Curse of Beatlemania

LewRockwell.com ^ | 1/12/2002 | Joseph Sobran

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Physical Graffitti may be underrated by critics, or maybe some fans, but for me, it's a great piece of work. "Kashmir", and "In the Light" especially have the typical catchy Zeppelin repeat chords, their style was simple but effective. "Boogie with Stu" was a sound unlike Zep, sort of fifty-ish, definitely a keeper, like the whole album.

Carmine Appice, who really brought the bottom-heavy pound-and-club style and miking to hard rock via the early Vanilla Fudge recordings a couple of years before Led Zeppelin's premiere.

You explain the Bonham sound exactly. By the time he got to the fourth one, with "When The Levee Breaks", he had cemented it as the Zep sound. He pretty much stole the credit away from Carmine Appice.

[BluesDuke]

My favorite Cream is that first version of "Crossroads" done live on the double album. That is one heck of a cut and I wonder how many kids learned to do EC's guitar solo note for note!

Probably a few thousand of them. Trivia: That "Crossroads" was never edited. Many years later, Tom Dowd, who had recorded the show where Cream performed the version (at Winterland; though the album credit said "Live at the Fillmore," all Wheels of Fire live cuts except "Toad" were done at a Winterland show), revealed that contrary to reputation he never edited the track down; the version was pretty much the length Cream usually took "Crossroads," and Dowd says he came across an audience tape of the same show with the same version, as heard on the album. Apparently, it was very rare for Cream's live cuts to be edited down (my understanding is that only one, the Live Cream version of "NSU," had about two minutes edited out...)...

I taught myself to play guitar after hearing B.B. King in concert as noted earlier on this thread; I had known basic chords and note positions, but it was hearing him, plus Clapton's and Mike Bloomfield's blues (I wore out a copy of Super Session by virtue of "Albert's Shuffle" and "Really"!), that made me want to try seriously. I would try learning some of the solos (my favourite was Eric Clapton's on the studio version of "Spoonful" and Mike Bloomfield's on the Butterfield Blues Band cut "I Got A Mind To Give Up Living," not to mention Albert King's "Blues Power" and B.B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone") and, while doing that, discover various patterns of scales and runs and begin experimenting with those. At first I made myself a speed player but in due enough course I found it dissatisfying, once I realised I could say more with less if I did it right.

At various times, I am known to lay away from playing or practising for certain periods and then return to the instrument afresh, I find it a good way to halt myself from getting beyond my basic feel for the blues and from getting any ideas of going past myself. And whenever I do get out to play a gig, rare though it is these days (since I am more or less limited to holding an ordinary job while working on my first book), people invariably compliment me because I use extremely few notes but say as much as I like to think I say. I learned that as much from Miles Davis as from any blues guitarists; I had heard Miles's earlier recordings, on which he would interpret the blues (and he was a master at it), and was astonished at the feeling he would get merely using six noted across the first seven or eight bars. And when I heard people like Albert King doing likewise, that was when I realised you didn't have to be Shreddy Krueger to play the blues - just pick up your guitar, play it the way you feel it, and meld your ear to your heart.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Clapton has done tons of work in his career, but my fav is "Layla and Other Assorted Loves Songs". There isn't one song on that classic I don't like. Derek and the Dominos were a good studio band, but never did well on the road for some reason.

[BluesDuke]

I confess I was disappointed when the first single from Physical Graffiti, "Trampled Under Foot," didn't become a big hit. As a union between raw blues and funky dance music, it was non-pareil. The unsung hero: John Paul Jones's neat electric piano playing throughout.

It wasn't so much Bonzo stealing credit from Carmine Appice, it was more a question of Carmine Appice being a very good drummer in a couple of very lame bands, though Vanilla Fudge (by way of Renaissance, their third album; plus, the single "Where Is My Mind") and Cactus (Restrictions, their only album worth hearing from start to finish) did have their moments. My best guess is that Jeff Beck's legendary auto accident kept Cactus from being what they should have been (the name was born when Appice and bassist Tim Bogert, during their first attempt to form a band with Beck, thought Cactus would be a perfect name for the new group; by the time Beck was finally ready to play with the two, the real spark was long dissipated and Beck, Bogert and Appice in actuality proved a huge disappointment).

[BluesDuke]

Derek and the Dominos were better than credited on the road. I remember them playing live on Johnny Cash's television show and dropping the hammer rather nicely playing "Key To The Highway". I saw them perform at C.W. Post College and the set was exhilarating, even on the more mellowed material; the key, I think, was Bobby Whitlock keeping the band bound with his keyboards, and when he was right the whole sounded positively thrusting, and Whitlock and Clapton could trade off runs and thrusts as if they'd been welded together. I remember especially their cranking out versions of "Bottle of Red Wine," "Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad," and "Let It Rain" which almost made the clock stop, Clapton and Whitlock were so well on. I wish someone had thought to record that show; those three versions would have made the live album even better.

The live album as remade-remastered is very good stuff and cut early in their tour. I remember people saying how disappointing it was against both Layla and, of course, the legacy of Cream - I suspect it took Clapton a very long time to live down Cream's reputation - but Derek and the Dominos were a very good round of easy tension R and B in concert.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

The most underrated Zep album in my opinion is "Led Zeppelin 111". There are some hidden gems on that one like "That's the Way", (heard a great live version of that one recently done by Page and Plant), "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp", and "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper". That one, and Zep lV are my favorites.

[dennisw]

Thanks for that about Cream and Clapton. I remember all that stuff and saw them in concert. Saw Butterfield a few times with and without horns (David Sanborn on sax) and saw people wear out that Super Session album in college.

East West by Butterfield/Bloomfield and company was a ground breaker with blues and psychedelic tinged tunes.

[dennisw]

Led Zep still amaze me. I love to hear them on the local classic rock station and turn it up LOUD!

[MarkWar]

>Just curious, how old were you when this song was released? Wasn't it on 'The Doors' their first album?

It was on their first album... (I believe 1967.)

And I was pretty young. In fact, my childhood memories of that first album are limited to "Break on Through," "Twentieth Century Fox," and "Light My Fire." "The Crystal Ship" didn't even register on my consciousness until I was an adult and was going out with a woman who was a little bit of a female version of Jim Morrison...

(As to my youth back then, I had an interesting path through the 60s. My brother was born in 1950. He is one of those musical genius types who can play anything. By 1967, he was in a couple of bands -- he played trumpet in a working polka band (!) and he played rock guitar in a working club band... I was born in 1960, so by 1967 I was still too young to actually be part of the 60s revolution, but I was old enough to see everything that was going on, and I was able to hang out around my brother, his friends, and the various groupies who got off being with the neighborhood band...)

I always thank God for this sort of schizo view of the 60s I got -- I was too young to participate in the drug scene when people actually thought it was cool. And, by the time I got old enough, 99.9% of my brothers friends had already paid the price for the life style and I was able to see, first hand, the dangers and tribulations such stuff inflicts on a person (some flat out dead, some in foreign prisons, some in insane asylums, some walking veggies, some just disappeared...). Though I was too young to take part in the drug scene, I was just old enough to appreciate the great music, to sit around at parties and stuff, to meet the former beats who had survived, to talk to the freaks who were around, and to see the emptiness of the "hippies" when the mass media tried to _market_ the left overs of the beat generation with some kind of marketable version of the freak generation...

Mark W.

[UnBlinkingEye]

I always thank God for this sort of schizo view of the 60s I got -- I was too young to participate in the drug scene when people actually thought it was cool. And, by the time I got old enough, 99.9% of my brothers friends had already paid the price for the life style and I was able to see, first hand, the dangers and tribulations such stuff inflicts on a person (some flat out dead, some in foreign prisons, some in insane asylums, some walking veggies, some just disappeared...).

I was born in 1953 so I was right in the middle of all that. I must admit to a little experimentation, the only thing I came away liking was pot. I don't smoke anymore, but I think it should be legal. Luckily no one I knew ended up dead or in prison, one guy I met in the 1970s ended up in an insane asylm, I'm not sure it was do to drugs though. I spent a couple of years as a bartender and came away with the impression that hard liquor is much worse than pot. I'm glad I don't do that anymore, but it was fun for awhile.

[Borges]

Do you prefer what American pop music was before they arrived? Frankie Avalon? Fabian?

[discostu]

I prefer what American rock and blues music was before they arrived. Little Richard, James Brown.

[Borges]

Little Richard’s stuff was charmingly primitive. Rock was bound to evolve beyond three chord stomps. James Brown didn’t even hit his stride till after the Beatles arrived. What they did was push crooners like Paul Anka off the pop charts for the most part.

[discostu]

But they did it with crappy prefabricated cookie cutter crap music.

[Borges]

It was actually fairly complex harmonically and melodically. They were like The Beach Boys at their best in that they made complex music sound simple. And also, they stopped writing the Boy-Girl love songs in 1965.

[discostu]

I don’t know why you resurrected a 7 year old thread and of the 300+ posts on it picked mine. But here’s the simple reality. I hate pop music, and the reason I hate pop music is because it’s primarily moronic simplistic music designed to make 12 year-old girls horny. And the Beatles are the guys that perfected that and created the template that keeps the top 40 a haven of the worst the music industry has to offer.

If you like it great, your ears, your time, not my problem. I loathe it. It makes me want to puke.

[Borges]

Nothing against you personally I just saw your post and responded naturally. Little Richard and James Brown are pop music as well btw.

[discostu]

Like most guys that hung around awhile they’ve dabbled in pop, they’ve dabbled in just about everything. But primarily they’re rhythm and blues.