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On the Arts: If you're listening for it, the history of rock 'n' roll is in the music
Sunday, June 03, 2001 By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic
I turned 4 the year my favorite decade ended. And the sad thing is, I didn't even know it was my favorite at the time.
I doubt I even knew what decades were. I think we covered that in second grade.
But I digress.
I discovered my love of the '60s as the '70s were ending, after seeing "Help" on cable one Thanksgiving at my aunt's house. (If I didn't thank you that Thanksgiving, thank you, Mary Kay.)
So anyhow, I met the Beatles and quickly discovered the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Bob Dylan, the Yardbirds and others, immersing myself in the magic of a recent past I'd somehow missed (in the process of learning to walk, no doubt) through books on rock 'n' roll and frequent trips to Record Graveyard.
Half of what I bought was junk, of course (although I'm sure my folks would put that number at closer to 80 percent).
But it was worth it, sifting through the occasional Iron Butterfly or Pacific Gas & Electric to get to Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde." Or "Beggars Banquet." Or "Revolver." Or my favorite album ever, "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society."
By now, I know those albums -- and those artists -- better than I ever hope to know myself, which made it all the more amazing when I heard the Kinks' first album and other 1964 releases in a whole new light the other day while driving home from Cleveland.
I'd decided to make the trip more interesting -- for me, if not my wife -- by listening to all my favorite albums of the early '60s in chronological order (while continuing to swear I'm nothing like the freaks in "High Fidelity").
The first revelation that hit me, outside Canfield, after switching from "The Times They Are A-Changin'" to "Beatles for Sale," is that while much of what I've read would tend to credit Dylan with inventing folk-rock (and handing it off to the Byrds) and the Beatles with inventing everything from love to humor to the Internet, it was actually the Beatles who invented folk-rock.
Never mind the history books.
It's right there in the records.
Dylan was playing acoustic guitar and harmonica alone on both his 1964 releases while the Beatles -- inspired by Dylan, especially Lennon -- were chiming away on 12-string Rickenbackers blended with acoustics.
Check out "No Reply."
Or "Every Little Thing."
Or "I'm a Loser."
And if "What You're Doing" isn't definitive folk-rock, I played lead guitar on "Abbey Road."
It's true, the Byrds hit No. 1 in 1965 with Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," but they played it so it sounded like the Beatles on "Beatles for Sale."
I did not know that.
Now I do, just as I know now that the Kinks' first album, which for decades I had thought of as the birth of punk, is actually wilder and faster and more intense when listened to in context of the other classic rock 'n' roll releases of the time (a year before I hit the charts at Homestead Hospital).
The Rolling Stones sound ripe for NPR in comparison, let alone the Beatles.
Don't believe it? Play "You Really Got Me" back to back with "It's All Over Now" or "I Feel Fine." And when you're finished, consider the way the groups approached Chuck Berry on their 1964 releases -- the Beatles on "Rock and Roll Music," the Stones on "Around and Around" and "Carol," and the Kinks on "Beautiful Delilah" and "Too Much Monkey Business."
As Berry himself has noted, on more than one occasion, I go for that rock 'n' roll music, any old way you choose it. But the way the Kinks have chosen it on that first album is like nothing anyone had ever heard before.
It's reckless and snotty and primal and practically spiraling out of control in its youthful drive to redefine the music in the Kinks' own image. It's the sound of all those uppers the Beatles were popping in Germany kicking in, a sound that's trashier by far than "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen, a single that came out the previous year and practically defined the trash aesthetic.
And now I've heard it that way for the first time, and it's only made me love it that much more.
I plan to get around to 1965 as soon as possible, but meanwhile, I'm writing this column to encourage you to figure out the history of rock 'n' roll and what it means to you instead of taking what they say on VH1 or in some music magazine or book as gospel.
Just the other week, I was watching a Spin documentary on punk on VH1 (I know, it's my fault) and a man came on to tell me that the Velvet Underground's significance was such that Lou Reed's "Heroin" came out while the Beatles were singing about how much they want to hold your hand.
Like hell they were. That record hit the street or maybe two streets in October 1967, by which point the Beatles had already done "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "She Said She Said."
That's the thing about these rock 'n' roll historians. They're sloppier than early Kinks' guitar leads. And the sad thing is, they wouldn't even know how truly sloppy that can be.
Ed Masley is the Post-Gazette pop music critic.
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