The 500 - #95 - Bitches Brew - Miles Davis

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #95

Album Title: Bitches Brew

Artist: Miles Davis

Genre: Jazz Fusion, Psychedelic Jazz, Avant-Garde. Jazz Rock

Recorded: 52 Street Studios, Manhattan, New York, USA

Released: March, 1970

My age at release: Four

How familiar was I with it before this week: Somewhat

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #87 - rising Eight spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Pharoah's Dance

I took music all the way through high school and played with the school band every year, except one. Looking back, I probably didn't practise as much as I should have, and I certainly didn't take every lesson as seriously as I wish I had.

Still, I was a competent enough saxophone player to earn passing grades and survive recitals, concerts and exams. I also have music teacher Mr. Gwyn Beynon to thank for not booting me from class or band when my teen-age brain seemed hell bent on giving him a good reason to do so on a seemingly monthly basis.

Gwyn Beynon is now the Conductor Emeritus with the London, 
Ontario based Encore Concert Band. 

If I could go back, though, I wouldn't just spend more time in the practice room, I'd spend more time paying attention in music theory classes.

At the time, theory class felt a lot like math class. Which makes sense, music is math. It is patterns, relationships and structures. Unfortunately, teen-age me had already decided that I wasn't really a "math person," so I approached music theory with the same lack of enthusiasm that I brought to algebra.

Today, as a middle school teacher, that's exactly the mindset I try to instill in my students. I task them to see themselves as mathematicians. Understanding mathematical concepts isn't about being born with some special gift. It's about focus, time, practise and, most importantly, believing you are capable of learning difficult things.

I vaguely remember the lessons on the church modes from my Grade 13 year at Beal Secondary School. The church modes are seven musical scales derived from the notes of a major scale. Instead of always starting and ending on the first note of the scale, each mode begins on a different note, creating its own unique sound and mood. Long before they became important in jazz, these modes were used in church music during the Middle Ages, which is where they get their name. They are Ionian (major), Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian (natural minor) and Locrian, most easily remembered by the mnemonic I Don't Play Loud Music At Lunch.

I remember trying to memorize them. I remember writing them out. I remember learning just enough about them in order to pass a quiz and then...promptly forgetting them. At the time, with a head full of teen-age social anxieties and unrequited crushes, I simply didn't think they mattered.

Now, decades later, I realize those modes are essential in understanding jazz, especially the music of Miles Davis. I know enough to appreciate that fact, but I also believe that if I were to take music theory again, perhaps in retirement, a much deeper level of understanding awaits.

Which brings me to Bitches Brew.

Released in 1970, Bitches Brew arrived at a time when Miles Davis was determined to push jazz in a new direction. Rock music was dominating popular culture. Younger listeners were embracing electric guitars, amplified instruments, and more experimental forms of entertainment. Davis had already begun moving away from traditional jazz structures with albums such as In a Silent Way. However, it was Bitches Brew that blew the doors off.

Album cover for In A Silent Way, a CD I purchased during my
"I want to understand jazz" phase in the late 80s.

The recording sessions were unlike most jazz albums that had come before. Rather than bringing fully written compositions into the studio, Davis often arrived with sketches, bass lines and, of course, modal frameworks paired with simple instructions. He assembled an astonishing cast of musicians, including Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Larry Young, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, and Bennie Maupin. What emerged was part jazz, part rock and part improvisation.

Musicians credited on Bitches Brew.

For listeners expecting catchy melodies and familiar chord progressions, Bitches Brew can be a challenging experience. Many of the pieces stretch beyond 20 minutes. The music often feels less like a collection of songs and more like a landscape. Instead of moving quickly through traditional chord changes, the musicians frequently explored modes, textures, rhythms and moods for extended periods of time.

That is where those old theory lessons come back to haunt me.

While listening to tracks, such as  Pharaoh's Dance, Bitches Brew, Spanish Key and Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,  I can detect a different musical language by recognizing some of the vocabulary. I understand enough to know that the modal ideas I encountered in high school are playing an important role. And I am also aware there's a deeper conversation happening just beyond my knowledge.

Miles Davis, in his trademark trumpet pose, recording Bitches Brew.

Maybe that's one reason why this album remains fascinating more than 50 years after its release. Like a difficult book or a demanding film, it reveals a little more at each re-listen.

Fortunately, I'll be visiting friends at their cottage in a week. Their teenage son, Mitchell, is a talented guitarist who recently took up jazz. Perhaps I can pick his brain for the insights that eluded me in those music classes 40-plus years ago.

The 500 - #104 - Sweet Baby James - James Taylor

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #104

Album Title: Sweet Baby James

Artist: James Taylor

Genre: Folk Rock

Recorded: Sunset Studios, Hollywood, California

Released: February, 1970

My age at release: 4

How familiar was I with it before this week: Fairly

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #182, dropping 78 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Fire and Rain

Before I knew what a “genre” was, before I knew what a chart was, before I even really understood that music had eras, I was already living inside one...courtesy of the adults in my world. The first popular music I ever loved wasn’t flashy, loud, rebellious or even complex and progressive, it was gentle, thoughtful and a little sad. It was the music of soft, folk rock singer-songwriters who seemed as ubiquitous in the early ‘70s as cigarette smoke in public spaces and wood-paneled basements adorned with macrame wall art, with potato chips in pastel Tupperware bowls on glass-topped coffee tables.

Classic '70s living room decor.

It was my primary and junior school music teacher and choir director that I have to thank. She introduced us to Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, and Cat Stevens. I can still sing every word of their respective hits (Time in a Bottle, If You Could Read My Mind and Moonshadow) because we performed them in choir. I loved them all, although Moonshadow, despite its sweet melody, featured lyrics that were oddly unsettling to a nine-year-old who only understood poetry at a literal level:

“If I ever lose my hands…I won’t have to work no more.
If I ever lose my eyes… I won’t have to cry no more.
If I ever lose my legs…I won’t have to walk no more.”

At the time, that felt less like wisdom and more like fatalistic and misguided optimism. Even now, it’s one of several lyrics in the song that makes me pause. But I have to admit, it’s the double negative that bothers me more these days than the hypothetical loss of body parts.

Jack Miner Public School in Kingsville, Ontario where I attended in the 70s.

All of that ‘70s soft rock blurred in my mind. I knew the artists by name and was familiar with their hits and somewhere in that warm, slightly melancholy blend was James Taylor. I couldn’t have told you where one artist ended and another began. They were just part of a beautiful, warm and comfortable atmosphere.

James Taylor in the 70s.

It wasn’t until years later, in 1988, when my future wife and I watched the film Running On Empty that the blurring cleared. Based, in part, on the lives of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn of the Marxist militant organization, The Weatherman, the film follows a family on the run, living under assumed identities. It’s a quiet, human story about sacrifice, identity, and what parents owe their children, and what children, in turn, learn from their parents’ choices.

Movie poster for the film, Running On Empty.

During the movie, Taylor’s biggest hit, Fire and Rain, appeared and suddenly his folk-rock voice from my youth was back on my radar. Over the next few weeks, my wife and I became mildly obsessed with Taylor, digging deeper into his catalogue, including Sweet Baby James, his second studio record.

Album jacket for the single, Fire and Rain.

Released in 1970, Sweet Baby James became the album that defined Taylor. If his debut hinted at something special, this album delivered it fully formed: sparse arrangements, lyrical intimacy, and a voice that could sound both fragile and assured at the same time.

Born in Boston and raised in North Carolina, he came of age in the 1960s music scene, eventually becoming one of the first American artists signed to The Beatles’ Apple Records In fact, Paul McCartney played bass and George Harrison sang backing vocals on Taylor’s first hit, Carolina In My Mind.

James Taylor's self-titled debut record, on the Apple label.

However, success didn’t arrive as neatly and assuredly for the budding entertainer. There were struggles with addiction, mental health challenges, and stretches of instability that ran parallel to his early career.

Album jacket for the single, Carolina In My Mind. 

About a decade ago, Taylor was on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast for a lengthy discussion about his life and career, including a tumultuous time in the late 1960s when he was first trying to make it as a musician with a band called The Flying Machine. He described being in New York City, strung out on heroin, broke, and living around Washington Square. He was essentially at the end of his rope and, out of options, he swallowed his pride and made a call to his father.

Album jacket for James Taylor's band, The Flying Machine (1967).

His father didn’t hesitate. He got on a plane immediately, flew to New York, rented a car, and drove him all the way home to North Carolina so he could get the help he needed. No lectures. No delay. Just: “I’m coming. We’ll fix this together”.

WTF with Marc Maron Podcast logo.

That story has stayed with me, not just because of what it says about James Taylor’s life, but because of what it represents: unconditional love in its most practical, immediate form.

Listening to Sweet Baby James, knowing that story, I don’t just hear the songs, I hear the fragility behind them and envision the invisible threads holding everything together.

And it makes me think about how lucky some of us are, including me. I grew up with the kind of support system that you don’t fully appreciate until later; the kind that lets you take risks because, deep down, you know you won’t fall alone. The kind that quietly reassures you…If you mess up, someone will be there for you.

Fortunate are those who have parents as their safety net.

And I did mess up, at times. Nothing spectacularly dramatic, but enough to know what it feels like to need someone in your corner, or maybe someone willing to lend you a few thousand dollars to get out of a financial jam you stupidly put yourself into.

What I always had, and what James Taylor had in that moment, was the knowledge that there was somewhere to land. And, on this weird tumultuous journey through a life filled with risks and pitfalls, that changes everything.

It doesn’t prevent you from falling, but it makes the fall survivable. It gives you permission to try, to wander, to make mistakes, to push beyond what feels safe, because “safe” isn’t something you have to carry on your own.

When I listen to Sweet Baby James now, I hear more than just another piece of that ‘70s singer-songwriter haze that surrounded my childhood. I hear a person in the middle of it all, finding success. I also reflect on my own trials, tribulations and, ultimately, triumphs and I am thankful that my parents have always been there for me.

The 500 - #110 - Loaded - The Velvet Underground

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #110
Album Title: Loaded
Artist: The Velvet Underground
Genre: Rock, Pop, Proto Punk
Recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, USA

Released: November, 1970
My age at release: 5
How familiar was I with it before this week: A couple of songs
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #242, dropping 132 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Sweet Jane

As a teen, I became an avid record shopper. I worked part-time jobs from the age of 14 and always set aside money for my weekend trips downtown to the record stores, especially the used bins at Dr. Disc. Discovering music felt like a pursuit, almost a sport.

Teenage friendships are always a little competitive. We wanted to win at sports, board games, cards, and, perhaps most importantly, we wanted to be the first to uncover a new band. There was real status in putting a record on the turntable at a house party and having it win over the room. It was also humbling to put one on and have someone else switch it off mid-song because the crowd had deemed it lame.

A house party from the 1980s - from the internet, but perfectly
reminiscent of the ones I attended.

With that realization came something stranger -- possessiveness. We wanted the bands we had discovered to succeed...but not too much. We wanted our “finds’ to remain reachable by playing at small, intimate venues, and drifting into the pub next door after a concert to mingle with the crowd. In some unspoken way, we wanted them to remain ours, our special thing, shared only among those who were "in the know".

Marillion, a band I discovered in 1983 was one of those
bands I wanted to keep within my circle of friends.

When a new record from one of “your” bands hit the shelves, it usually came with a complication. A single might slip onto the radio, or a video would start popping up on MuchMusic (Canada's version of MTV). Of course, you were happy to have new material and you wanted the record to sell well enough to keep the band afloat and fund another tour. But what you didn’t want was a hit. Not a real one.

In 1985, Marillion had its first bona-fide hit with Kayleigh.
I was excited for them, but also worried it meant mainstream popularity.

Nothing triggered indignation faster than seeing that music escape your circle. If someone from another clique, one with, in our estimation, terrible taste, suddenly showed up wearing that band’s T‑shirt, it felt like a violation. The voice in your head would scream "Poser!", "Tourist!", "Bandwagon Jumper!" You’d known about this band for years. You’d earned the knowledge that only comes from discovering a rare EP in a dusty record shop or late‑night listens dissecting the lyrics from one of their deepest cuts. Their sudden popularity in the commercial world didn’t feel like success; it felt like theft.

Loaded, the fourth studio release from The Velvet Underground, was conceived as an album full of hits. The band, already close to fracturing, and effectively doing so after the record came out, had been pushed by Atlantic Records to write songs with clear commercial potential. The title works on multiple levels. It is a nod to the slang term (loaded) for intoxication on alcohol or drugs, and a more literal raison d’etre...deliver an album "loaded" with songs that might top the charts.

The Velvet Underground in 1970. (l-r) Doug Yule, Lou Reed,
Sterling Morrison and Maureen (Moe) Tucker.

It didn’t succeed, at least not in the way Atlantic Records had hoped. None of the three singles released from Loaded managed to crack the Top 40. What the band did create, however, was an enormously enjoyable pop record and one that moves easily and pleasantly through multiple genres. It has also steadily grown in stature over time. In retrospect, Loaded sounds less like a failed bid for commercial relevance and more like a quiet triumph, its reputation solidified by the acclaim of critics and its high placement (#110) on Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 2012 list.

Musically, Loaded casts a wide net and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it repeatedly in preparation for this blog post. The album moves comfortably between straightforward rock and roll and gentler pop, drawing heavily on early‑'60s radio sounds that Lou Reed, the band’s primary vocalist and leader, clearly absorbed as a listener long before he became a songwriter. There are traces of garage rock in the lean guitar work, folk‑rock in the conversational vocals, simple chord progressions, and even a touch of country and soul in the album’s looser rhythms and warm harmonies. Unlike earlier Velvet Underground records, which often leaned into confrontation or abstraction, Loaded feels grounded in familiar genres. It’s an album that sounds intentionally approachable, as if the Velvet Underground were testing how close they could move toward the mainstream while still sounding unmistakably like themselves.

Lou Reed played his final show with the Velvet Underground on
August 23, 1970 - before Loaded was released.

So, I can’t help but wonder if there was a teenager like me in 1970. Someone who had discovered The Velvet Underground with their 1967 debut (#13 on The 500), who had grown alongside them through White Light/White Heat (#293) and the self‑titled third record (#316). When that imaginary teen first heard the pop sensibilities creeping into Loaded, did he/she worry that tourists and poseurs and bandwagon jumpers from high school were about to start sporting Velvet Underground T‑shirts, absent‑mindedly humming the melody to Sweet Jane? I want that Velvet fan to know something: You’re not alone. The 1985 version of me feels your pain.

The 500 - #117 - Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs - Derek and the Dominos

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album #:117
Album Title: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Artist: Derek and the Dominos
Genre: Blues Rock
Recorded: Criteria Studios (Miami, Florida)

Released: November, 1970
My age at release: 5
How familiar was I with it before this week: Quite well
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #226, dropping 109 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Layla

In a way, the story of this record, the only release from British blues rock sextet Derek and The Dominos, begins in the west Arabian Peninsula during the 7th Century.

Bedouin poet Qays ibn al-Moullawwah was just a boy tending flocks of sheep with his cousin, Layla. The pair belonged to the Banu Amir tribe, and their early bonding blossomed into a deep, but forbidden love as they became adults. Their relationship gave rise to a legend and then a poem titled majnūn laylā, sometimes anglicized to Layla and Majnun, but better translated to Layla's Mad Lover.

A modern sketch of al-Moullawwah by
Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran.

As the story goes, when al-Moullawwah and Layla fell in love as adolescents, he began composing poems about his feelings for her – feelings which became obsessive. Some locals began calling him "Majnun" -- which translates to "mentally unhinged".

Undaunted, al-Moullawwah asked for her hand in marriage. Her father refused and, shortly after, forcibly married her off to a noble and rich merchant of the Thaqif tribe in the city of Ta'if -- a city that still exists in Saudi Arabia.

When word of her marriage reached Majnun, he fled the tribal camp and vanished into the desert. His family, despairing of his return, left food for him among the rocks and scrub. Those who passed through the wilderness claimed they saw him wandering alone, reciting poetry aloud or carving verses in the sand with a slender stick.

Majnun in the Wilderness -- unknown artist.

Layla moved to a place in Northern Arabia with her husband, where she became ill and died. In some versions, she dies of heartbreak from not being able to see her beloved. Majnun was later found dead in the wilderness in 688 AD, near Layla's grave. He had, reportedly, carved three verses of poetry on a rock nearby They are the last three verses attributed to him.

Part of a poem composed after Layla's
marriage and before Majnun's descent
into madness.

The story of Layla and Majnun has inspired more than a thousand years of artistic creation across cultures, languages and art forms. Originating in 7th‑century Arabic poetry, it was transformed into one of the great masterpieces of Persian literature by Nizami Ganjavi and went on to influence poets from India to the Ottoman world.

The legend has been adapted into operas, ballets, plays, films, miniature paintings and modern dance works, and it continues to shape contemporary storytelling. In Western culture, its theme echoes in works such as Romeo and Juliet and in other stories, including the ill-fated Abelard and Heloise.

In particular, the theme is incorporated in modern popular music, most famously by Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon, whose composition, Layla, appears on this week's record by Derek and the Dominos. Across time and geography, the story endures as a powerful symbol of forbidden love, artistic obsession, and the idea that love itself can become a form of mad devotion.

Layla single album jacket,

Derek and the Dominos were a short‑lived but hugely influential blues‑rock band formed in spring,1970, by Eric Clapton, alongside Bobby Whitlock (keyboards, vocals), Carl Radle (bass), and Jim Gordon (drums). All four musicians had previously played together in Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, a touring soul‑rock ensemble that Clapton joined after the breakup of his high‑profile supergroup Blind Faith.

Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett were an American husband
and wife duo who performed soul, rock, blues and country music.

Wanting to escape the pressure and celebrity attached to his name, Clapton adopted the alias “Derek” so the group could function as a more anonymous, collaborative band rather than a star‑led project. The group solidified while backing George Harrison on sessions for All Things Must Pass (#433 on The 500) and soon began recording their own music in Miami with guest guitarists Duane Allman and Dave Mason.

Clapton (left) with Allman in 1970.

The band released just one studio album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, which is now regarded as one of the greatest albums in rock history. Despite the creative success, Derek and the Dominos fell apart in 1971, less than a year after forming. The breakup was driven by a combination of factors: severe drug addiction (especially Clapton’s heroin use), internal tensions, exhaustion from touring, and emotional strain following Duane Allman’s death, which happened within a year of this release. Attempts to record a second album collapsed, and the group quietly dissolved without a formal announcement. Although brief, Derek and the Dominos left a lasting legacy, defined by raw emotional intensity and a single monumental recording.

Allman died following a motorcycle crash, he was 24.

In tracing the arc from the ancient Arabic poem to Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, the connection becomes more than a clever literary reference: it becomes a shared emotional architecture. The legend of Layla and Majnun is not simply a story about romance, but about love that cannot be acted upon, love that survives only through expression. Majnun’s devotion is rendered through poetry whispered to himself, traced in desert sand and finally, painfully, carved into stone. Centuries later, Eric Clapton encountered this same emotional aching in his own life when he fell in love with model Pattie Boyd who was married to his best mate and Beatle, George Harrison.

Boyd in a photo shoot - 1968.

The song Layla functions as a direct emotional translation of the poem rather than a retelling of its plot. Its urgent opening riff captures obsession and desperation, while its famous coda slows into resignation and longing, perhaps mirroring the two emotional states of Majnun’s journey from pursuit to acceptance. Across the album, Clapton and the Dominos repeatedly circle the same themes found in the Arabic tradition. Love is represented as fixation, suffering and, ultimately, something that can reshape identity rather than resolve itself.

George Harrison and Pattie Boyd wedding (1966).

In both stories, the beloved Layla is not fully possessed, yet becomes immortal through art. Ultimately, the recording of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs demonstrates how ancient stories persist not only because they have been preserved, but because they are perpetually re‑felt.

Clapton did not borrow the name Layla to decorate a song. Instead, he recognized himself in Majnun’s condition. In a way, the album stands as proof that across cultures, centuries and languages, the same truth about love unfulfilled. If it cannot be lived, it can be preserved in poetry, visual art and music. It can become something that outlasts the emotions that inspired it. In that sense, the poetry scratched into shifting desert sands and a 1970 rock album are doing the same work. Both are bearing witness to a love that could not be resolved.

CODA

Boyd divorced Harrison in 1977 and married Clapton in 1979. However, that marriage lasted only a decade. In 1991, she met property developer Ron Weston, whom she married in 2015. They are still together.

There are seven Harrison and Clapton songs specifically written about Boyd (Listed below). Every one of them is on an album that is on The 500 list. I wonder if Weston has any on his playlists?

I Need You - The Beatles (1965)

If I Needed Someone - The Beatles (1965)

Something - The Beatles (1969)

For You Blue - The Beatles (1970)

Layla - Derek and the Dominos (1970)

Bell Bottom Blues - Derek and the Dominos (1970)

Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton (1977)