Still going … but aren’t we all?
On Monday, having seen various positive or better newspaper arts reviews of the new Ryan Adams CD Prisoner, I went onto the Amazon website and bought myself a copy – which duly arrived yesterday.
Adams and I have a little bit of history. He was originally in a band called Whiskeytown that made three albums before he became a star in his own right via his first two solo albums Heartbreaker (2000) and Gold (2001).
Inevitably, being fifty years of age at the time, I wasn’t in the vanguard of the explosion of his global following, but I was deeply impressed by Gold, which contained sixteen tracks with neither a filler nor a dud amongst them.
As a composer Adams could seemingly flit without much effort between any number of styles and production approaches and as a singer could combine influences of everyone from Van Morrison to Bruce Springsteen whilst simultaneously retaining a core of something instantly recognisable as his own.
He was also prolific – the songs just kept pouring out of him – and swiftly developed a maverick reputation as someone who did his own thing, argued with his record companies, got into trouble generally, and very much ploughed his own furrow.
All that aside, Gold soon became one of my favourite albums of that era as much as anything because it could stand multiple plays and – for example, when driving long distances – had the uncanny knack of reducing the sense of time that a journey was taking considerably.
A few years and a few albums later, Adams having moved beyond his 30th birthday, a UK tour was announced. By now he was playing with a backing band called The Cardinals and I decided to buy tickets to one of the tour gigs at (I believe it was) the Shepherds Bush Empire. In preparation therefor I bought whatever was the Ryan Adams And The Cardinals album of the moment – right now I cannot recall its name but (truth be told) that doesn’t – and didn’t then either – really matter.
The important thing, after all, was that Ryan Adams was coming to the UK and no doubt he was going to play all sixteen songs on Gold exclusively for my benefit (this being, I would guess, the thought process of over 85% of his audience at every date on his tour).
But guess what?
I’m not sure that I was there right through to the last note of the encore (if indeed there was one) at the Shepherds Bush Empire that night, but I don’t think he played a single bloody tune off Gold.
The concert was ‘okay’ as a concert – it was unmistakably Ryan Adams up there on the stage – but he seemed to doing self-indulgence in a big way, just playing at being part of a band (mucking about on stage, joking and laughing with the other members of his ensemble) and paying no attention to the audience at all, still less those of us who would have given our eye teeth to have heard oh … I don’t know … just at least three or four songs from Gold.
Disappointing didn’t begin to describe the impact upon this member of the audience, put it that way.
Returning gradually to my review of his new album Prisoner, which I have only played right through once – and this on a two hour car journey.
Since about 2006, when I attended that Shepherds Bush gig, Ryan Adams has made plenty of albums, undertaken huge numbers of tours, taken up painting and producing – and still retains an enormous critical reputation in the United States and elsewhere around the world.
Until Prisoner – described as a dissection of his failed six year marriage to actress Mandy Moore – I had not bothered to buy any of Adams’ records since Gold, simply because the reviews were always so-so.
And Prisoner is fine – twelve or so tracks of cutely-crafted and enjoyable songs in various styles, which has had excellent reviews – but it is no Gold.
I saw in one of said reviews that Adams is now 42. It’s funny, but that immediately struck me as ‘old’ and I’m sixty-five, for God’s sake. But it has something to do with a sense that – like mathematicians and chess players, even philosophers – many high-achievers in different walks of life do their most creative work in their youth – say their twenties. It almost comes with the territory when you’re talking rock and roll music, or pop, or whatever it’s called these days.
What I’m trying to say is that, in his mid-twenties, someone like Ryan Adams was coming up with terrific tunes day and night. He was probably giving away to his friends every week more wonderful melodies than 70% of his peers could come up with in a lifetime.
Here, for example, is a video of the first track off Gold – the brilliant New York, New York – courtesy of – YOUTUBE
Adams was 26 when he composed it and, even today, I’d place the first five consecutive tracks on that album as in my top three ‘first five tracks’ on any album I’ve ever heard.
Today Adams is still a songwriter of outstanding quality, but even on Prisoner he hasn’t been able to match the majesty of Gold, which first saw the light of day sixteen years ago.
Postscript
Speaking of which, when thinking back to the classic great hits of The Who – you can list your own favourites, but here I personally will just reference Won’t Get Fooled Again, Pictures of Lilly, Substitute, Pinball Wizard … oh, and let’s add My Generation, with its iconic line “Hope I die before I get old” – did you see the pictures of lead singer Roger Daltrey in the newspapers the other day?
Now rushing up on his 73rd birthday in March, the charismatic Sex God of yesteryear looked a little worse for the passage of Time as he relaxed beside a pool on holiday