May 25, 2010

Some time in the late 1970s, a young musician named Marshall Crenshaw made a desperate bid to escape his native Detroit by auditioning for the part of John Lennon in a traveling production of the faux-Beatles extravaganza known as “Beatlemania.” After receiving a crash course in all things Beatles from the show's producers, Crenshaw finally won the role, and then had to endure a solid year of being wildly cheered for looking and sounding like somebody other than himself.

By all accounts, Crenshaw was a credible enough Lennon, but it didn’t take him long to realize he needed to find a musical identity of his own or else be driven insane. So he purchased a four-track tape recorder and, whenever there was a break from the tour and he was back in Detroit, he made demos of his own songs. But they weren’t the sorts of tunes other struggling songwriters were recording on the cusp of the glossy '80s.

“Around '73,” Crenshaw later said in an interview, “I just stopped listening to the radio and just became immersed, listening to old 45s from the '50s and early '60s. It seemed to me that there was more immediacy in those records than the stuff that was on the radio at that time."

Crenshaw’s tunes rode on a wave of starry-eyed lyrics, although the romanticism was more often than not undercut by an Elvis Costello-like strain of barbed sarcasm. Or maybe he was just a wise-ass Smokey Robinson. Either way, he had trouble writing completely committed “love” songs, and the fissure was both amusing and fascinating.

Here’s one of the demos he recorded when he finally got his act together, “You’re My Favorite Waste of Time.” Note his already fully-developed flair for vaguely melancholic, minor chord-driven melodies.

"You're My Favorite Waste of Time"

With captivating work like that coming from his bedroom, it’s no wonder record labels were soon clamoring for Crenshaw’s services. I can remember reading about him in “Rolling Stone” magazine long before I’d heard a single note of his music, and just the description of what he was doing, which included references to Buddy Holly and Phil Spector, got me excited. I was, after all, the only 16 year-old kid in north Alabama who listened to the Ronettes while he got ready for school.

Soon after signing with Warner Bros. Records, Crenshaw entered the Record Plant in New York City with his drummer-brother, Robert, and a superb bass player named Chris Donato, and proceeded to cut one of the coolest, most insanely catchy debut albums since the Beatles initially please-pleased the world. I, for one, flipped when I first heard it. I can clearly remember listening to it on a set of headphones while lying in bed at night, marveling at the melodies, in particular, and at Crenshaw’s remarkable ability to sound old-fashioned and absolutely modern at the same time.

I felt from that first listen that the record was a rock & roll classic, and, over the past couple of decades, it’s surely stood the test of time.

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The story goes that Lou Reed named his final album with the Velvet Underground “Loaded” because, as he saw it, it was loaded with possible hits. Marshall Crenshaw could have named his eponymous debut the same thing, for the same reason.

Unfortunately for Crenshaw (and for Reed, for that matter), the American public’s musical tastes had skewed mightily toward horse crap while he was still digging The Good Stuff, so he only managed a very minor chart appearance in the form of a bouncy little number called “Someday, Someway,” which also received some airplay when it was released by the rockabilly revivalist, Robert Gordon. All the other “hits” would be enjoyed only by the relative handful of people who purchased the album.

Everything on “Marshall Crenshaw” is great— and I mean every single song. The weakest track would have to be a cover of an old Arthur Alexander tune called “Soldier of Love,” but even that serves as mortar between Crenshaw’s concepts of rock & roll past and present. You can tell the guy singing and playing the guitar on this album is also a music fan, much in the same way you can detect Bruce Springsteen’s fanatacism on “Born to Run.”

There’s a joyous sense of creation in the air, as if Crenshaw is celebrating his chance to join the lineage of great American pop. And he throws in lots of lyrical hints that rock & roll is a lifeline you can cling to when the real world is simply too much to bear. This, obviously, is a man who’s bought a few records in his time.

Years earlier, Crenshaw’s co-producer on the project, Richard Gottehrer, was a songwriter who penned such AM-radio classics as “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “I Want Candy,” so he knew full-well where the artist was coming from (Gottehrer would hit the financial jackpot soon after working with Crenshaw by producing the Go-Go’s gazillion-selling debut, “Beauty and the Beat.”)

“Marshall Crenshaw”’s bright, bouncy sound is elemental to its appeal. The arrangements are never overly busy, so you can pick individual instruments out of the mix if you want to focus, for instance, on one of Donato’s bubbling bass lines or Robert Crenshaw’s pistol-crack backbeat. The only thing that could conceivably be viewed as a bauble is the occasional ringing of a glockenspiel. Beyond that, it’s handclaps and high harmony supporting a series of gorgeous, seemingly effortless melodies.

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As I already said, there are no duds here. It’s tough to choose just a couple of tracks for new listeners to hear, but anything I pick is guaranteed to convey the album’s dazzling effervescence. Let’s start with “She Can’t Dance,” which paints a portrait of the exact sort of swinging-ponytail girl you can imagine young Marshall pining for, and probably not getting, in high school.

"She Can’t Dance"

There’s nothing especially intricate going on here, at least not on first listen. Pay closer attention, though, and you’ll notice the minimalist perfection of Crenshaw’s guitar chords— he’s laying down a bed of bouncing electricity to support the vocals, and the rest of the trio simply drives the thing along with boundless energy. Why kids at the time weren’t assigning number judgments to this on “American Bandstand” remains quite beyond my understanding. Was it really not as worthy as Styx and Joe Walsh?

Next up is “Cynical Girl,” which is arguably the key song on the album and as close to an anthem as you’ll find in the Marshall Crenshaw oeuvre. An hilarious ode to abhorring the abundant garbage everyone else embraces, it once again sounds like it could have been recorded in 1956 or the day after tomorrow, although the weary lyrics are something of a dead giveaway.

"Cynical Girl"

Well I'm goin' out
I'm goin' out lookin' for a cynical girl
Who's got no use for the real world
I'm lookin' for a cynical girl

I'll be lost in love
And havin' some fun with my cynical girl
Who'll have no use for the real world
I'm lookin' for a cynical girl

In an interview with “Magnet” magazine last summer, Crenshaw said of the song, “I had the music first. That’s how it always works. As far as the words go, I remember having to go to court to pay a traffic ticket, and the words kinda popped into my head all at once. The meat of the song is where it says, ‘I hate TV,’ which is an oddball thing to say in a rock ‘n’ roll song. Whenever I get an idea like that, that’s almost too stupid to put in a song, I always put it in. The thing about the girl is really window-dressing. At that time, I despised about 60 percent of mass culture. Now, it’s up to about 90.”

I can relate, Marshall. I can relate.

And for my final exhibit, I offer you, “Mary Anne,” a classic entry in the long rock & roll tradition of songs named after unapproachable girls. The protagonist, as always on “Marshall Crenshaw,” is trying to light the love flame, but the winds of disappointment keep blowing it out. And the object of his undeclared affection is in the same boat.

“You take a look around, and all you seem to see/Is bringing you down, as down as you can be/Go on and have a laugh/Go have a laugh on me/Go on and have a laugh at how bad it can be” is hardly the most hopeful lyric, but the soaring backing vocals and fragile melody coupled with the obvious yearning in Crenshaw’s voice move the tune into certifiably sad territory.

There’s mere disappointment and there’s genuine heartbreak, and this song hangs precariously on the cusp of the two. It’s a remarkably concise balancing act, clocking in at a radio-friendly two minutes and fifty-eight seconds, not that any deejays actually played it. But the lack of public acceptance doesn’t make this tune, or the rest of “Marshall Crenshaw,” any less of a masterpiece.

"Mary Anne"

It’s no exaggeration to say Buddy Holly couldn’t have done it any better himself. What a terrific, and terrifically moving, little song.

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I intended to stop there, but what the hell. While we’re at it, let’s play the flip side.

One of my favorite “Marshall Crenshaw” tunes isn’t even on the album— it only appeared on the B-side of “Cynical Girl.” “Somebody Like You” was recorded with a little more muscle than the songs that ended up on the record. The sound is meatier, more modernistic, and the guitar solo punches a bit harder. It's more power pop than brilliantly retooled classicism.

"Somebody Like You" still appears to be an abandoned experiment, though; there are occasional dropouts and flutters in the left channel that suggest the tape somehow got crinkled or twisted. But the eye-rolling lyrics (“I cannot stand that noise you’re listening to/Why did I ever get involved with you?”) are wholly in keeping with the rest of the album, and the handclaps and “bop-bop” background vocals are to die for.

"Somebody Like You"

The crop of songs that encompass “Marshall Crenshaw” may not hold the secret to life, al a Springsteen or Lennon or the Band. But, almost 30 years later, they still hold the secret to the next three minutes while I’m listening to them, and, that, for me, defines great pop music. If I’m allowed to bring 15 albums to that mythical desert island everyone talks about, surely this one’s coming with me, and I’ll gladly sing along with it until I die of dehydration or scorpion stings.

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Crenshaw has released many albums since 1982, and is a well-respected songsmith who still tours clubs around the country. But he’s somehow never recaptured the lightning of his debut release, at least not with such energetic, winning consistency. By now, more people probably know him as the guy who played Buddy Holly in the Richie Valens biopic, “La Bamba,” than as a great rock & roll artist. If you’re looking for a working definition of irony, that should suffice right there.

Back around 1993, my agent at the time needed a date to her old boyfriend’s wedding (they still knew and liked each other), so I agreed to put on a suit and tag along. The ex-beau worked for Columbia Records and, of course, knew a lot of people in the business. But I was still surprised to see that his buddy, Marshall Crenshaw, led the house band at the reception!

Crenshaw played a lot of obscure ‘60s hits, including a hefty handful by the Sir Douglas Quintet. This seemed dream-like enough, but I also noticed, sitting among the guests, a sassy-looking woman who smiled broadly while bopping her head to the music. It was Ronnie Spector, the lead singer of the Ronettes.

I don't believe our lives can really come to one complete circle. It’s more like a series of rough, circular doodles scrawled on a sheet of cosmic notebook paper by an unknowable force. I didn’t speak to either Crenshaw or Spector that evening. I thought it best that we simply share the moment and dig the music, just like we always had, albeit in different locations. There was more than enough connection in that to keep me happy, and other circles remained to be drawn. For a couple of hours, anyway, the joint was jumping, Crenshaw rocked out, and all seemed right with the world.

Download: “Marshall Crenshaw” (1982) by Marshall Crenshaw, in its entirety. Don't forget to tack on the bonus tracks, "You're My Favorite Waste of Time," "Somebody Like You," and "Whenever You're on My Mind." Then pop till you drop...wop-bop-wop-bop-ooh-ooh-ooh.

Paul Tatara