40 Year Itch : "Man, What Are You Doin' Here?"

"Joel has a fine shot at establishing himself as consistent AM quality artist with large scale songs and dynamic performing range"--Billboard Magazine, Nov  17, 1973

       Indentured to Artie Ripp's iron clad contract and waiting for a record deal that was supposed to happen any day, Billy Joel was also in need of money so he spent some down time as Billy Martin , lounge pianist at the Executive Room in Hollywood. From his piano, he made observations that helped him write "Piano Man", the title cut of his Columbia Records debut and his first hit single, peaking at #25 in 1974.



    Though Joel would sound like a wanna-be Paul McCartney in later years, here he sounds like a wanna-be Harry Chapin, who, with "Taxi",  also had a hit with semi-autobiographical tale of his lean years.

   "Piano Man" was a new song...and a waltz! But not everything on the album was new, Joel confessed at the time:

   Some of things on Piano Man are old. "Captain Jack", "Billy the Kid" and "Travelin' Prayer" are two years old. The rest of it comes from about six months ago...I'm not sure what I was aiming at with this album. I guess they're just songs.



     Columbia execs were happy with the debut which established Joel as an up and coming pop artist.  Eventually Piano Man would sell more than two million copies, but thanks to one of those criminal recording/management contracts we hear about far too often, Joel himself only netted $8,000 from the debut. Artie Ripp still owned a  piece of Joel's songwriting contract. According to a 1991 Spy Magazine article. Joel had to spend "tens of millions" to get out of his contract but , even then, Ripp was still getting a percentage of every Joel album up to 1986's The Bridge.

Best song:


 

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40 Year Itch: Carpenters on the Tonight Show

  On November 5, 1973 The Carpenters appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. They were there to promote their greatest hits album, The Singles 1969-1973,  so they smartly performed a medley of hits, sat down for an interview in which they gave an account of recent scare on a small plane, and then performed another song.



  Among the songs in the medley is Leon Russell's "Superstar( Groupie)" which Richard Carpenter first heard Bette Midler perform on The Tonight Show. Karen, already familiar with the tune,  didn't care for the song but their recording hit #2 in 1971. They also perform "Goodbye to Love" with its head melting guitar solo.



In the interview Karen especially comes across as a self-effacing girl next door. She's actually a bit of a nerd. But that voice...!



The final song is a strange choice. From the 1970 album Close to You, "Mr Guder", Richard Carpenter's slap down of a Disney Parks executive,  is a jazzy little number that lets the band stretch out a bit.

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40 Year Itch : Sipping Imaginary Cola

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Here's one one of 1973's true gems: both easy on the ears --like the best singer songwriter efforts of its day-- and soulful in that blue eyed way that would eventually make Hall and Oates one of the most successful acts in the mid-70's and 80's. The sound of Abandoned Luncheonette, and the one their label wanted most to promote, all stems back to the debut album cut "Fall in Philadelphia". You can hear a similar vibe on the best cuts: "When the Morning Comes", Las Vegas Turnaround" and the title track.

The best known track, "She's Gone", is based on the break-up of Daryl Hall's marriage and John Oates getting stood up on New Year's Eve. Released as a single, it stalled at #60. Then, in 1974, Tavares cut a similar version that topped the R and B charts. Following the success of the 1976 single "Sara Smile", RCA re-edited "She's Gone", knocking 60 seconds off the running time. The result: a Top 10 hit.

In his book Hitmaker: The Man and His Music, Hall and Oates manager Tommy Mottola writes:

We were shocked when "She's Gone" failed to become a hit as soon as it was released. But by no means was I disillusioned. I knew that "She's Gone" was a hit. I knew it was a smash. I knew that Atlantic had dropped the ball...the album was not a commercial success. But stories began to trickle back that Led Zeppelin's lead guitar player, Jimmy Page, was seen carrying around the Abandoned Luncheonette album while on tour. That made Daryl's day. It made his day more than if you'd told him that "She's Gone" was at the top of the singles charts, because Jimmy Page was one of Daryl's idols, and that meant credibility and integrity.

The iconic album cover shows Pottstown PA's old Rosedale Diner sitting in the weeds outside of Philadelphia. The story of the diner's demise is told in this very thorough blog post.



   Despite disappointing sales for Abandoned Luncheonette, Atlantic Records considered Hall and Oates on the verge of stardom. But the duo had something else in mind: rock credibility. But the story of War Babies must be saved for another day .

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40 Year Itch: The Guru Manipulator Goes Live

On November 3 1973 Miles Davis performed tunes that would show up on his live albums Agharta , Pangaea and Dark Magus.  Davis' group included Dave Liebman on sax and flutes, Reggie Lucas on Electric Guitar, Pete Cosey on electric guitar and percussion, Michael Henderson on bass, Al Foster on drums and James "Mtume" Forman on conga and percussion. This is heavy music, with one platform shoe immersed in dark funk ( the one that leans on the wah wah pedal)...and the other in space jazz.



The critics panned a lot of what Davis was doing these years...calling the music "sloppy". Davis himself was in pain. He had arthritis in his hips, ulcers and medicated himself with far too much alcohol and cocaine. After a Newport Jazz performance in 1975, Davis would retire from the public eye for six years.

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40 Year Itch : All I Wanna Do Is Boogaloo!

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With more than a little help from his friends, Ringo Starr released the best of his solo albums, simply titled Ringo,  on November 2, 1973. Anticipation for the album was maxed out not only because the first single, "Photograph" (written with George Harrison) was climbing the chart on its way to #1 ( It was #11 with a bullet that week) but because this was the first album to feature contributions from all four Beatles ( and Billy Preston). 

Melody Maker broke the news in this way in March of '73:

"Rumours flashed through Los Angeles this week that three of the Beatles have teamed up for recording purposes. John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are all in Los Angeles with Klaus Voormann, the bassist rumoured to replace Paul McCartney after his departure from the group."

It's true that Lennon wrote the lead track, "I'm The Greatest" ( after watching A Hard Day's Night on TV), and plays keyboards along with Preston while Harrison chimes in on guitar. And yes,  Beatle friend Voorman plays bass.  But that was the extent of Lennon's involvement with the album.

    Never to be outdone, McCartney contributed the song "Six O'Clock". He also plays piano and sings backing vocals with Linda. McCartney also sings on "You're Sixteen" harmonizing with Harry Nilsson. No other single member of The Beatles could ever have brought the band this close together. They can all be found at the center of Sgt Pepper-reminiscent album cover.

Klaus Voorman etching from "Ringo"

There were other friends as well : Marc Bolan ( T.Rex) plays guitar on the Randy Newman written "Have You Seen My Baby (Hold On)". Most of The Band is playing on the Harrison-penned "Sunshine Life For Me ( Sail Away Raymond)". There's Martha Reeves and Merry Clayton singing on"Oh My My"

Somehow this huge cast contributes to an album that has a light, sunny, goofy feel: the way we most fondly think of Ringo himself. It is not one of the most important albums to be released in 1973 but it is certainly one of the most enjoyable. 

   The latest version on CD is amended with three additional tracks including the 1971 Top 5 hit "It Don't Come Easy" and Ringo's "open letter to The Beatles" "Early 1970.

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40 Year Itch: From Arizona to Eldorado

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On November 1 , 1973 Roxy Music released their third album, the future UK #1 , Stranded, featuring Ferry squeeze Marilyn Cole, 1973's Playmate of the Year, on the steamy cover.

This is the first Roxy Music album without Brian Eno and yet Eno himself called Stranded his favorite Roxy Music album. By now Ferry had mastered his bored, broad-shouldered tuxedo'd playboy persona and the dramatic vibrato that quivered through tales of one night stands ( what exactly is a"G-Plan gymnastics by an everglow fire" ?) and party time wasting .

If there's one serious hitch to loving Roxy Music, it's how Bryan Ferry has taken far too much songwriting credit ( and thus the major portion of the royalties) for tunes developed by the entire band. Phil Manzanera says the band would record "the music first – all the music, including the solos. Then Bryan would listen to it and try to write a top-line tune and words. When it worked, it was absolutely brilliant. Because none of us knew what the song was going to be about until he recorded the vocal." 

Manzanera would share credit on the Stranded cut "Amazona", my second favorite cut on the album. I love how the surging solo falls apart at the end and tumbles back into Manzanera's funky groove. 

It turned out to be my first recorded track on an album and I was very proud of it. When I finished recording the guitar part, everyone cheered in the control room."

Andy Mackay shares credit on " A Song for Europe" otherwise all the credit goes to Ferry. 

"Street Life", the first single off Stranded, became a Top 10 hit in the UK. It features a solo by Roxy's newest member , 19-year old Curved Air violinist/ keyboard player Eddie Jobson, whose fiddling away beneath the "Street Life " chant halfway through the song.

You can tell by the number of clips I'm posting that I'm a big fan of this album. It's probably sacrilegious to prefer this to the two albums with Eno but I've been called worse.  The cut that truly knocks me out is the epic bipolar "Mother of Pearl". The lyrics sounds like overheard snatches of conversation at one of the parties Ferry attended with fashion models:

Divine intervention 
Always my intention 
So I take my time 
I've been looking for something I've always wanted 
But was never mine 
But now I've seen that something 
Just out of reach - glowing
 - Very Holy grail
 Oh mother of pearl
 Lustrous lady 
Of a sacred world

Roxy Music is on a roll that would propel the band through the next two years, through Country Life and Stranded. And then the band would , strangely, sit out the punk rock years while Brian Eno can be found manning the boards for Talking Heads, Devo and David Bowie. 

Is it unfair to wonder what would have happened had Eno stayed with Roxy Music? Would Ferry have deigned to sing "Baby's On Fire"?

And yes, "A Song for Europe" has to be a parody of Eurovision. What else could it be? Right?

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40 Year Itch : Those We Missed October 1973

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Bonnie Raitt's third album, Takin' My Time,  is another critically acclaimed gem. Here she broadens her musical canvas to include calypso and dixieland while handing  over all songwriting duties to others ( including Randy Newman , Chris Smither and Jackson Browne). Of the album, often recorded with members of Little Feat,  Bonnie says:

"Takin' My Time is one of my favorite records to listen to, although I started out with Lowell George producing it, and he and I got too close to be able to have any objectivity about it. That's the problem when you're a woman and you get involved with the people you work with - and I just don't just mean romantically. It becomes too emotional. It's hard to have a strong woman telling the man her ideas when, in fact, the man wants to take over the situation. So that album had a lot of heartache in it. At the time it was a difficult one to make, but now I like it."

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With leader Nils Lofgren off recording and touring with Neil Young, and the label running out of patience,  this was the swansong for Grin. Fans would have to wait two years for Lofgren's spectacular solo debut

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The "one man Beatles" never made any money from his terrific catalogue thanks to a messed up record deal with Dunhill. Farewell to Paradise is the third and final album before Rhodes would abandon his musical career facing tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

"That was it, I didn't want to do it anymore," he told LA City Beat. "I wanted to open a Laundromat and watch the dryers go around."

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The former McCoy and member of Edgar and Johnny Winter's bands, killer guitarist Rick Derringer released his debut album featuring his solo version of "Rock and Roll, Hootchie Koo"--a song already featured on three albums. Derringer's version hit highest, peaking at #23 in 1974. Edgar Winter, Joe Walsh and Suzi Quatro lend a hand on the album.

John Martyn follows up his classic 1973 album Solid Air with the  even more experimental and jazzier Inside Out, recorded with Danny Thompson and  Stevie Winwood on bass and keyboards respectively. Absolutely hypnotic.

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