Brookswords

Toronto Rock n' Roll Revival Revisited

The summer of 1969 was the summer of rock music festivals. In many ways these were an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of 1967's "Summer of Love" in San Francisco--and more particularly, the "Be-In" that occurred in that city's Golden Gate Park one day in January of that year. Yes, already by 1969 the counter culture was awash in nostalgia. The pinnacle was at Woodstock that August, but things would become seriously unhinged later that year at the Rolling Stones' one day event at Altamont. (I almost went to the latter, but I was sick that weekend. And I had a lot of homework to do.)

In Toronto, at the end of the summer of '69, things were a little different. It was a one-day affair, as opposed to the 2 or 3 day festivals that were the norm, and it was planned to be a celebration of the roots of rock n' roll. Consequently most of the acts were pioneers of rock, such as Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis -- with a smattering of newer acts, most prominent of which was the Doors.

Well, that lineup didn't entice ticket buyers in the summer of '69. Fearing the festival would collapse before it even began, the promoters invited the Beatles -- who were themselves on the verge of collapsing -- to make their first live appearance in 3 years. Needless to say, the Beatles, who had just recently spent their final days together in a recording studio, didn't show. But John Lennon did, and the concert was saved.

Since he hadn't been in front of an audience for such a long time, Lennon later admitted he spent the half hour before he took the stage nauseous in his dressing room. But his performance shows no sign of nervousness. In fact, he shows that he was one of the great rock vocalists. Bowing to the the nature of the event, he sang mostly only old rock n' roll chestnuts such as "Dizzy Miss Lizzie", with the able assistance of Eric Clapton's nimble, blistering lead guitar.

As for the rock pioneers, Jerry Lee Lewis, strangely enough, centered his set on Elvis Presley songs and not his own. Or maybe not so strange -- Presley had recently begun to return to live performances that summer in Las Vegas, and I can't help thinking "The Killer" was attempting his own style of one-upmanship. (His resentment of Presley culminated 7 years later with Jerry Lee showing up drunk late one night with a loaded pistol, at the gate of Elvis' Graceland mansion, ranting and raving. According to one witness, he said, "Tell him the Killer's here to see him" -- hardly assuring words coming from someone brandishing a gun. He was arrested at the scene.) As for Little Richard, he instantly revived his career at Toronto; as one observer noted, "in 30 frenetic minutes Little Richard had just made his comeback".

Here's Lennon's version of "Dizzy Miss Lizzie", Jerry Lee performing a manic "Hound Dog", and Little Richard -- with his terrifically tight band -- performing "Lucille" and making the original version sound like a dress rehearsal.

     

 

Pearl Harbor and the Explosions

One of our first nights out on the town after the birth of my firstborn, my wife and I went to a club in Berkeley to see Pearl Harbor & the Explosions, a New Wave/Punk group that was hot at the time. They had a song out called 'Drivin' that was a local hit in the Bay Area. It was sort of a theme song for me at the time, since I did a lot of driving in my job.

We got great seats near the stage. The night soon turned strange. For some reason, Pearl Harbor -- who at one time went by the stage name Pearl E. Gates -- began looking at me as she sang. I was pretty surprised & mystified by this. At one point I even looked behind me, to see if maybe there was someone she knew behind me. There was no one there. Her focus on me only increased as the night wore on.

My wife was at first annoyed by this, and then increasingly irritated -- when she wasn't away from our table, calling home to see how the baby was doing. (She'd do this about every 20 minutes.) She kept looking at me, accusingly, as if I was inviting this. I'd shrug my shoulders in response to her angry glances -- to no avail.

We drove home in silence. I tried bringing it up a few days later, jokingly, but that would only make her lapse into silence again.

I saw my now ex-wife a few months back at my son's wedding. We enjoyed talking to one another at the reception, but I think it's a good thing I didn't mention Pearl Harbor.

Here's Pearl Harbor singing 'Drivin' -- apparently from a cable access show in 1979 -- and then you can see her perform 'Fujiyama Mama', backed by The Clash. 'Fujiyama Mama' was a 1950's Rockabilly song, by Wanda Jackson--who has been dubbed both the Queen of Rock as well as the First Lady of Rockabilly. There's the Queen, with none other than the King, on the right, at the birth of their careers. In the midst of the Disco nightmare of the late 1970's, I loved how the New Wave/Punk movement revived the Rockabilly sound, like when Sid Vicious revived Eddie Cochran's 'Somethin' Else'. The final clip is the original 'Fujiyama Mama', sung by that spitfire Wanda Jackson. She's still rocking her tail off -- she played here in LA only a few months ago.

Professor Elvis

In Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special, there came a point where he had to address the fact that, after almost a decade of making bad movies, he'd been eclipsed by the Beatles and all that had come after them. By 1968 he was largely seen as an anachronism. He was all too aware of the shallowness of his movies -- he once said "the only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one".

But after bringing up the Beatles, he...changed the subject! He launched into a little lesson on the roots of Rock n' Roll, pointing out that it grew out of Gospel and Rhythm & Blues. It was an eye-opening revelation to me as I watched at home. Within days I bought a B.B. King record, which lead to a life-long interest in roots music. Here's that section of the Comeback Special, which was, to me -- as much as I enjoyed hearing him sing his old hits -- the heart and soul of the show.

"That's it, man. 14 years right down the drain".

Elvis loses it onstage, at the beginning of his comeback tour in 1969. Apparently he thought he'd really messed up--at the end, he says "That's it, man. 14 years right down the drain". (14 years earlier, he had his first his first hit records.) But this was in the days before Youtube, where every mistake by a celebrity goes viral.

Also, well put together slide show. The family portrait from when he was a baby is very stark and kind of alarming. Smiling seems to be the last thing on their minds. But then again, probably to be expected for a poverty ridden Southern family during the Depression, haunted by the death, at birth, of Elvis' twin brother. It looks as if it could have been taken by Dorothea Lange. I guess, judging by the smiles & laughter seen in this clip, he was making up for lost time.

Howlin' at the Moon

    Elvis Presley became a professor of sorts to me when, as a kid, I heard him say during his 1968 comeback special that rock n' roll was just basically rhythm and blues. It was a revelation to me; devoted as I was to rock n' roll, I soon made a beeline to a record store & bought a BB King record. (Strangely enough, my payroll checks from LAUSD call me 'BB Ammerman'. I tell office clerks that I'm singin' the blues about my income.)

    I loved the record I found--a true classic, 'Live at the Regal'--but soon sought out more hardcore blues, the kind that never wound up on the Tonight show. Here are two choice selections, both by Howlin' Wolf; the first, 'Killing Floor', established a career for the guitarist brought in at the last minute, Buddy Guy. The second is both paranoid & confessional -- how many songs bemoan the loss of a love & then admit 'I'm the causin' of it all'?'

Howlin Wolf - Killing Floor

Howlin Wolf - Who's Been Talkin'

Anna Nicole Smith & Elvis

From an old Boston Globe movie review:

The poet William Carlos Williams once wrote, "The pure products of America go crazy," a line that was later quoted by rock critic Greil Marcus in a well-known essay about Elvis Presley. For good reason: It gets right to the mix of ambition, excess, and weirdness that fuels greatness in this country.

It feels like Deja Vu all over again--the passing of 39 year old Anna Nicole Smith is eerily reminiscent of the death of 42 year old Elvis Presley; while she may not have qualified in the 'greatness' category, she certainly was a model of 'ambition, excess and weirdness'.  In the end they were both constantly in the tabloids, plagued by weight problems and drowning in a sea of (legal) drugs.

Only a few weeks before his death, some of Elvis' ex-bodyguards had released a book exposing his drug use; here's a YouTube clip of two of those authors, shell-shocked, at a press conference soon after the news came out that he was dead.  Then, a clip of Elvis only a couple months before his death; one can't tell if the audience was laughing with him or at him.  As he introduces 'Are You Lonesome tonight', he answers the song's question with the painfully honest declaration, "I am.  And I was". (Note: the clips are from a documentary which used the strange, unsettling technique of using an Elvis impersonator as a narrator, as if Elvis was speaking from beyond the grave.)