The modern music business was built on album tracks.
The single is just the introduction. The key is to set the listener on an adventure, deep into the wilderness. It's a solo journey. If you need friends, a crowd, dancers to enjoy a track, that's something different. It may be joyful, but that's not what built this business into the juggernaut it became.
Sure, rock and roll started in the fifties. But not long thereafter it devolved...into what it's become today. Empty stars, most of whom have been forgotten, are completely unknown to today's youngsters. Fabian? Bobby Rydell? They were ultimately eclipsed by the Beatles. Sure, we had the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons, but when the Beatles hit the airwaves at the advent of 1964, everything changed. It was no longer music, it was MANIA! Music suddenly became everything. And sure, the four from Liverpool were cute, had good voices, and were cheeky, but really it was all about the music. Which they wrote. That was the turning point. Suddenly, the music was direct from them to you, the artist to the listener, ideas, truth, beauty were being channeled directly into your heart.
And then came FM radio. Everybody who'd been inspired by the Beatles, everybody too left field for the mainstream, everybody who thought music was more than a cut on a 45 RPM single, suddenly had an outlet for their work. Listeners were exposed to "Purple Haze" and "Sunshine of Your Love," the latter of which ultimately crossed over to AM with its iconic riff, but my favorite track on "Disraeli Gears" has always been "Tales of Brave Ulysses." And if I want to listen to Hendrix, I'll put on "Burning of the Midnight Lamp."
I'm not saying cuts didn't cross over to AM, you could hear "Piece of My Heart" there, but so much of the great stuff, that could sell tickets, never produced a single. This is the stuff you remember. Funny how all these years later everybody agrees that the first Blood, Sweat & Tears album is far superior to the follow-up with David Clayton Thomas that produced all those hits. Furthermore, the band could never follow up that monster, whereas Al Kooper continued to have a career, I bought the albums he made/was involved with, whereas the rap on "Blood, Sweat & Tears 3" was so bad I left it in the bins. Can you say "Hi-De-Ho"? No!
And as the seventies wore on, every hamlet and burg got an FM station, if you were listening to AM you were a loser. An act could be huge on FM and be completely unknown on AM.
If you look at the "Billboard" chart, and I advise against it, you'll see that "Free Bird" made it all the way to #19 on the singles chart, but really it was an FM staple, always #2 on the annual Memorial Day 500, the best songs of rock history. And the perennial #1, "Stairway to Heaven," was never a single, never ever. Nor was there a truncated version. You accepted the track as is, or...
Meanwhile, I've skipped over "Stairway to Heaven" many times while listening to the fourth Zeppelin LP. If I listen to that album I want to hear "Battle of Evermore" or "Going to California" or..."When the Levee Breaks." And "D'yer Mak'er" was one of the worst songs on "Houses of the Holy." If I'm looking for obvious, I'll go with "Dancing Days," and "The Rain Song" and "Over the Hills and Far Away" eclipse both. Where is the spot on AM radio for the mysterious, atmospheric "The Rain Song"? Talk about not being a single.
But these were the songs you wanted to hear live.
And for a long time I swore that the first Zeppelin album was the best.
I can't say I wasn't enamored of the opening banger "Good Times Bad Times," and "Communication Breakdown" was a tear, but my favorite song on the debut is "Dazed and Confused." And then "Your Time Is Gonna Come" and "How Many More Times."
And to tell you the truth, by time "Physical Graffiti" was released in the spring of 1975, I was off Zeppelin, the fifth album wasn't as good as the fourth and it was more obvious and embraced by the hoi polloi and then...
I heard "Kashmir.'
Not on the radio, but as part of the album. A friend had made an 8-track tape that he played in the condo every day when we got home from skiing that month of May at Mammoth Mountain.
Now "Kashmir" was usually #3 in those Memorial Day countdowns, which evaporated with the demise of AOR radio, but it was never a single. As a matter of fact, nothing on "Physical Graffiti" was ever heard on AM radio! This was an hour and twenty minute listening experience. And certain tracks didn't really work out of context. "Down by the Seaside" was so great because it sat on the third side between "Bron-Yr-Aur" and "Ten Years Gone."
And "Ten Years Gone" is the piece-de-resistance!
I was stunned when I heard the band play it live. But really, it's always been a private listening experience. In the dark. On headphones. "Ten Years Gone" is not background music, it demands attention, not by banging you over the head, but via subtlety, via magic.
And majesty.
"Ten Years Gone" is a symphonic work. It's not something that you talk about, but it is something you think about, sing in your head, play on a regular basis.
And in the eighties the mainstream and the outside merged on MTV. The lame AM hits were replaced by FM-style hits, but it was all about single cuts on the music video service. And to hear them at home you had to buy the album, and radio played what MTV did, there were new Top Fortys replicating the MTV playlist which eclipsed FM, and the overpriced CD came along and suddenly record companies, and their executives, were richer than ever before.
And it hasn't been the same since.
Even worse, those with knowledge of the switch from AM to FM, from singles to album rock, are in the rearview mirror. Most people in the business, never mind listeners, only know single driven music.
To our collective detriment.
But in the past decade something has changed. As the major labels keep consolidating, trying to launch hit singles, those who desire a deeper meaning, a deeper feeling, have moved on to acts that are not giant, but deliver the feeling of yore, the heart of both music and the business. We want more than the track, and in order for the business to be healthy this is the way it has to be.
People have not lost the need to hear "Ten Years Gone," it just hasn't been served to them. And I'd love to tell you they're making new "Ten Years Gone," but that's why they call it classic rock.
Our only hope is that some of these outside acts, doing it on their own, without Jack Antonoff and cowriters, will hone their chops to the point where they create undeniable music, which can then spread.
The seeds have been planted. The only way out of this mess is to go back to the garden. That's where the optimism lies. Because the experience never changes, it's what people desire, and if it's not delivered music will continue to be a second-class citizen. But for a while there, especially from "Rubber Soul" to "The Wall," it was...
EVERYTHING!
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