The Joys of RE-Creation
Classic albums come back to life in upcoming concerts and recordings
By Steven Rosen
If 1967 was the Summer of Love, music-wise, then 2007 could be called the Summer of Advocacy, as performers and producers stage concerts and release new CDs devoted to re-creating, revisiting, reinterpreting, or just plain celebrating the staying power of a favorite album of the past. It may be an act's own; it may be a tribute to someone else.
It also may be nostalgic, but at the same time it's an act of defiance - advocacy - by artists and music-biz veterans who believe in albums as an enduring art form despite changes in the industry and the broader, youth-oriented culture.
"The album as an album may not be a concept kids with their iTunes get anymore," says Arvind Manocha, vice president and general manager of the Hollywood Bowl. This summer, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra is participating in two noteworthy re-creations - a Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 40th-anniversary tribute on August 10 and 11, and Rufus Wainwright's re-creation of Judy Garland's tumultuously famous 1961 Hollywood Bowl concert on September 23.
"Who knows - maybe 25 years from now, playlists will be re-created in concert from start to finish," Manocha says.
He is joking a bit. The key to these album "re-creations" - for lack of a better term - is acknowledged quality of the source material. "If an album was conceived as a whole work, then it makes sense," he says. "It wasn't written to have two hit singles, but to be heard from start to finish."
Adds Jimmy Guterman, a music writer who became involved in producing reissues and now has made the new The Sandinista! Project: "Because albums may be dead in this iTunes era, this may be nostalgia for the very idea of an album."
His Sandinista! is a multi-artist two-CD set re-creating the Clash's controversial early-1980s follow-up to its classic London Calling. It features, among others, Jon Langford and Sally Timms, Willie Nile, Camper Van Beethoven, and a mesmerizing version of "Broadway" by Stew.
Guterman believes the Clash's Sandinista! has been unfairly overshadowed by London Calling. "This is a work of advocacy for the original album," he says. "It's thought of as a big, sprawling, three-album mess, but I've developed enormous affection for it," he says. "Their earliest records show you how much you can take out of a recording and still have rock 'n' roll. This shows you how much you can put back in and still have punk."
While not a new idea, the notion of playing albums start-to-finish in concert has in the past been associated with either the promotion of brand-new collections or as a sort of goof. Phish in the 1990s used to do one-off covers of classic-rock albums at Halloween concerts.
But Los Angeles has become a hotspot in recent years for the notion of taking "album re-creations" more seriously. Some would say Brian Wilson's meticulously arranged comeback performances of Pet Sounds and Smile at such key, prestigious venues around town as the Hollywood Bowl, UCLA's Royce Hall, and Walt Disney Concert Hall in recent years have done as much to launch this trend as to revive his career.
Arthur Lee, before he died, was able to perform his L.A. classic, Love's Forever Changes, with a string quartet and rock band at Royce Hall. Last year, the Go-Go's celebrated the 25th anniversary of Beauty and the Beat with a Greek Theatre show, and in 2005 Petra Haden and choir performed her a cappella rendition of The Who Sell Out at John Anson Ford Amphitheatre.
This year is fairly brimming with declared acts of album advocacy - some at very toney venues. Rosanne Cash promoted her May 5 show at Disney Hall as "Black Cadillac in Concert." Roger Waters, who split from Pink Floyd, did the band's (and his) Dark Side of the Moon during his June 13 Hollywood Bowl show.
Barry Hogan's London-based All Tomorrow's Parties concerts, which present arty, experimental rock acts like curated contemporary-art biennales, is bringing the U.S. "Don't Look Back" tour to L.A. this month. Four bands will be here performing what are considered their finest albums and seminal postpunk work.
Sonic Youth is celebrating the release of a deluxe edition of Daydream Nation, its 1988 milestone, by playing it in its entirety at the Greek Theatre on July 20. Opening will be Redd Kross, the pop-culture-steeped L.A. band, who will play 1982's Born Innocent beginning to end.
Meanwhile, also as part of "Don't Look Back," Louisville, Kentucky-based Slint - who curated an All Tomorrow's Parties in 2005 - will play 1991's Spiderland at the Music Box at Henry Fonda Theatre on July 23. And Girls Against Boys will be doing 1993's Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby at the El Rey on July 22.
All are sure to attract rock cognoscenti, but none of those shows will be as big a draw as the Sgt. Pepper concerts at Hollywood Bowl. To Manocha, Sgt. Pepper is an easy choice for an in-concert re-creation featuring the Pops. The original recording, loosely conceived as a concept album, was an ideal and idealistic meeting of Beatles rock with producer George Martin's training in orchestral arrangements. (In 1999, Martin conducted the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in a concert of Beatles classics.) "This album certainly holds up, and you can do it from start to finish," Manocha says. "And it's something people haven't seen played live, certainly not by the Beatles."
He felt that finding the right rock band to participate would be the key. "Cheap Trick brings a level of legitimacy and artistry to it. They worked with George Martin and in their early years were considered Beatlesque." Plus, he points out, in 1998 Cheap Trick went on a club tour performing its own first three albums - Cheap Trick, In Color, and Heaven Tonight - in their entirety during three-night stands. "That was a way to reconnect to their past and to the original critical acclaim for their artistry," he says.
Wainwright's Judy Garland concert with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra is a bit different. He already has re-created - without impersonating her - her beloved Judy at Carnegie Hall live album at shows in New York and Europe. For the Bowl, he wanted to do something different - re-create her concert there from the same 1961 tour as Carnegie Hall. While it wasn't recorded, it's become folkloric among Garland and Hollywood Bowl aficionados.
"It's one of the most famous concerts in the history of the Bowl," Manocha says. "At the time, she set an attendance record of 20,000 people." (Attendance now is capped at 17,000.)
"And it rained for much of the show. Here was this incredible diva in front of this incredibly rapt audience sitting through the rain. We can't re-create the rain, but we'll do everything else we can."
At the time, Manocha explains, there was a pool where the "pool circle" seats are now, and Garland performed on ramps over the water. Wainwright will walk along ramps placed down the center of the area, although he'll be surrounded by people in seats.
Much is in the pipeline, on record and in concert. After Carla Bozulich, formerly of L.A.'s Geraldine Fibbers, had great success covering Willie Nelson's 1975 Red Headed Stranger, Chuck Prophet (formerly of Green on Red) has just recorded a version of Waylon Jennings's 1975 Dreaming My Dreams. (It doesn't yet have a release date.)
"My first solo record, Into the Dark, I made after listening to Dreaming My Dreams for months on end," Prophet says. "I just thought it was the perfect country record. And last year, when I needed to do demos, I got into a studio and started showing off by saying I could do that album from memory. I couldn't, so I got the music and lyrics and, as a dare, recorded it in all of two to three days. After we were done, I thought at first, 'We're in an era of remakes, and maybe it's a sickness.' But for stories to survive, we have to revive them." And songs are stories, he adds.
Lou Reed is touring Europe behind an elaborate production of 1973's Berlin, having already tested it in New York and Australia. The Human League, celebrating its 30th anniversary as a band, has announced European dates for a Dare! tour, playing its 1982 synth-pop breakthrough in entirety.
And everyone who likes music has an idea of what they'd like to see re-created on stage by the original artists. "I'd personally like to see the Stones do Exile on Main Street from start to finish," says Manocha. "That'd be a great show."
Published: 07/12/2007
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