Any week that includes Jethro Tull and The Moody Blues is a pretty good week. But after digesting the progressive rock hitmakers that performed at Ravinia Festival last week, and updating my i-pod accordingly, the sounds swirling in my head, the ones that linger, are from Tull's opening act, Procol Harum and their Grand Hotels, doomed sailors and Salty Dogs.
There may not be much of the original line-ups left in these bands, but the music that left such an indelible impression in the late sixties and early seventies holds enough power to keep these guys out of the "oldies act" categories. All three bands still feature their original singers and all three remain in fine form.
If you've never been to The Ravinia Festival, you are missing one of the hidden treasures of music in Chicagoland. Located in Highland Park, Ravinia Park offers an inexpensive and convenient outdoor concert experience. (The Metra stops at the front door.) The pavillion holds a few thousand, but the real joy of Ravinia is the lawn. More than 30 acres becon, and don't worry about the skeeters and flies that intrude on picnics, as the clever folks at Ravinia keep a home for bats on the grounds, keeping flying insects scarce.
The most attractive element of the park is its picnic atmosphere. While most music venues gouge concertgoers for substandard fare, (seven bucks for a bottle of warm water?!), Ravinia welcomes coolers and lawn chairs. The park opens at 5 p.m. for a 7:30 show, leaving plenty of time to imbibe before the music starts. Lawn tickets are usually between $20 or $30. If you are too rushed to bring a picnic, there is plenty of food and drink available.
The informal air on the grounds can be a distraction, as many of the folks in attendance are there for the outdoor cocktail party. Some seem not to know or care who is playing on a given night. The volume level of conversation on the farther reaches of the lawn is annoying and screams out for an upgrade of the speaker system. I have to concede though, that the same yak-yak mentality seems to pervade indoor auditorium concerts which cost a lot more.
PROCOL HARUM--This band has lost all it's original members save the one it couldn't live without. Gary Brooker sounds much like he did in 1967 when the group toured as the opening act for Jimi Hendrix in support of it's self-titled debut album, which featured the group's signature song, "A Whiter Shade of Pale." The line-up changes over the years are too numerous to catalogue here (entire websites have been dedicated to the task) but all I can say is that the guitar chops of founding member Robin Trower are covered ably by Geoff Whitehorn, and the haunting beauty of the Hamond Organ that so defined the group's original sound is kept intact by Josh Phillips.
Brooker started touring with the new band in the ninties and "The Commander" does a splendid job of pumping life into the Bach-inspired "Whiter Shade"; the heavy guitar vehicle, "Simple Sister"; and my fave, the trippy "Shine on Brightly," in which Trower once traded acid-tinged leads with original organist Matthew Fisher.
These numbers brought the crowd to its feet several times, though most had obviously come to see Jethro Tull, whom the guy sitting next to me claimed to have seen 30 times.
This music surely could have benefited from the symphony the band employed in its heyday, but Brooker has done a fantastic job of keeping the music alive with a crack touring band. I have to concede that some of the newer material doesn't approach the lofty heights of the group's first four albums, but Brooker keeps those selections to a modest few and instead reminds us what an remarkable catalogue Procol Harum created. This is music well worth remembering.
JETHRO TULL--Flutist Ian Anderson looks leaner and meaner than when I saw him in 1973. He can still play the flute from a ballerina's pose, can still leap and bouce around the stage like a ragged Peter Pan and can still get through an entire show without a single dropped lyric.
Jethro Tull played a perfect summer set, starting out with "Nothing is Easy" from their second album, "Stand Up." A perfect opener as it begins with a flourish on flute, joined quickly by the band in a bluesy romp. "Beggar's Farm" followed, from the first Tull album, back when their management company envisioned them as a blues band and urged Anderson to put away that silly flute.
"Thick as a Brick" was next, Tull's opus. The forty-minute track was shortened to nearly ten for this tour, just enough to hit the familiar spots, an acoustic guitar opening over the classic line, "your sperm's in the gutter, your love's in the sink."
"Brick" bounces from chimes and harpsichord, to blaring organ runs followed by electric chops from master guitarist Martin Barre, then back to a bass-driven flute run and combines all the band's elements into a joyous romp of uninhibited theatrical rock for the ages.
They returned to their blues roots next with "New Day Yesterday," featuring an extended guitar flourish while Anderson backed up Barre with some nasty blues harp.
It was about this time I realized my spot on the lawn couldn't do justice to a Tull Concert. If you don't mind standing, the area to the west of the pavillion offers a decent view of the stage, particularly since Jumbotron screens were added this season. I arrived in time for "Songs From the Wood," the title track from an endless series of "departure" albums. Anderson joked throughout the evening about the many labels critics have tossed on the band: Blues rock, prog rock, folk rock, rock opera.
(One can hardly blame them. I intended to post this article a week ago but instead--trying to get a handle on this puzzling band--have gotten lost reading reviews, downloading albums, going blind watching grainy videos from 1972. I feel no shame for this. Ian Anderson has confounded many during his illustrious career. The Grammy Awards in 1988 decided they needed a new category to recognize heavy metal bands like Metallica. The award inexplicably went to Tull for "Crest of a Knave," which I suppose made them a heavy metal band, as well. One wonders what might have been. Tony Iommi played on 1969's "Stand Up," before joining Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath.)
But seeing the band close-up through the middle section of the show reminded me of how I felt seeing them perform "A Passion Play" at the Chicago Stadium in 1973. Amazed, but confused. What kind of friggin' band is this? The pounding drums and slashing guitars can hold their own against Led Zeppelin. But what's with the pennywhistle and harpsichord and why are they clapping and singing acapella and who the fuck brings a flute to a rock concert, anyway, and then plays it while scat singing and standing on one leg?
Only Ian Anderson, who continued through the show with a number penned by Henry VIII, another by J.S. Bach, (the lovely "Bouree,"), a six-minute flute solo, then "Farm on the Freeway," which, if you simply read the lyrics you might mistake for a Springsteen anthem, some poor farmer losing his simple-yet-ennobling plot to progress and eminent domain, being left with only his pick-up truck.
Through it all Anderson prances, whirls and commands the multi-instrumentalist band members about waving his flute like a baton. (Or a whip, maybe? Ain't no one in this band doesn't know whose band it is. A theme throughout the web sites devoted to all these bands is the never-ending line-up changes, any one of which could make a great novel if only it weren't so confusing.) He's clean-shaven now, and looking rather bad-ass and ripped, like he might have ridden off the set of "Sons of Anarchy" on a Harley. Quite a departure from the early days when tights were the norm, his hair was measured by the foot and his beard appeared to have been spewed, rather than grown.
Finally, we move back to familiar ground. For the big finish, he returns to his most popular album, "Aqualung" for "My God," then the a perfect seven-plus minute rendition of the title track. The encore is "Locomotive Breath," in which the band mimicks a train starting up.
Now that's heavy metal. And worthy of any award you want to throw at it.
The Moody Blues--It's skunk-at-the-garden-party time. I was never a fan of the Moody Blues. I didn't dislike them, but I never bought an album. The other 20,000 or so revelers at last week's Ravinia show would probably say that's my loss, and I walked away from the show thinking they would probably be right.
I love strolling and kibbitzing at Ravinia, since I have lived here in Highland Park most of my life and can usually count on running into old classmates. I saw several, and they all had stories to tell.
"I was at the Red Rocks Show....It changed my life."
"They were Pink Floyd before Pink Floyd was Pink Floyd."
"The colors, man. The colors...."
*******
I have my own story. I'll make it quick, but if you are still with me at this point, I figger you got nothing else to do. I'm in a basement room with crumbling drywall and two real bad dudes. Cher chez la' femme? I was seeing a girl who used to date one of them. I never should have gone down there. We got way too high for so early in the day. The ex starts leaning on me, but the other sticks on "In Search of the Lost Chord," the one that starts with the spoken-shouted word poem-song, "Departure."
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an arquebus deep in the ground
The wonder of flowers, to be covered, and then to burst up
Thru tarmack, to the sun again,
Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing,
To lie in the meadow and hear the grass sing....
I flip. Ignoring the dude leaning on me, I crawl to the phonograph searching for my lost mind.
"What is that?" I stammer, as the band kicks into "Ride My See-Saw." I was sufficiently impressed and agog at that wondrous noise that the dudes either thought I must be allright or couldn't stop laughing. I walked out of the basement that day.
They really were king tripsters, and in the mellowest, orange sunshiney kind of way. They mourned Dr. Timothy Leary. They told us thinking is the best way to travel and we knew exactly what they meant, and when they sang "Hurry high, butterfly, as clouds roll past my head," we didn't laugh, but instead chanted "OM, OM, Heaven, OM," along with them.
Perhaps some of us never really bought into the whole peace-love-dope thing, except for the last part. I know I favored tough guy rock stars with bulging crotches who sneered and smashed guitars and guzzled cynicism by the gallon. Sick fucks like Morrison.
I had a hand in the banning of rock shows at Ravinia for decades. Janis Joplin played here, not long before she died. Frank Zappa. Iron Butterfly (now there was some music to trip to!) Me and my droogs loved to hop the fence, save three bucks and fifty. Steal bottles of wine from lovers in their sleeping bags. Smoke dope and run from the Andy Frains, unconcerned we were stepping on flower children as we ran, cackling.
They finally had enough. When B.B. King played, they hired off-duty bulls from Waukegan. Lined 'em every fifty feet or so outside the fence. Plenty of room, we figured, fat pigs. We'd flash past before they could fart. I hit the chain link and spotted another bull in the woods on the other side, billy club gripped tight. I dropped and flew back. The guy next to me took my cue and dropped, but turned an ankle. They beat him good. That was it. No more rock shows.
Years later, they started up again, easy-like. Mellow folkies from Chicago. Steve Goodman, John Prine, Bonnie Kolak, David Bromberg. Things change. Darwin rules. Both dudes in the basement got locked up forever. Murder. And I'm sitting under a flashlight moon nearly forty years later, with these incredible people....
*******
My (almost) Irish twin brother, a singer and picker himself; my only sister, who grabbed my spiritual umbilical cord when they snipped it off Mom, and plugged it into her heart; two girlfriends of hers, all cool vibes and smiles; my sister-in-law, the same; her daughter, the first of the next generation of Mac, who sings and paints and earned her way through college on a scholarship, (a Mac scholar! My mother's genes skipped a generation); and of course my wife, shapely and sure-footed, who insists we go to these things and without whom I would surely grow moss....
And I start to really dig on the band. They are Justin Hayward on guitar and remarkable vocals, sings lead on most songs in a familiar soaring timbre; John Lodge on flying bass and vocals; and Graeme Edge on drums and vocals. These are the three from the old days. (Don't get me started on line-up changes. Denny Laine is long-gone and so, apparently, is their first hit, "Go Now.")
The show starts to take off. "I Know You're Out There Somewhere." Then, "The Story in Your Eyes." Hayward's guitar reminds me of the old J-school adage: Write to express, not to impress. His every lick means something, takes the melody and the band somewhere new.
There is a Jumbotron, so we can see from the lawn. The backing band is top-notch. I notice the guy listed as second drummer seems to be doing the heavy lifting, while Edge seems content to use his seat behind a drum kit as the best seat in the house. My Mr. Hyde chuckles, old fart, can't keep up anymore. They take a break and when they return there is nothing unfamiliar, nothing that doesn't make me smile. "Your Wildest Dreams," "The Other Side of Life," "Isn't Life Strange."
Edge steps out from behind his kit and grabs a mic. He makes a Viagra joke and I wince, but he announces he's 69 years old and can't believe people will still come to see him strut around a stage. The gratitude is rehearsed, no doubt, but it seems genuine to me. He leads on vocals for "Higher and Higher," and thirty acres of fans follow. It's soaring a little higher with every song, now. "Tuesday Afternoon," "Nights in White Satin," "I'm Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band." And finally, "Ride My See-Saw."
I was disappointed they didn't do Graeme's "Departure," as a lead-in, like on the album, but if I can be forgiven, I can happily return the kindness.
Peace and love ruled the night.
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Comments
Memories are wonderful things some days here.
You have it right. Peace and love is all that is left here.
Understanding went right out the window as far as I am concerned.
Thanks so much for the memories and this well written piece.
Bless you Jimmy. I care here about you. Be well.
and yeah, I grew up idolizing Ian Anderson, as I was a flautist from the age of eight who was conVinced that you could blow a blues flute.
Never quite proved that one, but it's the dream that counts.
And moody Blues!? Oh, yeah. Great memories of chillen on the couch, waiting for the lineup of Monty Python + Saturday Night Live, c. 1975, Panama-altered, listening to Days of Future Passed - which by then was considered Old; and thrilling to Quadrophenia, as a chaser.
ohmeohmy
Thanks for the memories.
Those bat homes. No purple Martins, ay?
Connie--One of my four brothers was inspired to learn the flute. Bouree was the only thing I ever heard him play, but he could do it riding a unicycle, a rather unprofitable skill, as it turned out, and he became an accountant. Quadrophenia killed. Do bats chase the martins? You lost me there.
designator--There may be more people who say MB was the best concert they ever saw, than for any other band. They weren't just cool. They were beloved.
Monte--Now I think they were neither good or bad. They just were. At the time, of course, I thought I was king of the world. Being able to run very fast was helpful.
One thing for sure. We were spoiled musically. Went to concerts almost weekly. An embarrasment of riches. An explosion of creative energy swept the country.
Spud--They were at the top of a lot of people's lists. Enjoy.
HB--Were you at Red Rocks?
Lezlie
I am still performing, and I share one thing with Ian/Jethro -- I play what moves me and let somebody else try to figure out what bag I'm in.
And you musical taste/descriptions are shrewd. I saw the moodies in 1969. Loved their albums *when high*, but they sucked live.
I finally got to enjoy Ravinia is weekend when Garrison Keillor was the entertainment. He's fun, but doesn't compare to your line up. I had to miss Steve Martin and also Buddy Guy because of family crises, but life is like that sometimes.
I enjoyed the glimpse of young jimmy the gate crasher.
I love Thin Ice of A new Day, Crossed -Eyed Mary, Too Old to Rock n Roll, even the commercial Bungle in the Jungle. It's all okay in my books. Gees-us, now that I'm thinking back, I did see the band live, probably in Buffalo, NY.
But Passion Play & Thick As a Brick, you lucky duck! Thanks for the flood of memories on these songs ...