40 Year Itch : Three We Missed

[Purchase]This is the end of the month round-up of albums I didn't get to for one reason or another.Radio has such a short memory. When Dave Edmunds released "I Hear You Knockin" in 1971, there wasn't anything else like it getting played. The music of Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Smiley Lewis couldn't be heard anymore.For his debut album, Rockpile, Edmunds recorded the music of his idols, a few originals and some surprising covers: Neil Young's "Dance...

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40 Year Itch: A Rockin Night on the Telly

On May 30, 1972, you could flip on Granada and see Argent perform their Top 5 hit "Hold Your Head Up" then flip over to The Old Grey Whistle Test to see Dutch prog rockers Focus yodel their way through "Hocus Pocus". In fact fans were so wild about "Hocus Pocus", Sire Records released the single in October and watched in astonishment as the song hit #20 in the UK and #9 in the US. ...

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40 Year Itch: Two Guys Named Bobby

[Purchase]I don't know anything about women. But I have a good excuse. I've only been married ten years. I only have one daughter. I've only had one mother, three stepmothers, one sister, two half sisters and a step sister. But I know good advice when I hear it. And no song offers better advice about women than Bobby Womack's "Woman's Gotta Have It". Like half of Bobby's songs it begins with a moment on the pulpit: Fellas I wonder would...

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40 Year Itch: Southern Child

In May of 1972 Little Richard wrapped the last of his string of poorly selling albums for Reprise Records by knocking out ten tracks for the album Southern Child. Despite shooting an album cover with Little Richard milking a cow, Southern Child wasn't released until, get this, January 2005 ( 32 years later on a Rhino Records anthology). You won't find a piano on any track. And you won't hear any squealing. This is Richard Wayne Penniman...

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40 Year Itch : Messin With Jim

[Purchase]A former truck driver, and a man who knew how to hammer nails into wood, Jim Croce was a common man with an uncommon ability to write instant classics. His ABC Records debut You Don't Mess Around With Jim, released in May of 1972,  sounds like a greatest hits album with the Top 10 title track, the masterful Top 20 hit "Operator", "Photographs And Memories" and "Time in A Bottle" which would hit #1 19 months later--its lyrics (There...

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40 Year Itch : The Who Record "Relay"

[Purchase]Forget what you've heard about Al Gore inventing the internet. Listen to the lyrics Pete Townshend wrote for "Relay" , recorded on May 26, 1972 at Olympic Studios, and you might think he's commenting on social media circa 2012. In fact, Pete introduced the song at the Glastonbury Festival in 2007 in this way :When you look up on the stage and see all these old fuckers up here talking about the Internet, well in 1971 I wrote a song which...

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40 Year Itch: Teen Idol Bares All

[Purchase]David Cassidy posed naked ( for photographer Annie Leibovitz) and revealed his drug use in the May 11th, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone. "The Business of David Cassidy" --which at that point included a Top Ten version of "Cherish" and a hit TV show called "The Partridge Family "-- would never be the same.   It pissed off everybody that was really profiting from the business of David Cassidy. I had fan letters that came to me--and...

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40 Year Itch: Carpenters Down Under

The Carpenters play Festival Hall in Melbourne on May 24, 1972. At the time "Hurting Each Other" , from the upcoming album A Song For You, was #20 on the Australian charts. It would move up to #9 the following week and remain in the Top 10 until August 5. The song peaked at #2 on the US Billboard charts. The Carpenters, brother and sister Richard and Karen,  were both millionaires and both still lived at home with their parents.00:02 - Help...

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40 Year Itch : Bedroom Secrets

[Purchase]Kris Kristofferson met Rita Coolidge in November 1970 at an LA airport. Both were catching the same plane to Tennessee. When Rita got off in Memphis, Kris followed her. The pair would get married in 1973 and record several albums as a duet before their divorce eight years later. Here, from May 23, 1972 episode of The Old Grey Whistle Test is an abbreviated version of Kristofferson's classic "Help Me Make It Through The Night". The two lovers share shy and intimate glances. One of television's steamiest moments ev...

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40 Year Itch: The Guess Who Is God

[Purchase]On May 22, 1972 The Guess Who recorded their sold out concert at Seattle's Paramount Theatre. Steve Wilson, then 16, was one of the thousands of people who paid $3.75 a ticket to see the band. He drove up from the other side of Tacoma and got to The Paramount early enough to get decent seats.  So you fought for a seat and then during the show most of the people ended up standing on the seats and breaking them. I was actually pretty...

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40 Year Itch: Inside a Rolling Stones Rehearsal

 The Rolling Stones gather in a closed movie house in Montreux, Switzerland on May 21st to rehearse for the upcoming "Cocaine and Tequila Sunrise" North American tour.    With a baby on the way, Keith and Anita decided to clean up their act . Going "cold turkey" in the US, England or France was not an option so they went to a clinic in Vevey, Switzerland, four miles from Montreux..  It is fucking awful. ..the whole...

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40 Year Itch : Shoo Bee Doo Wah

[Purchase]Great 1972 single from Shocking Blue, the Dutch band that brought us "Venus". The band put out three albums in 1972. A bit later this year we'll check out Shocking Blue Live In Jap...

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40 Year Itch : The State of Teenage Blues

[Purchase]For tax reasons, his accountants suggested Elton John--like The Rolling Stones-- record his albums outside the UK. That's how Honky Chateau, released May 19, 1972,  got recorded at the Chateau d'Hierouville, a 17th Century chateau in the french countryside . Guitarist Davey Jonstone joined Dee Murray and Nigel Olsson in Elton's band. They would meet for meals and then walk a few yards through a courtyard to Strawberry Studios,...

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40 Year Itch : Clouds In My Coffee

40 years ago this month Carly Simon met producer Richard Perry at his Laurel Canyon house and played him a new song called "Ballad of a Vain Man".      As Sheila Weller writes in Girls Like Us , the song had been written in four parts. Carly sketched out a melody with the chorus "Bless You Ben". Then on an airplane her musician seatmate pointed to his cup and said "Doesn't that look like clouds in my coffee?" Then, thinking...

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40 Year Itch : A Bra To Fit A Car

[Purchase]When In The Land Of The Grey And Pink failed to sell in big numbers, Caravan co-founder David Sinclair left the band to join Robert Wyatt in Matching Mole. So the kings of the Canterbury Scene brought jazz keyboardist Steve Miller aboard and made a very pleasant album full of bouncy pop and long Traffic-like jams. For those who might have missed the sex-capades of "Golf Girl", Caravan offers up "Waterloo Lily" herself:   ...

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40 Year Itch: A Mess Of Help

[Purchase]On May 16. 1972...two days after the release of Carl And The Passions, The Beach Boys (minus Brian Wilson and Bruce Johnson; plus Daryl Dragon, Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin) play their new single "You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone" on the BBC2's Old Whistle Test.What was Brian up to?The answer is here&nbs...

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40 Year Itch : A Heep Of Gothic Metal

 [Purchase]For those who want their heavy metal infused with wizards living in mountain homes, rainbow demons riding on horses of fire, a million silver stars, acoustic guitars and heavy handed organs, this is the album for you. Plus you get "Easy Livin'", Uriah Heep's only Top 40 hit in the US , a Roger Dean album cover ( with hidden images of male and female genitalia)... and wisdom: "Today is Only Yesterday's Tomorrow". I'm not sure what...

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40 Year Itch : The Greatest Guitarist Goes Live

[Purchase]"How does it feel to be the greatest guitarist in the world? I don't know, go ask Rory Gallagher." —Jimi Hendrix quote from 1969 Rolling Stone magazine Legend has it this is the album that inspired future U2 members Adam Clayton and The Edge to learn guitar and play in a band. Live in Europe, compiled from live performance recorded throughout Europe during February and March 1972, captures the immense talent and showmanship of the Irish...

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TOP ALBUMS OF 1972

Dave Marsh's Top Ten Albums of 1972 Creem/ Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh's list of the best albums of 1972: 1. Rolling Stones Exile On Main St 2. "Wonder, Stevie" Talking Book 3. "Mayfield, Curtis" Super Fly (Soundtrack) 4. "Morrison, Van" Saint Dominic's Preview 5. "Green, Al" I'm Still In Love With You 6. "Mitchell, Joni" For The Roses 7. "O'Jays, The" Back Stabbers 8. Al Green Let's Stay...

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40 Year Itch : Basement Tapes

[Purchase] All rock records should be made in dank basements of old Nazi strongholds on the Cote d'Azur, with reliable heroin connections in Marseille and Gram Parsons hovering in the paneled hallways. That way they might sound half as good as Exile On Main St.           -Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, 2004Recorded in the cold and humid basement of tax exile  Keith Richards's villa in the South of France, Exile...

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40 Year Itch : The Metric System

[Purchase]As The Meters, guitarist Leo Nocentelli, keyboardist Art Neville, bassist George Porter Jr and drummer Ziggy Modeliste backed just about every artist who found his way to New Orleans and producer Allen Toussaint : Dr. John, LaBelle, Robert Palmer even Paul McCartney. When the label for whom they made three instrumental records, Josie Records, went backrupt The Meters signed with Reprise and released their first album on May 11, 1972.  Cabbage...

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40 Year Itch : Dadgummit-ah!

[Purchase]Bill Withers followed up the folk soul of his debut Just As I Am by taking over the production reins and enlisting members of the Watts 103rd Rhythm Band to raise the funk. And the funk do cometh especially on raunchy cuts like the #2 pop hit "Use Me" and "Who Is He ( And What Is He To You)?". Makes you wonder if some  Foxy Brown kind of lady entered his life right about the time "Ain't No Sunshine" hit Number One. You know, the kind...

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40 Year Itch : The Doors Carry On

[Purchase] On May 8, 1972, ten months after Jim Morrison's death, The remaining Doors played on BBC2's Old Grey Whistle Test. Naturally, it wasn't the same thing. While the band could always find a great riff, there's something kind of pathetic about watching Robbie Kreiger sing a song as sophmoric as "I'm Horny, I'm Stoned". The song comes from the 1971 album Other Voices. Recordings for Other Voices began while Jim Morrison was on vacation in France with the expectations that the Lizard King would not die in a Parisian bathtub. Robbie and...

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40 Year Itch : Two From The Q

 [Purchase]Al Anderson has already joined NRBQ when he recorded this delightful album to fulfill a five year contract with Vanguard Records. Some of the NRBQ boys helped out on the album including Tom Staley on drums, Terry Adams on piano and his brother Donn Adams on trombone. Most of the songs are happy foot-tappin' ditties that will remind you of the Q ("Be My Woman Tonight", We'll Make Love", "Don't Hold The Line"). In the few that don't...

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40 Year Itch: Brian Wilson's Beach Girls Gem

Having withdrawn from The Beach Boys following 1971's Surf's Up , Brian Wilson instead devoted "some" of his time to the girl group sounds of his wife Marilyn and sister in law Diane Rovell, both former members of The Honeys. In May of 1972, as Spring ("American Spring" outside the US), they released a record that absolutely vanished  There are only two used copies of the CD for sale at Amazon and both are prices at  just under $130. Brian...

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40 Year Itch : The American Badfinger

[Purchase]Has any band announced itself with as much aplomb as The Raspberries in those first ten seconds of their debut album? Wally Bryson lays down some fat stabbing chords, Eric Carmen answers with four syllables "Ma Ma Yeah. Wooh!" and the radio speakers rattle with the million-selling teen sex anthem "Go All The Way".  Those who bought the album got a scratch and sniff sticker that presumably smelled like a raspberry and an album full...

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40 Year Itch : Feminist Boogie

[Purchase]Joy of Cooking is overdue for that kind of  reappraisal that plucks great artists from the past and makes them the new big thing. And not just because two women led this band of confident purveyors of in-the-groove-boogie or that some of the lyrics offered feminist takes on love lost and gained. Joy of Cooking simply rocked.In a 1971 article entitled "Female Rock" Time Magazine wrote:  "The one outfit so far that can compete...

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40 Year Itch: Job Number 79682

Forty years ago today, Bruce Springsteen made his first "formal" studio audition at CBS Studios in New York City. John Hammond produced the twelve song demo session which became known in the studio logs as job number 79682. Half the songs Springsteen played would appear on his debut album Greetings From Asbury Park the following year. Among them, "Growin' Up", seen below performed live in 1972 at The Gaslight, the same club in which he performed...

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40 Year Itch: The Sunset Cowboy Dies On Stage

[Purchase]It was May 2nd, 1972 at The Top Rank Ballroom in Swansea .1200 fans were lined up outside the club waiting to get in. Stone The Crows guitarist Les Harvey ( far left in above photo) was playing during a sound check when, with wet, sweaty hands apparently, he touched a microphone that wasn't grounded. Harvey was electrocuted--thrown into the air by the shock --and killed instantly. He died at that most infamous of rock star ages: 27. (...

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40 Year Itch: The Snark Sails Away

[Purchase]That Randy Newman didn't sell anywhere nearly as many albums as his more famous contemporary singer-songwriters is an indication of only one thing: Americans don't get satire, irony or sarcasm. We prefer to have a point jabbed into our chests. Randy Newman nonchalantly drawling out  strip tease requests in "You Can Leave Your Hat On" (" Baby take off your dress/ Yes, yes, yes") only works for us when Joe Cocker is squeezing the meaning...

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