T-Bone Burnett - Proof Through The Night

I first heard of T-Bone Burnett when he was with the Alpha Band with Steven Soles, and David Mansfield. I had a friend who had one of their albums, I can't remember which one as I only heard it once, but it was quirky and caught my interest. Then I bought a copy of his 1982 E.P. Trap Door and pretty much played it to death. I loved the fact that he was self effacing enough to make a joke about his passing resemblance to Eric Idle.

The office where I worked used to have copies of People magazine I like to read - for the record reviews, and in one issue there was an article where Mariel Hemingway said her favourite album was T-Bone Burnett's Proof Through the Night. Well, I wasn't sold because of her endorsement, I was sold because I'd just realized there was new T-Bone Burnett album.

I remember talking about this with my girlfriend at the time who absolutely loved The Who, and The Monkees (she had great taste in music) and she casually mentions that she saw T-Bone open for The Who when she saw them a year earlier. I was stoked, "That must have been awesome." "Nah, people booed. They wanted The Who."

Oddly enough Pete is featured on a couple of tracks on the album so whatever feeling the band had about T-Bone shitting the bed (which I doubt he did, people tend to generally ambivalent to opening acts. I remember seeing Robert Plant, where The Black Crows opened, and while they were great, we pretended they sucked, because that's what you did) it didn't extend to poisoning any future working relationship.

T-Bone is now more often than not associated with being a producer, but Proof Through the Night was produced by Jeff Eyrich who also worked with The Blasters, The Plimsouls and even Cheech & Chong. The E.P. I really liked was produced by Reggie Fisher who also financed the often overlooked Truth Decay.The songs here aren't exactly straight ahead rock songs, but they aren't an atonal artistic sploogefest either. I suppose they were rockabilly fused rock songs with a storytellers flair. You can hear many of the musical tells that would permeate his later work, and much of his production. 

At the time when I first bought this I was drawn to the more accessible rock songs. The opening cut "Murder Weapon" features flutist Masakazu Yoshizawa's haunting intro and the cutting guitar work of Mick Ronson. The other pure pop killer was "Stunned" that featured Stan Lynch. Then as I played the album other songs started to emerge. It would be the strange songs that would enthrall me. The closing track on side one "The Sixties" that features both Mick Ronson and Pete Townshend cutting.

When he was young and out struggling to climb the ladder
He used to fight with his wife or have a night out with the boys
And he'd maybe go to a bar and try to pick up some strange, if you get my drift
And after a while, he started hearing about free love
And he felt left out
And he tortured his imagination dreaming of pot parties
With those suntanned girls in halter tops with their cutoffs slit up to their belt loops
Then he saw a picture in Playboy of Ursula Andress on the arm of some hippie and that did it
He began his rebellion late
And now he's got a designer camper
And one time he even got to sleep in it with one of those girls in the cutoffs
But it made me feel awful
'Cause he had to pay her fifty dollars
And it was twenty for anybody else

I'd never really heard songs like this before. 

Of course Mr. Burnett would save a heaping dollop of vitriol for the album's centrepiece "Hefner and Disney" the song plays out like a twisted short movie. The music feels like the stilted lovechild of Ennio Morricone and Henri Mancini delivered by an eighteen year old Arlo Guthrie at the Newport Folk Festival. I love this song, and it's a lot shorter than "Alice's Restaurant." I generally don't post entire songs, but T-Bone was at his best here, and the songs features Pete Townshend and Masakazu Yoshizawa, and the song was arranged by David Mansfield.

Somewhere between Never Neverland and Wonderland
In a land called Never Wonderland
There lived a beautiful wealthy young divorcee
With a checkered past and a bad memory
Who should probably remain nameless
And men travelled from far and wide and try to win her hand
And she took in stragglers from all over the known world

Her newest guests were (as her mother called them)
"The latest Russians to defect"
One's name was Hefner
The other's name was Disney
Disney smoked a pipe and was very philosophical
He was constantly surrounded by go-go girls
And he used to take pictures of them without any clothes on
And sell them to the neighborhood children
Hefner on the other hand was not so introspective
He loved a good story just like anybody else

In fact he loved the myths of Never Wonderland so much
That he made elaborate moulded plastic sculptures
Of the characters in the myths
Then ... he would put them out in the garden
Until .... he had built a whole nother land in Never Wonderland
Which he called Hefnerland

And the neighborhood children loved them
They had lots of fun playing in Hefnerland
And looking at all Disney's go-go pictures
Because they didn't know any better
And they didn't know any worse
But the beautiful young wealthy divorcee thought
That they were only after her money
Sometimes she even wished they would go back to Russia

(But between you and me they were really dupes of the Wicked King
Who wanted to rob the children of their dreams)

This was an ambitious album, and T-Bone assembled a crack group of musicians, including his old Alpha Bandmates to help him out. I remember at the time thinking this was a great and wonderful record. I still think of this as his more rock oriented album, but listening to this again you can hear how he's stayed rooted firmly in his influences and the this thread would run though all his work.

At the time the album barely cracked the top 200 Billboard Pop album chart in 1983 which I still find perplexing. However, there were enough people I guess who heard it to allow him to continue making music, and for that I'm grateful.