The Beatles and R&B

It's not news that the Beatles began their recording career heavily indebted to black American music. Early rock and roll, R&B and the blues were all important ingredients of their sound, as Anglicized as it was (the Beatles were probably less shameless in their appropriation of these genres than most of their peers). Anyways, a quick listen to their earlier recordings, or glance at the covers they recorded, reveals that R&B had made an impact in Liverpool.

However, as I've been immersing myself in R&B this past year, I've been surprised by the extent to which the influence was mutual--the Beatles' influence is clearly felt in R&B. Not in cover versions, although legends like Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin all covered Lennon/McCartney tunes during the 1960s.

The Beatles weren't influencing R&B during the early 60's--when they themselves were aping the genre. It was only after the band left behind their early, more insistently rhythmic music that the influence filtered back. It was the studio-based, baroque and psychedelic Beatles--the Beatles of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Strawberry Fields Forever"--whose music altered American R&B.

It was connecting a couple anecdotes that led me to recognize R&B's embrace of the Beatles. The first was about Otis Redding. In the months before his death, Redding became obsessed with Sgt. Pepper's. He had previously covered the Beatles,* but this was different. He channeled Pepper's psychedelic sounds in writing "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of A Bay"--a song whose pensive beauty resembles "Strawberry Fields Forever." "Dock Of A Bay" was drastically different from anything Redding had previously written. Different enough that Stax was reluctant to release it at all. Otis, of course, knew better: he predicted the song was a number one hit, although he didn't live long enough to see that come true himself.

A couple years later at Stax, Booker T found himself so inspired by Abbey Road that he and the MG's recorded an entire album of Abbey Road covers. They called it McLemore Avenue--where the Stax studio was--and that's the album cover, at the top of the post.

The second anecdote is about Richard Pegue, a Chicago DJ who ran the Nickel and Penny record labels. The wonderful work of Pegue's labels was recently excavated by the Numero Group. In that release's liner notes, it mentions that Pegue's record collection featured lots of British Pop, including several Beatles LPs. The influence is clear on some of the later cuts on the reissue, when Pegue began using colorful production techniques in his R&B.

This was more broadly true of R&B acts. Stevie Wonder--who hit number one with a cover of "We Can Work It Out" in 1970--took the studio-as-instrument and synthesizer to astounding places. These were sounds that the Beatles and producer George Martin helped introduce into the pop vocabulary. Stevie's Motown colleague  Norman Whitfield, in his work with the Temptations and the Undisputed Truth, was transforming R&B into something as psychedelic as anything from Magical Mystery Tour.

By the early 70's studio experimentation had taken firmly taken hold in R&B. So had the album format, as opposed to the barrage of singles. Credit to that goes to Isaac Hayes more than the Beatles. But it's clear that Hayes was listening to the Beatles--he does a ten-minute version of "Something" on the brilliant Isaac Hayes Movement, and his sophisticated arrangements and multipart songs recall Abbey Road's medley.

I don't want to overstate this case. Psychedelic ideas were in the air. The Beatles were a gateway to those sounds for music fans like Richard Pegue, others in the R&B world. But they weren't the only one (Sly & the Family Stone were another crucial gateway group). And the Beatles were hardly the main influence on late 60's and early 70's R&B. That'd be James Brown, who flipped the Fab Four's trajectory on its head and placed all his emphasis on the rhythm.

But it's a story with a nice circularity. That the Beatles, the world's biggest and most revered rock band, were able to inspire a few new sounds in a genre from which they took so much.


*The Beatles, for their part, had shown their admiration by sending limos to pick up Otis and other Stax performers from the airport during a British tour. And--though this seems ridiculous and it's hard to find documentation for this--Wikipedia and other sites report that the Beatles bowed and kissed the ring of Stax guitarist Steve Cropper.

R&B Listening Journal, Volume One

I'm currently hard at work, researching a book about R&B. It's for middle schoolers, the sort of thing you see in school libraries. The book isn't especially long, but I've been throwing myself into the research, taking it on as my summer project, as well as a second job (it's also a weak excuse for my recent absence here).

This means that I've listened to R&B and little else for the past month. In recent years, my exposure to the genre has grown considerably, but it's still selective--I dig the cinematic soul of the 70's, and love the Minneapolis Sound of the 80's. But New Jack Swing or Philadelphia Soul?--these are blind spots. I've made a few steps to rectify that, and to fill some embarrassing holes in my knowledge. It's been rewarding, but a little frustrating, since the book isn't really a work of criticism. That's the impetus for this possibly ongoing Listening Journal, which will highlight some of the most incredible or otherwise remarkable music I come across.

"Escapade," Janet Jackson

The opening bars of "Escapade" give the same insane rush as The-Dream's "Rockin' That Shit"--synth programming aimed straight at the pleasure centers. The chiming keyboard figure, which resurfaces for the chorus, gets even better when Janet harmonizes with it: "Don't hold back/Just have a good time." The production, by Jam and Lewis (the ex-Time maestros with seventeen number ones to their credit) is drunk on sound, mashing together the swooshing, chiming and thumping noises that their technology produces. Prince, especially "1999" and Sign 'O' The Times, is a reference point, but the song's deployment of several units of Jackson vocals gives it a unique texture. It's unusually dense for a summer jam, but that's what "Escapade" is--an invitation to get lost, to fucking enjoy yourself.

"7 Rooms Of Gloom," The Four Tops

The Four Tops were responsible for plenty of vintage Motown--"Bernadette" is staggering--but this song intrigues me because it's such an aberration. The group apparently hated it, unsurprising for a song that sounds so un-Motown. What "7 Rooms" does resemble is 60's garage--I swear this could be a lost Nuggets classic. Levi Stubbs belts with a shout-y frustration about his girl problems. And the track has a crude crunch, hitting its aggrivated groove and just staying there. The gothic backing vocals are the only embellishment. You don't hear this much anger or psychdelica in 60's Motown; "7 Rooms" outdoes plenty of 60's garage too.

"Sadie," R. Kelly

R. spends most of his solo debut dwelling on the carnal--this is a record whose centerpiece is the 10-minute jam "Sex Me". And, you know, he does that pretty well. It just makes "Sadie" that much more arresting. Part celebration, part remembrance, "Sadie" is Kelly's tribute to his dead mother. The organ places the song squarely in church, and the chorus rises high on Kelly's conviction and simple backing vocals. But a single detail about Sunday mornings helps fill in the portrait. 12 Play's least lascivious moment (and least hip-hop informed) is also one of its best.

"Heaven Is Ten Zillion Light Years Away," Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder's clavinet is responsible for his funkiest turns, but the instrument also informs the serene explorations of Music Of My Mind and Fulfillingness' First Finale. It lends this cut a quiet, naturalistic feel. Yet the vocals come from a place of pain--how is it that heaven seems so far away when hate and racism are so immediate? The short answer is that you don't believe in God enough. "Heaven" is pure gospel: ultimately, salvation is there, and here. Wonder's voice is joined by a small choir as the song moves towards its celestial finale. His conviction is so powerful, his talent so unique that, for these five minutes, he will make you believe.

"What'd I Say," Ray Charles

An epochal song in American music. I'd thought of Ray Charles as music for parents: well-performed, tastefully arranged, too safe. But the Genius' early Atlantic recordings are gritty, sweaty stuff, of which nothing tops "What'd I Say." For seven minutes, Charles' fingers dance across his keyboard, pounding out the electrified boogie as clattering cymbals drive the thing into further frenzy. By the time you reach Part Two, with its grunted give-and-take between Charles and the Raelettes, you realize: this still sounds dangerous.

"Me & Mrs. Jones," Billy Paul

Certifiably smooth--Paul's jazzy vocals and the drifting strings will take you there. But like all good smooth music, the quiet storm of the surface masks a fraught interior. In this case, the narrator is having an affair with the married Mrs. Jones. The tension is present in the verses, but really comes out when Paul lets loose right before the chorus. He's back to smoothness ten seconds later, but his outbursts--stretching words to the breaking point, belting with a deeper intonation--color the entire song. This is considerably slower than most of the 70's Philadelphia International hits, and the scene's maestros, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff (who wrote this song together), made a rare commercial miscalculation in following up "Me & Mrs. Jones" with a song called "Am I Black Enough For You?"

"We Need A Resolution," Aaliyah

Aaliyah's tracks are blocky, shifting things that, on first listen, don't make sense rhythmically. On "Resolution," Static Major and Timbaland's production explores the friction produced by abutting plates of sound, while Eastern-sounding flourishes fill the center of the space. Timbo shows up at the end, spitting with admirable attitude, but only Aaliyah holds her own--her vocals are wispy, but forcefully so. Of course, Aaliyah's career never reached a state of resolution: she died shortly after Aaliyah was released. Static Major too passed before his time, a few years later, literally days before his frigid work on "Lollipop" bum rushed the charts.

English Blood Runs Hot

I sometimes feel sorry when artist's work leaks to the internet. While Jack White and Radiohead-level freakout/hissyfits are uncool, and smell strongly of the big egos involved, you have to feel for a guy like Bradford Cox. He got angry when somebody leaked the new disc from his pals in Animal Collective, and couldn't understand why people didn't funnel their energy into recording their own versions of highly anticipated albums instead, like he did for Pavement's Brighten The Corners. When Microcastle leaked 6 months before the album was to be released, Cox reconvened Deerhunter to record a completely new album, Weird Era Cont., which was packaged with Microcastle. That is how you respond to a leak, people. (Weird Era also leaked prior to the double-album's October release).

This is all a preface, however, to my main point: sometimes, unavailable/illegal things are so awesome they deserve to be leaked (I'm looking at you, unreleased and now unclear-able Paul's Boutique-era Beastie Boys tracks). Such is the case with Cocksucker Blues, the unreleased documentary that follows the Rolling Stones on their legendarily debauched 1972 North American tour. The film, which legally can only be shown in the presence of director Robert Frank, made its way to the internet recently.

Cocksucker Blues plays like a film of deleted scenes, a succession of unnarrated, uncontextualized images that flash before our eyes. It's verite to the point that you can hear the cameras rolling. Much of the documentary is presented in a spooky, bluish B&W, which lends a certain menace to the film's prosaic scenes, and an outright villainy to its notorious ones--public sex aboard a private jet, groupies and hangers-on shooting up, Mick Jagger doing lines of blow.

Of course, outright menace underscores the entire film, as the '72 tour was the Stones' first since their disastrous concert at Altamont, then and now as potent a symbol as any of the death of 60's idealism. The ghost of deceased Stone Brian Jones, a flower child felled by excess, also haunts the proceedings. Indeed, the Stones of Cocksucker Blues are hedonistic and apolitical, in pointed contrast to the radical Stones Goddard offered four years prior.

The version I streamed seems to be missing the very end of the film, but it's still fascinating stuff. The concert scenes, filmed in color, sizzle--in particular a duet between Jagger and Stevie Wonder that begins as "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" and transitions into "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," a brilliant bit of "Midnight Rambler," and footage of Jagger and Richards listening to "Happy" that segues into the Stones performing the song, with Jagger handling some of the lead vocals.

The film--for shame!--has little interest in Watts, Wyman, or Taylor, much less the touring musicians, but Jagger's magnetism compels. His on-stage persona is sex incarnate, and his sartorial decisions are as glam as glam gets. Off-stage, and in snippets of interviews we hear, he seems tired and conflicted, wanting both celebrity and peace of mind, to be and not to be Mick Jagger. Most telling are Jagger's visible relief at riding the tour bus (rather than taking the Stones jet and mingling with the on-board entourage) and inattentive response to a parade of half-sincere birthday wishes.

It's one of the film's few clues as to what made the Stones so brilliant, so fascinating. The menace is a part of it--the Luciferian affectations, profane grooves, and lyrical raunch--but it hardly explains how the group, from 1964-1981, produced one of the most consistently brilliant bodies of work in the history of rock music. And in 1972, the band was on an equaled but never bested hot streak, having, in the space of five years, released three-and-a-half of the greatest albums ever made.*

It seems the Stones milieu, disgusting and warped by excess as it may have been, was key to their music. The hedonism--as well as the prodigious talent of all involved--provided the irresistible boogie and salacious licks, while a certain antipathy towards this world accounts for the more reflective, honest moments (usually the country songs and slower blues numbers). The Stones had it both ways with Mr. D, it seems, or at least regretted their sympathy for the satanic. The second verse of "Dead Flowers" shares something of the two impulses, and captures the contradiction well:

Well when you're sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac
Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day
I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon
And another girl to take my pain away

The narrator speaks to a sybarite but is himself a lowlife. Yet the sybarite was once a part of the underworld, and the narrator, with his easy access to drugs and sex, an alpha male of the underground. Neither has both feet in either world, an their coexistence and contradictions blur the boundaries between high and low society. The song's tone and lyrical content, a pensiveness via hedonism, clearly emanates from the ne'er-do-well, and there's little evidence of soul-bearing by his former accomplice (just as "Brown Sugar" is hardly introspective). The two poles of high society and demimonde are characterized by the popular perceptions of Jagger and Richards, respectively.

The value of Cocksucker Blues for Stones scholars is that while it exposes the band and its coterie's sybaritic side, the performances suggest that the self-proclaimed "world's greatest rock and roll band" may have been exactly that. A few fleeting images and sounds help us grapple with the questions why and how.


*Sticky Fingers has never been a favorite