Author: paulobrian Page 8 of 28

The high school flashback continues with Phil Collins’ 1982 album Hello, I Must Be Going!. Just like Making Movies, this was another teenage mainstay for me, especially when in the throes of relationship angst. I have vivid memories of loading up “I Don’t Care Anymore” and driving way too fast on country backroads while singing at the top of my lungs. (Sorry, Mom and Dad.)

Now, let’s face it, at some point Phil Collins jumped the shark. In fact, I have argued in the past that the musical equivalent of jumping the shark should be called “Sussudioing.” However, I would also argue that what makes his shark-jumping so clear is how great he was before it happened, and this album was definitely part of the great period.

Not that there weren’t a couple of hints. Probably the clearest indication of his future direction is in his cover of The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love.” Now, credit where due: this is a bright, breezy, fun version of the song. In fact, as an 80’s kid, I think Collins’ version was my introduction to that song, and alongside reruns of The Big Chill on cable, it prompted me to seek out a bunch of Motown originals. I’m richer for that. Not only that, the song was a big hit for Collins, hitting Number One in the UK and breaching the Top Ten in the US. Phil probably saw this as a big neon finger pointing the way to what the public wanted to hear from him.

In the context of this album, though, it’s quite jarringly out of place. The only other track with a similar lightness of tone is “Like China”, in which Collins adopts a broad, comedic Cockney accent to play a rough-edged character in love with a girl from a different social class. Collins totally hams it up in character, singing “Oy know ‘oo oy am!” and so forth, promising to hold this delicate girl like china, prove to her brother that he’s no “limp-wristed wimp”, and make himself presentable for her parents. It’s all pretty goofy.

Compare that to the other character piece on Hello, an incredibly dark piece of work called “Thru These Walls.” This is the story of a lonely man in an apartment, whose pleasure comes from putting a glass to his wall and listening to his neighbors’ sexual romps. At least, that’s his night-time activity. During the days he gazes out his window at the children below, struggling with his sexual desire for them. “Am I really asking a lot?”, he muses, “Just to reach out and touch somebody?” Well, yes. That grim, desperate tone is much more typical of the rest of this record.

Oh, there are horn sections and plenty of them. But while The Phenix Horns (who had also appeared on Face Value) may have polished songs like “It Don’t Matter To Me” and “I Cannot Believe It’s True” to mirror-brightness, they couldn’t disguise the snarling anger of the lyrics. Both of these songs are furious accusations of lies and betrayal. “I Cannot Believe” lives up to its title as an incredulous expression of disbelief, but it knows the truth underneath — “(Over and over) I keep on telling myself / (Over and over) I’m hope I’m gonna wake up / But (over and over) I know it’s really happening / And there’s nothing that I can say.” “It Don’t Matter” takes the matter a step further, accusing the subject of lying (“I’ve heard it all so many times before”), and following up with a menacing promise: “There’s no way that you can run / Cos I’m gonna find you / And there’s nobody that you can turn to / Cos I’ll be behind you, just to remind you…”

Yes, they’re peppy, and yes they’re poppy, and yeah, they’re pretty brassy, but these are not lighthearted pop songs. Rather, they are seething with rage underneath the dazzling horns. Sometimes Collins just goes straight to the rage, as in the rather self-explanatory “Do You Know, Do You Care?” Again, the theme is lies and betrayal: “You said you would, you didn’t, and I wanna know why / And don’t make no excuses.” And once again, there’s an underlying threat: “I watch you, yes every day I watch you pass me by / I’ll get you, yes in the end I’ll get you / Just watch me try.” But there are no happy trumpets here, just a huge drumbeat, a ringing vocal echo, and a deep, buzzy synth drone.

And that brings us to “I Don’t Care Anymore.” In my estimation, this song is the absolute masterpiece of Hello, I Must Be Going!. Collins divorced his first wife in 1980, and critics called 1981’s Face Value his “divorce album”, but it seems he still had plenty of anger a year later. It’s in most of the album’s songs, but this is the most concentrated dose, and its place as the opening track makes it very clear what the record will be about.

“I Don’t Care Anymore” starts with a portentous drumbeat, unadorned, pounding out fury. Of all the songs on this album, this is the one most ruled by Collins the drummer, and the drums stay center stage throughout the song, underlined by sustained chords on the synth. Over this foundation, Collins lays venomous lyrics in an anguished vocal, spurning his former lover with unbelievable ferocity. Truly, if you’ve been burned in love, this is just the song for you. I recommend high volume and high speeds. (NOTE: Not an actual recommendation.)

Finally, towards the end, when the anger has spent itself at last, we get a couple of tender and exhausted songs. “Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away” starts with a lovely piano, and contrition: “You were lonely and you needed a friend.” From there, the song goes into some familiar possessive territory (as the title indicates), alongside apologies: “What else can I do but say I was wrong?” Then at the end of the album we hear a man who’s worn out from marital strife, facing another fight and asking, “Why can’t it wait ’til morning?”, thinking that things will be clearer in the daylight, and hoping that if they wait until “next time”, that time may never come.

The irony is, as this song was released, his marriage was long over. The conflict he’d tried to put off had blown up in his face. Not only that, we as listeners now know that Collins had two more marriages and divorces in his future, not to mention a fair bit of sussudioing. So let it wait ’til morning, but in the morning it’s still there, unavoidable. Phil Collins is a bit of a tragic figure today, once respected but now serving as a punchline more than a role model. But damn, back in the day he sure could write a hell of a divorce album. Or two.

In the fall of 1985, the album that absolutely dominated the airwaves was Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits. It seemed like you couldn’t go an hour in the day without hearing “Money For Nothing” or “Walk Of Life” or “So Far Away.” Also that fall, I was a sophomore in high school and cementing my friendship with Robby. One of our main sources of bonding was music, and we spent many a contented hour in one basement or the other, listening to and discussing our favorite bands. I dug Brothers, and when I mentioned that, Robby said, “Well then, you really have to listen to Making Movies.”

So he loaned me the CD, and I listened. And then I listened again. And then I bought it myself, and listened again, and again, and again, and again. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say I’ve listened to this album literally hundreds of times. It became one of the most important albums in my emotional high school life. I can still remember the school folders upon which I dutifully handwrote the lyrics to “Romeo and Juliet”, “Hand In Hand”, and “Solid Rock”. And I’ve always associated this record with Robby, which I suppose made it only a matter of time until I assigned it for us to revisit.

What is it that makes this disc so special for me? Well, certainly there’s the fact that I was 15 when I fell in love with it. That always helps to seal the deal. And because of that, I suppose I can’t find a place to stand that’s outside of my own intense emotional reaction, which by the way still happens every time I hear Making Movies. All I can do is stand where I’m standing, and tell you why I think this album is pure magic.

Let’s start with the guitar playing of Mark Knopfler. That’s a fine place to start when discussing any Dire Straits record, but this one may be the shiniest of shining examples. No, wait. The shiniest example is the first one: “Sultans of Swing”. That was the record with which Knopfler debuted his extraordinary style, in which he and the guitar perform a song-length call-and-response conversation, each continually topping the other for eloquence until the final outro solo, in which the guitar declares a decisive victory.

No, that song isn’t on Making Movies. But what it accomplished in a 5:49 single, Making Movies sustains for well over half an hour. In “Tunnel Of Love” that sounds like a continued conversation in the “Sultans” style, a trading of leads between the guitar and the lyrics. In “Expresso Love” it starts out as a riff, turning into a rhythm part that intertwines with the vocal line, each one equal partners in the dance, both of them layering onto the initial part, then welcoming another layer of a different rhythm part, which then resolves into full solo, which then gets another solo layered onto it in counterpoint, before the whole structure drops away to expose the fundamental riff again. In “Romeo And Juliet” it’s a gorgeous melody played acoustic with impeccable style and tone, threading a path into the full song, in which it keens sweetly in harmony with Romeo’s streetsuss serenade, joined at the end by an electric, echoing the melody and echoing itself.

At every point, Knopfler’s guitar sound directs the music to where it’s supposed to go, whether that’s someplace delicate or muscular, wistful or ecstatic, sometimes all in the same song. It’s the defining sound of Dire Straits — aside from David Gilmour, I’ve never heard a guitarist who can coax so much emotion out of the instrument. But more than that, Knopfler’s songwriting style pulls off this remarkable trick of placing the guitar in equal importance to the vocal, making every song into a duet even though there’s only one singer.

Still, as important as Knopfler is in the band’s sound, this Dire Straits album has a secret weapon: the incredible piano playing of Roy Bittan. When I saw who was credited with the keyboards on this album, I had to laugh. How many of my favorite records does this guy play on? Sure, he’s in the E Street Band, so there are all those great Springsteen albums. And of course (for me), he’s a fundamental part of the sound on Stevie Nicks’ first two solo albums, Bella Donna and The Wild Heart. Top that with his phenomenal work on Bat Out Of Hell. Add to that appearances with Peter Gabriel, Patti Smith, Jackson Browne, and David Bowie. He even plays on Car Wheels On A Gravel Road!

With Making Movies, his keyboards are the first thing we hear. There’s the warbly organ playing Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Carousel Waltz”, almost more of a sound effect than a musical part, but right behind it is Bittan’s piano, doubling the melody, then dropping into arpeggios of increasing intensity until the curtain is swept aside and the full band jumps onstage for “Tunnel Of Love.” The effect is one in which sweetness, suspense, and a powerful yearning all combine to introduce a song that dramatizes those same feelings with stunning force. The piano returns midway through the song, as its mood shifts from soaring to tender. Then, as the final solo winds down, the piano appears once more, with cascading notes that are very reminiscent of the guitar part in the final moments of “Sultans.”

Bittan’s keyboards often serve this kind of threading and bookending function on the songs. They’re a perfect counterpoint to the opening riff on “Expresso Love”, fading more into the background after the drums start, but reappearing when the beat drops out in the middle, and returning to prominence once more as the song vamps and fades to its conclusion. In “Les Boys” it’s a rollicking music-hall piano that evokes the cabaret described in the lyrics. The piano is featured by itself for the introduction to “Hand In Hand”, a gorgeous and aching song from which Bittan wrings every drop of emotion, first alone, then accompanying the band, then entwining with the guitar at the end to lead into the final question mark.

As an example of excellent musicians, locked into each other, and playing at the top of their game, Making Movies is outstanding. But where it hits me straight in the heart is when that music brings to life the vivid romanticism of Mark Knopfler’s lyrics. I want to be clear that by “romanticism”, I don’t just mean Romeo-and-Juliet-style romance, though obviously that is present on this album, in fact literally so. I also mean that these songs exemplify many of the qualities associated with the artistic and literary Romantic movement: describing heightened experience, the veneration of the imagination and of powerful emotions, and a focus on the heroic individual, set into relief against a drab industrialized society.

That list is pretty much the Cliff Notes version of “Skateaway.” The heroine of the story lives in a setting of traffic, trucks, and taxis, all crawling along jammed city streets. She weaves fearlessly through these obstacles, an “urban toreador” who teases the taxi drivers and lets the trucks brush against her hip. And what elevates this heroic figure? Music and imagination. The music in her ears takes her mind into story — she’s “making movies, on location” as she transcends her mechanistic settings, finding her own world in the city, a purer one than ours.

“Les Boys” are heroic figures themselves, stepping beyond the prejudice that surrounds them into a place where they can feel “glad to be gay.” Even “Solid Rock”, as realistic and grounded as the lyrics want to be, is about the individual trusting in his inner feelings rather than the ephemeral illusions and projections of culture.

It’s romantic love, though, that occupies the bulk of the album, each statement standing brilliantly on its own and combining into an exhilarating whole. “Hand in Hand” mourns a complicated loss in progress, remembering a history together full of pain and yearning, but also full of passionate attachment. “Expresso Love” is the other side of the coin, the pure exaltation of desire, the idealization of the lover and the incredible rush of ecstasy that accompanies her presence. “Tunnel Of Love” brings them together — the carnival thrills of a new love, and the grimy souvenirs of love lost.

And then there’s “Romeo And Juliet.” This is an epic love song if there ever was one, and to try to describe it feels like an exercise in futility — I couldn’t capture a tenth of its luminous beauty. So I’ll just say a couple of things about what it means to me. I’ve felt like that lovestruck Romeo before, though I could never hope to muster the cool of “You and me babe, how about it?” And it’s one thing to want someone, but another thing entirely to find that though you may be perfect for her and she for you, the time is wrong, and no right time is coming. That is the piercing ache at the heart of this song, and its combined evocation of Shakespeare’s tragedy and of its more modern avatar West Side Story drives the knife deeper than a song alone could manage.

Romeo feels betrayed and abandoned, and can’t help but replay over and over again the scenes of passion in which he came to believe that love is forever, that promises of “thick and thin” couldn’t be broken. But Romeo is trapped in a tragedy, in which the most he can do is reach through the bars of a rhyme towards a Juliet now forever beyond his grasp.

I don’t feel like this now, and I haven’t felt this way in a long time. But as far back in the past as those feelings might be, they leave their scars, and hearing “Romeo and Juliet” takes me right back to that somewhere place. It’s time travel by music, and it’s so, so powerful, even thirty-odd years past 1985.

A while ago, I wrote about how I have trouble relating to a lot of The Band’s material. I like The Last Waltz well enough, the energy and the musicianship, but as far as the actual songs, I could never quite connect with tale after tale of down-and-out hillbillies. So when I approached Robbie Robertson’s first solo album in 1987, it wasn’t as a fan of his earlier work — it was as a fan of Peter Gabriel, U2, and BoDeans. Of the nine songs on this album, fully six of them feature one of those three artists, seven if you count instrumental as well as vocal contributions.

This, then, is the story of a producer. Daniel Lanois created some of the defining sounds of the 1980s by producing two of its most artistically and commercially successful albums: Peter Gabriel’s So and U2’s The Joshua Tree. He’d produce albums for U2 and Gabriel beforehand and afterwards, but those two were the peak, both for him and for the artists. His sonic landscape was huge, creating epic cathedrals of music with echoing bass and drums pushed way up in the mix, punctuated by searing guitars and sometimes bright horns as well.

Lanois produced two albums in 1987. One was The Joshua Tree, and the other was Robbie Robertson. He’d produced So the year before, and in fact a core of musicians from that album — Tony Levin on bass and Manu Katché on drums, as well as Lanois himself on various instruments and vocals — provide Robertson’s accompaniment here. Lanois’s signature sounds are all over this album, as are his signature artists, along with BoDeans, whom he never produced but who were the opening act on U2’s Joshua Tree tour.

The album opens with “Fallen Angel”, featuring a haunting vocal by Gabriel, and a keyboard part too. It’s a tribute to Robertson’s former Band-mate Richard Manuel, who had hanged himself in 1986. The song starts soft, building in power. Robertson’s vocal comes in wordlessly, hums that transition into high wails of anguish, slowly forming lyrics: “Are you out there? / Can you hear me? / Can you see me in the dark?” Once the verse begins, it’s clear that Robertson is not speaking in character, and that he’s writing far away from the Band mode. It’s a song of loss, with Robertson’s earthy tone complemented perfectly by multiple layers of Peter Gabriel’s ethereal voice intoning over and over, “Fallen angel… if my eyes can see…” It’s a fitting farewell to a lost soul who “felt too much.”

The grand mode continues in both of Robertson’s songs with U2. “Sweet Fire Of Love” was in fact co-written with the group, and is performed more or less as a duet with them. If it made the charts today, it’d probably be billed as “Robbie Robertson featuring U2”, or maybe just “Robbie Robertson and U2.” “Testimony,” too, features the entire band and a horn section to boot. In fact, now that I think about it, these two songs not only give us a whole new side of Robertson, they also document U2’s transition from its epic Joshua Tree mode to the more soul-oriented approach of Rattle & Hum. “Sweet Fire” sees them in spiritual/romantic fever, similar to “Where The Streets Have No Name” or “In God’s Country,” whereas the bluesier sound of “Testimony” hearkens forward to songs like “Angel Of Harlem” and “When Love Comes To Town.”

Then there are the BoDeans. Kurt Neumann and Sam Llanas have an electrifying vocal blend, and Lanois puts it to excellent use in the glorious “Showdown At Big Sky,” an impressionistic song about escalating war. Robertson sets the scene in the verse, but the chorus belongs to Kurt and Sammy, who take it to the skies musically, similar to the effect that Gabriel has in “Fallen Angel.” “American Roulette” doesn’t feature them quite so prominently, but once again they lend that special sound to the chorus, specifically the title. Robertson’s lyrics paint abstract portraits of James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe, but when it’s time to make his point, it’s BoDeans who do the underlining.

“Somewhere Down The Crazy River” is a little different. Rather than a CinemaScope war or tragedy, “Crazy River” is more like a southern noir. Robertson speaks the verses rather than singing them, making the whole thing feel like an unsettling session with a grizzled old storyteller, who may himself be a little crazy. He sings the chorus, and that’s where Sam Llanas comes in. Llanas has a raspy vocal tone, and the way he matches with Neumann’s much smoother voice is the key to what makes the BoDeans’ harmonies special, somewhat analogous to Ray and Saliers (respectively) of the Indigo Girls. But Llanas by himself is pure grit, and he turns that dial up to 11 as he echoes the title behind the chorus. Where the other guest spots provide a counterpoint to Robertson’s tone, Llanas in this one takes that tone even further in the direction it was already going.

The final guest star song is “Broken Arrow”, to which Peter Gabriel contributes keyboards and drum programming. Because the contribution is instrumental, it feels far more like a pure Robertson song, and in fact is probably the best known song on the album, thanks to Rod Stewart’s cover making the top 20 in 1991. It’s a sweet song, with some lovely lines: “Do you feel what I feel? / Can we make that so it’s part of the deal? / I’ve gotta hold you in these arms of steel / Lay your heart on the line / I want to breathe when you breathe.”

Probably my favorite song from this assignment, though, is one with no guest stars at all: “Hell’s Half-Acre.” Search Google for this term and you’ll find a strange geological formation in Wyoming, as well as an obscure 1954 noir film whose title refers to a Honolulu slum district. Read the lyrics of this song, though, and I think you’ll agree it’s pretty clear that the reference here is to Vietnam.

The lyrics tell the story of a young Native American man from the Black Hills of South Dakota, drafted to fight a “rumble in the jungle.” Robertson’s melody and Lanois’s arrangement perfectly convey the danger and intensity of his situation, and the story they tell has no happy ending — “She said, you’ve changed, you’re not the same / Clouds of napalm and the opium / The damage was already done.” Robertson’s vocal is as fierce as he gets, and the result is devastating. For all the support he gets on this album, “Hell’s Half Acre” shows that Robbie Robertson was plenty strong standing on his own.

There are lots of reasons people make solo albums. Sometimes it signals the next phase of an artist’s career after their band’s final creative demise, as with Sting, or Paul McCartney, or Paul Simon. Some artists produce far more material than their band can accommodate, such as Stevie Nicks, or Amy Ray, or Phil Collins. Sometimes they’re really just side projects — Stephin Merritt, Thom Yorke, and Mick Fleetwood come to mind. But some solo albums demand to be made, and such was the case with Pete Townshend’s Empty Glass.

Townshend had been writing for The Who since 1964, a songwriting career of relentless innovation and spectacular success. But by 1980, that career and indeed his whole life was foundering on a variety of shoals and reefs. He was struggling with a substance abuse habit, including alcohol and heroin. His 12-year marriage was coming apart. Punk rock had exploded in Britain, creating a culture that cast Townshend and The Who in the uncomfortable role of Establishment dinosaurs. The last Who album, Who Are You, had been a commercial success but was difficult to record, and had received mixed reviews. During the Who Are You tour, 11 fans died in a crowd crush due to festival seating arrangements in Cincinnati. And Keith Moon was dead, claimed by an overdose on the sedative he’d been prescribed for his alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

The songs on Empty Glass give us a look into Townshend’s anguish over these issues, sometimes obliquely and sometimes with startling directness. But even more than that, they show an artist freed from a musical framework that had come to constrict him more and more over the years. The Who is a phenomenal band, obviously, and for many years they had served as Townshend’s creative outlet, but The Who has its limitations. Chief among these is Roger Daltrey as a frontman, and I say that with full respect to Daltrey’s sensational stage presence and potent singing voice. Daltrey is many things, but one thing he isn’t is uncertain – he has a clear “golden god” image, and extends that image to the band in general with swagger and machismo.

But Townshend’s new songs, though some of them were firmly in the Who idiom on a musical level, were not necessarily a good match with Daltrey. The album’s opening track “Rough Boys” is a perfect example. Musically, it could easily be a Who song. Lyrically, it starts out that way too: “Tough boys / Running the streets”. That’s an image that would have been at home on Quadrophenia or Who’s Next. But the song quickly takes an unexpected turn — “Rough toys / Under the sheets”. Okay, so now we’re talking about rough sex, but even that’s not so beyond the pale. Here’s what’s next, though: “Rough boys / Don’t walk away / I very nearly missed you / Tough boys / Come over here / I wanna bite and kiss you”.

Whoa! So, hey, it turns out maybe the rough sex is with the boys themselves! And the homoerotic tone gets clearer and clearer: “I wanna see what I can find”… “Gonna get inside you”… “I wanna buy you leather”… “We can’t be seen together”. And just in case that’s not transparent enough, Townshend also gives us “And I Moved,” an unmistakable portrait of a tender erotic encounter with a man, whose “hands felt like ice exciting / As he laid me back just like an empty dress.”

Now is probably a good time to say that yes, of course, Pete’s not necessarily writing about himself, and in fact is more prone to write in character than most rock songwriters. And yes, it’s true that “And I Moved” was originally written for Bette Midler, though that doesn’t change the fact that he still chose to sing it himself, without changing the gender. In any case, can we really picture Daltrey singing these songs, at least in the way they’re presented here? It was daring enough in 1980 for Townshend to put them forward, and what they express was not in the Who’s iconic vocabulary, at least not at that time.

Empty Glass is full of one thing, and that is multiplicity, more than The Who could have contained. Nowhere is that clearer than on the astonishing “I Am An Animal.” Most of the song is sung in Pete’s “sweet” register — think the “don’t cry” bridge from “Baba O’Riley”. Townshend’s voice is very different from Daltrey’s, but for me it has a magic all its own, tough and tender at the same time. Parts of the song are sung almost in a hush, like a lone choirboy practicing in a cathedral.

The words put forth a series of bold, contradictory metaphors: “I am an animal / My teeth are sharp and my mouth is full”… “I am a vegetable / I get my body badly pulled.” “I am a human being / And I don’t believe all the things I’m seeing”… “I am an angel / I booked in here, I came straight from hell.” In one moment, he’s proclaiming himself “queen of the fucking universe”, and almost immediately afterwards, “I am a nothing king.”

It all returns to the chorus, in which the speaker is lost in a timeless present moment, without history or future, where he’s being carried along into the unknown, accompanied by all these versions of himself:

I’m looking back
And I can’t see the past anymore, so hazy
I’m on a track and I’m traveling so fast
Oh for sure, I’m crazy

According to Townshend, the song “Empty Glass” is based on 14th century Sufi poem, in which the heart is an empty cup filled up with God’s love. And that certainly fits the words, but I would suggest that in another sense, the empty glass of this album is Townshend himself, so long a vehicle through which another voice expressed itself. When he stepped out of that structure, he found himself filled with beautiful multitudes, some complementary, some oppositional.

He is lost, yes, and desperately seeking — “I’m losing my way”… “I’m boozing to pray”. Some lines seem to speak clearly to his troubled relationship — “I don’t know what I have anymore / Anymore than you do”… “I don’t know where you are anymore / I’ve got no clue.” As another great songwriter once put it, pain is all around.

But at the same time, love is all around too. Empty Glass contains two of the greatest love songs Townshend ever wrote: “Let My Love Open The Door” and “A Little Is Enough.” Both of them are open-ended enough to encompass many kinds of love — romantic, agape, divine. Both have a spiritual component, reaching toward a kind of devotion that is generous, open, and focused outward. And both are musically ecstatic, locating an elevated bliss in the declaration of passionate attachment.

Pain and love sit side by side most manifestly in “Jools and Jim”. Fundamentally, this is a furious song, striking out vehemently at a poison pen of the British press named Julie Burchill, who had recently co-written a book-length rant about rock and punk called The Boy Looked At Johnny with her future husband Tony Parsons. In a promotional interview for their book, they had slagged off Keith Moon, saying “we’re better off without him.” Townshend lets them have it with both barrels, spitting out line after line of rebuke: “Typewriter bangers on / You’re all just hangers-on”… “You listen to love with your intellect”… “Your hearts are melting in pools of gin”… “Morality ain’t measured in a room he wrecked.”… “They have a standard of perfection there / That you and me can never share”.

But in a remarkable bridge, Townshend admits his own complicity, and allows for the possibility of connection even with such enemies:

But I know for sure if we met up eye to eye
A little wine would bring us closer, you and I
Cause you’re right, hypocrisy will be the death of me
And there’s an I before e when you’re spelling ecstasy
And you, you too…

Immediately afterward, he invokes Krishna, and says it was “for you that Jesus’ blood was shed.” He finds forgiveness in his heart even for those who have stabbed it. He doesn’t let them off the hook — the “you too” attaches to the statement about hypocrisy in my reading — but he believes “for sure” that they could connect if they met on a human level. We don’t see this sort of stance taken very often in rock and roll, do we? Townshend blends rebellion and humility, anger and contrition into something more potent than either.

It’s clear that in part, Empty Glass was a reaction to punk rock. He dedicates “Rough Boys” to both his children and to the Sex Pistols. “I am an animal” not only echoes the Pistols’ “I am an antichrist / I am an anarchist”, it replies back to their song “Bodies”, in which the chorus cries, “I’m not an animal!” But where punk culminates in blistering anger, for Townshend that’s merely a starting point, on a road that ends in an open door.

On May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen fired their weapons above, below, and into a crowd of unarmed students at Kent State University in Ohio. Four students were killed, nine wounded. On May 15, LIFE magazine dedicated its cover and a set of photo spreads to the killings, giving America a firsthand look at the results of what it called “senseless and brutal murder at point-blank range.” And on May 21, after seeing those pictures, Neil Young brought a new song to his bandmates Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

The song was called “Ohio”, and it was a howl of rage and confusion against “tin soldiers and Nixon.” The music was a fierce, harsh protest march, returning again and again to stark statements and questions. “Soldiers are cutting us down.” “What if you knew her, and found her dead on the ground?” It was on the radio just a few weeks after the shootings, elbowing its way onto the charts to sit ironically alongside CSNY’s much more optimistic “Teach Your Children.” “Ohio” is the iconic example of pop music responding to world events with galvanizing immediacy, marrying the folk protest tradition of Woody Guthrie to the power of mass distribution, broadcasting, and electric instruments.

Peace Trail finds Young in “Ohio” mode. He recorded the whole album in four days, and its songs are full of responses to the tumultuous headlines of November 2016. The album was released on December 9, just a few weeks after the events it references. But there are some differences too. Where “Ohio” mentioned Nixon directly, Peace Trail doesn’t name Donald Trump or Standing Rock. And where “Ohio” was energized and powerful, Peace Trail is overall more muted, more acoustic, and more contemplative.

The album starts with its title track, and its best song. Over chords vaguely reminiscent of “Rockin’ In The Free World,” Young observes that “something new is growing” in and among the same old signs, and that this new development has moved him to “hit the peace trail.” He’s decided to keep his hand in, to not cash it in yet — and this album is evidence of that decision. To my ears, it’s a pretty clear reference to the election of Donald Trump, “something new” in an American president: no experience, little interest in governing, swept into power on a tide of authoritarian appeals to racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. People of all stripes were energized by this election to hit their own versions of the peace trail, to speak up and stand up wherever and however they can to protect the vulnerable, resist economic inequality, and forestall environmental disaster. Young is speaking for all of those people in this song.

Why would a 71-year-old artist maintain this level of commitment, still responding to the news after 46 years when so many of his contemporaries have faded away or locked themselves into an endless run-out groove of nostalgia? He explains why in track two: “Can’t Stop Workin’.” Continued dedication like Young’s is “bad for the body, but it’s good for the soul,” so he tells us, and once again, this album is evidence. His voice has always had a frail, tender quality to it, but he sounds particularly ragged in many of the tracks on this album. Despite that, though, his facility with words is intact, as is the fire in his belly.

“Indian Givers” and “Show Me” provide evidence of that. The first is a clear explication of the conflict over the Dakota Acccess Pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. For me, the second verse to this song is the most powerful moment on the whole album:

Now it’s been about 500 years
We keep taking what we gave away
Just like what we call Indian givers
It makes you sick and gives you shivers

It’s one of those moments when poetry and words can bring together ideas to form an undeniable conceptual juggernaut, blowing through any possible opposition. “Show Me” isn’t quite so concrete, but is still clearly grounded in the “battle over water” on the sacred land.

None of these songs has the urgency of “Ohio.” They tend to roll along at midtempo or slower, mostly acoustic guitar, drums, percussion, and quiet bass, with the occasional intrusion of harmonica so heavily distorted it sounds like guitar, or perhaps it’s the other way around, or both at different times. After “Show Me,” though, something unsettling starts to happen. Young seems to more or less run out of musical ideas.

“Texas Rangers” is spoken rather than sung by Young, over a quasi-musical figure that is singsongy in the extreme. It reminds me of the little non-songs some people (including my spouse) sometimes hum to themselves as they go about their business, narrating the mundane events of their lives. “Wipe the counter, fill the cat bowl, fold the laundry and sweep the floor.” I was tired of it the first time I heard it, before it even ended. Talk-singing like this dominates the latter half of the album, especially on songs like “John Oaks” and “My Pledge”, which are more or less Young reciting doggerel over simple beats.

The whole thing winds up with the baffling “My New Robot,” which seems to be pretty much the story of an unemployed guy sitting around the house, getting a robot in the mail from Amazon.com, and programming it to say odd and incoherent things for a loved one. It’s a very strange ending to an album so engaged with the political and environmental aspects of the world, and an unsatisfying one at that.

That’s not to say that the latter half of the album doesn’t have its moments. Young nails a character study in “Terrorist Suicide Hang Gliders,” in which frightened white people ask, “It’s all those people with funny names / moving into our neighborhood / How can I tell if they’re bad or good?” without any recognition that “all those people” might ask the same question about them, and often with much more legitimate cause to feel threatened. The auto-tuned sung background on “My Pledge” is a haunting avant-garde evocation of the soul and emotion that can linger behind a plainspoken presentation. And “Glass Acccident” effectively captures how many of us felt waking up on the morning of November 9th.

Still, overall Peace Trail ends up a fairly slight and uneven album, gradually petering out after a promising beginning. Nevertheless, it’s the first rock and roll response I’ve seen to the New Trump Order, and as I’ve said, it has some very powerful moments. It’s not exactly The Rising, but it’s still something to be grateful for. Neil Young can’t stop working, and we all get to reap the benefits.