A Playlist Series

American Crisis Playlist # 35

You got to have friends

Why can’t we be friends, why can’t we be friends?” so sang War back in the early 1970’s. I didn’t know why then, and I’m not sure I know any better now.

“I didn’t know we were still speaking?” Jedediah Leland says to Charles Foster Kane.

“Of course we’re still speaking, Jedediah…you’re fired.”

Friendships form and are torn asunder for too many bad reasons. Even good reasons make me wonder why, and if, after enough time, we can’t mend our broken hearts and minds. And so, I dedicate this playlist not to the national crisis, but to my old friends from Bessemer who, shamelessly, I will be naming below, as I remember and honor our relationships through the following set of songs. Hoping they remember…

AMERICAN CRISIS PLAYLIST # 35

1. “We Just Disagree,” Dave Mason from 1977’s Let It Flow. I heard this song again on Sirius-XM’s “The Bridge” this past Sunday as I was driving to my wife’s office. When was the last time I heard it? Had to be a couple of decades, and I was surprised not at how good it still sounded, but that I remembered almost every lyric. In 1977, I was in college again, after having returned from work in DC. Much of my free time on weekends and in that summer was spent with my friend Jack Griffis. He and his then wife were living in his grandmother’s basement apartment. It was often more of a scene than you’d think. Jack had loved Dave Mason since his Traffic days, and maybe he could explain why we both loved this song. Jack was a rock and roller who, along with his brother Steve, played in a band whose various names were “The Trojans,” “Night Wind,” and “Mother Savage.” Manning the drums, Jack understood the backbone of The Beat. I’m betting that this song is on his rapid play tune list. Hope so anyway.
2. “Kentucky Woman,” Deep Purple from The Book of Taliesyn (1968). It takes a certain kind of “hard rock” band to cover Neil Diamond, don’t you think? Jack and Steve loved Deep Purple, and together might have founded the Deep Purple fan club, Bessemer chapter. In my view, this was “Purple’s” finest record. I don’t know if that really says anything today, but though the band, once singer Ian Gillan replaced Rod Evans, could screech with the best of them, I preferred this more melodious sound, in part because, truthfully, I once loved Neil Diamond, too. Don’t wince, Jack and Steve. I also once wrote about finding the album in an unlikely venue: https://readmedium.com/beach-music-3ec5a77f87c8?sk=f4335125e5774a53301b245edc40d507 I think that this was the story that caused Noah Levy to ask me to join The Riff.
3. “Evil Ways,” Santana from 1969’s Santana. Steve Griffis and Night Wind band mate Russ Guyton were also in our high school’s Key Club, a fraternity of sorts. In 1972, for our school’s annual variety show, “Tiger Talent,” they led the Key Club band in the talent competition, playing this Santana hit. Steve was lead guitar, Russ on bass, and singing was a combination of vocalists led by my friend and neighbor, Joe Terry (mentioned more directly later on). It was a rockin’ good time as the light show mesmerized an audience of Alabama kids still trying to negotiate youth and rebellion. I can still see Steve’s red guitar, and I still know that the Key Club band did not win the competition that night. They were bested by…
4. “If I Were Your Woman,” Gladys Knight and the Pips, from 1971’s If I Were Your Woman. As sung in Tiger Talent by a sixteen year-old girl named Joyce Williams, a girl in my class whom I hardly knew because she was African American and I, Caucasian. We had some classes together, and while she didn’t speak much, when she did, you understood, even if you didn’t really, what the word “sultry” could mean. I promise you that when she sang that night, dreams arose, only to be crushed by the grimness of life in Bessemer, circa 1972. I had this single, still have it actually in my collection of old 45’s down in the basement. And while I rooted that night for my friends, it was clear to me that Joyce was everybody’s star. And besides, when I tried to pledge the Key Club, they turned me down — me, and my friend Jimbo Mulkin.
5. “Where Is the Love?” Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, from 1972’s Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. Jimbo was my acting friend, well, let me put that another way: Jimbo loved to act, and so he organized us one night in high school to do our own dramatization of Jesus Christ Superstar…in his bedroom. I think we stopped before the nails got hammered into Ian Gillan’s hands. Jimbo’s tastes in music ran along a slightly different stream than mine, and so when I jumped in his old Buick Skylark one afternoon, I noticed the RF/DH eight-track tape lying in his floorboard. “Is this what you’re listening to now?” I asked, because I was a little stunned that something so mainstream filled him with joy (forgetting for the moment my Neil Diamond fixation). “Yeah,” he said. “It’s fabulous.” And you know…it really is.
6. “Friends,” Bette Midler from The Divine Miss M (1972). Yes, I remember, Jimbo. You once added a soundtrack to a Super-8 film you made of all of us, and this song formed the heart of it all. I remember how we all grabbed each other, falling and laughing (3 Musketeers?) somewhere in your old house. The other song from this record that was an AM hit, “Do You Want to Dance?” was my favorite, but I wouldn’t have thought anything about Bette back then if it weren’t for you. Bette will never be my favorite, but I’ll also hold this record close because for a bit of time, it defined us. And only you could have brought it so closely to us.
7. “High Priestess,” Uriah Heep, from 1971’s Salisbury. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A man walks into a bar…Actually, Joe Terry called me over to his house across the street one day so that he could play this record for me. I picked this song because it was number one on side A. Somehow in the remastered version, it’s moved down into the middle, but I’m losing you, I know, in esoterica. Uriah Heep cancelled while we were at their show, so fuck ’em still. But I’m glad Joe took the time to make me listen to a different sound, that he cared enough about me, a guy two years younger which in high school time is really eons, to expose me to worlds far away. And I can’t tell you about our explorations on the south side because my daughters might be reading this.
8. “Laughing,” David Crosby from 1971’s If Only I Could Remember My Name. Love, and always will, this album’s title. So David, right? The only person I knew who actually owned this record back in ’71 was my friend Fred Wallace, Bessemer’s optometrist. Fred had vision, surely, and while we kind of made fun of Crosby’s “Almost Cut My Hair” on Deja Vu, when CSNY did their solo albums while still together, Crosby’s venture was the only one Neil Young played on. And Neil, as you know, was truly our rock god, Fred and I. Neil sings on this tune, and maybe helped write it, too. “I was only a child, laughing in the sun.” I have photos, and so does Fred, of us playing together as tiny babies. Only I wasn’t so tiny. Laughing….
9. “Running Dry,” Neil Young from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969). I wonder which Neil record Fred would select as his favorite? Maybe he’ll respond below. This might be mine, especially for the 10 minute version of “Cowgirl in the Sand,” which follows this song. I picked “Running Dry,” though, for two reasons. One, I used to sing it alone in my bedroom almost every night back then, when I was fifteen. I also stopped the needle countless times as I wrote the lyrics in blue ink on the album’s inner sleeve. My friend Jim Whisenhunt borrowed the record once and thought that I had actually written those lyrics. He put them to music, too, he said, though he never played his creation for me. God, we could have been stars, had potential plagiarism not gotten in the way.
10. “I Never Had It So Good,” Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge from 1973’s Full Moon. Hard to believe that though I was born and raised in Alabama, and so grew up with country music as my background soundtrack early on, I refused its charm until Jim played this record for me, and especially this song. These lovers’ voices mesh so well, and though I was older than Jim by almost a full year, I wondered what else he knew that I didn’t — what else he dared to listen to that I thought I couldn’t. We still learn from each other here and in other musical sub-spheres. Like all of my old friends, really. So true.

Sometimes crises help us get to the point of what has and still is all we need to get by. Of course, we also have so much more, but crank these up, and tell me you don’t understand where we’ve been…and where we’re going.

Thanks to The Riff, the fastest growing site on Medium (or should be) and the hordes of dedicated writers and listeners from Frank Mastropolo to Graeme A Henderson to MDSHall, If Ever You’re Listening, Keith R. Higgons, to Anton Astudillo, Steven Hale, Kathryn Dillon, Christopher Robin, Nia Simone McLeod, Kevin Alexander, Jessica Lee McMillan, Michael Datz and Rob Janicke.

Here’s the previous crisis list: https://readmedium.com/american-crisis-playlist-34-a39b3886b50a?sk=1ce2c529047839d38105d79878bab148