The British band Genesis had a long history before it entered its present state of dormancy. In previous articles, I have discussed the only two members of the group to remain for its entire existence, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, and next year I intend to cover the best known of the other members of the group, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, and Steve Hackett. Another somewhat less well known former member who played an important role in the group’s formative years was Anthony Phillips (born December 23, 1951), who along with Banks, Gabriel and Rutherford was a founding member of Genesis. Though his early departure meant that the vast majority of the band’s best songs were written and recorded without any input from him, it seemed appropriate to do a brief overview of the early years of Genesis with an emphasis on the significance of Phillips in this period.
As noted in my article on Rutherford, he and Phillips became good friends at school and started playing music together, just as their schoolmates Banks and Gabriel did. Soon after arriving at the school in 1965, Phillips formed a group called Anon (sometimes referred to as “The Anon”, even by Mike Rutherford, though Phillips insists that there was no “the”) with bassist Rivers Job, vocalist Richard MacPhail, and drummer Rob Tyrell. Rutherford joined soon after, and the band, whose only recorded song was Phillips’s "Pennsylvania Flickhouse" (a R&B style tune very different from later Genesis songs, though Phillips maintains that the studio demo was not the best version of the song), played together with various lineups until the end of 1966 before splitting up. Rob Tyrell afterwards joined Sour Milk Sea, whose lead singer for its last few months of existence was Freddie Bulsara – later known as Freddie Mercury. Phillips, meanwhile, had started to spend more time playing music with Banks and Gabriel, and began attempting to write songs with Rutherford. Sometime in 1967, Phillips and Rutherford got together with the intention of recording some songs, and Phillips asked Banks to come and play piano. Banks suggested that he and Gabriel also record one of their songs and that Gabriel do the singing, as he had the best voice. So Genesis was born.
The four schoolmates managed to attract the interest of Jonathan King, a pop impresario who had once attended their school, with their demo. King signed them to a contract, gave them their name, and produced two singles and an album for them. The group’s first two singles, “The Silent Sun” and “A Winter’s Tale”, were released in 1968 and were mainly the work of the Banks/Gabriel partnership, with Philips and Rutherford only writing “That’s Me”, the B-side of “The Silent Sun”. On the group’s first album From Genesis to Revelation, recorded in 1968 while they were still at school and released in early 1969, the songs were still fairly simple and pop-oriented. According to Phillips, Banks and Gabriel dominated the songwriting on the first album, though he also contributed a number of songs, some with help from Rutherford and some on his own. An early composition by Phillips was the instrumental “Patricia”, which had appeared on the group’s first tape. Lyrics were later added, apparently by Gabriel, and the song was recorded as “In Hiding” on From Genesis to Revelation. Another song written mainly by Phillips that appeared on the album was “A Place to Call My Own”. According to Tony Banks, this song was one of the first long songs with separate sections done by the group, though they only used the last section on the album. (Note: Though the releases of From Genesis to Revelation that I know of credit all the songs to Genesis, several sources give individual songwriting credits for the songs; only a few of these individual credits are directly backed up by quotes that I’ve seen from the band members, though the few direct statements they have made about the authorship of the songs are not inconsistent with the individual credits given)
After their first album failed to make any impact, the members of Genesis, after some hesitation, made the decision to devote themselves to developing their music. According to Rutherford, Banks and Gabriel were the more hesitant ones, while he and Phillips were more certain that music was what they wanted to do, with Phillips perhaps being the most determined. Phillips and Rutherford began writing songs together on 12-string guitars, creating a sound that became one of the group’s signature sounds, along with Banks’s keyboards. The Phillips/Rutherford team, or Phillips alone, wrote a number of important songs in this period. Phillips had written “Visions of Angels” on piano at the time of the first album, and Phillips and Rutherford wrote “Dusk” and “White Mountain” together, as well as parts of “Stagnation”, though Banks and Gabriel also contributed to the latter. All these songs appeared on the group’s second album, Trespass, released in 1970. But according to Banks, another key early track, though one that was not released until it appeared on a later box set, was “Going Out to Get You”, and while all of them worked on it, Phillips wrote the song part of it. The unreleased song “Pacidy” also may have been a Phillips/Rutherford collaboration, as part of it was included in a piece on a Phillips solo album called “Field of Eternity” and credited to Phillips and Rutherford. Phillips no doubt wrote or co-wrote a number of the other early unreleased songs by the group, but no information on the other songs is available.
Unfortunately, by the time Trespass was released, Phillips had started suffering from debilitating stage fright, and he eventually decided to quit the band. As he had been very important to the group, his decision almost caused the others to give up, but in the end they decided to continue, and in addition to looking for a replacement for Phillips also find a new drummer. The drummer they ended up recruiting was Phil Collins. As Phillips said, “There was a huge silver lining for Genesis which was that me leaving meant…they got Phil. I mean, it’s got to have been worth it to have got Phil.” While getting a replacement for Phillips himself took longer, the person they finally got, Steve Hackett, would also prove to be a good choice for the group. But even after Phillips had left, he still had an influence on Genesis in that some songs that he had been involved in writing remained in their repertoire and in some cases were recorded. The most notable example was “The Musical Box”, which appeared on the first post-Phillips album, 1971’s Nursery Cryme, and became one of the group’s most popular and highly regarded songs from the early part of their career. While, like all the songs on early Genesis albums, it was officially credited to the band (meaning the current group as of the time of the recording), a significant part of the music, particularly the opening sections, had been written by Anthony Phillips (possibly with Mike Rutherford), as can be heard from listening to his 1969 instrumental demo entitled F#, which was released on his Archive Collection Volume 1 (a further development of what became “The Musical Box” can be heard in the Genesis archive track “Manipulation”).
In the years after he left Genesis, Phillips and Rutherford continued to play and write together on occasion. In fact, they originally had intended to release an album together, but because of his Genesis commitments, Rutherford found it difficult to find time to work with Phillips. The music they wrote together was finally released as Phillips’s first solo album, The Geese and the Ghost, along with a number of songs and instrumental pieces composed by Phillips alone. Phil Collins also participated, doing vocals on two songs. A third collaboration between Phillips, Rutherford and Collins was “Silver Song” (named for John Silver, the drummer for Genesis at the time of From Genesis to Revelation), which was recorded to be released as a single but was then shelved, only getting released in 2007 on a re-release of The Geese and the Ghost.
Phillips was clearly very important to Genesis in its early years. He helped push the band in the direction of art rock (or progressive rock as it is now called), though it was a direction all of the group were interested in, and he was at first the most determined to make a career of music. Gabriel, Banks and Rutherford have all stressed his impact on Genesis, with Gabriel going so far as to call him “in many ways the most musically gifted of all of us” and Banks saying that “Anthony for me was kind of the group leader”. He certainly had a major role in the writing during his time in the band, probably about equal to (but not greater than) Banks and Gabriel, though Rutherford had pretty much caught up by the time Phillips left. Though even on the first two albums Banks and Gabriel stand out the most to me as performers (Phillips himself called Banks “the fulcrum of the group”), as I noted above the excellent 12-string guitar playing in tandem that Phillips and Rutherford (and occasionally Banks) did on Trespass became a signature sound of the band, one that they continued to use to good effect in later years. Since I don’t consider either From Genesis to Revelation or Trespass to be as good as the albums that followed it (though the addition of Collins and Hackett and improved performance by the others also have something to do with that), it’s hard for me to consider his departure a disastrous loss for Genesis, but there are still some good songs on those albums (Phillips's "Visions of Angels" is one of the better songs on the latter one), and “The Musical Box” is one of the group’s best early tracks. I can’t judge most of Phillips’ solo recordings, as the only album I’ve heard in its entirety is The Geese and the Ghost, though as far as that one is concerned I concur with some who point out that while it has some beautiful guitar playing and is enjoyable enough to listen to, it is somewhat lacking in drama, which is something that Banks and Gabriel in particular (and later Collins and Hackett as well, at least as performers) contributed to Genesis. For that matter, even Trespass seems weaker in part because it is somewhat softer and less dynamic than the later albums. But it’s also true that without the acoustic guitar passages contributed by Phillips and Rutherford (and later by Rutherford and Hackett), Banks’s keyboards would quickly become overwhelming. Like with most great bands, it was the balance between the different group members that made them good, and it was fortunate that the softer, more acoustic music pioneered by Anthony Phillips remained part of Genesis even after he left.
Anthony Phillips with Genesis
(All songs performed by Genesis except where otherwise noted)
Pennsylvania Flickhouse (Phillips; performed by Anon)
Patricia (Phillips)
That's Me (Phillips/Rutherford)
In Hiding (Phillips/Gabriel [?lyrics])
A Place to Call My Own (Phillips/Gabriel[?])
In the Beginning (Phillips/Gabriel[?])
Window (Phillips/Rutherford[?])
Visions of Angels (Phillips)
White Mountain (Phillips/Rutherford)
Dusk (Phillips/Rutherford)
Going Out to Get You (Phillips[song section], [?Banks/Gabriel/Rutherford])
Pacidy (Phillips/Rutherford[?])
The Musical Box (Music: Phillips/Rutherford[opening section], Banks/Rutherford[final section]; Lyrics: Gabriel)
Which Way the Wind Blows (Phillips; performed by Anthony Phillips with Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford)
Silver Song (Phillips/Rutherford; performed by Anthony Phillips with Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford)
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Let’s Put the Beatles Back Together Again 1970-2010 by Jeff Walker
As today is the 22nd anniversary of the murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980, it seems like an appropriate time for another Beatles-related article. Earlier this year I bought a copy of the book Let’s Put the Beatles Back Together Again 1970-2010: How to Assemble & Appreciate the 2nd Half of the Beatles' Legacy by Jeff Walker, and I finished reading it a month or two ago. As the title indicates, the author assembles solo songs released by the various ex-Beatles in the decades after the group broke up into Beatles albums. This is of course not a new idea – I have done something similar myself, though I only got as far as the mid 1970s (at least so far) – but Walker is the first person to publish a comprehensive book on the subject.
The first part of the book is devoted to arguments about why it makes sense to assemble the best of the individual Beatles' post-1970 output into Beatles albums. Walker has a tendency to belabor the point about, repeating arguments a little more often than necessary, but he makes a good case. One good point is that the Beatles had already released quite a bit of material that did not involve all of the four and in some cases only involved one. As far back as Paul McCartney's solo recording of "Yesterday" there had been songs released in the Beatles' name that didn't include all of them, and by the time of The Beatles (aka The White Album), many of the songs were recorded without the participation of one or several of the group. In this sense, the post-1970s recordings are just a continuation of this trend, especially since individual members still sometimes recorded together, though of course far less frequently than even in 1968 and 1969, and with far more help from other musicians.
While it is apparent that there is plenty of solo material that is not up to the standards of that released by the Beatles, Walker makes the point that there were at least a few songs released under the Beatles moniker that weren't all that great, and that there are some solo songs that are superior to even decent Beatles songs. I do have a minor problem with one of his examples; while I agree that in the cases of the examples he cites for Paul ("Run Devil Run" vs "Another Girl"), George Harrison ("Any Road" vs "If I Needed Someone"), and Ringo Starr ("It Don't Come Easy" vs "What Goes On") the solo songs are at least slightly better, John's "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)", while certainly one of his better songs from that period, is by no means equal to "And Your Bird Can Sing" (there are a number of weaker Beatles songs written by John that would have been better examples). Also I disagree with a few of his examples of solo songs that he regards as not "Beatles-worthy", such as "Crackerbox Palace" and "Crippled Inside", with the former in particular being actually quite good. But of course these things are subjective, and the reader can accept his overall argument without agreeing with all his specific examples.
Before he gets down to details on the post-breakup material, Walker gives his reconfigurations of the 1960s albums for CD. While it makes sense to put the singles onto the albums from the same period, I wouldn't go nearly as far as Walker does in messing with the original track sequences, nor would I eliminate as many songs as he does. In fact, I'm not sure that any really should be taken off; while a few early tracks are basically filler, none are truly terrible, and there is some virtue in every track on their later albums (yes, even "Revolution 9"). Admittedly, even Walker does little more than add contemporary singles to the albums from Help on, with the exception of Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album, and it makes sense to assemble a more chronologically-accurate version of Magical Mystery Tour. But I am so used to albums like Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, and Abbey Road opening and closing as they do in the original formats that I would have trouble getting used to hearing them differently (even if it does make more sense for Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever to be on Sgt. Pepper's than on Magical Mystery Tour), and in the case of even the less unified White Album it would seem a bit odd to hear the track order changed so much. But those who don't want to mess with the original albums can safely skip this section.
Next Walker devotes two chapters to reassessing the Get Back sessions and the material that came out of them. He argues strongly that the negative views of this material and the claims that the sessions were a disaster are wrong. While I agree that some of what has been said and written about the Get Back sessions is excessively negative, Walker overstates his case to some degree. While the Beatles were able to get along better than is often portrayed, the tensions were also quite obvious, and while a much better album could have been assembled from the Get Back sessions than the botched effort by Phil Spector that finally came out as Let It Be, it is still true that overall the songs weren't quite up to the standards of their previous few albums, with a few exceptions like "Let It Be", "Across the Universe" and "The Long and Winding Road". But Walker does provide an alternative viewpoint to the usual critical views of this material.
Though it only starts two-fifths of the way in, the meat of the book is of course the sections on the Beatles' post-breakup songs. Walker uses a fictional alternate history in which the songs that in reality were released on various solo albums instead were released by something he calls the Beatles Releasing Collective (BRC for short), masterminded by a fictional manager named Arnold Zonn (as Walker puts much of the blame for the breakup on the conflict over choice of managers and bad handling of affairs by Allen Klein). I think he spends too much time setting up the BRC concept, which after all is fictional, and I don't agree with the way he groups the releases. While in Walker's fictional timeline singles were released more or less at the same pace as in reality, all the BRC albums are grouped into box sets: Black Box (1973; 3 discs), MoonDogs (1982; 2 discs), Covers (1999; 2 discs), 45 (2000; 3 discs), Live (2009; 4 discs) Singularity (2010; 3 discs) and several bonus sets. Even if the Beatles had agreed to something like the BRC, it is highly unlikely that their songs would have been released in box sets. Box sets were not all that common before the CD era, and I can't think of any significant original releases (as opposed to compilations of previous released material or unreleased outtakes) that were box sets. Furthermore, I'm sure the individual Beatles would have been too impatient to get their songs out on the market to wait years between sets. Of course the advantage to grouping the songs this way is that Walker has a wider selection to pick and choose from, and he can sequence the albums with more freedom. Nevertheless, I prefer my own way of putting together this material, as single albums released more or less annually in the early years and then with less frequency afterwards, though some individual songs might end up getting held back for later release.
Inevitably, I disagree with some of Walker's individual song choices. For one thing, though he argues strongly for Paul being every bit John's equal, something I agree with him completely about, and for both George and Ringo having a lot to contribute as well, his song selections are unbalanced in favor of John's songs. He includes as many or more of John's songs as he does Paul's, even though Paul released far more songs than John. This means he neglects great songs by Paul like "Listen to What the Man Said" in favor of relatively obscure songs by John. I can't judge the merits of all the songs he picks, since there are some I don't have (in particular I don't have the John Lennon Anthology), but from the ones I do know I don't think that the ratio on Walker's sets is justified. It would make more sense to simply decrease the number of John's songs on the later sets when there is less of his material to choose from, or to add more songs by Paul (and to a lesser extent by George and Ringo), to reach a more reasonable ratio. It's also interesting to note that Walker has a definite preference for certain albums. He includes most of the songs on albums such as Paul's Flaming Pie and George's Brainwashed in his sets, while including little or nothing from other albums. I don't necessarily have a big problem with this (Flaming Pie and Brainwashed are certainly among the best solo Beatles albums), but there are still albums that are unfairly neglected. Also, while Walker does have a very useful index of songs which indicates the source albums for each and for the truly dedicated a list of suggested edits (some of which, at least, would probably significantly improve the songs in question, though I'm not likely to take the time necessary to do them), it would have been nice to also have a list organized by source albums, which would incidentally show which ones he got most of his selections from, giving those who haven't bought all the solo albums a clearer idea of which ones would be good starting points. Despite these issues, Walker's choices will be useful references for me to consult when I get around to putting together my own Beatles collections for the later years, and I may even be inspired to reconsider a few of my choices on the ones I've already done.
One of the book's strong points is that Walker talks about every song he has chosen for the main sets in varying degrees of detail. Some of the entries focus on the songs themselves, while others are mainly devoted to background stories. Some go off on tangents with only the remotest connection to the song in question, but for the most part they are still very interesting reading. The entries on John's songs are the longest, and are the places where he most often goes into biographical anecdotes. The only problem with these is that Walker seems to use his various sources rather uncritically, repeating occasionally gossipy stories from different biographies, some of which have been criticized for inaccuracy. One exception to Walker's uncritical use of sources is the entry on "Watching the Wheels" where he mentions the possibly biases of May Pang and Elliot Mintz (who he refers to as Yoko Ono's paid "spin-master"). He is rightfully skeptical of John's claim to have seen a UFO, as related in the entry on "Nobody Told Me", but uncritically relates some dubious stories about John's death. Even if some of them are of questionable accuracy, the background stories are still very interesting, and most fans of the Beatles will learn something new from them. For one thing, the overall picture one gets of John and Yoko's relationship is not nearly as rosy as either Yoko or John when he was alive portrayed it. Interestingly, while Walker doesn't blame Yoko for the Beatles' split, he does make a case for her preventing a reunion, as when John was still with May Pang he was contemplating going to drop in on Paul's recording sessions for Venus and Mars, but when he got back together with Yoko this idea was abandoned, and though for a while afterward he was still fairly positive about the idea of a reunion he soon dropped out of music altogether. The stories he relates (some of which I've heard elsewhere) also tend to portray Yoko as cold and manipulative, though he has some positive things to say about her and her music (among his bonus CDs are ones pairing her songs with those of John's sons Julian and Sean).
While I have focused on a number of flaws and areas of disagreement, I still have to conclude that Let’s Put the Beatles Back Together Again 1970-2010 is a worthwhile purchase for any Beatles fan. For all the books written about the Beatles, there are very few that cover the solo releases of all four of them comprehensively. Fans who have not listened to much of Paul, John, George and Ringo's solo output will find this a very useful reference, and while I (and many other fans) might quibble with some of his choices, I have no doubt that anyone who actually assembled Walker's BRC sets would find them to be truly enjoyable albums on par with most of what the Beatles released in the 1960s.
[Update: For a look at a similar book, see my post from the end of 2015 on Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers by Andrew Grant Jackson. Also check out more of my own post-break up Beatles albums.]
The first part of the book is devoted to arguments about why it makes sense to assemble the best of the individual Beatles' post-1970 output into Beatles albums. Walker has a tendency to belabor the point about, repeating arguments a little more often than necessary, but he makes a good case. One good point is that the Beatles had already released quite a bit of material that did not involve all of the four and in some cases only involved one. As far back as Paul McCartney's solo recording of "Yesterday" there had been songs released in the Beatles' name that didn't include all of them, and by the time of The Beatles (aka The White Album), many of the songs were recorded without the participation of one or several of the group. In this sense, the post-1970s recordings are just a continuation of this trend, especially since individual members still sometimes recorded together, though of course far less frequently than even in 1968 and 1969, and with far more help from other musicians.
While it is apparent that there is plenty of solo material that is not up to the standards of that released by the Beatles, Walker makes the point that there were at least a few songs released under the Beatles moniker that weren't all that great, and that there are some solo songs that are superior to even decent Beatles songs. I do have a minor problem with one of his examples; while I agree that in the cases of the examples he cites for Paul ("Run Devil Run" vs "Another Girl"), George Harrison ("Any Road" vs "If I Needed Someone"), and Ringo Starr ("It Don't Come Easy" vs "What Goes On") the solo songs are at least slightly better, John's "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)", while certainly one of his better songs from that period, is by no means equal to "And Your Bird Can Sing" (there are a number of weaker Beatles songs written by John that would have been better examples). Also I disagree with a few of his examples of solo songs that he regards as not "Beatles-worthy", such as "Crackerbox Palace" and "Crippled Inside", with the former in particular being actually quite good. But of course these things are subjective, and the reader can accept his overall argument without agreeing with all his specific examples.
Before he gets down to details on the post-breakup material, Walker gives his reconfigurations of the 1960s albums for CD. While it makes sense to put the singles onto the albums from the same period, I wouldn't go nearly as far as Walker does in messing with the original track sequences, nor would I eliminate as many songs as he does. In fact, I'm not sure that any really should be taken off; while a few early tracks are basically filler, none are truly terrible, and there is some virtue in every track on their later albums (yes, even "Revolution 9"). Admittedly, even Walker does little more than add contemporary singles to the albums from Help on, with the exception of Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album, and it makes sense to assemble a more chronologically-accurate version of Magical Mystery Tour. But I am so used to albums like Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, and Abbey Road opening and closing as they do in the original formats that I would have trouble getting used to hearing them differently (even if it does make more sense for Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever to be on Sgt. Pepper's than on Magical Mystery Tour), and in the case of even the less unified White Album it would seem a bit odd to hear the track order changed so much. But those who don't want to mess with the original albums can safely skip this section.
Next Walker devotes two chapters to reassessing the Get Back sessions and the material that came out of them. He argues strongly that the negative views of this material and the claims that the sessions were a disaster are wrong. While I agree that some of what has been said and written about the Get Back sessions is excessively negative, Walker overstates his case to some degree. While the Beatles were able to get along better than is often portrayed, the tensions were also quite obvious, and while a much better album could have been assembled from the Get Back sessions than the botched effort by Phil Spector that finally came out as Let It Be, it is still true that overall the songs weren't quite up to the standards of their previous few albums, with a few exceptions like "Let It Be", "Across the Universe" and "The Long and Winding Road". But Walker does provide an alternative viewpoint to the usual critical views of this material.
Though it only starts two-fifths of the way in, the meat of the book is of course the sections on the Beatles' post-breakup songs. Walker uses a fictional alternate history in which the songs that in reality were released on various solo albums instead were released by something he calls the Beatles Releasing Collective (BRC for short), masterminded by a fictional manager named Arnold Zonn (as Walker puts much of the blame for the breakup on the conflict over choice of managers and bad handling of affairs by Allen Klein). I think he spends too much time setting up the BRC concept, which after all is fictional, and I don't agree with the way he groups the releases. While in Walker's fictional timeline singles were released more or less at the same pace as in reality, all the BRC albums are grouped into box sets: Black Box (1973; 3 discs), MoonDogs (1982; 2 discs), Covers (1999; 2 discs), 45 (2000; 3 discs), Live (2009; 4 discs) Singularity (2010; 3 discs) and several bonus sets. Even if the Beatles had agreed to something like the BRC, it is highly unlikely that their songs would have been released in box sets. Box sets were not all that common before the CD era, and I can't think of any significant original releases (as opposed to compilations of previous released material or unreleased outtakes) that were box sets. Furthermore, I'm sure the individual Beatles would have been too impatient to get their songs out on the market to wait years between sets. Of course the advantage to grouping the songs this way is that Walker has a wider selection to pick and choose from, and he can sequence the albums with more freedom. Nevertheless, I prefer my own way of putting together this material, as single albums released more or less annually in the early years and then with less frequency afterwards, though some individual songs might end up getting held back for later release.
Inevitably, I disagree with some of Walker's individual song choices. For one thing, though he argues strongly for Paul being every bit John's equal, something I agree with him completely about, and for both George and Ringo having a lot to contribute as well, his song selections are unbalanced in favor of John's songs. He includes as many or more of John's songs as he does Paul's, even though Paul released far more songs than John. This means he neglects great songs by Paul like "Listen to What the Man Said" in favor of relatively obscure songs by John. I can't judge the merits of all the songs he picks, since there are some I don't have (in particular I don't have the John Lennon Anthology), but from the ones I do know I don't think that the ratio on Walker's sets is justified. It would make more sense to simply decrease the number of John's songs on the later sets when there is less of his material to choose from, or to add more songs by Paul (and to a lesser extent by George and Ringo), to reach a more reasonable ratio. It's also interesting to note that Walker has a definite preference for certain albums. He includes most of the songs on albums such as Paul's Flaming Pie and George's Brainwashed in his sets, while including little or nothing from other albums. I don't necessarily have a big problem with this (Flaming Pie and Brainwashed are certainly among the best solo Beatles albums), but there are still albums that are unfairly neglected. Also, while Walker does have a very useful index of songs which indicates the source albums for each and for the truly dedicated a list of suggested edits (some of which, at least, would probably significantly improve the songs in question, though I'm not likely to take the time necessary to do them), it would have been nice to also have a list organized by source albums, which would incidentally show which ones he got most of his selections from, giving those who haven't bought all the solo albums a clearer idea of which ones would be good starting points. Despite these issues, Walker's choices will be useful references for me to consult when I get around to putting together my own Beatles collections for the later years, and I may even be inspired to reconsider a few of my choices on the ones I've already done.
One of the book's strong points is that Walker talks about every song he has chosen for the main sets in varying degrees of detail. Some of the entries focus on the songs themselves, while others are mainly devoted to background stories. Some go off on tangents with only the remotest connection to the song in question, but for the most part they are still very interesting reading. The entries on John's songs are the longest, and are the places where he most often goes into biographical anecdotes. The only problem with these is that Walker seems to use his various sources rather uncritically, repeating occasionally gossipy stories from different biographies, some of which have been criticized for inaccuracy. One exception to Walker's uncritical use of sources is the entry on "Watching the Wheels" where he mentions the possibly biases of May Pang and Elliot Mintz (who he refers to as Yoko Ono's paid "spin-master"). He is rightfully skeptical of John's claim to have seen a UFO, as related in the entry on "Nobody Told Me", but uncritically relates some dubious stories about John's death. Even if some of them are of questionable accuracy, the background stories are still very interesting, and most fans of the Beatles will learn something new from them. For one thing, the overall picture one gets of John and Yoko's relationship is not nearly as rosy as either Yoko or John when he was alive portrayed it. Interestingly, while Walker doesn't blame Yoko for the Beatles' split, he does make a case for her preventing a reunion, as when John was still with May Pang he was contemplating going to drop in on Paul's recording sessions for Venus and Mars, but when he got back together with Yoko this idea was abandoned, and though for a while afterward he was still fairly positive about the idea of a reunion he soon dropped out of music altogether. The stories he relates (some of which I've heard elsewhere) also tend to portray Yoko as cold and manipulative, though he has some positive things to say about her and her music (among his bonus CDs are ones pairing her songs with those of John's sons Julian and Sean).
While I have focused on a number of flaws and areas of disagreement, I still have to conclude that Let’s Put the Beatles Back Together Again 1970-2010 is a worthwhile purchase for any Beatles fan. For all the books written about the Beatles, there are very few that cover the solo releases of all four of them comprehensively. Fans who have not listened to much of Paul, John, George and Ringo's solo output will find this a very useful reference, and while I (and many other fans) might quibble with some of his choices, I have no doubt that anyone who actually assembled Walker's BRC sets would find them to be truly enjoyable albums on par with most of what the Beatles released in the 1960s.
[Update: For a look at a similar book, see my post from the end of 2015 on Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers by Andrew Grant Jackson. Also check out more of my own post-break up Beatles albums.]
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Randy Newman
November 27 was the 70th anniversary of the birth of Jimi Hendrix. November 28 is the birthday of a very different American popular music artist, one who is a contender for the greatest living American composer of popular song. Randall Stuart Newman, best known as Randy Newman, was born into a family of musicians (his uncle Alfred won nine Academy Awards for his film work) on November 28, 1943. He has been writing songs professionally since his late teens. In his early years he wrote songs for other artists, and in the last few decades he has become known primarily as a composer of movie soundtracks, including films like The Natural, Meet the Parents, Awakenings, Ragtime, Cars, Monsters Inc. and the Toy Story films. He was nominated for an Academy Award 15 times before finally winning one on his 16th nomination, and he now has 2 Oscars out of 20 nominations (as he said, "my percentages aren't great"). But perhaps his best work has appeared on his albums, which despite a relative lack of commercial success (the major exception being the song "Short People") have been critically well regarded.
While Randy Newman doesn't have the level of fame of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan, he is highly regarded by many critics and artists. Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks and many others have said they are fans of his work. Several artists have recorded entire albums of Newman's songs, most notably Harry Nilsson on Nilsson Sings Newman. Mark Knopfler cited Newman's songs as an inspiration for "Money for Nothing". Even John Cleese, who admitted almost complete ignorance about popular music (he couldn't even remember what band Mick Jagger was in), said he was a fan of Randy Newman. For my part, while I wouldn't say that every one of his songs hits the mark, many of them are truly brilliant. I would say his best album was 1972's Sail Away, with the two runners-up being 1974's Good Old Boys and 1999's Bad Love, and there are plenty of great songs scattered among his other albums, not to mention among the tracks he wrote for others but never sang himself. He has a very good sense of melody and is capable of composing music in a wide variety of genres, but what really sets him apart is his lyrics. While some of his songs are overly caustic or too subtle even for me, the best of them are really without parallel.
To cover all of Randy Newman's best songs, whether performed by Newman himself or by others, would take several CDs, and that's without taking into account different covers of the same song. I have made several different compilations of Newman's work in the past, and rather than take the time to come up with a new list of songs, I am simply attaching one of these, including the original liner notes that went with it. There are a few good songs that I didn't yet have when I made this list, including many that appear on the compilations On Vine Street: The Early Songs of Randy Newman and Bless You California: More Early Songs of Randy Newman, and I should also point out that Newman himself did great versions of several of the songs on the first disc, such as "Sail Away". Perhaps for his 70th birthday, I'll put together a newer, more comprehensive compilation. For now, this one provides a good sampling of his work.
CD 1
1 I Think It's Going To Rain Today Judy Collins (1966)
2 I've Been Wrong Before Cilla Black (1965)
3 Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear Alan Price (1967)
4 The Debutante's Ball Harpers Bizarre (1967)
5 Wait Till Next Year Ricky Nelson (1968)
6 Just One Smile Blood Sweat & Tears (1968)
7 Vine Street Harry Nilsson (1970)
8 Snow Claudine Longet (1968)
9 I Don't Want To Hear It Anymore Dusty Springfield (1969)
10 Mama Told Me (Not To Come) Three Dog Night (1970)
11 The Beehive State The Doobie Brothers (1971)
12 I'll Be Home Barbra Streisand (1971)
13 Sail Away Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee with Arlo Guthrie (1973)
14 Guilty Bonnie Raitt (1973)
15 You Can Leave Your Hat On Etta James (1973)
16 Living Without You Manfred Mann's Earth Band (1971)
17 My Old Kentucky Home Johnny Cash (1975)
18 Love Story Liza Minnelli
19 I Wonder Why Ella Fitzgerald (1969)
20 Have You Seen My Baby Ringo Starr (1973)
21 Old Man Art Garfunkel (1973)
22 Baltimore Nina Simone (1978)
23 Louisiana 1927 Aaron Neville (1991)
24 Feels Like Home Linda Ronstadt with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris (1995)
25 Every Time It Rains Joe Cocker (2002)
CD 2
1 Dixie Flyer Randy Newman
2 New Orleans Wins The War Randy Newman
3 Davy The Fat Boy Randy Newman
4 Political Science Randy Newman
5 Burn On Randy Newman
6 God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind) Randy Newman
7 Rednecks Randy Newman
8 Marie Randy Newman
9 Short People Randy Newman
10 I Love L.A. Randy Newman
11 I'm Different Randy Newman
12 Song For The Dead Randy Newman
13 It's Money That Matters Randy Newman
14 My Country Randy Newman
15 I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It) Randy Newman
16 The Great Nations of Europe Randy Newman
17 The Natural (Main Theme)
18 The Ballad Of The Three Amigos Steve Martin, Martin Short & Chevy Chase
19 Blue Shadows On The Trail Randy Newman
20 I Love to See You Smile Randy Newman
21 You've Got A Friend In Me Randy Newman & Lyle Lovett
22 If I Didn't Have You John Goodman and Billy Crystal (2001)
23 Lonely At The Top Randy Newman
This pair of CDs is intended to serve as a introduction to the work of Randy Newman, as well as a distillation of his very best material. The first CD features songs performed by other singers. In some cases these songs were originally written for these or other artists, and in others the artists were covering songs which Newman himself had released previously. Narrowing down the song selection to a single disc was a difficult task in more ways than one, as not only does Newman have many excellent songs which have been performed by others, but many of these songs have been covered by multiple artists, so not only did I have to decide between different songs, but also between different versions of the same song. To some degree, my choices were influenced by a desire to avoid to much repetition between this compilation and the one I did a few years ago. This factor was at least partially responsible for my inclusion of Claudine Longet's performance of "Snow" over Harry Nilsson's "Dayton Ohio 1903", for example, or my choice of Etta James' version of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" rather than the more familiar Joe Cocker version. However, for the most part I simply tried to pick the best (or most interesting) versions of the best songs, whether or not I had included them in the previous set. Even in the cases mentioned above, I felt that the ones I used were as good as the alternate choices, otherwise I wouldn't have included them.
Having narrowed down the choices to the best versions of Newman's best songs, the final result is, in my opinion, a brilliant set of songs. In terms of both music and lyrics, these songs are among the best around. Whether it's the tortured melancholy of "I Think It's Going To Rain Today", the tongue-in-cheek humor of "Wait Till Next Year" or "My Old Kentucky Home", or the dreamy nostalgia of "Feels Like Home", not to mention classic compositions like "Sail Away", "Mama Told Me (Not To Come)" and "Guilty", these songs are a perfect match of words and melodies. It's not hard to see why some people have compared Newman to Cole Porter. Whatever you think of that comparison, I strongly recommend that you listen closely to Newman's lyrics. Even many of his songs which might initially sound more conventional have little neat little twists. Good examples include "I've Been Wrong Before" ("You seem all that I've been waiting for, but then I've been wrong before") and "Just One Smile" (I detect a touch of irony in lines like "A little dream to build my world upon"). The interpreters are a pretty impressive group, including artists like Etta James, Art Garfunkel, Dusty Springfield, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Aaron Neville, Ella Fitzgerald, Ricky Nelson, The Doobie Brothers, Barbra Streisand, Bonnie Raitt, and Johnny Cash. Even so, it's a bit of a shame that you don't get to hear many of the other interesting versions of Newman's songs, like Tom Jones' cover of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" from the movie The Full Monty, UB40's version of "I Think It's Going To Rain Today", Marcia Ball's recording of "Louisiana 1927", Scooter and Fozzie's performance of "Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear" from the Muppet Show, The Blues Brothers' (more specifically, John Belushi's) eerily ironic live cover of "Guilty", or Cher & Carol Burnett's duet of "Lonely At The Top" from the Carole Burnette Show, including their own lyrical additions (such as "I hear you're on your eighth divorce"). But perhaps I can do another CD for those who are interested in hearing more.
The second CD primarily features Newman's own recordings of songs which – with a few exceptions like the abovementioned "Lonely At The Top" – have not been covered by other artists. In some cases this is because the tunes are more personal (the first two tracks), or perhaps because they are relatively recent (tracks fourteen to sixteen), but in many cases because Newman's wit is so caustic that few others would have the nerve to sing the songs ("Davy The Fat Boy", "Rednecks", "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)" – actually the last one has been covered a few times, most notably by Etta James). The sharp wit of these tracks, combined with Newman's less-than-perfect vocals, means that these songs take a little more getting used to than those on the first disc. Once you do, however, you see that these songs are just as brilliant, with Newman's attacks on racism ("Rednecks", "Short People"), pollution ("Burn On"), jingoism ("Political Science", "Song For The Dead"), TV culture ("My Country"), over-the-hill rock singers ("I'm Dead") and consumerism ("It's Money That Matters") hitting their targets spot on. The remainder of the second CD features some of Newman's soundtrack work from movies like The Natural, The Three Amigos, Toy Story, and Monsters, Inc. and concludes with a live performance of "Lonely At The Top", another ironic tune which seemed a good way to wrap things up.
While Randy Newman doesn't have the level of fame of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan, he is highly regarded by many critics and artists. Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks and many others have said they are fans of his work. Several artists have recorded entire albums of Newman's songs, most notably Harry Nilsson on Nilsson Sings Newman. Mark Knopfler cited Newman's songs as an inspiration for "Money for Nothing". Even John Cleese, who admitted almost complete ignorance about popular music (he couldn't even remember what band Mick Jagger was in), said he was a fan of Randy Newman. For my part, while I wouldn't say that every one of his songs hits the mark, many of them are truly brilliant. I would say his best album was 1972's Sail Away, with the two runners-up being 1974's Good Old Boys and 1999's Bad Love, and there are plenty of great songs scattered among his other albums, not to mention among the tracks he wrote for others but never sang himself. He has a very good sense of melody and is capable of composing music in a wide variety of genres, but what really sets him apart is his lyrics. While some of his songs are overly caustic or too subtle even for me, the best of them are really without parallel.
To cover all of Randy Newman's best songs, whether performed by Newman himself or by others, would take several CDs, and that's without taking into account different covers of the same song. I have made several different compilations of Newman's work in the past, and rather than take the time to come up with a new list of songs, I am simply attaching one of these, including the original liner notes that went with it. There are a few good songs that I didn't yet have when I made this list, including many that appear on the compilations On Vine Street: The Early Songs of Randy Newman and Bless You California: More Early Songs of Randy Newman, and I should also point out that Newman himself did great versions of several of the songs on the first disc, such as "Sail Away". Perhaps for his 70th birthday, I'll put together a newer, more comprehensive compilation. For now, this one provides a good sampling of his work.
CD 1
1 I Think It's Going To Rain Today Judy Collins (1966)
2 I've Been Wrong Before Cilla Black (1965)
3 Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear Alan Price (1967)
4 The Debutante's Ball Harpers Bizarre (1967)
5 Wait Till Next Year Ricky Nelson (1968)
6 Just One Smile Blood Sweat & Tears (1968)
7 Vine Street Harry Nilsson (1970)
8 Snow Claudine Longet (1968)
9 I Don't Want To Hear It Anymore Dusty Springfield (1969)
10 Mama Told Me (Not To Come) Three Dog Night (1970)
11 The Beehive State The Doobie Brothers (1971)
12 I'll Be Home Barbra Streisand (1971)
13 Sail Away Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee with Arlo Guthrie (1973)
14 Guilty Bonnie Raitt (1973)
15 You Can Leave Your Hat On Etta James (1973)
16 Living Without You Manfred Mann's Earth Band (1971)
17 My Old Kentucky Home Johnny Cash (1975)
18 Love Story Liza Minnelli
19 I Wonder Why Ella Fitzgerald (1969)
20 Have You Seen My Baby Ringo Starr (1973)
21 Old Man Art Garfunkel (1973)
22 Baltimore Nina Simone (1978)
23 Louisiana 1927 Aaron Neville (1991)
24 Feels Like Home Linda Ronstadt with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris (1995)
25 Every Time It Rains Joe Cocker (2002)
CD 2
1 Dixie Flyer Randy Newman
2 New Orleans Wins The War Randy Newman
3 Davy The Fat Boy Randy Newman
4 Political Science Randy Newman
5 Burn On Randy Newman
6 God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind) Randy Newman
7 Rednecks Randy Newman
8 Marie Randy Newman
9 Short People Randy Newman
10 I Love L.A. Randy Newman
11 I'm Different Randy Newman
12 Song For The Dead Randy Newman
13 It's Money That Matters Randy Newman
14 My Country Randy Newman
15 I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It) Randy Newman
16 The Great Nations of Europe Randy Newman
17 The Natural (Main Theme)
18 The Ballad Of The Three Amigos Steve Martin, Martin Short & Chevy Chase
19 Blue Shadows On The Trail Randy Newman
20 I Love to See You Smile Randy Newman
21 You've Got A Friend In Me Randy Newman & Lyle Lovett
22 If I Didn't Have You John Goodman and Billy Crystal (2001)
23 Lonely At The Top Randy Newman
This pair of CDs is intended to serve as a introduction to the work of Randy Newman, as well as a distillation of his very best material. The first CD features songs performed by other singers. In some cases these songs were originally written for these or other artists, and in others the artists were covering songs which Newman himself had released previously. Narrowing down the song selection to a single disc was a difficult task in more ways than one, as not only does Newman have many excellent songs which have been performed by others, but many of these songs have been covered by multiple artists, so not only did I have to decide between different songs, but also between different versions of the same song. To some degree, my choices were influenced by a desire to avoid to much repetition between this compilation and the one I did a few years ago. This factor was at least partially responsible for my inclusion of Claudine Longet's performance of "Snow" over Harry Nilsson's "Dayton Ohio 1903", for example, or my choice of Etta James' version of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" rather than the more familiar Joe Cocker version. However, for the most part I simply tried to pick the best (or most interesting) versions of the best songs, whether or not I had included them in the previous set. Even in the cases mentioned above, I felt that the ones I used were as good as the alternate choices, otherwise I wouldn't have included them.
Having narrowed down the choices to the best versions of Newman's best songs, the final result is, in my opinion, a brilliant set of songs. In terms of both music and lyrics, these songs are among the best around. Whether it's the tortured melancholy of "I Think It's Going To Rain Today", the tongue-in-cheek humor of "Wait Till Next Year" or "My Old Kentucky Home", or the dreamy nostalgia of "Feels Like Home", not to mention classic compositions like "Sail Away", "Mama Told Me (Not To Come)" and "Guilty", these songs are a perfect match of words and melodies. It's not hard to see why some people have compared Newman to Cole Porter. Whatever you think of that comparison, I strongly recommend that you listen closely to Newman's lyrics. Even many of his songs which might initially sound more conventional have little neat little twists. Good examples include "I've Been Wrong Before" ("You seem all that I've been waiting for, but then I've been wrong before") and "Just One Smile" (I detect a touch of irony in lines like "A little dream to build my world upon"). The interpreters are a pretty impressive group, including artists like Etta James, Art Garfunkel, Dusty Springfield, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Aaron Neville, Ella Fitzgerald, Ricky Nelson, The Doobie Brothers, Barbra Streisand, Bonnie Raitt, and Johnny Cash. Even so, it's a bit of a shame that you don't get to hear many of the other interesting versions of Newman's songs, like Tom Jones' cover of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" from the movie The Full Monty, UB40's version of "I Think It's Going To Rain Today", Marcia Ball's recording of "Louisiana 1927", Scooter and Fozzie's performance of "Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear" from the Muppet Show, The Blues Brothers' (more specifically, John Belushi's) eerily ironic live cover of "Guilty", or Cher & Carol Burnett's duet of "Lonely At The Top" from the Carole Burnette Show, including their own lyrical additions (such as "I hear you're on your eighth divorce"). But perhaps I can do another CD for those who are interested in hearing more.
The second CD primarily features Newman's own recordings of songs which – with a few exceptions like the abovementioned "Lonely At The Top" – have not been covered by other artists. In some cases this is because the tunes are more personal (the first two tracks), or perhaps because they are relatively recent (tracks fourteen to sixteen), but in many cases because Newman's wit is so caustic that few others would have the nerve to sing the songs ("Davy The Fat Boy", "Rednecks", "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)" – actually the last one has been covered a few times, most notably by Etta James). The sharp wit of these tracks, combined with Newman's less-than-perfect vocals, means that these songs take a little more getting used to than those on the first disc. Once you do, however, you see that these songs are just as brilliant, with Newman's attacks on racism ("Rednecks", "Short People"), pollution ("Burn On"), jingoism ("Political Science", "Song For The Dead"), TV culture ("My Country"), over-the-hill rock singers ("I'm Dead") and consumerism ("It's Money That Matters") hitting their targets spot on. The remainder of the second CD features some of Newman's soundtrack work from movies like The Natural, The Three Amigos, Toy Story, and Monsters, Inc. and concludes with a live performance of "Lonely At The Top", another ironic tune which seemed a good way to wrap things up.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
James Marshall Hendrix, aka Jimi Hendrix
This week is the 70th anniversary of the birth of James Marshall Hendrix, who was born November 27, 1942 as Johnny Allen Hendrix and performed under the name Jimi Hendrix. Despite a relatively brief career, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential musicians of all time, with his innovative use of the electric guitar having a major impact not only on rock and pop music but even genres such as jazz. He began as a journeyman musician, playing backup to a variety of soul and R&B artists, including Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. His most notable early session recording was the Isley Brothers’ “Testify”, on which Hendrix’s guitar is quite prominent. Chas Chandler, formerly of the Animals, met Hendrix in New York and brought him to London, where he formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell and soon shot to fame in the UK with the singles “Hey Joe” and “Purple Haze” and numerous live performances. Popularity in his native US came following his performance in the summer of 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival, to which he had been recommended by Paul McCartney. After a whirlwind career which produced three studio albums, a live album, and many additional unfinished recordings, he died on September 18, 1970 in London, apparently of drug-related causes, though some of the details are unclear. His legend has if anything only grown since his death, though it seems to impossible to imagine him as a seventy-year-old man (harder even than imagining John Lennon at 72), which is what he would be in a few days if he were still alive.
Much has been written about Hendrix and his influence on rock, and I don’t intend to repeat all of it here. Suffice it to say, what he does on the guitar still sounds impressive today, and it must have been even more startling at the time, since no one else had done anything like it. It’s no surprise that even musicians like Miles Davis were influenced by him. Though his reputation is mainly based on his guitar playing, he was also a good songwriter and arranger. While not everything he wrote was compositionally brilliant, some songs being little more than vehicles for his guitar playing, quite a few of his songs are excellent piece of work in their own right, so that they sound good even when performed by artists who don’t have Hendrix’s ability on the guitar. His songs ranged from blues to spacey psychedelic rock, and some of them are among the best of their genres. Hendrix was also a noted interpreter of songs written by others, with “Hey Joe” and “All Along the Watchtower” being just two of the best known examples.
The following is a list of twenty-two of Hendrix’s best songs. I am not as thoroughly familiar with Hendrix’s material as I am with that of some other artists, even excluding the vast number of posthumous and unofficial releases, so I have no doubt neglected a few worthy tracks. All of these selections come from the CD versions of the three studio albums released in Hendrix’s lifetime, Are You Experienced? (1967), Axis: Bold As Love (1967), and Electric Ladyland (1968), plus the posthumous album First Rays of the New Rising Sun, which represents the official attempt at assembling the album Hendrix was working on at his death. While there are a number of significant Hendrix recordings that don’t appear on these albums (such as his live rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner”), they do cover most of his best material – the first CD also includes tracks from Hendrix’s early singles that didn’t appear on the original album release. Even on these CDs there are good songs that I didn’t include on the list. For a fuller understanding of Hendrix’s legacy, it’s best to listen to the full albums, as well as check out some of his most notable live performances.
The Best of Jimi Hendrix
(All songs by Jimi Hendrix except where otherwise noted)
Purple Haze
Hey Joe (Billy Roberts)
Foxy Lady
The Wind Cries Mary
Highway Chile
Manic Depression
Red House
Third Stone from the Sun
Up From the Skies
Spanish Castle Magic
Little Wing
Castles Made of Sand
Crosstown Traffic
Voodoo Chile
The Burning of the Midnight Lamp
1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)
All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Angel
Freedom
Room Full of Mirrors
Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)
Much has been written about Hendrix and his influence on rock, and I don’t intend to repeat all of it here. Suffice it to say, what he does on the guitar still sounds impressive today, and it must have been even more startling at the time, since no one else had done anything like it. It’s no surprise that even musicians like Miles Davis were influenced by him. Though his reputation is mainly based on his guitar playing, he was also a good songwriter and arranger. While not everything he wrote was compositionally brilliant, some songs being little more than vehicles for his guitar playing, quite a few of his songs are excellent piece of work in their own right, so that they sound good even when performed by artists who don’t have Hendrix’s ability on the guitar. His songs ranged from blues to spacey psychedelic rock, and some of them are among the best of their genres. Hendrix was also a noted interpreter of songs written by others, with “Hey Joe” and “All Along the Watchtower” being just two of the best known examples.
The following is a list of twenty-two of Hendrix’s best songs. I am not as thoroughly familiar with Hendrix’s material as I am with that of some other artists, even excluding the vast number of posthumous and unofficial releases, so I have no doubt neglected a few worthy tracks. All of these selections come from the CD versions of the three studio albums released in Hendrix’s lifetime, Are You Experienced? (1967), Axis: Bold As Love (1967), and Electric Ladyland (1968), plus the posthumous album First Rays of the New Rising Sun, which represents the official attempt at assembling the album Hendrix was working on at his death. While there are a number of significant Hendrix recordings that don’t appear on these albums (such as his live rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner”), they do cover most of his best material – the first CD also includes tracks from Hendrix’s early singles that didn’t appear on the original album release. Even on these CDs there are good songs that I didn’t include on the list. For a fuller understanding of Hendrix’s legacy, it’s best to listen to the full albums, as well as check out some of his most notable live performances.
The Best of Jimi Hendrix
(All songs by Jimi Hendrix except where otherwise noted)
Purple Haze
Hey Joe (Billy Roberts)
Foxy Lady
The Wind Cries Mary
Highway Chile
Manic Depression
Red House
Third Stone from the Sun
Up From the Skies
Spanish Castle Magic
Little Wing
Castles Made of Sand
Crosstown Traffic
Voodoo Chile
The Burning of the Midnight Lamp
1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)
All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Angel
Freedom
Room Full of Mirrors
Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
The 72nd Anniversary of the Birth of John Lennon
John Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980) was the founder of a Liverpool skiffle band called the Quarrymen, which, following membership changes that included the addition of fellow Liverpool teens Paul McCartney and George Harrison and a series of name changes, became the Beatles. The Beatles, of course, following the addition of Ringo Starr on drums, went on to conquer the world and become the most successful popular music group ever, both artistically and commercially. Lennon would be 72 years old if he were alive today. Since he isn’t, his public image is in certain senses fixed; for instance, the photos of him that are most frequently seen are from the 1960s (when he was in his 20s), the 1970s (when he was in his 30s) or, slightly less commonly, from the last year of his life, around the time he turned 40. In other ways, his image continues to evolve – but, as with other celebrities who have died, without being influenced for better or worse by anything he himself does.
As the founder of the group, John was commonly seen as the leader of the Beatles, especially in their early years. In many senses, this was the truth; in interviews, for instance, while all of them made clever remarks, John usually had the sharpest wit and commonly acted as the spokesman for the group as a whole. Within the band, the others also tended to follow John’s lead. Musically, Paul McCartney very quickly, if not from the very beginning of their recording career, became as much of a leader as John, and in the group’s later years, Paul clearly took charge in the studio. But in other ways, John remained the group’s spiritual leader. If, for instance, he actively opposed something Paul wanted to do rather than just apathetically going along, it was not likely to happen. Likewise, if he really wanted to do something, the others would generally go along.
I argued in my article on Paul McCartney that Paul contributed at least as much to the Beatles as John did, and so should be held in equal regard. This does not diminish John’s importance, however. Paul was (and arguably still is) a musical genius, but so was John. In many ways, they complemented each other perfectly. Of course, due to their background, they has a lot of the same taste in music (early rock and roll, Motown, etc.) and likewise shared a natural, untutored talent for composition. But in other ways they were quite different. The stereotype that Paul wrote melodic ballads and John wrote straight-ahead rock and roll is exaggerated, as Paul wrote plenty of harder-edged tunes and John wrote some lovely ballads, but like most stereotypes it had some basis in reality. Paul had much more of an interest in music hall and other pre-rock styles, as is seen from songs like “Honey Pie”, whereas John at best tolerated such detours. Lyrically, John often had a cynical and caustic edge, whereas Paul was usually sunny and optimistic. This difference was most obvious in later years, but it was clear from the beginning: for example, it’s hard to imagine Paul writing songs like “I’m a Loser” or “Help”, or John writing a song like “I’ll Follow the Sun”. These opposing or rather complementary ways of looking at things can even be seen in songs they wrote together, like “We Can Work It Out” or “Getting Better”, as John and Paul themselves observed in their comments on these songs.
I noted in my previous article that while John wrote many of the most cutting edge, experimental songs the group put out, Paul often played an important, even vital role in arranging and producing them. But for Paul to have an opportunity to experiment with tape loops on “Tomorrow Never Knows” or an orchestra going crazy on “A Day in the Life”, or have a chance to play an otherworldly Mellotron intro on “Strawberry Fields Forever”, John had to write those songs in the first place (or most of the song in the case of “A Day in the Life”). While the Beatles wouldn’t have been the great band they were without Paul’s contributions, John was just as indispensable (it can reasonably be argued that George and Ringo were indispensable as well, but in terms of songwriting, John and Paul were clearly the key to the group’s artistic greatness). The songs referred to above are not only among the most innovative the Beatles recorded, but among the best in popular music history, and the world would be a much poorer place without any of them, not to mention “Help”, “Norwegian Wood”, “I Am the Walrus”, “Come Together” and many others that John wrote.
John’s solo career got off to a great start with several great singles like “Give Peace a Chance”, “Cold Turkey” and “Instant Karma” and the brilliant John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970). The latter album was filled with stark, emotional tracks like “Mother”, “God”, “Love”, “I Found Out” and “Working Class Heroes”. While it was a dramatic departure from the recordings made by the Beatles, it is almost universally well-regarded and is seen by many (including me) as John’s best solo album. His only other solo album to sometimes figure in top album lists is his second, Imagine (1971), due to not only the title track, which is by far the best known Lennon solo song (with only “Give Peace a Chance” being almost as widely heard), but other solid efforts like “Jealous Guy”, “Gimme Some Truth” and “It’s So Hard” (it also contains “How Do You Sleep”, an attack on Paul that is wrongly taken to represent how John felt about his former partner in the post-Beatles era – in fact it represented the nadir of their relationship). His other solo albums, Some Time in New York City (1972), Mind Games (1973), Walls and Bridges (1974), the oldies album Rock 'n' Roll (1975), Double Fantasy (1980) and the posthumous Milk and Honey (1984) – the last two and the first of these being partly made up of songs by his wife Yoko Ono – are considered something more of a mixed bag. Nowadays most critics view them mostly positively (except Some Time in New York City, which many regard as overly strident in tone), but they are generally held to have a fair number of mediocre songs, though opinions vary as to which are the good ones and which the mediocre ones. I haven’t listened to some of these albums all the way through more than a few times, since I don’t have copies of all of them, but my general impression is that they aren’t as consistent as his first two. However, they do all have at least a few good and even great songs, like “Mind Games”, “#9 Dream”, “(Just Like) Starting Over”, “Watching The Wheels” and “Nobody Told Me”.
Since he was murdered by a deranged fan just as he was beginning a comeback following a long sabbatical from music, John Lennon has been almost deified by many music fans. His idealism, his witty cynicism, and his (sometimes brutal) honesty all played a major role in making him the hip people’s favorite Beatle, but being seen as a martyr had at least as much to do with it as any of his real virtues, just as John F. Kennedy is generally ranked as one of the greatest presidents in polls of ordinary Americans more because he was assassinated than for any actual accomplishments. John’s death has resulted in a number of distortions in the public view of him. One is his relationship with Paul after the Beatles, which was much better than commonly believed; despite a period of hostility, they later hung out together and even played some music together. Another is his relationship with Yoko, which according to many who knew them was far from perfect. Also, despite his idealism, John could be inconsistent and didn’t always practice what he preached. In terms of music, there has been a tendency to consider John the true source of the Beatles’ greatness. Since this deification of John comes at the expense of the other Beatles and particularly Paul, I have many problems with it, as do others. Peter Gabriel, for example, said in a letter to the editors of The Lennon Companion: “Although I was and I am a big Lennon fan, I feel the canonisation of this particular hero of mine has overlooked the formative roles of the other Beatles, particularly Paul and George, and I am a little concerned that your project may give the gloss and blessings of the arts establishment to a one-sided memory.” It is hard for Paul to compete with a dead man for critical acclaim, but an objective look at their work with the Beatles – and their solo work as well – shows them to be equally deserving of admiration. But even if John should not be placed more highly than Paul, he certainly ranks alongside him as one of the most important figures in 20th century popular music. His songs, his wit, and his idealism were and still are an inspiration to countless people, and will doubtless continue to be for a long time to come.
Below I have listed 50 of John Lennon’s best songs with the Beatles. While I haven’t included songs like “She Loves You” that were written more or less equally by John and Paul, I have included a few that Paul made a substantial contribution to, most notably “A Day in the Life”, where Paul not only wrote the middle section but the “I’d love to turn you on” line. There is also some dispute regarding the authorship of “In My Life”; while everyone agrees that John wrote all the lyrics, Paul says he wrote the melody, whereas John said Paul only helped with the middle eight. Since it’s impossible to verify either account (unlike in the case of “Eleanor Rigby”, John and Paul seem to have been the only ones present for the writing of “In My Life”), I have assumed it was mainly John’s, though Paul certainly helped on the melody. I didn’t try to make a list of John’s best solo songs; a few of the best are mentioned above, but a full list will have to wait for a future article.
John Lennon with the Beatles
Please Please Me
It Won’t Be Long
Not a Second Time
This Boy
A Hard Day’s Night
I Should Have Known Better
If I Fell
You Can’t Do That
I Feel Fine
No Reply
I’m a Loser
Help
You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
Ticket to Ride
You’re Going to Lose That Girl
Day Tripper (Lyrics and Music co-written by Paul McCartney)
Norwegian Wood (Lyrics co-written by Paul McCartney)
Nowhere Man
In My Life (Music co-written by Paul McCartney)
Girl
Rain
I’m Only Sleeping
She Said She Said
And Your Bird Can Sing
Tomorrow Never Knows
Strawberry Fields Forever
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Lyrics co-written by Paul McCartney)
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
A Day in the Life (Lyrics and Music co-written by Paul McCartney)
All You Need is Love
I Am the Walrus
Revolution
Dear Prudence
Glass Onion
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
I’m So Tired
Julia
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
Yer Blues
Good Night
Don’t Let Me Down
Hey Bulldog
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Come Together
I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
Because
Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam
Across the Universe
Free as a Bird (Lyrics and Music co-written by McCartney/Harrison/Starkey)
Real Love
As the founder of the group, John was commonly seen as the leader of the Beatles, especially in their early years. In many senses, this was the truth; in interviews, for instance, while all of them made clever remarks, John usually had the sharpest wit and commonly acted as the spokesman for the group as a whole. Within the band, the others also tended to follow John’s lead. Musically, Paul McCartney very quickly, if not from the very beginning of their recording career, became as much of a leader as John, and in the group’s later years, Paul clearly took charge in the studio. But in other ways, John remained the group’s spiritual leader. If, for instance, he actively opposed something Paul wanted to do rather than just apathetically going along, it was not likely to happen. Likewise, if he really wanted to do something, the others would generally go along.
I argued in my article on Paul McCartney that Paul contributed at least as much to the Beatles as John did, and so should be held in equal regard. This does not diminish John’s importance, however. Paul was (and arguably still is) a musical genius, but so was John. In many ways, they complemented each other perfectly. Of course, due to their background, they has a lot of the same taste in music (early rock and roll, Motown, etc.) and likewise shared a natural, untutored talent for composition. But in other ways they were quite different. The stereotype that Paul wrote melodic ballads and John wrote straight-ahead rock and roll is exaggerated, as Paul wrote plenty of harder-edged tunes and John wrote some lovely ballads, but like most stereotypes it had some basis in reality. Paul had much more of an interest in music hall and other pre-rock styles, as is seen from songs like “Honey Pie”, whereas John at best tolerated such detours. Lyrically, John often had a cynical and caustic edge, whereas Paul was usually sunny and optimistic. This difference was most obvious in later years, but it was clear from the beginning: for example, it’s hard to imagine Paul writing songs like “I’m a Loser” or “Help”, or John writing a song like “I’ll Follow the Sun”. These opposing or rather complementary ways of looking at things can even be seen in songs they wrote together, like “We Can Work It Out” or “Getting Better”, as John and Paul themselves observed in their comments on these songs.
I noted in my previous article that while John wrote many of the most cutting edge, experimental songs the group put out, Paul often played an important, even vital role in arranging and producing them. But for Paul to have an opportunity to experiment with tape loops on “Tomorrow Never Knows” or an orchestra going crazy on “A Day in the Life”, or have a chance to play an otherworldly Mellotron intro on “Strawberry Fields Forever”, John had to write those songs in the first place (or most of the song in the case of “A Day in the Life”). While the Beatles wouldn’t have been the great band they were without Paul’s contributions, John was just as indispensable (it can reasonably be argued that George and Ringo were indispensable as well, but in terms of songwriting, John and Paul were clearly the key to the group’s artistic greatness). The songs referred to above are not only among the most innovative the Beatles recorded, but among the best in popular music history, and the world would be a much poorer place without any of them, not to mention “Help”, “Norwegian Wood”, “I Am the Walrus”, “Come Together” and many others that John wrote.
John’s solo career got off to a great start with several great singles like “Give Peace a Chance”, “Cold Turkey” and “Instant Karma” and the brilliant John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970). The latter album was filled with stark, emotional tracks like “Mother”, “God”, “Love”, “I Found Out” and “Working Class Heroes”. While it was a dramatic departure from the recordings made by the Beatles, it is almost universally well-regarded and is seen by many (including me) as John’s best solo album. His only other solo album to sometimes figure in top album lists is his second, Imagine (1971), due to not only the title track, which is by far the best known Lennon solo song (with only “Give Peace a Chance” being almost as widely heard), but other solid efforts like “Jealous Guy”, “Gimme Some Truth” and “It’s So Hard” (it also contains “How Do You Sleep”, an attack on Paul that is wrongly taken to represent how John felt about his former partner in the post-Beatles era – in fact it represented the nadir of their relationship). His other solo albums, Some Time in New York City (1972), Mind Games (1973), Walls and Bridges (1974), the oldies album Rock 'n' Roll (1975), Double Fantasy (1980) and the posthumous Milk and Honey (1984) – the last two and the first of these being partly made up of songs by his wife Yoko Ono – are considered something more of a mixed bag. Nowadays most critics view them mostly positively (except Some Time in New York City, which many regard as overly strident in tone), but they are generally held to have a fair number of mediocre songs, though opinions vary as to which are the good ones and which the mediocre ones. I haven’t listened to some of these albums all the way through more than a few times, since I don’t have copies of all of them, but my general impression is that they aren’t as consistent as his first two. However, they do all have at least a few good and even great songs, like “Mind Games”, “#9 Dream”, “(Just Like) Starting Over”, “Watching The Wheels” and “Nobody Told Me”.
Since he was murdered by a deranged fan just as he was beginning a comeback following a long sabbatical from music, John Lennon has been almost deified by many music fans. His idealism, his witty cynicism, and his (sometimes brutal) honesty all played a major role in making him the hip people’s favorite Beatle, but being seen as a martyr had at least as much to do with it as any of his real virtues, just as John F. Kennedy is generally ranked as one of the greatest presidents in polls of ordinary Americans more because he was assassinated than for any actual accomplishments. John’s death has resulted in a number of distortions in the public view of him. One is his relationship with Paul after the Beatles, which was much better than commonly believed; despite a period of hostility, they later hung out together and even played some music together. Another is his relationship with Yoko, which according to many who knew them was far from perfect. Also, despite his idealism, John could be inconsistent and didn’t always practice what he preached. In terms of music, there has been a tendency to consider John the true source of the Beatles’ greatness. Since this deification of John comes at the expense of the other Beatles and particularly Paul, I have many problems with it, as do others. Peter Gabriel, for example, said in a letter to the editors of The Lennon Companion: “Although I was and I am a big Lennon fan, I feel the canonisation of this particular hero of mine has overlooked the formative roles of the other Beatles, particularly Paul and George, and I am a little concerned that your project may give the gloss and blessings of the arts establishment to a one-sided memory.” It is hard for Paul to compete with a dead man for critical acclaim, but an objective look at their work with the Beatles – and their solo work as well – shows them to be equally deserving of admiration. But even if John should not be placed more highly than Paul, he certainly ranks alongside him as one of the most important figures in 20th century popular music. His songs, his wit, and his idealism were and still are an inspiration to countless people, and will doubtless continue to be for a long time to come.
Below I have listed 50 of John Lennon’s best songs with the Beatles. While I haven’t included songs like “She Loves You” that were written more or less equally by John and Paul, I have included a few that Paul made a substantial contribution to, most notably “A Day in the Life”, where Paul not only wrote the middle section but the “I’d love to turn you on” line. There is also some dispute regarding the authorship of “In My Life”; while everyone agrees that John wrote all the lyrics, Paul says he wrote the melody, whereas John said Paul only helped with the middle eight. Since it’s impossible to verify either account (unlike in the case of “Eleanor Rigby”, John and Paul seem to have been the only ones present for the writing of “In My Life”), I have assumed it was mainly John’s, though Paul certainly helped on the melody. I didn’t try to make a list of John’s best solo songs; a few of the best are mentioned above, but a full list will have to wait for a future article.
John Lennon with the Beatles
Please Please Me
It Won’t Be Long
Not a Second Time
This Boy
A Hard Day’s Night
I Should Have Known Better
If I Fell
You Can’t Do That
I Feel Fine
No Reply
I’m a Loser
Help
You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
Ticket to Ride
You’re Going to Lose That Girl
Day Tripper (Lyrics and Music co-written by Paul McCartney)
Norwegian Wood (Lyrics co-written by Paul McCartney)
Nowhere Man
In My Life (Music co-written by Paul McCartney)
Girl
Rain
I’m Only Sleeping
She Said She Said
And Your Bird Can Sing
Tomorrow Never Knows
Strawberry Fields Forever
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Lyrics co-written by Paul McCartney)
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
A Day in the Life (Lyrics and Music co-written by Paul McCartney)
All You Need is Love
I Am the Walrus
Revolution
Dear Prudence
Glass Onion
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
I’m So Tired
Julia
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
Yer Blues
Good Night
Don’t Let Me Down
Hey Bulldog
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Come Together
I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
Because
Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam
Across the Universe
Free as a Bird (Lyrics and Music co-written by McCartney/Harrison/Starkey)
Real Love
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Gordon Sumner, aka Sting
Sting, born Gordon Sumner on October 2, 1951, is a singer-songwriter and musician who first became famous as the lead vocalist and chief songwriter for the Police. Prior to joining the Police, he had played in a number of bands in his native Newcastle, most notably Last Exit. Sting was the group’s bassist and singer (the same roles he later had in the Police) and the other key figure was keyboard player Gerry Richardson, who wrote "Whispering Voices" and "Evensong", the songs on the only single the band released. Many of the other songs the band played live were tracks that Sting later reused with the Police or as a solo artist, such as “I Burn for You”, "Oh My God", “Truth Kills” (an early version of “Truth Hits Everybody”), and “Savage Beast” (an early version of “We Work the Black Seam”). It’s interesting to note how these jazz-influenced arrangements are not unlike much of Sting’s post-Police solo work. For those who want to know more about this part of Sting’s career and his life up until the time the Police began to make it big, his excellent autobiography, Broken Music, is well worth checking out.
As he makes clear in his autobiography, one of Sting’s main motivations for teaming up with drummer Stewart Copeland to form the Police is that as he saw it as a vehicle to break into the music business. While Copeland conceived the group as a punk band (though Sting implies that Copeland – who had previously been the drummer in the progressive band Curved Air, which was likewise far removed from punk – also may have been exploiting musical trends), Sting liked neither the name nor the kind of music they played at first, and tried to steer the group in a more romantic direction at first opportunity. That he eventually succeeded can be seen from their later material, much of which bore no resemblance whatsoever to punk.
While Sting very quickly took over from Copeland as the main songwriter in the Police, both Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers, who replaced original guitarist Henri Padovani before the group’s first major label recordings, played important roles, particularly in the arranging. They resisted Sting’s inclinations towards more jazzy numbers, and Copeland in particular made the songs much more up-tempo than they would have been if it had been entirely up to Sting. Nevertheless, as the writer of the songs, Sting deserves the greatest share of the credit for the group’s success. Songs like “Message in a Bottle”, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, “King of Pain” and “Every Breath You Take” are brilliant regardless of the arrangement, and even those such as the excellent “Synchronicity II” where it’s hard to imagine them without the propulsive arrangement the Police gave them, much of their virtue comes from Sting’s lyrics and melody.
After Sting went solo, he no longer felt constrained to keep things simple lyrically and musically, so he incorporated more jazz and classical influences into his music and his lyrics became if possible even more literary (though it is hard to top rhymes using Nabokov and Charybdis, both of which appear in Police songs). This has resulted in charges of pretentiousness from critics, but I see no reason why pop music can’t be intelligent and literary; for that matter, the way some of the same critics dismiss many popular, established artists out of hand in favor of underground music or the next new trend is just pretentious in its way. While Sting’s solo work generally doesn’t have the immediate, visceral appeal of his hits with the Police, it is on the whole just as good. Of course, that doesn’t mean every song he has released either with the Police or as a solo artist is great, but even the least appealing songs are listenable, and the best are classics.
While all of the albums Sting has released are worth listening to, the best of the five Police albums in my view are Zenyatta Mondatta (1980) and Synchronicity (1983), with Ghost in the Machine (1981) not far behind. The best Sting solo album to date is Ten Summoner’s Tales (1993), followed by The Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985) and Brand New Day (1999). …Nothing Like the Sun (1987) and The Soul Cages (1991), though not quite as consistently enjoyable as the above three, have two of the very best songs he ever wrote, “Fragile” and “All This Time” respectively, as well some other good material, particularly in the case of The Soul Cages ("Mad About You" and "Why Should I Cry For You" are also excellent, so I might sometimes put this album in my top three, depending on my mood). For that matter, Mercury Falling (1996) and Sacred Love (2003) are both solid, if not quite equal to his other albums. Sting’s last three albums have not been albums of new material: Songs from the Labyrinth (2006) was an album of the songs Elizabethan composer John Dowland, If on a Winter’s Night… (2009) was an album of winter-themed songs (mostly traditional, though a few of Sting’s own songs were included), and Symphonicities (2010) was an album of reinterpretations of previous Sting songs as classical symphony pieces. While I don’t have If on a Winter’s Night…, the other two are quite interesting, even if it would also be nice to hear an album of new songs. Sting has also released close to two albums’ worth of tracks on movie soundtracks or as B-sides of singles, including both original songs and covers. Of his more obscure B-sides, a favorite of mine is “Conversation with a Dog”, which is as good as anything except “Fragile” on Nothing Like the Sun, the album it’s an outtake from. I also quite like "Beneath a Desert Moon".
Sting's songwriting is generally pretty consistent in terms of both lyrics and melodies. On some songs the melody seems to take a back seat to the lyrics, but on his best songs the match is excellent. Aside from being a very good singer, he is a talented bassist and guitarist (his playing on "Fragile" is a good example of the latter), and he also plays a bit of keyboard and numerous other instruments. No doubt in part due to his ability to play multiple instruments, he's also a great arranger, though fans of the Police may miss the contributions of Summers and Copeland in this regard. In addition to his musical skills, Sting has also contributed to many worthy causes such as human rights (he has performed for Amnesty International) and the environment. Admittedly, his record is not perfect; he did a commercial for Jaguar, which doesn't quite accord with his environmentalism, and he did a concert in Uzbekistan paid for by their authoritarian president. However, the good he has done outweighs these (admittedly rather glaring) misdeeds.
I have listed thirty of Sting’s best songs with the Police and as a solo artist. As usual, there are other songs that I like more or less as well as some of those that I included, and if I were to redo the list without referring to this one, it would no doubt come out differently.
The Best of Sting
(All songs written by Sting except where otherwise noted; tracks 1-14 originally performed by the Police)
Roxanne
Can’t Stand Losing You
Message in a Bottle
Walking on the Moon
Don’t Stand So Close to Me
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Spirits in the Material World
Invisible Sun
Every Breath You Take
Synchronicity II
King of Pain
Wrapped Around Your Finger
I Burn for You
If You Love Somebody Set Them Free
Fortress around Your Heart
Russians (Music: Sting, Sergei Prokofiev)
Moon Over Bourbon Street
Fragile
Conversation with a Dog
All This Time
Mad About You
Fields of Gold
Seven Days
Saint Augustine in Hell
Epilogue (Nothing ‘Bout Me)
The Hounds of Winter
Desert Rose
Brand New Day
Send Your Love
Honorable Mentions: Driven to Tears, Canary in a Coalmine, When the World Is Running Down You Make the Best of What's Still Around, One World (Not Three), Tea in the Sahara, Children’s Crusade, Be Still My Beating Heart, Englishman in New York, Why Should I Cry for You, Saint Agnes and the Burning Train, If I Ever Lose My Faith in You, She's Too Good for Me, Shape of My Heart (Music: Dominic Miller), Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot, All Four Seasons, I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying, Beneath a Desert Moon, After the Rain Has Fallen, A Thousand Years (Kipper/Sting), Ghost Story, Inside, Whenever I Say Your Name
As he makes clear in his autobiography, one of Sting’s main motivations for teaming up with drummer Stewart Copeland to form the Police is that as he saw it as a vehicle to break into the music business. While Copeland conceived the group as a punk band (though Sting implies that Copeland – who had previously been the drummer in the progressive band Curved Air, which was likewise far removed from punk – also may have been exploiting musical trends), Sting liked neither the name nor the kind of music they played at first, and tried to steer the group in a more romantic direction at first opportunity. That he eventually succeeded can be seen from their later material, much of which bore no resemblance whatsoever to punk.
While Sting very quickly took over from Copeland as the main songwriter in the Police, both Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers, who replaced original guitarist Henri Padovani before the group’s first major label recordings, played important roles, particularly in the arranging. They resisted Sting’s inclinations towards more jazzy numbers, and Copeland in particular made the songs much more up-tempo than they would have been if it had been entirely up to Sting. Nevertheless, as the writer of the songs, Sting deserves the greatest share of the credit for the group’s success. Songs like “Message in a Bottle”, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, “King of Pain” and “Every Breath You Take” are brilliant regardless of the arrangement, and even those such as the excellent “Synchronicity II” where it’s hard to imagine them without the propulsive arrangement the Police gave them, much of their virtue comes from Sting’s lyrics and melody.
After Sting went solo, he no longer felt constrained to keep things simple lyrically and musically, so he incorporated more jazz and classical influences into his music and his lyrics became if possible even more literary (though it is hard to top rhymes using Nabokov and Charybdis, both of which appear in Police songs). This has resulted in charges of pretentiousness from critics, but I see no reason why pop music can’t be intelligent and literary; for that matter, the way some of the same critics dismiss many popular, established artists out of hand in favor of underground music or the next new trend is just pretentious in its way. While Sting’s solo work generally doesn’t have the immediate, visceral appeal of his hits with the Police, it is on the whole just as good. Of course, that doesn’t mean every song he has released either with the Police or as a solo artist is great, but even the least appealing songs are listenable, and the best are classics.
While all of the albums Sting has released are worth listening to, the best of the five Police albums in my view are Zenyatta Mondatta (1980) and Synchronicity (1983), with Ghost in the Machine (1981) not far behind. The best Sting solo album to date is Ten Summoner’s Tales (1993), followed by The Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985) and Brand New Day (1999). …Nothing Like the Sun (1987) and The Soul Cages (1991), though not quite as consistently enjoyable as the above three, have two of the very best songs he ever wrote, “Fragile” and “All This Time” respectively, as well some other good material, particularly in the case of The Soul Cages ("Mad About You" and "Why Should I Cry For You" are also excellent, so I might sometimes put this album in my top three, depending on my mood). For that matter, Mercury Falling (1996) and Sacred Love (2003) are both solid, if not quite equal to his other albums. Sting’s last three albums have not been albums of new material: Songs from the Labyrinth (2006) was an album of the songs Elizabethan composer John Dowland, If on a Winter’s Night… (2009) was an album of winter-themed songs (mostly traditional, though a few of Sting’s own songs were included), and Symphonicities (2010) was an album of reinterpretations of previous Sting songs as classical symphony pieces. While I don’t have If on a Winter’s Night…, the other two are quite interesting, even if it would also be nice to hear an album of new songs. Sting has also released close to two albums’ worth of tracks on movie soundtracks or as B-sides of singles, including both original songs and covers. Of his more obscure B-sides, a favorite of mine is “Conversation with a Dog”, which is as good as anything except “Fragile” on Nothing Like the Sun, the album it’s an outtake from. I also quite like "Beneath a Desert Moon".
Sting's songwriting is generally pretty consistent in terms of both lyrics and melodies. On some songs the melody seems to take a back seat to the lyrics, but on his best songs the match is excellent. Aside from being a very good singer, he is a talented bassist and guitarist (his playing on "Fragile" is a good example of the latter), and he also plays a bit of keyboard and numerous other instruments. No doubt in part due to his ability to play multiple instruments, he's also a great arranger, though fans of the Police may miss the contributions of Summers and Copeland in this regard. In addition to his musical skills, Sting has also contributed to many worthy causes such as human rights (he has performed for Amnesty International) and the environment. Admittedly, his record is not perfect; he did a commercial for Jaguar, which doesn't quite accord with his environmentalism, and he did a concert in Uzbekistan paid for by their authoritarian president. However, the good he has done outweighs these (admittedly rather glaring) misdeeds.
I have listed thirty of Sting’s best songs with the Police and as a solo artist. As usual, there are other songs that I like more or less as well as some of those that I included, and if I were to redo the list without referring to this one, it would no doubt come out differently.
The Best of Sting
(All songs written by Sting except where otherwise noted; tracks 1-14 originally performed by the Police)
Roxanne
Can’t Stand Losing You
Message in a Bottle
Walking on the Moon
Don’t Stand So Close to Me
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Spirits in the Material World
Invisible Sun
Every Breath You Take
Synchronicity II
King of Pain
Wrapped Around Your Finger
I Burn for You
If You Love Somebody Set Them Free
Fortress around Your Heart
Russians (Music: Sting, Sergei Prokofiev)
Moon Over Bourbon Street
Fragile
Conversation with a Dog
All This Time
Mad About You
Fields of Gold
Seven Days
Saint Augustine in Hell
Epilogue (Nothing ‘Bout Me)
The Hounds of Winter
Desert Rose
Brand New Day
Send Your Love
Honorable Mentions: Driven to Tears, Canary in a Coalmine, When the World Is Running Down You Make the Best of What's Still Around, One World (Not Three), Tea in the Sahara, Children’s Crusade, Be Still My Beating Heart, Englishman in New York, Why Should I Cry for You, Saint Agnes and the Burning Train, If I Ever Lose My Faith in You, She's Too Good for Me, Shape of My Heart (Music: Dominic Miller), Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot, All Four Seasons, I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying, Beneath a Desert Moon, After the Rain Has Fallen, A Thousand Years (Kipper/Sting), Ghost Story, Inside, Whenever I Say Your Name
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Mike Rutherford of Genesis
Over the past few months I have done a number of entries on members of some of my favorite long-lasting bands as well as one or two individual artists. Thus far I have published my entries on the birthdays of the musicians in question, but I'm going to have to make an exception in this case, as both Mike Rutherford of Genesis and Sting have the same birthday (only a year apart too). So I'm doing my entry on Rutherford a few days early, and I hope to finish one on Sting in time for his birthday (especially since an even more important artist has a birthday a week later, namely John Lennon of the Beatles).
Mike Rutherford of Genesis
Mike Rutherford (full name Michael John Cleote Crawford Rutherford, born October 2, 1950) was one of the founding members of Genesis, and, other than Tony Banks, the only member to remain with the group throughout its history. While in my article on Tony Banks I argued that he was probably the single most important member of Genesis in that he more than anyone else was responsible for the group’s overall sound, Mike Rutherford played nearly as important a role over the years. At the time the group formed in 1967, his closest friend and chief collaborator was Anthony Phillips, just as Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel were friends and songwriting collaborators. In the very early years, Rutherford was perhaps somewhat less important in musical terms, as he was probably the least proficient on his instrument (the bass) and the other three did a slightly larger share of the songwriting, but he was vital to the group chemistry, and fairly soon he and Phillips developed a distinctive way of playing 12-string guitars in tandem that was a key element in the group’s sound. By the time Phillips left in 1970, Rutherford was able to step into his role as one of Genesis’s main songwriters along with Banks and Gabriel, and as a performer his bass and 12-string guitar was, along with Phil Collins’s drums, the backbone to the band’s sound in concert. Even in the Gabriel years, Rutherford, Banks and Collins in particular developed a good chemistry in the studio, writing sections of “Supper’s Ready” and “The Cinema Show” as a trio. On his own, Rutherford wrote a few pieces like the opening section of “The Cinema Show”. Rutherford also came up with guitar riffs that various songs were built on, a notable example being “Back in N.Y.C”, which was unusually hard and edgy for a Genesis song, almost proto-punk.
In the years immediately after Gabriel left, Banks and Rutherford were the band’s primary songwriters, though lead guitarist Steve Hackett also wrote some key tracks and Collins contributed to a lot of the group-written tracks (“Dance on a Volcano”, for instance, began with a jam by the Banks-Collins-Rutherford trio, with Rutherford writing the lyrics). While he wrote a little less than Banks, he was the main writer of tracks like “Ripples” (aside from the lyrics, it seems he also wrote all the music with the exception of the instrumental section written by Banks) and “Squonk” (for which he wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the music with Banks). He also wrote “Your Own Special Way”, the first Genesis song to chart in the US. After Hackett left, Rutherford took over all guitar duties in the studio in addition to his role as bassist, and he and Banks at first handled nearly all the songwriting, though Collins soon began to take on a more of a hand in the latter. While Rutherford never became a guitar virtuoso, he soon adapted to using the guitar in a way that combined very well with Banks’s keyboards and Collins’s drums and vocals. A number of songs he wrote entirely on his own appeared on the first three post-Hackett albums, And Then There Were Three, Duke, and Abacab (plus an EP from the same period), but even at this point some of his most important songwriting contributions were on group compositions, such as the hits “Follow You Follow Me” and “Turn It On Again”, both of which were based on riffs that Rutherford came up with and both which he wrote the lyrics for. After Genesis started writing all their songs as a group, there were still many songs that came more from Rutherford than the others (just as there were songs that were more Banks or more Collins), including heavier tracks like “Just a Job to Do”, “Land of Confusion”, and “Dreaming While You Sleep” and ballads like “Taking It All Too Hard” and “Throwing It All Away”, all of which were based mainly on Rutherford’s guitar as well as featuring his lyrics. He also made contributions that are less readily apparent from the instruments used: for instance, the drum machine riff that “Mama” was built on came from Rutherford, not Collins. After Collins finally left the group, it was apparently Rutherford who was most keen to try to keep the group going, though after the relative failure of Calling All Stations, he was also the one who didn’t want to make another attempt (the initially hesitant Banks was more willing to record another album with the new lineup).
Rutherford, like Banks, started his solo career after the release of And Then There Were Three in 1978, though previously he had also contributed heavily to Anthony Phillips’s first solo album (originally intended as a Phillips/Rutherford joint album, though Rutherford’s Genesis commitments scuttled that plan) and co-wrote a song on Steve Hackett's first solo album, released in 1977. On his first solo album, Smallcreep’s Day (1980), he worked with a guest vocalist, and on his second, Acting Very Strange (1982), he handled the vocals himself. He disliked the results and also concluded that he worked best in collaboration with other songwriters, so he formed the group Mike & the Mechanics featuring vocalists Paul Carrack and Paul Young and co-writers B.A. Robertson and Christopher Neil. This group unexpectedly achieved commercial success not far short of Genesis and Phil Collins as a solo artist, leaving Tony Banks, the central figure in Genesis, as the only member not have commercial success as a solo artist (though their manager once asserted that Genesis was Tony Banks’s solo career). Even with the seeming demise of Genesis (unless Collins decides to come back out of retirement and join forces again with Banks and Rutherford as he did in their 2007 reunion tour), Mike and the Mechanics remains active, Rutherford having reformed the group recently – the first incarnation split after the death of Paul Young, and a second incarnation with Paul Carrack in a more prominent role released one album in 2004.
Rutherford’s songwriting tends to be slightly simpler than that of his longtime collaborator Tony Banks, as a comparison of their work both in and outside Genesis shows. In fact, a few fans of the earlier incarnations of Genesis “blame” Rutherford rather than Phil Collins, the usual target, for Genesis becoming more commercial, pointing to songs like “Your Own Special Way”, “Follow You Follow Me”, “Alone Tonight” and “Throwing It All Away” as evidence (of course this assumes that the later version of Genesis is inferior, a view I don’t agree with). While Rutherford’s songs are certainly more direct than those of Banks, there is more to his writing than these ballads, such as the harder-edged songs cited earlier, which give the music of Genesis much needed variety. Lyrically, he is perhaps a bit more consistent than Banks – though he occasionally wrote fairly banal lyrics, he also wrote exceptional ones like “Ripples” and “Land of Confusion”. In the interviews accompanying the remixes of Genesis's albums, he also showed that he is quite perceptive concerning flaws in the band's earlier work, such as their lyrics sometimes being overly "busy" or the music and lyrics clashing due to the way they worked at the time. Judging from his career as a whole, I would have to agree with his own assessment that he works best in collaboration with others. Though one or two songs that he wrote entirely or almost entirely on his own are classics, such as “Ripples”, the vast majority of his best work was co-written with others, even when he was the main writer. Most of the Genesis songs he wrote alone are decent, but on the whole they are not as strong as most of Banks’s solo compositions for the group. As for his solo albums, some parts of Smallcreep’s Day do sound very much like Genesis and much of the music is quite pleasant to listen to, but as a whole the album seems to be lacking something. The same holds true for Acting Very Strange, though I’ll admit I haven’t listened to either album many times and it’s possible that I would discover their virtues through repeated listening. While Mike and the Mechanics is certainly more MOR than his earlier work, and the group has plenty of songs that are simple mediocre (certainly Genesis albums are far more consistent), they also have some that are great, such as “Silent Running”. I generally find Banks’s solo efforts more interesting overall, but the best work of Mike and the Mechanics is quite good as well. In general, what I know of his non-Genesis work supports my impression that while Rutherford often has had great musical ideas, he usually – though not always – needs a collaborator (or two) to help him bring them to completion.
On the list below, for the Gabriel era, I have restricted myself to the few songs that Rutherford is known to have been chiefly responsible for. I have left out songs from the first two Genesis albums that he co-wrote with Phillips, as well as songs that there is no reliable information about (it’s quite possible, for instance, that he was the main composer of songs other than “Back in N.Y.C.” on The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, but no interviews have confirmed this). For the albums where individual songwriting credits are given (from the first post-Gabriel album, A Trick of the Tail, to Abacab), I have generally excluded co-written songs, even where Rutherford wrote the lyrics (such as on “Dance on a Volcano” and “Eleventh Earl of Mar”), with the exception of particularly notable tracks like “Squonk”, “Follow You Follow Me” and “Turn It On Again” [Update: I recently came across an interview in which Rutherford said he wrote the lyrics for "Abacab", so that song probably should be added to those below, as it's one of the band's best tracks from the album of the same name]. For the later years, I have included important songs that Rutherford wrote the lyrics for and for which he seems to have been the driving force compositionally. While with slightly stricter criteria (such as excluding co-written songs like “Squonk” that are not known for certain to be composed mainly by Rutherford and including fewer of the later group compositions), some extra effort (such as editing out the last half of “The Cinema Show” and the instrumental section of “Ripples”, as these were mostly written by others) and dropping a few other less great tracks, it would be possible to make a single CD of Rutherford’s best work with Genesis, I decided to expand it to two CDs as I did with Banks, though in this case it was easy to fit everything with some room to spare. For his solo career, I picked a few highlights and representative tracks, but since I don’t have all of the albums he did (such as the last several Mike and the Mechanics CDs) and those I do have I’m not thoroughly familiar with, I no doubt missed a few worthwhile songs.
The Best of Mike Rutherford with Genesis
The Cinema Show (opening section) (Music: Rutherford[opening section], Banks/Rutherford/Collins[instrumental section]; Lyrics: Rutherford/Banks)
More Fool Me (Rutherford/Collins)
Back in N.Y.C. (Music: Rutherford[main riff]/Banks/Collins/Hackett)
Ripples (Music: Rutherford/Banks; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Squonk (Music: Rutherford/Banks; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Your Own Special Way (Rutherford)
Snowbound (Rutherford)
Deep in the Motherlode (Rutherford)
Say It’s Alright Joe (Rutherford)
Follow You Follow Me (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Turn It On Again (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Man of Our Times (Rutherford)
Alone Tonight (Rutherford)
Open Door (Rutherford)
Like It Or Not (Rutherford)
Taking It All Too Hard (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Just a Job to Do (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Land of Confusion (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Throwing It All Away (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Dreaming While You Sleep (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Calling All Stations (Music: Banks/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
The Dividing Line (Music: Banks/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Mike Rutherford Solo and with Mike and the Mechanics
(Tracks 1 to 4 performed by Mike Rutherford; Tracks 5-11 performed by Mike and the Mechanics)
Moonshine (Rutherford)
At the End of the Day (Rutherford)
Halfway There (Palmer/Rutherford)
Hideaway (Rutherford)
Silent Running (Rutherford/Robertson)
All I Need Is a Miracle (Rutherford/Neil)
The Living Years (Rutherford/Robertson)
Word of Mouth (Rutherford/Neil)
Over My Shoulder (Rutherford/Carrack)
Another Cup of Coffee (Rutherford/Neil)
Now That You've Gone (Rutherford/Carrack)
Honorable Mentions: Time and Time Again, Acting Very Strange, Couldn't Get Arrested, Taken In, Beggar on a Beach of Gold
Mike Rutherford of Genesis
Mike Rutherford (full name Michael John Cleote Crawford Rutherford, born October 2, 1950) was one of the founding members of Genesis, and, other than Tony Banks, the only member to remain with the group throughout its history. While in my article on Tony Banks I argued that he was probably the single most important member of Genesis in that he more than anyone else was responsible for the group’s overall sound, Mike Rutherford played nearly as important a role over the years. At the time the group formed in 1967, his closest friend and chief collaborator was Anthony Phillips, just as Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel were friends and songwriting collaborators. In the very early years, Rutherford was perhaps somewhat less important in musical terms, as he was probably the least proficient on his instrument (the bass) and the other three did a slightly larger share of the songwriting, but he was vital to the group chemistry, and fairly soon he and Phillips developed a distinctive way of playing 12-string guitars in tandem that was a key element in the group’s sound. By the time Phillips left in 1970, Rutherford was able to step into his role as one of Genesis’s main songwriters along with Banks and Gabriel, and as a performer his bass and 12-string guitar was, along with Phil Collins’s drums, the backbone to the band’s sound in concert. Even in the Gabriel years, Rutherford, Banks and Collins in particular developed a good chemistry in the studio, writing sections of “Supper’s Ready” and “The Cinema Show” as a trio. On his own, Rutherford wrote a few pieces like the opening section of “The Cinema Show”. Rutherford also came up with guitar riffs that various songs were built on, a notable example being “Back in N.Y.C”, which was unusually hard and edgy for a Genesis song, almost proto-punk.
In the years immediately after Gabriel left, Banks and Rutherford were the band’s primary songwriters, though lead guitarist Steve Hackett also wrote some key tracks and Collins contributed to a lot of the group-written tracks (“Dance on a Volcano”, for instance, began with a jam by the Banks-Collins-Rutherford trio, with Rutherford writing the lyrics). While he wrote a little less than Banks, he was the main writer of tracks like “Ripples” (aside from the lyrics, it seems he also wrote all the music with the exception of the instrumental section written by Banks) and “Squonk” (for which he wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the music with Banks). He also wrote “Your Own Special Way”, the first Genesis song to chart in the US. After Hackett left, Rutherford took over all guitar duties in the studio in addition to his role as bassist, and he and Banks at first handled nearly all the songwriting, though Collins soon began to take on a more of a hand in the latter. While Rutherford never became a guitar virtuoso, he soon adapted to using the guitar in a way that combined very well with Banks’s keyboards and Collins’s drums and vocals. A number of songs he wrote entirely on his own appeared on the first three post-Hackett albums, And Then There Were Three, Duke, and Abacab (plus an EP from the same period), but even at this point some of his most important songwriting contributions were on group compositions, such as the hits “Follow You Follow Me” and “Turn It On Again”, both of which were based on riffs that Rutherford came up with and both which he wrote the lyrics for. After Genesis started writing all their songs as a group, there were still many songs that came more from Rutherford than the others (just as there were songs that were more Banks or more Collins), including heavier tracks like “Just a Job to Do”, “Land of Confusion”, and “Dreaming While You Sleep” and ballads like “Taking It All Too Hard” and “Throwing It All Away”, all of which were based mainly on Rutherford’s guitar as well as featuring his lyrics. He also made contributions that are less readily apparent from the instruments used: for instance, the drum machine riff that “Mama” was built on came from Rutherford, not Collins. After Collins finally left the group, it was apparently Rutherford who was most keen to try to keep the group going, though after the relative failure of Calling All Stations, he was also the one who didn’t want to make another attempt (the initially hesitant Banks was more willing to record another album with the new lineup).
Rutherford, like Banks, started his solo career after the release of And Then There Were Three in 1978, though previously he had also contributed heavily to Anthony Phillips’s first solo album (originally intended as a Phillips/Rutherford joint album, though Rutherford’s Genesis commitments scuttled that plan) and co-wrote a song on Steve Hackett's first solo album, released in 1977. On his first solo album, Smallcreep’s Day (1980), he worked with a guest vocalist, and on his second, Acting Very Strange (1982), he handled the vocals himself. He disliked the results and also concluded that he worked best in collaboration with other songwriters, so he formed the group Mike & the Mechanics featuring vocalists Paul Carrack and Paul Young and co-writers B.A. Robertson and Christopher Neil. This group unexpectedly achieved commercial success not far short of Genesis and Phil Collins as a solo artist, leaving Tony Banks, the central figure in Genesis, as the only member not have commercial success as a solo artist (though their manager once asserted that Genesis was Tony Banks’s solo career). Even with the seeming demise of Genesis (unless Collins decides to come back out of retirement and join forces again with Banks and Rutherford as he did in their 2007 reunion tour), Mike and the Mechanics remains active, Rutherford having reformed the group recently – the first incarnation split after the death of Paul Young, and a second incarnation with Paul Carrack in a more prominent role released one album in 2004.
Rutherford’s songwriting tends to be slightly simpler than that of his longtime collaborator Tony Banks, as a comparison of their work both in and outside Genesis shows. In fact, a few fans of the earlier incarnations of Genesis “blame” Rutherford rather than Phil Collins, the usual target, for Genesis becoming more commercial, pointing to songs like “Your Own Special Way”, “Follow You Follow Me”, “Alone Tonight” and “Throwing It All Away” as evidence (of course this assumes that the later version of Genesis is inferior, a view I don’t agree with). While Rutherford’s songs are certainly more direct than those of Banks, there is more to his writing than these ballads, such as the harder-edged songs cited earlier, which give the music of Genesis much needed variety. Lyrically, he is perhaps a bit more consistent than Banks – though he occasionally wrote fairly banal lyrics, he also wrote exceptional ones like “Ripples” and “Land of Confusion”. In the interviews accompanying the remixes of Genesis's albums, he also showed that he is quite perceptive concerning flaws in the band's earlier work, such as their lyrics sometimes being overly "busy" or the music and lyrics clashing due to the way they worked at the time. Judging from his career as a whole, I would have to agree with his own assessment that he works best in collaboration with others. Though one or two songs that he wrote entirely or almost entirely on his own are classics, such as “Ripples”, the vast majority of his best work was co-written with others, even when he was the main writer. Most of the Genesis songs he wrote alone are decent, but on the whole they are not as strong as most of Banks’s solo compositions for the group. As for his solo albums, some parts of Smallcreep’s Day do sound very much like Genesis and much of the music is quite pleasant to listen to, but as a whole the album seems to be lacking something. The same holds true for Acting Very Strange, though I’ll admit I haven’t listened to either album many times and it’s possible that I would discover their virtues through repeated listening. While Mike and the Mechanics is certainly more MOR than his earlier work, and the group has plenty of songs that are simple mediocre (certainly Genesis albums are far more consistent), they also have some that are great, such as “Silent Running”. I generally find Banks’s solo efforts more interesting overall, but the best work of Mike and the Mechanics is quite good as well. In general, what I know of his non-Genesis work supports my impression that while Rutherford often has had great musical ideas, he usually – though not always – needs a collaborator (or two) to help him bring them to completion.
On the list below, for the Gabriel era, I have restricted myself to the few songs that Rutherford is known to have been chiefly responsible for. I have left out songs from the first two Genesis albums that he co-wrote with Phillips, as well as songs that there is no reliable information about (it’s quite possible, for instance, that he was the main composer of songs other than “Back in N.Y.C.” on The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, but no interviews have confirmed this). For the albums where individual songwriting credits are given (from the first post-Gabriel album, A Trick of the Tail, to Abacab), I have generally excluded co-written songs, even where Rutherford wrote the lyrics (such as on “Dance on a Volcano” and “Eleventh Earl of Mar”), with the exception of particularly notable tracks like “Squonk”, “Follow You Follow Me” and “Turn It On Again” [Update: I recently came across an interview in which Rutherford said he wrote the lyrics for "Abacab", so that song probably should be added to those below, as it's one of the band's best tracks from the album of the same name]. For the later years, I have included important songs that Rutherford wrote the lyrics for and for which he seems to have been the driving force compositionally. While with slightly stricter criteria (such as excluding co-written songs like “Squonk” that are not known for certain to be composed mainly by Rutherford and including fewer of the later group compositions), some extra effort (such as editing out the last half of “The Cinema Show” and the instrumental section of “Ripples”, as these were mostly written by others) and dropping a few other less great tracks, it would be possible to make a single CD of Rutherford’s best work with Genesis, I decided to expand it to two CDs as I did with Banks, though in this case it was easy to fit everything with some room to spare. For his solo career, I picked a few highlights and representative tracks, but since I don’t have all of the albums he did (such as the last several Mike and the Mechanics CDs) and those I do have I’m not thoroughly familiar with, I no doubt missed a few worthwhile songs.
The Best of Mike Rutherford with Genesis
The Cinema Show (opening section) (Music: Rutherford[opening section], Banks/Rutherford/Collins[instrumental section]; Lyrics: Rutherford/Banks)
More Fool Me (Rutherford/Collins)
Back in N.Y.C. (Music: Rutherford[main riff]/Banks/Collins/Hackett)
Ripples (Music: Rutherford/Banks; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Squonk (Music: Rutherford/Banks; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Your Own Special Way (Rutherford)
Snowbound (Rutherford)
Deep in the Motherlode (Rutherford)
Say It’s Alright Joe (Rutherford)
Follow You Follow Me (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Turn It On Again (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Man of Our Times (Rutherford)
Alone Tonight (Rutherford)
Open Door (Rutherford)
Like It Or Not (Rutherford)
Taking It All Too Hard (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Just a Job to Do (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Land of Confusion (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Throwing It All Away (Music: Rutherford/Banks/Collins; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Dreaming While You Sleep (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Calling All Stations (Music: Banks/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
The Dividing Line (Music: Banks/Rutherford; Lyrics: Rutherford)
Mike Rutherford Solo and with Mike and the Mechanics
(Tracks 1 to 4 performed by Mike Rutherford; Tracks 5-11 performed by Mike and the Mechanics)
Moonshine (Rutherford)
At the End of the Day (Rutherford)
Halfway There (Palmer/Rutherford)
Hideaway (Rutherford)
Silent Running (Rutherford/Robertson)
All I Need Is a Miracle (Rutherford/Neil)
The Living Years (Rutherford/Robertson)
Word of Mouth (Rutherford/Neil)
Over My Shoulder (Rutherford/Carrack)
Another Cup of Coffee (Rutherford/Neil)
Now That You've Gone (Rutherford/Carrack)
Honorable Mentions: Time and Time Again, Acting Very Strange, Couldn't Get Arrested, Taken In, Beggar on a Beach of Gold
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Farrokh Bulsara, aka Freddie Mercury of Queen
Farrokh Bulsara, better known as Freddie Mercury, was born on September 5, 1946 on the island of Zanzibar, a British territory in East Africa. His parents were Indians of Parsi descent; the Parsis were Zoroastrians originating in Iran, though from photos of the Bulsaras, including the young Farrokh, I think it is safe to say they also had some non-Iranian Indian ancestry as well, as they look at least as much like typical Indians as Iranians. In any event, Bulsara went to school in his parents’ ancestral home in Gujarat, India, where his grandmother and aunt lived, and absorbed local music as typified by Bollywood film music in addition to Western rock and roll. At school he learned piano and joined his first band, the Hectics, a rock and roll cover band which he formed with several of his classmates (he was the band’s pianist, not its vocalist, as apparently he did not at the time have the self-confidence necessary to be out in front). It was also at school that he acquired the nickname Freddie, which he would use for the rest of his life.
When Bulsara was 17 his family moved to England in the wake of the Zanzibar Revolution. As an art student in London, he joined several bands as vocalist, including Ibex (later called Wreckage) and Sour Milk Sea. He also met Tim Staffell, the vocalist of Smile, and through him the group’s guitarist and drummer, Brian May and Roger Taylor. When Staffell quit, Bulsara persuaded May and Taylor to form a new band with him, which he named Queen. He himself started to use the surname Mercury, and it was as Freddie Mercury that he went on to become one of the best known rock vocalists in history.
As a vocalist, Freddie Mercury was widely recognized as one of the best in rock music, due to both the range and the power of his voice. Unlike many other singers, his falsetto was not overly thin, and so sounded better than average. But while a lot of rock fans tend to equate good singing with singing high notes, something that Mercury certainly did well, his ability to sing low and with great power was if anything more outstanding. In concert, due to worries about damaging his throat, he would usually not sing the high notes that he sang on record, but his live vocal performances remained very impressive regardless, certainly more so than the vast majority of other singers in rock, and when combined with his powerful stage presence, it is no surprise that few others could match him as a live performer. As for his instrumental abilities, in Queen’s early years, he was the group’s primary keyboardist. Though he himself was supposedly dismissive of his skill on the piano, his playing on tracks like “The March of the Black Queen”, “Love of My Life”, "The Millionaire Waltz" and “My Melancholy Blues” is, at least to my admittedly untrained ear, excellent. He only played guitar on record on one song, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (on this song, he also played guitar in concert), but he wrote one or two others on guitar, including “Ogre Battle”, and he wrote many guitar lines on piano.
In Queen’s first decade, Freddie Mercury was the band’s most prolific songwriter, writing slightly more than Brian May and far more than Roger Taylor or bassist John Deacon in terms of total number of songs, as well as composing more of the group’s hits than all the others put together. He was also the group’s most eclectic writer, composing in a wide variety of styles. The group’s biggest hit in the UK, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, a mix of ballad, opera and hard rock that is still considered their magnum opus and is often voted best song of all time in UK music polls, was entirely Mercury’s work. Among the group’s other big hits from their first eight albums, he also wrote the sports stadium favorite “We Are the Champions” (originally paired on record with Queen’s other big sports anthem, Brian May’s “We Will Rock You”), the gospel-style “Somebody to Love”, the rockabilly “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (Queen’s first American chart-topper), the vaudeville-tinged “Killer Queen” and “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy”, and the playful “Bicycle Race” and “Don’t Stop Me Now”. As for album tracks, he wrote the highly complex “The March of the Black Queen”, centerpiece to the second side of Queen II, all of which was written by Mercury; ballads like “Love of My Life”, “Nevermore” and “Lily of the Valley”; the music hall/vaudeville songs like “Seaside Rendezvous”, rockers like “Ogre Battle”, “Death on Two Legs” and “Flick of the Wrist”, the classical-style track “The Millionaire Waltz”, the lounge jazz-style song “My Melancholy Blues” and the Middle Eastern-flavored “Mustapha”, along with many other songs.
In the 1980s, Mercury’s share of the songwriting for Queen shrank considerably, with the other members writing as much or more than he did. He still wrote a number of excellent tracks such as “It’s a Hard Life” and “I’m Going Slightly Mad” (the latter, like all tracks on the albums The Miracle and Innuendo, was credited to the group as a whole) and was according to various sources the main writer on collaborations like “Friends Will Be Friends”, “Was It All Worth It” and “Innuendo”. He also made key contributions to songs written primarily by others in the group. In addition, in1985 he released a solo album called Mr. Bad Guy (two of the best tracks on this album, “Made in Heaven” and “I Was Born to Love You”, were later reworked by the other members of Queen for the posthumous album Made in Heaven), in 1987 he released an excellent cover of “The Great Pretender” (his biggest solo hit in his lifetime), and in 1988 he released Barcelona, an album he recorded with opera singer Montserrat Caballé (this album, featuring some of his best solo songs, was largely co-written with keyboardist Mike Moran). He also sang songs on a couple of soundtracks and produced or sang on some tracks by other artists. Unbeknownst to the public, by the time of the release of Queen’s 1989 album The Miracle, Mercury was already ill with AIDS, and by the time of the release of Innuendo in early 1991 his condition was already quite serious, as is apparent from the videos featuring new footage of the band made for that album. He continued to record in the following months, until it became impossible for him to do so. On November 23 he issued a statement confirming that he had AIDS, and the next day he died. Several years after his death, in 1995, the rest of the band released a final album called Made in Heaven, which included Mercury’s last composition “A Winter’s Tale” and his last recording “Mother Love” (written by May with help from Mercury) in addition to several reworked older recordings, such as the Mercury solo tracks mentioned above. Since then, a number of demos and incomplete recordings by Mercury have been released, and it is reported that May and Taylor are polishing up some of Mercury’s demos (whether ones that have been released or others is not clear) for release on a new album in the near future.
As noted above, Mercury was the most eclectic songwriter in Queen, covering a wide variety of genres. He was particularly strong as a composer, with a good gift for melody and harmonics. Lyrics were not his strong point, as most of the songs he wrote were by his own admission fairly disposable and not very deep, though few of his lyrics were truly awkward and some were quite good. Even when his lyrics were relatively weak, the music often overcame this deficiency, a case in point being “The March of the Black Queen”, which has pretty nonsensical lyrics but great music. In any case, Mercury’s voice was such that he could almost have sung the phone book, as they say, and gotten away with it. That might be a slight exaggeration, but he could usually make an average song sound good and a good song sound great. Still, like the other members of Queen, he did his best work with the band. Mr. Bad Guy has some good songs but also quite a few that are at best mediocre. Barcelona is much better, but is less of a pure solo effort, as he was collaborating with others in both the songwriting and the performing. In any case, it is for the songs he produced with May, Taylor and Deacon, particularly those from the 1970s when his songwriting was at its peak, that he will be remembered.
The following is a list of 30 of Mercury’s best compositions. It is drawn from songs that are credited solely to Mercury or, for later songs that were credited to Queen, are known to have been written nearly entirely by him. In addition to a short list of honorable mentions, I have appended a short list of some of the best songs that Mercury co-wrote with others. I should emphasize that if a song doesn’t appear here, this doesn’t mean I dislike it, just that I think the other songs are better (in some cases only slightly so). For that matter, I might feel differently if I were to do the list again another time (in particular, I like several of the "honorable mentions" just as much as some of the songs that made the main list, but I had narrow it down somehow).
The Best of Freddie Mercury
(All songs written by Freddie Mercury and performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
My Fairy King
Ogre Battle
The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke
Nevermore
The March of the Black Queen
Seven Seas of Rhye (credited to Mercury, but May helped with the music)
Killer Queen
Flick of the Wrist
Lily of the Valley
In the Lap of the Gods (Revisited)
Death on Two Legs
Seaside Rendezvous
Love of My Life
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Millionaire Waltz
Somebody to Love
Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy
We Are the Champions
My Melancholy Blues
Mustapha
Bicycle Race
Let Me Entertain You
Don’t Stop Me Now
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Life Is Real
It’s a Hard Life
Princes of the Universe
I’m Going Slightly Mad (Credited to Queen)
Made in Heaven (First recorded by Mercury, later re-recorded by Queen)
I Was Born to Love You (First recorded by Mercury, later re-recorded by Queen)
Honorable Mentions: Great King Rat, Funny How Love Is, In the Lap of the Gods, Big Bad Leroy Brown, Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, Get Down Make Love, Jealousy, Play the Game, Staying Power, Man on the Prowl, Keep Passing the Open Windows, There Must Be More to Life Than This (Freddie Mercury solo), Living On My Own (Freddie Mercury solo), Delilah (Credited to Queen), A Winter’s Tale (Credited to Queen)
Notable Collaborations
(All songs performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
Is This the World We Created (Music mostly by May, lyrics mostly by Mercury)
Friends Will Be Friends (Mercury/John Deacon)
The Miracle (Mercury with Deacon, May and Taylor)
Was It All Worth It (Music: Mercury with May, lyrics: Mercury/Taylor/May/Deacon)
Innuendo (Music: Mercury [melody and middle section] and May/Deacon/Taylor [basic backing track], lyrics: Taylor/Mercury)
Bijou (Mercury/May)
Barcelona (Mercury/Mike Moran; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
Exercises in Free Love (Mercury/Mike Moran; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
The Golden Boy (Mercury/Moran/Tim Rice; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
How Can I Go On (Mercury/Moran; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
When Bulsara was 17 his family moved to England in the wake of the Zanzibar Revolution. As an art student in London, he joined several bands as vocalist, including Ibex (later called Wreckage) and Sour Milk Sea. He also met Tim Staffell, the vocalist of Smile, and through him the group’s guitarist and drummer, Brian May and Roger Taylor. When Staffell quit, Bulsara persuaded May and Taylor to form a new band with him, which he named Queen. He himself started to use the surname Mercury, and it was as Freddie Mercury that he went on to become one of the best known rock vocalists in history.
As a vocalist, Freddie Mercury was widely recognized as one of the best in rock music, due to both the range and the power of his voice. Unlike many other singers, his falsetto was not overly thin, and so sounded better than average. But while a lot of rock fans tend to equate good singing with singing high notes, something that Mercury certainly did well, his ability to sing low and with great power was if anything more outstanding. In concert, due to worries about damaging his throat, he would usually not sing the high notes that he sang on record, but his live vocal performances remained very impressive regardless, certainly more so than the vast majority of other singers in rock, and when combined with his powerful stage presence, it is no surprise that few others could match him as a live performer. As for his instrumental abilities, in Queen’s early years, he was the group’s primary keyboardist. Though he himself was supposedly dismissive of his skill on the piano, his playing on tracks like “The March of the Black Queen”, “Love of My Life”, "The Millionaire Waltz" and “My Melancholy Blues” is, at least to my admittedly untrained ear, excellent. He only played guitar on record on one song, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (on this song, he also played guitar in concert), but he wrote one or two others on guitar, including “Ogre Battle”, and he wrote many guitar lines on piano.
In Queen’s first decade, Freddie Mercury was the band’s most prolific songwriter, writing slightly more than Brian May and far more than Roger Taylor or bassist John Deacon in terms of total number of songs, as well as composing more of the group’s hits than all the others put together. He was also the group’s most eclectic writer, composing in a wide variety of styles. The group’s biggest hit in the UK, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, a mix of ballad, opera and hard rock that is still considered their magnum opus and is often voted best song of all time in UK music polls, was entirely Mercury’s work. Among the group’s other big hits from their first eight albums, he also wrote the sports stadium favorite “We Are the Champions” (originally paired on record with Queen’s other big sports anthem, Brian May’s “We Will Rock You”), the gospel-style “Somebody to Love”, the rockabilly “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (Queen’s first American chart-topper), the vaudeville-tinged “Killer Queen” and “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy”, and the playful “Bicycle Race” and “Don’t Stop Me Now”. As for album tracks, he wrote the highly complex “The March of the Black Queen”, centerpiece to the second side of Queen II, all of which was written by Mercury; ballads like “Love of My Life”, “Nevermore” and “Lily of the Valley”; the music hall/vaudeville songs like “Seaside Rendezvous”, rockers like “Ogre Battle”, “Death on Two Legs” and “Flick of the Wrist”, the classical-style track “The Millionaire Waltz”, the lounge jazz-style song “My Melancholy Blues” and the Middle Eastern-flavored “Mustapha”, along with many other songs.
In the 1980s, Mercury’s share of the songwriting for Queen shrank considerably, with the other members writing as much or more than he did. He still wrote a number of excellent tracks such as “It’s a Hard Life” and “I’m Going Slightly Mad” (the latter, like all tracks on the albums The Miracle and Innuendo, was credited to the group as a whole) and was according to various sources the main writer on collaborations like “Friends Will Be Friends”, “Was It All Worth It” and “Innuendo”. He also made key contributions to songs written primarily by others in the group. In addition, in1985 he released a solo album called Mr. Bad Guy (two of the best tracks on this album, “Made in Heaven” and “I Was Born to Love You”, were later reworked by the other members of Queen for the posthumous album Made in Heaven), in 1987 he released an excellent cover of “The Great Pretender” (his biggest solo hit in his lifetime), and in 1988 he released Barcelona, an album he recorded with opera singer Montserrat Caballé (this album, featuring some of his best solo songs, was largely co-written with keyboardist Mike Moran). He also sang songs on a couple of soundtracks and produced or sang on some tracks by other artists. Unbeknownst to the public, by the time of the release of Queen’s 1989 album The Miracle, Mercury was already ill with AIDS, and by the time of the release of Innuendo in early 1991 his condition was already quite serious, as is apparent from the videos featuring new footage of the band made for that album. He continued to record in the following months, until it became impossible for him to do so. On November 23 he issued a statement confirming that he had AIDS, and the next day he died. Several years after his death, in 1995, the rest of the band released a final album called Made in Heaven, which included Mercury’s last composition “A Winter’s Tale” and his last recording “Mother Love” (written by May with help from Mercury) in addition to several reworked older recordings, such as the Mercury solo tracks mentioned above. Since then, a number of demos and incomplete recordings by Mercury have been released, and it is reported that May and Taylor are polishing up some of Mercury’s demos (whether ones that have been released or others is not clear) for release on a new album in the near future.
As noted above, Mercury was the most eclectic songwriter in Queen, covering a wide variety of genres. He was particularly strong as a composer, with a good gift for melody and harmonics. Lyrics were not his strong point, as most of the songs he wrote were by his own admission fairly disposable and not very deep, though few of his lyrics were truly awkward and some were quite good. Even when his lyrics were relatively weak, the music often overcame this deficiency, a case in point being “The March of the Black Queen”, which has pretty nonsensical lyrics but great music. In any case, Mercury’s voice was such that he could almost have sung the phone book, as they say, and gotten away with it. That might be a slight exaggeration, but he could usually make an average song sound good and a good song sound great. Still, like the other members of Queen, he did his best work with the band. Mr. Bad Guy has some good songs but also quite a few that are at best mediocre. Barcelona is much better, but is less of a pure solo effort, as he was collaborating with others in both the songwriting and the performing. In any case, it is for the songs he produced with May, Taylor and Deacon, particularly those from the 1970s when his songwriting was at its peak, that he will be remembered.
The following is a list of 30 of Mercury’s best compositions. It is drawn from songs that are credited solely to Mercury or, for later songs that were credited to Queen, are known to have been written nearly entirely by him. In addition to a short list of honorable mentions, I have appended a short list of some of the best songs that Mercury co-wrote with others. I should emphasize that if a song doesn’t appear here, this doesn’t mean I dislike it, just that I think the other songs are better (in some cases only slightly so). For that matter, I might feel differently if I were to do the list again another time (in particular, I like several of the "honorable mentions" just as much as some of the songs that made the main list, but I had narrow it down somehow).
The Best of Freddie Mercury
(All songs written by Freddie Mercury and performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
My Fairy King
Ogre Battle
The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke
Nevermore
The March of the Black Queen
Seven Seas of Rhye (credited to Mercury, but May helped with the music)
Killer Queen
Flick of the Wrist
Lily of the Valley
In the Lap of the Gods (Revisited)
Death on Two Legs
Seaside Rendezvous
Love of My Life
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Millionaire Waltz
Somebody to Love
Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy
We Are the Champions
My Melancholy Blues
Mustapha
Bicycle Race
Let Me Entertain You
Don’t Stop Me Now
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Life Is Real
It’s a Hard Life
Princes of the Universe
I’m Going Slightly Mad (Credited to Queen)
Made in Heaven (First recorded by Mercury, later re-recorded by Queen)
I Was Born to Love You (First recorded by Mercury, later re-recorded by Queen)
Honorable Mentions: Great King Rat, Funny How Love Is, In the Lap of the Gods, Big Bad Leroy Brown, Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, Get Down Make Love, Jealousy, Play the Game, Staying Power, Man on the Prowl, Keep Passing the Open Windows, There Must Be More to Life Than This (Freddie Mercury solo), Living On My Own (Freddie Mercury solo), Delilah (Credited to Queen), A Winter’s Tale (Credited to Queen)
Notable Collaborations
(All songs performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
Is This the World We Created (Music mostly by May, lyrics mostly by Mercury)
Friends Will Be Friends (Mercury/John Deacon)
The Miracle (Mercury with Deacon, May and Taylor)
Was It All Worth It (Music: Mercury with May, lyrics: Mercury/Taylor/May/Deacon)
Innuendo (Music: Mercury [melody and middle section] and May/Deacon/Taylor [basic backing track], lyrics: Taylor/Mercury)
Bijou (Mercury/May)
Barcelona (Mercury/Mike Moran; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
Exercises in Free Love (Mercury/Mike Moran; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
The Golden Boy (Mercury/Moran/Tim Rice; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
How Can I Go On (Mercury/Moran; recorded by Mercury and Montserrat Caballé)
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