The September 2016 issue of Vanity Fair magazine had a review of two recent books about the Beach Boys, including Good Vibrations by Mike Love.
In its December issue Vanity Fair printed a written rebuttal from Lynette Fromme to one of the contentions Love made in his book.
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ReplyDelete(Sorry. Deleted previous post for typos) Mike Love's book does seem like a bunch of bullshit that he made up to make money. I haven't read it, just excerpts. He claims Dennis Wilson said he witnessed a murder but Mike never told anyone until 2016? Not believing it.
ReplyDeleteYep, Mike Love's revelations are awfully hard to swallow. He said that Susan Atkins baby sat his kids while his wife was having an affair with Dennis. The trouble with that is Susan was in the Mendocino County jail for most of the time the Family was at Dennis's house. Between the Beach Boys tour dates, which are well documented, and Susan being in jail there was a very small window for that to happen.
ReplyDeleteI like it that Lyn stood up to the lies and that Vanity Fair published her letter.
I thought his book was self serving BS. I didn't believe a third of it. Brian's book was much better and more interesting because Brian was much more talented and interesting in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteOf course Squeaky didn't shower with him. Everyone knows the family didn't take showers.
Just kidding Squeaky. I believe you too.
ReplyDeleteSt Circumstance said...
Of course Squeaky didn't shower with him. Everyone knows the family didn't take showers.
This, and St C's reaction to David Gerrold describing how great sex with Steven was, gave me the biggest laughs this week. :-D
The funniest thing is watching old beach boys videos on U-tube lol They stand around with there arms folded with Brian in the middle singing. Watching Mike Love try to dance a little or do whatever he can to get some of the attention away from Brian is classic...
ReplyDeleteIts like watching Graham Nash with Crosby and Stills lol He is always dancing around and touching the other guys. He makes those painful faces so you can tell how hard he is working to sing in harmony... everything the other guys don't have to do because they have actual talent and play instruments lol
Of course Nash wrote the best book of the three lol so maybe being the poseur of the group has a long term literary benefit...
Another thing that strikes me about the earliest American Rock bands is that nobody had any musical talent. Our 2 first big Socal Bands- Beach Boys and the Byrds
Brian was the only one of the family who had any at all- they just taught the others. same thing with the Bryds. Only Mcguinn had any real knowledge of music. Gene Clark had never even played drums- but looked the part. Just like Dennis Wilson. You can take a look and manufacture the rest...
Ever wanna see a great movie about that concept check out "The Idolmaker" with Ray Sharkey before he got hooked on smack. one of the best acting performances you will ever see, and a soundtrack you will never forget...
Hey, Saint, don't mean to take exception with your police work, there but Crosby was in the Byrds.
ReplyDeleteMy question is why on earth if you are going to make up a shower sex scene with a Manson girl would you choose Squeaky.
"My wife er....Morgan Fairchild whom I've seen naked. Yeah, that's the ticket."
ReplyDeleteI would always laugh when one of the instrument playing members of a group would take over the vocals on a song, and somebody would hand the lead singer a tambourine to play. Yeah, work that tambourine baby!
Garfunkel always does that "Look at me! I'm doing something really hard : singing" whenever he joins in on the vocals too. Watching him sing a song by himself is excruciatingly painful.
I did see Idolmaker. Was one of the songs something like "I just want to take you with me baby"? I remember thinking that they could have come up with a better song.
Why were so many of those teen idol singers Italian? Even the Beach Boys had that Italian business manager that Charlie didn't much care for. Does the mafia really control the music business? Was Charlie right? ;-)
Crosby had to be taught how to play guitar standing up :) he was a folkie with very little musical talent. Great voice and wrote some sick tunes but...
ReplyDeleteSteven Stills played every instrument on the CSN debut album except drums...
when he was in the Byrds he was almost useless on stage. The Byrds were a studio band- and the music was mostly played by the wrecking crew.
That is why Buffalo Springfield blew away so many people live- they could actually handle the instruments...
or so I have read. I was born in 67 so its not my personal experience lol
I JUST WANT TO TAKE YOU WHERE IM GOING.... Quarternotes lol
ReplyDelete"Its easy when you got rythm kid"
ReplyDeleteDreath said...
Hey, Saint, don't mean to take exception with your police work, there but Crosby was in the Byrds.
I'm with the Saint on this one. Crosby has no discernible talent.
ReplyDeleteSt Circumstance said...
I JUST WANT TO TAKE YOU WHERE IM GOING...
That's an even worse lyric than I remember. Who wrote the songs for that movie?
David Crosby?
That was Cesare the second singer he made... but Tommy Dee was my favorite lol
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Idro-Vyq4
" You got that head turning walk just thinking about it.. makes me want you again"
"and I do anything you ever want just to see that look in your eyes... so let me love ya let me love ya let me love ya till the day I dieee.....
"Ohwow woow I been up-I been down-I been played with and pushed around- I been in and I been out and baby this time there AINT NO DOUBT.. Here is my love oweeooo Here is my love oweooo Here is my Love...."
ReplyDeleteSome awesome David Crosby lyrics :
I was not out looking for honeys
Oh, I noticed them like usual but not as strong
And the distance between me and my pavement
Seemed to get a hundred yards long
At least a car goes where you steer it
Sometimes that's the only thing that does
So I get in it and I drive it just to hear it
And remember this feeling that there was
ReplyDeleteWas Cesare supposed to be Fabian? He looked like Frankie Avalon, though.
David Crosby? No talent?!? Who else could have delivered that line in Thunderheart?
ReplyDeleteGoddamn prairie niggers!
His best guitar performance ever was on Roseanne lol Thunderheart was great too!!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI always thought that he was Corey Feldman's real father, based solely on musical talent.
“David was obnoxious, loud, demanding, thoughtless, full of himself – of the four of them [David Crosby, Steven Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young], the least talented.”
ReplyDelete-David Geffen
FRom Inside the LC Series:
Laurel Canyon’s very first band, the Byrds.
As a fledgling band, the Byrds had any number of problems. The first and most obvious was that the band’s members did not own any musical instruments. That problem was solved though when Naomi Hirschorn, best known for funding such other quasi-governmental projects as the Hirschorn Museum in Washington, D.C., stepped up to the plate to provide the band with instruments, amplifiers and the like. But that didn’t solve a bigger problem, which was that the band’s members, with the exception of Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, didn’t have a clue as to how to actually play the instruments.
Cast to play the bass player was Chris Hillman, who had never picked up a bass guitar in his life. As he candidly admitted years later, he “was a mandolin player and didn’t know how to play bass. But they didn’t know how to play their instruments either, so I didn’t feel too bad about it.” On drums was Michael Clarke, who had never before held a set of drumsticks in his hands, but who bore a resemblance to Rolling Stone Brian Jones, which was deemed to be of more significance than actual musical ability. As Crosby co-author Carl Gottlieb recalled, “Clarke had played beatnik bongos and conga drum, but had no experience with conventional drumming.”
Gene Clark, though by far the most gifted songwriter in the band and a talented vocalist as well, could play the guitar, but not particularly well, so he was relegated to banging the tambourine, which was Jim Morrison’s (and various non-musically inclined members of the Partridge Family’s) instrument of choice as well. David Crosby, tasked with rhythm guitar duties, wasn’t much better. Crosby himself admitted, in his first autobiography (does anyone really need to write more than one autobiography, by the way?), that “Roger was the only one who could really play.”
But the Beach boys were no better lol - the same musicians who played on Bryds records played on Beach Boys records as well.... it was a small rock and roll world back then it seems:
ReplyDeleteThe wrecking Crew: ( excerpt from Wiki)
They were sometimes used as "ghost players" on recordings credited to rock groups, such as the Byrds' debut hit rendition of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" (1965), as well as the first two albums by the Monkees, and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966).
From an article by Ken Hart:
Yes, this was clearly the Beach Boys, one of the biggest bands in the world, laying down the instrumental backing tracks for yet another of their seemingly endless Top 40 hits of the era. Just like it said on the group's record jackets. Just like you would see at any of their concerts.
Except it wasn't. In fact, there wasn't a Beach Boy in that recording room, despite the impression left by the band's legacy, and their reunited performance at Sunday night's Grammy Awards. Instead, it was a group of hired hands.
They can be heard playing on "God Only Knows" as well as virtually the rest of the Pet Sounds album. They were a small, uncredited, close-knit bunch of top-notch studio musicians, who came to dominate the music industry like no one before or since. On literally hundreds of popular records — from "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds to "California Dreamin'" by the Mamas & the Papas to "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon & Garfunkel — the instrumental work by these session men (and woman) came to define the sound of AM radio during the sixties and early seventies. Most people who hear the music, even those who love it, don't know the difference. Which is how the major record labels wanted to keep it.
of course Leon Russell who jsut passed was in the Wrecking Crew. As was Carol King- the female bass player who laid down the beat for Cher in " The Beat Goes on" and my favorite Glen Campbell..
ReplyDeletewho actually played with the Beach Boys for awhile- until he was replaced by Brian Johnston who would go on to help write the hit song - " I Write the Songs" for...
BARRY MANILOW :) Ahhhhh the Humanity lololol
Sorry I am done now. I had the day off. Have your post back George...
ReplyDeleteSt Circumstance said...
and my favorite Glen Campbell..
I thought that these guys were your favorite?
RE : The dark haired guy. I didn't know that Dudley Moore and Adrian Zmed had a son together?
ReplyDeleteworking link?
Don't see how anyone can tell if Lynette wrote this response, or not. Don't most all of the Manson family live under rocks here and there?
ReplyDeleteGrease 2 Adrian ?
ReplyDeleteTucker :) George would know if it were not real friend.
ReplyDeleteSt Circumstance said...
Grease 2 Adrian ?
Yep. And Dance Fever Adrian. I don't know why his career never took off. He was very versatile.
He wasn't the first dance fever guy lol. Denny Terrio. If another Manilow reference didn't turn Matts stomachs. This will lol
ReplyDeleteSorry lol
He was an embarrassment to the T- birds. They were my second favorite gang after The Lords Of Flatbush. The Jets were third.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI thought "The Wanderers" would be your favorite gang, from your Ray Sharkey mention earlier. He was on the show "Wiseguy" with Wanderer Ken Wahl.
And of course I know that Zmed wasn't the first host of Dance Fever. I'm pretty sure that I mentioned Deney Terrio at least one other time out here. And it's Deney, not Denny, dammit.
Matt was more of a "Solid Gold" guy than a "Dance Fever" guy. Matt's a big Rex Smith fan. I once got into a heated debate with him - I thought that Andy Gibb was a much better host than Rex. We agreed that Marilyn McCoo was the glue that held that show together, though.
I actually didnt like that movie... Except the " Leave the kid alone" part lol too cheesy...
ReplyDeletelol Solid Gold lol....
ReplyDeleteDid you like "The Warriors"? "Warriors (clank clank clank) come out to play yay". That guy could have played Charlie in a movie.
I think this thread proves that we don't have any interest in Mike Love. He's no Adrian Zmed.
He was in Ford Fairlane lol an underrated funny movie that got pulled early because it's star Andrew Dice Clay had just been barred from MTV - who ruined the music business
DeleteI loved that movie lol it would be number 1
ReplyDeleteBut then the leader did Zanadu on roller skates and that ruined it. But that was a great movie
Can you dig ittttttttttttt????
ReplyDeleteMatt liked Xanadu. How bad could it be?
I actually have a copy of Ford Fairlane. I agree it's an underrated movie. "I'm sorry I made you clean the toilets and the bathtubs. I mean, who did all the work in bed?" Lauren Holly in her heyday wasn't too bad to look at either.
Dice was in a lot of 80's movies, and he actually played a high school bully on Different Strokes, if you can believe that. Since he never looked high school age in his entire career.
Hey St. That is carol kaye you were referring to on bass with the wrecking crew. Enjoy your astute commentary by the way
ReplyDeleteHey St. That is carol kaye you were referring to on bass with the wrecking crew. Enjoy your astute commentary by the way
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe bass player for "the Wrecking Crew" was Carol Kane, not Carol King.
ReplyDeleteJerry Cole the arranger and session man for "The Crew" was asked by Terry Melcher to arrange and write charts for 4 of CM's songs. He did so and the instrumentation was completed. Manson did come into the studio sans the usual gang of idiots and did the vocal tracks. The results were pretty poor and nothing came of the session. But Charlie would bug Melcher about "when his record was coming out"? in true Manson fashion from time to time.
Gloop beat me to it, & he's correct, Carol Kaye was the Bass playing superstar for the wrecking crew.
ReplyDeleteJerry Cole often wondered who paid for the Manson session at Columbia. The studio time and artist fee's + arranging costs would have come in around $10K. Somebody would have had to cover those billing costs.
I heard Carol Kaye on the radio say she secretly filled in the bass line on some of the Doors songs and they never knew.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a very good documentary on the Muscle Shoals studio musicians on Netflix.
I'm thinking Mike Love could have showered with a Manson Girl and had a Manson Girl babysit for him and mistakenly remembered them as Lyn and Sadie.
I saw there's a Charlie conversation with Backporch tapes from this Thanksgiving on You Tube.
Well ... gorp .... cough ... gotta love (or cringe) at these 'he said, she said' impossible-to-know-for-sure scenarios. I mean, is it possible they (Love/Fromme) were stoned and showered together at Brian's ? Or did one or the other walk in while the other was showering ? Or if Fromme says, "... within 10 feet of ..." when I would expect her to say, " ... within a mile of ..." .... . Did they even ever meet at all ? Maybe they could ID each others hidden tattoos or scars, if any ? And then the most amazing of all ... Fromme signs off from Central New York State !!!
ReplyDeleteThe slow but steady emergence of the Laurel Canyon troubadours .... I always viewed them all as having some talent, even Crosby (voice, guitar, creativity, presence) but few held a candle to Stills when it came to a musical savant. Drummer Dallas Taylor (CS&N) went on about this for a long time. Joni Mitchell was another -- her lover Graham Nash was 'blown away' by her daily song production. The session or studio players .... well paid unsung heroes. I saw a couple of them backing up James Taylor & Carole King a while back -- ancient geezers but still viable.
Sorry that was my bad about carol im typing on phone and it keeps changing my words to other words it recognizes. It is Kane not King. I didn't catch that one
ReplyDeleteThanks for correction and compliment gloop. Happy Holidays
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThe interview that Shorty's pistols made reference to : Jerry Cole of the Wrecking Crew on recording Charles Manson (starts at 4:25)
ReplyDeleteSt Circumstance said...
Happy Holidays
Merry Coorsmas!
ReplyDeleteI was going to post this in Dreath's recent thread about Tex climbing the pole at Cielo, but never got around to it.
Gene Clark and Michael Clarke of "The Byrds" climbing a telephone/utility pole.
(David Crosby looking up at the bottom. McGuinn might be the other guy with his back to the camera.)
Great pic.... A Great toast to all of whatever it is you prefer...
ReplyDeleteYou know I will drink a Coors- light for all of you...
I will even take on in the shower with me and drink to Squeaky :)
Robert C- I too think Crosby had talent great voice and wrote some songs I love later on as he developed. I just pointed out he wasn't much of a musician when he first started with the Bryds..
Speaking of Old Geezers lol- this will be sacrilege for some of you- but sorry its the truth:
I saw Bob Dylan the night before Thanksgiving at the Broward Performing Arts Theater.
First of all - I pad for a club box with open bar- no Coors light.
Then they wouldn't even let me use my phone let alone take a picture.
Then Dylan comes out and plays 23 songs- says not one word in between- and with two exceptions he played covers of oldies including 3 Frank Sinatra songs. He did Sinatra for his final encore..
The only thing that saved it from being one of the worst concerts I ever saw- was that he did play Desolation Road and that he had Charlie Sexton ( Beat So Lonely)in his band...
It still won't let me type that ladies name right lol
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteCharlie Sexton? I am not Impressed
Was Robbie Nevil the opening act? Or was it Lone Justice? Or The Fabulous Thunderbirds? Or John Cafferty's Beaver Blues Band? Or Billy Vera and the Beaters (that song from "Family Ties" where Michael J Fox breaks up with Courtney Cox).
Beaver Brown lol
ReplyDeleteBut I don't even want to get started on Eddie and the Cruisers at the Holidays. That music makes me break out the tequila and go to the Dark Side ;)
ReplyDeleteI saw Dylan with a 4 piece band, including G.E. Smith, at the Greek Theater in Berkeley in 89 and boy did I love it. No, he never said a word to the audience but the songs were great, especially when he played 3 of the 4 songs from the B side of Bringing It All Back Home in reverse order: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue; Gates Of Eden; and Mr. Tambourine Man. (he didn't play It's Alright, Ma)
ReplyDeleteAnother time I saw him at the Shoreline Ampitheater in Mt. View across the bay. He had a bigger band and Tom Petty was on the ticket too. It was 1986. It was good, but I preferred the more intimate concert.
Saint I don't think I would have cared for the Dylan show you saw either.
I've seen Dylan, too. I enjoyed going but due to him notoriously never singing/playing a song the same way twice found it hard to sing along (in my head). You never want to hear me sing out loud, I can't carry a tune to save my soul.
ReplyDeleteThere was a really drunk woman who managed to make it up on stage and tried to stand next to Bob and sing with him. He stepped aside and let her take the mic, told her to have at it. She was so drunk that she kept repeating the same verse over and over. It was painful and it seemed to go on forever, had the crowd had tomatoes or something to throw, they would have. Bob allowed her to thoroughly embarrass herself. Finally they hauled her off and the concert went on as if nothing had happened!!
The concert was in '92. http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/bob-dylan/1992/jt-grace-pavilion-santa-rosa-ca-1bd5e980.html
I should have added that this was my first time seeing him. Maybe had I heard all my favorites live before it would have been novel lol
ReplyDeleteBut I had to go home and look up what I had just heard lom
Deb S. that's a hilarious story. Kind of cool that Dylan let her do it.
ReplyDeleteSt., loved your depiction of Mike Love....his flailing around is just plain creepy...not to mention the comb over. I refuse to read his book. He thought Good Vibrations wasn't a good song...too trippy for the beach boys. I love that song and their performance on ed Sullivan singing it.
ReplyDeleteMichael Clarke was the drummer in the Byrds, not Gene. Gene was in the new Christie minstrels and mcguinn in the chad Mitchell trio (which John Denver was also a member of). Gene could actually play guitar but Crosby heckled him so bad, that he actually started to doubt himself and let Crosby take over the playing.
Graham Nash is my least favorite in CSN...i hated his book.
The Springfield did a mini tour several years ago before Neil pulled the plug on it. It was amazing. One of my tip five favorite concerts ever.
Top five (typo)... Happy merry holidays!
DeleteAnd if you are on Bobby BeauSoleil's mailing list:
ReplyDeleteHappy Yuletide
May the divine spark within guide you to the truth of your unique existence.
Peace.
Peace.
Peace.
Happy Holidays Lynn :) Thank you again- I got another name wrong lol
ReplyDeletewe agree on some things and not on others and that is so good :)
Peace and love to you and yours too :)
I think I figured out why Squeaky broke up with Mike Love: "Too much love sittin' in one place not doin' nothing." He was lazy.
ReplyDeleteThe wrecking crew put out a 4 cd set with several of the songs they played on. My favorite parts of the cd are the jokes they intermittently put in throughout the cd...the 4th is called crew cuts (recordings under their own name). It's pretty good.
ReplyDeleteThere are also two cds (not a set) titled bird parts and byrd parts 2. Rare recordings of members of the birds and people who have covered songs they have written...including Jackie DeShannon doing Splendor in the Grass with the Byrds doing the backing vocals, Johnny Rivers, Peter Fonda and even David Hemmings (blow up and he was in Eye of the Devil with Sharon Tate) covering a song written by Gene Clark.
David Crosby may have had a personality that exceeded his talent, but If I Could Only Remember My Name is still one of the coolest albums ever.
ReplyDeleteZelda Formaldehyde said...
ReplyDeleteDavid Crosby may have had a personality that exceeded his talent, but If I Could Only Remember My Name is still one of the coolest albums ever.
Yes... absolutely one of the all-time great albums... the perfect tail-end of a trip soundtrack as the dawn light paints mosaics on your eyelids. Wonderful stuff :-)
...though admittedly it probably doesn't sound that great through a headful of Coors...
ReplyDeletebrownrice, being released in February 1971, it really comes at the tail-end of anything resembling the hippy, communal vibe .... just before the materialistic hedonism of the 70's came in and changed things. I can't even really think of another album that catches the same feel. A gem of the times.
ReplyDelete"Traction in the rain" is such a beautiful song. So is "laughing"
ReplyDeleteI repeat lol. I think Graham Nash was the talentless one in that trip. Crosby had a great voice and wrote some excellent songs.
ReplyDeleteI just don't think he was a great musician when he started out with the Byrds. My comments were not to be taken as an insult to David Crosby.
:)
You don't have to apologize for your opinion about Crosby, St. C. That's all the rest of us are offering.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which, Nash is a co-founder of the Hollies and was actually a pretty important component to CS&N. He 'penned' a number of their songs like "Marrakesh Express", "Teach Your Children" and "Our House". While we all have our favorites, Nash is far from talentless as is Crosby.
I believe that both Nash and Crosby are very talented. Both are excellent writers, and both sing great high harmonies. Neither are great guitarists; both Stills and Young are far superior players. The great guitarist of the Laurel Canyon scene (in addition to Zappa) was Joni Mitchell. Easily the best folky guitarist of that crowd. DC and GN still sound great as evidenced by both of their recent records, and hearing GN in a live one hour set at the last NAMM Show.
ReplyDeleteThe whole recording scene of those days with the Wrecking Crew, et al is a serious research interest of mine. Perhaps there will be a reason to chat about it further here in the future.
Robert C said...
ReplyDeleteNash is a co-founder of the Hollies
The Hollies are one of the few bands I actually remember from the 60s, or more specifically, Allan Clarke's face. I've no idea why. I quite liked a few of their songs but Nash's "King Midas in reverse" is far and away my fave of theirs. It kind of signaled the end of his time with them as they weren't up for going psychedelic. Like Barry Gibb, I still find it amusing that he sounds like a Mancunian.
St Circumstance said...
I thought his book was self serving BS. I didn't believe a third of it. Brian's book was much better and more interesting because Brian was much more talented and interesting
Brian's book was worth the wait. I used to have the first one, "Wouldn't it be nice," but I read somewhere that he hadn't really written it and that he was actually writing one so I chucked it and decided to wait. It sounds like it was written by someone that has struggled with mental illness, lots of strange twists and turns and left field references. But it's actually a strength. Very little about the Manson saga in it, also a plus point.
Lynn said...
Gene could actually play guitar but Crosby heckled him so bad, that he actually started to doubt himself and let Crosby take over the playing
Gene Clark was possibly American pop/rock's first acid casualty. From when he first took the trip, his life just kaleidoscoped pretty much until he died. Like a lot of the acoustic guitar playing folkies of the time, he was adequate rather than outstanding. But he crumbled under the weight of Crosby's critcisms of his guitar playing, acid, sudden fame and the resentment of the rest of the band due to the fact that in their first couple of years, he was the primary songwriter in the band and made more money than the others. Personally, I've long held Gene Clark to be America's foremost songwriter in that early to mid 60s period. I think he wrote better stuff than Dylan, Brian Wilson, Sloan and Holland/Dozier/Holland and until '66 was the only serious American contender to challenge Lennon and McCartney although Dylan's '65 output is unsinkable in it's total and long range sphere of influence on both sides of the Atlantic.
Gene Clark's problem is that he just didn't have the staying power to take on the competition.
Mr. Humphrat said...
ReplyDeleteI heard Carol Kaye on the radio say she secretly filled in the bass line on some of the Doors songs and they never knew
Yeah, Carol Kaye played both bass and guitar for the crew. Apparently, they were called the wrecking crew because some of the older musicians who had been doing sessions prior thought these new young upstarts were wrecking the scene for them.
In the 90s there was a lot of controversy over whether or not the crew played on some of the big hits that came out of Motown. Carol Kaye herself says she played bass on the 4 Tops' "Reach out, I'll be there," The Supremes' "Baby Love," "You keep me hanging on" {great bass parts} and "You can't hurry love," Mary Well's "My guy" and Stevie Wonder's "I was made to love her" {one of the first outstanding bass lines in a song in that decade that went a long way towards freeing up what bass players could contribute to a song}. She says that they never knew what the song they were playing on was but she'd recognize her style when those songs came on the radio. Kind of funny that bass players that cite Motown's James Jamerson's style as an influence may, in actuality, have been influenced by an uncredited white lady.
At one point, she said she was making more money than LBJ !
St Circumstance said...
it was a small rock and roll world back then it seems
There wasn't really a rock scene as such prior to '66. After the Beatles came to America in '64, it slowly began to develop. England was no different. It was showbiz, not the rock scene. It's interesting seeing the kind of artists that were on some of those early Rolling Stones and Beatles bills. Some of them read as something you could go to with your Mum !
America seems to have been desperate to have it's own homegrown scene after the Beatles, Stones, Hollies, Dave Clark 5, Herman's Hermits and the Animals had been over and shown "the way." Hence your Byrds, Turtles and later Monkees. Funny thing is that bubbling in the undergrowth was a revolution in the making. It was sort of marketed as folk rock and co~opted Dylan and the Beach Boys {who had been making records before the Beatles} and, along with acid and few other ingredients, paved the way for American psychedelia, a very different creature from it's English cousin.
The wrecking Crew: ( excerpt from Wiki)
They were sometimes used as "ghost players" on recordings credited to rock groups, such as the Byrds' debut hit rendition of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" (1965)
Again, there was a parallel development of this kind of thing in the UK. Session musicians that went on to bigger things like Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Jon Lord, Nicky Hopkins, Ritchie Blackmore, Big Jim Sullivan and John McLaughlin could find themselves on sessions by the Kinks, the Stones and the Who as well as Donovan, Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones. People like Dave Davies of the Kinks got well pissed off that for years, Jimmy Page was rumoured to have played the solo on "You really got me" and Pagey won't talk about it.
I think the presence of session musicians allied with songs being brought in by producers for these 'bands' to record {with the developing knowledge that publishing was where the consistent money lay} forced many artists to get better as musicians, singers, writers and producers and led to a period where the industry changed almost unrecognizeably, in the sense that the album became the dominant means of getting one's music and message out.
ziggyosterberg said...
ReplyDeleteSome awesome David Crosby lyrics
They do look pretty crap. But then, so many songs that are brilliant songs wouldn't be if you just went by the lyrics. Even Dylan, who, in my opinion, changed lyric writing in rock forever with his stuff on "Highway 61" and "Bringing it all back home," wrote a few clunkers or they look that way when you see them written down.
David Geffen said..
David was obnoxious, loud, demanding, thoughtless, full of himself – of the four of them [David Crosby, Steven Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young], the least talented
That's known as synergy, Dave.
St said someone on Wiki said...
Cast to play the bass player was Chris Hillman, who had never picked up a bass guitar in his life. As he candidly admitted years later, he “was a mandolin player and didn’t know how to play bass
Mind you, the note configuration of a bass is just the mandolin strung backwards.
To be honest, many of the key bass players in the 60s weren't initially bass guitarists. Paul McCartney, Carol Kaye, Jack Bruce, Roger Glover, James Jamerson, Larry Graham, Bill Wyman, John Paul Jones, Brian Wilson, John Entwistle, Rick Grech, Greg Lake, Wally Waller, Geezer Butler, Martin Turner, Chris Squire and others all had made their starts on guitars, pianos, harmonicas, trumpets and horns. {Jamerson & Bruce moved to double bass from piano}.
It's really the 70s where you start to get in vast numbers bassists for whom the bass guitar was their first and primary instrument. I think that accounts for the way rock bass playing developed in the 60s with some really clever stuff after 1965 and also the actual sonics. Engineers didn't seem to arrive at a generic staple sound of the bass until well into the 70s. It seemed like an afterthought much of the time.
All this talk about the music of the 60's leaves me longing for a good outdoor concert. When I think of the greatest musical talents of that time period I have to include Joni Mitchell (greatest ever, IMHO), Miles Davis, Chicago, Nick Drake, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Yes, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Renaissance, King Crimson, Cream, Spirit, Jefferson Airplane ... and the list goes on.
ReplyDelete