Category: Music

What I’m Reading: “Rod: The Autobiography”

Rod_ TheAutobiography2

One of the many things I learned from Rod Stewart’s memoir, Rod: The Autobiography, is that the technical process of recording a studio album is very strange.  For instance, the lead singer usually records his vocal track in a soundproofed room, by himself, wearing headphones so that he can listen to the band’s instrumental track.

It seems a very sterile and artificial process–not at all what one pictures when imagining a rock singer at work.  And so I was impressed to learn that Stewart has always rejected this technique, insisting on recording all tracks directly with his band:

When we were recording, I liked to be in the sound room with the band, walking around with a microphone  in hand, so that I could look them in the eye, interact with them, perform with them, basically.  I think it slightly startled the engineer, who was more used to having the singer isolated behind screens, or in an entirely separate vocal booth.  I remember hearing how Frank Sinatra had once been parked by an engineer behind a screen in a recording studio and he had made them take it down.  In order to sing, he needed to feel the sound of the orchestra hit him in the chest.  I guess this was my own version of that.

It’s interesting that Stewart draws a comparison between himself and Sinatra.  As I learned from James Kaplan’s fine bio of Sinatra, the great crooner himself exerted tremendous effort when preparing for one his recordings.  He was known to read the song lyrics aloud to himself, almost like prose.  He felt he had to discover the emotional truth of the lyric before he could sing it, and if that truth was not forthcoming, he would nix the song.

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Friday Night Rock-Out: “Anarchy in the U.K.”

Sometimes you just have to go back to basics. And what could be more basic than the definitive punk-rock song of all time?

Some things you might not know about the Sex Pistols: 1.) Their original name was The Pistols. Their favorite venue was a club called Sex. The rest is history. 2.) They only had one studio album. 3.) They broke up on stage in San Francisco on their one and only U.S. tour. 4.) John Lydon was given his nickname, Johnny Rotten, for his bad teeth (allegedly).

Also, Billy Idol uses the opening lines of “Anarchy in the U.K.” as the opening lines for his excellent memoir Dancing with Myself. Who am I to argue with Billy Idol?

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Can’t Stand Losing You”

If you’re old enough to remember the early 1980s, you probably know that there was a time when Sting was more than just a meme, and The Police were the greatest rock band in the world. When I say greatest, I mean by almost any measurable component—records sold, concerts sold out, number of MTV plays in any given week, number of magazine articles written about them, etc.—they were at number one. (The only artists who could really give them a run for their money were Michael Jackson and Madonna, and I don’t count either of them as rock artists, though I love them both, especially Madonna.)

Heck, I’m old enough to remember when The Police, themselves, weren’t a rock band, either. They were more of a punk, reggae-adjacent garage band. And that period was, imho, their peak. Yes, “Every Breath You Take” is a classic—arguable the most successful rock song of the 20th Century—but it came out on what was, in some ways, The Police’s least interesting album, Synchronicity. Their very best songs, I think, come from earlier albums, including this one about a guy who, well, can’t stand losing…you.

Rock on…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Authority Song”

There is a great documentary on Netflix about the legendary record producer Clive Davis. One of the more interesting moments in the film is when Davis describes some of the fine artists he didn’t sign to his label, either because someone else beat him to punch or because he thought the artist in question just didn’t fit in with his catalog.

One example he gives of the latter is John Mellencamp, who, despite being saddled with the dumb, management-invented stage-name of John Cougar, hit the airwaves like a thunderbolt in the early 1980s. Mellencamp, Davis lamented, seemed too similar to another of Davis’s great artists, Bruce Springsteen, in that they both played soaring, electrified dirges about working class America (i.e., so-called “Heartland Rock,” even though Springsteen is famously from New Jersey). So, to his later regret, Davis passed.

Too bad for him. Mellencamp sold a bazillion records over the years, while gradually ditching the John Couger moniker and returning to his own, real name. As he did so, I gradually came to like him more and more. His early hits like “Jack and Diane” didn’t speak to me, perhaps because I was in high school at the time (just like Jack and Diane), and while the song was a paeon to lost youth and spirit, I was miserable in high school. (Later, I would realize that I probably would have liked high school a lot better if I had gone to Mellencamp’s, nestled somewhere in small-town America, full of cool, down-to-earth, nice kids instead of the jocks and preppies I was used to. And, yes, I eventually fell in love with and married a girl named Diane.)

But my opinion of Mellencamp’s music changed when his “Authority Song” came out. Not only is it one of the most danceable songs of the 80’s, it’s also one of rock music’s most defiant and rebellious rejections of… well…authority.

I’ve liked Mellencamp ever since. In fact, I think he’s a bit of genius.

Rock on…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Dead End Friends”

As a long-time, struggling, nominal “artist,” I am aesthetically opposed to the idea of a supergroup. The very notion sounds like a BS, 1990s-era, dot-com bubble businessplan: 1.) Pick great musicians from two or more already famous and successful rock groups, 2.) put them in a studio with all the booze and/or drugs they want, and 3.) profit!

But I have to admit that my snobbery is unjustified, if not downright hypocritcal. There are a lot of “supergroups” whose music I love. Derek and the Dominos. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The Traveling Wilburys. Hell, even friggin Toto was pretty good. (“I’ve felt the rains down in AAAAAFRI-CUH!!!”)

Them Crooked Vultures is one of the more recent (and also one of the best) rock supergroups. Representing at least two generations of great rock music, it boasts Dave Grohl on drums, Josh Homme on lead guitar and vocals, and John Paul Jones on bass. I find myself especially sentimental about Jones being in the band. Not only is he an older guy who proves that he still has the licks, but he’s one of the most under-appreciated musicians in the history of rock. When people say they love Led Zepplin, what they’s often, really saying is that they love John Paul Jones (and John Bonham, of course, rounding out one of the greatest rythym sections ever).

Below is a great live version of “Dead End Friends” in which you can see that, yes, Jones still knows how to rock. And Grohl and Homme haven’t forgotten, either.

Rock on…!

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Malibu”

Ever since Kurt Cobain’s tragic suicide in 1994, Courtney Love has gotten a lot of hate from the bros. I don’t know why. I always liked her and her music. If Kurt Cobain was my generation’s Jim Morrison, then she was our Patti Smith.

I say “was” because Love hasn’t released much music recently. I hope that changes. I’m particularly fond of this song, “Malibu”.

Friday-Night Rock Out: “Any Way You Want It”

E.L. Doctorow once said that Edgar Allen Poe was the best bad writer in American history. I would suggest that Journey was the best bad band in rock history. Blessed with a classic rock pairing of a great singer and a great lead guitarist—Steve Perry and Neil Schon, respectively—Journey was a hit-machine all through the 1980s. In a sea of turgid, flat corporate rock, Journey’s unusual combination of Perry’s crooning lyrics and Schon’s clean-yet-virtuosic guitar licks was a winner. It stood out a mile on F.M. radio. Also, the band had a great work ethic. They played out-of-the-way venues in the midwest and the deep south that many other bands shunned, which won the band the eternal devotion of countless rural and working-class kids, to whom Journey’s sentimental and often maudlin songs appealed.

It was this sentimental and overblown quality that made Journey a bit of a drag. There was something cloying and yet self-aggrandizing about much of their work. Every other song sounded like an “anthem.” One was always tempted to flick a lighter and wave it in the air whenever one of them came on the radio.

Still, when Journey was on its game and at its most pure, they could create a really great, down-and-dirty rock song. My favorite of theirs—the only one that truly feels like a rock song, to me—is their unapologetic ode to sex, “Any Way You Want It”.

Rock on…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Vertigo”

Like all great rock bands, U2 has always has always had the ability to reinvent itself. Just when you think it’s completely washed out and finished, the members come up with another great album. They did it in 1991 with Achtung Baby and again in 1994 with How to Assemble an Atomic Bomb. The best song off that latter album is “Vertigo,” which also has one of the cooler music videos the band has ever appeared in.

Rock on…

What I’m Listening To: “Sorcerer”

One of my favorite films of all time is Michael Mann’s first feature, 1981’s Thief. That movie was not only the beginning of my life-long love of Mann’s movies, but also with the soundscapes of the German band Tangerine Dream, who composed the score. 

When I saw the movie, I had never heard of Tangerine Dream, and thus had no idea that they were one of the iconic avant-guarde bands of the 1970s, producing legendary albums like Phaedra and Zeit. All I knew was their music was hypnotic and unbelievably powerful.

In fact, Tangerine Dream was sort of the Hans Zimmer of their day, creating some of truly great soundtracks. One of their other great scores was for William Friedkin’s 1977 suspense film Sorcerer. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out. Nominally a thriller, it’s about four guys from totally different backgrounds, all hiding in out from the law in South America. When a local oil platform catches fire, the guys are offered a big payday if they will drive two trucks full of leaky nitroglycerin through the mountains to put the fire out. That’s the stated plot of the film. I have a theory, however, that its really about four guys who are in hell and just don’t realize it yet. They all have much to atone for, and each suffers and grows (or fails to grow) in his own way.

The score brilliantly evokes that sense of menace and evil that lies just around the corner. It’s a great piece to listen to when you’re in a dark and somewhat demented state of mind (or if you want to be in one, for whatever reason).