40 Year Itch: Welcome Foghat

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 When "Lonesome" Dave Peverett decided he had enough of Savoy Brown the singer/guitarist took the band's drummer Roger Earl and bassist Tony Stevens with him. With the addition of lead guitarist Rod Price, the band signed with Bearsville and went into the studio, first with Todd Rundgren and later with Dave Edmunds.


 "Dave was very much into early Elvis and the Sun Records thing," Peverett recalls. "I loved the phasing effects he got on the vocals. He wasn't scared to try off-the-wall sound ideas."

 As the band finished off the album, all they were missing was a name. How about Brandywine Track? Hootch? Finally Peverett offered up a name he made up playing scrabble with his brother : Foghat.



 Foghat's debut LP reached #127 on the U.S. album charts, with the single, a cover of Willie Dixon's "I Just Want To Make Love To You" reaching #83 on the Billboard Singles charts. Foghat would dominate the 70's with their boogie rock, selling 8 gold records, one platinum and a live album that would go double platinum.

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40 Year Itch: Our Bodies, Ourselves

1972 was an odd year for artists who wanted to bare more than their souls on record.
 Here are eight of the most, um ,  interesting examples.




CAETANO VELOSO : ARACA AZUL

I don't go to Caetano Veloso for odd, avant garde experimental sounds. Not when he can deliver albums like Transa. I guess I'm not alone. Araca Azul has established itself as the Brazilian Metal Machine Music. It's not that bad  but, really, what music fan in his right mind--or her right mind-is going to walk up to the register with an album that looks like this?






 


BRAINSTORM : SMILE A WHILE

Brainstorm recorded a highly entertaining mix of krautrock/prog/jazz-rock that may remind some of the Canterbury scene. Not sure anybody has explained why the band dressed up in ladies undergarments for the cover. I guess to make you smile a while?










TERRY CALLIER : WHAT COLOR IS LOVE
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Obviously this isn't Terry Callier on the cover but I'm not going to pass up an opportunity to write about Terry Callier. I got into the Terry Callier appreciation club later than most, via Beth Orton's 1997 Best Bit EP. Callier has a soulful voice and plays a sweet acoustic guitar but so do Bill Withers and Richie Havens. Callier also adds tasteful, borderline cheesy in some cases, jazz instrumentation. In 1972 he made What Color Is Love, an album as beautiful as the woman posing on the cover.





 


THE EDGAR WINTER GROUP: THEY ONLY COME OUT AT NIGHT

The Edgar Winter Group's They Only Come Out At Night features the #1 million selling instrumental "Frankenstein" and the #4 single "Free Ride" as well as a shirtless cover of Winter wearing jewelry so elaborate it would embarrass the Queen of England.









JEAN-CLAUDE VANNIER : L'ENFANT ASSASSIN DES MOUCHES

From, Jean-Claude Vannier,  a French producer and arranger who worked closely with Serge Gainsbourg comes L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches,  a big budget no holds barred album that promises to overload the auditory senses with its mix of symphonic rock , huge choruses and sound effects. I think that's Vannier posing on the cover photo which suggests a completely different kind of album.












JONI MITCHELL : FOR THE ROSES

Long before there were hidden tracks on CDs, Joni Mitchell offered a hidden photo of herself, in the nude, on the inside cover of her gold album  For The Roses. Although Wikipedia's entry suggests she's looking out upon the ocean, I'd say this is more likely The Strait of Georgia, off Vancouver Island. But I can't prove it. This is the album in which Joni begins exploring some of those jazz sounds with Tom Scott which would lead to such highs as Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns and lows like the live album Miles of Aisles and a few others I'm too polite to name.











CHRIS SMITHER : DON'T DRAG IT ON


The great Duane Michals took this shot of Smither, a singer-songwriter who Bonnie Raitt called "my Eric Clapton" Despite her championing Smither hasn't had the best of careers but this album, recorded at Bearsville Sound Studio in Woodstock,NY, has a great feel to it and belongs in your "I must listen to this really soon" pile.






 


ANALOGY : ANALOGY

Analogy was a German psychedelic band based in Italy whose female vocalist was apparently not hired for her singing talent.

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40 Year Itch: The Bloody J-Word

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Living in the Past, released June 23 1972, is an odds and sods two disc collection of album tracks, singles, B sides, outtakes and cuts from "Life Is a Long Song" EP that reveals the band in its finest, most prolific form. It may be one of the great arguments , like Kinks Kronikles, for collections less based on the hits than on giving an overall picture of a band at its peak.

With its blues based rock, the band was at first proclaimed by the British Press as "the new Cream". Tull also explored progressive rock, jazz and  folk. The driving force has always been Ian Anderson who has spent most of his life dressed like a character out of Dickens, hating having people call him "Jethro", and running the group like a "dictatorial pharaoh" I think Rolling Stone put it.





Over the years Anderson has been asked the same questions over and over again and so with the help of his website I offer you this very non-exclusive interview the Faginesque Pharaoh himself

Are you, like the song, "Living in the Past"? 

 I am not one for nostalgia or reminiscences and prefer to live in the present and the future. However, some of our audience obviously like the nostalgia bit, and the older material which we play is, for them perhaps, a trip down memory lane. For us, it's not about playing a song which could be thirty years old. It's about playing something 24 hours old, since that's when we probably last played it on stage. Our style of music is, I hope, a little bit timeless and not rooted in a particular music fashion.

In 1973, Jethro Tull disbanded following the bad reviews of "A Passion Play". Why?

 No, we didn't! Our then manager decided to respond to a bad review in the influential pop newspaper Melody Maker by cutting a deal with the editor for a front page "scoop" involving the band's supposed decision to quit. We knew nothing about it until we read it in the paper ourselves, and we were furious. It made us look petulant and silly. Which we probably were, but we didn't need the wrong kind of publicity. Tull have never disbanded, even for a moment. No come-back tours for us, thank you very much. We haven't yet been away!

Pop and Rock music have changed a great deal over the 30 years. How do you view these changes? And do you listen to the new music like Techno and Rap?

 Well, the really big changes were back in the early years of the mid-to-late sixties and the early seventies. The introduction of musical influences from many diverse world cultures and historical periods provided for a rapidly evolving and richly creative musical environment. Folk, Classical, Blues, Jazz and Asian motifs and forms broadened the scope of American-derived pop and rock. Tull were a part of that evolution. Since the mid-seventies, the development has been more technological rather than musical. Sampling, synthesis, sequencing and the personal home computer revolution have brought music making to the masses at an affordable price. But the music goes round in circles. Same old simple rhythms, melodies, harmonies and verse/chorus/bridge song structures. Nothing really changes: nothing is really new. But each new generation of young musicians rediscovers the wheel, The Beatles, sunglasses and stretch limousines. As long as they and their fans think it is new, why disappoint them? Give the kids a pot of paint and they will repaint their house. Same old bricks underneath. Techno and Rap? Just nursery rhymes with attitude. Nice idea but going round in very small circles.


Don't you hate having to play the same songs, like Aqualung or Locomotive Breath, every night after so many years?

 If they were not decent songs, then I certainly would, but I am lucky to have a good collection of material which I still enjoy playing. There are over 250 songs to choose from, in fact. Anyway, much of Tull's music contains elements of improvisation, so the songs are never the same two nights running. There is always some scope for variation and interpretation in each performance. A Tull concert wouldn't be the same without some of Locomotive Breath. Well, for me at any rate.

What is the worst thing you are willing to make public about yourself?

That I have never tried drugs. I am deeply ashamed of this, but I promise to try better in the next life to be one of the lads. I can manage the beer and curry, honest.

 If you could go back in your life and change one thing, what would it be? 

 The 'Jethro' in Jethro Tull. Norman, Julien, Damon - anything but that bloody J-word.



If you could choose the words for your epitaph, what would they be?

"Thank you and goodnight". Or perhaps, "Any chance of a wake-up call?" I think that probably covers it.

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40 Year Itch: Amazing Grace

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Aretha Franklin's best selling album of all time, released in June of 1972, remains her greatest achievement. She may have achieved worldwide fame with secular soul song's like "Respect" and "I Never Loved A Man ( The Way That I Love You)" but Aretha was first and foremost a preacher's daughter. Her father, The Rev. C.L. Franklin, had earned the nickname "The Million Dollar Voice" for his sermons at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit.

On January 13, 1972 Aretha went back to church, in this case the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, to record what would become a double album with James Cleveland and The Southern California Community Choir. Aretha sang many of the songs she grew up with but also sang Marvin Gaye's "Wholy Holy" and Carole King's "You've Got a Friend" ( as part of a medley with "Precious Lord (Take My Hand)".

Some of those in attendance said the real powerhouse in church that day wasn't Aretha. It was the Spirit. Among those leaving the church inspired were Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts who were in LA finishing up Exile On Main St. They added gospel inflections to both "Let It Loose" and "Shine a Light" as a result.

Amazing Grace has sold two million copies so far.

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40 Year Itch: Lost Computers of a Shattered Tribe

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The Dutch band Golden Earring gave the world more than 1973's "Radar Love" and 1982's "Twilight Zone".
They formed in 1961 and recorded wonderful Beatlesque pop songs in the mid 60's that are truly worth exploring ."Another Man In Town" is from the 1967 album Winter Harvest.



Together, released in June of 1972--13 months before "Radar Love", is a spotty hard rock album that finds Golden Earring pulling together all the elements that would make 1973's Moontan such a classic. Among some of the more interesting moments, there's "Brother Wind" featuring a Cesar Zuiderwijk drum solo that typically ended in concert with Zuiderwijk launching himself over his drum kit and "Buddy Joe" a pop song featuring a sitar-like solo that could have come from The Sweet. The band opened for The Who on their European tour.




As a bonus: here's the band performing "Radar Love" a #13 hit ( and one of the great driving songs of all time) which would finally break the band in the US.

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40 Year Itch: James Brown There It Is

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Jam packed with hot funk, There It Is , released in June of 1972, offers listeners four hits: "There It Is", "I'm a Greedy Man" ( with a chant every parent of a school kid should know: Now brother don't leave/your homework undone") and the funkiest of them all the #1 R and B hit "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing" ( at the 5:28 mark the band stops while James Brown and Bobby Byrd rap the rhythm with interchanging "Keep On Singin'"s).





 And then there is "King Heroin".


The Godfather of Soul sets aside the funk for a few minutes to rap brother to brother and brother and sister about the evils of one of the most deadly killers in our country: heroin.

I can make a man forsake his country and flag
Make a girl sell her body for a five-dollar bag
Some think my adventure's a joy and a thrill
But I'll put a gun in your hand and make you kill

This lyrics are credited to Manny Rosen, who --according to Wikipedia--worked at The Stage Delicatessan on Manhattan's Seventh Avenue, and had lost his daughter to a drug overdose. That appears to be the true story even though Jet Magazine reported that "Manny Rosen" was a pseudonym for impressionist George Kirby who had seen the insides of a prison after dealing heroin to an undercover cop in Las Vegas.

  Whatever the circumstances, the lyrics deliver a haunting message that, as a single, managed to hit the Top 40 in 1972.

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40 Year Itch: No More Pencils, No More Books

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What's the greatest three minutes of your life? One is Christmas morning... The next one is the last three minutes of the last day of school when you're sitting there and it's like a slow fuse burning. I said, 'If we can catch that three minutes in a song, it's going to be so big.'
-Alice Cooper



The Alice Cooper Band emerged from the Arizona desert in the late 60's  to sign with Frank Zappa's Straight label in Los Angeles. Two years later the shock rockers moved to the Motor City, practicing 12 hours a day and  rubbing shoulders with the Stooges and MC5 -- influences which led them to record their finest albums Love It To Death and Killer. The Summer that saw the release of  their most famous single "School's Out" and the album of the same name, the band moved to a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. I know the timing's off but I like to imagine Alice Cooper among the lock-jawed set at the country club getting cornered by Chase Davenport IV explaining to Alice that if he wanted to hear some "very fine music indeed" he should check out the soundtrack to West Side Story.



That might explain the concept album that is School's Out ( or at least Track 3 "Gutter Cat Vs. The Jets"). That kind of ruins the album for me even though I like "Luney Tune", "Alma Mater", "Public Animal No. 9" and of course "School's Out"--which just one, by a landslide, a recent Rolling Stone Readers' Poll for Best Graduation Song.( Actually "Alma Mater" is a better graduation song--"Goodbye everybody/ I finally grew up/They finally let me out of schooooool")



  Alice Cooper told Esquire Magazine: "When we did 'School's Out,' I knew we had just done the national anthem. I've become the Francis Scott Key of the last day of school."

The producer , Bob Ezrin, reused the kiddie chorus trick again when he produced Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall" seven years later.

The single hit Top 10 in the US and #1 in the UK. The album hit #2 on the Billboard charts. Oh,and the vinyl disc originally came wrapped in a pair of flammable panties

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