Eminence Front: 5 Songs by 1960s Artists Who Managed to Sound Great in the 1980s
This week's songs are from Tina Turner, Paul Simon, Steve Winwood, the Kinks, and Joe Walsh
I watched Yacht Rock: The Documentary a while back, which sets aside the silliness of the genre to tell the more human stories of the primary drivers of it: Michael McDonald, Toto, Kenny Loggins, and for some reason Christopher Cross, who is really just soft rock. Many of these artists were studio creatures on top of state-of-the-art recording techniques and were making or playing on a staggering number of contemporary pop hits in the late 70s and early 80s. To hear these musicians tell it, the introduction of MTV all but killed their careers because they lacked a real image. MTV meant you couldn’t be a schlubby guy in a tweed jacket singing behind a piano anymore. You needed to look cool, be out front. Maybe dance a little. These average joes were blindsided by the new demands of the game.
“Artists run out of hits. The zeitgeist moves on without you. The fact is, Top 40 careers have a natural end. They always do.” - Rob Tannenbaum
But consider that first wave of post-Beatles artists dealing not only with the same cultural shift the Yacht Rock bands all point the finger at, but also all of the new technology. As the 1980s rolled around these folks were mid-career, trying to stay in relevant in a rapidly shifting landscape. The last thing they should have put in front of them is a synthesizer or a drum machine.
Instead of full band doing single takes, there are ways to smooth over a late entry, edit out the extra string pluck. Suddenly an endless number of tracks were available, new layering techniques, gated drums, and more label suits in their ear telling them “it’s what the kids are into” or how you want to make sure the sound matches whatever else is on the radio. I don’t begrudge any of them for sucking in the 1980s. Watch anyone over 50 try to work a smart TV and you’ll have sense of what it must have been like for Bob, Neil, Paul, Iggy, Lou, Van, or any other living legend walking into a studio in the 80s. Incorporating all of this new technology into their process totally shifted their sound, and almost never for the better.
There are some exceptions of course. Here are 5 songs from 1960s artists who managed to sound good in the 1980s.
Mike Wallace: “Do you feel like you deserve all this?”
Tina Turner: “I deserve more.”
Interview, 60 Minutes (1997)
Tina Turner - “Ask Me How I Feel”
The Queen of Rock & Roll hit an early career high with music and romantic partner Ike Turner, whose “Rocket 88” is (unofficially) the first Rock & Roll song. She fled that relationship in the late 70s, with pocket change, a gas card, and a mountain of lawsuits from cancelled gigs. She paid the bills as a nostalgia act for close to a decade, until her second career topped her first when “What’s Love Got to Do With It” topped the pop charts in 1984. Then she followed that with “The Best,” off of Foreign Affair, which also has this banger on it, which she co-wrote with Albert Hammond (father of the Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.). Everything somehow got bigger in the 80s. So it should be no surprise that Tina’s massive voice could keep up with the scale of this anthem, driven by the flanged guitars, gated drums, synthesizers, and a chorus so big it had to be put in front of the verse.
“Most of the time it takes you quite a while before you realize you don’t know anything.” - Paul Simon
Paul Simon - “Think Too Much (b)”
Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints are touchstones of Paul Simon’s career. Like Tina Turner, his 1980s output casts a massive shadow over everything that came before it, including his one-time partner. But Hearts & Bones, the album that preceded Graceland was poorly received, and the first album in his discography to not earn any sort of sales certifications. Initially intended to be a Simon & Garfunkel release, Simon decided the songs—which revolved around his divorce from Carrie Fisher—were too personal, so he erased all of Garfunkel’s vocal tracks and released it as a solo album. It stands out in his catalogue as a very personal record; there’s a lot of songs from the first-person perspective, but he’s not telling a story, or singing as a character.
The album highlight is “Think Too Much (b).” Like Dylan’s two versions of “Forever Young,” it’s clear which version belongs on the record, and which version is a failed attempt at contrasts. Some feelings only sound good when expressed with the authentic emotion behind them. And yes, there’s a bit of a marimba that makes it sound pretty close to “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid, but it works. Weaving in elements of world music into a heart-felt melody, the song works as a creative gateway to the key ingredients of Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints.
“I was 38 or something. I’d been doing music all my life and I’d had a lot of success, so I think I really just fancied a change. I suppose it’s like – does a footballer quit when he’s ahead in the game? Or does he start to play down the lower leagues?” - Steve Winwood
Steve Winwood - “Holding On”
I’ve mentioned before a title or two from my parents’ sparse CD collection. Steve Winwood’s Roll With It was among them, which was a #1 album in 1988. It’s the first album I think of when I’m thinking about 80s music. It may have true session musicians recorded live (“The Memphis Horns” are credited), but the way it’s mixed, when I hear those horns, all I can picture is a keys player hitting the chords on a synthesizer. But it slaps. Back in the High Life, which preceded Roll With It, is no doubt the better album. It shares a similarly thinned out production, and what I think is an electric alto sax solo. But Roll With It has the bigger swings—songs that felt like vintage Blue Eyed Soul, rather than contemporary pop. You can compare songs like “Holding On” to stompers like “Keep on Running” and “Gimme Some Lovin’,” which Winwood recorded as a member of the Spencer Davis Group. The only difference is one is engineered to sound better coming out of a speaker in the ceiling of your dentist’s office.
“I’ve found that a lot of Kinks music is pretty timeless in the sense that it’s not really been in one particular age or time, but in some ways quite futuristic. It could be about the future as well as the past.” - Dave Davies
The Kinks - “Living On a Thin Line”
It doesn’t get much more 1980s for an English artist than bashing Margaret Thatcher. As the Kinks lament in “Living On a Thin Line,” “There’s no England now” and are more or less saying the same thing as Joe Strummer does in “This is England.” One of them is seeing an unrecognizable country, the other is insisting that it’s still the same place, it’s the jobs and basic level of decency that’s gone. “Living On a Thin Line” was quite famously and effectively used in one of the great, grim episodes of The Sopranos. It serves as a bookend for the entrance and departure of an otherwise innocent character that’s got nothing to do with England, but it says a lot about the erosion of morals, humanity, and the external circumstances that play a part in one’s fate…anyway, the music.
I love how the bass and guitars mirror one another and the deep synthesizer in the back of the mix creates really moody atmospherics that bolster the bitterness that charges the song. Despite that, Dave Davies lands on the side of hope:
What we couldn't do, what we wouldn't do
It's a crime, but does it matter?
Does it matter much? Does it matter much to you?
Does it ever really matter? Yes, it really, really matters
Along with the big, reverb-heavy, midi drums, it makes for a very 1980s production that reminds me of Lou Reed’s Magic & Loss. None of the trademarks of the British Invasion are there. They’re in a different territory altogether, and it belongs among the Kinks’ best work.
Larry Solters: “Joe, kids are showing up at shows with their ‘Joe Walsh for President’ banners, and it’s really starting to take off. Why do you want to do this?”
Joe Walsh: “I’m afraid I’m going to win.”
Joe Walsh - “Rosewood Bitters”
Joe Walsh wasn’t exactly first-wave Rock & Roll, but “Funk #49” is an iconic enough tune to count. Walsh is one of those Zelig-type figures of the 60s and 70s Rock scene that has more than a handful of strange-but-true stories. Like not only that he dated Stevie Nicks, but that he broke up with her fearing their drug addictions would kill at least one of them. Or that when he and John Belushi were denied entry for wearing jeans, they got black spray paint and spray painted their pants behind a club. Or taking a chainsaw to a hotel room wall to create adjoining rooms. Or him and Keith Moon blowing up toilets with condoms full of fertilizer and laundry detergent. Or for President in 1980 under the policy of “free gas for everyone,” and making “Life’s Been Good” the new national anthem. Or him deciding to get sober when he woke up on a trans-Atlantic flight with no knowledge of how he got on board. An underrated guitarist that is always mentioned in Lists of Underrated Guitarists, I always considered Walsh something of a clown. But a few years ago, I saw the light. Turns out he’s a clown with massive talent. He is an underrated guitarist, and an even more underrated songwriter (see: Barnstorm; or listen to “Life of Illusion” as an adult). He’s good with big melodies. He’s even better at picking you up on a bad day.
1985’s The Confessor is not a career high for Walsh, or any of the stellar musicians involved (Randy Newman, Waddy Watchel, Jim Keltner). Also on the album are Jeff and Mike Porcaro—members of Toto, and central figures in the previously mentioned Yacht Rock documentary. Walsh didn’t write “Rosewood Bitters,” (that would be Michael Stanley), but he kept the stuttering, confusing pace of the original within a synthesizer and smoothed out the rest into a fist-pumping triumph. You could freeze-frame a high five in a 1980s wrestling movie over these guitars. And the harmonies in the chorus are as addictive as whatever Joe and Stevie were putting up their noses. It’s got all the markings of 80s cheese, but the song rips.
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs: