A Lifetime-Plus of Music

     I consider today’s album to be one of the more significant and notable albums in the evolution of pop and rock and roll music for several reasons, which I will address in more detail below.  “Rubber Soul”, the sixth studio album from the Beatles, is rated #35 on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

     I have always looked at “Rubber Soul” as the first of two albums that represent the “middle” of the Beatles’ unprecedented run of studio recordings in the 1960s.  No longer contained by the boundaries of the traditional two minute and forty second format about relatively innocent love, this album greatly extends their boundaries, both in lyrical and musical content.  This album has also been attributed as the true beginning of the “album focus” for the band, and for the industry as a whole, where the ultimate deliverable became the full album as a presentation, versus a random collection of songs.

     Building on their success and shaping their format for the remainder of their career, this album is 100% original compositions, with two George Harrison songs and the first co-writing credit for Ringo spliced in between the continuously building rivalry of songwriting from Lennon and McCartney.  While John and Paul still worked with each other and helped shape each other’s songs, “Lennon-McCartney” songs were increasingly becoming one or the other in reality, if not in credit.

     The album opens with Paul’s simple rocker “Drive My Car”, followed by one of John’s best songs ever, “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”.  Highlighted by George Harrison playing the sitar, this warm and cozy ode to a slightly taboo and forbidden love remains one of my favorite songs the Beatles ever recorded.  Again, this is a big step beyond “I Want to Hold Your Hand”.  Paul’s “You Won’t See Me”, an extremely catchy melody comes next, and is once again followed by an even better Lennon song, “Nowhere Man”.  Even as a classic Lennon tune (with great harmony vocals), if you listen closely, you can see what an accomplished musician Paul McCartney was and still is.  His bass line in this song is fantastic, even under the mostly acoustic guitar tracks.  Side one ends with “Michelle”, just one of many top-notch ballad melodies from Paul over the course of their career.

     Highlights of side two include “Girl” by John, a melancholy, almost-ragtime, sad song with beautiful backing vocals.  “In My Life” is one of the very few Beatles songs whose authorship remains somewhat in dispute.  Both John and Paul claim to have had a lead role in writing this song, although John’s lead vocals through the main verses certainly skews my assumption on who wrote the majority of this song.  It really doesn’t matter, it is just an uncommonly positive and affectionate love song with a brilliant melody.  “Wait” is a bit of a hidden gem, really showcasing Paul’s high harmony vocal paired with John.

     As noted, there are two George Harrison tracks on this album, but in my mind, he is still working to raise his level up to where John and Paul are as songwriters at this point.  However, I do like “If I Needed Someone”, and you can very much hear the influence of the Byrds and their guitar sound and harmony vocals all through the track, as British bands and American artists continued to inspire and influence one another. Ringo’s lead track is the up-tempo and catchy country-esque pop song that is pure Ringo, one of his best.

     In summary, Rubber Soul is major step forward for the Beatles and a great representation of their collective talents.  As with other albums, this material was so strong that two of their best songs from that time, “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out” were co-released as a single and not even included on the album.  It is just mind boggling how many good songs this band delivered.   

     Often compared with their next release, “Revolver”, I tend to lean towards “Rubber Soul” as my preferred choice of the two.  By this point, the Beatles had all but given up playing pop songs to stadiums full of screaming girls, preferring the relative safety, quiet and isolation of the recording studio to display and master their craft.    “Rubber Soul” demonstrates the merit and rationale behind this choice, even as a band who learned their way playing thousands of live shows along the way.  

     I just wrapped up 71 songs, 4 hours and 54 minutes worth of the hardest working man in show business, Mr. Please, Please Himself, the Godfather of Soul, the one and only James Brown.  This massive gathering of R&B and funk, the comprehensive collection “Star Time”,  covers a large time span of his career, but I sequenced it in the mid-1960s as he was hitting his peak.  This definitive album is the #54 album on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

     Some key thoughts… first off, James Brown was a bad dude.  We heard it earlier live at the Apollo Theater, but you get it on full display and with top notch studio production here.  Secondly, he had a phenomenal collection of artists who played in his band and provided the backing vocals.  They were tight, and really added to the greatness of the sound.  Third, if you ever wondered where about 87% of early hip-hop samples came from, they can probably be found somewhere on this record.

     So many timeless hits on this album… “Try Me” and “I’ll Go Crazy”, with the Famous Flames, take you back to that smokin’ night at the Apollo.  “Night Train”, “It’s a Man’s World”, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”, “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine”, “Super Bad”, “Get Up Offa That Thing”, and of course, “I Got You (I Feel Good)”.  Live in concert, it is quite the spectacle when a top performer takes control of the building, and in his prime, it is hard to imagine anyone with a more dominant and commanding stage presence than James Brown.

     71 songs later, my life is much groovier, funkier and just more colorful than it was the day before.  Get down like James Brown…

     Over the course of this ~ 1.5-year experience, I will listen to albums I have heard a thousand times, albums I know in part, and even encounter a new discovery now and then from an artist I only knew in passing.  Rarely do I come across an artist or album I have absolutely no prior exposure to, but that is exactly the case today as I listen to the #7 rated folk album on nme.com, “Frost and Fire” by The Watersons.

     I really don’t know where to begin.  This is certainly a unique and different sound from any album I have listened to so far, but I have to say, it is quite infectious.  The Watersons are an English folk vocal group, mostly from the Waterson family, performing as a four person act, with two male and two female voices.  Their songs are almost complete acapella with no instrumental accompaniment.  I have been thinking all day how to describe this sound.  I think the best I can do is as follows…  It is one part Abba, one part The Mamas and Papas, one part Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull, one part old English church chorus, and one part Bilbo Baggins.  The sound is extremely traditional and old European, in the most charming manner possible.  There are a few songs that are solo performances, but I definitely prefer the ensemble pieces with their quirky, yet rich harmonies.  Among my favorite songs are “The Derby Ram”, “The Holly Bears a Berry”, “Earsdon Sword Dance Song”, and “Hal-An-Tow”.

     This experience is all about comparison, discovery and appreciation, and I really hope you do yourself the favor of listening to The Watersons.  I don’t say this lightly, but I definitely feel enriched for the time I spent (and will spend) listening to this remarkable quartet.

     We have talked a lot about the perpetual hit machines in the 1960s, the Beatles and the Beach Boys.  That being said, aside from the Beatles, no artist produced more #1 hits in the 1960s than The Supremes, also known as Diana Ross and The Supremes.  Today’s album is the collection “Anthology”, a greatest hits collection.  I sequenced this album in late 1965, as they were at the peak of their Motown magic.

     The lineup shifted over time, but the most enduring members were lead singer Diana Ross, and Mary Wilson.  The relationship and role definition between Ross and Wilson, along with the others who were a part of the Supremes over the long history of the act, has no shortage of drama, but I will focus on the music and impressive streak of hits this act delivered during this run.  Sadly, since I began this blog, we lost Mary Wilson, who passed away on February 21^st of this year.

     Let’s look at the 12 #1 hits, in sequential order, all of which were included in this collection.  “Where Did Our Love Go”, “Baby Love”, “Come See About Me”, “Stop! In the Name of Love”, “Back in My Arms Again”, “I Hear a Symphony”, “You Can’t Hurry Love”, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”, “Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone”, “The Happening”, “Love Child”, and “Someday We’ll Be Together”.  Ten of these twelve songs were written by the Motown songwriting trio of Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and Eddie Holland, who also created hits for The Four Tops, The Jackson Five and other Motown artists.

     As I listened to all of these (and others) together, I realized once again just how many classic songs they gave us, many of which have gone on to be big hits for other artists as well.  I also really appreciated the simplicity and elegance of Diana Ross.  I read one summary that described her voice as “thin”, and that is probably a fair word, but I take that as a complimentary description of her style.  She doesn’t riff, she doesn’t over-sing, she just delivers the melody with a consistently beautiful tone, and the accompaniment of Wilson and her peers are an important and very well produced part of the sound.

     This “Anthology” collection also includes some interesting covers, including “A Hard Day’s Night” by the Beatles, and “Whistle While You Work”, by… umm… Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  A couple of interesting choices, but I think I will stick with the hits as I load up my playlist from this album.

     We will look at many other Motown artists, during and after their run of greatness under the watchful eye and direction of Berry Gordy, but Diana Ross and the Supremes are an excellent starting point for one of the most influential phases in all of American music.

     Today’s album is an eclectic and interesting choice for me, even as the #178 album on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  It is also rated as the #4 all-time soul album by digitaldreamdoor.com.  When I saw it was an Otis Redding day, I was pretty excited, as I’m a big fan of pretty much anything I had heard from him to date.  My final take on this album?  A bit of a mixed bag.

     This album, “Otis Blue”, is a series of mostly covers and three original songs.  In most cases, an artist, particularly one with the talent of Otis Redding, can take someone else’s song and make it his own.  That being said, I wish I could say I loved it, and I really wanted to, but I can also see I’m somewhat trapped and attached to some of these other versions as well.  Let’s start with Sam Cooke.  Two of the songs on this album are “Shake” and “Wonderful World”, and while I appreciate the rougher takes by Otis, I do miss the vocal purity of Cooke, especially on “Wonderful World”.  And since we are speaking of smooth and pure, I also struggled to embrace his version of the Temptations’ “My Girl”, written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White, mainly due to the lacking of the harmony backing vocals so essential to the song.  As I heard Otis tear into “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, I was hoping for a funkier sound, but to me, it came across as just a mediocre lounge version; I think the arrangement could have been done much better.  Even on an original song, “Respect”, which I learned was written by Otis Redding, I was unable to escape the much more well-known rendition by Aretha Franklin.

     I think my favorite moment on the album was his version of “Change Gonna Come”, again by Sam Cooke.  Deep in the fight of 1965, I am moved by any powerful version of this song, especially by a great singer like Otis Redding, and it is truly heartbreaking to think how quickly both Otis and Sam Cooke were gone after these recordings, not living long enough to witness the transformation our country mandated, in part due to the powerful inspiration of their music.

     As I discussed my mixed reaction to this album today with one of my musical north stars, my son, we both agreed that sometimes even our favorite artists go in a direction we don’t fully appreciate or embrace, and that it is just fine.  Clearly, for most, this is an album that carried tremendous weight and influence, and I remain a big Otis Redding fan, eagerly anticipating what he and others have waiting for me tomorrow and beyond.

     It is no secret that Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone magazine have a rather biased appreciation of Bob Dylan.  As I joked with my son, I estimated that 97 of the Top 100 Albums on their list were Bob Dylan albums.  Now, now… I know that’s an exaggeration, particularly with their most recent list which added eight years of music and took a much more diverse look at the music across all genres than on previous versions of that list.  All of that being said, we look at the highest rated album to date, the #18 album on the list, “Highway 61 Revisited”.

     In terms of advance and progress, this album was a controversial landmark for Dylan as he performed with a backing band, including electric guitars, organ, and a full rhythm section.  Mike Bloomfield played electric guitar and Al Kooper played organ, among others.  The hallmark song of this album kicks it off, the legendary “Like a Rolling Stone”.  This has always been my favorite Dylan song, coming from one who hasn’t always been a big fan, but I just love the mix of organ and the main chord progression of this song.  Having never listened to this album in its entirety before, it was great to see the theme and sound of this song proliferate through the entire album.  It really is a great album and worthy of the high praise.

     “Tombstone Blues”, “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”, “From a Buick 6”, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, and particularly “Queen Jane Approximately” really build on the lead song to deliver an album that exudes warmth, soul and good vibrations.  This album is a huge departure from his acoustic folk roots, but it really works and I’m glad I finally discovered what all the hype was about.  I can now appreciate both sides of Bob Dylan, and understand his brilliance as a songwriter.  Backing band or not, he rates as one of the most influential artists of the 20^th century, and this album underscores that fact from beginning to end.

I realized there are two other key observations I somehow excluded from my first post. First, “You’re Going To Lose That Girl” is my other absolute favorite song on this album. From a style perspective, I feel like this song would have fit better on “A Hard Day’s Night”, as it is a classic Lennon lead with Paul and George with their typically phenomenal harmony backing vocals. It is very reminiscent of “You Can’t Do That”, and most likely an all-time Top 10 Beatles song for me.

Secondly, I think it is worth noting this is yet another Beatles album that ends with a rousing Lennon cover. In this case, it is “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”, originally written and performed by Larry Williams in 1958. Even as they expanded their creative range in many directions, they still had the ability and the willingness to transport themselves back to the Cavern Club, back when they were a young and hungry rock and roll band working to master their craft.

     As was frequently the case in the 1960s, if a Rolling Stones album came out, you had to know the Beatles wouldn’t be far behind.  “Help!”, their fifth album and soundtrack to their second movie, was released in August of 1965.  It is rated as album number 266 on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

     Even with a band I have followed as closely as the Beatles, it is great that I continue to learn new facts as I study each of these albums.  I never previously realized that with “Help!” as well as with “A Hard Day’s Night”, the songs from the film are featured on side one, with the second side allotted for other music they had recorded during that time.  This is probably due to the fact that I have never devoted as much attention to the films as I have the music they produced.  The title track “Help!” and “Ticket to Ride”, both Lennon leads, continued their unprecedented string of #1 singles.  Ringo sings the Buck Owens country hit “act Naturally”, which is one of my favorite Ringo Starr leads as a Beatle, and George Harrison has two of his own compositions on the album, “I Need You” and “You Like Me Too Much”.  Neither of those tracks really stand out, as John bluntly once said about George’s early songwriting days with the band, “George’s songs weren’t quite up to snuff”.  Of course, that would be proven inaccurate as time passed and Harrison evolved with the band.

     There are three songs on this album that represent to me, not only some of the Beatles best work, but a notable advancement in sound and style.  “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”, performed and written by John, is probably the most timeless and impactful song on the album.  He was never shy about acknowledging this was him trying to do Bob Dylan, and as can be the case, he may have done Dylan better than Dylan.  The Beatles hadn’t fully moved away from their pop expertise, but this song was a major step ahead of “She Loves You” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand”.

     Equally compelling to me on the second side, is a two-song sequence of McCartney songs, “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “Yesterday”.  As I listened to these songs side by side, I realized this was the real breakthrough for Paul as the most legendary living performing artist I have ever personally seen.  Like the rest of the band, you can hear him maturing and escaping the early “Little Richard-esque” baby-faced beginning with these songs.  With these acoustic performances, the Beatles were notably expanding their catalog, and with “Yesterday”, this became the first song recorded by just a single member of the band, a trend that increased over time, for good and for bad.

     “Help!” was a massively successful album and project, and in many ways, represented the end of the Beatles as a pop culture phenomenon first, fully delivering an album of depth, creativity, and enduring quality.

     While discussing “For Your Love” by the Yardbirds, I noted that while similar in influence and style to the Rolling Stones, I felt they lacked the same creative songwriting, energy and diversity in their music.  This next album from the Stones, “Out of Our Heads”, released in July of 1965, could not illustrate this point any more effectively.  This is the fourth album from the Stones, and it is a very impressive collection of songs.

     Of course, it was on this album that the world first learned that Mick Jagger just “Can’t Get No Satisfaction”.  To this day, “Satisfaction” is probably their most recognized and iconic song, and it is frequently the set closer on recent tours.  A perfect blend of Keith’s riff and Mick’s double-entendre frustration, this song is just one of many, although one of the best, representations of Mick’s provocative and boundary-stretching, serving as a theme and tone for the restless generation of the 1960s.  Other easily recognized hits on this album include “The Last Time” and “Play With Fire”.  Both are Stones originals.  The former is high-pace guitar driven rocker, while “Play With Fire” is one of their early successes with an acoustic ballad, a format they would frequently and successfully revisit on future albums.

     Beyond the obvious hits, there are some hidden gems on this album as well.  As I listened to “Good Times” I thought, this sure sounds like a Sam Cooke song.  And naturally, that’s because it is.  This song is the perfect contrast to the blues-influenced guitar rock featured through most of the album.  Directly following is a live version of Bo Diddley’s “I’m All Right”, which at this pace, has a lot of the audience give and take similar to “Shout” by The Isley Brothers.  Perhaps my favorite song on the entire song is the Jagger-Richards “The Spider and the Fly”, a simple but extremely catchy blues-rock number that only the Stones could deliver so perfectly.

     I listened to this album several times and will be adding a lot of this one to my extended playlist.  This is the early Rolling Stones at their very best, still shaded by their blues roots but pushing forward in multiple directions to explore new places in their expanding repertoire.

     Of the many bands who joined in the “British Invasion” following the success of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, most tended to follow either the pop formula associated with the Beatles or the blues-influenced track of the Stones.  One of the more notable and successful blues acts to come next from the UK was the Yardbirds, a band that is probably more well-known for who was in the band than the music they actually produced.

     The album “For Your Love” was released in the U.S. in mid-1965, and was a mix of songs featuring their first highly rated lead guitarist Eric Clapton, and his successor, Jeff Beck.  Interestingly enough, it was the recording of the single “For Your Love”, the most commercially successful song on the album, that alienated and frustrated Clapton enough to leave the band to join John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers in an attempt to get closer to the blues recipe he believed the Yardbirds should have stayed with. 

     This album, and the Yardbirds as a whole, are a bit of an enigma to me.  As you listen, you can definitely hear the blues roots, with a formula similar to what was coming from the Stones.  Lead singer Keith Relf had a great rock-blues voice, and he was also an excellent harmonica player.  Even so, with that intent and some of the greatest musicians of the rock blues era, I have always found the Yardbirds to be a bit uninspiring, and listening to “For Your Love” did not change my mind.  I think at the end of the day, even though I can appreciate some of the songs like “I Ain’t Got You” and “Got to Hurry”, I think their weakest link was the songwriting and the lack of compelling hooks or interesting takes on the blues approach.  It is certainly very insightful to hear the earliest of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and ultimately Jimmy Page as he joined the band eventually as well, but there just isn’t nearly as much here that grabs me like what I get from any of the early Rolling Stones albums.  I would argue the lack of staying power and commercial success somewhat validates my take here.

     I had to be sure to include the Yardbirds in this process to help pave the way for what comes next from Clapton, Beck and Page, however I fully believe that each of them moved on to much bigger and better things in subsequent reinventions.