Though I’ve written a lot about various British and American artists on this blog and have also posted a few pieces on Taiwanese popular music (though not that much relative to the time I’ve spent researching it), I have barely touched on the music of other countries in Asia. In part, that’s just because I know comparatively little about it; I’ve lived in Taiwan for many years, I speak one of the country’s languages, and I’ve met and even done album liner notes for a few of the artists, whereas I’ve only visited the other countries in the region, and (except in the cases of China and Singapore), I don’t speak their languages with any fluency. However, I have managed to collect a fair amount of music from these countries and, relying largely on things I’ve read by others with more knowledge, have learned a bit about several of the key artists in these countries.
Outside of Taiwan, the Asian country whose popular music I’m most familiar with is Thailand. I’ve spent more time in Thailand than in any Asian country other than Taiwan; aside from a dozen or so trips of various lengths, we even lived there for three months fifteen years ago. Another factor is that CDs of local music are unusually cheap in Thailand, generally less than US$5, so I could buy them a lot more freely than I could anywhere else. Of course there are still a lot of things making it harder for me to become as knowledgeable about Thai popular music as Taiwanese or English-language popular music. The biggest barrier is language. I speak a smattering of Thai, enough to bargain for things in a market or hold an extremely simple conversation with only a few exchanges. My Thai is about as good as my Hoklo/Minnan; though I don’t speak either well at all, they are the only Asian languages other than Mandarin where I know more than a few phrases. But my ability is still extremely limited, so to understand the lyrical content of songs I have to rely on translations or references in English by others. I am often able to figure out some basic information about the songs on CDs I own such as who wrote the music and lyrics; I know a few of the letters, but more importantly I’ve learned to recognize a few key words and name, or I’m able to deduce them by comparison (e.g., it’s easy enough to guess the words for “lyrics”, “music” and “arrangement”, as they appear next to or under the song titles and in front of the names of people), but this is still harder for Thai CDs than for CDs from Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines simply because the latter countries use the Latin alphabet. The language barrier also means that for historical background on the music I have to rely on the limited resources available in English, or use online translation programs to attempt to get the gist of what I can find in Thai.
In any case, I have several dozen Thai CDs, perhaps as many as a hundred. Most of them are rock, folk and urban pop, though I also have some CDs of luk thung, commonly referred to Thai country. I tried to acquire music by a fairly wide variety of artists, particularly those who seem to be regarded as particularly significant or representative, though I’m sure there are many important ones I’ve missed. So, for example, I have CDs by classic luk thung singers Surapol Sombatjalern (สุรพล สมบัติเจริญ) and Pompuang Duangjan (พุ่มพวง ดวงจันทร์), kantrum singer Darkie, and mor lam singer Jintara Poonlarp. I have CDs with songs by early urban pop groups like the Impossibles and Grand Ex and rock groups and pop singers from the 1980s and 1990s such as Micro, Billy Ogan, Bird, Itti and Mai, as well as later artists like Loso, Palmy, Beau, Paradox, Smile Buffalo and Silly Fools. In particular, I tried to acquire music by key artists from the genre known as pleng phua chewit (“songs for life”), a type of folk rock mixing Western folk and rock with some elements of more traditional Thai music, and emphasizing lyrics with more sociopolitical content. The first and most important (except for the band I’ll discuss momentarily) “songs for life” group was Caravan (คาราวาน), and I’ve bought a number of their CDs. I even met and exchanged greetings with their lead singer and key member Surachai Jantimatorn (aka Nga Caravan) when he visited Taiwan for the Migration Music Festival a few years ago. I also have CDs by Hammer, Pongsit Kamphee and Zuzu. But the two artists whose albums I have the most of are the brotherly pop rock duo Asanee Wasan and Thailand’s most famous band, the “songs for life” rock group Carabao.
Carabao was formed in the early 1980s and has been active in various forms pretty much ever since. The group’s mainstay is its chief vocalist and songwriter Yuenyong Ophakul, better known as Ad (or Aed) Carabao. Other key members include guitarists Lek and Thierry, multi-instrumentalist Keo (or Khiao) and bassist Od (or Ot). Carabao is not only very popular among Thais, it is also the one Thai band non-Thais who have a passing familiarity with Thailand are most likely to have heard of. Even today Carabao’s symbol, a long-horned buffalo skull (a carabao is a type of water buffalo native to the Phillipines, where Ad and cofounder Keo were students in the late 1970s), can be seen all over Thailand. Carabao’s sound combines elements of Western folk, country and rock (such as Lek’s Santana-style guitar playing) with rhythms reminiscent of Thai music forms such as luk thung and mor lam. The band’s lyrics frequently deal with social issues, and Ad in particular is outspoken on social justice and the environment.
The band hit its peak in the mid 1980s with what is generally considered its classic lineup. The series of albums Carabao released in the 1980s are pretty much all classics, particularly those from their third (Waniphok) to their ninth (Thap Lang),but the most famous was their fifth album, Made in Thailand, released in 1984. It sold four to five million copies and remains one of the most successful Thai albums ever. The title track is the band’s best known song, but several of the other tracks are also among their most popular recordings, and really everything on the album is good. This is definitely the one must-have Carabao album, though the other albums from this period are also highly recommended.
Ad Carabao wrote the majority of the band’s songs, at least in its early days, though Lek and Thierry in particular also wrote some songs, typically writing and singing one song each on most albums they participated in, and occasionally co-writing the music for other songs with Ad. Most of the band’s chief members have released solo albums, with Ad in particular having a number of solo successes – in fact, one of his best known songs, the ballad Thaleejai, was released on an album that he recorded with his brother Id, though it has since appeared on Carabao compilations as well. Speaking of which, Carabao has released a rather bewildering number of compilation albums, live albums, “special” albums (such as acoustic and remix albums) and collaborations with other artists, which can be a bit confusing for those who don’t read Thai (and possibly even for Thais as well). Anyone looking for a good compilation is advised to have a list of key songs to look for on the track listing (e.g., “Wanipok”, “Made in Thailand”, “Refugee”, etc.) in order to make sure it has the most important Carabao songs.
Since Carabao has released so many albums, I don’t have anything like a complete collection of their recordings, even though I easily have more than a dozen Carabao CDs. The Thai artist who I am closest to have a complete collection of is the duo Asanee Wasan. Asanee and Wasan Chotikul are two guitar playing brothers who got their start as members of the folk group Isn’t in the late 1970s. Asanee worked with several other artists in the early 1980s before the brothers released their first album as a duo in 1986. They became more popular with each subsequent release, and remain one of the country’s top selling artists and concert draws, though their output slowed considerably after the early 1990s. Perhaps their most notable album was their fourth, 1989’s Fak Thong. This contained “Yindii Mai Mii Panhaa”, a song which has been widely covered around Asia, including versions in Hoklo (by Taiwan’s Blacklist Workshop), Mandarin, English, and Cantonese, as well as one of the group’s most popular ballads, “Dai Yang Sia Yang”. It also contained “Krung Thep Mahanakhon”, which is a melodic chanting of the full name of Bangkok (which has the world’s longest official name) over rhythmic music composed by Asanee.
Musically, Asanee Wasan is more pop than Carabao, and the lyrical content of their songs only rarely strays into more serious subjects, though Yuenyong Ophakul (Ad Carabao) helped write a couple of their songs and together Ad and Asanee wrote “Chiwit Samphan”, an environmentally themed “Do They Know It’s Christmas” style song performed by the top “songs for life” artists of the late 1980s. Also unlike Carabao, Asanee Wasan frequently sings songs written for them by others. Asanee has generally written the music for several songs on each album (for instance, he wrote the music for all three songs mentioned above), and he often arranges songs written by others. Wasan only occasionally takes a hand in the writing. The brothers do produce all their albums, and even songs written by others have their distinctive sound. Asanee, who is the elder of the two brothers, usually seems to be the dominant of the pair. He is extroverted and flashy in his performance style, and he sings lead on the majority of the duo’s songs. As noted, he also frequently takes a hand in the songwriting or arranging. Wasan, who is on the chubby side, wears glass, and seems more introverted than his brother, generally sings around two songs on each album, and these are usually ballads (though several of them have been among the duo’s biggest hits). However, it is worth noting that on the first of the two solo albums that Wasan has released has a song called “Loey Dam Loey” which is reminiscent of the rock style more associated with Asanee but was written by Wasan. The duo does this song on a concert DVD I have, and Wasan plays the really fast guitar solo from the song himself, proving that he is capable of matching his brother for flashy guitar playing.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Thursday, March 30, 2017
15 Essential Recordings by Chuck Berry, the Grand Old Man of Rock and Roll
Last year became notorious for the number of prominent people in music and other fields who died in the course of the year. While this year has not yet equaled the pace set early last year, earlier this month saw the death of another music great, Chuck Berry, one of the pioneers of rock & roll, indeed some would argue the greatest one of all. Berry’s longevity was impressive; he was 90 years old when he died, having outlived many of the rock musicians he influenced. This was even more surprising when you consider that he wasn’t even all that young at the birth of rock and roll, having turned 30 in 1956, just when the new genre was taking America by storm. By comparison, Elvis Presley was only 21 in 1956, when he was having his first major label hits, and the Beatles had already broken up by the time any of them reached 30. Indeed, even many years ago it amazed me to think that Chuck Berry was still around when so many of his successors were not.
Of the first generation of rock and rollers, including Presley, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and more, Berry was perhaps the most representative of the sound of the new genre as it was born from a fusion of rhythm and blues with elements of country, and he was one of the few who wrote (or perhaps co-wrote, as I discuss below) all of his songs. His influence on the next generation of rock musicians was profound. The Rolling Stones were practically founded on a love of Chuck Berry, and John Lennon was quoted as saying “If you were going to give rock & roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.” Songs like “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Johnny B. Goode” are all time classics that have been covered countless times, and Berry’s performing style was imitated by many later musicians. Berry himself was supposedly pretty difficult to work with and in later years his shows were apparently rather erratic in quality, but that doesn't negate his impressive accomplishments. Those of his admirers who dealt with him certainly felt that way; Keith Richards commented that while he found Berry difficult, he put up with the aggravation because of all he owed to Berry.
In a previous post, I talked about an album of Chuck Berry covers that I put together many years ago, including ELO’s masterful fusion of “Roll Over Beethoven” and Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the Beach Boys rewrite of “Sweet Little Sixteen” as “Surfin’ USA”, alongside covers by the Beatles, the Stones, Elvis, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Emmylou Harris, Paul McCartney and more. This time I’m listing my choices as the fifteen most essential recordings by Chuck Berry himself. Aside from the obvious hits, I’ve included some of my favorites among his relatively obscure tracks. Berry’s one major downside as a songwriter was that a lot of his singles sounded quite similar; indeed he sometimes reused the same music (listen to “School Days” and “No Particular Place to Go” or “Johnny B. Goode” and “Let It Rock” for some examples). But he also did songs that sounded nothing like the hits, such as the ominous sounding “Downbound Train” and the tragicomic calypso song “Havana Moon”, both of which combine great lyrics with interesting music. He also did songs in the classic blues style, with “Wee Wee Hours” being the example I’ve included here. The later “You Never Can Tell”, best known today for its use in the film Pulp Fiction, also has a musical flavor that is distinct from his earlier hits. Perhaps Berry’s greatest strength in comparison with other early songwriters was his lyrics; only Jerry Leiber of the Leiber and Stoller songwriting team could match him in those days. Among my favorite Berry lyrics are “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” and “Memphis, Tennessee” with its surprise twist at the end.
But as far as the music is concerned, though Berry is credited as sole composer on all his songs, there are a number of songs where that credit should be taken with a grain of salt. His breakout track, “Maybellene”, was based on the upbeat Bob Wills arrangement of the traditional song “Ida Red”, and his sole number one hit, the risqué novelty song “My Ding-a-Ling”, was originally written and recorded by Dave Bartholomew, who in turn took the melody from the 19th century song “Little Brown Jug” (Berry did substantially alter the lyrics and arrangement, but at most that should have be good for a co-writing credit). Finally, it’s possible that pianist Johnnie Johnson helped write the music for many of Berry’s songs, most of which he played on (in fact Berry’s career got started when Johnson recruited him to join a trio he was leading). As I wrote in my post on the autobiography of one of Berry’s biggest fans, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, Richards “asked Johnson about how songs like ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and ‘Little Queenie’ were written. Johnson said Berry would come in with all the words and then Johnson and the band would play a blues format with Johnson laying out the sequence. Richards’ reaction was hey, that means you co-wrote the songs. He goes on to note that he and the drummer went back and looked at Berry’s songs and realized that they were all in piano keys.” Johnson, who died in 2005 a few months short of his 81st birthday, sued Berry over the credits for many of the songs (including “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”) in 2000, but the case was dismissed because too much time had passed. Interestingly, one song Johnson himself said he didn’t even play on was “Johnny B. Goode”, which he said Berry had told him was a tribute to him (Johnnie Johnson), though it also had a lot of autobiographical elements about Berry himself. Regardless, Johnson’s role in the creation of Berry’s music should be remembered along with Berry himself.
Here, in order of release, is my list of essential Chuck Berry songs:
Maybellene (1955)
Wee Wee Hours (1955)
Downbound Train (1955)
Roll Over Beethoven (1956)
Brown Eyed Handsome Man (1956)
You Can’t Catch Me (1956)
Too Much Monkey Business (1956)
Havana Moon (1956)
School Days (1957)
Rock and Roll Music (1957)
Sweet Little Sixteen (1958)
Reelin’ and Rockin’ (1958)
Johnny B. Goode (1958)
Memphis, Tennessee (1959)
You Never Can Tell (1964)
Of the first generation of rock and rollers, including Presley, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and more, Berry was perhaps the most representative of the sound of the new genre as it was born from a fusion of rhythm and blues with elements of country, and he was one of the few who wrote (or perhaps co-wrote, as I discuss below) all of his songs. His influence on the next generation of rock musicians was profound. The Rolling Stones were practically founded on a love of Chuck Berry, and John Lennon was quoted as saying “If you were going to give rock & roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.” Songs like “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Johnny B. Goode” are all time classics that have been covered countless times, and Berry’s performing style was imitated by many later musicians. Berry himself was supposedly pretty difficult to work with and in later years his shows were apparently rather erratic in quality, but that doesn't negate his impressive accomplishments. Those of his admirers who dealt with him certainly felt that way; Keith Richards commented that while he found Berry difficult, he put up with the aggravation because of all he owed to Berry.
In a previous post, I talked about an album of Chuck Berry covers that I put together many years ago, including ELO’s masterful fusion of “Roll Over Beethoven” and Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the Beach Boys rewrite of “Sweet Little Sixteen” as “Surfin’ USA”, alongside covers by the Beatles, the Stones, Elvis, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Emmylou Harris, Paul McCartney and more. This time I’m listing my choices as the fifteen most essential recordings by Chuck Berry himself. Aside from the obvious hits, I’ve included some of my favorites among his relatively obscure tracks. Berry’s one major downside as a songwriter was that a lot of his singles sounded quite similar; indeed he sometimes reused the same music (listen to “School Days” and “No Particular Place to Go” or “Johnny B. Goode” and “Let It Rock” for some examples). But he also did songs that sounded nothing like the hits, such as the ominous sounding “Downbound Train” and the tragicomic calypso song “Havana Moon”, both of which combine great lyrics with interesting music. He also did songs in the classic blues style, with “Wee Wee Hours” being the example I’ve included here. The later “You Never Can Tell”, best known today for its use in the film Pulp Fiction, also has a musical flavor that is distinct from his earlier hits. Perhaps Berry’s greatest strength in comparison with other early songwriters was his lyrics; only Jerry Leiber of the Leiber and Stoller songwriting team could match him in those days. Among my favorite Berry lyrics are “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” and “Memphis, Tennessee” with its surprise twist at the end.
But as far as the music is concerned, though Berry is credited as sole composer on all his songs, there are a number of songs where that credit should be taken with a grain of salt. His breakout track, “Maybellene”, was based on the upbeat Bob Wills arrangement of the traditional song “Ida Red”, and his sole number one hit, the risqué novelty song “My Ding-a-Ling”, was originally written and recorded by Dave Bartholomew, who in turn took the melody from the 19th century song “Little Brown Jug” (Berry did substantially alter the lyrics and arrangement, but at most that should have be good for a co-writing credit). Finally, it’s possible that pianist Johnnie Johnson helped write the music for many of Berry’s songs, most of which he played on (in fact Berry’s career got started when Johnson recruited him to join a trio he was leading). As I wrote in my post on the autobiography of one of Berry’s biggest fans, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, Richards “asked Johnson about how songs like ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and ‘Little Queenie’ were written. Johnson said Berry would come in with all the words and then Johnson and the band would play a blues format with Johnson laying out the sequence. Richards’ reaction was hey, that means you co-wrote the songs. He goes on to note that he and the drummer went back and looked at Berry’s songs and realized that they were all in piano keys.” Johnson, who died in 2005 a few months short of his 81st birthday, sued Berry over the credits for many of the songs (including “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”) in 2000, but the case was dismissed because too much time had passed. Interestingly, one song Johnson himself said he didn’t even play on was “Johnny B. Goode”, which he said Berry had told him was a tribute to him (Johnnie Johnson), though it also had a lot of autobiographical elements about Berry himself. Regardless, Johnson’s role in the creation of Berry’s music should be remembered along with Berry himself.
Here, in order of release, is my list of essential Chuck Berry songs:
Maybellene (1955)
Wee Wee Hours (1955)
Downbound Train (1955)
Roll Over Beethoven (1956)
Brown Eyed Handsome Man (1956)
You Can’t Catch Me (1956)
Too Much Monkey Business (1956)
Havana Moon (1956)
School Days (1957)
Rock and Roll Music (1957)
Sweet Little Sixteen (1958)
Reelin’ and Rockin’ (1958)
Johnny B. Goode (1958)
Memphis, Tennessee (1959)
You Never Can Tell (1964)
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
A Selection of Superstar Beatles Covers
Cover songs are looked down upon in some circles. This is to some degree due to the immense success of artists like the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who wrote the vast majority of their own songs, including all their major hit singles, setting a standard followed by rock bands and singer-songwriters since. Though of course there were quite a few performers who wrote some or all their own material before the Beatles era (Chuck Berry, for instance) and many songwriters performed on occasion (including greats like Cole Porter and Hoagy Carmichael), in the past it was quite normal for most singers to get their material from others. While this sometimes meant songs written particularly for them to sing, it was also common to perform songs that had already been recorded by others. Of course artists have continued to do this since Dylan and the Beatles, but the expectation had been created that the best, most genuinely creative singers and bands would come up with their own material. I'll admit to sharing this prejudice to some extent, in the sense that I am most impressed by artists who can both write good songs and perform them well. In part this is an interest in the creative side of music, so that I'm more inclined to focus on the writers of songs, whether we're talking Porter and the Gershwins from the early to mid 20th century, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in the 1950s and 1960s, or Randy Newman in more recent decades, than their performers. However, not every great performer can be or even needs to be a great songwriter. Whether we're talking Ella Fitzgerald or Elvis Presley, there's no denying that many people who didn't write any songs are still among the most important artists in popular music. For that matter, many capable songwriters enjoy performing others' material from time to time. The Beatles themselves did a lot of covers, especially in their early years (their powerful cover of "Twist and Shout" is just one example), and the individual Beatles continued to perform cover songs throughout their solo careers. Dylan also did covers from time to time, and even artists that never did any on their studio albums, such as Queen and Genesis, played them in concert. Indeed, a good cover can be as much of a work of art as an original song. Some cover versions manage to surpass the originals, even by substantial margins, though this is of course a subjective judgment, partly influenced by how we're exposed to the song in the first place (for example, people often tend to be partial to the version they hear first, though that can change after repeated exposure to another version).
Sometime I may attempt to draw up my own comprehensive list of great covers, but for today I'm just going to introduce a CD of Beatles covers I put together many years ago. It includes both some very well known covers of Beatle songs and some that are fairly obscure, though the artists doing them are generally quite well known. This was actually only one of three I made at the time, and even after three I hadn't come close to including all the interesting Beatles covers out there (some years after I made these CDs, I picked up a book entirely dedicated to Beatles covers, and even that book, which mentions hundreds of covers, doesn't include all of those in existence). I originally sent the CDs without any track listings to several members of my family to challenge them to identify the performers. They did pretty well, considering that even though all (or nearly all) the artists are fairly famous, not all of them were people you'd necessarily expect to have covered the Beatles, and it's not always easy to identify performers by voice alone. In any case, one of my goals was to show the great diversity of artists who have covered the Beatles, and the wide variety in interpretations that exist. I may post the track lists for the other two CDs in the future, but just this one has a lot of great stuff.
Can't Buy Me Love Ella Fitzgerald
A Hard Day's Night Billy Joel
Yesterday Marvin Gaye
Help Tina Turner
In My Life Crosby/Stills/Nash
Taxman Stevie Ray Vaughan
Eleanor Rigby Ray Charles
Tomorrow Never Knows Phil Collins
Penny Lane Sting
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Jimi Hendrix
With a Little Help From My Friends Joe Cocker
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds Elton John
The Fool on The Hill The Four Tops
Hey Jude The Temptations
Revolution Mike+The Mechanics
Obladi, Oblada Sting & Youssou N'Dour
Come Together Aerosmith
Across The Universe David Bowie
Sometime I may attempt to draw up my own comprehensive list of great covers, but for today I'm just going to introduce a CD of Beatles covers I put together many years ago. It includes both some very well known covers of Beatle songs and some that are fairly obscure, though the artists doing them are generally quite well known. This was actually only one of three I made at the time, and even after three I hadn't come close to including all the interesting Beatles covers out there (some years after I made these CDs, I picked up a book entirely dedicated to Beatles covers, and even that book, which mentions hundreds of covers, doesn't include all of those in existence). I originally sent the CDs without any track listings to several members of my family to challenge them to identify the performers. They did pretty well, considering that even though all (or nearly all) the artists are fairly famous, not all of them were people you'd necessarily expect to have covered the Beatles, and it's not always easy to identify performers by voice alone. In any case, one of my goals was to show the great diversity of artists who have covered the Beatles, and the wide variety in interpretations that exist. I may post the track lists for the other two CDs in the future, but just this one has a lot of great stuff.
Can't Buy Me Love Ella Fitzgerald
A Hard Day's Night Billy Joel
Yesterday Marvin Gaye
Help Tina Turner
In My Life Crosby/Stills/Nash
Taxman Stevie Ray Vaughan
Eleanor Rigby Ray Charles
Tomorrow Never Knows Phil Collins
Penny Lane Sting
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Jimi Hendrix
With a Little Help From My Friends Joe Cocker
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds Elton John
The Fool on The Hill The Four Tops
Hey Jude The Temptations
Revolution Mike+The Mechanics
Obladi, Oblada Sting & Youssou N'Dour
Come Together Aerosmith
Across The Universe David Bowie
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Theme Songs for the Incoming Administration of Deplorables
Since Don tRump (aka Pumpkin Hitler) has had such trouble finding acts willing to perform at his inauguration, I thought I’d go through my music collection and come up with some suitable music for him and his proposed cabinet of deplorables. Unfortunately, even the most ironically exaggerated of these songs could turn out to be scarily accurate if the worst tendencies of the incoming administration are left unrestrained. If they are to remain in the realm of satire rather than prophesy, it will take the collective efforts of all people of conscience and good sense.
Theme Songs for the New Administration
Political Science (Randy Newman) – Randy Newman himself commented that this song is “never out of date, unfortunately.” But this sort of ignorant, nationalistic jingoism is especially reminiscent of the attitudes of tRump and a number of those around him.
Deportee (Woody Guthrie/Martin Hoffman) – It was hearing a version of this song that inspired me to put together this list. Though it’s more than half a century old, its lyrics (which Guthrie originally wrote as a poem, inspired by a news report about a plane crash that killed several Americans and more than two dozen Mexicans who were being sent back to Mexico and who were not listed by name but just referred to as “deportees”) attack the same kind of dehumanization of undocumented immigrants that characterizes tRump and his followers. Of course we should also remember that Guthrie also wrote a set of lyrics titled “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home (Old Man Trump)” about his greedy, racist landlord Fred Trump – Donnie’s father.
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) (Marvin Gaye) – This Marvin Gaye classic will unfortunately be an even more accurate depiction of the way we’ve polluted our environment if people like Scott Pruitt, tRump’s nominee for EPA director, get their way.
Pollution (Tom Lehrer) – Another good description of what even a few years of Republican dominance of government is likely to do to our environment. The line about what comes out of the taps is eerily close to what the people of Flint have had to put up with already, and that sort of thing will just get more common in the next few years.
Send the Marines (Tom Lehrer) – This would work as a theme song for a Defense Department headed by "Mad Dog" Mattis.
Murder by Numbers (Sting/Andy Summers) – While this song is more broadly targeted at all political leaders and the ease by which many of them give orders that lead to others’ deaths, it also is a scary reminder of what such power can become if wielded by someone unrestrained by conscience or empathy (neither of which tRump or many of his top nominees seem to have much of).
It's Money That Matters (Randy Newman) – A perfect fit for tRump and his cabinet of greedy billionaires, especially people like Mnuchin, DeVos, Tillerson and Ross, not to mention all the "coddle the wealthy" Republicans in Congress.
Trigger Happy (“Weird” Al Yankovic) – While Weird Al Yankovic, unlike Tom Lehrer or Randy Newman, rarely does songs with a political slant, this original song (a “style parody” of the Beach Boys) is the perfect theme song for all the gun nuts who will run rampant if the “guns everywhere” policies supported by tRump and the Republicans actually become law.
Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) (Roger Waters) – This grim portrait of a twisted education system seems rather fitting as a theme for what we might expect of education under Betsy DeVos, with her hostility to public schools and promotion of unregulated charter schools that “advance God’s Kingdom”.
Which Way to America (Vernon Reid) – This Living Colour song contrasts the America of the wealthy (and usually white) population and that of the poor (and often minority) population, the sort of inequality that will only get worse under tRump. Their “Cult of Personality” from the same album in some ways fits tRump, though I think of him as belonging to a slightly different category than leaders like Hitler or Stalin, whose evil was more calculated.
Subcity (Tracy Chapman) – A lot of Chapman's songs are about America's neglected underclass, but this song, with its lines about not being able to get any government relief and of course "Please give the President my honest regards/For disregarding me", is particularly appropriate considering the cuts to food stamps and other programs that can be expected from the Republicans.
Hammer to Fall (Brian May) – This apocalyptic Queen song seems fitting as a description of the sword of Damocles we’ll all be living under with tRump in charge. Queen’s “White Man” (also by May) would also be appropriate in reference to Standing Rock and similar disputes.
American Idiot (Armstrong/Dirnt/Cool) – This one is an obvious one, fitting for both tRump and those who voted him into office.
Putin (Randy Newman) – I only discovered this new Newman song today, but it's the perfect theme song for the guy who helped put tRump into office.
We Will All Go Together When We Go (Tom Lehrer) – Let’s just hope this one doesn’t turn out to be prophetic.
Update:
I'm Dreaming (Randy Newman) - I just ran across this song today, and I just had to add it. As a Randy Newman fan, I'm a bit embarrassed to have missed hearing this, since it apparently dates back to 2012. He seemingly wrote it in character (as he often does), in this case the character being an Obama-hating tea party type. As such, it makes the perfect theme song for the tRump voter.
Theme Songs for the New Administration
Political Science (Randy Newman) – Randy Newman himself commented that this song is “never out of date, unfortunately.” But this sort of ignorant, nationalistic jingoism is especially reminiscent of the attitudes of tRump and a number of those around him.
Deportee (Woody Guthrie/Martin Hoffman) – It was hearing a version of this song that inspired me to put together this list. Though it’s more than half a century old, its lyrics (which Guthrie originally wrote as a poem, inspired by a news report about a plane crash that killed several Americans and more than two dozen Mexicans who were being sent back to Mexico and who were not listed by name but just referred to as “deportees”) attack the same kind of dehumanization of undocumented immigrants that characterizes tRump and his followers. Of course we should also remember that Guthrie also wrote a set of lyrics titled “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home (Old Man Trump)” about his greedy, racist landlord Fred Trump – Donnie’s father.
Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) (Marvin Gaye) – This Marvin Gaye classic will unfortunately be an even more accurate depiction of the way we’ve polluted our environment if people like Scott Pruitt, tRump’s nominee for EPA director, get their way.
Pollution (Tom Lehrer) – Another good description of what even a few years of Republican dominance of government is likely to do to our environment. The line about what comes out of the taps is eerily close to what the people of Flint have had to put up with already, and that sort of thing will just get more common in the next few years.
Send the Marines (Tom Lehrer) – This would work as a theme song for a Defense Department headed by "Mad Dog" Mattis.
Murder by Numbers (Sting/Andy Summers) – While this song is more broadly targeted at all political leaders and the ease by which many of them give orders that lead to others’ deaths, it also is a scary reminder of what such power can become if wielded by someone unrestrained by conscience or empathy (neither of which tRump or many of his top nominees seem to have much of).
It's Money That Matters (Randy Newman) – A perfect fit for tRump and his cabinet of greedy billionaires, especially people like Mnuchin, DeVos, Tillerson and Ross, not to mention all the "coddle the wealthy" Republicans in Congress.
Trigger Happy (“Weird” Al Yankovic) – While Weird Al Yankovic, unlike Tom Lehrer or Randy Newman, rarely does songs with a political slant, this original song (a “style parody” of the Beach Boys) is the perfect theme song for all the gun nuts who will run rampant if the “guns everywhere” policies supported by tRump and the Republicans actually become law.
Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) (Roger Waters) – This grim portrait of a twisted education system seems rather fitting as a theme for what we might expect of education under Betsy DeVos, with her hostility to public schools and promotion of unregulated charter schools that “advance God’s Kingdom”.
Which Way to America (Vernon Reid) – This Living Colour song contrasts the America of the wealthy (and usually white) population and that of the poor (and often minority) population, the sort of inequality that will only get worse under tRump. Their “Cult of Personality” from the same album in some ways fits tRump, though I think of him as belonging to a slightly different category than leaders like Hitler or Stalin, whose evil was more calculated.
Subcity (Tracy Chapman) – A lot of Chapman's songs are about America's neglected underclass, but this song, with its lines about not being able to get any government relief and of course "Please give the President my honest regards/For disregarding me", is particularly appropriate considering the cuts to food stamps and other programs that can be expected from the Republicans.
Hammer to Fall (Brian May) – This apocalyptic Queen song seems fitting as a description of the sword of Damocles we’ll all be living under with tRump in charge. Queen’s “White Man” (also by May) would also be appropriate in reference to Standing Rock and similar disputes.
American Idiot (Armstrong/Dirnt/Cool) – This one is an obvious one, fitting for both tRump and those who voted him into office.
Putin (Randy Newman) – I only discovered this new Newman song today, but it's the perfect theme song for the guy who helped put tRump into office.
We Will All Go Together When We Go (Tom Lehrer) – Let’s just hope this one doesn’t turn out to be prophetic.
Update:
I'm Dreaming (Randy Newman) - I just ran across this song today, and I just had to add it. As a Randy Newman fan, I'm a bit embarrassed to have missed hearing this, since it apparently dates back to 2012. He seemingly wrote it in character (as he often does), in this case the character being an Obama-hating tea party type. As such, it makes the perfect theme song for the tRump voter.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
The Best of George Michael (The Grim Reaper Strikes Yet Again)
In my previous post I remarked, as many others have done, on the number of major artists in popular music who had died this year, and in passing I mentioned the possibility that since the year wasn’t over, there was still a chance that one or more major artists might yet die. That turned out to be the case, as this past Christmas weekend, George Michael unexpectedly joined the list that already included David Bowie, Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Prince, Beatles producer George Martin, both Keith Emerson and Greg Lake (two thirds of Emerson, Lake and Palmer), Leonard Cohen and many more. Of course, despite the superstitious nonsense some people are spreading, these deaths are not due to a curse or anything silly like that. It is just an unfortunate coincidence, and given the ages of many famous artists who are still living, it is likely that some year in the near future will have at least nearly as many top artists dying, not to mention the fact that which artists qualify as major artists is necessarily subjective.
However, few people would dispute that George Michael (born Georgios Panayiotou) was a major artist, and his death was more of a surprise than, say, Leonard Cohen’s, as Michael was only 53, even younger than Prince. I didn’t have all of his albums, but I did have several of them, and I’d long considered him to have one of the best voices in pop. Interestingly, one of the few singers I’d rate above him, Freddie Mercury of Queen (whose mother Jer Bulsara also died recently), named Michael along with Aretha Franklin as one of his favorite singers, and Michael in turn did the best job taking Freddie’s place in performing Queen’s songs at the Freddie Mercury Memorial Concert. But aside from being a very good singer, Michael was also a capable songwriter. Not everything he wrote was great, but he did write a number of excellent songs. While since what he was writing was pop music, his melodies were generally what got the most attention, he also wrote some excellent lyrics from time to time. “Praying for Time”, for instance, is very well written, and “I Want Your Sex (Part 1)” has a lot of clever lines.
The following is a list of my favorite George Michael songs, basically the ones I’d put on my own “Best of George Michael”. I made one list of the ones I consider indispensable and a second of the songs I’d choose from to fill out a full CD. Since I don’t have his last album, Patience, I didn’t include anything from that, though eventually I’d like to check it out and possibly revise this list. I did listen to a few later songs over the last couple of days, though not enough to decide for certain which I’d want to include in a “best of”, though I did add 2006’s “An Easier Affair” to my secondary list. When Wham was popular I wasn’t really paying much attention to pop music, so I only heard a few of their songs at the time, though I heard more afterwards and I now have a copy of their compilation The Final. I probably could have included more songs from that era, but I decided to mainly concentrate on his solo songs, though I had to include my favorite Wham songs “Freedom” and “Everything She Wants”, and I added a few more into my second tier list. Faith is the album I was most familiar with, so inevitably there are quite a few songs from that, and really all of the singles from it are pretty good, as is the album track “Hand to Mouth”. “Kissing a Fool” is probably my favorite here, though “I Want Your Sex (Part 1)” and “Faith” are close. But there’s also some filler, while pretty much everything on his second solo album Listen without Prejudice Vol. 1 is good. “Praying for Time” is probably my favorite on this album, though “Heal the Pain” and “Waiting for That Day” are also great, and some of the others are close behind. The songs on his third album Older are generally also pretty good, though for some reason few of them really grabbed me the way the best ones on his previous albums did, and so most of them didn’t make the list here, though several would if I were to make it a double album. I did include his later, tongue-in-cheek single “Outside”, which was also pretty clever.
While for my main lists I stuck to original songs that Michael wrote himself, I made a separate list of some of my favorite covers he’s done (plus his song with Aretha Franklin, which while original he didn’t write). This is necessarily incomplete, as he’s done many covers I haven’t heard, including a whole album of them, but it would make a nice EP companion to the main set.
The Best of George Michael
Indispensable Tracks
Freedom
Everything She Wants
I Want Your Sex
Faith
Kissing a Fool
Praying for Time
Waiting for That Day
Heal the Pain
Other Top Tracks
I’m Your Man
A Different Corner
Careless Whisper
Hand to Mouth
Monkey
One More Try
Freedom ‘90
Mother’s Pride
Jesus to a Child
You Have Been Loved
Outside
An Easier Affair
Top Covers and Duets
I Knew You Were Waiting for Me (with Aretha Franklin)
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me (with Elton John)
Somebody to Love (with Queen)
As (with Mary K. Blige)
I Can’t Make You Love Me
However, few people would dispute that George Michael (born Georgios Panayiotou) was a major artist, and his death was more of a surprise than, say, Leonard Cohen’s, as Michael was only 53, even younger than Prince. I didn’t have all of his albums, but I did have several of them, and I’d long considered him to have one of the best voices in pop. Interestingly, one of the few singers I’d rate above him, Freddie Mercury of Queen (whose mother Jer Bulsara also died recently), named Michael along with Aretha Franklin as one of his favorite singers, and Michael in turn did the best job taking Freddie’s place in performing Queen’s songs at the Freddie Mercury Memorial Concert. But aside from being a very good singer, Michael was also a capable songwriter. Not everything he wrote was great, but he did write a number of excellent songs. While since what he was writing was pop music, his melodies were generally what got the most attention, he also wrote some excellent lyrics from time to time. “Praying for Time”, for instance, is very well written, and “I Want Your Sex (Part 1)” has a lot of clever lines.
The following is a list of my favorite George Michael songs, basically the ones I’d put on my own “Best of George Michael”. I made one list of the ones I consider indispensable and a second of the songs I’d choose from to fill out a full CD. Since I don’t have his last album, Patience, I didn’t include anything from that, though eventually I’d like to check it out and possibly revise this list. I did listen to a few later songs over the last couple of days, though not enough to decide for certain which I’d want to include in a “best of”, though I did add 2006’s “An Easier Affair” to my secondary list. When Wham was popular I wasn’t really paying much attention to pop music, so I only heard a few of their songs at the time, though I heard more afterwards and I now have a copy of their compilation The Final. I probably could have included more songs from that era, but I decided to mainly concentrate on his solo songs, though I had to include my favorite Wham songs “Freedom” and “Everything She Wants”, and I added a few more into my second tier list. Faith is the album I was most familiar with, so inevitably there are quite a few songs from that, and really all of the singles from it are pretty good, as is the album track “Hand to Mouth”. “Kissing a Fool” is probably my favorite here, though “I Want Your Sex (Part 1)” and “Faith” are close. But there’s also some filler, while pretty much everything on his second solo album Listen without Prejudice Vol. 1 is good. “Praying for Time” is probably my favorite on this album, though “Heal the Pain” and “Waiting for That Day” are also great, and some of the others are close behind. The songs on his third album Older are generally also pretty good, though for some reason few of them really grabbed me the way the best ones on his previous albums did, and so most of them didn’t make the list here, though several would if I were to make it a double album. I did include his later, tongue-in-cheek single “Outside”, which was also pretty clever.
While for my main lists I stuck to original songs that Michael wrote himself, I made a separate list of some of my favorite covers he’s done (plus his song with Aretha Franklin, which while original he didn’t write). This is necessarily incomplete, as he’s done many covers I haven’t heard, including a whole album of them, but it would make a nice EP companion to the main set.
The Best of George Michael
Indispensable Tracks
Freedom
Everything She Wants
I Want Your Sex
Faith
Kissing a Fool
Praying for Time
Waiting for That Day
Heal the Pain
Other Top Tracks
I’m Your Man
A Different Corner
Careless Whisper
Hand to Mouth
Monkey
One More Try
Freedom ‘90
Mother’s Pride
Jesus to a Child
You Have Been Loved
Outside
An Easier Affair
Top Covers and Duets
I Knew You Were Waiting for Me (with Aretha Franklin)
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me (with Elton John)
Somebody to Love (with Queen)
As (with Mary K. Blige)
I Can’t Make You Love Me
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
The Grim Reaper Strikes Again
As I and many others have noted, it hasn't been a particularly great year for music when it comes to deaths of important musical figures. I wrote about two of the biggest who have died this year, David Bowie and Prince, and in the latter post I listed many of the other major losses up to that point in time, from the Beatles producer George Martin to the keyboard wizard Keith Emerson. Recently a few other significant people have been added to the list. One was Leon Russell, who worked with artists such as Joe Cocker, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Elton John. His first album included guest musicians like George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton. Though I don't own any of his albums myself, I'm certainly aware of his impact.
That is even more true of another aritist who died recently, Leonard Cohen. I only have one Leonard Cohen compilation, an early "best of" album, so there's a lot his stuff I haven't heard. But he was definitely a very distinctive songwriter and wrote some great stuff. Bob Dylan is the obvious comparison, but Cohen had a style all his own. One of these days I need to get one or two more of his albums, either a more comprehensive compilation album, one of his top rated original albums, or both. For now, I have to be content with early classics like "Suzanne", "So Long, Marianne", "Bird on a Wire", "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye", as well as Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" and Billy Joel's cover of "Light as the Breeze".
There's only one month left in 2016, so we can hope there will be no more major deaths this year. But considering the ages of so many of the remaining greats who emerged in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, perhaps we should prepare ourselves for a few more years like 2016 in the near future.
That is even more true of another aritist who died recently, Leonard Cohen. I only have one Leonard Cohen compilation, an early "best of" album, so there's a lot his stuff I haven't heard. But he was definitely a very distinctive songwriter and wrote some great stuff. Bob Dylan is the obvious comparison, but Cohen had a style all his own. One of these days I need to get one or two more of his albums, either a more comprehensive compilation album, one of his top rated original albums, or both. For now, I have to be content with early classics like "Suzanne", "So Long, Marianne", "Bird on a Wire", "Famous Blue Raincoat" and "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye", as well as Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" and Billy Joel's cover of "Light as the Breeze".
There's only one month left in 2016, so we can hope there will be no more major deaths this year. But considering the ages of so many of the remaining greats who emerged in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, perhaps we should prepare ourselves for a few more years like 2016 in the near future.
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Life by Keith Richards with James Fox
This, as the title implies, the autobiography of Keith Richards, guitarist and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Richards had an eventful life and his story is interesting reading. His prose style is conversational, filled with asides and peppered with expletives and politically incorrect language (for instance, he frequently refers to gay people he’s known as “fags”, though he doesn’t seem to be actually prejudiced against them). It’s hard to tell where his own writing stops and his co-writer’s begins, though it’s possible the latter basically transcribed and organized accounts that Richards gave orally. In any event, the book certainly seems to be entirely in Richards’ own voice and it provides a fairly full picture of him. It ranges from his childhood up to around 2007 or so, though the 1960s and 1970s take up the most space, perhaps as they were the most eventful period of his life (though quite a few notable events come before and after those decades as well), and towards the end he even throws in a recipe and talks a bit about the kind of books he reads (a lot of historical fiction, among other things – he says that when he fell off a ladder in his library after a bookshelf collapsed on him, resulting in a punctured lung, the book he was trying to get was a Leonardo da Vinci book on anatomy). But of course most of the book is about the people in his life, the things that happened to him, and music in general.
Richards himself seems like a mostly decent guy, though by his own account he has a bit of a nasty temper and a propensity to violence. Some of the occasions where he flipped out (occasions he describes as “red mist” or “a red curtain” falling in front of his eyes) seemed justified, at least based on his version of events, but in some cases it seemed like a bit of an overreaction. It might be understandable for him to be annoyed when some music industry bigwig came into the studio and started pontificating on how they could improve the song they were working on, but taking a knife and throwing it between the guy’s legs seems a bit more than was called for. Likewise, when a DJ in a bar he was in persisted in playing Rolling Stones songs after Richards “politely” asked him not to, it is understandable that he lost his temper with him, but perhaps grabbing him and throwing him on the ground was a little much. Other examples include the time he waved a knife at Billy Preston backstage because the latter was playing too loud and drawing all the attention to himself, or the time when some foolish young man inadvertently took the spring onions that Richards was going to put in a dish he was cooking at a party at his house, with the result that Richards ended up chasing the guy around the backyard with sabers in his hands. At the same time, he also did things like rescuing an abandoned kitten, which Richards named Voodoo – hence the name of the Stones’ 1994 album, Voodoo Lounge, from the terrace Voodoo spent much of his time on (“Voodoo’s Lounge”). He occasionally intervened in other situations (for instance, he talks about stopping Billy Preston from beating up his boyfriend), though at other times he seemed to content to just observe, such as when Brian Jones was being nasty to someone. He makes a point of saying that he generally trusts people until they prove untrustworthy, whereas Mick Jagger is the opposite. He also had rather interesting friends over the years; while Jagger became something of a socialite, hanging out with the rich and famous, Richards seemed to prefer a completely different crowd. While he did hang out with some relatively upper crust or famous people in the 1960s, including John Lennon and Gram Parsons, a lot of his friends in later years were not at all famous, though as he notes, one thing they often had in common is that they had done time in prison at some point. Most of them weren’t musicians or really in the industry at all, though one close friend was a Texan sax player named Bobby Keys, who ended up playing with the Stones for many years, though with a long gap after he infuriated Jagger by being irresponsible during a tour.
Inevitably, Richards’ drug use comes into the book quite often; in fact, he opens the book with an episode from the 1970s when he and several companions were stopped in Arkansas while in a car full of drugs. For the most part, he doesn’t try to excuse or justify his drug use, though he does argue that he managed it better than a lot of the people around him and it sometimes served a useful purpose. But he admits by the mid to late 1970s his heroin addiction had gotten out of control (as had that of his longtime girlfriend Anita Pallenberg), and he concludes that it’s just a bad idea to start. Even aside from the legal problems and the sheer desperation of being a junkie always worrying about his next fix, his heroin problems in this period indirectly led to the deterioration of his relationship with Jagger.
Of course this is inevitably one of the big points of interest in a book like this; what does he say about his relationship with his bandmates. Oddly, he doesn’t really talk about his relationship with Bill Wyman or Charlie Watts much; Wyman in particular doesn’t get mentioned very often. He says “the closest emotional thing” he ever had with Wyman was when he was arrested for heroin possession in Toronto, and Wyman helped him out by managing to score some heroin to tide him over until he got out. Watts gets a little more attention, including their musical rapport, but not much. Richards credits Ian Stewart with being the real founder of the band and talks about his distress when Stewart died of a heart attack, though otherwise he’s fairly peripheral to the story as well. He does dwell a bit more on Brian Jones, though a lot of what he has to stay about Jones is negative. He does speak positively about his ability to pick up instruments and says that they did sometimes have fun together, as Jones could be funny and they shared a love for R&B, but he says he was erratic, couldn’t handle drugs or fame, and was cruel to friends and girlfriends. He says that Jones and Pallenberg (who were a couple before the latter got involved in Richards) often got in violent fights, though as often as not Jones would come out the worst. In later years, in contrast, Richards had a fairly close relationship with Ronnie Wood, who he sometimes actually hung out with in contrast to other members of the band, though he also says he slugged him once when Wood’s drug use was causing problems during a tour.
But of course his most important relationship was with Mick Jagger. He talks about how closely in sympathy they were in the early years, particularly with regard to their musical tastes, and how they started writing songs together. They started to drift apart somewhat in the early 1970s, with goings-on like sleeping with each other’s girlfriends or Jagger getting jealous about Richards’ friendship with Gram Parsons. He admits that in this period Jagger generally came through for him when the chips were down, but it’s clear that they weren’t hanging out together as much as before. Then when Richards’ heroin problem was at its worst, Jagger had to basically take over running the band’s affairs. Richards notes that he had no reason to object, as he was too wrapped up in his addiction to care about business matters, though he was still reasonably dedicated to making music. But he explains the real crunch came when he finally kicked the habit and basically let Jagger know he was ready to take on his share of the leadership duties. He says he expected Jagger to be relieved to give up part of the burden, but to his surprise he found Jagger was now used to being in control and wanted to things to remain that way. From then on, things went downhill. By Richards’ account, it wasn’t only him that got fed up with Jagger’s seeming arrogance (which he attributes in part to what he calls LVS – lead vocalist syndrome). He says the normally staid Charlie Watts punched Jagger out when Jagger called him up and referred to him as “my drummer”. Jagger’s secret signing of a solo deal a lot of anger, though the biggest rupture came in when he went on tour without the band. Eventually Richards and Jagger patched things up to the point where they could continue to write together, but from Richards’ account, they still didn’t talk much, and they still had conflicting ideas about the music – he says Jagger too often wanted to follow the latest fad, whereas Richards just wanted them to do what they did best. Richards says now their relationship is in more like that of brothers or even a marriage than that of friends; even their dressing rooms on tour are kept far apart, and their producer Don Was was surprised to note how little they talked. Richards at one point talks about his regret for the fact that they don’t really hang out together anymore. Interestingly, Richards says that in these later years, they got on best when it was just the two of them sitting down to write songs for an album.
While Richards doesn’t go over the creation of every song, he does comment on the origins of some of them, as well as making some general observations about how he and Jagger usually wrote together. He ironically observes that a lot of their very first songs, all of which they gave to other artists as they didn’t consider them suitable for the Stones, were not very successful, and often did worse than those artists’ previous singles: “Our songwriting had this other function of hobbling the opposition while we got paid for it” (though he notes that Marianne Faithfull’s very successful recording of “As Tears Go By” was an exception). He says that “Satisfaction” was a typical example of how he and Jagger collaborated in the early days, as he came up with the basic idea, including the chorus line, and Jagger would fill things in. He says that with “Paint It Black”, he wrote the melody and he wrote the lyrics (this contradicts a claim by Bill Wyman that the song was a group composition). He says that generally he came up with the musical riffs, though he mentions some exceptions, such as “Brown Sugar”. He names the riff for “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” as his favorite riff of all (his claim of authorship here contradicts an assertion by Wyman that he originally came up with the riff). He implies that “Ruby Tuesday” is basically his work (another Stones book claims it started as a collaboration with Jones, but Richards says Jones couldn’t write and that there was no “spark” on the occasions when they tried to do something together). He takes credit for “Gimme Shelter”, but says “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is basically Jagger’s. He credits Jagger with “Tumbling Dice” and “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll”, but says “Happy” and “Angie” were his own work. He implies that “Miss You” was mainly Jagger’s, while engineer/producer Chris Kimsey is quoted as saying “Start Me Up” was “Keith’s song”. Of course many more songs are mentioned, including some Richards did solo.
Richards also has some interesting remarks about other musicians, whether his predecessors and influences or his contemporaries. He says that Linda Keith gave Jimi Hendrix a copy of a demo Richards’ had of Tim Rose singing “Hey Joe”, so that indirectly Hendrix got the song through him. The Beatles, not surprisingly, come up often, and Richards is generally complimentary about them, though he does say that the Beatles couldn’t play the blues like the Stones could and that he would tell John Lennon that the Beatles lacked swing and that they could only rock but couldn’t roll. But he talks about how Lennon and McCartney gave the Stones their first big hit (“I Wanna Be Your Man”) and how afterwards the two bands would coordinate releases so they wouldn’t conflict with each other. He credits the Beatles and the Stones with making the album the main vehicle for recording in place of the single, and he credits the Beatles and Bob Dylan with changing songwriting. He notes that he hung out quite a bit with Lennon, who he says was like Gram Parsons a “pure musician”. Near the end of the book, he talks about meeting Paul McCartney on a Caribbean beach in 2005. He says he hadn’t really hung out with McCartney in the past, but that they had some great talks on this occasion and even worked on a song together. He also talks about his experience with Chuck Berry. He worked with Berry on the 1987 bio pic Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, and he says that Berry was really difficult as a person, though he put up with because of all he owed to him musically. He also says he got Berry back together with pianist Johnnie Johnson for the film. Most notably, he says he asked Johnson about how songs like “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Little Queenie” were written. Johnson said Berry would come in with all the words and then Johnson and the band would play a blues format with Johnson laying out the sequence. Richards’ reaction was hey, that means you co-wrote the songs. He goes on to note that he and the drummer went back and looked at Berry’s songs and realized that they were all in piano keys. So really most of Berry’s famous songs were probably Berry/Johnson compositions (however, according to Wikipedia, Johnson says that he didn’t have anything to do with arranging or recording “Johnny B. Goode”, which he said Berry told him was a tribute to Johnson), though the use of a “blues format” also might explain why musically a lot of Berry’s songs are similar to each other. Richards says the first time he met Jerry Lee Lewis he almost got in a fight with him, though they later became friends (if he’s aware of the rather strong possibility that Lewis killed at least one of his wives, he doesn’t mention it). Many other musicians and singers who Richards has crossed paths with in his long career also make appearances in the book.
The last major episode in the book, other than the death of Richards’ mother in 2007, occurred in 2006, when Richards fell off a tree branch he’d been sitting on on an island in Fiji and banged his head, then a couple of days later after a jolt on a boat he started to get blinding headaches. It turned out he’d cracked his skull, and he had to be flown to New Zealand and have an operation to open up his skull and drain the blood clots out of his head, with six titanium pins holding the skull cap in place. It was perhaps the closest Richards has come to dying in life full of close calls, from actually getting caught by some of the screaming teenage fans from the 1960s (he was trying to get in the car when the door handle broke off and the driver panicked and drove off, leaving Richards behind), a car accident, various hairy encounters when he was trying to score heroin, two occasions where he punctured a lung, and more. On this occasion, he says, he got “an interesting preview of my obituaries”, with notes and letters and tributes from people like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jay Leno, Robin Williams and people in the music industry. He also reveals that he feels the same way about Jet Skis as I do; in mentioning that later accounts falsely claimed a Jet Ski was involved he notes that they are something he “really dislike[s] intensely because they’re noisy and stupid and disruptive to the reefs.” Anyway, through it all, he manages to keep going, a pretty impressive feat for a guy who beginning in 1973 spent ten years on the top of a New Musical Express list of rock stars most likely to die.
Richards himself seems like a mostly decent guy, though by his own account he has a bit of a nasty temper and a propensity to violence. Some of the occasions where he flipped out (occasions he describes as “red mist” or “a red curtain” falling in front of his eyes) seemed justified, at least based on his version of events, but in some cases it seemed like a bit of an overreaction. It might be understandable for him to be annoyed when some music industry bigwig came into the studio and started pontificating on how they could improve the song they were working on, but taking a knife and throwing it between the guy’s legs seems a bit more than was called for. Likewise, when a DJ in a bar he was in persisted in playing Rolling Stones songs after Richards “politely” asked him not to, it is understandable that he lost his temper with him, but perhaps grabbing him and throwing him on the ground was a little much. Other examples include the time he waved a knife at Billy Preston backstage because the latter was playing too loud and drawing all the attention to himself, or the time when some foolish young man inadvertently took the spring onions that Richards was going to put in a dish he was cooking at a party at his house, with the result that Richards ended up chasing the guy around the backyard with sabers in his hands. At the same time, he also did things like rescuing an abandoned kitten, which Richards named Voodoo – hence the name of the Stones’ 1994 album, Voodoo Lounge, from the terrace Voodoo spent much of his time on (“Voodoo’s Lounge”). He occasionally intervened in other situations (for instance, he talks about stopping Billy Preston from beating up his boyfriend), though at other times he seemed to content to just observe, such as when Brian Jones was being nasty to someone. He makes a point of saying that he generally trusts people until they prove untrustworthy, whereas Mick Jagger is the opposite. He also had rather interesting friends over the years; while Jagger became something of a socialite, hanging out with the rich and famous, Richards seemed to prefer a completely different crowd. While he did hang out with some relatively upper crust or famous people in the 1960s, including John Lennon and Gram Parsons, a lot of his friends in later years were not at all famous, though as he notes, one thing they often had in common is that they had done time in prison at some point. Most of them weren’t musicians or really in the industry at all, though one close friend was a Texan sax player named Bobby Keys, who ended up playing with the Stones for many years, though with a long gap after he infuriated Jagger by being irresponsible during a tour.
Inevitably, Richards’ drug use comes into the book quite often; in fact, he opens the book with an episode from the 1970s when he and several companions were stopped in Arkansas while in a car full of drugs. For the most part, he doesn’t try to excuse or justify his drug use, though he does argue that he managed it better than a lot of the people around him and it sometimes served a useful purpose. But he admits by the mid to late 1970s his heroin addiction had gotten out of control (as had that of his longtime girlfriend Anita Pallenberg), and he concludes that it’s just a bad idea to start. Even aside from the legal problems and the sheer desperation of being a junkie always worrying about his next fix, his heroin problems in this period indirectly led to the deterioration of his relationship with Jagger.
Of course this is inevitably one of the big points of interest in a book like this; what does he say about his relationship with his bandmates. Oddly, he doesn’t really talk about his relationship with Bill Wyman or Charlie Watts much; Wyman in particular doesn’t get mentioned very often. He says “the closest emotional thing” he ever had with Wyman was when he was arrested for heroin possession in Toronto, and Wyman helped him out by managing to score some heroin to tide him over until he got out. Watts gets a little more attention, including their musical rapport, but not much. Richards credits Ian Stewart with being the real founder of the band and talks about his distress when Stewart died of a heart attack, though otherwise he’s fairly peripheral to the story as well. He does dwell a bit more on Brian Jones, though a lot of what he has to stay about Jones is negative. He does speak positively about his ability to pick up instruments and says that they did sometimes have fun together, as Jones could be funny and they shared a love for R&B, but he says he was erratic, couldn’t handle drugs or fame, and was cruel to friends and girlfriends. He says that Jones and Pallenberg (who were a couple before the latter got involved in Richards) often got in violent fights, though as often as not Jones would come out the worst. In later years, in contrast, Richards had a fairly close relationship with Ronnie Wood, who he sometimes actually hung out with in contrast to other members of the band, though he also says he slugged him once when Wood’s drug use was causing problems during a tour.
But of course his most important relationship was with Mick Jagger. He talks about how closely in sympathy they were in the early years, particularly with regard to their musical tastes, and how they started writing songs together. They started to drift apart somewhat in the early 1970s, with goings-on like sleeping with each other’s girlfriends or Jagger getting jealous about Richards’ friendship with Gram Parsons. He admits that in this period Jagger generally came through for him when the chips were down, but it’s clear that they weren’t hanging out together as much as before. Then when Richards’ heroin problem was at its worst, Jagger had to basically take over running the band’s affairs. Richards notes that he had no reason to object, as he was too wrapped up in his addiction to care about business matters, though he was still reasonably dedicated to making music. But he explains the real crunch came when he finally kicked the habit and basically let Jagger know he was ready to take on his share of the leadership duties. He says he expected Jagger to be relieved to give up part of the burden, but to his surprise he found Jagger was now used to being in control and wanted to things to remain that way. From then on, things went downhill. By Richards’ account, it wasn’t only him that got fed up with Jagger’s seeming arrogance (which he attributes in part to what he calls LVS – lead vocalist syndrome). He says the normally staid Charlie Watts punched Jagger out when Jagger called him up and referred to him as “my drummer”. Jagger’s secret signing of a solo deal a lot of anger, though the biggest rupture came in when he went on tour without the band. Eventually Richards and Jagger patched things up to the point where they could continue to write together, but from Richards’ account, they still didn’t talk much, and they still had conflicting ideas about the music – he says Jagger too often wanted to follow the latest fad, whereas Richards just wanted them to do what they did best. Richards says now their relationship is in more like that of brothers or even a marriage than that of friends; even their dressing rooms on tour are kept far apart, and their producer Don Was was surprised to note how little they talked. Richards at one point talks about his regret for the fact that they don’t really hang out together anymore. Interestingly, Richards says that in these later years, they got on best when it was just the two of them sitting down to write songs for an album.
While Richards doesn’t go over the creation of every song, he does comment on the origins of some of them, as well as making some general observations about how he and Jagger usually wrote together. He ironically observes that a lot of their very first songs, all of which they gave to other artists as they didn’t consider them suitable for the Stones, were not very successful, and often did worse than those artists’ previous singles: “Our songwriting had this other function of hobbling the opposition while we got paid for it” (though he notes that Marianne Faithfull’s very successful recording of “As Tears Go By” was an exception). He says that “Satisfaction” was a typical example of how he and Jagger collaborated in the early days, as he came up with the basic idea, including the chorus line, and Jagger would fill things in. He says that with “Paint It Black”, he wrote the melody and he wrote the lyrics (this contradicts a claim by Bill Wyman that the song was a group composition). He says that generally he came up with the musical riffs, though he mentions some exceptions, such as “Brown Sugar”. He names the riff for “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” as his favorite riff of all (his claim of authorship here contradicts an assertion by Wyman that he originally came up with the riff). He implies that “Ruby Tuesday” is basically his work (another Stones book claims it started as a collaboration with Jones, but Richards says Jones couldn’t write and that there was no “spark” on the occasions when they tried to do something together). He takes credit for “Gimme Shelter”, but says “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is basically Jagger’s. He credits Jagger with “Tumbling Dice” and “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll”, but says “Happy” and “Angie” were his own work. He implies that “Miss You” was mainly Jagger’s, while engineer/producer Chris Kimsey is quoted as saying “Start Me Up” was “Keith’s song”. Of course many more songs are mentioned, including some Richards did solo.
Richards also has some interesting remarks about other musicians, whether his predecessors and influences or his contemporaries. He says that Linda Keith gave Jimi Hendrix a copy of a demo Richards’ had of Tim Rose singing “Hey Joe”, so that indirectly Hendrix got the song through him. The Beatles, not surprisingly, come up often, and Richards is generally complimentary about them, though he does say that the Beatles couldn’t play the blues like the Stones could and that he would tell John Lennon that the Beatles lacked swing and that they could only rock but couldn’t roll. But he talks about how Lennon and McCartney gave the Stones their first big hit (“I Wanna Be Your Man”) and how afterwards the two bands would coordinate releases so they wouldn’t conflict with each other. He credits the Beatles and the Stones with making the album the main vehicle for recording in place of the single, and he credits the Beatles and Bob Dylan with changing songwriting. He notes that he hung out quite a bit with Lennon, who he says was like Gram Parsons a “pure musician”. Near the end of the book, he talks about meeting Paul McCartney on a Caribbean beach in 2005. He says he hadn’t really hung out with McCartney in the past, but that they had some great talks on this occasion and even worked on a song together. He also talks about his experience with Chuck Berry. He worked with Berry on the 1987 bio pic Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, and he says that Berry was really difficult as a person, though he put up with because of all he owed to him musically. He also says he got Berry back together with pianist Johnnie Johnson for the film. Most notably, he says he asked Johnson about how songs like “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Little Queenie” were written. Johnson said Berry would come in with all the words and then Johnson and the band would play a blues format with Johnson laying out the sequence. Richards’ reaction was hey, that means you co-wrote the songs. He goes on to note that he and the drummer went back and looked at Berry’s songs and realized that they were all in piano keys. So really most of Berry’s famous songs were probably Berry/Johnson compositions (however, according to Wikipedia, Johnson says that he didn’t have anything to do with arranging or recording “Johnny B. Goode”, which he said Berry told him was a tribute to Johnson), though the use of a “blues format” also might explain why musically a lot of Berry’s songs are similar to each other. Richards says the first time he met Jerry Lee Lewis he almost got in a fight with him, though they later became friends (if he’s aware of the rather strong possibility that Lewis killed at least one of his wives, he doesn’t mention it). Many other musicians and singers who Richards has crossed paths with in his long career also make appearances in the book.
The last major episode in the book, other than the death of Richards’ mother in 2007, occurred in 2006, when Richards fell off a tree branch he’d been sitting on on an island in Fiji and banged his head, then a couple of days later after a jolt on a boat he started to get blinding headaches. It turned out he’d cracked his skull, and he had to be flown to New Zealand and have an operation to open up his skull and drain the blood clots out of his head, with six titanium pins holding the skull cap in place. It was perhaps the closest Richards has come to dying in life full of close calls, from actually getting caught by some of the screaming teenage fans from the 1960s (he was trying to get in the car when the door handle broke off and the driver panicked and drove off, leaving Richards behind), a car accident, various hairy encounters when he was trying to score heroin, two occasions where he punctured a lung, and more. On this occasion, he says, he got “an interesting preview of my obituaries”, with notes and letters and tributes from people like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jay Leno, Robin Williams and people in the music industry. He also reveals that he feels the same way about Jet Skis as I do; in mentioning that later accounts falsely claimed a Jet Ski was involved he notes that they are something he “really dislike[s] intensely because they’re noisy and stupid and disruptive to the reefs.” Anyway, through it all, he manages to keep going, a pretty impressive feat for a guy who beginning in 1973 spent ten years on the top of a New Musical Express list of rock stars most likely to die.
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