Summing up Roger’s solo catalogue

When I tentatively began exploring Roger’s solo catalogue in 2002, I was quite nervous and expected the worst. Thanks to the loud voices of the older guys on my Who mailing lists, I was led to believe it was hit-or-miss at best and embarrassing garbage at worst. Of course, the consensus on my estrogen Who lists was much different. As proudly tomboyish and gender-defiant as I’ve always been, I can’t deny the experience and opinions of male and female Who fans are often radically divergent!

I decided to sample Roger’s solo stuff because I was familiar with his voice and liked it very much. I had a general sense of what I’d be getting, despite how unreasonably nervous I used to be about trying anything new musically.

Roger himself understood early on he’d probably never be a huge solo star, and approached it as a fun hobby to pass the time and keep singing when The Who weren’t touring or recording their own albums. He didn’t do much marketing for his solo work, and didn’t even tour by himself.

All that aside, however, his solo albums aren’t nearly as bad as they’ve gotten the reputation of. The whole point of going solo, for many artists, is to try something new and break away from the type of music they made with their bands. Most of Roger’s solo albums don’t have a Who-like sound because that’s not what he was going for!

I will never understand so-called fans who whine and rant because a band or artist dared to experiment with a new style of music instead of spending their entire career constantly remaking their quintessentially greatest albums. No one is denying the strength and awesomeness of those records, but it would get really boring fast if all their songs sounded like mindless carbon copies. Many artists become one-hit wonders because their follow-up sounds way too much like that first big hit, and people laugh about it.

Roger also understood most Who fans weren’t wild about his solo albums, and that he was targeting a different type of audience. The voice is the same, but the songs aren’t. If you can recognise and respect that, you’ll probably enjoy his solo catalogue a lot more.

Hearing the worst and subsequently having very low expectations also helped me to like most of his albums far more than I thought I would. They’re not nearly as bad as I was falsely led to believe.

Just about everyone recommended McVicar first, since it’s a de facto Who album. Not only do Pete and John play and sing background vocals, but the songs also have a very Who-like feel. If you didn’t know this is a Roger solo album, you’d think it was The Who playing as The Who.

Another great place to start, or to go after McVicar, is Under a Raging Moon. It too has a very Who-like sound (which Roger was deliberately going for), and Pete even wrote the first track. As you might guess, the eponymous closing track is a tribute to Keith Moon.

My third-favourite album is One of the Boys, which was a hugely pleasant surprise. Every single song is a winner for me, and the album’s eclectic nature works for it instead of against it. Roger used a much wider group of songwriters than usual, so he wasn’t tied to just one style. This is perhaps his most criminally underrated album.

I also adore Can’t Wait to See the Movie, which is a marvellous trip down memory lane for me as a proud Eighties kid. While it has those trademark synths that musically defined my childhood decade, it’s not exclusively welded to that era like some other Eighties albums.

I couldn’t resist getting his eponymous 1973 début, since it was only $2 and Roger looks so beautiful and angelic on the cover. It makes no pretension of being timeless music or even a 5-star album, but it is a really fun listen. Not all music is meant to be serious and tailored to perfection. Sometimes you just want to kick back and listen to something lightweight, just as there are times you go for eating ice-cream and corn chips on the davenport instead of a five-course meal at a super-expensive restaurant.

Rocks in the Head is another fun romp, this time marked with the trademark style of the early Nineties. I only recently finally got acquainted with it, but it only took a few listens to start getting into it and really liking it.

Ride a Rock Horse is also a fun, rocking romp, but it’s never been one of my favourites. I appreciate and like it more now than I originally did, after listening to it again for the first time in many years, but it’s not what I’d personally recommend for someone just getting into his solo work. You always want to start with the strongest examples.

Parting Should Be Painless is his weakest solo effort, in my opinion. It’s not that the material is necessarily bad, just not presented in the strongest way. The individual songs would probably sound a lot better if they came up by themselves on the radio or a playlist, but they don’t work when collected on the same album. Even an album with a deliberately depressing theme should have more energy than this!

If you just want a sample of everything before committing to an entire album, you can try the greatest hits compilations Best Bits (1981), Best of Rockers & Ballads (1991), Martyrs & Madmen (1997), Anthology (1998), and Moonlighting: The Anthology (2005). Best Bits contains two previously-unreleased songs, “Treachery” and “Martyrs and Madmen” (#38 in the U.S.). “Say It Ain’t So, Joe” was also re-released and went to #41 in the U.S.

Roger sings lead on some of the songs on the Lisztomania soundtrack, which is a fair bit better than the movie.

In 2014, Roger released Going Back Home, a collaborative album with guitarist Wilko Johnson (who was fighting pancreatic cancer at the time). Another new album, As Long As I Have You, came in 2018. I’ve heard a few of their songs on auto-generated Spotify playlists, but have yet to listen to either in entirety.

I’m really glad I took a chance and gave Roger’s solo work a fair listen. While my preference will always be for The Who, followed closely by Pete’s solo work, there are a lot of treasures on Roger’s solo albums. They’re all worth multiple listens.

“Life is an unforgettable opera”

Image used to solely illustrate subject for an album review, and consistent with Fair Use Doctrine

Rocks in the Head, released 1 July 1992, is Roger’s eighth solo album, and until very recently seemed to be his solo swan song. He recorded it at The Hit Factory in London and New York, and unusually co-wrote seven of the eleven songs. Once again, Roger’s cousin Graham Hughes designed and photographed the cover.

The album only charted at #83 in Canada. As mentioned in previous posts, Roger never did much marketing for his solo career and knew early on he’d never be a huge solo star. He began taking it more seriously after The Who broke up, but it still didn’t become anywhere close to a full-time job.

RITH is a very polished album, with Roger in fine vocal form. While it does have an unmistakably early Nineties sound, it’s not hopelessly dated like, say, Hope + Glory. It’s also greatly aided by how Roger co-wrote so many of the songs, thus adding a personal, emotional connection to the lyrics. E.g., “Days of Light” was inspired by his former job in a sheet metal factory and how he always looked forward to having fun and relaxing over the weekend break.

In 2009, at a solo show in Vancouver, Roger forgot the lyrics to “Days of Light” halfway through. Instead of acting like a spoilt diva or running backstage in embarrassment, Roger told the audience that was only the second time he’d ever sung it live (the last time being a 1992 appearance on David Letterman) and started the song over again.

“Everything a Heart Could Ever Want (Willow)” is about Roger’s second daughter Willow (born 20 March 1975), and has really sweet, poignant lyrics about watching a child taking her first steps into adulthood. His son Jamie (born 1981) provides backing vocals.

Too often, we don’t really think of celebrities as parents. We obviously know they have kids, but we’re so used to seeing them only in their role as singers, musicians, actors, etc. Thus, it’s so precious to get a little glimpse into the world of Roger’s private life and his fatherly feelings for his kids.

Track listing:

“Who’s Gonna Walk on Water” (written by Gerald McMahon)
“Before My Time is Up” (Dave Katz and Gerald McMahon)
“Times Changed” (Roger and Gerald McMahon)
“You Can’t Call It Love” (Roger, Walter Ray, Dave Ruffy)
“Mirror Mirror” (Gerald McMahon)
“Perfect World” (Gerald McMahon)
“Love Is” (Roger, Ricky Byrd, Dave Katz, Gerald McMahon)
“Blues Man’s Road” (Roger, Ricky Byrd, Gerald McMahon)
“Everything a Heart Could Ever Want (Willow)” (Roger and Gerald McMahon)
“Days of Light” (Roger and Gerald McMahon) (#6 in the U.S.)
“Unforgettable Opera” (Roger and Gerald McMahon) (the source of the album’s title)

My favourite tracks are “Mirror Mirror,” “Unforgettable Opera,” “Everything a Heart Could Ever Want (Willow),” and “Days of Light.”

Quadrophenia at 50, Part III (On the road)

As seemed natural for promoting a new album, The Who began touring Quad on 28 October 1973. However, they immediately encountered problem after problem with properly replicating the complex sounds of the studio album onstage. Describing the plot to the audience also took up a lot of valuable performance time. After only four months, the Quad tour came to an end, though a few of the songs remained part of the band’s regular live set.

Pete wanted pianist Chris Stainton, who’d played on the album, to join their tour as an official member. Roger, ever the antagonist and cardinal opposite to Pete, said no way, there should remain only the four actual bandmembers onstage. To get around the issue of reproducing those sounds well without other musicians, the band opted for taped backing tracks.

Though The Who had previously used taped backing tracks to great live success on such seminal songs as “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Baba O’Riley,” it didn’t exactly work out quite so well this time around. From the jump, the equipment malfunctioned, and when they did work, the band were compelled to play to the tapes instead of letting loose with their established, natural performance styles. Keith found it particularly hard to do this.

Additionally, there were only two days of rehearsals with the tapes before the tour began, and one of those rehearsals abruptly ended when Roger and Pete got in a fight and Roger punched Pete.

After the first concert at Stoke-on-Trent, “The Dirty Jobs,” “Is It in My Head?,” and “I’ve Had Enough” were dropped from the set. Then, a few tour dates later, at Newcastle, the “5:15” backing tapes started late. Pete, who had long struggled with anger management issues (which seem to have finally resolved as much as they ever will as he’s gotten older and calmer), was so pissed he dragged roadie and sound engineer Bobby Pridden onstage and cursed him out.

Not content simply to make such a humiliating public example of Bobby, Pete then proceeded to pick up some of the tapes and throw them all over the stage, kicked over his amplifier, and stalked offstage. Twenty minutes later, the band returned and played older songs.

Pete and Keith went on TV the next day to apologise and do damage control.

The U.S. leg of the tour kicked off on 20 November at San Francisco’s Cow Palace. After the huge failures on the British tour, the band were understandably nervous about proceeding, particularly Keith. Towards this end, Keith accepted some tranquilisers a fan offered him before the concert began.

Shortly after the show started, said fan collapsed and was rushed to hospital. Keith also began feeling the effects of the tranquilisers, and his playing became very erratic. Near the end of the concert, during “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” he passed out over his drums and was taken backstage.

Twenty minutes later, he reappeared and promptly collapsed again during “Magic Bus.” The band did a few songs without him while he was being taken to hospital, and Roger used a tambourine for percussion. Pete then apologised for what had happened and thanked the fans for putting up with a mere trio.

One of those fans, 19-year-old Scot Halpin, got the opportunity of a lifetime when Pete asked if anybody in attendance could play drums really well. He got some brandy to calm his nerves, and Pete reassured him, “You’ll be fine. I’m going to lead you. I’m going to cue you.” After the last song, Scot took a bow with the other three guys.

Scot got to go backstage with the band, where he and a friend got some drinks and snacks. Sadly, the concert jacket he got was stolen from him later that very same night.

After a day of recovery, Keith returned at a Los Angeles Forum concert, where he was once again playing at his usual maniac strength and skill. The rest of the U.S. shows were a success, since the band had gotten used to the backing track tapes.

That leg of the Quad tour wrapped up on 6 January 1974 at The Capital Centre. A final, very short leg began on 18 February in London, since the band wanted to make up for their initial embarrassing failures in their hometown. The final Quad concert with Keith took place on 24 February at the Palais de Sports in Lyon, France.

Thanks to modern technological advancements, The Who were able to take Quad on the road properly in a very successful tour from 29 June 1996–16 August 1997. By this point in his life, Roger’s own anger management issues had also significantly calmed down, and he was totally fine with other musicians joining them onstage to help with reproducing the complex sounds, providing other instruments, and playing characters in the story.

A recording from this tour was released in 2005 as part of the 3-CD set Tommy and Quadrophenia Live, which I don’t own.

Quad was performed again on 30 March 2010 at the Royal Albert Hall, part of the charity gigs for the Teenage Cancer Trust which The Who have done so much work for over the years. (Though honestly, I have a hard time thinking of them as The Who when only Roger and Pete are left of the original four.)

Another Quad tour launched in November 2012, running until July 2013. A final short tour came in September 2017, as Pete performed with Billy Idol, Alfie Boe, and an orchestra called Classic Quadrophenia.

Happy Duran Duran Appreciation Day!—Celebrating my fave music videos, Part II

It’s been two years since I wrote Part I of the spotlight on my favourite Duran Duran music videos. Last year on DDAD, I didn’t allow enough time to write a proper post, and so just featured the full Chapter 54 (with some edits) of Justine Grown Up, “Irene and Amelia Redecorate Their Room.” Now it’s time to show some more love to the band’s awesome music videos!

To make it clear, these are only official music videos, not fan-made videos.

11. “Union of the Snake.” I love all the trippy, creepy, macabre imagery and how the video tells a story. The story doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense, but it’s right up my twisted alley! This is also the song that inspired the title of Chapter 41 of The Twelfth Time, “Union with a Snake.”

12. “New Moon on Monday.” I also love the story this video tells, and how it’s set in a small, quaint French village that gives it a very historical appearance. If not for the 1980s computers, I’d think it were a historical instead of a modern story! As always, there’s also a lot of beautiful, intriguing, mysterious imagery. We don’t have to understand 100% of the story a video is telling to get into it. There’s also a 17-minute version of this video.

13. “Save a Prayer.” I love the Sri Lankan settings—beautiful landscapes, the beach, elephants, the ancient rock fortress Sigiriya, and the ruins of a Buddhist temple, with huge rock carvings of Buddha, in Polonnaruwa. I’ve wanted to go to Sri Lanka for years. There are so many things I want to see and do there.

14. “Planet Earth.” Besides the trademark artsy, trippy visuals, I love the text running across the screen in old-school computer font, providing statistics about how many people are born every day, the ratio of men to women, the Earth’s surface area, and that the Shadouf Chant is the world’s oldest song.

15. “Do You Believe in Shame?” I love how it uses montage to tell the story, making a cohesive whole out of all those various photos and bits of video incorporated with the main video story. And what a haunting, bittersweet story it is, particularly if you know the song was a tribute to Simon’s childhood buddy David Miles (one of three songs dedicated to him).

16. “Serious.” With my dinosaur tastes, you know the black and white is right up my aesthetic alley! I also love the surrealistic distorted images (probably achieved with curved mirrors on the lens) and how happy and relaxed the band is.

17. “Too Much Information.” I love all the neat camera tricks and bizarre visuals. They’re the perfect representation for a song about too much information being flung at us fast and furious in the modern era, too speedily for us to process and make sense of.

18. “Skin Trade.” I love the rotoscoping effects transforming this from what might’ve been just an ordinary music video into a piece of neat modern, surrealistic art.

19. “Careless Memories.” It’s obvious this is one of their earliest videos, but I love that unpolished rawness and relative simplicity.

20. “Perfect Day.” I love the simplicity of the padded red stage commingled with trippy photos, animated drawings, and short film clips. As for the song itself, you can’t top Lou Reed’s praise, “I think Duran Duran’s version of ‘Perfect Day’ is possibly the best rerecording of a song of mine. I’m not sure that I sang it as well as Simon sang it. I think he sings it better than I. If I could’ve sung it the way he did, I would’ve. It wasn’t from lack of trying.”

My own educational experience, Part II (Junior year of high school onward)

I was really looking forward to my junior year of high school. After the disaster of sophomore year, I was determined to take much less challenging classes. I was also really excited because I’d be an upperclasswoman, which meant I could start taking electives instead of just required courses. Towards that end, I signed up for American history (not AP, as much as my boneheaded guidance counselor tried to persuade me!), Latin I, world literature, and either psychology or Africana studies (or both?), alongside Course III (trig) and Spanish III (my fifth year of Spanish). I don’t remember what I chose for science.

Sadly, my mother wouldn’t let me continue with art, despite my love for it. I’ve never pretended to be anywhere near the quality of a serious professional artist who draws and paints every single day, but that doesn’t mean I’m a talentless hack who can only draw stick figures or fling globs of paint at a canvas. My love of art and desire to create was badly hurt for many years on account of this. I’ve discovered my artistic calling and passion are for geometric and abstract art, and very colourful animals like tropical fish, tree frogs, and parrots.

Alas, my family made a disastrous mistake of a move back to Pennsylvania, a mistake which was obvious even before it happened. Those eleven months were among the darkest nights of my soul. I was enrolled in the same rural, smalltown high school my father attended, where I felt so profoundly unchallenged. Irina’s experience at her first high school in Dream Deferred is very strongly based on my year at that school, and her friend Rhonwen is based on one of the few people who was kind and welcoming to me.

I might as well have skipped eleventh grade or graduated early, since the academic standards were so far below what I was used to. Albany High wasn’t exactly Eton, but at least it had age-appropriate standards. I don’t think my new guidance counselor, or the school in general, knew what to do with me, since I came from such a radically different system.

Instead of reading classic world lit and Hamlet in English, I was forced into freaking research paper and public speaking classes (each running half the year). These kids were juniors and had never done research papers before! I’d been doing them since eighth grade! Why couldn’t they let me take an English class with seniors?

And instead of any history class, I had to take civics with sophomores. This teacher was an infamous nut, and apparently got even worse in the years afterwards. I kid you not, he had a unit on the political spectrum, and there was a test where we were supposed to assign one of the six classifications to people based on descriptions like “20-year-old waitress who smokes pot” and “Someone who says ‘You can’t trust a Russian as far as you can throw him.'”

I got to take Spanish IV with seniors, and another junior who started in a different school system. But it moved at a snail’s pace, and these kids were just learning things I’d already known since sophomore year. One time I politely asked the teacher if a verb tense shouldn’t be romparon (they broke), since it was in the preterite. She agreed, but said she didn’t want to confuse them with grammar they hadn’t learnt yet.

We never even read Don Quixote or any other classics of Spanish literature!

There was no Latin, so I had to take French I. At that time, I had a negative view of the French language on account of the Vichy French, and also considered it snobby and outdated. The only other languages they offered were German and Japanese, through distance learning by computer. Almost all of the other kids in my French class were ninth graders, and they didn’t exactly warm to this strange liberal Yankee in their midst.

The only classes that didn’t make me feel stupid, bored, and unchallenged were astronomy (taught by someone who got his Ph.D. at the end of the year) and psychology (which only ran for half the year). I was surrounded by hicks and hayseeds content to live in the same small rural town their entire lives, with only a few fellow cosmopolitan-minded nonconformists I knew of. They weren’t used to dealing with people from outside their little bubble, and that scared and threatened them.

Some of the boys in my “English” classes were particularly annoyed by how often I covered Russian history and culture, and even made audible noises of disgust and frustration when I started writing the Cyrillic alphabet on the blackboard. These same boys later gave a very homophobic, gay-bashing speech I’m shocked was permitted.

As much as I clashed with the school’s culture, I nevertheless decided to stay to finish the year after my parents and little brother moved to Massachusetts in April 1997. I figured I’d been screwed out of enough, and didn’t want the trauma of uprooting near the end of a school year. I even went through the motions of registering for senior year classes, including an integrated science seminar which consisted of lots of research papers.

My final high school was like night and day. I took AP English, Spanish V (which did include Don Quixote), Italian I (which I took to like lightning), physics, trig (the first math class I loved and excelled in since elementary school), U.S. history, and some kind of English-related elective that ran for the second half of the year.

I attended community college after graduating high school, and then transferred to UMass–Amherst. Though I wish I’d gone to UMass all four years, I had many excellent classes and professors in community college, and it saved a lot of money. No one should ever be made to feel ashamed of attending community college.

However, had I been set up for high academic achievement from a very young age like the A.T. kids and gradually transitioned into advanced courses instead of thrown in without a lifeboat, I think I would’ve applied myself a lot more rigourously and taken more than just two APs. Perhaps I could’ve attended a school like Smith, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, or the University of Michigan. UMass was a default school which had a transfer compact with the community college.

After I make aliyah, I plan to attend graduate school at the University of Haifa’s International School (i.e., English-Language instruction), either Holocaust Studies or Jewish Studies, and damned if I don’t take it much more seriously than any of my previous academic experiences. Unlike the A.T. kids, I never had anything handed to me on a silver platter.