Here Comes The Night, Them (1965)

In researching my posts, I'm always intrigued to see how much an artist's parents and/or home life influenced his or her life's direction early on. One whose father had everything to do with his ascent to greatness is the former lead singer of Them, the iconic Van Morrison.

In I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity, by Theodore Gracyk, the author writes that kids from maritime locales in the UK, like Liverpool and Belfast, often had broader rock and roll roots than kids from London and other landlocked cities. In the former, the merchant seamen would bring home the latest recordings from across the pond, while Mick Jagger, for example, would have been more apt to send away for imports.

Morrison's father was a Belfast shipyard electrician and he'd had the opportunity to travel to the U.S. He became an avid record collector and exposed his son to rhythm and blues, folk music and jazz very early on. Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie - these were just some of the standard-issue sounds around the Morrison house. Needless to say, his son responded very positively. He received an acoustic guitar as a gift from his father, along with a copy of a manual that instructed him on the revolutionary fingerpicking style of Maybelle Carter, mother of June Carter Cash. Hey thanks, Dad!

Thus inspired, Morrison left school early and went professional at 16, playing saxophone in Irish showbands (like seated big bands, only they stood). Them essentially was formed when a Belfast hotel called the Maritime advertised for a house band, and Morrison was one of those who responded. They were called the Gamblers at first, then decided Them had more cachet. The group became a sensation of sorts; Morrison would improvise and fashion their sets off of the energy of the crowd. It is said his version of Gloria, which became a smash hit, was born on this particular stage.

I don't know how you really characterize what Van Morrison does - his stage presence and that devastating voice, his complete abandon to whatever his muse is ... I have a hard time putting into words how deeply he affects me - and has always affected me, from that first time he growled "Whoa here it comes" and Here Comes The Night just knocked me flat. So beautifully ominous, particularly when you're 12.

As an aside, I didn't realize that their version of the blues standard Baby Please Don't Go (which was Them's first actual hit) became the theme song for the popular British music variety series Ready Steady Go!, where they played as they were getting their commercial start. (Gloria was its B-side.)

Them didn't survive long after their commercial success took them on tour in America and the pressures of the music business broke the group apart. But before that happened, audiences here would have been exposed to some priceless musical interludes.

According to some archival information about the history of the Whisky A Go-Go in Hollywood, Them was the main event for three weeks in 1966, where on several occasions the fledgling Doors opened for them. According to this site, on June 18, 1966, the audience was treated to the two groups serving up a 20-minute version of Gloria and a 25-minute version of In the Midnight Hour. I imagine that Morrison-fest would have been unforgettable.

What's New Pussycat?, Tom Jones (1965)

I'm a Navy Seal and I just threw my panties at him. - YouTube commenter

Ah, the charismatic Tom Jones. I have always been a sucker for a showman - someone who commits to his material to such a degree that you can't help but become a convert even if the material itself is questionable or campy.

For that reason, What's New Pussycat? will always be a favorite. That signature growl: it's ridiculous - and it's sublime. As another YouTube commenter says, "Only Tom Jones knows how to make this such an awesome song."

It's probably worth mentioning that What's New Pussycat? had the advantage of having been written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David - who really were incapable of writing a bad song - for the score of the Peter Sellers hit movie. Jones had sung their To Wait For Love as the B-side of It's Not Unusual; they were impressed with his interpretation of a song that other artists had failed to nail in earlier attempts.

Many times before I've noted that the AM radio playlists during the 60s were as diverse as the streets of New York City. (What's New Pussycat? was #5 the week Satisfaction was #2 on the Billboard charts.) So if you grew up then, it was not unusual to hear Jones belting out his songs on radio and on his weekly variety series, This Is Tom Jones (1969-71). The audience did a lot of screaming. He was considered risqué in certain circles, and sometimes he was even banned, but it was all just good clean fun.

Yet for all the love thrown at Jones' various hits, there isn't a lot in his catalogue that did justice to that lustrous powerhouse of a voice. The arts and culture website Cosmopolis suggested that Jones has "... one of the most incredible and sexiest male voices in show business, comparable to greats like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley ... This comparison of course sheds a bad light on his accomplishments. For years he has worked with pitiful musicians and arrangements. Instead of becoming one of the all time greats, he has produced some of the worst kitsch on the market. His main problem: He is no songwriter and depends on material written by others."

Whether that was his main problem or not, in recent years Jones has tried his hand at his own material - check out songs he co-wrote with Wyclef Jean and Jerry Wonder Duplessis for his 2002 Mr. Jones album. According to Jones, "Wyclef and Jerry ... know how to work with me, my voice, my history, and they know how to stretch me while still making me find what's real." (Check out Jean's remix of Pussycat!)

In a BBC Radio interview around the time of his collaboration with the great piano player Jools Holland, Jones acknowledged that always having had so much material put in front of him didn't do much to inspire him to write on his own. Somewhere along the line that changed, but he stressed that he needs to write with others; the collaboration is essential for the ideas to flow, he said.

In trying to find what's real over the years through vast experimentation with musical styles, one thing Jones has never been hampered by is a lack of certainty as to his allure. A friend who saw him live in the 80s handed him some flowers from her perch in front of the stage. Was she ever surprised when he leaned over and gave her a kiss - a French kiss!

Classical Gas, Mason Williams (1968)

I don't know when the term "destination TV" was first coined, but one of the earliest manifestations of the concept for me was in 1967-69, when CBS aired The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

A show that packed a satirical punch so hard it is said Richard Nixon wanted it off the air, it was the baby of Tom and Dick Smothers and their uber-talented stable of writers, which included Steve Martin, Don Novello, Rob Reiner, Pat Paulsen, Bob Einstein, his brother Albert Brooks, and the head writer, Mason Williams. Week after week, the Smothers crew used comedy to skewer the Establishment and give voice to the counterculture.

And did it ever succeed - the censorship battles the brothers waged with CBS are legendary. After wising up to Tom Smothers' habit of turning in the shows too late to be edited before airtime, the network insisted on receiving full episodes days in advance for review by the censors. This was something that everyone in their audience knew about - that's how public it was. Tommy and Dickie were were always my heroes for never surrendering - until they were summarily thrown off the air on bogus breach of contract charges.

But back to the music. In those days it was not customary to present music on variety television unless it was something people were already familiar with, so there was no place for artists to perform new songs for a mass audience before they became hits. No place, that is, until the Smothers Brothers gave them one.

The Smothers' dedication to giving exposure to new artists did not go unnoticed by A&R executives from Warner Brothers-Reprise, which was establishing itself as a label that carried singer-songwriters, a category which had more or less fallen by the wayside during the early years of the British Invasion.

Williams was a folksinger-guitarist turned comedy writer (and the creator of the loopy theme song for the show). For his first album, one of the tracks involved no singing at all. It was called Classical Gas, and it became a smash hit, waking young people up to the beauty of instrumental guitar music.

Described by Williams as "half flamenco, half Flatt & Scruggs, and half classical," Classical Gas was a bonanza of rhythmic changes, and is considered by many to be a tutorial unto itself for learning to properly fingerpick. What was at best conceived as a novelty song became a classic.

For No One, Beatles (1966)

And in her eyes you see nothing
No sign of love behind the tears
Cried for no one
A love that should have lasted years

It was this past week in 1966 that an event many felt was a seminal one in the evolution of Beatles musicology occurred - the release of their album, Revolver.

I wasn't one of those people. I was underwhelmed, disappointed, even, in the tracks on Revolver. The fact that it marked a new phase in the Beatles' development as studio musicians just didn't resonate with me, because the majority of songs didn't resonate with me.

But lurking amidst the various ditties about taxes and yellow submarines was a gem called For No One. It was a song that Emmylou Harris once described as being about "love hurting real bad." It was notable for being such a stark departure from what surrounded it. And it was notable on its own merits, for nailing what it feels like when the look in your former love's eyes has gone dark and cold - even if tears are flowing from those same eyes.

Several things about this song made it interesting apart from its naked emotion. At first blush it appears to be outlining the all-too-familiar perspective of the one suffering - "Your day breaks, your mind aches" ... But we switch back and forth between hearing his anguish and watching her movements, presumably separate from his. A well done juxtaposition that made the song even more harrowing. Such power Paul McCartney packed into such a small space.

For No One also featured a haunting instrumental solo by Alan Civil, a French horn player of international renown who was asked by George Martin to become part of the recording session, because McCartney wanted a horn break.

Some say the song was so perfect because McCartney was writing about the demise of his relationship with the beautiful actress Jane Asher who, it must be said, I wanted to be for a full five years of my teenybopper life. (To her credit, Asher, who continues to act and is a much sought-after cake baker, has never sunk to a tell-all about their romance. If she hasn't by now, she probably never will. A true class act.) But unless they broke up at some point before the relationship ended completely (1968), the chronology is off. Regardless, it is McCartney at his best and purest.

As to Revolver, I will say that I also love everything about And Your Bird Can Sing. Everything. And Eleanor Rigby was a masterpiece in its own right. But because it was released simultaneously with Revolver as a single, I have always thought of it independently of the album because that is how I experienced it.

Beatles For Sale (1964): To Cover Or Not To Cover? That Is the Musical Question

Earlier this week, crossword puzzle constructor extraordinaire Brendan Emmett Quigley sparked a very minor but amusing firestorm when he mildly dissed the Beatles For Sale album.

In the aftermath, my friend Karmasartre felt compelled to comment on Brendan's blog. Anyone who reads my blog knows I have nothing whatsoever against covers and have written in glowing terms about many of them. One of the reasons is that, done with the appropriate flair, they exposed us to musical genres and artists we'd not likely have known about otherwise, for reasons of marketing (read: profiling).

I thought Karma's perspective was well worth bringing out into the open, as his points are well taken and insightful. They follow, edited for standalone publication.

******************
In a recent casual poll rating Beatles' albums, Beatles For Sale made a poor showing. The lack of appreciation was linked to the number of cover songs - six out of 14 - on the album. Hard to reconcile with the joy I remember hearing it.

When any of the Beatles albums came out, I slipped a twenty to a friend whose father was a pilot. He would pick up the "real" version (as opposed to the Capitol Records smush job) for me in London. So, I was able to hear the songs the way they were intended, plus enjoy the hyper-glossy finish of the EMI sleeve. In my dorm, Beatles For Sale got as much turntable time as the other early albums.

Until the Beatles came along, nearly all songs were composed by others. Neil Sedaka sang his own stuff, but many 45s were a combination of great writer/great performer. Purchasing an LP was a waste, as much of it would turn out to be crap. Think 11 B-sides and one A-side. There were exceptions: folk albums (and other genres, of course) where the entire album was good material ... and then along came Bob. But for rock and roll, covers meant the best music.

The Beatles, combining great songwriting and performing skills, were the first to make albums a great value. Part of the early allure, though, was not just their own compositions, but their ability to transpose r&b or soul songs into a more penetrable - for some - format. When their version of Twist and Shout first hit the airwaves, people were transfixed, overwhelmed, amazed. There was a bit of "Hey, if John can sing that, maybe I can" among a certain set of listeners ... those who couldn't conceive of matching Ron Isley's soaring notes.

The simple four-instrument lineup added to that fantasy. Could other magic music be similarly attainable? Hearing George transform some wild horn section's scream into a simple guitar line was a normalization of sound that reached the ears of listeners who wanted to replicate it in their parents' garage. It wasn't better, but it was approachable. And the Beatles had traditionally performed r&b songs as part of their repertoire. I wanted to hear them do Shout (and finally heard it on some VHS tape) and Desiree, some Sam Cooke numbers, and other beautiful, soulful sounds (e.g., Phil Specter, more Smokey, maybe an Impressions).

So when Beatles For Sale emerged, most of the covers were warmly welcomed. Rock and Roll Music was explosive and exciting; John's particular brand of gravel needed to see the light of every stylus. Mr. Moonlight was an unfortunate choice, to these ears (note from Estivator: I loved that thing). Always fun to tell people "If you were a Beatles song, you'd be Mr. Moonlight." The Kansas City medley (Estivator: see my 2007 review) was inspired and wild. Words of Love was a serviceable interpretation with excellent harmonies. While Honey Don't just seemed like a vehicle to give Ringo a microphone (Estivator: again, I loved this tune), Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby, showcasing George's obvious dedication to exploring Carl Perkins' guitar licks, was a delight. That these tunes were mixed with such a sweet selection of John/Paul numbers was gravy. The covers may not hold up as well, or appeal to new listeners, but at the time, they were gold.

How many of us have spent good time in the shower meditating on Eight Days A Week or What You're Doing, struggling to grasp how someone dreamt up those wondrous melodies? (Oh, not that many, sorry.) Those are just two of the gorgeous John/Paul songs on Beatles For Sale. This September, the remastered versions of the Beatles' catalog will finally be available. Having heard a few of their songs remastered, I know what a joy this is going to be. Can't wait to hear I'm A Loser (Estivator: along with No Reply, one of their best ever) and the rest in all their glory.

RIP Gordon Waller (1945-2009)

He was my best friend at school almost half a century ago. He was not only my musical partner but played a key role in my conversion from only a snooty jazz fan to a true rock and roll believer as well. Without Gordon I would never have begun my career in the music business in the first place. ... The idea that I shall never get to sing those songs with him again ... is an unthinkable change in my life with which I have not even begun to come to terms. - excerpt from statement of Peter Asher, on the death of Gordon Waller

This is so peculiar and eerily prescient - only last week I was thinking about all the noteworthy Peter and Gordon songs that I might write about and had been listening to various of their many Top 40 songs from the mid-60s.

The duo with the mellifluous harmonies were the British equivalent of the Everly Brothers, some felt, and certainly both credited Don and Phil Everly with being direct influences on their style.

Oddly, Peter and Gordon were the first British Invasion musicians after the Beatles to have a #1 hit in the U.S. - something I neither remembered nor would have guessed to be true. (I'd have said maybe the Animals, with House of the Rising Sun, but actually it took another 3 months for them to be the third group of British artists to top the charts). How would their story have been different if Peter Asher's sister Jane hadn't been Paul McCartney's girlfriend in those early Beatlemaniacal days? Fortunately, they didn't have to find out, and shared their talents with the whole world.

Mates from boarding school, Peter and Gordon discovered each other's musical bents and began performing together early. At first, they had to scale the wall on school grounds to work their late-hours coffeehouse and pub dates. Later, they were noticed in a ritzy supper club by a man who repped for EMI, one of the UK's three major labels at the time. Still teenagers, they were signed and suddenly in need of songs to take to their first session. McCartney had previously played a version of World Without Love for them, they liked it (Paul and John, not so much, apparently) and he offered it up to them for their maiden voyage in the studio.

Although A World Without Love became the breakout #1 hit, I always thought the less Beatle-esque songs like I Go To Pieces (by Del Shannon) and To Know You Is To Love You (by Phil Spector) showcased their vocal talents most effectively. The latter is a good vehicle from which to appreciate Waller's booming baritone. Both are beautifully rendered.

Connected as they were to the Beatles, they toured the world with the Fab Four as well as other acts, and became internationally recognizable.

Waller pursued a solo career after the duo split but he never found the kind of success he had known with Peter and Gordon. In addition to writing and performing his own music, he became involved in musical theatre. Asher headed up A&R for Apple Records and for decades has been a fixture in the music industry, producing California acts such as Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. Friends forever, in 2005 Peter and Gordon reunited for a performance to benefit the Dave Clark Five's Mike Smith, who had been seriously injured in a fall, and continued to perform intermittently as a duo for special occasions.

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Rolling Stones (1965)

Though it seems like Keith Richards is the sort of guy who should have passed over to the other side a long time ago given his various excesses, as fate would have it, he's still with us and for my money has always been one of the great guitar gods. Blues-rock guitar gods, anyway.

And so it's his famous grinding riff in Satisfaction - conceived, he has claimed, while asleep; why am I not surprised? - that defined one of the anthems of rock in the mid-60s, giving the Stones their first #1 on the charts 44 years ago yesterday and flipping the bird at the comparatively sweet Beatles. (I Feel Fine, Eight Days A Week and Ticket To Ride had already been #1 that year.)

The Stones had found their way into the top 10 with The Last Time and their cover of Time Is On My Side, both killer songs, but #1 had eluded them. Debates over which band was better were common as was, after Satisfaction, ongoing interest in who was #1 or close to it at any given time. (The Beatles would have more singles top the charts that year than the Stones.)

A Battle of These Particular Bands seems silly when you think about it now, but the menacing, edgy Stones were the anti-Beatles and the juxtaposition of the two was interesting to ponder back in the day. Newsweek didn't call the Beatles "leering." The Stones? Oh yeah they did.

Although being an inductee of the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress (2006) would seem to fly in the face of that leering sensibility, nonetheless Satisfaction was, 44 years ago and today, one of the best examples of disaffectedness that the 60s had to offer.

The song was actually railing against America's empty values, but somehow I don't think that's what most kids took away from it. I know I didn't, anyway. It was one of those songs that simply made it OK to give voice to the idea that life is a disappointment on so many levels. (Kind of a musical version of the brain of Holden Caulfield.) And it's also one of those songs that if, say, you're having a bad day 44 years later, still taps into that belligerent streak that some of us (read: I) have always had, for better or worse.

What I didn't know is that the song wasn't initially viewed as anything special, at least not by Richards and Mick Jagger.

On their third U.S. tour, they stopped into various recording studios along their route to lay down tracks for whatever was percolating in their brains at the time. Following a Chicago concert in 1965, that studio was Chess, where some of their own heroes, such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, recorded - as did McKinley Morganfield aka Muddy Waters, after whose Rollin' Stone, the first single Chess ever released, the Stones had named themselves.

Here the song's first take germinated but it was nothing like what was eventually released. The finishing touches didn't happen until they hit L.A. and RCA's studios. Keith had recently acquired a Gibson Maestro FuzzTone pedal, and suddenly the song morphed aggressive. However, the story goes that the guitar riff was merely a stand-in for the horns that he was actually envisioning. In any case, he didn't see it as A-side fare. For one thing, he thought it was too much a knockoff of Martha and the Vandellas' Dancing in the Street.

In reality, Satisfaction was probably the synthesis of many influences that could have been soaked up in those days. Nothing unusual about that. Here's Keith briefly demonstrating the song's bluesy roots, from what source I do not know.