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[michelej1]

New York Times (NY), December 2, 1984

Section: 2

VETERANS OF LOS ANGELES ROCK STILL CHAMPION ITS JOYS

JOHN ROCKWELL

If any city and any sound dominated rock music during the 1970's, it was the folk-rock of Los Angeles. Bands like the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and solo artists like Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt shaped a style based firmly on folk music - country, 60's folk, even soul - but unified as a genre of its own by its shared concerns, musical signatures and social linkages.

But Los Angeles rock of this sort is almost a nostalgia item today. It has been supplanted in its own backyard by punk and pop-rock bands. Its key groups have either broken up formally (the Eagles) or practically (Fleetwood Mac). Or its practitioners have broadened their range to the point of abandoning their old image (Miss Ronstadt).

Still, many of these people persist, as recognizable practitioners of this sort of gently folksy, slightly self-centered but often affecting Los Angeles rock. They turn out solo records, extending their old poetic themes and musical idioms in more or less radical ways. And they still function as a social circle, helping one another in songwriting and in the recording of their albums. Five recent solo records by male veterans of the 70's Los Angeles rock scene suggest sometimes fruitful new avenues even as they reaffirm satisfying - for those who admired this school at its best in the first place - old values.

First we have three albums by former Eagles. Don Henley led the band along with Glenn Frey; Mr. Henley was the drummer, lead singer and co- chief songwriter, and he composed most of the best-known Eagles songs with Mr. Frey.

Mr. Henley's new album, "Building the Perfect Beast" (Geffen GHS 24026), is the closest in sound to an Eagles record among these five, and hence may well appeal to fans of that band. Mr. Henley has a distinctive, Texas-twanging baritone, plaintive and tough, something that would sound right at home on a record by the Band. Despite some slick-sounding synthesizer overlays, the basic idiom recalls the Eagles, and there are some nice cameo vocals by the likes of Belinda Carlisle and Patty Smyth.

The songs, too, most of them co- written with Danny Kortchmar, mine many of the same themes of romantic regret, desire and despair that we used to encounter from the Eagles. The trouble is that comfortable familiarity can quickly lapse into overfamiliarity: one reason the Los Angeles rock sound of the 70's didn't survive into the 80's was that people simply got tired of it. Mr. Henley, less successfully than the others under consideration here, hasn't found a way out of that dilemma.

Far more effective - indeed, the most pleasing album among these five - is "The Allnighter," the second solo disk by Mr. Frey (MCA- 5501). Always the carnivorous eclectic of the Eagles, Mr. Frey has produced an album of elegant, refined, soul-flavored songs that is both romantically sexy and a sophisticated extension of the familiar Los Angeles rock style. The songs are co- written with Jack Tempchin, a longtime Los Angeles singer-songwriter who has never achieved any great renown on his own. But the success of this album belongs to Mr. Frey, for the quality of the songs, the subtle skill of their singing and the sumptuousness of the arrangements.

The third solo Eagle, Timothy B. Schmit, was a latecomer to the band, having played bass, sung and written songs before that for Poco. The trouble with his "Playin' It Cool" (Asylum 9 60359-1) is that he seems to be trying too hard to escape the sense of folk-rock sameness that weighs down Mr. Henley. The songs are a potpourri of different writers, with Mr. Schmit involved in some but not all of them. The arrangements, too, seem to wander across the stylistic map: many of them work well on their own, but the album as a whole fails to cohere.

John David Souther, who crops up as a songwriter for Mr. Schmit and as a background vocalist for both Mr. Schmit and Mr. Henley, has long occupied a niche just below the top level of stardom in this scene. He is a close associate of nearly everyone involved, a well-respected songwriter and a sensitive and direct if vocally limited singer. But his solo albums have never quite caught on commercially.

Mr. Souther's latest, "Home by Dawn" (Warner Bros. 9 25081-1), finds this archetypically lovelorn balladeer in characteristically affecting form. He, too, tries to stretch his range with uptempo songs (not that he ever altogether eschewed them). But his forte, and this album's strength, remains the sad, slow songs. And although his idiom certainly is reminiscent of the Eagles', his very lack of dominant commercial success helps preserve his sense of freshness.

Finally, we have the latest solo album by Lindsey Buckingham, "Go Insane" (Elektra 60363-1). Mr. Buckingham, the loner-wild man of Fleetwood Mac, first emerged as a part of a duo with Stevie Nicks, now also of Fleetwood Mac. Their joining this former British blues-rock band transformed it into the epitome of the Southern California sound and the overwhelming popular success it became in the 70's.

It was Mr. Buckingham who provided most of the band's buoyant pop- rock flavoring, with its plaintive high harmonies. But it was also he who undercut the latent frothiness of that genre with fascinating, disturbing, off-balance feints and twists.

However, it was Mr. Buckingham's determination to pursue his own, idiosyncratic directions, and to work by himself in his home studio, that contributed mightily to the recent quiescence of Fleetwood Mac. This was a process that began with the band's two-disk album, "Tusk," which was largely a Buckingham project, and has continued with Mr. Buckingham's own solo activity.

"Go Insane" prolongs the image of the mad outsider, from its title to its crazed-looking jacket photos to its actual songs. This is, in many respects, a profoundly eccentric record, full of deliberately odd lyrics, abrupt song- structures and bizarre instrumentation.

And yet this disk has an undeniable charm, too, and it reminds us that beneath the fun-fun-fun surface and the stately folk-rock torch songs that define Los Angeles rock of the 60's and 70's, there has always been a defiantly oddball current, from Brian Wilson to Frank Zappa to the punks of today - and that undercurrent has lent the simpler platitudes life. "Go Insane" may not be the accomplished pop artifact that "The Allnighter" is. But it has its endearing qualities, all the same.

photo of John David Souther and Glenn Frey

A caption on the Recordings page last week misstated the professional background of the rock musician, John David Souther. Mr. Souther is not a former member of the Eagles.