I found most of it dull, and after a bit the whole show began to bother me immensely. Admittedly the huge band was tight and
well-rehearsed. Harrison sang with conviction and Eric Clapton was spectacular. OK, it was well-produced. Well-produced oatmeal.
Every other song seemed to be about one of three things: 1) God saving us. 2) This is the way God planned it. 3) Chant the name of the Lord and you’ll be free. (Nick Tosches has suggested that this course of action did not seem to be getting the people of Bangla Desh very far; nasty of him to bring that up.)
All of the devout rockers on Harrison’s stage seemed to be missing their own point. If this gibberish had any relation to reality, or even any internal consistency—perils of pantheism—then the same god that allowed this wonderful concert to take place was also raining hot death on the other side of the globe. To achieve some kind of spiritual balance, perhaps.
Well, it reminded
me
of Joseph Heller’s God, the Vicious Practical Joker. The songs chosen made a mockery of what the event was supposedly about—raising funds and world awareness for the plight of refugees from the war in East Pakistan and the fight for Bangladeshi independence—and I imagine this comes across much more blatantly on record than it did at the concert itself, since the electric presence of the stars doesn’t blank out any doubts in a mindless glow of
being there
with George, Ringo, and Bob Dylan. Which is nothing to sneeze at: I’d have liked to have been there too. But I wasn’t, and I have to take what I can get, along with the rest of the audience that wasn’t there either, and what I get is a feeling of being sold down the river, smothered by some of the silliest ideals of western civilization, and flattered by a superstar glitter that fails to hide the almost total emptiness of the production.
There’s a line in Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” where he warns, “Beware of maya,” maya being an Indian word for “veil of illusion”—and without even going into the fact that the avoidance of darkness is a perfect definition of illusion, it has to be said that a veil of illusion is precisely what this concert has to offer.
There are some exceptions to the bland sound, the horrible fake gospel shouts, and the silly songs. Leon Russell makes a valiant attempt to erase the pompous mood of the event, delivering a wild
version of “Jumping Jack Flash,” braking into a long jive story that resolves itself into the Coasters’ “Youngblood” and finally edges out and roars back to where it began. That’s exciting, and as anomalous to the general drift of the concert as two other high points, Ringo’s “It Don’t Come Easy” and Dylan’s last number, “Just Like a Woman.” If the genius of this man seems occasional now, when it comes it is staggering, and nothing can touch it. Ah, Bob Dylan!
One of the best things about Dylan’s side of the set is that it can make you feel like a fan again. A Bob Dylan fan. It’s moving to hear George Harrison say, “I’d like to bring out a friend to us all, Mr. Bob Dylan,” and implicitly join in the cheers; to recognize, in yourself, the thrill the audience is experiencing; to delight in the applause that breaks in on the choruses they and you have publicly celebrated and privately cherished for years. In spite of the fact that the movie promises to be uniquely boring, I’ll be there to see how Ringo looks playing tambourine with Bob Dylan.
Dylan’s performance is steady, but most of his material seems just out of his reach, as if he couldn’t quite catch the emotional rhythm of the songs. But from the first notes of “Just Like a Woman,” it’s clear that something else is happening. Here he rises to one of the great performances of his career. He sings the song the way Hank Williams would sing it if he were still alive, with the ghostly chill of “Lost Highway.” It may well be the equal of anything he has ever done, and if it took him five years to regain the power he once had, then what matters is not how long it took, but that he has regained it. What began, some years ago, as a change in attitude, seems finally to have grown into a changed point of view, and an authentic, as opposed to a contrived, maturity.
His performance reveals nuances of emotion and commitment that do not even seem to be implied in the recording we know from
Blonde on Blonde.
What is absent from the song, now, is the sense of bitterness that emerged both as a complaint and contempt five years ago, and the performance here imposes an enormous agony on the simple matter of living through the day, until finally, in the
last verse, it increases in intensity and Dylan’s voice is acting out a resistance to the calamity of life that stops a long way short of forgiveness.
There are words in this song that Dylan sings with such an unholy intensity that they vibrate, like the arms of a tuning fork. There is that moment when he sings,
and the first word echoes off the rafters of the hall. The song has the impact that is really what’s been missing in Dylan’s work of the last few years, a force that makes you drop your jaw with amazement and recognition. He has reached it in moments, as with the first line of “All Along the Watchtower”—“There must be some way out of here”—and in the long, last choruses of “George Jackson,” but here it merges in a sustained performance: you can’t get out of the way.
Dylan’s impact is a simultaneous clarifying and deepening of our lives, never in a facile celebration of his life
or
ours, but a challenge to the very sensibility that looks for such a celebration. And it is not all that complicated to define it. When Dylan has this force, it is risky to listen.
As the last song of the set, there is “Bangla Desh,” which flopped when Harrison released it as a single. The performance here has such fire it might well hit now if released a second time. The lyrics still fall miles short of their subject (“It sure seems like a mess”) but Clapton especially reveals all the power that previously lay dormant in the song. The sound, inevitably calling up images of carnage and horror, is inspiring and scary. Harrison beats his fists against that veil of illusion as he sings, and his words are helpless to pierce the velvet curtain this concert has thrown over itself—in a sense, to protect the event from the terror of its own subject—but this time the music breaks through and you get some idea of
why it was Harrison called all these people together in the first place.
Still, that’s not much out of three LPs. I can’t honestly recommend that anyone buy it for musical reasons, but I can encourage you to keep the radio on and listen to some of it. The recorded concert is a ponderous document of some of the worst foibles of the counter culture, but buried within it is a hint of what power that culture still retains.
Finally, though, the most pathetic thing about the event is its almost total lack of risk, be it artistic or political. Bangla Desh was a safe issue. It’s always easier to turn to the troubles of a distant land than to enter into situations that directly threaten yourself, and, if you are a musician, your audience. The music, for the most part, could not have been less adventurous. Though many have implied that the soul of Woodstock, having been sold to the devil that day at Altamont, was bought back with this concert, they ought to know that not only can’t you buy it back, you have to recreate it, on terms that recognize the fall implicit in the original deal. You can’t redeem yourself by the spectacle of someone else’s suffering, you have to come to terms with your own. That’s why no matter what George thinks about my sweet Lord or Billy Preston about the way God planned it, Ringo deserves the last word. It don’t come easy.
The Concert for Bangla Desh
(Apple, 1972, #2). Featuring George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Ravi Shankar, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Ustad Alla Rakha, and Kamala Chakavarty; with band composed of Jesse Ed Davis, Tom Evans, Pete Ham, Mike Gibbins, Jim Keltner, Joey Molland, Don Preston, Carl Radle, and Klaus Voorman; with hornmen Jim Horn, Alan Beutler, Chuck Findley, Jackie Kelso, Lou McCreary, and Ollie Mitchell; and backing singers Don Nix, Jo Green, Jeanie Greene, Marlin Greene, Dolores Hall, and Claudia Linnear.
DOUG SAHM AND BAND
Creem
April 1973
Hi, welcome to 1973! (You’re probably used to it by now, but this was written in January.) It’s going to be a banner year for rackkanrill (heavy reggae influence on the horizon), starting out with the release of a whole batch of great new album covers. Grin’s
All Out
is just stunning, the Guess Who goes down in history, and Claudia Linnear’s
Phew
—well, she must be the most gorgeous woman who ever cut a record (best picture is on the inside—makes Freda Payne look like Mrs. Miller—a sure winner on the
Vogue
charts). Best of all may be Gilbert Shelton’s cartoon on the front of the new Doug Sahm extravaganza. Check out that high-steppin’ hillbilly in the purple shirt—yes sir, that’s
Bob Dylan,
just a-pickin’ and a-grinnin’, getting his chops down in preparation for session work (they’ll say “he just dropped in,” but don’t you believe it) with Rita Coolidge, Delaney Bramlett, Marjoe, and the Rowan Brothers.
As I said, the cover is fine (pic of Bob on the back, too). The album may be Sir Doug’s dullest, but let’s not push these guys too hard. Music is its own reward. The people who made this platter had a fine time doing it, and that’s all that really matters, right?
Oh, we might get picky and say that David “Demon” Bromberg (a beatnik Mickey Dolenz, ’cept he don’t sing as good) infects every cut he touches with his emotionless, mindless, pointless dobro-doodle, and that not only is his music a perfect example of not knowing what to leave out,
he
ought to be locked out. We could fret that the sound of the album is as homogenized as that city-slick peanut butter
The Greening of America
came down so hard on, which means that Charles Reich wouldn’t like it—something to consider, these days—but then, Charles is a
nice
guy, and this is a
nice
record. We might be caught fessin’ up that the only tracks to rise out of the sink are standard Texas blues, and only because their form, not their execution, is distinctive—nothing here
to compare to the barroom funk of
The Return of Doug Saldaña.
I wouldn’t want to be the one to say it, but the disc does feature the worst harp and the least expressive and least audible singing Bob Dylan has ever recorded. And when the lights are low, we might cop to the likelihood that Bob’s original contribution to the LP, “Wallflowers,” shows that he has absorbed his John Prine influences very well, and has succeeded in writing and whining a tune that could by no stretch of the imagination have the slightest effect on anybody.
But there’s no sense to any of this. These guys have given us a lot, more than we can ever repay. It’s up to us to give it back. Because wherever music is, spring can’t be far behind.
Doug Sahm,
Doug Sahm and Band
(Atlantic, 1973).
HEAVY BREATHING
Creem
May 1974
Last January, writing from the Netherlands, Langdon Winner had this to say:
I’ve gotten back into rock and roll, at least that part of it which shows up on Dutch, British, French or American Armed Forces stations. It’s difficult for me to know which of the songs (other than soul group hits) are European and which are U.S. origin. Anybody can learn to sing like Mick Jagger so I suspect that some of the big tunes here are Dutch rock and not heard back there. One thing is entirely evident, however, as this year begins, and it may have been evident to you for some time. The radio is filled to overflowing with songs which are super-self-consciously about the business of making rock and roll and living on its terms. Two which come to mind: “Rock and Roll Baby” and “Rock and Roll I
Gave You the Best Years of My Life.” I remember how precious a thing it used to be to hear any song make reference to its own medium. Now it seems to be the only thing going!
But perhaps this period of heightened but ultimately ridiculous self-consciousness is a prelude to what we’ve been waiting for—the appearance of something genuinely new. I don’t mean just music either. There are good signs that the whole atmosphere, political and cultural, in both the U.S. and the rest of the world is about to undergo a transformation. Too many things remain unsettled after having been settled, e.g., the “end” of the Vietnam war, the “full disclosure” of Watergate and a host of submerged themes bequeathed to us by the last dozen years. There is a very great tension and it runs very deep. I don’t see how it can do anything other than create tremendous forces to push our center of gravity into one direction or another. Like a tumbler in a lock falling into place when a key is inserted, there will be, I think, a convergence of new voices, styles, and interests headed in a particular direction. I don’t know, perhaps something like Dylan’s tour with the Band will be one sign. Maybe George Wallace will come out at half-time at the Super Bowl, throw off his crutches and lead a Bastille-type march and coup on Washington. The need is there. And I think, now, very, very definitely it is becoming a collective need. The tone of the time and the range of possibilities available to anybody at all are set by the coming together, often by coincidence, of a peculiarly matched set of human elements. There’s no counting on logic any longer. But neither is there any denying that what is possible for us to do in any important way outside our personal lives does depend on a certain climate accompanied by a set of open doors which makes that climate visible. Unfortunately, I think that the working of these forces right now can only take the form of a Leader to personify what people are feeling. If it is proven that the Wallace assassination is connected to Watergate, we are in real trouble. Whatever the personification, we probably won’t like it. There is too much evil in the air, too much that Agnew and Nixon did not satisfy in the tormented American soul.
But, as I am always heard to say, there may be some room to move in the cracks. The hard thing will be to avoid interpreting what’s truly new in terms of what’d be old and familiar. It’s easy to get locked in. What’s interesting about the New York Dolls are some new bumps and crevasses—a strong sense of guilt, unfocused moral outrage, the missing sense of humor. It is, indeed, a lot like some very old stuff. But I get the feeling that for part of what we are about to see happening, the key may have gone about one click in the lock.