Deep Tracks

Play me a song that I’ll always remember

Posted on by brucehhackett

Although I enjoy discovering new artists and new releases, diving into the albums of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s is still one of my favorite pasttimes. There was SO MUCH great music made in those decades, and I love unearthing the deeper tracks, the “lost classics,” to give them exposure to my Hack’s Back Pages audience.

Readers tell me they love these forays into our collective past, so I hope you enjoy this week’s batch.  As is customary, there’s a Spotify playlist at the end so you can listen as you read.

Rock on, music lovers!

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“Dance on a Volcano,” Genesis, 1976

In 1975, when Genesis vocalist/frontman Peter Gabriel announced he was leaving at the end of the band’s “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” tour, many observers figured it would be the end of the group.  Gabriel’s distinctive voice and mesmerizing stage presence were arguably the most important elements of the band’s success.  Granted, keyboardist Tony Banks, guitarist Steve Hackett, bassist Mike Rutherford and drummer Phil Collins were all superb musicians who contributed mightily to the songwriting and arrangements… but who would sing?  As the story goes, they apparently auditioned nearly 200 vocalists (!) before they found the answer right in their own back yard.  Phil Collins, it turned out, had the uncanny ability to sound a lot like Gabriel, especially in the studio, where they came up with an astounding transitional LP, “A Trick of the Tail,” featuring eight songs of fantasy/progressive rock much like the stuff they’d been churning out with Gabriel.  The excellent opening track, “Dance on a Volcano,” is perhaps the best example of this Genesis 2.0 model, which had a shelf life of about five years before a much more commercially oriented Genesis 3.0 version evolved around 1980.

“Out in the Country,” Three Dog Night, 1970

Perhaps my favorite song from the Three Dog Night catalog is this pretty piece from their “It Ain’t Easy” LP in the fall of 1970.  This group was famous for recording tunes written by other notable composers, from Harry Nilsson (“One”) and Randy Newman (“Mama Told Me Not to Come”) to Laura Nyro (“Eli’s Comin'”) and Hoyt Axton (“Joy to the World”).  “Out in the Country,” which reached #15 on the singles chart, was no exception — it was written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, known for white-bread commercial fare like The Carpenters’ hits “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays,” as well as another 3DN song, “Just an Old Fashioned Love Song.”  The track was the group’s only hit that featured unison vocals instead of featuring one lead vocalist.  Its lyrics, which cry for concern for the environment, are every bit as relevant today as we continue to face threats to the planet’s future:  “Before the breathing air is gone, before the sun is just a bright spot on the nighttime…”

“Rehumanize Yourself,” Police, 1981

Slickly produced and full of diverse, engaging songs, The Police’s “Ghost in the Machine” continued the British band’s musical evolution as one of the top artists of the early Eighties.  The group maintained the foothold in punk and reggae they’d been featuring since their 1978 debut, but this album was more New Wave, introducing synthesizers and even horns to the mix.  Hits included the catchy “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” and “Spirits in the Material World,” but just as intriguing were deep tracks like “Secret Journey,” “Darkness, “One World” and my favorite, the uptempo “Rehumanize Yourself.”  They would go on to rule the airwaves and the charts two years later with their final LP, “Synchronicity,” before songwriter/singer Sting headed out for a long solo career.

“Echoes of Love,” Doobie Brothers, 1977

In 1976, medical conditions caused singer-guitarist-songwriter Tom Johnston to withdraw from the band he had formed six years earlier.  To replace him (temporarily), the Doobies recruited Steely Dan background vocalist Michael McDonald, who turned out to be a pretty decent songwriter as well, although his stuff was markedly different from Johnston’s rock ‘n roll boogie.  The Doobies began a new phase in their career with “Takin’ It to the Streets,” a solid album with one Johnston song amidst a half dozen McDonald-led numbers.  Throughout all of this, there was always another vital piece of the band’s sound:  singer-songwriter-guitarist Patrick Simmons, who had been responsible for tunes like “Black Water,” “South City Midnight Lady,” “Toulouse Street” and others.  On the 1977 LP “Livin’ on the Fault Line,” Simmons shines brightly on his outstanding song “Echoes of Love,” with McDonald on harmonies and the venerable California band sounding as tight as ever.

“Car on a Hill,” Joni Mitchell, 1974

What a marvelous track from a perfect album!  Together with the live “Miles of Aisles” LP that followed it, “Court and Spark” was Mitchell’s high-water mark commercially — both albums went Top Five — but she soon tired of “stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song” and began writing and recording with top-flight jazz artists through the rest of the ’70s.  Joni is one of only a handful of songwriters whose lyrics and music are of equally fine caliber.  In particular, “Car on a Hill” has a fabulous melody and arrangement, and the words do a beautiful job of describing the angst of waiting by the window for the unfaithful lover’s car that never comes:  “He said he’d be over three hours ago… Now where in the city can that boy be?, waitin’ for a car, climbin’, climbin’, climbin’ the hill…”

“Go Back Home,” Stephen Stills (with Eric Clapton), 1970

After the implosion of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in the summer of 1970, each went off to make solo LPs, although they made guest appearances on each others’ albums.  Stephen Stills had headed to London to record with a broad array of musicians, including the legendary Jimi Hendrix, who added guitar on “Old Times Good Times” only a month before his death.  More impressive, however, was the contribution from Eric Clapton, who offered up a scorching performance on the second half of Stills’ mid-tempo shuffle “Go Back Home,” arguably one of Clapton’s best guest solos.  (It was recorded at the same session that produced “Let It Rain” and “After Midnight” for Clapton’s solo debut LP that same year.)  You need to crank up this one!

“All the Things She Said,” Simple Minds, 1985

One of England’s greatest bands of the 80s and ’90s got its start in the late ’70s but didn’t have much success on the UK charts until their fourth album in 1981, when they began a string of seven Top Five albums (including three #1 LPs) through 1995.  Here in the US, their impact was far more brief.  They contributed the huge #1 hit “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” to the John Hughes teen comedy classic “The Breakfast Club” in early 1985, and followed that with a Top Ten charting for their “Once Upon a Time” LP, spawning two big hits, “Alive and Kicking” (#3) and “Sanctify Yourself” (#14).  It was the third single, “All the Things She Said” (which managed only #28), that always struck my fancy.  Lead singer Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill, the band’s chief songwriting team, really hit their stride with this album, but I never understood why the next several Simple Minds releases (1989’s “Street Fighting Years,” 1991’s “Real Life” and 1995’s Good News From the Next World”) stiffed in the US, because they’re full of excellent material in the same vein as “Once Upon a Time.”

“Gypsy,” Moody Blues, 1969

It should have happened about 20 years earlier, but the great Moody Blues were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.  There has been so much great music from these pioneers of British progressive rock, especially the seven albums they released in the 1967-1972 period.  Their fourth LP, 1969’s “To Our Children’s Children’s Children,” had no hit singles, but charted high on the album charts (#2 in the UK, #14 in the US).  Released shortly after the moon landing, the album explored the cosmic themes of space travel and children, and the legacy of the human race.  The standout track for me was “Gypsy,” yet another amazing song by the consistent singer/guitarist Justin Hayward, who wrote the majority of their better known tunes.

“Caroline,” Jefferson Starship, 1974

Singer/songwriter Marty Balin formed the Jefferson Airplane in 1965 in San Francisco when he met up with guitarist/singer Paul Kantner, and with the addition of Grace Slick, they became household names in the late ’60s as voices of the counterculture.  But the group crashed and burned in 1972, with Balin bailing out when Kantner kept advocating his wild-eyed sci-fi/fantasy themes.  By 1974, Kantner and Slick had teamed with new instrumentalists and re-introduced themselves as Jefferson Starship.  “Dragonfly,” their first LP with that lineup, was a delicious surprise, highlighted by great stuff like “Ride the Tiger,” “That’s For Sure” and “All Fly Away.”  The sleeper track, though, was “Caroline,” written and sung by none other than Balin, who was coaxed to participate.  It’s a gorgeous power ballad, actually better than the huge hit “Miracles” he wrote for the “Red Octopus” #1 LP the following year.

“Why Must I,” ‘Til Tuesday, 1988

Singer-songwriter Aimee Mann was the primary talent behind the ’80s alt-rock group ‘Til Tuesday, who emerged out of Boston in 1985 with the LP and Top Ten single “Voices Carry.”  They lasted for two more albums before Mann headed out on her own in 1992, and she’s still touring today.  I always thought ‘Til Tuesday’s second and third LPs — “Welcome Home” (1986) and “Everything’s Different Now” (1988) — were very underrated.  “Coming Up Close” and “What About Love” made modest dents in the singles charts, but there were eight or ten other strong songs worthy of attention.  My favorite was “Why Must I” from the 1988 LP, which features a catchy melody, inventive arrangement and great performance by Mann and her band.

“With You There to Help Me,” Jethro Tull, 1970

Tull’s 1969 second album “Stand Up” went to #1 in England, and their monumental fourth LP, 1971’s “Aqualung,” was Jethro Tull’s greatest international success, but sometimes overlooked is their third effort, 1970’s “Benefit.”  It’s among their hardest rocking collections ever, with the minor hit “Teacher” appearing on the US version of the album.  Ian Anderson on flute and vocals and Martin Barre on guitar were, as always, the key elements of Tull’s sound, with John Evan adding keyboard parts on some tracks for the first time.  FM stations in the US gave airplay to a few tracks, most notably “To Cry You a Song” and the prog rock beauty “With You There to Help Me,” which includes a great lyric in the chorus about the warm feeling you get when you return home:  “I’m going back to the ones that I know, with whom I can be what I want to be…”

“The Back Seat of My Car,” Paul McCartney, 1971

In the wake of The Beatles’ breakup in 1970, each member’s solo career was put under the microscope for intense scrutiny, as many observers felt their solo work could never measure up to the work of the band as a whole.  McCartney in particular took a lot of heat for writing and recording a lot of slight, inconsequential stuff, but he was always able to come up with two or three really excellent tracks on every album.  From the 1971 LP “Ram” (credited to Paul & Linda McCartney), which spawned the cutesy #1 hit “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,” by far the strongest moment was the album closer, “The Back Seat of My Car,” beautifully arranged and performed, full of lush orchestration and voices, solid electric guitar by Paul, and a memorable repeated chorus, “Ohhh, we believe that we can’t be wrong…”

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He’s the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent

Posted on by brucehhackett

This year’s inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced recently, and I’m pleased to see several vintage rockers finally get the nod: Joe Cocker, Bad Company, Warren Zevon, Nicky Hopkins. I first wrote about Cocker, then Nicky Hopkins two weeks ago. I’ll be profiling Bad Company in another week or two, but today’s post focuses on maverick rocker Warren Zevon.

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I’d wager that many fans of classic rock have, like me, a limited knowledge of the career of Warren Zevon. When I saw that the man whose main claim to fame is the 1978 hit “Werewolves of London” had been selected for induction into the Rock Hall, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Really? I must have been missing something.”

I have a friend in Los Angeles named Michael who wouldn’t mind me describing him as a rock music fanatic, especially when it comes to attending concerts. He and I have often compared notes and experiences about the artists and albums we cherish, and he has turned me on to several that I doubt I would have discovered if not for his recommendations.

To say he was thrilled about Zevon’s upcoming induction would be an understatement. “Since the late ’70s, I have appreciated the writing and performing of Warren Zevon‘s music, by him and by others,” he said. “I have always felt it was a shame that he was never included in the upper echelon of rock ‘n’ roll, and I’m glad for his current inclusion!”

In light of that endorsement, I spent quite a bit of time over the past several weeks diving into Zevon’s catalog of 12 studio albums (released between 1970 and 2002), and I was stunned at how much of it appealed to me. I wouldn’t say he has a great voice, but he sings with defiance and vigor (in the manner of Dylan, Springsteen and others), and I’m pleased to report that many of his songs have memorable melodies, hooks and performances. I urge you to visit my Spotify playlist at the end of the essay and, perhaps, visit a lyrics website (www.azlyrics.com, for example) so you can follow along and get a full appreciation of Zevon’s talent as a lyricist.

Indeed, his way with words may be his greatest strength. As The New York Times put it in its 2003 obituary, “Mr. Zevon had a pulp-fiction imagination which yielded terse, action-packed, gallows-humored tales that could sketch an entire screenplay in four minutes, and often had death as a punchline.” Consider some of his song titles: “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead,” “Angel Dressed in Black,” “Life’ll Kill Ya,” “Bad Karma” and “My Shit’s Fucked Up.”

In its inductions announcement, the Rock Hall noted, “Zevon wrote poetic but offbeat songs, often with darkly humorous and acerbic lyrics, and delivered them with a dry wit and a twisted energy like no other performer could.”

James Campion, in his 2018 book “Accidentally Like a Martyr: The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon,” wrote, “Warren Zevon was one cool fucker, whose music and humor and pathos made life better, and remains one of the finest live performers I’ve seen with an uncompromisingly smart and, yes, sinister side that always made me smile.”

“Sinister” is right. I remember when I bought Zevon’s “Excitable Boy” album in 1978 and enjoyed the musical sounds on almost every song…and then I started paying attention to the lyrics, which caught me off guard. For such upbeat tunes, the lyrics were pretty damn dark. Take the cheerful title song, which benefits from the great Linda Ronstadt on backing vocals, but here’s a sample of the words: “He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom, /Ooh, excitable boy, they all said, /And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home… /After ten long years, they let him out of the home, /Excitable boy, they all said, /And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones…” Yikes.

Mostly, Zevon wrote sharp satire, describing emotionally deep scenarios sometimes with tongue firmly planted in cheek but other times as serious as a train wreck. He was equally adept at moving ballads and spirited rockers, but he was also certainly capable of including a couple of clunkers on every album. As Rolling Stone wrote in a review of 1987’s “Sentimental Hygiene,” one of his “comeback” albums, “Zevon’s albums have always seemed willfully spotty, as if he knew quite well that he’d struck oil but still, self-destructively, placed it alongside goofy dreck. Even if ‘Sentimental Hygiene’ is only a two-thirds-perfect album, it still towers head and shoulders above most of his contemporaries’ best efforts.”

Where did Zevon’s cynical worldview come from? No one can say for sure, but he grew up in Chicago, then moved to Fresno, where his parents divorced when he was 14. He had the good fortune to occasionally visit the home of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, where he studied modern classical music. Zevon dropped out of school at 16 and headed for New York City to become a folk singer, but that movement was in its dying days, and he ended up composing advertising jingles and doing session work for the likes of The Everly Brothers, whose careers were at a low point in the early ’70s.

His debut LP, 1970’s “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” failed to chart and offers only a rudimentary version of the talent he would show on his remarkable second effort, 1976’s “Warren Zevon,” recorded in Los Angeles with the help of many LA-based heavy hitters (Jackson Browne, Lindsay Buckingham, Glenn Frey, Stevie Nicks, Waddy Wachtel, Bonnie Raitt and David Lindley). That album included two songs Ronstadt made famous — “Hasten Down the Wind” and “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.” Critics gushed over the songwriting, calling the album a masterpiece, but still, it stalled at an anemic #185 on US album charts.

Ah, but then “Excitable Boy” came next, putting him on the mainstream map at #8 on the US album chart, and singles that still get airplay (“Werewolves,” “Tenderness On the Block,” “Lawyers, Guns and Money”). During this period and in support of 1980’s follow-up “Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School,” he successfully toured as a headliner and in collaboration with Jackson Browne. I regret that I missed these tours; as his 1980 live LP “Stand in the Fire” clearly shows, he was a dynamic performer.

But Zevon had his demons to cope with, and he struggled with addictions. After 1982’s “The Envoy” was rebuked by critics and peaked at a disappointing #93, he took it hard, relapsing and seeking treatment. Although he recovered, and continued writing and recording exemplary work that earned good reviews and pleased his loyal fan base, he didn’t have much chart success with albums or singles after that. However, “Sentimental Hygiene” (which reached #63) is a real revelation, packed with marvelous tracks like “Boom Boom Mancini,” “Detox Mansion” and “Reconsider Me,” and augmented by the musical skills of Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry of R.E.M., among many others.

The fact that so many major stars were eager to participate on his albums or cover his songs on their own LPs speaks volumes for the high regard in which Zevon’s talent is held within the music business. Said David Crosby, “Warren was and remains one of my favorite songwriters. He saw things with a jaundiced eye that still got the humanity of things.” Springsteen noted, “I’m in awe of his diverse musical and lyrical palette, and I’m so glad I had the chance to record ‘Disorder in the House’ with him for his final record.”

In 2002, Zevon was encouraged by his dentist to see a physician for the first time in nearly three decades and learned he had late-stage cancer in his lungs and chest, which left him deeply shaken and resulted in another relapse. Instead of receiving treatment he feared would incapacitate him, he instead threw himself into completing “The Wind,” a searing “nearness of death” album (not unlike David Bowie’s “Blackstar” in 2016), which was released in 2003, just three weeks before his death at age 56.

One of his biggest cheerleaders was David Letterman, who struck up a close friendship with Zevon and had him on his show as the sole guest one night a few months before his death. Zevon called Letterman “the best friend my music’s ever had.” When Letterman asked him if he had any words of wisdom about life and death as he approached his final days, Zevon smirked and said, “Enjoy every sandwich.” That became the title of a marvelous Zevon tribute album released in 2004 and featuring a range of artists from Dylan and Springsteen to The Pixies and The Wallflowers covering fifteen of Zevon’s songs.

Zevon biographer Campion wrote, “It is important that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame not merely cater to the über-famous and instead take the time to shine a light on those who expanded the genre and traversed outside its parameters. Zevon lived on the bleeding edge of those parameters and came back to tell us all about it in incredibly moving, funny, and raucous songs about love, loss and death.”

If I had to pick one song that most grabbed me in my recent discovery of Zevon gems, I think it would have to be “Reconsider Me,” on which Don Henley provides soothing harmonies. It’s a poignant piece born of the changes a man goes through in rehabilitation: “If it’s still the past that makes you doubt, /Darlin’, that was then, and this is now, /Reconsider me…”

Way to go, Warren. You and your honest, edgy music and lyrics definitely deserve this honor.

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