40 Year Itch : John Fogerty's One Man Band

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Robert Christgau noticed it right away. All seven of the men on the cover of The Blue Ridge Rangers album look like John Fogerty. That's because they are John Fogerty. For his first post CCR album, a collection of 1950's country and western and gospel tunes, John Fogerty played every instrument. But before you conclude it's all an exercise in egotism, you should know the original album cover made no mention of Fogerty.

In a variety of interviews he explained:

I didn't want people to be playing the record just because it was John Fogerty. I didn't want to be living forever in the shadow of something I did last year, never allowed to go beyond the boundaries that had been set with Creedence. For a lot of reasons, I didn't want to get in my own way.

       Fogerty had already learned to play the Dobro in CCR ( heard in "Lookin' Out My Back Door"). In 1971 he taught himself to play pedal steel. On the Japan tour, he learned to play the banjo. He'd only been playing the fiddle a little over a month before he started recording the album

      Part of the inspiration was the fun he and the band ( and opening act Tony Joe White) had after the concerts, jamming in hotel rooms. During these so called "Shit Kicker sessions", the boys even played Hank Williams's "Jambalaya" which became a Top 20 hit for the Blue Ridge Rangers. The B Side, a cover of "Workin' On a Building" is even better...with Fogerty multi-tracking his own voice for the gospel choir.

 Just check out the first 15 seconds here:



  The album peaked at #47 and received mostly positive reviews. For Rolling Stone, Jon Landau wrote "the record is a crystal-clear distillation of one man's view of the rock and roll past, the source of his strength and his faith."

What's missing to these ears is the spontaneity that comes when talented musicians play off of each other. Sill a worthy listen.

A lot of the information for this post came from Hank Bordowitz's book Bad Moon Rising: The Unauthorized History of Creedence Clearwater Revival

40 Year Itch : Just Call On Me, Brother

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We had been up all night the night before rehearsing together, even arguing with each other --each of us with only one thing in mind, to do our best.

Bill Withers

                On a rainy Friday Evening in early October, 1972, Bill Withers -- just two years from working full time for an aviation company--took the stage at Carnegie Hall with his crack band. Nervous? More like excited. Withers has always been disarmingly himself. Still Bill. He's the kind of guy you want to meet for beer and conversation. The kind of a guy you want for a friend. 

            And that night Withers returned over and over again to the theme of friendship. Brotherhood. Family. Would  today's popular male artists ever record a song with lyrics like those of  "For My Friend"?:

                                                              One of us has to say he's sorry 
                                                              Or we will never be friends again 
                                                              Lets have a drink and talk it over 
                                                              I want to keep you for my friend

Then there's " I Can't Write Left-Handed" sung from the point of a view of an injured soldier who seems more concerned about his younger brother than himself:

                                          Would you please write a letter, write a letter to my mother?
                                            Tell her to tell, tell her to tell, tell her to tell the family lawyer 
                                            Trying to get, trying to get a deferment for my younger brother

   The magical video below, from a 1973 BBC concert includes the songs "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lonely Town, Lonely Street", "Grandma's Hands", "Use Me", "Let Me In Your Life", "Lean On Me", and "Harlem"  but, best of all, you can see Bill Withers sitting for a spell and just talking like a friend.

          Live at Carnegie Hall captures an even more special evening. There may have been thousands in the audience-- all there presumably to hear the hits (an eight minute jamming version of "Use Me", "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lean On Me") but it wasn't long before they were taken in by the man from Slab Fork, West Virginia.

   By the time we got into "Harlem", us and the audience had become all happy members of one big band all on one stage. In about an hour and a half that audience transformed us all from nervous, serious musicians into free and happy people. I know I'll never forget it.

40 Year Itch: A Thousand Dreams Turn Blue

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                        For just over half an hour you'd swear 
                        you were listening to a superstar
 -The Mojo Collection

   Terry Reid is the electrifying vocalist and guitarist who famously not only turned down the job of lead vocalist for what would become Led Zeppelin but pointed Jimmy Page to the singer in a band called Hobbstweedle instead. That singer was Robert Plant.
    By 1973 Led Zeppelin was the biggest band in the world and Terry Reid, after being held up for years because of litigation,  had signed with Atlantic Records.

With the help of Jackson Browne's famous sideman David Lindley, and producer Tom Down,  Reid recorded River,  an album of spontaneous, shimmering beauty that will appeal to those who love John Martyn's Solid Air. Just give a listen to the title track:




   River did not sell well and is now considered a cult classic. Side One rocks not unlike Edwin McCain's early efforts but Side Two is where the real beauty lies.If the title track does as much for you as it does for me, it will be worth your while to check out the entire album.

My Top 10 : Clare Grogan of Altered Images

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Altered Images hit the Top 10 in 1983 with "Don't Talk To Me About Love", their most listenable hit song if only because Clare Grogan almost completely dispensed with the baby voice sound heard on "Happy Birthday". As Spring of '83 approached, Grogan ( who played "Susan" in the great movie Gregory's Girl) provided Smash Hits with a list of her ten favorite songs which comes to us courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happened

Altered Images : Don't Talk To Me About Love

Shangri-Las's : Past Present and Future

Orange Juice : Flesh of My Flesh

Bluebells: Everybody's Somebody's Fool

40 Year Itch: The Red And The Blue

For too many people, "A Day In The Life" and not "Getting Better" is the song they expect to hear following "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds". Here's why. On April 2, 1973 The Beatles released the Red and Blue albums, compilations that would top the charts in the US despite the then shocking $9.98 price tags.  Angus McBean took both photos from the now demolished EMI House. The first in 1963 for Please Please Me and the second in 1969.

The albums were - in part-a response to the bootleg Alpha Omega collection of 60 random Beatles songs that were sold on late night television.

All Killer No Filler? Almost. How did "Octopus's Garden" and "Magical Mystery Tour" get on the Blue album instead of say, "Baby You're a Rich Man"? And where's "Rain" on the Red? Or "I'm Down"? Or "Taxman"? In any case, The Blue Album has sold 15 million copies. The Red Album 14 million.

Paul McCartney's Long Lost Demo

Paul McCartney : One Legged Lady ( demo)

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To promote his upcoming  "Out There" World Tour, Sir Paul McCartney granted music bloggers phone interviews not to exceed two minutes. Here now is the all too brief interview 1001Songs did.

1001Songs
     Thank you so much for your time Sir Paul. May I ask what are you looking forward to the most about this tour?

Paul: 
   Lovely to be here. Well, you know. We'll be playing in parts of the world I haven't seen yet. We've got three gigs in Brazil. And Bonnaroo ( The Tennessee music festival) sounds like a blast. We'll be adding more dates and I hope we can do a show near you. People say "Why do you still do it?" and I say "Come down to one of our shows and you'll see!"

Paul talking to 1001Songs

1001Songs
    In interviews you've done about songwriting, you've talked about "the ether". Waking up and having "Yesterday" in your head. How does that happen?

Paul:
    I dunno. Some songs are just there and all I have to do is reach up and grab them. It's funny you know. People think I really work hard at songwriting. Critics and fans are always trying to read special meaning into my songs. Like "My Love"  is about Linda and "Dear Friend" is about John. Or "One Legged Lady" is about Heather...

1001Songs
   "One Legged Lady"? I don't think I've heard that one...

Paul
    Oh yeah ( sings) She's got two eyes and two ears
                              But she's only got one leg


1001Songs
     Nice. But that's not about Heather Mills?

Paul
   No no no yeah. I don't know where people get these strange ideas

1001Songs
   Maybe because your ex wife is a one legged lady.

Paul.
   Yeah. Well I did notice that you know.No no no yeah but that could be about any one legged lady
   (sings)
          She's got two arms and two heads
           But she's only got one leg.    

Yeah. There must be thousands of one legged ladies out there in the world right now.    

1001Songs
     Two heads not two hands?

Paul
   Yeah. I thought that was a bit crummy at first but then I thought John would have said "That's the best part!"


1001Songs
Well I'm being told to wrap things up. Thank you so much Sir Paul. I think I speak for all of us, when I say you've enriched all of our lives with your songs and we'd love to hear "One Legged Lady" someday.

Paul:
   Cheers mate. I'll have me publicist send you the demo.


 
   

40 Year Itch : Those We Missed from March 1973

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"The Kiss" may the most beautiful song released in 1973. It's from singer/songwriter Judee Sill's second album Heart Food, one of Sufjan Stevens's picks for a 2006 Spin Magazine article asking musicians about the music that changed their lives:

                The more you listen to her songs, the more you realize all the weird stuff going on.
                 She was really into baroque music, or at least had those sensibilities. When I started
                 writing songs, I started looking into people like her, trying to figure out what kind
                 of an environment they were writing in.



  Sill's life was full of tragedy. Everyone she loved died young. She got hooked on heroin and died in 1979.
                                         

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  After a two year hiatus, Scottish troubadour Donovan returned with Cosmic Wheels,  a very mixed batch of songs. You could always hear just a trace of Donovan in the music of T.Rex. Now it's the other way around. Especially on the worthy title track. But there's crap here too. The worst of it is "Intergalactic Laxative":


If shitting is your problem
When you're out there in the stars,
Oh, the intergalactic laxative
 Will get you from here to Mars.




While recording Cosmic Wheels, Donovan popped in on Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies session and sang on the title track. While Billion Dollar Babies hit #1 in the US, Cosmic Wheels would be the last Donovan album to reach the top 20.

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Former Zombies keyboardist Rod Argent and his band followed up their massive hit "Hold Your Head Up" with an album full of dull prog rock. The exception is the nearly seven minute opening track , which Kiss covered in 1991 for the soundtrack to Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.




The reissued In Deep comes with "Hold Your Head Up" so there's that in its favor.

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Jeff Beck teams up with former Vanilla Fudge/Cactus members Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice for a power trio album.  You can argue that on 1968's Truth, Jeff Beck created the hard rock sound that made Led Zeppelin so famous. Maybe this was his effort at reclaiming the glory. But even the best stuff ( "Sweet Sweet Surrender", "Black Cat Moan") now sounds like some kind of 70's rock cliche.



  Stevie Wonder gave Beck "Superstition"( also featured on this album) and only decided later that he would record his own version. Which one do you know?