So tough he doesn't have to prove it.

I first ran across Nils Lofgren on an educational tv documentary, of all places. The show was about Roy Buchanan, the certified legendary Maryland guitarist, and it chronicled his return to the little California okie town he�d split from years ago, showcasing his impeccable, brilliant playing with Johnny Otis, Merle Haggard, a bible-thumping white church chorus, a jazz group, and the third rate rock band Buchanan uses. Well, Buchanan is superb, and he could cut the floor boards out from under just about everyone you�d care to name, and they�d all admit it, but when it all comes down, I�d rather hear Bob Dylan warbling about �Genghis Khan and his brother Don.� Buchanan is no rocker and he�s not much fun. There�s only so much you can do with virtuosity. Still, he�s an eloquent, moving musician, and I was sitting in front of my tv being moved when Bill Graham appeared like the tooth fairy to introduce Nils Lofgren, a friend of Buchanan�s, for a guitar duet on �Shotgun.�

Lofgren promptly blew Buchanan off the stage. After two minutes the legend broke a string and he never caught up. Lofgren burned for a good ten minutes, pulled back into a chorus, let the band end it, and then split.

What he did was brazen his way into this basically sentimental legend clap-trap and put it in its place, which is somewhere between a pile of old Arthur Crud-up recoil and �He Ain�t Heavy He�s My Brother.� Lofgren played rock and roll with a grin and a sneer, he played loud, made noise. He hit those special, undefinable and unmistakable snyapses of music that have their twins in the brain of anyone that has by the purest involuntary reflex snapped up the sound on a car radio when he heard for the first time the opening notes of �Jumping Jack Flash� or punched buttons into the middle of �We Won�t Get Fooled Again� and then gone into a skid.

Music isn�t really all one or all the same deep down. If you have been captured by rock and roll nothing, not the best of blues, country, soul or jazz can ever hit you with the same kind of impact. I don�t mean that the other stuff is not as �good.� I mean it isn�t the same. John Fogerty once said that he didn�t listen to-, say, Django Reinhart, because good as he might be, Django was not going to do to John what �Suzie Q.� did to him fifteen years ago. It wouldn�t be rock.

I am talking about rock and roll that could not possibly take any other name or need a hyphen. Stuff like �Every Picture Tells a Story� (as opposed to �Mandolin Wind�), �Up Around the Bend� or �Fortunate Son� (as opposed to �Wrote a Song for Everyone�), * �Wild Night� (as opposed to �Tupelo Honey�), �That�ll Be the Day,� not �Raining in My Heart,� �Eighteen,� not �Ballad of Dwight Frye�: music that encapsulates and defines without reaching the thing itself, that reveals the core music of any given period as one big aesthetic fringe.

There is never very much of this around because its spirit is so hard to capture. It has nothing to do with reviving anything. It�s difficult music to make. It was always easier for the Beatles to cut �Can�t Buy Me Love�' or even �A Day in the Life� than �Money� or �I�m Down.�

This music bubbles within the mass of pop music like a secret, occasional, half-forgotten possibility. When it blasts its way out of the latter of Top 40 or the fog of FM or an lp you bought on word of mouth it�s always a surprise and you can never quite believe that there is a human being with arms and legs just like you who has actually made the sound that is turning you inside out. It seems like some kind of trick. You know it�s not, though, and you grin. Sebastian, in his only song that does this, said it: �It�ll start with a smile you can�t wipe off your face and you don�t even know how it got there.�

This kind of rock is what all the songs about rock and roll are about, every one of them. �Rock and Roll Music� or �Rock and Roll� or �It Will Stand� are not about Astral Weeks or Imagine. �American Pie,� that great piece of rock criticism, is about the aesthetic myth and pop tradition that sustains the possibility of what the rock-and-roll songs are celebrating — it�s about the state of rock at any given time, and at any given time there is lots of �Tupelo Honey,� which is a masterpiece, and very little �Wild Night,� which is too. At any given time save that of a pop explosion, that is, 1955, �56, �64, �65. A pop explosion, defined in purely musical terms, seems to be the simultaneous emergence of dozens of records that capture this spirit — when this music becomes the core instead of the outside chance.

Well, enough theory. Here�s what Nils Lofgren has to do with all this: he doesn�t seem to have to reach for this kind of music — it seems to come naturally to him. The most exciting thing about Lofgren is that while he broke through into this mystical and perfectly tangible area of the rock that night on tv, and breaks through on his new record, his performance with Buchanan suggested that he was just getting off the ground and that it all lay ahead.

Lofgren works with a group called Grin. He sings lead, plays acoustic guitar mostly for rhythm, electric for first and second leads, piano, and organ. Bob Berberich and Bob Gordon sing back-up and play drums and bass. They little rhythm section is all punch when they�re rocking, all flow otherwise: Their first lp came out earlier this year. One the cover the three of them sat in an innocuous lump, all grinning, of course. It looked like the cover of a Poco album. It wasn�t; but while many people think it�s as good or even better than this new one, I found it unremarkable — solid, bright, easy going, just plain easy.

The new lp is called 1+1, presumably because it has �two sides,� the Rockin� Side and the Dreamy Side, just like those Original Sound oldies collections. So you might think this is just another revivalist conceit, like Daddy Cool. But check the cover. Just walk into your record store and look at it. Lofgren is alone in half-shadow, small, barrel-chested, looking, as was said of Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo, so tough he doesn�t have to prove it. He looks a lot like Dylan on the cover of Highway 61, straight forward and no gimmicks.

Charlie Gillett argues that Buddy Holly and the Crickets put out two different kinds of records; tough songs on the Cricket sides and soft ones on the Holly sides. He was talking about lyrics and delivery as much as sound. We get something like that here. Most of Lofgren�s songs are pure pop, of the something-wrong-with-love-and-it-throws-me type. Those on the Rockin� Side are angry, confused, or desperate, while those on the Dreamy Side are more reflective. They actually muse. �Lost a Number� is probably the most perfect. It starts off with an effortless story about meeting your dream girl, you falling for her and she for you, writing down her phone number, floating home on a cloud, and then Lofgren changes the tune'and asks, �Have you ever lost a number? It�-s like losing the world.� He pulls this off without ever seeming cute or self-conscious; it all seems obvious — but you�ve probably never put it quite as well as he does, and the song deepens your own experience. It�s pure pop philosophy.

On the Rockin� Side every number has an edge to it, the last two especially. You don�t so much hear or follow the lyrics as you hear little tag-lines at the end of each verse or chorus, something that gives you a feeling for what�s going on without ever taking you away from the music. As with Lennon, you can get most of it from the titles: �White Lies,� �End Unkind,� �Please Don�t Hide.� His songs here are intense, sharp vehicles for rock and roll, performed by a band that in spite of all its overdubbing sounds like a unit, like the band on the first Buffalo Springfield lp.

Their sound is built out crisp bass and drums, with one super-miked acoustic guitar and a burning electric guitar, piano and organ when it�s called for, Lofgren�s rough, deep voice, or his soft, melodramatic one, with appropriate backing vocals. The first couple of cuts on the Rockin� Side and �Hi, Hello Home� on the Dreamy Side sound like the best of the Springfield�s Last Time Around (�On the Way Home� or �Special Care�), but better, because' this band is less formal than the Springfield was at that stage, and the singing is much stronger. The whole Rockin� Side builds and by the last cut the band is sizzling, screaming, and it all ends with a cackling that is positively unnerving and highly unpleasant. But this isn�t the old toilet-flushing routing; this is an appropriate part of the music, no more tacked on than anything this band does.

However, I doubt if anyone is going to take my word on the basis of a well-timed cackle, so I�d better be more specific. Lofgren plays a vicious, brash guitar, choosing short runs and snatches of melody (again, like Stills on �Rock and Roll Woman,� and again, with more flash and less formality), working around choruses. Each song moves back and forth and into highs and lows with a great sense of surprise that is built on repitition. These is a moment of searing, wonderful intensity in each of his Rockin� Side songs that is repeated, and given that repetition it gains strength each time it�s repeated; the new eruption is a surprise because you are into the flow of the song, you know the good moment is coming, but each time it�s better than it was before (it seems) and you�re knocked out.

Though Lofgren is all over the place it never seems like he�s showing off; it all sounds like a group. He has a habit of making vocal asides in the middle of a song (best in �Moontears�) that are the equivilant of Mick Jagger�s dancing in terms of the way they set his songs on fire. Grin has the committment and the brittle emotion the early Kinks showed us with stuff like �You Really Got Me,� �Something Better Beginning,� and especially �I�m Not Like Everybody Else.� And when they play their dreamy stuff they at least approach the kind of detachment — that musing sensibility — that made it possible for Davies to write �Sunny Afternoon� a.nd �Waterloo Sunset.� So if you want references, this band, whose guts, finesse, and delight must come from a sense of their own novelty, is a combination of the Buffalo Springfield and the Kinks, though in many ways they are already better than the former band, and certainly possess an innocence that Ray Davies probably lacked when he was in his mother�s womb.

These songs of Lofgren�s insinuate themselves into whatever you�re doing. I picked a line out of �Moontears� - or it picked itself out — �You ask me if it�s right to love another guy, first I say yes AND THEN I SAY WHY!� that has the simple desperation about something not too big (not as big as The Fate of the World, say) that sums up the best of this band�s music. What matters here is not lyrics but a sound and a sense Of the lyric — which you get from Lofgren growling �moooooooooontrs� or chanting �End unkind, end unkind, END UNKIND ...� and so on.

The Dreamy Side of this record is as profusely arranged as a Fred Astaire movie, just as the Rockin� Side is as tough as an old 45. There are strings, harps, and even Graham Nash singing on a cut. (To be honest, I didn�t notice him. The lp copy says he�s there, but I figure he�s not and it�s just part of the concept of the side; they simply paid for the use of the name.) The last cut on the side, �Soft Fun,� is (like �End Unkind,� the last Rockin� cut) the ultimate expression of what Lofgren is trying to do with he genre. It has everything: enormous flourishes of strings, a beginning that features little children singing, a sound that comes close to one of Neil Young�s super-production numbers but never takes itself nearly as seriously. Lofgren is doing just what he says — having soft fun. The whole side is remarkably moving fluff, and its sentiment is on a level with old Crystals songs like �He�s Sure the Boy I Love� or the Ronettes� �Walking in the Rain.�

I�m raving because of the rock and roll, but I love the other side too. Lofgren, whether playing guitar as he did that night on tv or just being marvellous on �Hi, Hello Home,� is emerging as a major talent, and I guess he�s the kind of tough rocker who, as Lester says, has to be warm and loving deep down, just like Elvis. Good as this album is, at any rate, I think Lofgren is just hitting his stride. If I�m right, he also represents the thinnest and most vital tradition we have, the tradition of the rockers. While there isn�t the slightest hint of any boxed and wrapped �tradition,� his best songs have the spirit, not the form, of �That�ll Be the Day.�

So stay outta planes, Nils.

Greil Marcus