Joe Cocker!

Of all the rock stars, past or present, you could meet, Joe Cocker probably ranks with the two or three least interesting conversationalists. Not that he’s not a great performer; it’s just, what do you write about him? He’s a hell of a nice guy, I mean he really is. I like the dude, I love his singing but there ain’t that much there to talk about. Except that he sure does sing good.

He comes on like a slovenly pipefitter. The Cocker aura of bravado, even with his recent beard, comes across as secondary to his amenable but prosaic self. His manner is totally British workingclass. Which, mind you, is a hell of an important and a noble breed of person. But, unlike the Peter-Townshend-John-Lennon art school intelligentsia who sort of make English rock and roll dudes a breed apart, Cocker comes on like Ruben Sano (at least more Ruben than Tommy/Arthur.)

He gets stoned, a lot, you know; just kind of happily, not a complaint from Cocker. Totally amicable, just sort of bland. Not a bad thing to say about him. And a lot of good ones. Even if most of them have been said before.

He doesn’t seem to bear any scars from his ten year career in the British boondocks of rock. Ten years of gigging around Sheffield, which ain’t London no way, would weather most men more than it has Joe. But Cocker seems content. He also seems content not to question what he’s become, at least not overmuch.

The whole thing is that Joe Cocker might just be much better at being Joe Cocker than being an A-l rock and roll star with crushed velvet and satin. The dimensions of the man, however large, are barely visible at the first level of perception. But his talent, edging into genius at certain points, certainly is too great to be ignored.

What he .is, he’s kinda lackadaisical; not duU really just sort of your average popster. Until he gets on stage. Where he becomes a raving bundle of flying hair and meat.

Undeniably spastic, he twitches and! strums his pseudo-guitar fantasizing' god-knows-what, turning Unexpected songs into cathartic mini-psychodramas that push all the excess you’ve had shoved down your beleagured throat out and leaves a levitated sort of drained consciousness behind.

It’s not a simple matter to watch a guy try to destroy himself on stage. Where with James Brown all that falling-down emotion and cryin’ out loud and carrying on is presented in a slippery slick choreographed ballet-like context, Cocker’s jerk is completely incongruous. He half shakes himself to death on occasion. Just when it becomes apparent that he’s about to blow himself off, though, just when you can see him drifting, atom by atom, into the tenderly expectant arms of groupie chicks and velvet vested boys he diverts the energy into a shout that’s quite unlike anything you’ve ever •experienced. And at that moment, despite their validity, Cocker/Charles comparisons come up against absurdity. For obvious reasons Charles doesn’t go mucking about the stage, grinning and carrying on like a spaced voodoo child. Sedate Joe isn’t.

Even to himself his performances are embarassing. His shaking and writhing, at first gasp, are certainly bizarre; the obvious implication is, shuck. And there isn’t any way to explain that it isn’t. It’s just what he does. The whole smoking mass can be interpreted on a whole number of levels, sexual and

psychological. Whatever, it’s fun to watch and it certainly is distinctive. And it’s effect on certain chicks is legendary; there was a reason behing the inverted crotch dot-screen Delta Lady ad. But Cocker deals with it simply; that’s the way he does things, right?.

“If I watch television or something like that I’m aware of it. But. .. .you can’t worry about what shape your face is in.” Even when it’s contorting near-psychotically.

The story of how he got to be Joe Cocker, famous, from being Joe Cocker, pub singer, is rather mundane, like the man. Besides Ray Charles, he used to listen to the transitional urban bluesmen ... Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins. “It’s good and it’s simple and it’s basic,” he says. That influence certainly shows.

Sheffield, the archetypical English factory town, could only provide Cocker with pub jobs. What might be called, if one will pardon the expression, a bar band. “When I used to live in Sheffield.” Cocker remembers,• “I used to sing a lot of Motown. Sort of Four Tops, Sugar Pie Honey Bunch type of things. But while I was doing that I was sort of getting something else together in my head, you know? We always knew that we didn’t want to drift into that sort of thing. .. but is was just a way, to make a living. While we were doing that, in the spare time we were making demos to send off to people.”

We at the time was only Joe and Chris Stanton, now his keyboard player and unofficial leader of the infamous Grease Band. Joe’d been about ready to •give up but theni “we heard Sergeant Pepper and I thought we might as well have another go at it.” ; -

“Chris §tainton did Marjorine as a backing track with all these instruments and, for drums, he just used things like kettles and stuff. I put the Vocal on, doubletracked. And he mixed it and it was a really weird sounding thing man. The actual record we used was nowhere pear as effective; we went to a studio and did it. It’s always a shame nobody ever heard it because it was really free.”

Marjorine led themto Denny Cordell’s Tarantula Productions, (Cordell also produces Procol Harum) and a drawn out session of doing the first Cocker album. What emerged was Cocker’s first 45 and album, both entitled With A Little Help From My Friends, both immediate critical and commercial hits. It was far from the usual treatment of Little Help; the normal rollicking become a scream of exquisite anguish.

The album, promotionally if not musically, was helped along by the status of the backing musicians. Everyone from Al Kooper to Aynsley Dunbar participated, including alot of , work by Jimmie Page and Steve Winwood. “Denny Cordell’s vefy shrewd,” Joe explains.“When TieTiasn’t . gotmuch money and he can’t afford session men, he gets in people like the Beatles and Stones. And they never accept any money.” Of course, on the other hand they usually have to be pretty damn impressed with an artist before they’ll lend llieir name to his records.

A second part of the interest in the album centered on Cocker’s somewhat odd choice of material. “You try anything,” Cocker says “can’t you? You can do anything .. . anything.”

At least one of the tunes that Cocker transposed into his transatlantic soul style was Bye Bye Blackbird. Like Little Help it used to be a sort of Arthur Godfrey/Maguire Sisters type of number. A lot of young men did it as their first song on the Ted Mack amateur hour. Joe’s version replaced the JuliusLaRosa incidentals with solid ftink and a wail. Jimmie Page added a tasteful solo in the midst to completely conguer a cretin classic. The startling approach has feathers flying on both sides of the Atlantic. But as usual Cocker’s appraisal is placid. “Both that and Little Help are in 3/4 time — blues waltzes. I got this thing about blues waltzes.” It must be a nice thing to IraVe around.

Next, of course, we have the de rigeur American tour; Unfortunately the people Cocker had recorded the lp with, with the exceptions' of Stainton and guitarist Henry McCullough (late of the Irish band, Eire Apparent), were tied-up in little projects like Led Zeppelin and. Blind'Faith.

Wynder K. Frog had, however, just broken up and while the killer toad left to join Mason Wood Capaldi and Frog, the bassist and drummer, Allan Spenner , and Bruce Rowlands, became the rest of the Grease Band.

The breakup of the Frog was inevitable. “We were an instrumental group. We’d been working for a long, long time and not getting anywhere . . . years and years and years,” explains Spenner. “We had four or five singles and a couple of albums out but we were^ just an instrumental, band. No vocals. We were just playing to please ourselves cause we just used to dig playing. We just worked ourselves up to such a position and sort of stayed there. Never went any farther. We got tired of having to work, up and down the country; seven nights a week just to j survive.”

Through thier mutual agency, Island Records, the guys got it together barely in time' for America. “It was very strange cause we didn’t think it was gonn,a happen,” said Joe, “We were on the road, we did the Gene Pitney tour in England. You know, how embarassrng that was. Just before we came to the states we sort of got this thing going.”

The Grease Band fit Cocker as perfectly as the MGs fit Otis or the Band Dylan. Like the other two they are fairly unobtrusive, simply turning out excellent music while still bearing in mind that Cocker is the star.

The very power of Joe’s voice is its own problem. “I’ve got a loud voice and sometimes it’s annoying, you know? Sometimes when I’m singing it’s starting to blow it. You have to try and keep a happy balance. Like if 1 haven’t been singing for four days I’ll go out tonight and I’ll be feelin’ right loose, y’know? i have to watch m’self.”

But the very power that cautions him against abuse simplifies everything down to one essential — pain. Cocker is the rare performer with the ability to translate any song into his own particular framework. That he has always received excellent instrumental backing is almost secondary, in fact, to his apparent ability to select apparently incongruous material and have.it work.

Aside from his “blues-waltzes” he has taken three of Dylan’s best songs (/ Shall Be Released, Just Like A Woman and, most recently, Dear Landlord) and, without rendering any ' other interpretations invalid, has made them into compact three or four minute psychodramas.

The new album also features his most recent ‘hit’ Delta Lady. Delta Lady was written by Leon Russell, of Delaney and Bonnie fame, and Leorr'atSo'helped with the ip’s production.

But, like the other elements of Cocker’s success, Russell’s appearance was more happenstance than planning. “Just before we left England 1 got a copy of the Delaney and Bonnie album and Leon was playing piano on that you know. When we came to Los Angeles they were doing a session for Herb Albert and Leon was there, playing piano. So we invited him down to a session one night and he came and thought we were all insane. And he came a couple of nights later and I talked with him. We just got to know him slowly and one night he walked in and sat down and he said ‘WOOO-man of the country.’.”

The version of Delta Lady on the album has thrown a lot of people. The only difference from the single version is a single trumpet blast ... a low-point of incongruity. “When Denny (Cordell) played that he said that it was there to throw people. And I said well, yeah, but leave it out. When somebody played me the album it turned out he’d never heard. He’d mistook me.”

And lest any one mistakes me, let’s make it clear that Joe Cocker is still one of the two or three best rock singers alive on the planet. He’s got more balls . than nearly, anyone... sheer guts. Screaming out his lyric, the essential crotch clutching message driven straight down the throat.

But he certainly ain’t your classical English dandy, at all. That’s practically, a given, at this point. But he’s got these neat patchwork boots and he’s kind of chubby and he does have the Grease Band.

So even if he ain’t Peter Townshend and he didn’t go to art-school and Jimmie Page has better hair and Stevie Winwood dresses prettier, you’ll forgive ’cause he does sing good. You want more.