Jazz Covers: Keith Jarrett-My Back Pages

Keith Jarrett: My Back Pages
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Over at Cover Me, in honor of Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday earlier this week, the staff, including yours truly, contributed to a long feature ranking the 100 “best” Dylan covers (although we actually wrote about 124, because while many people see a relationship between music and math, bloggers get to do pretty much whatever we want). 

The way that Cover Me “Best Covers” pieces work is that the editors put out a call to the staff for suggestions, and they gather them, add ones they like, and then choose how many to feature. For the Dylan piece, we submitted well over 200 suggestions, which only scratches the surface of the covers out there. Then, once the poobahs come up with the final list, staffers write up the blurbs for each song, the editors rank the covers and the piece gets posted. Like many of my fellow writers, I suggested a whole bunch of really excellent covers, but not all of them made the final cut. 

One of those that didn’t make it was today’s featured song, a cover of “My Back Pages” by Keith Jarrett. I was kind of disappointed, because I hate rejection and because I think that it’s a great cover, but I used my considerable influence here at Star Maker Machine to suggest a “Jazz Covers” theme that would let me highlight the song. (Although it seems that the description posted of the theme calls for covers of jazz songs, which considering how jazz seems to consist, in large part, on interpretations of “standards,” doesn’t make all that much sense to me. But I suggested the theme, and this is what I meant…) 

I have to admit that when I first heard this song, I believe from a cassette (!) that I nabbed from a discard pile the summer that I worked at Atlantic Records, I thought it was great, and had no clue that it was a Dylan song. First off, as I mention somewhere in the Cover Me piece, my knowledge of Dylan songs was, for a long time, really limited to his most famous songs, and it was only years later that my appreciation of his work increased and broadened. So, at the time I heard this cover, I didn’t recognize the title. If you had said, who wrote the song with the lyric “but I was so much older then/I'm younger than that now.” I might have been able to name the writer. Although I also might have thought that it was The Byrds. But Jarrett’s cover is an instrumental. 

Second, honestly, the music sounds very, very different from Dylan’s (or The Byrds’ for that matter), and you kind of have to know what you are listening for. So, now that I know that it’s a cover, I can (sort of) hear it. That all being said, it is really a beautiful song in its own right. It features a 23 year-old Jarrett on piano, still relatively early in his career, accompanied by the brilliant Charlie Haden on bass and Paul Motian on drums, and was recorded live at Shelly’s Manne-Hole in Hollywood, California in August, 1968, only four years after the original was released on Another Side of Bob Dylan. 

As Motian recalled, 

In those days I think I owned about ten albums by Bob Dylan, and the Beatles and all that. I listened to all that shit, man, that shit was strong. That influenced Keith, it influenced all of us, especially Keith, and the music he was writing too. So we were getting into other areas. We’d never play semi-rock and roll kinds of things with Bill Evans, never. But with Keith that was the times, you know? We’re talking about the very late sixties and the early seventies. 

Jarrett went on to join Miles Davis’ band, and then became one of the most heralded pianists in jazz, as a solo artist, a leader, and as a part of small groups. With Haden and Motian as well as saxophonist Dewey Redman, he formed what was called the “American quartet” while simultaneously playing with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson, and Jon Christensen (the “European quartet”). His collaborations with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette (one of my favorite drummers), for albums of standards and originals, are also incredible. Jarrett also wrote and performed classical music, plays a bunch of other instruments, and even was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live, back when it was more common for the bookers to look beyond the pop charts for guests. 

Unfortunately, Jarrett had a series of strokes in 2018, and can no longer perform.

HOMECOMING: TAKE ME BACK HOME/SOULSAVERS

OK, so it was only when the facebook link to my last post alerted me that I realised Homecoming to be peculiarly and specifically an american concept, relating to (high) schools inviting back past alumni, for a dance to celebrate the existence of the institution in question. And football?! Who knew? Certainly not me, although I suddenly get a whole lot of references from "Romy and Micheles High School Reunion" to the Monkees. Anyway, this piece too, like those of my colleagues, is nothing at all to do with that. (Except, arguably, on a metaphysical level.........)

Soulsavers are a remarkable concept, the idea of Rich Machin and Ian Glover, two british producers who somehow have conjured a knack of getting some of the most distinctive vocalists around to sing on their electronica take on what I would broadly categorise as gospel music, possibly not (but probably) including in any religious sense. Perhaps if a little veiled as to any particular divinity. Sorry, sprawling intro, but it is tricky for modern musicians to overtly ally themselves to any accepted spirituality beyond the vague. Or maybe difficult for me and my generation, avowedly secular, to accept such. I can find little back story as to how these two honed their craft. 2003 saw their first record, 'Tough Guys Don't Dance', the template immediately set out with sombre and dark sounds, sombre and dark imagery and sombre, dark, often lugubrious vocals. Here's 'Love' from that record, a style remaining and in no need of change. The singer is Josh Haden, son of Charlie, and erstwhile lead singer of the short lived 'Spain', well worthy of recommendation in their own right.

Second album, 'It's Not How You Fall, It's How You Land', saw them bring in Mark Lanegan, whose gothic tones have increasingly added a little black, or is it white, magic to any number of artists, as well as building up quite a catalogue of his own. With his back story of gaol and addiction, who better to sing of a curiously old testament redemption and revival?

Third album, 'Broken', again included Lanegan, amongst others including Jason Pierce, whose 'Spiritualised' had been mining, and still do, a similar vein. This took deeper still the atmospheric, exemplified by this version of this Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy) track, he also appearing on this and the last record. (And here's Billy's version.)

The song featured in this article comes from number 4, 'The Light the Dead See', which, on the back of the critical breakthrough achieved by 'Broken', had the genius of recruiting Dave Gahan in the Lanegan role. Perhaps as famous for his overdosing near-death experiences as for his fronting of electro-band Depeche Mode, interviews had already revealed his deep melancholic beliefs. When Soulsavers were chosen to support Depeche Mode on a 2012 tour, it was perhaps inevitable he would end up writing and singing with/for them. Not for nothing was the title of his main bands 1993 album 'Songs of Love and Devotion'.

'Take Me Back Home' is one of many highlights from this remarkable album, the references aplenty as to where that home may be. It can move me to impossible places, to states akin to a mystical reverie, almost damascene in intensity. It is only my hard fought for cynicism that enables me to pretend I hear not the beseechments to (a) god. Or to God? As intensity goes it can go little further. And it can't get more overt than the song below.

Gahan has stayed on board a while longer, to the extent of the next release coming under the Dave Gahan & Soulsavers soubriquet, a step backwards for me, experientially, even if the songs, on 'Angels & Ghosts', were nearly as powerful. Strangely, the giving of a name extruded a taste of Mammon. Some of the magic was gone. Perhaps indicatively, the next release was back to the core duo, and instrumental, a film soundtrack, 'Kubrick', no clues in the lyrics, and fewer from the subject matter of the film. But no mistaking the music.

I remain an atheist. I think.

I could just point you toward the named track. Hell, or is that heck, hit the main page.