“Okay.”

You’re supposed to say no. But the problem with excluding all comers is you forgo serendipity, you eliminate magic. Yes is risky, but it can blow your mind. Like it does in this clip of Billy Joel at Vanderbilt.

First you should watch the clip of Billy playing “Miami 2017” at the MSG Sandy show. Kinda reminds me of that old John Lennon comment, that the rich should just rattle their jewelry. Billy’s got an entire band, he’s firing on all cylinders…and the audience just doesn’t care. They’re self-satisfied, smiling because they’re there. He’s changing the lyrics, making them apropos, but you get no hoot of recognition, no excitement, but Billy soldiers on. He’s playing to millions, but you believe he’d rather be home on the North Shore, watching TV, riding his motorcycle.

But at Vanderbilt…

Billy does these college shows. Where he tells his story. Can’t make as much money as he does in an arena, but it’s much more fulfilling, it’s different. And at this small show, he knocks it so far out of the park you become a fan, even if you weren’t one before.

Billy Joel… Wasn’t he supposed to be a joke?

Don’t pay attention to the press. Hang around long enough and you outlive the critics. Don’t forget Led Zeppelin was panned by “Rolling Stone.” And we can’t even remember who wrote the review.

College kids are not supposed to care, they’re not supposed to know. But listen to them ooh and ahh in this clip. That’s what’s great about being young, the moment is the most important. It’s all about the now. Which is why we revere the youth, they’re untainted by experience, they don’t know what they don’t know, and they can let go.

Like this Michael Pollack. Who has the chutzpah to ask if he can accompany Billy, play with him. Why not, you’re never gonna get the chance again.

And this is not like those YouTube videos where someone gets up on stage and the moment is merely a brush with fame. Pollack can really play. As well as Billy. He didn’t write it, which is the key, but boy can he play it.

But the true magic moment comes when Billy puts on his sunglasses. He’s up to the challenge. He’s gonna perform. He’s gonna blow everybody AWAY!

That’s what performers do. They grab the audience and lift them higher. That’s why you go to the show. To hear songs you know by heart in a slightly different iteration and have the night of your life.

Listen to the roar when Billy dons his shades. This is not Madison Square Garden. The audience is not separated from each other by their income, they’re all in it together.

Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami Beach or to Hollywood
I’m takin’ a Greyhound on the Hudson River line
I’m in a New York State Of Mind

And the audience EXPLODES! This is a show!

And inspired by the reaction, Billy ups the ante, he takes it up a notch.

I’ve seen all the movie stars in their fancy cars and their limousines
I been HIIIGHHH in the Rockies under the EVVERRGREEENNS

It’s a master at work.

Normally, “New York State Of Mind” is about poignancy. But in this case, it’s like being at Yankee Stadium, Billy is truly playing to the last row, and he has each and every person in the palm of his hand.

And he does Sinatra and acknowledges it.

And the longer he goes on, the more you realize that Elton gets all the accolades, but his old piano-dueling partner is the one who’s still got the pipes. You realize that Billy is an American, one of us.

And he’s got a lumpy body, and has trouble walking, but when he opens his mouth you get it…this is music, this is art, this is rock and roll.

Everybody’s playing to the media.

Play to the audience. Take risks. Capture magic in a bottle.

And your video will start bouncing around the Internet. Because when we uncover that little kernel of life, that indescribable something that touches us and makes us feel alive, we can’t help but tell everybody we know.

“Billy Joel – Sings in the piano accompaniment of student”

“Miami 2017 (Sandy) – Billy Joel 121212 Concert at MSG”

Mila Kunis talks to Chris Stark off the Scott Mills show on Radio 1

10,135,014 views.

And they say to go on late night TV…

Normalcy, it’s the new rock star persona.

I mean what kind of crazy, f***ed up world do we live in where an actress is more honest and more real and delivers more personality than a musician?

One in which music is a second-class citizen. As it was way back when, before the classic rock artists made Warner stockholders rich by testing limits and being themselves.

One of the problems with today’s media is the feedback loop. The mainstream says it’s so, so that’s the way it is, repeated endlessly by the big blowhards. But that’s not the case at all. I didn’t hear about this Mila Kunis interview via the mainstream, but via e-mail and social networks. That’s what drove the view count up.

Virality.

Almost nothing you do has this. You mail your CD, speak to reporters, do what your publicist says and you get a blurb in the newspaper, everybody involved pats themselves on the back, yet there’s nearly zero effect. You’ve got to get into the trenches and reveal the real you, if you want a chance at success.

This is why Howard Stern is so successful.

Ever notice the mainstream media never comments on Stern? Because he’s not one of them! Not because he doesn’t have an audience, hell, his is larger and more rabid than any late night television host’s, but because he doesn’t play the game. The gossip sites, RadarOnline, will post excerpts from his interviews every once in a while, but there’s a blackout in the mainstream. Yet, Howard can help you more than anybody. Hell, if Clive Davis were on Howard Stern, his book would sustain on the chart.

But Clive doesn’t get it.

No one in the mainstream gets it. That we’re in the midst of a revolution.

Then again, the “Wall Street Journal” published an absolutely eye-popping article about self-publishing in Saturday’s paper. Did you see it? The author has already made seven figures on Amazon, and refuses to give Simon & Schuster digital rights! The revolution has begun! The one the fat cats said would never happen, that they still say will never happen. Talk to Lucian Grainge and he’ll tell you you need a major label, Doug Morris doesn’t even know indies exist, he thinks he’s the big kahuna. Then tell them you don’t write Top Forty material… They won’t want to make a deal, and if they do, it’ll be for peanuts. And if you succeed, the man will make most of the money. But you’ll be able to tell your mommy you’re on Sony or Universal, like that means anything anymore.

We’re all caught up with brand names, anything but the truth.

And art is truth. Lightning captured in a bottle. That’s why the oldsters pooh-pooh today’s music. It might be catchy, but it was written by some guy in Sweden and has got nothing to do with the “artist.” Whereas when it comes straight from the heart…

That’s what built Taylor Swift’s career. Honesty. She’s veered from that, that’s why she’s getting so much blowback now. She’s playing the role of star as opposed to artist. Then you’re a football. Whereas if they even bother to kick around Bob Dylan, he doesn’t respond, he just doesn’t give a sh*t.

And neither should you.

We live in an era that’s person to person. Every man for himself. Woman too! You can make it if you really try, but you must cast aside the old rules and be out there, engaging the public, taking risks, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding. The packaged star went over the transom once Perez and TMZ got traction. Everybody’s smoking dope and having sex. You’re not clean and almost nobody’s sober. You’re better off owning it. Kind of like Janis Joplin swigging her Southern Comfort. If you try to hide it, then you’re playing a game of GOTCHA, and you look bad.

Then again, there are no rules.

Other than you’ve got to have something to sell.

If your music can’t stand alone, if it needs videos and hype, you’re not going to last. No one in the world is waiting for PSY’s next song. Hell, it wasn’t about the song, it was about the video. Heard anything from…what was the name of that band on Capitol again..? OK Go recently? OF COURSE NOT! It was about the videos, not the music.

But videos are easy, music is very hard.

But everybody’s looking for an easy way out. They think marketing will make them a star. Yeah, back in the MTV era.

Now you can be famous and a joke. Just ask Kim Kardashian. As for Kanye West, I wish he’d stop talking and just make music. Every time he opens his mouth and boasts he loses another fan. We get it Kanye, you’re talented, now STFU!

But if you are going to speak. And you’re somewhat famous…. Do it from the heart. That’s your only chance of connecting. Because we live in a lonely alienated world where everybody’s telling you you’re inadequate and inferior and when someone famous comes down off their perch and speaks some truth, we immediately run to them, because it’s so rare.

But it’s the way of the future.

Hell, it’s the way of the now.

“Sci-Fi’s Underground Hit – Authors are snubbing publishers and insisting on keeping e-book rights. How one novelist made more than $1 million before his book hit stores.”

Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 – 5) (Silo Saga)

Self-righteous mythologizing.

That’s the problem with Clive Davis’s book. It’s like seeing the end of the tunnel, he wants to write his version of history, hoping it will become the one that sticks as decades pass. I liked the old Clive, the Columbia Clive, who became the head of CBS Records, warmed to the job, and went for a victory lap almost immediately. He was riding the horse back then, now he’s in the grandstand, telling us he was the greatest ever, when that’s not even the point. No one remembers the executives. Only the artists remain.

And some of the tales Clive tells are doozies.

But let’s get back to Clive’s story. Recently I listened to Jill Abramson on Alec Baldwin’s “Here’s The Thing” podcast. Despite having the most despicable voice in media, Jill stopped me in my tracks when she said what she was interested in was the story behind the story. That’s my dad in a nutshell. He wanted to know the truth. And the public result, even what your friends tell you, usually is the result of a lot of backstory that is much more interesting than the end facts.

Like how did Clive really get this job?

He seems to say he fell into it.

But that never happens. Anybody who tells you they fell up the career ladder is lying. Because as you near the top, competition becomes fierce. Everybody wants that job. Obviously, Clive charmed his superiors, was incredibly cunning, but you don’t find that in the book. You learn he was a good student who applied himself. Duh! That was what was fascinating about “The Social Network,” despite it being fiction. What kind of person triumphs? Just going to Harvard is not enough. Did you read that obit of the guy who created the game Diplomacy? He went to Harvard, undergrad and law school (although he did drop out before finishing his graduate degree), and for decades he was a letter carrier!

So you won’t learn how Clive got to where he was.

And Clive’s got a weird way of twisting the knife in the backs of artists. He delineates their flaws, their poor choices, and then says they were one of the greatest of all time. Huh?

But Clive was there when it all blew up. When music took over the world. When it went from classical and show tunes to rock. And you couldn’t tell the artists what to do.

You couldn’t change Simon & Garfunkel’s name.

You couldn’t tell them what to record.

You quaked in your boots speaking of singles and edits.

Yup, Clive wanted a single version of Big Brother’s “Piece Of My Heart,” with one more iteration of the chorus. He was afraid of what Janis would say. Ultimately, she shrugged her shoulders, let the suit do what he wanted to do. She almost didn’t care, AM radio was the plaything of charlatans, she’d let Clive have his fun. Hell, she died anyway.

Yup, artists back then were not the mercenary pricks of today. The uneducated followers who would do anything to make a buck. It was a different era, and that’s just the point.

Did Bob Dylan have a motorcycle accident, or was it a story concocted to get the media off his back? After all, he was soon recording in a basement with the Band.

You just didn’t know.

This is the vaunted mystery all the oldsters lament is gone from the music industry. But usually, they’re talking about manufactured mystery. You’re in the press, but there are holes, you keep the public guessing as you bob and weave. Dylan just disappeared.

So different from today’s hypester culture. Yes, today you tell people how great you are, over and over again. You implore them to pay attention to your bowel movements. You want them to buy your perfume. You dun them into submission. No wonder acts fade. The public burns out on them! They’re just waiting for your single to stiff and for you to disappear. So they can get some relief!

In the old days, the music came first. FM music. AM radio was a sideshow. It’s the FM bands that lasted.

But it was such a different time. A rock star could be far richer than a banker. Could get laid every night. Could truly make his own choices. Today musicians are followers, not leaders.

And those days are never coming back. That’s what bugs me about everybody who’s still invested in the music industry. Like it could be 1968 all over again. Or even 1981, when MTV started up. Those days are through. And the only hope for a renaissance is with the artists. But their goals are screwed up. They believe it’s about marketing and money as opposed to music. They don’t want to make a statement, they want to make a buck!

Whereas in the sixties it was about excellence and good times. You relied on yourself. Hell, Dylan made a deal with no advance! He didn’t want the pressure. He wanted to make no commitment. He wanted to follow his muse. Of course the record companies were ripping you off back then, but first and foremost music was an artistic endeavor.

And Clive delineates this well. As he rewrites history and claims he was only trying to save the company. Rescue CBS Records from death and destruction. Yet, he contradicts himself constantly. Says how bad thing were as he says how good they were.

But Clive was there.

Eventually I’ll get to Ace of Base and Santana’s comeback album, but those will just be stories. No one listens to that Santana album today. But “Abraxas”! That’s a staple! Not because Carlos and the band were making a record for the ages, but for right now. And sometimes, right now is more important than your plan for world domination. Sometimes it’s about what’s right in front of your face as opposed to what’s around the bend.

Everybody else tells their stories privately, late at night, around an overly expensive bottle of wine. Clive is letting you into his world. Despite its flaws, you can’t put his book down, not if you lived through the era he’s talking about, not if you remember when music changed the world.

P.S. I point you to Wayne Rosso’s screed on the sales of Clive’s book. It sold 11,348 copies in its first week. Yup, there was a huge ad in the “New York Times” with blurbs by people you don’t respect, like Ryan Seacrest, as if the mainstream cares about “The Soundtrack Of My Life.” It’s a sham, it’s a scam. The average person just doesn’t care. Clive put his image all over TV and print in the past twenty years and the end result is a shoulder shrug. The only people who care are the core, those in the business. As usual, Clive is using mainstream media to get his message out. But that era is through. Clive would be better off going on a tour of college music business programs. Appearing on niche programming and websites that appeal to music junkies, who want to know the details of advances and commitments. But Clive missed the memo that times have changed. Which is why he sat so far back at the Grammys. Everybody has their time. Then it evaporates. Led Zeppelin might be forever, but you’re not. You’re just an observer, a pawn in the game, whose rules are constantly being rewritten. Unfortunately, most people don’t care about what’s happened since the classic rock era, ergo the failure of “I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution.” But they do care about what happened in the sixties. It was better back then.

The Soundtrack of My Life

Update: An Exercise in Irrelevancy

“Here’s The Thing”-Jill Abramson

“Allan Calhamer Dies at 81; Invented Diplomacy Game”

Clive’s Book-2

I had the smallest single in Starr Hall.

Even worse, the janitor’s closet jutted into my room, every morning I’d wake up to him running the water in the sink.

Talk about depressing.

First semester senior year was a disaster.

I puked twice in bed.

I was burned out on my friends.

I was already gone in my head, but I still had one year to go at Middlebury.

And what got me through was music, most especially Wendy Waldman’s initial LP, “Love Has Got Me,” a veritable masterpiece which has not faded with age, but has burned bright and is FINALLY available on Spotify.

And if you check it out, start with side two, which has a trilogy of songs that will blow your mind if you believe wooden music is the apotheosis of sound.

Drop the needle on “Old Time Love” and be inspired to LIVE!

And at this point in time, on one level I wanted to DIE!

Well I love to dance to your music
Keep me movin’ all night long
It’s that old time love

That’s what music is, my old time love.

And after “Old Time Love” came “Vaudeville Man.” You know that number Maria Muldaur built a whole career upon, it’s right here, done by its writer. And it’s oh-so-magical.

But then comes “Lee’s Traveling Song.”

I’ve got no idea who Lee is.

But this is definitely MY song.

Catch a ride on a plane to California
My mind won’t let me be
Whoa, whoa, what will be my destiny

That’s where I’d been before I’d returned to Middlebury. Dropping my sister off at graduate school in Los Angeles. You know how some place just feels like home?

That’s L.A. for me.

To return to Vermont was to go someplace I was already done with.

And it was painful.

But when I played Wendy Waldman’s debut, I could get through.

The second semester, I got a better room next door, vacated by a recent graduate. It almost got stolen from me by a returning junior, but I made an incredible stink, I DESERVED IT!

But finally, I graduated.

And I set off for the west.

With a cassette of “Love Has Got Me” for the Blaupunkt.

I’d be in godforsaken Wyoming, the middle of nowhere, and I’d play “Lee’s Traveling Song” and a smile would cross my face, I’d get hopeful.

And eventually I landed in L.A.

And the rest is history.

Well, that’s not true. Oh, I mean it is, but there were so many bumps in the road. People come and gone. Money come and gone. I can finally identify with that Elton John song, “I’m Still Standing.” Surviving is quite a feat.

But that’s what Wendy Waldman’s “Love Has Got Me” has done.

It was a different era. Ask Wendy. A review in “Rolling Stone” made her career.

And I’m hoping forty years later my writing here will inspire you to check this music out. It’s my go-to resource. It’s my best friend.

It’s everything to me.

And hopefully now, it will be to you.

Coda:

I have a feelin’ that there’s something waitin’ for me
And may it set me free

I dreamed of moving to California from the time I began watching TV. It seemed to be such a better place, where everybody was FREE!

That’s the essence of music, it sets you FREE!

The world is full of b.s. You’re thwarted at every turn. But with a great track riding shotgun, you can get by.

Whoa, whoa, can’t you come and go with me

That’s one of the great disappointments of my life. That everybody I wanted to bring with me, to California, to my brand new life of possibilities, couldn’t make it. They couldn’t take the risk. You’ve only got one life, be sure to take chances.

At last, on the road at last, with the echoes of the past ringin’ in my ear
Hand, let me take you by the hand, let me lead you across the land and wash away your tears
I wanna wash away your tears

You can never forget. You can leave the past behind, but it haunts you. When you’re trying to fall asleep at night, when you’re driving cross-country alone.

I want you to feel good. I want you to smile, I want you to laugh, I want you to enjoy this journey of life, with its plethora of possibilities. I want you to listen to “Lee’s Traveling Song” and be INSPIRED!

And if I find you with your heart down in the city, hey now
A-dreamin’ far away
Whoa, whoa, let it be a brand new day

There are do-overs in life, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. You can reinvent yourself, you can become someone different, the best you. All you’ve got to do is try, all you’ve got to do is try.

Catch a ride on a plane to California
My mind won’t let me be
Whoa, whoa, what will be my destiny

I’m not sure, I’m still reinventing MYSELF!

I know what I’m not, but I’m still figuring out who I want to be.

I hope you are too.

Original Stephen Holden review of “Love Has Got Me” from the October 25, 1973 issue of “Rolling Stone”

Rhinofy-Lee’s Traveling Song

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