The Heavier Side of the Beatles

There I was, searching for podcasts to download.  I found one called “Heavier Side of the Beatles.”  The guys who did this one usually comment on heavy metal, and they thought “let’s do one on the Beatles.”  Why not indeed.  They weren’t just lovable Moptops who sang love songs.  Nor were they always whacked out on drugs producing psychedelia.  When they wanted to, they could rock out.  I went through an exercise about a month ago where I wanted to put their “heaviest” stuff on one CD.  Wouldn’t you know, their list was very close to mine.  The program lasted only 45 minutes.  They played the songs they picked, so there wasn’t an entire 80-minute CD for them to cover.  They had a couple of interesting choices for “heaviness” – Tomorrow Never Knows and I Am the Walrus.  Weird?  Yes.  Heavy?  I guess it depends on your definition of “heavy.”  

My list starts in the year 1966.  What is so significant about 1966?  That was the year things began to change for the Beatles’ sound.  George dispensed with the Gretsch guitars and switched to Gibsons.  John’s main guitar had been a Rickenbacker 325, but he switched to an Epiphone Casino.  Although Paul still used his Hofner violin bass on-stage, he began to record with a Rickenbacker 4001S bass.  Geoff Emerick [and Ken Scott after him] replaced Norman Smith as their recording engineer in 1966, just in time for Revolver.  He had new and different ideas on how to capture the Beatles’ sound.  The guitars were louder and had more bite.  The bass was able to be heard AND felt.  Ringo’s drums sounded “bigger.”   

Prior to 1966, the Beatles had recorded plenty of high energy “rock” songs, but the folks at EMI weren’t interested in pushing the sound envelope.  They were worried about whether record player needles would jump and skip grooves if things were recorded too loudly.  Hence, the guitar sound was pretty thin, and one had to struggle to hear the bass.  Here are some songs with “thin” guitar sounds that could have benefit from better recording techniques:  

I Saw Her Standing There

I Feel Fine

She’s a Woman

A Hard Day’s Night

Ticket to Ride

Day Tripper

Drive My Car

If I Needed Someone

You Can’t Do That  

These songs rock, but they just aren’t “heavy” enough.  If I included these songs as recorded with the list I have below, they’d sound out of place.  What’s my definition of “heavy”?  I don’t really have one, but I know it when I hear it.  Elements are high volume [though not deafening like heavy metal], distortion, feedback, a big bottom end [though not thunderously loud like John Entwistle, Geezer Butler or Jack Bruce].  

The songs:

Taxman [Revolver, 1966] – The song that kicks off Revolver is George’s angry rant at the UK’s Inland Revenue.  That’s George playing the biting rhythm guitar while Paul plays an Indian-sounding lead on his own Epiphone Casino [which he later used on Sgt. Pepper and uses to this day].

  

And Your Bird Can Sing [Revolver, 1966] – That’s Paul and George playing duel lead guitars, with John chiming away on rhythm with his Rickenbacker 325.  This is probably the last song on which John used that guitar.

Rain [B-side, 1966] – This is the B-side of Paperback Writer.  To get that hazy, drugged out feeling the band recorded the backing track at a higher speed, then slowed it down to normal speed for Paul to overdub his bass.  For years I tried to learn how to play this song without success.  Then I saw a guitar lesson on YouTube where a guy tried it in an Open G tuning.  And it worked!  That was a great day when things clicked for me on this song.

Paperback Writer [Single, 1966] – This song, which was recorded during the Revolver sessions, started the Beatles revolution in sound.  I wrote in an earlier blog how Geoff Emerick beefed up Paul’s bass sound by using amps as microphones.  Paul's bass work on this song is often referred to as lead bass.  If one can hear an isolated track of the bass, you’d hear why.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967] – That’s Paul on the screaming lead guitar.  John and George play two rhythm guitars.  Ringo’s drums sound like the cracking of a whip.  This is one of the finest vocals Paul ever did.  There’s one he did even better that’s further down this list. 

With a Little Help From My Friends [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967] – This one isn’t really heavy as such, but one can’t hear the title track without this song immediately following in its wake.  This song has a great bassline.

Hey Bulldog [Yellow Submarine, 1969] – This is one of the few songs of John Lennon that is piano-driven.  They recorded this one specially for the Yellow Submarine movie.  The tambourines you hear is Paul keeping time with Ringo.  George plays a nasty solo on a Gibson SG, while Paul overdubs a booming bass with his Rickenbacker.  I love this song.

It’s All Too Much [Yellow Submarine, 1969] – This one from George was also recorded for Yellow Submarine.  George holds down a G chord on the Hammond organ throughout the song.  It acts as a drone like one would hear in Indian music.  Along with the psychedelic-sounding Hammond, there’s lots of shrieking guitar with much feedback.  I think Paul played the initial feedback bit at the beginning, but the guitar solo and everything else sounds like George.

Back in the USSR [The Beatles, 1968] – Paul is playing lead guitar, John is playing a four-string bass, and George is playing a six-string bass [a Fender VI].  This one is an ode to Chuck Berry by way of the Beach Boys.  That’s Paul on piano and drums, too [Ringo quit the band for two weeks].  Despite Ringo’s absence the boys sound like they’re having a great time. 

Revolution [B-side, 1968] – This is the most-distorted you’ll ever hear the Beatles.  The song’s first incarnation, Revolution 1 [first track, side 4 of the White Album] was a slower, more subdued version with horns.  John wanted it as a single, Paul and George said “no, not fast enough.”  This version is the result – the “angry” John.  It’s much faster, much louder and in your face than the first version.  It made it out as a single, but only as the flip-side of Hey Jude.  Things are pretty loud here.  FWIW, this song sounds better in mono than in stereo.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps [The Beatles, 1968] – Two words – Eric Clapton.  George wanted a better guitar player than he to play on his song, which neither John nor Paul took seriously until EC showed up to play.  And as George often said, when he brought a guest by the studio John and Paul were on their best behavior.  It happened again when George brought Billy Preston to the Get Back sessions, but that’s another story.  What resulted from everybody pulling together with EC was one of the Top 10 songs in the Beatles catalog.  I think George invented AOR with this song.

Helter Skelter [The Beatles, 1968] – Paul heard Pete Townshend talk about how he thought I Can See for Miles was the nastiest, loudest, sweatiest piece of rock and roll ever committed to vinyl.  Paul heard that and thought “challenge accepted.”  George and Paul played the guitars [they were VERY loud], John played the bass.  Ringo was up to the challenge, too.  That’s him yelling “I got blisters on my fingers!” at the end.  Hard rock and heavy metal bands have tried this song, and they don’t even come close.

Birthday [The Beatles, 1968] – John and Paul are playing the riff.  George is too on the bass.  Ringo’s still up to the task.  My favorite bit is after the band comes out of the drum break and John is thrashing away on an E chord while singing “yes we're going to a party party…”

Yer Blues [The Beatles, 1968] – John wrote a lot of songs in India.  This is one about loneliness and feeling suicidal.  Instead of recording in one of Abbey Road’s “regular” studios, they crammed all their instruments into a room not much bigger than a closet and bashed away. 

Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey [The Beatles, 1968] – John said this was a great line he had around which he built a song.  John and George’s guitars were so loud Paul couldn’t play with them.  He had to overdub the bass.  That’s Paul ringing the fire bell as well.

I’ve Got a Feeling [Let It Be, 1970] – This one is live from the Apple rooftop, January 30, 1969.  John plays the riff while George gets a big sound out of a Fender Telecaster [of all things].  When George enters the song, he makes his presence known immediately.  Paul voice is off-the-charts raucous here.

Come Together [Abbey Road, 1969] – John first conceived this song as a Chuck Berry style rocker, but Paul suggested they slow it down.  What emerged was a swampy, slinky, very cool song to kick off Abbey Road.  The thing one immediately notices is heavy bass.  It dominates the song.  John plays the rhythm, while George plays lead.  I can’t figure out whether he’s using a slide, but it sounds cool whatever he’s doing.

Oh! Darling [Abbey Road, 1969] – Paul’s best vocal – period.  John often said he thought he could do it better.  I beg to differ.  As much as I like John Lennon as a vocalist, there’s no way he could do what Paul did here. 

Old Brown Shoe [B-side, 1969] – This was the B-side of The Ballad of John & Yoko.  It’s a better song that it’s a-side.  It could’ve fit on Abbey Road.  It’s definitely a much better song than Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.  George played both guitar and bass in unison as he had done with Paul on Drive My Car, and he plays one of his most tasty, Leslie-drenched solos of his time with The Beatles.

You Never Give Me Your Money [Abbey Road, 1969] – There’s three parts to this one – the first, soft piano beginning where Paul is singing about Allen Klein, the second part with the jaunty, honky tonk piano, and then all the guitars come in after “oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go” and it’s rock city from there until the end of the song.

I Want You [She’s So Heavy] [Abbey Road, 1969] – This is a monstrous track with tons of overdubbed guitars, especially after the last “she’s so…” at the 4:37 mark.  And then it’s the same grinding riff as Lennon adds white noise that gets louder and louder.  Suddenly everything stops like somebody pulled the plug.  The last 3:10 of the song lulls you into a trance and the sudden silence snaps you out of it.

Sgt Pepper [Reprise] [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967]/The End [Abbey Road, 1969] – Once you’ve snapped out of the hypnosis of I Want You [She’s So Heavy], close out your playlist with these two. It’s all guitars all the time for these two brief numbers.  Both in the same tempo, if you overlap them by .37 seconds you can get a really good medley without skipping a beat.

At the end of the podcast, the two guys said to their listeners that George Harrison had to be in the conversation about great guitar players.  Hello!  I’ve known that for fifty years now!

Jack Bruce - Silver Rails

Silver Rails [2014] is the first album Jack Bruce released under his own name since More Jack Than God [2003].   Not that he was slacking between the two releases.  Shortly after the release of More Jack Than God, he got very sick with liver cancer, had a liver transplant and nearly died.  After his body nearly rejected his new liver, he stabilized and was well enough to take part in a brief reunion with Cream in 2005.  He and Robin Trower put out Seven Moons in 2008.  In 2012 he teamed up with John Medeski, Cindy Blackman Santana, and Vernon Reid to form Spectrum Road, a tribute band to Tony Williams’ Lifetime.  They released their eponymous album in 2012.  When he wasn’t busy with those projects he was gigging with his Big Blues Band all over Europe.  

Jack Bruce’s recording career hasn’t been very prolific.  He decided to make this album because he realized he wasn’t getting any younger.  He wanted to have an album with diverse music like he was listening to, and I think in that regard he succeeded.  He used his first solo album Songs for a Tailor as his template.  The comparison between that album and this one is appropriate.  He went to Abbey Road, and with a little help from his friends, we have Silver Rails.  The most inspired choice of collaborators on this album is the aforementioned John Medeski.  His Hammond organ and occasional Mellotron pop up on half this album to great effect.  There are rockers, and there are piano ballads in equal number.  And there are horns, something you don’t hear very much on a Jack Bruce release.  

The songs:

Candlelight – [Phil Manzanera – guitar; John Medeski: Hammond organ] At first listen I thought this sounded more like Jack’s remake of West, Bruce and Laing’s Out Into the Fields.  But instead of the Afro-Cuban feel of Out Into the Fields, the addition of a beefy horn section puts this one in Calypso territory.  Phil Manzanera plays a scorching guitar solo that I didn’t know he had in him.  This is an excellent opener for Silver Rails.  

Reach for the Night – [John Medeski: Hammond organ; Malcolm Bruce: guitar] – One of the best piano ballads Jack Bruce has ever written.  I like to hear this one after Fields of Forever, not before.  

Fields of Forever – Imagine Doin’ That Scrapyard Thing [Cream – Goodbye] with a horn section and you have Fields of Forever.  This is a good thing.  This is as up-tempo as Jack Bruce gets on Silver Rails.  This is my favorite from this album.  

Hidden Cities – [Uli Jon Roth: guitar, Cindy Blackman Santana: drums, Aruba Red, Kyla Bruce: vocals] – I expected some guitar pyrotechnics from Uli Jon Roth but didn’t hear any.  I tried to like this one, I really did.  This is the album’s “skip” track.  

Don’t Look Now – [Tony Remy: guitar; Malcolm Bruce: guitar; John Medeski: Hammond organ, mellotron] Look!  Another piano ballad!  This is a good one.  

Rusty Lady – [Robin Trower – guitar; Malcolm Bruce: guitar] Jack Bruce didn’t like Maggie Thatcher, the Scot socialist that he was.  And here he sings his “good riddance” to the Iron Lady.  It’s a cousin to Politician [Cream – Wheels of Fire].  Robin Trower is excellent as always.  Pete Brown has a great line - "when she stepped from her oxhide car, it was Winston in drag without the cigar."  

Industrial Child – This one is another piano ballad, with a faint acoustic guitar played by Tony Remy.  The best adjective to describe this one is haunting.  Better than Don’t Look Now, but not as good as Reach for the Night.  A keeper.  

Drone – Stukas!  Distorted bass and drums only.  His bass hasn’t sounded this distorted since he recorded Apostrophe(‘) with Frank Zappa.  Although there are references to bumble bees, this is a commentary on today’s terror weapon from above, with samples of a terror weapon of yesteryear to drive the point home.  I like it!  

Keep It Down – [Bernie Marsden – guitar] This song was first done on 1974’s Out of the Storm, his first LP after West, Bruce & Laing imploded.  Steve Hunter [he of Alice Cooper fame] played on the original, which would not have been out of place in either Cream or WB&L.  It had that power trio vibe.  This update version has Bernie Marsden instead of Steve Hunter, and John Medeski on Hammond organ.  Jack Bruce was a heroin addict when he wrote this, and he has said this is his Needle and the Damage Done.  This version isn’t as hard-hitting as the one from 1974, but it’s still pretty good.  

No Surrender – [Bernie Marsden – guitar; Cindy Blackman Santana: drums] This song was first done on 1989’s A Question of Time.  Despite Bernie Marsden’s presence on guitar, there’s little difference between this and the original.  Though this is a good song, it’s not essential either.  

Jack Bruce had plans to follow-up Silver Rails.  He bought a house in Mallorca, put in a small studio so he could write songs, and planned to go back to Abbey Road.  But his liver failed him and he died on October 25^th, 2014, seven months after Silver Rails’ release.  This wasn’t meant to be a final album like The Wind was for Warren Zevon, but there it is.  Fortunately for us, it’s one of the better albums in Jack Bruce’s canon.

Tony's Guitarist Picks - Michael Schenker

I’ve wanted to write about Michael Schenker for the longest time but didn’t know quite how.  Then I saw a 30 for 30 thing on ESPN the other day called Believeland.  It was a thing about being a sports fan in Cleveland, and how much it sucks to be a sports fan in Cleveland.  You have such high hopes for your teams but in the end they just crush your dreams [The Drive, The Fumble, The Shot, The Decision, the Browns winning the Super Bowl after they moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens, etc].  Being a fan of Michael Schenker is like being a sports fan in Cleveland.  He’s a brilliant guitar player, but he just doesn’t have his shit together.  In UFO, he was the meticulous German in an English band of drunks.  There was always a separation between Schenker and Phil Mogg and Pete Way.  There’s the language barrier, Mogg and Way were practical jokers and piss-takers while Schenker always hid away to practice, practice, and practice some more.  The band’s substance abuse problems would probably kill mere mortals.  Mogg and Way did so much cocaine they kept Peru’s economy afloat, Way supplemented his coke with heroin, and Schenker just drank a lot (an understatement if ever there was one).  Schenker couldn’t handle success – he disappeared for months after Lights Out became a hit.  Why do I like Michael Schenker?  Because he can riff like Tony Iommi and solo like Ritchie Blackmore.  It’s a shame that he’s a head case. 

Schenker’s technique is flawless [unless he’s drunk, of course].  He’s precise, he’s intricate, he’s fast when he wants to be, and he can bend notes like Albert King.  His playing is astonishing, his solos soaring.  His riffs are as solid as any of those written by Tony Iommi.  He gets his unique tone by setting his wah-wah pedal at a certain spot and leaving it there.  He could write and play titanic riffs.  But here’s the rub – producer Ron Nevison once said "Schenker would give me these amazing, epic riffs, but he didn't write with any sense of a vocalist involved.  The guitar parts were these wandering, beautiful things, but they weren't for a band with a singer."  It’s no wonder that some of the best songs he’s done on albums he’s made away from UFO are instrumentals [Captain Nemo, Ulcer, Coast To Coast, Essenz].  He’s also done two electric instrumental albums [Adventures of the Imagination, MS 2000: Dreams and Expressions] that are dazzling.  But what Nevison said about Schenker not being able to write for a singer is true – he’s has many albums with anonymous bands and even lesser-known singers who are as faceless as they are weak, where you can count the really good “songs” on one hand, sometimes even one finger [hence my “Cleveland sports fan” metaphor].  His music with UFO was his best, followed by that of his own Michael Schenker Group between the years 1980-84 [see below]. 

I had the opportunity to see Michael Schenker live twice.  The first time was in a small club in Colorado Springs with MSG in 1984.  They played most of his songs that I knew and some that I didn’t.  The second time was in 1995 with UFO at an even smaller club in Tucson.  I was right up front for the MSG show, and I’m sure I lost some hearing.  Having learned that lesson the hard way, I sat/stood in the back of the club when I saw UFO in ’95.  There was no hearing damage that night.  It was like being a part of the Strangers in the Night album – they played it all, plus one new song [Venus].   Strangers in the Night [1978] was one of those live albums where everything clicked.  If you are going to own one UFO album, Strangers in the Night is the one to have.   The scary thing about Strangers is that Schenker claims the best takes from different shows weren’t used.

The list: 

Phenomenon [UFO] – Rock Bottom

Force It [UFO] – Let It Roll, Out in the Street, Mother Mary, This Kid’s

No Heavy Petting [UFO] – Natural Thing

Lights Out [UFO] – Too Hot To Handle, Lights Out, Love To Love

Obsession [UFO] – Only You Can Rock Me

Strangers in the Night (Live) [UFO] – the whole thing (11-minute Rock Bottom!)

Lovedrive [Scorpions] – Lovedrive, Coast To Coast

Michael Schenker Group – Cry For the Nations, Into The Arena, Armed And Ready

MSG [Michael Schenker Group] – Attack of the Mad Axeman, On And On, But I Want More

Assault Attack [Michael Schenker Group] – Assault Attack, Samurai, Desert Song

Built To Destroy [Michael Schenker Group] – Rock Will Never Die, Captain Nemo

Walk On Water [UFO] – A Self Made Man, Venus, Stopped By a Bullet, Darker Days

Written in the Sand [Michael Schenker Group] – Essensz

The Unforgiven [Michael Schenker Group] – Rude Awakening

Covenant [UFO] – Love Is Forever, Unraveled, Miss the Lights, The Smell of Money

Adventures of the Imagination [Michael Schenker] – Achtung Fertis, Los, Aardvark in a VW Smoking a Cigar, At the End of the Day

MS 2000: Dreams and Expressions [Michael Schenker] – all of it

Be Aware of Scorpions [Michael Schenker Group] – No Turning Back, On Your Way

Sharks [UFO] – Quicksilver Rider, Deadman Walking, Fighting Man, Crossing Over 

Today, Michael Schenker records and tours with a band he calls his Temple of Rock.  Doogie White [who used to sing for Ritchie Blackmore] is the vocalist, while the rhythm section is Franz Buchholz and Herman Rarebell from the Scorpions, with Wayne Findlay from previous editions of MSG on second guitar and keyboards.  The songs are solid and consistent, just not spectacular.  But the two albums he has done with them are the best things he’s done in years, so there is hope that this Teutonic stringmaster is finally getting his act together.

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.