Album Review: Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Mardi Gras"

Breakup albums should not be pretty. They shouldn’t be full of bittersweet well-wishes and vulnerable introspective emotion like Bridge Over Troubled Water, nor should they be solid, cohesive efforts like Synchronicity. Not that Simon & Garfunkel’s farewell had been a bad album by any means, but, they were folk musicians, and folk artists by nature are more delicate and fragile creatures than rock and rollers. Elegant breakups don’t befit rock and roll. If rock songs about breakups are as biting, bitter, and vicious as they are melancholy, a breakup of a band itself should be no different. And, when that’s conveyed in the band’s final album, that band has, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not, accomplished something great. 

Creedence Clearwater Revival certainly wasn’t aiming to make an album that reflected the crumbling relations between the rhythm section of Stu Cook and Doug Clifford and leader/guitarist John Fogerty. Although, theories about the album that were printed after its release claimed Fogerty, CCR’s visionary and artistic force, knew exactly what he was doing when he gave in to Cook and Clifford’s alleged demands for equal songwriting opportunities. The music press opined that by allowing the tight rhythm section to produce mediocre songs, their complaining and clamoring for creative input would prove once and for all how much the group depended on John Fogerty and John Fogerty alone. Hence the album’s nickname, “Fogerty’s Revenge.” It was certainly a more fitting title than Mardi Gras, that’s for sure. Maybe naming the record after a New Orleans festival was meant to tie into the group’s unmistakable bayou “swamp rock” sound. 

The recording and production, however, was anything but festive. Now a trio after a creatively frustrated Tom Fogerty left the band a year before (described by his brother in two of the group’s most recognizable songs, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and “Wish I Could Hideaway”), tomorrows seemed less and less likely with each passing square on the ‘72 calendar. John Fogerty – according to Cook and Clifford’s side of the story – demanded the pair contribute songs, as well as vocals, rather than submitting to their desires to be more involved in the songwriting. The pair’s version of events seems to some a low-key excuse for any substandard quality in their efforts, implying Cook and Clifford had insufficient time and means to prepare better material. 

The other side of the Mardi Gras tale, however, suggests an ungrateful pair pressuring their creative force during a fragile time for the band, trapping him – and themselves – into making an album far below the standards CCR had set in the years prior. Whichever side of the story one chooses to believe, the fact that Fogerty refused to sing on or produce his bandmates’ songs lends credence to either version, and shows how frustrated and fed up he was with the band’s situation. The album’s opener is Fogerty’s, the very country “Looking For a Reason.” The somewhat pedestrian song finds the singer an open book: 

I’m lookin’ for a reason to stay / I’m all wound up and tied in knots today... Yesterday I tried once more to find / a way to share the trouble on my mind / It seems like you turn away every time / I used to like it here – I can’t remember why. 

Stu Cook’s first song on the album, “Take It Like a Friend,” meanwhile, is anything but longing or sad, and takes an obvious shot at Fogerty, even if the song itself gives contradictory claims about how the bassist wound up finally singing (shouting) lead vocals on a Creedence song: Maybe you’d move over, give someone else a chance, try they luck / Instead you run up closer / Tryin’ to grab a page before they close the book. Later, however, Cook seems to describe a catch-22 situation, knowing he and Doug Clifford’s efforts would be quashed – 

We moved out toward the light, showin’ empty hands. 

Cook’s second solo tune is the crude but lyrically relatable “Sail Away.” Even if the words coming out of Cook’s mouth are butchered on their way out, they could certainly resonate with anyone who’s ever felt trapped in a one-way relationship. Cook laments bitterly, Spent a long time listenin’ to the captain of the sea / Shoutin’ orders to his crew – no one hears but me. 

The bassist suddenly changes gears on his next song, the undeniably infectious “Door To Door,” a fun, harmless tune about Cook’s time as a door-to-door salesman. Someone decided the song was at least good enough for the B-side of Fogerty’s “Sweet Hitch-Hiker,” undoubtedly Mardi Gras’ best, most memorable, and most Creedence-like track. Or, back to conspiracy theories, “Door To Door” was purposely paired with “Sweet Hitch-Hiker” to further bring out the perceived contrast in quality as it inevitably paled in comparison in the ears of the majority. Not withstanding, “Door To Door” was played with regularity on the subsequent tour to support the album, a performance of which was included on Live In Europe the next year (an album whose release John Fogerty strongly protested, but lost the fight with Fantasy Records – an institution that would be a thorn in the rock genius’s side for well over the next decade, well after CCR was no more). 

Behind the drumkit, Doug Clifford didn’t seem to have much of a grudge to bear, at least not on record; his songs are laid-back, country-colored standards, a wise move, as the style fits his softsung voice. “Need Someone To Hold” and “Tearin’ Up the Country” are both enjoyable, even if they’re nothing spectacular. These songs are generally more well received than his bass playing counterpart’s offerings, probably because, again, Clifford’s voice is less abrasive and forced. The drummer sings with an inoffensive twang, making Cook’s I-Just-Stubbed-My-Toe shouts all the more jarring when played side by side with Clifford’s songs in the tracklisting. The two briefly team up – possibly against Fogerty specifically – on “What Are You Gonna Do,” the best non-Fogerty song on the album, a knee-bouncing, well-constructed song whose chorus borders on earworm (that’s not a bad thing, despite that “worm” thing; an “earworm” is a piece of music that’s extremely catchy). Though the lyrics’ lecture to an unwise character could describe any half of any failed relationship, of any kind, the temptation to assign them to John Fogerty is overwhelming in the context of the rest of Mardi Gras. If he is indeed the target, it’s Clifford’s only gripe on the record, and again he wisely handles the vocals, toning down any bitterness the song may or may not contain. 

Not surprisingly, none of Cook or Clifford’s songs would see a place on either of CCR’s bestselling Chronicle compilations, the first being universally hailed as a definitive representation of the band’s work. Chronicle Volume 1, released in 1976, saw Mardi Gras represented only by “Sweet Hitch-Hiker” and Fogerty’s deeply personal but relatable “Someday Never Comes.” Volume 2, released a decade later saw a stranger song selection, with a preference for the band’s several great covers of doo-wop, folk, and blues standards like “The Midnight Special,” “The Night Time is the Right Time,” and “Cotton Fields.” Mardi Gras, however, is represented the second time around by the mediocre “Looking For a Reason” and the album’s least interesting recording, a meh cover of “Hello Mary Lou.” The fact that this song was chosen for inclusion rather than “Tearin’ Up the Country” (the B-side to “Someday Never Comes”) or even the admittedly novelty “Door To Door,” more than hints at how Cook and Clifford’s work was received. 

Released in April 1972, Mardi Gras must have been either enormously satisfying to John Fogerty to see his bandmates’ work turned to cannon fodder by Rolling Stone’s minions, or devastatingly reaffirming that the death of Creedence was near. “Fogerty’s Revenge” was probably a much preferred nickname to the distinction given it by Rolling Stone – “the worst album ever recorded by a major band” up to that point in rock history. 

The band as musicians was, somehow, still in great shape; they played tours of Europe, Australia, and Japan, to a surprising amount of press hype and fanfare despite Mardi Gras being panned as a huge disappointment (though it still went Top 20, for what it’s worth). Fogerty, Cook, and Clifford seemed on the surface a jovial trio of brothers, their interviews abroad betraying no friction at all. Many other bands wouldn’t even try to put on a performance. A photograph on Mardi Gras’ back jacket showed the three sitting in careless conversation, and the gatefold sleeve of Live In Europe sees a photograph of the trio side by side in the back of a limousine, all smiles and silliness. It’s actually a heartbreaking photo – forced or miraculously genuine, the camaraderie it captures was, or would soon be, no more. Despite Fogerty’s objections, Live In Europe showed the band still an exciting, tight unit as a trio; Fogerty’s guitar playing is especially impressive as he doubles on lead and rhythm duties in the absence of brother Tom. Whether actually recorded in concert, or a counterfeit, a soundcheck allegedly dubbed with crowd cheers as some maintain, CCR still sounds strong. 

In October, however, the inevitable could no longer be postponed, and the announcement was made – Creedence was done. The band, in the four-piece lineup in which they’d played since 1957 under various names, played together again in 1980 at Tom Fogerty’s wedding, and even posed for a picture together. It would be the very last time the Fogerty brothers shared a stage. Tom died in 1990, estranged from his brother by record industry politics. When CCR was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, his widow was in attendance, carrying with her Tom’s ashes in an urn. Her gesture was for naught – after their acceptance speeches, John refused to play even one Creedence classic with his former bandmates, opting instead to share the moment with Bruce Springsteen on “Who’ll Stop the Rain?” Cook and Clifford got up and left. 

Again, breakup albums should not be pretty. Albums recorded by bands in danger of falling apart should be scattered, uneven, and should sound as if the band could crumble at any moment. Mardi Gras is the quintessential breakup album. Like an awkward week after the charges are dropped in a domestic dispute, the tension is there, the anger only thinly veiled, the hole kicked in the bathroom door gaping and providing insight into what really goes on in the life of a major rock band. It’s not always fun, and more often than not, egos and power struggles prevail over the band of brothers each garage act sets out to be. 

-From my book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems (but you don't have to buy it if you don't want to)

Album Review: Pink Floyd's "Obscured By Clouds"

You had no idea Pink Floyd released an album called Obscured By Clouds, did you? No idea. All you know is “Wish You Were Here” and “Comfortably Numb.” You don’t know nothin about nothin!

But to give you an idea of how somewhat uncharacteristically stripped down Obscured By Clouds is for a Pink Floyd album, its foreboding opening instrumental title track was used by my high school football team for our entrance music as we approached the field (go JC Chasez Mennonite School! Class of ‘04!). We couldn’t have instilled such primitive fear in our opponents with more polished, intricate Floyd instrumentals like “A Saucerful of Secrets” or “One Of These Days” (unless we skipped forward to the “I’m going to cut you into little pieces” part). 

“Foreboding” isn’t a rare adjective to Floyd’s music, but the grittiness of this guitar and prehistoric synth-dominated title track opened an album that found the band hurriedly, though craftily, writing and recording the soundtrack to a French adventure drama, La Vallee (that is, The Valley, for the laypersons). Two of the songs contained were straight ahead rock, the rowdy instrumental “When You’re In” and the searing, crunchy “The Gold It’s In the...” (I don’t know what the gold is in, that’s just the title of the song). The band had approached such heavy territory before on an earlier film soundtrack album, More (the film of which was coincidentally directed by Barbet Schroeder, who was also at the helm for La Vallee); two songs from that album, “The Nile Song” and “Ibiza Bar” had approached outright heavy metal.

Soundtrack work was nothing new to Pink Floyd, but most of More, and their contributions to the film Zabriskie Point, were very Floydian – psychedelic pieces carefully textured and shaped by painstaking improvisations and ideas conceived on stage. Obscured By Clouds, however, found the band on a time crunch, locked away in a studio in France, in a rush to get back on the road, then back to Abbey Road to finish what would be their next album, Dark Side of the Moon.

The fact that this album had the misfortune to be released not even a full year before Dark Side undoubtedly contributes to its lack of a reputation. It would become their first album to crack the US Top 50, reaching #46, but Dark Side of the Moon’s decade-plus long stay on the album charts will always overwhelm such a feat. And, unlike their previous albums, none of the ten songs here were shaped over time by live performances before being hammered out in the studio – the songs here were “proper” rock songs, conceived and recorded on the clock. The result was an atypical Pink Floyd album, but a striking and highly enjoyable one nonetheless.

The jaunty, jangly, catchy “Free Four” enjoyed a bit of airplay when released as a single, though it’s doubtful that fans appreciated Roger Waters’ grim cynicism in the lyrics exploring death and futility. It also contains possibly his first reference to being “the dead man’s son,” a keystone in his music’s inspiration as time went on and his father’s death in World War II made more of an impact. The song was probably the first in Floyd’s entire catalog to so prominently feature that trademark grimness that made Waters’ lyrics so great; “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk,” from the band’s groundbreaking debut The Piper At the Gates of Dawn, had been his first sole credit with the group. Unless I’m misinterpreting the nonsense in the poppy psychedelia, those lyrics held a shade of that cynical English wit, though they lay under the surface of Piper’s electronic, whimsical wonderland. But the other band members, and many fans, agree that “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk” is the lone throwaway from their legendary debut.

Their next album, A Saucerful of Secrets, saw Waters’ songwriting breakout, with such staples as “Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun” and “Let There Be More Light.” But it’s the psychotic “Corporal Clegg” that hinted – or, rather flatout boasted – of the subjects and themes that would dominate Roger Waters’ later songwriting, both with Pink Floyd and in his solo career. The song told the tale of an amputee war veteran and his alcoholic wife. Grim things indeed, but grim things only the English can turn into an overbearing pop tune complete with kazoo coda.

For the next five years, though, Waters’ lyrics mostly stayed within the frame of the psychedelic noodling that made Floyd such an underground sensation throughout the world (except, so far, the States). But “Free Four” was a sudden release of a dour world view, the bassist sculpting a rotting skull with a gap-toothed grin.

Elsewhere throughout Obscured By Clouds, the lyrics follow, more tightly than at first glance, the theme of the La Vallee film, exploring the simple but daunting themes of unalterable change and the dangers and depths that lie beyond one’s comforts. The film explores the same: a group of explorers search for treasure or gold or some spiritual journey or something in a mysterious and dangerous place in Papua New Guinea simply marked on maps as “obscured by clouds.” The characters in the movie see a slow shedding of what they know as civilization until they themselves become trodden by the unknown things so far from their homes. The lyrics of Obscured By Clouds reflect this of course, which in a strange way gives it parallels with the themes of Dark Side of the Moon. 

As that album was a master portrait of the pressures of society than can lead one to absolute madness, this album slowly tracks the pressures that come with drastic change. The mid-tempo “Burning Bridges” is self-explanatory, as is David Gilmour’s “Childhood’s End” (incidentally the last Pink Floyd lyrics not written by Waters until 1987, years after he’d left the group on acrimonious terms). Purportedly with the Vietnam War in mind, Gilmour’s lyrics are much simpler than Waters’, but anything more detailed and sardonic would have been ill-fitting for such a frank lecture about the death of innocence.

While the basic narrative of the album is what makes it so strong, there are times its instrumental passages are, at the risk of hyperbole, spellbinding. “Mudmen” is my second favorite Floyd song of all time, in case you were wondering what’s my second favorite Floyd song of all time. In La Vallee, the song plays as a group of mud-covered tribal warriors or shamans, or whatever they are, in hideous, gargantuan masks dance and stalk towards a transfixed character. The song is a beautiful slowburner, grinding from melancholy to ecstasy, and was the first Pink Floyd song penned by Gilmour and keyboardist Rick Wright; it was a great dose of the musical partnership they’d form twenty years later on The Division Bell and after Floyd was done "for good" in the 2000s.

Speaking of Wright, his vocal on “Stay,” one of the band’s few “ballads,” is almost spine-tingling. The keyboardist was often critical of his voice, but its lonesomeness fits the loss and finality of the song’s lyrics. Closing the album is “Absolutely Curtains,” a gorgeous yet frightening instrumental that seems to perpetually build and build until its stunning crescendo leads into an excerpt from the film – a choir of tribesmen singing words in an exotic language that, if interpreted, would dash the mystery that lends itself so perfectly to the song.

Obscured By Clouds isn’t usually included in the lineage of Floyd works that were essential to the development of Dark Side of the Moon as is, say, the track “A Saucerful of Secrets” in 1969; the twelve-minute instrumental had been a thematic, conceptual, multi-part story, which led to “The Man & The Journey Suite” that became a focus of the band’s legendary live repertoire during the same era, further shaping their penchant for storytelling via instrumental texture. In 1971, Meddle had been vital to Dark Side of the Moon’s birth, if not in terms of structure, in terms of the quantum leaps in studio knowledge and innovation. 

But Obscured is exactly that – fogged over in the history of Pink Floyd as it relates to the elements that ultimately led to Dark Side and beyond.

The rub is, it shouldn’t be. The album tells a story, its music shapes the events and moods, and an overall, solid narrative focusing on change and departure runs consistently throughout – just the way the narratives of madness and societal pressure shape Dark Side of the Moon. Granted, Obscured By Clouds had a movie to follow. But even in that sense, Pink Floyd looked beyond slapping some mood music onto forty minutes of tape and chose rather to make a proper album using La Vallee’s story.

Though obviously decimated in sales and memory by its successor, such was the success of this record throughout the faithful European market in 1972 that it eclipsed the film for which it was recorded, which performed lukewarmly. A dispute between the band and the film studio arose, for whatever reasons those disputes always arise, and in response, the studio re-titled the movie to The Valley Obscured By Clouds, to hopefully capitalize on the positive reception the album enjoyed over the film, particularly in France.

Much like the treasure and spiritual whatnots sought by the characters in the film, Obscured By Clouds is in many ways the post-Piper, pre-Dark Side album that holds the most reward for those who seek it out. It’s not only a solid and well-written album, especially considering the rushed atmosphere of the sessions, but it captures Pink Floyd in a very non-Floydian snapshot.

It’s the perfect definition of a hidden gem.

-from my book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems (but you don't have to buy it)

Album Review: "A" by Jethro Tull

In honor of the new box set edition of Jethro Tull's 1980 album A (which you can order here), here's a piece from my book Rocktology Exam (which you can think about buying here), covering this complex and ultimately engrossing album. (Note that my opinion on the track "Flyingdale Flyer" has changed, and I somewhat enjoy the song these days.)

If one didn’t know the backstory for the one-letter title, or the cover depicting the group in a futuristic air traffic control room gazing at an ominous pink A in the looming clouds, one could be excused for assuming, given prog-rock tradition, that A is some kind of concept album; perhaps about a dystopian future society in which rock music is banned (it’s always banned in the future according to concept albums), only for it to be rescued by a misunderstood loner superhero called "A." Or whatever. Basically every concept album ever. 

But it’s not anything like that. A’s humble beginnings found Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson attempting his first solo album (hence A for Anderson, you see). He later told MTV, when they were into this kind of thing, “It wasn’t really Jethro Tull music. It wasn’t really Ian Anderson music, either. But setting out do so a solo album, the whole point was that I would be unfettered with any stylistic straight-jacket.”

The previous year, Anderson had served notice to the classic Tull lineup of the 70s that he wished to perform with different musicians, albeit still under the Jethro Tull banner. He then recorded A, and was convinced, with great difficulty, by Chrysalis Records to release it as the new "Jethro Tull album." Perhaps the record execs feared the band’s Dickensian minstrel rock would see its demise in the new decade, and saw the uncharacteristic use of synthesizers and electronics as a step ahead, a sure fit for the ever-growing technological “advances” in rock music. It would be sure, they felt, to seal Tull a place in the new decade. 

Unfortunately, the rest of Jethro Tull, save for faithful guitarist Martin Barre, who played on A, weren’t made privy to the decision until they read a statement from Chrysalis in the music press, of which Ian Anderson was apparently unaware, that they’d been fired from the group – which hadn’t been the case at all. Feeling betrayed, their understandably bitter feelings toward Anderson made his job of reforming Tull with new musicians a bit easier, though not under ideal circumstances. Keeping Barre on board, Anderson enlisted drummer Mark Craney and bassist Dave Pegg (formerly of Fairport Convention); the latter, signed up for a one-off solo project, would remain with the band for over a decade, proving the fallout from the solo project was not for naught. 

Also on board, temporarily, was violinist and keyboardist Eddie Jobson; his seethrough electric violin was quite a sight on stage, matching the haphazard “futuristic” look that Anderson, with great regret, had formed for their live shows; he traded his vest and troubadour neckerchief for a white parachute material jumpsuit. “I hated it – I don’t care if I never see it again!” he said in 1987 during a rare spot as a guest MTV VJ – yes, the guy from Jethro Tull was a guest VJ on MTV. It was once an amazing world.

Accompanying the album was a home video release, Slipstream. The video preserved for all coming time the unique sight of Jethro Tull performing pixie-rock staples like “Songs From the Wood” and “Heavy Horses” in cheap space-age costumes, but the visual was blown away by the audial, as Anderson retained his acrobatic energy throughout. He is truly one of rock’s greatest frontmen, among the ranks of Freddie Mercury or Ray Davies.

Back to the album, A is by no means a bad record, and some of its numbers could have become concert staples and possibly classics. If the infectious, exciting “Black Friday” had been pushed as the single, instead of the dull “Flyingdale Flyer,” the album might not be so out of mind in the Jethro Tull discography. It’s strictly conjecture, but that one change in singles plans could have given A a shot in the arm commercially, and the record’s more memorable songs – “4WD,” “Batteries Not Included,” “Working John, Working Joe,” and the great opener “Crossfire” – might not be as obscure in Tull’s catalog. 

Elsewhere though, some material is admittedly lifeless and easily forgettable, some tracks barely discernible from others. Even if “Black Friday” had gained more airplay, and if A had climbed higher on the charts, the aforementioned standouts would still have been paired with a few less interesting tracks like “Protect and Survive,” “Uniform,” and “And Further On,” none of which stay long in the membrane or command repeated listening.

Fortunately for the album’s drastically more technological sound, Anderson’s trusty, trademark flute was not left at home. The woodland instrument never seems out of place in the synthy landscape, and adds much warmth to some of the album’s more studio-sterile sections.

A is a curious album, a sudden exception to the Jethro Tull sound from the albums that immediately preceded it. But it’s no less interesting and adventurous, and even no less terribly British, even if it “wasn’t Jethro Tull music or Ian Anderson music.” Though not a “proper” Tull album in technicalities and origin, it’s stuck in the band’s canon. The circumstances surrounding A are an integral part of the band’s history, which, even if it had been released as an Ian Anderson solo album as intended, impacted the band’s history and future. It ended an era that had lasted a decade-plus, almost completely disintegrating its most well-known lineup, and sending Tull headfirst into the 1980s. A transported a rock band that could have entertained the court of Elizabeth I into the court of digital doodads, its leader clutching his trusty flute as a talisman.

Four years later, Jethro Tull released Under Wraps, an album gilded in drum machines and songs of Cold War espionage, a distinctly 80s record, making A sound like Songs From the Wood by comparison. 

But there was still the flute. There would always be the flute.

Album Review: Bob Dylan - "Shot of Love"

Despite being a Christian, I don’t listen to contemporary “worship music.” I find it bland and repetitive. If I don’t believe whoever wrote a pedestrian song was inspired, I can’t be inspired, either. Who knows if Bob Dylan is still a Christian today? Who knows if he truly was back then? After his three “Christian albums,” several songs for the following Infidels sessions were full of Christian, or at least Biblical, imagery: “Foot of Pride” and “Lord, Protect My Child” are well-known outtakes from that 1983 album, while “Man of Peace” actually made the cut; its chorus “sometimes Satan, you know he comes as a man of peace,” echoes a verse from 2 Corinthians: “Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.” The lead track, “Jokerman,” was packed with explicit Old Testament references, even if it seemed to be describing something else entirely. One could even argue that the pro-Israel “Neighborhood Bully” from Infidels was rooted in Dylan’s experience with the Bible, or just his own Jewish heritage, or maybe even both. Biblical imagery, however, would continue to appear in Dylan’s songs long after his faith became ambiguous, and had actually made appearances long before – “All Along the Watchtower” draws some of its words from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapter 21 (I’m serious – snoop around).

But as for identifying a reference to Scripture in a Bob Dylan song and laboring over it as a clue to the state of his faith when he wrote it, if any, is probably a fruitless exercise. Even the title of that first “post-Christian” album: Infidels. It could be a clue in itself. Or, it could mean nothing at all, just a little joke. And, before one reads too deeply into the words of “Death is Not the End” in 1988, in which “the bright light of salvation” and “where the spirit never dies” are hoped for, the caveat remains that a song’s narrator is not always reflective of the songwriter’s beliefs.
Whatever the truth is, the man is notorious for self-contradicting interviews that paint a frustratingly baffling portrait of the artist. He once famously said about the media, “I figured you lied to it.” To be fair, though, maybe we fans ought not have the right to be frustrated – it’s, in a way, none of our business what an artist’s personal beliefs are, unless they choose to splay them on record, film, or text. Sometimes it’s even best not to know: I can’t imagine the horror of being a young Billie Eilish and, upon instant stardom at age sixteen, being harangued by media and the public at large demanding to know your stances on abortion, feminism, wealth inequality, immigration, gender identity, and that cake store that refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
These poor kids don’t even know where babies come from yet.

The burden of being a music star from whom many demand their life answers, the terror of being turned into a golden calf, must be unbearable, unless one just naturally enjoys spouting off their opinions. Bob Dylan no doubt felt this heavier than any major artist before or after him, even more than the Beatles. His beliefs, his thoughts, his views were his, though he was labeled a prophet and those views were adopted with force by his audience.

But, not to defend the demands of such rabid and dogmatic fans, relating to a poignant piece of art while not knowing if the one speaking such seemingly personal statements is being genuine, or if it’s just part of an ever-changing series of the artist’s gimmicks, can be frustrating. Even if, again, sometimes it’s none of our business.
Who knows what goes through Bob Dylan’s head anyway?

1981’s Shot of Love is the last, the hardest-rocking, and most accessible of Dylan’s trio of “Born-again” records that began in 1979, all of which were (and still are) widely criticized. I’ve met many non-believers who, despite not having a religious interest, nonetheless appreciate and gravitate toward the book of Job. There are many elements on Shot of Love that reflect that Old Testament figure’s rage and agony. The title track and “The Groom’s Still Waiting At the Altar” are the most musically ferocious things Dylan had done since “Hurricane.” The former finds Dylan decrying the “rape” of the Church and the declaration that “God is dead,” the latter an angry defense of those who “try to be pure at heart, they arrest you for robbery,” blasting those who “mistake your shyness for lewdness, your silence for snobbery.” “The Groom’s Still Waiting” could have easily fit on Highway 61 Revisited – imagine if The Band, or even just Levon Helm or Garth Hudson, had been in the lineup. “Property of Jesus” is exactly what the title suggests, except it’s much more rollicking and loose than any of the more stiff, underwhelming material on the previous Slow Train Coming and Saved. Its lyrics are moving and stark, the opposite of the kind of Christian music that simply doesn’t move me.

But it’s the gentler moments of this otherwise hard rocking album that are most effective, and find Dylan at his most self- reflective, and self-aware. On the gorgeous harmonica-laden ballad “In the Summertime,” he asks, seemingly his audience and his critics, and maybe himself,
Did you respect me for what I did
Or for what I didn’t do
Or for keeping it hid?
Did I lose my mind
when I tried to get rid
of everything you see?

A passage from the 139th Psalm declares, “where can I go from Your presence? If I ascend into the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” It seems that way of thinking, that nothing is truly “secular,” as no song can hide from God, is being applied on songs that aren’t overtly “Christian,” like the genial “Heart of Mine” and the beautiful dirge “Lenny Bruce.” Other artists must have felt these tracks safe enough, as “Heart of Mine” features Ron Wood and Ringo Starr, and the Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench plays keyboards throughout the album. On that note, it’s amazing to think that Slow Train Coming was produced by Jerry Wexler, who, when Dylan allegedly tried sharing his faith during the sessions, sighed and said, “Bob, you’re dealing with a sixty-two-year-old confirmed Jewish atheist. I’m hopeless. Let’s just make an album.” He proceeded to produce Bob to his first Grammy for “Gotta Serve Somebody,” a song John Lennon dubbed so offensively preachy that he responded with “Serve Yourself.”

Then there’s the ode to Lenny Bruce (1925-1966), the most controversial comedian of his time, and to many a martyr for the First Amendment. On almost any other Dylan album, the eulogy would settle inconspicuously in the track list, as Bruce was almost as much of an icon of 60s counterculture as Dylan and Abbie Hoffman. But when placed on an album identified as a Christian album, its inclusion is curious – at first. The lament is actually very fitting among the title track’s anguish and the bite of “Groom.” “Lenny Bruce” captures a sadness that comes from events in the “secular world” (wherever that is) processed through a faith that is mutually inclusive with inevitable feelings of heartbreak. The closing lyric
Lenny Bruce was bad
He was the brother that you never had
gives the listener a look through watery eyes at loss and waste, of a man dead too soon, even if that man was never the singer’s Christian “brother.”

If Dylan was aware his Christian era was, at least musically, coming to a close, there was no better song that could have rolled over the credits or a closing montage of savagely derisive press clippings than “Every Grain of Sand.” It ranks among “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” “Buckets of Tears,” and “Roll On John” as one of the greatest closing tracks to a Dylan album. Even if he has truly eschewed his faith in Christ since the early 80s, he wrote a realistic and heart-wrenching look at the whole idea of faith that’s topped only by King David’s most anguished but hopeful Psalms. Again, being so emotionally gritty, it’s not the kind of contemporary music played in many churches. An even more stunning, rougher early version of the song is available on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 3. “Every Grain of Sand” encapsulates “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (that’s a Bible verse).

I guess you’d just have to have experienced for yourself the beautiful insanity of faith to identify with the poetry in this song. Or, maybe you just have to be someone with a lot of hope, whose hope wrestles daily with a lot of pain. As Dostoevsky once wrote, “my Hosanna has passed through a furnace of doubt.”

-from the book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems

Album Review: Bob Dylan - "Self Portrait"

Bob Dylan - Self Portrait (1970)

Nothing is sacred.
In 1966, Bob Dylan was a god to a generation. Or, at the very least, a prophet. By 1970 and a cover of “Blue Moon,” those who called him such were ready to stone him to death and tear him to pieces.
Self Portrait is not “lost” or forgotten. Not by any means. In fact it's one of the most infamous records in twentieth century popular music. Its infamy comes from the bombardment of scorn and accusations of betrayal its creator suffered because of the material contained therein. Not to make Bob Dylan sound like a cartoon villain whose plans have gone awry, but...
...maybe that was the plan all along.

It would border on asinine to suggest Dylan concocted Self Portrait to sabotage his entire career. Even as far-out as the man has stretched his image in his career through his various moods and personas – a torchbearer for Woody Guthrie, electric rock and roller, country crooner, wandering face-painted gypsy, Christian preacher, and most recently, torchbearer for Frank Sinatra – the thought that he meant to end his public life with this purposely uncharacteristic album is absurd. Self Portrait was more like, as hokey and cliché as it sounds, a statement. It was an artistic move, and a brave one at that, knowing the backlash he'd receive would make the boos hurled upon him when he “went electric” seem like a playful chiding.

Released as a sprawling, twenty-plus track double album in 1970, Self Portrait was condemned by both reviewers and fans, who were shocked that the spokesman of their generation was crooning harder than he had on Nashville Skyline. But instead of acceptable country music, he was now covering the Everly Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel, Gordon Lightfoot, and a slew of other borrowed material, both obscure and well known, all with a distinctly commercial polish – save for a few raggedly performed live tracks with The Band from the previous year's Isle of Wight concert –  that had the anti-establishment up in arms and pulling out the beads in their hair. The reaction, or fallout, to Self Portrait saw critics claiming Dylan had turned his back on his principles – whatever those were. Congrats to the lucky buggers who had somehow managed to crack Dylan's moral code. They asserted the Bard was indulging in a “commercialization” of his music; critic Ralph Gleason was seething, and even called for a boycott of Dylan's albums.
The heart of the entire matter may lie in Dylan's growing discontent with being hailed as a leader; in a biography by Anthony Scaduto, Dylan was quoted about this experience:

“I wasn't going to fall for that, for being any kind of leader... and because I wanted out, they all started to rap me.” 

And that's what makes this album so perversely enjoyable. Didn't Bob Dylan tell us not to follow leaders in the first place?
Dylan's famous “motorcycle accident” in 1967 has been the subject of debate, not unlike most other facet's of his public and private life. Did it even really happen? Or was it an alibi to allow him to escape to the woods of upstate New York and hide from his followers? Whatever one believes, the subsequent lack of touring was made up for with an incredibly productive and prolific period in a basement in a big pink house in Saugerties with four-fifths of The Band, known as the "Basement Tapes." Even before their double-album release in 1975 (and even that was just scratching the surface of the load of material), the recordings were heavily bootlegged and had reached legendary status, many of the songs having already been covered by some top names. But the songs were not what they had been on Blonde On Blonde or The Times They Are A-Changin'. They were far from social protests; they were backwoods mumbo jumbo, nonsense that somehow made sense. Some had distinct messages – “Tears of Rage,” “Going To Acapulco” – others were head-scratchers that still somehow meant something – “Too Much of Nothing,” “You Ain't Going Nowhere.”
However one interprets those legendary dozens of songs, they were certainly the result of an artist in retreat, reshaping his craft, consciously or otherwise.

Dylan's next official release was John Wesley Harding in 1967, a deep album that left behind much of the electricity he'd been skewered for and out-folked his folkiest songs. On the record, listeners heard Dylan's voice begin to change. The change was subtle, but it was there. By the next year's full-blown country endeavor Nashville Skyline, Dylan's prominent nose was doing the vocal work. The album took the music world by surprise. Rolling Stone, the Village Voice Recorder, and everyone who was still with Dylan after the mysteries of John Wesley Harding collectively reacted, “wh... um... okay, yeah. Cool. Country voice. Johnny Cash. We'll allow it.”
Then, in June 1970, it happened. Like a double-disc Pearl Harbor attack of pedal steel ballads, prominent string sections, and angelic background singers, Self Portrait lives in infamy.

The title suggested the album would resemble some kind of personal diary, but it was anything but. That is, if one expected a portrait resembling the sour-faced Bob Dylan from the cover of The Times They Are-a Changin.' As reflected on the cover of this album, literally painted by the man himself, this Dylan had a face beyond recognition.

  There was a touch of Woody Guthrie or Johnny Cash-like folk in “Little Sadie,” and “Days of '49,” but the absolutely Burt Bacharach-ish “Bell Isle” blew away any chance of redemption to the critics. The two records were filled with infamously dogged but... well, bizarrely enchanting covers of “Early Morning Rain,” “Blue Moon,” “Let it Be Me,” and an exquisite, if eyebrow-raising version of “I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know.” Songs like these, and “Take a Message to Mary,” “Copper Kettle,” and “Take Me As I Am (Or Let Me Go)” (which is easy, but likely erroneous, to interpret as a thinly veiled message to the critics) were absolutely commercial. They were songs that could have been lip-synced on The Ed Sullivan Show by “Sink the Bismarck”/"North To Alaska" singer-songwriter Johnny Horton, had Horton been alive.

The thought made Bob Dylan's self-appointed disciples gag.

Most infamous of the tall stack of covers, the single track on Self Portrait that drew the most guffaws and groans was Dylan's duet with himself on a double-tracked recording of Simon & Garfunkel's “The Boxer,” sung with honky-tonk croon to boot. But Dylan had every right to cover a song by the folk duo in any way he wanted. After all, he invented their job, if only fortuitously – spokespersons of their generation. Critics begged for someone to assure them it was a joke. That this was avant-garde high art they didn't understand. That Dylan had an inoperable brain tumor that affected his judgment. The decision to include the live Isle of Wight tracks was baffling, but perhaps most telling in their poorly recorded and performed state. Perhaps Dylan's most identifiable, iconic song, “Like a Rolling Stone,” presented in such a haggard performance, he and The Band staggering through it, uncharacteristically jumbled, was too out of place not to be a calculated message.

But, statement though the album may have been, it still sounds like the Bard is having fun throughout. As with most Dylan records, a load of outtakes from Self Portrait have been released, and he sounds as carefree and jubilant as someone just happy to be recording an album. If the “back off” statement theory is correct, if this album really was Dylan's message to the masses to denounce or discourage their view of him as their prophet and leader, it sounds like he was having a blast making that message, rather than brooding in self-pity and loathing for the public. Consider it Bob Dylan's own experience of Stage Fright; his former backing group and proteges The Band released the album of that name the same year, their reaction to the dregs of being made public figures. But it only took them two years to reach that disillusion, while Dylan had endured a decade of it. And while The Band's reaction to the rigor of the music business and demands of public perception was to produce a record with a darker energy than their first two albums, their former employer's reaction had been to have a ball while his worshipers writhed in disappointment.

Given the scurrilous attacks the album generated, it's interesting to consider that Self Portrait is not generally regarded as Dylan's worst album; I nominate 1986's Knocked Out Loaded for that dubious honor, while many critics enjoy picking on Down in the Groove. It can only be the mythos surrounding Self Portrait, the legend and notoriety of it all that keep it from being ostracized in hindsight.

All the talk of statements and defiance on Dylan's part may be just romantic wishful thinking. Maybe he'd simply made a gross error in judgment and made a bad album. He would make a few stiffs in his lifetime. But even so, Self Portrait might have been the best thing to happen to Dylan at this point in his career, and maybe even his personal life. If only for the sake of his sanity. The album would leave a permanent footnote to his already puzzling and complex mythology, an exception and a caution to those who had exalted him as an all-knowing seer, holy and blameless in all his ways.
However one interprets the album – mistake or memorial – it has to be said that Self Portrait, with all of the debris left in its nasal, string-caked, mushy wake, is a testament to how quickly a generation's hero can be stabbed in the back. Even if Dylan was the one who handed his generation the knife.
But, it was also a testament to how quickly a hero can be forgiven for his sins, so long as the public is pleased. Dylan's following album, New Morning, saw Rolling Stone declare, “we've got Dylan back again!” The songs were serious, deeper, explorations of the domestic life he'd finally attained with his family, and, they were originals. Even the honky-tonk croon was slowly wearing off. It's just a theory, but maybe Self Portrait had to happen for the fickle critics to get Dylan back again. What could have been the next possible move after the country and borderline novelty of Nashville Skyline? A sudden return to social anthems? It would have been dead on arrival – dueting with Johnny Cash would have cast a pall over a new, scowling song referring to Vietnam or Nixon. And, if Dylan had skipped the spectacle that was Self Portrait and gone straight into the laid back, thoughtful role of "Pa" in New Morning, the public would have been just as confused, asking, “why isn't the prophet prophesying? He's singing about having kids and meeting Elvis. He's sold out!”

Rolling Stone "got Dylan back again" in 1971, but maybe the flogging he received with Self Portrait was a necessary step to Dylan getting Dylan back again.

-from my book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems