A good song will stand up to almost any amount of abuse in the recording studio. For example: most hits by The Rolling Stones before 1978.
A good song will stand up to almost any amount of abuse in the recording studio. For example: most hits by The Rolling Stones before 1978.
Most people probably feel that All Things Must Pass is George Harrison’s best solo work, and if it weren’t for Phil Spector’s sludgy production, I would agree with them.
I’m old enough and sad enough about the current state of affairs to have written several dozen songs lamenting the way we seem to choose to live. But when I hear The Pretender by Jackson Browne, I realize I haven’t come close.
Van Morrison deserves respect as a songwriter, but I wish his songs had been recorded by Springsteen. Take, for example, Domino.
The thing about lists is they are designed to create controversy. Witness Rolling Stone’s 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. Everyone’s going to have a grievance or three. This one’s too low on the list, that one’s too high. And – especially, it would seem, if you’re a Celine Dion fan – why isn’t she (or he) on the list?
But this list created a different problem for me, because for every okay-I-get-it and are-you-serious? on the list there was also a who?
I must be getting old.
I know Chuck Berry only wrote, like, three songs, but all twenty-eight of them are fabulous.
Over the years, I’ve heard lots of criticism about 12-bar blues, all of it boiling down to: it’s boring because it’s so predictable.
Fair enough, but do you know why it’s endured all these years? Because it works.
Check out the lyrics for Dylan’s Desolation Row.
How can one guy be this … insightful, cutting, good, clever, empathic, cynical, hypnotic, intimate?
Thanks, Bob. Wow! Ouch! Right on! Yeah, that’s what I thought.
I think.
Here’s some heresy for you:
Who is the greatest blues songwriter? Willie Dixon? Robert Johnson? Howlin’ Wolf? Muddy Waters? B.B. King?
I think a serious case could be made for one Robert Zimmerman.