Seattle has long been a hot bed of great new music and that’s still true today. Today’s Two’fer Tuesday post highlights two new Seattle groups that are making music that you need to hear. First up is a great new female group called La Luz (pictured above).
La Luz started in 2012 and features Shana Cleveland (guitar), Marian Li Pino (drums), Abbey Blackwell (bass), and Alice Sandahl (Keyboards). Sure As Spring, from the girls debut album (It’s Alive), features four part harmonies, surf guitars, and some amazing organ all of which combine to create a sound that transports me right back to the 60’s. Really good stuff!
La Luz – Sure As Spring (great 60’s girl group pop)
Next up is Pillar Point, a solo project of Scott Reiterman who previously started Throw Me The Statue. With Pillar Point, Scott produces a glorious synth pop sound that would have been right at home back in the 80’s. You can hear that sound for yourself by listening to Eyeballs from the group’s self titled debut album. Enjoy!
Al Kooper! Now….here’s the story about how Al Kooper saved the day by sitting in on the recording of Like a Rolling Stone without ever having been invited. I pieced this story together from two key sources;
An April 11, 2014 interview with Al that appeared in the Wall Street Journal
The Wikipedia article about Like A Rolling Stone
We will start with the Wikipedia article:
The recording sessions were produced by Tom Wilson on June 15–16, 1965, in Studio A of Columbia Records, 799 Seventh Avenue, in New York City. In addition to Bloomfield, the other musicians enlisted were Paul Griffin on piano, Joe Macho, Jr. on bass, Bobby Gregg on drums, and Bruce Langhorne on tambourine, all booked by Wilson. Gregg and Griffin had previously worked with Dylan and Wilson on Bringing It All Back Home.
On the first day, five takes of the song were recorded in a markedly different style from the eventual release—a 3/4 waltz time, with Dylan on piano. The lack of sheet music meant the song was played by ear. However the essence of the song was discovered in the course of the chaotic session. They did not reach the first chorus until the fourth take, but after the following harmonica fill Dylan interrupted, saying, “My voice is gone, man. You wanna try it again?” This take was subsequently released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.The session ended shortly afterwards.
When the session re-convened the following day, June 16, Al Kooper joined the proceedings as a guest of Tom Wilson. Al picks up the story from this point in the Wall Street Journal interview…….
Question: How did you manage to play on a session you weren’t invited to: “Like A Rolling Stone?”
I was 21 by that time and because I wrote songs I knew a lot of producers. They would hire me to plan on sessions. So I was friends with Dylan’s producer (Tom Wilson). When he found out I was a Dylan fan he invited me to a session, not to play but to sit in the control room and watch. So I thought, I want to play on that record . I was practicing the guitar to be ready and I got there early–I wanted to pull this off before Tom Wilson could stop it. I got there 45 minutes early. But then like five minutes after I got there so did Dylan and he brought Mike Bloomfield. So I heard Bloomfield play and went into the control room where I belonged. I never heard anyone play like that, much less someone who appeared to be my age.
After a couple of rehearsal takes, Wilson moved Griffin from Hammond organ to piano. Al saw his opportunity and jumped at it but he had a couple of challenges to over come. We will let him continue the story from his Wall Street Journal interview:
Question: Then, long story short, you snuck in and played and Wilson didn’t kick you out. Had you played a Hammond organ before?
Yes, but I didn’t know how to turn it on-it’s very complicated. Also I didn’t know how to use all the controls. But (keyboardist Paul Griffin, who had moved to piano for the track) left it turned on and whatever the settings were that’s what I played.
Now let’s go back to the Wikipedia article to finish the story…..
Wilson, surprised to see Kooper at the organ, nevertheless allowed him to play on the track. Upon hearing a playback of the song, Dylan insisted that the organ be turned up in the mix, despite Wilson’s protestations that Kooper was “not an organ player.”
This session saw 15 recorded takes. The song had by now evolved into its familiar form, in 4/4 time with Dylan on electric guitar. After the fourth take—the master take that was released as a single—Wilson happily commented, “That sounds good to me.” Nevertheless, Dylan and the band persisted in recording the song 11 more times.
So, as they say, the rest was history. Al Kooper, an uninvited participant in the recording process, playing an instrument that he really wasn’t very familiar with, managed to improvise an organ riff that became one of the key elements of what is now widely recognized as one of the best songs of all time. That my friends is one of the best stories in rock history in my opinion.
Al went to to have quite a career but we will save most of that story for another day. Let me leave you with just one more tidbit. One of the great things that Al Kooper did later in career was to discover Lynyrd Skynyrd. The signature track of Lynyrd Skynyrd is a little ditty called Free Bird which happens to have a signature organ introduction. Guess who was in the studio playing that organ……yep it was none other that Al. Let’s listen….
James dueted with Mark on Sailing to Philadelphia singing the part of Charlie Mason while Mark sang the part of Jerimiah Dixon. As described on Wikipedia, Charlie and Jerimiah are…..
…the two English surveyors who established the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia in the 1760s. The border later became known as the Mason-Dixon Line and has been used since the 1820s to denote the border between the Southern United States and the Northern United States.
I truly love the song and the voices of James and Mark sound great together. As always……let me know what you think.
As it turns out there was another great duet on the Sailing to Philadelphia album. This one between Mark and Van Morrison on a great song called The Last Laugh. Let’s listen…..I think you will really like it!
This is the eight in a long running series of posts that highlight rock songs featuring someone interesting sitting in on the recording session. For this series I post the song on one day and identify who is sitting in the next couple of days. I hope you enjoy the concept and maybe learn some interesting music history in the process.
My selection for today’s post is Sailing To Philadelphia by Mark Knopfler. The song is about the drawing of the Mason-Dixon line in the United States. I love history so this songs is one of my all time favorites. Let’s listen………
The answer will be posted tomorrow along with some additional background information.
Send in your guesses and I will identify the the first person who gives the correct answer in tomorrow’s post.
Last week I posted about Carly Simon’s song You’re So Vain which was the #1 single for the first couple of weeks in 1973. In that post, I mentioned that a famous rock star could be heard singing background vocals on the song. I challenged my readers to name that vocalist but no one responded so I will have to reveal who was sitting in on the song myself.
Drum Roll please…………Mick Jagger provided background vocals on the song!
Who Carly was singing about remains a mystery. As you can see from the cover of the March 1973 Circus magazine (above) this mystery was raging from the release of the song. The Circus article didn’t identify who the song was about but it did provide some insight into how Mick got involved in the recording of the song while Carly was recording at Trident Studios in London.
Jagger, an old friend of Carly’s, had heard that Carly was recording. Carly recalls, “I was right in the middle of overdubbing the vocals to ‘You’re So Vain.’ I said, ‘Mick, you want to come over and sing vocals on this song?’ And he came right up.”
He came by almost every night that Carly was there (over a week), even when he wasn’t dubbing ‘Vain.’ On some nights he would quietly watch the recording; during others he spent time teaching Carly basic rock ‘n roll licks. “He told me that I really was a rock ‘n roll singer”, recalls Carly, “and not just a folk singer, and I shouldn’t be afraid to admit it. Yet it never feels natural to me.”
Exactly who Carly was singing about remains a mystery. Some of the speculation on this topic is provided below in an extract from the Wikipedia article about the song.
Before the song became a hit single in 1972 she told an interviewer that the song was about “men,” not a specific “man.”
In 1983, she told the Washington Post that it is not about Mick Jagger, who contributed uncredited backing vocals to the song. However, in a 1993 book Backstage Passes, Angela Bowie claimed to be the “wife of a close friend” mentioned in “You’re So Vain,” and that Jagger, for a time, had been “obsessed” with her. Simon made another comment about the subject’s identity as a guest artist on Janet Jackson’s 2001 single, “Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You),” which sampled “You’re So Vain.” About the song, Simon said, “The apricot scarf was worn by Nick (Nick Nolte). Nothing in the words were referred to Mick.”
In a 1989 interview, Simon acknowledged that the song is a little bit about Warren Beatty but said the subject of the song is a composite of three men from her L.A. days. In a 2007 interview, Beatty said, “Let’s be honest. That song was about me.” Simon has said that Beatty had called and thanked her for the song.
Over the years, Simon has divulged “letter clues”, and has claimed that the subject’s name contains the letters A, E, and R.
Shortly before the writing of the song, Simon was married to James Taylor; she has said that he was “definitely not” the subject of the song. David Bowie, David Cassidy and Cat Stevens have all been cited by the press as speculative candidates. In 2005, Simon’s ex-husband Jim Hart said he was sure that the song was not about anyone famous.
A great song and a great long-running mystery. What a great way to start 1973!
As usual, my online friend Gerard was the first to chime in with the right answer. Here is what Gerard said in his comment:
There are three well known musicians sitting in the making of this record/LP; Al Kooper, Todd Rindgren and last but not least George Harrison. If you listen to this number you can hear the guitar of George playing and strumming in Day After Day.
While Gerard was correct, Wikipedia identifies a few more musicians that participated and provides a few more details about George’s role in the following excerpt from its Badfinger article:
In 1971, the group rented Clearwell Castle, in Gloucestershire; living and recording there. They finished recording their third album, again with Emerick as producer, but the tapes were rejected by Apple. Harrison took over as producer in spring of 1971, but later pulled out of the project because of his Bangladesh commitments; the album was then completed by Todd Rundgren. Straight Up was released in the US in December 1971, and spawned two successful singles: “Day After Day” (Billboard number four), which sold over a million worldwide, and “Baby Blue” (US number 14). The album reached number 31 on the US charts. It included uncredited special guest appearances from Harrison, Leon Russell, and Klaus Voormann. Commenting on the recording of the dual slide guitars on “Day After Day”, Molland remembered: “Pete and I had done the backing track, and George came in the studio and asked if we’d mind if he played … It took hours, and hours, and hours, to get those two guitars in sync”.
As mentioned in the article above, George turned over production responsibilities to Todd Rundgren in order to plan his benefit concert for Bangladesh. Badfinger ended up as the backing band for the concert.
As a bonus, here is a great clip from that concert with George singing Here Comes The Sun backed by Pete Ham from Badfinger.
This is the seventh in a series of posts that highlight classic rock songs featuring someone interesting sitting in on the recording session. For this series I post the song on one day and identify who is sitting in the following day. I hope you enjoy the concept and maybe learn some interesting music history in the process.
My selection for this post is Day After Day by Badfinger, from their album Straight Up. If you have been reading this blog you know that Badfinger is a favorite of mine. Listen to the song and see if you can tell who is sitting in. I will give you a couple of hints, his specific work on this song is uncredited but he played a major role on this album.
The answer will be posted tomorrow along with some additional background information.
Send in your guesses and I will identify the the first person who gives the correct answer in tomorrow’s post.
John visited Elton at the Caribou studio in Colorado during the recording of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and played guitar and sang background vocals during the recording.
Here is a little mini-documentary about John performing at Elton’s Madison Square Garden performance on Thanksgiving night 1974. You really need to watch it…that appearance ended up being John’s last performance in public. Very interesting rock history stuff. Enjoy!
This is the sixth in a series of posts that highlight classic rock songs featuring someone interesting sitting in on the recording session. For this series I post the song on one day and identify who is sitting in the following day. I hope you enjoy the concept and maybe learn some interesting music history in the process.
My selection for this post is Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. No, it isn’t the original Beatles song, it is the cover of it by Elton John. It is a great cover that pays homage to the original but introduces an interesting little reggae break in the middle. Listen to the song and see if you can tell who is sitting in. I will give you a hint, he is credited on the album as Dr. Winston O. Boogie.
The answer will be posted tomorrow along with some additional background information.
Send in your guesses and I will identify the the first person who gives the correct answer in tomorrow’s post.
Pete put Thunderclap Newman together in 1968 to help out John “Speedy” Keen who had been a roommate of, and chauffeur for, Pete. The studio band consisted of Speedy (vocals, drums, guitar) along with Andy “Thunderclap” Newman (piano), and Jimmy McCulloch (guitar), and Pete Townshend (bass). On the record Pete was listed as Bijou Drains. Pete also produced their one and only album, Hollywood Dream. Something in the Air, written by Speedy, was a number one single in England in 1969.
Fun Fact: Something in the Air was originally titled Revolution. It was renamed due to song of the same name by The Beatles.
When they toured in 1969 Jim Pitman-Avery replaced Pete on bass and Jack McCulloch played drums. The initial three members stayed together through 1971 with a variety of musicians filling in on bass and drums.
After the band broke up:
Speedy recorded a couple of solo albums, played as a session musician, and was a record producer. He passed away in 2002 as a result of heart problems.
Jimmy went on to play with Stone the Crows, a reformed Small Faces, and more famously with Wings. He died young at the age of 26 as the result of a heroin overdose.
Andy went on to record a solo album. In 2010/2011 he put together a new Thunderclap Newman band which recorded an album, Beyond Hollywood.
Before we leave Thunderclap Newman behind I strongly recommend you checkout this video tribute to the band lovingly put together by JimmyMcCullochFan and posted on YouTube. It includes some interesting commentary by Pete Townshend.
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 