Photo by Steven C. Wilson/Getty Images, via Rolling Stone

I was 12 when, in 1978, the Rolling Stones released Some Girls. I remember there being some hand-wringing about whether the Rolling Stones were too old to be playing rock & roll music, which, to be fair, was only about 25 years old as a genre. The band members were in their 30s. And, though they hid it, so were Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr of The Cars, who had just seemingly come out of nowhere with their stunning debut album. So I could not imagine the Stones existing as a working band in their 60s, never mind in my 60s! And here I am, a newly minted member of the sexagenarian club. Mick Jagger is 83 and Keith Richards is 82, and they have released yet another new album, Foreign Tongues. As with their most previous one, Hackney Diamonds, I am just sort of tickled that they’re still alive and mobile (particularly Keith, of course), never mind still putting out serious records.

Whether or not one loves the new stuff is not really relevant. The artists are still creating art. You can take it as a gift or ignore it. I have seen some crusty old heads panning it with surprising vitriol, as if they took it personally. That just seems silly. As my accidental Zen master college pal Pete used to ask, “Why do you care?” Or to use a more current idiom, “scroll on.”

There’s little use in comparing the latest work of artists to their peaks, but that’s what we do anyway. Especially those oldsters, who like to point out their bona fides, like “seeing them on the ’72 tour, man.” Or “I lost interest after they fired Brian.”

And then there has long been the overly optimistic bunch. Starting probably around 1989’s Steel Wheels, critics wishfully compared whatever the latest Rolling Stones album happened to be to Exile on Main St. And so I have seen with Foreign Tongues (I have also seen a few mentions of Some Girls, perhaps the first critical/fan consensus “return to form”). Never mind that Exile itself was not universally acclaimed the year it was released. Lenny Kaye, interviewed in recent months in Mojo, still regrets his knee-jerk review in Rolling Stone. “I had four days to digest an entire world, and I didn’t see the forest through the trees,” he explained. “It’s not a song album. It’s the atmosphere.”

The atmosphere of “Rough and Twisted,” the opening track of the latest Stones album, Foreign Tongues, feels more oppressive than even the unrelenting, sweaty-basement churn of Exile’s “Ventilator Blues,” and I don’t mean that in a good way. The sexy and malevolent “Ventilator Blues” gives me a charge. Most of Exile leaves me feeling spiritually cleansed by the gospel-informed “Let It Loose” and “Shine a Light,” and invigorated, like I am in a convertible winding down the Riviera piloted by a crazed Keith as Mick sings at the top of his lungs to “bust another bottle, yeah!”

Well you can’t say yes, and you can’t say no

Just be right there when the whistle blows

While there are moments of dynamic relief from the slamming loudness of Andrew Watt’s production on the new LP, the sensation I am left with after listening to the opening track is something like fatigue.

But here we are again comparing (contrasting, actually) this latest collection to that past milestone. I am just rolling (excuse the pun) with it. So enough with the past. Jagger, for one, has always lived for the present moment. “Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone,” he sang.

If you stick with it, there are some gems on Foreign Tongues, and not just the expected blues and country numbers. That simply marks it as a Stones album. Of course, they have veered away from their “Stonesy” roots templates before — frequently, and early, in fact. They were a bit all over the place right through Their Satanic Majesty’s Request. In a few of the wonderful and plentiful interviews that Mick and Keith have given in the wake of the new album, Jagger points out that the by-far-most-streamed Stones song is “Paint It Black,” an oddball number even in their widely varying catalog. Decades ago, Jagger said it sounded “like Songs for Jewish Weddings.”

“Jumping Jack Flash” marked an early rebirth of the band, leading into their four-album golden period. Though I love all of the albums through Tattoo You, it’s hard to argue that they have sustained that level of excellence ever after Exile. And it got quite bad in the 1980s.

But since Steel Wheels or Voodoo Lounge, these late records are welcome; they are like gravy for lifelong fans like me. The records come out with some degree of hype, sound maybe better than I expected, and then I mostly forget about them and what songs were on which. That is, except for Blue and Lonesome, their surprise late album of well-chosen, passionately executed blues covers, which I rank as my favorite Stones album since Tattoo You.

Unlike the relatively finessed Blue and Lonesome, co-produced by Don Was, Foreign Tongues opens with “Rough and Twisted,” a blues that brings to mind Blues Hammer, the fictional band in the film Ghost World. “Rough and Twisted” is compressed and slammed to win all loudness wars on any format past, present, or future. There is no space to breathe, but Jagger is commendably strong vocally, here doing his shout-singing thing. Coupled with the album “art,” it’s an inauspicious start. It’s more like a 1990s Aerosmith album. Andrew Watt might be the old-rocker whisperer (God bless him; I don’t begrudge the kid for getting to work with our heroes), but the word “subtlety” rarely comes to mind.

As a song, “In the Stars” could have been on any Stones album since 1994: A variation on the library of open-G Stones riffs; Jagger shout-singing one note on the verses. But as a recording, I can’t imagine this one being so devoid of swing if Charlie Watts and/or Bill were still in the band. As I know both drummer Steve Jordan and Ron Wood (on bass here) are both identified with a certain amount of loose swing, the blame must come down to the relative lack of hours together as a rhythm section. But it is stiff and instantly forgettable.

As a song and production, “Jealous Lover” could have come from the much-underrated and unfairly slagged Emotional Rescue (the funniest Stones album) sessions. This is a standout. In an interview with Conan O’Brien, Jagger deflected praise for the strength of his impeccable falsetto at this age, saying it is a pretty easy thing to do. He contrasted singing almost a whole song in falsetto versus what Al Green often did, slipping into and out of falsetto within the same lines, which is far more challenging and requires admirable vocal dexterity.

“Mr. Charm” turns the “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” coda guitar riff into a new song. Thankfully, Watt is still in a less hammering mix mode here. This one is almost like Primal Scream doing a quality Stones song, and Mick’s commanding (never mind qualifying “for age 82”) vocal. Around 2:30, it gets into B-52s “Love Shack” territory. The vocal refrain of the title also brings to mind Joe Jackson’s “Beat Crazy.” Then it ends in a “Street Fighting Man”-like vamp. Lyrically, Jagger explains how important discerning taste and perspective are for people with money, calling out Elon Musk comically and pointedly.

“‘Divine Intervention’ features Robert Smith of the Cure” is a line I would never have predicted I’d write about the Rolling Stones. I love how Jagger and Smith both have very different accounts about how Smith was roped in to play guitar on this and sing on “Never Wanna Lose You.” Jagger says Smith just happened to be in the same studio and he roped him in: Aren’t you Robert Smith of the Cure? Then you should play on something. Smith explained that Watt, a friend, invited him down to have a few beers and check out the new Stones tracks and was somewhat reluctantly cajoled to overdub some parts. I thank Watt here for engineering this, no matter which account is most accurate. I am guessing Smith is playing that subtle repeating (pedaling) four-note figure on the choruses, back in the mix on the left side.

“Ringing Hollow” is, for this fan, the centerpiece of the record. Classic Stones country vibes. The legendary Steve Winwood adds organ and piano. Hearing Keith singing his soulful, bruised backing harmonies is a welcome Stones essential element that became increasingly rare as the Stones went on. Jagger always felt more self-conscious as a Brit about his stabs at country than blues (odd, when you think about it). Keith pointed out decades ago that Mick is “slightly vaudeville in his approach. When he sings it as a caricature … you expect Mick to walk out in his cowboy duds on an eighteen-wheeler set.… Or sing it into his CB.…” He was downright hokey on “Far Away Eyes,” which, frankly, suited the song.1 Mick uses “Ringing Hollow” to express his disappointment in Trump-era America. As someone who exuberantly loves this place, he seems truly let down as he is in his final years. Bonus: It’s one of three tracks that feature Benmont Tench.

I love “Never Wanna Lose You,” a classic late-1970s/early-‘80s Stones funk/disco track. It has Winwood on organ and fabulous Fender Rhodes piano parts. Robert Smith is, I guess, in the chorus harmonies. I love that they brought this funk-Stones shit back. Sort of like “Undercover of the Night.” This one could legit be a hit even today.

“Hit Me in the Head” is a skip for me, and sadly does not serve as a suitable goodbye as the last track to feature the late, great Charlie Watts. He is on the purchase (download or CD) bonus track, “Bad Luck Hideaway.” So, technically this is not the last one.

“You Know I’m No Good.” Amy Winehouse cover. You like it? Here it is. I am neither here nor there about it.

“For those looking for actual humanity in Stones records after Some Girls, a good place to start would be the Keith-sung ballads, like this one.” I wrote that about the Emotional Rescue song “All About You” in my 2013 book about the band, Rocks Off. And while Mick came back and started to write meaningful songs, it remains a truism; if Keith is singing it, you should listen. “Some of Us” starts off with a variation of his “Hand of Fate” riff. It’s a compelling lyric; Keith acknowledging the subject’s beauty. But she’s an aloof one, and he professes not to care about her specifically, while others fall at her feet. Then he expands from what seems intimate to something broader: “Some of us are on our knees, begging” for a little smile and a “little loving.”

“Covered in You” returns to the head-pounding production. Paul McCartney is on bass, so that’s nice, right? “Side Effects” keeps it up, with Andrew Watt getting a co-write credit on it. Both are fine, if generic Stones pop songs, the kind one would expect to hear on any of their post ‘80s albums. At least there is not a song title on this bunch with the word “rocking” in it. (Wait, lemme check that. Okay, we’re good.)

Too bad McCartney is not on the far more engaging “Back In Your Life,” which borrows its verse chord progression from the solo section of the Beatles’ “In My Life.” Is the title completely coincidental or subliminal? Either way, this could legitimately sit next to “Wild Horses” or “Plundered My Soul,” the fantastic track they resuscitated from the Exile on Main St. sessions for the 2010 expanded box set. I would guess that Watt is playing the first lyrical guitar solo, while Mick beseeches, “Come on, Ronnie!” for the later lead stuff that takes us out in the vamp. Mark this down as the most memorable one for me, a lovely power ballad, to end the album.

.“Beautiful Delilah” is kinda like a reprise bonus track from the old days of CDs. And appropriately, it’s a Chuck Berry cover, bringing the band whose first single, “Come On,” was another Berry cover — and who covered “Beautiful Delilah” closer to Berry’s original rock & roll version on a radio performance in 1964 — full circle

It’s almost like they know this could be the last one. At the risk of mawkish sentimentality, thanks to these guys for carrying the torch. As I wrote in my final words of my 2013 Rocks Off:

They are mythological heroes who still—miraculously, in Keith’s case—walk amongst us. The image that we carry with us—of their lives as demigods who have discovered the Holy Grail and the “Secret Sign/That’s known to all the artists who have known true gods of sound and stone”—fuels this legend, the lies and the half-truths, the glamorous sheen that glosses over the often ugly reality…. As the Stones hit their fiftieth anniversary, we “Raise a glass for the hardworking people.” As long as they keep going, partying in the face of it, they shine a light in the darkness and give funky form to life’s splendor.

For me, the Nineties were broken down as the couple of years before Nirvana’s Nevermind and the balance of the decade. It really was that stark. How did it change? As the classic Hemingway line goes, “Gradually, then suddenly.” We could see all the pieces being put into place: indie-label bands signing to majors; college radio deejays moving into commercial stations, MTV, and A&R positions; and young writers penning pieces about our particular slice of the underground in major publications like Rolling Stone and Spin. The British weeklies were already breathlessly and comprehensively covering American college rock/alternative/grunge — whatever the terms they were using.

Most young bands like ours were just thrilled to go overseas and play to packed halls that were usually considerably larger than the clubs we played back home. We were making a living and living out our rock dreams, feeling like artists, and never knowing how long it would last. Would we get to make another album and tour? Would we get invited to this or that festival?

And then Nirvana broke massively, and those modest goal posts seemed to be hoisted way downfield. Interestingly, I have the above fax that I held onto from a promoter, asking if we wanted to take over a tour in Europe from Nirvana, who were scrapping it and playing much bigger venues. In my memory, it was as “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was hitting, but it was actually a full year prior, 1990. I believe we took those dates, except the Futurama festival, which we had played in 1989.

And we rode that wave with middle-class success, never achieving the big-big time, the kind that would give us fuck-you money. But we made a living, bought houses in nice towns, and played out the decade as full-time artists.

But then the promise of the Nineties, to paraphrase Portlandia, seemed to dissipate gradually, and then suddenly. The band members’ children started arriving near the end of the decade. I remember our last big tour, opening for the Goo Goo Dolls, who, after having the same sort of middling post-Replacements success as us, broke through into the pop mainstream. Johnny looked good in the videos, and the Midwest tour was primarily attended by adolescent girls. One moment crystallized the writing on the wall for me via a kind of out-of-body experience. I feel like we were in Oshkosh. I was jumping around, trying to win over the crowd as the thankless support band. But I just remember the bored, glazed-over faces of a couple of young girls, and, as we played and I flailed, I felt like I was floating outside of it all, literally detached, looking down and realizing that my wife was pregnant with our daughter, who was closer in age to some of these girls than I was.

“Welp. What’s next?”

It’s a longer story, but a few things conspired for us to agree to take a break from the record-tour-record cycle. Mainly, we had just signed a new deal with Polydor after spending almost all of our career with the great Beggars Banquet label. And we got dropped almost immediately. We were among the roughly 200 (if memory serves) acts let go as the labels merged under Universal. We had a little money they owed us and, remarkably, paid. So that floated us a bit. I made a go at a solo project or two. Buff Tom had periodic projects as well, no albums of new material, but compilations, and even a bona fide Top Ten hit in the UK with a cover of the Jam’s “Going Underground.”

But not much else was happening. Other artists and managers from our heyday years seemed depressed. The business had reverted to the lowest common denominator: dumb-downed corporate versions of stuff that preceded it. Radio consolidated (thanks, Clinton!), and everything seemed like it was before we started in the Eighties.

I wrote a bit as a freelancer while I stayed home with my daughter and started wondering how to make some bread. My resume was basically:

1989: Graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a B.A.

1989-1999: Rock band

Like many Americans, I thought, “Well, what about real estate?” I figured I could take the classes, take the exam, get my license, and see how it went. I could set my own hours, allowing flexibility to do an occasional tour, keep records, and do some more writing. Spoiler alert, that’s what I decided, and 25 years later, that’s still how I make most of my living. It gave me room for music to be just for fun again. Don’t get me wrong; I had a full-blown identity crisis as I withdrew from music full-time and took on this other, sort of cliché American archetype persona. I mean, was I Frank Bascombe or something? (I did indeed go and re-read Richard Ford’s Independence Day.) I didn’t want to be a guy in a yellow blazer pictured on a bus stop bench. It is a balance that I eventually became comfortable with, especially as I created a niche marketing historically significant midcentury-modern homes.

But another thing I dabbled in was music-for-hire. Here is a page of sample stuff, like the theme song for This Old House, music I did for the Red Sox Radio Network, the CBS sitcom Yes, Dear, and a few other things. The network stuff was lucrative, and the residuals continue to be welcome mailbox money. Part of me will always wonder, “What if I had moved to LA, networked, and hustled this shit a bit more?” I think I could have made a nice living at it.

But it could be tedious as all hell. Writing theme songs was one thing. You just had to make the client happy. But sometimes I had to write a record various “families” of stings, bumpers, and beds; short bits for using as transitions. It was soul-sapping. I had never been less happy playing music. At times, it made me almost hate music. It would be bad enough to spend the time creating them, but then there would be the client’s feedback, sending me back for changes. I didn’t have the stomach for it. Perhaps if I had put everything else aside to set up shop and make a go of it as a living, I would have the right mindset. But dabbling in it part-time was frustrating.

I was thinking about all of this as I listened to a couple of public radio programs* that discuss the role of AI for such projects. It makes total sense, as AI has no soul to be sapped. Ask it to create a family of 35 stings, and it will say, “Thank you sir! May I have another?” And it will just as easily send you 70 more variations in minutes.

And it works cheaply. But it is putting musicians and composers out of work. As I said, works-for-hire could be quite lucrative. One of my biggest sell-outs came after an acquaintance told me his wife worked for a local big company that was looking to celebrate a major valuation milestone with a company-wide party and wanted to commission a song. Would I want to submit something? I might have sent a demo of an idea. They gave me a bunch of notes for stuff they wanted covered in the lyrics. They gave me a musical prompt, a goofy song by a goofy band who shall go unnamed here. They asked me for a price quote. I really did not want to do this. Only some nutty amount of money would make it worth it. So I named that figure, and they did not flinch. I was stuck. I hired some friends and studio time, but I walked away with a significant amount of dough. But today, this company would just pump all of their prompts into an AI song generator and come up with something better. I just listened to the thing I did for them and hope that it never surfaces. I mean, it’s potential blackmail material.

I don’t fear that AI is a threat to genuine human artistry. But genuine human artists are not always able to make a living from their art. Many need side hustles or day jobs. Many have used their talents as musicians to score films, write jingles, or provide background music for broadcast. Unfortunately, that seems to be where AI will take over. And now most musicians will have to scramble even more desperately to make a living.

*On the Media, 2024, and On Point, 2026.

I’m late to the 50th, but it was my choice for cocktail hour listening and was reminded how much this record is a part of me. Here’s my piece from 2015, which has links to references.

2015 marks the 40th anniversary of The Köln Concert, a landmark album by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, who played a solo concert at Carnegie Hall last week. Few albums have touched me as deeply as this one. As a 16-year-old kid who knew very little from the jazz world, I first heard a selection from the record on the nightly “Eric in the Evening” program on WGBH FM, Boston’s public radio station. The host, Eric Jackson, a quintessential cool FM jazz DJ, was my Jazz 101 instructor, at least until I took an actual jazz history course at the University of Massachusetts with professor Archie Shepp, a legendary saxophonist, composer and playwright. In one of my favorite college memories, professor Max Roach sat in as a substitute teacher.

Prior to that, though, Mr. Jackson’s selections made up my jazz appreciation course load. He spun everything from the postwar bop period to contemporary records. After a track ended, there would be a few seconds of radio silence. In stark contrast to the increasingly wall-to-wall onslaught of FM manic rock radio, Mr. Jackson would calmly inform us of the track title, the name of the album, the year of release, and the personnel on the recording in an unhurried manner, interspersed with ultra-chill pauses. For a lonely kid whose family had just moved from Long Island to a small wooded town in the Boston suburbs, Mr. Jackson’s impeccable taste—alongside the adventurous new punk and post-punk of the early-1980s being played on the area’s many college radio stations—provided a bit of relief, if not a lifeline. “Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life,” indeed.

One night, in my bedroom, no doubt feeling quite sorry for my own forlorn teenage soul, I heard Mr. Jackson spin a stunning solo piano selection from The Köln Concert. It went on for over 15 minutes, as if it were a classical piece. Yet while it certainly had resonances with more Impressionistic classical composers such as Debussy (as I later learned), Mr. Jarrett also was striding in gospel chords and rhythms, music that sounded almost like a pop song in spots. But then while Mr. Jarrett’s left hand would start to augment the basic and familiar chords with unexpected harmonies, at the same time, the right hand would shoot out a run of notes at a blistering “Flight of the Bumblebee” tempo, each note in the flurry articulated cleanly.

The recording ended. There was the space of a breath or two, and then the sound of applause. To that point there had been no evidence that it was a live performance. As the audience sounds faded out, there was another pause, maybe five seconds, then Mr. Jackson’s mellifluous voice effortlessly described what we had just listened to.

It was unlike anything I had ever heard, even though it had familiar touch points. I immediately went out and bought the record—well, a cassette, actually. The fact that it was on a tape provided that early form of portability via the Walkman. The music became that much more intimate, direct through my headphones to my brain, as I took the bus to school, mowed the lawn and later walked the campus at college. At the time, I had been listening to everything in the rock and roll realm, and on The Köln Concert, I heard stuff that reminded me of the melancholy two-chord songs and rhythmic repetitions of New Order’s Power, Corruption, and Lies; the driving rock and roll and churning blues cauldron of the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St.; Jorma Kaukonen’s solo fingerpicked ragtime acoustic guitar, and even the Velvet Underground’s extended brutal jams. I could also recognize the more obvious influence of Gershwin’s soaring melodic rhapsodies.

Recorded as one continuous concert at the Cologne Opera House in 1975, the album is divided into four tracks, titled, “Part I” (running time: 26:01); “Part II A” (14:54); “Part II B” (18:14); and “Part II C” (6:56). In one illustrative passage beginning around the 9:30 mark of “Part I,” Mr. Jarrett locks into a hard-hammering, left-handed gospel vamp, which improbably flows out of a far-less-nailed-down, delicate two-chord dominant theme. The transition seems natural and effortless, slipping by unnoticed. Indeed, I have often rewound back, or lifted the needle on the vinyl to listen again to how Mr. Jarrett got from Point A to Point C. While one might expect the bluesy right hand soloing over the gospel left hand work on this passage, Mr. Jarrett soon rattles off stunning lyrical runs. And then the passage takes on a specifically New Orleans tone, before he steers it around to something more contemporary and cosmopolitan.

Around 14 minutes into “Part I,” Mr. Jarrett allows his improvisation to break down, as if the movement were about to end. But he teases out melodies that soon sound like they were always there, hiding around the middle of a chord, from a pivotal note that you might not have been aware of, but which he uses as a lynchpin. This subsequently transitions to something sparse and Japanese feeling, percussive like a plucked koto. Before you know it, in the 19th minute the pianist has turned all Rachmaninoff on you, pummeling you with a darker, denser and more strident attack. And he’s not done: Via a Modernist turn, with Cubist-like chord structures, the heavy curtains open up to a cascading waterfall of chords, a “Dance of the Girls with Lilies” lightness that in turn becomes an uplifting country-folk piece. This staccato left hand on the acoustic piano could also easily be imagined against a synth-pop pulse. There is something mechanized and modern about it. This resonance with electronic music is perhaps not accidental; Mr. Jarrett was already a veteran of Miles Davis’ electric band by the time he sat down in Cologne in 1975, even though he notes that he thinks of electronic instruments as “toys” and was compromising in order to work with Mr. Davis. Interestingly, the city of Cologne itself is storied for its place in electronic music.

“Part I,” begins with Mr. Jarrett playing a five-note figure that was apparently echoing the chimes in the lobby of the Cologne Opera House alerting attendees that the performance was about to start. If you listen carefully, you can hear the knowing titters of the audience members who understood this musical quote. By the end of 26 minutes, the artist has created a whole movement that he brings down with a symphonic flourish, leaving just a few keys to finish the last few ringing notes, the middle register note somehow melting into it’s bass-octave cousin.

And somehow it all relates: The jazz, the classical, the blues, and the folk references. I can hear it all, man. In some spots, it sounds like Mr. Jarrett is playing all the best parts of a band—not only a well-oiled jazz combo; in spots, The Köln Concert sounds as if it could be the Stones or the Grateful Dead cooking on one of their peak nights. Keith Jarrett is a one-man jam band on the album. The album is the answer to the ultimate stoner Zen koan—what is the sound of one man jamming with himself? No wonder the record found a home in many a Deadhead’s dorm room. The Dead were a decades-long manifestation of the musical ideal captured in Gram Parson’s “cosmic American music,” an Americana-blend of jazz, blues, gospel, country, soul, folk, and rock and roll.

Mr. Jarrett’s music contains these and other, deeper and broader multitudes. But while such rock and roll bands hit moments of brilliance, the comparisons start to seem silly. While they might mine some of the same sources, and hit on some similar trance-like grooves, Mr. Jarrett is a true virtuoso with absolute pitch who seemingly can play anything (he is also a multi-instrumentalist with a particular talent for the soprano saxophone). The Köln Concert record is just one of his albums that stand as evidence that this artist is a genius, inasmuch as the music repeatedly flows seemingly wholly composed from his heart, soul, and/or mind, if not from some divinity or otherworldly force. And perhaps that’s its wellspring.

Like the Dead, or other jazz, and improvisational art, you never know what you were going to get when you went to go see Mr. Jarrett perform solo, but that was part of the excitement. The man’s astonishing technical ability and musical vocabulary is always subservient to the muse at his solo improvisational performances. There is that communal feeling of, “we’re all here at the same time to experience this art being created in the moment.” The audiences at a Keith Jarrett program, however, tend to be more like one found at a classical concert.

Upon arrival in Massachusetts, I had made a friend in the neighborhood, a kid named A.J., and it was with him that I went to go see Mr. Jarrett perform at Boston’s storied Symphony Hall on December 7, 1983. It was a Wednesday night during my junior year of high school. I had only been in Massachusetts for six months and this was my first time in Symphony Hall. We were seated on the floor, close to the stage. There was a grand piano up there. Behind it were two sections with about a half-dozen rows of folding chairs, with people seated there—on the stage. Mr. Jarrett, a slight man with a mustache and short, tight, curly hair, came out and acknowledged the audience’s applause. Then he sat at the piano, head bowed down, for what seemed like five minutes. This is his protocol for clearing his head and tapping into his inspiration.

A.J. remembers him getting agitated for coughing, something for which he has become infamous. What I remember is a guy on stage, a portly balding man with a white beard—his image burned in my brain—snapped a flash photo on stage. Mr. Jarrett looked at him with dagger eyes for a few seconds while the guy turned red, and gritting his teeth, said so all could hear, “Put. That. Away. Far away.”

When he performs these solo improvisations, he is clearly out there without a net. The trust has to flow both ways between the performer and audience. “There’s never been a time where improvisation has been given the respect that it deserved,” he said in the documentary, Keith Jarrett – The Art of Improvisation.“By virtue of the holistic quality of it, it takes everything to do it. It takes real time, no editing, it takes your nervous system to be on alert for every possible thing in a way that cannot be said for any other kind of music. I’m essentially an improviser. I learned that by playing classical music (laughs).”

That he has repeatedly found the muse, in front of thousands of people, with only his chops and broad musical vocabulary to guide him to some musical discovery, a form of spontaneous composition that heretofore did not exist, should—but does not always—engender that respect in his audience members which Mr. Jarrett describes. These improvisations are not mere runs up and down a scale over an established chord progression, with other musicians holding down the foundation. As opposed to much of his work with well-established Keith Jarrett Trio, his solo performances such as The Köln Concert do not begin with standards or other songs to provide a structural launching point. He comes with little or nothing prepared. However, his encores for such concerts tend to be shorter pieces that seem more song-like in structure. “Part II C” of The Köln Concert is as a catchy as any pop song, while offering an emotional depth that leaves the listener breathless.

Instead, Mr. Jarrett explores until he finds a hook or a motif, and takes off from there. And this is why the record found its way into so many non-jazz collections that it is, according to the Guardian, “the bestselling solo album in jazz, and the bestselling solo piano album in any genre.” The resulting music has as much to do with the revelations found in Krautrock and prog rock repetition. Gary Peacock, the bassist in the Keith Jarrett Trio, noted to Mr. Jarrett’s biographer, Ian Carr, “When we’re playing something in straight time, boy! When this thing locks, something else takes over and it’s like you’re not playing—it’s kind of floating!”

But of course, that also relates to gospel, or any devotional music aimed at ecstasy. And I don’t mean the capital “E” drug. While adventurous musicians from Charlie Parker to the Dead sought to be aided by chemicals in the search for their muse, the influences that Mr. Jarrett attributed to this singularly legendary performance are no more than sleep deprivation, a faulty piano and a long wait for a lame meal in a Cologne Italian restaurant. He told grammy.com, “I was due to go onstage soon, we’d had so many hassles, and the piano was such a terrible instrument. And I hadn’t slept anyway. So I was in almost hell. Then we went to this Italian restaurant where, for some perfectly symmetrical reason, we were served way last. Everyone else was eating, I was the one who was going to play in an hour, and I still didn’t have any food. And then when they finally brought the food, I was still hungry, because I wasn’t happy with the food they served.”

Other than speed, it would be difficult to point to a drug that would have allowed Mr. Jarrett to play with such agility. Drugs may help one find inspiration, or help one with his or her energy level, but being able to execute those ideas, ay, there’s the rub! In Ian Carr’s book, Keith Jarrett: The Man And His Music, Mr. Jarrett explains, “Once somebody … said something about getting high and I said, ‘Yeah—on the music. For me, it’s hard to understand why a musician needs more than the music.”

The Köln Concert is transcendent in the literal sense, with Mr. Jarrett transcending the all-too-typical obstacles for a musician on the road—lack of sleep, bad food and shitty equipment. “Every situation is different, the dressing room situation, the social situation, where I eat,” he told Ian Carr. “These are all big, big things, not insignificant details. If I have, say, an 8 o’clock concert and the audience is not in the hall at 8, I’m capable of losing my timing. I’m aiming an arrow at the event, and I’m divorcing myself from anything that’s the wrong thing.” Regarding the concert in Cologne specifically, Mr. Jarrett recalled, “What happened with this piano was that I was forced to play in what was—at the time—a new way. Somehow I felt I had to bring out whatever qualities this instrument had. And that was it. My sense was, ‘I have to do this. I’m doing it. I don’t care what the f*** the piano sounds like. I’m doing it.’ ”

Indeed, he has also noted that such equipment limitations can trigger those inspirations. He told Keyboard Magazine, referring to a performance in Rio De Janeiro, “So when I find a piano that has this ‘imperfect’ character, it’s actually much more to deal with—and I mean that in a good sense—than a ‘perfect’ piano. So you’re hearing me discover which notes on the keyboard will do this zingy thing with the overtones, and I’m learning what part of the keyboard is acting a certain way.”

The popularity of The Köln Concert is in large measure thanks to its spiritual resonance, the idea of one man ascending to the stage to channel improvised, often repetitive mantra-like music in a communal setting. The appeal of devotional music from various traditions was working its way into jazz starting in the mid-1960s, with Eastern drones and chants informing such records as John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1965) and providing the very basis of much of his widow, Alice Coltrane’s work, such as Universal Consciousness, (1971). Of course, jazz itself, like soul music, takes church music as one of its foundational stones. Mr. Jarrett is an adherent to the philosophy of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff and even released an album called G.I. Gurdjieff: Sacred Hymns (1980), which he describes as “a spiritual exercise,” not a musical one.

In Cologne, “It just seemed like everybody in the audience was there for a tremendous experience, and that made my job easy,” Mr. Jarrett told grammy.com. Mr. Jarrett moans and grunts at various points during the performance, as he does regularly, and as others such as Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus have. While these exaltations have a dramatic effect, only the most callous could doubt their organic source from uninhibited spirit of generous performance. Mr. Jarrett was 29 at the time of The Köln Concert. He was in complete trust of his capabilities, his source of inspiration, and his audience. More than 3.5 million copies of the album have been sold. Don’t blame him for any “new age” noodling that followed. His aim was true.

I just finished watching the Say Nothing series. I had read the great book not long after it was published and thought the series was very well done. It got me thinking about the first time we visited Belfast in 1991, opening for the Wedding Present. I had recently told some friends about this, and then today I received a couple of photos of us from the tour from Paul Dorrington. Posting them on the BT IG, I was Googling the tour to confirm the date and came across this blog entry I wrote in 2013, in turn recounting a journal entry I’d written about our time in Belfast. It was striking that the bombings continued to occur so frequently. I never expected to witness such things.

I was up in my attic this weekend looking for baseball cards to show my son. I came across a big box of my old notebooks. I did keep journals while Buffalo Tom was in full swing, but I was not a diarist. Most of the stuff is meandering impressionistic, melancholy (if not despondent) rumination that is generally so unanchored that it is a bit of a challenge to figure out where we even happened to be at the time, unless I wrote down headings like “July 1991 Copenhagen –> JFK.” I didn’t have many entries that were straightforward “Today we played a show in ___.” But this one was more like that.

May something, 1991

BELFAST Europa Hotel

“The most bombed hotel in Europe,” said our waiter at breakfast. The IRA has bombed this hotel thirteen times in the past nine years. The televisions in the guest rooms turn themselves on  and tell you to leave when there is a threat. The band, TAD, had a bomb here during their stay two weeks ago and had to evacuate. TAD are also booked by Paperclip. Why are we staying here? I don’t know.

The pub, or shell of the pub across the street, was the target of a bomb.

I walked around a corner onto a roped-off street guarded by authorities wielding machine guns. An office building with blown out windows; armored vehicles; glass all over the street; a few bystanders, most people walking on. I took photos and generally by-stood until a cop approached me. I thought he’d confiscate my film but he merely asked me some questions, holding his hands on something inside his bulletproof vest.

“Waiting for something, or….?” he asked.

“Um, no. I’m just noticing, having a look at this scene,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Are you from around here? Where are you….?”

“No, I’m from America.”

“Where?”

“America. Boston.”

“Oh, are you a tourist? Just visiting?”

“No, I’m in a band.”

“Oh, what’s the name?” He shifted on his feet.

“Buffalo Tom. We’re supporting the Wedding Present, an English band.”

“Oh, right.” He seemed to half recognize the Weddoes. I proceeded to volunteer information.

“We’re staying at the Europa Hotel. Played in town last night. Tonight, in Jordanstown.”

“Oh? How’d it go?”

“Very well, thanks.”

He pivoted to walk away, smiling.

“Is this fairly routine?” I asked, noticing his nonchalance.

“‘Fairly routine?’ No, no, no. I wouldn’t say that.”

We passed a similar scene last night. Bob almost drove our van through a roped off “threat” scene. No blast.

*****

Probably a day after the journal entry, I was taking a shower in the hotel when I heard an extremely loud squawky voice and a bunch of noise coming from my room. It gave me quite a start. I scrambled out of the shower and into the room, wrapping my towel around me. The television was bellowing out the alarm about a bomb threat. I quickly pulled my clothes on over my still-wet body and opened the door. No one else was so much as opening a door, never mind running out into the hall. I went downstairs. No one taking notice of anything in the lobby. With my hair dripping, I asked the desk clerks what was going on. Was there or was there not a bomb threat?

“Oh, you didn’t see the notice about the drill?”

I recently visited my alma mater, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMass). I was there for an event to promote my book about The Cars. It was my first time back on the campus in about 25 years, as far as I can recall. My kids had each visited when they were touring colleges, but as with most parenting responsibilities, this one was handled by my wife, Laura. Honestly, if it weren’t for her, our kids would have been better off being raised by wolves.

Laura and I met at UMass in 1986, my junior year. This past October, we walked all over the sprawling campus in a nostalgic reverie. There’s the spot where she and I had one of our first starry-eyed conversations, one we both remember at least abstractly. We walked through the bowels of the Student Union building, where my friend Jay Talerman introduced me to J Mascis when I visited the campus as a high school senior. There is the building where I had my Avant-Garde Film class with professor Don Levine, a heavy smoker forever dressed in black (naturally). We slowed our pace by the lacrosse field that I picture in my mind any time I hear the Replacements’ “Sixteen Blue,” because I had sat there on the knoll one day listening to it on repeat on my Walkman, indelibly lodging that association in my brain. Then, recalling R.E.M.’s “Harborcoat” for a similar reason, we passed through the tunnel to the Southwest residential area where we each lived during our first year as students.

The campus and town seemed more vividly beautiful than I remembered them, despite my perception being periodically jarred by the physical changes: Holy shit! When did they build that? And, for the love of God, why is the Top of the Campus Bar gone? It had long been the cherry on top of the Marcel Breuer-designed Brutalist building housing the Campus Hotel. Still, we rode an elevator filled with neatly dressed, fresh-faced Hospitality & Tourism Management students to the top floor, where they now have a Marriott-funded conference room, and took in the sweeping vistas.

It was a sparkling October day in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. The campus is rimmed by forested hills that burst with peak autumnal glory. I posted a couple of pictures with the backdrop on Instagram, where one friend who grew up out there commented, “In the sleepy west of the woody east,” the opening line of the Pixies’ song “U-Mass.” I loved my years there and really didn’t want to leave. But Buffalo Tom had already started to gather momentum, so we all decamped to Boston. Still, as deeply as I appreciated the experience at the time, going back at 59 made me realize how much of the area’s breathtaking natural surroundings I had taken for granted.

With “U-Mass” now ringing in my head, I realized that it had been easy for me to take the Pixies for granted, even though they’d been on my mind often this past year. Sure, the band took off, seemingly out of nowhere, particularly in England. And they quickly achieved a level worldwide that I could only dream of attaining with my own band. By the time we put out our debut album, the Pixies, as with our friends in Dinosaur (before the “Jr.” suffix), were headlining big (to us: 1200-2000-cap) rooms overseas and, soon, in America as well. That was almost more success than we could reasonably aspire to in 1987, as mainstream pop charts were still dominated by Bon Jovi, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Huey Lewis, or, perhaps closer to home, U2, who later invited the Pixies to support them on tour.

But the Pixies’ innovations would ultimately seep into the mainstream, absorbed and radiated by hundreds of notable bands, most famously Nirvana. A common story; many of those artists had considerably greater commercial success, thanks in large part to timing. And the Pixies finally got their remunerative due with a hugely successful reunion tour in 2004, grossing over $14 million and remaining a big worldwide concert draw ever since. They transcend generations. My kids love them.

But what I mean when I say I have taken them for granted is that I those startlingly novel and unconventional songs and sounds — their trademark stark quiet-loud-quiet dynamic as a backdrop for an animated helix strip of intertwined levity and surrealism, sweet dreams and nightmares, screams of terror and giddy giggles, pitch-black nights that give way to bracing cold morning light — are mostly just recalled as timeless catchy tunes I have just been humming along to for decades, on a wave of mutilation.

I first heard the Pixies on WMUA, UMass’s main radio station. It was around September 1987, the start of my senior year, when the band released its debut mini-album, Come On Pilgrim. I can’t say for certain which song the deejay played, but it must have been “Vamos (Pilgrim),” because something about it immediately reminded me of the Gun Club. I had been really into that band’s Fire of Love since high school. It combined raw punk rock energy with rootsy blues and country, over which the unusual vocalist howled weird and haunting tales.

“Vamos (Pilgrim)” begins with a spoken bit of Spanglish over muted upstrokes on an acoustic guitar, soon joined by the familiar Western train-track drum cadence. Among other songs, the Gun Club used it on “For the Love of Ivy,” which I would often cover in various bands. Some electric guitar enters with a bit of feedback. And as with “For the Love Ivy,” the other Pixies answer the vocalist’s quieter approach with an explosive response, and then go quiet again.

But while the Gun Club’s singer and leader, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, assumed a deadly serious character, the singer of the Pixies sounds impish, like an angry boy-man, mulling over a possible move to join his sister in New Jersey. And the chorus is just a sing-song suggestion (en Español) that we all go play on the beach. And when the band explodes, answering his verse vocals, the squiggly guitar line is almost cartoonish, like a slide whistle underscoring Wile E. Coyote in mid-air. It’s like someone went wild on the pitch wheel of a synthesizer to bastardize a surf guitar part. The Gun Club’s Ward Dotson pounded away in a more straightforward punch. Santiago said, “I attached myself to bands like Violent Femmes. That was the strongest one. I wasn’t really into punk rock at that time. I didn’t have one ounce of emotion that could really relate to it. I really wasn’t that.”1

But the tone of “Vamos” grows more malevolent, a storm threatening the beach party. After squalls of guitar feedback and reverb springs being knocked around, he lets out growls and yelps. He sounds combustible, a real live wire, like some of David Byrne’s narrators, maybe a little Stooges-era Iggy Pop, or even Bon Scott (“Neckties, contracts, HIGH VOLTAGE!”) And there was something that brought to mind Pere Ubu’s “Final Solution.” Suicide’s Alan Vega likely influenced them all, grafting a vaguely rockabilly vibe against Marty Rev’s analog electronic thrashing. But again, instead of sounding threatening, the singer of “Vamos” just sounds a little silly and playful, more like Jonathan Richman than any of those other frontmen. His first words after that more threatening instrumental break are, ”I keep getting friends, looking like lesbians/If we get bored, we’ll move to California,” that last word emphasized in a voice that could have been taken from Pee Wee Herman’s repertoire.

As with Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph channeling Neil Young, Hüsker Dü, and Black Sabbath, it just all made sense to me; the Pixies seemed to be taking the Gun Club and those other influences and distilling them so seamlessly into their own sensibilities that it sounded almost sui generis, and they got there before my then-new band did. I was hooked even before I learned about the local and personal connections. Band leader, singer, and rhythm guitarist Black Francis (Charles Thompson, a.k.a. Frank Black) and lead guitarist Joey Santiago met there at UMass just a couple of years earlier. And I don’t know how long into their career as the Pixies it was when I learned that Black Francis and Santiago had met J Mascis on campus. But, as with us in Buffalo Tom, they were inspired by the immediate and proximate example of Mascis and Dinosaur as people who “were doing it,” as Black (for ease of reference) recalled recently.2 Black and Santiago moved to Boston and formed the band with David Lovering on drums and bassist/singer Kim Deal (then billed enigmatically and ironically as “Mrs. John Murphy”).

I can’t recall whether I went straight to buy the record before seeing them perform, or the other way around. But I learned the album was released on 4AD, one of those labels I trusted implicitly, buying often without first hearing the music contained in the unfailingly captivating covers, under the inspired art direction of Vaughan Oliver. Bauhaus and the This Mortal Coil collaboration had both commanded an inordinate amount of turntable time since I had gotten to school. The year before the Pixies released their debut, Rhode Island’s Throwing Muses had become the first American band to release an album on the label. The Muses were already playing in Boston at the Rat and other clubs, and I was interested in them (talk about your Sui generis!). And the Pixies were essentially discovered by Gary Smith, who saw the Pixies open for Throwing Muses at the Rat. A musician-turned-producer, Smith whisked the Pixies to Fort Apache, the new studio he was helping grow in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. The demo they created was known as “The Purple Tape,” and eight of those tracks made up Come On Pilgrim.

As with Throwing Muses, being on 4AD meant this was not a straightforward rock band; there would be something artful waiting in the grooves. The Pixies album cover might have been the most striking 4AD art to come across the Atlantic. All this mysterious stuff added to the band’s enigmatic allure. If they had been packaged with their clean-cut, gleaming faces in a more typical 1980s pop design, it would have presented a wholly different set of expectations when I stepped down into the basement of Sheehan’s Cafe in Northampton, the town next to Amherst in which I was by then living. A delightful 19th-century bar, Sheehan’s had a cellar that was one of the depressingly few off-campus venues in the region to host live music. Most students seemed to prefer dance clubs with deejays.

The capacity of the downstairs bar at Sheehan’s was maybe 80 people. I saw the Flaming Lips there as well. When I saw the Pixies. I was enthralled. Like most American “college rock” bands (this was before “alternative,” “grunge” and other silly classifications) of the time, they dressed in unremarkable street clothes. But there was nothing ordinary about the music. Something shifted in my consciousness, as it had the first time I had seen R.E.M. opening for the English Beat in 1983. Or when I heard Hüsker Dü combine pop, folk, and hardcore on Zen Arcade. And absorbing the atmosphere and poetry of Evol and Bad Moon Rising by Sonic Youth. And how it would shift again upon hearing My Bloody Valentine’s 1988 Feed Me with Your Kiss EP, and, especially, seeing them live in 1989, and touring with them on their mind-blowing Loveless album. Like those other artists, the Pixies did not merely write fresh-sounding songs; they created a world of their own. You met the records on their terms.

We had little time to digest it all. Within months, we would be following their steps and those of Dinosaur Jr. and Throwing Muses, going into the raw warehouse space of the first Fort Apache Studio in Boston, releasing our debut in 1988 (on SST in America and the UK), and signing with 4AD’s parent label, Beggars Banquet, for our subsequent albums, the beginning of a heady whirlwind ride through the 1990s.

Before the title of my most recent book, The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told, was handed to me by keyboardist Greg Hawkes, my agent suggested “How The Cars Invented the Eighties.” They certainly were instrumental in that evolution, straddling the beefy 1970s AOR rock sounds and futuristic textures and subject matter. A similar case can be made that the Pixies (who were fans of The Cars, by the way) were pivotal in inventing what we think of as Nineties rock.

Driving home to Boston from New York, watching the dramatic November sky change, the magic hour softening light around 3 o’clock, so that you have the glowing sun gleaming off a red and white striped smokestack against a grey pin-cushion sky. Going deeper into Connecticut, the gloaming horizon darkens, and there seem to be flashes of lightning, but it could be my tired eyes playing tricks. I am only halfway home.

A perfect time to replay The Cure’s record, Songs of a Lost World.

It is rare for me to take the time to listen to a complete album in one sitting. That used to be the default. Now it’s an exceptional moment, such as a Saturday cocktail hour, when I select and spin both sides of a vinyl album. Or, as in this case, an extended drive.

I was immediately smitten with Songs of a Lost World when it was released just over a year ago. It just gripped me sonically, well before the lyrics jumped out, which is how I first receive music. There are sweeping trademark Cure sounds—vintage synth string pads, flanged guitar spirals, cathedral-like echo, and Robert Smith’s singular voice—all presented in an astonishing mix by Smith and engineer Paul Corkett. It sounds at once contemporary and classic.

I happened to get a new car around that time, which came with an upgrade over my previous car’s sound system. I spent the waning weeks of autumn through winter listening repeatedly to the album, which lent a dramatic soundtrack to otherwise unremarkable drives through the increasingly dreary, grey wooded western suburbs of Boston. I am tempted to say that the album provided a sense of color as the landscape became pallid. But really, it was as if a photo filter accentuated the surroundings with starker contrast; the land, trees, and stone walls seemed less grey than sharper black-and-white.

I relate to Songs of a Lost World almost like I do to Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree. This should come as no surprise, as both are by songwriters who were, and remain, affiliated with 1980s goth (for lack of a better term). Each is a late-career triumph from two artists who continue to challenge themselves, delving into their personal lives to confront aging, mortality, and loss, subjects I have always been drawn to, even as a young person, but never more so as I have reached old age myself.

Skeleton Tree hits me so hard, though, that listening passively has never been an option. My initial response was emotionally visceral, colored, no doubt, by the fact that it was released after the death of Cave’s teenage son, Arthur, who fell from a cliff while the album sessions were underway. But once again, the music, the tonality, the textures, and the timber in Cave’s voice leveled me before I could even allow myself to soak in the lyrics, never mind interpret them.

It is only after I have surrendered to music that I listen attentively to lyrics. It has always been so. Some people listen to lyrics primarily. My wife can sing all of the early Elvis Costello, Squeeze, and Clash lyrics from memory. I am still catching up to the words thirty or forty years later. Even as a kid listening to Highway 61, it was the overall sound of Bob Dylan and the other musicians that hit me, the words taking years to absorb. Of course, those are dense poems as much as songs, and the voice is almost just another instrument. But it’s the same for me with straightforward and relatively light pop songs. I hear melodies and instrumentation before anything meaningful seeps in intellectually. As with much great art, but particularly music, I am moved before I can process it.

Even though Cave faced the tragedy more directly on the 2019 album ghosteen, I find that Skeleton Tree affects me so deeply that I have not listened to it frequently since its 2016 release. Perhaps it was the idea that the earlier album was an immediate reaction to the shocking loss, even though the lyrical content was mostly complete before the event, while ghosteen is a reflective reckoning, a work of healing, with years to grapple with it.

I would have felt the beautiful power of Skeleton Tree even without awareness of its tragic context, and I think it would always rank among my favorite Cave works. However, knowing the full weight of the story, anticipating Cave’s first work after that profound loss, made listening all the more poignant. It took a bite out of me. It’s similar to how I felt as a young father while reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road1. And it was that initial reaction that will likely forever color the listing experience, so I have to be in the right space to allow its immense to come at me.

While the lyrics of the Cure’s Songs of a Lost World are unrelenting in their Dark Romanticism and melancholia, the record is musically stirring, even uplifting in spots. Smith takes his time entering with his vocals on many of these songs, allowing them to breathe and build, ebb and flow, lift and fall, a passion play of tension and release. One of the most dramatic pieces, “And Nothing Lasts Forever,” climbs with cinematic swells of strings, elegiac piano riffs, distorted bass and guitar, and drums that sound so huge that they approach John Bonham’s on “When the Levee Breaks.” It isn’t until nearly three minutes into its seven-minute runtime that the narrator enters, beseeching his lover:

I know, I know

That my world has grown old

But it really doesn’t matter

If you say we’ll be together

If you promise you’ll be with me in the end

Elsewhere on the album, we can lean on familiar funky Cure grooves like “A Fragile Thing” while Smith sings:

“Every time you kiss me, I could cry,” she said

“Don’t tell me how you miss me, I could die tonight of a broken heart

This loneliness has changed me, and we’ve been too far apart

And it’s too late now for me to just forget

I never thought I’d need to feel regret for all I never was

But all this time alone has left me hurt and sad and lost

Regret, loss, aging, bitterness, and anger find no such musical relief on the next track, “Warsong,” a noisy dirge with wailing wah-wah guitar squalls (presumably from Reeves Gabrels). Indeed, it is arguably the album’s lowest point of emotional despair. But then, a couple of tracks later, “I Can Never Say Goodbye” deals head-on with Smith’s brother’s death as a tempestuous storm from across the sea, splitting the night sky with lightning, and in another stanza, as a demonic creature.

Something wicked this way comes

From out the cruel and treacherous night

Something wicked this way comes

To steal away my brother’s life

As with other moments of the record, on “All I Ever Am,” we have a rueful Prufrockian narrator regretting past choices, lost opportunities, and ruminating on meaningless obsessions and a failure to live in the moment. Some of these themes are only driven home more forcefully on the closer, “Endsong.” Apparently inspired by a memory of watching the Apollo 11 landing in with his father, Smith sings:

And I’m outside in the dark

Staring at the blood red moon

Remembering the hopes and dreams I had

And all I had to do

And wondering what became of that boy

And the world he called his own

I’m outside in the dark

Wondering how I got so old

But this is no wistful remembrance; over a pummeling tribal beat and walls of screaming guitars and synths, Smith laments:

It’s all gone, it’s all gone

Nothing left of all I loved

It all feels wrong

It’s all gone, it’s all gone, it’s all gone

No hopes, no dreams, no world

No, I, I don’t belong

No, I don’t belong here

The pain feels palpably present. It’s hard to believe that this album—the band’s first after a sixteen-year break from releasing new material—was initially going to be darker, but was rejiggered to temper the dark with some light. Smith told The Independent, “I was imagining [with] this album, everything was going to be relentlessly downbeat, and then a few people who I trust listened to it and said…‘It’s too much, you can’t expect people to listen to this much doom and gloom.’”

But an occasional dose of doom and gloom can be awfully cathartic.

I was fortunate enough to speak to Bruce Springsteen in November 2021. We were set to discuss Leon Russell for my 2023 biography of Leon. My wife had given me a lot of “Oh, that’s nice” sentiment when I informed her of some of the previous interview subjects I landed. Elton John? “Oh, that’s nice.” Rita Coolidge? Eric Clapton? Willie Nelson? Randy Newman? “Oh, that’s nice.”

But she grew up in New Jersey as a big fan of that state’s patron saint. She flushed with excitement when I told her about Bruce. This was during the pandemic when the dress code was largely sweats. But she got all dressed in a lovely outfit, put on her makeup, and fixed her hair up pretty, just to sit on the floor outside the closed door of the room where I would be having a phone call—not even a video call—with Bruce. You know, just in case.

The news had just broken that morning about the brouhaha in the Gateway National Recreation Area in New Jersey. So I was not hopeful that the interview would happen. But the Boss called right at the appointed time.

“Is this Bill?” came the familiar voice.

“Yes, hey,” I started.

“It’s Bruce!” he announced, in case I had any doubt. Here is the rest of our short but sweet chat.

Bill

Well, again, thanks for taking the time. I spoke to Jon Landau yesterday because I know he was a fan of Leon. Back in the Mad Dog days. And it’s interesting for me, that that period of time when Leon was taking that sort of Delaney and Bonnie gospel type stuff, and I read in your memoir, that you kind of thought of that Mad Dogs thing as a pivotal moment.

Bruce Springsteen

Oh yeah, me and Stevie Van Zandt went and saw the movie because they made the film. So the film got everywhere. It came to our little town, and we went and saw it. And all I remember was leaving, going, “I want to band just like that.” And I went about shortly thereafter putting together, locally, which was hard to do, a 10-piece band, that was really based on Mad Dogs and Englishmen. You know, we had singers and horn players. It was a big, big band that was dedicated to, primarily, soul music and rhythm and blues, and I played with that band for a while until I couldn’t afford it anymore, and that slowly broke down. But Leon, as a band leader, was very, very impactful to me as a 21-year-old kid.

Bill

You see him in the movie, kind of taking charge and directing the band, and you could tell it’s his baby, right?

Bruce

Yeah. He was the music director, and I was interested in musicians who played that role because I was studying my craft and learning how to do that from my own bands. He was a unique figure, also —you know, he was charismatic and colorful and very talented on his own. You know his own singing and playing was, was really stellar, and he was just somebody I admired greatly at that at that moment, particularly.

Bill

And had you already been aware of his role as a key session guy with Snuff Garrett and Phil Spector?

Bruce

I had no awareness of his role previous to Mad Dogs in Englishmen. And then I went back and saw how all these great sessions he’d been on, and you know how he’d been at the birth of a lot of incredible records that I loved.

Bill

Exactly, I mean, it’s kind of the appeal of this, of this, of this book to me is this arc from the earliest days of rock and roll, you know, he toured with Jerry Lee Lewis as a 17-year-old, so I mean this whole arc. I know you were kind of already studying, as you say, showmanship or bandleading, and that sort of thing. Were you inspired by his particular almost preacher-like vernacular, the southern sort of Pentecostal thing that he got going?

Bruce

I had a little bit of that. I picked a little bit of that up and used it in my show.

So, yeah, I’d say I’d say so that and I picked it up from other places, also all the great soul frontmen had a little bit of that. But it was just a fascinating blend of music and people, and it was so colorful and had that circus atmosphere, and the great, the great vocalist in Joe [Cocker], and it was just a beautiful—for however long it lasted, and I only remember lasting a little bit— it was a beautiful creation.

Bill

And did you follow his solo records as well as go see him on tour?

Bruce

A little bit, not as much, you know? I followed the solo records. I never saw him on tour. But, you know, I was a fan of what he was doing on all these records. Sure.

Bill

And did you guys create so you didn’t cross paths? Once you were established?

Bruce

The only time I ever got to say two words was in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was quite old, in a wheelchair, and his hearing wasn’t that great. But I leaned over to him. And I just said “Hey, nice to meet you. You meant a great deal to me.” I whispered in his ear. And I stood back and he looked at me and said, “I can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying!”

Bill

Oh man, he aged fast. The loss of hearing kind of hit him.

Talking to Jon yesterday, it was this era of moving from the heaviness and psychedelia into the, the more, you know, taking the R&B roots, as you, say, the soul influence, and not many English bands were really doing that so much at that time. There was Mick, of course, in front, but it was an interesting thing to see how it linked with you guys, and like J Geils Band.

Bruce

Yeah, Peter was doing that kind of thing as well as I, I suppose.

Bill

Well, great. I mean, I didn’t really have many more questions, but I appreciate you taking the time, and it’s a real privilege.

Bruce

Thanks, buddy.

Bill

Thanks for calling, Bruce.

Bruce

Carry on. Take care.

Bruce Springsteen has been in the news quite a bit lately. I mean, even more than usual. This recent attention stems from the near-simultaneous 2025 releases of the electric Nebraska sessions and the film Deliver Me From Nowhere. I highly recommend Warren Zanes’ book with the same title that inspired the film (as well as all of his books).

I have never been a big fan of the E Street Band, and even less so as the number of people on stage grew to a rockestra. The quieter Bruce got, the more I listened to and appreciated his songs. It’s like the old carnival barker trick, I guess, like the counterintuitive way to draw a crowd would be to talk quietly, not bellow so loudly that the people would just pass you by.

My favorite Springsteen songs include “One Step Up” and “Highway Patrolman,” both from my favorite Bruce records. Listening to “Highway Patrolman,” I never fail to be astonished at his economy of language in that one, particularly. He tends to be far more verbose throughout his catalog. But his studying of Flannery O’Connor in the run-up to writing the songs on Nebraska directly paid off in these stark, short-story-like songs.

The titular character offers the plainspoken, blunt truth, as he sees it, in the first verse.

I always done an honest job

As honest as I could

I got a brother named Franky

And Franky ain’t no good

But as he parses out his view of just the facts, he reveals enough about himself to explain the guilt-ridden responsibility he feels toward his brother, Franky, the one who he claims “ain’t no good.” Meanwhile, describing himself, he claims he’s “always done an honest job,” but then offhandedly qualifies it, “as honest as I could.”

In the chorus, we learn that they used to take turns “dancing with Maria as the band plays ‘Night of the Johnstown Flood,’” a then-fictional song that, from its title, would not indicate that it would be much of a dance number. Nevertheless, that these two brothers were taking turns dancing with the same young woman, indicates to me that Maria was not yet attached to either of them exclusively.

And then we get to the next verse, which gives away much through its word choices.

Well Franky went in the army, back in 1965

I got a farm deferment

Settled down, took Maria for my wife

But them wheat prices kept on droppin’

‘Til it was like we were gettin’ robbed

Franky came home in ‘68

And me, I took this job

Franky went to serve the country, while his narrator brother got a deferment. He “took Maria” for his wife. Took her. This farmer, aggrieved by the challenging economics of farming, “took this job” as a highway patrolman. Franky “went,” served, and “came home,” alive. But Franky could never get his shit together, and the army probably only fucked him up further. He is always in trouble with the law, which his brother now serves to enforce. But he treats Franky with kid gloves and leniency, explaining:

I catch him when he’s strayin’

Teach him how to walk that line

Man turns his back on his family

He ain’t no friend of mine

We don’t get to hear Franky’s side of the story. It would be easy to imagine him feeling this “teaching” and “catching” would be seen as condescension from his brother, the one who “took Maria” while he was away, presumably in Vietnam, and then “took this job” as a cop. It’s a classic archetype. Think of the brothers in Better Call Saul.

Then we reach the climax, which is my favorite of all Springsteen verses, even more than the opening of “Thunder Road.”

Well the night was like any other

I got a call ‘bout quarter to nine

There was trouble in a roadhouse

Out on the Michigan line

There was a kid lyin’ on the floor lookin’ bad

Bleedin’ hard from his head

There was a girl cryin’ at a table

And it was Frank, they said

This picture is so vivid in my mind, like a neo-noir scene or an Edward Hopper painting, if Hopper ever tackled the aftermath of violence. It’s perfect in its selection of words, remaining as straightforward as the opening, remaining consistently in the narrator’s voice.

It’s only on the choruses, with their wash of nostalgia for better days—or at least one memorable night—that Springsteen allows the narrator to break into something uncharacteristically poetic. “Laughing and drinking/Nothing feels better than blood on blood.” But the blood in this climax verse is spilling out onto a roadhouse floor, as a kid lies dying.

The final two post-climax verses, uninterrupted by a chorus, have the narrator half-heartedly chasing his brother—escorting him, really—to the state line, where he lets him get away, watching his “tail lights disappear.” There is a resigned sense that the narrator has let his brother live, but they will likely never see each other again. The last image was so striking to me that—along with Keith Richards singing “watch my taillights fading” in “Before They Make Me Run”—inspired me to write a whole song around that image, titled “Taillights Fade.”

And it’s no wonder the song inspired the film The Indian Runner (1991). I am horrible at remembering movies, so I am not sure if I ever saw that one. I will watch it soon.

In the album’s title track, “Nebraska,” Springsteen adopted the “meanness in this world” from O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” story, dropping into the voice of the real-life serial killer, Charles Starkweather, who inspired the great 1973 Terrence Malick film, Badlands, which in turn inspired the song. In Springsteen’s depiction of Starkweather, the killer attributes the senseless, detached murders as a response to that meanness, as if he were just caught up in it. Starkweather, though, never used those words nor indicated as much. But he did write that he and his girlfriend accomplice, Caril Ann Fugate just wanted to “have fun.”

The meanness in that song, explained almost as if the killers were mud on a bad karmic wheel of the world, was overt and resulted in eleven people dying. The meanness of “Highway Patrolman” is more subtle and personally felt and dealt. There’s the blatant violence of the climax, but more primary is the vague and intimate brotherly meanness, with the narrator starting the song by characterizing his brother as “no good.” Not troubled, or struggling, or capable of bad actions, but simply and absolutely “no good.” The narrator feels the world’s meanness in the form of wheat prices dropping and the lifelong burden of trying to catch and right his wayward brother. He does nothing to explain possible reasons for Franky’s bad actions. Even as he explains that he took Maria and took the job, the cop takes it for granted that he is the righteous, upright citizen, stoically carrying on in the face of the meanness of the world, like Cormac McCarthy’s Sheriff Ed Tom Bell character in No Country For Old Men. Though the song begins as a testimony, delivering his name, rank, and barracks number, the vocal delivery is almost that of a man sighing out the whole tale. The patrolman seems more relieved than anything else by the end of the song, no longer having to care for his brother or have him there as a reminder of his own failings.

Different people feel the world’s meanness in varying degrees and intensity. Depending on where you live, how old you are, your station in life, or your mental health, the meanness can sometimes feel more distant and life more generally hopeful. But one would have to be completely detached not to feel absolutely beaten down by the world’s meanness in late 2025. In this country, meanness has rarely, if ever, been more celebrated. Hypocrisy is laughably irrelevant. Shamelessness is a superpower. Cruelty is virtuous and synonymous with strength. One has to feel severely insecure and frightened to take such pleasure as to make so many others feel small and insignificant at best, and parasitic at worst; people sent away, imprisoned, or killed without any due process or justice. Heroes are now villains. “I like people who weren’t captured,” said the guy who got a deferment. That same year, he mocked a person’s disability at a rally. It was only the beginning. Long live the mad King from Queens! He’s the real hero! One worth staging an insurrection for! He will surely pardon us winged monkeys who minister to his cruelty.

I kept a notebook of various Buddhist and related wisdom back at the turn of the last century. One quote I noted was “People are at their cruelest when they are intentionally avoiding suffering.” It’s basic Buddhist dharma, but presented in a particularly effective way. Most suffering stems from insecurity, a challenged sense of self or ego, or a lack of economic or physical well-being. My simplistic theory is that such insecurity can generally be seen as the source of much of humanity’s cruelty.

If cruelty is the sign of someone who is suffering, then we are being led by one of the most insecure suffering bastards in history, wallowing in his own hell-on-earth. We encounter ordinary meanness from people almost every day. But rarely has it been this heightened and obvious. We watch as one person projects his vanity and insecurities, surrounding himself with other pathetic creatures similarly suffering, creating a dark new reality that affects the whole world. The problem here is that he is creating a hell for all of us. He has also given permission for his and his team’s collective meanness to become the default for his followers, who welcome and wallow in cruelty, having voted for him three times. We have all heard or read the now-cliché, “the cruelty is the point.” Most of the time, it seems precisely true.

What is it you’re afraid of? Is the world changing from what you once perceived it to be? Is AI going to destroy us? Are immigrants here to take your place? Are your grandkids now proudly expressing who they are, unlike the days when people had to hide it? Do you feel left behind in this changing economy that, by design, encourages an ever-widening gyre of extreme inequity? Is your gated community fortified enough to protect you when the pitchforks and torches come for you? Do people need billions of dollars in order to feel secure and powerful enough? Who hurt you, Elon? Your father, right?

Bad behavior is often explained by one’s upbringing. But how do people who were raised with an unchallenged sense of security, with a value set that stressed compassion, kindness, and understanding, and who turned out predictably liberal, make sense of their elderly parents knowingly voting for cruelty and corruption at least two of the last three elections? “What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love, and understanding?” That was written by Nick Lowe, ironically, in the early ‘70s, a poke at idealistic hippie music. Lowe knew then that the meanness of the world was ever at hand, and a song asking to “smile on your brother” and “love one another” was the height of futility.

Meanness is having the hour, which seems to make a great many people gleeful. Meanness is hogging the road like a semi tailgating you at 75 miles per hour in the middle lane. I long for a day when I can pull over on the side of the highway and watch the taillights disappear.

_______

Photo of Bruce Springsteen, circa Nebraska. John Michael Kennedy