THE BEATLES — ABBEY ROAD APPLE 50383

Another clue from the Beatles. I can remember the first time I heard every Beatles album. Recreate the scene, and it’s always “what do they have for us now?” The dudes that started it all, and it’s always “oh, yeah, here’s something we forgot about.” Popping in and out of your consciousness, but when they're there, it’s always with a presence. Mystique they're the BEATLES. Of course, they're the fucking I BEATLES because they’re so I good, and they're always good different ways. But (again) always with this presence. They’re so good, and it’s so easy for them, you can tell.

So a new Beatles album, and all of a sudden there’s all this new information to assimilate. Making the record a part of yourself takes a few days, but you have to do it; the music is its own compulsion. And then again, it’s the Beatles, and, you know, you just have to find out. Any Beatles album is an artifact in a way that few records ever can be, and since the Beatles are so much a part of what you are, you have to examine it closely.

It’s all kind of a flash back to those early days when Marshall and I used to go through the teen magazine in drugstores looking for pictures, scraps of information amidst the fave raves and fab gears,. going over to people’s houses to watch the fucking Ed Sullivan show, and sitting through fifty-five minutes of accordians and dancing bears to catch the new tune. Anything about them, any part of them, because, well, you know.

Of course we don’t approach anything with that kind of pure unspoiled devotion anymore. It’s just a record, you know, not a. religious experience. Except of course it is. Well, ok, here’s my review of the latest crop of loaves and fishes.

You can approach a record in a number of ways, if you’re planning to write about it. TO CRITICIZE, REVIEW, TECHNIQUE IT. The guitar leads are derivative, this part is overorchestrared, the horns are weak, the horns punctuate perfectly, orchestration is sensitively used to add texture, his voice is hardedged good/bad, it is coherent, it is disjointed, dynamics are, this or that is pretentious meretricious, foreboding, fascinating, conscious, unreal, ethereal, like blues, country, classical, soul, folk, PSYCHEDELIC, uh uh.

To relate to it as a sensory experience. When you do this with a Beatles record, when I do, you, I, wind up with something like:

which is clearly unfit for publication.

To view it as a puzzle, a key, to look for clues, a (that’s fight) magical mystery. The album as a whole is one part of the overall puzzle, the album itself is a puzzle. EXPLICATE IT. “What is this about?" Analyze it. What you can feel, see through, think of, understand, to touch, to grasp the : .essential, to find out, reproduce, excite, research, revive, relegate, make whole, show, follow, believe, fathom, dispute, make clear, or can’t. “What are they about?” Dig it: this is real. I have to do this; the Beatles are a whole thing (I’ve heard that before). BE CAREFUL NOT TO DESCEND TO THE FUCKED UP BABY GAMES OF THE INTELLECTUAL. And try to make real what isn't except in your own need for order, system, place, pose, posture, show.

Come Together is the first cut. Invitation and orgasm right at the start. It's rolling and sensuous, the drums riding on the soft edge of the beat. Paul laying down bass figures they’re too compact to be called' lines that end with a sigh. John pushes the words out against the top of his mouth.

He roller coaster He got early warning.

He got muddy water.

He want mojo filter.

He say one and one and one is three;

Got to be good looking cause he’s so hard to see.

Come together Right now Over me.

Unlike a lot of other cuts, this is not a tune to figure out, unless you want to fall back on the stock McLuhanism; this is primal, driving, down rock and roll: move, nod, sway, stomp, ball.

Something is a George Harrison Composition that somehow reminds me of the Buffalo Springfield with a totally string feeling. George’s guitar even sounds like an electric violin in spots. And again he e m e r ge s as the essential guitar player, choosing his notes carefully, revealing the t hem e. and rolling over it like a river. The' whole song the sweet movie soundtrack strings, the viscous guitar, the stylized mistiness of the vocal has a prettiness about it that few groups besides the Beatles could put over without being precious: but the Beatles deal in archetypes and, partly because they are themselves archetypes, and partly because they're so good at (which I suppose is really one thing after all), the laying out of the form is also an illumination of it, which of course amounts to more than filling in readymade pattern, and which makes the thing worthwhile.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer is a tune that was cut at the sessions for The Beatles but didn’t find its way into the finished product. It’s a true lightweight of a song, in the manner of Honey Pie, but it’s a showcase for Paul’s facility with the language and his sweetest singing voice (wonder what John did to crack him up in the middle of the fourth verse). The silver hammer is like Billy Liar’s machine gun only better because it’s fantasy -real instead of fantasy-fantasy). With a rousing spirit of (sort of) nonviolent fun: “Silver hammer, yeah.” Death-yes; blood-no (like Thurber’s people), and a good time was had by all.

BEATLES

Oh! Darling, by John, doesn’t carry the Great Rock Revival to any new heights, but they’re obviously having the same kind of fun that we all do in singing old rock and roll tunes. Being the Beatles, of course, they had to write their own old rock and roll tune,-but it’s really the same thing.

Octopus’s Garden, (Ringo’s under water again) is the perfect Ringo song. Ringo the child, the cute one:

We would sing and dance around

Because we know We can’t be found Oh what joy For every girl and boy Knowing we’re happy and we’re safe.

We would be so happy, you and me

No one there to tell us what to do.

Really, what more to make him happy? .Ringo’s world view, the reduction of conflict to the lowest common denominator; don’t try to get above it, get below it:

We would be warm

Below the storm The world - peasant, the steategy of the little man. But if the song doesn’t tell us anything new about Ringo (or at least his image) - it’s really exactly the same as Yellow Submarine, right down the line - it shows that within the genre, he’s getting a lot better. For exam.ple, there was nothing in Don’t Pass Me By as good as

Resting your head

On the sea bed.

The Beatles as archetypes again, in another sense: Paul, the handsome; George, the intense; John, the daring; Ringo, the childlike. Four parts of everyones’s inner life, and the hardest to deny is the last, political naivete that goes along with it and all.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy). An, as they say, Heavy Jam. The strongest instrument on the cut is Paul’s bass, which is incredible. The essence of post-Beatles rock. With Come Together, the most intense

rock and roll on the album, but it’s pure coincidence (I think) that these two tunes have the same title (almost) as the MC5’s Come Together and I Want You Right Now. The sentiments are the same. But they’re universal sentiments, and the 5’s approach is far more lustful that this. I really tried my best to dig up musical similarities of Deep Meaning, but I. couldn’t; they’re four different tunes of two different names.

The cut has the now -traditional three minute ending. 11 builds with a repeated theme (unlike A Day in the Life) to a Day in the Life} kind of pitch. But after the climax in Day in the Life they gave us that long, long chord to ease us down after the abrupt break. That was in 1967; in 1969 they don’t give us that any more. The pressure is there, and then it’s gone; it’s up to us to make out in the aftermath as best we can. Does this mean that they’re getting harder, or that they think we are? Say you want a revolution? Well, you know.

After the trauma of / Want You, they ease us into the second side with Here Comes the Sun, George Harrison’s spring song. George’s writing is always more elemental than John and Paul’s. You Like Me Too Much, l Need You, Here Comes the Sun, I’d like to hear them all-played at once; they share a basically simple melodic intent. Catchy, intriguing, like George’s voice, they fit in perfectly with the Lennon-McCartney axis that dominates the Beatles’ sound. If the Beatles are archetypes, George is the architypical Beatle. Musically, that is.

Because is the calm before the storm; there’s no other way to describe it in the perspective of this album. By She’s Leaving Home, out of// / Fell and I’ll Get You, 1 imagine the Lettermen will be doing this one shortly. Or somebody.

Love is old

Love is new

Love is all

Love is you.

You Never Give Me Your Money. We’re into it hot and heavy here. They have the audience sing the first verse:

You never give me your money,

You only give me your funnj papers;

well, OK, that’s our job, no? So the second verse comes out of their mouths:

I never give you my number,

I only give you my situation; This interchange works on two levels. About their music, it’s a question of explicitness or crypticism,if that’s a word. You couldn’t get more open than Sergeant Pepper, for all its complexity, but again, this is 1969. Dig it: they’re still laying it all out for you in terms of emotions, but the ratiocination is your department. Or, the indictment may be a political' one, but the answer is still, about art, which is the point, anyway, even in terms of social consciousness. If they did more -of one, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to do less of the other, but it’s a question of place; theirs and yours, to judge and to do. Do what you can, leave it like it is; part of it, but there’s more to it than that; I can’t really explain. Anyway,

One-two'-three-four-five-

six-seyen

All good children go to heaven.

Which is not quite the cop-out it may seem, but is separated from the first part by some genuine entertainment in the form of a mini-day in the Life. Of course, that structure, too, is a statement.

Sun King is Paul’s customary tribute to conventional beauty, complete with cricket noises at the beginning and two verses sung in Italian. Very lush, very much for lushes; that right, it’s Lush Music. I don’t understand why they feel it’s necessary to keep putting these songs in; I wish I did. Doubtless, in time, all will be made clear.

Mean Mr. Mustard is a neat little characterization in one minute and six seconds:

Mean Mr. Mustard sleeps in the park,

Shaves in the dark,

Tryin’ to save a bob;

Sleeps in a hole in the road,

Saves enough to buy him some clothes,

Keeps a ten bob note up his nose,

Such a mean old man.

His sister Pam works in a shop,

She never stops,

She’s a go-getter;

Takes him out to look at the Queen,

Only place that he’s ever been,

Always shouts out something obscene.

Someone suggested to me that the ten bob note up his nose is used to snort coke with, and .that this is therefore a drug song. As we anti-intellectuals used to say, fuck that shit.

Polythene Pam is another tune left over from the last album. Is this Mean Mr. Mustard’s sister, grown up, hard and tough? 1 don’t care. This sounds like -the who, anyway (maybe it’s Tommy’s sister?).

She Came in Through the Bathroom Window. There may be more to this, but what I get out of it is Paul’s amazing ability to come up with those lines:

She said she’d always been a dancer,

She worked in Fifteen clubs a day ;

And though she thought I knew the answer

Well, I knew what I could not say.

Sun King, Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam and this song are strung together, with well contrived but minimal seques between them. Compared to what follows, they seem like a digression.

Golden Slumbers is an introduction to the key song of the record:

Once there was a way to get back homeward,

Once there was a way to get back home ;

Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry

And l will sing a lullabye.

What follows is not really a lullabye. Instead, it’s Carry That Weight, an invocation, a statement of justification and purpose, The Way It Is Condensed. A big thing:

Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight,

Carry that weight

Carry that weight a long time . . .

And then, suddenly:

1 never give you my pillow,

1 only send you my invitations;

You didn’t realize the implications before, but' it’s all the same thing. Art; LIFE . . . approach them the same, because they are one. And, shit, you’re doing more

than you might think. Clues again, parts of the whole in I Want You and Give Me Your Money, then, suddenly the more universal thing, and wait, you knew that. Here it is again, we already told you, and now we’ll put it together, you knew it all along. It’s a mind thing: what they‘ve been saying means more, here’s what it is.

If it’s not clear enough by now, here’s The End:

And in the end The love you take Is equal to the love you make. You don’t have to spell out who is here indicted, what you should do about it. When you ask for something, whom do you ask?

I once read something about Sergeant Pepper, I guess it was in Crawdaddy!, where the author explained that the Sergeant Pepper reprise on the second side meant okay, that was all good fun, you don’t have to take it too seriously, but here’s A Day in the Life, this you’d better get down with. I think that makes sense, and the insight seems applicable to Abbey Road, but I’m not quite sure how. After The End comes a short, untitled piece with Paul singing against acoustic guitar:

I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl, but she doesn’t have a lot to say;

I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl but she changes from day to day;

I wanna tell her that 1 love her a lot,

But I gotta get a bellyful of wine;

I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl,

Someday I’m gonna make her mine.

Deday LaRene

Everything before them is sort of blurry; I mean, nothing is quite definite, nothing its important. I’d never been laid/stoned/drunk even. I was thirteen years old and watching the Ed Sullivan show. The next thing I knew there they were and the whole trip was very clear. I Want To Hold Your Hand may not seem significant now but to people my age that is a line of demarcation between history and life as we live it. Dig?

I’m nineteen, my adolescense has been spent with the Beatles and their progeny. All the way from Meet the to The Beatles. Now Abbey Road and a week later I get this phone call from Carlisle at WKNR. Danny says I’ve got something bigger than Abbey Road and you should listen at 4. O.K. man, Deday and I sit in the living room. How big is bigger than the Beatles, man? I mean, the Beatles, they’re like Jesus and the disciples. Sure, a lot of us thought they were getting a little bit too over-produced (me, not Deday) but they’re still way, way up there. Over the Stones even; over Dylan . .. Should we tape it? We did . .. reviewed it, too.

Cont. on next page

Cont. from page 21

It was Them, the Beatles. Called Get Back and 12 Other Titles. I can only relate to it as someone nineteen who didn’t go through a starvation period of schlock ( not rock). They were always there, see? You’ve got to understand, .They are more important than anything anyone else does. I even care about what Ringo eats for breakfast. Because They are the Beatles. And if you’re my age, the Beatles are bigger than J. C.; a lot more people I know have Beatles records than Bibles. As if there were a difference.

The album moves, it gets back down and there ain’t no time to question. The message, as always with rock and roll, is listen, feel, move CHANGE. GET BACK - be real. Up against the sky, this is a Beatles album.

909 is the opening track; a Buddy Holly/Carl Perkins cut that could’ve been taken off Beatles ‘65. Beatles ‘65? I’d just moved from city to suburb. The Beatles had moved from mere stars to incredible genius/saints. This is like Everybody’s Try in ’ to Be My Baby; the song that sent a lot of us on a quest for something that could hit us hard enough to make our teeth ache. 909 live would be like that. Message is clear enough; “move over once move over twice”. Good advice. Dance music, so is the rest from here.

A quick break into Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins again) then Save the Last Dance for Me; should you wonder, Don’t Let Me Down follows. It’s somehow fitting that I heard this first in a car; even if the car was equipped with an FM radio and I wasn’t drumk. How many times did I hear a Beatle hit first in a car, drunken and mellow?

Don’t Let Me Down may be the breakthrough tune the Beatles needed to break away from the myth that they don’t do rock and roll. “Ooooo she done me, she done me good” couldn’t be there at all if it wasn’t rock. It’s a line as earthy as Jagger but still the Beatles.

Too rockhard for Abbey Road, just a little too mellow! here. Dig a Pony is probably the weakest track. But the Harrison work is still tasteful, still Them . . . That counts' for much.

I’ve Got a Feeling opens with a riff ripped off from Bringing It All Back Home, evolves momentarily into a beer ballad then emerges as a McCartney screamer. The song is about contexts and textures. It’s the perfect lead to . . .

Get Back. Which is Ed Sullivan/Madison Square Garden/rip off their clotlfes in the parking lot/every girl’s dreamfuck Beatles way back when their hair was still above the shoulders, above the ears even. (Remember how important that hair was? Just slightly less graphic than an uplifted middle finger.) It’s balling music, dancing music, getting high/drunk/happy/ silly/crazy music; dig it? Do it.

George Harrison now emerges playing early Stones guitar (yeah, its blues riffs but its still Keith Richard. You wouldn’t know about it without Beatles/Stones/Animals guidance.) For You Blue, with its acoustic intro, sounds like a leftover (an excellent one) from the first album. It probably wouldn’t work in any other context but that’s part of the genius of the Beatles. Each of their albums (even the earliest) is thematically arranged. That didn’t begin with Sgt. Pepper either; dig the Second Album, a total rhythm and blues experience. Admittedly of Liverpool’s leftfield.

If the theme of the album is get back, this tune is all the way back. Now watch them move. Teddy Boy is an Irish folk song Beatlized beyond recognition. Paul McCartney excercises his usual lyric cuteness that somehow never fails to impress.

Then one day she found herself/Teddy turned and ran. Oedipal reference? Or a mere piece o’ fun? Given the context of the album it’s only the latter; which is infinitely better. Watch everybody intellectualize this album into supposed submission; watch them all make asses of themselves. Abbey Road is meant to be intellectually chopped up and rehashed; this record is meant to be listened to, enjoyed, responded to on a far more visceral level. If the direction to Abbey Road was pointed by Blackbird the direction to Get Back was pointed by Helter Skelter (“when I get to the bottom I go back to the top”).

On Our Way Home is the one song on the record that begs for analysis. The very lyrics themselves (“Two of us/wearing raincoats/standing sorrow/in the sun/ . . . we’re on our way home”). It might be, like Bringing It All Back Home, (which is an album with this much importance) a return to some Elysian field of rock and roll. And it might be what it seems to be; a very very pretty rock song.

The message again; Can you dig it? Come on, COMe on, COME ON. Move feel dance change. “You can dig it if you want it”. A chant song with the flute making it Donovanesque and ten times heavier than him. “Pick it up/Come on and get it” Like Hey Jude, Like A Rolling Stone (they admit) and the message might be just that -“When you ain’t got nothin’ you got nothin’ to lose.” This is the happiest jam/song I’ve heard since Rainy Day Women. (And, my god, is this aimed at all those who’ve accused them of turning away from hard core rock and roll? There’s something extremely bitter about that last “You’re gonna get, you’re gonna get it good”).

Then a hymn; the Beatles, realizing themselves as the cult they are, rejecting it, still have the power to “whisper words of wisdom/Let it be.” Musically, the fullest song on the album; it’s sounds very, very much like stuff I’ve heard in church (about the same time I heard the Beatles I stopped going). A lot of people are really going to go to school on this one.

Long Winding Road is a more concious effort at hymnody; like Let It Be a piece. “You left Me standing here/a long long time ago/Don’t leave me waiting here/lead me to your abode”. Billy Preston may be the best discovery the Beatles have made yet. He could be responsible for a lot of the changes visible here.

We now return to Don’t Let Me Down; like Sgt. Pepper. Get Back feels the need of a restatement of theme. Those of us who’ve felt let down by some of their latest work (I’m thinking of Honey Pie) should have that feeling alleviated/eliminated by this album.

“I‘m in love for the first time/Don’t you know it’s gonna last/It’s a love that lasts forever/It’s a love that has no past”. When you’ve grown up with the Beatles those lyrics have much more meaning than being around pre-Beatles and going through the change; they’ve been there with everything we’ve done. And sometimes we take ‘em for granted.

If, as Barry has suggested, this is about John/Cynthia-/Yoko, it’s also about the things a lot of us have gone through while the Beatles have been around, and even more largley, about the way you can get to feel about rock and roll. Six years later the Beatles don’t let us down. It’s the best yet .... until the next one.

Dave Marsh

FRED NEIL - EVERYBODY’S TALKIN' CAPITOL ST 294

Fred Neil is a legend and a genius; one of those people your friends tell you about with a look of awe. You can never quite believe the stories ’til you’ve heard him. The legend is-' almost too impressive; he was once with Buddy Holly’s back up band (the Crickets? It’s never stated specifically) but got too deep into drugs and escaped to Florida to dry out. He lives down there and only comes out maybe once or twice a year, to record or play. He did spend enough time in New York to be, along with Tim Hardin, a sort of grandfather to folk-rock. Neil’s haunt was the Night Owl and it’s no coincidence that the Lovin’ Spoonful show his influence so strongly. Both the Spoonful and the Jefferson Airplane have written songs about him (John Sebastian’s “Coconut Grove” sounds like the Spoonful’s interpretation of his voice). And the Airplane’s version of The Other Side of this Life, which Neil wrote, is by now legendary.

When you finally do get to hear him, the legend quickly assumes the proportions of gospel. All the little bits and pieces, the stories that swirl around him, can be verified by listening to Fred Neil. But they’ll never, ever explain about that voice. By implication, sad and lonely. What is left behind when the song is done are bittersweet impressions of a timy miracle; the magic he works with music is always understated.

The linernotes of this album talk about him “shoving his voice into his pocket”. That’s exactly how he uses this incredible instrument; he sets a mood with it, defines exactly what he’s taking about with its very tone and texture. How do you explain to somebody that

“burned my fingers on the coffeepot” sounds exactly like just that?

His songs are incredible things he must think about at two a.m. or out on the ocean or somewhere when he’s very very alone. They’re not happy songs, usually, though sometimes you can detect the glint of a small sharp piece of optimism way behind the obvious implications. Neil leaves you with the impression that he’s just too damned tired to care anymore (“They’ll drop the atom bomb the day my ship comes in” is sung so resignedly that you realize the only thing any of us can do is sort of swing with it.) He’s the weariest person I’ve ever heard. Yet he’s never depressing the way someone like Tim Hardin can be. He’s weary, not tired, and he’s definitely not bored; just a little restless, kind of relaxing. Definitely not a city person.

He lives in a place called Coconut Grove, Florida. Close to where “the ocean’s roar will dull the drummin’/ of any city thoughts or city ways”. Hw talks to dolphins and writes songs about them. He’s one of the few truly free people on the planet.

This record is the best representation that exists of Fred Neil (although Sessions (Capitol ST 2862) is also excellent. The set opens with his masterpiece, The Dolphins, an eerie song about much more than porpoises. Though it’s been interpreted as a protest song, if it is that it’s only one against the astounding lack of gentleness that Fred Neil sees around him.

Shake Sugaree opens with Neil whistling and, like Deday sez, ain’t hardly nobody does that, these days. You don’t realize until the instrumental break that this one of the happiest of songs. The lyrics (“I’m gonna sing it right if it takes all night long”) are almost painstakingly real. Fred Neil couldn’t lie if he wanted to.

There is one kind of song that Fred Neil does that nobody else can or should do. There are these upbeat tunes that would be blues if anyone else was singing them. For him, it becomes a vehicle to act out a complete drama. That’s the Bag I’m In is a switch for Neil, an upbeat tune carrying a distressed lyric (I’ll never get out of these blues alive’”). His voice is a medium for that distress, conveying it perfectly.

Then he turns around and does a tune like Badi-da. Like many of his songs this returns us to the fact that “city life sure does bring a fella down”.

Everybody’s Talkin ’ is now known as a Nilsson song; it’s a shame because Nilsson’s version is so sissified. He loses at least half the mystery that Neil’s delivery implies. Coupled with the amazing instrumentation, it’s probably the highlight of the whole album.

Everything Happens is just on the near side of mawkish; if anyone else did the tune, it would slip over that fine edge it treads so well. But Neil’s hard-edged voice prevents that. Like cocaine, it’s bittersweet.

Sweet Cocaine is a Fred Neil almost-blues tune that is so real it pains you to listen to Neil sing it. A1 Wilson’s harp work is perfect and Neil is an excellent guitarist. The lyric (“Well, mama, I thought it was understood/You got no connections, it’s just no good for me”) is a perfect representation of the drup’s effect; the whole song is a rush.

Fred Neil is just country enough to make Green Rocky Road really work and is just sophisticated enough to keep it from being corny. Again it’s his guitar work and voice that make his rendition plausible.

Finally, a word about the personnel on this album. The A1 Wilson I mentioned earlier is now with Canned Heat. The drummer is Billy Mundi, ex-Mother of Invention now with Mother Earth. And Cyrus Faryar, who appears only on the final cut Cynicrustfredpetejohn Raga (too incredible for words), is one of the most famous bouzouki players in this country.

This is a re-release of an album called Ered Neil. Maybe Capitol considers this the record’s final chance. At any rate, now is a good time to buy it. Fred Neil might be able to teach you a thing or two about yourself and “this crazy world

we’re livin’ in.”

Dave Marsh

JOHN COLTRANE -SELFLESSNESS, IMPULSE AS-9161

My Favorite Things; I Want To Talk About You.

John Coltrane, tenor and Soprano Saxes; McCoy Tyner, Piano; Jimmy Garrison, Bass; Roy Haynes, Drums. Recorded at The Newport Jazz Festival, 1963.

Selflessness

John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Tenor Saxophone; Donald Garrett, Bass Clarinet and Bass; Tyner, Piano; Garrison, Bass; Elvin Jones, Drums; Frank Butler, Drums, Percussion-, Juno Lewis, Percussion, Recorded in L.A., October, 1965.

This is the “new” John Coltrane record, the latest, one of the many never before released recordings by Trane that Impulse has in its vaults. The prospect that there is more to be heard from the late black genius (d. July 17,1967) is one of the more positive thoughts being filtered through my lobes — and a guarantee that the process of discovering Coltrane will continue for many more years.

My description of this record can only be, at best, programmatic. This is an admission both of my limitations and of the man’s brilliance. Trane preferred to have the music speak for itself, as it ultimately must, even to the point of eliminating liner notes. The music speaking the unspeakable.

The first side is a 17:31 live version of My Favorite Things recorded about three years after the famous Atlantic version. Trane was less hesitant on his soprano by then (he’s listed as playing tenor on this cut — I’ve never heard a tenor play those intervals - that’s a soprano), ready to push and jump (where the other version swayed, this one jumps and leaps), to be more forceful, even raspy at times, while maintaining his seemingly innate lyricism. McCoy didn’t change much from ‘60 to ‘63. We have here his basic approach — linear phrases, deftly executed, while his left hand plays steady hypnotic chordal patterns. Then Trane comes in and plays his - well, this is the Coltrane of “Live at Birdland” which was recorded later that same year. No more words about that, just listen. I am not as impressed with Roy Haynes’ work here as Frank Kofsky is in the liner notes -he just isn’t as strong as Elvin Jones and though he plays his ass off, his touch seems too light and too busy at the same time.

Then Billy Eckstine’s “I Want To Talk Abouy You” (erroneously listed on the liner as “I Want To Know About You”) - Trane is lovely here with asides and direct statements into the ballard’s melody. Garrison makes his presence felt but Elvin is still missing. As in the “Live at Birdland” version, the last part of the song is an unaccompanied tenor solo -spurring Donovan on to a funky enthasiasm missing in his latest albums. “Superlungs, My Supergirl” has solid lyrics and melody and “Atlantis” is the best chant/song I know of outside of “Hey, Jude”. “To Susan on the West Coast Waiting” is the most gentle anti — war song I Know of, period. You have to listen carefully to even realize that it is an anti — war song.

this one is more forceful than the “Birdland” one. You see, Birdland was a bit more intimate than Newport.

“Selflessness” takes us two years further along the Coltrane journey - it comes from the same session that produced the classic Kule Se Mama. A very simple melody line is played by the leader about ten times as the musical surroundings slowly thicken in density. The focal point here for me, as in almost all of Trane’s later recordings, is the Pharoah - Trane duets. This is really heavy - Pharoah’s sound consumes the atmosphere around you in great gulps of spirit liberation. McCoy is the same as always except that the left-hand chord patterns change quicker, which is fine with me. Juno cooks and blends with the two drummers nicely. It’s so much.

You will certainly buy this record - you could almost consider it a Coltrane sampler. And with the cold winter months ahead, you will need some fire and warmth.

Richard C. Walls

DONOVAN* - BARBAJAGAL--EPIC BN 26481

Barbajagal; Superlungs (My Supergirl); Where Is She?; Happiness Runs; I Love My Shirt; The Love Song; To Susan on the West Coast Waiting; Atlantis; Trudi; Pamela Jo.

Another Donovan record. For some reason I feel I’m supposed to dislike this record and put it down. I can feel it in the air, thick with industrial heat and muck, and see it in the filthy view of Cass and Canfield from my window; and over the radio a group called Jethro Tull has just said, “Each goes his own way. . . I know mine.”

But with the exception of a couple of cuts; I like this record pretty well; especially Side 2. The main exception — Donovan has a soft cute voice and soft cute face, framed by soft eute hair. He often writes soft cute lyrics about how much he likes his clothes (“1 Love My Shirt”). Every time I hear it I feel a wave of soft cute nausea.

Yet this really isn’t a bad record. The two strongest cuts are “Barbajagal” and ‘Trudi” with the Jeff Beck Group

At this point in his career, Donovan’s major talent is his ability to write attractive melodies. But the sad thing that despite his talent fof writing memorable melodies and quaint lyrics he just isn’t as original as he was during his Sunshine Superman - Mellow Yellow period. This record isn’t as near as dead in spirit and vanity as the “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” album; but it’s just what you’ve come to expect from Donovan. In jazz -when a new Theolonious Monk album comes out and you ask someone what it’s like the standard answer is “Well, you know - Monk is Monk.” Same here; if you’ve followed Donovan this far then buy this record. You’ll enjoy it.

Richard C. Walls

DAN HICKS AND HIS HOT LICKS - EPIC BN 26464

Generally, in this age of inbred music, reviewing a record by a new group can be like a game of musical Lotto, color-matching influences and effects with band personnel and group sound. Usually it’s fairly obvious. With Dan Hieks and his Hot Licks, you really have to reach a bit.

Sort of a Western, neo-Ricky Nelson, Rotary Connection, Dan approaches a syrupy quality achieved by neither the Mamas and Papas nor Aunt Jemima. I’ve always wondered if Santo and Johnny had any impact on late-sixties rock. Happily, Dan has cleverly transposed their sound, losing none of its original vibrancy. Dan’s Hot Licks — I think he’s referring to vocalist Christina Viola Gancher — are not to be confused with Jaime Leopold’s bull fiddle.

One particularly moving cut is Junkies’ Ball, an amazing combination of Brazil ’66 under the direction of Benny Goodman and Sid Page’s violin. And Milk Shakin’Mama — you can’t just listen to it, you’re moved to some kind of action, like bowling. Jon Weber, on lead guitar, does not get a real chance to express his limitations. Perhaps the real surprise of the album is Shorty Takes a Dive; with the pulse of rigor mortis, it drives with unyeilding force to a bottomless peak, and then ascends.

Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks is only a prelude to despair. I look forward to his Christmas album with Fred Waring.

Harvey Zuppke

THE HOLLIES - WORDS AND MUSIC BY BOB DYLAN, EPIC BN26447 That Bob Dylan is the most prolific and most influential, not to mention best, songwriter presently living is hardly to be disputed. Dylan’s influencee as a trendsetter and lyricist have created a new critical artform, second only to the Peter Townshend interview in verbosity and multitude. He’s been analyzed, evaluated, occasionally mutilated and often miseon trued and it is now vitually a mockery to attempt any newly cogent comment. “Don’t send me no more letters, no”, could be Dylan’s reference to rock

writers.

“These songs weren’t written on Tin Pan Alley” he .said once and preceded to demolish that venerable institution establish a new one in its stead, “out in America, somewhere”. With help from a multitude of his fellows (he was still the first) he has made rock an art form — not only enabling Richard Goldstein to analyse it to death in the Sunday Times, but also permitting Ravi Shankar and Pete Drake to become pop stars.

Yet Dylan’s prime influence has been as lyricist, not as musician per se; Dylan has set new directions lyrically and topically but only incidentally, until recently, has he truly been a prime mover in changing anything basic in the music. (Folk rock would almost certainly have happened anyway, with the advent of the new drug culture, but country rock is a Dylan —

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manufactured trend on all levels. He did his first Nashville album in 1966.) Lyrical structures could never have

progresses so rapidly without Dylan e.g. the Beatles pre and post — Rubber Soul).

The Hollies, in search of new directions, perhaps, upon the loss of Graham Nash, persent us with a quandry in Words and Music By Bob Dylan. The title is definitely a misnomer; the lyrics are

Dylan’s but the music is his only infrequently, if ever. At best, the music is the Hollies. That would appear to be what is expected of this album.

Unfortunately the Hollies have a tendency, on this record, to try to play games with their sound. Their sound is certainly a distinctive one and one which is not unobtrusively deviated from. Descending from being the Dylan/Hollies prototype, at least once it becomes so

mawkish as to sound like one of those records of !‘lush orchestrations” of once valid music. Yet, despite the occasional adventure with Mancini*isms, the album has some real successes, on vocals the Hollies are an excellent medium for interpreting Dylan. • Yet the album makes use of the songs of only one composer on an album (because you don’t have your own material?). Joan Baez tried it with Any Day Now, and a lot of others have madeup albums of largely Dylan material. In many ways, the Hollies are more successful than any of the others. But in several others they fall flat on their faces.

The Hollies success is as interpreters of Dylan for an even more mass audience than he now has. I have a feeling that way back there in the high schools some people haven’t discovered him yet. If the Hollies could make Bob Dylan valid for 15 year - old greaser then America would appear ready.

The failure is that this may be the only thing the Hollies could have done without becoming trite. Everyone has recorded so much of his material that at a certain point sensory overload overtakes you. And to record Dylan for soley for the sake of doing a Dylan album is simply boring.

Regardless of the banality of the whole concept, the Hollies do some excellent music on this album. The Times They Are A-Changin’ really works, in a Hollies manner. My Back Pages has a " beautiful opening section, opens into a woodwind part just a shade too slick and never gets back to that beginning. And the Mighty Quinn emerges as a Revolutionary/Civil War marching song. Not a total loss, at least.

The worst cut on the entire album is Blowin ’ In the Wind. John Gabree claims on the liner notes that the Hollies have been influenced by neither Peter Paul and Mary nor Dylan’s interpretation in doing this tune. And they haven’t; the arrangement is remarkably similar, however, to Stevie Wonder’s version. Allen Clarke’s vocal delivery could have been done at Motown and overdubbed back in Britian. Yet, the singing is not nearly so offensive, is downright enjoyable, next to the strings.

When the Ship Comes In manages to capture that marching song spirit mentioned in reference to Mighty Quinn. On the other hand, I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight energes as a fraternity boys’ beer drinking holler. It conjures up images of the - Yale University Choir singing the Wiffenpoof Song.

I Want You is, on at least one level, a bubble-gummy lyric anyway and the Hollies capture that essence perfectly. It would be a great single for the group, maintaining their sound yet providing them with a basis from which to expand themselves.

The only other tunes which are really successful are This Wheel’s On Fire and Quit Your Low down Ways. Wheel’s On Fire is the Hollies getting down to rock basics. What they’re best at. And it feels right. Bobby Elliott‘s drumming is a highlight here; he’s always been one of the Hollies’ major strenghts;

Quit Your Lowdown Ways must be the Hollies. There is very little else to compare it to (though I’ve always thought of their sound in conjunction with Beatles ’65).

I Shall Be Released and Just Like a Woman both come exquisitely close to being successful. Only the horns and electric piano mar Released. Otherwise the music is excellent and Clarke sings the song the way Dylan wrote it; sadly but hopefully.

Just Like A Woman starts out with a very protestant organ. Clarke’s singing, moving into that Calvinist context, fails to capture the inherent sensuality in the song. And the overorchestration further deteriorates one ot Dylan’s best songs.

This album is an excellent presentation ot the Hollies. The concept is uncreative, the

execution spotty, but the occasional flashes of excellence make it listenable. It’s only a mediocre album of excellent material.

Dave Marsh

JOHN SURMAN - ANGLO' SAX DERAM DES 18027

THE JOHNNY ALMOND MUSIC MACHINE PATENT PENDING DERAM DES 1803 John Surman is the young reedman who recently won first place in the baritone sax and soprano sax divisions of the Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition part of the Downbeat International Jazz Critics Poll. Johnny Almond is also a young reedman currently working with John Mayall, I think. (These things change so fast.) The two men have come up with two decent albums that move no particular mountains, but each has something to recommend it. The Surman album has an interesting extended “free form” type piece and Almond’s album is good listening for those people who aren’t too crazy about jazz but dig reed speed.

The first side of the Surman record, on which he leads a quintet, is marred by hokey conga drumming on all the cuts and also by head arrangements that sound like old calypso songs. The solos themselves aren’t bad especially alto saxist Mike Osborne who occasionally gets a hard sound just short of Jackie McLean. But those melodies - geez! Maybe British jazz has been influenced by the music of the West Indies. Reasonable. Could be their idea of funky. Sounds like something out of an early-sixties British movie like “Sapphire.” Or maybe “All Night Long”. The horns are good, but the rhythm section is a turn off.

The second side is a more or less three part extended composition by Surman. This is the first I’ve heard a baritone sax played in the style of circa 1965 John Coltrarie. And It’s good. This side has the spirit and imagination so lacking in side one. The sound is the energy and song which creates. Is created and creates energy. Part II of the composition, “Episode,” is subdue, a good contrast. Kenny Wheeler’s flugelhorn solo is a swift exploration of a peaceful episode. Accompanied first by bassist Dave Holland, then the other members of the ensemble join to build to an apex; then a tapering off to Dave alone. Good jazz. Dave has a remarkable solo — he’s now with the Miles Davis group and will hopefully reach a larger audience than when he was hanging out in Britian. Part II, Episode, goes into a dance with a rhythm more Afro than Calypso. A definite, improvement. This side should be checked out even if Side one is pretty dull.

Almond’s record is predictable blues - influenced but not repetitiously so. The main jazz influences here are Yusef Lateef and Roland Kirk, especially Kirk, who is very popular with British pop musicians. One of the cuts, “Before Dawn”, is a Lateef composition (all the rest are Almond originals) and the cut “To R’K’” is dedicated to kirk. If I heard this cut played without previous knowledge of who the musicians involved were I would swear it was Kirk playing flute. But the point is that these are young artists (average age 22.6) that have put together an album funkier, tighter, and more adept than alotta what’s being put out by many older so — called jazz musicians. (I don’t think the cats I have in mind have really sold out; maybe they’ve just forgotten how to have fun; maybe they’ve been beaten over the head too often; maybe its sad.) WABX should pick up on Almond’s record. And some Roland Kirk, too. Spread some simple joy.

Richard C. Walls THE INCEST SUITE AL KOOPER - YOU NEVER KNOW WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE, Columbia CS No. .9855 MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD IT’S NOT KILLING ME, Columbia CS No. 9883 NICK GRAVEMITES - MY LABORS Columbia CS No. 9899 and

LIVE AT BILL GRAHAM’S FILLMORE WEST - Various Artists, Columbia CS 9893 Remember when it used to be a real treat to pick up an album and discover that A1 Kooper or Mike Bloomfield was on it? All of their work with Butterfield, Dylan, Kooper’s with the Blues Project; it all seemed very special and specially good. Then they both started big bands, rock-jazz orchestras or something.

Kooper called his Blood, Sweat and Tears. Michael chose Electric Flag. And it really looked like the concept had some interesting possibilities. Kooper had a great line-up of personnel; Steve Katz, Bobby Colomby, all them dudes. Bloomfield had picked up people like Buddy Miles, Marcus Doubleday, Nick Gravenites.

But both BST and the Flag broke up and then reassembled; minus their prime motivators, Kooper and Bloomfield. And the true highlight of the Flag album was finding, in Nick Gravenites, a really excellent r ’ n’ b singer. But all that was in the past and

nothing seemed really amiss. Just some fine musicians moving in new directions. Then came Super-Session. The guitar playing, Al’s vocals and organ

work were excellent. It’s just that it was so sterile, dig, there were no changes. Mike played better’n that three years ago with Butterfield.

Bypassing / Stand Alone (which is the about the only way I know of dealing with it) we now arrive at the subject of this discourse: four new albums which, if a Columbia promo man had been slick enough (does one dare say honest enough?) could have been packaged together as The Incest Suite.

Well, we all know where incest leads to. These are freak children of a group of men so hung up with playing correctly, so involved with their own genius (which is abundant) that they have forgotten what once must have compelled them to produce the music they did.

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My mind is blown. The Gravenites album and the Fillmore West album have between them one song which excites me, It Takes Time. Identical personnel on both albums (with the addition on Live at the Fillmore of Taj Mahal and Skip Davis for one cut) produce nothing I wouldn’t have predicted without hearing the albums except that one cut. It Takes Time doesn’t even come up to a third of the stuff on that first Electric Flag record. It just sounds enough like Texas so that one can remember what could’ve, should’ve been.

Michael Bloomfield’s It’s Not Killing Me is really tragedy. Using the Graven ites personnel as his basis he has added a steel guitar on a couple of numbers while still retaining a blues feeling in his central approach. The steel guitar numbers are the most impressive in an otherwise trite set. It really hurts to see someone who has impressed so many with his guitar playing (which is really excellent on all three of these records) descend into banality.

Bloomfield just serves to prove that technical proficency is never enough to make a truly successful musician. If music becomes as dried out and self centered as on these records it just can’t be enjoyed; only analyzed. And the center of that analysis, because it is the center of the music, must be the musician’s ego.

The epitome of the ego trip is A1 Kooper. Kooper reacehed that pinnacle of that with the cover of I Stand Alone, one of the finest examples of self-mockery ever conceived. In his conceit Kooper feels he is creating a fresh sound. He leaves you just begging him to listen to some Stan Kenton or Stan Getz records. John Sinclair calls music of this kind “be-bop” and that’s really exactly where it’s at. That old bop sound was all through when Charlie Parker died and unless you’re Woody Herman, or Buddy Rich, you’ve probably realized it by now.

It’s emasculated rock utilizing everything that is boring and pretentious in big bands. It sure ain’t jazz. Kooper should be subjected to several hours of listening to Tauhid or Fire Music if he thinks his use of horns is inventive or even valid.

Which is not to say that these albums aren’t listenable. They’re just stuff we’ve all been through before and if you haven’t got the message yet it’s “Kick out the jams, motherfucker, or get off the

Dave Marsh