The album Howard Stern said had no bad songs: “One of my favourite albums”
It doesn’t really take much to get an opinion out of Howard Stern.
‘The King of All Media’ has been incredibly forthright about virtually anything that he talks about, and even if he was known for his shocking behaviour whenever he was on the radio, he would be a dead man in the ground before he lied to his audience about anything. That came down to when he thought something was absolute garbage, but that also included when he thought bands were absolutely perfect.
For all of the controversial things that Stern has said over the years, if there’s one thing that he knew a thing or two about, it’s classic rock. He’s not going to be the one that knows the ins and outs of a band’s body of work or tell everyone about some obscure B-side that the world needed to hear, but whenever he talked about everyone from Billy Joel to AC/DC, you could tell that he was a fan first instead of some guy who was given the rundown on an artist immediately before airing.
But despite his outlandish persona, Stern always had a varied taste in rock music compared to everyone else. Not everything was exactly the most tasteful thing to air on the radio by any means, but the fact that he hosted everyone from Henry Rollins to Insane Clown Posse to Keith Richards to Paul McCartney was proof that he understood the medium. Everyone was on an even playing field on his show, but the ones who got top priority were always the ones who spoke the truth.
This probably explained why he felt so connected with people like Neil Young. Never for a second did Young ever claim to be anything but his most authentic self, and throughout his entire career, he seemed adamant about working on whatever struck his fancy at the time. But by definition, that also means that not everything that he made was going to be the best album of his career.
Some may have been an acquired taste like Trans, but when Young did knock it out of the park, it was always based around songs that came from the heart like ‘Heart of Gold’ or ‘After the Gold Rush’. But when he hooked up with his buddies in Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Stern was knocked out by what he was saying on the album Deja Vu.
Though Stern had a steady relationship with David Crosby during the end of the songwriter’s life, Stern felt that Deja Vu was the real watermark for them, saying, “The first album wasn’t the smash hit that Deja Vu but they won a Grammy for that. My favourite was Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The album Deja Vu was one of my favourite albums growing up, and when I say that, I mean in the top five. Every fucking song is great.”
And looking at the kind of elements Stern looks for in an album, almost every song on the record has them in spades. That rustic feeling is one of the best parts about tunes like ‘Carry On’, but there’s a lot of subtle beauty in keeping things simple, like when Young breaks out the acoustic guitar for the song ‘Helpless’ or when Graham Nash shows up for heartbreaking tunes like ‘Teach Your Children’.
Deja Vu might not be among the all-time greatest rock and roll albums of all time like Sgt Peppers or Exile on Main St, but a lot of its strength comes from the fact that it was never meant to be that kind of album. They wanted to document the songs they had in the moment, and in doing so they made an album that works as both a time capsule and life lessons for what growing up is supposed to be like.
