“He’s Back and I’m Blue”
The Desert Rose Band
Written by Robert Anderson and Michael Woody
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
June 25, 1988
So why was The Desert Rose Band making country music that was so much better than Exile?
I’ve been thinking about that while working my way through the No. 1 hits from both bands.
I’ve got the fancy wordsmith answer. The sun-kissed warmth of The Desert Rose Band’s California rock recalls the pioneering genre fusions of Linda Ronstadt and Gram Parsons, giving their records a musical heft gleaned from an authentic understanding of country music instrumentation, coupled with a level of musical proficiency that is without peer.
Or, put another way: They’re just a much better band.
They know how to turn a dreamy seventies rock ballad into an eighties country hit with a few twangy tweaks. They also know how to make the music enhance the lyric, an approach which works exceedingly well here.
They approach this returning lover with a gentle sigh, knowing deep down that their partner never got over him and that if he ever came back, that would be it. The softened edges suggest that he is grateful for the time he got with her, and that he knew all along that she could never truly be his: “I can’t stop him from living in you.”
One hell of a line from one hell of a record from one hell of a band.
“He’s Back and I’m Blue” gets an A.
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The metronome-like steadiness of the drum at the centre of this song holds everything together as the heart-broke harmonies and twangy guitars constantly threaten to break away on their own throughout this gorgeous performance.
It is absorbingly moody and atmospheric;it sounds like somebody talking themselves down from an anxiety attack they knew was coming all along. The whole production and arrangement is bluer than blue.
We are at a place in the late eighties now where the artistic highs are exceedingly high and the lows – even the uninspired middle-of-the road recordings – sound dead on arrival. They are bottoming out by comparison with the best of the newer acts who have a strong sense of where country music came from and where they want to take it.
The Desert Rose Band had chops and knew it’s country music history, and they were not afraid to wear their influences on their sleeves.
Exile seemingly just wanted another number one hit.
One important aspect that separates the Desert Rose Band is the fact that they were never a Nashville band, even though both Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen have worked the Nashville circuit more than a few times in their respective careers. They are a uniquely California band, borrowing elements of the Bakersfield Sound, the 1970’s L.A. country-rock movement, bluegrass, and folk-rock; and they’re not willing to hide it, even with their fidelity towards the country genre always in evidence.
I owe them a debt of gratitude for helping move that seventies California country rock sound back onto the radio. It’s a necessary ingredient for the 90s country that I love so much.
Chris Hillman and Herb Pederson were already familiar with each other’s work and would work together on a very large number of projects during the future – they seemed to be on the same psychic wavelength, giving a sense of cohesion sometimes lacking in groups. I tend to think of them as primarily being influenced by bluegrass and newgrass rather than any particular rock influences. Hillman’s solo 1984 album DESERT ROSE pointed what was to come (it featured Pederson but not John Jorgenson).
I was ecstatic with the first Desert Rose album – I liked all of their albums and virtually every song on the albums. I wish they had stayed together longer, but as often happens, their label tried to redirect their music and radio move on from them.
I can’t improve upon what’s already been said. The pitch-perfect instrumental and production enhance the equally skillful vocal to really sell this one. The listener can feel the melancholy of the narrator in their bones, or at least this one can. Agreed that narrator seems to have seen this gut punch coming, which if anything makes it hurt even more than if he didn’t. I wish the Desert Rose Band had had a longer run but was grateful for the excellent run of hit singles they had in their prime.
I’d never made any kind of comparison between the two LA crossover groups Exile and Desert Rose Band but it’s an interesting experiment. Both of them appeared at my county fair at the apex of their popularity–Exile in 1986 and Desert Rose Band in 1989–so my connection with both ran deep, but through adult ears it’s not at all difficult to concede that DRB ran circles around Exile in songwriting, musicianship, and vocals. With that said, you gotta give Exile some credit for surviving as a band for a half century. I couldn’t believe it last year when a local station played a goofy Christmas song from Exile that they said was recorded just last year. Now if we can only get a new album from the Desert Rose Band!
Grade: A-