Wearing my talk radio hat, I was lucky enough to shake hands with Ted Kennedy a few years ago, just before he got sick. (No pictures, alas.) Digesting the media obituaries regarding the late, great Senior Senator from Massachusetts, I am consistently amazed at the editorial choices which were made while covering the great man's life:
How many personal demons would you possess if you'd suffered the family tragedies that he did, all while under the gaze of the public eye, much of which was directed at himbecause of those tragedies?
How easy is it for people to take one tragedy out of a man's life -- now, almost forty years gone -- and demonize that person for it? I'm looking at you, Christian conservatives, who seemingly would never forgive Kennedy for anything -- but was it for his actions, or just leverage for their hating his politics? Must be politics, because their memories and lack of forgiveness regarding similar acts do seem party-sensitive.
Amidst all the thousands of hours of wasting television "news" coverage of OJ, the Buttafucos, John and Kate and all such similarly inane crap, why did we never know Kennedy was such good friends with Republicans, like Orrin Hatch? All sorts of talking heads know enough to speak glowingly of it, but why wasn't that personal behavior covered over the years decades that our politics have become so polarized? Why couldn't that be role modeling for kids to observe on TV, instead of types like the Gosselins and the Hiltons?
Finally, Joe Scarborough keeps suggesting this one particular 1990 GQ takeout story on Kennedy as being a turning point in his life. Perhaps, but, Joe, was that the only magazine article you've ever read?
And, now, what a wonderful (totally memorized) coda to a great life:
Of course, I'd already gotten two text jokes by that posting:
The first: "After Farrah Fawcett died, she went to Heaven, and upon arriving was asked what was her one wish for those she left behind on Earth. She replied, "Keep the children safe." Then Michael Jackson died."
The second: "What were Michael Jackson's final words? "Take me to Children's Hospital.'"
Now, before anyone gets all bent out of shape, this is a natural human reaction called "gallows humor." And whatever Jacko's many adult shortcomings (which too often eclipsed his creative excellence), I, at least, think they stemmed from his being an abused pre-adolescent who was responsible for being his family's meal ticket while working in a ethically dubious business in a morally dubious time.
When you spend your entire life trying to change the face of the "man in the mirror," and you looked like your father, you are trying to forget something bad.
Looking back on what was a relatively small class that produced Grosse Pointe North's student paper, North Pointe, in addition to enabling us to have many extended lunches at Big Boy, Mr. Amberg oversaw and encouraged the creativity of some people that have turned out pretty well, including:
Ron Asheton has always been around Detroit and Ann Arbor, so we will miss his presence after his passing this week. For too long, though, our community and the rock world at large missed the presence of The Stooges: the exciting dynamic that Ron and his brother Scott uniquely had as the Stooges with one James OsterbergIggy Pop.
When the Stooges reunited in 2003, it was somehow appropriate that their now-legendary gig at DTE Pine Knob was interrupted by an enormous regional blackout.
So, should the hugely influential Stooges finally make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the next month, that Ron would miss it is somehow, bittersweetly, unsurprising.
Check out this awesome memory:
When was the last time you looked at a YouTube video and wished you had been there?
Added 10/18/08: The thoughts of the Yoda of Detroit music writers, Dave Marsh, from his Rock & Rap Confidential:
SOMETHING ABOUT YOU…When I was 15, I met the Four Tops on a downtown Detroit street, where they were doing a photo shoot with the Supremes. The group—especially Duke Fakir—were extraordinarily kind to a trio of white kids totally out of their element. I love the Four Tops for that, but I would have loved them anyway. They are the voice of adolescent angst and adult heartbreak, the pure, the absolute joy that humans can take in one another. Call them love songs –I’d say it was more like lifelines—but call them silly and you’ve branded yourself as a fool.
Phil Spector once said that “Bernadette” was a black man singing Bob Dylan. The name of that black man was Levi Stubbs. And for those of you who are Bruce Springsteen fans, go find the Tops greatest album, The Four Tops Second Album, and listen to “Love Feels Like Fire” and “Helpless,” two of my alltime Motown tracks (and they weren’t even singles). You’ll feel the same thing. Those crazed sax breaks are as close to free jazz as Motown ever let itself come, and they got away with it there solely because the Tops were such a perfect machine with the most powerful voice of its time at the fore. I could never figure out whether Levi was the toughest or the tenderest singer at Motown, so I finally accepted that he was both.
Yeah, a lot of the Tops is formula Holland Dozier Holland. Sometimes even I think it’s the Supremes when the intro to “It’s the Same Old Song” or “Something About You” comes on. So what? To begin with, HDH created the greatest formula in the history of rock and soul. Now: Go listen again to “Reach Out” and see if you can think of a Supremes record that could grab you in the gut that way. It’s the “Like a Rolling Stone” of soul—with a flute and hand percussion leading the way! The group always got Eddie Holland’s greatest lyrics (and he the most under-rated lyricist of the ‘60s) and that’s one.
They got those songs because Levi could sing the most impossible stuff. Any other soul singer I know would have insisted on editing. The great, long, image rich lines in “Bermandette” and “Ask the Lonely” were too long, that they needed more space to really sing. Not Levi. He charged into those words and wrestled everything out of them, and somehow, he sounded graceful as he did. “Loving you has made my life sweeter than ever” is so multisyllabic that they had to shorten it for the title: “Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever” fit the label better, I guess.
The Tops got away with that as a group because they knew how to work with such vocal intricacy. By the time they had their first Motown hit they’d already been together for ten years. Duke told me recently that their earlier sojourn at Columbia Records in the late ‘50s came after a brief appearance at the Apollo. The talent scout who signed them was John Hammond—the same guy who found Bob, Bruce, and Aretha. That’s the company the Four Tops, and Levi Stubbs, in particular belong in. Who else could turn “Walk Away Renee” into soul music? Who else could get away with “7 Rooms of Gloom” as a love song without a hint of irony, let alone comedy?
I will testify. Levi and the Tops were among the graces of my own soul. When I get nervous before an interview, I always remember how kind those guys were to that 15 year old kid, and I feel beyond harm. When I listen to “The Same Old Song,” I remember once again the sweetness of sour. “Bernadette” calls to my mind the futility of believing you’re in control, and how easy it is to confuse passion with obsession. “Reach Out” is simply as colossal an extravaganza as rock and soul music have ever produced, as monumental in its way as “Like a Rolling Stone.” The focal point of all that musical gingerbread and the mighty Funk Brothers is not the group—it’s one man, Levi Stubbs, pushed not to his limit but way past it. But there’s not a hint—not a second—where Levi Stubbs sounds like anything but a guy from down the street, across the way or in your mirror. Imagine a Pavarotti on the corner. There he is. All of it helped, somehow, make my own life possible.
This is no case of “Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over).” Levi Stubbs was 72 years old. He hadn’t been in good health for several years. This isn’t Marvin Gaye or David Ruffin or Tammi Terrell. This is a man who made his full contribution to our culture, our lives. That doesn’t make it all that much easier to hear the word.
At the Tops’ golden anniversary show in Detroit several years ago, he sang from a wheelchair. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house,” his friend and attorney, Judy Tint, told me this afternoon.
Ain’t any in this house today, either.--Dave Marsh
If you're Roger Smith, who had the bad fortune to die the same day as Evel Knievel, and you're reading your obits, it would have to suck to be you. . . perhaps even slightly worse than being dead. Because in addition to being called a "greek tragedy" and, basically, a failure, they dismiss your towering achievements like the Cimarron and other accounting-driven feats of badge engineering. And then, to be someone who I imagine was a good Oakland County Republican, to have Michael Moore -- who started his career literally on your back -- mentioned in the lead of your obits? Poor guy will be corkscrewing his way to Japan, perhaps bumping into a rusted-out '86 Nova (above) at the end of the trip.
