John Mellencamp Continues Stripped Down, Acoustic Approach On New Album

Initially, Sad Clowns & Hillbillies was supposed to be a collection of spiritual country duets with Carlene Carter, the daughter of June Carter and stepdaughter of Johnny Cash. While prominently featuring Cash on duet vocals for five of the 13 songs, John Mellencamp’s 23rd studio album only includes one tune the two artists wrote together.

Sad Clowns & Hillbillies wasn’t their first trip to the rodeo. They started working together in 2012 in connection with Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, a musical for which Mellencamp collaborated with author Stephen King and veteran producer T-Bone Burnett. He subsequently invited Cash to sing a song he had written as part of the music score for Ithaca, a drama motion picture released in Oct 2015 and directed by his then-girlfriend Meg Ryan. “That was when we became friends, when I went to Indiana and recorded with him and the guys this really cool song called Sugar Hill Mountain that’s in the movie,” Carter told Songfacts.

Carter also joined Mellencamp as the opening act on his extensive 2015-2016 tour in support of his previous album Plain Spoken. It was during that tour when the initial idea for Sad Clowns & Hillbillies was conceived. “It started out like ‘Look, lets go back and do an old country religious record,” Mellencamp said during an interview with Yahoo! News’ Katie Couric. “‘We’ll try to write songs that sound like those songs, but they’ll be new.’ And then it just kept evolving and evolving and evolving, and the songs that she was bringing and the songs that I was bringing – they weren’t so religious. I write a lot of sad songs, so it’s like Sad Clowns & Hillbillies – that’s where it came from.”

The album pretty much picks up where Mellencamp’s previous 2014 studio release Plain Spoken left off, featuring mostly acoustic, stripped down, front porch type roots music. This record is not for the multi-tasking generation; instead, it’s an invitation to sit down and listen. The album is also very different from Mellencamp’s ’80s rockers like Hurts So Good, Jack & Diane, Pink Houses and R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A., which I dearly love and which attracted me to him in the first place. Of course, his departure from the straight rock sound these songs represent started a long time ago. It was 1987’s The Lonesome Jubilee that for the first time introduced more traditional folk and country music instruments like accordion and fiddle to Mellencamp’s songs.

The one exception that sounds more like vintage Mellencamp is Grandview, the album’s second and current single, for which Martina McBride is joining him on vocals. You could easily picture the tune on 1985’s Scarecrow or 1987’s The Lonesome Jubilee. That’s not a surprise – Mellencamp co-wrote it with his cousin Bobby Clark in the 1990s. He told the Indianapolis Star the current version “includes some vocals he recorded in the ’90s and some recorded this century.” The song also features Guns N’ Roses’ co-founder and former rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin and Stan Lynch, the original drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I’m not gonna deny it – I wouldn’t have minded, if Mellencamp had included one or more rockers like this one!

The opener Mobile Blue pretty much sets the tone for the album. The combination of violin (Miriam Sturm), Hammond-like keyboards (Troye Kinnett) and of course acoustic guitars, some mandolin-like, creates a beautiful, warm and rich sound. Written by American country singer-songwriter Mickey Newbury, the song is one of the two covers on the album. The other one is Early Bird Cafe, a folk song from Lane Tietgen, which was first recorded by the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood in 1970. Mellencamp saw that band in the early ’70s, has liked the song ever since, and has performed it solo on acoustic guitar on various occasions throughout his career.

Indigo Sunset is only tune co-written by both artists. Carter and Mellencamp alternate lead vocals. Her traditional country voice and his rougher instrument that briefly join toward the end of the song are a perfect match. Together with the great Hammond-like keyboard (not sure whether it’s an actual Hammond!) and the seductive violin sound, this makes the tune another standout on the album. Damascus Road is the only song Carter penned all by herself. With biblical-like references throughout the lyrics, it’s evident the tune reflects the record’s original idea.

The closer Easy Target presents Mellencamp with his most raspy voice – one review I can no longer find compared it to Tom Waits after he had cleared his throat! Mellencamp’s gravelly singing certainly fits the dark lyrics of the song, which addresses racism and income equality and was initially released on the eve of President Trump’s inauguration – certainly not a coincidence. An excerpt:

Here’s an easy target/With just one quiet pop/Shot to hell anyway/No reason to stop/In the streets and the gutters/The cotton fields in this land/Here’s an easy target/With a trigger in your hand/

So, Black lives matter/Who we tryin’ to kid/Here’s an easy target/Don’t matter, never did/Crosses burning/Such a long time ago/400 years and we still don’t let it go.

Unlike his previous three studio albums Plain Spoken (2014), No Better Than This (2010) and Life, Death, Love and Freedom (2008), which were produced T-Bone Burnett, Sad Clowns & Hillbillies was produced by Mellencamp. The album was recorded at his studio in Belmont Mall – funnily, as an NPR story pointed out, that studio is located in Nashville, except it’s Nashville, Ind., not Nashville, Tenn. The art work on the album’s front cover is from Mellencamp, who is also a painter. It was taken from Twelve Dreams, a painting he created in 2005.

Painting has become a very important aspect in Mellencamp’s life, which also impacts his songwriting. In the current print issue of Rolling Stone, he explained how songs come to him while being all by himself and painting in his Indiana compound. “A voice in my head will go, ‘OK, put your brush down and write these words down’…And I’ll be like, No, I don’t want to write a fucking song.’ Then the voice will go, ‘You better write it down, you idiot.’ Then I forget about it, and I find it and I go, ‘When did I write this?’ It’s a wonderful way of writing songs.”

For more on Grandview, Easy Target and Mellencamp’s upcoming tour in support of the album, see my previous post. And, of course, I couldn’t help myself – here’s a great clip of Carter and Mellencamp perfoming Indigo Sunset together live.

Sources: Wikipedia, Songfacts, Yahoo! News, Indianapolis Star, NPR, Rolling Stone, YouTube

 

Sheryl Crow’s New Album Is a Nice Return to Her 90s Pop Rock Roots

The title of Sheryl Crow’s new album, Be Myself, is a statement that you shouldn’t try to be somebody else than you really are. It also nicely fits the singer-songwriter’s conclusion that seeking success in the world of country came with unexpected roadblocks and requirements, which ultimately made the genre the wrong fit for her.

While Crow said she enjoyed the songwriting for her 2013 country album, which ironically was titled Feels Like Home, there were other things she didn’t like. “What I didn’t expect is that [country radio programmers] really don’t play women unless it’s Carrie [Underwood] and Miranda [Lambert], ” Crow told the Los Angeles Times. “The other thing I didn’t expect is how much you have to make yourself available to record promoters and radio programmers,” a tough proposition for Crow who is raising two young school-age children by herself.

Released last Fri (Apr. 21), Be Myself is Crow’s 10th studio album. Not only did she decide to return to her pop rock-oriented style of the 90s, she also collaborated with two people who played an important role during that period: Songwriter Jeff Trott and audio engineer Tchad Blake, who had been involved in Crow’s 1996 eponymous studio album and the 1998 follow-on, The Globe Sessions. Both albums sold well and won Gammy awards. Trott, who also co-produced the new record together with Crow, co-wrote many of her hits over the years, such as Everyday is a Winding Road, My Favorite Mistake, Soak Up the Sun and If It Makes You Happy, which is perhaps my favorite Crow song.

Fans of Crow’s early work won’t be disappointed with the new album. The opener Alone in the Dark pretty much reflects the style of the record: mid-tempo, guitar-oriented pop rock with catchy melodies. Halfway There, which was released as the first single in early March, has a nice grove with effective touches of funky guitar and horns. Other standouts are the title song with a nice rock guitar solo, and Roller Skate, which has a cool guitar riff. Another aspect I like about the album is the music craftsmanship. At 55 years old, Crow comes from a generation of musicians who believes music should be played on real instruments rather than generated in the computer.

Initial reactions to the album have been positive. Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield called it “excellent” and her “toughest, best in a decade.” Writing for AllMusic, Steven Thomas Erlewine characterized the album as “strong, sophisticated pop.” Blurt’s Tiffini Taylor concluded, “Sheryl Crow is presenting a great musical journey with Be Myself. It’s a journey that everyone should get on board with, one that will be listened to for a very long time.”

I’m less optimistic than Taylor about the album’s longevity, given it sounds very different from most of the mediocre stuff dominating the charts nowadays. But Crow, who has proven has herself and – it’s safe to assume – also made good money in the process, seems to be at ease. “There is something really fantastic about being my age,” she said in an interview with USA Today.  “I don’t worry about repeating myself or wanting to be a better producer, a better songwriter, a better this or that. On this record, I was like, screw that. Let’s just close the door and not worry about who hears this.”

Here’s a nice clip of a live performance of Alone in the Dark, which apparently was captured just a few days ago from a show in New York City’s Bowery Ballroom.

Sources: Wikipedia, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, AllMusic, Blurt, USA Today, YouTube

On This Day In Rock & Roll History: April 22

I always have fun looking back at happenings in rock & roll history. One could argue that doing this based on a specific date is rather arbitrary. It certainly is, as is the following list:

1964: Wallace Scowcroft, the president of the UK’s National Federation of Hairdressers, offered a free haircut to the next band to hit no. 1 on the pop charts. Reportedly, he said: “If pop groups had their hair well cut the teenagers would copy them – instead of just asking for a bit off the neck. The Rolling Stones are the worst. One of them looks as if he has got a feather duster on his head.”

1965: The Beatles’ Ticket to Ride was on top of the U.K. singles chart, their seventh consecutive no. 1 hit there. Written by John Lennon and, as usually, credited to him and Paul McCartney, the song was also included on Help!, the Fab Four’s fifth studio album, which appeared in August that year. The Beatles recorded Ticket to Ride on Feb. 15, 1965 at Abbey Road Studios in London, using a new approach. Instead of taping live versions of songs, select the best take, and overdub harmonies or solos, The Beatles now usually recorded a rhythm track first and then built an arrangement around it step by step.

1966: The Troggs released Wild Thing, a single from their debut album From Nowhere, which appeared in July that year. Written by American songwriter Chip Taylor, the song was originally recorded the prior year by The Wild Ones, an American rock band. But the Troggs’ cover became the most successful commercial version, hitting no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1966 and climbing to no. 2 in the U.K. singles chart. Undoubtedly, the wildest live performance of the tune was by Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Here’s a nice clip of the spectacle. Wild Thing has been called a major influence on garage rock and punk. As performed by The Troggs, it’s ranked at no. 261 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

1972: Deep Purple scored their second no. 1 album in the U.K. official charts with Machine Head after Fireball, which was released the previous year. The band’s seventh studio album includes gems like Highway Star and Smoke on the Water. It remains my favorite Deep Purple album to this day and is perhaps the best classic hard rock album. Surprisingly, the record is not in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, though it scored no. 4 on a reader’s poll about the 10 best metal/hard rock albums of the 1970s, which the magazine published in August 2013.

Sources: This Day in Music, Rolling Stones: Off the Record (book by Mark Paytress, 2003), Rolling Stone

What I’ve Been Listening to: Buddy Guy/ Born to Play Guitar

John Lennon once said, “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.” Well, if Chuck Berry is Mr. Rock & Roll, perhaps Buddy Guy could be called “Mr. Blues,” at least among the still-living electric blues guitarists. No matter how you may want to characterize Guy, one thing is clear – his 17th studio album sure as heck illustrates he was born to play the guitar!

Released on July 31, 2015, Born to Play Guitar certainly doesn’t sound like an album from a man who was close to 79 years old when he recorded it! The record kicks off with the title track, an excellent slower tune showcasing Guy’s amazing electric blues guitar skills and, not to forget, his still-formidable voice.

Then things pick up with Wear You Out featuring ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, one of many guitarists who were influenced by Guy. The album also includes guest appearances by other top-notch musicians. Fabulous Thunderbirds frontman Kim Weston plays a bad-ass harp on Too Late and Kiss Me Quick. English singer-songwriter Joss Stone shares vocals with Guy on (Baby) You Got What It Takes. And then there is Van Morrison who joins Guy on vocals for Flesh & Bone, a beautiful tune dedicated to B.B. King.

While each of the above songs already is a true gem, to me there is one that takes things to an even higher level: Whiskey, Beer & Wine. This kick-ass blues rocker sounds like a reincarnation of none other than Jimi Hendrix, another guitarist Guy influenced.

While many artists listened to Guy, he of course was influenced by other musicians as well. One of them was Muddy Waters. Guy is paying homage to Waters with the album’s closer, Come Back Muddy, the only acoustic blues on the record. The tune’s last lines pretty much sum up what Guy views as his mission these days – keeping the blues alive: “Come back Muddy/The blues ain’t been the same/Give you my promise/That I’m gonna keep on playing.” It’s also a message Guy shares during his concerts. I witnessed this firsthand when I was fortunate to catch one of his shows last July, an amazing double bill with Jeff Beck. You can read more about it here.

Most of the album’s music was written by Richard Fleming and producer Tom Hambridge. He also was one of the studio musicians, playing drums and other percussive instruments and contributing background vocals. Guy only has co-writing credits on four of the songs. But as Rolling Stone’s David Fricke observed, Guy sings “lines he didn’t write but lived. In the blues, that’s what matters.”

Born to Play Guitar climbed to no. 1 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart and made it into the Billboard 200, peaking at no. 60. It also won the Grammy for Best Blues Album in 2016. As reported by Blues and BG Music News, when Guy accepted the award, his 7th Grammy, he said: “At least I know the blues is not dead yet! I want to thank my record company, because I don’t think blues is getting played that much no more. And I’m not ashamed to say that, because I used to could drive down the streets and hear Muddy Waters once or twice a week. But I didn’t give up. And I gotta thank my record company for puttin up with me and my producer Tom Hambridge.”

Of course, I couldn’t finish this post without a clip of – I suppose you correctly guessed it – Whiskey, Beer & Wine.

Sources: Wikipedia, AllMusic, Rolling Stone, Blues and BG Music News, YouTube

What I’ve Been Listening to: Curtis Mayfield/Curtis

By the time Curtis Mayfield released his first solo album Curtis in Sep 1970, he already had established himself as a successful music artist for more than 10 years, especially as leader of the pop soul and R&B band The Impressions.  But while songs like People Get Ready and Keep on Pushing had started to introduce lyrics with a social message, Mayfield felt what was generally expected of The Impressions did not sufficiently allow him to express himself, both musically and lyrically.

Right from the get-go with (Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re Going to Go, Mayfield makes it crystal clear he has left behind the days of For Your Precious Love, Gypsy Woman and It’s All Right. For the record, I think all three songs are beautifully executed doo-wop soul. The point is they are very different from the music on Curtis. Perhaps an excerpt from Don’t Worry illustrates it best:

Everybody smoke/Use the pill and the dope/Educated fools/From uneducated schools/Pimping people is the rule/Polluted water in the pool/And Nixon talking ’bout, “Don’t worry”/He say, “Don’t worry”/He say, “Don’t worry”/He say, “Don’t worry”/But they don’t know/There can be no show/And if there’s hell below/We’re all gonna go.

This is pretty heavy stuff. It’s also rather eerie how relevant these lyrics remain in present-day America, more than 45 years after they were written! Like much of the other music on the album, the song doesn’t have a catchy hook line but instead is fueled by a grove dominated by congas, funky guitars, jazz and orchestral parts.

The standout on the album, both musically and lyrically, is Move On Up, which remains one of the greatest funk-soul songs to this day. The fantastic horn intro and the conga-driven beat, along with Mayfield’s mesmerizing silky falsetto, is simply irresistible. Unlike the dark lyrics of the album’s other songs, Mayfield conveys a more upbeat message, saying there is hope after all for people if they work hard and persist. Again, an excerpt illustrates it best:

Take nothing less, than the second best/Do not obey, you must keep your say/You can pass the test/Just move on up, to a greater day/With just a little faith/If you put your mind to it you can surely do it.

While Curtis performed well upon its release, hitting no. 1 on the Billboard Black Albums and no. 19 on the Billboard Pop Albums charts, it got mixed reviews from music critics some of whom simply didn’t get what Mayfield was doing. Wendell John wrote in Rolling Stone, “Lyrically, his songs are a lot more rhyme than reason…The arrangements are all pretty uninspired, a little bit halfhearted – maybe largely because there’s so little melodic meat to most of the tunes.”

The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau at first wasn’t particularly impressed either but later reassessed his views: “Initially I distrusted these putatively middlebrow guides to black pride–“Miss Black America” indeed. But a lot of black people found them estimable, so I listened some more, and I’m glad…What did surprise me was that the whole project seemed less and less middlebrow as I got to know it.” Oh, well…

Bruce Eder from AllMusic said Curtis “was practically the “Sgt. Pepper’s” album of 70s soul, helping with its content and success to open the whole genre to much bigger, richer musical canvases than artists had previously worked with.”

Finally, let the music speak. Here’s a clip of Mayfield performing Move On Up live.  While playing the horn parts on keyboards isn’t as good as the real instruments, even without the horns, the song and Mayfield’s voice shine. And, by the way, what a killer band!

Sources: Wikipedia, AllMusic, Rolling Stone, Robert Christgau Consumer Guide Reviews, YouTube

On This Day in Rock & Roll History: April 16

Following is a selection of happenings on April 16 in rock & roll history. As always, this list is not meant to be comprehensive and is fairly arbitrary.

1956: Buddy Holly released his first single, Love Me, on the Decca label, with Blue Days – Black Nights as the B-side. While the single was a commercial failure, it would mark the beginning of Holly’s prolific but short recording career, which would generate iconic tunes, such as That’ll Be the Day, Peggy Sue and Everyday. Holly tragically died in a plane crash on Feb 3, 1959 at the age of 22.

1964: The first studio album of The Rolling Stones appeared in the U.K. Their eponymous debut only included one original tune written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Tell Me (You’re Coming Back). The remaining songs were covers of blues classics, such as Route 66 (Bobby Troup), Carol (Chuck Berry) and Walking the Dog (Rufus Thomas). While the Stones have always loved and played the blues, it would take them another 52 years before they would release an album that’s entirely made up of blues covers – last year’s excellent Blue and Lonesome, their best release in decades!

1966: With last night’s excellent concert of Beatles tribute band RAIN very much on my mind, I couldn’t leave out this tidbit. It so happens that on Apr. 16, 1966, the Fab Four finished recording Rain, a song written by John Lennon and credited to him and Paul McCartney. The tune became the B-side to Paperback Writer. Both of these songs did not make it on any studio album released while The Beatles were active.

1970: Led Zeppelin’s gem Whole Lotta Love received Gold certification in the U.S. after sales exceeded more than one million copies. The opener of their second album Led Zeppelin II was also released as a single in the U.S., Japan and several European countries, though not in the U.K. Initially, Whole Lotta Love was credited to all four members of the band. In 1982, credits were expanded to American blues artist Willie Dixon. It was part of a settlement of a lawsuit that claimed parts of the song were adapted from Dixon’s tune You Need Love, which had been recorded by Muddy Waters in 1962. In 2004, Whole Lotta Love was ranked no. 75 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

1972: Pink Floyd performed at the Township Auditorium in Columbia, S.C. as part of their Dark Side of the Moon Tour. Remarkably, the tour, which included 93 shows, featured the entire album prior to its release in March 1973, though with significant variations in the music and the titles for most of the songs.

Sources: This Day in Music, The Beatles Bible, Rolling Stone, Wikipedia

A Night of RAIN Brings Beatlemania to Red Bank

Last year, an ad on Facebook announced RAIN: A Tribute to The Beatles was going to play the historic Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, N.J. As a true Beatlemaniac, I looked them up on YouTube right away. Over the years, I’ve encountered various bands covering The Beatles – some pretty good, others not so much – so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. In this case, I was immediately intrigued and got tickets for last night’s show.

To put it right upfront, RAIN delivered what the YouTube clips had promised and then some. These guys are truly amazing and probably come pretty darn close to the real thing. Not only are the vocals almost indistinguishable from the original songs, but the band also does an amazing job looking and acting like The Fab Four during different times of their career.

RAIN was founded in Laguna Beach, Calif. as Reign in 1975, initially playing both original songs and Beatles covers. The band took its name from the 1966 song Rain, written by John and credited to Lennon-McCartney. The tune was released as the B-side to the single Paperback Writer. In 2010, RAIN took their act to Broadway, performing 300 shows there between October 2010 and July 2011.

For each of the Fab Four RAIN has various musicians: Steve Landes & Jimmy Irizarri (John Lennon – vocals, rhythm guitar, piano & harmonica), Paul Curatello, Joey Curatolo & Ian Garcia (Paul McCartney – vocals, bass & piano), Alastar McNeil, Joe Bithorn & Jimmy Pou (George Harrison – vocals & lead guitar) and Ralph Castelli, Aaron Chiazza & Douglas Cox (Ringo Starr – drums, percussion & vocals). Additionally Mark Beyer and Chris Smallwood help out on keyboards & percussion. RAIN is managed by Mark Lewis, the band’s founder and original keyboardist.

Last night’s lineup included Landes, Paul Curatello, McNeil, Chiazza and Beyer. RAIN worked their way through The Beatles’ music catalogue in rough chronological order. The show was divided in five sections: The early years mostly included singles The Beatles released between 1963 and 1965, such as Please Please Me, I Want to Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, A Hard Day’s Night, If I Fell and Yesterday. The section also featured a reenactment of the Fab Four’s first visit to the U.S. and appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Part 2 covered The Beatles’ legendary open-air concert in front of more than 55,000 screaming fans at Shea Stadium in August 1965. This section featured Ticket to Ride, The Night Before, I Feel Fine, Day Tripper and Twist and Shout. The next part captured the end of the band’s live touring and mostly included songs from Rubber Soul and Revolver, such as Drive My Car, In My Life, Eleanor Rigby and Got to Get You Into My Life. The section ended slightly out of chronological order with two tunes from the White Album: Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and While My Guitar Gently Weeps featuring a superb rendition of Eric Clapton’s guitar solo – a highlight of the show.

Following a short intermission came the evening’s biggest thrill – in honor of the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, RAIN played the entire album in chronological order, from the title song to A Day In the Life. It was truly amazing!

The last part of the official set featured a selection of post-Sgt. Pepper tunes, including Here Comes the Sun, Lennon’s solo single Give Peace a Chance, Get Back, Revolution and The End. The band did not play any tunes from Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine, but given they performed all of Sgt. Pepper and the show lasted for more than two hours, one cannot complain. When not surprisingly at the end of the official program the audience was cheering for more, RAIN played Hey Jude as an encore.

Here’s a nice clip of more than one hour of footage from a concert RAIN performed in Mexico in April 2013.

Sources: Wikipedia, RAIN (official web site), YouTube

What I’ve Been Listening to: Marvin Gaye/What’s Going On

The clip of Marvin Gaye performing What’s Going On, which I posted on the blog last night, reminded me of his seminal record from 1971. The concept album, which pushed the envelope at the time with lyrics that remain eerily relevant to this day, is one of my favorite records from one of my favorite soul artists. Not only was it broadly acclaimed, it also became Gaye’s and Motown’s most successful record at the time, selling more than two million copies by the end of 1972.

In the spring of 1970, Gaye was in a deep depression. Singer Tammi Terrell, his duet partner on songs like Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Your Precious Love and Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing, had passed away from brain cancer at the age of 24. His marriage with Anna Gordy, an older sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy, was failing. And Gaye’s younger brother, Frances “Frankie” Gaye, had returned from Vietnam, sharing with Marvin the horrors of war he had seen firsthand.

Then Obie Benson from The Four Tops handed Gaye a protest song, What’s Going On, after his band and Joan Baez had passed on it. The tune had been inspired by police brutality against young anti-war protesters in Berkeley, Calif., which Benson had witnessed during a tour with his band. Gaye liked the song and initially had in mind to record it with Motown quartet The Originals. But Benson insisted that Gaye sing the song himself. It would prove to be the channel Gaye needed to express what was going through his mind and plant the seed for an entire album.

When Berry Gordy heard the tune for the first time, he reportedly called it “the worst thing I ever heard in my life.” He was concerned the song was too political and would not sell. But Gaye didn’t take no for an answer and refused to record anything else for Motown unless Gordy would change his mind. With the support of Motown executive Harry Balk and company sales executive Barney Ales, the song was released without Gordy’s knowledge.

What’s Going On became an overnight sensation and Motown’s fastest-selling single at the time. Only during the first week, more than 100,000 copies were flying off the shelves. The song also climbed to no. 2 on the Billboard Pop Chart and hit no. 1 on the R&B Chart. A stunned Gordy told Gaye he could record whatever music he wanted, as long as he’d finish an album within 30 days. Gaye did not need any further prompting and returned to the studio.

In only 10 days, between March 1 and March 10, 1971, Gaye recorded eight additional tracks for what would become a concept album. Kicking off with the title track, most songs lead into the next and have a similar laid back groove that is in marked contrast to the lyrics. Gaye covered a broad range of “heavy” topics, such as social unrest (What’s Going On), disillusioned Vietnam war veterans (What’s Happening Brother) – a song about his brother Frankie; environmental degradation (Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)); and the bleak socioeconomic situation of inner-city America (Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)). The aforementioned songs are also the album’s musical highlights, in my opinion.

Reflecting on What’s Going On, Gaye told Rolling Stone, “In 1969 or 1970, I began to reevaluate my whole concept of what I wanted my music to say. I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realized I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people. I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world.”

Gaye dedicated the album to Marvin Gaye Sr., his strict father and a baptist minister, who had introduced him to singing through church music but also abused him as a child. Throughout his life, Marvin would seek his father’s approval, but whatever he did wasn’t good enough. During an excellent PBS documentary Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On, Motown road manager Joe Schaffner explained: “Marvin went to buy his dad a Cadillac. He would send him all kinds of gifts…His father would accept them…But he would never come to grips and say, ‘thank you,’ or smile, or none of that!” Instead, he would tragically become the man who would shoot Marvin to death during a physical argument on April 1, 1984.

What’s Going On was Gaye’s first record to hit the top 10 on the Billboard Top LPs. It climbed to no. 6 and stayed on the chart for almost one year. The album also became Motown’s and Gaye’s best-selling record until his 1973 release Let’s Get It On. The album was broadly hailed by music critics. It also received numerous accolades, including best album of all time, as voted by writers on British music weekly NME, and a no. 6 ranking on Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It was also one of 50 recordings selected by the Library of Congress that same year to be added to the National Recording Registry.

As first reported by Variety in July 2016, another film documentary about Gaye and the making of What’s Going On was planned by Noah Media Group and Greenlight. Production was slated to begin later in the year. Marvin, What’s Going On? was to include contributions from Gaye’s ex-wife Janis Gaye and his children Nona, Marvin III and Frankie Gaye – the first time his family supported such a project. Since I haven’t seen any other reports, I assume the film has not appeared yet.

Here’s a nice collage clip of Mercy Mercy Me.

Sources: Wikipedia; “Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On” (PBS “American Masters” documentary, May 2008; Performing Songwriter Be Heard; Rolling Stone; Variety; YouTube

Clips & Pix: Marvin Gaye/What’s Going On

A clip of the great Marvin Gaye performing What’s Going On, a song that sadly hasn’t lost any of its relevance, more than 40 years after its release in 1971 on Gaye’s 11th studio album.

Sources: YouTube

John Mayer Is Back With Reflective New Album

After two EPs each consisting of four songs from his new album, John Mayer has released the entire record. The Search for Everything is the seventh full-length studio album of the singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer, and his most personal and reflective work to date.

Mayer clearly put a lot of ambition in the album, reportedly spending hundreds of hours in the studio. “This is the longest I have gone in the incubation of a record,” he told Rolling Stone. “I wasn’t interested in doing anything I’ve done before, and I wanted to stoke the fire of abstraction and just start punching hard.”

The 12-track set kicks off with Still Feel Like Your Man, a soulful ballad with a soft, laid-back, funky guitar feel. Other tunes with a similar groove include Helpless and Moving On and Getting Over. Helpless also nicely showcases Mayer’s great abilities on electric solo guitar, as does Changing.

Love on the Weekend, the first single released last Nov, is perhaps the album’s most catchy tune. While in this regard it doesn’t quite reach previous songs, such as Daughters, Waiting on the World to Change or Say, it proves Mayer still knows how to write hit songs. Love on the Weekend charted within the Billboard Hot 100 at no. 53 and climbed to no. 5 on the Hot Rock Songs chart.

On two of the songs Mayer has some great help on background vocals. The above mentioned Helpless features Tiffany Palmer, who according to her bio has also worked with artists like Bette Midler, Chaka Khan and Mary J. Blige. In addition, she has written for Anita Baker and Patti LaBelle. And then there is none other than Cheryl Crow, who provides background vocals on In the Blood.

Overall, The Search for Everything is a pretty solid album. Mayer’s guitar-playing is superb. A review in Entertainment Weekly noted it’s reminiscent of “the most reeled-in work of Eric Clapton’s solo career.” Perhaps one drawback is that all of the songs are slow or mid-tempo, which does make listening to the album a bit monotonous after a while. Throwing in a couple of uptempo tunes here and there could have mixed things up, even covers of blues rockers, which is a genre in which Mayer absolutely excels. On the other hand, I get this would have thrown off the album’s overall focus on personal reflection.

Further commenting on the album, Mayer told USA Today it’s about “getting older and comparing my track to other people’s. Part of me is a quote-unquote ‘rock star’ and part of me is this kid from Fairfield, Conn., who really wasn’t made for this. That part looks around at the other parts and goes, ‘Is any of this OK? Am I alright doing this?'”

All tracks on The Search for Everything were written by Mayer. He also produced the album, together with Chad Franscoviac and Steve Jordan (executive producer), with whom he has frequently worked in the past. Mayer is currently on the road to support the record with an extensive tour that mostly focuses on the U.S., with a few gigs in Canada and one show in London, UK.  The tour is scheduled to conclude in Noblesville, Ind. on Sep 2.

Here’s a clip of Helpless from a recent live performance in Albany, N.Y.

Sources: Wikipedia, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Billboard, USA Today, Tiffany Palmer web site, YouTube