Rock and Roll Flashpoints

Interesting topic, but I'm a bit confused.

Do you mean a flashpoint for band/artist or a flashpoint in my own tastes? Works either way, I suppose.

Every band has its flashpoint, so I'll go with the most obvious and do the solo Beatles:

Ringo Starr -- Who knows? The minute he pondered a solo career? I don't really care for any of Starr's solo stuff. He never escaped the stereotype of being the harmless scamp.

George Harrison -- When Here Comes The Sun and Something were hits off of Abbey Road. It posited Harrison as an equal of Lennon-McCartney at a key time as he could then launch from the break-up into a solo career. Great things were expected, and I like solo George, but like his Beatles' songs, his solo career was uneven. Some of it is great, a lot of it ... meh.

John Lennon -- Lost Weekend era which led to dreck like Walls & Bridges and Whatever Gets You Through The Night. He never recovered. Double Fantasy was lauded as a comeback album, and I suppose some of it isn't bad, but I think his murder has made memories of that album much fonder than they deserve to be.

Paul McCartney -- I suppose some would argue that it was the minute he launched his solo career or Wings, but I think it's when he achieved fame with his 80s duets.

He was uneven as hell in the 70s, no doubt about it. I hate Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey with a passion. But he also mixed in some brilliance, and most often, just recorded a lot of good pop songs that aren't world-changing, but that are good, and have stood up.

That era basically ended when did Ebony & Ivory, The Girl Is Mine and Say, Say, Say. All popular songs, but none of them sound good today, and he never recovered relevance after they were hits.

 

I think it was Paul McCartney who once said that ELO was what The Beatles would have sounded like had they stayed together.

 

Which would have made the Beatles still a kick-ass band in the 1970s

 

Wins the Internet

 

The chapter about this video in "I Want My MTV" is amazing.

Lessons learned: Never let a director convince you to wear pink and roll around in satin sheets, listen to your girlfriend when she says "THEY'RE TRYING TO RUIN YOUR CAREER!", make sure to record more than one take of you performing the song "live" with your band, and make sure that you can cancel your MTV World Premiere date if you need to reshoot.

 

The other one that comes to mind for me is Pink Floyd.

Flashpoint being when Syd Barrett discovers LSD.

With Syd, they were a unique, interesting band. The debut album has a few classics and some nursery rhyme songs I absolutely adore--"The Gnome", "Bike". But, had Syd not discovered his hallugenic utopia, would Pink Floyd have become the Waters/Gilmour monsters of rock that they became?

 

How old was that song by the time they released it?

I know my brother had it on a tape of a live show years before the album/single came out.

It really was odd. The Grateful Dead all of a sudden having a hit single, and the video was in heavy rotation on MTV.

Was there any actual effort by the band and/or their label to make it a hit, or was it just a fluke?

 

Oct. 20, 1977. There was this plane crash in Mississippi. It was carrying a band. Truly the day the music died.

 

That band's still together, isn't it?

 

Sex Pistols running into problems with visas and not being able to play SNL in Dec. 77. Elvis Costello got the gig instead.

 

I believe I've read where the Dead first wrote and performed Touch of Grey in 1982. I know I heard them perform West LA Fadeaway (also on that album) in the Fall of '82. I don't think the band themselves did much to make the song a hit, but they were on Arista at the time, and I think someone there heard the polished studio version, thought it could be a hit, and pushed the label's promotion department into gear behind it. Once that happened, they talked the band into producing some videos, which they got into in a big way. IMO, the video for Hell In A Bucket is a real hoot.

 

Yes it is, and I fully enjoyed seeing 'em play last summer. BUT, GRIP Ronnie.