Age is just a number: David Crosby's For Free

If you ever get into one of those pub discussions with someone with trenchant views on venerated musicians still making records, chances are that at some point they’ll declare that old farts should simply step aside and let the next generation have a go. This assumes that there is a threshold at which retirement should be mandated. But at what age would you set that? 50? 60? 65? 70? 

It’s somewhat preposterous that creativity has any age limit - upper or lower. The case for older musicians being gently eased into their dotage by taking away the keys to the recording studio does, occasionally, get strengthened by someone releasing an utter stinker. I won’t name names. Given, though, that what we term ‘pop’ music has been with us since the mid-1950s, and not everyone has been killed off by old age, drugs, drink or other forms of misadventure, there are plenty of acts from the classic rock and pop age still plying their trade admirably.

The Rolling Stones, for example (Mick Jagger turns a respectable 78 next week and can still get away with skinny jeans), and the 94-year-old Tony Bennett; Paul McCartney, also 78, put in a creditable effort with his McCartney III, late last year, while Willie Nelson, 87, has released 14 albums alone in the last 11 years. I’m no great fan of Bob Dylan, for that matter, but last year’s Rough And Rowdy Ways, his 39th studio album, was a tour de force.

So, a month shy of turning 80, David Crosby delivers For Free, and it is wonderful, in all dimensions. Being the fifth solo album since 2014’s well received Croz, you could say that it represents a continuing purple patch. With his 2017 album, Sky Trails, Crosby said there was a lot still to come: “There was a lot of pent-up creative juice,” he said of the writing renaissance after Crosby, Stills and Nash finally wound itself up. “It’s as if I’d been in a dark room and someone turned on the lights”. In 2021, the lights are well and truly still firmly on. 

The first thing that strikes you about For Free is how fresh it sounds, not the least of which Crosby’s ageless voice. If you had no idea that he’d been a pioneer of the hippy folk-rock movement and stalwart of the Laurel Canyon scene more than 50 years ago with The Byrds and then CSN (oh and, go on, CSN&Y), you’d never guess that the principal voice you hear on this album is about to enter its ninth decade. This is an even more remarkable achievement when you consider Crosby’s historic dalliances with the law, substances various, heart attacks, a liver transplant (widely believed to have been paid for by Phil Collins) and sundry other medical contretemps over the years. But that voice, once part of so many classic harmonies, is as sweet sounding as ever. To be honest, I could have enjoyed For Free if it was just a-capella recordings.

Part of the freshness comes from the co-production by James Raymond, the son Crosby put up for adoption in 1962, and with whom became reconciled in the late 1990s, leading to musical collaborations ever since. “Can you imagine what it’s like to connect with your son and find out that he’s incredibly talented - a great composer, a great poet, and a really fine songwriter and musician all around?” Crosby says. “We’re such good friends and we work so well together, and we’ll each go to any length to create the highest-quality songs we can.” 

In that regard, more than any other, For Free delivers comprehensively. It closes with the bittersweet I Won’t Stay For Long, a poignant piece written entirely by Raymond but clearly about his father’s advancing years. “I’m standing on the porch,” it establishes. “Like it’s the edge of a cliff. Beyond the grass and gravel lies a certain abyss.” It sounds mawkish but, conversely offers a hand of hope for the future. It’s a satisfying conclusion to an album that commences in equally pleasing form, with the rousing River Rise, co-written by Crosby and Raymond with Michael McDonald, setting the scene. From this listener’s perspective, it’s a resonant love letter to Crosby’s native California, McDonald’s blue-eyed harmonies injecting a little of the Golden State that he added to his work with the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan. Speaking of which, one of the album’s highlights is a track written with and featuring Donald Fagen, Rodriguez For A Night, which manages to out-Dan the Dan with its combination of groove and a sophisticated lyric that, as per, only Fagen might get about a mythical former hell raiser.

That gives an indication of the topics elsewhere on the album. Not fantasy figures, as such, but a reflection of life’s challenges and its opportunities. There are, too, nods to the community - physical and spiritual - that Crosby was a part of back in those sun-dappled Canyon days, from the album's cover portrait of the singer painted by Joan Baez, to the title track, a retread of a regular Crosby interpretation of a Joni Mitchell song, but one sounding as fresh as if it had been written yesterday.

“It’s not how much time you’ve got because we really don’t know,” Crosby recently told US radio legend Howard Stern. “It’s what you do with the time that you have. I’m trying to really spend it well. I’m very grateful for each day that I get and I try to do it making music because I think the world needs music.” Sentiment that could easily have been expressed at the turn of the ’70s, but given where the world is today, as valid as ever. 

There is a sense, however, that Crosby is winding up with For Free. Its tracks, its lyrics - while not mournful, far from it - do suggest an octogenarian putting things in order, and his comments to Stern appear to back that up. But if he and Raymond are capable of producing more like this, the notion that age is just a number will continue to be served. Let’s not tempt fate, though. Let’s enjoy this delightful record for what it is.

Sunset boulevard - Paul Weller’s West Coast album

You know, it's actually become boring to talk about Paul Weller’s rich vein of form. Because, for a purple patch, it's been going on a mighty long time. His 15th solo studio album, On Sunset, continues an output that has averaged an album every two or three years since his self-titled solo debut, incredibly, 28 years ago. It's a rate that puts most of his contemporaries - even an Elvis Costello - to shame. Much, I suspect, has to do with the restless spirit that has always charged Weller’s creativity, not just in having something to say, but also a yearning to try something new each time, dipping a quill into the different shades of ink from which the now 62-year-old has drawn his influences.

On Sunset marks another change of course, veering from the reflective, folky vibe of 2018's pastoral True Meanings, to a decidedly sunny, open-topped outing. As the title might allude, it’s an excursion into the blue skies and free'n'easy living of 1970s Los Angeles: effortlessly cool, intriguing by turns, melodically pleasing and incongruously soulful for an album crafted in deepest Surrey (Weller’s work-from-home location, Black Barn Studios in the village of Ripley - Eric Clapton's birthplace).

“Everybody likes a good tune, regardless how it’s dressed up,” Weller told GQ’s Dylan Jones recently. “Luckily, melody comes relatively easy to me – it’s a very natural part of the writing process. You’re often trying to find new ways of saying the same thing, but I can always rely on melody to see me through.” And thus it proves, with 10 tracks (15 if you buy the ‘deluxe edition’) of joyous songcraft, most making authentic nods to the '70s soul and R&B influences that, like the more orthodox mod traces of The Who and Small Faces, have fed Weller’s musical subconscious.

Perhaps, most surprising, is the unabashed West Coast association. The likes of Down In A Tube Station At Midnight and Stanley Road may have given the wrong impression of a narrow, Anglo-centric scope, but a visit last year to his son in Los Angeles brought about a reawakening to the City of Angels. “I stayed at this funny little hotel just off the Strip [Sunset Boulevard],” Weller told Jones, “and while I’ve been to LA a lot, I hadn’t spent any time on the Strip for years and so it all came rushing back – the Sunset Marquis, the Rainbow... I couldn’t believe how quickly everything had gone. I love the West Coast: not the psychedelic Grateful Dead but The Beach Boys, especially the later period. Be warned, though, this isn’t my West Coast record.” That’s as maybe, but from the cover art to the title, and from the title track’s strings, lusciously arranged by Game Of Thrones composer Hannah Peel (and with an ebbing seashore sound effect in the outro), to it’s references to palm trees, the warm breeze and drinks “in the Whiskey” [A-Go-Go] (with an unashamed touch of George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord in the intro), it’s as West Coast as Steely Dan’s Hey Nineteen. And that’s no bad thing.

It might be corny to suggest, but the warmth I know, love and, frankly, miss about California - the endless days of sultry sunshine and freshening winds blowing off the Pacific - is present throughout this record. Written and recorded before the lockdown, it nevertheless exudes freedom. The kind of freedom you get from cruising through the Santa Monica Mountains in a vintage '70s Pontiac convertible, as Weller appears to be doing in the album’s artwork. It’s there in the woozy funk of the album’s seven-minute opener Mirror Ball, with its nods to the Isleys' Summer Breeze. It’s there in the wistful thoughts of Old Father Tyme, which presciently - pre-COVID - makes the statement: “In this time of confusion, hang on to what is real. Hail the love around us, see how deep it feels.”

The contemplative frame of mind that Weller has attached to his work of late is patently age related. Though not obvious, the death of his father John - who’d managed his son’s career from the beginning (instilling in him the relentless work ethic) - might still bear presence. Certainly he is not afraid of his past, both in re-signing to Polydor, the label Weller Sr. helped sign The Jam to in 1977, but also in drawing on the organ talents of former fellow Style Councillor Mick Talbot, who appears on Baptiste and Village. Earth Beat, while we’re at it, swings like the Council’s Speak Like A Child, with the giddiness of pristine ’80s pop wrapped in modern sonics. Nor is he afraid of casting out widely into his vast pool of historic reference, calling on Slade’s Jim Lea to provide a rakish violin to Equanimity, one of several Beatley tracks which include the acoustic guitar-driven melancholic beauty, Rockets (featuring some pristine bass work by Andy Crofts).

Picture: Lee Cogswell

Looking back over the last fourteen Weller solo albums, it’s hard to truly find any which waste your time. In fact, looking at the bigger picture, most conform to an unbelievably high standard. He’ll probably hate this, but I don’t think Paul Weller ever gets enough credit. Some, lazily, still think of him as the angry young man, of Red Wedge, of Town Called Malice or ‘A’ Bomb In Wardour Street. Others go to the Paris Match posing of The Style Council. All of which were a long Weller time ago. “You’ve got to keep your tools sharp,” he told GQ. “The world is full of people who made great records and then tailed off, but maybe I care more now because I wasn’t as good as they were when I started. With me it’s probably worked in reverse, but there are still some great performers who are doing great work. The things Robert Plant has been doing have been really, really good; I’ve seen Macca and The Stones play live recently and both were absolutely brilliant.”

Frankly, he should be held in the same reverence. It might be tempting to think that On Sunset points to a career winding down, but with Album 16 already on the sketch pad, Paul Weller is showing no signs of his 28-year purple patch ending any time soon. Even if, for me, On Sunset is an absolute career high. Maybe, even his best to date.

I remember when this was all Fields

It seems so long ago that I can’t actually remember exactly when it was. But somewhere in the second half of last year I was driving back from my girlfriend’s one Monday morning, listening to Mary Anne Hobbs’ BBC 6 Music show, when I thought I'd stumbled across a new single from Talking Heads, or at least David Byrne. The slightly awkward white funk was there, the somewhat strangulated vocal too, and most of all, an absolutely compelling rhythm. Rarely have I made note of the release date of a parent album on the basis of one single track, and so far ahead of time, but Hobbs’ declaration that Field Music’s Only In A Man’s World would be out on a full album in early 2020 was enough to chalk it up in anticipation.

So, here in the present, the album Making A New World has arrived, and it is a genuine delight, heard from a certain perspective. There’s a concept behind it, too, but I’ll come on to that later. My starting point, however, is as always the music: here the brothers Brewis have tapped into a veritable suitcase of influences, a subtle evolution of their last fifteen years making music with a discernibly old head on it. Whether the influences I’m about to come on to were conscious in the Brewis brothers’ thinking is not clear, but from the beginning of Making A New World there are some exceedingly comforting (to these ears at least) nods to the late '70s and early '80s. The aforementioned Only In A Man’s World is one of two songs which could have been companion tracks to the Heads’ Once In A Lifetime. Talking Heads were often regarded by sniffy critics as one of those ‘clever-clever’ bands, professional smartarses who produced songs with complex themes, complex structures, or complex instrumentation. Bands like Steely Dan, Supertramp, Genesis (in the post-Gabriel, pre-MTV days) and XTC, bands that wouldn’t fit any one categorisation - neither pop nor rock, New Wave, prog or anything else, even if the music press tried to pin labels on them. Well, guess what? There’s no shame in that. Which is why, lazily, I’ll end up resorting to comparisons when it comes to Field Music’s latest effort.

Making A New World is, according to the band themselves, “pretty much a concept album about the aftermath of the First World War”, which sounds ominously like another Roger Waters exorcism of the father he lost to German guns at Anzio but in fact, lyrically, the record is about the social impact of The Great War. Indeed, the album wasn’t meant to be an album at all, but instrumental elements of an Imperial War Museum exhibition about the conflict. That original staging plays a key role in the sequencing of Making A New World which, in the traditions of prog rock’s great concept albums, is a 19-song continuous cycle of tracks of varying lengths (from one coming in at just 41 seconds to the longest at just over four minutes), with a varying topography of time signatures driving the entire 42-minute album through a variety of tempos and timbres. This concept is not, however, what warms me to it, as clever a narrative as it offers up. No, it’s the musical return to the music I was listening to as I entered teenage that makes Making A New World so enjoyable. While it may be set in 1919, the musical tonality is set in 1979. From the outset, dark stabs of Yamaha CP80 piano recall Talk Talk, or Peter Gabriel’s glorious third album, while the vocals on Coffee Or Wine, Best Kept Garden and Between Nations immediately resonate 10cc (a band, by the way, deserving of far greater reflection - and, as an aside, I’m excited to hear that Liam Newton’s long-out of print book, 10cc: The Worst Band In The World, is getting a re-release next month). XTC’s Sgt. Rock appears, in spirit, on Nikon Pt.2, a 55-second coda to Nikon Pt.1, a brace of tracks which reflect on what happened to those who came back from the war in France. In fact, everywhere there are nods and ticks of familiarity. Whether by accident or by design, I don’t care, as the entire piece is just so satisfying.

Of course, if you naturally loathe concept albums, or the era of music I’ve referred to and the bands therein, then Making A New World, is not for you. But since I was schooled in exactly that music, this album didn’t just serve up a plate of piping hot comfort food nostalgia, but restored my faith that bands do still exist who can produce instrumentally rich albums that warrant a complete listen from start to finish, and can maintain the listener’s interest no matter what tangents it might indulge itself in.

Cruise Control

I’ll be honest, a Caribbean cruise had not really been on my ‘Things To Do Before You’re 50’ list. But on the basis of ‘why not?’ I said, “why not?”, and now find myself at the aft end of Deck 14 (or the "14th floor", as I like to call it) of a ship measuring almost a quarter of a mile long and towering 236ft above the water, amongst 6,000 other passengers and 12,000 plants and 56 living, breathing trees, watching the sea, the occasional tropical island and, hopefully, a few whales and dolphins float past.

With the approach of my 50th year on this planet, the opportunity to see a new part of it while travelling at a sedate 21 knots an hour seemed like a perfect convergence. Admittedly, though, the idea of being on a boat with more than 8,000 people, crew included, is not my normal idea of a holiday: I’m someone who gets people-phobic in a hotel with more than one lift, and I would not, normally, go to a resort offering all-you-can eat dining and a demographic that could realistically enable the staging of mobility scooter races around the half-mile running track on Deck 5, with a grid size not far off the 22 vehicles that start a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

This might sound snobbish, but I assure you it is not. I just - normally - prefer more holidays which don't require dressing up and in which I have the freedom to explore places in my own time or simply do nothing, without having to queue to sit down for dinner at a set time because of a system. So, to be at sea for seven days amongst a population similar in size to that of a small town is certainly out of my comfort zone. And to be on an itinerary whereby whole days elapse without the scenery changing much from, simply, blue ocean seems counter-intuitive. But that should be exactly what I’m doing, 13 days before I turn 50: a new experience, a new vista.

The vast Oasis Of The Seas towers above Port Canaveral
© Simon Poulter 2017

Cruising is, today, far from some Hemingway-esque exercise in rugged adventure it may have once been seen to be. Nor is it anything like Carry On Cruising or The Love Boat, my two sole reference points (carefully removing Titanic from that frame) - a never-ending programme of mass keep-fit sessions and deck quoits, with occasional bouts of projectile vomiting. Cruise ships today come with celeb-chef restaurants, sky-diving simulation machines, casinos and designer brand boutiques. Mine - Royal Caribbean’s vast Oasis Of The Seas - has an ice-skating rink, it's own English pub, a production of Cats, two rock-climbing walls, and more dining options than I actually know what to do with. Cruising is also no longer the preserve of the elderly (though the age group on this boat is definitely skewed somewhere considerably north of my own...). Indeed, the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association claims that cruisers are getting younger, with Millennials and Generation X-age passengers choosing cruise holidays over land-based breaks. Indeed these two groups, according to the FCCA, like cruising as a means of ‘sampling’ destinations for later and longer trips. 

© Simon Poulter 2017

That said, it's hard - yet - to get a full idea of who is on this boat, such is the enormity of its human cargo. Boarding was relatively - and reassuringly - quick, through the logistics must be astonishing: if you know how chaotic boarding a Boeing 747 can be, imagine more than ten times that number pitching up at Port Canaveral in Florida, in scenes resembling the Ellis Island sequence in The Godfather Part II. Credit, though, to Royal Caribbean: it all works. 

Once on board it takes time for the newbie to get acclimatised. For a start, there’s the sheer scale of the boat. Oasis Of The Seas was, when launched in 2009, the largest cruise vessel in the world, and even with bigger ships coming into use, it still beggars belief. I could probably spend my entire week exploring it and still not cover everything. And that’s the point: these cruise ships are an exercise in over-consumption, and you pay the privilege for it.

The cruise industry is a big, $40 billion-per-year business. The major cruise lines will invest almost $5 billion this year alone in new ships and services, and their 23 million passengers will spend more than $3 billion at the various destinations the ships call into. The US accounts for roughly half those passengers, and with a predominantly American clientele on board this ship, it’s easy to see how. Not for nothing is the baseball cap the predominant headgear, and the capped-sleeve T-shirt very much in evidence. Cruising draws a loyal crowd: the average passenger on one of these big US-based ships will have taken more than five cruises as an adult prior to the current trip, and that’s certainly borne out by the people I’m travelling with on this seven-day voyage around the Caribbean, which will take me to Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico before returning to Florida. And that, in itself, is a statement I couldn’t imagine making before: a "voyage". 

Ever since humankind first discovered that a felled tree could float, we've been exploring these oceans, crossing them, migrating via them, discovering new countries, subjugating their indigenous incumbents, trading with them, exploiting their resources and more. So I can hardly claim, at the end of October 2017, to be Columbus. But, after 24 hours on board and almost 24 hours at sea on the first leg of the trip, with nothing but endless ocean outside of my cabin, and hot-and-cold-running buffet seemingly available around the clock on the interior of this floating town, I’m starting to see the attraction. 

Yes, you can indulge in a daily curriculum that includes Martini lessons, karaoke, jazz guitar instruction, “fun” activities around the pool and a machine dispensing Coca-Cola simply by holding up a cup with an embedded chip in it; or you can lie on a sun lounger surrounded by others exposing their equally pale, flabby flesh to the sky, just dozing to the rhythm of a ship at sea, occasionally dropping anchor to indulge in beach life and local craft stalls for a few hours before returning to the onboard buffet and casino. And despite the size of this ship, with its battalions of 'seniors' moving at a sluggish pace in search of food at 5pm, or the gaudiness and volume of the entertainment options, there is also a peace and calm to be found, that I'm enjoying from my balcony overlooking water of an almost unreal blue. The only sound being the gentle chug of engines and water washing against the hull. In fact, it really is most relaxing.

© Simon Poulter 2017

Tomorrow we stop spend a few hours in Haiti, a country I know principally for its natural disasters, its murderous father-and-son dictators ‘Papa Doc’ and ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, and being the back story of Steely Dan’s Haitian Divorce. I have a lot to learn. Welcome to the new order.