True Originality, Arising From Interpretation: Joe Cocker And Alchemy

In some ways Joe Cocker, who died last week at 70, was a man out of time.  A simple laborer from Sheffield, England, primarily known for its steel (Sheffield Steel was the title of one of Cocker's albums, in fact),  Cocker began his working life as a gas pipe-fitter.  As we all hope, though, talent will out:  Cocker burst onto the music scene in 1969 with two albums--which wasn't unusual in those times; I think people maybe just worked harder-- With A Little Help From My Friends and Joe Cocker! which immediately established him as a unique (Ray Charles comparisons notwithstanding) voice and, shall we say, an idiosyncratic live performer.  What also set him apart, in those times, is that he wrote almost none of his own material.

Back in the day, of course, there were, really, only interpreters of others' songs.  Sure there were anomalies such as some of the blues guys, like Robert Johnson, and Mel Torme did write "The Christmas Song,"  which he also performed, but for the most part writers and singers were two distinct groups and came together only on record.  Sinatra, Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, all the famous vocalists, relied on the Cole Porters, Harold Arlens, Yip Harburgs, all of the Tin Pan Alley songsmiths to provide them with their material.  That tradition continued mostly unchanged into the 60's with the Brill Building songwriters like Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Boyce & Hart, Neil Diamond, Sonny Bono (!), Gerry Goffin & Carole King, Greenwich and Barry, Leiber and Stoller, Mann and Weil:  the list goes on and of familiar names who were contract songwriters, churning out hit after hit for others to perform.

The shift to performers writing their own material probably had its beginnings as did, arguably, rock 'n' roll, with Chuck Berry, and was taken to new levels, as were most things in that era, by a couple of fellas named Lennon and McCartney.  Publishing, see, was where the real money was.  A songwriting credit on a hit album was a goldmine, as royalties roll in year after year from every performance of your credited song.  That's why you stopped seeing covers on Beatles and Stones records, for the most part, and why John and Paul would reluctantly throw George a bone of one song per album, which eventually resulted in All Things Must Pass;  Harrison had all those songs stockpiled, and when the Fabs split everyone was stunned by the wealth of his material.  Well, he was finally in charge.

So the Joe Cockers of the music world became anomalies, "mere" interpreters of others' material.  And yet, and yet:  whose version of "With A Little Help..." would you rather listen to?  Ringo singing lead on the original, endearing as it is, or Cocker's all-stops-out throat-wrencher?  With whom do you identify "Feelin' Alright?  Traffic, and Dave Mason's original version, which is great in its own right, or Joe's cover?  "Something," "...Bathroom Window," "Darlin' Be Home Soon," all were done quite satisfactorily for most folks' needs, but Joe Cocker made them his, even through--or maybe partly because of--his often indecipherable delivery.  There are passages in nearly every Joe Cocker song, especially early in his career, that I defy anyone to translate, maybe even if you already know the originals.  Dylan's "Dear Landlord," from Cocker's second album, for instance: it's absolutely indecipherable, but it really doesn't matter--and it's a Dylan lyric, for chrissake.

The reason he was able to put such an indelible stamp on the songs he sang, I think, is that he was inseparable from them:  He was the song, and the song was him.  Cocker inhabited the songs and they inhabited him simultaneously, a Mobius strip of sound, sight and emotion.  He was transported by the music and his performance, to the point where his very body became possessed, moving involuntarily as it tried to let out all the emotion that even that amazing voice was incapable of expressing on its own.  If you've seen early videos of Cocker performances, maybe especially from Woodstock, then you know whereof I speak.  Sweating profusely from the energy he expended, hair drenched, hands and arms flailing seemingly uncontrollably, mimicking the movement of hands on a guitar neck or a keyboard, tugging at his hair, he was the very personification of  uncontrollable, unvarnished, all-encompassing emotion.  Those performances are perhaps the closest secular--if, indeed, music can rightly be called "secular;" I think it is mystical and holy-- embodiment of the Sufi dervishes, whose unrestrained, wholly-given dancing is an attempt to reach religious ecstasy.  Joe Cocker's performances showed that he was already there, in his own musical/secular/mystical trance.

And so the passing of another great, another icon from my youth, a circumstance which will of course only increase in frequency in the coming years, leads me to this week's show, a tribute to Joe Cocker, someone whose like we really may never see again.  I'm going to play his first two albums in their entirety, maybe mostly 'cause that's how I have to hear 'em.  The last, stinging guitar note in "Lawdy Miss Clawdy, leads necessarily and inexorably into the fuzz-tone guitar crescendo intro to "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window," for instance.  To separate them would be criminal.  I'll supplement those albums from among this list:

The Letter                                                                                 (The Boxtops, originally)
Many Rivers To Cross                                                               Jimmy Cliff
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress                                                 Jimmy Webb
Into The Mystic                                                                         Van Morrison
Let's Go Get Stoned                                                                   Ray Charles
Cry Me A River                                                                         Julie London, et al
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away                                       The Fabs
The Weight                                                                                 The Band
Put Out The Light                                                                       Joe Cocker (!)
Jamaica Say You Will                                                                 Jackson Browne

See you on Tuesday, from noon till two, on WOOL-FM, 91.5, or www.wool.fm on the net.

Another Xmas, Rollin' On Through

It's the shortest day of the year, it's snowing, we've literally seen the sun one day in the last two weeks, we as a country are racially retarded and basically at war in our streets and neighborhoods, and Kim Jong Un is probably reading this.  Actually, that's one of the bright spots in the the news lately, that the North Koreans are threatening terrible consequences if we don't allow them to help in the investigation into who "really" hacked Sony.  We should promise them full cooperation in the investigation, with one condition:  first, they have to help O.J. Simpson in his exhaustive search to find the "real" killer of his wife....

But it's Christmastime, when peace, brotherhood and goodwill fill the hearts of all people. (Bonus Questions: What is the tone of the previous sentence?  How do you know?)  I'm going to try, for the third year in a row, to do an xmas radio show.  Two years ago, when my show fell on Dec. 25,  I planned a 4-hour extravaganza.  Unfortunately,  Alice was in the hospital with pneumonia, so that went by the boards.  Last year, I was too busy with work to do what would've been a Christmas Eve show.  This year, though, goddammit, I'm going to do that show, now a Christmas Eve Day Eve Day show, come Hell or high water--the latter of which, ironically, we're supposed to be getting around then.  It'll be a little abridged, and so end up at around 3 hours, and it'll of course be a little skewed, but at least it'll be.

I read in The New York Times last year around this time that many radio stations go to an all-Christmas-music format in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and that doing so served as "rocket fuel for ratings;" stations see their listenership skyrocket when they provide a steady diet of holiday-cheerful songs.  Personally, I'd jump off a bridge (holiday movie reference, there) if I had to listen to or play nothing but that stuff, but if it'll increase WOOL's listenership dramatically--which is pretty bloody likely, I think--why then I'll suck it up and do it for 3 hours.  I hope yule join me on Tuesday from (NOTE SPECIAL STARTING TIME) 11 AM till 2 PM on WOOL FM, 91.5, or wool.fm on the webs.

The playlist is as follows, ahem, harrumph, harrumph:

Birthday                                                                                    The Fabs
Christmas Must Be Tonight                                                      The Band
Kung Fu Christmas                                                                   Christopher Guest, et al.
Merry Christmas, Baby                                                             Lou Rawls
Friend Of Jesus                                                                         John Stewart
Bach: Cantata #22, "Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwolfe"               Yo-Yo Ma, et al.
Jesus Christ                                                                               Arlo Guthrie
Christmas With Jesus                                                               Josh Rouse
Jesus Was A Capricorn                                                             Darrell Scott
Jesus Was A Crossmaker                                                          Judee Sill
Jesus Just Left Chicago                                                             ZZ Top
Jesus Is Just Alright                                                                  Doobies
Christmas Time (Is Here Again)                                              The Fabs
On Christmas Eve                                                                     John Hartford
Christmas Time Blues                                                              John Lee Hooker
Christmas Time Is Here                                                           Bela Fleck & The Flecktones
Christmas Time                                                                        Ray Charles
Christmas Ain't Christmas                                                       The O'Jays
Father Christmas                                                                      The Kinks
Getting Ready For Christmas Day                                           Paul Simon
Variations On The Kanon By Pachelbel                                  George Winston
The Rebel Jesus                                                                        Jackson Browne
Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis                     Tom Waits
Christmas In Kyoto                                                                   Michael Franks
Christmas In Prison                                                                   John Prine
Christmas Morning                                                                   Lyle Lovett
Christmas Morning                                                                   Loudon Wainwright III
Christmas Wish                                                                         NRBQ
Jesus, Etc.                                                                                 Wilco
Tell Me What Kind Of Man Jesus Was                                    Big Bill Broonzy
Jesus Wrote A Blank Check                                                     Cake
Come On Down Jesus                                                               John Kongos
River                                                                                          Joni Mitchell

Silent Eyes                                                                                Paul Simon
Night                                                                                        Bruce Springsteen

You Got The Silver                                                                   Rolling Stones
Ring Them Bells                                                                       Dylan

Frosty Morn                                                                              Doc & Merle Watson
Humidity Built The Snowman                                                 John Prine

I'm Walkin'                                                                                Rick Nelson
Winter                                                                                       Rolling Stones
Wonderland                                                                               Michael Franks

Little Big-Time Man                                                                Dirk Hamilton
Heavy Metal Drummer                                                            Wilco
Boy                                                                                           Darden Smith

We                                                                                             The Roches
Wish You Were Here                                                                Pink Floyd
You                                                                                           George Harrison
Merry Go Round                                                                      The Replacements
Christmas                                                                                  The Who

Next week:  the annual year-end-review of noteworthy--according to me--people from the musical realm who died this year.

Happy Xmas.

"...Started Out So Young and Strong, Only To Surrender"

I always defend meteorologists.  It bugs me when people say "If I screwed up in my job half as often as they do, I wouldn't have a job."  I happen to think weatherpeople (and I don't mean Bernadine Dohrn) are right way more than they're wrong, and they're right about stuff I can't even imagine: what time a storm, which hasn't even formed yet, in fact is just a twinkle in colliding high- and low-pressure zones' eyes, will start in a given area.  Not only that, but what type or amount of precipitation different parts of a state, even one as small as New Hampshire, will get, and when the storm will "pull away."  See, if it pulls away too fast, there'll be no storm; even the weather is about sex.

So here I sit, a true believer, hunkered down in anticipation of mixed-precipitation-becoming-6-inches-of-heavy-wet-snow, in my area.  That was supposed to begin 5 hours ago.  Nothing has happened yet.  I'm writing this during the time I'm supposed to be on the radio.  I'll still believe next time.

That's not what I want to write about, though.  I recently purchased Jackson Browne's newest cd, called "Standing In The Breach."  It'll probly be dismissed by many with a casual "sounds like every other Jackson Browne album," but what's wrong with that, I'd like to know (sounds like a McCartney lyric, dunnit?)?  Hemingway's books looked and sounded like they'd been written by Hemingway, Faulkner's by Faulkner, Henry James's (ugh) by Henry James (ugh).  Picasso, once he found his style, painted Picassos.  Emily Dickinson wrote Emily Dickinson poems.  I apparently don't have any cultural touchstones post-1950: we are who we are.  Put on Jackson Browne and expect to hear Monet (that fooled you, right?)?  It won't happen.

Browne has a reputation, I think, as something of a melancholic, writing songs (mostly) about love lost, love gone wrong, relationships not quite working out.  Mopey, literate, Romantic stuff.   Of course I eat that kind of thing right up, and revel in his ability to get emotion into words, onto paper, out of guitar and piano strings.  But he's also always been socially conscious and aware of the larger world: not just a navel-gazer, but an activist (god, I hate that term.  I can't believe I used it.  But these missives are one-and-out, so there's no goin' back to change it) and committed Lefty, which of course I also eat up.

I can't get past (or over) the third cut on the new disc, "The Long Way Around."  I mean literally.  I have previously described in this space my obsessiveness and obsessions--20 consecutive plays of "Melancholia" being perhaps the best example-- and I find myself hitting "repeat" whenever that song comes along. The arrangement, a little shuffle, is pretty cool, and there's this spooky, I'd say backmasked, electric guitar part.  But the words, the words:  Here's what he says in it:

I don't know what to say about these days.
I'm seeing people changing in the strangest ways.
Even in the richer neighborhoods
People don't know when they've got it good.
They've got the envy, and they've got it bad.

When I was a kid everything I did was trying to be free:
Running up and down Tinsel Town with the fire inside of me,
My planets all in retrograde, the best of all my plans got laid.
I made my breaks, and some mistakes--
Just not the ones people think I made.

Now I'm a long way gone,
Down this wild road I'm on.
It's going to take me where I'm bound
But it's the long way around.

It's a little hard keeping track of what's gone wrong;
The covenant unravels, and the news just rolls along.
I could feel my memory letting go some two or three disasters ago.
It's hard to say which did more ill:
Citizens United or the Gulf oil spill.

And I'm a long way gone,
Down this wild road I'm on.
It's going to take me where I'm bound
But it's the long way around.

It's never been that hard to buy a gun.
Now they'll sell a Glock 19 to just about anyone.
The seeds of tragedy are there
In what we feel we have the right to bear:
To watch our children come to harm
There in the safety of our arms.
With all we disagree about,
The passions burn, the heart goes out.

And we're a long way gone,
Down this wild road we're on.
It's going to take us where we're bound
It's just the long way around.

Man, there's so much brilliance there.  You have no idea how much I wish I was smart and talented enough to come up with that.  In Verse 1, a self-referential bit at the end of line 1 ("these days," the title of a song no 16-year-old should be capable of writing, but he did).  In V. 2, the odd syntax about youthful freedom, but that scrambled-up stuff was what it felt like, tryin' to be free.  Then that fabulous phrase "the best of all my plans got laid" in V. 2 (now that's something a 16-year-old oughta be thinking about!),  and the reference to "some mistakes...just not the ones people think I made," which I presume refers to the Darryl Hannah episode (and what is it with her and Neil Young, of all people?!?).

After the first chorus, V. 3 expresses exactly how I feel lately, resigned and helpless and hopeless, not even helplessly hoping anymore.  I don't think it is hard, though, to know which did more ill:  the Gulf oil spill polluted a relatively small area for a small time; Citizens United has polluted our entire political system ("the covenant") for, perhaps, generations, until maybe someone who believes in the Greater Good, not just temporal political expediency, comes along and makes us more whole again and tries--and has the guts-- to right the Ship of State.  I despair that I will live to see that.

Then Chorus 2, and the blazing brilliance of Verse 4, full of wordplay (if such serious stuff can rightly be called play):  "the seeds of tragedy in what we feel we have the right to bear," which is of course a doubly intended use of that word, meaning "to stand, to put up with" as well as the Second Amendment reference implied, "the right to ... bear arms,"  while our children "come to harm, there in the safety of our arms:"  a "safety" is the mechanism on a gun that prevents it from firing; our children should be safe in our arms, but our arms too often hold arms (weapons).  Finally, "the passions burn, the heart goes out:"  an echo of Yeats, in The Second Coming;  "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity."  Our passions for a cause burn, sometimes, and our hearts can go two ways: "out," to those whose lives are adversely affected by life's slings and arrows, or "out," extinguished, like "a brief candle."

And that's not even to mention the choruses, which move from the suddenness of "Now" to the continuance of "And" to the inclusive and encompassing "we're" of the final chorus.  Not effin' bad for just another tune from a faded former star, huh?

Are you there?  Say a prayer for The Pretender: get up and do it again.