Archive for month: May, 2009

1967 brought us psychedelia and an era of self-importance based on discovering and distributing inner truth to society, aided by drugs, pop literature and the trance-creating music of groups like Procol Harum. For self-importance, why not a majestic name from Latin meaning, significantly, “beyond these things.” And a Zen-like title that sounds profound but has no meaning, does it? The lyrics vaguely recall T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland: “the room was humming harder, as the waiter brought his tray.” And most classical of all are the “sixteen vestal virgins, heading for the coast.” Huh? Man, you don’t have to understand it, you just feel it. And feel it we did, in our bones, in our minds, in our soul, as the organ resonated with a church-like dirge and Gary Brooker’s plaintive vocal never rose above a mourn. It was oh, so serious, and we were oh, so important. I was on a “beach” in Dubrovnik in the summer of ’67 when I heard this hymn booming from the transistors of European teens and just knew we were all part of a new world. Weren’t we?

Sidebar: Classical Rock

As opposed to “classic rock,” which just means old stuff, usually from the ‘70s and ‘80s, I’m calling this “classical rock” to denote the half-decade or so when rock artists took their cue from classical music. The Moody Blues recorded Days of Future Passed (another Zen title) with the London Festival Orchestra. Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick had distinct movements, but the whole record (both sides) was just one song, like a classical piece. The greatest album of this epoch, without argument, was Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, a lushly orchestrated whole that demanded the same concentration, and same attention span,  as a Brahms symphony. And Procol Harum, of course, wasn’t even subtle in its allusion: the melody of A Whiter Shade of Pale was lifted directly from a Bach cantata. For those of us who never got into classical music but were surrounded by society’s assumption that that was a higher (much higher) art form, rock’s classical era allowed us to feel that gap was closing. But all great art is a reaction against what’s then in vogue, and the swelling self-importance of this music soon gave way to the Ramones.

If music is about romance, this is about the most romantic song I know. Also, the slowest slow-dance number since the Flamingos’ I Only Have Eyes for You (the “shrub-de-bup” song) or, going further, Golden Teardrops, which doesn’t move at all. It would be a crime, not to mention awfully uncomfortable, to dance to Wonderful Tonight with anyone but your lover, just as it would be a crime not to dance when the disc jockey plays it. It’s also one of the most mature love songs, befitting Eric Clapton’s and this listener’s ages: it’s not about chasing, or getting, the girl; it’s about a married, or at least committed, couple, getting dressed up, going to a party, getting tired, coming home and, through it all, appreciating the love they share. It’s slow, but not lethargic; sweet, but not saccharine; intelligent, but not pretentious. For years I overlooked the background female voice that subtly adds depth and range. More obvious is the guitar for which Clapton is famous, a wailing voice that increases the tug on the heartstrings. Near the end, the music stops entirely, and we hear what may be the most romantic line in all of rock: “You just don’t realize…how much I love you.” If you’re dancing with your lover, you don’t want this song to end.

The climax of Simon & Garfunkel’s career (see Sidebar, below), The Boxer has, in spades, everything that made one of the rock era’s two greatest duos so great: harmonies that melt your heart, folk-rock purity, insinuating rhythm, literate lyrics and an intriguing story you think you understand, but don’t, really. Humility the listener can identify with is present at the outset – “I am just a poor boy” – and is reinforced throughout, most famously in, “Asking only workman’s wages/ I come looking for a job/ But I get no offers…” The music is so sweet you don’t notice all the words until years later, but when you do there are more classic lines than one has a right to expect in a single song: “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”; and (added later) “After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same.” Who else could parse the following words into a song: “I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there.” After each heart-rending verse there is a chorus that goes something like “li-la-li, li-la-li-la-li-la-li-la, li-la-li, la-la-li-la-la-la-li-lala-lala-li.” A wonderful sing-along nonsense sound, as in Brown-Eyed Girl, except I’m convinced that the “la”s and “li”s subtly change with each repetition, in a way that conveys even deeper hidden nuances to the emotions being expressed. This is certainly the case following the verse about the “whores on Seventh Avenue,” when the refrain turns into “ooh-la-la-la-la-la.” After five verses about the tough time the singer has run into in a cold New York, Simon & Garfunkel skip the “la-la-li” and launch into a sixth, seemingly unrelated verse about…”a boxer, a fighter by his trade.” Where did he come from? What has he to do with our hero? Well, no matter how many times this boxer has been laid low and scarred and says he is quitting, “the fighter still remains.” So, after all, this is a song of defiance, a song of the spirit, a song of The Sixties. Li-la-li!

Sidebar: The “Sixties”

The Sixties, of course, wasn’t a decade, but a spirit embodying freedom, hope, idealism, egalitarianism, anti-materialism and ultimately, failingly, revolution. There were different manifestations: on the West Coast, think hippies and psychedelic, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. On the East Coast, think coffee shops, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. And Simon & Garfunkel, city boys, Jewish, university literate, sensitive. They announced their arrival with Sounds of Silence (and the Greenwich Village album cover). Their harmonies were achingly beautiful, with Garfunkel soaring and Simon providing a solid floor below. The lyrics echoed T.S. Eliot: “people talking without speaking/ people hearing without listening/ people writing songs that voices never shared. No one dared/ disturb the sounds of silence.” What did it mean? I don’t know. Did that matter? Of course not. Wasn’t the world meaningless, after all? The drum comes in and the song goes from a capella to crescendo, back to quiet. In the midst of the civil rights movement, this was a white man’s spiritual.

            All their songs struck some chord, none more for me, a self-professed (self-obsessed?) loner, than I Am A Rock, as I looked out my window on a “freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.” We could be happy, too, at times, despite the angst, and 57^th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) captured that emotion perfectly. The movie of the Sixties, for all college-age men, was The Graduate, and who better to provide the soundtrack for Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross than S&G: “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” After The Boxer, the Sixties lost steam, lost its sense of unity, and split off into dozens of different, often destructive, directions. Simon & Garfunkel began to split, as well. Bridge Over Troubled Water was their biggest hit, but the singing was all Garfunkel – just as the Beatles’ song that followed at #1, Let It Be, was all McCartney. Later hits – Cecilia, El Condor Pasa – were pure Simon (just as Lennon began doing his own thing). The exquisite harmony of Simon & Garfunkel and the beautiful dream of The Sixties were slip, slidin’ away.

Like the sea rolling over the sand, With or Without You seeps from every pore of the speakers and takes hold of every nerve of my body. It becomes an environment all to itself. The 4/4 tomtom beat of the bass grabs me and holds on, then halfway through, the drum starts pounding the backbeat. Bono finishes his lyrics (about which, more later) and the rhythm instruments, still insistent, quiet down while a soft high wail pierces the upper register. Then – and this is the killer moment – Edge’s guitar comes in with a syncopated beat, on top of the tomtom and backbeat, full rolling orchestration resumes, and I feel, this is what I’ve waited for. What Bono is waiting for is totally unclear, with more of those cryptic British lyrics: “Sleight of hand and twist of fate/ On a bed of nails she makes me wait/ And I wait without you.” If the song is addressed to “you,” who is “she”? The words don’t matter, but Bono’s voice does. It starts in a matter-of-fact tone and becomes increasingly urgent as the song proceeds, imbuing it, like all U2 songs, with an aura of serious import. There’s an anthemic quality, also indigenous to U2: “and you give yourself away” is repeated over and over, and the mantra “with or without you” is intoned 12 times. The wall of sound would make Phil Spector proud.

Sidebar: Heartbreak Songs

If I get any sense from the words, With or Without You describes the familiar male condition of being in love with someone who is not adequately reciprocating. I’m not happy when I’m with you, but I can’t live without you. Oh, despair! And while there are a couple of songs about being happy – I’m Into Something Good and 57^th Street Bridge Song come to mind – the deep stuff, the songs that bite into your soul and won’t let go, tend to be about lost love and unhappy moments. If someone never loved and lost, how much of the rock repertoire would be so less meaningful, if not a mystery! My own heartbreaks? – I’ve had a few, and I was helped through them by the likes of the Fleetwoods singing Mr. Blue, Little Anthony’s Tears on My Pillow, the Skyliners’ Since I Don’t Have You, the Beau Brummels’ Just A Little and my all-time consolation, Love Hurts by the Everly Brothers.

Polished commercial perfection and deeply expressed emotion don’t often come together, but when they do, as they do here, it is a gem. The Motown rhythm section chugs along with Southern-school marching band precision and the Supremes are given a readymade dance move, with gloved hand extended at every “Stop!” But then, before each verse, the background chords go minor and Diana Ross, at her very best, tells her sad tale, and you can hear her heart breaking: “Is her sweet expression/ Worth more than my loving affection?” The approximate rhymes, a la Smoky Robinson, – “patient” with “infatuation” – add somehow to the sincerity of Diana’s plea. And there is one more important balance: the sad plight of the jilted lover leads not to tears, but to the forceful demand, “Stop! in the name of love.”

Sidebar: Girl Groups

Notably absent on the list to this point is any female representation. This in no way reflects my current taste, which runs heavily to Dar Williams, Nancy  Griffith, Mary-Chapin Carpenter; and Joni Mitchell’s Blue and Patti Smith’s Horses are among my alltime favorite albums. Rather, it reflects the far smaller role women have always played in rock: even when there are great female lead vocalists, like Chrissie Hynde or Debbie Harry, say, the rest of the group is male. Worse, in early rock, girl songs were often fawning: I Want to Be Bobby’s Girl; Johnny Get Angry; Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb. Still, at any one time there was usually at least one signature girl group that could stand with the best, the Chantels, the Shirelles and the Ronnettes chief among them. For general recognition, though, the Supremes were just that. At the peak of Motown glory, they matched the Temptations hit-for-hit. But rock was very much a man’s world, and it is fitting and symbolic that they appear on this list 17 places down.