All Right Now: One Fan's Discretionary History of Rock 'n' Roll in the 1960s & 1970s (Part 3)

American rock, country rock, songwriters, producers, studios.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, most of the American rock 'n' roll in the late 1960s and early 1970s came out of the West, from San Francisco (Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, Big Brother and The Holding Company, Santana, It's a Beautiful Day, The Steve Miller Band, Country Joe and The Fish, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sly and The Family Stone, The Sons of Champlin) and Los Angeles (The Seeds, Love, The Electric Prunes, The Merry-Go-Round, The Doors, Clear Light, The Chambers Brothers, The Mothers of Invention, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Spirit, Iron Butterfly, Steppenwolf, Canned Heat, Three Dog Night, Steely Dan). Other exemplars of American rock 'n' roll came from the Midwest (The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels, Tommy James and The Shondells, The Buckinghams, H. P. Lovecraft, The James Gang, Bob Seger, Chicago, The Stooges, MC5), the South (The 13th Floor Elevators, Fever Tree, The Box Tops, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top), and the East (The Left Banke, The Blues Magoos, The Youngbloods, The Velvet Underground, Vanilla Fudge, Ultimate Spinach, Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Band, Mountain, Todd Rundgren, Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith).

Many of the bands that sprang up in Los Angeles played country rock, a rustic brand of rock 'n' roll that borrowed from the past sounds of American music (in much the same way that the musicians of British folk rock borrowed from the past sounds of British music), writing and performing homespun songs that joined old ways and new ways. The leading light of country rock was Gram Parsons, a musician and songwriter from a wealthy Southern family. After he dropped out of Harvard University in 1966, he moved to California in 1967 and was briefly a member of The Byrds, appearing on their album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo (recorded in Nashville and released in 1968), now considered to be an early milestone in country rock. After leaving The Byrds, he formed The Flying Burrito Brothers with Chris Hillman (another ex-Byrd), and together, across two albums, The Gilded Palace of Sin and Burrito Deluxe, they settled into their mutual vocation of uniting the best properties of country and the best properties of rock (to which was added the gritty leaven of gospel and soul), an undertaking that yielded an estimable output.

Because Gram Parsons had an unhealthy partiality for alcohol and narcotics, his life had an untimely conclusion (he perished from an overdose of morphine in 1973, at the age of twenty-six, after being kicked out of The Flying Burrito Brothers and releasing two albums, GP and Grievous Angel, under his own name), but his musical legacy remains. Apart from The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, country rock also shaped the activities of other musicians in Los Angeles: Buffalo Springfield (whose three singers and songwriters, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay, all became major figures in the 1970s), The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (who, in 1972, released an album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, on which they played with Roy Acuff, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, Maybelle Carter, and other legends of country), Linda Ronstadt, Poco, Michael Nesmith and The First National Band (Michael Nesmith being a former member of The Monkees), and The Eagles, who, while not necessarily blazing any trails musically, were nevertheless the runaway winners in the sweepstakes of country rock, soaring ahead to sell many, many, many more records than any of their twangy cohorts.

Not being a musician, I was astonished by the compelling alchemy of rock 'n' roll, the marvel of voices, guitars, keyboards, and drums being harnessed into balance within the structure of a musical composition, and I closely observed the exploits of all the musicians who were in the vanguard. Singers, such as Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey, Steve Marriott, Chris Farlowe, Julie Driscoll, Terry Reid, Jackie Lomax, Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, Robert Plant, Paul Rodgers, Maggie Bell, Ian Gillan, David Byron, Frankie Miller, Marty Balin, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. Guitarists, such as Keith Richards, Dave Davies, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Peter Green, Jimi Hendrix, Alvin Lee, David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore, Paul Kossoff, Robert Fripp, Steve Howe, Rory Gallagher, Mick Ronson, Chris Spedding, Mike Bloomfield, Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen, Robby Krieger, and Duane Allman. Keyboardists, such as Nicky Hopkins, Rod Argent, Brian Auger, Rick Wright, Keith Emerson, Jon Lord, Vincent Crane, Dave Greenslade, Rick Wakeman, and Tony Banks. Drummers, such as Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, Jon Hiseman, John Bonham, Michael Giles, Carl Palmer, and Bill Bruford.

For me, the talent of those musicians was awesome and sacred, something akin to a divine mystery. Along with a surfeit of great musicianship, the 1960s and 1970s were also filled with the bounteous outpourings of many great songwriters: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Tim Hardin, John Sebastian, John Phillips, P. F. Sloan, Arthur Lee, Lou Reed, Robbie Robertson, Leon Russell, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, Emitt Rhodes, Leonard Cohen, Laura Nyro, Melanie, Van Morrison, Dave Mason, Syd Barrett, Nico, John Cale, David Bowie, Peter Starstedt, Alan Price, Russ Ballard, Kevin Ayers, Peter Hammill, Gerry Rafferty, Jon Mark, Al Stewart, Dave Cousins, Joan Armatrading, Alan Hull, Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Judee Sill, Rodriguez, Jim Croce, and Bruce Springsteen, among others. Their songs, infused with lashings of outspoken honesty and bracing frankness, eloquently voiced the values, yearnings, concessions, victories, and losses of a generation, and in doing so, left an imprint on everyone who heard them.

A small number of those songwriters were speedily propelled to the forefront of rock 'n' roll during the 1970s. They became superstars by singing their own songs, usually with backing from an acoustic guitar or a piano. Elton John ("Your Song," "Crocodile Rock," "Daniel," all with lyrics by Bernie Taupin), Cat Stevens ("Wild World," "Peace Train," "Morning Has Broken"), Rod Stewart ("Maggie May," "You Wear It Well," "Tonight's the Night [Gonna Be Alright]"), Carole King ("It's Too Late"/"I Feel the Earth Move," "Sweet Seasons," "Jazzman"), Paul Simon ("Mother and Child Reunion," "Kodachrome," "Loves Me Like a Rock"), Joni Mitchell ("Big Yellow Taxi," "Help Me," "Free Man in Paris"), James Taylor ("Fire and Rain," "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight," "Shower the People"), Carly Simon ("That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," "Anticipation," "You're So Vain"), Gilbert O'Sullivan ("Alone Again [Naturally]," "Claire," "Get Down"), and Leo Sayer ("The Show Must Go On," "One Man Band," "Long Tall Glasses [I Can Dance]") all became household names, releasing records that topped the charts for weeks at a time and performing their music to worshipful throngs in premier venues.

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As an aspiring writer, I always took heed of the lyrics whenever I listened to a song, frequently committing them to memory and, if they warranted it, pondering their import. Bob Dylan set the benchmark for the artful use of words in rock 'n' roll, digging into the depths of his restless intellect to write reams of heady songs that rode roughshod over every song that had come before him. (In 1965, with his caustic, scornful hit, "Like a Rolling Stone," he had shrugged off his transitory guise of being a folk singer, and had sneeringly declared himself to be an unrepentant rocker.) John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles, spurred by the literate tone of Bob Dylan's compositions, were subsequently inclined to seek greater richness in their own lyrics, extending their abilities from "Please Please Me, "She Loves You," and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to "Eleanor Rigby," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," and "I Am the Walrus." Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, in spite of having, and trading on, a reputation as a couple of surly, uncouth heathens, also revealed themselves to have an unsuspected knack for writing sensitive lyrics, as was proven by "As Tears Go By," "Lady Jane," "Ruby Tuesday," "Yesterday's Papers," "Back Street Girl," "Dandelion," and other thoughtful songs.

A handful of lyricists, writing with musicians whose tunes were in need of words, were known in their own right. Pete Brown, a British poet who wrote songs with Jack Bruce for Cream ("I Feel Free," "Sunshine of Your Love," "Dance the Night Away," "SWLABR," "White Room," "As You Said," "Politician," "Deserted Cities of the Heart," "Doing That Scrapyard Thing"), and for Jack Bruce's later albums ("Theme for an Imaginary Western," "Weird of Hermiston," "Rope Ladder to the Moon," "You Burned the Tables on Me," "Smiles and Grins," "The Consul at Sunset"), turned out distinctive lines that lodged in the ear and lingered in the mind. Keith Reid of Procol Harum ("Whiter Shade of Pale," "Homburg," "Conquistador," "Shine On Brightly," "A Salty Dog"), Pete Sinfield of King Crimson ("21st Century Schizoid Man," "Epitaph," "The Court of the Crimson King," "In the Wake of Poseidon," "Cat Food"), and Betty Thatcher of Renaissance ("Carpet of the Sun," "Running Hard," "Black Flame," "Mother Russia," "Ocean Gypsy") were among the other writers whose lyrics gave me cause for profound musing.

After The Who released Pete Townshend's stalwart brainchild, Tommy, in 1969, it became fashionable for songwriters to conceive of albums not merely as tidy bundles of throwaway songs, assembled for the sake of convenience, but as "rock operas," song cycles in which each track was designed to be part of an overall story. In 1973, The Who released Quadrophenia, another masterpiece from the fecund imagination of Pete Townshend, an album whose songs poignantly, and with enormous breadth of intention, recounted the ups and downs of Jimmy, a young, anguished mod in the 1960s (and an album that, to me, sounded more mature and more accomplished than Tommy). Ray Davies, chief songwriter of The Kinks, took to the writing of song cycles (with a decidedly English slant) as if his life depended on it, as evidenced by a string of eight albums that his band released, from Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) in 1969 to Schoolboys in Disgrace in 1975. Ian Anderson, the leader, vocalist, and flutist of Jethro Tull, also applied himself to the writing of albums that projected a story or a theme, resulting in Aqualung, Thick As a Brick, A Passion Play, War Child, and other LPs of weighty content.

In addition to being utterly hooked on the music, I also had an abiding curiosity in regard to the electronic process of recording, wanting to understand as much as I could about how the lively, unstable sounds of rock 'n' roll were caught on magnetic tape and transferred to polyvinyl discs. I became increasingly aware of the underlying qualities that were governed by the taste and skill of certain producers (Phil Spector, Berry Gordy Jr., George Martin, Andrew Loog Oldham, Mickie Most, Shel Talmy, Norman Smith, Rick Hall, Bob Johnston, Paul A. Rothchild, Tom Dowd, Bob Ezrin, Denny Cordell, Jimmy Miller, Glyn Johns, Joe Boyd, Gus Dudgeon, Tony Visconti, John Anthony, Chris Thomas, Alan Parsons, Roy Thomas Baker), working in certain studios (Gold Star, Sunset Sound, Motown, FAME, Abbey Road, Olympic, Advision, Sound Techniques, Trident, AIR, Rockfield, Château d'Hérouville, Record Plant, Sound City, Caribou Ranch, Cherokee). Even if a given track was not altogether praiseworthy as a composition or a performance, I could still enjoy a record if it had an attractive sound.

I was especially drawn to the singular work of Joe Meek, the British producer whose daring, eccentric mode of production gave life to a host of offbeat recordings ("Be Mine" by Lance Fortune, "Johnny Remember Me" by John Leyton, "Telstar" by The Tornados, "Don't You Think It's Time" by Mike Berry, "Just Like Eddie" by Heinz, "Have I the Right?" by The Honeycombs) that clearly stood apart from those of his less adventurous peers. Joe Meek was without any musical prowess, and he had an infamously difficult personality (his daily moods were twisted and torn by an unwholesome welter of drugs, paranoia, depression, and superstition, and he carried an understandable wariness of being prosecuted for his homosexuality), but as a freelance producer in the 1960s, empowered by a dogged aptitude for analog technology and an inborn flair for undaunted experimentalism, he succeeded, again and again, in devising unusual hits, stubbornly conjuring them with a bank of tape recorders (augmented by sundry contrivances of his own making) and musicians for hire (Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore being two of the many players who were called upon), in the home studio that he maintained inside his flat at 304 Holloway Road in London.

Even though I was engrossed by records and their production, I was not an audiophile, and I was never overly fastidious regarding my own mode of playback, mainly because I could not afford to be fussy. Being young in the 1960s, I did not have much money to spend, and since turntables, receivers, and speakers were unquestionably expensive and well out of my reach, I had to make do with whatever radio, record player, or stereo was close at hand. It was, and still is, my conviction that if an album or single (of rock 'n' roll or any other form of music) has been properly recorded, it should come across to a listener, and have its intended effect, even when played on a device that is not top-of-the-line. Things got much better (closer and closer to the vaunted goal of high fidelity) as I crossed into the 1970s, when I owned a Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder (a gift from my mother, purchased secondhand, useful for taping records that were lent to me by friends) and a pair of Koss headphones (another gift from my mother, who was charitably supportive of my mania for music), which, while heavy and bulky, and slightly uncomfortable if worn for too long, did provide a delicious revelation when listening (preferably late at night, sitting alone, with eyes shut) to stereophonic recordings with wide separation.

In the 21st century, music (or what, nowadays, is laughably mistaken for music by the clueless, undiscerning masses) is recorded entirely on computers, through cold, digital means, with the harsh outcome being a narrow range of sounds that are flat, brittle, and lifeless. Such recordings, which are careless and disposable in equal measure, lack any trace of authentic feeling, and serve primarily as stark warnings against the unthinking tolerance of sonic deficiency. Accordingly, there is now little likelihood of hearing a new recording whose sound can match, or even begin to approximate, the high standards established in the 1960s and 1970s by Rubber Soul, Pet Sounds, Revolver, Surrealistic Pillow, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Forever Changes, Days of Future Passed, Axis: Bold as Love, Mr. Fantasy, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, Music from Big Pink, Beggars Banquet, Abbey Road, In the Court of the Crimson King, Let It Bleed, Bridge over Troubled Water, Tea for the Tillerman, Who's Next, Close to the Edge, Dark Side of the Moon, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Selling England by the Pound, Pretzel Logic, Physical Graffiti, Young Americans, and A Night at the Opera.