The 100 Greatest Songs of the 1970s, Part XI.

050. Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Like a Hurricane”
(Neil Young)
American Stars ’n’ Bars, 1977

I’m not real big on guitar heroes, as you might have noticed; not because of any righteous punk-rock anti-widdlywoo stance, but because I treasure songs as discrete sonic experiences, and 70s guitar wankery all tends to blend together after a while. The major exception, as he is to almost every other generalization out there, is Neil Young. It takes a peculiar sort of man to bridge the gap between John Denver and Dinosaur Jr. (I’m just talking sonically; for all I know J’s Denver and Mascis play poker every Thursday), and the most fiercely individual, contrary artist this side of Bob Dylan, the only figure who played a major role in the development of both country-rock and Amerindie, is it. His high, quavering voice, his spare, elliptical lyrics, his bone-dry melodicism, and his fearlessness in the face of untrod territory are the usual reasons to love him (and excellent reasons they are, too), but it is as a solo guitarist, sputtering, sparking, oblique, and piercing, that he should always be remembered. This song is one of his most bravura performances, a distended epic of feedback and dissonance that retains a down-home romanticism in the mere song (lyrics and melody), but is sliced open and spread across a vast, nightmarish canvas by his glorious spattering, whining, screaming guitar. Nobody plays like that and still gets played every hour on classic-rock radio. Nobody except Neil Young.



049. Stevie Wonder “Superstition”
(Stevie Wonder)
Talking Book, 1972

Because of the opening hard-funk drum pop. Because of the extra-ultra-funky clavinet line that jumps on its heels. Because of Wonder’s voice, delerious in the first real exercise of his full, unfettered strength, fusing a young man’s joy at limitless possibilities with an experienced craftsman’s determination to get everything precisely right. Because the lyrics, which recite a litany of age-old American and British superstitions and then berates the listener for believing in them, are delivered with a passionate brio that robs them of their condescending smugness and in fact celebrates the strange and curious things that human beings are capable of believing and doing. Because of the stuttering charge just before the line “superstition ain’t the way.” Because of the big-band horns, playing lines that an borrow equally from bop and swing, carving out a respectable adult space in the song to offset the funky, groovy hucklebuck of the rhythm section. Because it represents, paradoxically, both the rhapsodic fruition of Motown’s decade-long chart assault, and the slow, gasping end of Motown’s factory-produced, assembly-line pop genius; from now on, genius would be personal, individual, idiosyncratic, and beat a dignified retreat from the world of pop. And because Stevland Hardaway Morris wrote, composed, arranged, played, recorded, produced, and sang every atom of it all by himself — and, incredibly, it works.



048. Big Star “Thirteen”
(Chris Bell/Alex Chilton)
#1 Record, 1972

Modern indie begins here. Not with the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, Can, or any other deep-cred act you can think of. Here, with the most famous obscurities in the 70s catalogue. Their music was not at all innovative, daring, or boundary-expanding; in fact, it wore its unremarkable influences (Beatles, Byrds, California pop) on its sensitive, hipster-sweatered sleeve. Their music was not at all challenging; in another world, they could easily have been as popular as Badfinger at least, and by now have probably have surpassed them in terms of song-recognition by having “In the Street” serve as the theme to the terminally-anachronistic That 70s Show. And their music was not at all popular, except in retrospect and with a fanatically-devoted cult. Thus the conditions of modern indie were born: backward-looking, heartfelt pop with enough guitar edge to play at rock & roll, and perfectly accessible except for the minor fact that the mass audience doesn’t really want to hear it. This is perhaps their most gentle and reflective song, a lovely ballad that would fit in perfectly with 60s summer-pop tradition except that this is the beginning of postmodern rock; rather than continue a tradition, it looks back and comments on the tradition, even mentioning “Paint It, Black” in the lyrics. Oh, and Alex Chilton had been in a chart-chasing garage-soul band before moving up an octave and going plaintive. I mean, totally indie.



047. Van Morrison “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile)”
(Van Morrison)
Saint Dominic’s Preview, 1972

Jackie Wilson, as I hope you know, was a Detroit soul singer who notched several genre-mashing r&b hits in the 50s (“Reet Petite,” “Lonely Teardrops”), and struck gold in the 60s with “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.” The invocation of his name (and quoting his first big hit) in the first line is Morrison’s way of serving notice to the listener that this song is gonna be all about joyful celebration. And no white man has ever really done joyful celebration as well as Van Morrison. While his lengthy discography is worth exploring in all its labrynthine mystic, literary, and jazzy ramifications, it’s as a hedonistic soul shouter that Morrison reaches his peak. It’s fitting, by the by, that soul music, the American music par excellence, should be re-presented in all its celebratory glory by an Irishman, since all of American music is a fusion of ancient African and Celtic traditions, fully democratized and given a good solid showbiz urgency. The horn charts, while undoubtedly Stax-based, also have a Celtic knottiness, and Morrison’s gravelly scatting owes as much to the language-play tradition that produced Yeats, Joyce and Flann O’Brien as to Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway. Dexys Midnight Runners, practically the sole heirs to Morrison’s Gaelo-funk legacy, covered the song, and managed to make it sound self-pitying and dour. Is that the difference between Ireland and Northern England, or between the 70s and the 80s?



046. Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On?”
(Renaldo Benson/Al Cleveland/Marvin Gaye)
What’s Going On, 1971

Perhaps it’s too much to suggest that this record, by itself, permanently changed the course of soul music. Certainly the lush, delicate Philly sound was already brewing, and like-minded black artists like Roberta Flack in New York, Al Green in Memphis, and Barry White on the West Coast were each creating their own version of intimate, orchestrated, “smooth” soul. But after this record, soul changed permanently; rhythm split the scene with funk, and only passion remained; and the music became baby-making music. Which is ironic, not only because Gaye is often best-remembered today for superb baby-making music like “Let’s Get It On” and “Sexual Healing,” but because baby-making was about the furthest thing from the mind of this record, famously the first socially-conscious megahit from a black artist. It’s become the stuff of legend how Gaye fought, and fought hard, to produce the record his way, without any obvious singles or concessions to the radio audience. The radio audience ate it up anyway, of course, especially the lovely, glorious title track, which admits us to the hippest party in the universe — the one in which every guest is Marvin Gaye — and then proceeds to drop some truth on us in the most achingly beautiful falsetto known to man. The “brother, brother” lyrics are what grab your attention, but it’s the wordless vocalizations — “do bwee do doo do” — and constantly rising key changes that stay with you long after the record’s spun to a stop.


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