Ideal Album Lengths

We knew we were in trouble when Aerosmith started putting out 60-minute records.

I recently purchased two Van Halen albums on vinyl and noticed how quickly I had to flip the record. VH wasn’t prone to long-winded releases. Check out the times of their first several records:

Van Halen, 35:34
Van Halen II, 31:36
Women and Children First, 33:35
Fair Warning, 31:11
Diver Down, 31:04
1984, 33:22

Not until you get into the CD era do their albums go over 40 minutes.

It’s not as if the LP format was limited to 35 minutes’ worth of music. I remember back in the day dubbing LPs onto a side of a Maxwell 90-minute cassette tape and having to cut songs when copying Genesis records. My first two purchases from Genesis were …And Then There Were Three and Selling England by the Pound, which both came in at over 53 minutes, more than an entire album side of material than your typical Van Halen record. Talk about getting more bang for your buck.

You could argue that the fidelity of those old Genesis albums wasn’t very good due to the physical constraints of the LP format and the compromises that had to be made to pack in that much music, but there were very good-sounding records with more content than your standard hard rock album:

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon: 42:50
Stevie Wonder, Innervisions: 43:52
Supertramp, Breakfast in America: 46:06
Toto IV: 42:17
Michael Jackson, Thriller: 42:16

Clearly, even during the vinyl era, bands could put out records that were over 40 minutes that still sounded amazing (which is why engineer Ken Caillat’s argument that the wonderful song ”Silver Springs” had to be dropped from the 38-minute Rumours doesn’t really hold water).

But then came the CD, and things started to get out of hand. Aerosmith’s 1993 release Get a Grip clocked in at a whopping 62 minutes! Who on Earth needed to hear over 60 minutes of Aerosmith in 1993? Van Halen’s 1998 release Van Halen III was 63 minutes. Rush got into the act too, with Vapor Trails and Snakes and Arrows both well over an hour long.

I’m a big Rush fan. But that’s too damn long.

Listening to records from the CD era, it’s hard not to conclude that if artists had had some self-discipline, they could have ended up with a perfect 40-minute record. I recently listened to the Genesis album We Can’t Dance from 1991, and it’s generally regarded as a subpar album, but it’s over 71 minutes! If you cut out five of the weakest tracks (and there are definitely five weak tracks), I think you’d end up with a very good 45-minute album.

For a more recent example, Peter Gabriel’s I/O from 2023 may contain some good songs, but once again, it runs at almost 70 minutes long. It’s just too much, with too many tracks that aren’t distinctive enough to hold a listener’s attention for over an hour.

One could rightly point out that some of the greatest records ever released have been double-LPs with a lot of material. Consider the following:

The Beatles, The Beatles (White Album): 93:33
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main St.: 67:07
The Who, Quadrophenia: 81:42
Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti: 85:59
Fleetwood Mac, Tusk: 74:02
Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life: if you include the extra EP included with the double album, a whopping 104:29
The Clash, London Calling: 65:07
Pink Floyd, The Wall: 80:42
Prince, 1999: 70:29

That’s a pretty amazing list, so why was it okay for those bands to put out lengthy records but not Aerosmith, Van Halen and Rush?

Well, it would have been okay for those bands to put out a double album when they were at their creative peaks. You want to combine Toys in the Attic and Rocks into one double album? Sold! It would be among the all-time best. The same for Van Halen’s first two records or Rush’s Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures.

But by the 1990s, these bands were not producing their best stuff. Yes, some of it was good. Maybe a lot of it was good. But an awful lot was filler, fluff, overwrought, drawn out and tedious. Long albums should be reserved for artists at their peaks, creating so much material that they can hardly stop themselves from composing great track after great track, struggling to find a way to get it all out on record. That’s why in the CD era it made sense for artists like Smashing Pumpkins, 2Pac, Drive-By Truckers, Beyonce, Christina Aguilera and Arcade Fire to put out really long albums. It was their time.

In the 1990s, it was not Rush’s time, or Genesis’s or Van Halen’s.

And let’s face it: sometimes less is more. I’ll take a perfect half-an hour record by Van Halen any day over a bloated album that has me constantly reaching for the skip button.

After writing the above, I wondered if I’d ever committed the sin of producing an album that was way too long. I did a quick check, and the longest one I’ve ever completed was The Palisades from 2016, clocking in at 47:53. And you know what? It would probably have been better at 40 minutes.

So there you are.

Peter Gabriel and Sting at Milwaukee's Summerfest

When I saw Peter Gabriel and Sting perform at the Marcus Amphitheater in ’87 and ’88, respectively, to imagine seeing them perform together 29 years later with my adult twin girls (and my sister!) in attendance would have been way too bizarre to contemplate. I could barely be expected to attend class on a regular basis much less successfully raise two children (and now very close on the third). How cool that both musicians are still around on tour, but cooler still that they managed to pull off a very entertaining and fulfilling show as a double bill. It could have been oh so lame, but it was anything but.

Though the stars shared the number of songs performed, I couldn’t help but think that this was a Peter Gabriel show with Sting in tow, and I have to give credit to Mr. Sumner for being such a gracious musician on stage. Gabriel opened with “Rhythm of the Heat,” a track I never expected to hear live in my lifetime, and the power exhibited during the finale of the tune was such that even Sting’s powerhouse “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” that followed sounded thin by comparison. That’s not a knock on Sting. That’s a recognition that when it comes to majestic, heartfelt performances, Gabriel likely has no equal. 

Following the two opening numbers, Gabriel, after a joking reference to the body shapes of the two singers (yeah, Sting wins, and beats just about every male in attendance), announced that the bands and the stars themselves would commingle throughout the evening. Up to fourteen musicians graced the stage, with several staying put for most of the show while others exited and entered or combined, and not always with allegiance to their usual band. From where I was sitting, I at first thought that Sting was handling all the bass parts, but then from behind a large pole that obstructed part of the stage, I saw the unmistakable silhouette of Tony Levin as Gabriel began 1992’s “Digging in the Dirt,” and my girls were equally thrilled to see David Rhodes, the guitarist they loved watching on the Secret World Live DVD that was on constant rotation during much of their early childhood.

Sting surprisingly eschewed much of his stronger solo tracks in favor of his Police catalog, focusing on several deeper cuts, including “Invisible Sun,” “Driven to Tears” “Englishman In New York,”and “Walking in your Footsteps,” and as cool as it was to hear those songs, when held up against Gabriel’s “Red Rain,” “San Jacinto” and “Secret World,” they didn't have the same impact. All told, only six Sting solo numbers were performed, with Gabriel taking the reins on a Beck-inspired “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free.” It would have been cool to hear a few others (“I Hung My Head,” anyone?), but again, to Sting’s credit, he leaned on several tunes that he knew would please the crowd, including the overplayed but still pretty damn fun “Message in a Bottle,” and “Roxanne,” the latter morphing into a lovely verse of the Bill Withers tune, “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone,” the only song not penned by either of the evening’s stars.

The most surprising inclusion of the night was Sting’s brief cover of “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight,” a track from the Peter Gabriel-led Genesis catalog that the original singer has avoided for decades. I find it odd that Gabriel is unwilling to give a gentle nod to his prog-rock past while still playing old songs like “Solsbury Hill” and “Games Without Frontiers,” but oh well, Sting took it upon himself to get the job done!

As strong as most of performances were, the weakest tune of the evening by far was Gabriel's "Love Can Heal," a new track written for the recently slain Jo Cox. Perhaps this tune would have worked better in a different setting, but to me it simply isn't a good song, and I also found it interesting that Gabriel played not one note from his album Up, another example of how underwhelming the exceedingly nonprolific composer's songs have been since his album Us.

I admit I was moved to tears during two numbers: first, the booming climax of “San Jacinto,” the song Gabriel opened up with when I saw him back in 1987 as a wee 19 year-old, the same age my daughters will be in a month’s time – this was simply too much for me to handle; and then again on the climax of “Don’t Give Up,” a song I don’t particularly care for, and yet again, the song conjured up a complexity of emotions that went way beyond the song itself.  Perspective matters with these things.  Hearing Paul McCartney sing “Yesterday” means so much more today than it meant three decades ago, and a sixty-six year old Gabriel singing “Whatever may come/and whatever may go/That river’s flowing” meant more to this nearly-fifty year-old writer last night than it did in 1987.

That river’s flowing, indeed.

The Lure of Living in the Past

Even if nostalgia isn’t your thing, you might be hard-pressed to escape it in the 21st Century. Susanna Schrobsdorff writes in this week’s TIME Magazine that living in the past is not only easier than ever now that our lives and so much pop culture have become digitized, it’s practically impossible to escape. Our last ten years have been better documented than any other decade, archived with countless digitized photos, videos, blog entries, emails, texts, and Facebook and Twitter comments.  Schrobsdorff writes:

“All that evidence of what we really said (in the past) messes with the version of ourselves we’ve created.” 

After all, if you've managed over time to smooth out your rough edges, you might not be so keen on dredging up your formal self. I cringe when I think of the worst episodes of my past, and if those moments had been documented and broadcasted over the Internet, I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. Today’s generation gets no such slack. Those who participate in social media and other digitized forms of communication may never be able to escape their pasts, no matter how hard they try. 

For many, nostalgia is a comfort, a pleasant way to revisit the better moments of our lives. At a Super Bowl party last Sunday I admitted to a few friends that I’d recently rewatched a DVD of Super Bowl XXXI (Guess what? The Packers won!), and while I was initially made fun of for living in my Packer Past, my friends soon confessed that they’d relished the recent news stories commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Bears’ Super Bowl victory. Nostalgia can be fun. It’s why we reread books, rewatch movies, listen to old records, collect items from long ago, thumb through yearbooks and photo albums, read history and tell stories. It’s also why people are shelling out $80 to see the upcoming Carol Burnett tour (I’m one of them!), why Antiques Roadshow and Ken Burns are PBS mainstays, and why WDCB in suburban Chicago broadcasts old radio shows every Saturday on “Those Were the Days.”  

Nostalgia can also be a bit dangerous. Mae West popularized the quote, “Keep a diary and someday it’ll keep you,” and I’ve thought of this often as I go through boxes of old letters, yearbooks and tickets stubs, edit family videos and rearrange my vinyl.  I could spend the second half of my life doing little more than reliving various moments from the first half of my life. I’ve always been a nostalgic guy, and I’ve met others who share the same sensibility, the kind of people Ben Folds makes fun of in his song “Bastard.” (“You get nostalgic about the last ten years before the last ten years have passed.”)

But at the same time, I admire those who have no interest in revisiting yesterday’s playground: guys like Woody Allen, who’s career code is to work and continue to work, never looking back to watch his films once they’ve been completed; Peter Gabriel who’s refused to do a Genesis reunion; Tom Trebelhorn, the former Milwaukee Brewers manager, who once quipped (I’m paraphrasing here, but I believe it came from Milwaukee Magazine, July 1987, Volume 12, Number 7) that cemeteries should be bulldozed into golf courses. There’s something freeing about moving on to the next big adventure and eschewing the past. It’s what allows humanity to progress. But the sort of person who wishes to look to the future might have a tough time living today. Like Jimmy Buffett’s pirate, he may have been born too late.

For the rest of us, we might need to work a little harder at balancing our lives, substituting the comfort of yesterday for the unknown, resisting the lure of living in the past, or else – as Schrobsdorff aptly puts – at some point our past “…becomes a memory of remembering.”

Aging Like Peter Gabriel

Aging can be scary.  Just ask my daughters about Peter Gabriel.  But first, a little background…

In 1994 I mentioned to my friend Julie that I thought my hairline was starting to recede.  “Well, duh!” was her response.  Apparently, I was the last to know.  Or maybe the last to know was Alice, my wife, because I managed to snare her prior to my long descent into baldness.  2013 helped spur the aging process, as I put on about seven pound and purchased my first pair of reading glasses.  I figure it’s only downhill from here.  There are exceptions to men aging in unattractive ways: say, George Clooney, Cary Grant, and every man who’s ever played James Bond.

But for me, I think I’m going to go down the path of Peter Gabriel (except for the world stardom part).

Gabriel didn’t really reach world stardom until his album So in 1986 when he was thirty-six years old, a fairly elevated age for a rock performer’s peak, but even six years later, when he toured behind his follow-up album Us and sang about aging issues like divorce, he looked good.  Svelte.  Tireless.  Exuberant.  When my daughters were young, we would play Gabriel’s Secret World DVD over and over, mesmerized by the visual spectacle of the show as much as the musical performances.  Still own it.  Still love it.

And then…

As Gabriel is wont to do, he stayed largely hidden from public view for a number of years, but appeared in 1999 at the Academy Awards to sing Randy Newman’s song “That’ll Do” from the movie Babe - Pig in the City.  You could almost hear the audience gasp as he came onto the stage.

Check out the reaction that people shared on-line immediately following the Oscars (under the heading “Peter Gabriel YIKES”).

My favorite line is: “My husband came into the room and asked me why Marlon Brando was singing.”

Big deal, right?  People age.  Except it was only SIX YEARS AFTER the Secret World tour!  The man went from this…

…to this…

...from the age of 43 to 49!

I’m 45, smack dab in the middle of the road that goes from “tolerable looking” to “ewww”.

Four years after Gabriel’s Oscar performance, I rented the DVD of his Up tour, excited to once again show my daughters an inspiring Peter Gabriel concert.  I don’t want it to sound like I’ve raised two shallow-minded girls, but they practically cowered while watching the hairless, bloated figure on screen.  They were only six years old, but they knew a cover up when the saw one.

“This is the same man?” they asked.

“It is.”

“Are you sure?” 

I wasn’t.  They went back to playing with their Barbies, and I finished the DVD, searching for a melody in tunes like “More than This” and “Growing Up.”  It was as if the songs had suffered the same fate as their creator, plodding along, suffocating beneath their own weight.

It’s said that people see themselves at a certain age, frozen in time, and are shocked and betrayed when the mirror shows their true age.  But better to live by that internal age then the external one.  Better to be surprised when looking into the mirror than validated.

I guess that's the trick.  So I've decided I'm going to live like I'm twenty-one and see what happens. Should be divorced and homeless within a month's time.