Nik Cohn, Lester Bangs, Otis Redding

One of the greatest books that I've ever read was called "Rock from the Beginning" or "Awopbopaloobop Awopbamboom" depending on the edition. It was published in 1970 and written by a guy named Nik Cohn who was only 22 at the time. It's a book to found whole philosophical movements on, but more often it's referred to as the founding book of rock criticism. He's the greatest rock writer I've ever read, matched only by Lester Bangs, another genius writer from around the same time and who was played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the movie Almost Famous. Lester Bangs deserves his own post but in the meantime here's my favorite part from that movie.



Lester Bangs died of a drug overdose in 1982 after a bad drug interaction from apparently trying to treat a cold with Valium and Darvon. Like Nik Cohn he was a full heartedly passionate and eloquent writer who's prose could drift to poetry and who's poetry sounded like rock and roll. Nik's book is a history of rock and roll/pop music up through 1970 along with his opinions and sharp criticisms of famous groups and singers from the 1950's and 60's. My favorite chapter in the book is called "Spectorsound" and it's about Phil Spector. I haven't been able to find my copy of the book for a couple years now or I would quote it directly, but Cohn at one point says something like, "when I listen to Phil Spector records I imagine him as a Greek God on Olympus hurling lightning bolts". I gotta buy another copy and get the right quote). His image of Spector is a 20th century version of Richard Wagner, the German classical composer who is known for a bombastic, total sound coming at you in full force. (I say 'that's what he's known for' and not 'that's what he sounds like' because I haven't listened to Richard Wagner. I only like rock and roll. That's right motherfucker, I only like rock and roll).

When I first read Nik's book I disagreed with some of what he said, and I still disagree with a lot of it. But it's written so passionately that even if you don't agree with him it's like a breath of fresh air in a vacuum. He takes on people who are never criticised, pulls no punches, and rips them apart. If someone or something has no room for criticism then it's either dead or dying. If the great ones aren't criticised then you're wishing upon them the same fate as Bob Dylan in "Tombstone Blues":

Now I wish I could give Brother Bill his great thrill
I would set him in chains at the top of the hill
Then send out for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille
He could die happily ever after



This from Bob in 1965, before he was taken to that same hill, brought up higher and chained up tighter then anyone's ever been before. If I could find my copy of the book I'd quote out of it but off of my head I remember he heavily critisises the Beatles, Dylan and Stax records, the company that recorded, among other greats, Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. And who criticises Stax Records? To this day his book stands as the only negative critisicm of them that I've ever read. And it's not just to be controversial, his criticism is well thought out and jarring. ( Anyway, I remember Cohn's critisim of Stax was along the lines of, 'Stax records promotes and buys into a racist image of black singers as being unduly emotional, begging and pleading caricatures; not multi-faceted and complex human beings'. Meaning that there's a whiff of minstrelsy in Otis Redding and other black singers begging and pleading in song after song. That's a hell of an interesting argument even though I'm a big fan of Otis Redding. But maybe he's right and giving the people what they wanted could be a dangerous and unhealthy proposition in the 1960's. It's always a dangerous proposition for your soul but maybe especially so if you're a 6'1 black man from the deep south who could write his own songs and was bursting with creativity. Maybe it was stifling and maybe he shouldn't have been pleading and begging in so many songs. On the other hand maybe that was the kind of music that moved him. I don't know enough about him but Nik brought up an extremely interesting way of looking at something. However, on Otis, and throughout the book, Nik, even when he has a point, has the tendency to paint with a broad brush. For example, though a lot of Otis's song's did involve him begging him in some sense, his biggest single, released after his death in a plane crash in 1968, was Sitting on the Dock of The Bay and it's one of the most, if not the most, subtly complex 4 week long number one singles of all time. It's got an amazing bridge that comes out of nowhere like a sudden vista on that bay, smooth as glass with sunlight covering it and spread upon the waves. And Otis, as he gets up to go, smiles and it's clear the man's got secret thoughts and depths he'll only partly say. "Looks like nothings gonna change, everything still remains the same. I can't do what ten people tell me to do, so I guess I'll remain the same". Buddy Holly and you big man, the Wright brothers have a lot to answer for.


(They didn't have any videos of Otis singing Dock of the Bay on youtube so here's him singing Try a Little Tenderness and a version of Dock of the Bay by someone I never heard of named Guy Sebastian playing it with the original guitarist on the record and the co-writer of the song Steve Cropper. This isn't close to the real record, but Steve Cropper is one of my favorite guitar players ever and played on all the Stax records and wrote or co-wrote a million great songs.)