He Could Play a Guitar Just Like Ringin' a Bell

We have rock & roll as we know it in large part because of Chuck Berry.

First and foremost, he made the electric solid-body guitar (a relatively new invention in and of itself) the primary instrument of the new musical form, steering the nascent musical style away from R&B piano and countrified hollow-body guitars as the musical vehicle of choice.  You don't get to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen without Chuck.

Secondly, he was the complete artist.  He not only played and sang, but he composed his own material as well (frequently in collaboration with Johnnie Johnson).  Few performers wrote their own songs at the time; Elvis didn't, nor did Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett or Bing Crosby.  New York City was full of songwriters who were turning out material for others to sing.  But Berry was a natural storyteller, who put his tales of dancing, dating, high school beauty queens and living the American dream to music in a way that was emotionally light years ahead of virtually anything else heard in rock & roll at the time.  He ushered in a new era of singers who wrote their own material, such as Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison.  Of course, some of his most successful spiritual offspring are Brian Wilson and Lennon and McCartney.

Lastly, he brought honest-to-God swagger.  Elvis may have oozed raw sex appeal on stage, but otherwise he was a shy country boy.  Little Richard was a wild man, but so much so that he almost seemed like a living cartoon.  The only other African-American rocker of Chuck's caliber in the Fifties was Fats Domino, who was a quiet, reticent man.  But Chuck was not shy.  He was handsome and witty and sharp, he dressed in fine clothes and he drove expensive cars.  We have a hard time understanding now just how seismically radical that was for 1950s white America.  Of course, he paid a steep price for that soon enough.

At the absolute peak of his fame, with a long string of huge hit songs behind him..."Maybelline", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Johnny B. Goode", "Sweet Little Sixteen" among them...Chuck found himself in prison.  Not surprisingly, he was the architect of his own downfall.  Maybe he had gotten too cocky, and figured his success made him untouchable.  He quickly learned otherwise.  He had opened a nightclub back in his native St. Louis, and for reasons unfathomable, he thought it was a good idea to drive an underage Apache prostitute from Arizona back to Missouri so she could work at the club.  That violated the Mann Act, which forbade transporting minors across state lines for immoral purposes, and that was a federal crime.

Chuck landed himself in the slammer for a couple of years, and in the meantime, rock & rock underwent a massive transformation.  Most of the first generation of stars disappeared from the charts, and the few who could hang on, most notably Elvis, began turning out syrupy ballads, which was what the corporate music industry had largely reduced rock & roll to, once they had gotten a better handle on the beast and tamed it.

So when Chuck finally got out of prison, he was bitter, and it looked as if he was forgotten.  Worse than forgotten, really...he saw himself being robbed; some lily white punk kids out in California calling themselves the Beach Boys had a Top 5 hit with a song called "Surfin' U.S.A."  The credit for writing the song was claimed solely by Brian Wilson, and thus 100% of the royalties were going to him.  The problem was, the entire melody, kicked off by a note-for-note copy of Chuck's signature guitar riff, was an exact duplicate of Chuck's own "Sweet Little Sixteen".  Chuck didn't hold out much hope for compensation, but after a couple of years of legal agitation, not only was the song re-credited as a Wilson/Berry composition, but Chuck's own music publishing company got the full rights to the song.  So, score one for the brown-eyed handsome man.

More daunting still was the prospect of rebuilding his own musical career.  America at the time wasn't well-known for giving black ex-cons a second chance, particularly when that chance meant letting their white teenaged daughters swoon over his songs.  There was also the fact that nearly a full decade had passed since he had his first hit song, and for a lot of young teens, Chuck Berry was seen as a relic of that ancient past known as the Fifties.  But he had the loyal support of his record label, Chicago blues giant Chess Records, and what's more, Chuck had some powerful arrows in his quiver.

It's pretty amazing that for all of the bitterness he felt for the hand fate had dealt him, Chuck didn't let it sour the inherent optimism of his songwriting.  As a result, he beat the odds, roaring up the charts with a couple of his best tunes, "Nadine", "No Particular Place to Go" and, greater still, "You Never Can Tell".  And he did it during the musical tsunami that was the British Invasion, when so many other American artists were washed away from America's own Top 40.  It certainly didn't hurt him any that the Beatles and Rolling Stones were not only proclaiming their love and admiration for Chuck, but recording their own versions of his tunes.

That's kind of the high water mark for Chuck Berry.  He was now firmly ensconced as an Elder Statesman of Rock, and given the deference and respect he was due.  He continued to tour successfully for decades to come, and his music became ingrained into the soul of global culture.  The People's Republic of China made a big deal out of banning "Roll Over Beethoven" because they felt it was disrespectful to the classical composer.  When NASA sent the Voyager probe off into the universe on the off-chance it might be found by some other species, they included a disc with examples of what the dominant species on Earth had accomplished to date, and they included "Johnny B. Goode".  When they launched the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, Chuck was in the very first class of inductees.

I've got a Chuck Berry story of my own, although it's not a very fulfilling one.  Back around 2000 or so, I had the chance to see him and Little Richard play live.  Richard was astounding, singing with the energy of a 25 year old, pounding out song after song on his piano as he wailed and "Ooooooooo'd" with reckless abandon.

Chuck, sadly, seemed every bit a man in his seventies.  His voice was flat, and he didn't even bother to properly tune his guitar.  He never toured with his own band in those days; he simply required that promoters find a couple of local musicians to back him up.  As any halfway decent bar band can play the Chuck Berry repertoire, it shouldn't be difficult to find some competent sidemen.  And yet, this promoter managed to achieve an epic fail.  The bass player had his amp cranked up way too high, so that his thump-thump-thump nearly drowned out all other sounds.  Worse still was the guy behind the drum kit, who played as if he had never held two sticks before.  It probably didn't help any that he had a broken arm and his limb was in a cast.  If Chuck still cared about the music, I'm sure he would have told those two to get the hell off of his stage, and then just played and sang all by himself.  But sadly, he had stopped caring.  This was just another paycheck, and it didn't matter if the show was any good or not...the money would still be the same.

But I don't let that night spoil my love for Chuck Berry.  As far as I'm concerned, he contributed enough great art to our culture to get a lifetime pass for bad concerts.  And now that he's died (having lived multiple lifetimes in his 90 years), I think it's the perfect opportunity for people to explore his work.  Do yourself a favor and look beyond the usual hits, and seek out gems like "Thirty Days (To Come Back Home)", "Promised Land", "Reelin' and Rockin'", and what I think is the greatest rock & roll Christmas song (and why is it that rock & rollers so often fail at creating decent Christmas songs?  Hell, even Paul McCartney and Elton John couldn't pull it off.), "Run Rudolph Run".

Farewell Chuck, and thanks for everything.

Tell the folks back home this is the promised land callin'
And the poor boy's on the line

Albums with better names in Britain than in America

For some curious reason, from time to time record companies decide that when releasing an album from a British artist, a title change is in order.  Sometimes it can make sense; in 1964, the first LP from the Beatles that Capitol Records was releasing in the United States was actually their second release in the UK, WITH THE BEATLES.  But Capitol, not surprisingly, retitled it MEET THE BEATLES for America.  When they later got the rights to release the first album from the group, PLEASE PLEASE ME, Capitol dubbed it THE EARLY BEATLES for the U.S. marketplace.  Slightly confusing for the uninformed, but again, understandable from a marketing perspective.

Other times though, it just seems to make no sense, and indeed, the "solution" is invariably less logical or creative than the original title.

Here are three quick examples off the top of my noggin:

THE ROD STEWART ALBUM (1969) Rod Stewart

In Great Britian, Stewart's debut solo album was titled AN OLD RAINCOAT WON'T EVER LET YOU DOWN, after one of the songs on the LP.  It's a great name, something that sounds both frivolous and profound at the same time, like the very best English aphorisms.  The original even boasted a very nice cover.  There's really no logical reason why Mercury Records made such a drastic change.  It's not as if Stewart was already well known in America, so highlighting the fact that this was his first solo album would have meant anything to anyone.  Stewart was known by some fans in the U.S. as the lead singer of the Jeff Beck Group, but as the name suggests, Beck was the real star of that assemblage.

So, between the uninspiring name and the blandly generic cover, it might have been easy to overlook this album altogether.  And that would have been a shame, since it's a great record, containing such gems as "Handbags and Gladrags" and Rod's astounding cover of "Street Fighting Man".

PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE (1978) Nick Lowe

What does this title even mean?  It sounds like something that would have been used for one of those late '60s choral groups like the Ray Coniff Singers or the Mike Curb Congregation (two of Richard Nixon's favorite "rock and roll" outfits...which tells you everything you need to know about them).  The original UK title...JESUS OF COOL...captured the New Wave esthetic perfectly.  However, Columbia Records feared that a rock album with the name of Jesus in the title would anger Bible Belters, thus the title change.

Of course, they feared backlash over the album's original name, but they left a song on it called "Little Hitler".  Because who could find offense in that, right?

SECURITY (1982) Peter Gabriel

Following his departure from Genesis, Peter Gabriel released a solo album in 1977, and he called it PETER GABRIEL.  He released his second album in 1978, and called it PETER GABRIEL.  He put out a third album in 1980, and called it PETER GABRIEL.

Do you see a pattern emerging?  Fans did, and it didn't seem to confuse them any...each album was met by better and better sales.

But for his fourth LP, called PETER GABRIEL in the UK, Geffen Records suddenly seemed to think that naming yet another album after the person who made that album would just be too perplexing for American audiences.  Thus, they slapped a sticker on the sleeve that identified it as SECURITY.

Beyond the fact that fans up until then seemed to have had no problem differentiating between the various albums (particularly as they all had distinctly different covers), it's woefully clear that Geffen didn't understand what Gabriel had been doing.  It's not as if he was so egomaniacal that he needed to name every record after himself so that when he spoke about them, he could refer to himself in the third person.  Rather, Gabriel saw his solo records as something of an 'audio magazine'.  And like a magazine (such as Time or Rolling Stone), the name stays the same with each issue, even though the interior material changes.

Faced with Geffen's action, Gabriel gave up the practice, and then proceeded to release albums with some of the shortest titles ever:  SO, US, UP.

Summer Nights

Lately, I've been recalling the summer of 1982 quite a bit.  Specifically, the late summer nights of that year.

I was 15, and I spent most nights in my bedroom, watching a portable b&w TV that looked just like this, orange color and all:

1982 was the year that LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN premiered on NBC, and I was hooked.  It was like nothing I'd ever seen on TV before...incredibly funny, fresh, and subversive.  And things really were kicked up several notches the night in late July when Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler guested, to promote their pro wrestling feud:

And even after Letterman, there was good reason to stay up:  that summer, NBC debuted their new NEWS OVERNIGHT program.  Ordinarily, stations went off the air after 12:30 AM (or switched over to local programming), but the network decided to fill a few of those hours before dawn with this.  Although OVERNIGHT only lasted a couple of years, it proved to be a prototype for the 24 hours news cable channels.  Plus, it made a news star out of the awesome Linda Ellerbee!  It also made me into a hardcore news junkie.

Filling out the trifecta of late night enticements that season was an offering from my local PBS station, WTTW.  They had an early-morning series called SUMMER CAMP, in which they aired adventure serials and B-movies from the 1930s and 40s.  At a time when this stuff was hard to come by, I loved it.  In particular, I thought the "Flash Gordon" serials with Buster Crabbe were particularly terrific, and I still remember them fondly to this day:

I suppose the end result of all of this...beyond having my sense of humor shaped by Letterman, my inquisitiveness sparked by Ellerbee, and my love of old Hollywood adventures instilled...is that the summer of '82 left me to this day as an incurable night owl.  I just wish television now offered fare half as great as they did that year.

Tiananmen Square

On this day in 1989...

If you were old enough to grasp the significance of this image then, it has remained indelibly etched into your memory ever since.  One man bravely standing down a column of advancing tanks by himself.  And, more amazingly, he succeeds!

That's an impressive enough feat to accomplish with only one tank.  But if we look at a wider-lensed photo, we see that he was standing up to a whole lot more than one.

The lead tank crew, refusing to run the lone protestor over, shut off their engine, and the entire column was halted.  Eventually, two unidentified men arrived to quickly escort the protestor away.  The identity of "Tank Man" remains unknown to this day.  Many assume that the men who took him were with the national security service, and that he was most likely imprisoned and, eventually, executed.  But others think the men were fellow protestors who hid him from the government.  Leaked internal reports from the Chinese government suggest that, despite an intensive search, they were never able to find Tank Man, and that they don't even know his identity.  For his sake, I hope so.

Protestors in Tiananmen Square had already constructed their own Statue of Liberty to rally supporters to their cause.  Their 'Goddess of Democracy' stood 33 feet tall, made of papier-mâché and foam over a metal armature in a mere four days.  They made it so large because they knew the government would either have to accept its presence in the Square, or else destroy it utterly, rather than simply transporting it away.

Eventually, the Red Army managed to violently clear the Square, and tanks were used to topple and crush the statue.  The pro-democracy movement was brutally crushed in China.  For now, at least.

The People's Republic of China has gone to great lengths to make the entire protest disappear.  The Chinese people cannot find reference to it on the internet, nor see any photos.  Their history books contain not the slightest passing reference to it.  Foreign journalists report today that a majority of university students asked have no idea there ever was a protest.

Nevertheless, there have been a great many fundamental changes in China under the seemingly placid surface in the years since.  The protestors of 1989 took the hard-won lessons learned in Tiananmen Square and adapted them, going underground to slowly nudge their country closer to liberty and freedom from within.  It's inconceivable to think that today's young generation of Chinese would ever engage in things like the 1960s 'Cultural Revolution' again...they are far too committed to personal individualism and self-awareness to ever become faceless pawns like that again.

Who knows, in another generation, true democracy may come to China, and the Goddess of Democracy was be permanently holding her torch above Tiananmen Square for all to see. We can certainly hope so.

5 classic rock songs that take a verbal poke at other musicians

One of the perks of being a successful rock star is that you aren't limited to insulting your rivals in the same plebeian ways of lesser mortals.  No, with a few gold records to their credit, one can vent their spleen in song, and then their spite becomes timeless, there to be enjoyed by generations to come.

Indeed, it’s almost become the norm now.  Think about it…if the dis song were suddenly banned, we’d lose about 30% of all hip hop for the past quarter century.

Anyway, here are what I consider to be the five best slams in classic rock…

5)  Sweet Home Alabama –Lynyrd Skynyrd (1974)

It isn’t that the members of Skynyrd didn’t agree with Neil Young, in principle.  Racism and segregation and lynching are all terrible, and worthy of scorn in song.  But in a pair of numbers which Young had written and recorded a few years previous, “Southern Man” and “Alabama”, the boys in Skynyrd felt that Canadian-born Neil was tarring the entire American South with the same brush.  Ultimately however, this tune has more bark than bite…Skynyrd still more or less agreed with Young’s point of view, so their chastising, which is pretty tame to begin with, doesn’t draw blood:

Well, I heard Mister Young sing about her /
Well, I heard ol' Neil put her down /
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember /
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow

Couple that with the fact that Neil really liked this song, and he’s gone on to publicly walk back some of the sentiments of his own work which prompted this riposte, and at the end of the day everybody is all smiles and back slapping.

Note of irony:  None of the guys in Lynyrd Skynyrd were actually from Alabama.

4)  Too Many People – Paul McCartney (1971)

McCartney’s second solo album, RAM, is rife with references to the break-up of the Beatles.  I could have easily gone with another song from the LP, like “Dear Boy” or “3 Legs”, but this tune seems to me to really go to the heart of Paul’s confusion and exasperation with his former bandmates, in particular John Lennon.

He starts a bit vague.  For all we know, he could be writing about Arsenal’s season that year…

Too many people going underground /
Too many reaching for a piece of cake /
Too many people pulled and pushed around /
Too many waiting for that lucky break

But then he goes right to the heart of the matter…

That was your first mistake /
You took your lucky break and broke it in two /
Now what can be done for you? /
You broke it in two

He’s teetering on the edge of bitterness, but McCartney being McCartney, he veers away.  You can almost hear the pain in his next voice when he sings…

Too many people breaching practices /
Don't let them tell you what you want to be /
Too many people holding back /
This is crazy and maybe it's not like me

Finally, unable to dwell on the anguish any longer, he sheds it and walks away…

That was your last mistake /
I find my love awake and waiting to be /
Now what can be done for you? /

She's waiting for me

Lennon took exception to what he saw as Paul’s barbs aimed at him, John apparently forgetting all of the nasty things he’d been saying about McCartney in the press for the past year or so.  But he in particular saw this song as justification to reply musically, which we’ll get to soon.

3)  You Don’t Move Me Anymore – Keith Richards (1988)

Twenty-five years after they made their first recordings, there was trouble between the Glimmer Twins.  Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were at odds over the musical direction of the Rolling Stones, and when Mick launched a solo career and effectively put the band on hold, Keith retaliated with a solo record of his own.  Critics raved about it, and no one could mistake the target of this particular song.  Lyrics like…

You made the wrong motion /
Drank the wrong potion /
You lost the feeling /
Not so appealing /
Why do you think you got no friends? /
You drove them all around the bend

…make it more than a little plain that ‘Keef’ had some frustration issues with his longtime musical cohort.

Happily, rather than widen the rift between them, this song helped Keith and Mick reconcile.  Just prior to the album’s release, Richards invited Jagger over to his home to get an advance listen.  Dropping the needle on the vinyl, Keith excused himself, leaving Mick alone in the room.  But what Mick didn’t know was that Keith was still able to see him from the next room, and what he saw, when Jagger thought he was alone, was the singer dancing his ass off.  Because a grudge mean nothing to Mick when the music is good.  With things patched up, the Stones reunited, and they’re still going strong to this day.  Thus is the power of sweet sonic slap upside the head.

2)  How Do You Sleep? – John Lennon (1971)

If the others songs on this list hit like slaps, then this one lands like a hydrogen bomb.  Lennon’s friends and enemies alike could attest to his biting, sometimes cruel wit.  And he unleashed all of the venom he had built up over his feud with McCartney for this…

So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise /
You better see right through that mother's eyes /
Those freaks was right when they said you was dead /
The one mistake you made was in your head /
How do you sleep?

He then goes for the sucker punch, belittling Paul’s songwriting since the halcyon days of the Lennon/McCartney partnership…

The only thing you done was yesterday /
And since you've gone it's just another day…

The sound you make is Muzak to my ears /
You must have learned something all those years

Legend has it, Lennon wrote another verse that was particularly cruel, but fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, who plays drums on the track, told him they went too far, and they were cut out of the song.

Not long before his death, John more or less recanted this song, saying that it wasn’t really about Paul, but actually about himself, and the bitter place he was in at the time.  I’m not sure that’s quite the truth, but regardless, it was nice of him to let McCartney off of the hook.

1)  I Dig Rock and Roll Music – Peter, Paul & Mary (1967)

This is such a ceaselessly peppy little number, it’s easy to miss the acid behind the cheery words.  It’s 1967, flower power is in full bloom, and PP&M are not happy.  Earlier in the 60s, during the folk boom, they had emerged as major stars.  But the British Invasion basically relegated them to the shadows.  Even the folk rock trend didn’t please them, as they saw it as a bastardization of the true folk music they played and revered.

Tired of seeing their singles stall in the lower reaches of the charts, Paul Stookey finally decided to fight fire with fire, and he co-wrote for the trio a song steeped in the pop sensibilities of the day.  Radio listeners must have been thrilled to hear them name-check some fellow musical acts, but if they listened more closely to the lyrics, they would get the sense that PP&M weren’t exactly paying homage.  But before they get to that, they open up with a backhanded swipe at all of rock ‘n roll, their words dripping with sarcasm…

I dig rock and roll music and I love to get the chance to play (and sing it) /
I figure it's about the happiest sound goin' down today /
The message may not move me or mean a great deal to me /
But hey, it feels so groovy to say

Their first specific jab is at the Mamas and the Papas, whom PP&M clearly feel sing beautifully, even though the subject matter of their songs is vapid, telling us the foursome “got a good thing goin' when the words don't get in the way”.

Next up on the hit parade is British folk rocker Donovan, who had begun his career as a straight folkie before going electric (thus ‘betraying’ folk music).  His music, they inform us, is all “crystal images tell you 'bout a brighter day”.  For Peter, Paul & Mary, proper music serves a noble purpose, be it civil rights, peace, or the brotherhood of man.  To them, Donovan and his fey ditties like “Epistle to Dippy” aren’t just pointless…they actually distract people from the important things in life.

Lastly, they go after the biggest dogs on the porch, the Beatles…

And when the Beatles tell you, they've got a word ‘Love’ to sell you /
They mean exactly what they say

Lastly, biting the hand that feeds them, the trio lash out at Top 40 radio.  Hey, you’ve got to give them credit…when they get into a fight, they don’t stop swinging until they’re the last ones left standing…

I dig oh, rock and roll music I could really get it on in that scene /
I think I could say somethin' if you know what I mean /
But if I really say it, the radio won't play it /
Unless I lay it between the lines

With as much vitriol as is on display here, this has all the makings of musical disaster, the kind that wrecks careers on the shoals.  But here’s the funny thing…it was a huge hit.  And deservedly so, because this is a brilliant piece of pop music.

For all of their frustration, the group were smart enough to layer a bit of whimsy over their performance, taking a lot of the edge off without compromising the intent of the lyrics.  And what a performance they give!  They had already proven themselves masters at three-part harmony, but here they not only give a nearly spot-on impersonation of the Mamas and Papas, but also of Donovan and the Beatles (complete with “Strawberry Fields”-ish sound effects).  It’s an irresistible tune, and it’s impossible to not hum along to it.  It’s also the song that has probably most established the enduring fame of the trio to this day.  Sure, a lot of people know “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, but it’s this song that still gets regular airplay on oldies stations...and the song that made them bona fide rock stars.  And I’ve no doubt the irony of that amused Peter, Paul & Mary to no end.

5 Songs that Prove Paul McCartney is Wrong

A few days ago, Paul McCartney told a BBC reporter that, regarding his 1970s band, Wings, "We were terrible.  We weren't a good group."

Now, in the sense that Wings was never a proper group, he's right.  They were never more than Paul and his sidemen of the moment, no matter how much he insisted at the time that they were all equals.  (Excluding Paul, over the group's decade-long existence, there were nine other members at various times including, most controversially for many, his wife, Linda.  All of the musicians were good...Paul wouldn't settle for anything else...but the best of the bunch was probably Henry McCullough, who had gotten his first break as lead guitarist for Joe Cocker's band, where he played at Woodstock, and he also played the guitar on the cast album for Jesus Christ Superstar.  His shining moment in Wings was undoubtedly the stunning guitar solo he created on the spot while recording "My Love" in '73.  But you probably know Henry best as the guy who says, "I don't know, I was really drunk at the time" at the end of "Money" on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.)

But as a musical unit, they were never "terrible".  True, they rose and fell on the strength of the songs which McCartney wrote, but even with some of his lesser efforts, the musicianship was never anything short of impressive.  Wings at their worst were better than the entire musical output of a lot of other artists.

And at their best, they were among the very best bands of the '70s.  Need proof?  Fine, here are five instances in which Paul McCartney and Wings nailed it, and nailed it big.

"Let Me Roll It" (1973)
A highlight from Band on the Run, which is considered by quite a few fans and critics alike to be the best album the band ever did.  Many call this Paul's 'John Lennon' song, as both the lyrics and, in particular, the musical style had striking similarities to the kind of music John himself was recording at the time.

"Junior's Farm" (1974)
A non-album single that rocks, which makes the fact that it was written and recorded while the band was staying in Nashville, Tennessee kind of amusing, as there's nothing country about this.

"Beware My Love" (1976)
As a track on Wings at the Speed of Sound, it was a genuine highlight, but it really came alive on stage, with the whole band really sliding into the groove.

"Mull of Kyntyre" (1977)
After back-to-back albums recorded in 1975 and '76, followed by a lengthy world tour, Paul and the band were exhausted, so McCartney limited their work in '77 to this single.  It was a huge hit in Britain (for many years to come, the biggest selling song in UK history), but curiously it failed to hit in America.  But it's a great pastiche of traditional British folk styles, topped off with a rousing blare of bagpipes.

"With a Little Luck" (1978)
During the band's sabbatical, music on both sides of the Atlantic made huge sea changes.  In the U.S., disco emerged as the dominant musical trend, while in England, punk rock was all the rage.  Rather than kowtow to either, McCartney plunged ahead with this, a sweet pop love song with, of all things, prog rock undertones.  Against all odds, it was a huge hit, and deservedly so.

Honorable Mention: "Coming Up (Live at Glasgow)" (1980)
Paul didn't officially disband Wings until 1981, but the band effectively ended in January of '80, when they traveled to Japan to kick off a tour of Asia, only to have it canceled when McCartney was arrested and deported for marijuana possession.  Back home in England that spring, Paul decided to put out a new LP consisting of tracks he had recorded in his home studio over the past year or so.  As he played all of the instruments himself, he decided to release it as a solo record, called McCartney II, with no mention of Wings.  One of the tracks, a techno pop ditty called "Coming Up", was released as a single; for the b-side, Paul opted to include the same song, albeit a more rocking live version done by Wings on tour the previous fall, when it was still expected by the group that a new studio version of the tune done by Wings proper was likely to happen soon.  The song was a huge hit worldwide, but in the U.S. at least, it was the live flip side that got the most airplay, making it the last foray by Wings onto the Top 40 chart.

Stay little valentine, stay...

Today would have been Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday, and not surprisingly, his legacy is splashed across all media this week.  I could certainly add to that, talking about his greatest hits, his finest albums, his most outrageous antics.

But instead, I want to keep it small.  I want to talk about how Frank Sinatra made me love a song.

"My Funny Valentine" has been a linchpin of the Great American Songbook very nearly since it debuted in 1937.  It certainly has a solid gold pedigree, having been written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and being recorded by hundreds of artists over the years, including Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.  Chet Baker's version is in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry for "cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society".  By every measure, a classic.

I never much liked "My Funny Valentine".  I can't specifically say why, other than that it never moved me much.  I guess I've felt that too many singers inject too much sentimentality into their interpretations, turning it into a somewhat cloying little love song, and the world already has an over-abundance of those.

But then I heard Sinatra's version, and the song hit me like a wrecking ball.  His take on it was not born of sentiment...rather, it was out of desperation.  The man singing these words isn't mouthing sweet nothings with his lover; he's pleading with her from a place of emotional agony.

It's easy enough upon first listen to not pick up on this.  There's nothing frantic in Sinatra's delivery.  Indeed, he's almost gentle in the way he enunciates the lyrics.  But if you know where Frank was in his life at the time he recorded this, suddenly much becomes understandable.

***

He remains such an icon to this day, it's often forgotten...indeed, even incomprehensible...that Frank Sinatra was a washed-up has-been in the early 1950s.  But after the dizzying heights of his success during World War II, his popularity began to fade.  Partly it was because the ballads that were his forté were falling out of favor, as postwar listeners tilted more toward jump music and novelty numbers (there's an audio recording from the late 40s of Sinatra on the Your Hit Parade radio show, where he was asked to sing that week's #1 hit, "The Woody Woodpecker Song".  He does so, but the vitriol in his voice for this wretched piece of doggerel comes through loud and clear).  Partly it was because Sinatra at his peak had stepped on a lot of toes and picked a lot of fights, and a good many people in positions to do something about it were actively rooting for his failure.  Returning G.I.'s resented that Sinatra stayed home as 4F, and Middle America felt revulsion when Frank left his wife and three young children to chase tail in Hollywood.  After one too many disappointments at the box office his movie studio, MGM, dropped him.  Not long after, after declining record sales his label, Columbia, did likewise.

He was still a concert draw, albeit nothing like he had been.  Gone were the days when he would pack the Paramount in Manhattan for multiple shows each day for weeks.  Now, he was doing one night stands in smaller halls and nightclubs, and started making a name for himself in Vegas.  But things kept going from bad to worse.  Bashing Sinatra became a popular hobby for newspaper columnists, and the papers played up every indiscretion.  Connections with mafioso got him labeled (and investigated) as a mob crony, and his longtime liberal politics got him smeared as a Communist in the McCarthy Era.  The IRS hounded him for back taxes.  Concert promoters weren't always taking his calls now, meaning the one career option left open to him seemed to be closing as well.

Is it any surprise that he began to lose his voice...and his hair...from the stress?

But worst of all for Frank Sinatra was Ava Gardner.

Ava, the love of his life.  The passion they shared was as brilliant to behold as it was ultimately destructive.  As Ava herself said many times afterward, she and Frank deeply, furiously loved each other, but they were too much alike, and if they stayed together, they would only wind up killing each other.  Their arguments were legendary, complete with flying plates, records and picture frames, trashed hotel rooms, and expensive designer clothes removed from closets and cut to shreds with knives.  And their brawls usually ended up after a week or two of sulking with Frank sheepishly flying halfway around the world to whatever foreign film set Ava was on to beg her for forgiveness.  Reporters would greet him at airports and gleefully needle him by calling him "Mr. Gardner".

(After one of their reconciliations, a co-star on one of Ava's films asked her why she was wasting her time with that hundred pound runt.  "Because ninety pounds of that runt is cock," she said with no small satisfaction.)

By 1953, after two tumultuous years of marriage, Frank and Ava were separated.  It was not a situation that pleased him in the least, and he was forever conspiring to find ways to win her back.  But 1953 was also a very busy year for Sinatra, for it was the year in which he began to rebuild his career.

He worked on two fronts, and both paid magnificent dividends soon enough.  First of all, after months of pleading and cajoling (and backstage string pulling from Ava, who was one of Hollywood's biggest stars at the moment and thus she wielded no small amount of power; she never told Frank what she had done, because she knew his ego would be wounded), Sinatra landed the role of Pvt. Maggio in the film adaptation of From Here to Eternity.  It's not widely known that Frank had been a voracious reader his entire life, and always had books handy during down times on film sets and between curtain calls on the road.  He had read the Eternity novel several times, instantly identifying with Maggio, and was determined to play him on the screen.  Columbia Pictures was highly reluctant to cast him, but finally relented...although Frank had to agree to work for so little money, he may have well just done it for free.  But the money wasn't important to him...he knew this part would either make him or break him once and for all as an actor.  It was straight drama, without so much as a few musical bars for him to hum.  And Maggio was central to perhaps the most powerful moment in the entire movie, his own death scene.

Rehearsing intensively with his co-star, Montgomery Clift, Sinatra was more than ready when the cameras began to roll.  And when it was over, there was complete silence on the set, as the cast and crew were too stunned to say anything.  Who the hell knew Frank Sinatra was a great actor?  He'd go on to win the Oscar for playing the role.  The movie was the biggest box office smash of '53.

Concurrent with this was Sinatra's reborn career as a recording artist.  After every other label turned him down, Capital Records finally took a chance on him.  He released four singles in 1953; all of them hits, although only one of them cracked the Top Ten.  Each of them displayed a greater maturity of delivery than Sinatra's Columbia sides had.  Age, booze and hardship had lowered his singing register, adding a new gravity that he had lacked in his bobbysoxer heyday.  One song in particular, "I've Got the World on a String", suggested even greater things to come.

For all of this chart success, as far as Capital was concerned, the real acid test would be Frank's inaugural LP for them.  The label was positioning Sinatra to appeal to an older listenership, and while hit singles were always welcome (and profitable), the real goal was to make Sinatra a central figure in the soon-to-be unveiled realm of the 33 1/3 RPM album.  So at 8:00 PM (Frank always preferred to work at night, as his internal clock was set to live performance time) on November 5th, 1953, Sinatra stepped into the studio to begin work on his first Capital album.

Sinatra had a specific routine for recording, beyond the late night hours.  First and foremost, he would sing live along with the orchestra.  He considered his voice as much an instrument as the piano and the trumpet, and he needed to hear, to feel the music around him as he sang.  He also had learned to take care of that instrument, forgoing alcohol on days when he was recording, and soothing his vocal chords with tea and honey.  He also was exceptionally well-prepared.  Rarely did he have to record a song more than once, unless a musician missed a cue.  As a result, he cut all of the tracks for his album, to be called Songs for Young Lovers, in just two evenings.

And I've told you all of that to get you to this point.

Song 1, Side 1 is "My Funny Valentine", gorgeously arranged by Nelson Riddle (giving credit where credit is due, working from charts done for Frank's nightclub act by George Siravo).  As the song that greets us, it not only sets the tone for the album that follows, but more or less for Sinatra's career to follow.

Frank sings with an almost plaintive gentleness, but there's a certain playfulness (hopefulness?) on the fringes throughout.  The creative chasm between "The Voice" of the 1940s, the idol of teenaged girls, and the man singing now is the difference between a talented amateur and a singer who has mastered his craft.  With this song, Frank Sinatra stakes his claim as one of the most important musical figures of the century...and in the years that followed, he quite possibly established himself as THE leading figure.

But there's one specific reason why this song resounds so deeply for me.  I knew it the moment I first heard it, because I knew enough about the backstory of Sinatra's life at that time to read between the lines.  And the secret is this:  he wasn't singing it as Frank Sinatra...he was projecting the lyrics onto Ava, and imagining her saying these words to him.

Tell me, is this how anyone in their right mind would describe Ava Gardner?:

Your looks are laughable/
Unphotographable/
Yet you're my favorite work of art.

Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When  you open it to speak
Are you smart?

But could those adjectives be used to describe Francis Albert Sinatra?  To a T.

This was Frank, yearning so deeply his heart must have felt as if it would burst out of his chest, desperate to reunite with his love.  But no matter how much he pleads, she won't take him back.  Still, he dreams of the day when she'll call to him, express her love in that sarcastic way she used as an emotional defense, and they'll be happy together forever.

Frankie, the tough Italian kid from Hoboken, New Jersey knew that was a fool's dream.  But SINATRA needed that dream.  It was the tonic that fueled him, much more so than the gallons of Jack Daniels he would consume each calendar year.  It's a dream so powerful, and so complete, that it transforms a song that never spoke to me into something almost spiritual upon every listen.  Sixty-plus years after being recorded, it still hits like a haymaker.  If one ever needs to make the case that Sinatra matters, then as far as I'm concerned, this is the only thing you need to play to win the argument.

***

There's something of a happy ending to this, in its way.  No, Frank and Ava never reunited.  They finally divorced in 1957, but oddly this seemed to have brought them closer together, and they remained friends and confidants (and occasional bedmates, what the hell, just to relive old times) until Ava's death in the 1980s.  Her last years were ones of illness, and Frank paid all of her medical expenses.  He also paid for her funeral.

Frank had a couple of broken engagements (first to Lauren Bacall, then Juliet Prowse) before jumping into a fairly disastrous marriage to Mia Farrow in the 1960s ("You're like the son Frank and I never had," Ava told the tomboyish Mia.  Despite this, Mia came to like Ava quite a bit.), before wedding Barbara Marx in a marriage that finally took.  The day before marrying Barbara, Frank called Ava and asked her to marry him again.  She turned him down.  Ava never wed again after Frank.

Two weeks after recording Songs for Young Lovers, with From Here to Eternity still doing big box office, with his latest single, "South of the Border", moving steadily toward the Top 20, and with every indicator predicting huge successes for him as both a singer and an actor in the new year to come, Frank Sinatra sliced open his left wrist and tried to kill himself.

His latest effort to woo Ava back having failed, Frank just didn't want to go on living.  His friend, songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen, found him as he was bleeding out, rushed him to the hospital, and spread cash around to the cab driver and the nurses to keep their mouths shut.  That bleak night was the last time that Sinatra would ever succumb to such despair ever again.

Of course, he went on to monumental, almost incomprehensible success.  And yes, the bad boy streak in him would not-infrequently get him into hot water.  But although the man could so often fall victim to his mortal failings, the artist...the man who transformed "My Funny Valentine" into an anthem of lonely hope...remains untouchable to this day.

Happy birthday, Frank...and here's to the next hundred years.