 

May 16 – Turntable Talk 26 : A Salute To ’60s Rock

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Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 26^th round. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first off, welcome! I hope you find it interesting and check back from time to time here – new posts go up daily and we run the ‘Turntable Talk’ feature usually once a month. And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. We have an index of past topics, with the final one of each in the link, others could be found going back day by day from each of those.

This month, our topic is Music Music. We asked our contibutors to write about a song that is about music – either about music itself, or the art of making it or the lifestyle of a musician. I’m intrigued to see what people come up with. Today we have Christian from Christian’s Music Musings, a site where he keeps us upto date on new releases every week and looks back at some great oldies.

Once again, it’s Turntable Talk time. Now in its 26^th round, fellow blogger Dave’s monthly series continues to go strong. This time, the topic was great songs about music, whether they express sentiments about music or focus on the life of a specific musician.

While there are many examples that fit the above definition, the first song that randomly came to my mind was “Sweet Soul Music”, a classic first released by Arthur Conley in 1967. The second one I thought of was my pick, “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” by John Mellencamp, one of my longtime favorite artists.

Written by Mellencamp, who at the time was still known as John Cougar Mellencamp, “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” first appeared on his eighth studio album Scarecrow, released in July 1985. This album also happens to mark the start of my Mellencamp musical journey, which I felt was another good reason to pick the song.

“R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A,” subtitled “A Salute to ‘60s Rock,” also became the album’s third single and its biggest hit. In the U.S., it peaked at no. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Canadian audiences evidently liked it as well, propelling the song to no. 7 on RPM’s singles chart. Elsewhere, it reached no. 17 in New Zealand and no. 67 in the UK – not bad for a song with a ‘60s retro sound during a time the charts were dominated by new wave and hair metal.

Songfacts explains “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” tells the story of how rock and roll emerged in America, and how those (now infamous) musicians that were not afraid to take personal risks for the sake of their music became a strong influence on the next generation. It mentions numerous artists and bands, including Frankie Lymon, Bobby Fuller, Mitch Ryder, Jackie Wilson, Shangra La’s, Young Rascals, Martha Reeves and James Brown, who became influences for Mellencamp. Growing up, he listened to their music on AM radio.

Initially, Mellencamp hesitated to include the song on the Scarecrow album, feeling it was too light-hearted compared to other tracks about more serious topics, such as “Rain on the Scarecrow” about the financial struggles of midwest farmers and “Face of the Nation”, which addresses the decline of the so-called American Dream and corporate greed. “It was one of those absolute last-split-second decisions,” Mellencamp said in 1986. “I was only including it on the cassette and CD copies of Scarecrow as a bonus party track, but my manager loved the energy of it and I thought, ‘Yeah! What the hell!'”

Contrary to Mellencamp’s first manager Tony DeFries, who insisted the last name Mellencamp wasn’t marketable and came up with Johnny Cougar, a name Mellencamp hated, in the case of “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A”., the manager got it right. While I know by that time Mellencamp had long parted ways with DeFries and next worked with Rod Stewart’s manager Billy Gaff, I’m not sure Gaff was still in the picture at the time of the Scarecrow album.

“R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” was recorded at Belmont Mall in Belmont, Ind. Mellencamp produced the song under the alias “Little Bastard” together with Don Gehman. Other musicians on the recording included Mike Wanchic (guitars, backing vocals), Larry Crane (guitars, flutophone), John Cascella (keyboards), Sarah Flint (backing vocals), Toby Myers (bass) and Kenny Aronoff (drums).

Here’s a fun live version captured in 1985 at Farm Aid, an annual benefit concert to support American farmers, founded in 1985 by Mellencamp, Willie Nelson and Neil Young.

Following are some additional tidbits from Songfacts:

With “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A”…Mellencamp was paying homage, but he was also paying his dues. For example, the late Bobby Fuller’s mention on a Top 10 song, and a platinum album, was enough to revive flagging interest in the artist (as well as get Mellencamp a credit on a Bobby Fuller Four Best-Of album). Said Mellencamp: “When I played in Albuquerque, I think it was, his [Fuller’s] mom and some of his family came down to see me play. They acted like I gave them 60 million dollars just for mentioning his name. They gave me his belt that he died in.”

The instrumental break in this song is very clever. Mellencamp says the riff was lifted from Neil Diamond’s first hit, “Cherry, Cherry.” When we first hear it, it’s played on an ocarina, which is a small wind instrument of ancient Eastern origins, thought to be 12,000 years old, and often made in the shape of a bird and used to imitate its fluting song. This is a nod to the song “Wild Thing” by The Troggs, which featured an ocarina solo. In Mellencamp’s song, the riff is then played on guitar and later on keyboards, going through various musical forms popular in ’60s rock. In concert, Mellencamp would often bring a fan onstage to dance with him during this section.

In the months prior to recording Scarecrow, Mellencamp’s band worked their way through nearly a hundred cover songs. Mellencamp hoped that through these covers, they would absorb the stylistic essence of the era through osmosis. Mellencamp’s bassist Toby Myers admitted that, “I thought he was giving us busywork, but he wanted us to understand what made those songs tick so we could put some of that grit into his songs.” The band was surprised by the sheer quantity of different styles that characterized the era. “Take an old Rascals song for example,” Mellencamp said. “There’s everything from marching band beats to soul music to country sounds in one song.”

In keeping with ’60s hit single tradition, Mellencamp kept this song under three minutes long – it clocks in at 2:54.

Last but not least, here are the song’s lyrics:

They come from the cities

And they come from the smaller towns

Beat up cars with guitars and drummers

Goin crack boom bam

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A., Yeah, Yeah!

Rockin’ in the U.S.A.

Said goodbye to their families

Said goodbye to their friends

With pipe dreams in their heads

And very little money in their hands

Some are black and some are white

Ain’t to proud to sleep on the floor tonight

With the blind faith of Jesus you know that they just might, be

Rockin’ in the U.S.A.

Hey!

Voices from nowhere

And voices from the larger towns

Filled our head full of dreams

Turned the world upside down

There was Frankie Lyman-Bobby Fuller-Mitch Ryder

(They were Rockin’)

Jackie Wilson-Shangra-las-Young Rascals

(They were Rockin’)

Spotlight on Martha Reeves

Let’s don’t forget James Brown

Rockin’ in the U.S.A.

Rockin’ in the U.S.A.

Hey!

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A., Yeah, Yeah!

Rockin’ in the U.S.A.

Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube

May 12 – Stones Rolled Across The Chunnel

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Exile…in France? the Rolling Stones were in trouble in their UK because of tax bills owing so they relocated to the south of France to finish up a sprawling double-album that came out this day in 1972. Exile On Main Street was in most places their 10th album (different packaging in different countries make it a debatable point) and quickly became their sixth to top the charts at home. The album also went to #1 in the U.S., where it spent over a year on the charts but didn’t sell as well at the time as its predecessor, Sticky Fingers (which yielded “Brown Sugar“) or the follow-up, Goat’s Head Soup (“Angie”). However, if you liked your rock basic and gritty, this was an album for you with the standout tune “Tumblin’ Dice.”

The song “Happy” also hit the North American charts (actually making #9 in Canada) and a few other tunes remain on the list of their iconic tunes like the (appropriate for these times) “Ventilator Blues” and “Casino Boogie”. At the time, the band was in turmoil with Keith Richards’ heroin problem causing a rift between him and Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman and there was a different outlook on music among the main members as well. Jagger said of it he wanted to progress sonically and that “it’s very rock & roll. It’s good (but) I”m very bored with rock & roll. I want to experiment.” Critics likewise considered it “uneven” and according to Rolling Stone, “the great Rolling Stones album is yet to come.” Melody Maker at the time though loved it, declaring it was their best work to date and that it would “once and for all …answers any questions about their ability as rockers.” However, history’s treated it very well. It went on to be their fourth biggest-selling album and is now often called their finest work. Entertainment Weekly gave it an A+ review in 2013 and Uncut and Q both retroactively gave it a perfect 5-star rating. A 2010 CD re-release of it hit the top 10 in the U.S., Canada and Italy. Allmusic graded it a perfect 5-star as well, suggesting it’s “generally regarded as the Rolling Stones finest album” and that “few other albums, let alone double albums, have been so rich and masterful” and adding “each subsequent listen reveals something new.” Likewise, the magazine which shares the name with the band also revised their opinion over the years. This century, they rank it as the seventh greatest album ever, and the best by Mick and the boys. They note that Keith Richards says it was the “first grunge record” and admire its “dirty whirl of blues and boogie…the Stones at their fighting best.”

May 6 – Copper? Try Platinum, Live!

Times were a-changin’ in 1995, musically at least. Kurt Cobain was dead and more or less took the grunge revolution with him and rap was becoming mainstream. But rock wasn’t dead in the water … or on the charts quite yet. Case in point, this day that year, Live hit #1 in the U.S. with their third album, Throwing Copper.

It might seem like they were an overnight sensation, but really that was far from the truth. The Pennsylvania band had by then been around for over a decade (albeit under a couple of different names) and, as we noted, this was their third full album and second one on Radioactive, a small division of big label MCA. Their previous album, Mental Jewelry, had been a minor hit in 1991, reaching #73, but this one took them to a whole new level. They brought in Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads to help them produce the 14 song effort, and came up with a sound that was right for the times – powerful rock that hinted of the grunge of a year or two prior but was smoothed out just enough for mainstream consumption.

The album then and now garnered decent reviews. Rolling Stone at the time gave it 4-stars and Spin gave it seven out of ten. As Rolling Stone put it, they “strive for an epic sound” and “successfully execute” it. If there were complaints, it was largely about singer/guitarist Ed Kowalczyk’s lyrics which were, when decipherable, “a bit much” and too full of “melodrama” according to allmusic and several other reviews.

Melodramatic or not, it spawned four big radio hits – “Selling the Drama”, the only put out domestically as a single, which reached #43 in the U.S., #30 in the UK but was a #1 on Alternative Rock charts;

“I Alone”, “All Over You” and in between, “Lightning Crashes”. That was a massive #1 hit on Alternative and Mainstream Rock charts and hit #3 in Canada (where it was released as a single). The momentum built, leading to this week in ’95 – a full year after Throwing Copper came out – when it sold over 117 000 copies in the States and hit #1, dethroning Elton John. His Lion King soundtrack had been #1, his first chart-topper in a full 20 years as it turns out. Live, in turn would be knocked off the top by the soundtrack to Friday, an album featuring primarily rap and artists like Dr. Dre and Cypress Hill.

1995 was a mixed year all around for the charts. While soft rock Hootie & the Blowfish had the year’s biggest seller, artist like Mariah Carey and Selena figured prominently among the #1s, as did country superstar Garth Brooks, but there were still a few rock entries like this one, Bruce Springsteen’s Greatest Hits and Van Halen still beating the competition for at least a week.

Live’s album ended up selling ten million copies, going 8X platinum in the States, 7X in Canada and 10X in Australia and ended the decade among its top 60 sellers. Lightning didn’t quite crash twice for them though. Their follow-up, Secret Samadhi, did hit #1 as well and produced one more big radio hit, “Lakini’s Juice”, but overall the album barely sold one-quarter as much as Throwing Copper, and sales have declined since then. The band, however, still exists, with Kowalczyk being the only permanent member.

May 5 – Sunset Illuminated Davies Growing Talents

Usually gruff critic Robert Christgau called it “the most beautiful song in the English language.” So maybe it’s not that terribly surprising it went unnoticed for years in North America. Or maybe it is shockingly so. Either way, The Kinks released the single “Waterloo Sunset” on this day in 1967.

Ray Davies had always shown a flair for writing fine character sketches and glimpses of British life but he was growing in his talents by the Summer of Love. Not only did he write the song and sing it (with his wife, Rasa, doing some backing vocals) he produced it himself too, the first Kinks song that he did. They were actually beginning to work on what would be their fifth album, Something Else By the Kinks, and had well-known producer Shel Talmy in but he and Davies didn’t get along well and Ray fired the veteran and did things himself.

The song was about someone staring out of a window at a bridge across a “dirty old river” – the Thames – near Waterloo station in London, watching lovers meet and walk off together. More widely he said it was “about the aspirations of my sister’s generation, who grew up during the Second World War. It’s about the world I wanted them to have. That, and then walking by the Thames with (Rasa) and all the dreams we had.” He said he’d had the melody in his head for at least two years prior. Of course, the Kinks were more than just Ray Davies, and his brother Dave played some solid guitar on it and noted “we used a tape delay echo, but it sounded new because nobody had done that since the 1950s…we were almost trendy for awhile!” He also remembered his brother being reluctant to share the song. Ray seemed to consider it “like an extract from a diary nobody was allowed to read.” Curiously, while rooted in London and its landmarks, Ray had originally called it “Liverpool Sunset” but changed it because there were enough Liverpool songs and references already from, well a certain other band of the 1960s!

The song won instant praise and success… in Europe and Oceania. It got to #2 in Britain – their tenth top 10 single – , #3 in Ireland, #4 in Australia and even #1 in the Netherlands for example. It went gold in his homeland. Over here though, it failed to chart at all in the U.S. or Canada. Although the song was great and sold, arguably pre-releasing it a couple of months ahead of the LP backfired, as the album sold poorly, only hitting #35 in the UK and far worse elsewhere.

Although it failed to hit over here, it’s now well-appreciated, Rolling Stone lists it among their top 300 songs of all-time for example, and it appears prominently in the American-made but British-set movie Juliet Naked, in which Ethan Hawke, playing an aging alt rock musician sings it and adds he wished he wrote it. Ray played it himself at the closing of the London Olympics, resulting in it re-charting there.

Although they dipped a bit in popularity after that at home for a few years, they never fell utterly out of fashion, but in North America they’d have to wait four years to be noticed again, thanks to the 1970 hit “Lola.”

May 5 – Reed’s Portrait Of Warhol’s World

The American public took a “Walk on the Wild Side” this day in 1973… with the song of that name by Lou Reed peaking at #16. It was quite possibly the most unlikely hit of the decade in the U.S., and one might think no one would have been more surprised than Reed himself.

Reed was at the time 31 and was about two years out of the legendary Velvet Underground…a band which famously inspired a generation of new musicians but never quite came close to having a “hit” record in terms of sales let alone radio play. His first solo record in ’72 met with the same commercial response as the band’s had, and expectations for his second one, Transformer, weren’t much higher. One thing was different however, Lou got David Bowie and Mick Ronson (Bowie’s lead guitarist and frequent collaborator) to produce the album. The pair had both been big fans of the Velvet Underground.

“Walk on the Wild Side” had a slow, sultry sound quite unusual for mainstream radio at the time, highlighted by a great sax solo fading out at the song’s end (played by Ronnie Ross) and the prominent, funky bassline played by one of the best session bassists anywhere, Herbie Flowers. Flowers actually played two different basses – an old standup one and a typical Fender electric – hoping they would pay him double! That didn’t work apparently, and he got a flat rate 17 pounds (about $250 in current money) for his contribution. But they mixed the two tracks together to get the ominous rumbling sound that made the single stand out. Oh, and there were the lyrics as well!

Reed would call the song a “gay song…carefully worded so straights can miss out on the implications and enjoy (it) without being offended.” He got the basic idea after reading a novel of the same name, about a drifter who left Texas for New Orleans, seeking excitement along the way. But he wrote about people he’d known in New York, friends of Andy Warhol’s. Drag queens or transsexuals mainly, not the fare for most top 40 hits in the early-’70s! “I always thought it would be fun to introduce people to characters they might have met or hadn’t wanted to meet,” the singer said.

Among the real-life people populating the song were “Little Joe,” the “Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Holly.” Joe was Joe Campbell, a transsexual actor who’d made movies with Warhol (although some suggest his character was more a composite of Warhol hang-arounds and ‘Sugar Plum Fairy’ was a nickname for any drug dealer in their gang). Holly was Holly Woodlawn, a transgender person who left home in Miami at 15. “I was going to school, getting stones thrown at me , being beaten up by homophobic rednecks,” they recalled, so “I ran away from home and hitch-hiked across the U.S.A.” ending up with the Warhol gang in the Big Apple.

Despite its for-its-time shocking references to oral sex and cross-dressing, few censors seemed to have a problem with it. It was perhaps too outrageous and wild for them to really pick up on the content. The only thing some stations had a problem with was the phrase “the colored girls” in one line and a few stations beeped that out.

The song pushed the boundaries of radio…and Transformer to platinum status in the UK and his top-seller everywhere. Likewise, by hitting #16 in the U.S., #10 in Britain and #18 in Canada, “Walk on the Wild Side” was pretty much his only major hit single. Curiously, his second best-known song might be the one on the b-side to the 45 – “Perfect Day.”

May 2 – Gramm No Foreigner To Hit Records

Happy 74th birthday to someone who’s right at home on rock radio…and maybe a Jukebox Hero as well – Foreigner’s Lou Gramm.

Growing up in Rochester, NY, Louis Grammatico (to his musical parents) had an early interest in music and learned drums young. In high school he was playing in local bands and soon after he had become the frontman for Black Sheep, a band with a local following in western New York that eventually became the first American act signed to Chrysalis Records. Although their two albums did little, it did get the attention of Britain’s Mick Jones (of Spooky Tooth, not the same Mick Jones as in The Clash, it should be noted) who loved Gramm’s voice and thought it right for a new band he was putting together. Gramm, and his voice “Robert Plant might envy” (according to Circus) joined the band which consisted of three Americans and three Brits. The name Foreigner replaced Trigger, their original moniker, because no matter where they were someone would be a “foreigner”.

As we know they instantly had an impact on AM hit and FM album rock stations upon release of their 1977 debut and would soon rack up five-straight platinum or better albums in the U.S. In the UK their success was a bit more limited, but they did hit #1 by 1984’s Agent Provocateur. That was about the time Gramm – the rocker – and Jones, more of a pop balladeer by that point were seeing the band’s future differently and Gramm put out his first solo record. By that time, he’d been a part of six platinum Foreigner albums (not counting compilations) and 13 top 20 hit singles, many of which he’d co-written. That list included “Hot Blooded”, “Jukebox Hero”, “Double Vision” and “Cold As Ice.” As a solo artist, he notched two more top 20s in the ’80s at home, “Midnight Blue” and “Just between You and Me.”

A non-malignant but problematic tumor in the ’90s left Gramm’s voice weakened. His spirit too; he said he was “tired of the rock’n’roll lifestyle and not feeling very fulfilled” and became a Born Again Christian. His current band, the Lou Gramm All Stars, as Rolling Stone puts it play “a bizarre mix of Foreigner hits (like “Head Games”) and Christian rock.” However, he still shows up to sing with Foreigner now and then, and has periodically toured with Asia in the past decade, singing their stuff as well as Foreigner’s.

He told Ultimate Classic Rock he was retired around 2016. Sorta. “I’ve decided that I’ve been doing this 45 years, and we have a little one at home. I wanted to spend more time at home with (his wife) Robin and my baby girl.” However, he added that he might play a few more concerts with both Foreigner and Asia on occasion, and was working on getting some unreleased songs from years gone by ready for release. He said there was about a full album’s worth of new songs, but he’d likely put them out online three at a time. Generally these don’t seem to have come out but he does have several shows scheduled for this summer around the country and is expected to rejoin Foreigner “for one night only” when they get inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year.

April 29 – James Persuaded Many To Be Fans

Drugs, hit records, mobsters and a spurned Beatle…. happy birthday to a musician whose life sounds like it was made to be a movie. Tommy James turns 77 today. That might be surprising as he seems to be one of those figures who’ve “always” been around, an important figure in the early-ish days of rock. The reason for that is he started early.

James was born in Dayton, but his family had relocated to a town in southwest Michigan when he was young. By age 11 (!) he played a little guitar and had formed a rock and roll band with school friends, variously calling themselves Echoes or The Tornadoes. Before long, that changed to The Shondells. In 1964 (hence with James still only 17) they recorded a song called “Hanky Panky”. A radio station owner in his town of Niles put it out himself, and it was a hit through a county or two, but it had no widespread distribution, and back then radio was fairly independent. Having a hit in southern Michigan didn’t automatically mean that similar stations in Ohio, let alone California or Colorado, were going to know about it or spin it. The Shondells broke up around when they finished high school.

However, some club owner from Pittsburgh heard the song (as likely as not driving through the town) and got a copy to play at home. It soon became his most popular record with the crowds, so somehow, bootleg copies of the single were made and sold in the Steel City. Astoundingly, 80 000 or so of the illegally-pressed records sold, lifting “Hanky Panky” to #1 in that city. Tommy eventually found out about that, and came to Pittsburgh to play some shows. Lacking his old band, he recruited some locals called the Raconteurs (not to be mistaken for Jack White’s band of not long back) and changed their name to The Shondells, for continuity. All the while, James sang and played lead guitar on most of their songs.

The song was so popular in a decent-sized market that eventually big labels paid attention. It’s alleged Atlantic Records wanted them but for whatever reason, James signed The Shondells to a smallish New York label called Roulette Records. They didn’t have the clout of Atlantic (or Columbia, RCA or the other huge companies of the ’60s) but did at least have coast-to-coast distribution… and a bit of an intimidation factor. James wrote in his biography that Roulette was owned and operated by the Mafia and was essentially a money laundering factory for a major crime family. Perhaps no surprise that he feels he was short-changed for a fair bit of royalties in the ’60s, but didn’t take it to court.

Criminals or not, Roulette let the band, soon re-christened Tommy James and the Shondells have some good success through the second-half of the ’60s. They lobbed 13 songs into the American top 40 in a matter of five years. they included “Mony Mony” (which hit #1 in the UK, their only smash hit there), “Crystal Blue Persuasion”, a #1 in Canada and two U.S. chart-toppers, “Hanky Panky” (which eventually did get nationwide airplay) and “Crimson and Clover.” Along the ride, James began to produce some of their records, took up the keyboards as well as the guitar and by the end of the ’60s, was the chief writer for the band. So popular were they that by 1968, when George Harrison called offering a few songs to them, James turned him down. He took a few months off that year to work with Hubert Humphrey on his presidential campaign. And when he was invited to play Woodstock, he basically laughed at them. He was on vacation in Hawaii and wondered why they would want him to leave the beach and fly 6000 miles to “play a pig farm!”

The counter-culture lifestyle caught up to him, when in 1970 he apparently OD’d and nearly died on stage. That sparked him into thinking it was time to semi-retire, and whether because of that or not, The Shondells were history. He soon got back to music as a solo artist, but with much less success in the ’70s. He did however, have one more big hit of his own, “Draggin’ the Line” in ’71 (a top 10 in both the States and Canada) and he wrote another- “Tighter Tighter”, a biggie for a band called Alive N Kicking. Tommy’s choice of companies may not have always been the best. After leaving the Mafia-run company (and relocating to Nashville because of threats to him by a rival Big Apple crime family) he went to Fantasy Records, CCR’s old (and hated) label.

He had a good decade vicariously in the ’80s, with a trio of his songs becoming big hits as covers – “Crimson and Clover” for Joan Jett, “Mony Mony” for Billy Idol and “I think we’re Alone Now” for Tiffany. Since then, he’s still put out some new records but hasn’t been much in the spotlight. Currently he hosts a satellite radio show of oldies music and was living in New Jersey. More remarkably, he has a number of concerts booked for this spring and summer with his new version of The Shondells, largely in the Northeast and Midwest.

April 24 – People Got Fever-ishly Hot For Tom’s Music

An appropriate album for anyone who went outside last night and looked at the big moon shining bright.

It was Sheryl Crow who sang “A Change Will Do You Good”, but it was advice taken to heart by her friend Tom Petty. Petty released his first solo * album on this day in 1989, Full Moon Fever. We’ll get to my asterisk in a little.

By that point, Petty had put out seven studio albums with his backing band The Heartbreakers. However, the last one of those prior to this work, Let Me Up, hadn’t won much love from the record-buying public nor the critics. Arguably it was the weakest work of his career. So he’d fallen in with the hobbyist supergroup Traveling Wilburys in ’88 and made some new friends, including George Harrison, Roy Orbison and perhaps most importantly, Jeff Lynne of ELO. As Rolling Stone said, “Tom Petty picks his friends well.”

So when he had some tunes rattling around in his head and in demo form, he decided not to just make another Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers record, as per the norm, but to do a solo one. Of course, “solo” was rather subjective as while he did much of the writing, the lead vocals obviously and much of the standout guitar work, he still called in a number of other musicians to help. Those included minor contributions from the Heartbreakers’ Benmont Trench on piano and Howie Epstein (who added some backing vocals) and major contributions from his musical right-hand man, Mike Campbell. So it really wasn’t that far removed from a traditional Heartbreakers record. Campbell, the most prominent of his backing band, as usual added some great guitar work, co-produced it and co-wrote the hit “Love Is A Long Road” with him. Then, for good measure he had Orbison and Harrison add minor bits and Jeff Lynne add a lot to the record, making it essentially a hybrid of the Wilburys and Heartbreakers. Lynne not only co-wrote the majority of the tracks with Petty , but added in keyboards and was the main producer, giving it quite a bit more contemporary and well-produced feel to many fans… despite the fact that much of it was recorded in Campbell’s garage in what Petty says was “the most enjoyable (recording work) of my career.”

The result was great, 11 new songs plus a cover of the Byrds “I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better.” Singles popped off it and dominated FM rock radio for much of the year to follow. “Free Fallin’”, “I Won’t Back Down” and “Running Down A Dream” all topped rock charts, equaling the total number of rock #1 hits he’d had to that point in his whole career. As well, “Free Fallin’” made it to #7 on the Billboard singles chart, the highest of his career to that point and “I Won’t Back Down” made the UK top 30, his first success there. In Canada, both “I Won’t Back Down” and “Running Down a Dream” got to #5, and even “A Face In the Crowd”, the fourth single off the album, made the top 20.

As a result, the record quickly climbed the charts, and sold for months on end. In the U.S. and Canada it hit #3 and in Britain it became his first top 10 one. When all was said and done, it was the biggest of his career, topping 8 million copies and being 5X platinum at home. Which would have left egg on the face of Irving Azoff, who’d gone from managing Dan Fogelberg to running MCA Records which put out Petty’s records. He didn’t think he heard any hits on the record and tried to refuse letting it be released. Happily for Petty and listeners, Azoff quit and moved over to Warner Bros. not long after he first heard Full Moon Fever, and the new boss thought more highly of it!

Reviews were generally good for it, then and now. at the time, Rolling Stone rated it 3.5-stars, calling it a “rewarding, low-key side project” (ironic that was how it was seen when first hitting the shelves – a side project of less than great importance) and the Chicago Tribune rated it 3.5-stars as well, but out of 4 (instead of 5). They found it a “wonderful mix of depth and free-wheeling fun” beckoning to be listened to in “a convertible with the top down.” Later on, allmusic would give it 4.5-stars, the best since his ’81 album Hard Promises. They noted that while Lynne had a tendency in general to over-produce, on this one “Petty’s roots rock becomes clean and glossy” and the record stood out due to the fact it “didn’t have a weak track.”

Petty recalled the Heartbreakers for his next album, Into the Great Wide Open, but kept Lynne around to help out again.

April 19 – Not Halloween, But The Time Of Season For Zombies

Maybe they should have consulted their oracle more. Because while The Zombies album Odessey & Oracle (yes, that wasn’t a typo, that was the spelling) wasn’t a real posthumous hit, it was in the sense that the band was kaput by the time most heard it. It came out in Britain this day in 1968.

By then the Zombies had been around for almost the entire decade. However, they had put out only one full album prior to this, supplemented with several standalone singles. They scored hits with “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No” off the first album, but their star was falling by the time this one arrived. The quintet, led mainly by lead singer Colin Blunstone and keyboardist Rod Argent , had begun work on this one in the summer of ’67 at Abbey Road studios, using the same equipment the Beatles had made Sgt. Pepper... on. Fitting perhaps because not only would this one eventually be judged The Zombies best, it like the Beatles opus, was decidedly psychedic-tinged and varied in influences and sounds. For a couple of weeks they had to relocate to the also impressive Olympic Studios in London, eventually delivering the 12 song package to Columbia Records British office early in ’68. Around the same time, tensions were running high in the band and the realization that they were being booked into smaller clubs to play live than they’d done three or four years prior made them break up before it actually hit the shelves. Which, coupled with the psychedelia made Columbia North America, led by Simon & Garfunkel-boosting Clive Davis, refuse to put it out for over a year, thinking it had no commercial potential at all. In terms of the actual LP and its store sales, Davis was correct. However, it did spawn one hit single worldwide and has grown in critical acclaim through the years to when it is now considered among the best of the decade.

The quintet, while not necessarily a conventional “democracy”, did share duties. While Blunstone was lead singer on most tracks and bassist Chris White wrote more than any of the others, they all had at least a part of the songwriting and all did some vocals with Blunstone, Argent and White all singing lead on at least one track – something sure to confound their record label bosses despite the obvious parallel with the Beatles sharing the mic. And varied too were the song inspirations – while there was a typical “hippie love” song (the hit “Time of the Season”) and a couple more love songs, there were ones about being buddies (“Friends of Mine”), a timely anti-war one set in WWI (“Butcher’s Tale”) and even one about a loved one who’s in jail (“Care of Cell 44”) …probably the only such pop song until Dawn’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” five years later. Curiously enough, although “Time of the Season” did end up being a hit, it was the song that might have driven the final nail into the Zombies coffin at the time. Apparently Blunstone hated the song, written by Rod Argent, but Argent insisted not only on having it on the record but getting the other to sing it.

“Butcher’s Tale” and “Care of Cell 44” were put out as singles but flopped. And it would appear few publications at the time really even took note of it when it came out, perhaps because as Pitchfork later suggested, it was “decades ahead of its time.”

“Time of the Season” was put out as a single in 1969 upon constant urging from Columbia exec Al Kooper. Although it still never made an impact in their homeland, it took off over here, going to #3 in the U.S. and #1 in Canada.

Since then, the album has grown steadily in praise, but not so much in sales – Rolling Stone still put it under half a million copies ever sold. Nonetheless, it’s had impact. Paul Weller puts it as one of his all-time favorite albums, and as Rolling Stone point out, Beck and Fountains of Wayne both cover several songs off it in concert. Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet covered “Care of Cell 44” and say they are both huge fans of Colin Blunstone’s singing. This century, the BBC has declared it “among the top three albums of the Summer of Love,” and suggested “on a “Rose for Emily” they proved to be every bit the equal of the Beatles.” Q ranked it as the 26^th best British album ever. Allmusic rate it a perfect 5-stars and suggest “aside from the Beatles and perhaps the Beach Boys, no mid-’60s group wrote melodies as gorgeous as the Zombies” and call the record “pleasing, surprising and challenging.” Rolling Stone have ranked it as high as #80 on their list of greatest albums of all-time, pointing out “its baroque-psychedelic arrangments continue to exert a powerful influence.”

One might have thought that with the single’s success, the Zombies might have thought it was “the time of the season” to get back together quickly, but that wasn’t the case. Rod Argent had some success out of the gate with his new band Argent and it took two decades before they re-formed. Currently they’re still performing with Blunstone and Argent in the lineup, but they’ve only put out one album of “new” material since Odessey & Oracle, and that one was merely outtakes and scrapped tracks from 1960s sessions.