George Harrison 11: Cloud Nine

Nowadays, five years between albums isn’t that big a stretch; in the ‘80s, it seemed like an eternity. But in the year of the first Beatle CDs, twenty years after Sgt. Pepper, surprise! George was recording again, with the guy from ELO, of all people. Suddenly he was everywhere, sporting fashionable stubble and snazzy shirts and jackets.

Given his ‘80s track record, we worried about how the album would sound, but we needn’t have. The very first note of the title track is the slide guitar that we’d been missing, over a slow groove with pseudo-philosophical lyrics. Ringo’s probably playing the drums, which are buried under Jeff Lynne’s production. “That’s What It Takes” is fairly ordinary, but already our toes are tapping, and there’s a definite joy in his voice that continues over the rest of the album. “Fish On The Sand” is a poppy one, with a twangy retro 12-string pushing it along. “Just For Today” is the only remotely religious song, albeit filtered through AA, nice on the first listen, but plodding afterwards. “This Is Love” was co-written with the co-producer, and sounds like it, inoffensive as it is. “When We Was Fab” got all the attention the first time, and rightfully so; it’s still a wonderful homage to the Pepper era and all the nostalgic rage at the time. Jeff finally has an excuse to use Ringo’s “Walrus” drum sound, and George matches his wistful recollections with well-placed Pythonesque humor. New things are revealed on each listen, such as the sitar at the fade and the backing vocals throughout. This one truly redeems the side.

George goes back to his grouchy mode for “Devil’s Radio”, but it’s dressed up in such a rocking sound that he doesn’t seem at all preachy. “Someplace Else” provides a nice change of pace, with a sweet lyric and great guitar lines. “Wreck Of The Hesperus” is the obligatory “I’m not old and washed up” statement, but wrapped in obscure references that don’t intrude on the fun. “Breath Away From Heaven” was a refugee from the previous year’s cinematic adventure with Mr. and Mrs. Sean Penn, and has nice, what-we-used-to-call-Oriental touches to make it interesting. The album closes with “Got My Mind Set On You”, an obscure, maddeningly repetitive cover that amazingly went to #1 on the pop charts. (To these ears, it still sounds like he’s singing, “Look out, I might sit on you.”) Maybe it was the two videos that helped; we preferred the one where “George” puts down his guitar and does a backflip off of his chair.

Like any good icon, George waited until he had something to say before saying it. Cloud Nine was such a nice surprise at the time, especially since we didn’t expect much. As with other albums from that year, some of the production touches have not aged well, but when you tune them out and concentrate on his voice, it’s still worth it. And in a big Beatle year, it was great to know he still cared. It sure was nice to have him around again. Little did we know how much more we’d be hearing from that Jeff Lynne character. (The album got extra-special treatment when reissued in the Dark Horse Years box set, gaining not one but two bonus tracks—the theme tune from Shanghai Surprise and the mostly instrumental “Zig Zag” from the same film.)

George Harrison Cloud Nine (1987)—3½
2004 Dark Horse Years reissue: same as 1987, plus 2 extra tracks

Tom Petty 8: Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)

Touring with Bob Dylan must have inspired Petty and band to keep it simple in the studio for their next album. (Too bad Bob couldn’t have done the same.) Sure enough, the credits for Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) read “all instruments and voices by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers”. No horns or female vocalists here, just the band. The concepts and experiments of Southern Accents are left behind. There are even a few odd interludes and snippets, just like on the equally straight Damn The Torpedoes.

The album does indeed rock. “Jammin’ Me” (co-written with Dylan) is the only song we know that mentions Joe Piscopo, while “Runaway Trains” seems to be cut from the same cloth musically and lyrically as Don Henley’s “The Boys Of Summer” (a huge hit that originated in Mike Campbell’s garage studio). “The Damage You’ve Done” and “How Many More Days” fade in out of what seem to be extended jams, and just to keep the dynamics fresh, “It’ll All Work Out” is a sighing lament based around mandolins and acoustics. It’s a good palette cleanser for “My Life/Your World”, which gets by on a robotic drum track and outmoded keyboards but what now sound like astute observations on baby boomers and what had yet to be called Generation X. (By the way, the acoustic part indexed at the start of the track would later be named as “Mike’s Life/Mike’s World”.)

“Think About Me” and “A Self-Made Man” are just plain fun rockers taken from two different directions, just as “Ain’t Love Strange” is decent pop; all improvements on the tense rock of Long After Dark. “All Mixed Up” might have been a decent soul track if they used better canned horns, but it’s possibly the only clunker here. Finally, the title track is a great lost outtake from Exile On Main St.

The album wasn’t a huge commercial hit, and deserved better. While certain aspects of the production haven’t aged well, Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) remains a straightforward blast of gutbucket rock ‘n roll—highly welcome at a time when such a sound had all been but lost.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) (1987)—3½

John Lennon 13: Menlove Ave.

When this album appeared in the fall of 1986, it was unclear at first glance just what we were getting. Side one seemed to consist of Rock ‘N Roll outtakes, but what was with all those Walls And Bridges retreads on side two? Obviously these were all originally recorded outside of Yoko’s immediate sphere of influence; did she even know what these tracks were? (And the packaging: a clear plastic inner bag, no lyrics, limited notes, the same basic Warhol art on front and back covers…)

Looking back, she did us all a favor by putting these tracks out, and whetted the appetites of the uninitiated to the many marvelous Lost Lennon Tapes to be discovered. As it turned out, the second side is quite simply the 1974 precursor to Unplugged. These are fascinating, stripped-down run-throughs of five Walls songs, with minimal accompaniment by the cream of his post-Beatles cohorts: Jesse Ed Davis, Jim Keltner, and Klaus Voormann. The experience is intimate and stunning. “Steel And Glass” is even more cutting here, with some vocal ad-libs that’ll curl your hair. The alternate “Bless You” is even more achingly tender, and “Scared”, “Nobody Loves You”, and “Old Dirt Road” are just as interesting.

However, side one still seems half-baked today. “Here We Go Again” is listed as a songwriting collaboration with Phil Spector, but it doesn’t live up to the hype. “Rock ‘N Roll People” is cut from the same pointless boogie cloth as “Move Over Ms. L”, with even less clever wordplay. (It was obvious John couldn’t find direction in his originals, which was another excuse to go to LA.) “Angel Baby” was on the Roots version of the Rock ‘N Roll album; he sounds drunk singing this, and he probably was. “Since My Baby Left Me” tries to get a party going and fails. Yet it’s “To Know Her Is To Love Her”, in Spector’s drastically slowed-down style (typical of his work at the time), that gives John a chance to pour out his heart, proving that perhaps he had learned something from Janov after all. This experiment, and leads perfectly into those performances on side two.

Coming the same year as the official release from the One-to-One concerts, we fans began to get spoiled. But the bounty would be limited, for Menlove Ave. was slightly ahead of its time; had they remained on the shelf in 1986, these tracks would all be prime cuts on the Lennon Anthology when it finally arrived in twelve years’ time. Or failing that, in the remastered CD era, they could have been bonus tracks for the albums themselves. (And indeed, some, but not all, were.)

John Lennon Menlove Ave. (1986)—3
Current CD availability: none

Bob Dylan 31: Knocked Out Loaded

After playing Farm Aid with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and taking that band on a tour of the Far East, we hoped Bob would capitalize on the momentum and put out an album sure to deliver the same punch and wild mercury of Blonde On Blonde. In fact, based on a Rolling Stone article written by Mikal Gilmore and published shortly before the album’s release, Bob and the Heartbreakers were busy in the studio, recording hours of inspired material, bursting with promise and potential—a view Mr. Gilmore maintains to this day.

Despite all that, Bob apparently hadn’t written any songs worth keeping, and instead cobbled together Knocked Out Loaded, a hodgepodge of recordings from the recent past and present, making for something of a cross between Self Portrait and Dylan. (That’s not meant in a good way.) The only cohesiveness comes from the Queens of Rhythm, consisting of four to six female vocalists, slathered over each track, along with way too much reverb.

The opener “You Wanna Ramble” isn’t that adventurous for R&B. “They Killed Him” is a Kris Kristofferson cover (not a good sign), something of a rewrite of “Abraham, Martin & John”, and just when you think it can’t get any worse, it includes a children’s choir. “Driftin’ Too Far From Shore” is a cheesy remix of a synth track left off the previous album, “Precious Memories” is an old hymn that might have been a nice idea, but it’s torpedoed by a steel drum solo, and “Maybe Someday” is another noisy synth track that takes too long to end.

The second side would seem to show some promise, as it consists of three songwriting collaborations with three distinct collaborators, in order: playwright Sam Shepard, rocker Tom Petty, and MOR legend Carole Bayer Sager. At eleven minutes, “Brownsville Girl” is the long-awaited, highly touted epic, but you’re likely to get stuck trying to follow along with the story amidst all the slushy echo and Queens of Rhythm. (We wondered if Gregory Peck himself had ever sat through it; apparently he did, and wrote that he was both “pleased” and “honored”.) “Got My Mind Made Up” is the only true Heartbreakers track here, and a letdown; it’s too bad he couldn’t have included “Band Of The Hand”, released earlier that year for the movie of the same name nobody saw. The album finally ends with the comparatively pleasant “Under Your Spell”, but it only succeeds in the face of everything that has gone before.

Ultimately, the effect of the album was summed up by the cover art, with the listener identifying with either the bandito or the guy being strangled. Knocked Out Loaded was product, plain and simple, put out while Bob and the Heartbreakers (and the Queens of Rhythm, naturally) toured America. (Only two of the album’s songs were tried on the tour, and only once each.) It was hard to feel spoiled by such traffic on the shelves when the albums weren’t worth the plastic they were printed on. For all the pre-hype of recordings with the Heartbreakers, this one just plain hurt.

Bob Dylan Knocked Out Loaded (1986)—1½

Tom Petty 7: Pack Up The Plantation

Tom Petty’s career was pointing to “the obligatory live album”, and that’s where Pack Up The Plantation came in. Like any good rocker he had years of tapes to choose from, but the majority of this two-record set came from a show at LA’s Wiltern Theater (which also was the source of an accompanying home video, with a different song selection). Some tracks came from earlier tours, which likely sent some royalties the way of retired bass player Ron Blair.

For the most part, the album gives a good idea of a Heartbreakers show, by including the hits and some well-placed covers, highlights being the opening “So You Wanna Be A Rock ‘N Roll Star”, with a guitar solo drenched in “Eight Miles High”, and “Needles And Pins” featuring Stevie Nicks on harmonies. The Animals’ “Don’t Bring Me Down” comes from a 1978 theater date, and John Sebastian’s “Stories We Could Tell” gets something of an unplugged hoedown treatment from 1980 in London, but “Shout” goes on far too long and makes one long for Otis Day & The Knights. A better use of audience participation comes on “Breakdown”, wherein Petty steps back to let the crowd sing the verses.

“Rebels” has a lot of fire, and “The Waiting” is another nice departure, played mostly solo until the band plows in after the bridge. “It Ain’t Nothin’ To Me” translates okay to the stage, helped out by the three-person horn section and pair of female vocalists along for the tour. (Luckily, they wouldn’t stay; for the most part, the band would not use such live augmentations going forward, sticking with a utility guy who’d cover several instruments and harmonies, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves again.)

For fans and newbies alike, Pack Up The Plantation did the job. In a demonstration of either Petty’s affinity for vinyl or the record company’s theory of value, the compact disc version sported two fewer tracks (“I Need To Know” and “You Got Lucky”) than the better-selling LP and cassette versions.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Pack Up The Plantation Live! (1985)—3½
Current CD: same as 1985, minus 2 tracks

Bob Dylan 30: Biograph

In 1985, Bob was known as a cultural icon, though many Americans wouldn’t have exactly been able to say why. He started the year as the odd voice out on “We Are The World”, then showed up as the penultimate closing act at Live Aid, playing a brief acoustic set with two inebriated Rolling Stones. (He used the occasion to inspire Farm Aid, but the few people who actually understood his mumbled comments thought it was a crass distraction from the poor Ethiopians we were patting our backs to save.) Empire Burlesque got lots of press, but it didn’t wow.

So it was a little surprising when Biograph came out that November, an unprecedented five-record set featuring Dylan’s biggest radio hits plus album cuts and some fabled unreleased tracks (about four sides’ worth of true rarities; collectors were just as intrigued by the fabled unreleased tracks it didn’t include). When you want to understand where the concept of the box set started, have no doubt that it started here. Eric Clapton’s Crossroads, long considered the benchmark, wouldn’t have happened without Biograph, but had the advantage of CD-length programming. Because it was 1985, most households (much less radio stations) hadn’t considered owning a compact disc player; thus Biograph was sequenced as ten separate LP sides and themes, which is exactly how it’s supposed to be heard.

Side one is dedicated to the tender love song; these are the songs the leader of the Wallflowers hears when he thinks of his parents in love. The rarity here is a nice piano take of “I’ll Keep It With Mine”. Side two is made up of protest songs; oddly enough, given his reputation, his legacy as the conscience of the ‘60s is neatly wrapped up in four songs from his second and third albums, plus the wistful “Percy’s Song”.

Side three features rock ‘n roll, a side that had confused his folkie followers but was a good audition for those about to watch him tour with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. One version of “Mixed-Up Confusion” starts the side, followed by “Tombstone Blues”, “Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar”, the Before The Flood version of “Most Likely You Go Your Way” and “Like A Rolling Stone”, with 51 seconds or so of “Jet Pilot”. Side four explores imagery and wordplay, from the near-religious wonder of “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” and “Every Grain Of Sand” to the level of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Visions Of Johanna”, included here in a gorgeous live version from 1966 (with a stomping “I Don’t Believe You” with the Hawks right in the middle). His genius can be demonstrated nearly as with the Beatles: you can play the songs in alphabetical order and they’d fit just fine.

Side five starts out about such characters as “Quinn The Eskimo”, “Dear Landlord” and “Mr. Tambourine Man”, but what does “It Ain’t Me Babe” have to do with that? It doesn’t really matter, because the songs are so good, especially when you get to side six, which is the best of set. These are some of his best odes to unrealized love: “To Ramona”; the heartbreaking original New York version of “You’re A Big Girl Now”; “Abandoned Love”, which would have been the best song on Desire had he included it; “Tangled Up In Blue”; and a transcendent live “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”.

From there the themes jumble again. Side seven, with its rare tracks, seems to be dedicated to his best songs never included on an album simply because they were the ninth or tenth best songs he’d recorded that day: “Can Your Please Crawl Out Your Window?”, which segues nicely into “Positively 4th Street”, a live “Isis” from the Rolling Thunder tour, one incarnation of “Caribbean Wind” and “Up To Me” from the New York Blood On The Tracks sessions. Side eight seems to play on the more playful side of his love songs. “Baby, I’m In The Mood For You” has some hilarious rollercoaster whoops, but “I Wanna Be Your Lover” makes us wish they’d included “She’s Your Lover Now” instead. A possibly live version of “Heart Of Mine” is the other rare track.

Side nine is entrenched in the late-‘70s, with a couple of his born-again anthems amidst songs that got unfairly overlooked, starting with “Romance In Durango” from Rolling Thunder. Side ten is devoted to the rest of his “anthems”, many best known either in cover versions or plagiarism by others, closing with a short publishing demo of “Forever Young” (the fast version).

There’s a lot to take in here, but any newbie who took the time to digest them those years ago has probably gone ahead and explored each of the lesser-known albums that spawned these. If you can program your CD player to digest these songs in the prescribed chunks, they’ll be even more revelatory.

Bob Dylan Biograph (1985)—4

Neil Young 33: Road Rock

With his name on two albums within a short span after a long (for him) break, Neil undertook not one but two tours. The first was the cleverly titled CSNY2K, which screamed for the inevitable live album. Instead, for some reason, Road Rock Vol. 1 surfaced at year’s end, a single-disc souvenir of the “Friends & Relatives” tour with the Silver & Gold band, plus his wife and half-sister on vocals.

Unlike the crisp acoustic sound of the album the tour was promoting, Road Rock is muddy and even sloppy sounding—amazingly for a live album that doesn’t involve any of Crazy Horse. For many of the tracks the audience noise is mixed at the same level as the band, so maybe it is just like being there. The song selection is random, only scratching the surface of the dozens of songs they did throughout the tour. To his credit, these are mostly songs that had yet to appear on any of his other live albums, but they truly do not improve on any of the versions we already love. “Cowgirl In The Sand” stumbles along for 18 minutes, with the normally solid Jim Keltner contributing his own paradiddles and Donald “Duck” Dunn all but inaudible on the bass. The backing vocals are the aural equivalent of too much ketchup on your hamburger, and why must we have another “Tonight’s The Night”? While “Walk On” and “Peace Of Mind” are nice diversions, “Words” runs for 11 minutes, and we didn’t care much for “Motorcycle Mama” in the first place. Of the first-timers, “All Along The Watchtower” with Chrissie Hynde is about as thrilling as the Stones backing up Dave Matthews, and “Fool For Your Love” is hardly worth the $18.

While the title suggested that more volumes were to come, to date none have. This is most likely not due to Road Rock’s poor sales, but rather that Neil got sidetracked into other things (like the Archives, fans hoped against hope). Those wanting more could splurge for the concurrently released Live At Red Rocks video, which includes a complete concert performed in a torrential downpour.

Neil Young, Friends & Relatives Road Rock Vol. 1 (2000)—2