10 Songs is a weekly list of ten songs that happen to be on my mind at the moment. Given my intention to usually write these on Mondays, the lists are often dominated by songs played on the previous night's edition of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. The idea was inspired by Don Valentine of the essential blog I Don't Hear A Single.
This week's edition of 10 Songs draws exclusively from the playlist for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1045.
THE BEATLES: Revolution
John Lennon would have been 80 years old today.
How can one pay proper tribute to an artist who has meant so very much to so very many of us? Our friend and fellow SPARK! radio programmer Rich Firestone devoted this week's edition of his fab show Radio Deer Camp to a celebration of John Lennon's 80th birthday. Rich did an incredible job, and there was no need for us to add to what he did. Rich passed the audition.
But we couldn't let the milestone pass without doing something. As pop fans, as rock 'n' roll fans, as fans of the joy of radio and all that it can be, Dana and I owe everything to The Beatles. There are, of course, many other essential influences, from both before and after John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr took that all-important left turn at Greenland. But none of it happens for us, not with any sort of similar intensity, without the moptopped music of The Beatles first prompting us to chant in enthusiastic accord, Yeah Yeah YEAH!
Sass, pizazz, and razzmatazz. Hooks and Harmony. A sense of deeper meaning, whether it's lodged in a simple love song about wanting to hold her hand, in a plea to help us if you can we're filling down, or in some tantalizing glimpse across the universe. I read the news today, oh boy. The connection may be illusory, but...no, it's not. It's one-sided--the artist creates, we absorb--yet no less palpable and vital than the sensory experience of everything around us: the sights, the sounds, the seasons, the warmth, the cold, the rain, the sun, the affection for people and things that went before. Nothing is real. That's real, too.
Imagine. What can be imagined can be experienced. That's why we have art. That's why we have dreams. That's why the dream isn't over.
I was born in 1960. I'm old enough to remember Beatlemania, even though I was only four years old in '64. For those of us who still can recall the contemporaneous spark of The Beatles, the British Invasion, the American reaction, the impact on everything going forward (including punk in the '70s), an impact extending well beyond music, there is only one word that adequately describes the legacy of The Beatles:
Revolution.
And you can count me in.
CHUCK BERRY: You Can't Catch Me
John Lennon said that when he first heard Elvis Presley, that was it. I'd say Chuck Berry was of comparable importance, and everything we just said above about the pervasive impact of The Beatles also applies to the seismic effect of both King Elvis I and the duck-walkin' brown-eyed handsome man who played his guitar just like a-ringin' a bell. In a 1970s Rolling Stone interview, Lennon said he'd love to produce an Elvis Presley rock 'n' roll album, but that he'd probably be too nervous to actually do it. A nervous Beatle? Yep. John Lennon was a fan, just like we are fans.
So Lennon never worked with Elvis, but he did appear once with Chuck Berry, the student from Liverpool joining the master from St. Louis on The Mike Douglas Show for a rousing rendition of "Johnny B. Goode." They also met (figuratively speaking) in court. Lennon had told an interviewer that a line in The Beatles' "Come Together"--Here come ol' flattop, he come groovin' up slowly--had been lifted from Berry's "You Can't Catch Me." It was one line, more of a tribute than it was anything resembling plagiarism, but nonetheless: Gentlemen, start your lawyers!
The instigator of this particular round of sue-me-sue-you blues was one Morris Levy, a music hustler alleged to have ties to organized crime ("alleged" in the same sense that Jimmy Durante was alleged to have a nose). It's a tangled chronicle, a story filled with greed, ambition, corruption, and an absolutely bitchin' soundtrack. I'd tell you more, but I'm afraid Levy himself would rise from his grave and have my legs broken.
Allegedly.
THE DIRTY MAC: Yer Blues
For many years, the officially unseen 1968 TV special The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus was solely the province of collectors and bootleggers. An odd circus-set concert presentation starring the Stones with support from Jethro Tull, Taj Mahal, and Marianne Faithfull, the show is dated but interesting, and it's often been said that the Stones nixed its originally-planned broadcast because an energetic on-screen performance by The Who made the Stones seem lackluster by comparison. (If the story's not true, it should be; this isn't The Rolling Stones' finest moment [though it ain't bad, either], but The Who freakin' smoke.)
The other highlight of The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus is the sole appearance of The Dirty Mac, a one-off supergroup formed by John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, and Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell. It was The Traveling Wilburys of the '60s, except heavier and with a more limited output. The Dirty Mac did but two numbers: a blues jam backing Yoko Ono and violinist Ivry Gitlis, and a triumphantly bludgeoning rendition of the White Album track "Yer Blues."
THE FLAMIN' GROOVIES: Thanks John
"Thanks John" by The Flamin' Groovies is trite and obvious, an attempt to pay tribute to John Lennon by stringing together a bunch of Beatles song titles and pretending the collective result can be called lyrics. I love it. Recorded in the '80s and released as a flexi-disc included with Bucketfull Of Brains magazine's 1987 special edition Bucketfull Of Groovies, the track later saw CD release on the Groovies' 1992 album Rock Juice.
The track's saving grace is its sincerity. The Groovies' Cyril Jordan is as big a Beatles fan as you'll ever encounter; there's no evidence of even a trace of cynicism finding its odious way into the making of "Thanks John." Thanks, Cyril.
AL GREEN: I Want To Hold Your Hand
The Beatles wanted to be a soul act. As they became successful, incorporating lessons learned from Arthur Alexander, The Isley Brothers, and Motown, it was inevitable that soul acts would want to return the favor. While I dig Wilson Pickett's "Hey Jude" and Otis Redding's "Day Tripper," Al Green's "I Want To Hold Your Hand" towers above as one of the best Beatles covers ever made...maybe the best.
It's all the more impressive because its goal is unattainable: trying to better The Beatles at "I Want To Hold Your Hand." Can't be done. The original is too entrenched and untouchable, especially to the ears of Americans for whom it was our chance to meet The Beatles. And indeed, even the Reverend Al Green can't overcome that.
So he doesn't try. He does his own version, with a shrug and a smile, a sway and swagger that could only come from the South, a casual confidence that could only be justified in the grace of a unique gift bestowed from above. Shut up, Al Green! That order is given to Green at the beginning of this record. He says All right...and then he testifies. And I think we understand.
THE HUDSON BROTHERS: So You Are A Star
I was 14 when The Hudson Brothers' TV variety show aired in the summer of '74. I was already a fan of the silly schtick on display each week in The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and the Hudsons' show served up more of the same (with, as I recall, much of the same supporting cast), so yeah, I was there. I would been even more there if the lovely Teri Garr had been among the Sonny and Cher regulars moonlighting with the Hudsons, but alas...no lass.
THE KENNEDYS: And Your Bird Can Sing
By all accounts, John Lennon wrote "And Your Bird Can Sing" as a throwaway. Man, I wish my throwaways were a quarter as great as The Beatles' throwaways. The world-renowned coffee house pop duo The Kennedys allowed us to use their sprightly cover of the song on our first This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation CD in 2004. Thanks again for that, Pete and Maura!
LIQUOR GIANTS: Beatles Please Come Back
Like any pop mania, Beatlemania inspired a wealth of attempted tie-ins, novelties, and cash grabs, and some of them transcend the money-grubbing intent of their origins to achieve something special. I'm fond of The Beattle-Ettes' "Only Seventeen" and The Bootles' "I'll Let You Hold My Hand," a pair of 1964 female-sung answer songs (to "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand," respectively). Gigi Parker and the Lonelies' "Beatles, Please Come Back" offers a yearning plea for our lads to forsake the Mersey and Her Majesty and return to the colonies and the American girls who love them, yeah yeah yeah.
Liquor Giants released a version of the song on their 1998 all-covers album Something Special For The Kids. They also achieved something special. The whole album's pretty cool, and it's available to purchase as a digital album from our good friends at Futureman Records.
PAUL McCARTNEY: Here Today
From a previous post about my 25 favorite post-Beatles Paul McCartney tracks:
"I know how John Lennon's murder affected me. I can't even imagine how it affected Paul McCartney. John and Paul were brothers, their long-time relationship characterized by bickering and worse, but held together by a unique bond beyond even what they shared with George and Ringo. When John was killed, reporters stuck microphones in Paul's face and asked how he felt; overwhelmed, Paul said, "It's a drag!" He was pilloried for his apparent lack of emotion. The soulless pundits had no goddamned clue. "Here Today," an album track on Tug Of War, expresses the wistful regret and feeling of loss when a loved one is taken too soon."
They were brothers. Bandmates. Partners. Rivals. With two of their other friends, they were an exclusive gang of four that no outsider could ever truly understand in the way that Fab Four understood. And I suspect that not even George Harrison and Ringo Starr themselves could really know the specific interpersonal dynamic of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
In the '70s, when they were publicly fighting in the press and sniping at each other in song lyrics, Paul still turned up at Lennon's digs, guitar in hand, Quarrymen forever. When John was asked about the apparent anti-Macca vitriol of his song "How Do You Sleep?," he scoffed and replied that if he couldn't say such things about his best friend, who else could he say them about?
John and Paul would have worked together again. I have no doubt about that. They may or may not have ever re-Beatled, but I'm sure their paths would have eventually crossed in some public manner. Old friends. Brothers, whose shared bond changed the world for the better.
JOHN LENNON: Watching The Wheels
John and Paul didn't get that chance. A nobody with a gun took it away from them, took away Yoko's husband, Sean and Julian's Dad, George and Ringo's friend, Paul's brother. Our icon. All of it ripped asunder by a killer who wanted to be famous. Fuck him. I will never even say his name.
But today is not the day to curse the darkness. Today, we light a birthday candle in joyful remembrance. 80 birthday candles. We recall the gift of John Lennon, of The Beatles, of music, of family, of love. We're just sitting here watching the wheels go 'round and 'round. Like Cyril Jordan said: Thanks, John. Rock on.
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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:
Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio: CD or download
Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1)will contain 165 essays about 165 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).
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