Tag: Chains

Three Ladies Who Did It Twice

Tina Turner and Carole King have now joined Stevie Nicks as only female music artists inducted twice into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

On Saturday night, Tina Turner and Carole King were officially inducted for the second time into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Prior to them, only one other female music artist had accomplished that feat: Stevie Nicks.

I fully realize many music fans are highly critical of the Rock Hall, some to the point where they no longer care, as do certain artists based on what they’ve said. Debates about the secretive selection process and who’s in the Rock Hall and who’s not are certain to continue.

Instead of rehashing controversy, I’d like to celebrate these three amazing women, Stevie Nicks, Tina Turner and Carole King, and their great music. All three are among my longtime favorite artists and very deserving inductees, IMHO.

Stevie Nicks

Nicks was first inducted as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1998, together with former and current band members Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie, Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan and Christine McVie.

From Rock Hall website: After forming as a British blues band in the late ’60s, Fleetwood Mac evolved into one of the most influential rock groups of the ’70s. Not only did they write some of the decade’s most indelible songs—and release one of the best-selling albums of all time, 1977’s Rumours—but the troupe created a distinctive “California sound” that endures today as a sonic touchstone for countless bands.

Here’s one of my favorite tunes written by Nicks for Fleetwood Mac from the band’s second eponymous album that appeared in July 1975: Landslide. I really dig her singing and Buckingham’s acoustic guitar playing.

Nicks’ induction as a solo performer happened in 2019. From Rock Hall website: Stevie Nicks’ life and career have always had a touch of magical enchantment. Tonight represents a crowning validation of her spellbinding gifts as a rock & roll icon, as she becomes the first woman to be twice inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – with Fleetwood Mac in 1998, and now as a solo artist.

Following is Stand Back, a tune from Nicks’ sophomore solo album The Wild Heart, which appeared in June 1983. Also released as a single, the song became one of her highest-charting, climbing to no. 5 in the U.S. on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at no. 10 in Canada, and reaching the top 40 in various other countries, including The Netherlands, Germany and Australia. It’s definitely a child of its time!

Tina Turner

Tina Turner was first inducted into the Rock Hall in 1991 as part of Ike & Tina Turner. From Rock Hall website: A charismatic bandleader and an unbridled whirlwind of sexual energy formed one of the most formidable live acts in history. Ike and Tina Turner were such a presence onstage that even their own albums don’t do them justice. The explosive duo made such enduring hits as “River Deep–Mountain High,” “Proud Mary” and “Nutbush City Limits.” Ike Turner was a talented songwriter and guitarist. Unfortunately, his physical and psychological abuse of Tina Turner will forever diminish him. Here’s the amazing Nutbush City Limits, which actually was written by Tina Turner – I always mistakenly had thought Ike had penned it! The tune was the title track of Ike & Tina Turner’s studio album from November 1973 and became a signature song.

From Rock Hall press release announcing 2021 inductees: …Tina Turner is known as the Queen of Rock & Roll, a title she earned not just once but twice. The first time, she rose to fame in the 1960s as part of the duo Ike and Tina Turner, belting out soulful rock songs in a non-stop stage show where she danced the audience into a frenzy. But all of that is backstory to the most successful and triumphant rebirth in the history of rock…

The most important album of Turner’s solo career is Private Dancer from May 1984, which not only turned her into a viable solo artist but an international superstar. Here’s the title track, written by Mark Knopfler. While it’s obviously a radical departure from the R&B sound of Ike & Tina Turner, I still love that tune!

Carole King

Carole King’s initial induction into the Rock Hall occurred in 1990, together with her ex-husband and former lyricist Jerry Goffin. From Rock Hall website: Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote much of the soundtrack of the Sixties. Chances are, you have danced around to a hit single by the dynamic songwriting duo. Goffin wrote the lyrics and King wrote the music for such hits as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “One Fine Day” and “Don’t Bring Me Down.”

After their breakthrough Will You Love Me Tomorrow, which The Shirelles took to no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1961, Goffin-King became a hit machine. There are so many tunes I could have picked here. I decided to go with Chains, first recorded by American girl group The Cookies in 1962, climbing to no. 6 on Billboard’s R&B Singles chart and reaching a respectable no. 17 on the mainstream Hot 100. The tune was also covered by The Beatles and appeared on their UK debut album Please Please Me.

This brings me to Carole King’s second induction as a solo artist. From Rock Hall website: After writing the soundtrack of the 1960s, Carole King wove a tapestry of  emotion and  introspection as a singer-songwriter in the 1970s.  Her solo work was a clarion call to generations of female artists and  millions of  fans  –  giving  them voice and confidence.  King has too many accolades to list – six Grammys,  the  2013  Library of Congress Gershwin Prize,  a  2015 Kennedy Center Honor,  and beyond.

As somebody who has loved Carole King’s music since his childhood days, I’m very happy she also finally got the Rock Hall’s well-deserved recognition as a solo artist. It was also great to read that she was able to attend Saturday’s induction ceremony – unlike Tina Turner who is turning 82 on November 26 and sadly not in good health. You can watch King’s performance of You’ve Got a Friend here, featuring Danny Kortchmar (guitar) and Leland Sklar (bass), among others – probably King’s last major public performance, since she has said she’s no longer touring.

Similar to Goffin-King, there were so many songs I could have picked from King’s solo career, including pretty much any track from Tapestry. Instead, I decided to highlight Hard Rock Cafe, a song from her eighth album Simple Things that appeared in July 1977. I’ve always liked this happy song, which also was released as a single and charted in the top 30 in the U.S., Canada, Australia and various European countries, including Austria, Belgium and Switzerland.

Sources: Wikipedia; Rock Hall website; YouTube

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My Playlist: Music Artists Who Do It All

Some of my favorite singer-songwriters from the 1960s through the 2000s

The singer-songwriter category is very broad, depending on how you define it, spanning different music genres, including folk, rock, country and pop. According to Wikipedia, singer-songwriters are artists who write, compose and perform their own music, oftentimes solo with just a guitar or piano. AllMusic adds that although early rock & roll artists like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly wrote and sang their own songs, the term singer-songwriter “refers to the legions of performers that followed Bob Dylan in the late 60s and early 70s.” You could make the same observation about blues pioneers like Lead Belly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Based on the above definition, artists who write and perform songs as part of a band are not singer-songwriters. Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger would be popular examples in this context. While I’ve seen Elton John being mentioned as a singer-songwriter, to me he’s not, at least not in the strict sense. While he has written the music to his songs and performed them, he has relied on Bernie Taupin for the lyrics. By comparison, the other big pop piano man of our time, Billy Joel, has written the music and lyrics for pretty much all of his songs, so he fits the category.

With the singer-songwriter definition being out of the way, let’s get to some of my favorite artists in that category. I’d like to tackle this chronologically, starting with the 60s and Bob Dylan. The Times They Are A-Changin’ is the title track from his third studio album, which appeared in January 1964. According to Songfacts, the tune “became an anthem for frustrated youth,” expressing anti-establishment sentiments and reflecting the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Songfacts also quotes Dylan from the liner notes of his Biograph box set compilation album from November 1985: “I wanted to write a big song, some kind of theme song, with short, concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. This is definitely a song with a purpose. I knew exactly what I wanted to say and who I wanted to say it to.” Sadly, the song has taken on new relevance in present-day America, especially over the past couple of years.

Next up: Donovan and Sunshine Superman, one of my longtime favorite ’60s tunes. The song is the title track of Donovan’s third album released in August 1966 in the U.S. It did not come out in the U.K. due a contractual dispute between British label Pye Records and U.S. label Epic Records. This also impacted the release of Donovan’s fourth album Mellow Yellow, which like Sunshine Superman appeared in the U.S. only. After the labels had worked out their issue, Pye Records released a compilation from both records in the U.K. in June 1967 under the title of Sunshine Superman.

Jumping to the ’70s, here’s Fire And Rain by James Taylor. Apart from his cover of the Carole King tune You’ve Got A Friend, the opener of his second album Sweet Baby James from February 1970 is my favorite Taylor song. It became his first big hit in the U.S., peaking at no. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Songfacts quotes Taylor from a 1972 interview with Rolling Stone, during which he explained how the song came about: “The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend [Susie Schnerr, “Suzanne”]. The second verse is about my arrival in this country [the U.S.] with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it. And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs [from drug addiction] which lasted about five months.” Wow, certainly a lot of stuff packed in one song!

In November 1970, Cat Stevens (nowadays known as Yusuf/Cat Stevens) released Tea For The Tillerman, his fourth studio album. One of my favorite tunes from that record is Father And Son. According to Songfacts, while Stevens made up the story about a son wanting to join the Russian Revolution and his dad pleading with him to stay home to work on the farm, the lyrics were inspired by Stevens’ lonely childhood and differences of opinion between him and his father about his chosen path to become a professional musician.

I already mentioned Carole King, one of my favorite singer-songwriters of all time – in fact, make that one of my all-time favorite music artists! Sometimes one forgets that before becoming a recording artist and performer, King had a close to 10-year career writing songs for other artists, together her then-husband Gerry Goffin. More than two-dozen of these tunes entered the charts, and various became hits. Examples include Chains (The Cookies, later covered by The Beatles on their debut record), The Loco-Motion (Little Eva), One Fine Day (The Chiffons) and Pleasant Valley Sunday (The Monkees). King composed the music for these tunes, while Goffin wrote the lyrics. Then, in February 1971, Carole King released her second solo album Tapestry. Instead of obvious choices like I Feel The Earth Move, It’s Too Late or You’ve Got A Friend, I’d like to highlight Way Over Yonder. Among others, this gem features James Taylor on acoustic guitar and Curtis Amy who plays the amazing tenor saxophone solo. To me, this is as close to perfection as music can get – emotional, beautiful and timeless!

Joni Mitchell is one of those artists I really should know much better than I currently do. In June 1971, her fourth album Blue appeared, which according to Wikipedia is widely regarded by music critics as one of the greatest records of all time. Here’s This Flight Tonight. If you don’t know Mitchell’s original, yet the melody and the lyrics somehow sound familiar, you’ve probably heard the cover by Scottish hard rock band Nazareth. I certainly have, since they scored a no. 1 hit with it in Germany in 1973. The song also charted in the U.K. (no. 11), U.S. (no. 177) and Canada (no. 27).

More frequent visitors of the blog won’t be surprised about my next choice: Neil Young. Wait a moment, some might think, based on what I wrote in my clever introduction, should he be in the list? After all, he has been affiliated with bands like Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and he continues to perform frequently with Crazy Horse. Well, in addition to these bands, Young has done plenty of solo work, plus Crazy Horse is his backing band. At the core, there’s no doubt to me that Young nicely fits the singer-songwriter definition. Here’s The Needle And The Damage Done, one of Young’s finest songs first recorded for Harvest, his fourth studio album from February 1972. The tune was inspired by the death of Young’s friend and former Crazy Horse bandmate Danny Whitten from heroin addiction. With the U.S. battling a horrific opioid addiction crisis, eerily, the song’s lyrics remain as relevant today as they were more than 45 years ago.

While with the explosion of the singer-songwriter category in the late ’60s and 70s I could go on featuring artists from that time period, I also would like to least touch on more recent decades. In the ’80s, Suzanne Vega emerged as one of the most popular artists in the category. At the time, I frequently listened to her second album Solitude Standing from April 1987 – yes, it’s the one with Tom’s Diner. While that song represents cinematic-type storytelling at its best and perfectly describes the New York morning rush, I’ve become a bit tired of the tune due to over-exposure. Interestingly though, it wasn’t much of a chart success at the time, unlike Luka, the track I’m featuring here, which became Vega’s biggest hit. The song’s upbeat melody is in marked contrast to the lyrics addressing the horrible subject of child abuse.

When it comes to ’90s singer-songwriters, one name that comes to mind is Alanis Morissette. In June 1995, the Canadian artist released her third studio album Jagged Little Pill, which became her first record that appeared worldwide and catapulted her to international stardom. The album became a chart topper in 13 countries, including Canada, the U.K. and the U.S., and is one of the highest-selling records of all time, exceeding more than 33 million copies worldwide. It won five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year. Here’s the record’s second single Hand In My Pocket, a nice rock tune Morissette co-wrote with Glen Ballard who also produced the album.

The last artist I’d like to highlight in this post is English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse. During her career, which was tragically cut short in July 2011 when she died from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, Winehouse only released two albums. Her acclaimed second record Back To Black from October 2007 won Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2007 Grammy Awards. With close to 3.6 million units sold in the U.K. alone, Back To Black became the U.K.’s second best-selling album of the 21st century; worldwide sales exceeded 12 million. Here’s the opener Rehab, which also was released separately as the album’s lead single. The lyrics describe Winehouse’s refusal to attend rehab for alcoholism following her management team’s suggestion. The tune has a nice soul vibe and like many of her other songs has a retro feel.

Sources: Wikipedia, AllMusic, Songfacts, YouTube