Tag Archives: The Beatles

DownTown Blog – Superstar (To Sir Elton With Love Mix)

The song Superstar was originally titled Ode To A Superstar. My cousin Gordon (GT Sullivan) had written the lyrics and gave them to me on a visit to his home. We grew up writing songs together in our teenage years and he would write lyrics from time to time and give me a batch when we got together. It’s kind of ironic that we wrote Superstar the way Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote songs, with Bernie writing lyrics and then having Elton putting them to music. I say ironic because Superstar was in no way written with Elton in mind.

Elton John & Bernie Taupin

I think the song was written back in 1974 and would become part of my band’s set list, usually as an opener. I remember the drummer would play it on his toms to help drive it. It fit right in when we played it at CBGB back in 1975. The drums changed when I went out to LA in 1981 and recorded a new version of the song with drummer Greg Thomas, who had worked with Neil Young and Leon Russell. He played it with a more straight forward groove, which I really liked. The song had always been a guitar rocker. Greg had Mike Finnigan (CSNY & Bonnie Raitt) put an organ part on it but it didn’t really do much for the track.

Greg Thomas

Fast forward 40 years…I had recently moved and was putting my computer together and listening to my iTunes library. One of the songs I came across was the 1981 recording of Superstar. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that great groove from Greg and I made it part of a playlist I put together of songs I was planning to record. The more I heard the song the more I seriously thought about recording it with drummer Steve Holley and bassist Paul Page. My wife commented to me what a cool song it was and I should record it. So I decided to include it as part of the demos I sent to Steve and Paul when I was planning to go into the studio.

Paul, Robert & Steve

So it’s January 2022 and I’m cutting tracks with Steve and Paul at Shorefire Studios for what will become the AmeriKarma album. When it comes time to track Superstar, Steve, as he always does, tells me the tempo of the demo. It’s really fast and I say I could do it a bit slower which Steve seems to be more comfortable with. So we try it at a few different speeds and settle on one that feels good to me. It’s a straight ahead punk rocker, the way it was written. I haven’t changed a thing to the song in over 40 years.

Elton John

It’s not until I’m listening to a playback and it comes to the breakdown part after the first chorus, for some reason, Elton John pops into my head. I can see him getting up from behind his piano and strutting across the stage to the groove like I’d seen him do on many occasions in concert. Elton John? Really?? Now I start thinking about Elton and his music. I’m a huge Elton John fan, having been there at the start when he hit in 1970 and seeing him at The Fillmore East in NYC opening for Leon Russell. Superstar is not an Elton John song but the more I hear the track, the more I’m thinking about how Elton would play it.

Jeff Levine

I had keyboard wiz Jeff Levine coming in for a session and told him to think of Elton’s song Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting as an approach for Superstar. Both songs are guitar based and I believe Elton didn’t even want to play piano on his track. He had to be talked into it! Jeff got into it right away and laid down a piano track very fitting of Elton. Jeff’s playing is as close to Elton’s style as you can get. It made me have to think about how I could make the track more like Elton. I hadn’t changed my guitar parts one iota, so I needed something else.

Elton John at Dodger Stadium

It happened when I was laying down my vocals. As I was listening to the playbacks I started to think about Elton’s vocals. It occurred to me that he always had harmonies and background parts that were like hooks in themselves. That was it! I needed to come up with a background part on the chorus. So I told my engineer Joe DeMaio I wanted to try a background vocal and went into the studio and basically came up with a part on the spot. I added a harmony to it and when it was mixed together with the lead vocal I had my Elton John track.

Elton

One of the weirdest things that ever happened to me in a recording studio happened to me as I was overdubbing a lead guitar part on my 1960s Gretsch Tennessean (the one that George Harrison used with The Beatles at Shea Stadium). I was almost finished with the part when the bridge of the guitar started to slip under the strings. I thought it was because of the Bigsby tailpiece but I wasn’t using it. Joe came rushing into the studio to try and help me get the bridge back under the strings and we came very close to doing it. I decided to put the guitar in its case and let guitar tech extraordinaire Billy Penn work his magic on it.

George Harrison at Shea Stadium

I figured it was my 1964 Strat that had sabotaged the Gretsch so that I would have to use it since I had it on hand that day. 🙂 It was very weird! After laying down some more tracks with the Strat, Superstar was finished. Listening back in the control room I could hear flashes of Mark Bolan (T-Rex) and even David Bowie. How odd I thought. Back in the early 70s, Bolan was the king of Glam Rock in the UK, playing with both Elton and Bowie. Nearly 50 years after writing the song I could hear all 3 influences in the track!

Elton John with T-Rex at at BBC Top of the Pops London 1971

I started doing 3 different mixes but it was obvious I had to focus on Elton as the main mix. Besides the piano I really focused on Steve’s snare. I always felt that the drum sound was a key element to the song like the guitars, so I made sure the drums were slamming. Besides writing the song like Elton and Bernie would, the other irony was that Steve Holley had recorded with Elton in the early 80s. So the stage was set. I would release Superstar as a single in October of 2022 with the To Sir Elton With Love Mix as the Radio single and for the release I added the Guitar Mix to show the way the song was played in 1975.

Steve Holley

The song received a great reaction from Radio with over 150 stations around the world playing it. Superstar (To Sir Elton With Love Mix) has also become the most streamed song in the DownTown Mystic catalog. I think part of the reason is that it has a vibe that hasn’t been around in a long time. So Elton, if you’re out there and read this, please know that the track was created out of love for a musical hero of mine. I tried to make it as close to one of your songs as possible and I think you’re the only one who could do it better. 🙂

DownTown Blog – Fly

With the release of the 21st Century RnR album, I felt like I had made peace with the end of an era. The songs represented the best of the work I did with my engineer of 20 years, Ben Elliott. It was time to move on and I was ready to do it. The release of the 21st Century album was timed with going into the studio to record new material in a new studio with a new engineer.

For 20 years I had recorded at Ben’s Showplace Studios in Dover, NJ. The studio was gone with Ben so I had to find a new place to record. Change was in the air. I sold my house of 40+ years during the Covid Pandemic and had moved 80 miles south down the GSP. A year after Ben’s death I closed on my new house and realized I was only a half hour from Shorefire Studios in Long Branch, NJ where I had recorded the On E Street sessions with Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg

Shorefire Entrance

Garry was a co-owner of the studio then and I hadn’t been back since he sold his interest in it. A guy named Joe DeMaio had bought the studio. I didn’t know Joe, but as it would turn out, we had many things in common, including being guitar players. What was amazing was how we had managed to never meet before I walked into the studio in January of 2022. My fellow compatriots in the enterprise were 2 old friends–Steve Holley and Paul Page. It had been a while since we had played and recorded together.

Paul, Robert & Steve

What I didn’t know was that Steve had been working with Joe at Shorefire for 20 years! As is usually the case, we picked up as if we had just seen each other yesterday. Covid had surely changed everything but some things never change, and as far as I was concerned, that was definitely a good thing. 🙂

I found out very quickly just how fast and on target Joe DeMaio is as an engineer. Setup was a breeze and Joe had the sound of the drums down with very minimal sound checks. We were recording from the word go. That was something I was not used to. But Joe knew the sound of his room. Having briefly talked beforehand, Joe told me he had set Steve’s drums up like Ringo’s kit and that was no exaggeration because they sounded great! Also, Joe had replaced the original MCI board with a classic Helios console, one of the last to be made. This was the console used in all those classic 60s and 70s recordings in the UK. It had THE sound!!

Joe DeMaio at the Helios console

I was originally planning to work on 5 songs but we ended up recording10 tracks. One of the songs had different versions. I was not a real fan of a song called Fly. I mean, I liked it but it wasn’t exciting me in its original form. What was exciting me was doing a different version of it ala Buddy Holly. Paul was very much for doing it but Steve was a bit reticent about it. He thought it was a great song and was afraid I would release the Buddy Holly version instead. However, he finally agreed to record a BH version, setting up his drums like Jerry Allison, the drummer for The Crickets.

Now you’re probably thinking, Buddy Holly?? Yes Buddy Holly. In fact, the original title of Fly was Buddy Holly. That was before I had any lyrics. For some reason, I kept hearing Buddy Holly influences in the music on the demo. So much so, that I wanted to record a version that was based on Buddy’s Peggy Sue. And we did! I still have some work left on it before I can mix it, but this track will be released someday! 🙂

Robert on the Breedlove

It was the original version of Fly that we cut that would take me by surprise. I knew exactly what acoustic guitars I was going to record on it, including the 12-string Rickenbacker. What I didn’t know was that the 12-string Ric would be recorded through an early 60s white Vox AC30 with the Blue Celestion Alnico speakers…a Beatles geek orgasm if there ever was one! The Ric sounded amazing through it! The song took on a whole new character for me after that. There’s a bit of a laid-back Tom Petty feel to it that works really well. Recording the vocals was a breeze and it would be the 1st song I ever had Steve Holley sing harmony on.

The day before he came down to record vocals, Steve had lost one of his oldest friends. He seemed to be in a sad place but I think having him come down to record vocals helped to lighten his load a bit. He had some ideas for the harmonies that made me rethink the parts of the song. One was in the main refrain which acts like a bridge in the song. I had recorded a high harmony on the demo but Steve didn’t hear it that way. He heard a lower harmony for it and I was glad he did because I wasn’t sure about the harmony on the demo.

By not singing a harmony over the lead vocal on that part, it allowed me to keep the focus on the main melody and that was helpful. But in working on the song, it took on a zen-like quality for me that I had never experienced before. The mix was one of the easiest I’ve ever done, which owes a good deal to Joe DeMaio’s engineering. But it also had a very calming effect on me, which was odd. The song somehow transformed into something I really dug and I decided I had to release it as the 1st Single from the sessions! 🙂

Fly was recorded in January and February, mixed in March, and released in May. To date, it’s getting airplay on 100+ stations in 25 countries around the world. I also decided to make it my 1st single release at AAA Radio in the US in over 6 years. That just might be too long a time to be away but I also decided to release the song When The Angels Sing as a AAA Exclusive and part of the Fly single release. Steve also sang harmony on that track, but I’ll save talking about it for another day.

Fly just seems like a song for this point in time. I wrote it during the Covid lockdown and I think it speaks to a lot of people around the world who just want to get out and about again. At the time I wrote it I was just trying to lighten up a bit from some of the more intense songs I was working on. But as I played it for people, their feedback made me look at the song in a totally different way. It’s not easy trying to put complicated ideas in a simple straightforward way, which is what Fly seems to do. It’s one of my favorite tracks now.

All in all, I’m having the time of my life working with Joe D. at Shorefire. I’m a retro-sounding artist that has to deal with “classic rock” comparisons but that’s what you’re going to sound like if you’re trying to compete with recordings made 50-60 years ago. It comes with the territory. In doing so, I don’t sound like anybody else and having the chance to work with a Helios board only enhances the sound. Also, these are much different recordings from any others I’ve done before and a challenge to me as a producer. I could not ask for more! 🙂

DownTown Blog – 21st Century Rock’n Roll

I decided to make a statement with the release of 21st Century Rock’n Roll. I’m releasing it the day before my 70th Birthday…so how’s that for a statement? Being an artist is not what it used to be, or is it? It’s not like it was in the 20th Century, that’s for sure. More importantly, I wanted to make a statement with regards to the current state of Rock’n Roll.

Right now, as far as the venerable genre goes, the only thing I can see out there are The Rolling Stones, speaking of venerable. I look at this as a good thing because it helps me make a case for 21st Century Rock’n Roll. The Stones are really the only band keeping RnR alive. Why 21st Century Rock’n Roll? Well, despite being compared to classic rock artists like Tom Petty and sometimes being classified as classic rock (really?), I don’t think my music could exist at any other time than now. There might have been a few years in the early 80s for a few of the songs, but on the whole I don’t seem to fit in any other time than the 21st Century.

The truth is I don’t really sound like anyone out there. My shorthand for my influences is Buffalo Springfield meets Rockpile. These are not 2 bands that sound like each other and were certainly not as big in their day, but both were highly influential. From the 60s, Buffalo Springfield spawned Stephen Stills and Neil Young and led to CSN/CSNY. Richie Furay and Jim Messina left to form Country Rock pioneers Poco. All of these artists and groups had a big influence on my playing and writing. In the 80s, Rockpile, formed by Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe, were at the forefront of New Wave. It was at a Rockpile show in Asbury Park, NJ that inspired me to create DownTown Mystic, albeit years later.

To make my RnR statement on 21st Century Rock’n Roll, I chose what I would consider to be my most rocking songs. These are not necessarily all my best songs but they are mainly my most rocking ones. Most are up-tempo. I like to think that I probably put out the most up-tempo tracks out there. Up-tempo tracks are generally considered harder to play and require a certain amount of skill from the musicians. Rockpile was an up-tempo kind of band, with great players, which is probably why I favor them. Of course, The Beatles were also a huge influence and I always looked forward to what new up-tempo songs they would record.

Ben Elliott

The other thing about this release is my chance to honor the late Ben Elliott, who was my engineer for 20 years. He sadly passed away in April 2020 as did his beloved Showplace Studios. Ben’s as much a part of 21st Century Rock’n Roll because his sound is on display. Our goal was to make records and I know we succeeded with these tracks. Just ask anyone who has tried to write and record Rock’n Roll. It’s not as easy as it looks. It’s all about great sound and getting that sound. Ben was a master at it. It’s definitely the end of an era for me, which is probably the main reason for releasing 21st Century Rock’n Roll.

To have these tracks that Ben engineered, at this point in time, is truly a blessing. It’s no surprise that Keith Richards name would also come up now. I mean, why wouldn’t Keith Richards name come up when you’re talking about Rock’n Roll? Keith Richards, the architect of The Rolling Stones brand of RnR and myself, have something in common. That something is actually someone, namely Ben Elliott. Keith met Ben at Showplace when Ben was working on Howling Wolf’s guitar man, Hubert Sumlin’s album About Them Shoes. It was sort of a tribute to the guitarist featuring Keith, Eric Clapton and Levon Helm among others.

Ben & Keith (photo courtesy Arnie Goodman Photography)

Ben must have hit it off with the Stone s legend because soon after, Keith hired Ben to be his personal engineer at his Stamford, CT home studio. Ben’s stories about working at Keith’s were hilarious as well as interesting. I think the other thing I have in common with Keith Richards is our love of all things GUITAR. My recordings are all about GUITARS as are Keith’s. The other thing is the SOUND. You can’t have one without the other when it comes to recording them. Keith knows something about sound, as well as guitars, and that’s why he had Ben as his engineer.

To me, Keith Richards is synonymous with RnR. If there was only one photo to have next to the definition of RnR, it would be of Keith’s face. Even before Chuck Berry and that’s saying something! Keith has doled out far more riffs than anybody I can think of that have any meaning. Yes, Chuck is the Father of RnR but it’s the Son who took it further. Keith took it to another level as an artist, particularly as a Recording Artist. That’s also something Ben Elliott gave me. I became a Recording Artist because of Ben and I will always be grateful to him for that.

Ben & Robert

DownTown Blog – The Album Lives

I know that the word on the street is that the album is dead but I think it’s premature, or at the very least, debatable. I think one of the problems with the album, as we know it, is that it was a product of the vinyl record. But with the passing of vinyl and the CD becoming the main medium for recorded music, artists lost the focus of what an album was or could be.

Recently, Sheryl Crow released her new album Threads and announced it would be her last album. Her reasoning was that since streaming had now become the main way that people listen to music, it was individual tracks that were important and not a full album of tracks. She said she would still record music but just release individual tracks when she felt like it. I can’t say that she’s wrong because what she says makes sense. But I still think the album has a place if done in the right way.

I think that Threads is a really good album but I also think that Sheryl lost her focus with it, and here is where the cd vs the vinyl record debate comes in. When the CD became the main medium for releasing music, we went from being able to fit 35-40 minutes of music on 2 sides of a vinyl record to being able to put 80 minutes of music on a cd. Also, the price of a cd doubled the price of a vinyl record, and artists felt that they needed to give more music for the money. So it wasn’t unusual to buy cds with over an hour’s worth of music and 15-20 songs.

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I don’t care how talented you are, you’re not going to write 15-20 great songs, record them and put them all on one album. As an artist you’ll hold some back, which means some of those 15 songs will be ok to fill time and that’s why interest in albums began to fade. I know that I don’t really want to listen to more than 6 songs at a time, let alone 14-16 on a cd. Sheryl Crow’s Threads would have been a great album if she had decided to release 10-12 songs instead of the 17 that she put on it. There’s no way to focus on 17 songs in one sitting.

I stated earlier that the album was a product of the vinyl record because the medium supported the concept of an album. You had 2 sides of music to listen to, so you could only listen to 4-6 songs at a time, depending on the amount of time the songs took up. When one side of the record stops, the listener has to physically get up and put the other side on to play. Think about that, compared to listening to cds or MP3s on an iPod or streaming on Spotify, Pandora, etc.

When you look at what are considered to be classic albums, generally you get 10-12 songs on them. That’s because of the limitation of time allowed per side of the vinyl. Back in the day, the 1st and last song on each side were important, particularly the last song on Side 2. Some of those last songs on Side 2 are classics from the bands that recorded them. Take A Day In The Life from The Beatles Sgt. Peppers or We Won’t Get Fooled Again from The Who’s Who’s Next LP. These songs became classics because of what came before them on the album.

I’m not saying that these songs don’t stand on their own, but if they were released today as individual tracks for streaming, I don’t think they would have the same impact. That’s why the album is so important to the artist. That’s also why vinyl is important. An artist can release 5 or 6  unrelated songs on one side of an album and put 5 or 6 songs with a central theme on the other side to make a statement. It’s working within the limitation of the vinyl that gives an artist more freedom than stacking one song after another on a cd.

So is the album really dead? I don’t think so and I offer up the resurgence in vinyl records as proof. The comeback of vinyl will keep the album alive and kicking for years to come. It just goes to show that the “old school” way of doing things like analog recording to tape, vinyl records, etc. will never really go out of style, allowing a new generation of musicians and artists a chance to innovate and put their own brand on making records now and in the future.

DownTown Blog – Rock’n’Roll Romantic: Rock’n’Roll

DownTown Mystic: Rock 'n' Roll Romantic

To quote Pete Townsend of The Who, “Rock is dead they say”…whatever. This is a tired old chestnut that “they” bring up over and over. I’m not sure who “they” are, and I’m not sure what “they” mean by “rock”. Are we talking ROCK from the 70s, 80s or 90s onward? Or since the turn of the century? It’s a very broad term for a particular kind of music. For the sake of this blog post, I’ll be talking about the original “rock”—Rock’n’Roll.

Since I’ve already made certain statements in interviews about my intention to bring RnR into the 21st century, I’ll back it up. Rock’n’Roll is a totally other animal than “Rock”. As Tom Petty said earlier this year about his discovering RnR, “Not rock; this was Rock and Roll. The roll designates a swing — there’s a swing in the roll.” That’s what I’m talking about. There’s a difference between Rock and Rock’n’Roll, and just to be clear, it’s RnR that I’m putting out there.

All that aside, I intended the Rock’n’Roll Romantic album to be my statement about RnR in the 21st century. I took over a year to build up to the release of it and when I finally did release it on CD in October 2016, it proved to be my most successful release to date. The CD starts off with 2 of 3 songs that feature RnR Hall of Famers Max Weinberg & Garry Tallent—the rhythm section from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. In fact DownTown Mystic is the only artist in the world that can make that claim. Not even Garry Tallent and Little Steven can say that about their new solo records. Not too shabby! 🙂

A big part of the success of Rock’n’Roll Romantic was at Radio. The previous release of the DownTown Nashville EP at Americana Radio in the spring last year was easily DownTown Mystic’s biggest release at the format and helped to set the stage, so to speak, for Rock’n’Roll Romantic. But I also knew that Rock’n’Roll Romantic had a broader appeal to it than just Americana. The strategy of going to the AAA and College formats along with Americana garnered DownTown Mystic its largest radio audience, going from 16 to 36 Adds and more than 70 radio stations playing the music. For me, these results show that RnR in today’s marketplace is not dead, to say the least.

NUB

2017 started out by continuing the success of Rock’n’Roll Romantic when DownTown Mystic signed a deal with UK indie label Nub Music to release Rock’n’Roll Romantic in Europe. How apropos for 2017 to be the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles classic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 1st Concept Album. Besides the noise of “the death of rock” is the noise about “the death of the album” and “the death of the CD”. Besides being a true RnR album, Rock’n’Roll Romantic is also a true concept album.

The truth is Rock’n’Roll is here to stay…it will never die. Wait, that sounds like a song I once heard. Nevertheless, it’s true. There’s something undeniable about an electric guitar playing along to a groove that’s being put down by a real drummer and bass player. It’s an irresistible force. Sure, it might not be what’s popular on Top 40 Radio but who cares? There are millions of people who don’t listen to Top 40 Radio.

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Meanwhile in the UK, Nub has already released the Side 2 EP to help set up the release of the full Rock’n’Roll Romantic album later in the year. What better place to release some new RnR than in the UK? Oasis has been the biggest band there since The Beatles and they’ve been around now for 20 years. So it’s safe to say that Rock’n’Roll is still alive and well there. This next chapter with Nub Music may turn out to be even more exciting than the success at US Radio for Rock’n’Roll Romantic! 🙂

DownTown Blog – Brian Jones: The Golden Stone

DownTown Mystic: Rock 'n' Roll Romantic DMysticBJCover

February 28, 2017 would have been the 75th birthday of the man who started The Rolling StonesBrian Jones, the man they called the Golden Stone because of his perfect blonde hair. There’s a reason why I wrote the song Brian Jones and why it’s the centerpiece on the Rock’n’Roll Romantic album.  The main reason for the song being at the heart of the album is that Brian epitomizes the Rock’n’Roll Romantic. Brian was the trendsetter for Swinging London in the 1960s. It’s been said that Brian lived the life that Mick and Keith only wrote about. For me, it was Brian Jones who caught my attention when I first saw The Stones, just as it had been John Lennon who I immediately gravitated to when first seeing The Beatles. Now there are 2 Bad Boys to idolize! ?

Brian Jones

There have been many books written about Brian’s short life and demise. The most recent is Paul Trynka’s excellent book, Brian Jones—The Making of The Rolling Stones. In the UK the book is called Sympathy for the Devil! One of the main points made in the book is that Brian was far more important in not only starting the band, but in the overall British Blues explosion that changed the UK music scene. I found it to be the best account of what it must have felt like being around The Stones in the early days. This was not a bunch of school chums getting together to form a band, but rather a group of individuals who could be very calculating with each other. For Brian, you get the feeling that none of them really had his back. But you also sense that Brian played a big part in setting that in motion.

Firebird

It feels a bit odd talking about Brian and The Stones as being together because the band has been around for so long as the current entity that it’s hard to picture Brian in this band. When you looked at The Stones, Brian was the odd man out. He was his own brand for sure. Even with Mick Jagger out front singing and bopping around, it was Brian who would catch your eye…by simply standing there! Over the years there’s been a good deal of revisionism in The Stones camp as it pertains to the band’s history, with Brian’s role being minimized to that of a bit player. The truth is something that has gotten, shall we say, muddled.

BJStones2

The real story is an epic tragedy, almost Shakespearean in its unfolding. But as I write in my song Brian Jones, he did not understand his circumstances and certainly never took responsibility for his actions. He was a mojo man who fathered 6 kids with 6 different girls! He had an innate talent for playing musical instruments and he left a distinct imprint on the recordings that he played on. He gave The Stones sound an extra dimension that other bands didn’t have. But he also lived a decadent life, like nobody else around. They had to coin the term sex, drugs & rock’n’roll to describe his lifestyle!! ?

brianinmetallicrobe

There are many who put Brian’s downfall on Mick and Keith. Did Mick and Keith, along with manager Andrew Loog Oldham, deliberately plot against Brian to take the band away from him? Maybe…probably…but the reality was that The Stones wanted to be in the same arena as The Beatles. That meant they needed to write their own songs and become more pop oriented. Oldham’s choice of putting Mick & Keith together as the main writing team has proven to be an inspired one. Given the personalities involved, Brian certainly saw the writing on the wall for himself.

Brian with Vox Teardrop

In recent years it seems like there’s been a whole cottage industry that has sprung up around Brian. Many see him as a multi-talented hero who was “stabbed in the back” by his band, but part of the problem is that we always tend to see our idols or heroes in 2 dimensions. We see them live in concert or on TV, and we read what other people write about them. We don’t know them personally and what they’re really like, so we form our opinions based on assumptions based on a 2 dimensional portrait. There’s a whole school of “oh poor Brian” this and “oh poor Brian” that, but in the end we don’t really know him and what he brought on himself.

Brian with Gretsch Country Club

In his book, Paul Trynka writes that nobody saw much of Brian in the last year of his life. He went on drug binges for longer and longer stretches and had blackouts. He was seen nodding out on quite a few occasions, even in the studio when he did show up. Just look at the changes in his physical appearance from 1965 to 1968. He goes from being the trendsetter for the hip and beautiful people of Swinging London to an overweight drugged out mess in just 3 years! Take a look at the photos on Between The Buttons, one of my fave Stones albums. Brian looks totally out of it and disconnected from the rest of the band.

Brian with Les Paul

I think the real reason they shelved the Rock’n’Roll Circus TV show in 1968 (Brian’s last public appearance with the band) was because of Brian’s physical condition. He was a train wreck! Mick, Keith and Brian had already been busted by the police for drugs. They were public enemies to the UK Establishment, so the last thing that was needed, was for any of them to show up on BBC TV (the only TV in the UK) looking completely stoned! If you’ve ever been in a band with one of the members always being fucked up, you’ll know what I’m talking about. They’re unreliable and bring everyone down.  At any rate, whatever went down between them personally is their business.

Flash

I once spent an afternoon talking with David Dalton, a Stones biographer, about Brian. He said an interesting and somewhat telling thing—that Mick and Keith were very superstitious when it came to Brian and would get very uptight at the mention of his name. I’m sure, deep down, they harbor some guilt. As for all the conspiracies about murder in Brian’s death, he wasn’t murdered. When you look at the cast of unsavory characters who hung around Brian in the last weeks of his life, one thing is clear, he was the last person they would want dead. The main reason being, he was famous, and that was why they were there. If he was dead, no more hanging out with fame.

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However, I do think he died of un-natural causes on the night he joined the 27 Club. Before I continue, there’s 1 thing that can’t be emphasized enough—DRUGS. Since it was the 60s, there’s a kind of playing down of the amount of DRUGS that were being consumed back then. Like tee-hee (yes I used tee-hee), everybody was getting high back then…NO! The amount of drugs involved with this particular individual was almost inhuman. Brian took more and did more of everything in massive quantities. Eventually, this had a serious impact on him. So contrary to the lore about Brian being in shape and getting ready to form a super group with the likes of Hendrix, he had no interest or ability in forming another band.

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Brian was done. Brian had abused his body to such extent that all he needed was to have a nightcap and then float in his pool, that was heated at 80-90 degrees, nod off and float away. It’s real easy to fall asleep in a pool like that totally straight. Brian may have shown a bit of wear on the outside, but his inside was worse. The autopsy revealed that his liver was shot and that he had the flabby heart of a 60 year old man despite being only 27. I’d say that qualifies as un-natural! This is something that most people seem to overlook, his actual physical condition. He took drugs by the handful and drank on top of it, and everyone thought he was immortal. He wasn’t. There’s a physical toll to be paid.

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As I said earlier, there is a reason I wrote the song Brian Jones. I was in contact with his spirit when I wrote the song, and this was many years after his death when he was all but forgotten. No cottage industry, no Brian was murdered books being written. Of course, it’s hard to know when you’re in contact with the other side. For years I wondered about what I had written in the song and how I knew it. Paul Trynka’s book helped me to understand that I was right. That and a Channel, who I’ve been working with for about the last 8 years, have helped me to understand that I am also a Channel via my music. Things that came through in the song were not things I could have possibly known about at the time.

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Now I know I’m opening myself up to a good deal of skepticism, but this is my reality as an artist. I know ideas and creativity come from another place and that we are all capable of tapping into them if we are open enough to receive them. So I will share my experience with those who are open to it. In a recent Channeling session I asked to contact Brian and his spirit came through. I asked him (via Dr. Peebles) what happened on that night he died. Here is an MP3 of the session and you can draw your own conclusions:

 

It’s somewhat ironic that it’s the conspiracy theories have helped to keep Brian’s name alive and create a legend. “The Truth will set you free”. On the day of what would have been Brian’s 75th birthday, I want the Truth to be known by those with ears to hear it. In his short life, Brian burned bright and then burned out like a comet falling to earth. He deserves to be remembered in a Good Light, as a true Rock’n’Roll Romantic. ?

DownTown Blog – 2016 Year In Review: Part 1: DownTown Nashville

DownTown-Nashville-Cover

It’s that time of the year again when we take some time to look back and assess what we’ve done before heading into a new year. As usual, it’s hard to believe we’re at this point again as another year just seemed to fly right by. You think we’d be used to it by now. 🙂

As crazy as 2016 was for the world in general, it turned out to be a very good year for DownTown Mystic. As the year started, I had this feeling that something “big” was coming. I don’t know why that was, but I could definitely feel it. In 2015 I was focusing on a strategy to release the Rock’n’Roll Romantic album. It felt like the absolute right time for it, but I decided to take a long term approach, promoting digital releases such as singles and EPs to build up to the release of the album.

Now that 2016 was here, I knew I would have to finally release the album. In January, Way To Know was released as a single in Europe. It had been released there in December but an error had caused there to be a problem with the upload to Radio. Luckily, I caught it and had the problem remedied with a new release in January. Way To Know steadily climbed the Official European Indie Music Chart, eventually making it all the way to #1 (here’s a previous post about it). In late January, the video single She Said, She Said, celebrating the 50 year anniversary of The Beatles REVOLVER album, was released exclusively on YouTube.

A pattern of doing 2 releases at the same time was starting to develop. With the release of She Said, She Said as a single, a spring release for Rock’n’Roll Romantic was scheduled. Rock’n’Roll Romantic would be the 1st full album since the self-titled DownTown Mystic album in 2013. Being that it was going on 3 years since DownTown Mystic had been at Americana Radio, there was a worry that Rock’n’Roll Romantic might not be Americana enough for the format. It was around this time that a new idea popped up.

The new idea was to create and release something that would be more conducive to the format. That release would become the DownTown Nashville EP. The original idea I had was about creating a CD to send to the music industry people (A&R, Managers, Publishers, etc.) in Nashville. I had some songs plugged down there and with the sound of modern country going more rock & pop, I wanted to introduce the music of DownTown Mystic for publishing purposes. But the idea soon morphed into creating a CD release at Americana Radio. This would create a story to interest the music people in Nashville and set up the release for Rock’n’Roll Romantic.

Steve, Robert & Paul

Steve, Robert & Paul

I had recorded a bunch of songs with Steve Holley & Paul Page (the rhythm section from Ian Hunter’s Rant Band), along with additional help from guitar ace Lance Doss, that were inspired by the many influences I had gotten over the years from the music made in Nashville. The more the idea for the release began to become clearer to me, the more I wanted to make a statement with it. I needed something iconic for the cover art, something that everyone in Nashville would immediately recognize. Then I realized that I had the perfect cover photo from my last visit to Nashville—the famed Oak Bar Men’s Room in the Hermitage Hotel! It was perfect! I had visited the Men’s Room one afternoon when it was empty and was busy taking photos when the cleaning lady showed up. She was nice enough to take one of me since my selfies weren’t too good. 🙂

Robert in Oak Bar Men's Room

Robert in Oak Bar Men’s Room

Now that I had the cover, I wanted to be able to fit the song lyrics on the inside, but that meant I would only be able to fit 5 or 6 songs. That made an album out of the question and the DownTown Nashville EP was created. I decided to release the EP digitally, but only print up 100 CDs, and make them for RADIO ONLY. This would tie in nicely with the visual on the cover (my graphics guy Larry Bentley did an amazing job!). Meanwhile, the single Way To Know kept gaining momentum, climbing the Top 20 in Europe. 🙂

In early March I mailed out less than half of the cds to less than half of the Americana radio panel. For the 1st time I would be promoting the release by myself and I decided to just concentrate on the stations that had played me before, plus some of the stations that weren’t there 3 years ago with the DownTown Mystic release. I had scheduled the DownTown Nashville EP for release on the 1st day of spring—at the Vernal Equinox.

On March 21st DownTown Nashville debuted in the Top 5 Most Added on the AMA Chart…the 1st time that had happened! In just 2 weeks it broke into the Top 100, something that took the DownTown Mystic release from 2013, 8 weeks to achieve. 2 weeks later it was at #60, blowing by the 2013 release, which took 12 weeks to reach #65!! DownTown Nashville would reach #53 and stay on the AMA Chart for 7 months, becoming DownTown Mystic’s best release at the format yet. DownTown Nashville would also be #1 on the AirPlay Direct Top 50 Global Radio Rock Albums Chart in March and April, beating the mark set by the DownTown Mystic on E Street EP the year before as DownTown Mystic’s most downloaded release on APD!

Meanwhile, the single Way To Know was about to start a 3 week run at #1 in Europe. It was only April and the year was rockin’ in a big way and there was still the matter of releasing Rock’n’Roll Romantic. 🙂

To be continued…Part 2: Rock’n’Roll Romantic

DownTown Blog – 50 Years of REVOLVER

DownTown Mystic: Rock 'n' Roll Romantic

On August 5, 1966 The Beatles released their 7th album—REVOLVER. I bought it the next day when it was released in the US. It was a somewhat odd time for a Beatles album…in the middle of summer. Making it a bit odder was the fact that all we had been hearing on the radio was the single Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby. We had pretty much forgotten that Paperback Writer/Rain had been released months before to herald the coming of their next album.

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Adding to all this was the fact that Capitol Records had just released in June, arguably, the best Beatles album to date called Yesterday And Today (the Butcher album). So when I got my copy of the album with the cover of the black and white drawing of The Beatles, I was a bit underwhelmed. It definitely wasn’t as good as Yesterday And Today. Why not? Every Beatles album had always been better than the one before it. How could this be?

About the only thing that I remember about the REVOLVER album in 1966 was my friend showing me the import Revolver album from England he had just got. I had never seen an import album. What was different about it? As it turns out, there was a lot that was different. For one thing the record company was called Parlophone, not Capitol, and there were 14 songs on the album! 14 songs?? We only got 11 songs on a Beatles album! Plus 3 of the songs that were on Yesterday And Today were also on REVOLVER…WTF??

We had no idea that Capitol had been trimming down the UK releases so that they could create an extra release that the band had nothing to do with. I mean on one hand it was great. We here in the US could not get enough of The Beatles. So the more albums, the better!! But it all kind of came to a head between the band and Capitol Records with the release of Yesterday And Today. Again, IMO, the best album the band ever released in the US. It would also be the last US-made album from Capitol.

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Yesterday And Today became known as the infamous “Butcher Album”. Capitol really did a number on the band with this album. The Beatles started to get serious, entering their artistic phase with the release of Rubber Soul in 1965. This was the album that Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys had credited with inspiring him to create Pet Sounds. How would you feel if you had created the best album of your career and the Record Company in the US decided to cut off the 1st track of that album? Amazing, right?

So now Capitol Records wanted The Beatles to shoot a new cover for their made up album, Yesterday And Today. Famously, The Beatles did a photo shoot wearing butcher’s coats, holding various cuts of raw meat mixed in with parts taken from toy dolls’ anatomies. It was bizarre, to say the least, especially in 1966. Even more bizarre, a cover shot was chosen and went out on a 1st run of the album before the company stopped the presses on it. That album is worth some $$ if you have a copy.

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That “Butchers cover” made its point to the executives at Capitol and Yesterday And Today would be the last US-made Beatles album. Starting with the next album, Capitol would only issue the albums that The Beatles gave them. But Butcher’s album was totally correct. To create Yesterday And Today, Capitol had taken Drive My Car and If I Needed Someone off of the UK Rubber Soul as well as I’m Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing and Doctor Robert off of Revolver, which was still being recorded when they did it!! You can see why Revolver, as released in the US by Capitol, was a bit underwhelming missing those 3 songs.

It really wasn’t until they released all of The Beatles UK albums on CD in the 80s that REVOLVER started to get the well-deserved acclaim it had been missing. Now you could hear the 14 songs the way The Beatles had recorded them together. Today it is considered to be their best album. Next year will mark 50 years of Sgt Pepper, which got ALL the acclaim, but Sgt. Pepper was not a ROCK album. It was their best POP album.

As a young teen it took a bit to get into REVOLVER. The songs were very different from anything the group had put out before. Even the sound was different. It was clearly The Beatles, but there was something different about them. John Lennon called it their Guitar Record. That was the message that the Paperback Writer/Rain single was meant to send to the fans. You could expect to hear more guitars like never before and rock’n’roll like never before. REVOLVER delivered on its promise.

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The #1 song that has always represented REVOLVER for me has been the last track on Side 1—She Said, She Said. It was also the last song to be recorded for the album. This was John’s track about an LSD trip in LA with George and Ringo, along with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn of The Byrds, who brought along actor Peter Fonda. It was Fonda who kept telling George that “ he knew what it was like to be dead” because he thought George was having a bad trip, Of course nobody knew that was what the song was about. Clocking in at a tick under 2 minutes with the odd time signatures and the odder lyric “she said I know what it’s like to be dead” was very weird for a Beatles song.

For me, She Said, She Said has always been one of John’s hippest songs. So one day when Ozzie Caccavelli, who was playing lead guitar at the time with The Discontent, said that he had a killer arrangement for the song I had to hear it. #1, because Ozzie didn’t strike me as a Beatles kind of guy and # 2, I couldn’t imagine what he would come up with. What he played me was a straight ahead rocking version that kicked ass! Ozzie’s arrangement was actually more commercial sounding than Lennon’s version and it showed John’s creative genius for writing hit songs, even when he wasn’t trying. I knew we had to record it and so we did!

Earlier this year DownTown Mystic released the recording of Ozzie’s arrangement of She Said, She Said as an exclusive video single on YouTube as a tribute to honor the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles greatest album—REVOLVER.