This Day in Radio History (Pioneering Female DJ Alison Steele Debuts on WNEW-FM)

July 4, 1966—Complying with a directive from the Federal Communications Commission that FM stations could no longer simulcast programming from their AM station counterparts, WNEW-FM coupled something tried and true—pop music in a middle-of-the-road (MOR) with something new: an all-female roster of deejays.

A member of this unusual group made this declaration on that Independence Day:

“Hello New York and America, this is WNEW-FM ... Where the girls are ... Welcome to history.”

The background and selection of that early group—actresses, models, and assorted TV personalities—represent a long, fascinating story in and of itself, which Dan McCue relates in this Substack post from this March.

But I want to focus on the one who delivered the above greeting, survived the format switch and mass replacement by male DJS a year later and, amid an employment environment far different from today, created a template that other females in the role pursued: Alison Steele.

To say that Steele was the first woman to win Billboard’s FM Personality of the Year in 1976 and that she was an inductee in the Radio Hall of Fame and Rock and Rock Hall of Fame doesn’t begin to describe the place she held in the imagination of faithful listeners.

You had to experience it, night after night, at your most restless and searching when you were unwilling or unable to sleep.

At the time of her hiring, Steele, a divorced single mom with a nine-year-old daughter, trailed a set of broadcasting gigs behind her: office aide, production assistant and associate producer at a New York radio station, morning exercise program leader, and, in the parlance of the day, “weather girl.”

“I was determined to be in show biz; I would do anything,” she told Su Yates of TV/Radio Week in an August 1978 interview. The Brooklyn native had been taught well by her mother, a singer and concert pianist: “She taught me a very simple rule: If I wanted something, all I had to do was go and get it.”

The entertainment world is filled with ambitious, hard-driving people who are sure that with one break, they can vault to the top of their profession.

But Steele’s willingness to try something different in that first year in her 2 pm-7 PM—theater reviews, celebrity interviews, whatever might reasonably hold a listener’s interest—may have impressed her bosses that she would be a quick study when they instituted a free-form, progressive-rock format in October 1967.

Once given her new perch from 10 PM to 2 AM six nights a week, she demonstrated the intelligence to craft an utterly individual on-air personality, signaled in her characteristic opening—a jazzy, flute-inflected melody followed by an intro she herself wrote and made famous throughout the New York City area, that, with some variations, went like this:

"The flutter of wings, the sounds of the night, the shadow across the moon, as the Nightbird lifts her wings and soars above the earth into another level of comprehension, where we exist only to feel. Come fly with me, Alison Steele, the Nightbird..."

During my adolescence more than 50 years ago, WNEW was the New York station you listened to be cool, to hear concert simulcasts, musician interviews, and most tellingly, cuts from up-and-coming artists. Truth be told, I was more familiar with Steele’s male on-air colleagues because of the early hours I needed to maintain for school.

But I stayed up for the first hour or so to hear where her inclinations took her—spinning records by Yes, Genesis, The Moody Blues, Santana, and the Grateful Dead, interviewing Thin Lizzy, KISS, and Moody Blues bass guitarist John Lodge, and reading Poe, Wordsworth, Ginsberg, and Shakespeare—all in that voice.

That voice—low, honeyed, sultry, as if Lauren Bacall or Kathleen Turner were purring directly to you. (Luckily, listeners only heard her purr and not her French poodle, Genya, chewing on a bone in the studio near her.)

Her aural allure was matched by a physical one, marked by flaming red hair and bohemian attire: suede fringed vests, leather skirts, bell-bottom jeans, and flowing velvet materials. No wonder she was rumored to have dated Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, Sean Connery and a few rock stars.

It’s been 25 years since I read veteran DJ Richard Neer’s memoir of working at the station, FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio, but I can still vividly recall this passage:

“There was once a summer concert in Central Park when [Steele] wore a thin leather halter top, a leather bikini bottom, with high boots and a bare midriff. Boys were literally falling out of trees to get a better look.”

Unlike her high-living colleagues, Neer also notes, she was never “intoxicated by anything more than a New York Rangers victory.”

During those first years on the job, Steele disclaimed negativity (“I’ve always gone by the idea that there’s something fine in life, but you have to make the effort to find what it is,” she told K. Michael Blumberg in a 1974 New York Daily News profile).

She never wrote a memoir, as another DJ, Meg Griffin, for instance, urged. But in later years, after The Nightbird had flown from WNEW, she slipped hints about the sexism and bruises along the way.

“She was burned badly a few times,” recalled Griffin. “She lost several opportunities because she was a woman, and I don’t think that’s something you forget. She’d always tell me women had to work twice as many hours and be 10 times as good to be noticed in radio.

She related additional frustrations to women’s studies scholar and author Becca Anderson, observing that at a Madison Square Garden concert, “I was the last person be introduced. So they [her fellow male WNEW deejays] were all on stage when they introduced Alison Steele, ‘The Nightbird.’” They had to wait while the crowd cheered wildly for her.

There were also petty annoyances, as when station management wouldn’t buy her a step stool so she could reach records on the top shelf, or not giving her the night off to accept her Billboard award.

Management and, perhaps, some of her fellow DJs may have felt annoyed over the attention this radio pioneer received. But it’s doubtful that any of them ever inspired, as she did, at least three fictional nighttime deejay characters on TV and screen:

*Angie, a female trucker who worked with the air name of “The Nightingale” on BJ and the Bear;

*Rita McCall, a controversial personality who draws the attention of a murderous stalker in the Kojak episode "A Strange Kind of Love"; and

*Stevie Wayne, a smalltown deejay with a beguiling voice that Adrienne Barbeau patterned after Steele, in John Carpenter’s 1980 horror film The Fog.

By the end of the 1970s, WNEW and the Nightbird came to a parting of the ways. According to Neer’s account, the station asked him whether her extensive outside activities (public appearances and producing radio and syndicated TV shows) were distracting her from the work.

For her part, Steele could see a rising demand that deejays move away from the free-form format that emphasized personality-driven selections and towards homogenized choices. So, after 13 years, she left the station that made her famous in September 1979.

Her remaining 15 years were more nomadic—a stint announcing the soap opera One Life to Live, commercials (again), serving as writer, producer, and correspondent for CNN’s entertainment and lifestyle program, Limelight, and returning to her “Nightbird” roots at 92.3 K-Rock in the late 1980s. Increasingly, they were also darkened by health concerns.

Psychologist Dr. Patricia Farrell recalled becoming acquainted with Steele after meeting her on a late-night talk show, Last Call. Off the air, Steele confided that she had cancer and “was convinced that her job and the discrimination she had to battle in the industry had caused it.”

Her “vacations” had become trips to Lenox Hill Hospital. Exhausted from the chemo, she should have taken time off but couldn’t because she needed the health insurance.

The driven woman who’d become a radio legend and role model for later female deejays Carol Miller, Jody Peterson, and Rita Houston should have had a happier ending than death at age 58. 

Rock died some time ago at WNEW, but it continues to live in the memories of Steele’s listeners, who would agree with how colleague Vin Scelsa characterized her in a tribute:

“In her undying devotion to her audience, Alison was unique. She was one of the last purveyors of the utopian, communal vision of radio.”

Song Lyric of the Day (Bob Dylan, on When All Signs Point Away From Love)

“The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you.”—American singer-songwriter and Nobel Literature laureate Bob Dylan, “I Want You,” from his Blonde on Blonde LP (1966)
 
I’ve blogged before about Blonde on Blonde, but my special feeling for one single from the Bob Dylan double-album, “I Want You,” requires me to focus on that today, the 60^th anniversary of its first appearance on the U.S. Billboard “Hot 100 chart. (It peaked at #20.)
 
More than a few critics and academics have parsed its lyrics. I’m not going to pick one interpretation—many seem perfectly plausible and non-exclusive to others. That’s what happens with lyrics so quicksilver and elusive, much like the nature of love itself.
 
Variations exist as much in its performances as in interpretation.
 
The brisk, buoyant tempo of the original recording reminds me of a later Dylan song I cherish, “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” But a decade later, indulging his penchant for not settling for a single way to play his classics, he slowed it down to give it a torch-song feeling.
 
Three decades ago, in the tribute album A Nod to Bob, the folksinger Cliff Eberhardt delivered a plaintive, keening acoustic version that rends the heart without doing any violence to the spirit of the original.

Flashback, June 1961: Elvis Flops on Film, Flies in Studio

As June 1961 moved towards its conclusion, Elvis Presley and manager “Colonel” Tom Parker tried to recover from a rare career misstep by the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Earlier in the month, the latest Elvis movie, Wild in the Country, had divided critics while leaving loyal fans in little to no doubt about its lack of value. 

Not only was it his only film to lose money during its initial release, but the title song, rushed out to boost its prospects, only peaked at #26 on the US Billboard Hot 100—hardly up to his lofty commercial standards.

It all turned around on a long session at RCA Studio B in Nashville. True Elvis fans might enjoy “Kiss Me Quick,” “That’s Someone You Never Forget,” and “I’m Yours,” but the two that scored solidly with the public were “(Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame” and “Little Sister,” which were released as a double single.

Both tunes came from the songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. The duo, who managed to get hold of his attention in 1959 by sending a demo for “A Mess of Blues” while still on his Army stint in Germany, went on to write 16 songs for The King. Amazingly, though, they never met the singer who turned their compositions into hits.

Elvis tweaked “Little Sister” slightly, cutting the tempo in half and slowing it down, according to Paul Simpson’s The Rough Guide to Elvis. By the third take, he liked the groove so much that he told his backup musicians to “burn” on the next take. 

That was the one that turned out to be a keeper, confirming Pomus’ hunch that, while Bobby Darin had decided it wasn’t for him, it would be the kind of nasty blues that Elvis did so well.

“His Latest Flame” proved a harder nut to crack. Elvis and his musicians were floundering in the studio, uncertain how to proceed. 

None of the attempts to start it on different instruments seemed to click, until someone called Pomus to see what he would play the piano portion. The songwriter was surprised to hear that his intro was three bars long rather than four.

From that realization sprang the eventual solution: a Latin flavor with a Bo Diddley beat. Tom Petty, asked by Rolling Stone Magazine for the Elvis tunes that most influenced him, described how this one came together from what originally had been “kind of a mess”:

“An acoustic guitar and a snare drum played with brushes carry the rhythm, but when the six-string bass comes in and the piano goes up to the high register, the whole thing jumps out of the speaker.”

I don’t have the technical knowledge to explain this process remotely as well as Petty did. All I know is that I never grow tired of hearing this, and it is easily among my half-dozen favorite songs by The King.

(Five of those musicians, by the way, were participating at the same time and in the same RCA studio in another recording session of a classic: Roy Orbison’s “Cryin’.” Talk about catching lightning in a bottle!)

Technically, Presley’s was a cover version of this Pomus-Shuman composition: Del Shannon had already released it as a single and cut from his debut album, Runaway With Del Shannon. 

But Presley’s interpretation is the one that, more likely than not, you’ll hear on your favorite oldies station, because once the “His Latest Flame/Little Sister” double single was released in August, it shot into the top 5 in the Billboard charts and all the way up to #1 in the UK.

The following year, Elvis lured his fans back to the movies with Blue Hawaii, another formulaic profit-maker that generated additional soundtrack sales. By now, he was tiring of plots that sidetracked him from his ambition to become another James Dean.

But he felt no such ambivalence about “His Latest Flame.” Even while making it, he noted, “It’s a good song. I like it even if it takes us 32 hours.” He had no reason to revise that opinion in the years to come.

Exhibit Review: "‘Born To Run' at 50," Passaic County Arts Center, Hawthorne NJ

Fifty-one years ago this month, when Eric Meola came to photograph Bruce Springsteen for the upcoming song collection, Born To Run, the Columbia Records singer-songwriter had two albums under his belt that attracted little interest. It was a real question how long the label would retain this young musician whose talent hadn’t yet registered with the public.

That sense of everything riding on the present moment permeated the studio where Springsteen had been reworking his songs for months. Not surprisingly, Meola found “someone who had put his soul on the wire for the better part of a year to make eight songs.”

The intensity of one artist was matched by the one viewing and capturing his image. “I had a sense of the history unfolding in front of my camera,” Meola remembered. “I wanted to photograph that history more than anything I have ever worked on.”

The product of that session featuring Springsteen and saxophonist and onstage foil Clarence Clemons is at the heart of “Born To Run at 50,” an exhibition at the Passaic County Arts Center (PCAC) in Hawthorne, NJ, containing a sampling of items from the recently opened Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University.

Three months ago, at the time the exhibit opened, I clipped an article out of my local paper, The Bergen Record, about this commemoration of that landmark album’s cultural impact and the aftermath of its success.  The other day, picking up that piece again, I wondered when I should see it.

At that point, a lyric from another Springsteen LP went through my mind: “Summer’s here and the time is right.” There was no doubt that I had to see this.

One photo plucked out of the Meola session, folded in half and wrapped around, ended up on the cover of Born To Run and found their way, Springsteen noted, in “the windows of every record store in America”: the one with him leaning on the cover of Clemons—“the big man with the big smile,” in Meola’s words.

But in truth, almost any of the more than two dozen outtakes displayed on the walls of the PCAC would have made for a compelling visual image of this turning point in The Boss’s life.

My favorite shows the same Springsteen attire (black leather jacket, tweed cap) as the album cover, but with sneakers hanging off the guitar and an “Elvis Fan Club of NYC” button on his jacket.

In addition to the evocative Meola photos, the exhibit contains other artifacts documenting Springsteen’s time in New Jersey in the two-year period between Born To Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, such as:

*A handwritten note addressed to the “landlordess” of the cottage where he composed Born To Run, apologizing for a later payment of a water bill (two humorous postscripts ask, “Do you like my classy writin’ paper?” and “I’m practicing my autograph. Whadya think?”

*An artistic recreation of the customized guitar featured on the cover of the album;

*A video from his acclaimed 1978 performances at the now-defunct Capitol Theatre in Passaic;

*A now-ragged sweater worn by The Boss thrown into the audience at one of these shows, then caught—and now displayed, like a precious relic, all these years later.

For longtime fans like myself, the exhibition (which runs through July 19 at the PCAC (in the John W. Rea House, 675 Goffle Road, Hawthorne) offers the opportunity to relive when the New Jersey rock ‘n’ roll scene (including good friend Southside Johnny) burst with vitality and the seemingly endless promise of being young and alive.

For later generations, it tells a story of how music was recorded, promoted, and performed long before the digital era utterly transformed how the industry reached millions of listeners worldwide.

The exhibit has whetted my interest in seeing what other events may be sponsored by PCAC. And, at some point, I’ll have to drive down to Monmouth County and spend a few hours at the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music.

Song Lyric of the Day (Cat Stevens, on ‘The Old Schoolyard’)

“Remember the days of the old schoolyard
When we had imaginings
And we had all kinds of things.”— British singer-songwriter and musician Yusuf/Cat Stevens, “(Remember the Days of the) Old Schoolyard,” from his Izitso LP (1977)
 
In the Seventies, I bought and listened incessantly to every Cat Stevens song I could, until the Izitso LP. I couldn’t imagine that by the end of the year, he’d convert to Islam, starting enormous changes in his life—and that this would turn out to be the last song collection of his that I’d own.
 
At the time of its release 49 years ago this week, “Old Schoolyard” represented something of a comeback for Stevens after the commercially disappointing Numbers collection. This song reached #33 on the Billboard Top 100, the last time to date he’s achieved that distinction.
 
Maybe to the extent that it was successful, it was because “Old Schoolyard” tapped into baby boomers’ wistfulness and nostalgia. That’s certainly why it, along with another tune from the LP, “Child for a Day,” made such an impression on me at this time, when I was looking forward to senior year of high school, wondering what college would bring—and thinking back to what really wasn’t so long ago, to my own elementary school days.
 
Now in my retirement years, it all feels so much longer and far away. With another June here and another age cohort saying goodbye to this environment, do the younger generations go through something of the same thought process—or, in this digital age, are they too caught up in the present moment to consider how they and the world have changed?
 
On his “From My Desk at Home” blog, Steven Pereira—a couple of years older than me—offers an especially thoughtful meditation on childhood as a life stage for both Stevens and himself.

Flashback, January 1976: Massive ‘Comes Alive’ Success Nearly Undoes Frampton

Frampton Comes Alive! came charging out of the gate at the start of 1976 and maintained its momentum throughout the year, and beyond. English guitarist Peter Frampton experienced the kind of success he’d never enjoyed before, as the double-live set became the best-selling LP of the year—and, with more than 8 million copies sold in the U.S. and 11 million worldwide, it remains one of the bestselling live albums of all time.

All of it came at a price, though, that left him, in the words of screenwriter-director Cameron Crowe (a friend since interviewing him for Rolling Stone) “strapped to the nose cone of rock 'n' roll.”

It wasn’t a case of success too soon—Frampton’s lack of a commercial breakthrough after four solo LPs had left him craving more. But it was a case of too much, as the 25-year-old loathed himself for following management’s urging to follow up with an ill-conceived studio album and a film adaptation of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The lack of preparation for overwhelming success contrasted enormously with his careful buildup as a live performer. 

As the opening act for a number of more seasoned performers—Edgar Winter, J. Geils, ZZ Top, and “the best teacher” Steve Marriott—Frampton “learned something new from every act—how they got the audience going, how they built their set. I would steal stuff from everyone, watch how they would say certain things and what reaction they would get.”

The original plan was to have a single LP of his live performances. But he was persuaded to add more songs to fill out a second disk—notably, “Baby I Love Your Way” and “Show Me the Way,” which became hit singles that lifted the collection into the sales stratosphere.

“Show Me the Way” featured the distinctive sound of Frampton’s electric guitar filtered through a “Talk Box,” as did the third single, “Do You Feel Like We Do.”

The news that the album hit #1 in April initially made Frampton euphoric: “Career-wise this was the best news I could ever hear—I was in shock.” Then self-doubt began to creep in: “I couldn’t help listening to the man on my other shoulder whispering, ‘How are you going to follow this one up, buddy?’”

By the end of the road tour to promote Frampton Comes Alive!, the new rock idol was feeling utterly frazzled. In an interview this month with Christopher Scapelliti of Guitar Player, Frampton reflected, “The biggest mistake was just not shutting down at that point.”

But he yielded to the advice of manager Dee Anthony that he get back into the studio and record I’m in You, even though he felt he didn’t have enough good songs at that point to put out a full disk.

The influence of Anthony—who, according to Frampton, was connected to organized crime—was malign in other ways, as perhaps indicated by his listing on this 2019 list of “Classic Rock Musicians Who Got Ripped Off by Managers and Record Labels Part 1.”

Anthony had “three rules of success” cited in Fred Goodman’s 1997 account of the business of rock ‘n’ roll, The Mansion on the Hill: “The first thing is, get the money. The second thing is to remember to get the money. The third thing…is always remember to get the money.”

His ultimate aim was to steer clients away from thinking about their finances, and he had a surefire means of doing so with Frampton, the musician remembered:

“I was kept high. If I needed weed, he [Anthony] made sure I had weed. If I needed cocaine, he made sure I had cocaine. He didn’t want me thinking about what was going on. It was criminal. I could have put him in jail.”

A 1978 car crash almost killed Frampton, and it took 20 years for him to shake his alcohol and drug addictions. The story of his rise and fall sounds like an episode of Behind the Music (and in fact, in the year 2000, it was an episode of the long-running VH-1 series).

Only that wasn’t the end for him. He rediscovered his love of music when he became lead guitarist on tour for longtime friend David Bowie in 1987; released several well-received solo albums in the 1990s; acted in Crowe’s Oscar-winning Almost Famous; and published Do You Feel Like I Do?, a memoir notable for its honesty and thoughtfulness.

In 2024, Frampton was elected to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and as I wrote in this blog post at the time, “few have reacted with as much modesty and gratitude” to this honor. His 2019. Frampton disclosure that he was diagnosed with the inflammatory muscle disease Inclusion-Body Myositis left many fans wishing him nothing but the best, and glad that they could see him perform for as long as his health permits.

Quote of the Day (Patti Smith, With Advice for Young Artists)

“The most important thing is the work and the evolution of the work….So focus on the work. That is the greatest gift we have as artists, to create an enduring work.”—American poet, rock-and-roll singer-songwriter, and memoirist Patti Smith, quoted by Amanda Fortini, “Literature Innovator: Patti Smith,” WSJ. Magazine, November 2020

(The image accompanying this post, of Patti Smith performing at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, was taken by her sister, Kimberly Smith, on Dec. 31, 2007.)

The Fallen Boys of Summer: RIP, Brian Wilson and Sly Stone

 Just when music fans with indelible memories of the Sixties were getting used to the death of Sly Stone, Brian Wilson followed him within 48 hours.

The conjunction of deaths had an all too sad symmetry: both gone at age 82, with their heyday as pop trailblazers 50 to 60 years behind them, undone by drug abuse, with occasional reappearances in the spotlight that started and electrified admirers.

The critical and commercial peak of each man lasted for about five years. At first, to the wide public that snapped up their hits, most, if not all, of their behavior seemed a matter of the kind of eccentricity that often accompanies artistic genius, like Wilson wearing a fireman’s hat while directing a promo video for “Good Vibrations” or Stone donning long wigs and hats.

For Wilson and Stone, the expectations generated by their success proved too immense to handle. Somewhere along the line eccentricity shaded into instability, then worse: mental illness (Wilson) or homelessness (Stone).

By 1975, canceled concerts and musician departures meant the effective end of Sly’s band. The Beach Boys carried on, even braving multiple changes in popular taste. But at roughly the same time that the Family Stone folded its tents, the Beach Boys became no more than Mike Love’s nostalgic troupe. 

Canceled concerts followed, then isolation from collaborators, a vacuum in their bands’ leadership, and concluding with declines on the pop charts. Their creativity then came only in fits and starts. Wilson admitted to Rolling Stone that he became “too concerned with getting drugs to write songs.”

Eventually, reality fractured Wilson and Stone without destroying them. 

That is not what I remember them at their best, though. Then, while listening to their best records—the Beach Boys’ entire Pet Sounds LP, “Good Vibrations,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Don’t Worry,” or Sly’s “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music,” or “Everybody is a Star”—I can only marvel at their effortless mastery of sounds and styles.

But, although the Beach Boys and Sly and the Family Stone released records throughout the calendar year, I—and, I suspect, many other fans—think of them overwhelmingly in terms of summer.

Wilson ran with his brother Dennis’ suggestion that the group record songs appealing to the carefree, hot-rod-and-surf culture then springing up in California, giving rise to a whole string of hits: “Little Deuce Coupe,” “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfer Girl.” Stone and his band became indelible parts of the counterculture with their summer 1969 appearances at Woodstock and the Harlem Cultural Festival.

During his glory years, Stone created what sounds like a quintessentially Beach Boys tune: “Hot Fun in the Summertime.” In fact, the Beach Boys, nearly three decades after their time atop the charts, recorded a cover version for their Summer in Paradise CD.

For fans of the two groups, their peaks occurred during our summers, too—when our energy seemed as endless as the world that beckoned to us.

But, for all the aural complexity of their masterpieces, they won the allegiance of listeners with simple, effervescent messages of joy and love.

Decades ago, we could never imagine Wilson and Stone getting old, any more than we could imagine we could. Their bodies may have died, crumbling as much from their Dionysian excesses as from old age, but they live in the endless summer of memory, where youth is forever golden.

(The image of Sly Stone that accompanies this post was taken in Berkeley, CA, on Apr. 16, 1982, by Sarfatims.)

Flashback, May 1965: The Byrds’ ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ Starts Climbing the Charts

With lyrics taken from a sprawling, trippy Bob Dylan song and a jangling guitar sound like the Beatles, a recently assembled Southern California quintet, The Byrds, launched the folk-rock movement with “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which began its march up the pop charts in May 1965.

A month later the tune hit #1—the only Dylan-penned tune ever to do so—and, as the lead song and title track of their first album, turbocharging sales of that collection.

The term “folk rock” was coined specifically by journalist Eliot Siegel to account for what “Mr. Tambourine Man” sought to bring together: the depth and lyrical sophistication of folk music with the energy and backbeat of rock ‘n’ roll.

By the end of the summer of 1965, record companies couldn’t rush musicians fast enough into studios to capitalize on the new trend. (Tom Wilson was especially influential, producing an electrified version of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” that revived the duo’s partnership after their underperforming debut, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.)

The band—which formed only the year before when Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke joined Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark of The Jet Set—came across the song via their producer and manager Jim Dickson, who had secured a rough demo by Dylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott from Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman.

With Crosby particularly opposed to recording the song, it took strenuous convincing on the part of Dickson to bring the band around. In his 2020 memoir Time Between, Hillman remembered the producer’s clinching argument:

“You guys need to go for substance and depth. Make records you can be proud of—records that can hold up for all time. Are we making an artistic statement or just going for a quick buck?”

Dickson and the band had to figure out first, however, how to adapt this acoustic tune to the rock ‘n’ roll market:

*They switched from Dylan’s 2/4 time—more suitable for country/bluegrass—to a 4/4 groove;

*They added electric guitars, including McGuinn on a twelve-string Rickenbacker also used by the Searchers and the Beatles’ George Harrison;

*Though the Byrds played on the rest of the album recorded to follow up on the single, the only member to play an instrument on the single was McGuinn, as the famous session ensemble The Wrecking Crew were brought in for the breakthrough single;

*In place of Dylan’s idiosyncratic vocal, McGuinn aimed for a sweet spot between Dylan’s and John Lennon’s, with Clark and Crosby layering in background harmonies, with the result capturing “that angelic sound I’d heard when they were first becoming familiar with each other’s voices,” noted Hillman.

*With FM radio still a few years away, the group condensed Dylan’s four word- and image-heavy verses down to one, to accommodate AM stations’ time limits of 2½-3 minutes for singles.

Dylan, for one, was excited by the results of their three-hour January 20, 1965, studio session with the song, exclaiming “Wow, man, you can even dance to that!” So, too, was the preteen daughter of influential nightclub owner and talent agent Benny Shapiro, whose enthusiasm persuaded her father to talk it up with prominent figures in the music industry.

Eventually, the Byrds’ demo brought to the band’s door Columbia Records, which offered a deal for a couple of records that, if successful, would lead to an album. The company then assigned producer Terry Melcher (son of Doris Day) to work on the follow-ups.

With the success of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Los Angeles became “the main spawning ground for folk rock,” according to a 1986 Rolling Stone article. Several groups followed in the vein that The Byrds opened, including The Turtles, We Five, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, and Spanky and Our Gang, to name just a few.

Ironically, The Byrds’ biggest impact may have registered on the songwriter whose work helped jumpstart their careers: Dylan. It wasn’t only that, according to critic David Fricke, the songwriter, “until then largely known as King Folk, suddenly had the ear of an enormous teenage pop constituency.”

Furthermore, hearing their version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” spurred him to record an electric side for his next LP, Bringing It All Back Home. Later in 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, he would outrage folk purists by pursuing this experimentation more intensively.

Perhaps responding to criticism that they were too reliant on covers of Dylan and other songwriters—and by the outspoken Crosby’s urging that they (and especially he) should compose their own songs that would earn royalties—the Byrds, over the next few years, increased the original content of their LPs.

Not content with launching folk-rock, the group went on, through restless innovation and personnel changes, to pioneer, through their own compositions, other musical genres through the late Sixties: psychedelic rock (through “Eight Miles High,” an account of a disastrous trip to Britain that many interpreted as laden with drug references) and country rock (Sweetheart of the Radio, featuring Hillman’s friend Gram Parsons).

For years, I wished that The Byrds had recorded “Mr. Tambourine Man” beyond their abbreviated, AM-oriented version. Then, in 1990, I was delighted to find that the briefly reunited McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman had included such a longer version at a Roy Orbison tribute concert featured on the group’s 1990 career-spanning 4-CD box, The Byrds. 

You can watch that performance—featuring a surprise appearance by Dylan himself—in this YouTube clip.

Song Lyric of the Day (Bruce Springsteen, on ‘When All the Summers Have Come to an End’)

“I’ll see you in my dreams
When all the summers have come to an end
I’ll see you in my dreams
We’ll meet and live and love again.” —American rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, “I'll See You in My Dreams,” from his CD Letter to You (2020)

Song Lyric of the Day (The Moody Blues, on Being ‘Part of the Fire That Is Burning’)

“We're part of the fire that is burning,
And from the ashes we can build another day.”—"The Story in Your Eyes,” written by Justin Hayward, performed by The Moody Blues on their Every Good Boy Deserves Favour LP (1971) 

Quote of the Day (Peter Frampton, on Musicians With Longevity)

“People who have longevity in music are usually the ones who never think they’re that special, so they keep pushing the envelope, listening, and learning more. I'll never be as good as I want to be, because the goal posts are always moving. If a player ever starts to think they're hot s—t and stops trying to improve themselves, it's curtains, or stagnation at the very least. But my friend and yours, B. B. King, was the most humble man, till the day he died.”— English-American rock ‘n’ roll guitarist and singer-songwriter Peter Frampton with Alan Light, Do You Feel Like I Do?: A Memoir (2020)

B.B. King would find a kindred spirit, I firmly believe, in Peter Frampton. Few entertainers have known his level of fame as a teen idol after the release of his multiplatinum album Frampton Comes Alive in the mid-Seventies. 

But few have reacted with as much modesty and gratitude after his richly deserved election to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame last month.

There was a time when I would have gagged on that phrase “richly deserved.” I had purchased and enjoyed Frampton Comes Alive, but been deeply disappointed with his solo follow, I’m in You, as well as with his participation in a film project I still regard as sacrilegious, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

To his credit, Frampton has acknowledged these creative mistakes, along with the substance abuse that put his career and life at risk for a long time. He rededicated himself to his work and reminded listeners why, ever since his days with Humble Pie, he became one of the elite rock ‘n’ roll guitarists.

Memoirs can be a fraught genre, filled at times with artful trimming and deception, but Frampton’s strikes me as one written by a musician who takes pride in his work and the friends he’s made along the way without yielding to overweening ego. In short, he seems as likable as they come.

Fans naturally value skill in performers, but honesty, humility and thankfulness can be in far shorter supply. These latter qualities shine as brightly with Frampton as the prowess with the “talk box” that made him a music-industry phenomenon nearly a half-century ago.

(For further information on the inflammatory muscle disease through which Frampton has persevered over the last half-dozen years, inclusion body myositis (IBM), see this July 2020 post from the Myositis Association blog.)

(Photo of Frampton performing at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, FL, taken on Sept. 26, 2006, by Carl Lender)

TV Quote of the Day (‘WKRP in Cincinnati,’ As the Station Deals with ‘Hoodlum Rock’)

[The station is promoting the band “Scum of the Earth,” pioneers of what they call “hoodlum rock.”]

Jennifer Marlowe [played by Loni Anderson]: “Where is Mr. Pievy?”

Dog/Sir Charles Weatherbee [played by Michael Des Barres]: “He got out of the car. That's actually the last we saw of him, I think.”

Dr. Johnny Fever [played by Howard Hessemann]: “Was the car moving when he got out?”

Dog: “Yes... I believe it was.”

Arthur Carlson [played by Gordon Jump]: “Why would he do a thing like that?”

Blood [played by Peter Elbling]: “We don't know. But that's our story, and we're sticking to it.” — WKRP in Cincinnati, Season 1, Episode 4, “Hoodlum Rock,” original air date October 9, 1978, teleplay by Hugh Wilson, directed by Michael Zinberg 

Quote of the Day (Keith Richards, on His Luck)

“I’ve been so lucky, I don’t believe it. I'm sure I'm going to pay in the next life. Hell is really going to be hell for me. I don't know why I've been given all this. You couldn't dream it up, man, you couldn't write it.”—Rolling Stones founding member, co-songwriter, and guitarist Keith Richards quoted in Alan Light, “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But He Likes It),” WSJ. (The Magazine of The Wall Street Journal), March 2018 issue

Surely, Mr. Richards feels “lucky” not just because of his astonishing commercial success as a member of the Stones, but also because, despite a lifestyle that could have killed him as many as 50 years ago, he has survived to turn 80 today.

BTW, his 2010 memoir co-written/ghosted by James Fox, Life, is, for my money, the most insightful autobiography by a rock ‘n’ roller about what has gone into the music he’s created.

This Day in Rock History (Hall and Oates Take Step Forward With ‘Abandoned Luncheonette’)

Nov. 2, 1973— Abandoned Luncheonette, released by Atlantic Records, epitomized the larger career arc of Daryl Hall and John Oates: slowly building momentum until a confluence of factors brought a commercial breakthrough.

The two singer-songwriters, who would go on to become the number-one duo in rock ‘n’ roll history, were not strictly an Eighties phenomenon, despite what their ubiquity in silly MTV videos might lead one to believe. They signed their first contract with Atlantic in 1970, and released their first LP, Whole Oats, two years later.

Hall and Oates didn’t let their initial paltry sales discourage them. Instead, in the spring of 1973 they returned to the studio, only this time they moved to New York City, which allowed them to collaborate more closely with Whole Oats producer Arif Mardin.

The relocation not only got the pair thinking more intently how to achieve the sounds they wanted from other musicians in the confined space of a studio, but exposed them to multiple musical genres in the world’s greatest metropolis.

At first, it appeared that Abandoned Luncheonette wouldn’t do much better than its predecessor. Upon initial release, the lead single, “She’s Gone,” only peaked at #60 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

But when a cover version by Tavares hit the top of the R&B chart, Atlantic re-released it three years later, and the original climbed into the top 10 on the pop list.

While “She’s Gone” was the eventual breakout hit, other songs on the album’s first side have remained also fan favorites for the last 50 years. 

Mine include “Las Vegas Turnaround (The Stewardess Song),” inspired by Oates’ introductory conversation with the woman who became Hall’s longtime girlfriend and muse, Sara Allen, and “When The Morning Comes,” featuring special contributions from Hall on mandolin and Chris Bond on mellotron.

The album as a whole took longer to take off, but 29 years after it came out, it finally was certified platinum, with a million copies sold. Charlie Ricci’s recent post on the blog “Something Else Reviews” uses the term “acoustic soul” (i.e., folk music with the R&B-inflected Philly harmonies the pair had grown up with) to describe the sound they achieved.

I have a higher opinion of Hall and Oates’ Eighties work than Ricci does (and, as I explained in a blog post from three years ago, I particularly value the multi-hit, multiplatinum Voices). But I agree fully with his assessment of Abandoned Luncheonette as "one of the best albums of the classic-rock era."

In his 2017 memoir Change of Seasons, Oates remembered it fondly as the album “I always go back when I need to remember how things should be done. The collection that still resonates through every bone in my body. A musical moment that became such a personal benchmark, that to this day I measure everything against it.”

Quote of the Day (Tom Bligh, on Cover Songs)

“Movies get remade, songs get covered. A cover song comes with history attached. The song’s past blends with its present to create something surprising yet recognizable: two stories in one, two contexts, two visions. Covers are familiar enough that we know what to expect, plus there’s opportunity for the unexpected, an appealing combination of same/different. Our favorite songs slip away from us when overplayed. The familiarity does breed contempt. They become routine. We hardly notice what makes them special. A friend of mine says these songs don’t register until you’re drunk. Then they come through, fresh and strange; you appreciate them all over again. I propose another way to make old songs new: the cover song. The best covers show both artists in a new light.”— Fiction writer and Mount St. Mary’s Univ. English Professor Tom Bligh, “A Treatise on Cover Songs,” The Oxford American, Issue 54, Fall 2006 (Music Issue 2006)

Growing up, I never cared much to know if a song was a cover version or not. But as I’ve grown older, having witnessed the whole cavalcade of American rock ‘n’ roll and more fascinated by its history, cover songs have fascinated me more and more.

In fact, I’ll even search YouTube for songs by artists I enjoy, but covered by others.

Tom Bligh’s article From The Oxford American—which I came across again the other day—has some interesting things to say about this phenomenon, including that the “original artist” doesn’t refer to the songwriter, but rather the person who made the first public recording. (Case in point: Frank Sinatra, who did not compose songs himself but often was the first to release songs created by some of the prime names in the Great American Songbook, notably Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.)

He also makes a telling observation about how performers “make the song their own”:

“When people like a cover, the common saying is that the artist ‘made it his/her own.’ That’s never entirely true. Bits of associative residue cling to even the best covers. The relationship of cover to original is not wax-museum dummy to real person. We don’t listen to a cover song because we can’t find the original—we listen to experience the pleasure of a familiar song in a different way.”

I think you might also like this article listing “75 Greatest Cover Songs by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees.” Yes, this list is entirely subjective, so I’m sure it’ll start more than a few arguments about what gets included, what doesn’t, and whether certain artists deserve to be ranked so high or low.

But I’m also sure nearly everyone will find songs that they will nod along in agreement with—and maybe sing along to. My personal favorites on the list, for what it’s worth, are (to list the cover artists with original performers in parentheses): George Harrison’s “If Not for You” (Bob Dylan), David Bowie’s “China Girl” (Iggy Pop), Rod Stewart’s “I Know (I’m Losing You)” (The Temptations), Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Got To Get You Into My Life” (The Beatles), and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Woodstock” (Joni Mitchell).

Over the years, I have created mixtapes for friends of cover songs. At some point I’ll share one or more of those lists—and maybe even the “liner notes” I included.

Quote of the Day (Robbie Robertson, on Not Giving Up on Dreams)

“People would say to me: ‘You’re just a dreamer. Everyone talks about this stuff, but those kinds of things don’t happen for people like us. You’re gonna end up working down the street, just like me. You’re gonna get your heart broken. Most of the people round here just end up in prison, so you might as well get used to the idea.’

“So part of that is crushing, and the other part of it is: ‘Oh yeah? I’ll show you a thing or two.’ I think I was able to hold my chin up and say: ‘I’m on a mission. I’m moving on. And if you look for me, there’s only going to be dust.’”— Robbie Robertson (1943-2023), Canadian rock ‘n’ roll guitarist, songwriter, and member of The Band, quoted by Rob Hughes, “Robbie Robertson Interview: Life with Bob Dylan, Martin Scorsese and The Band,” Classic Rock Magazine, January 15, 2020

The photo accompanying this post, of Robbie Robertson at the New York City Rock ‘n’ R Hall of Fame inductions on March 6, 2000, was taken by Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel, MD.

Flashback, May 1973: ‘Rhymin’ Simon’ Continues to Propel Paul’s Post-Artie Career

The 50^th anniversary this month of the release of There Goes Rhymin’ Simon would have been reason enough to write about this LP that cemented the commercial strength of Paul Simon apart from longtime partner Art Garfunkel.

But two bits of news about the singer-songwriter over the last week may well bring to a close his remarkable pop career.

First, Simon released Seven Psalms, a CD that is, by all accounts, not a pop recording at all. With his continual quest to experiment with musical textures (including from outside North America), there is a real question if he cares to return to the rock ‘n’ roll or folk genres that inspired him in the first place.

The second bit of news is the report that, during studio sessions for Seven Psalms, he “quite suddenly” and mysteriously lost most of the hearing in his right ear. After nursing for several weeks the unsuccessful hope that his condition would soon improve, he now wonders if he will be able to perform live ever again.

Certainly other singers and musicians have dealt for years with hearing impairment (indeed, I was astonished to discover, from this 2018 AARP article, just how extensive that list is—everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Barbra Streisand).

But, at 81 years of age and following a nasty bout of COVID-19 as well, Simon’s opportunities to take the stage will diminish, while his periodic bouts of insecurity and depression may very well increase. In that case, even the creative energy needed to compose a song may well ebb. So it becomes an open question whether we will hear from him in any creative forum.

The Wall Street Journal review that first alerted me to the release of Seven Psalms noted that it was only the 15^th studio album of Simon’s six-decade career. If it turns out to be an unexpected career valedictory, it makes it all the more worthwhile to retrace his artistic evolution--including There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, the second album in his solo career.

In a post from last year, I expressed my abiding enthusiasm for “American Tune” as a powerful lyrical statement on the state of the country, both at the time of its composition (the divisive Vietnam-Watergate era) and today.

I did not realize until further researching the song now, however, that it was based on the 18^th-century J.S. Bach chorale “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” (translated, appropriately enough, as “O Sacred Head Now Wounded"). The mood is one of resignation amid “the age’s most uncertain hour.”

It is a distinct outlier for an album otherwise brimming with looseness, optimism, and humor, reflecting Simon’s joy as a husband (“Something So Right”) and new father (“St. Judy’s Comet”).

In contrast, the album’s first single, “Kodachrome,” is a rollicking retrospective just before the onset of middle age, with the narrator recalling his school days and life as a bachelor. Its jaunty, carefree tone would have been one that other Americans who, like Simon, came of age in the Fifties would have identified with, as the nation indulged in a nostalgia craze that saw the Broadway premiere of Grease, the movie premiere of American Graffiti, and, on TV, the first episode of Happy Days.

“Going Home” was the original title of the song, but it was only a temporary phrase. As he told veteran deejay Scott Muni in a 1988 interview, "I was thinking as I was doing it, 'Well, I'm certainly not going to call the song 'Going Home,' there must be 250 songs called 'Going Home.' That's not going to do anything. 

Knowing his ambivalence about any association with his days with Garfunkel, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he also resisted any comparison with their hit “Homeward Bound.”

“Kodachrome” turned out to be a felicitous replacement, at least lyrically. (The use of a branded name led the song to be banned from the BBC.) From it emerged those “nice bright colors” in the refrain, and “everything looks worse in black and white” as a wry comment on the women he knew when he was single.

A couple of years after “Kodachrome’s” release, at an assembly at my high school, the opening line—“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school”—provoked many students to leap to their feet, undoubtedly to the discomfort of the administration and faculty.

There Goes Rhymin’ Simon represented something of a studio departure for Simon, both in the number of multiple producers (not just Simon and his longtime producer from the albums with Garfunkel, Roy Halee, but also Phil Ramone, Paul Samwell-Smith, and even the accomplished Alabama studio musicians, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) and the number of multiple voices (also including the New Jersey folk music duo Maggie and Terre Roche, as well as the gospel quintet, the Dixie Hummingbirds).

In general, I prefer Simon’s songs from his collaboration with Garfunkel to his solo work. But his penchant for trying out new sounds and musical directions (demonstrated even more dramatically with Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints) is something to be respected, and the results in these cases, as with the best of There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, are entirely admirable.

The public certainly embraced it. “Kodachrome” and “Loves Me Like a Rock” each shot to #2 on the singles chart, and the album as a whole sold two million copies in its first year alone. A late friend of mine said she regarded Bob Dylan as America’s pop poet and Simon as its pop psychologist. By that standard, Simon was expressing the mood of a generation transitioning from youthful protest to something approaching private happiness—still tentative, but hopeful.