Category: music

Andrew Wood: What Could’ve Been

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Andrew Wood was 24-years-old when he died. He died weeks before the release of his group Mother Love Bone’s debut album Apple. Reports say he started seriously playing music when he was 14, but we have to imagine that that music was probably a mess, but if he died at 24, imagine what he could’ve done by 34. I’m biased, but I can’t imagine how anyone could listen to Apple and not hear the potential he had for so much more. If rock musicians tend to peak between the ages of 27-30, Andrew Wood probably would’ve helped create three incredible albums. 

There were some meaningful songs on the albums, but for the most part, this album was fun and funny. Here are some of the lyrics that his bandmates called Andrewisms: 

Stargazer: “She dance around my, my pretty little cable car.”

This is Shangrila: “I look bad in shorts
But most of us do
Don’t let that bother me.”

This is Shangrila: “Said the sheriff, he come too
With his little boys in blue
They’ve been looking for me child.”

Capricorn Sister: “Chartreuse regalia and Purple Pie Pete (Purple Pie Pete)
You dance Electra and the night becomes day.”

Mr. Danny Boy: “With your long black kitty and your funky hair
Why did I leave you there?”

Holy Roller: “I got somethin’ to say to you people out there
You gotta listen to me people, you gotta listen to me
Yeah, the Lord’s comin’ down people
Yeah He’s gonna take you whole, He’s gonna eat you whole people
Like a big grizzly bar comin’ out of the closet and eat you whole
Ya see the Lord’s gonna come and get you people and you gotta beware
Because the Mother Love Bone camp knows what to do about it

You see I been around I seen a lotta long haired freaks in my day
But those boys in Mother Love Bone
I’ll tell you they know what’s right for you
You know they’re like malt-o-meal for you, they’re good for you
They’re like soup, they’re like nothing bad, let me tell you that much
I tell you people, the Lord’s comin’, and if you don’t believe, and if you don’t believe in what can happen to you today people

I’ll tell you people love rock awaits you people
Yeah lo and behold, lo and behold

I don’t know if Andrew Wood wrote all of these lyrics, or how much of the music he wrote, but I give him most of the credit for the creative lyrics of these songs. There seems to be a consistency in the lyrics that the same members of Mother Love Bone didn’t display in Pearl Jam. When someone writes that lyrics speak to them, we naturally assume that they found those lyrics meaningful, spiritually fulfilling, and life-altering. They didn’t accomplish anything close to that for me, but I enjoyed them as much as I’ve enjoyed any silly, sophomoric lyrics. Most of these lyrics could’ve been written another way, a more serious way that would lead critics and industry types to take Andrew Wood more seriously. My bet is Wood had more than his share of detractors, behind-the-scenes, who didn’t take him seriously, and my bet is that numerous industry types informed him that if they were going to invest serious money in his project, he had to take his role as primary lyricist more seriously. My bet is the industry people said, “What is this lyric, and what does that mean?” His defenders obviously said, “It’s silly. He writes about some serious topics in admittedly silly ways, but it’s who he is. It’s what we call his Andrewisms, and it’s something that separates him from all the other lyricists who take their role so seriously.” The thing that numerous artists like Andrew Wood, Frank Zappa, Freddie Mercury and many others prove is that even weird and silly expression can be great. Yet, as everyone knows, that is an uphill battle for most. Most immediately disregard the silly and weird as just that, and they will never listen, read, or in any other way appreciate what they consider a silly, weird artist. 

Think: Useless and Trivial

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@) If we could talk to the animals, my guess is that we’d find that, among others things, we’re the only being that finds flatulence and bowel movements funny.

“Why do you find them funny?” Dabbi the deer might ask.

“Because we find them disgusting,” we’d answer.

“What?”

“It’s complicated, but it’s further complicated by the fact that you don’t have a sense of humor.”

“I don’t have a sense of humor?” she asked. “I don’t? I’ll have you know that I share the same sense of humor with the rest of the human population. Our sense of humor generates ratings, box office sales, and album sales. You’re the freak of nature.”

&) We never call out dystopian productions from their all-too-near future predictions for being wrong. Young up-and-coming lyricists are forever in search of meaningful and important lyrics. They can’t write about Lord of the Rings anymore. Led Zeppelin been there done that. Silly Love Songs were Paul McCartney’s domain, and we can no longer write ‘baby’ lyrics, because the 70’s and 80’s bands drained that vestibule. The only avenue left is war, anti-war, and anti-military, but there hasn’t been a real war by first world countries in about 50 years. So, while all of the lyrics written in the interim are meaningful and important lyric, they’ve also been false, so far. “True, but they weren’t talking about today, they were talking the all-too-near future.” So, when do we say they’re wrong. “You don’t!”

$) So, how do young, inexperienced artists craft “meaningful and important” lyrics and dialogue when they know nothing about the real world? Is it more important to be meaningful and idealistic or knowledgeable and realistic?

#) If you’ve ever met a truly tough guy, you know they’ve already done it. They wear a “nothing left to prove” garb for the rest of their lives. We know how tough they are, when we meet the other guys, those who talk tough to show it.

*) If we ever catch up to Alien technology, will medical professionals finally learn that the key to physical and mental health lies in the anus?

^) Too much sports knowledge is trivial and useless. Watching sports on TV is supposed to be fun, but some of us get so tied up in good guys vs. bad guys that we forget this is basically a reality show. It’s the best one we’ve ever invented, but it’s still just a show. The next time we meet that guy who knows so much about sports that we’re slightly intimidated by his fact-based opinions, we should liberate him by saying, “Who cares?”

!) You’ll know you’re one of these guys if a lighthearted disagreement over useless and trivial information boils over into you deciding that you’re never speak to the other ever again. At that point, someone needs to step in and say, “Clark, no one cares. You think you’re right, and she thinks you’re wrong, but no one here really cares. We just want to go back to eating our turkey, watching football, and talking about Mary’s Jell-O. That’s all we want to do today.

?) What if she says that your favorite sports star is actually a pretty awful human being? We defend him, because we’re nerds who sit in an audience of millions, and he’s the good-looking, athlete who wouldn’t talk to us in high school. If we pick the right one (he who wins) we want everyone to know our vicarious association. “I’ve followed that guy since he was a five-star recruit. I know his high school stats and college stats by heart.”

“No one cares, Clark!”

%) To counter those who say, “Today’s music ain’t got the same soul,” I would like to introduce you to the noise coming out of Britain. black midi (lower case for whatever reason), Black Country, New Road (one band), Squid, and a band named Famous. These bands are genuinely creative and innovative souls coming out with music that might be as brilliant as the music of past decades, and my guess is they’re only going to get better. Other bands that are also making great noise are Thee Oh Osees (or Osees), and just about everything Ty Segall puts his name on. As with all innovative music, we shouldn’t expect the noise to grab in one blow, and we shouldn’t expect one song to deliver the knockout blow either. Although I think the music from black midi’s Welcome to Hell (not the 23-year-old’s definition of meaningful and important lyrics) might change your interiority by about the tenth listen.

Pitchfork has a few nuggets from black midi’s lead singer Gordie Greep to dispel the notion we have that he wants us to view him as deep, meaningful, and important.

“It’s just fun man,” Greep said. “We’re doing this this stupid thing and somehow making the semblance of a living.” This might be false modesty, as we can be sure he hopes we take his stupid stuff seriously.

Greep also drops a fascinating description of his writing style. “When you want to do something original…use something as a model or inspiration that you know you definitely can’t do,” Greep has said. “Your failure will be interesting.” He talks about Clint Eastwood’s failure to act like Marilyn Monroe, and Tom Waits attempt at the blues. He says they both failed by relative measures, but he says we found their attempts interesting. I found a similar attempt to write like James Joyce interesting.

So, he writes what he doesn’t know, just to see what falls out? What an interesting and perplexing method of writing. My guess, and I have a pretty decent track record in this regard, is that Gordie Greep (whether with black midi or not) is a craftsman who has a relatively bright future.

() I got off on Queen when I was younger. Queen almost single-handedly introduced me to the concept that different can be so beautiful in the right hands, and then I discovered David Bowie. Once I got passed Bowie’s pop songs, I thought he was the most experimental artist in the mainstream, until I discovered Mike Patton. Mike Patton did things I never heard before, and I thought he was the most adventurous artist I ever heard, and I still think that in many ways, but Omar Rodríguez-López (ORL) is just as adventurous in different ways.

Omar Rodríguez-López (ORL) is one of the most gifted artists and musicians on the scene today, and he has played some role, most often leading it in some creative manner, in over fifty albums. I purchased an At the Drive-In album, and I purchased a couple of Mars Volta albums, but for some reason they never appealed to me. If it hadn’t been for Ipecac Records releasing his solo recordings, I never would’ve discovered the genius (and I do not use that term lightly) behind the music of those previously mentioned bands.

AllMusic.com tries to succinctly capture this genius writing, “His multivalent body of work derives inspiration from punk rock, prog, metal, funk, traditional Latin music, blues, jazz, film music, and avant-garde composition.”

As with any mercurial genius, much of ORL’s solo albums will not appeal to most palettes, but the true music fan will probably go nuts over about twenty-four of the fifty albums. When I approached Omar Rodríguez-López music, I had no idea what to expect, but he violated those expectations in the most obscene manner possible. Such violations are not immediate, as they rarely are. My first love was Roman Lips. Anytime a friend invites me to listen to complicated, difficult music, I suggest he do so by starting their most accessible album. Roman Lips is probably the most accessible ORL album, followed by Blind Worms, Pious Swine. Beyond that, the ORL solo albums are impossible to categorize, list, or breakdown by category. Suffice it to say that I was wary that the genius behind At the Drive-In and Mars Volta would appeal to me. I was also wary of the Ipecac Recordings, as they release a lot of material that major recording studios won’t, and a number of their albums don’t appeal to me, but ORL.

As with all of the artists listed above, it’s difficult to believe that these individual artists, and Queen, are capable of such wide-ranging music. I love some of the more major, mainstream pop acts, but there is a comfortable thread that runs through most of them. Their fifth album might sound more advanced than their first in production value and matured writing, but we all know what kind of music they prefer. Listening to the albums put out by Bowie, Patton, and Omar Rodríguez-López, it’s hard to believe the same artist created all these incredible albums. ORL is definitely the most prolific of the three, and he’s not even fifty-years-old at the time of this article.

Circa ’72: The Magical Musical Era

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It’s been 50 years since the most seminal era of music. That’s a long time to remember, forget, and strategically distort some facts. I found that out as I started writing this article in my head, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. I am unable to sleep if I have a thought, any stray thought I can think up to keep sleep at bay for one more minute or hour as the case may be. This particular article haunted me, as I thought it was so good that I couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t sleep, until it was done. It’s sort of a small, obsessive, and to my mind incurable, mental illness.  

(Now that I’m done with this article, and editing it, it’s not as great as I thought it would be, but read on.)

My original inspiration involved what I considered could be an award-winning title: 1972: The Magical Music Year. My inspiration involved telling you, my faithful reader, how many of our most beloved musical artists started in 1972, how many of the most influential bands of all time came out with their seminal works in 1972, and what an incredible year it was for the music industry. I was all ready to write about all of artists and bands from 1972 that would shape the music industry for decades, and in some small ways the world, for decades (50 year!) to come. I was ready to follow each entry with the words, “such and such did this in 1972 to further cement the notion that 1972 was, indeed, a magical year”, and I planned to write that line so often that the reader would grow sick of it. I found out I was wrong, somewhat, sort of. I found out that in some ways, and by some days, I was a little off. Instead of titling this piece 1972: The Magical Music Year, I edited the title to Circa 1972. The theme remains, but the word circa (approximately) gives me a three-year window, either way, to talk about one of the most incredible eras (as opposed to years) in music, and I also decided to continue writing this piece because I didn’t want to waste a night’s sleep for nothing.

22) Most of the folksy, Jim Croce music has not aged well, and he probably doesn’t make many “best of” lists, but my mom forced me to grow up listening to his tunes, and his 1972 You don’t Mess Around with Jim was one of the first albums, not created by Johnny Cash, that I heard top to bottom so often that it’s earned a place on this list. I heard it at my aunt’s house, when she wasn’t playing Johnny Cash, and I was heard it in my neighbors’ homes when they couldn’t find their Johnny Cash albums. As a result, I hated Croce (and Cash) for so many years, but when I hear this album now, I experience some nostalgia, remembering those years when I was so young that I had no control of the music they played in my vicinity.

21) As often as I was wrong about 1972, I was also right on the mark for some artists. Stevie Wonder, for example, wrote and released one of his many incredible albums in 1972, Talking Book.

20) Michael Jackson’s solo debut Got to Be There was released in 1972. This might not be his best album, but I don’t think anyone would argue that it kicked off an incredibly influential solo career. 

19) Deep Purple did not form in 1972, but the album most argue their best Machine Headcame out in 1972.

18) Steely Dan’s debut Can’t Buy a Thrill was released in 1972, and two of their other more influential albums, Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) and Pretzel Logic (1974), were released during our arbitrary window.

17) Roxy Music’s debut was released in 1972. They also released four more of their best albums in this arbitrary window. All five of these albums contain singles that have made their way to various playlists I’ve created for decades.

16) Todd Rungren’s weirdest and most creative album, A Wizard/ATrue Star, was created in 1972, as was his most popular album Something/Anything. As with most artists on this list, Rungren’s pre and post 1972 career is hit and miss, but I consider Wizard/A True Star his masterpiece.

15) Lou Reed put out his debut album, and the career defining album that David Bowie deserved a major assist on, Transformer in 1972.

14) Elton John and Bernie Taupin put together what Allmusic.com calls one of the most focused and accomplished set of songs they ever wrote in 1972, Honky Chateau.

13) I thought I heard somewhere that Billy Joel’s Piano Man came out in 1972, but it was 1973. His debut album came out in 1971, so to cement my conspiracy theory, Mr. Joel just happened to take 1972 off to make it seem like I wasted a night of insomnia for nothing. Are we supposed to believe that it just happened to happen that way? Are we supposed to believe that they didn’t get together to make me look foolish? I’ll leave that up to you.

12) The Rolling Stones did not start in 1972, of course, and some would argue that it wasn’t the beginning of their artistic peak, but the end. The Stones did put out an album in 1972 that many consider their best, and some consider one of the best albums ever made Exile on Main Street. The Stones would release better singles than anything on Exile on Main Street, in my opinion, but they never delivered a better album, top to bottom, than Exile. Sticky Fingersalso came out in 1971.

11) Queen loosely formed in 1970, John Deacon joined in 1971, and they recorded their debut album in 1973, but they wouldn’t reach their artistic peak until 1975 with their A Night at the Opera album.

10) KISS started in 1973, and they recorded their debut album in 1974, but they wouldn’t achieve worldwide stardom until the release of their Alive album in 1975.

9) Rush would form in 1968, but they were far from ready. They would experience lineup changes and several configurations before they became the band we know today. (Sidenote: I had no idea, until I began researching this piece that Alex Lifeson was the only remaining member from the original lineup. If I ever put any thought into it, I would’ve thought Lee or Peart was.) They didn’t release their debut album for six long years later in 1974, and they released Fly by Night in 1975.

8) Some of us argue that 1972 was the apex of Frank Zappa’s mainstream creativity, but Apostrophe (1974) and Over-Nite Sensation (1973) weren’t released for a couple years after that seminal year.

7) One of the greatest albums of all time, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, wasn’t released until March of 1973, but we can guess that the heart of this album was created in 1972, and most of the touch up, superficial tinkering work done on the album occurred in 1973. (I’m trying to keep a theme going here.)

6) I had it in my head that an album many arguably call Bob Dylan’s best Blood on the Tracks came out in in 1972, but it was 1975.

5) Likewise, Paul McCartney didn’t form Wings in 1971, and Band on the Run didn’t come out until December 1973. Due to the fact that McCartney normally writes so quickly, and so often, I suspect that he wrote Wing’s debut Wild Life in 1971, and he skipped 1972 before delivering Band on the Run just to mess with my theme here, and don’t tell me he couldn’t know I’d be writing this article 50 years later. He knew!

4) Aerosmith formed in 1970, but they didn’t release their debut album until 1973.

3) Led Zeppelin released their best album, IMHO, Physical Graffiti in 1974. The three-year window also includes Led Zeppelin IV (1971) and Houses of the Holy (1973). Notice the pattern of skipping 1972? You think that’s a coincidence?

2) T. Rex’s most incredible album Electric Warrior was released in September of 1971, but the single from the album didn’t begin to chart until January of 1972. Marc Bolan’s second-best, stellar album Slider was released in ’72.  

1) And last but not least, we direct you to the reason I wrote this article in the first place, as I introduce you to a man that I consider one of greatest, most influential, prolific, and creative artists of all time. In 1972, David Bowie experienced what could be his most popular year, a year in which he produced what may not be his best record, but the one that had the most cultural impact. Before and after 1972, Mr. David Bowie created incredible music, but IMHO, he blew the damned doors open with his 1972 release Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

If you’re looking for a starting point on the otherwise daunting musical catalogue of one of music’s greatest artists, I can think of no album that initiates the uninitiated better than Ziggy.

We all go through phases with artists, songs, and albums, but I don’t think I listened to any album on this 1972 list more than Ziggy. In 1972, as the character Ziggy, David Bowie sat atop the world.

The album wasn’t adored by critics or fans at the time of its release (though it did peak at #5 in the U.K.), but after Bowie killed the rock star, he posthumously received accolades as Bowie’s breakthrough character, and one of the most important rock albums of all time.  

In this arbitrary window we’ve created here, Bowie also made Hunky Dory, Aladdin Sane,and Diamond Dogs. Bowie is one of the few on this list who didn’t peak in this arbitrary window of ‘72-‘75, as he created the ’77-’80 Berlin Trilogy, but ‘72-‘75 years were definitely one of his peaks.

Honorable mentions) Mott the Hoople, All the Young Dudes; Can Ege Bamyasi, Big Star #1 Record; Captain Beefheart, Clear Spot; Neil Young, Harvest.

I’m quite sure you just thought of about five-to-ten artists and albums I left out, but this is a list of artists who influenced my life the most, and though I was too young to listen to the music of 1972, when it came out, and I had no say in what music was played on record players and eight-track decks, I would eventually come to adore the music I thought they created in 1972.

Before reading on, go back and look at the list of emboldened names. Look at the names of the artists who either debuted between 1972 and 1975, or look at the albums these incredible artists created circa ‘72-’75 window. What kind of soup were they eating? What did they have in their water? If there was some sort of toxic substance with a byproduct of greater creativity, they probably would‘ve suffered long-term effects, but as far as we know they didn‘t, so how did this happen? 

Most of the artists of this era talk about one seminal moment, The Beatles appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Others talk about the other The Beatles albums that followed to inspire them to want to create a little magic of their own. Some also suggest that The Rolling Stones, Elvis, The Who, and Black Sabbath played seminal roles to influence their music careers. Whomever it was that inspired these guys, a window opened, circa 1972, for so many artists to take that influence to a different level that displayed a level of unique brilliance of their own. We can guess that some of them went to their mom’s garage, or whatever space they could find, and they started something that took years to develop after seeing The Beatles for the first time.

The artists on this list then created something that inspired those who followed to create their own influence. How many different algorithms can we create from the list of artists above who took their influence to another, completely different level? It‘s incredible to think how influential this small window in time was, and how it changed the musical landscape forever. It’s a window in time that I don’t think will ever recreate, duplicate, or defeat for sheer output, creativity, and intellectual brilliance. No matter how you square it, this year, and these three years, were some of the greatest, most creative three years in rock history.