Reality was where it was at in 1970 for Nathaniel Mayer, too. There was no fantasy for him, either, as he--once Detroit's answer to James Brown--was out of recording work. Eight years previous, Mayer had landed a huge local hit (and #22 nationally, while top ten in New York, Chicago, and L.A.) with his soul/doo-wop/gutter rock**** record, "Village of Love" for Detroit's other soul label, Fortune Records. That record brought Mayer national attention. He followed it with several more great soul/doo-wop/gutter rock records, but, as goes the maxim about diminishing returns....Mayer had his last "hit" with Fortune in '66, and then left over contractual disputes. In '68, he traveled over to Norton Records, recorded the song, "I Don't Want No Bald-Headed Woman Telling Me What to Do," and the company didn't release it*****. Mayer then dropped off the map...for thirty-five years.*****
Where'd he go? I don't know, but (now ex-) Detroit Cobra bassist/guitarist Jeff Meier found him earlier this decade, and with the help of Meier (and others), Mayer was able to wow the crowd at the 2002 Detroit Legends Show. Meier (and others, including the Detroit band the Fabulous Shanks) was then able to help Mayer get a record deal at Fat Possum Records, which in 2004 released Mayer's first album since 1963.
The album--I Just Want to Be Held--is solid, but Mayer is fantastic. For once, and most surprising, he sounds very little like he did in '62 or '66. His voice is down an octave (maybe two), and his vocal chords sound as if someone shredded their outer cortex and replaced them with dull barbed wire. In fact, his voice sounds like an instrument, a guitar playing through a amp with a busted vacuum tube. His fuzzbox vocals don't reflect a shattered spirit, though, as Mayer's vocals--especially on "I Found Out"--are enlivening as they wore forty years ago, if not more so, and it's Mayer's vocals--along with his interplay with the guitar--that help his cover surpass Lennon's, and as wonderful and soulful and gutteral a singer as Lennon was, that's no small feat.
Here, Mayer takes Lennon's lyric and makes mincemeat out of it. The original record--like most of the songs from that album--sounds nowadays (or it does to me now, as I've heard it dozens of times) more like it was intentioned as a scaffold for Lennon's polemic than it does a record whose purpose and function is solely musical. That's not to denegrate the original, though, as even though the music on it may just be a scaffold, that music is one hell of a scaffold, as on the original Ringo's at his funkiest, and Lennon's distorted guitar cuts and slices, and--at times--Lennon's vocals are at his gutbucket best. On the verses, though, Lennon enunciates well because he doesn't want his message lost in the music. Mayer and his band here (Tino Gross on drums, Greasy Carlisi--oh, what a great name that is--on bass, and on guitar Dale Beavers, whose raucus work here is on a level with Mayer's) take the inverse: they play and Mayer sings so that the music doesn't get lost in the message.
That's an all-important distinction here. Mayer and Beavers and Gross and Carlisi turn Lennon's manifesto into their own blues/rock/funk masterwork, transforming Lennon's message (of the inner freedom and happiness that can be found--or that he found--by taking charge of his own world and relinquishing any other group's hold on him) into one that actually feels liberating. Mayer and the Fat Possum musicians exemplify Lennon's meaning in the music in a way that Lennon's cut never did; Lennon seemed too intent on explaining how he achieved his newfound intellectual and (ahem) spiritual independence, where Mayer mushmouths the lyrics--he doesn't need to explain his creed because his performance embodies it fully. The interplay of Lennon's guitar and vocals plus Voorman's bass and Ringo's drums seem perfunctory and (almost) stilted compared to the interplay between Mayer and his band, who work up some of the most wicked and raucus and bluesy funk n' roll of the past decade.
The lyric's not completley neglible, though. Lennon speaks of relinquishing the hold all others (except Yoko) have on him, as he takes responsibility for his place in the world and comes to rely totally upon himself (and Yoko) for fulfillment. What fills the void? The music. When Mayer's life had been in the down in the valley for years, it took music to rescue him, With a little help from his friends, Mayer found out.
NOTES
*John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is most decidely a landmark album, but it's impact isn't what it used to be, where its subject matter and naked sound contrasted diametrically with the last Beatles album, the minutely produced Abbey Road. Methinks the album's influence will only grow lesser with time. It's just this side of didactic and pedantic, its personal politics saved only by the musicians, Lennon's voice, and the tough starkness of the production. Musicians are almost always woeful politicians, John Lennon notwithstanding.
**Much like Steve Ditko left fantasy for Ayn Rand's brand of Objectivism, pledging allegiance--as Lennon does on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band--to reality, where A=A. They both made their departure at about the same time, and they left most of their best work behind them, as both were much better as artists than they were as philosphers or politicians or essayists.
Inversely, Ditko never left a demarcation line of departure; throughout the '70s and the '80s, he still returned to fantasy sporadically, though the more and more he published his creator-owned material, the more and more he seemed to lose what made him great in the first place (though his talent still shone through). Lennon--who completely refused to play the fantasy game anymore--returned almost fully, making great pop records, full of rock and soul and romanticism, all the stuff he had left behind, not so long ago.
***And wind. Yoko Ono is credited with creating that on the album. Oh, the jokes and irony in that credit....
****I call it gutter rock because neither the band nor Fortune's producers showcased half of the pristine talent that Motown put on wax, the Fortune sound often muddy, often terribly mixed, and the guitars--when they stood out--didn't sound smooth or clean--hell, even the distortion sounded distorted. Matched with (often) superb singing, this mixture provided an odd listening experience. Fortune's drummer--whoever he was--was great, though. How he--or they, but probably he, because Fortune, heh, didn't have much money--kept those records from falling apart is a testimony to the importance of the consistancy of a well-timed backbeat.
*****Not until 2002.
******There's a blip, though. Mayer did resurface once. He recorded "Raise the Curtain High" for Love Dog Records in 1980...the year Lennon died.
PS: Nathaniel Mayer died in November of last year.
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