Original article: https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2026/08/10/long-hair-tattoos/

The original e-mail that inspired my screed:

Bob…. Long time reader and have enjoyed your postings so much but what is your thing against long hair on guys? I just played a big outdoor festival up here in Alaska this weekend and there were tons of guys with long hair and tattoos, many of them in their 20s and 30s. I see the same thing in Seattle when I go to shows. Also, many of the younger musicians who come into the guitar shop / music store I manage up here have long hair and tatts. 

David Resch
Fairbanks,Alaska
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I was the singer in a band that was managed by Jimmy Iovine, A&R’d by John Kalodner and Produced by Bob Rock on Geffen in 1990. I was the most heavily tattoed rocker out there with full sleeves and a solid back piece. Bryn Bridenthal and the label staff had to fight to get our pic out there ’cause we looked so scary and the other half of the time was making up stories about how we were the biggest “bada*ses” on Earth….which we weren’t. When we did the Arsenio Hall show I did the rehearsal wearing a jacket as the studio was cold and when we taped it, I went out there bare chested as that’s how I always performed and Arsenio and his Producer had a meltdown over it. ?
I was heavily tattooed by the mid 80’s. Mothers used to grab their kids and go the other side of the street when they saw me coming. I loved the expression, the rebellion, the horror I would illicit. I still love all my tattoo work. The youngsters think I’m “OG”. Soccer Mom’s want to compare ink in the fruit section and folks want to know if I am a chef or aging barista. I am actually grateful my tattoo artist friends in Hollywood did all that work on all those celebrities bringing it onto the pages of People magazine. It helped me ease into my older years without looking like a freak. But if I were to do it all over seeing what all these folks are doing with tattoed eyeballs (literally a thing), I’d be the rebel and stay uncolored as a true non conformist. ?
Ron Young
(Little Caesar)
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I loved this take because you knocked down the posers and wannabes.  Art is all about authentically pushing boundaries in a way that excites people, and in that vein.

Bret Colson
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Great take on this.  It is easier to be interesting on the outside than it is to be interesting on the inside.  This applies to pretty much everything, not just tattoos.

Gary Yacoubian
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Good god what a redundant boomer-a*s take Bob.??Sure, getting tattoos and having long hair is no longer an act of rebellion. But let’s not pretend that everyone back in the 70’s wasn’t trying to belong to a club, because they were. Hell, my dad was part of the rockers and mods feud (firmly on the rockers side) and every single damn person was trying to indicate which gang they belonged to, and it’s been like that the entire time. There’s a reason The Warriors was so of its time.??Only these days long hair and tattoos doesn’t signify a specific club, it could mean anything. The rules have changed. It isn’t about whether you have tattoos, it’s about what specifically you chose to get inked. Design, style, references if any. Same with hair. Colour, length, undercut, all of it can signify any number of things within numerous subcultures.??And most of all they’re not some bold statement of which club you belong to, they’re a statement of self-expression, of what you like and what represents you specifically. We’ve long moved past surface bullsh*t: monsters and heroes can come in any guise these days, and how they choose to represent themselves straight up does not matter.??If you’re looking for a rebel, sure they might show up with colourful long hair and tattoos. Or they might show up in a suit and tie. We don’t give a sh*t and neither should you.

Al Worth
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You’ve done it. Being long haired with tattoo sleeves you’ve got me triggered like the little snowflake I am. 😉 Your views on both long hair and tattoos seem a bit outdated.?Sure, like you say, tattoos used to be dangerous. In the days of yore, if you had tattoos you’ve either spend time in prison, were a sailor or part of a biker club. With all three of them being equally notorious.
But a lot of folks, like me, don’t have any other motivation for tattoos and long hair other then that they just like it. Long hair looks better than short hair. Nothing more to it. Tattoos make a boring body more interesting. That’s it. Nothing more.?Sure, a lot of people have tattoos and maybe long hair for all the wrong reasons. But the same goes for earrings, baggy trousers, toupees and plastic boobies.
The fact that something is permanent doesn’t make it bad. In my opinion it could make something awesome. And you said that there is a lot of money being made with tattoo removal. So it’s like tattoos are permanent for a limited time. If you want them to be.??Keep the letters coming Bob! Always a good read.?And stop laughing at me.??Best regards,?Gerrit Mesker
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Bob, funny you mentioned the heavy metal image.  For YEARS I’ve been wondering why no metal bands have the guts or inspiration to dress like western cowboys or wear bermuda shorts or…?  They ALL look the same.  And by the same token I’ve never seen a country band dress like metal or wear bermuda shorts or…?

You are correct, no one wore long hair until the Beatles, (it was all crew cuts and flattops).  In 1964, I was a junior in a high school of 3000 kids in Arlington, VA, and I was one of only three boys who tried to grow our hair like the Beatles.  (I had to stick it behind my ears and hoped it wouldn’t fall out or the school would make me cut it).  But soon the Stones arrived and I liked them more because they were more “rebellious and dangerous”.  Some boys would chase me with scissors and threaten to cut my hair if they caught me – that’s how it was in 1964.  In 1965 I graduated and moved to Glendale and went to Glendale Junior College, and once again there were only three guys in the entire school with long hair.  I remember once being in a school bathroom and a guy said “Are you sure you’re in the correct bathroom?”  And then, within two years, almost EVERY guy had long hair.

Sterling Howard, founder/owner ?https://www.MusiciansContact.com
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Absolutely agree on every point.?It’s cosplay.

Kathleen Stagg
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“How demented can you be?”

Really, Bob?

In 21st century America tattooing is a respected art form. People pay hundreds of dollars an hour to sought after artists with long waiting lists to get a one-of-a-kind work of art permanently inked their skin so they can proudly wear for the rest of their lives. 

It’s not about “rebellion” or being “dangerous” or “taboo.” It’s about expression. It’s about adornment. It’s about having some agency over what the meat bags, which are formed by genes that we did not choose, look like. 

I have to assume you see the irony in writing “I don’t want to sound like an oldster” and immediately following that by telling metal musicians to “slow it down and stop screaming” 

Should they turn down the volume and to get off your lawn while they’re at it?

Okay, boomer.

Zac :Lasher
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You say: 

“This is why the sixties and seventies were a golden era. You never knew what would come next, you’d drop the needle and be wowed. People were taking chances.”

I say: 

This is why the sixties and seventies were a golden era. You never knew what would come next, you’d drop the needle and be wowed. People were taking chances…and the people with money and vision invested in them.

That is most definitely missing from today.  Ostin, Warnaker, Norman, Bowen, Smith, Alpert, Kalodner, Moss, Brown, Sigerson, Fogelsong, Geffen. 

Who is doing that now ? Borchetta ? Who else ? I am not making a statement. I am asking.  

Susan Levy Rash 
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You know…I remember thinking in the early 2000’s that a tattoo removal business would be an awesome idea in ten-years’ time. I mean, surely these skater boys and girls would regret their body art as their skin started sagging and pulling away from their bones. 

Seeing how prevalent tattoos are now, I’m glad I stuck with music!

-Christopher Maloney
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Re: tattoos? Amen, brother. So ugly. Same goes for piercing but at least those metal spikes can be pulled out.

— Greg Dennis
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Michael McCarty said it on your podcast a few years ago: fewer kids are learning to play an instrument. Rick Beato just did a piece on the lack of guitars in the park.?
It makes me think that because music is hard to do, fewer people are playing instruments today. It may even be that few people are listening to music, which is almost unfathomable to me.

But go back a century and the same was true for poetry. Poetry died off. We still have Poet Laureates, but they are placed in such high esteem – rarified and separated from the rest of us. 
?In 1915, “In Flanders Fields” was written and affected the culture of the entire Western world. We were supposed to memorize it in school, but I could never get the whole thing. It takes effort to parse out a poem.

Neil Young’s “OHIO” was more my speed. It was easier to catch the theme when Neil belted out the chorus over and over. Like Michael and Rick said, few are going to play it in the park anymore, fewer will sing it, and while someone might cue it up on an iPhone, even that is unlikely.
?It’s the comedians who are carrying that mantle now – reducing our culture to a delicious one-liner like Julia Child’s Sauce Bordelaise.

Kind regards, 
Rob Whittaker
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Bob – If I’m not mistaken, Edgar and Jonny Winter are from Port Arthur, TX, too.  I beleve they knew each other back in their Texas days Wiki has Johnny listed as born in Beaumont, but Port Arthur is an exurb of that city. My wife and I drove out to the Museum of the Gulf Coast  https://www.museumofthegulfcoast.org/ when we lived in Houston.??If you click under music, Clay Walker and Larry Graham, among a host of others, are listed from Beaumont.??But in that part of Texas it’s spittin’ distance between Port Arthur and Beaumont.??Robert Vellani
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It’s funny you would ask this:  is anybody else from Port Arthur even well-known, never mind in music?

I saw a Robert Rauschenberg exhibit at the Guggenheim last year, and it noted he was from Port Arthur, Texas. And I thought, wait, like Janis Joplin??

Yep. Also several professional athletes and hip hop duo UGK…

Barbara Barna Abel / Abel Intermedia LLC
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Long time reader, first time message. I’m sure many people have told you this by now, but just in case, Super Bowl winning football coach Jimmy Johnson went to high school with Janis Joplin in Port Arthur.

Best,
Mike Chase
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AW, IT’S ALWAYS …

… the BALD guys talkin’.

Dave Wallace, Jr.

Rock and roll was the other. Outsiders questioning precepts. It was anything but me-too.

No one wore their hair long before the Beatles. And isn’t it interesting that today Paul & Ringo wear their hair short, and have for quite a while. They don’t want to be boxed in by an identity, they don’t want to trade on the past, they want to look forward.

Eric Clapton has short hair too. Judge him on his music, not his image.

So many denizens of the classic rock era have short hair today, because they’ve grown up, long hair is no longer a rebellion, but de rigueur.

Ditto on tattoos. Used to be dangerous, outré, taboo. But not anymore, as a matter of fact people are competing for attention with neck tattoos and face tattoos, to show that they’re just more dangerous and out there than the rest, those with tramp stamps and sleeves. I laugh at these people. How demented can you be. You can’t cover them up and they’re PERMANENT! Never mind Gregg Allman getting hepatitis from a bad needle in San Francisco.

If you want to be an artist you should question convention, not adhere to it.

Who says you have to have long hair and tattoos to play metal music? You’re ultimately appealing to an ever-dwindling base. This is the path for all fads. They’re hip once, and then been there and done that and most people don’t care. If you want to be taken seriously by anyone outside of the metal backwater, maybe try looking a bit different. Or slowing it down and not screaming… I don’t want to sound like an oldster here (and I am!), I like heavy music, but when something is just a riff on what came before, I dismiss it. Metallica pushed boundaries. Imitations of Metallica? That’s what’s wrong with the hit parade, it’s formulaic, which is why so many tune out.

I read today that “Stranger Things” is the number one streaming show of 2026, even though it came out in 2025. I definitely hadn’t seen anything quite like it before. Although one season was enough for me. I was riveted by “Squid Game,” I don’t need anymore. Why? It’s been played out.

Too many people think music is about the external, the totems. The greats are unquantifiable. “American Idol” contestants have good voices. That’s a small part of the package, what about writing and performing? In truth, our greatest artists do not have conventionally pretty voices, but that does not mean they cannot convey emotion… Rod Stewart would be laughed off a TV competition stage, and he’s not the only one.

Look at Janis Joplin. An outcast in her high school. She returned a star at reunion and they still didn’t accept her. Meanwhile, is anybody else from Port Arthur even well-known, never mind in music?

This is why the sixties and seventies were a golden era. You never knew what would come next, you’d drop the needle and be wowed. People were taking chances.

And they were not locked into who they were. David Bowie tried a number of things before he truly broke through with “Ziggy Stardust,” and then he broke up the band! Every album had a new sound and a different look. To his death he was testing limits. Knowing it’s not about commerciality, but art. This is what Madonna specialized in, changing it up. But with less than successful recent recordings, she went back to the well to dance music. Whew! That’s what I’m waiting for, more of the same. The reviews are positive, but not one person has ever e-mailed me about this album. Then again, if you want to know which way the wind blows don’t read today’s reviewers. They salivate at the tit of what once was. They’re looking for access, there certainly isn’t any money in it.

As for the loss of the “Brooklyn Vegan” and “Revolver”…believe me, if people were reading them they’d be successes, they’d march on. But who needs self-appointed experts in the form of a website when everybody’s got an opinion online and you earn your stripes, i.e. your audience. Just like when MTV stopped showing videos… Because they were an on demand item online. All the oldsters crying in their beer… Oh, bring back what once was. Well, it didn’t work financially, that’s why they changed it. Like a wannabe act that pivots, and many of your heroes have…their initial recordings would make you laugh.

We look for artists to lead. That’s your job. Assuming you’re an artist. Just because you can play guitar and sing, that doesn’t make you an artist.

And then there are people who completely challenged convention. Picasso with cubism, Jackson Pollack with his overall drip paintings. Made fun of at first, completely changing the landscape thereafter.

If you want to wear your hair long and get tattoos, that’s fine with me. Just don’t tell me they make you a musician, that you’re dangerous… It’s a fashion choice… And you know how fast fashion changes. You’re locking yourself into a decades-old paradigm?

Let’s go back to the garden. The so-called “White Album.” The Beatles left the cover blank as a commentary on overdone gatefold covers. There was nowhere left to go, they couldn’t outdo what had been done, they’d hit the apotheosis with “Sgt. Pepper.” And isn’t it interesting that “Abbey Road” was a single-sleeved cover when seemingly every artist had a gatefold.

Then again, artists need inspiration. And where is that coming from today? What I see is a bunch of whiners. Someone’s blocking you from success, you’re not making enough money. What do they say? SHUT UP AND PLAY! You’re not endearing yourself to anybody, no one really cares, you’re taking yourself out of the game.

You speak with your art.

And the heroes of yore spoke. You hung on every word. An interview in “Rolling Stone” was manna from heaven. Not anymore, it’s just lifestyle and details, how they made the record. David Crosby was an a*shole, but he was a deep thinker, he could wrestle with the issues. Can you? No number of tattoos or long hair will deliver this. This comes from education and reading and..

That’s hard.

So it’s easier just to grow your hair out long and get a bunch of tattoos to become a member of the club. A club any true innovator wants nothing to do with.

We’re hungry for different. And very few people can deliver it.

Bob Dylan said acoustic folkie music was done and went electric, he didn’t want to repeat himself. People were angry, others laughed, but “Like a Rolling Stone” is frequently cited as the greatest rock track ever.

And speaking of Beatles… John Lennon cut his hair short, wore his specs and laid bare his issues. “1970s “Plastic Ono Band” was a commercial failure, but it inspired so many to reveal their inner truth. If John could, if he was tormented, if he wasn’t happy… He no longer believed in Beatles but so many in the audience still did. So many going to see the old bands do the old tunes. That’s nostalgia, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but the arts are based on envelope piercing work. It’s about the idea, and then the execution of it.

If you’re wearing long hair and sporting tattoos, you’re playing it safe. Can you own that? I doubt it. If you had long hair in the sixties, you were on the cutting edge, it was a badge of honor. Tattoos? I think their outrageousness expired sometime in the nineties, if not a bit thereafter. So if you’ve got ’em… Then again, there’s a big business in removing them.

Want my attention? Do something good and different. People don’t e-mail me about the same, they send me breakthroughs, that they’re excited about.

Thinking comes first, execution comes later.

In order to leave your mark you’ve got to be inspired to create something unique. And that’s really hard to do. So people fall into the trap of thinking the image will suffice.

It won’t.

If you want to feel left out… Unless, of course, you were there.

So what did I learn…

Doc McGhee is a sharp guy with a lot of insight, as are the most successful people in rock and roll. They may not have a CV, but they’ve got brains, and they know how to use them. Doc shoots it straight, only so many people have the talent to make it, there are plenty of gigs as cocktail waitresses, as support in this industry, you can be in it, but the odds of you being on stage…

And then there’s Phil Collen… Who says he’s got to be drunk to go on stage as his avatar.

They all are just regular people. But when done right, rock stars are larger than life.

And they’re in this movie.

It’s not like the Sunset Marquis is an unknown quantity. God, I had dinner there with Jack Casady on his birthday a few months back. Talk about an OG, he’s got stories from before the eighties, the era when the Sunset Marquis truly flourished, when it was the destination of the outrageous. Jack’s agent was staying in the hotel, that’s his regular haunt. As it is for so many managers and others from out of town.

And if you hang around long enough, show up, you too will be privy to memorable insider moments, that’s why you live in L.A., come here, because even though you can make a record in your bedroom, people need to interact, and most of them do it in L.A.

Not New York. That’s a different vibe. The down and dirty seventies? Those musicians can’t even live in Brooklyn anymore. And Times Square has been cleaned up. Manhattan is where money talks, and the bread that speaks is made by people with a lot more cash than musicians.

But back in the eighties… A musician could be as rich and powerful as anybody in America. No longer, which is why the acts sell out to the man and have brand extensions.

But once upon a time…

And that time is gone. History. Never coming back.

Life is all about evolution, even though most can’t do it. They’re stuck in time. Like an aged rock star with long hair and tattoos and a lifted face plying the boards every summer to fans who look decades older.

And the Sunset Marquis evolved. Went upscale you can say. From not quite a dump, to a respectable outlet. They expanded, put in that restaurant, installed the studio. Kudos.

If only the music and those who make it would take note.

Now you could do it and get away with it back then, in the last century, before cellphone cameras. You were free and easy, with plausible deniability. That’s why you became a rock star. AC/DC had it right…getting robbed, getting stoned, getting beat up, broken boned… It’s harder than it looks. And despite “Cribs” and the rest of the image-making machinery of the MTV years, a lot of the famous players were not rich. They had bad deals, there were too many hands in the pot, but they were on stage, they were in the videos, they were famous, their mugs opened doors.

And this movie is all about the stuff the rock stars did behind closed doors. Some so outrageous, nasty, that no one will even talk about them in this film. The Beastie Boys in the hot tub…

Then again, code of the road. We all know stories we cannot tell, we cannot break that bond, otherwise we’d be out. There’s no contract, no deal, just a look in the eye.

And if you’re not on this side of the velvet rope, you think you’re missing out.

And for a long time you were.

But not anymore.

Oh, there are still charts, but there’s more innovation in tech, everyone talks about AI…and isn’t it funny how so many musicians are against it, the same people who knew no limits way back when. What we’ve got is a caricature of what once was. It needs to be reinvented. It’s not about tattoos and long hair… Tom Verlaine had no tattoos, and I’m pretty sure none of the Talking Heads do either. They all looked like people you went to high school with, but they were built different, twisted.

Then again, that’s the east coast intellectualism. Even the Ramones were intellectuals, otherwise how do you come up with the concept, never mind execute it.

But as the eighties rolled on, we got image and bombast.

So… Unless you were a participant, this movie will make you feel like you missed out, that something was happening there and whatever it was, you had no access. And it’s not like the Sunset Marquis is a private club, anyone can book a room there, it’s not even that expensive. But getting behind closed doors, becoming members of the club, it don’t really happen that way at all anymore.

And the man who sang those words, Roger Daltrey, said he never participated, he was in a band with three alcoholics.

And Ian Anderson told me he went back to his hotel room after the gig, sans groupies and substances.

No, the people in this movie…they’re different. They want to be a part of the action, they want to mix with people, they want to use these relationships to their advantage.

Is that you?

Probably not. Musicians are a special breed… Are you willing to hang it all out there on a dream? As Doc McGhee says, he doesn’t want to be involved with anybody who has a Plan B.

So what we’ve got here is a family story, George Rosenthal, who builds the Marquis and his son Mark, who it is named for, who ultimately takes it over.

Rosenthal was as big a rock star as the famous people who stayed at his hotel. An entrepreneur who wheedled his way into Hugh Hefner’s orbit and was inspired to build the Sunset Marquis right down the road and then went on a real estate spree, all based on borrowed cash.

Are you willing to take this risk?

So we’ve got the two Rosenthals, and a slew of rock stars. Genuine rock stars. No one said no to this film. They reminisce about their time at the hotel. Seemingly only Joe Elliott is humble. The rest…they’re luxuriating in their image, this is what they do, create music and become larger than life.

But the era has changed. We can see behind the curtain. Music, like it was before the Beatles, is first and foremost a business, the names come and go, sure you can sell tickets today, but are you changing the world?

When these people were stars, you did. Your image was displayed all over the world on MTV. There was basically one outlet and people were mesmerized by it.

Now MTV is just a pawn, if even that, in the Paramount/WarnerDiscovery merger.

So if you’re a fan, if you’re the kind of person who lives to go to shows, to see your old heroes go through the motions…

You’ve gotta see this movie, you’re gonna love it.

If you’ve got a brain, unlike too many stars today, who are built and promoted by committee, and you want to make an impact in music today, you should see this movie too… Not to salivate and imitate, but to slurp up history and use it as a jumping off point, to do something different.

We’ve seen this paradigm. Of the larger than life. Whether the underlying people deserved it or not, were truly outrageous or not.

But today, no one sits above… All the celebrities going to Rande Gerber’s Whiskey Bar in the Marquis… Most two dimensional…actors can no longer open a movie, their opportunities are mostly on television.

However, there are nobodies from nowhere employing the new digital tools to change the world. And despite the carping from the oldsters’ whose cheese was moved, there’s a lot of humanity in it. It’s just different.

Truly different from what came before.

But if you want to know the way it was…

This film is a good starting point.

This is the song I woke up with in my head this morning. Actually, it was the tail end of “Can’t Find My Way Home,” which segued into “Well All Right.” And as I sat up in bed, I thought how that was the sequence on the album.

No one ever talks about “Had to Cry Today” anymore. No one even talks about Blind Faith. It’s passed into history as an anomaly, a curio, except for “Can’t Find My Way Home,” party to Simon & Garfunkel’s “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her” as two of the most beautiful songs ever written. In the streaming era “Can’t Find My Way Home” is no longer uncommon, then again, it’s no longer special to me. I still like it, but my innards don’t resonate like they used to when I hear it.

As for “Had to Cry Today”… It’s really about the guitar work that begins at 6:40, with the axes flying in the air like a halo of flies, with that “Itchykoo Park” effect to boot. This is when the track goes over the top, when it enters the stratosphere. I mean you’ve got Winwood and the riff, but when Clapton cuts loose…it exits the intellectual and becomes pure emotion.

Now I think what kills the one and only Blind Faith album, denies it legendary status, is the fifteen plus minute “Do What You Like” on the second side. Every other track is a winner, “Do What You Like” is marginally better than “Toad.”

And speaking of Cream, we were stunned they broke up. Don’t forget this was before the Beatles did so. Acts expired, but they didn’t call it quits at their peak. We found it hard to fathom, for we were invested, we believed…in the music more than the penumbra, unlike members of the BTS Army today. The music stood alone, and the people who made it were gods.

As for Winwood… This was still when Traffic was for insiders, the act didn’t reach mainstream consciousness until after the band broke up and reunited, with “John Barleycorn” and “Low Spark.”

Now the thing about “Barleycorn” is it started out as a Winwood solo album. But even though the sound of the second Traffic album was full-bodied, we were not ready for this, the “Barleycorn” album is rich. And despite the deserved success of the title cut, the peak of that album for me was always “Empty Pages,” which started with a flourish, and then broke down into a lilting ditty, in your mind you could see the spark in Winwood’s step as the track played.

And, of course, it was the seventies when Eric Clapton went solo. Had his peak with Duane Allman and the rest of the Dominos with “Layla,” but the interesting thing about both Winwood and Clapton is they had another peak in the eighties, Winwood’s career defining “Back in the High Life,” Clapton…Russ Titelman worked his magic with him too.

But this was ’69. Back before every act felt it deserved to produce itself. Which is another way to say that the man in control of the Blind Faith project was Jimmy Miller, a footnote today, but a monster before producers became stars outright. It was Miller who was in control when the Stones executed their legendary four album run, from “Beggars Banquet” to “Exile on Main Street.” The Stones went on to have success without him, but the sound changed. The latter day albums, especially the most recent, are noisier, more trebly, they don’t kick you in the gut the same way. The latter-day stuff tries to overpower you into submission, whereas the Miller stuff got into your gut and stayed there. Just think of the sound of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”…you haven’t heard that full-bodied richness since Miller’s been gone. Ditto on the ethereal quality of “Gimmie Shelter.” When you listen to the Miller albums on a full-blown stereo it’s an experience, it squeezes out the rest of the life, it’s life itself.

And you find a similar quality on the Miller produced second Traffic album, the best one they ever made, with “Forty Thousand Headmen” and “Cryin’ to be Heard,” and the world-weary Dave Mason vocal on the original “Feelin’ Alright?”…Joe Cocker made the song legendary, but it was this 1968 version that truly conveyed the feeling, of a man after a breakup, who wasn’t feelin’ so good himself.

Now you definitely feel that presence, that musical totality, that richness in the first side closer of the one and only Blind Faith album, “Presence of the Lord.” Miller took Clapton’s pipes beyond Cream, the range and emotion were wider, you could hear a three-dimensional person in the music.

As for “Well All Right,” those older than me knew it was originally a Buddy Holly song. I mean at this point, I knew a bunch of Holly’s hits, but what was originally titled “Well…All Right” was the b-side to the 1958 track “Heartbeat,” which only made it to #82 on the “Billboard” Hot 100. And many of us baby boomers…we really started with the Beatles. We knew the earlier hits, but the Beatles had wiped the slate clean, our eyes pointed forward. But the Brits had always looked back, and played our history back to us. Which the Beatle generation ultimately got hooked on with the advent of Cream and the rest of the FM bands in the second half of the sixties.

Which is all to say when I first heard “Well All Right” as done by Blind Faith, I was not comparing it to the original.

Now it’s all there in the original, but it’s more of a blueprint than a final version for Blind Faith. Blind Faith lays down an undeniable, subtle groove that gets your head nodding, and keeps it moving.

Also, there’s that pregnant intro to the vocal, unlike Holly’s take, this track is not a two minute romp. We know something is coming, and we know it’s not going to be downbeat and downtrodden, and when Winwood starts singing, it’s not.

“Well all right so I’ve been foolish
Well all right let people know”

Once again, this is not the fifties, this version of the song is positively rooted in the sixties, when the music was no longer a sideshow, but the main show. There’s no subtlety involved, just pure joy, you hear it in Winwood’s vocal, even though the words themselves might not be that positive. But the song…

Once again, Jimmy Miller creates a full-bodied sound, there’s treble, but it doesn’t overwhelm the middle and the bottom.

Furthermore, you’re not being overpowered, this track is not made to appeal to an ignorant Top 40 audience, this recording is for people in the know, those who purchased those Cream and Traffic albums, who had respect for the music.

And just like in “Had to Cry Today,” it’s the guitar work that separates this remake from the original. Actually, it all starts at 2:50 with the keyboard, and then the guitar, and then the interplay for the rest of the number. This was the breakthrough of FM rock, the stretching out of songs. But this was neither the Dead nor the latter-day jam bands, at least on records, the instrumental section, in this case fading out at the end of the song, was not indulgent, not overblown, rather it was relatively concise, while being delectable at the same time.

The Buddy Holly version of “Well…All Right” is 2:14. And the Blind Faith take contains all of that, but goes on for two plus minutes more, which makes all the difference, Blind Faith makes the song its own.

And think about it… You’ve got Winwood on vocals (and more!), and Clapton on guitars, never mind Ginger Banker holding down the beat. This was the promise of Blind Faith. Which turned out to be a better idea on paper than in real life. It was the tour that killed the band. Because it was more of an idea than a true group. And billed as the first supergroup, Clapton grew tired of the overwhelming attention and retreated into Delaney & Bonnie and it was one and done.

But that does not mean that great work was not delivered. Winwood and Clapton did push each other, the songs on the Blind Faith album are superior to so much of the stuff filling out the albums of the two thereafter.

Then again, this was album rock. Traffic’s only hit was in the U.K., the Dave Mason penned “Hole in My Shoe,” which the rest of the band disowned. As great as “Dear Mr. Fantasy” was, only musos knew it, the live version by Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield two years later spread the word to more, when FM rock started to truly burgeon across America. Traffic had the goods, just look at the covers, especially Three Dog Night’s “Heaven Is in Your Mind” and Al Kooper’s “Coloured Rain,” never mind Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “Smiling Phases,” but sans AM hits at the time…the band was not a household name.

And it was the same with Cream until the summer of 1968, when “Sunshine of Your Love” crossed over, which is one of the reasons Clapton didn’t want to continue, he wasn’t in it for the hits.

Anyway, as time marches on, fewer and fewer albums and songs are remembered. And the focus devolves into chart hits. But that’s not what it was about in the late sixties and seventies. Then again, when it comes to classic rock oldies, radio does play “Can’t Find Your Way Home” a bit, but the rest of the Blind Faith album may as well not even exist. As big as it was in the summer of Woodstock, when the whole nation was becoming aware of the power of rock and roll.

So ask a youngster who knows the Doors and the Dead about the tracks on the Blind Faith album and they’re going to be flummoxed. Blind Faith has been excised from the canon. Seen mostly as a footnote of excess. But there was a lot more than that, a lot more.

Just listen to “Well All Right.”