"Learning to Live Together: The Return of Mad Dogs & Englishmen":
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Everybody's dead. Well at least the two stars, Joe Cocker and Leon Russell. And Carl Radle and Jim Horn and Bobby Keys and...Jim Gordon's in jail.
I actually saw Mad Dogs & Englishmen. At the Capitol Theatre, in Port Chester, New York. The mania from the Woodstock movie was selling tickets, but Joe was a star already, with two albums played incessantly on FM radio, where all the action was. His cover of "With a Little Help From My Friends" became a staple of the FM rock format just after it was released in 1969. And I knew about Mad Dogs & Englishmen.
Today there's too much information, yesterday not enough. I read about the tour in "Rolling Stone," a couple of other places, but I had no idea who most of these people were, Leon Russell being the exception, I purchased his debut solo LP back in March, I still prefer his version of "Delta Lady," and you'd be surprised how many people know "Roll Away the Stone," and I learned that he co-wrote those Gary Lewis & the Playboys hits, I loved "She's Just My Style," a Beach Boys flavored track, but I did not know the details of his years in the studio, the dues he'd paid.
As for the band's third star, the other breakout? The first time I became aware of Rita Coolidge was when she was singing on stage.
Back then there was an almost impenetrable barrier between the players and the audience. There was no social media. No way to easily look up their address. Maybe if you were in L.A. you could see them driving around, hanging out, but if you lived in the rest of the country they were exotic animals, who dropped down into your town and then jetted out, to where the action was.
And it was only about the music, at the Mad Dogs & Englishmen show they weren't even selling any merch. The Fillmore East didn't sell merch, wasn't the music enough? Concert t-shirts didn't really become a thing until the seventies, and although the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour took place in the spring of 1970, it might as well have still been the sixties, with Kent State... Once rock became corporatized, blasted on stations all over the country, then the merch became a big deal. People in backwater hamlets were just as infatuated, just as eager to get attached as those in the cities. I could compare the musicians of yore to the techies, maybe even the bankers, of today, but it's not really a good fit. With the bankers it's just about the money. With the techies...well, it used to be about innovation, pushing the envelope. But the musicians of yore...IT WAS ABOUT THEM! Not only did they sing the songs, they wrote 'em. They embodied the lyrics, you felt that you knew them. Then again, Joe Cocker did not write, and as a result he was kind of a cypher, and the endless testimonials to his character in this film ultimately tell us nothing about him, he's dead, you never want to speak ill of those who've passed, I mean what was Joe really like? I don't know, nor do most other people.
So you know the history... The band goes on the road, the double live album comes out only a couple of months later and Leon Russell becomes an overnight superstar and Joe Cocker disappears. Not only did Joe not record for two and a half years, ultimately releasing the substandard "Something to Say," he grew an enormous beer belly, there were pictures, he seemed completely burned out.
But Leon's comet burned very quickly and flew by soon. One can state that Leon's peak only lasted three years, three solo albums and then a bloated triple album set and then he went country and he never could recapture the magic. He was seen as stealing the spotlight from Joe, using the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour to his advantage, so there was little good will to sustain him, and by the end of his life he was barely able to walk, getting around on a scooter, playing clubs, even Elton John couldn't resuscitate his career. Maybe because Elton and Leon both played the piano, could both be flamboyant, in dress and in their playing, but their roots were completely different. Elton was from England, Leon was from Oklahoma.
Oklahoma, have you been there?
I've been to every state surrounding it, but never to OK, despite knowing the musical by heart. But a certain creativity came from the flatlands of the oil-producing state. Not only Leon, but Dwight Twilley, who with his partner Phil Seymour released one of the iconic tracks of the seventies, "I'm on Fire." And sure, Jimmy Webb came from Oklahoma, but soon left. Garth Brooks went to Nashville to make it. But Leon Russell was constantly going back to the Sooner State, Shelter Records set up a studio in Oklahoma City and...if you were from the coast you just couldn't understand it, there was nothing there, thank god you left, why in the hell would you want to go back?
But Leon Russell is Oklahoma through and through. That's what you see in this new movie. It's the way he talks, the cadence. Slow, with a drawl. And with attitude. They don't talk this way in the north, or on the coasts. And his roots were different. There was a bunch of country, soul and gospel mixed in with the rock, so the ultimate sound is unique. And for a while there, it resonated throughout the country.
So you want to see this new movie for Leon.
But the star of the show is Chris Robinson, another musician people have a bad taste in their mouth about, another one hated by many, but when Robinson steps to the mic, be prepared to be wowed. He doesn't sound like Cocker, but he evidences the same blues roots, filtered through years of rock and roll. Robinson doesn't shout, he just emotes with extreme intensity, and the music lives in him just like it lived in Cocker, he moves to the sound, he can't help himself. I was watching thinking how he also sang the Zeppelin hits with Jimmy Page, and he even sang with Phil & Friends, Phil Lesh's side project.
I know you don't want to hear this, you just want me to pour endless love on Tedeschi and Trucks and the oldsters, but I'm being honest here, when Chris steps up to the mic you're convinced he's a national treasure, and he's still here!
Not only so many of the old band are gone, so is the sound. This concert was filmed at LOCKN', one of America's hippest festivals, but it gets very little media love, it's for fans of the music as opposed to those who just want to parade, be seen and post. But that's today's world, all the focus is on the Spotify Top 50, but that's just a smidge of what's truly happening out there.
So it's a reunion of the oldsters, paired with the Tedeschi Trucks band.
Let me just state straight that Derek Trucks is an incredible player. Like Jeff Beck he uses no pick. And as much as he's lauded, he still doesn't get enough respect. He's genius, probably the best of his generation. And his wife Susan Tedeschi has the pipes to sing these old songs, as well as the ability to play guitar, despite getting only a tiny bit of press, which flummoxes me, then again, Tedeschi Trucks has a significant following, that can keep their large band on the road.
Today everybody's a solo performer. The music is made alone in your bedroom and the creator makes all the money. To create a sound like Tedeschi Trucks, which is akin to the Allman Brothers, but with its own twist, it takes a lot of players up on stage, which means it costs A LOT OF MONEY!
It's not about the money...it's about the money. That's a classic music business aphorism. And you see all these people on stage and one thing is clear, no one is getting rich, you've got to be doing it for the love of the music, the love of playing, because that's all there is.
It used to be different. No money was made on the original Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, but there was plenty of money in the music business back then. Most of it in the records themselves, a ten dollar ticket was unheard of. Then again, managers and labels were famous for screwing the artists, hopefully you wrote something and regained the rights via copyright reversion in this century, but if they're still alive, so many of these old players are broke. Because you're hip, and then you're not.
It's different today, because no one is as big as those of the past, they don't have the mental footprint. And you can't possibly make the money of the techies and the bankers, even though musicians keep complaining they can't. In other words, there's a bifurcation. Either you're in it for the money and fame, or you're in it for the music. But if you're in it for the music, you must be really damn good, because you're gonna earn your keep on the road. Watch Derek Trucks and the rest of the band, are you as good as they are? If not, keep your day job.
So yesterday you used to shine incredibly bright for a few years, and then you fell back to earth. The band broke up. You were so burned out you sat at home, licked your wounds and adjusted your perspective and then, in the nineties, if you'd had success, you went back on the road with the reunion tour. But people wanted to see you, commensurate with your impact the first time around.
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So first we've got the camp reunion, Rita Coolidge, Pamela Polland, Claudia Lennear, the Moore Brothers, Leon... It's been half a century, almost none of these people played together ever again. Rita Coolidge went on to become an icon, but she appears so normal here it polishes her image, she's throwing off no star vibes, no divadom whatsoever, but when she steps to the mic, she's still got it.
Ditto for Claudia Lennear, another cultural icon, often referenced as the inspiration for "Brown Sugar," sexiness incarnated, she ultimately punted the music business and became a school teacher. She couldn't be more normal in this film. But then she steps to the mic, and she's still got it.
The Moore Brothers? For all their writing credits, they get no history, no backstory in this movie, hell, Matthew Moore WROTE "Space Captain," which is one of the highlights of this film, if not THE highlight.
And Pamela Polland?
If you were reading the music news you knew who she was, but she never broke through, I had to look on Wikipedia to see that she's been making her living in Hawaii, playing music there, literally off the radar screen. And now she's 77, 71 when the concert was filmed in 2015, it took the producers that long to raise finishing monies, but she's still lucid, SHE'S STILL THE SAME! She's a rock chick, but not in leather like Lita Ford, but an equal of the guys back then. Sure, there was a ton of sexism, but the women got record deals, and they didn't have to sing pop tunes.
And I know all this because I lived through it. But almost everybody testifying other than the old band members WASN'T EVEN ALIVE WHEN THE ORIGINAL TOUR TOOK PLACE!
So they're talking about the old show and you realize it's just history, moving images from the original concert film, they've got no idea how it really was. An oldster in the flick states that they didn't think there was one person over thirty in the original Mad Dogs & Englishmen entourage. Music was a youth business. The oldsters had given up, hired house hippies to tell them what to sign, twentysomething managers were making it up as they went, inventing, formulating a business that is a smooth running machine today, at least in comparison.
So this is not the movie I thought they'd make. I figured it would be a concert film of the 2015 show, with a few interstitial conversational moments, like the rock movies of the seventies, but no...this is really a documentary juxtaposing the old with the new, with music at best equal to the story.
You see they're constantly referring to the original Mad Dogs & Englishmen movie, a 1971 production that almost no one saw. Distribution was sketchy at best. It wasn't quite like "Cocksucker Blues," but prior to the VCR and digital TV, almost nobody had seen it, it was a secret, all the money was in the double live album. The players of today are testifying about the film, not realizing it was a dud upon release, almost nobody was aware it came out, you had to be a big rock fan to know about it, and then you had to find somewhere they played it, which was essentially nowhere.
And the original film is 57 minutes. And the new one is 111 minutes. "Learning to Live Together" is essentially the two shows put together.
But really, it's a peek into the way it used to be. When you see Leon Russell and Chris Stainton play the piano, you're wowed, you can't believe they're actually playing those notes you know so well, sans flaws, sounding almost identical to the originals.
And then there's a horn section, adding a broadness to the sound that you can't get anywhere else, never mind a flourish.
And the endless backup singers... Nobody ever carries this many on the road. They've got the music in them, they're singing along, and since they're pros they're singing in tune.
So...
I finished watching the movie and I felt sad. Because what once was is no longer. Did you see that Commander Cody just died? This is a regular thing now, old rock stars kicking the bucket. Cody, real name George Frayne, passed away at 77, you'd think from hard living, but the truth is the Big C got him. There's not a single boomer who doesn't know "Hot Rod Lincoln," but they'll never hear the original sing it ever again. Same deal with David Bowie, Glenn Frey...
But Mad Dogs & Englishmen were unique. It was a lark, pulled together for one tour, with little rehearsal. Leon Russell called up some friends...
That's right, you had to know somebody. Which meant you had to live in L.A. and hang out. There was a community. You only wish there was this community today.
And it was a big band and it was a one time thing. Either you saw that tour or you never did, like the Beatles there was no reunion, until LOCKN'.
Where they're playing the music once again.
But there are no originals being written as good as the songs of the past. Not only is there no McCartney and Lennon writing "With a Little Help From My Friends" and "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window," Wayne Carson Thompson is gone and there is no under two minute gem like "The Letter" anywhere and Leonard Cohen left us "Bird On the Wire," but the heir to Mr. Cohen has yet to appear. Dave Mason is still singing "Feelin' Alright," a song so good it's been covered endless times, who is covering the music of today? And Bob Dylan is still plying the boards, but if you think what he's doing today is anywhere near equal to what he did back then, you're a blind, boot-licking apologist.
So we're used to beats. And electronic sounds. And there's nothing inherently wrong with either, but a real band, like Mad Dogs & Englishmen, evidences a humanity absent in the digital world. It's people with practiced skills coming together to present a cohesive sound that looks easy yet is anything but.
At some point "Learning to Live Together" will come to you. Probably on some streaming service. You should definitely dial it up. Because irrelevant of the film's arc, you'll get a look into a world that is soon to be gone forever. And if you were there the first time around, you'll weep. As for the Tedeschi Trucks Band keeping the sound alive, you'll be thrilled, but you'll also notice they inhabit their own world, which doesn't really cross with the mainstream.
Then again, what does.
And what is mainstream.
You watch this new movie and you get depressed, but you also gain hope. You see it can still be done. You just have to take the road less traveled. You've got to pick up an instrument, practice really long damn and hard, build a band and then...
Building a band and keeping it together is nearly impossible. But a sole performer is inherently something different.
As for songs?
I've yet to hear new classics, but there are tons of old numbers just waiting to be redone, even reworked a la Joe Cocker.
And I could say you can only do it with a little help from your friends, a summing note equivalent to the summing up scene in this movie, but I don't want to leave you with a cheap shot.
But I think of the words of "Space Captain."
We're never gonna learn to live together. But as big as the generation gap was fifty-odd years ago, the truth is all the youth were on the same page. They drank, smoked dope and listened to music.
It was the music that kept us together. It was our reference point. It's what we talk about in our old age. What the songs meant to us, where we first heard them, the shows we attended. Ultimately, the music is bigger than the players, which is the way it should be. Ultimately no one owns the sound, the inspiration...then again, we can say all of us own it!
"I lost my memory of where I've been
We all forgot that we could fly"
But "Learning to Live Together" will remind you. And you'll realize you'll be caught up in the music until you die. You can try to deny it, but if you're a boomer, everybody was in, everybody knew the music, everybody went to the show, everybody had to get closer.
And it was clear the stars were on stage.
And the truth is they were just regular people.
But not to us. To us they were untouchable stars.
You'll remember that watching this movie. You'll ponder your own life path. And then you'll just crank up the music and feel good once again. The music brought us together, and it still can. Because we're all just birds on a wire, trying in our own way to be free, and the music helps get us there. It inspires us, it sets our minds adrift, we remember what once was and still can be. And there's nothing more powerful than that.
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