DAY 142.
Johnny Cash...............................Johnny Cash At San Quentin    (1969)





Johnny Cash At San Quentin, still sounds as good as it did the first time I heard it, many moons ago.
I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this album, as Pat said, I don't think I know anyone who dislikes "the man in black" and my kids like him too, in fact I bought my youngest a greatest hits double album of his as a stocking filler, and I hear it getting played most days, It's funny as she's a bit of a princess/fashinista which I would suggest is not your normal Cash fan, but she likes to "Walk The Line" but mostly in "Prada"


So all in all this is a terrific album, every track a winner, and will certainly be purchased at some point in the future.



Bits & Bobs;


Mostly covered in post #449  (if interested)

About some of the tracks;


A Boy Named Sue.

This was written by the multitalented Shel Silverstein, who later wrote several hits for Dr. Hook, including "Sylvia's Mother" and "Cover Of The Rolling Stone." Silverstein also wrote several popular children's books. He got the idea for the song from his friend Jean Shepherd - a guy who had to deal with a girly name. Shepherd was a writer/humorist like Silverstein; he narrated the 1983 movie A Christmas Story, which is based on his writings.


 
This is about a boy who grows up angry at his father not only for leaving his family, but for naming him Sue. When the boy grows up, he sees his father in a bar and gets in a fight with him. After his father explains that he named him Sue to make sure he was tough, the son understands.


 
Cash recorded this live at San Quentin Prison in February 1969. Shel Silverstein's nephew Mitch Myers told us the story: "In those days in Nashville, and for all the people that would visit, the most fun that anyone really could have would be to go over to someone's house and play music. And they would do what one would call a 'Guitar Pull,' where you grabbed a guitar and you played one of your new songs, then someone else next to you would grab it and do the same, and there were people like Johnny Cash or Joni Mitchell, people of that caliber in the room.




Shel sang his song 'Boy Named Sue,' and Johnny's wife June Carter thought it was a great song for Johnny Cash to perform. And not too long after that they were headed off to San Quentin to record a record - Live At San Quentin - and June said, 'Why don't you bring that Shel song with you.' And so they brought the lyrics. And when he was on stage he performed that song for the first time ever, he performed it live in front of that captive audience, in every sense of the word.




He had to read the lyrics off of the sheet of paper that was at the foot of the stage, and it was a hit. And it wasn't touched up, it wasn't produced or simulated. They just did it, and it stuck. And it rang. I would say that it would qualify in the realm of novelty, a novelty song. Shel had a knack for the humorous and the kind of subversive lyrics. But they also were so catchy that people could not resist them."


 
Shel Silverstein went on to write another song titled "The Father of the Boy Named Sue." It's the same story, but from the father's point of view.  


 
Johnny Cash performed this song in the East Room of the White House on April 17, 1970 when he and his wife were invited by President Richard Nixon. Nixon's staff had requested the song along with Okie from Muskogee and a song by Guy Drake called "Welfare Cadillac," but Cash refused to perform those songs, saying he didn't have arrangements ready.



I Walk The Line.

One of his most famous songs, this song details Johnny Cash's values and lifestyle. It is a promise to remain faithful to his first wife, Vivian, while he is on the road.


 
"Walk The Line" was the title of the 2005 Cash biopic, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter.


 
Carl Perkins suggested the title "I Walk The Line" while on tour with Cash.


 
Levi's used this in television commercials.


 
While performing the song on his TV show Cash admitted that his eerie hum at the beginning of each verse was to get his pitch. The song required Cash to change keys several times while singing it.


 
Recorded in April 1956, Cash's first #1 was sped up at the urging of Sun Studios owners Sam Phillips. Jack Clements, who worked with Cash, recalled to Uncut magazine April 2012: "I wasn't impressed with Cash at first, because I like recordings with class… And Cash seemed rough, but 'I Walk The line' was a class recording."


 
 

 

'Abbey Road' is absolutely wonderous.

 

DAY 143.
Creedence Clearwater Revival.....................Green River     (1969)









Just finished listening to this one, and I've got to say I enjoyed this one far more than Bayou Country, this may have been helped by no track lasting more than 5 minutes, the fact that its nine songs spanned less than 29 minutes didn’t matterr Green River felt complete, and its concision ought to serve as a lesson to the bloated affairs that have haunted this listener of late.

Your man Fogerty has a great voice, and don't tell anyone but I actually enjoyed the guitary bits, they seem to always have pretty good intros which for me sets the tone for what's to come.


If I had an unlimited budget, I would most certainly purchase this album, but as I don't I wont be buying this one........for now! 



Bits & Bobs;


See post   #540   (if interested)



Just found out that John Fogerty wrote "Rockin' All Over The World" the song Status Quo had a big hit with.



Some bits about some of the tracks;



Green River

This song was written by group leader John Fogerty, who explained in his Storytellers special: "Green River is really about this place where I used to go as a kid on Putah Creek, near Winters, California. I went there with my family every year until I was ten. Lot of happy memories there. I learned how to swim there. There was a rope hanging from the tree. Certainly dragonflies, bullfrogs. There was a little cabin we would stay in owned by a descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody. That's the reference in the song to Cody Jr. ["Up at Cody's camp I spent my days..."]




The actual specific reference, Green River, I got from a soda pop-syrup label. You used to be able to go into a soda fountain, and they had these bottles of flavored syrup. My flavor was called Green River. It was green, lime flavored, and they would empty some out over some ice and pour some of that soda water on it, and you had yourself a Green River."


 
John Fogerty has said that Green River is his favorite Creedence Clearwater Revival album, in part because it sounds like the '50s albums by the likes of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash that came out of Sun Records in Memphis.


Commotion
"Commotion" is the second track on the Green River album. It was the B-side of the "Green River" single, which peaked at #2 in the US and #19 in the UK. A standard practice at the time was to release lesser-quality songs as B-sides on singles, but Fogerty always liked to take a different approach, pairing two A-side-worthy songs together, as he wanted the highest possible quality on all CCR products at all times. This practice helped boost CCR singles sales even further.


 
Fogerty doesn't like the frenetic pace and constant noise of modern life. "Commotion" grew out of his frustration with those things.


Tombstone Shadow


The song was inspired by John Fogerty's visit to a fortune teller in San Bernardino, which is pronounced "San Berdoo" in the song. The fortune teller told Fogerty that he should avoid airplanes, inspiring the line "Fly in no machines." The fortune teller also told him that he had 13 months of bad luck ahead, inspiring the "13 months of bad luck" line



Wrote A Song For Everyone


Fogerty assumes a character in this song, but in many ways it relates to him:

Wrote a song for everyone
Wrote a song for truth

He grew up middle class and never spent time on the county welfare line, but always empathized with the downtrodden, giving them voice in his songs.


 
"Wrote a Song for Everyone" was first released on August 3, 1969, on Creedence Clearwater Revival's Green River. At just under 5 minutes, it's the longest song on the album. The song was released again in 1986 on Volume 2 of the Chronicle compilation album. In 2013, CCR frontman John Fogerty released a new version of the song on his ninth solo studio album, also titled Wrote a Song for Everyone. This version features Miranda Lambert and Tom Morello.


 
Fogerty wishes he'd recorded the original version of the song differently. An infamous perfectionist, he detects a "quirkiness" in it that bothers him (though no one else seems to notice).


 
Fogerty destroyed all copies of the first version of the song because he never wanted any of his outtakes to make it into the public's hands. This has been a regular practice of the perfectionist throughout his career.


 
Jeff Tweedy of Wilco has cited this as a song that had a profound influence on him. A huge Fogerty fan, Wilco credits him with forming the foundation of the Americana genre.


Bad Moon Rising
In Rolling Stone issue 649, John Fogerty explained that the lyrics were inspired by a movie called The Devil And Daniel Webster, in which a hurricane wipes out most of a town. This is where he got the idea for the words "I feel the hurricane blowin', I hope you're quite prepared to die." Overall, he said the song is about the "apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us."


 
Released April 1969, this was the lead single from Green River. The B-side was "Lodi."


 
This was used in two science-fiction movies of the 1980s: An American Werewolf In London (1981) and Twilight Zone: The Movie (1982). In the former, it plays as the main character is awaiting a full moon and wondering if he will turn into a werewolf.


 
This contains a classic misheard lyric. The line "There's a bad moon on the rise" is often heard as "There's a bathroom on the right." Not only do many people sing the wrong lyrics, but John Fogerty himself sang the "bathroom on the right" lyric once during the "Premonition" concert. It can be heard after the last verse of the song quite plainly.




Fogerty would often have fun with this trope, sometimes pointing to a nearby bathroom from the stage when he got to the famous misheard line.


 
The music makes this sound like a happy song, but the lyrics are very bleak, describing events that indicate a coming apocalypse.


 
As a result of this song, American football player Andre Rison's nickname was "Bad Moon," as in "Bad Moon Risin'." Rison was an all-pro wide receiver, but is also famous for having his house burned down by Lisa (Left Eye) Lopes, a singer with TLC who was his girlfriend at the time.


 
This has been covered by Nirvana, Bruce Springsteen, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Emmylou Harris, The Reels, The Meteors, Thea Gilmore, Ann Wilson with Gretchen Wilson, Type O Negative, 16 Horsepower, Reels, Spitballs, Blue Aeroplanes, Lagwagon, Battlefield Band, Ducky Boys, Acoustic Shack, Ventures, Meteors, and Rasputina.


 
Argentine soccer fans came up with a new version of this song after their team advanced to the World Cup finals in 2014 while the host country, Brazil, was eliminated in the semi-final. Set to the tune of this song, Argentines chanted, "Brasil, decime qué se siente tener en casa tu papa," which means "Brazil, tell me how it feels to be bossed around in your own home."


Even the team members were heard singing this taunt, but in the end Argentina did not take home the trophy, as they lost in the final to Germany, the team that beat Brazil.


 
This became the theme song of the demonstrators during the People's Park riots in Berkeley, California, in 1969.


 
During his VH1's Storytellers performance, Fogerty said that he was quite aware of the contradiction between the song's lyrical content and its bouncy sound (though he offers no explanation for this). He then recounted how, during many performances, the audience would sing back at him "There's a bathroom on the right" during the final lyric, which actually says "There's a bad moon on the rise." Fogerty has also used the "bathroom" line during some live performances.


 
In 2010, Jerry Lewis recorded a version of this song with John Fogerty for Lewis' Mean Old Man album, which also featured performances with Keith Richards, Kid Rock, Willie Nelson, and many others.


 
During a benefit for the Berkeley Hall School, a Vietnam veteran approached Fogerty and told him that he and his squad, who called themselves the Buffalo Soldiers, would blast "Bad Moon Rising" in their camp before going into the jungle on a mission. It was their way of getting pumped up for combat, but also their way of instilling fear in the enemy. In Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music, Fogerty expresses admiration for the man's courage, and regret that he cannot remember his name.


 
"Bad Moon Rising" is the signature walkout song for UFC fighter Jim Miller.


 
 
In his memoir, Fogerty said he borrowed the guitar lick for this song from Scotty Moore's work on Elvis Presley's "I'm Left You're Right I'm Gone" Fogerty stresses that he wasn't trying to hide that he'd borrowed the lick and was instead openly "honoring it." In 1986, at an unspecified awards get-together, Moore grabbed Fogerty from behind and said, "Give me back my licks!"


Lodi

In Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music, John Fogerty explained that the inspiration for "Lodi" came from trips with his father around central California, an area of the world where he "felt very warm and special." This seed of an idea grew into a story about a traveling musician whose career "is in the rearview mirror." Fogerty was only 23 when he wrote this song about an aging musician.


 
This song is a reflection on John Fogerty's days with The Golliwogs, an early version of Creedence Clearwater Revival. They had to struggle for success, playing wherever they could with dilapidated equipment and an often indifferent audience. He did not want a return to the Bad Old Days.


 
Lodi is a city in California located in the central valley, about 30 miles south of Sacramento and 75 or 100 miles east of San Francisco/Oakland. Fogerty and his earlier band often performed in "nowhere towns" like Lodi.


 
Fogerty sometimes covered this at concerts after he became a solo artist.


 
Drummer Doug Clifford claimed the band played a show in Lodi in their early days. Said Clifford: "There were nine people in there, they were all locals, they were all drunk and all they did all night was tell us to turn it down."


 
Al Wilson recorded a cover of this song. His version was issued on Soul City Records in America and on Liberty Records in the United Kingdom. It was played extensively in the few underground "Northern Soul" clubs of England during the late 1960s and early '70s, getting its first exposure at the famous Twisted Wheel Club Allnighters in Manchester, England.


 

In a radio interview, John Fogerty said when he was young his parents took him and his brother to camp at Lodi lake (called Smith lake then) and they hated camping there. So later on they wrote a song about Lodi using their old hatred for the place.


 
Tesla did an acoustic version of this song that was included on their 1990 live album, Five Man Acoustical Jam. Each band member got to pick a song to cover for the set, and Tesla drummer Troy Luccketta chose "Lodi" since he was born there.


Sinister Purpose


This song was first released on Creedence Clearwater Revival's Green River album. The speaker in the song is meant to the Devil; it is a dramatization of the Devil handing the listener a business card and making a sales pitch for what he can offer.

Love 'Tommy'.

It ties with 'Quadrophenia' as my favourite Who album.

Both solid 9/10's

Just listening to "Tommy," and got to the beginning of "Pinball Wizard" and it reminded me of one of my all time favourite songs that I haven't heard for ages, this song for me at least has the lot, absolutely superb. 


Got to go my neighbours for a wee soiree now, but not before I watch this




 

Miles Davis I could see Davis away!

Never was a Beatles fan, or a The Who aficionado, but these albums are great compared to the American stuff of late.

Apart from the Mothers or Beefheart of course   

I'm worried we're getting bye the Mod period now, and some obscure bands have been missed out, but no worries, my most favourite albums rather than songs were probably from the early 'seventies. From this side of the pond, of course (apart from the Mothers or Beefheart).

Last edited by PatReilly (02/1/2018 8:08 pm)

DAY 145.
The Who..................Tommy   (1969)







Confession time, I last heard this in 1971, in fact that was the first and only time,  and I was 13 years old.



Now if you'd asked me a couple of hours ago what I thought of "Tommy" I would have said "a load of shite," but here's the thing that would have been my opinion as a 13 year old, I've never really thought about how your musical taste changes over the years.


So if I hadn't listened to this again, that opinion would have been ingrained in my mind as my stock answer to "what do you think of Tommy " but now having listened to it as an older  ( but not necessarily wiser) listener I found it an absolutely superb album, I done the old trick of reading the lyrics as I was listening to the album, and probably because I don't pick up a lot of the lyrics when listening, I have never gave Townsend the credit he most probably deserves for his lyrics and arrangements.


I found this album a joy to listen to, apart from The "uncle Ernie" bits that still make me feel uncomfortable but that just goes to show, lyrically they're doing they're job. I even liked the instrumental "Underture" that went on for round about 10 minutes.

Really in a quandary as whether to buy this or not, I really like it, but how often would I play it in it's entirety?

I don't think I'll buy it just now, but who knows in the future.


Bits & Bobs;



An interview with Pete Townsend about Tommy;



At long last, Tommy is with us. Pete Townsend's been talking about doing his opera for years. And now we have a double album set that's probably the most important milestone in pop since Beatlemania. For the first time, a rock group has come up with a full-length cohesive work that could be compared to the classics.
The central character is Tommy himself. Born during the First World War, he becomes blind, deaf and dumb after seeing a murder by his parents in a mirror, becomes a pinball champion, reaches a state of grace, regains his senses and starts his own religion, is eventually discarded by his disciples somewhere in the far distant future, finds himself as isolated as he was in the beginning. The opera is, apart from being some of the best rock yet, a statement of Townshend's philosophy. "It's about life," he says.


 Pete has often spoken of his opera in the past. Pieces from a projected bigger work appeared on A Quick One and The Who Sell Out, but Tommy, which took two years to complete, owes little to these. The germ of the opera in fact came from a single, "Glow Girl," which was never released.


 "Glow Girl," explains Pete, "led me to the idea of 'It's A Boy,' 'Mrs Walker' (the first song on the album). But that would have been too blunt an opening, so I did the "Overture." This clues you in to a lot of the themes and gives a continuity to the individual tracks – you think you've heard them before because they've been stated in the overture. It gives more of a flow and strengthens the whole thing."

 One of the central themes of Tommy is the play between self and illusory self. It's expressed by Tommy (the real self) who can see nothing but his reflection (illusory self) in the mirror – "There had to be a loophole so I could show this. The boy has closed himself up completely as a result of the murder and his parents' pressures, and the only thing he can see is his reflection in the mirror. This reflection – his illusory self – turns out to be his eventual salvation.



 "In general terms, man is regarded as living in an unreal world of illusory values that he's imposed on himself. He's feeling his way by evolution back to God – realisation and the illusion is broken away, bit by bit. You need the illusions until you reach very pure saintly states. When you lose all contact with your illusory state, you become totally dead – but totally aware. You've died for the last time. You don't incarnate again; you don't do anything again – you just blend. It's the realisation of what we all intellectually know – universal consciousness – but it's no good to know until you can actually realise it.


 "Tommy's real self represents the aim – God – and the illusory self is the teacher; life, the way, the path and all this. The coming together of these are what make him aware. They make him see and hear and speak so he becomes a saint who everybody flocks to.
 "The boy's life starts to represent the whole nature of humanity – we all have this self-imposed deaf, dumb and blindness – but this isn't something I'm over heavy on," says Pete. "I'm more concerned about what actually happens in his life."


 Having lost most of his senses, Tommy feels everything simply as rhythms and vibration. Everything reaches him as music.

 "He gets everything in a very pure, filtered, unadulterated, unfucked-up manner. Like when his uncle rapes him – he is incredibly elated, not disgusted, at being homosexually raped. He takes it as a move of total affection, not feeling the reasons why. Lust is a lower form of love, like atomic attraction is a lower form of love. He gets an incredible spiritual push from it where most people would get a spiritual retardment, constantly thinking about this terrible thing that's happened to them.

 "In Tommy's mind, everything is incredible, meaningless beauty."

 The songs in the opera, then, have to convey an amazing amount. It's possible that all that's in Townshend's mind won't come across by simply sitting down and listening to the album. There's too much, on too many levels, for a casual listener. But on the simplest level, the songs are magnificent, simply as rock.


 "You see, each song has to capsule an event in the boy's life, and also the feeling, what has ensued, and cover and knit-up all the possibilities in all the other fields of action that are suggested. All these things had to be tied up in advance and then referred back to. I can tell you it was quite difficult."


 Touch is the one sense that Tommy still has in the early part of the album. McLuhan says that touch is a combination of all the senses at once: "Yea, I read that. I went into McLuhan quite deeply once. For someone that can see, sight has an absurdly high percentage over the other senses in terms of mental concentration. But if you can't see or hear, touch must come totally alive. The most excruciating thing known to man isn't blazing light – it's pain. The heights of pleasure are felt through touch – at least on a physical level – and the early part of the opera is on physical level."


 All but three of the songs were written by Pete – one by Keith Moon and two being by John Entwistle, "Fiddle About" and "Cousin Kevin." Says Pete: "I didn't want to do them. I didn't think I could be cruel enough. They're ruthlessly brilliant songs because they are just as cruel as people can be. I wanted to show that the boy was being dealt with very cruelly and it was because he was being dismissed as a freak."

 One of the lines is: "There's a lot I can do with a freak." Pete explains, "I would have avoided that, but it's nice to have it in."

 This leads to the general subject of freakishness, and Tiny Tim is brought into the conversation: "Seeing through the shit to the talent is the answer. Practically every talented person spends most of his time hiding his talent – or freakiness. This fascinates me. Some hide it behind the aura of being a superstar in glittering show business. The reason is the remoteness it creates – the more remote they become, the more powerful they are as star figures. Rock is built on it. I mean, I speak to Mick Jagger on the telephone all the time, and I still can't be normal with him – well, because he's him."

 Does Townshend consider himself a freak? "I suppose so. I don't know. I did very much so when we first started. But I don't really want to talk about me and my freakiness."

 A recurring theme in Tommy is the boy's repeated outburst: "Feel me, touch me."


 "We can't play it on stage for laughing now, but when I first wrote it, it brought tears to my eyes. It's meant to be extremely serious and plaintive; but words fail so miserably to represent emotions unless you skirt around the outside, and I didn't do it enough there. You can circumscribe an emotion with a lyric – by telling of an event and leaving out one important chunk – and that can contain an emotion and put it across. This one fails because it actually comes out and says it. But there's so much circumscribing in Tommy that I wanted to get to the crunch a number of times."


 Some people have read the album as being sick.

 "That's great! As far as Tony Blackburn's concerned, forget it! But for the average intelligent person, that's what it was meant to be. The kid is having terrible things done to him, because that's life as it is, although perhaps not to the extremes that happen in the songs.


 "Pop is a light medium. A pop song about the horrors of war is out of place . . . this means the sick things have a pre-emphasis. We hope that people's preconceptions will get screwed around by this. This sick humour thing which John has got is so important to the album. The songs aren't completely within the continuity of the album musically, but the perfection of the album lies in other areas. "Fiddle About" represents a whole feeling of family callousness and lack of respect for the kid because he's not like they are."


 There is a song called "The Acid Queen" – who may be another route to Tommy's salvation. "The song's not about just acid; it's the whole drug thing, the drink thing, the sex thing, wrapped into one big ball. It's about how you get it laid on you that you haven't lived if you haven't fucked forty birds, taken sixty trips, drunk fourteen pints of beer – or whatever. Society – people – force you. She represents this force. On a number of occasions I've got this sinister, feline, sexual thing about acid, that it's inherently female. I don't know if I'm right . . . it's fickle enough."

 But once you know of the existence of these things – sex, drugs, drink, how do you resist?

 "It isn't built into man; it's the dare or the challenge for most people. About acid: I feel that there's a spiritual process going on in every person's head that's so overwhelmingly complex and so beautifully balanced, and acid just feeds on the distortion of that balance. People find pleasure in distorting the balance. But the human being is such a beautifully equipped piece of machinery that it's very spiritually disturbing to topple it and think that it's good.


 "If you know you're throwing yourself out of balance, like when you're drunk, you hate yourself, so that's alright. But when you trip, for some reason you love yourself. You don't realise you were better equipped as you were. Each trip is just a sidestreet, and before you know it, you're back where you were. Each trip is more disturbing than the one that follows, till eventually the sidestreet becomes a dead end. Not only spiritually, which is the most important, but mentally it can stop you thinking physically. It can fuck you up. People are falling out of trees and all this bullshit."


 But doesn't acid turn a lot of people on to the spiritual side of life?

 "Acid has happened and there was obviously a purpose for it – the acceleration of spiritual thinking – otherwise I believe it wouldn't have happened. So I'm against what it has done. Actually, I did enjoy my trips . . . but the acid song is supposed to show the potential of acid as a spiritual push and knock it down as a danger in reducing the power of man in society."


 "Pinball Wizard" has already been notably successful as a single, though it wasn't tailored for that purpose.

 "The whole point of "Pinball Wizard" was to let the boy have some sort of colourful event and excitement. Side Three is supposed to be really explosive. Suddenly things are happening, it starts to move really fast. "Pinball Wizard" is about life's games, playing the machine – the boy and his machine, the disciples with theirs, the scores, results, colours, vibrations and action."


 Does Townshend see games people play as negative or positive?



 "Definitely not negative; and Tommy's games aren't games. They're like the first real thing he's done in his life. I play games – an incredible number. But I do real things as well. No . . . this is Tommy's first big triumph. He's got results. A big score. He doesn't know all this; he stumbled on a machine, started to pull levers and so on, got things going, and suddenly started getting incredible affection – like pats on the back. This hasn't happened to him before, and the kids are his first disciples.


 "It's supposed to capsule the later events, a sort of teasing preview. It's meant to be a play off of early discipleship and the later real disciples. In a funny sort of way, the disciples in the pinball days were more sincere, less greedy than later on, when they demand a religion – anything to be like him and escape from their own dreary lives, do things his way and get there quicker."


 Is this a metaphor for pop music, which at one time was an unconscious thing and now is taken on a serious religious level?

 "I dunno. "Pinball Wizard" is a very groovy time but it doesn't compare with divinity in any way at all. I happen to be at that stage, so I operate better at that stage. I don't happen to be divine at the moment. I can't express the magnificence of divinity in music, but I can express the grooviness of being a pinball champ because I'm a pop star which is very close. The absurdity of being a pinball champion!


 "Pinball's more rewardingly obsessive than something like golf where the obsession can be sidetracked – 'Well I just do it for the fresh air' – and all that bollocks. You can't escape from the basics; it's just getting a ball into a hole. I mean, it's a machine simply made to be a match for man. A very important process.


 "People play their own pinball in other ways, like I muck around with tape recorders all the time. It's the same fascination with machines, and it'll show itself far more in the future when machines get even better. Most people's pinball machines are their cars. The car obsession is overwhelming, but it's there and I imagine it can only increase. I think it's groovy – why not? I thrive on modern things – good hifi, amplifiers, tape recorders, colour television. A lot of them look like they're all padding, but there's far less than you'd imagine."


 The pinball wizard wins by intuition; what part does intuition play?


 "People talk about the bulge, the youth of today, acid, all this. I feel that intuition is taking over, that education is becoming pointless because of its failures . . . and when classes and groups like negros do eventually get their pride back and nations do resolve their petty problems . . . it's a hard road but it will happen, you know . . . intuition is going to start taking over as a mental process.


 "There's going to be so much scientific information that unless you're a ruthless specialist you might as well leave it to computers. Like when you throw a cigarette butt into an ashtray on the other side of the room, you can judge the rake, the height and angle because you have the equipment to do it. It often goes in without thinking. That's no accident, because the arithmetic went on. That's what man's about; intuitive magnificence on legs. But as a mathematical machine, man's a waste of time."


 "Sensation" is the song Tommy sings after he's regained his senses. He realises who he is and becomes totally aware. The sound of the song is like The Beach Boys; the moment is that of divinity. Tommy is worshipping himself, knowing what he is and speaking the truth.
 "I really dig the Beach Boys. Their incredibly architectural control of music is as powerful as the Who anyday. "I Can Hear Music" has one of the most powerful musical backings I've ever heard . . . they're another group I dig because they aren't afraid of saying what they feel they should, like The Beatles . . . well, John Lennon at least. Or Dylan, though I think he tends to close himself . . . I don't know.


 "I used all the sensation stuff because after all this time where Tommy's just been getting vibrations, now he's turned the tables. Now you're going to feel me! I'm in everything; I'm the explosion; I'm a sensation. Our influences in the Who are often directly attributable to certain things that certain groups have done at certain times. But "Sensation" is indefinable for me. I can't really put my finger on where it came from.

 "'I'm Free' came from 'Street Fighting Man.' This has a weird time/shape and when I finally discovered how it went, I thought 'well blimey, it can't be that simple' – but it was and it was a gas and I wanted to do it myself . . . but some of them are quite remote. I listen to a lot of music so I'm open to a lot of influences.


 "People say that music is cyclic. Well, rock is like a flat spin. It repeats itself every ten seconds where music might repeat every hundred years. This is what makes rock so exciting; the flat spin is cyclic and the cycle is cyclic and there it is, all very compressed . . . like one of the most omnipotent cyclic sounds is Hendrix. It's hard to know why, but he is definitely rock and not something else like blues. Cream are definitely rock, too."

 "Compositions come out so fast in rock because there's a demand created and contracts have to be fulfilled. I mean, who ever put Beethoven under contract. Prince Charming may have asked him to do this and that but there was none of this six records a year. The pressures of the pop industry are part and parcel of it all."


 Many people think that the commercial side is the bad side of pop?



 "It's about the only fucking healthy thing about it! (laughs) It is like . . . teenagers getting screwed up because their parents won't change for them. The commercial market refuses to change at the speed musicians and composers might wish. It has its own pace, adjusted by the mass, which is to me absolutely the most important thing on earth.


 "There are levers in the commercial market to be pulled, but if people buy a record, they were moved in some way to do so. You can't swing it that far. Things like the competitive press, competitive American radio stations, these things are all important. They keep the pace fast but steady.


 "Huge musical personalities like Clapton and Hendrix can get the machine to do what they want, but it's still the machinery that does the work. What people find oppressive is the dependence on the system, but the commercial system comes halfway to pop, but pop won't come halfway back. Anything that does is classed as bubblegum and chucked out. But some of the world's best music is bubblegum. I mean I really dug Yummy Yummy Yummy but some people spew over it. And there's a lot of other stuff, real shit, that I dig. And the machine created Cream. It really did."Musical snobbery is the trouble.


 "There's a difference between discerning and snobbish. I think that a lot of people listening to, say, John Peel are snobbish. They don't know why a record is good and why it appeals to Peel. Though he sincerely digs it, they'd like it for another reason. There's so much good music in this country that's unacceptable. I thought The Kinks last album was great, and The Zombies too. But they don't even get into the record shops. A discerning listener is one who defines his own taste; he wants something that comes from somewhere inside.


 "There have always been classical snobs, people on whom record companies thrive. You know: 'We'll put this one in a big thick package and we'll put a really heavy name on, a picture of the violinist on front, we'll put a lot of very heavy sleeve notes on and we'll charge seventeen quid for the box. All we need is four people and we've made a profit'."

 "People here are doting on snobbery, like in the blues scene. But this is OK for me because bands like Fleetwood Mac and Ten Years After have a lot of potential in other directions, though they got in through a blues backdoor. They're very anxious to communicate direct, devoid of hangups. It's hard to say why I like any of them; like I enjoy some soul singers but not others, and can't go overboard on soul for the sake of soul . . . and I don't like a lot of the West Coast groups. Some new American groups make it and some somehow don't. Steppenwolf make it for me, yet they can be incredibly pretentious. "The Pusher" is a terrible song, loaded with bullshit, yet "Born To Be Wild" was fantastic. But . . . they're still caught on the seesaw. Like the Moody Blues; such incredibly produced albums, but they're religious snobs. You're getting vicars' tea parties thrown at you".

 But if Townshend believes so strongly in the commercial market, why is the top ten such a disgrace?


 "It's got nothing to do with what people like. What made the charts good once was pirate radio. As soon as they get commercial radio again in this country the whole thing's going to throb back into life. Now, Top of the Pops is the only programme on and it's controlled by the charts. The BBC only play what's in the charts; until a record gets in they don't play them and once they do, they play them till they're fucking dead.



 "It's based on a complete lack of faith. Nobody's trusted to decide. The public knows what it wants. They decide! Does that follow? No – someone has to give them the full spectrum. The shops are the same; we're only going to give the public what it wants/no we ain't got that/we've only got the dead certainties in stock.


 "So what does a new group do? And fuck knows how we got on Top of the Pops. That's why our record is in the charts; people saw us on TV . . . oooh, they're still a group then! and it's a powerful record and it went. But the basic ingredients are who gets the TV spectaculars? Tom Jones. Who gets the number ones? The middle classes want TV shows by Tom Jones and Val Doonican so they get them. But the rest of the record audience don't get their barrage."


 "On radio they won't take chances. Despite the fact that there was a readymade market for the world's best rock when the pirates went off the air, Radio One still wouldn't play records by established artists like the Kinks, like us, like The Stones, like lots of people. And they still don't. The programmer for the BBC must be an old dear."


 "You can laugh at it, but listen to the DJs, having heard them a few years ago. The saddest case was Johnnie Walker who'd been publicly, in the press, decrying Radio One. And eventually, you know, he had to give in. I heard him the other day introducing a tape of the NDO playing 'Quando Quando.' Swing to this, kids."


 The teachings of Tommy to his hordes of disciples run parallel to practically any other religious leader you can name.


 "Rama Krishna, Buddha, Zarathustra, Jesus and Meher Baba are all divine figures on earth. They all said the same thing; yet still we trundle on. This is basically what Tommy is saying. But his followers ask how to follow him, and disregard his teaching. They want rules and regulations; going to church on Sundays – but he just says 'live life'. Later on he smashes rules to them."


 Townshend is much involved with the teachings of Meher Baba. How did this affect his writing?


 "The process of writing was controlled by my direct involvement with Baba. His stuff is completely self-contained, and it's a good point to start fucking-up from. On a basic working level, songs like 'I'm Free,' 'Pinball Wizard' and a couple of others are very much Baba, songs of the quiet explosion of divinity. They just rolled off the pen.


 "But I don't mean divinely inspired! You get a lot of crap from the close devotees of Baba, stories about people rushing up to him and saying, 'My daughter was dying in Poona and I said a prayer to you and you came in a vision and she was well again.' Baba says, 'I'm sorry mate, I don't know anything about that.' It's obviously their faith, their love for him that did the trick. It's like Jesus saying 'it's your faith that made you whole.'


 "The institution of the church comes up in 'Welcome.' The followers want to know how to follow him and he tells them very simply what to do. He's telling them what they want to hear – 'It's going to be all smooth and fun and we're never going to speak, we're going to drink all night and have the time of our life. You can do good things, go out and get new people, and for this you'll win gold stars.'


 "He knows they're completely off the track and is trying by his very presence to make them aware of what they should be doing – coming in to the house and then getting out again. Instead of that they want more action, so he gets the bright idea of extending the house into a huge holiday camp where he can accommodate thousands who want to come and be brainwashed.



 "It's supposed to represent the perverting of what he's been saying. He says 'you can follow me by playing pinball and doing things my way' – but when he says here's Uncle Ernie with your very own machine, it's like they're being led back to their very own life and way which is already built-in. All the time they demand more and so he starts to get hard: 'Well if you really want to know what to do, you've got to stop drinking for a start. You've got to stop smoking pot.' And he starts to lay down hard moral facts – like Jesus did – but nobody wants to know. (Baba actually gives the reasons: a stable, moral life is a good one because it doesn't hang you up).


 "Puritan morality is right, but for the wrong reasons. You don't burn in hell, but in the fires of life. You reincarnate again and again until you're sorted out. One way to do this is to attain a balance in your existence until you've exhausted all the possibilities and found your way to the goal. It lies in a lot of old religious laws – an eye for an eye and turning the other cheek mean exactly the same, but people don't realise. An eye for an eye means that if you poke out someone's eye, that person – in this life or in a billion lives from now – will eventually take the eye out of your head. But that Karmic retribution can be balanced. And this happens at a spiritual level too. You might as well turn the other cheek and get it slapped because that way you're taking both slaps for yourself and therefore balancing it. But people have this on a million levels. Possessions loading, lust loading, a thousand things which hang people up and drag them down."


 Do people naturally incline towards suffering because it leads to self-realisation?

 "Yea, well that's like Arthur Brown's 'suffer the fire' thing. Every individual has a load. You can tell by the way people ruthlessly live their lives that they're fulfilling some sort of destiny. On minor levels it can be astrological; on other levels it can be evolutionary or environmental. Biggest of all is the feeling that there's something really latently powerful driving every man, and I think it's Karmic Law. Each man has a load he's trying to shake off, to find . . . peace. As he drops one bit, he picks up another and so on. You just feel that everyone's desperately getting things done while never getting to grips with their individual problems. People do need this suffering; when it's meant to stop, someone will stop it. But you can't sit back and let things roll, because man is the mediator, he's the one that caused the fucking problems in the first place."


 And so on to a summing up of the work on the album.

 "The singing is better than ever on this album – there are some incredible performances of diction from Roger, aggressively sung but perfectly phrased. And it was an incredible surprise to find that we could do it all live. Such a relief!


 "It would have been tedious but simple to have run the whole album into one great big long kybosh, but I wanted to retain track-by-track action. I was really pleased that it had a musical form from beginning to end; separate tracks with separate action and separate musical strength and, at the same time, track-to-track unity, links across time and shunt-backs, all going smoothly. Though I do think the action on Side Two is a little slow.


 "I think that, despite the fact that the album is my own little thing and the motivation is not completely understood by the rest of the group even, it's still the first group effort really, since so much of the other stuff we did was gimmick-laden advertising schmatter. This is working toward a far more unified project.


 "It was approached in exactly the way anti-intellectual rock people would hate. We went into it in depth before we worked out the plot; we worked out the sociological implications, the religious implications, the rock implications. We made sure every bit was . . . solid. When we'd done that we went into the studio, got smashed out of our brains and made it. Then we listened, pruned and edited very carefully, then got smashed and did it all again, all the time playing gigs and grooving. And somehow it came out as if we'd done it all in one breath.


 "It's wrong to talk about who played what part in the album, because it's so much a product of the Who. Definitely. I'd been dreaming about getting it together for such a long time, all the time worried about their end and never worrying about my part of the bargain until I actually got to grips with the problem.

 "Keith's playing has never been better, John's playing has never been better, Roger's singing has never been better – my bit, the art bit, was where the problems lay. They were so incredibly true to form, and as a member of the Who, I was true to form. The sound was so easy to come by. It was great to do it. I thought I was going to have to make concessions, but not once did I have to. I mean, ideas were made much more powerful than they were originally.


 "It really does show how flexible rock and roll is, and what a lot of bullshit is talked about what it can and can't do. Although the sound itself has limitations, it has flexibility and malleability . . . four musicians totally involved with one another's limitations, lives and emotions . . . I mean, what other three musicians would have put up with all my bullshit in order to get this album out? It's my apple, right. It's my whole trip, coming from Baba, and they just sat there, let it come out, and then leapt upon it and gave it an extra boot. It's an incredible group to write for, because you know it's going to work out right. And though I've written other songs, which I won't mention, I've only ever had hits with the Who. And hit records are very near and dear to me."

 This story is from the July 12th, 1969 issue of Rolling Stone. 

Day 147.
The Bee Gees...........................Odessa    (1969)







Barry Gibb has dismissed Odessa as a confused attempt by a disintegrated and exhausted band to live up to their record company's desire that they do something "meaningful," yet it remains the most enduring of their 1960s work.

DAY 148.
The Pentangle............................Basket Of Life   (1969)





Basket Of Light is the quintets most important album, both in terms of quality and commercial success, "Light Flight" may not be Pentangle fans favourite song, but when the BBC used it as theme tune for their TV series Take Three Girls it soared to No 5 in the charts (though it's not a straightforward tune and the time signature varies between 5/8, 7/8 and 6/4 in the middle)

PatReilly wrote:

Interested in what folks make of Pentangle. Bert Jansch is sometimes put forward as the most influential and innovative acoustic guitar player of all time.

I don't think it will be coming in your house, arabchanter!

We done his self titled album way back in '65, if anyone's interested its DAY 56, post #211. and a damn fine guitar player he was!
 

messed up

Last edited by arabchanter (05/1/2018 11:30 am)

Gradually, albums have become longer in (time) length). I'm assuming round about the mid-sixties new techniques meant the quality of recordings could vastly improve the length available to musicians. 

Mind you, I'm feeling that some of these 1001 albums are already far too long for many of our tastes! But I do genuinely like the Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart, which is unusual for the time period as generally I didn't favour American musicians. And still don't.

Let it Bleed is a great album, but if pushed, I probably prefer Beggars Banquet. The two opening tracks on each side of Let it Bleed are fantastic, though.