Failure for the Future Good?
By Mr. Moderator on Apr 2, 2008
Is there such a thing as a rock 'n roll failure for the future good of rock 'n roll? I'm not thinking about any undeserved commercial failure that those of us most qualified to judge great music know actually was great (eg, Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica), but a commonly acknowledged failed attempt at greatness that nevertheless put enough cracks in the wall to allow a few rays of light to shine through. I'm also not thinking of something like Wilco's Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, which is a decent if not failed album that has the perception of having failed because it was rejected by the main label the band was signed to before being shuffled off to a subsidiary of that same label. I'm asking you, because although I'm fascinated by the role of failure in great works of art, I'm not sure that I can think of an album or song that meets these criteria. If I really thought that The Beach Boys' aborted Smile album led to anything but third-rate versions of second-rate Beach Boys I might have an example to share. Who knows, maybe that one works for you. Maybe there's a good example from the Funkadelic catalog. Those guys put out their share of cosmic slop that others could use for scrap parts.
Anyhow, I'm going to keep thinking about this. Maybe you will too. Don't be offended by the premise that great artists sometimes "fail" yet possibly clear out enough dead wood to allow future progress, whether by themselves or others. I trust we'll get some helpful answers. I look forward to your responses.
Follow up:
(By the way, I thought about this while watching Spinal Tap tonight. I was thinking that the spectacular, heartfelt failure of certain types of music from the past have led to great opportunities for humor. I got to thinking about what future generations will find mock-worthy in today's spectacularly, heartfelt failures of rock 'n roll.)
23 comments
Comment from: the great 48 [Member] 
I think I get what you're saying here. Are you talking, like, Gary Numan? Someone who pioneered, but was almost immediately rendered quaint by those who were able to better translate his ideas?
04/03/08 @ 00:32
Comment from: homefrontradio [Member]
How about the first David Bowie album, the 1967 Decca one that's always absent from his reissue schedules, and which Bowie got his lawyers to squash a 2 CD expanded release of a few years ago?
Released on the same day as 'Sgt. Pepper', but has yet to be subjected to any 'it was 20 / 30 / 40 years ago today' articles.
I've often thought 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' was lauded due to the story behind the album rather than the music itself.
Released on the same day as 'Sgt. Pepper', but has yet to be subjected to any 'it was 20 / 30 / 40 years ago today' articles.
I've often thought 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' was lauded due to the story behind the album rather than the music itself.
04/03/08 @ 07:51
Comment from: Mr. Moderator [Member]
Great One, yes, because I trust your knowledge of what that album would influence, Gary Numan probably fits the bill. A pioneering work being almost immediately rendered quaint is one way of having a greater influence than the work itself is typically given credit.
Homefrontradio, I'm not sure that I know the Decca album that you're referring to. Does this predate the folky one with "Space Oddity"? Would those songs have been collected on some "rarities" album that friends of mine had in the '80s, with stuff like "The Laughing Gnome" (but not the earlier "David Jones" stuff, of course)? How do you think this Decca album began to beat down an artistic wall or two?
Homefrontradio, I'm not sure that I know the Decca album that you're referring to. Does this predate the folky one with "Space Oddity"? Would those songs have been collected on some "rarities" album that friends of mine had in the '80s, with stuff like "The Laughing Gnome" (but not the earlier "David Jones" stuff, of course)? How do you think this Decca album began to beat down an artistic wall or two?
04/03/08 @ 09:38
Comment from: BigSteve [Member]
How about Judee Sill and Karen Dalton, lionized by the freak folks but hardly made a ripple while they were around. It took a long time for that seed to sprout.
04/03/08 @ 10:58
Comment from: BigSteve [Member]
Their Satanic Majesties Request is an example of what you're talking about isn't it? An album generally acknowledged as a failure, but it closed off a direction the Stones might have gone off towards and had the effect of leading them back to what they were good at.
04/03/08 @ 11:05
Comment from: Mr. Moderator [Member]
Great call on Their Satanic Majesties Request, BigSteve!
04/03/08 @ 11:07
Comment from: mwall [Member]
Kraftwerk's Autobahn? Although the future that came of it had more bad than good, there was maybe some good?
04/03/08 @ 11:49
Comment from: hrrundivbakshi [Member]
Prince's "Black Album." It was a final blast of sex-funk that Prince had already outgrown, recorded just because he thought he had to prove to the world he could still write that shit. He later disowned the record, and with good reason -- he had other places to go and things to try, and they were mostly better. Mostly.
04/03/08 @ 12:13
Comment from: Mr. Moderator [Member]
I can't count Autobahn because it's the best-known album by Kraftwerk, isn't it? Again, I'm not necessarily concerned with commerical failures that would be influential, because that's almost to be expected, but albums that seemed to have failed the artist's own vision that nevertheless ended up being influential or otherwise driving progress.
Prince's Black Album may rightfully join Their Satanic Majesties Request in the "ultimately helpful dead end" category.
Prince's Black Album may rightfully join Their Satanic Majesties Request in the "ultimately helpful dead end" category.
04/03/08 @ 12:54
Comment from: Mr. Moderator [Member]
Here's one I'll posit, although I don't have a particular stake in it: Black Flag's My War, or whatever album it was that officially marked their move into Sabbath-style sludge. If memory serves, the album was divisive among the band's core fans and it was mostly blasted critically in the hardcore fanzines of the time. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Now that was the first album by Black Flag that I could begin to make sense of, even helping me like their earlier wors, but I don't think I count here. What good I think the album did was to allow a lot of hardcore kids to come out of the closet with the sludge-metal albums of their youth, and it gave hardcore a way out of the dead end it had been hitting. How much of later-80s underground rock owes something to Black Flag's not-entirely successful move into the sludge?
04/03/08 @ 13:11
Comment from: Oats [Member]
How about Neil Young's Time Fades Away, his flop follow-up to Harvest. Derided by Neil, but of course cherished by many fans (including me). But even if you don't like it, it did begin the "ditch trilogy," leading to the acclaimed On the Beach and Tonight's the Night. Those three albums collectively have a lot to do with Neil's iconoclastic reputation.
04/03/08 @ 13:33
Comment from: BigSteve [Member]
How about Trans? Can we find any 'future good' in that one?
04/03/08 @ 13:51
Comment from: BigSteve [Member]
I was listening to an old Theme Time Radio Hour yesterday, and the theme was Young and Old. Dylan introduced Neil Young's hit song Old Man by praising the Stray Gators backing band (all of whom have played with Dylan too) and then said, "This song comes from Neil's biggest selling album, Harvest. Gee, I thought it would have been Trans!" That guy cracks me up.
04/03/08 @ 14:29
Comment from: hrrundivbakshi [Member]
Led Zeppelin III -- a mediocre hippie-dippie album that allowed LZ to purge a lot of the acoustic silliness they only *thought* they were good at.
04/03/08 @ 15:20
Comment from: mwall [Member]
Okay, I get the drift a little more. Been traveling so I'm rusty.
Given the parameters, maybe Kraftwerk 1 and 2 are closer. Also in the disowned by the band category and now permanently not in print, psychedelic drone that somewhat hints at the technofuture, they paved the way for a whole sound many people are still on the fence about.
Given the parameters, maybe Kraftwerk 1 and 2 are closer. Also in the disowned by the band category and now permanently not in print, psychedelic drone that somewhat hints at the technofuture, they paved the way for a whole sound many people are still on the fence about.
04/03/08 @ 15:43
Comment from: homefrontradio [Member]
The Bowie album is heavily-orchestrated, stylised music hall. It's 'acted' as much as 'sung'. If it had succeeded, he would have gone on to a career based in theatrical musicals and light entertainment.
I actually admire it for the sheer peverse nature of the album. The songs are oddly-arranged chamber pop, and the subject matter of cannibalism, lesbianism, transvesticism and child murder filtered through the English Nostalgia craze, makes for one of those listening experiences when you question the artist's sanity.
The AllMusicGuide review puts it best:
"He was, at this time, targeting most of his energy directly into the heart of the Hip Easy Listening Intelligentsia — without pausing to wonder whether that crowd actually existed."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLjtXUGGPH4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvqH0-2KWnQ
I actually admire it for the sheer peverse nature of the album. The songs are oddly-arranged chamber pop, and the subject matter of cannibalism, lesbianism, transvesticism and child murder filtered through the English Nostalgia craze, makes for one of those listening experiences when you question the artist's sanity.
The AllMusicGuide review puts it best:
"He was, at this time, targeting most of his energy directly into the heart of the Hip Easy Listening Intelligentsia — without pausing to wonder whether that crowd actually existed."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLjtXUGGPH4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvqH0-2KWnQ
04/03/08 @ 16:09
Comment from: dr john [Member]
Led Zep were always acoustic hippies: look at Goin to California and Battle of Evermore on IV.
I'm arguing against III as a failure. Their fans still bought it, it has some great songs on it, like "Tangerine and "Friends," and, if anything, has gotten better with age.
If anyone was a failure, it would be Bob Seger whose repeated setbacks paved the ways for populist hacks like John Cougar.
I'm arguing against III as a failure. Their fans still bought it, it has some great songs on it, like "Tangerine and "Friends," and, if anything, has gotten better with age.
If anyone was a failure, it would be Bob Seger whose repeated setbacks paved the ways for populist hacks like John Cougar.
04/03/08 @ 18:45
Comment from: Mr. Moderator [Member]
I'm with you, Dr. John. Led Zep III is STRONG and representative of a key part of the band's strengths.
Seger doesn't come into play here either. It's not failures we're looking for but failures tthat nevertheless helped shed a ray of light on something in the future that would be worthwhile.
Seger doesn't come into play here either. It's not failures we're looking for but failures tthat nevertheless helped shed a ray of light on something in the future that would be worthwhile.
04/03/08 @ 19:47
Comment from: Mr. Moderator [Member]
Thanks for the reminders, Homefront. Actually, I don't find this stuff to be too different than what would be at the root of Bowie's classic music. The rock trimmings that he would add sure helped my enjoyment of his music, but maybe this failed album actually is the beginning of his personal breakthrough, in which the first rays of what's unique about Bowie peeked through. It sure sounds more "Bowie" than those groping David Jones tracks, don't you think?
04/03/08 @ 22:27
The hacks in the Ministry of Truth would now have you believe that Randy Newman's first album was self-titled and pictured a pensive hipster on the sleeve, but those whose memories haven't yet been immolated will recall that it was subtitled "creates something new under the sun" and the cover pictured our hero in (see http://www.gregsgrooves.com/imagesm-r/newman_randy.jpg) a double-plus uncool elbow-patched blazer and unmatching slacks that stood out against the grain of the summer of love as much as Hendrix did earlier, but in the opposite direction!
Warners obviously had NO idea what to do with this skeevy feller and his weird little tunes, so they had Van Dyke Parks package his mess up like a Burt Bacharach clone or a severely twisted Mr. Barry Manilow, and tried to sweeten the pungent crawfish jambalaya with some orchestral syrup. Didn't work. The LP sank like a stone. Just a few of us caught the ripples left behind by 'Davy the Fat Boy' and the other freaks in Newman's rotating carnival.
After that, the execs pretty much left him alone to do his thing, whatever the heck that was and the result was '12 songs' and Live! and Sail Away and a dozen more. If Randy Newman had had more success with the full orchestral flammarion right out of the gate, and drifted over into the middle of the road, we might never have had a chance to hear 'Old Kentucky Home' and 'Kingfish' and 'Political Science' and 'Marie'. Lucky for us 'Under the Sun' was just too damn wierd with a beard for the Kostelanetz crowd.
Of course, he pretty much wound up over there on his own later, but getting there via the scenic route proved much more interesting...
Warners obviously had NO idea what to do with this skeevy feller and his weird little tunes, so they had Van Dyke Parks package his mess up like a Burt Bacharach clone or a severely twisted Mr. Barry Manilow, and tried to sweeten the pungent crawfish jambalaya with some orchestral syrup. Didn't work. The LP sank like a stone. Just a few of us caught the ripples left behind by 'Davy the Fat Boy' and the other freaks in Newman's rotating carnival.
After that, the execs pretty much left him alone to do his thing, whatever the heck that was and the result was '12 songs' and Live! and Sail Away and a dozen more. If Randy Newman had had more success with the full orchestral flammarion right out of the gate, and drifted over into the middle of the road, we might never have had a chance to hear 'Old Kentucky Home' and 'Kingfish' and 'Political Science' and 'Marie'. Lucky for us 'Under the Sun' was just too damn wierd with a beard for the Kostelanetz crowd.
Of course, he pretty much wound up over there on his own later, but getting there via the scenic route proved much more interesting...
04/04/08 @ 01:29
Comment from: dr john [Member]
Good point, DangerEddie. Newman came out a lot looser on 12 Songs and, from that point on, he seemed to better grab the zeitgeist of his times.
04/04/08 @ 12:13
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