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3 episodes with john mcvie
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4 episodes with john mcvie
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2 episodes with john mcvie
2 episodes with john mcvie
2 episodes with john mcvie
2 episodes with john mcvie
2 episodes with john mcvie
By 1975, Fleetwood Mac had already had many iterations and lineups. Started by veterans of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, early Fleetwood Mac were a blues based band with limited success on the US Billboard chart. By 1975, they had lost their main singer, lead guitarist and main songwriter in Bob Welch and remaining members Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood were on the search for a spark. While working at Sunset Studios, they heard the debut album from a duo that was also a couple, Buckingham Nicks. Though at first they were interested in hiring on Lindsey Buckingham as their singer and guitarist, they soon found out that he would only join if they took his singer/songwriter girlfriend Stevie Nicks as well. The rest is pop/rock history as the 1975 product of the five piece, Fleetwood Mac, would go on to sell over 7 million copies in the US alone. Now with three lead singers/songwriters in the band, they could choose the best of the best for inclusion on the record. While the choices for singles didn't always make sense (Warm Ways was the 1st UK single, World Turning wasn't released as a single), the chemistry did and the world heard harmonies that were unknown before. While Christine McVie held her own with lilting love songs (Warm Ways, Over My Head, Say You Love Me), Lindsey Buckingham offered more upbeat rockers like Monday Morning and the brooding So Afraid. However, the real star in the making was Stevie Nicks who turned the album's and the band's fortunes with her all-time classic Rhiannon. It really introduced the world to Stevie Nicks and the power she possessed in her voice and songwriting. She also offered the sweet Landslide, another track on this album that would go on to be a rock radio staple and part of their live show. The success of Fleetwood Mac gave them the opportunity to release Rumours in 1977, an album that would sell over 40 million copies worldwide. But this album laid the groundwork for Rumours and all the future success for the band for the next 50 years. Check out our new website: Ugly American Werewolf in London Website Twitter Threads Instagram YouTube LInkTree www.pantheonpodcasts.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When you explore the music of The Yardbirds you are really observing the evolution of what would become hard rock. This group started in 1963 and over its time would engage the talents of three of the greatest guitarists of the rock world: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. Additional musicians in the group through 1968 were Keith Relf on vocals and harmonica, Jim McCarty on drums, Chris Dreja on rhythm guitar, and Paul Samwell-Smith on bass. The group was founded in the blues, but over time would explore psychedelic rock, pop rock, and hard rock, with instrumental jams being a signature sound throughout their tenure.Having a Rave Up, also known as "Having a Rave Up with the Yardbirds," is their second American album, and showcases two of their virtuoso guitarists. The album has one side of studio recordings in which Jeff Beck is the guitarist. Side two is a compilation of live performances featuring Eric Clapton on guitar. During a time when most songs were expected to run about three minutes, the Yardbirds would extend these out in live performances to six or seven minutes with instrumental jams known as "rave ups." The combination of studio and live work is an excellent introduction to The Yardbirds, as the band's strength was in their live performances. Their studio efforts would improve with the experimentation of Jeff Beck.Jimmy Page would become their guitarist in mid-1966 until their split-up in mid-1968. He would form a group as "The New Yardbirds" shortly thereafter, which would be renamed shortly thereafter to Led Zeppelin.Rob brings us this study in the origins of rock for this week's podcast. Heart Full of SoulThis song was the first single released by The Yardbirds after Jeff Beck joined the group. It was written by Graham Gouldman, who would later be the co-lead singer and bassist of 10cc. The band wanted to include a sitar in the instrumentation for this song, but when things didn't work out for that, Beck experimented with his guitar to duplicate the eastern sound of the sitar instead.You're a Better Man than IThe opening song from the album is also known as "Mister, You're a Better Man than I." It was written by brothers Mike and Brian Hugg, and is an attempt at a more folk rock song. The socially conscious lyrics take aim at the hypocrisy of society and politics, stating that you shouldn't judge a person based on superficial appearances or education.Smokestack LightningThe live opener to side two is a cover of an old blues song recorded by American blues artist Howlin' Wolf in 1956. The inspiration for the title came from watching trains go by at night and seeing the sparks come out of the smokestack.The Train Kept a-Rollin'While Aerosmith's cover may be more famous, this jump blues piece was originally performed by Tiny Bradshaw in 1951. The Yardbirds played this song during their first American tour in 1965, and Sam Phillips recorded it for them in Memphis later that year. It closes out side 1 of the album. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Main theme from the television action comedy "Batman"This campy superhero show premiered this month. STAFF PICKS:Don't Think Twice, It's Alright by The Wonder Who?Bruce begins the staff picks with a disguise group. The Four Seasons used the name "The Wonder Who?" for four records released from 1965 to 1967, including this one. Frankie Valli wasn't happy with his vocals on this song, and he recorded it with a "joke" falsetto voice while trying to break the tension in the studio. All Your Love by John Mayall & the BluesbreakersLynch brings us a blues song originally recorded by American blues musician Otis Rush in 1958. Multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter John Mayall led this group, which included Eric Clapton on guitar and John McVie on bass. This single is the lead-off track to the debut album "Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton," also known as "The Beano Album" because Clapton is reading a children's comic called "The Beano" on the front cover.My Generation by the WhoWayne's staff pick is the hit that started the trajectory for the Who. Guitarist Pete Townshend wrote this song about young rebellion. Roger Daltrey incorporates a stutter in his vocals to sound like a British mod on speed. While this song would reach number 2 on the UK charts, it topped out at number 74 on the US charts.Day Tripper by the BeatlesRob features a well known song from the Beatles, recorded during the "Rubber Soul" album sessions but not included on the album itself. It was released as a double A-side single along with "We Can Work it Out" during a time when the Beatles were under pressure to release a single in time for the 1965 Christmas season. COMEDY TRACK:The Lurch by Ted CassidyTed Cassidy played Lurch on "The Addams Family," and also performed this novelty song. Thanks for listening to “What the Riff?!?” NOTE: To adjust the loudness of the music or voices, you may adjust the balance on your device. VOICES are stronger in the LEFT channel, and MUSIC is stronger on the RIGHT channel.Please follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/whattheriffpodcast/, and message or email us with what you'd like to hear, what you think of the show, and any rock-worthy memes we can share.Of course we'd love for you to rate the show in your podcast platform!**NOTE: What the Riff?!? does not own the rights to any of these songs and we neither sell, nor profit from them. We share them so you can learn about them and purchase them for your own collections.
We continue the conversation from yesterday about the greatest guitar solos of the 80s...Plus, another passage from the Fleetwood Mac book "Dreams" about the time John McVie threw a glass of vodka in Lindsey Buckingham's face!
Pat welcomes Dave Festini and Dave Schneier back to the Zoom Room to referee the battle between Fleetwood Mac's "Fleetwood Mac" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours." My prediction is Fleetwood Mac just might WIN!!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Christine McVie - one of only two British girl rock musicians in the ‘60s and part of the greatest pop soap opera of all time. Neither in the backline or the frontline but occupying a unique middle ground. Packed it in for 16 years then returned to the fold. Lesley-Ann Jones' fresh and emotional memoir Songbird follows “the trajectory of a male rock star played by a woman”, the home she was keen to escape, the outer limits of life in Fleetwood Mac's “toxic Camelot” and the rigours of holding her ground in a man's world. We cover all sorts here including … … the lasting effect of not having “an ordinary mother”. … the night in Sunderland that made her think again. … when your best friend sleeps with your fiancée. … supporting the Shadows when she was 15 at the 2I's in Soho. … Etta James, Chicken Shack and playing the Reeperbahn. … why rock stars can never be part of a village community. … Fleetwood Mac's West Coast Elysium: “they were all as bad as each other”. … “cute and dangerous” meets “lifeline and anchor”: the love affair with Dennis Wilson. … why she and John McVie both needed a wife. … and her lifelong connection with the blues, “a sadness you can't cure”. Order Songbird here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Songbird-Intimate-Biography-Christine-McVie/dp/1789467217Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Christine McVie - one of only two British girl rock musicians in the ‘60s and part of the greatest pop soap opera of all time. Neither in the backline or the frontline but occupying a unique middle ground. Packed it in for 16 years then returned to the fold. Lesley-Ann Jones' fresh and emotional memoir Songbird follows “the trajectory of a male rock star played by a woman”, the home she was keen to escape, the outer limits of life in Fleetwood Mac's “toxic Camelot” and the rigours of holding her ground in a man's world. We cover all sorts here including … … the lasting effect of not having “an ordinary mother”. … the night in Sunderland that made her think again. … when your best friend sleeps with your fiancée. … supporting the Shadows when she was 15 at the 2I's in Soho. … Etta James, Chicken Shack and playing the Reeperbahn. … why rock stars can never be part of a village community. … Fleetwood Mac's West Coast Elysium: “they were all as bad as each other”. … “cute and dangerous” meets “lifeline and anchor”: the love affair with Dennis Wilson. … why she and John McVie both needed a wife. … and her lifelong connection with the blues, “a sadness you can't cure”. Order Songbird here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Songbird-Intimate-Biography-Christine-McVie/dp/1789467217Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Christine McVie - one of only two British girl rock musicians in the ‘60s and part of the greatest pop soap opera of all time. Neither in the backline or the frontline but occupying a unique middle ground. Packed it in for 16 years then returned to the fold. Lesley-Ann Jones' fresh and emotional memoir Songbird follows “the trajectory of a male rock star played by a woman”, the home she was keen to escape, the outer limits of life in Fleetwood Mac's “toxic Camelot” and the rigours of holding her ground in a man's world. We cover all sorts here including … … the lasting effect of not having “an ordinary mother”. … the night in Sunderland that made her think again. … when your best friend sleeps with your fiancée. … supporting the Shadows when she was 15 at the 2I's in Soho. … Etta James, Chicken Shack and playing the Reeperbahn. … why rock stars can never be part of a village community. … Fleetwood Mac's West Coast Elysium: “they were all as bad as each other”. … “cute and dangerous” meets “lifeline and anchor”: the love affair with Dennis Wilson. … why she and John McVie both needed a wife. … and her lifelong connection with the blues, “a sadness you can't cure”. Order Songbird here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Songbird-Intimate-Biography-Christine-McVie/dp/1789467217Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The date August 12th marks two significant and big events in the life of the band Fleetwood Mac. On that date in 1967, the original band, consisting of founder Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, made their stage debut at the National Blues & Jazz Festival in London. This heavy blues version of the band was a far cry from the group most fans are familiar with today. Exactly 30 years later, the classic lineup of Fleetwood, McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie reunited on stage for the first time in 15 years on MTV's full concert program, “The Dance.” Fleetwood Mac is a tale of many bands filled with numerous personalities who've all left an indelible mark on their sound. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.
The date August 12th marks two significant and big events in the life of the band Fleetwood Mac. On that date in 1967, the original band, consisting of founder Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, made their stage debut at the National Blues & Jazz Festival in London. This heavy blues version of the band was a far cry from the group most fans are familiar with today. Exactly 30 years later, the classic lineup of Fleetwood, McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie reunited on stage for the first time in 15 years on MTV's full concert program, “The Dance.” Fleetwood Mac is a tale of many bands filled with numerous personalities who've all left an indelible mark on their sound. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.
JOHN MAYALL “BLUES BREAKERS C/ ERIC CLAPTON” West Hampstead, London, May 1966.All Your Love, Hideaway (instrumental), Little Girl, Another Man, Double Crossing, Parchman FarmBlues Breakers: John Mayall – vocals, piano, organ, harmonica; Eric Clapton – guitar, vocals on “Ramblin' on My Mind”; John McVie – bass guitar; Hughie Flint – drums; Alan Skidmore – tenor saxophone; Johnny Almond – baritone saxophone; Derek Healey – trumpet. BLUES BREAKERS “HARD ROAD” London, October & November 1966A Hard Road, It's Over, You Don't Love Me, The Stumble (instrumental), Another Kinda Love, Hit the Highway, Dust My BluesJohn Mayall & the Bluesbreakers: Peter Green lead guitar, John McVie bass, Aynsley Dunbar drums, John Almond on saxophone. Continue reading Puro Jazz 07 de agosto, 2024 at PuroJazz.
JOHN MAYALL “BLUES BREAKERS C/ ERIC CLAPTON” West Hampstead, London, May 1966.All Your Love, Hideaway (instrumental), Little Girl, Another Man, Double Crossing, Parchman FarmBlues Breakers: John Mayall – vocals, piano, organ, harmonica; Eric Clapton – guitar, vocals on “Ramblin' on My Mind”; John McVie – bass guitar; Hughie Flint – drums; Alan Skidmore – tenor saxophone; Johnny Almond – baritone saxophone; Derek Healey – trumpet. BLUES BREAKERS “HARD ROAD” London, October & November 1966A Hard Road, It's Over, You Don't Love Me, The Stumble (instrumental), Another Kinda Love, Hit the Highway, Dust My BluesJohn Mayall & the Bluesbreakers: Peter Green lead guitar, John McVie bass, Aynsley Dunbar drums, John Almond on saxophone. Continue reading Puro Jazz 07 de agosto, 2024 at PuroJazz.
The Jazz Session No.374 from RaidersBroadcast.com as aired in August 2024, featuring the late, great jazz/blues musician and band-leader John Mayall, along with tracks from famous and lesser-known collaborators. TRACK LISTING: It Doesn't Matter - Spyro Gyra; Being With You - George Benson; What'd I Say - John Mayall; You Can't Take It With You - Keef Hartley, w. Miller Anderson [gtr/voc]; 500 Miles High - Chick Corea and Return to Forever, w. Flora Purim; Don't Know Why - Norah Jones; I'm A Stranger - John Mayall; Goin' Away Baby - Eric Clapton; Robot Portrait - Quincy Jones & His Orchestra ; Roses are Red - Michael Gibbs Band; Unknown Soldier - Weather Report; Easy Did It - Dave Holland Quintet; Killing Time - John Mayall; Dusk Fire - The New Jazz Orchestra [Jon Hiseman]; Marram - Matt Carmichael; On Pink Lane - Abbie Finn Trio; Have You Heard - John Mayall; Love That Burns - Fleetwood Mac [Peter Green, John McVie]; Why Can't You Behave - Oscar Peterson; Alexander's Ragtime Band - Yorkshire Jazz Band.
| Artist | Title | Album Name | Album Copyright | Eric Clapton & Chris Barber et al - John Mayall & The Blues Breakers | Hideaway | 70th Birthday Concert | Eric Clapton & John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers | Tribute to Elmore | The Early Years | | John Mayall With Buddy Whittington | Sen-Say-Shun | Blues From The Lost Days | Walter Trout | Mayall's Piano Boogie (Instrumental) | The Blues Came Callin' | Blues Breakers | All Your Love/ Hideaway | Blues Breakers. John Mayall with Eric Clapton | John Mayall's Bluesbreakers | Bye Bye Bird | Live In 1967 Vol. II | | John Mayall & The Blues Breakers And Friends, Mayall, Clapton & Barber | Please Mr Lofton | 70th Birthday Concert | John Mayall & Duster Bennett | My Babe [John Mayall & Friends, Live At The Palais Des Sport | Live In France [Disc 1] | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee | God And Man | Sonny & Brownie | | James Oliver | Peter Gun | Less Is More | | Stompin' Dave's Rockin' Outfit | Great Balls Of Fire | Stompin' Dave's Rockin' Outfit | John Mayall's Bluesbreakers w Peter Green, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood | Stormy Monday | Live In 1967 Vol. II |
Avec Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Coldplay et Fleetwood Mac. En 1997, Nick Cave et ses Bad Seeds sortent leur 10e album, tournant dans la carrière du groupe vers des sonorités moins dures, "The Boatman's Call", Nick Cave se sépare de Viviane Carneiro, mère de son 1er fils, Luke, et a une courte relation avec la chanteuse et musicienne britannique PJ Harvey. Divorce encore dans l'album "Further Complications" du chanteur et musicien anglais Jarvis Cocker, leader du groupe Pulp à l'époque de sa désunion avec la mère de son fils. En 2014, Coldplay sort son 6e opus "Ghost Stories", en grande partie basé sur le récent divorce du chanteur Chris Martin et de l'actrice américaine Gwyneth Paltrow. L'album de Fleetwood Mac, "Rumours", en 1977, qui nous plonge dans la séparation de, non pas 1, mais bien 2 couples au sein de la formation : le guitariste Lindsay Buckingham et la chanteuse Stevie Nicks et le bassiste John McVie et la chanteuse et musicienne Christie McVie. --- Du lundi au vendredi, Fanny Gillard et Laurent Rieppi vous dévoilent l'univers rock, au travers de thèmes comme ceux de l'éducation, des rockers en prison, les objets de la culture rock, les groupes familiaux et leurs déboires, et bien d'autres, chaque matin dans Coffee on the Rocks à 6h30 et rediffusion à 13h30 dans Lunch Around The Clock. Merci pour votre écoute Pour écouter Classic 21 à tout moment : www.rtbf.be/classic21 Retrouvez tous les contenus de la RTBF sur notre plateforme Auvio.be Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement.
On this first edition of Viral Music History, we begin with the early beginnings of Fleetwood Mac! This episode covers how Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood met each other through John Mayall's Bluesbreakers group, where their blues roots are inspired from, the impact of the single Black Magic Woman, their first two album releases and more!
We check this week's luggage on the rock and roll baggage carousel and remove the following items for inspection … … The People v OJ Simpson and why it's worth re-watching. … the only two convincing films about magazines and journalism. … bands that look like mini-cab drivers. … David's upcoming appearance on University Challenge (cue the voice of Roger Tilling: “Middlesex Hepworth!”) ... the source of the phrase “Bring on the empty horses!” … why someone called Riley asked John McVie and Nick Mason for his life back. … who was more prolific, Michael Curtiz, Barbara Cartland or Mozart? … the eternal destination of all Peter Pan royalties. … the man who saved Po Powell from a spell in the cooler. … “Morning, Gentlemen. Nice day for murder!” … writing bands' names on school bags. … ‘I need a sheep, a psychiatrist's couch, a vet and a ticket to Hawaii!' ... the old Word magazine gang and what they're doing now. Mentioned in despatches – the Atom Heart Mother cow, a duff Barry Gibb movie, the Mark Leeman Five and Balaam And the Angel.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We check this week's luggage on the rock and roll baggage carousel and remove the following items for inspection … … The People v OJ Simpson and why it's worth re-watching. … the only two convincing films about magazines and journalism. … bands that look like mini-cab drivers. … David's upcoming appearance on University Challenge (cue the voice of Roger Tilling: “Middlesex Hepworth!”) ... the source of the phrase “Bring on the empty horses!” … why someone called Riley asked John McVie and Nick Mason for his life back. … who was more prolific, Michael Curtiz, Barbara Cartland or Mozart? … the eternal destination of all Peter Pan royalties. … the man who saved Po Powell from a spell in the cooler. … “Morning, Gentlemen. Nice day for murder!” … writing bands' names on school bags. … ‘I need a sheep, a psychiatrist's couch, a vet and a ticket to Hawaii!' ... the old Word magazine gang and what they're doing now. Mentioned in despatches – the Atom Heart Mother cow, a duff Barry Gibb movie, the Mark Leeman Five and Balaam And the Angel.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We check this week's luggage on the rock and roll baggage carousel and remove the following items for inspection … … The People v OJ Simpson and why it's worth re-watching. … the only two convincing films about magazines and journalism. … bands that look like mini-cab drivers. … David's upcoming appearance on University Challenge (cue the voice of Roger Tilling: “Middlesex Hepworth!”) ... the source of the phrase “Bring on the empty horses!” … why someone called Riley asked John McVie and Nick Mason for his life back. … who was more prolific, Michael Curtiz, Barbara Cartland or Mozart? … the eternal destination of all Peter Pan royalties. … the man who saved Po Powell from a spell in the cooler. … “Morning, Gentlemen. Nice day for murder!” … writing bands' names on school bags. … ‘I need a sheep, a psychiatrist's couch, a vet and a ticket to Hawaii!' ... the old Word magazine gang and what they're doing now. Mentioned in despatches – the Atom Heart Mother cow, a duff Barry Gibb movie, the Mark Leeman Five and Balaam And the Angel.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
They have performed for over 950,000 Fleetwood Mac fans across the world to date, and they have garnered over 100-million views across YouTube. How do they capture the heart and soul that lies behind the music of one of the most popular rock bands in the world? This week Dr. Alan Campbell speaks with Alan Cosgrove, founding member and drummer of the band Rumours of Fleetwood Mac.
Kann eine Band noch Musik machen, wenn alles andere, was sie zusammenhält, wegbricht? Fleetwood Mac beweisen: Man kann sogar ein Meisterwerk schaffen. Oder sind am Ende doch die Drogen an allem Schuld?
Season 1, Episode 1: In Review - Rumours by Fleetwood Mac In our first episode, take a dive into one of the greatest albums of all time. Hear the history of the band and the album itself, and then a full, in-depth review of each song. This is an episode that you don't want to miss! (Originally released on February 24, 2023) Sam's 3 of the Week Picks... 1.) Walkin' The Dog - Aerosmith, 1973 2.) Alyson - Rick Springfield, 1983 3.) Maggie May - Rod Stewart, 1971 Luke's 3 of the Week Picks... 1.) Lips Like Sugar - Echo & the Bunnymen, 1987 2.) When The Stars Come Out - Chris Stapleton, 2015 3.) Turkey Vulture - Under The Rug, 2023 Follow us on Instagram @obu.fm.pod for updates! https://www.instagram.com/obu.fm.pod/?hl=en We do not own any music included within this episode of OBU-FM. This episode is a Questone Entertainment Production in association with the Signal.
Let's Get It On Tracklist: Let us know by LEAVING A COMMENT! Fleetwood Mac: “Teen Beat (Outtake) [2016 Remaster] ” This is an outtake from Fleetwood Mac's Mirage album from 1982. Featuring a somewhat unhinged Lindsey Buckingham coaxing Mick Fleetwood and John McVie to follow and enhance his fun romp, this is a […]
This week we sat down with musicians Nick Mencia aka Nick County and Danny Gonzalez (Jacuzzi Boys) at a place called Lee Ho Fooks to get a big dish of beef chow mein and to discuss Warren Zevon and his 1978 release 'Excitable Boy'. "Dad, get me out of this!" Songs discussed in this episode: Knockin' On Heaven's Door - Warren Zevon; If You Still Love Me - Nick County; Glazin' - Jacuzzi Boys; Orgasm Addict - Buzzcocks; Last Caress - Misfits; She Quit Me - Warren Zevon; Doctor My Eyes - Jackson Browne; Carmelita - Linda Ronstadt; Carmelita - GG Allin; My Shit's Fucked Up, Johnny Strikes Up The Band - Warren Zevon; Take It So Hard - Keith Richards and the X-Pensive Winos; Roland and the Headless Thompson Gunner - Warren Zevon; Spanish Bombs - The Clash; Excitable Boy, Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon; Dreams - Fleetwood Mac; Accidentally Like A Martyr, Nightime In The Switching Yard - Warren Zevon; Shakedown Street - Grateful Dead; Veracruz, Tenderness On The Block - Warren Zevon; Mr President (Have Pity on the Working Man) - Randy Newman; Gotta Get Up - Harry Nilsson; Lawyers, Guns and Money - Warren Zevon; Glue - Jacuzzi Boys; Racetrack - Nick County
Hello and happy Off-Topic Season! We are kicking off our 6-episode season with Janey's deep-dive into Fleetwood Mac.Sources:“Fleetwood Mac: Back on the Chain Gang” article by Rolling Stone Christine McVie on why she and John McVie split up A timeline of Fleetwood Mac's relationship drama Behind the Beef An Interview with Jeremy Spencer Why Bob Welch left Fleetwood Mac Danny Kirwan on NPR Support the showCheck out our books (and support local bookstores!) on our Bookshop.org affiliate account!Starting your own podcast with your very cool best friend? Try hosting on Buzzsprout (and get a $20 Amazon gift card!)Want more??Visit our website!Join our Patreon!Shop the merch at TeePublic!If you liked these stories, let us know on our various socials!InstagramTiktokGoodreadsAnd email us at sortofthestory@gmail.com
Episode 166 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Crossroads", Cream, the myth of Robert Johnson, and whether white men can sing the blues. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-eight-minute bonus episode available, on “Tip-Toe Thru' the Tulips" by Tiny Tim. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I talk about an interview with Clapton from 1967, I meant 1968. I mention a Graham Bond live recording from 1953, and of course meant 1963. I say Paul Jones was on vocals in the Powerhouse sessions. Steve Winwood was on vocals, and Jones was on harmonica. Resources As I say at the end, the main resource you need to get if you enjoyed this episode is Brother Robert by Annye Anderson, Robert Johnson's stepsister. There are three Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Cream, Robert Johnson, John Mayall, and Graham Bond excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here -- one, two, three. This article on Mack McCormick gives a fuller explanation of the problems with his research and behaviour. The other books I used for the Robert Johnson sections were McCormick's Biography of a Phantom; Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow; Searching for Robert Johnson by Peter Guralnick; and Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald. I can recommend all of these subject to the caveats at the end of the episode. The information on the history and prehistory of the Delta blues mostly comes from Before Elvis by Larry Birnbaum, with some coming from Charley Patton by John Fahey. The information on Cream comes mostly from Cream: How Eric Clapton Took the World by Storm by Dave Thompson. I also used Ginger Baker: Hellraiser by Ginger Baker and Ginette Baker, Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando-Collins, Motherless Child by Paul Scott, and Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. The best collection of Cream's work is the four-CD set Those Were the Days, which contains every track the group ever released while they were together (though only the stereo mixes of the albums, and a couple of tracks are in slightly different edits from the originals). You can get Johnson's music on many budget compilation records, as it's in the public domain in the EU, but the double CD collection produced by Steve LaVere for Sony in 2011 is, despite the problems that come from it being associated with LaVere, far and away the best option -- the remasters have a clarity that's worlds ahead of even the 1990s CD version it replaced. And for a good single-CD introduction to the Delta blues musicians and songsters who were Johnson's peers and inspirations, Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson, compiled by Elijah Wald as a companion to his book on Johnson, can't be beaten, and contains many of the tracks excerpted in this episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick note that this episode contains discussion of racism, drug addiction, and early death. There's also a brief mention of death in childbirth and infant mortality. It's been a while since we looked at the British blues movement, and at the blues in general, so some of you may find some of what follows familiar, as we're going to look at some things we've talked about previously, but from a different angle. In 1968, the Bonzo Dog Band, a comedy musical band that have been described as the missing link between the Beatles and the Monty Python team, released a track called "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?": [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Band, "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?"] That track was mocking a discussion that was very prominent in Britain's music magazines around that time. 1968 saw the rise of a *lot* of British bands who started out as blues bands, though many of them went on to different styles of music -- Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Chicken Shack and others were all becoming popular among the kind of people who read the music magazines, and so the question was being asked -- can white men sing the blues? Of course, the answer to that question was obvious. After all, white men *invented* the blues. Before we get any further at all, I have to make clear that I do *not* mean that white people created blues music. But "the blues" as a category, and particularly the idea of it as a music made largely by solo male performers playing guitar... that was created and shaped by the actions of white male record executives. There is no consensus as to when or how the blues as a genre started -- as we often say in this podcast "there is no first anything", but like every genre it seems to have come from multiple sources. In the case of the blues, there's probably some influence from African music by way of field chants sung by enslaved people, possibly some influence from Arabic music as well, definitely some influence from the Irish and British folk songs that by the late nineteenth century were developing into what we now call country music, a lot from ragtime, and a lot of influence from vaudeville and minstrel songs -- which in turn themselves were all very influenced by all those other things. Probably the first published composition to show any real influence of the blues is from 1904, a ragtime piano piece by James Chapman and Leroy Smith, "One O' Them Things": [Excerpt: "One O' Them Things"] That's not very recognisable as a blues piece yet, but it is more-or-less a twelve-bar blues. But the blues developed, and it developed as a result of a series of commercial waves. The first of these came in 1914, with the success of W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues", which when it was recorded by the Victor Military Band for a phonograph cylinder became what is generally considered the first blues record proper: [Excerpt: The Victor Military Band, "Memphis Blues"] The famous dancers Vernon and Irene Castle came up with a dance, the foxtrot -- which Vernon Castle later admitted was largely inspired by Black dancers -- to be danced to the "Memphis Blues", and the foxtrot soon overtook the tango, which the Castles had introduced to the US the previous year, to become the most popular dance in America for the best part of three decades. And with that came an explosion in blues in the Handy style, cranked out by every music publisher. While the blues was a style largely created by Black performers and writers, the segregated nature of the American music industry at the time meant that most vocal performances of these early blues that were captured on record were by white performers, Black vocalists at this time only rarely getting the chance to record. The first blues record with a Black vocalist is also technically the first British blues record. A group of Black musicians, apparently mostly American but led by a Jamaican pianist, played at Ciro's Club in London, and recorded many tracks in Britain, under a name which I'm not going to say in full -- it started with Ciro's Club, and continued alliteratively with another word starting with C, a slur for Black people. In 1917 they recorded a vocal version of "St. Louis Blues", another W.C. Handy composition: [Excerpt: Ciro's Club C**n Orchestra, "St. Louis Blues"] The first American Black blues vocal didn't come until two years later, when Bert Williams, a Black minstrel-show performer who like many Black performers of his era performed in blackface even though he was Black, recorded “I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,” [Excerpt: Bert Williams, "I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,”] But it wasn't until 1920 that the second, bigger, wave of popularity started for the blues, and this time it started with the first record of a Black *woman* singing the blues -- Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] You can hear the difference between that and anything we've heard up to that point -- that's the first record that anyone from our perspective, a hundred and three years later, would listen to and say that it bore any resemblance to what we think of as the blues -- so much so that many places still credit it as the first ever blues record. And there's a reason for that. "Crazy Blues" was one of those records that separates the music industry into before and after, like "Rock Around the Clock", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", Sgt Pepper, or "Rapper's Delight". It sold seventy-five thousand copies in its first month -- a massive number by the standards of 1920 -- and purportedly went on to sell over a million copies. Sales figures and market analysis weren't really a thing in the same way in 1920, but even so it became very obvious that "Crazy Blues" was a big hit, and that unlike pretty much any other previous records, it was a big hit among Black listeners, which meant that there was a market for music aimed at Black people that was going untapped. Soon all the major record labels were setting up subsidiaries devoted to what they called "race music", music made by and for Black people. And this sees the birth of what is now known as "classic blues", but at the time (and for decades after) was just what people thought of when they thought of "the blues" as a genre. This was music primarily sung by female vaudeville artists backed by jazz bands, people like Ma Rainey (whose earliest recordings featured Louis Armstrong in her backing band): [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider Blues"] And Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues", who had a massive career in the 1920s before the Great Depression caused many of these "race record" labels to fold, but who carried on performing well into the 1930s -- her last recording was in 1933, produced by John Hammond, with a backing band including Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Give Me a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer"] It wouldn't be until several years after the boom started by Mamie Smith that any record companies turned to recording Black men singing the blues accompanied by guitar or banjo. The first record of this type is probably "Norfolk Blues" by Reese DuPree from 1924: [Excerpt: Reese DuPree, "Norfolk Blues"] And there were occasional other records of this type, like "Airy Man Blues" by Papa Charlie Jackson, who was advertised as the “only man living who sings, self-accompanied, for Blues records.” [Excerpt: Papa Charlie Jackson, "Airy Man Blues"] But contrary to the way these are seen today, at the time they weren't seen as being in some way "authentic", or "folk music". Indeed, there are many quotes from folk-music collectors of the time (sadly all of them using so many slurs that it's impossible for me to accurately quote them) saying that when people sang the blues, that wasn't authentic Black folk music at all but an adulteration from commercial music -- they'd clearly, according to these folk-music scholars, learned the blues style from records and sheet music rather than as part of an oral tradition. Most of these performers were people who recorded blues as part of a wider range of material, like Blind Blake, who recorded some blues music but whose best work was his ragtime guitar instrumentals: [Excerpt: Blind Blake, "Southern Rag"] But it was when Blind Lemon Jefferson started recording for Paramount records in 1926 that the image of the blues as we now think of it took shape. His first record, "Got the Blues", was a massive success: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Got the Blues"] And this resulted in many labels, especially Paramount, signing up pretty much every Black man with a guitar they could find in the hopes of finding another Blind Lemon Jefferson. But the thing is, this generation of people making blues records, and the generation that followed them, didn't think of themselves as "blues singers" or "bluesmen". They were songsters. Songsters were entertainers, and their job was to sing and play whatever the audiences would want to hear. That included the blues, of course, but it also included... well, every song anyone would want to hear. They'd perform old folk songs, vaudeville songs, songs that they'd heard on the radio or the jukebox -- whatever the audience wanted. Robert Johnson, for example, was known to particularly love playing polka music, and also adored the records of Jimmie Rodgers, the first country music superstar. In 1941, when Alan Lomax first recorded Muddy Waters, he asked Waters what kind of songs he normally played in performances, and he was given a list that included "Home on the Range", Gene Autry's "I've Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle", and Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". We have few recordings of these people performing this kind of song though. One of the few we have is Big Bill Broonzy, who was just about the only artist of this type not to get pigeonholed as just a blues singer, even though blues is what made him famous, and who later in his career managed to record songs like the Tin Pan Alley standard "The Glory of Love": [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "The Glory of Love"] But for the most part, the image we have of the blues comes down to one man, Arthur Laibley, a sales manager for the Wisconsin Chair Company. The Wisconsin Chair Company was, as the name would suggest, a company that started out making wooden chairs, but it had branched out into other forms of wooden furniture -- including, for a brief time, large wooden phonographs. And, like several other manufacturers, like the Radio Corporation of America -- RCA -- and the Gramophone Company, which became EMI, they realised that if they were going to sell the hardware it made sense to sell the software as well, and had started up Paramount Records, which bought up a small label, Black Swan, and soon became the biggest manufacturer of records for the Black market, putting out roughly a quarter of all "race records" released between 1922 and 1932. At first, most of these were produced by a Black talent scout, J. Mayo Williams, who had been the first person to record Ma Rainey, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, but in 1927 Williams left Paramount, and the job of supervising sessions went to Arthur Laibley, though according to some sources a lot of the actual production work was done by Aletha Dickerson, Williams' former assistant, who was almost certainly the first Black woman to be what we would now think of as a record producer. Williams had been interested in recording all kinds of music by Black performers, but when Laibley got a solo Black man into the studio, what he wanted more than anything was for him to record the blues, ideally in a style as close as possible to that of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Laibley didn't have a very hands-on approach to recording -- indeed Paramount had very little concern about the quality of their product anyway, and Paramount's records are notorious for having been put out on poor-quality shellac and recorded badly -- and he only occasionally made actual suggestions as to what kind of songs his performers should write -- for example he asked Son House to write something that sounded like Blind Lemon Jefferson, which led to House writing and recording "Mississippi County Farm Blues", which steals the tune of Jefferson's "See That My Grave is Kept Clean": [Excerpt: Son House, "Mississippi County Farm Blues"] When Skip James wanted to record a cover of James Wiggins' "Forty-Four Blues", Laibley suggested that instead he should do a song about a different gun, and so James recorded "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues"] And Laibley also suggested that James write a song about the Depression, which led to one of the greatest blues records ever, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues"] These musicians knew that they were getting paid only for issued sides, and that Laibley wanted only blues from them, and so that's what they gave him. Even when it was a performer like Charlie Patton. (Incidentally, for those reading this as a transcript rather than listening to it, Patton's name is more usually spelled ending in ey, but as far as I can tell ie was his preferred spelling and that's what I'm using). Charlie Patton was best known as an entertainer, first and foremost -- someone who would do song-and-dance routines, joke around, play guitar behind his head. He was a clown on stage, so much so that when Son House finally heard some of Patton's records, in the mid-sixties, decades after the fact, he was astonished that Patton could actually play well. Even though House had been in the room when some of the records were made, his memory of Patton was of someone who acted the fool on stage. That's definitely not the impression you get from the Charlie Patton on record: [Excerpt: Charlie Patton, "Poor Me"] Patton is, as far as can be discerned, the person who was most influential in creating the music that became called the "Delta blues". Not a lot is known about Patton's life, but he was almost certainly the half-brother of the Chatmon brothers, who made hundreds of records, most notably as members of the Mississippi Sheiks: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Sheiks, "Sitting on Top of the World"] In the 1890s, Patton's family moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, and he lived in and around that county until his death in 1934. Patton learned to play guitar from a musician called Henry Sloan, and then Patton became a mentor figure to a *lot* of other musicians in and around the plantation on which his family lived. Some of the musicians who grew up in the immediate area around Patton included Tommy Johnson: [Excerpt: Tommy Johnson, "Big Road Blues"] Pops Staples: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"] Robert Johnson: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Crossroads"] Willie Brown, a musician who didn't record much, but who played a lot with Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson and who we just heard Johnson sing about: [Excerpt: Willie Brown, "M&O Blues"] And Chester Burnett, who went on to become known as Howlin' Wolf, and whose vocal style was equally inspired by Patton and by the country star Jimmie Rodgers: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"] Once Patton started his own recording career for Paramount, he also started working as a talent scout for them, and it was him who brought Son House to Paramount. Soon after the Depression hit, Paramount stopped recording, and so from 1930 through 1934 Patton didn't make any records. He was tracked down by an A&R man in January 1934 and recorded one final session: [Excerpt, Charlie Patton, "34 Blues"] But he died of heart failure two months later. But his influence spread through his proteges, and they themselves influenced other musicians from the area who came along a little after, like Robert Lockwood and Muddy Waters. This music -- or that portion of it that was considered worth recording by white record producers, only a tiny, unrepresentative, portion of their vast performing repertoires -- became known as the Delta Blues, and when some of these musicians moved to Chicago and started performing with electric instruments, it became Chicago Blues. And as far as people like John Mayall in Britain were concerned, Delta and Chicago Blues *were* the blues: [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "It Ain't Right"] John Mayall was one of the first of the British blues obsessives, and for a long time thought of himself as the only one. While we've looked before at the growth of the London blues scene, Mayall wasn't from London -- he was born in Macclesfield and grew up in Cheadle Hulme, both relatively well-off suburbs of Manchester, and after being conscripted and doing two years in the Army, he had become an art student at Manchester College of Art, what is now Manchester Metropolitan University. Mayall had been a blues fan from the late 1940s, writing off to the US to order records that hadn't been released in the UK, and by most accounts by the late fifties he'd put together the biggest blues collection in Britain by quite some way. Not only that, but he had one of the earliest home tape recorders, and every night he would record radio stations from Continental Europe which were broadcasting for American service personnel, so he'd amassed mountains of recordings, often unlabelled, of obscure blues records that nobody else in the UK knew about. He was also an accomplished pianist and guitar player, and in 1956 he and his drummer friend Peter Ward had put together a band called the Powerhouse Four (the other two members rotated on a regular basis) mostly to play lunchtime jazz sessions at the art college. Mayall also started putting on jam sessions at a youth club in Wythenshawe, where he met another drummer named Hughie Flint. Over the late fifties and into the early sixties, Mayall more or less by himself built up a small blues scene in Manchester. The Manchester blues scene was so enthusiastic, in fact, that when the American Folk Blues Festival, an annual European tour which initially featured Willie Dixon, Memhis Slim, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and John Lee Hooker, first toured Europe, the only UK date it played was at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, and people like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jimmy Page had to travel up from London to see it. But still, the number of blues fans in Manchester, while proportionally large, was objectively small enough that Mayall was captivated by an article in Melody Maker which talked about Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies' new band Blues Incorporated and how it was playing electric blues, the same music he was making in Manchester. He later talked about how the article had made him think that maybe now people would know what he was talking about. He started travelling down to London to play gigs for the London blues scene, and inviting Korner up to Manchester to play shows there. Soon Mayall had moved down to London. Korner introduced Mayall to Davey Graham, the great folk guitarist, with whom Korner had recently recorded as a duo: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] Mayall and Graham performed together as a duo for a while, but Graham was a natural solo artist if ever there was one. Slowly Mayall put a band together in London. On drums was his old friend Peter Ward, who'd moved down from Manchester with him. On bass was John McVie, who at the time knew nothing about blues -- he'd been playing in a Shadows-style instrumental group -- but Mayall gave him a stack of blues records to listen to to get the feeling. And on guitar was Bernie Watson, who had previously played with Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. In late 1963, Mike Vernon, a blues fan who had previously published a Yardbirds fanzine, got a job working for Decca records, and immediately started signing his favourite acts from the London blues circuit. The first act he signed was John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and they recorded a single, "Crawling up a Hill": [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "Crawling up a Hill (45 version)"] Mayall later called that a "clumsy, half-witted attempt at autobiographical comment", and it sold only five hundred copies. It would be the only record the Bluesbreakers would make with Watson, who soon left the band to be replaced by Roger Dean (not the same Roger Dean who later went on to design prog rock album covers). The second group to be signed by Mike Vernon to Decca was the Graham Bond Organisation. We've talked about the Graham Bond Organisation in passing several times, but not for a while and not in any great detail, so it's worth pulling everything we've said about them so far together and going through it in a little more detail. The Graham Bond Organisation, like the Rolling Stones, grew out of Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. As we heard in the episode on "I Wanna Be Your Man" a couple of years ago, Blues Incorporated had been started by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, and at the time we're joining them in 1962 featured a drummer called Charlie Watts, a pianist called Dave Stevens, and saxophone player Dick Heckstall-Smith, as well as frequent guest performers like a singer who called himself Mike Jagger, and another one, Roderick Stewart. That group finally found themselves the perfect bass player when Dick Heckstall-Smith put together a one-off group of jazz players to play an event at Cambridge University. At the gig, a little Scottish man came up to the group and told them he played bass and asked if he could sit in. They told him to bring along his instrument to their second set, that night, and he did actually bring along a double bass. Their bluff having been called, they decided to play the most complicated, difficult, piece they knew in order to throw the kid off -- the drummer, a trad jazz player named Ginger Baker, didn't like performing with random sit-in guests -- but astonishingly he turned out to be really good. Heckstall-Smith took down the bass player's name and phone number and invited him to a jam session with Blues Incorporated. After that jam session, Jack Bruce quickly became the group's full-time bass player. Bruce had started out as a classical cellist, but had switched to the double bass inspired by Bach, who he referred to as "the guv'nor of all bass players". His playing up to this point had mostly been in trad jazz bands, and he knew nothing of the blues, but he quickly got the hang of the genre. Bruce's first show with Blues Incorporated was a BBC recording: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "Hoochie Coochie Man (BBC session)"] According to at least one source it was not being asked to take part in that session that made young Mike Jagger decide there was no future for him with Blues Incorporated and to spend more time with his other group, the Rollin' Stones. Soon after, Charlie Watts would join him, for almost the opposite reason -- Watts didn't want to be in a band that was getting as big as Blues Incorporated were. They were starting to do more BBC sessions and get more gigs, and having to join the Musicians' Union. That seemed like a lot of work. Far better to join a band like the Rollin' Stones that wasn't going anywhere. Because of Watts' decision to give up on potential stardom to become a Rollin' Stone, they needed a new drummer, and luckily the best drummer on the scene was available. But then the best drummer on the scene was *always* available. Ginger Baker had first played with Dick Heckstall-Smith several years earlier, in a trad group called the Storyville Jazzmen. There Baker had become obsessed with the New Orleans jazz drummer Baby Dodds, who had played with Louis Armstrong in the 1920s. Sadly because of 1920s recording technology, he hadn't been able to play a full kit on the recordings with Armstrong, being limited to percussion on just a woodblock, but you can hear his drumming style much better in this version of "At the Jazz Band Ball" from 1947, with Mugsy Spanier, Jack Teagarden, Cyrus St. Clair and Hank Duncan: [Excerpt: "At the Jazz Band Ball"] Baker had taken Dobbs' style and run with it, and had quickly become known as the single best player, bar none, on the London jazz scene -- he'd become an accomplished player in multiple styles, and was also fluent in reading music and arranging. He'd also, though, become known as the single person on the entire scene who was most difficult to get along with. He resigned from his first band onstage, shouting "You can stick your band up your arse", after the band's leader had had enough of him incorporating bebop influences into their trad style. Another time, when touring with Diz Disley's band, he was dumped in Germany with no money and no way to get home, because the band were so sick of him. Sometimes this was because of his temper and his unwillingness to suffer fools -- and he saw everyone else he ever met as a fool -- and sometimes it was because of his own rigorous musical ideas. He wanted to play music *his* way, and wouldn't listen to anyone who told him different. Both of these things got worse after he fell under the influence of a man named Phil Seaman, one of the only drummers that Baker respected at all. Seaman introduced Baker to African drumming, and Baker started incorporating complex polyrhythms into his playing as a result. Seaman also though introduced Baker to heroin, and while being a heroin addict in the UK in the 1960s was not as difficult as it later became -- both heroin and cocaine were available on prescription to registered addicts, and Baker got both, which meant that many of the problems that come from criminalisation of these drugs didn't affect addicts in the same way -- but it still did not, by all accounts, make him an easier person to get along with. But he *was* a fantastic drummer. As Dick Heckstall-Smith said "With the advent of Ginger, the classic Blues Incorporated line-up, one which I think could not be bettered, was set" But Alexis Korner decided that the group could be bettered, and he had some backers within the band. One of the other bands on the scene was the Don Rendell Quintet, a group that played soul jazz -- that style of jazz that bridged modern jazz and R&B, the kind of music that Ray Charles and Herbie Hancock played: [Excerpt: The Don Rendell Quintet, "Manumission"] The Don Rendell Quintet included a fantastic multi-instrumentalist, Graham Bond, who doubled on keyboards and saxophone, and Bond had been playing occasional experimental gigs with the Johnny Burch Octet -- a group led by another member of the Rendell Quartet featuring Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, Baker, and a few other musicians, doing wholly-improvised music. Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, and Baker all enjoyed playing with Bond, and when Korner decided to bring him into the band, they were all very keen. But Cyril Davies, the co-leader of the band with Korner, was furious at the idea. Davies wanted to play strict Chicago and Delta blues, and had no truck with other forms of music like R&B and jazz. To his mind it was bad enough that they had a sax player. But the idea that they would bring in Bond, who played sax and... *Hammond* organ? Well, that was practically blasphemy. Davies quit the group at the mere suggestion. Bond was soon in the band, and he, Bruce, and Baker were playing together a *lot*. As well as performing with Blues Incorporated, they continued playing in the Johnny Burch Octet, and they also started performing as the Graham Bond Trio. Sometimes the Graham Bond Trio would be Blues Incorporated's opening act, and on more than one occasion the Graham Bond Trio, Blues Incorporated, and the Johnny Burch Octet all had gigs in different parts of London on the same night and they'd have to frantically get from one to the other. The Graham Bond Trio also had fans in Manchester, thanks to the local blues scene there and their connection with Blues Incorporated, and one night in February 1963 the trio played a gig there. They realised afterwards that by playing as a trio they'd made £70, when they were lucky to make £20 from a gig with Blues Incorporated or the Octet, because there were so many members in those bands. Bond wanted to make real money, and at the next rehearsal of Blues Incorporated he announced to Korner that he, Bruce, and Baker were quitting the band -- which was news to Bruce and Baker, who he hadn't bothered consulting. Baker, indeed, was in the toilet when the announcement was made and came out to find it a done deal. He was going to kick up a fuss and say he hadn't been consulted, but Korner's reaction sealed the deal. As Baker later said "‘he said “it's really good you're doing this thing with Graham, and I wish you the best of luck” and all that. And it was a bit difficult to turn round and say, “Well, I don't really want to leave the band, you know.”'" The Graham Bond Trio struggled at first to get the gigs they were expecting, but that started to change when in April 1963 they became the Graham Bond Quartet, with the addition of virtuoso guitarist John McLaughlin. The Quartet soon became one of the hottest bands on the London R&B scene, and when Duffy Power, a Larry Parnes teen idol who wanted to move into R&B, asked his record label to get him a good R&B band to back him on a Beatles cover, it was the Graham Bond Quartet who obliged: [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "I Saw Her Standing There"] The Quartet also backed Power on a package tour with other Parnes acts, but they were also still performing their own blend of hard jazz and blues, as can be heard in this recording of the group live in June 1953: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Quartet, "Ho Ho Country Kicking Blues (Live at Klooks Kleek)"] But that lineup of the group didn't last very long. According to the way Baker told the story, he fired McLaughlin from the group, after being irritated by McLaughlin complaining about something on a day when Baker was out of cocaine and in no mood to hear anyone else's complaints. As Baker said "We lost a great guitar player and I lost a good friend." But the Trio soon became a Quartet again, as Dick Heckstall-Smith, who Baker had wanted in the band from the start, joined on saxophone to replace McLaughlin's guitar. But they were no longer called the Graham Bond Quartet. Partly because Heckstall-Smith joining allowed Bond to concentrate just on his keyboard playing, but one suspects partly to protect against any future lineup changes, the group were now The Graham Bond ORGANisation -- emphasis on the organ. The new lineup of the group got signed to Decca by Vernon, and were soon recording their first single, "Long Tall Shorty": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Long Tall Shorty"] They recorded a few other songs which made their way onto an EP and an R&B compilation, and toured intensively in early 1964, as well as backing up Power on his follow-up to "I Saw Her Standing There", his version of "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "Parchman Farm"] They also appeared in a film, just like the Beatles, though it was possibly not quite as artistically successful as "A Hard Day's Night": [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat trailer] Gonks Go Beat is one of the most bizarre films of the sixties. It's a far-future remake of Romeo and Juliet. where the two star-crossed lovers are from opposing countries -- Beatland and Ballad Isle -- who only communicate once a year in an annual song contest which acts as their version of a war, and is overseen by "Mr. A&R", played by Frank Thornton, who would later star in Are You Being Served? Carry On star Kenneth Connor is sent by aliens to try to bring peace to the two warring countries, on pain of exile to Planet Gonk, a planet inhabited solely by Gonks (a kind of novelty toy for which there was a short-lived craze then). Along the way Connor encounters such luminaries of British light entertainment as Terry Scott and Arthur Mullard, as well as musical performances by Lulu, the Nashville Teens, and of course the Graham Bond Organisation, whose performance gets them a telling-off from a teacher: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat!] The group as a group only performed one song in this cinematic masterpiece, but Baker also made an appearance in a "drum battle" sequence where eight drummers played together: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat drum battle] The other drummers in that scene included, as well as some lesser-known players, Andy White who had played on the single version of "Love Me Do", Bobby Graham, who played on hits by the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five, and Ronnie Verrell, who did the drumming for Animal in the Muppet Show. Also in summer 1964, the group performed at the Fourth National Jazz & Blues Festival in Richmond -- the festival co-founded by Chris Barber that would evolve into the Reading Festival. The Yardbirds were on the bill, and at the end of their set they invited Bond, Baker, Bruce, Georgie Fame, and Mike Vernon onto the stage with them, making that the first time that Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce were all on stage together. Soon after that, the Graham Bond Organisation got a new manager, Robert Stigwood. Things hadn't been working out for them at Decca, and Stigwood soon got the group signed to EMI, and became their producer as well. Their first single under Stigwood's management was a cover version of the theme tune to the Debbie Reynolds film "Tammy". While that film had given Tamla records its name, the song was hardly an R&B classic: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Tammy"] That record didn't chart, but Stigwood put the group out on the road as part of the disastrous Chuck Berry tour we heard about in the episode on "All You Need is Love", which led to the bankruptcy of Robert Stigwood Associates. The Organisation moved over to Stigwood's new company, the Robert Stigwood Organisation, and Stigwood continued to be the credited producer of their records, though after the "Tammy" disaster they decided they were going to take charge themselves of the actual music. Their first album, The Sound of 65, was recorded in a single three-hour session, and they mostly ran through their standard set -- a mixture of the same songs everyone else on the circuit was playing, like "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Got My Mojo Working", and "Wade in the Water", and originals like Bruce's "Train Time": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Train Time"] Through 1965 they kept working. They released a non-album single, "Lease on Love", which is generally considered to be the first pop record to feature a Mellotron: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Lease on Love"] and Bond and Baker also backed another Stigwood act, Winston G, on his debut single: [Excerpt: Winston G, "Please Don't Say"] But the group were developing severe tensions. Bruce and Baker had started out friendly, but by this time they hated each other. Bruce said he couldn't hear his own playing over Baker's loud drumming, Baker thought that Bruce was far too fussy a player and should try to play simpler lines. They'd both try to throw each other during performances, altering arrangements on the fly and playing things that would trip the other player up. And *neither* of them were particularly keen on Bond's new love of the Mellotron, which was all over their second album, giving it a distinctly proto-prog feel at times: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Baby Can it Be True?"] Eventually at a gig in Golders Green, Baker started throwing drumsticks at Bruce's head while Bruce was trying to play a bass solo. Bruce retaliated by throwing his bass at Baker, and then jumping on him and starting a fistfight which had to be broken up by the venue security. Baker fired Bruce from the band, but Bruce kept turning up to gigs anyway, arguing that Baker had no right to sack him as it was a democracy. Baker always claimed that in fact Bond had wanted to sack Bruce but hadn't wanted to get his hands dirty, and insisted that Baker do it, but neither Bond nor Heckstall-Smith objected when Bruce turned up for the next couple of gigs. So Baker took matters into his own hands, He pulled out a knife and told Bruce "If you show up at one more gig, this is going in you." Within days, Bruce was playing with John Mayall, whose Bluesbreakers had gone through some lineup changes by this point. Roger Dean had only played with the Bluesbreakers for a short time before Mayall had replaced him. Mayall had not been impressed with Eric Clapton's playing with the Yardbirds at first -- even though graffiti saying "Clapton is God" was already starting to appear around London -- but he had been *very* impressed with Clapton's playing on "Got to Hurry", the B-side to "For Your Love": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Got to Hurry"] When he discovered that Clapton had quit the band, he sprang into action and quickly recruited him to replace Dean. Clapton knew he had made the right choice when a month after he'd joined, the group got the word that Bob Dylan had been so impressed with Mayall's single "Crawling up a Hill" -- the one that nobody liked, not even Mayall himself -- that he wanted to jam with Mayall and his band in the studio. Clapton of course went along: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] That was, of course, the session we've talked about in the Velvet Underground episode and elsewhere of which little other than that survives, and which Nico attended. At this point, Mayall didn't have a record contract, his experience recording with Mike Vernon having been no more successful than the Bond group's had been. But soon he got a one-off deal -- as a solo artist, not with the Bluesbreakers -- with Immediate Records. Clapton was the only member of the group to play on the single, which was produced by Immediate's house producer Jimmy Page: [Excerpt: John Mayall, "I'm Your Witchdoctor"] Page was impressed enough with Clapton's playing that he invited him round to Page's house to jam together. But what Clapton didn't know was that Page was taping their jam sessions, and that he handed those tapes over to Immediate Records -- whether he was forced to by his contract with the label or whether that had been his plan all along depends on whose story you believe, but Clapton never truly forgave him. Page and Clapton's guitar-only jams had overdubs by Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart, and drummer Chris Winter, and have been endlessly repackaged on blues compilations ever since: [Excerpt: Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, "Draggin' My Tail"] But Mayall was having problems with John McVie, who had started to drink too much, and as soon as he found out that Jack Bruce was sacked by the Graham Bond Organisation, Mayall got in touch with Bruce and got him to join the band in McVie's place. Everyone was agreed that this lineup of the band -- Mayall, Clapton, Bruce, and Hughie Flint -- was going places: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Jack Bruce, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Unfortunately, it wasn't going to last long. Clapton, while he thought that Bruce was the greatest bass player he'd ever worked with, had other plans. He was going to leave the country and travel the world as a peripatetic busker. He was off on his travels, never to return. Luckily, Mayall had someone even better waiting in the wings. A young man had, according to Mayall, "kept coming down to all the gigs and saying, “Hey, what are you doing with him?” – referring to whichever guitarist was onstage that night – “I'm much better than he is. Why don't you let me play guitar for you?” He got really quite nasty about it, so finally, I let him sit in. And he was brilliant." Peter Green was probably the best blues guitarist in London at that time, but this lineup of the Bluesbreakers only lasted a handful of gigs -- Clapton discovered that busking in Greece wasn't as much fun as being called God in London, and came back very soon after he'd left. Mayall had told him that he could have his old job back when he got back, and so Green was out and Clapton was back in. And soon the Bluesbreakers' revolving door revolved again. Manfred Mann had just had a big hit with "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", the same song we heard Dylan playing earlier: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] But their guitarist, Mike Vickers, had quit. Tom McGuinness, their bass player, had taken the opportunity to switch back to guitar -- the instrument he'd played in his first band with his friend Eric Clapton -- but that left them short a bass player. Manfred Mann were essentially the same kind of band as the Graham Bond Organisation -- a Hammond-led group of virtuoso multi-instrumentalists who played everything from hardcore Delta blues to complex modern jazz -- but unlike the Bond group they also had a string of massive pop hits, and so made a lot more money. The combination was irresistible to Bruce, and he joined the band just before they recorded an EP of jazz instrumental versions of recent hits: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Bruce had also been encouraged by Robert Stigwood to do a solo project, and so at the same time as he joined Manfred Mann, he also put out a solo single, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'" [Excerpt: Jack Bruce, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'"] But of course, the reason Bruce had joined Manfred Mann was that they were having pop hits as well as playing jazz, and soon they did just that, with Bruce playing on their number one hit "Pretty Flamingo": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Pretty Flamingo"] So John McVie was back in the Bluesbreakers, promising to keep his drinking under control. Mike Vernon still thought that Mayall had potential, but the people at Decca didn't agree, so Vernon got Mayall and Clapton -- but not the other band members -- to record a single for a small indie label he ran as a side project: [Excerpt: John Mayall and Eric Clapton, "Bernard Jenkins"] That label normally only released records in print runs of ninety-nine copies, because once you hit a hundred copies you had to pay tax on them, but there was so much demand for that single that they ended up pressing up five hundred copies, making it the label's biggest seller ever. Vernon eventually convinced the heads at Decca that the Bluesbreakers could be truly big, and so he got the OK to record the album that would generally be considered the greatest British blues album of all time -- Blues Breakers, also known as the Beano album because of Clapton reading a copy of the British kids' comic The Beano in the group photo on the front. [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Ramblin' On My Mind"] The album was a mixture of originals by Mayall and the standard repertoire of every blues or R&B band on the circuit -- songs like "Parchman Farm" and "What'd I Say" -- but what made the album unique was Clapton's guitar tone. Much to the chagrin of Vernon, and of engineer Gus Dudgeon, Clapton insisted on playing at the same volume that he would on stage. Vernon later said of Dudgeon "I can remember seeing his face the very first time Clapton plugged into the Marshall stack and turned it up and started playing at the sort of volume he was going to play. You could almost see Gus's eyes meet over the middle of his nose, and it was almost like he was just going to fall over from the sheer power of it all. But after an enormous amount of fiddling around and moving amps around, we got a sound that worked." [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Hideaway"] But by the time the album cane out. Clapton was no longer with the Bluesbreakers. The Graham Bond Organisation had struggled on for a while after Bruce's departure. They brought in a trumpet player, Mike Falana, and even had a hit record -- or at least, the B-side of a hit record. The Who had just put out a hit single, "Substitute", on Robert Stigwood's record label, Reaction: [Excerpt: The Who, "Substitute"] But, as you'll hear in episode 183, they had moved to Reaction Records after a falling out with their previous label, and with Shel Talmy their previous producer. The problem was, when "Substitute" was released, it had as its B-side a song called "Circles" (also known as "Instant Party -- it's been released under both names). They'd recorded an earlier version of the song for Talmy, and just as "Substitute" was starting to chart, Talmy got an injunction against the record and it had to be pulled. Reaction couldn't afford to lose the big hit record they'd spent money promoting, so they needed to put it out with a new B-side. But the Who hadn't got any unreleased recordings. But the Graham Bond Organisation had, and indeed they had an unreleased *instrumental*. So "Waltz For a Pig" became the B-side to a top-five single, credited to The Who Orchestra: [Excerpt: The Who Orchestra, "Waltz For a Pig"] That record provided the catalyst for the formation of Cream, because Ginger Baker had written the song, and got £1,350 for it, which he used to buy a new car. Baker had, for some time, been wanting to get out of the Graham Bond Organisation. He was trying to get off heroin -- though he would make many efforts to get clean over the decades, with little success -- while Bond was starting to use it far more heavily, and was also using acid and getting heavily into mysticism, which Baker despised. Baker may have had the idea for what he did next from an article in one of the music papers. John Entwistle of the Who would often tell a story about an article in Melody Maker -- though I've not been able to track down the article itself to get the full details -- in which musicians were asked to name which of their peers they'd put into a "super-group". He didn't remember the full details, but he did remember that the consensus choice had had Eric Clapton on lead guitar, himself on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums. As he said later "I don't remember who else was voted in, but a few months later, the Cream came along, and I did wonder if somebody was maybe believing too much of their own press". Incidentally, like The Buffalo Springfield and The Pink Floyd, Cream, the band we are about to meet, had releases both with and without the definite article, and Eric Clapton at least seems always to talk about them as "the Cream" even decades later, but they're primarily known as just Cream these days. Baker, having had enough of the Bond group, decided to drive up to Oxford to see Clapton playing with the Bluesbreakers. Clapton invited him to sit in for a couple of songs, and by all accounts the band sounded far better than they had previously. Clapton and Baker could obviously play well together, and Baker offered Clapton a lift back to London in his new car, and on the drive back asked Clapton if he wanted to form a new band. Clapton was as impressed by Baker's financial skills as he was by his musicianship. He said later "Musicians didn't have cars. You all got in a van." Clearly a musician who was *actually driving a new car he owned* was going places. He agreed to Baker's plan. But of course they needed a bass player, and Clapton thought he had the perfect solution -- "What about Jack?" Clapton knew that Bruce had been a member of the Graham Bond Organisation, but didn't know why he'd left the band -- he wasn't particularly clued in to what the wider music scene was doing, and all he knew was that Bruce had played with both him and Baker, and that he was the best bass player he'd ever played with. And Bruce *was* arguably the best bass player in London at that point, and he was starting to pick up session work as well as his work with Manfred Mann. For example it's him playing on the theme tune to "After The Fox" with Peter Sellers, the Hollies, and the song's composer Burt Bacharach: [Excerpt: The Hollies with Peter Sellers, "After the Fox"] Clapton was insistent. Baker's idea was that the band should be the best musicians around. That meant they needed the *best* musicians around, not the second best. If Jack Bruce wasn't joining, Eric Clapton wasn't joining either. Baker very reluctantly agreed, and went round to see Bruce the next day -- according to Baker it was in a spirit of generosity and giving Bruce one more chance, while according to Bruce he came round to eat humble pie and beg for forgiveness. Either way, Bruce agreed to join the band. The three met up for a rehearsal at Baker's home, and immediately Bruce and Baker started fighting, but also immediately they realised that they were great at playing together -- so great that they named themselves the Cream, as they were the cream of musicians on the scene. They knew they had something, but they didn't know what. At first they considered making their performances into Dada projects, inspired by the early-twentieth-century art movement. They liked a band that had just started to make waves, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band -- who had originally been called the Bonzo Dog Dada Band -- and they bought some props with the vague idea of using them on stage in the same way the Bonzos did. But as they played together they realised that they needed to do something different from that. At first, they thought they needed a fourth member -- a keyboard player. Graham Bond's name was brought up, but Clapton vetoed him. Clapton wanted Steve Winwood, the keyboard player and vocalist with the Spencer Davis Group. Indeed, Winwood was present at what was originally intended to be the first recording session the trio would play. Joe Boyd had asked Eric Clapton to round up a bunch of players to record some filler tracks for an Elektra blues compilation, and Clapton had asked Bruce and Baker to join him, Paul Jones on vocals, Winwood on Hammond and Clapton's friend Ben Palmer on piano for the session. Indeed, given that none of the original trio were keen on singing, that Paul Jones was just about to leave Manfred Mann, and that we know Clapton wanted Winwood in the band, one has to wonder if Clapton at least half-intended for this to be the eventual lineup of the band. If he did, that plan was foiled by Baker's refusal to take part in the session. Instead, this one-off band, named The Powerhouse, featured Pete York, the drummer from the Spencer Davis Group, on the session, which produced the first recording of Clapton playing on the Robert Johnson song originally titled "Cross Road Blues" but now generally better known just as "Crossroads": [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] We talked about Robert Johnson a little back in episode ninety-seven, but other than Bob Dylan, who was inspired by his lyrics, we had seen very little influence from Johnson up to this point, but he's going to be a major influence on rock guitar for the next few years, so we should talk about him a little here. It's often said that nobody knew anything about Robert Johnson, that he was almost a phantom other than his records which existed outside of any context as artefacts of their own. That's... not really the case. Johnson had died a little less than thirty years earlier, at only twenty-seven years old. Most of his half-siblings and step-siblings were alive, as were his son, his stepson, and dozens of musicians he'd played with over the years, women he'd had affairs with, and other assorted friends and relatives. What people mean is that information about Johnson's life was not yet known by people they consider important -- which is to say white blues scholars and musicians. Indeed, almost everything people like that -- people like *me* -- know of the facts of Johnson's life has only become known to us in the last four years. If, as some people had expected, I'd started this series with an episode on Johnson, I'd have had to redo the whole thing because of the information that's made its way to the public since then. But here's what was known -- or thought -- by white blues scholars in 1966. Johnson was, according to them, a field hand from somewhere in Mississippi, who played the guitar in between working on the cotton fields. He had done two recording sessions, in 1936 and 1937. One song from his first session, "Terraplane Blues", had been a very minor hit by blues standards: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Terraplane Blues"] That had sold well -- nobody knows how well, but maybe as many as ten thousand copies, and it was certainly a record people knew in 1937 if they liked the Delta blues, but ten thousand copies total is nowhere near the sales of really successful records, and none of the follow-ups had sold anything like that much -- many of them had sold in the hundreds rather than the thousands. As Elijah Wald, one of Johnson's biographers put it "knowing about Johnson and Muddy Waters but not about Leroy Carr or Dinah Washington was like knowing about, say, the Sir Douglas Quintet but not knowing about the Beatles" -- though *I* would add that the Sir Douglas Quintet were much bigger during the sixties than Johnson was during his lifetime. One of the few white people who had noticed Johnson's existence at all was John Hammond, and he'd written a brief review of Johnson's first two singles under a pseudonym in a Communist newspaper. I'm going to quote it here, but the word he used to talk about Black people was considered correct then but isn't now, so I'll substitute Black for that word: "Before closing we cannot help but call your attention to the greatest [Black] blues singer who has cropped up in recent years, Robert Johnson. Recording them in deepest Mississippi, Vocalion has certainly done right by us and by the tunes "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" and "Terraplane Blues", to name only two of the four sides already released, sung to his own guitar accompaniment. Johnson makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur" Hammond had tried to get Johnson to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts we talked about in the very first episodes of the podcast, but he'd discovered that he'd died shortly before. He got Big Bill Broonzy instead, and played a couple of Johnson's records from a record player on the stage. Hammond introduced those recordings with a speech: "It is tragic that an American audience could not have been found seven or eight years ago for a concert of this kind. Bessie Smith was still at the height of her career and Joe Smith, probably the greatest trumpet player America ever knew, would still have been around to play obbligatos for her...dozens of other artists could have been there in the flesh. But that audience as well as this one would not have been able to hear Robert Johnson sing and play the blues on his guitar, for at that time Johnson was just an unknown hand on a Robinsonville, Mississippi plantation. Robert Johnson was going to be the big surprise of the evening for this audience at Carnegie Hall. I know him only from his Vocalion blues records and from the tall, exciting tales the recording engineers and supervisors used to bring about him from the improvised studios in Dallas and San Antonio. I don't believe Johnson had ever worked as a professional musician anywhere, and it still knocks me over when I think of how lucky it is that a talent like his ever found its way onto phonograph records. We will have to be content with playing two of his records, the old "Walkin' Blues" and the new, unreleased, "Preachin' Blues", because Robert Johnson died last week at the precise moment when Vocalion scouts finally reached him and told him that he was booked to appear at Carnegie Hall on December 23. He was in his middle twenties and nobody seems to know what caused his death." And that was, for the most part, the end of Robert Johnson's impact on the culture for a generation. The Lomaxes went down to Clarksdale, Mississippi a couple of years later -- reports vary as to whether this was to see if they could find Johnson, who they were unaware was dead, or to find information out about him, and they did end up recording a young singer named Muddy Waters for the Library of Congress, including Waters' rendition of "32-20 Blues", Johnson's reworking of Skip James' "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "32-20 Blues"] But Johnson's records remained unavailable after their initial release until 1959, when the blues scholar Samuel Charters published the book The Country Blues, which was the first book-length treatment ever of Delta blues. Sixteen years later Charters said "I shouldn't have written The Country Blues when I did; since I really didn't know enough, but I felt I couldn't afford to wait. So The Country Blues was two things. It was a romanticization of certain aspects of black life in an effort to force the white society to reconsider some of its racial attitudes, and on the other hand it was a cry for help. I wanted hundreds of people to go out and interview the surviving blues artists. I wanted people to record them and document their lives, their environment, and their music, not only so that their story would be preserved but also so they'd get a little money and a little recognition in their last years." Charters talked about Johnson in the book, as one of the performers who played "minor roles in the story of the blues", and said that almost nothing was known about his life. He talked about how he had been poisoned by his common-law wife, about how his records were recorded in a pool hall, and said "The finest of Robert Johnson's blues have a brooding sense of torment and despair. The blues has become a personified figure of despondency." Along with Charters' book came a compilation album of the same name, and that included the first ever reissue of one of Johnson's tracks, "Preaching Blues": [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Preaching Blues"] Two years later, John Hammond, who had remained an ardent fan of Johnson, had Columbia put out the King of the Delta Blues Singers album. At the time no white blues scholars knew what Johnson looked like and they had no photos of him, so a generic painting of a poor-looking Black man with a guitar was used for the cover. The liner note to King of the Delta Blues Singers talked about how Johnson was seventeen or eighteen when he made his recordings, how he was "dead before he reached his twenty-first birthday, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend", how he had "seldom, if ever, been away from the plantation in Robinsville, Mississippi, where he was born and raised", and how he had had such stage fright that when he was asked to play in front of other musicians, he'd turned to face a wall so he couldn't see them. And that would be all that any of the members of the Powerhouse would know about Johnson. Maybe they'd also heard the rumours that were starting to spread that Johnson had got his guitar-playing skills by selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads at midnight, but that would have been all they knew when they recorded their filler track for Elektra: [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] Either way, the Powerhouse lineup only lasted for that one session -- the group eventually decided that a simple trio would be best for the music they wanted to play. Clapton had seen Buddy Guy touring with just a bass player and drummer a year earlier, and had liked the idea of the freedom that gave him as a guitarist. The group soon took on Robert Stigwood as a manager, which caused more arguments between Bruce and Baker. Bruce was convinced that if they were doing an all-for-one one-for-all thing they should also manage themselves, but Baker pointed out that that was a daft idea when they could get one of the biggest managers in the country to look after them. A bigger argument, which almost killed the group before it started, happened when Baker told journalist Chris Welch of the Melody Maker about their plans. In an echo of the way that he and Bruce had been resigned from Blues Incorporated without being consulted, now with no discussion Manfred Mann and John Mayall were reading in the papers that their band members were quitting before those members had bothered to mention it. Mayall was furious, especially since the album Clapton had played on hadn't yet come out. Clapton was supposed to work a month's notice while Mayall found another guitarist, but Mayall spent two weeks begging Peter Green to rejoin the band. Green was less than eager -- after all, he'd been fired pretty much straight away earlier -- but Mayall eventually persuaded him. The second he did, Mayall turned round to Clapton and told him he didn't have to work the rest of his notice -- he'd found another guitar player and Clapton was fired: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, "Dust My Blues"] Manfred Mann meanwhile took on the Beatles' friend Klaus Voorman to replace Bruce. Voorman would remain with the band until the end, and like Green was for Mayall, Voorman was in some ways a better fit for Manfred Mann than Bruce was. In particular he could double on flute, as he did for example on their hit version of Bob Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann "The Mighty Quinn"] The new group, The Cream, were of course signed in the UK to Stigwood's Reaction label. Other than the Who, who only stuck around for one album, Reaction was not a very successful label. Its biggest signing was a former keyboard player for Screaming Lord Sutch, who recorded for them under the names Paul Dean and Oscar, but who later became known as Paul Nicholas and had a successful career in musical theatre and sitcom. Nicholas never had any hits for Reaction, but he did release one interesting record, in 1967: [Excerpt: Oscar, "Over the Wall We Go"] That was one of the earliest songwriting attempts by a young man who had recently named himself David Bowie. Now the group were public, they started inviting journalists to their rehearsals, which were mostly spent trying to combine their disparate musical influences --
Thunder only happens when it's raining, and Strong Songs only crams two songs into an episode when it's super warranted.This episode warrants just such a pairing, with a focus on two tunes by the great Fleetwood Mac. First there's the collaboratively written group-sing stomper "The Chain," and then comes Stevie Nicks' heartbeat anthem "Dreams." Both were featured on the band's classic 1977 album Rumors, and both have more than stood the test of time."The Chain" was written by Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, and John McVie."Dreams" was written by Stevie Nicks.Album: Rumors (1977)Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify----------OUTRO SOLOIST: Kyle MolitorKyle is a Portland-based trombonist who plays in all sorts of bands, and the dude can really get it done. Find him on Instagram @tbonemolitor-----LINKS-----SUPPORT STRONG SONGSPaypal | Patreon.com/StrongsongsMERCH STOREstore.strongsongspodcast.comSOCIAL MEDIA@StrongSongs | @Kirkhamilton | IG: @Kirk_HamiltonNEWSLETTERhttps://kirkhamilton.substack.com/subscribeJOIN THE DISCORDhttps://discord.gg/GCvKqAM8SmOUTRO SOLO PLAY-A-LONG:https://soundcloud.com/kirkhamilton/strong-songs-outro-music-no-soloSTRONG SONGS PLAYLISTSSpotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music--------------------June 2023 WHOLE-NOTE PATRONSCatherine WarnerDamon WhiteKaya WoodallDan AustinJay SwartzMiriam JoySEAN D WINNIERushDaniel Hannon-BarryAshley HoagChristopher MillerJamie WhiteChristopher McConnellDavid MascettiJoe LaskaKen HirshJezMelanie AndrichJenness GardnerNarelle HornJeanneret Manning Family FourDave SharpeSami SamhuriAccessViolationRyan TorvikElliot Jay O'NeillAndre BremerMark SchechterDave FloreyJUNE 2023 HALF-NOTE PATRONSLynda MacNeilDick MorganZach WamplerBen SteinSusan Greencase faubsJake YumatillaAlan BroughRandal VegterGo Birds!Jeff SpeckSamuel MillettWhit SidenerChance McClainRobert Granatdave malloyTim RosenwongNick Gallowayjohn halpinPeter HardingDavidAnthony MahramusMeghan O'LearyJohn BaumanDax and Dane HuddlestonMartín SalíasTim HowesStu BakerSteve MartinoDr Arthur A GrayCarolinaGary PierceMatt BaxterGiantPredatoryMolluskCasey FaubionLuigi BocciaRob AlbrightE Margaret WartonCharles McGeeCatherine ClauseEthan BaumanRenee DowningKenIsWearingAHatJordan BlockAaron WadeTravis PollardJamieDeebsPortland Eye CareCarrie SchneiderAlenka GrealishRichard SneddonJulian RoleffDoreen CarlsonDavid McDarbyWendy GilchristElliot RosenLisa TurnerPaul WayperBruno GaetaKenneth JungAdam StofskyZak RemerRishi SahayJason ReitmanAilie FraserVonKaren ArnoldNATALIE MISTILISJosh SingerPhino DeLeonAmy Lynn ThornsenAdam WKelli BrockingtonStephen RawlingsVictoria YuKevin RiversBrad Clarkmino caposselaSteve PaquinDavid JoskeEmma SklarBernard KhooRobert HeuerMatthew GoldenDavid NoahGeraldine ButlerRichard CambierMadeleine MaderJason PrattAbbie BergDoug BelewDermot CrowleyAchint SrivastavaRyan RairighMichael BermanOlivia BishopJohn GisselquistLinda DuffyLiz SegerEoin de BurcaKevin PotterM Shane BordersDallas HockleyJason GerryNathan GouwensLauren ReayEric PrestemonCookies250Damian BradyAngela LivingstoneDavid FriedmanSarah SulanDiane HughesJo SutherlandMichael CasnerLowell MeyerStephen TsoneffLorenz SchwarzWenJack SjogrenGeoff GoldenRobyn FraserPascal RuegerRandy SouzaJCClare HolbertonDiane TurnerTom ColemanMark PerryDhu WikMelEric HelmJake RobertsJonathan DanielsMichael FlahertyCaro Fieldmichael bochnerNaomi WatsonDavid CushmanAlexanderGavin DoigSam FennTanner MortonAJ SchusterJennifer BushDavid StroudAmanda FurlottiAndrew BakerJules BaileyAndrew FairL.B. MorseBrian AmoebasBrett DouvilleJeffrey OlsonMatt BetzelMuellerNate from KalamazooMelanie StiversRichard TollerAlexander PolsonEarl LozadaJustin McElroyArjun SharmaJames JohnsonKevin MorrellColin Hodo
Sponsored by www.betterhelp.com/TheBarnFriday, June 16th, 2023The Orris Theater - Ste Genevieve, Missouri265 Merchant St.Ste. Genevieve, Mo 63670573-883-7211www.stegenchamber.org/purchase-ticketsFleetwood Mac stands as one of the most iconic and influential bands in the history of rock music. With their unique blend of rock, pop, and blues, they have captivated audiences around the world for decades, leaving an indelible mark on the music industry.Formed in London in 1967, Fleetwood Mac experienced numerous lineup changes throughout their early years. However, it was in the mid-1970s that the band achieved immense commercial success and critical acclaim with the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The quintessential lineup of Fleetwood Mac was born, consisting of Mick Fleetwood on drums, John McVie on bass, Christine McVie on keyboards, Lindsey Buckingham on guitar, and Stevie Nicks on vocals.The success of "Rumours" propelled Fleetwood Mac into superstardom, but their journey didn't stop there. The band continued to release critically acclaimed albums, each showcasing their musical growth and evolution. "Tusk" (1979), a double-album experimentation, pushed the boundaries of their sound and defied expectations. Though it received mixed reviews initially, it has since been recognized as a daring and influential work.Beyond their iconic albums, Fleetwood Mac's live performances became legendary. The band's chemistry on stage, combined with their individual talents, resulted in captivating and electrifying shows. Mick Fleetwood's thunderous drumming, John McVie's solid basslines, and Christine McVie's soulful keyboard playing created a solid foundation for the intricate guitar work and enchanting vocals of Buckingham and Nicks. Their live concerts showcased the band's immense talent and brought their music to life in a way that left audiences awe-struck. #FleetwoodMac, #rockandroll, #Rumours, #GoYourOwnWay, #Dreams, #DontStop, #YouMakeLovingFun, #Tusk, #awestruck, #musicalExcellence, #legacy, #BuckinghamNicks, #SayYouLoveMe, #Landslide, #TheChain, #SilverSprings, #Gypsy, #Sara, #GoldDustWoman, #BigLove, #LittleLies, #Everywhere, #Rhiannon, #SevenWonders, #FleetwoodMacFans, This episode is sponsored by www.betterhelp.com/TheBarn and presented to you by The Barn Media Group.
El pasado 30 de noviembre nos dejó Christine Anne Perfect, conocida como Christine McVie (1943-2020), a la edad de 79 años. Christine fue teclista, cantante y compositora de muchos de los éxitos de una de las bandas más legendarias y laureadas de la historia: Fleetwood Mac. Y el disco que traemos hoy, es nada más ni nada menos que Rumors, el undécimo disco de Fleetwood Mac, publicado en 1977, y uno de los discos más vendidos de la historia, exactamente está en el nº 7 del ranking, con más de 40 millones de copias vendidas en todo el mundo. Antes de hablar del primer tema del programa, un poco de cotilleo, ya que al hablar de Christine McVie y John McVie, hay quien se preguntará que relación habían entre ellos. Christie Ann Perfect se casó con John McVie en 1968, adoptó su apellido, y se divorciaron en 1976, aunque siguieron juntos en la banda. El primer tema que escucharemos en el programa, es el que abre el álbum: Second Hand News, “noticias de segunda mano”. Está compuesta por Lindsey Buckingham (guitarra y voz en esta formación), y según cuenta, la escribió después de escuchar el Jive Talkin de los Bee Gees. Trata de un amante despreciado, aunque las guitarras suenen un poco alegres y sugieran más un sentimiento de despedida. Cuenta también que como Mike Fleetwood, el batería, no daba con el ritmo, Buckingham lo tocó en una silla de oficina, para conseguir el efecto que quería. La línea de bajo la reescribió John McVie, usando solamente notas negras y haciéndola más sencilla de cómo la había pensado Buckingham
What's your most loved and least favorite song on Fleetwood Mac's album Rumours?! For our third request episode, Dan's teenage nephew Esher suggested the 1977 classic and it won our public election. This second season finale turned out as epic as the album itself, with several rankings the likes of which we've never seen in our 30 episodes. Lots of fun facts and opinions and tales about the album producer getting you fired from the hosts plus the nominator nephew himself and Mara Kuge of the long-running Los Angeles AM Gold party Soft Rock Sundays. Listen at WeWillRankYouPod.com, Apple, Spotify and your local second hand newsstand. Follow us and weigh in with your favorites on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @wewillrankyoupod . SPOILERS/FILE UNDER:Alcohol, Beyond Yacht Rock, Big Love, breakups, Lindsey Buckingham, Buckingham/Nicks, Irene Cara, Rio Caraeff, The Chain, classic rock, clavinet, Clinton inaugural ball, Crunch Media, dobro, Dogg Face, Don't Look Down, Don't Stop, Dreams, drugs, Janice Engel, Esher, Chris Farley, Mick Fleetwood, Fleetwood Mac, Go Your Own Way, Going Home documentary, Gold Dust Woman, harmonies, Hole, I Don't Want to Know, Jellyfish, Mara Kuge, Led Zeppelin, Lola (My Love), Christine McVie, John McVie, the Move, Never Going Back Again, Stevie Nicks, Oh Daddy, Pixies, request episode, Rhiannon, Rumours, season finale, Second Hand News, soft rock, Soft Rock Sunday, Songbird, Whenever I Call You Friend, yacht rock, Yachtski scale, You Make Loving Fun, Zellerbach Hall, 1977 US: http://www.WeWillRankYouPod.com wewillrankyoupod@gmail.com http://www.facebook.com/WeWillRankYouPod http://www.instagram.com/WeWillRankYouPod http://www.twitter.com/WeWillRankYouPo http://www.YourOlderBrother.com (Sam's music page) http://www.YerDoinGreat.com (Adam's music page) https://open.spotify.com/user/dancecarbuzz (Dan's playlists)
In this episode of Influenced, we take a look at the career of one of the most iconic bands in pop music history, Fleetwood Mac. Formed in late '60s London by Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and most importantly the iconic rhythm section (and band namesakes) Mick Fleetwood and John Mcvie. The group was initially formed as a hard rocking Blues group inspired by Hendrix and the Yardbirds. With the addition of Christine Mcvie on Vocals and Keyboards, the band began to inch toward a pop rock sound as they began a rotating list of band members (15 musicians have past through the banks ranks) after the departure of Green. In the early '70s the band struck gold with the addition of Lindsey Buckinham and Stevie Nicks to the band. They would begin a string of hit songs (Rhiannon, Landslide, The Chain, Don't Stop and Songbird to name a few) and quicckly rose to the top of the industry with the release of the Rumours album. Constantly plagued by inter-personal drama within the band, they defy the odds and continued to put out albums across the next decades even with continued shuffling of the iconic lineup of the group. Listen to our deep dive into this iconic group wherever you get your podcasts! Follow Us Here: https://www.instagram.com/influenced.podcast/
En este episodio revisamos "Rumours", uno de los títulos más importantes en la discografía de Fleetwood Mac, conversando sobre el éxito de la banda gracias a su lanzamiento, su proceso creativo, las complicadas relaciones entre sus integrantes, entre otros aspectos de esta obra.
Mit 40 Millionen verkauften Einheiten, ist "Rumours" von Fleetwood Mac eine der meistverkauften Platten aller Zeiten. Bei der Grammy-Verleihung 1978 wurde "Rumours" zusätzlich als "bestes Album des Jahres" ausgezeichnet. Bei den meistverkauften Platten aller Zeiten ist Michael Jacksons "Thriller" aus dem Jahr 1982 inzwischen unangefochten auf Platz 1. Bis heute hält sich "Rumours" von Fleetwood Mac aber sehr sicher in den Top 10 der meistverkauften Alben weltweit. 2022 war ein trauriges Jahr für die Band Fleetwood Mac und auch für deren Fans. Sängerin, Keyboarderin und Songwriterin Christine McVie ist verstorben, von ihr stammt auch der sehr emotionale Song "Songbird" vom Album "Rumours". "Rumours", also Gerüchte, gab es bei Fleetwood Mac auch immer um die Beziehungsverhältnisse innerhalb der Band. Als das Album "Rumours" entstanden ist, hatten sich gerade gefühlt alle Bandmitglieder voneinander und untereinander getrennt. Sängerin Stevie Nicks und Gitarrist Lindsey Buckingham stritten sich nahezu andauernd, das verheiratete Paar Christine und John McVie waren getrennt und auch Bandgründer und Namensgeber Mick Fleetwood war nicht mehr mit seiner Frau Jenny zusammen. Dass es da Spannungen innerhalb der Band gab, ist leicht nachzuvollziehen. Wie Musiker so sind, verarbeiten sie ihre Emotionen und privaten Geschichten gerne in Songs, da sind Fleetwood Mac nicht anders. Vor allem Lindsey Buckingham verarbeitet in seinen Songs, die er zum Album beisteuert, die Trennung von Sängerin Stevie Nicks. Einmal im Song "Never Going Back Again" und dann noch im sehr erfolgreichen "You Can Go Your Own Way", den Exfrau Stevie Nicks dann auch noch an sich selbst gerichtet lauthals singen darf. Anders als Lindsey Buckingham, der kein sprichwörtliches gutes Haar mehr an der Ex-Partnerin Stevie Nicks lässt, blickt diese eher nach vorne und denkt positiv in ihrem Song "Dreams". Auch diese unterschiedlichen Wege innerhalb der Band, mit der Trennung umzugehen, hat wieder für Zunder und Streit innerhalb des Bandgefüges geführt. Auch wenn es menschlich immer wieder Streit und Dramen bei Fleetwood Mac gab, hat die Musik sie doch immer zusammengeschweißt. Welcher der einzige Song des Albums ist, den die Band tatsächlich zusammen entwickelt hat und ob es ohne die menschlichen Spannungen innerhalb der Band auch zu so guter Musik gekommen wäre, darüber sprechen wir im Podcast zu "Rumours". __________ Über diese Songs vom Album “Rumours” wird im Podcast gesprochen 07:32 Mins – "Second Hand News" 14:16 Mins – "Never Going Back Again" 20:11 Mins – "You Can Go Your Own Way" 21:47 Mins – "Dreams" 23:48 Mins – "Songbird" 27:35 Mins – "The Chain" __________ Über diese Songs wird außerdem im Podcast gesprochen 08:10 Mins – "Jive Talkin'" von den Bee Gees 10:30 Mins – "Think Over You" von Fleetwood Mac 11:00 Mins – "Planets of the Universe" von Fleetwood Mac 11:56 Mins – "Gold Dust Woman" (Demo) von Fleetwood Mac 16:25 Mins – "Never Going Back Again" von Blame Sally 17:26 Mins – "Never Going Back Again" von Matchbox Twenty 18:24 Mins – "Don't Stop" von Elton John 18:56 Mins – "You Can Go Your Own Way" von The Cranberries 31:19 Mins – "Buttercookie (Keep Me There)" von Fleetwood Mac __________ Shownotes: Artikel im Rolling Stone zu "Rumours": https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-albums-of-all-time-1062063/fleetwood-mac-rumours-3-1063226/ 7 Dinge über "Rumours", die du noch nicht wusstest: https://www.udiscover-music.de/popkultur/rumours-fleetwood-mac-7-fakten Autobiographie von Mick Fleetwood: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.de/ebook/Play-on/Mick-Fleetwood/Heyne/e476804.rhd Biographie von Stevie Nicks (Englisch): https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250295620/gold-dust-woman Youtube Channel von Fleetwood Mac: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAb60rVrvVQVfSgrX1UWb0g __________ Ihr wollt mehr Podcasts wie diesen? Abonniert die SWR1 Meilensteine! Fragen, Kritik, Anregungen? Schreibt uns an: meilensteine@swr.de
Coming up this Monday, in the very first episode of 2023, Aaron and Brent highlight music from New England duo who released their fourth album in 2022 and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band that was originally conceived as a hard-edged British blues combo in the late '60s.Formed while guitarist Martin Earley and former drummer Devin Mauch were attending Stonehill College, Aaron picks out three songs from The Ballroom Thieves.Getting their name by combining the surnames of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, Brent highlights three from Fleetwood Mac.Visit www.crossingthestreamspodcast.com for extended show notes.
[Transcript included at the end of these show notes] Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" is one of the greatest pop songs ever. Although forged in tumultuous times, "Everywhere" sounds like it comes straight from heaven. Thanks for spending your time with us! Follows, ratings, and recommendations are always appreciated! Helpful links mentioned in the episode: Our mixtape The demo That awful video You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Masadon, and our website. You can email us at BandFGuiltFree@gmail.com, too. Here is our Spotify playlist featuring every song we've featured. Our theme music is by the incredibly talented Ian McGlynn. Transcript (easier to read on our website) Bill: [0:07] Let me set the stage for you, Frank. It's 2011. Frank: [0:11] Okay, like now or then? Gotcha. Bill: [0:13] Then, so bring yourself back to 2011. Frank: [0:19] 34 years old? Oh, what was I doing? Bill: [0:23] I know what I was doing. Frank: [0:25] Oh, yeah, that's right. Bill: [0:26] I was pining. So it's somewhere in March and I'm wondering if things are going to work out with me and, Ashley because we're not back together yet. It's been this seven year stretch and things look like they're promising but there are no kind of guarantees. Frank: [0:44] Yeah. Bill: [0:52] She's actually living in France. dating somebody else. Frank: [0:58] So there's a lot of obstacles stacked up against you. Bill: [1:03] Yeah, I got some, I got a bit of faith. [1:09] And that's, that's what I had going for me. Gumption. Frank: [1:12] Yeah engumption yes. Bill: [1:16] Yeah, that's right. I had gumption. So it's my like week off from school and our great friend of the podcast, our mentor, Chris Newkirk, says to me, hey, I got to go back to the States. Do you want to drive with me? I got to go for the week. It's your holiday. Why don't we drive down and you can do we road trip it? Frank: [1:38] And just road trip it. Yeah, nice. Bill: [1:40] So I went with on this road trip with Chris Newkirk. And at one point we're doing a drive from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. And he said, you know what? I have an iPod. He had an actual one of those old iPods, not even a phone, just iPod full of music. Frank: [1:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had one of those up until about two years ago when it was stolen out of my car. Bill: [1:59] Because when we play a game. [2:03] That's right. Frank: [2:04] Just so you know. Bill: [2:05] Yeah, that's right. No, of course not. So he said, why don't we play three songs each? Frank: [2:06] It's not that old. It's not that uncommon, Bill. Bill: [2:11] You pick three songs and you could set it up in queue and then he'd pick three songs in queue and so that would be our way to kind of get things moving on our journey. And so I'm looking through his music which of course is way cooler than mine so I'm like I don't know this Smith song, I don't know this Pure song. So I'm desperately trying to find a song that I could put on also to impress him because we're always kind of trying to impress him. And then I see this song, Fleetwood Max everywhere. And I think to myself, oh, I remember this song. I was a kid, I loved this song. So I put it on the queue and then those opening notes come out or what would we call it? Opening beats. Frank: [2:55] Notes. I think you were right the first time. Bill: [2:56] Notes. Notes. I think you were right the first time. Okay. And suddenly everything is right in the world. And I say to him, everything about this song, is what makes life beautiful, something like that. I had this like profound moment that everything is gonna be okay. This is the most joy I have felt. And suddenly when I heard this song, it brought back feelings of being a kid and full of wonder. And it brought back sort of memories of just straight up hopefulness. And then I knew things would be okay. And so within the week, things are looking good. I'm engaged to Ashley by June, we're married. And then flash forward 11 years later, you're sitting amongst a ton of toys and blocks. And I apologize, there was a diaper right at your feet. We couldn't figure out why this place smelled like sewage. My apologies, but this is the life. This is everywhere to me. Frank: [3:57] In your defense, you didn't smell it because you're nose-blind. But no, this is a good place to be, and I'm glad that we can do this podcast everywhere. Bill: [4:12] Christine McVie just passed away recently. So people have been commenting on social media and in the news about how she really was. Frank: [4:14] Yeah, yeah. Bill: [4:24] One of the great songwriters of the past 40 years in a sense. And with Fleetwood Mac, we love to talk about, the Buckingham Knicks thing, the kind of craziness surrounding their albums, but she was the sort of steady hand in terms of making consistently great songs. Frank: [4:44] Yeah, so after her passing, I found I was listening to the radio and they did this little thing talking about Christine McVie and how she joined the band. So I don't know if you if you heard this necessarily. So she she's married to the bass player John McVie, but she has her own solo thing going on. But the tensions of like, two artists, you know, separately on the road doing different things. She kind of took a backseat and decided like, you know, I'm gonna give up my solo career and, I'm gonna be a wife. I'm gonna try and like that this marriage is too important like I'm gonna make the sacrifice and and just like I'll give up music as my career and, Then I can't remember which album it was but they're in this cabin and they're, No, no, sorry. It was it was for a tour, tour. They're in this cabin and they're just kind of rehearsing and performing and all this. And she's sitting there just on the sidelines. She knows all the songs because she's been with the band for as long as they've been together at this cabin rehearsing, getting ready for this tour. And then at the last minute, it was just like, hey, do you want, Wanna just join the band? Bill: [5:58] And so that's 1970. She joins Fleetwood back in 1970. By 1971, she's writing and singing in Fleetwood Mac. And she stays right through, you know, you have Buckingham Nicks joining, right through this album, Tango in the Night. And then there was still behind the mask and time, albums in the 90s, she was still there. And still writing actually pretty good music for albums that were not strong. She still was the sort of steady hand. And then she was there for the reunion, retired, but then came back around, I think it was around 2014 or something like that. So she's back in the band and still playing up until recently. And so she's had an incredible career, and still released a pretty good album with Lindsay Buckingham a few years ago called Christine McVee, Lindsay Buckingham, although Buckingham McVee would have sounded way cooler. Frank: [6:52] Yeah, a little bit on the nose with the title of the album, right? Yeah. But yeah, to say that Fleetwood Mac's history of personality is tumultuous, I think is a slight understatement. Bill: [7:05] Oh my goodness. So, I mean, I dove deep for the last few days into the history of Fleetwood Mac and you can find it. You can find all these stories and it is a tale of massive excess. It's just insane. All the things I was warned about with heavy metal groups, I didn't realize Fleetwood Mac was way, oh man, it is insane. It's just insane. Just reading about the amount of drugs consumed and the amount of money spent and wasted is crazy. So we all know that, or if you don't know that, you can just look into it. so we won't dive into it. Frank: [7:44] Yeah, just just Google Fleetwood Mac Gong show and then it's something you'll get the whole history. Bill: [7:51] So Tango in the Night, which is this album, this was originally supposed to be Lindsey Buckingham's third solo album. He's working on it. He has three songs that are decent songs, Big Love, Caroline, and I think maybe Tango in the Night. I think that those are three songs he's already working on. And they ask him to come back and do a Fleetwood Mac album. So this is, I think, the record company. So his solo career is not taking off like Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie had a great album in the eighties. You really got a hold on me. Do you remember that song? Frank: [8:29] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, big. Bill: [8:30] So good. So good. She's just so steady. And Lindsay Buckingham, I think might have produced it. Either way, Buckingham's just like, okay, I'll put my solo aspirations on hold for the sake of the band. And because he's Lindsay Buckingham, He just can't go in there and play his music. He needs to kind of take over. So whoever was producing, they just ended up saying, okay, why don't you leave? Lindsay Buckingham, Richard Dashett will come in. They're gonna produce. And so there's these stories about it. And basically it's just super depressing, how much work they put in. They put in 18 months of nonstop work. It's insane. And Lindsay Buckingham is a perfectionist, but he's also experimenting with some synthesizers. the Fairlight program we've talked about, he's experimenting with that. He's doing so much. And so every song he'd spend weeks and weeks and weeks on. [9:27] So let's head into the backstory. They ended up recording at his house a lot of the time. And that wasn't good for Stevie Nicks, who was coming out of, who just came out of rehab, she wouldn't have gone in during it. And going to her ex-boyfriend's house to record didn't make her feel well. And he's, I don't think he has like a great bedside manner anyways, Mick Fleetwood and the others ended up renting an RV and stationing it in the driveway so they could go out of his house and do whatever it is they're doing. Like it sounded just like a mess. Often they would talk about how you have the sixties and they're doing all the experimenting. And then the seventies is a lot of cocaine. And the eighties, the drugs aren't working and that cocaine's now controlling the people more than they're using it to make their music. And this is what's going on. Like it's just a mess. And Buckingham talks about how they're all at their worst point when they're recording this album. I don't know much about Christine McVie in terms of this, but she brought these songs that are wonderful to this album. Frank: [10:33] She wrote some great songs for the album. Like there's this song in Little Lies, which is... Bill: [10:38] Which are the two greatest songs on the album to me. Frank: [10:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely there. Bill: [10:43] The amazing thing is her two songs that she brought, Little Lies and Everywhere are the third and fourth singles. You'd think they would be the lead singles. So, yeah. So the first two singles are Big Love and Seven Wonders, which are good. Frank: [10:49] They're so good. [10:51] Yeah. Well, I know, right? They're so good. Bill: [10:59] It's just so weird. whole time is weird because they those songs didn't stand the test of time in In terms of us, I like them. I like them all. I really like this album. Frank: [11:07] Well, in the context of those songs, like I don't or barely remember them. But Little Eyes and Everywhere, yeah, in a heartbeat. say Everywhere Fleetwood Mac? Yeah, I know exactly the song you're talking about and I know that it's awesome. Same with Little Lies. Bill: [11:24] Yeah. So whatever went on in production, they don't have like an interview where they talk about this. But there's a demo, which wasn't released on the deluxe edition, but I found it on YouTube. Frank: [11:30] Yeah. Bill: [11:37] So I'm assuming the demo was done by Buckingham and McVie. She brings it. He does some things to, it, but he hasn't done the full Buckingham to it. So I'm gonna play this for you. He hasn't bucking. Frank: [11:49] Yeah. He hasn't Buckinghammed it. Bill: [11:51] Their new verb. Okay. I'm going to play a little bit of it for you. So you can hear the beginnings of it, but it doesn't have that special quality. Frank: [12:02] It's really quite raw. It's missing a lot of the final touches, but you can feel hints of them. So when we played this song, it sounds magical. It sounds like a fantasy. Bill: [12:15] Yeah. Well, this is it. This is why the song is so perfect. is it creates this sort of fairy-like world where people, you can almost just see fireflies around you while the song is going on. So Richard Dashett, who is the co-producer, by co-producer, he was the encourager of Buckingham. Like he's really good about this when he talks about it. He said, I know my role. There's gonna be, Buckingham is the guy. So I'm there to support him and to kind of listen and do it. He said that the beginning that we always talk about is a half speed acoustic guitar and an electric guitar combined. And then, yeah, McV said, Buckingham slowed the tape down really slowly. So they did this all over the album, slows it down and played the part slowly. Then when it came to the right speed, it sounded bloody amazing. So whatever he was doing, he was playing with both acoustic and electric over top of each other and altering the speeds. Frank: [13:10] Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Bill: [13:12] And so he does this actually with like voices too. Sometimes he uses his voice to become a female voice. Yeah, there's all these things going on. So even the voices in this song, I'm not sure who they are. And so, but apparently it is Stevie Nicks because she got into a big fight with him because she thought that he took her vocals off of this song. Stevie Nicks only showed up for two weeks to do any recording of this 18 month process. So just to put that out there, so Stevie Nicks is kind of to say the least. Frank: [13:36] Oh, tumultuous. Bill: [13:42] But anyways, we got everywhere out of this time and everywhere is perfect. Frank: [13:47] Yeah, yeah if it took 18 months to get everywhere I'm okay with that. Bill: [13:52] All right, so the opener, we got that already down. This is magical, this is perfect. Frank: [13:57] Yeah, because it's a song about those first sort of throws of being in love. Bill: [13:58] And so this is one of those things where the lyrics, they're just pretty straightforward, which she does well, but she also is able to kind of take in these sort of, the emotions of love. And she's really good at singing about this feeling in love. Frank: [14:20] And that really giddy sort of euphoric feeling you feel. And it's childlike and fun and everything's great and fantastic and the world could be crumbling around you but you're in love. So you're smiling and you're happy. Bill: [14:35] And what she say here, she says, Can you hear me calling out your name? You know that I'm falling and I don't know what to say. I'll speak a little louder. I'll even shout. You know that I'm proud and I can't get the words out. So, okay. Basically, when you're feeling this, everything seems right to say, or you have nothing to say. That sound makes sense? I'm trying to find the words myself and I can't find them. Frank: [14:59] Yeah. I can't mark. Just going through those lyrics. But like I immediately went back. There's that scene in Anchorman when Ron Burgundy is falling in love. It's like, I'm in love with Veronica Corningstone and I don't care who knows it. It's just like, did I say that loudly? It's like, yeah, Ron, you pretty much shouted it. That's that feeling, right? Like you don't care who knows. Yeah. Bill: [15:20] I think that does speak of my 2011. Like I was just so, it just set everything in motion. And then it leads to that chorus with all those voices. Frank: [15:30] Yeah. [15:31] And it's layered, right? Bill: [15:32] Yeah. Frank: [15:34] And it's soft and it's not saying a whole lot. It's just repeating the same line twice, but it's so effective and you can feel it. Bill: [15:47] I can't say this enough about how his instincts as a producer are right on the money. So he'll make his songs kind of complicated or difficult at times to listen to. They're not that difficult, but he knows that there is this sort of pure beauty to what she's doing. And he just highlights it and adds to it and does creative things, but they're all about this dreamlike feel, which he does in Little Eyes as well. It's just so incredible. And I don't know how many times he's layering voices what he's doing but I can guess just from the sounds of it. It's so pleasing to our ears but, it might have been a month of a nightmare for these other co-producers and engineers who are, just watching him. That's right the one producer used the following two words to describe the. Frank: [16:34] If they have to suffer for my pleasure, I'm okay with that. Bill: [16:41] Experience trauma. Still thank you it was worth it. The only other verse really because then they. Frank: [16:44] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Bill: [16:52] Start repeating things but something's happening, happening to me, my friend's saying I'm acting peculiarly. Come on baby. Did I say peculiarly right? Sure. Okay. I'm gonna say yes. Come on baby. Frank: [17:02] Line, the Pekirulu. Bill: [17:06] We better make a start. You better make it soon before you break my heart. Frank: [17:10] That you said, Pekirulu, that's a good one. Bill: [17:16] Yeah. Frank: [17:17] That P word that you said, peculiar. Oh my goodness. Bill: [17:22] Peq- Oh, how did she say it? Peq-ular-ly. Yeah. Frank: [17:25] Yeah, yeah. But it's, my friends have me saying, I'm acting this way. And that's like, when you're kind of, again, giddy in love. I feel like I should write a song called Giddy in Love. It'll be like the spiritual sister to Crazy in Love by Beyonce. Anyways, when you're giddy in love, yeah, you're acting a little bit different. Like, you know, you're happy, you're bouncy, you're kind of doing goofy things, I find. Like, I know that's the way I've been, like when I'm kind of really into someone and they're into me and things are going good, before everything just falls apart. Bill: [18:07] Yeah, then it's a different song. I think that song you're looking for is Nowhere. Frank: [18:11] Yeah. That song's like every other song we've done on the podcast. Bill: [18:18] That's right. [18:19] This is a brief moment of levity. Frank: [18:20] I know, right? Yeah, so, you know, we'll do a breakup song again pretty quick, I'm sure. Bill: [18:21] I know. Thank you for bringing it back down. [18:26] Oh yeah, no question. She did co-write this with Jonas David Kroeper. I'm giving his full name just because it's on my songwriting sheet here. but that was her husband at the time. So this is about their love and their early love, so much joy and... Frank: [18:41] Yeah, yeah, he was he was also a keyboard player, right? Bill: [18:44] Okay, well then that, maybe that explains... Frank: [18:46] Because I think they married shortly after the recording of this album. Bill: [18:50] Okay, right, so they're already in this sort of love. Frank: [18:52] Yeah, this this giddy stage. Bill: [18:54] She has a tendency to do that with certain songs. By tendency, I mean she wrote one other song like that. So rumors she wrote, you make love and fun, which was about her affair or relationship, with the lighting guy in Fleetwood Mac. But she told John McVie it was about her dog so that he wouldn't get suspicious or angry. Oh man, so everywhere it was not about her dog. This is about this happy new relationship, and this marriage that was coming. The power beyond those lyrics, of course, is just the sounds. It's what Buckingham is doing with those sounds. Frank: [19:31] I read a quote saying that it's a bulletproof pop song, which I will not disagree with. The song's, what, 87 it came out, so we're 36 years after this song comes out, and it still plays, and it's still bouncy and fun and poppy and great. It's not contemporary to in 2022, but it still plays. Bill: [19:55] It not only still plays, Like it shows up in commercials in the UK and then re charts at like got to number 15 recently. Frank: [20:02] Yeah, it was used for a Chevrolet electric vehicle commercial recently. Bill: [20:09] And there are a lot of bands that have kind of, arisen in the last decade, like Vampire Weekend, there's been more than a decade I know. Paramore, there's a bunch of other bands too, who've looked towards Tango in the Night as their inspiration. They talk about it and everywhere is covered by Vampire Weekend and Perron More. Frank: [20:27] Yeah, and Paramore, yeah. Bill: [20:29] So I think it is getting its due. And when you see like the top 50 songs, or Rolling Stone did the top 50 songs of Fleetwood Mac, this was number five. So I think it's not an unsung hero. People are realizing how incredible it is. It's still incredible to me that this is the fourth single. So if I had to choose between these two, I would put this ahead of Little Lies. I like Little Lies, but everywhere is the one. I can't believe this wasn't the lead-off single. Frank: [20:56] Yeah, oh I know. And it charted relatively well. It was 14 on the US Billboard Top 100. But I mean, ultimately, the Bill and Frank's guilt-free pleasure, the only chart we really care about is the adult contemporary chart, right? Bill: [21:14] Straight to number one, baby. So, and we brought this up before, even though I charted 14, whatever was number one that week. Frank: [21:16] Straight to number one. [21:24] I don't even know. Bill: [21:24] I know I don't even care because this is the one. Frank: [21:25] I don't care! Bill: [21:28] That endures, because it was played all the time. Frank: [21:30] I don't want to, you know, jump the gun here, but this is a roller rink song. Bill: [21:30] At least when I was a kid, I remember it. And so just hearing the, oh my goodness, there's so many bits and pieces to that song. [21:44] Yeah. Oh yeah. This is perfect. Roller rinks still around late 80s? Okay. Would you put, would you roller skate to this at Prudhommes Landing? Did you ever roller skate at Prudhams? Frank: [21:46] I think so. Yeah, I roller skated in the early 90s even. I mean, I would if I was cool enough to roller skate at Prudhommes Landing. No, no. Bill: [22:05] Oh man, this is a call back to our Prudhommes Landing episode. Just songs that remind you of. Frank: [22:11] If you don't know what you're talking about, just listen to all of our previous. Bill: [22:15] Yeah. Frank: [22:15] Episodes and eventually you'll get get the reference. No, no, no, no, don't tell them I'm trying to get listens here. Bill: [22:18] So in Gloria Stefan's bad boy, it's a, Oh, well we can get them straight to bad boy and we can see the, okay. Frank: [22:25] But I'm trying to get them to listen to everything. Bill: [22:27] Either way, if you don't know Prudhommes Landing, well, you'll know this is the summer song, not to jump into a category. We are there for jumping into these categories. Frank: [22:35] We're jumping into categories. Bill: [22:36] So, all right. I see this as a perfect breezy summer day. Frank: [22:44] Yes, absolutely. Bill: [22:46] Also, I could see this as snow falling close to Christmas. This could be like a Christmas song. Frank: [22:52] It's an all-season song. Bill: [22:53] It is because it just will make whatever situation you're in brighter. Now, I'll tell you what's not bright is the music video. Frank: [23:04] Yeah, it's... not good. Bill: [23:06] Yeah, apparently there was two. I can't find this other version that is with Fleetwood, McV and McV. Because by the time Everywhere comes out, this is depressing, but Buckingham has left the band. So he had done all this work on the album And then it came down to them planning their tour. And he just said, I can't do it. And basically saying, I can't be around you guys. You guys are destructive. You're gonna die. I don't wanna die. And then Stevie Nicks lunged at him while they're in Christine McVie's mansion. And then he got so angry that he chased her. And she talked about, this is Stevie Nicks saying, she was running through the halls of this sort of house that was almost like, it feels like they're in some sort, of maze and he's chasing her and they're end up on the street, he's still chasing her and she's afraid for her life. Frank: [24:05] Oh, jeez! Oh! Bill: [24:06] And he throws her against a car and then she threatens to have him killed by her family. It's just awful. And this of course is bringing over their relationship from a decade earlier and it's awful. I imagine Christine McVie just sitting still there in the house and it's- Frank: [24:17] Yeah. Oh my goodness. [24:22] I just want to sing everywhere on stage. Bill: [24:24] I know, so he's already gone, he's left the band. And so by the time this video comes out, they film it without any members of the band. And they think, oh, everywhere, why don't we do like something that's like a ghost story, and we do the highway man as a music video. Now the highway man is that old poem, and you can watch the music video and it kind of just follows the story of it. But this does not work with the song at all, because there's like... Frank: [24:53] Not at all. It's not, it's a song about falling in love and being in love early on and when everything's good and fantastic and fun. Bill: [25:04] It's not about getting kidnapped, killed and then getting revenge and then being a ghost. Oh, that's insane. The only time I want to hear the Highwayman is from Anne Shirley when she's. Frank: [25:08] Yeah, by redcoats! Bill: [25:15] Doing her speech competition and Anna Green Gables. That's the most powerful version of the Highwayman. Everything else doesn't matter. Oh, I'm sure he is. Megan Follows, best Highwayman. Frank: [25:25] Is Gilbert in the audience watching? Bill: [25:31] And rendition, that might've occurred at the same time. Cause standing green gables I think came around then. Sorry, Fleetwood Mac, bad choice. Frank: [25:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bad choice, yeah. Bill: [25:39] Now, if you look at the cover of the single, this cover of the single has this sort of picture of someone whose arms are kind of open up to the world. Frank: [25:47] Oh, okay. Bill: [25:48] There's a planets star. It looks like the person who did the artwork for the little prince did the artwork for everywhere. It's perfect. It works exactly as it should. And that's what it should have been. Frank: [26:02] Yeah. [26:02] The video doesn't, yeah, it doesn't work. And if we're going to be critical of the video, so I watched it just once. And there's a bunch of scenes where like these British redcoats are running inside this cottage house or whatever it is. They're going up the stairs and it's clearly animated shadows on- so there's all these animated pieces that just like- it's like was your shadow guy on vacation? that's why you couldn't get the lighting right? I don't know. No, no, no, no, no. Bill: [26:31] It's not worthy of the song. The record company spent a boatload of money on producing this album, just like they've spent it on Tusk and other things. When oh, this is awful. This is side note, but when they would go to hotels in like the early 80s, they'd have them like bring in a grand piano. And if they couldn't get it through the doors, I don't know how you get through a hotel door, they have to like break open windows to get it in. They'd force them to repaint the walls white. so that they'd have white rooms like they were just the excess was ridiculous. That's crazy. But they didn't put any of that into this music video. No. No. No. No. How dare they? Okay. Frank: [27:08] No, no, no, no, no. How dare they? I mean, you know me, it's the chorus, right? But it's the opening of the chorus, the oh, like, I love that sustained. I right. I love that. And then I want to be with you everywhere. It's just so fun. I love it. Bill: [27:13] What's your favorite part of the song? [27:34] So that's what you're singing to in the car. Oh yeah. And you know me, I like doing backing vocals to the song so I'm doing whatever's going on in the background and trying to make those vocalizations. Frank: [27:36] Oh yeah, absolutely. [27:46] Well at the end of the chorus where it's like, I want to be with you everywhere. And then there's the sort of follow up, want to be with you everywhere. Bill: [27:53] Want to be with you everywhere. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Even thinking about that. Frank: [27:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bill: [28:00] How could I pick a favorite part? Everything's perfect. Everything's great. Bulletproof. And the ending of the sort of vocals going back and forth. It's bubbly. It literally sounds like they're making bubbles to me. And it's just like, oh my goodness. Yeah. This is where. Frank: [28:02] Oh, I know. Proof Pop song. [28:14] Yeah, magical bubbles. Bill: [28:19] You go to dreamland. There's a picture of some sort of heaven where you have like grass just blowing in the wind, bubbles in the air, fairies dancing. Frank: [28:30] Yeah, people dancing with ribbons. Bill: [28:32] Yeah. [28:33] Yes. This is it. That leads us to a category pretty naturally. So for the talent show, you're going to be doing a floor routine. Frank: [28:41] Yeah. [28:41] Gymnastics floor routine with ribbons. Bill: [28:42] Yeah, gymnastics floor. Yeah, with the ribbons. Yeah. Yeah, that's that. This is easy. Frank: [28:44] Yeah. Yeah. Bill: [28:46] So there you go. Category check. Frank: [28:48] Check. Would you sing this at karaoke? Bill: [28:52] No, I don't think I could do it. It's so good that it demands this sort of perfection that I don't think I could even come near it. Frank: [28:57] I think the only way it could be done is if there's got to be someone taking the lead, but you need someone to harmonize on those choruses. Bill: [29:08] You better have someone incredible. Frank: [29:09] Yeah. I think Stevie Nicks would do karaoke with me, right? Bill: [29:14] Maybe but she might only show up for a few minutes like she did for this album. Frank: [29:19] Yeah. She showed up for enough for this album. Bill: [29:21] Oh, yeah. Okay. Hallmark movie. I have written here, no way. This needs to be a mainstream movie, not something on Hallmark TV, but this is a song that should. Frank: [29:28] Yeah? [29:28] Well, it has that, well, the opening magical like sort of dreamy sequence, right? Bill: [29:32] Be sort of like this heads in a mixtape territory. Remember when they'd play Dreams by Cranberries all the time to sort of set the stage? Forget Dreams. Play everywhere. Frank: [29:48] Well, Dreams had it too and it kind of had to because it was in the name, But also linger same same sort of a feel so I'm sure we'll do a cranberry song at some point too, but. Bill: [29:56] Our usual category, we, it keeps altering in different ways. Can Michael Bolton sing this song? Frank: [30:08] I think he can but I don't want to hear it. Bill: [30:10] No. What would Mariah Carey do to it? She would Mariah Carey it it would suck. Frank: [30:13] She would destroy this, Yeah, yeah, she I don't think she has the self-control not to go full Mariah on it. Bill: [30:23] Yeah, Celine Dion also I can't think of of anyone who could do it off the top of my head. Frank: [30:31] Also yeah. [30:32] There's a subtlety about the way that Christine McVie sings the vocals. Like she doesn't go over the top. She's a little bit reserved, like as much as it is like a fun happy song about being in love, she's reserved and conservative with it. Bill: [30:49] She does have a very British way of being, if I could say that. Yeah. She did also the song. Do you remember song, Songbird from Rumors? Frank: [30:52] Yeah. Stiff upper lip. Bill: [31:01] They closed every concert with it. So Eva Cassidy, if you remember Eva Cassidy. Frank: [31:03] Uh, yes. Yeah. Bill: [31:06] She did a version of Songbird, which is near perfect. It probably is perfect. I still don't know if Eva Cassidy could have done everywhere because there needs to be a bounciness that I, I never pictured with her, but maybe she could have done it. But there is something special about Christine McVie is both unassuming, but also is in these grand songs because she can go along with Buckingham. They always got along. So Buckingham, notoriously difficult to get along with, but he never had a bad thing to say about McVie and vice versa. They could do albums together. They understood each other. And she wasn't into all the drama. I mean, she partied hard, but compared to the rest of Fleetwood Mac, I think she's a girl guide. Frank: [31:45] Yeah, the rest of them. Yeah, she was... Yeah. Bill: [31:48] And she was also with Dennis Wilson from, um, the beach boys for a while. Yeah. There's a whole, she's got her own backstory and sadness too, right? Frank: [31:52] Oh, really? Okay. Bill: [31:56] About all that stuff. Mix tape. Frank: [31:59] You're just going to name Ashley's album? Bill: [32:01] You want me to go first? So I decided in honor of the person who was the catalyst for this song, kind of coming back to my life and then defining my 2011. Frank: [32:16] You're just gonna name Ashley's album? Bill: [32:18] You're just. Oh yeah. Well, we love you too, Ashley. But I'm thinking of Chris Newkirk. I'm dedicating this to Chris Newkirk. Frank: [32:20] Oh, that's fantastic. Bill: [32:26] Sorry, Ashley. So. She'll never listen to this. She'll never listen to this. So these are songs that I heard while hanging out with Chris Newkirk in 2011. Frank: [32:31] She'll never listen to it. Bill: [32:40] Not all of them actually, but they made me think about Chris Newkirk and his love of this sort of big dreamy sort of pop song. Okay, so everywhere we'll open it of course. Frank: [32:52] I'm sorry. Bill: [32:56] There's a song called I L U by the school of seven bells. It is insane. And the woman who sings lead also passed away few years ago, but in her 30s, I think. Frank: [33:08] Okay, oh. [33:09] Yeah, so Bill just played the song for me and it'll be in the show notes, but my goodness they gave me goosebumps bumps it's it's ethereal and and and dreamy and oh man that's good. Bill: [33:21] I heard that also on that same drive. Chris Newkirk. Wow. Great taste in music. And so also on the drive, we heard cloud busting by Kate Bush. I'm pretty sure that's like just so good. So hands of love from Kate Bush also inspired the production of Tango in the Night. So Kate Bush's style and her relentless drive was where Lindsay Buckingham was was looking towards for making this. Also, I don't think I'll ever be able to pronounce this right, but one more Chris Newkirk, number three. Hoppipolla, Hoppipolla. Frank: [34:02] Happy pool! That doesn't sound at all at least. Bill: [34:05] Yeah, that doesn't sound at all like Sigur Ross, but it is. And it's a Sigur Ross, like the major song, which played when Chris and Jade, I think we're walking down the aisle after their wedding. Frank: [34:09] That's like a new song. [34:15] Oh really? Oh nice. Bill: [34:16] So incredible song. So we were just discussing this as I was playing it, but cinematic in scope as is all these songs, as as is everywhere. Okay, and then I threw a couple more in, Fleet Fox's Can I Believe You? And one more song, Everywhere by Brandvan 3000, which I love. Frank: [34:42] Was that on that trip too or no? Bill: [34:45] No, but I just think I should have played it on the trip. I don't know if he would have liked it. Do you remember everywhere? Yes. Oh, I don't know if it fits. However, you know, those first three were something else. Frank: [34:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [34:57] Mix tapes are allowed to have an outlier, right? Bill: [35:01] Yeah, and maybe it transitions into yours. Frank: [35:03] All right. So my mixtape is, I tried to keep it like happy songs, like giddy songs, fun songs about falling in love. So Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. Butterflies by Kacey Musgraves. Bill: [35:13] Okay, oh good. [35:20] Okay not crazy town. Frank: [35:22] No, surprisingly not. Bill: [35:25] No, okay, great. Frank: [35:26] He just threw me right off there. Bill: [35:31] Yeah, sorry about that. Frank: [35:33] The way you are by Bruno Mars. Love is in the Air by John Paul Young and then we finish it off with Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows by Leslie Gore. Sunshine lollipops and rainbows everywhere that's how I feel when I feel that we're, together that's a and then finishing it off with the sunshine lollipops and. Bill: [36:00] Got it okay perfect well this mixtape just good thing i put in brandman 3000 it's just a transition straight to walking on sunshine oh good. Frank: [36:14] Rainbows. Bill: [36:15] Yeah, yeah. future I'm sure it's a future episode. Frank: [36:18] Well I'm sure yes so I before we before we came to record this song I was talking to my friend Becca and saying, oh, we got to go. I got to go and record this podcast. And he's asking, what song are you doing? I said, Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac. And she said, I love that song. When her and her partner were in New Zealand, they had this this, crappy garbage car and that had a tape deck. So her and Blake went to a thrift store to buy tapes just to play. and they bought Tango in the Night and just listened to that on repeat and this was far and away their favorite song on the album. I told Becca just like, all right I'm gonna tell that story if you're okay with it and well here it is it might actually make the cut. Bill: [37:06] I will and you know what? We don't often do these call-outs. I try to listen to other podcasts because often they're like, hey here's the name of our show which we... do we even say what we're called? Yes you did once but you have to be an astute listener but of course you also have been. Frank: [37:18] Great. Bill: [37:22] An astute enough person that if you're listening to our podcast you're looking at it and the name of our podcast is right in front of you. So we really are glad you're listening to Bill and Frank's. Frank: [37:28] Yeah, exactly. Bill: [37:31] Skill-free pleasures we don't have patreon right now for you to give us money or anything like that but what we would like is to hear your story about Fleetwood Max everywhere tell us how this song, has made your life brighter. Frank: [37:48] And also you can just mail cash to us to our addresses. Bill: [37:51] It's right. Frank: [37:52] We'll put those in the show notes. Bill: [37:53] That's right. Frank: [37:56] It's been a fun and fantastic experience putting this podcast out every week. And this song is coming out at the beginning of 2023. And we just want to thank everyone for listening to us and being with us and downloading and taking this on your drives, on your walks, wherever you listen to it. I listen to podcasts at work all the time instead of working. Bill and I would like to say we want to be with you everywhere. Bill: [38:25] Boop-a-doo-doo-doo.
Fleetwood Mac zal nooit meer in de beroemdste bezetting kunnen optreden, want toetsenist Christine McVie (tevens de componist van Mac-hits als Don't Stop, You Make Loving Fun, Little Lies en Everywhere) is op 30 november dit jaar overleden. Leo Blokhuis luisterde als tiener al graag naar McVie en brengt in deze podcast het oeuvre in kaart dat zij in de jaren voor Rumours maakte. Getrouwd met Mac-bassist John McVie is Christine al vanaf 1968 betrokken bij de muziek van de groep om twee jaar later definitief toe te treden tot Fleetwood Mac. En passant komen zo ook de vele gitaristen die de groep in de eerste helft van de jaren 70 verslijt ter sprake.
In honor of the passing of one of the great voices and songwriters in Fleetwood Mac, the guys revisit their early 2022 foray into the sex, drugs and rock n roll that defined that band and one of the greatest albums ever made. SHOW NOTES: Songs in this episode: "Long Grey Mare" by Fleetwood Mac, "Say You Love Me" by Fleetwood Mac, "Everywhere" by Fleetwood Mac https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-christine-mcvie-songs-1234638906/say-you-love-me-2-1234638915/ https://www.mamamia.com.au/fleetwood-mac-affairs/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleetwood_Mac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumours_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_McVie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckingham_Nicks https://www.biography.com/news/fleetwood-mac-rumours-album https://www.loudersound.com/features/stevie-nicks-all-of-us-were-drug-addicts-but-i-was-the-worst https://www.nme.com/news/music/fleetwood-macs-mick-fleetwood-says-cocaine-use-left-him-with-two-year-memory-gap-2873541 https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/30/jenny-boyd-mick-fleetwood-jennifer-juniper-its-not-what-you-think-behind-the-star-studded-life-of-a-rock-stars-wife https://genius.com/Fleetwood-mac-the-chain-lyrics The 1977 Rolling Stone piece: https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-true-life-confessions-of-fleetwood-mac-120867/ https://stevienicks.info/2006/01/cameron-crowe-reflects-on-fleetwood-mac-piece/ https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-100-best-covers-fleetwood-in-flagrante-232585/
Songbird was written by Christine McVie to convey her feelings toward recent ex and band mate, John McVie. This song is tender, truthful, and touching and gives insight into the type of person we believe Christine is. There's a story in it's production too of how the environment and mood created by the producer effects the outcome of the song's tone. Christine definitely delivered an emotional performance that "makes grown men everywhere cry", especially John. Since this song was recorded outside the studio with a more live setup, it has a different feel than the rest of the songs on the album. Does it change your overall experience of the album? Initially this song wasn't one of our favorites, but in research and after listening to it alone, and not in succession with the rest of the album, it grew into something we loved. Songbird also proves Christine can write anything...blues, pop, rock, ballads, she is a talented songwriter that can do it all! Most of the research for this episode was done by reading Ken Caillat and Steven Stiefel's book, Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.
In 1940, bluesman Bukka White recorded "Parchman Farm Blues," a lament about being imprisoned in the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary (2:30). Insightful lyrics, impassioned vocals, great slide guitar, and some nice accompaniment from Washboard Sam to boot! Even though he denied it, jazzman Mose Allison adapted White's song in 1958, titling it "Parchman Farm" and giving the song a controversial punchline (43:43). His version was an unlikely dance hit amongst the British Mods, with an insistent piano riff, solid rhythm section backing, and lots of hipster irony. In 1966, The Blues Breakers took the song on, with John Mayall's harmonica in place of the piano, another great rhythm section (including future Fleetwood Mac-er John McVie on bass), and Eric Clapton in the back, reading his Beano comic book. Finally, back to the States to hear The Traits, with Johnny Winter, who shreds on guitar and vocals mere months before he finds fame at Woodstock (1:38:59). Drink some wine, sit on Number 9, and open your textbooks ...
The thing we love about Fleetwood Mac is their ability to create songs as a full band, as soloists with a backing band, and as a duo with harmonies so tight they are almost indistinguishable. Never Going Back Again is an example of Lindsey Buckingham stretching his solo ability to write and compose. Never going back again is a compilation of 5 different guitar parts, all played by himself, and a bass part played by John McVie but written by Lindsey. Call it a my way or the highway attitude, or call it extreme focused vision - either way, Lindsey Buckingham knew what he wanted with this song and wasn't going to compromise. In this episode hear all about the interesting way this song came to be and maybe learn from Lindsey how to deliver bad news with a delightful tune. You'll also learn how Shawn translated this acoustic guitar driven song to piano. Shawn shares a few tips and tricks for recreating guitar technique and sounds on a piano throughout this episode. We hope you enjoy. Most of the research for this episode was done by reading Ken Caillat and Steven Stiefel's book, Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.
Fleetwood Mac's Rumors album, released in February of 1977, created a tidal wave of enthusiasm for the band following the earlier release of their self-titled album in 1975. Still fresh to America, with the addition of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham; Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, and Christine McVie started feeling the pressure to meet the expectations of their new fans. In this episode of Web Piano Teacher's artist series we will break down the first track of Rumors and try to answer why this song is great and what it's contribution was to one of the greatest albums of all time. So much to discuss with this album. Most of the research came from Ken Caillat's book, Making Rumors: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.
Ever wonder what it's like to work with your ex? The lyrics from every song on Rumours might give you a little insight. Apparently, Lindsey kept the lyrics to the third track, Secondhand News, all to himself until it was time to lay down the vocal tracks. He knew what Stevie's response might have been, and he wanted to avoid a blowup. Other than the drama his lyrics may have created, there's a treasure trove of hidden sounds in this song. We highly suggest listening with good headphones. Fleetwood Mac's Rumors album, released in February of 1977, created a tidal wave of enthusiasm for the band following the earlier release of their self-titled album in 1975. Still fresh to America, with the addition of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham; Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, and Christine McVie started feeling the pressure to meet the expectations of their new fans. Most of the research came from Ken Caillat's book, Making Rumors: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album
In this episode, we look at one of the highest-selling albums of all time, Fleetwood Mac's 1977 masterpiece, 'Rumours.' My brother and resident pop aficionado, Spencer Cropper, joins the party as well...Follow the show if you haven't already so you don't miss any news:Instagram & TikTok — @rocktalk.dr.cropperTwitter — @RockTalkDrCroppFacebook, LinkedIn & YouTube — Rock Talk with Dr. CropperSupport the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dr.cropper)
NOTE: This episode went up before the allegations about Dylan, in a lawsuit filed on Friday, were made public on Monday night. Had I been aware of them, I would at least have commented at the beginning of the episode. Episode one hundred and thirty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, and the controversy over Dylan going electric, Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Hold What You've Got" by Joe Tex. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum A couple of times I refer to “CBS”. Dylan's label in the US was Columbia Records, a subsidiary of CBS Inc, but in the rest of the world the label traded as “CBS Records”. I should probably have used “Columbia” throughout... Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Dylan. Much of the information in this episode comes from Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald, which is recommended, as all Wald's books are. I've used these books for all the episodes involving Dylan: Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. The New Yorker article by Nat Hentoff I talk about is here. And for the information about the writing of "Like a Rolling Stone", I relied on yet another book by Heylin, All the Madmen. Dylan's albums up to 1967 can all be found in their original mono mixes on this box set. And Dylan's performances at Newport from 1963 through 1965 are on this DVD. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There's a story that everyone tells about Bob Dylan in 1965, the story that has entered into legend. It's the story that you'll see in most of the biographies of him, and in all those coffee-table histories of rock music put out by glossy music magazines. Bob Dylan, in this story, was part of the square, boring, folk scene until he plugged in an electric guitar and just blew the minds of all those squares, who immediately ostracised him forever for being a Judas and betraying their traditionalist acoustic music, but he was just too cool and too much of a rebel to be bound by their rules, man. Pete Seeger even got an axe and tried to cut his way through the cables of the amplifiers, he was so offended by the desecration of the Newport Folk Festival. And like all these stories, it's an oversimplification but there's an element of truth to it too. So today, we're going to look at what actually happened when Dylan went electric. We're going to look at what led to him going electric, and at the truth behind the legend of Seeger's axe. And we're going to look at the masterpiece at the centre of it all, a record that changed rock songwriting forever. We're going to look at Bob Dylan and "Like a Rolling Stone": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] While we've seen Dylan turn up in all sorts of episodes -- most recently the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man", the last time we looked at him in detail was in the episode on "Blowin' in the Wind", and when we left him there he had just recorded his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but it had not yet been released. As we'll see, Dylan was always an artist who moved on very quickly from what he'd been doing before, and that had started as early as that album. While his first album, produced by John Hammond, had been made up almost entirely of traditional songs and songs he'd learned from Dave van Ronk or Eric von Schmidt, with only two originals, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan had started out being produced by Hammond, but as Hammond and Dylan's manager Albert Grossman had come to find it difficult to work together, the last few tracks had been produced by Tom Wilson. We've mentioned Wilson briefly a couple of times already, but to reiterate, Wilson was a Black Harvard graduate and political conservative whose background was in jazz and who had no knowledge of or love for folk music. But Wilson saw two things in Dylan -- the undeniable power of his lyrics, and his vocals, which Wilson compared to Ray Charles. Wilson wanted to move Dylan towards working with a backing band, and this was something that Dylan was interested in doing, but his first experiment with that, with John Hammond, hadn't been a particular success. Dylan had recorded a single backed with a band -- "Mixed-Up Confusion", backed with "Corrina, Corrina", a version of an old song that had been recorded by both Bob Wills and Big Joe Turner, but had recently been brought back to the public mind by a version Phil Spector had produced for Ray Peterson. Dylan's version of that song had a country lope and occasional breaks into Jimmie Rodgers style keening that foreshadow his work of the late sixties: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Corrina, Corrina (single version)"] A different take of that track was included on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, an album that was made up almost entirely of originals. Those originals fell into roughly two types -- there were songs like "Masters of War", "Blowin' in the Wind", and "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" which dealt in some way with the political events of the time -- the fear of nuclear war, the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement and more -- but did so in an elliptical, poetic way; and there were songs about distance in a relationship -- songs like "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", which do a wonderful job at portraying a young man's conflicted feelings -- the girl has left him, and he wants her back, but he wants to pretend that he doesn't. While it's always a bad idea to look for a direct autobiographical interpretation of Dylan's lyrics, it seems fairly safe to say that these songs were inspired by Dylan's feelings for his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, who had gone travelling in Europe and not seen him for eight months, and who he was worried he would never see again, and he does seem to have actually had several conflicting feelings about this, ranging from desperation for her to come back through to anger and resentment. The surprising thing about The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is that it's a relatively coherent piece of work, despite being recorded with two different producers over a period of more than a year, and that recording being interrupted by Dylan's own travels to the UK, his separation from and reconciliation with Rotolo, and a change of producers. If you listened to it, you would get an impression of exactly who Dylan was -- you'd come away from it thinking that he was an angry, talented, young man who was trying to merge elements of both traditional English folk music and Robert Johnson style Delta blues with poetic lyrics related to what was going on in the young man's life. By the next album, that opinion of Dylan would have to be reworked, and it would have to be reworked with every single album that came out. But The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out at the perfect time for Dylan to step into the role of "spokesman for a generation" -- a role which he didn't want, and to which he wasn't particularly suited. Because it came out in May 1963, right at the point at which folk music was both becoming hugely more mainstream, and becoming more politicised. And nothing showed both those things as well as the Hootenanny boycott: [Excerpt: The Brothers Four, “Hootenanny Saturday Night”] We've talked before about Hootenanny, the folk TV show, but what we haven't mentioned is that there was a quite substantial boycott of that show by some of the top musicians in folk music at the time. The reason for this is that Pete Seeger, the elder statesman of the folk movement, and his old band the Weavers, were both blacklisted from the show because of Seeger's Communist leanings. The Weavers were --- according to some sources -- told that they could go on if they would sign a loyalty oath, but they refused. It's hard for those of us who weren't around at the time to really comprehend both just how subversive folk music was considered, and how seriously subversion was taken in the USA of the early 1960s. To give a relevant example -- Suze Rotolo was pictured on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Because of this, her cousin's husband, who was in the military, lost his security clearance and didn't get a promotion he was in line for. Again, someone lost his security clearance because his wife's cousin was pictured on the cover of a Bob Dylan album. So the blacklisting of Seeger and the Weavers was considered a serious matter by the folk music community, and people reacted very strongly. Joan Baez announced that she wouldn't be going on Hootenanny until they asked Seeger on, and Dylan, the Kingston Trio, Dave van Ronk, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, among many others, all refused to go on the show as a result. But the odd thing was, whenever anyone *actually asked* Pete Seeger what he thought they should do, he told them they should go on the TV show and use it as an opportunity to promote the music. So while the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary, two of the biggest examples of the commercialisation of folk music that the serious purists sneered at, were refusing to go on the TV in solidarity with a Communist, that Communist's brother, Mike Seeger, happily went on Hootenanny with his band the New Lost City Ramblers, and when the Tarriers were invited on to the show but it clashed with one of their regular bookings, Pete Seeger covered their booking for them so they could appear. Dylan was on the side of the boycotters, though he was not too clear on exactly why. When he spoke about the boycott on stage, this is what he had to say: [Excerpt: Dylan talks about the boycott. Transcript: "Now a friend of mine, a friend of all yours I'm sure, Pete Seeger's been blacklisted [applause]. He and another group called the Weavers who are around New York [applause] I turned down that television show, but I got no right [applause] but . . . I feel bad turning it down, because the Weavers and Pete Seeger can't be on it. They oughta turn it down. They aren't even asked to be on it because they are blacklisted. Uh—which is, which is a bad thing. I don't know why it's bad, but it's just bad, it's bad all around."] Hootenanny started broadcasting in April 1963, just over a month before The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out, and so it would have been a good opportunity for publicity for him -- but turning the show down was also good publicity. Hootenanny wouldn't be the only opportunity to appear on TV that he was offered. It would also not be the only one he turned down. In May, Dylan was given the opportunity to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, but he agreed on one condition -- that he be allowed to sing "Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues". For those who don't know, the John Birch Society is a far-right conspiratorial organisation which had a huge influence on the development of the American right-wing in the middle of the twentieth century, and is responsible for perpetuating almost every conspiracy theory that has exerted a malign influence on the country and the world since that time. They were a popular punching bag for the left and centre, and for good reason -- we heard the Chad Mitchell Trio mocking them, for example, in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man" a couple of weeks ago. So Dylan insisted that if he was going to go on the Ed Sullivan Show, it would only be to perform his song about them: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues"] Now, the Ed Sullivan Show was not interested in having Dylan sing a song that would upset a substantial proportion of its audience, on what was after all meant to be an entertainment show, and so Dylan didn't appear on the show -- and he got a big publicity boost from his principled refusal to make a TV appearance that would have given him a big publicity boost. It's interesting to note in this context that Dylan himself clearly didn't actually think very much of the song -- he never included it on any of his albums, and it remained unreleased for decades. By this point, Dylan had started dating Joan Baez, with whom he would have an on-again off-again relationship for the next couple of years, even though at this point he was also still seeing Suze Rotolo. Baez was one of the big stars of the folk movement, and like Rotolo she was extremely politically motivated. She was also a fan of Dylan's writing, and had started recording versions of his songs on her albums: [Excerpt: Joan Baez, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"] The relationship between the two of them became much more public when they appeared together at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. The Newport Folk Festival had started in 1959, as a spinoff from the successful Newport Jazz Festival, which had been going for a number of years previously. As there was a large overlap between the jazz and folk music fanbases -- both musics appealed at this point to educated, middle-class, liberals who liked to think of themselves as a little bit Bohemian -- the Jazz Festival had first started putting on an afternoon of folk music during its normal jazz programme, and then spun that off into a whole separate festival, initially with the help of Albert Grossman, who advised on which acts should be booked (and of course included several of the acts he managed on the bill). Both Newport festivals had been shut down after rioting at the 1960 Jazz Festival, as three thousand more people had turned up for the show than there was capacity for, and the Marines had had to be called in to clear the streets of angry jazz fans, but the jazz festival had returned in 1962, and in 1963 the folk festival came back as well. By this time, Albert Grossman was too busy to work for the festival, and so its organisation was taken over by a committee headed by Pete Seeger. At that 1963 festival, even though Dylan was at this point still a relative unknown compared to some of the acts on the bill, he was made the headliner of the first night, which finished with his set, and then with him bringing Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger and the Freedom Singers out to sing with him on "Blowin' in the Wind" and "We Shall Overcome". To many people, Dylan's appearance in 1963 was what launched him from being "one of the rising stars of the folk movement" to being the most important musician in the movement -- still just one of many, but the first among equals. He was now being talked of in the same terms as Joan Baez or Pete Seeger, and was also starting to behave like someone as important as them -- like he was a star. And that was partly because Baez was promoting Dylan, having him duet with her on stage on his songs -- though few would now argue that the combination of their voices did either artist any favours, Baez's pure, trained, voice, rubbing up against Dylan's more idiosyncratic phrasing in ways that made both sound less impressive: [Excerpt: Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, "With God On Our Side (live at Newport 1963)"] At the end of 1963, Dylan recorded his third album, which came out in early 1964. The Times They Are A-Changin' seems to be Dylan's least personal album to this point, and seems to have been written as a conscious attempt to write the kind of songs that people wanted and expected from him -- there were songs about particular recent news events, like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", the true story of the murder of a Black woman by a white man, and "Only a Pawn in Their Game", about the murder of the Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers. There were fictional dramatisations of the kind of effects that real-world social problems were having on people, like "North Country Blues", in which the callous way mining towns were treated by capital leads to a woman losing her parents, brother, husband, and children, or "The Ballad of Hollis Brown", about a farmer driven to despair by poverty who ends up killing his whole family and himself. As you can imagine, it's not a very cheery album, but it's one that impressed a lot of people, especially its title track, which was very deliberately written as an anthem for the new social movements that were coming up: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin'"] But it was a bleak album, with none of the humour that had characterised Dylan's first two albums. Soon after recording the album, Dylan had a final split with Rotolo, went travelling for a while, and took LSD for the first time. He also started to distance himself from Baez at this point, though the two would remain together until mid 1965. He seems to have regarded the political material he was doing as a mistake, as something he was doing for other people, rather than because that was what he wanted to do. He toured the UK in early 1964, and then returned to the US in time to record his fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. It can be argued that this is the point where Dylan really becomes himself, and starts making music that's the music he wants to make, rather than music that he thinks other people want him to make. The entire album was recorded in one session, along with a few tracks that didn't make the cut -- like the early version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" with Ramblin' Jack Elliott that we heard in the episode on that song. Elliott was in attendance, as were a number of Dylan's other friends, though the album features only Dylan performing. Also there was the journalist Nat Hentoff, who wrote a full account of the recording session for the New Yorker, which I'll link in the show notes. Dylan told Hentoff "“There aren't any finger-pointing songs in here, either. Those records I've already made, I'll stand behind them, but some of that was jumping into the scene to be heard and a lot of it was because I didn't see anybody else doing that kind of thing. Now a lot of people are doing finger-pointing songs. You know—pointing to all the things that are wrong. Me, I don't want to write for people anymore. You know—be a spokesman. Like I once wrote about Emmett Till in the first person, pretending I was him. From now on, I want to write from inside me, and to do that I'm going to have to get back to writing like I used to when I was ten—having everything come out naturally." Dylan was right to say that there were no finger-pointing songs. The songs on Another Side of Bob Dylan were entirely personal -- "Ballad in Plain D", in particular, is Dylan's take on the night he split up with Suze Rotolo, laying the blame -- unfairly, as he would later admit -- on her older sister. The songs mostly dealt with love and relationships, and as a result were ripe for cover versions. The opening track, in particular, "All I Really Want to Do", which in Dylan's version was a Jimmie Rodgers style hillbilly tune, became the subject of duelling cover versions. The Byrds' version came out as the follow-up to their version of "Mr. Tambourine Man": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "All I Really Want to Do"] But Cher also released a version -- which the Byrds claimed came about when Cher's husband Sonny Bono secretly taped a Byrds live show where they performed the song before they'd released it, and he then stole their arrangement: [Excerpt: Cher, "All I Really Want to Do"] In America, the Byrds' version only made number forty on the charts, while Cher made number fifteen. In the UK, where both artists were touring at the time to promote the single, Cher made number nine but the Byrds charted higher at number four. Both those releases came out after the album came out in late 1964, but even before it was released, Dylan was looking for other artists to cover his new songs. He found one at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, where he met Johnny Cash for the first time. Cash had been a fan of Dylan for some time -- and indeed, he's often credited as being the main reason why CBS persisted with Dylan after his first album was unsuccessful, as Cash had lobbied for him within the company -- and he'd recently started to let that influence show. His most recent hit, "Understand Your Man", owed more than a little to Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right", and Cash had also started recording protest songs. At Newport, Cash performed his own version of "Don't Think Twice": [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"] Cash and Dylan met up, with June Carter and Joan Baez, in Baez's hotel room, and according to later descriptions they were both so excited to meet each other they were bouncing with excitement, jumping up and down on the beds. They played music together all night, and Dylan played some of his new songs for Cash. One of them was "It Ain't Me Babe", a song that seems at least slightly inspired by "She Loves You" -- you can sing the "yeah, yeah, yeah" and "no, no, no" together -- and which was the closing track of Another Side of Bob Dylan. Cash soon released his own version of the song, which became a top five country hit: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "It Ain't Me Babe"] But it wasn't long after meeting Cash that Dylan met the group who may have inspired that song -- and his meeting with the Beatles seems to have confirmed in him his decision that he needed to move away from the folk scene and towards making pop records. This was something that Tom Wilson had been pushing for for a while -- Wilson had told Dylan's manager Albert Grossman that if they could get Dylan backed by a good band, they'd have a white Ray Charles on their hands. As an experiment, Wilson took some session musicians into the studio and had them overdub an electric backing on Dylan's acoustic version of "House of the Rising Sun", basing the new backing on the Animals' hit version. The result wasn't good enough to release, but it did show that there was a potential for combining Dylan's music with the sound of electric guitars and drums: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “House of the Rising Sun (electric version)”] Dylan was also being influenced by his friend John Hammond Jr, the blues musician son of Dylan's first producer, and a veteran of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Hammond had decided that he wanted to show the British R&B bands what proper American blues sounded like, and so he'd recruited a group of mostly-Canadian musicians to back him on an electric album. His "So Many Roads" album featured three members of a group called Levon and the Hawks -- Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson -- who had recently quit working for the Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins -- plus harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite and Mike Bloomfield, who was normally a guitarist but who is credited on piano for the album: [Excerpt: John Hammond, Jr. "Who Do You Love?"] Dylan was inspired by Hammond's sound, and wanted to get the same sound on his next record, though he didn't consider hiring the same musicians. Instead, for his next album he brought in Bruce Langhorne, the tambourine man himself, on guitar, Bobby Gregg -- a drummer who had been the house drummer for Cameo-Parkway and played on hits by Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell and others; the session guitarists Al Gorgoni and Kenny Rankin, piano players Frank Owens and Paul Griffin, and two bass players, Joseph Macho and William Lee, the father of the film director Spike Lee. Not all of these played on all the finished tracks -- and there were other tracks recorded during the sessions, where Dylan was accompanied by Hammond and another guitarist, John Sebastian, that weren't used at all -- but that's the lineup that played on Dylan's first electric album, Bringing it All Back Home. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" actually takes more inspiration than one might imagine from the old-school folk singers Dylan was still associating with. Its opening lines seem to be a riff on "Taking it Easy", a song that had originally been written in the forties by Woody Guthrie for the Almanac Singers, where it had been a song about air-raid sirens: [Excerpt: The Almanac Singers, "Taking it Easy"] But had then been rewritten by Pete Seeger for the Weavers, whose version had included this verse that wasn't in the original: [Excerpt: The Weavers, "Taking it Easy"] Dylan took that verse, and the basic Guthrie-esque talking blues rhythm, and connected it to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" with its rapid-fire joking blues lyrics: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, "Too Much Monkey Business"] But Dylan's lyrics were a radical departure, a freeform, stream-of-consciousness proto-psychedelic lyric inspired as much by the Beat poets as by any musician -- it's no coincidence that in the promotional film Dylan made for the song, one of the earliest examples of what would become known as the rock video, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg makes an appearance: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] "Subterranean Homesick Blues" made the top forty in the US -- it only made number thirty-nine, but it was Dylan's first single to chart at all in the US. And it made the top ten in the UK -- but it's notable that even over here, there was still some trepidation about Dylan's new direction. To promote his UK tour, CBS put out a single of "The Times They Are A-Changin'", and that too made the top ten, and spent longer on the charts than "Subterranean Homesick Blues". Indeed, it seems like everyone was hedging their bets. The opening side of Bringing it All Back Home is all electric, but the B-side is made up entirely of acoustic performances, though sometimes with a little added electric guitar countermelody -- it's very much in the same style as Dylan's earlier albums, and seems to be a way of pulling back after testing the waters, of reassuring people who might have been upset by the change in style on the first side that this was still the same Dylan they knew. And the old Dylan certainly still had plenty of commercial life in him. Indeed, when Dylan went to the UK for a tour in spring of 1965, he found that British musicians were trying to copy his style -- a young man called Donovan seemed to be doing his best to *be* Dylan, with even the title of his debut hit single seeming to owe something to "Blowing in the Wind": [Excerpt: Donovan, "Catch the Wind (original single version)"] On that UK tour, Dylan performed solo as he always had -- though by this point he had taken to bringing along an entourage. Watching the classic documentary of that tour, Dont Look Back, it's quite painful to see Dylan's cruelty to Joan Baez, who had come along on the expectation that she would be duetting with him occasionally, as he had dueted with her, but who is sidelined, tormented, and ignored. It's even worse to see Bob Neuwirth, a hanger-on who is very obviously desperate to impress Dylan by copying all his mannerisms and affectations, doing the same. It's unsurprising that this was the end of Dylan and Baez's relationship. Dylan's solo performances on that tour went down well, but some of his fans questioned him about his choice to make an electric record. But he wasn't going to stop recording with electric musicians. Indeed, Tom Wilson also came along on the tour, and while he was in England he made an attempt to record a track with the members of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers -- Mayall, Hughie Flint, Eric Clapton, and John McVie, though it was unsuccessful and only a low-fidelity fragment of it circulates: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] Also attending that session was a young wannabe singer from Germany who Dylan had taken up with, though their dalliance was very brief. During the session Dylan cut a demo of a song he planned to give her, but Nico didn't end up recording "I'll Keep it With Mine" until a couple of years later. But one other thing happened in England. After the UK tour, Dylan travelled over to Europe for a short tour, then returned to the UK to do a show for the BBC -- his first full televised concert. Unfortunately, that show never went ahead -- there was a party the night before, and Dylan was hospitalised after it with what was said to be food poisoning. It might even actually have been food poisoning, but take a listen to the episode I did on Vince Taylor, who was also at that party, and draw your own conclusions. Anyway, Dylan was laid up in bed for a while, and took the opportunity to write what he's variously described as being ten or twenty pages of stream of consciousness vomit, out of which he eventually took four pages of lyrics, a vicious attack on a woman who was originally the protagonist's social superior, but has since fallen. He's never spoken in any detail about what or who the subject of the song was, but given that it was written just days after his breakup with Baez, it's not hard to guess. The first attempt at recording the song was a false start. On June the fifteenth, Dylan and most of the same musicians who'd played on his previous album went into the studio to record it, along with Mike Bloomfield, who had played on that John Hammond album that had inspired Dylan and was now playing in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Bloomfield had been surprised when Dylan had told him that he didn't want the kind of string-bending electric blues that Bloomfield usually played, but he managed to come up with something Dylan approved of -- but the song was at this point in waltz time: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (early version)"] The session ended, but Joe Macho, Al Gorgoni and Bobby Gregg stayed around after the session, when Tom Wilson called in another session guitarist to join them in doing the same trick he'd done on "House of the Rising Sun", overdubbing new instruments on a flop acoustic record he'd produced for a Greenwich Village folk duo who'd already split up. But we'll hear more about "The Sound of Silence" in a few weeks' time. The next day, the same musicians came back, along with one new one. Al Kooper had been invited by Wilson to come along and watch the session, but he was determined that he was going to play on whatever was recorded. He got to the session early, brought his guitar and amp in and got tuned up before Wilson arrived. But then Kooper heard Bloomfield play, realised that he simply couldn't play at anything remotely like the same standard, and decided he'd be best off staying in the control room after all. But then, before they started recording "Like a Rolling Stone", which by now was in 4/4 time, Frank Owens, who had been playing organ, switched to piano and left his organ on. Kooper saw his chance -- he played a bit of keyboards, too, and the song was in C, which is the easiest key to play in. Kooper asked Wilson if he could go and play, and Wilson didn't exactly say no, so Kooper went into the studio and sat at the organ. Kooper improvised the organ line that became the song's most notable instrumental part, but you will notice that it's mixed quite low in the track. This is because Wilson was unimpressed with Kooper's playing, which is technically pretty poor -- indeed, for much of the song, Kooper is a beat behind the rest of the band, waiting for them to change chords and then following the change on the next measure. Luckily, Kooper is also a good enough natural musician that he made this work, and it gave the song a distinctive sound: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] The finished record came in at around six minutes -- and here I should just mention that most books on the subject say that the single was six minutes and thirteen seconds long. That's the length of the stereo mix of the song on the stereo version of the album. The mono mix on the mono album, which we just heard, is five minutes fifty-eight, as it has a shorter fade. I haven't been able to track down a copy of the single as released in 1965, but usually the single mix would be the same as the mono album mix. Whatever the exact length, it was much, much, longer than the norm for a single -- the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" had been regarded as ridiculously long at four and a half minutes -- and Columbia originally wanted to split the song over two sides of a single. But eventually it was released as one side, in full: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] That's Bruce Langhorne there playing that rather sloppy tambourine part, high in the mix. The record made the top five in the UK, and reached number two in the US, only being held off from the top spot by "Help!" by the Beatles. It would, however, be the last track that Tom Wilson produced for Dylan. Nobody knows what caused their split after three and a half albums working together -- and everything suggests that on the UK tour in the Spring, the two were very friendly. But they had some sort of disagreement, about which neither of them would ever speak, other than a comment by Wilson in an interview shortly before his death in which he said that Dylan had told him he was going to get Phil Spector to produce his records. In the event, the rest of the album Dylan was working on would be produced by Bob Johnston, who would be Dylan's regular producer until the mid-seventies. So "Like a Rolling Stone" was a major break in Dylan's career, and there was another one shortly after its release, when Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival for the third time, in what has become possibly the single most discussed and analysed performance in folk or rock music. The most important thing to note here is that there was not a backlash among the folk crowd against electric instruments. The Newport Folk Festival had *always* had electric performers -- John Lee Hooker and Johnny Cash and The Staple Singers had all performed with electric guitars and nobody had cared. What there was, was a backlash against pop music. You see, up until the Beatles hit America, the commercial side of folk music had been huge. Acts like the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, and so on had been massive. Most of the fans at the Newport Folk Festival actually despised many of these acts as sell-outs, doing watered-down versions of the traditional music they loved. But at the same time, those acts *were* doing watered-down versions of the traditional music they loved, and by doing so they were exposing more people to that traditional music. They were making programmes like Hootenanny possible -- and the folkies didn't like Hootenanny, but Hootenanny existing meant that the New Lost City Ramblers got an audience they would otherwise not have got. There was a recognition, then, that the commercialised folk music that many of them despised was nonetheless important in the development of a thriving scene. And it was those acts, the Kingston Trios and Peter, Paul, and Marys, who were fast losing their commercial relevance because of the renewed popularity of rock music. If Hootenanny gets cancelled and Shindig put on in its place, that's great for fans of the Righteous Brothers and Sam Cooke, but it's not so great if you want to hear "Tom Dooley" or "If I Had a Hammer". And so many of the old guard in the folk movement weren't wary of electric guitars *as instruments*, but they were wary of anything that looked like someone taking sides with the new pop music rather than the old folk music. For Dylan's first performance at the festival in 1965, he played exactly the set that people would expect of him, and there was no problem. The faultlines opened up, not with Dylan's first performance, but with the performance by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, as part of a history of the blues, presented by Alan Lomax. Lomax had no objection to rock and roll -- indeed, earlier in the festival the Chambers Brothers, a Black electric group from Mississippi, had performed a set of rock and R&B songs, and Lomax had come on stage afterwards and said “I'm very proud tonight that we finally got onto the Newport Folk Festival our modern American folk music: rock 'n' roll!” But Lomax didn't think that the Butterfield band met his criteria of "authenticity". And he had a point. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band were an integrated group -- their rhythm section were Black musicians who had played with Howlin' Wolf -- and they'd gained experience through playing Chicago blues on the South Side of Chicago, but their leader, Butterfield, was a white man, as was Mike Bloomfield, their guitarist, and so they'd quickly moved to playing clubs on the North side, where Black musicians had generally not been able to play. Butterfield and Bloomfield were both excellent musicians, but they were closer to the British blues lovers who were making up groups like the Rolling Stones, Animals, and Manfred Mann. There was a difference -- they were from Chicago, not from the Home Counties -- but they were still scholars coming at the music from the outside, rather than people who'd grown up with the music and had it as part of their culture. The Butterfield Band were being promoted as a sort of American answer to the Stones, and they had been put on Lomax's bill rather against his will -- he wanted to have some Chicago blues to illustrate that part of the music, but why not Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf, rather than this new group who had never really done anything? One he'd never even heard -- but who he knew that Albert Grossman was thinking about managing. So his introduction to the Butterfield Blues Band's performance was polite but hardly rapturous. He said "Us white cats always moved in, a little bit late, but tried to catch up...I understand that this present combination has not only caught up but passed the rest. That's what I hear—I'm anxious to find out whether it's true or not." He then introduced the musicians, and they started to play an old Little Walter song: [Excerpt: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Juke"] But after the set, Grossman was furious at Lomax, asking him what kind of introduction that was meant to be. Lomax responded by asking if Grossman wanted a punch in the mouth, Grossman hurled a homophobic slur at Lomax, and the two men started hitting each other and rolling round in the dirt, to the amusement of pretty much everyone around. But Lomax and Grossman were both far from amused. Lomax tried to get the Festival board to kick Grossman out, and almost succeeded, until someone explained that if they did, then that would mean that all Grossman's acts, including huge names like Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary, would also be out. Nobody's entirely sure whose idea it was, but it seems to have been Grossman who thought that since Bloomfield had played on Dylan's recent single, it might be an idea to get the Butterfield Blues Band to back Dylan on stage, as a snub to Lomax. But the idea seems to have cohered properly when Grossman bumped into Al Kooper, who was attending the festival just as an audience member. Grossman gave Kooper a pair of backstage passes, and told him to meet up with Dylan. And so, for Dylan's performance on the Sunday -- scheduled in the middle of the day, rather than as the headliner as most people expected, he appeared with an electric guitar, backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Al Kooper. He opened with his recent single "Maggie's Farm", and followed it with the new one, "Like a Rolling Stone": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (live at Newport)"] After those two songs, the group did one more, a song called "Phantom Engineer", which they hadn't rehearsed properly and which was an utter train wreck. And then they left the stage. And there was booing. How much booing, and what the cause was, is hard to say, but everyone agrees there was some. Some people claim that the booing was just because the set had been so short, others say that the audience was mostly happy but there were just a few people booing. And others say that the booing mostly came from the front -- that there were sound problems that meant that while the performance sounded great to people further back, there was a tremendous level of distortion near the front. That's certainly what Pete Seeger said. Seeger was visibly distraught and angry at the sounds coming from the stage. He later said, and I believe him, that it wasn't annoyance at Dylan playing with an electric band, but at the distorted sound. He said he couldn't hear the words, that the guitar was too loud compared to the vocals, and in particular that his father, who was an old man using a hearing aid, was in actual physical pain at the sound. According to Joe Boyd, later a famous record producer but at this time just helping out at the festival, Seeger, the actor Theodore Bikel, and Alan Lomax, all of whom were on the festival board, told Boyd to take a message to Paul Rothchild, who was working the sound, telling him that the festival board ordered him to lower the volume. When Boyd got there, he found Rothchild there with Albert Grossman and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary, who was also on the board. When Boyd gave his message, Yarrow responded that the board was "adequately represented at the sound controls", that the sound was where the musicians wanted it, and gave Boyd a message to take back to the other board members, consisting of a single raised middle finger. Whatever the cause of the anger, which was far from universal, Dylan was genuinely baffled and upset at the reaction -- while it's been portrayed since, including by Dylan himself at times, as a deliberate act of provocation on Dylan's part, it seems that at the time he was just going on stage with his new friends, to play his new songs in front of some of his old friends and a crowd that had always been supportive of him. Eventually Peter Yarrow, who was MCing, managed to persuade Dylan to go back on stage and do a couple more numbers, alone this time as the band hadn't rehearsed any more songs. He scrounged up an acoustic guitar, went back on, spent a couple of minutes fiddling around with the guitar, got a different guitar because something was wrong with that one, played "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", spent another couple of minutes tuning up, and then finally played "Mr. Tambourine Man": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man (live at Newport)"] But that pause while Dylan was off stage scrounging an acoustic guitar from somewhere led to a rumour that has still got currency fifty-six years later. Because Peter Yarrow, trying to keep the crowd calm, said "He's gone to get his axe" -- using musicians' slang for a guitar. But many of the crowd didn't know that slang. But they had seen Pete Seeger furious, and they'd also seen, earlier in the festival, a demonstration of work-songs, sung by people who kept time by chopping wood, and according to some people Seeger had joined in with that demonstration, swinging an axe as he sang. So the audience put two and two together, and soon the rumour was going round the festival -- Pete Seeger had been so annoyed by Dylan going electric he'd tried to chop the cables with an axe, and had had to be held back from doing so. Paul Rothchild even later claimed to have seen Seeger brandishing it. The rumour became so pervasive that in later years, even as he denied doing it, Seeger tried to explain it away by saying that he might have said something like "I wish I had an axe so I could cut those cables". In fact, Seeger wasn't angry at Dylan, as much as he was concerned -- shortly afterwards he wrote a private note to himself trying to sort out his own feelings, which said in part "I like some rock and roll a great deal. Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. I confess that, like blues and like flamenco music, I can't listen to it for a long time at a stretch. I just don't feel that aggressive, personally. But I have a question. Was the sound at Newport from Bob's aggregation good rock and roll? I once had a vision of a beast with hollow fangs. I first saw it when my mother-in-law, who I loved very much, died of cancer... Who knows, but I am one of the fangs that has sucked Bob dry. It is in the hope that I can learn that I write these words, asking questions I need help to answer, using language I never intended. Hoping that perhaps I'm wrong—but if I am right, hoping that it won't happen again." Seeger would later make his own electric albums, and he would always continue to be complimentary towards Dylan in public. He even repeatedly said that while he still wished he'd been able to hear the words and that the guitar had been mixed quieter, he knew he'd been on the wrong side, and that if he had the time over he'd have gone on stage and asked the audience to stop booing Dylan. But the end result was the same -- Dylan was now no longer part of the Newport Folk Festival crowd. He'd moved on and was now a pop star, and nothing was going to change that. He'd split with Suze, he'd split with Joan Baez, he'd split with Tom Wilson, and now he'd split with his peer group. From now on Dylan wasn't a spokesman for his generation, or the leader of a movement. He was a young man with a leather jacket and a Stratocaster, and he was going to make rock music. And we'll see the results of that in future episodes.
Warren Zevon, Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, REM, Fleetwood Mac, Welcome to Episode #12 coming to you live from the former site of Riverwood Garbage Tip in Sydney Australia. Conveniently located down Wiggs Road behind the Housing Commission Estate is the beautiful restoration that has taken place here on Salt Pan Creek Reserve. We have sat right next to the methane gas pipe outlet and we're enjoying that sweet sweet aroma with a view over the Salt Pan Creek. Mick has been scavenging around down on the creek and has dragged up an old Woollies shopping trolley in remarkably good condition. And it's great to see all the kiddies out here playing on the beautiful grassed area here.Mick has been listening to Kina Grannis, who does a lovely, moody version of Elvis' "(I Can't Help) Falling in Love with You" . The Phatman has been listening to Neil Young's "Lotta Love", by Nicolette Larson. Nicolette did a lot of work with Neil Young but unfortunately died from an overdose of paracetamol. Feature Item: Warren Zevon – More About this Very Excitable Boy There's so much to his story that we needed to split him over 2 episodes.The story of Zevon, hailed by Bruce Springsteen as “one of the great, great American songwriters”, is like a Greek tragedy, where everything that could happen to him, happened - and it was all his own fault! Zevon, an American based in LA, was a musician's songwriter. His songs seemed simple but were masterpieces of technique. He worked with key artists, like Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, REM, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. He was a drunk, by his own admission, who damned his own career when he went up to the publisher of Rolling Stone and told him a few alcohol-fuelled home truths, and got banned from the magazine as a result.Live, he wasn't afraid of baring his soul to his audience, once saying, “I'd prefer you didn't dance; these songs are kind of personal”; or wryly introducing a song, “Here's a song that brings back a lot of memories. For me, anyway.”His songwriting is full of characters such as Roland, a mercenary who ends up as a vengeful ghost searching for the “man who done him in”. Or Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, a boxer who killed his opponent in a match. Or outlaws Frank & Jesse James."Werewolves of London" shows Zevon's humour with a werewolf "with a Chinese menu in his hand / Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein”, and "drinking a Pina Colada at Trader Vic's / His hair was perfect”, all set to an oft-sampled jaunty piano rhythm. On top of this, his love songs were often achingly beautiful. Songs such as "Reconsider Me”, for Crystal, his ex-wife and the love of his life; “Hasten down the wind” - “She's so many women, he can't find the one who was his friend.” You can always count on finding great lyrics. In “Desperadoes Under the Eaves”, he states that “if California slides into the ocean / Like the mystics and statistics say it will/I predict this motel will be standing/Until I pay my bill”; in “Bed of Coals”, he's "too old to die young / and too young to die now” and in "Poisonous Lookalike", he's “so confused /(he) can't tell the salt from the wound” and refers to “Little Miss Gun-to-a-Knife-Fight". We make no apology for being Zevon fan-boys. You don't need to lock Zevon to a date or particular album. In this streaming age, you can just pick a random point and listen to a great bunch of songs. Book “I'll sleep when I'm dead” - Crystal ZevonListening:Kina Grannis
Episode 126 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “For Your Love", the Yardbirds, and the beginnings of heavy rock and the guitar hero. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "A Lover's Concerto" by the Toys. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. The Yardbirds have one of the most mishandled catalogues of all the sixties groups, possibly the most mishandled. Their recordings with Giorgio Gomelsky, Simon Napier-Bell and Mickie Most are all owned by different people, and all get compiled separately, usually with poor-quality live recordings, demos, and other odds and sods to fill up a CD's running time. The only actual authoritative compilation is the long out-of-print Ultimate! . Information came from a variety of sources. Most of the general Yardbirds information came from The Yardbirds by Alan Clayson and Heart Full of Soul: Keith Relf of the Yardbirds by David French. Simon Napier-Bell's You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is one of the most entertaining books about the sixties music scene, and contains several anecdotes about his time working with the Yardbirds, some of which may even be true. Some information about Immediate Records came from Immediate Records by Simon Spence, which I'll be using more in future episodes. Information about Clapton came from Motherless Child by Paul Scott, while information on Jeff Beck came from Hot Wired Guitar: The Life of Jeff Beck by Martin Power. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, we're going to take a look at the early career of the band that, more than any other band, was responsible for the position of lead guitarist becoming as prestigious as that of lead singer. We're going to look at how a blues band launched the careers of several of the most successful guitarists of all time, and also one of the most successful pop songwriters of the sixties and seventies. We're going to look at "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "For Your Love"] The roots of the Yardbirds lie in a group of schoolfriends in Richmond, a leafy suburb of London. Keith Relf, Laurie Gane, Paul Samwell-Smith and Jim McCarty were art-school kids who were obsessed with Sonny Terry and Jimmy Reed, and who would hang around the burgeoning London R&B scene, going to see the Rolling Stones and Alexis Korner in Twickenham and at Eel Pie Island, and starting up their own blues band, the Metropolis Blues Quartet. However, Gane soon left the group to go off to university, and he was replaced by two younger guitarists, Top Topham and Chris Dreja, with Samwell-Smith moving from guitar to bass. As they were no longer a quartet, they renamed themselves the Yardbirds, after a term Relf had found on the back of an album cover, meaning a tramp or hobo. The newly-named Yardbirds quickly developed their own unique style -- their repertoire was the same mix of Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed and Chuck Berry as every other band on the London scene, but they included long extended improvisatory instrumental sequences with Relf's harmonica playing off Topham's lead guitar. The group developed a way of extending songs, which they described as a “rave-up” and would become the signature of their live act – in the middle of a song they would go into a long instrumental solo in double-time, taking the song twice as fast and improvising heavily, before dropping back to the original tempo to finish the song off. These “rave-up” sections would often be much longer than the main song, and were a chance for everyone to show off their instrumental skills, with Topham and Relf trading phrases on guitar and harmonica. They were mentored by Cyril Davies, who gave them the interval spots at some of his shows -- and then one day asked them to fill in for him in a gig he couldn't make -- a residency at a club in Harrow, where the Yardbirds went down so well that they were asked to permanently take over the residency from Davies, much to his disgust. But the group's big break came when the Rolling Stones signed with Andrew Oldham, leaving Giorgio Gomelsky with no band to play the Crawdaddy Club every Sunday. Gomelsky was out of the country at his father's funeral when the Stones quit on him, and so it was up to Gomelsky's assistant Hamish Grimes to find a replacement. Grimes looked at the R&B scene and the choice came down to two bands -- the Yardbirds and Them. Grimes said it was a toss-up, but he eventually went for the Yardbirds, who eagerly agreed. When Gomelsky got back, the group were packing audiences in at the Crawdaddy and doing even better than the Stones had been. Soon Gomelsky wanted to become the Yardbirds' manager and turn the group into full-time musicians, but there was a problem -- the new school term was starting, Top Topham was only fifteen, and his parents didn't want him to quit school. Topham had to leave the group. Luckily, there was someone waiting in the wings. Eric Clapton was well known on the local scene as someone who was quite good on guitar, and he and Topham had played together for a long time as an informal duo, so he knew the parts -- and he was also acquainted with Dreja. Everyone on the London blues scene knew everyone else, although the thing that stuck in most of the Yardbirds' minds about Clapton was the time he'd seen the Metropolis Blues Quartet play and gone up to Samwell-Smith and said "Could you do me a favour?" When Samwell-Smith had nodded his assent, Clapton had said "Don't play any more guitar solos". Clapton was someone who worshipped the romantic image of the Delta bluesman, solitary and rootless, without friends or companions, surviving only on his wits and weighed down by troubles, and he would imagine himself that way as he took guitar lessons from Dave Brock, later of Hawkwind, or as he hung out with Top Topham and Chris Dreja in Richmond on weekends, complaining about the burdens he had to bear, such as the expensive electric guitar his grandmother had bought him not being as good as he'd hoped. Clapton had hung around with Topham and Dreja, but they'd never been really close, and he hadn't been considered for a spot in the Yardbirds when the group had formed. Instead he had joined the Roosters with Tom McGuinness, who had introduced Clapton to the music of Freddie King, especially a B-side called "I Love the Woman", which showed Clapton for the first time how the guitar could be more than just an accompaniment to vocals, but a featured instrument in its own right: [Excerpt: Freddie King, "I Love the Woman"] The Roosters had been blues purists, dedicated to a scholarly attitude to American Black music and contemptuous of pop music -- when Clapton met the Beatles for the first time, when they came along to an early Rolling Stones gig Clapton was also at, he had thought of them as "a bunch of wankers" and despised them as sellouts. After the Roosters had broken up, Clapton and McGuinness had joined the gimmicky Merseybeat group Casey Jones and his Engineers, who had a band uniform of black suits and cardboard Confederate army caps, before leaving that as well. McGuinness had gone on to join Manfred Mann, and Clapton was left without a group, until the Yardbirds called on him. The new lineup quickly gelled as musicians -- though the band did become frustrated with one quirk of Clapton's. He liked to bend strings, and so he used very light gauge strings on his guitar, which often broke, meaning that a big chunk of time would be taken up each show with Clapton restringing his guitar, while the audience gave a slow hand clap -- leading to his nickname, "Slowhand" Clap-ton. Two months after Clapton joined the group, Gomelsky got them to back Sonny Boy Williamson II on a UK tour, recording a show at the Crawdaddy Club which was released as a live album three years later: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds and Sonny Boy Williamson II, "Twenty-three Hours Too Long"] Williamson and the Yardbirds didn't get along though, either as people or as musicians. Williamson's birth name was Rice Miller, and he'd originally taken the name "Sonny Boy Williamson" to cash in on the fame of another musician who used that name, though he'd gone on to much greater success than the original, who'd died not long after the former Miller started using the name. Clapton, wanting to show off, had gone up to Williamson when they were introduced and said "Isn't your real name Rice Miller?" Williamson had pulled a knife on Clapton, and his relationship with the group didn't get much better from that point on. The group were annoyed that Williamson was drunk on stage and would call out songs they hadn't rehearsed, while Williamson later summed up his view of the Yardbirds to Robbie Robertson, saying "Those English boys want to play the blues so bad -- and they play the blues *so bad*!" Shortly after this, the group cut some demos on their own, which were used to get them a deal with Columbia, a subsidiary of EMI. Their first single was a version of Billy Boy Arnold's "I Wish You Would": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "I Wish You Would"] This was as pure R&B as a British group would get at this point, but Clapton was unhappy with the record -- partly because hearing the group in the studio made him realise how comparatively thin they sounded as players, and partly just because he was worried that even going into a recording studio at all was selling out and not something that any of the Delta bluesmen whose records he loved would do. He was happier with the group's first album, a live recording called Five Live Yardbirds that captured the sound of the group at the Marquee Club. The repertoire on that album was precisely the same as any of the other British R&B bands of the time -- songs by Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, Slim Harpo, Sonny Boy Williamson and the Isley Brothers -- but they were often heavily extended versions, with a lot of interplay between Samwell-Smith's bass, Clapton's guitar, and Relf's harmonica, like their five-and-a-half-minute version of Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightning": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Smokestack Lightning"] "I Wish You Would" made number twenty-six on the NME chart, but it didn't make the Record Retailer chart which is the basis of modern chart compilations. The group were just about to go into the studio to cut their second single, a version of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl", when Keith Relf collapsed. Relf had severe asthma and was also a heavy smoker, and his lung collapsed and he had to be hospitalised for several weeks, and it looked for a while as if he might never be able to sing or play harmonica again. In his absence, various friends and hangers-on from the R&B scene deputised for him -- Ronnie Wood has recalled being at a gig and the audience being asked "Can anyone play harmonica?", leading to Wood getting on stage with them, and other people who played a gig or two, or sometimes just a song or two, with them include Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Rod Stewart. Stewart was apparently a big fan, and would keep trying to get on stage with them -- according to Keith Relf's wife, "Rod Stewart would be sitting in the backroom begging to go on—‘Oh give us a turn, give us a turn.'” Luckily, Relf's lung was successfully reinflated, and he returned to singing, harmonica playing... and smoking. In the early months back with the group, he would sometimes have to pull out his inhaler in the middle of a word to be able to continue singing, and he would start seeing stars on stage. Relf's health would never be good, but he was able to carry on performing, and the future of the group was secured. What wasn't secure was the group's relationship with their guitarist. While Relf and Dreja had for a time shared a flat with Eric Clapton, he was becoming increasingly distant from the other members. Partly this was because Relf felt somewhat jealous of the fact that the audiences seemed more impressed with the group's guitarist than with him, the lead singer; partly it was because Giorgio Gomelsky had made Paul Samwell-Smith the group's musical director, and Clapton had never got on with Samwell-Smith and distrusted his musical instincts; but mostly it was just that the rest of the group found Clapton rather petty, cold, and humourless, and never felt any real connection to him. Their records still weren't selling, but they were popular enough on the local scene that they were invited to be one of the support acts for the Beatles' run of Christmas shows at the end of 1964, and hung out with the group backstage. Paul McCartney played them a new song he was working on, which didn't have lyrics yet, but which would soon become "Yesterday", but it was another song they heard that would change the group's career. A music publisher named Ronnie Beck turned up backstage with a demo he wanted the Beatles to hear. Obviously, the Beatles weren't interested in hearing any demos -- they were writing so many hits they were giving half of them away to other artists, why would they need someone else's song? But the Yardbirds were looking for a hit, and after listening to the demo, Samwell-Smith was convinced that a hit was what this demo was. The demo was by a Manchester-based songwriter named Graham Gouldman. Gouldman had started his career in a group called the Whirlwinds, who had released one single -- a version of Buddy Holly's "Look at Me" backed with a song called "Baby Not Like You", written by Gouldman's friend Lol Creme: [Excerpt: The Whirlwinds, "Baby Not Like You"] The Whirlwinds had split up by this point, and Gouldman was in the process of forming a new band, the Mockingbirds, which included drummer Kevin Godley. The song on the demo had been intended as the Mockingbirds' first single, but their label had decided instead to go with "That's How (It's Gonna Stay)": [Excerpt: The Mockingbirds, "That's How (It's Gonna Stay)"] So the song, "For Your Love", was free, and Samwell-Smith was insistent -- this was going to be the group's first big hit. The record was a total departure from their blues sound. Gouldman's version had been backed by bongos and acoustic guitar, and Samwell-Smith decided that he would keep the bongo part, and add, not the normal rock band instruments, but harpsichord and bowed double bass: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "For Your Love"] The only part of the song where the group's normal electric instrumentation is used is the brief middle-eight, which feels nothing like the rest of the record: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "For Your Love"] But on the rest of the record, none of the Yardbirds other than Jim McCarty play -- the verses have Relf on vocals, McCarty on drums, Brian Auger on harpsichord, Ron Prentice on double bass and Denny Piercy on bongos, with Samwell-Smith in the control room producing. Clapton and Dreja only played on the middle eight. The record went to number three, and became the group's first real hit, and it led to an odd experience for Gouldman, as the Mockingbirds were by this time employed as the warm-up act on the BBC's Top of the Pops, which was recorded in Manchester, so Gouldman got to see mobs of excited fans applauding the Yardbirds for performing a song he'd written, while he was completely ignored. Most of the group were excited about their newfound success, but Clapton was not happy. He hadn't signed up to be a member of a pop group -- he wanted to be in a blues band. He made his displeasure about playing on material like "For Your Love" very clear, and right after the recording session he resigned from the group. He was convinced that they would be nothing without him -- after all, wasn't he the undisputed star of the group? -- and he immediately found work with a group that was more suited to his talents, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. The Bluesbreakers at this point consisted of Mayall on keyboards and vocals, Clapton on guitar, John McVie on bass, and Hughie Flint on drums. For their first single with this lineup, they signed a one-record deal with Immediate Records, a new independent label started by the Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Oldham. That single was produced by Immediate's young staff producer, the session guitarist Jimmy Page: [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "I'm Your Witch Doctor"] The Bluesbreakers had something of a fluid lineup -- shortly after that recording, Clapton left the group to join another group, and was replaced by a guitarist named Peter Green. Then Clapton came back, for the recording of what became known as the "Beano album", because Clapton was in a mood when they took the cover photo, and so read the children's comic the Beano rather than looking at the camera: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, "Bernard Jenkins"] Shortly after that, Mayall fired John McVie, who was replaced by Jack Bruce, formerly of the Graham Bond Organisation, but then Bruce left to join Manfred Mann and McVie was rehired. While Clapton was in the Bluesbreakers, he gained a reputation for being the best guitarist in London -- a popular graffito at the time was "Clapton is God" -- and he was at first convinced that without him the Yardbirds would soon collapse. But Clapton had enough self-awareness to know that even though he was very good, there were a handful of guitarists in London who were better than him. One he always acknowledged was Albert Lee, who at the time was playing in Chris Farlowe's backing band but would later become known as arguably the greatest country guitarist of his generation. But another was the man that the Yardbirds got in to replace him. The Yardbirds had originally asked Jimmy Page if he wanted to join the group, and he'd briefly been tempted, but he'd decided that his talents were better used in the studio, especially since he'd just been given the staff job at Immediate. Instead he recommended his friend Jeff Beck. The two had known each other since their teens, and had grown up playing guitar together, and sharing influences as they delved deeper into music. While both men admired the same blues musicians that Clapton did, people like Hubert Sumlin and Buddy Guy, they both had much more eclectic tastes than Clapton -- both loved rockabilly, and admired Scotty Moore and James Burton, and Beck was a huge devotee of Cliff Gallup, the original guitarist from Gene Vincent's Blue Caps. Beck also loved Les Paul and the jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, while Page was trying to incorporate some of the musical ideas of the sitar player Ravi Shankar into his playing. While Page was primarily a session player, Beck was a gigging musician, playing with a group called the Tridents, but as Page rapidly became one of the two first-call session guitarists along with Big Jim Sullivan, he would often recommend his friend for sessions he couldn't make, leading to Beck playing on records like "Dracula's Daughter", which Joe Meek produced for Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages: [Excerpt: Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages, "Dracula's Daughter"] While Clapton had a very straightforward tone, Beck was already experimenting with the few effects that were available at the time, like echoes and fuzztone. While there would always be arguments about who was the first to use feedback as a controlled musical sound, Beck is one of those who often gets the credit, and Keith Relf would describe Beck's guitar playing as being almost musique concrete. You can hear the difference on the group's next single. "Heart Full of Soul" was again written by Gouldman, and was originally recorded with a sitar, which would have made it one of the first pop singles to use the instrument. However, they decided to replace the sitar part with Beck playing the same Indian-sounding riff on a heavily-distorted guitar: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Heart Full of Soul"] That made number two in the UK and the top ten in the US, and suddenly the world had a new guitar god, one who was doing things on records that nobody else had been doing. The group's next single was a double A-side, a third song written by Gouldman, "Evil Hearted You", coupled with an original by the group, "Still I'm Sad". Neither track was quite up to the standard of their previous couple of singles, but it still went to number three on the charts. From this point on, the group stopped using Gouldman's songs as singles, preferring to write their own material, but Gouldman had already started providing hits for other groups like the Hollies, for whom he wrote songs like “Bus Stop”: [Excerpt: The Hollies, “Bus Stop”] His group The Mockingbirds had also signed to Immediate Records, who put out their classic pop-psych single “You Stole My Love”: [Excerpt: The Mockingbirds, “You Stole My Love”] We will hear more of Gouldman later. In the Yardbirds, meanwhile, the pressure was starting to tell on Keith. He was a deeply introverted person who didn't have the temperament for stardom, and he was uncomfortable with being recognised on the street. It also didn't help that his dad was also the band's driver and tour manager, which meant he always ended up feeling somewhat inhibited, and he started drinking heavily to try to lose some of those inhibitions. Shortly after the recording of "Evil Hearted You", the group went on their first American tour, though on some dates they were unable to play as Gomelsky had messed up their work permits -- one of several things about Gomelsky's management of the group that irritated them. But they were surprised to find that they were much bigger in the US than in the UK. While the group had only released singles, EPs, and the one live album in the UK, and would only ever put out one UK studio album, they'd recorded enough that they'd already had an album out in the US, a compilation of singles, B-sides, and even a couple of demos, and that had been picked up on by almost every garage band in the country. On one of the US gigs, their opening act, a teenage group called the Spiders, were in trouble. They'd learned every song on that Yardbirds album, and their entire set was made up of covers of that material. They'd gone down well supporting every other major band that came to town, but they had a problem when it came to the Yardbirds. Their singer described what happened next: "We thought about it and we said, 'Look, we're paying tribute to them—let's just do our set.' And so, we opened for the Yardbirds and did all of their songs. We could see them in the back and they were smiling and giving us the thumbs up. And then they got up and just blew us off the stage—because they were the Yardbirds! And we just stood there going, 'Oh…. That's how it's done.' The Yardbirds were one of the best live bands I ever heard and we learned a lot that night." That band, and later that lead singer, both later changed their name to Alice Cooper. The trip to the US also saw a couple of recording sessions. Gomelsky had been annoyed at the bad drum sound the group had got in UK studios, and had loved Sam Phillips' drum sound on the old Sun records, so had decided to get in touch with Phillips and ask him to produce the group. He hadn't had a reply, but the group turned up at Phillips' new studio anyway, knowing that he lived in a flat above the studio. Phillips wasn't in, but eventually turned up at midnight, after a fishing trip, drunk. He wasn't interested in producing some group of British kids, but Gomelsky waved six hundred dollars at him, and he agreed. He produced two tracks for the group. One of those, "Mr. You're a Better Man Than I", was written by Mike Hugg of Manfred Mann and his brother: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Mister, You're a Better Man Than I"] The backing track there was produced by Phillips, but the lead vocal was redone in New York, as Relf was also drunk and wasn't singing well -- something Phillips pointed out, and which devastated Relf, who had grown up on records Phillips produced. Phillips' dismissal of Relf also grated on Beck -- even though Beck wasn't close to Relf, as the two competed for prominence on stage while the rest of the band kept to the backline, Beck had enormous respect for Relf's talents as a frontman, and thought Phillips horribly unprofessional for his dismissive attitude, though the other Yardbirds had happier memories of the session, not least because Phillips caught their live sound better than anyone had. You can hear Relf's drunken incompetence on the other track they recorded at the session, their version of "Train Kept A-Rollin'", the song we covered way back in episode forty-four. Rearranged by Samwell-Smith and Beck, the Yardbirds' version built on the Johnny Burnette recording and turned it into one of the hardest rock tracks ever recorded to that point -- but Relf's drunk, sloppy, vocal was caught on the backing track. He later recut the vocal more competently, with Roy Halee engineering in New York, but the combination of the two vocals gives the track an unusual feel which inspired many future garage bands: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Train Kept A-Rollin'"] On that first US tour, they also recorded a version of Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man" at Chess Studios, where Diddley had recorded his original. Only a few weeks after the end of that tour they were back for a second tour, in support of their second US album, and they returned to Chess to record what many consider their finest original. "Shapes of Things" had been inspired by the bass part on Dave Brubeck's "Pick Up Sticks": [Excerpt: Dave Brubeck Quartet, "Pick Up Sticks"] Samwell-Smith and McCarty had written the music for the song, Relf and Samwell-Smith added lyrics, and Beck experimented with feedback, leading to one of the first psychedelic records to become a big hit, making number three in the UK and number eleven in the US: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Shapes of Things"] That would be the group's last record with Giorgio Gomelsky as credited producer -- although Samwell-Smith had been doing all the actual production work -- as the group were becoming increasingly annoyed at Gomelsky's ideas for promoting them, which included things like making them record songs in Italian so they could take part in an Italian song contest. Gomelsky was also working them so hard that Beck ended up being hospitalised with what has been variously described as meningitis and exhaustion. By the time he was out of the hospital, Gomelsky was fired. His replacement as manager and co-producer was Simon Napier-Bell, a young dilettante and scenester who was best known for co-writing the English language lyrics for Dusty Springfield's "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me": [Excerpt: Dusty Springfield, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me"] The way Napier-Bell tells the story -- and Napier-Bell is an amusing raconteur, and his volumes of autobiography are enjoyable reads, but one gets the feeling that he will not tell the truth if a lie seems more entertaining -- is that the group chose him because of his promotion of a record he'd produced for a duo called Diane Ferraz and Nicky Scott: [Excerpt: Diane Ferraz and Nicky Scott, "Me and You"] According to Napier-Bell, both Ferraz and Scott were lovers of his, who were causing him problems, and he decided to get rid of the problem by making them both pop stars. As Ferraz was Black and Scott white, Napier-Bell sent photos of them to every DJ and producer in the country, and then when they weren't booked on TV shows or playlisted on the radio, he would accuse the DJs and producers of racism and threaten to go to the newspapers about it. As a result, they ended up on almost every TV show and getting regular radio exposure, though it wasn't enough to make the record a hit. The Yardbirds had been impressed by how much publicity Ferraz and Scott had got, and asked Napier-Bell to manage them. He immediately set about renegotiating their record contract and getting them a twenty-thousand-pound advance -- a fortune in the sixties. He also moved forward with a plan Gomelsky had had of the group putting out solo records, though only Relf ended up doing so. Relf's first solo single was a baroque pop song, "Mr. Zero", written by Bob Lind, who had been a one-hit wonder with "Elusive Butterfly", and produced by Samwell-Smith: [Excerpt: Keith Relf, "Mr. Zero"] Beck, meanwhile, recorded a solo instrumental, intended for his first solo single but not released until nearly a year later. "Beck's Bolero" has Jimmy Page as its credited writer, though Beck claims to be a co-writer, and features Beck and Page on guitars, session pianist Nicky Hopkins, and Keith Moon of the Who on drums. John Entwistle of the Who was meant to play bass, but when he didn't show to the session, Page's friend, session bass player John Paul Jones, was called up: [Excerpt: Jeff Beck, "Beck's Bolero"] The five players were so happy with that recording that they briefly discussed forming a group together, with Moon saying of the idea "That will go down like a lead zeppelin". They all agreed that it wouldn't work and carried on with their respective careers. The group's next single was their first to come from a studio album -- their only UK studio album, variously known as Yardbirds or Roger the Engineer. "Over Under Sideways Down" was largely written in the studio and is credited to all five group members, though Napier-Bell has suggested he came up with the chorus lyrics: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Over Under Sideways Down"] That became the group's fifth top ten single in a row, but it would be their last, because they were about to lose the man who, more than anyone else, had been responsible for their musical direction. The group had been booked to play an upper-class black-tie event, and Relf had turned up drunk. They played three sets, and for the first, Relf started to get freaked out by the fact that the audience were just standing there, not dancing, and started blowing raspberries at them. He got more drunk in the interval, and in the second set he spent an entire song just screaming at the audience that they could copulate with themselves, using a word I'm not allowed to use without this podcast losing its clean rating. They got him offstage and played the rest of the set just doing instrumentals. For the third set, Relf was even more drunk. He came onstage and immediately fell backwards into the drum kit. Only one person in the audience was at all impressed -- Beck's friend Jimmy Page had come along to see the show, and had thought it great anarchic fun. He went backstage to tell them so, and found Samwell-Smith in the middle of quitting the group, having finally had enough. Page, who had turned down the offer to join the group two years earlier, was getting bored of just being a session player and decided that being a pop star seemed more fun. He immediately volunteered himself as the group's new bass player, and we'll see how that played out in a future episode...
In Part A (Episode 10), Paul & Dave Derringer discussed the first seven years of Fleetwood Mac. In this Part B episode, with help from Special Guest Kathy, The Derringer Brothers debate the five albums released by the classic Fleetwood Mac line-up consisting of Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood. In addition to providing the world with some great music, this line-up of Fleetwood Mac - the classic five - also unwittingly became a textbook example of a dysfunctional musical family, a band full of discord, strife, heartbreak, and palpable angst. The classic five increasingly couldn't work together - they couldn't even be in the same room with each other, but the world demanded (and continues to demand) that they each put on a brave face and go out there to give the people what we want. Taking the band up to the present, Paul & Dave also briefly note Fleetwood Mac's ever evolving line-up and their intermittent releases after the classic period. Don't worry, The Derringer Brothers keep it upbeat and brisk. At the end, they weigh in on whether or not Fleetwood Mac "Jumped the Shark." They also introduce the listeners to a new Derringer Discoveries category of musical output: what it means to "Cross the Rubicon." The songs discussed in this episode can be found at Fleetwood Mac Won't Stop Playlist B. Contact Paul & Dave at derringerdiscoveries@gmail.com and follow Derringer Discoveries on your favorite digital platform. Stay for the post-episode bonus track and hear Dave talk about the volcanic water given to him by Paul during the recording of this episode. They also include another snippet of the digital single Music Box Killer by Ho Jo Fro, the same band behind the Derringer Discoveries' theme song, Your Sister's Room. Support a struggling group of musical misfits by including their songs on your favorite playlists and sharing with your friends. Sharing is good and encouraged.
Using humor, unique insights, and brotherly love, in this Part A episode with help from Special Guest Alton, The Derringer Brothers - Paul & Dave - discuss Fleetwood Mac's first seven years as a band right up until the phenomenal addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. With plenty of first loves and memory-fests including Dave's very own wrestling song and Paul's fascination with the Bermuda Triangle, they also manage to provide helpful insight about the 10 Fleetwood Mac albums and various singles released from 1967 to 1974, celebrating the Peter Green years followed by the Bob Welch years and the rise of Christine McVie. Along the way, they tell the strange, almost unbelievable tale of how Mick Fleetwood and John McVie had to sue their manager to reclaim the band's name and how, after failing to sniff the charts for nine singles in a row, they almost called it quits right before the stars aligned and they began their incredible ascent to superstardom status. These true-life tales are uniquely spun by The Derringer Brothers and any concerns about "jumping the shark" are held at bay until Part B. The songs in this episode are featured on Fleetwood Mac Won't Stop Playlist - Derringer Discoveries. Contact Paul & Dave at derringerdiscoveries@gmail.com and follow Derringer Discoveries on your favorite digital platform. Derringer Discoveries' theme song, Your Sister's Room, is by the band Ho Jo Fro. The post-episode playout features a snippet of the song Crazy Kellyanne, a new single by Ho Jo Fro released in 2021. Support a struggling artist by adding a song or two of theirs to your favorite playlist!
Fjallað um bresku söngkonuna, píanistann og lagasmiðinn Christine Anne Perfect sem byrjaði í blúsrokksveitinni Chicken Shack árið 1967 og gekk í Fleetwood Mac árið 1971. Þá hafði hún verið gift bassaleikara sveitarinnar, John McVie, í þrjú ár og tekið upp ættarnafn hans. Leikin eru lög sem hún samdi meðan hún var í Chicken Shack og á fyrstu árunum eftir að hún gekk í Fleetwood Mac. Umsjón: Jónatan Garðarsson.
Here's a look at 'Today in Rock History' featuring: Hafthor Bjornsson is 31. John McVie from Fleetwood Mac is 73. Charles M. Schulz was born on this day in 1922. He's the "Peanuts" genius, and year after year one of the top-earning dead celebrities. In 1922, King Tut's Tomb was entered by American archeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon of England. King Tutankhamen became Pharaoh at age 9 and died when he was 19. So even HIS 10 year challenge sucked. In 1998, Hulk Hogan announced that he was retiring from pro wrestling and would run for president in 2000. Four years later, Hulk Hogan was back in wrestling.
Blues legend John Mayall founded one of the most influential rock bands of the 20th century. John talks with Marc about ushering musicians like Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and John McVie through his band, giving birth to Fleetwood Mac, and using music to get himself through the Korean War. Plus, Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful podcast, stops by to argue with Marc about cereal. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast.
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