Song of the Week: The Byrds -- Have You Seen Her Face?

The Byrds were probably America's best band in an era dominated by the British Invasion. Not just clones of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, The Byrds blended American country and western, pop and folk to create a beautiful new sound. That sound was most distinguished by the beautiful harmonies of four of the five members. By the time the band's fourth -- and best -- album Younger Than Yesterday was released,  Gene Clark (pictured above on the right and recipient of two Flip-Side posts in his post-Byrds career. Those are Out On The Side and Polly) had departed the band for good. With that departure the Byrds were now missing their strongest singer and perhaps their strongest songwriter. Tensions between David Crosby and the rest of the band were bubbling over and creating particular tension between the band and band leader Roger McGuinn.

From that bubbling cauldron, bassist Chris Hillman emerged, perhaps unlikely so, as a major creative force. Co-composer of the album's #1 hit single, So You Want To Be A Rock-N-Roll Star, Hillman also wrote and sang lead on four other songs on the album: Thoughts And Words, Time Between, The Girl With No Name, and today's SOTW, Have You Seen Her Face.

And more than that (if that wasn't enough), Hillman changed the sound of The Byrds, not just with his flatter, more countrified voice, but with the musicians he brought in to support his songs. Chris Hillman called on country guitar wizard Clarence White to play leads on Hillman's songs, essentially ditching The Byrds trademark 12-string chimey Rickenbacker as the lead instrument. Now we had the twang of a Fender Telecaster. This was a total rebranding of the Byrds that would become permanent as David Crosby would soon leave the band and be replaced by another Chris Hillman friend, Gram Parsons (himself a recipient of a Flip-Side post for his beautiful solo-era song, A Song For You). Of course those two would quickly leave The Byrds, along with drummer Michael Clarke, and form their own group, The Flying Burrito Brothers.

Have You Seen Her Face was released as a single in the US and died a miserable death on the charts. In some respects, it marks the beginning of the end of The Byrds' chart success. That doesn't mean the song isn't great, just that the stuff they were soon to record wasn't as radio friendly as before.

I've always had a soft spot in my musical heart for Chris Hillman. Not only was his bass work for the Byrds tremendous, but as noted above, his song writing and singing grew into it's own. As co-founder, and anchor, of the Flying Burrito Brothers, Hillman proved to be the corner stone in the creation of country-rock.

Enjoy Have You Seen Her Face.

Song of the Week: Pete Townshend - Is It In My Head?

Quadrophenia is one of the most highly praised albums of all time. It marks the end of an amazing run of four "must have albums" from The Who (preceded by Sell Out, Tommy, and Who's Next.) In 1972, as Pete began writing for Quadrophenia, Pete set out to rectify the wrongs he felt were beset upon him in his pursuit of the failed Lifehouse album, an aborted album that would become the critically acclaimed and high selling Who's Next. It seems everyone but Pete loved Who's Next. He couldn't let the failure of Lifehouse to fade and he was now set on creating another concept album. And he was also set on taking even more control of the band's direction, jettisoning extremely talented people like engineer Glynn Johns whom, Pete felt, hadn't shown enough support to Lifehouse and in fact forced him to put out the best songs from that session as Who's Next.

Pete retreated to his very advanced home studio on the island of Eel Pie and shut the world out. There he tried to expand on his groundbreaking use of electronics and crafted a thematic story of a downtrodden mod named Jimmy who, like Pete, seemed to be plagued by doubt and disappointment. When Pete emerged he had a comprehensive story and two hours of demos that sounded better than many other bands' completed songs. The Who had just completed their own recording studio and Pete brought the band in to put their stamp on his sophisticated demo recordings.

Until last month, when a Deluxe, remastered and expanded addition of Quadrophenia was released, most of those demos were only rumors. We got a few on the Scoop series, but not all of them. Well, here they are. To say they are well polished is an understatement. They are rock solid. Pete's drumming and bass work have improved from his demos in preparation for the Who's Next session and his voice is more confident too. His piano work is stellar and his guitar work is often more up front than in the final mixes for The Who.

Today we highlight the song Is It In My Head? On the final Quadrophenia version, Roger Daltrey sings with anger and aggression. And it is John Entwistle whose voice is mixed to the front on the chorus. But on this demo we get to hear Pete Townshend with his more vulnerable voice. It changes the posturing of the main protagonist from one who is confrontational and defiant to one who is unsure of even his own thoughts. Listening to all the demos, one is struck by how well thought out the songs were. One is also left with the sense of how much the band was a front for Pete Townshend's mind.

In the end, the recording and mixing of Quadrophenia was not what it should have been. The studio was not in shape for the recording (it actually flooded while they recorded and the control booth had to be stationed in a bus parked outside), the technology was not there for what Pete Townshend wanted to accomplish and the band was feeling like they were taking Pete's marching orders. In addition, producing and engineering the album was probably one job too many for Pete. At night Pete would take the tapes back to his home studio and bounce tracks (making a true remaster impossible) so as to allow him to over-dub more instruments. Likewise, John Entwistle would take tapes home to record his horn sessions at his studio. It's testament to the quality of the songs and the quality of the band that the album came out as good as it did.

And it's a testament to Pete's demos.

Song of the Week: The Music Machine - No Girl Gonna Cry

Sean Bonniwell passed away two weeks ago after a battle with lung cancer. Sean Bonniwell is one of those guys who made great, inventive and forward thinking music. And like fellow Angelenos Arthur Lee and Emitt Rhodes, the quality of his music didn't necessarily translate into sales or fame. Sean Bonniwell did pen a certified hit for his group, The Music Machine. The song was the great Talk Talk (see vid below). But he, and the rest of the band put out really good quality music that regularly equaled or even surpassed the high standard of Talk Talk.

I never had the opportunity to meet Sean Bonniwell but I knew many people who did. The dark lyrics, black clothing (and one black glove) and gruff exterior apparently stood in contradiction to the nice and engaging personality that was the true character of Sean Bonniwell. I first became aware of the Music Machine in about 1984 when Rhino Records put out a retrospective of the band. I was immediately drawn to the music and the look. About the same time I came across Mike Stax's second issue of Ugly Things fanzine which featured an interview with Bonniwell. Stax's interview showed a man who loved crafting music and loved exploring new ideas both musically and lyrically. The scooping up of "everything Music Machine" was now my personal ambition.

Learning as many as the songs as I could figure out with my then limited ear was an obsession. Thankfully, the Ugly Things issue shown above even came with sheet music! These were not your run of the mill 1960s garage songs. These were well crafted tunes with introspective lyrics and difficult to learn music.

Our Song of the Week understandably celebrates the music of Sean Bonniwell. The song I chose is one that failed to find release during the lifetime of the the Music Machine. I did so to show how good they were. If a song this good didn't make the cut, then you know how good the other stuff is. The song is No Girl Gonna Cry and it first came into my playlist around 1986 or '87 when a German traveler some how talked his way into crashing on my living room floor while he worked on a fanzine. While in California he found his way to Sean Bonniwell and came back with a tape of unreleased songs, demos and alt. versions of Music Machine songs. I recall a stunning, live, in-studio version of The Eagle Never Hunts The Fly filled with different lyrics and the occasional mistake. It showed how strong the band was. The tape was a gift to this kid from an appreciative Sean Bonniwell. That German cat put out his fanzine, called Splendid, and in it he included a flexi-disc of two unreleased Music Machine songs. You are now listening to a digitization of one of those songs from that flexi-disc. The song did finally see a wider release in the late 90's, but I prefer you listen to that plastic flex version.

RIP Sean Bonniwell

Video Diary: Dock Boggs - Country Blues

Song of the Week: Howlin' Wolf (featuring Hubert Sumlin) - Smokestack Lightning

Hubert Sumlin died yesterday. He was 80. I would like to think that most everyone knows and appreciates what he did for blues music, but that just isn't the case. Hubert Sumlin was the quiet, diminutive and happy-go-lucky sideman to blues giant, Howlin' Wolf.

Howlin' Wolf first started working with Hubert Sumlin when Sumlin was still a teen, and not terribly confident on guitar. Sumlin played second guitar to Willie Johnson. Where Willie Johnson was aggressive in his playing and his life and would musically go toe to toe with the massive Howlin' Wolf, Sumlin sat back and remained quiet.

When Willie Johnson parted ways with Howlin' Wolf, Hubert Sumlin was moved to first chair. His style had not taken shape and Howlin' Wolf pushed him hard, perhaps too hard. In a wonderful Howlin' Wolf documentary film, Sumlin recounts how Wolf would badger and bully him to be better. As they worked on an important recording, Howlin' Wolf grew impatient at what he felt was Sumlin's lack of originality. As he often did, Wolf sent Sumlin packing. As Sumlin packed up his gear and began to leave the studio, Howlin' Wolf yelled after him something along the lines of "put your guitar pick away. Learn how to play with your fingers and come back with something that will stand out. If you don't trust yourself to play something great then how I can trust you to play something great? You can come back tomorrow and have one more try at it. If I don't like what you have, then I will let (studio musician and Wolf's second guitarist on the session) Buddy Guy take it over." With that, Sumlin recounted, the wallflower that was Hubert Sumlin went home, cried and began on the task Howlin' Wolf had given him: A finger picking guitar riff that would compliment the song. The next morning, fingers raw from a sleepless night of playing his new riff, Hubert Sumlin came back to Chess Studios where Wolf and his band, including Buddy Guy were ready to record. Wolf tersely told Sumlin he better impress and that he only had one chance to do so. Hubert Sumlin sat down and began to play his finger-picking riff in the key of E. After a few seconds Howlin' Wolf interrupted Sumlin's audition and turned to producer Leonard Chess and said, "you ready to record?". With that the band took off on Howlin' Wolf's biographical song, Smokestack Lightning. The guitar riff was unique and catchy and fit perfectly with the song and Wolf's pain stricken tale. The guitar riff would soon be pilfered by Dale Hawkin's own teenage guitarist, James Burton, to create the iconic Suzie Q. Bands like The Yardbirds, Manfred Mann, Creedence Clearwater Revival and a host of others would also mine the guitar riff with great success.

The relationship between Hubert Sumlin and Howlin' Wolf was very similar to father and son. As detailed in James Segrest's book, Moanin at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf, the two did not always get along, but they always respected each other, looked out for each other and, in the end, were always inseparable. An illustrative tale from the book stands out. While touring thru the South shortly after Wolf had "made it", Howlin' Wolf drove the tour bus late one night to a spot not on the route. Wolf was quiet and tense and the whole band had fallen asleep in the back. Sumlin, sensing something was up, sat with his mentor in the front row and said nothing. Wolf stopped the bus in front of a run-down house and walked tentatively to the front door before eventually knocking on the door. An elderly woman came to the door and and the powerful Howlin' Wolf began to shake and said "Mama, it's me, Chester. How ya doing?". His mother had rejected him years before for a violent incident that happened when a teenage Chester Burnett, now The Wolf, had laid out a man he found on his mother's property. She told him to leave and he had not seen her in the 30 or so years since. That incident, by the way, is the major theme of the song, Smokestack Lightnin' as it is in another of his songs, Back Door Man.  Howlin' Wolf handed the elderly lady a $100 bill, a fortune in the mid-50's. The mother ripped up the money and threw the pieces on the ground proclaiming she wouldn't take money earned by singing the devil's music. With that she turned and went back into the house. The mighty Wolf fell to his knees and wept. Hubert stepped out of the car and walked his friend to the passenger seat and then took over the driving duties. Sumlin only said, "I'm sorry Wolf" and the two never spoke of the incident again. And the rest of the band never woke and never knew of the moment of vulnerability.

Another interesting tale, this time from Robert Gordon's book, Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters, is when, in one of the common instances of Sumlin and Wolf parting ways, Sumlin quickly got snatched up by arch-rival Muddy Waters. Wolf had more than able musicians filling in, but they weren't Hubert. One night Howlin' Wolf burst into a club on Maxwell street and pushed his way to front and center of the stage and began heckling Muddy Waters for stealing his guitarist. Muddy could give as good as Wolf and began taunting Wolf. After a few rounds, Howlin' Wolf pointed to Sumlin and said something along the lines of "get off that damn stage with these fools, you're my guitarist." At this point the band stopped playing and one of Waters' musicians pulled out a gun (the two books talk incessantly about how many guns and knives were stored in blues musicians' guitar cases). Wolf moved onto the stage and headed right at the man pointing a gun at him and said something akin to "you better put that away before I pull it out of your hands." With that Muddy Waters signaled to the sideman to stand down and Howlin' Wolf unplugged Hubert's amp and walked off.  Hubert packed up his guitar and followed Howlin' Wolf out of the club.

Hubert Sumlin remained Howlin' Wolf's sideman until Wolf died in 1976. Hubert's unique, bouncing and warbling guitar riffs often spoke in retort to Wolf's guttural howls. Any musician knows how important Hubert was to Wolf. Wolf knew it and he would stand up to defend it.

I got a chance to see Hubert Sumlin perform when he was but a spry 75 years old. His skills had diminished, that's for sure. Guitarist GE Smith performed with him and brilliantly would fill a missing part as soon as Sumlin would stumble. But still, at 75, he was a better guitarist with far more style than the vast majority of the strat-n-a-hat SRV clones that fill every blues jam around the globe. I got to shake his hand and see him smile and hear him play. How damn cool is that?

Enjoy this great live performance of Howlin' Wolf with Willie Dixon, Sunnyland Slim, Clifton James and, of course, Hubert Sumlin off on the right of our screen. Dig that crazy guitar work.

Thank you Hubert Sumlin!