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.”

This Day in Rock History (Stewart Becomes Solo Superstar with ‘Every Picture Tells a Story’)

May 28, 1971—The LP Every Picture Tells a Story primarily featured song covers, but it was a tune co-written by Rod Stewart—one that he considered leaving off the finished product—that propelled the 26-year-old to solo superstardom, after stints with the Hoochie Coochie Men, Steampacket, the Jeff Beck Group and The Faces.

As he had done with his solo studio album from the prior year, Gasoline Alley, Stewart included a composition by Bob Dylan, “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” on this new 10-song Mercury collection.

But the influence of Dylan may have been more strongly, if unconsciously, absorbed when the working-class son of a North London plumber let his creativity flow on what became the album’s monster hit, “Maggie May.” 

Recalling why he had reservations about including this song that he had recorded rapidly in the studio, Stewart remembered in his 2012 autobiography, Rod:

“It didn’t have a chorus. It just had these rambling verses. It didn’t really have a hook. How could you hope to have a hit single with a song that was all verse and no chorus and no hook? And it went on a bit: it was more than five minutes long, for God's sake, which was pretty much operatic by the standards of the pop single."

Perhaps he “should have known from listening to Bob Dylan,” Stewart reasoned, that “the lack of a catchy phrase in the middle,” not to mention a song exceeding the average length of a single, was not necessarily an impediment to significant radio time. (Indeed, see "Positively 4th Street" and “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”)

Nor was Stewart’s raspy voice an obstacle to success: Dylan’s vocals, likened to “a dog with his leg caught in barbed wire” by an unnamed Missouri folk singer cited by critic Nat Hentoff, had already proven that unconventional sounds could be tolerated if they were also expressive and evocative. Similarly, in the counterculture’s periodical bible, Rolling Stone, John Mendelsohn, reviewing the album, wrote that Stewart possessed “the most unique male voice in rock, a voice anyone could recognize instantly at five hundred paces through a Dixie cup….He’s got soul to spare.”

To Stewart’s surprise and delight, then, an American DJ (“allegedly in Cleveland, Ohio”) went with playing “Maggie May” rather than the designated single, a cover of Tim Hardin’s “Reason to Believe.” It peaked at #1 on the Billboard U.S. singles chart in early October 1971.

I wonder, though, if there might have been another reason for Stewart’s initial hesitancy about releasing “Maggie May?” I was surprised to learn from Rod that, when recording the vocals on his own compositions, he has sometimes felt so vulnerable over revealing his feelings that he has the studio emptied out “of everyone except the engineer—the producer at a push.”

There could hardly be a more personal song than “Maggie May,” his semi-autobiographical memory of losing virginity at age 15 in the summer of 1961 at the Bealieu Jazz Festival to “an older (and larger) woman” who propositioned him in the beer tent.

It’s hard to believe that the randy rooster who has undoubtedly scored with the ladies in virtually every stop on his world tours could feel this way. But who are we to argue?

The album also conveyed Stewart’s bone-deep appreciation for blues, soul and folk. Produced by Stewart himself, it exhibited a raw, go-for-it quality that crackles with energy, especially on the title track, the singer’s episodic tale of careening across Europe as a teenager and what he learned from the opposite sex—a kind of Tom Jones for the age of rock ‘n’ roll.

“That whole album was done in 10 days, two weeks, about as long as it takes to get a drum sound right nowadays," Stewart recalled in an interview for Mojo Magazine in 1995. He trusted his backup musicians—guitarist Ron Wood, pianist Pete Sears, and fiddler Dick Powell—and they delivered to a man, perhaps none more so than acoustic guitarist Martin Quittenton, who not only co-wrote “Maggie May” with Stewart but contributed its memorable, and ultimately exhilarating, mandolin sound.

In the years since, Stewart has sometimes been maddeningly unmindful of his gifts, whether through roosterish posturing on “Hot Legs” and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” or his early-millennium ill-advised turn towards “The Great American Songbook.”

But Every Picture Tells a Story demonstrates why fans on both sides of the Atlantic embraced him so ardently near the beginning of his journey. Or, as he put it in his ruminating 2012 song, “Can’t Stop Me Now”:

I stood up straight and sang for the record-company man, my enthusiasm filled the room
I was young and I was keen with that devil in my stream as I hollered out an old blues tune.

This Day in Rock History (James William Guercio, Producer of Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears, Born)

July 18, 1945— James William Guercio, an influential producer, manager, and songwriter who launched such acts as Chicago, Blood, Sweat and Tears and the Buckinghams, was born in Chicago.

In the 1960s and 1970s, in the wake of Phil Spector, the celebrity record producer became almost as big a force in rock ‘n’ roll as the artists themselves. Such figures as George Martin, Lou Adler, Phil Ramone, Arif Martin, Richard Perry, and Jimmy Ienner played decisive roles in shaping the sound of musicians such as The Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas, Billy Joel, Hall and Oates, Carly Simon, and Eric Carmen.

Among this group, Jim Guercio occupied a special niche: what might be called jazz rock, or, more precisely, “brass rock,” revolving around a driving horn section.

He got his start as a teenaged guitarist, sharing the stage with Mitch Ryder. After studying classical composition in college, he made his way to Los Angeles, taking on increasingly vital roles as session player and songwriter before becoming a staff producer in the L.A. division of Columbia Records, a division of CBS Records.

In 1967, Guercio foreshadowed his association with Chicago with his relationship with another band from the Windy City, the Buckinghams. After signing the band to a management agreement, the 22-year-old steered them to a string of hits, including “Don’t You Care,” “Mercy Mercy Mercy,” "Hey Baby (They're Playing Our Song)," and “Susan.” But the group, after objecting to a “psychedelic” section he added to “Susan,” parted ways with Guercio.

A college friend from Chicago, sax player Walt Parazaider, got Guercio to catch a performance by his band, The Big Thing. In short order, by the summer of 1968 he had convinced them to sign him on as producer and manager, relocate to Los Angeles, and change their name to Chicago Transit Authority, in honor of the line Guercio once took to ride to school. (The moniker was shortened to Chicago a couple of years later.)

Amid his work for Chicago, Guercio had a chance encounter that made him even busier. While helping to change the flat tire of Jim Morrison’s girlfriend at the time, he was asked by Blood, Sweat and Tears manager Bennett Glotzer to produce the band's next Columbia album.

Criss-crossing the country from Chicago in L.A. and BST in New York, Guercio brought in the latter group’s self-titled LP. The results were so successful--the monster singles "Spinning Wheel" and "You've Made Me So Very Happy"—that the disk took home the Grammy for Album of the Year for 1969, beating out the Beatles’ Abbey Road.  (Seven years later, Guercio would add another Grammy to his shelf for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)/Best Background Arrangement for Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now.”)

The association with Chicago proved just as successful but more enduring. In the first half of the Seventies, the group enjoyed five platinum and double-platinum albums, featuring hits that have since become staples of classic rock stations: "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is," "Beginnings,"  “Saturday in the Park,” “Searching So Long” and “Feeling Stronger Every Day.”

The band really took off in 1970, when Guercio overcame radio stations’ resistance to Chicago’s six-minute album cuts by editing them down to three minutes. “Make Me Smile” and “25 or 6 to 4” became major hits, but with a price: the band became regarded as sell-outs.

Fueling the criticism was the softer sound the band pursued—partly because of the success they enjoyed with ballads such as “If You Leave Me Now,” and partly because of the heavy-handed control Guercio increasingly exercised. 

In Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, he had purchased Caribou Ranch and built a studio there, free of the distractions of L.A. and New York. While the environment was pleasant and peaceful and the acoustics were excellent, Chicago began to chafe at the direction that Guercio imposed. He did not want them to learn production techniques, and several band members—notably guitarist Terry Kath—preferred their more freewheeling early work.

Matters came to a head after Chicago XI, when the band and its longtime producer split over its sound, its rigorous touring schedule and what they regarded as a disadvantageous agreement that deprived them of a fair share of their royalties. 

(Ironically, under subsequent producer David Foster—and minus Kath, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound not long after the breakup with Guercio--the band steered even further into the waters of adult-pop contemporary in the 1980s.)

Caribou Ranch continued to lure a string of artists (including Elton John, who christened one of his bestselling LPs after it, and The Beach Boys, whom Guercio also managed in the mid-1970s) until 1985, when a fire destroyed the recording studio.

This Day in Rock History (Buddy Holly Sets New Direction in Last Recording Session)

Oct. 21, 1958—Buddy Holly wrapped up his most recent recording session with songs that pointed to a new musical direction, yielding two more hits, including “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” covered by countless musicians. Little did he or his growing fan base imagine that the 22-year-old rock ‘n’ roller from Lubbock, Texas, had finished his last studio work. A little over three months later, this enormously influential singer-songwriter would die in a plane crash alongside fellow idols Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper.

I have touched briefly on the influence of Holly before, in a blog post on John Fogarty’s speech inducting him posthumously into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. But the circumstances surrounding his last time in a studio represent one of the great might-have-beens in entertainment history.

Speed propelled his guitar sound and his often impulsive decisions in the last months of his life—so much so, friends said later, that they wondered if he had a premonition that his life would be truncated. Only six hours after meeting Maria Elena Santiago, a receptionist at his music publisher’s, he proposed marriage to her. 

Determined on larger horizons beyond Lubbock, he had relocated to Greenwich Village in New York, the home city of his bride. Although love provided the impetus for the decision, the relocation also put him closer to a metropolis with a whole mélange of musical styles beyond rockabilly that increasingly fascinated him. 

The move was paralleled by a major shift in his business and creative life: suspicions that his earnings were being diverted led to a split with manager Norman Petty, and the breakup precipitated an additional parting of the ways with backup band The Crickets. Facing an immediate cash-flow problem to cope with starting a new family and pending litigation with Petty, he reached out to form an alliance with a singer-songwriter he had once viewed as a potential rival: 17-year-old teen pop sensation Paul Anka. 

For a time in 1957, Holly had been annoyed that Anka’s “Diana” had prevented his own work from topping the charts. But he’d gotten friendly with the youngster while touring Australia early in 1958, and by autumn, as Holly charted a new course for his life, he even discussed forming a music company with him, according to Anka’s memoir, My Way. 

Anka let it be known that he had a song that Holly might use when he was done with it. By mid-October, Holly was so anxious to see it that Anka just managed to finish it the day of the session. Taking out his guitar, he quickly learned its structure before passing it along to Brunswick-Coral A&R head Dick Jacobs. "He told me it was a new song that Paul Anka had just written specially for him, called 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore,' and it had to be in the session," Jacobs recalled afterward.

It was Jacobs who had the responsibility for helping Holly work toward a new sound at Coral Studios, at the Pythian Temple at West 70^th Street. The year before, Holly had told a Canadian deejay, “I’d prefer singing…something a little more quieter.” “Less raucous” might have been a more apt description, because, for the four songs Holly wanted to perform, Jacobs was creating arrangements for an 18-piece studio orchestra, filled with strings, harp and tenor saxophone.

“I had no time to harmonize the violins or write intricate parts, so I wrote them all pizzicato,” Jacobs said later about “It Doesn't Matter Anymore.” “That was the most unplanned thing I have ever written in my life.”

Whatever astonishment Jacobs may have felt about Holly’s sudden request for a song that the singer had, uncharacteristically, not written himself, it was swallowed up by the needs of the moment and his great respect for Holly (whom he later termed the least temperamental singer he’d ever worked with). The musicians in the orchestra started out rather more skeptical, but by the time Holly was done with his vocal, they, too, had become converts, breaking into smiles and even applause.

The string-laden arrangements should not obscure the daring nature of Holly’s interpretation of the Anka tune. First, it can be regarded as a pioneering example of the post-breakup “kiss-off” song, best exemplified by The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way,” Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name,” and Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone."

Second, his rapid evolution so soon in his career would show other rock ‘n’ rollers to follow the imperative to absorb new influences. Six years before George Martin employed strings on Paul McCartney’s plaintive ballad “Yesterday,” Holly had gotten there first. Beach Boy Brian Wilson's experimentation with French horns and other classical instruments on Pet Sounds was likewise made infinitely easier to promote to record company execs because of the success Holly had enjoyed in this last session.

Remarkably, though, this was the first time Holly had used strings so extensively in his work, and he was bursting with even more ideas. 

Maria Elena remarked years later that her husband had talked about also opening a London studio, and biographer Philip Norman has noted that Holly wanted to absorb jazz and classical music into his songs, and he was willing to range far afield: working with Ray Charles and Mahalia Jackson, and an album of South American songs that he would sing in Spanish. He was already showing a willingness to experiment, to push beyond limits—a propensity that would have prevented him from becoming confined in a creative straitjacket.

“It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” became Holly’s last Top 20 single (and the first to reach #1 in the UK after an artist's death). But it was only one of four songs from that last session that each had their favorites. Holly himself told his brother Larry that “Raining in My Heart” would be regarded as “the best record I’ve ever put out.” “Moondreams” and “True Love Ways” also have their partisans.

Early on, Elvis Presley had opened Holly’s eyes to the possibilities of rock ‘n’ roll. But it is no disrespect to The King to suggest that Holly represented an even greater influence on the next crucial wave of rock ‘n’ rollers. 

Two groups at the forefront of the British Invasion even took on names that paid tribute to the budding legend: The Beatles (a play on The Crickets) and, more explicitly, The Hollies. But that hardly exhausts the list. Think also of the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Page, Elton John, Eric Clapton, and Elvis Costello (whose nerdy early look mirrored the black horn-rimmed glasses that became Holly’s trademark).

 

Writing in Britain’s Independent on the 50^th anniversary of what Don McLean famously termed, in “American Pie,” “The Day the Music Died,” Spencer Leigh catalogued his influence succinctly: “Buddy Holly created a series of firsts, although most of them need qualification – the first singer/songwriter of the rock 'n' roll era; the first to have the lead/rhythm/bass/drums line-up; the first to use studio trickery such as double-tracking; the first to have strings on a rock 'n 'roll record; the first to use the Fender Stratocaster; and the first rock 'n' roll star to wear glasses.”

“He managed to forge a sound that was just unique, but it sounded simple enough for everyone to say, ‘I can have a go at that,’” recalls Keith Richards in an interview for a PBS documentary, Rave On: A Buddy Holly Biography. “You would get close, but it would be something to aim for. And I think for the body of musicians of my age at that time, that it was like a magnet.”

This Day in Rock History (The Doors Break on Through With ‘Light My Fire’)

June 3, 1967—Nearly five months after the debut of their eponymous first LP was released, The Doors began their climb toward commercial success by issuing “Light My Fire.” The group has become such a staple of classic-rock stations in the years since that it’s worth a reminder of just how much it overturned the conventions of rock ‘n’ roll in that tumultuous year.

The magnitude of The Doors’ legend has become so enormous that I don’t see any way to convey it—or even this particular album—in a single blog post. But concentrating on “Light My Fire,” the closing song on the LP’s first side, might focus attention on salient points.

“Light My Fire” wasn’t the band’s first single—that distinction belonged to “Break on Through”—but, by going to #1 on the charts, it made the group impossible to ignore.

Unlike their other tunes, it was not written primarily by frontman Jim Morrison, but by Robby Krieger. “Why do I have to do all the work!?” Morrison pointedly challenged the guitarist, who had never written a song to that point.

The first idea that Krieger had was to write about the elements. Getting stuck after a few verses, he turned back to Morrison, who supplied the most unusual—and, as befitting the singer’s mordant bent—darkest line in the song: "and our love become a funeral pyre." The tune ended up credited to the entire band, though, because contributions were also made by drummer John Densmore (the Latin-flavored groove) and keyboardist Ray Manzarek (the fugue-like opening). 

That opening, worked out rapidly by Manzarek on a Vox Continental organ after the band had laid out a jazz-like, improvisational middle section, might have been inspired by baroque music, but the finished product was certainly a matter of thinking outside the Bachs. (The ironic Manzarek was rather more modest: “It just came out of, you know, fifteen or twenty years of music practice.”)

Phil Spector, The Beatles, and The Beach Boys had been employing classical instruments such as violins, the harpsichord and the organ, and The Left Banke became explicitly branded “baroque pop” with their 1966 hit “Walk Away, Renee.” But Manzarek’s use of the organ, in supporting Morrison’s Dionysian lead, was as far removed from the spiritual as pop music could get. In 1967, rock and pop listeners would become even more accustomed to the organ in songs like Vanilla Fudge’s cover of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” and Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” The march toward the “progressive rock” era had begun in earnest.

The album version of “Light My Fire” clocked in at seven minutes long. When the band heard about their record company’s plan to release the single at a bit under three minutes—then the ironclad maximum for Top 40 airplay—they were annoyed that the shorter version would eliminate the middle section where they got the chance to display skill to the fullest. But those improvisations would hardly be lost—FM rock stations were about to take off (WNEW-FM, the archetype of that format, would premiere that October), and listeners flocking to the format fanned interest in the song anew.

Three months after the single’s release, The Doors appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Just a few minutes before airtime, a producer relayed Sullivan’s request that they substitute, “Girl, we couldn’t get much better” for “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher,” lest the latter be interpreted as a drug reference. But on the show, a defiant Morrison not only sang the original lyric, but seemed to emphasize it even more. An incensed Sullivan banned the group from the show from then on. (Not that the band needed it, given its continued success.)

The following year, Jose Feliciano enjoyed a hit with his own very unique interpretation of “Light My Fire.” But for most of the baby boomers coming into their high school and college years, it’s a fair bet that nothing could compare to the original in where it could transport listeners.

This Day in Rock History (Birth of Bill Graham, Legendary Promoter)

Jan. 8, 1931— Wolodia Grajonca, better known more than three decades later in his adopted country as rock concert promoter and artist manager Bill Graham, was born in Berlin.

"I don't know if there's a dirtier, not uglier, dirtier business,” Graham said in a 1971 interview included in The Smith Tapes: Lost Interviews with Rock Stars & Icons 1969-1972, edited by Ezra Bookstein (2015). “I don’t know if any business has more shady characters in it. Maybe the underworld, which I don’t see.”

He may have found his business dirty, but few brought so much bluster and balancing flair and idealism to his. If anyone could survive dirtiness, even ugliness, it was the Jewish youth nicknamed “Wolfgang.” He had walked across Europe, all 55 ricket-stricken pounds of him, to escape the Nazis, then been shipped across the Atlantic with other children. His sister didn’t survive the passage, while his mother ended up dying in Auschwitz. Then, once in the United States, he had to adapt to a foster family.

That experience as a Holocaust survivor was seared into Graham’s consciousness for the rest of his life. Particularly in the 1980s, he became involved in a number of causes. His leadership of protests against Ronald Reagan’s plans to visit Bitburg cemetery in Germany, the final resting place of dozens of SS officers, led to his San Francisco office being firebombed. Rock fans were more generally aware, however, of the massive benefit concerts he organized in that decade, including Live Aid, two Amnesty International tours, and the 1987 Soviet-American Peace Concert in Moscow.

Alternately altruistic and abrasive, Graham was described by actor Peter Coyote as a cross between Mother Teresa and Al Capone. He first became immersed in the promotional game in organizing fundraisers for Coyote’s San Francisco Mime Troupe, where appearances by the Jefferson Airplane clued Graham into the vast potential of the Bay Area’s burgeoning musical scene.

He had no trouble mixing and matching musicians and other performers of different styles: rock stars, say, coupled with Miles Davis and the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. What he did have trouble with was stars who were spoiled, lacking roots, professionalism and respect for their audiences. Consequently, he was not shy in telling off musicians whose drug habits undermined their performances—what critic Robert Christgau called “his exhibitionistic hostility, his epithets, his profane intolerance of inefficiency.”

Graham had already received an education about the public through an earlier job as a waiter in the Catskills, where he couldn’t escape noticing “the atrocities of the Concord dining room,” and how its patrons would stuff their napkins to take up to their rooms, “and you learn about people and tastes and mannerisms and dealing with the people, [and] you ain’t gonna learn it in no college.”

Without Graham, would anyone have heard of the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company? Perhaps, but with his organizational genius he made sure these San Francisco counterculture musicians reached a larger audience sooner than they might have done in the hands of someone else.

Major venues were also an important part of Graham’s legend—e.g., the Fillmore West and East, the Winterland—as well as his self-admitted “adrenaline” and micro-management of the smallest details of the concert experience, including clean bathrooms.

Appropriately for someone who lived a high-flying but other-centered life, Graham died in a 1991 helicopter crash following a visit to musician Huey Lewis, whom he had just persuaded to perform in a benefit for victims of the 1991 Oakland Hills wildfire. A year later, the promoter was posthumously inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in the “Non-Performer” category.