The Godfather: Peter Corris on his music
Hail, hail, rock and roll
Deliver me from the days of old
– Chuck Berry
What are the records you play over and over again? What are the ones you had on vinyl, cassette and CD and (I’m way behind the technology if not the jargon) now on other platforms? And why do they still work for you?
Is it simply familiarity or nostalgia or association with particular people and events in your life? Like most things, I suspect it’s a combination of all of the above.
Here’s my list, not all items passing the vinyl, cassette and CD test because of the time span; some, when lost or stolen or damaged I’ve quickly replaced.
Elvis Presley, The Sun Sessions
Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde
The Band, Music from Big Pink
Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow
Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room
The Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Chronicle
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Déjà Vu
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
Dire Straits, The Sultans of Swing
To the distress of some of my friends who have kept up, that’s where I more or less left off my intense interest and investment in popular music. I was indifferent to Motown, apart from Diana Ross, disliked disco and thought punk was a fake. I was uninterested in reggae and hip-hop and felt alienated by rap.
Of course over that time span I had individual favourites – Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Lymon, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly. I knew of the roots – Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Billie Holiday and Muddy Waters.
Later, I listened to and occasionally bought records by Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Janis Ian, Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton. I respected the talents of Elton John, Bob Seger and others, but I didn’t have collections of their albums as I had with Elvis, Dylan, the Stones, Creedence and the others listed.
There are oddities I still enjoy, like Procol Harem’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and Glen Campbell’s ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’, both instances where I’m sure the artists didn’t really know what they were accomplishing.
Roy Orbison was a one-off: pale, pudgy, immobile, with his growl and falsetto he was the fun and pain of rock personified. Johnny Cash, whose singing was just above flat, nailed certain moods precisely. Tina Turner was a phenomenon, define it how you please.
I don’t expect too many to agree with me but I feel I could mount a good defence in terms of energy, innovation and influence for all the albums I’ve selected. ‘Milk Cow Boogie’ saw Elvis, a white man, singing a black song fully aware of the sexual implications. Before Dylan no popular songwriter could ever have made reference to Verlaine and Rimbaud. The blend of musical styles from the Band ushered in a new complexity to rock and roll. Credence’s ‘Fortunate Son’ is the best anti-establishment rock song ever. The Byrds pointed the way forward for country rock that would produce great music from the likes of Gram Parsons, the Allman Brothers and the Eagles. And so on with the others.
Like commentators selecting the greatest AFL players of all time, I’m troubled by the omissions. The world of rock and roll is so vast, so diverse, so changeable, that it’s difficult to pick the dream team. I’ve never been able to quite locate the Beatles and perhaps that’s their unique power. It seems to me they were a quintessentially English music-hall act, superb at their best, silly at their worst. John Lennon was a brilliant enigma, musically, politically and personally unplugged.
One thing I will stand by in all the marvellous jumble of popular music – a belief that the two greatest popular singers of the 20th century were Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. I wore out a vinyl copy of Songs for Swinging Lovers and, for all my love of rock, I still play a Sinatra ‘best of’ CD and it’s appropriate that Ol’ Blue Eyes should get the last mention.
