I’ve been collecting albums, attending gigs and writing about Rock Music for over sixty years. I ran the first adult education ‘History of Rock Music’ course in Britain. I love Rock Music! My tastes range from country and urban blues, reggae, heavy and progressive rock, rock ‘n’ roll through to singer-songwriters. I decided to list all my favourite albums (the ones I couldn’t possibly live without) and came up with a list of 537. So I decided to explain why I liked each one of them. Here’s a slice of that list! BTW – the order is not incredibly important. That would change day to day anyway.
537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books
50. Lightnin’ Hopkins – Lightnin’ Strikes
Dick Brunning introduced me to the blues and Lightnin’ Hopkins when I was fourteen. This album was very different to anything I’d ever heard before. I was into Rock ‘n’ Roll with Little Richard, Chuck Berry and co, and Beat music with the Beatles, Stones, Kinks and Who. It took me a while to get my ears attuned to Lightnin’s blues.
This album sounded as if it had been recorded in a really big echoey old building. There was a lot of atmosphere and a great depth to the sound.
There was just Lightnin’ Hopkins with an amplified electric guitar and some bottle tops nailed on to his shoes. You could imagine him sitting in some empty church or a chair with his amplifier, a big guitar and a sombre mood. He was playing these intricate guitar runs with very distinctive rhythms and his rich Texas voice.
I have heard a lot of Lightnin’ and some of it is quite light and folky, some is quite funny, but this album wasn’t; it was very serious and atmospheric.
After I’d got into Lightnin’s voice and got used to the intonation I really started following those guitar lines. I loved it. On some of the tracks he kept time by tapping his feet on the ground with those bottle tops. It was crazy.
I had this album for years but when I went to America I lent it to a friend called Adam along with 37 other Blues classics. When I got back he’d moved and I never saw them again.
There are a number of albums released with the same title. I have it on CD but somehow it is not quite the same. Even so every time I put it on it takes me straight back to Dick’s room, sitting on that bed nodding my head in time as Lightnin’ sang ‘Worried Life Blues’ and hit those amplified runs. It had a rawness I’d never heard. That was the start of my love of the Blues.
51. Leonard Cohen – I’m your man
It is hard to believe that Leonard is 80 years old. I went to see him again last year and he did a really long three hour show, had an amazingly talented band and sang as good as I’ve ever heard him. The fact that the show was three hours demonstrates the number of quality songs he has written over the years.
Some people find him depressing and seem to think his songs are almost suicidal. I can’t understand that because I find such a range of emotions there. A lot of them are very tongue in cheek, celebrations of love or quite droll and ironic humour while others have a serious side. Whatever it is the lyrics are special. Leonard has a way with words.
This album is a favourite of mine. I was talking about it a week ago with one of my kids who told me I used to play it every morning when I took them into school. I can’t believe that. There are too many brilliant albums to have got fixated on one; but I did play it a lot.
The song ‘I’m your man’ is one of those ones I was talking about; it is suffused with humour and never fails to hit my funny bone.
Leonard is a poet and has a rare ability to paint pictures with words. There is a serious edge to a lot of his songs and ‘First we take Mahattan’ and ‘Everybody knows’ have serious social observation. As I love that sort of thing it gets to me.
I love Len he is a songwriter with gravitas.
52. Fugs – Belle of Avenue A
If ever there was an anarchic bunch of lunatics it was the Fugs. They were full of fun and as crazy as Hell. They combined street theatre, poetry and politics in a mad sprawling symphony of madness promoting sex and drugs and opposing war. There was liberal doses of liberalism, anarchy and poetry.
There is nothing like the Fugs. I loved their extreme lunacy. They seemed to sum up that sixties thing. There was a punk craziness to it and home-made, can-do attitude.
The message was that you could do anything you wanted; just get out there and do it.
Their first couple of albums set the tone for what was to come later. They were pretty extreme.
The music was a mixture of styles and ‘Belle of Avenue A’ was a bit more electric. There were almost tender songs like the anti-war ‘Mr Mack’ and Country & Western on ‘Belle of Avenue A’. There were political themes reflecting what was going on with the kids on the streets as the Vietnam War raged on.
I loved the other albums but I tended to play this one more than the others. They reflected the activism and madness, the revolution and social change of those turbulent times to me.
53. Phil Ochs – A toast for those who are gone
Straight out of the Greenwich Village Folk scene Phil was really the epitome of the Left-wing song-writer straight out of the 1950s activism of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Phil wrote his topical songs on war, civil rights and social equality by focussing on the news stories of the day. Dylan cruelly jibed that he wasn’t a song-writer he was a journalist. This was unfair. He was someone who wore his heart on his sleeve and believed in justice and freedom as much as anyone. Phil did his bit to create the world of equality, free of sexism and racism that we now enjoy. He did his bit for the revolution by writing these socially motivated songs which he sang with passion and anger and sometimes even a fair bit of humour thrown in.
These early albums have some great and important songs. He was a major player even though he never really received the attention he deserved. He was a little in the shadow of the genius of Dylan whose powers eclipsed Phil and caused him immense frustration. His lack of success led him to take to drink which destroyed him and led him to sadly take his own life in the mid seventies.
To me he was a great man. His songs still resonate to me and his sad story could have been so much different.
This album features some of his great political early songs such as the title track, ‘Going down to Mississippi’, ‘I’ll be there,’ ‘Do what I have to do,’ and ‘Ballad of Oxford Town (Jimmy Meredith)’. Phil was a voice for justice and like Woody before him he was prepared to stand up against the thugs and sing his songs.
His songs still inspire me today. You have to stand up against fascists, racists and the hatred of the intolerant. Phil wasn’t afraid to sing out against and we should all take a leaf out of his book.
There are things worth standing up for. We have to stand up against injustice and inequality and make our voices heard. The alternative is that the intolerant and bigoted become the violent bullies of the future.
Thank you Phil.
54. Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield were another of those West Coast bands that came out the same folk based sound as the Byrds. The band was short-lived mainly due to the incendiary relationships between the massive egos of messers Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Dewey Martin.
Many people prefer the second album ‘Buffalo Springfield again’ but I prefer this one. It has some brilliant songs on it ‘Flying on the ground is wrong’, ‘Burned’, ‘Nowadays Clancy can’t even sing’ and the more political ‘For what it’s worth,’ which focussed on what was going down on the Sunset Strip as there was confrontation between the burgeoning new Youth culture and the establishment in the form of the police. Heads were getting bust.
They were short-lived but highly influential and spawned the solo careers of both Neil & Stephen as well as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. That’s quite a legacy.
55. Muddy Waters – Chess Anthology 1947-72
I love those later albums with Johnny Winters but I also love the early stuff of Muddy’s with that searing slide guitar. That was the stuff that set the Rolling Stones off and all those other British beat groups.
The anthology is a double album with all those seminal tracks such as ‘I want to loved,’ ‘I can’t be satisfied,’ ‘I just want to make love to you,’ and ‘I’m ready’. I could name a dozen others. Willie Dixon lit the fuse and Muddy Waters detonated. His voice and guitar smoked.
I don’t know how many beat groups covered ‘I’ve got my Mojo working,’ or ‘I’m a Hootchie Cootchie Man’ or ‘Mannish Boy,’ but I do know nobody did them better than Muddy.
Muddy had that swagger. He’d come up from the Delta to Chicago and proved himself one of the big three acts vying with Elmore James and Howlin’ Wolf for that top spot. He probably had the most exciting act in Chicago but then Howlin’ Wolf clawing his way up the curtains was maybe that slight tad better. Who knows? I wish I’d seen them in those sweaty clubs in Chicago. I think they toned down their act for us soft white Europeans. Muddy used to put a bottle of coke down his trousers, shake it up, flip the top off at the climax of a song and spray the audience. You don’t get much more climatic than that.
When I went round Mississippi I went to the Delta Museum in Clarksdale and sat in Muddy’s cabin. They’d taken it down and brought it inside. That seemed a bit strange. I also went along to the place the cabin had been and looked out over those fields he once worked in. Muddy is a legend. I only got to see him perform three times and he was immense. I wish it could have been more.
I’ve got my Mojo working but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Without Muddy there might have been a lot of bands who would never get going. The Stones even took their name from one of his songs and he introduced both Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley to the world as well as Little Jacob Walters and Otis Spann.
Imagine a world without Muddy? It would be different. I saw his son Mud Morganfield play in York this year. He was OK but his pa was something else.
56. Roy Harper – HQ
It is a big debate as to which is the best Roy Harper album. There are at least three jostling for that spot. I usually plump for Stormcock but in the right mood I might go for HQ. On another day I’d go for Lifemask on the strength of the mighty ‘Lord’s Prayer’ and then I might go for ‘Bullinamingvase’ because of ‘One of those days in England’. It matters little. This list is in no distinct order.
HQ is Roy with a Rock band. It has the cream of Rock musicians on it including the amazing Jimmy Page and Dave Gilmour.
Nobody has ever made an album quite like this, merging serious lyrics with intricate, yet accessible Rock. I rate ‘The Game parts 1-5’ as one of the best Rock songs of all time with its social commentary on the direction our civilisation was heading. That riff knocks it straight into your head and hits you right between the eyes.
Then you’ve got the diatribe against religion with ‘The Spirit lives,’ ‘Hallucinating Light’ and the incredible ‘When an Old Cricketer leaves the Crease’ which should have been a huge hit. Never has there been a better and more haunting song about death. John Peel always said he would have it played at his funeral. It was a shame that he didn’t – but I will!
The rest of the album is good but with those monster songs this album has to be one of the greatest albums ever.
Roy has always been lauded by Rock’s hierarchy but has never had the commercial success his talent deserved.
This album deals with the usual big themes of civilisation, politics, religion, love and death. You can never accuse Roy of ducking any big issues. He has never been one for producing nice little albums of ditties; Roy prefers a big, deep canvas of meaningful proportions. Yet he does it so well with great panache and incredible musical invention and originality. There is no one similar.
I would love to someone of Roy’s calibre on one of those dire Cowell-like TV talent shows. I’m sure he’d stun the whole gamut of audience, panel and viewers. They would not know what to make of real talent! I’d love to see it!
57. Bob Dylan – Times they are a-changin’
When Bob Dylan appeared on the scene as a bit of a Woody Guthrie clone and one of many at that time it was not possible to imagine the impact he would have on the Rock scene and the huge influence he had over everyone. He single-handedly brought poetry, meaning and content into what had been a visceral rebellion. He provided an intellectual vigour that was to raise Rock Music to a new level of serious sophistication. He demanded that it be taken seriously. His songs and poetry were studied in universities. He unleashed a new type of song-writing on the world and enabled other song-writers to extend their scope, extend their reach and deal with issues that had never have been attempted before.
This was his third album and his song-writing had got up to full speed. ‘Only a pawn in their game’ was the song about the cowardly assassination of the black civil rights activist Medgar Evans. ‘Ballad of Hollis Brown’ painted a picture of a poor black farmer being forced to kill his wife, children and himself out of sheer desperation. ‘When the ship comes in’ is a defiant song that is a clarion call to everyone concerned with the cause. It sang of triumphantly of victory. It was supposed to have been written in response to a supercilious concierge in some motel who had insulted Bob. If that was the response it was a shame more people hadn’t insulted him.
This was the period when the gems of songs just poured out of him in an unremitting stream. ‘The lonesome death of Hattie Carroll’ was one of many as Dylan became the darling of the left-wing folkies, championing Civil Rights, anti-war and social evils.
I love this album with Bob singing with just his guitar as backing. Its strength and quality, its beautiful melodies, poetic lyrics, snarling fury and sensitivities puts it up there in a class of its own. It was one of three equally brilliant acoustic albums (‘Another side of’ and ‘Freewheelin’) made before Bob decided to set about electrifying and producing a trio of the greatest electric albums of all time.
This album was the young formidable Dylan at the height of his talents. It was biting and raw. It doesn’t get much better than this.
58. Pink Floyd – Piper at the gates of Dawn
Something different and magical was happening in London in 1967. The Beat groups had started to extend their musical horizons. The Underground scene was taking off. Hendrix, the Stones and Beatles were reaching out to the West Coast of America and a new culture was starting up.
They were heady days.
We were making a new world.
This was the days when LSD was sweeping through the minds of musicians and their audiences opening up new vistas, new sounds and opportunities. This was the dawn of psychedelia.
Right at the forefront of this new music was Pink Floyd. They were a bunch of intelligent middle class individuals who gelled around the remarkable Syd Barrett to create something absolutely extraordinary. The imagination was unleashed, experimentation unlimited and all structure reinvented. It was a new sound, a new concept and it was ours.
Psychedelia burst upon the scene with Pink Floyd.
They’d started as a standard R&B band but rapidly, under Syd’s artistic direction extended themselves into something different. Syd was taking prodigious amounts of LSD and his mind was right out there. You can hear it in the music. The others were right out there with him.
They became the resident band at the temple of the psychedelic underground that was Middle Earth, Their light shows and extended experimentations, their events and happenings, were all legendary.
The album ‘Piper at the gates of dawn’ blew everyone away. It was a new type of music and became one of that batch of radical works of genius that seemed to deluge out of 1967.
I can remember hearing it for the first time and being astounded and blown away. Pink Floyd altered the music scene.
Sadly it was Syd’s only real album with Pink Floyd. He went to pieces and became the world’s best known acid casualty, contributing very little to the next album.
Pink Floyd reconstituted themselves and went on to continue to achieve great things but this album was the triumphant start.
What a major work of art.
Fortunately I was there to see it. I caught them with Syd once and saw them in a number of small clubs like ‘The Fishmonger’s arms’ in Tottenham and ‘Eel Pie Island’ in Twickenham. I also saw them do a number of free gigs in Hyde Park and around. They were just as exciting and mesmeric live as they were on record.
What a memory.
59. John Lennon – Plastic Ono Band
I always rated John as the major force in the Beatles. I loved his songs more than the others, though George and Paul had their moments. John’s stuff had more power and depth to it in my opinion. Though I must admit they were better together. They fed off each other and augmented each other’s skills. As a band they were the perfect foils for each other. Paul bought melody, Ringo a craftsmanship on the drums and George some great songs and the Indian stuff.
When they split up it was with a great deal of trepidation that I viewed the ensuing solo stuff. It started well. George released his great triple album ‘All things must pass’ and John released this. It was a shame about Paul but you can’t have everything.
After all the massive production and complexity of the Beatles we were all wondering what John would do. He went for a stripped down album and it worked brilliantly. The Plastic Ono Band album was incredible. ‘God’ remains one of my favourite tracks of Lennon’s. ‘Working Class hero,’ was great. It showed that John had no intention of playing it safe. Being out of the Beatles had freed him of all those limitations. He could liberate all his ideas and vent his spleen. There were no inhibitions; no having to worry about the impact on the others. He was his own man.
This album felt to me as if he had been released from the shackles. He could say what he wanted and fuck everyone – too bad if they were offended. He was no longer the cuddly mop-top.
John had been doing his scream therapy with therapist Arthur Janov. On this album he continued the therapy looking to get all that fear, anger and grief out of his system. The result was a Lennon bared to the soul and it made for stark listening and created incredible art in the process.
This was one of two immaculate albums of Johns. After that he did not ever seem to get back to these heights again.
60. Neil Young – American Stars and Bars
This was Neil giving full vent to his electric genius. It was an album of great energy and superb songs played with Crazy Horse. I loved that driving sound he created with Crazy Horse. They took Neil’s music into a different dimension. Neil is right up there with Dylan as a song writer though he lacks the social content and level of poetry of Dylan.
The greatest track on the album was ‘Like a hurricane’ with its pounding riffs, swirling guitar and amazing solos.
I was teaching in America when this came out and took to showing the kids slides of all the places I’d visited. I’d do them a little slide show to musical accompaniment. I remember I used Beefheart and Neil Young. One of my delicate-eared students asked if I could please turn the music down as it was hurting and distracting her from taking in the slides.
This was an album from the late seventies when the whole music scene had died away. Punk had even had its day but Neil Young seemed to go from strength to strength. ‘Hold back the tears,’ with its Mexican mariachi band feel was great, ‘Will to love’ with its soft melody and the exuberance of ‘Homegrown’ made this a great album.