R.I.P John Lennon: The Beatles - Help!

It was 33 years ago today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETE TOWNSHEND: The Who -- 1921

In 1968, The Who were at a crossroads. The four lads were well known in England but considered a definite second class to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. In the U.S., they were still an enigma to the masses. The year prior they had released one of the most successfully ambitious and entertaining records to ever hit the bins, the quasi-concept album, The Who Sell Out. But nobody in the U.S. bought it and few in the UK appreciated the album beyond the one single to come from the album, I Can See For Miles. (it didn't help that the theme of the album was an attack on state-run radio). For a very frustrated Who, success on the charts was as elusive as modesty is for Kim Kardashian. But their live performances were winning fans over one at a time. One was John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas who picked The Who to perform at the Monterey Pop Festival for the final night. Their blitzkrieg performance served not so much as a coming out party in the US, but more as a full frontal assault. After the American musicians and critics regained their hearing they asked, "who was that and what's next?"

The pressure was on and Pete Townshend, like a dog with his first taste of blood, began trying to expand on his nascent steps of writing a single thematic for an entire album. The result was 1969's hugely ambitious, Tommy, the so-called rock opera. This was not about flowers in your hair, love, and peace. This was about murder, pedophilia, false messiahs and the life affirming power of music. This self-produced album, with french horns and copious amounts of acoustic guitars was quiet, dark and brooding. This album effectively ripped the band-aid off of Pete Townshend's fragile psyche and exposed performances that are as gentle and complex as the subject matter is troubling and complex.

On the first side of the four sided album is a humble little song that introduces us to the central plot of Tommy. The song is called 1921 and it is our Song of the Week. Even certified Who fans might have to pause to recall this song...and it certainly won't ever make any greatest hits double disc. The Who often dropped it from their live performances of Tommy. But that is part of the beauty of this song. 1921 is one of those many intricate Pete Townshend songs in which he lays his soul out for all to see. But as he had done before with deeply personal songs (think Sell Out's Sunrise), the song is obscured from the listener with its shy demeanor and elliptical lyrics.

Let's linger over those elliptical lyrics for a second. As mentioned earlier, they tell our central story through which the rest of the album must be understood. But in typical Townshend fashion, he forces the listener to work for it with a constant sleight of hand. His central tool in this musical prestidigitation is the constant switching of narrator.

(Allow me to pause and give a Cliff's Notes version of the scant few lines contained in the six minutes of sublime music which precede 1921 on the album). Mr. and Mrs. Walker are a newly married British couple in love. Captain Walker soon heads off to do his duty for the Empire at the outbreak of World War I. In the father's absence, his son, Tommy, is born. Around this time Mrs. Walker is told that Mr. Walker has gone missing with a number of men, and that he is presumed dead.

It is at this point that we pick up our song sung from many different perspectives, all of which, except one, are sung by Townshend at his most vulnerable. It's New Year's eve and Mrs. Walker has found a potential new father for her young child. Mrs. Walker's unnamed lover opens the song (verse 1; PT) as he whispers words of proposal in the mother's ear while making love. Presently Captain Walker miraculously (and mysteriously) returns home to find his wife entwined with the lover. An enraged Captain Walker confronts the lovers (verse 2, PT) and, in one of Townshend's most susceptible vocal performances, turns to the wife and says "I had no reason to be over-optimistic, but somehow when you smiled I could brave bad weather." And with that the Captain violently kills the lover. Unbeknownst to him, his son (at least we think it is the Captain's son), witnesses the murder while looking through a mirror in the next room (we learn the particulars of this part later). And in verse 3, PT still singing, takes on the roll of the mother as she pleads "What about the boy, he saw it all"? Here is where things get interesting, both narratively and musically. Pete Townshend now plays the part of both mother and father as they turn to the juvenile Tommy and insist to him that he "didn't hear it, didn't see it, won't say nothing to no one ever in his life." Roger Daltrey, makes his debut as Tommy as he rebuts his parents and futilely argues against the orders ("I heard it", "I saw it"). Browbeaten, the young Tommy succumbs to his parents' wishes and resigns:  "I won't say nothing to know one...never in my life." And so it is, in this one verse with three narrators singing over each other, Tommy is psychologically programmed to be deaf, dumb and blind.

Mission accomplished, the Walker's turn their attention back to each other as the father now apes the words of the dead lover. Mrs. Walker, in turn, looks for forgiveness as her unsteady voice betrays the limits of her optimism. Townshend's bittersweet voice hits that perfect balance of sad and happy as the mother struggles to make sense of what is. A coda of distinctive chords (Eb - Absus4/Eb - Abm/Eb) rings out before we are represented with the central question of the album. A largely auto-biographical question, "what about the boy?" That is a question best answered by the rest of the album. 

Pete Townshend was only 24 years old when he wrote the groundbreaking 4th Who album that would shoot to the higher echelons of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. The Who took their album on the road for nearly two years where it would transform from a soft, sensitive, introspective confession into a brash, bold, powerful statement of the healing powers of music. It was the end of one turbulent decade, and the beginning of another. It was the end of an innocently self-conscious mod band and the beginning of the most articulate pilgrims of rock. And it was the end of a commercially tenuous band, and the beginning of one of the most successful in history. It was The Who. Enjoy! Until next time, we'll see you on the Flip-Side.

Song of the Week: The Beatles - Dear Prudence

Happy Birthday to John Lennon who would have been 72 today. Without argument, he was the greatest pop song writer of the latter half of the 20th Century. And yet, remarkably, this is the first time in the three years existence of this blog that John Lennon or The Beatles have received any love from us.

Busker Days: Jeremy DuBois, "Before, During and After"

Jeremy DuBois came out west from Connecticut recently, following his muse, making his go at music.  "Where better to do that than San Francisco?", he added.  I happened upon him on one pleasant September day sitting down crooning at what has to be one of the all-time prime SF busking locales.  I'm talking about Powell Street BART, of course, just below the cable-car turn around. It's a sure bet for free lunchtime music (toss 'em a dollar or two though!).  Jeremy has a penchant for Lennon-crafted Beatles tunes and he did a nice version of In My Life, requested by a certain listener.  He also has some original work.  Here he is playing a beat-up 1952 Airline acoustic guitar singing his original composition, Before, During and After. Enjoy!

Del Shannon: Paranoia in A-minor

When Del Shannon’s first and only number one hit, Runaway, appeared in 1961, there were good reasons to think he would have many more. Here was a distinctive singer with an obvious knack for writing songs that people wanted to hear. Runaway managed to combine haunted desperation with catchiness, a formula that is magical if all too rare. But while he did have a few more songs in the charts through the mid-60s, none hit with the power of Runaway. Still, he should be remembered for more than just that song. Six months before the Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, Del’s cover of From Me To You, which he learned while appearing with the Fab Four in England in 1963, became the first Lennon-McCartney song in the U.S. charts, providing the only American test of the duo as songwriters completely removed from the hurricane of Beatlemania. Del’s version sticks pretty closely to the original, except when he shows off his vocal chops on the coda.

Other than Runaway, my two favorite Del Shannon songs are Keep Searchin (We’ll Follow the Sun) from 1964 and Stranger in Town, from 1965. They are a matched set of sturdily strummed minor-key dramas, with paranoia as the overriding sentiment. Keep Searchin' exploits the Runaway formula (similar chord progression beginning with an A-minor to G major change, a simple, melodic organ solo, and perfectly controlled but thrilling leaps into falsetto). Stranger in Town continues the sketchily outlined story of the lovers on the run while substituting a sax break for the organ. These two minute chapters detailed the futility of escape, and were perfectly tailored to the era when The Fugitive was one of the most popular shows on the small screen.

After years out of the spotlight, working as a producer and on the oldies circuit, Del attempted a comeback in the 80s with the backing of Tom Petty. He was even asked to join the Travelling Wilburys after Roy Orbison’s death, and his falsetto would have filled that void as well as anyone’s could have. But by then his demons had finally caught up with him, and Del Shannon took his own life in February 1990.

Song of the Week: "Valerie", The Zutons

It's pretty rare that I hear a song in passing and immediately become hooked. That's what happened the other day as I was flipping channels on TV. Somewhere between countless repeats of CSI: Poughkeepsie and Law & Order: The Tax Assessment Files, I ran across an HD music channel that was showing a bunch of one-off live performances. Click, click, click. What was that? I heard one little refrain and I clicked back. Live on stage was some band I didn't recognize performing a song I had never heard before. But, man oh man, that song had a nice groove to it. Before I could say "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" the song was over. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet and the obvious refrain of the song, I was able to piece it together quicker than those super sleuths on CSI: Youngstown. That little song I saw on the boob-tube two weeks ago is our Song of the Week. It's called Valerie and it is performed by some lads (and a lass) from Liverpool, England who call themselves The Zutons.

I don't have too much knowledge of this band (like...damn-near none). So I'm not going to waste a whole lot of space telling you that some other band -- whose name escapes me at the moment -- is also from the seaport town of Liverpool. I'm not going to make crass comments about the ease of looking at Sax player/back-up vocalist Abi Harding. All I'm going to say is that frontman David McCabe, wrote a pretty darn catchy tune which appeared on the band's sophomore effort, 2006's Tired of Hanging Around. With nice Ray Davies like vocals and good musicianship, the song's melody will burrow into your head like a musical tick. It's catchy enough that it not only stopped me dead in my click, click, click. It also caught the attention of that Über-skank (but talented), Amy Winehouse, who covered the song and had a nice little hit with it. (warning: by clicking the following link you will be subjected to bee-hive hair-dos that may hide the missing dwarf from Wizard of Oz, snaggly Brit-teeth, legs that would horrify even the skinniest chicken, and more tracks than have been laid across Siberia).  Winehouse's Valerie.

That's it for this week. Enjoy your Song of the Week for December 8, 2008.