Take the Stairs

Song 288: The honor of being this week’s playlist track goes to Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. While I liked a lot of LZ’s first 3 LPs, I felt that somehow they hadn’t yet painted that musical masterpiece that lurked somewhere in the soul of the band. Then in the late fall of ’71 came word about a new Zeppelin record soon to rock the airwaves, and on the day of its official release, I caught the beginning of one of the tracks on my radio that immediately grabbed my attention. The opening riff had a bit of a different sound from their earlier work, but it sounded good, and when Robert Plant’s voice came across, I knew it was a cut from the new disc. The track sounded similar to the earlier LPs, but better and clearer, and as the song went on, it continued to build, getting stronger and heavier, in a way that carried the listener along for an unforgettable ride. Instead of following the usual verse to chorus structure of almost every other song in prevailing musical genres, from rock to country to pop to soul, this new track moved linearly, from the mellow folky opening section to the heavy rocking climax, in a way that felt musically consistent, as it fully developed every musical thread on its journey. Soon, everyone was talking about this incredible new Zeppelin song, which, despite its 8-minute length, started conquering not only FM radio but the AM dial as well. Sometimes AM stations would cheat by playing shortened and sped-up versions, but with the smaller playlists that dominated radio in that era, inevitably, it became too much of a good thing. I can remember, about 6 months after the song’s release, wondering if I’d ever choose to want to hear it again, given how I couldn’t escape hearing it, even in the grocery store or walking down the street. Going on into the late ‘70s, when I rarely if ever heard it, I would still instinctively turn the dial when those opening chords came out of the speaker, and I cringed if someone started fingering those familiar riffs at a song swap. Fast forward a few decades, and a couple of weeks ago, on a trip to Brooklyn, I inserted into the player a homemade compilation CD that a friend had given me years ago, not knowing what to expect. Track 2 turned out to be Stairway to Heaven, and even though I knew very well the roads that we were winding down, both with the van and with the CD player, the moment brought back much of the fine feelings that this song had inspired 4 decades ago, and I felt like the tune had come to me at last.

Good Question

Song 287: For this week’s playlist track you can hear Why Not Me by The Judds, written by Harlan Howard, Sonny Throckmorton and Brent Maher. In the mid-‘80s, the Judds made a very big splash on the country charts, with a string of songs that sounded good and did well on the radio, and this track, which was the title cut for their first album, grabbed my attention the first time I heard it. I remember checking out an LP cover of the mother and daughter duo, not knowing which one was the younger, and deciding that I found the mother more attractive than the daughter, though they both looked pretty good on that record jacket. During that era, it’s possible that I might have been spotted on a stage in the East Bay area playing bass for a country bar pickup band, and if so, a female lead singer might have covered this song, as well as a few others by the Judds. On a side note, this track is a second sly reference to the second verse of my own song As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, which begins with the line Should Patty Loveless when Wynonna, she’s Judd fine(?), Wynonna Judd being the daughter in the mother and daughter singing duo. You can find the As Long as Merle is Still Haggard video here. The songwriter’s name Harlan Howard may look familiar, as it appears on a bunch of standout country songs, from early classics like I Fall to Pieces, Busted, and Heartaches by the Number, to more recent hits like the Pam Tillis cut Don’t Tell Me What to Do (Song 210) which I used as my first sly reference to the opening line of verse one of As Long as Merle is Still Haggard, that line being Now Pam Tillis, the truth now.

Browne-eyed Guy

Song 286: For this week’s playlist track, you can listen to Doctor My Eyes by Jackson Browne, who also wrote the song. I had noticed Jackson Browne’s name on the credits of a handful of excellent cuts in the 2 years before this single appeared. Tom Rush had a pair of very good JB songs on an LP he released in the spring of 1970, which was a record I had spinning on my own turntable a lot back then. The Byrds also had a JB track on one of their albums, as did Brewer and Shipley, so I already had a lot of respect for Jackson’s songwriting long before word came that he would soon have his own LP available. During the spring of 1972, I happened to do a lot of hitching, shuffling between Chicago, Atlanta, and New York a few times, and somewhere along the way, I heard this cut for the first time while in a grocery store or drug store. I knew Jackson had a single out, and when this track started playing, I felt certain that it had to be the one. From that very first hearing, I really liked the catchy piano riff that kicks off the song, as well as the track’s uptempo feel, which suitably supports the thoughtful and reflective words. So often in that era, in the early years of crafting my own lyrical stories, I would hear a new record and imagine some sort of accompanying deeply-poetic lyric, only to be disappointed, when I learned the actual lines, by mundane cliches and cheap rhymes. In stark contrast, Jackson’s single, and indeed, his entire first album, totally lived up to my expectations, both in words and music. Doctor My Eyes always sounded very good to my ears, and quite illuminating to my imagination as well.

Loving the Crazy Ones

Song 285: For this week’s playlist track, you can hear Crazy Ones by John Mellencamp, written by John Mellencamp and Randy Handley. I remember seeing the ads for JM’s new album Whenever We Wanted on the buses in Manhattan in the fall on 1991, and I really liked the cover picture of him playing guitar in an artist’s studio surrounded by paintings, with a pretty woman sitting in the studio, looking very much like an artist’s model. That graphic gave me a very positive feeling for the CD, and when every track I heard on the radio sounded as good as it did, I soon decided I wanted a copy of that new record. It didn’t take too many spins to conclude that, as good as some earlier Mellencamp albums might be, for me, Whenever We Wanted topped them all. This cut, near the middle of the set, really resonated with me, as one of those I could have written that — I’ve been there too moments. At the time, I had recently gotten to the end of my second roller-coaster ride from falling for one of the crazy ones, after having taken a similar ride the year before. The 1990 experience inspired the song Thanks a Lot that appeared on the Country Drivin’ CD, and the 1991 adventure inspired another song, though I haven’t quite found the right context for a recording of that one. Over the last few years, I feel like I’ve found the answer to John’s question, and I would share it with him if I ever had the chance. He's asking the right person when he sings, “Mama, why do I always fall for the crazy ones?” However, his mama may not be able to tell him, but being his mother’s son lies at the heart of why “the crazy ones leave me (and him) feeling like this.” If JM hasn’t figured it out for himself yet, and if he’d like me to fill in the details, I could do it — he’ll just have to send me an email, or maybe connect on Facebook, Twitter or whatever.

Moonrise

Song 284: This week’s playlist track turns out to be Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival, written by John Fogerty. The YT video for this song that’s linked to my website contains some very entertaining footage of the band performing the tune, although it’s not a live performance video, but rather, live footage matched to the record, as well as a few stills of the band thrown in, but all in all, a good visual track that goes well with the cut. When this song came rocking out of the radio speaker a month or 2 before my HS graduation, if felt like a perfect fit for that moment. The decade I grew up in felt very intense and apocalyptic, in and of itself, with very real scenes from Viet Nam battlefields playing on the 6 o’clock news and the threat of nuclear war constantly hanging over our heads, sometimes haunting our dreams. Add to that the fundamentalist Christian background of my family, which included a strong belief in biblical end times prophecies, and this cut captured the essence of the era. Almost four years after Eve of Destruction (Song 146), it felt good that destruction hadn’t yet arrived, but it also felt like we were that much closer to the stroke of midnight. When the actual stroke of midnight on 12/31/69 passed, and I celebrated the arrival of a new year and new decade by catching a ride from a friend on a snowmobile while on Christmas break as a college freshman, I felt a slight sense of relief that my species had made it out of the ’60s without destroying ourselves. Much turmoil would lie ahead, including the Kent State shooting in the coming spring, more campus demonstrations against the war and the like, but at least we hadn’t blown up our entire civilization, so the Bad Moon had risen, but it had also gone back down, and we were still around. On a humorous note, for the first few times I heard this, I thought Fogerty was singing Black Moon Rising, and that was what I mouthed when I sang along with the record. I also remember reading some critic who mentioned the ‘50s influence on the CCR sound coming through on certain tracks, this being one, and I didn’t understand the context at the time, so I didn’t know what to make of that critique, though it would become much clearer over the next few years as the classic rock of the ‘50s enjoyed a revival of sorts. Many fans of this song probably know the joke about the final chorus line “There’s a bad moon on the rise” being sung as “There’s a bathroom on the right” which reportedly Fogerty himself sometimes did, and if there’s any truth to the rumor about me performing with a country bar pickup band in the East Bay during the 1980s, then it’s quite possible that the lead singer for that outfit did the same thing. As the year 2016 begins, and candidates for the top spot talk about carpet bombing and making the sand glow, that bad moon could be rising once again, but hopefully, by early November, it will have gone back down and we’ll still be around.