The End ... of the Beginning

"What a long, strange trip it's been," and it wouldn't have, couldn't have been the same without music. Memory is a tricky thing, and no doubt this chronicle of my musical journey is misremembered, sometimes embellished, and only a snapshot (4,269 words cannot cover sixty odd years of rock and roll) but still true in the larger sense. True to the music. After all, that's what really matters, staying true to the music.

So, without further ado, let's rock and roll!

First up, guitarist extraordinaire, Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee Duane Eddy, with “Rebel Rouser.” This instrumental from 1958 takes me back to my grade school days in the wilds of southern Idaho. It also evokes memories of my late sister, Rosemary. In those ancient times, record stores featured listening booths that allowed customers to preview a record before buying. In this particular case a seven-inch, 45rpm, single. Ooh, how I fondly recall the joy it brought my sister, horrifying those respectable, middle-aged, “biddies” (as she called them) with the “devil’s music.” It was my first real introduction to the power of Rock ‘n’ Roll to shock and offend: Scandalous! This arcane knowledge has informed and fueled my subsequent existence.

https://youtu.be/bu0gsR-P8KY

Next up, The Kingston Trio. I collected two or three of the folk group’s albums in the very early sixties. The acoustic, folky sound was hugely popular at the time, and these guys were commercially successful with their covers of traditional folk songs. “M.T.A.” leads off their #1 LP Here We Go Again! The absurd story of a man named Charlie, stuck on the commuter train because he couldn’t afford the fare increase greatly appealed to my prepubescent sense of humor.

https://youtu.be/MbtkL5_f6-4

Now we come to the first big, major musical influence and love in my life, The Beach Boys. I was always attuned to the Top-40 Billboard hits via the radio, but my first exposure to the seminal California group came in my friend Bart’s basement. His older brother and friend were playing the Beach Boys’ first LP, Surfin’ Safari. I was blown away from the first note and over the years have amassed an extensive collection of Beach Boys’ music. Those incredible harmonies and Brian Wilson’s genius are legendary. This song comes off the group’s third release, Surfer Girl, the first sessions produced by Brian. "Little Deuce Coupe" was my favorite of the hot rod songs so popular at the time, especially with our grade school crowd.

https://youtu.be/piKfnqIxggE

Surf music and car songs dominated my personal chart in ’63, but everything would change that winter as a new force arrived on the scene, shaking everything up and changing the musical landscape forever.

The Beatles! The British Invasion arrived and eclipsed everything and everyone else in my musical universe. What can I say that hasn’t been said about the Fab Four? I’ll simply say life was never the same after they performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964.

In the spring of ’64, the Fabs owned the charts; on April 4, all top 5 Billboard hits belonged to the lads from Liverpool. “Twist And Shout” sat in the #2 spot. Just try to sit still when this slice of Rock and Roll heaven comes on the radio!

https://youtu.be/xcdwr9RCg2A

The Beatles ushered in the “Mersey” sound, named for Liverpool's Mersey river. Their main competition in that first wave of the British Invasion were The Dave Clark Five. Hailing from the Tottenham area of London, theirs was the “Tottenham sound;” the band was formed originally by drummer Dave Clark to raise money for his football team.

In January of 1964, "Glad All Over" knocked The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” off the top spot on the UK singles chart. The band featured, in my opinion, one of the finest rock singers of his time, Mike Smith. Smith sadly passed away just months before the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.

https://youtu.be/EipdAjhImrc

The British Invasion changed the face of popular music, but the American bands didn’t give up without a fight. Fittingly, this Beach Boy classic, the B-side of a two-sided smash (“I Get Around,” being the A-side) reached number one on the Fourth of July, 1964. Brian Wilson has since called it their best recording of the sixties. A personal favorite, it’s a song about a guy worried about a drag race. His girl tells him, “Don’t Worry, Baby.”

https://youtu.be/X9E1by7PocE

I remember wearing out the 45 of “Don’t Worry Baby” that summer. Listening today, it still floors me! The 45 would be the last Beach Boys record I bought until 1970, when I found their Sunflower LP and fell in love with the band all over again!

My parents divorced when I was ten; without rock ‘n’ roll music I don’t know if I’d have survived my teen years. Teen dances, “draggin’ Main,” the top-40 blasting on the car radio, burger joints and jukeboxes. It was a heady time, and the music played non-stop. I may have been a poor student at school, but I was working on an advanced degree in rock ‘n’ roll!

Every garage band had to know the next two songs and I danced to each at least a hundred times. First up, from Ireland, it’s Them, featuring Van Morrison, and “Gloria.”

https://youtu.be/VlWiQ69DGE0

The Shadows of Knight also had a hit with “Gloria,” but Van’s impassioned vocal gives Them the edge, in my opinion.

Next, is the all-time garage band anthem, written by Richard Berry, and first released by his group The Pharaohs in 1957. “Louie, Louie” has been covered endlessly since (rateyourmusic.com reports some 1,600 versions) most notably, in 1963, by The Kingsmen, out of Portland, Oregon. Friends of mine who had a stellar garage act in the mid-60s, used to let me sit in on bass when they played it. The lyrics of the supposed “dirty” version were known by any teenage boy who was anybody – at least in our circle. I also have fond memories of hearing it played during the seventh inning stretch at Seattle Mariners’ games. It is a glorious thing!

https://youtu.be/3EqzTiDc-1k

Another musical trend emerged in the mid-sixties: “folk-rock.” Exponents of the sound included The Lovin’ Spoonful and The Mamas and the Papas, but for my money the leading exponents of the sound were The Byrds. The hippie movement was in full bloom, and the “granny glasses” Roger McGuinn (then known as Jim) wore, along with their flower-power shirts and bell bottoms were a big influence, as teens all over the country, even in the backwaters of Idaho, adopted the style. This next tune, one that was lovingly covered years later by Tom Petty, written by their late, great lead singer, Gene Clark, is from the group’s first long-player, Mr. Tambourine Man.

https://youtu.be/to-RVV_3anw

In the summer of 1966, The Beatles released what has come to be my (and many critics) personal Beatles favorite: Revolver. I remember the cover art alone blew me away, and when a friend played me the album (I didn’t have a record player at the time) – wow! Earth shaking!

A few years later, under the influence of LSD, I really heard the album! Listening in that state, I was so moved by the music, I recall asking aloud: “Where does genius come from?” The next thing I knew, I was transported to another realm. That was a mystical, out-of-body experience from which I’ve never recovered; words cannot do it justice. I loved them before, but after that, The Beatles were like gods to me.

https://youtu.be/m4BuziKGMy4

The British Invasion gave us not only John, Paul, George & Ringo, but their bad-boy counterparts, The Rolling Stones. Along with Dylan, the Stones, for me, epitomize the rougher, quirkier side of rock ‘n’ roll. They were also covered more by the local garage bands, possibly because their songs didn’t feature complicated harmonies, ala The Beatles and The Beach Boys.

I remember fondly dancing to Stones’ hits like “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, “ “Get Off My Cloud,” and “Let’s Spend The Night Together,” and though I have been blessed to see a ton of great live music, no band, in my experience, can match The Rolling Stones.

Here is the song they opened with the last time I saw them live, on their 2006 A Bigger Bang concert tour. Keith Richards, at age 62, came running through the curtains, hit the opening chord, and slid to the front of the stage on his knees! As this was happening, flames shot high into the Seattle sky from the forty-foot smoke stacks flanking the stage! Jaw-dropping! That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, baby!

https://youtu.be/G3dFpQzu54w

Can’t reminisce about the sixties and not throw in a classic teenage love ballad, for a slow dance. This “one hit wonder” from 1968 has stayed with me all these years and holds a very special place in my heart. Yeah, it’s a bit sticky & gooey, lightweight & melancholic, like the memories I have of my first true love. Welcome in The New Colony Six, and “I Will Always Think About You.”

https://youtu.be/lgzOOhj5lqI

After that sweet confection, time to switch gears. I can’t move on from the turbulent sixties without highlighting the revolution – and who better to speak for my generation than Bob Dylan, “the spokesperson of his generation?” I was slow getting into Dylan; the radio stations in my little corner of Idaho weren’t playing his records and my situation at home didn’t allow for my own stereo. Then, in the summer of 1965: “Like A Rolling Stone” hit the airwaves, rising all the way to #2 on the charts (kept from the top spot by The Beatles’ “Help!”). Despite a running time of over six minutes, the song still remains Dylan’s most successful single. It still sounds fresh to these ears almost sixty years on.

How does it feel, to be on your own, with no direction home, a

complete unknown, like a rolling stone?

https://youtu.be/syNLBJ_Lq9E

In the summer of 1969, I got stoned on pot for the first time, and took my first psychedelic pill that fall. Hearing acid rock was a revelation; my taste in bands expanded along with my mind. I’d entered college the previous fall and had friends with stereos in their dorm rooms. We were “turned on” to both the counterculture drugs and the music.

My first psychedelic “trip” was highlighted by the music of The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Who know music could sound like that?!? Who knew walls could breathe like that?!? “Groovy” and “Far-Out” don’t quite describe it ...

https://youtu.be/WGoDaYjdfSg

Revisiting another of those dorm rooms now, to remember another of those bands and those albums I never tire of: The Band, by The Band. The group became famous as Dylan’s touring band in the mid-sixties, but began as The Hawks in the late ‘50s. While the heavy, psychedelic sounds of bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin dominated rock, The Band sounded like no one else. Eric Clapton has said it was their music that led him to disband Cream and go in a new direction. This is the opening cut from that eponymous 1969 LP. An interesting side note: The Band was recorded in a beach house in Santa Monica, owned by Sammy Davis, Jr.

https://youtu.be/EisXJSsULGM

By early 1970, fueled by the spirit of the times, I was in San Francisco, now a college dropout furthering my musical education in the city’s ballrooms. It was there that I first saw the band that more than any other, has come to epitomize the hippy experience, the good old Grateful Dead. The venue was Bill Graham’s Carousel Ballroom – the Fillmore West. The show came just a week after the band’s infamous bust in New Orleans, immortalized in another chronicle of the times, "Truckin'.’’ What a long, strange trip it’s been ... indeed. The Dead cut their teeth as the house band for Ken Kesey’s famous “Acid Tests” and they were as advertised. The image of Jerry Garcia up on stage that night is forever stamped on my brain. “Captain Trips” did not disappoint!

https://youtu.be/QuyaK0hGxWk

One fine day in 1972 as I was browsing the racks, I stumbled on to pure gold. It seems remarkable now, looking back, that I had not heard of the artist or the album before that summer day. I was intrigued by the cover art and something told me to take a chance. Man, am I ever glad I did! The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars has to be in my top ten of all-time. I turned all my friends on to the record. All became instant fans. Then we saw Bowie perform on TV couldn't believe what we were seeing! The hair, the makeup, the clothes – Ziggy was from another planet! As the decades moved on, Bowie changed personas many times, but Ziggy remains my fave. I could pick any song from the album, they are all standouts, but “Moonage Daydream” with spacey, psychedelic lyrics, and Mick Ronson’s lead guitar work gives me acid flashbacks even today (and I haven’t ingested a psychedelic since the eighties!).

https://youtu.be/JFDj3shXvco

During my San Francisco interlude in the spring of 1970, I took in an “audition” night at Fillmore West. It was a Tuesday night, and bands performed who were hoping for a slot on a weekend bill. One of the groups on this particular audition night was “Steel Mill." Hailing from New Jersey, it featured the then unknown Bruce Springsteen. I don’t remember too much about Steel Mill. I was more taken with Nils Lofgren’s band, Grin, who also auditioned. It wasn’t till years later when reading about Bruce’s musical history that I realized I’d seen him. In 1981 I was lucky enough to meet Bruce. The occasion was the wedding party for his sax player, Clarence Clemons, held at a beachfront home in Maui.

"Thunder Road" is the opening song from Bruce’s breakthrough album, Born To Run. The record that got him the covers of both Time and Newsweek in 1975. It is a record I played religiously that summer and ever since.

https://youtu.be/YdhkaPZtQF4

The fall of 1975 brought big changes to my musical journey when I landed my first gig on the radio – as a DJ for the Idaho State University college station. College radio led me to my first commercial station, KSNN, Pocatello, where I was live on the air that fateful August day when Elvis Presley died.

I’d always loved Elvis. My sister and I first watched him on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, when I was only six. As John Lennon famously said, “Before Elvis there was nothing.” But by ’77, the King had gotten fat and the hits had become few and far between. The KSNN library only contained two albums, Elvis For Everyone, a lackluster (for Elvis) collection, and From Elvis In Memphis. I spun them both, start to finish, in honor of Elvis, never worrying what management might say.

From Elvis In Memphis was a revelation! After my shift ended that afternoon I ran to the record store to order my own copy. At that time I didn’t know the background of the recording. How it was the follow-up to his “comeback TV special” of 1968, and marked the first time Elvis cut a record at a Memphis recording studio. It was during those sessions, in January, 1969, that the King cut his final Billboard Number One, “Suspicious Minds.” Funny thing is, I don’t really remember hearing it on the radio back then. It was a non-album single, so I hadn't played it when I'd spun From Elvis In Memphis.

I do recall the first time I played "Suspicious Minds" over the airwaves. I had moved from Pocatello to Maui, and was working the midnight shift on KMVI-AM 550. The program director had put a note on the tape cartridge: “Watch out for the false fade ...” which I failed to heed, and cut the song off prematurely.

Since that fateful day in August of '77, I've collected a ton of Elvis music, become a huge fan, and on any given day would put “Suspicious Minds” at Number One on my personal Elvis chart.

https://youtu.be/ryhbmGbrnw8

Sadly, before I left Pocatello for Maui, another tragedy occurred; on Valentine’s Day, 1978, my sister took her own life. I’d lost my only sibling, the one who first infected me with rock and roll music. No way would the TV have been tuned to Ed Sullivan in 1956 – or at least that’s how I choose to see it – if she hadn’t been there to persuade the parents to watch. This next song came from the songwriter’s loss of her own brother to suicide. A song like this, sad as it is, does help to ease the pain of that loss. It can never go away, but music can help to make life feel a little brighter.

Lucinda Williams is an artist I didn’t pick up on immediately, not until years after she put this song out, but has grown to be one of my favorite Americana artists. "Sweet Old World" is for you, Rosemary.

https://youtu.be/BwGMJYszLMY

I enjoyed my time on the airwaves, working as a DJ from 1975 through 1988, spinning all genres of popular music: rock, country, jazz, easy listening, even a comedy record now and then. I was once called on the carpet for playing "Let's Get Small," from Steve Martin! But, once I landed on Maui, I was introduced to Hawaiian music. It was baptism by fire; I was asked to host a Sunday morning Hawaiian music show barely a month into my ten-year Maui residence. Well, the locals were not amused at my butchering of the names of the songs and the groups. The phone rang off the hook: "Stupid Haole!" was the main gist, understandably so. If you've visited the islands, and been baffled as I was by local names and how they're pronounced, well, you can imagine the uproar!

Over my time in Maui, and being exposed to the beauty of Hawaiian music, I developed a love and appreciation for the songs and the artists. This next song is one I first heard not long after landing in the islands. While it falls into the "contemporary Hawaiian" category, it speaks of the heartache the Hawaiian native peoples suffered at the hands of western imperialism and capitalist development. Here's "Waimanalo Blues," from Country Comfort.

https://youtu.be/HreF7Ql4pRI

Next to the passing of my sister and my parents, no loss has hit me harder than the murder of John Lennon. I remember getting the phone call. I had the day off and the DJ sitting in for me called from the radio station. It was around six in the evening in Hawaii.

“Why did they have to shoot him?” were the first words Dan said. “Who?” I asked, and he said, “John Lennon,” and my knees went weak. Stunned, in shock, I drove to the radio station. At that time, we were only an AM, easy listening station. The FM station went on the air January 1, 1981. Still, and it seems crazy now, we followed Yoko Ono’s directive to go silent for 10 minutes in the aftermath. TEN MINUTES of dead air on a station that played mostly big bands, Sinatra, and other MOR artists!

Double Fantasy hit number one the next month and the world still grieves the immense loss. Paul McCartney has said this next song is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written; “Beautiful Boy” was written for Sean Ono Lennon, and it is indeed timeless.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans ...

https://youtu.be/Lt3IOdDE5iA

Moving further along into the eighties to feature one of, if not the most exciting live performers I was blessed to see in concert. Prince was dubbed the “hardest working man in show business,” for the incredible amount of music he gave us – an astounding 20 albums in 20 years (1978-1998)! I remember the first time hearing the 1999 album at a New Year’s Eve party and being blown away. I saw the man twice in the 2000’s and he was amazing! Eric Clapton was asked once, (in the ‘80s), who were the hot guitar players, and he put Prince at the top of his list.

I love the playful humor, the sexual innuendo, and the way this fabulous song just rocks!

Here’s Prince, with “Little Red Corvette!”

https://youtu.be/v0KpfrJE4zw

Moving ahead; the eighties ended and I left the islands and my radio days behind. In the nineties, I stayed fairly current with the music scene, and living in Seattle, was exposed to more live music than ever before.

My love affair with Wilco and the music of Jeff Tweedy came about after seeing their 1996 release, Being There, listed in Rolling Stone as one of the year’s best. I took a chance – like I had with Ziggy Stardust – and fell in love with the alternative rockers. I since have collected most every studio release and seen them live numerous times. They are a phenomenal live band and never disappoint.

This song leads off Being There and is a concert staple for the band. Dig that final stanza, with Tweedy defiantly spitting out the refrain:

I want to thank you all for nothing ... nothing ... nothing ... nothing ... Nothing at all ...

“Misunderstood” perfectly captures – for me – the anger and the isolation of my youth, of feeling so misunderstood, and the power of rock and roll to soothe the wounded heart.

https://youtu.be/Vn7ZSbZhKVE

Now we come to the band who its leader, Barry Gibb, termed, upon their induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “the enigma with the stigma,” the Bee Gees.

I adore their sixties material: “I Started A Joke,” “To Love Somebody,” “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” but also the music that gave them the stigma, I suppose, in the seventies. Songs like “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” and “Tragedy.” I played them all on the radio over the years and have never tired of those shimmering, sibling harmonies.

"Alone" is one of their last chart singles, and one of those songs for which “ear-worm” was coined. It's the first track off their 21st studio record, 1997’s Still Waters. The single peaked at number 28 on the US Billboard Hot 100, making it the Bee Gees' 30th and final top-40 hit in the US. (Wikipedia).

https://youtu.be/w_MYMaFyuGI

Now, I jump forward nearly a decade, to 2006, and a song that is in my Top 10 of the 21st Century. "Crazy" reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, but was a number one in several other countries. I stumbled across it while putting together a compilation CD, and was blown away by the singer, the lyrics, and the whole shebang! Cee Lo Green and Danger Mouse weren’t unknown to me. I had read about them, probably in Rolling Stone. Which may be why I ended up downloading the song. Another very fortuitus take-a-chance, indeed!

The lyrics are a marvel; personally, I find them to be very compatible with my own philosophy of life:

Come on now, who do you

Who do you think you are?

Ha Ha Ha, well bless your soul

You really think you’re in control?

Well, I think you’re crazy ... just like me

Amazing! And what a vocal delivery! Just crazy!

https://youtu.be/-N4jf6rtyuw

Now, it’s time - before signing off - to circle back for a pair of classics songs I was no doubt conscious of at the time they came out, but didn’t fully absorb or appreciate till years later, and now are so beloved.

The first is from the band I once touted as being superior to the Rolling Stones, such was my passion for their music. Ray Davies is justly acknowledged, by The Who’s Pete Townshend, no less, as one of England’s finest lyricists. His brother, Dave Davies, revolutionized rock guitar with his fuzztone solo on “You Really Got Me.” Those sibling harmonies are some of the finest in the genre.

This Kinks song from the 1967 masterpiece, Something Else By The Kinks should have been number one everywhere. It is a composition of aching beauty and I would dare say surpasses any other pop hit from that watershed year. Enjoy this tale of Terry and Julie, and their “Waterloo Sunset.”

https://youtu.be/6eZ32TrHB5U

There are many singers and songs and groups I’ve left out of my story. Music I love spanning the 70 plus years I’ve been digging the music. But I can’t think of a better singer or really a better song to wrap this up than this last selection.

Aretha Franklin has been crowned “The Queen of Soul,” and the “Singer of the Century,” so what more can be said? As legend goes, Burt Bacharach wrote and recorded it with Dionne Warwick, but was unhappy with the result. He felt he’d blown it, that the tempo was too fast.

Meanwhile, Aretha and her backup group, the Sweet Inspirations (who also backed Elvis Presley for many years), were playing around in rehearsal, singing “I Say A Little Prayer,” when they realized they needed to record it themselves.

Though Aretha’s version wasn’t as big a hit, Burt Bacharach called it “the better record.” Both are great records, but I have to agree with Mr. Bacharach. But then, who could top Aretha? Just ask Otis Redding.

https://youtu.be/-8y0onSG3kg

Blessings to you all -- and ROCK ON!!