The Brill Building Sound: A Rock High Point By Steven Rosen (I am posting this story, which ran in Paste Magazine in 2005, as a way of honoring and remembering Ellie Greenwich, who passed away last week.) A long, long time ago, when Don McLean’s “American Pie” was new in late 1971 and early 1972, everyone tried to analyze what he meant by “the day the music died.” With time, the general consensus – aided by McLean’s own comments – has come to be that he was referring to Feb. 3, 1959, when the sweet-voiced rock ‘n’ roll innocent Buddy Holly died in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. But with time, I’ve come to my own belief about that day. To me, it actually was Feb. 9, 1964, when the Beatles took the stage of New York’s “Ed Sullivan Show.” Now, for many years – decades, even – I had believed that date was when rock was revived and reborn after the post-Holly years. And then Dylan came along to wed rock with lyrical relevance. And I still believe that. But rock and the British Invasion (and even Dylan) may have killed something far better – the Brill Building Sound. And that musically and socially progressive youth-oriented genre of the early 1960s looms with each passing year as the best popular music since the classic Great American Songbook composers. While a rather vague term, it most narrowly refers to songwriters – especially the youthful teams of Gerry Goffin and Carole King and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil – who wrote for the Aldon Music publishing company. It actually was located nearby rather than inside Manhattan’s Brill Building, itself a long-established home to publishers. Yes, this music was better than the Beatles. At least, it was better at the moment when the Beatles and their British brethren undermined and replaced, ushering in the era of self-contained rock bands that never left. Just put “She Loves You” up against “Spanish Harlem”; “I Want to Hold Your Hand” against “Up on the Roof”; “Please Please Me” against “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” It’s as Allison Anders, the director of the film “Grace of My Heart” that is about the Brill Building Sound – told me recently: “They produced the only real standards as far as I’m concerned for the rock ‘n’ roll generation.” I’m not alone in this slow reevaluation. Even in Greil Marcus’ latest book on Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone,” the writer who consistently makes the greatest case for Dylan’s greatness as a revolutionary musical force includes this amazing footnote about Brill Building writing: “…(It) stands as one of the truest achievements of postwar pop music. Dylan more than anyone ended their careers as songwriters.” I’m not even sure how long Dylan’s idiosyncratic wordplay, so wrapped in his own youthful curly-headed mythos, will outlive him. But there’ll always be a place for the Drifters’ “This Magic Moment” or Gene Pitney’s “I’m Gonna Be Strong” – two stalwarts of the Brill Building Sound. When I think of the enduring quality of this music, I think especially of the ballads that were so wispy, melancholy and ruminative. (There were also plenty of Brill Building rockers that were fun in their own right if not classics for the ages, especially those recorded by the “girl groups” of the era.) But these ballads were for and by teenagers and young adults, and they were thought-provoking and literate and well-crafted. At their best, especially in the work of the slightly older Burt Bacharach and Hal David, the songs had dramatic narratives that expressed the rare, mature quality of regret as well as affection. When romantic, they revealed secrets rather than hurled clichés – “Don’t Make Me Over” for Dionne Warwick, “Mexican Divorce” for the Drifters, “Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa” for Gene Pitney, “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” for Tommy Hunt. And they could be political, too. While a little late in the curve, Mann and Weil wrote some sparkling Dylan-influenced social-protest songs, like the Vogues’ “Magic Town” and Jody Miller’s “Home of the Brave” and the Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.” And one of their earlier songs, the Drifters’ “On Broadway,” is as much a masterpiece of urban sadness as is an Edward Hopper painting. “I really liked folk singers like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie as a kid because their songs had something to say about society,” Weil says via E-mail. “I was also very into musical theater and I liked the idea of pop songs expressing ideas and being more that ‘Moon’ and ‘June’ love songs, so that awareness found its way into my lyrics.” Not all the great songs of the era were by Brill Building or Aldon visionaries per se. Not even all were New York productions – Los Angeles played an important part and for awhile there was crossover with “The Sound of Young America” emanating from Berry Gordy’s Motown operation, especially on such sanguine, reflective Four Tops ballads as “Baby I Need Your Loving’” and “Ask the Lonely.” But they all shared an aesthetic – an ambitious creative approach. Their sound was adventurous and full of surprisingly subtle coloration, such as string arrangements and horns as well as rumbling bass, Latin-like percussion, doo-wop memories, and female back-up singers with their gentle, dreamy “sha la la’s.” There wasn’t a fear that delicacy could be interpreted as a loss of “edge.” Delicacy was part of the edge. Everyone involved thought they were topping him- or herself with each new hit – and they were: Singers like Ben E. King, Warwick, Pitney and the Shirelles; producers/arrangers/writers like Leiber and Stoller, Phil Spector and Luther Dixon; songwriters like the aforementioned ones plus Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman and Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry; independent labels like Atlantic, Musicor (home of George Jones, true, but also Pitney) and Scepter/Wand. And to an extent appropriate for the optimistic times that coincided with the 1963 March on Washington and the Kennedy presidency, the music was color blind and integrationist. Most of the writers were white; many of the singers black. And the music had worldly influences. Clever productions like the Shangri-Las’ urgently spooky “Out in the Streets” and “Give Us Your Blessings,” both written by Greenwich and Barry, owed as much to “West Side Story” as Elvis, if not more. The British Invasion and all that followed ruined the importance of such qualities in youth music. Instead, they replaced it with hero worship – and egocentricity of monstrous proportions. And we lost something profoundly valuable that we’ve never recovered. “I’m not in total agreement it changed music for better,” says Ben E. King of the British Invasion. He was the lead singer for the Drifters on “This Magic Moment” and “Save the Last Dance For Me,” before recording as a solo artist such hits as “Spanish Harlem,” “Stand By Me” and “I (Who Have Nothing).” “I thought they had some great writers, but so did we,” King explains. “It was certainly for the better for European groups, and to this day they’re household names – Mick Jagger on down. (But) it was not the blend of music we had going at the time, which was a mixture of music of all races – I had Latin music, R&B, two wonderful Jewish guys producing. We had wonderful human relationships in our music. But when it came from England, it was European groups playing what they assumed pop music and R&B should sound like.” Actually, those early British groups were admirers of the Brill Building Sound – especially, oddly, the girl-group recordings. Some even had sizeable hits covering them – the Searchers with the Orlons’ ethereal “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” and Herman’s Hermits with Irma-Jean’s “I’m Into Something Good.” But in making those songs their own, they erased the past. Billy Vera, a musician and music historian who had a huge hit in 1987 with “At This Moment,” started his career as a writer for an Aldon rival, April-Blackwood Music. (His boss was Chip Taylor, who now records folk music with Carrie Rodriguez.) He believes that era’s Brill Building Sound – primarily the silky urban soul tunes recorded by King and others – was as good as it ever got. “I don’t know that I’d call it rock,” he says. “It was pop music, orchestral in nature. There was a maturing taking place. By the early 1960s, all these guys were bored with the simplicity of rock ‘n’ roll and wanted to do something more sophisticated. Leiber and Stoller started it with (1959’s) ‘There Goes My Baby.’ Then Bacharach and David and, before David Bob Hilliard, started making music that was more Gershwinesque but still had elements of rock ‘n’ roll and soul.” Vera also points out that this blending of influences was happening at the same time as Top 40 radio was itself a giant blender for all kinds of pop music. Everybody was listening to everything. “That period from 1959-1964 was when all these records were being made with great arrangements, recording techniques, and songwriting with lyrics and melodies that had more depth than rock ‘n’ roll,” Vera says. “A lot of the people who had come out of early rock ‘n’ roll were becoming grown-ups. And blacks and whites, as fans and musicians, were coming closer together. “The British Invasion brought an end to that and that’s crucial to understanding the history of rock ‘n’ roll,” he says. There are several reasons why this is crucial. Ever since the Beatles, rock – which until recently has dominated pop music commercially and culturally – has been about reinventing the wheel. Sooner or later, it always comes back to authenticity. The spirit of worldly pop experimentation that was a Brill Building Sound hallmark, must fight off the guardians of “roots.” Roots has come to mean music that can trace its origins directly back to the 1950s godfathers. Growth has been viewed with suspicion. It’s like the argument in art that Jackson Pollock’s abstractions weren’t “real” because they didn’t depict anything. Never mind that they were real because they were paintings. But in art, the champions of Pollock won the argument – they were the radicals. In pop, however, the conservatives won although they thought they were the radicals because the music they championed is seen as rebellious. But it’s an immature rebellion, pure arrested development – Peter Pan’s cry of “I don’t want to grow up.” Still, there was accomplishment in this. The black-American blues and hard R&B the Brits were reinterpreting had originally been seen as adult music the first time around. They made it youth music through the force of their flamboyant personalities and guitar-playing prowess. They also made it white. “The only reason these kids came to be popular is they imitated what we sent over,” Ben E. King says. “They had a great look, a great promotional gimmick and you have to allow for all the songs recorded by blacks that didn’t get played in some parts of the country. So when the Beatles came over, no problem. Every state loved them, every major TV show they were on. They cut through with no problem.” These groups also started writing their own songs, which often sounded suspiciously like the material that inspired them. That started a whole new trend that continues today – superstars who get away writing mediocre, derivative material because of who they are. As a result, there has been a dumbing-down of songwriting. With an older producer, George Martin, at the helm, the Beatles tried to be musically sophisticated in their arrangements and recordings. And they made some breathtaking recordings. Lyrically, however, even as late in their career as “All You Need Is Love” or “Hello Goodbye,” their songs were no match for the songwriters of the Brill Building Sound. But it didn’t matter. By that time, rock has starting to separate into different categories. And, despite the occasional Jimi Hendrix or Bob Marley, race had a lot to do with that. For awhile, there was an incredible flowering as different youth-music radio formats started to cover the expanding territory
Read more from the original source:
The Importance of the Brill Building Sound
