"Among the velvet-trousered denizens of the Scotch of Saint James, the feeling was that the vaunted San Francisco Sound was strictly Amateur Hour."
— Ian MacDonald
How things had changed. Though the British Invasion was immensely popular, it wasn't without its critics. American pop stars were surprisingly slow to react to The Beatles, with the output of acts such as The Beach Boys and Four Seasons still being rooted in Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. State-of-the-art recording facilities and crack house bands ensured that bigs acts signed to major labels would have nothing but the best at their disposal. (This was also during the last days of the staff songwriters in New York so there was always professional material available if need be) The Beatles generated plenty of excitement but their records were dismissed by pros in the States as rough and unsophisticated. (Only struggling folk artists from Bob Dylan down to David Crosby and John Sebastian were astute enough to look past their supposed faults)
Jump ahead three years and roles had been reversed. The British had become the backbone of rock's aristocracy while a new generation of bands, especially those that came from outside of Los Angeles, seemed crass, unable to play their instruments and were incapable of composing great pop. Hence the Ian MacDonald quote above. There were exceptions of course. Members of the Grateful Dead were all accomplished jug band and bluegrass musicians while the quintet that made up the ill-fated Moby Grape were all talented songwriters, including Canadian-born Alexander 'Skip' Spence who had been the original Jefferson Airplane drummer.
MacDonald's essay on Jefferson Airplane goes to great lengths to describe their amateurism. He's probably not wrong but looking at the "Somebody to Love" cover above — which is identical to the sleeve of their debut album, the hit-and-miss Surrealistic Pillow — I don't think it's Spencer Dryden clasping a banjo which stands out. ("That's about right," MacDonald dismissively asserts; the critic mistakenly claimed that it was Jack Casady, which I suppose is an easy mistake to make: it's not as if many people were paying attention to anyone beyond Grace Slick) Rather, it's the sight of guitarist Jorma Kaukonen on the bottom left. In his shades and boyish t-shirt, he could easily pass for a member of The Velvet Underground.
Though contemporaneous, the Velvets never had much regard for what was going on in California. Their darkness supposedly represented an antidote to all that hippie free-love idealism centred around San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. While there's some truth to this, the doom which emanated in some of Jefferson Airplane's work suggests they shared more than a little in common. (Meanwhile, both The Doors and Love weren't exactly all flower power, peace 'n' love down in LA) The only thing really separating the two was that the New Yorkers had one-time professional songwriter Lou Reed as well as the classically trained violinist John Cale leading the way while no one from the Airplane was nearly as prodigious.
Yet for that "only 10,000 people bought the first The Velvet Underground album but everyone who did formed a band" malarkey, they never had anything even in the same universe as "Somebody to Love" (and don't think for a second that there weren't garage bands all over North America who were all about the Jefferson Airplane). Sure, I dig "I'm Waiting for My Man" and "Venus in Furs" and "The Black Angel's Death Song" but these are songs to rock out to and contemplate and be unnerved by respectively; "Somebody to Love" is as cool as anything Reed ever recorded while being the kind of thing people can't not sing along with.
As simple and direct as vintage Velvets, the trump card is Grace Slick, who wasn't just an attractive, charismatic front but a powerful vocalist which is easy to overlook. Male or female, there wasn't anyone who sounded like her. Amateurish? Maybe. Certainly she wasn't going to be anyone's first choice to do Bachrach and David or Greenway and Cook covers but that wasn't what she was there for. You can sort of hear in her original version with previous group The Great Society that she was in need of an accompaniment that was as committed as she was. There's something hesitant about her voice which contrasts sharply with the confidence she oozes in the more famous recording here.
The Bay Area was said to have been full of groovy kids dropping acid but the truth was much darker and suspect. "You'd better find somebody to love" is a surprisingly threatening statement that seems to reflect the countercultural ideals while offering a sobering warning to all. Slick and her bandmates may not have known that the Haight was soon to devolve into cults, madness and murder but they surely could see through the bullshit. Just because they were amateurs doesn't mean they didn't know what they were talking about.
Score: 8
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