Since We Seem to Love Talking About John Lennon

"Girl" / The Beatles

Well, we just happen to have another Rubber Soul track that should be worth discussing.

This was, after all, the album where the Beatles had to rise to the challenge, to stretch themselves beyond the pop love song mould; Bob Dylan (and Donovan -- let's not forget Donovan) had laid down the gauntlet for a more literary kind of rock song.

While I rarely find Rolling Stone relevant anymore, here's a smart assessment of that crucial moment in rock history. (This was "the album where the Beatles became the Beatles" -- well, so says a male writer born in 1966 who can have no idea of what it felt like in 1964 to hear "I Saw Her Standing There" for the first time.) But I digress...

I made this video for discussion purposes, just so you can listen to the track as I blather on. I'm sure you all already own it in one form or another (if you're like me, you own it in vinyl, CD, cassette, AND 8-track tape).

Okey-dokey. Sources tell me that this was the last track recorded (at Abbey Road Studios, naturally) for this album, and it was John's clever parry, trying to top Paul's clearly genius track "Michelle." If "Michelle" was going to be French, "Girl" was going to get European as hell, with Greek bazoukis and Viennese mandolins and accordions. (Although, depending upon whom you talk to, it was Paul who added the bazoukis.) Mid-tempo, minor key, but with a way more chromatic melodic line, as was John's wont.  

But that's all beside the point: Let's focus on the yearning of this track, the longing for love. John tarts it up with intellectual constructs (those memorable lines: "Was she taught when she was young that pain would lead to pleasure / Did she understand it when they said / That a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure.") Had John been reading Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Working Class? Possibly. But bottom line? He really wanted a woman who could engage with him on another level. "She's the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry / Yet you don't regret a single day." This song was written after "Norwegian Wood" and he had already evolved.  He hadn't yet met Yoko Ono -- that would happen in 1966 -- but he was primed for something meaningful.

Although when we really look at this girl -- isn't she kind of a bitch? "And she promises the earth to me / And I believe her / After all this time I don't know why." Even worse, in that chantingly monotonic bridge: "She's the kind of girl who puts you down when friends are there / You feel a fool / When you say she's looking good she acts as if it's understood she's cool / Oooh-ooh, oooh-ooh..." 

So let's get real. What do you remember most about this track? It's the rawness of John's vocals, collapsing into those lush harmonies, and that staggeringly sexy intake of breath. Was he sucking in his frustration or just taking a toke (this was the Beatles greatest pothead album)? 

And then there's the bridge, where whatever the lyrics say about "she's the kind of girl who yadda yadda yadda, " ALL we ever heard was the Beatles gleefully singing "tit-tit-tit-tit." And we were their fans, and we were in on it.

I wanted to be that kind of girl. Except she didn't actually seem, you know, to be someone I could be. But if Paul and John wanted that kind of girl . . . well . . . 

52 GIRLS

Okay, back to business, and making up for lost time . . .  
Four Fab Four Girls

Who could possibly pick just one Beatle song about a girl, when there are so many, each telling its own short story?  And none of them is a simple love song.

"Eleanor Rigby" -- from Revolver

1966 -- the year the Beatles turned literary. Suddenly their singles included French ("Michelle"), existential imagery ("Nowhere Man" and "Rain"), and media satire ("Paperback Writer"). "Girl" quotes from Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class ("Was she told when she was young that pain would lead to pleasure?") and "Eleanor Rigby" -- as we've all been told many times -- is based on a character from Charles Dickens.

But listen to the song more closely. If Miss Havisham from Great Expectations inspired "Eleanor Rigby," Paul McCartney was smart enough to make this portrait of a lonely spinster more riddle than literary footnote. We see Eleanor picking up the rice after a church wedding, but he never says whose wedding it was. The haunting image of her waiting by the window, "wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door" could just as easily be Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard. We don't know if she's old or young; we never get inside her head, only watch from a cinematic distance.

And -- surprise! -- the next verse isn't even about Eleanor, but a drudge of a priest named Father MacKenzie, presiding over a church that has lost all relevance. When I first heard this song, I hoped Eleanor and the Rev. MacKenzie would find each other roaming around that empty church and there'd be a happy ending. But no dice. Verse three brings them together at last, but -- downer alert! -- only as MacKenzie buries her in the churchyard.  With no mourners.

That heart-tugging refrain, "Ahh look at all the lonely people" -- it has a hint of satire, but more of sorrowful compassion, especially with the string quartet counterpointing through it. (If a cello worked on "Yesterday," then why not let the brilliant George Martin score a full quartet?) No longer were the Beatles writing coded messages to their girl fans, e.g. me. Pop music was ready to take on a bigger slice of life than just teen romance.

Although, just to be safe, let's put the jolly "Yellow Submarine" on the other side of the single . . . . 

"Lovely Rita" -- from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

A happy-go-lucky song about a guy trying to pick up a cute traffic officer? I don't think so.

For our Rita is a brash New Woman, a new sort of character for 1967. He asks her to tea and she promptly makes it dinner instead, then pays the bill. (Such emasculation!) He requests a second date; in charge of her own sexuality, she cuts to the chase and takes him straight home. But then things get weird – he finds himself “sitting on the sofa with a sister or two.” (I love that word-crammed rat-tat-tat staccato line). Does she live with her family? Is she a feminist with equally liberated roommates? Is she a lesbian, or even a transvestite (have I been listening too much to the Kinks’ “Lola”?)? For all his declarations – “nothing can come between us,” “where would I be without you,” and the sublimely silly “when it gets dark I tow your heart away” – it's not your garden-variety Paul love song. Believe me, I wanted every song Paul McCartney sang to be about me, but I never identified with this Rita chick.

Yet there’s something so compelling about the scenario, you want to get inside and figure out what’s going on. Although Paul's lead vocal promises a good-time rock shuffle, tweaks of bizarreness keep us off balance -- the psychedelic-textured intro, the woozy double-tracked chant “Lovely Rita meter maid,” the sarcastic zing after “Nothing can come between us” (George did that on slide guitar), the snide scrap of military march after “Made her look a little like a military man” (a little comb-and-paper orchestra John set up), the honky-tonk piano in the break. And at the end, the heavy breathing over the pounding piano, chords modulating uncertainly – they nearly make it – then John snaps “I’m leaving” and a door slams. It's Paul’s “Norwegian Wood” – a surreal hook-up gone wrong.

"Dear Prudence" -- from The White Album

As the jet plane of "Back in the USSR" whizzes away, a haunting circular guitar riff moves in, those top notes striking like fingerbells or a gong. "Dear Prudence" croons John Lennon, pleadingly, "Won't you come out to play / Dear Prudence / Meet the brand new day." So who is this Prudence, and why won't she come out? Is she an invalid? A sheltered child? A recluse? In "Eleanor Rigby," Paul drew his haunting portrait from a distance, but John is trying to change things, coaxing Prudence into the world. "The sun is up, the sky is blue / It's beautiful, and so are you" -- why won't she listen?

Prudence would be a great made-up name for a girl too tentative to taste life, but as it happens, she was a real person -- Mia Farrow's sister Prudence Farrow, whom the Beatles met in India while worshipping with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Prudence was so intense about her meditation that she'd run straight back to her cottage after group sessions and meditate alone, and John was asked to intervene, to get her to lighten up. He wrote this song and played it for her there -- whether or not it worked, I don't know. She did teach meditation for many years after; among her students was comedian Andy Kaufman. (That has nothing to do with this song but it's a detail I love.) 

So often we think of John Lennon as a bitter cynic, but the innocence and sweetness of this song show another side to him. He begs Prudence to open her eyes to the world, to feel "a part of everything." The chant-like opening becomes overlaid with rich textures -- a boingy bassline, slapping drums, plinky piano, tambourines, handclaps, a backing chorus that howls like a wind. The tempo changes to a march as the great parade of life barges in. And there is Prudence, cross-legged, eyes screwed shut, obliviously humming her mantra through all of it.

"Polythene Pam" -- from Abbey Road

Years of LP-listening habit run deep, so it's hard for me to isolate any single section of the great Side Two medley on Abbey Road -- but Pam deserves to stand alongside her sisters. We've just learned that Mean Mr. Mustard has a sister named Pam, and now, introduced with a brusque electric guitar flourish, we meet her. "Well you should see Polythene Pam, / She's so good-looking but she looks like a man." Is Polythene Pam one of Lovely Rita's ambiguous roommates?

Songfacts.com claims there was a Cavern-era Beatle fan nicknamed Polythene Pat -- she liked to eat plastic -- and that name popped into John Lennon's free-associating mind. But this is a new girl entirely. Just two years after Sgt. Pepper, John can be explicit about Pam's alternate lifestyle -- "Well you should see her in drag / Dressed in her polythene bag." (As a American teenager, I had no idea what "polythene" was -- I now read that the incident that inspired this song involved sex on a plastic garbage bag.) Later we also see her dressed mannishly in "jack-boots and kilt"; this is a vinyl get-up well beyond anything The Avengers' Emma Peel would wear. She's a tough babe for sure -- "She's killer-diller when she's dressed to the hilt." (Dig how John goes full-on Liverpudlian with his accent here.) And there's a whiff of scandal about her: "She's the kind of a girl who makes the News of the World" -- even without knowing about British tabloid culture, I could get that line.

It may just be a scrap of free-associated lyrics, but it's a vital part of the Side Two mosaic. Listen to the nervy chromatic chord shifts at the end of each verse, the machine-gun drum track, the whip-like steel guitar. Segueing from the lazy shuffle of "Mean Mr. Mustard," this hard-edged song tightens the screws, pushes the energy upwards, until it explodes -- a musical orgasm -- as Pam finally makes her entrance: "She came in through the bathroom window / Protected by a silver spoon." Coke addict, burglar, strip-club dancer, the heroine of this song is a lost soul who doesn't even know it. But the singer loves her, "And so I quit the police department / And got myself a steady job" -- classic Lennon political snark.

Man, I miss the Beatles.

18 DOWN, 34 TO GO

"Don't Forget Me" /
Marshall Crenshaw Sings
Harry Nilsson

I'll admit it -- I'm still part-time obsessed with Harry Nilsson, have been ever since last summer. So please permit me to interrupt the regularly-scheduled program here to post a memorial tribute.

I've just finished the Alyn Shipton biography of Nilsson that I was reading, and realized that it was 20 years ago this January that Harry Nilsson died, at the way-too-soon age of 52. If I'd read the book faster, I'd have known the date in time to post this on January 15, but I'm sure Harry wouldn't mind that I'm getting around to it a couple weeks late.

Because Harry didn't want to be forgotten.

I promise you a Harry Nilsson week this summer, to celebrate his birthday (always better to celebrate births than deaths).  But I couldn't let this anniversary pass without something, and this song is perfectly apropos.

Harry Nilsson had one of the great voices of the 20th century -- at least he did early in his career, before damaging it with his legendary rock-n-roll lifestyle. When Harry recorded "Don't Forget Me," for his 1974 album Pussy Cats, the months-long party that accompanied that recording session had left his voice ravaged. So instead of listening to Harry's version, let's get an idea of what it could have been by hearing Marshall Crenshaw's faithful cover, from the brilliant 1995 tribute album For the Love of Harry. After all, Nilsson was also one of the great songwriters of the century, and I've always believed that the mark of a great songwriter lies in how good his songs' covers are.

Nobody could outdo Harry Nilsson when it came to wistful songs about loss and parting. This is a break-up song -- a divorce song -- but with dashes of ironic humor and regret that make the parting even more bittersweet. (And having already gone through two divorces, Harry knew whereof he spoke.) "In the wintertime," he begins, already projecting into their future apart. Still feeling protective, he advises her to "Keep your feet warm," but then adds wryly, "Keep your clothes on" -- he may be letting her go, but he's not ready to imagine her getting naked with anybody else. He keeps working that fine line between sentiment and sarcasm: "Don't forget me / Keep the memories / But keep your powder dry too."

Verse two follows songwriting convention, moving onto the next season, projecting even further forward in time. It's a lyrical vision at first -- "And in the summer / By the poolside / While the fireflies are all around you / I'll miss you" -- but before he gets too sappy, he undercuts the sentiment to add, "And I know that / I'll miss the alimony too."

The chorus simply repeats the melody, only in a higher key -- a trademark move for Nilsson, he of the three-and-a-half-octave voicespan. (Luckily, Marshall Crenshaw also has that upper register well in his range.) "Don't forget me, / Please don't forget me," he yearns in that higher key. "Make it easy on me, just for a little while" -- I love how that phrase admits to the pain of this split, without asking for pity. And then the chorus shifts down to the original key, adding tenderly, "You know I think about you / Let me know you think about me too." Because marriages don't just vanish; it takes time to work through this stuff.

To me, the tour de force is verse three. Talk about projecting into the future: "And when we're older / Full of cancer / It doesn't matter now, / Come on, get happy." Nothing like putting perspective on today's pain. And then he winds it up with "'Cause nothing lasts forever / But I will always love you." If nothing last forever, how can he "always" love her?  Yet he will.

Harry was one of the world's great Beatle fans -- he was thrilled to be referred to as the Fifth Beatle, and not only because he was close friends with John Lennon, and even closer with Ringo Starr. (The respect was mutual -- at one press conference when the Beatles were asked who their favorite group was, they all answered, "Nilsson.") It wouldn't be surprising, given that his idol John Lennon was producing this album, that this simple melody sounds Lennonesque in its pared-down range, the narrow intervals and chromatics and repeated variations. Yet there's also a McCartneyesque playfulness to the rhythm, a skiffle-ish dance before and behind the beat that gives the song extra buoyancy.

But what really makes this a wonderful song is the unique Nilsson touch, the sidelong way he communicates heartbreak, without ever getting soppy or melodramatic. Who else has ever captured the perverse yin and yang of love and loss so well?

We won't forget you, Harry.

BETWEEN THE BEATLES COVERS

"I'm Only Sleeping" /
Rosanne Cash

So now we've heard from the folk folks, the soul contingent, and the reggae crew -- what about country artists?  It would seem like an obvious connection. There was a definite rockabilly streak trailing through the mid Beatles' catalog -- "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," "I'm A Loser," "She's A Woman," "What Goes On," "I'm Looking Through You" -- no doubt inspired by all those Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly records the Fabs listened to as boys in Liverpool. Country music even solved the perennial What To Do With Ringo question by providing the Buck Owens song "Act Naturally."

Yet surprisingly few country artists have tried their hand at Beatles covers. Sure, there are some gems -- I'm thinking of Emmylou Harris's doggone woeful "For No One," Dolly Parton's fast-break jig "Help," or Johnny Cash's going-to-meet-my-maker turn on "In My Life." Still, the only Beatles cover that ever hit #1 on the country charts was by Johnny's daughter Rosanne -- "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" (1989) transformed into a brisk little Texas two-step.

But Rosanne Cash recorded another Beatles cover, "I'm Only Sleeping," which was never released until it surfaced on her 1995 compilation Retrospective. And "I'm Only Sleeping" doesn't sound country at all -- reminding me that Rosanne Cash, like her daddy before her, is much more than just a country artist.

The Beatles' version of "I'm Only Sleeping" mesmerized me the minute I first heard it on Revolver back in 1966.  John Lennon claimed he was only writing about his fondness for sleeping (fast-forward a few years to John and Yoko's bed-in for peace) but the narcotized tempo, John's weary vocal, and the distorted backwards guitar blips telegraphed to all of us who were In The Know -- this was a Beatles drug song. I mean, come on! "When I'm in the middle of a dream / Stay in bed, float upstream" . . . "Please don't spoil my day / I'm miles away" . . .  "Lying there and staring at the ceiling / Waiting for a sleepy feeling" -- how could we NOT have thought this was about the hazy escapism of drugs?

In fact, I've thought of this as a druggie song for so many years, hearing Rosanne's version was like a shot of energy. Her robust contralto does not sound enervated or weary -- I get the impression that she's staying in bed because she's pissed off.  Or maybe -- I like this scenario even better -- she's an overworked mom who's finally got a few hours to herself and she does not want to be disturbed. 

Though she dials down the psychedelic effects -- her guitar is a brisk acoustic strum, the drumbeat has a little more kick to it, the background oohs hit their beat instead of oozing in -- Rosanne is clearly not going for a country sound here. She commits herself to that backbeat rhythm, and she doesn't deny the inherent spooky melancholy of Lennon's melody, with its circling chromatics and unresolved minor key. (Dig how the second half of each verse repeats the same melodic phrase three times, while the underlying chords shift restlessly -- "[Am] Please don't wake me / [G] No don't shake me / [Am7] Leave me where I am."). The electric guitar part (I'd love to know who played this for her) reads more as rock distortion than as country twang, adding another element of disorientation.

Staying in bed isn't about laziness, it's about escaping a complicated life, and even sleep doesn't drive away the demons. Members of the Cash family know about demons; I'm betting that Rosanne zeroed right in on this subtext. Whether it was about sleep or drugs, John Lennon's original song always begged the question:  What is there about your life that you so desperately need to escape?  Money, fame, critical acclaim, worldwide fan devotion, none of it made John Lennon any happier with himself.

Rosanne Cash may not answer that question, but she lets this song ask it all over again. If one definition of a good cover is that it makes you hear the original song afresh, then Rosanne scored big with this one.

BETWEEN THE BEATLES COVERS

"Nowhere Man" / Paul Westerberg

A really good cover of a really great song is a rare and wonderful thing, and there's nothing harder than covering a Beatles song. Considering that almost your entire audience already knows the original, you've got to walk a tricky line. On the one hand, if you merely imitate the original, why even bother to record it? But on the other hand, the original was done so right, if you change it too much, you're committing sacrilege.

Still, a few artists have turned the trick, and as a lifelong Fab Four fanatic, when I find a memorable Beatles cover, I snatch it up right away.  I'm always on the hunt for these, so if you're got a favorite, please let me know about it. 

I would never have expected a great Beatles cover from alt-rock pioneer Paul Westerberg, even though I am secretly a fan of his post-Replacements acoustic stuff. (I came to the game late -- Westerberg's solo music was actually my intro to the Replacements, not the other way around.)  Yet as soon as I heard this song -- you'll find it on his best-of album Besterberg or the soundtrack of the movie I Am Sam -- it revolutionized how I hear this song.

John Lennon claimed that "Nowhere Man" came to him like magic at dawn, after hours of desperately trying to crank out a song for the Rubber Soul album, keenly aware no doubt that Paul McCartney had already tossed off several beauties. (Ah, the fruits of that rivalry....) Back in the early days, songs came so easily to John and Paul, they could scribble a new tune in half an hour during a recording break. Writer's block must have terrified John, like a portent that the jig was up, that he would finally be exposed as the fraud he always secretly thought he really was.

And then, out of the blue came this sublime little folk song, aching with loneliness and existential despair. For once, John abandoned his usual clever puns and snarky commentaries and laid his orphaned soul bare. Though the song claims to observe and address the Nowhere Man, John is of course himself the Nowhere Man, a lost soul behind the mask of his biting wit, and he takes himself wistfully to task for "making all his nowhere plans for nobody." The world may be at his command, but he doesn't trust that one bit.

In the Rubber Soul version, however (which by the way we Americans only got on Yesterday . . . And Today), John has a little help from his friends, who chime in harmonies and la-la-lala's on the chorus. There's a gently rocking tempo, Ringo's chipper drumbeat, and George's twangy guitar break to counteract the song's melancholy. When we first heard it we knew it was a sad-dish song, in the same way that "I'll Follow the Sun" and "Things We Said Today" were sad-dish songs. But the Beatles were a pop group, for chrissake.  Producer George Martin was not about to let them go full-on depressive.

But Paul Westerberg?  Sitting in his basement studio in Minneapolis, making his own handmade solo recordings?  Nobody was around to stop him from scuba diving to the heart of melancholy -- and this cover brilliantly adds a new dimension to Lennon's song as a result.

It's just him and his guitar, the tempo dialed down, the guitar gently picking instead of strumming. Even Westerberg's creaky, scratchy voice is an asset to this track. He sounds like an ordinary guy, observing the Nowhere Man from a distance, awed by the fact that "isn't he a bit like you and me." He's critical, but hesitantly so -- "He's as blind as he can be / Just sees what he wants to see / Nowhere man, can you see me at all?" And oh, he wants the Nowhere Man to see him -- he wants Lennon to know he's there, even though the guy is dead by now, mowed down because of his own celebrity. There's an elegiac quality here that Lennon could never have put into this song. It bears a weight of history; it is transformative.

 And yet in the third verse PW can step up to the plate and counsel the guru: "Nowhere Man, don't worry / Take your time, don't hurry / Leave it all, till somebody else / Lends you a hand." You can't tell me that this guy doesn't feel at least a tiny bit the same burden of carrying on a legacy. I love how he falters behind the beat, tentative, testing the waters. The fade-and-repeat ending drifts into a subtle rendition of "Taps" -- nuance, nuance, nuance.

A cover that transforms the original? Turn me on, dead man.          

"Stupefied" / Robyn Hitchcock

Listening to Robyn Hitchcock is a pretty fair way to feel high without have to smoke or snort anything. There's always something deliciously off-kilter about his music, from the Rimbaud-like imagist lyrics to the tripping syncopations to the crunchy snarls of dissonance. It never fails to give me a kick. 

With most artists, I listen to a new album hunting for themes, biographical tidbits, a new musical direction. None of those criteria matter with a new Robyn Hitchcock album. Is Love From London any more "about" London than any of his previous albums? No. It's not particularly about London at all, apart from one song -- "Strawberries Dress" (Robyn Hitchcock writes a lot about strawberries) -- that begins by mentioning the Telecom Tower. The lyrics are more stream-of-consciousness than self-expression, and the sound -- as always -- can only be described as the idiosyncratic Robyn Hitchcock sound, a freeform blend of folk and rock and jazz full of insidious melody.

Here's track three, "Stupefied." As you listen, tell me -- whom does it remind you of?

  
I've always known that Robyn Hitchcock was a huge John Lennon fan, but I never thought he sounded particularly like Lennon until this song.  I'm thinking of the later Lennon, the post-Mind Games Lennon, after he rediscovered joy and melody. (I've always given Harry Nilsson credit for that.) 

Maybe it's the piano accompaniment -- those plunky modulations -- or the light-fingered percussion skipping behind it. Then there's the chromatic melodies, the unresolved chords at the end of lines, and the way he sings just slightly against the beat.

But most of all, it's the lyrics, a series of absurdist koans that Lennon himself would have enjoyed. "Ain't no money on the ceiling / Ain't no ceiling on the floor," Robyn begins, suggesting a sense of dislocation that works perfectly with the next lines: "Got that terrifying feeling / You don't love me any more." I love how the verse's melody scrabbles around among a few close-together notes, conveying the boxed-in feeling of this beleaguered guy.

In the next verse, desperate for some comfort, he ruefully informs us, "Ain't no whisky in the Talbot," which according to Wikipedia probably means a rare brand of automobile, though it could also be a lunar crater or an obscure type of railway wagon (Robyn Hitchcock also loves trains). "Ain't no sugar in your tea," he adds, as if shaking his head morosely along with that loungy beat. "There's an answer to it all but / You're still mystifying me." Well, that makes two of us.

Perhaps the answer lies in the refrain, as he soars up into a Lennon-like nasal falsetto: "You wanna get [off beat] hi-ii-iigh." Letting loose with that sustained high note really feels like escape, doesn't it?  First time around, he continues, "But you don't know just why"; by the third refrain, he tells us, "and by now you know why." So it's the second refrain that's the heart of the song:

     You wanna get high,
     It's in the blood supply
    And time'll go by
    Like a neuron in the sky

Don't you know just what this feels like?

Verse three is my personal favorite. "Ain't no honey back in Norway / Ain't no kroner in your pants / Must have blown it in the doorway / On those sugar-coated ants." Maybe these are lazy, opportunistic rhymes, but I prefer to see them as evocative word associations -- the honey with the sugar, the Norway with the kroner, and of course ants, another of Hitchcock's insect fascinations. You've gotta love the way his voice swoops on "pants," which is of course inherently one of the funniest words there is.

All I know is, by the end of the song I'm feeling a little stupefied myself -- but in a good way.

SATURDAY SHUFFLE

There is a light at the end of the tunnel -- spring vacation is here, and possibly, just possibly, I can get back to regular blogging very soon.  Until then . . .

1. Seeds and Stems (Again) / Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen
From Lost in the Ozone (1971)
Now here's a little time machine for you: This track effortlessly induces a contact high, every time.  It isn't just nostalgia -- I never had the pleasure of listening to this great stoner rockabilly stuff back in the day -- but thank god I found them since.   

2. More and More and More and Then Some / Nina Simone
From Pastel Blues (1965)
Here's a two for one -- Nina Simone working a Billie Holliday song, and adding her own extra throb of bluesy desire.  I certainly wasn't listening to this in 1965; I wouldn't have known what to make of it, anyway. But oh, what fine stuff this is, a shot of moaning late-night melancholy that's just about perfect.  

3. Bingo / Madness
From The Liberty of Norton Folgate (2009)
Ska-flavored music hall soft shoe, full of Cockney smart-arse patter -- all in the service of a downright Dickensian panorama of London low-life.  A seriously brilliant album, criminally unheralded this side of the Atlantic. I think I can safely say that anybody who loves the Kinks would totally dig this stuff.  

4. She Said / Collective Soul
From Dosage (2008)
Funked-up loungy rock, craftily laden with hooky riffs, and cue the strings and synths. I love how Collective Soul pitches to their female audience with sensitive-guy "I understand your pain" lyrics, meanwhile baring their chests and tossing their long hair... 

5. Live Alone / Franz Ferdinand
From Tonight (2009)
Talk about hooks -- these Scots rockers pump 'em out recklessly, along with charged-up tempos that sweeten the minor-key desperation of their songs. "I want to live alone / Because the greatest love is always ruined by the bickering / The argument of living..."  

6. Nobody Told Me / John Lennon
From Milk and Honey (1984)
What a amazing groove John hits here, loose and comical and reconciled.  "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed!" He's just sitting back shaking his head, amused by the absurdity of it all.  When I think that this was where he'd gotten, finally, and then to be shot down -- tragic. 

7. Rain Coloured Roses / The Beatstalkers
From The Beatstalkers (1968)
Serendipity!  Put together Franz Ferdinand and John Lennon and what do you get?  "Glasgow's Beatles" -- or so this band was touted at the time. Sorry I can't post a link, as I only got these tracks from my Glasgow connection (thanks, Davy!). But they were clearly the peers of most British Beat bands of the period (even recorded some early Bowie compositions) and really should be better known.    


8. Profoundly in Love With Pandora / Ian Dury and the Blockheads
From Reasons To Be Cheerful: The Best of Ian Dury (compilation)
Last week I finally watched Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, the brilliant recent biopic of Ian Dury, so I'm very happy to have this 1985 gem shuffle up. "My mother's heart and soul have gone halfway up the pole / My father's on the dole / It's taking its toll..."   As if Dury's clever subversive lyrics weren't enough, this band was an incredibly tight jazz-ska ensemble.  Man, do I love them. 

9. Further On (Up the Road) / Johnny Cash
From American V: A Hundred Highways (2006)
Late Johnny Cash, gravel voice and all.  The fierce distilled intelligence of Johnny Cash at the end of his career is not to be rivaled -- talk about raging against the dying of the light!

10. Retrieval of You / Minus 5
From Down With Wilco (2003)
Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck's other other job, when they're not playing with Robyn Hitchcock.  I love the copacetic groove of this "pop collective," which this time round enlisted Wilco to jam with them. It's all good.

BONUS TRACK!!!  (Because I can't resist these guys...)


11. All Kinds of Time / Fountains of Wayne
From Welcome Interstate Managers (2003) 
Clever AND tender -- that's the special thing about Fountains of Wayne. They gently satirize the football hero in slo-mo exultation at the height of his achievement, and yet make us feel wistful about how fleeting this moment is.  It really is "all kinds" of time...

SECOND BONUS TRACK!!!  (Because...well, it's Johnny.)

12. Learning How To Love You / John Hiatt
From Bring the Family (1987)
My very first Hiatt post  -- loved it then, love it now.


And now I promise I'll stop -- even though Graham Parker's next...

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 86-90

I'm surprised to discover how few of today's five singles ever got covered on this blog before. I assure you, each one had its heyday on my record player (and yes, I do mean record player). Bear with me as I make up for lost time!

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

86. "Have I The Right?" / The Honeycombs (1964)
Remember, in 1964, we had no idea which English band would be the Next Big Thing. We listened to all of it, drank it in, bought the singles -- and waited to see how it would all shake out. The Honeycombs were a British band -- check -- from North London, named after their female drummer Honey Lantree, who was also a hairdresser (Honey Combs, get it?). I was snared right away by the exuberant backbeat bounce of this song, enhanced by a prominent drum track, a tambourine rattled right onto the mike, and heavy footstomps on the studio stairs, recorded by producer Joe Meek. ("Come! right! back! I just can't bear it / I've got this love and I want to share it!") Add some cheese-grater guitar and a whiny organ and there it was, an irresistible bit of pop candy. Lead singer Denis D'Ell's voice was a little Tommy Steele-ish -- even more so once they'd sped up the original recording -- but that chipper, boyish quality was tremendously appealing, especially with all the little growls and yips he threw in. "Have I the rrright to touch you? / If I could yooou'd see how much you / Send those shivers rrrunning down my spine." Two minutes and 59 seconds of youthful desire -- exactly my cup of tea.

87. "You Were On My Mind" / We Five (1965)
For some reason, in my mental jukebox "Have I The Right?" is always followed immediately with "You Were On My Mind." This despite the fact that it came along a year later, from an American band (We Five was from San Francisco), had a female lead singer, and was folk-rock instead of BritBeat (if I'd been a folkie I'd have recognized it as an Ian and Sylvia song). But it's the same sort of uptempo, upbeat charmer, with lots of drums -- in fact, "You Were On My Mind"'s entire first verse is practically a capella, sung with just a snare and high hat. Verse two adds a few asterisks of electric guitar strums, with more guitars layered on gradually as the song builds and builds. The harmonies swell, guitar riffs spin off like Telstars, and a marvelous time is had by all. The plot is simple: "Well I woke up this morning / You were on my mind / And you were on my mind . . ." She's got troubles, she's got worries, she's got "wounds to bind" -- but she doesn't bother us with details. She goes to the corner, she comes home again, she walks away her blues. She copes, briskly and cheerfully, probably because of that guy who's on her mind. What's not to love?

88. "Killing Me Softly With His Song" / Roberta Flack (1971)
Coming fresh off of her first big smash hit, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," Flack owned the airwaves for a while with this song, and she deserved to. It came along smack dab in the middle of my coffeehouse intellectual phase -- well, as much of a coffeehouse intellectual as I could be as a high school senior in Indianapolis -- when an arty jazz-soul hit by a black sister with an enormous Afro was just the ticket. It has a great backstory, too: Written by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox (composers of the "Happy Days" TV theme song) and singer Lori Lieberman, it was inspired by Leiberman's rapture after watching a pre-"American Pie" Don McLean sing at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. (I suspect that's info I picked up from Casey Kasem's Coast to Coast radio show.) On her own recording, however, Lieberman overemotes; the thing that made this a hit was Roberta Flack's smoky, bell-like voice gliding over a samba beat. I love those overlapping, repeated phrases: "Strumming my pain with his fingers / Singing my life with his words / Killing me softly with his song / Killing me softly / With his song, telling my whole life / With his words, killing me softly / With his song. . . . " She sounds dazed, transported, stunned to her core, the way a girl sometimes is after sitting in the dark, riveted soul-deep by a stranger on stage. We've all been there, ladies.

89. "Tempted" / Squeeze (1981) I listen now to Squeeze and can't fathom why they never really registered on my radar. It was just this one big hit, but oh, what a sweetie.

90. "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" / John Lennon (1974)
Post-Beatles John Lennon took himself way too seriously -- all that primal scream crap -- it would have driven me right into the arms of Paul McCartney if I hadn't already been firmly snuggled there. I longed for the old playful, funny John to resurface, and he finally did on this 1974 single -- John's only #1 solo hit -- from the Walls and Bridges album. It's telling, I think, that this song came out of John's 18-month-long "lost weekend," when he went off with May Pang to sort himself out. Pang has said that it was inspired by John's habit of channel-surfing late at night, a habit I totally identify with. It rockets along on a high-energy groove, courtesy of Elton John, who contributes backup vocals and a boogie-woogie piano; best of all is the screaming sax, a Bobby Keys special. Studded with a few Lennonesque koans ("don't need a watch to tell the time," "don't need a gun to blow your mind"), it's one long party of a song, bursting with joy and optimism. I love that coaxing boogeying bridge: "Hold me darlin,' come on listen to me / I won't do you no harm / Trust me darlin,' come on listen to me, / Come on listen to me / Come on listen, listen." Whenever this song came on the radio, I'd squeal and turn it up -- and it still never fails to lift my spirits.

"Dear Boy" / Paul McCartney

I'm still mad at the Beatles for breaking up. How dare they?! The only consolation I had back in 1970 was that at least Paul McCartney was still making records, and of course I loved them. I was obsessed for months with his first solo effort McCartney, his handmade homemade one-man show with that spilled bowl of cherries on the front and the scrapbook of happy family snapshots inside (man, how jealous I was of Linda McCartney!). Totally unlike the Beatles' densely crafted LPs, it seemed wild and unpolished and vital and divine. And it wasn't long before the prolific Mr. McCartney cranked out another one, the equally primitive Ram.

I suppose if I listened to these records now for the first time, I'd think they were silly. So many of these songs are little more than fragments, scraps of private meanderings that only Paul could decipher. But I'll never know what my honest critical reaction would have been; all I know is that I love love love these records to death.

McCartney was recorded before the Beatles broke up (in fact it precipitated the break-up); Ram was written and recorded after all that brouhaha, and therefore this is the one we have to look to for "messages" about the Beatles. That photo of two beetles screwing each other on the back of the album cover is hard to miss, isn't it? And the song "Too Many People" seemed pretty clearly aimed at the other Beatles. But apparently John Lennon smarted when he first heard "Dear Boy," too, thinking it was written about him ("Guess you never knew, dear boy, what you had found...Hope you never know, dear boy, how much you missed.") Paul, though, has said it was written to Linda's ex-husband, marveling that anyone would have let such a woman go. That does make more sense out of lines like "she was just the cutest thing around" and "When I stepped in, my heart was down and out, / But her love came through and brought me round / Got me up and about." Of course, that didn't stop John from going off and writing the supremely nasty, bitter "How Do You Sleep?" in retaliation.

Well, anyway, back to the song McCartney did write. Forget the lyrics; it's the melody and the syncopation that make this song so irresistible. A pounded piano takes the place of the signature McCartney bass line, climbing darkly up beneath a tripping melody; that capricious rhythm keeps you delightfully off balance as the minor-key melody circles around. It's a simple song, but he keeps layering on more textures, with guitars and drums and backing harmonies and a vocal counterpoint. I could make up all sorts of reasons why this dense tapestry of sound suits the theme of the song, but this is Paul McCartney after all; he probably just did it because he liked the way it sounded. Well, when you've been blessed with the amount of sheer musical instinct this guy has, you can afford to operate like that.

It sure sucks me into its vortex, anyway. The melody's so restless, the rhythm so edgy, it makes me almost intoxicated. I know that the very sound of this man's voice sends me into a special zone; there's no accounting for the way I love McCartney's music. But really, anyone but the worst kind of music snob has to admit this is fine stuff indeed.

Dear Boy sample

"Watching the Wheels" / John Lennon

Twenty-seven years ago, and it still hurts. I lived just a few blocks uptown from the Dakota the night John was shot, and I remember walking there the morning after, taking my place among the crowds of hollow-eyed, stunned mourners gathering on the sidewalk across the street. No other rock 'n' roll death ever hit me so hard. Every year, this anniversary surprises me by how much I still miss him.

I wasn't much of a fan of the Double Fantasy album -- too many Yoko songs. (I actually don't dislike Yoko, not like some people do, but let's be honest, her songs were horrible.) This one track, though, redeemed the whole record for me. It's a delicious defense of John's house-husband years, those fallow years when he'd finally figured out how to stop being a Beatle and start being a person. But his music mattered so much to the world, the idea of him being a private citizen seemed perverse.

"People say I'm crazy / Doing what I'm doing ," he notes wryly. I'm sure Lennon heard it over and over again, how he was wasting his phenomenal talent by sitting around his apartment baking bread and playing with his little boy Sean. (My other favorite song on this album: "Beautiful Boy.") But it's like something I once heard Orson Welles say -- it's such a Puritan notion, that just because you have talent you have to use it.

"When I say that I'm okay, / Well they look at me kinda strange," John reports, with only a trace of that famous edge of his. "'Surely you're not happy now / You no longer play the game'?" But the thing is, John WAS happy just "watching shadows on the wall." He didn't miss "the big time," not at all. Here was a guy who'd been living in a whirlwind ever since he was 19 years old -- can you blame him for finally jumping off?

There's a hypnotic piano hook lacing it all together, a curling little riff that's the best thing about this whole song. In typical Lennon form, the melody slides around chromatically, the chords morph in and out of seventh and diminished modes, more interested in subtle incremental shifts than the bouncy tunes his partner Paul McCartney tended to write.

"I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round / I really love to watch them roll," he insists in the chorus. "No longer riding on the merry-go-row-ownd" -- jumping upwards for once, an exasperated falsetto howl. "I just had to let it go," he explains, and although this entire song is about being relaxed and contented, the way he punches out that line suggests that it didn't come easy.

I think it's significant that this song shows Lennon getting his syncopated groove back -- after all the primal scream of the Plastic Ono Band album, the woozy introspection of Imagine, and the political rants of Sometime in New York City, the Double Fantasy album found Lennon's creative juices in harmony again. The album came out in November 1980; a couple weeks later he was shot. Makes you think.

So, in honor of John Lennon, let's all draw a breath, step off, and watch the wheels for a while. Life's too short to ride that merry-go-round forever.

Watching the Wheels sample

“Crippled Inside” / Widespread Panic

I don’t know about you, but I found the recent worldwide Live Earth concerts to be a little, well…disconcerting. I know we need to save the planet and all, but still -- did those shows really make a single person more environmentally aware? I bet they wasted more energy than they saved, in the long run.

Nevertheless, I’m not opposed to do-good causes, when they’re done right, and it seems like this Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur has been done right. Trust Amnesty International and Yoko Ono to play their cards shrewdly. Cashing in on John Lennon's songwriting genius makes complete sense if it's for a political cause. Okay, it’s a little annoying to hear Avril Lavigne warble “Imagine,” but Green Day doing “Working Class Hero,” Matisyahu rapping away on “Watching the Wheels,” or Los Lonely Boys rocking out on “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” (really, can anybody ruin that song?) make it all worthwhile.

I love it when a tribute album turns me on to a band I’ve never heard before. Though it’s only available on the iTunes bonus tracks, Widespread Panic’s version of “Cripple Inside” did just that. It was great to get a jolt of southern jam band energy after all the slick pop and Important Anthem Rock performances on this record (R.E.M. no longer counts as a southern jam band in my book). Lennon’s original recording of “Crippled Inside” already had a nice jangly honky-tonk vibe; Widespread Panic has taken that and added bluegrass picking and pedal steel -- I even hear a little washboard in there -- and then let it swing like the roadhouse classic it was always meant to be.

Sure, Widespread Panic’s lead singer sounds more like a cracker-barrel philosopher than the snide, bitter pundit Lennon was. But somehow it works this way, too. “You can shine your shoes and wear a suit / You can comb your hair and looks quite cute” – when Lennon sang that, he was a long-haired dropout sneering at conformists; when WP sings it, it comes off as a country boy poking fun at a city slicker. You can almost imagine him pausing to spit tobacco juice between verses. “You can go to church and sing a hymn / And judge me by the color of my skin” – these lines sound even more relevant when sung by somebody with a southern twang. And the chorus just crackles with down-home wisdom: “Well now you know that your cat has nine lives / Nine lives to itself / But you only got one / And a dog’s life ain’t fun / Mamma take a look outside.”

Anyway, I apologize in advance for shilling a track that can only be bought on iTunes. (Must be my secret crush on Steve Jobs leading me astray.) But check it out if you’re iTuned in; otherwise, head over to www.widespreadpanic.com and check out some other tunes by these guys. That’s what I plan to do.