ROD McKUEN – New Ballads – (Warner Brothers) – 1970

Rod McKuen is an acquired taste.

His detractors would say he is pretentiously poetic, maudlinly romantic, ponderously repetitious, slightly narcisstic, boringly middle aged, full of middlebrow banality and  with a voice somewhere just below Bob Dylan on the dulcet tone scale. To me this is all true but how you take it depends on where you stand.

He certainly is poetic (and has published volumes of poetry to prove it), unashamedly romantic, thematically consistent, always world weary with an old mans (or a wise mans)  attitude even when he was young, and with a voice that sounds as if it had lived.

How did I get into McKuen?

Very simple – when I started op-shopping in the 1980s his records were everywhere and he was very unhip (and still is whereas Serge Gainsbourg isn't – go figure). His records made such a large dent in the rop shop ecord bins because in the 60s and 70s he sold well over 100 million albums mainly to "adult" and "older" people …  people our age now. He was venerated by the middle aged masses, covered by the adult pop entertainers like Sinatra, MOR pop singers like Oliver, Terry Jacks, Scott Walker and Glen Yarbrough and country singers like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. It's hard to explain how popular he was, just accept he was.

Read the bios linked below.

Unfortunately for McKuen he hit it big at a time when the mainstream, and less thoughtful "serious" rock critics at Rolling Stone etc, were dismissing everything before The Beatles with that overweening pretentiousness that became part and parcel of "rock criticism". McKuen was savaged by them as a relic of another time, and maybe he was, but that was part of his charm. He refused to compromise his taste or his values (though apparently there is a disco album in there somewhere which I haven't heard, but otherwise he has been consistent), but his biggest problem with the taste makers is that, if you are going to be "introspective" and "tortured" you have to be cynical or dark. McKuen is uber introspective and very melancholy but relentlessly upbeat and positive and rarely angry despite a world of imperfect humanity that tests him. 

You would never mistake him for Henry Rollins in either his music or his spoken word, though there are similarities. He could also pass for a less country Lee Hazlewood. Apart from Rollins and Hazlewood, thematically he is also not that far removed from Brian Wilson or Ray Davies of the Kinks. He and they are out of step with the world and don't mind being so, and they are also relatively upbeat.

Though, even if the music intelligentsia could see all that, the lush MOR strings all but sinks him in their eyes . 

Again I direct you to his bio links but in short McKuen was born in California in 1933, never knew his father, was abused by his stepfather, hit the road early, was a lumberjack, DJ, cowboy, did some acting in the 50s and appeared in some films, wrote poetry with the Beats, read poetry with Kerouac and Ginsberg, sang upmarket folk, then jazz, sang with Lionel Hampton's band, wrote songs (1500 apparently), covered many songs, put out vocal albums, hung out and wrote songs with Jacques Brel, lived in all the usual American expatriate places in the world, sold 65 million books of poetry, put out many spoken word albums, sold out spoken word concerts, sold out musical concerts, composed film music, composed orchestral suites, conducted orchestras, was a quiet radical, won many humanitarian awards … so give him a break.

The music here is a lush MOR pastiche of jazz, lounge, MOR, and occasionally exotica all held together by his gruff voice and his world view. The album was arranged and conducted by Don Costa (of Frank Sinatra fame).

I love McKuen – and I often play his compilations though from what I have so far I don't have one great album. This album certainly is better than some of the others I have, though I should say I only have about 14 of his 50 or so vocal albums. The music is still MOR but a little zippier with Don Costa 's arrangements. The harpsichord and strings never drown out Rod so he has a lot of space to ruminate … and he does ruminate, on lost love, found love, and missed love. All at the age of 37!

Tracks (the best in italics):

• Statement: Before I Loved No one – a poem.

• As I Love My Own 

• Thanks You For Christmas 

• And Tonight – a throwback to the 40s and 50s very much like something that Maurice Chevalier or Charles Boyer would put out … lushly romantic and the lyric gives you the general idea …

            Because you smell like yesterday

            I thought I'd come here once again, and stay

            The night

            Because my arms have ached to long

            I thought I would rest them here where, they belong

            Tonight

• I Looked At You A Long Time 

• I'm Not Afraid – a musical theatre piece with an obvious joyous carnival atmosphere (Fellini would love it):

            What about You

            What about me

            Two years from now where will we be

            each of us gone our separate ways

            lost in the headlong passage of days

            Maybe we might

            give a love a try

            extending the moment

            before goodbye

            and for a gentle moment in time

            we will take what pleasure people can find

• Resolution: Before I Loved No One 

• Rock Gently – covered by Rock Hudson on his album of McKuen covers, "Rock Gently" from 1971, which was also produced by McKuen. I have always been partial to Rock's films so to get him "singing" was a bonus. He is very musical you know … I'm not musical at all. Sinatra also did a whole album of McKuen songs, "A Man Alone" from 1969 as did Glen Yarborough, "Each Of Us Alone", 1968 (as an aside I have all of those albums and they are good).

• Philadelphia

• Gone With The Cowboys – oddly a song that Rod wrote with Rock Hudson in mind … they had known each other since the 50s when Rod was a contract player at Universal studios and Rod was one of it's biggest stars. Very much a melancholy tone piece

• Tomorrow And Today – "silence can be loud even in a crowd"

• In Someone's Shadow 

• Hit' em In The Head With Love – "Im gonna get up and hit em in the head with love" … I did say he was upbeat.

• A While More With You – "Please let me share a smile more with you, Let Me stay a while more with you"

And …

The album went to #126 of the US Hot 100.

Sounds

I'm Not Afraid
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Gone With The Cowboys

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