{"id":161736,"date":"2020-09-30T12:28:20","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T16:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=161736"},"modified":"2020-09-30T12:41:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T16:41:03","slug":"r-i-p-helen-reddy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=161736","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Helen Reddy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/helen-reddy-obit-1970-billboard-1548-1601431454-1024x677-1-e1601481099238.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"463\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-161737\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nWhat an icon. It&#8217;s wild to me that I just dug deep into all-things-Helen-Reddy for my recent review of the Helen Reddy biopic <i>I Am Woman<\/i>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/i-am-woman-movie-review-2020\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">which I reviewed for Ebert<\/a>. I didn&#8217;t care for the movie at all, but I did take the opportunity to talk about Reddy&#8217;s fame and how it&#8217;s almost this weird lost legacy, totally relegated for a 4 or 5 year period. Which, okay, yes, but let&#8217;s not FORGET how huge this woman was. As my friend Mitchell said on Instagram this morning: &#8220;Imagine not knowing who Adele or Rihanna was.&#8221; That&#8217;s the level of fame she achieved. <\/p>\n<p>The feminist anthem that put her over the edge is the rousing &#8220;I Am Woman.&#8221; I made this observation in my review: she could sing very softly, gently even &#8230; so that when she opens up into that belt, it&#8217;s a surprise. You didn&#8217;t know she was sitting on all that POWER. It makes her such an exciting performer. Here she is performing &#8220;I Am Woman&#8221; in 1971: <\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rptW7zOPX2E\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nThe pushback Reddy experienced was severe. She wasn&#8217;t glamorous. She wore pantsuits. She wore her hair short. Such silly things, but people found it hugely threatening. Nothing says &#8220;Strong Man&#8221; like a man threatened by a woman with short hair. Oooh, you&#8217;re so STRONG.<\/p>\n<p>In her 1973 hit &#8220;Leave Me Alone&#8221;, Helen Reddy took the gloves off. <\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sKfqHsiHWJU\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;I Am Woman&#8221; is fine as a self-empowerment anthem. &#8220;Leave Me Alone&#8221; gets down to brass tacks. <i>Here is what we face on a daily basis and here is what I have to say about it: LEAVE ME ALONE.&#8221;<\/i> The chorus, just in case there&#8217;s any doubt: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Leave me alone, won&#8217;t you leave me alone<br \/>\nPlease leave me alone, now leave me alone<br \/>\nOh leave me alone, please leave me alone, yes leave me<br \/>\nLeave me alone, won&#8217;t you leave me alone<br \/>\nPlease leave me alone, now leave me alone<br \/>\nGod leave me alone, just leave me alone, oh leave me!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This was radical then and it still IS radical. Look at the hostility women face when they DARE to say they aren&#8217;t open to every single man on the planet, like how DARE we have preferences, how DARE we say no. You&#8217;ll be sorry, bitch. <\/p>\n<p>Her song &#8220;Angie Baby&#8221;, written by Alan O&#8217;Day, went to #1 in 1974. It has to be one of the weirdest popular #1 hits of all time. It&#8217;s a story-song. And &#8230; it&#8217;s clear what&#8217;s happening and it&#8217;s awful and then &#8230;. things take a turn. And you think to yourself, &#8220;&#8230;. wtf?? There&#8217;s a little tiny man trapped in a record player? Did I hear that right?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hjZy00iHM-8\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nMy introduction to Helen Reddy (as was true with so many of the cool artists of the day) was through <i>Sesame Street<\/i>. <\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YIwqUZP3tPI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nI 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 &#8211; the instrument itself &#8211; is so unique. She&#8217;s got a jazzy sense of rhythm and phrasing. She&#8217;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&#8217;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!<\/p>\n<p>I am so appreciative of Lester Bangs&#8217; 1974 <i>Creem<\/i> review of Helen Reddy&#8217;s smash album <i>Long Hard Climb<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Helen_Reddy_-_Long_Hard_Climb.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Helen_Reddy_-_Long_Hard_Climb.jpg\" alt=\"Helen_Reddy_-_Long_Hard_Climb\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-76072\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Helen_Reddy_-_Long_Hard_Climb.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Helen_Reddy_-_Long_Hard_Climb-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Helen_Reddy_-_Long_Hard_Climb-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Helen_Reddy_-_Long_Hard_Climb-400x400.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\nAlmost every song on said album is now iconic, and the album went gold. She won Grammy&#8217;s. She wore a headliner, a huge star. As I said in my review of the film: she was in no way &#8220;niche.&#8221; She dominated the industry in the 70s.<\/p>\n<p>Lester Bangs&#8217; review starts with the comforting sentence: &#8220;All men are weasels.&#8221; 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&#8217;t see them at all). He gets why women have contempt for men. Bangs sees Helen Reddy as something entirely &#8220;other&#8221;, a new kind of female idol making space for women to put things into words. Bangs refers to her as &#8220;downright <i>prim<\/i>&#8220;, and then, with a typical Bangs-ian switchback, says, &#8220;But that&#8217;s her genius.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>In a later essay about Blondie, Lester Bangs observed that sexual repression had been essential to the creation of rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll, because everybody had to let off so much steam, and sex is a natural drive, and yet &#8220;we&#8221; weren&#8217;t supposed to talk about it. So the music pulsed with unspoken lust and desire. But then, in the mid-70s, with S&#038;M gone mainstream, and sex, in general, saturating the culture, Lester Bangs felt that a little &#8220;repression&#8221; might be in order, that maybe what was missing is contemporary music is repression (a bold claim then and now). He writes &#8220;everybody&#8217;s too damn <i>blatant<\/i> today&#8221;, which makes you wonder what on earth he would think of today&#8217;s porn-ified landscape.  <\/p>\n<p>Bangs appreciates this aspect of Helen Reddy, the aspect that got so much &#8220;she&#8217;s a man-hater&#8221; criticisms. Bangs saw her prim-ness as being even more radical than a black-leather-cat-suit.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s an excerpt from the review, where Bangs discusses (among other things) &#8220;Leave Me Alone&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p><p>\n<big><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0375713670\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=0375713670&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;tag=thesheivari-20\">Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=0375713670\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/><\/i>, &#8220;Helen Reddy: <i>Long Hard Climb<\/i>&#8221; by Lester Bangs<\/big><\/p>\n<p>But the real masterpiece here is &#8220;Leave Me Alone.&#8221; Guys have had all kindsa great hostility songs for years, from John Lee Hooker&#8217;s &#8220;I&#8217;m Mad&#8221; to Lou&#8217;s &#8220;Vicious,&#8221; but all women had to fall back on was masochistic laments like &#8220;Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow&#8221; or at best c&#038;w you&#8217;re-cut-off sops like Loretta Lynn&#8217;s &#8220;Don&#8217;t Come Home a Drinkin&#8217; (With Lovin&#8217; on Your Mind).&#8221; But this is a woman&#8217;s song that goes all the way in the most basic terms: &#8220;Leave me alone, aww <i>leave<\/i> me alone. . . .&#8221; Not since Dylan&#8217;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 (&#8220;Yours doesn&#8217;t look so good,&#8221; if one&#8217;s really fat and ugly; &#8220;Well, which one do <i>you<\/i> want &#8211; makes no difference to <i>me<\/i>.&#8221; &#8220;The blonde.&#8221; &#8220;I thought you were gonna say that.&#8221;) So now besides just smirking &#8220;No&#8221; at these losers, the sisters have a blare of support to blast the brummels to cowering jelly under their own tables. It&#8217;s the same kind of release from sexual suffocation expressed in the line of her hit &#8220;Peaceful&#8221;: &#8220;No one bending over my shoulder \/ Nobody breathing in my ear!&#8221; <i>This<\/i> is a real woman&#8217;s pop anthem, and not that queasily self-conscious sisters-unite pap set in a perfect marriage of watered-down Sousa and &#8220;Waltzing Matilda.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Even when she&#8217;s toeing the line Helen manages to get the irony. &#8220;A Bit O.K.&#8221; 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: &#8220;Now I&#8217;m really livin&#8217;.&#8221; Now you might think that&#8217;s just a bogusly suburban mythical wifey-poo copout on Helen&#8217;s part, but it&#8217;s not. Subtle as ever, she saves her wealth of sarcasm for the chorus: &#8220;Hey hey, it&#8217;s a bit O.K. [whotta testimonial!] \u2026 By the way, thanks a lot for givin&#8217; me a little lovin&#8217;\u2026&#8221; (you miserable clumsy inconsiderate prematurely ejaculatin&#8217; grunt lug!)<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t blame Helen and the rest of womankind for being mad. All men but me are puds. What I&#8217;d like to see is an all-girl band that would sing lyrics like &#8220;I&#8217;ll cut your nuts off, you cretins,&#8221; and then jump into the audience and beat the shit out of the men there. Meanwhile, Helen&#8217;s chops are up: she&#8217;s no artist, she&#8217;s a constant <i>pulsation<\/i>, 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&#8217;s composite dream suburb. Helen is not merely heavy, Helen is not just a downy-necked sex object like Anne Murray &#8211; 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 &#8211; the real velvet underground. <\/p>\n<p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/CROP-Helen-Reddy-GettyImages-688087500-e1601483247454.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"388\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-161740\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nRest in peace. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What an icon. It&#8217;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&#8217;t care for the movie at all, but &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=161736\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161736"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161746,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161736\/revisions\/161746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}