Boz Scaggs “Other Roads”
The sepia tones of the Nineteen Seventies were not a filter or a figment. No, they were quite real. Sad, muted yellows and browns were the decade’s palette — the de facto colors for bellbottoms and turtlenecks. But today, those misty shades work metaphorically as well, evoking a cigarette stained patina — a hazy sunset of the hopes and dreams of previous decades. If you were an adult living during that era, you likely understand how the colors operated on both levels — literal and figurative. But if, like me, you were a young child during those years, that line bled like a watercolor. It was as clear as the line between beige and tan.
For instance, as an kindergartener reared on “AM Gold,” I did not know if Tony Orlando was an actual person, a Disney spokesman, or Chachi from “Happy Days” wearing a fake mustache. Similarly, though I heard the name “Eddie Rabbit” on the radio and though I could sing every word to “I Love a Rainy Night,” it was not clear to me whether he was a man or a Muppet — like Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. Also, I naturally assumed that Juice Newton was somehow related to the Fig and Apple Newton family. It’s of course funny — kind of cute — to think about it now. But, my confusion was not a byproduct of any marketing ploy or second hand smoke. It was simply a five year old mind trying to figure out a world wherein music was heard but not seen.
Though I eventually deduced that Mr. Orlando, Mr. Rabbit and Ms. Newton were probably (but not certainly) famous, real life humans, I was much more certain that they were not Boz Scaggs famous. Because I heard that name all the time. On every station on both sides of the dial. On AM and FM. And it was that name which confused me the most. Boz Scaggs — could a person really be named “Boz”? Why did it sound so dangerous? Like a pirate? Like a captain pirate? Or maybe like a Pittsburgh Pirate? Like a flamethrowing relief pitcher who threw at batters’ chins if they leaned in too closely? I’d never seen him on a baseball card, so I couldn’t prove anything. And despite hearing his name on the radio seemingly every day, I also could not have told you the name of any one of his songs. So, as far as I was concerned — sure, maybe he was probably a singer. But, also, maybe he was a Pittsburgh Pirate.
As the Seventies became the Eighties and my musical consumption became more MTV and cassette based and less mom’s car radio constrained, I mostly forgot about Tony Orlando, Eddie Rabbit and Juice Newton. But not Boz Scaggs. By the time I resolved to find him, however, he was gone. Yep — the guy whose name mildly haunted me had simply disappeared. Gone from the radio — left and right of the dial. AM and FM. Gone. Just like that.
By 1984, I was ten years old, which meant that I could figure this mystery out all by myself. At least, so long as my mom or dad could drive me to the place where I could figure it out all by myself. And so, with one chaperoned trip to my local Sam Goody, I did just that. I walked over to the “B” section, and found nothing. Perplexed, I asked a terrifying, chain smoking clerk — who I was certain was at least ninety years old but who, in retrospect, was probably closer to thirty — where I could find Boz Scaggs. Once redirected towards the “S” section, I promptly marched over, picked my way past Seals and Crofts and — voila — there he was. Nine albums. Plus a greatest hits album. Plus a card that referenced The Steve Miller Band, who I’d heard of because of “Abracadabra,” but which I did not understand the relevance of. Nevertheless, Boz Scaggs was a guy — a real guy. I had proof. The mystery was over. Only my questions had apparently just begun.
I bought two albums that day — “Silk Degrees” and “Slow Dancer.” The former made the cut because I recognized the song “Lido Shuffle.” The latter I bought simply for the cover. Boz, in a bikini swimsuit and sunglasses, hair briny and tousled, strolling in the sand near the edge of the ocean. It’s all black and white. There’s a patch of chest hair and some trailing down past his belly. He looks healthy, but not particularly athletic. He’s not smiling. The photo is somewhere between awkward, tasteful and very mildly pornographic. I mean, it’s really just barely a bikini — maybe three inches top to bottom.
Excited that I’d solved the mystery but slightly ashamed about the erotic cover art, I filed those albums away on my parents’ record shelf — just to the left of Streisand — and did not listen to them for more than two full decades. It was not as though I didn’t hear Boz Scaggs in the interim. His songs would crop up on Soft Rock radio and Adult Contemporary radio and, very occasionally, on Classic Rock radio. When they’d play, I’d initially confuse them with Steely Dan or Little River Band. But then something would click — some bass too plump for Steely Dan, too soulful to be L.R.B. There was a precision about his music, but it was not heady like Fagen and Becker or slick like the Aussies. It was a casual, easy precision — a hard trick to pull off. On the other hand, it was music that went down easily and was out of your system, nearly forgotten, just as easily.
In time, Scaggs had faded even further from the zeitgeist, far from the Punk and Indie fare that demanded my attention. For a short spell, I heard his name on the radio, alongside Donald Fagen in ads for the New York Rock and Soul Revue — who I never saw or heard but who I could easily imagine. Immaculately played, tasteful performances of modern standards for middle-aged professionals with discerning taste. Upscale tickets in midtown theaters. Very special guests. It all tracked. But that really was it. Those ads disappeared in the early Nineties. And by 2000, Boz Scaggs albums were thrift-store staples. Cheap pieces of vintage.
Sadly, my copies of “Slow Dancer” and “Silk Degrees” never made it out of my childhood home. But neither did Hall and Oates, Queen or Foreigner. Unlike those others, though, I never went out and backfilled Scaggs on CD. Unlike Steely Dan, the cult of Boz had either not survived or had gone underground. Unlike L.R.B. he was not a Lite FM staple. And unlike The Doobie Brothers he was not Classic Rock canon. So, if he was recording and touring, the news did not make it my way. Throughput those years, Boz was just that childhood mystery that I’d resolved: I thought that I had imagined him and then I confirmed that I had not. End of story.
But then came the internet. And then came Yacht Rock. And then, right there, behind Loggins and Cross and McDonald, stood Boz Scaggs. Or at least the late Seventies image of Boz. Shirt unbuttoned three spots down. Pants tight but not uncomfortable. Hair brushed but not styled. Handsome but not overly so. Everything precise but also totally casual. And what struck me, so many years after I questioned his very existence, was how cool he looked. And not ironically on a boat cool, like Cross, or Footloose cool like Loggins, or bearded cool like McDonald. No — Scaggs, who I’d always thought of as a relic of The Seventies, was more post-Yuppie, post-Preppie cool. Like the sort of guy you might see at a fancy restaurant in L.A. or a vineyard in Napa and think that he owned the place. Not an alpha. Not a beta. Just fucking cool.
That fairly striking revelation — Scaggs’ unmistakable coolness — was what brought me to my next big case: Who was this guy? It was 2006 and, with a few clicks of the mouse and without the assistance of mom and dad, I pieced together the basics. He was a Texas guy who eventually found a home in San Francisco. He was a bluesman at heart, obsessed with the Chicago sound but raised on Texas’ more swinging variety. He went to highschool with (the) Steve Miller and played on the first couple of Steve Miller Band albums. His neighbor in The Bay — the guy who helped produce his second album — was Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner. Without Wenner and Rolling Stone, Scaggs would almost certainly have remained a sub-popular artist. With Wenner, glowing reviews followed, and doors opened.
Which is not to say that Scaggs was undeserving of his success — to the contrary. He possessed a distinctly smooth, soulful tenor, dipped in Al Green. He had a gift for arrangements, knowing when to let a song skate around and when to bring it back home. When to drop in horns and strings and when to let the bass and drums do the work. And he was also genre fluid. Extremely so. His most famous songs — “Lowdown” and “Jojo” — were as much like slow jams or downer Disco as they were like Rock or Pop. But his greatest gift really seemed to be that easygoing, casual vibe paired with the cool precision of the playing. Scaggs made music that — even when the subject matter was dark — would not disturb. It might not thrill, but it could easily delight. It was music that thrived just in front of the background.
It was also excellent grist for radio — music that could be played on almost any radio format. Scaggs’ biggest hits retained a hint of Seventies singer-songwriter-ness while they simultaneously explored Funk, Soul and Disco. He had the rhythm and the the blues, but reimagined almost as though The Sixties never happened. As though Pop music started with Jimmy Reed and Ray Charles and then jumped directly to Al Green and Steely Dan. There was really no one like Boz. He was more successful than he was famous, though he was, for some time, also famous. And he was more a player than a star, though he was also, very briefly, a star.
While he was still a reliable seller, by 1980 Scaggs was on the other side of the mountain. Punk had arrived. Disco was dead. And MTV was around the corner. It had been an amazing, but also, grueling decade for him. He lived out on the road. He’d married and become a dad. He’d tried to settle down, but life as a semi-Pop star and full time touring act made that impossible. His marriage was irretrievably broken and he simply could not be the parent he desperately wanted to be. He was in no shape for making records. He’d lost the will and the muse. His life had devolved into something neither casual nor precise.
And so, for the better part of a decade, Scaggs did not release any new music. His platinum albums sat frozen in ember, stuck between Nixon and Reagan. While he was not making music, however, Boz remained very busy, closer to home. He fought with his ex for joint custody of their sons. He opened a cafe and a music venue, both of which became San Francisco staples. He drank a lot of wine. He tried to rediscover himself. And then he tried to rediscover his muse. By the second half of the decade, Boz was as much a local impresario as he was a celebrity. He was a man about town — a genteel former Texan turned Rock star turned poster guy for middle-aged California cool. It was a long way from “Silk Degrees.” But also, it seemed like a pretty good life.
Ultimately, it was that distance between genteel and cool which helped me understand Boz Scaggs. Publicly, he’s been a man of few words. It’s doesn’t seem that he disdains the spotlight so much as he feels it's improper to talk too much about himself. He spent most of his childhood in Plano, outside Dallas, and his laconic manner is decidedly Texan. It presents as genteel — polite but terse. While he did not grow up affluent and though he could be verbose in his songs, Boz was sometimes accused of coldness — of distance — in his work.
There is, however, a “genteel spectrum.” On the one side is a cold, stiff upper lip dispassion that can border on disdain. On the other is a kindness — a politeness — that can be warm and cool. I’d say that Scaggs leans towards the latter — warm and cool. It’s a Marin County, California vibe — the guy who’s sure of himself but who doesn’t need to tell you that he’s sure of himself. A guy with enough manners to know that humility is attractive. A guy capable of working very hard but who doesn’t have to any more. A guy who can discern a good red wine from a less good red wine. A guy whose been in the fast lane but who prefers to take it a bit slower.
Obviously, I can’t confirm my take. It’s just a read. All I have to go on are some interviews and those album covers — starting with that one in the bikini on the beach. Scaggs was offhandedly confident while half naked in 1974. After “Slow Dancer,” he was always fully dressed on his covers. His clothes, better fitted. His choices, more contemporary. Then he took that long break and, when he returned, it was 1988 and Boz was forty something — through the mid-life crisis. On the cover of “Other Roads,” he’s decked out in black — leather boots, leather pants (yes) and leather jacket. A black collared shirt, hair combed back but with a few stray strands falling forward. Something in between a knowing smirk and a smile. Leaning against the back of his motorcycle, against the backdrop of a long, winding road. He’s on the other side of the mountain. He had a great view behind him. But, he’d also had time to think. Time to explore. And he came back to tell us about those other roads.
After the platinum success of “Middle Man,” (1980), after his divorce and his custody battle and after he opened his cafe and his concert venue, and after he tried but failed to make an album in 1983, and after he tried again in 1985 and was sent back into the studio by his label who didn’t hear a hit, and after he then took three more years to complete the album, Scaggs sounds surprisingly like the same guy who’d walked away. His voice is in fine form. He uses Blues and Funk as the backbone for slower, jazzier, more soulful ballads. He works alongside an extremely large band — a veritable who’s who of session players, including members of Toto and Chicago. And most of all, he retained that uncanny sense of casual precision. That capacity to showcase all of the players and their plays within the song without losing his grip on the arrangement. On the other hand, that blessing was always, also, his curse. For to whatever extent it kept his songs interesting and moving in the right direction, it’s also what kept them from being surprising and extraordinary. It’s what made his greatest hits also the greatest background Rock and Roll.
Though it was released in 1988, “Other Roads” recalls music from the earlier Eighties — when synthesizers still sounded like wind chimes, when drum programs still sounded a little clunky, and when “Lite” was better than “Heavy.” And, most of all, before Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel and (of course) Michael Jackson fused Electronic R&B with Arena Pop. Compared to America and Captain & Tennille and Christopher Cross, Scaggs sounded interesting, maybe even slightly dangerous. But compared to the Pop charts of 1988 — George Michael, Terence Trent D'Arby, Whitney Houston and the like — Scaggs was dated. Flaccid.
I suspect that if I’d heard “Other Roads” in 1988, performed live, at some upscale Napa vineyard, I would have been bowled over by its casual precision. It would have paired nicely with a great Pinot and branzino. Boz would have looked the part. His band would have sounded immaculate. I bet that if, that same year, I was in the market for a whole Bang and Olufsen set up and I went to a stereo store and the manager walked me back to the “listening room” and played the album on a new compact disc player and fancy speakers, I’d ooh and ah at the pristine sound. But, just pressing play on the CD (or cassette) at home, or, many years later, listening on Spotify through earbuds, “Other Roads” sounds both dated and slight.
Not slight as in cheap or poorly made. Even today it retains some of its bougie, Northern California affluence. The bass is particularly well-upholstered and Scaggs avoids the saccharine balladry that defined his sometimes collaborator, David Foster. Broadly speaking, the album is about love, lost love and love gone wrong. But there’s a weirdness to Scaggs’ tone and groove. It’s a feature that separated “Lowdown” and “Jojo” from Steely Dan and J.J. Cale and The Bee Gees — and something he retained in middle age. It’s less a worldview and more an angular quality, something that Peter Gabriel and Oingo Boingo had in the Eighties, where the bottom of the band is the top of the song and where horns are sharp and forceful and where time signatures change unexpectedly. It resembles Pop and Rock music but its moodier — better at setting a scene than stealing it.
Peter Gabriel and Oingo Boingo were both film and TV soundtrack mainstays throughout The Eighties. More to the point, both Gabriel and Danny Elfman (Oingo Boingo’s founder) scored films, the latter becoming one of the great cinematic composers of his time. Boz Scaggs’ music possesses some of that character, where it can evoke a feeling or dynamic without actually grabbing your attention. But the music on “Other Roads” never rises to the level of “Games Without Frontiers” (Gabriel) or “Dead Man’s Party” (Elfman). It’s probably closer to “Young Hearts” or “It Takes Two to Tango” — those lesser, but still likable and highly professional tracks from “The Karate Kid” soundtrack. Or any number of mildly romantic, make you feel warm but not hot, Eighties soundtrack cuts that lacked whatever it is that separates “pleasant” from “pleasurable.”
In truth, everything on “Other Roads” is more intricate and better played that anything from “The Karate Kid” soundtrack. It’s jazzier. Fuller sounding. If anything, it’s closer to “Look What You’ve Done to Me,” Scaggs last major Pop hit, from the “Urban Cowboy” soundtrack. But whereas that song, co-written by David Foster, was sweet but flaccid, “Other Roads” is stuck between vim and vigor. Between hope and regret. But also, still kind of flaccid.
“What’s Number One,” opens the album with a statement of purpose wrapped up in a question. The bass is robust. The groove is solid. The synth is era-appropriate. The guitar has that smokey, white hot but not too hot, Eighties quality. Boz’s voice sounds great — maybe more familiar than great, but still, very good. And yet, the melody is so slight. It’s not Jazz. It’s not Funk or R&B. But it’s also not fusion. Meanwhile, the song is explicitly unsure of itself, wondering what it means to win. If maybe, losing the game is winning in life.
“Other Roads” is a thoroughly post-divorce, post-hiatus record. An album made by a man who’s disillusioned, but not totally cynical, about love. At least not cynical enough to have lost the capacity for desire. But certainly let down enough to question clear motives and happy endings. The one hit from the album, “Heart of Mine,” was a minor (and very brief) Pop hit, but raced to the top of the Adult Contemporary charts. Its success, however, is less a reflection of any special quality — it’s not particularly catchy or groovy, nor is it all that different from everything else on the album which failed to chart. It’s sentimental but not totally cloying, and that’s only because the artist’s voice and tone is slightly left of center. But ultimately, this was this hit because (a) the label needed a single and this is what they chose, (b) Scaggs’ name still held some cache and, mostly (c) it was co-written with Jason Scheff, the bassist from Chicago, and sounds a great deal like mid-Eighties Chicago at a time when A.C. radio was Chicago’s domain.
Because so much of the album is genre-less, the standouts emerge when Scaggs commits to two or three styles, rather than none at all. “Claudia,” for example, is high end, modern Blues — like if Stevie Ray Vaughan had survived, moved to Napa and discovered John Coltrane. “Right Out of My Head” grooves while it tries to imagine what Roxy Music would have sounded like if they were also interested in Americana. Neither song grabs you, nor do they necessarily stay with you. But on an album full of searching that can feel like meandering, they sound like they know what they want. At its worst, however, “Other Roads” simply recedes. On "The Night of Van Gogh," the funk fizzles. It’s shoots for starry-eyed romance but lands in an eight dollar glass of Merlot at the California Pizza Kitchen.
Though not a commercial success or a critical darling, Scaggs’ return was a bridge to the future. All of that genre-fluidity — the white Funk, the new age Jazz, the slow Soul, the mildly seamy underside and the daring rhythms suggest that Boz was a major influence on Dave Matthews. In fact, Dave played keys on Scaggs’ 1997 album, “Come on Home.” Like his forebear, Dave has a soulful tenor and a comfy falsetto. Both were reared on rhythm and blues but toiled in balladry. Both felt most at home in ensembles. And both relied heavily on adventurous rhythm sections, even when their melodies did not call for adventure. The more time I spent with Boz, the more he reminded me of Dave. It’s possible that Scaggs’ legacy might be less “Silk Degrees” and more what Dave calls “The Groogrux” — a jazzy, jammy, soulful, magical force that guides the band and protects them from danger. On his tenth album — his long gestating comeback — the Groogrux is probably less magical and more protective.
After “Other Roads,” Boz joined Donald Fagen in the New York Rock and Soul Revue, a loosely held, tightly played, pre-Yacht consortium that thrilled bougie Boomers all around the Tri-State area. And, once that entity ran its course, he started making solo records again. First, some modest and familiar Adult Contemporary. Then, some tasteful Jazz. And, then, finally, a trio of records inspired by American Roots music — one which celebrated Memphis R&B, one which had more Funk and Soul influence and, finally, a return to the Blues.
Those last three albums, which earned Boz his best chart positions since The Eighties and plenty of NPR-ish attention, revealed an older, firmly rooted, settled-down artist. On the other side of his mountain. Happily remarried. A grandfather. A Napa Valley vintner. Shirt untucked. Hair receded. Much more casual than genteel. But also, always, precise.