Dust Off Those Grooves (Chapter Three) Johnny Thunders' So Alone

Johnny Thunders would have turned sixty years old today. In tribute to one of my major musical heroes, I am re-posting this look at his greatest album that I wrote in the early days of Moon in the Gutter.


Memory is a strange thing, specifically what we remember. I have over 3,000 records and cds. I've been collecting, passionately, since I was in my early teens. I have had girlfriends that I can't even remotely remember anything about but I can pretty much pull any of my records, or discs out, and recall not only where where I got them but what was going on in my life at the time. I couldn't tell you what I was doing last week but I could tell you my first 45 was Blondie's "The Tide Is High" and that my first lp was Elvis Gold Records Vol. 5. I mention this because, even though I remember these things clearly, certain albums seem to be almost part of my DNA...while I remember the first time with them, I can't imagine ever really being without them.
I found Johnny Thunders then out of print solo debut, SO ALONE, on vinyl in a tiny Manhattan record store in 1992. I had discovered JT at the perfect age of 16 when I bought the first New York Dolls record and even though his guitar playing had been copied a million times over at that point there was still a freshness and raw energy that made it totally unique and unbelievably compelling to me.
Southern Indiana in the late 80s early 90s was not the most ideal spot for finding Johnny Thunders solo records; so for several years it was just those Doll sides, some scattered live recordings and articles that I found in old music magazines.
I'll never forget getting the news that JT had died my senior year of high school. My friend Ryan coming into the cafeteria and simply saying, 'Johnny died'.
A year or so later my father took me up to Queens to see Johnny's grave, by that point Jerry Nolan was gone also and the groundskeeper was very helpful in helping us locating both markers. Johnny's grave was covered with stuff fans had brought...I added a pack of Lucky Strikes..
It was on that same visit that I found SO ALONE, a near mint original British pressing with the insert sleeve. The original Rolling Stone review was entitled 'The Promise Of Rock and Roll' and all these years later that still seems fitting. It's not only one of the great rock albums but it's an album that's in love with the idea of rock itself. It's because of this record that when I think of Johnny I don't think of drugs, his early death or any of that shit, I just think of the passion and humanity that he injects on SO ALONE'S 10 tracks. Humanity might seem an odd word to use in describing Johnny but like the line goes in "Great Big Kiss", "Bad but not evil". Hell, even the notorious Sex Pistols put down "London Boys" has a certain honor to it...like a kid talking trash on the playground because he's been insulted in front of his friends.
The album open with what sounds like a call to arms with Thunders storming version of the classic instrumental "Pipeline". What other 'punk' album would have worn it's heart on its sleeve so much? Johnny on this album right up to his final work COPYCATS would always, at heart, be that kid who grew up listening to rock in the 50s and 60s. One of the main things that always separated the New York punk scene from the British one was New York's willingness to tip their hat to what had inspired them. A lot of the British bands from the time seemed to take this holier than thou attitude that they were doing something new, when of course they had all been influenced by the same stuff the NY scene had. While Joe Strummer was singing 'No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones' Patti Smith was covering "Jailhouse Rock" and Richard Hell was doing "Ventilator Blues". It all works out though, and the influences that punk carried are more and more known. I think it might even get to the point where I can say no one was more punk than Elvis in '55 or The Who in '66 and not be looked at like I was crazy.
SO ALONE includes a mixture of covers, originals and a few older redone Dolls tracks and yet it feels completely cohesive. "You Can't Put Your Arm Around A Memory" is the most famous and probably rightly so, but listen to the way he sings David Johansen's incredible lyrics to "Subway Train" or that cover of the Otis Blackwell penned "Daddy Rolling Stone". It sounds like a greatest hits album to me and if the closing late period Dolls track "Downtown" doesn't make you miss what used to be New York City, nothing will.
A lot has been written about Johnny Thunders, highly recommended is Nina Antonia's bio 'In Cold Blood' (plus her work on The Dolls) and books like 'From The Velvets to The Voidoids' and 'Please Kill Me' are essential. For newcomers, I would recommend three things over any of those: The first Dolls album, SO ALONE and an essay Richard Hell wrote after Johnny died called 'Johnny Thunders and The Endless Party'. It's available in Hell's must have 'Hot and Cold' book. There isn't a finer piece of writing on a rocker that's ever been written. The most famous quote comes when Hell describes him as the 'the rock and roll Dean Martin of Heroin' which is of course dead on but it's his description of Thunders as a guy who wanted to be 'as good as Frank Sinatra and Elvis' that really gets me. After reading that I saw that guy staring at me from that isolated corner on the cover of SO ALONE differently. He was no longer that doomed rock and roll loser that everyone is so quick to cast him off as. He was just a kid who grew up wishing he could wear a great suit, play music that he loved so much and be as good as good ever got. Through the ten tracks on SO ALONE Johnny Thunders got his wish.

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Operation Screenshot (Films of the 2000s): Greg Whiteley's New York Doll (2005)

This post is dedicated to Billy Murcia, John Anthony Genzale Jr., Jerry Nolan and Arthur 'Killer' Kane...

Dust Off Those Grooves (Chapter Eighteen) King Creole by Elvis Presley

Recorded during a three-day session in the mid part of January 1958, with some additional work done in a day in mid February, Elvis Presley’s KING CREOLE album is one of his greatest and most diverse works. The album stands as a testament to the astonishing range Elvis had, as a vocalist and producer, and it is among the most consistently great of all of his LPs.
The album was recorded at Paramount’s Soundstage Studios with a Thorne Nogar operating as engineer. The producers listed are Paramount’s Walter Scharf and Phil Khagan although it is fairly well documented that Elvis himself was the one really responsible for the sound of his recordings up to 1968. Ernst Jorgensen notes in his book A LIFE IN MUSIC that songwriters Lieber and Stoller were also on hand to help with production duties for this difficult record.
Joining Elvis in the studio were his legendary sidemen Scotty Moore on lead electric guitar, Bill Black on stand up bass, and D.J. Fontanta on drums. Elvis himself is credited with much of the rhythm guitar playing on the album. Paramount and RCA enlisted the help of many top session musicians for the diverse selections including Neal Matthews on guitar, and a top Jazz combo. The ever-reliable Jordanaires appear on background vocals and vocalist Kitty White pops up on the legendary CRAWFISH track.
This was a volatile and rushed moment in the life of Elvis Presley. His draft notice had already come through, but he had successfully got the okay to complete work on the KING CREOLE album and film. This huge upcoming change had to be weighing heavy on Elvis’ mind and his vocals on the KING CREOLE sessions, featuring some of his most passionate and at times frantic, surely reflect this.
Elvis was commercially at the peak of his powers here, and it seemed that everything he touched in this period was a sure fire smash. With this in mind the KING CREOLE album can be viewed as somewhat of a risk, as stylistically it would mark a departure from much of his previous work. The album, the jazziest that Elvis ever produced, stands though as a tribute to the vision and talent of Presley, and a punch in the face to critics who claim all of his soundtrack work was garbage.

The album opens up with the startling Leiber and Stoller track KING CREOLE, one of the swampiest and most evocative tracks Elvis ever recorded. With his menacing vocals promising a “guitar held like a tommy gun” the iconic background work of the Jordanaires and a blistering Scotty Moore guitar solo, KING CREOLE is masterful introduction to the album and it holds up as well as any of his more popular work from the period.

The lovely Wise and Weisman composition AS LONG AS I HAVE YOU follows, and its sweet lilting melody and charming vocal as a perfect counterpoint to the intense opener. AS LONG AS I HAVE YOU is one of the great ballads Elvis ever sang. It is a shame he didn’t revisit it later in his career. It is harder to imagine a more perfect and simple love song, and the fact that it is delivered in less than two minutes makes it all the more haunting.

HARD HEADED WOMAN follows and I will let what I wrote recently on it stand. I will say here that I love the way this long player (it should be noted that KING CREOLE was originally released as two extended players) keeps switching things up. It’s a schizophrenic record whose sharp stylistic swings mirror perfectly the volatile part of Danny Fisher that Elvis played so well in the film.
The legendary TROUBLE follows, surely one of the dirtiest and most savage songs in Presley’s entire catalogue. His deadpan vocals on this original take make it all the more fascinating. This astonishing Leiber and Stoller composition would of course later open Elvis’ 68 comeback special in a roaring rock and roll take that tops this very jazzy and cool original.
The Claude DeMetrius/Fred Wise track DIXIELAND ROCK is sparked by a great lyric and a scorching Sax solo by Justin Gordon, and it is followed by the sweet HARD HEADED WOMAN b-side DON’T ASK ME WHY.
LOVER DOLL, a Wayne and Silver track, is one of the slightest tracks on the album. It sounds like an attempt to recreate the magic of the previous years TEDDY BEAR but it doesn’t have any of that songs power. It does have a nice smooth vocal by Elvis, and a cool time change at the end, but it is finally among the weaker moments on the album.

The Wise and Weisman track, CRAWFISH, on the other hand, is one of the best. Later covered by Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin, CRAWFISH is one of the most underrated of all Elvis’ work. Totally authentic sounding with the great Kitty White providing a great female counterpart to Elvis, CRAWFISH is really remarkable…it is no wonder the legendary New York Dolls axe-man chose to release it as one of his final singles nearly thirty years after this original.

YOUNG DREAMS is a contribution from Martin Kalmanoff and Aaron Schroeder and it is a passable song made great by Elvis’ passionate vocal take. The interplay with The Jordanaires is particularly good here also.
The short Lieber and Stoller track STEADFAST, LOYAL AND TRUE follows and while it works in a key sequence in the film, it is a minute that could have been left off the final album.

The slip up of STEADFAST, LOYAL AND TRUE gives way to one of the album’s greatest moment, the down and dirty Jazz romp NEW ORLEANS. Featuring a sizzling call and response between Elvis and The Jordanaries, and a scintillating lyric by Sid Tepper and Roy Bennett, NEW ORLEANS is a stunning closer to the album. It is just a shame that it is over in just a couple of minutes, as the band and Elvis sound like they want to play on and on.

KING CREOLE, the album, would street in August of 58 and it would climb to #2 on the album charts. It most surely would have gone to number one had it not been proceeded by the two Extended play releases the month before (which by the way did top the charts). It would be the last album of all new material before Elvis would enter the army (1959’s FOR LP FANS ONLY was a grab bag of Sun and RCA tracks) and it remains one of the great albums of his career. Short, to the point and incredibly diverse, KING CREOLE can stand proudly next to the likes of ELVIS PRESLEY, ELVIS IS BACK, FROM ELVIS IN MEMPHIS, THAT’S THE WAY IT IS and I’M ABOUT TEN THOUSAND YEARS OLD as one of the great recorded tributes to the genius of Elvis Presley. It should be in every rock lover’s possession.
The album can be heard in its entirety on the massive box set THE KING OF ROCK AND ROLL or even better in a 1997 re-release that features a bonus of the entire album in outtakes.