TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF ROCK?
As you are probably aware by now, just about every Rilly Big (as Ed Sullivan used to say when he wasn't performing questionable acts with little Topo Gigio) rock-and roll artist in the world is touring the U.S.A. this year. Paul McCartney and Wings, Elton, the Who, the (surprise!) Stones, the Beach Boys, Dylan, Zeppelin, Bad Company . . . they've all been here or soon will be.
Even the talk about the Beatles' reunion is be ginning to sound serious. As a staunch sup porter of the "Ban the Bicentennial" movement, though, I can't help but wonder whether this unprecedented flurry of rock activity will be enough to divert our attention from such obnoxious topical phenomena as Schmidt's Historic Beer Can Series and the Republican and Democratic conventions, or whether there will instead be so much music available that ultimately it will all cancel itself out, leaving us only with enough red-white-and-blue bunting to choke on.
The whole thing has set me to brooding.
You see, my colleagues around here, specifically those in the classical music areas, will have no trouble at all coming up with a quintessentially American composer to represent us as birthday time rolls around. Oh, Ives and Copland and Ellington and Billings and Joplin and whoever will all be slugging it out for the honor, but that's the point-in "serious" music, at least, there's a field to choose from. Me, I'm stuck with rock-and-roll, and that's a little limiting. I can't think of much mainstream pop dealing with America either, unless we're going to drag in Stephen Foster or George M. Cohan. But if my colleagues are equal to the task, then so, by gum, am I; there has to be a Bicentennial rock group and, further, a Bicentennial rock song somewhere.
AND of course there is; on any album by The Band. Didn't someone once describe them as the only rock act that could have warmed up the crowd for Abraham Lincoln? Didn't Guy Peelaert depict them as Civil War soldiers out of a Matthew Brady photograph in his comic book Rock Dreams? And don't many of their best songs deal with American history and American themes? Yup, they do, which makes them ideal-except for one small problem: they're Canadians. Somehow, I don't think we can have our neighbors to the North filling in for us at a time like this, especially with everyone so touchy about the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Hmmn. Well, then, how about the Beach Boys? They're good California lads, and what with Spirit of America, Be True to Your School, and all those car songs, who else ever reflected the American Post-War Urban Reality as accurately as Brian Wilson and Company? They are, for that matter, among the very few rockers who have ever reflected it positively, and that is certainly what we're looking for. But I've got my reservations about them as well, beginning with the fact that the Boys are actually staging their own Bicentennial Tour, even going so far as to schlep along the group America (who, despite the name, has never made a statement about this country-or anything else, for that matter). We don't want to be too obvious about this thing either (I keep thinking of those beer cans).
Okay, okay! I've got it! Send Arlo Guthrie over to the White House and have him sing his father's This Land Is Your Land. No, that's no good; the song has already been bought up for an airline ad, and we can't have crass commercialism impinging on the dignity of the occasion. Waitaminnit . . . the White House! Jack Ford had a rock band when he was in high school (think of the President's having to deal with all that noise coming out of his garage!), and a fellow critic who has heard him jam assures me he's quite a hot guitar player. But no, it's an election year; Dad would never let Jack make such a spectacle of himself. One Ron Nessen in the family is quite enough.
Goodness, what a muddle. But hold on, now ... what was it the man said about obvious solutions being the best ones? Of course! 1976 also happens to be the two hundred and first anniversary of the Midnight Ride of ... Paul Revere! Paul Revere and the Raiders!! Now I know this is hardly the time or the place for me to bore you with such bits of trivia as the fact that Paul and the boys were into outrageous costumes and pop theatrics when Bowie was still in diapers, or that they were smashing pianos into smithereens in teen clubs before Peter Townshend even owned a guitar, much less demolished one. That's unimportant. What is important, it seems to me, is that every patriotic American rock-and-roll fan sit right down and demand that the Raiders back into those ridiculous Revolutionary War outfits they used to cavort in on Where the Action Is, and that they then pCtition Columbia to reissue, original cover intact, the perfect Bicentennial rock album: the Raiders' "Midnight Ride." (It might be a good symbolic gesture to throw a shipment of Janis Ian records off a boat into Boston Harbor at the same time.) We might even make a hit of the group's new single The British Are Coming (well, the Queen is) if we're feeling feisty; it chronicles the events of April 18, 1775, while the band plays Louie Louie in the background.
That takes care of finding the right group.
Now how about the right song? That's much, much easier-in fact, there are only two logical choices, so I'm willing to let someone else make the final decision. For the Fifties fans out there, what could be more appropriate than Chuck Berry's Back in the USA, with its immortal lines "I'm so glad to be back in the USA, where the hamburgers sizzle on the open grills night and day"? And for the younger rockers in the audience, Bruce Springsteen's Fourth of July, Asbury Park ( Sandy) just couldn't be topped (so what if the song mentions the holiday only in the title?).
And there we have it: the right group, the right songs. If we can get them all together we should be able to Rock the Bicentennial in a style at least a bit more amusing than another round of Kate Smith singing God Bless America. If we can't, I have one last suggestion: go see the Woodstock movie again, but this time stand up when Jimi Hendrix plays his unaccompanied, feedback-ridden version of everyone's favorite Golden Oldie, The Star Spangled Banner. Second best, but not bad.
Ah, if reviewing were only as easy as this a-&-r work!
------ Paul Revere and the Raiders holding up somebody's front porch
on the jacket of their second album, "Just Like Us." That's Paul
at lower right.
Also see:
AMERICAN MUSIC (200th anniv.)
Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)