Santana IV

I first got into Santana when I moved to Colorado in 1978.  Shortly thereafter, I learned their best work was their first four albums between 1969-72 [Santana, Abraxas, Santana III, and Caravanserai].  One of the oldest clichés in the music business when a band splits up is “musical differences,” but in Santana’s case it was the truth.  Gregg Rolie and Neal Schon were perfectly happy in sticking with the Latin rock formula, while Carlos Santana and Michael Shrieve were more interested in jazz, specifically that of Miles Davis and John Coltrane.  And so, after four albums, the musicians went their separate ways [no pun intended].  Santana and Shrieve stuck around and cut Love Devotion Surrender with John McLaughlin [to include their take on Coltrane’s A Love Supreme], while Rolie and Schon formed Journey.  The Santana band of old [especially after Neal Schon came on board in 1971] was like the original Allman Brothers Band.  There were two lead guitar players who complemented, not competed against, each other.  Both bands had a back line of thunderous percussion, and both had a fine singing organist/songwriter named Gregg.  

What followed is well-known to anyone who has been paying attention.  Journey played radio-friendly chick music, especially after Steve Perry arrived.  It sold by the truckload, but so does Britney Spears.  Santana had hits and misses, mostly misses.  Zebop! was a good record, but let’s face it – Winning is a far cry from Black Magic Woman.  As time went by, Santana the band became Santana the brand name, and not a very marketable one at that.  Then Carlos signed with Arista Records and Clive Davis, the guy who gave us Whitney Houston [really boring chick music].  It was his idea to pair Carlos with guest stars to get him back on the radio.  The formula worked once with Supernatural.  But Clive being the record company boss, wanted more of the same thing and the formula ran into the ground.  Carlos was a guest on his own albums.  Oh the humanity!  There was a glimmer of hope with Shape Shifter, a mostly-instrumental album that reminds us that Carlos is a damn fine guitar player who has more than one lick to play.  Then there was the abominable Corazón, the Spanish-language version of Supernatural [Tony shudders…].  

Imagine my surprise when over a year ago I read Carlos was getting the band back together.  It was the same feeling I had when Deep Purple Mk II reunited and made Perfect Strangers back in 1984.  Gregg Rolie, the best singer and organ player Santana ever had or will ever have, was back, as was Michael Shrieve, Mike Carabello, and Neal Schon.  David Brown died in 2000, and Jose Chepito Areas is missing in action.  Filling those spots are percussionist Karl Perazzo and bassist Benny Rietveld from the last Santana band.  

My hopes for Santana IV – that it not suck, that is compares favorably with the first four albums, and that there’s nothing slightly resembling Smooth.  The results?  Where has this album been since 1972?  Gregg Rolie is singing better now in his 60s than he did in his 20s.  The fiery Hammond B3 is back, Neal Schon is pushing Carlos like he hasn’t been pushed for a long time.  It took me awhile, but I think I can tell the guitarists apart.  Put on your headphones and listen to Neal Schon panned all the way to the right, Carlos is panned to the left.  Sometimes the two guitarists meet in the middle.  The percussion is flawless.  Santana IV sounds like a cross-between their commercial peak Santana III and the adventurous Caravanserai.  For some reviewers, there’s too much music on this disc. – screw them! For my money, you can’t have enough Santana music of this quality.  

Yambu – Chanting, lots of it.  But it serves notice that the real Santana is back!  

Shake It – Gregg Rolie telegraphs how the song is going to go in the first line - Doesn’t matter what I know/Gonna find the groove that don’t let go… Where has this band been the last 45 years?  This is the biggest, nastiest, most monstrous groove Santana and his musicians of choice have played since the 1987 instrumental Touchdown Raiders.  Not only is the groove back, but also Neal Schon has lit a fire under Carols’ ass like what hasn’t happened for much too long.  Carlos plays the riff, Neal freaks out on the wah-wah and the whammy bar.  Heaven…  

Anywhere You Want To Go – Carlos gets a speaking part - Hey baby!  What’s your name, baby?  Come over here, girl – sit on my lap.  Albert King used to do that on his records.  But soon thereafter the band launches into another fine groove not unlike Oye Como Va.  This is the first single from Santana IV.  I’m loving this album already…  

Fillmore East – When I first saw the name I knew it would be an instrumental.  The question was would it bring the thunder like Soul Sacrifice, or would be cosmic like a Caravanserai tune?  This is a long, spacey but subdued jam, so I’m going with “cosmic.”  

Love Makes the World Go Round and Freedom in Your Mind - Ronald Isley on guest vocals.  I have a few rules when it comes to music.  One rule is this - If I don’t like what I hear within 10-15 seconds, I probably never will.  These two songs of peace, love and cosmic hippie shit fit that category.  Note to Carlos – if you want guest vocalists, save it for the umpteenth iteration of Supernatural.  

Choo Choo – A dance tune that I actually like.  The lyrics are cringe worthy, but the music makes up for it.  

All Aboard – The instrumental coda to Choo Choo, like Savor was for Shades of Time on the first Santana album [you know, right before Jingo].   

Sueños – As the title suggests, this is a dreamy instrumental that would fit nicely on Caravanserai.  

Caminando - it's got cheesy synth horns, but it's an "okay" song.  The guitar interplay between Carlos and Neal saves the track from disaster.  Skip this one.  

Blues Magic – Fifty years after being known as the Santana Blues Band, these guys finally cut a blues song.  It’s a good one.  Think Taboo from Santana III.  

Echizo – An up-tempo instrumental with which I have one complaint – it’s too short.  It fades at the end, so I know there’s more.  

Leave Me Alone – This is another strong vocal number.  Solid.  

You And I – Another fine instrumental.  This one is of the slow piano/guitar variety.  

Come As You Are – “Hola!  Hola-la-la!  Hola!  Just come as you are.”   Um…no.  This didn’t pass the 15-second test.  Skip this track.  

Forgiveness – Epic closer.  This one veers very close to Jeff Beck territory.  A soulful vocal from Gregg Rolie is icing on the cake.  

Bottom line – Welcome back, gentlemen.  What took you so damn long?  I’ve waited a long time for this.  The more I listen to it, the more I like it.  Of the sixteen tracks on this album, twelve of them are keepers.  Buy this album!  I hope there’s more where this came from.  If you can find it, buy Shape Shifters as well.

Prince - RIP

Well...shit!  Here we go again.  I’ll keep this one short.  I’m on the road, my CPAP died, I slept like crap.  Then I turned on my computer and I found out that Prince died.  WTF?  The only time I heard about any health issues was last week.  My sister guessed it might be an overdose of something.  I’ve never heard of him mentioned with drugs...ever.  Since he was found unresponsive in an elevator, I’m going to guess “heart attack”.  The cause of death doesn’t matter; the result is the same.

I won’t pretend I was a big fan - I wasn’t.  But I was curious enough to see Purple Rain in the theater way back when (1984 I think).  I liked what I heard, so I bought the cassette.  I had it, Around the World in a Day, Lovesexy, and Sign O the Times.  That’s it.  I saw the Sign O the Times concert movie.  Was there any musical instrument he couldn’t play?  

A friend of mine asked me awhile ago about what I thought about Prince in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  My answer surprised him.  I said “why not?  He writes, produces, plays all the instruments on everything he creates.  And he influenced many, many people.”  He was a smokin’ hot guitar player, too.  If you ever type “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” in YouTube, you’ll get a Prince hit right away. Then there was Super Bowl XLI. Best...halftime show...ever. And he wanted it to rain harder. Really! Go ahead and look it up on YouTube. The cheap bastards at the NFL won't let me embed it here.

Super Bowl XLI Halftime Show - https://youtu.be/7NN3gsSf-Ys

I’ll close with this - the guy was freakishly talented, and I mean “freakish” in a good way.  Talent like his doesn’t come around very often.  He shouldn't be dead, not at the too-young age of 57.  First Vanity, now Prince.  Who’s next - Morris Day?

As fate would have it, when I started typing this, my brother-in-law was taking me to find a new power supply for my CPAP.  When he turned on the car radio, Let’s Go Crazy was playing.  Perfect...

Sir George Martin [1926-2016] - RIP

As I look back on the past two or three months of this blog, it has come to resemble an obituary column.  Sadly, that trend continues here.  George Martin died on March 9, 2016.  He produced records for many people in a very long and storied career, but all you really need to know is this – he produced The Beatles.  He signed them to Parlaphone when all other record labels wouldn’t.  He was very different from record producers of his day.  He didn’t have a “signature sound” like Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound.  He did not impose his own personal vision on the people with whom he worked.  He did not take for himself a cut of the Beatles’ songwriting royalties, which was a common practice for a long time.  He didn’t bring in studio pros to play their instruments [except for a different drummer on ‘Love Me Do’] – only the instruments the Beatles couldn’t play.  Only once did he try to get the Beatles to record something they didn’t write [he wanted ‘How Do You Do It’ – they held out for ‘Please Please Me’, their first #1 single].  In another move that was against type, he didn’t try to make the Beatles into a group of a front man and a bunch of sidemen, like Billy Haley and the Comets or Buddy Holly and the Crickets.  There was no ‘John Lennon and the Beatles’.  He encouraged Lennon & McCartney to keep writing their own songs when most artists at the time didn’t.  Not to be overlooked, he wasn’t a ‘my way or the highway’ kind of producer. While he would often make suggestions as to how to arrange a song, he also made their weirdness come true.  If they had a request to provide a certain sound they heard in their heads, more often than not George Martin made those requests become reality.  This final point will be the focus of today’s blog.  For this I lean heavily on two sources:  The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn, The Beatles Anthology, and the webpage The Beatles Bible.  There are hundreds of interviews from the principals [John, Paul, George, Ringo and George Martin] from which I draw upon as well.

George Martin wrote many a string arrangement for the Beatles.  The exceptions were She’s Leaving Home. The Long and Winding Road, I Me Mine, and Across the Universe.  But some of those arrangements [string, vocal or otherwise] were such that one can’t imagine what the songs would sound like without George Martin’s contributions.  What are some of these magical moments?

Please Please Me [1963] – When Lennon & McCartney first brought this song to George Martin, it was a slow, bluesy song like what Roy Orbison would do.  Martin didn’t like it – he suggested they double the tempo.  The result – the Beatles’ second single, and their first-ever #1 in Britain.  "Congratulations, gentlemen," he told them, "You've just made your first number one."

A Hard Day’s Night [1964] – I’ve often said the opening chord to this song is like the sound of the Big Bang of the British Invasion.  There is more than meets the ear here.  Not only does George Harrison play a Fadd9 chord on his Rickenbacker 12-string guitar, John Lennon plays the same chord on his Gibson J-160 6-string acoustic guitar.  Paul McCartney played a simple D note [on the fifth fret of the A string on his Hofner violin bass], while George Martin played a Steinway grand piano [D2, G2, D3, G3 and C4].  To tell the difference, compare this to any live version where only George Harrison plays the chord.  The live versions are thin in comparison to what they did in the studio.  If you think you can do the whole thing on just a 12-string guitar, you can’t get there from here.

In My Life [1965] – That’s George Martin himself playing the baroque piano solo.  He played it at half speed and then sped the tape to make it sound like a harpsichord.

Yesterday [1965] - This was the first Beatles recording to feature only one Beatle; Paul McCartney and his acoustic guitar.  It was George Martin’s idea [and his arrangement] of adding a string quartet to the song.  The result is the most-covered song in history.

Rain [1966] - The backing track was recorded at a fast tempo, and then they slowed the tape playback to normal speed to drop to tone.  This gave the song a woozy, drugged-out feeling.  I found that if you want to play along it’s easiest to tune your guitar to Open G.  Standard G chords just don’t sound right otherwise.  John wanted the backwards signing at the end, and George Martin gave it to him.

Tomorrow Never Knows [1966] – Revolver [which I think is better than Sgt. Pepper] is the record with backwards guitar solos, tape loops, big thunderous drums, Indian instruments, just all kinds of crazy stuff.  Many tape loops were played simultaneously, and the sounds you hear are how the faders on the recording desk were moved.  It was a live performance mix-on-the-fly of tape loops instead of instruments that can’t be duplicated.  John wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama chanting from a hilltop.  But instead of flying to Tibet to capture the sound, George Martin fed John’s voice through a rotating Leslie speaker, the kind that’s used in a Hammond organ.

Strawberry Fields Forever [1967] – According to Lewisohn, this one took 55 hours to record.  There were two versions of Strawberry Fields.  The first was closest to the tempo you would recognize today.  It has the Mellotron opening and George’s slide guitar.  John wanted to do it again, only he wanted brass and strings and stuff.  After doing both of them, he told George Martin he liked the first part of the first version, and the second part of the second version, and oh by the way could he join the two parts?  It was easier said than done because ProTools didn’t exist.  Everything had to be done manually – cut tape at the right time, join them together.  The two versions were in different tempos and different keys.  John didn’t have a clue how this sort of thing worked, so he placed all his faith in George Martin – “you can fix it!”  He sped up the first, slowed the second and got it to work.  The edit is at 57 seconds if you’re interested.  Listen closely and John’s vocals sound just a tad more drugged out after the edit.

I Am the Walrus [1967] – If you listen to the early version of this song, there’s really not much to it.  There’s electric piano, a barely-heard guitar, bass and drums.  Then George Martin scored it for a sixteen-piece ensemble.  He also added the Mike Sammes Singers [eight males, eight females], whom he got to do stuff like "ho ho ho, he he he, ha ha ha", "Oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper" and "Got one, got one, everybody's got one".  He never did drugs, but you’d never know it when listening to this.  Add John’s most sneering vocal, and you have an acid-drenched nightmare.  This is what an acid trip sounds like [I don’t know from personal experience, but I have a good imagination…].  This is the Beatles song I listen to the most.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite [1967] – Inspiration for this song by John Lennon came from a circus poster.  Most of the words from the poster are in the song.  John wasn’t musically articulate.  He told George Martin he wanted a circus atmosphere, so he could “smell the sawdust.”  He got some of EMI’s calliope tapes, cut them into 12-inch sections, flung them into the air and reassembled them at random.  Add to this a Lowery organ, a harmonium, a Hammond organ, and harmonicas of various sizes, and there’s your carnival.

A Day in the Life [1967] – Paul McCartney was very much into the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen.  It was from Stockhausen that Paul got the idea to put the orchestral bits into this song.  George Martin described how he made it happen:

At the very beginning I put into the musical score the lowest note each instrument could play, ending with an E major chord. And at the beginning of each of the 24 bars I put a note showing roughly where they should be at that point. Then I had to instruct them. 'We're going to start very very quietly and end up very very loud. We're to start very low in pitch and end up very high. You've got to make your own way up there, as slidey as possible so that the clarinets slurp, trombones gliss, violins slide without fingering any notes. And whatever you do, don't listen to the fellow next to you because I don't want you to be doing the same thing.' Of course they all looked at me as though I was mad...

I Want You [She’s So Heavy] [1969] – George Martin once told John Lennon about the power of silence in recording music.  John internalized that lesson.  Three minutes of a mass of overdubbed guitars, white noise created by a Moog synthesizer, and a wind machine played by Ringo created a trance, only to be ended suddenly by John telling engineer Geoff Emerick to cut the tape in mid-bar instead of letting the music fade.  If John had it his way, that’s how Abbey Road would have ended.  George Martin planted the seed for this song’s ending.

All You Need Is Love [1967] - George Martin's orchestral arrangement, for which he was paid £15, contained elements from one of Bach's Brandenburg concertos, Greensleeves, and Glenn Miller's arrangement of In The Mood, in addition to the distinctive introduction of La Marseillaise.

Good Morning, Good Morning [1967] – After all the animals have finished chasing each other, a chicken clucks at the very end, which morphed into the first guitar part of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [Reprise].

Because [1969] – The three-part vocal harmony was arranged by George Martin.  He had them do it three times, so there are nine voices on the song.

Abbey Road Side Two Medley [1969] – George Martin had always been telling the Beatles to ‘think symphonically.’  Paul McCartney took the idea and ran with it.  Both he and John had bits of unfinished songs.  Why not stitch them together into one, long operatic-type piece?  Lennon didn’t like the medley idea, but somehow he got talked into contributing three parts – Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, and Polythene Pam.

Eleanor Rigby [1966] – George Martin wrote the score.  Given that no Beatles play any instruments on the song, one could make the case for this being a McCartney/Martin song.  The vocals are stripped away for the version that appears on Anthology 2.

Good Night [1968] – John Lennon wrote this as a lullaby to his son Julian for Ringo to sing. As with Eleanor Rigby from 1966, no Beatles play on this – just a string section scored by George Martin.  When he asked John Lennon how he wanted the score to sound, John said he wanted it to sound “Hollywood”.  After the chaos and disorder of Revolution #9, Good Night closes the White Album.

RIP George Martin, the real Fifth Beatle

Glenn Frey - RIP

This one was hard to write.  I am conflicted.  I don’t care for The Eagles.  The biggest reason for my antipathy is because they remind me of someone I would prefer to forget.  Another reason is Don Henley, the smug, sanctimonious holier-than-thou drummer-turned-frontman.  I dislike everything about him, most especially his vocals.  They are nails on a chalkboard to me.  A long time ago Mojo Nixon did a song about him called Don Henley Must Die.  He hit the nail on the proverbial head.  But to give the Devil his due, Henley actually had the balls to get up onstage at a Mojo Nixon concert in Austin and sang the song with him.  But enough about Don Henley…

But I come not to slam Don Henley [much], but to praise his musical partner, Glenn Frey. This is the source of the conflict - while I don’t care for most of the Eagles’ music, I have always liked Glenn Frey.  He had the best voice in the Eagles.  He didn’t sing lead very often.  He should have – the Eagles’ songs that I do like were sung by him.  He wasn’t a powerhouse singer – for the most part he sang the country-ish ballads.  He was an adept vocal arranger.  According to Henley, “we gave Glenn a nickname, the Lone Arranger.  He had a vision about how our voices could blend and how to arrange the vocals, and, in many cases, the tracks. He also had a knack for remembering and choosing good songs.”   Here I must give credit where it is due – The Last Resort, the last song on Hotel California, is a masterpiece.  Even though Henley sings it, it’s probably the best thing the Eagles ever did.  It was an epic story lamenting man’s ability to destroy his own environment.  Henley had the lyrics and basic chord progressions, and Frey filled in the rest, including the theme of the song and the arrangement.  Frey’s piano and Don Felder’s steel guitar are magical touches.

Showtime did a documentary about the Eagles – History of the Eagles.  When it came out a couple of years ago I wouldn’t watch it.  But last week was an encore presentation.  So I did something I thought I wouldn’t do – I watched it…and I didn’t puke.  I rediscovered what I liked about them when they got a lot of airplay in my house when I was a teenager.

What are those Eagles songs that I like?

Tequila Sunrise [Desperado, 1973] – This is one of the first songs I learned to play. 

Desperado [Desperado, 1973] – Original lead vocals by Don Henley.  This is the first song Henley and Frey wrote together.  Frey should have sung it on the album.  Frey did this one on his Glenn Frey Live album from 1993.

Ol’ 55 [On The Border, 1974] – Written by Tom Waits.  This duet with Henley is perfect for Frey’s voice.  That’s Al Perkins from Stephen Stills’ Manassas on steel guitar.

Lyin’ Eyes [One of These Nights, 1975] – What is understood need not be discussed.  The vocals are perfect.

Outlaw Man [Desperado, 1973] – Lead vocals by Glenn Frey.  Lead guitar and electric piano also by Glenn Frey.  With guitarists like Bernie Leadon, Joe Walsh and Don Felder in the band, Glenn Frey was the invisible guitarist.  Here he shows he can play a pretty solid lead guitar.

After the Thrill Is Gone [One of These Nights, 1975] – This is a Frey/Henley duet.  It’s a good song – shut up!

Heartache Tonight [The Long Run, 1979] – There’s nothing deep here.  Joe Walsh’s slide guitar is perfection. 

New Kid in Town [Hotel California, 1976] – see my comments about Lyin’ Eyes.

King of Hollywood [The Long Run, 1979] – Henley and Frey are singing the lead.  This tale of the decadence of Hollywood bosses is as dark as the Eagles would get.   Each of the three guitarists [Frey, Don Felder, Joe Walsh] gets a solo.

The Last Resort [Hotel California, 1976] – See my comments above.

What about those solo years?

If the Eagles years were an exercise in “country rock,” then Glenn Frey’s solo years had a more R&B/soul flavor.  No Fun Aloud [1982] was his first post-Eagles album.  Some of the songs sounded like they would be at home on the Eagles’ The Long Run.  The songs vary in styles.  All Those Lies and That Girl were recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and it sounds like it – this is a good thing.  She Can’t Let Go has a Spanish feel to it [GF even plays the guitarron].  But the two singles, I Found Somebody and The One You Love, are a departure in soul territory.  Instead of the guitar, the saxophone is the lead instrument.  Both of these songs point the direction that’s to come.  If you can find the album, get it.  The Allnighter came next [1984].  It sounds like a mid-1980s production, for better or worse.  The hits were Sexy Girl and Smuggler’s Blues.  Sexy Girl comes dangerously close to Hall & Oates territory.  But Smuggler’s Blues heads back to rock and roll territory.  There was a pretty good video that came with it.  Miami Vice was very good to Glenn Frey.  Smuggler’s Blues inspired an entire episode.  You Belong to the City appeared on the soundtrack.  The sax was the hook, but the vocals are some of the best he’s done.  It’s a damn fine song.  Soul Searchin’ came in 1988.  While Don Henley was going for cheesy synthesizers and drum machines on Building the Perfect Beast, Glenn Frey went the other way with real horns and female soul singers.  Soul Searchin’ boasts some good songs [Soul Searchin’, True Love, Some Kind of Blue], but the production sounds extremely dated [those dreaded 1980s again].  Strange Weather [1992] didn’t chart, which is odd because it’s better than the two albums that came before it.  The songs were better, the production was better, Glenn Frey’s singing was till top-notch.  This one’s another one I recommend.  After Hours [2012] was a recording of American standards with one original song [the title track].  I can’t comment on it because I haven’t heard it.

The Eagles Reunion.  Hell indeed froze over when the band decided to get back together in 1994.  The one new song that Glenn Frey sang [The Girl From Yesterday] is a straight up country tune.  As for The Long Road Out of Eden [2007], I have three songs, all sung by Glenn Frey which I checked out after his death.  How Long is a J.D. Souther song they often played live in the early 1970s.  It was a hit on country radio.  No More Cloudy Days is hard to classify.  I think it has the dreaded “adult contemporary” tag.  The most interesting one is the last song on the album – It’s Your World Now.  This one is definitely a country song that has a mariachi feel.  This valedictory is the keeper.

Glenn Frey has been called a lot of things – driven, a perfectionist, a hard worker, corporate, a jerk.  They may have all been true, but in the end it’s the work by which he’ll be judged.  I was reviewing something a wrote about Joe Walsh about four years ago.  When it was time for the Eagles to reunite in 1994, Glenn Frey decreed that if anyone was going to be in the band, they had to be sober.  It was Frey’s kick in the ass that got Joe Walsh sober.  The music listening public can be forever grateful for that.  I may not like the Eagles as a band, but I do like the songs Glenn Frey sang in that band.  Maybe as I age more my feelings toward that particular band may mellow and I’ll appreciate the entire body of work.  For now I’ll content myself with those songs he sang.  This new year has been hell on music legends.  First Lemmy Kilmister, then David Bowie, and now Glenn Frey.  Frey’s passing is the most surprising as I didn’t know he was sick like the other two.  I saw a film clip of an interview with Don Henley not too long ago.  When asked when it would be time for the Eagles to hang it up, he said he would defer that decision to Glenn Frey.  Perhaps his death has made that decision.  I can’t imagine the Eagles without him.

A perfect day, the sun is sinkin' low

As evening falls, the gentle breezes blow

The time we shared went by so fast

Just like a dream, we knew it couldn't last

But I'd do it all again

If I could, somehow

But I must be leavin' soon

It's your world now

It's your world now

My race is run

I'm moving on

Like the setting sun

No sad goodbyes

No tears allowed

You'll be alright

It's your world now

Even when we are apart

You'll always be in my heart

When dark clouds appear in the sky

Remember true love never dies

But first a kiss, one glass of wine

Just one more dance while there's still time

My one last wish: someday, you'll see

How hard I tried and how much you meant to me

It's your world now

Use well the time

Be part of something good

Leave something good behind

The curtain falls

I take my bow

That's how it's meant to be

It's your world now

It's your world now

It's your world now

RIP Glenn Frey.

David Bowie - RIP

He was The Man Who Sold the World.  He was Ziggy Stardust.  He was The Thin White Duke.  He was The Man Who Fell to Earth.  For a while he was also The Elephant Man.  In what is the ultimate career move for any entertainer, now he is David Bowie [Deceased].  David Bowie sure was a lot of different guys.  No matter what the character, there was music, and lots of it.  Some of it was great and some of it was not-so-great, but it was rarely boring.  I remember the first time I heard a David Bowie song – it was at my friend Brian’s house.  I was 12 years old, we were listening to a radio station in Springfield, Ohio [WNCI].  The song was Fame.  I’ve been a fan ever since. 

Upon hearing about Bowie’s death I compiled a rather lengthy playlist.  If you want to take an afternoon and listen to all-Bowie all the time, here are my recommendations.  You can find quite a bit of this list on either Best of Bowie [2002] or Nothing Has Changed [2014], but there are plenty of album deep tracks I really like that.  One quarter of this list comes from the last fourteen years of his career, beginning with the album Heathen [2002] and ending with Blackstar [2016], released just two days before his death.  Another sizeable chunk comes from the 1975-80 period, which included his “Berlin” period.

1. Slow Burn [Heathen – 2002] - This is my favorite Bowie song.  That’s Pete Townshend playing the flamethrower guitar.
2. Cat People (Putting Out Fire) [Let’s Dance – 1983] – This is the song where I discovered Stevie Ray Vaughan.  The first version was done for the Cat People movie.
3. Fame [Young Americans – 1975] – Bowie’s first #1 single.  He wrote it with a guy named John Lennon. 
4. “Heroes” [“Heroes” – 1977] – That’s Robert Fripp playing the guitar.  This became a featured song in a movie I like called The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
5. Rebel Rebel [Diamond Dogs – 1974] – Believe it or not, that’s Bowie himself playing that guitar riff.  And a great, instantly-recognizable riff it is.
6. Under Pressure (with Queen) [single – 1981] – a great, great single
7. This Is Not America (with The Pat Metheny Group) [The Falcon and The Snowman soundtrack – 1985] – Bowie was in the middle of his Let’s Dance/Tonight pop phase when he did this with Pat Metheny.  It sounds nothing like what he did on those two albums.
8. Criminal World [Let’s Dance – 1983] – More SRV.
9. Loving the Alien [Tonight – 1984]
10. Sunday [Heathen – 2002]
11. Heathen (The Rays) [Heathen – 2002]
12. Lazarus [Blackstar – 2016]
13. V-2 Schneider [“Heroes” – 1977]
14. Neuköln [“Heroes” – 1977]
15. Station to Station [Station to Station – 1976] – If you were paying attention, this is foreshadowing of things to come with the “Berlin Trilogy”.
16. Warszawa [Low – 1977]
17. Art Decade [Low – 1977]
18. TVC15 [Station to Station – 1976]
19. Sound and Vision [Low – 1977]
20. Stay [Station to Station – 1976]
21. Pablo Picasso [Reality – 2003]
22. Hallo Spaceboy [1. Outside – 1995]
23. Seven Years in Tibet [Earthling – 1997]
24. Under The God [Tin Machine – 1989]
25. I’m Afraid of Americans [Earthling – 1997]
26. The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell [‘Hours…’ – 1999]
27. China Girl [Let’s Dance – 1983]
28. Neighborhood Threat [Tonight – 1984]
29. Blue Jean [Tonight – 1984]
30. Dancing With the Big Boys [Tonight – 1984]
31. Modern Love [Let’s Dance – 1983]
32. The Next Day [The Next Day – 2013]
33. Dirty Boys [The Next Day – 2013]
34. Reality [Reality – 2003]
35. Outside [1. Outside – 1995]
36. Strangers When We Meet [1. Outside – 1995]
37. Because You’re Young [Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) – 1980] - Pete Townshend plays guitar here, too.
38. Ashes To Ashes [Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) – 1980] – Bowie catches up with Major Tom, who is now a junkie.
39. Sense of Doubt [“Heroes” – 1977]
40. Never Get Old [Reality – 2003]
41. Looking For Water [Reality – 2003]
42. The Heart’s Filthy Lesson [1. Outside – 1995]
43. Seven [‘Hours…’ – 1999]
44. Dead Man Walking [Earthling – 1997]
45. Joe The Lion [“Heroes” – 1977]
46. Blackout [“Heroes” – 1977]
47. The Secret Life of Arabia [“Heroes” – 1977]
48. Look Back in Anger [Lodger – 1979]
49. Boys Keep Swinging [Lodger – 1979]
50. I Can’t Give Everything Away [Blackstar – 2016]
51. The Stars (Are Out Tonight) [The Next Day – 2013]
52. I'd Rather Be High [The Next Day – 2013]
53. (You Will) Set The World On Fire [The Next Day – 2013]
54. Love Is Lost [The Next Day – 2013]
55. Blackstar [Blackstar -2016]
56. Panic In Detroit [Alladin Sane – 1973] – Is that a Bo Diddley riff?
57. The Jean Genie [Alladin Sane – 1973]
58. Life On Mars [Hunky Dory – 1971]
59. Moonage Daydream [The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars – 1972]
60. The Man Who Sold the World [The Man Who Sold the World – 1970]
61. Starman [The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars – 1972]
62. Space Oddity [David Bowie – 1969] 

David Bowie was not normal.  He allowed others to revel in their uniqueness.  I suspect that is what kept him from being boring.  He was one of those few who kept everybody guessing from album to album.  What was he going to do next?  He explored and he took us along for the ride.  Until the very end he was still capable of springing surprises.  Only a select few people knew that Blackstar was going to be his last album, and it’s only in hindsight that we can see that he was leaving clues that he wasn’t long for this world.

I bought Blackstar yesterday morning, not because Bowie suddenly up and died, but because it was on my list of things to get.  His death just hastened my decision to pull the trigger on the purchase.  Later that afternoon, I checked Amazon just for grins to see what bits of his catalog were available.  In short, nothing was available.  Every album was sold out.  Last night I was surfing through the cable TV guide and I found Iron Maiden: Flight 666 on Palladia.  But instead of seeing Iron Maiden, there was his installment of VH1 Storytellers.  Imagine my surprise when I found that every one of his stories was funny.  A lot of adjectives describe David Bowie, but I didn’t think “funny” was one of them until last night.  But given all the stories written about him these past two days, I think that is how I will prefer to remember him – the serious guy who had a hidden funny streak.  But now he’s stepped through the door, and the stars look very different today.

 

Tony's Guitarist Picks - Lindsey Buckingham

When one hears the phrase “guitar hero” many names instantly come to mind – Hendrix, Beck, Clapton, Page, Gilmour, Duane Allman, Peter Green, etc.  One guy who is especially underrated is Lindsey Buckingham.  Yup, the guy who plays pop songs in Fleetwood Mac.  Maybe he’s a guitar “anti-hero” because he’s not a household name.  Fleetwood Mac was originally a blues band and had a great blues guitarist, Peter Green.  If you’re a purist, perhaps you don’t like the pop band that Fleetwood Mac has become, and that’s ok.  I like the blues incarnation, and I like the arena rock/pop edition as well.  As the guitar player in a pop band, he’s like George Harrison in that he has a keen sense of melody that enables him to provide the right thing for the songs of Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks.  That doesn’t give him a lot of room to solo, but every now and then he can let rip a good solo – see Go Your Own Way or Sisters of the Moon.  But being the producer in addition to being the guitar player, he can pick and choose where he can make songs by the other songwriters sound the way he wants them to.

Guitars.  Before he joined Fleetwood Mac, LB’s guitar of choice was a Fender Stratocaster.  After he joined the band he needed a fatter guitar sound, so he switched to a Les Paul.  He met a luthier who worked for Alembic named Rick Turner.  He asked Turner to make a guitar that’s a cross-between a Stratocaster and a Les Paul.  The result was the Turner #1 model [see below].  That is his main electric guitar, but sometimes he’ll go back to the Stratocaster or even a Telecaster.  For some acoustic work he’ll use a Gibson Chet Atkins.  For the rest he plays various Taylor acoustics.

Style.  He never took guitar lessons and he doesn’t read music.  Most of the guitar players I like are grounded in the blues.  When he was a kid, his first guitar idol was Scotty Moore.  After the first wave of rock and roll faded [Elvis got drafted, Chuck Berry went to jail, Buddy Holly died] The Kingston Trio became his big influence.  And like The Kingston Trio, LB plays without a pick.  He combines the power of a rock guitarist with the precision of a classical nylon-string player.  To hear the former, look no further then Peter Green’s Oh Well, Part I [Fleetwood Mac Live – 1980].  Here LB wails with the best of them.  The one time LB usually gets to stretch out during a Fleetwood Mac show is on his own I’m So Afraid, where he gets to solo to his heart’s content.  On the acoustic side, there’s stuff like Landslide and Never Going Back Again.  The man has incredible technique.

Colors.   What does the song need?  LB’s dobro gives Gold Dust Woman an exotic sound.  The volume swells on Dreams are ethereal.  The National Steel Guitar on The Chain is a sound not often heard on a pop song.  Within the confines of Fleetwood Mac [what he calls “the big machine”] he can’t get too carried away with his guitar sounds.  But in his more-esoteric solo work [“the little machine”] he can indulge himself.  The center of the songs of McVie and Nicks are the vocal melody around which guitar parts are arranged.  His own songs are centered around the guitar.  Sometimes one gets the feeling that his songs are really lots of guitar parts with vocal melodies thrown in as an afterthought, but I like them anyway.  His technique is best described as “dazzling.” 

Two Guitarists Replaced Him.  After the band finished Tango in the Night LB bolted from Fleetwood Mac in 1987, the band replaced him with two guitarists to do the work of one – Rick Vito and Billy Burnette.  Both were hired to play the parts LB played by himself.  Since LB also produced the records, they had to find someone to fill that role as well.  You can do the blind taste test between Tango in the Night and Behind the Mask and judge the results yourself.  

Come [Fleetwood Mac – Say You Will] / Down On Rodeo [LB – Under The Skin].  I like to listen to these two songs as a “twofer”.  Although the songs are from two different albums, they’re from the same song cycle.  For me, these two songs best represent the two sides of LB’s musical personality.  Come is a manic electric freakout, while Down On Rodeo is a calm acoustic “after the storm” piece.

Big Love.  This song opened Tango in the Night, but since he didn’t tour with Fleetwood Mac after that album’s release, the first time he played it live with that band was for 1997's The Dance.  While the studio version of the song is a full band arrangement, from this point forward he played it solo.  Had I not seen the performance for myself, I wouldn’t have thought what I heard was played on one guitar.

Go Your Own Way [Fleetwood Mac - Rumours] - Early one morning in late 1982, I was on my way to take a physics exam.  I had a cheap cassette deck in a 1975 Toyota Corolla, and whilst driving to class I had on Rumours.  This song came on and when it ended, I heard it again, and again.  As the song has a fair amount of lyrical bile in it [in a good way, which reflected my own emotional state at the time], but the hook was the last solo.  The first solo in mid-song is good - the second solo is great.  The song and the solo hooked me on all things Lindsey Buckingham.  I suffer happily.  The physics exam?  I aced it.  I credit this song for getting me in the proper frame of mind.

I'm So Afraid [Fleetwood Mac Live] - This was the finale from the eponymous Fleetwood Mac album.  The studio has quite a few harmony guitar overdubs, but the song morphed into a beast live.  Being the sole guitarist, he's got a bigger sound with the Rick Turner electric.  There are several other live versions of this song [Live in Boston, The Dance, the Mirage deluxe set, the Tusk deluxe set].  This one is my favorite.  This live album sold me on the "Lindsey Buckingham - guitar hero" tag.

My current iPod playlist:

Come [Say You Will]

Down on Rodeo [Under the Skin]

Gift of Screws [Gift of Screws]

Wait for You [Gift of Screws]

Murrow Turning Over in His Grave [Say You Will]

Someone's Gotta Change Your Mind [Under the Skin]

Steal Your Heart Away [Say You Will]

Bleed to Love Her [Say You Will]

Rock Away Blind [Seeds We Sow]

Big Love [Tango in the Night version]

Go Insane [Go Insane version]

Tango in the Night -> Loving Cup [Tango in the Night/Go Insane]

Second Hand News [acoustic outtake version from Rumours]

Tusk [2/1/79 Outtake] [Tusk]

Wrong [Out of the Cradle]

Soul Drifter [Out of the Cradle]

Holiday Road [iTunes single]

Book of Love [Mirage]

Go Your Own Way [Rumours]

I’m So Afraid [FM Live]

The Ledge [3/13/79 Version] [Tusk]

Save Me a Place [10/18/78 Version] [Tusk]

What Makes You Think You're the One [Tusk]

That's All For Everyone [Remix] [Tusk]

That's Enough for Me [9/29/78 Version] [Tusk]

I Know I'm Not Wrong [11/2/78 Version] [Tusk] [“Shit, that’s fast” – Christine McVie]

Tusk "Stage Riff" [1/30/79 Demo] [Tusk]

Trouble [Law and Order]

I Want You [Go Insane]

Slow Dancing [Go Insane]

This Is the Time [Out of the Cradle]

Countdown [Out of the Cradle]

Caroline [Tango in the Night]

Family Man [Tango in the Night]

You and I, Pt. II [Tango in the Night]

D.W. Suite [Go Insane]

Red Rover [Say You Will]

Say Goodbye [Say You Will]

Treason [Gift of Screws]

Turn It On [Out of the Cradle]

Surrender The Rain [Out of the Cradle]

On With the Show [Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie]