by STEVE SIMELS
MY LIFE AS A MOOG
I HAD lunch the other day with Rick Wakeman (just prior to the announcement of his departure from Yes, as it turned out), and I found him to be some what different from what I had expected.
Yes are so damned serious about what they do, and Wakeman wears his classical training so prominently on his sleeve, that I had pictured him as being a more or less typically boring musical pedant, a Horatio Parker in pop drag. In fact, I approached the interview disposed to confront him with a wise-ass critical trashing of his music, quoting (as I recall) Langdon Winner to the effect that any attempt at fusing the European classical tradition with heavy rock was bound to make you realize just how great the real Beethoven and the real Yardbirds were.
But, to my chagrin, Rick turned out to be such an amiable, unpretentious English boozer and all-around nice guy that I simply didn't have the heart. (The closest I got was telling him at one point that I couldn't see why anybody would want to hear him play the Brahms Fourth on a synthesizer when they could just as easily listen to the real thing.) Instead, we just chatted about music in general; he mentioned that his current favorite singles were Sparks' This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us and (gasp!) Ray Stevens' The Streak, and he regaled me with some stories about his session days. Collectors take note: he appears on all of the White Plains bubble-gum hits, and even, if you can believe it, on the Pipkins' album, although not on their immortal Gimme Dat Ding. He also cleared up what for me is one of the Major Mysteries of the Age- to wit, why the London Symphony Orchestra is so eager, of late, to guest-star with rockers.
The answer, of course, is that the LSO members are their own bosses, many of them are quite young, and Rick went to college with them. So, progressive rock fans, what you're listening to is not a daring musical synthesis but an old-school reunion. Hah! I bring all of this up, I should mention, because lately I've been getting an in creasing number of letters from readers who can't understand why we- meaning me and my colleagues at STEREO REVIEW--aren't turning handsprings over the recorded efforts of such synthesizer cut-ups as Wakeman and Keith Emerson. Most of them, I suspect, are from kids who have only recently graduated from listening to (and writing us letters about) Grand Funk, and are now over compensating with their devotion to "good" music, but one letter in particular intrigued me. Reader Tom McGee, a synthesizer technician from Massachusetts, took special umbrage at some re marks I made in the August issue to the effect that there was little difference between the random noises Emerson makes and the electric organ sounds you can find on old surfing records. He point ed out that while the synthesizer can indeed do that number ("and sound obviously synthesized"), it is also capable of a much wider variety of expression.
He concluded by observing that ultimately "it is up to the performer," and I couldn't agree more. The point is that a Moog is not in itself the kind of titanic breakthrough that it has been pro claimed. Any new instrument, no matter what sounds it produces, simply presents you with the traditional compositional problems you have with older instruments; in other words, where do you put the notes? The reason I'm not knocked out by what Wakeman does ( "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" is reviewed ), or by what Emerson accomplishes with that pointlessly elaborate equipment of his, is that I don't think that either of them has a particularly impressive head for composition.
Fast fingers and a flair for technological fooling around, yes. A talent for melody, or a sense of how a piece is put together, I'm afraid not.
By way of simple comparison, if you want to hear what can be done with a synthesizer in the hands of a composer who knows what he's doing, I suggest you listen to "Who's Next" or "Quadrophenia," wherein Pete Townshend em ploys it as an integral part of his overall compositional scheme; you're rarely conscious of the instrument per se, but you'd miss it if it wasn't there. That, it seems to me, is the only sensible way to approach this sort of thing, not merely to use it as a vehicle for virtuoso display.
IT'S been a pretty good summer for rock-and-roll, in New York at least (I'm writing this in late July); the fact that there's finally a Stones single (and a killer at that) on the radio has had a lot to do with it, but there's been a healthy number of interesting acts to check out lately, both known and unknown. (In the latter category, I must make mention of a band called the Miamis, whom I caught at a club on the Bowery doing a rendition of Elvis' Viva Las Vegas that suggested the Surfaris with all their fingers amputated: needless to say, I adored it.
More important, Bruce Springsteen did a weekend at the Bottom Line, and he was absolutely superb, reaffirming my belief that he's the only important new comer in about three years; Clapton did a night at the Garden, and was pleasantly laid back; and Steeleye Span did a marvelous few days (again at the Bottom Line) featuring their inimitable brand of Elizabethan hard rock. Bowie was in town too, and I missed him, but then again I've never much cared for musical comedy anyway. Interestingly, one trend seems quite clearly to have taken shape (and remember you read it here first): glitter is now nostalgia.
What brought this home most force fully was the American debut of Elektra's $300,000 bonus baby, Jobriath.
You'll recall that when his hype began last year, the implication was that he was going to out-Bowie Bowie; a self-billed "true fairy," the word was that his stage show featured giant lucite cubes and a finale in which he was shot off a model Empire State Building by a bunch of World War I biplanes.
In New York, however, he came off as just another rock singer. His group was okay, but their space-age costuming could not conceal what was essentially a bunch of guys from Long Island bar bands dressed up for the occasion. The star himself just stood there and sang.
Vocally he reminded me of old soul belters like Billy Stewart (which is fine), and he was given to dashing to the piano and displaying some very capable Little Richard-style pounding. There was little or no gay posturing, and the overall effect was almost like a short-haired Leon Russell. From a man whom a friend had dubbed "The Great Lavender Hope" it was, to say the least, a surprise. Sic transit Max Factor.
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Also see:
ROCK & RICHES--The (economic) facts of life in the business of pop music, ALLAN PARACHINI