By
Richie Unterberger
Of all
the producers to make a mark on the world of jazz and rock in the 1960s
and 1970s, David Axelrod had one of the most unusual career paths.
Gaining his first notable credits on late-1950s jazz albums, by the
mid-1960s he'd combined jazz, soul, and pop as the producer of hit
recordings by Lou Rawls and Cannonball Adderley. Given the freedom to
create records under his own name, Axelrod was behind some of the most
ambitious concept albums of the late 1960s and early 1970s, marrying
psychedelic rock, orchestrated arrangements, soul, and funk in
adaptations of classic literary, religious, and musical works. One of
the most audacious of these was issued on RCA in late 1971 as David Axelrod's Rock Interpretation of
Handel's Messiah, referred to from this point onward as Messiah for short.
Rock albums with
religious themes were somewhat in vogue around this time. Jesus Christ Superstar reached #1
earlier in the year, and Godspell
would go gold not long after that, entering the Top Forty in 1972.
Axelrod, however, was not jumping on a bandwagon, and indeed was a
pioneer of the approach, his first efforts along those lines dating
back about four years before Messiah's
release. He arranged and wrote the material on the Electric Prunes'
third album, Mass in F Minor
(released at the end of 1967), which combined psychedelic rock music
and religious themes with classically-oriented horns and strings on
tracks sung entirely in Latin. With a different lineup of Electric
Prunes, he also composed and arranged their 1968 album Release of an Oath, based on the
Kol Nidre, the sacred Jewish prayer recited on the eye of Yom Kippur.
By that time, it could be argued that the band's LPs were more Axelrod
records than Electric Prunes ones, though their association with David
ended after Release of an Oath.
By that time, however, Axelrod was releasing albums
in a similar mold under his own name. In 1968, his Song of Innocence took its
inspiration from poems by William Blake. So, naturally enough, did its
1969 follow-up, Songs of Experience.
These weren't whimsical attempts by Axelrod or Capitol Records to
exploit mysticism in the hippie culture, but an expression of an
interest that he'd harbored for quite a few years. "If I went to
somebody today and told them I wanted to do an album of tone poems to
William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, they'd throw me
out," he told MOJO in 2001.
"First question – how much? In the '60s those questions weren't asked.
I'd got involved with Blake in my early twenties, reading the poems
over and over. I composed the album in a week."
Axelrod's final album for Capitol, 1970's
environmentally-themed Earth Rot,
used (according to a review in Circus)
words "from The Old Testament (particularly Genesis and Isaiah) and
from a Navajo legend-poem, 'Song of the Earth Spirit.'" Interestingly,
the review also opined that "some of it sounds like Handel's Messiah or
a Bach fugue." Axelrod would take on Handel's Messiah for real on his next album,
moving to another major label, RCA.
"Sometime in the 1960s I got a nice letter sent to
me at Capitol from a young guy named Ron Budnik," explained Axelrod in
an interview with Richard Morton Jack. "He wanted a career in the music
industry, and wondered if I could give him some advice. I had my
secretary schedule an appointment, and we talked. He was knocked out,
because no one else he'd written to had replied. By 1971 Ron was
working at RCA, and contacted me to ask whether I would be interested
in recording the Messiah for
them. I said, you bet I would!"
Added Axelrod, "But I knew from the start it was
going to be both different and difficult. I worked out arrangements for
the sections I wanted to include, and used the usual session players -
Carol Kaye on bass, Mike Deasy on guitar, and so on." Budnik was
credited as producer, Axelrod taking the writing and arrangement
credits. Conducting would be his good friend Cannonball Adderley, who
as it happened cut an early fusion album titled Black Messiah around the same time,
with Axelrod as producer. Recording engineer Peter Abbott had worked on
Axelrod-produced LPs by Adderley and Lou Rawls, as well as rock
releases by the Monkees, Fred Neil, and Michael Nesmith.
Axelrod could have hardly chosen a more revered
classical work to interpret. Composed by George Frideric Handel as an
oratorio in 1741, its text was drawn from the King James Bible and
psalms included with the Book of
Common Prayer. It had been performed for centuries, and recorded
for decades, in countless
forms. He likely wasn't worried about offending purists who thought
Messiah had no business being modernized, telling Billboard in July
1971, "today you can get away with anything because people are so
flexible." By that time, he added, college students had the patience to
sit and "dig Mozart and Santana on the changer at the same time." It
seemed safe to say that no one else had thought of doing a rock version
of Messiah, though as it
turned out, another would hit the market around the same time as
Axelrod's.
Though some of his earlier recordings had been
instrumental, as Messiah is
very much a choral work, it made sense that vocals would be prominent
in Axelrod's arrangements. Soul-gospel singing, whether choral or solo
(as in "Behold a Virgin Shall Conceive," handled by a passionate
uncredited woman vocalist, and "Comfort Ye My People," where the duties
were given to a likewise uncredited male singer), was very much at the
forefront of several tracks. While grand classical-style orchestration
was present, there were also plenty of wah-wahing, distorted rock and
funk guitar, bass, drums, and organ. There were also plenty of the
funky "breakbeats" – the varied but steadily driving rhythms,
especially on the drums – that made Axelrod a much beloved source of
samples to future generations, kicking in after the first half-minute
of the opening track, "And the Angel Said Unto Them." Isolate the brief
drum solo about a minute into "Worthy Is the Lamb" for a sample, and
few would guess it came from an adaptation of a famous classical work.
Those behind the album made their intentions clear
on the LP sleeve. "The text of this work (by Charles Jennings) is the
same as used by Handel in 1741 with slight modifications," wrote
Axelrod. "Handel's melodies and counterpoint are so beautiful that it
was as much fun as work to borrow and alter (or probably to some, mess
up) for my interpretation. Hallelujah!" Chipped in Ron Budnik: "On this
album is the work of George Frideric Handel, as interpreted by David
Axelrod, an artist of this century who shares the same bold, energetic
sense of pride as the great composers of the past. Until now an attempt
to condense and modify this classic work on a contemporary level has
been avoided, probably because of its prominence and singular
distinction. It is hoped that Axelrod's work will bring to light and
punctuate the creative acumen of Handel in what is considered his
finest – the MESSIAH."
Noted Axelrod in his interview with Richard Morton
Jack, "I thought it was an interesting piece, but when it was released,
I was dismayed to see that they had printed my name far bigger and more
prominently than Handel's on the front cover. Oh, god, did I suffer for
that! Reviewers had their knives sharpened from the moment they saw it.
People forget that once something's recorded, the artist ceases to have
an input. I enjoyed the music, though." Phyl Garland was indeed savage
when reviewing the album for Ebony:
"Handel's bulky corpse must have turned over in its grave when they
came up with this one, especially when they got to fooling around with
his famous Hallelujah Chorus.
The whole thing just seems so unnecessary."
A more straightforward assessment by Martin
Bernheimer of The Los Angeles Times
found the LP "relatively straight and square, as much concerned with
Handel and jazz and the gospel tradition as it is with blatant
rock...in several numbers Axelrod uses only a Handelian motive [sic]
for extended 'original' elaboration." Stated Axelrod to Bernheimer, "I
didn't want any of that bubblegum stuff," adding that it was
essentially a matter of "making Handel more accessible."
Coincidentally, another rock adaptation of excerpts
from Messiah, with only four
duplications, appeared around the same time on a different label,
conducted and arranged by Andy Belling. Described by Bernheimer as
"essentially loud and funky, from start to finish," the almost
simultaneous release of the two albums no doubt hurt the commercial
prospects of each one. Owing to the mushrooming popularity of Axelrod's
work several decades down the line, however, it is his Messiah that's
remembered today, at least when it comes to rock interpretations of
Handel's oratorio. – Richie Unterberger
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