Organ Wars

It's obvious that the Big Bang of rock and funk is the introdction of the electric guitar: the amplified beat of early delta blues, the percussive sounds of power chords, yadda yadda yadda. Often overlooked is what the electric organ added to the mix.

Specifically, the Hammond organ, popularized by Bob Dylan. I mean, think back, what one sound is the signature of "Like A Rolling Stone"? Right, Al Kooper's one-fingered waves. Then, of course, bands like Procul Harum picked up on it, not to mention the various bands Al Kooper and Stevie Winwood (I still think they're the one and the same person harharhar) were involved in. Because it lent itself very well to the church drive of Gospel call-and response, it became a staple of soul music, while, on the other hand, because it's a very dramatic sounding instrument, I think its sound also had a big influence on progressive rock. The way I see it, prog rock musicians wanted to bring class to rock and roll and blues (and never caught on to the fact these genres had plenty of that to begin with) so what they wanted to put in were classical and jazzy keyboard runs. But they didn't want to play like their daddies so that meant, make the sound big and electric. And the way to resolve that little difficulty was the Hammond. Of course, they later went on to the mellotron and the Moog but the way they played them was informed by the inherent drama of the Hammond.

Meanwhile, on the trashier side of the spectrum where garage bands thrived, the leading keyboard instrument was another organ - namely, the Farfisa organ, with its cheesier sound recalling a carnival merry-go-round, cf. "96 Tears". Now, I don't think anyone can play the Farfisa organ with quite the same dramatic weight as the Hammond (though Elvis Costello, tight-assed wannabe artiste that he is, often tried that approach in his later albums, though if he'd had half the brains that he thinks he does, he'd have realized the cheesy sound Steve Nieve gave him on This Year's Model was what saved EC's parsimonious ruminations from imploding) which is just the point. There's an entire - and important - bedrock of music whose sensibility is rooted in a sort of lunacy that would collide with the kind of music played by self-important Hammond musicians north of the Mason-Dixie line and east of the Atlantic Ocean.

I started out writing this wondering what our musical world would have sounded like if the Farfisa organ had won this imaginary war with the Hammond but on second thought, I'm not sure it didn't, because the two important keyboard styles of the late seventies and early eighties had nothing to do with the progressive rock. One style is the rubbery synth voicing of funk, which really is the brainchild of one man, P-Funk's Bernie Worrel, and God knows where he came up with the sound. After years of listening to all the various P-Funk permutations, it still seems to me that Worrel's style was born out of nowhere, fully fleshed out, with no previous intimations, on Chocolate City and The Mothership Connection. The other style was the British New Wave Synth-Rock, which can sound dramatic enough to reach for the Hammond but works in another musical mode. It's probably a matter of sheer incompetence, I think the Brits wanted to sound like Yes and Tangerine Dream but simply didn't have the chops.

Ian Hunter - "Once Bitten Twice Shy" (1975)

Great, simple rock and roll and ex-Mott The Hoople frontman's biggest solo hit (though "Cleveland Rocks" is better known due to The Drew Carey Show). He updates "Sweet Little Sixteen" with a regurgitated version of the Chuck Berry beat married to Mick Ronson's glam guitar. The joke here is that "his" groupie finally ditches him for another singer but perhaps the best bit comes at the top, when he introduces the song with the most British "hallo" anyone ever came up with.

And the way he combines his arch vocals with sly humor makes mincemeat of both David Bowie and Brian Ferry. This is Ziggy Stardust come down to earth and playing with the chicks.

Carl Perkins - "Lend Me Your Comb" (1957)

There is a reason why Sun owner/producer Sam Phillips thought he was as great as Elvis, a reason why the Beatles admired him and covered so many of his songs. At his best, he was as good a songwriter as Chuck Berry or Lieber and Stoller, while as weird and outrageous as Little Richard. A soulful, country-inflected songer, he was one of those original rockabilly guitarists who sounded like they had used barbed wire for guitar strings and like all originals, no one really managed to top his original versions.

He was a rebel, outlaw roackabilly and his songs were among the first the portray and address that image. Which is what set him apart from his peers in the original pantheon of fifties rock and roll greats. Little Richard was too much of a sexual deviant to be a rebel in that same mold while Chuck Berry just minded his commercial base too much so his approach was to portray rock and roll as the secret language of the entire teenage generation instead of a few select outsiders (not that his cocky guitar riffs didn't inspire thousands of rebels anyway). Jerry Lee Lewis came close but he didn't write any songs. Buddy Holly worked more within the mold and Elvis was, well, Elvis.

Having said that, there is a certain sense in which even songs like "Blue Suede Shoes", "Dixie Fried" and "Put Your Cat Clothes On" just shy away from the rampifications of taking the rebellion to the edge (in a way Richard would never hold back) which just adds to their power in the same way Perkins' guitar flashes like a pocket knife that is displayed but never actually used.

So you all just need to pick up a good anthology of his Sun Years to discover the true predecessor of Taking It All Back Home and while you're at it, listen to "Lend Me Your Comb", which isn't one of his greatest performances and which Perkins didn't even write it. But I think it's about time someone noticed that those chord changes at the end of the verses are the grandaddies of Merseybeat.

Archers Of Loaf - "Web In Front" (1993)

Great rock and roll has a history of undecipherable lyrics, predating even Dylan - say, Little Richard. You don't need to understand the lyrics of this one from the Archers' debut Icky Mettle to get the sheer youth exuberance. Which is what this kind of music is all about, right?

It boasts Pixies/Pavement angular guitars, let's just call it the Television influence and get it over with. And college-rock emotionally-distant-yet-energetically-driven vocals. But why analyze it to death? This song will just make you feel great about your present hangups and make you wish you had enough drive and talent to form your own band just so you could rip them off. Something I'm sure happened a lot during their heyday (which I admit I missed - 1993, I was coming off Lou Reed and rediscovering fifties rock and roll and sixties soul).

Mott The Hoople - "Ballad Of Mott" (1973)

You might remember them as a one hit wonder, but "All The Young Dudes" defined its short-lived era of glam-rock teenage rebellion and still gets airplay thirty years later. And though "Dudes" was presented to the band by David Bowie, with "Ballad Of Mott", Mott head honcho Ian Hunter proved he could write an anthem just as good - and from my tunnel-visioned eyes, even better. And what's more, according to the album credits, he probably wrote it before Mott The Hoople even recorded "All The Young Dudes".

There is a sort of a history of self-referential songs in rock and roll. I guess the Beatles started it with John Lennon quoting his own lyrics on "I Am The Walrus" and "Glass Onion" but these pale beside other ancendents such as the Rolling Stones' "Jigsaw Puzzle" and "Torn And Frayed". Though my favorite moment in this obscure genre is the Mekons' Rock 'N' Roll, which included not only an obvious candidate like "Club Mekon" but lines like "the battles we fought were long and hard - not to be consumed by rock and roll". But "Ballad Of Mott" is the best because it cuts to the bone while retaining a sense of rock grandeur only the early seventies Stones could have matched.

Musically, it's just a rock ballad with a few touches that date it, f'rinstance that fat, dramatic guitar. But what's behind the surface embellishment is Ian Hunter picking at every scab the band had ever picked up during its ever-stalling career. He's bitter and pissed off and embellishes his failures with every verbal taunt and dramatic flair he can think of. And it works because his bitterness and sense of resigned loss have a way of cutting through his literary pretensions. Not to mention, it helps that his pretensions have sense of poetic rhythm to them and that the music has a lolling, dramatic beat that captivates and lives up to his scathing flatullence.

The Rolling Stones - "Jigsaw Puzzle" (1968)

This is the epitome of Mick Jagger's effected, manneristic 1960's singing style (as opposed to his over-the-top, manneristic of the late 80's and on). Also, his most Dylanesque lyrics, as though, after several years of trying to rip off the Beatles, he'd been listening too much to Blonde On Blonde.

But if the Rolling Stones would not have been quite as successful with a less flamboyant frontman, Jagger himself would never have made it if he wasn't backed by such a stellar band, laid back enough to offset his extroverted tendencies on stage and in the studio. And it's the music that that makes this one of the best tracks of their career.

Forget any notions of the Stones being merely purveyors of elemental three chord, blues based rock. "Jigsaw Puzzle", like all of the Stones greatest recordings, may be raw, but it is magnificent music that turns country blues into a space age symphony with no pretensions barring the lyrics. And actually, as is often the case with the Stones, the music redeems the lyrics, turning the line about the guitar players being "outcasts all their lives" into an obituary for Brian Jones before the fact.

Like all of the music on Beggars Banquet, "Jigsaw Puzzle" is based on Keith Richards' explorations of open chord tuning, which is widely documented in interviews and which I admittedly don't understand much about, not being a guitar player myself. But you don't have to be a musician to feel the creative boost these explorations injected in him and you only need to have any ears at all to get the laid back groove of Charlie Watts' drumming or the fat sound of the bass - one of their best recorded parts and rumored to be Keith and not Bill Wyman. But best of all are lilting, almost surrealistic bottleneck guitars, which literally turn into a tribal drone by the time we get to the verse about the twenty thousand grandmas and the queen (see what I meant by Dylanesque?).

With all that going on, Jagger himself sounds quite good, actually.

Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughn - "Pipeline" (1987)

Two grand myths of surf music cross paths with blue-eyes blues.

Dick Dale was a ground-breaking innovator on guitar, largely forgotten today due to surf music's lowly image. He was actually an avid surfer and he tried to make his music depict the physical sensatons of riding the waves. That physicality, combined with the electronic and studio possibilities of the instrument that he explored are his unique contributions. And honorable mention is due his use of exotic, eastern motifs, which might make him the first world musician, cf. "Misirlou" (the instrumental track from the opening credits of Pulp Fiction), which borrows the melody from a Lebanese song.

Stevie Ray Vaughn is more famous but he really never intersected with my interests so you'll just have to look him up yourself.

"Pipeline", originally a hit for the Chantays in 1962, is one of the classic surf instrumentals, which doesn't so much convey the act of mastering the board as much as being pulled down by an undertow, with the eerie threat of the melody carried on guitars played and mixed almost like a bass guitar, all bottom. Dale and Vaughn's version, on the other hand, sounds like a tidal wave, with Dale supplying the muscle and effects and taking off for the stratosphere while Vaughn plays the bluesy licks that bring it down to earth again.