STEELY D AN The Royal Scam (ABC)

In keeping with our growing interest in media and gossip, this review is written in the manner that John D. Ehrlichman, the novelist, once referred to as 'modified , limited hangout.'

The other day, I received a phone call from Lester Bangs, of this publication, saying that he would like me to review the new album by Steely Dan.

'I don't know anything about Steely Dan,' I said. What I didn't say was that I keep thinking that Steely Dan is the name of the karate champion who will have lost a split decision to Muhammad Ali by time this sees print.

'I'd be interested in youropinion,' Lester said. In Ehrlichman's circles, this is called 'stroking.'

I leapt to the bait. 'Are they the guys who did 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number'?'

Lester said I was right. My historical credentials established, I agreed to review the album if he would do a certain thing, irrelevant to the present topic and therefore deleted, for me. He agreed.

Then he hit me with it. Having implicated me in his foul conspiracy, he proceeded to give me the bad news. Not only did he need the review immediately (my original reason for hesitation, for normally, I am pleased to help Lester in any way I can), he needed it so quickly that there would be no time fora copy to be sent to me through the mails from the usual promotional sources. 1 would have to go to a record store and buy a copy, for which CREEM would ^reimburse me.

I agreed, and I think my desire to have this part of the conversation on the record is understandable.

All of this is by way of explaining how I found myself in what 1 shall now call the Consumer Position. I had in my possession the latest LP by a big-time rock group, seal still unbroken, music still unheard. I had it because a highly regarded rock critic suggested that it was worth my while to spend my own money for it. You know the feeling.

I admired the cover for a while. It is a nice picture, in subdued nocturnal tones, of a bum sleeping on a stone bench, probably in front of the main branch of the New York Public Library. The skyscrapers around him are topped off with the heads of fiferce prehistoric animals such as used to menace Raquel Welch in her early period-. Pretty suggestive. Heavy stuff.

Then I figured, well, I'd better play the little bugger. I at least owe Lester that, no matter how much of a hurry he's in .

So I did. I played it through, listening to it closely. I played it again. I played it while I went into the next room and attended to other matters. 1 am playing it now. I don't think it's going to do any good.

The crafty little thing keeps slipping out of my head. I've accomplished one thing, though. Now I know what 'hook' means. A hook is a memory aid, something that sticks in your mind. This record doesn't have any of them. I wonder if the people who made this record would recognize it if they heard it on the car radio.

That's a legitimate question, by the way, and in most cases, I bet the answer would be 'No.' Because after several albums, Steely Dan has arrived in the place where the Byrds started out. That is to say, a front man—two front men, in this case— backed up by a group of ace session men. Those guys can play anything, and on this album, they do.

They are right down into the soft, oozy center of a certain kind of American pop music. I think it started with those so-called 'fusion' groups, Miles Davis alumni spinoffs—Weather Report, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, that crowd. Just a lot of sound swirling around, very busy, no identifiable melody. Hippie Muzak. The closest thing to a melody I could find is a rip-off of Stan Kenton's old theme, 'Artistry in Rhythm.' Very modem.

Then there are the lyrics, which are buried in all this viscosity, and are sung in a manner that makes a lyric sheet obligatory. Some of them are about things. 'Kid Charlemagne' seems to be about that guy who manufactured acid in San Francisco. 'Don't Take Me Alive' is about somebody like Howard Unruh or Charles Whitman. 'Everything You Did' is dead serious about those kinky little domestic psychodramas Randy Newman is so funny about. The rest are those little substitutes for crossword puzzles that are harder to figure out because, there isn't any answer. Dylan has a lot to answer for. He made bad poets think songs could be about anything (or nothing) that ran through their uniquely beautiful minds.

There's one line I like, though: 'Before the fall/When they wrote it on the wall/When there wasn't even any Hollywood.'

For a class exercise, try singing that to the tune of 'The Sounds of Silence.'

There. I've almost done it. I've almost reviewed the record. I've talked about the cover and the music and the lyrics. I haven't talked about the sound. The sound is nice. I haven't talked about file producer. His name is Gary Katz, and he produced this record. I haven't compared the record to Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver. The song about Unruh or Whitman reminds me of Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver. Do I have to talk about anything else to make this a mainstream contemporary pop record review? I hope not, because the record has finished playing, and I can't remember it any more. I have to go call Lester Bangs and tell him I want my money back.

BOBMARLEY& THE WAILERS Rastaman Vibration (Island)

One could certainly have hoped for something better than this after the tuneful, rhythmic, and downright commercial Natty Dread, the sizzling live album, and the haunting, Lee Perry produced single of last fall (available on import only, and get the British pressing, because the Jamaican one's mastered offcenter) 'Jah Live.' The very fact that Marley had gotten back together with Lee Perry, the man who made the Waiters' greatest records (available as Rasta Revolution and African Herbsman on Trojan), had me thinking that perhaps the whole next album would have his distinctive touch.

No way. Instead, we got an LP cluttered with re-makes and cliches, containing maybe two or three good tupes and a lot morC of the boredom that the Waiters, at their worst, are capable of producing. Marley's super-righteous Nyah-man pose looks pretty silly behind weak lyrics and barely competent tunes. For instance, one bjg standout is 'Night Shift,' a weird rewrite of the classic 'All Night/All Right' from the Lee Perry days. 'Who the Cap Fit,' 'Johnny Was,' 'Cry to Me,' and 'Rat Race' are disgracefully monotonous, lacking the laid-back, yet intense energy of the best reggae.

'Positive Vibration,' basically a catalogue of Rasta cliches, still has a nice hummable melody, and 'Roots, Rock Reggae' with its references to the Hot 100, is pretty funny, but 'Want More' is a song with real potential that only comes out in the live show. Nowhere on this album is there a tune like 'No Woman No Cry,' or a rhythmic workout like 'Lively Up Yourself ' or 'So Jah Seh,' or a good set of lyrics like 'Jah Live' or '3 O'Clock Roadblock.'

Getting Perry in to produce some tracks would be a good idea, and I'm certainly not going to write off the Waiters after seeing them live this last tour, but you should know that by the time you read this, Island will have released albums by the Maytals and the Heptones, Virgin will have U. Roy and the Mighty Diamonds in the stores, and Columbia's longawaited Peter Tosh masterpiece (which, from what I've heard, should walk all over this album) 'Legalize It' will be out. Go see the Waiters live and fill in your collection of old stuff. Pass on this one.

Ed Ward

STEVE MARRIOTT Marriott (A&M)

At heart, Steve Marriott, solo star, is not all that different from Stevie Marriott, Humble Pie front man, but those differences are resounding. As similar as much of this basic material is to past group efforts, what distinguishes the album most of all is its conservatism and good taste — neither of which could be considered attributes of Humble Pie. At its worst, that group could be one of the most oppressively mindless boogie bands around, but more often the blokes were just out for a roaring good time, and it worked.

Marriott has recorded one side of this album with a British band and one with an American band. Naturally, the former flaunts a little more flash and showy lead guitar from Marriott (as well as. a cocky little autobiographical song called 'East Side Struttin''). I prefer the American side, if only because the songs themselves are better focussed. The other factors that separate it from the British side are that it uses horns, Marriott had the class to choose Red Rhodes for pedal steel over the more obvious L. A: country rockers, and it continues Steve's lifelong infatuation with Ray Charles ('You Don't Know Me').

Beyond that, there's not much to say about this oh so professional album. The arrangements are impeccable in a totally predictable way, as is the soloing from both Marriott and his sidemen. A few other songs (especially 'Star In My Life') stick in the mind due to a heretofore untapped flair for melody. But more than anything else, Marriott's solo debut reminds me of that wisecrack white critics used to always make of Motown stage shows: 'It's so perfect that every bead of sweat is in place.' That's certainly true in this case — with this album, Marriott joins that growing list of ageing superstars who sacrifice spontaneity for control, who substitute technique for feeling and fresh ideas, and who turn out solo sets that are as instantly forgettable as they are utterly competent.

John Morthland

JETHRO TULL Too Old To Rock 'n' Roll, Too Young To Die (Chrysalis)

Artistic maladjustment is never agreeable to write about even if your inclination is to show empathy with the underachieving dog. Ian Anderson (and any mention pf Jethro Tull's 'sidemen' is only self-serving, like admiring the spaces in a latticework) is maddeningly eccentric, maddening because he does nothing with his considerable and limited talents. After eight years one can anticipate how much one will be moved (not very), how much one will enpy (some), how much there will be. To Old To Rock is chipdip for the mind, only yielding as music as you are willing to scoop out, usually less.

This is by no means a bad Tull album in the tradition of Passion P/ay of Thick as a Brick, although it presents itself (falsely) as a concept album as did the Kink's Schoolboys, Ziggy Stardust and name your favorite. The only uniting factor is Anderson's stunning ability to couch a well-conceived idea in a cushion of contradicting strings and Donovanesque vocalizing, C.g. 'From a Dead Beat to an Old Greaser,' in which some pointed words of loss are drained of their lyric-sheet starkness by a cushy MOR recitation.

The feeling throughout the album is one of missed connections, of infuriating amenities, and a few blissful wisps. Anderson/Tull remains a kneejerk capsule for a ready audience of swallowers. Not an indication that the empire is falling, but certainly a reflection of its decline and continued greying.

Richard C. Walls

ELTONJOHN Here and There (MCA)

Here and there but mostly nowhere. Even though Elton John isn't for me the Lord of the Hooks, I was surprised to find his obligatory live album sounding so, well, obligatory. Considering his tinselly theatricality and bouncing-butterball bravado, I hardly expected 'an album so faggedly colorless. Side one — which includes 'Skyline Pigeon,' 'Crocodile Rock,' and a sickly romancer, 'Love Song' — was recorded in London during a command performance for the Queen, and enduring those songs, along with the insipidly cute 'Honky Cat,' is doubtless the most severe ordeal weathered by the monarchy in this century.

Side two was recorded during a more boisterous concert at Madison Square but never really erupts because the opener, 'Funeral for a Friend,' gets to the cemetery with the speed of a three-wheeled hearse. 'Take Me to the Pilot' features an excruciating Alvin Leeish vocal, 'Bennie and the Jets' slogs groggily, and 'Rocket Man' lazily .circles the earth, an orbital bore. Not only are these numbers among EJ's least compelling songs (I would have preferred 'The Bitch is Back' and 'Meal Ticket'); despite being the most successful popstar on spaceship earth, he won't even take the time and expense to work with a decent band. The crew here has all the personality of a dehumidifier. Captain Fantastic was my favorite Elton elpee because though it was acridly pinched, some real emotions came spilling through. This stillborn live album and Rock of the Westies return Elton to his true role: as rock's Mr. Potatohead.

I'd like to run him through a Vegematic.

James Wolcott

PUNK ROCK RISES AGAIN!!

RAMONES

(Sire)

I don't wanna walk around with you I don't wanna walk arpund with you I don't wanna walk around with you So why you wanna walk around with me?

1 don't wanna walk around with you.

The most radical album of the past six years isn't Bowie's, isn't Ferry's, isn't Eno's or Reed's. Kraftwerk couldn't have conceited of such Teutonic conquest in a dozen light years and it's doubtful Bob Marley could've ingested enough ganja to perceive its decidedly non-Rasta dimensions. Oddest of all, it's an album that probably would have stood a 99% chance of being dismissed as archaic, or at best an anachronism, had it been released four or even three years ago. Even if it turns out not to be the clarioh squawk of a raw new age, the Ramones' Ramones is so strikingly different, so brazenly out of touch with prevailing modes as to constitute i bold swipe at the status quo.

As such, Ramones threatens hard rock's current ruling caste (Bad Co., Zep, Frampton, et al.) with a razor sharp E-string to the throat. (Most 'progressive' programmers will assuredly turn away from this album, toke up and thumb-cue that new StillsStonesQueenWakeman onto turntable A.)

Ramones: four guys, 14 great two-piinute songs, three great chords. Proficiency, poetry, taste, Art have nothing to do with the Ramones. Nor do blues, improvisatory solos or pedal steel. White, American rock 'n' roll is what they practice and in this sense the Ramones are the latest -speed-crazed cruisers to drive chicken down that white line that extends straight from Eddie Cochran to Iggy to their own Bowery loft.

Ramones reads like a rock 'n' roll reactionary's manifesto. The kind of driven, primal, mindblasting r&r that fueled Stooges fanclubs and formed the editorial backbone of fanzines from Who Put the Bomp to Punk comes alive in 'Blitzkrieg Bop,' '1 Wanna Be Your Boyfriend' and ,vChain Saw.' The infusion of the Kinks, Herman's Hermits, fake Mersey accents, DC5, MC5 and BCR into the Ramones' music is all the more crucial, vital to the survival of rock 'n' roll. Once the whole ballgame; r&r has been reduced to a less than flourishing subgenre whose 70's mutation from 'hard' to 'heavy' has crowned ponderous middle-aged labor unions like Zep, Bad Co. and Foghat giants in the field. Serving its radical function, the Ramones' debut drives a sharp wedge between the stale ends of a contemporary music scene bloated with graying superstars and overripe for takeover. Right now, the Ramones have their hands on the wheel.

Can the first 'New York band' to record survive? Should we expect Joey, Dee Dee, Tommy and John-' ny Ramone to 'grow musically'; to do their first sensitive ballad backed by the London Festival Orch on Album #5 or collaborate with Ken. Russell on their tenth anniversary? Who cares? The rambunctious speed & noise equation outlined by 'Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World' or 'Loudmouth' will do just fine for right now. If their successors are one third as good as the Ramones, we'll be fixed for life. Right fucking, on.

*1976, Taco Tunes/Bleu Disque Music.

Gene Sculatti

THE RUNAWAYS

(Mercury)

Don't let the teevee tube or-the records being released fool you! Teenage America's spirit is not sagging (empty helium balloons surrounded by Paul McCartney records). CB radios, disco, the Fonz, the cast of Welcome Back, Kotter: THAT'S SHELLAC, JACK!! Punk nouveau is hot as blazes, spreading fast, groping even into Iowa, and very, very soon (maybe tomorrow) punk rock is going to start hips shaking on every streetcorner, wiping out the boredom set deep in every teenager's eyes (put to snooze by Elton John and assorted wimps). That's the Punk Rock Revival II, meaning no more clean-cut pop and lotsa dirty, badass rock 'n' roll. Kim Fowley knows it's coming. Patti Smith and the Ramones are perpetrating it. And damn, the Runaways have grasped IT!

Calling themselves 'Queens of Noise' in their anthem 'American Nights' (as teenage a call-to-arms as you'll ever hear), the Runaways have earned the right to scream 'I'm sixteen and proud,' play sloppy, and strut like they were the Rolling Stones. The Runaways don't try to hide the fact that their band was obviously spawned in a garage, educated on the shakin' streets, and measured in terms of its own sexuality. Get this straight: these girls do not display any S&M image, chained to the throne of the Shangri-Las, nor do they rate their 'tits & ass' over their music like Fanny. This is a band, not just a band of girls, which embraces the frantic energy of being teenage in much the same way as the Dictators.

When the first chord strikes thebeat on this debut elpee, you sense an urgent commitment, or rather, a need to surv/ive against the seemingly endless barrier of thirty-year old geezers acting like decrepit clowns as they mimic a Chuck Berry riff (from the Allman Bros, to Mr. Muscle and his Macho - Boogie Kings: take your pick). It's the vision which charged a 'new breed' (as the Barbarians put it) into accepting the pulsating rhythms of the beat as op* posed to the slick professionalism of chugging Fabianesque bands (Translation: Question Mark vs. David Crosby).

The Runaways epitomize that punk rock vision. No. 1: they represent the first all girl band npt at the mercy of some manipulative male producer; no. 2: they are sixteen, high school to the core, and rooted in the belief of total teenage rampage; and no. 3: they are ready and willing to stomp upon the professional groin. Just listen to 'Thunder' or 'Secrets' from this album, and note the transcendence of their inner impulses over the banality of the material or the awkwardness in performing even the most basic riffs. The Runaways' album can easily be earmarked right alongside the first Stooges record in its expression of teenage passions, its slurring of lyrics into pouting mono-syllables, and its final call to dance to that rock 'n' roll beat.

Punk rock represents teenage liberation quite economically: those off-key, out-of-tune, primitive screams and hyena gyrations still remain the purest form for expressing teenage desire and arrogance (from the Shadows of Knight to the MC5). The Runaways exist still in that tradition, but with a difference: they're younger, snottier, wilder, and more depraved, PLUS they're GIRLS. In their exuberance and their passionate screams, the Runaways will stand. A millenium will pass: Thin Lizzy or Steely Dan or whatever will fade into a final vinyl oblivion. But the spirit of bands like the Runaways will remain fixed in the teenage consciousness forever, coded subliminally into two universal key words: 'SHAKE IT!!'

Robot A. Hull

THE MODERN LOVERS

(Berserkeley)

Velvets meets Stooges meets Doors meets boy next door. Who has this sinus condition. Tho not from nasty habits. (Most of the reputed $12,000 dropped by Warners on John Cale to produce Modern Lovers demos must have gone up somebody's nose, but not Jonathan Richman's.) Good garage band production, especially for 1972, before people were supposed to be conscious of such things as true rock art (versus Bowie/Bob Ezrin ship-in-bottle tactics behind the board). Only one guitar solo... which makes one more than on the Ramones album, which is however more consciously dumb: vis-a-vis the Ramones don't sing about Pablo Picasso or Cezanne or things being 'bleak in the morning sun.'' Two great organ cops from 'Sister Ray.' I hear this keyboard player now works for Elliott Murphy, which I suppose is the '70s equivalent of going from David Blue's sideman to being I;ric Anderson's.

Jonathan Richman is nothing if not a Lou Reed protege.. .apparently when the Velvets were sequestered in Boston's student ghetto in late '68, Jonathan found his guru in Lou. At least it wasn't Mel Lyman. I've heard that as soon as he could play stalk through the parks of Cambridge, declaiming his songs to anyone within earshot, yelling things like 'I'm not a hippie! I'm not stoned!' Ellen Willis wrote about the Lovers in The New Yorker (for Chrissakes!) and described Jonathan as wearing a T-shirt with 'I love my life!' scrawled in pencil across the front, dancing alone in front of a jukebox. Everybody's loser. Jonathan, like Lou, enjoys pointing fingers at girls who wear triangular glasses, but the difference is that Lou crawls after his princesses and them spits on them...Jonathan just crawls. And then writes songs like 'She Cracked.'

• Reminds me of a conversation I had with a 15-year-old on a bus in 1968. She had just gotten out of the psycho ward after kicking a meth habit. 'All I could listen to was the Doors. It was like Jim Morrison could see inside my head better tharv any shrink...now I can't stand their records.' She later picked up a mild junk habit, and once when presented with the opportunity to ball her my own meth use negated my abilities. I digress, although somewhere in the larger digression lies some justification for the kind of people who can scrawl 'I love my life!' on their shirts and get written up in The New Yorker.

Okay, the Modern Lovers album is good stuff. It's the album Transformer could have been (how important it is that we recall the dates). In a year that has brought us such dross as Station to Station, Coney Island Baby and The Eagles' Greatest Hits, you owe it to yourself to buy this record. Probably easiest available by mail direct from:

Berserkeley Records 1199 Spruce St. Berkeley Calif. 94707

, $3.99 plus 50d postage and handling.

Peter Laughner

GRAM PARSONS AND THE FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS Sleepless Nights (A&M)

Back in 1968, when hippies started to approach country music as a reaction to psychedelic sludge, my friend Reagan from Little Rock couldn't understand why I liked it. 'I'd rather listen to the original,' he said, and pretty soon I discovered that I would too. Then the hippie stuff started getting pretty good and after a while, it began to influence mainstream country. Now we see a failed folksinger from West Virginia, Emmy Lou Harris, in the C&W Top 10 and Willie and Waylon getting played on FM rock stations. As far as I can tell, it's been good for everybody.

So A&M discovered that between their outtakes from their old Burritos albums and Warners' outtakes from Grievous Angel, they had themselves a genuine historical relic— 1970-vintage hippie country. But the thing is, the Flying Burrito Brothers really were one of the bands Reagan was talking about. I really hoped I'd hear some great country-rock version of these songs, the kind Parsons was capable of at his best (and the New Riders, and the Eagles, and the last couple versions of the Burritos), but no. For one thing, the listless, bored-sounding performances of the Burritos tracks shows why they were outtakes, and the instrumental work is execrable. The three duets with Emmy Lou Harris aren't much, either, with the exception of 'The Angels Rejoiced Last Night,' which I may like because it isn't one of those done-to-death songs like the rest of album is packed with.

Save your money and buy one of Merle Haggard's thirty-something albums, or one of Dolly Parton's dozen-and-a-half, or even (if pristine but boring country-rock is your style) one of Emmy Lou's albums. Sleepless Nights is a nod-out.

Ed Ward

TODDRUNDGREN Faithful (Bearsville)

Did you know that Keith Relf died? I didn't until last night. But I don't care. First of all, 1 didn't know the guy personally, and second, I got the new Todd Rundgren album. And side one of Faithful renders Relf, as well as Jimmy Page and any of the rest of the old Yardbirds, along with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys and Dylan and the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, as dead as yesterday's news, whether they're already dead or not. From the Dylanish non-vocal on 'Most Likely You Go Your Way' to each eccentric Ringo drumbeat on 'Rain,' to the note-for-note copies of the guitar solos, this sideful of Sixties greatest hits is such perfect imitation that, unwarned, you can't tell the difference. If he doesn't prove on side one of this that he can do everything that everybody else can do better, Todd at least proves once and for all that he can do it exactly as' well. Which just goes to show that one man's art is another's technology.

But what does it mean to you? Well it saves you the hassle of having to dig all thfese songs out of your record collection the next time you want to hear them. And if you don't have them, it saves you the hassle, the money, and perhaps even the peril you might encounter on the, way to the record store of having to buy these cuts. In other words, it renders your life just that much more modern.

Not only that: the record also comes with a side two, which, coincidentally, is the best set of originals Todd has done since Something/ Anything. While one may suspect that somewhere in these new tracks lurks the cosmic bullshit that has plagued his output of late, I'll be damned if I can find it. With Faithful Todd appears to have returned to ear(|h and to the roots which he displays so much affection for on side one. 'Black And White,' the album's best number, is one of those rockers that manages to marry melody with rebellious abandon in the tradition of John Lennon's best Beatle material without compromising either. Also like Lennon, Todd rocks with a sense of humor here, particularly on 'Boogies (Hamburger Hell)' where he works in lyrics from the Burger King theme song. Perhaps because he honored Philly soul with a medley on Wizard/True Star, he doesn't do any soul covers on side one. But on side two, he lets those deep roots show with the lush and heroically corny 'The Verb 'To Love'. '

Considering his professed aversion to doing any more love songs, it's strange that out of the six originals here, three are ballads that might loosely fit that category. While this may not quite be a recant of previous statements—he does hedge his bets with lyrics at least in 'The Verb' that deride the notion of love songs—the original side of Faithful is a far cry from the sterile bombast and cosmic rhetoric of his Utopia stuff. The other side... Well, whether that was his cynical responce to his record company when they asked him, as has been rumored, to 'give us hits,' or not, it's still fun to listen to.

This whole album may be a cynical attempt at commercialism. If so, I'm still not put off. It works, and so does he (you think making those exact copies wa$ a joke?). In fact, you'd probably have to call him the hardest working cynic in show business, bless his golden heart.

Robert Duncan

MILES DAVIS Agharta (Columbia)

RETURN TO FOREVER Romantic Warrior (Columbia)

WEATHER REPORT Black Market (Columbia)

LONNIE LISTON SMITH & THE COSMIC ECHOES Reflections of a Golden Dream (Flying Dutchman)'

'Anybody can make a record; and try to do something new, to sell; but to me a record is more than something new, and 1 don't care how much it sells. You have to capture some feeling — you can't just play like a fucking machine. You can't even turn on with any kind of dope and get any feeling to play if you don't have it in your heart. No matter what you do, it won't make you play any better. You are what you are, no matter what you do. I can be loud and no good, soft and no good, in 7/8 and no good. You can be black and po good, white and no good.'

—Miles Davis, on Don Ellis' Electric Bath, in a Blindfold Test, Do&nbeat, June 27, 1968

BLACKMORE'S RAINBOW Rainbow Rising (Oyster/Polydor)

Wow, a new Ritchie Blackmore album! Hot off the trots and ready to guitar-masticate your mind until even the whole rest of you is just one big blob of ABC gum. I mean, you gotta admire Ritchie. Why? Because he's a total asshole. Pouts, snits, wears black leather like it means something and even brags about it. 'I wear black leather and I don't give a damn,' he told interviewer Cameron Crowe in the pages of this very magazine last year. So you can see that this palooka is no chump to bait. He also told Crowe he keeps his business offices in Germany because he empathizes with the raw deal the Germans got in World War II. The very sight of his nose epitomizes danger. A tiger. A wolfschmidt. A guitar wiredsurd now trying to be a true star.

So how does he stand up in the image/media/public-persona sweepstakes? Well, he could pull crows to a cornpatih at sunset. Because he be mucho macho tough mean biznez badass. Look at the evidence. Throws steaks around restaurants if they miss his specifications by even one ion. Alienates just about everybody around by similarly abrasive sans rationale behavior. Gives better than average interviews because like Td Nugent he has absolutely nothing good to say about anybody or anything.

Now, Deep Purple, Ritchie's old venue, were (I'm assuming that, as I've heard, they broke up. These days you never know.) a formula band in it for the money pure and very simple. Jon Lord was the only one of them with any brains, in fact he was smart enough to realize from the top that this whole D.P. gig was just a shuck to cop big bread, which •at the time I interviewed him he of course could not admit for obvious reasons so instead he copped off with 'Of course we're journeymen, and what's wrong with that?'

But Ritchie. Well, Ritchie was famed for, among other cakewalks, laying his guitar on the stage and strolling up and down the length of its strings. With jackboots yet. He treated his fretboard like Huey Long would a recalcitrant Negro. Which was fine by me. I mean, haven't we all had it up to here with guitars, aren't there at least230,000 too many electric guitars in the world, weren't you glad even in '65 when Townshend first smashed his to' smithereens? Sure. But you'd be surprised what happens when you goto interview these guys. When I asked Ritchie why he liked to takeconstitutionals on his fretboard, he responded straightfaced with nary a hint of irony: 'Yeah, I always wanted to play with my toes... I thought it would feel good. I should imagine a person if they had no hands might, get into something.. .You know Django Reinhardt? He was my idol. He could only move his hand, and he created fantastic music.'

Deed he did. But Ritchie saying that, in the light of his music, is Kind of like Kiss letting on they been bigly fluenced (if not financed) by Alban Berg. I mean forget it. When D. Purp were still alive, lots of people thought Ritchie was a hot hailstrorhming guitarro, much better perhaps than the sonic schlubs he hadda work with, and I imagine Ritchie yvas not the last person in the world to come to this conclusion, so here's the second big rave-up from his OWN group Rainbow, the very title of which most aptly demonstrates the man's gift for imagery.

And yeah, he is quite a hot mashdown metal marksman, he doth cook both in D. Purp and hereabouts, but one cooker on any axe duz not a great Rock Arid Roll Band make, which is why I am not-going to comment on any of the individual songs on Rainbow Rising, because they are not in truth songs at all but merely excuses for Ritchie to go apeshit and trod upon his fretboard with his palms, sweat-beaded forehead, belt buckle, dropped hangnails, distocated ribs, etc. I think he also does something with his fingers but we gotta sell this magazine in supermarkets and you know how those housewife/mothers are.

Ritchie plays herein like he was being chased from opposite channels by a blowtorch-wielding PLO terrorist and that guy with the flesh mask and saw in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I think they're. chasing Ritchie into the heart of thfe Cold Center. Because if right and left are both after your ass and you can't leave the stage where the fuck do you go but upfront and center and solemn? So he ends up as stultified as he ever musta felt in Purple, even though he's supposedly calling the shots. Nobody in this band can write, the singer whose name I don't know and why bother to find out might even be Ritchie himself is every lame Rob Plant/Oz Osbourne/Jack Bruce/Ian Gillian limey stereotype squealayakoff you ever heard, which maybe is why Ritchie reserves side two for two extended pieces where he extends his guitar until it begins to resemble a taffy pull performed by Washington, while crossing the Delaware with' one stooge standing back on shore holding the other end. Plus which all the good stuff he played on Deep Purple in Rock I'd swear was copped straight out from the MC5, Fred Smith and Wayne Kramer who really were rock 'n' roll whether they wore jackets of any kind because they certainly gave a damn. So do I, but not about Blackmore, his Rainbow, or ego-tripping guitarists trying to build mystiques by living totally infantile anal-aggressive lifestyles and bragging about it while putting out music as slop-ridden as the walls of whatever restaurant housed Ritchie's worst temper tantrum.

Lester Bangs