40 Year Itch: Those We Missed from Nov '72

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I'm reading Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace ( skip the first 50 pages and Neil starts to settle down and tell his story). I think it's fair to say Neil's the kind of guy who likes to have a lot of plates spinning at the same time. Journey Through the Past is the soundtrack to an experimental, critically panned concert film that wouldn't be seen for two more years. Unreleased on CD, among the best stuff is this seven minute Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young version of "Southern Man"

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With her debut, The Divine Miss M, Bette Midler introduces audience to the brassy, self-mocking "Bathhouse Betty" who first stole hearts in cabaret shows performed in NYC gay clubs. The album went Top 10 and remains a fan favorite.

 

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With the help of "Brand New Key" ( I got a brand new pair of roller skates/ You got a brand new key) , Melanie became Billboard's #1 Female Vocalist of 1972. Her follow-up, Stoneground Words, is the work of a mature, intelligent artist. Naturally nobody bought it. Yet , today it is often referred to as a great under-heard classic.



 

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Basically, Cream's Jack Bruce replaced a heroin addicted Felix Pappalardi on bass to form a new version of Mountain. But by changing their name, Leslie West, Jack Bruce and Corky Laing could renegotiate their record contract. The result was a whopping $1 Million/ Three Album deal. The label didn't care for the debut album enough to promote it but Why Doncha is worth a listen for those who like their riffs heavy and bass lines plodding.


 

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After years of recording albums on his own Takoma label, the inventive guitarist John Fahey released his first Reprise album in November of 1972. Of Rivers And Religion would be selected as one of top ten albums of the year by Time Magazine and Robert Christgau says it's Fahey's best but most critics weren't so kind.
I haven't found the time or desire to get to know all of Fahey's work. To me it sounds as good as anything else I've heard him do.

 

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Neil Young's Harvest Turns 40 Today

[Buy Harvest]

[Buy Some Area Code 615]


The download I offered  isn't a tune from Harvest , the best selling album of 1972, or even from Neil Young. I figure anyone who finds their way to this blog has Harvest. The featured track is from Nashville session band Area Code 615. Young wanted the band to back him up for a session or two while he was in Nashville doing The Johnny Cash Show. Only drummer Kenny Buttrey could make it and , as it runs out, he didn't really get a chance to show his stuff. It was Neil's idea to limit him to the "Boom-Boom-Pah" beat on four album tracks: "Heart of Gold", "Old Man", "Alabama" and the opener "Out on the Weekend".

 Buttrey: That’s the way he heard it; he wanted [the rhythm] to be felt on the guitar. He dictated everything: bass, drums, all the parts. We improvised a bit on the verses, and I even managed to throw in a little hi-hat here and there, but that was about it. Later, when we were doing ‘Alabama,’ I tried to hit a tom-tom, and Neil stopped the whole thing and really came down on me. I did sneak one in right near the end of the song. I remember thinking, ‘It’s a little too late for him to pull this one out!’"



The fact that Neil was even in Nashville and not bedridden in California was something of a minor miracle.

Anyone who has ever experienced severe back problems knows how debilitating it can be. Neil Young had been in and out of hospitals for the two years between After The Gold Rush and Harvest. As he told Rolling Stone 's Cameron Crowe in 1975:

 I have one weak side and all the muscles slipped on me. My discs slipped. I couldn't hold my guitar up. That's why I sat down on my whole solo tour. I couldn't move around too well, so I laid low for a long time on the ranch and just didn't have any contact, you know. I wore a brace. Crosby would come up to see how I was, we'd go for a walk and it took me 45 minutes to get to the studio, which is only 400 yards from the house. I could only stand up four hours a day. I recorded most of Harvest in the brace. That's a lot of the reason it's such a mellow album. I couldn't physically play an electric guitar. "Are You Ready for the Country," "Alabama" and "Words" were all done after I had the operation. The doctors were starting to talk about wheelchairs and shit, so I had some discs removed. But for the most part, I spent two years flat on my back. I had a lot of time to think about what had happened to me.





Neil and the Nashville session musicians ran through the songs quickly, usually no more than three takes.
They recorded master tracks for "Heart of Gold", "Old Man" and several others the first night.

From Songwriter101:
Producer Elliot Mazer: Everyone was within about five feet of each other. There’s some leakage on account of that, but that’s what gave the record such a nice feel. Neil sat on a chair in the doorway between the living room and dining room, because that spot around the doorway had such a nice sound. ( Bassist )Tim (Drummond) and (steel player) Ben (Keith) were to his right, with Kenny on the other side so he could watch Neil’s right arm and get a feel for the backbeat on those songs.




After the telecast the next night, Neil brought back two other performers from the Johnny Cash Show: Linda Ronstadt and  James Taylor. The three of them cut the backing vocals to "Heart of Gold" and "Old Man" from a couch inside the control room. Taylor also added some banjo flourishes to "Old Man".



The Nashville sessions only make up half the album. "A Man Needs A Maid" and "There's A World" were both recorded with The London Symphony Orchestra with arrangements provided by Jack Nitzsche.



His devastating anti-drug number "Needle and the Damage Done", seen here on the above mentioned Johnny Cash Show and inspired by the death of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, came from a live performance at UCLA.



The "rockers" of the album ( "Alabama", "Words" and "Are You Ready For The Country?") were recorded in a barn on Young's Northern California ranch.
"Alabama" had some overdubs: a lead guitar line and harmonies from Crosby Stills and Nash.



Mazer tells the story of mixing the album at Young's ranch:

The PA was still out in the barn,and we had those JBL monitors in his house across the way. For a laugh, we ran the left channel into the barn and the right channel to the JBL monitors, then faced the speakers in the direction of Neil, who was sitting in a rowboat in the middle of this small pond that was located directly in front of the house. During the playback I asked Neil through the talk-back how the balance was, and he yelled back, "More barn!"



Harvest spent two weeks at Number One. "Heart of Gold" would top the charts in 1972 before getting bounced by America's Neil Young impression "Horse With No Name". "Old Man" also made the Top 40. But not all critics were impressed. Rolling Stone's John Mendelsohn wrote

(Neil Young)'s seemingly lost sight of what once made his music uniquely compelling and evocative and become just another pretty-singing solo superstar.

Young would eventually revisit the acoustic country arrangements of Harvest in Comes A Time and Harvest Moon. But as he wrote in his liner notes for Decade:

  'Heart of Gold' put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch.

That ditch would lead to some of the most exciting and puzzling albums of his career.

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#47 Neil Young - Vampire Blues (1974)

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Could Neil Young have predicted the vampire craze caused by the God-awful Twilight series and HBO's True Blood? Actually this tune from 1974's On The Beach isn't about fangers. It's about the original oil crisis. The same one that inspired Tower of Power's "Only So Much Oil In The Ground" and John Denver to build huge underground tanks on his property outside Aspen.

         I'm a vampire baby suckin blood from the earth/
         well I'm a vampire babe, sell you twenty barrels worth.



OK. To be fair, Denver was hoarding gas for the Aspen Summer Camp buses that brought underprivileged kids to his fair mountain town. But this post is about Neil. Vintage Whine indeed!

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Rickie Lee Jones Interview

In the more than 30 years since "Chuck E.'s In Love" made her a household name and earned her a Grammy Award for Best New Artist, Rickie Lee Jones has continued to follow her own beat. Her recording career--like her astonishing voice-has hit all kinds of highs and lows.

Rickie: I'd like to hear me on the radio again someday. I don't know what radio that would be.

 She spent most of her teenage years in Western Washington. In 1969 15 year old Rickie had already run away from home several times when her family moved to Lacey, a small town outside Olympia.

It was mostly farms and some trailer parks. Some massage parlors. There was nothing to do there. There was one restaurant. The Rib Eye. Everybody went there after school, smoked cigarettes and ate fish sandwiches and the rest of the time we drove around and smoked cigarettes.

Rickie got kicked out of three high schools for talking back to teachers.
She wrote songs and found refuge in records.
I brought some CDs from my house.
She passed over Joni Mitchell's Blue with no comment.
Then she picked up Neil Young's second album.

This was the one. This was so beautiful. I loved this record.

Even the title of Young's album--Everybody Knows This is Nowhere--seemed to apply to Rickie's life at the time.

I think I started out imitating Neil Young, you know. I sang "I seen the needle and the damage--" kinda high up there and my mother would go "Oh that must be a Neil Young song right?"
 Cuz you could always tell when I was trying to sing like Neil Young.
And it took quite a few years to quit trying to sing like Neil Young to tell the truth.

She sang like Neil and dressed like Neil, buying Pendleton shirts made in Oregon. Then, at a Salvation Army store in Olympia, she found a Coleman Hawkins album called Today and Now.

Wow! What a wonderful thing to accidentally find. And for me he's so melodic....coming out of pop music it was a really gentle way to be introduced to jazz.


But the records weren't enough to keep Rickie Lee Jones in her one track town.

I left on my 18th birthday. The day I turned 18.


Legend has it she met Tom Waits and they slept under the Hollywood sign. She sang in L-A clubs. After five years she got her break and recorded the debut album featuring "Chuck E.'s in Love".
A song she'd rather not talk about.

Rickie: I can't escape from it because it's me.
If I could have done anything I would have sung it another way.
It just was the way I was.

 The albums that followed reveal an artist consistently exploring new sounds. Some have sold well. Some have not. At a time when many artist will use their private lives to publicize albums, Rickie has taken a higher road.



I don't want to sell it to you and I won't do it. I'll show up so you know I'm here. And I'm really tired of people going "Are you still making records?" because yes, I'm still making records.
I didn't sell it then and I'm not going to sell it now.
I wish it could come to people through osmosis so this (interview) is my contribution to osmosis.




I still think that if you make a beautiful piece of music they might not all run to it in the first six months but they will find it and that's what you came to do


While you can't hear her songs on the radio as much these days, you can often hear Rickie's influence. Jewel for one.





Sometimes it feels like I'm getting ripped off.
Sometimes I feel flattered. And sometimes I don't.
Jewel doesn't bother me at all because she's a little kid and you can really go "Wow. She just really really..that's the specific time and place --ME. And then it became her and now she's doing it the way she sees it.

Sheryl Crow doesn't get off so easy.




Sheryl Crow, you know I feel a little ripped off by Sheryl Crow. Sheryl Crow's older and should have known better. She's like a professional singer who decided to do other people. Jewel was just really really influenced.

A year after our 2000 interview Rickie decided to move back to LA. On her website she let it be known her house was on the market.

I love being here in LA, in
the warm sunshine and the cars and the people. Tacoma just
was too darned cold.
We are trying to sell our house up there in Olympia. It's on
the waterfront, three acres, extraordinary beauty and it's
cheap! The Nisqually Delta, where we have lived for so many
years, is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.
I hope someone buys it soon and is happy there. I am ready to
let it go.


Rickie Lee Jones will be joining Bob Dylan's Israel concert, which will be held at the Ramat Gan Stadium on June 20.

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In Praise of Jini Dellaccio: Northwest Rock'N' Roll Photographer

I feel like I'm surrounded by angels
and have been throughout my entire career.
~ Jini Dellaccio.




Jini Dellaccio was a 40-something L-A Fashion photographer when she moved to Gig Harbor,WA with her husband in the early 60's ... taking any assignment she could get.
One day the phone rang.
"They told me it was The Wailers, " She recounted in her small Seattle apartment. "And since I lived in Gig Harbor, a fishing village, I heard it as 'The Whalers'.
So I thought 'Well it was probably a group of fishermen.
Maybe they have guitars or something'.
And here came these tall handsome young men
all dressed in black leather and boots and long hair
all carrying guitar instruments
I said 'Well they don't look like fishermen'.

                                The Wailers

"They didnt really know what they wanted so I said well maybe we should just go out and start taking pictures
They were taken by that and they were running around.
There was a huuuge maple tree and they were willing to climb the tree
so that was absolutely the start of my rock n roll pictures."

Soon more Seattle bands showed up at Jini's doorstep: The Sonics, The Daily Flash, Don and The Goodtimes, Merrillee Rush and The Goodtimes.

Merrilee told me "The property wasn't very big but there were so many wonderful places to photograph:
On top of piers.Next to a tree.She was just very creative".

                                             Merrilee Rush

"Oh do I remember Merrilee," laughs Jimi. "She was so beautiful. She was my most beautiful subject to work with . She was such a gorgeous girl."

As Jini's reputation spread she met more rock stars. She did a photo session with Neil Young at his house in Laurel Canyon.
"I looked at him and he was wearing one of his new vests that had fringe just clear to the floor." She remembers. " It was beauuutiful grey leather and i said 'Well if i could get you on the roof i could sure get a good picture of you' and he said 'Oh ok'".

                                            Neil Young

"So we went outside. He got a ladder and went up on the roof.
He said 'Now what do you want me to do?' and I said 'Fly like a bird'
and thats how I did the picture."

The legendary Seattle DJ Pat O'Day got Jini front row seats at major concerts so she could shoot The Who, Jeff Beck and The Rolling Stones.
But the Stones concert would be her last.

"The police were there. " She remembers. "Oh man this policeman gave me a shove. Scared the life out of me says 'You cant go up there'.
I said "Well I'm doing this for Pat O'Day.I've been doing it for months'.
He said 'Well you cant do it now.'
When I finished the night I said I'm not going to do this anymore.
I quit. I'm kind of sorry that I did".

In the decades that have followed, her photos have become more influential.

                               The Sonics


"I had no idea that people were looking at my work as an example of 'this is what we should do' and they started doing.Never imagined that happening."

Jini Dellaccio is now in her 90's. Her extraordinary life behind the lens is the subject of an upcoming documentary.
To learn more about this amazing woman and to order her book, click  here.

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