Brett Gurewitz is not only the owner of Epitaph Records, but a member of Bad Religion as well. We go deep into Brett’s history, from becoming a punk in the San Fernando Valley to ultimately signing Tom Waits to his record label. But before that, Brett opines on the nuts and bolts of running a record label…who to sign, how to promote, interactions with DSPs… Brett is fantastic, this is a MUST-LISTEN!
People forget that “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” went to number two for Gladys Knight & the Pips before Marvin Gaye took it to number one little over a year later, on the way to its becoming the biggest Motown single to date.
And the Temptations released “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby” in 1966 before Marvin Gaye had huge success with the song in 1969, although the Temptations never put it out as a single.
I could never understand how a song that was already a hit could be a hit by a different artist on the same label so soon thereafter. As for Creedence Clearwater Revival’s eleven minute version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” mere months after the success of Gaye’s take, that made no sense to me. It wasn’t that different.
Unlike Al Kooper’s version of “Season of the Witch.”
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That was the track from “Super Session” you heard first, the eleven minute cover of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch,” it was the same song, but completely different, and just as great, if not better, in its own way.
Now I’m an anomaly, I’ve always preferred the second side of “Super Session” to the first, the one with Stephen Stills as opposed to Michael Bloomfield. Maybe if Stills had died instead he’d be just as revered, then again, Bloomfield’s star is fading.
So the first song on the second side, Stills’s side, is a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” And it couldn’t be further from the original on “Highway 61 Revisited.” Now if you listen to it you’ll see although Gram Parsons gets all the credit for bringing country to rock, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” came out on August 30, 1968, whereas “Super Session” was released before that, on July 22nd. Interesting.
Now of course “Super Session” came out after the first Blood, Sweat & Tears LP, which is a masterpiece. But it didn’t sell prodigiously and Al Kooper was replaced by David Clayton Thomas in his own band.
Now Thomas just died and got lengthy obits everywhere. But in truth, his only success came with the second Blood, Sweat & Tears album, whose songs Kooper had picked before leaving/being kicked out (depending on who you listen to). Sans Kooper, the band was dead in the water.
So if you purchased the first Blood, Sweat & Tears album, and then “Super Session,” you were primed for, and immediately went out and bought, Al Kooper’s solo debut, “I Stand Alone.”
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“I Stand Alone”… If only it came out a few years later, when it didn’t matter whether you had AM hits or not. It was far from a stiff, but it was ultimately a cult item. At this point, February 1969, very few markets had underground FM radio stations, with free formats that played a cornucopia of music like this. So, in order to hear “I Stand Alone” in most markets you had to buy it. And, in truth, Al Kooper didn’t reach his pinnacle of fame until the live version of “Dear Mr. Fantasy” from “The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper” became a radio staple over the ensuing years, gaining traction as FM radio spread.
That’s right, the original Traffic “Dear Mr. Fantasy” was not a hit. By this point, the band had broken up, there was no single. The song was legendary if you knew it, but not that many people knew it, not that many people had purchased Traffic’s debut at all.
But Al Kooper had. “Smiling Phases” had been picked for, and appeared on, the second Blood, Sweat & Tears album, the one without him, and on “I Stand Alone,” Kooper covered “Coloured Rain.”
Now in truth, the title track, “I Stand Alone,” is a standout.
But some of the covers…
Kooper covered Nilsson’s “One,” and Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” but the two soul covers were the piece-de-resistance, “Toe Hold” and “Hey, Western Union Man.”
“Toe Hold” was a Stax staple, first recorded by Johnnie Taylor. This song has been unjustly lost to the sands of time, and Jerry Butler’s “Hey, Western Union Man” had more commercial success, and I hear it on SiriusXM every once in a blue moon, but this is a soul classic just waiting to be discovered by the younger generations.
But back in 1969, Al Kooper took these two numbers and applied the Blood, Sweat & Tears formula, maintaining some soul, but bringing horns right up front and rockifying both of them, “Hey, Western Union Man” is one of my absolute favorite tracks period, with the horn flourish announcing the number, down to the telegraph beeps to boot. Yes, Kooper threw in everything, including the kitchen sink, but instead of a mess, he made a delectable concoction.
So if you loved these songs as much as I did, purchasing Al Kooper’s 1969 follow-up, “You Never Know Who Your Friends Are,” was a no-brainer. No, scratch that, I awaited it with bated-breath, bought it immediately when it came out, broke the shrinkwrap, dropped the needle…
Now the title track opens the second side, and it’s an enjoyable jaunt. And the first side opener, “Magic in My Socks” was good too, but ultimately one can’t call the “You Never Know Who Your Friends Are” album anything but a disappointment. And I was really disappointed, having loved “I Stand Alone” so much.
But back in those days, if you bought it, you played it, ad infinitum, because you’d paid for it, and you ended up knowing it by heart.
And at this late date the one track I think of when I think of this album, the one that sticks out, that is embedded in my brain, is Al’s version of “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby.”
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“Uh-huh, oh yeah
Uh-huh, oh yeah”
And then the horns come in heralding excitement, levitating the room, and Al starts to sing:
“I ain’t got time to think about money
Or what it can buy”
They were off and running, just like with “Toe Hold” and “Hey, Western Union Man” on the previous album.
This ain’t the Marvin Gaye version, it’s sped-up, it’s a tear, only a little bit of the soul is left, replaced with those horns and the mellifluous voices of the backup singers. It might have been cut in a studio, but it’s got a live feel, this is the kind of music you want the band to play when you’re at the club. (Well, at least when they used to have bands at clubs.)
You know how it is. There’s nothing somnambulant about it, you’re completely energized, at the end of your wits, bopping around.
And Kooper’s take is great, but it’s not in the league of Marvin’s. You don’t want to compete with Gaye, because he’ll wipe the floor with you.
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Now the Temptations’ original has a different groove, it positively swings, it’s even sweetened with strings. Eddie Kendricks is giving it everything he’s got. But today it sounds dated, a period piece, hearkening back to the past more than looking forward. Sure, it’s soul, but it sounds closer to the big band era than what Kooper did with the track, modernizing the horns, never mind the groove.
And that’s what Marvin Gaye added, the groove.
“Uh-huh-huh, oh yeah
Oh, listen to me, people”
And we are. This is not the Kooper take, hedonistically dancing in the club to the band banging it out on stage. No, Marvin demands our attention, from the very get-go.
“I ain’t got time to think about money
Or what it can buy”
And you believe him.?
But it really kicks in in the second verse, when Marvin truly gets into it, starts to play. He growls. He takes his voice way up high. He’s showing off for the object of his affection…and us.
There’s a brief instrumental section, with the strings sweetly singing, and then Marvin comes back.
“All the diamonds and pearls in the world
Could never match her worth, no, no
She’s some kind of wonderful, people will tell you”
BINGO! “She’s some kind of wonderful,” Marvin lays it down exactly as Grand Funk lifts it for their own track with that moniker, directly from Gaye to Farner. Yup, when I hear people mention “Some Kind of Wonderful” these two songs conflate, become one in my brain. Then again, both acts are from Michigan and the message is ultimately the same. But, Grand Funk is bopping the woman over the head, it’s akin to the Flintstones, whereas Marvin is more like Cary Crant, suave.
“Too Busy Thinking About My Baby” is two minutes and fifty six seconds of perfection, compact and exquisite.
And Norman Whitfield produced the record. And he wrote the song too, along with Barrett Strong and…
Every day my father used to wake up my mother saying “Muggs, guess who died!”
Well, not every day, but often enough that it became a regular joke in our family. My father read the obituaries assiduously, after all, he grew up in Bridgeport and he knew most of the names.
Not anymore. Today you can die and most people are unaware. Oh, you can purchase an obit in the paper…then again, who reads the paper? No, at this point very few purchase obituaries, but the papers publish their own words for significant people. And it’s interesting who makes the cut, who they choose.
Of course Dolly Parton gets reams. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember this much passion and furor about anybody dying since Elvis. (Of course, except for John Lennon, who is in his own category, I’m still not over that.)
So Dave Marsh earned an obituary. But more well-known people do not. Seems the more idiosyncratic your success was, the more impact you had in a certain field, however narrow, the greater the odds you’ll be featured. Just being rich is not enough. Although if you reach a certain amount of fame, you’ll get some words.
But the thing about obits is they come after you die. So you can’t bask in the admiration. It’s kind of like that “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode with Albert Brooks watching his own funeral. That’s what you want, to hear the accolades before you pass.
And the funny thing is obits are not always consistent. Like with Jaye P. Morgan. The “Los Angeles Times” said this:
“Morgan was class treasurer of her California high school, and her peers nicknamed her J.P. after the 19th century financier J.P. Morgan. She later feminized it by changing the initial J to Jaye.”
The “New York Times” this:
“‘My name was Mary Morgan, and at the time there were a lot of singers with the last name “Morgan,”‘ she said. (Their ranks included Jane Morgan and Marion Morgan.) It was Mr. DeVol who came up with Jaye P., a play on the name of the Gilded Age financier J.P. Morgan.”
What is the truth? I tend to trust the “New York Times,” its obits are usually more in-depth, but when it comes to entertainment figures, the “Los Angeles Times” is occasionally superior.
Which raises the question whether Barrett Strong, singer of the song, was one of the composers of “Money (That’s What I Want),” the first hit Motown single, albeit on Tamla.
Here’s what Wikipedia says:
“Singer Barrett Strong claimed that he co-wrote the song with Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford. His name was removed from the copyright registration three years after the song was written, restored in 1987 when the copyright was renewed, and then excised again the following year. Gordy has stated that Strong’s name was only included because of a clerical error.”
(Wikipedia was determined to be almost as accurate as the Brittanica…)
So that’s who Janie Bradford is/was. She co-wrote “Money.” You know, that song that every garage band played back in the sixties, never mind the new wave version by the Flying Lizards in 1979.
Of course the Beatles covered it. Was that our inspiration? “Money” just seemed to be a song in the air, the kind that was always there, the concept of someone actually writing it seemed if not unfathomable, at least superfluous. It was bigger than its composers.
Now depending on which obit you read, Janie Bradford either got a gig as a receptionist at Motown and worked her way into becoming a songwriter or Gordy Berry was introduced to her by Jackie Wilson as a songwriter and she was regarded as such from the very beginning.
Does it matter?
Yes, only because the story is so unique. For all the stories of Carole King and Cynthia Weil, the truth is successful woman songwriters were a rarity, especially in the Black soul music world. Hell, we’ve heard about Holland/Dozier/Holland and Smokey Robinson, as for Ashford & Simpson, their first hit didn’t come until 1966, with Ray Charles’s version of “Let’s Go Get Stoned.” But “Money” was released in 1959.
Now anybody can get a credit once. Maybe you were just in the room. But to do it twice?
We all know “Money.”
But we also know “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby.”
I became fascinated with airplanes when I was 13 and my family made a cross-country trip.
Our first flight was on a 720B to Chicago. I’d never heard of that plane. It was the 707 that was famous, the epitome of the jet age.
But on the tarmac I saw planes with three engines in the back, and found out they were the latest and greatest, they were 727s.
And on one leg of the trip we took a Lockheed that was not a jet, we were lucky to get on it, for there was an airline strike.
And then from L.A. to Phoenix we took a DC-9. With only two engines in the back. What I remember most about that flight was it jumped into the air very quickly.
And descended just about as fast.
Now Lockheed and Douglas ultimately released their own jets with three engines in the tail, to compete with the wide-body 747. But Lockheed’s L1011 was the last commercial plane the company built, they couldn’t compete with Boeing. As for what was then known as McDonnell Douglas…an engine fell off the DC-10, and in the resulting financial mess, the company was sold to Boeing.
So only Boeing was left. It was the big kahuna. It won.
And we were proud of it.
But then there was a fakokta consortium formed to build the supersonic Concorde. It had an “e” at the end at the behest of the French, their British partners capitulated.
This was truly the jet age.
But when a tire blew out on the runway and the plane took a dive, the Concorde was sidelined and only Boeing was left.
But not really. A competitor emerged with the moniker “Airbus,” a consortium of European powers: France, Germany, Spain and Britain. A plane built by committee? We didn’t expect technological breakthroughs from the continent, those were the domain of the States. And calling it an AirBUS? We were in the jet age, flight was still relatively exotic. People might not have still dressed up, but they weren’t quite wearing shorts and flip-flops as they do today.
Then again, the reduction in sartorial fare coincided with the deregulation of the airlines, which caused a concomitant drop in the price of flights, and seemingly everybody took to the air thereafter.
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Now the bumpiest flights I encounter are flying east, over the Rockies, to land in Denver. You’re cruising along, smoothly, looking down at the snow in the mountains and then…
The landscape immediately flattens out and this causes airflow to change dramatically, and as a result…if you’re afraid of turbulence, get ready for a white knuckle ride.
And on one of these flights, with the plane going sideways, wondering if we were even going to make the runway, my friend leaned over from the seat behind me and said:
“Freak out all you want, but the plane is never going to crash.”
And I embraced that. It’s carried me through a number of sketchy flights thereafter. Plane crashes used to be a regular feature. But now, it’s really only private craft. Until…
The 737 Max.
Now the 737 is a plane that was launched in the sixties. Relatively low to the ground, so you didn’t need jetways, you could just roll up a set of stairs. No one expected it to become a workhorse, to even fly cross-country, but it turned out carriers wanted smaller planes, not bigger ones. To the point where Airbus came out with the double-decker A380 and despite being the smoothest experience ever, it’s like flying on your living room couch, demand was de minimis and it went out of production.
Seeing that the demand had switched to smaller jets, Airbus created the A320. And other than on Southwest, which famously flies only 737s, you started to see them around.
But then Airbus saw the future, and created a smaller, more fuel-efficient version of the A320 called the A320neo, which was much more fuel-efficient.
And Boeing was caught flat-footed.
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Covid taught me nobody is in control. The fact that the world runs at all is staggering to me.
But I was brought up to respect experts, my elders, and if you follow the business press, the biggest hero of the nineties was Jack Welch. The accolades were unending, he was the CEO of the century, making GE the most valuable company in America.
How did he do this?
I won’t quite say he cooked the books, but it’s something like that. He sold divisions that were not very profitable and got into finance.
But when the bubble burst…
If you follow GE, you know that today it is a shadow of what it once was. Slimmed down to nearly nonexistence to keep the company alive.
But back then… You could not stop hearing about Jack Welch.
And with all this publicity, corporations fought to hire those from his team. Which they did at Boeing.
It was utterly ridiculous. The headquarters was moved from Seattle to Chicago, and…corners were cut.
Like with the 737 MAX.
What Boeing needed to do was design a new plane from scratch. But that would cost billions and take years. Boeing had been asleep at the wheel. So, they decided to upgrade the 737 to compete, ergo the “MAX.”
Which was a technological marvel, but not in a good way. You see the new, bigger engines, had to sit more forward, and they threw off the balance of the plane, and as a result, software was needed to compensate for this.
But Boeing didn’t tell the government there was a big change, for that would require pilot-retraining, they wanted it to be easy.
Now this new software system was called MCAS. But everybody did not get the same system, you had to pay more for two sensors instead of one. Two created a fail-safe system. With only one…it could ice up and give false readings and the MCAS would take over and the pilots would be overwhelmed, if for no other reason than they weren’t trained for this, never mind having so little time to react, and the jet would crash.
Which happened twice.
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Then it came out. Ad infinitum. Boeing had been cutting corners. They grounded the 737 MAX, And there was a deep dive and…
They found all kinds of flaws. Caused to a great degree by outsourcing production.
But it looked like the problems were finally solved, the planes took back to the air and then…
A door plug blew out.
And then an engine cowling fell off.
But Boeing blamed it on maintenance.
But really, you thought the company had changed.
But then you watch this documentary.
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Actually, I wasn’t planning on seeing it, having followed the story so closely, but I came home from hiking one night and Felice was glued to the set, absolutely horrified, and you will be too.
Forget the workers who won’t fly on the planes they built.
Forget the details about mistakes that were not fixed. Metal shavings in the wires.
What really blew my mind about “Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing” was the culture.
And it’s not only in aircraft, it permeates American business and society. It’s all groupthink, you don’t want to be an individual in today’s world. And it’s as bad on the left as it is on the right. If you don’t adhere to the orthodoxy on trans rights and Israel, you’re pilloried by the left, even if you’re a Democrat. As for the other side, it’s all about paying fealty to Trump, no matter what he does.
But he’s a businessman…
AND THAT’S EXACTLY THE POINT!
Here you see it in action. These overpaid wankers employing financial engineering to make the stock price go up. After all, the reason a corporation exists is to reward the shareholders, right?
That’s cockamamie crap. That’s not the way it used to be. Then again, we no longer have supersonic commercial air travel and we haven’t landed a man on the moon in half a century. Today it’s all about wealth, and flaunting it.
Used to be you owned the company, and even if you were CEO, you felt a responsibility to your employees. No longer. You don’t want workers to unionize, and you’d rather not pay them benefits at all. It’s best if you can outsource the work, as Amazon does with its delivery drivers, so you can say it’s not your fault when it’s revealed these drivers are woefully undercompensated.
Look at AI… All the investments are off the books, so the stocks of Meta, et al, don’t fall. And then there’s Nvidia, on both sides of the deal, selling its chips to companies it’s got a stake in.
But the market keeps rolling along.
And if your holdings are in stock, you can borrow against them and not pay taxes! What a country!
So what we’ve got here is corporate brass doing everything in its power to lower costs and the quality control workers flagging the problems that result, whereupon they are ignored.
The worst thing is employees are afraid to go to HR. Because if you do, at best you’ll get reassigned, but there’s a good chance you’ll just be fired, and then good luck getting another job in the field.
But they use scrapped parts.
And the mistakes keep happening. I didn’t know about the problem with the faulty oxygen tanks. It is said that 25% of them don’t work. So, when the door plug blows out of the Alaska Air plane, fliers don their masks and…they don’t work.
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Now you may or may not be following the latest news about football and CTE. One in four players will get it, if not more.
But our nation blindly champions the game.
This is like Russian Roulette. And I’ve got to ask you, do you feel lucky?
But the players get paid well (although few of them have guaranteed contracts, get hurt and you don’t get paid), and it’s their own choice.
But is it really?
That’s like me telling you to jump off the bridge. You might die, but if you don’t, I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars. Are you going to take that risk? And believe me, having CTE is worse than dying, which is why so many with the disease commit suicide. Being locked into a non-functioning body, one with pressure and pain, is just too much.
Just like it is standing up to the man. You can blow the whistle, but they’re going to put you through hell before there’s any change, never mind getting your reward.
And they don’t only question the work, but your complete identity.
So, you can watch this doc and ask yourself, what is better, to shut up and be the company man, overlook bad activity so you can maintain a paycheck…
Hell, that’s what we see in the music business. Everybody turns their head, especially when it comes to MeToo… Blow the whistle and you’ll never work in this industry again. Are you really going to take that risk?
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We live in a two-tiered society, the haves and the have-nots. And the haves believe they’re smarter and are entitled to their riches, when this is usually not the case, if for no other reason than if the public doesn’t buy the product you’re going to go out of business, no matter how good it is.
And, in truth, with even a grifter President, who ignores the law with impunity, the average citizen no longer believes. They know the game is rigged against them. They know the winners are breaking the rules, so why shouldn’t they?
And if you say anything negative about Trump it’s like being on the left and not falling behind every tenet of democratic socialism… There can be no questioning involved. Either get with the program, or get out.
Now the reason I brought up the CTE study is how fast it was off the front page. With so much coming down the pike, worthy news falls by the wayside. Furthermore, there are those who no longer believe in facts and science, and if I die this week you know it will be from the flu shot I just got at Costco, that’s what many would say.
That’s the world we live in.
So I don’t have much hope that this Boeing documentary will have a big impact.
Because you just can’t fight the system. And if you try, it takes forever and you still may not win.
The corporate powers have deep pockets and can outlast you.
But if you watch “Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing,” you’re not going to be so complacent the next time you get on a Boeing plane.
But everybody else is!
That’s what they want you to think. But watching this documentary you discover that these are just time bombs in the sky.
But it’s nobody’s fault, except maybe yours. You can’t fly private. You should have known better than to get on the plane in the first place. And one thing is for sure, whatever happens, really no one is going to be held accountable.
That’d be a step in the right direction, if bad actors went to jail.
But they think they’re above that, that it’s an impossibility.
Hell, if you want to fight social media practices, don’t fine Meta a quarter of their net profit, put Mark Zuckerberg in jail.
But he went to Harvard and he’s rich, he’s inviolate.
