The cold winds doth blow here in Ohio, down the street and up your pant leg. Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" sure sounded inviting on the oldies station a few hours ago.
"Summertime Blues" sounds like it was recorded yesterday and rocks like there is no tomorrow. Rock has never been harder. Cochran's rhythm is built like a boa constrictor: dangerous incompressable shiny muscle. Maybe that's the difference between rock 'n' roll and metal. Rock 'n' roll - no matter how hard - is made of muscle and bone and skin. Metal is metal: inorganic alloys mined and smelted, not birthed and nurtured.
What the Who did to "Summertime Blues" is the difference between rock 'n' roll and metal (not that the Who is metal per se). The Who take the swing out of everything, even "Twist and Shout" - they take bounce and turn it into stomp. This isn't bad, it just is. But, you're not going to dance to "Summertime Blues" by the Who. With Eddie, it's all in the upbeat, the Who crush everything on the downbeat. The Who aren't harder, just louder and clumsier. I come not to bury the Who, but to praise the swing of first generation rock 'n' roll, and in particular Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues."
Eddie Cochran was all energy and motion and arrogance. It can be misleading to read, but not hear, lyrics - so much of the meaning is conveyed by how the lyrics are presented. Often the attitude directly contradicts the literal meaning of the words, and that contradiction can make a song multidimensional. Songs are like people: they both have to be met to be fully understood.
"Well I'm a-gonna raise fuss
I'm agonna raise a holler.
About a working all summer just to
Try to earn a dollar"
The outrage is feigned. The voice jumps out of the grooves (as we used to say of vinyl records) - the guitar jumps and pumps like adolescent hormones. He's working all summer, not all year. The work is optional. He needs money to fund fun, not for food, shelter or clothing. Cochran is mimicking working adult complaints. Eddie knows that he will be back in school in the fall. He's just playing at being an adult for the summer.
What's really important is that he's "gonna raise a fuss, he's a-gonna raise a holler." What he's going to raise it about is secondary. If the problem hadn't been work, it would have been something else. Teenagers have to bitch. It's a way to let off steam, and Eddie's got so much steam that it's fogging the windows.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
great article E.
i think you've just kicked off my twice-yearly (or so) rockabilly jag...
2 - Eric Olsen
Thanks M! sometimes there's just no substitute for it. What's easy to forget is just how wild so much of hte original rock 'n' rol is.