40 Year Itch : A Heep Of Gothic Metal

 

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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 to do with that wisdom exactly. Maybe tack it up on the fridge and see if it sinks in.

 There are far more painful listens in the early 70's heavy metal sphere. Demons and Wizards offers short, sharp shocks of metal along with a 12 minute epic called "Paradise/The Spell" at the end. Had I mixed more with a different crowd, who's to say this wouldn't be a magic carpet ride back to a youth spent smoking pot in a room filled with black light posters.

 Rolling Stone critic Mike Saunders was impressed with Demons and Wizards.

  These guys are good. The first side of Demons and Wizards is simply odds-on the finest high energy workout of the year, tying nose and nose with the Blue Oyster Cult...They may have started out as a thoroughly dispensable neo-Cream and Blooze outfit, but at this point Uriah Heep are shaping up into one hell of a first-rate modern rock band.

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40 Year Itch : The Greatest Guitarist Goes Live

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"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 blues guitarist who knocked Eric Clapton from 1972's Melody Maker's poll as Best Guitarist. Gallagher plays the hell out of the beat up Fender Stratocaster you see on the cover. But he also plays harmonica, acoustic guitar and mandolin. All before an adoring audience completely swept up in the show. The album barely crept onto the Billboard charts stateside but hit Top Ten in the UK. Gallagher sold more than 30 million albums worldwide before his untimely death at the age of  47. By the way, in Rolling Stone's Top 100 Guitarists issue, Gallagher was not even mentioned once.

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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 Together
 9. Stevie Wonder Music Of My Mind
 10. Paul Simon Paul Simon
 11. "Stewart, Rod" Never A Dull Moment
 12. Aretha Franklin Young Gifted And Black

13. "Hendrix, Jimi" Hendrix In The West
14. Allman Brothers Eat A Peach
15. "Temptations, The" All Directions

16. "Nash, Johnny" I Can See Clearly Now
17. "Gaye, Marvin" Trouble Man (Soundtrack)
 18. Steely Dan Can't Buy A Thrill

19. "Persuasions, The" Street Corner Symphony
 20. "Band, The" Rock Of Ages
 21. "Geils, J. Band, The" Live Full House
 22. War The World Is A Ghetto
 23. Todd Rundgren Something/Anything
 24. "Kinks, The" Everybody's In Show-Biz
 25. "Franklin, Aretha" Amazing Grace
 26. "Jackson, Michael" Ben
 27. "Simon, Carly" No Secrets
 28. "Bowie, David" The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars

 29. "King, B. B." L. A. Midnight
 30. Creedence Clearwater Revival Mardi Gras
 31. "Jackson, Michael" Got To Be There

32. "Stylistics, The" Round 2: The Stylistics
33. "Chi-Lites, The" A Lonely Man
 34. Mott The Hoople All The Young Dudes
 35. Deep Purple Machine Head
 36. "Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The" Will The Circle Be Unbroken
 37. "Staple Singers, The" Beatitude: Respect Yourself
 38. The Kinks Kinks Kronikles
 39. "Lennon/Ono/Plastic Ono Band With Elephant's Memory" Some Time In New York City
 40. Elton John Honky Chateau

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40 Year Itch : Basement Tapes

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 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, 2004

Recorded in the cold and humid basement of tax exile  Keith Richards's villa in the South of France, Exile On Main Street is often hailed as the greatest rock album of all time. How it ever got recorded with all the drugs, the booze, the never-ending house party, with anywhere between twenty and thirty visitors making noises upstairs, is a tribute, to of all people, Keef himself. Sure he was strung out and sleeping the day away, but at the oddest hours, Keith was a self described task master churning out song after song:

  "Rocks Off", "Happy", "Ventilator Blues", "Tumbling Dice", "All Down The Line" --that's five string tuning to the max. I was starting to really fix my trademark; I wrote all that stuff within a few days. Suddenly, with the five-string, songs were just dripping off my fingers".

Keith might have a line or two in mind to go with these riffs but it was up to Mick to come up with the lyrics. As Keith wrote in his autobiography:

"Most of what I had to do was to come up with riffs and ideas that would turn Mick on. To write songs he could handle. They had to be good records but translatable to being played on stage. I was the butcher cutting the meat"

To this day Mick has referred to Exile as "a bit overrated"...with , again in his opinion, none of the great songs that made Sticky Fingers and Let It Bleed such classics. But Mick wasn't always around for Exile. He would occasionally disappear with his new very pregnant bride Bianca . Keith was living the album-- producing two songs a day on a heroin habit which he said helped him shut out all of the daily stuff and concentrate on the music. "Happy" wasn't even recorded with the Stones but with producer Jimmy Miller on drums, Bobby Keys on baritone and Keith doing everything else.

   Even when that legendary summer at Villa Nellcote ended, the Stones still spent four or five months in LA mixing and over dubbing, recording two new cuts ( "Torn And Frayed and "Loving Cup"), adding percussion in some places, backing vocals in others. Richards and Jagger were both at the monumental recording of Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace album at LA's New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, and were inspired to add gospel inflections to songs like "Let It Loose" and "Shine A Light".

 Released on May 12, 1972, the album got mixed reviews. Naturally some critics compared it unfavorably to The Beatles double album. Lenny Kaye, writing for Rolling Stone, said "here are songs that are better, there are songs that are worse, and others you'll probably lift the needle for when the time is due."

To listen to Exile in its entirety --even the remastered 2010 deluxe version--is to immerse yourself in a thick stew of roots oriented rock n roll at its most ragged. For the most part, the songs don't sound over practiced ( though sounds can be deceiving-- "Tumbling Dice" was played more than 100 times before they captured that languid intensity we hear today). The bloom of inspiration shines on just about every cut. Still, I'll try to follow Lenny Kaye's lead and, at the risk of losing some of that claustrophobic basement funk, condense Exile into one epic ten song LP:

1 Rocks Off
2 Rip This Joint
3 Tumbling Dice
4 Sweet Virginia
5 Loving Cup
6 Happy
7 Let It Loose
8 All Down The Line
9 Shine A Light
10 Soul Survivor

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40 Year Itch : The Metric System

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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 Alley brought percussionist Cyril Neville on board and the album combines the  New Orleans  funk ingrained in The Meters' DNA as well as some Caribbean island flavor

(especially on "Soul Island"). 

"Do The Dirt" ( pronounced "Doit" in that Jersey-like New Orleans accent)  offers a better glimpse of what the Meters would be doing down the road: earthy funk that would hit its peak on 1974's Rejuvination ( a rare 5-star album according to The Rolling Stone Record Guide). But if Josie failed The Meters by going bankrupt, Reprise wouldn't be doing The Meters much of a solid either. All of the Reprise records quickly went out of print. When I ran into George Porter in the mid-90's, he said his only copy of Rejuvination was on a squeaky cassette tape. 

Since 2000,  Sundazed Records has earned the worship and hard earned money of music fans by  releasing The Meters catalog. I would suggest buying Rejuvination first, one of the instrumental albums second ( maybe Meters over Look A Py Py), and Fire On The Bayou before you get Cabbage Alley.

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40 Year Itch : Dadgummit-ah!

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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 who is too much woman for one. But not enough for two. Using him until she used him up.





No matter how funky things get, Withers plays it cool . We've all probably heard "Lean On Me" too many times by now. But next time,  listen to the song in the context of all the gospel soul that was hitting the charts in 1972: Aretha Franklin's Young Gifted And Black and Amazing Grace, The Staple Sisters's "I'll Take You There", Jesus Christ Superstar. The Rolling Stones's "Let It Loose" and "Shine A Light"? Could the compassionate singer be JC himself?

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40 Year Itch : The Doors Carry On

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 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 Ray Manzarek recorded the vocal tracks and the album peaked at #31 in the charts.

 In the Spring of 1972, The Doors got back together to record another album. Full Circle appears to be an effort by the band to forge a new musical direction which may explain the album's single "The Mosquito".




Inspired by a traditional Mexican tune, Robbie wrote what may be the best know post-Morrison Doors song, It peaked at #85 in the singles chart. Full Circle , released in August of 1972, was aptly named. It was the last Doors album.

 

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