My latest
article for
Seen and Unseen is entitled '
Rock ‘n’ roll’s long dance with religion'. The article explores how popular music conjures sacred space through a survey of inter-connections between faith and music.
The article includes a link to my Spotify playlist
'Closer to the light' which includes a wide selection of the music I mention in this article.
'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' is a review of
Adam Steiner’s
Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death in which I explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.
My co-authored book
The Secret Chord explores aspects of a similar interplay between faith and music (and the Arts, more broadly). Posts related to the themes of The Secret Chord can be found
here.
Check out the following too to explore further:
I've received some interesting feedback on the article which has flagged an artist whose music I hadn't explored previously and whose music has then reminded me of two other musicians that I briefly mentioned in the article.
David Ackles was a musician who has been described by
Rev Jim Friedrich as: "a lifelong Christian, deeply spiritual and theologically astute, an authentic and generous man. And though some of his songs revealed a profound empathy with the suffering of displaced souls, there was an essential core in him—a comedic faith in resurrection—which survived the harrowing descent of the artist into the nether regions of the human condition."
"
Ackles recorded three albums for Elektra – his self-titled debut (1969), ‘Subway To The Country’ (1970), and probably the most famous of all, ‘American Gothic’ (1972), the last of which was recorded in England, and produced by Bernie Taupin, the lyric writer for ...Elton John." Then, "What should have been the fourth album in a long and illustrious career, in retrospect turned out to be Ackles's swansong.
Five & Dime may not be as tightly-knit as American Gothic, but as a many-colored patchwork of varied songs, the album has few rivals."
Kasper Nijsen writes that: "Ackles was a versatile and accomplished composer, drawing inspiration from disparate sources including Broadway composers, vaudeville and music hall tradition, French chansonniers, Nashville country music, American jazz and spirituals, Los Angeles surf music, and classical music."
"He was called a genius, one of the best that America had on offer (Elton John, Reuters obituary, March 1999), and was said to have forged an utterly unique and unrivaled sound (Collin McElligatt, Stylus, 09-01-2003). His masterpiece album was hailed as the Sgt. Pepper of folk (Derek Jewell, Sunday Times, 1973) and called a work of pure poetry, theatrical, witty and sublime (Robert Cochrane, Culture Catch, 03-30-2008). It was also said that Ackles could have been another Randy Newman or Leonard Cohen (Reuters obituary, March 1999) and his music has been compared to Weill and Brecht and even Richard Wagner (Bernie Taupin, blog entry, 12-3-2008)."
Michael Baker concludes the story: "Brutalized in a near fatal car accident in the early eighties, the weakened Ackles found time to raise a son, maintain a successful marriage, work for bigwig philanthropic organizations, write an occasional score for a made for TV movie, and work on an operatic treatment of
Aimee Semple Macpherson ... who became L.A.'s leading religious leader and basked in world wide celebrity ... Tough, individualist, and savvy, she most certainly would have been a formidable opponent, for Ackles wanted if not clarity about faith and individual works of grace at least a reconciliation between a cold world that dumps slag on top of children and an uncommunicative God. This reconciliation, man's major intellectual achievement, is both disconcerting and liberating. And Ackles knew full well that the balance between conventional and conservative faith and yearning, narcissistic, seductive art is the greatest of musical aspirations."
Baker suggests that "Ackles regarded the message from Ecclesiastes as gospel: "Who gathers knowledge gathers pain."" He expands by noting that Ackles and his vignettes of dispossessed personae: "set the stage for blurred epiphanies, an ironic fusion of baseless ritual and superficial decorum. These pockets of darkness contain paralysis, vagueness, and thwarted ambitions. The only thing holding the center is the voice, a voice of grandeur, tenor resonance, and declamatory power. Never comfortable simply crooning, and forsaking a kind of blues/soul aesthetic that would have diminished his uniqueness, Ackles uses his booming, cajoling voice to proclaim truths from the center of town. It is a convincing voice of reason in the re-created scenes of missing emotions. Although the narratives are uncertain with action deferred or muddled, and the characters are inarticulate carnage of that universe, Ackles retains dignity for himself, his characters, and their landscapes, by renouncing censure. We are all flawed; we have all fallen."
This seems to me to be an accurate description of Ackles' storytelling songs which demonstrate a incarnational 'being with' approach to his characters ("We are all flawed; we have all fallen."), while the cumulative picture painted is of the bleakness of a world which has, as with the stunning 'His name is Andrew', lost its connection with God.
Look out for the forthcoming biography of David Ackles by
Mark Brend, which is due in July 2025.
The short-lived Memphis power-pop pioneers
Big Star from the 1970s have been referred to as “the greatest American cult rock band this side of The Velvet Underground”. Given this, it is remarkable, as
David Zahl has noted, that they "made music that, especially on their first record, bordered on proto-Christian rock". "Much of this was due to the influence of ...
Chris Bell, the co-leader of the band" with
Alex Chilton.
Zahl quotes by way of example the following lyrics from 'My Life is Right': “Once I walked a lonely road/I had no one to share my load/But then you came and showed the way/And now I hope you’re here to stay/You give me life”. Zahl notes that "Bell’s talent came with its fair share of personal demons" including drug addiction and clinical depression. As a result, songs like 'Try Again' are "anguished first-person prayers":
"Lord I’ve been trying to be what I should Lord
I’ve been trying to do what I could
But each time it gets a little harder
I feel the pain
But I’ll try again
Lord I’ve been trying to be understood
And Lord I’ve been trying to do as you would
But each time it gets a little harder
I feel the pain
But I’ll try again"
After the first Big Star album #1 Record "failed to achieve commercial success ...
Bell left the band in 1972." "He struggled with depression for the rest of his life." "Bell concentrated on solo work after leaving Big Star" but it was only 14 years after his death that "the songs from his Car Records single and several of his other 1970s recordings were released on 1992's
I Am the Cosmos full-length CD on
Rykodisc." "Many of the
songs reflected his embrace of
Christianity."
John Jeremiah Sullivan writing about one of the songs from that album says that: "
"Better Save Yourself," opens jarringly with organ and a huge, minor-key guitar-god riff.
I know you’re right
He treats you nice
It’s suicide
I know, I tried it twice
We have it from David Bell that his brother had, in fact, tried suicide. In the throes of whatever drove him to it, he found Jesus and became a devout Christian, further complicating the psychological picture of his post-Big Star years. In "Better Save Yourself," he goes on to sing "You shoulda gave your love to Jesus/Couldn’t do you no harm.""
There Was a Light: The Cosmic History of Chris Bell and The Rise of Big Star by Rich Tupica is the principle source of information about Chris Bell.
Similarly, the life of
Bryan MacLean is, as
Jon Cody has written, "a story of extremes; missed opportunities, addiction and family dysfunction alongside critical acclaim, reconciliation and redemption".
MacLean was a member, with
Arthur Lee, of the Los Angeles rock band
Love. Love's drummer,
Michael Stuart-Ware, in his 2003 autobiography,
Behind the Scenes on the Pegasus Carousel, describes MacLean's contributions to Love's music: “Bryan’s contributions to the first three Love albums spoke to his talent. My favorite of his compositions has always been ‘Softly To Me,’ but all of Bryan’s songs demonstrated a mystically unique lyrical and musical phrasing quality that defies category, but is at once, both emotional and powerful.”
"
MacLean was offered a solo contract with Elektra after the dissolution of Love, but his demo offerings were rejected by the label and the contract lapsed ...
Around 1996, MacLean's Elektra Records demo tapes were discovered by his mother Elizabeth in the family garage, and after two years of persistent shopping around to record companies, a deal was struck with
Sundazed, who in 1997 released the CD
Ifyoubelievein. In the album's liner notes, Rolling Stone's
David Fricke wrote that the collection was, "in a sense, the Love record that never was: solo demos and home recordings of fourteen original MacLean songs, all written in the earliest and most vital years of Love and all but three virtually unheard in any form since MacLean wrote them"."
Cody writes that MacLean "was one of the very first from the L.A. music community to embrace Christianity". "
Intra Muros (the title translates as “Inside the Wall) was his ‘real’ solo album, a collection of 14 worship-oriented songs". He said that "
Intra Muros is what I care about. It’s who I am" and "My deepest longing is that
Intra Muros touches lives and changes them." His mother, Elizabeth McKee, described
Intra Muros as "Bryan’s masterpiece". "MacLean described the absolutely unique blend of gothic rock and jazz as “spooky worship music.”" Part of the uniqueness of his music, including his worship songs, derives from the "Broadway influence that permeates his entire catalogue ... with many of the songs sounding like show stoppers from another era".
In his
last interview, he said "My goal from the beginning writing music was to be timeless, to transcend age or style and to enrich peoples' lives, to make them feel better about life in general".
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