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

015. Roxy Music “Remake/Remodel”
(Bryan Ferry)
Roxy Music, 1972

I don’t mean to imply that they never did any better than the first track on their first album; “Virginia Plain” and “Love Is the Drug” are all-conquering behemoths, and even their 80s Eurocool hits are worth paying attention to. But they sprang fully-fledged from the brow of Jove, seemingly; no awkward missteps or influence-beholdening are on view here, on this intoxicating rush of a song that makes every needful case for Roxy Music’s staggering importance. Not just as sonic innovators, either — you’d hardly expect less with Brian Eno at the boards — but in applying the lessons of the most advanced experiemental music of the time to some of the most glorious pop music of the time. Though they’re often called an art-rock band, Roxy Music was, fundamentally and excitingly, a art-pop band, which makes all the difference in the world; pop can’t be pretentious, though rock frequently is. The sound of this song is the sound of a rock band incorporating the entire world of music into a definitive pop vision (the quotations at the end serve both as statement of intent — they will be as brilliant as the Beatles, as big as Wagner — and as a signal not to take them too seriously). The lyrics are astutely-composed nonsense (though “CPL593H” can sound revolutionary when shouted), but Ferry already sounds like the lovesick bastard offspring of Mel Tormé and Gene Vincent. And Eno’s wooshing, squalling treatments push all of popular music, politely but firmly, ahead a few decades.



014. Rod Stewart “Mandolin Wind”
(Rod Stewart/Ron Wood)
Every Picture Tells a Story, 1971

People are always asking me, “Jonathan, why do you like Rod Stewart so much? Isn’t he just another cheesy adult contemporary hack like Elton John, Sting, and Michael Bolton?” Okay, so no one’s ever asked me that (and one of these things is not like the others), but it can be difficult to explain my love for the first four albums of a man who went on to record “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Those first four albums, however, are masterpieces, showcases for an original brand of folk-rock that is broad enough to encompass blues, gospel, country and soul. And as a lyricist, he excelled at putting together just enough evocative, down-to-earth imagery (often highly colored by his own lower-class upbringing) to create vivid, if not particularly detailed, stories in the mind of the listener. But I love this song on such a deeply personal and potentially embarrassing level that I’m not sure I can explain why. It has something to do with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books being among the first to capture my childhood imagination, and something to do with the way the steel guitar and mandolin come in after that break, and something to do with the celestial key change in the outro; when he hollers “and I love you,” in that soulful rasp (which he hadn’t been doing long enough for it to be mannered yet), I feel like I’ve just finished watching Casablanca, or whatever the greatest romantic drama in the world might be for you.



013. The Undertones “Teenage Kicks”
(John O’Neill)
single, 1978

Probably the most enduring rock ’n’ roll myth is that of teenage rebellion. “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” “Whaddya got?” is the matins, compline, and vespers of all true rock & rollers. In one telling of the story, anyway. (And let’s not forget that the line comes from a thoroughly Hollywood movie, a teensploitational flick that doesn’t even know about rock & roll; Brando’s motorbiking is set to old-fogey jazz.) But rebellion is all well and good up to a point, and then you gotta see what’s left. After every revolution, there is an retreat — for British punk, it was the Undertones, bringing the noise and the stomp not in service of the half-baked anarcho-nihilism of the Sex Pistols, or even the more fully-baked political heroism of the Clash, but in the service of all the old traditional pop values: girls and fun and hanging out with your mates. Unlike the founders of punk, they were teenagers, and were uninterested in the roiling mythological trappings with which adulthood invests youth; they were far more romantic, inarticulate, and blissful than any grownup band could be. Of course it couldn’t last; pop beauty never does. But for the space of three minutes and the most thrillingly bashed-out chords ever played by an Irishman (apologies to Van, Phil, Shane, and the Edge). Not to mention . . . if it’s good enough for John Peel, it’s good enough for me.



012. Wizzard “See My Baby Jive”
(Roy Wood)
single, 1973

Roy Wood’s 70s material often gets lumped in with glam because a) the face paint and b) no one knows what else to call it. But it’s not so much glam as rock ’n’ roll circa 1963 blown up to cosmic proportions and danced around in. With pretty much everything else you can think of thrown in. He started out doing trippy whimsical psychedelia with the Move, then hooked up with Jeff Lynne and was responsible for most of the interesting bits of the early Electric Light Orchestra, and then split to produce a handful of brilliant, confounding, bewildering, lovely, and overblown (in the best possible sense) albums (as Roy Wood) and singles (as Wizzard). He drew from WWII-era swing, 50s rock & roll, surf music, easy listening, hard rock, British Invasion pop, theatre music (especially ballet), exotica, and studiotastic psychedelia, and then made like he was Phil Spector in 1964, with miles of echo and gargantuan, overloaded sonics bursting out of the tiniest possible space. This is one of the rare songs that doesn’t sound better with headphones — it’s too big for them. Ideally, it needs to be blasting out of a really kicking PA into the space the size of a football field at 98db or so. Only then can its swinging crunch really wallop you upside the head like it needs to. The sway and lilt of the music says 1950s malt-shop jukebox, but the overpowering size of it says 1970s stadium decadence. Call all the people to the dance; gonna have some fun tonight.



011. Al Green “Let’s Stay Together”
(Al Green/Al Jackson, Jr./Willie Mitchell)
Let’s Stay Together, 1972

Every note, every trumpet puff, every guitar lick, every choked-off falsetto moan, is perfect. The Reverend Al Green is, as everyone knows, the greatest romantic soul singer of all time, and the last great soul singer from the South. It’s ironic, of course, that the years of his success dovetailed with the end of Southern Soul as such — the end of the hard, funky, gritty stuff as perpetrated by Otis, Aretha, Wilson, Solomon, Booker, Sam and Dave, and thousands of lesser lights. And Motown up north was leaving Detroit and its signature factory-produced silky-smooth sound for the more varied, tempestuous, and individual sounds of its roster of superstars and LA. Al Green, man of God and ladies’ man, both at once, split the difference. He could make a love song — scratch that, a sex song, a sweaty, needy jump-your-bones song — sound like a prayer, and his prayers were just as passionate, urgent, and shaken. But like every really religious person, he’s a romantic at heart. None of this “I Gotcha” stuff for him, he wants to stay together, to cherish, to look past the pain and the tears and the betrayals and allow love (redemption, sacrifice, sanctity itself) to heal all wounds. Willie Mitchell and the Hi Rhythm Section create a cloud of tender funk for that gorgeous, aching falsetto to beg, weep, plead, and rejoice upon, and not only a new kind of soul, but just damn about all soul would ever be anymore was born.


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