This article is within the scope of WikiProject Songs, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of songs on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SongsWikipedia:WikiProject SongsTemplate:WikiProject Songssong articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject The Kinks, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.The KinksWikipedia:WikiProject The KinksTemplate:WikiProject The KinksThe Kinks articles
The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:
In 1964, John Fahey recorded an acoustic guitar instrumental with a similar title, "The Last Steam Engine Train", for his album The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites. It's listed as a Fahey composition, which he described in the liner notes as "combin[ing] elements of white mountain music, Stephen Foster, and Nashville rock and roll." When Leo Kottke recorded it for Greenhouse (1973), the album notes included "also John's [the preceding track had also been recorded by Fahey]. In part from a Sam McGee song." He may be referring to "Railroad Blues" by the McGee brothers, which has some similar guitar parts (OR).
I couldn't find any RS that discusses a connection between Fahey's piece and the Kinks' song, but the title seems too similar to be totally coincidental. Pete Townsend was familiar with Fahey's music and spoke of him in a documentary. It is likely that other English musicians (at least guitarists) were also familiar with Fahey; The Dance of Death was one of his most accessible early albums. Davies also seems to share some of Fahey's peculiar world view (OR). I not sure what you can do with this, but it seemed worth a mention in case you're looking towards a FA.
I also think that the steam train that appears on the cover of Blur's 1993 album Modern Life Is Rubbish was influenced by this song. Damon Albarn was apparently listening to the Kinks non-stop at that time. I haven't found any authors that make that connection though, so it's all original research. Tkbrett (✉)14:41, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Tkbrett: I did a google search of "Last Steam Engine Train" and the WP article "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" shows up around No. 12, after youtube and guitar tab links, while Fahey's or Kotke's albums don't appear in the first two pages. The redirect gets very little traffic,[1] so maybe it isn't needed. Up to you. It would be interesting to see an academic take on the song, but the linked article appears accessible by subscription only. —Ojorojo (talk) 15:42, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think lack of traffic is necessarily considered in whether or not to keep an article or a redirect, so I'll probably just leave it up.
The article is behind a paywall, but you can access it for free via Wikipedia:JSTOR if you're curious. I could also just email it if you don't want to go through the hassle. Anyway, I'll probably get started on expanding stuff in the new year once Christmas is out of the way. Tkbrett (✉)15:53, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Tkbrett While doing some unrelated research, I came across "I've Got Those Fleetwood Mac Chicken Shack John Mayall Can't Fail Blues" by the Liverpool Scene.[2] At 4:10, they go into the "Smokestack" riff for a few bars. It's discussed along with Bonzo Dog's "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites" as a parody of the second English blues boom.[3] Apparently, both came out in 1968, around the time that "Last" was written and recorded. I didn't see any mention of the Kinks, but it seems that Davies would have been aware of other satires and possibly influenced by them. —Ojorojo (talk) 15:02, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Davies contributed harmonica ... – Since he's mentioned, it seems that the rest of the players should also be mentioned (separate "Personnel" section optional!).
Unfortunately I'm somewhat stuck here due to a lack of sourcing (this will be a common theme). Ray's harmonica contribution is the only one I can independently verify, since it's mentioned in a few different books. Doug Hinman lists the personnel for Village Green as a whole and for its single – that's how I have personnel sections on "Starstruck" and "Picture Book" – but there are otherwise no listings for individual tracks. Miller writes what was typical for the band's recording practice – in particular, he says Avory on drums, Quaife on bass, Ray on keyboard and/or rhythm guitar and Dave with "guitar parts". I don't have anything specific though. I can't even tell you with a reliable source whether it was Ray or Dave playing lead guitar.
I figured as much, but felt I had to point out for the review.
Davies based the distinct riff – My access to Rogan and Miller doesn't include these pages. May want to add "distinctive guitar riff". Did Ray actually decide on this? Or was it just "let's do a Smokestack-type thing" and Dave (the guitarist) pulled out the old riff?
Changed phrasing as you've suggested. Sources like Thomas M. Kitts (p. 120) and Andy Miller (p. 65) indicate Ray wrote the melody in direct reference to "Smokestack Lightning". As far as I'm aware, other than a few select cases, Ray did not allow his bandmates to improvise or contribute ideas for songs. (Cover this a bit at The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society#Band dynamics and "Wicked Annabella").
OK.
Burnett a.k.a. Howlin' Wolf – Throughout his professional career, he was always known as "Howlin' Wolf"; "Chester Arthur Burnett", his legal name, was reserved for formal uses, such as copyrights. Also, "a.k.a." in prose doesn't look encyclopedic. Maybe "song by Howlin' Wolf, who usually appears in the writer's credits as Chester Arthur Burnett, his real name" or such. Up to you.
I've just cut it down to "song by Howlin' Wolf".
OK.
is played in E major – Maybe expand on this: Smoke stays on the I (tonic) throughout, while Last does modulate (so it isn't a complete rip-off). Last also has some non-blues elements (chorus with vocal harmonies) that Smoke doesn't. At "And I don't know" and "But I live in a museum", the band sounds like they're going into a country or country rock type 2/4 (especially the bass). Is this more parody (rockers mixing up the genres)?
This is another case of not having much to work with. Andy Miller writes that both songs are in E major, but he doesn't go any further than that. He's not a musicologist, but he's unfortunately the only one providing any sort of analysis on a song like this. Allan F. Moore has hardly anything to say and Walter Everett basically ignores the Kinks in The Foundations of Rock.
Too bad, but just mentioning the fact that both are in the very widely used key of E might might lead some readers to wrongly conclude that the songs' structures are more similar than they really are. Up to you (also see the following comment).
Fair enough. I'll just cut it.
Davies imitating Wolf around 2:21 – It's difficult to distinguish this from the preceding chorus. Nice quote though.
It's quite low in the mix, but I can hear what he's talking about. Did you think this ought to be removed?
Miller seems to be reading more into Last to bolster his idea of the "jokes and allusions" to Smoke and "the scene in general". The fact that Last makes a lot of use of the riff from Smoke should be enough to point out the connection between the two; the rest is a stretch. Up to you.
I disagree – even though its low in the mix, I can hear Ray doing the "woo-ooo" vocal (for comparison: [4] & [5])
OK. On my setup it's quite low, but it's definitely there.
jumps an octave and plays a bassline that Miller compares to the music of rock and roll guitarist Chuck Berry – In the instrumental section beginning about 2:42, the bass and a guitar double lines that go off in another direction. Is this what he's comparing to Chuck Berry? If so, I wonder what of Berry's music he is referring to.
All he says is that "Pete Quaife [leaps] an octave to play a distinctly Chuck Berry-like bass line" (p. 65). Unfortunately there's nothing beyond that.
There is a very brief (~3 sec) Berry-type shuffle on guitar at about 3:42. But Quaife's bass line is fairly typical R&R and not "distinctly Chuck Berry-like". It's odd the things Miller focuses on.
I'm thinking no analysis is preferable to crappy analysis. I'll chop it.
The song's third verse lyrically alludes to the 1951 blues song "Train Kept A-Rollin'", which the Yardbirds had covered for the 1966 film Blowup, rewritten as "Stroll On". – There are several problems with what Miller (the source) wrote:
The 1965 Train recording with Beck includes the title line several times, which appears to be the only partial line in the third verse of Last ("keep on rollin'"), that is similar. Miller is stretching to call these three words "a lyrical allusion to" Train. Also, Train was not released in the UK until 1977 (Russo, p. 215). The "Stroll On" rewrite with Beck and Page, was released in the UK in 1966 and is the one that most listeners there were familiar with. However, it does not contain any of the lyrics from Train (and shares none with Last).
Train is not a blues song per se. Originally, it used a jump blues arrangement (stylistically different from Chicago or electrified Delta blues). However, the Yardbirds based theirs on a very different 1956 rockabilly adaptation by Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio (brought to the group by Beck, a fan of rockabilly). There is no real connection between the Yardbirds' version and older blues artists or the blues, except through the rockabilly adaptation by Burnette. Miller also attempts to show that Led Zeppelin was also trying to keep up the blues posturing with Train, but their version follows the proto-metal Stroll, so again he is stretching.
I'm glad you picked this review up because I don't have any the same background knowledge regarding blues stuff. I've just gone ahead and canned that bit from Miller. It's rather unfortunate that he's almost all I've had to work with in writing these song articles instead of a real musicologist or musician. Tkbrett (✉)16:36, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
contemporary British R&B music, like John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers or the Yardbirds, which he [sic] saw as increasingly disconnected from the authenticity of the original American blues artists they were channelling, – If one is discussing the British R&B scene c. 1968 (although Rogan mentions two American bands), there are much better candidates than the Yardbirds or even Mayall. Smoke had been the Yardbirds' most popular live number with Clapton, but he quit after they deliberately began pursuing a non-blues direction with "For Your Love" (March 1965). By 1968, they were split between extended hard rock/psychedelic live shows with Page and recording schlocky pop rock for Mickie Most. After Clapton, whatever pretense they had of being bluesmen was gone. Mayall might have taken himself too seriously, but "channelling" the originals is maybe too much (his 1968 albums had almost all Mayall compositions).
Clapton was the blues purist and in 1968, Cream was still playing blues tunes (Wheels of Fire reached No. 1, with Robert Johnson's Crossroads, Albert King's Born Under a Bad Sign, and Wolf's Sitting on Top of the World and Spoonful). In 1968, Fleetwood Mac's first album was straight-ahead Chicago-style blues and reached No. 4. Their Jeremy Spencer was a very diligent Elmore James imitator and the most obvious case for "channeling" a blues artist. But Miller and Rogan don't seem to have mentioned them.
So, while Davies may be criticizing his early 1960s contemporaries, by 1968, they had pretty much all moved on to different musical styles as did the Kinks. Writers seem to be trying to extend this to the "contemporary 1968" scene, but leave out the more obvious (and popular choices). Maybe just "Commentators often regard the song as Davies's criticism of early British R&B groups for being inauthentic compared to the American blues artists who wrote many of the songs they recorded" and leave out mentioning the artists or channeling.
Yes, that sounds better. Ken Rayes was the one who mentioned the Yardbirds and the Bluesbreakers while Miller mentioned the Yardbirds and Manfred Mann. I've gone with your wording. Tkbrett (✉)18:45, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
their first American tour – Are there enough reliable sources for a WP article in the near future? If unsure, maybe don't red link.
I've got the beginnings of an article in one of my sandboxes. I'll probably focus on a few other articles first.
FYI only – I think the brief instrumental parts in the studio version make more sense when they're stretched out, as in a 1970 Fillmore version. They lend themselves to jamming and build up the excitement for a live show. I wonder if these came out of their early performances of Smoke.
I'm not sure, as there doesn't seem to be very much extant material of the band's early live stuff. What there is though indicates they sounded pretty awful (e.g. this 1964 performance of "Long Tall Sally" at the Cavern). I've never thought too highly of them as a live act. I think I read in one of Nicholas Schaffner's books that the shows he went to in 1969 were extremely exciting at the time b/c of all the build-up, but in retrospect he acknowledges they sounded pretty shaky.
FYI only: In his autobiography, Clapton touched on the difference between the originals and the rock adaptations:
When we [Yardbirds] listened back and compared it
[songs we just recorded] to the stuff we were supposedly modeling ourselves on, it sounded pretty lame. We just sounded young and white... I still felt that we were falling far short of the mark in some way. This was not something I felt just about the Yardbirds, but about other bands that I admired, like Manfred Mann, the Moody Blues, and the Animals, all of whom were far better live than they were on recordings. [Clapton 2007, p. 48]
Use or ignore as you see fit.
That's a great parallel thought. I've added it in a note.
An image or quote box would help break up the text. Nothing caught my eye on the Kinks WP Commons page, but maybe this 1969–1970 group photo[6] can be cleaned up. [I see you added an image while I was writing this, so adding more is optional.]
Unfortunately that image includes John Dalton, who joined the band after Pete Quaife quit in March 1969. The latest PD ones with Quaife are from April 1967. I've been on the lookout for pictures of the band in US trade ads in 1968, but they kind of disappeared from American attention that year. I'm not sure what other image to add besides the one of the train.
Tkbrett: Good work. My comment about "done" in the lead may have been overlooked; it's a minor point, so I won't hold up this pass. I was thinking of reviewing "Berkeley Mews" (some great lyrics), but someone beat me to it. Next time! —Ojorojo (talk) 14:15, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whoops, yes, I missed that one. I went ahead and fixed it per your suggestion. Thanks for the review; again, I'm glad you grabbed it since the song's origins seem related to the pages you typically work on. I'll keep an eye out for your next GAN so I can return the favour. Cheers. Tkbrett (✉)14:22, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The modification that Gelbart is referring to is to the standard 12-bar chord progression rather than the guitar riff he describes in Example 3(a): "The riff is now overlaid with an only-slightly modified 12-bar blues progression (the V chord position is altered to and the pattern is drawn out to 24 bars, but is proportionally correct...)" The riff itself, as he identifies it, doesn't follow the chord changes and only appears when playing on the I. Also, his conclusion that Davies' chord pattern is a "only-slightly modified 12-bar blues" is contrary to his narrative. He describes Train as having a 24-bar pattern with the I changing to the IV during the first eight bars and, more significantly, changing the common V–IV–I during the last bars to ♭III–IV.
These are substantial changes that are highly usual for a blues song and in effect introduce major non-blues elements to the song. It is near impossible to see how they could make "an old blues song even 'bluesier'". AllMusic's Janovitz describes "Smokestack" as "almost like a distillation of the essence of the blues";[7] how does one take that and make it bluesier (more authentic, truer to the source)? WP:EXTRAORDINARY should apply here and other RSs are needed to support his view.
Tkbrett: A better wording might be: Musicologist Matthew Gelbart describes the song as having a twenty-four-bar structure[1] that is "proportionally correct" in comparison to a standard twelve-bar blues.[2][a] However, Davies uses different chords at points, including replacing the final V–IV–I with ♭III–IV.[4]
I'm not an academic, but his "12 bars, with a very slow measure" is peculiar – popular music is usually counted on the drum beats, which, as he says, makes it 24. I moved it to a footnote, although I'm not sure it adds anything.
Thanks Ojorojo. I was very into music theory... around a decade ago. At this point, unless something is really obviously wrong, I don't feel I really have the ability to assess the rightness or wrongness of an author. I think the changed wording looks good though, so long as we tweak "notes" to "writes" (MOS:SAID) and probably just drop the "however" (MOS:OFCOURSE). Sorry, I didn't mean to let this sit for so long, I just haven't gotten back into the swing or serious editing since the holidays. Tkbrett (✉)14:16, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
^Gelbart notes that the song "could in fact be considered as the usual 12 bars, with a very slow measure, but I am considering it as 24 because of the drum pattern".[3]
^Gelbart 2003, p. 238, Table 4. sfn error: no target: CITEREFGelbart2003 (help)
^Gelbart 2003, p. 237. sfn error: no target: CITEREFGelbart2003 (help)
^Gelbart 2003, p. 237, note 96. sfn error: no target: CITEREFGelbart2003 (help)
^Gelbart 2003, pp. 237–238. sfn error: no target: CITEREFGelbart2003 (help)
Resolved
![[6]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kinks_1969.JPG){kind=link}