Led Zeppelin I Led Zeppelin

By John Mendelsohn | March 15, 1969

The popular formula in England in this, the aftermath era of such successful British bluesmen as Cream and John Mayall, seems to be: add, to an excellent guitarist who, since leaving the Yardbirds and/or Mayall, has become a minor musical deity, a competent rhythm section and pretty soul-belter who can do a good spade imitation. The latest of the British blues groups so conceived offers little that its twin, the Jeff Beck Group, didn't say as well or better three months ago, and the excesses of the Beck group's Truth album (most notably its self-indulgence and restrictedness), are fully in evidence on Led Zeppelin's debut album.

Jimmy Page, around whom the Zeppelin revolves, is, admittedly, an extraordinarily proficient blues guitarist and explorer of his instrument's electronic capabilities. Unfortunately, he is also a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs, and the Zeppelin album suffers from his having both produced it and written most of it (alone or in combination with his accomplices in the group).

The album opens with lots of guitarrhythm section exchanges (in the fashion of Beck's "Shapes of Things" on "Good Times Bad Times," which might have been ideal for a Yardbirds' B-side. Here, as almost everywhere else on the album, it is Page's guitar that provides most of the excitement. "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" alternates between prissy Robert Plant's howled vocals fronting an acoustic guitar and driving choruses of the band running down a four-chord progression while John Bonham smashes his cymbals on every beat. The song is very dull in places (especially on the vocal passages), very redundant, and certainly not worth the six-and-a-half minutes the Zeppelin gives it.

Two much-overdone Willie Dixon blues standards fail to be revivified by being turned into showcases for Page and Plant. "You Shook Me" is the more interesting of the two — at the end of each line Plant's echo-chambered voice drops into a small explosion of fuzz-tone guitar, with which it matches shrieks at the end.

The album's most representative cut is "How Many More Times." Here a jazzy introduction gives way to a driving (albeit monotonous) guitar-dominated background for Plant's strained and unconvincing shouting (he may be as foppish as Rod Stewart, but he's nowhere near so exciting, especially in the higher registers). A fine Page solo then leads the band into what sounds like a backwards version of the Page-composed "Beck's Bolero," hence to a little snatch of Albert King's "The Hunter," and finally to an avalanche of drums and shouting.

In their willingness to waste their considerable talent on unworthy material the Zeppelin has produced an album which is sadly reminiscent of Truth. Like the Beck group they are also perfectly willing to make themselves a two- (or, more accurately, one-a-half) man show. It would seem that, if they're to help fill the void created by the demise of Cream, they will have to find a producer (and editor) and some material worthy of their collective attention.

With A Little Help From My Friends Joe CockerBy John Mendelsohn | August 23, 1969

Joe Cocker and the Grease Band were ending a performance they gave recently at the Whiskey in Los Angeles. As they went into their explosive version of "With A Little Help From My Friends," a nubile young admirer, apparently driven wild by Cocker's amazing voice and insane spastic contortions, stationed herself on her back between Cocker's legs and, reaching up, began to work the Cocker cock with considerable fervor. Moments later Joe delivered the scream of his career.

Which is not to say that everyone will react with such frenzy to this latest and perhaps greatest British bearer of the Ray Charles tradition, but that Cocker's first album, a gem, should cause an awful lot of excitement. Despite the fact that he's a twenty-four year-old product of Sheffield, England, Cocker's voice is that of a middle-aged Southern black man — and the quality of his voice enables him to transcend (as does Ray Charles on his coke commercials) the lyrics and the traditional happy associations of such originally sprightly tunes as "Bye Bye Blackbird," turning them into astonishing, compelling expressions of pain and desperation.

That Cocker is a Charles imitator is beyond argument — at various places on his album he even receives vocal backing from former Raelettes. But Cocker has assimilated the Charles influence to the point where his feeling for what he is singing cannot really be questioned And, in answer to the question of why

someone should listen to Cocker when there is Charles to listen to — how many times in recent years has the latter applied himself to such exceptional modern material as Dave Mason's "Feelin' Alright?" or such contemporary Dylan as "I Shall Be Released" (of which Cocker does the most evocative, moving version I've yet heard)?

Denny Cordell, late of Procol Harum fame, deserves a feverish round of applause for producing this album, in spite of such momentary lapses as stealing almost intact Havens' arrangement of "Just Like A Woman" and letting Jimmy Page nearly capsize "Bye Bye Blackbird" with a completely inappropriate solo. Cordell was so determined to come up with a perfect album (and the album is nearly perfect) that he spent over a year and a small fortune getting everything just so. For instance, he's reportedly got ten excellent takes of "Released" in a can somewhere, having decided that none of the takes — done by Al Kooper and Aynsley Dunbar among others — were quite good enough. Cordell's success in fusing a consistently marvelous backing unit out of America's premier studio soul singers and England's most famous rock musicians and delicate egos cannot be exaggerated.

Besides such material as the Dylan, Mason and Beatle stuff there are three originals written by Cocker and Grease Band keyboard man Chris Stainton: "Marjorine" (a Stainton puppet show score to which Joe added words), "A Change in Louise," and "Sandpaper Cadillac," all of which are brilliant rock tunes. It's a triumph all around. And the thought of Cocker's next album, which will include new Harrison and McCartney songs and a lot more Grease Band originals, is an exceptionally pleasant one.

Abbey Road The BeatlesBy John Mendelsohn | November 15, 1969

Simply, side two does more for me than the whole of Sgt. Pepper, and I'll trade you The Beatles and Magical Mystery Tour and a Keith Moon drumstick for side one.

So much for the prelims. "Come Together" is John Lennon very nearly at the peak of his form; twisted, freely-associative, punful lyrically, pinched and somehow a little smug vocally. Breathtakingly recorded (as is the whole album), with a perfect little high-hat-tom-tom run by Ringo providing a clever semi-colon to those eerie shooo-ta's, Timothy Leary's campaign song opens up things in grand fashion indeed.

George's vocal, containing less adenoids and more grainy Paul tunefulness than ever before, is one of many highlights on his "Something," some of the others being more excellent drum work, a dead catchy guitar line, perfectly subdued strings, and an unusually nice melody. Both his and Joe Cocker's version will suffice nicely until Ray Charles gets around to it.

Paul McCartney and Ray Davies are the only two writers in rock and roll who could have written "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," a jaunty vaudevillian/music-hallish celebration wherein Paul, in a rare naughty mood, celebrates the joys of being able to bash in the heads of anyone threatening to bring you down. Paul puts it across perfectly with the coyest imaginable choir-boy innocence.

Someday, just for fun, Capitol/Apple's going to have to compile a Paul McCartney Sings Rock And Roll album, with "Long Tall Sally," "I'm Down," "Helter Skelter," and, most definitely, "Oh! Darling," in which, fronting a great "ouch!"-yelling guitar and wonderful background harmonies, he delivers an induplicably strong, throat-ripping vocal of sufficient power to knock out even those skeptics who would otherwise have complained about yet another Beatle tribute to the golden groovies' era.

That the Beatles can unify seemingly countless musical fragments and lyrical doodlings into a uniformly wonderful suite, as they've done on side two, seems potent testimony that no, they've far from lost it, and no, they haven't stopped trying.

No, on the contrary, they've achieved here the closest thing yet to Beatles freeform, fusing more diverse intriguing musical and lyrical ideas into a piece that amounts to far more than the sum of those ideas.

"Here Comes the Sun," for example, would come off as quite mediocre on its own, but just watch how John and especially Paul build on its mood of perky childlike wonder. Like here, in "Because," is this child, or someone with a child's innocence, having his mind blown by the most obvious natural phenomena, like the blueness of the sky. Amidst, mind you, beautiful and intricate harmonies, the like of which the Beatles have not attempted since "Dr. Robert."

Then, just for a moment, we're into Paul's "You Never Give Me Your Money," which seems more a daydream than an actual address to the girl he's thinking about. Allowed to remain pensive only for an instant, we're next transported, via Paul's "Lady Madonna" voice and boogie-woogie piano in the bridge, to this happy thought: "Oh, that magic feelin'/Nowhere to go." Crickets' chirping and a kid's nursery rhyme ("1-2-3-4-5-6-7/All good children go to heaven") lead us from there into a dreamy John number, "Sun King," in which we find him singing for the Italian market, words like amore and felice giving us some clue as to the feel of this reminiscent-of-"In My Room" ballad.

And then, before we know what's happened, we're out in John Lennon's England meeting these two human oddities, Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam. From there it's off to watch a surreal afternoon telly programme, Paul's "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window." Pensive and a touch melancholy again a moment later, we're into "Golden Slumbers," from which we wake to the resounding thousands of voices on "Carry That Weight," a rollicking little commentary of life's labours if ever there was one, and hence to a reprise of the "Money" theme (the most addicting melody and unforgettable words on the album). Finally, a perfect epitaph for our visit to the world of Beatle daydreams: "The love you take is equal to the love you make ..." And, just for the record, Paul's gonna make Her Majesty his.

I'd hesitate to say anything's impossible for him after listening to Abbey Road the first thousand times, and the others aren't far behind. To iy mind, they're equatable, but still unsurpassed.

Led Zeppelin II Led ZeppelinBy John Mendelsohn | December 13, 1969

Hey, man, I take it all back! This is one fucking heavyweight of the album! OK — I'll concede that until you've listened to the album eight hundred times, as I have, it seems as if it's just one especially heavy song extended over the space of two whole sides. But, hey! you've got to admit that the Zeppelin has their distinctive and enchanting formula down stone-cold, man. Like you get the impression they could do it in their sleep.

And who can deny that Jimmy Page is the absolute number-one heaviest white blues guitarist between 5'4" and 5'8" in the world?? Shit, man, on this album he further demonstrates that he could absolutely fucking shut down any whitebluesman alive, and with one fucking hand tied behind his back too.

"Whole Lotta Love," which opens the album, has to be the heaviest thing I've run across (or, more accurately, that's run across me) since "Parchmant Farm" on Vincebus Eruptum. Like I listened to the break (Jimmy wrenching some simply indescribable sounds out of his axe while your stereo goes ape-shit) on some heavy Vietnamese weed and very nearly had my mind blown.

Hey, I know what you're thinking. "That's not very objective." But dig: I also listened to it on mescaline, some old Romilar, novocain, and ground up Fusion,and it was just as mind-boggling as before. I must admit I haven't listened to it straight yet — I don't think a group this heavy is best enjoyed that way.

Anyhow . . . Robert Plant, who is rumored to sing some notes on this record that only dogs can hear, demonstrates his heaviness on "The Lemon Song." When he yells "Shake me 'til the juice runs down my leg," you can't help but flash on the fact that the lemon is a cleverly-disguised phallic metaphor. Cunning Rob, sticking all this eroticism in between the lines just like his blues-beltin' ancestors! And then (then) there's "Moby Dick," which will be for John Bonham what "Toad" has been for Baker. John demonstrates on this track that had he half a mind he could shut down Baker even without sticks, as most of his intriguing solo is done with bare hands.

The album ends with a far-out blues number called "Bring It On Home," during which Rob contributes some very convincing moaning and harp-playing, and sings "Wadge da train roll down da track." Who said that white men couldn't sing blues? I mean, like, who?

"The Seeker" The WhoBy John Mendelsohn | April 30, 1970

ith "The Seeker" Pete Townshend and the Who take that proverbial one step backwards.

A subdued (for the Who) rock and roller that gives the impression of having slightly more muscle than it shows, "The Seeker" addresses itself to the futility of seeking The Answer (which, we are informed, neither

Bobby Dylan, the Beatles, or even Timothy Leary has to bestow). Built around a rather familiar rock riff and employing a typically obvious change to hook in its chorus, it's highlighted instrumentally by sympathetic interplay between Townshend's guitar and Entwistle's bass, bombastic (and unusually well-recorded) Moon drumming, and a Chuckleberry-ish break by Townshend, who elsewhere amuses himself by brushing up on his "Sally Simpson" piano licks.

Well-performed and clever as it is, though, it's a trifle mundane compared to most everything from Tommy or the group's live act. Distinguished by neither the pulverizing fury of "I Can See For Miles" nor the perverse wit of "Pictures Of Lily" and "I'm A Boy," it is reminiscent of "Call Me Lightning," "Magic Bus," and other disappointing singles Townshend slipped us in between strokes of genius.

What's most disturbing about this single is its tone: After the success of Tommy, Townshend seemingly feels called upon to re-define his context, to reassure us that he's not off building a soapbox. Very somber, this. They should have given us Entwistle's exhilarating "Heaven and Hell" instead.

On the back is Daltrey's "Here For More," his second released attempt at songwriting. Unlike his earlier "See My Way," this one is even a little hummable, comprised of a catchy melody and nice bluegrassy guitar from Pete. Country-flavored in the typically charming English way, it demonstrates that Daltrey may yet surpass Ringo Starr.

Bring on the live album, he said for the millionth time.

Let It Be The BeatlesBy John Mendelsohn | June 11, 1970

To those who found their work since the white album as emotionally vapid as it was technically breathtaking, the news that the Beatles were about to bestow on us an album full of gems they'd never gotten around to polishing beyond recognition was most encouraging. Who among us, after all, wouldn't have preferred a good old slipshod "Save The Last Dance For Me" to the self-conscious and lifeless "Oh! Darlin'" they'd been dealing in?

Well, it was too good to be true — somebody apparently just couldn't Let It Be, with the result that they put the load on their new friend P. Spector, who in turn whipped out his orchestra and choir and proceeded to turn several of the rough gems on the best Beatle album in ages into costume jewelry.

Granted that he would have preferred to have been in on the project from its inception rather than having it all handed to him eight months after its announced release date (in which case we would never have been led to expect spontaneity and his reputation would still be intact), one can't help but wonder why he involved himself at all, and wonder also, how he came to the conclusion that lavish decoration of several of the tracks would enhance the straightforwardness of the album.

To Phil Spector, stinging slaps on both wrists.

He's rendered "The Long and Winding Road," for instance, virtually unlistenable with hideously cloying strings and a ridiculous choir that serve only to accentuate the listlessness of Paul's vocal and the song's potential for further mutilation at the hands of the countless schlock-mongers who will undoubtedly trip all over one another in their haste to cover it. A slightly lesser chapter in the ongoing story of McCartney as facile romanticist, it might have eventually begun to grow on one as unassumingly charming, had not Spector felt compelled to transform an apparently early take into an extravaganza of oppressive mush. Sure, he was just trying to help it along, but Spectorized it evokes nothing so much as deweyeyed little Mark Lester warbling his waif's heart out amidst the assembled Oliver orchestra and choir.

"I Me Mine," the waltz sections of which reminds one very definitely of something from one of The Al Jolson Story's more maudlin moments, almost benefits from such treatment — it would have been fully as hilarious as "Good Night," after all, had Spector obscured its raunchy guitar with the gooey strings he's so generously lavished on the rest of it. As he's left it, though, it, like "Winding Road," is funny enough to find cloying but not funny enough to enjoy laughing at.

Elsewhere, Spector compounds his mush fixation with an inability to choose the right take (it is said that nothing on the "official album" comes from the actual film sessions, mind you). Inexplicably dissatisfied

with the single version of "Let It Be," for instance, he hunted up a take in which some jagged guitar and absurdly inappropriate percussion almost capsize the whole affair, decided that it might be real Class to orchestrally embellish the vocal, and thus dubbed in — yes! — brass. Here the effect isn't even humorous — Spector was apparently too intent on remembering how the horns went on "Hey Jude" to listen closely enough to this one to realize that they're about as appropriate here as piccoloes would have been on "Helter Skeltre."

Happily though, he didn't impose himself too offensively on anything else, and much of what remains is splendid indeed:

Like John's "All Across The Universe," which, like "Julia," is dreamy, childlike, and dramatic all at once and contains both an unusually inventive melody and tender devotional vocal.

Like the two rough-honed rockers, the crudely revival-ish "I've Got A Feeling" and "One After 909," both of which are as much fun to listen to as they apparently were to make. "C'mon, baby, don't be cold as ice" may be at once the most ridiculous and magnificent line Lennon-McCartney ever wrote.

Like John's crossword-puzzlish "Dig a Pony," which features an urgent old rocker's vocal and, being very much in the same vein as such earlier Lennonisms as "Happiness Is a Warm Gun," nearly makes up for the absence of "Don't Let Me Down" and "The Last Dance." And especially like everyone's two favorites, "Two of Us." which is at once infectiously rhythmic and irresistibly lilting in the grand tradition of "I'll Follow the Sun," and the magnificent chunky, thumping, and subtly skiffly "Get Back," which here lacks an ending but still contains delightful comping by John and Billy Preston.

All of these are, of course, available on the bootleg versions of the album, a further advantage of which is their pure unSpectoredness and the presence of various goodies that didn't quite make it to the official release.

Musically, boys, you passed the audition. In terms of having the judgment to avoid either over-producing yourselves or casting the fate of your get-back statement to the most notorious of all over-producers, you didn't. Which somehow doesn't seem to matter much any more anyway.

Elton JohnBy John Mendelsohn | November 12, 1970

Given that his voice combines the nasal sonority of James Taylor with the rasp of Van Morrison with the slurry intonation of M. Jagger with the exaggerated twang of Leon Russell; that, in this age during which most everyone seems content to sing unison with moronic little guitar riffs, he writes attractive melodies; that the lyrics devised by his songwriting partner appear on first glance to be Genuine Poetry; that, while the standard procedure for the modern singing songwriter is to either perform hunched over the piano in a terrified little ball or shy away from live performances altogether, he gets off on wearing outrageous costumes, thrashing tambourines, and occasionally impersonating Jerry Lee Lewis; given all that, it's not even a trifle surprising that the mere mention of his name causes those who've seen him live or heard his album to drool superlatives like "SUPERstar!" and break out in hives.

As hesitant as one might be to own up to it in the light of all the superlative-drooling and hive-breaking-out-in that's been going on since his first American visit, Elton John really is a gas.

The sad part is that those assigned to give him a hand in the recording studio during these sessions were apparently something less than positive about his being a gas and consequently gave him all manner of over-production as well as a hand, the result being that his first American album is something less than the gas it might have been.

The major problem with Elton John is that one has to wade through so damn much fluff to get to Elton John. Here, by the sound of it, arranger Paul Buckmaster's rather pompous orchestra was spliced in as an afterthought to flesh out music that had sufficient muscle to begin with, their choirs and Moogs and strings threaten to obscure Elton's voice and piano, everywhere that they appear at least momentarily diverting the listener's attention therefrom. Those acquainted with producer Gus Dudgeon's brilliant work with the Bonzos have ample reason to be mightily disillusioned with the good fellow for the excesses he allowed to run rampant here.

But don't be scared away, for so immense a talent is Elton's that he'll delight you senseless despite it all. He's equally effective belting gospely rock and roll raves like "Take Me To The Pilot" and the already much-covered "Border Song" (neither of which one can resist leaping up heatedly to boogie to) in a tuneful snarl and intoning pretty McCartneyesque ballads like "Your Song," "I Need You To Turn To," or "First Episode at Hienton" in a warm, intimate and wonderfully sympathetic tenor. In "No Shoestrings on Louise," a respectful send-up of the Stones' "Dear Doctor," he manages to sound like the perfect synthesis of all the luminaries mentioned above without once removing his tongue from against his cheek. And the orchestra was needed on neither "Sixty Years On" nor "The King Must Die," for on both his voice creates sufficient drama on its own.

A few warranted words on the album's words, by Bernie Taupin. At this hopefully early stage. in his evolution, Bernie all too often opts for the consciously poetic/arty where the straightforward would do better, tends to wander metaphorically, forces himself into some perfectly dreadful rhymes, occasionally employs ambiguity for its own sake, and generally seems intent on reproducing most of Keith Reid's early faults, the result being that one often has to consciously ignore the lyrics if he's to enjoy the song. He's definitely his most bearable when, as in "The Greatest Discovery" or "Hienton," he's too busy narrating specific emotions and experiences for us to think about concealing his sentimentality with poetistic tricks. Rock and roll has too few unabashed sentimentalists writing songs as it is: let it all hang out, Bernie.

Now then, if you're certain you simply won't be able to withstand the intrusive orchestrations of Elton John, get yourself his first album, Empty Sky, which contains generally even better songs than the American album and has Elton singing slightly less manneredly and without fear of being swallowed whole by an orchestra. And watch for the second American album, which Elton promises will be a combination of the best of Empty Sky and Elton John.

If we can somehow discover another Elton John and coerce the Move to release their new album in the next few weeks, 1970 may yet escape going down as a not terribly good year for rock and roll.

The Man Who Sold The World David BowieBy John Mendelsohn | February 18, 1971

"Some say the view is crazy/But you may adopt another point of view. So if it's much too hazy/You can leave my friend and me with fond adieu," sings David Bowie in The Man Who Sold The World, thus supplying a most cogent critique of his own recent work — Bowie's music offers an experience that is as intriguing as it is chilling, but only to the listener sufficiently together to withstand its schizophrenia.

Bowie deals throughout this second album in oblique and fragmented images that are almost impenetrable separately but which convey with effectiveness an ironic and bitter sense of the world when considered together. His unhappy relationship with the world is traced to his inability to perceive it sanely: "I'd rather stay here with all the madmen/Than perish with the sadmen roaming free ... I'm quite content they're all as sane as me."

Producer Tony Visconti's use of echo, phasing, and other techniques on Bowie's voice to achieve a weird and supernatural tone reminiscent of a robot (which is to imply not that Bowie sings mechanically, but that his voice is oddly metallic to begin with) serves to reinforce the jaggedness of Bowie's words and music, the latter played in intimidatingly heavy fashion by an occasionally brilliant (note Mick Ronson's guitar break in "She Shook Me Cold") quartet guided by Visconti's own maniacally sliding bass.

In an album that, save for the impotently sarcastic "Running Gun Blues," is uniformly excellent, at least four tracks demand special attention: "Saviour Machine" demonstrates that Bowie far from exhausted his talent for quietly moralistic rock sci-fi in his earlier "Space Oddity." The almost insufferably depressive "After All" contains the strangest refrain perhaps ever conceived — a haunting, mantric "Oh, by jingo." "The Width of the Circle" is both a hallucination with religious overtones that recall both Dante and Adam and Eve and a sound of enormity. And "She Shook Me Cold" contains some of the most bizarre sexual imagery ever committed to vinyl: "She sucked my dormant will," or "She took my head, smashed it up/And left my young blood rising."

You ambitious young film makers out there contemplating a brilliantly evocative psychologically-oriented film about despair, consider Kevin Ayers and then eventually decide on David Bowie to do the score.

Long Player Faces

By John Mendelsohn | March 18, 1971

Being one of the few English bands left willing (nay, all too happy) to flaunt their Englishness, and moreover ranking no lower than third on the current faverave list of such heavy critics as John Mendelsohn, Faces should be just a shout away from becoming very enormous indeed, and, in the opinion of such heavy critics as John Mendelsohn, perhaps saving rock and roll from taking itself seriously to death in the process. In view of which we all have reason to be a trifle disappointed with Faces' new Long Player, for, consistently good casual fun and occasionally splendid though it may be, it's by no stretch of the imagination going to save anybody's soul (as an album by someone very enormous indeed ought) or even rescue the FM airwaves from the clutches of such increasingly cloying items as Elton John.

Simply, Faces seem to lack a clearly-defined sense of direction. Since the departure of the incredible Steve Marriott, they have been unable (or indisposed) to create more of the magic and wonderful R&B-derived English fantasy-rock like that on Ogden's Nut Gone Flake; consequently, they are obliged (or disposed) to look, aside from infrequent contributions in the grand old style by bassist Ronnie Lane, to late additions Ron Wood and that chap with the haystack haircut for direction. Wood, most frequently fancying pleasant, if dispensable, bottleneck-laden variations on De Blooze, is not the Face to provide that direction. And his friend with the haystack haircut doesn't seem nearly so intent on so providing as deferring to the other chaps' tastes for purposes of saving the group from becoming Rod Stewart (with Faces). But so intimidating is Stewart's presence apparently (in what should, of course, but hasn't thus far, been a mutually beneficial way) that the other chaps are all too eager to defer to Stewart's tastes. The present result being that, instead of getting both Faces albums and Stewart albums, Long Player being nothing more than a grab-bag of tidbits good enough only to tide us over until Stewart's third "solo" album.

Thus, the undisputed star cut on Player is that one on which Rod and the band work most distinctly in the same relation to one another as on his solo albums, with his voice and words commanding most of the attention. Leaving the matter of Faces' current inability to be more than Stewart's back-up band aside for a moment, what a cut it is!, it comprising an immediately attractive Wood tune, lovely Garth Hudson-ish organ by Ian McLagan, a beautiful pedal steel guitar solo, and magnificent Stewart singing and lyrics about becoming resigned to irreconcilability with a former lover:

Her Spanish habits are so hard to forgetThe lady lied with every breath, I acceptIt was a matter of time before my face did not fitI knew all along I'd have to quitAnyway I'd better not waste any more of your timeI'll just steal away

Dig here and elsewhere his use of images from American geography, like: "I think I'll go back home and start all over again/Where the Gulf-stream waters tend to ease the pain."

In the same vein but somehow lacking "Sweet Lady Mary"'s charisma is "Tell Everyone," a gospel-style ballad with occasionally superb Stewart words (that deal with what for him is an infrequent theme, a two-sided working love affair) and very nice guitar ornamentation from Wood.

But for the horrendous production, Lane's "On The Beach," a delightful tale about a young fellow who succeeds in hustling a beach honey in spite of his emaciation, would be a worthy successor to The First Step's "Three Button Hand-Me-Down" as a great Faces drinking song. On his other entry, "Richmond," the tiny bass-thumper delivers an unutterably charming shy vocal, but the track has an unfinished feel about it owing to an insufficiently developed arrangement.

"Bad 'N' Ruin" and "Had Me A Real Good Time" both rely a little too heavily on Larry Williams-ish riffs and Stax-ish rhythmic insistence and as a consequence wear poorly, impressing as rather tedious and perhaps even a trifle leaden by about tenth hearing. I personally am of the mind that both are insufficiently frenzied — both give the impression of intending to blow the roof off, but if so why do Faces jog when they should be sprinting in terms of tempo? Marriott, superman that he is, could have pulled it off at these relatively sedate speeds (the dubious are encouraged to examine many of the tracks on the last Small Faces album. The Autumn Stone, which just might be the definitive English rock and roll album). Stewart, whose voice (and range of expression) become increasingly thin when he pushes too hard, cannot.

The two live cuts, "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Feel So Good," both compare less than terrifically well with the unspeakably dynamite live stuff on Autumn Stone (not to worry the point to death, but to emphasize that the work of Faces when they were The Small richly deserves your attention). On the former the group is content to faithfully recite the original arrangement, which act, in these dark days of Blood, Sweat & Tears, Keith Emerson, and every last punk teenage garage band having its Own Original Approach, is awfully refreshing. Here a monstro climax seems to be forewarned by the group's stopping three-quarters of the way through only to pick up again, but it thankfully never materializes.

As for "Feel So Good," its presence on the album indicates either that Faces are having trouble finding material or that they've got a wide self-indulgent streak, 'cause this here is almost nine minutes of stupifying bellowed De Blooze which, however good it made the live audience that had the pleasure of watching them swagger all over the stage and embracing one another like long-separated lovers in their characteristic way as they were playing it feel, it makes the listener feel bored and annoyed after about 30 seconds of appreciative amusement. Not only does Rod scream the ultimate wrong on-stage question, "Are you with me?" not once, but four times, but it's also a shabby recording, with mostly only the crash cymbal audible from Kenny Jones' drumkit.

OK, a couple of incidental comments that will hopefully put my feelings about this album and Faces Small and otherwise into some vague semblance of perspective: Magnificent musically (extra-musically he's always magnificent) as he is most of the time, Stewart is not quite a match for the memory of Steve Marriott in the context of this particular band — it was definitely a major tragedy in the rock and roll cosmos when Marriott left Lane, Jones, and McLagan to join Humble Pie, who are notable only in their amazing ability to remain deathly horrid even with him in the group. Buy yourself Long Player for "Sweet Lady Mary" if you simply can't wait for the forthcoming Rod Stewart album, but doncha dare go calling yourself a Faces fan on the strength of LP if you haven't first experienced the unsurpassable ecstasy of The Autumn Stone.

Love It To Death Alice CooperBy John Mendelsohn | April 15, 1971

[It came on the radio in the late afternoon and from the first note it was right: Alice Cooper bringing it all back home again. God it's beautiful it is the most reassuring thing that has happened in this year of the Taylor Family...]

Ever since they ceased to be the Nazz, a fairly normal Yardbirds/Who derivation in the manner of Count V, and became instead Frank Zappa's vision of American youth's sexual uncertainties gone berserk, Alice Cooper have endured more than their fair share of abuse from such redoubtables as Rolling Stone in general and L. Bangs in particular, this in spite of the fact that their stage-show, clumsy and heavy-handed though it usually has been, represents at least a modest oasis in the desert of dreary blue-jeaned aloofness served up in concert by most American rock-and-rollers.

That their recorded work has heretofore been quite ghastly has scarcely served to make anyone fonder of them.

Henceforth Alice's detractors won't have their albums to kick about any more. Love it to death they and you may not, but at least like Love It To Death a lot many will, especially those with an ear for nicely-wrought mainstream punk raunch and snidely clever lyrics. For these, along with a heretofore-lacking sense of economy and control, are the major ingredients of such staples of Love It as "I'm Eighteen" (Alice's first teenage hit single), "Is It My Body" (a plea for, believe it or not, less superficiality in interpersonal relationships, particularly in those between the Coopers and their backstage courtiers). "Hallowed Be My Name," and "Sun Arise" (their dynamite show-opener, which they resourcefully learned off the back of an old Rolf Harris hit).

Sadly, the one bummer on this album is so loud a bummer that it may threaten to neutralize the ingratiating effect of the aforementioned nifties. Embarassingly reminiscent of the very worst of such horrors as Iron Butterfly and Black Sabbath and in places so strikingly similar to "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" that the Coopers may yet have to answer to Pink Floyd in court, "Black Juju" is mind-blowing black-magic nonsense at its most inane. Considering that this piece has seldom, if ever, worked properly live, in which context Alice's supposedly hypnotic chanting in the middle has been known to inspire audiences to yell, "Get off the fucking stage," it's difficult to imagine why they supposed it would work on record.

Some will be pleased to note, though, that "Ballad of Dwight Fry," the story of a man who's gone temporarily insane and finds himself going gradually more insane as a result of being confined in a mental institution, is conveyed by a genuinely pretty melody, which more than makes up for "Juju"'s presence. I'll be looking forward to seeing the Coopers perform this one live.

Now that they're making quite good records, incidentally, it is to be hoped that the Coopers will apply themselves to dreaming up a new image, that of the psychedelic drag-queen group having long since been exhausted witness how they've had to get into gruesome (and thus inconsistent with their stated intention of testing our sexual insecurities by being ambiguously attractive) stuff like tarantula eye make-up in order to stay ahead of their audiences in terms of outrageousness.

Not to be presumptuous, but I should like to suggest to the group that, in what will surely be recorded as a monumental feat of guts, as a sensational testament to the veracity of the image of iconoclastic perversity they've worked so hard to compile, they now turn the tables completely -to wit, that they all get crew-cuts, weight-lift their frail or pudgy bodies into Atlasian magnificence, perform in leopard-skin bikini briefs smeared head-to-toe with coconut oil (taking care to flex their muscles as often as possible while playing and flexing them dramatically between numbers), and generally give the young rocking studs of our great nation something to look up to.

I'll betcha they don't have the balls.

Every Picture Tells A Story Rod StewartBy John Mendelsohn | July 8, 1971

He has it in him, has Rod Stewart, to save a lot of souls, to rescue those of us who are too old for Grand Funk but not old enough for those adorable McCartneys from being nearly consummately bored with the current rock and roll scene.

It's not inconceivable that he could do it without even opening his mouth: He's physically sensational, the idol of perhaps three continents' heavy trendies, the most profound influence on rock and roll fashion since the Stones' Tour. He's the single most glamorous rock figure rolling.

When he does open his mouth to sing, out comes the most unique male voice in rock, a voice anyone could recognize instantly at five hundred paces through a Dixie cup. He's suggested to interviewers that he sounds too much like Arthur Conley or occasional other R&B luminaries, but 'tain't so — he sounds only like a white kid with strep throat fighting valiantly but in vain to reproduce Arthur Conley's or some other occasional R&B luminary's vocal tone. Consequently, he's got soul to spare.

His are just about the finest lyrics currently being written, lyrics constructed solidly of strong, straightforward images that convey intense emotions, images that far more often reflect the musics that their creator has loved than anyone's notion of rock-lyrics-as-poetry: "I think I'll go back home and start all over again/ Where the gulf-stream waters tend to ease my pain." He's eloquent, literate, and moving — a superb writer.

Moreover, his taste in co-writers and accompanists is impeccable.

All of which combines to imply that only deficiencies of taste in the areas of material and occasionally production may be held responsible for Every Picture Tells A Story being the third Rod Stewart album in succession that only occasionally sounds like the work of a man who's got it in him to save a lot of souls, a bashful step in the right direction though it may be in that it's equal parts magnificent splendor and pleasant inconsequence rather than, as were The Rod Stewart Album and Gasoline Alley, equal parts magnificent splendor and scarcely listenable heavy-handedness.

There is no better backing band in the biz at the moment than the one Stewart assembles for his solo sessions — Ron Wood seems to save all his most exquisite chops for these occasions, Martin Quittenton's acoustic guitar, both when sharing the lead with Wood's bottleneck or working as a rhythmic embellishment to Mick Waller's ride cymbal and high-hat, is always stunning, Pete Sears plays a quite pretty piano, Dick Powell's fiddle is unremittingly delightful, and together these gentlemen interact ingeniously, producing accompaniments as rich in texture as those of the Highway 61 and Blonde On Blonde bands.

Sad to say, though, no amount of excellent, even occasionally breathtaking playing by his band behind quite satisfactory singing by Stewart himself can transform such massively inconsequential, nay, downright trivial, fare as "Seems Like A Long Time" or "Tomorrow Is Such A Long Time," an understandably obscure bit of early Dylan schlock, into anything very memorable. What on earth is Rod Stewart doing listening to old Brewer & Shipley and Hamilton Camp albums (where from these two tidbits were procured) when he could be writing his own stuff, his own stuff always being his best stuff? And why also, as with "That's All Right, Mama" and "Reason To Believe," should he or we settle for his paying pleasant but hardly captivating homage to early inspirations when he's capable of saving souls?

Simply, on about half the album he started with nothing much and, to no one's surprise, came up with something that can be respected or even slightly enjoyed but scarcely gotten passionate about.

Moreover, on at least one occasion he starts with something quite splendid of his own and produces it in such a way that, for one's first week or so with the album, he can listen to only a portion of the song at a time. So prominent in the mix of the title track, in which Stewart attempts to reproduce the tightly sloppy, all-hell-has-broken-loose sound of "It's All Over Now" and "Cut Across Shortly" from his previous album, are Waller's drums, that the track originally comes off as obnoxious and heavy-handed. Which is not to mention that one really has to struggle to pick out all the words.

And will he never tire of endless endings?

But enough of sad matters, and on to the joyous task of examining the man's work at its incomparable best ...

Even while it originally almost drives you from the room trying to convince you of the fact, "Every Picture" does rock with ferocity via a simple but effective seven-note ascension/five-note descension riff that Waller cleverly punctuates with a halved-time bass-drum-against-snare lick. In the grand manner of "Gasoline Alley" and "Bad 'N' Ruin," It kicks things off powerfully with the usual Stewartian picaresque autobiographical tale with the familiar theme of the down-and-out wanderer confronting some basic moral truths during his wanderings and returning home a wiser man. Where he's momentarily intent on rhyme things get a trifle forced here and there (as when he mates Rome and None,) but such objections evaporate instantly in the face of such delightful lines as: "Shanghai Lil never used the pill/She said, 'It just ain't natural!'"

A careful listening or two will reveal that Stewart is subtly brilliant on "I'm Losing You," which enjoys splendid hard-'n'-heavy backing from the Faces, as when he swoops almost imperceptibly into and out of falsetto during the title line. Note with pleasure how, towards the end of his colossal (and excellently produced) drum solo, Kenny Jones, surely among the very best rock and roll drummers drumming, refers back to the song's basic bass rhythm as a lead instrumentalist will refer back to the melody.

"Maggie May," purportedly about a schoolboy's ill-fated romance with a floozy, is debatably the album's most wonderful selection, with an irresistible tune and an overall sound that somehow evokes a warm late-summer afternoon. It's got charming words and is beautifully played by all present, with a celeste chiming in ever so charmingly here and there. Exhilarating is the only way to describe the mandolin break at the end.

"Mandolin Wind" (what a beautiful title!) is nearly as good, with a beautiful Western instrumental texture and Rod delivering some gorgeous cowboy images. At the end, when, after a moment's silence, everyone's come back rocking like mad, he even gets off one of his soul-stirring falsetto whoops. A knock-out.

Boring as half of it may be, there's enough that is unqualifiedly magnificent on the other half of Every Picture Tells A Story to make it clearer than ever before that if Rod Stewart ever allows himself the time to write himself a whole album, it will be among the best albums any of us has ever heard. Until such time, a lot of souls will have no choice but to truck about half-saved.

Who's Next The WhoBy John Mendelsohn | September 2, 1971

Who's Next, regardless of what you may have been led to believe to the contrary, is neither the soundtrack to the realization of Pete Townshend's apparently-aborted Hollywood dream, the greatest live album in the history of the universe, nor a, shudder, rock opera, but rather an old fashioned long-player containing intelligently-conceived, superbly-performed, brilliantly-produced, and sometimes even exciting rock and roll.

Having said which, I will digress . . .

If, instead of a Heavy!-loving barbiturated kid who discovered in the wake of all the jumpin' and jivin' that accompanied the release of their last two albums that the Who resemble Led Zeppelin and so on on a gross aural level and must therefore be far-out!, it's an age-long admirer of theirs you are, you'll doubtless have noticed that the Who's stage act, snazzy as it remains, has toned down subtly over the last couple of tours.

Most noticeably, they've discarded the dazzling fop finery in which they first arrived on these shores for comfortable, functional clothing that's easier to rampage about in, And recently they've given the impression of consciously attempting to complement one another's physical presences, where in days past each strove with maniacal tenacity to focus the attention of every eye in the audience on himself alone — John Entwistle, for instance, has owned up that playing bass for the Who doesn't bore him nearly so much as it once did and that he's recently taken to pretending he's bored on account of he reckons it looks nicest with him standing very still.

And, most important, Townshend, whose semi-psychotic need to brutalize his audience used to drive him to smash the shit out of his guitar at the end of every performance, has abandoned that mutually liberating strategy in favor of safer and saner climaxes during which he improvises on the ax long enough to render even a speeder comatose.

All those changes, it seems to me, derive from the group's perception of a need to demonstrate themselves Serious Artists instead of gimmick-mongering punks — to make themselves a little more accessible and a little less offensive.

That same compulsion to selfvalidate that's left their stageshow a four-stone apology for what it once was has also led the Who to tidy up their records to the point where they're dangerously close to sterile. It's a monumental testament to their greatness, therefore, that a lot of Next, their first studio album since self-consciousness set in heavily in the wake of so many people decreeing Tommy a work of genius, transcends its calculatedness to emerge mostly exciting as well as awesomely admirable.

It is to be borne in mind, of course, that a period during which they would concentrate on technique at the expense of the spontaneous expression of feelings was inevitable for the Who for a variety of reasons.

First, they must surely have gotten good and sick of having people dismissing them with a fast fart for having some terrific gimmicks but only minimal musical competence. Moreover, Townshend has surely been drooling with anticipation of the day that he could produce his own stuff, considering what a perfectly dreadful job Shel Talmy and other early Who producers did. And also, with all sorts of people in recent years, from Led Zeppelin to Alice Cooper, exploiting stuff they learned from them, it was only natural that the Who should want to make a clearly-defined stylistic statement.

They've taken care of all that business with Next. The musicianship is indisputably excellent, with Moon thrashing and bashing more precisely than ever before on record, Entwistle dreaming up all manner of scrumptious melodic and rhythmic flourishes (listen especially to what he plays beneath the chorus of "Won't Get Fooled Again"), and Townshend, be it with chunky acoustic rhythm, resounding monster chords of the classic sort, or cogent and lyrical soloes, playing with exemplary efficiency and taste.

As for the album's production, Townshend has, with the able assistance of Glyn Johns in the dual role of engineer and co-producer, come up with one of the most masterfully-recorded rock records in recent memory. Whether so precise a sound as this record's becomes the Who is, at this point, less relevant than the consideration that they've now satisfied their curiosity about whether or not they could be recorded as crisply as, say, Thunderclap Newman.

And with the long LP version of "Won't Get Fooled Again," an ingeniously — constructed panoramic view of methods of attack they've grown fondest of over the years, they've succeeded in committing to vinyl a comprehensive primer of basic Whostyle.

Such dynamics! The beautiful quietly lyrical moments of such selections as "The Song Is Over," "Gettin' In Tune," and "Behind Blue Eyes" are juxtaposed with the thundering rock that is the marrow of those songs so that each is rendered even more poignant.

To further frost the confection, Townshend wrings more than his money's worth out of his £14,000-worth of synthesizers, making, I daresay, shrewder at once more adventurous and better-integrated — use of them than any rock experimenter before him.

In "Baba O'Riley," for instance, he sets the stage for the band's dramatic entrance with a prerecorded VCS3 part he obtained by programming certain of his vital statistics into a computer hooked up to the synthesizer, then treats the part as a drone while the song's two major chords are transposed over it, and later has the band playing against it (that is, piling a few gigantic chords on it while it keeps going "Meepmeep-meep-meep-meep ...") to lead into a solo by guest fiddler Dave Arbus.

Next, on "Bargain," he uses his ARP both as a solo instrument and as a backdrop to his own beautiful guitar solo.

There's just so much to be astonished and delighted by on this album once you get used to its kinda chilly perfection . . .

There's Roger Daltrey singing, "And I'm gonna 'chune' right in on you," during "Gettin' In Tune," which is so wondrous that it's enough to keep the listener's mind off the possibly unpleasant implications of "the straight and narrow" being what's been gotten in tune to.

There's Daltrey bestowing an excellent dramatic reading (note especially his intonation of the world "vengeance") on interesting lyrics in front of the prettiest Who harmonies in ever so long in "Behind Blue Eyes."

There's Imbecile's stupendously catchy and stupid "My Wife," which deals with the danger of being both married and fond of lazing about in the boozer until all hours. (What a pity that The Ox's pleasantly adenoidal voice is all but lost beneath the instruments "Can this be a result of jealousy on Townshend's part?" you'll long to know for sure.)

And, ultimately, there is "The Song Is Over," one of a few survivors on Next from the recently-aborted Bobby project, an unutterably beautiful song in which Townshend sings exquisitely over a gentle piano background before and in between Daltrey charging in exhilaratingly over a hard part with breathtaking chord changes in the manner of the "Listening to you I hear the music . . ." refrain from Tommy. Definitely up there with "Rael" and "Pinball Wizard" and "I'm The Face" among their very best work is this one.

And, just to make it clear to any cretins out there in Radioland that this is just a plain old-fashioned long-player, there are a couple of throwaways: The faintly pretty but negligible "Love Ain't For Keeping" (which most certainly does not deserve to succeed "Heaven And Hell" as the group's stage-opener, unless they play it live about ten trillion times harder than they do on record), and the faintly inane "Goin' Mobile," which celebrates the joys of, ho hum, being free to roam the highways and byways in one's trailer.

And there you have it, chums, an album that, despite a degree of sober calculatedness that would prove fatal to a lesser group, ranks right up there with David Bowie's and Black Oak Arkansas's and Crazy Horse's and Procol Harum's and Alice Cooper's and Christopher Milk's as among the most wondrous of 1971. In view of the fact that Pete's resumed smashing shit out of his guitar at the end of performances and that they've hopefully now resolved all their anxieties about technique, it's eminently reasonable to assume that subsequent Who albums won't be no shrinking violets either.

Hunky Dory David BowieBy John Mendelsohn | January 6, 1972

David Bowie, the swinging/mod Garbo, male femme fatale, confidante to and darling of the avant garde on both sides of the Atlantic, and shameless outrage, is back, and with a bang, although bearing little resemblance to the dangerous loony of The Man Who Sold The World from earlier this year.

For the most part, Dave is back, after an affair with heavy! highenergy killer techniques, back into his 1966-ish, Tony Newley/poprock thang, and happily so: Hunky is his most easily accessible, and thus most readily enjoyable work since his Man Of Words/Man of Music album of 1969.

Much of The Man Who Sold's appeal is derived from the incredible ferocity of Bowie's accompanist's instrumental backing and from Tony Visconti's masterful production, which propelled it into a tie with the

Move's Shazam for the title of the best-recorded and-mixed heavy! album of all eternity. Relative to Bowie's own talents it was erratic in the extreme, tedious music and hopelessly obscure (and sometimes downright embarrassing) words alternating frequently within the space of a verse with exciting melodic phrases and poignant, incisive lyrics.

Hunky Dory not only represents Bowie's most engaging album musically, but also finds him once more writing literally enough to let the listener examine his ideas comfortably, without having to withstand a barrage of seemingly impregnable verbiage before getting at an idea — only in "The Bewlay Brothers" does he succumb to the temptation to grant his poetic faculties completely free rein, and there with expectedly frustrating results.

Here the backing, including strings, doesn't oppress him as it sometimes did in The Man, but rather creates a casual pop atmosphere in which Dave's voice, which loves to entertain company, is free to perform all manner of little tricks for us. To top all of this off, Ken Scott's production is quite splendid — delicious little flourishes of the sort that the casual listener will not detect but that one who gives the record a few serious spins will find thrilling abound, like, say, Mick Ronson's guitar suddenly beginning to echo distantly at the onset of a solo.

While compiling material for this album Dave's thoughts apparently turned frequently to the imminence of the birth of his first son, Zowie, which preoccupation is reflected in the album's two obvious candidates for release as a single, "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Kooks." The former, which was a hit in England for Herman Hermit, intimates that homo superior — the superman race — is about to emerge, implicitly in the form of the wee Bowie. "Kooks," which is even catchier, finds Dave urging the infant to stick around with his folks, shameless aberrants though they may be, with such lines as, "Don't pick fights with the bullies or the cads/'Cause I'm not much cop at punching other, people's Dads," revealing remarkable self-candor on Papa's part.

"Eight Line Poem," which is tacked onto the end of "Pretty Things" for reasons obvious only to Dave, is musically blah but boasts the following haiku-ish couplet or whatever at its conclusion: "But the key to the city/Is in the sun that pins the branches to the sky."

"Changes" has an irresistible stuttered chorus sung by dozens of overdubbed Daves alternating with faintly Newley-ishly-delivered verses that may be construed as a young man's attempt to reckon how he'll react when it's his time to be on the maligned side of the generation schism.

"Quicksand," a melodically lovely affair that boasts superb singing from Dave and a beautiful guitar motif from Mick Ronson, also speaks of confusion. Through two verses it's typical erratic Bowie — a flaccid, strained image in the same breath with an extremely effective one (as in "I'm the twisted name on Garbo's eyes/I'm living proof of Churchill's lies"), until in the third it abruptly becomes clear and controlled as it betrays the paradoxes the Bowie intellect finds most troubling:

I'm not a prophet or a stone age manJust a mortal with potential of a supermanI'm living onI'm tethered to the logic of homo sapienCan't take my eyes from the great salvationOf bullshit faith...

A delightfully and appropriately good-natured rendition of Biff Rose's sprightly "Fill Your Heart" opens side two, ending with a truly deft swoop into falsetto by the Bowie vocal chords and a taste of the provocative Bowie saxophone, heretofore left un-unveiled on the Bowie records.

Then Dave falters momentarily with two tunes that suggest to Lewis Segal and other astute Bowie-watchers that the lad's tongue may be less firmly against his cheek than originally suspected when he suggests that he is in the vanguard of, and therefore a qualified commentator on, hip and avant — garde goings — on — both "Andy Warhol," whose only notable feature is its extraordinary all-acoustic-guitar accompaniment, and "Song For Bob Dylan" impress even these unastute ears as self-indulgent and trivial.

"Queen Bitch," though, with a vocal right out of Lou Reed and an arrangement right out of the Velvet Underground and a theme right out of the novel of the same name, is fascinating and scandalous, describing a "swishy ... Queen" successfully hustling the singer's boyfriend. And after all this reviewer did to portray Dave as a clean-cut normal in these pages!

"The Bewlay Brothers" sounds like something that got left off The Man Who Sold because it wasn't loud enough. Musically it's quiet and barren and sinister, lyrically virtually impenetrable — a stream-of-consciousness stream of strange and (seemingly) unrelated imagery — and it closes with several repetitions of a chilling chorus sung in a broad Cockney accent, which, if it's any help, David usually invokes when he's attempting to communicate something about the impossibility of ever completely transcending the mundane circumstances of one's birth.

And there you have it. With his affection for using intriguing and unusual themes in musical settings that most rock "artists" would dismiss with a quick fart as old-fashioned and uncool, he's definitely an original, is David Bowie, and as such will one day make an album that will induce us homo superior elitist rock critics to race about like a chicken with its head lopped off when he learns that he's a couple of pretentious tendencies he'd do handsomely to curtail through the composition of an album's-worth of material. Until that time, Hunky Dory will suffice hunky-dorily.

Wild Life [US Bonus Tracks] Paul Mc CartneyBy John Mendelsohn | January 20, 1972

Like Paul McCartney's first two post-Beatles albums. Wild Life is largely high on sentiment but rather flaccid musically and impotent lyrically, trivial and unaffecting. It lacks the exhilarating highs of Ram (which highs I, as one who found it as worthless as the next guy when it first arrived, can assure you are indeed present), and, in the form of a track called "I Am Your Singer," contains the most embarrassingly puerile single piece of work Paul's been associated with since "She's Leaving Home."

But allow no one to convince you that it's entirely devoid of merit: while it's vacuous, flaccid, impotent, trivial and unaffecting. It's also unpretentious (a humble enough vessel of praise, but one of which neither George Harrison's nor John Lennon's post-Beatles work is worthy), melodically charming in several places, warm, and pleasant. Mostly, it's nicely (but not, as was some of Ram, spectacularly) executed pop music, and should be taken or left on that basis alone.

I personally find the notion that Paul can't distinguish between the trivial and the heavy without the assistance of a George Martin or Lennon preposterous, and attribute the low-key blandness of his recent work instead to what is, in view of his remaining contractually chained to an organization he has little desire to make wealthier, an understandable nonchalance. As for considerations of pride having to do with his rivalry with the other Beatles in general and Lennon in particular, he's apparently quite accurately surmised that the average record buyer, unlike nearly every critic who's expressed an opinion, greatly prefers his hummable fluff to Lennon's more interesting but frequently strident expressions of conscience.

One somehow convinced of McCartney's basic perversity might argue that he's quite intentionally making mediocre music, knowing that his ex-partner will suffer more watching effortlessly-produced pop quasi-Muzak easily outsell his own anguish - predicated soul-barings. A more likely explanation for a theory holding that McCartney's records have been deliberately second-rate is that he's attempting to comment ironically on Lennon's obsession with putting yet another huge hunk of his personality on every 12-inch vinyl disk by himself sticking to the most banal imaginable themes.

In many ways Paul is slowly regaining the upper hand, mostly by making many fewer hard-to-live - up - to significance - reeking pronouncements about his own life and society at large. Note, for example, that he credits Linda as co-composer on all of Wild Life's new compositions, as well as co-producer, while Lennon, after going out of his way to sympathize with the feminist movement in "Power To The People," scarcely allows Yoko to complete a sentence on national television.

While Lennon continually threatens to implode in his eagerness to represent himself as the spokesman for the politically conscious avant-garde, to perpetuate his stature as the spearhead of whatever revolution is in the air, Paul quietly continues to quite deliberately demystify himself, resisting the obvious temptation to set Dick Cavett straight, showing up at the presentation of the Grammy awards at least partially to demonstrate that he doesn't consider himself above such gross recognition of his talents, unveiling Wings' album at the approximate English equivalent of Lawrence Welk's Hollywood Palladium, and, most importantly, making modest, simple music about the least mystical theme imaginable, domestic contentment. He's driven by no obsession to demonstrate rock's potential as fine, revolutionary, or religious art, but rather is content to make straightforward pop music, to entertain. He apparently sleeps soundly.

None of which is to imply either so great a degree of detachment or so immense a capacity for charity in McCartney that he's above further participation in the inter-ex-Beatle feuding. Parts of Wild Life may with little exertion be construed as his answer to the unkind things Lennon sang and said about him during the last round.

To my ears there's something quite fishy about the title track

specifically, I find it impossible to take, "Taking a walk through an African park one day," and similar lines at face value, as merely very clumsy things to say in what sounds to me like a too-obvious-to-be-real ecology-fad-inspired song. Rather, the whole theme of this track seems a subtle but discernible parody of Lennon's stance as a social critic, just as the way Paul holds onto several raspily sung notes at the beginning of the song remind me more than a little of Lennon's vocal approach on the primal screaming album.

It's conceivable, of course, that I'm completely mistaken. It's this very uncertainty about the parodic nature of "Wild Life" that permits Paul to play the unfairly victimized but still charitable half of a friendship gone sour in "Dear Friend," to ask, "Does it really matter that much to you?" in a way that suggests that "it" doesn't matter nearly so much to him as does the friendship.

The placement of these two songs is interesting: in closing the album, "Dear Friend," in which he's the unjustly-hurt but nevertheless understanding golden boy, appears in the place where we'd probably most expect him to address Lennon. Thus, if you miss the import of "Wild Life," which is placed at the end of a side whose first three-quarters seem to have been included mostly in an attempt to convince the listener that the album bears no pronouncements, you have only the far more flattering picture that "Dear Friend" paints on which to base your perception of McCartney's role in the feud. All of which, it must be admitted, is quite neat.

The aforementioned first three-quarters of side one comprise "Mumbo," a raucous rock and roll rampage that, like "Smile Away," may be taken as a small self-send-up, and "Bip Bop," an hypnotic and quite enjoyable Merle Travisstyle guitar-pickin' hoedown, and the venerable "Love Is Strange."

If the remainder of the album has a theme it's the perfect, self-containing, incomprehensible-to-outsiders nature of the McCartneys' love. Thus, the presence of "... Strange," the first non-original Paul's recorded since the middle of last decade. I, for one, would have much enjoyed hearing the McCartneys asking one another how each calls his lover-boy (-girl), but the absence of this crucial component of Mickey & Sylvia's and Peaches & Herb's versions of the song is compensated for by the superbly-played Staxish arrangement Wings have lavished on it, including a bass and tom-toms mix that Phil Spector himself might be proud of.

"Some People Never Know" and "Tomorrow" are archetypal post-Beatles McCartney: banal, self-celebrating lyrics full of many of the most tired rhymes in Western pop, sentiments that Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy would embrace without a moment's hesitation; glossy, if unfocused production; pretty, eminently Muzakable melodies; lots of velvety background ooh-ing; and the expressive intensity of the Carpenters good pop, but neither more nor less than that.

"I Am Your Singer" represents McCartney's most dangerous impulses run rampant. It's sufficiently sweet and adorable to gag on, with Mr. & Mrs. describing each's importance to one another by use of a metaphor that even a Paul Williams might reject as overly cute. Whatever Linda's attributes may be as a wife and mother, she's no singer, being incapable of tip-toing through even the simplest phrase in tune (as becomes embarrassingly evident during her solo moment). Moreover, the song's arrangement appears to have been slapped together in a matter of seconds, as is suggested by drummer Denny Seiwell's thumping around aimlessly in a manner that suggests that the first time he heard the song was while it was being recorded. This isn't even acceptable pop music.

Speaking of arrangements, as we were a sentence ago, Paul seemingly can't be bothered to do much more than decide where he's going to insert a guitar solo or background singing, and is mostly content to allow his songs to stand or fall on tune alone. Only in "Love Is Strange" and "Dear Friend," whose jarring piano and chilling strings (which remind, even if ever so slightly, of those on "How Do You Sleep?") successfully evoke despair, is there much evidence of anyone having taken the time or trouble to focus the performance in such a way that its effect on the listener is controlled.

Passing note should be made of the invisibility in Wings of former Moody Blues leader and Airforce man Denny Laine, a musician of some stature in England. It is difficult to imagine how he'll remain content with the unspecified background role he plays on this record.

My own conviction is that we'd be foolish to expect anything much more earth-shaking than Wild Life out of McCartney for a good long while not, I daresay, before he extricates himself from record and publishing companies that he feels little love for. Which may very well not happen until the latter part of this decade. In the meantime the reader is advised to either develop a fondness for vacuous but unpretentious pop music or look elsewhere for musical pleasure.

Harvest Neil YoungBy John Mendelsohn | March 30, 1972

At the end of this, five'll getcha ten, most of you are going to be exclaiming lividly, "O what vile geeks are rock critics! How quick are they to heap disapproval on one whose praises they once sang stridently at the first sign of us Common Folk taking him to heart en masse! How they revel in detesting that which we adore!" However often I might second with a hearty "right on!" such a perception of the critic/audience chasm, though, I will swear under oath before the highest court in the land that such an exclamation is far from apt in the case of a displeased review of Neil Young's Harvest.

Different folks, it must be seen, respond to overwhelming mass acceptance with different strokes. While some respond to commercial prosperity as a means to realizing all those brainstorms that a lack of loot formerly made impossible, to expanding and growing as an artist through the exploitation to heretofore unattainable resources, others either wilt artistically in the face of a mass audience's expectations — resorting to conscious imitations of what was once instinctive and spontaneous — or greatly relax the standards by which they once judged themselves, having concluded (usually quite correctly) that once one attains superstar status the audience will eagerly gobble up whatever half-assed baloney he pleases to record.

On the basis of the vast inferiority relative to his altogether spectacular Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere of the two albums he's made since teaming up with Crosby, Etc. (and thus insuring that he'd never again want for an audience), it can only be concluded that Neil Young is not one of those folks whom superstardom becomes artistically.

Harvest, a painfully long year-plus in the making (or, seemingly more aptly, assembling), finds Neil Young invoking most of the L.A. variety of superstardom's weariest cliches in an attempt to obscure his inability to do a good imitation of his earlier self.

Witness, for example, the discomfortingly unmistakable resemblance of nearly every song on this album to an earlier Young composition — it's as if he just added a steel guitar and new words to After The Gold Rush. Witness his use of said steel guitar to create a Western ambience worlds less distinctive than that conjured in earlier days by his own vibratodrenched lead guitar.

Witness, in fact, that he's all but abdicated his position as an authoritative rock-and-roller for the stereotypical laid-back country-comforted troubadour role, seldom playing electric guitar at all any more, and then with none of the spellbinding economy and spine-tingling emotiveness that characterized his playing with Crazy Horse. Indeed, his only extended solo on the album, in "Words," is fumbling and clumsy, even embarrassing.

Neil's Nashville backing band, the Stray Gators, pale miserably in comparison to the memory of Crazy Horse, of whose style they do a flaccid imitation on such tracks as "Out On The Weekend," "Harvest," and "Heart of Gold." Where the Crazies kept their accompaniment hypnotically simple with a specific effect in mind (to render most dramatic rhythmic accents during choruses and instrumental breaks), the Gators come across as only timid, restrained for restraint's sake, and ultimately monotonous.

With that going on behind him, Neil's lyrics dominate the listener's attention far more than befit them. Neil's verbal resources have always been limited, but before now he's nearly always managed to come up with enough strong, evocative lines both to keep the listener's attention away from the banality of those by which they're surrounded and to supply the listener with a vivid enough impression of what a song is about to prevent his becoming frustrated by its seemingly deliberate obscurity and skeletal incompleteness. In his best work, as in Everybody Knows, wherein Crazy Horse's heavy, sinister accompaniment made unmistakable the message (of desperation begetting brutal vindictiveness) which the almost impenetrably subjective words hinted at only broadly, the basic sound of a song further vivified what lyric fragments suggested.

Here, with the music making little impression, the words stand or fall on their own, ultimately falling as a result of their extremely low incidence of inspiration and high incidence of rhyme-scheme-forced silliness. A couple

are even slightly offensive — "The Needle And The Damage Done," is glib, even cute, and displays little real commitment to its subject, while "There's A World" is simply flatulent and portentuous nonsense. Only "A Man Needs A Maid," in which Neil treats his favorite theme — his inability to find and keep a lover — in a novel and arrestingly brazen (in terms of our society's accelerating consciousness of women's rights) manner, is particularly interesting — nearly everything else being limitlessly ponderable, but in a scant, oblique way that offers few rewards to the ponderer.

It might be noted (with remorse) that neither of the symphony-orchestrated tunes of Harvest even approaches "Expecting To Fly," from 1967, in terms of production or over-all emotional power. Would that the two unreleased movements of that earlier masterpiece, originally conceived as a trilogy, been given the grooves used for "Maid" and "There's A World." (Apologies if "The Emperor of Wyoming" or "String Quartet From Whiskey Boot Hill," from Neil Young, or "Broken Arrow" are in fact the missing two-thirds).

"Alabama" aspires to the identical effect of "Southern Man" but contains nothing nearly so powerful as that Gold Rush song's "I heard screamin' and bullwhips crackin'," followed by a vicious slash of Danny Whitten's rhythm guitar and a stinging lead line from Neil. "Old Man's" first line promises a lot more than the song ever delivers in terms of compassionate perception. "Heart of Gold's" basic conceit would be laughed off the airwaves coming from another solo troubadour. "Are You Ready For The Country," like "Cripple Creek Ferry," seems an in-joke throwaway intended for the amusement of certain of Neil's superstar pals. The title tune is lyrically cluttered and oblique, and "Out on The Weekend" is puerile, precious, and self-indulgent, not to mention musically insipid.

Truth be told, I listened to the entirety of Harvest no less than a dozen times before touching typewriter to paper, ultimately managing to come with only one happy thing to say about it: Neil Young still sings awful pretty, and often even touchingly. For the most part, though, he's seemingly lost sight of what once made his music uniquely compelling and evocative and become just another pretty-singing solo superstar.

Which can't help but bring me down.

Katy Lied Steely DanBy John Mendelsohn | May 8, 1975

Steely Dan sound like a million dollars not only next to at least 26 of their coresidents of the Boss 30 when they're in it, but also in comparison to three-quarters of the stuff with which they share FM needle-time.

The lead singing of Donald Fagen, which sounds to these old ears like a strange hybrid of the Mike Love of "California Girls" and pre-motorcycle-wreck Dylan, is engagingly distinctive.

The words, while frequently not easy to get the definite drift of, are almost always intriguing and often witty. And they mount them on accessible tunes punctuated by quite nice harmony-laden refrains.

Instrumentally, they (and the studio pros they've recruited to accompany them on record) are veritable paragons not only of dexterity but also of taste. And, unlike 95% of the people currently making "serious" music, they know when to shut the hell up — neither a solo nor a whole track lasts longer than one wants it to.

Why, then, do I — without the slightest intention of undermining anyone else's enthusiasm for it — find myself not caring if I ever again hear any of Steely Dan's music up to and including Katy Lied?

It has to do primarily with the fact that, however immaculately tasteful and intelligent it all may be, I personally am able to detect not the slightest suggestion of real passion in any of it. Fagen's singing is indeed engagingly distinctive, but for me the accent's a little too clearly over the distinctive: It sounds as though he's a great deal more concerned with style than with expression.

When it comes to the words he's singing, I feel all too frequently as though I must choose between concluding that I'm a thickhead and suspecting that the Dan lyricist either is too lazy to make his stuff penetrable or else is oblique simply to conceal the fact that, however facilely he may string together unusual and interesting images, he really hasn't much to say through them. While such typical lyrics as, "Throw back the little ones/And pan fry the big ones/Use tact, poise and reason/And gently squeeze them"* greatly interest me, I can make only the wildest guess as to what Messrs. Becker and/or Fagen wanted to tell me about their perception of the world.

Likewise, the instrumental statements — by Dan perennial Denny Dias and an awesome array of guest stars — are a great deal more impressive for their taste and proficiency than they are moving.

Thus, while I can scarcely help but be at least a little grateful for it in this, the year of Barry White, Steely Dan's music continues to strike me essentially as exemplarily well-crafted and uncommonly intelligent schlock.

The Razor's Edge ACDCBy John Mendelsohn | November 15, 1990

Since the heyday of Little Richard, one of the things that teenagers have liked most about rock & roll is that it can provoke parents to pull out fistfuls of their hair and bellow, "God, what is that?" When your hormones are playing unspeakably cruel tricks on you, making you absolutely desperate to get laid even as your face is filling with gruesome crimson lesions, what can be more satisfying than inflicting equally grievous discomfort on the people who cramp your style the most?

Strangled, hysterical and infinitely malign, Brian Johnson's bloodcurdling singing surely induces greater parental distress than any other voice in rock & roll. As long as he's in the band and fifteen-year-old boys suffer hormonal imbalances, AC/DC will never want for an audience. In view of which, The Razor's Edge (punctuation courtesy of the band) may be perceived as a lot better than it is.

With its Hitler Youth-rally chorus, "Moneytalks" recalls Slade (Johnson began his career as a clone of Slade's Noddy Holder) to delightful effect, while the Sabbath-like title track creates an atmosphere of deep foreboding. "Are You Ready," an exaltation of nocturnal hell raising with which our heroes seem to be bucking for a Michelob commercial, is as irresistible as it is formulaic, and behold the inventive syncopation of the guitars in "Fire Your Guns."

Though the album is probably better than it needs to be, it is a great deal less compelling than it might have been. Several songs are built on threadbare Keith Richards-isms. And in spite of the fact that guitarist Angus Young, the straw that stirs AC/DC's drink, is over thirty now and Johnson is past forty, AC/DC can think of little to sing about but the joys of sex, drugs (tobacco, at least), rock & roll and general loutishness. In fact, with The Razor's Edge, AC/DC sets a new record for the longest career without a single new idea.