Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4k7Sh6uxSCWNobslKrbdnb?si=e462ab0412e344ec

1

“I’ll be home on a Monday

Somewhere around noon”

Actually, later in the afternoon, but that’s not the point. The point is people started asking me when I was going to be home. And I responded with this song, Little River Band’s “Home on Monday”…

And I’m not sure anybody had any idea what I was talking about.

WAIT, WAIT! This is actually about Bonnie Raitt! So all you Little River Band haters…

Well, you didn’t hate them at first. I can still remember hearing “It’s a Long Way There” at eight in the morning stuck in traffic driving to Civil Procedure. You remember where and when you hear amazing tracks, it’s part of the process, you’re struck by lightning and…

I purchased the LP and when Spotify slipped into another track from that initial album, which is really a combination of two Australian albums, I knew it. That wouldn’t happen today. Because it’s really not that great a song. But we listened from beginning to end back then.

But before that I played “Home on Monday.”

“Yes, that’s right, I’m calling from

The Las Vegas Hilton”

Band on the road. But it’s more than that…

“You looked so lovely when I left I nearly didn’t go

Twelve thousand miles is such a long way”

That’s how far it is from Sin City to Down Under. That’s a staggeringly long distance. Which is why not long before he died Michael Gudinski told me he preferred to be a big fish in a small pond. Not only do you need the music and the chops to make it in the States, you’ve got to GO, and it’s FAR!

But Little River Band did and…they ultimately had a string of hits. That became wimpier and wimpier, but they were ubiquitous. That’s right, Little River Band had more huge hits than anybody working today, if you consider audience reach.

And Spotify is playing them all. I always loved “Lonesome Loser,” but “Reminiscing”…this was not exactly the band I became enamored of back in 1976.

Then again it’s not that band at all anymore, hasn’t been in forever. You see the band’s name is owned by an entity that’s been putting a completely fake Little River Band on the road for eons. The old guys, the ones who made the hits, could not tour under the original name and…

I’m pulling up Wikipedia to see where everybody is today, and I read that not only is Glenn Shorrock eighty, he’s got Parkinson’s, which I initially thought meant he’s retired, but I just pulled up his personal website and he’s got two gigs this coming weekend…

And Graham Goble and Beeb Birtles are a few years younger than Shorrock, but for legal reasons, you won’t see the real band performing under its own moniker…EVER!

We wait and wait for reunions and then time passes and you suddenly realize…they’re never going to happen. Good luck with that Kinks tour.

But it’s funny, the records remain. AC/DC may be touring with a white-haired Angus Young, but even if the band had called it quits after “Highway to Hell” and the death of Bon Scott, people would still be listening to (and singing along with!) that track and “It’s a Long Way to the Top.”

Funny that we lived through these experiences, but they’re just fumes today. yet somehow younger generations perpetuate these records. There’s something in them. That’s IRRESISTIBLE!

Not that I think future generations will be listening to Bonnie Raitt’s “Green Light.”

2

Which was a commercial and critical disappointment back in 1982, despite all the hosannas on the Wikipedia page today. Yes, it’s a rewrite of history. Bonnie had finally broken through commercially. There were those who’d been with her forever and those who cottoned to the Paul Rothchild and Peter Asher sounds of the previous three albums and then came this left field, but in-your-face production by Bonnie’s then boyfriend Rob Fraboni, sans not only Freebo but featuring…Ian McLagan? Of the Faces? And an unknown, unheralded guitarist with the appellation Johnny Lee Schell.

It’s not like there was a big marketing hook here. Other than the record was cut at Shangri-La, the Band’s studio, now more famous as Rick Rubin’s domain. It seemed that Bonnie had gone on an alcohol-fueled hejira and might have had a lot of fun, but left her audience behind. To the point where Warner allowed her to record a new record thereafter, but they cut her loose and refused to release it for years and suddenly Raitt was truly out in the wilderness. An apparent seventies burnout, a has-been who could work on the road, but was seemingly meaningless in the big time world of rock and roll now driven by MTV.

Now the rest is history. After years, after Al Bunetta implored her to go indie like his client John Prine, telling Raitt that no major label would be interested, one was and Bonnie signed to Capitol and…

3

Now the advance word was “Green Light” contained two NRBQ songs. In an era when NRBQ was barely a critics’ darling, when they kept putting out albums that only a small coterie cared about. And the irony is to this day most people don’t know any of NRBQ’s records, even though they did one “At Yankee Stadium” (HA!), which actually contains the original recording of “Green Lights,” and I bought that based on the reviews and it slid right off of me, no, it bugged me a bit, it was edgy and “Green Lights” was the opening track and it didn’t resonate. As for “Me and the Boys,” the other NRBQ song on “Green Light”…it’s apropos considering the band and the recording process, it was Bonnie and the boys and it sounded like something they had fun recording, maybe performing late at night in a bar, but the magic of yore…

It was absent.

The album almost seemed like a lark. A finger poked in the eye of fans.

However…the opening number, “Keep This Heart in Mind,” written by the unknown duo of Fred Marrone and Steve Holsapple, worked. It had a driving force, with delicious changes, it just wasn’t what Bonnie had been selling for her last few albums. Sure, it rocked harder than the first two LPs, yet you could see it as part of those records, but…

Most of the album didn’t feature Bonnie’s usual writers, and to say it wasn’t a one listen smash is…charitable. If you listened to the record multiple times, got past the stuff that rubbed you the wrong way, you found some gems.

There’s “I Can’t Help Myself”…

If you listened to the album enough times the track became infectious, the way the song opened with the chorus and then quieted down, not quite sotto voce, but intimately, with the story, the verse. And that chorus had you nodding your head.

And then there’s the best track on the album, “River of Tears,” an Eric Kaz tune that evidences all of Bonnie’s sultriness and depth. Yes, Bonnie was not a blank blues-belter, you could always see the person underneath. And this person was not a victim. She could give as well as she got, and that was part of her appeal. You played baseball with her in your early days, she was one of the boys and then…she hit puberty and matured and suddenly you were anxious when you ran into her…

Even though she was not.

It’s one thing to meet a cardboard model/star. They trade on their looks, and their looks only. It’s a full-time job delivering the image the audience expects. But someone who allows the rough edges to be seen, who is three-dimensional…what works with a woman like that? Not a Porsche. Not a Black Amex card. No, you’ve got to sell both your body and mind, and most guys are not up to that. They’d rather do surface. And Bonnie Raitt was never surface.

4

So for some reason, I don’t know how the brain works, after listening to Little River Band I got a hankering to hear “River of Tears.” I didn’t even mention the groove…that’s part of its infectious nature, “River of Tears” is not in-your-face like so much of “Green Light,” then again, Bonnie had recorded Kaz’s (along with Libby Titus!) “Love Has No Pride” long before anybody had a hit with it, as well as “Cry Like a Rainstorm,” the unheralded “I’m Blowin’ Away” and a driving version of “Gamblin’ Man.”

Then again, Bonnie Raitt had never recorded a Bob Dylan song. In this case one that had never been released on wax by the man from Minnesota himself.

Now I know “Let’s Keep It Between Us,” it closed the first side of “Green Light” and it was a vinyl album you played from beginning to end and I actually bought the CD, but…

Today is the first day it ever truly resonated.

The song followed one of the others on “Green Light” while listening in the van to the airport and…

Maybe it was the state of suspended animation. With nothing on my mind, not working, the song penetrated me.

“Let’s keep it between us”‘

Usually it’s something bad. You don’t want the word out.

“These people meddling in our affairs

They’re not our friends”

Okay, okay…other people truly have no idea what is going on between a couple. And they have agendas and take sides and the underlying truth can be lost in the process. But what is that truth?

“Before the whole door closes 

And it comes to an end

They’ll tell you one thing, me another

‘Til we don’t know who to trust

Oh, darlin’, can we keep it between us?”

Now I’m becoming intrigued. What exactly is going on here?

“We’ve been through too much together

That they’ll never share

They’ve had nothing to say to us before

Now all of a sudden it’s as if 

They’ve always cared

All we need is honesty

A little humility and trust

Oh, darlin’, can we keep it between us”

And the more I’m listening, this does not sound like an argument, rather they share something between them and he’s advising circling the wagons against…

Exactly what?

The recording starts with an organ flourish, akin to an old blues number, and then Bonnie is singing this song with a swagger.

The band and she are cohesive. In a groove. And you can hear every player. The mix is not a miasma.

And then there’s the bridge…which actually differs from Bob Dylan’s original lyrics:

“I know we’re not perfect, then again, so what

That ain’t no reason to treat you like a snake

Or to treat me like a slut

And it’s makin’ me so angry”

Bob agrees they’re not perfect, but…

“Then again, neither are they

They act like we got to live for them

As if there just ain’t no other way

And it’s makin’ me kind of tired”

And then the whole number drops down…becomes ever more serious:

“Could we just lay back for a moment

Before we wake up and find ourselves

In a game that we both have lost

These easy cures and easy handsomes

Somethin’ tells me we can’t afford the cost”

But Bob’s lyrics are once again different:

“Can we just lay back for a moment

Before we wake up and find ourselves in a daze that’s got us out of our minds

There must be something we’ve overlooking here

We better drop down now and get back behind the lines

There’s some things not fit for human ears

Some things don’t need to be discussed

Oh, darlin’ can we keep it between us?”

Bob’s telling a more conspiratorial story. This ain’t no lover’s spat. There’s no reference to a slut and…

Now my curiosity got the better of me. I mean it’s possible “Let’s Keep It Between Us” is on an early Dylan album and I don’t know it, but…

It turns out it’s included in one of the “Bootleg Series,” in this case “Springtime in New York,” featuring recordings from 1980-1985, it’s Volume 16 and it was released in…2021, decades after the version on “Green Light.”

Okay, this is like the “Basement Tapes,” there must be more to this story. And after digging around a bit, I find out there is.

“Let’s Keep It Between Us” is about Dylan’s relationship with Carolyn Dennis, his backup singer who he ultimately married in 1986 and had a child with who is…

Black.

They definitely kept this relationship between them. It was truly a secret. No one knew about it until it was revealed in “Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan” by Howard Sounes in 2001. And at the time this claim was debated, many didn’t believe it was true, I remember reading the book and being stunned…if this is so, why haven’t we heard about it?

But now we know it’s absolutely true. And “Let’s Keep It Between Us” is the story of an interracial relationship, which many still consider taboo over forty years later.

Hmm…

Well, this is definitely an autobiographical song, and there are multiple versions of the lyrics and a line in one is…

“Let’s just move to the back of the back of the bus”

So now I’m reeling. What I thought was a song about two people who’d had a fight…

Turned out to be nothing of the sort.

And I’m still metabolizing this. Bob’ll surprise you. You think he’s speaking in allegory, that he’s not paying attention to others’ reaction to him and then…

You get the Musicares speech where he referenced seemingly every slight he’d received in his life.

And now “Let’s Keep It Between Us.”

How can a song say so much and so many of us miss it?

Maybe I’m the only one. But I don’t think so. There was no internet forty years ago, we could speculate…but that’s all we could do.

Who knew there was such a backstory on a song from “Green Light,” which works as pure presentation, performance, but…

I’m still trying to figure out exactly what Bonnie is singing about…