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For J.D. Salinger, Jethro Tull and Me (Revisited)

April 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It was 42 years ago, today, that Jethro Tull’s third album, Benefit, was released. I wrote about it (and many other things) over the course of a productive day during the great Snowpocalypse of 2010.

 

She nodded. “Make it extraordinarily squalid and moving,” she suggested. “Are you at all acquainted with squalor?”

I said not exactly but that I was getting better acquainted with it, in one form or another, all the time…

–J.D. Salinger, “For Esme — with Love and Squalor” (1950)

Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth, as the song says.

April, 1988.

More time has passed since those days than had passed since I’d been born.  There has to be a more eloquent way to put that, but I’m having a difficult time coming up with it. More to the point, I am increasingly unable to avoid calculations like this. Why? Because the balance has shifted and, going forward, more years (and things) will have transpired in my life, but few of them will be as indelible. So there’s that.

Everyone talks about how reading The Catcher in the Rye is one of those seminal rites of passage. Now that J.D. Salinger has gone to that big field of rye in the sky, everyone is talking about it all at once. I would be a phony, I figure, not to include myself (and all). For starters, what do you call a rite of passage involving a lot of middle-aged (or older) folks talking about the passing of an author who wrote one of the ultimate rite of passage novels? Indulgent? Inevitable? Ironic? All of the above?

By the time I got around to Holden Caulfield, I was already a senior in high school. Too young? Too old? Just right? For better or worse, I was either too old, or not alienated enough, to feel the full force of Salinger’s operetta of adolescent angst. Of course, I’m selling it short (or am I?), but I’ve heard very few adults whose opinions I admire mention falling under this novel’s spell while revisiting it as an adult. Myself, I couldn’t tell if it was too obvious this book was the result of a grown man trying (diligently, and in that overly mannered, oft-imitated style) to sound like a disaffected but acutely sensitive sixteen year old, or if it’s because he succeeded so thoroughly that, even as a seventeen year old, I wasn’t especially simpatico with his anguished, if solipsistic observations. Which is not to say that his plight did not move me, or that his situation is not, at times, rendered with profound artistry by Salinger.

(This is the squalid, or moving part of my observation: after getting several paragraphs of analysis and personal reflection put down, my power went out for a second, and I lost everything I had just written. Everyone knows, whether they are writing an essay or an e-mail, how indescribably frutrating this can be. Nevertheless, I had to chuckle thinking Salinger’s spirit was taking the piss out of my piece, or else the collective force of so many Holden Caulfield acolytes simply snuffed me out in midstream as a sort of karmic correction. Duly noted, and a discouraging setback but not enough to tempt me to pull a Seymour Glass.)

Perhaps it would be a bit unfair, if mostly accurate to conclude that The Catcher in the Rye is the archetypal novel of adolescent alienation for teenagers/young adults who don’t read a great deal of fiction. Just as there are certain types of movies and music that, through a perfect storm of critical consensus and a groundswell of contagious public approbation, get anointed as authentic touchstones of a particular moment in time (I would say “tapping into the zeitgeist” but I try to avoid using the dreaded z-word if at all possible).

Regarding the almost half-century of silence that followed his initial burst of creativty, Norman Mailer decreed Salinger “the greatest mind to ever stay in prep school.” That is harsh but it is also –based on the available evidence– pretty indisputable. On the other hand, when people hold up The Catcher in the Rye (or even Franny and Zooey) as the zenith of Salinger’s oeuvre, they are overlooking (or more likely, have never read) “For Esme –With Love and Squalor”, in my estimation one of the five best American short stories of the 20th Century. Indeed, what Salinger accomplishes in those twenty-odd pages greatly exceeds the sum total of Mailer’s voluminous, if mostly perishable output. Everything that Salinger didn’t do, or didn’t do convincingly, or didn’t do well enough to reward subsequent readings by a more mature audience, in his canonized novel, he does in spades with this short story. It is a compact, devastating illumination of the cruel machinery we, for lack of a better or more appropriate word, call adulthood. How fittingly ironic, then, that a writer celebrated (and minimized) for being the consummate chronicler of what Pete Townshend later called “teenage wasteland” actually wrote a shattering treatise from the trenches (literally and figuratively) that endures well into a new millennium. Of which, more later.

 

As it happens, when I first experienced The Catcher in the Rye I was in the early (but intense) stages of what became a lifelong infatuation with Jethro Tull. Which naturally coincided with my burgeoning obsession with all-things progressive rock, which happened to coincide with the release of so many classic recordings on that new-fangled technical revelation called compact discs. It would be near impossible for anyone who didn’t live through those days to imagine a world when you waited for anything: i-Pods and online access have made everything that has ever happened available, immediately.

Back then, waiting for certain Rush, Yes, King Crimson and especially Jethro Tull albums to get their digital reincarnation was like patiently awaiting Moses to deliver a new sonic commandment every other week. The upside of this, of course, was that it was still a time when you had time (you had no choice) to savor and spend time with a new purchase, and by the time you’d (temporarily) exhausted your enthusiasm, you had ample funds to get the next installment. This was also, as many will remember, a time before information itself was a free 24/7 proposition. As such, each trip to the record store was loaded with possibility: you never knew what might have been released, including albums by bands like Genesis and Pink Floyd, that you never even knew existed. And, it should go without saying that the prospect of upgrading scratchy vinyl (or tape-recorded) copies of Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin and Hendrix albums was something slightly beyond orgasmic.

Anyway, it was during the winter and spring of 1988 that the back catalog of Jethro Tull was being released, a couple at a time, on compact disc. It was around this time, having already devoured Thick as a Brick and still patiently awaiting the arrival of A Passion Play, that I had my first sustained go-round with Tull’s third album, 1970′s Benefit. In April 1988 it was the right album at the right time. Remarkably, it still is.

But before you can fully appreciate what Tull achieves on Benefit, one has to consider (and understand) the brilliant album that preceded it, 1969′s Stand Up. In addition to the handful of gems that still get radio play (“Nothing Is Easy, “Bouree”, “A New Day Yesterday” and “Fat Man”), there were a couple of standard coming-of-age type middle finger salutes to the establishment: “Back to the Family”, which features a blistering guitar coda from Martin Barre and album-closer “For A Thousand Mothers”, where Ian Anderson not only spits on, but laughs at the naysayers. This song is notable for perfecting  a sort of “garage flute rock”: once you hear that joyously spiteful noise, this might not sound like such an oxymoron. (And incidentally, if you don’t realize how incendiary and downright dangerous this band was capable of sounding circa ’69, get a load of this.) The two most surprising, and surprisingly abiding, songs are “Look Into The Sun” which Led Zep could have put on their third album (and indeed they may have been listening to this one before taking their somewhat left-field, and awesome, acoustic turn in 1970) and the best song you’ve never heard, the sublime and ethereal “Reasons For Waiting”. But the one that stands out (or stands up, as the case may be) from the rest is the ceaselessly astonishing “We Used To Know.” Check it out:

How many 21 year olds write songs like that? The world weariness of those vocals (not to mention the lyrics) and the masterful subtlety of Martin Barre’s embellishment through the first half make the song ache with longing and arid resignation. But then after the flute solo bleeds into the guitar solo, the song explodes into the clear-eyed appraisal of a man who has fully taken stock of the world, and the reigns of his destiny. As we know now, he never looked back. (A few quick words about that guitar solo: more than a few folks, including Ian Anderson, have noticed that The Eagles’ much more famous “Hotel California” seems to have borrowed more than a little from “We Used To Know”. Personally, I think it’s a tough case to make as the two songs are so different, but this does present an opportunity to lament the fact that Joe Walsh, lovable rascal that he is, would be easily identified by approximately 100% of people who know anything about rock music, while Martin Barre might be recognized by one in ten, and that is being generous. Such is life, and don’t weep for Mr. Barre who can wipe his own eyes with the piles of money he has earned. Joe Walsh, who left his talent and most of his brain cells in that holiday weekend of excess called the ’70s, endures as an avatar, and casualty, of that era: he is the coke-stained hundred dollar bill that says so many things about a time and a place where certain people did certain things because they quite simply could afford to. Mr. Barre, on the other hand, is a vintage Jaguar –pronounced Jag.U.R.– that may have neither the flash or immediacy of newer, more colorful models, but discerning eyes can assess its value, and class, with little difficulty. In hindsight, listening to him in song after song after song, it becomes increasingly clear that even some of the most accomplished –and celebrated– guitarists of the ’70s were using crayons while Barre had already figured out how to use water colors.)

So where were we? Ah, 1970. The growth evidenced between Tull’s blues-drenched debut and the follow-up, only a year later, is unequaled by any other rock band’s first and second albums. This is in no small part due to Barre’s arrival (replacing Mick Abrahams, who lost his battle to co-lead the band and continue down the British blues revue road) and the almost incomprehensible maturation of Ian Anderson’s songwriting proficiency. To the band’s credit, their ambition knew no bounds, and part of their strategy for the third album was to recruit John Evan to agument the sound with his considerable piano (and organ) skills. It was a move that paid substantial dividends, immediately evident on the first song, “With You There To Help Me”. Evan’s welcome presence is in full effect on the deceptively simple, almost waltz-like “Alive and Well and Living In“, which details the dynamics of a failing, probably abusive relationship. The flute and acoustic guitar bely the heartbreakingly familiar subject matter (a woman stuck in the rut of on-again/off-again romance with a man who is distant and then demanding, while she is quick to forgive but not quite able to forget), but Barre’s abrasive guitar tone articulates the anger steadily being buried beneath the surface. It’s a cautionary tale for the teenage listener who has yet to embark on a meaningful romance (written by a young man who could not have had a great deal of experience himself) that an older listener can still admire, decades later.

But the centerpiece (thematically, aesthetically) of the album –and a song that absolutely ranks in the upper echelon of the Tull catalog– has to be “Nothing To Say”. If “We Used To Know” grapples with a wary nostaligia that accompanies the resolve to make one’s own way (as an artist but also as a young adult going out into the world),  ”Nothing To Say” confronts the pressures (of an artist or a young adult out in the world) of conformity or, in Anderson’s case, the expectation that he will embrace the role of countercultural guru, ready to dispense words of wisdom for his young acolytes (a role many artists are quite satisfied to assume, and much more so today than in 1970). Anderson’s ambivalence about this scenario signals, as much as any rock song of that era, that the ’60s are over. Anderson who, to his credit, did not pay much more than lip service (intellectually, lyrically) to the free-love surface level ethos of the festival-flocking hippies, takes aim at both sides of the system and espouses a creed of personal responsibility. What at first might be read as a surly refusal to take a stand is actually an admonishment that everyone needs to figure it out on their own; certainly Anderson was not willing to be a de-facto spokesman for anything political or otherwise. The world was, in many ways, a mess, but every concerned citizen is personally accountable for finding their way and bringing about whatever change is warranted:

It’s not my power
to criticize or to ask you to be blind
To your own pressing problem
and the hate you must unwind.
So ask of me no answer
there is none that I could give
you wouldn’t find.

At this point, Anderson has dealt with the past (Stand Up) and the present (Benefit); his burgeoning confidence would prompt him to combine those elements in an attempt to grind some axes that probed quite a bit deeper than the typical sociopolitical commentary on offer (then, now). As it turns out he had plenty to say, which brings us to Aqualung and the semi-dreaded concept album, wherein Anderson turns his attention, and lacerating wit, to the institution of organized religion. First off, it’s one of the more unfortunate, if trivial, missteps in rock. Naming their fourth album Aqualung was akin to Black Sabbath changing their name from Earth. In both instances, a less appropriate moniker makes the work easier to dismiss. Considering the thematic scope of the album, and the central thesis of how religion affects us all, especially when we are at a young and formative age. It is tantalizing to imagine how much more street cred this album could –and would– have accrued if it were named after almost any of the other ten songs, specifically “Cheap Day Return”, “Up To Me” or “Wind Up” (particularly as a pun for what this expression signifies in British slang–as a comment on the song and the album, and the material, which was sure to “wind up” some listeners). But most of all, this album absolutely should have been named “My God” which, again, would be appropriate on the micro and macro levels.

In any event, anyone who has made it this far most likely has at least a passing acquaintance with this particular album (perhaps beyond the excellent title track and the radio staples “Locomotive Breath” and “Cross-Eyed Mary”). While the first side of the LP concerns itself with, for lack of a better cliche, man’s inhumanity to man, the second side takes on religion with a righteous indignation that has not been improved upon by many (if any) other mainstream artists since ’71.

I wrote a bit about this one (while attempting a succint overview of the band’s career here) and here’s an excerpt on a couple of songs from Side One: the one-two acoustic punch of “Cheap Day Return” and “Mother Goose” are archetypes of a sort; the kind of whimsical British folk that Tull perfected: the songs seem straightforward and pleasant enough (and they are) but are cut by their topical, and occasionally unsettling, lyrical import. This is Anderson’s calling card, and nowhere is it in better effect than the one minute and twenty-four seconds of perfection entitled “Cheap Day Return”. In astonishingly succinct and effective fashion Anderson deals with his own alienation, offers a sardonic appraisal of his own budding super-stardom (What a laugh!), and his father’s imminent death, all in a song that sounds innocuous as a nursery rhyme.

Side Two is a remarkably ambitious –and successful– attempt to look at the racket religion has degenerated into (or was it always thus?) and after getting some licks in on the clergy, Anderson turns both barrels on the men who have sought to create a  convenient God in their own image. Pretty sophomoric stuff, eh? Well, that’s partly the point (more on that in a moment), but what’s remarkable is that these songs have lost none of their power or perspicacity. It still sounds pretty audacious today, but was downright defiant to pen tunes like this in 1971 (check out “My God” and “Hymn 43“, which includes the incendiary couplet “If Jesus saves, he better save himself/From the gory glory seekers who’ll use his name in death). In just one minute Anderson nails, for all time, the opportunistic hypocrisy of the materially rich but spiritually depraved amongst us who compensate (figuratively) for their nagging consciences in the confessional or in the collection basket (“And you press on God’s waiter your last dime/As he hands you the bill”). But on the literal levels, these are the people we all know: our peers, parents and especially our politicians, and Anderson sardonically nails these weekend warriors to their crosses of gold.

He saves the best for last, when in “Wind Up” he recalls being shipped off to church, eventually concluding that God is “not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays”. I can trace the trajectory of when I first heard this album, early in high school, and loving the “hit” songs, to eventually gaining a fuller appreciation of “My God” –in terms of the lyrical import and the inspired way Anderson multi-tracks his vocals to imitate, and satirize, a sanctified choral hymn– and the other songs on the second side. But it wasn’t until college that the full effects of “Wind Up” revealed themselves to the not-so-innocent, recovering Catholic who had served mass as an altar boy only a couple of years earlier:

In your pomp and all your glory you’re a poorer man than me/As you lick the boots of death born out of fear.

I’ll decline to further recall how profound those lyrics seemed to a nineteen year old, but I’ll argue they retain their poetic import even now. Of course one comes to an age where they can see through the self-serving charade and the fake humility and the sickening appropriation of the holy for personal, earthly gains. Et cetera. But this sort of material goes several steps beyond fighting the power or endorsing the punk rock anarchy; this stuff is gospel for a young sensitive soul, alienated by everything and earnestly (sensitive souls are nothing if not earnest) looking for Truth with a capital T.

Which, at long last, brings us back to Salinger. If the holy trinity (sorry) of Tull albums comprised the ideal, if occasionally uncomfortable, source material for making that awkward (but earnest!) leap from adolescence to young adulthood, “For Esme — with Love and Squalor” is among the handful of indispensable short stories (along with Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well Lighted Place”,  Tolstoy’s “The Three Hermits”, Kafka’s “First Sorrow”, James Joyce’s “Eveline” and especially Joao Guimaraes Rosa’s “The Third Bank of the River”) that resonate on profound and permanent levels with a certain type of person at a certain age.

Perhaps, as already acknowledged, I simply came to The Catcher in the Rye too late (although, as already suggested, I am uncertain it was capable of working its celebrated charms on me, not because I didn’t relate to Holden Caulfield on some levels, but more because as I read I kept thinking “Yeah? Is this all you got?”). There can be no doubt that I came to “Esme” at exactly the right age: after digesting Catcher and spending many a session (and, the writer would be remiss to overlook, at least one enchanted, and mycologic evening) uncovering the ultimately not so mysterious mysteries of Aqualung. I was, inevitably, an ardent if confused soul quite concerned with “again becoming a man with all his fac– with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact”.

Like the very best literature, “For Esme — with Love and Squalor” is every bit enjoyable and edifying to adult eyes as it is to, say, the wider eyes of a college sophomore. In fact, Salinger’s achievement is that much more poignant (and devastating) to an older audience who has actually known people who have been wounded or killed in war. But the narrator of this story is reeling from actual experience in the real world, so it resonates to a young reader about to enter it, and certainly a more mature reader who has seen and felt some of those proverbial slings and arrows. If there is a more  quietly coruscating image in literature than the narrator lifting Esme’s (KIA) father’s wristwatch, which has shattered in transit, out of the care package, I’m not aware of it. The question, as the story ends, is: does that broken glass represent the narrator’s spirit, or will he rally to once more become part of the world?

This is the question so many (but apparently not enough, considering we are still fighting wars and still taking less than acceptable care of our veterans) young adults grapple with at a crucial time in their lives.

This is the question J.D. Salinger may or may not have answered, in his own inscrutable fashion, once he turned his back on fame –and his fans– and spent the last decades of his life in a golden cage of his making. Whether or not he was quietly desperate, or just quiet, will presumably be answered once those elusive and much-discussed manuscripts see the light of day.

Once it seemed there would always be
a time for everything.
Ages passed I knew at last
my life had never been.
I’d been missing what time could bring.
Fifty years and I’m filled with tears and joys
I never cried.
Burn the wagon and chain the mule.
The past is all denied.
There’s no time for everything.
No time for everything.

–Ian Anderson, “A Time For Everything” (1970)

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The Man Who Improved Music: An Appreciation of Norio Ohga

April 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Depending on how old you are, the iconic image above may mean different things. If you are young enough that digital files have been the primary way you’ve experienced music as long as you can remember, the picture of a compact disc is like an old car: a relic, a nostalgic reminder of a product that has long since been improved upon. If you are old enough to remember using CDs, you also remember having to pay for them, so their increasing disappearance from the cultural landscape is a welcome development. If you are mature enough, perhaps you already owned enough albums that you never wanted (or needed) to jump on the technological bandwagon. If you are old enough and/or an ultra-audiophile who disdained these discs from the get-go (which means you are an old fart, a pretentious Luddite or Neil Young), you probably saved a ton of money the last few decades, but then again, you probably wasted it on ludicrously expensive gadgets and hundred dollar speaker cables that are actually worth the pocket change it costs to produce them.

If, on the other hand, you are a guy like me, who got his first job right around the time compact discs starting appearing in record stores (note: there were once things called record stores and they sold things called records), you can recall the way the light bounced off that sucker like the star that once guided the wise men through the desert. I’m not ashamed to admit that I acquired my first compact disc even before I had a machine to play it in; I knew I was getting one so I began stocking up as quickly as possible. And after listening to records (good), cassettes (bad) and 8-Tracks (ugly), I looked at this pristine new invention the way the apes look at the monolith at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Here’s the thing: LPs are somewhat back in vogue now (equal parts prompted by desperate hipster cred and retro longings) and, to be certain, many people never stopped listening to them in the first place. But people who remember too fondly by half how the system used to work are either in denial or never lived through the era in the first place. Listen: you hear that snap, crackle and pop? That was an inexorable part of the experience. Yes, if you took good care of your albums, they lasted much longer, but everyone can recall how infuriating (and inevitable) it was to open up a brand new record, slip the needle into the groove and have it skip, usually on the one song that made the album worth buying in the first place. As a result, I am positive I’m not the only person who got in the habit of immediately copying each new LP onto a blank cassette in order to capture and preserve that (hopefully) flawless first-listen. But then, what was the point of doing this when you could not (would not) listen to the actual album after a while? In other words: the system was flawed and it used to be a dorky dream out of some sci-fi fantasy to imagine music being permanently unmarred for a million listens.

Enter the compact disc.

(Intermission: this reminiscence is prompted by news that Norio Ohga, the former Sony CEO and man credited with helping create and develop the compact disc has passed away at age 81. There is an interesting summary of his life from AP here.

A few fascinating highlights from the piece:

As a young man, aspiring opera singer Norio Ohga wrote to Sony to complain about the quality of its tape recorders. That move changed the course of his life, as the company promptly recruited the man whose love of music would shape the development of the compact disc and transform the Japanese electronics maker into a global software and entertainment empire.

Shattering the stereotype of the staid Japanese executive, the debonair Ohga was never shy, his hair neatly slicked back, his boisterous manner exuding the fiery yet naive air of an artist. His persona added a touch of glamour to Sony’s image at a time when Japan had global ambitions. An experienced pilot, Ohga at times flew the plane himself for business trips. A gourmet, he boasted about his roast beef. His hobby was cruising on his yacht.

Chairman of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra since 1999, he continued to conduct there a few times a year. In 1993, he conducted the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in a charity event funded by Sony.

Ohga often compared leading a company to conducting an orchestra.

“Just as a conductor must work to bring out the best in the members of his orchestra, a company president must draw on the talents of the people in his organization,” Ohga said in a 1996 Sony publication.

Ohga had tried to lead a double life of artist and Sony man.

One day, he dozed off from exhaustion in the stage wings while waiting to go on in the “The Marriage of Figaro,” rushed in from the wrong direction and watched his embarrassed co-stars stifling giggles.

He gave up his opera career but still promoted classical music in Japan by supporting young musicians and concerts.

Sounds like a life well-lived to me.)

In between becoming ascendent and outmoded, compact discs had a complicated integration into the mainstream. Yes, from the get-go there were legitimate gripes about the fidelity, authenticity and the mere notion of digital numbers replacing analog wax made many purists pause. I had records, I loved records, and I sincerely wish I still had all my old records (most of which I gave away or sold to used record stores for pennies on the dollar in order to acquire compact discs), but I can’t –and wouldn’t– change the way things unfolded. It’s almost impossible to explain to the uninitiated how unbelievably good compact discs sounded in the mid-’80s. It wasn’t just that they sounded the same with each subsequent listen, they sounded better than the LPs. (The argument, which still rages on in coffee shops and online chat groups and at High-End Audio conferences, is one that can never be reconciled: anyone who claims they can unfailingly tell the difference between an album and a vintage AAD compact disc (e.g. a disc that digitalized an original analog recording, which was the case with virtually all music until the technology caught up with the creation of “new” music) is being recalcitrant or is the same type of person who insists their $300 gold-wired speaker cables make a discernible difference in the quality of the sound pumping through their “listening room”. In other words, it’s an argument that means so much to some people because it means so little to everyone else.)

Records did (and do) have that inimitable warmth, and a certain something that can’t be duplicated, but it’s folly to suggest or insist that contemporary music did not sound better digitally. For instance, I had albums by The Police and those first discs (even though they, like virtually all first pressings throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s, have been radically improved upon since) sounded better than the albums. A lot better. There was more clarity, you could hear all the instruments, and you could definitely discern subtle sounds that were buried into the mix or lost in the ether of fidelity and technology.

Perhaps more importantly, and this is something the younger generation, spoiled brats that they are, can never fathom and therefore never appreciate, is that content was not ubiquitous or readily available back in the bad old days. And I don’t just mean it wasn’t all free for all plugged-in pirates; I mean a great deal of it did not exist. Many albums from the glorious era of Prog-Rock had not been reissued or had fallen out of favor and, in some cases, had never been in favor in the first place. As such, particularly during a time when MTV, hair metal and synth pop reigned supreme (dark days, my wet-behind-the-ears-brethren), “classic rock” was not just considered music made by dinosaurs; it was a dinosaur–it was extinct.

There is no doubt in my mind that the proliferation of compact discs led to the resurgence of sales for old music, which prompted the classic rock radio formats that became a huge deal toward the end of the ’80s.

While writing/reminiscing about Jethro Tull on the occasion of J.D. Salinger’s death (here), I recalled the impact compact discs had on me, as a teenage music fanatic. I did/do defend my obsession with music as an addiction, and an expensive one, but also one that has had only positive influence on my life in literally too many ways to count:

As it happens, when I first experienced The Catcher in the Rye I was in the early (but intense) stages of what became a lifelong infatuation with Jethro Tull. Which naturally coincided with my burgeoning obsession with all-things progressive rock, which happened to coincide with the release of so many classic recordings on that new-fangled technical revelation called compact discs. It would be near impossible for anyone who didn’t live through those days to imagine a world when you waited for anything: i-Pods and online access have made everything that has ever happened available, immediately.

Back then, waiting for certain Rush, Yes, King Crimson and especially Jethro Tull albums to get their digital reincarnation was like patiently awaiting Moses to deliver a new sonic commandment every other week. The upside of this, of course, was that it was still a time when you had time (you had no choice) to savor and spend time with a new purchase, and by the time you’d (temporarily) exhausted your enthusiasm, you had ample funds to get the next installment. This was also, as many will remember, a time before information itself was a free 24/7 proposition. As such, each trip to the record store was loaded with possibility: you never knew what might have been released, including albums by bands like Genesis and Pink Floyd, that you never even knew existed. And, it should go without saying that the prospect of upgrading scratchy vinyl (or tape-recorded) copies of Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin and Hendrix albums was something slightly beyond orgasmic.

And so, it was not just a matter of how it all sounded, it was also a matter of discovering all this new (old) shit. In this regard, I reckon I was the right age at the right place at the right time, and my obsession with all types of music coincided with this giant technological leap. If compact discs made more classic rock available, it’s simply not possible to convey what a godsend this format was for jazz and reggae. If you think early Pink Floyd albums were obscure (and they were), getting out of print Blue Note jazz discs or any reggae by anyone other than Bob Marley was a pipe dream (literally). While I may have saved tens of thousands of dollars had all this music been available by some magical computer –which is what it would have seemed like then, and still, to a certain extent, seems like now– I can’t say I regret the inexpressible thrill of discovery and the delight of entire eras of music suddenly within my grasp: I reckon (without sarcasm or snark) that I experienced, on some slight but meaningful level, what scholars or religious devotees are in search of when they dedicate themselves to their monomaniacal quests for enlightenment. For me, the pleasure was never in doubt, the rewards indescribable, and at the end of the day, this was the best investment I’ve ever made. Every single disc I ever bought (except of course the ones that were borrowed or stolen) I still own, they all play, and they still sound impeccable.

My world, in sum, existed with albums and compact discs and then digital files. It still does, and while it’s strange to imagine, I’ll welcome the next technological advancement, if there is one. In the final analysis all of these toys and innovations are delivery devices for the most pure form of expression mankind has been capable of perfecting. For that, I salute the rich life and considerable accomplishment of Norio Ohga.

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2010: Time To Die (Part One: January-June)

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

2010: In pace requiescat!

We almost made it through January without a major loss, but then, during the darkest and coldest evenings we got word that the reclusive and curmudgeonly icon J.D. Salinger had left for that great rye field in the sky. I had been working on a piece (mostly in my head) for a couple of years, and Salinger’s passing (along with round one of the 2010 Snowpocalypse, which kept me blissfully housebound for several days) prompted me to polish it off. It’s long, it’s involved and it’s something I ended up feeling rather good about (if for no other reason than it provided me with an excellent opportunity to write at length, once more, about Jethro Tull and what it meant, for me, to read J.D. Salinger while simultaneously falling under the spell of Ian Anderson way back in 1987).

By the time I got around to Holden Caulfield, I was already a senior in high school. Too young? Too old? Just right? For better or worse, I was either too old, or not alienated enough, to feel the full force of Salinger’s operetta of adolescent angst. Of course, I’m selling it short (or am I?), but I’ve heard very few adults whose opinions I admire mention being overwhelmed by this novel while revisiting it as an adult. Myself, I couldn’t tell if it was too obvious this book was the result of a grown man trying (diligently, and in that overly mannered, oft-imitated style) to sound like a disaffected but acutely sensitive sixteen year old, or if it’s because he succeeded so thoroughly that, even as a seventeen year old, I wasn’t especially simpatico with his anguished, if solipsistic observations. Which is not to say that his plight did not move me, or that his situation is not, at times, rendered with profound artistry by Salinger.

Perhaps it would be a bit unfair, if mostly accurate to conclude that The Catcher in the Rye is the archetypal novel of adolescent alienation for teenagers/young adults who don’t read a great deal of fiction. Just as there are certain types of movies and music that, through a perfect storm of critical consensus and a groundswell of contagious public approbation, get anointed as authentic touchstones of a particular moment in time (I would say “tapping into the zeitgeist” but I try to avoid using the dreaded z-word if at all possible).

Regarding the almost half-century of silence that followed his initial burst of creativty, Norman Mailer decreed Salinger “the greatest mind to ever stay in prep school.” That is harsh but it is also –based on the available evidence– pretty indisputable. On the other hand, when people hold up The Catcher in the Rye (or even Franny and Zooey) as the zenith of Salinger’s oeuvre, they are overlooking (or more likely, have never read) “For Esme –With Love and Squalor”, in my estimation one of the five best American short stories of the 20th Century. Indeed, what Salinger accomplishes in those twenty-odd pages greatly exceeds the sum total of Mailer’s voluminous, if mostly perishable output. Everything that Salinger didn’t do, or didn’t do convincingly, or didn’t do well enough to reward subsequent readings by a more mature audience, in his canonized novel, he does in spades with this short story. It is a compact, devastating illumination of the cruel machinery we, for lack of a better or more appropriate word, call adulthood. How fittingly ironic, then, that a writer celebrated (and minimized) for being the consummate chronicler of what Pete Townshend later called “teenage wasteland” actually wrote a shattering treatise from the trenches (literally and figuratively) that endures well into a new millennium.

As it happens, when I first experienced The Catcher in the Rye I was in the early (but intense) stages of what became a lifelong infatuation with Jethro Tull. Which naturally coincided with my burgeoning obsession with all-things progressive rock, which happened to coincide with the release of so many classic recordings on that new-fangled technical revelation called compact discs. It would be near impossible for anyone who didn’t live through those days to imagine a world when you waited for anything: i-Pods and online access have made everything that has ever happened available, immediately.

Back then, waiting for certain Rush, Yes, King Crimson and especially Jethro Tull albums to get their digital reincarnation was like patiently awaiting Moses to deliver a new sonic commandment every other week. The upside of this, of course, was that it was still a time when you had time (you had no choice) to savor and spend time with a new purchase, and by the time you’d (temporarily) exhausted your enthusiasm, you had ample funds to get the next installment. This was also, as many will remember, a time before information itself was a free 24/7 proposition. As such, each trip to the record store was loaded with possibility: you never knew what might have been released, including albums by bands like Genesis and Pink Floyd, that you never even knew existed. And, it should go without saying that the prospect of upgrading scratchy vinyl (or tape-recorded) copies of Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin and Hendrix albums was something slightly beyond orgasmic.

Anyway, it was during the winter and spring of 1988 that the back catalog of Jethro Tull was being released, a couple at a time, on compact disc. It was around this time, having already devoured Thick as a Brick and still patiently awaiting the arrival of A Passion Play, that I had my first sustained go-round with Tull’s third album, 1970?s Benefit. In April 1988 it was the right album at the right time. Remarkably, it still is.

(Read the rest here.)

 

In February, just beginning to dig out from round two of the Snowpocalypse, it was sad to hear the news of Doug Fieger’s passing.

Look at that guy. You know which one I’m talking about. You’ve got three surfer dude boys in the band and the frontman with the thousand yard smirk.

You know that guy. So do I. He’s the dude who always had a copy of the exam beforehand, always had a parent’s note (that he wrote) each time he was late for school. The guy that never kicked in for the keg then left the party with the best looking girl. The guy who would end up wearing his high school letter jacket after graduation, unless he happened to become a millionaire. And the big difference: that guy in your life doesn’t have the redeeming value of writing a transcendent pop song that gets inside of you like Herpes simplex and never leaves. Doug Fieger was that guy. And now he’s gone.

Rest in peace, you rascal.

It turned out to be a rather sombre St. Patrick’s Day when word got out that Alex Chilton had abruptly died. This was both unfortunate and ironic since Chilton, who had been one of rock’s great, if enigmatic, recluses, had recently seemed reinvigorated and was back on the road, touring and possibly ready to record. Instead of heading out to down some Guinnesses, I stayed in and listened to my personal favorite Chilton project, the undservedly obscure Cubist Blues.

While many people (understandably) associate Chilton’s best work with the ’70s, he was still making serious noise in the ’90s. Quite by chance, as we eased past Y2K, I stumbled upon the truly bizarre, and beautiful, album he made with Alan Vega and Ben Vaughn, 1996?s Cubist Blues.

If you are a fan, or if you are curious (check out the clip below and I dare you to not be hooked) it comes highly recommended. This is midnight of the soul mixed with ’50s Beat energy and what Elvis would sound like if he had ever tried to channel Jerry Lee Lewis, drunk. Only one million times deeper and darker and, for my money, more satisfying. This is at once deliberate, narcotic and wonderfully disorienting. It’s like you walked into the wrong bar and stumbled onto a one-off jam session featuring a bunch of bruised and wily underground legends, laying it all on the line for nobody but themselves. Which is exactly what this album is.

Back in September 2003 the east coast was about to get rocked by a hurricane named Isabel. We knew it was coming, and this was one even the TV weathermen couldn’t get wrong. We didn’t know how bad it was going to be and fortunately, for D.C. denizens, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It got darker and later, and once the wind really started blowing and the rain began pounding down, I knew exactly what album I needed to have playing. Cubist Blues came through for me before, and has come through since, but I’ll always consider this an ideal soundtrack for a hurricane.

We made it through April unscathed, but then in May a piece of America passed on to what is hopefully a long and easy ride. My tribute to Dennis Hopper can be read here; for now some key takeaways:

So cancer finally succeeded in cutting short the odd and inimitable life of Dennis Hopper. That is a shame, of course, although we would probably be wise to give thanks that he managed to stick around as long as he did. He danced with the devil so often they were on a first name basis. And if Thoreau was wise to encourage us all to suck the marrow out of life, Hopper sucked, slurped and occasionally mainlined it. I’d like to think you could cut him open and a good chunk of 20th Century DNA would come oozing out. He may have had a few more battles in him, but no one can deny he left it all out on the proverbial field.

(After dissecting some of his more notorious film scenes, a quick shout-out to what I consider his unequalled moment):

From True Romance, a movie that, pound for pound, features as many sublime scenes as quite possibly any other made in the last two decades. This scene, notorious for its, shall we say, frank discussion of racial relations, and hilarious for its rather unorthodox delineation of history, is one of the most-quoted from all contemporary films. For good reason, and all praise to Tarantino (who wrote it), Tony Scott (who directed it) and the bravura performances of Hopper and the genuinely incomparable Christopher Walken. It also includes the hulking presence of the then-unknown James Gandolfini.

The scene is certainly problematic (and no politically correct critic would want to touch it with a ten foot soap box), but more than the adults-imitating-schoolchildren one upmanship it sardonically presents, there is serious acting going on here. It is to the considerable credit of all involved that this scene never degenerates into (self) parody and is able to be hilarious and horrifying, often at the same time. There probably aren’t too many examples of scenes in semi-recent cinema that so successfully skirt the switchblade’s edge of tension and release. Hopper goes from scared to crafty, then understands he’s screwed and decides to go out with a bang (literally). The moment he realizes he is a dead man, you can almost feel him resignedly saying “fuck it” as he decides to have a cigarette, after all. And when he lets out the mirthful little laugh (a very Hopperesque touch), you get the chance to savor him saying “fuck you” to the men who are about to murder him.

The scene is uncomfortable and amusing in equal measure (well, in all honesty, it’s probably a hell of a lot funnier than anything else), but mostly a tour de force on every conceivable level. It just might feature Hopper’s finest work.

A bittersweet occasion (more sweet than bitter, bitter then sweet) for American legend Howlin’ Wolf: June 10, 2010 marked his centennial, and he remains an artist who cannot be imitated and whose unmistakable growl can probably never be adequately explained or understood.

Six foot, six inches. Approximately 300 pounds. Named after President Chester A. Arthur. In a class entirely by himself as a singer, performer and presence. If Muddy Waters, his friendly (and at times not-so-friendly) adversary was like an industrious bee that produces so much sweet honey, Howlin’ Wolf was a bear that crashes into the nest, snarling as he swats away the thousand wasps circling his head.

You read advice like this all the time (and no matter how enthusiastically I endorse a particular artist, I try to dispense it judiciously) but if you’ve ever taken someone’s word for it when they say “your life is lacking if you don’t have this” take my word for it and drop the ten bucks on this indispensable document. It’s not just that you are depriving yourself of one of the singular voices of the last century, you are actually missing an important chunk of America itself. Put another way, touchstones like “Smokestack Lightnin’” and “Sitting On Top Of The World” endure less as (merely) American songs and more as components of this country’s unique sensibility. Believe your ears because they are, in fact, even more than that.

Later in June we had the one year anniversary of The King of Pop’s premature passing. My assessment of Michael Jackon’s complicated legacy is here.

Listen: this story has been told so many times it is inextricable from the history of America. F. Scott Fitzgerald infamously (and incorrectly) declared that there are no second acts in American lives, but he was writing his own epitaph at the time. Little did he know that artists, and later, politicians, would perfect the Lazarus routine to the point that it was itself an art form of sorts.

Some great American artists could not handle the hype of their success, or remained paralyzed by the prospect of following up their uncanny grand slam (think Ralph Ellison after Invisible Man for the prototype). Some artists famously flamed out in part because of the pressure or else were consumed by their own demons (insert any number of movie stars and rock gods: James Dean and Charlie Parker remain the heavyweight champs of this routine). Some artists never had a choice in the matter: what can we say about the fact that Melville received less than a little acclaim after he wrote Moby Dick (even his good friend and contemporary critical darling Nathaniel Hawthorne–to whom Melville’s masterpiece was dedicated–thought little of the book, revealing him as either an exceedingly poor judge of genius or else an insecure literary prince who could not brook the very real competition Melville presented), and the man who may be our great American author (at least of the 19th Century) died broke, unknown, and embittered.

But none of these case studies can come close to approximating the one-of-a-kind wunderkind who became the King of Pop. His story is unique and will likely remain the triumphant and ultimately tragic cultural touchstone of our times. He had already lived at least three lives before he died, each one more improbable than the last.

That he was abused is undeniable and well-documented. It also scarcely scratches the surface of the pressures and pains that were inflicted upon him. Even a cursory acknowledgment of what he’d been through, before becoming a teenager, should leave the most cynical critic astonished that he was able to create the lasting work he did, as an adult.

I still get goosebumps every time I watch that. Now that he is gone, I’m sure each subsequent viewing (and there will be many, as I don’t expect I’ll ever tire of watching it) will be burdened with a melancholy even more profound than the one I would have felt anytime up until June 25, 2009. In other words, even before he passed on, watching a moment like this obliges one to relive one’s youth; it’s inescapable. So naturally one can’t help lamenting that loss of insouciance, of Innocence (with a capital I) and the many things time takes from us.

The previous generation had the moon landing; we had the moonwalk. That is not intended to be overly coy; I actually think I would invoke the moon landing regardless of the obvious word association. In my opinion, the few seconds that Jackson spent introducing that new dance move to the world are the defining cultural moments of my generation. In fact, I can’t readily think of anything else that enters the discussion. People have spoken about the other MJ (Michael Jordan) having played basketball better than anyone else did anything. I feel we could find other examples (Daniel Barenboim playing Beethoven piano sonatas; Flannery O’Connor writing fiction; Glenn Beck being an asshole), but I would propose that this performance is the apotheosis of what a pop star can achieve. No one, before or since, has been better at being a star, at seizing the moment, at overtaking the world by force of will and talent, quite like Michael Jackson did that evening. What is truly remarkable is not merely how incredible it was, then, but how inimitably cool and untouchable it remains, now. Everyone saw that and everyone reacted to it. It was (and is) impossible to be wholly unaffected or unmoved by what happens during those five minutes. There are probably people (perhaps lots of them) who still won’t see the art or genius (and the many layers of that genius: the song itself–a slice of irrepressible pop perfection, his dancing, and the fact that he is lip-synching it) of this moment, but it’s simply not possible to remain indifferent. You can fail to acknowledge this the way you can fail to acknowledge the Grand Canyon, as you are being pushed over the edge, eyes shut and screaming all the way down.

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For J.D. Salinger, Jethro Tull and Me

February 8, 2010 By 1 Comment

She nodded. “Make it extraordinarily squalid and moving,” she suggested. “Are you at all acquainted with squalor?”

I said not exactly but that I was getting better acquainted with it, in one form or another, all the time…

–J.D. Salinger, “For Esme — with Love and Squalor” (1950)

Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth, as the song says.

April, 1988.

More time has passed since those days than had passed since I’d been born.  There has to be a more eloquent way to put that, but I’m having a difficult time coming up with it. More to the point, I am increasingly unable to avoid calculations like this. Why? Because the balance has shifted and, going forward, more years (and things) will have transpired in my life, but few of them will be as indelible. So there’s that.

Everyone talks about how reading The Catcher in the Rye is one of those seminal rites of passage. Now that J.D. Salinger has gone to that big field of rye in the sky, everyone is talking about it all at once. I would be a phony, I figure, not to include myself (and all). For starters, what do you call a rite of passage involving a lot of middle-aged (or older) folks talking about the passing of an author who wrote one of the ultimate rite of passage novels? Indulgent? Inevitable? Ironic? All of the above?

By the time I got around to Holden Caulfield, I was already a senior in high school. Too young? Too old? Just right? For better or worse, I was either too old, or not alienated enough, to feel the full force of Salinger’s operetta of adolescent angst. Of course, I’m selling it short (or am I?), but I’ve heard very few adults whose opinions I admire mention falling under this novel’s spell while revisiting it as an adult. Myself, I couldn’t tell if it was too obvious this book was the result of a grown man trying (diligently, and in that overly mannered, oft-imitated style) to sound like a disaffected but acutely sensitive sixteen year old, or if it’s because he succeeded so thoroughly that, even as a seventeen year old, I wasn’t especially simpatico with his anguished, if solipsistic observations. Which is not to say that his plight did not move me, or that his situation is not, at times, rendered with profound artistry by Salinger.

(This is the squalid, or moving part of my observation: after getting several paragraphs of analysis and personal reflection put down, my power went out for a second, and I lost everything I had just written. Everyone knows, whether they are writing an essay or an e-mail, how indescribably frutrating this can be. Nevertheless, I had to chuckle thinking Salinger’s spirit was taking the piss out of my piece, or else the collective force of so many Holden Caulfield acolytes simply snuffed me out in midstream as a sort of karmic correction. Duly noted, and a discouraging setback but not enough to tempt me to pull a Seymour Glass.)

Perhaps it would be a bit unfair, if mostly accurate to conclude that The Catcher in the Rye is the archetypal novel of adolescent alienation for teenagers/young adults who don’t read a great deal of fiction. Just as there are certain types of movies and music that, through a perfect storm of critical consensus and a groundswell of contagious public approbation, get anointed as authentic touchstones of a particular moment in time (I would say “tapping into the zeitgeist” but I try to avoid using the dreaded z-word if at all possible).

Regarding the almost half-century of silence that followed his initial burst of creativty, Norman Mailer decreed Salinger “the greatest mind to ever stay in prep school.” That is harsh but it is also –based on the available evidence– pretty indisputable. On the other hand, when people hold up The Catcher in the Rye (or even Franny and Zooey) as the zenith of Salinger’s oeuvre, they are overlooking (or more likely, have never read) “For Esme –With Love and Squalor”, in my estimation one of the five best American short stories of the 20th Century. Indeed, what Salinger accomplishes in those twenty-odd pages greatly exceeds the sum total of Mailer’s voluminous, if mostly perishable output. Everything that Salinger didn’t do, or didn’t do convincingly, or didn’t do well enough to reward subsequent readings by a more mature audience, in his canonized novel, he does in spades with this short story. It is a compact, devastating illumination of the cruel machinery we, for lack of a better or more appropriate word, call adulthood. How fittingly ironic, then, that a writer celebrated (and minimized) for being the consummate chronicler of what Pete Townshend later called “teenage wasteland” actually wrote a shattering treatise from the trenches (literally and figuratively) that endures well into a new millennium. Of which, more later.

 

As it happens, when I first experienced The Catcher in the Rye I was in the early (but intense) stages of what became a lifelong infatuation with Jethro Tull. Which naturally coincided with my burgeoning obsession with all-things progressive rock, which happened to coincide with the release of so many classic recordings on that new-fangled technical revelation called compact discs. It would be near impossible for anyone who didn’t live through those days to imagine a world when you waited for anything: i-Pods and online access have made everything that has ever happened available, immediately.

Back then, waiting for certain Rush, Yes, King Crimson and especially Jethro Tull albums to get their digital reincarnation was like patiently awaiting Moses to deliver a new sonic commandment every other week. The upside of this, of course, was that it was still a time when you had time (you had no choice) to savor and spend time with a new purchase, and by the time you’d (temporarily) exhausted your enthusiasm, you had ample funds to get the next installment. This was also, as many will remember, a time before information itself was a free 24/7 proposition. As such, each trip to the record store was loaded with possibility: you never knew what might have been released, including albums by bands like Genesis and Pink Floyd, that you never even knew existed. And, it should go without saying that the prospect of upgrading scratchy vinyl (or tape-recorded) copies of Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin and Hendrix albums was something slightly beyond orgasmic.

Anyway, it was during the winter and spring of 1988 that the back catalog of Jethro Tull was being released, a couple at a time, on compact disc. It was around this time, having already devoured Thick as a Brick and still patiently awaiting the arrival of A Passion Play, that I had my first sustained go-round with Tull’s third album, 1970′s Benefit. In April 1988 it was the right album at the right time. Remarkably, it still is.

But before you can fully appreciate what Tull achieves on Benefit, one has to consider (and understand) the brilliant album that preceded it, 1969′s Stand Up. In addition to the handful of gems that still get radio play (“Nothing Is Easy, “Bouree”, “A New Day Yesterday” and “Fat Man”), there were a couple of standard coming-of-age type middle finger salutes to the establishment: “Back to the Family”, which features a blistering guitar coda from Martin Barre and album-closer “For A Thousand Mothers”, where Ian Anderson not only spits on, but laughs at the naysayers. This song is notable for perfecting  a sort of “garage flute rock”: once you hear that joyously spiteful noise, this might not sound like such an oxymoron. (And incidentally, if you don’t realize how incendiary and downright dangerous this band was capable of sounding circa ’69, get a load of this.) The two most surprising, and surprisingly abiding, songs are “Look Into The Sun” which Led Zep could have put on their third album (and indeed they may have been listening to this one before taking their somewhat left-field, and awesome, acoustic turn in 1970) and the best song you’ve never heard, the sublime and ethereal “Reasons For Waiting”. But the one that stands out (or stands up, as the case may be) from the rest is the ceaselessly astonishing “We Used To Know.” Check it out:

How many 21 year olds write songs like that? The world weariness of those vocals (not to mention the lyrics) and the masterful subtlety of Martin Barre’s embellishment through the first half make the song ache with longing and arid resignation. But then after the flute solo bleeds into the guitar solo, the song explodes into the clear-eyed appraisal of a man who has fully taken stock of the world, and the reigns of his destiny. As we know now, he never looked back. (A few quick words about that guitar solo: more than a few folks, including Ian Anderson, have noticed that The Eagles’ much more famous “Hotel California” seems to have borrowed more than a little from “We Used To Know”. Personally, I think it’s a tough case to make as the two songs are so different, but this does present an opportunity to lament the fact that Joe Walsh, lovable rascal that he is, would be easily identified by approximately 100% of people who know anything about rock music, while Martin Barre might be recognized by one in ten, and that is being generous. Such is life, and don’t weep for Mr. Barre who can wipe his own eyes with the piles of money he has earned. Joe Walsh, who left his talent and most of his brain cells in that holiday weekend of excess called the ’70s, endures as an avatar, and casualty, of that era: he is the coke-stained hundred dollar bill that says so many things about a time and a place where certain people did certain things because they quite simply could afford to. Mr. Barre, on the other hand, is a vintage Jaguar –pronounced Jag.U.R.– that may have neither the flash or immediacy of newer, more colorful models, but discerning eyes can assess its value, and class, with little difficulty. In hindsight, listening to him in song after song after song, it becomes increasingly clear that even some of the most accomplished –and celebrated– guitarists of the ’70s were using crayons while Barre had already figured out how to use water colors.)

So where were we? Ah, 1970. The growth evidenced between Tull’s blues-drenched debut and the follow-up, only a year later, is unequaled by any other rock band’s first and second albums. This is in no small part due to Barre’s arrival (replacing Mick Abrahams, who lost his battle to co-lead the band and continue down the British blues revue road) and the almost incomprehensible maturation of Ian Anderson’s songwriting proficiency. To the band’s credit, their ambition knew no bounds, and part of their strategy for the third album was to recruit John Evan to agument the sound with his considerable piano (and organ) skills. It was a move that paid substantial dividends, immediately evident on the first song, “With You There To Help Me”. Evan’s welcome presence is in full effect on the deceptively simple, almost waltz-like “Alive and Well and Living In“, which details the dynamics of a failing, probably abusive relationship. The flute and acoustic guitar bely the heartbreakingly familiar subject matter (a woman stuck in the rut of on-again/off-again romance with a man who is distant and then demanding, while she is quick to forgive but not quite able to forget), but Barre’s abrasive guitar tone articulates the anger steadily being buried beneath the surface. It’s a cautionary tale for the teenage listener who has yet to embark on a meaningful romance (written by a young man who could not have had a great deal of experience himself) that an older listener can still admire, decades later.

But the centerpiece (thematically, aesthetically) of the album –and a song that absolutely ranks in the upper echelon of the Tull catalog– has to be “Nothing To Say”. If “We Used To Know” grapples with a wary nostaligia that accompanies the resolve to make one’s own way (as an artist but also as a young adult going out into the world),  ”Nothing To Say” confronts the pressures (of an artist or a young adult out in the world) of conformity or, in Anderson’s case, the expectation that he will embrace the role of countercultural guru, ready to dispense words of wisdom for his young acolytes (a role many artists are quite satisfied to assume, and much more so today than in 1970). Anderson’s ambivalence about this scenario signals, as much as any rock song of that era, that the ’60s are over. Anderson who, to his credit, did not pay much more than lip service (intellectually, lyrically) to the free-love surface level ethos of the festival-flocking hippies, takes aim at both sides of the system and espouses a creed of personal responsibility. What at first might be read as a surly refusal to take a stand is actually an admonishment that everyone needs to figure it out on their own; certainly Anderson was not willing to be a de-facto spokesman for anything political or otherwise. The world was, in many ways, a mess, but every concerned citizen is personally accountable for finding their way and bringing about whatever change is warranted:

It’s not my power
to criticize or to ask you to be blind
To your own pressing problem
and the hate you must unwind.
So ask of me no answer
there is none that I could give
you wouldn’t find.

At this point, Anderson has dealt with the past (Stand Up) and the present (Benefit); his burgeoning confidence would prompt him to combine those elements in an attempt to grind some axes that probed quite a bit deeper than the typical sociopolitical commentary on offer (then, now). As it turns out he had plenty to say, which brings us to Aqualung and the semi-dreaded concept album, wherein Anderson turns his attention, and lacerating wit, to the institution of organized religion. First off, it’s one of the more unfortunate, if trivial, missteps in rock. Naming their fourth album Aqualung was akin to Black Sabbath changing their name from Earth. In both instances, a less appropriate moniker makes the work easier to dismiss. Considering the thematic scope of the album, and the central thesis of how religion affects us all, especially when we are at a young and formative age. It is tantalizing to imagine how much more street cred this album could –and would– have accrued if it were named after almost any of the other ten songs, specifically “Cheap Day Return”, “Up To Me” or “Wind Up” (particularly as a pun for what this expression signifies in British slang–as a comment on the song and the album, and the material, which was sure to “wind up” some listeners). But most of all, this album absolutely should have been named “My God” which, again, would be appropriate on the micro and macro levels.

In any event, anyone who has made it this far most likely has at least a passing acquaintance with this particular album (perhaps beyond the excellent title track and the radio staples “Locomotive Breath” and “Cross-Eyed Mary”). While the first side of the LP concerns itself with, for lack of a better cliche, man’s inhumanity to man, the second side takes on religion with a righteous indignation that has not been improved upon by many (if any) other mainstream artists since ’71.

I wrote a bit about this one (while attempting a succint overview of the band’s career here) and here’s an excerpt on a couple of songs from Side One: the one-two acoustic punch of “Cheap Day Return” and “Mother Goose” are archetypes of a sort; the kind of whimsical British folk that Tull perfected: the songs seem straightforward and pleasant enough (and they are) but are cut by their topical, and occasionally unsettling, lyrical import. This is Anderson’s calling card, and nowhere is it in better effect than the one minute and twenty-four seconds of perfection entitled “Cheap Day Return”. In astonishingly succinct and effective fashion Anderson deals with his own alienation, offers a sardonic appraisal of his own budding super-stardom (What a laugh!), and his father’s imminent death, all in a song that sounds innocuous as a nursery rhyme.

Side Two is a remarkably ambitious –and successful– attempt to look at the racket religion has degenerated into (or was it always thus?) and after getting some licks in on the clergy, Anderson turns both barrels on the men who have sought to create a  convenient God in their own image. Pretty sophomoric stuff, eh? Well, that’s partly the point (more on that in a moment), but what’s remarkable is that these songs have lost none of their power or perspicacity. It still sounds pretty audacious today, but was downright defiant to pen tunes like this in 1971 (check out “My God” and “Hymn 43“, which includes the incendiary couplet “If Jesus saves, he better save himself/From the gory glory seekers who’ll use his name in death). In just one minute Anderson nails, for all time, the opportunistic hypocrisy of the materially rich but spiritually depraved amongst us who compensate (figuratively) for their nagging consciences in the confessional or in the collection basket (“And you press on God’s waiter your last dime/As he hands you the bill”). But on the literal levels, these are the people we all know: our peers, parents and especially our politicians, and Anderson sardonically nails these weekend warriors to their crosses of gold.

He saves the best for last, when in “Wind Up” he recalls being shipped off to church, eventually concluding that God is “not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays”. I can trace the trajectory of when I first heard this album, early in high school, and loving the “hit” songs, to eventually gaining a fuller appreciation of “My God” –in terms of the lyrical import and the inspired way Anderson multi-tracks his vocals to imitate, and satirize, a sanctified choral hymn– and the other songs on the second side. But it wasn’t until college that the full effects of “Wind Up” revealed themselves to the not-so-innocent, recovering Catholic who had served mass as an altar boy only a couple of years earlier:

In your pomp and all your glory you’re a poorer man than me/As you lick the boots of death born out of fear.

I’ll decline to further recall how profound those lyrics seemed to a nineteen year old, but I’ll argue they retain their poetic import even now. Of course one comes to an age where they can see through the self-serving charade and the fake humility and the sickening appropriation of the holy for personal, earthly gains. Et cetera. But this sort of material goes several steps beyond fighting the power or endorsing the punk rock anarchy; this stuff is gospel for a young sensitive soul, alienated by everything and earnestly (sensitive souls are nothing if not earnest) looking for Truth with a capital T.

Which, at long last, brings us back to Salinger. If the holy trinity (sorry) of Tull albums comprised the ideal, if occasionally uncomfortable, source material for making that awkward (but earnest!) leap from adolescence to young adulthood, “For Esme — with Love and Squalor” is among the handful of indispensable short stories (along with Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well Lighted Place”,  Tolstoy’s “The Three Hermits”, Kafka’s “First Sorrow”, James Joyce’s “Eveline” and especially Joao Guimaraes Rosa’s “The Third Bank of the River”) that resonate on profound and permanent levels with a certain type of person at a certain age.

Perhaps, as already acknowledged, I simply came to The Catcher in the Rye too late (although, as already suggested, I am uncertain it was capable of working its celebrated charms on me, not because I didn’t relate to Holden Caulfield on some levels, but more because as I read I kept thinking “Yeah? Is this all you got?”). There can be no doubt that I came to “Esme” at exactly the right age: after digesting Catcher and spending many a session (and, the writer would be remiss to overlook, at least one enchanted, and mycologic evening) uncovering the ultimately not so mysterious mysteries of Aqualung. I was, inevitably, an ardent if confused soul quite concerned with “again becoming a man with all his fac– with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact”.

Like the very best literature, “For Esme — with Love and Squalor” is every bit enjoyable and edifying to adult eyes as it is to, say, the wider eyes of a college sophomore. In fact, Salinger’s achievement is that much more poignant (and devastating) to an older audience who has actually known people who have been wounded or killed in war. But the narrator of this story is reeling from actual experience in the real world, so it resonates to a young reader about to enter it, and certainly a more mature reader who has seen and felt some of those proverbial slings and arrows. If there is a more  quietly coruscating image in literature than the narrator lifting Esme’s (KIA) father’s wristwatch, which has shattered in transit, out of the care package, I’m not aware of it. The question, as the story ends, is: does that broken glass represent the narrator’s spirit, or will he rally to once more become part of the world?

This is the question so many (but apparently not enough, considering we are still fighting wars and still taking less than acceptable care of our veterans) young adults grapple with at a crucial time in their lives.

This is the question J.D. Salinger may or may not have answered, in his own inscrutable fashion, once he turned his back on fame –and his fans– and spent the last decades of his life in a golden cage of his making. Whether or not he was quietly desperate, or just quiet, will presumably be answered once those elusive and much-discussed manuscripts see the light of day.

Once it seemed there would always be
a time for everything.
Ages passed I knew at last
my life had never been.
I’d been missing what time could bring.
Fifty years and I’m filled with tears and joys
I never cried.
Burn the wagon and chain the mule.
The past is all denied.
There’s no time for everything.
No time for everything.

–Ian Anderson, “A Time For Everything” (1970)

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