I’ve written before of my late arrival to Joe Cocker fandom. Hell, late arrival to most fandom is my way, that’s just how I am. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but I rarely get excited for an artist just because they have a new release out – it really depends on what I’m into at the time, and if years later my interests intersect with what they were putting out, I’ll give it a listen.
In Joe Cocker’s case, despite being around for his peak hit years, his stuff didn’t particularly speak to me at the time. I was a teenager, after all. When John Belushi was parodying Cocker on Saturday Night Live (a parody he carried over from the much earlier National Lampoon’s Lemmings show), I couldn’t understand how Cocker was well enough known to warrant a parody. It baffled me. I hadn’t had a sense of his Woodstock impact, hadn’t understood the importance of “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” (a record I had but didn’t play for decades before suddenly becoming infatuated with it).
Since then, I’ve picked up a few more Joe Cocker records (and a lot more Leon Russell records), this one being the most recent. I didn’t even recognize the title, which amazes me, because it contains his huge, inescapable hit from 1974, “You Are So Beautiful,” and I would expect that the album containing that top 5 hit would have gotten some promotion; if it did, it didn’t stick with me.
That song, in memory, is more exaggerated, more overwrought, than it really plays now – maybe it’s the impressions of hundreds of more over-the-top covers I’ve heard in the interim, maybe it’s the memory of singing it mockingly at 14-year-old idiots. Who knows. But the arrangement of this Billy Preston song is super simple, with Cocker’s vocals, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and a bassist named Dave McDaniel – that’s it. And Cocker really kinda dials it back, to a super beautiful effect. The rest of the album, much busier, is very solid and enjoyable. At the risk of being called a heretic, I’ve gotta say: Jimmy Webb’s songs generally do nothing for me, and his two contributions to this album are no exception. (What does “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” even mean?) But the opening “Put Out The Light,” the title track, songs by Nilsson, Allen Toussaint, Randy Newman, and Cocker – all really good.
Picked this up last year at Forever Changes (which shows how long it’s been since I tried to catch up my entries, or how slow my slog through my collection is going).
Huh . . . I didn’t know that Webb wrote a song called “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.” I know that phrase from the Robert Heinlein novel of the same title . . . wonder who cribbed who, or if there’s an older source? I usually have Cocker’s version of “Feelin’ Alright?” on my regular household mixes, but could deffo stand to dig a bit more into his catalog . . .
Wikipedia says that Webb cribbed it from Heinlein, and that he acknowledged as much in 2009:
Robert Heinlein, was a kind of early mentor of mine. I started reading his books when I was eight years old. … I guess I was really getting more of my education out of science-fiction than out of public school. I was reading Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov and learning a great deal about the patois of the language itself and how these words were being used to create emotions. I was learning this from writers without even knowing it. … “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” was one of the best titles I’ve ever heard in my life. I really am guilty of appropriating something from another writer. In this case I had contact with Robert A. Heinlein’s attorneys. I said, ‘I want to write a song with the title, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. Can you ask Mr. Heinlein if it’s okay with him?’ They called me back and he said he had no objection to it.