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War's Lonnie Jordan Talks Music, Playing with Eric Burdon and Jimi Hendrix's Final Performance
The six founding members of War – the late Papa Dee Allen and Charles Miller, survivors Harold Brown, B.B. Dickerson, Lonnie Jordan and Howard Scott – were gigging around L.A. for nearly a decade before hooking up with Eric Burdon (ex-Animals) and Danish harmonica player Lee Oskar in 1969. Burdon and producer Jerry Goldstein named them War, and they backed it up with a steamy Afro-Latin R&B groove that rocked their debut hit “Spill The Wine.” Less than two years later, Burdon dropped out and War went their own way in 1971. A long string of Top 10 pop/R&B crossover hits established War’s status through the Seventies, always with a social message grounded by their distinctively breezy Southern California vibe. In this interview with War founding member Lonnie Jordan, he shares his first memories of playing, how War first connected with Eric Burdon and jamming with Jimi Hendrix during what would be his last public performance.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: How did you first become interested in playing music?
Lonnie Jordan: As a kid, I used to watch old black-and-white movies. Now keep in mind I'll be 65 this year, so when ...
At the Library and Archives: Storm Thorgerson Retrospectives
Storm Thorgerson, arguably best known as the designer of Pink Floyd’s album cover for Dark Side of the Moon, died Thursday, April 18, 2013, after a battle with cancer. He was both a close friend to the band and integral to their artistic vision. The Library and Archives has two compendiums of his career, which lasted from the 1960s well into 2012. The first, Mind Over Matter : the Images of Pink Floyd, concentrates on his breakthrough work with the influential rock band and 1996 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. The second is a lavish, limited edition set by Genesis Publications called Taken by Storm : the Album Art of Storm Thorgerson (pictured below), which features a 203-page book edited by Thorgerson himself, as well as full-color prints, a bonus retrospective book on SunStorm Studios and a 3-D Viewmaster of cover images.
The Library and Archives also holds several album cover collections edited and compiled by Thorgerson:
Classic album Covers of the 60s / compiled and written by Storm Thorgerson
Album Cover Album / edited by Storm Thorgerson & Roger Dean
Album Cover Album : the Second Volume / edited by Storm Thorgerson, Roger Dean & David Howells
Album Cover Album : 5 / compiled by Roger ...
Celebrating Record Store Day In Cleveland – and Beyond
I’m a native Clevelander, and have always been a keen record shopper. I bought my first record with my own money, Lulu’s “To Sir, With Love,” at the Disc record store in Severance Center mall, across from the cinema where my Mom and I had just seen the movie starring Sidney Poitier. As a kid I shopped ‘em all: Record Revolution and the Record Exchange on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights; Tommy Edward’s Record Heaven in the Memphis-Fulton Shopping Center in Cleveland and the venerable Record Rendezvous in downtown Cleveland, among others.
When I moved to New York City in the late Seventies, my record jones sent me out on regular excursions around Greenwich Village, both east and west. Sounds on St. Mark’s Place was my East Village haunt, while Bleeker Bob’s, closer to the West Side, was a little more out of the way. It took awhile for me to warm up to Bleeker's – or rather – for the store to warm up to me. I experienced my own ...
American Treasure: 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Randy Newman
“See, if I were to write Billy Joel’s ‘Just The Way You Are,’ I’d wreck it,” he said, explaining why his instincts run contrary to pop music. “I’d have written ‘I love you just the way you are, you stupid little bitch.’ Which really isn’t as good.”
Of course, he’s joking. But he’s also serious. And it’s that’s precise blend of humor and gravity that has distinguished the songs of Randy Newman from the start. He’s both one of the most hilarious and most serious of all songwriters. A compositional genius, he’s the only great American songwriter to become an accomplished film composer (with some 26 films to date, each with a fully orchestral score he wrote and conducted himself). But he’s also a lyrical genius who has done more than created a style; he’s created his own school of songwriting.
Newman’s songs use the novelistic technique of the untrustworthy narrator, a sometimes funny, often dark, always effective way of shaping a song.
Asked why he chose this indirect method of songwriting, he said: “Maybe it’s a psychological defect. I don’t want to stand up ...
Album Notes: The Rolling Stones – Exile on Main St.
I was seven years old when Exile on Main St. was released in 1972. It wasn't until later in the decade that I first heard the album, though I was already a Rolling Stones fan by then. My earliest rock and roll mentors – friends and family, and musicians and writers that I admired – told me Exile was the Stones record to have, so I picked up a used, well-worn copy on vinyl. The dog-eared double LP jacket was ragged and looked like hell; long gone were the dozen postcards that came with the original packaging. However, the scratched wax delivered an electric sound.
Those sounds – like my battered copy's packaging – were gritty, rough, perfectly unpolished. The album was filled with bravado, the songs seemingly shambolic, unrehearsed and the playlist was sprawling, with more than a dozen tracks. The Stones tapped into America's eclectic songbook, borrowing lines from country, blues, soul, swamp and the heyday of the rock and roll era – and it all sounded genuine. The recording of Exile was shrouded in mystique, a model of rebellion amid tales of wild decadence and hedonism at Nellcôte, the French mansion-cum-studio rented by Keith Richards. Even the ...
30 Years After New Order's "Blue Monday": Interview with Peter Hook
Released on March 7, 1983, New Order's "Blue Monday" was a smash. Designed by Factory Records' Peter Saville, the original 12-inch sleeve packaging cleverly replicated a floppy computer disk and included little information about New Order (neither the name of the group nor the single title appeared). Although rumored that the cost of producing the complex die-cut sleeve represented a loss on each single sold by Factory, the seven-minute-plus track would become among the best-selling 12-inch singles of all time. The original single is part of a special Joy Division/New Order exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.
"Blue Monday," which took nearly four months to record, was driven by a host of sequencer and synthesizer effects, including the throbbing synth bass line (overlayed with Peter Hook's lead bass stylings), and drum machine beat. The song contained no chorus, instead revolving around a series of verses. "It does come down to songwriting," said Hook of "Blue Monday" during a 2010 interview at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio . "Whilst everyone may have the equipment in their little box, not everybody [has] the ability to write a ...
Interview with 2009 Hall of Fame Inductee Bobby Womack
Born on March 4, 1944, Cleveland-native Bobby Womack grew into a soul and gospel legend whose contributions as a songwriter, singer and guitarist have kept him and his music relevant for decades.
The son of a steelworker, Womack and his siblings got their start as a gospel group. On tour with the Soul Stirrers, the Womack brothers – Bobby, Cecil, Curtis, Harris and Friendly Jr. – were introduced to the Stirrer's lead singer, Sam Cooke. With a move from gospel to secular soul, Cooke asked the Womack brothers to join him in California, and 16-year-old Bobby Womack made the trip.
Billed as the Valentinos, Bobby and his brothers cut two R&B classics: “Looking for a Love” (later covered by the J. Geils Band) and “It’s All Over Now.” The Rolling Stones’ cover of the latter song beat the Valentinos’ own version onto the charts, giving the Stones their second Top 40 hit in the States and first Number One hit in the U.K.
In the years following his work with Cooke, Womack would write songs recorded by Wilson Pickett (“I’m a Midnight Mover”), George Benson (“Breezin’”), Janis Joplin (“Trust Me”) and others. Pickett alone recorded 17 ...
In the Museum: The Who's Roger Daltrey
Born on March 1, 1944, Roger Daltrey injected the Who's songs with expressive muscularity and passion. Daltrey made a natural rock and roll frontman, theatrically swinging the microphone and proving the ideal, angst-projecting foil to Who songwriter/guitarist Pete Townshend's "windmill" strumming and instrument destroying antics and drummer Keith Moon's explosive – sometimes literally – playing. With rock-steady bass virtuoso John Entwistle, the four evolved from purveyors of Mod-era "maximum R&B" to visionary, literary creators of concept album narratives and singular rock opera productions. Simply put: the Who created some of rock and roll's most enduring and powerful anthems.
In mid-1965, Daltrey and the Who were unflagging devotees of R&B, though their reverence ultimately started to stifle creativity. Hoping to shake things up on the compositional front, manager Kit Lambert demanded a new anthem to go with the image they didn't have yet. Pete Townshend responded with a primitive home demo of "My Generation." Arranged as a talking blues number, it didn't sound much like his generation. With a terse order to make it beefier, Townshend returned with a version deemed chunky enough to warrant a group whack at a demo session, which ...
