Issue 83

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs……There’s also a negative side.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

Everybody remember this one.

My apologies for making you listen to a song, as great as it was, that’s played 12 times a day on every crappy classic rock station in America. But you can’t begin to talk about Steppenwolf without mentioning their first hit off the first album, and one of their most iconic. Plus dig Jack Nicholson on the back of the Captain America chopper wearing a football helmet. I was 14 and haven’t stopped dreaming of motorcycles and football helmets since. Terrible movie. Great music. Huge influence.

I’ve always loved Steppenwolf but more for their R&B influence. I’ll concentrate on the first six albums on ABC Dunhill Records, all taking place in my opinion their most significant period 1968 -1971, and certainly most prolific. I will be picking out the R&B related pieces. This was a very good R&B band with a unique sound and they definitely influenced the way I listened to music.

First a little history.

John Kay the lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist (especially blues harp), you know the guy with THAT voice, first joined with 2 of the eventual cast of the band with a Canadian group Sparrows. The band didn’t last and ex-Sparrows Kay, keyboardist Goldy McJohn and drummer Jerry Edmonton recruited guitarist Michael Monarch and bass player Rushton Moreve to form a new band. They got the attention of a Dunhill producer Gabriel Meckler and Meckler suggested Steppenwolf as a band name because he’d just read Hesse’s novel by the same name.

Meckler was a classically trained musician and had recently moved to the US from Palestine and went to work for Dunhill. He had no success until he hooked up with Steppenwolf and that relationship lasted through Monster, the band’s 4^th studio album, when engineer Richard Podolor took over as producer for the 7 and For Ladies Only. Meckler’s success with Steppenwolf led to his producing all the early albums for Three Dog Night and that success kept him viable and busy until his death on a motorcycle in 1977. OK sad, but ironic.

Kay was an interesting and talented guy but must’ve been hard to work with. Monarch, the guitarist with such a classic sound from the first two albums, quit in 1969 after disputes with Kay. Moreve was let go in 1968, not because of problems with Kay but because he started missing gigs because his girlfriend had convinced him California was going to slide into the ocean any second so he was afraid of CA gigs. What a couple of maroons. How many of us would have killed to be in a band with that much success and screw it if the lead singer was an asshole or your girlfriend ran away with the circus at a young age and hit her head on a Tilt-A-Whirl? Sheesh.

Plus the band could hardly get rid of Kay because he had THAT voice. So for the remainder of the band’s existence the personnel went through a revolving door.

Jon Kay was actually born in East Prussia, Germany, now Sovetsk Laliningrad Oblast, Russia. His father died a month before he was born in 1945. Bummer. As a baby his mother took him to escape the advancing Soviet troops and settled in Hanover, Germany. When he was 13 the family moved to Canada.

You don’t see many pictures of Kay without sunglasses, which were the fashion de coolness in the day, but his use was more than an affectation. He was afflicted with rod monochromacy, a very rare and extreme form of color blindness contracted at birth which results in seeing no color at all. The world exists completely in black, gray and white. As a result being in sunlight and in front of something like Klieg lighting is very uncomfortable. I just wore them because I wanted to look like John Kay.

I had a ball listening to all these albums again after all these years looking for examples of their R&B stuff. Pretty much all 6 albums had a form of R&B if only a single song but the influence of that idiom certainly runs through most of their music.

The first album, released in 1968, does showcase some vital stuff including the title tune. But two songs “Hootchie Coochie Man” and “Berry Rides Again” are examples of what I’m talking about. Side note here. Readers may well bring up that the Stones did a lot of R&B and several rock bands from the period specialized in R&B. But I’ll remind you that the first albums of guys like Johnny Winter, Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers came out in 1969, a year after the first two of Steppenwolf’s albums with real strong examples of R&B on them. I’m not saying Steppenwolf was better; anyone who knows me knows how much I adore both Winter and the Allmans. But for me The Second was my first exposure to the stuff. Sure I bought the album because it had “Magic Carpet Ride”. But it was the R&B shit that grabbed my package. Also, I never thought the Stones really pulled the stuff off. Yeah, I said it.

Remember the old adage…Before you criticize someone walk a mile in his shoes. That way when you do criticize him yer a mile away and you have his shoes.

So from that first album Willie Dixon’s “Hootchie Cootchie Man”. That’s right, Dixon, not Muddy as popularly assumed.

And “Berry Rides Again”.

Dig dat. Clapton would’ve loved to be in the mid of that shit man. Michael Monarch on that guitar.

The second album was titled The Second. Has a couple of great examples. One of them “Tighten Up Your Wig” is a complete rip-off of Junior Wells’ “Messin With the Kid”. When I was in a Blues Brothers type band in the late 70s we did a medley of these two and it was a blast. To Kay’s credit, he references the fact that he stole “Tighten” from Wells and ‘he from someone else’.

In 1970 they released a live album that my friend and brother Hank turned me onto. From Steppenwolf Live, Tighten Up Your Wig.

At Your Birthday Party, the third album and released in 1969 had a nice hit with “Rock Me” that shows definite R&B influence, but two, “Chicken Wolf” and “Cat Killer” are fun and in the vernacular. From At Your Birthday Party we have “Cat Killer”.

Any reference to a cat killer gets my attention immediately.

The fourth album Monster was primarily a political statement. Hey it was 1969. There was a lot of angst floating around about Nixon and his gang of liars and thieves, and of course the Vietnam Conflict. But we can still have some fun. Here is “What Would You Do (if I did that to you)”:

The fifth album by the boys, released November 1970, was Steppenwolf 7  for some weird reason. This marked five albums in 2 years, all with great stuff on them. I bought 7 when it first came out and in 8 track form. More on that some other time. When the 8 track wore out I bought the vinyl and I still have it. This is a wonderful work through and through including a version of Hoyt Axton’s “Snowblind Friend”. There are several R&B influenced numbers on it like “Ball Crusher”, “Hippo Stomp” and “Foggy Mental Breakdown” but I’ll use a song that was a minor hit for them “Who Needs Ya”. Um, play this loud. Seriously.

Our last here and the last for Dunhill is from For Ladies Only. This was panned by the critics and labeled as sexist, so naturally being a 17-year-old guy I ran right out and got it. The album is not on a fave list but they were still doing stuff like “Jaded Strumpet”.

I saved the best for last, my usual treat for both the readers and me. That album The Second, my first Steppenwolf album, had a medley on the B side that to this day is so cool and meant so much, and the same for my funk fusion drummer son. True test there. This right here is what I mean when I say I was grabbed by the balls by this album. I’ve worn out 2 copies of the vinyl and I’m on my third. Enjoy.

What a wonderful band and a shame they couldn’t keep it together. Lord knows they tried reunions several times, the last as late as 2017. The fan base is pretty fanatical and it would be a gas to see them in what would certainly be a small venue. It also would have been interesting to see if they just re-hashed the old hits or stuck to R&B roots in these performances. I would hope it to be the latter.

[Originally published in Goldmine magazine—Ed.]

Talking Beatles, The JFK Assassination and rival DJ Murray the K….

In 1964, there were only 4 ways to connect with your rock ‘n’ roll heroes:

1. Buying the 45’s and maybe albums (if you could talk your parents into it!)
2. Possibly seeing them on a TV variety show
3. The newsstand specialty magazines (which popped up seemingly overnight the minute the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show), and…
4. Through the voices of DJs at AM radio that fed you a steady diet of music and information about them.

The Disk Jockeys were our connection to the current hits and the hits to come. The voices of the DJs at that time were (and are) cemented into our musical references and individual histories.

At that point, having been born in NYC and still living there in 1964, I was glued to Hit Radio 77, unofficially called “77 WABeatleC, The Number one station in the Nation!”

Of all the jocks on the station, three had the greatest effect on me: afternoon jock Dan Ingram, early evening jock Scott Muni, and the nighttime jock who also did the weekly top 40 countdown, Cousin Brucie (Bruce Morrow).

I recently sat down with Bruce Morrow for an interview about what it was like to be one of the most important DJs of the era. I wanted to know what it was like to be the first person to bring the Beatles into our homes, what it was like to meet the Beatles for the first time, introduce them and Ed Sullivan at the Shea Stadium concert, and his thoughts about rival DJ “Murray the K” (the 5th Beatle).

I did this interview at the SiriusXM studios in NY where Bruce has a radio show on the channel 60’s on 6. I want to say that, at the age of 82, his energy rivals 20-year-olds, and his voice…that voice, is exactly the same as it was when I was 10 years old!

Bruce may be the sole remaining working (and living) DJ from that golden era when AM radio ruled our lives.  His graciousness and warmth toward me was incredible.

(Ironically, Dan Ingram was still alive at the time of the interview and then passed away suddenly 2 weeks later.)

A couple of days after the interview, I realized that I wanted to know the answer to one more question.

As monumental as the arrival of the Beatles was, the trauma of the events on November 22^nd, 1963, a mere 5 weeks before the Beatles were played on WABC for the first time, occurred.

It was the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Jay Jay French: What was it like to be on the air the night of the Kennedy assassination?

Bruce: I remember I was in my car on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn with my wife. (Dan Ingram was on the air) After hearing about the assassination, we pulled over (illegally parked) for an hour trying to catch our breath. I went into work at WABC that evening in a very somber way. I didn’t go on as “Cousin Brucie” with all the sound effects and jingles. Our program director Rick Sklar took off all commercials (for the first and only time) and we just played ballads. I was very sad on the air. The audience felt the same as I did.

Shortly after the announcement (that afternoon) the news crew took over for Dan’s time slot. No promos, no shtick. Just very somber. This lasted until the following Monday.

JJF: Your first job at NY radio was at WINS. How did you move over to WABC?

Bruce: In 1961, I was a producer at WINS. AFTRA, the union that represents on air talent, went on strike and, as I was “management” but with previous radio on air experience (a year on the radio in Bermuda at station ZBM), they asked me to take a radio shift. That proved so successful that they put me under contract immediately following the strike. About a year in, on a cold winter’s night in late ‘61, I took the nickname Cousin Brucie (a story for another time).

WABC wasn’t a pop music station yet. WMCA was the other music station playing music a little bit. When WINS hired Murray the K, (Murray Kaufman) he wanted my shift (on air time slot). Murray did some pretty nasty things to me; I was a kid and couldn’t protect myself. They wanted to move me to overnights, which I refused. I moved to WABC shortly thereafter in 1962 when it became a pop music station.

JJF: The Beatles entered the WABC chart at number 35 for the first time on December 24th 1963. The next week it jumped to number one. Why? Could you feel it? What was going on?

Bruce: The station management turned down the Beatles several times in early 1963. We (the management) couldn’t hear it, didn’t understand it…then we started noticing (through newsreels) that there were riots oversees. Our eyes started popping. We really started listening a little more.

JJF: So, what really happened?

Bruce: The hype started. We started to listen to the Beatles’ music (from various independent labels) on Swan Records (“She Loves You”), Vee-Jay Records (“Please Please Me”), and Tollie Records (“Twist and Shout”).

The Beatles were not given to us by God. They were really talented but the Lord didn’t say ‘Here are the Beatles, thou shalt enjoy them and feast!’ No. It’s called money. Money makes the world go round.

A lot of hype and a lot of promotion.

The first time I played “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (date not specific, but had to have occurred either on December 24^th, 1963 or a day after), a record company promotion man, accompanied by an armed guard, came to my show with an attaché case handcuffed to his hand with the record. I wasn’t allowed to play it before 9pm (a nationally imposed debut broadcast order by the record label) this particular evening. It’s important to note that WABC was the most powerful (meaning that the station had 50,000 watts of broadcasting power – most others had only 5,000 watts) and in the evening you could hear WABC in 40 states!

At exactly 9PM that night I put on “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (interestingly a tape cartridge, Brucie pointed out, not a 45rpm single) and the place went wild.

At 9:02:22 (actual song time 2:22) I put it on again. I played it 8 times in a row! The phones went crazy. Record stores were calling. Radio stations all over the nation asked us to send them our actual on-air recording of the debut so they could replay it. We were the first ones (nationally). The hype started. The record company spent huge amounts of money behind it for promotion…It went to number one because it was like an express train. There was excitement. I was more excited than the fans!

The Beatles were a light in the night to save our industry!

It went to number one because of record sales, pressure from the record company, and phone calls from listeners to the station.

JJF: So how did Murray the K usurp every other jock in the US and become “The Fifth Beatle”, and how did you feel about this?

Bruce: This is typical Murray the K. The poor man is gone. The way he died (cancer) was pretty bad. They (The Beatles) did not like that he was calling himself “The Fifth Beatle”. His ratings at WINS were not good, but he latched onto something. He did very well with it. Murray sold them (the Beatles) a bunch of vegetables and onions from Brooklyn! (Convincing Brian Epstein and the band that he was that important.)

JJF: But how did all of your fellow DJ’s feel about Murray? 

Bruce: …He was not a nice man; he was very, very…He did things behind your back, he wasn’t really a radio guy. He was not an honorable man. He would do anything to sell a product or get ahead. He knifed me in the back when we were together on WINS.

JJF: In those days, were the charts manipulated by outside forces that were not just record sales?

Bruce: Yes. The numbers were moved (by Rick Sklar, the program director) to reflect many competing forces.

( At this point in the interview, I showed Bruce a WABC chart from early April 1964—the Beatles had held the number one spot for 4 solid months— with 30 Beatles songs on the charts and the Hot Prospects list. Louis Armstrong knocked the Beatles off the number one position with “Hello Dolly” a couple of weeks later, in April. As an aside, and after the interview ended, Bruce confided to me that his radio partner Scott Muni was so angry that “Hello Dolly” was played on the station, let alone reaching number 1 (it wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll!), that he resigned.)

JJF: Was there ever a point where you (the station) had Beatles fatigue?

Bruce: No. We were so grateful that something was happening in the industry that was going to save our asses! Pop radio had gotten tired. Everything was now changing because of the Beatles. Then all those other artists (British invasion) came over.

JJF: When you interviewed the Beatles for the first time, what were your impressions of them?

Bruce: John was very interested in my questions and really paid attention. Paul, not so much. He seemed to give pat answers. Ringo and George sat on the arms of the couch in the hotel and didn’t talk very much, but they were all very nice to me.

JJF: Did you see the Beatles live?

Bruce: Yes. I introduced Ed Sullivan, who introduced the Beatles, at Shea Stadium. That is some story: We were all in the dugout waiting for the Beatles to get to the stage. It was crazy, 50,000 kids. This never happened before in concert history. It could have been a disaster. It really was kind of scary.

John Lennon turned to me and asked me if it was going to be alright. He really was scared. So was Paul. I said “John, it’s going to be fine.” Honestly, I had no idea if that was true but that’s what I said.

As we walked to the stage, Ed Sullivan turned to me and asked me if we were going to be safe. I turned to Ed and said, “Pray, Ed, Pray!”

The kids were screaming, you couldn’t hear anything above the screams but they were all just so happy that they shared the same space as the Beatles. It could have been a disaster, but it wasn’t. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.

JJF: Thank you Brucie!

With this interview now fresh in your minds, I have reprinted below the WABC Hit Radio Chart for the week of April 7^th, 1964, which was part of a previous article. Now the context is more precise and fun to look at.

This not only shows the total dominance of the Beatles at that point (8 songs in the top 30 including the top 3 spots), but the astonishing Hot Prospects list: 9 songs…All Beatles!

This Week                                                                                        Last Week

1. Can’t Buy Me Love – The Beatles (Capitol)                                            1
2. Twist and Shout – The Beatles (Vee Jay)                                                4
3. Do You Want to Know a Secret – The Beatles (Vee Jay)                     2
4. Hello, Dolly! – Louis Armstrong (Kapp)                                                 3
5. The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss) – Betty Everett (Vee Jay) 6
6. She Loves You – The Beatles (Swan)                                                       5
7. Suspicion – Terry Stafford (Crusader)                                                    13
8. Glad All Over – The Dave Clark Five (Epic)                                           8
9. Please Please Me – The Beatles (Vee Jay)                                              14
10. Dawn (Go Away) – The 4 Seasons (Philips)                                           9
11. Stay – The 4 Seasons (Vee Jay)                                                                10
12. Ronnie – The 4 Seasons (Philips)                                                            24
13. Bits and Pieces – The Dave Clark Five (Epic)                                       15
14. The Way You Do the Things You Do – The Temptations (Gordy)    11
15. Needles and Pins – The Searchers (Kapp)                                             16
16. All My Loving – The Beatles (Capitol)                                                    17
17. I Want to Hold Your Hand – The Beatles (Capitol)                              7
18. Rip Van Winkle – The Devotions (Roulette)                                         12
19. Love Me Do – The Beatles (Tollie/Capitol)                                           PH
20. Shangri-La – Robert Maxwell (Decca)                                                    —
21. My Guy – Mary Wells (Motown)                                                              26
22. That’s the Way Boys Are – Lesley Gore (Mercury)                               19
23. Yo Me Pregunto – The Val Rays (Parkway)                                           20
24. Little Children – Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas (Imperial)               30
25. Shangri-La – Vic Dana (Dolton)                                                               23
26. Wish Someone Would Care – Irma Thomas (Imperial)                      28
27. (Just Like) Romeo & Juliet – The Reflections (Golden World)          —
28. Just One Look – The Hollies (Imperial)                                                  —
29. Forever – Pete Drake & his Talking Guitar (Smash)                            29
30. Nadine (Is It You?) – Chuck Berry (Chess)                                            HP
31. Sunday Morning – Bob Leaper & the Prophets (Reprise)                   —
32. Make Me Forget – Bobby Rydell (Cameo)                                              —

Hot Prospects:

1. From Me to You – The Beatles (Vee Jay)
2. This Boy – The Beatles (Capitol EP)
3. Roll Over Beethoven – The Beatles (Capitol of Canada)
4. I Saw Her Standing There – The Beatles (Capitol)
5. You Can’t Do That – The Beatles (Capitol)
6. There’s a Place – The Beatles (Tollie)
7. Thank You Girl – The Beatles (Vee Jay)
8. Please Mr. Postman – The Beatles (Capitol of Canada)
9. Ask Me Why – The Beatles (Vee Jay EP)

The four of us shuffled into the doctor’s office. An old man gazed at us from behind his thick glasses.

“Drop them!” He growled. “And the underpants!”

We complied as he gazed at our bare junk.

“Get dressed!”

He then stamped our forms and ushered us out. I had just passed my medical exam to become a New York taxi driver.

After I got fired from Bloomingdale’s I needed a job, so I became a cabbie. In 1977, it was a lousy job. The shifts were 10-11 hours and the cabs were falling apart. Often, they wouldn’t start, and if that was the cab assigned to you, you couldn’t work that day. And when it did start, it was a sheer joy to drive—it lacked shocks, had streaky windshield wipers, and as an added bonus, the heater blew burning air on my right foot while the hole on the left ensured my other foot was permanently frozen. My dispatcher was an animal and would look at my takings and accuse me of malingering and not picking up enough fares at 5 a.m. Because he scared the shit out of me, I finally figured out that wealthy people went to work or the airport early in the morning, so I started frequenting the East side of Manhattan, especially the area around the UN.

Finding your way around Manhattan is fairly easy (as long as you can count) but the outer boroughs, especially Brooklyn and the Bronx, were nightmares, so I often tried to avoid them.

One of the few nice things about driving a taxi is that you start earning money on your first trip. The other “perk” is that you get paid for making mistakes. As long as the meter is running, you’re OK. Other drivers warned against taking certain people (i.e. blacks) up to Harlem. This was a time when cabbies were robbed and sometimes shot, and populist racism always blamed the blacks. I never heeded that advice as I needed the money and a ride was a ride.

A good ride was out to JFK airport, as it was a high fare with a guaranteed ride back if you didn’t mind waiting. The airport rides saddened me as other people were flying somewhere and I wasn’t. (Ironically, a few months later, I was sent by Macy’s on a buying trip to the far east and the taxi driver who picked me up was a colleague of mine, one with whom I had shared nakedness at the doctor’s office. He didn’t recognize me in my new suit and hairdo and as I didn’t want to embarrass him, I kept silent during the ride.)

One day I dropped a ride off outside Bloomingdale’s, the store that deemed me unfit for employment after Christmas ended. I had been a supervisor from central wrap. This meant that I was in charge of delivery for every piece of paper or box needed on the main and basement floors. As you can imagine, Christmas at Bloomingdale’s was a zoo and for its employees, a pressure cooker. There were many stations set up to do holiday wrapping and I had to make sure all were properly stocked. One morning, the day before Christmas, I heard a commotion in the men’s shirt department. On investigating I came across the shirt buyer, a young man in his mid-twenties who was apparently having a tantrum. He was screaming and throwing shirts and boxes all over the floor. This happened a few minutes before opening and there were hundreds of people outside the door and windows watching this event. I immediately called my boss who promised to come right up. The cause of his meltdown was the fact that although one of my staff had delivered the requisite quantity of red gift boxes to the department, in his haste he forgot to remove the brown paper wrapping that held the bundles of boxes. This was the straw that broke the poor buyer’s back. He snapped and chaos erupted. My boss arrived, surveyed the scene, and said to the guy, “Why are you so physically perturbed?” This made him howl even more. Some medics soon arrived, calmed him down, and removed him to the New York Home for the Bewildered, never to return.

I did have one scare once, in the cab. Two men flagged me down and gave me an address downtown in Alphabet City (Avenues A, B, and C.) This was a really poor, run-down, drug-infested neighborhood. Tomkins Square Park was a dangerous place and no one I knew would venture into it. When we arrived on East 10^th St. and Ave. B, I was ordered to stop. One of the riders jumped out and ran into the park. A few moments later he reappeared, jumped in and yelled, “DRIVE!” I drove. This was repeated another three times and I was beginning to sweat when one of them bellowed, “Do a U-turn and stop.” I did as I was told and they leapt from my cab and ran away. As they left, one of them threw a wad of bills at me.  When I counted the notes, there was over $100.

I only drove a cab for three weeks before I lied my way into Macy’s.

Ever wondered how lasers work?…Wondered what it is that gives them the interesting properties they exhibit?…You have?….Good! This column’s for you.

Lasers are all about electrons. Atoms are composed of a nucleus surrounded by several electrons, one for each proton in the nucleus. The number of protons in the nucleus determines which element the atom comprises. A nucleus with one proton will be that of a Hydrogen atom; with two protons a Helium atom; with 8 protons, an Oxygen atom, and so forth. The number of electrons which surround the nucleus always matches the number of protons in the nucleus, and although it is the number of protons in the nucleus which determines which element the atom is, it is only the electrons surrounding it which determine an element’s chemical properties.

You can think of an electron as being a bit like a billiard ball. It has mass and energy, and the amount of energy it has depends on how fast it is travelling. If the electron is not orbiting around the nucleus of some nearby atom it is said to be a free electron, and it is free to take on any amount of energy it wishes. But electrons which orbit an atomic nucleus are not so fortunate. Such electrons are constrained to having certain very specific energies [for reasons that we don’t need to go into]. Some of these energies are higher than others, and electrons always want to occupy the lowest available energy level if at all possible. Consequently, the natural state of a substance is that all of its electrons are crammed into the lowest available energy states. Or, to be strictly accurate, most of them are. At any temperature above absolute zero, thermal energy will always manage to jog some of them out of the lowest energy states.

If an electron falls from a higher energy level to a lower one, it obviously has a surplus of energy that it needs to get rid of. There are various ways in which it can do that, but it is easiest to think of it in these terms: it can give up the excess energy as either heat or light. So there is some sort of natural relationship between heat, light, and the energy states of electrons. And it was that man again, Albert Einstein, who first established the basic physics which underpins these relationships. These are called, naturally enough, the “Einstein Equations”, and they are fundamental to understanding how a laser works. But don’t worry…we don’t need to look at them here.

The key to a layman’s understanding of a laser is to understand the interactions between a photon of light and an electron. Like electrons, photons also have energy, and this energy is determined solely by the wavelength of light. The two can interact if the energy of the photon is exactly the same as the energy difference between two states of an electron. Specifically, an electron at a higher energy level (which is termed an “excited state”), can fall to a lower energy level (which is termed the “ground state”) giving up its surplus energy as a photon of light whose energy (and therefore a specific wavelength) will corresponds exactly to the energy difference between the excited state and the ground state. And likewise, if an electron at the ground state encounters a photon of the exact correct energy, it can absorb that photon and use its energy to jump up to the excited state.

There is one additional concept that needs to be grasped if you are to understand how a laser works, and that is the notion of “stimulated emission”. Suppose we have an electron in an excited state. It wants to drop to its ground state, emitting a photon to carry away the excess energy in the process (or, alternatively, giving that energy up as heat). Left to its own devices, it will eventually do just that. But if instead, before it does that, it encounters another photon having that exact energy, it can undergo “stimulated emission”. This is where the incoming photon effectively nudges the electron to fall to its ground state, emitting an identical companion photon. What is really intriguing about this process is that not only do the two photons have the same energy, they also have the same phase and travel together in the same direction. In fact they are two absolutely identical copies of each other. Essentially, the photon has been amplified by a factor of two.

So what do we need to do if we want to use this process to amplify a beam of light into something seriously powerful? Well, it is clear that we require a combination of a huge assemblage of electrons in their excited states, and a huge flux of photons of the exact correct energy (i.e. wavelength). The problem boils down to this – we need enough electrons to hang around in their excited states long enough for them to encounter photons to amplify. And this turns out to be a major problem. When you measure these “excited state lifetimes” they inevitably turn out to be far too short – by several orders of magnitude – to be of any use in making a laser. In other words, they don’t stay excited long enough to encounter a photon. But actually, if you look carefully enough, there are certain very specific atoms – and some molecular structures too – which turn out to have excited state lifetimes long enough to make a practical laser out of them.

The other important aspect of laser design is that you want all the photons to have the exact same phase and direction. You do this by placing the laser material within a so-called “optical cavity”, which is effectively the space between two parallel mirrors. The light bounces back and forth between the two mirrors, passing through the laser medium each time, and thereby being amplified along the way. Finally, if you make one of the mirrors only partially-silvered, some of the light can escape though it and form the output of the laser.

The thing that makes a laser so special, and so practically useful, is this fact of all the photons having the same phase and direction of propagation. We refer to this as “coherence”. It is solely this property of coherence that allows a laser beam to propagate over huge distances in a pencil-thin beam, something that an incoherent light source – such as a flashlamp, or an LED – cannot do.

The laser was invented in 1960, but it is intriguing to speculate whether Einstein could have built a laser as early as 1926. For sure, his theory was complete, and if he had the materials to hand he would have had everything he needed – in principle at least – to invent the laser. It appears that Einstein never grasped the full practical significance of the fact that stimulated emission produced pairs of photons of identical phase and direction of propagation, and never contemplated what it would mean if one could amplify enough of these photons to generate a beam of light. Had he stopped to consider that, it would have been a relatively trivial exercise to work out the extraordinary properties that such a beam of light might possess. A thornier question is whether he (or his contemporaries worldwide) would have been able to identify a suitable material from which to make a practical laser, but it has been argued that it need not have proved insurmountable at that time, given sufficient impetus to work on it. Finally, it is intriguing to speculate what he might have called the device. Whatever the answer, it probably wouldn’t have been anything as romantic as LASER! [To be clear: LASER is an acronym, each letter representing the first letter of the words Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The laser has a cousin which amplifies microwaves, and as you might expect, it’s called MASER.—–Ed.]

Getting back to the real world, a related device is the “optical amplifier”. This is essentially a laser but without the “optical cavity” formed by the back-and-forth reflection of the mirrors. In an optical amplifier the light passes just once through the laser medium, and is amplified. Optical amplifiers are almost exclusively used in high-speed long-distance fiber-optic data links, and you wouldn’t be able to watch Netflix without them.

One thing that inspired me to write about lasers and optical amplifiers was a point Paul McGowan regularly makes about the fundamental structure of an audio amplifier. Regardless of whether we are talking about a preamplifier or a power amplifier, a point he likes to emphasize is that these circuits are not, strictly speaking, actually amplifying anything. They are circuits whose function is to take a power supply, and get a small signal to make use of it to fashion a bigger copy of itself.

That may seem like an arcane observation, but its true power becomes evident when you compare an electrical amplifier with an optical amplifier. The latter is a true amplifier. Photons go in at one end, and each time one of these photons interacts with an excited electron in the amplification medium, it causes the excited electron to fall to its ground state and give up a direct copy of the incident electron. In fact, calling it a copy is itself an understatement. It is a complete replication, in all respects, of the incoming photon. If it were possible to inspect the two photons – one incoming and the other replicated – as they propagate away from the electron they just interacted with, you would not be able to determine which was which.

By comparison, an electrical amplifier is like Paul McGowan (I hope he doesn’t mind me taking his name in vain!) heading off to MOMA and sitting in front of Van Gogh’s small masterpiece Starry Night, where he proceeds to paint a giant-sized forgery as accurately as he possibly can. He may be a damn good forger, and as a result you may not be able to tell them apart (other than the fact that Paul’s copy is really big), but it will be a forgery nonetheless. With an optical amplifier, you have genuinely made the original incoming signal itself bigger, and there just isn’t an equivalent process in the electronic domain. Even a triode tube comes close, but gets no cigar.

Good luck getting close enough to forge that!—Ed.

I spent the majority of my career (well, the productive parts at any rate) in the field of lasers and fiber optics, and as a result it is quite cool to be able to compare and contrast these aspects of the laser and audio worlds. I mention this merely because it strikes me that none of my old non-audiophile laser industry colleagues would find my comparison of optical and electrical amplification at all worthy of mention. Whereas I think (or maybe I just hope) the audiophile community might find it more interesting.

Today we begin with Mahler and his Third Symphony. Then we move on to Perséphone, a melodrama for which Igor Stravinsky composed music in 1934. Both works—and a lot of other music from the last hundred years—draw upon various notions of the “classic.” So next time, we’ll sort out even more of that, using music from Prokofiev, Huw Watkins, and Mozart.

But first Mahler. Like Stravinsky and other “neoclassical” composers, he drew upon a bedrock of Western culture: Greek mythology. Timeless truths. Ripping good yarns, too. His approach, like everyone else’s, was quite flexible. Like Stravinsky, he had no interest in conforming to preconceived notions.

As early as 1895, Mahler began conceptual work on his Third Symphony as Pan: Symphonic Poems. At that point he envisioned seven movements with programmatic subtitles, e.g., “What the flowers of the meadow tell me,” “What the beasts of the forests tell me.” Central to the generative power of the overall program was Pan, “god of woods and fields, of flocks and shepherds,” in Bulfinch’s words. To Mahler those words did not go nearly far enough:

It always strikes me as strange that most people, when they talk about “Nature,” think only of flowers, birds, forest breezes, etc. Nobody knows the god Dionysius, Great Pan!

Mahler originally titled the first movement “Pan Awakes; Summer Marches In.” Just as Bulfinch got around to telling us Pan was no mere “rural deity” but rather a “personification of Nature,” enabling all life to form and grow, so did the composer soon enlarge upon his subject:

It’s eerie, the way life gradually breaks through. . . . And, as this life rises from stage to stage, it takes on ever more highly developed forms: flowers, beasts, man, up to the sphere of the spirits, the “angels.” . . . “Summer marches in” no longer fits the shape of things in this introduction; “Pan’s Procession” would be better. . . . Satyrs and other such rough children of nature disport themselves in it.

The opening, with its eight-horn paraphrase of the finale theme from Brahms’s First Symphony, leaves no doubt as to the world-shaking might of the forces being summoned. But the moment that seeks to introduce Pan is this:

Frankly, I’m glad Mahler provided a program for the Third, because otherwise I would have no idea this music depicts Pan. It could almost as easily introduce one of those Armageddon sci-fi movies. Only some of the music that follows gives us the “rough children of nature” beloved by Mahler. (Speaking of rough children: 25-year-old trombonist Franz Dreyer’s playing of the big “Pan” solos so impressed Mahler at the symphony’s premiere that he hired Dreyer away from Köln for the Wiener Philharmoniker.) The whole first movement, littered with bird calls and fanfares, takes at least a half hour to perform. Here is a passage, closer to the end, that actually suggests “Pan’s Procession” (and you’ll hear something of the quasi-Brahms tune too):

Mahler never could decide whether programs were a good idea. On the one hand, many people wanted a way into the music; on the other, no literary program could possibly give a full understanding, since it was so intensely personal (and necessarily abstract) an expression.

The recording that encouraged me to give Mahler’s Third another listen comes from conductor François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln (Harmonia Mundi), the same group that played the first performance. (Well, obviously not precisely the same group.) They bring a welcome spirit, alternately brash and tender, to the proceedings, and it’s well recorded. Strongly recommended.

And now to Stravinsky: If we recognize in Mahler’s Pan symphony the same primal power that animates the Rite of Spring (a work that relies on no classical mythologies), we might think of Perséphone as a companion to both, since it also works with the idea of the generative/regenerative power of Nature manifested in the changing seasons.

Trouble is, the protagonists this time are not rural deities, nor are they prehistoric hominids with violently libidinous tendencies. Rather, Persephone’s story outfits her for dual roles in management of the universe. Daughter of Demeter, goddess of agriculture, growth, and nourishment, she is linked with the springtime rebirth of flowers and grain, as is her future husband Triptolemus, who tills the soil. In the traditional version of the story, Persephone is abducted by Pluto, god of the underworld, who forces her to live with him in Hades, the shadows of which she illuminates by her presence—whenever she’s not upstairs helping out Demeter and Triptolemus, that is.

André Gide’s poetic adaptation for Stravinsky modernizes and humanizes Persephone. In Gide’s retelling, she plucks a “deep black flower,” whose scent induces her to take pity on the inhabitants of the underworld. Thus she chooses (!) to dwell with them as their queen but nevertheless yearns—especially after biting into a pomegranate—for those she knew in her previous life, and so she arranges to usher in springtime above ground every year.

Does all this sound rather precious? Are you wondering how Stravinsky and Gide came up with a theatrically satisfying narrative? Well, they quarreled. The hybrid work they produced—a ballet-cum-oratorio with monologues—met with an uncertain reception from its first audiences; thus a major work by a major composer remains relatively unfamiliar. Yet it occupies a special place in the hearts of connoisseurs: The Guardian’s Andrew Clements termed it “one of the most radiant and lyrically beautiful scores . . . in 20th-century music.” Conductors like Ludovic Morlot, Andrew Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Esa-Pekka Salonen have recently championed it, so it is gratifying to see that Pentatone has captured one of Salonen’s performances. The sound is superb; you can click on the label link in the previous sentence and hear brief excerpts from each movement. You’ll get a much better sense from extended passages, though. Here are three.

As the work begins, Demeter has entrusted Persephone to the care of the Nymphs, who celebrate “the flowers and birds, the tender embrace of the stream.” “Stay with us,” they say, “and share in our joy; today is the world’s first morning.”

After Persephone becomes sensitive to the Shades, she sets out to console them with her presence (“Ô peuple douloureux . . . Vers toi j’irae”). Stravinsky’s language here—presumably a dance sequence—is dominated by neoclassical echoes of Bach and others, becoming distilled in a florid oboe line and punctuating bass:

Persephone languishes in the underworld, finding her powers there limited. She rejects Pluto’s gifts; instead of precious gems, she would rather be given something alive, like “the meadows’ most fragile flower.” The tenor soloist (who narrates throughout) tells us that clever Mercury brings her a pomegranate, the taste of which compels her to return to earth. “Where am I?” she asks, “The fruit has revived in me the taste for the land I lost.” (This is not the role the pomegranate originally played—click here for the classic story.)

Perhaps these excerpts will suggest the riches that lie within. Although Perséphone models Apollonian composure and balance, it also offers an enchanting array of musical events and a story grounded in modern psychological insight.

In Classicists Part Two, we’ll explore concertos and symphonies from Prokofiev, Watkins, Mozart and more, continuing our look at just how creatively the classical traditions could be reshaped.

Britain still had a few more months of World War I to endure when Margaret Marian Turner was born in Slough, England in 1918. By the time World War II came around, she was a skilled enough jazz pianist – she’d obsessed over Fats Waller and Count Basie in her teens – to join the USO. While touring for the troops, she met her husband, Chicago cornetist Jimmy McPartland, at an after-show jam session in Belgium.

Still, there was nothing remotely likely about her becoming a jazz star. But she did it. Even more than her fifty-plus recordings, her importance to other musicians can be measured by the nine honorary doctorates and many awards she received over the decades.

Her playing? Elegant, yet courageous. Her charm, intellect, and curiosity are as obvious in her music-making as they are in her personality. Jazz fans got to know her well, thanks to the National Public Radio show Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, which she hosted from 1978-2011. She died in 2013.

Please enjoy the beauty, bravery, and brains of these tracks by Marian McPartland.

1. “Paper Moon”

While American audiences obsessed over four mop-topped Liverpudlians called the Beatles, some British rockers were becoming equally fascinated by American blues music. They studied it, learned to play it, and put a distinctive British stamp on it. Then they sold it back to America on pressed vinyl. The three members of Cream were among those who mastered this trans-Atlantic transaction.

Guitar royalty Eric Clapton had just quit The Yardbirds the year before Cream was formed because he wanted to play more blues. First Clapton made a quick stop as a member of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. But by the end of 1966 he was ready to put together his own band.

He’d recently met drummer Ginger Baker, who was at the time playing blues-inspired tunes with the Graham Bond Organisation and looking for an exit. Baker brought bassist Jack Bruce into the mix – at Clapton’s insistence, even though Baker and Bruce were famous for their quarreling — and Cream was born.

Music executive Robert Stigwood, Cream’s manager, was just setting up an independent record label. He made Cream’s debut, Fresh Cream, the company’s first project. (Nearly its last project, too. Reaction released only three full-length albums: two by Cream and one by The Who.)

True to the band’s mission, the record included some blues covers in addition to original songs by Bruce and Baker. “Four Until Late,” Clapton’s only vocal lead on the album, is by blues great Robert Johnson. Bruce’s ambling bass line and harmonica riffs give this cut an irresistible motion, in spite of Clapton’s rather noncommital singing. Dig that mouth-harp solo at 1:13.

Fresh Cream was released in the U.S. and fared pretty well. But the second album, Disraeli Gears (1967) really solidified Cream’s name in America. It hit No. 4 on the U.S. charts. Its singles, “Sunshine of Your Love” and “Strange Brew,” are still standards of classic rock.

But this album is chock-full of great stuff. Don’t forget “SWLABR” by Jack Bruce and poet/singer Pete Brown. The title apparently stands for “She Walks [or maybe Was] Like a Bearded Rainbow.” Psychedelia, anyone? Although Bruce wrote the music, it’s arguably Clapton’s aching ax-playing that takes this track to another level.

With Reaction Records defunct, the band signed with Polydor for their third album, Wheels of Fire (1968). It was a smash. This became the first double album ever to go platinum. It also hit No. 1 on U.S. album charts.

Wheels of Fire is actually two albums released as a set (they were also available as two single records in some markets): one recorded in the studio and one live, with tracks from San Francisco venues The Fillmore and Winterland.

Side 2 of the studio disc started with “Pressed Rat and Warthog,” one of two collaborations between Baker and jazz pianist Mike Taylor for the album. British literary critic Peter Stothard once described this song as “part Wind in the Willows, part dirty Scottish canal life.” It’s a ballad, in the folk sense of story-song. But instead of singing, Baker speaks the bizarre tale of two unfortunate merchant animals as if to children around a campfire. Producer Felix Pappalardi provides the mournful muted trumpet.

In their short time together, Cream existed largely as a jam band, and their performances were legendary. And while they did release some live material officially, bootlegs were rampant.

Dazed and Cream is, by many accounts, the best-produced of the illicit live captures. As one mega-fan put it on his Clapton-devoted website, “The jams are simply beyond human description.” Some of the tracks were recorded at the Detroit Grande Ballroom in 1967, and some at Winterland in 1968.

From the first venue is “Toad,” an instrumental previously released in studio version on Fresh Cream. In fact, it goes back farther than that. Baker had originally called it “Camels and Elephants” when he played it with the Graham Bond Organisation. It was unheard-of at the time for a drummer to solo during a rock song.

There’s a wildness about live “Toad” that’s missing from studio “Toad.” And it’s not just the distortion in the band’s sound equipment and/or the bootlegger’s recording equipment. The tempo is a hair slower than it was on Fresh Cream, encouraging the musicians – especially Clapton – to express themselves more freely, bending the notes and rhythms as they feel them.

By 1969 it was clear to all three players that Cream had run its course. Baker and Bruce were forever at odds, and Clapton felt like the individual members did more showing off than true group playing. So they planned their farewell album, aptly named Goodbye. It had three live tracks and three from studio.

“What a Bringdown” is by Baker, but the vocals are shared by Bruce and Clapton. One of the best things about this cut is the meter in the instrumental sections, alternating 6/8 and 2/4 (count eighth notes: 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2), right out of Afro-Cuban music. When the verse starts, the meter changes to a steady 3/4. No surprise that the drummer wrote this thing.

Although Clapton and Baker played together briefly in the band Blind Faith, the only other time all three musicians performed as a trio was at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. They did three songs that night.

Until 2005, that is. In what is perhaps the most straightforward title in rock history, Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005 was a recording of exactly what its name describes. (You can also watch it on DVD.)

Some critics complained that their playing wasn’t as free and jamming as on earlier live recordings. Gee, really? The fact that they hadn’t worked together seriously in 35 years had an effect? Not to mention their ages and the intense expectations of fans longing to recapture their own 1960s youth. There’s a time to complain and there’s a time to be thankful for the miracle of one more chance to hear great artists. Jack Bruce died in 2014, so there are no more chances.

It’s only fitting to end with some blues. This is Cream’s 2005 performance of the Muddy Waters song “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” which they first did on their debut album in 1966. That opening duet between harmonica and guitar makes me glad the Brits fell in love with the blues.

In the dark, dim past, on a dark and stormy night, Bill Bottrell would rant to anyone who would listen (usually just me) about Mix A and Mix B. As I despair of ever getting him to write about it, I’ll now take it on.

There are all kinds of ways of expressing what the idea is supposed to be about, but for want of a better phrase, it’s about What Went Wrong With Music. This is something that must cross everyone’s mind from time to time: What Went Wrong With Music.

Here’s Bill’s theory — which I find kind of inarguable: Mix A represents the musicians in charge; Mix B represents the engineers in charge.

Think about what that means for a few minutes: in the days of few (or fewer) tracks, we first began with capturing music — think Meet the Beatles, or some of the old RCA Living Stereo recordings. As the musicians got more used to the process, and they became more involved in it, collaboration between the two respective teams began, culminating in works like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, or even Tubular Bells, for that matter.

I think about my first experiences in a studio: my band and engineer Doug Sclar were equal partners in shaping our work — Doug effectively functioning as a non-playing musician. Although now I think we kinda sucked, we were certainly ambitious — all of us, Doug included. And rather than giving us orders, he was, in addition to capturing our sounds, performing what we might call “cat-herding”. This strikes me as an ideal: everyone’s opinion is given equal weight.

Certainly, George Martin never gave the Fabs instructions. He would offer suggestions, they might take them, and gradually a record would emerge.

But: as tracks became more plentiful, and options increased, the power began to shift to the other side of the glass. And this here is the crux of the matter, of Mix A vs. Mix B: power. By the late ’70s, we (the players) were taking our cue from the engineers. By the time I moved into Hollywood, many musicians were jumping through hoops of their own to meet engineers exacting demands. At one group of sessions I was involved in, players were clapping their hands in an attempt to cover the sound of a metronome, trying to clap in such flawless time — metronomic time — that the two sounds became one. With the players, the music, so subjugated, is it any surprise that punk music rose up in the midst of it?

Bill himself started as a player, built his own makeshift studio in a warehouse in which he had a job, worked his way up to being house engineer at a small Hollywood place called California Recording (home of the Wah-Wah pedal), and eventually became Chief Engineer at Soundcastle Recording in Silver Lake, L.A. And then the Jacksons came calling, and Jeff Lynne, and…

By the time we met, he was about to open Toad Hall, his private studio in Pasadena. And it was in Toad Hall that he started to put his beliefs into practice: Mix A, the restoration of power to artists.

When you think like this, suddenly most pop music becomes an example of one way of thinking or the other.