Check It And See One More Time For Me

Okay, you can justifiably say that Please Mr. Postman is just a formulaic, lame pop song.  But listen to John Lennon’s vocal on the Beatles version and tell me it’s not heart-grippingly soulful.

Sounds Like …

Here’s an obvious truth: although they covered a lot of ground over many years (not enough, in the case of The Beatles), The Beatles always sound like The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones always sound like The Rolling Stones.

But here’s the thing:  what made them so darn good is that they could do anybody else.  The Beatles do Roy Orbison and come up with Please Please Me.  They do Dylan and come up with You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.  They start jamming Fleetwood Mac’s Green Manalishi and arrive at Sun King.

Same thing with The Stones.  While always true to their blues roots, they’ve absorbed and played back: Rock and Roll, British Invasion, Country, Folk Rock, Psychedelic, Hard Rock, Jazz Fusion – and just about everything that ever came out of Motown, Memphis and Muscle Shoals.  I know some cynics who think The Stones sold out and became silly by trying to stay relevant in the late 70’s as the world shifted into Disco and then 80’s R&B, but I disagree.

What I hear is a great band saying, “Yeah, we can do that.  Listen!”  And then they prove it by serving up a classic example of the style.  But even as the do that, they remind you they’re still The Stones.  The riffs, the grit, the guitar bi-play, the self-caricaturing vocals – they’re all there.  Miss You is both vintage Disco and vintage Stones.  Rock and A Hard Place sounds like it could have been recorded by Robert Palmer, but the presence of Keith and Ronnie make it better.  And just to drive the point home, they give us Sad Sad Sad on the same album.  “So much for this ‘new’ R&B thing.  Now here’s some rock and roll.”

Paul McCartney’s solo career proves that if The Beatles had lasted longer, they too would have remained relevant by continuing to listen to the new music around them, absorbing it, and the giving it back to us as fresh magic.

The Beatles and The Stones prove that you develop your own style by absorbing the music around you, and you evolve that style by continuing to listen.

The Rover

Wow.  I always knew Jimmy Page was a session player before he signed on with The Yardbirds and then founded Led Zeppelin, but wow.  Gibson’s Jimmy Page In The 60’s article shows you just how much this guy got around.

You’ve got your big names: Tom Jones, Van Morrison, The Kinks, The Who,  Donovan, Cocker … wow.

You’ve got your forgot-about-thems: The Southerners, The Nashville Teens, The Sneekers … who?

You’ve got your really?: Burt Bacharach, Petula Clark, Lulu, Herman’s Hermits … are you kidding me?

You’ve got your that-was-him?:  Gloria?  Here Comes the Night?  Can’t Explain?  As Tears Go By?  With a Little Help From My Friends? (Cocker, not Beatles) Hurdy Gurdy Man?  Did I say wow yet?

This guy was everywhere.  But the song did not remain the same.  He rambled on, met a few friends, went out on the tiles, slapped us upside the head with Good Times Bad Times, and carried us over the hills and far away.

ps – Leave My Kitten Alone?

A Well Respected Man

Gibson’s Dave Davies’ 10 Greatest Performances serves as a healthy reminder that The Kinks’ guitarist was about way more than You Really Got Me.

Yeah, that’s on the list, as is its sequel, All Day and All of the Night, as thats semi-sequel Tired of Waiting.

Pushed aside by the late 60’s blues rockers, The Kinks enjoyed an all-too brief resurgence ten years later, riding the punk/new wave thing for a few years.  Gibson’s list nicely demonstrates that The Kinks – and Davies – still had their chops, staying as – or even more – relevant than many of the 60’s British Invasion relics that were still out there. 

The tunes – and the guitar work – on Misfits and Low Budget are archetypal, no-holds-barred rock and roll.  The massive influence of You Really Got Me aside, for my money, this was their best work.  They rocked us around the dial.

Matchstick Men

January, 1968.  A psychedelic pop song called Pictures of Matchstick Men hits the charts, and man, was it trippy.   Vaguely drug-related lyrics, wah-wah guitar, and one of the early examples of the phaser effect.  OK, it was closer to bubble-gum than, say Cream or Led Zeppelin, but it was cool.

And then they were gone.

Fast forward to July, 1985.  Along with nearly two billion of my closest friends, I watched Live Aid.  The Wembley section of the concert opens up with this high energy bunch of British rockers who don’t seem to have left the 60’s.  They remind me of The Kinks, or any number of British Invasion groups I’d forgotten.  Didn’t catch their name, but they put on a great set.

And then they were gone.

Fast forward to early this century.  I’ve entered the digital age and I’m surfing the web looking for old tunes I once had on vinyl but can’t find on CD.  I go looking for Pictures of Matchstick Men, and find dozens of songs by Status Quo.  Oh!  That was that band from Live Aid.  Why didn’t I know about this?

From the 60’s through the 90’s, these guys reflected back a little of what was popular, but never wavered from their honest delivery of straight-ahead, stand-up, rock ‘n’ roll.

Funny how they never made it this side of the Atlantic.  They seem have a loyal following in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, and they deliver a similar brand of music to many other bands – British and American – that have made it and endured.  It’s a pity.  These guys should have been rockin’ all over the world.

Remember I’ll Always Be True

Well, along with a big bunch of other people, I’ll be watching the 50^th anniversary tribute of The Beatles’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan when it airs this Sunday.  And along with what I suspect will be a healthy majority of ‘em, I’ll have my fingers crossed that it’s not too corny, schmaltzy or over-done.  Unlikely, but it is possible.

But whether I shed tears of nostalgic joy or wince in embarrassment, I’ll tell you this:  aside from being born, The Beatles are the single biggest fact of my life.

I’m not talking about teenybopper infatuation, mindless celebrity idolization, or stalker-like obsession.  The Beatles tapped into something bigger than themselves, something enervating, life giving, transcendent – and it touched millions of us in profound ways.

Friends, teachers, work colleagues – even family – come and go.  Many earned my respect, gratitude and love.  Some influenced my thinking, and who I became.  A few provided excellent role models.  The Beatles did something even bigger: they defined my culture.

I was two months shy of my tenth birthday on February 9, 1964, and a week or so short of sixteen when Paul announced that The Beatles had broken up.  So growing up, they were a dominant news item, the biggest positive, a cosmic force.  The Space Program, Civil Rights, Vietnam, pending nuclear Armageddon  … they were all out there.  But for many of us, these things were only visible and understood through music and pop culture, which was dominated by The Beatles.  They were the lens through which we watched the world.  They were the shoes we would put on so we could walk in it.

Sometimes what The Beatles did was sad.  Sometimes it was embarrassing, even painful.  But mostly they were joyful and they were always magical.  They changed all of us, and their impact is still being felt.

As Bob Wooler wrote in the very first article ever written about The Beatles (in Mersey Beat on August 31, 1961), “I don’t think anything like them will happen again.”