Month: May 2015

We’ve All Gone Solo #8 (Keith and Donna Godchaux)

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We’ve all gone duo? Since Keith and Donna Godchaux, the husband-and-wife package deal who were members of the Grateful Dead for the better part of the Seventies, are almost always thought of as one, I figured they’d qualify. Certainly they fit the underdog ethos of this series. There is a lot of attention on the Dead this summer, with a high-profile series of 50th anniversary shows at Chicago’s Soldiers Field stadium on the July 4th weekend, and all the various magazine cover stories, video tributes, memorabilia etc. I have a feeling not a lot this will figure in the Godchauxes, even though I’m sure they are fondly remembered by many Deadheads. Their story is a bit unusual, even with the “long, strange trip” aura that surrounds the band. In the more accessible days of the early 70s, the couple basically talked their way into the group (see the Donna G. interview clip below) even if the two of them did not appear as naturals to join. The Alabama-born Donna was a former Muscle Shoals backup singer who moved to San Francisco but was unimpressed on first hearing the “druggie” records of Jerry Garcia and Co. but became a convert after seeing a particularly great show at the Winterland ballroom. Her new husband was also reluctant at first. Keith was a Bill Evans-inspired jazz pianist who didn’t go much for the rock epoch of the day. But he came around as well after agreeing to go to a Dead concert with his “old lady” and some friends.

The couple’s timing was fortuitous. Founding member Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, who played organ as well as harmonica while singing the Dead’s blues numbers, was in poor health (he died in 1973) and unable to keep up with the band’s rigorous touring schedule.
In ’73, Keith and Donna first appeared on a Dead studio album. “Wake of the Flood” was one of their most musically rich outings and the fluid keyboards and feminine vocal backdrop provided by the couple were a key part. But it was clear that they were in a supporting role. Keith’s only songwriting credit and lead vocal in the band was on that album’s “Let Me Sing Your Blues Away” while Donna had to wait until 1977’s “Terrapin Station” LP for her turn in the spotlight, with the song “Sunrise.”

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So it was not unusual that the we-got-our-own-album-to-do bug hit them during one of the Dead’s sabbaticals. The group had their own label by then (Round Records) and the Godchauxes, who had a baby son named Zion, turned part of their Stinson Beach house into a temporary studio. Garcia, who lived around the way, played all the guitar parts and in return the couple helped him out on some subsequent dates with the Jerry Garcia Band. There are a lot of Dead-related solo records and side projects out there and unfortunately this one quickly got lost in the shuffle. It’s not exactly the second coming of “Beggars Banquet” but it’s a likable helping of Marin County Mellow, undermined by a lightweight production and a couple of programming lapses. It opens with Donna’s too-deferential version of “River Deep, Mountain High” but once she finds her comfort (like on the Muscle Shoals-style zinger “When You Start to Move”) things pick up in a hurry. Keith, who never had a great singing voice, generally sticks to the keyboards, otherwise they could have more closely approached the Delaney and Bonnie brand of soulful rock. The album wraps up nicely with the six-minute plus “The Song I Sing” which gives Jerry a little room to stretch out on lead guitar.

In the latter half of the Seventies, things started going south for the couple. Keith’s hard drug use and their domestic troubles were part of it, and stylistically they were not fitting in as well as before. Donna’s vocals, so strong in her FAME Studio’s framework, became, in the modern parlance, “a little pitchy” when trying to keep up with the Dead’s higher-flying excursions. They mutually parted ways in early 1979. Brent Mydland replaced Keith; Donna was destined to remain the only woman member in the band’s history.

Before the couple could fully re-group, Keith died in a car accident in July 1980 at age 32. Donna is still performing while Zion, whose adorably scowling infant self appears on the “Keith and Donna” LP, currently plays in the band BoomBox. This album has never appeared on CD and was uploaded to YouTube 8 months ago by Tony Sclafani, an author of a Grateful Dead book, and has received 1260 views as of this writing. I’d say it deserves better.

We’ve All Gone Solo #7 (Ronnie Wood)

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Is Ronnie Wood rock music’s ultimate wingman? Born in 1947 in an outlying district in London, he’s a guitar-playing guy who came into the world at just the right time. After knocking around a bit in the capitol’s hothouse music scene, he got a gig in 1967 playing bass for the Jeff Beck Group and never looked back.

When the restless Beck dissolved that version of JBG, Wood and vocalist Rod Stewart quickly joined forces with Ronnie Lane, Ian MacLagan and Kenny Jones from the beloved Small Faces whose own frontman, Steve Marriott, had left to form Humble Pie. With the Faces, Wood went back to shouldering a six-string and took up his stage right position, dishing out his buzzing riffs and slide guitar fills through several notable albums (and co-writing such great tunes as “Stay With Me” and “Ooh La La”) and high-spirited tours with that archetypal group of working-class blokes made good. Oh, and since the mid-70s he’s been a Rolling Stone.

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So life’s been good for this son of a long line of river barge operators—he’s been rock royalty for over four decades without ever seeming to hog the spotlight. Employing the time-tested tricks of the trade (rooster haircut, low-slung guitar, dangling cigarette) Wood’s been a reliable foil to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in rock history’s most durable top-line act. He’s also played with Bob Dylan at Live Aid, represented the Stones at the Last Waltz concert, had an affair with rock super-muse Patti Boyd Harrison, been in and out of rehab several times and was twice married to models—the second one divorced him several years back after he had a fling with a barely-legal Russian girl. I think that about takes care of the checklist.

And when it was time to do his first solo record in 1974, he came up with the perfect title. (I was going to name this blog series I’ve Got My Own Album to Do before choosing the more compact title I nicked from the chorus of “Solo,” the Sandy Denny song about the comings and goings of Fairport Convention alumni). Naturally, Wood had no trouble rounding up some mates to help him out. The credits are full of Faces and Stones (both Mick and Rod the Mod help out on vocals), not to mention the great rhythm section of bassist Willie Weeks and drummer Andy Newmark. This album is a real corker, as they say across the pond. You expect ol’ Ron to be chuffing away on the bluesy rockers that were the calling card of his various groups, but there is also some impressive variety in the songwriting. There’s the very nice “Far East Man” with George Harrison (who co-wrote it) on slide guitar and harmonies, plus a few songs (“Mystifies Me,” “Cancel Everything”) that channel that sweet melancholic vibe associated with his Faces songwriting partner Ronnie Lane. These slowies are especially well-suited to Wood’s slightly raspy, Everyman voice. But whether the mood of an individual song is sad or sassy, the overall ambience recalls a fun night out with the lads and it all ends with a loose, funky instrumental jam called “Crotch Music.”

This wouldn’t be Ronnie Wood’s only solo LP. His most successful one in the States would come in 1979 with Gimme Some Neck, which led to the short-lived semi-supergroup with Keith Richards called the New Barbarians. But mostly, life with the Stones has kept him pretty busy over the years, with occasional solo outings to fill the gaps and keep him (mostly) out of the tabloids. When you’re this high up in the court of the Royal Rock Stars, it is good to be The Wingman.


From the 2007 concert film “Shine A Light.”

My latest book, Rock Docs: A Fifty-Year Cinematic Journey is now available. You can view a 30-page excerpt by clicking on the image of the book cover on the upper right.

Review: “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock & Roll”

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Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock & Roll
Directed by John Pirozzi—2015—105 minutes

The freedom to live out a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, taken for granted by several decades worth of young people in Western nations, may never be regarded so lightly again after viewing John Pirozzi’s mesmerizing documentary. Whether or not the viewer realizes beforehand that Cambodia had a vibrant pop music scene in the 60s and early 70s will hardly matter once he or she is drawn into the film’s orbit. What most will know going in is that this thriving youth movement was destined to be crushed, along with all else, when the homicidal Khmer Rouge forces took over the country in a terrible offshoot of the Vietnam War. Using interviews with survivors, evocative period footage and vintage vinyl, Pirozzi conjures up a regenerative tale despite the historical horrors. It’s a case of mankind’s better nature, here in the form of musical enrichment, persevering even in the face of the worst fanatical impulses this sorry world has to offer.

The story starts soon after Cambodia peacefully gains its independence from France in 1953. A period of relative economic success follows under the restored monarchy, led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk. The prince was a patron of the arts and a bit of a singer himself, and music and traditional culture thrived. Pop songs soon became all the rage, with vocalists both male (Sinn Sisamouth) and female (Ros Serey Sothea) becoming idols across all age groups. At first, the tunes are reminiscent of French and Afro-Cuban styles; as we get into the Sixties, the British and American rock influences seep in. There is a certain lulling appeal to this first part of the film. The capital Phnom Penh is a vision of blossoming trees and bright boulevards, towering temples and lively clubs. Especially when the soundtrack features the keening, ethereal tones of the woman singers, the sights and sounds float by like an exotic dream.

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“When we were young, we loved to be modern,” one of the participants says right at the start. It is a simple as it is heartbreaking, knowing the nightmare that this dream will morph into. Still, it is fun to learn of the different musical artists and their evolution through the better part of twenty years. News that the war in neighboring Vietnam is spilling across their border comes at first in brief segments. Prince Sihanouk tries to remain neutral, even in the face of President Nixon’s bombing of his country to try and stymie the North Vietnamese communists. Still, the happy teens congregate and the music plays on into the late 60s and early 70s. Guitar bands like Baksey Cham Krong and mildly rebellious artists like troubadour Yol Aularong and sassy-girl singer Pen Ran are readily identifiable in the global pop canon.

It all starts coming apart in 1970 when the prince is deposed in a right-wing coup and naively allies himself with the Khmer Rogue. Far from being “modern,” the Khmer Rouge were pathological ideologues who, upon taking power in April of 1975, emptied Phnom Penh and other cities with the demented idea of creating a pre-industrial agrarian society—in effect turning the whole country into a big prison farm. A quarter of Cambodia’s population would not survive the regime’s four year rule, and as many as two million died from hunger, disease and summary execution in the world’s worst such event since the Holocaust. Pirozzi, as befits his subject, keys in on the Khmer Rouge’s particular contempt of artists, a group who are “close to the people” and thus deemed a dangerous challenge to their dogma. Singer Sieng Vanthy recalls how her life was saved because she convinced authorities that she had been a banana seller before the takeover.

At the end of “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten” Pirozzi shows the present-day (and once again sparkling) Phnom Penh, with its easeful citizens, pop talent shows and stores with racks of CDs, some of them re-issues of those old albums we almost feel we know by now. Things aren’t perfect. Much like Prince Sihanouk (who was good on the arts but stymied political dissent with his secret police), Cambodia is today ruled by Hun Sen, a long-reigning strongman (and Khmer Rouge defector) who can make life very uncomfortable for his opponents. On the plus side… well, he has managed not to kill two million people.

The grace and dignity of the film’s subjects will make an even greater impression when held up against the depravity of the perpetrators. The inspiration and uplift of culture is one of the great counterweights we have against the dark impulses that lead to the violence, greed and exploitation that seems to have half the globe in a stranglehold at any one time. Like in this film, we always seem outnumbered but never give up.

My new book, Rock Docs: A Fifty-Year Cinematic Journey will be released in late 2015.
Copyright 2015, Rick Ouellette. All rights reserved.