Who Cares?

The Who - or what's left of them - are on the farewell tour that was supposed to have taken place 43 years ago.

After Keith Moon died in 1978, the remaining members of the Who, Roger Daltrey (left, above), Pete Townshend (right, above) and John Entwistle decided to move forward with former Faces drummer Kenney Jones replacing Moon and, in addition to a tour in 1979 (the one that included to the infamously fatal stampede at the Riverfront Coliseum that December), the band cut Face Dances in 1981 to meh reviews.  Townshend, recognizing that the Who just didn't sound the same as it had before, when Moon was in the drummer's chair, but not yet realizing that Moon's absence was the sole reason for that, started writing new songs for another album, and a year later, It's Hard was released.  Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed it their best album since Who's Next, but the magazine was alone in that assessment, as even its best, most early-seventies-Who-evocative cuts, "Athena and "Eminence Front," couldn't redeem it.  At that point, Townshend decided that the Who's 1982 tour would be its last, and in 1984, he confirmed that the Who had broken up and wouldn't even be a studio band as had originally been envisioned.

That should have been the end of it, bar one last set at the London Live Aid concert in 1985.  But in 1989, Townshend, Daltrey and Entwistle reunited to tour again (Jones had wisely moved on) and to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the release of their rock opera Tommy, rather than do the simple thing and remaster the original album for a new CD issue.  (Would the three surviving Beatles have toured in 1987 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Sgt. Pepper?)  As Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell later wrote, the remaining members of the Who got a whole ensemble of backup musicians to compensate for Keith Moon's absence, and they didn't even come close.  The Who would tour again throughout the nineties and into the new century, even after the 2002 death of John Entwistle - which occurred in the middle of a Who tour - as well as continuing to perform Tommy on occasion even though the stage musical should have been enough.  (Their current tour coincidentally - noncoincidentally? - intersects with the fiftieth anniversary of the Tommy movie directed by Ken Russell.)  In the forty-odd years since they said they broke up, the Who have recorded only one studio album - 2006's Endless Wire, which got a modicum of attention before Who fans in Whoville returned to listening to Who Are You.  Apart from Endless Wire, and solo albums, the Who have created no new music since their last album as a quartet.

Why is this so upsetting for me, as you can clearly tell by my tone?  Because the Who's refusal to call it a day and step aside until Daltrey and Townshend became octogenarians is indicative of what rock and roll has become since the mid-eighties, which is precisely the time that rap and dance-diva pop began to take over the charts.  The early 1980s found record sales in a depression and many veteran rock and roll acts getting long in the tooth, but a few newer artists still managed to break through and score a few hits, from traditional AOR performers like Billy Squier to spritely pop rockers like Men at Work to the Stray Cats, who seemed poised to bring back rockabilly the way the Rolling Stones brought back the blues.  Heck, the Clash finally broke through on American radio and in the Billboard singles chart.  The Clash opened for the Who on that 1982 tour, and Pete Townshend confided to Joe Strummer that he hoped the Clash would carry the torch that the Who were passing.

For various reasons (*cough cough*, MTV, *cough cough*, Russell Simmons, *cough cough*, radio conglomerates, *cough cough*), the 1980s rock and roll renewal that was supposed to mirror the earlier rock and roll renewal sparked by the British Invasion and the blues revival of the 1960s never happened, as veteran rock acts refused to step aside while younger acts strove to get attention even as rappers and pop divas started sucking up all the oxygen.  Virtually the only signs of life in rock in the 1980s were the success of hair bands and pop-metal acts spewing out recycled riffs and lyrical clichés.  U2, a postpunk band with a jagged sound no one had ever experienced before, were an exception.  Pete Townshend even said that when he heard Dave "The Edge" Evans play guitar, he wanted to give up.

But he didn't.  Rather than make a living editing books or writing avant-garde musicals, Townshend reunited the Who and turned them into an oldies act.

The Who are hardly the only veteran or "legacy" rock band to stick around or come back long after they promised to or should have hit the showers, and for younger rockers striving to get attention beyond college-indie radio play, that is unfortunate, but the Who are easily the worst offenders.  We Who fans never considered them to be as good as the Rolling Stones.  We considered them to be better than the Stones.  Better.  They were better instrumentalists, Roger Daltrey was (and still is) a better singer than Mick Jagger, and they were more innovative and experimental.  And Pete Townshend's and John Entwistle's songs were more imaginative and multifaceted than Jagger's and Keith Richards' songs celebrating pride and joy and greed and sex ("Sha-dooby!"), and even when the Who themselves wrote songs celebrating pride and joy and greed and sex, such as the Entwistle composition "Trick of the Light" from Who Are You, they were more literary about it.  The Who's reunion of its partial lineup for purely nostalgic reasons tarnishes the legacy and the accomplishments of the great band they used to be.

It would have been perfectly fine for Daltrey, Townshend, and Entwistle to continue recording solo albums and eventually fading away as new rockers took their place.  However, their refusal to exit stage left at a time when rock, being overwhelmed by Madonna, rappers, and assorted Jackson family members, was starved for new talent that did not waste their time checking out their jumper-cable hair in the mirror or write tunes making Kiss songs sound like Cole Porter tunes by comparison was one of the reasons rock declined and fell like the Roman Empire.  Note this: When the remainder of the Who's lineup regrouped in 1989, only one rock act - the insufferable Mötley Crüe - managed to have a number-one LP on the Billboard album chart.  A year later, no rock act managed that.

Remember when I said that Townshend in 1982 expected the Clash to carry the torch of rock and roll going forward?  In 1985, the same year the Who did what was supposed to be a one-shot reunion for Live Aid, the Clash, having fired Mick Jones, released a new album with two new members, Cut the Crap, and the title was so descriptive of the crap they had cut that the Clash broke up immediately thereafter.  And who is opening for the Who on this final tour?  The Joe Perry Project.  Led by the same Joe Perry who played guitar for Aerosmith for the previous fifty years.  Hardly a vote of confidence in rock and roll's future.  

Ladies and gentlemen, the two old blokes you see on the stage today are not the Who.  The Who as you originally knew them died forty years ago.  Leave them to rest in peace.  The two old blokes on stage now are a couple of music hall performers who occasionally put on a skit about a deaf, dumb and blind kid who sure plays the mean pinball.  Compare that to Illinois indie rocker Stace England and his concept band Screen Syndicate, who performed their song cycle about B-movie actress Roberta Collins once - in 2014 - and didn't even reproduce it for disc in the studio until 2022.

Now that's rock and roll.

Can Rock and Roll Come Back?

This is a question that a lot of people have asked but it is a question so obviously lacking in interest - judging from the Billboard pop charts these days - that it's almost rhetorical and moot.  But I'll try to answer it.

Rock and roll, of course, was the dominant pop form in music in the 1960s and 1970s. In this century - not this decade, this century - rock has all but disappeared from the radio and hip-hop and dance pop have overtaken it, along with streaming services as well as in the charts - much to the delight of the fans and performers of all of the newer forms of "music" that are so popular at this time.  Oh, there are still new rock acts out there, but the ones that actually get signed to a record deal are rare and the few who are lucky enough to get a recording contract are all to quickly written off as being retreads of many of the bands and solo artists from the classic-rock era.  When rock is represented in popular media, it's usually in a fiercely negative light; need I remind you of the Trolls movie Trolls World Tour from 2020, in which the Queen of the Rock Trolls tribe plans to unite the trolls under rock music - and the Rock Trolls are the bad guys?

Is it any wonder that, whenever YouTube rock-music hosts like Michael Noland and Rick Beato do videos on this question, they look like someone has hit them upside the head with a two-by-four?

In 1965, Queen Elizabeth II made the Beatles Members of the Order of the British Empire.  In 2023, King Charles III presented royal honors to - a K-Pop band?  When did the Republic of Korea join the Commonwealth?

How about the disappearing rock stations on terrestrial radio, with the Greater New York area down to one classic-rock station in the city and two AOR stations in the suburbs, neither of which have enough wattage to reach the city?

And what about the latest successes of rock and roll, likely to be the last - a new single from the Beatles and a new album from the Rolling Stones, a point of fact I mentioned in my November 6 post?  When was the last time a rock band had a number-one album?  

Veteran Los Angeles DJ Jim Ladd, who now broadcasts on Sirius XM's Deep Tracks channel and has been in radio for as long as Abbey Road has existed, recently noted on his show all of the young people who listen to him today and are inspired to form new bands.  Why do I get the impression that the same kids forming bands now will be working in offices in a few short years?  And why was Ladd's weekday show reduced to just Mondays?  And why was Deep Tracks, a channel that plays obscure rock songs from forgotten albums and forgotten bands, as well as the "other" songs on  albums like Led Zeppelin IV besides "Stairway to Heaven" and "Black Dog," moved to a channel many people with older cars and older radios can't access because it's a three-digit channel? 

So where exactly did rock and roll's decline begin?  While I wouldn't say it began in the seventies, there were definitely some troublesome stirrings as that decade came to a close, as the leading rock acts of the late seventies - and early eighties - included too many "corporate bands" - bands so faceless, professional and sterile, their music was as empty as a diet soft drink.  Nothing the Police or Elvis Costello couldn't handle, and indeed, no one really cares about Loverboy anymore.  Certainly John Lennon's murder in 1980 had a monumentally adverse effect on rock and roll, and the best the early eighties could offer in its aftermath were Journey and REO Speedwagon.  But there were several new acts that arrived in the early eighties, such as the Go-Go's (the female Beatles) and Men at Work, among others, who, if given time and the chance, could have become formidable mainstays of the decade.  Many rock fans would likely point to the premiere of MTV as the start of rock's decline, or at least a couple of years after its August 1981 debut, when it became apparent that the most commercially successful new "artists" the cable channel would spawn were musically bankrupt but visually savvy performers who could use video to promote even the thinnest and most cottony pop - you know who they are, I won't mention their names.  The rise of rap certainly accelerated rock's decline, even as rock relied increasingly on grizzled veterans who were becoming less interesting with each new record they put out.   Several of the newer rock bands that debuted, meanwhile, were the so-called "hair bands" who, in typical MTV fashion, cared more about their coiffes than their chords.  A few efforts were made to reverse the decline of rock and roll, most notably the grunge revolt, but when such efforts ran out of steam, so did rock.  

The point of no return for rock came probably came in 1999, when the most talked-about musical performer was Britney Spears and what was left of the alternative-grunge scene in the aftermath of Kurt Cobain's suicide came to an ignominious end at the disastrous Woodstock '99 festival, also known as Altamont East.  But the fatal blow might have come in the 2000s, when writer Kelefa Sanneh wrote his now-infamous 2004 New York Times essay "The Rap Against Rockism," in which he defined "rockism" as an elitist conceit in which a listener prefers rock music to manufactured and slickly produced pop because of its authenticity and its traditionalism, suggesting that the average rock fan tends to look down on those who listen to pop divas or boy "bands."  Sanneh could have stopped there, but he went on to suggest that racism, sexism and homophobia were involved - rock fans, like much of the music they listened to, tended to be straight, white, and male, and thus pitted themselves against everyone else in their desire to eschew any music made with computers, autotuners, or synthesizers to the exclusion of guitars, basses, pianos and drums.

I'll be the first person to admit that rock got too white and too male (but it never got too straight, so long as Elton John and Freddie Mercury have remained rock icons). Rock fans in the seventies and eighties should have gone beyond War and listened to more black bands like Bloodstone or the Bus Boys, and Fanny, a band David Bowie idolized, is one of the great lost female bands - no, one of the great lost bands, period - of all time because too many guys who apparently never heard of Suzi Quatro thought that women don't play hard rock.  But for Sanneh to suggest that rockism is racism ("Black rock guitarist and singer Gary Clark, Jr. responded, 'What a breakthrough!  Now I can hate . . . myself!'" 😉 ) and not even consider the idea that a penchant for musical authenticity might mean a respect for craft and technical proficiency and a dislike for any sound generated by a programmed machine no matter who - black, white, red, yellow, green - programs the machine is a dereliction of duty as a writer.

Nevertheless, the definition of rockism Sanneh offered up probably put rock in an unfavorable light with many pop fans and probably hastened rock's further decline to the point where it is now about to fall.  It has become a form no one wants to bother with very much.  It doesn't help that rockers have had little to say in the past twenty years - good grief, they had nothing to say in their defense when Sanneh railed against them and their audiences.

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So, to get back to my original question . . . can rock and roll come back? The answer is a resounding HELL NO!  The best we rock fans can do is to keep the music alive by listening to our old favorites and fine some new favorites among the underground and alternative bands who are keeping rock going musically, if not culturally and commercially.  Just don't bet that hip-hop fan in the cubicle next to yours at work that this new indie band from Murphysboro, Illinois, Rosedale, Mississippi, or, for that matter, Superior, Wisconsin is the band that is going to bring rock and roll back to the top of the charts.  You'll only lose.  

She, Tina

Bob Dylan once gave a warning to John Fogerty that succinctly describes Tina Turner's awesome talent.  Fogerty had been wary of performing Creedence Clearwater Revival songs in concert when he resumed his solo career in the 1980s for reasons too random and complicated to explain, but Dylan convinced him he had to step up to the plate and claim his old songs.  If he didn't, Dylan told him, people would "remember 'Proud Mary' as Tina Turner's song." 

That was Tina Turner in a nutshell (or a Nutbush).  Turner, who died this past Wednesday at 83, could take any song and make it her own, and if it was a cover of a song originally recorded by its composer, the composer had to be prepared to defend it.  Her covers of "Proud Mary" and the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman" with her then-husband Ike threatened to eclipse the originals, and a generation of Americans who discovered her in the eighties with her Private Dancer LP probably know her cover of David Bowie's "1984" (released on Private Dancer in 1984) better than Bowie's original.  "The Best" (not, as many people believe, titled "Simply the Best"), released in 1989, is Turner's signature song, but how many people are aware that Bonnie Tyler - no slouch herself when it comes to interpreting a song - had released her own version of the Mike Chapman-Holly Knight composition a year earlier?  

Professional songwriters who don't perform the songs they write could always count on Tina Turner to record definitive versions of their songs, and she could also take the slightest song and give it more meaning.  For every solidly written song she was given, like "Better Be Good To Me," she was handed a lightweight tune like "What's Love Got To Do With It," but she didn't just make "What's Love Got To Do With It" her own song,  she gave it more depth and more meaning.  She could also rescue a well-known bad song.  "State of Shock," the 1984 song that Michael Jackson and his brothers did with Mick Jagger, is a piece of junk, a piece of crap that makes the case that the eighties were, by and large, a horrible decade for popular music.  At Live Aid, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner performed "State of Shock" together and it sounded fantastic. Tina could redeem anything with her amazing talent. 

Songwriters were happy to give her their songs.  When Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler, a voice of sanity in the musically insane decade that was the 1980s, wrote "Private Dancer" and knew instinctively that it was not a Dire Straits song and ought to be given to a woman to sing, he probably never even considered giving it to any woman other than Tina Turner.

I saw Tina Turner twice in concert - at the aforementioned Live Aid concert in 1985 (yes, I was at Live Aid, but it's nothing to brag about, as Woodstock it wasn't, no matter what Joan Baez said)  and again at the Meadowlands in New Jersey later that year.  Both of Turner's performances were amazing, and she commanded the stage both times - even at Live Aid, where her entire performance was duetting with Jagger.  It's why she, not Janis Joplin, is called the Queen of Rock and Roll, and it's a damn shame that no classic-rock radio playlist seems to want to acknowledge that.  RIP. 😢

Beck-Ola

Whether a member of the Yardbirds or a leader of a group, British guitarist Jeff Beck, who died last week at 78, was content to let vocalists take front and center stage.  But whether is was Keith Relf, Rod Stewart or Bob Tench singing out front, Beck's guitar was the star of the show.

 

Beck, along with fellow Yardbirds alumni Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, was one of what Creem magazine once dubbed the Unholy Three - the trio of British  guitarists that redefined rock and roll by taking it out of the realm of pop and taking into heavier territory.  But while Clapton remained a purist and Page turned amplified blues chords into heavy metal, Beck pursued the free-form, blues-based experimentalism commonly associated with Jimi Hendrix.  From the beginning, when he played the solo on the Yardbirds' recording of "Heart Full of Soul" (written by Graham Gouldman), he was driven to be innovative; he developed a sound on his guitar that emulated the Indian sitar and was like an accompanying voice for Keith Relf.   His pioneering work on the debut album of the first Jeff Beck Group, which featured Rod Stewart on vocals, created an array of sounds full of reverberation and feedback that set the template for blues-based rock that many thought Jimmy Page merely replicated on the first Led Zeppelin album.   

As a solo artist, Beck would occasionally bring in a singer but he mainly recorded instrumentals, preferring to let his guitar do the talking.  Beck already knew to make his guitar speak, and the sounds he emanated from it yielded memorable tracks.  At a time when guitar heroes are becoming harder to find in a pop world that has turned its back on guitar rock, it's worth revisiting Beck's vast catalog and (re)discover and appreciate what made him so great.  RIP. 😢 

Coronavirus Playlist

On this April Fool's Day, I offer a very serious suggestion of songs to play during the COVID-19 crisis - another iPod playlist of doom.  These songs, in no particular order, are relevant in one way or another. 

"Don't Stand So Close To Me," the Police (keep a distance of six feet)

"Waiting For the Sun," the Doors (waiting for better days so we can find out what went wrong)

"It Better End Soon," Chicago (a ten-minute anti-war suite)

"It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)," R.E.M. (natch!)

"Keep Yourself Alive," Queen (ditto)

"Avant Gardener," Courtney Barnett ("I'm having trouble breathing in")

"School's Out," Alice Cooper ("We might not come back at all . . .")

"Industrial Disease," Dire Straits (and industry wants us to return to work?)

"Ventilator Blues," the Rolling Stones (of course)

"Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," Marvin Gaye (the planet is dying)

"The Last Resort," the Eagles ("seeking a place to stand . . . there is no more New Frontier, and we have got to make it here")

"Eat at Home," Paul McCartney (don't eat out!)

"Shelter From the Storm," Bob Dylan (shelter in place)

"My Hometown," Bruce Springsteen (deserted town)

"Do For the Others," Stephen Stills ("She is gone, there is no tomorrow . . . It is done so now, he must borrow the life of his brothers and living in sorrow, must do for the others")

"Life During Wartime," the Talking Heads (no parties, no discos, no fooling around - groceries to last a couple of days)

"World of Pain," Cream (no time for pity)

"Pure and Easy," the Who ("As people assemble, civilization is trying to find a new way to die . . .")

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There once was a note - listen!

Long After Dark

Tom Petty, who died earlier this week at the age of 66 of cardiac arrest, was probably rock's own greatest fan.  He met Elvis Presley as a boy on the set of the Elvis movie Follow That Dream when his uncle, a crewman on that movie, invited young Tom to watch the filming.  Petty got into Elvis's music and developed an interest in rock and roll.  He was further inspired to become rock and roller when he saw the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and soon took inspiration from Bob Dylan's raw voice and songwriting abilities and the Byrds' fusion of Dylan's folk and the Beatles' rock.  Petty - who also dug the Rolling Stones - became one of the prime movers of post-punk rock, leading his own band the Heartbreakers and delivering a sound that spoke to Middle America with its jangling guitars and steady rhythms while adding a New Wave edge that made his music sound as modern as it was a throwback to the sixties music he loved.

Petty's love for that music led him to work with his heroes.  After several collaborations with Dylan, he would join him in the Traveling Wilburys with rock and roll founding father Roy Orbison and former Beatle George Harrison (not to mention Electric Light Orchestra leader Jeff Lynne, whom PBS's Petty obituary did not mention in referring to the Wilburys).  The Traveling Wilburys were both a supergroup and a men's club of comrades who gave each other support on their own records.  (Petty also collaborated with Roger McGuinn on one of the former Byrd's solo albums.)  Petty's own records, from his and the Heartbreakers' 1979 album Damn The Torpedoes and 1982's Long After Dark to  The Last DJ from 2002, as well as solo albums like 1989's Full Moon Fever, produced a string of classic songs - "Refugee," "Don't Do Me Like That," "You Got Lucky," "I Won't Back Down," "You Don't Know How It Feels" – that had a lot of grit and a lot of heart even as songs from other "artists" in popular music increasingly displayed neither.  Petty not only savored his famous associations, he savored rock and roll and was passionately committed to keep it strong and vibrant even as the recording "industry" seemed to work against it - consider the title song from The Last DJ and its biting commentary against Big Radio for neutering rock radio's spirit.  (And it's gotten worse since then.)

The world not only lost a rock fan in Tom Petty as well as a great artist, it lost an advocate for the music.  Petty did not suffer fools in popular music gladly; he famously lamented that twenty-first-century rock and roll was populated by too many bands made up of guys that "you joined a rock and roll band to get away from."  A great loss, indeed,  RIP. :-(  

Unplugged

Big news: The electric guitar is in decline.

In other news, water is wet.

No, this story is no surprise, although the PBS NewsHour's Web site and the Washington Post have both dedicated stories to it.  What fascinates me is how many people are struggling to explain why sales of electric guitars have been steadily falling over the past few years.

Why?  Why?  Have you heard the latest hits on the charts?  All you hear are synthesizers and electronic noise.  Computerized music has been the bedrock of early-twenty-first-century pop, and electric-guitar music has been pushed aside.  Some folks have blamed the failure of the record business in the age of digital downloading that has all but rendered vinyl records and compact discs obsolete.  But other forms of music are thriving in the age of digital downloading; in fact, downloads of hip-hop are now outnumbering downloads of rock tracks.  A better explanation is that not only are kids today more into the new technology that produces new sounds and provides new ways to access them, they themselves would prefer to make music with computers because learning how to play a Fender or a Les Paul is "too hard". . .  and besides, the electric guitar takes so damn long to master.  Why take all that time to play a traditional instrument when you can program a computer to make music instantaneously?    

Then there's the coolness factor.  Rappers like Kanye West have promoted their "music" as rock and roll and have declared their sound to be relevant and fresh, implying that guitar rock is neither of those things. Old-fashioned rock and roll music played on a Fender or a Les Paul is dismissed as "dad rock," something your dorky father listens to.  Kids can't be bothered with the real genius of an Eric Clapton or a Duane Allman.  And yes, there's the racial issue - traditional rock and roll is laughed off as "white guys with guitars," ignoring not only the legacies of Hendrix and Prince but also ignoring current black rock guitarists like Gary Clark, Jr.

As hip-hop has gone on the offensive, defending traditional rock and roll in general and electric-guitar rock in particular can get you into trouble.  Remember when, in 2008, then-Oasis member Noel Gallagher criticized organizers of the annual Glastonbury Festival for booking Beyoncé's husband, Mr. Shawn Carter, as a headliner for that year's show?  I talked about this before on my blog.  Gallagher's objection was based on the the tradition that Glastonbury had been a showcase for guitar music.  But Mr. Carter himself would have none of that.

"We don't play guitars, Noel," he said of himself and other rappers, "but hip-hop has put in its work like any other form of music. This headline show is just a natural progression. Rap music is still evolving. From Afrika Bambaataa DJ-ing in the Bronx and Run-DMC going platinum, to Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince winning the first rap Grammy, I'm just next in the line. We have to respect each other's genre of music and move forward."

We all know what happened at Glastonbury in 2008, and it took awhile for Noel Gallagher to recover from the backlash he got.  It was also in 2008, incidentally, that MTV personality Matt Pinfield made his effort to launch rock station WRXP in New York.  You know all about that as well.  :-(   

And prospects for the electric guitar are unlikely to get better as more kids become entranced by electronic music.  Even Paul McCartney has conceded as much, saying that there's just no new electric-guitar talent (not even Gary Clark, Jr.?) to inspire the youth of today.  Paul McCartney, by the way, first experimented with electronic music in the 1960s, and with far less technology at his hands then than some kid with a laptop has now.

Guitar music will survive - just not the electrified sort.  In a bizarre twist, thanks to the popularity of country music and thanks also to singer-songwriters like Taylor Swift, sales of acoustic guitars are up.  

That should be good news for people whose first career choice - say, politics - doesn't pan out. 

Martin O'Malley, you do indeed have a future.

(P.S.  Although I am obviously so disgusted with where popular music has been heading that I haven't published any record reviews on Sundays in this space lately, I hope to write some more soon.) 

Bye Bye Johnny

Hail, hail, and farewell to one of the founding fathers of rock and roll.

Chuck Berry, who died this past weekend at the age of ninety, was the man who put the the rhythm and the blues into a new sound that was different from rhythm and blues.  He gave rock and roll the crisp, electric, intensely fun sound that defines it, and from three little chords he produced songs about everything from teen romance and cars to paternity issues and rock stardom.  Every rock and  roll star from the Beatles to the Black Keys could and can trace the origins of their sound to him.  As Robert Christgau once said, Berry taught a whole generation of rock and rollers how to play guitar before he ever met any of them.  Keith Richards gives Berry credit for everything he knows about rock and roll, and John Lennon once said that if rock and roll had another name, it would be Chuck Berry.

I  don't think I can say anything about Chuck Berry that hasn't already been said by everyone else . . . in fact, my review of his compilation album The Great Twenty-Eight says it all.  Needless to say, rock and roll, already in bad shape these days, has suffered its biggest loss in decades, the loss of one of its progenitors.  RIP. :-(      

When The Beatles Were Turned Down

A new year has begun, rock and roll is out of style, and solo singers dominate the charts.  Groups that play guitar music don't stand a chance.

Is rock that bad off at the start of 2017?  Actually, I was talking about 1962.

At the beginning of 1962, rock and roll was dormant to the point of disappearing altogether, what with Jerry Lee Lewis banished for marrying his cousin, Chuck Berry in jail, Buddy Holly dead, and Elvis Presley having been turned into a mainstream pop singer.  And it was in this milieu that the Beatles - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best - went into a Decca Records studio in London for an audition.  It was fifty-five years ago today, and it's actually kind of scary to think that we're marking double-nickel anniversaries in Beatledom.

The Beatles did indeed spend New Year's Day, 1962 auditioning for Decca, one of the biggest record companies in the United Kingdom.  They spent an hour in the studio and recorded a set of American rock and roll songs and pop tunes, along with some of their own original numbers, that were selected by their manager, Brian Epstein. After a straightforward run-through of their set list, producer Mike Smith (not to be confused with the Dave Clark Five's lead singer) was so bowled over he wanted to sign them immediately, but his superior, a fellow by the name of Dick Rowe, overruled him and turned the Beatles down.  Not only did he think they sounded too much like Cliff Richard's backing group, the Shadows, but he decided that, because of the popularity of solo singers in Britain (and also America, by the way), electric-guitar groups were on the way out.  "These boys won't make it," he told Epstein.  "Go back to Liverpool, Mr. Epstein, you have a successful business there."

Well, that's the short version of the story. And even though Rowe's decision is considered one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of show business, it was probably the right decision at the time.  The pop charts in both the U.K. and the U.S. showed no signs of a change of trend back to rock and roll.  Decca was kind enough to at least have given the Beatles an audition; most labels in Britain wouldn't even grant them that opportunity.  And Brian Epstein, as a record store manager in a backwater British seaport city managing and promoting a rock band at a time when rock music was out and claiming that the Beatles would be bigger than Elvis, must have seemed as preposterous as, say, a home-electronics department manager at a big-box store outside Superior, Wisconsin managing and promoting a rock band today while claiming that they'll be bigger than the Beatles - at a time when rock music is out - would seem.  

Also, Epstein is believed to have deliberately sabotaged the Beatles by choosing the fifteen songs they played - twelve covers and three Lennon-McCartney originals - knowing that most the familiar songs he chose, such as "September In the Rain" and "The Sheik of Araby," weren't the best examples of their awesome talent for doing definitive cover versions and knowing also that the originals he had them do weren't their best examples of their songwriting abilities.  (After hearing the Decca recording of their minor ditty "Like Dreamers Do," I concluded that I wouldn't have signed them either.)  Epstein later admitted that he was partial to EMI signing the Beatles, but no one at EMI would bother with them . . . until George Martin, the director of the EMI "junk" label Parlophone, auditioned them in June 1962 and didn't think much of the group.  He decided to sign them (although Best was replaced by Ringo Starr thereafter), figuring he'd have nothing to lose.

And everything to gain.

It's all good and fine to think that history can be repeated, that another band like the Beatles can literally come out of nowhere, which is what Liverpool was, and bring rock and roll back to life, but as I explained in great detail back in January 2014, things are far different today from what they were in the early sixties.  Not only is the infrastructure of the recording profession completely different, thanks to streaming and all that, but how can guys with guitars get any attention when people like Kanye West and Beyoncé keep sucking up all the oxygen and the critical acclaim?  Since I wrote about the slim chances for a rock and roll comeback in 2014, a few newer artists have caught my attention, such as guitarist/singer Gary Clark, Jr. and Australian singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett.  If white guys with guitars are considered uncool, then maybe a black guy with a guitar and a woman with a guitar, as Clark and Barnett are, respectively, can make guitar music cool again?  Good luck with that.  Many listeners view Clark's music as recycled Clapton or recycled Hendrix, while Barnett is viewed as recycled Dylan.  But most pop critics don't go for recycled sounds; they want something new, and how can you provide a new sound in an old form?     

Bands?  One up-and-coming rock band is a group called the Struts, a band out of England that recalls the 1970s-era Rolling Stones.  But that's still recycling. :-O

So, while Dick Rowe did sign the Rolling Stones to Decca after seeing the Beatles' success (and learning about the Stones from none other than George Harrison), maybe Rowe wasn't wrong when he said in 1962 that electric-guitar music was on its way out.  Maybe he was just ahead of his time.  Sure, guitar rock had a good run through the 1960s and 1970s, but afterward, that started to change.  Rowe lived long enough to see synth-pop and the rise of rap in the mid-1980s - he died in 1986 - and he got a glimpse of what would, quite frankly, be the future of popular music.

The biggest rock story of 2016 was not the Struts or Courtney Barnett or even Bruce Springsteen's receipt of the Medal of Freedom but the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of Nirvana's Nevermind, sometimes thought of as rock's last important album.  The biggest rock story of 2017 will likely be the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  But so what, when all that matters is to relive past glories in the absence of present ones?  With many rock bands going unsigned by record labels, and with rappers declaring their genre the new rock and roll, the act of living on past achievements and celebrating their anniversaries is nothing new for us rock fans, who continue hoping against hope that another eager producer will take a chance on another ambitious band and their equally ambitious manager . . . and get things going again.

But that hypothetical band from Superior sure do have their work cut out for them.  

A Song For You

Leon Russell, who died the other day at the age of 74, was a musical genius.  The Oklahoma-born Russell began as a session musician in Los Angeles in the sixties and honed his skills as a producer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist working with various performers and playing in the house band for Jimmy O'Neil's  pop show "Shindig."  He was called the Master of Space and Time for all of the sessions he worked on in such a short period.  By the time Russell released his debut album in 1970, he had already co-produced Joe Cocker's second album and led his Mad Dogs and Englishmen touring band.  Russell's sour, abrasive voice brought his personal, evocative lyrics to life.  His greatest songs - "Delta Lady," the haunting ballads "This Masquerade" and "Hummingbird," the gospel-tinged "Stranger In a Strange Land," the biting protest song "Alcatraz," and the intensely personal ballad "A Song For You," among others, have become classics, and his songs have been covered by the Carpenters, B.B. King, Ray Charles, George Benson, and Joe Cocker.  His own covers of Bob Dylan and George Harrison songs were just as accomplished, showing his skills as an arranger.

I was lucky enough to see Leon Russell perform at a concert in New Jersey on March 27, 2015, forty-five years to the day after his and Joe Cocker's historic Mad Dogs and Englishmen show at the Fillmore East in New York.  He walked to the piano with a cane, and he was not the wild man he had once been, but his spirit and talent remained, as well as his ability to tell some wonderfully humorous anecdotes about his career between songs.  It was probably one of the best concerts I'd ever seen.  And we'll never see his like again.  But now that is his life is over, remember when he was singing his songs for us.  R.I.P.    

The Donald Trump Playlist (Or, the iPod of Doom)

While Hillary Clinton was trying to show how current she was by playing Sara Bareilles' "Brave" and Rachel Platten's "Fight Song" at her rallies and getting Katy Perry and Beyoncé to perform concerts for her campaign, Donald Trump was playing classic rock songs from the Rolling Stones, Queen and Free at his rallies over the objections of Mick Jagger, Queen's Brian May, Mick Jagger, and Free's Paul Rodgers, respectively.  (Thanks to a detail in copyright laws allowing politicians to buy the rights to songs for one-time events like rallies, I've been led to understand, Trump could do that.)  But then Trump knew that his favored demographic pines for a time when such rock and roll giants walked the earth.  Yes, we middle-age white guys love our classic rock, but that doesn't mean we all subscribe to Trump's politics!  Classic-rock artists certainly don't.  I believe it was Pink Floyd's Roger Waters who called Trump "pig-ignorant."

Be that as it may, I've taken to going on YouTube and listening to a slew of rock songs, classic and otherwise, that, in one way or another, capture my feelings about Trump's presidential election victory.  Sort of like an iPod of doom.  And I guarantee you that the Trumpster won't be playing any of these songs at his re-election campaign rallies in 2020. Here they are, in no particular order:

"When The Levee Breaks," Led Zeppelin (an impending man-made disaster)

"Band On the Run," Paul McCartney and Wings ("If we ever get out of here . . .")

"Katmandu," Bob Seger (that's where I'm going?)

"The Best of Times," Styx ("The headlines read, 'These are the worst of times'; I do believe it's true")

"Only Women Bleed," Alice Cooper (in Trump's America, anyway)

"Something In the Air," Thunderclap Newman ("Because the revolution's here")

"Runaway," Jefferson Starship (You don't know how much I want to!)

"Black Friday," Steely Dan (Trump gets sworn in on a Friday)

"Peace Frog," the Doors ("Blood in the streets of the town of Chicago")

"Fallen Eagle," Stephen Stills and Manassas ("Fly on up to Canada, this country isn't safe anymore")

"Lit Up," Buckcherry ("Tell me, are you f--king high?")

"Harry Truman," Chicago (America really does need him!)

"Free Me," Roger Daltrey ("Take me to hell, and let me stay, if that's the price I have to pay")

"Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)," Billy Joel (an apocalyptic sci-fi song coincidentally mentioning the year Trump takes office)

"Atlantis," Donovan (because I'd rather be on a sunken continent than in Trump's America!)  

"My Last Mistake," Dan Auerbach (I think we just made it!)

"Run With the Pack," Bad Company ("I'm leaving you . . . you won't even see me, no no, for dust!")

"Wooden Ships," Crosby, Stills and Nash (leaving a wasted land for a better place)

"Space Captain," Joe Cocker (because while some of us may be able to escape America, none of us can escape the planet)

"Time," Pink Floyd ("One day closer to death!") 

 And of course . . .

"Bad Moon Rising," Creedence Clearwater Revival (about the end of everything)

Hope you are quite prepared to die.  Looks like we're in for nasty weather.

Talkin' 'Bout Our Generations

Two things happened recently that prompted me to write about something I've been pondering for awhile. The first is that, earlier today, I walked into the kitchen while my mother was watching Follow The Fleet, a 1936 Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie with songs by Irving Berlin, on television. Just before I walked into the room I heard Ginger Rogers singing a song I did not recognize, and, in complete ignorance of who was singing and who wrote the song, thought to myself, "Oh, man, what is that corn?"

The second thing is that rapper-entrepreneur Shawn Carter (Jay-Z to you, ofay!) and his lovely wife Beyoncé Knowles (but please call her by her first name only) just sired a baby girl, whom they named Blue Ivy Carter. Right after the birth, Mr. Carter recorded a new rap song, "Glory," about his baby daughter . . . with little Blue Ivy's cries added to the recording. Going beyond Stevie Wonder's addition of his baby daughter's sounds on his 1976 hit "Isn't She Lovely," Mr. Carter gave a credit to Blue Ivy on the record. "Glory" was quickly released, and five days after the baby's birth, it would debut at number seventy-four on the Billboard hip-hop and R&B charts, making Miss Carter the youngest person to debut on the Billboard charts.

So what do these two events have to do with each other? Simply this: A pop record that sounds contemporary when it's first released may seem dated many years from then. A song from a thirties Hollywood musical sounded antiquated just two decades later, when Elvis burst upon the scene, and Jay-Z's own record will likely sound passé by the time Blue Ivy is old enough to make her own records, assuming she goes into the family business.

Look at the popular music that existed before rock and roll - solo singers backed by large bands, as well as bandleaders who were stars in their own right. All of this music was considered rather hokey by young people in the mid-1950s, and when rock and roll burst upon the scene, it became, or should have become, apparent that the old pop establishment was headed for decline. Irving Berlin had been American popular music's greatest songwriter for decades; then, in 1956, with Elvis Presley on top of the charts, Berlin was faced with a new form he had no ability to write for.

This is something we rock and roll fans, as we watch our favorite musical form slip into irrelevance and possibly extinction, fail to understand. Popular music is an expression of its generation, and whatever music a generation produces or consumes usually has a hard time surviving its generation. No, rock and roll is not the cultural force it used to be, but given that most of it was a product of Depression children like Elvis, Baby Boomers, and Generation X elders, it's astonishing that it's lasted as long as it has. But rock and roll is also mainly the province of white guys with guitars, and there are a lot fewer of both today as the American population gets more diverse and as popular music and the methods in which it is made become more fragmented - and many young white males prefer hip-hop these days anyway. So it's not surprising that rock and roll has lost most of its audience and most of its relevance to rap, never to regain either.  We act as if we can prevent it from dying out.

And before you rap fans start chanting, "Hip-hop hurray!", let me put you on notice: Your music has an expiration date as well. Sure, rap is in better shape 33 years after the first big-selling rap record, "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang, than rock was in 1988, 33 years after Bill Haley and the Comets topped the charts with "Rock Around the Clock" - but the clock is ticking down to the day hip-hop will be as irrelevant as rock.

Let me, if I may, explain what I now call the "Blue Ivy Rule." The greatest figures in English-language popular music were all born at a time when the musical forms they would go on to work in didn't exist; the music that existed at the time they were toddlers wouldn't survive their own influence on pop. When Frank Sinatra was born in 1915, no one listening to "Alabama Jubilee" or "The Old Grey Mare, She Ain't What She Used to Be" on their Victrolas could have imagined the large, brassy big-band sound that Ol' Blue Eyes would personify. When the big jazz and pop bands of the forties dominated the Hit Parade, no one could have imagined rock and roll - or that four little boys in Liverpool, England would grow up to bring such a music to a global audience. Likewise, in the late sixties and early seventies, when rock and roll seemed destined to rule the earth, the babies that would grow up to create and dominate rap were in their cribs - and had different names from the ones they're known by today. (Jay-Z himself was born in 1969, the year of Woodstock and the release of the Beatles' Abbey Road.)

Right now, even as hip-hop is dominant, there are babies being born that will one day create the music that displaces rap. It's a musical form that has not yet been invented, and which we do not yet recognize. And don't be surprised if Blue Ivy Carter is at the forefront of it.

Rock Is Dead, They Don't Say

An article by entertainment writer Shirley Halperin of the Hollywood Reporter caught my eye recently. Halperin noted that overall album sales were up in 2011 for the first time in seven years, with digital album sales up by 20 percent (as opposed to digital sales of individual tracks). Compact disc sales had a smaller sales decline than in previous years - 5 percent - suggesting that the downward spiral for sales of tangible recordings has at least been checked for now.

Halperin noted that this sales surge was largely due to the success of female artists -specifically, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Adele. They, along with Katy Perry, were credited for putting across strong personas, touring extensively, and/or appearing on television as often as possible, which produced several radio hits that drove sales. Even Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears - veterans by today's standards - had success. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Nicki Minaj were singled out by Halperin for creating alter egos with their music, which appealed to their mostly female fan bases, while Adele scored with direct realism; both trends suggest a golden age for "girl power."

But here's the thing. What Halperin didn't point out, and quite frankly didn't need to point out, was, with the possible exception of Perry, none of these performers are rockers. They mostly represented soul, disco, and pure pop. Not a Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, or Stevie Nicks among them - and certainly no one who could draw comparisons to Ann or Nancy Wilson of Heart.

I think it's taken for granted that rock and roll, if not extinct, is irrelevant outside the college indie radio station circuit. And such stations, which broadcast at the low end of the FM dial, probably have more megahertz in their frequencies than they have listeners. Halperin's article gave barely a mention of Foster the People, a rock band that got a modicum of attention in 2011 with "Pumped Up Kicks," and albums from bands such as Iron and Wine, the Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, and Florence and the Machine obviously didn't get mentioned at all. If you love these bands and the LPs they put out in 2011, fine. But they're not going to define their generations or any other. Adele is pretty much the only mainstream artist with indie appeal - or is that the other way around? - and she's an exception either way.

So who were the top male artists of 2011? According to Halperin, they were a slew of rappers - Li'l Wayne, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Wiz Khalifa, DJ Khaled, and a Canadian rapper named Drake - all extolling the virtues of making lots of money and spending lots of money, which doesn't exactly jibe with rock's egalitarian, communal, set-my-spirit-free message. Even if white suburban male teenagers can't participate in hip-hop, they still relate to the current crop of rappers more than to whiny leftie guitar groups like the Decemberists, who probably remind them too much of the early-seventies bands their fathers love.

I've heard a lot of talk about retrograde rock bands, groups who try to bring back a sound from the past without realizing how redundant the term "retro rock" is - all rock is retro. And even rock's greatest heroes don't seem to captivate people's imaginations like they once did.

Today is Elvis Presley's birthday anniversary. For decades after his death in 1977, Elvis was like Bogart - someone who remained as relevant a cultural figure in death as he was in life. Does Elvis still matter? Well, I looked in my local TV listings today for any Elvis movies or documentaries that might have been on. I didn't find any. Maybe Elvis fans now spend their time watching their idol on YouTube and communicating on Facebook, but that only shows how the King is no longer a mass media hero. Like rock and roll itself, he's just another cult favorite now. :-(

Hello Again, Mr. Chaps

Back in December 2009, I reported here that British rock singer Roger Chapman, the former frontman for Family and Streetwalkers and, since 1979, solo artist, had retired after two final shows the weekend before Christmas in his hometown of Leicester. It turns out that this was merely Chappo's first final call. Chapman, 68, has spent 2010 on a "Part 2" of his "farewell tour" with a "Part 3" promised for 2011. In other words, on the subject of "retirement," Chapman is as full of crap as Cher. But this is a case of disingenousness I'm actually happy to see.

Because it gets better. Chapman has hinted at the possibility of playing a gig or two in the United States in 2011. Bear in mind that Chapman hasn't performed in America since Streetwalkers toured here in 1976, and neither Family nor Streetwalkers never did really big business in the U.S. To add insult to injury, his solo albums have never been available in this country. Chapman does have a group of devoted fans in America, and while we are not, in fact, a group small enough to fit in a walk-in linen closet, we may not exactly be large enough to fill the Beacon Theater in New York either. So an American gig would clearly be for the fans, not the money. At least that's my take on it. Besides, Chapman has been active in rock and roll at least as long as I (I just turned 45) have been alive. What does he have to prove?

So, yes, an American concert makes perfect sense. I'm cautiously optimistic that it will come to pass. Chappo's reported plans to play New York in 2003 fell through, but I have a good feeling that it's for real this time. The big question is whether he will include any Family or Streetwalkers tunes in his set list. Since he's better known in this country for his involvement in those bands, it's possible he'll do so, although his solo career has never been about looking back. A "farewell" tour, though, suggests a set list with a broader career retrospective. We'll have to wait and see. If Chappo does play a gig in America, though, I'm sure to be there. And you won't have to worry about me getting drunk and shouting out a request for "The Weaver's Answer."

I don't drink, and my favorite Family song is probably "Between Blue and Me," anyway. :-D

(Check out my newly revised Family page - with song lyrics! - here. :-)

Ringo!

Ringo Starr turns seventy today. And he's still active. Ringo (you can't call him Starr) is bringing his All-Starr Band on tour yet again this year, and he's playing Radio City Music Hall tonight. Sadly, I can't make it.

How do you account for the former Beatle's longevity? It could simply be that Ringo doesn't take himself too seriously, and he's always being underestimated. He's used these qualities to his advantage throughout his career. In the Beatles, he served as the group's Everyman, the average bloke holding together three rock musicians of extraordinary talent with his steady, industrious drumming. Although not a virtuoso, he was a solid drummer for the group, but because he wasn't technically superior, he's usually left out of the lists of great rock drummers, the most thoughtful of which would include Charlie Watts, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Creedence's Doug Clifford, and Neil Peart (and as a Family fan, I would throw in Rob Townsend, who, incidentally celebrates his 63rd birthday today). But Ringo should be there too. His stick work on "Rain" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" should be enough reason.

Ringo also gained notoriety for his plain, deadpan singing, which allowed him to turn slight songs like "I Wanna Be You Man" into masterpieces and add extra charm to the likes of "Yellow Submarine." And only someone with the whimsical wonder of Ringo Starr could have written a wonderful tune like "Octopus's Garden." But during the sixties,it was understood that a little Ringo went a long way. Wen the Beatles broke up in 1970, the question was obvious; how, how, could Ringo possibly make it as a solo artist?

Very well, actually. Ringo himself asked this question, and he made no secret of his desire for the Beatles to reconcile. preferring to be in a band than on his own. But despite a few bumps - and a long dry spell in the 1980s, when he recorded very little and battled alcoholism - he developed a respectable solo career for himself. His first solo album, Sentimental Journey, was a collection of Tin Pan Alley standards his mother used to sign at the local pub in Liverpool with her friends, and wit ha little help from his friends - each track on Sentimental Journey had a different arranger - he came through with a record noted for its honesty and Ringo's own love for the songs. Always a country and western fan, Ringo followed up with Beaucoups of Blues, an album of original songs supplied by producer Pete Drake, who got a little help from his friends, Nashville songwriters such as Sorells Packard and Chuck Howard. Ringo had already found a nice little sideline as an actor, his lack of pretentiousness making him an enjoyable screen presence. All he had to do was act naturally.

Ringo's biggest successes started with two singles he wrote himself, 1971's "It Don't Come Easy" and 1972's infectious "Back Off Boogaloo," both produced by George Harrison. The straightforward lyrics of the former song and the jokey atmosphere of the latter ("Back Off Boogaloo" was inspired by a saying used liberally by T-Rex frontman Mark Bolan) made both songs huge hits, and when Ringo teamed up with producer Richard Perry to record the albums Ringo (1973) and Goodnight Vienna (1974) he had truly found his voice as a singer and as an entertainer. Unlike the lofty ambitions of his former bandmates in their music - John Lennon's activism, Paul McCartney's symphonic pop, George Harrison's spiritual pursuits - Ringo only wanted to please people and make them smile.

By the late seventies, though, newer, younger acts had taken over the charts, and Ringo was affected by this as much as any other veteran rock and roller. Maybe even more so - Atlantic Records dropped him when his 1977 album Ringo the 4th barely made it onto the charts (at number 199), and he was soon exasperated by the whole record business. In the past twenty years, though, Ringo has re-invigorated himself, reveling in his own showmanship, and quietly putting out new albums that have registered with the small but loyal audience that buys them. With producers such as Mark Hudson and Dave Stewart behind them, some say they may be his best work yet. And he's carried that joy and fun in his All-Starr Band concerts, one of which this blogger saw at an outdoor venue in New Jersey in the summer of 1992. (The remnants of Hurricane Andrew got everyone wet with rain, but no one cared. Everyone was too busy having a good time.)

My mother once said that Ringo is the only "normal" Beatle. By that, she meant that Ringo is the only Beatle who's like the rest of us. He doesn't think he's an Important Artist. He doesn't put on airs. He's never had reason to find himself; he knows who he is. He's probably the only Beatle who could blend in at a British pub singalong or at an American barbecue. He's the Beatle you'd rather have a lager with. Heck, he's the only Beatle who's never been in a drug bust. He's the only Beatle to put out a Christmas album. (Which is ironic - before 1999, when his I Wanna Be Santa Claus album, produced by Mark Hudson, was released, he was the only Beatle who hadn't yet put out a Christmas record; the others had put out singles.) He's always been an ordinary average guy, and his bewilderment at his own success is what's made him so popular and resilient. He is, to be blunt, one of us.

So, happy birthday to Mr. Richard Starkey of Liverpool 8. Cheers! :-)

Goodbye, Mr. Chaps

The lion in winter has roared his last.

After a career in music spanning over four decades, first as the frontman for Family, then as the lead singer of Streetwalkers, then as a solo artist, Roger Chapman - one of the great unsung heroes of rock and roll - called it a career by performing his last concerts ever in his hometown of Leicester, England last night and the night before. With the possible exception of Family's last concert in October 1973 (also in Leicester), no gig has ever been this bittersweet to fans of the man we all call Chappo.

Chapman was - is - one of the most powerful singers in rock. His bleated vibrato vocal style - described by many as the sound of an electronically amplified goat - brought songs to life with a vicious ferocity and a commanding strength. He could make Robert Plant sound like a crooner with his deliveries on Family classics such as "The Weaver's Answer" and "Drowned in Wine," and his later performances on Streetwalkers songs like "Downtown Flyers" and "Run For Cover," as well as solo tunes like "Do I Leave a Stone Unturned?", were no less potent. Chappo's covers of blues and rock songs gave them his own unique, interpretative stamp; it's hard to hear "Drive" as originally done by the Cars after hearing Chappo sing it.

Roger Chapman was a huge star in Germany, and he didn't do too badly singing for the punters in the U.K., but stardom in America eluded him. He didn't get off to a promising start; he threw a microphone stand at Family's debut 1969 U.S. gig at the Fillmore East in New York when the audience proved to be unreceptive, and it almost hit Fillmore East impresario Bill Graham, setting bad vibes for the band. (The entire group was discombobulated that night by circumstances beyond their control. Their gig as Elton John's warmup act on his 1972 U.S. tour went much better.) Both Family and Streetwalkers diligently tried to gain an audience in America, and they did - just not big enough to sustain either band, or get Family or Streetwalkers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Chapman's solo career was of even less consequence here; his records were never released in the United States. His last American gigs, in fact, were with Streetwalkers on their 1976 American tour. Conquering the New World may not have worked out, but Chapman remained active and vital throughout his musical career, never letting the nostalgia of his early work with Family and Streetwalkers (both of which featured his old collaborator Charlie Whitney on guitar) get in the way of moving forward as an artist.

At 67, Chapman has ended his career in triumph. Having achieved just about everything he could possibly do, he went out like an undefeated boxing champion. I obviously couldn't go to either of his last concerts, and the news of Chapman's retirement meant I would never get the opportunity to take in one of his shows. I still have the records, and I still have a wonderful tape of one of his sets on the German TV rock show "Rockpalast." I'm thankful for that, and I'm especially grateful for the marvelous music and illustrious career of the man of the hour - Roger Maxwell Chapman, always and forever.

Guitar Hero

Les Paul, the legendary guitarist and recording technology innovator, died yesterday at 94, and in his long life he created new ways for music to be heard. His Gibson solid-body guitar with electric pickups allowed for a more shimmering, fluid sound, and its controls allowed players to manipulate the sound and make the notes cry or sing by manipulating the treble for more brightness and clarity or deepening the rhythm for a fuller sound. Also, he pioneered multi-track recording, allowing bands to concentrate on each instrument of the arrangement individually and re-record elements of the song, rather than perform a song live in the studio over and over until they got it right. The range of possibilities he created helped spur the rise of the guitar hero in sixties and seventies rock, and many a rocker - Jimmy Page, Joe Walsh, Joe Satriani, Keith Richards - has sung Paul's praises. Or, more appropriately, played them.

Paul was still playing at the Iridium Jazz Club every Monday night in New York as recently as June - he never planned to retire - but pneumonia sidelined him this summer, and he died from complications of the disease. Mondays will still be devoted to guitarists there as a memorial to him. It will be a fitting tribute.

While many veteran rockers and rock fans are eulogizing Paul as one of music's greats, I doubt his death will have much of an impact on the younger generation of hip-hop and dance pop performers.

To them, Paul was probably just another white guy with a guitar.

Chappo Retiring!

I got the shock of my life earlier this month when I heard that British rock singer Roger Chapman announced his impending retirement. At 67, Chapman plans a farewell concert this December in his hometown of Leicester, England, capping an illustrious career as one of rock and roll's greatest wild men.

Chapman is best known as the onetime frontman for Family, the great British progressive rock band of the late sixties and early seventies that pushed the boundaries of songwriting and arranging that got them accolades and hit albums in the United Kingdom and continental Europe but failed to gain them any recognition in North America. Chappo (as he became known) had been influenced by the great American rock and rollers and rhythm an blues singers of the fifties, and he created a unique vocal style that sounded like a bleating goat and could possibly, as one music critic put it, kill small game at a hundred yards.

Chappo said he tried to sound like Little Richard and Ray Charles. Instead, he ended up sounding like Roger Chapman, a remarkable achievement.

Family created some of the most thunderous, intense rock and roll to come out of Britain; their albums A Song For Me and Fearless are classics, as are their song s "The Weaver's Answer" and "Drowned In Wine." The bad vibes for the group - and Chapman - in the U.S. were set at their disastrous American debut at the Fillmore East in New York on April 8, 1969 (Chapman's twenty-seventh birthday), when Chapman led family through a desultory performance that led him to throw his microphone stand aside in frustration - almost hitting Fillmore East impresario Bill Graham. The faux pas gave Family a bad reputation among American promoters and sealed their fate as a trivia question in this country.

After Family broke up in 1973, Chapman and Family guitarist Charlie Whitney formed Streetwalkers. That group - which included guitarist Bob Tench of Jeff Beck's group and drummer Nicko McBain (later of Iron Maiden), put out two acclaimed albums (1975's Downtown Flyers and 1976's Red Card) before breaking up in 1977.

Chapman began his solo career in 1979 with the release of his first solo album, Chappo, and he never looked back. He's remained a singer without peer, still able to come out with a trademark bleat, even as other veteran British rock singers like Robert Plant have mellowed a bit. His retirement comes at an ironically poignant moment. In the early sixties, before joining the band that became Family, Chappo began his career fronting local Leicester bands such as the punningly titled Rockin' R's (you have to know British English to get the joke) at a time when British rock and roll was unheard of in the United States. He now ends his career at a time when British rock has never seemed more irrelevant to Americans. But in between, when British rock was a global force to be reckoned with, Chappo and his respective bandmates never dominated music the way the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or Led Zeppelin did.

He's made himself eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times, as the frontman for Family, the lead singer of Streetwalkers, and as a solo artist. However, Chapmaniacs shouldn't expect any inductions for him, so long as he remains unknown to most Americans and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame keeps inducting celebrity disco singers without considering musical merit.

I'll never get to see Chappo play live. He hasn't played in the U.S since the seventies, and I've never been able to travel to the U.K. But I still have the records, and I intend to keep on listening to them to help keep the legacy of this great singer alive. Here's to you, Chappo - you've earned your retirement. :-)

End Of a Web Site

"STRANGE BAND - the Family Home Page," created by Michigan Family fan Patrick Little, has been removed from the Web, presumably forever. AOL Hometown, which hosted the site, was shut down permanently recently. Too bad. Patrick's site was undoubtedly the best source for information about the greatest band to come out of Leicester, England, and was chock full of details on their discography, their tour dates, their biographical data, you name it. But the truth is, Patrick hadn't updated it since Tony Ashton, the group's last keyboardist, died of cancer in May 2001. In fact, he kind of disappeared. Meanwhile, I put up my Blogger-based Family page, a link to which is to the right of the screen, and I've been updating it ever since.

Anyone who wants to visit my page devoted to the greatest band you've never heard is encouraged to do so. I've never found a Family page as good as Patrick's, and even though mine is a poor attempt to imitate his, it seems it's up to me to help keep Family's legacy alive in America.

The torch has been passed . . ..