Tag Archives: Rock

RIP Mark Lanegan, 1964-2022

I’ve frankly struggled to process the death of the great rock vocalist Mark Lanegan since his passing at the age of 57 this past February. When someone has essentially been your musical spirit animal for 30-odd years it’s very difficult to say goodbye, particularly as Mark’s passing was just the latest in a numerous and dispiriting series of deaths of all-time greats in the music world. It wasn’t the extreme gut punch of Chris Cornell’s painful and unexpected suicide back in 2017; or the shock of Prince’s sad and seemingly pointless OD in 2016; or the extreme melancholy of a stoic David Bowie succumbing to liver cancer that same year. Lanegan was, by his own admission, a long-time hardcore drug and alcohol abuser, as well as a chain smoker, even if he had been reportedly sober for some years now. Then, he also had an extremely nasty case of COVID that put him in the hospital and even into an induced coma for far too long a spell in 2021. (A true artist, Mark wrote two emotionally honest, raw and well-received autobiographical books about those horrible experiences of addiction and illness, Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir and Devil In A Coma.)

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Borracho

A standout track from just his second solo effort, 1994’s Whiskey For the Holy Ghost , the barn burning “Borracho” shows a young artist already nearly fully formed. 

So, hearing he had died suddenly in late winter of ’22 was not exactly a complete surprise. A total bummer, yes, but one couldn’t be surprised that his extreme lifestyle, born out of a brutally unhappy childhood in rural Washington, had caught up with him and that the bill had finally come due. It wasn’t really any more surprising than Kurt Cobain cashing his check back in 1994. Mark Lanegan was every bit the self-destructive rock poet Cobain was and at least he beat the curse of 27 by about 30 years, not to mention somehow outliving his other doomed contemporaries, Andrew Wood, Layne Staley, Scott Weiland and Cornell. Though that time still seems far too brief now that he’s passed, he put it to astonishingly good use. His longevity and prolific output of exceedingly high quality material, as well as his unflinching honesty as an artist and aversion to self-indulgence, make him one of the towering if woefully underappreciated figures in Rock history. While he was often primarily noted for his work as the Screaming Trees frontman way back in the ’90s, or compared as a solo artist to Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen in a facile, shorthand way, the long view shows many more similarities with Jim Morrison (and even Rimbaud), from the brooding, almost unfathomably deep and textured baritone that could all at once rise to a banshee’s wail, to that craving for riding to the very edge of self-destruction in search of some sort of twisted enlightenment and then — for a long while, at least — returning to tell the tale as only a debauched survivor can.

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Because of This

An 8-minute, raga-inflected mini-epic from his third solo album, 1998’s Scraps at Midnight, shows Lanegan’s virtuosic understanding of dynamics in songwriting and within his own vocal range.

Lanegan put his time on this earth and his haunting and beautiful instrument to good use. If you only know Mark Lanegan from Screaming Trees or even just the hit single “Nearly Lost You” then you are really missing out. To get first things out of the way first, though, Screaming Trees themselves were way more than that one big hit from the Singles soundtrack, no matter that Mark held little fondness for his first band. They started well before most of their grunge brethren, back in the mid-1980s, and were key pioneers of that Seattle scene even if never quite fully a part of it. Their earlier recordings are well worth seeking out and show a band rapidly evolving into a semi-psychedelic hard rock powerhouse, with 1991’s Uncle Anesthesia being a particularly tight precursor to their big breakthrough, Sweet Oblivion.

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Dollar Bill

Not “Nearly Lost You” — one of the many ‘hidden gems’ hiding in plain site on Oblivion.

Oblivion, which featured “Nearly Lost You” as its breakthrough hit, is a total ass-kicker from opening to closing track. But the toxic band dynamics and the record label’s condescending view of the Trees as “inferior” to their labelmates, Alice in Chains (perhaps the Trees were not really “Grunge” enough), squelched any momentum they should’ve had. The fantastic, technically impressive follow-up four years on, Dust, failed to build any kind of commercial momentum. Continue reading

What we’re reading — Becoming Elektra: The True Story of Jac Holzman’s Visionary Record Label by Mick Houghton

If you’re a classic Rock fan with a particular interest in the 1960s like me then Becoming Elektra: The True Story of Jac Holzman’s Visonary Record Label by Mick Houghton is a must read piece of music history. As its long subtitle proclaims, Becoming Elektra is both a biography of legendary music executive Jac Holzman and also a testament to Elektra Records’ uniquely eclectic and pervasive impact on the popular music of the baby boomer generation. Houghton traces Holzman’s pioneering technical efforts and prescient eye for talent with admirable thoroughness from the Folk boom of the 1950s and early ’60s to the LA-based psychedelic Rock explosion of the late ’60s to the Soft Rock adult contemporary acts that came to dominate radio in the ’70s.

Most famous for signing The Doors, Holzman’s legacy is much more than that admittedly awesome feat. He comes across as a fascinating and driven guy with an unusually compassionate feeling for his artists, as well as something of a technical visionary and studio perfectionist with a super wide range of musical tastes. A native New Yorker from a reasonably prosperous family, Holzman returned to the city determined to make his mark in music after precociously forming Elektra while still in college. Like so many of his generation he found that the action was happening downtown in Greenwich Village, where he opened a record store in 1951 with a small recording studio in the back. Holzman’s soon realized that the sound on the records for the folk performers of the time was nothing like the richness of their live performances. So Holzman abandoned selling records and focused on seeking out unique new talents and then recording them to their best possible advantage. That became the Elektra signature throughout his years running the label.

The list of artists that Holzman corralled is nothing short of astonishing. In the folk era it included Village stalwarts like Jean Ritchie, Phil Ochs, Judy Henske, Fed Neil, Tom Paxton and Tom Rush, as well as reviving the career of Blues pioneer Josh White and discovering a young Coloradan with a big voice named Judy Collins. Continue reading

Earworm of the day — Golden Brown by the Stranglers

So my wife and I were having drinks in a new local favorite recently and it’s the kind of place where they usually do their Spotify or Pandora by the decade. The first night we were there it was all ’90s music (no Grunge, though, more like that Top 40 Cali stuff like No Doubt and Sugar Ray). This particular night it was all ’80s music like Tears For Fears, Duran Duran, Human League, etc. And then this song came on:

And I said “well, that one snuck in there because it’s clearly from the ’60s.” And my wife, who is an ’80s music connoisseur par excellence, said “Are you sure? I think it is from the ’80s actually.” So, doubting Thomas that I am. I looked it up on one of those music sensing apps, Soundhound in this case, before the song had ended and damn if she wasn’t right (again). It’s “Golden Brown” by the Stranglers from 1981. On the rare occasions I’ve heard this tune before I’ve always been of the firm belief that it was a lost gem from the psychedelic era, something that should have been included on those voluminous Nuggets collections.

The sort of queasy harpsichord, the druggy subject matter (it’s about heroin!) and the Donovan-like vocal delivery just screams 1960s to me. But it ain’t so and my wife should know. I also had the gnawing feeling that I’d heard it before in another context. And dang if it isn’t right smack in the middle of one of the best scenes in Guy Ritchie’s best film, Snatch, perfectly paying off the ill-fated Gorgeous George’s bare knuckle fight with Mickey the Pikey.

The Stranglers have a mixed critical reputation to say the least, as they made a rather calculated journey from Punk to artier New Wave fare and were inveterate put-on artists. But if they had only recorded “Golden Brown” this beautifully constructed trippy little masterpiece would be enough to hang their hats on even if it turned out they were only aping ’60s nostalgia for their own amusement. Sometimes songs from one era really do capture the feel of another one nearly completely. For me at least, “Golden Brown” is one of those rare times. Glad I didn’t bet anything more than picking up the dinner tab against my wife’s expert ’80s ear.

In memoriam: RIP Aretha Franklin, 1942 – 2018

The great lady has now been laid to rest and all has been said about Aretha Franklin‘s inestimable greatness that needed to be said.

The New York Times obituary is here.

The Washington Post obit is here.

And fine Rolling Stone appreciation by David Ritz is here.

The only thing I can think to add is that she occupies the same hallowed place in American culture as other luminaries like B.B. King, Ray Charles and Michael Jackson, an elite group of seminal cross-cultural pop superstars, giants of entertainment in the second half of the 20th Century one and all. These are the special musicians and entertainers who bridged the gap between “black” and “white” music, in the process cross-pollinating the two for an even stronger hybrid that we recognize today as uniquely American popular music. Aretha, like those other greats who came before and after her, took from the past, put her own indelible stamp on it and left that as a foundation for succeeding artists to build upon, leaving us all the richer for it.

As if to nail that point home here she is in 2015 at the Kennedy Center Honors paying tribute to Carole King by singing the blockbuster hit “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” — causing Ms. King, the song’s author, to freak out in happiness, the first couple at the time to wipe tears from their eyes and the place to go nuts in general. That spellbinding Aretha magic in action, even at that late date.

The Queen of Soul is gone but the voice lives on. Long live the Queen.

Earworm of the Day — Come Undone by Duran Duran

First things first, let me just say that I am not a very big Duran Duran fan. I always found their big hits “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Girls on Film” and “Rio” sort of overly bombastic and crude with Simon Le Bon’s vocal stylings lacking in nuance and modulation, almost but not quite shout-singing. And the lyrics are, frankly, dumb. If their MTV-fueled success was groundbreaking for the music video era and helped usher in the New Romantic movement here in the States — they were nicknamed the “Fab Five” at one point, for gods’ sakes — well, I have to say I much prefer the music of non-New Romantics like the Cure, The Smiths, Big Country, Echo & The Bunnymen and New Order, to name but a few of their contemporaries. Also there’s just something so time-specific about Duran Duran, from their very pretty ur-80s fashion sense to the Patrick Nagel cover art, that you can practically smell the Drakkar Noir wafting off their videos.

That said you’ve got to give the devil his due. Duran Duran did make extremely catchy singles and once in a while they could come up with a real beauty. Such is the case with the stunning “Come Undone” from 1993, quite late in their heyday.

One of the standout tracks along with “Ordinary World” from the band’s major comeback effort, The Wedding Album, “Come Undone” features gorgeous production, sinuous hooks and sophisticatedly mysterious lyrics. Le Bon’s vocal effort is also much improved 10 years on as he embraces an appealing Bryan Ferry by way of Micheal Hutchence croon. In fact the whole song does resemble one of INXS’s moodier ballads with the angular edges sanded off. Add to that a bevy of typically seductive Duran Duran hooks like a desperately sexy, helium voiced female vocal (“Can’t ever keep from falling apart at the seams”) replying to Le Bon’s darkly charged overtures (“Blow me into cry” indeed) and a well done arty video in an aquarium with crossdressing appeal and you come up with a Duran Duran hit that even a hater like me can love. And play on repeat, for that matter.

Earworm of the Day — Love Is A Long Road by Tom Petty

The untimely death of the great Tom Petty a few weeks ago forces us to look back in wonder at his amazing career and his frankly unbelievable trove of fantastic songs. There are very few American artists in any popular song-making genre who were able to sustain such a prodigiously satisfying output while also experimenting within what was ultimately a singularly unique personal style. Dylan, of course, and probably Springsteen and Paul Simon. But after that I’m at a loss.

Love Is A Long Road

“Love Is A Long Road” is a sterling example of Petty remaining true to his earliest rock instincts even while pursuing new artistic directions. Off of his first solo album, 1989’s Full Moon Fever, and relased at the height of his collaboration with his Traveling Willbury’s bandmate, Jeff Lynne, the song is  a standout among such blockbuster hits as “Free Fallin’,” “Running Down A Dream” and “I Won’t Back Down” precisely because it doesn’t resemble them. Rather, it’s classic Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, less slick and more emotional than those other chart toppers. You can draw a straight line from earlier dark horse standouts like “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)” and “Straight Into Darkness” right to “Long Road” and clearly see its intense similarity by way of raw emotion and well-constructed gritty rock dynamics. It’s also a wonderful showcase for Petty’s uniquely evocative voice and it’s no wonder it remained an Easter Egg-like staple in his live arsenal even though the song never charted.

RIP Tom Petty, 1950 – 2017

We here at Man’s Fine Life are deeply saddened by the untimely passing of Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Tom Petty at the age of 66 after a cardiac arrest at his LA home on October 2. The Rolling Stone obituary is here.

Tom Petty was one of the best of the straight-ahead American rock ‘n rollers to come out of the 1970s, arguably forming a triumvirate with Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger that spearheaded a rebirth of singer-songwriter rock with a gritty edge characterized by narrative lyrics about the common man and impeccably crafted tunes played by top notch bands. It’s easy to forget just what that meant at a time when it looked like conventional blues-based rock was on the wane due to the onslaught of Disco, Heavy Metal, Wus Rock (Firefall, Dan Fogelberg, Bread, et al) and Punk. But like Springsteen and the E Street Band and Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recaptured traditional fans of rock and made legions of new ones with whole albums full of catchy singles suffused with the passion of the true believer in the redemptive power of Rock.

Petty and the Heartbreakers started off with a bang way back in 1976 when they had Top 40 hit with the sinuously assertive “Breakdown” and a very influential non-hit with the Byrds-inflected “American Girl” on their eponymous debut album (legend has it that people were calling up Roger McGuinn to see if it was his new single). With Petty’s oddly effecting trademark nasal delivery and 12-string Rickenbacker, Mike Campbell’s stinging lead guitar, Benmont Tench’s pivotal swirling organ adding uncommon depth and the rock solid rhythm section of the late Howie Epstein on bass and Stan Lynch on drums, the original lineup seemed to emerge as a finely tuned outfit from day one and never took their foot off the gas for the next few years. Their consistently excellent efforts culminated in one of the decade’s best albums, Damn the Torpedoesin 1979. With such all-time classic as “Refugee,” “Don’t Do Me Like That,” “Here Comes My Girl” and “Breakdown,” Torpedoes was an artistic and commercial smash, going 3-times platinum with over three million in sales.

The band entered the 80s with two more fine releases — Hard Promises (1981) and Long After Dark (1982)– that, while not as successful as Torpedoes, still solidified their rep as major hit makers and one of the most important acts around. Then came Southern Accents in 1983. A beautiful album with a very troubled recording process — Petty broke his hand badly punching a wall in frustration during the mix of the lead single “Rebels”Southern Accents was originally conceived as something of a concept album by way of an exploration Petty’s “red neck” Florida roots. Other than a general thematic similarity the songs on Accents do not quite add up to a concept album, perhaps because it was trimmed down from a double LP. But it is beautifully produced, significant for its lyrical ambitions and ultimately lovely and artistically satisfying. It hit platinum and so was also successful commercially. But Petty considered it a noble failure and for him the album never quite lived up to the magnum opus that he had in his head when he conceived it.

Southern Accents and the strains of making it marked a true turning point and after that Petty and the band changed subtly but significantly, as if the reach for something grander and more profound had led instead to a sort of artistic burnout. After Petty’s rehab and recuperation from his self-inflicted wound, as well as drug issues which would continue to plague him in the years to come, the music became much simpler and more stripped down if no less radio friendly. On the full band’s Let Me UP (I’ve Had Enough) (1987) and Into the Great Wide Open (1991), as well as Petty’s smash solo album Full Moon Fever (1989), the narratives became more detached, the characters observed from a distance for the most part rather than from within their skins as had been the case on the band’s earlier material. The songs seem more programmatic, more LA and less Gainesville, and frankly, from an artistic standpoint, less interesting. There’s a less nuanced, less bluesy feel overall that sacrificed some complexity for a more universal “rock” sound, which ironically hasn’t aged as well as the earlier hits. If it marked a return to the basic pleasures of the straight-ahead 3-minute single the updated style clearly seemed to abandon much of the passionate involvement of the earlier 1970s music.

His work with the enjoyably light supergroup The Traveling Wilburys, where he teamed up with other legends like Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and ELO mastermind and super producer Jeff Lynne, to create one of the surprise hit albums of the late 1980s seemed to confirm that Petty was done taking things too seriously and suffering for his art. From here on out it would be all rock, no angst, jamming with friends, playing the hits live and just generally enjoying being one of the world’s most successful rock musicians. Petty evolved into a wryly funny wise old hand with hooded eyes and his trademark deadpan drawl, almost a different person from the strangely sharp featured, almost androgynous angry young rocker of the early days.

And who could blame him for that transition from hot blooded rebelliousness to satisfied professionalism? Taken in its entirety the music is still good and highly enjoyable in the later 80s and 90s. But that earlier stuff is where the magic still shines and resonates in a timeless way. Those first 9 years were a remarkable run and stand up with the creative output of pretty much any Rock artist of any era over that kind of sustained period of time. Of course there are probably fans who fall into the other camp and prefer the later, lighter stuff. But for me I’ll take the music up to and including Southern Accents as peak Petty. It’s the music I grew up with and the music I still reach for and play with pleasure.

Personal preferences aside, one thing’s for sure — Tom Petty was a great rocker and well deserving of his Hall of Fame status. He was a music giant who will be sorely missed and the world is poorer for his passing. But the gift of his music lives on as one of the real high water marks in Rock & Roll because Petty was one of the genuine originals in a genre where that’s about as rare as hen’s teeth. Godspeed, Tom, and thanks for the terrific tunes.

Earworm of the day — America by Simon and Garfunkel

I blame that damn Volkswagen commercial with the nice old Irish lady and her family. Or maybe it’s a hangover from a certain Vermont senator’s 2016 campaign. But Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” has been absolutely stuck in my head for weeks now. And so I’m going to inflict it on you, as well, in an attempt to exorcise it from my ear canal

Obviously it’s a gorgeous 1960s classic redolent of complex youthful emotions, lyrics that effortlessly paint a detailed and profoundly human mise en scène and lifted skyward by those patented soaring S&G harmonies.  There’s even a very George Harrison-like guitar sound in there rendered instead by Larry Knechtel’s Hammond organ, as well as Hal Blaine’s thundering drums, giving what could otherwise be a straight forward folk ballad complexity, texture and heft. Essentially it’s a perfect single where the words seamlessly dovetail with the music — “Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together” — and one that profoundly captures the troubled, fraying zeitgeist of 1968 America. I just hope that by finally posting it I’ll be rid of this masterpiece in my mind’s ear for a while. Sorry if it infects you in the process but it has to be done!

RIP Chris Cornell, 1964 – 2017

The sad and shocking news that Chris Cornell, founder and frontman of both Soundgarden and Audioslave and one of the most gifted rock vocalists of his generation, has died at the age of 52 is still reverberating around the music world. He was found dead in his hotel room in Detroit on May 17th while on tour with his re-formed original band, the great grunge pioneers from Seattle, an apparent suicide. Cornell’s loss as an individual and his loss to rock music as a whole is hard to fully process. Our sincere condolences go out to his family and friends.

Searching With My Good Eye Closed – Badmotorfinger (1991) 

Unlike their local peers Nirvana and Pearl Jam, with whom they are most closely grouped, Soundgarden was less true “grunge” than an extension of classic 70s hard rock, albeit with sophisticated lyrical themes and innovative musical techniques. While initially satirizing the over-the-top nature of metal at the time they began in the late 80s — see “Big Dumb Sex” for the apotheosis of this in-your-face, on the nose send-up of hardcore metal misogyny — Soundgarden quickly graduated to a more lyrically complex, more darkly psychedelic metal sound that was uniquely their own. Their real breakthrough was Badmotorfinger, one of the seminal albums of the ’90s in any genre. A borderline concept album, Badmotorfinger was inestimably weird and powerful, featuring guitarist Kim Thayil’s patented Drop D tuning on several hard-hitting classics like “Jesus Christ Pose,” “Outshined,” the soaring & ominous “Searching With My Good Eye Closed” and the punishing and mystical “Room A Thousand Years Wide.” Another track from this awesome album, “Mind Riot,” seemed to point in the direction that Cornell and the band would take in future: hard-edged, certainly, but with an almost ballad-like emotional intensity and strikingly original lyrics of searching strangeness and loss.

I was crying from my eye teeth and bleeding from my soul
And I sharpened my wits on a dead man’s skull
I built an elevator from his bones
Had climb to the top floor just to stamp out the coals (I’ve been caught in a mind riot)

Candle’s burning yesterday
Somebody’s best friend died
I’ve been caught in a mind riot

Mind Riot – Badmotorfinger (1991)

After the explosion of Grunge as a distinct genre onto the national scene, fueled by their own success and that of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Screaming Trees among others, Soundgarden followed up Badmotorfinger with an even bigger hit, Superunknown. The new album was characterized by a subtle shift away from pure heavy metal and more emphasis on mystical guitar driven psychedelia. Propelled by the huge MTV hits “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman,” the album also featured other classics like the title track and the propulsive “My Wave.”

Superunknown – Superunknown (1994)

The band also honed their penchant for extreme pessimism with the beautiful downers “The Day I Tried To Live,” “Like Suicide” and the very heavy “Mailman” and “4th of July.” Continue reading

Earworm of the day — Flame Of The West by Big Country

This old Big Country song from their remarkable Steeltown album way back in 1984 has been going through my head on repeat to start 2017. The late, great Stuart Adamson certainly had a way with a socially conscience anthem.

Aside from the more charismatic elements of the subject it definitely reminds me of someone today. Can’t quite put my finger on it but it’ll come to me, I’m sure…