The First Everly Brothers LP

So I kept my promise to myself yesterday and went straight out to get the Debut LP from Phil and Don, released in 1958. The opening cut “This Little Girl Of Mine” is a Ray Charles cover. This is like finding a long lost “Rockpile” album. Except for the fact that it’s one hundred times more authentic than anything Nick and Dave ever did. Which is saying something. Sure the vocals are pristine, but the rhythm tracks are absolutely smoking hot. All musical roads and directions go through here. This is where country met R&B and folk, boarded the same bus and took off down the road drinking and humping.
These stains will never come out.

The second song “Maybe Tomorrow” , is a haunting ballad that aches with teenage frustration. Those lonesome lamenting harmonies sung in thirds yielding two distinct melodies that when joined together, personify the very essence of longing for the one you love. This is where the supposed clean cut image of the boys allowed their songs to explore this fertile (and risqué for it’s time) subject matter.

“Bye Bye, Love” has that amazing open G barre chord intro that chugs headfirst into the hook, placed brilliantly at the beginning of the track and then followed by the verses. Written a year earlier by the husband and wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, the song was reportedly “passed on” by just about every major artist recording at that time. Sung by The Everlys, it was a worldwide smash hit on the pop,country, AND R&B charts!

Track #4, A Brand New Heartache is about a new kid that moved into town and stole the singer’s girl. Another Bryant/Bryant tune, with beautiful guitar strumming, particularly on the second bit in the middle.

Little Richard’s “Keep A Knockin’ Gene Vincent’s “Be Bop A Lula” and Bumps Blackwell’s “Rip It Up” fill out the middle of this effort and demonstrate how rock and roll affected older brother Don in particular. Those staggeringly rhythmic acoustic guitar chops by Don and session man Ray Edenton were direct descendents of Bo Diddley’s influence. Don Everly explains, "I heard ‘Bo Diddley’ back in ’55. I put it on and I’ll never forget it—it just nailed me. And I was immediately hit with the thought, ‘I’ll never be able to incorporate this type of rhythm into any kind of country music. But I just tried it on my open-G acoustic one afternoon, and there it was."

The aforementioned Ray Ederton along with Buddy Harman on drums and bass man Floyd Chance, were put together for the Everlys by the great Chet Atkins. These cream of the crop session men were the main components in what would be known as the “Nashville Sound” born within the original RCA studio at 1525 McGavock Street.

Younger brother Phil speaking on Don Everly’s approach to the guitar and how it influenced everything that came after, "I know our harmonies influenced a lot of people, but when you take Donald’s intros to ‘Bye Bye Love,’ ‘Wake Up Little Susie,’ ‘Bird Dog,’ or any of the others, that was the first time those kinds of incongruous chords were used. Bo (Diddley) had the beat, but those chords were Don’s creation. If you take them, and you electrify them with a lyric on top, you have the essence of heavy rock, which is essentially a song written around a riff. Keith [Richards] alluded to that—but I think it’s ironic that Don doesn’t get more credit. Because that was the seed, right there."

Inspiration

So this week, I’m embarking on a new musical journey in an attempt to yield some written fruit of the blogger variety. My posts lately on this blog have dwindled down to a trickle, and I really don’t have much of an explanation for it.

Inspiration has never come easy for me, and as my own worst critic I’ve probably chucked more ideas and first drafts than many bloggers publish. OK, so much of it never really makes it to the page, but I process ideas in my noodle and as they evolve, I convince myself either to keep going or to chuck it off to the side. Lately, it’s been a lot of the latter.

My last post on Love’s “Forever Changes” album was probably hashed and re-hashed in my head for the better part of four months. I knew I wanted to write about it, but all the ideas and approaches I came up with towards it just never made the cut. Nothing I could come up with would do it justice. I’m still not entirely sure what I ended up publishing even did.

Then this past week, I read a sentence on a message board that affected me. It said “A Date With The Everly Brothers is a really great album”. Nothing more, nothing less. I wished I had written it. All the convincing I needed was right there in that one sentence. Everything that I had agonized over trying to sum up “Forever Changes” and dozens of other albums I’ve wrote about and planned to write about was right there. My problem was that my words were getting in the way of my thoughts.

Of course if you’d ask me about Phil and Don Everly , I’d nod in agreement that they are great. To respond otherwise would be like renouncing your heritage. I’ve heard Everly Brothers tunes most of my life. Pretty sure we had some of their 45’s in the house (I specifically remember having “Bird Dog”) and it’s common knowledge that their close harmony vocal styles influenced just about everything that followed it.

They were supposed to play “Devoted To You” at my wedding as the first dance for the bride and groom. The wedding band however, forgot to learn the song so we got another Everly Brothers song instead, probably “All I Have To Do Is Dream”. I’d have to check the video tape of the wedding to be sure. My main point is that although The Everly’s were instilled into my musical lexicon as gospel, I had never bothered to check out an entire LP by them.

So there it was, inspiration in one sentence. Now I’m not going to advocate or take up the practice of composing one sentence blog posts anytime soon, but sometimes it needs to be understood that the conviction of one sentence can be more powerful and more inspiring than an entire page of adjectives. From that one sentence, I used the internet to find out some awesome things about The Everly Brothers.

For one thing, they were really good friends with Buddy Holly. Phil was a pallbearer at his funeral, and Don was too distraught over Holly’s sudden death to even attend the proceedings. Even more incredible was finding out that Buddy Holly and The Crickets had the t-shirt and jeans fashion sense of The Ramones before being exposed to Phil and Don’s well tailored, suit and tie persona. Not a bad cache of additional knowledge culled from about 10 minutes of internet research, inspired once again by a single sentence.

So, how could I NOT want to dive in headfirst into these records? I probably should have started with their first two LP’s on the independent Cadence label. After all, this short period of time was arguably the most fruitful period for them if we’re talking specifically about hits. I already kind of regret it, but I started off with their early ‘60’s output on the Warner Brothers label.

The first 20 seconds of “That’ll Be The Day” off of their 1965 “Rock And Soul” album was all I needed to be convinced. Convinced that I should go back to the Cadence records and start from the beginning, and that I now need to hear practically every note they ever recorded. This 20 second intro was like a light bulb going off, or a match being struck. An instant game changer. This was before the vocals even kick in. I can hear everything they inspired right then and there. Of course, I knew about all that because my history books told me so. But it’s one thing to read it, and an entirely other animal to actually hear it.

Just like that one sentence, that 20 second snippet of music convinced me of what I thought I already knew. Sure, The Everly Brothers were great. But their greatness goes way beyond the hits. Something I always understood but never bothered to confirm to myself prior to reading that one sentence. As a blogger with writers block, it’s going to provide me with some much needed content. More importantly though as a music fan, it’s nothing less than salvation.

The best Pop album ever?

Most music fans know about the summer of love. 1967 was the year the rest of the world caught up with what was going on in California and elsewhere up to that point, what with the be-ins, love ins, flowers in your hair, and the rejection of the draft, sexual repression and soap. To those who were living it though, it was glaringly apparent that this was the beginning of the end. Because once the media and it’s advertisers caught wind of the revolution and figured out how to sell it, it’s purpose was defeated.

In the Autumn of 1967, Love (the band) released it’s third LP titled “Forever Changes”. Recorded in June of that year, it is anything but a reflection of those times. This record is instead, a window into the future. It accurately predicts the disillusionment of the seventies, the me-first attitude of the eighties, as well as the news as entertainment mentality of the nineties and beyond.

Most of the songs on “Forever Changes” were written by Love’s enigmatic front man and band leader Arthur Lee. The opening track however, was penned by band mate Bryan MacLean. Titled “Alone Again Or” , it’s juxtaposition of positivity offset by stark reality is a hallmark of it’s brilliance.

“You know I could be in love with almost everyone…I think that people are the greatest fun…….And I will be alone again tonight, my dear…”

MacLean was not a principal songwriter for the band, but this track wisely chosen by Lee as the album’s opener dissects free love, exposes it as the fallacy it had become and leaves it out on the examination table for all to bear witness. Set to a flamenco guitar rhythm track with mariachi horns, it is one of those songs that when you hear it for the first time you exclaim, “Oh I’ve heard this before!” It’s actually a peppy little tune which makes the underlying message all the more powerful.

Arthur Lee however, would chime in soon enough. On the LP’s second track, “A House Is Not A Motel” Lee cuts loose with some scathing social commentary with nary a daisy or a lava lamp in sight.

By the time that I'm through singing
The bells from the schools of walls will be ringing
More confusions, blood transfusions
The news today will be the movies for tomorrow
And the water's turned to blood, and if
You don't think so
Go turn on your tub
And it it's mixed with mud
You'll see it turn to gray
And you can call my name
I hear you call my name


Lee’s lyrics here paint a grim picture of the future that is stunning in it’s accuracy.
Even more important is that these lyrics don’t sound dated. They are actually more relevant today than they were back then. Lee had been quoted various times about the lyrics on this record as him writing from a place where he was viewing the world as if he was dying.

"When I did that album," commented Arthur Lee, "I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so those were my last words."

Lee of course did not die, at least not right away. The idealism of the ‘60’s however WAS dying and bands like Love and The Doors (Strange Days have found us…) were on the cutting edge of this conclusion while gramdmas and grampas on vacation were taking the bus tour through Haight-Ashbury so they could see real live hippies.

The sociological undercurrent that drives the mission statement of this album is not always so obvious. It runs through the piece like a thread that is sometimes hard to see, sometimes plain as day, but always there. There are personal pleas and “look at yourself in the mirror moments” cleverly disguised as self examination. “You Set The Scene”, perhaps Lee’s magnum opus, explains.


This is the time and life that I am living
And I'll face each day with a smile
For the time that I've been given's such a little while
And the things that I must do consist of more than style
There are places I am going

This is the only thing that I am sure of
And that's all that lives is gonna die
And there'll always be some people here to wonder why
And for every happy hello, there will be good-bye
There'll be time for you to put yourself on

The last verse is where Lee turns the tables with an impassioned plea for awareness and participation towards fixing what is happening in our world. Not exactly “Tune in, turn on and drop out” is it?

Everything I've seen needs rearranging
And for anyone who thinks it's strange
Then you should be the first to want to make this change
And for everyone who thinks that life is just a game
Do you like the part you're playing?

Most records are very much “of their time” meaning that when you listen to them they take you back to a place or a feeling. “Forever Changes” contains an inherent sense of immediacy that flies in the face of that logic. This record sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday. It contains none of the psychedelic trappings or backwards tape looping of the era. It is mainly an acoustically driven folk inspired effort, but delivered with tasteful orchestral flourishes and an uncanny edge that makes it both timeless and essential.

The record charted only as high as #154 on the Billboard US album charts, mainly due to a lack of a hit single and Arthur Lee’s resistance to touring anywhere other than the immediate Southern California area.

Today the record is almost universally lauded as a classic. The most notable retrospective praise came in 2003 from the British magazine, NME, who rated Forever Changes #6 on their list of greatest albums of all time. In 1998, Q magazine readers voted Forever Changes the 82nd greatest album of all time.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked it 40th in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in the December 11, 2003 issue. In a special issue of Mojo magazine, it was ranked the second greatest psychedelic album of all time, while in 1995 it made #11 in Mojo's list of the 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made.
Forever Changes was ranked 83rd in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.
Forever Changes was praised by the British Parliament in 2002 as being one of the Greatest Albums of All Time.
According to the New Musical Express, The Stone Roses’ relationship with their future producer John Leckie was settled when they all agreed that Forever Changes was the "best record ever".

While I’m no big fan of polls and how they’re used to fill space on magazine racks, this kind of across the board praise has to give one pause to think as to why they have not checked this album out yet. So you might wanna set out to do something about that if you have’nt already.

the 45's of 1969

Recently, for the Rock NYC blog I "reviewed" every significant 45 from the year 1969.
They were'nt as much reviews as they were single snippet comments. I'm going to migrate them over here, starting with this post. Only thing here is, they wont be in alphabetical order, because the files are all spread out over different computers and websites-So, we will start with the "G"s and just work our way around. I actually listened to about 325 45 A sides to accomplish this, so here goes.

Hair - The Cowsills-There’s much better Cowsills stuff than this, but it’s still good. At it’s core, it’s still a broadway show tune, and in this format it’s just a little hokey.

Handbags And Gladrags - Rod Stewart-This wouldn’t chart in the US until it was re-released in 1972. It’s a magnificent track.

He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother - The Hollies-Hey, did you know Elton John plays piano on this? Proof that no matter how poignant the subject matter, any song can still wind up as a beer commercial.

He Loves Me All The Way - Tammy Wynette-Smoky, sexy country.

Here Comes The Sun - The Beatles-One last dash of magic from the fabs. George Harrison, songwriter.

Hitchin' A Ride - Vanity Fare-Not that many one hit wonders so far this year, but this is definitely one.

Holly Holy - Neil Diamond-Neil gives us a big hunk of gospel with Spector-esque production flourishes.

Honky Tonk Women - The Rolling Stones-Great recording. The bass drum sounds like it’s right there in the room with you, and Keith just strums at the beginning until it’s time to hit that trademark riff.

Hot Fun In The Summertime - Sly & The Family Stone-Another winner. It’s got horns and strings but doesn’t sound over polished at all. Natural, laid back groove. That fade out could’ve been thirty seconds longer.

Hot Sand - Shocking Blue-B side to “Venus”, The A side is better. We’ll talk about that once we hit the “V”s

Hot Smoke And Sassafras - The Bubble Puppy-Could swear I’ve heard this before, but can’t place when. It could pass for early Yes, from a structural standpoint.

I Can Hear Music - The Beach Boys-Not counting the early, early stuff, this is the first 45 not produced by Brian, with Carl taking over.

I Can't Get Next To You - The Temptations-Another heavy hitter from this year. Impeccable vocals, Pristine sound. It just leaps right out at you.

I Don't Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing (Open Up The Door I'll Get It Myself) - James Brown- This one has more of that raw, unbridled quality that flows so seamlessly from the live recordings. It really takes off half way through.


I Like What You're Doing To Me - Carla Thomas-I’m woefully ignorant of the Stax/Atlantic soul stuff, this should provide me with the impetus to correct that. Loved it.

I Threw It All Away - Bob Dylan-One of many “Nashville Skyline” highlights.

I Turned You On - The Isley Brothers-It could be that the 1969 funk/soul bar is set so high, because this one just doesn’t have the staying power of the competition.

I Wanna Be Your Dog - The Stooges-In many ways, more frightening than “Schizoid Man”.

I Want To Take You Higher - Sly & The Family Stone-It’s starting to become apparent that 1969 is Sly’s year.

I Want You Back - The Jackson 5- #1 for three weeks in January.

I Bet You – Funkadelic- Like The Temptations, but way heavier. Dig all the screamin, hootin’ and hollerin’.

I'll Never Fall In Love Again - Bobbie Gentry
I'll Never Fall In Love Again - Dionne Warwick-Of these two, I prefer the Bobbie Gentry one. Her vocals are raspier, which makes the sentiment of the lyrics more believable. If you’ve never heard it, seek it out.

I'll See Him Through - Tammy Wynette-Tammy’s voice is bigger than a grain silo.

I'm A Man - Chicago Transit Authority-The entire first Chicago LP is just loaded with blistering lead guitar courtesy of Terry Kath. He really cuts loose here.

I'm Free - The Who-The opening rhythm guitar salvo by Pete Townshend is one of my favorite intros to any song. The “Pinball” reprise at the end is sheer awesomeness.

I'm Livin' In Shame - Diana Ross & The Supremes-The chorus really sneaks up on you, and boy it’s a corker.

Idaho - The Four Seasons-This is from “The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette” recognized in some circles as a lost classic LP. Never thought I’d ever refer to a Four Seasons track as ‘weird”, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.

If I Were A Carpenter - June Carter & Johnny Cash-Johnny and June duet on the Tim Hardin tune, one of the most covered songs of the ‘60’s.


If It's Good To You (It's Good For You) - Eddie Bo-Another New Orleans funk legend unbeknownst to me until undertaking this task. I’m running out of adjectives to describe them.

Imagine The Swan - The Zombies-A foray into baroque rock with rich harmony and harpsichord. The chorus is great, but it’s kinda clunky getting there. Overall, worth a listen.

In The Court Of The Crimson King - King Crimson-Broken up into 2 parts for the 45, as a part one and two deal. It only made it as high as #80 in the US, but it is obviously one of the more groundbreaking recordings that are being reviewed here. A watershed moment in the history of pop.

In The Ghetto - Elvis Presley-After Elvis “came back” in ’67, he followed that up with an astonishing run of 45’s. This is one of them. I don’t think there’s ever been such a seamless amalgam of pop styles so skillfully executed on one record.

In The Land Of Make Believe - Dusty Springfield-I could listen to Dusty sing the phone book. Love how on this track how it’s chock full of orchestrations, but the playing is understated so we can focus on the vocals, as it should be. Wonderful recording.

In The Year 2525 - Zager & Evans-This is just bad, right down to the cheesy reverb on the vocals.

Indian Giver - 1910 Fruitgum Company-Before the days of political correctness, you could write a song like this, and actually sell it to children. Title aside, it’s a nice big hunk of bubblegum, complete with a key change at the end.

Is That All There Is? - Peggy Lee-Love the sparse arrangement with the banjo and horn punctuations. “Let’s break out the booze and have a ball”….couldn’t agree more.

It Don't Matter To Me – Bread-Mellow rock rears it’s ugly head, just kidding this is actually pretty good.