Thunder & Lightning: Thunderclap Newman

 

Thunderclap Newman: Something In The Air
[purchase] 

I suggested this theme during a summer thunderstorm, but when I started brainstorming ideas for a post, the band Thunderclap Newman jumped into my brain and wouldn’t leave, so there are no (other) storm references here. 

Like most people, I bet, I could name exactly one song by Thunderclap Newman, the wonderful “Something In The Air,” but no others. I’ve mentioned before the “classic rock radio” syndrome (although I’ve never called it that), where bands are remembered only for a handful of songs—or even in this case, for one song—and the rest of their discography gets forgotten. I’m sure you have your favorites, and I’ve even used “Something In The Air” as an example in an earlier post. I also knew that Pete Townshend produced their album, and that he played on it, under a pseudonym, although I didn’t know what that was (Bijou Drains). But that’s pretty much it. 

The band was assembled by Townshend in 1969 as a vehicle to support the songwriting and other talents of John “Speedy” Keen, who wrote “Something In The Air.” It was an unlikely crew: Keen, who had been a friend of Townshend's and a driver for the Who, had written “Armenia City in the Sky,” the opening track on The Who Sell Out. Townsend enlisted Andrew “Thunderclap” Newman, a postal worker and piano player, and 15-year-old guitarist Jimmy “No Nickname” McCulloch. They met at Townshend’s home studio, and the four recorded a single, with Townshend producing. 

It was a big hit in England, was in a couple of movie soundtracks, and was a minor success in the US, initially. Followup singles were less popular, but the success of “Something” led to the band having to do live performances, augmented by a drummer and bass player who was not Pete Townshend. The band’s album, Hollywood Dream, was released in 1970, to excellent reviews, but only modest sales. After some more touring, the band broke up in the spring of 1971. As Wikipedia noted, “The members of the band had little in common. In a 1972 NME interview, Newman said that he got on with Keen's music but not with Keen personally, while the exact opposite was true with regard to McCulloch.” 

Apparently, Hollywood Dreams is now considered a forgotten classic, with Allmusic stating, “So many bands have been hauled out of obscurity to be tagged the greatest secret you've never been told. Thunderclap Newman are one of the few who actually deserve that epithet.” I admit to only sampling a few tracks, and I have trouble getting past Keen’s reedy voice and the excessive music hall influences, but maybe it takes a few solid listens before the genius is revealed. And that’s why I’ve perpetuated the “classic rock radio syndrome” here, focusing on the one song we all know. 

McCullough went on to play with John Mayall, Stone the Crows, and, most famously, Wings, but died from heroin-induced cardiac arrest in 1979 at the age of 26. Keen’s solo career went nowhere, and became a producer, helming Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers’ debut, L.A.M.F. and Motõrhead’s first album (and appears on one of that band’s live albums) and was a session musician before leaving the music industry. Keen died of a heart attack in 2002 at the age of 56. 

Newman recorded an unsuccessful solo album and was a studio musician before retiring until 2002, when he formed the Thunderclap Newman Band, which toured until it disbanded in 2010. Newman formed a new band (which included Pete Townshend’s nephew Josh and the former drummer of Big Country), billed simply as Thunderclap Newman. In 2010 this group released an album, Beyond Hollywood, and toured from 2010-2012, with their last gig at the Isle of Wight Festival. Newman died in 2016 at the age of 73. 

And I’ve made you wait to the end to know why Andy Newman was known as “Thunderclap”—it was a nickname he received in school because of his playing technique.

Fast: Fast Food

 

purchase [ The Iron Man]

Welp ... it looks like SMM posts for this theme never got in to the alternate meaning of <fast> timed to fit the Islamic month of Ramadan, where believers fast from sunrise to sunset. Our theme looks set to end here; Ramadan in a few days. Here is a food-related post to compensate or celebrate.

Pete Townshend/The Who has something for musicals: Tommy ... Quadrophenia ... The Iron Man ... more? The rock musical is not exactly a grossly popular format but there are several more than I was aware of sprinkled among the 75+ listings at the Wiki - some Lloyd Webber, Pink Floyd's The Wall - but also Paul Simon, Green Day, Bono ... have a look.

Townshend's Iron Man eats heavy metal as well as fast food. Fast? you say. In the Ted Hughes book from which the musical is adapted, the iron man wreaks havoc by eating industrial farm machinery- until he changes his mind and saves the world from a space alien. ... sci-fi from '68 adapted with Hughes' support and turned into a musical after several re-writes by Townshend and David Thacker, Director of the Young Vic theater at the time.

The lyrics are extensive - lines and lines of somewhat rique material: rich in connotation and, as ever for Townshend, critical. In this case about, of course, fast food. The album where it appears is kind of a off-spring of the full musical, which was still being cobbled together in 1989 when the album was released. According to at least one critic, the song following Fast Food (I Eat Heavy Metal) had the potential for a more raucus rendition, but both- to my ears - sound like The Who. Nina Simone is credited with the vocals but it sounds to me like mostly Townshend (but then again, I don't really knoiw much about Simone). Daltry and Entwhistle also perform on the album, which is not a Who album since the band had since disbanded. Kind of: Superbowl XLIV anyone?

You can read a lot lot more yourself here in an extensive, entertaining and informative read at petetownshend.net

And a snippet of the lyrics, for your eyes (for your ears is at the top of the page):

I don't even want it killed

If it's dead I heave, it makes me sick

So check that it can breathe and bring it to me quick

I want food fast

I want fast food

Frisky little children

Served up in the nude

Double Entendres: Squeeze Box

 

purchase [ The Who By Numbers]

When I purchased my own first "stereo" back in '71, the merchant included a copy of "Who's Next" in the deal. I have mentioned this before here. Andy La RayGun has also brought it to our attention

Always a fan of the Who/Pete Townsend, I have tried to keep up as he has done side gigs, the NFL Superbowl (however difficult with the group at that age) and more.

The album <The Who By Numbers> includes this piece that might fit the current theme: Squeeze Box.

Ostensibly, a squeeze box is an accordion: you know, the player pulls and pushes/squeezes the box to produce the musical sounds. That doesn't  appears to be the actual subject of the song:

Mama's got a squeeze box she wears on her chest

 .. [daddy] never gets no rest

Yes, the accordion usually rests on the players chest. But more:

She goes in and out and in and out ... [Hmm...meaning what?]

... Come on and squeeze me ...come on and tease me ... [Hmm.. tease the accordion?]

The album studio version is a lot better:

Sheryl Crow does it too

GUITAR HEROES: HANK

Why does the phrase "Guitar Heroes" always have me thinking the wanton destruction of guitars? I guess it’s my age, as the sure fire way to gain that status in the 60s would be, literally, to fire it up. Or to smash it up. OK, let’s disregard the apocrypha that inform us of the dodgy guitar, just off stage and out of audience view, hurriedly sleighted into use and destroyed, night after night, whilst the more precious gear went back into the mink lined crate. And why always guitars? How come the keyboards or drums never took equivalent bashings? (Alright, well nearly never….)

John Hiatt has famously had words to say about the practice, rightly decrying it. But he has had oodles of previous posts here, so I have to think harder. The good news is that there are actually a lot of songs about guitars, often by guitarists who are no slouches on the instrument either. There are even a slew of songs about guitarists by guitarists. One I have covered here before, but not this one below.

I am not going to blether ever onward about my love and awe of RT. Partly because I could and partly as I, and others, have already. But the song, not, I agree, his strongest composition, does at least give some faithful insight of who he was trying to emulate,  in his bedroom all those years ago. But I notice that one of the fellas included in the song always appears in the lists of the favourites of our favourites, that being Hank Marvin, of the Shadows. Those queueing up to pay homage to this mild mannered anti-axe hero are many and varied, including some surprising names: Tony Iommi, Ritchie Blackmore, Neil Young even. (And you thought From Hank to Hendrix was about Mr Williams?!)

I like the video above, if only presenting Hank and the boys in a slightly cooler setting than the usual suits, grins and little dances. Not that they too, in hindsight, don't have their own certain whiff of something unattainable.

There is something slightly thrilling in revisiting these old tunes and these old clips. Remember this is the cusp of the 60s and England. Sure, we had rock and roll over here, but a largely gentler and milder version, nothing too shocking to shift our upper lips. Cliff was as rowdy as it got, the Shadows getting their break as his backing band. The advent of the Beatles so then tilted the universe that Cliff and the Shads seemed forever displaced to light entertainment and TV variety shows. But, listen again: that tone, that tremolo. Magnificent.

He has even had a tribute album created in his honour, Twang!, with an A list of the gurners and shredders, including those mentioned above, along with Mark Knopfler, Brian May and Peter Green, all lining up to play his praises. It’s a good listen, too, in turns surprising, as you realise quite who is on it, as well as realising and remembering quite how good a body or work he produced all those years ago. But who does he rate and who were his inspirations? Here's a pretty good interview and, unsurprisingly, it lists the icons of the golden age of rock and roll, Scotty Moore and James Burton to name but two. He comes over as a decent fella, too, with feet still firmly on the ground.

So you can keep your long hair, your tapping and your pedals, when I want something simple and sublime, gimme some Hank!

Guitar Heroes , get 'em both!!!!

Self-Reflection: Pete Townshend, "I Am an Animal"

Click and listen: I Am An Animal

[Purchase "Empty Glass"]

When I first started thinking about this theme, the second song that popped into my head was “I Am an Animal,” by Pete Townshend, from his 1980 album, Empty Glass. (The first one was “I Am a Scientist,” by Guided by Voices, in case you were curious.) Odd that this song should pop into my head that quickly, since I think it has been a number of years since I listened to that album all the way through and heard the song, but it now seems like an apropos choice: of the 47 lines in the song (as counted from the song's page on a song lyric website), 40 of those lines contain the words “I,” “me,” or “my.” Now THAT is introspection. Or narcissism.

Musically, the song feels to me like it could have been an outtake from Quadrophenia — although “outtake” implies that it didn’t make the cut, and the melody of “I Am an Animal” is equal in caliber to many of the quieter, more introspective songs on Quadrophenia (I think I’m making a connection to “Dr. Jimmy”: “Is it me, for a moment?”).

Lyrically, the song deals with . . . well, it’s about . . . um . . . uh . . . hm. You know, I don’t really know — not exactly. But Pete is searching. He seems uncertain of the future, unsure of his memories of the past, and speculates a bit about what his current state is: animal? vegetable? angel? king? queen ("of the fucking universe,” no less)? It’s all going by in a blur, that’s for sure.

I'm looking back

 And I can't see the past anymore, so hazy


 I'm on a track and I'm traveling so fast

 
Oh, for sure I'm crazy


I am a human being


 And I don't believe all the things I'm seeing

 
I got nowhere to hide anymore

 
I'm losing my way

Ultimately, Pete settles on “animal,” and who can argue with that? Aren’t we all, after all?

THE OTHER GUY: Keith Moon

The Who: "Bell Boy"
[Purchase]

For this entry in the Other Guy theme, you could almost say it's the Other Other Other Guy. Yes, when it comes to the Who, Roger Daltrey was the lead singer, Pete Townshend (The Other Guy) sang the songs that Roger couldn't interpret the way Pete heard them in his head (at least that's the way I've always figured it), and then John Entwistle (The Other Other Guy) would sing his one composition per album. But unlike the Beatles, where Ringo always had a song per album as well, Keith Moon typically didn't sing on Who albums.

But on "Bell Boy," from the Who's classic 1973 double-LP concept album, Quadrophenia, Moon took the lead for a good chunk of the song. Daltrey starts things off by setting the scene for Moon's entrance, letting you know that he (in the character of Jimmy, from the album's storyline), has found that his idol, "Ace Face," is now a bell boy at a resort hotel ("I can see The Face coming through the haze/I remember him from those crazy days"), no longer the anti-authority figure he had been as leader of the Mods. And then in comes Moon as Ace Face himself, singing in a gruff Cockney accent, bemoaning his current situation. Obviously, Moon is hamming it up, so his singing isn't really as off as this might lead one to believe. In fact, while he's thinking back wistfully ("Some nights I still sleep on the beach/Remember when stars were in reach") you can hear him channeling his inner Townshend. Clearly it's a part that would have otherwise been sung by Pete -- but Moon handles it quite well, showing that he did in fact have some melodic range, even if it was rough around the edges.

Townshend has said that he tried to get Moon to sing the song more seriously, but that Moon simply couldn't help mugging for the part, so he gave up trying to get him to do it any other way. And he should be glad he did, as it's certainly one of the most memorable songs on a very memorable album -- and, it should be added, has one of the greatest power-chord riffs in the Who's repertoire. Moon's moment in the vocal spotlight was no throwaway tune, by any means.

Civics Lessons: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Pete Townshend: Won't Get Fooled Again (Demo)

[purchase]

This song has the dubious honor of being named number one on the National Review's oxymoronic list of the Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs. According to NR: "The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off naïve idealism once and for all."

In response to the designation, Townshend explained: "It is not precisely a song that decries revolution--it suggests that we will indeed fight in the streets--but that revolution, like all action can have results we cannot predict. Don't expect to see what you expect to see. Expect nothing and you might gain everything."

My own cyncial opinion is that the song is neither conservative nor liberal, but instead just realistic.

This demo version comes from Pete Townshend's Lifehouse Chronicles box set.

Here is a very funny satire of the National Review list.

Work: Keep On Working

Pete Townshend: Keep On Working

[purchase]

Unfortunately this song about the constant demands of work is too often the story of my life. Fortunately it's a nice little tune from an underrated album.

This Rhino Podcast has a great feature about Pete's Empty Glass, as well as a few other interesting items. Check it out!

Little Black Book: Annie

(Author's note: OK, so I'm a dumbass. I didn't realize we were supposed to add random pictures until I actually read the "Little Black Book" post all the way through to the comments. Stupid reading. Anyway, here's my Annie, decidedly less hirsute than my previous subjects.)

Ronnie Lane: Annie [purchase]

A sadly beautiful number from the unheralded Pete Townshend/Ronnie Lane LP, Rough Mix (1977). "Annie" is actually a Ronnie Lane/Eric Clapton co-write ... ol' Slowhand even adds refreshingly subdued acoustic guitar ... and I'd say it's of a piece with some of Ronnie's tunes with The Faces ("Debris," "Glad And Sorry," maybe "Richmond"). Benny Gallagher's haunting accordion rides atop the backporch country strumming and perfectly complements Lane's soulful singing. A winner in every regard.

If you're an old-school Faces fan, I highly recommend the documentary, The Passing Show: The Life & Music Of Ronnie Lane [purchase]. Like much of Ronnie's best work, it's both sad and curiously life-affirming.