Phil Ramone, Billy Joel, and Paul Simon

Rest in peace Phil Ramone – passed away at age 79 I believe (early reports said 72, so it’s a bit confusing).

I first knew about Phil Ramone when he produced Billy Joel’s breakthrough album The Stranger. I think he’s one of the guys on the  back cover enjoying some pizza.  That Billy.  The Jew who wanted to be Italian.  Complicated guy.   Talented as all hell.

 I don’t know all of the stuff Phil Ramone did after Billy moved on, but I do know he produced Paul Simon’s latest “comeback” album, So Beautiful or So What.  The arbiters of taste say it’s great, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.  Heck, I don’t even own Graceland; It’s amazing I can let myself be seen in public.  Graceland got the 20-hear anniversary reissue treatment, followed by the 25-year multi-package onslaught (with a documentary).  Maybe I’ll wait for the 30th anniversary Broadway show.

Aaanyway…

I recently got Simon’s One-Trick Pony (originally released in 1980), which is the soundtrack to one of the most underrated rock and roll movies ever.  Paul dares to play a cad – and does it well.  And with Rip Torn as the record company mogul and Lou Reed as the producer who turns one of the songs into a bloated, overproduced monstrosity (“Remember ‘River Deep/Mountain High’?  That’s a gutsy record.  It had strings.”), it’s hilarious and heartbreaking.  The look on one of the musicians’ faces during the playback when the syrupy strings start strangling the song is priceless, and then Simon says,”River Deep/Mountain High,” in perfect deadpan sarcasm.

And then there’s the music industry event that Simon’s character is drawn into, where he (as the fictional Jonah Levin) reluctantly agress to play his ’60s protest anthem “Soft Parachutes” (it’s wonderful, and it’s on the remastered CD).  It’s the beginning of 1980, and someone tells Jonah, “Who knows, maybe the Beatles will show up.”  Priceless…

Compared to other film/video projects by rock stars at about the same time, One-Trick Pony stands out as an unqualified artistic success.

Pete Townshend’s big cinematic project turned into an unsatisfying half-finished 45 minute long-form video called White City.  Buy the album (it’s good), read the liner notes for the story, and don’t bother seeking out the video.  It’s over before you think it started.

Ray Davies’ try was Return to Waterloo, not quite a movie, more like another longform video.  Ambitious, interesting, but ultimately a strange, thinly plotted, and repetitive oddity for hardcore fans only (that’s me!).  Once again, the album is better.

But Paul Simon was smart enough to make an actual movie – with people who knew how to make actual movies.  I understand it flopped in theaters, but it was well done.  Buy the album – and seek out the movie.  Enough said.

I collect dead people

Mr. Shider as I'll remember him.

While visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, last summer (Cleveland rocks, by the way), I saw a modest little exhibit with photos and biographies of Hall of Famers who had recently passed away.  Among those honored was Garry Shider, longtime member of George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic troupe.

I hadn’t known that Shider was no longer with us, but I must admit I felt a brief thrill because I had seen him perform with Parliament/Funkadelic a few years before – wearing his signature “Star Child” diaper, no less.  In fact, I embarrassed myself at that show by asking someone, “Is that Garry Shider?” – just like the voice on a great old Parliament record that keeps repeating, “Which one is George Clinton?  Which one is George Clinton?…”

Yep, Garry Shider is dead, but I saw him live in concert!  I’m like a mercenary art collector who rejoices when a painter dies.

Immediately, I started counting up the other dead stars I’d seen onstage before they kicked the bucket:

• Bassist John Entwistle during the Who’s “Farewell Tour” in 1983.  I remember the promoter delayed the start of the Who’s set so more people could see this historic show.  Of course, the band was still touring about 20 years later when Entwistle died, and they keep going with just Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and more substitutes.
• Alex Chilton, ex-leader of the Box Tops (“The Letter”) and the incomparable Big Star, at New York City’s Knitting Factory in the late ’80s.  He passed away at age 59 this year.
• Keyboardist Danny Federici, dead at 58 in 2008, with Springsteen’s E Street Band during the mammoth mid-’80s Born in the USA tour.
• Pianist Ian Stewart during the Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You tour in ’81.  Relegated to backstage and sideman roles because he wasn’t pretty enough for the up-and-coming Stones’ image in 1963, he contributed to some of the band’s best work as well as one-offs like Led Zeppelin’s “Boogie with Stu” in 1975.  Ten years later – dead of a heart attack.
• Beach Boy Carl Wilson at something called the “U.S. Olympic Festival” in 1986.  A gifted songwriter with an angelic voice, he died of cancer in 1998.

I’m actually trying to remember other people, now deceased, whom I’ve been lucky enough to see onstage.  Shameful. Morbid.

On the bright side, I don’t think I’ll add the Stones’ Keith Richards to the list anytime soon.  He always looks like death, but he’s likely to outlast me, my house, my children, and Lloyd’s of London.

Toward a scientific classification of musical disorders

Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica album: useful in therapy?

Many of us are obsessed with music, yet the science of mental health does not even recognize the vast array of musical disorders that keep us from maintaining normal social relationships, playing sports, and – in extreme cases – venturing more than 20 feet away from a stereo system.  Truly, musical disorders are The Silent Annoyer.  Even when a person exhibiting pathological musical behaviors feels fine, he is surely bugging the hell out of someone else.

Based on my 35 years of personal experience with many of these conditions, I shall now attempt to categorize some of the more common disorders in order to shed light on a potentially promising field of inquiry that so many mental health professionals choose to ignore.  Perhaps we may find that thousands of mental health professionals themselves struggle with musical pathologies, so it’s too close to home.  Time will tell.  We can only make irresponsible generalizations at this point.

Disorders of Pretension

Hopped up on the Rolling Stone Album Guide, Rock: the Rough Guide, the Spin Alternative Record Guide, or Robert Christgau’s guides to albums of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s (say, isn’t it time for a new one?), the person with a Pretension Disorder tries in vain to fall in love with an album simply because some authority says it’s “indispensable,” “five stars,” or “A+.”  At a friend’s house, he may pretend to like something just to appear “cool”; in extreme cases, acting out in the form of bad dance moves may occur.  Treatment options: the patient may be instructed to look at himself in a mirror and repeat affirmations such as, “Not everybody adores Trout Mask Replica,” or “Brian Eno is not God, and that’s OK.”  Of course, these statements are patently untrue, but they may prove useful in a therapeutic context.

Anti-Popular Disorders

Many music obsessives automatically dislike music that is extremely popular – because, by definition, it’s not “cutting edge.”  This strategy backfires when a once-obscure artist goes multiplatinum.  Those who suffer from the most annoying types of Anti-Popular Disorders will then trump up some ridiculous reason not to like the newly successful artist, using terms such as “sellout,” “pandering,” “commercial,” or “I don’t know – the new bass player just doesn’t do it for me.”  Treatment: remind the sufferer that the Beatles were popular, Lou Reed had a hit, and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn album hit number 5 on the Billboard album chart in 1975.  Tread carefully, however, as this tactic may backfire and cause the sufferer to claim that the shape of John Lennon’s nose now prevents him from enjoying the White Album.

Delusions of Interest

The person with Delusions of Interest assumes that everyone around him is music-crazy and wants to hear about producers, pressings, masterings, multitracking, session musicians, and other deadly boring topics.  These disorders by far cause the most annoyance to the outside world, which doesn’t care that Steve Lillywhite tried not to produce three albums in a row by the same band (but didn’t succeed, haha!!) or that Pete Townshend’s daughter Minta was script supervisor on the movie Charlie Wilson’s War (I know; I couldn’t believe it either!).  Treatment options: tape a conversation in which the sufferer talks about microphone placement for 20 minutes, and then force him to listen to it.

Next Steps

Obviously, these categories and treatments merely scratch the surface.  We have only just begun to uncover the amount of suffering involved here – at least some of which is felt by the people with the disorders.  Maybe 5%.