UNDERRATED ALBUMS # 21

KNOWING THE SONGS WELL  
BEFORE THEY START SINGING:-

THE 2011 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
BOB DYLAN TRIBUTE ALBUM

COMMEMORATING 50 YEARS 
OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

The Cover Version In Context

'And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it.
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin''

('A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' - Bob Dylan, 1963)
 

The appearance this year of Amnesty International's impressive 4-CD compilation of previously unreleased covers of Bob Dylan's back-catalogue, issued to mark the organisation's 50th anniversary, may give us pause to consider, along with the actual album, the place of the cover version in popular music. Incidentally, this is not Amnesty's first fund-raising foray in the field; they issued a 2-CD set of John Lennon songs in 2007 - Instant Karma. The Campaign To Save Darfur).  Nowadays, the covers-album is pretty much recognised as a genre in itself, but it's easy to forget that, once upon a time, just about all albums were effectively covers-albums. The original sales charts of the music industry were, of course, based on songs published as sheet music to be performed not only by radio and stage entertainers but by the general public gathered around stand-up pianos in public houses and domestic parlours. By the 1950s, the charts that represented the sales of records and singles were soon joined by albums which usually threw together a couple of hits with a few makeweight odds and sods, including an established standard here and there (songs became standards by virtue of accumulating a high number of cover versions).

The great engine room that drove the music industry at that time was New York's legendary Tin Pan Alley which churned out songs to be bought in their original form as well as being covered and translated the world over. London's Denmark Street was the other market leader, although a long way behind the Americans. Stateside hits were routinely covered in the UK and it was not uncommon for there to be several very similar versions of the same song charting simultaneously either side of the Atlantic. During the Rock & Roll phase, singer-songwriters such as Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly briefly weakened the traditional stranglehold, but of course, King Elvis would always be reliant on songs being presented to him and regarded covers as a stock in trade.  Even the great names who would later shape the age of 'Rock Music' - an era which demanded that singers and bands produce original material if they were to be deemed artists rather than mere pop acts - padded out their early albums with covers. It's worth remembering that all through the 1960s, the hugely successful Tamla Motown label still held even its most prized performers' albums in low regard, filling them up with an incestuous and repetitive mix of songs from that remarkable song-writing hothouse of Holland/Dozier/Holland.

To a large extent, the industry's priority with singles has always seen songs as product rather than art. By the mid to late '60s, however, record companies were prepared to allow their signings to indulge themselves artistically on album cuts and this coincided with some of the best and most enduring long-players ever made. Even in today's digital age of downloads and iPod shuffles, the album retains a cultural cachet rarely attained by the single. At the same time, songs have been recommodified to serve as backing tracks to celebrities twirling around on Strictly Come Dancing or to provide vehicles for the karaoke generation to compete with on the likes of American Idol and The X Factor. These global TV franchises have done little to encourage distinctive singing, playing or song-writing, but they have been a shot in the arm for the cover-song (consider, for instance, X Factor winner Alexanra Burke's huge hit with Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' - which prompted several other previous covers of the song by Jeff Buckley, John Cale and Rufus Wainwright to be reissued - all of them, by the way, far superior to Burke, who managed to get the lyric wrong). 

 

The songs of The Beatles and Bob Dylan have accumulated a vast and ever-growing number of cover versions a very long way beyond that achieved by any of their contemporaries.  During the late '60s, two particular songs, both of them album tracks - 'With a Little Help From My Friends', one of the slighter cuts from The Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper and 'All Along The Watchtower' from Dylan's back-to acoustic John Wesley Harding, also from '67 - were taken on in ways which raised the bar on what was possible with a cover version. The first was a towering reconstruction by Joe Cocker & The Grease Band, whilst the second was an electrifying tour de force by Jimi Hendrix. Dylan has subsequently attempted to copy it himself in live performances many times since. No other cover versions have ever quite epitomised the onward and upward aesthetic of the Rock culture as much as those two extraordinary records.

In the early 1970s; there appeared a brief flurry of covers albums, most of them regarded at the time by critics as lightweight side-projects: David Bowie's Pin-Ups (1973) his homage to the bands he saw around the London clubs during the 'Swinging Sixties'; Harry Nilsson's A Little Touch Of Schmillson in the Night (1973), the first trawl through 'The Great American Songbook' by a rock performer; several excursions by Bryan Ferry on leave from Roxy Music; and not forgetting Dylan's own Self Portrait (1970), dismissed at the time by that most intellectual of American rock critics, Greil Marcus, as 'shit' ...

When they did appear, covers albums, like the increasingly prevalent live albums, were often delivered by performers as contract-filling assignments. Rod Stewart, however, was to be seen in the twilight of his career releasing several albums of reliable old chestnuts from that Great American Songbook - like Linda Ronstadt before him and Robbie Williams afterwards. It's a deep well that McCartney has also visited of late (like his old partner John, Paul has also released a set of Rock & Roll covers).

Cover versions often appear on the 'free' CDs which music magazines such as Mojo 'give away' these days. These may be commissioned as 'tribute albums' devoted to classic artists or classic albums and often include previously unreleased performances. Covers still popped up on the singles charts and flourished during the doldrums years of the 1990s and the early 21st century when the craze for anodyne boy bands, singing actors and TV talent show 'stars' was at its height. Few, if any of these records though, aspired to, let alone attained the lofty peaks of Mounts Cocker and Hendrix.

The "Chimes Of Freedom" Compilation

('For every unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail')

This is merely the latest of numerous Dylan tribute albums to appear over the years: its real importance derives from its purpose to raise funds for a truly worthy cause as well as marking Amnesty's 50th anniversary and reminding us of how Dylan, like no other songwriter of this period, 'sings of how the world can conspire against individual freedom – and how, insidiously, ordinary people can be complicit in that conspiracy', as Sean Wilentz puts it in his sleeve-note.

The scope of the enterprise is ambitious: 72 tracks featuring artists from far and wide (although predominantly American), ranging from fresh-faced pop stars to grizzled veterans and legends to obscurities, playing in many different styles - the vast majority of whom more than do justice to the songs. I had thought that I'm Not There (the 2001 OST of Todd Haynes' interesting though flawed film about Dylan) would take some beating, but the quality, variety and sheer quantity of Chimes Of Freedom manage to pull it off. I've played the whole thing several times now and can find only two real clunkers. These are, firstly, UK singer-songwriter, Natasha Bedingfield's unwitting ruination of 'Ring Them Bells', which gradually descends into a shrill, faux-gospel mess; and the unmitigated, sniffing, sobbing disaster of 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright' by US singer / rapper Kesha, which forces one to redefine the word 'overwrought'. It could well be inferred that these performances are an indirect product of the 'X Factor' approach where phoney emoting of the Whitney & Maria School Of Over-Singing is mistaken for real soul power.

The modus operandi of the project was that all of the performances, apart from Dylan's original title-track, should be previously unreleased - but I'd have liked just a little more flexibility in order to have included Bruce Springsteen's epic version of 'Chimes' to perhaps have opened the set and provided a bookend to Dylan's original which closes the collection.l Failing that, one has to wonder why there is no version of 'Masters Of War', which would have also been an ideal curtain-raiser. Given the project's aims, the omission of this particular masterpiece is both glaring and puzzling.  My only other criticisms would be minor ones. Firstly, the sequencing occasionally leaves something to be desired - for instance, CDI ends with three ballads very similar in style and tone ('Boots Of Spanish Leather', 'Girl From The North Country' and 'Restless Farewell') whilst CD3 has back-to-back punk rushes of 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' and 'Desolation Row' which might, to some ears, seem rather a clash.

Secondly, the neat, fold-out design of the package is attractive and functional, but, apart from telling us that Bob Clearmountain mixed the whole shebang, has no recording information whatsoever about the artists - many of whom will be unknown to purchasers. An insert would have been useful. Finally, it should be noted that only four songs – all from Time Out Of Mind (1991) - represent the last 22 years of Dylan's recording career. Perhaps not all that surprising, but it might have been interesting to hear the odd new slant on some of his more recent songs (his last few albums have, after all, been very successful, both critically and commercially).
 

The Range Of Styles

Cover versions tend to fall into different types of rendition. There have been a number of themed covers albums of Dylan songs ranging from soul to strings sets. Chimes Of Freedom ticks most, if not all of the boxes in its eclectic approach to Dylan's vast back-catalogue. What follows is an unashamed exercise in pigeon-holing, but readers should bear in mind that the categories are not hard and fast and sometimes overlap.

* ACOUSTIC TO ELECTRIC (& vice versa)

US alt. rockers State Radio's furious take on one of the early anti-war songs, 'John Brown', for instance. The Dave Matthews Band's version of 'All Along The Watchtower' begins in an interestingly slow, downbeat way and later features a surprising horn solo, but along the way degenerates into wildly over-the-top howling and riffage.

* THE TEMPO CHANGE

The thrashing rampages mentioned above of 'Baby Blue' and 'Desolation Row' by US outfits Bad Religion and My Chemical Romance both work quite well. Similarly, 'Hollis Brown' gets a powerful Punk Rock treatment from Rise Against. '4th Time Around' is slowed down by Israeli singer songwriter Oren Lavie in a beautifully languid and dreamy fashion which features breathy vocals accompanied by sitar and cellos.

* MALE TO FEMALE VOCAL (& Vice Versa)

About a third of the tracks feature female leads including the World-conquering Adele with a live take of her huge hit, 'Make You Feel My Love'. Patti Smith, who did Dylan's 'Changing Of The Guard' on her own recent covers album, Twelve (2007), here offers a fine, countryish pass at 'The Drifter's Escape '. Thea Gilmore really makes something of the rather nondescript 'I'll Remember You' and Joan Baez resurrects the dusty 'Seven Curses' (and if that is her eloquent and nimble guitar, then age is certainly not withering her).

* THE GENRE SWITCH

Irish band Flogging Molly turn 'The Times They Are A-Changin' into a raucous Poguesian romp, whilst Elvis Costello's almost Doo-Wop reading of 'License To Kill', complete with falsetto backing vocals, is curiously effective (his wife, jazz artist, Diana Krall, is on top form with her stately, piano-led version of 'Simple Twist Of Fate', by the way). Then there is veteran US soul star Betty Lavette's convincing take of 'Most Of The Time'.

* LOW KEY TO BIG PRODUCTION

There are no orchestrated arrangements on the album although Adele's contribution somehow implies the big treatment despite her being accompanied only by solo piano (when she thanks the audience at the end, we're alsogiven a blast of her chavtastic speaking voice).

* THE DECONSTRUCTION

Perhaps the most radical reworking on the album is Somalian K'Naan's gentle urban rap version of 'With God On Our Side' in which he rewrites the verses whilst retaining the original chorus. Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim offers a slow, highly formal reading of 'All I Really Want To Do' in which she changes parts of the melody as well as delivering the title in her native tongue.

* THE INSTRUMENTAL

Only one on 'Chimes': US art outfit, The Kronos Quartet's Nymanesque rendering of 'Don't Think Twice'.

* THE CARBON-COPY

Apart from its sax and trumpet solos, the Lenny Kravitz version of 'Rainy Day Women' , is probably the arrangement which comes closest to the Dylan original on Chimes, although Steve Earle's duet with US actress and violinist, Lucia Micarelli is a pretty faithful reflection of 'One More Cup Of Coffee'. Meanwhile, Mick Hucknall's take on 'One Of Us Must Know' is a lovely homage to Dylan's classic Blonde On Blonde era singing style.  Hucknall's version is one of my favourites on the set, but I think I detected that even the famous Simply Red larynx can't hold a note quite as long as Bob could back then. It reminds me of Dylan's tongue-in-cheek boast to reporters during the Dont Look Back film about his breath control. It also brings to mind that old CBS marketing slogan that 'Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan', which indirectly seemed to address the commonly held view that Dylan couldn't really sing at all, whilst at the same time cleverly implying that the way he sang was so radically different and distinctive as to defy comparison. 

 

Some of the younger performers acquit themselves particularly well - special mention goes to Ziggy Marley's straightforward but soulful grasp of 'Blowin' In The Wind', the ghost of his father's voice audible in the muscular acoustic arrangement. The highly successful US pop band Maroon 5 also do a solid job on 'I Shall Be Released' and none other than songstress Miley Cyrus, star of TV's Hannah Montana' and daughter of the God of line-dancing, Billy Ray, carries 'You're Conna Make Me Lonesome When You Go' very effectively, without succumbing to the over-singing so much in vogue with her generation (Natasha and Kesha please take note). Fashionable US Rock bands like The Gaslight Anthem, My Morning Jacket and Queens Of The Stone Age are present and correct, whilst the middle-agers are represented by, amongst others Neil Finn, Billy Bragg, Lucinda Williams and the reverend Sinead O'Connor who righteously grabs 'Property Of Jesus' by the scruff of its neck. Seal, supported by Jeff Beck, carries 'Like a Rolling Stone' with confidence, and whilst Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry's singing of 'Man Of Peace' may be negligible, he does transform the song a with triumphant bottle-neck extravaganza.

During Dylan's barren patch in the early 1970s,Bryan Ferry emerged as a real contender with his songs for Roxy Music but, over time, Ferry's gift for lyrics faded and his off-stage persona became more right-of-centre politically. It's interesting therefore to see him involved in this Amnesty project, his contribution being a pleasant version of 'Bob Dylan's Dream' featuring his harmonica playing over a clip-clop rhythm, much of a piece with his own album of Dylan covers, 2007's Dylanesque. Other oldies on form are Mark Knopfler, Carly Simon, Eric Burdon, Marianne Faithfull and Taj Mahal who apply their experience to good effect. Pete Townshend is rather wobbly on 'Corrina, Corrina' though, and Kris Kristofferson does a curiously downbeat version of 'Quinn The Eskimo' (Manfred Mann it ain't...). The version of 'One Too Many Mornings', jointly credited to Johnny Cash & The Avett Brothers, which opens proceedings, is a strong cut and is apparently the result of some studio jiggery-pokery by Rick Rubin who, whilst producing an album for The Avett Brothers, has taken one of Dylan/Cash duets from the Nashville Skyline out-takes and replaced the Dylan vocal with those of the band. None more old than Pete Seeger, of course, and his nonagenarian intoning of 'Forever Young', counterpointed by The Rivertown Kids, a troupe of children from his neck of the woods fittingly provides the final cover on the album. 

 

It should be clear from the above that I think the overall standard of these performances is unusually high for this kind of tribute album. There are big songs and big names here as well as lesser known material and artists.  Consequently there were plenty of chances for tripping up - and yet remarkably few missteps weaken the six dozen covers. This is a testament to the strength of the songs.  I really would have liked to describe every single track but that doesn't seem practicable. Suffice to say that all of the performers who've gone unmentioned did very good work indeed (and there are some intriguing people involved here: two notable sons, Dhani Harrison and Ben Harper figure in the line-up of Fistful Of Mercy, whilst Evan Rachel Wood is the ex-fiancee of Marilyn Manson; Moroccan songwriter, Red One, meanwhile, has produced Lady GaGa).

 

Amnesty International's 50th anniversary aptly coincides with the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan's recording career and, with the truly excellent Chimes Of Freedom, it is a case of honours all round. You owe it to yourself to make a significant donation to a very worthy cause, so treat yourself to a copy, because that's what this collection is - a real treat.

 

N. B.

*I - In actual fact, one of the tracks released on Chimes Of Freedom has previously been issued. In March 20II, Proper Records released a digitally remastered and expanded 2-CD 'Collector's Edition' of Joan Baez 1992 album Play Me Backwards. This expanded version, released on CD only in the UK and Europe, contained ten demos recorded by Baez in 1991, one of which was the version of 'Seven Curses' issued on Amnesty's Chimes Of Freedom.

 

THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN ISSUE 161 OF ISIS,

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ALL THINGS DYLAN.

 

C. IGR 2013

UNDERRATED ALBUMS # 20

'Its lack of cliché and sentimentality make for a memorable, if low-key listening experience and an unusually authentic insight into the lives of its subject
and authors.'
  

Songs For Drella (1990)

By Lou Reed & John Cale

When in late October, 2013, I heard that Lou Reed had died, it reminded me that Songs For Drella was on my ‘to do list’ of underrated albums to retro-review. So now seems an appropriate time to get on with it. A few words first though, about the man himself and the reaction to his passing.

I was somewhat surprised by the outpouring of ‘grief’ in the media – the I newspaper, for instance, featured a centre-spread of fulsome celebrity tweets – whilst substantial obituaries in the qualities may have puzzled readers who didn’t also incline towards the Mojo side of the music press. A seminal figure in the history of Rock music, Reed was to be sure, but as a personality he could be infamously arrogant, irascible and charmless (possibly a side-effect of his brains being jangled by the electric shock treatment inflicted on him at the behest of his parents during his troubled youth). Apart from ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ (UK # 10, US # 16, 1972) and the Various Artists charity single, ‘Perfect Day’ (UK # 1, 1997), his solo records and those of his band, The Velvet Underground, had never seriously troubled the charts*1. Offsetting, but by no means overshadowing the lamentations, was grudging praise from the likes of The Daily Mail, which was however, at pains to characterise Reed as one of a significant number of Rock luminaries from the Sodom & Gomorrah Sixties who were the toxic junky libertines responsible for polluting generations of the young and innocent ever since. Mail readers who might have had ‘Perfect Day’ played at weddings and funerals must have felt betrayed and doubly bereft by the revelations that the song was not about a lovely walk in the park, but was instead a paean to that hardest of drugs, heroin…apparently*2.

I doubt that I need to remind readers here of how important The Velvet Underground  were. Suffice to say that few, if any Rock artists have exerted so much influence with so little commercial success*3. Notably, however, it is difficult to point to people who conspicuously influenced Reed or The Velvets: a sign of their unusual level of originality as artists.



L-R -Nico, Warhol, Tucker, Reed, Morrison, Cale

Although Lou Reed was by far the principal songwriter, Welshman John Cale was a key creative member of the otherwise American Velvets, bringing both classical training, multi-instrumentalism and an avant garde sensibility to the band. As a solo performer, he has built up a varied and often daring body of work, operating in a realm where commercial success has not been a priority. He has also been a notable producer of albums by early Velvets guest vocalist, Nico, as well as The Stooges, Patti Smith, The Modern Lovers, Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Happy Mondays amongst others.

                                                                       * * * * *

Reed & Cale had parted company in 1968 after the second Velvets album, and it came as something of a surprise when they teamed up again on Songs For Drella. The catalyst for the reunion was the death in 1987 of their mentor, the modern artist Andy Warhol, who designed the cover and was also credited with production of their momentous debut album (the actual producer was Tom Wilson*4). Not only had Warhol involved the band in the cutting edge goings on at his New York base of operations, The Factory, and put them into his happening multimedia circus, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable show, he’d also become their personal friend. Their tribute to him, Songs For Drella, provides a deeply felt and fascinating insider view of one the most remarkable artists of the C20th - no matter what you may think of his work (personally, I can take or leave Warhol, but there’s no denying his impact or influence and Reed & Cale’s album is a moving portrait of the man).

In the sleeve note, which includes Reed’s admirably concise summary of the fifteen songs on the record, Cale admits that Reed ‘did most of the work’ whilst allowing him ‘to keep a position of dignity through the process’ (a phrase which hints at the fundamentally uneasy relationship between the two men). Although all of the songs are credited as co-compositions, Reed takes lead vocal on ten of them. The instrumentation is sparse, with Reed on guitars, Cale on keyboards and viola, with no other musicians taking part.

The album’s title, by the way, derives from Warhol’s Factory nickname, a conflation of Dracula and Cinderella, presumably inspired by the artist’s rise from humble origins to multi-media maestro, as well as his deathly pallor and albinoid mop of silver hair (the pallor was the product of pancake foundation whilst the hair was actually a series of wigs that he alternated and had trimmed…)

The songs on the record quote from Warhol’s journals, his conversation and the stock of homilies which he would bestow on friends, fellow artists and employees. The lyrics herein could only have been written by really close insiders such as Reed and Cale.

 

Cale’s vamping solo piano and Reed’s typically laconic vocal, gets proceedings underway with the lively ‘Smalltown’, a ‘gotta get outta this place’ song in which a first-person Warhol resolves to leave his Pittsburgh*5 roots far behind:-

 

                             ‘Bad skin, bad eyes, gay and fatty –

                              People look at you funny…

                              I hate being odd in a small town –

                              If they stare, let them stare in New York City.’  

On ‘Open House’, we find Warhol in 1950s New York drawing shoes at an industrial rate for an advertising agency – ‘550…today…It almost made me faint’ – whilst following his old Czech mother’s advice about cultivating friends by inviting them round for tea and giving them little presents. Warhol was both garrulous and shy – ‘I like lots of people around me / But don’t kiss hello and please don’t touch’. Reed’s gentle intonation with Cale’s dark synthesiser chords and two-note piano motif - perhaps hinting at a doorbell’s chimes, evoke this personal delicacy.

‘Style It Takes’ is another quiet one, Cale reproducing the seductively camp lilt of Warhol’s voice as he cajoles and flatters people into backing or taking part in his projects. Reed’s guitar appears for the first time here, subtly weaving into Cale’s billowing synth melody. We’re in the 1960s now and the song neatly depicts one of Warhol’s famous artworks and also introduces its authors’ antecedents:-

‘I’ve got a Brillo box and I say it’s art,

It’s the same one you can buy at any supermarket                  
‘Cause I’ve got the style it takes
And you’ve got the people it takes.

Here is a rock group called The Velvet Underground,

I show movies on them
Do you like their sound?

‘Cause they have a style that grates

And I have art to make.’

That grating style is evident on the next track, ‘Work’, which revolves around a rattling electric guitar figure and plinking piano, whilst Reed recalls in the third person how Warhol would exhort him to knuckle down, get on with it and stop wasting time. Andy’s credo was ‘It’s just work / All that matters is work’ and this Factory ethic clearly still inspired Reed as he remembers being told to write fifteen songs, not just ten, keep in ‘the dirty words’ the better to ‘make trouble’ and not ‘think too much / ‘Cause that’s just work that you don’t want to do’.

‘Trouble With Classicists’, a muscular guitar and piano workout, sees Warhol rejecting the art establishment in favour of:-

                 ‘…the druggy downtown kids who spray-paint walls and trains,

                 I like their lack of training, their primitive technique,

                 I think sometimes it hurts you when you stay too long in school,

                 I think sometimes it hurts you when you’re afraid to be called a fool.’

 In ‘Starlight’ there is a roll-call of the ‘real people’ who populated Warhol’s avante garde counter-cultural films - ‘Viva, Little Joe, Baby Jane and Edie S.’*6 – his so-called ‘superstars’ of the street who he tried to sell to Hollywood (‘Starlight open wide…open up your door’). The low-key, chorus-free ‘Faces And Names’ closes the first half . Sung by Cale, it’s again in the first person with Warhol wishing everyone could look the same:-

                           ‘I always fall in love with someone

                           Who looks the way I wish that I could be…

                           ‘People who want to meet the name I have

                           Are always disappointed when they meet me.’

‘Images’, which follows on logically, finds Warhol celebrating his famous method of repeating images – sometimes of prosaic household objects, sometimes of iconic celebrities - via the process of silk-screening. Reed sings and the relentless industrial grind of his guitar and Cale’s viola complement the song well.

The next two songs feature more conventional chord-progressions and take us into the period following the attempt on Warhol’s life in 1968 by the radical feminist writer, Valerie Solanas, who had nurtured a brooding hatred of him after he’d lost the script of a play that she’d submitted to him*7.

The tender ‘Slip Away (A Warning)’, anchored by a bass guitar, finds the recuperating Warhol reluctantly withdrawing from The Factory at the advice of friends and associates or his own safety. Fearing the loss of his creative powers, the artist resigns himself to the changes happening around him, but vows to stay true to himself. A lyrical guitar leads into ‘It Wasn’t Me’, in which Warhol confronts the increasing mortality of those around him, paying the price for the dissipated life-styles that tended to be the norm at The Factory. Depending on your point of view, the tone is belligerently defensive and/or irresponsible: ‘You wanted to work – I gave you a chance at that…I never said give up control / I never said stick a needle in your arm and die’. The instrumental break with Reed’s solo soaring above Cale’s swirling, Debussyan piano is pure Prog-Rock and perfectly captures the anger and anguish at the heart of the song.

‘I Believe’ sees Reed in a bracingly Old Testament mood, looking back on Solanas trying to kill Warhol and righteously wishing her dead, swearing that he ‘would’ve pulled the switch himself’. The galloping piano and distorted guitar point not only to the retributive rage, but also the guilt felt by Reed, who apparently failed to visit his stricken friend in hospital. It ends with Warhol’s poignant, accusatory cry, ‘Visit me! Why didn’t you visit me?’

The Country-styled ‘Nobody But You’ cuts two ways with post-shooting Warhol (who, in the 1970s, increasingly devoting himself to cultivating high-profile patrons and making money) despising the people around him as ‘nobodies’ whilst realizing he’ll ‘never be a bride’ and that underneath his celebrity he craves anonymity.
 

The self-pitying tone at the end of ‘I Believe’ is picked up again in ‘A Dream’. The longest track on the record at 6.33, it was apparently lifted verbatim from Warhol’s journal. Cale again catches the flat rhythm of Warhol’s voice, as he sinks further into lonliness, feeling old, unloved, creatively bereft and abandoned by friends. After a visit from Cale, he gets to thinking how he’d ‘never gotten a penny’ from the Velvets and how Reed snubs him (‘I hate Lou, I really do!’) and didn’t even invite him to his wedding. And he ‘did a cover for John, but I did it in black and white and he changed it to colour. It would have been worth more if he’d left it my way, but you can’t tell anybody anything – I’ve learnt that.’

Surrounded by a clanging guitar and spooked keyboards in an echo chamber, Cale’s recitation is oddly compelling and catches the creeping, nightmarish fear of death that Warhol suffered for the last two decades of his life. The next track ‘Forever Changed’ breaks out of the miasma, upping the tempo, with Cale again on vocals, voicing Warhol’s conviction that he was right to leave it all behind and forge ahead in his own peculiar direction. The propulsive playing reinforces this resolve although lines like ‘I lost myself and never came back’ hint at Warhol’s inherent sadness.

Cale’s elegiac viola provides the background on ‘Hello, It’s Me’, the bitter-sweet closer. Nostalgically, Reed tells his dead friend how much he misses him and apologises for the belated nature of  the tribute. Reed, also however, takes one last shot at Valerie Solanas, reflecting that ‘You get less time for stealing a car’ (surely, he meant more time?) and scratching an old personal sore:-

                          ‘They really hated you – now that’s all changed,

                           But I have some resentments that can never be unmade;

                           You hit me where it hurt – I didn’t laugh;

                           Your diaries are not a worthy epitaph.’

 And there we have a vivid illustration of Reed’s fundamentally difficult, prickly nature: even in a valedictory concept such as this one, there is little room for sentiment, but space is saved in which to rake back over old scores. Nevertheless, the fact that both Reed and Cale include references in the songs that portray themselves in a less than flattering light, make Songs For Drella an unflinching and admirable project. Its lack of cliché and sentimentality makes for a memorable, if low-key listening experience and an unusually authentic insight into the lives of its subject and authors. 

Inspired by their time together on the album, Reed and Cale reconvened the original Velvet Undergound with Mo Tucker and Sterling Morrison and, in the summer of 1993, embarked on a European tour which included an appearance at Glastonbury and some dates with U2. The reunion was abandoned however, when Reed and Cale once again decided their working relationship was insupportable. Apart from a brief appearance in 1996 by the two of them with Tucker (Morrison had died the year before, aged fifty-three, Nico in '88, aged 49) when they were inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, they never worked together again.   

It is interesting to consider what Songs For Drella would have sounded like as a Velvet Underground record. Had Morrison and Tucker been on board, a fuller, more rhythmic sound might well have resulted, but perhaps the listener's focus may not have been so concentrated on the exceptional lyrics and the strange but true story related by Reed and Cale. As it stands, the album is an under-appreciated highlight of both men's careers.       

N. B.

*1 – Although Songs For Drella provided Reed with one of his best UK chart positions (# 22), it failed to hit the US Top 100. His previous album, New York (1989), a UK # 14 and US # 40, had been his most successful since the mid-‘70s. Riding this wave, Magic & Loss (1992) gave him his highest UK placing at # 6, but its gloomy concept about the death of friends lost Reed more listeners than he would ever regain.

 

*2 – ‘Apparently’ indeed…the only mention of intoxicants of any kind in ‘Perfect Day’ is the reference to ‘drinking sangria in the park’ and the song can be listened to very closely without any implication of heroin arising. The fact that it appeared on the OST of the drug-drenched UK film, Trainspotting (1996), the year before the BBC blithely arranged for its epic re-recording, may well have substantiated the notion of it being about smack – well, hey, Reed did write ‘Heroin’ back in the ‘60s, right?

Right – and anyone who hears ‘Heroin’ – one of the great art-songs of the C20th – as a glorification of drugs simply isn’t listening, either to its words (‘Heroin, be the death of me’) or its brilliantly unhinged music. And while we’re on the topic, ‘Waiting For The Man’ is definitely about hoping to score dope, but it’s equally about ‘feeling sick and dirty, more dead than alive’. OK – there will always be a certain kind of teenager drawn to Death Metal and black-draped Goth fantasies, but it’s not the responsibility of the artist to hand out hymn books, and Reed was nothing if not an artist.

Having said that, I do seem to recall Reed in 1974, supporting The Who in an epic concert at The Valley, stadium of Charlton Athletic FC, performing ‘Heroin’ whilst simulating shooting up…But then, memory plays tricks: apparently Humble Pie came on before The Who and were stunningly good. So stunning, in fact, that I have no recollection of them whatever, despite Steve Marriott being one of my favourite singers of all time…

*3 – The Velvet Underground proper made only three albums in as many years: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), White Light/White Heat (1968) and The Velvet Underground (1969). Of the two subsequent albums that bear their name, Reed, who wrote all of the songs, left during the recording of Loaded (1970). Remarkably, Reed turned his back on the music industry at this point and returned to his troubled family roots in Long Island, New York, where he worked as a typist in his father's tax accountancy office for some months before beginning his solo recording career in 1971.

Only Sterling Morrison of the original band also appears on Loaded, whilst none of them feature on Squeeze (1973). Nonetheless, Loaded – unlike Squeeze - remains a very good record and is worthy of exploration by Reed fans who may somehow have missed it.

*4 – Tom Wilson – unusually for the time, a black producer of mainly white artists –  worked with Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, The Animals, The Blues Project and The Mothers Of Invention. Notably, he was also at the desk for Nico’s first and best album, Chelsea Girl (1967).

 *5 – Pittsburgh, famous for its steel industry, may have seemed like a small town to Warhol, but it’s currently the 20^th largest city in the US and, in 1901, was actually the 8^th largest. During the 1930s and ‘40s when he was growing up, the population was at record levels – more than twice what it is today. Clearly Pittsburgh was metaphorically a small town to Warhol who, in the song, reflects ‘there’s no Michelangelo… [and] no Dali coming from Pittsburgh.’

*6 – A similar cast of characters inhabit Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ – Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Sugar Plum Fairy and Jackie. They too all appeared in Warhol’s ‘art movies’. ‘Little Joe’, who figures in both lists was the hunky junky bisexual, Joe Dallesandro (who according to ‘WOTWS’ ‘never once gave it away / Everyone had to pay and pay’). Shots of Joe taken by Warhol are used on two famous album covers – the infamous zipper sleeve of The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers (1971) and The Smiths (1984) eponymous debut – not that you’d know it, as his face isn’t visible in either picture.

*7 – Solanas shot Warhol at The Factory, also wounding an art critic and attempting to shoot Warhol’s manager before her gun jammed. Following her release from prison just three years later, she continued her feminist activities until her death, aged 52, in 1988, satisfyingly for her perhaps, seeing out Warhol who had died, aged 58, the year before.

 

(C. IGR 2013)

LIFE SENTENCE

 

 

Sudden shaft of sunlight breaks

Through inkwell of night

Where shadow and light

Vie on the opening page

Of a script waiting to be written

Conjugated now

You poise centre-stage

Curled like a comma

Lime-lit in the amniotic dark

Ready to burst through blood

And blindly cry out

A living raw exclamation-mark

(2001)

I don’t recall any specific inspiration for this. I think it may be one of those that came out of nowhere.

All things considered, most of us lucky enough to be born in the affluent West and Europe have pretty good lives. There are too many places in the world where life still begins with a question-mark.

UNDERRATED ALBUMS # 19

‘Everything is refracted through the unique prism of XTC and, in this circus of intertextuality, some tracks sound more like them than they sound like anything else.’

Chips From The Chocolate Fireball (1987)

by The Dukes Of Stratosphear

In 1985 and again in ‘87, a quartet of musicians masquerading under the names of Sir John Johns, The Red Curtain, Lord Cornelius Plum and E. I. E. I. Owen, undertook two trips back through history. No-one knows quite how they facilitated these expeditions, whether it was as stowaways on a fully-fledged starship like the USS Enterprise or in a less conspicuous time-travel vehicle such as the Tardis. Perhaps more humbly, they blundered through a portal in a wardrobe. Some say that, like a certain little girl called Alice a full one hundred years before them, they boldly followed a white rabbit down a certain rabbit-hole.

What is known for sure, however, is that when they emerged on both occasions they found themselves where they had always wanted to be: in second half of the 1960s in the land of Psychedelia.

                              

When The Dukes reappeared from these long, strange trips, rich with the lore and liberty and love they had learned of that bygone time, they returned to their recording studio with a sonic guru known as Swami Anand Nagara and created two musical journals of their adventures. Although these dazzling records were not hits, people were fascinated as to how they had made them. Simple as ABC really, said The Dukes - when you know how. Come now, asked the people, are you sure you don’t mean LSD? Ah, well, replied The Dukes, their eyes all a-twinkle, more like XTC, actually…

                                             * * * * *

It has long been an open secret that The Dukes Of Stratosphear were really XTC as they were at the time: Andy Partridge (‘Johns’) – guitar, chief songwriter & vocalist; Colin Moulding (‘Curtain’) – bass, second songwriter & vocalist; Dave Gregory (‘Plum’) – keyboards & guitar; Ian Gregory (‘Owen’) – drums; brother of Dave and one of a number of session drummers used following the departure of Terry Chambers in the early 1980s.

XTC will appear in their own right later on in this series of Underrated Albums – as will a couple of other famously pseudonymous bands, The Rutles and The Traveling Wilburys – but here I shall only consider XTC’s holiday tripping alter-egos, The Dukes.

Chips From The Chocolate Fireball is made up of the mini-album, 25 O’Clock (1985) and the full album, Psonic Sunspot (1987). It comprises sixteen tracks*1 co-produced by the band with John Leckie (‘Swami’), who soon after would be at the desk for  eponymous debut album, The Stone Roses (1989), an epochal record regarded as an Acid-Psych classic. The Roses gained not only plaudits but platinum discs; The Dukes had not charted at all, but their influence – and indeed, their influences – reverberated beneath the surface of the psych-revival of the 1980s*2.

When considering CFTCF, it is of key importance to understand that it is not simply the work of a band paying homage to exponents of ‘60s Psychedelia. Not all of the songs celebrate a particular act – and when they do it is sometimes amidst additional traces of others from the era (for example, early Bee Gees, Cream, The Idle Race, Moby Grape, Tomorrow, Traffic and The Zombies). Everything, in any case, is refracted through the unique prism of XTC and, in this circus of intertextuality, some tracks sound more like them than they resemble anything else.

‘25 O’Clock’, however, is a fairly straightforward genuflection in the direction of American Garage Band par excellence, The Electric Prunes, although it starts with heavily amped ticks, chimes, alarms and riff a’la Pink Floyd before rampaging away in a souped-up take on ‘I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night’. A psychotic rant about tiring of waiting for a woman to come around set to a blizzard of backwards guitars and treated keyboards, it has a terrific tune and is a cracking opener.

‘Bike Ride To The Moon’ also inescapably recalls early Pink Floyd with Partridge effectively mimicking Syd Barratt on a characteristic piece of whimsy about being caught in space without a repair kit to fix ‘a cosmic flat tyre’, amidst another hell-for-leather orgy of interplanetary studio effects. Clearly inspired by Jeff Beck period Yardbirds, the breakneck pace is maintained by ‘My Love Explodes’, in which a Bowiesque Starman of Love is at hand to take on the loveless ‘straight plastic bowler men’ and ‘blow ‘em out of town’.

In the first of several spoken-word links between tracks, a horrified bowler man damns the song as ‘an abomination’ before ‘What In The World’ imagines a future featuring ‘blue’ housewives, role-reversal, hash-tea and free acid as if to further ramp up the outrage. The high watermarks of The Beatles’ studio experimentation are indelibly referenced here and Moulding, who authors this song, especially evokes McCartney’s inventive bass-playing from that 1966-68 era. A strong bass can be a deceptively key element in much Psychedelia - and it is Moulding’s plunging riffs, foregrounded in the mix, which distinctively anchor this album.
 

Another killer riff, this time on guitars, arrives with ‘Your Gold Dress’, along with much panning, phasing, whooshing and a dash of sitar – all of which may bring to mind The Pretty Things crossed with The Yardbirds and Pink Floyd. The hazy vocal describes the ‘whirling’ frock in a way which recalls Klimt’s painting The Kiss whilst at the same time referring to ‘a thousand melting Dali guitars’.

‘The Mole From The Ministry’  comes drenched in piano and mellotron and is not only a brilliant pastiche of ‘I Am The Walrus’, but also takes in a 1968 ‘phantom’ single by a mysterious band called The Moles – rumoured to be an incognito Beatles, but actually Parlophone label-mates, Simon Dupree & The Big Sound. With Pythonesque Gumby vocals on the verses threatening to turn your ‘perfect garden into mountain range’ and Partridge cutting through on the chorus like the ghost of Lennon warning, ‘I’m the bad thoughts inside your head / And you shouldn’t think me’, it’s wonderfully authentic and one of the album’s highlights.
 

It is these first six tracks that constituted the original mini-LP, 25 O’Clock. The ensuing ten cuts from Psonic Sunspot are neither, in the main, as specifically referenced or quite as dynamic. By any other yardstick, however, they form another excellent batch of songs.

Classic popsters, The Hollies may not be the one of the first bands that spring to mind when considering ‘60s Psychedelia, but they had their moments and Moulding’s ‘Vanishing Girl’ with its sparkling guitars and harmonies nails them unerringly, although it’s more ‘Look Through Any Window’ than ‘King Midas In Reverse’. When it ends, we hear the voice of an Alice-like little girl, describing the Wonderland-like collection of oddities that stream out when she opens a suitcase. This, and subsequent surreal interjections, are reminiscent of those on Pop-Psych classics such as Traffic’s ‘Hole In My Shoe’ and Simon Dupree & The Big Sound’s ‘Kites’*4.

This leads us into ‘Have You Seen Jackie?’, a four-square romp pleading for tolerance for ‘an odd little fish’ suffering from gender-confusion. Lyrically, we’re in the territory of ‘I’m A Boy’ and ‘Lola’, although musically the song doesn’t really resemble either The Who or The Kinks. Emerging out of vague foghorn sounds, ‘Little Lighthouse’ cleverly constructs a metaphor for the lighthouse as a love- goddess:-

                                  ‘She’s a little lighthouse

                                  When she opens her huge eyes

                                  And streams of diamonds shoot out

                                  ‘Til we’re wading waist deep

                                   In her brilliant love’.

Decorated with flourishes of trumpet, it is driven along by Moulding’s bouncy bass  (for good measure, he throws in Bill Wyman’s closing fret-run from The Rolling Stones’ ‘19^th Nervous Breakdown’ at the end).

Preceded by another fragment of Alice In Wonderland nonsense, a discordant piano stutters into the rollickingly inconsequential tale of a Great War veteran who married the woman who nursed his wounds. The sort of track that might have found its way on to a Kinks album, ‘You’re A Good Man, Albert Brown’ ends with a Small Faces knees-up and a bout of Goonsian laughter. It’s not bad, but is only half as good as ‘Collideascope’, which sounds like a John Lennon rewrite of The Move’s ‘Blackberry Way’.  Bad dreams crash up against each other here – listen up for the sound of a  woman being sawn in half and watch out for a ‘nail in your eye’ – whilst the ‘Wakey, Wakey. Wakey!’ chorus may recall the stentorian announcement at the start of each Billy Cotton Band Show *5, which ran on BBCTV from 1956-65.

‘You’re My Drug’ melds The Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High’ and ‘So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star’ right down to the latter’s clicking guiro riff*6. Quite what the pronoun denotes in ‘You’re My Drug’ is anybody’s guess – mine is that it refers to music- and perhaps especially Psychedelia - which, of course, can induce mental and physical sensations similar to and, in many cases, better than chemical or herbal drugs.

Talking of artificial stimulants, Moulding’s ‘Shiny Cage’ with its ‘Double-deckers of smokers’ recalls McCartney’s middle-eight section in ‘A Day Of The Life’ whilst the torpor of humdrum diversions suggested in the rest of the song is delivered via a tune redolent of Lennon’s Beatles’ songs, ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ crossed with ‘I’m So Tired’. After another cameo from the Wonderland girl describing ‘a giant cranefly’ who ‘turned into a splendid cream bun’, the McCartneyesque ‘Brainiac’s Daughter’ goes on its jolly, nonsensical way, complete with Swanee Whistle.

‘The Affiliated’, a vaguely Kinksy number, begins with a heavily strummed guitar and a pub piano, its plodding tempo accompanying a tale about a bachelor who virtually lives in his local Working Men’s Club - until a Latino rhythm heralds the appearance of a woman who spirits him away into marriage and serial fatherhood. It’s a typical ‘slice of life’ piece by Moulding and probably belongs on an XTC album more than here.

Last up is ‘Pale And Precious’, providing a strong finale in the form of a wonderful homage to Smile-era Beach Boys (although I think there may also be an affectionate nod in the direction of The Flowerpot Men’*7). Lyrically, it’s another hymn – like the earlier ‘Little Lighthouse’ – to a radiantly inspirational goddess. It features keyboards, percussion and theremin remarkably true to source as well as suitably stratospheric harmonies and one of Partridge’s strongest vocals.

Partridge had several ideas for further excursions into the land of Homage including projects involving Merseybeat, Bubblegum and Glam Rock, but these were apparently more or less strangled at birth by Virgin, the record company XTC would eventually leave to go independent*8.

Partridge & co. were also unhappy with Virgin’s cover art for CFTCF, a garish, cheap-looking mess which served the album badly. The original sleeves for The Dukes’ records were much more simpatico with the music inside them – as can be seen above. Ironically, the next XTC album, Oranges & Lemons, with its Yellow Submarine style cover painting (see below), would have better suited The Dukes…   

N. B.

*1 – The Dukes’ two sets have been reissued separately and feature some bonus tracks. Occasional tracks have trickled out subsequently, but to date no comprehensive anthology has appeared. Until it does, you might like to visit www.songlyrics.com, where you can listen to this album along with an additional five tracks.

*2 – Although The Dukes’ influences were mainly British, they can be seen to be roughly in line with the so-called Paisley Underground movement in the US during the 1980s which included The Bangles, The Dream Syndicate, Green On Red, The Long Ryders and Rain Parade. Released the same year as The Stone Roses, XTC’s Oranges & Lemons managed just three weeks on the UK chart compared to almost two years for The Roses.


*3 – ‘We Are The Moles (Pts.1 & 2)’ appeared on the a and b sides of the stunt single which enjoyed a reasonable amount of airplay, but failed to burrow into the chart.

*4 – It’s ironic, given the abiding popularity of ‘Hole In My Shoe’ and ‘Kites’, that neither band liked the songs, both of which provided them with their highest UK chart positions (# 2 and # 9 respectively). At least Dupree & Co (including the three Shulman brothers, who went on to form Gentle Giant) had the excuse of having ‘Kites’ foisted upon them by their management from outside the band. Dave Mason, who wrote ‘Shoe’, left Traffic shortly after.   

*5 - The Billy Cotton Band Show actually began with the rotund bandleader bawling ‘Wakey, Wakeyaaah!’ and – so, I’m reliably informed by Wikipedia – latterly featured jokes written by future Pythons Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

*6 – I’m guessing that it might be a guiro on ‘You’re My Drug’ – it might be some form of fish or frog stick (the multifarious family of percussion instruments does have such aquatic-sounding sub-species…)

*7 – The Flowerpot Men’s ‘Let’s Go To San Francisco’ was a cash-in UK # 4 hit during 1967’s ‘Summer Of Love’. Written and recorded by Birmingham songwriters and session singers John Carter and Ken Lewis (two thirds of harmony group, The Ivy League), the song and its unsuccessful follow-ups was toured by a band which included two future members of Deep Purple (Jon Lord and Nick Simper) and the then ubiquitous pop vocalist, Tony Burrows (White Plains, Edison Lighthouse, Brotherhood Of Man, The First Class and The Pipkins).

*8 – XTC made two more albums for Virgin: Oranges & Lemons (1989) and Nonesuch (1992), followed by Apple Venus Vol. 1(1999) and Wasp Star (AV Vol.2 - 2000). Since then the band has been effectively defunct.

(C. IGR 2013)