I was saddened to hear of the death of Richie Havens, who passed, aged 72, on the 22nd April. This is a sentiment and line becoming all too frequent of late, but not surprising as musicians with whom I grew up as a teenager – so themselves already or just being established musically as young adults – are of an age where this will be more common.
Having been away in the Lakes last week I have only just
found out. So the sadness is deepened a little by the fact that Haven’s death
did not register more widely. If at home I would have ‘heard’ as I touch
base daily with music sites for reviews and information, but even though I was able
to go to a local cafe to use their WiFi for quickly checking emails, and I got
a daily newspaper and watched the TV news, his death hadn’t registered enough
to be reported. Lesser ‘popular’ stars would, I’m sure, have created
larger if less distinguished ripples.
Quite by coincidence, I had during the week been thinking
about my musical Top Fifty [see – even when away from home and not writing on
the blog I am somewhat consumed by the insular world it provides for me] and
wondering if Richie Havens should have a place there. He is without doubt a
favourite artist of mine. It is his distinctive vocal – at times quite a growl,
but at others a soft and resonating folk vocal – and of course the guitar
playing, open-tuned with a famously, aggressively strummed style. This style
was brought to my attention and so many others with his opening performance at Woodstock – obviously through the film
version – and his mesmerising and commanding stage presence with, as we now
know, impromptu jamming as he was asked by the organisers to extend his performance as other acts were held up in traffic [if you are from another planet and haven't seen/heard, check out the stunning Freedom here].
It isn’t his death that sways me to include Alarm Clock in my Top Fifty, but it does
provide me the opportunity to honour him by its inclusion. This is one of the
first few albums with which I grew up musically and in many other respects, so it
was played a considerable amount. It is beautiful – the song I am listening to
as I write is the self-penned [with Roth and Margoleff] End of the Season, with its unusual, for this album, orchestral
accompaniment, acknowledged on the album as a string arrangement by Bill
Shepherd, but surely it is a Moog Synthesiser dominating the background. It is
a lovely song with Havens’ deep vocal and the heightened drama of that
arrangement.
The title track is quite a bluesy number, Havens’ signature
rhythm driving the beat and Paul Williams providing some funky lead guitar. It
has a jamming/live element that appealed particularly then, reminiscent of the Woodstock performance [the cd version
runs at 7.17 to accentuate this feel, compared with the vinyl at 5.17].
Havens was a great interpreter of others’ songs, especially
the Beatles, and Alarm Clock opens
with a beautiful cover of the beautiful George Harrison number Here Comes The Sun. Third track Younger Men Grow Older is another
Havens/Roth song and its apparent gentle lyricism about age and wisdom and
hopes for the future encapsulates perfectly the ideals of the Woodstock
generation, that initial sweet focus tempered ruefully by reflections on
the destruction of war and assault on the environment. Fourth track Girls Don’t Run Away, written by Havens,
is gorgeous, if plaintive, and lyrically also reflects well on preoccupations
of this generation, here the ‘generation gap’ and a mother who does not understand/appreciate
her daughter, and an urge that the daughter should stand up for herself and
seek independence. Such musical folk excellence was heightened by a storytelling
which so deeply tapped into the contemporary listeners’ thoughts and feelings.
 |
| January 1941- April 2013 |
No comments:
Post a Comment