Underneath the Bridge

Underneath the bridge /
The tarp has sprung a leak
-"Something in the way"    

 When you visit Aberdeen WA you get a peek at the tortured soul of its most famous son. This is a dreary place that doesn't offer teenagers much in the way of hope or good times. Just a lot of rain , logging trucks and a muddy river that doesn't seem to be headed anywhere.

 Where the hell does a smart kid go to get some time to himself?

For Kurt Cobain that place was evidently underneath a bridge that crosses the Wishkah Bridge. He even claimed he lived there. His house was actually two blocks away. But Cobain did spend time here, writing lyrics as he listened to cars rumble overhead,  and when he died one third of his ashes was shaken into the river.

When Cobain died the Young Street Bridge became an unofficial memorial. People would come and leave messages, flowers and other items -- in the same way people visit Jim Morrison's Grave at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

  Some of the messages I read:

"Kurt you got me through my teens and early 20's"

"You were too big for this town"

"Welcome to the ghost town. The trees are the most alive"

I ran into Texan Edward Shanahan and his girlfriend Christina there. Shanahan says he bought Nevermind when it came out.

"That was a big deal in the house," he says. "You couldn't have a naked baby swimming in the water."

His mom threw the CD out.

"And like a good ole rebellious teenager I just went down the street and bought another one."

For the longest time, there was no official memorial for Kurt Cobain in Aberdeen. Don Sucher, who owns a Star Wars shop in town, got so many questions about Cobain he made a map to tell them where to find the bridge and the music store where Kurt bought his first guitar.

"Nobody had done anything to celebrate Kurt's life or whatever." he says. Soon Don gets around to telling his Cobain story:

"Back when he was a junior in high school, him and Kris (Novoselic) came in the furniture I was managing. They were looking for a Summer job. I think we furthered their music career because moving hide-a-beds isn't easy. Kurt lasted one day and Kris lasted two so yeah I didn't think it was their cup of tea doing manual labor back then."

Don has some real respect for Cobain

"What most people in the community don't realize is what he did to a whole generation of people all over the world. It's like what Elvis did for me."

  Finally in 2009 Aberdeen erected a memorial to Cobain. Here's what it says:

             

40 Year Itch : David Bowie's "Diary"

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From 1973 to 1973, David Bowie was supposedly contributing an exclusive weekly diary to the UK teen music magazine Mirabelle. It wasn't until 1998 that Bowie confessed his American publicist Cherry Vanilla, a former member of the Andy Warhol entourage, wrote the column. "The cute thing," Bowie said, "is that every now and then she'd write how I had just come from seeing this great new performer whom everyone should know about...Cherry Vanilla".

Cherry Vanilla and Bowie

8th September 1973 

   I've just remembered that I never told you about the party I had at the Café Royal after my last concert, so I'll make this week's letter about that...

 Oh, what a night it turned out to be! Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, Jeff Beck, Lulu, Spike Milligan, Dana Gillespie, Ryan O'Neal, Elliott Gould, Ringo Starr and Barbra Streisand... all there at my last concert party at the luxurious Café Royal - everyone looking so lovely in their sparkling evening clothes and colourful make-up... dancing, sipping champagne and tasting delicious salmon and big fresh strawberries and cream. The disc jockey played lots of really good soul and rock 'n' roll records, and the dance floor was absolutely packed all night. Cherry Vanilla (my American publicist, a wonderful lady) fell off her gold platforms and split her strapless Chinese dress right up the front, but got up and just kept on dancing and grooving, black suspenders peaking out from newly-opened slit, and that ever wide smile on her face! 

   I got a little off balance myself when Mick and Bianca and Angie and I were all dancing together to 'Honky Tonk Woman' - but managed to stay on my high heels for a few more songs. Most of the evening I spent answering everyone's questions about my decision to stop touring and concentrate on movies and recording. 

  Angie and I arrived a little late because we had gone back to our hotel to change into our party clothes, and then got very involved in conversation with Mick and The Spiders and Gloria (my secretary) - you can't imagine how many telephone calls we received, even though we thought nobody knew where we were. 

   When we made our entrance, Angie in a brand new chartreuse and brown knit ensemble by Freddy, me in my ice-blue iridescent Freddy suit, they announced us over the speaker system, and everyone stood up and applauded.

    Oh dear, I'm running out of space again. Looks like I'll have to save the rest for next week. 

Twiggy and Bowie shot for album cover Pin Ups

 September 22   

  Well, friends, I don't feel I've done justice to that fantastic chateau we stayed at in France. I think I would like to tell you some more - quite a bit more - about it. 

     The Chateau D'Herouville was the name, and what a lovely place to record an album. Warm, summer sunshine, a lovely chateau and a fantastic 16 track recording studio. Enough to please any hard-working, city-weary, young musician. The chateau is in the village of Herouville just outside Paris. We spent three wonderful weeks there, recording my new album 'Pin-Ups'. It's all those fun and fabulous songs from the mid-sixties that never really got quite the attention their lovely easy beats deserved. Ronno, Trevor and Mike Garson were there with us, and Aynsley Dunbar came along to play drums. 

    There seemed to be an endless stream of visitors, like Jean Millington (Fanny), Nico, that really wonderful singer, with a friend of hers, Kid Jensen (of Radio Luxembourg fame) and a lovely French singer called Christine.

    Angie and Zowie came down every weekend, and one day we were photographed together by Terry O'Neil for the Daily Mirror. Angie wore some lovely things from the Paris collections, and I wore my favourite Freddy suit. Oh, and Justin De Villeneuve photographed me with his favourite model 'Twig The Wonder Kid' (Twiggy) for a Vogue magazine cover. 

    Dinners were really momentous occasions, with everyone seated at a super-long table with candles and dry wine, delicious food and all those beautiful faces with their suntanned cheeks and twinkling eyes. 

   The food was very French... though they did seem to serve an awful lot of potatoes! The vegetables and fruits were very fresh and lush, though - and with that famous Paris bread, everything tastes great. 

   It's a good thing we had a nice big swimming pool outside to let everybody burn up some calories each day - everyone but me, of course. I only ventured in once when the heat of the day got to be a bit too much. But Ronno and Jamie (my road manager) had a few good workouts every day.

40 Year Itch: Top 5 New UK Singles

These are the Top 5 singles debuting on the UK charts for the week ending September 15. The #1 song in the UK was Donny Osmond's "Young Love".

1. Rod Stewart "Oh No Not My Baby" (UK#22). A self produced single of the 1964 Goffin-King classic climed all the way to #5 in the UK and #59 in the US.

2. The Jackson 5 "Skywriter" ( UK#38) The funky third single from Skywriter would peak at #25 in the UKbut failed to chart at all in the US

3. Manfred Mann's Earth Band : Joybringer (UK#39)  A non-album single from busy Manfred Mann's Earth Band who also released two albums in 1973, Messin' ( Get Your Rocks Off was the US title) and Solar Flare. "Joybringer" would peak in the UK at #9.

4. Mott the Hoople "All the Way from Memphis" (UK#40) The sad story of a lost guitar would peak at #10 in the UK for Mott the Hoople. From the album Mott, one of 1973's best.

5. Status Quo: Caroline (UK#44) From the album Hello, this was a Top 5 hit for Status Quo. It started a golden streak for the band in the UK that lasted the rest of the decade. The US ignored the band the entire time.

   Further down the chart: two notable tunes:
     #46 Elton John: Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting
     #47 Wings: Live and Let Die

40 Year Itch : A Stone, Howling, Joyous Monster

"Bruce Springsteen has delivered another stone, howling, joyous monster of a record"

-Bruce Pollock, The New York Times

On September 11, 1973 Bruce Springsteen released his second album, The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. And if you think the title is a mouthful, so are the lyrics this skinny New Jersey kid tried to stuff in his epic seven minute + tunes.

The album's highlight is "Rosalita ( Come Out Tonight) , a musical autobiography, in which the singer with the big record company advance, tries to convince his girl to run away with him. It is also, as Springsteen noted in Songs, a "kiss-off to everybody who counted you out, put you down or decided you weren't good enough".

Remember: this album didn't sell at first. Despite outstanding review from the New York Times, Crawdaddy and the Village Voice, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle failed to even dent the Top 200 Album chart when it was released. 

The album kicks off with "The E Street Shuffle", the song that would eventually give his backing band a name. I've always liked the 57 second nod to Curtis Mayfield at the end.  

The first cut is the shortest. To make room for epics like the 9:55 "New York City Serenade" and the 7:47 "Incident of 57th Street", Springsteen had to jettison other cuts recorded during the sessions. Including some ( like concert favorite "Thundercrack" and "The Fever" that might have made this a better-selling album).

The first version of Wild was received by CBS executive Charlie Koppleman in this way:

"Fellas, we may have run to the end of our days with Bruce Springsteen. This is not an album we are going to put out."

Springsteen restructured the album. What he kept and what he dropped is  a mystery to me.

There's certainly no shortage of nicknamed characters on Wild. There's Spanish Johnny, Power Thirteen, Little Angel, Wild Billy, Puerto Rican Jane, Sloppy Sue and Big Bones Billy .

 With his first two albums selling poorly, his big advance dissolving to nothing, Springsteen began focusing on his stage show. First to go was drummer Vini "Mad Dog "Lopez. Ernest "Boom Boom" Carter helped the E Street band tighten up their sound. Springsteen also crafted stories he could tell between the songs . Then there were the oldies that brought the crowd to its collective feet. (In a November show at Max's Kansas City, with Halls and Oates opening, it was Wilson Pickett's "634-5789")

By the Spring of 1974, Springsteen "had his act together." Just in time for critic Jon Landau to catch a show and exclaim:

"I saw rock and roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen."

40 Year Itch: Last of the Rock Stars

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Murphy's Aquashow is easily the best Dylan LP since John Wesley Harding

-Paul Nelson, Rolling Stone

I'll say this upfront: Aquashow will make my year end list of the Top 10 albums of 1973. That I knew nothing of this album until 2013 should embarrass the hell out of me. After all, it was met by critics gushing over the "new Dylan". OK. I'm embarrassed. But it's not like I can buy the album on Amazon. All they offer is Diamonds By The Yard, an Elliot Murphy collection featuring four Aquashow tracks. And , with the exception of "Last of the Rock Stars", not what I would consider the best four either. 

Aquashow is right up my alley. Great songs. Great lyrics. Great playing. As many have noted before me: Murphy sounds like he's doffing a cap to the great mid 60's Dylan era . You've got Murphy's harmonica soloing right at the top and Frank Owens ( who played on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone") on Hammond B 3 swirling along and lyrics that speak to an entire generation of  suburbanites.

This is my kind of music! So how did I miss it? I can only blame Polydor Records. Maybe they were too busy promoting James Brown and the Bee Gees to realize what they had on their hands. Industry shill Billboard Magazine gave Murphy this kiss off one sentence review:

Good set from newcomer highlighted by simple rock tunes such as "Hangin' Out" and skilled vocals.

(On the same page Burt Reynolds got three sentences in a favorable review for his album --which made 1001Songs Top 5 Worst albums of 1973)

The son of the Elliot Murphy who owned the New York water ballet arena Aqua Show, our hero had the financial stability and talent to go after his artistic dreams. 

From 1939-64, Aqua Show could be seen on the grounds of the World's Fair 

After checking out the world and even appearing in Fellini's Roma, Murphy and his brother Matthew put together a band, Elliot Murphy's Aquashow, part of the same Mercer Arts Center scene that spawned the New York Dolls and Patti Smith. While the album Aquashow was met with mostly critical fervor ( an A- rating from Dean Christgau), US stardom was not to come. Americans had found their new Dylan in a skinny New Jersey songwriter names Bruce.

Murphy and Springsteen

   Murphy moved to Paris. He still lives there. He's recorded 30 albums since Aquashow including Selling the Gold ( 1996) which has cameos from both Bruce Springsteen and the Violent Femmes Gordon Gano. He's got his own website ElliotMurphy.com where he offers free mp3 downloads including an updated, and slower, version of "Last of the Rock Stars"

But that's decades ahead of where we're standing. The Fall of 1973. When a besotted Rolling Stone critic is first hearing an album that will inspire him to label Murphy with the "new Dylan" tag. On his website. Murphy writes:

I never thought I sounded much like Bob Dylan until the famous Rolling Stone Review came out calling me "the new Bob Dylan" and then the shit hit the fan and everybody in the music business wanted to know who I was. My hero Lou Reed came to see me play one night at Max's Kansas City and said I needed a new record company and introduced me to his manager Dennis Katz who arranged for RCA to buy my contract from Polydor for over one hundred thousand dollars. In nine months my life had changed completely and the hopes and dreams I expressed in Last of the Rock Stars had become reality.

40 Year Itch: Scandinavian Prog Rock

This month 1001Songs is flying all around the world on its supersonic internet spacecraft to discover how different regions responded to the influence of progressive rock bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis and Yes.

And our phasers are locked on STUN!

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Our first stop is Sweden where the avant prog band Samla Mammas Manna released their masterpiece Maltid. With Maltid, you get musicianship worthy of  great Canterbury bands like Soft Machine. And it's probably best you focus on that. Because for some odd reason, the band sings in an ear-wrenching falsetto. The epic eight minute "Minareten" has less of this than most cuts and was included on the box set The Essence of Swedish Progressive Music 1967-1979: Pregnant Rainbows for Colourblind Dreamers  

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Also from Sweden comes the instrumental prog rock band Kvartetten Som Sprangde (The Quartet Who Blew)  and their album Kattvals ( Cat Drums). The band doesn't blow at all ( And what's with the self effacing band names of 1973? Average White Band, Budgie) KSS is a trio made up of a guitarist, Hammond organ player ( with a bass pedal) and a drummer. With no Swedish lyrics and no high pitched falsetto vocals, I might but this one first.

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We're staying in Sweden because we have hopes to meet the Swedish bikini team and because this is the country where Kebnekaise ( the band, not the mountain) released their second album, artfully named Kebnekaise II. This is prog with a Swedish folk music take + African drumming. And it works!

Now we head to Denmark to see how the band Dr Dopo Jam responds to some of the intricate horn charts of early Chicago. There's just enough goofiness and variety in instrumentation here to make Zappa fans happy. Apparently that had a funny stage act as well.

40 Year Itch: Jugglers Lying All Over the Place

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Scottish funk? And...I'm out. That, apparently, was the reaction to the debut album by the Average White Band, Show Your Hand. After opening for Eric Clapton at his comeback concert at the Rainbow Theatre, the band with the self-effacing name recorded their first album. And nobody noticed.

I mean some people probably noticed Hamish Stuart's short-lived Fro. Maybe a few took offense at the album cover. But nobody noticed the very decent if derivative funk within the grooves of the record.

Except one guy. Bruce McCaskell, Clapton's manager. McCaskell took on the band and sent them to LA to record their follow-up, a future Rolling Stone Record Guide 5 Star LP called AWB which would feature the million selling #1 single "Pick Up the Pieces".

That's when the Average White Band's original label re-released the debut as Put It Where You Want It which managed to sneak  into the Top 40 in 1975.

If I'm still writing this blog next year we will visit AWB and the awful LA party in September of 1974 which the band's young drummer died of a heroin overdose. If not, AWB followed up their second album with another Top 10 album  and title cut single , Cut the Cake, before breaking up. Most of the band members became successful sidemen and session players with Stuart joining Paul McCartney for Flowers in the Dirt and subsequent tours.