THE ROLLING STONES’ HACKNEY DIAMONDS
By: Parke Puterbaugh
The new Rolling Stones album is better than it has any right to be. Entitled Hackney Diamonds, it’s the Stones’ first album of new material since A Bigger Bang, which came out in 2005. A Bigger Bang is 18 years old; it’s practically an adult and is old enough to drink in some states. Entire careers come and go in 18 years. Why did the Stones suddenly decide to make a new record now?
Making the feat even more remarkable is their age. Mick Jagger turned 80 in July, and Keith Richards will turn 80 in December. Rock and roll is a young man’s game, right? Octogenarians don’t make rock albums, do they? Ron Wood, the youngster of the Stones’ surviving core trio, is no spring chicken at 76. And yet these three senior citizens, plus drummer Steve Jordan and a raft of special guests, got the job done with hungry, go-for-broke energy.
I don’t just like Hackney Diamonds, I’m actually proud of the Rolling Stones for making it. Who could’ve foreseen that the bad boys of rock, one of them (Keith Richards) a seemingly ticking time bomb of bad habits, would show the world that one can rock well past the age of retirement? Critics have been falling all over themselves proclaiming Hackney Diamonds the Stones’ best album since Tattoo You (which came out in 1981) or Some Girls (which came out in 1978). Personally, I think that undervalues some of the fine later albums in the Stones’ arsenal, such as Steel Wheels (1989) and Bridges to Babylon (1997). Hey, I even thought that A Bigger Bang was a pretty solid piece of work.
To their credit, the Stones have not chucked out albums with a frequency and quantity that would embarrass them, like such lately overproductive old-timers as Neil Young and Van Morrison. Hackney Diamonds is a worthy addition to the Rolling Stones’ catalog and a reminder that rock music still has a place in the 2020s.
The smartest thing the Stones did was to hire a hot young producer named Andrew Watt. Though he’s only 32, he already has an extensive track record, having worked with hip hoppers (Post Malone, Future), pop stars (Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus), hard rockers (Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop) and rock legends (Elton John, Paul McCartney). McCartney recommended Watt to the Stones as “a spright young fellow.” From the sound of Hackney Diamonds, he created a good vibe in the studio, allowing the principals – Jagger, Richards, Wood and Jordan – to work together as a real band, often playing live on the floor instead of aridly overdubbing parts one at a time.
The album opens with “Angry,” a song that has steadily grown on me. Jagger fairly spits out his vocal, and Richards and Woods weave their guitars into what sounds like a single bolt of fabric. The Stones come on like a punk-rock band on “Bite My Head Off,” which features some nasty fuzz bass from Paul McCartney. How could a rock and roll summit meeting be more momentous than a Beatle joining the Stones on a relentless rocker? Jagger noticeably sings in an unadulterated British accent, just as the first wave of British punks did back in 1977.
With unusually inclusive lyrics of counsel from Jagger, “Whole Wide World” delivers a message of perseverance to those who feel beaten down by life’s slings and arrows. Richards’ biting riff adds its own aura of feisty resistance to the song. Built around a track that was begun back in 2019, when drummer Charlie Watt was still alive, “Live By the Sword” brings together the Stones’ longest-lived lineup of Jagger, Richards, Wood, Watt and Bill Wyman, the group’s former bassist, who was called in last year to play on it. This one will bring a tear to the eye of longtime Stones’ loyalists, not because the song is sappy but because it shows what a powerhouse that lineup was. Think back to Some Girls for a musical reference point.
The Stones are not averse to slowing things down and baring their emotions, which they do on “Get Close.” Its yearning tone exhibits an unexpected vulnerability, with guitars and vocal in perfect emotional sync. “Driving Me Too Hard” and “Dreamy Skies” both indulge the group’s love of country music, which is a place they’ve visited from time to time throughout their career.
The highlight of the album is “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” which evokes the gospel-like tenor of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and features solid contributions from Stevie Wonder (on keyboards) and Lady Gaga (on vocals). The lyrics are powerful and prayerful, with Jagger singing, “Let no woman or child go hungry tonight/Please protect us from the pain and the hurt.” While Hackney Diamonds demonstrates the Stones are still capable of rocking out, songs like this one also prove they’ve matured by recognizing the suffering and needs of the world beyond them.
Hackney Diamonds closes with Keith and Mick alone delivering an acoustic version of Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ Stone” (retitled “Rolling Stone Blues”). Though this was the song from which the group took its name back in 1962, they never actually performed it before – until now. It ends the album on a perfect grace note.
If Hackney Diamonds is the Rolling Stones’ last album, then they will have gone out in style. However, they recorded upward of 30 songs during the sessions, and much material remains in the can. I hope they get out another album quickly and that the Stones keep on rolling, showing Father Time a thing or two about how to rock.
JIMMY BUFFETT REMEMBERED
By: Parke Puterbaugh
I became a Jimmy Buffett fan about the time my family began taking vacations to Florida every Easter to visit a grandmother who lived in Fort Lauderdale. We’re talking early 1970s, half a century ago. It was a simpler time and place. The ocean breezes, inviting beaches, golden sunshine, mesmerizing sunsets and easygoing pace of life were intoxicating to my teenage self.
It grabbed Jimmy Buffett, too. After a 1971 visit to Key West, where he busked on the street, he moved there from Nashville the next year. Buffett became the guitar-strumming bard of Key West’s liberated, laid-back, land’s-end lifestyle. The first three albums he made after moving to Florida – A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, Living and Dying in 3/4 Time and (my favorite) A1A – were captivating exercises in closely observed songcraft by a musician who’d found his home turf and subject. Just as New York belonged to Lou Reed and California to the Eagles, Buffett understood the environment, geography and people of Key West. You could extend that range to include the entire state of Florida and the islands of the Caribbean as well.
Like those old salts who are somehow able to build ships in bottles, Buffett bottled the laid-back world of happy-hour margaritas, paradisical cheeseburgers and semitropical splendor in song. He ultimately built an empire around the carefree lifestyle idealized in “Margaritaville,” the song that made him a legend. Buffett died a billionaire. Somewhat improbably, given his unhurried, fun-loving persona, he came to acquire an entrepreneurial streak that led to the creation of his Margaritaville record label, the Margaritaville restaurant chain, and several “Latitude Margaritaville” retirement villages (their slogan: “Your New Home in Paradise”).
As Buffett wrote in the Parrothead Handbook that came with his Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads box set: “My fantasy has always been to find that perfect laid-back town by the ocean, the kind of place where the locals are all legendary characters who spend their days mixing up margaritas, where the air is always warm, and the sea is crystal clear – a real Margaritaville of the mind.”
Apparently, a lot of people shared that fantasy, as Jimmy Buffett’s concerts became legendary for its sellout crowds of card-carrying “Parrotheads” – devoted fans who’d wear colorful and outlandish attire to shows. For a few hours each night, Jimmy Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band provided an escapist release for those wanting to forget about jobs and responsibilities and party with a tribe of like-minded kooks. Buffett was in the top ten for tour revenue in the 2000s, and he did so without overinflating ticket prices like other fan-gouging superstars. His performance at the Greensboro Coliseum on April 20, 2002, drew the seventh largest crowd in the venue’s history.
I’ll concede Buffett’s work is not for everyone. Those who prefer harder, edgier stuff have little use for his nautical-themed songs, droll character studies and mellow equatorial reveries. But I have never encountered anyone with a bad thing to say about him as a person.
Mac McAnally, a songwriter, songwriter, guitarist and producer who worked alongside Buffett for 40 years, called him “a one-man fountain of positive energy” shortly after his death. He added: “To the folks who only knew him from the stage or through the speakers, I can tell you that he was the same fellow in person that you saw and heard. Trying to help everyone he crossed paths with have the best day possible. He saw life as a gift to enjoy, and his calling was to spread that joy. I’ve never seen anybody do it better.”
I interviewed Buffett in 1998, soon after the release of Don’t Stop the Carnival, an album based on Herman Wouk’s 1965 novel. I reached him on the set of the Tonight Show, where he awaited its taping. I found him an utterly engaging guy, easy to talk to and completely unaffected. His good vibes traveled easily down the phone line, and our chat remains among my favorites as a music journalist. Some people you like right away, and he was one of them. He struck me as the kind of guy you’d want to sit down with and have a margarita.
In my opinion, Buffett is actually underrated as a songwriter. The core songs in his repertoire, the ones Parrotheads expected to hear and boozily warble along to at every concert, tended to speak to one’s inner party animal. They include “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” “Fins,” “Boat Drinks,” “Volcano,” “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” (his chart-topping duet with Alan Jackson) and “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” (with the unforgettable lines “Let’s get drunk and screw/I just bought a water bed, it’s filled up for me and you”). A number of reflective ballads dotted his setlists as well. Among them were “Come Monday,” “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” “One Particular Harbour,” “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” “Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude” (“If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane”) and his nostalgic remake of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.”
Most of those songs appeared on Songs You Know by Heart, a compilation of hits and favorites from the 1970s that is by far Buffett’s best-selling album. It has sold over eight million copies in the U.S., and soon after his death it re-entered the Billboard album chart, where it rose to #4. Incredible!
But there’s a massive number of worthy songs from Buffett’s five decades of recording that remain overlooked and underplayed. Recognizing that, he started working deserving obscurities into his concerts’ intimate second encore. Some of them were collected on Encores (released in 2010) and some were re-recorded for Songs You Don’t Know by Heart (issued in 2020).
My point is that beyond the ubiquitous favorites lies a buried treasure of less-heard songs and albums. Buffett learned his trade in Nashville, becoming a sturdy song craftsman with an unerring ability to conjoin words and music. His tunes could be rowdy or ruminative, always with sharp turns of phrase and musical settings that evoked the settings and people – bars, boats and beaches, roustabouts, romantics and renegades – he wrote about.
There’s a lot of Jimmy Buffett music to sink your teeth into if you want to look beyond Songs You Know by Heart. I’d recommend starting with the three early albums mentioned previously. From there you can’t go wrong with anything through 1979’s Volcano. While Buffet’s work was less consistent in the 1980s, he still connected on such gems as One Particular Harbour and Floridays. He went on an inspired roll in the mid-1990s (Fruitcakes, Barometer Soup, Banana Wind) and again in the early 2000s (Far Side of the World, License to Chill). I’m eager to hear his final album, Equal Strain on All Parts, which will be released in November. Not counting a pair of Christmas albums, it will be Buffett’s thirtieth studio album of original songs. Now that is a legacy.
A final thought: Jimmy Buffett was born on a holiday (Christmas Day, 1946) and died on a holiday (Labor Day, 2023). Could the coming and going of a musician who devoted himself so fully to celebrating life have been timed any better than that?
ROBBIE ROBERTSON
By Parke Puterbaugh
At the rate noteworthy musicians are dying these days, this column could easily become a monthly collection of obituary notices. I don’t want to go there, but the passing of Robbie Robertson on August 9th set so many thoughts in motion that I felt duty-bound to write about him this month. Roberston died at age 80 at home in Los Angeles after battling prostate cancer for a year. Even though he wasn’t a star or celebrity per se, his passing merited numerous detailed notices in newspapers, magazines and all over the ‘net. All this attention stemmed from the collective realization that Robertson was one of the greatest songwriters of the rock era, and we really don’t have that many of those left. As the guitarist and chief songwriter in The Band, he was principally responsible for the six albums of original material released by The Band between 1968 and 1977. Thereafter he intermittently released half a dozen solo albums between 1987 and 2019. Robertson also scored fourteen films for director Martin Scorsese, a close friend and onetime roommate. But it’s his work with The Band that earned him his greatest recognition and acclaim. More specifically, it’s that group’s first two albums – Music from Big Pink and the self-titled The Band – that linger as milestones in the musical pantheon. Any music fan who is culturally literate is or should be familiar with them. They are essential, even required listening from my perspective. How to describe them? In the midst of the psychedelic maelstrom of the late Sixties, five guys who looked like gentlemen farmers walked out of the proverbial woods and laid upon the world a pair of albums whose songs could’ve been written in the late 1800s or the early decades of the 1900s. They sound timeless, harking back to what writer Greil Marcus has called the “old, weird America.” A friend of mine noted that these songs evoked the oeuvre of Mark Twain. You heard no feedback, wah-wah pedals, cranked-up guitars or LSD-inspired lyrics on Music from Big Pink and The Band. Instead The Band – comprising four Canadians (including guitarist Robertson) and one Southerner (drummer and vocalist extraordinaire Levon Helm) – hazily delineated the American experience, its history and landscape, in allegorical songs that drew from more rustic music styles. These included folk, blues, country, gospel and old-time music from the proverbial back roads of the South. And yes, you could detect more “modern” influences, like 1940s rhythm & blues and 1950s rockabilly. How this group, and Robertson in particular, was able to write so perceptively about America and especially the South on these albums remains as mysterious as a spectral mist hanging over a Louisiana swamp. The perception is that Robertson was the principal architect behind The Band’s songs and evocative, colloquial style, and certainly from the self-titled second album on this held true. However, it should be pointed out that Robertson wrote only four of the eleven songs on Music from Big Pink. It often gets overlooked but The Band’s debut album was a true group effort, with pianist Richard Manuel contributing three songs, while he and bassist Rick Danko each collaborated with Bob Dylan on two others. (The Band had been recruited by Dylan as his backup group in 1965, when they were still known as the Hawks.) But by their second album, Robertson was firmly in the driver’s seat as The Band’s chief songwriter and visionary, writing or cowriting all twelve songs. It’s hard not to hear songs like “The Weight” (from Music from Big Pink) or “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (from The Band) and not marvel at Robertson’s genius for welding words and music in a way that brought ghosts of the past – the “old, weird America” – to life. Because he was not much of a singer himself, Robertson got very good at writing for the three exquisite voices in the group – Helm, Manuel and Danko – both as individuals and a harmonizing collective. Robertson once cited the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa as a principal influence on his songwriting, and one can indeed detect a cinematic eye in his work with The Band. It also explains his subsequent career scoring films. The other albums by The Band didn’t quite rise to the lofty heights of those first two, though Stage Fright (1970) and Northern Lights – Southern Cross were both very good and occasionally brilliant. By the early Seventies, The Band was undergoing internal problems, including heavy drinking and heroin
addiction by three of its members (Robertson not among them), triggering a dissolution of the personal chemistry that made those first few albums so extraordinary. It all ended for the original lineup on Thanksgiving Day 1976, when The Band performed a gala final concert with many notable special guests at San Francisco’s Winterland. This historic evening that was preserved on film as The Last Waltz. It is one of the greatest concert films and a classy way for The Band to bow out. For those who might be interested in my overall assessment of The Band’s albums, here’s how I’d rate them on a scale of one to five stars:
Music from Big Pink *****
The Band *****
Stage Fright ****
Cahoots ***
Rock of Ages (live album) *****
Moondog Matinee (album of early rhythm & blues and rock & roll covers) ***1/2
Northern Lights – Southern Cross ****
Islands **
The Last Waltz (live album) *****
HYPERCREATIVITY IN POPULAR MUSIC
By Parke Puterbaugh
Okay class, today’s subject is hypercreativity – more specifically, musicians who create in an exceptionally compulsive and prolific way. Their brains are churning all the time. It’s almost like a hose that can’t be turned off. They have to compose, they have to record, they have to work. They not only produce a formidable discography of releases but also fill their vaults with massive amounts of unissued material. If their reputation is such that fans want to hear everything by them, those vaults will eventually be opened and plundered.
We see that happening a lot now, since rock music is largely on the back burner and older fans are loading up on archival works by favorite acts from rock’s golden decades. The record industry has obliged with a blizzard of boxed sets, concert recordings, deluxe editions, and so on. There are even superdeluxe editions of some titles for the true fanatic. Personally, I have put my life savings in jeopardy trying to keep up with the archival output of the Beach Boys and Neil Young.
I first heard the term hypercreativity used in conjunction with Prince. Several former employees who assisted him with recording as engineers and tape operators were discussing his work habits. They recalled working between eight or twelve hours straight at his Paisley Park studio on an average day. An exhausted Prince would at last be ready to knock off when he’d suddenly call for “fresh tape.” He had an idea for a song and wanted to get it down right then and there. His last batch of bandmates – 3rdeyegirl, a female trio – reminisced after his death about how there were no clocks or windows in the work spaces at Paisley Park. You didn’t know if it was day or night, and that was the point. For Prince, life was one long unending day of work.
Here are some of rock’s most hypercreative musicians with brief commentaries on their recorded catalogs:
- Prince – I’ve already talked about his hypercreative nature but not his actual work. According to Esquire magazine, “Legend has it that as many as 8,000 songs are stored in his vault.” I’ve also read there are “hundreds of albums worth of material” stored at Paisley Park. In terms of what’s been made available, beyond the 39 albums released in his lifetime, let’s take a look at the super-deluxe edition of Sign O’ the Times. One of his greatest works, it was originally released in 1987 as a double album – and that was after being whittled down, at his record company’s insistence, from the triple album Prince wanted to release. The super-deluxe edition of Sign O’ the Times, released in 2020, comprises eight CDs (or thirteen LPs), plus a concert DVD. In addition to the original album, this loaded baked potato includes 63 unreleased tracks. Sixty-three unreleased songs! That’s five or six albums’ worth. Listening to this box in its entirety might properly be described as a retirement project. How the hell did Prince do it? Did he ever sleep?
- Neil Young – Way back in the 1970s, Neil Young was spitting out albums on an annual timetable. That was how it was done back then: record contracts often demanded an album a year, and musical acts were touring constantly on top of it. (No wonder there was so much cocaine abuse and burnout.) But Neil Young, being hypercreative and impulsive, was routinely shelving completed albums and issuing something new in their place. Some of the albums he didn’t release have become as legendary as those he did, including Hitchhiker, Homegrown and Chrome Dreams. Young has lately upped his output, at least in part (from my perspective) to monetize himself after losing significant amounts of money and property to divorce, business failures (Pono and Linc), and declining revenues from physical music sales in a streaming world. To be fair, Young would no doubt counter he’s been inspired to produce so much new work at this late date – he’s 77 years old – because the clock’s ticking and he still has much to say. Just in the past decade, from 2012’s Americana to 2022’s World Record, there have been 11 studio albums. Almost no one still puts out new albums at a yearly rate. On top of that, Young has dug deep into his massive archive to issue unreleased albums, include all three previously mentioned, plus scads of live albums and box sets. He has no quit in him.
- Van Morrison – This soulful singer-songwriter has, like Neil Young, been a reliable source of worthwhile new work throughout his career. As with Young, he was steadily prolific in the 1970s, producing classic works like Moondance and Tupelo Honey. Unlike Young, he didn’t falter and lose focus in the 1980s. Ditto the 1990s. Morrison might’ve lost a little steam in the early 2000s, but I’d go so far to say that his catalog is the only one that is comparable, in terms of sustained output and quality, to that of Bob Dylan. Lately, like Young, Morrison has been on a blue streak as a recording artist, releasing ten new albums between 2012 and 2022. (What was it about 2012 that ignited Young’s and Morrison’s creative engines?) Morrison’s 2021 album, Latest Record Project, Volume 1 – whose generic, tongue-in-cheek title seemingly makes the point he’s amassing a body of work more than a pile of discrete albums – comprised two CDs of new material. It’s all solid musically, if a little crochety in places lyrically. (Van has his issues.) While working on this, I discovered Morrison has just put out yet another album, Moving On Skiffle, which is also a double CD. This legend will turn 78 next month. His message: Age ain’t nothing but a number.
Paul McCartney – The way I see it, Sir Paul was the most driven Beatle, the relentlessly productive pop engine that helped steer the Fab Four to their unparalleled – and rather brief (1962-1970), when you think about it – reign as a recording artists. On his own after the Beatles, nothing held McCartney back from indulging his productive ways. In the half-century from 1970 to 2020, McCartney released 26 studio albums (both with and without his old group Wings). That figure in itself is impressive, but consider some of the things he’s done on top of it. McCartney has made five classical albums, including 1991’s Liverpool Oratorio, released on the EMI Classics label. (Who knew, right?) He’s scored a couple films. And he’s made three experimental, electronic albums with the musician Youth under the name The Fireman. From 2002 to 2022, I’ve seen McCartney perform upward of three hours in concert without so much as taking a drink of water. He turned 81 years old last month and shows no sign of letting up. That is hypercreativity.
TINA TURNER: REMEMBERING THE QUEEN OF ROCK
By Parke Puterbaugh
The music world lost another giant with the passing of Tina Turner. The legendary singer died on May 24th at her home in a Swiss village near Zurich, where she had been living with her husband for the past three decades. Turner had been in declining health for years and was unable to attend her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo singer in 2021, instead sending a video clip expressing her gratitude. It was her second induction, coming twenty years after she got in with her infamous ex- husband, Ike Turner, for their work as a seminal soul and R&B duo. Extensive media attention and heartfelt tributes from fellow musicians attest to the reverence felt for her as a singer of immense intensity and a powerful role model. Beyonce, who claims Tina as a principal influence, wrote, “My beloved queen, I love you endlessly…. I am so grateful for your inspiration.” Mick Jagger hailed her as “an enormously talented performer and singer…. She helped me so much when I was young, and I will never forget her.” (Incidentally, lest that statement leave the impression Tina was a matron to Mick, she was only four years older.) Even Joe Biden weighed in, citing Turner as a “once-in-a-generation talent that changed American music forever.” You know you’ve made a mark when the president notes your passing. There have been myriad references to Turner as the “Queen of Rock,” which at first glance might seem surprising. Not the Queen of Soul (that would be Aretha Franklin) or the Queen of Rhythm & Blues (that would be Ruth Brown), although she was a hugely significant figure in both areas. She’s fully deserving of the rock queen accolade. Tina’s earned her crown with a fearless ability to bring rock energy to material that black acts did not typically tackle. That would include songs by such British Invasion stalwarts as the Beatles (“Come Together”), the Rolling Stones (“Honky Tonk Women”) and The Who (“The Acid Queen”). Inarguably one of the greatest cover versions of the rock era was Ike and Tina Turner’s drastic reworking of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.” It starts slow and sultry, with Tina famously exclaiming, “We never ever do anything nice and easy.” Then it erupts into a frenzied double-time passage with Tina and the Ikettes – the Turners’ background singers, rather like Ray Charles’ Raelettes – singing for all they’re worth. Their live rendition of “Proud Mary” on The Ed Sullivan Show, with Tina and the girls salaciously shaking their short-skirted booties, remains among the most exciting performance footage broadcast on network TV back in the day. Tina was downright explicit in her performance of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” when Ike and Tina Turner served as the handpicked opening act on the Rolling Stones’ 1969 tour. Captured in the Gimme Shelter film documentary, Tina moans in a deep, sultry voice and caresses the microphone stand in ways I’d wager are now illegal in at least several red states. It totally rattled my seventeen-year-old brain when I saw Gimme Shelter in a theatre in 1970. With the platform afforded them by the Stones, Tina brought unabashed sexuality from the world of R&;B revues to rock audiences. An infusion of Fifties-style rock and roll into their rhythm & blues roots was all part of the plan, dating back to their first recordings in 1958. Ike’s instruction to Tina was to sing like a female Little Richard. Just listen to Tina’s voice on the 1960 single “A Fool in Love.” With the possible exception of Big Mama Thornton’s feral recording of “Hound Dog,” never had a female singer unleashed such a fiery series of growls, screams and hollers. “A Fool in Love” is a remarkable performance, and many others followed. The raw, high-energy recordings of Ike and Tina Turner from 1960-1975 are well worth checking out, especially an overlooked run of late-1960s albums on the Blue Thumb label. My favorite Ike and Tina Turner song title: “Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter.” Tina left her tormentor Ike in July 1976 with forty cents to her name. She slowly built up to one of the greatest second acts in music history, becoming a solo singer whose popularity eclipsed that of the duo. She did so by exhibiting artistic fearlessness, embracing the sound and style of synthesizer-dominated New Wave at a time when this was an uncertain path for an older black artist.
The turning point was her collaboration with British musician Martyn Ware of the group Heaven 17, whose British Electric Foundation (BEF, for short) side project reworked old soul hits in new synth arrangements. Ware enlisted Turner to sing on covers of the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion” and Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” The latter song became a worldwide hit, and it opened the doors for an array of notable producers, musicians and songwriters to work with Turner on her 1984 breakthrough album, Private Dancer. Driven by the success of the single “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” Private Dancer went on to sell 9 million copies, becoming one of the most popular albums of the 1980s and vaulting Turner into a superstar stratosphere alongside Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna. A further refinement and reinvention by Tina, particularly as a live artist, was her desire to become the premier rock and rolling female – an analogue to the likes of Mick Jagger, David Lee Roth, Brian Adams and all of the other strutting frontmen of the rocking decade. You know the rest of the story: More platinum albums followed, including Break Every Rule, Foreign Affair and the greatest hits album Simply the Best. Tina made a volcanic appearance in the film and soundtrack to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. (Remember “We Don’t Need Another Hero”?). Her last album of new music, Twenty-Four Seven, came out in 1999, and she gave her final concert on May 5, 2009 at the conclusion of her 50th anniversary tour. By that point she’d sold over 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling artists in music history. Just as familiar to the world as Turner’s music is her backstory as an abuse survivor who rose to become an empowering inspiration to women everywhere. She went from recording “I Idolize You” with Ike Turner in the 1960s to “Better Be Good to Me” in the 1980s, demanding fair and respectful treatment as a woman. She wrote of the physical, verbal and psychological abuse endured during her sixteen-year marriage to Ike in her autobiography (I, Tina), and her fractious story was brought to the silver screen in the big-budget film What’s Love Got to Do With It, starring Angela Bassett as Tina. Ultimately, Tina Turner triumphed over every obstacle to become a beloved pop-culture icon. I’ve lately been reflecting on her legacy and revisiting her music, giving fresh listens to a 1994 box set, Tina: The Collected Recordings, Sixties to Nineties. It is a solid career overview. But you can’t go wrong with anything that has Tina Turner’s voice on it. You might say that love’s got everything to do with it.
COMPACT DISCS AT THE CROSSROADS
By Parke Puterbaugh
Two important CD milestones occurred very recently:
- First, the compact disc turned 40. To be more specific, compact discs were introduced in the United States on March 18, 1983, when an early batch of discs manufactured in Japan – including Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, considered the first for alphabetical reasons – were imported for sale here.
- Second, it was announced earlier this year that in 2022, sales of vinyl records topped CDs for the first time since 1987. Vinyl sales rose to $644 million last year, while compact disc sales dropped slightly from the year before to $483 million.
For CDs the 2022 figure represents a massive fall from 1999, when compact disc sales accounted for $13 billion – a whopping 88% of recorded-music purchases in the U.S. Compare that with how everything flipped by 2022, when streaming accounted for $16 billion – 84% of domestic revenues from recorded music. Now CDs account for a minuscule 2.5% of music sales. Going from 88% to 2.5% of market share in 23 years marks a precipitous drop for the once-dominant CD. But does this mean compact discs are doomed? Not necessarily.
Look at the way vinyl albums bounced back after having been on life support for decades. It’s amazing that so many young, income-challenged music fans are willing to drop $20 and more for Chuckles-colored vinyl editions of new and reissued titles. I’d like to think that just as they’ve picked up on vinyl’s most appealing aspects, both visually and sonically, some of them will also come to discover the benefits of compact discs.
One obvious advantage is sound. Compact discs can reproduce a greater dynamic range – the difference between the loudest and softest passages – than vinyl, which is somewhat more limited (especially as the needle moves to the center of an LP). CDs also handle the highest and lowest frequencies better, which is why the deepest tones traditionally have been “rolled off” when vinyl albums are mastered. I’ve yet to find an album that can make my subwoofer shudder and growl like a CD can. And I haven’t even mentioned the enhanced sonics and surround-sound capabilities of DVD-A, SACD and Blu-Ray discs, which truly offer mind-blowing listening experiences.
Gen Z’ers, who were raised on almond-sized ear buds and brittle, brick wall-mastered lo-res streams, don’t particularly value or even recognize “good sound.” But as they get older, if they have any hearing left, they very well might come to appreciate it.
Compared to CDs, a certain amount of volume must be sacrificed on vinyl as well, lest the loudest passages and deepest notes cause a light-tracking needle to bounce like a truck hitting a rut. The most famous example is Led Zeppelin II, whose first U.S. pressing was mastered “hot” (read: loud) by the legendary Robert Ludwig. When the young daughter of Ahmet Ertegun – president of Atlantic Records, Led Zeppelin’s label – played Led Zep II on her stereo, it jumped and skipped, unable to track Ludwig’s hot master. Fearful that America’s burgeoning population of adolescent Zep-heads would experience the same problem on their sound systems, Ertegun ordered the album remastered at a lower volume. This has made a pricey collector’s item of the first pressing of Led Zep II, revered for its feral power. Check your copy: if the initials “RL” appear in the dead wax between the last song and label, you’ve got a piece of rock history in your hands.
Another advantage of CDs is the amount of music that can be stored on them, which enhances the convenience factor. Compact discs have a diameter of 4.75” while vinyl long-players are 12”, which obviously makes the former medium more, uh, “compact.” But despite their smaller size, CDs can hold considerably more music. The compact disc’s diameter was a function of the fact you could fit an entire symphony – Beethoven’s Ninth being the one chosen – on a 4.75” disc, given what digital-music technology was capable of at the point of design (a period from 1978-1982). The first generation of CDs could hold 74 minutes’ worth of music. As improvements and refinements were made, the length increased to 78 and then 80 minutes. Lately I’ve bought jazz reissues that manage to cram 83 minutes of music on them. Don’t ask me how. When I burn a mix CD, my up-to-date Nero software balks at anything even a second over 80 minutes.
To return to my point, two vinyl albums’ worth of music can be accommodated on a single compact disc. This means you don’t have to go through the protracted process of removing an LP from its jacket and sleeve, placing it on the turntable, positioning the needle over the first track, gently lowering the needle onto the record, carefully lifting the needle from the inner groove 15-20 minutes later, setting the tone arm back on its cradle, removing the album from the turntable, flipping it over, placing side two on the turntable and dropping the needle again. Rinse and repeat.
Hey, there are plenty of times I’m up for the fun and games of playing vinyl (yes, even 7” singles), and I definitely prefer perusing a long player’s larger and way more legible credits, notes and graphics. But I’m also grateful for the convenience of the continuous-play option afforded by compact discs. Moreover, I like the fact I can listen to CDs at home, in the car and in the college classroom where I teach the history of popular music using mix CDs I’ve burned on my computer.
There are major advantages and minor disadvantages to both forms of physical media, and it’s nice to have collections of each for different moods, purposes and environments. Therefore, I would ask the music industry not to make compact discs disappear in the 2020s like they made vinyl records disappear in the 1990s. They’re both exceptionally stable platforms that appeal to those of us for whom streaming doesn’t offer the same tactile, interactive and holistic experience.
Ultimately, I agree with Ken Pohlmann, an authority on digital sound who told USA Today, “The CD was one of the most beautifully engineered products to ever come out of the late 20th Century. It opened the door to our modern world of digital music.”
And I would humbly request that for those of us who recognize the CD’s abundant merits, please leave that door ajar.
A BRIEF TIMELINE OF RECORDED MUSIC (ESPECIALLY VINYL)
By Parke Puterbaugh
In my many years of writing and teaching about music, I’ve had reason to amass a lot of historical dates pertaining to music and technology. With April 22nd marking the sixteenth annual observance of Record Store Day – a high holy day for vinyl obsessives – I thought I’d assemble and annotate a timeline of recording technology and the most popular consumer formats over the past 150 years.
1877 – Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, which employs a tinfoil recording medium wrapped around a hand-cranked metal cylinder.
1885 – Prerecorded wax cylinders are marketed. They are primarily used in coin-operated machines – the first jukeboxes, you might say – at taverns and arcades.
1988 – Edison’s and Alexander Graham Bell’s sturdier wax cylinders are sold to individuals who own phonographs, creating the recorded-sound industry.
1889 – Emile Berliner introduces his flat, lateral-cut “gramophone” disc – the first real record – in Europe.
1894 – Berliner’s American Gramophone company begins selling one-sided 7-inch records that play at 70 rpm. This same year, the first issue of Billboard is published.
1901 – 10-inch records are introduced. The Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor, RCA, BMG and now Sony/BMG) is founded in Camden, NJ by Berliner and Eldridge Johnson.
1903 – 12-inch records are introduced.
1904 – The 78 rpm record is introduced.
1909 – Edison introduces a cylinder that spins at 160 rpm and can play for as long as 4½ minutes. That would just about accommodate “All Right Now,” by Free.
1921 – Record sales reach 100 million in the U.S. for the first time.
1925 – The old style of recording – whereby a horn funnels sound to a diaphragm that vibrates a cutting stylus – gives way to electronic recording with the introduction of the microphone. The mic captures sound, which is then amplified by vacuum tubes and sent to an electromechanical recording head.
1925 – Victor introduces the Orthophonic Victrola, which plays electronically recorded discs. It retails for $100-$300.
1948 – Columbia Records introduces the 12” 33-1/3 rpm LP (“long player”). The first LP is Mendelssohn’s Concerto In E Minor by violinist Nathan Milstein with the New York Philharmonic.
1948 – Ampex debuts the 200A quarter-inch magnetic reel-to-reel tape recorder. It eventually leads to the development of popular consumer audiotape formats, including cassettes and eight-tracks.
1948 – The first McDonald’s opens in San Bernardino, CA. I thought this was important to note in case anyone is hungry.
1949 – RCA Victor introduces the 7” 45 rpm “single.” The first release in this new format is “Texarkana Baby,” by Eddie Arnold. Early 45s are pressed on colored vinyl, giving them novelty appeal. (Sound familiar?) The arrival of the 45 gives rise to the “battle of the speeds”: 33, 45 and 78.
1958 – With 78s losing the battle to 45s, major record companies stop making them, although a few smaller labels will continue to press 78 rpm records into the 1960s.
1963 – Philips Electronics introduces the cassette tape.
1982 – Compact discs are introduced in Japan, with Billy Joel’s 52nd Street being considered the first (although 49 others were released simultaneously).
1984 – Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. is the first CD manufactured in the U.S. for commercial release.
1999 – Revenues from sales of recorded music in the U.S. peak at $14.6 billion
2009 – Revenues from sales of recorded music plummet to $6.3 billion.
2022 – The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announces that sales of vinyl records have surpassed compact discs for the first time since 1987.
This last fact came as a shock to a lot of people when it was announced by the RIAA in 2023, although anyone who’s been paying close attention over the last decade is well aware that vinyl has acquired a hip cachet among young people and is still the medium of choice for many older ones. Meanwhile, compact discs have been rendered obsolete (for reasons I can’t quite grasp, to be honest) by streaming services. Arguing the merits of CDs is a subject for another column, as this one is meant to celebrate the fact that Record Store Day (RSD) is turning “Sweet Sixteen.” Participating stores will carry a selection of titles from the roughly 300 vinyl recordings being rolled out this year. For a complete list of participating stores and this year’s RSD releases, go to recordstoreday.com. Happy hunting!
SEVERAL OF THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2022
By Parke Puterbaugh
I’m always amused when the end of the year rolls around and media outlets (mainly magazines) roll out their “Best Albums of the Year” lists. For starters, many of them are compiled and published before the year is over, making any declaration of thoroughness suspect. Beyond that, it’s simply impossible for any individual or staff to sample even a modest percentage of all the deserving discs released in any given year. In a time when anyone can record and release a physical disc or upload their work to sites like Bandcamp and SoundCloud, the sheer volume results in an approximately infinite universe (to borrow a phrase from Yoko Ono) of songs and albums. Many music aficionados have simply given up, limiting themselves to the barrage of reissues, compilation and top-heavy box sets by artists more familiar to them.
Let’s plow this furrow a little further. Pop quiz: How many new albums are released each year? According to Billboard magazine, 35,516 albums were released in the year 2000. Only seven years later, Billboard claimed more than double that number – 79,695 albums (including 25,159 digital albums) – were released. A subsequently published book contends that the number of annual releases is now in excess of 100,000. That is tantamount to drowning in music. No wonder some people just throw up their hands and watch Netflix.
However, in 2010 an analytical fellow named G.C. Stein published a piece on WordPress entitled “How Much Music Is Really Released Per Year?” Making a few logical assumptions, he estimated the actual number of annual releases of original material by credible artists (and not just laptop dilettantes) to be closer to 5,000. That still works out to about 100 albums a week of new music. It would take the equivalent of two-and-a-half work weeks to listen only once to each week’s releases. Do you see why I maintain that these “best of year” lists, while undoubtedly helpful, are somewhat inherently absurd? I am discovering older albums all the time that are new to me, and I only really gain a bead on any given year five years or more after it’s passed. Hell, I’m still uncovering albums from the 1960s!
Instead of offering a fixed list like Moses descending the mountain with commandments carved in stone tablets, I think it makes more sense to say, “Here are several albums released in 2022 that I encountered, enjoyed and listened to a lot.” Meanwhile, discovery of other deserving releases from that (or any) year remains an ongoing process. I would add that my likes and opinions are exactly that. Sometimes I surprise myself.
A case in point is an album by two women from an island off the British coast who go by Wet Leg, a name selected for its absurdity. Their self-titled debut became a sensation in indie-rock circles for its puckish humor and irresistible hooks. While no one will make claims of Mahavishnu Orchestra-like virtuosity for Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers – both of whom play guitar and sing – the album plays through like a box of chocolates, offering sweet delights in each bite. If a catchier song than “Chaise Longue” was released in 2022, I’d not heard it. Its three minutes suggest a mashup of early Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers’ two-chord classic “Roadrunner” and the Flying Lizards’ electro pop deconstruction of the soul classic “Money.” Gen Z boredom is communicated in deliberately repetitive lyrics that speak of reclining “all day long on the chaise longue.” But then you realize these enterprising young women have channeled their ennui into music that offers an escape from it. Not since the days of Blondie, the Bangles and Go-Go’s have their been neo-girl group pop tunes with hooks as addictive as those in found in the casually naughty “Wet Dream” and the singalong-worthy “Supermarket.” Exhilarating, fresh and fun, Wet Leg offers a compelling rejoinder to generational somnambulance and a rebuttal to those who believe all the flavor has been chewed out of pop music.
Another album that has earned frequent replays in my car and at home is Dear Scott, by Michael Head & the Red Elastic Band. Head is a Scouse – British parlance for a native of Liverpool – who has been an under-the-radar treasure for the past forty years with such bands as the Pale Fountains, Shack and the Strands. He has been beset by bad fortune both personal (he’s survived both heroin addiction and alcoholism) and professional (the master tapes of Shack’s second album were lost when the studio burned down and the only copy was left in a cab). But this dogged survivor finally found acclaim with Dear Scott, an enchanting collection of songs that went to #5 in the U.K. Head is a singer-songwriter with a burry, conversational voice and a wealth of closely observed songs about real characters. The musical settings are understated but absorbing, exhibiting elements of folk, jazz and tuneful, toned-down rock. Dear Scott was produced by Bill Ryder-Jones, a fellow Scouse and a founding member of The Coral, a neo-psychedelic group whose work I enjoy. Head’s songs make for ridiculously agreeable listening, part curly the soulful, elegiac “Broken Beauty”; the swinging, jazzy “Gino and Rico”; and Head’s fingerpicked meditation on “Freedom.”
Richard Dawson is another estimable English songwriter with an indelible sense of place. His latest album, The Ruby Cord, is credited to “Richard Dawson of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.” Not to be confused with the Hogan’s Heroes actor and former Family Feud host of the same name, Dawson might best be described as a progressive folkie with a streak of eccentricity that puts him in a similar vein as the legendary Roy Harper. Dawson regards his last three albums as a trilogy that addresses humankind past (Peasant), present (2020) and future (The Ruby Cord). The latter album is almost indescribably odd but also oddly appealing. Dawson doesn’t make it easy on the listener, as The Ruby Cord opens with “The Hermit,” a piece that runs for forty-one minutes. (You read correctly.) That’s as long as most albums, and it is a beguiling slog, unfolding like a long ramble through a series of musical landscapes. If you make it through “The Hermit,” you will be rewarded with five songs of relative succinctness, running between five and ten minutes each, and two-and-a-half scarifying moments of howling wind. It would take a thesis rather than a capsule review to untangle all of the implications of this sagacious sci-fi projection into a barren, challenging future. Suffice to say it’s an album whose depths are worth plumbing. Incidentally, in addition to all of the unpredictable twists and turns the music takes throughout this eighty-minute odyssey, Dawson’s voice vacillates between the sober depths of Richard Thompson’s stoic delivery and the airy, skyscraping reaches of Robert Wyatt. The Ruby Cord would keep very good company with both artist’s work.
As long as we’re on the subject of oddballs pursuing personal visions in lieu of pop stardom, King Gizzard and the Lizard might be seen as kindred spirits, even though their music is more extroverted, explosive and jammy. Like Dawson’s Ruby Cord, King Gizzard’s Omnium Gatherum commences with a lengthy track that separates serious listeners from dilettantes. “The Dripping Tap” is eighteen minutes of speed-tripping, high-flying, jammed-out neo-psychedelic bliss that harks back to the days of the Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service in full flight at San Francisco’s strobe-lit ballrooms. From there it offers fifteen briefer songs that range from the entrancing Oriental allusions of “Magenta Mountain” to the acid-laced Steely Dan of “Kepler 22-B” and the strummy percolations of “Persistence” (both of the latter songs being about cars). I can’t get enough of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and they seem to know that, as this hyper-creative Australian ensemble – led by uber-motivated guitarist Stu Mackenzie – released five studio albums in 2022. My favorite is Omnium Gatherum, which is, in fact, a double album. Crazy, man, crazy!
PAYING THE COST TO BE THE BOSS:
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND
By: Parke Puterbaugh
I’ve been thinking about Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band a lot lately. For one reason, they’ve been in the news due to their upcoming 2023 tour, which has generated controversy over ticket pricing and speculation it might be their last hurrah. I’ve also been musing about Springsteen’s loyalty – and at times seeming lack thereof – to the E Street Band, who have backed him up for 50 years as of October 2022. Let me explain.
First, a pop quiz. How many of Bruce’s 21 studio albums have been jointly credited to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band? The answer is… none. That is correct: despite the fact that the E Street Band were present on and integral to 12 of Springsteen’s studio albums, from 1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. to 2020’s Letter to You, they were all credited to Bruce Springsteen alone.
Another aspect of this examination would be his and their respective inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bruce Springsteen was inducted alone in 1999, with Bono of U2 lionizing the Boss with his typically fiery oratory. Surely the E Street Band would follow close on his heels, right? In fact, 15 years would pass until ten former and present E Streeters were jointly inducted in 2014, with Springsteen doing the honors as speechifier. Curiously, one of the greatest live bands in the history of rock music was inducted not in the “Performer” category (as Bruce had been) but the “Musical Excellence” category, which to me seems a bit of a snub. I mean, who if not the E Street Band deserves to be inducted as performers? From that evening, which I was privileged to attend, what sticks out in my mind from Springsteen’s lengthy induction speech came at the very end, when he quoted E Street guitarist and primary foil Steve Van Zandt on the bond that Boss and band shared, however uneasily: “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band – that’s the legend.” I couldn’t agree more.
In all fairness, I must note that all Springsteen live releases involving the group have been jointly credited to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, from the box set Live/1975-1985 – a mid-1980s pop-culture event, with fans forming lines outside record stores that opened at midnight on the official day of release – to a slew of paid concert downloads available at the official site live.brucespringsteen.net. Hundreds of shows can be had there, from every performance on the 2014, 2016 and 2017 tours to selected concerts from 1978 through 2013.
Given that Bruce’s concerts last upward of three hours, you could spend a good chunk of your remaining days just plowing through his live performances. And there are some great ones available, including Springsteen’s epic performance at the Greensboro Colliseum on April 8, 2008 – a 26-song, two-and-a-half hour marathon. Each concert can be downloaded at prices ranging from $14.99 (mp3) to $24.99 (HD Audio) to $39.99 (DSD). They’ll even burn and mail you a CD of any given show for $26.99. I call that a bargain, considering what one must pay to attend a Springsteen show – or just about any in-demand artist’s performance – in modern times.
Ticketmaster’s roundly despised “dynamic pricing” model – in which it is plainly stated on the webite that “ticket prices may fluctuate, based on demand, at any time” – has led to ludicrous overpricing and elicited Congress’ attention. Springsteen got caught in the gears of angry fan blowback when individual ticket prices at stops on his 2023 tour were going for well over $1,000, with some seats surpassing $5,000 at certain venues. Even the devoted Springsteen fanzine Backstreets was harshly critical.
Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, only poured gas on the fire when he issued a tone-deaf response in a New York Times article: “Regardless of the commentary about a modest number of tickets costing $1,000 or more, our true average ticket price has been in the mid-$200 range. I believe that in today’s environment, that is a fair price to see someone universally regarded as among the very greatest artists of his generation.”
Having just checked the Ticketmaster website to see the going rate for Springsteen’s upcoming concert in Greensboro on March 25, I beg to differ. Good seats on the floor of the coliseum are going for as much as $5,428 each. Hmmm…. Should we buy our daughter a used car or buy two tickets to a concert that will last for a few hours? Nothing on the floor at the moment appears to be going for less than $824. I think that as the concert’s start time approaches, you will see “dynamic pricing” in reverse, as speculators are forced to dump tickets at the last minute to save themselves a total loss on their selfish expectation of profit.
Bruce himself didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of the situation when, in a Rolling Stone interview, he said, “We have those tickets that are going to go for that [higher] price somewhere anyway. The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. I’m going, ‘Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?’ It created an opportunity for that to occur. And so at that point, we went for it. I know it was unpopular with some fans. But if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.”
That raises a few questions in my mind. Are his bandmates on salary, or are they going to receive bigger paydays as a result of Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing,” as he seems to imply? And if someone in attendance says, “I didn’t get my $5,428 worth, so I want my money back,” is Bruce going to write him a check, as he appears to state? In my opinion, the whole thing is an ugly, disappointing mess, any way you slice it.
I don’t disagree with Landau that Springsteen is “among the very greatest artists of his generation.” Nor do I think that, if they were actually available, decent seats for what might be his last tour are reasonably worth a few hundred bucks to hardcore fans like myself. But I find myself wondering, hasn’t the whole point of Springsteen’s songcraft been to speak to the sensibilities of overworked, underpaid workingclass men and women in America? How does this ruthless cash grab serve his reputation in any positive way? The answer: it doesn’t.
SOME THOUGHTS ON DAVID CROSBY
By: Parke Puterbaugh
Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
So sang Joni Mitchell in “Big Yellow Taxi,” and that sentiment has lately hit home for music fans who’ve been dealing with a number of passings, including Christine McVie (Fleetwood Mac), Jeff Beck, Tom Verlaine (Television) and David Crosby.
The last of these hit me the hardest, probably because I’d connected with Crosby earliest of all via the Byrds and then Crosby, Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young). When the supergroup CSNY went on hiatus in the early 1970s, the David Crosby and Graham Nash made several outstanding albums as a duo. I saw them perform at Duke University in November 1973, and that evening remains etched in my memory as a concertgoing highlight. Crosby and Nash had a hot electric band that included guitarist David Lindley, bassist Tim Drummond and drummer Johnny Barbata. The crowd’s response was as rabid as any Springsteen show I’ve ever seen, and justly so. It was pure magic.
Crosby’s was a gifted singer, rhythm guitarist and songwriter. He ranks among the greatest harmony singers in rock music, possessing a voice that eschewed close harmonies for unexpected intervals that added a note of mystery and wonder to every song it touched. Evidence of his harmonic genius is arrayed across his work with the Byrds and CSN but also in his guest spots with artists ranging from Phil Collins to Hootie and the Blowfish. (He’s on the latter group’s Top Ten hit “Hold My Hand.”)
As a guitarist Crosby favored nontraditional tunings and, as with his vocal harmonies, his unconventional chords and rhythms added atmosphere and intrigue to his group endeavors and solo albums. As a songwriter, he could suggest worlds of sensibility and sensuality beyond those in plain view. “Déjà Vu,” the title track of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s fabled 1970 album, is about as magical and mystical a piece of music as I’ve ever heard. The same can be said of “Guinnevere,” from CSN’s 1969 debut album, a haunting tune that was covered by no less a musical seer than jazzman Miles Davis.
David Crosby was a bundle of contradictions. He was a master of harmony who had famously disharmonious relations with his bandmates that would degenerate into screaming matches. As recently as 2015, Crosby and Stephen Stills got into a noisy physical altercation at the Obama White House after CSN badly mangled “Silent Night” at a Christmas celebration. Crosby was a peace-loving hippie who always carried a gun. As an archetypal hippie free spirit, he was the inspiration for the character of Billy, played by Dennis Hopper, in Easy Rider.
Crosby’s temperament was both sanguine and volatile, even-keeled and obnoxious. He was a drug-abusing mess who loved nothing more than sailing his schooner, The Mayan, on placid seas. He was a reckless hedonist who had a spiritual side that revered grace, beauty and order. At various points his life was troubled and unruly, but throughout it all his music was polished and pristine.
Despite his demons, Crosby was a dogged survivor who overcame severe addictions to heroin and cocaine. In addition to a Herculean intake of hallucinogens, he began snorting coke in the early 1960s. By 1975 his overuse resulted in a perforated septum and he had to find another way to ingest the drug. He turned to freebasing, relentlessly hitting the pipe from the mid-1970s through early 1980s and experiencing several grand mal seizures along the way. A 1982 bust and nine-month imprisonment in Dallas, Texas finally got him straight. In a 2014 interview he reflected, that prison was “not a pleasant way to get off that train [of drug abuse], but it worked.” He even wrote the judge a thank-you note after leaving prison and putting his life in order.
In the prologue to his autobiography Long Time Gone, Crosby wrote, “Never once, until I got out of prison, did I ever record, perform, or do anything any way except stoned. I did it all stoned.” The irony is that his music was sublime both before and after his addiction, his muse serving as a sort of compass that always remained true. Yes, it nearly went dormant during his years in the druggy wilderness, but even under that shroud he wrote several of his brightest gems: “Delta,” “Arrows,” and “Compass,” to name three.
Crosby leaves behind a formidable body of work. Its dimensions may not be apparent to the casual observer because his work was divided among numerous group and solo projects. Not counting a multitude of live albums and compilations, Crosby made six albums with the Byrds; nine with CSN and CSNY; four as a duo with Graham Nash; two with CPR (Crosby with his son James Raymond and guitarist Jeff Pevar); and nine solo albums. That’s thirty albums’ worth of music – a substantial body of work by any measure. Most remarkable was Crosby’s late-career spurt of creativity, resulting in an extraordinary run of albums: Croz (2014), Lighthouse (2016), Sky Trails (2017), Here If You Listen (2018) and For Free (2021). They’re all burnished, harmony rich, thematically deep pieces of work, among the finest songs he wrote and recorded in his sixty-year career.
I’ve been listening to For Free a lot lately. Produced by his son, it’s a sublime, masterful and mature piece of work. It opens with “River Rise,” a song about transcending difficult times in which Crosby’s voice fuses easily with that of guest singer Michael McDonald. “Rodriguez for a Night” is a wry, jazzy tune about professing envy for an outlaw’s life. Musically, it takes an obvious page from the book of Steely Dan, whom Crosby has called his favorite group. The title track is a reverential remake of a Joni Mitchell tune that might be the best ever written about the motivations behind making music. Every song is suffused with Crosby’s diaphanous, otherworldly magic. What a way to go out.
Curiously, his voice is a clear and supple instrument throughout For Free. How did he escape all those years of drug addiction and pot smoking without any apparent ill effect on the limpid purity of his voice?
Eerily and appropriately for a mystic like Crosby, the last song on his last album was titled “I Won’t Be Here Long.” R.I.P, David Crosby.