Music Sunday: The "I've been off reading music books" edition

So.

Due to unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances, I was mostly away from Music Sunday for a couple of weeks. But, I'm back, and in the meantime I've been reading books about music.

No, really. Since the middle of January I've read four music-related books and am now working my way through the fifth. The ones I've finished reading are:

1) 27: A History of the 27 Club Through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, by Howard Sounes (2013, Da Capo Press; 359 pages)
2) Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life, by Tim Riley (2011, Hyperion; 765 pages)
3) Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles 1965 Tour that Changed the World, by Larry Kane (2003, Running Press; 272 pages)
4) Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, by Eric Burdon with J. Marshall Craig (2001, Thunder's Mouth Press; 326 pages)

And right now I'm reading Beatles vs. Stones, by John McMillian (2013, Simon and Schuster; 304 pages).

These are all good books, although I suspect that Sounes just wrote 27 so that he could write about Amy Winehouse. Still, he does a good job covering the lives and deaths of the other 27 Club members that he highlights. Riley's book is long, but it is comprehensive, perhaps a little too comprehensive in its detail about recording sessions, but that is a minor quibble. I very much liked the way that Riley seemed to go out of his way to not forgive the times that Lennon acted like an ass, but also gave context as to why he might have been acting that way and also related that Lennon also had times when he was kind and generous and thoughtful. I've read other biographies of Lennon and have found that some writers either try to make him a saint or make him a demon when in fact he seems to have been a very complicated man. Kane's book was more historical in nature and, despite the title, covers both the 1964 and 1965 American tours (he was the only American journalist who traveled with the band the full length of both tours). He also goes out of his way to show that the members of the Beatles were full human beings rather than cutout cardboard figures. He didn't try to whitewash flaws out of existence, but he didn't try to portray any of them, or the support staff who toured with them, as completely flawed. And Burdon's memoir...well, it must have been good, because I more or less read it in one sitting. It seems to jump around in time a lot, but that is a minor quibble. I like that he doesn't approach his life the way some rock stars do, trying to play down the adventures and misadventures of their lives, but plainly says, "these are the things I did, and I might regret some of them now but I'm not going to deny them at this point."

The book I'm reading now, Beatles vs. Stones, is more academic in tone, but that's to be expected since McMillian is an historian and an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University. So far (and I'm on page 109 at the moment) it seems to me he's leaning more toward being as Stones fan than a Beatles fan even though he declines in his introduction to say which band he favors although he admits that he does have "a preference for one group over the other" (p. 5).

At any rate, these books highlight the lives of people who have made some classic music, and since it is Music Sunday, of course I'm going to share some if it with you. I will say that I have probably shared some of these songs before, but all these people have made music that stands up (I think) to repeated listenings.

But, I'm going to start out with something I know I haven't share before, because I didn't know it existed until a couple of days ago. Anyone who grew up in the 1970s probably knows the Three Dog Night version of Randy Newman's "Mama Told Me Not To Come". That 1970 cover went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. But the first recording of the song was by Eric Burdon and the Animals in 1966, although it was never released as a single and ended up on the 1967 album "Eric is Here", and the band playing behind Burdon is not the Animals, but the Horace Ott Orchestra. This original version is edgier than the more commercial-sounding Three Dog Night version:



Here's a live performance of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" from Burdon and the Animals at Wembley Empire Pool at the New Musical Express poll winners' concert on April 11, 1965:



I found a clip of the Beatles singing "All My Loving" at the Hollywood Bowl concert on their 1964 tour of the United States. This show took place on my 8th birthday, I lived in Southern California at the time, and even at the age of 8 I was very bitter that I didn't get to go to the concert:



One of the notable details in this early clip of a live Rolling Stones performance of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is that there look to have been a lot more males in the audience than in audiences for the Beatles' shows. And, if that young gentleman in the audience shown near the end of the song is any indication, some of them were as emotional about their favorite band as the girls were. This was the first single by the Rolling stones to go to number 1 in the United States:



Jim Morrison was not only a singer, but a poet as well. His poetry has gotten mixed reviews over the years, but I quite like some of the things he wrote. A few years after Morrison's death, the rest of the Doors got together and put some of his recorded poetry on record along with music. This cut from the resulting album, "American Prayer" (released 1978, with the spoken word parts recorded in 1969 and 1970), called "Stoned Immaculate", shows a crossover between what the Doors recorded as a band and what Morrison was doing with the written word:



Since I'm running out of room for today's post, I'll just end with this, my favorite Janis Joplin song. Don't get me wrong; I like all of her work. However, this song just seems...perfect. So, here is Janis, and "Mercedes Benz", from the album "Pearl" (1971):

Music Sunday: The Everybody's Got An Opinion Edition

Last week, I shared a few of my own favorite songs. It wasn't a "favorites" list, exactly, because I didn't rank the songs in any order and because there are songs that I like at least as much as some of those I shared that I didn't include. It also wasn't a "best" list, because I don't really believe there is any objective way of deciding what is the "best" in art of any kind.

It seems, however, that everyone has an opinion on what the "best songs" are. Of course, Rolling Stone Magazine has it's "500 Best Songs of All Time" list. And I happened on another "best" list, this time the "100 Greatest Songs Ever" list from a blog called Consequences of Sound, which made its list on the occasion of the 5-year anniversary of its existence. Reviewing the two lists, I found some interesting comparisons among the top ten songs from each list.

There are just two songs that made the top 10 on both lists.

Rolling Stone chose Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" as the greatest song of all time, while Consequences of Sound put Dylan's song in the third slot on its list. This live performance was at Newport:



The other song that made both top 10 lists is Aretha Franklin's "Respect". Rolling Stone puts it at number five, while Consequences of Sound rates it at number eight.



Three other artists made both top ten lists, but with different songs. Consequences of Sound rated the Beach Boys at number one, with "God Only Knows", from their classic album "Pet Sounds", while Rolling Stone placed their "Good Vibrations" at number six.





The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" comes in at number five on the Consequences of Sound list, while The Beatles don't show up until number eight on the Rolling Stone list, with "Hey Jude". You'll want to watch the video for "A Day in the Life" closely for some interesting, and perhaps unexpected, guest appearances.





Rolling Stone Magazine rates "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", by the Rolling Stones, as the number two song of all time in it's greatest list, while the Stones don't show up until number seven on the Consequences of Sound list, with "Sympathy for the Devil".





Otherwise, the two lists have some very different choices. For purposes of comparison, the Rolling Stone Magazine top ten reads, in full:

1. Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"
2. The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
3. John Lennon, "Imagine"
4. Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On"
5. Aretha Franklin, "Respect"
6. The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"
7. Chuck Berry, "Johnny B. Goode"
8. The Beatles, "Hey Jude"
9. Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
10.Ray Charles, "What'd I Say"

The Consequences of Sound top ten list reads, in full:

1. The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"
2. Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime"
3. Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"
4. Michael Jackson, "Man in the Mirror"
5. The Beatles, "A Day in the Life"
6. The Velvet Underground, "Sister Ray"
7. The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"
8. Aretha Franklin, "Respect"
9. The Notorious B.I.G., "Juicy"
10.Radiohead, "Idioteque"

The biggest different between the two lists, from my point of view, is that I know, well, all the songs on the Rolling Stone list, while there are three songs on the Consequences of Sound list that, to be honest, I had never even heard of before I read that list (those would be "Sister Ray", "Juicy", and "Idioteque"). I should probably go investigate those, to see what I might be missing.

What the two lists point out is that, everybody has an opinion regarding music. No two people have exactly the same taste in music, and that is to the good, I think. What I am wondering is, what is your top ten list of "best" or "favorite" songs? Drop me a comment and let me know. Did any of your favorites make either of these lists? What do you think of these lists? In relation to your favorites, do they match at all, or do these published lists miss the point entirely in comparison to the music you like?

Music Sunday - Censorship Editon

I suppose that music censorship really started to be a "thing", in that it came to the attention of many people here in the United States, during the 1985 Senate hearing regarding what was labeled "porn rock" after nearly 20 record companies agreed to put labels warning of "Explicit Content" on some records. The agreement by record companies to do this came after a group called the Parents Music Resource Center put pressure on them to do so. And this is probably the thing that comes to mind most often when record or music censorship is brought up...music that has sexual content or so-called obscene words, or that has what censors consider to be references to drug use, all of which some parents might object to their children listening to.

The hearings were interesting, including testimony from Frank Zappa, who called the stickers, and the PMRC campaign "nonsense", and an appearance by John Denver, whom the PMRC expected to support their cause. Instead Denver spoke out against censorship and what he called misinterpretation of songs, including his own "Rocky Mountain High."

This sort of censorship has been going on much longer than since 1985, however. In the 1960s, the popular Sunday night variety show staple, The Ed Sullivan Show, attempted to censor performances by, among others, The Rolling Stones and The Doors for respectively, sexual and drug references, with varying success. Mick Jagger altered the words of "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "let's spend some time together", as requested, but he obviously rolled his eyes at the camera as he did so.



In the case of The Doors' performance of "Light My Fire", Jim Morrison was asked to change the lyric, "girl, we couldn't get much higher" to "girl, we couldn't get much better". During the performance, Morrison sang the lyric as originally written. After the show, the band was told that they wouldn't ever be invited onto the show again, and they weren't, but it didn't seem to bother Morrison or the band very much. They'd already done the show and apparently were not interested in repeating the experience. Both of these incidents took place in 1967.

More interesting to me are the songs that have been censored, or that there have been attempts to censor, on radio or television, based on lyrical content that doesn't consist of "dirty" words. One of my favorites in this category is "Lola", by The Kinks, which was released in 1970. The BBC would not broadcast the song, not because the subject matter of the song included a transvestite, but because the lyric named a product, Coca Cola. Ray Davies had to go back into the studio and replace "Coca Cola" with "cherry cola" before the BBC would play the song on the air. I hear both versions on the radio here in the US, and was puzzled that there were two versions until I read this story a few years ago when I was writing a paper for a college class on music censorship.

Politics have also resulted in music censorship. "Eve of Destruction", most notably recorded by Barry McGuire in 1965, was banned on some US radio stations for its lyrics critical of, among other things, the draft, the war in Vietnam, and the existence and use of nuclear weapons. Earlier, in 1963 and again on The Ed Sullivan Show, a scheduled appearance by Bob Dylan never took place because the song he wanted to sing, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", was deemed too politically sensitive to sing. Dylan walked off the show rather than agree to the censorship.



This clip of "Eve of Destruction", from the time tht the song was the #1 hit in the US, is a little strange. I'm not sure what the producers of the show thought the dancers would add to it. At least, it was allowed on the airwaves, which was more than some radio stations would allow at the time.

I could go on and on in detailing incidents in which interest groups or networks or governments themselves have attempted to restrict or completely stop the playing of some music over the airwaves. The BBC appears to have an especially lengthy record of this sort of activity. It once even banned an instrumental piece of music, the theme to the Frank Sinatra film, "The Man With the Golden Arm", in 1956, because it was connected to a film that had drug use as a theme. Doesn't make any sense to me, but then again, most censorship doesn't make much sense to me.

Life according to Keith Richards

There's a great video on You Tube that I stumbled on the other day, in which Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis interviews Keith Richards. DeCurtis starts out the interview by mentioning that, in an earlier interview Richards had answered a question about how he thought things had changed since the Rolling Stones had first started out by observing that "nobody reads anymore". DeCurtis then asks Richards to talk a little bit about what books and libraries have meant to him. Richards says that libraries are the "center of things", and that this is the way it should be.

And then Richards says that when he was growing up, libraries were the only place he "willingly obeyed the rules".

Reading Richards' autobiography, Life (Little, Brown and Company, 2010; 564 pages), written with James Fox, there is a continuing sense that this must be the truth. Richards, it seems, has broken just about every rule there is, in all aspects of life, and managed to come out the other side with intelligence and wit intact.

Richards makes no apologies for the things he's done, not about the drugs, not about relationships, not about anything. His philosophy seems to be that, yes, he'd done some stupid things, and some dangerous things, and that no one should try to emulate him in doing them, but that, hey, that's life, what can you do. And, in the end, it doesn't seem like all that bad a philosophy to have. Far too few of us can forgive ourselves for the things we've done, and Richards' ability to forgive himself for his transgressions is probably healthier in the long run.

Of course, he talks about the drugs. And there were a lot of drugs, including years of addiction to heroin despite many attemtps to clean up. This has been documented endlessly. But, he feels compelled to point out that, despite the reputation as a junkie that still follows him around, he's been clean of heroin for over thirty years, finally kicking it after an ultimatum from his manager. He admits that he loved heroin but that enough was, finally, enough. And, at one point, lest any of his fans think that they might like to try to emulate their hero's drug habits, he blatantly warns, "Don't try this at home" (p. 262).

But he also talks about the music, and about his long and rocky relationship with Mick Jagger, saying that from his point of view, Jagger makes it hard to be friends with him, but that they're brothers and that he would be there in an instant if Jagger really needed him and that he believes Jagger would be there for him in time of crisis. Richards documents, in fact, the times Jagger was there for him when he really needed him. This does not mean that Richards didn’t also point out what he sees as Jagger’s personality flaws.

The only time the book dragged for me, as a reader, was when Richards wrote about the technical side of his guitar-playing, about his discover and use of alternative tunings and so forth. It was interesting, but I don't play guitar, and so the discussion was too technical for me to really understand.

There is a lot in this book, stories of the road, stories of friends, those lost and those who have remained for decades. He talks particularly fondly about his relationship with Gram Parsons, who didn't manage to make it out the other side from drug addiction. He writes about meeting some of his own musical heroes, who didn't always live up to expectations as people, but who mostly met and exceeded expectations as musicians. And he talks about the women in his life, both those he had long relationships with and those who came into his life briefly while he was on the road with the Stones. In his case, at least, he claims that there wasn't nearly as much sex going on as one might assume.

Well, you can believe him or not about that, but in the end it all seems beside the point.
I've read a lot of books about rock and roll music and those who make it, and this is one of the best. It is written as if, as I commented to someone while I was reading it, someone put Richards before a tape recorder, turned it on, and said "Go!", and then edited it just enough to put events in a roughly chronological order. Richards' voice comes thorugh loud and clear, telling the story of his life as he sees it.

And an interesting life it has been, and continues to be.

Now, how old do you feel?...

I don't know why I listen to "classic rock" radio. It's just an invitation to feel old, engraved in gold and served up on a silver platter.

They just finished playing (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. Rolling Stones, of course. I can't say I've ever been a huge Stones fan, but whenever that song comes up, the volume gets cranked up. Good song. Rocks, even all these years later.



Yeah, all these years later. That's the key here. I did a little figuring, and now I feel like one of those fossils I've been reading about for the writing I'm doing now. Satisfaction was released in the US in June 1965. 47 years ago. I was just finishing up the third grade. Lyndon Johnson was President, for Pete's sake. Completely different world, really.

Of course, me being me, I see more in the song besides just a rocking good sound. If you've read this blog much, you know I tend to over-think things from time to time. Still, it has been my opinion for a long time that Mick Jagger wrote some insightful sociological commentary into this song, even if he didn't mean to.

No, really.

Consider the line, "...but he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me."

How does that not capture the essential tribalism human beings still hang on to, all these millennia since we became supposedly "civilized"? We get into arguments with people who don't support the same teams we do. We marginalize people who don't come from the same culture we do. I once knew a woman, a friend of my mother's, who thought that people from the town she grew up and lived in should only marry people from that same small town. "Marry a good Sanger boy," she told me one time. As if. That woman had done that, and ended up in a loveless, abusive marriage.

Of course, rock and roll is just as tribal as anything else. You've got your rock fans and your pop fans, who often look at each other like they're crazy. You've got people who have bumper stickers on their cars that say, "There's two kinds of music: Country and Western". There are jazz purists, and blues purists, and bluegrass purists, and on and on and on.

But, in that song, with its snide comments about the commercialism that was rampant when it was written and is even worse today, you have that line that can be taken either as a straightforward statement of how it is, or as a finger-pointing statement of how stupid it is to judge someone else's manhood by what brand of cigarette they smoke.

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter which way Jagger meant it. What matters is that the observation was made and presented for our consideration.

Music Sunday...

Occasionally, I will tell people that the closest thing I've ever had to a spiritual experience is the night in February, 1964, when I saw the Beatles for the first time, the first time they were on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The thing they sometimes don't really get is that I'm only half joking when I say that. It really was a major turning point in my life. At seven years old, hiding behind the piano to watch because I was supposed to be in bed asleep, I got turned on to music. I had been in bed, but I heard that wonderful noise coming from the TV and I had to get up and see what it was. Forget the fact that the next morning was a school day, and I had to be up early. I just had a sense that this was something important, something I had to get in on.

And, really, it was. Not just the fact that the Beatles changed the world. Well, yeah, they had help, but they're the ones who really started the change in what music meant to the world and could accomplish in it. But also the fact that they...their music...changed my life that night. From then on, really from nearly the next day, while my second grade friends were running home after school to watch cartoons, I was running home to watch the local afternoon music shows, L.A.' weekday-afternoon clones of American Bandstand. I'd say it took me less than a week to discover them after that Sunday night.

Some people don't believe me when I tell this story. I was just a little kid, they say, and young kids that little don't get music in the same way that older kids and adults do. But, I was a precocious kid in other ways, too. By that time, I was reading books out of the adult section of the library, and not only reading them but understanding them. So, I don't really think it was unusual that I responded to the Beatles and their music the way I did, when I did.

What brings all this up is that I stumbled onto Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" yesterday, while I was looking for something else on the Internet. That's one of the things I love about the Internet. You go looking for one thing and, completely serendipitously, come across something you didn't know you were looking for. Something wonderful. I only got through reading the first 50 titles on the list before I had to go off and do other things, but even that first fifty brought back memories, including,, at number sixteen on Rolling Stone's list, "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which The Beatles played that night in 1964.



Several of my all-time personal favorite songs are also in the top 50 of Rolling Stone's list. At number 21 is Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run", from 1975. Number 26 is "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay", by Otis Redding, which is from 1968 and didn't come out until after Redding was killed in a plane crash. At number 29 is another Beatles song, "Help", from 1965 and was the title song for their second film. U2's beautiful "One", which came out in 1991, is at number 36. And "Hotel California," by the Eagles, from 1976, is the 49th song on the Rolling Stone list.

There are seven Beatles' songs in those first 50 plus, at number 3, "Imagine", by John Lennon, from 1974. Those seven include, along with "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and "Help", which I've already mentioned, "Hey Jude" (at number 8), "Yesterday" (at number 13), "Let It Be" (at number 20), "In My Life" (at number 23), and "A Day in the Life" (at number 28).

The Beatles aren't the only act to have more than one song in the top 50. The Rolling Stones placed three songs there, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", (at number 2), "Sympathy for the Devil" (at number 32), and "Gimme Shelter" (at number 38). And there are two songs each from Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, and Elvis Presley. Actually, Dylan has three if you include, at number 47, The Jimi Hendrix Experience's version of "All Along the Watchtower", which Dylan wrote.

There is just one song in that first 50 that I don't know at all, The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset", which is at number 42 and came out in 1968. I'll be checking that one out. I'm not sure how I missed it. I was in seventh grade in 1968 and listened to the radio constantly.

I'll also be going back to the list, to see what the other 450 songs included are, and to see what other memories those titles bring back. It's a neat list. Almost like a time machine.

Or like a service in the First Church of Musical Greatness.