Rock ‘n’ Roll: The New Troubadours

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

“Zeeks!” gasped one teenybopper. “You can’t even dance to it!” She was referring to the Beatles’ latest release, Eleanor Rigby, in which the shaggy four sing to the accompaniment of a double string quartet. Rigby is typical of the newest and in many ways most welcome upheaval to rock rock ‘n’ roll in years. To begin with, the familiar big beat of rock ‘n’ roll is receding—not in sales, but in decibels. The reason is simply that there is a big message in lyrics nowadays, and the kids want to hear it.

In the past, the amplified din was so intense that the singers were wailing away in tongues that sounded like a cross between banshee and Bantu. Now, after the takeover of the folk rockers, the words are understandable and, in some cases, even worth understanding. In recent months the pop market has been penetrated by a new and impressive clutch of poet troubadours. They are mostly ex-folk singers who turn out their own numbers, are older than their forerunners and more musically sophisticated. They write songs with titles like A Single Desultory Philippic and Sunshine Superman. The recurring themes are loneliness, alienation, and lovers who walk “on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight.” Take Shadow Dreamsong:

It’s a crystal ringing way she has about her in the day, But she’s a laughing, dappled shadow in my night.

On the music side, the new troubadours are experimenting with all manner of sounds and complex musical modes. Says Jazz Bassist Steve Swallow: “There is a scarcity of young jazzmen because the most talented young people are playing rock ‘n’ roll. They have saved songwriting from the tyranny of Irving Berlin.”

The best of the new groups:

> The Mamas and the Papas are two beards, a beauty and a Big Bertha. After knocking around the fringes of folk music separately for a few lean years, they joined forces in 1965 and made their first single, California Dreamin’. It went straight to the top of the bestseller charts, as did their next release, Monday, Monday. Papa John Phillips, 25, an Annapolis dropout, is the group’s songsmith, and what his lyrics lack in depth his melodies make up in lilting appeal. Phillips’ wife Michelle, a willowy ex-model, is the spiraling soprano; Denny Doherty, 24, sings a secure tenor. Anchor girl is rotund (200 lbs.) Cass Elliot, 23, whose ringing contralto gives the quartet its oomph. Together they build a buoyant vocal blend that floats easily through intricate harmonic shifts, toying with rhythms that are as fresh and bracing as ocean breezes. The quartet is now on a highly successful college tour, stands to make $1,000,000 this year.

> Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, both 23, are the most literate of the new troubadours. Their low-key harmonizing has sold nearly 6,000,000 records in the past year. They sing about man’s failure, naturally, to communicate:

You’re a stranger now unto me, lost in the dangling conversation, And the superficial sighs, in the borders of our lives.

The team switched from folk singing to folk rock because “those mountain songs didn’t say anything to the kids in the 22-story apartment house.” Songwriter Simon, a short moonfaced lad whose lyrics are studied in a few high school English courses, does not admit to any big message. “We are just creating doubts and raising questions,” he explains. Garfunkel, a Columbia University graduate student who sports a Dr. Zorba shock of electrified hair, says: “Pop music is the most vibrant force in music today. It’s like dope—so heady, so alive.”

> The Lovin’ Spoonful are four shaggies in their 20s who trade in “goodtime music.” The most versatile of the new groups, they mix hard rock and country, funky blues and jug-band music. Biggest Spoon is John Sebastian, who, with Zal Yanovsky, a grinning zany in a ten-gallon hat, handles the songwriting. Joe Butler works out on drums, Steve Boone on the bass, guitar and piano. “Together,” says Sebastian, who is the son of Classical Harmonica Player John Sebastian, “we make up about one fairly efficient human being.” There are no protests in their songs, just new and often bizarre wrinkles on lovin’ and livin’, as in Summer in the City:

Hot town, summer in the city; back o’ my neck gettin’ dirty and gritty. Been down, isn’t it a pity; doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city.

Easy and relaxed, the Spoonful’s lively, freewheeling attack can be as infectious as it is inventive. It’s all just natural, says Yanovsky, “like our hair. If you don’t cut it, naturally it grows.” And so, in the hands of the new troubadours, does pop music.