Johnny's Rock Immersion School

Hello, kids, and welcome to Johnny's Rock Immersion School.  Today we are going to learn our A-B-Cs, so without further ado let's get started.

A.  "A" is for Marsha Albert, a young woman ahead of her time.  In November 1963 Marsha was a 15 year old girl living in Silver Springs, Maryland when she viewed a puff piece on CBS News regarding how Beatlemania had overtaken the U.K.  She begged her favorite local DJ, Carroll James of A.M. station WWDC, to play Beatles music, which was so different than what American teens had been hearing.  James finagled a copy of I Want To Hold Your Hand from England, played it on his show on December 17, and the rest is history.  That marked the first time a Beatles tune was ever heard on US airwaves.  Thank you, Marsha!

B.  "B" is for Brewster-Douglas Housing Projects.  In one of the rock era's most amazing rags-to-riches stories, the three original Supremes, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, all emerged from the Brewster-Douglas Projects on the east side of Detroit.   The trio went from impoverished teen years in a crime-infested environment to becoming Motown's most commercially successful music act.

C. "C" is for Creque Alley.  A number of rock/pop music acts have recorded songs which are autobiographical.  For example, check out Boston's Rock & Roll Band, James Taylor's Fire And Rain, Piano Man by Billy Joel and Neil Diamond's Brooklyn Roads.  Creque Alley was a club district in the Virgin Islands where the four members of The Mamas And The Papas went in 1965 "to find their sound" in a bar called Duffy's before they returned to California and became famous.  Ironically, the lyrics of their song Creque Alley do not refer to the district by name although they do mention Duffy's.

D.  "D" is for Darryl Jones, who has been the bassist for the Rolling Stones ever since the band's original bass player, Bill Wyman, retired in 1993.  One of the more interesting facets of  Darryl's relationship with the Stones is that even though he is their exclusive bassist both in the studio and on tour, he is not an "official member."  The official members include only Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, plus Ronnie Wood who joined the band in 1976.  I have never found a satisfactory explanation of why Wood is treated differently than Jones.  A difference in agents?  Jones is considered a "touring member" as is keyboardist Chuck Leavell who has been playing with the Stones since '82.

E. "E" is for Ed Sullivan.  I have written about his show on this blog before.  In the mid-sixties most Americans had access to only four television stations: CBS, NBC, ABC and a local station such as WGN in Chicago.  On Sunday nights, the Ed Sullivan Show reigned supreme.  It was called a variety show, meaning there was an assortment of different kinds of performers: singers, dancers, comics, jugglers, musicians, puppeteers, etc.  Prior to 1964, his most famous show was the night in 1956 when he had heartthrob Elvis Presley as a guest.  Ed's producers instructed their camera operators to show Elvis only above the waist so the viewers would not be able to watch him swivel his hips.  Then came the night you all heard about, February 9, 1964.  If you're in the dark, check out my post from March 10, 2014.  It's accurate to say that Ed hosted every group from the British Invasion, introducing the Englishmen to American teens and their parents.

F.  "F" is for the Funk Brothers.  The Funk Brothers were Motown Records' house band, providing expert backing for such artists as the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Temptations, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. These were all performers who made it big, but did not have bands of their own, therefore relying on the Funk Brothers.  During the mid-sixties, Motown Records along with Capitol Records were the two most successful record labels.  The Brothers worked for the most part in anonymity, but deservedly are honored members of the Musicians' Hall Of Fame in Nashville.

G.  "G" is for Peter Grant. "Peter Who?" you ask.  When we think of rock bands' managers, Brian Epstein (Beatles) or Andrew Loog Oldham (Rolling Stones) immediately come to mind, and for good reason.  But one of the most intriguing fellows who held a similar post was Grant.  A 300 pound former professional wrestler with alleged ties to the underground, he was able to strike fantastic financial deals for his two main clients, Led Zeppelin and Bad Company.  He was also responsible for scouting new talent for Led Zeppelin's label Swan Song.  A few years ago it was revealed that Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have made just under $500 million for co-writing Stairway To Heaven, which was released in 1971.  Sounds like Grant struck a hard bargain.

H. "H" is for Hawthorne, California.  The music business is filled with myths, so this list should have at least one or two of them.  One of the biggest was perpetrated by Capitol Records with their promotion of the Beach Boys.  As I've written before, the two biggest music acts in the States prior to the British Invasion were the Four Seasons from New Jersey and the Beach Boys from Hawthorne.  The Beach Boys' songs were often about fun in the sun, girls on the beach, high school and surfing.  Capitol's marketing efforts played up the idea that the Beach Boys were beach combers who devoted their time to surfing when they weren't hanging out with bikini-clad chicks.  Most of their early album covers depicted beach scenes, complete with woodies and surf boards.  In fact, Hawthorne was not on the ocean.  It was (and is) a grimy industrial land-locked suburb of Los Angeles.  The Wilsons' house was a plain smallish house in a nondescript, unglamorous neighborhood.  Of the five Beach Boys, only drummer Dennis Wilson knew how to surf.

I.  "I" is for Idlewild South.  The Allman Brothers Band from Macon, Georgia was not an overnight sensation.  In fact their self-titled debut album, released in 1969, was only commercially successful in the South.  The problem was that, although they were great live performers, their studio recordings were unable to capture that feeling.  Their record lablel, Capricorn, strongly urged them to move their operation to LA or New York to hone their craft, but the guys told the suits they weren't budging.  Instead, they rented a small house outside Macon to which they retreated and lived communally while they bonded, rehearsed, wrote and partied.  They called this retreat Idlewild South.  Not all the local rednecks were welcoming toward the long-hairs, especially one of the Allmans' drummers, Jaimooe, who was black. The bands' commaraderie grew stronger.  They named their sophomore album Idlewild South.  It contained two of their most famous songs, Midnight Rider and In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed.

J.  "J" is for Jacksonville, Florida.  Another city, another myth.  Lynyrd Skynyrd, arguably the most famous southern rock band, was formed in 1964.  Their story is one of the most tragically dramatic in the history of music.  They have had only five top 40 hits, but their calling card is they are a terrific live act.  (I have been to three of their concerts.)  The fan favorite is Freebird, which normally closes the show, but almost as popular is Sweet Home Alabama, with lyrics longing for home ("Lord I'm coming home to you").  Naturally, the uninitiated music fan would think these rockers are from Alabama.  But, lo and behold, they are not; they hail from Jacksonville, Florida.

K.  "K" is for Murray The K.  It might be hard for people younger than Baby Boomers to appreciate what a huge role A.M. radio DJs played in the music listening experiences of the school age boomers.  In the sixties and even into the seventies, a song's success was measured by how high it climbed on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart.  Yes, singles aka 45's, not albums, were the thing.  Billboard's two principal measuring sticks were sales and radio airplay.  Consequently, radio stations hired disc jockeys who had rapport with teens, the demographic which bought the most records.  Kids would tune into a station at times they knew their favorite DJ would be spinning the tunes.  For me it was Sam Holman on WLS in Chicago who counted down the top 40 Silver Dollar Survey from 3:00 to 6:00 every weekday afternoon.  WLS also had legendary "Wild Man" Dick Biondi from 9:00 to midnight, and Bob "East Of Midnight" Hale for the wee hours.  (In Bob's honor I adopted East Of Midnight for my handle on the Notre Dame fan website, ndnation.)  However, the most famous DJ of all was Murray The K out of New York City.  Murray was the epitome of self-promotion, but the kids loved him.  His popularity peaked when the Beatles arrived for the first time in February 1964.  Murray used his connections to ingratiate himself with Brian Epstein and then infiltrated the Mop Tops' entourage, gaining access behind closed doors that his competition could not penetrate.  Murray even broadcast his show on WINS from the Beatles' hotel, the Plaza, and accompanied them to Washington, D.C. after the band's first Ed Sullivan Show.  He called himself "the fifth Beatle."

L.  "L" is for Leslie Gore, one of the top female solo artists of the '60's.  Momma Cuandito and I lucked into front row seats to watch Leslie perform at the Dakota Jazz Club a year and a-half before she died in 2015.  Leslie had ten top 40 hits, and her first four singles including the two described below reached the top 5.  In the music business, an answer song (sometimes called a reply song) is one which offers a reply or follow-up to a previous song.  Most answer songs are gimmicky and commercially insignificant.  By contrast, Leslie launched her career in 1963 at age 17 with It's My Party (a song whose lyrics gave rise to the popular saying, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to").  That song is a lament of how the singer's friend Judy stole her boyfriend Johnny and returned to the party wearing his ring.  Oh, my!  But wait!  Leslie's follow-up single released two months later, Judy's Turn To Cry, announces with glee that Johnny has come to his senses and come back to the singer!  Her fourth single, You Don't Own Me, issued a bold, self-explanatory warning to her male partner.  The New York Times' Jon Pareles wrote a touching obituary: "Ms. Gore made herself the voice of teenage girls aggrieved by fickle boyfriends, moving quickly from tearful self-pity to fierce self-assertion."          

M.  "M" is for Mr. Tambourine Man, the first single released by the Byrds, reaching # 1 early in the summer of 1965.  The Byrds are said to have invented folk rock.  The driving force and co-founder of the band was a folk singer himself, Jim McGuinn, who later changed his name to Roger.  McGuinn met fellow co-founder Gene Clark at a folk show in LA in 1964.  Within a year, formation of the five man Byrds was complete with McGuinn as lead guitarist using a twelve-string Rickenbacker, and Clark as lead singer and principal songwriter.  A third member, rhythm guitarist David Crosby (later of CSN fame), had a friend named Jim Dickson who became the Byrds' manager.  Somehow, Dickson got ahold of an acetate of an unreleased Bob Dylan song, Mr. Tambourine Man, had the band record a rearranged-to-rock version, and then got a major label, Columbia, to sign them to a record deal.  The song became the title track to the band's first album.  One reason Americans loved the Byrds was because they looked and sounded Beatle-esque.  Even frizzy-haired bass player Chris Hillman ironed his locks to look more British.  When they toured the U.K. they billed themselves as "America's answer to the Beatles."  Well, the Brits didn't quite buy into that, but the Byrds were voted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 1991, and played Mr. Tambourine Man at the induction ceremony.

N.  "N" is for Ricky Nelson.  This is going waaay back to my Libertyville days.  One of my family's favorite television shows was The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet.  The thirty minute episodes showed life in the Nelson household, adding many touches of humor as the two sons, Ricky and older brother David, usually had some petty dilema to work through.  As was typical of many programs like Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver, the parents always came up with thoughtful, sensible and practical solutions.  The difference with each Ozzie And Harriet show was that at the end teenage idol Ricky would sing a song looking straight into the camera while he strummed a guitar with a backing band that seemed to appear out of nowhere.  Ricky placed an amazing total of thirty-five singles in the top 40.  Many of his hits have aged well and can be heard frequently on oldies radio.  My three favorites are Fools Rush In, Hello Mary Lou (written by the great Gene Pitney) and Travelin' Man.      

O.  "O" is for one hit wonders.  OHWs are generally defined as music artists who had only one big hit song, with the vague term "big" being left to debate.  The list of OHWs could take several pages, but I have chosen a handful of personal faves for this post.  Of the thirty-three songs on Pud's Plethora Of Platinum (see below), only two are performed by OHWs: Wherever You Will Go by The Calling, and Friday On My Mind by the Easybeats.  Others I listen to on a semi-regular basis include: Richard Harris' MacArthur Park, a song containing one of the greatest instrumental breaks ever recorded; If You Leave by Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark (called "OMD" by their fans) from the Pretty In Pink soundtrack; and When A Man Loves A Woman by the soulful Percy Sledge, imitated but never duplicated.  Oh heck, let's do five more to make it a round number 10.  How 'bout these:  Vehicle by The Ides Of March; To Sir With Love by Lulu; Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners; Mr. Dieingly Sad by the Critters; and The End Of The World by Skeeter Davis.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  

P.  "P" is for Pud's Plethora Of Platinum.  As proclaimed in my June 30, 2017 post, it's simply "the greatest compilation of music that ever graced a playlist."  See the footnote* below for the track listings.

Q.  "Q" is for Queen.  When you have a granddaughter whose nickname (among several) is Freddie Mercury, it seems only right to go with Queen here instead of my other possibility, ? & The Mysterians (another one hit wonder with 96 Tears from 1966).  Queen and its managers pulled off a clever gambit in 1977 when they released We Are The Champions as the first single off their album News Of The World.  The B-side of the single was We Will Rock You, also from the same album.  On the album itself, We Will Rock You is the first track, immediately followed by We Are The Champions as the second.  And, the band's concert set list placed those two songs consecutively, just as on the album, i.e., We Will Rock You immediately followed by We Are The Champions.  Thus fans became accustomed -- and to this day remain accustomed -- to hearing the B-side segue into the A-side.  That is how radio stations play them, as if they constitute one long song.  One other example where, on radio and on the relevant album, one full length song always segues into another: The title track to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album going into With A Little Help From My Friends.  [Note: I am intentionally omitting the sixteen minute medley (sometimes referred to as the "Mr. Mustard Medley") from the Beatles' Abbey Road album.]  

R.  "R" is for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, which I have visited twice.  Located in Cleveland, the Hall is looked upon as an ultimate honor to which musicians aspire but yet, simultaneously, is subject to criticism.  Although a few artists have publicly stated they have no interest in Hall induction, even fewer (e.g., Axl Rose from Guns N' Roses) once elected have turned it down.  (Some band members (e.g., Peter Cetera of Chicago) have declined to attend the induction ceremony due to ongoing disputes with their former bandmates).  The Hall's critics focus on three aspects of its operation.  First, since it calls it self a "rock and roll" hall of fame, why are artists from other genres such as rap, country and doo wop included while some deserving true rockers like Foreigner and Pat Benetar are left out?  Secondly, women artists are allegedly under-represented. Third, politics.  Critics say Jann Wenner, the co-founder and publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine who also founded and ran the Hall for thirty years before retiring last January, played his cards with too heavy a hand, tipping the scales toward his personal favorites and stong-arming the selection committee to keep certain artists out..   

S.  "S" is for swamp rock, or what some musicologists might consider a modern subset of American roots rock.  It is a funky combination of New Orleans jazz and blues with shades of country and heavy-bass rock.  The unique sound is most associated with Creedence Clearwater Revival.  But CCR was not a Louisiana band.  In fact it was far removed in the East Bay area of California.  John Fogarty, who ultimately became the sole personification of CCR, was influenced by music of the bayou as evidenced by the titles of several of the songs he wrote for CCR such as Born On The Bayou, Green River and Proud Mary (about a riverboat).  Other songs like Bad Moon Rising and Run Through The Jungle convey images of voodoo.  Spooky.   

T.  "T" is for Twenty-seven Club.  Did I just write "spooky"?  The term Twenty-seven Club is a glib reference to the sad fact that so many well-known music artists have died at age twenty-seven.  Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones (1969), Jimi Hendrix (1970), Janis Joplin (1970) and Jim Morrison of the Doors  are the most famous unfortunate members.  The Grateful Dead's Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (1973) and Amy Winehouse (2011) also left this world at twenty-seven.  Morrison's death in Paris was probably the incident which first drew attention to the coincidence of young stars all succumbing at the same time of their lives.  Kurt Cobain's passing twenty-three years later at age twenty-seven sealed the verdict.  Check out the lyrics to the 1973 Righteous Brothers' hit Rock And Roll Heaven.    

U.  "U" has to be for U2, Ireland's most accomplished music export.  Lead singer Paul Hewson, better known as Bono, is almost as famous for his world-wide philanthropy and as an unabashed proponent for social justice.  This often brings up the question (not to be resolved here) of whether entertainers should use their platform as celebrities while they are performing.  If one pays a dear price for a concert ticket, does she want to sit through a speech espousing some cause chosen by the performer, even if the ticket holder concurs with the performer's point of view?  Is the answer clear or is there a fine line between freedom of speech and annoyance?  Regardless, U2 is building a legacy as one of the world's most talented bands.  Their fifth studio album, The Joshua Tree from 1987, is universally critically acclaimed.  

V.  "V" is for Viva la Vida, Coldplay's fourth full length album, released in 2008 and considered by many to be its best ever.  With the success of their third album, X & Y, three years earlier, Coldplay was looked upon as one of the world's biggest bands, if not the biggest.  Their tours filled stadia wherever they traveled.  The pressure was on to duplicate X & Y.  The members, who did business as a democracy despite the perception of being Chris Martin's band, hired Brian Eno, a world class producer who had worked with U2.  Eno was a task master and perfectionist, even resorting to hypnotism to draw out the musicians' creativity.  The title track was the first Coldplay song to reach # 1 on both the British and American charts.  For some critics Viva is too much "a producer's album," but for the majority it is sweeping, spiritual and emotional.    

W.  "W" is for, what else (?), Woodstock.  There have been many famous and infamous music festivals in the rock era: Altamont Speedway (1969), Monterey Pop Festival (1967), Farm Aid (since 1985), Live Aid (1985), South By Southwest (since 1987), Coachella (since 1999), and the North Dakota State Fair (sanctioned in 1966), to name a few.  But the granddaddy of them all was the Woodstock Music Festival in mid-August 1969, the capstone of the Summer Of Love.  Numerous books and hundreds of articles have been written about the three day event and its relevance not only to the music scene but to American culture and history, so it would be foolhardy to encapsulate it in a paragraph here.  Woodstock's scope was so vast that the original documentary shown in theaters was over three hours long, and the director's (Michael Wadleigh's) cut ran an additional thirty-nine minutes.  One more myth to add to the list: The festival was not actually held in Woodstock, New York, as many believe.  Rather, the site was Max Yasgur's farm outside of Bethel, New York, forty-six miles as the crow flies from Woodstock. 

X.  "X" is for Phil X, the lead guitarist of Bon Jovi.  Phil's real surname name is Xenidis, but his stage name is simply Phil X.  The Canadian officially became a member of Bon Jovi in 2016, replacing Richie Sambora who had been with the band for thirty years.  During the last eight or nine years with the group, Richie took temporary leave periodically to address personal issues such as drug addiction and a divorce by his wife of thirteen years, the glamorous Heather Locklear (another "ex," you might say).  For most of the gigs missed by Richie, Phil was his replacement, so it was no surprise that when Richie permanently quit Bon Jovi in 2013 Phil stepped in.  

Y.  "Y" is for Yardbirds, known mostly as the one band whose membership included three of the greatest guitarists of all time: Eric Clapton (whose fans proclaimed, "Clapton is God"), Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.  The band formed in Surrey England in 1963 when five blues lovers, including vocalist Keith Rolf, discovered at a club's open mic night that there was a chemistry among them.  When one of the five was forced by his parents to leave the nascent group, Rolf enlisted his art school mate, sixteen year old Clapton.  In March 1965, the band scored its first hit, For Your Love, but ironically Clapton quit on the day it was released, preferring to focus on blues instead of a commercial rock sound.  The Yardbirds offered the job to Page, another teen musical prodigy.  Jimmy declined but recommended Beck, who accepted the gig and led the Yardbirds to experiment with things such as psychedelic feedback and distortion.  Page finally had a change of heart when another of the founding members retired.  Surprisingly, Jimmy originally signed on as a bass player, but shortly thereafter became co-lead guitarist with Beck.  Thus was formed the epitome of dual lead guitar bandmates in the history of rock.  Personal note: In 1966 I saw the Yardbirds in concert in the unlikeliest of venues, Dayton's eighth floor auditorium in downtown Minneapolis.      

Z.  "Z" is for Robert Zimmerman, Minnesota's most renown music artist.  Born in Duluth, grew up in Hibbing, studied at the U of M, played gigs in Dinkytown coffee houses, was prominent in the local folk music scene, and then, at the age of 20... moved to the East Coast.  Was he a poet who couldn't sing?  A singer-songwriter whose lyrics were so deep his vocal attributes were of little concern?  More an activist than an entertainer?  An acoustic guitarist who should never have plugged in?  Isn't one of his most admired tunes, Girl From The North Country, an ode to a Minnesota girl friend?  No matter where he landed, we still claim Robert as a native son.  He can do no wrong. 

Oh oh, I just heard the bell!  I guess we're out of time.  As they used to say on Hill Street Blues, be safe out there.  Class dismissed!

_____________

* Pud's Plethora Of Platinum, Volume I:

1. Blue Collar Man - Styx   2. Can't Stop Lovin' You - Van Halen   3. In These Arms - Bon Jovi   4. Jaded - Aerosmith   5. Sweet Child Of Mine - Guns N' Roses   6. Gimme Three Steps - Lynyrd Skynyrd   7. Like No Other Night - .38 Special   8. Wherever You Will Go - The Calling   9. Since You've Been Gone - The Outfield   10. Brown Sugar - Rolling Stones   11. Peace Of Mind - Boston   12. Til I Hear It From You - Gin Blossoms   13. Always - Bon Jovi   14. Summer Of '69 - Bryan Adams   15. Don't Stop Believin' - Journey

Pud's Plethora Of Platinum, Volume II:

1. I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better - Byrds   2. Pride - U2   3. Walk On Water - Eddie Money   4. I'm Alive - Hollies   5. Good Lovin' Gone Bad - Bad Company   6. I Can't Let Go - Hollies   7. All Day And All Of The Night - Kinks   8. I'll Be There For You - Bon Jovi   9. Cajun Song - Gin Blossoms   10. All About Lovin' You - Bon Jovi   11. Better Man - Pearl Jam   12. Can't Fight This Feeling - REO Speedwagon   13. Friday On My Mind - Easybeats   14. She Loves You - Beatles   15. I Saw her Standing There - Beatles   16. No Matter What - Badfinger   17. Didn't Know It Was Love - Survivor   18. In Good Faith - Survivor