The brilliant singer and musician Chris Rea has passed away. I remember when I first heard this song (my favorite of his). I was in grad school in Tucson, Arizona and had a summer job teaching English at Pima Community College. I was driving there one day in July when the temperature hit 117. My little car started to overheat so I turned off the A/C, rolled the windows down, and hoped for the best. Then this song came on. It had such a great groove to it that I almost forgot my miserable circumstances. Almost.
It was also so very, very appropriate. Still is, even in winter.
I had never heard of Young the Giant until a few months ago, when this song, “My Body,” popped up on the playlist at my gym. I liked the groove so much that I paused my incredibly wimpy set of curls (“Hey, I’m going for tone, dammit. TONE!”), went to my locker, got out my phone, and Googled it.
The rest is history…
People have compared Young The Giant to The Cure, but they remind me more of Coldplay, but with more of a rock-edge (not to mention a bit more soul).
If you’re of a certain age (i.e., over fifty), you probably spent many a summer afternoon in the long-ago past listening to the 45 single of “Hotel California” over and over and over. (You might also have enjoyed a mildly illegal form of herbal, hand-rolled cigarette as you listened.) If you did, you’ve probably read a lot of articles about the song, and heard a lot of interviews by Don Henley or Glenn Frey or others about it, to the point that you probably think you know everything about it. You know, for instance, that Henley and Frey wrote the lyrics in a very short period of time (by some accounts, a few hours; by others, over a weekend). You know that the album cover is a photo of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that some people think they see a mysterious figure in the bell tower. And you know that the song is really about Hell, or California-as-Hell, or American hedonism, or…something cool like that.
What you probably don’t know is that song is, primarily, the creation of guitarist Don Felder, who wrote the melody by himself before he even joined the band. As Marty Jourard recounts in his excellent non-fiction book Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town:
One afternoon while enjoying his ocean view and no doubt the general situation, Felder sat on his sofa and idly strummed an acoustic twelve-string, eventually refining his musical idea into a carefully crafted guitar arrangement. Using a Teac four-track reel-to-reel recorder, Felder first recorded his Rhythm Ace drum machine playing a cha-cha beat, then added acoustic and electric guitar and bass, then an idea for two solo guitars. Don Henley listened to a cassette mix of this song and more than a dozen others Felder had submitted for consideration and declared this rhythmically complex instrumental the best, giving it a working title of “Mexican Bolero,” and along with Glenn Frey wrote lyrics that transformed Felder’s music demo into “Hotel California,” the title track of the next Eagles album and its first single.
It’s also Felder’s actual guitar playing, along with that of co-lead Joe Walsh, that gives the song its unbelievably haunting tone and its indelible, dark crescendo. I’m not just saying this because Felder, like his childhood friend Tom Petty, is a Gainesville boy like me. Felder is, in fact, one of the most underrated musician/composers in the history of rock-and-roll.
Of course, I don’t mean to denigrate Henley’s and Frey’s brilliant lyrics, gave the song its cachet among the teenage set of the 1970s (and now, even). One thing I’ve noted about “Hotel California” is that is one of those rare examples of a narrative poem (i.e., it tells a continuous story). Also, it’s written in ballad quatrains, with a rhyming scheme of ABCB. How cool is that?
And, yes, I do see a mysterious figure in the bell tower.
Don’t let the name fool you. There is nothing “folksy” about The Folk Implosion, nor about this song. In fact, “Natural One” has a slightly demented, sinister quality to it that I really like.
This skewed quality might be due to the deliberately off-key, jangly sound of the lead guitar, which is the main hook of the song. It’s also, I believe, an example of musical dissonance. (I’m not sure of this; please correct me if I’m wrong.)
Also, don’t be fooled by the graphic for the video above. Those are not the band members. Rather, the image is taken from the poster of the 1995 film Kids, for whose soundtrack the song was composed. I haven’t seen Kids, but I’m told it’s a powerful, brutal depiction of alienation and apathy in a group of suburban youths in the drug-soaked 1990s.
Which means this song is a perfect fit.
Rock on…
BONUS! Here is a really cool video about musical dissonance.
I must admit that I had never heard of Awolnation until a few years ago when my son played me a couple of their songs. This song, in particular, has a big, anthemic sound of the sort one doesn’t hear very often in alt-rock. I really like it. Even the soft parts sound really, really loud. And lead singer Aaron Bruno has the vocal range to pull it off without sounding like he’s screaming.
“Passion” is from Awolnation’s 2017 album Here Come the Runts. Rock on…
There have been a lot of great rock duos over the years—Hall and Oates, Tears for Fears, The White Stripes, David and David—but there haven’t been that many hard rock duos. I’m guessing this because you typically need a minimum of three musicians to form a hard rock band: a drummer, a bassist, and a lead guitarist. (One of those folks has to sing, too, obviously.)
The great British duo Royal Blood gets around this minimum by ditching the lead guitarist and having their bassist, Mike Kerr, do double-duty. On this little gem, which has become one of my favorites, he is actually playing a distorted bass that sounds like a lead guitar. (Jack White does the same thing on “Seven Nation Army“.)
The great comedian George Burns once attended an Alice Cooper concert, and he was impressed by all the crazy costumes, make-up, special effects, and over-the-top acting that made that artist famous. Later, he saw Cooper back-stage and told him “You’re the last vaudeville act.” He was right! Cooper was one the first artists to realize that great rock-and-roll can be…well…theater. Especially in its stadium-arena-sized version.
Another band that was quick to pick-up on the theater aspect of rock was Kiss, who hit the cultural pop-scene of 1970s like an earthquake. Yes, they were the silliest rock band of that era (perhaps of any era). Kind of like Spinal Tap, but even dumber. However, if you ignored the make-up and the pleather sci-fi costumes, you realized that Kiss was just a kick-ass, New York City rock-band, with tough-guy lyrics and hard-hitting musicianship.
Ace Frehley, their great guitarist, passed away yesterday. I thought I would dedicate this episode of my Friday Night Rock-Out series to him by posting my favorite Kiss song.
I don’t remember how I stumbled upon Canadian band Alvvays, but I’m glad I did. This song, really got to me. It’s one of those singles that gets labelled as “Indie Pop” or whatever, but in fact it’s just a kick-ass rock song.
David Bowie was a musical genius. And perhaps the only bad thing about being a musical genius is the possibility that someday another genius might come along and do a cover of one your songs that’s better than the original. That’s what Kurt Cobain did, I think, with this cover, recorded in 1993 on MTV. And he was only twenty-six at the time.
Oh, well. Here, for your entertainment (and, I hope, solace) is a song written by one genius and sung by another, with some really great musicians playing along.
Ash Clifton, Writer 