Rock videos part two: Rock those winter blues away
My winter’s trawl of YouTube clips takes me, inevitably, to Paul Simon. He had a booking on Saturday Night Live to preview a new musical direction.
The release of the album Graceland was delayed so the studio audience had never heard Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes, nor were quite ready for Paul’s strange backing group, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, with their Zulu chants and staccato dance routine.
It’s a mind-blowing moment – since removed from Youtube, presumably for copyright reasons. The album sounds as vibrant now as it did then, and if you were lucky enough to see that line-up when they toured with Paul in his prime, I’m green.
Freddie Mercury’s show-stealing turn at Live Aid in 1985 is a legend in the biz. More than a quarter-century on, he and Queen received a spontaneous tribute at a Green Day concert in London’s Hyde Park last year.
Before the headliners take the stage, a soundman puts on Bohemian Rhapsody to entertain the crowd. Some 65,000 people launch into the rock standard.
You think, they’ll never last because Rhapsody explodes with operatic bombast in the middle section. Think again – the ‘choir’ nail it in a display of popsong-power that surely upstaged the main event.
A wasted Amy Winehouse’s last concert, in Siberia, is memorable for all the wrong reasons. Her loss is our loss for what that huge talent might have achieved.
The same goes for wholesome Eva Cassidy, ripped from us by melanoma. Like Ray Charles, Aretha and Dusty, Eva was an ace song-hijacker with her pitch-perfect voice and immaculate phrasing.
People talk scathingly about ‘covers artists’, but the stealthiest catburglars create something far superior to the original. When Eva sang your song, wave it goodbye because she now owned it.
Her performance at the Blues Alley club in Washington is online, and if you manage to stay dry-eyed during Over The Rainbow, check your pulse.
Stevie Wonder commits his act of larceny at Sting’s 60th birthday concert. Whatever monkey glands Sting is ingesting, pass them around. He looks fit, healthy and half his age.
Okay, he’s not first-rank as a songwriter, but Fields of Gold is a sweetie – the harmonica solo on the original is by Nelson-raised Brendan Power – and Fragile would grace any CV.
Stevie is undaunted. Sting conducts the band while Stevie winds that harp up as only he – and possibly Brendan – can. At the final squeak of a note, Sting throws up his arms in happy surrender.
Dusty Springfield had the pipes to annex a whole genre, soul, and win the respect of black artists while doing it. She was way past her best, however, when guesting on Later With Jools Holland (Youtube).
They dredge up a clip from her heyday, and Dusty mimes shooting a gun at her former self. She then strains through a number that can’t be rescued by A-list ‘back-up’ singers Alison Moyet and Sinead O’Connor.
We have to skip back to Dusty In Memphis for genius on parade – though she drove producer Jerry Wexler mental with her insecurity, vetoing the arrangements, musicians, song choices … in short, everything. She eventually came around, giving us one of the greatest pop albums.
Dusty was adored by colleagues as the queen of ‘blue-eyed soul’. Carole King thought her the ultimate interpreter, and notorious taskmaster Burt Bacharach doffed his cap.
Next-generation Petshop Boys paid their respects by shoehorning Dusty into their catchy What Have I Done To Deserve This.
Brother Tom, from their start-out trio The Springfields, went on to produce and songwrite for an Aussie group called The Seekers, who apparently did quite well.
Dusty not so well. When her career slumped in Britain she made a disastrous move to America, sliding into drink, drugs and humiliation. She began cutting herself and was diagnosed as bipolar.
Her secret personal life – she was lesbian in an era when it would end her career – hit rock-bottom in 1983 with ‘marriage’ (then not legal) to actress Teda Bracci. They met at an AA meeting.
Both were soon hospitalised with brawl injuries. Dusty had been smashed in the mouth with a saucepan, losing teeth and requiring plastic surgery. She returned to Britain in 1994 but breast cancer was waiting. It took five years to kill her.
Modern popstars continue to acknowledge their debt. In 2013 Adele was reportedly approached to play Dusty in a long-rumoured biopic. Casting from heaven. Alas, it never happened.
Tragedy, ruination, heartache – your parents were right to douse youthful dreams of being a popstar. But dammit, when the band is sharp and the vocalist on top of his or her game, they can stir your blood like a blender on ‘turbo’.
Amid the current humiliation of tribute acts and fan-gouging tours by rock stars long past their Best By date, we can console ourselves by skipping back to their peak.
Warming in the gloaming, no less. YouTube also has a cute gambit of throwing up side-roads to explore. Fish around to learn about Jerry’s wrath, which led to the cloning of the famous Muscle Shoals studio, or why Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) doesn’t play Freddie Mercury (casting from hell) in the upcoming movie.
Finish off your session with Old Movie Stars Dance To Uptown Funk. It’s been around for a while but never fails to give me a buzz.
Tragedy, ruination, heartache – your parents were right to douse youthful dreams of being a popstar.