About This Time 50 Years Ago… It’s The Hits Of August-ish 1974!

The Biggest Hit On The Planet:

• “Pillow-talk disco.”
• “Boudoir Disco.”
• “Bedroom soul.”

These are the genre names bandied around when discussing the music of Barry White. Genre names that inform you with absolutely zero ambiguity what this music was designed for. But just in case you were still unsure, there were also the nicknames.

For Barry White was… The Walrus Of Love!

There are a great many Barries in the world.

A great many of those Barries were given the name Barry because they were conceived whilst listening to Barry’s music. Barry White spent much of his life being introduced to Barries for whose existence he was at least partially responsible.

“There’s people making babies to my music” Barry once observed. “That’s nice.”

The same speaking voice as on the intro to Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe, telling us that he’s “heard people say that too much of anything is not good for you, baby” but that Barry “don’t know about that.”

And indeed, Barry did not. For Barry was a man with insatiable appetites. An appetite for making love. Presumedly also an appetite for food. So many of the titles of Barry’s hit records feel as though they might be referencing both his giant-sized libido and his hefty weight. Baby, I’ve Got So Much To Give, for example, and I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little Bit More.

Both of which were from Barry’s debut album I’ve Got So Much To Give:

Barry White did have a lot of love to give. It genuinely appears to be all he cared about. The “only subject on Planet Earth,” he was known to have philosophized, was “the lurve between fellow human beings.” Once again: just imagine Barry speaking that sentence. Imagine it in that voice!

Hearing Barry White sing is one thing. But hearing Barry White speak!… hearing Barry White grumble!!… that’s something else!!! Virtually every televised interview Barry ever did, featured a moment when Barry speaks, and the interviewer loses their shit. Barry’s speaking voice is more than they can stand.

The opportunity to hear Barry White grumble the things he’s heard people say, and then straight away disagree with them, is probably the main reason why Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe became the Hottest Hit On The Planet this time 50 Years Ago. People just couldn’t get enough.

But Barry White hadn’t always lived the life of Barry White. He hadn’t always been The Walrus Of Love. And he had not always possessed that speaking voice.

Barry White had originally been a child. As a child, Barry had what he described as a “squeaky” voice. And then one day, one teenage day, Barry woke up one morning and his voice had dropped, like, a million octaves!

Barry’s life had begun in Galveston, Texas, where things were…  tough. Then they moved to Watts, which was… even tougher. Yet even in a neighbourhood as infamously tough as Watts, Barry appears to have been the toughest kid around. With the possible exception of his brother, Darryl. Together, Barry and Daryl were a two-man gang. Together, they terrorized the neighbourhood. And remember, the neighbourhood we are talking about here, was Watts!

Barry knew “what it is like to see a cat get shot and its whole insides blown out.” He’d seen a boy get hung “until his tongue hung out.” He’d seen “a broad get split down the middle” her legs tied to the bumper of two cars driving in opposite directions. Maybe you need to have witnessed such hatred, to be filled with such copious quantities of love.

Barry’s turning point came after stealing $30,000 worth of Cadillac hubcaps – that’s $30,000 worth of Cadillac hubcaps in early 60s money (!) which has got to be close to a truckload or something – and consequently spending time in jail. Whilst Barry was in jail he heard Elvis on the radio, singing It’s Now Or Never.

Now, for many people, It’s Now Or Never is the moment that Elvis started singing soppy ballads: thereby raising serious questions about whether or not he was still cool, or whether the army – or Colonel Tom Parker – done something to his brain? But for Barry White, It’s Now Or Never was the song that changed his life. That saved his life. Turned his life around. “It was like he was telling me: ‘Change your life, Barry, you’re thinking about going another way. It’s now or never.’ I understood that.” Barry wasn’t going to argue with the King. (It’s Now Or Never is a 7.)

And no wonder Barry was sitting with a Buddha-like gaze, for Barry had achieved enlightenment. Barry had just gotten married. To Glodean, one of the sisters in his vocal group, Love Unlimited. Barry now knew the love of a beautiful woman!

Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe is definitely about Barry White feeling horny for Glodean. Every time Glodean was near, Barry feels a change. Something is movin.’ Barry seems genuinely taken aback by his horniness. He can’t get used to it, no matter how he tries. It’s as though Barry, a man presumedly well accustomed to good lovin’, is struggling to deal with this new level of horniness. This new level of horniness is more than he can stand!

Barry managed to make feeling horny sound like a religious experience. Every time Barry says “ba-by”, or more accurately groans it, it almost feels like an “AMEN!” Barry groans so often on Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe, and so convincingly, that it almost feels as though he is in bed right next to you! In bed with The Walrus Of Love!

And baby, that’s no lie.

Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe is a 9.

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Meanwhile, in Funky Land:

The Average White Band were from Scotland.

Scotland, I think it’s fair to say, is not typically regarded, as a funky land.

More specifically, the Average White Band was from Dundee, a town famous for… um… err… it used to be a major manufacturer of jute? Whilst also possessing a vibrant – and related – whale oil industry? That seems to be about it.

What Dundee was not famous for however – at least not before the Average White Band came on the scene – was the manufacture of funk.

If the fact that they were from Dundee, Scotland wasn’t enough to make the Average White Band the world’s least likely funk band, then how about the fact that two of the members played on Chuck Berry’s absolutely-funk-free My Ding-A-Ling? I’m not going to embed that thing! Or that they shared managers with Eric Clapton?

Nothing about the Average White Band suggested that they were funky. They certainly didn’t look funky! They looked as though they didn’t have a funky bone in their collective bodies.

I don’t feel uncomfortable stating these facts. The band themselves would surely admit the same. The band themselves knew what they were up against. They realized that they looked like an average white band. That’s presumedly why they called themselves Average White Band.

Actually, there’s this whole back story to the name, about a friend of theirs who worked for the diplomatic corps somewhere in Africa, and he was always talking about how the weather down there was “too hot for the average white man”, but that’s not important.

About the only thing the Average White Band had in their favour was their logo.

He looks like the type. It came from a doodle that he was playing around with. And yet it’s only the second-best logo in this week’s column!

Sad to say, the Average White Band did often sound very much like an average white band. Particularly on those records where they sang. There appears to have been an inverse relationship between how funky an Average White Band record was, and the quantity of singing on it.

Cut The Cake, for example, their only other proper hit, was an actual proper song, with lyrics and verses and choruses and everything. But – despite being technically funky, I suppose – it doesn’t seem anywhere near as fun as a song called Cut The Cake could be. I wouldn’t play it on my birthday. (It’s a 5.)

Fortunately, the Average White Band had one record that featured no singing at all. No singing and very few vocals. Just a faint background chant of “pick up the pieces… uh,huh!… pick up the pieces… alright!”, during the breakdown. For the duration of that record at least, the Average White Band was a far-above-average white band, playin’ a poppin’ bass line, a sizzling saxophone solo, and some sprightly chicken-scratch guitar. There’s not a lot to it, but it does the job well.

Pick Up The Pieces was on its way to becoming a chart-topping hit – the kind of chart-topping hit that might get you invited to a Hollywood party – when tragedy struck.

For the Average White Band were invited to a Hollywood party, an experience they do not appear to have been prepared for. The Average White Band were particularly not prepared for heroin. They were definitely not prepared to snort heroin because they thought that it was cocaine – an understandable mistake to make at a Hollywood party in the 1970s – which is exactly what they proceeded to do.

The rest of the band was left to pick up the pieces, part of the process of which was to audition a new drummer. They found Steve Ferrone, who, ironically, was Black. Picking up the pieces is literally what the song means to them now. It’s a tale of resilience, a funky montage of their battle against the insurmountable odds of being a Scottish funk band, and a cautionary tale about the importance of knowing exactly what drugs you are taking at Hollywood parties.

To everyone else, it’s just an iconic 70s funk groove.

Pick Up The Pieces is an 8.

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Meanwhile, in Glam Rock Land:

Have you ever noticed that the KISS logo is not quite perfect?

Have you ever noticed that the two Ss are slightly different? That the first S is slightly thicker than the second. And I think it’s slightly wider at the bottom. And the second one seems slightly more vertical.

Paul Stanley drew it with a Sharpie, because that’s the kind of band Kiss was, dreaming their rock star dreams on a Sharpie budget!

The fact that they came up with a logo themselves was part of the point. Lots of bands had had logos before Kiss, but they were usually designed by proper graphic designers, working for the record company. Before the 70s, no band would have even thought of incorporating a logo into their rock’n’roll fantasies.

But Paul Stanley did. Clearly, the man was a visionary. I like to think that Paul was already dreaming of a time, only a couple of years away, when Kiss would have the biggest selling rock’n’roll lunchbox in the world!

Just in case designing their own logo wasn’t enough to help Kiss stand out from the competition, they also wore scary-looking clown make-up. The world felt intrigued, and Kiss were invited onto talk shows before they were even properly famous. When nobody at home – or in the studio – had a clue who, or what, they were.

Gene Simmons went on The Mike Douglas Show. Mike asked him “why do you dress like that?”, an utterly clueless question, when the answer, obviously, is so-that-I’ll-be-invited-onto-television-talk-shows. Gene then suggested that he wanted to eat the audience – which was creepy – announced that he was “evil incarnate” – which was creepier – and poked out his long, pointy – and instantly famous – tongue and hissed, which was just disturbing. He also admitted to being a bat.

When Gene revealed that he was bat, it was only half true. Gene Simmons was The Demon. Paul Stanley was The Starchild. Ace Frehley was The Space Ace. Those are cool characters.

Peter Criss was The Catman.

Kiss may have come up with character names and associated make-up, but they don’t appear to have put nearly as much effort into formulating a backstory for each of the characters. Are they supposed to be monsters? Vampires? Aliens?

Paul apparently decided to be Starchild because he liked looking at the stars. That’s as deep as it went. Ace was The Space Ace because his guitar skills were off the planet.

It’s possible that they were supposed to have superpowers, but that’s a little unclear.

They do seem to have superpowers in the 1978 movie Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park, which they use to help save an amusement park – you will not be surprised to learn it was produced by Hanna-Barbera – but since fans are advised never to mention the movie in Kiss’ presence, I don’t think it’s considered cannon.

So, anyway, Strutter, or as it was originally called when Gene wrote it half a decade earlier, Stanley The Parrot, is a song of unrequited teenage lust for a woman with sexual superpowers far more impressive than whatever Kiss have in Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park. It’s a hoary old cliché of a rock song, but more importantly, it’s a horny old cliché of a rock song. And that’s exactly what Kiss fans – the few who existed at this early point – wanted. They’d get more fans later.

“Strutter” is an 8.

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Meanwhile, in Joni Land:

It’s tough being a record company head honcho. Constantly stoking the star maker machinery behind the bogus capitalist process that is destroying youth culture. People are always wanting something from you. Or else presuming that you are part of some shadowy cabal, brainwashing the youth with girl groups and boy bands and mindless pop drivel.

Nonetheless, writing a song that humanizes a record company head honcho sounds like a challenge. The kind of challenge that requires an absolute genius to pull it off. How do you humanize a shadowy figure?

Maybe that’s unfair. By the standards of record company head honchos, David Geffen appears to have been decidedly unshadowy.

It was like a musical management company run on free-love principles.

Joni Mitchell probably seems like the last person who might stand up for a record company head honcho. Or for big business of any kind. If you know one thing about Joni Mitchell, it’s probably that she really hates parking lots.

Joni always seemed so pure, as though she had spent her entire childhood dancing through fields of flowers.

Joni Mitchell was a free spirit. You could tell that Joni Mitchell was a free spirit because she bought a house on Lookout Mountain. And she bought a house on Lookout Mountain because… oh, I’ll let Joni explain it herself:

Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they’ll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they’ll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they’ll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they’ll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they’ll say Lookout Mountain.“

Just above Frank Zappa’s house apparently. The crazy people reputation checks out.

You could also tell that Joni was a free spirit because of all the song ideas that were constantly floating around her head, and all the words that were constantly tumbling out. And by the way she couldn’t prevent her songs from going on crazy, jumbled, meandering tangents about ramblin’ gamblin’ sweet talkin’ ladies men, hoping for the future and worrying about the past, and hot hot blazes and smoke and ash.

And yet somehow she was able to fit all of that into a coherent song. Help Me, which had been Joni’s biggest chart hit a few months earlier, is a 10.

Being a record company head honcho, David Geffen was probably relieved that Joni had finally given him a hit. Joni never gave off the impression that writing hits was her greatest concern. On those rare occasions when she did write a hit, it almost seemed like an accident. Court And Spark, for example, the album that gave the world both Help Me and Free Man In Paris, was a fusion of folk and jazz, not exactly a combination known to inspire a rush to the record store.

Being a record company head-honcho was clearly stressful work. Rockstars constantly calling him up, asking for favours. Asking for his time. Good thing then that when things got a little bit too much for David in America, he could always escape to Europe. He always had Paris.

Joni also knew all about escaping to Europe to get away from it all. Maybe that’s why she could relate.

And more importantly for the purposes of our story, Our House by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Important, because it was Joni’s house:

The one on Lookout Mountain, where all the crazy people lived. It was Joni’s vase that she had bought. It was Joni’s two cats that were in the yard. (Our House is a 9)

But soon life became hard again – the problem seems to be that Joni liked to cook, but Graham preferred coke, which ruined his appetite – and Joni and Graham broke up, and Joni flew off to Europe, where she spent some time living in some Neolithic caves, carved into a cliff in Crete.

Much latter on, David would get away from it all by buying his own mega-yacht; a yacht so mega that he is now reputed to be the biggest individual polluter in the world!

Joni hasn’t attempted to write a song justifying that yet, and she probably wont.

Free Man In Paris is a 9.

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