This Day in Classical Music History (Sergey Rachmaninov, Melancholy, Much-Imitated Maestro, Born)

Apr. 1, 1873— Sergey Rachmaninov, who established a worldwide reputation as a composer and conductor before political exile forced him to change career direction and become a virtuoso concert pianist, was born in Semyonovo, Russia.

“I reflect the philosophy of old Russia—White Russia—with its overtones of suffering and unrest, its pastoral but tragic beauty, its ancient and enduring glory,” this self-acknowledged “last of the romantic composers” said, in an interview published by Glenn Quilty in 1959, 16 years after Rachmaninov’s death.

It was the Bolshevik regime’s loss when it made life in Rachmaninov’s “White Russia” untenable by seizing his Ivanovka estate during the Communist takeover. Packing only enough belongings to fit in a few suitcases, he embarked on a Scandinavian tour featuring 10 piano recitals, then settled in America, where he built a reputation as arguably the greatest pianist that many concertgoers had ever seen.

It’s easy to imagine Rachmaninov as the kind of wistful aristocrat nostalgic for a lost estate envisioned by Anton Chekhov. But his melancholy strain has been more likely to have been experienced in popular culture less onstage than through recorded music—credited frankly, on film (Piano Concerto No.2, in David Lean’s adaptation of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter), or uncredited, at least initially (Eric Carmen—but more on that shortly).

Pick up almost any summary of the life of Rachmaninov—even a short article—and the author will probably remark on this musical icon’s remarkably large hands—how he commanded, even exploited, all the capabilities of the keyboard, so much that his own compositions often challenged subsequent pianists without his lengthy fingers.

It’s true that he could span 12 piano keys from the tip of his little finger to the tip of his thumb. But physical assets can only carry a musician so far, in the same way that quick wrists can help but not fully account for how fast a baseball slugger can turn on a pitch.

Just as important, in both cases, are intensive training, self-discipline, and an appropriate temperament.

The training came primarily by way of the Moscow Conservatory. The self-discipline came through the slow but diligent practice regimen he learned there and urged on later students. The temperament followed an early crisis, when conductor Alexander Glazunov—whom a persistent legend claims was drunk at the time—botched the premiere of Rachmaninov’s first symphony.

The 23-year-old’s trauma was so intense (he hid on a spiral staircase during the performance, then fled into the street with catcalls ringing in his ears) hid on a spiral staircase while it was going on and then ran into the street to escape the catcalls) that he underwent hypnosis while under a psychologist’s care to overcome). When he did, the result was a triumph: the Second Piano Concerto.

The public loved Rachmaninov—sometimes too much.

Maybe you’ve heard of authors groaning over apprentice works still out there that can no longer withstand their scrutiny, right? Like W. H. Auden tweaking his early verses, with not-always-happy outcomes? That was the case with Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor, written in 1892 after his graduation from the Moscow Conservatory.

As Timmy Fisher notes in the popular “Life of a Song” column in The Financial Times early last month, Rachmaninov “considered this youthful piece unrepresentative — inferior to later efforts that were ‘not appreciated half so much.’” The composer’s lack of affection for the piece was so pronounced that he begrudged its popularity—even going so far as to risk an audience’s displeasure in 1923 by refusing to play it as an encore.

(I don’t want to leave you with the impression that Rachmaninov was always so grouchy or that he utterly lacked a sense of humor. Given the proper occasion, his ironic wit could be keen. During one performance, his friend violinist Fritz Kreisler, anxious over losing his place in the music, whispered, “Where are we?”  Rachmaninov quipped, “Carnegie Hall.”)

Even during his lifetime, Rachmaninov saw his work adapted in singular ways by pop musicians. In 1918, George L. Cobb’s “Russian Rag” transformed Prelude into—yes, ragtime music.  Twenty years later, Duke Ellington employed a swinging arrangement of the same work at the Cotton Club.

But few musicians have occasioned as much commentary for borrowing so heavily from the Russian as Eric Carmen. When I first heard that the former frontman of The Raspberries had done so for “All by Myself” for his first solo LP, I had assumed that the influence could be heard most heavily in the extended piano solo in that hit’s break. But as it happened, it was the melody itself form the Second Piano Concerto that had been used.

Then, several years ago, while listening to the Adagio movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, I sat bolt upright: that was Carmen’s “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” that I was hearing!

These borrowings can be viewed very differently by different people. A decade or two later, Carmen could have said that this was a case of “sampling.” Others might have claimed that he was paying tribute to an idol, in the manner of Brian DePalma with Alfred Hitchcock.

But because they saw no credits on the album sleeves, Rachmaninov’s descendants saw plagiarism—and they sued. Carmen has said he mistakenly believed the song was in the public domain. Before long, the lawyers got to work and everyone was happy.

“The reason that I used those things was twofold,” Carmen explained 16 years later, in an interview with Gordon Pogoda. “First, they happened to move me. That stuff gave me goose bumps every time I listened to it. Also, I thought that it's a crime that there are some spectacular melodies in classical music that the general public doesn't get exposed to. I thought this was a way for me to bring some of the classical music that I love, incorporate it into a pop song for a new decade of kids, and introduce them to those beautiful melodies that they might not otherwise hear.”

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattering, that Rachmaninov would be thrilled by all the “flattery” he’s gotten since his death. Carmen is hardly the only pop postwar composer who’s looked to Rachmaninov for inspiration: Jeff Lynne and Barry Manilow, among others, have done so.

In the decade before his death in 1943, just a few days short of his 70^th birthday, Rachmaninov may have wondered about the strength of his legacy in classical music. Such musical authorities as Virgil Thomson, Paul Rosenfield, and Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians dismissed his work.

The passage of time, though, has seen his work incorporated into the repertoire of most orchestras. Piano specialist Jeremy Nicholas goes further, writing without reservations in the January 2023 issue of Gramophone Magazine that the Russian was “perhaps the most complete musician of the past 150 years,” observing that he “operated at the highest level in three different disciplines: conducting, composing and piano playing.”

This Day in Pop Music History (Raspberries’ ‘Starting Over’ Becomes Swan Song)

September 16, 1974—The title of the fourth studio album by the power pop group The Raspberries not only tried to capitalize on one of the LP’s more commercially viable songs, but also a new direction and new hope in the replacement of two members. 

But, despite possessing what many fans consider its greatest production masterpiece and winning critical approval for once, Starting Over proved to be the group’s final collection of original material.

I have already written posts about what may have been the group’s zenith, its 1973 Carnegie Hall gig; the group’s infectious tip of the hat on Starting Over to one of their influences, the Beach Boys, on “Cruisin’ Music”; even another post on Starting Over. But that hardly exhausts what can be said about the group’s denouement.

Hopes were high, as Starting Over was released, that Michael McBride, a former member of lead singer Eric Carmen’s prior band, Cyrus Erie, would fill Jim Bonfanti’s shoes on the drums, and that Nebraska bassist Scott McCarl would not only prove an adequate permanent substitute for Dave Smalley but that he might form a creative songwriting combo with Carmen, much like their heroes, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. 

Expectations were even greater because producer Jimmy Ienner had crafted Carmen’s "Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)," into an exhilarating, Spectorian five-minute suite that began to climb the Billboard charts.

But “Overnight Sensation” could climb no higher than #18 on the singles chart and the album as a whole only reached #143. By early the following year, after a grinding tour, continuing intra-band tensions and not enough money, The Raspberries split for good.

Carmen told his side of the story in the song “No Hard Feelings” from his first, bestselling eponymous solo album:

“While we were locked in image prison waiting for that break

 We were raped, reshaped, and trying to escape

 Caught in a rock 'n' roll time warp and trying to find a way to get out."

With a record company keeping them “in image prison,” it was all a product of circumstances beyond their control, he suggested: “There isn’t anyone to blame.” In truth, the causes of the breakup were small, petty—but, because they were myriad, all that much harder to repair the damage. 

While the lack of money coming certainly didn’t help, group members also seethed and sometimes fought over songwriting credit, the direction of the band—even the apparel they wore onstage.

Carmen was considerably more prosaic about the group’s breakup in an interview with Bullzeye.com seven years ago:

“We did the Starting Over album, and Rolling Stone picked it as one of their seven best of the year in their annual writers and critics poll, and they picked 'Overnight Sensation' as the best record of the year, and we subsequently sold the fewest number of copies of any of our records, and played every hole on the east coast for six or seven solid months of demoralizing gigging. And that was pretty much the end of it. We realized at some point that there was no way to climb out. What we had tried to do had been successful on one level, and a complete bust on another level. The rock critics got it, and the 16-year-old girls got it, but FM radio was just not about to play a band that sounded like they were making singles, and so it was kind of like beating your head against the wall at a certain point. It was time to move on and try something else.”

The cumulative toll of four years of wayward promoting by Capitol Records—who, seeing the quartet’s lack of facial hair and affinity for The Beatles and The Beach Boys, had promoted them as teenyboppers (even dressing them in matching suits)—had proven too much to overcome. 

Yet critics from the time who found the band overly derivative would be astonished to find that, four decades later, the Cleveland Fab Four have won a cult following as progenitors of power pop.

It might be a stretch to call Starting Over “a loose concept album,” as one online review called it. 

But let’s just say that a strong connecting thread among the songs is the rock ‘n’ roll life, starting with the title track and proceeding through “Play On,” a McCarl tune where the bassist seems to channel John Lennon; "The Party's Over," lead guitarist Wally Bryson’s sayonara to the old incarnation of the group; “All Through the Night,” Carmen’s winking narrative of a close encounter with a groupie; and “Hands on You,” Bryson and McCarl’s louche follow-up to Carmen’s prior quartet on teenage lust: “Go All the Way,” “I Wanna Be With You,” “Ecstasy” and “Tonight.”

Fans of The Raspberries are a different breed of animal, showing up in the most unexpected situations. Several years ago, I followed up on a kind note on this blog from a reader who told me he was a church musician. How had he come across my stuff?  I asked.

I half expected to hear that this person had read a “Quote of the Day” featuring a pope, a spiritual writer, maybe even one of the psalms. But such was not the case. Instead, the church musician responded, he came upon the blog through something I wrote about The Raspberries.

It was fans like him—or, to confess my allegiance frankly, like us—who kept the dream of a Raspberries reunion going, even when the peace among its members proved so terribly fragile. 

In 2005, after 30 years of going solo, Carmen reunited with Bryson, Bonfanti and Smalley in what was originally supposed to be a one-shot gig at Cleveland’s House of Blues but that soon ended up creating a small concert tour. 

The product of that coming-together, Live on Sunset Strip, gave their rabid cult following what they had awaited all these years.

Relations among group members—particularly Carmen and Bryson—have proven so delicate that their sweet moment of the reunion might be all their fans get for their patience. But that might be enough.

Bonus Quote of the Day (Billboard, on the Raspberries’ Classic Final Album, “Starting Over”)

“Eric Carmen must be considered one of the strongest rock vocalists around, and it is a mistake to consider this band for kids only. There are a lot of music fans waiting for the kind of skillful, good rock this band serves up. Probably the strongest overall effort yet from this band, thematically and musically. Best cuts: ‘Overnight Sensation (Hit Record),’ ‘Play On,’ ‘I Don't Know What I Want,’ ‘I Can Hardly Believe You're Mine,’ ‘Starting Over.’” --“Pop Pick,” Billboard Magazine, September 28, 1974, on The Raspberries’ final album, Starting Over (from Eric Carmen’s Web site)

All hail The Raspberries! Most of the rock critics of the time wouldn’t give the power pop group of the Seventies a break, and the pressure from the record company just became too great to endure.

Two members left, but it still didn’t help. The title Starting Over took on unintended irony when the band collapsed. By the following spring, it was, as Carmen later sang on his eponymous solo album, time for “Ricky and the Tooth” (i.e., producer Jimmy Ienner).

All I know is that throughout high school, I wore out Starting Over—and, if I’d been able to get my hands on the Raspberries’ earlier LPs, they probably would have received the same treatment. For true believers, none of what I say is necessary.

But for anyone else—well, just think of some of their biggest fans: John Lennon, Keith Moon, Kurt Cobain, Bruce Springsteen. From great, full-out rock ‘n’ roll (“Cruisin’ Music,” a Beach Boys tribute covered in a prior post of mine) to the most hauntingly tender love songs (the title track), this album had it all.

But towering over it all was the first song, perhaps the great production masterpiece of Carmen’s entire career: “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record),” a thunderous five-minute extravaganza packed with piano, guitar, all-stops-out lead vocals by Carmen--and one hell of a lot of heart. It shows the struggle to get a creative product out there for fans to appreciate (“Well the program director don’t pull it/Then it’s bound to get back the bullet”), climaxing in the magical moment when the song-within-a-song issues from a transistor radio.

That LP has been consigned to history in the CD era, but I played it so often I can hear it still, as much as I can the heartbeat of my youth.

In my head I hear
The record play, hear it play…

Song Lyric of the Day (The Raspberries, Keepin’ the Summer Alive with “Cruisin’ Music”)

“Get up in the morning

Check out the weather

If it looks like sun

I get my things together

Throw some cutoffs on

Got my tank-top and tennies now

And head for the beach.”—The Raspberries, “Cruisin’ Music,” written by Eric Carmen, for the band’s album Starting Over (1974)

Some might say that “Hot Fun in the Summertime" is the greatest song that Brian Wilson should have written but didn't. My own nomination is for this one, the last chart entry before lead singer Eric Carmen left The Raspberries. It’s got all the essentials for The Summer Song—sun, sand, cars, and, of course, girls.

When he wasn’t channeling F. Scott Fitzgerald (see the song titles “Boats Against the Current” and “Winter Dreams”), Carmen was literally channeling the Beach Boys on his transistor radio. If you don’t believe me, try listening to “She Did It” from his Boats Against the Current solo album, or, in his Raspberries days, his take on the romantic dilemma of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?”, “Let’s Pretend.”

(A word of advice: Steer clear of the cover version of the latter by The Bay City Rollers. While Carmen sings the tune with conviction, you’ll probably feel the goo coming off your hands from the overhyped Seventies answer to the Beatles.)

A week ago, Carmen turned 60. It’s hard to believe that the composer of “Go All the Way,” “Ecstasy,” “Tonight,” and “I Wanna Be With You” is now a settled-down family man.

But the sound of this particular Raspberries single is so fresh that it’s easy to overlook the time-capsule lyrics (“Those suntanned girls/Are lookin' outta sight/A beach-drenched chick/Would never get uptight”).

If there were any justice in this world, the Raspberries would have been hailed as the greatest thing to hit pop since—well, The Beach Boys. But life isn’t fair.

The hell with it. Find this song on iTunes (or, in my case, a Raspberries CD), and play it loud.

Summer’s here—late, it’s true, for the New York area—but not too late to “check out the weather,” hop in the car and catch a wave.

This Day in Rock History (The Raspberries Play Carnegie Hall)

September 26, 1973—In perhaps the highlight of their career—a moment that would pass all too quickly—the quintessential Seventies power pop group The Raspberries made their New York City debut at Carnegie Hall.

Ah, The Raspberries! They have been the subjects of one of those before-and-after arguments that periodically divide devotees of Seventies rock ‘n’ roll like myself. 

Specifically, was Eric Carmen better as a solo artist (“All by Myself,” “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again”) sometimes given over to emotional weepies, or as part of the tougher Raspberries, where his bandmates could keep his lyrical side in check? 

(Similar battles have raged over whether Grand Funk Railroad was better before or after producer Jimmy Ienner, or whether Bruce Springsteen’s best work came before or after Darkness on the Edge of Town.)

I came of musical age during Carmen’s solo career, but after repeated listening to his work over the years, I’m now more inclined to lean toward his output with this quartet that never really got its due until it was too late.

The group from Cleveland had waited several years for its big New York show, and had been bitterly disappointed when a 1972 backup tour gig with the Hollies had fallen through.

Now Eric Carmen, Wally Bryson, Jim Bonfanti, and Dave Smalley made the most of the opportunity in front of a standing-room only crowd.

You want to know what makes me chuckle about this show? The boys started with some chords from The Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride” before ripping into their high-energy hymn to teenage lust, “I Wanna Be With You.”

What made that move so unusual was that a number of critics had taken them to task for what was seen as overly heavy indebtedness to the Fab Four, a perception undoubtedly enhanced in their early days by management’s decision to put them in matching outfits, just like the Liverpool moptops. (See what I mean in the photo accompanying this post.)

This time, in the same performance venue that had launched The Beatles’ invasion of America in earnest in February 1964, Carmen and Co. were, in effect, giving the finger to the critical powers that be by invoking the memory of the British musicians that had transformed their lives.

It didn’t matter—their fans loved it, as hit after hit from their first three albums came from the group, including “Go All the Way,” “Let’s Pretend,” and “Ecstasy.”

It all ended so soon afterward. Smalley and Bonfanti left the group by the end of the year. Though the LP that Carmen and Bryson made with two replacements, Starting Over, won critical acclaim (particularly for what might have been the group’s production masterpiece, “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record”), the sales just weren’t there, and it all ended up messily in a parking lot brawl. 

From then on “it was Ricky and the Tooth,” Carmen noted in “No Hard Feelings” (“The Tooth” being producer Ienner, who went on to make Carmen’s first solo album).

Among rock ‘n’ roll musicians, Carmen might have the greatest affinity for my literary hero, F. Scott Fitzgerald, as witnessed by the fact that two of his song titles were inspired by The Great Gatsby author: “Winter Dreams” and “Boats Against the Current.” 

It is ironic, then, that in the last five years, Carmen’s career disproved Fitzgerald’s observation that “There are no second acts in American lives.”

In 2005, after 30 years of going solo, Carmen reunited with Bryson, Bonfanti and Smalley in what was originally supposed to be a one-shot gig at Cleveland’s House of Blues but that soon ended up creating a small concert tour. 

The affection that had belatedly welled up for the group over the years was best illustrated by one of their greatest admirers, Bruce Springsteen, who referred to these fine musicians three different times in his summer 2005 concert tour.