With Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad Of Easy Rider” In Mind The Search For The Great Working-Class Love Song - With Richard Thompson’s Vincent Black Lightning, 1952 In Mind –Take Three

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:

Several years ago, maybe about eight years now that I think about it, I did a series of sketches on guys, folk-singers, folk-rockers, rock-folkers or whatever you want to call those who weened us away from the stale pablum rock in the early 1960s (Bobby Vee, Rydell, Darin, et al, Sandra Dee, Brenda Lee, et al) after the gold rush dried up in what is now called the classic age of rock and roll in the mid to late 1950s when Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy, Chuck, Bo and their kindred made us jump. (There were gals too like Wanda Jackson but mainly it was guys in those days.) I am referring of course to the savior folk minute of the early 1960 when a lot of guys with acoustic guitars, some self-made lyrics, or stuff from old Harry Smith Anthology times gave us a reprieve. The series titled Not Bob Dylan centered on why those budding folkies like Tom Rush, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Jesse Winchester and the man under review Richard Thompson to name a few did not make the leap to be the “king of folk” that had been ceded by the media to Bob Dylan and whatever happened to them once the folk minute went south after the combined assault of the British rock invasion (you know the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, hell, even Herman’s Hermits got play for a while),   and the rise of acid rock put folk in the shade (you know the Jefferson Airplane, the Dead, The Doors, The Who, hell, even the aforementioned Beatles and Stones got caught up in the fray although not to their eternal musical playlist benefit). I also did a series on Not Joan Baez, the “queen of the folk minute” asking that same question on the female side but here dealing with one Richard Thompson the male side of the question is what is of interest.

I did a couple of sketches on Richard Thompson back then, or rather sketches based on probably his most famous song, Vincent Black Lightning, 1952 which dove-tailed with some remembrances of my youth and my semi-outlaw front to the world and the role that motorcycles played in that world. Additionally, in light of the way that a number of people whom I knew back then, classmates whom I reconnected on a class reunion website responded when I posed the question of what they thought was the great working-class love song since North Adamsville was definitely a working class town driven by that self-same ethos I wrote some other sketches driving home my selection of Thompson’s song as my choice.

The latter sketches are what interest me here. See Thompson at various times packed it in, said he had no more spirit or some such and gave up the road, the music and the struggle to made that music, as least professionally. Took time to make a more religious bent to his life and other such doings. Not unlike a number of other performers from that period who tired of the road or got discourage with the small crowds, or lost the folk spirit. Probably as many reasons as individuals to give them. Then he, they had an epiphany or something, got the juices flowing again and came back on the road.  That fact is to the good for old time folk (and rock) aficionados like me.

What that fact of returning to the road by Thompson and a slew of others has meant is that my friend and I, (okay, okay my sweetie who prefers that I call her my soulmate but that is just between us so friend) now have many opportunities to see acts like Thompson’s Trio, his current band configuration, to see if we think they still “have it” (along with acts of those who never left the road like Bob Dylan who apparently is on an endless tour whether we want him to do so or not). That idea got started about a decade ago when we saw another come-back kid, Geoff Muldaur of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, solo, who had taken something twenty years off. He had it. So we started looking for whoever was left of the old folks acts (rock and blues too) to check out that question-unfortunately the actuarial tables took their toll before we could see some of them at least one last time like Dave Von Ronk.

That brings us to Richard Thompson. Recently we got a chance to see him in a cabaret setting with tables and good views from every position, at least on in the orchestra section, at the Wilbur Theater in Boston with his trio, a big brush drummer and an all-around side guitar player (and other instruments like the mando). Thompson broke the performance up into two parts, a solo set of six or seven numbers high-lighted by Vincent Black Lightning, and Dimming Of The Day which was fine. The second part based on a new album and a bunch of his well-known rock standards left us shaking our heads. Maybe the room could not handle that much sound, although David Bromberg’s five piece band handled it well a couple of weeks before, or maybe it was the melodically sameness of the songs and the same delivery voice and style but we were frankly disappointed and not disappointed to leave at the encore.  Most tunes didn’t resonant although a few in all honesty did we walked out of the theater with our hands in our pockets. No thumbs up or down flat based on that first old time set otherwise down. However, damn it, Bob Dylan does not have to move over, now.  Our only consolation that great working-class love song, Vincent Black Lightning, still intact.

Which brings us to one of those sketches I did based on Brother Thompson’s glorious Vincent Black Lightning. When I got home I began to revise that piece which I have included below. Now on to the next act in the great quest- a reunion of the three remaining active members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim Maria Muldaur, and of course Geoff at the Club Passim (which traces its genesis back to the folk minute’s iconic Club 47 over on Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square. We’ll see if that gets the thumbs up.     

With Roger McGuinn’s“Ballad Of Easy Rider” In Mind, Take Two

This is the way Doug Powers told the story, Jeff’s story, the way he got it from Little Peach mostly, the road stuff, straight up, and then later when he checked up …

He, the ghost of… Peter Fonda he, Captain America he , Dennis Hooper he, Bill The Kid he, Hunter Thompson he, Doctor Gonzo on an Indian he, James Ardie he, Vincent Black Lightning he, hell, Sonny Barger or one of one hundred grunge, nasty mothers keep your daughters indoors under lock and key Hell's Angels brethren he (as if that would help, help once she, the daughter, saw that shiny silver sleek Indian , Harley, Vincent, name it, whatever and did some fancy footwork midnight creep out that unlocked suburban death house ranchero back door), Jeff Crawford he, Norton he, just wanted to drive down that late night Pacific Coast Highway. Where else in the American world could you have the hair-raising blown warm wind at your back and the sometimes hard-hearted, but mainly user-friendly, ocean at your right. Somehow Maine icy stretch Ellsworth Point did not make its case against that scenario. He knew those forlorn streets and back roads like the back of his hand but there was no going back, and no reason to since his divorce and his Ma dying.

Drive, ride really, motorcycle ride just in case you were clueless and thought that this was to be some sedan buggy family, dad and mom, three kids and Rover, car saga. Maybe with his new sweet mama behind holding on to her easy rider in back, holding tight, her breasts rising and falling hard against his waiting back, and riding, laughing every once in a while at the square world, his old square world (and hers too, she used to serve then off the arm while attending some dink college when he fell into her at the local breakfast place), against the pounding surf heading south heading Seals Rock, Pacifica, Monterrey, Big Sur, Xanadu, Point Magoo, Malibu, Laguna, Carlsbad, La Jolla, Diego, south right to the mex border, riding down to the sea, see. Riding down to the washed sea, the sea to wash him clean. Her, she had nothing to be washed, hadn’t been out in life long enough to build up soul dirts, except maybe a little off-hand kinky sex she picked up somewhere and had curled his toes doing so one night, and that didn’t count in the soul-washing department . Not in his book. Not some big old poet- wrangled washed clean either, some what did old ‘Nam Brad call it, some metaphor, if that was right, if that was how he remembered it, not for him, just washed clean.

Easy, Jeff thought, just an easy rider and his sweet, sweet mama, her hair, her flaming red hair, or whatever color it was that week (he didn’t care what color really just as long as it was long. He had had enough of short- haired women all boyish bobbed, all snarling every which way, all kind of boyish do it this way and that way, all tense, and making him tense. He liked the swish of a woman’s hair in his face all snarly and flowing and letting things take their course easy. A ‘Nam lesson.) blowing against the weathers, against the thrust of that big old Norton engine, all tight tee-shirt showing her tiny breasts in outline that a shirt or sweater made invisible (he didn’t care about big breasts, or small, like a lot of guys around the bar, the biker hang-out, where he hung out over in Richmond, the Angel Tavern, the one run by Red Riley,), tight jeans (covering long legs which he did care about), tight. Maybe a quick stop off at Railroad Jim’s over on Geary before heading to ‘Frisco land’s end Seals Rock and the trip south (and if Railroad wasn’t in then Saigon Pappy’s, Billy Blast or Sunshine Sue’s) to cope some dope (weed, reefer, a little cousin cocaine to ease that ‘Nam pain, the one Charley kissed his way one night through his thigh when he decided to prove, prove for the nth time that he, Charley, was king of the night) to handle those sharp curves around Big Sur, and get her in the mood (she, ever since that midnight creep out Ma’s back door over in Albany a few months before when he had challenged her to do so when he wanted to test her to see if she was really his sweet mama, craved her cousin, craved it to get her into the mood, and just to be his outlaw girl).

Yah, it was supposed to be easy, all shoreline washed clean (no metaphor stuff, remember, just ocean naked stuff), stop for some vista here (about a million choices, he would let her pick since this was her first run, her first working run), some dope there and then down to cheap Mexico, cheap dope, and a haul back El Norte and easy street, easy street, laying around with sweet mama, real name, Susan White, road moniker, Little Peach (an inside joke, a joke about a certain part of her anatomy that is all she would give out) until Red Riley needed another run, another run against the washed sea night.

Then it turned into one thing after another. He took a turn around Pacifica way too fast, went way over the edge with his right hand throttle (Little Peach so excited by this her first outlaw run she slipped her hands low, too low while he was making that maneuver, thinking, maybe, they were in bed and well you know things happen, distracting things, just bad timing) and skidded hair- pin twirl skidded off the on-coming road. Little Peach was hurt a little but the bike was dented enough to require some work at Loopy Lester’s (Red Riley had guys, bike magic guys, up and down the coast) back in Daly City. So delay.

A couple of days delay too, they ran into rain down around Big Sur, pouring rain and Little Peach moaned about it and they had to shack up in a motel for a couple of days, days looking at that fierce ocean. More delay. Then he made his first serious mistake, short on funds he decided to rob a liquor store in Paseo Robles. Hell, not decided, he was hard-wired compelled to make that decision, hard –wired by his whole sorry, beautiful life, his father (a drunk) then mother (none too stable, a product of those too close Maine family relationships and those long, bad ass Maine winter nights) left him Maine dumped, his whore first wife from over in Richmond cheating on him with every blue jean guy in town while he was in ‘Nam, his very real ‘Nam pain (while saving Brad’s, metaphor Brad’s city boy, college boy sorry ass when Mister Charlie decided, probably hard-wired too to come prove who was boss of the night), and, a little his dope habit (picked up courtesy of ‘Nam too, he had been  strictly always a whisky and beer man before). Little Peach, gentle in some womanly ways, no question, and the eternal ocean, gentle, when it co-operated, his only rays.

Hard-wired to just take now, take it fast, and get out fast. Hell, it was easy he had been doing since he was about sixteen and just needed that first Harley some Ellsworth guy was selling, selling cheap, since was headed to Shawshank for a long stretch. That time he wasn’t even armed, easy. As so it went. Easy, except that time down in Rockland where the clerk flipped the alarm and the cops were just a block away. Yah, he didn’t figure that one right, not at any point. That was when he got the choice- three to five in county or ‘Nam. He hadn’t messed with that kind of thing in California since he hooked up with Red’s operation about a month after he got out of the VA hospital over in ‘Frisco.

Trouble this time, the night he tried to rob the Paseo Robles liquor store, was the owner, and he identified himself as the owner, must have thought he was Charley, shot at him, nicking him in the shoulder. He grabbed the owner’s gun in the tussle and bang, bang. Grabbed the dough (almost five thousand dollars in that two bit town), and the extra ammo under the counter and roared off, Little Peach trembling, into the Pacific highway night.

A serious mistake, for sure, one the cops kind of pressed the issue on. They caught up with him just outside Carlsbad, South Carlsbad down near the airport road, near the state park camp sites, where he was resting up a little (bleeding a little too). He had left Little Peach back in Laguna to keep her out of it and with most of the dough, telling her to get out of town on the quiet, to use the dough to go back to school, and have a nice life. He was okay that she didn’t argue a lot about staying, or getting all weepy about his fate. She had been his ray and that was enough, enough for what was ahead. So alone, not wanting to face some big step-off  ahead, he wasn’t built for jails and chambers, not wanting to face another downer in his sorry, beautiful life, taking a long look at the heathered, rock strewn, smashing wave shoreline just below, he took out that damn gun, loaded the last of the ammo, doubled around to face the blockading police cars, and throttled –up his Norton. Varoom, varoom…

 

 

 

ARTIST: Richard Thompson
TITLE: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Lyrics and Chords

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike

A girl could feel special on any such like

Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you

It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952

And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems

Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme

And he pulled her on behind

And down to Box Hill they did ride

/ A - - - D - / - - - - A - / : / E - D A /

/ E - D A - / Bm - D - / - - - - A - - - /

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand

But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man

I've fought with the law since I was seventeen

I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine

Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22

And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you

And if fate should break my stride

Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae

For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery

Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside

Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside

When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left

He was running out of road, he was running out of breath

But he smiled to see her cry

And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world

Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl

Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do

They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52

He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys

He said I've got no further use for these

I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome

Swooping down from heaven to carry me home

And he gave her one last kiss and died