Frank Sinatra – "What's New?" (1958)

What's new?

How is the world treating you?

You haven't changed a bit

I met legendary music journalist Lisa Robinson in May 2014 when she came to a Washington bookstore to speak about her new book, There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll.

Lisa, who is currently a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, has been going to concerts and writing about rock music for over 40 years.  

She got to know everyone who was anyone in the music world during that time – including the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Lou Reed, John Lennon, the Ramones, Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Eminem, and Lady GagaOn Bob Dylan: (to name just a few).

Lisa Robinson with David Bowie

I dove into There Goes Gravity on the way home from hearing Lisa speak at the bookstore.  But for some reason, I never read the book’s last chapter until this week.

That chapter is of a miscellany of anecdotes and observations from the entirety of Lisa’s career.  Here are a few excerpts:

On Bob Dylan:

He was, and still is, one of the few of his generation who had grown old but had not grown old and irrelevant.

On drummers:

[Record] producers often hate drummers.  Funnily enough, they prefer a drummer who can keep time, as opposed to someone who has the right “feel,” or had been in the band since the band was formed in college.  

Lisa Robinson LOVES “2 or 3 lines”!

On the process of “mixing” musical tracks recorded in a recording studio:

I’ve been  in studios when bands have stormed out, had fistfights, or broken up over mixes. . . . I’ve been there when some bands have listened to fifty or sixty mixes of the same song until you just want to scream that no one could possibly hear the difference.  

On the late Ian Stewart, the pianist and road manager of the Rolling Stones (whose members insisted that he be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with them):

In 1981, when the Stones played with Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge in Chicago, Ian Stewart sat in on piano.  I remember how Stu took a drink out of a bottle of whiskey, passed it around, then carefully put the top on the bottle so nothing would spill when he placed it back on the piano.  Such was his respect for the piano.

On Mick Jagger:

[A]fter having spent hours and hours interviewing Mick, when people ask me what he’s really like, it’s still hard to explain. . . . Mick can be wildly entertaining and funny and smart.  He can still light up a room.  But he’s insecure.  Wary.  He can’t ever really get away from being MICK JAGGER.

Lisa Robinson with Mick Jagger

On Led Zeppelin:

And no matter what the idiots thought about Led Zeppelin being a cheesy heavy metal band, their music was also about banjos, fiddles, blues, boogie-woogie, and the shuffle.  Music from the Smoky Mountains.  Howling’ Wolf and Muddy Waters and Chicago.  The Mississippi Delta.  Highway 61 revisited.

On modern-day concert tours:

By the time the Stones did their “Bridges to Babylon” tour in 1998, I had seen them in concert for 29 years. . . . I saw some great shows at Madison Square Garden.  But the one on January 14, 1998, was different. . . . For $500 a ticket, people could have a beer, some potato chips, and a fast meet-and-greet with Ronnie Wood.  I thought about how, in 1975, years before corporate sponsorship . . . [promoter] Bill Graham had set up hot dog carts . . . backstage at the [Stones’] New York shows.  By 1998, it was all about business. . . . The songs were great, the band still played great.  But none of it seemed to matter anymore.  With my memories, I left midway through the show.

On Frank Sinatra and what music means to her:

In February 2012, I saw [composer and record producer] Jon Brian at Capitol Records’ recording studios in Hollywood.  He was restoring Frank Sinatra’s great 1950s Capitol recordings. . . . Jon was taking off all the “gunk” that had “polished,” “improved,” and digitized the original songs.  When Jon played the vocal track for “What’s New,” fifty years after Sinatra had recorded the song, you could hear Sinatra breathe.  He was literally in the room with you.  It was thrilling. . . . [I]t reminded me why I got into all of this in the first place.  Ghosts everywhere.  Passing it on.  Let the good times roll.  One more for the road.  Full circle.  The music remains.  Some things last forever.

*     *     *     *     *

“What’s New?” was originally an instrumental titled “I’m Free,” which was composed in 1938 by jazz bassist Bob Haggart.  A year later, Johnny Burke was hired to write lyrics for the song.

Bing Crosby was the first singer to record the song.  It was subsequently recorded by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Robert Goulet, Jack Jones, Linda Ronstadt, and many others.

Frank Sinatra’s version of “What’s New?” was released on his 1958 album, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, which Sinatra later said was his favorite album.

Here’s “What’s New?”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Murphy's Law -- "Beer" (1986)

Why don't you drink f*cking beer?

What's the matter?
Are you [politically incorrect word that rhymes with beer]?

The two previous 2 or 3 lines have discussed There Goes Gravity, the new book by music journalist Lisa Robinson.

Have I mentioned that Lisa is a big fan of 2 or 3 lines?  

Lisa Robinson knew everyone from the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin to David Bowie to John Lennon to Elton John to Michael Jackson to U2 to Eminem to Jay-Z to Lady Gaga, so There Goes Gravity covers the entire musical gamut.

Lisa's true love was punk music.  That's not surprising given that she lived in New York City when its punk rock scene came of age.

The Ramones at CBGB

She and her friends went to Max's Kansas City and CBGB every night in the mid-seventies to hear Lou Reed and Patti Smith and Television and Blondie and the Ramones, who "took [her] breath away" the first time she saw them perform:

They rushed as breakneck speed through the shortest, cutest, and loudest songs I'd ever heard.  The best thing was that all their songs were under two minutes.  Their entire set at that time was only about twenty minutes, which, at that volume, was a huge plus . . . . I especially was fond of the lyrics in "Beat on the Brat" -- which basically consisted of repeating "beat on the brat" numerous times.

The New York Dolls

But Lisa's favorite New York band of that era was the New York Dolls, and her favorite musician was Dolls frontman David Johansen:

David was swagger personified.  He wore pumps.  Or a tube top, shorts, knee-length boots and a cowboy hat.  Apropos of nothing, he's burst into "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in the middle of some rock number. . . . David's onstage patter sailed above the heads of the audience, much of the press, and quite possibly his own band.

Lisa also traveled to London regularly, where she saw the Buzzcocks, the Sex Pistols, and the Clash.

The Clash came along and musically smacked me in the face. . . . I loved the Rolling Stones.  I loved Led Zeppelin.  I'd been turned on by the Ramones.  David Johansen was the wittiest, and certainly one of the best live rock and roll performers ever.  [Television's] Tom Verlaine's guitar playing was transcendent.  Patti Smith was unique.  But the Clash, at that moment, made everything that came before it seem obsolete.  This band mattered.

The Clash

When I went to hear Lisa discuss There Goes Gravity at a Washington, DC bookstore, I asked her to name some of the punk bands she had seen in New York back in the day who deserved to be better known today.

One of the groups she mentioned was Washington's Bad Brains, a hardcore punk that got noticed by a lot of people because all its members were black.  Black punk bands were as rare then as white rappers are today.  But the fact remains that Bad Brains was one of the best punk bands ever -- like Eminem is one the best rappers ever.

It's interesting that Lisa compares Eminem's appearance at Yankee Stadium in 2010 to a Bad Brains show she had seen almost a quarter of a century earlier: 

Eminem's set was stripped down, bare, intense, manic.  I hadn't seen anything quite that furious since the Bad Brains' raging set at the Ritz in 1986.

(I'm going to write about the Bad Brains in the future.  Hopefully, I'll be able to persuade Lisa Robinson to share more about that 1986 show she saw.)

Murphy's Law frontman
Jimmy Gestapo

Another great punk band that Lisa said had been overlooked by many people was Murphy's Law, a New York City band that formed in 1982.  (The group is named after the old adage that is usually stated as "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.")

You'd be hard-pressed to find a band with a more politically incorrect musical oeuvre than Murphy's Law, whose songs included "Beer," "Panty Raid," "Attack of the Killer Beers," "Quest for Herb," "Secret Agent S.K.I.N.," "Bong," "Big Spliff," "Beer Bath," "Hemp for Victory," and "Bitch."  So it might seem odd that a liberal and a feminist like Lisa Robinson would be a fan.

But for Lisa Robinson, "the lure was always the music."   In There Goes Gravity, she puts her money where her mouth is by praising a number of artists whose lyrics would give Tipper Gore apoplexy -- Eminem is probably the best example -- but whose music is undeniably original and powerful.

I share that point of view.  I've written about a number of songs by badly-behaved musicians whose lyrics may be characterized as violent, obscene, and/or misogynistic because those songs are artistically compelling.

While Mick Jagger once sang that "It's the singer, not the song," I would say just the opposite.  I think Lisa Robinson shares that point of view.

Here's "Beer," which was released in 1986 on the eponymous Murphy's Law debut album:

Click below to buy "Beer" from Amazon:  

And click here to buy There Goes Gravity:

David Bowie -- "Boys Keep Swinging" (1979)

Heaven loves you

The clouds part for you

Nothing stands in your way

When you're a boy

I wasn't familiar with "Boys Keep Swinging" -- which was released in 1979 on David Bowie's Lodger album -- until I heard it and a couple of other songs with "boys" in the title on Sirius XM's "Underground Garage" channel recently.  

As rock journalist Lisa Robinson said in her new book, There Goes Gravity,

Male musicians in bands are always called "the boys."  Men who are well into their sixties -- some in their seventies -- when they are on tour, are referred to as "the boys."  Sometimes there's an attempt -- especially with the British and the Irish -- to be a bit more graceful.  So they say "the lads."  Or "the guys."  But it is never, ever "the men."

David Bowie is one of the "boys" that Lisa writes about in her book, although he was much more of a chameleon than the other rockers she hung out with:

David used to tell me that he wasn't really a rock star, he was an actor playing a rock star.  I always thought he was a rock star playing an playing an actor playing a rock star.

Lisa Robinson with David Bowie

[Note: As I explained in the previous 2 or 3 lines, I chatted with Lisa Robinson after her recent appearance at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC, and we hit it off so well that I feel perfectly comfortable calling her by her first name.  (Lisa, please feel free to call me by my first name, too!)]

In 1972, Bowie would release his megahit album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album, which would eventually sell 7.5 million copies.  

But when Lisa met him for the first time at the offices of RCA Records in New York City in the fall of 1971, Bowie was relatively unknown in the U.S.

Bowie as Ziggy Stardust

Two of Bowie's musical heroes at that time were Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.  Lisa arranged a dinner where Bowie met Reed.  Later that evening, she took Bowie to Max's Kansas City club, where he met Iggy Pop.

Lisa Robinson pooh-poohs the importance of her introducing Bowie to Reed and Iggy Pop, writing in There Goes Gravity that the meeting "has been made to sound as if it were akin to the coming together of FDR, Stalin, and Churchill at Yalta."

But the meeting of these three musical icons at that time had real significance for each of them.  

Bowie with Lou Reed

Bowie would produce Reed's second solo album, Transformer, which was released in 1972 and included Reed's huge hit single, "Walk on the Wild Side."  

(Lisa's husband, Richard, had produced Reed's first solo album and was expecting to produce Transformer.  Reed's change of heart caused a serious but only temporary rift between the Robinsons and Bowie and Reed.)

Later that year, Bowie produced the Raw Power album for Iggy Pop's band, the Stooges.  The Stooges then broke up due to Iggy's heroin addiction.  Bowie also fell prey to drugs -- in his case, cocaine.

Iggy Pop with Bowie

Lisa interviewed Bowie many times over the years, and he was usually a good interview -- except when he was too drug-addled to be able to give her anything except "mumbled gibberish."

[O]nce, when we were in San Diego or Phoenix . . . our scheduled interview never got done because [Bowie] literally was making no sense.  Then, from an adjoining room, out came a surprise: Iggy, who was also speaking in tongues.  This was around the time they both decided to clean up, detox, and together, they departed for Berlin -- the heroin capital of the world.

One might question the wisdom of the strategy of moving to Berlin to kick drugs, but one can't question the brilliance of the music that the two men made while they were there.

Iggy recorded his The Idiot and Lust for Life solo albums during his Berlin years.  (Both albums were produced by Bowie, who also wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on them.)  And Bowie recorded his so-called "Berlin Trilogy" -- Low, Heroes, and Lodger.

That was a long, long time ago.  Lisa Robinson writes that "the world has completely changed" since David Bowie and Iggy Pop decamped for Berlin almost 40 years ago, and she's right.  

David Bowie today

But both of them are still alive and kicking (unlike Lou Reed and Joey Ramone and so many other of the greats of that generation).

There Goes Gravity brings us up to date on both men:

After the heart attack he had while on tour in Germany in 2004, [David Bowie's] public appearances have been scarce.  He has released only one new album and so far, has not performed in concert.  We've seen each other socially only rarely.  But we e-mail each other about various bands and new music.  He seems to be on the Internet all the time, and doesn't miss a trick.  He's one of the few who has managed, so far, to gracefully get off the stage.

* * * * *

Two years ago, Iggy appeared on American Idol, performing "Real Wild Child" shirtless.  He had that body of an eighteen-year-old and the face of someone closer to seventy.  [Note:  Iggy Pop is 67.]  Was it good that "America" got to see Iggy?  I'm not sure. . . . [T]hey couldn't have possibly understood who the hell he was or what Iggy had meant to us.  These days, Iggy's great song "The Passenger" is the soundtrack for a rum ad on TV.

Iggy Pop on "American Idol"

Here's "Boys Keep Swinging":

Click below to purchase the song from Amazon:

And click here to buy There Goes Gravity from Amazon:

Mott the Hoople -- "One of the Boys" (1972)

I'm just one of the boys

One of the boys

I don't say much but I make a big noise

Lisa Robinson was definitely not "just one of the boys" when she broke into the world of rock journalism in the 1970s.  As she has written,

The rock world always was, and still is, predominantly a boys' club.  Often, I was the only woman in the room and certainly the only one who wasn't sleeping with any of them.

I first became acquainted with Lisa Robinson when I heard her being interviewed about her new book, There Goes Gravity, on Tony Kornheiser's radio show.  Kornheiser was fascinated by her accounts of life on tour with "classic rock" superstars like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.

Lisa Robinson

Her stories about Jagger and Richards and Page and Plant interested me as well.  But what really caught my attention was her answer to a question about which artists she would pay money to see perform.  

Lisa named the Clash (if lead singer Joe Strummer were still alive), Jay-Z, and Kanye West.

Lisa with Kanye West

Lisa and I were in our late twenties when the Clash crashed the music scene like a runaway train, and her enthusiasm for their music isn't surprising.

But relatively few white folks of our generation – especially females – are fans of rappers like Jay-Z and Kanye.  

If Lisa admired their music, she was someone whose writing I wanted to know more about.  So I went to see her a couple of weeks later when she appeared in person at Politics and Prose, a bookstore that's right here in Your Nation's Capital:

Lisa and I had a nice chat after the Q-and-A session at Politics and Prose, so I feel very comfortable calling her by her first name.  (Lisa, you are more than welcome to call me by my first name, too!)

I'm going to ask her to be interviewed for 2 or 3 lines, and I'm sure she'll say "yes" because she seems to be a big fan of my wildly successful little blog:

Lisa Robinson and 2 or 3 lines: BFF!

Lisa got her start as a rock 'n' roll journalist when her boss – he later became her husband – asked her to take over his column for a British pop music weekly.

Eventually Lisa moved on to the New York Post, and then to Vanity Fair, where she has covered music and the music industry since 1999.

The first chapter of There Goes Gravity is a first-person account of the Rolling Stones' 1975 American tour.  (Note: I saw the Stones play at Kansas City's massive Arrowhead Stadium the first week of that tour.)  It opens with an anecdote about a phone call Mick Jagger placed from his hotel room to Lisa's hotel room at 3 AM exactly 39 years ago today – July 5, 1975.

Lisa with Mick Jagger

Lisa goes on to explain why she refers to the Rolling Stones as "the boys":

Male musicians in bands are always called "the boys."  Men who are well into their sixties – some in their seventies – when they are on tour, are referred to as "the boys."  Sometimes there's an attempt – especially with the British and the Irish – to be a bit more graceful.  So they say "the lads."  Or "the guys."  But it is never, ever "the men."

(In case some of you other boys out there think this means it is OK for you to call women "girls," let me disabuse you of that notion.  If you think what's good for the gander is good for the goose, you obviously don't understand how the typical goose's mind works.)

When I was vacationing on Cape Cod over Memorial Day weekend, I was lucky enough to get a rental car that was equipped with Sirius XM radio.  One day, the "Underground Garage" channel featured a set of songs that had "boy" in the title – including Mott the Hoople's "One of the Boys," which was released in 1972 on the All the Young Dudes album.

Lisa with David Bowie

All the Young Dudes was produced by David Bowie, who wrote its title track.  In the next 2 or 3 lines, we'll feature a song by Bowie, whom Lisa Robinson first met in 1971.  In fact, Lisa introduced Bowie to two of his musical idols, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, that year.

Click here to listen to "One of the Boys."

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

And click here if you'd like to buy Lisa Robinson's There Goes Gravity from Amazon.  (Trust me -- you want to read this book.)