Back in the early 1960s, when
Bob Dylan
was writing protest songs and inventing folk-rock,
Gerry Goffin
was penning such pop lyrics as
"Will You Love Me Tomorrow?"
More than three decades later,
Goffin
, with help from
Dylan
and some of his sidemen, made a creditable
-style album in
Back Room Blood
and filled it with lyrics as embittered as any
ever wrote. The similarities began with
Goffin's
voice, as hoarse and tuneless as
Dylan's
, though the closest approximation may be to say that
sounded like
Billy DeVille
after chain-smoking a pack of Camels.
threw down the gauntlet with the opening track, a by-the-numbers rocker called "Never Too Late to Rock and Roll," and then went through a laundry list of concerns, from relationships to politics and religion, all in a tone of serious-as-death pessimism. Unlike
(who co-wrote two songs, co-produced one of them, and was a sideman),
didn't leaven the vitriol with either humor or any of the pop elements he knew so well, which made the record an extremely sour message from a man with a demonstrated ability to be sweet. Still, if you're looking for the otherwise nonexistent 1996
album, here it is. ~ William Ruhlmann