Log #103 - Don't Write Off All of Bob Dylan's Post 70s Output

You (old time music listeners that is) can't really argue with this week's selection - we have a couple of "mid" period Dylan albums, the last Doors album, and some JJ Cale, plus another Bob who surprisingly sounds like Dylan, and a classic from Dylan's sometime backing band, the Band.

The Doors - American Prayer

Bob Geldof - The Happy Club

Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy

Bob Dylan - Time Out Of Mind

JJ Cale - Naturally

The Band - Music From Big Pink

American Prayer is surprisingly a really good record. It is a pot pourri of live performances, parts of existing recordings, and "new" Jim Morrison poems set to music. It shouldn't work, but it does, very well.

Morrison's spoken words are on the verge of being sung and don't sound much different to some regular Doors tracks. The accompanying music is chilled - funky and jazzy. The music fits perfectly and if you didn't know you probably would never guess that the vocal tracks were recorded separately (apparently by Morrison in 1969 and 1970). The editing is top class and the tracks merge with each other producing a coherent album which is greater than the sum of its parts and one that should really be listened to in one sitting from start to finish. 

American Prayer earns its right to be considered a genuine part of the Doors discography.

We have two what I've called "mid" period albums from Bob Dylan although really you could argue they are "late" period considering his output slowed a lot from the 90s. These two albums featured here are separated by 8 years and only one intervening (originals) album (Under The Red Sky).

Like many artists who made their name in the 60s and 70s, the 80s was a tough decade for Dylan who was struggling to find his way in the new musical environment. For many his last great album from his hey day would have been Street Legal (1978), or my personal favourite Desire (1976), or even the one before that, the classic Blood On The Tracks (1975).

He had a brief dally with religion as the 70s turned - a trilogy of gospel celebrations of his new found christianity beginning with Slow Train Coming and following up with Saved and Shot of Love.

The 'born again' trilogy

Moving into the general musical wasteland of the 80s Dylan bounced back somewhat with Infidels which is pretty alright but then fell victim of the musical fashions of the day with some bland over produced albums like Empire Burlesque and Knocked Out Loaded supplemented by some uninspiring live albums.

Dylan sits under the red sky and surveys the wasteland of most of his 80s work

But then, mirroring similar trajectories of singer-songwriter contemporaries Van Morrison (Avalon Sunset) and Neil Young (Freedom), Dylan pulled one out the bag right at the end of the decade with Oh Mercy released in 1989.

The album was hailed as a return to form on its release and this wasn't merely due to comparison with the preceding string of disappointing efforts. The production by Daniel Lanois is smooth and positively lush like on the gorgeous Most Of The Time. The sound is polished but the balance is right and the laid back introspective music flows assuredly behind Dylan's nasal outpourings (thankfully the 80s drum slap has been left behind). Man In The Long Black Coat and What Good Am I? are beautiful / Ring Them Bells could be an outtake from 1970's New Morning and I really like the blues chug of Everything is Broken which foreshadows the tracks on Time Out Of Mind:

Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds,
Ain't no use jiving,
Ain't no use joking,
Everything is broken.

There is some gorgeous languid guitar on this album. I have a feeling it could be Lanois's playing? Almost certainly it won't be Dylan. Let's check...

Oh yes, it is (Lanois) at least on some of the tracks like the aforementioned Most Of The Time and the brilliant What Was It You Wanted which also features some of the best ever Dylan harmonica blowing:

Daniel Lanois also produces Time Out Of Mind but with quite a different approach. The production here is stripped right back to a raw blues and rock sound which ideally suits Dylan's new found gravelly growl and the backing band's bar room aesthetic. With plentiful gutsy guitar riffs on tracks like Can't Wait and Cold Irons Bound (below) this is one of Dylan's heaviest albums despite one or two down tempo ballads like Make You Feel My Love.

What a great looking band too.

The album finishes on the Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands like Highlands - at 16 minutes Dylan's longest ever recorded song. It's no symphonic epic - the track just repeats a hypnotic blues guitar round over and over and Dylan sings long verses of stream of consciousness lyrics (just like the old days!):

I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound
Someone's always yellin' "Turn it down."

When asked for a short version of the song by one of the recording engineers Dylan replied: "That was the short version."

You just never know what you're going to get. He's an eccentric man.

Daniel Lanois on Bob Dylan

It seems odd to talk about an artist finding himself (or more to the point re-finding himself) after 30 years or so but both these albums and in particular Time Out Of Mind sounds like an artist who has come to terms with a new style and is at home in his own skin. The voice is now a gruff growl but this is Bob Dylan sounding like his real self in 1997.

It is often easy to write off post 70s output of many artists especially singer song writers like Bob Dylan. These two albums demonstrate that can be a short sighted view - a view I must admit having assumed too. I'm mighty pleased to have rediscovered these two albums which have given me a new found respect for latter period Bob Dylan which opens up a whole new catalogue of listening I had assumed was unworthy of examination. Standby for some further excursions into post 1978 Bob Dylan!

It is however a shame that for the most part Dylan isn't able to reproduce the quality of the production on these two albums live. I've seen him a few times since the 80s and his live voice leaves plenty to be desired (unlike the aforementioned Young and Morrison who are still great singers). In my experience it is even difficult to recognise some Dylan songs live and you sometimes wonder if he has even met his backing band let alone rehearsed with them!

As for the other Bob - I heard this song in a shop and thought it was Dylan:

Pretty good eh? Not what I expected from Bob Geldof.

No time left this week to give the Band's record a thorough review but checkout this post for some background reading on the making of "Big Pink".

Cover art this post: The Oh Mercy cover is a picture by street artist "Trotsky" Dylan found on a wall in New York.

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Log #102 - 4 Doors Albums

Were The Doors just a phase one went through when growing up, like the recently discussed Rush? Or did they really have depth and staying power? They aren't a band I return to very often (and in fact this is their first appearance in the log in 2 years and nearly 250 artists!). This is surprising really as the music is actually excellent and the band should really be viewed as much more than a mere Jim Morrison vehicle. But has the cult of their revered and charismatic singer over shadowed their actual music? Read on as I replay four of their (only six *) studio albums.

Aimee Mann - Whatever

Nightmares on Wax - Late Night Tales

The Doors - Morrison Hotel

The Doors - Strange Days

The Doors - The Doors

The Doors - L.A. Woman

* There were six proper original Jim Morrison Doors studio albums plus a live album although a couple of albums were recorded after his death and some previously unreleased recordings and live albums surfaced later.

The complete studio discography is:

The Doors (1967)

Strange Days (1967)

Waiting for the Sun (1968)

The Soft Parade (1969)

Morrison Hotel (1970)

L.A. Woman (1971)

Other Voices (1971)

Full Circle (1972)

An American Prayer (1978)

The Doors

The Doors The Doors arrived in 1967 (the same year as Sgt. Pepper and the Velvet Underground debut). It was quite a debut and very unique. There weren't many bands with such an emphasis on the organ - Ray Manzarek's carnival thrustings on his Vox Continental and Fender Rhodes Bass gave the Doors a 60s vaudeville like sound. They wrote brilliantly catchy pop tunes, but could really rock too - witness the malevolent The End - the debut's brooding menacing 12 minute epic in which Morrison would famously ad-lib the spoken word section during live performance. Quite a shock for both live audiences and bedroom listeners alike. The song was also made famous as the opening credits to Apocalypse Now:

The other big track on the album is, of course, Light My Fire. Possibly a bit spoilt by over exposure these days it is nevertheless objectively a brilliant track with a keyboard and guitar instrumental section which was cut for the single release.

Right down The Doors' alley we have the Brecht and Weill cover Whisky Bar perfectly suited to Manzarek's fairground organ grinding and Morrison's baritone. There is a blues cover (The Doors would return more and more to their blues roots in later albums); Willie Dixon's Back Door Man. Take It As It Comes and Twentieth Century Fox are great rock pieces and the psychedelic End Of The Night is similar to Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd.

It's difficult to argue that this is not the greatest Doors album. Consistent and original. Their subsequent albums largely repeated the formula albeit becoming slightly more blues and rock based. They were never quite as original again.

Strange Days

Perhaps the band's second album Strange Days suffers from comparison as it is pretty much a carbon copy of the first album but by then without the "surprise" of course. So we have an abundance of consummate pop singles like Love Me Two Times and People Are Strange and another 12 minute epic closer When The Music's Over.  Structurally this track it's pretty identical to The End with guitarist Robbie Krieger using some Robert Fripp type distortion, and a slowed down middle section. These extended builders gave the band, and Morrison especially, plenty of scope for live improvisation and extension:

Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection
Send my credentials to the House of Detention
I got some friends inside 

I imagine at many live performances there was a dread of what Morrison was going to sing or say every time he went off script (rather like Donald Trump today!).

One departure on this album which I can safely say is no-one's favourite Doors track is the Horse Latitudes poem set to avant-garde noises. Some recordings of Jim Morrison's poems were later released on American Prayer which I actually think works really well and is an excellent album in it's own right.

My copy comes in a lovely LP style miniature cardboard case with a £3 sticker. What a bargain. See if you can spot the album cover in my Album Cover Challenge. The location was a residential alley in Manhattan, New York.

Rock Trivia Fact Question: Which Doors album cover does not feature a picture of the band or Jim Morrison?

Morrison Hotel

The band's 5th album Morrison Hotel kicks off with the much covered Roadhouse Blues which sets the tone for the album with its honky tonk piano and harmonica (John Sebastian) enhanced Rolling Stones Exile On Main Street vibe.

Woke up this morning, I got myself a beer.

The only shame is this studio version is curtailed in comparison to the extended live versions (one of which appears on the underestimated American Prayer). 

There's more blues on You Make Me Real and the excellent grind of Maggie M'Gill:

I've been singing the blues ever since the world began.

The Spy is an intriguing slow blues. One of the joys of reassessing a band like The Doors is uncovering some hidden gems like this, and Queen of The Highway with it's nice electric wurlitzer.

On the down tempo Blue Sunday and Indian Summer Morrison sounds like a Ratpack crooner; the modern day equivalent would be Nick Cave or Stuart Staples. Then on Ship of Fools the circus organ recalls the debut album sound.

Peace Frog is my favourite Doors track. I heard this recently in a pub and felt sure it must have been a remix with it being so funky. But it's not, it is the original. Great guitar chops, driving bass and honky organ, slapping drums and fills and a superb guitar break. The lyrics are n't bad either:

Blood in the streets in the town of Newhaven. 

This always means something extra to me as we have a 'town of Newhaven' just a few miles from us in Brighton!

Morrison Hotel is a strong coherent album with only one or two weak tunes - maybe Land Ho! was lucky to make the cut - a fairly lacklustre sea shanty where the vocals even sound like someone else at the end of the song (I've never heard the post Morrison Doors albums - apparently they aren't much cop apart from, ironically, American Prayer which uses Morrison's vocal posthumously).  Although the album lacks the hit singles of earlier releases the overall cohesion demonstrates a work which is greater than the sum of it's parts and as such presents a good case for being the second best Doors album.

The album shoot was taken in and around an old long gone hotel in downtown L.A. The band were refused entry to the hotel to take the photo but apparently jumped in quickly when no one was looking.

L.A. Woman

L.A. Woman was The Doors' last Jim Morrison album, released in April 1971 three months before Morrison's death.

The band had moved further from their original vaudeville type roots (although perfect pop singles like Love Her Madly would have been entirely at home on the debut album). The guitar (and bass) is more prominent and there is less organ generally although the extended keyboard instrumental on the classic Riders On The Storm is possibly Ray Manzarek's finest moment.

The album is more basic rock and blues based as best displayed on the slow crawling blues of Cars Hiss By My Window and Crawling King Snake, but did this demonstrate the band were running dry of original ideas?

L'America is a bit naff but Hyacinth House is a pleasant enough tune:

I need a brand new friend who does n't bother me.

 ... and The Wasp rocks.

What About The Bass?

Did The Doors have a bass player? Well, yes and no. They didn't have one, but also had a lot. The unusual thing about The Doors was that they did employ some session bass players for the studio albums but never, as far as I have discovered, used one for live performances. I'm sure this is the opposite to many bands who have a core group of musicians who may double up their tracked instruments on record, but unable to do so live, employ extra touring musicians to reproduce the records on stage.

So live it was only keyboard guru Ray Manzarek (left) playing bass on the organ which is incredible when you think about it and listen to the fullness of the sound (there is a surprising amount of excellent live footage of The Doors on youtube) (the other musician I'm aware of who does this live is Steve Winwood). However in the studio the tracks were laid down with Manzarek's bass playing but some (not all) were enhanced with electric bass guitar. None of the following bass players were part of the band and most went uncredited.

So on the debut record, you have Manzarek's organ bass, but underneath it you also have Larry Knechtel on bass mirroring his lines.

On the second album Doug Lubahn played electric bass particularly on the more bouncy driving tracks. Lubahn is also the bassist on the next album Waiting for the Sun although a couple of other session players were also used. He went on to play on three tracks from The Soft Parade although the majority of bass was played by Harvey Brooks. 

Main bass stay for the more rock orientated Morrison Hotel was Ray Neopolitan although two of the most bluesy tracks Roadhouse Blues and Maggie M'Gill were handled by Lonnie Mack.

Finally on L.A.Woman bass duties were passed to Elvis bass player Jerry Scheff who remained post Morrison appearing on Other Voices and American Prayer.

Rock Trivia Answer: Many would answer Strange Days but the actual answer is Full Circle. On the Strange Days cover there is a poster of the band on the wall.

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