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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All I have to hold on to is a simple song at last

Posted on by brucehhackett

“His songs weren’t just about fighting injustice; they were about transforming the self to transform the world. He dared to be simple in the most complex ways — using childlike joy, wordless cries, and nursery rhyme cadences to express adult truths. His work looked straight at the brightest and darkest parts of life and demanded we do the same. As I reflect on his legacy, I’m haunted by the eternal cry of ‘Everyday People’: ‘We got to live together!’ Once idealistic, now I hear it as a command.” — Questlove

Sylvester Stewart, known worldwide as Sly Stone, died this week at age 82, and the subsequent outpouring of love and respect for the man and his musical accomplishments makes clear how widespread his influence was, and still is.

There’s no denying the excessive and self-indulgent drug use that curtailed his career and turned him into a recluse for most of the past 40 years. Here at Hack’s Back Pages, though, I prefer to focus on his extraordinary musical innovations that wiped clean and redrew the boundaries between rock, soul, funk and pop in the late ’60s and early ’70s, setting the stage for many other artists to do the same in more recent times.

The songs and albums released by Sly and The Family Stone between 1967 and 1973 were wonderfully diverse and mesmerizing. As veteran Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres put it back in 1970: “Sly and the Family Stone became the poster children for a particularly San Francisco sensibility of the late Sixties: integrated, progressive, indomitably idealistic. Their music, a combustible mix of psychedelic rock, funky soul and sunshine pop, placed them at a nexus of convergent cultural movements, and in turn, they collected a string of chart-topping hits.”

Sly and The Family Stone in 1969, from left: Gregg Errico, Rose Stone, Sly, Cynthia Robinson, Freddie Stone, Jerry Martini, Larry Graham

I was about 12 when I first heard the irresistible soul groove of “Dance to the Music,” with lyrics that gave us all a tutorial on how a great dance tune is created: “All we need is a drummer, for people who only need a beat… /I’m gonna add a little guitar and make it easy to move your feet… /I’m gonna add some bottom so that the dancers just won’t hide… /You might like to hear my organ, I said ‘Ride Sally Ride’… /You might like to hear the horns blowin’, Cynthia on the throne, yeah!…”

Shortly after that, I was among the millions who were inspired by the sublime pop and inclusive lyrical message of “Everyday People,” Sly’s first of four #1 hits. Deftly using the children’s teasing “na na na na boo boo” melody, Stone wrote a timeless song of universal optimism and harmony, with words protesting prejudice that were so relevant in 1968 and are even more so today: “There is a long hair that doesn’t like the short hair for being such a rich one that will not help the poor one, /Different strokes for different folks… /We got to live together!…”

Sly at Woodstock, 1969

A third big hit in the summer of ’69, “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” continued Stone’s penchant for coming up with upbeat soul, augmented by blissful vocal and instrumental flourishes. The song came out just before the band’s game-changing appearance at Woodstock in August, which greatly enhanced their reception by the hippie crowd. That response grew exponentially when the film and album of the festival came out in 1970, highlighted by the performance of “I Want to Take You Higher,” cementing Sly and The Family Stone as superstars of the period.

Perhaps the high-water mark came at the dawn of the Seventies with the release of “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” a hugely impactful song that placed Sly and his group squarely at the forefront of the burgeoning funk movement. As one critic put it, “James Brown may have invented funk, but Sly Stone perfected it.”

Where did all this innovation come from? Sylvester Stewart was born in 1943 in Dallas as part of a large family with Pentecostal/gospel roots, a family who encouraged a broad range of musical expression. Once the family relocated to the Bay Area in California, Stewart and his younger siblings formed a vocal group, The Stewart Four, and cut a gospel record, “On the Battlefield of the Lord,” which received modest targeted airplay. Sylvester and his brother Freddie also both did stints in student bands in high school and beyond.

Sylvester Stewart reimagined as disc jockey Sly Stone, 1964

By the time he was 21, Sylvester had adopted the name Sly Stone as a disc jockey in San Francisco, playing a diverse playlist of white and black artists doing rock, soul, jazz and gospel. “In radio,” Stone said, “I found out about a lot of things I don’t like. Like, I think there shoudn’t be ‘Black radio.’ Just radio. Everybody be a part of everything.” He resisted narrow radio formats and instead thrived on a blend of musical styles, from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to Jan and Dean and The Righteous Brothers to Marvin Gaye and Dionne Warwick. He also worked for a local label as a producer, writing and producing Bobby Freeman’s #5 hit “C’mon and Swim” in 1964 and working with Grace Slick’s first band, The Great Society.

In 1966, Stone and his brother were both gigging with their own bands and decided to merge the best players in each group to create one integrated “family” comprised of men, women, blacks and whites: Freddie (Stewart) Stone on guitar, Larry Graham on bass, Cynthia Robinson on trumpet, Gregg Errico on drums, Jerry Martini on sax and Sly Stone on keyboards. Rose (Stewart) Stone joined the lineup in 1968. And everyone sang.

Sly and the band, 1966

Sly and The Family Stone’s first LP, aptly named “A Whole New Thing,” won critical praise but sold poorly, and their next two albums didn’t do much better, but the aforementioned singles “Dance to the Music” and “Everyday People” put them on the map. Sly was at the helm producing, writing and singing as the group assembled their remarkable 1969 LP “Stand!”, which was peppered with accessible hits (“Sing a Simple Song,” “You Can Make It You Try,” “Somebody’s Watching You”) juxtaposed with bolder tracks like the funk jam “Sex Machine” and the incendiary “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey.”

As the group’s fame took off in 1969-1970, sadly, so did Sly’s affection for cocaine, which often made him unpredictable and unreliable. His (and consequently the band’s) reputation suffered as the drug use made him chronically late for many concerts, if he showed up at all. He surrounded himself with a sketchy entourage of handlers and bodyguards, and retreated much of the time into isolation and paranoia.

He later said the pressures of being an innovator, bandleader and role model became too intense. He found himself influenced by the angry rhetoric of the Black Panthers, who urged (some say demanded) that he replace the two white members of the band with black musicians, and write songs that more accurately reflected their militant views. In the spring of 1971, Marvin Gaye released his landmark LP “What’s Going On?”, and Stone seemed to respond to that question with “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” an album that saw Stone doing an about-face from sunny optimism to darker pessimism.

He recorded most of it on his own, some of it alone in his Bel Air loft, overdubbing relentlessly with emphasis on the then-new drum machine technology, and an overall murky sound dominated by electric piano (played by guest Billy Preston) instead of guitar. The lyrics took on a more strident tone that reflected racial unrest in songs like “Luv n’ Haight,” “Running’ Away” and “Thank You For Talkin’ To Me Africa.” Reaction to this departure was mixed; one reviewer called the album “a challenging listen, at times rambling, incoherent, dissonant, and just plain uncomfortable.” Still, it managed to reach #1 on US album charts, as did its somber single “Family Affair” (although its lyrics focused not on the joy of family but on the dysfunctional family).

Perhaps sensing that he’d let the pendulum swing too far, Stone re-emerged in 1973 with the decidedly more commercial album “Fresh,” which turned out to be the group’s last Top Ten album, and its hit, “If You Want Me to Stay,” their final Top Twenty appearance. It comes across as upbeat as “Riot” was hostile, and included not only his most overt love song, “Let Me Have It All,” but also the only cover Sly ever recorded, and a curious choice it was: “Que Sera Sera,” the old Doris Day hit, radically reworked with Rose Stone on vocals. There’s actually a song called “If You Want Me to Stay” that warned us all we shouldn’t expect much from him going forward: “You can’t take me for granted and smile, /Count the days I’m gone, forget reachin’ me by phone /Because I promise I’ll be gone for a while…”

In 1974, Stone took the unusual step of getting married on stage at a Madison Square Garden concert, but that spectacle of a wedding became a marriage that crashed and burned in a matter of months. Sly and The Family Stone also dissolved as a band around that time, and Stone’s career seemed to fall precipitously, despite several lame comeback attempts. His 1976 effort, “Heard You Missed Me, Well I’m Back,” didn’t even chart, and his label released him. In 1979, the folks at Epic chose to release “Ten Years Too Soon,” a poorly conceived disco remix of a handful of his best work of the late ’60s. (It’s mercifully out of print, but I found the discoed version of “Everyday People” on Spotify and included it on my playlist so you can judge for yourself.)

One last release, 1982’s “Ain’t But the One Way,” was supposed to be a collaboration between Stone and Funkadelic’s George Clinton, but both men seemed to give up on it, and it sounds like it. One reviewer wrote, “When a once politically astute pop statesman writes an ode to New Jersey called ‘Hobo Ken,’ you know something is wrong. If you crave the beat, you’ll find it here, but in no way can this album be regarded as a success.”

Stone retreated further and further from public life. He was arrested for cocaine possession multiple times in the 1980s, and he served 14 months in a rehab center beginning in 1989. He made a few unimpressive talk show appearances, and he showed up at Sly and The Family Stone’s 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and at the 2006 Grammy Awards for a group tribute, but otherwise, he seemed to have vanished. He claimed in 2007 that he had “a library of about a hundred new songs,” but they never saw the light of day except for three new tracks on “I’m Back! Family and Friends,” a lackluster 2011 re-recording of ’60s songs with selected guests (Jeff Beck, Ray Manzarek, Ann Wilson) making instrumental contributions. It, too, failed to chart. 

Sly Stone in 2016

Despite all these setbacks, Sly Stone’s legacy as a pioneer and innovator remains steadfast among many dozens of musicians who emulated his music and raved about his impact on their own records. Jazz greats Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock began incorporating electric instruments and funk grooves into jazz, while Prince, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Roots have all covered Sly & the Family Stone songs.

Questlove, leader of The Roots and a dedicated rock/funk historian, is behind the recently released documentary, “Sly Lives! (a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius),” which deftly tells Sly’s story, warts and all. “Yes, Sly battled addiction,” he said. “Yes, he disappeared from the spotlight. But he lived long enough to outlast many of his disciples, to feel the ripples of his genius return through hip-hop samples, documentaries, and his memoir (published in 2023). Still, none of that replaces the raw beauty of his original work.”

Emilio Castillo, bandleader for Tower of Power, added, “All of us in music today owe a great deal to his influence on our music. He greatly influenced the way I approach rhythm, and also the way we in Tower of Power approach live performance. I pray that I will see him up there in heaven and I know that the band up there, with Otis and Jimi and all other greats, just got a whole lot better.”

Even some of his abandoned Family Stone members had kind words in the wake of his death. “I feel like a piece of my heart left with Sly,” said sax man Jerry Martini. “We were close friends for 60 years. He credits me with starting the band, but it was his musical genius that made music history. He will always be in my heart, and I will continue to celebrate his music with the Family Stone. Rest well, my dear friend. You will be greatly missed.”

Marvin Gaye’s daughter Nona weighed in with this comment: “He was family to our family. My father had deep respect for him, and I carry that same love and admiration. Thank you, Sly, for breaking boundaries, for making noise that mattered, and for never playing it safe. Your courage in sound will never be forgotten. Fly high, beautiful soul. The funk is eternal now.”

R.I.P., Sly.

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This Spotify playlist offers about 30 tracks by Sly and The Family Stone — hits as well as deeper album tracks — arranged chronologically according to release date.