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.

This Day in Rock ‘n’ Roll History (Lewis Scandal Shows Why ‘Too Much Love Drives a Man Insane’)

May 22, 1958—With Elvis Presley drafted and in the Army until 1960, with two of his own songs massive hits, Jerry Lee Lewis seemed poised to assume the mantle of “The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

But it all came apart when, landing at London’s Heathrow Airport for an upcoming UK tour, the rollicking singer-pianist acknowledged that he had a new, very young wife.

Follow-up details soon revealed that he had left out interesting details about what his prior relationship with “Myra” was (first cousins, once removed) and when they’d wed (five months before his divorce from his prior wife had been finalized).

Some defenders of the musician claimed that Lewis didn’t see what he had done as out of the ordinary, as his own sister had reportedly married at age 12. But the fact that he claimed Myra was 15 rather than her real age of 13 strongly suggests that he knew his action had run counter to larger cultural norms.

The ensuing scandal brought consequences, both short term (cries of “cradle-snatching” in half-full arenas, uncomfortable interviews with the UK police, and cancellation of the tour after only three performances) and long-term (derailing Lewis’ career stateside).

He not only never reached his expected zenith in the rock ‘n’ roll firmament, but even had trouble getting bookings for several years, with his nightly earnings dropping from $10,000 to $100. 

When he did come back, Lewis reinvented himself as a country music artist—perhaps the right genre for musicians who crooned about “heartaches by the number” and the fans who loved them.

I wrote briefly on Lewis' cultural impact in a blog post eight years ago. But perhaps nothing illustrates why this original rock 'n' roll wild man was considered so unmanageable--and such a danger by the older generation--than this career-defining episode.

“Too much love drives a man insane,” he declared in “Great Balls of Fire.” He sang it like an exultation, but it could have served better as a warning to himself to tread carefully around females—particularly young ones related to him.

Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered much. As he told Rick Bragg in an interview for the 2014 biography, Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, Myra "looked like a grown woman, blossomed out and ready for plucking ... I thought about her being 13 and all, but that didn't stop her from being a full-fledged woman."

My first sustained exposure to the story of the scandal came in the form of the 1989 biopic Great Balls of Fire! starring Dennis Quaid as Lewis and Winona Ryder as Myra. Though he re-recorded for the movie several songs that Quaid lip-synched, Lewis reportedly loathed the finished product for its inaccuracies. (Consider this: It used as its source the autobiography of his now-ex, Myra.)

Myra Gail Lewis was not the first—and would not be the last—woman that her husband would wed. This was the third union for the 22-year-old musician, and he would go on to have four more before he died last October.

Nor was it the last time his personal life would explode. A later wife would die in their swimming pool under mysterious circumstances, and another one would die of a drug overdose less than a year later—mirroring Lewis’ own descent into addiction to prescription drugs and alcohol.

There is an element of “might have been” to Lewis after his disaster. But a similar feeling attaches to the careers of other early rock ‘n’ rollers like Chuck Berry (upended by his own sex scandal, less than two years later), Elvis (trotted out by “Colonel” Tom Parker in increasingly mediocre movies), and Buddy Holly (death in a plane crash).

To his credit, whether he was at the top or bottom, Lewis always pulled out all the stops at his shows. Indeed, his lack of inhibition was a through-line from the stage to his private life.

In the wake of the singer’s death last fall, Cameron Gunnoe offered this perceptive observation in a post on the blog “Culture Sonar”:

“While Lewis’ pathological commitment to his own explosive temperament would bring about a host of problems for the musician over time, it would also endue his stage show with an intensity and fervor by which audiences would be driven regularly to borderline hysterics.”

The impact of these live shows can be seen most readily, perhaps, in Elton John—and, indeed, the English rock ‘n’ roller tipped his hat to “Killer” with a cover of “Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On” in the 2003 Sun Records tribute album, Good Rockin' Tonight.

Sir Elton simply stated the obvious at the time of Lewis’ death: “Without Jerry Lee Lewis, I wouldn’t have become who I am today. He was groundbreaking and exciting, and he pulverized the piano. A brilliant singer too. Thank you for your trailblazing inspiration and all the rock ‘n’ roll memories.”

Quote of the Day (Todd Rundgren, on His New Non-Musical Sideline)

“I have a vanity line of cannabis coming out. It’s called Hello It’s Weed.”—American rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriter and producer Todd Rundgren quoted by Nick Paumgarten, “The Talk of the Town: Dept. of Song—Day Job, The New Yorker, Jan. 2 and 9, 2023

When I read this quote from Todd Rundgren, my first reaction was to burst out laughing at the pun on his hit from half a century ago, “Hello, It’s Me.” Then I wondered if he might be pulling Nick Paumgarten’s leg.

It wouldn’t have been the first example of the rock ‘n’ roller’s bent sense of humor. After all, when he issued a quickly produced 1982 album to fulfill his last contractual obligation to longtime label Bearsville Records, he had called it The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect, and two years earlier, with his band Utopia, he had titled his parody/tribute LP in the style of the Beatles Deface the Music. It wouldn’t be beyond him to put people on again.

At the same time, the musician has, over the years, made no bones about his extensive use of cannabis. Judging from the crowd at his Central Park concerts in the Seventies, he would have had a ready-made audience for his ventures in this direction.

Well, it turns out that his comments in The New Yorker were true. Back in November, Rundgren announced his new cannabis brand, Hello, It’s Weed, a partnership with Cheef, a cannabis and CBD manufacturer based in Royal Oak, Mich.

I’m not surprised that Rundgren has tried this venture, only that he hadn’t tried it sooner. In his music he has prided himself on being innovative, experimenting with an “interactive album,” for instance, 30 years ago, with No World Order.

On the other hand, cannabis—in case you hadn’t heard—is a field where everyone’s getting into the act. Carving a niche is going to be difficult, so it’s probably wise for Rundgren to keep expectations low, as he indicated to Gary Graff of the Oakland Press late last year:

“I'm not competing with anyone who's already kind of built a little empire around it. We're doing it right now for fun and to see if people respond. And if it does well we'll probably progress."

I suspect that many of Todd’s fans from his early years have moved on with their lives, so the Evil Weed no longer has the transgressive factor that once intrigued them. But I’m not sure it matters to him, anyway, if it ever did. After all, not for nothing did he call one of his recent live CDs The Individualist.

(The image accompanying this post, of Todd Rundgren at Revolution Live in Fort Lauderdale, FL, was taken Mar. 25, 2009, by Carl Lender.)

Quote of the Day (Rick Wakeman, on an Unusual Inspiration for His ‘Six Wives of Henry VIII’)

“That night I couldn’t sleep. It was in the early hours that I finally dropped off, and the track [“Anne Boleyn”] was running through my head. And suddenly there I was, at the Tower of London. It was as vivid as a dream could be. The crowd was gathered by the gallows—I was right with them. I can’t say that I saw Anne’s head go into the basket, but after what had happened everyone started singing the hymn ‘The Day Thou Goest, Lord, Is Ended.’ I woke up with a start and said to my then-wife: ‘I’ve got the ending of the song.’ She replied [sounding bored], ‘Oh, good.’”—Rock ‘n’ roll keyboardist and composer Rick Wakeman on a seminal moment in creating The Six Wives of Henry VIII, quoted by Dave Ling, “Off With Their Heads!”, Prog Magazine, February 2023

I confess to skepticism when I read the above quote from Rick Wakeman. The dream that the on-and-off longtime keyboardist of Yes credits for spurring the creation of his first solo LP, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, released 50 years ago, sounded to me more like the product of mind-altering substances. We live in such a cynical age that many people will still believe that drugs were behind it.

Under normal circumstances, I’d take with a very, very large grain of salt Wakeman’s contention from a February 2017 interview with the UK’s Daily Mail that he’s never taken a joint or cocaine, or even popped up a pill. 

But his explanation (“That was just booze and adrenaline. And it nearly killed me anyway”) makes sense: when you smoke and drink so heavily and get so little sleep that you have three heart attacks by age 25, you don’t need more vices than you have already.

I’m not sure why I never got around to listening to this LP when I came out, or in all the years since. I had eagerly watched the British mini-series of the same name a couple of years earlier when it made a splash on US television.

Moreover, when Wakeman’s follow-ups to this epic LP, Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, came out in the next two years, I had eagerly snatched them up. But somehow, I never heard what started it all for him. 

In retrospect, I can’t believe how weird that was.

These days, it’s a bit hard for youngsters to imagine the hold that progressive rock (or, as it’s been rudely abbreviated, “prog rock”) held for those my age back in the early 70s. It was everywhere. The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” you could say, started it all, but before long all the cool kids were listening to the cool "free-form" rock stations like New York's WNEW-FM that played it, featuring groups like Procol Harum, The Moody Blues, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Renaissance, and Yes.

Even if you didn’t exactly embrace this music, you absorbed it. It was simply inescapable.

Even so, musicians of the time who played in this style must have felt at points that they were going deeply against the grain in the industry. You can’t help but come away with that impression after reading Wakeman tell Dave Ling about his presentation of the finished record to the A&M brass:

“At the end, the lawyer from America said, ‘Can I hear it with the vocals on it?’

“I replied, ‘There are no vocals, it’s an instrumental keyboard album.’

“They said, ‘Nobody makes instrumental keyboard albums,’ to which I replied, ‘I’ve just done it.’ They couldn’t get their heads around it. ‘So we’ve just paid for an instrumental keyboard album?’ ‘Yep.’ And somebody said, ‘God help us.’”

This exchange made me laugh almost as hard as Wakeman’s explanation for his inspiration. But even that didn’t make me guffaw as much as his response to the question of whether any record company execs admitted their mistake when the LP climbed to #7 on the UK charts:

“Record companies never admit they are wrong. Are you mad?!”

I had quite a few chuckles while reading Wakeman’s remarks, but even I have to admit the obvious: After you listen to this live performance of “Anne Boleyn,” I think you’ll agree that Wakeman is a marvelous musician indeed. 

King Henry may have demanded that his suspects kneel before him, but some of Wakeman's more ardent fans would gladly pay him similar homage without the threat, in tribute to his mastery of his instrument.

Song Lyric of the Day (Toad The Wet Sprocket, on Closing the Heart)

“Nothing's so cold
As closing the heart when all we need
Is to free the soul.”— “All I Want,” written by Todd Nichols, Glen Philips, Dean Dinning, and Randy Guss, from Toad The Wet Sprocket’s CD Fear (1991)

Song Lyric of the Day (John Lennon and Paul McCartney, on the People and Places ‘In My Life’)

“All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all.”—John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “In My Life,” performed by the Beatles on their LP Rubber Soul (1965)
 
Even with their very different sensibilities, John Lennon and Paul McCartney both cited “In My Life” as among their favorite Beatles songs.
 
It may be a product of advancing years, but the same goes for me.
 
It’s hard to believe that two young men, still only in their mid-20s, could create a tune of quiet reflection and affection for what had passed out of their lives. But, I guess, Joni Mitchell did much the same thing with “Both Sides Now.”

Song Lyric of the Day (Paul Simon, on the Fallout From an Earlier “Most Uncertain Hour”)

"I don't know a soul who's not been battered
Don't have a friend who feels at ease
Don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees."—American singer-songwriter Paul Simon, “American Tune,” from his There Goes Rhymin' Simon LP (1973)

Paul Simon released his mournful anthem “American Tune” in the year that America finally tallied the costs in lives lost from the recently concluded Vietnam War, investigated a criminal President, and experienced the shock of quadrupled oil prices within three months over a foreign conflict.

Simon recognized that public ordeals have their inevitable consequences in private trauma, in ways we can only begin to sense at the time.

Nevertheless, each generation, before and since, though weary at the unexpected challenges in which it finds itself, sings its “American Tune.” Let’s hope that despite ourselves, there will be another generation after us to repeat the process.