For many a rock musician, the muse is the LP. For The
Beatles, it was Liverpool itself that shaped Paul, John and George’s musical
inspiration. The British music industry was rigidly controlled by the BBC and
London's Denmark Street Music groomed a stable of homegrown singers in the
mold of Elvis Presley (kind of like Pepsi Light) and Buddy Holly.
This clean-cut, nonthreatening lot included Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard. But In Liverpool, young lads like the future Beatles
would clamber around the local record shops, probably on Penny Lane, and await
the latest from America: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Louis and even
older blues like Leadbelly and Robert Johnson. In addition to the skiffle
artists that had emerged, an early alternative genre, The Beatles latched onto
these LPs and 45s – and so would bands like The Stones and The Kinks – but The
Beatles, as Liverpudlians, got there first. Prior to skiffle, the only significant blip on the
British pop-culture time line had been a brief flurry of juvenile delinquency
occasioned by the arrival of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock"
(the record and the film) in 1955. For John Lennon, the three most
influential American recording artists of the 50s were Elvis, Buddy Holly and
Chuck Berry.
Keith Richards, guitarist/songwriter of The Rolling
Stones would concur. The Stones, from London, would have less in the way of variety,
the Liverpool collection of imports having diminished by the time it got to the
city. For Richards, the two most influential LPs were A Date With Elvis (his
favorite song, "Baby, Let’s Play House," and The Best of Muddy Waters, in
particular, "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (which The Stones would cover
later in their career, performing the song on Hollywood Palace as hosted by an
unimpressed Dean Martin). Obviously steeped in the Blues, Keith's favorites
also included King of the Delta Blues by Robert Johnson, which he'd been
exposed to by Brian Jones, and more obscurely, Slim Harpo's swamp-styled Blues
on the LP Rainin in My Heart. "A lot of people don't know about this stuff and
it is some of the darkest blues. The Stones were very early exponents of Slim when
we did 'I'm A King Bee.' This
album was cut down in Louisiana and you can almost smell the swamp and the
Everglades coming off of this thing. Incredibly wry lyrics and I love the
delivery. It's almost sleazy." Others in Richards' collection of favorites
include an LP he grew up with, one belonging to his mother, Billie Holiday's
Lady Day, a compilation from 1954, The Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded
Palace of Sin from 1968, which he claims introduced him to country music, and
Little Walter's Hate to See You Go.
Tom Waits is equally specific about LPs as muse. Waits favorite is one of music's true works of art, Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours. "Actually, the very first 'concept' album. The idea being you put this record on after dinner and by the last song you are exactly where you want to be. Sinatra said that he's certain most baby boomers were conceived with this as the soundtrack." Of Thelonius Monk's LP, Waits said, On Solo Monk, he appears to be composing as he plays, extending intervals, voicing chords with impossible clusters of notes. 'I Should Care' kills me, a communion wine with a twist. Stride, church, jump rope, Bartok, melodies scratched into the plaster with a knife. A bold iconoclast. Solo Monk lets you not only see these melodies without clothes, but without skin. This is astronaut music from Bedlam. Other influences are the far less accessible Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart (this one seems obvious), and The Stones Exile on Main Street. More obscurely, Waits dotes on the Lounge Lizards from 1980, Rum Sodomy and the Lash by The Pogues and Leonard Cohen's later work from 1988, I'm Your Man.
Elvis Costello simplified things by publishing in Vanity
Fair, "Costello's 500." He makes no real commentary, but states that you won't
find The Doors, Led Zeppelin or Sting – they "just don’t do it for me." (Of
course you'll find collaborator, Burt Bacharach.) It is indeed but a list and
includes: Abba’s Gold, Cannonball Adderly, Mose Allison, Nirvana, The Band,
R.E.M. and The New York Dolls. Its an eclectic collection that you may want to
add to the 1001 LPs to hear before you die (so, like, don't die for a long time).
For Bryan Ferry, it's simple to comprehend his influences
through the songs he's covered over a forty year career, some of which exceed
the originals. Ferry has had a long-extended dalliance with Bob Dylan
throughout his career. The album – which Ferry recorded with Roxy Music and released a couple
of years after Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure – starts off with Dylan's "A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall," Ferry’s best Dylan cover bar none. He turns
Dylan's scorched vocals into a theatrical, gospel-tinged, barrelhouse rocker. Others include "These Foolish Things" originally by
Leslie Hutchison (from 1936) and The Velvet Underground's "What Goes On." For 2013's The Great Gatsby film from Baz Luhrman, Ferry provided a 1920s jazz orchestra, to no one's surprise.