HEADED FOR HOME

JOHN FOGERTY Centerfield (Warner Bros.)

Mitchell Cohen

I have a better title, except Malamud already claimed it: The Natural. John Fogerty’s sound could never be pinned down to time or region; spring “Who’ll Stop The Rain” or “Lodi” on a panel of musicologists 30, 40 years from now and ask them to place it, and odds are there’ll be a lot of baffled head-scratching. There’s some New Orleans bounce, some Memphis thump, a bit of a blue yodel in the voice, and the spare directness of blues. The bite of ’50s rock ’n’ roll, the hickory-smoked twang of Henry Fonda in The Grapes Of Wrath. All this stuff, and it still only takes three notes to identify the music’s maker.

That is, if your musical memory bank accepted deposits prior to Watergate. I’d have thought this was one of those “man who needs no introduction” situations, but when Z-100 here in N.Y.C. first played “The Old Man Down The Road” and asked its listeners who the singer is, one woman hesitantly said, “Sam The Sham?” Not quite, lady (I’d have loved to hear Creedence tackle “Wooly Bully,” though, now that you mention it). It has been nine years of Fogerty’s voice—if not his imprint—missing from the rock prairie. So first off, welcome back, John.

Formalities out of the way, to Centerfield we go, and smack into that low-clouds, watch-your-ass, middle-of-nowhere mystery music that was so arresting all the way back when The Big Chill generation thought the frost would never come. Fogerty knew better, and that’s why Green River and Cosmo’s Factory can be played to this day without causing guffaws, while so much Bay Area turn-ofthe-decade rock has mildewed beyond listenability. “The Old Man Down The Road” is a tightly coiled cousin to rural blues with lyrics like a Stephen King interpretation of the Old Testament: “He make the river call your lover/He make the barking of the hound/Put a shadow ’cross the window/When the Old Man comes around.” What’s the geezer doing in the road? Fogerty never tells, and good for him.

Fogerty is a guy with several calling cards, so one function of Centerfield is as resume. You want rockabilly, he bows towards Sun and does a one-man imitation of the Tennessee Three on “Big Train (From Memphis),” perhaps the least sappy Elvis tribute to come down the pike. You want a Fogerty rock-as-rock song (remembering, perhaps, “Rockin’ All Over The World” or “Traveling Band”), he obliges with the altogether infectious “Rock And Roll Girls.” You want to hear him let loose his oddball diction, and damned if “Searchlight” doesn’t come out “soichlight,” just as you hoped it would. Like EB ’84, Centerfield is an album that would win even if it just sounded the way it does, hit the right notes, recreated the right spirit.

Waiting more than nine years for nine songs does tend to raise one’s expectations. We in the rock-writer trade have been using Fogerty as a kind of yardstick for ages now, surmising that Springsteen, Seger, the Blasters, the DelLords, et.al., wake up every morning and hope it’s the day they’ll write their “Bad Moon Rising.” If Fogerty’s felt the pressure of his grand-old-masterhood (ironic since back when his band was boinin’ up the charts with incredible regularity, they were often snottily dismissed as a “singles machine”), Centerfield doesn’t show signs of strain. Only “Mr. Greed,” a snarling indictment of a money-grabber (“You’re a devil of consumption/I hope you choke”: this from the writer of “Fortunate Son”) lands with a thud.

Two tracks, the title song and “I Can’t Help Myself”—not the Four Tops tune, but a serious contender for hitdom, with or without an Arthur Baker remix—express Fogerty’s enthusiasm as he steps up to take his cuts. And the LP’s most ambitious song, “I Saw It On T.V.,” takes a not especially original idea, tracing our recent history through tube touchstones (Ike, Elvis, JFK, Beatles, Vietnam, Watergate), and makes it work. Not because of individual images, but because of Fogerty’s muted passion, and a terrific ending. After all the icons are toted up, he switches to the point of view of an old man in a rocking chair, embittered by the loss of a son, angered by the betrayal by his government: “The light, he says, at the end of the tunnel/Was nothin’ but a burglar’s torch.” Then, after the final chorus, he strums the guitar licks from “Who’ll Stop The Rain.” He knows that his music is part of our collective past as well, and that we didn’t see it all on TV: some of it we heard on records.

FOREIGNER Agent Provocateur (Atlantic)

Have to admit I’ve had some good times inspired by Foreigner. Why, just this afternoon I dozed off watching MTV (understandably so) and had a pleasant daydream involving Madonna and Foreigner’s Lou Gramm. (He clawed feverishly at her bare belly button howling “Feels Like The First Time” while she saucily wriggled out of his grasp and heatedly cooed “Like A Virgin.”)

And I can’t forget what a pivotal role “Cold As Ice” played in adding to my enjoyment of Joe “Francis Albert” Piscopo’s “I Love Rock ’N’ Roll” medley (“You are chilly, baby!”) anymore than I can erase the glad memory of first hearing “Urgent” come flying off the radio and realizing that the volcanic sax solo was brought forth from the mouth of Mr. Junior Walker. Best of all was the time I worked in a department store and watched my friend Al cruise the hardware aisles approaching attractive young women with declarations of, “I’m hot-blooded, check it and see!” Yes, on more than one occasion the music of Foreigner has brought a little bit of joy into my life.

Agent Provocateur is not one of those occasions.

On this, their latest excursion into the gaping jaws of pulverizing mediocrity, our boys continue to wrestle with an all-too-turgid identity crisis—they still can’t decide whether it’s stupider to aspire to poor man’s Led Zep status or settle for being a weightier verison of Chicago. Some swinging choice, huh?

Either way they lose and this record is simply jammed with one dull defeat after another. Oh, I will admit that “Tooth and Naij” ’s intro provides a vicious kick and that drummer Dennis Elliott treats his drums as if they were the skulls of his worst enemies. But the minute Lou Gramm enters with his blowhard overkill vocals the jig is up and exit signs light up in your head. I mean, we’re talking Meat Loaf nuances here, folks.

I’ll further admit to almost liking “Down On Love” on which Lou’s bulldozing is only semiinsufferable. The rest is grandiose garbage which means three or four of these hand-wringing, teethgnashing epics will get saturation airplay. And the nominees are...

“I Want To Know What Love Is” you already know about, as the band suffers sensitively and Lou goes knock-knock-knockin’ on purgatory’s door. “Reaction To Action” is one of those futile crotch-grinders, the kind where the band takes turns whipping it out to see who has the biggest one. “A Love In Vain” is chock full of Novocaine pain and gutless agonizing. They all pale next to the strangulated intensity of “Stranger In My Own House,” in which Gramm gives himself a severe hernia trying to lift a couple hundred pounds of dumbbell angst off the floor. I don’t know about him, but the strain was killing me.

Lou, after this trial by vinyl, you and your buddies deserve a rest—a long rest.

Craig Zeller

BOB DYLAN Real Live (Columbia)

I remember the last time I interviewed Bob Dylan: it was on October 12, 1978 in front of 20,000 people at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens.

Dylan was onstage, and I was sitting in floor seat A30, literally front row center.

The interview took place during the middle of the concert when Dylan stepped up to the microphone and announced, “This next song is from an album you might remember called Planet Waves. It sold 12 copies.”

At which point I said, “Why?” Whereupon Bob turned to look at me and answered, shaking his head with a slight grin on his face; “I dunno, man. I dunno.”

I’d hate to be the person who’s gonna have to break the news to him about Real Live.

From Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde to Blood On The Tracks and Desire, Dylan’s greatest albums have always been released back to back. Even lesser masterpieces such as John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline as well as Self-Portrait and New Morning sound better when listened to in tandem.

Which is why, after the strength and clarity of 1983’s Infidels, I expected 1984 to herald the final combination of Dylan’s first one-i two punch of the ’80s.

Instead, we have Real Live: anl album which neither excites or' disappoints so much as it just sits there, immobile.

On the 10 tracks here, two are from Infidels (‘‘I And I” and “License To Kill”) and one is from Blood On The Tracks (“Tangled Up In Blue”). The remaining seven are from four of Dylan’s LPs released between 1963 and 1965.

What really angers about Real Live, however, is that it doesn’t add anything new to our picture of Dylan the musician. Unlike the savage, revisionist arrangements he helmed on Before The Flood, the versions on Real Live are competent, perfunctory, and flat. Even the Las Vegas stylings on Bob Dylan At Budokan gain new merit compared to the bar band boogie of “Highway 61 Revisited” or the self-parodying vocal inflections on “It Ain’t Me, Babe” evidenced here.

Certainly, as Infidels proved, Dylan is still in command of his voice in the studio, whether as a rocker (“Neighborhood Bully,” “Union Sundown”) or as a balladeer (“Sweetheart Like You”).

Why, then, he insists on hamming up his songs in public is anyone’s guess.

Granted, singing the same songs for almost a quarter of a century necessitates a certain reworking of the material periodically to prevent boredom from creeping in, but the way Dylan sings live these days, dragging out and milking every nuance and inflection as if he were recording a National Lampoon parody, will always remain a mystery to me.

My Mother chalks this up to misplaced nostalgia—and she may be right. I get the feeling that Real Live is supposed to be Bob Dylan’s Rock ’n’ Roll Animal-, but if that was his intention, he should’ve stuck with Mick Ronson, not Mick Taylor. The performances here don’t warrant being issued in album form; indeed, even as a radio broadcast they’d be barely interesting.

As it stands, Real Live (if I may paraphrase the words of another famous poet) is an album full of lots of sound and very little fury, signifying nothing.

Jeffrey Morgan

BRYAN ADAMS Reckless (A&M)

If you’re looking for a by-thebook rock star for the ’80s, you don’t have to go farther than the beginning of the alphabet. Mr. & Mrs. Adams can be proud: their son Bryan is so much of a straight arrow even his genes must be generic.

RATT BETWEEN THE UPS

RATT

(Time Coast/Atlantic)

Richard Riegel

Ratt have complained so much about being compared to Aerosmith maybe I should help ’em shake off that cliche. After all,

I thought the Big A were pretty hot pastramis back in their mid-’70s heyday, so I don’t appreciate then being compared to just any young pack of glitter vermin off the streets.

Entertainment Tonight true believers are yapping like crazy about all the supposedly common attributes of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy. It’s said that the twin garment baggies share not only the same given name and lead-shouter duties, but also the selfsame shrunkenheaddoll hairdos, not to mention the identical Jockey briefs size. The more historically-minded pundits bring up the fact that Aerosmith was already doing tunes entitled “Round And Round” and “Rats In The Cellar” when the future Ratts were just old enough to reach Mommy’s makeup for the first time.

Is it true that Ratt’s nothing more than a footnote to the Aerosmith epic? “That sounds like something you’d read in CREEM,” as Mick Jagger once said, probably when someone was trying to pin Steven Tyler’s communal lip farms on him. Thank Vishnu the success of Ratt’s debut album, Out Of The Cellar, has persuaded Atlantic to reissue the group’s earlier, privatelabel EP, so we can examine the origins of Ratt in depth and determine whether there really were any Aerosmiths in the woodshed pile.

I’ve listened to the six songs on this big 12-inch Ratt EP over and over, and I’ll be switched if any of them sound “that” close to Aerosmith. Even their respective debut-record versions of Rufus Thomas’s “Walkin’ The Dog” sound diff—Aerosmith’s is rhythmic & fluid, like the blues they thought they were emulating, whereas Ratt’s is big slabs of fuzz, exactly the metallic approach you’d expect from whippersnappers who came of age when leisure suits still walked the earth.

I guess Ratt’s own “Sweet Cheater” sounds like it could’ve been forged in the smithy of Aero, but the similarity may lie more in the tired old lyrical concept (title sez it all, trust me) than in the matching guitar rollercoasters. In fact, when I penetrate the deeper Ratt mazes of this EP, and catch songs like the semi-hit “Back For More,” or “U Got It,” or especially “You Think You’re Tough,” more and more what I hear is the stal ki ng-the-wi Id-uti lity-poles bumpdump of KISS! Yep, none other, forget the Tyler-Pearcy comparisons, you press dupes really should be matching notes on Ratt’s Robbin Crosby and old lizard-gonads Gene Simmons himself.

Check it out: Crosby’s got the same surgically-implanted platforms in his legs as Simmons does, and der neue Bingle’s tongue has been known to reach all the way to San Diego on big

nights. So that’s where Ratt got their endless-snotz riffs and nightof-the-living-bass-drums intro chunkers! You can marvel once more at the science of metallurgy for stamping out these Kissing cousins.

And I can confidently predict that each member of Ratt will make his own solo album by the end of this decade. (I got dibs on reviewing Bobby Blotzer’s.)

Generic? By the book? What kind of words are these to describe the guy who has the first new Top 10 LP of ’85? Accurate ones, as it turns out. Bryan Adams knows the rock ’n’ roll game cold and is solidly on top of it. “Reckless is released simultaneously as an album, chrome cassette, compact disc and 30-minute home video package, directed by Steve Barren,” reads his bio. Get the picture?

No? Hmmm. Well, check out the picture on the front cover. Adams has a suitably intense look on his face, while his hair is being carefully fan-blown and his forehead is being carefully lit. At the bottom of the frame are the letters which spell out the album’s title: RECKLESS. That’s at least worth a chuckle; the only thing reckless about this LP is its intended image.

The music sure isn’t. In case you’ve been away from the airwaves for the past two years, Adams’s voice charts a middle course between those of John Cougar and Don Henley: borderline gutsy, borderline cool. Imagine a Sandpaper sandwich made with a lotta white bread, and you’ve got it. Bryan’s lead guitarist, Keith Scott, keeps the melody in mind at all times, so he ends up sounding not unlike REO’s Gary Richrath.

But Bryan considers himself primarily a songwriter, so let’s check out the songs...except we don’t have to, because the song titles tell all: “One Night Love Affair,” “Run To You,” “Somebody” and “Kids Wanna Rock.” True, they’ve all got hooks galore, but after listening to ’em a few times, the idea that this guy’s made a career out of belaboring the obvious is inescapable.

So people who want to contemplate the eternal verities of the rock ’n’ roll life to a catchy backbeat will likely find much pleasure here. For the rest of us, it’s simply more of the same.

Michael Davis

EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL (Sire)

You grew up on rock ’n’ roll. You listened to “Rag Doll” on a tiny transistor underneath your pillow and saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. These days, when you get home from your job, you want to relax and unwind. You’re too hip for Billy Joel, but not hip enough for Husker Du. You crave background music, but can’t stand elevator muzak. You need Everything But The Girl...

THESE ARE THE MEN OF BONANZA

REO SPEEDWAGON Wheels Are Turnin’ (Epic)

Jon Young

If you go for music with a high danger content, forget REO Speedwagon. Truth to tell, these fellas aren’t the least bit threatening—there’s more excitement to be had from old geezers like Bob Seger and Rod Stewart. No offense intended, mind you. Speedwagon is all right by me, and Wheels Are Turnin’ is a sturdy album that holds up fine under

repeated listenings. But don’t assume that since they’re a bigtime rock band (still?) selling out arenas, the REOs are wild boys. They’re squares, plain and simple.

Like any decent Speedwagon outing, Wheels Are Turnin’ qualifies as Good Old Rock ’n’ Roll by virtue of solid contributions from all concerned. Lead axeman Gary Richrath riffles through the dictionary of best-loved licks with ease, inserting a Chuck Berry fill here, unleashing a metallic shriek there, even pumping a wah-wah pedal for nostalgia’s sake. Chirpyvoiced Kevin Cronin displays the pride and spirit needed to command center stage, though he’s unnaturally cheery at times. The title cut and “One Lonely Night” propose to explore the dark side of amour, yet Kev’s never less than sunny. Guess he’s just a happy guy.

The real story here, though, isn’t the performing, capable though it is. Wheels Are Turnin’ scores biggest in the songwriting department. Not being a fan from way back, yours truly used to assume that Speedwagon finally made it big through sheer persistence, not ability. It wasn’t ’til I heard a doowop combo, Randy & The Rainbows, cover Hi Infidelity’s “In Your Letter” that I recognized the REO’s superior knack for creating catchy tunes. Whether it’s a bouncy rocker or a swelling ballad, each track on Wheels could be recorded by some other artist to great chart advantage. Give “Thru The Window” to Olivia Newton-John or “Break His Spell” to Elton, for example. And since Speedwagon’s own high-steppin’ rendition of “I Do’wanna Know” flopped as a single (undeservedly), let the Everly Bros, take a shot with it. Can’t miss!

Getting back to that business about being squares, the REOs practically deserve a “G” rating on Wheels. No decadence for these solid citizens, just affirmations of old-time romance like “You’re a candle in the window on a cold dark winter’s night.” And if you think that’s sweet, consider these greeting-card lyrics: “Live every moment—love every day/’Cause if you don’t you just might throw your love away.” Go ahead and snicker, but I think it’s heartwarming. There’s not an insincere note on Wheels and, well, let’s admit it: Speedwagon’s corny values are what this country needs more of!

Wheels Are Turnin’ makes an excellent case for REO Speedwagon as a budget Bruce Springsteen. Our boys share the Boss’s salt of the earth outlook, but they don’t work on the same epic scale. Which is kinda of nice. While Bruce soars around in the clouds, eagle-like, plenty of us ants are content to stay on the ground with,. REO Speedwagon. It’s not as exciting, but it’s more like real life.

Tracey Thorn, the singer, looks like she dropped up from Alphabet City while Ben Watt, guitarist/ keyboardist/arranger, resembles Sluggo. Together, they’re carving out a brand-new musical category,' along with fellow Brits like Carmel, Sade and Style Council: post-postpunk cocktail jazz. Y’know the feel: late-night ivory tinkling by some tux-clad Charles Aznavour type whose velvety-smooth resignation speaks existential tons about cigarettes smoked, ladies (and men) romanced, passions spent and experience gained. We’re traveling back in time now, to a period before rock ’n’ roll was a gleam in the Colonel’s eye, when bobby-soxers screamed for Frankie and war was still a noble exercise.

Of course, don’t expect any of that from Everything But The Girl. This is no trivial Linda Ronstadt pursuit of some long lost nostalgic ideal. Yes, it is every bit as sexless, but-somehow, that makes it all the more enjoyable. Robin Millar’s tinny production is offputting, until you realize the preciousness is the point. Tracey Thorn’s husky, tobacco-filled vocals soothe on the outside, but reward more than casual listening, too, as do Ben Watt’s mini-pops orchestrations. The single, “Each And Every One” and “Tender Blue” feature mournfully muted trumpet lines while “Another Bridge,” “Frost And Fire” and “Never Could Have Been Worse” offer sprightly, meticulous acoustic guitars, the latter evoking pre-Grace Slick Jefferson Airplane or Boston’s psychedelic Salem 66.

The only problem with this clever duo’s conceptual savvy is the utter un-erotica and neuterality built into the music. The songs are less about love lost than likes misplaced and the sense of timelessness is undercut by a disturbing feeling of the evanescent and the ephemeral. Everything But The Girl say relax, don’t do it. Unlike rock ’n’ roll, this music soothes the savage beast rather than provoking it. Even Yuppies sometimes get the blues.

Roy Trakin

EURYTHMICS 1984 (For The Love Of Big Brother)

(RCA)

Irony buffs might have felt a twinge of interest recently when the Eurythmics’ “Sexcrime” was being banned in various quarters. In Orwell’s 1984 the word is used by the totalitarian state to designate all acts of sex except utilitarian intercourse between married couples, the idea being that by lumping all nonreproductive sex semantically together the state then deters the individual from making the intellectual distinctions that would lead to heretical thoughts. Ironic, then, that a fictional word described in a novel as a tool of puritanical repression itself provoked a little minor league repression by some hyper-sensitive but weirdly selective rock station programmers. But it’s just a twinge...the real lesson of the “Sexcrime” mini-scandal is that the Eu’s ain’t got the platinum clout that some folks mighta thought they had—obviously, if you’re really hot, you can say anything you damn well please about sex (see Prince, of course). Unfortunately, the duo’s second album (Touch) impacted somewhat less fabulously than the first (Sweet Dreams, etc.) and there you are. Add another album like No. 3 here and these guys won’t even be allowed to say “poopoo.”

Not that it’s dreadful, it’s just that, both careerwise for the Eu’s and taken single artifact-wise, it’s kind of irrelevant. First of all, it’s a soundtrack album and second of all a soundtrack album of music that (from all reports) mostly never found its way to the soundtrack. Listening to the album you get the idea that the film’s producers knew what they were doing when they demurred. Not only do we get standard-issue filmusic instrumentals but instrumentals that alternate between ominous synth chords and robotic/metallic rhythms—an approach to “futuristic” music that’s definitely old-fashioned. It sounds like the Eu’s have confused 1984 with Logan’s Run or Soylent Green or any of a number of hackneyed dystopia scenarios so beloved in the ’70s, ignoring the fact that the novel is sui generis and that the unusual disco apocalypse stuff doesn’t really complement Orwell’s vision. Also, when it comes to modern doom, the Eu’s are just too literal-minded (e.g. ‘‘Ministry Of Love,” where Orwell’s torture factory is evoked in an uninhibitedly Grand Guignol manner—everything but rattling chains. Something a little more insidiously benevolent is needed here—were there a real Ministry of Love, its walls would most likely seep sentiments along the lines of 1001 Strings’ rendition of “You’ve Got A Friend...”)

Amidst all this conventional gloom-boogie are four actual songs—the offending “Sexcrime,” wherein Annie Lennox sounds like Morgana King and which turns out to be a harmless dance number with inexplicit l-don’t-wanna-behere lyrics; “For The Love Of Big Brother,” which sounds suspiciously like a left-over love song pressed into service (wouldn’t be surprised if programmers tried to ban this one too, fearing an ensuing epidemic of incest); “Julia,” a cleverly arranged bit of wistfulness, and “Doubleplusgood,” the only time on the album that Stewart/Lennox seem to actually have become engaged by some of the meatier material in Orwell’s novel.

No matter, the whole thing’s just an aberration, a little outtake from what will no doubt be a sterling career. Expect the real next Eurythmics album to put them back on the track as a better than average synth band with lots of interesting sounds, not much to say.

Richard C. Walls