NYS Music 202​2

Category: Book Reviews

  • Two New Books Explore the Intricacies and Staying Power of Pop’s Most Iconic Songs

    Earlier this month, Bob Dylan made waves with the publication of his long-awaited critique of 66 of his favorite tunes by other songsmiths, The Philosophy of Modern Song.  Now veteran music journalists Marc Myers and Steve Baltin are weighing in with their own fascinating and divergent explorations of this turf, with Anatomy of 55 More Songs (Grove Atlantic Press) and Anthems We Love (Harper Horizon).

    iconic songs

    Unlike Dylan’s book, which doesn’t delve into the paint-by-numbers makings of the classics, Myers and Baltin’s approaches are straightforward explorations of the creation and lasting impact of some of pop’s most iconic compositions. Where Dylan often employs his selections as jumping off points for impressionistic, very personal essays about the subject matter of his chosen songs (divorce, career crash, gambling, etc.), Myers and Baltin serve up approaches that are far more direct and satisfying, especially for music-makers.

    Myers’ newest is the second book culled from his long-running Wall Street Journal column, “Anatomy of A Song.” The first, a critical smash released in 2016, provided oral histories on the making of 45 era-defining hits from interviews with the artists that crafted them, names like Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Rod Stewart and Roger Waters to name a few.  Myers’ latest takes on 55 more including Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising,” The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation,” The Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around,” Blondie’s “Rapture,” Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman,” The Youngbloods’ “Get Together” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

    In his interviews with the songwriters and collaborators like producers Tony Visconti and Bob Ezrin, Myers brings you backstage for an incredibly detailed view of their inspirations and creations. These are engaging narratives that are dressed up with offbeat trivia that will make you the star conversationalist of any cocktail party. 

    John Fogerty tells how his “Bad Moon Rising” was a marriage of the short story, “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” and Scotty Moore’s guitar licks on early Elvis records.  The secret sonic sauces?  He did it with his Les Paul tuned down to D and slapback echo on the vocals that make everyone think his final lyrical couplet may be “there’s a bathroom on the right.” The latter is something Fogerty now periodically deploys in concert to the amusement and delight of his audience. The versatile Todd Rundgren shares how his twice-recorded “Hello It’s Me” may not have come to be if his high school girlfriend’s dad hadn’t turned the garden hose on him for having long hair or if he hadn’t heard jazz organist Jimmy Smith’s version of “Johnny Comes March Home.”  Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crystal Blue Persuasion” was not an “acid song” as many believe.  It was something inspired by a poem put in James’ hand after a college gig by a kid who was never heard from again. Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead shares that their “Truckin’” really crossed over largely because of the harmony tricks they had picked up from jazz great Jon Hendricks.  As for AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” it also was almost not to be when the cassette containing the rough rehearsal demo became unraveled and was nearly destroyed before they could share it with producer Mutt Lange.

    iconic songs

    Shock rock pioneer Arthur Brown’s hit “Fire” sprang from a poem he had written at 15, while Steve Miller’s “Fly Like An Eagle” only solidified after he added electronic trimmings from “the cheapest, dumbest synthesizer” he could find at his local music store.  Steely Dan’s “Peg” only got its finishing touch when they wrestled the perfect guitar solo from session man Jay Graydon, the eighth musician to try his hand at it. Earth, Wind & Fire’s lyric collaborator Allee Willis never knew the significance of the date in their song “September” until years after leader Maurice White’s death (September 21 was the due date of his son as told by his widow to Willis).  And even though she begged White 20 times or more, he would not replace the “ba-dee-yah” in the song’s refrain with lyrics “that made sense.”

    Myers’ book also provides astute musical analysis that places the songs within the context of their time and meta musical trends.  His chapter on Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” begins with a pocket history of power ballads of which this tune is a solid gold example. Myers’ traces the birth of the power ballad to days of movie musicals and Judy Garland’s show-stopper, “Over the Rainbow,” from The Wizard of Oz.

    Where Myers is more focused on the big bang of their creation and immediate aftermath, Steve Baltin’s book is more focused on the reverberations – how hit songs with a unique staying power become anthems that connect with generations and have many lives beyond their time on the charts.

    Baltin’s book investigates 29 iconic songs that have grown to anthem stature with the passing of time.  These include everything from 60s classics like The Temptations’ “My Girl,” The Beach Boys “Good Only Knows” and The Doors “Light My Fire” to more modern rock and pop staples like Linkin Park’s “In the End,” My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade” and TLC’s “No Scrubs.”

    To become an anthem a song needs two things per Baltin – timelessness and universal appeal.  Most anthems are “mistakes.”  Some like Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule The World” were throwaways that nearly didn’t get finished or recorded (it only was when Roland Orzabal’s late wife insisted that he decided to complete what he called his “rubbish song”).  Others like Chic’s “Le Freak” were almost too silly in the minds of their creators, while still more like Graham Nash “Our House” were deemed almost too simple to be really proud of, even with their runaway success. 

    Baltin’s chapter on “God Only Knows” is a good template for his approach.  While Paul McCartney and others called it “the greatest song ever written,” it was buried on a now-classic album that was largely ignored upon its release, Pet Sounds. Beach Boy Al Jardine compares it to “The Nutcracker,” a classical not pop production, something that its writer, Brian Wilson, also admits. He notes the “Tchaikovsky-influence” on his writing at the time. As with most of the entries here, Baltin goes on to note the many cover versions of the song (200 and counting for this one, from the likes of mellow crooner Andy Williams to art rockers Flaming Lips).  He also completes many entries with a list of their frequent and very lucrative use in film, television and commercials.

    In his chapter on Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” Baltin relates how this bit of sunshine pop from 1969 became a sports anthem for The Boston Red Sox and something that helped heal the city when Diamond performed it at Fenway Park five days after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.  Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick labels her “White Rabbit” a “rip-off of Ravel’s Bolero and Alice in Wonderland.”  She credits its popularity to the “sex build up to climax” of the song’s arrangement.  Interestingly, her favorite version of the song is not her own, but the one done by Pink – though she would still love to hear a cover by Barbra Streisand.  In the same spirit, the Tears for Fears duo actually now prefers the downtempo electronica version of “Everybody Wants to Rule The World” recorded by Lorde for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack.  It’s an arrangement they sometimes perform in concert and have considered re-recording.

    The only anthem in the book that was conceived as one was KISS’s “Rock and Roll All Nite.”  According to guitarist Paul Stanley, the president of their record label, Casablanca, Neil Bogart, said to the band they were still struggling need an anthem to really breakthrough.  Stanley went straight to his hotel room and penned the killer chorus which was fused with a partial tune by bassist Gene Simmons, “Drive Me Wild.” The tune did not really take off until it was re-recorded and featured on their 1975 live album, Alive.  

    The descriptions above just scratch the surface of these fine books, ones which belong on the bookshelf of any diehard music-lover and every music-maker seeking to capture lightning in a bottle.

  • Bob Dylan’s New Book Spins Philosophical on 66 Modern Songs

    After 12 years in the incubator, Bob Dylan’s long-awaited book on songwriting, The Philosophy of Modern Song (Simon & Schuster), has finally landed with a very big splash.  This, of course, is as it should be as he is, with little doubt, the most revered songwriter of the latter part of the 20th Century, the first and still only rocker to earn a Pulitzer Prize.

    As with everything Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song, is not really what you think it will. It is not a literal analysis or anatomical study of these tunes as told by their makers. It is something grander, more ambitious and maybe more revealing about Dylan himself – his life’s experiences, observations and opinions.

    bob dylan book

    The book employs 66 widely varied songs as jumping off points for some dazzlingly impressionistic essays. These are his philosophical jams on the subject matter at the heart of each song – from romantic betrayal/divorce to the faith of the Vegas gambler to career crashes, war, alienation and so much more. It’s a Monet, J.W. Turner or other great Impressionist painters take on a book.  It’s super misty and foggy but the soft focus of it may impart greater emotional resonance than something photo realistic.  In most cases, these elegant prose forwards are followed by a second essay, one that more literally relates to the songwriters and performers, the historical backdrop for the songs and the like.

    Per the promotional press release: “While they are ostensibly about music, these are really meditations and reflections on the human condition… a series of dream-like riffs that resemble an epic poem.”   Along the way, readers will get plenty of Dylan’s dry and devastating humor, served up with some oddball trivia about the artists and his beliefs on what makes a song great.  Want to know how a single extra syllable can ruin a song or how bluegrass is the father of heavy metal?  If so, this is the book for you.

    The selections in the book demonstrate Dylan’s reverence for many genres of song. There’s old-timey Americana, classic country and Delta and Chicago blues, the crooners of the Great American songbook, Laurel Canyon rock, Motown and Philly Soul, the R&B and rockabilly influenced rock-n-roll pioneers of ‘50s, some classic rock radio staples and even Top 40 kitsch.  

    Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up” is the perfect “boiling point song, the anthem of an alienated hellcat” per Dylan. He calls the artist a fusion of silent screen icon Harold Lloyd and Buddy Holly, two masters of minimalist precision in their work.  Likewise, this song is a “streamlined classic,” one better than others by Costello which Dylan sometimes finds “too wordy” and full of “too many thoughts.”  Dylan’s views on the blues classics “Key to the Highway” and “Big Boss Man” are testaments to the power of their architects – Little Walter and Jimmy Reid, whom Dylan dubs “the essence of electric simplicity.”  On Elvis Presley’s “Money Honey,” Dylan waxes poetic and a little leftist provides on the value of money. It’s all about power, the difference between rich and power and how we are all equal in the end when we shed the bone suit.  His riff on Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” may serve to explain why he is still on his so-called “Endless Tour.”  Willie’s version is an update on Kerouac’s hipster/beatnik classic On the Road, in luxury bus vs. Neil Cassady’s ramshackle ‘49 Hudson . Why the road?  Because you will never be bogged down by any of life’s trivial responsibilities like doing the laundry per Dylan. It’s all about to the road that leads to the next performance.

    Dylan’s offering on Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool” sets out to secure Nelson his rightful place on the pantheon of early rockers. Per Dylan, Nelson was the person who really brought this new music to a nation through his weekly performances on his family’s hit TV show, “The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet” in the mid-‘50s .  According to Dylan, Nelson was “more than Elvis the ambassador of Rock-n-Roll.”  This section also charts the starring role “the fool” has had in many eras and genres of popular music, in hits from Hank Snow, Aretha Franklin, Bobby Bland, The Beatles, The Main Ingredient, Elvis Presley, The Grateful Dead and Anthony Newley.   Dylan’s book also riffs on a duo of Little Richard standards, “Tutti Fruitti” and “Long Tall Sally.”  The former is really Richard “speaking in tongues” about the undercover gay subculture, while the latter provides the platform for a head scratching fantasy about 12-foot-tall ancient Egyptians!

    Dylan on The Who’s “My Generation” is a rumination on the “cockiness of youth” and how each new generation will always somehow take from the one before it … and resent the fact!  The Eagles “Witchy Woman” is the runway for a rant on the kinds of women you should avoid, “a hallucinogenic amalgamation of succubus and thaumaturge.” It’s also a deep dive into the life and end of the legendary New Orleans voodoo queen, Marie Laveau. With his study of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” Dylan addresses how being misunderstood and getting lost in translation “ruins your enjoyment of life.” There’s cool trivia here about how the label that put out Nina Simone’s classic version, ESP, was first founded to help spread the new universal language, Esperanto, before it became the home to avant-garde jazz greats like Albert Ayler.

    In the chapter on “It’s All in the Game,” we learn how a melody created by a man who would become Vice President to Calvin Coolidge made the hit parade.  Here, Dylan spouts on the history of American politicians as musicians, referencing Nixon’s piano chops and Bill Clinton’s yakety sax to name a few.  This chapters contains what I think are the most unfortunate collection of words in the book, when he calls former Arkansas governor and Fox News staple Mike Huckabee “an accomplished bass player.”

    The ‘70s Stax Records classic, “Cheaper to Keep Her” by Johnnie Taylor, is a song reflection what Dylan calls “the school of street wisdom.” Perhaps a reflection of his own experience, Dylan uses it to rail against “the $10 Billion a year divorce industry” and lawyers in “the business of family destruction.” His solution?  Embracing polygamy and having only as many children as you can afford!  And speaking of questionable occupations, Dylan’s take on Cher’s quasi-novelty hit, “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves,” concludes with him saying that these are “the three types of people” a person might have the most fun having dinner with.

    For me, Dylan’s most eye-opening take came with Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”  To Dylan, it’s a song of nuance, one that can be viewed from two perspectives. First, and most obvious, is the person who has been cheated on. But for Dylan, maybe the song is really or also about the cheater, the person who is questioning his own compulsion to be unfaithful again and again?

    Credit must go to whoever art directed this long-awaited book.  The text is complemented with over 150 curated photos which serve to set the time and emotional tone for Dylan’s subjective, profound and sometimes humorous investigations of some our most beloved and underappreciated popular songs.

  • 10,000 Shows and A Generation of Great Jams Recounted in Concert Promoter Peter Shapiro’s New Memoir

    Veteran club owner, concert promoter and sometimes filmmaker Peter Shapiro is drawing back the curtain on a career that encompasses nearly three decades and 10,000 shows in his new memoir, The Music Never Stops (Hachette Books). 

    Peter Shapiro

    Peter Shapiro is the man behind venues like Wetlands Preserve, Brooklyn Bowl (located in Williamsburg, Las Vegas, Philadelphia and Nashville) The Capitol Theatre and a bevy of tours and festivals including The Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary Fare Thee Well and LOCKN’ and films like U2 3D to name but a few.  Beginning with his work at Wetlands, Shapiro can lay claim to being a central figure in keeping alive and expanding the cult around the Grateful Dead and the many “jam bands” that emerged in their wake.  For all his Dead credentials, people sometimes forget that Shapiro also played a vital role in exposing this huge base of open-minded fans to diverse artists like hip hoppers The Roots, rapper Talib Kweli, Americana great Jason Isbell, bluegrass innovators Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle, jazz guitarists John Scofield and Stanley Jordan and countless more. 

    Shapiro’s journey began after seeing a Grateful Dead show in Illinois in March 1993. It was something that inspired him and a friend to take to the road to film Deadheads in their natural habitat during the band’s summer tour.  Things didn’t go too well at first due to his crew being mistaken for D.E.A. agents because of their rental vehicle of choice – a white-panel van sans windows. His love of the Dead community would soon lead him to a job at Wetlands Preserve, the downtown NYC club dedicated to improvisational music and environmental activism founded by Larry Bloch. By age 23, he became a minority owner; a year later he assumes full ownership and is one the first giant step in a long and still percolating career.

    Peter Shapiro
    Peter Shapiro

    The 50 chapters of Shapiro’s book are titled and dedicated to some of his most memorable shows, beginning with The Dead’s 50th Anniversary Fare Thee Well at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara in July 2015.  As the last song of the first set ended, a giant rainbow broke out over the crowd.  The promoter joked that he paid $50,000 to create the effect, a quip that got reported as fact in a review in Variety.  The Dead’s drummer Mickey Hart said: “Not even Bill Graham could do that!” 

    The early part of the book deals with the ups and downs and incredible evenings at Wetlands. These include the 10th anniversary show where Bob Weir jammed with Hanson, the unmatched 21 show run by Disco Biscuits, the Black Lily Jams with Questlove and the new talent, like Jill Scott and India.Arie, who emerged with the opening of club’s Downstairs Lounge.  The heartbreak of the closing of Wetlands would come around 9/11, but not before a stellar lineup of farewell shows and jams featuring club favorites like The Spin Doctors, Rat Dog,  DJ Logic and Stanley Jordan.

    Some of the best parts of the book deal with Shapiro’s matter of fact communication of his struggles and occasional failures.  One was his participation, as an investor only, in 2012’s Great Googa Mooga Food and Music Fest in Prospect Park. This was one that failed because it was too successful, drawing an overflow crowd that well exceeded the 40,000 expected. It was also hampered by a forward-thinking digital payment system that was a little too ahead of its time. Shapiro also talks about the incredible run and occasional SNAFUs that took place at The Jammy Awards, including the vastly understaffed 2001 edition.

    Peter Shapiro
    Peter Shapiro at The Capitol Theatre

    The tale of his efforts to get Brooklyn Bowl going are also pretty entertaining.  When Shapiro sought the advice of veteran NYC promoter Ron Delsner on the concept, he said he thought it was insane to have a bowling alley next to a stage where the band played.  On this, the old man was wrong as Shapiro would go on to create hugely successful off-shoots of The Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville, Las Vegas and Philadelphia. 

    One poignant chapter is the one dedicated to Easy Rider Live at Radio City, a film screening with live music to mark the 50th anniversary of the legendary film starring Peter Fonda.  Artists like Steppenwolf’s John Kay and The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn were on hand to play their songs featured in the soundtrack live during the screening, with an all-star band corralled by T. Bone Burnette.  Unfortunately, Fonda would pass the month before the September 2019 event.  His final Instagram post was a picture of himself before the marquee announcing the show.

    Naturally, Shapiro’s book is bursting at the seams with a lot of hard-earned wisdom about the music business. 

    In the early days of Wetlands, he noted the importance of the late great Village Voice in getting the word out about shows.  The sell-out of the unsigned and unmanaged Vulfpeck at MSG in 2019 is credited to smart way the band built a huge following via social media, viral videos, a killer email database (a Shapiro go-to) and their efforts to keep ticket prices (and profits) reasonable.  Shapiro is also the kind of guy who would fly for 20 hours to get facetime to pitch an idea to an artist like Bono, Robert Plant or Taylor Swift, but only if the vibe was right. He also tells us that sometimes cash is really king – that a wad of it can be (take over in) the inspiration needed to get a band like Umphrey’s McGee to do a second encore (that one cost $500.)

    Peter Shapiro
    Peter Shapiro at Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas

    Readers will get plenty of anecdotes about their favorite musicians and celebs. Shapiro recounts the night when Jimmy Fallon joined Joe Russo’s Almost Dead at the Capitol Theater for a rousing rendition of Neil Young’s “Fuckin’ Up” and how it was B.B. King who gave hippie icon Wavy Gravy his unforgettable handle.   We hear about the night SNL’s Chevy Chase played piano at The Jammy Awards and another when he made Shapiro valet his car at the 2010 Climate Rally in D.C. There are anecdotes from Questlove’s memorable “Bowl Train” nights at Brooklyn Bowl, the site where SNL’s Maya Rudolph pioneered her popular Prince Tribute.  Naturally, there’s lots of insight into the Dead and the many shows he promoted for Bob Weir’s Dead & Company and Phil Lesh & Friends.  You also get an insight into their differences with Phil liking things “loud and fast” and Bob preferring his music “slow and quiet.”

    The later chapters of Shapiro’s book deal with the onslaught of COVID and what it wrought on his and the concert business as a whole.  While he was able receive PPP support for The Capitol Theater, LOCKN’ Fest and his media off-shoot Relix, there was none in the offing for The Brooklyn Bowls, due to a partnership venture with Live Nation. 

    Peter Shapiro at Lockn’ Festival

    A lifeline during COVID came from longtime running buddy Trey Anastasio of Phish.  The guitarist created a weekly series of concerts – The Beacon Jams – streamed from The Beacon Theater via Relix’s partnership with Twitch.  The eight events attracted nearly 2 million viewers and some sorely needed capital.  Shapiro’s Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville became the site of the novel “Be In the Stream” concerts carried on FANS.live featuring Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires.  Viewers joined a Zoom session and could be selected to be projected on the walls at the venue at the end of songs, giving the virtual events a live audience feel and the performers some sorely needed applause.   At The Capitol Theater, Shapiro greeted COVID and passersbys with a sign that said: “This is only a set break!” 

    It was one that would last for 18 months.

    Post-COVID, Shapiro is back with the launch of Relix Studios in the home of the old Jazz Standard on NYC’s East Side, with the opening of Brooklyn Bowl Philly, a proposed concept for yet another club called Jazzlands and much more.

    The 13 testimonials at the beginning of the book, from boldfaced names like Phil Lesh, Stevie Van Zandt, Don Was, Questlove and Trey Anastasio, demonstrate Shapiro’s importance to music makers and fans alike.  More than one, call him “the Bill Graham of our generation.”  The 330-plus pages in this book are evidence that more than supports the claim. 

  • Island Records’ Chris Blackwell Chronicles His Six Decades in Music in New Memoir

    With THE ISLANDER: My Life in Music and Beyond (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books), Island Records’ founder Chris Blackwell secures his status as one of the most insightful, ballsy and successful label owners in the history of the rough-and-tumble record business. The swashbuckling, swing-for-the-fences Blackwell’s M.O. was finding and patiently nurturing musicians of true originality, artists who were often overlooked by larger labels due to their distinctive edge.  This was the very thing that Island tirelessly exploited to turn them into stars, ones who both delighted critics and sometimes moved tens of millions of albums.  Bob Marley, U2, Steve Winwood, Traffic, Cat Stevens, The B-52s, Nick Drake, Free, King Crimson, Roxy Music, Tom Waits, Robert Palmer, The Tom Tom Club, Brian Eno, Sparks, Grace Jones and The Cranberries are just the tip of Blackwell and Island’s roster of finds.  The man would not only go on to create an indelible mark over six decades of modern music but extend it into the worlds of films, technology and high-end hospitality.

    chris blackwell

    Blackwell’s story begins and ends in Jamaica. He is the son of rich Brits who came to the island shortly after his birth, the fortunate heirs to a 300-year-old food concern, Crosse & Blackwell. His wealthy family was at the center of a star-studded expat community in Jamaica at that time. It included Hollywood actor Errol Flynn, songwriter Noel Coward and, most notably, Ian Fleming.  Fleming wrote all of his James Bond novels at his famed home GoldenEye, one that Blackwell now owns and runs as an exclusive resort. His mother Blanche was a muse for Fleming and the basis for two of his most memorable Bond paramours, Pussy Galore and Honeychilde Ryder. Blackwell would head back to England for school in his teens. It was there that he would become fascinated with the burgeoning popular music scene.

    It is in Jamaica, however, where Blackwell begins to enter the music business. His first job is as a “selector” who would supply R&B records he bought in his international travels to Britain and New York City to the island’s far-flung jukeboxes and mobile “Sound System” djs like the legendary Coxsone Dodd and Tom the Great Sebastian. After a few misses in record production in Jamaica, Blackwell’s first big success come with the signing of 15-year-old singer Millie Smalls.  Blackwell would become her guardian and take her to England where she would score a huge international hit with the ska-flavored “My Boy Lollipop.” 

    Blackwell’s long foray into rock would begin with the discovery of teenage Steve Winwood and the string of hits with his first band, The Spencer Davis Group. Island would then go on to champion Winwood’s next venture, Traffic.  It was Blackwell who came up with the idea of getting them away from the city and up to a country cottage to create the music for their first album.  Bands have been doing the “going to the country” thing ever since, thanks to Blackwell and Traffic.

    While he didn’t sign them, it is Blackwell,  through his then number-two Guy Stevens, who we have to thank for connecting aspiring poet/lyricist named Keith Reid with composer/singer/pianist Gary Brooker. Together, they who would go on to create Procol Harum and “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” perhaps the greatest orch-pop anthem of the Summer of Love. A great section of Blackwell’s memoir deals with the some now immortal names in British folk – Nick Drake, Fairport Convention and John Martyn – artists  Blackwell inherited when he purchased Joe Boyd’s Witchseason label.  His description of the powder keg when the alcohol-loving Martyn and eccentric Jamaica dub master/producer Lee “Scratch” Perry worked together are worth the price of the book alone. So, too, are the stories from his long-running relationship with Cat Stevens. It was Blackwell who helped turn this failing lightweight pop idol into one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the ‘70s. He also dealt with the artist’s unexpected retirement and named change spurred by his new found devotion to Islam in the early ‘80s.

    Through the two recording studios he founded, London’s Basing Street Studios and Compass Point in Nassau, Chris Blackwell was a party to a huge cache of hits that didn’t, unfortunately, come out on his label, from the Talking Heads “Remain in Light” to AC/DC’s “Back In Black.”

    Of course, the heart of this book is the story of his two most successful artists, Bob Marley and U2. 

    Blackwell would go on to give the former the cash to make his first album with a simple handshake. The label owner was with Marley every step of the way on his long climb to stardom, something which was only cemented with the release of Marley’s 1975 live album. Blackwell also dishes the sad facts of Marley’s death and his belief that the reggae great could’ve lived if he promptly dealt with his cancer at diagnosis.  And, naturally, one of the true joys of his life is witnessing the impact Marley continues to have as a symbol of freedom to oppressed people throughout the world. 

    And just like The Beatles, U2 were pretty much turned down by every record company when Blackwell was finally strongarmed by his staff to sign the Irish rockers.  As with many of his artists, Blackwell’s hands-off approach in the studio helped the band find and refine its voice, until it became the biggest in the world with the release of its 25-million selling 1987 album, “The Joshua Tree.” 

    Some of the best parts of the book are about the less-known scenes, such as his partnership with NYC-based ZE Records. This was the label behind early ‘80s “No Wave” bands/artists like James White and the Blacks, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Suicide, Mars, Was (Not Was) and Kid Creole and the Coconuts.  With his label Mango Records, Blackwell was perhaps the most important catalyst for the global spread of reggae by artists like Burning Spear, Max Romeo, Sly & Robbie and Lee Perry.  And with the Bill Laswell-led Axiom Records, Blackwell played a part in unleashing some of the most adventurous and uncompromising music coming out of Greenpoint Studios in Brooklyn. Axiom was the label behind  albums by Praxis and Material and the noise guitar great Sonny Sharrock’s classic, “Ask The Ages.”

    Blackwell’s memoir also provides the details on his move into films with the release of the reggae classic, The Harder They Come and his founding of Palm Pictures, which gave the world acclaimed films like The Basketball Diaries and Sex and Lucia. Also detailed is his early move into technology with the ultimately failed webcasting service, Sputnik 7.  In 1989, Blackwell would sell his stake in Island to Polygram and leave the record business for good in 1997.  He would go on to make savvy investments in Miami Beach real estate, which he would have to sell in one of his inevitable cash crunches (due to Sputnik 7’s flop).  He would ultimately settle on running a collection of distinctive hotels and villas in Jamaica which he continues to operate today under the banner Island Outpost.  Fun fact: Sting wrote “Every Breath You Take” while staying at Blackwell’s GoldenEye, the same place Apple founder Steve Jobs celebrated his 29th birthday.

    Unlike some record company founder bios, Chris Blackwell humbly shares the credit for much of his success with his associates, chief among them producer and A&R man Guy Stevens.  Blackwell also gives unvarnished views of his failures, like Sputnik 7, some promising singings that went south and his missed singing opportunities like Procol Harum and much of the early British punk scene.  

    For all the amazing achievements packed into its pages, Blackwell’s memoir is eminently readable, a tale imparted with the casual flow of a first-rate raconteur.  It’s an absorbing recounting of one of the most remarkable lives, and longest winning streaks, in the fickle and constantly evolving world of popular music.

  • An Inside Look at the Sites, Songs, Shows and Stars that Made NYC Rock in “New York Groove”

    In 2021, veteran rock writer Frank Mastropolo gave us a mega-informative book about the history of one of New York’s most legendary performance venues in Fillmore East, The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever.  Now he’s back with New York Groove (Edgar Street Books), a sort of half guidebook/half history to the sites, stars, shows and songs that made the Big Apple a mighty rock metropolis, from its dawning days in the 1950s to today.

    The generously-illustrated 224-page book divides the city’s rock landmarks and stories into three chapters: Downtown, Midtown and Uptown, with the first being the arena of most of the action.  All the classic venues of the past are here, from the well-trodden like The Fillmore East, MSG, The Apollo Theater and CBGB to more temporal ones, like The Dom, Club 82, Player’s Theater, Mercer Arts Center and The Garrick Theater, which played a role in launching acts like The Velvet Underground, The New York Dolls, The Fugs and Zappa’s Mothers of Invention.  After these venues are introduced, the author gives the history of some of the most famous shows at each. One important one was James Brown’s 1962 live show at the Apollo. This incendiary performance gave birth to not only one of his most lasting albums but provided proof positive that a live performance of previously released tunes could sell as an LP.  Mastropolos’ book also unearths lots a cool factoids about the many ratty apartments, cheap hotels and, and later, the palatial brownstones where stars like Dylan, Lennon, Sting and Patti Smith lived. Also covered are where they penned, and the studios at which they recorded, some of their most well-known songs like The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ever-enduring steamy weather staple, “Summer In The City.” There’s more than 200 archival and performance photos, posters, albums, buttons and memorabilia included, arcania that truly brings nearly 70 years of NYC rock history to life.

    New York Groove

    The book is a bit of a personal blast from the past for me as it’s a trip back to my recently former life, when I ran a PR company that created, among other weird things, rock and roll landmark bus tours for Tanqueray Gin, first in Los Angeles and later in New York City.  In New York, our tour guide/researcher was the amazing Danny Fields, the man who did PR for The Doors and discovered and managed folks like Iggy Pop and The Ramones, subject of the Ramones song and later documentary “Danny Says.”  Fields shared some of the same weird facts that Mastropolo does here.  My favorite?  That Paul Simon’s song “Mother and Child Reunion” was inspired by a chicken and egg dish he ate at a Chinatown restaurant.  

    A look at NYS Music’s reviewer as a younger man giving Japanese TV viewers an inside look at Electric Lady Studios and other NY Rock landmarks, ones covered in this new book.

    Mastropolo’s book is a must for anyone who wants to head to the streets, or just couch-potato it, and take a comprehensive, first-rate tour of the whole history of rock music in New York.

    New York Groove

  • Steve Tibbetts Serves Up a Long Overdue Career-Retrospective with “Hellbound Train”

    Hellbound Train is an astounding double-album retrospective from the always revelatory American guitarist Steve Tibbetts, a stalwart innovator who has been associated with ECM Records for 13 albums over 40 years. 

    Steve Tibbetts

    Tibbetts has one of the widest palates in the world of guitar.  His music features alternately tuned 12-string acoustics that trigger lush samples from a wide library he has created – Tibetan long horns, gongs and even his wife’s tuned wine glasses.  And no one can create a more fearsome sound with an electric guitar.  Tibbetts combines a vintage Stratocaster with a Marshall JCM 800 to create feedback that he compares to “sheet metal being torn to pieces.”  Tibbetts can tap and slur with the best of them, with his electric sounding like an uncaged animal and his acoustic melodies bearing a sitar-like tonality. He complements this with electric kalimba, dobro,  percussion and piano to complete his always melodic compositions.  

    Since the beginning of his career, Steve Tibbetts has been supported by the incredible tribal cum gamelan rhythms of percussionist Marc Anderson, surely one of the most underrated musicians working today.  Minnesota-based Tibbetts has traveled widely. He has lived and collaborated with musicians in Tibet, Nepal and Bali, something that infuses his music with colors and beats that are truly unique.

    Hellbound Train is divided in two chapters. The first disc is largely a showcase for his dazzling electric side; the second his acoustic and more peaceful ethereal leanings.  The anthology juxtaposes pieces originally featured on the albums Northern Song, Safe Journey,  Exploded View, Big Map Idea, The Fall Of Us All, A Man About A Horse,  Natural Causes and Life Of.  The guitarist’s goal was not to create a “Best Of”with bits from every album, but a collection of pieces that flowed best together.  

    The album opener, “Full Moon Dogs,” enters with polyrhythmic hand drums and shakers supporting Tibbett’s vocal choir chants and sitar-like melodies from his treated acoustic.  At the four-minute mark, things get more hellacious with the entrance of Tibbett’s fuzz fried Strat and groaning whammy bar antics. “Black Temple” opens with an orchestral acoustic and tinkering temple bells and Anderson’s sandy, scrapy percussion.  More animal melodies from Tibbett’s electric as the pulse and tempo accelerates. 

    I am delighted that side one features the tune that turned my head and turned me on to Tibbetts, “Vision” from his 1984 album, Safe Journey. It has everything I and you are sure to love about Tibbetts.  There’s an intro with tablas and shakers supporting a simple melody played by Tibbetts on his kalimba.  After a slight breakdown for percussion at 1:45, Tibbetts roars in with drawn out notes of his fuzzed-out Strat before moving into the melody, with slurs, taps and harmonics.  Interestingly he get this thick maelstrom of guitar splendor without an effects boxes, just with every dial on his amp turned up to 10.

    It’s music ancient and modern, music of both the soil and deep space.

    Disc 2 showcases Tibbetts’ unique approach to acoustic.  Rock fans will have their minds expanded by his cover of Jimmy Page’s “Black Mountain Slide.”  Tibbetts’ take is infused with other worldly ambience from his sample-generating 12-string and driven by Anderson’s excellent tabla drumming.  In places, it brings to mind the work of John McLaughlin’s Indian acoustic band, Shakti.  The Indonesian-flavored “Wish” provides a distinct gamelan vibe while “The Big Wind” is all airy guitars and ambience at first, leading to a rhythmic pulse and kalimba melody before an outro of heavenly sustained guitars climax.  These pieces show that, in the hands of Tibbetts, an acoustic guitar can be orchestra with all the color of a philharmonic and the warmth of a large concert hall.

    Since the 1970s, ECM Records has been a platform for not only some of the most virtuosic and original musicians on the planet, but a producer many of the best sounding and engineered albums ever made.  Along with Tibbetts, ECM has been home to monster guitarists’ guitarists like Norwegian Terje Rypdal, John Abercrombie, Ralph Towner, David Torn and Eivind Aarest.  And it’s let them not only stretch their wings conceptually, but produces some of the most attractive album packaging to showcase these superlative sounds .

    Steve Tibbetts

    With its liquid melodies and textures,  its hypnotic beats and pulsations subtly influenced by musics of many cultures, Hellbound Train is an ideal introduction to the work of one of the world’s most consistently original guitarists.

  • Cowbell King Corky Laing’s Climb to the Top of the Rock Mountain Told in New Memoir

    What’s the most eardrum pummeling cowbell moment in rock? Thanks to that famous Saturday Night Live sketch, you might think it’s Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” But for my money, it’s the cowbell count-off pounded out by Corky Laing in the rock classic whose saucy lyrics he also penned: Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen.” The tale of how that song came to be and many more hilarious and harrowing anecdotes from his long and winding career are told in his eminently readable memoir, Letters to Sarah.

    Corky Laing provides hilarious and harrowing anecdotes from his long and winding career

    Co-written with longtime manager and partner Tuija Takala, Letters to Sarah is a rock autobiography with a difference. In addition to Corky’s exceptionally honest recollections of his highs and lows, there are excerpts from the dozens of letters that he wrote to his mom, Sarah, between 1963 and her death in 1998. These were a way for Corky to keep in touch with his family and try to make sense of his life, while he was away furiously touring and recording for years on end.

    Raised with triplet brothers and a sister in Montreal, the sports-loving Laing would first become enamored with the drums when he saw the hyperbolic jazz great Gene Krupa, on TV. Laing would then forsake his and every Canadian’s first love, hockey, for music because, as he quips, “the drums don’t hit back!” His first public performance was an impromptu one backing the famous vocal group, The Ink Spots. In short order, he would be engaged in regular gigs and drum battles, just like his idol Krupa.

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    In 1965 at age 17, he and his band, B+3, would be in New York playing at the famed Peppermint Lounge. At another gig around that time in the Hamptons, he became acquainted with his guitar partner-to-be in Mountain, Leslie West, then playing in The Vagrants. Summer residencies in Nantucket over the next couple of years brought him into contact with a crew of writers who would inspire his interest in literature. Nantucket is where he would come up with the gem, “Mississippi Queen.” Forced to take a long drum-solo during a power outage at a gig and witnessed the seductive dancing of a friend’s Southern-bred girlfriend. Laing’s passion made him start singing what would become the opening lines of his most famous tune – “Mississippi Queen, you know what I mean?”

    When he returned to Canada, he got to know luminaries like The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream and The Who since his band opened for them at venues like the Montreal Forum. By 1969, his band evolved to a more progressive sound and was renamed, Energy. During another opening slot, he got to know Miles Davis’ great drummer Tony Williams, someone who would later refer him to Jack Bruce that
    would put another milestone band on his resume.

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    Corky and Energy came into the orbit of Felix Pappalardi (the producer of Cream and bassist, founder and producer of Mountain) while playing at the World’s Fair, Expo ‘67 in Montreal. Felix was interested in producing the band and especially intrigued by Corky’s drumming and lyrical input. After Mountain’s debut at Woodstock, Pappalardi lured Laing away from Energy to join what was to become one of the hardest working (and partying) proto-metal bands.

    As for “Mississippi Queen,” Laing says he copped the groove from Levon Helm’s playing on The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek,” a man he would become very close to during many visits to Woodstock to record at Levon’s legendary farm studio. When Laing was trying to come up with a good Southern town to name check in the lyrics, a friend suggested “Vicksburg” and Corky awarded him 10% of the publishing for the two syllables. The first person to hear “The Queen” outside of the band was Jimi Hendrix, who was working in an adjacent room at The Record Plant at the time of its recording. Interestingly, Laing would go on to earn a Gold Record for his contributions to the Woodstock ‘69 soundtrack, not with Mountain (N.D. Smart was Mountain’s drummer at that gig), but for Ten Years After’s “I’m Going Home.” It seems Laing was enlisted to overdub drums while at the Record Plant with Mountain because the drum mics were not working during the live recording of that particular song during TYA’s Woodstock set.


    The book has plenty of sex and drugs along with the rock-n-roll, something that, along with bad management, spelled the end to Mountain’s initial frenzied three-year run. After much promise, his next band, the super group West, Bruce & Laing, would also collapse after a brief two-album run, due largely to overindulgence. Laing also spends a good deal of time speaking of the brilliance and flaws of Pappalardi and his creative partnership with his wife, Gail Collins. Collins would contribute lyrics and album art to Mountain, but ultimately go on to shot and kill the bass player with a gun he bought her in the early 1980s.

    Corky would next hook up with the likes of Ian Hunter, Mick Ronson, Lee Michaels and Todd Rundgren to make a couple of albums in the singer-songwriter vein, music that was “very Springsteen” in his words, with only the first earning a release. He would go on to be a part of the legendary Lone Star Café scene in New York City backing the hilarious Texas bad boy singer turned novelist Kinky Friedman, who contributed the introduction to Laing’s memoir. For a while, Corky would cut his hair and join a promising new wave band, “The Mix.” Through a chance encounter on the beach near his Connecticut home with jazz guitarist Larry Coryell, he would be introduced to Buddhism. This would go a long way towards vanishing his demons. Laing’s up and down life would settle for a time when he accepted a job in music publishing with Warner-Chappell Music. He would then move on to even more success, and a “six figure salary,” as Vice President of A&R for Polygram Canada during the MTV era, until a merger put him back in the playing business.

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    Laing would finally get to play Woodstock in 1994. This was at the smaller Woodstock Reunion Concert at the original concert site, versus the grander Michael Laing-produced affair in Saugerties. At this gig, the Mountain lineup was West and former Hendrix bassist Noel Redding. This book and this chapter of Laing’s life comes to close with the passing of his mother in 1998, when he is back making music with Redding and a new guitarist, the Spin Doctors’ Eric Schenkman.


    As a musician, Laing was an indispensable ingredient in the success of Mountain, a band that paved the way for the metal we know today. He had a uniquely powerful style that drove the straight-ahead rock numbers like “Never in My Life” and “You Can’t Get Away.” It was one that matched the fuzz-leaden bass of Pappalardi and Leslie West’s searing blues run and thick power chording. He also had an unflagging stamina and an improviser’s heart. It was Corky’s pulse and dynamics which led the band through long extrapolations on classics like “Dreams of Milk & Honey,” from their album Flowers of Evil, and their unique version of “Stormy Monday,” captured on live album from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.

    I saw Mountain several times during their early ‘70s glory days and my ribs are still quaking from Pappalardi’s sub-atomic bass and Laing’s double bass drum and cowbell combo. The last time I saw them was on August 11, 2001. It was at a free lunchtime concert in the plaza at World Trade Center so I couldn’t pass it up. My taste in music had certainly changed since the early ‘70s but, damn the hipsters
    and those who worship at the altar of Pitchfork, I still kind of loved Mountain. It was a beautiful day and band played energetically to a happy crowd of old and new fans. I even caught one of the drumsticks hurled by Laing into the crowd. Thirty days later, that stage would be the site of something very different – the smoldering wreckage from 9/11
    terror attack.

  • A Rocker Mom’s Roller Coaster Ride Comes to Life in Amy Rigby’s “Girl To City”

    If you want a blast of the dirty ol’ D.I.Y. NYC rock scene of mid-70’s – late-90’s, look no further than Girl To City, the memoir of the critically-acclaimed but never quite platinum-selling singer-songwriter Amy Rigby.

    Now quietly residing in Catskill with her musician hubby, the legendary Brit punk Wreck-less Eric of Stiff’s Records fame, Rigby’s story is a unique one of music and young motherhood played out against creative cauldron of the then low-rent, dangerously delicious Lower East Side. Girl to City is the story of her progression from “Elton Girl,” a pop loving rebellious Catholic schooler in suburban Pittsburgh, to Manhattan art student, fledgling alt. country musician/temp office worker to “indie darling,” one who causes a big but, too brief national sensation with her 1996 solo debut, Diary of A Mod Housewife. 

    As someone tattooed by a Catholic school education myself, I can relate to a good deal of what Rigby has to tell about her early years.  

    At seven, Amy decides to cast her lot with the music-loving sinners rather than the saints – coming to the realization that she’d rather marry Monkee Mike Nesmith than her powerful first crush, Jesus Christ.  Rigby is really lightning struck with the magic of words + music when she hears Dylan for the first time at a Girls Scouts’ picnic in the park, from the transistor radio of a bunch of pot-smoking hippies loafing on an adjacent blanket.  

    Rigby leaves high school a year early to move to NYC and study the “dying art” of fashion illustration at Parsons. The year is 1976 – the age of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, CBGBs and The Ramones, the year after that President Ford tells the nearly bankrupt metropolis to “Drop Dead!” on the front page of the New York Daily News. She will move among several apartments on sketchy blocks in the neighborhood until she finally departs for Brooklyn, 15 years later. She is delighted when she spies creative icons like jazz legend Charles Mingus, Television’s Tom Verlaine, John Cage, Brian Eno and Yoko Ono almost daily on the streets. 

    Rigby enters the thick of the music scene when she takes a job as “a No Wave coat check girl” at the club, Tier 3. It is through this hotspot and others downtown, and a boyfriend named Bob, that she will finally act on her musician/performer aspirations. Her sound is not NYC punk but one shaped by her newfound love of classic country – Merle Haggard, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and the like. From this emerges her first band, The Last Roundup, a cute countrified quartet with her younger brother Michael in tow. This band will have a four-year run, one marked by an exhausting string of gigs in venues small and a few large ones, opening for major acts like The Raincoats. There’s a disastrous trip to Nashville to record an album that won’t see the light of day and a trip to the Midwest to wax one that finally does, Twister, their 1987 debut on Rounder Records.

    Girl to City

    In addition to music, Rigby has a lot of boys on her mind and in her life.  There’s the aforementioned musician Bob and a married Brit called only “The Manager,” someone comes into her life for a whirlwind affair in New York and when she briefly continues her art studies in London. There’s the culture-centric “D,” who introduces her to foreign film and experimental theater, but whose love of heroin she smartly skirts. He is someone who will inspire one of her most memorable songs, “Dark Angel.” Then there’s the ultimately jail-bound street hustler Joe. He’s the kind of guy who drops by a quickie and then asks her to hold onto his pistol (literal, not figurative). Amy will finally settle down and marry Will Rigby, the drummer for the dBs, with whom she will have a daughter, Hazel. He will broaden her musical palate by introducing her to items like the Beach Boys’ Smile bootleg, something she compares to taking LSD or tasting pastrami for the first time.

    From The Last Roundup, Rigby will move onto The Shams. This is a group formed with two other girl singers, an outgrowth of their attempts to raise cash by singing Christmas carols on the street and Raffi tunes at children’s birthday parties. It is in this band that Amy’s talent for writing comes to the fore, in tunes like “Down at the Texaco” and “File Clerk Blues,” a number based on her life as an office temp. The group will go on to record a single, an EP and one full-length album for the then-fledgling Matador label, Quilt, produced by Patti Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye. As with her entire career, Amy would experience highs and lows with The Shams. There were huge gigs opening shows on nationwide tours for The Indigo Girls and Urge Overkill to nearly empty clubs. There’s even one gig where they “were paid in pierogis.” Regrettably, she can’t tell the other girls she wants to go solo and ultimately breaks up with them via fax. 

    Through her time with these bands, Amy would be struggling with motherhood, finding someone to care for her young daughter when she or her drummer husband were away on tour, at rehearsals or recording.  The always on tour lifestyle would ultimately lead to the breakup of her marriage to Will.

    Bravely, Rigby also addresses the financial realities of the music business at this level. She spends a good deal of time reminiscing, often positively and humorously, about the string of day jobs she takes to make ends barely meet – from serving ice cream to celebs like actress Sandy Dennis to temping in real estate offices and the legal department at CBS Records. She provides a refreshing view on what many musicians would consider an obstacle – saying that these days jobs are a part of a musician’s life, not something that stands in the way of it. She reminds us that they were also a way to get free photocopies for the street posters and mailers that were an important promo device for musicians in the pre-social media era. And it is through the CBS job that she will meet the man who champions her and lands her a deal to make her solo debut for Koch Records, 1996’s Diary of A Mod Housewife, produced by The Cars’ Elliot Easton. 

    “There was one month in my adult life, August 1996, when everything went right,” writes Rigby.  That was the month her debut album came out to glowing reviews in Rolling Stone, People, Billboard, Entertainment Week and many more.  Amy even scored an interview, one she thinks in retrospect might’ve been too revealing, with NPR’s Terry Gross on “Fresh Air.”  Interestingly, she recently did a second interview with Gross to promote this book.

    But for all the promise, Rigby is back working at CBS in a little over a year. Her critically-applauded debut only sells around 20,000 copies, at a time when contemporaries like Liz Phair and Sheryl Crowe will hundreds of thousands and millions respectively.

    Regrettably, this is kind of where Girl to City wraps up this installment of her life story, with a slight jump ahead in the prologue and epilogue to her daughter Hazel striking out as a musician on her own. But there is so much more to tell.

    With a hell of a lot of heart and dignity, Rigby has continued to do what she did then – write and record quirky, interesting story songs, ones loved by a modest cult of literate music-lovers. She continues to make albums and periodically tour, playing to adoring audiences in modest venues here and abroad, usually solo but sometimes with her husband Wreckless Eric Goulden. At the conclusion of Girl to City, she spent a few years working as a songwriter in Nashville and several years in France with Eric.  She also continues to periodically work those day jobs to make the ends of an itinerant artist’s life meet, notably in an Upstate N.Y. bookstore whose staff helped light a fire under her to write this story.

    From the verbal flow to the emotion and insight imparted, Rigby has discovered another great talent – that of putting words on paper, sans the music.  She has always been a great story-tellers who, until now, has limited her writer’s gifts to the three-minute song.  

    For those who lived through this era of NYC, Girl to City is a real trip down memory lane.  It comes complete with all the touchstones – the post-gig chow downs at Wo Hops or Kiev, seeing Basquiat or Keith Haring scribble their art on tenement and subway walls, the sights and smells of the bathrooms at CBGB and much more.  It all comes into sharp focus in Amy’s writing.

    Memoirs of life in the East Village of this era are now a growing cottage industry. There are many entries but very few that are as good as Amy’s and John Lurie’s recent autobiography.  

    Like much of what she had done, Girl To City is a gutsy D.I.Y. project, self-published by Amy’s own Southern Domestic imprint, which can be found at her website, www.amyrigby.com  You can head here to sample her music, on-going blog and a podcast version of this fine book.

  • Wild Times at Woodstock’s Legendary Tinker Street Café Immortalized in New Memoir

    Ever since powerhouse music manager Albert Grossman arrived at the dawn of the ‘60s, Woodstock has served as the delightfully laid-back domicile for some of the biggest names in music.  With Grossman came his stable of stars – Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield and also non-Grossman managed giants like Jimi Hendrix and, much later, David Bowie. What also arrived was an abundance of top-flight recording studios and informal artist retreats, like The Band’s legendary basement recording space Big Pink, where some of the finest moments in modern music were crafted. 

    Musicians are perhaps the most social of the creative breeds. These are a seemingly tireless brood who love nothing more than to get together after a long gig or recording session to chat, imbibe and, of course, jam to create even more sonic magic. 

    Now one of Woodstock’s most legendary musicians’ hangouts of the past, The Tinker Street Café, is coming back to life in a new memoir by one of its owners, Jerry Mitnick, The Music In The Walls: Stories and Anecdotes from Tinker Street Café (HappyLife Productions). 

    For ten years beginning in 1988, The Tinker Street Café was the place where the biggest names who were living or recording in Woodstock could be found.  Locals like Rick Danko, John Sebastian, Mick Ronson, Tony Levin and The B-52s Fred Schneider held court alongside passing-throughs like Gregg Allman, Living Colour, Dave Matthews and many more. And where there are musicians, libations and a stage with a ready backline, there’s sure to be great music. There are also sure to be some unforgettably comic moments courtesy of these toasted and/or tanked music makers – events that are the heart of Mitnick’s slim but richly entertaining memoir.

    Mitnick relates these tales in rapid-fire chapters and the captivating banter of a seasoned barkeep, which I assume he was at some point during the Café’s run. 

    He begins his story in his native Brooklyn, where the seeds of his love of music were sewn – first as a schoolboy devotee of doo-wop, then as a bassist in a series of bands.  Jerry was a professional musician from the mid-‘60s through the late ‘80s, one who, like many, also drove a cab to make ends meet.  His gigs included everything from playing in showbands at Catskill resorts to a close call with mortality when his band, The Human Condition, flew to El Salvador to play a concert in the middle of its bloody revolution.

    A call in 1988 from his friend Freddie Sandell not only forever changes his life, but also rewired the social scene in Woodstock.  Sandell invited Mitnick to become a partner in a club on Tinker Street, one that would be in the site of the former Café Espresso.  Sandell would handle the bar, Mitnick the music booking and a third partner the restaurant service.  Then turning 40 and tiring of the working musician grind, Mitnick eagerly jumped on board.

    The author gives some good backstory on the history of the legendary Café Espresso.  It opened in 1962 in the former site of another popular hangout dating back to the Roaring Twenties, The Nook.  It immediately became a hotbed of music with live performances by Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and Bob Dylan.  The Espresso’s owners, The Pautrel’s, famously let Dylan live in “The White Room” on the second floor during 1963.  It was here that he wrote much of the music for his 1964 classic, Another Side of Bob Dylan.  The Espresso would also become the site of countless jam sessions featuring Jimi Hendrix and scores of other music glitterati. But after passing through a few owners, it was in a pretty sad state by the mid-‘80s. That was when it earned a new nickname among locals, “The Café Depresso.”

    In the book, Mitnick recalls the many Christmas concerts The Band’s Rick Danko played for charity as well as the countless nights he dropped by to try out freshly-penned songs. There’s also a great tale about a legendary jam between Danko and Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, another rock luminary who resided in Woodstock in the ‘80s.  Jorma and Hot Tuna would also come to hold the record for the “most songs played in a night” according to Mitnick.  Another memorable happening was when the Dave Matthews Band took a break from their recording to play a benefit for the family of a girl killed in Kingston in 1995. Even though the event was unpublicized per Matthew’s wishes, the word spread fast and it drew scores who listened to the three-hour plus set from outside the packed club.

    Jerry’s own highpoint might’ve been the night Gregg Allman dropped by.  That night, Mitnick got to jam with him till the wee hours before a crowd of no more than 30 people.  A low point may have been when Hendrix’s bassist Noel Redding came to town. He promptly passed out during the first song, ending his show. Mitnick also recalls other great events witnessed by surprisingly small crowds. This included when Joey Ramone sang “I Wanna Be Sedated” and B-52s Fred Schneider crooned the “Patty Duke Show” theme at an Open Mic night.  There’s also a funny yarn about songwriter Loudon Wainwright III overhearing a woman wax poetic about what she’d like to do with his tongue.  Loudon tended to poke his oversized licker out while singing, something that seemed to capture the bawdier quadrants of the unnamed woman’s imagination.

    Mitnick also describes The Tinker Street Café’s renowned “Wall of Fame.”  What the author calls a “Poor Man’s Hard Rock Café” exhibit would grow to include items like John Sebastian’s harmonicas, drumsticks from Steve Jordan, strings from the guitar Carlos Santana played at Woodstock ‘94, Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics to “To Ramona” and “It Ain’t Me Babe” and the bass guitar Tony Levin played on Peter Gabriel’s hit “Sledgehammer,” one that was burnt up in a fire before it was gifted to Mitnick for his display.

    According to Mitnick, it was the Tuesday Poetry Nights and not the rock events that were the most volatile. Here seemingly peaceful wordsmiths/hosts like Gunga Dean, Les Visible and Max Schwartz, Jim Morrison’s old college roommate, would sometimes come to blows with each other over their strong opinions about their works.  And speaking of wordsmiths, legendary metal wild man Ozzy Osbourne would come to the Café during breaks in his recording sessions to sit quietly and write lyrics. Mitnick also discusses the weekly Blues Nights hosted by Orleans’ axeman John Hall, its Sunday Jazz Nights hosted by vibraphonist Karl Berger, the very short-lived Karaoke Nights and its Smoke-Free Women in Music Nights, which featured notables like Jill Sobule and Patti Rothberg and no ciggies.  There is also a discussion of the Live from The Tinker Street Café broadcasts on Radio Woodstock.  These featured memorable sets by artists like Cracker, Aimee Mann, Garbage and Jewel, a then-unknown who Mitnick found “incredibly boring” and unlikely to be successful in the biz.

    The author also devotes a good deal of space to local heroes who are not household names but were beloved. These include the late guitarist/studio builder Ted Orr of the band Futu Futu, singer/guitarist Jim Eppard and even some of the more off-the-wall customers and Tinker staff.  There are also testaments to hysterical hijinks like “The Cockateering Club.”  This effort, instigated by a Tinker bartender and his well-lubricated customers, erected 7ft. snow penises all along Tinker Street during winter storms.  The Cockateers’ ultimate goal was to create a “Dream Field of Cream,” 300 or so of their snow schlongs on the town’s golf course. Sadly, this never came to be.

    Mitnick’s book would not have been possible without the assistance and artwork by Mike Dubois of HappyLife Productions.  The veteran poster and graphic artist who has worked with artist like Grateful Dead provided the cover art for book, one based on his artwork for a 1994 Tinker Street Café compilation CD, and several more posters within.

    Today, Dubois is also playing a role in the revitalization of the former Tinker Street Café, under the direction of its new owner, Lizzie Vann, who also runs the Bearsville Theater complex. 

    Dubois’ HappyLife art gallery/gift shop has moved into half of the former Tinker Street Café space at 59 Tinker Street.  The other half will feature food, drink and some periodic music performances orchestrated by Vann. It will also serve as a satellite to Vann’s popular Bearsville Theater, where folks can purchase tickets to events, merchandise and more.

    At present, Jerry Mitnick’s The Music In The Walls: Stories and Anecdotes from Tinker Street Café is available exclusively at the HappyLife Gallery at 59 Tinker Street, Woodstock, and via its website.  The gallery will also be hosting a book signing with the author on Saturday, July 16 from 2 – 4 pm.

  • Arista Records: The Last Quintessential NYC Label Explored in New Book

    Last year, Mitchell Cohen partnered with former Sparks/Roxy Music bassist Sal Maida on one of the most enjoyable reads about pop arcana ever penned, The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Oughta Know. Now Cohen is back, riding solo this time, to tell the story of the last quintessential New York record label. It’s the imprint that either launched or revitalized the careers of Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, The Kinks, Lou Reed, Aretha Franklin, Gil Scott-Heron, The Grateful Dead, Iggy Pop and, of course, Whitney Houston, in the ‘70s and early ‘80s – Clive Davis’ Arista Records.

    Cohen’s Looking for the Magic (Trouser Press Books) tells the story of Arista from its inception – a label built upon the foundation of the singles-centric Bell Records to the conclusion of its freewheeling indie era with a mid-1980s merger with industry giant RCA. And although Cohen worked at the label in publicity and A&R from 1977 – 1993, he largely remains absent from the narrative, a humble factor that’s a very good thing for the storytelling.

    “Looking for the magic” is a record industry maxim. It says that success is spelled by a label’s ability to realize what’s a hit and, more importantly, what is not! Clive Davis, the man who defined Arista, was unparalleled in his ability to sniff out both hits and artists who grow to become mega-selling legends. It’s something he had done from his early days at Columbia thru Arista to his latter run at J Records.

    But before the book gets to Arista, Cohen tells the equally fascinating story of its forerunner, Bell Records, and its intriguing head Larry Uttal.

    Uttal’s singles-focused label didn’t do artist development or produce records. It licensed them from a host of talented outside producers like Allen Toussaint and then did the savvy sales and promotion that made them big hits.

    Mitch Ryder’s “Devil with the Blue Dress On,” The Box Tops’ “The Letter,” “I’m Your Puppet” by James and Bobby Purify and Merrilee Rush’s “Angel of the Morning” were some of the independent productions Bell drove to the upper reaches of the charts. Uttal also sourced England for hits by Spooky Tooth, Suzi Quatro and Vanity Fair. And after Bell’s purchase by Columbia Pictures came hits from its TV division, The Partridge Family, and Tony Orlando and Dawn. Interestingly, Bell was the partner label for the proto-metal of Leslie West and Mountain and released one of the weirdest records you’ll ever hear, 1971’s For You. This crockpot of kooky features the erotic poetry of Brit thespian/singer Anthony (“What Kind of Fool Am I?”) Newley set to orchestral music by Neely Plumb, the father of child actress Eve Plumb of “Brady Bunch” fame.

    Arista Records

    Clive Davis enters the picture at Bell as a “consultant” after he is summarily fired from Columbia Records due to an accounting scandal in 1973. By 1974, Davis is in charge and changes the name of the label to that of his high school honors society.

    As he had at Columbia with Santana, Sly & The Family Stone and Janis Joplin, Davis made his first order of business signing up talent he could grow – both the new and the established. A vast majority of these would come from NYC like his first signings: the proto-rapper Gil Scott-Heron and Barry Manilow, the cabaret-styled singer who would become the label’s true triple platinum-selling cash cow. Arista would be in the thick of punk with the signings of Patti Smith and punk godfather Lou Reed, whose flagging career would be revitalized with Arista albums like Street Hassle. The Kinks and The Grateful Dead would see their careers soar again with their respective Arista releases, Low-Budget and In the Dark, the latter which featured The Dead’s only Top 40 hit, “Touch of Grey.”

    Interestingly, jazz was a very important part of the mix at Clive’s Arista. This was perhaps due to his experience at Columbia Records with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. These were forward-leaning jazz stars who crossed over to a rock audience and Gold Record sales with their respective fusion masterworks, Bitches Brew and Head Hunters. Jazz was relatively cheap to record and market and they could break even without the huge sales of rock. So, Clive and company rolled the dice on jazz often, garnering both solid cash returns and even more lasting artistic results.

    Arista Records’ forays into jazz deserves some serious attention. The effort was led by Steve Backer, the man who earlier signed Keith Jarrett and Gato Barbieri to Impulse Records. The imprint, Arista Freedom, kicked off with marquee signings of avant-garde notables like Anthony Braxton, Julius Hemphill, Cecil Taylor and the like. In the way of more mainstream fusion, Arista made a splash with The Brecker Brothers and Larry Coryell’s Eleventh House. The latter was a contender to the crown worn by Columbia Records’ resident guitar god John McLaughlin and his fearsomely talented and financially successful Mahavishnu Orchestra. With the purchase of the Savoy Records catalog in 1975, the label did a splendid job repackaging and turning a new generation on to the classic works of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon and many more. Arista Freedom eventually morphed into Arista Novus. It released a bevy of beautiful, edge-pushing jazz from the likes of Muhal Richard Abrams, Oliver Lake, Air with Henry Threadgill and guitarist Michael Gregory Jackson, whose 1979 album Heart and Center is a masterpiece of genre-leaping future funk.

    Arista Records

    With the licensing of Passport Records, Arista even dabbled in progressive rock, distributing discs by the likes of Camel, Brand X and synth wizard Larry Fast. By the dawn of the ‘80s, Arista also had a nice piece of MTV-era pop with the success of acts like A Flock of Seagulls, Haircut 100 and The Thompson Twins.

    In 1983, things would begin to change. That’s when RCA acquired a 50% stake and took over distribution for Arista. That year, Clive Davis would see the future when he witnessed Whitney Houston singing at the Upper West Side club called Sweetwater. He took his time finding the right songs and style that would make her long-delayed 1985 debut not only an unprecedented smash with three #1 singles, but the template that would be followed to build the careers of everyone from Mariah to Britney.

    But that’s another story and that’s where Cohen choses to end this very gratifying one.