Who's Crying Now?

Bruce Springsteen has taken some hits for his vocal opposition Trump, and the latest hit he's taken comes from one of his peers, a fellow rock and roll musician who owes his career to being in the right place at the right time - and to pure luck.

In 1980, Gregg Rolie, the keyboardist and singer from Santana who had started Journey with fellow Santana alumnus and guitarist Neal Schon five years earlier, decided to leave the band.  He and Schon went to a show by a British band, the Babys, whose lead singer, John Waite, would eventually find success as a solo artist.  Rolie admired the prowess of the Babys' American keyboard player and told Schon that he might make a good replacement for him as Journey's new keyboardist.  Schon agreed, and he later approached the fellow and offered him the job of becoming Journey's new ivory tickler.  The musician accepted, and that's how Jonathan Cain joined Journey. one of the most successful - commercially, anyway - rock bands of the late seventies and early eighties, debuting with the band on their 1981 album Escape.

At least that's how I remember the story.  I heard it on MTV years ago.

Now, anyone who knows me would say that I more or less agree with the critics, despite my respect for Neal Schon as a guitarist and Gregg Rolie as a keyboardist (and their first two drummers, Aynsley Dunbar and Steve Smith, are accomplished musicians in their own right, Dunbar as a blues drummer in John Mayall's group and Smith as a jazz drummer), that Journey's music is mostly junk.  It's corporate rock that follows a straitjacketed formula of pumped-up rockers and power ballads, the spectacularly insufferable "Don't Stop Believin'" being a prime example of the latter - rock and roll on automatic pilot.  It's all hackwork, and as a member of Journey at its commercial peak - and as the composer of "Faithfully," another power ballad that led some rock fans to wonder if Lionel Richie had written it under a pseudonym - Jonathan Cain may very well be the biggest hack of them all.

So bear that in mind when I tell you this: Cain said that Springsteen should "shut up" and stop telling people how to vote and what to think of Donald Trump, saying that music should be apolitical and that the sole purpose of musicians is to entertain, not preach politics.

"Guys like Bruce Springsteen should shut up, you know?" Cain said.  "I mean . . . really? Do your art. I try to keep politics out of my music." 

Cain could have stopped there, but he accused Springsteen of lack of patriotism, having just found out after forty-two years that the title song of Springsteen's 1984 album Born In the U.S.A. was not a celebration of right-wing Republicanism.

"And Bruce, I mean, what the heck? I used to like him, and now he’s just annoying. He's an annoying, bitter old man. I mean, stop it. Really. You were born in the U.S.A., weren’t you, dude? So act like it. But even that song, if you look at the lyrics, I mean, it’s a kind of a diss to our country," he said.

Even that song, if you look at the lyrics, it's the thoughts of an embittered Vietnam veteran who can't reconcile the American promise of freedom and opportunity to what he was fighting for in Vietnam, even as he can't get a job in the local oil refinery in his hometown and can't even get any help from his local Veterans Administration office.  Cain speaks as if the concerns of the working class folks that didn't achieve the success that Springsteen and Cain himself did don't matter.

By the way, because Journey was so faceless, even their own fans couldn't name one member besides singer Steve Perry without looking at the credits of one of their Journey LPs, it appears that Cain is the annoying, bitter old man here.  He happens to be only a year younger than Springsteen.  But nowhere nearly as renowned. 

The way Cain attacks Springsteen for being unpatriotic and dismissive of American values - when Springsteen is engaging in the greatest American value of all, freedom of speech, especially in the face of a tyrant like Trump - you'd think Cain was one of those Christian conservatives who think being against Trump is like being against America.  Well, he is.

"Now, people say, 'Well, you’re a Christian, and you’re conservative,' and I’m like, 'So what?'" Cain said.  "I don't preach it on stage. I don't spend ten minutes talking about it," Cain said.

Well, he has his wife do that for him.  See, his wife is Paula White, Trump's spiritual advisor - the chick who famously speaks in tongues at the drop of a hat. "Aka kaka wokka makka koka kola oko uno iki icki kama taka tiki torko ticky tacky kaka waka maka braka ooga ooga ooga ooga chaka!"  She sounds like Fozzie Bear on acid.

Did I happen to mention that this is the third marriage for Cain and White - so much for Christian values, eh? -  and that Cain is notably older than his wife?  She was fifteen years old in 1981, when her schoolmates - and possibly White herself - were buying Journey's Escape album.

But then. younger conservative women marrying older men is the thing these days.  Look at Karoline Leavitt. 

And seriously, where has Cain been all this time?  Bruce Springsteen, critical of Republican politicians?  He just got that?  How far back do you want to go?  During his 1988 tour, Springsteen famously yelled at one of his audiences, "Don't vote for that f**kin' Bush!" 

Being the keyboardist in one of the most popular rock bands of the early eighties is nothing for Jonathan Cain to brag about, as Journey, like most bands of the time, made the sort of bland, unchallenging rock that was as satisfying as a diet soft drink and more bloated - the sort of rock music that led many young listeners to embrace the even more awful sounds of hip-hop and synthesizer-based disco that suddenly flowered like algae blooms after MTV premiered, because rock and roll, thanks largely to bands like Journey, had become that lame.  As you can gather, I don't think Journey is worth the trip.

And it's appropriate that Cain was in the Babys, because when he disses Springsteen, he certainly acts like one.

Turn To Stone

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony for the class of 2017 was held a few days ago, and as always, I have something to say about it. Lots to say in fact.  Rock and roll seems to have reached a critical condition where it struggles for relevance in this century even as the Hall struggles to be taken seriously.   Right now, both seem to be losing their respective battles.  I mean, the keepers of the Hall inducted a corporate rock band that was a leading cause of rock's decline in favor of rap, and at the same time, they induct another rapper!  Go figure.

So what do I think of the new class of inductees overall?  Well, I'm glad you asked, because I was going to tell you anyway.  So here it goes:

the Electric Light Orchestra.  Jeff Lynne's classical pop-rock band did for strings what Chicago did for brass instruments - that is, they turned their sound into such a cliché that it got really tiresome really fast.  But I'm glad ELO got inducted.  Why?  Because a lot of their seventies hits were very good in spite of their overuse of strings.  Notable examples include "Do Ya," a remake of Lynne's old song from his time with the Move, as well as "Strange Magic" and "Showdown," and I always loved the humor of "Don't Bring Me Down" - including the fact that Lynne occasionally sings the song's misheard bridge lyric, "Don't bring me down, Bruce!" instead of the correct lyric, "Don't being me down, Gruß" ( a German-language term of endearment), in live performances.  But there's another reason Lynne deserves to be honored.  As a member of George Harrison's Traveling Wilburys, he injected life into his fellow Wilburys' recordings.  He co-produced Roy Orbison's last album and Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever LP, and he helped the three surviving Beatles turn two demos of unreleased John Lennon songs into actual Beatles songs, the last two new Beatles songs ever released, for the group's Anthology series.  Heck, Lynne should be in the Hall for that last achievement alone.

Joan Baez.  Joan Baez should definitely be the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, even though she herself doesn't consider herself a rock and roller.  Because she did record songs from her buddy Bob Dylan with great care and feeling, she inspired Dylan on more than one occasion, and she helped infuse rock with political awareness.  Just forget her awful cover of the Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."  Never mind that.

Journey.  Journey's induction is proof that the inmates are running the asylum - or, at least, the fans are running the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (fans can vote now).  What was so bad about Journey?  Well, for one thing, Steve Perry (who showed up at the induction ceremonies but did not perform with the group) has a voice with all the charm of a methane fire, the group's founders - guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist Gregg Rolie - never showed the same spark they had when they were in Carlos Santana's band and Carlos was calling the shots, and Journey's music was always coldly programmed to fit into an AOR radio format - a radio format that has fallen on hard times since Journey's eighties glory days.  Stop believing, already.  As I said back in December, the banality of Journey and other corporate rock bands of their ilk made rock so boring and predictable that kids turned to rap for excitement, relegating rock and roll to a long and steady decline.  Quite an achievement, eh? And certainly a big reason for why we have to suffer the insufferable induction of . . .

Tupac Shakur.  No, no, no.  Rap is not rock, and it's not even music.  Next!

Yes.  Just say no.  Despite a few clever progressive rock tracks like "Roundabout" and "Long Distance Runaround," most of Yes's music was meaningless twaddle, and Tales From Topographic Oceans wasn't even good enough to be twaddle.   Their reputation is based on a few choice cuts from their early-seventies albums Fragile and Close To the Edge and their 1983 hit single "Owner of a Lonely Heart,"  but if classic rock radio were forced to dig deeper into their catalog and play more of their work, Yes would have never even made it on the ballot.  And when was the last time you heard any edits from Tales From Topographic Oceans on the radio?  Good grief, even Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick is held in higher esteem, and that was supposed to be a joke!         

Pearl Jam.  Absolutely, unequivocally and definitely a must for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Their music, part of the Seattle grunge scene of the early nineties, gave voice to a generation - mine - of frustrated slackers done in by Reaganomics before we even got into the workforce, and frontman Eddie Vedder is still singing and speaking for us all these years later.  Rock on! 

And the recipient of the Award for Musical Excellence . . .  

Nile Rodgers.  I begrudgingly acknowledge Rodgers' honor, which would be easier to do if he hadn't worked with Madonna and Duran Duran.  But he did produce David Bowie and was likely an inspiration for Prince, so sure, why not?  And some of those Chic records he was a part of were okay.  Just don't get me to try to dance to any of them at a party.  No air guitar in them. ;-)

As always, I have my complaints.  The aforementioned Jethro Tull are still shut out again, while Family - more progressive on one album than Yes were over the course of ten albums - apparently remains ineligible for simply never having broken through commercially in America.  (Thanks for nothing, Bill Graham.)  And while hope springs eternal for 2018, I'm not holding my breath.  And if the Hall wants to honor another corporate rock act, at least induct Foreigner - Lou Gramm is a great singer, and they belong in there for "Long, Long Way From Home" alone!

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was originally established to honor rock and roll performers but has since gone on to include performers representing a variety of pop styles.  Or so I've been told.  

Any Way You Want It

A lot of rock fans are, naturally, up in arms about Tupac Shakur being among the inductees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2017, because, after all, rap isn't rock, right?  Well, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame board long ago decided that it is, and that anyone who argues otherwise is making a claim based on racist, elitist grounds (aesthetic grounds?  oh no, can't be that!), so there's little if anything we can do about that.

But Journey?  Yes?  Are you kidding me?  Journey is one of the reasons rock lost much of its audience (and its coolness) to rap in the first place, because the post-industrial sounds of anger and resentment coming from North Philly, the South Bronx, the West Side of Chicago and East Orange, New Jersey (among other places named after compass directions) sounded a whole lot fresher and cooler to kids than the carbon-copy, automatic-pilot corporate rock that bands like Journey put out in the eighties.  And Yes, which started out as a progressive rock band like Family (yes, Family were overlooked again), got too progressive at the expense of rock - Yes's music became so ponderous and pretentious, they ended up being the poster boys for the reason punk had to happen.  A couple of good tracks like "All Good People" and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" aren't enough to hang your hat on.

For the record, Joan Baez has also been inducted (and about time, too, since she's been just as relevant as Bob Dylan in the folk-rock scene and maybe - maybe, I stress - more so than Joni Mitchell), and so have the Electric Light Orchestra and Pearl Jam.  I'll have more to say on all of this when the induction ceremonies are held in April.  (And the Award for Musical Excellence for Chic's Nile Rodgers?  Well, he did produce David Bowie.  I'll have more to say about that in April as well.)

So, the Pac Man notwithstanding, maybe the members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame board are at least finally coming to their senses by inducting more guitar acts, including Joan Baez?  Don't you believe it.  When Britney Spears becomes eligible for induction, she will be inducted.  Ditto for Miley Cyrus.  After all, Madonna was inducted.     

And Jethro Tull still haven't been inducted.  Martin Barre may be the most underrated guitarist in all of British rock, but the Hall's leadership obviously has contempt for any band whose leader - in this case, Ian Anderson - plays the flute.