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

005. Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band “My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains”
(Captain Beefheart)
Clear Spot, 1972

I’ve been told that there aren’t enough acts with underground or music-snob credibility on the list (not in so many words, but that’s the subtext); those people will probably not be mollified by my choice of the good Captain’s least-weird song, regardless of numerical placement. But the hell with them. This is one of the most moving, beautiful little songs ever recorded, a freak-soul ballad with gently odd rhythms and voicings, a straight-faced love song with surreal imagery that could be called Dylanesque (from around say 1964) if it weren’t so obviously its own thing owing nothing to no man. (Latter-day Tom Waits, though, can be extrapolated from his bruised caterwaul). And it contains just about the most beautiful use of marimbas in a Western pop context that I’ve ever heard. The uncompromisingly weird Trout Mask Replica is usually considered Van Vliet’s artistic apex, for much the same reason that some people tout the White Album as the Beatles’ best (more Beefheart is better Beefheart), but four years later he was lurching unsteadily towards the mainstream: Clear Spot also contains barely-twisted takes on hard rock, Stax-style soul, and funk (the title track is an alternate-universe Funkadelic track), and is one of his most purely enjoyable albums as a result. Not that any of them are unenjoyable, especially if you love that good old avant-r&b skronk.



004. Bob Dylan “Tangled Up in Blue”
(Bob Dylan)
Blood on the Tracks, 1975

It’s not too much of a stretch to say that every remotely complimentary comment about a Bob Dylan album over the past thirty years has used the words “. . . since Blood on the Tracks.” While a lot of that can be chalked up to boomer self-regard (if they loved it — and the record sales prove they did — it must be great), it’s also, wearily, true: this is the return-to-glory artistic validation that makes for a great last five minutes of Behind the Music. (Pity the story doesn’t end there, but we can’t all be summed up in an hour with commercials.) And the centerpiece, radio representative, and all-devouring juggernaut from the album, the song that announced that Dylan was back and kicking the aesthetic ass of every folkie-wannabe with a guitar and some half-baked poetic conceits (Don McLean, your fifteen minutes are up). It can even be difficult for me to listen properly to the song, it’s so familiar by now — but the extra concentration required is always worth it. The out-of-focus, time-shifting love story it chronicles isn’t much in straight dramatic terms, but as a sly, unhurried evocation of romantic relationships, historical meaning, and memetic associations (apparently it’s based on a Chekhov short story, unless that’s another of Dylan’s shrewd track-covering moves), it’s unparalleled, even providing cheese-rock standbys Hootie & the Blowfish with unearned style points when they quoted it in “Only Wanna Be With You.” Or am I dating myself with that reference?



003. ABBA “Waterloo”
(Benny Andersson/Stig Anderson/Björn Ulvaeus)
Waterloo, 1974

Guilty pleasure, my ass. Straight-up pop never got better than ABBA, and ABBA (the capitalization is essential; it’s both a reference to a rhyming pattern and an acronym of the first names of the group) never got better than this, their first hit single and winner of the Eurovision contest in 1974. Yes, Eurovision, the place where musical mediocrity goes to die. Things were better, once upon a time. I suppose there will always be haters — and the official ABBA^® brand hasn’t made things easy for pure pop lovers, with the corny, grandma-baiting Mamma Mia! musical and their pop-culture status (especially in America) as a code-for-gay punchline — but just close your eyes and listen to the goddamn music, and the rest of it doesn’t matter. The song is all rise, baby, a thunderstorm of gorgeous sounds, from the power-chorded acoustic guitars and sparkling piano descents to the tight harmonies of Frida and Agnetha, warmly inviting (in a way that only 70s pop ever is) but still retaining the faintest frisson of a Swedish accent. Benny and Björn were master studio craftsmen by this point, loopy geniuses that didn’t know how to read music and just slapped down what sounded good. Which is why the song’s roiling combination of Beethoven chords, chugging jump-blues rhythms, and naïvely clever lyrical conceits is one of the purest expressions of unadulterated pop ever conceived, planned or executed. Ever.



002. The Buzzcocks “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone) (You Shouldn’t’ve)?”
(Pete Shelley)
single, 1978

And now for something completely — well, the same, sort of. The Buzzcocks were the greatest pop band to come out of the punk revolution. Famously formed in the wake of the Sex Pistols’ Manchester concert (which they had largely enabled), they put out one arty, distorted EP (which laid the foundations for British postpunk even as punk proper was barnstorming the nation), and then discovered Pete Shelley’s minimalist pop-music genius, without ratcheting down the punk. This is their most elegantly noisy jangle, a furious burst of wounded romanticism and elegantly violent heartbreak. Shelley’s adenoidal yelp paces the slightly soggy, high-school notebook-paper lyrics brilliantly (e. g. “You make me feel like dir-hir-hirt/And I’m hurt”), and the taut rhythmic patterning of the middle eight (I don’t think it can quite be called a solo) proved enormously influential; even bloody blink-182 did pretty much the same thing on “All the Small Things” — which is why I retain some lingering affection for the mall-punk hit. The velocity of the song is such that Steve Diggle’s Telecastered needly grace-notes barely register, but choirs of angels could scarcely improve on them; and of course the finest rhythm section in punk rock, with their Krautrock discipline and unerring sense of timing, makes the song, as it always did. The Buzzcocks barely made it to 1980 as a coherent group, but there’s never been a more blinding flash in any pan.



001. The Faces “Stay With Me”
(Rod Stewart/Ron Wood)
A Nod Is As Good As a Wink . . . To a Blind Horse, 1971

Taking the long view, the Seventies’ relationship to rock music is the same as the Thirties’ relationship to jazz: it’s the default music of the popular culture, and even when bastardized or watered-down it retains an unimpeachable vitality. Rock bands in the 70s are remembered for their excess in every particular: consumption of illegal (or just plain dangerous) substances, rampant egomania, sexual extravagance, and talent for uninhibited, unstoppable partying. No band was better suited to see the legend and raise it another dozen ounces of blow than the Faces; and no band could match the Faces for sheer working-class dirty-ass rock & roll mojo. This song, their one American hit and the moment of transcendence that every great band needs, is a cheeky satire of rockstar/groupie relationships in the lyrics, but nothing more than scuzzy sex with a backbeat in the music. There are no straight lines or clean surfaces in the song (or really in the Faces catalogue): Rod’s whiskey wail, Ron’s rusty-wire slide guitar, and even Ian’s fuzzed-out electric piano are practially a dissertation on distortion in the service of funk. And it is funk, greasy, grinding, sloppy funk: Ronnie’s melodic bass and Kenny’s battered drums, careening drunkenly though always in the pocket, ensure that. They were Stones- or Zeppelin-level rock stars, but they were also the lads from down the pub — they toured with an open bar on stage — and they knew the whole of rock music, from its roots in country, blues, and gospel to its latest permutations in metal, funk, and proto-punk, in their bones. But forget it all when Kenny strikes the snare and the band shifts into double-time for the outro: crescendo after manic crescendo (I told you it was sex) as each band member gets a sly, two-second solo, and Rod whoops ecstatically from the other side of the room. It’s grimy stadium rock, where the gutterpunks stop in for a pint with the cocaine astronauts, and rock & roll never dies.




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