Bob Dylan – Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week

Extra! Daniel Kramer’s year with Bob Dylan

May 5, 2024 by martin colyer 2 Comments

I’m re-publishing this following the passing of one of my favourite “Dylan” photographers. It was originally written for Pulp magazine in 2017.

Bob Dylan: A Year and a Day. Photographs by Daniel Kramer

Edited by Nina Wiener / Art Direction by Josh Baker / Design by Jess Sappenfield
Published by Taschen, hardcover in a clamshell box, edition of 1,965 (cute!)

“In retrospect, it’s clear that Bob was in the process of winding up a very large spring. I didn’t know then  how much of that spring would be let loose in the coming months.” – Daniel Kramer

On July 20th 1965, Bob Dylan, the star of the Greenwich Village Folk Boom, exploded onto the pop charts. America’s first modern singer-songwriter, Dylan, in the six minutes and thirteen seconds that it took for the epochal “Like a Rolling Stone” to be debuted on US radio, virtually created grown-up rock music. But Dylan’s spectacular reinvention of himself and his music had not just happened overnight – it had been brewing for a while. At the beginning of this astonishing, game-changing period – the like of which had previously been the preserve of fine artists such as Matisse and Picasso – photographer Daniel Kramer found himself, through a mixture of talent, persistence and chance, in the position of recording the highs of an extraordinary year in the life of Bob Dylan.

Having first seen Dylan on Steve Allen’s variety show in February, 1964 (“It was the kind of sound I always liked. It reminded me of a voice from the hills… like a voice that had been left out in the rain and rusted…”) Kramer decided that he had to photograph this performer who was brave enough to play songs about social injustice on a mainstream tv show. He called Dylan’s management: “Naturally I was told Mr Dylan was not available. And so it went. I would call, and they would say no.” Eventually, Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, picked up the phone. “By this time he knew why I was calling. I convinced him that I was a reasonable, completely sane, published, professional photographer. I was caught by surprise when his almost immediate answer was, Okay, come up to Woodstock next Thursday. You can have an hour. Just like that… just like that!”

So Kramer drove two hours north of New York City on a bright August morning and spent the day following the 23-year-old musician as he read newspapers, played chess, and hung out with Sally Grossman (Albert’s wife) and his own wife-to-be, Sara Lownds. In the early Sixties, Woodstock was still a sleepy burg, a place where Dylan could keep the increasing intensity of life in New York at bay. The pictures are winningly relaxed and goofy, Dylan obviously finding Kramer a copacetic presence, and from that simple beginning, Kramer found himself photographing Dylan on thirty occasions over the next 365 days.

Kramer had come to photography early, aged 14, and later fell into a job working as an assistant at the studio of the fashion photographer Allan Arbus. “His wife, Diane Arbus, also did her darkroom work there – it turned out to be more than just a job. From Allan I learned to manage a studio, work with models, and run the business – and from Diane, I learned to open my eyes a bit wider, to think about my pictures in new ways.” His next gig was assisting Philippe Halsman, legendary Life magazine cover photographer. “From Philippe, I learned how to make light do your bidding, instead of the other way around, and how to choose a decent wine – and that photography could be a great adventure and a pathway to the whole world.”

From Kramer’s fascinating recollections in the accompanying text, we find that he becomes one of Dylan’s travelling companions. In this role, he’s given both space and time to produce meaningful work. It’s a hallmark of Dylan’s relationships with the producers, musicians and photographers who come into his orbit – once they are admitted, they are allowed to bring their vision with them. Only Alfred Wertheimer on his trips around the country with a young Elvis Presley had such access to a popular star, with similar results – to show the nuts and bolts of the music business and lift the veil at the moment that the cultural plates were shifting.

Listen to any of the session tapes of recent release The Cutting Edge (every single note of music Dylan recorded, complete with false starts and unused takes, throughout 1965, the year of Kramer’s book) and you’ll find that Dylan’s moulding of what’s happening is subtle and understated, only occasionally direct and demanding. And if you met his approval, his world was your oyster. Kramer takes full advantage, producing classic black-and-white reportage backstage, onstage, in cars and cafes.

The book, beautifully laid out, is broken into sections (Woodstock / Town Hall / In the Studio / Bob & Joan / Early ’65 / Forest Hills) by lyrics letterpressed onto heavy matt paper, with Kramer’s excellent narrative set in typewriter, an era-specific evocation of the prevailing technology of the time.

The sheer size of the book lets you feel that you’re at a really well-curated exhibition, one where the scaling and sequencing of the images are perfectly judged. The detail drawn out of the gorgeous grain of the 35mm Kodak Tri-X film that Kramer used is wonderful, and the book is a much more satisfying way to see these photographs than as individual prints in a gallery.

The colour film that Kramer shot of Dylan, the cover session for Bringing It All Back Home, one of the two albums he would release in 1965 (the other, Highway 61 Revisited, also had a cover shot by Kramer) sits happily at the centre of the book, in a section called “Intermission”. Kramer’s studio shoots (including a meeting at Kramer’s New York studio that would provide the cover for Dylan’s first book, Tarantula) give a break between the reportage either side and show that his earlier experiences in the studio with Arbus and Halsman served him well.

But first, he needed the persuasive techniques of Bob’s manager to make these shoots happen. After Columbia’s art director, John Berg, refuses to commission the (as he saw it) inexperienced Kramer to shoot the cover of Bringing It All Back Home, Grossman intervenes. “Mr Grossman took us [Dylan and Kramer] to the art director’s ofﬁce, where he proceeded to make a series of predictions of what bad things would happen [to Berg] if I did not get this assignment.”

Having been present at the recording sessions, Kramer knew that he had to deliver something that related to Dylan’s new direction – and a technique he was working on for a fashion shoot with his 4×5 view camera seemed perfect. It enabled him to make “multiple exposures on one sheet of ﬁlm while moving, blurring, or keeping sharp parts of any single exposure”, a world away from the fly-on-the-wall 35mm reportage that Kramer had been shooting up to this point.

Arranging Dylan in a room set at Grossman’s Woodstock house, with Sally Grossman draped decoratively on a sofa, Kramer adds elements to make his technique work. “We scoured the house and basement to ﬁnd things to put in the picture so there would be things to ‘move’ when the camera back was revolved. I wanted to say that Bob Dylan was less a folksinger and more a prince of music. So there in the centre of the turning record is Bob Dylan without an instrument, in this beautiful room, seated with a beautiful woman in a red dress… we were lucky to get one exposure with the cat looking into my lens.” Kramer can’t resist telling us that he and John Berg were nominated for a Grammy Award for best album cover photograph…

Around this time, a new Dylan snaps into view, as the pages turn from images of joking around with old friends to those of Dylan with an early hero, Johnny Cash. Dylan is about to play one of his last acoustic shows and has morphed from the chubby-faced Chaplinesque troubadour to a more angular and focused presence. Over dinner with Cash, he seems to be burning with a particular intensity, fixing Dan Kramer and Cash both with a piercing gaze.

The next stage is about to begin in earnest, and it will lead to the alienation of Dylan’s loyal fanbase. His artistic horizons are widening to take in Pop Art and filmmaking – from Greenwich Village to the Warhol factory was only a matter of a few downtown NY blocks, but in 1965 it was an artistic chasm. On one side, the gruesomely authentic folksters, on the other, the achingly hip (yet blatantly commercial) scenesters. As Dylan moved inexorably across from one to the other, the air was thick with cries of Sell Out! and worse. Kramer finds himself shooting from the inside out.

A show at Forest Hills with electric backing will plunge Dylan into a maelstrom that the world of rock has rarely seen, as a performer’s desire to follow his muse sees him branded a Judas and pelted with objects. Visually, Dylan’s look begins to assume the sharp outlines of an icon – even in a close-field blur, with Albert Grossman far away in the stands of the Forest Hills stadium, Dylan is instantly recognisable, entering the period where he would be drawn by Milton Glaser as a rainbow-headed visualisation of the grooviness and excitement of the middle sixties.

And that concert signals the end of Kramer’s travels with Bob. The last shots are of Dylan at one remove from his audience, backlit by blinding spotlights as someone invades the stage, chased by cops. A tour of the US and Europe awaits Dylan, his world accelerating until it culminates in a motorcycle accident that will remove him from the public glare for the following years.

Daniel Kramer moves onto a long and successful career straddling editorial, advertising and motion-picture work, and never photographs Dylan again. And Dylan? Well, he’s still “on the road, heading to another joint…”, not stopping long enough to be pinned down. But we, luckily, have this epic production to linger over, reliving that remarkable year when the times were truly changing.

If you’re receiving the email out, please click on the Date Headline of the page for the full 5 Things experience. It will bring you to the site (which allows you to see the Music Player) and all the links will open in another tab or window in your browser.

The book of Five Things is available from Amazon here.

“He writes with the insight of someone who has inhabited the world of the professional musician but also with the infectious enthusiasm of someone who is a fan like anyone of us. He also comes at the subject from an entirely personal, slightly sideways perspective, with no agenda and no product to sell. It’s entertaining and inspiring in equal measure.”

“A terrific book, stuffed to the gills with snippets of news items and observations all with a musical theme, pulled together by the watchful eye of Martin Colyer… lovingly compiled, rammed with colour photos and interesting stories. Colyer has a good ear for a tune, an eye for the out-of-ordinary and he can write a bit too.”

Filed Under: Extra! Tagged With: Bob Dylan, music, Daniel Kramer, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, poetry, folk-rock, joan-baez

Thursday, August 22rd | Six Robbie Robertson Songs & Performances for the ages

August 23, 2023 by martin colyer 4 Comments

{ONE} RONNIE HAWKINS, THE LAST WALTZ | “COME ON ROBBIE, LET’S TAKE A LITTLE WALK…”
Robbie still has to count Ronnie in … but the sound of his newly-bronzed Stratocaster summons up the rowdy rockabilly that Ronnie Hawkins traded in. “I didn’t know whether it would be a bad idea, but I decided to have the Stratocaster bronzed. It was a bit tricky, you know, finding somebody to do that. One of the road manager guys said, There’s a place where they bronze baby shoes. He did some research, took it, brought it back, and it was bronze. I thought, Wow — it does look beautiful. They put it all back together again. I played it, and it sounded unlike any guitar I had ever played. Then, when I stood up and put on the strap, I realised it weighed more.

I tried it out in the rehearsals for the Last Waltz and it started to feel right to me, and I was quite drawn to the tonality of it. There was a little bit more… it was just a sharper tone, with more metal involved. It grabbed right onto the notes, making them sting, in a way, and have a nice sustain to it as well…” Well, there’s a whole life on the rockabilly road in Ronnie’s performance, topped with his glorious scream, and Robbie becomes eighteen again, the six-days-on-the road, “blowing down the backroads headin’ south” boy, taking lessons from Fred Carter Jr. and Roy Buchanan and trying to be the loudest, flashiest guitar player on the circuit.

{TWO} BOB DYLAN’S HOTEL ROOM, GLASGOW | “I CAN’T LEAVE HER BEHIND…”
Robbie Robertson jamming with Bob Dylan at the Station Hotel, Glasgow, on a day off between concerts, 18th May 1966. One of Dylan’s song sketches from a time when he’d try out melodies, often having an almost medieval feel, with dummy or half-formed words (most famously on “I’m Not There” on the Basement recordings the next year). How good would this have sounded on Blonde On Blonde?

“I’m not getting the bridge,” says Robbie, as he tries to read Bob’s mind… “That’s it, that’s it”, says Bob. Towards the end, as the song coalesces, hear how Robertson became one of the great structural guitarists of the pop age, learning how to play behind singers, how to structure the textures, the hills and valleys of songs, and when to drop in sweet grace notes, or play a fill that knits two parts together.

{THREE} OLD, OLD WOODSTOCK | “KING HARVEST (HAS SURELY COME)”
Everyone’s seen this performance, shot in what is now John and Jan Cuneo’s house, but was Robbie’s studio back then. Maybe no songwriter outside of Fleetwood Mac has written so many songs directed at their bandmates as Robbie Robertson has — “Stage Fright”, “Where Do We Go From Here?” Forbidden Fruit,” but here, as the second album is finished and all is well in the Band world, this film shows their characters and connection beautifully.

Barney Hoskyns, in his excellent book on The Band, Across The Great Divide, wrote: “Corn in the fields / Listen to the rice when the wind blows ‘cross the water / King Harvest has surely come…” It was the first of three marvellous images that Levon intoned as prefaces to Richard’s verses — just part of the song’s intricate structure, which involved several time changes and suspensions. “The chord progression was a little bit complex”, says Robbie. ‘There’s a sifty feeling we were trying to get, which was subtle and bold at the same time.’ Just as ‘sifty’ were the sounds the band attained for each instrument. With John Simon playing an electric piano through the same black box Robbie had used on “Tears Of Rage,” Garth’s Lowrey shimmered away in the background, and Robbie made tiny Telecaster incisions off to one side. “This was the new way of dealing with the guitar,” Robbie says. “Leaving out a lot of stuff and just waiting till the last second and then playing the thing in just the nick of time. It was an approach to playing where it’s so delicate, the opposite of the “in your face” playing that I used to do.” After the final verse, Robbie played a solo so intense it was frightening. “It’s like you have to hold your breath while playing these kinds of solos,” he says. “You can’t breathe, or you’ll throw yourself off.”

“Tempo sounds slow, John”, Levon drawls to their producer, John Simon, at the end. Sounds perfect to me.

{FOUR} I SAW IT AT THE MOVIES | “WONDERFUL REMARK”
A Van Morrison song and performance from the soundtrack of Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, produced by Robertson.

Robbie’s tremolo’d guitar comes in halfway through the song, playing along with Richard Tee’s glorious piano and then re-appears shuddering, swooping and stinging, taking out the song as Van moans, “I sighed a million sighs / I told a million lies / to myself / To myself / Baby, to myself…” It’s some of the most “Robbie” playing on record.

{FIVE} DOWN SOUTH IN NEW ORLEANS | “SECRETS OF STORYVILLE”

“Tipitina’s at 1:00 a.m. A sound so loud it seemed to suck the air out of your lungs. George Porter Jr., formerly of the Meters, also a sideman on Robbie Robertson’s album Storyville, was playing up there beneath a giant picture of Professor Longhair, playing funky stuff with four horns under smoke that swirled in cones of colored light. Nervous people, wall to wall, danced to the nervous licks from a bottleneck guitar. A man in a donkey mask danced for a moment in an orange light and then was swallowed by the primordial, protoplasmic crowd. A miasma of smoke and sweat rose to the faint lights. A soprano saxophone wailed old Coltrane, set to rhythm & blues.

We were trying to hide in the shadows beside the stage “to avoid any foolish thing that might happen,” as Robbie had put it. But the band began what Robbie called “this ferocious funk thing,” and then Porter went up to the microphone and looked over in our direction, saying with a sly smile: “Robbie? You wanna get some of this?” It was such a cool way of putting it. It was practically irresistible on its own. But then it was Nick Wechsler, Robbie’s manager, who did it. He had gotten up behind Robbie, and he was pushing him like a tugboat, pushing, pushing through the crowd, and there was nowhere else to go. Robbie later told me: “The appeal of it was that it was just this unknown ferocious funk that evolved. When I went up there, I didn’t know what they were playing.”

When Robbie pushed past Paula and me to get to the stage, we didn’t know what he was doing. Robbie rarely sat in, but there he was, climbing the stage, and the guitar player handed him the instrument as the crowd erupted with sustained Indian cries. It was as if a dam had burst, and sound flowed out, transforming itself into “Iko Iko,” the national anthem of New Orleans funk. Paula and I were absorbed into the crowd, and then we were dancing, Dominique was dancing, and the notes from Robbie’s guitar were unfurling like bolts of coloured fabric tossed into the wind.” — From a great Laurence Gonzales article, “Secrets of Storyville”, Men’s Journal, 1993

Here’s “Go Back To Your Woods”, a song from the album co-written with Bruce Hornsby — hear Robbie backed by the Meters, with George Porter on bass and some incantations from a couple of Parade Chiefs. There are some brilliant things on Storyville — “Soap Box Preacher”, ”Night Parade”, and ”Breakin’ the Rules” (with its great opening line, “I tried to reach you, on Valentines Day” and Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan on vocals).

{SIX} RECITING LOU REED | “SOMEWHERE (DIRTY BLVD.)”
Lang Lang’s extraordinary merging of Bernstein and Sondheim’s “Somewhere” and Lou Reed’s “Dirty Blvd.” If you remember “Somewhere Down the Crazy River,” then it makes perfect sense. It’s amazing, ten and a half minutes of pianistics, bombastic percussion, “Somewhere” sung by Lisa Fischer, and “Dirty Blvd” spoken by Robertson. One of America’s iconic songs of hope balanced by one of Lou’s greatest songs about lives lived in poverty and trauma.

Filed Under: Weekly Roundup Tagged With: Across The Great Divide, Barney Hoskyns, Bob Dylan, John Simon Ritchie, King Harvest (Has Surely Come), Lang Lang, Laurence Gonzales, Martin Scorsese, Men’s Journal, New Orleans, Robbie Robertson, Ronnie Hawkins, Storyville, The Band, The Last Waltz, Van Morrison, Woodstock

Five Things, Saturday, August 5th

August 4, 2023 by martin colyer 4 Comments

THE INTRO
Now we’re all getting fully signed up to the future — it’s Philip K. Dick’s world after all, we just live in it — this week, Five Things touches on A.I., a spooked and possessed Marvin Gaye song, a world of music newly discovered, a video that is so French it should be required viewing at Customs and an extraordinary guitar modification. The saddest news was the passing of Sinead O’Connor. I thought back to a performance of the song every news broadcaster defaulted to this week [“Nothing Compares to You“] in 2012, where I tried to convey just how extraordinary her voice was… and Philip Watson sent me this astonishing performance of “Danny Boy.”

{ONE} THE DYLAN-A.I. INTERFACE
I don’t join things, generally — I’m not very clubbable. The only two clubs I’ve ever been a member of are the Levon Helm Fanclub and Fred’s (an Eighties Soho Club I somehow designed the identity for). But there I was at the Dylan discussion group with a Bob-inspired bottle of wine. I had bought it from Dina, our excellent local wine store, and it was made by Joe Jefferies, a man apparently at “the militant end of the natural wine world.” Originally from Warwickshire, he’s now in the Languedoc and producing wines from volcanic soils (100% Carignan in this one, if you’re asking), and he’d named one 2021 vintage, “Where black is the colour, where none is the number”. Seemed like a good wine for the pre-discussion supper. So, a quiz with the wine as the prize, and I hit on asking Chat GPT to write a review of one of the songs we were discussing — “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?“ The first attempt was poor — bland and full of signature A.I. terms. Then I thought I’d ask for a review in the style of Lester Bangs (figuring it would add personality).

It added Lester’s rather dismal and critical view of Bob just enough to make the game (I handed round print-outs, first to guess the author won the prize) last for a little while as suggestions were thrown around and out. Finally, Alan peered up from the murk (our table in Soho House West was very dimly lit) and said,”It’s Chat GBT!”. And as he doesn’t drink, the wine went to Mick.
Postscript: I think A.I. had something to do with this weirdness that I found when looking for Dylan pictures on Getty Images: I know Aaron Rapoport’s originals, and they didn’t look like this…

{TWO} THE DEEPEST SOUL
There are still things to discover, Part One:
“Piece of Clay” by Marvin Gaye [hear it in the Music Player on the right].
I don’t know how I found this track, but it comes from the unreleased follow-up to What’s Going On, which was to be titled You’re The Man. Written by Gloria Jones and Pam Sawyer, it’s a brilliant piece of work — and the rough-hewn quality, where the edges haven’t quite been burnished off, make you think it could be a demo. “Father! Stop criticizing your son / Mother please leave your daughters alone / Don’t you see that’s what wrong with the world today / Everybody wants somebody to be their own piece of clay…” As sung by Gaye, that opening line is especially painful.

According to the Apple Music liner notes, “underperformance of the title track ahead of the album’s release, coupled with disagreements the singer is said to have had with the label about the project’s direction, led to the entire thing being shelved, leaving most of the songs to subsequently trickle out as bonus cuts packaged with reissues, compilations, and box sets. The official release [in 2019] of You’re The Man, then, is a time capsule — a portrait of an artist at the top of his game, but also one torn between the socially conscious anthems of What’s Going On and the superman lover he’d embody on 1973’s Let’s Get It On.”

The intro sounds like it was recorded in a church, an organ laying a carpet under a distorted slide guitar, very Duane Allman at Muscle Shoals, pushing the needles into the red before two drum hits and a crash cymbal silences it. Marvin sings the first line, then doubles his vocal like Al Green. Gospel piano drives the melody into the title line, so beautifully weighted by Marvin. A syncopated bass pushes into the second verse as Marvin heats up. The guitar comes back in, adding blues to the Southern Soul of the song. Then we’re into the middle eight — a call and response with the backing singers, joined by a horn section; it’s as if the entire congregation have picked up instruments. Suddenly, on the phrase love, not hate, everything drops out, bar the drums and bass as Marvin soars; then, from the back of the church, the fuzzed guitar creeps in, taking us all to a classic gospel ending and down into the fade.

{THREE} THE LIFE OF REILLY
There are still things to discover, Part Two: The Durutti Column.
Reading the excellent Conquest of the Useless [on Substack], I was sent to a Guardian article by Daniel Dylan Wray on Vini Reilly and the music of the Durutti Column. How did I miss them all those years ago — the music is simply glorious. The first song I hear is “Otis”, referenced in the article.

Reilly is dismissive about his own music — “When I listen back to it, it’s boring,” he says. “It’s done. I’ve already expressed everything I needed to when I was playing it.” I tell him that a colleague told me they wanted the 1989 track “Otis” playing at their funeral. “Give him my apologies,” he laughs before downplaying the beauty of the track, in which sparkling guitar swirls around dreamy vocal samples from Tracy Chapman and Otis Redding. “It was just messing about.”

It is four minutes of heaven. YouTube decides next up is a live performance, “Jacqueline”, with drumming from Bruce Mitchell. I only knew of Bruce as a member of Alberto Y Los Trios Paranois, the art-rock-satire-band, but his duet with Reilly is wonderful, his red brushes flying over the kit in perfect sync with Vini’s guitar and keyboards, his palpable enjoyment wonderful to watch.

{FOUR} THE WAY TO THE NEXT WHISKY BAR…
This was the most extraordinary thing I saw in the week that Jane Birkin passed on. From Off the Fence, the newsletter of The Fence magazine: “Let’s celebrate all that is best in Gallic culture with this amazing video from 1988, which shows a children’s choir decked in full Serge Gainsbourg regalia — whiskies and cigarettes in hand — regale Gainsbourg himself with one of his songs as the Frenchman weeps with emotion. One to warm your stony hearts!”

On a TV appearance toward the end of his life, he was surprised by a choir of children (Les Petits Chanteurs d’Asnières) in full Gainsbourg regalia — black jacket, grey wig, sunglasses, whisky, cigarette, unshaven. They’re singing Serge’s “J’e suis venu te dire que je m’en vais” (“I came to tell you that I’m leaving”) but they’ve changed it to “On est venu te dire qu’on t’aime bien” (We came to tell you that we like you).

{FIVE} THE A-Z OF THE B
Did you know Gene Parsons fitted a Clarence White/Gene Parsons B-Bender to a 1964 Gibson Dove acoustic guitar? I didn’t. Mind blown. Check this out. Nathaniel Murphy, who is playing it, is an Englishman in Chicago, and a fine guitarist.

Filed Under: Weekly Roundup Tagged With: Aaron Rapoport, B-Bender, Bob Dylan, Bruce Mitchell, Clarence White, Gene Parsons, Marvin Gaye, Nathaniel Murphy, Piece of Clay, Serge Gainsbourg, Sinead O'Connor, The Durutti Column, The Fence Magazine, Vini Reilly

Monday, June 26th

June 26, 2023 by martin colyer 6 Comments

Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
— T. S. Eliot, East Coker

{ONE} BILLIE’S HOUSE: EASY LIVING?

Billie Holiday’s townhouse came up for sale last year. It wasn’t her townhouse — she had an apartment (#1B) on one of its seven floors — but we’re dealing with estate agents here. That’s one posing by the staircase. “We are privileged to introduce 26 WEST 87, the esteemed home where Jazz legend Billie Holiday once lived. She was a resident until her death in 1959. While living in the apartment, she released one of her most famous albums, Lady in Satin. This historically significant home, adjacent to Central Park and the Reservoir, was built in early 1900 and has been meticulously restored and optimized with modern technology while preserving the classical detailing. The impressive Media Room boasts wallpaper designed by Lenny Kravitz”. They’re not kidding. Way to go, Len. Recently reduced to $12,250,000 from $13,995,000. A saving of nearly $2 million. What are you waiting for?

{TWO} TOM’S HOUSE: “As I went out one morning / To breathe the air around Tom Paine’s…”

To Lewes, for Michael Gray’s talk on Bob’s Greatest Rejected Album Tracks accompanied by Mick Gold. As we were driving down, I was recommending to Mick the music documentary Born In Chicago, co-written by Joel Selvin and directed by Bob Sarles and John Anderson, which tells the story of the young white musicians who became fascinated with the blues played on the South Side of Chicago — between the coffee shops and the bars, the young disciples (among them Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites, Charley Musslewhite and Steve Miller) started mixing with the bluesmen and kickstarted a whole genre of sixties music. Mick then told us about being at the University of Sussex in 1966 and going to a gig by the Butterfield Blues Band at the Town Hall in Lewes with his camera — that’s one of his shots, of Butter, Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop, below. Mick then left university and started working as a photographer (he toured with Pink Floyd, Dr Feelgood, and photographed Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, The Band, Reed, Cale and Nico, Elton, The Grateful Dead, Patti Smith… the list goes on) before changing horses in midstream to become a documentary filmmaker. It was my second small road trip with Mick — the first was to Canterbury for dinner with the same Michael Gray. I look forward to the next one.

Michael Gray’s talk was great — full of striking linkages, subtle studies and playful theories, and to hear performances of songs like “Moonshiner”, “Mama You Bin on My Mind”, “Angelina” and “Too Late” played on a really big sound system was wonderful. And special thanks to Michael B for his amazing hospitality (and for Parkrun!)

{THREE} ELVIS’S PLANE In the desert at Roswell for 40 years, Elvis’s 1962 Lockheed 1329 JetStar. Sold for $260,000. No engines.

{FOUR} ELVIS’S TICKET, CIGAR, KEY & HAIR There was more Elvis memorabilia in the latest Julien’s auction. These are my favourites…

{FIVE} MY COUSIN’S SONS… I’m so thrilled that the family music line continues, and I’m even more thrilled that I really like the music both Brett and Taylor are involved in. My cousins Nickie and Julie emigrated to Canada in the early sixties with my aunt and uncle and grew up in Mississauga, Ontario. With their own families, they moved — Nickie to LA and Julie to Calgary. Nickie and Doug’s son Brett played in the indie scene around Silverlake, I think, and became Best Coast’s tour bass player before moving to Nashville to work there. He is currently playing bass with Caitlin Rose, who visited London after a long hiatus.

The gig we saw at Hackney’s Earth was terrific. Her voice was direct and emotional, her stage manner beguiling, and the band could switch from Harvest-era Neil Young through (almost) straight-ahead Country to ambient American music with ease. The audience reaction was appropriately fervent — they’d waited a long time. There was an unexpected cover: “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody”, a beautiful song that I knew from Bonnie Raitt’s version. Highlights from Caitlin’s own pen were “Getting it Right”, “Blameless”, “Pink Champagne”, “Own Side”, and an acoustic encore of “Sinful Wishing Well”. Brett was also the tour manager and driver, and it’s always sobering to see the amount of hard work and commitment that goes into touring a continent and putting on shows. When we expressed amazement at the distances Brett was driving, all he’d say was that if you lived in Nashville and needed something from Ikea it was a round trip of 200 miles. And that it was no problem.
Julie and David’s son Taylor formed a band at school in Calgary, Braids, and moved to Montreal where Canada’s independent music scene was gestating. We’ve followed them since their first gigs here in 2011 (where we were their London hotel). They’ve also not played here for a while now, and their latest tour saw a string quartet added to their electronica palette. Their London date at Kings Hall was magnificent. The trio — Taylor on synths, bass and who knows what, Austin on drums and vocals, Raphaelle on vocals, keyboards and guitar — layered and tweaked and intensified their sonic textures, creating cathedrals of sound and enveloping their faithful audience, who gave them a riotous response. It’s always fun to reconnect the family after these gigs. I just wish we all lived closer…

{AND FINALLY} WAINWRIGHT’S WONDER I’ve always been a little immune to the ornate charms of Rufus Wainwright, but I really like his new album, Folkocracy, where he takes the elemental melodies of the folk canon and embellishes them with just enough left turns to remake them as songs that feel part of today’s landscape. I’ve also been resistant to the charms of John Legend, but the version of Peggy Seeger’s “Heading for Home” they duet on is rather marvellous. It starts like a Copeland Western or an Alfred Newman film score before an acoustic trio (Madison Cunningham on guitar, David Piltch on string bass and Patrick Sauber playing banjo) pulls it back into the folk tradition. It plays out beautifully; their voices pepper (Legend) and salt (Wainwright)…

The rest of the album takes in songs by John Phillips and Neil Young (Wainwright was part of Echo in the Canyon, a muddled and unsuccessful documentary about the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters) as well as “traditionals” like “Arthur McBride”, “Wild Mountain Thyme” and “Shenandoah”. Guests include Chaka Khan (beautiful), Van Dyke Parks (Van Dykesy) and various siblings and relatives, and the whole thing is pulled together by Mitchell Froom. Oh, and there’s a fascinating arrangement of a Moondog song, “High on a Rocky Ledge”, where Blake Mills provides a guitar orchestra behind Wainwright’s duet with David Byrne.

Filed Under: Weekly Roundup Tagged With: Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Born in Chicago, Braids, Caitlin Rose, Elvis Presley, John Legend, Michael Gray, Mick Gold, Rufus Wainwright

“I Think I’m Going Back…” Five pieces of music that moved me in 2022

January 3, 2023 by martin colyer 9 Comments

Son Little / Like Neptune
It’s as if Shuggie Otis walked into a recording studio in the middle of a nodded-out Sly Stone session and found Bruce Langhorne in the corner making his sound tapestries for Dennis Hopper’s The Hired Hand. It sounds like the 60s, now, as modern as tomorrow, as old as yesterday. I bought ten copies to give to friends I thought might like it. It’s that good.

Aimee Mann / Queens of the Summer Hotel
Asked by Barbara Broccoli to write a musical based on Suzanne Keyser’s astonishing memoir, Girl Interrupted, Mann delivered something that was simultaneously beautiful, funny and heartbreaking. The music didn’t lose Mann’s very particular melodic sensibility while still convincing as being Off-Broadway bound. Powered by piano and double bass and Paul Bryan’s glorious string arrangements, the songs swirl and swoon and spotlight the deeper, creepy undercurrents of the story. The lyrics were non-pareil, conjuring episodes and anecdotes into smart verses and punchy choruses. One song, “Suicide is Murder”, contains the greatest lyrics I heard this year. If it doesn’t reach The Great White Way, then no matter. It’s 40 minutes of shimmering perfection, doing justice to a unique book.

Alison Russell / Outside Child [May 2021, sent to me by T.C. this year]
Awful subject matter exorcised through sublime French Americana, with her clarinet and banjo as a thread that draws the narrative on. Written by Russell and JT Nero, her partner, it’s recorded [mostly] live in Nashville and beautifully produced and mixed by Dan Knobler. Her fluid and beautiful voice takes the listener from childhood in Montreal to motherhood in Nashville. I can’t improve on Joe Henry’s words: “Outside Child draws water from the dark well of a violent past. Though iron-hard in their concerns, the songs themselves are exultant: exercising haunted dreamlike clean bedsheets snapped and hung out into broad daylight, and with the romantic poet’s lust for living and audacity of endurance. This music, no less –– no less –– is a triumph: a courageous work, burnished and bright; unspeakably beautiful as she sings the unspeakable.”

Harry Styles / “As it Was”
My favourite working music was, hands down, Harry’s House. It’s light and free, full of affection and glide. Plentiful earworms and, like bronze-dye pasta’s way with a sauce, just enough roughness to delicately catch your ear without fully distracting. Top of the pops was the single “As it Was”, which I must have played 200 times and still love. It filled the same place in the summer as Lorde’s Solar [“Lead the boys and girls onto the beaches / Come one, come all, I’ll tell you my secrets / I’m kinda like a prettier Jesus…”] did last year. I originally listened to Harry because I was intrigued that he’d hired Sarah Jones as his live drummer — I figured that showed he had good taste. I had seen her playing with Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip at the RFH, where he supported Lonnie Holley and was hypnotised by her drumming. While his acting appearances have been all-around awful, his way with a pop tune and his choice of collaborators has been impeccable.

Bryan Ferry / “Where or When” [As Time Goes By, 1999]
Found in a junkshop, Ferry’s Jazz Age album uses a fine group of musicians arranged by pianist Colin Good. I don’t remember hearing Rodgers and Hart’s beautiful song before I put this CD on, which seems mad, as it’s one of the most-covered songs in the GAS. It’s a gorgeous meditation on Deja Vu from Babes in Arms, a 1937 musical which also gave the crooners of the day “Lady is a Tramp”, “I Wish I Were in Love Again”, “My Funny Valentine”. Some hit rate… I obviously went and listened to 25 versions, including the hit by Dion and the Belmonts’ (written about as the last chapter of Bob’s bizarre Philosophy of Modern Song), but none of them touched me like Ferry’s. It creeps in on the back of an ondes martenot played by the brilliant Cynthia Millar; as Bob says, “the swirling dreamlike quality of Rodgers’ tune gives the listener a feeling of time as mysterious and complex as anything by Stephen Hawking”. The ondes, somewhat like a keyboard-based theremin, give an uncanny and sensual air to the melody. Ferry takes the song gently in his cupped hands and sings it in a bruised whisper, hushingly alighting on the melody, encapsulating the gauzy reverie of the lyric. Beautiful.

* The ondes Martenot [“Martenot waves”] is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating “wavering” sounds similar to a theremin. It was invented in 1928 by the French inventor Maurice Martenot. Martenot was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators and wanted to create an instrument with the expressiveness of the cello.