“The Song Was a Hit 20 Years Ago. It Just Got a Video. – Decades-old tracks by artists including Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, LL Cool J and Talking Heads are finding younger fans. Record labels hope new videos will feed their interest.”

Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/arts/music/music-videos-talking-heads-lucy-dacus.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eE8.tKj-.PVDYQPNwr0sA&smid=url-share

The hits of yore still are…HITS!

Now in the pre-internet era it made little sense to promote ancient music, because except for a thin layer of hits, the music was unavailable at retail. However, the internet has completely changed this. All the music of recorded history is at your fingertips! (And for all you lame-o’s complaining that Spotify, et al, don’t have certain tracks, they are seemingly all available on YouTube. Gotcha is akin to internet hate…it’s irrelevant words written to make the creator feel good).

Anyway, if there’s a buzz online, people can immediately find the original track and stream it and KACHING! A payment is rendered. Which is another reason why you should never ever sell your publishing. Because you’re just one lightning strike away from its value going into the stratosphere. Queen sold its publishing rights to Sony for $1.27 billion. What would the price have been without the feature in “Wayne’s World”? Even half?

Yes, that was the paradigm of the late nineties and the first part of the twenty first century, get a sync. But now movies are dead, however, are you following the story of Huntrix, the fictional act that stars in the animated Netflix movie “KPop Demon Hunters”? Their track “Golden” just went to number one. And so far, has reached the Top 10 in 93 countries. That’s the power of Netflix. Meanwhile, all we hear about is the power of YouTube, how it eclipses other streamers. But YouTube can’t make a star, never ever. Stars, hits, are made on Netflix.

Now the great thing about a fictional act is you don’t have to pay them and they don’t complain. Not everything is so easy. Then again, have you even heard “Golden”? I have, it’s not for everybody. But those hits of yore ARE!

“Smoke on the Water”? Maybe the most iconic riff in hard rock history.

Now “Smoke on the Water” is not hidden, there are videos all over TikTok of people playing the song, or teaching you how to play the song, or video of Deep Purple. Kudos. But as far as original work? BUPKES!

The major labels survive on their catalogs. All paid for, it’s pure profit. But they also don’t put any money into them. There used to be compilations, but with streaming you can just pick the hit you want and anybody can create a playlist. Catalog is seen as a backwater, when in truth it should be FRONT LINE! If private equity bought a label they’d cancel new music production and milk the catalog. Does Primary Wave sign wannabe songwriters? OF COURSE NOT, THAT’S NOT WHERE THE MONEY IS!

The music labels are run by small-minded people, worried most about their salaries and bonuses. They never want to rock the boat. They’re loath to spend. But NOW is the time to maximize the catalog. NOW is the time to make new videos of classic hits that cannot only be seen online, but imitated…

Control is history. Obscurity rules. Let anybody do anything with your music. Otherwise it will languish. This is the era of personal creation, don’t hamstring the younger generation. Which is hungry for the hit music of yore because so much of today’s hit music is so damn lame.

Once again, it’s all about TikTok. Period. Too many hire a social media team which employs a firehose to send the same damn bland content to all platforms. That doesn’t work on TikTok. On TikTok it’s not so much about information as the essence, the riff. There are so many that young people would cotton to if they were just exposed to them.

You’ve got Matador making videos for ancient Lucy Dacus material, but nobody at Warner is promoting the iconic intro of “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” never mind the Gordon Lightfoot song being superior to anything Dacus has never done, never mind her group boygenius.

The riff of “Purple Haze”? I think kids today know of Hendrix, do they know the material?

These are iconic hits, but there are some songs of yore that only have double digit million streams on Spotify BECAUSE NO ONE IS MARKETING THEM!

It’s kind of like the sixties, but instead of hiring a house hippie, you should hire someone young who is fluent in TikTok, maybe a student in animation at a university. They’re plugged in and looking for opportunity.

The story of the summer is how there is no song of the summer. That oldies are dominating the chart. What this definitively proves is how damn hard it is to break a record these days. But the hits of yore, they’ve already been broken, they’re certified, and people want to hear them! Hell, there was a buzz on early Dylan after the movie, but most of his greatest material was absent and is ready for promotion. Right now “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” only has 16 million streams on Spotify. How about taking a verse and doing a “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video for it? You know, with the cards?

How about:

“While one who sings with his tongue on fire

Gargles in the rat race choir

Bent out of shape from society’s pliers

Cares not to come up any higher

But rather get you down in the hole

That he’s in”

There’s more truth and honesty in this verse than anything in the Top 10, the words still apply today, but the younger generation is mostly oblivious.

Or how about cutting just the intro to “Just the Way You Are”?

“Don’t go changin'”

That’s a viral hit just waiting to be exploited. The words fit so many situations.

All it takes is a bit of innovation and effort. This is low-hanging fruit. Do I expect everything to go viral on TikTok? Of course not, odds are low. But if you’re not playing on the service you can’t succeed.

“The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys”? That only has 11 million streams on Spotify. That haunting sound is ready to be exploited. But the label is dominated by whiners and diners trying to exploit today’s dreck, MOSTLY UNSUCCESSFULLY!

It’s your move.

LOL.

I understood perfectly, Bob.

Spotify produces nothing.

It creates nothing.

It is software designed purely for the purpose of using the work of others to generate enormous profits for its owner.

As with most large corporate entities, its business model is an exploitative one.

Its owner has become a deca-billionaire on the backs of ACTUAL creators. If paying out 70% of its revenues to artists and writers isn’t enough for their payouts to compare to Apple, Tidal, etc, then it needs to be an even higher percentage.

Or they simply aren’t charging subscribers enough.

I’ve actually been saying since day one that a lousy ten bucks or so for unlimited 24/7/365 access to basically the entire recorded history of music is an absurdly-low fee, and is ultimately unsustainable. And the more music that gets added to the service (a staggering average of 100,000 songs per day, according to many sources), the more inadequate and unsustainable it becomes.

Not sure what your personal motivation is for pretending that Ek isn’t the enemy, and that those of us standing up for fair artist compensation are, but…

It is what it is.

Mike Froedge

Step Up to the Mike Productions, LLC

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Has Napster been forgotten already? Never mind the era of Tower Records, Peaches, King Karol, ad infinitum?

Somebody needs to distribute music. And even CBS (now Sony) realized that it couldn’t do an adequate job of this, that their focus should be production, nor retail, and the company sold Discount Records.

Oh, the acts could do it by themselves… Just like the Grateful Dead with “Wake of the Flood,” an utter disaster financially, it wasn’t long before the band went back into the system. You see there’s more to distribution and retail than just manufacturing records, never mind shipping them. There’s getting retailers to buy them and then PAY FOR THEM! Those with occasional releases had hell getting paid. You’d need a steady stream of product in order to get your invoices paid, and the retailer was always behind. To the point when they went bankrupt, which they frequently did, they owed even the major labels millions. Did the owners declare personal bankruptcy? No, most had the companies incorporated and walked away with their wealth.

Now in the old days you needed a physical space with its attendant costs of water, electricity and air-conditioning as well as employees… Which is why it was always about the margins. The difference between what you paid the distributor/wholesaler versus what you charged the customer. Same deal with Spotify.

However, Spotify has the advantage of being an internet company, with little physical space cost. Kind of like the people making the music, who can do so on their computers, costs have gone down. Also, Spotify can scale around the world relatively cheaply, as can your music. Good luck getting your music in a retail store in Uzbekistan or Chile, hell, here’s a list of the nations where Spotify operates:

https://www.spotify.com/us/select-your-country-region/

But they’re not the only ones. You’ve got Apple and Microsoft and Facebook and…the list of tech companies operating around the world is huge. And many of their creating entrepreneurs have become billionaires, some the richest people in the world. But if you make your money by distributing music, YOU’RE THE ENEMY! Never mind Daniel Ek single-handedly saved monetized music distribution, before Spotify piracy ruled. As for competing companies, none could come up with a solution, hobbled by limits from copy protection to price.

As for price… Venerated hero Steve Jobs refused to raise the price at the iTunes Store when implored to do so by the money-hungry/greedy labels. He said he was building a business and they wanted to kill it. There comes a point at which people say no. Otherwise everybody would be driving a Mercedes-Benz. The value of music is what people are willing to pay for it, not a penny more.

And here we have America in a nutshell. Everybody gets their information from a different source and believes they’re right. And if you’re Ticketmaster or Spotify or anybody dealing with the public today you know that the customer is not always right, and should be ignored. This is kind of like the Democrats…you’re better educated with greater powers of analysis, luxuriate in this instead of constantly tearing out your hair trying to convince people of the truth, enlighten them when they prefer to live in the dark.

If you want to enlighten someone, employ art, it’s the most powerful tool. It’s based on speaking truth. But where is said truth today? Other than purveyed by people who can’t sing, write or play who e-mail me their songs telling me that the public needs to hear them. No, you have to make the music so irresistible that people pull it, don’t have it pushed upon them. And in order for your message to be believed, you must be trustworthy and honest, credible, you cannot take money and be a tool of the Fortune 500. But just like with Napster, people have forgotten about the sixties and the golden era of classic rock, and how music moved the world.

People are clamoring for great music, great art. If they find it they tell everybody they know about it, they believe in it. How many can excite the populace? Very few, but that’s the artist’s job, not making a living…making a living comes AFTER!

One more thing… If you’ve got a problem with Spotify and Daniel Ek, create your own music distribution platform, no one is holding you back. So far, no one has been able to compete with Spotify, which keeps nimble and innovative, since there’s no royalties from other enterprises to keep the company afloat. People CHOOSE to subscribe to Spotify.

And you can choose to become a business person. And most make more money than the artists. Then again, Clive Calder, who had the biggest financial victory in the history of the music business, is unknown to youngsters today, whereas the songs he purveyed…hell, Backstreet Boys are still playing the Sphere!

You make your choice. If you want to make bank, you probably shouldn’t become a social worker. Then again, being a social worker can be extremely fulfilling.

But everybody wants what everybody else has, someone is holding them back…when the dirty little secret is you are holding yourself back.

Do you have the wherewithal to complete umpteen years of schooling? The networking ability to make things happen? I believe in a social safety net, everybody is entitled to a roof over their head and food on the table. But not everybody is entitled to be rich. That’s your responsibility. Life isn’t fair, but if you want to be wealthy just don’t sit at home and do the same thing and complain, CHANGE! Never mind work harder and sacrifice. Or be happy where you are.

But seemingly nobody is.

________________________________________

You need to keep repeating your message.  There is a false narrative that needs to end.

The music industry is a popularity contest.  Always has been.  It doesn’t matter the genre, format, or monetization model.  If you are popular, you make money.

Sinatra, Elvis, Beatles, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Madonna, Beyonce, Taylor Swift and on and on.  Popular = $$$

Scott Cohen

________________________________________

I can’t tell you how often I’ve explained the “no-such-thing-as-a-streaming-rate” thing to songwriters and, as simple as the concept is, they can’t/won’t accept it. In their minds they are being cheated. And don’t get me started on what they think about Spotify taking a cut for operating costs.

Michael Battiston
Previously Director of Copyright and Music Usage at ASCAP.

________________________________________

Seeing these responses to your articles about Spotify reminded me of something…. a few years ago I was teaching part time at a college for recording arts. I had students for music production, songwriting and engineering, some music business, etc. Every single quarter I’d ask the same question… “what do you think is the reason most artists fail in their goal to become successful in music, in this case let’s define successful as being able to quit your day job and make a living solely from music”?

I would listen as each student gave their answers….

“bad management”

“drug problems”

“couldn’t get a break”

“not enough promotion”

And on and on and on; I then gave MY answer, which was simple. They aren’t good enough. Never once did I hear that come from a student first and when I said it they all looked a little surprised and maybe even taken aback. I used the example of “if Jimi Hendrix was on the street corner outside playing guitar don’t you think a crowd would probably gather?” I’m not saying talent always wins but true exceptionalism very often does and the lack of it usually doesn’t. Not that every act currently on the pop

charts is oozing with talent, but the ones who aren’t are often working with writers and producers who are, even if the music might not be my thing. I just thought it was important to remind these kids that NOT EVERYONE IS GOOD ENOUGH. Art isn’t democracy, where one person gets one vote. Some people are just better at art than others!

Most work their asses off to be that good, some are just kinda born with it, it’s not fair, get used to it!

I will say as a guy who was a little kid in the ’60’s, my generation is pretty much responsible for this attitude because my generation was the first to grow up with that sense of entitlement… “if you can dream it you can do it!” “everyone gets a medal just for TRYING”, etc. My parents generation was a little different, I think their mantra was “if you work your ass off for your entire life then maybe you won’t starve to death or get killed by the Nazis”. I understand why people are pissed off reading what you write on this subject but the numbers don’t lie. I’m working with a completely independent artist right now, no label, no publisher, we split everything 50/50 just like I do with sync music. Several of our songs are over a million and the money coming in is cool, not like 90’s platinum record cool but cool. If she continues like this it will be amazing- but it’s happening because she’s exceptional and works her ass off and apparently people want to listen to her music.

Kevin Bowe

________________________________________

Living wage or better is for those who actually work in the music business and many do well. I co-own a booking agency here in Florida and we book 300+ shows a month in our area. It’s mainly singles and duo’s, but these guys and girls are making a good living and the market is healthy here for the most part. The other problem is most of these complainers don’t even know how to get their money even if they are getting decent streams. I talk with artists all the time who haven’t registered their songs with a PRO and don’t have a clue about the MLC or SoundExchange. We are flooded with Hobbyists. I have a number of friends in known bands that work other jobs when they are off the road. Look, all the great songs have been written, all the great movies have been done. Not to say that someone might get lucky once in a while, but everything is a retread. We saw it, we lived it, we’re lucky. Onward.

B Chapin

________________________________________

Thank you for continuing to fact check these ridiculous, never ending, claims that Spotify pays a worse “per stream rate” than Apple or Tidal.  Same conversation for 20 years now – in spite of Spotify’s efforts to explain their model, most people have no idea how a shared pool model works.

Michael Abbatista

________________________________________

Hi Bob — I truly do not have much sympathy for musicians who complain that they are not getting paid much for streams.

Back in the “old days,” when a top 40 station, say, WLS, added a record, it would get played, maybe, 12-15 times a day.  Each play reached an audience of, say, 800,000 or more listeners. A chart record would be played on, say, 200 top 40 stations around the country.

Today, one stream on Spotify or any other service, reaches one listener.

Even a spin on a juke box in a tavern or teen club, reached more listeners than one stream on Spotify.

Do the math.

Jim Charne

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Spot on Bob

Again  you hit all the basic data points

that it’s more emotion than fact. That people not only don’t know basic math, but they hate it because it’s neutral to feelings

You also remind us that in this “imaginary golden age”, Mythologized by rock ‘n’ roll movies and stories of trashed hotel rooms, the majority of artists never got royalties and tons of them were ripped off so badly It’s not funny.

The big difference however was the record companies were not yet grabbing touring revenue -360 deals were not even a thought- so many acts that were excellent live (or even just decent), made fortunes, bought their houses & jets , had the rockstar life, but it was touring money they made.

The biggest thing…. You brought this up the other day, there was a time when going to a studio was absolutely Unreachable for the vast majority of Musicians, the expense to just lay down a little 4-song demo was a huge amount of money and inaccessible to most.

What a lot of musicians refuse to acknowledge is that in any other economic venture, for any other commodity, even in any other art; if the costs of production dropped as far as they have for Musicians, while the number of people now creating that commodity exploded —- the remuneration for said commodity would approach zero.

Today with a $200 Mac from a pawnshop, a 10-year-old interface and a couple microphones, you have more studio power than artists During most of the last century. And there are top ten hits done on GarageBand, like it or not

With free synthesizer plug-ins, free compressors and reverb units, free effects processor, free mastering software, free, free, free, free free. Free storage & distro online. Free word processing & spreadsheet software. These were all costs of doing business not long ago. Free Gmail and Instagram to promote with.

Bandcamp Is essentially free, some would argue that taking the percentage is a cost, but that is a debatable concept.

We have all this FREE stuff and yet no one wants to admit that that means the COST of production has shrunk astronomically. Meaning the entry point bar is low, so there are infinitely more people creating the product we are trying to sell, vs “the golden age” of 1975. But people HATE THE MATH.

Basically, if everyone had a brick oven in their house, every single person…. and a cheap or free supply of flour, spices, cheese and tomato sauce……Slices of pizza would be worth a nickel. If that!! Pizzeria owners will understand that the math is the math, but Musicians would complain that somebody moved their cheese

Thank you
Andre´Cholmondeley

________________________________________

Alright Bob, that was an excellent rant!  I have been reading your blog for years… but this one you spelled it out so clearly…particularly the Spotify math concept… I’m grateful to understand it now.  Thanks!

Cheers,
– Brett Currie

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Good God, Bob, that you have to explain this SIMPLE TRUTH ad nauseum to imbeciles, is truly pathetic.

You have incredible patience, not to mention balls of steel to put up with the blowback.

WAKE UP, PEOPLE.

DG

Carl Stubner runs the management company Shelter Music. He personally manages ZZ Top and Crowded House and has been involved with Fleetwood Mac and other acts. This is his story as well as the story of the management group he is growing.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/carl-stubner/id1316200737?i=1000721934253

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/7235742a-56fd-47da-bb9d-03fc30986669/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-carl-stubner

1

I didn’t think I had anything to add until I was reminded this morning of all the songs he co-wrote on “Layla.” You see, all the focus is on the title track, but it was never my favorite. Actually, there’d be three. First and foremost the cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing,” which I considered definitive until Sting did his version, “Keep on Growing” and…

“Anyday.”

“You were talking and I thought I heard you say

Please leave me alone

Nothing in this world can make me stay

I’d rather go back, I’d rather go back home”

Now I have to go back to “Little Wing,” so my inbox isn’t inundated with classic rockers pissed that I gave the Mr. Tantric Sex credit. No, Sting’s take on “Little Wing” is not superior, but it reimagines the song in a heretofore unimaginable way… He quieted and slowed it down and added gravitas to the lyrics. Whereas Derek and the Dominos’ version… It’s the majesty of that intro guitar sound…

That cover of “Little Wing” is what turned me on to “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” which did not get good reviews and did not sell prodigiously upon release. This was back when you had to buy it to hear it and I did not, buy it, that is. Even though I’d seen both Cream and Blind Faith and bought all the albums, and loved so much of Clapton’s initial solo LP only released the previous spring…how come nobody talks about “Easy Now”? You hear “Let it Rain” on the radio now and again. “After Midnight” became successful YEARS later as the soundtrack to a Michelob commercial, but it was just an album cut back in 1970, and I have to mention “Blues Power” too. But really, “Eric Clapton’s contemporary release, Dave Mason’s “Alone Together,” eclipsed the more anticipated LP. Only dedicated Dave Mason fans talk about his solo debut anymore, even though it’s legendary throughout, stellar in both music and imagery/packaging. “Alone Together” had no hits, but in your bedroom or living room it sat on the turntable ad infinitum.

And, of course there’s a connection. “Only You Know and I Know” was the standout track on Delaney & Bonnie’s album “On Tour” released just months previously, featuring not only Clapton and Mason, but Bobby Whitlock.

Supposedly that’s where Clapton and Whitlock met, when Delaney & Bonnie featuring Bobby Whitlock on keys opened for Blind Faith. And they worked together, on their own music and George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass.” Actually, that’s the last time I thought of Whitlock, he went on record that the remix of that three record set was terrible. They shut him up soon thereafter. Although I dug deep and found out he was still alive and making music with his wife, CoCo Carmel. But to say Whitlock and his music were even on the radar screen would be charitable. He was just another dude who played with a legend and then faded into the woodwork. Or was he?

I mean I can list tons of band members for legends who are either dead or retired. Unless you were studying the album credits, you’ve forgotten them. Hell, Dallas Taylor and Greg Reeves even got album cover credit on “Déjà Vu,” but neither wrote the songs, and ultimately their careers petered out, Taylor becoming a drug counselor and passing in 2015, Reeves still alive but unaccounted for.

Yet Bobby Whitlock… It’s kind of like Harry “KC” Casey without Richard Finch. In truth, Clapton did have success sans Whitlock, but I believe, and most people would agree, he did his best work with the man from Memphis.

2

One of the exciting things of the past, a veritable anachronism, was going over to someone’s house and being turned on to a record.

That was the first thing you did, check out their record collection, to judge their taste. You’d insist they play an album you wanted to hear but did not own, but other times they’d drop the needle on the vinyl and say YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS!

I’ve got to say, most of the time the taste of these people was substandard, but every once in a while…

So I was a freshman in college. And during January I made a friend at the end of the hall Denis Palmisciano, who brought me down to the second floor of Hepburn Hall to Dave McCormick’s room, where all the action was happening. Why it took place in Dave’s room, I am not sure. He was not the coolest guy in the dorm, his roommate kept the entire proceedings at arm’s length, then again, Dave was welcoming, you could all join in.

Now Dave had the Moody Blues albums I did not. “In Search of the Lost Chord” and “To Our Children’s Children’s Children.” At this point I know that the former is the group’s best album. The latter is unjustly ignored.

Dave also played “Idlewild South”… He’d drop the needle on “Revival,” and then the music would ultimately segue into “Midnight Rider” and the side would end with “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” That made me an Allmans fan.

And then there was “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.”

Of course I knew the title track, but I could never figure out why they stuck the coda on it. As for the riff… You know that was Duane Allman, which is why Clapton can’t nail it live to this day. But other than that, the album was unknown to me.

Until I heard “Little Wing.”

3

Now the goal was to have a stereo with huge speakers that you could turn up the volume on to the point where the whole room was enmeshed in the sound. You wanted to feel it, you wanted it to take you over, squeeze out all your other thoughts.

Listen to “Little Wing” on AirPods and it’ll sound like music, but you won’t FEEL IT! And that’s how it was made to be listened to, LOUD! I’d go into Dave’s room and insist he play it. I anticipated the spin. A song gets stuck in your head and you wait all day to hear it.

And that’s the side with “Layla,” so I heard it quite a bit.

But really, every other side is better, because they’re dominated by Whitlock co-written rockers.

My favorite on the first side is “Keep on Growing.” Which starts with a kind of shuffle endemic to the south. And the song was good, the unexpected pre-chorus was the kind of treat you no longer get, but it was the chorus that got stuck in your head:

“Keep on growing

KEEP ON GROWING”

Most people would cite “Bell Bottom Blues” as the best song on the first side. And it’s damn good, but quiet in a way that the subsequent “Keep on Growing” was not.

However the song gained energy and embedded itself in your heart with its chorus:

“Do you want to see me crawl across the floor

Do you want to hear me beg you to take me back

I’d gladly do it because

I don’t want to fade away

Give me one more day please

I don’t want to fade away

In your heart I want to stay”

Clapton is imploring her with Whitlock adding vocal emphasis. And not only is the song loud, it’s got melody! Too often absent from today’s in-your-face rock music where noise triumphs.

The third side is a killer too. It starts with “Tell the Truth,” with a walking line straight out of J.J. Cale’s ultimate work and then the whole band swaggers down the pike. And then there’s that slide guitar and a complete change which is utterly delicious:

“Whole world is shaking now, can’t you feel it

New dawn is breaking now, can’t you see it”

The entire album is filled with these unexpected changes, little flourishes that spike a spot in your body nothing else does, that illustrate the power of music, THEY JUST FEEL SO RIGHT!

And then there’s the tear of “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad.” It starts at full tilt boogie and you do your best to catch up with it. And, once again, the chorus sticks in your head.

But it’s the second side that draws my attention, that sticks in my mind today on this album that was produced by Tom Dowd just like “Idlewild South,” watch the documentary.

4

It’s that flourish at the beginning, heralding the arrival of the king. Like the intro to “Little Wing” but with more lyricism, just a bit of subtlety.

But the magic comes right after the guitar blast, the entire track breaks down, you just hear Bobby Whitlock’s organ and then a bit of guitar flourish on top. It’s a complete change of mood. As if someone pulled back on the reins of your horse, slowed you right down and made you think.

But then there’s an unforeseen swagger:

“Well someday baby I know you’re gonna need me

When this old world has got you down

I’ll be right here so woman call me

And I’ll never let you down”

And you wonder why there were groupies…

And then halfway through the vocal drops out, everybody lays back and there’s a guitar solo. Ultimately Clapton and Allman go at it together. This was back when records were cut not for the radio, but the listener…there were no constraints, the key was to get in the groove and try to transcend, deliver something that was based on instinct and feel.

But you still needed the underpinning songs.

And that’s where Bobby Whitlock came in. He co-wrote each and every song I’ve mentioned above other than “Little Wing.” Not that you’d know if it you hadn’t read the credits…but if you had, you’d never forget him, and I and many more never did.

5

I’m guessing Whitlock could live on the publishing royalties. Then again, did Stigwood own the rights and Bobby only got half of the writers’ share? Who knows. I hope the money was enough.

But Eric moved on. Deep into addiction. Ultimately returning with his 1974 comeback album, “461 Ocean Boulevard.” He had a huge hit with a cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” but if you know the original, you’d declare the cover execrable…I certainly did, to this day I press the button when it comes on. Clapton did write “Let It Grow,” probably the best song on the LP, but my favorite, “Mainline Florida,” was written by George Terry.

From there Clapton went into the wilderness. Every album was eagerly anticipated and always disappointed, and then there was the complete surprise of 1985’s “Behind the Sun,” made with Phil Collins, Ted Templeman and Lenny Waronker.”

Then Clapton had success working with Russ Titelman on “Journeyman,” but most of Clapton’s post “Layla” albums had a slew of covers, and most people cannot name a song from his post-“Layla” career other than “Tears in Heaven,” whose lyrics were written by Will Jennings, and my favorite later period song “Change the World,” co-written with the unduly unnoticed Wayne Kirkpatrick, who turned Little Big Town into stars. And I mention “Change the World” because although quiet and slickly produced, it’s got the subtle magic and changes of the work Eric did with Bobby Whitlock. Turns out Clapton works best with a collaborator.

6

Now it sounds like I’m putting Clapton down. But that’s not my point. He did have a slew of mediocre albums in the late seventies and early eighties, but my point is that comparing them to “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” there is no comparison. And why is that?

Well, got to give Duane Allman his due. Really. Music is not a competition, the greats all have a different style, and my absolute favorite has always been Jeff Beck, but in his short time here on earth Duane Allman left his mark. He both added to and inspired Clapton’s work on “Layla.” But without the songs…

Now I could go back through every one of Whitlock’s credits. But I’m not writing a survey, a conventional obituary. Who knows why his success petered out. Do you know how hard it is to make it to begin with? And some people, having reached the mountaintop, just don’t have the gumption to do it once again. It takes too much effort with too little psychic reward. Success didn’t solve their problems, so why chase it again. Which is why so many turn to drugs, just to cope with the emotional roller coaster.

And I’m stunned how many outlets have featured a Bobby Whitlock obituary. I didn’t expect it, because he’s known primarily as a sideman. Never forget, it’s DEREK and the Dominos. Whitlock was just one of the Dominos. Then again, as good as Jim Gordon and Carl Radle were, they didn’t write the songs. And not only did Whitlock write, he played organ, piano and even picked the guitar.

Is that enough?

Well, at the end of the day all this will just be seen as part of Eric Clapton’s oeuvre. The cast of characters changed, and he remained.

So…

It just comes down to the music. And “Anyday” resonates because of the power, one of the essences of rock and roll, and the lyricism and the dynamics. The critics missed it, they often do, they can’t clue in to what is in the musician’s head until they live with it for a while. “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” is now seen as one of the greatest albums of all time, a double to boot.

But ultimately it comes down to what these albums mean to you, the individual listener. Do you know them, do you play them, do they stick in your heart.

It’s a challenging world out there. And if I want to get amped up, I play a record. But oftentimes I can just THINK of a record. And I think of “Anyday.” 

“Any I know, anyday, I will see you smile”

I’m smiling listening to this, and I hope you are too. There are no tears in heaven tonight, only joy. That’s what’s embedded into the tracks of “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.” And sans Bobby Whitlock’s contribution there’s no there there. May not take a village to make a record, but it certainly takes a number of people, at least in the pre-computer age, and Bobby Whitlock was one.

I remember.