There's a time in life for Hoagy Carmichael. There's a time in life for Claude Debussy. There's a time in life for Jerry Lee Lewis. There's a time in life for Destiny's Child. All these things have their moment. ~Elvis Costello
Tom Waits has never been known as someone who minced words about how he felt about music. Throughout his career in front of the microphone, there was no doubt that Waits would deliver something 100% authentic to the story he wanted to tell. Though his intuition may have led him to multiple classic records like Rain Dogs and Bone Machine, he wasn’t afraid to talk about songs that he thought were below average either.
When first cutting his teeth in the rock scene, Waits was a far more dynamic presence than what he would become known for. Although many may associate Waits’ cadence with its off-kilter demeanour, many knew him as the kind of lonely barfly on his first handful of albums, sitting behind a piano and delivering biting songs about loneliness.
Out of all the tracks he wrote during that period, ‘Ol 55’ remains a particular highlight from his early years. Taking the basic premise of the titular car, Waits paints a dark tale on top of it all, delivering the kind of gruff voice that only he could muster in those days. If there were anyone who knew a thing or two about both lonely songs and cars, though, it would be the Eagles.
As Waits was starting his career, Glenn Frey and Don Henley had already been two of the kings of the California rock scene. Having already made their living with songs like ‘Take it Easy’ and ‘Tequila Sunrise’, the band were looking to go beyond their country roots on the album On the Border...
“I always wanted our songs to pop and kick,” The Cars’ Ric Ocasek told me in 2005. And on the band’s fifth album, Heartbeat City, they did just that.
You might think of the pop in Pop Art terms: bold colours, sleek lines; bang-vroom choruses, the kick of a lyrical subversion that sneaks up on you, hinting at fragile mental states, with elliptical drug references and some kinky S&M.
Of that contrast in his songs, Ocasek said: “One kind of holds you down to earth, while the other takes you somewhere else.”
After running the album-tour track annually from 1978-81, The Cars were looking to go somewhere else. The title of their fourth album, Shake It Up, hinted at just what they needed to do.
The first major shake-up for Heartbeat City was bringing in producer Mutt Lange, best known for his high-gloss hit-making on AC/DC’s Back In Black and Def Leppard’s Pyromania. “I thought that the combination of the sound he gets and what we do would mingle pretty nicely,” Ocasek said in 1984. “Mutt’s never done a band like us; he’s done a lot of heavy metal. But I thought the two could mix.”
Harrison had a rare ability that’s cherished in studio players like Louie Shelton, Brent Mason, and Larry Carlton. He could craft an unforgettable two bar phrase that becomes the signature to the song. Elliot Easton of the Cars and Keith Richards of the Stones, had this as well.
The classic example is Harrison’s intro to “Something”. Six notes with a released bend, all on one string. Anyone can do it. Even your little sister can do it. But he thought of it. This is a gift.
The concept behind Devo was created during a single shocking event in 1970. From their earliest moments they had a point to make – but they also had a specific way of wanting to make it, and it wasn’t an easy journey. In 2015, Gerald V Casale looked back on the band’s career with Prog.
“God, those were exciting times,” says Gerald V Casale, vocalist, bassist, synth player and joint founder of Devo, über-geeks of the States’ late-70s new wave. “When you’re just so energised by what you’re doing and you’re the chief believer in your own vision.”
Casale is reminiscing about Miracle Witness Hour, a live album, previously unreleased, of his band performing in a biker bar in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1977. That was just before Devo’s “full bloom,” when they became America’s Public Anomaly No.1.
“It was a very strange place,” he says of the Eagle Street Saloon. “It was mouldy and decrepit. There’d be a towny bike-bar scene and then the music would start. Some locals would stick around and create tension and terror for the artsy punks there, and then we’d play to them – around 40 people. Then we’d just get out of there.
“I remember being really afraid. I had things said to me and figured the best thing to do was ignore them. Whenever I got accosted on the street by a crazy maniac, the best thing to do was walk away. I always felt threatened. We had to leave by the back door at a lot of places.”
In contrast to the White Album and Let It Be, Abbey Road – released in September 1969 – found The Beatles operating relatively cohesively; attempting to pull together, in step with one another if not exactly on the same page. “Abbey Road was really unfinished songs all stuck together,” bemoaned John Lennon. “None of the songs had anything to do with each other, no thread at all.”
It was the final collection of songs The Beatles recorded together, and our track-by-track guide tells its story.
Come Together
Very much John Lennon’s song, Abbey Road’s opener started out as Let’s Get It Together, a campaign song for Timothy Leary, standing against Ronald Reagan for Governor of California.
Lennon kick-started his lyric with a phrase from Chuck Berry’s You Can’t Catch Me (‘Here come old flat-top’), but neglected to cut the line from the finished recording. Berry’s publishers initiated plagiarism proceedings but settled out of court in 1973 on condition Lennon record three of their songs (hence his 1975 album Rock ’N’ Roll).
With a thinly veiled Lennon as central protagonist, Come Together is a groove-based espousal of the counter-culture, rich in selfconfessed ‘gobbledygook’, which references Yoko Ono (then recovering from a car accident, in a hospital bed actually in Abbey Road Studios) and features the zeitgeist-defining line ‘you got to be free’.
Recorded across nine days in July, all four Beatles featured, with Lennon on double-tracked guitar solo, Paul McCartney on bass and piano, and Ringo shuffling beautifully on juju drums. Outwardly good-natured, there was tension in the air; “Shoot me” Lennon whispered over the opening bars. McCartney told journalist Ray Coleman: “On Come Together I’d have liked to have sung harmony with John, and I think he’d have liked me to, but I was too embarrassed to ask him.”
2) Why did the Doors have no musician dedicated to playing bass?
To the first question, the Doors were unique among the classic rock bands in that their lineup did not include a bass-only musician (e.g., electric bass guitarist). Playing live, keyboardist Ray Manzarek used his right hand to play organ, and his left hand to play bass lines on a Fender Rhodes Piano Bass – the lower left octaves of a standard eighty-eight note piano. While unique, this configuration is not without precedent.
The Doors were a rock version of the jazz organ trio – a band led by an organist who plays bass lines with their left hand on the low notes of their instrument (or with their foot via bass pedals). Covering bass as well as harmony and melody, the jazz organist needs only a drummer for percussion – their kick drum accenting keyboard bass notes. The third player can be a saxophone or other horn soloist to add color, or a guitarist who can support the organist with chords as well as play solos. This keyboard/guitar/drums trio is the Doors instrumental lineup.
While the jazz organist often played bass and melody/harmony on the same instrument, Manzarek used a separate piano bass for a few reasons. The piano bass provided more punch to the low end than his electric organ’s bass register could provide. But even had he principally played a full electric piano a separate bass instrument was needed. Electrified bass instruments need higher wattage amplification than other (treble) instruments for rock music. Manzarek used separate amplifiers as well as separate instruments to handle his organ and bass double-duty with the Doors.
It is the second question that gets to the heart of the Doors sound, and the reception to their music.
Before the Doors, Ray Manzarek played in a band called Rick and the Ravens, a typical Southern California surf/frat party group which included Ray’s brothers – Ray incidentally was the lead vocalist. After that group disbanded, Ray looked to form another group, which he built around the lyrics and vocal styling of Jim Morrison, whom he first met as a fellow film student at UCLA. The band recruited John Densmore as their drummer, and Robby Krieger as a guitarist. They developed their songs in this lineup with Manzarek initially providing bass and harmony on the same electric organ. In the meantime, they auditioned electric bass players.
What Manzarek and the Doors found is that their music and lyrics gave the band a different vibe than the typical LA rock bands. The mood was darker, more dramatic, and had a hypnotic, trance-like quality which eventually drew in their fan base. Key to that quality was the simple and repetitive bass which rooted the music, and allowed Ray’s right hand, as well as John and Robby, to play more freely.
The auditioning bassists would come in and play walking bass lines and improvisation that turned the Doors back into a rhythm and blues group reminiscent of Rick and the Ravens. For that reason, Manzarek and the Doors determined the best course of action was to stick with Ray’s left hand playing bass, but with a separate keyboard bass instrument and amplification.
For studio recordings, the Doors and their producers used session electric bass players. Their roles in the recording, particularly with the first few albums, were to simply double up, note for note, whatever Ray was playing with his left hand.
The Doors in performance in 1967. Ray Manzarek is playing his iconic keyboard stack (Fender Piano Bass on top of his electric organ), each keyboard running into a separate amplifier.
Every Moment Has A Song 