Rolling Stones - A Bigger Bang (2005)
Elton John - Songs from the West Coast (2001)
It would take a hundred Rick Rubins to resurrect the careers of all the many deserving artists from the sixties who currently toil in quasi-obscurity. The reverential love enjoyed in the late fifties and early sixties by traditional blues and folk artists doesn't seem to have a corollary for rock musicians. Yet careers, sometimes under oppressive conditions, continue. The idea, often repeated, that old rockers run out of steam after a few albums, really doesn't fit the facts. Two recent examples come to mind: the Rolling Stones and Elton John. What a pleasure it is finding these guys suddenly returning to peak form. The question is: What took them so long?
The Elton John album is a complete surprise considering Elton is currently in the "Shake Your Money Maker" section of our King of Pop index. If he manages another album or two this good, we'll place him somewhere more venerable. It's hard to figure out where Songs from the West Coast came from. It could be part of the post-alcoholic spike that many artists seem to enjoy after they clean up. The liner notes state "Special thanks to Ryan Adams, who inspired me to do better." Where had Elton's inspiration been hiding for the roughly twenty years from 1978 to 1998? The Elton John vocal style displayed on his best early work had disappeared into a smooth pop/disco haze. Session men and producers took over and Elton's piano playing faded into the background (had to make way for the fake drums and synthesizers). Collaboration with a horde of pop songwriters resulted in the usual few good songs and the usual many bad albums. These songwriters replaced Bernie Taupin's sometimes obtuse but usually interesting storytelling with love-pop fluff. One good album - Breaking Hearts - gave us hope, but the follow-ups were as boring as James Taylor. There were duets and stage shows and animated cartoons and Billy Joel/Elton John tours. Big hats, no cattle.
Then suddenly we get Songs from the West Coast - an album that would have been a stupendous follow-up to Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy - only this is such a mature work from both Taupin and John, that it probably wasn't even possible back in those wild and wonderful days.
The throaty, crackling drawl is back. The Bernie Taupin stories are back. Members of Elton's old band are back. Piano solos are frequent. Paul Buckmaster's rock and roll orchestra returns. It's as if an evil pop poseur had assumed Elton John's place for all these years and Ryan Adams killed the pod and released the true Elton, but he can't tell us because we are pods too.
Songs from the West Coast is the best album Elton John has ever recorded. Bernie Taupin has become less vague, more personal - his fiction seems less imaginatively literary and much more real. The songs are deeply affecting and this is a passionately moving album. A beatific bitter-sweetness is sustained throughout. On "Mansfield," "I Want Love" and "American Triangle" ( a song about the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard), there is more bitter than sweet. This is the prevailing mood and Elton John has never sounded so deeply committed. The first person, faux-self-reflection deepens the meaning of the songs: it's as if John and Taupin are letting us in on pieces of their souls that they've never revealed before (i.e. "Dark Diamond," "Birds," "Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes," "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore"). Their unity of purpose has never been so perfectly blended. Musician/songwriter barriers fall away and the melodies surprise you with nimble twists and turns. "Original Sin" is an stunningly beautiful love song that is eerily transcendent - evoking a rare sense of time and emotional ties. "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore" is a self-deprecating anthem. "Wasteland" is almost a final word on how English boy angst connects with the blues of Robert Johnson. Everywhere melodies work, hooks count and Elton has never sung better. There's no reason why the old fart can't sustain a renaissance given the total mastery displayed on Songs from the West Coast.
The Rolling Stones' plight parallels Johns,' but not to the same degree. The Stones made some good music during the mid-seventies to mid-nineties, but you had to look hard to find it. None of the albums added up to a major achievement. As with Elton John, aesthetic identity was a problem. Jagger and Richards showed little control of their aesthetic strengths. Bad ideas and artistic imbecilities crippled them as a band. If you were to name ten of these problems and call them speculation, they might look something like this:
1. They had made a gadzillion bucks so really didn't have to care. Managing money is hard work. You make more money from tours than music. Money, money, money. It's all about the money. 2. Chuck Berry is easy to do. Cut some rock and roll rhythm tracks and throw some vocals on. 3. Start a song with "Some girls this, some girls that," and end it with "other girls this and other girls that." Ditto on way too many other songs. 4. Make sure you throw on the boring funk jam that goes nowhere and means nothing. 5. It sounds sort of like the blues so it must be the same thing. 6. Don't get too close to conceptual intellect or it will ruin the good old rock and roll purity (mostly Keef's problem). 7. Isn't everything we do good? We're moving units and it must be all right. Bingo. Let's tour. 8. We're the big bad Stones, so let's write some big bad scary Stones' songs - how about people getting their heads cut off, and devil stuff, and beating up girls, and a little T & A. Groovy. 9. Let's get seriously political. No, let's not. Fuck you. Fuck you, too. 10. Let's go back and finish the songs we started in Jamaica last year. Hey, that wasn't Jamaica that was Montreux.
Hard to imagine how a band cruises through 15 or 20 years low on fuel. Many artists have kept a more even keel than the Stones, and created a more formidable body of work through consistency. Though the list above may seem off-hand, many of the problems cited are overcome on A Bigger Bang. First of all, this is a glorious rock album. And by rock, let's say it's rock and roll driven through grand old non-traditional rock precepts, rather than redundant rock and roll rhythm vamps hung with fake attempts at attitude. A Bigger Bang is closer to hard rock than rock and roll. It's a more demanding endeavor, and the rewards are all over the place.
Mick Jagger might have figured out what he was supposed to be writing back on Steel Wheels in 1989. At that point the Stones looked back at a career that was at least marginally panoramic, and began to grasp the essence. The album wasn't perfect, but it was game. Even better was the near total success with Bridges to Babylon (Voodoo Lounge suffered from the too-much-simple-rock-and-roll syndrome). Again the emphasis was Stones' panorama with nods to the usual trends and styles. The album touched on many successful stylistic variations from the past. The lazy lists were gone and the lyrics became detailed. It had been awhile since they had sounded as realistically deadly as they did on "Flip the Switch," "Gunface." and "Out of Control." Likewise, "Always Suffering" and "Already Over Me" grounded romantic encounters in a wider sense of emotional foundation.
A Bigger Bang continues this welcome trend. The usual Stones' song almost always is about one boy and one girl, but the details here are so fleshed out that a whole town comes alive in "Streets of Love," a film-noir landscape appears in "Rain Falls Down," and friends, hangers-on, and the world itself populate the emotional terrain. You are in the living room with the characters on "Look What the Cat Dragged In," "Biggest Mistake," "Let Me Down Slow" and "Rain Fall Down." You are part of the party on "Oh No Not You Again," "Rough Justice" and "She Saw Me Coming." There is even a theme running through A Bigger Bang which for the most part shows women holding all the cards. Jagger and Richards have never seemed so close to a real sense of down and out characterization. "Let Me Down Real Slow" has the sort of wicked observation that sustains the work: "You look a little dressed up, you're acting way too smart; your face a little big flushed for a walk in the park. And you're clutching your phone as you walk in the door. Your smile's got a twist - you're looking so hardcore." Jagger sings straight throughout - camp and distance are nowhere to be found.
Though both Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood had health problems leading up to A Bigger Bang - you can't tell it from the results. The nine songs Wood plays on feature some of the best Richards/Wood guitar interaction ever laid down. Careening and caterwauling slide guitar and melodic/energetic lead licks swamp the record with a holy guitar buzz. And the rhythm section is right there in that same old seamless way (and by this time bass player Darryl Jones should be made a member of the band). Showcasing their rock power, the Stones don't fancy anything up here, and panorama isn't what's on their mind. This is what a stripped down powerful rock band sounds like these days and it's deeper than any bevy of new boy bands can muster.
So somebody needs to explain how aesthetic amnesia overcomes many artists mid-career. Does something die, and then reconstitute, in the brain. Or is it just the illusion that everything old has become new again that allows the muse to flow through and illuminate the essential.
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