30 years ago today, September 29, 1992, was a great day for grunge rock. Alice in Chains released their second album and what many would call their greatest album, Dirt, and Stone Temple Pilotsreleased their debut album, Core.
I’ve always found AIC’s “Would?” to be one of the most emotionally affecting songs of the grunge era. I love the coda (the part that begins, “Am I wrong?”) … when they shift to the relative major key with a sense of absolute determination.
Radiohead released their first single, “Creep” 30 years ago today, in 1992.
At first it was a flop. BBC Radio considered it “too depressing” to play on the air. So the song didn’t belong in their home country, until it started getting played in other parts of the world — in Israel, Spain, Australia — and eventually the world realized that Radiohead is special …
Radiohead long refused to play “Creep” in concert, but here’s a live performance from 2006:
Last year Thom Yorke released a remix of “Creep,” slowed way down to make it 9 minutes long. A YouTube commenter says: “Feels like Thom just wanted all of us to know the endless pain and agony of playing Creep again and again.”
The pianist BradMehldau put out his Largo album 20 years ago today, in 2002. It deviated from the more traditional piano/bass/drums lineup of his series of five Art of the Trio albums he had put out from 1996 to 2000.
The first song on Largo, “When It Rains,” is a transcendent exploration:
The album includes covers of two songs on the Beatles’ White Album (“Dear Prudence” and “Mother Nature’s Son”) and Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android.” Here’s the Radiohead song:
H-D-H wrote “Baby Love,” which made the Supremes the first Motown group to have multiple #1 singles in the US. Here’s a live performance by the Supremes (with Diana Ross singing lead):
Here’s a video of Dozier talking about writing some of the H-D-H songs. He keeps saying about different songs: “It’s always about love. … It’s all about love.”
That video ends with Dozier talking about “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),” which was originally performed by Marvin Gaye, before James Taylor recorded an even more successful version. Here’s the original:
Dozier grew up in Detroit. In 2004, he told NPR it was an elementary school teacher who liked his writing and encouraged him to keep at it. “She thought it was very astute of me to have such a feel for words and stuff,” Dozier said, “So I started to put these words to music by the time I was, like, 12 or 13.”
NPR neglects to mention that H-D-H went beyond just songwriting, as Wikipedia explains:
During their tenure at Motown Records from 1962 to 1967, Dozier and Brian Holland were the composers and producers for each song, and [Brian’s older brother] Eddie Holland wrote the lyrics and arranged the vocals.
During [Berry] Gordy’s reign at Motown, the record label was run like an auto plant because that was the only other work environment the boss knew, Mr. Dozier said. The songwriters, session musicians and others had to punch a clock. As part of “quality control” each Friday, H-D-H and other songwriters had to write down their songs from the week, and Gordy and other executives would vote on the ones they liked.
The H-D-H songs were usually the winners, Mr. Dozier said.
Lamont Dozier said that he wanted to write “a journey of emotions with sustained tension, like a bolero. To get this across, I alternated the keys, from a minor, Russian feel in the verse to a major, gospel feel in the chorus.” He developed the lyrics with Eddie Holland, aiming for them to sound “as though they were being thrown down vocally.” Dozier said that they were strongly influenced by Bob Dylan at the time, commenting: “We wanted Levi [Stubbs] to shout-sing the lyrics … as a shout-out to Dylan.” For the recording, the writers and producers intentionally put Levi Stubbs at the top of his vocal range, according to Abdul Fakir of the Four Tops, “to make sure he’d have that cry and hunger and wailing in his voice.”
Kate Bush in 1978 at the Dickens Inn in London. Photo by Anwar Hussein/Hulton Archive/GI.
Kate Bush, the daring, eclectic British singer/songwriter, has been in the news for having a resurgence of popularity since her 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” has been featured on the Netflix show Stranger Things. She wanted to call that song “Deal with God,” but was told she couldn’t because the song could be censored in some countries.
She wrote the song to say that she wished she could make a deal with God for women and men to switch places so they could understand each other better.
Here she is playing “Running Up That Hill” live, with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd on guitar and backing vocals:
It’s hard to say what’s better about Kate Bush: her own body of work, or the massive influence she’s had on so many other musical artists, including Tori Amos, Björk, Regina Spektor, Goldfrapp, Florence + the Machine, St. Vincent, Bat for Lashes, Ellie Goulding, Antony and the Johnsons, Tegan and Sara, Lorde, Outkast, the Cure, Stevie Nicks, and Rufus Wainwright.
If you love some of those artists but don’t know much Kate Bush, I recommend her albums The Dreaming (1982) and Hounds of Love (1985), both of which she also produced. This is “Cloudbusting” from Hounds of Love:
Quotes on Kate Bush:
Alison Goldfrapp of Goldfrapp: “Lots of hippies liked Kate Bush where I grew up, so I associated her with bongs and incense and everything disgusting. Then I heard this album [Hounds of Love]. I realised that she was beautiful and interesting, which is not a common combination. It seems very deep somehow.”
Björk: “I think what is really underrated is the production. I think it’s really original and really feminine. … She created her own look and she produced her own sound.”
Tori Amos: “When I first heard her, I went, ‘Wow, she does things that I’ve never heard anybody do, much less me.’ But I could hear a resonance in the voice where you’d think we were distantly related or something.”
Kele Okereke of Bloc Party: “The first time I heard [the song ‘Hounds of Love’] I was sitting in a reclining sofa. As the beat started I was transported somewhere else. Her voice, the imagery, the huge drum sound: it seemed to capture everything for me. As a songwriter you’re constantly chasing that feeling.”
Big Boi of Outkast: “[Kate Bush] became my favorite artist of all time. Her and Bob Marley would tie for first. I used to listen to ‘The Kick Inside’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘This Woman’s Work’ … just admiring the style of music she was making, from the production side of it to the lyrics. It was kind of mind-blowing. I was like OK, I wanted to be like her.”
Nerina Pallot on why she started playing and writing music: “It was Kate Bush. I was around 14 when The Sensual World came out and she played ‘This Woman’s Work’ on Wogan [a British talk show]. I remember watching her and being transfixed and understanding that was what I wanted to do. … I had to write songs and get under the skin of the music.”
Regina Spektor on her influences: “I grew up on classical music, the Beatles, and Queen. But then all this other stuff came into my life. … Nirvana, the Ramones, Madonna, Eminem, Rufus Wainwright, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Kate Bush, David Bowie. … I love music that takes chances.”
Kate Bush: “Every female you see at a piano is either Lynsey de Paul or Carole King. And most male music — not all of it but the good stuff — really lays it on you. It really puts you against the wall. And that’s what I like to do. I’d like my music to intrude.”
This is my favorite Kate Bush song: “Hounds of Love,” from her album of the same name.
Thanks to my brother Chris for video suggestions … and for introducing me to Kate Bush’s great music.
