R.I.P. Helen Reddy

What an icon. It’s wild to me that I just dug deep into all-things-Helen-Reddy for my recent review of the Helen Reddy biopic I Am Woman, which I reviewed for Ebert. I didn’t care for the movie at all, but I did take the opportunity to talk about Reddy’s fame and how it’s almost this weird lost legacy, totally relegated for a 4 or 5 year period. Which, okay, yes, but let’s not FORGET how huge this woman was. As my friend Mitchell said on Instagram this morning: “Imagine not knowing who Adele or Rihanna was.” That’s the level of fame she achieved.

The feminist anthem that put her over the edge is the rousing “I Am Woman.” I made this observation in my review: she could sing very softly, gently even … so that when she opens up into that belt, it’s a surprise. You didn’t know she was sitting on all that POWER. It makes her such an exciting performer. Here she is performing “I Am Woman” in 1971:

The pushback Reddy experienced was severe. She wasn’t glamorous. She wore pantsuits. She wore her hair short. Such silly things, but people found it hugely threatening. Nothing says “Strong Man” like a man threatened by a woman with short hair. Oooh, you’re so STRONG.

In her 1973 hit “Leave Me Alone”, Helen Reddy took the gloves off.

“I Am Woman” is fine as a self-empowerment anthem. “Leave Me Alone” gets down to brass tacks. Here is what we face on a daily basis and here is what I have to say about it: LEAVE ME ALONE.” The chorus, just in case there’s any doubt:

Leave me alone, won’t you leave me alone
Please leave me alone, now leave me alone
Oh leave me alone, please leave me alone, yes leave me
Leave me alone, won’t you leave me alone
Please leave me alone, now leave me alone
God leave me alone, just leave me alone, oh leave me!

This was radical then and it still IS radical. Look at the hostility women face when they DARE to say they aren’t open to every single man on the planet, like how DARE we have preferences, how DARE we say no. You’ll be sorry, bitch.

Her song “Angie Baby”, written by Alan O’Day, went to #1 in 1974. It has to be one of the weirdest popular #1 hits of all time. It’s a story-song. And … it’s clear what’s happening and it’s awful and then …. things take a turn. And you think to yourself, “…. wtf?? There’s a little tiny man trapped in a record player? Did I hear that right?”

My introduction to Helen Reddy (as was true with so many of the cool artists of the day) was through Sesame Street.

I did not know the context, or what she represented to grown-up women, but she was everywhere. Mitchell and I have talked a lot about Helen Reddy and how her voice – the instrument itself – is so unique. She’s got a jazzy sense of rhythm and phrasing. She’s HIP. So contemporary. She was representative of the sea change in the culture, the 1970s breaking-down of expected gender roles. Musically, there is a lot more to be said there, though, and I think her message often overpowers the music itself. That’s always going to be the case with someone identified with a cause of some kind. Listen to her VOICE, people. What a voice it was!

I am so appreciative of Lester Bangs’ 1974 Creem review of Helen Reddy’s smash album Long Hard Climb.

Almost every song on said album is now iconic, and the album went gold. She won Grammy’s. She wore a headliner, a huge star. As I said in my review of the film: she was in no way “niche.” She dominated the industry in the 70s.

Lester Bangs’ review starts with the comforting sentence: “All men are weasels.” He goes on in this vein for a while, calling out the boorishness of men who only see women as potential sex conquests (or don’t see them at all). He gets why women have contempt for men. Bangs sees Helen Reddy as something entirely “other”, a new kind of female idol making space for women to put things into words. Bangs refers to her as “downright prim“, and then, with a typical Bangs-ian switchback, says, “But that’s her genius.”

In a later essay about Blondie, Lester Bangs observed that sexual repression had been essential to the creation of rock ‘n’ roll, because everybody had to let off so much steam, and sex is a natural drive, and yet “we” weren’t supposed to talk about it. So the music pulsed with unspoken lust and desire. But then, in the mid-70s, with S&M gone mainstream, and sex, in general, saturating the culture, Lester Bangs felt that a little “repression” might be in order, that maybe what was missing is contemporary music is repression (a bold claim then and now). He writes “everybody’s too damn blatant today”, which makes you wonder what on earth he would think of today’s porn-ified landscape.

Bangs appreciates this aspect of Helen Reddy, the aspect that got so much “she’s a man-hater” criticisms. Bangs saw her prim-ness as being even more radical than a black-leather-cat-suit.

Here’s an excerpt from the review, where Bangs discusses (among other things) “Leave Me Alone”.

Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, “Helen Reddy: Long Hard Climb” by Lester Bangs

But the real masterpiece here is “Leave Me Alone.” Guys have had all kindsa great hostility songs for years, from John Lee Hooker’s “I’m Mad” to Lou’s “Vicious,” but all women had to fall back on was masochistic laments like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” or at best c&w you’re-cut-off sops like Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind).” But this is a woman’s song that goes all the way in the most basic terms: “Leave me alone, aww leave me alone. . . .” Not since Dylan’s pinnacles has there been such a revivifying and totally irresistible rancor. I can see this tune being a hot number on jukeboxes in bars across the USA, as the stags smooth their shags furtively eyeing the always two babes just a few tables away (“Yours doesn’t look so good,” if one’s really fat and ugly; “Well, which one do you want – makes no difference to me.” “The blonde.” “I thought you were gonna say that.”) So now besides just smirking “No” at these losers, the sisters have a blare of support to blast the brummels to cowering jelly under their own tables. It’s the same kind of release from sexual suffocation expressed in the line of her hit “Peaceful”: “No one bending over my shoulder / Nobody breathing in my ear!” This is a real woman’s pop anthem, and not that queasily self-conscious sisters-unite pap set in a perfect marriage of watered-down Sousa and “Waltzing Matilda.”

Even when she’s toeing the line Helen manages to get the irony. “A Bit O.K.” is about connubial fructification. In the morning she tap-dances while making the coffee, at night she turns off the late show and reaches for him. Perfect joy, perfect fulfillment: “Now I’m really livin’.” Now you might think that’s just a bogusly suburban mythical wifey-poo copout on Helen’s part, but it’s not. Subtle as ever, she saves her wealth of sarcasm for the chorus: “Hey hey, it’s a bit O.K. [whotta testimonial!] … By the way, thanks a lot for givin’ me a little lovin’…” (you miserable clumsy inconsiderate prematurely ejaculatin’ grunt lug!)

I don’t blame Helen and the rest of womankind for being mad. All men but me are puds. What I’d like to see is an all-girl band that would sing lyrics like “I’ll cut your nuts off, you cretins,” and then jump into the audience and beat the shit out of the men there. Meanwhile, Helen’s chops are up: she’s no artist, she’s a constant pulsation, 50,000 watts of Helen Reddy arcing into diffusion with a glow that touches every stucco nautilus in every housing project from here to Bobby Goldsboro’s composite dream suburb. Helen is not merely heavy, Helen is not just a downy-necked sex object like Anne Murray – Helen is a beacon, the perfect Seventies incarnation of Miss Liberty herself in pantsuit and bowler crooning for America in a voice like the tenderest walls brushing together – the real velvet underground.

Rest in peace.