That couldn’t possibly be his name.

In the late sixties America was inundated with British acts, a second wave that was not about hit singles, but albums, wiping away the detritus of the British Invasion and pushing the populace forward via the newly embraced radio format known as FM.

Previously littered with simulcasts and classical music, because of the higher quality bandwidth, suddenly FM was the home to free-format rock, where owners let hippies do what they wanted, the government decreeing that they could not broadcast the same signal on both AM and FM.

Suddenly, we heard Phil Ochs, “Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends.” And Cream. FM was a club which was accessible to all but only the hippest were members. Seemingly every week there was a new act deserving attention. Including, in 1969, the guy with the indelible cover of “With A Little Help From My Friends.” Joe Cocker, wasn’t that a sexual reference, wasn’t the real name “Crocker,” like the deejay’s, took an untouchable classic and made it his own. His rendition even got a second life as the theme song to “The Wonder Years,” but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Records were expensive. You didn’t own them all, no one could. You were glued to the radio, to hear what you should. And it wasn’t only the Beatles cover that entranced us, but the one by FM compatriots Traffic, that seemingly no one knew until Joe covered it.

I’m speaking, of course, of “Feelin’ Alright.”

Seems I’ve got to have a change of scene

We were looking for more. We were not satisfied with what we had. And it was the music that opened our horizons.

And Joe Cocker took Dave Mason’s reflective number and turned it into a triumph of not only introspection, but exuberance, with the background vocals of Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway and Merry Clayton sealing the deal. Joe and his troupe found a groove that was not present in the original, he made the track his own, this was no karaoke star, Joe Cocker was going his own way.

And then we heard he was playing Woodstock.

You’ve got to know, we didn’t think it would happen, it seemed a fantasy, how could all these acts appear on one stage? But just by being included, you knew Joe was cool, he possessed stature.

And the debut LP blazed the trail.

But really, it was all about the second album.

Where do we start?

How about the beginning, with “Dear Landlord.”

Whoa, dear landlord
Please hear these words that I speak

Those words were written by Bob Dylan. “Dear Landlord” was on his comeback LP, “John Wesley Harding.” Which at this time I did not own. I learned the words I recite so frequently from Joe Cocker:

Now each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true
And if you don’t underestimate me
I won’t underestimate you

Actually, Joe changed a few words, but the meaning was the same, from back when music could affect your life and change your soul, when it just wasn’t about mindless dancing and money.

Then there was “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,” which was every bit as famous as the iteration on “Abbey Road.”

Then comes my personal favorite, opening side two, “Hitchcock Railway.” I was at a party last June and writer Don Dunn came up and introduced himself to me, I couldn’t stop testifying how much I loved this song, Joe did the definitive version.

Credit Milt Holland’s percussion and the Grease Band, “Hitchcock Railway” is a tour-de-force.

Then, of course, comes Joe’s rendition of “Darling Be Home Soon.” It was the piano groove that added the magic, taking one of John Sebastian’s best songs and making it Joe’s own. That was his specialty, his skill, the ability to take songs we knew by heart and reinvent them, turn them into something new. Joe took “Darling Be Home Soon” into the stratosphere.

And then, of course, came “Delta Lady.”

You’ve got to know what it was like to hear this come out of the speaker, to not be overhyped, to not find it on the countdown, just a random FM track. This romp that enraptured you immediately and then built to a level where everyone was firing on all cylinders, you couldn’t help but drop the needle on Leon Russell’s composition over and over again.

Yes, Leon Russell. Joe Cocker’s friend and foe all at the same time.

You see not only did Leon provide Joe this signature song, he then constructed the largest band ever to appear on a rock stage, and then utilized the success of the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour to ensure his own stardom. Joe ended up drunk on the sidelines, he gained weight, disappeared and then stunned us by climbing back up to where he belonged.

I saw the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour. With not only Joe and Leon with his top hat, but everyone whose name you’d seen in the credits and hadn’t. Everyone from Jim Gordon to Don Preston, to Claudia Lennear to Rita Coolidge, the tour’s other superstar in waiting.

You’ve got to imagine this. Rather than bring tapes or hard drives, rather than faking it, Joe Cocker fronted a veritable orchestra. The double album was a must have. For the rendition of “Cry Me A River,” Matthew Moore’s “Space Captain” and…”The Letter.”

Give me a ticket for an airplane…

Without Joe’s take, the song would never be as famous.

Then came “High Time We Went.”

It was a disappointment. We’d waited, Leon was blazing up the chart, and Joe released his first…dud. It failed on the chart and in our minds, to the point where many stopped paying attention and missed “You Are So Beautiful” and “I Can Stand A Little Rain” when they were released years later, in 1974. That’s right, even back in the album era, people had short memories.

But it wasn’t until 1982 that Joe was truly back, over a decade past his initial success, with a Jennifer Warnes duet that wouldn’t die, the theme song to the Richard Gere/Debra Winger pic “An Officer And A Gentleman.”

Debra Winger was the Jennifer Lawrence of her day, only she radiated more maturity and intelligence. Back when the movies were still an American addiction, when a song could still reach everybody, you could not escape “Up Where We Belong,” it was ubiquitous, not a cover, but an original, composed by a who’s who of writers, Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings.

And then Joe’s career was capped, he was ensured a place in the firmament, he was a certified legend.

Yes, the good guys win in the end. Elton John may have made an album with Leon Russell, but it’s Joe Cocker we love and remember.

Of course there were other tracks. Everything from the cover of Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” to a take on Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica Say You Will.” One of my favorites is “Shelter Me,” from Joe’s 1986 album, “Cocker.”

That’s right, Joe soldiered on, from label to label, album to album, his work always demanded attention, he seemed to gain a second wind, he was running on Sheffield steel.

But now he’s gone.

Another one bites the dust. Another member of rock royalty. Not someone who manipulated the media, but led with his music, imagine that!

Back when a song was enough.

And, of course, the “Woodstock” movie helped cement his reputation, we made fun of his movements. But one thing was for sure, the music lived in Joe Cocker, he had it in him.

And unlike so many stars, there’s not much to say about his personal life, no scandals, nothing to note but alcoholism, which he seemed to recover from so dramatically, at least artistically.

So, will these songs last centuries? Will Joe Cocker be remembered by our children’s children’s children?

I don’t know. Get old enough and you realize almost no one is remembered. You see it’s all about your own personal experience, what goes in your ears and eyes, what fills up your memory banks.

And way back when records ruled the world, you had to go to the show to get closer to the music, to sustain your soul.

And if you were lucky enough to see Joe Cocker you know he never phoned it in, he was always the genuine article, he was always about the music.

And what more can we ask?

Joe Cocker – Spotify

It used to be a leak trashed an album’s commercial chances. Could just the opposite be true now?

Madonna’s a has-been. Like Paul McCartney and Tom Petty. Someone everybody knows who has trouble selling new music. But unlike McCartney and Petty, Madge is a trendster, she didn’t just replicate an old sound on her new album, she worked with hitmakers of the moment. However, this is no guarantee of success.

But now, unlike in the early part of this century, when the leak occurred the label didn’t just fold its arms and huff and puff, they put out a bunch of tracks, they capitalized on the leak, right now the album dominates iTunes, why it’s not on Spotify I don’t know.

Because everyone knows Madonna makes her money on the road. The best result would be to have people hear her new music. That’s the goal of all artists, and especially the oldsters, who tour to the classics.

Will the album continue to dominate iTunes?

We’ll find out.

But the point is we’ve done a 180. The criticized labels now react swiftly. And with this and last year’s Beyonce album and this year’s D’Angelo and J. Cole LPs, could it be the paradigm is shifting? Could it be that the front-loaded game of yore is dying?

The old game was about making a bunch of noise so the album would have a big first week and retailers would reorder. But today, physical retail is dying. And album after album has a huge lead-up and then dies after the first week. It’s all about records being listened to. The worm is turning. No one’s gonna care how many you sold in week one, how many you sold at all, but how many times people listened, on Spotify, YouTube…

Think about this. Once you eliminate the first week game, there’s no reason to release a single in advance of an album, no reason to promote intensely for a few weeks and then give up. It’s no longer about the media, but the audience. The media likes news. It’s news when an album is released, it’s not news when the audience embraces it and continues to listen to it six months later.

Madonna herself was initially tone-deaf in her response to the leak. Then again, everyone gets angry when their well-laid plans are upset. But that’s the world we live in, where everybody knows everything and it’s hard to keep a secret. And why should music creation be such a secret anyway? PledgeMusic built a business on letting pledgers in on the creation of the record.

The X factor, of course, is radio. Radio turbocharges hits. Makes careers. If radio picks up on Madonna’s new music, she’s home free.

But does it have to be this way?

It does because there’s chaos in the rest of the marketplace.

Radio is stupid, antiquated in an on demand culture. Radio’s only advantage is adding coherence to the scene, delineating what records to listen to. This doesn’t have to be done by radio, but so far no one else has picked up the mantle. We’ve got endless playlists, when we really only need a couple. There’s only one “Billboard” chart for every format, only one MediaBase report. If we could clarify online listening, we could capture the flag from radio and create a new power.

Something like this will happen, that we can be sure of. The same way leaks are no longer death to an album.

Once again, Madonna could be ahead of the curve. She got intense publicity for a couple of days, the music is available, and if she’s smart, and we know Madge is brilliant, she’ll make an appearance on “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” or another first night of the year special, stealing the thunder from Taylor Swift.

It could happen.

“Winter”
Tori Amos

My favorite Tori song, from before she lost the plot. Did she become more obscure because of her success or was she headed that way? We’ll never know. But at this point this is my favorite winter song, the one I think about when the day is gray.

“Winter”
The Rolling Stones

Coming after “Exile On Main Street,” “Goats Head Soup” was highly anticipated, and almost as disappointing. The song that got all the pre-press was “Star Star,” whose name was unfortunately changed from the f-word and lost its power as a result. The best song is the unfortunately titled “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker),” you know, “The police in New York City”… I love the way Mick sings PO-lice. Actually, the best tracks on “Goats Head Soup” are the ones that got no press, not only “Heartbreaker,” but “Hide Your Love,” with that great piano groove, sounding like an outtake from “Exile,” “Can You Hear The Music,” slow and dreamy, and “Winter.”

Of course the album contained “Angie,” but I prefer the moody “Winter.”

Speaking of unheralded Stones tracks, do you know “Hand Of Fate” from “Black And Blue”? This is the Stones I love, the one wherein Mick is not coy, not cloying, but belting. That’s when they work best live, when the manipulation takes a backseat to the song. And, of course, the duet with Dave Matthews rescued “Memory Motel,” “Black And Blue”‘s best song, from obscurity.

And since I’m on a Stones tear, after Bobby Keys died I got a bunch of e-mail about “Ventilator Blues.” I’ll let Charlie Watts tell the story from Wikipedia:

“Bobby Keys wrote the rhythm part, which is the clever part of the song. Bobby said, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ and I said, ‘I can’t play that,’ so Bobby stood next me to clapping the thing and I just followed his timing. In the world of Take Five, it’s nothing, but it threw me completely and Bobby just stood there and clapped while we were doing the track – and we’ve never quite got it together as well as that.”

And while we’re on unheralded “Exile” tracks…

The best is “Let It Loose.” It’s the backup vocal at the end. Remember lying on your bed after dark listening to “Exile” on headphones? I do.

And having said that, the track that got me into “Exile” is the very last one, “Soul Survivor,” it’s the tonality of the intro guitar, the piano-playing, and the machine gun guitar after the chorus. From back before it didn’t need to be a hit to get notice.

“Song For A Winter’s Night”
Gordon Lightfoot

No song I know embodies the feel of winter as much as this. It captures being inside when it’s snowing outside, when you’re alone in your cocoon. What makes it so great is the strings, from back when there was debate whether to use them, before they were replaced by synthesizers and ultimately ostracized.

“A Hazy Shade Of Winter”
Simon & Garfunkel

This is not the best song on “Bookends,” and it’s now more famous in its Bangles iteration, but “Bookends” is one of the best albums ever made, even though it’s been nearly forgotten.

How did this happen?

Could it be that Paul Simon is not a warm guy? Could it be his eighties MTV success eclipsed his earlier work? But the truth is “Bookends” and “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon” are two of the best albums ever made.

Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
On the high shoes
Of the old friends

Can’t you see it? If you’ve been to NYC you can. The people who’ve lived in the city for their entire lives who’ve got nothing left to prove, who are not worried about being judged.

Can you imagine us
Years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly
How terribly strange
To be seventy

This lyric flows through the brain of all baby boomers. We thought it was impossible, but we got old. Replaced by people with unbroken bodies, who like us believe they know everything. That’s what’s so weird about life, you look into the mirror and you no longer recognize yourself, you feel about thirteen, but the truth is time has passed by.

The best song on “Bookends” is “America.”

We were disillusioned, the country was no longer the empire they told us it was in the fifties, but that did not mean we didn’t love it, didn’t want to experience it, didn’t want to know everything about it back before we grew up and got rich and sent our children to Europe and wanted nothing to do with flyover country which is now just as sophisticated as the coasts.

But there’s nothing like taking to the highway, driving in the middle of nowhere, watching the endless miles go by. You can fly across the USA in a few hours, but if you get behind the wheel it takes days. Only when you slow down can you really understand our country.

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said ‘Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera’

That’s love. The shared experience. When your world is your own. Back before you shared every private moment on Instagram and Facebook looking for acknowledgement, recognition. Used to be the moment was enough. It still is.

For a long time, “Fakin’ It” was my favorite cut on “Bookends.” But the most famous is “Mrs. Robinson.”

Mike Nichols made it famous. Putting it in “The Graduate,” which I caught a bit of on TCM after the man died.

Lost. Finding yourself. That’s the essence of a baby boomer. We were a searching generation. And we’re still looking.

A Few Winter Songs – Spotify

This was on Techmeme days ago.

That’s right, some security expert knows more than the government. The same intelligence agencies we’ve sacrificed our privacy to in order to be safe.

The President stands up and denounces a country based on the protestations of an ignorant film studio, corroborated by the intelligence gang that can’t shoot straight. And we’re supposed to trust these people to lead and keep us safe?

But it turns out the hackers, both good and bad, the lone rogues, are better than the system. Especially in science, those who go their own way are the ones responsible for breakthroughs, not those reading the WSJ for office tips and networking on LinkedIn.

Social, schmocial. There’s a fantasy that if we all just self-promote and raise the noise in the echo chamber that things will work out. But the truth is as a result of the internet we all just pay attention to those we agree with and shout down those we don’t. And the best and the brightest go into banking and those with no social skills push the envelope. Come on, was Steve Jobs nice? Mark Zuckerberg?

It’s a fascinating time to be alive, when a President gets it so wrong and one can reach the world from your laptop.

Assuming anyone is listening. Assuming you can break through the noise.

No one is guaranteed to be popular. No one is guaranteed to be rich. And it looks like no government has the power to get it right.

My sources tell me it’s an inside job.

But take that rumor with a grain of salt.

One thing we know is a group of nobodies has brought not only a movie studio, but a whole country to its knees.

But Congresspeople are voting for more tanks. And rather than study computer science, the unwashed want to be on reality TV, networks pound their chests over the ratings of inane singing shows.

Turns out that the smart and insightful inherit the earth.

Not the dumb and beautiful, no matter how aggressive.

As for baby boomers… They believe bluster triumphs.

Ain’t that a laugh.