#6 -- The Beatles

Come Together (fantasy)

A day in the life of a typical American, nearly 50 years after The Beatles' disbanding, still involves a good chance of hearing or reading about them; which is all one need consider when judging their greatness.  

There's a place for a fresh face in our pantheon of 14 immortals, but this isn't it (that space will open up soon, however, as we approach #1).

Something about the Beatles is so adorable ("I Want To Hold Your Hand") and yet so revolutionary ("Yellow Submarine") that there's been a tendency to date the decline of civilization to 1970 and their breakup.  Why the strong feeling?

Because they knew when to quit; even though the follow-up question is still 'why'?  Why'd it happen that way?

Help  in deciphering The Beatles journey from wise-cracking band-of-brothers to estranged break-up is found, I'd suggest, in what happened between '65 and '69.  What had been their slightly longish hair became decidedly uncut.  What had been their attempt at being 'pop' became absolute cutting edge.  What had been songs about love and loss became "I Am The Walrus".  So what makes people inward-looking, slightly at a loss socially, detached from prescribed behavior?  One Majestic Jest on a magical mystery tour, indeed.

I will merely say that if The Beatles were their 1965 selves in '69 they might have seen a way forward.  They might have taken a good many years off to pursue their own projects and relationships, remained friends who occasionally joked over the phone, gotten together for special charity fundraisers, and told the world they'd make one more record, but didn't know just when.  My guess is that the prospect of a future reunion, code-named, perhaps, "One After 909", might have kept them all alive until something like the turn of the century, when they could've put everything into that one more recording.   But then, I've always liked the line "...tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun".  Exit left.  So, perhaps this press release could simply never have been:

"Let-It-Be Studios, London, April 9th, 1999, The Beatles' entered the studio today, three decades after their last recording session, to begin work on what will be their final studio album with an expected release date of new year's day 2001"

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Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

10/8/9/8 = 35 out of a perfect 40

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Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds --> 12-year-old birthday boy:  The very first rock 'n roll record I ever owned was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

#7 -- The Band

Word Of Mouth

These days we call it 'buzz'.  In the late 1960s an unpublished, buzzworthy recording of songs, taped by Bob Dylan and The Band in their Woodstock-area basement, "went viral", as we would say today.  Fellow musicians, upon listening to these Basement Tapes, were so enthralled that they passed the music along to other musicians, influencing many of Rock's most popular acts, years before a public release.

The music was eerily familiar, but like little else being recorded at the time.  Its familiarity was due to it being 'roots' music: a songbook that Americans of a hundred years before might have felt comfortable with...except for the rock 'n roll adaptation.

Eventually, the backing ensemble behind the basement tapes, The Band, were recognized as headliners in their own right, recording musical Americana well into the mid-'70s.  Their highlighting of strong suits within pop music's historical record is what makes The Band not only one of our immortal top-14 stars, but ushers in the redemption of popular itself.  As with all great art, if one honors, with thorough study, those who have gone before, and if one adds something new to that foundation, it's hard to go wrong, and indeed, quite easy for 'buzz' to eventually find you.

Getting down to their songs, here's the first number of theirs I ever heard--as a high schooler listening in on AM radio: "Up On Cripple Creek"  

"Now me and my mate were back at the shack, 

we had Spike Jones on the box;

She said 'I can't take the way he sings, 

but I love to hear him talk'.

Well that just gave my heart a throb

to the bottom of my feet,

and I swore as I took another pull

my Bessie can't be beat!"

The song is carefree, light-hearted and whimsical.  The lyrics paint vivid scenes.  There's great fun being had.  There're even hidden levels of understanding one can sink one's teeth into on subsequent hearings.  For example, it's quite natural for someone to say "I can't take the way he sings, but I love to hear him talk" and actually be referring to a companion who is present.  That the music is Spike Jones obscures this second story delightfully.  It's these multiple layers and overall solidity, that make the musical styling itself--what might be 'rock 'n roll' as tipsy stumble--many times more powerful than the artless power chord and high-decible summons to recklessness that often passes for 'real' rock 'n roll.

....................................

Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

8/9/10/8 = 35 out of a perfect 40

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A second take:  As with the second story in the Spike Jones example, the iconic "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" seems to be lamenting the fall of the South in the civil war, until one considers the chorus:  "and all the bells were ringing."  Which, I would suggest, would be nigh impossible, or at least unlikely, for a bombed city in defeat, but all but certain in every major city of that era in the North, as word of war's end spread via church bells and of course ...the buzz that is word of mouth.

#8 -- Dave Matthews Band

What It Takes To Be Great

The way our Mighty 55 list is constructed, it is very hard for a relatively recent act to do well.  That's because 'Innovation' and 'Influence' are two of our four grades, along with 'Musical Integrity' and 'Do I Wanna Hear More'.  To have a high enough score overall, a group has to set themselves apart by adding something different, besides being really good at what they do.  This was easy for bands whose debuts occurred when singers wore uniforms, record executives told them what to sing, segregation was common, men and women played in different acts, many topics were taboo, foreign instruments and styles were unheard of, and there was no cross-pollination between musical genres.

Once those barriers were broken down, innovation was harder to come by.

Have a look at the record charts, though, and one is struck by just how good a few recent acts have been.  Dave Matthews Band, for example, has set a record for consecutive albums debuting at #1, with six out of their last six.  So, even though they score relatively low on 'innovation', they nevertheless join the other immortals at the top.

....................................

Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

5/10/10/10 = 35 out of a perfect 40

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A Sign: I think it revealing that several times DMB entered the studio, worked on material, then decided they didn't have superior stuff, abandoned their work and tried again later.  There is simply too much half-hearted, ho-hum, blah-blah-blah in the music business.

#9: Led Zepplin

Power:  Amp Up

If asked whether they'd want $10, $20 or $30, with no strings attached, most sensible people would opt for $30.  In a similar way, Led Zepplin came thundering out of a bluesy sky, flashes of giddy id leading on listeners with the question, Why not the full-on power of pleasure?

For nearly a decade, beginning in '68, most answered, "Why not?"

Unfortunately, Zep has had many would-be imitators who fail in many predictable ways.  They're either bashing brash, overly dark and moody, whippingly thorough thrashers, the wild clothes, the wanton hair....  But every 'heavy metal' band that's followed apace, up those promising stairs, has forgotten the secret ingredient that allowed L.Z. to pull it all off: musical architecture; the sort that leads one to a second storied, sweet heaven of a bedroom.  Otherwise, one is liable to knock oneself out in a sawed-off attic.

So look back in wonder.

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Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

10/8/10/7 = 35 out of a perfect 40

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That's Freedom: It's fitting that the music uncorked by Led Zepplin, the full-throated, unbound exhaltation that poured forth, involved a sight-unseen, sound-unheard, no-limits contract that meant choices of style and presentation were theirs alone.  There was never an executive standing over L.Z.'s shoulder; they were complete masters of their fate: 'Singles' were mainly replaced by 'albums'.  Initially, there were no album titles.  One hugely popular album had no readable identification whatsoever on front or back.  And the reaction from music critics was almost always behind the curve.  Success, one imagines, was likely all the more sweet.

#10 -- Joni Mitchell

A Feminine Aura

It's difficult to fully appreciate what Joni Mitchell did for rock n' roll, indeed for American culture.  Mainly that's because, in some respects, she led the way to where we are now.  In the age of Etsy and do-it-yourself crafting, originality and creativity no longer surprise us.

First and foremost, Mitchell wrote her own lyrics, produced her own sound, and crafted all her own album covers.

Second, and most importantly, she projected an unknowable mystique, grounded in creativity, that became a template for not just female musicians, but for the feminine project writ large.

And third, she opened up music itself; like a peeled banana her scales and rhythms shed tradition, seeking their own integrity.

Perhaps surprisingly, her use of 'open' guitar tuning was due to her bout with polio as a child; her fingers were simply too weak to produce certain chords and fingerings.  Characteristically, she threw all that out the window and created her own guitar string tunings, each determined by the song she was playing. 

Her exploration of 'open' tone and rhythm began as popular music, then, gradually, she stepped into the future, beckoning us to follow.

....................................

Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

9/7/10/9 = 35 out of a perfect 40

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Thought: although Crosby, Stills and Nash rendered a masterful cover of Mitchell's "Woodstock", I think of that song, and of the best of that generation, as her's.