— Fred Dellar
We're going back a bit for this post. Having decided earlier this year to include singles from before mid-1981, I realised that I had skipped one from the start of 1983. Though Smash Hits had begun giving a more prominent space for Singles of the Fortnight, they failed to do so this time round with largely unflattering reviews of Rockers Revenge and Jimmy Cliff sharing the top left hand spot usually reserved for critic picks. A stingy with praise Fred Dellar (the latest from Michael Jackson is only able to "almost convince you that "Bille Jean" is a great record. Which it isn't") doesn't specify a favourite so I refrained from covering it back at the beginning of 2019 but now that I'm inferring earlier SOTF, I feel more comfortable putting words in his nibs' mouth.
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An ambition of mine that I'm sure never to realise is to write a a jukebox musical based on the music of Steely Dan. Glamour Profession, as it is so named, is about a rotating cast of musicians who toil in the studio under the direction of an unseen pair of demanding and persnickety composers named Don and Walt. Beginning at around the time of 1974's Pretzel Logic, just as this organization was transitioning from a "proper" five-piece band into a diarchic unit surrounded by crack jazz and rock sessioners, it examines the hired hands as they rehearse under watchful eyes and, during the odd lull between songs, discuss their lives as working musicians. A backing vocalist, guitarist or saxophonist breaks into a full rendition of whatever song that they happen to be working on (I always imagine "Bad Sneakers" from the Katy Lied album working particularly well) before receiving word that Don or Walt (if not both) are unhappy with that take and wish to do it again (wheels turnin' round and round...).
One scene I've thought about at length (which I nearly wrote for this entry until it dawned on me that I haven't the faintest idea what I'm doing) is about a pair of musician buddies meeting in a quiet studio and catching up before another session is to begin. One has been out of the country and is surprised to discover that Walt is out of the picture. They spend much time discussing the implications of this new arrangement, unable to work out if it's for the best or not. Only one stern teacher barking at them seems to be a plus but then Don doesn't have his old partner to blame for sabotaging the session: the studio musicians will have to take the brunt of the blame. This new direction leads them into a rendition of "New Frontier".
Lead singers who go solo could do a lot worse than stick with what they know. The natural thing to do is stretch out from the confines of a band but does that ever really work out? Why not just do what's easiest: it worked before so why not keep it going? Fans who are already familiar with a group's material can appreciate hearing more of the same from a newly solo artist, especially since it helps dull the sting of a break up. The musically illiterate Morrissey emerged following the dissolution of The Smiths with a number one album and a string of top ten hits. Was Viva Hate a better work than The Queen Is Dead or Strangeways, Here We Come? Not at all but it greatly impressed people that he was able to cut it on his "own".
Sticking with a familiar sound also allows the vocalist to control the narrative. Keith Richards was said to have been livid when he first heard Mick Jagger's debut solo album She's the Boss — not because it spat on the legacy of The Rolling Stones but because it sounded too much like them. But coming on the heels of the patchy Undercover, it's not a bad effort and reaffirms the vital role he plays in his day job (though it probably helps that this was prior to Richards becoming everyone's favourite Stone). Bryan Ferry had long held solo ambitions and interspersed albums released under his own name with Roxy Music LPs. Again, the stuff he did on his own is decent but seventies Roxy is a much different beast than eighties Stones. Gradually, however, his band moved away from their remarkable art rock and their polished and slick later work began to fall closer in line with his solo recordings. Avalon was a commercial and critical success and Ferry deftly harnessed it into Boys & Girls, in effect its follow up. (Such was his blurring of the lines between group and solo artist that many subsequent compilations have drawn from both sources)
In a sense, Donald Fagen doesn't really fit in with Ferry, Jagger and Morrissey — which, considering the company, is probably for the best. Steely Dan fell apart following the sessions for their seventh album Gaucho and Fagen appears to have continued where he left off with The Nightfly but there's no sense of him having any prior solo ambitions, there wasn't a grand strategy involved and he wasn't setting out to proven anything to anyone. Eighteen of the album's twenty-eight session musicians were veterans from prior Dan works, with all but two having appeared on Gaucho, including Larry Carlton and Michael and Randy Brecker. That same old exactitude of the playing is present and correct, as are Fagen's witticisms.
"New Frontier" is Fagen's madcap tale of planning a party in a bomb shelter "in case the Reds decide to push the button down". The song isn't traumatically retelling how terrified he was by 'duck and cover' drill exercises or how he was kept awake with worry during the Cuban Missile Crisis but looks forward to the Bomb and the promise it brings. I imagine a fifteen-year-old geek, clipboard in hand, with a list of names that he has earmarked for a spot in the "dugout that my dad built". Is it even a list? Is the coming disaster just a ruse to get the Big Blonde to have a little nuclear fallout with our Donny? So much to chew on here.
Gone from The Nightfly are characters like Hoops McCann with Fagen instead using himself in the role. A bomb shelter becomes a teenage fantasy nightclub and he's the bouncer. The album is often described as a departure in that it got him being much more autobiographical. There's more than a little truth in this and certainly not having Walter Becker around to bounce ideas off would have made it much more convenient to look within. But I'm not so sure it goes into his own life and experiences, just the knuckleheaded thoughts that roamed in his mind. Perhaps this is what the jukebox musical should really be about.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
The Buebells: "Cath"
With Altered Images, The Associates, Aztec Camera, Big Country, Orange Juice, Simple Minds and Strawberry Switchblade, Scottish pop more than held its own in the early eighties. But what of The Bluebells, a group that lacked both the cool factor and/or the cultural import of their contemporaries? Obviously they'll always have "Young at Heart", a song I previously slagged, to keep the memories alive and the royalty checks coming but "Cath" is a much better song and gives one an idea of just how they manage to fit in. While Kenneth McCluskey didn't have the charisma of Billy McKenzie, Clare Grogan, Jill Bryson or Rose McDowall, the group didn't have a particularly distinct sound the way Big Country and Simple Minds did and they weren't songwriters like Roddy Frame or Edwyn Collins but they might have been the best possible compromise of all of 'em. I'll take "Cath" with "Party Fears Two" and "All I Need Is Everything" and you can have the rest.
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