Raspberries and Waterboys

Remembering Eric Carmen and Karl Wallinger

Eric Carmen (left) and Karl Wallinger

I couldn’t figure it out. The song had started with a riff and a raspy “Maw-maw, yeah!” worthy of a Humble Pie jam before it settled into pure pop with Beach Boys-like harmonies. As a kid, I’d never heard such a combination. It was always one or the other: hard-driving rock or catchy pop. I didn’t even know (at the time) what “Go All the Way” meant. But the singer sure was pleading for it bad.

The group was the Raspberries. They were on a various artists comp I had called Super Hits. It also had Linda Ronstadt covering the Everlys and Jackson Browne; Quicksilver Messenger Service begging for “Fresh Air”; Andy Kim requesting that you rock him gently; Glen Campbell singing to a country boy with his feet in LA, etc.

There were also two Raspberries songs. While “Go All the Way” was fun, the other, “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)”, blew my 10-year-old mind. The lyrics about wanting to make it as a rock star, the pounding chorus, the dynamics, the arrangement, the production. I loved the way it was filtered to sound like an AM signal at one point (yes, I was cognizant of that even at that age because I’d already been in an AM station and was a severe nerd by then) and had a false ending at another before the drums blasted back in like cannons. It was pure power pop perfection.

I’d learn later that Eric Carmen was the Raspberries guiding force. And though I didn’t care for his solo stuff (“All By Myself” is self-pitying at its worst, rivaled maybe only by Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again [Naturally]”…at least “Hungry Eyes” was tolerable, while his hair in its video defied logic), the Raspberries were full of hooks and melodies with just the right amount of crunch.

I eventually picked up the Raspberries album (the one with the scratch’n’sniff sticker - it no longer works). They were my gateway to power pop; artists like Cheap Trick, Dwight Twilley, the Flamin’ Groovies, Marshall Crenshaw, etc. Part of my brain absorbed these sounds while another part was taking in blues, soul, and the more, well, “macho” sounds of Southern Rock and heavy metal. Then later came prog. And I was already a country devotee. I was simply a conduit for all these different audio experiences. Still am, come to think of it.

I didn’t get a compact disc player until I turned 20. My first CD purchase? Frank Zappa’s Sheik Yerbouti. Not long after, I picked up Goodbye Jumbo by World Party, mainly on the strength of “Way Down Now”, which I’d heard on the radio.

I didn’t know until a little while later that Karl Wallinger had been in the Waterboys. I’d been a fan of Fisherman’s Blues, which I had on cassette, from a couple of years before. Looking back now, the Waterboys were paving the way for the Americana/roots music scene that hadn’t been given a name yet. To me, they fell right in line with the BoDeans, R.E.M., and that rootsy-yet-quirky college rock thing I was deep into at the time.

World Party sounded bigger. It was a strong nod to the Stones but with wider ambitions. The opener, “Way Down Now”, “Put the Message in the Box”, and others on Goodbye Jumbo was as good as pop/rock got as the eighties turned to the nineties.

Now both Eric Carmen and Karl Wallinger are gone. They both made their mark in their own way, and the music they left behind will surely remain. Carmen apparently got a little out there politically on social media over the last few years from what I understand. Thankfully, I wasn’t privy to all that until after his passing. So to me, he’ll always be that young power pop icon with the hungry eyes, hoping to go all the way, and maybe one day, be an overnight sensation.

Or something like that.

Maw-maw, yeah!