Tag: Me and Bobby McGee

Max Picks …songs from 1971

1971

This year may be the best ever for albums. You had Who’s Next (My number one), Led Zeppelin IV, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin On, and so much more.

We will start off with what I think is the greatest rock song ever played in a concert environment. I’ve seen The Who play Won’t Get Fooled Again twice and of all the concerts I’ve gone to… I’ve never heard anything this powerful live.

Roger Daltrey’s Scream is considered one of the best on any rock song. It was quite convincing…so convincing that the rest of the band, lunching nearby, thought Daltrey was brawling with the engineer.

Now let’s visit Led Zeppelin and they released IV or Zoso a few weeks after The Who released Who’s Next. Stairway To Heaven…this song is considered by some as the best song in rock history. The song was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

Marvin Gaye released this great song and it came off the album of the same name. A powerful song from a powerful performer. The song was written by Al Cleveland, Renaldo Benson, and Marvin Gaye.

The Moody Blues released the album Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and this song was on it. It may be my favorite song by them. Story In Your Eyes.

Great melody in this song. I bought the album Every Good Boy Deserves Favour just because of this song and I ended up liking the album a lot. The song peaked at #23 on the Billboard 100 in 1971. The song was written by Justin Hayward.

This is almost a perfect song…by the one and only Janis Joplin. There are few artists who give everything they have all the time. Bruce Springsteen is one…Janis was one. On film it comes through…she gives everything she has and more. It was written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster.

She would die on October 4, 1970. Her nickname was Pearl and that was the name of her last album. She left $2,500 for her wake…. 200 guests were invited with invitations that read…”Drinks are on Pearl”…

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Janis Joplin – Half Moon

I just read a Joplin book and anyone who follows me knows what that means…a few Janis Joplin posts are coming.

She wasn’t here to be conventional or a cookie-cutter person. She was here to blaze a path and leave her mark…and she did just that.

I owned the album Pearl a long time ago and loved it. Through the years I also got her greatest hits and was wrapped up in those songs. I had forgotten about this funky song…and I use funky in the best way. It reaffirmed what a singer should be about to me…giving 100 percent of yourself every time out there.

On her last album, she was produced by Paul Rothchild who wanted Janis to use less of her brash voice to give more.  He also worked on her dynamics which worked perfectly with this album and song. She was working with her 3rd band in two years…and this one was the best one no doubt. I liked Big Brother but she HAD to scream to get over those loud guitars. She was taking more of an R&B/soul/funk/blues/rock approach unlike her strictly rock/blues approach with Big Brother. She had more nuances on this album and her voice never sounded better.

Half Moon was written by John Hall and his first wife, the former Johanna Schier. It was picked as the B-side to Me and Bobby McGee. At the time, John was a struggling musician and Johanna was a writer for The Village Voice. Johanna was assigned an interview with Joplin, who suggested the couple write a song for her. Joplin wanted Johanna to write a song about how she was feeling about a man she met in Rio Janeiro and was planning to marry in the future after he finished what he was doing.

It was the first song they wrote together, and a huge break for the couple, who were able to buy a house and a sailboat with the royalties. John Hall got a lot of credibility in the rock realm from co-writing it, and his career took off. A few years later, he formed the group Orleans, which had hits with two songs he wrote: “Still The One” and “Dance With Me.”

I never realized what it meant when I heard people say…”the artist always gives everything of themselves” until I saw clips of Joplin, Springsteen, and Hendrix. They go out on a limb on stage and risk a train wreck to give you that raw excitement. In today’s world of pre-packaged high-priced Las Vegas style shows…you get a slick show with dancers (I never understood that) without a bit of soul. Sure…the live acts sound exactly like their records and that can be tedious after a while. Some love that…and more power to them but I like the emotional roller coaster journey you take with an artist like Joplin…and she gives you that feeling on studio albums also.

The amazing thing about Pearl is that all of the vocals were called “scratch” takes…meant to be redone later on. She was planning to replace all of her vocals…she went all out anyway so I don’t see how she could have improved on them. Funny thing about the album…the original producer was no other than Todd Rundgren…Janis got rid of him right off the bat because she could not relate to him. Paul Rothchild (Door’s producer) took over and just fell for Janis’s voice and Janis.

I included a live version she did a few months before her death on the Dick Cavett show. When she grabs that mic…there is no doubt who is in charge. There is no screaming in this…just pure soul/blues singing…I love the high notes and dynamics…and she just plain kicked ass on this song.

Pearl peaked at #1 on the Billboard Album Charts, #1 in Canada, and #20 in the UK in 1971.

John Hall:  “It was numerological and astrological in nature. And it also had an alliterative repetition that was kind of captivating. It wasn’t rhyming, exactly, but it was an internal rhyme, perhaps you could say. It’s a device that poets use and that songwriters use to not just have the end of lines rhyme or the end of verses rhyme, but to have sort of a foreshadowing of that and words inside each line.” 

Half Moon

Half moon, night time sky
Seven stars, heaven’s eyes
Seven songs on seven seas
Just to bring all your sweet love home to me

Hey, you fill me like the mountains
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
You fill me like the sea, Lord
Not coming past but still at last
Your love brings life to me
Your love brings life to me, hey

Rings of cloud and arms aflame
Wings rise up to call your name
Sun rolls high, Lord, it burns the ground
Just to tell about the first good man I found

Yeah, you fill me like the mountains
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
You fill me like the sea, Lord
Not coming past but still at last
Your love brings life to me
Your love brings life to me
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh yeah

Half moon on night time sky
Seven stars, heaven’s eyes
Seven songs on seven seas
Just to bring all your sweet love home to me

Hey baby, you fill me like the mountains
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
You fill me like the sea, Lord
Not coming past honey still at last
Lord, you fill me like the mountains
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
You fill me like the sea, Lord
Not coming past but still at last

Hey, you fill me like the mountains
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
You fill me like the sea, oh Lord
You’re not coming past, honey, still at last
Your love brings life to me
Your love brings life to me
Your love, la la la la la, la

Won’t you bring life to me
I said you’re gonna ride around
When I’m on a little home babe
Bring it on home, you bring it on home
Bring it on home, bring it on home
I said your love brings life to me, yeah

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