The passing last week of Men at Work's multi-instrumentalist and key creative force Greg Ham likely caught more than a few pop music fans off-guard, but those who knew the 58-year-old best probably (and sadly) weren't all that shocked. Ever since the puzzling 2010 court decision that determined the band's signature 1982 hit "Down Under" duplicated "substantial portions" of popular Australian children's song "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree," friends say that Ham had been despondent, even relapsing into drug and alcohol abuse in part due to his discomfort over the situation. The cause of death for the musician - found dead April 19 in his home near Melbourne - has yet to be determined, but it's difficult for any original fan of Men at Work's early-'80s heyday not to feel resentful about a court decision as suspect and potentially damaging as the "Down Under" judgment.
Nevertheless, former bandmate Colin Hay has been quick to praise the positive elements of Ham's life and the enriching perspective his personality brought to so many of the lives he touched. This, of course, is fitting and essential in the face of the loss of someone young and talented, but the sentiment is especially resonant in light of this week's feature, one of Men at Work's few tracks that featured Ham on lead vocals and drew from his solo songwriting efforts. Despite its seemingly downbeat title, "Giving Up" - a deep album track from the band's seldom-heard 1985 swan song LP, Two Hearts - actually embraces an uplifting if contemplative view on treasuring the joys of life while it's still possible. In essence, the song is about NOT giving up, and it serves as a particularly poignant requiem for an individual Hay remembered as "a beautiful man" graced with boundless humor and energy. Musically, this tune showcases one of Ham's least recognized gifts - his singing voice - and demonstrates the important role he served in a band clearly fronted by Hay but also most certainly graced with far more than mere backing from Ham. Fans celebrating the famous respective saxophone and flute parts from Men at Work hits "Who Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under" should probably also check out the group's unjustly out-of-print final record, which really allowed Ham to stretch out quite memorably as both songwriter and lead vocalist.
- Listen to "Giving Up" in its entirety here.
- Compare prices on Men at Work CDs here.
- Top Men at Work Songs of the '80s
- Top Down Under Artists of the '80s
- Best '80s Songs Featuring Saxophone
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Columbia - Greg Ham Pictured Above, Far Left
It was somehow appropriate that I first heard about the July 16 passing of legendary Deep Purple and Whitesnake keyboard master Jon Lord on NPR while I was driving home that evening. After all, Lord was always a rock and roll original whose influence and wide-ranging talent on the Hammond organ and other keyboard instruments reached disparate and eclectic audiences. Many classic rock fans certainly became familiar with Lord through his long-running tenure with Deep Purple, one of Britain's most famous and accomplished blues-based hard rock bands. Nevertheless, the man was remarkably busy and successful during his non-Purple years playing both orchestral music and arena rock with the early lineup of David Coverdale's eventually hair metal '80s band.
After yet another week shrouded by tragic and early celebrity deaths, the pop music world was forced to join in the mourning with Friday's announcement that founding Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch had passed away at 47 following a three-year cancer battle. So now, just three weeks after the pioneering rap-rock trio was enshrined into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, death strikes again in what could be construed by the extremely conspiracy-minded as a cruel attempt to silence the music. Now, I'm not literally saying some cosmic force in charge of death has something against rock and roll, but let's face it: 2012 has not been thus far kind to several creators of legendary music.
I'm the first to admit anytime the subject comes up that I was probably about as far as one could be from being hip to the early alternative/indie sound continuing to emerge out of the U.K. circa 1988. Trapped far too exclusively in a music world (though it seemed kind of wide open at the time) composed mostly of classic rock, hair metal and arena rock, I would have had no idea what to do if exposed to a band like The House of Love at that early point of my rock music education. So perhaps it's just as well that this London outfit remained as alien to me back then as a good, modestly stylish haircut. After all, only years after their peaks did I discover and appreciate the work of such bands as The Jesus and Mary Chain, Psychedelic Furs and Echo & the Bunnymen - all seminal influences on the dreamy, proto-indie rock strains of The House of Love.
While searching for a song to spotlight this week in this space, I've encountered a few unexpected obstacles, including a minor but nevertheless derailing bout with illness, an unlikely near-duplication of another entry I wrote two years ago involving Adam Ant, and general early-month sluggishness I've by now come to expect from myself. But I think I've punched through the paralysis now that I've stumbled upon the relatively brief but always interesting music career of American singer-songwriter Rachel Sweet. I also did another smart thing to help me get out of my own way; I consulted my wife about her gut reaction to my song selection for this week.
Over the years, commercial country music has not been a particularly solid breeding ground for successful bands, Alabama and current stalwarts Rascal Flatts notwithstanding. For some reason or another, mainstream country has always been dominated by solo artists supported by highly capable but frequently mercenary session musicians. This is but one important reason why The Desert Rose Band represented such a refreshing change of pace during the latter part of the '80s. The other, more important reason is that the group was fronted by Chris Hillman, one of the founding members of legendary, pioneering '60s country-rock bands The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers.
During the past eight years or so, something happened within American pop culture that many music fans assumed would never actually come to be: in the form of a 2004 stroke, the ravages of time had finally begun to catch up with seemingly ageless, legendary musical TV personality Dick Clark. Unfortunately today - despite an impressive recovery from that stroke over the past several years - Clark passed away at age 82 from a massive heart attack suffered during a hospital visit for an outpatient procedure. It's a genuinely sad day for music lovers of the rock and roll era, who one way or another grew up with Clark as a broadcast icon. And yet there's also so much to celebrate about a man who witnessed massive changes in the music industry and its styles across the decades as host of the long-running American Bandstand. Always earnest and business-like in his attempts to interview '80s acts disparate and seemingly unlike himself - from heavy metal band Autograph to sultry R&B vixen Vanity - Clark believed in his platform for pop music appreciation across the ages, which is perhaps his greatest legacy.
The attempt to replace a rock and roll frontman as distinctive as Little Feat's Lowell George was going to be an extremely risky one no matter when it happened. As it turned out, 1988's reformation of the band - nine years after George's tragic, early death - benefited from the best possible choice to fill the void. Craig Fuller, founding member of '70s country-rock band Pure Prairie League - a successful enough outfit in its own right - never attempted to mimic George in his contributions to Feat's comeback record, Let It Roll. Instead, the newcomer naturally sounded enough like his predecessor to allow for the application of Fuller's own distinctive songwriting stamp and passionate lead vocal style to a batch of new Feat material. This is a very strong, underrated late-'80s rock record precisely because the teaming of Fuller with George's old bandmates was a sound and well-conceived one.
Fortunately, '70s rock was relatively well populated with moderately heavy guitar rock bands featuring soulful lead singers. However, far fewer of these such artists continued to record long enough to be intact when the '80s arrived. Revered veteran guitarist Robin Trower turned out to be a welcome exception to this pop music generality, as his band produced consistently on the strength of both Trower's pulsating, heavily distorted playing style and the gravelly, rumbling vocals of Scottish bass player Jim Dewar. This lineup of the band established itself as one of '70s rock's most potent power trios, and although Trower traversed the rest of the '80s with different bandmates - including Cream legend Jack Bruce and another underrated Scottish-born lead singer in Davey Pattison - Trower remained a key if seldom spotlighted '80s music figure.
When I started this weekly feature nearly six years ago, I never intended for it to contain the acronym "R.I.P." on a regular basis. Nevertheless, life (and death) have dealt some fairly brutal cards to '80s artists of late, leading to a great deal of spotlight material on this site to seem unreasonably fixated on human mortality. I don't bemoan these developments for primarily selfish reasons (that's my hope anyway) - as these losses of highly musically talented human beings have presented prime opportunities to explore their life's work and considerable legacies. Rather, this recent near-avalanche of early pop music deaths has quite simply dulled the musical landscape for music fans to an extent that clearly bears repeated mention.
Tulsa, Oklahoma native Dwight Twilley served as one of the leading lights of the power pop revival of the mid '70s in America, which almost guarantees that his music never reached as many ears as it should have. When Twilley went solo at the end of the '70s, he somehow became even more obscure, releasing records that radio wouldn't touch and the industry wouldn't promote. Even the advent of new wave and college rock during the early '80s couldn't help Twilley's 1982 release, Scuba Divers, an album that featured refreshing acoustic arrangements and a guitar-centered Beatles fixation. Nevertheless, the synthesizer-obsessed new wave needed Twilley's throwback mentality far more than anyone ever acknowledged at the time.
Readers who have visited this site previously have probably caught wind of my significant admiration for "What About Me," an '80s pop song from the Australian band Moving Pictures that became a modest American hit in both 1982 and 1989. I genuinely enjoy the pronounced melodrama of this track, but more than anything else the piano-based melody remains one of the most haunting '80s tunes I can remember. But I'm actually not here particularly to spotlight this song yet again; instead, I'm strongly reminded of it by another early-'80s ballad - also drenched in piano - that has caught my ear this week.
Unfortunately, the loss last weekend of Ronnie Montrose, one of '70s American hard rock's most beloved yet unsung guitarists, probably hasn't resonated all that strongly for many '80s music fans. On the other hand, hard rock aficionados were certainly aware that Montrose followed up his most famous years as frontman of his namesake band with plenty of workmanlike projects into the '80s and beyond. One of the most successful of these ventures was undoubtedly Gamma, a hard-rocking outfit Montrose formed with vocalist Davey Pattison, who presciently received mention in this space a few weeks back when I spotlighted another legendary guitarist, Robin Trower. Based on some cursory online research, Gamma seems to strike many listeners as too derivative, but rock music fans are usually more forgiving about limited ingenuity when an artist is at good at his craft as Montrose was.
The songwriting partnership of Canadian musicians Jim Vallance and Bryan Adams left a wide-reaching mark on '80s music across several genres. However, Vallance himself got his start as a songwriter and early drummer in Canadian arena rock band Prism, all of which preceded his more renowned association with the eventual pop superstar Adams. And although he had long ceased to contribute as a working member of that band by the early '80s, Vallance continued to lend his talents to the new lineup.
Although Eagles legend Don Henley has probably endured in the nearly three decades since its release more than a few titters and barbs from folks expecting this song to be about erectile dysfunction or similar middle-age male struggles, it's actually a great pop song with a strong romantic conceit typical of the artist. As a deep album track from Henley's 1984 smash sophomore solo LP Building the Perfect Beast, this tune received far too little attention during the '80s. Overshadowed by that record's generally deserving hit singles, this is a song that almost perfectly encapsulates Henley's transition from a major member of The Eagles, one of country rock's most important bands, to a solo artist interested in tweaking and perfecting the modern pop song.
In honor of St. Patrick's Day (even if a day late and - let's face it - probably more than a dollar short), I thought the time was right to seek out some Irish music of the '80s for this space. It didn't take me long (once I shook my usual weekend lack of focus) to settle on The Undertones, one of the punk rock era's finest examples of the earliest and purest melding of formative punk-pop and classic power pop. Led ably and appropriately frantically by the desperate vocal strains of the incomparable Feargal Sharkey, the band surged on into the early '80s before its almost inevitable premature break-up in 1983. The Undertones never received much attention in the U.S. despite major success on the British Isles. For the life of me, I can't imagine why - even given the notoriously lowbrow tastes many American music fans have long displayed.
England has certainly produced more than its share of sparkling pop/rock during the half-century since The Beatles emerged, but during the '80s such music very rarely got better than this. Led by frontman and songwriter Paddy McAloon, Prefab Sprout continued the eclectic British tradition of contemporary literate rock outfits like XTC and Squeeze. Even better, the group benefited from the presence of Wendy Smith as backing vocalist, who managed to brighten up the band's sound to a level that could only be labeled as giddy. But clearly the most important element here is McAloon's sturdy songwriting, which stands proudly among some of the finest talents of the decade.
Post-punk band Wire Train remains one of the lesser known bands of the early '80s to emerge from the fertile San Francisco music scene, and listening to just a small sample of the group's work, I have no idea why. Of course, hardcore legends Dead Kennedys made a lot more noise around this time - both figuratively and literally - and more melodic contemporaries Romeo Void and Translator made a much more pronounced mark on the decade's music landscape. While I'm a fan of all three of those bands, I hate that their success and notoriety apparently came at the expense of a sophisticated ensemble like Wire Train. I'm not surprised that somehow '80s pop/rock had room for Taco but not Wire Train, but I must admit it's a continuous source of frustration.
The pop music world paid precious little attention even to country music once the country-pop craze ended during the early '80s, so it's certainly fair to say that there was essentially no place for bluegrass music in most mainstream '80s music conversations. Nevertheless, the highly talented progressive bluegrass quartet New Grass Revival came as close to breaking down such boundaries as any artist stationed squarely outside the circle of general pop/rock.
For a superstar as bright as Whitney Houston from the very start of her solo career, it's a bit more difficult to locate a truly forgotten gem than it is for typical pop music artists. After all, any song from an album as huge as her self-titled 1985 debut earned its share of radio airplay and general listenership by virtue of the rapid ascent of that LP to multi-platinum status. If I needed proof of this, I certainly got it tonight when I sampled "All at Once," a modest but melodic piano ballad that my wife instantly recognized from one of the first albums she owned and treasured as a preteen. Still, regardless of whether or not this track qualifies as a significantly neglected pop song for the ages, it serves ably as a way for me to extend my tribute to Houston in the wake of not only her sudden death on February 11 but also the media's continuing scramble to speculate about just how big a role drugs and alcohol may have played in her sad demise. I'll leave everyone else to that rather crass enterprise; in the meantime, I'll do what I hope I do best and just focus on the music.
Strictly speaking, this song from the late great Arthur Lee, frontman of the legendary L.A. psychedelic rock band Love, does not qualify as '80s music in the most tidy sense of the term. After all, though originally released on Lee's self-titled 1981 solo LP, the song emerged from various but scattered solo activities during the '70s. When the album was released, few music listeners were even aware Lee was still active in the middle of the new wave era, if they knew who he was at all. This kind of obscurity has always been unjust to the legacy of Lee and his original bandmates during Love's late-'60s heyday, but unfortunately pop music has always held little room for music legends to get their music heard years removed from their popular impact. Nevertheless, if a record comes out any time during the '80s, it's fair game for the lofty and searching reach of this regular feature.
Not since the seemingly abrupt death of music superstar Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009 (which many found less surprising in retrospect) has a pop music death shocked and saddened music fans like tonight's announcement of the passing of top-selling pop diva Whitney Houston. Never a huge fan of either artist - both of whom dominated parts of the '80s to remarkable levels - I am nonetheless stunned and shaken by this recent news. Whitney Houston was quite simply one of pop music's most successful crossover superstars between 1985 and 1995, her peak years as a recording artist, concert performer and film actress. Therefore, her very public decline as an entertainer over the last 15 years has been sad to observe on many levels. Nevertheless, I never dreamed I'd be seeing a headline like this, despite the wide knowledge of Houston's admitted struggles with substance abuse.