Here Come Old Flat Top

Wen the Beatles began recording Abbey Road in earnest in July of 1969, John Lennon mostly kept to himself and didn't contribute much at first, as he and Yoko had been in a car accident when they were on vacation with their respective children (John's son Julian and Yoko's daughter Kyoko, both six years old then), and both were still recovering. (Yoko was still bedridden, so John had Yoko, bed and all, moved into the studio, much to the shock of EMI staff.) But by late July, John (below, during the recording of Abbey Road) went full tilt boogie with a new song that hit the senses with as much force as John's insatiable appetite for old-fashioned guitar rock, and it makes sense that it was selected to open Abbey Road.

"Come Together" is a steamy, dirty song about sex, drugs and rock and roll - and John Lennon's obsession with all three.  It's a cheeky self-portrait in which John winks and nods as he describes himself as a cokeheaded holy roller who's "one spinal cracker," whose sexual prowess is so great that when he "hold you in his armchair, you can feel his disease."  He's Bag Productions, he's the walrus, he's Yoko's man, he's all of that.  And his fantastically bad grammar, topped with with a guitar and piano arrangement that goes for the burn, is the icing on the cake.  

The song started out as something entirely different.  Acid guru Timothy Leary had asked Lennon to write a song for his planned candidacy for governor of California against Republican incumbent Ronald Reagan in 1970.  John tried, staring with the phrase "Come together," but he couldn't think of anything else to say about Leary's politics or positions that could get people to vote for him, and so, as a campaign song, "Come Together" never got off the ground.  Neither did Leary's campaign for governor of California; he was later arrested for marijuana possession, ending his bid for the governorship of California, so the song never became a campaign tune.  (For the record, Reagan was re-elected governor in 1970 handily over Democratic candidate Jesse Unruh, making Reagan a Republican presidential prospect for 1976 at the earliest.)

So, "Come Together" could have been the first of several anti-Reagan songs that Lennon would have undoubtedly written had he lived to see the Gipper's Presidency.  But the phrase "Come together" was not wasted, as it had another meaning.  Let's just say that it involves two lovers having the same experience simultaneously in the heat of the moment.  (Which is why Walter Mondale would likely not have asked Lennon in 1984, had Lennon lived, to write a song for his effort to make Reagan a one-term President like Leary wanted to make him an one-term California governor - though, by 1984, Mondale's fellow Minnesotan Prince was writing stuff that made "Come Together" sound tame by comparison.)

There was just one thing; "Come Together" wasn't a totally original song.  John had based the opening line - "Here come old flat top, he come grooving up slowly" from a lyric from Chuck Berry's fast-car song "You Can't Catch Me."  (The original lyric - "Here comes a flat top, he was movin' up with me" - refers to a motorist in a low, flat-roofed car trying to pass the narrator's car on the New Jersey Turnpike.)  John and Paul McCartney changed the melody and modified the bass line so it wouldn't sound like the original Berry song.  (Berry - below, with Lennon in 1972 on "The Mike Douglas Show" - may not have minded, but his publisher did, and it led to an ugly episode of suits and countersuits that Lennon ultimately came out of victorious.)

The result was a mean, guttural vibe that Ringo Starr's drums add extra bite to as the song creeps along like a pickpocket in a back alley.  The final touch on "Come Together" was John's repetitive whisper "Shoot me!" As on "Happiness Is a Warm Gun," the reference is not about firearms, and in this case it's a reference to a narcotic firing in the arm.  It makes "Come Together" sound more unsettled than it already is without going over the edge.

Not surprisingly. "Come Together" led to even harder-edged covers.  One of the best known remakes of the song came from Aerosmith, who recorded "Come Together" in 1978 for - shhh!  - the universally and deservedly loathed Sgt. Pepper movie.  Aerosmith's cover takes the Beatles' tough rock into heavy-metal territory, and Steven Tyler's over-the-top vocals are priceless.  When he sings the opening lyric,  he slurs it to the point where he sounds like he's singing "Yeah, come on, flat jaw, he come oozing out soda." More recently, Texas blues-rock guitarist Gary Clark Jr., with help from Dutch producer Tom Holkenborg, recorded a cover of "Come Together" for the 2017 comic-book superhero movie Justice League.  Clark's cover brings the Beatles' music back to the roots of rock and roll in a devastatingly fresh twenty-first-century sound - proof that, if you want to make rock and roll go forward, you have to go to back to its beginnings.

Grammys 2019 - PAH!

The Grammy Awards are on TV tomorrow, and I won't be watching.  A cursory look at the nominees for the major awards left me more disinterested than I already was.

This Grammy ceremony is being touted as the Girl Power Grammys, since most of the nominees in the major categories open to both sexes - Album of the Year, Song of the Year - are women.  It's all about diversity, right?  But when you look at the lists of nominees, you notice that a good deal of these women are hip-hop/R&B singers (the initials for rhythm and blues are tacked on to hip-hop as if soul music itself were an afterthought these days), pure pop singers, and a few country performers.  Not an all-out rocker among these women - no one who reminds us of Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Stevie Nicks, or Suzi Quatro.  And certainly no nominations for Australian rocker Courtney Barnett's latest album, which came out in May 2018, and Courtney Barnett is considered a spiritual successor to Bob Dylan.  The only female nominees who seem to stand out are Kacey Musgraves, who likes to mix country with pop and electronica, and - wait, Brandi Carlile?  The folk-rocker?  Eight nominations for her, including Album of the Year?  How did an indie queen like Brandi Carlile get in?

Okay, I did not see that coming.  But when Courtney Barnett got a Best New Artist Grammy nomination in 2016, only to lose to Meghan Trainor - that I saw coming.

Meanwhile, the male nominees in the major categories are mostly rappers.  The simple truth that the Grammys are going to be dominated, as they have been in recent years and will be for the foreseeable future (which I define as the rest of the century), by musical forms that require a computer science degree to perform - but don't require singing lessons.  Anyone of a musical persuasion other than pop or hip-hop/R&B will have to be content with selling one record for every one thousand records a hip-hop/R&B or pop act sells, and so their records won't get noticed by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.  The commercial success of Brandi Carlile's By the Way, I Forgive You album has to be considered a fluke, and there's no guarantee that she'll win anything.

This all means that rock and roll is clearly out of the running for the major Grammys, and besides, rock and roll is dominated by white guys with guitars.  Gary Clark, Jr., the black blues-rocker from Texas, is a rare exception - incredible, since black guys invented rock and roll in the first place.  In fact, white males of any musical persuasion are by and large shut out of the nominations for major Grammy categories this year, though hip-hop fans aren't rubbing it in our faces this time.  Oh, some of us honkies got nominated as tokens.  The rock band Greta Van Fleet is up for a Best New Artist Grammy, and they'll probably go the way of Courtney Barnett.  Oh, and Beck did get a nomination for best Pop Vocal Performance for "Colors," and he may yet get that award.  But don't bet on it.  

Don't expect to see a white male artist nominated for any major Grammy in the near or far future, not even an R&B type like a couple of dudes named Justin that I could mention.  Everyone else is just not into them, and folks immediately suspect that racism or misogyny must be involved if one of us honkies wins an Album of the Year Grammy, as happened in 2015 when Beck won for Morning Phase over Beyoncé's self-titled release. Which is why Kanye West discombobulated Beck by walking on stage and then walking off in the middle of Beck's acceptance speech to protest Beyoncé's loss.  West knew what he was doing; by pulling that stunt, he ensured that Beck would be the last white man to win the Album of the Year Grammy for a long, long time.  After that, no one wanted to cross hip-hop fans or female pop singers by giving that award to another pale male.

Ahh, who cares?  Because I'm less concerned about the Grammys than I am about the possibility of an ice storm this coming Tuesday.  Suffice to say that this will likely be the last time I comment about the Grammys at all.  My musical tastes have nothing in common with what the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has been honoring of late.

Oh, well, maybe Gary Clark, Jr.'s upcoming album, This Land - to be released this month - will fare well in the 2020 Grammy nominations.  But probably not.  Because, though Clark won the 2014 Best Traditional (Traditional?) R&B Performance Grammy for "Please Come Home" and got a nomination that same year for Best Rock Song (the Rock category is a mere sideshow at the Grammys nowadays) for "Ain't Messin' 'Round," the folks at the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences probably can't figure him out.

A black guy playing rock and roll?  It must seem weird to them.