Southern Bookman

Elton John says farewell to Nashville with love, gratitude

Yes, it's been a long, long time.

Yet the 75-year-old Elton John still gives his all. In an outpouring of love and gratitude, Sir Elton thrilled 60,000 adoring fans in an incandescent concert at Nashville's Nissan Stadium Sunday night.

Spectacular video images beamed from giant screens above the stage shifted during the evening to photos from Sir Elton's 50-year career and closeups of him and his topflight band of old colleagues still rocking.

In homage to Sir Elton's grandiose concert costumes, many in the crowd wore flashy outfits and outrageous glasses, earning a word of appreciation from the consummate showman. Sir Elton wore a fairly restrained white coat with tails, switching to an elegant blue jacket and at the end a lounging outfit for a tender encore.

Sir Elton and mates propelled the crowd to stand and dance for most of the show, performing a generous selection of his greatest hits. "Rocket Man" took the evening to a higher stratosphere from which it never descended.

In his final performance in Nashville on his "Farewell to the Yellow Brick Road" tour, Sir Elton noted the city's musical heritage, and that of Memphis. He gave tribute to those cities with his piano playing, an encyclopedic offering of rhythm and blues, rock and country chords along with runs that echoed Mozart and Bach. With all of the high-tech effects and immense stadium, he could have been a guy singing and playing in an intimate club.

The crowd joined in on a raucous performance of "Crocodile Rock," thousands of voices spanning Baby Boomers to Generation Z harmonizing on the "ooo,ooooooo" as personal phone flashlights formed a continuous arc. All seemed transported to a time when rock, and the world, was young.

During his encore, Sir Elton performed his and Bernie Taupin's first hit, "This Is Your Song." Everyone there believed it.

Ben Fong-Torres set standard for American rock criticism, Netflix documentary shows

Ben Fong-Torres defined Rolling Stone magazine's pioneering rock-music coverage.

The Netflix documentary "Like a Rolling Stone: the Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres" reveals the writer and editor's essential contributions to the magazine's early years.

While Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Crouse pushed the boundaries of political coverage for the magazine, Fong-Torres set the standard for the new field of rock music criticism. Along with his innovative interviews, feature stories and reviews, Fong-Torres as the magazine's music editor shaped other writers' work. 

Lester Bangs gave Jann Wenner's counterculture magazine a druggy hip persona. Fong-Torres' incisive writing and revelations of rock stars' inner personalities exhibited the authority of serious journalism. Fong-Torres' pieces helped make Rolliing Stone a national bible for a new rebellious generation.

Fong-Torres frequently worked with photographer Annie Leibowitz. In an endearing reunion with Leibowitz, Fong-Torres recalls how they invented their innovative techniques on the fly.

Interviews with rock stars like Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, singer Country Joe McDonald and Grateful Dead vocalist Bob Weir indicate that Fong-Torres was trusted by the musicians, although he had a strong reputation for honest criticism. Wenner in an interview recalls that Fong-Torres resisted the rock world's destructive drug use.

Audio excerpts from Fong-Torres' taped interviews with stars like Marvin Gaye, Al Green and Stevie Wonder show how he got them to reveal their hopes and  vulnerabilities.

The son of Chinese immigrants, Fong-Torres gained his work ethic carrying out thankless tasks in his father's struggling restaurants in Oakland and San Francisco, with a brief sojourn to Amarillo, Texas. Pop radio offered visions of a different world.

Discovering his passion for journalism while covering the student protest movement as the editor of San Francisco State's newspaper, he left a job as the editor of a phone company magazine to take a chance on Wenner's venture, launched with legendary San Francisco writer Ralph Gleason.

An earnest Chinese American with long hair and glasses, Fong-Torres defined the magazine's music writing. While popular musicians gave the magazine credibility, Fong-Torres' work also established the careers of groups like Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Doors and the Jefferson Airplane. He recalls giving renewed attention to Ray Charles, whose music was underappreciated by the rock generation.

While working at Rolling Stone, Fong-Torres also got involved in covering discrimination against Chinese Americans and gang conflicts in San Francisco's Chinatown. Fong-Torres' brother, an anti-gang activist, was mysteriously murdered, a devastating tragedy.

Fong-Torres refused to leave the Bay Area when Wenner moved Rolling Stone to New York City. After a few years contributing to Rolling Stone from the West Coast, he built a career as a freelance writer for Parade magazine and other publications and as a public speaker and community activist.

While he's a respected community leader who now looks like a distinguished professor or successful businessman, Fong-Torres still loves the music. He's shown reuniting with Elton John before a concert on John's current tour.

Fong-Torres is known for his impersonation of Bob Dylan, alluded to in the film's title. He's the Dylan of rock critics.

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Serious drama in spotlight for Broadway's fall season

Broadway makes an exciting comeback this fall with the strongest lineup of serious drama in years.

Pulitzer Prize winners abound. Along with Broadway premieres of Tom Stoppard's "Leopoldstadt"and Martyna Majok's "Cost of Living," the season offers revivals of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson," Suzan Lori-Park's "Top Dog Under Dog," Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" and Stephen Adlay Guirguis' "Between Riverside and Crazy."

Classic theater will have a moment in the lights with productions of Ibsen's "Hedda Gabbler" and Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale." 

Musical fans won't be disappointed: Along with a show based on Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" and a production of Neil Diamond hits, "1776" will be restaged, giving a colonial-flavored alternative to the long-running "Hamilton."

While Stoppard's examination of his long-ignored Jewish ancestry will be a major Broadway event, I'm most hoping to see "Death of a Salesman" starring Wendell Pierce as the tragic Willy Loman and Sharon D. Clarke as his long-suffering wife. The Broadway production follows Pierce and Clarke's acclaimed performances in the play at London's Young Vic and West End.

With vivid memories of seeing Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in "Fences" on Broadway, I also would love to head to New York for "The Piano Lesson," starring Washington's son, John David Washington as Boy Willie. The star power will reach full illumination with Samuel L. Jackson as Doaker Charles and Danielle Brooks as Berniece. Jackson's wife, the noted actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson, will direct the play.

For years, critics have bemoaned Broadway's domination by shows offering unchallenging entertainment to tourists. This season, serious drama takes the top billing on the Great White Way.

 

 

John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme, Live in Seattle" a rediscovered jazz masterpiece

John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme,  Live in Seattle" brings back a magical night from the past.

The album captures a rare performance before a live audience of Coltrane's four-part suite. Recognized as a jazz masterpiece, the suite's studio recording by Coltrane's quartet was released in 1964, a foundational hit for the recently formed Impulse Records.

Earlier, Coltrane achieved national renown for his jazz-flavored rendition of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "A Few of My Favorite Things," a best-seller for Atlantic Records, which Coltrane left for Impulse.

Along with his classic quartet of pianist McCoy Tyner, bass player Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, Coltrane added several musicians for the rare live performance of "A Love Supreme" at Seattle's Penthouse jazz club on Oct. 2, 1965.

Fellow tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders had already joined Coltrane's group for its West Coast tour. Seattle musicians Carlos Ward on alto sax and Donald Garrett on double bass also perform on the record.

Seattle sax player Joe Brazil, Coltrane's close friend, recorded the session on the club's primitive, two-microphone tape system. The 1/4-inch tapes were recently discovered among the late Brazil's possessions. In surprisingly good condition, the tapes were digitally remastered for Impulse's two-record vinyl album of the performance.

Interspersed with Coltrane's four movements inspired by sacred texts, Jones, Garrison, Tyner and Garret perform several solo "interludes." Sanders and Coltrane's impressionistic flights on the suite's main parts push jazz to new frontiers, which today's players continue to explore.

Even listening to the album on my small suitcase record player, I was transported back to that long ago evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pop superstar Carole King calls for Biden to ban logging in national forests

Superstar singer and songwriter Carole King has used her rock and roll fame to fight for environmental action.

In a passionate op-ed article in The New York Times Friday, King called for President Biden to stop logging in the nation's national forests. Dispelling the myth of rock-star self-indulgence, King wrote with the emotive power of her long string of hits.

The Inflation Reduction Act's programs to promote the growth of trees and protect private and public forests include a survey of the country's old-growth forests, to be completed by next April.

King argued that the country can't wait that long, calling for Biden to immediately ban logging on national forests. Decrying the  loss of trees and the environmental damage from logging operations, she pointed out that forests in storing carbon are a natural defense against climate change.

Such an exective order would undoubtedly bring Biden condemnation from the GOP.  But King makes a convincing case that preservation of the national forests is urgent.

King in the article recalls how she fled the hedonistic Los Angeles lifestyle to live in rural Idaho. At age 80, with a deep reverence for the environment, she's fighting to preserve the national forests for future generations. 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Paul Sorvino

Paul Sorvino in a long and distinguished career never played a movie's leading character.

He was always the passenger on the bus rather than the driver, as he told Charlie Rose.

But Sorvino's characters always exerted a memorable presence.

One of America's most versatile character actors, Sorvino died Monday at age 83 of natural causes at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, according to media reports.

During Sorvino's career, his roles ranged from mobsters and detectives to drug addicts. He even played Henry Kissinger, in the film "Nixon."

Sorvino stood out among a stellar cast in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," giving his mob boss Paulie Cicero an urbane sophistication and fatherly calm lacking in the other crime figures.

He gave the same qualities to New York City detective Phil Cerretta in one season of "Law and Order." He quit, claiming poor communications and working conditions.

Ironically, he was replaced by Jerry Orbach, who portrayed the cynical wisecracking Lenny Briscoe for multiple seasons.

Like Orbach, Sorvino had a distinguished stage career, known for a memorable performance as the unscrupulous Phil Romano in 'That Championship Season."

He also shared with Orbach a musical background; Orbach was famed for performing "Try to Remember" in "Fantasticks" while Sorvino was trained as an opera singer and starred in several musicals and operas.

Sorvino also co-starred with Al Pacino in "Panic in Needle Park," co-written by Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

The father of Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino, Sorvino was one of those special performers who brought a fatherly authority to his roles.

Sally Rooney's "Beautiful World Where Are You" evokes classic novels

Sally Rooney's "Beautiful World Where Are You" ends with domestic bliss, like a Victorian novel.

In "Beautiful World Where Are You," email serves the same purpose as letters did in 18th century and 19th century fiction.

The computer exchanges between Alice Kelleher, a successful Irish novelist resembling Rooney, and her best friend Eileen Lydon at first stifle the narrative. As the book progresses, the emails effectively reveal character and advance the plot.

The book returns to themes of Rooney's first two books, "Conversations With Friends" and "Normal People."

As in those generational touchstones, young people struggle to find love and happiness in a world beset by economic uncertainty and environmental despair.

Not a total breakthrough, "Beautiful World Where Are You" explores new directions, growing more assured as the novel progresses.

Rooney at times overdescribes the smallest details. Those granular moments build into a visually vivid narrative.

Covering familiar ground, the book progresses Rooney's career, raising expectations for the future.

Alice and Eileen in their emails express opinions on climate change, commercialism and career fulfillment. And lovely thoughts on art and beauty to enthrall aesthetes, wherever you are.

A successful novelist, Alice wonders if literature still has any purpose, and suffers a "nervous breakdown." The sensitive and literary Eileen works as a low-paid editorial assistant at a Dublin literary journal, carrying out tasks such as placing periods between W.H. Auden’s initials.

Alternating with the emails, the microscopically observed third-person narration unwinds Eileen's conflicted relationship with Simon Costigan, a liflelong friend of her and Alice.

A dual plot tells of Alice's attraction to Felix Brady, a blue-collar factory worker who wields his disdain for reading and literary culture like a shield.

It's implausible that the literature-obsessed Alice would fall for someone who takes such wilful pride in ignorance. Yet Rooney makes the relationship believable. While Felix's cynicism and hostility raise expectations that he'll turn violent, Felix is slowly revealed as sensitive and compassionate.

In a salute to fellow Irish novelist James Joyce, Felix at a party brings Alice to tears by singing "The Lass of Aughrim," the song that haunts Joyce's "The Dead." As with Joyce's "epiphanies," the moment shows Felix in a new sympathetic light. His and Alice's relationship blossoms.

Simon and Eileen's love takes a similar course. The older Simon, who suffered boyhood epileptic attacks, lived with Eileen's family during her childhood, working on their farm. He also befriended Eileen, who unlike her popular sister was shunned by her classmates.

As adults, Simon and Eileen have a close platonic friendship that turns intermittently sexual. Simon, who works as an international bureaucrat, is a faithful Catholic, regularly attending daily Mass. That doesn't stop him from dating a series of beautiful women, returning to Eileen episodically.

At the end of the book, the two couples draw close to each other at the unnamed seaside village where Alice rents on old house.

Felix has grown up in the village, unlike the others working in a physically hazardous job. He suffers long hours in a warehouse that sounds like one of Amazon's. The bisexual Felix even makes apparently unconsummated passes at the attractive Simon.

While Felix, Alice and Eileen mock Simon's religion, they turn away from their agnosticism toward spirituality and a belief in a higher power, if not organized religion. Showing signs of hasty writing in response to the Covid epidemic, the novel's concluding emails describe both couples living in happiness, withdrawn from the world.

Yes, Eileen announes that she's pregnant. Rooney, the groundbreaking novelist of the millennial generation, resorts to the most conventional of Victorian conventions.

Rooney also evokes Joyce in her passages extolling the Irish landscape, especially a vision of the sea that has rhythms reminiscent of the famous ending of "The Dead."

"Beautiful  World Where Are You" answers its own question.

 

 

 

 

I'm Being Followed by a Cat Stevens shadow

Now I come to praise Cat Stevens.

The 1970s folksinger's "Where Can the Children Play" closed "This Is Us" Tuesday night, the song a nostalgia rush for aging boomers.

Stevens, who later changed his name to Yusuf Islam, wrote the memorable "Tea for The Tillerman" album, packed with hits like "Moon Shadow," “Morning Has Broken” and “Peace Train.”

"Where Can the Children Play" was one of the anthems of the then nascent enviromental movement, which tragically has failed to stop the fossil fuel companies from ravaging our beautiful planet.

Like John Sebastian's Lovin' Spoonful, Donovan, The Mamas and the Papas and the Byrds, Stevens was a significant artist who never quite reached the heights commanded by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen.

Performers like Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Doors, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, the Byrds, the Moody Blues, The Jefferson Airplane, Traffic, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, The Band and Steely Dan also achieved major careers, falling just below the top tier.

But Stevens' songs have held up well over the years, defining one of the era's dominant philosophies: back to the land environmentalism, peace and love. That conflicted with his later support of Islamic militant groups, which he recanted in recent years, returning to secular recordings under the name Yusuf.

Once I heard Stevens perform at the LSU Union in a benefit for, believe it or not, LSU's SDS Chapter. SDS? Look it  up, kids.

Nothing brings back those ethereal days like Stevens' songs.

Discovering Antonio Carlos Jobim's "The Waters of March"

The red and white azaleas bloom as another March hastens away.

Those ancient colors of war and love arrive earlier now, waning in early April, once their triumphant moment.

This March, I discovered a new song that expresses the month's jumble of sunshine, wind, rain and flowers.

Melancholy at the end of the haunting, if flawed, Norwegian film "The Worst Person in the World," I was lifted out of my reverie by a Bossa Nova melody and lyrics charged with imagery. The song riveted me as the closing credits rolled across the screen.

Google research revealed the song was "Aguas de Marco,"  or "Waters of March," written by the Brazilian songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim, who wrote one of my all-time favorite songs, "The Girl From Ipanema."

Art Garfunkel performed "The Worst Person in the World" version, one of the songs on a solo album Garfunkel recorded after the breakup of Simon and Garfunkel. His lilting voice and bemused/bewildered air summed up the season's confused mellowness.

Later, I discovered a more introspective version by Susannah McCorkle, the jazz singer who ended her own life.

For years, I've listened each March to Ella Fitzgerald's definitive recording of "These Foolish Things Remind Me of You," with its lines "The winds of March that make my heart a dancer."

"Aquas de Marco" will enrich that tradition.

"The Waters of March"

 

A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump, it's a little alone
It's a sliver of glass, it is life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death, it's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush
A knot in the wood, the song of a thrush
The wood of the wind, a cliff, a fall
A scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free, it's the end of the slope
It's a beam, it's a void, it's a hunch, it's a hope
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of the strain, it's the joy in your heart

The foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone
The beat of the road, a slingshot's stone
A fish, a flash, a silvery glow
A fight, a bet, the flange of a bow
The bed of the well, the end of the line
The dismay in the face, it's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike, a point, a nail
A drip, a drop, the end of the tale
A truckload of bricks in the soft morning light
The sound of a gun in the dead of the night

A mile, a must, a thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme, it's a cold, it's the mumps
The plan of the house, the body in bed
And the car that got stuck, it's the mud, it's the mud

A float, a drift, a flight, a wing
A hank, a quail, the promise of spring
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart

A snake, a stick, it is John, it is Joe
It's a thorn on your hand and a cut in your toe
A point, a grain, a bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard, a sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle, a sting, a pain
A snail, a riddle, a wasp or a stain
A pass in the mountains, a horse and a mule
In the distance the shelves rode three shadows of blue
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone, the end of the road
The rest of a stump, a lonesome road
A sliver of glass, a life, the sun
A knife, a death, the end of the run
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of all strain, it's the joy in your heart

Bob Dylan unveils new chapter with "Rough and Rowdy Ways" concert at Fox Theater

The lights flashed on, and Bob Dylan was seated at an upright piano, the instrument's unfinished back facing the audience.

That was the first sign that Dylan's concert at Atlanta's Fox Theater would be different.

Longtime fans expecting the 80-year-old Dylan to perform his classics were disappointed. Throughout the show, he never rose from his piano to pick up a guitar and stand at the microphone. He did play the harmonica in one song.

With the exception of a sped up version of Nashville Skyline's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," Dylan stayed with songs from his 2020 album "Rough and Rowdy Ways," his first release of new material in eight years.

Aging rockers like Dylan generally perform golden oldies for gray-haired hipsters reliving their youths. The Noble Prize winner keeps going in new directions.

As the night progressed, I was more and more willing to go along with him. Generally reciting rather than singing in a deep guttural voice reminiscent of Captain Beefheart, Dylan presented cinematic images of America's clashing histories.

Saluting a signature song of Jimmie Rodgers, the Mississippi "singing brakeman" and one of the progenitors of commercial country music, Dylan's new compositions evoked Tin Pan Alley show tunes, Dixieland, Texas swing, R&B, early rock and country, and horror movie soundtracks.

The lyrics recalled Old Testament prophesy, the Civil War, American West outlaws, New Orleans whorehouses, travel (Key West features in one song), and the American desire to "light out for the territory."

Dylan's "Rough and Rowdy Tour" band, including a steel guitar, stand-up bass and a driving drummer backing up Dylan's primitive rhythm piano, gave a tour of American music.

After Dylan and the band left the stage, the subdued audience waited for them to return, perhaps to play "Blowing in the Wind" or "The Times They Are a Changing." But the night was over. Dylan had given us a new chapter of music.