A FEW FAVORITE ARTISTS & MENTORS

Our original grandiose ideas for National Health, formulated over the course of several drunken evenings at Alan’s flat and based to some degree on a previous enjoyable collaboration between our former groups Gilgamesh (Alan) and Hatfield and the North (me), were for a nine piece band, 2 keyboards, 2 guitars, 3 vocalists, bass & drums.  Alan was to play electric piano and synthesizer (the latter an instrument on which he showed astonishing prowess despite not actually owning one) and myself Hammond organ, electric piano and pianet.  We would both compose, and the band would attempt to blend my heavily scored music with Alan’s more improvisational pieces…

One drummer, however, made a big impression…  We attempted to break him in on one of our “easier” sections, a riff from a piece called Elephants over which Alan used to play a serpentine Moog solo.  It was in 25/8.  The short chap was not a bad drummer, but this was beyond his musical experience.  After a few minutes of floundering (which sounded like the riff from Elephants accompanied by a free form percussion solo) we stopped, and I explained how the 25 quavers could be sub-divided into 3 sixes plus a seven.  This made no audible difference (riff from Elephants accompanied by air raid) so I further explained how the sixes could be regarded as half time bars of 3/4.  This was a mistake.  At the mention of “3/4”, the drummer’s eyes brightened, and before I could count in, he launched like a madman into a brisk waltz beat, punctuated at random intervals by a deadly even, robotic 7 beat tom fill in a different tempo.  We tried to join in, but it was chaos – the resulting musical carnage is beyond my descriptive powers.

In the midst of this mayhem, looking around the room at the other musicians’ concerned expressions, it suddenly occurred to me that the whole situation was becoming cartoon-like, and I had to try desperately hard not to laugh.  The same thought had obviously struck Alan, because when I turned to look at him for some kind of moral support or guidance, he had slipped out of sight down behind his Fender Rhodes, and was lying on the floor wheezing, weeping and convulsed with suppressed laughter…

Fortunately, someone at Virgin Records had given Bill Bruford my phone number, and after dragging a wary Alan Gowen along to a couple of meetings wherein Bill explained to me and my suspicious partner why it was O.K. to have been in a group that sold a lot of records, we arranged to have a play together.  The first rehearsal went very well – Bill could read music, so our complex arrangements held no terrors for him…

We had absolutely no idea how we were going to earn a living (in fact, we never did) but at least we had a band now.  Encouraged, we began to rehearse a plethora of new compositions.  I had written a daft, insanely long piece called The Lethargy Shuffle… which parodied Glenn Miller and rock’n’roll while maintaining Stravinskyan overtones, plus a more lyrical song in Hatfield style, Clocks and Clouds…  Not to be outdone (You want complex?  I got complex!), I wrote Tenemos Roads, an epic about ancient civilizations on the planet Mercury inspired by The Worm Orouborous.  The Ramones we were not.

Armed with this fearsome repertoire… we set out in January 1976 to terrify the youth of Britain in technical college canteens, leisure centre gymnasiums, and all the other unsuitable venues which in this country pass for auditoria.  But first, we before even stepping on a stage, we ran into the first of the 8 billion or so problems that seemed to dog the band through its life…

We were now ready to record our first L.P., and though the press rapturously received our winter gigs, we had run into a wall of indifference from British record companies.  Alan & I had thought that finding a record deal for this band would be easy.  How wrong we were…  After countless refusals and rejections from other companies, things reached a head when Virgin Records, a company who had to some extent built their reputation on progressive music and with whom we had close ties, turned us down.  I had a furious argument with some wretched A&R individual over the reasons… apparently, our music was old-fashioned and “unoriginal.”

“What do you mean, ‘unoriginal’?” I screamed.  “Tell me who else is playing this kind of thing?”

“Er, plenty of people.  It just sounds like what a lot of other bands have done.”

“Name one.”

“Er…it just sounds like, er…lots of other people.”

Oh, yeah.  What Virgin had rightly divined, of course, was that this band had MUSICIANS in it, and by some unspoken inter-record edict that persists to the present day, had decreed that musicians were bad news, and bands which sported them were NOT TO BE SIGNED.  Far better to sign up some good looking front person who’s not particularly interested in music (like the record company) and replace the band, if there is one, with session players or MACHINES.  Then you can get down to the real business of making a HIT RECORD without all that music stuff getting in the way. 

No one wanted to put it out, of course, but at least we had a tape.  Then another good thing happened.  We were invited to play at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, as part of a series of concerts entitled “Really Cultural Rock Music played by Serious Men with Beards”, or something…  I was impressed, and excited to get the opportunity to play at what I then considered a prestigious venue.  Eager to justify the gig as high art, and fill in some of the gaps in our sound left by Alan’s departure, I set about scoring some of our pieces for woodwind quintet…

I arrived at the QEH having guessed what time we would go on from a poster I saw in a railway station.  When I got there I found that our lighting engineer was being refused access to the lights, and that no-one had our lighting plan (which we had sent in 2 weeks previously).  Having been assured we would have the full co-operation of the QEH by the agency, this made me pretty angry.  Finally, after our soundcheck, a guy from the agency approached me and told me we were due on at 7:30.  It was 7:10; I’d sent the woodwind players away to get some food, assuring them we weren’t on until 8:00; the guy from the agency had been sitting in the hall ALL AFTERNOON (unknown to me) while we soundchecked, and only now did he reveal our playing time.  What was it, classified information?

We stalled until 7:45, but finally had to go on.  When I went on stage, the woodwind players had not returned from their meal, and I had no way of knowing if they would make it back in time for their first number.  But the SHOW MUST GO ON!  (Why?  HOW?)  We started the set.  When it came to the time for the woodwind stuff, I said to the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, for the next tune we were supposed to be joined by 5 woodwind players.  Due to the incompetence of the agency that booked us, they left the building some time ago, and I don’t know if they’ve come back.  But let’s see what happens.”  Bless their hearts, they all walked on stage dead on cue, having come back early from their meal.  And not one of them was still eating.

It might seem like a little thing to you, but if the woodwinders hadn’t showed up I think I might easily have soiled my trousers in front of 1,000 concert goers.  Anyway, this particular clothing disaster averted, the rest of the gig went very well.  The audience was great – one guy told me he’d come from America just to see the show.  I told him it was a good job the agency hadn’t shifted the playing time forward three hours.  The woodwind players played superbly, though occasionally forgetting to blow their instruments into the microphones.  (Indigestion?)  Never mind, 3 part harmonies are often more effective than 5.  At the end, the crowd demanded an encore, stamping and whistling.  But having gone on “late”, we had “overrun” by 15 minutes.  Horror!  Outrage!  The QEH staff said we could not do an encore.  They turned all the lights out on stage, but we went on anyway.  Fuck them.  I groped my way to the front of the stage and found a microphone.  “Please turn the lights on,” I shouted.  Nothing happened.  So, with the audience screaming and cheering, we began to play our encore in PITCH DARKNESS, with our road manager shining a torch on flautist Jimmy Hasting’s music so he could negotiate his way through Phil Miller’s Underdub, hard enough to play even in broad daylight.  After 2 minutes, the lights came back on, to a great roar from the crowd – but the psychological damage had been done.

Important concert?  Prestigious venue?  BOLLOCKS.  I’ve played some shit venues in my time, including the Zoom Club in Frankfurt, where there are no doors on the toilets to discourage heroin users from shooting up, the Mobileritz in Antwerp, frequented mainly by transvestites who ignore the band but cheer the blue slide show on afterwards.  I’ve played at really dodgy pubs and clubs in London and once, in France, in a disused abbatoir, but NOWHERE have I ever been this badly treated.  But worse was to come.  No doubt feeling that we had not yet been sufficiently humiliated, the agency withheld our fee because of “offensive” (ie., truthful) remarks I had made on stage, and to cover the “extra fees” due to the QEH because of our late start.  AAAARGH!!!  No wonder Britain invented punk music – the sound of guitars hitting booking agents and civic hall employees in the face.

We repeated the experiment of augmenting the quartet with 5 woodwinds and a guest vocalist at the Roundhouse in London later that year, but this time no-one went out of their way to sabotage the gig.  And we got some more good news.  Joop Visser of Charly Records heard our tape and LIKED IT – he even listened to it all the way through without making any phone calls…  The L.P., entitled National Health (a cunning pun on our name) came out in early 1978.

Of course, this was all a bit too good to be true, so almost immediately Neil Murray left the group.  After all, no-one had left for a while, and Neil didn’t want this bi-annual ritual to fall into disuse… also, he had been offered a gig with Whitesnake, a rock band who went on to become enormously popular (much to our surprise).  Luckily, we were able to replace him speedily with John Greaves, an old mate from the good old days at Virgin Records when Henry Cow and Hatfield & The North were on the label, before the terrifying Night of the Accounts (Wankernacht) when smart young men in suits ran amok through Virgin’s roster, smashing and burning anything tainted with the forbidden word MUSIC…

We set off on our most intensive touring period ever…  When you’re really in love with a band and its music, you will go anywhere and do anything for the chance to play.  In Egg I used to sometimes travel to gigs lying across my organ pedals in the back of the van – we once drove 400 miles to play a gig for 25 pounds in a venue called the Dead End Club (attractive name, eh?)  Earlier in the Health’s career, we would quite happily go for 2 or 3 days without sleep to get to a European gig without incurring hotel bills…

The band had never made it to the U.S.A., but had a strong cult following over there bordering on maniacal.  I only became fully aware of the depths of these lunatics’ devotion when I went there in summer 1979 with Bill Bruford.  At every show, people would scream out “Tenemos Roads!” and “Paracelsus!”, as if expecting us to drop our set and suddenly launch into a 4 year-old Mont Campbell composition…

(The above are excerpts from National Health – The Inside Story, included in the National Health Complete CD.  For more on Dave Stewart, visit www.davebarb.demon.co.uk.)

(For more info, visit www.therealallanholdsworth.com.)

As Wilson once characterized his former band the Beach Boys, with typical understatement, "It's a very dramatic story." That's also a fair characterization of Wilson's story of going from 300 plus pounds, self-destructive addictions to chemicals and foods, emotionally unable to leave his room or bed for years (much less do concert tours, which had led to a nervous breakdown and retirement from live performing as far back as 1964), to recording and touring regularly; being trimmer, healthier and handsomer than his rock music contemporaries; even outliving his two younger, presumably healthier brothers (Beach Boys Dennis and Carl Wilson).  As one fan half jested, referring to the years Wilson spent in bed and reclusion, "At least he got a lot of rest in the interim."  But then it was Brian Wilson who overcame child abuse and the limits of a largely self-taught musical education (spending hours at the piano, singing with his family, influenced by do-wop and Four Freshman music during his teens and Phil Spector's production in his early twenties) to became one of the biggest visionaries in pop music history.

The album's entirety, with its unorthodox songs, sounds and recording production (the latter partly inspired by, but venturing beyond, Phil Spector) and classical and jazz instrumentation and arrangements, was rejected as too "way-out" by the other Beach Boys, in favor of preserving Wilson's previous, commercially successful "formula", and by Capitol Records, whose lack of promotion contributed to an indifferent and unreceptive American public (unlike in England.)  Yet, it changed the standards for pop music within the industry, inspired the Beatles' cultural watershed album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and received high acclaim and recognition some 30 years later as a landmark album ahead of its time, climaxed by the 1996 release of the Pet Sounds Sessions compact disc box set.  Indeed, Wilson's work on Pet Sounds was largely responsible for his being lauded, at the time, as an American cultural treasure by Leonard Bernstein and numerous pop music dignitaries, with some musicologists going as far as comparing his "musical genius" and personal outlandishness to Mozart, his emotional and creative struggles to Beethoven, and his youthfully prodigious, innovative multiple artistry to Orson Welles.  (Ironically, his comparison to Welles also included Wilson's suffering one of the most devastating falls from grace in music history.  If Pet Sounds was Wilson's career equivalent of Citizen Kane, his subsequent, even more ambitious unfinished Smile sessions, which ushered in his mental and professional undoing, were his equivalent of Welles' It's all True.)

The live Pet Sounds is meticulously faithful to the original's unique arrangements and sound effects.  Still present and tightly performed are the inventive melodies and harmonic vocal and instrumental counterpoints, the tempo changes, the pulsating harpsichord and piano sounds, the swinging dual bass guitars, the harp-like guitar motif in Wouldn't It Be Nice, the stirring French horn and vocal fugue in God Only Knows, the strings' haunting, intricate harmonic tensions on Don't Talk (Put Your Head on my Shoulder), the early synthesizer-like Theremin in I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, and the surprise, arriving and departing train and barking, chasing dogs at the end of the album's final song Caroline, No (the latter's influences evident in the surprise fade-in and fade-out of train-like noise at the end of the Beatles' song Strawberry Fields Forever and the barking dogs and animal sounds at the end of Sgt. Pepper's near-closing song Good Morning Good Morning.)  Indeed, Pet Sounds was the first record to employ such common – yet musically unused – sounds in pop music (shades of the avant-garde Stockhausen.)   The concert also included occasional, tasty jazz-like embellishments – particularly during the climactic piece Pet Sounds, a Bacharach-inspired, jazzy percussive/brassy instrumental (rejected as soundtrack for a James Bond movie prior to its inclusion on the album, as Wilson surprisingly revealed in his introduction.)  The band's state-of-the-art technology often improved on the sound quality of the original album.  Its musically richest songs, Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows and Don't Talk (Put Your Head on my Shoulder), are easily worth the whole album or concert.  As former Beach Boy Al Jardine acknowledged, just the bridge of Wouldn't It Be Nice would be a lifetime achievement for many composers.

Wilson's heartfelt vocal performance of the brutally honest, artist's lament I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (which expresses Wilson's sense of frustration and isolation as a visionary artist, and a thinly veiled description of his rejection by the Beach Boys) seemed especially poignant and moving during the concert, given his own painful life journey and the troubled but triumphant history of the Pet Sounds album itself. Indeed, time seems to have vindicated them both.  Wilson has enjoyed an extensive revival and honoring of his work in recent years.

Still, despite all the hype, the Brian Wilson performing on stage was a dramatically different man from the 24-year-old who composed, produced and sang nearly all of the lead vocals in that impeccable, angelic, yearning (almost whining, without compromising musicality), smooth high-pitched voice on Pet Sounds back in 1966. What we saw instead was a 58-year-old, disoriented-looking singer with a rough, slightly stilted, lower voice that nonetheless managed to reach some crucial high notes and recapture some of the old magic, remaining seated behind a keyboard that served as a prop rather than an instrument, except for a quixotic nostalgic, mostly visual stint as additional bass guitarist (Wilson's original stage instrument) during one of the encore songs.  Even Wilson commented on his songs during the concert as if they were written by someone else, and recently confessed disbelief at how he could have written them.

It seems nothing short of miraculous, considering his past, that he's not only still alive but professionally active, even if he's mostly doing his "Vegas act", living off his former glory, and will never be able to live up to the standard he created when he was in his early 20s.  Indeed, Wilson epitomizes the reputation of many artists for creating their finest work when they were young – or during the "middle period" of their output.

It's a bitter irony that some of the happiest-sounding pop music ever written came from someone profoundly unhappy, compelled to compose for his own salvation.  Indeed, Wilson suffered years of physical and psychological abuse by his father (largely believed responsible for Wilson's deafness in one ear), a failed songwriter who was the Beach Boys' first manager.  As Wilson's musician friend Danny Hutton said of him, “Writing songs that sound happy isn't necessarily about being happy.”  And, despite Wilson's mostly performing songs made famous by the Beach Boys, on whom his reputation is based, their historic rivalry and personal and professional estrangement is reflected by his audience's jeering any reference to the Beach Boys as a band – especially Mike Love, his cousin and collaborator on most of their earlier songs (a sympathetic but ironic audience response that prompted even Wilson's current wife, Melinda, to roll her eyes.)

Even on a personal level, Wilson has made the triumphant transition from being a failed husband and neglectful father to reconnecting with his family, remarrying and adopting children.  When Wilson directed the orchestra to start over on You Still Believe in Me, he humbly and humorously informed the audience, "I goofed, and I'm going to do it until I get it right!"  36 years after his nervous breakdown and initial retirement from touring, 34 years after the release of Pet Sounds, and after decades of devastating mental illness and addictions, if Brian Wilson is accomplishing one thing, it's "doing it until he gets it right."

(For more info., visit www.brianwilson.com.)

My mother’s successes as a concert pianist, music educator, community activist, humanitarian, devoted friend, wife and mother, combined with her keen sensitivity, resilient spirit and humor, were unassuming.  Yet, they profoundly touched seemingly everyone who knew her, whether casually or closely.

Her music, along with my father's occasional jazz piano-playing, permeated the house.  Although she never pressured me to study music or be a musician, I absorbed its language before I could speak.  It was in the room even when she wasn't.  Specific pieces became my earliest memories.

Vice President of the Hofstra University-sponsored Pro Arte Symphony Orchestra League and a former teacher of choral music in public schools, she died of cancer in 1971 at the age of 41.  A lifelong Long Islander raised in Freeport, she was active in the Long Island and Hofstra musical communities, and a piano teacher with a large following.  She performed individually or as accompanist for various chamber music, vocal and modern dance groups, and for Classroom Materials Inc. of Great Neck, which provided musical instructional recordings to public schools.

She also toured the country and performed on radio with the Oberlin Woodwind Ensemble.  After receiving a Bachelor of Music Degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, she earned her Masters in Music Education at Columbia University, and went on to teach in several public school systems in the tri-state area.

Hofstra’s semiannual Rhoda Pinsley Levin Endowed Award for Excellence in Musical Performance assists promising senior undergraduate musicians in their scholarly and vocational pursuits.  Her legacy is honored by that award, its semiannual recitals, and Hofstra’s Rhoda Levin Piano Literature Collection.

“…these music-hungry kids…  what endless possibilities there are…  I only hope I have opened doors for you, helped to give you confidence, and have shown you what resources you all have that you can call upon for the rest of your lives.”

With its own brand of rawness, heavy grooves and traditional influences, Gentle Giant’s music has aged surprisingly better than that of their “progressive rock” contemporaries.  Indeed, although once accused of pretentiousness, their music actually sounds less pretentious now than it did back then, and less so than that of their more successful colleagues from that period.  (With typical jocularity, Gentle Giant even took to performing concerts with a “pretentious” sign as a backdrop!)  Ironically, the band’s heavier use of traditional instruments than state-of-the-art technology and production gimmicks (or their inability to afford some of the latter) has rendered their music far more timeless and honest sounding than the artists who capitalized more fully on those passing trends (e.g., period keyboard- and guitar-synthesizers and mellotron, and the overproduction that often went with it.)

Excerpts from the liner notes for the “Gentle Giant in Concert” CD…

Gentle Giant were, first and foremost, pioneers of progressive rock.  Their musical repertoire was as diverse as the array of instruments they used, combining classical, medieval and experimental aspects into composition which defied convention…  Gentle Giant’s goal was to expand the frontiers of contemporary music at the risk of being unpopular.  This was a credo which found them few friends in the media and restricted their fan base to a loyal cult following, rather than the mass popularity enjoyed by many of their contemporaries.

Between 1970 and 1980, Giant recorded eleven studio albums and one double live-set, an impressive legacy for a band who had worked on the fringes of obscurity for their entire career.  During this time they also toured vigorously, earning a reputation for meticulous musicianship and deservedly winning many new fans abroad.  Their live shows captured the instrumental dexterity of their studio work and instruments such as cello, recorder and vibraphone complimented the more traditional use of guitar, bass, keyboards and drums…

There is a growing respect for Gentle Giant, with many of today’s successful musicians citing them as influences…  the reputation the band so richly deserves, but were cruelly denied for most of their career.

(For more info., visit www.blazemonger.com/GG.)

When I met Annette Peacock at the Downtown Music Gallery in New York City, she told me that she’d never seen a point in creating work that wasn’t innovative or truly original.  Coming from most people, that might sound grandiose or pompous.  But when Annette Peacock says it, it’s simply the truth and her work bears it out.  Indeed, although she comes from a tradition of contemporary jazz and poetry, it’s difficult to find anyone who sounds like her or her music.  That might be why, after so many years in and out of the music world, she's still unknown to nearly everyone, despite her past associations with better known musicians.

So it's perhaps telling that, when she made her 2000 “comeback” after a twelve-year recording hiatus and nearly twenty-year absence from a New York stage, it was at an obscure, tiny record store in the East Village.  The store’s owner personally drove her there that evening all the way from her home in Woodstock, during a heavy rain storm in rush-hour traffic, and drove her back the same night.  About a dozen or so male Peacock-philes came out in the rain and waited for her for hours, crammed into the store and trading trivia.  When she arrived, she signed our copies of her brand new CD, performed a few new songs on voice and synthesizer, and engaged in extended, one-on-one conversations about music, art and the creative process.  She also asked if we knew of any good places in New York where she could perform (the last one had been the now defunct "Danceteria" discotheque, performing un-danceable music for an entirely standing audience) and whether we thought anyone would show up.  She ended her visit by saying that if any of us lived in her town, we’d be the people she’d hang out with.  I believe it.

Unlike most of the records I had at the time, Jim’s seemed to fit any occasion or mood.  Some of the other records were fun and lively.  Others were soothing and nurturing.  Only Jim’s were both.  His songs conveyed toughness as well as vulnerability.  They churned beauty out of chaos and humor out of pain – as I imagine he sometimes must have done in his own life.

During my early teens, Jim’s songs became a consistent backdrop to my life and the lives of the people I knew.  “Next Time, This Time” got me through a torturous romance.  And “One Less Set Of Footsteps” got me over it.  I’d just sit in my basement listening to those songs by myself and they somehow made me feel okay about everything (talk about the healing force of art.)  When I entered a junior high talent contest with an original piece, I placed second but lost to an aspiring singer-guitarist who performed “A Good Time Man Like Me Ain’t Got No Business (Singin’ The Blues)”.  I even fought over the “Life and Times” album with my father’s fiancée – a nationally known sociologist and college professor who equally treasured the album and didn’t want to give it up.  It’s not surprising that a sociologist would like Jim’s songs!  “It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way” remains one of my favorite “Christmas” songs.  I’ve sometimes wondered what specifically inspired Jim to write songs like those.  (Other than “the landlord each month”, as James Stewart says of the songwriter in “Rear Window”.)

I identified with the loss of Jim even though I never knew him.  “Dreamin’ Again” still captures that general feeling of loss for me.  Yet, his songs and presentation were so personable and intimate, his storytelling and imagery so vivid, his warmth so contagious, it was easy to feel as if I did know him.  And I know others have felt the same way.  That’s another testament to his artistry.  His songs were so filled with humanity, the songs seemed human!

The bittersweet paradox of “I’ll Have To Say I Love You In A Song” is one I’ve related to.  As a songwriter, it’s indeed been easier for me to say such things in a song.  Well, at least there’s some way to say it – and someone to say it to.  Even many years later, that song’s beautiful, understated simplicity and lushness still appeals.  Just like Jim “had to say I love you in a song”, his songs often expressed my feelings better than I could.  Sometimes one works things out through art that you can’t in life.

Just as some of his songs got me through part of adolescence, others touched me more as an adult.  “Lover’s Cross” helped me cope with a break-up.  “Workin’ At The Car Wash Blues” got me to laugh at, and thus endure, some of my own less than glamorous, grueling means of employment over the years.  Entrenched in New York after living in the Midwest and Boston, I’ve witnessed that special New York brand of alienation he describes in “New York’s Not My Home”.  Yet, the doubts that song describes I’ve actually felt more outside of New York.  Haven’t we all?  And so many years after first hearing and not liking it, I strongly connected to “Salon and Saloon”, Jim’s beautiful interpretation of Maury’s haunting, nostalgic, bittersweet love ballad, a rare gem of a song.

(For more info., visit www.jimcroce.com.)

As anyone who knew her could attest to, Mrs. Spiers was just as theatrical a character as the ones we studied, if not more so.  When it was time to leave high school, she told me, in her typically quizzical way, “It will be interesting to see what becomes of you.  And I think I may be around long enough to find out.”  I was fortunate enough to speak with her many years later when they commemorated the school’s auditorium in her name, by which time I’d worked in the arts for many years.  She had been around long enough, and she found out.