One of the most played albums at my house over the past several months has been John Phillips’ debauched 1970 solo debut, John Phillips (John, The Wolf King Of L.A.). I bought the album in October at the Amoeba Records on L.A.’s Sunset Strip, not far from where many of the record’s wondrously sad songs about bottomed-out hippies are set. I’ve been fascinated by Phillips for a long time—partly because he was a masterful pop songwriter with a knack for expressing spiritual and emotional crisis in the context of brassy, deathless pop songs, and partly because he was a monumental skeeze who rode the ’60s dream deep into the cold, hard depths of Hell. On John Phillips, he reminds me a little of a west coast Lou Reed, as he wanders in a heroin daze amid beautiful people whose souls are as empty as their drug-addled eyes. There’s also tons of steel guitar throughout, which is like catnip for me.Saturday, February 27, 2010
All hail The Wolf King
One of the most played albums at my house over the past several months has been John Phillips’ debauched 1970 solo debut, John Phillips (John, The Wolf King Of L.A.). I bought the album in October at the Amoeba Records on L.A.’s Sunset Strip, not far from where many of the record’s wondrously sad songs about bottomed-out hippies are set. I’ve been fascinated by Phillips for a long time—partly because he was a masterful pop songwriter with a knack for expressing spiritual and emotional crisis in the context of brassy, deathless pop songs, and partly because he was a monumental skeeze who rode the ’60s dream deep into the cold, hard depths of Hell. On John Phillips, he reminds me a little of a west coast Lou Reed, as he wanders in a heroin daze amid beautiful people whose souls are as empty as their drug-addled eyes. There’s also tons of steel guitar throughout, which is like catnip for me.
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