Cover of Give It Up
A revelation.
Have you ever been left?
It hurts bad enough to go first, you're wracked with guilt. But when you're left behind, you're truly at loose ends. You were the last to know. Usually your beloved decided to move out, to dump you long before. They're over the emotional hump. You're just beginning.
How many times have I heard "Love Has No Pride"?
Written by Eric Kaz, I was first exposed on Bonnie Raitt's second album, "Give It Up". Twenty years later, Bonnie cut an album just as good, maybe even better, "Luck Of The Draw", but for a long time "Give It Up" was my favorite, and the best.
Although Chris Smither's "Love Me Like A Man" is usually cited as the album's centerpiece, the end of first side killer, I was more enamored of side two, which began with "Too Long At The Fair".
Now unavailable in its fast, vinyl version, the slowed-down digital take still haunts.
And then we're straight into Jackson's "Under The Falling Sky". A tear in a way the original is not. Then the oldie, "You Got To Know How". Then the unexpected blitz of "You Told Me Baby".
Only Bonnie can deliver this material. Intelligent, with an edge. We've got wimpy girls and slow-witted ones too. But women with a mind, who aren't afraid of speaking it...whew! That's the essence of Bonnie Raitt's appeal. She's your fantasy girlfriend.
And then comes "Love Has No Pride". The slow album closer. The wimpy radio song.
Until just now. When I saw Bonnie perform it with Crosby & Nash at Madison Square Garden. It was a little slower, and it was all about the message.
"But if you want me to beg, I'll fall down on my knees Asking for you to come back I'd be pleading for you to come back Begging for you to come back to me"
Yes, you eventually do sacrifice your pride. After long torturous nights, on both sides of the raging debate in your head. You swallow your pride, you're honest. You call them up and reveal your truth.
But it makes no difference. They're already gone.
This is a real story, one we almost all live eventually. Grasping...for air.
Sure, it's about the song. To create something so exquisite leaves the rest of us marveling. But it's more than the changes, more than the words. It's comes down to the delivery. World-weary, having plied the boards for four decades, Bonnie Raitt delivered "Love Has No Pride" in such a way that I both related and was creeped out, I try to keep those emotions buried.
It was the highlight of the first half of the show.
THE PRETENDER
"I'm going to be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim To the heart and the soul of the spender And believe in whatever may lie In those things that money can buy Thought true love could have been a contender Are you there?
Say a prayer for the Pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender"
When these words poured out of the FM speaker in the fall of '76 the term "yuppie" had not yet been coined. Greed had not been legitimized. We were just emerging from the hangover from the sixties. Politics were taboo, but we were in a period of self-discovery.
Whilst Jackson was singing about human emotions, charlatans like Werner Erhard were selling personal development programs, insisting that they could wipe away a lifetime of hurt, a lifetime of bad deeds in a weekend. We wanted to be content, we wanted to be happy idiots.
We now are.
We live in a world of consumerism. People are not concerned with family life so much as what money can buy. And this goes for the religious zealots too. The "Atlantic" placed part of the blame for the economic crisis at the feet of the religious right. Telling their flock that they were entitled to a life of plenty.
Jackson delivered his number in an understated fashion. But when he reached the above lyrics he belted them out, over an audience of winners who overpaid to be up close to what once was.
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE
I keep my distance from Jerry Lee Lewis. I remember that exhaustive story in "Rolling Stone" wherein the suspicious deaths of those around him were delineated.
But years later, in the twilight of his life, delivering his rockin' original purely solo, the words stood out, they evidenced their truth.
"I'm real nervous, but it sure is fun"
Who hasn't been anxious about asking that girl to dance? Worried that the momentum built up in your head won't sustain.
Rock and roll doesn't only speak to your genitalia, it also speaks to your head and heart.
LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH
In concert, the CSN show is pure nostalgia.
But strangely, their segment worked on HBO. Because of Stephen's playing.
Anybody can have technique. You can pull up prepubescents on YouTube who can hit all the notes, replicate famous solos, dazzle with their speed. But it's he who develops his own sound, that we hear and recognize instantly, that are truly Hall of Fame material.
Thirty nine years ago, Stephen Stills was the biggest act in the business. His solo album sat on the mantel of baby boomers throughout the land. Revisit it, you'll be stunned.
Stephen's worse for wear, but it's still him. Dig him now, he won't be around forever.
SUPERSTITION
It was written for Jeff Beck. Stevie delivered it to the guitar maestro and then had second thoughts, he decided to record it himself. "Superstition" was Stevie Wonder's breakthrough. All these years later, "Sunshine Of My Life" is the most famous track off "Talking Book", but it was "Superstition" that exploded Stevie Wonder, let him leave the "Little" appellation behind.
Sure, he'd put out "Music Of My Mind", had even toured with the Stones, but "Superwoman" got very limited airplay. But the clavinet underpinning of "Superstition" could not be denied. Stevie Wonder rode the track straight into the American mainstream, where he went on to deliver on the promise, releasing three more albums just as good as "Talking Book", and they don't get any better.
Meantime, Jeff Beck ultimately cut an abysmal, bottom-heavy take of "Superstition" with Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert and then went jazz-rock, and was forgotten by the hoi polloi.
Until last night.
I credit Harvey Goldsmith.
Beck's been great forever. Never lost a step. As hot today as he was in the Yardbirds, as he was when he worked with Rod Stewart. His fleet fingers are dancing over so many records. But only when Eric Clapton had to pull out of this Hall of Fame gig did Jeff Beck get his chance. I'm sure Harvey made it happen.
And boy did Jeff deliver.
Yup, almost four decades after Stevie Wonder retrieved his career-breaking hit, he called Jeff Beck on stage, to wail, to play along.
And boy did he. Wail.
This was not nostalgia. This was not quaint. When Beck worked out, it was positively 2009, positively alive. Live long enough, and maybe you get your due.
BRUCE
It's tough. He's become an institution. If you criticize him, you're Un-American. His followers have become like Palinistas, their man can do no wrong.
He worked really hard. But his voice was lacking... Maybe he'd done too many dates. He was great on "Pretty Woman" with John Fogerty, but he lacked the transcendence we've all seen him deliver in the past.
But the E Street Band? They killed!
Clarence nailed his sax solo. Roy tickled the ivories. And Max Weinberg evidenced restraint. He didn't call attention to himself, he just provided the underpinning.
"The rangers had a homecoming in Harlem late last night"
That's why we go to the show. To go home. To where we're understood, where we're our best selves.
I went to the Bottom Line on a sweltering June night back in '74, a year before "Born To Run" was released. "The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle" had become my favorite album. I had to see the man perform.
It wasn't difficult getting a ticket. But I got there two hours early, ate an overpriced salad in a plastic boat, just to be within mere feet of the stage. I could have sat in the very first row, but I left two empty chairs between me and the platform, I wanted to be far enough away to get pristine sound, to take it all in.
The stage was crowded with players. The songs on the albums came alive. But the moment of transcendence came deep into the set, on a brand new number, "Jungleland".
"The midnight gang's assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night They'll meet 'neath that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light"
It used to be Esso. It had only been Exxon for a year or so. Standard Oil of New Jersey coming up with this non-word that they could brand their company with throughout the world.
You see Bruce Springsteen was new, he was ours. He didn't endure the war, he didn't grow up in poverty in some godforsaken gray city in England. He was a baby boomer. Born into the land of plenty, New Jersey.
What a complicated place, the Garden State. In places gorgeous, in others a dump. But it's got the beach. The land of romance.
Yes, Bruce Springsteen grew up in Asbury Park. Where money wasn't short, but support was.
Our parents had grown up hard. They knew how to provide, put food on the table, they just didn't know how to relate.
Bruce sang of this. Of hopes and dreams.
It's not about this song or that, it's about what he represented. Liberation from a society that said you had to go to the right school, had to look a certain way.
I find it ironic that the bankers who bought up the good seats at the Garden are such Boss fans. If they were made fun of in school, at least they got straight A's, so they could go to an Ivy League school, so they could rape and pillage as an adult. Bruce was a loser with a capital "L". Winning nowhere. And through hard work and belief in himself, he triumphed.
And he's been on an endless victory lap for decades.
Because he didn't foresee this. That little Bruce Springsteen could win, be a legend, rich in cash and adulation.
He married an actress. Went to psychotherapy. Got divorced. Remarried. Had a family. Went solo. Went folk. Reformed the band and has been trying to find the proper direction ever since.
But at least he's still alive, he's still kicking.
So many of the greats are no longer here. They used dope to get through. They were loved, but they couldn't fit in. On the surface they looked like kings, but inside they lived a life of pain.
The ending of "Jungleland" was a triumph. Of sheer power. Of a man who played by his own rules and won.
And that's rock and roll.
