Excerpt – 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 Paperback 

Posted on by Opher

I greatly enjoyed putting this together. I tried making a list of what I considered to be one hundred essential rock album. I arrived at 600 and pared it down. I couldn’t get it below 537. Even then I probably missed out some that definitely should have been included.

This was the first slice. I always intended to write the second half but have been far too busy with other projects and the response to this one was disappointing. One day.

Anyway, this is another slice. If you want to know what I consider to be the best 50 albums in rock music you’ll have to buy the book. It is only £6,89. I make 54p a book! But it’s not about the money is it? I enjoyed writing it. Great fun!

225. White Stripes – De Stilj

The White Stripes were a duo of guitar and drums who came out of Detroit with their great Garage sound of Rock, Country and Blues. There was a lot of controversy concerning their exact relationship. Meg was the female drummer and Jack was the guitarist/vocalist. They called themselves White. Were they brother and sister? – Or husband and wife? They kept dumb. All that mattered was that they were creating some amazing music.

Jack’s guitar sound was loud and raw and Meg could certainly pound the hell out of those drums. They were like a breath of fresh air on a moribund music scene. The major labels had been stifling the life out of bands with their over-production and safety-first policy of the lowest common denominator. It was clear that they put profit over music. Then the White Stripes burst upon the scene with a new vital sound and blew everyone out of the water. It was so refreshing.

I kick myself daily. I had the chance to go and see them perform at a small club in Leeds before they released De Stilj and became famous. They had brought out their first album ‘White Stripes’ and it had caused a stir. This was getting further enhanced by their live reputation. A friend rang me up and wanted me to go and see them but it was mid-week and I was knackered and couldn’t be bothered to make the trip. Well we all make mistakes. I did get to see them in Bridlington though a few years later and they were amazing.

Der Stilj was deliberately recorded with old technology to recreate that feel you used to get on those old fifties recordings. It worked. There was the same mixture of styles as on the first album, ranging from Blues to Pop and Country. It certainly worked for me. The production was so clear and the guitar sound right in your face. There was a Punk feel to the whole album.

The Blues tracks were a brilliant version of the Son House ‘Death Letter Blues’ and Blind Willie McTell’s ‘Your Southern can is mine’.

The whole album buzzed without a weak track. ‘You’re pretty good looking (for a girl)’ started it off pretty good but it was eclipsed by ‘Hello Operator’ and then ‘Little Bird’. The guitar seared. Jack took those rhythms, chords and notes and drove them right through your head. Slide guitar, acoustic, chords, single notes, it mattered little; it was all equally exhilarating. Jack could certainly put original riffs together in a nice way. I’d never heard anything so sharp. Awesome.


226. Linton Kwesi Johnson – Forces of Victory

Linton became the Poet Laureate of Brixton and archivist for the black community of Brixton. For generations they had felt victimised and persecuted. It appears that there is a tipping point. The SUS laws along with Thatcher’s discriminatory socially unjust policies were that tipping point. Linton documented and reflected the emotions of black youth in his poetry at this time as feelings boiled over. This was summed up in his poem/dub song ‘Time come’ with its chilling sentiments that ‘I did warn you’.

Forces of Victory contained the brilliant ‘Sonny’s Lettah (Anti-SUS poem)’ recited in Linton’s rich timbre it never fails to send chills through you. There was a cause to unite everyone. ‘Fite dem back’ displayed the determination to take the fascist forces on and fight whether that be Combat 18, the National Front, British Movement or the Police. This was a rallying call to fight on the streets.

This was reggae music at its very best and the politics made Bob Marley sound tame. This was the music of the people.

The voice was assured. There was no doubt over the outcome. ‘Forces of victory’ made that quite clear. Black consciousness, equality and anti-racist sentiments were going to win. If it could not be achieved through argument it was going to be achieved through strength.

Linton was the voice of the new assertive youth who had taken a leaf out of the Black Panthers, lost hope in organisations, and were prepared to fight it out in the streets. The confidence and fury was evident in Linton’s words and music.


227. Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night

This was the Beatles third album and also the soundtrack to the film of the same name. Beatle-mania showed no sign of diminishing and, as with Colonel Parker and Elvis, Brian Epstein had looked to capitalise on their popularity by getting them into films.

This was a departure from the previous albums in that they had moved away from the R&B and Rock of their early act. All the songs were written by the Beatles, the bulk by John, with George getting credited with one, and they had a Pop quality.

They were good catchy numbers with that great Beatle sound but they lacked that raw edge. These sounded a bit more polished and smooth. It gave the album a mellow feel but was strong enough to maintain the Beatles forward progress. It appealed to the young market who eagerly lapped it up. It might have been more Pop orientated but it was not a reduction in quality. Seemingly the Beatles, despite the pressures imposed on them, could churn out a string of quality songs without effort. They were touring, doing lots of radio and filming and still they were coming out with creative material. These songs were not run-of-the mill Pop songs.

The stand out tracks were the two singles ‘A Hard Day’s  Night’ and ‘Can’t buy me love’. But there were also a lot of other good songs that are still pleasant to listen to. Numbers like ‘If I fell’ were beautifully arranged as were ‘I should have known better’ and ‘And I love her’. This was the sound that influenced bands like the Byrds and even Dylan.


228. Nick Drake – Bryter Layter

Well Nick Drake and Joe Boyd certainly had pulling power. On the basis of one album they were able to get musicians of the quality of Richard Thompson, John Cale and Dave Pegg to provide the backing.

The production was greater and the strings were sympathetic. In many ways it had a more commercial feel to it and yet retained the Nick Drake  feel.

The words were poetic and painted pictures but, with hindsight, you can see the pressures reflected in the words. ‘Hazey Jane’ was still alluding to the cannabis use.

There were some delightful songs sung with Nick’s mellow voice that really set a mood for late-night listening. There was a sadness in the delivery. ‘One of these things first’ seemed to catalogue the regrets at roads not taken and love lost. Despite the optimism in ‘Northern song’ and the almost jaunty ‘Bryter Layter’ it was not going to be brighter later for Nick. His depression got worse and he became more reclusive and moved back to his parent’s house where he died of his overdose. It was brighter much later for record sales and reputation when, years after his death, he was finally recognised for the huge talent he was.

His last offerings were the great melancholy album ‘Pink Moon’ recorded in two late night sessions – just a sparse guitar, piano and Nick.

‘Family Tree’ was an album of his early home recording which showed him developing his craft and the influences of Jackson C Frank, Bert Jansch and Bob Dylan.

If only he hadn’t fallen so far down. All he needed was a second grace.


229. Byrds – 5th Dimension

This was the Byrds third album and a bit of a milestone. It was 1966 and the world was changing. The old Beat and Pop music of the 1964/5 British Invasion was transmuting into the start of the Underground. LSD was in the air and music was beginning to change. The Byrds were starting to expand and experiment while at the same time had lost the principal song-writing force of Gene Clark who had been having increasing problems with flying. The experimental side is clearly heard on tracks like ‘2-4-2 Fox trot (The Lear Jet Song)’ and ‘Eight miles high’. Yet they still kept their previous jangly style on songs like ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ and ‘John Riley’ both adaptations of traditional songs. The version of ‘Hey Joe’ seemed extremely tame when compared to Jimi Hendrix’s scintillating slowed down heavy version.

The supposedly druggie songs got the Byrds into trouble with radio stations and both ‘Eight miles high’ and ‘5th Dimension’ were both banned despite the bands protestations that the first was about being high up in an aeroplane and the latter was about Einstein’s theory of relativity. No. It didn’t quite wash with me either.

It was a bit of a strange mish-mash of an album with the rather Poppy ‘My Spaceman’ (with the Byrds jumping on the psychedelic Sci-fi theme), the instrumental ‘Captain Soul’ and a rather typical Byrds’ song with all its close harmonies in ‘I see you’, but I loved it.


230. Devo – Q: Are we not men? A: We are Devo!

Straight out of Akron Ohio came the strangest New Wave band of all, complete with flower-pots on their heads and strange robotic quirkiness, weird rhythms and a staccato delivery and futuristic one-piece costumes. They looked weird, acted weird and sounded weird. But they also sounded interesting and completely different to anything else that had gone before they were good.

Seemingly Devo was short for De-Evolution. The concept was that instead of evolving the human race was de-evolving into mindless cretins who did as they were told and followed each other around without a thought in their heads – hence the disjointed music, jerky music and strange taste in clothing. It was also the basis for tracks like ‘Mongoloid’, ‘Sloppy (I saw my baby getting)’ and ‘Joko Homo’

The band were brilliant at selling themselves with great videos of people in straight-jackets jerking about and throwing themselves about.

Their version of the Stones ‘I can’t get no (Satisfaction)’ with its stilted delivery and complex arrangement captured the attention and they built up a big following.

The most interesting track of all was ‘Jocko Homo’ with its strange repetitive riff, weird organ sound and lyrics. Seemingly they are no longer men. They have reverted back to some strange unintelligent primate now known as Jocko Homo.

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

A quirky extract from the best Rock Albums of all time – 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 Kindle/Paperback

Posted on by Opher

What are the best Rock albums of all time?

Well that’s a pretty subjective choice. Tastes vary. I compiled what I considered to be (after a life spent playing music, writing about music and attending gigs) a definitive list of essential albums. This book contains what I believe are the best of the best. These need to be in everybody’s collection!

Of course, your views will differ, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? This might just entice you to check out a few names you might not have heard of. I have eclectic tastes but am very particular!

Another extract:

238. Esquirita – Believe me when I say Rock ‘n’ Roll is here to stay

Eskew Reeder was a wild piano playing R&B singer from the early fifties. He started off as a gospel singer and moved into R&B where he produced the stage personality of Esquirita which involved heavy make-up, wigs and a huge piled up pompadour. He specialised in pounding piano and whooping vocals to great upbeat numbers.

It was said that Little Richard ripped off his style, looks and act. That is hard to assess because Esquirita was only brought in to record following Little Richard’s conversion and departure. At the time everyone thought that Esquirita’s style was based on Little Richard.

Whatever the truth of that there is no denying that Esquirita created a number of rockin’ tracks in a similar style to Little Richard including ‘I’m getting plenty loving’, ‘Golly Golly, Annie Mae’, ‘Rockin’ the joint’, ‘I’m Battie over Hattie’, ‘Hey Miss Lucy’ and ‘Oh baby’. They had Little Richard’s characteristic whoops, copied by the Beatles, and the gospel tinged raucous vocals, pounding piano and wailing sax.

Unfortunately Esquirita never rose to great recognition and declined into obscurity as a car-park attendant before dying of AIDS in 1986.


239. Joan Baez – Farewell Angelina

Joan Baez always was a bit of an activist even causing a few rebellious moments in High School. She started into Folk Singing in the late 50s and released her first album in 1960.

Her early albums were all traditional folk songs and she rapidly rose to prominence as the first lady of Folk because of her crystal clear vocals. She was political back then but hadn’t yet found a way to express it. That came when she met the ragamuffin Bob Dylan fresh from his adventures ion the streets and in the coffee houses of New York. Joan was knocked out by the quality of his songs and took to promoting him, getting him to come up on stage and introducing him to a wider audience. She also took to doing covers of his songs and extolling their virtues. Joan’s music and level of activism leapt forward.

Joan performed with Bob at the great civil rights march on Washington when Martin Luther King gave his wondrous speech. She went on numerous other civil rights marches and meetings and became involved in the anti-war movement and environmental issues and human rights. She always wore her heart on her sleeve and incorporated the politics into her songs and stage act. There was no doubting where Joan stood on all those issues. She was a voice of humanity, liberty, freedom and the voice of reason and intelligence. Where-ever there is injustice in the world Joan has been willing to put her time, money and voice to opposing it. If only we had a million more Joan’s we would not have such a selfish, greedy, cruel, warmongering world!

It’s hard choosing a best Joan Baez album. Her early albums were a little lightweight, her success, like ‘The Night they drove old Dixie down’ are not her best and some of her albums are a bit patchy. My favourite songs are ‘Diamonds and Rust’ and the Phil Ochs cover ‘There but for fortune’ but in the end I plumped for the album ‘Farewell Angelina’.

I think Joan was always brilliant at interpreting Bob Dylan numbers and this was one of her early albums which featured a lot of Dylan, with a Guthrie, Donovan and Seeger as well as some traditional songs. Not only that but two of the Dylan songs ‘Farewell Angelina’ and ‘Daddy you been on my mind’ had not been released by Dylan. They really shone.

The album was well produced with Joan’s guitar and voice prominent and the lyrics shining through. The passion is there and the versions of ‘A Hard Rain’s a gonna fall’ and ‘It’s all over now baby blue’ are great. It was wonderful to hear the Woody Guthrie classic ‘Ranger’s command’ and the Pete Seeger anti-war song ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ (in German).

Oh how we need that voice of sanity now as the environment is being eaten by the machine, the animals murdered, the forests cut down and the wind and waters tainted! 56% of all our wild mammals destroyed in forty years! Sing up Joan!


240. Don & Dewey – Jungle hop

Still in the wake of Little Richard the Specialty label were hunting around for an act to fill the gap and Don & Dewey flew in from nowhere. They were a versatile powerhouse of a Rock/R&B duo who created a dynamic sound and yet were also capable of more delicate numbers like ‘Pink Champagne’ and ‘I’m leaving it all up to you’.

Their act was reminiscent of the later Soul combo Sam and Dave. I’m sure Sam & Dave were more than a little influenced by the sound and act created by Don and Dewey. It is certain that Don and Dewey were certainly Soul precursors. The idea of a dual vocal attack was quite revolutionary.

Specialty gave them a hard hitting Rock backing on numbers like ‘Justine’, ‘Jungle hop’, ‘Koko Jo’, ‘Mammer Jammer’, ‘Little Sally Walker’, ‘Just a little loving’ and ‘Miss Sue’. My one concern of the numbers they chose to produce was this emphasis on jungles and monkeys. It came over to me as a slightly racist stereotype and I wondered where that had come from.

They were never very successful despite the quality and originality of their act but a few of their numbers were successfully covered. The most notable of these was ‘Farmer John’ which was a big hit for the Premiers and was covered by the Searchers and Neil Young.


241. Ronettes – Da Doo Ron Ron

Back in the late fifties and early sixties black R&B groups were all the rage. They were mainly male and had basically come out of the Doo-Wop scene. The sound was dominated by the Coasters, Drifters, Miracles, Contours, Isley Brothers and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. In the early sixties it was the turn of the female vocal groups to make themselves heard.

The Ronettes were really a family group with the two sisters Veronica and Estelle joining up with their cousin Nedra. They started singing together as little girls round at their grandmother’s house. They went on to dance and sing at the famous Peppermint lounge’ and then signed to the Colpix label.

They developed a cool appearance with high heels, slinky dressed and hair piled up a mile high. They oozed class.

Phil Spector was developing his Philles Label Sound in New York and stole them from Colpix. Their first few numbers were actually ascribed to the Crystals.

The first single ‘Be my Baby’ was recorded with Sonny Bono and Cher (who later became Sonny & Cher) helping out on backing vocals. It went huge and not only established the group but also that special production sound that Phil Spector had been working on.

This was the time that the Beatles were breaking and they were greatly impressed with girl bands and had covered both the Marvellettes and Cookies on their first album. Other Mersey bands, such as the Searchers with Da-Doo Ron Ron’, were also successfully covering these female R&B groups. I can remember the success of a number of these groups breaking into the charts such as the Crystals, Supremes, Shirelles and Shangri-Las. While Merseybeat had blown away all the old guard it seemed to have created a space where new acts could slip in and the female vocal groups fitted the bill.

The Ronettes second single ‘Baby I love you’ was almost as successful.

Ronnie and the girls came over to do a tour of Britain and were introduced to the Beatles and Stones. Estelle dated George Harrison and Ronnie had a romantic fling with Keith Richards.

Ronnie later married Phil Spector and he kept her secluded in his mansion.


242. Crystals – Best of

The Crystals were another of Phil Spector’s Philles Label signings. For some reason Phil Spector seemed to have the view that all the girl bands were interchangeable and, much to the annoyance of his artists, brought recordings of one group out under another groups name. The Crystals had minor hits with songs like ‘Uptown’ and ‘He hit me (and it felt like a kiss)’ and then had a bigger hit with ‘He’s a rebel’ except it hadn’t been recorded by the Crystals. Phil had got Darlene Love and the Blossoms to record it and then released it under the Crystals name! – As was their follow up single ‘He’s sure the boy I love’. That was all very weird and unethical!

However it was the real Crystals who recorded ‘Da-Doo Ron Ron’ and set the ball rolling in England. I remember the B-side was an instrumental call ‘Git-it!’ The rumour was that the girls had played the instruments and that set everyone talking in my school. The idea of these girls actually playing instruments seemed strange. How times change! – It’s not so strange now! In hindsight I’m sure that they had nothing to do with that B-side at all.

‘Da-Doo Ron Ron’ was not only a big hit but also the start of that famous Phil Spector ‘Big Wall of Sound’ production technique that created such a stir.

They released another great song with ‘Then he kissed me’. After that it all went downhill. It was obvious that Phil was besotted with Ronnie and the Ronettes and they eventually split company.


243. Sun Rockabilly – Billy Lee Riley/Sonny Burgess

There are not many compilation albums in my essential album collection but this one is a must.

Sam Philips started as a scout searching for R&BN and Blues talent for the big Chicago labels like Chess and Vee-jay. After a while he thought he could do the job himself and set up his own studio to record the local R&B and Country & Western artists. He figured that there was no point discovering them and allowing someone else to get the benefit. The result was Sun Studios in Memphis.

I visited Sun Studio a couple of times to soak in the aura that stills hangs in the air and emanates out of those walls and that wavy ceiling. When I went they had the old microphones that Elvis used to record on, a pink Cadillac parked outside and an X on the floor marking where Elvis stood when he recorded ‘That’s alright Mama’ all those years before. We all had to pretend we were Elvis! You couldn’t help yourself!

Those studios recorded some of the greatest names in the music business – Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rufus Thomas and Carl Perkins. It was awesome to stand in their and breathe their molecules.

Sun Rockabilly, which came out in two volumes, did not focus so much on the major stars so much as the plethora of other relatively unsung heroes. These included Sonny Burgess, Billy Lee Riley, Malcolm Yelvington, Warren Smith, Johnny Carroll, Ray Harris, and Hayden Thompson.

Many of my favourite Rockabilly tracks were from some of the unknowns such as Billy Lee Riley’s ‘Flying Saucer Rock ‘n’ Roll’ and ‘Red hot’ and Sonny Bugess’s ‘Itchy’ or Warren Smith’s ‘Uranium Rock’ and ‘Ubangi Stomp’ or Malcolm Yelvington’s ‘Rockin’ with my baby’ or Ray Harris’s ‘Come on little Mama’. They were wild and uninhibited.

A lot of these tracks are on the Sun Compilation.

A lot of these guys ended up with a bit of a chip on their shoulder because they reckoned Sam put all his energies and best material into Elvis, Jerry Lee and Carl and neglected their careers. He probably did. But at least we have these raw rockabilly recordings. They sure as hell knock the legs off all that Pop stuff Elvis did in his latter career.


244. Little Walter – Little Walter

Little Walter Jacobs was a master Harp player. His exploits with the harmonica have been compared to what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar. He was the harp player with the Muddy Waters band and appears on most of his big numbers for Chess.

He recorded in his own right for Checker and had some huge hits with numbers like ‘My Babe’ and the instrumental ‘Juke’. Other great tracks include ‘Mean old world’, ‘Boom boom, out go the lights’ and ‘Tell me mama’. He had a very smooth singing voice that proved very popular. His songs were covered by lots of Blues bands from the Yardbirds to Dr Feelgood.

Those were violent times in Chicago and Little Walter was an alcoholic on a short fuse; he was always getting in fights and was supposedly extremely mean and ornery. One such altercation in 1967 led to him dying later that night of a thrombosis. He did tour Europe but he was one of the guys that I regrettably never got to see perform. I loved his records though.


245. Billy Boy Arnold – I wish you would

The first Billy Boy Arnold numbers I heard were recorded by the Yardbirds on their early singles with Eric Clapton ‘I Wish you would’ and ‘I ain’t got you’. I loved those singles and it wasn’t til later when I heard Billy Boy’s versions that I found anything better. Billy Boy’s versions were richer.

He started off playing with Bo Diddley before signing to Vee-jay and doing his own stuff. He recorded some great songs including ‘She fooled me’, ‘Rockinitis’ and ‘You got me wrong’.

When the Blues dropped out of popularity in the States Billy Boy went into driving buses and then as a parole officer

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Books

PS – I got slagged off for putting a few ‘best of’ in amongst them. I remain defiant. Sometimes a ‘best of’ contains all the tracks you need and the album works!

Extract – 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 (Paperback/Kindle)

Posted on by Opher

I have selected 537 essential albums. They are diverse and brilliant. These are what everybody should have in their collection.

In this book I tell you something about each one of them. This is volume one. The second volume will follow at some time! See if you agree!

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Books

254. Gang of Four – Entertainment

Gang of Four are a post punk band. Entertainment was their first album and was released in 1979.

They are one of my three favourite Punk bands. Their lyrics are extremely intelligent and an expose of the social and political scenario with all the outrageous greed that runs the world.

They are not just about lyrics though. This was a highly developed style. The guitar sounds great with its strident sound and riffs; there is a lot of experimentation in song structure and dynamics, use of feed-back and talk over; there is a great call and answer interchange between n the vocals and all this is coupled with a great bass which is very prominent in the mix and a great pounding bass.

As a debut album this is very well constructed.

They have it all.

There is not a weak track on this album but the most striking for me are ‘Anthrax’, ‘Ether’, ‘Return the gift’ and ‘At home he’s a tourist’. I love the rawness of the music and the sound they generated but I loved the sentiments even more. If only music could change the world just like we dreamed long ago that it would do.

255. Ry Cooder – Paradise & Lunch

This was Ry’s fourth solo album. He came out from playing his session work to produce his own material. The sound on this album was centred on Ry’s crystal clear guitar.

It was a nice smooth album with Ry producing a nice mix of Gospel, Blues, R&B and Rock. The musicianship and production made it sound so soft that it appeared effortless. All the instruments melded together so perfectly.

Apart from one song the album was made up of traditional, blues, Gospel and R&B covers. These included the Blind Willie McTell ‘Married Man’s a Fool’, Bobby Womack’s ‘It’s all over now’, JB Lenoir’s ‘Fool for a cigarette’ the old work-song ‘Tamp them up solid’ and the gospel track ‘Jesus on the mainline’.

They were subjugated to Ry’s special treatment complete with chorus and call and response. It all worked fine.

The album ended with ‘Ditty Wah Ditty’. This was done as a nice light acoustic number. This is  a bit like coming back full circle because ‘Diddy Wah Diddy’ was the first single that Captain Beefheart released, except this was done as a R&B number, and Ry Cooder was the guitarist on the Captain’s first album.

256. Jimi Hendrix – Concerts

Well one thing is sure and that is that you can’t have too much Hendrix especially the live stuff. Jimi was a supernatural wonder, a man for whom new superlatives need to be invented. He only released 4 albums in his life-time and yet there are now countless CDs of unreleased material, studio outtakes, studio jams and live material. I just did a count up and I have a staggering 725 CDs of Jimi.

I love all the material. To hear Jimi noodling away, jamming to a groove in the studio, is quite incredible. Then there are the raucous early concerts and the finished article. There were many faces to Jimi Hendrix, some soft and lyrical and others loud, harsh and raw. Whatever mood or style the one thing that was consistent was the quality of the musicianship. Jimi did not stop. His whole short life was music. His guitar was part of him and he was so technically proficient that the only limitations in the sounds he could produce were those of his own imagination.

These tracks are the early Jimi between 1968 and 1970 when he was fronting the Experience with his dare-devil guitar histrionics and showmanship. They capture the excitement but I can tell you that no matter how loud you play them, how good your sound system is or powerful your imagination they don’t come near to the excitement of actually being there.

These tracks were all recorded in the States at San Francisco, San Diego, New York and Los Angeles. So, unfortunately I was not at any of these concerts; but I did see him three times and I can picture him there when I play these.

There has never been anything like Jimi Hendrix.

257. Elvis Costello – Spike

The early punky Costello was great and it is normal for an artist to mellow and mature as they get older, wiser and more adept. I am pleased to say that while Elvis certainly did develop his music, broaden it and bring in different styles, the power and ferocity of his lyrics and delivery were only intensified. This album was exceptionally spiky in places.

This was released in 1989 and was his twelfth studio album. It also contains one of my favourite tracks.

At this time Elvis moved labels and was also co-writing with Paul McCartney. Who knows? Perhaps the Beatles could have reformed with Elvis taking the John Lennon role? He certainly had the venom and bite to do justice to it. He could have pulled off the acerbic part quite well.

The two tracks he wrote with Paul are very good. ‘Veronica’ was very commercial but ‘Pads paws and claws’ was more experimental but still very accessible and catchy. It was a collaboration that showed promise.

‘Baby plays around’ was a beautiful song, sung very delightfully with a great deal of melancholy concerning a break-up of a relationship in which one’s partner is openly unfaithful. ‘…This Town’ was the opening track and was much more like the Elvis of his first few albums. This was the Punk Elvis lamenting the fact that in order to get on you had to be a complete bastard. ‘God’s comic’ is a great song and send-up of religion, a priest who had not been too religious has an audience with God who is listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber and wondering if he should have given the world to the monkeys. ‘Deep Dark Truthful Mirror’ is a song about confronting your own failings.

This was an album with a number of different styles, moods, instrumentation and types of songs. If that was all it would be an excellent album but that wasn’t all. There were two songs that had an exceptional impact on me. The first was the snarling diatribe against hanging ‘Let him dangle’. It told the story of a couple of young thieves who were cornered by the police. Young Bentley was already under arrest and Craig had a gun pointing at the police officer. ‘Let him have it,’ Bentley told Craig. Craig shot the officer dead. Craig was underage got life and Bentley was hung. Elvis turned it into a passionate expose of the viciousness of State murder and the hatred and primitive revenge involved. It was a thought-provoking tale delivered with real anger.

But the stand out track for me was ‘Tramp the dirt down’. It still sends chills running through me when I play it. The melodic beauty of the song only serves to accentuate the hatred in the lyrics as Elvis contemplates the cold, calculated duplicity of Margaret Thatcher. I still have a vivid memory of her standing on the steps at number ten delivering her election speech at the start of her term of office saying how she would bring harmony to the country while already plotting to break the unions and create havoc. Elvis pours out his vitriol as he goes through the trail of Tory deceit over the treatment of public services, the health service and the glorification of the Falklands war. It’s probably not too late to get there and tramp that dirt down so she never gets out, perhaps a good sharp stake should be deployed first though!

258. The Fall – Slates

The Fall were one of John Peel’s favourite bands. It is easy to see why. They have consistently gone about doing their own thing throughout the whole of their long career without the slightest nod to fashion, commerciality or anybody’s views.

Mark E Smith is the Fall. Despite all the personnel changes he is the guvnor! He directs the music, bosses the band around and dictates what goes on. He once said that even if it was him with his moth-in-law on bongos it would be the Fall.

They go about producing their raw output of post-punk without regard to taste, political correctness or the media and often with seeming contempt for their own audience.

I have been to live performances with strange film intros that went on and on, Mark seemingly so intoxicated he could not function, and virtual fights on stage. I’ve also been to concerts where they have motored along completely in tune with the audience with everyone bouncing about and singing along with Mark.

This is the usual type of Fall album. The driving riffs with Mark reciting and shouting his lyrics over it. The result is great. I can’t say he has a great voice but the effect is more interesting than all the plastic bands put together. From ‘Hip Priest’ to ‘Slates, slags etc.’ it drives along. There is that repetitive coda and variation that makes it interesting. You can feel the Captain Beefheart influence.

259. Randy Newman – Lonely at the top

This has all Randy’s great songs all gathered together. It gives you a great view of Randy’s genius. There is so much of Randy’s quirky humour and idiosyncratic observation. He is able to hone a lyric to its bare bones, deliver it with perfect phrasing to a simple but perfectly effective backing. This album has many of my favourites.

‘Political Science’ is a sardonic view of the rest of the world in which Randy suggests that America should just nuke everybody, except Australia – don’t want to hurt no kangaroo – boom goes London! Boom Paris!

‘God’s song (That’s why I love mankind)’ is a send up of religion in which God is a character who is a capricious individual who doesn’t care a jot about people yet is amazed by the antics of humans in the face of his vindictiveness.

There’s the full spectrum here with ‘Short people’, ‘Rednecks’, ‘Jolly Coppers on parade’, ‘I love L.A.’ ‘Germany before the war’, ‘Birmingham’ etc etc. The album ends with his own send up of himself with ‘Lonely at the top’.

What a song-writer! What humour!

260. Sam Cooke – Portrait of a legend

Sam was the guy with the smooth silken voice who was capable of big soulful ballads, Pop songs and more rocking numbers. That voice came straight out of Gospel. He started singing at an early age and became the lead vocalist with the leading Gospel group ‘The Soul Stirrers’.

He left Gospel to move into secular R&B focussing on producing singles and immediately hit with ‘You send me’. This crossed over into the Pop charts and was followed by a string of other hits ‘Only sixteen’, ‘Cupid’, ‘Chain gang’, ‘Little Red Rooster’, ‘What a wonderful world’, ‘Bring it on home to me’, ‘Twistin’ the night away’ and ‘Shake’.

There was a great deal of variation in his work. A comparison between the Pop of ‘Cupid’ and the Blues of ‘Little Red Rooster’ (recorded before the Stones did their version). He also tackled issues like the Civil Rights fight for justice which was an incendiary thing to do at the time; his song ‘A change is going to come’ was a brave thing to do.

Sam’s soulful voice was one of the precursors of Soul music. Unfortunately Sam was not there to participate. He was shot dead at a motel in very dubious circumstances. Seemingly he was drunk and took a girl back to his room. She stole his clothes and ran off claiming he was going to rape her and the distraught Sam was shot dead by the white motel owner. We shall never know by there seemed to be a racial element involved in this.

More of the ‘537 Essential Rock Albums’ book

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537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

121. Jefferson Airplane – Crown of Creation

This was the fourth Jefferson Airplane album and a nicely textured one. There were nice dynamics with softer phases and more rocky parts in which Jorma’s guitar seared. There was even a short electronic track. It had the usual range of vocalists, harmonies and sound that we associate with the Airplane. It also worked the same philosophy. We had to build our own society. The rules of the other one were no good. This was the counter-culture. We could play in the sand if we wanted. We didn’t have to put on a suit, make loads of money or shoot people. There were alternatives. We could make new rules and do what we wanted.

The stand-out tracks for me were the David Crosby track ‘Triad’ left off the Byrds album ‘Notorious Byrd Brothers’ because of their bust up, ‘Lather’ which was very atmospheric, ‘If you feel like china breaking’, and ‘Crown of creation’, which was based on the words from the John Wyndham novel Chrysalids. ‘House at Pooneil corners’ was a great finale with its feedback, harmonies and lyrics.

I love the ‘Crown of Creation’ track best which was basically saying that we were the new mutants who were superior and destined to take over. The old society was destined to become fossils. The counter-culture was at war with society and we were going to win. Life is change. My only gripe at a biologist is that we aren’t created; we evolved.


122. Beatles – With the

After the revolution of the first album everyone was expectantly waiting to see if the Beatles could maintain the momentum. The answer was not long in coming. It was yes and no.

I remember the excitement of going down to pick up the album and the nervous energy. I was almost beside myself with horror when my Dansette broke and had to rush down to my friend Jeff down the road to play. He was only too delighted and we played it over and over, then he kept it for a week until my Dansette was repaired.

In many ways it was as good as the first. It certainly did not disappoint. There were the same mix of great R&B covers this time with half the numbers being quality originals.

The covers were all great – ‘Devil in her heart’, ‘Please Mr Postman’, ‘You really got a hold on me’, Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll over Beethoven’ and the brilliant Barrett Strong cover ‘Money (that’s what I want)’. They proved they could do the stuff different and every bit as good as the originals.

Then there were their own songs; good Poprock for the most part – ‘All my loving’, ‘It won’t be long’, ‘I wanna be your man’, ‘Hold me tight’ and the others. There was even a George Harrison song ‘Don’t bother me’.

There was also the obligatory classic song from the shows in ‘Til there was you’.

They had moved on in that they were writing more songs but somehow the album slightly lacked the spark and vibrancy of the first. Overall it kept them at the same level. They’d proved they weren’t a one album band.


123. Doors – Doors

The Doors debut album was a stormer and another of those 1967 wonder albums. It was definitely out there in the sixties counter-culture though it would be hard to classify it as Acid Rock or Psychedelic. It came in from the Blues side with a great cover of Willie Dixon’s Howlin’ Wolf classic blues ‘Backdoor man’. There were lots of musical elements, Jim Morrison’s great poetry, drug references and a lot of controversy. The album was censored because of the drug references and Jim’s version of ‘The End’.

‘The end’ was the focal point of the album and their live performances at the time. It was an epic song, coming in at just short of twelve minutes, which featured an oedipal vision of a son killing his father and fucking his mother. I can’t see why the record company had a problem with that? Anyway they edited out Jim’s use of the word ‘Fuck’ and also references to getting high.

‘Light my fire’, which, unbeknown to the Doors, was the song I first started to learn to play on the guitar and subsequently led to me giving up any pretension of being a guitarist, was released as a single, created more controversy with Ed Sullivan, became a big hit and also propelled the album to the top of the charts.

‘Break on through (To the other side)’ was basically the story of how the Doors got their name and the philosophy that Jim espoused. It came from Aldous Huxley and William Blake. Life as we know it is one limited dimension. It we pushed hard enough we could break through the barriers that held us back; there were doors to higher dimensions of existence and drugs and drink could get you there. Well no one could say Jim didn’t live his philosophy. He was prodigious in his consumption and towards the end was a bloated alcoholic who sadly died in the bath-tub in Paris at the age of twenty seven.

Strange how those two numbers crop up time after time – 1967 and 27.

It was another incredible debut though they were to go on and surpass it.


124. Captain Beefheart – Drop out boogie aka. Safe as Milk

Well, what do you know? – Another 1967 release. The debut from Captain Beefheart was very weird for 1967 but positively normal by comparison with his later work.

It featured none other than Ryland Cooder on guitar. Ry soon left saying that Don was completely impossible to work with.

It might not have been psychedelic but it was acid drenched desert blues/rock of the first order. Nobody had ever heard anything quite like it and it positively roared and rumbled.

I saw the band, who were John Peel’s favourites, when they came over for their first tour and they blew me away. I have never seen anything like them. The numbers charged along like a runaway train.

This was an amazing debut album with incredible tracks the like of no one had imagined before – ‘Electricity’, ‘Drop-out boogie’, ‘Abba Zabba’ ‘Yellow brick road’ and ‘Sure enough ‘n yes I do’. They were so far out they’d gone out the other end of the counter-culture.

That was quite something but shortly they were going to get a lot weirder and better and more complex and blow away all these early efforts with even greater works.

Without doubt they were, and still are, my favourite band. Even the present Magic Band under John French and without the good Captain is immaculate.

When they arrived at customs for a subsequent tour Rockette Morton arrived with a huge American toaster pulled out and splayed on his head like a helmet. They weren’t weird at all.

This album stonked!


125. Phil Ochs – I ain’t marching any more

Phil’s second album carried on it the same vein as the first. He was adept at taking a new headline of a social issue that had taken his interest and developing it into a song. This is what had prompted Bob Dylan into scathingly calling him more of a journalist that a song-writer.

These early songs did not have the poetry of Dylan or even his later more complicated songs which were a lot more poetic but they did have a lot of humour, bile and passion and they fired their heavy artillery at their mark. There was no mistaking what Phil stood for. It was right in your face. He was for equality and civil rights. That came straight at you through songs like ‘Here’s to the State of Mississippi’. He was for the unions and fairness for black and white with ‘Links on the chain’ and he was against the whole hideous threat of war in all its guises as with ‘Draft-dodger rag’, ‘I ain’t marching anymore’ and ‘The men behind the guns’.

Phil lacked the genius of Dylan and suffered by comparison but his songs were good and honest and his aim was true. His passion shone through. He knew what he believed in and he set about doing something about it.

Phil epitomised what became known as ‘the protest movement’. It wasn’t so much a protest about what was going on so much as a desire to create something a whole lot better. There was nothing negative about Phil’s songs. He was highlighting what needed addressing. His anger was focussed and he wanted something doing about it.

This is an album packed with socially motivated songs that is both stimulating and thought provoking. That is summed up by Phil’s song ‘Days of decision’. He was part of that movement towards building a new, fairer world.

We need our idealists and men of conscience. Where are the voices speaking out right now? Where are our Dylan’s and Och’s when you need them?


126. Buddy Holly – Buddy Holly story vol. 2

This was the second posthumous album to come out after Buddy’s terrible death. The first one was crammed with all the hits and this one had a few of those plus a lot of lesser known tracks including some that Buddy had not quite finished.

It was less Rock ‘n’ Roll than the first and represented more of the last chapter in Buddy’s life when he was separated from the Crickets and living in New York. A number of these songs are softer but they all have the Buddy Holly trademark melodies, vocals and genius.

There isn’t a bad Buddy Holly album. I chose this one because it was one I used to play a lot and it kind of closes the circle for me.

At the time of his death on that last silly tour Buddy was already talking with the Crickets about getting back together. He was writing great songs and the future looked great.


127. Chuck Berry – More Chuck Berry

More Chuck Berry was a compilation album of great singles. It featured a lot of the familiar tracks such as ‘School days’, ‘Sweet little sixteen’, ‘Sweet little Rock ‘n’ Roller’, ‘Carol’, ‘Little Queenie’, ‘Reelin’ and rockin’’, ‘Rock and Roll music’ and ‘Too much monkey business’ as well as equally as good lesser known material such as ‘Anthony boy’, ‘Jo Jo Gunne’, and ‘Beautiful Delilah’.

I played this real loud and it rocked the house.

This was one of those albums that got my Mum yelling for me to turn it down!

If you want an album of good solid Chuck then this is it!


128. Incredible String Band – Hangman’s beautiful daughter

This was the album where the talents of Robin Williamson and Mike Heron conspired to create a new sound with their array of ethnic instruments and a type of mystical psychedelic Folk.

The album is often seen as the quintessential hippie statement with its mysticism, magic and long rambly dream-like tracks.

Led Zeppelin were among the artists inspired by the Incredible’s efforts. Even if people did not subscribe to the spiritual nature of the songs they were transfixed by the musicianship, complex structures to the songs and the great sound that they produced.

They were extremely uplifting and inspiring to see live. No other band put out such a positive and warm vibe.

My favourite track is the twelve minute ‘A very cellular song’. As a biologist I know amoebas are very small but it was nice to say it. The section that went ‘May the long time sunshine upon you’ was very beautiful indeed and never failed to make you feel good. What more could you want from an album?

This is another groundbreaking album from the late sixties. This just missed the 1967 wonder-year though. It was released in 1968.


129. Bert Jansch – It don’t bother me

This was Bert’s second album and not quite so political as the first despite the sound of the title. There are a couple of socially inspired songs such as ‘Anti-apartheid’ and the title track.

This album continued to set the pace for the British Folk revival in the mid sixties. It exemplified the type of contemporary style that was pushing the old Folk of Ewan McColl into the shadows. This was a move to creating your own songs, to paint pictures that reflected life now and not the days gone by.

Bert, John Renbourn, Roy Harper, Jackson C Frank and others were setting the standard for a new type of music and this album was at the forefront of it. The guitar style was new and completely modern. There was a different sensibility.


130. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bayou Country

Although these guys came from San Francisco they portrayed themselves as an authentic Cajun Rock band from the depths of the bayou. That was weird but John Fogerty and co. certainly made a success of it. They forged a really bright style that chugged.

The first time I heard them was at some underground club or other in London. In between bands there was a DJ playing tracks and he played a Creedence track and offered the album to anyone who could identify the band. Nobody did but the track sounded interesting.

This was a band who created a very distinctive sound all of their own.

I chose Bayou Country as the album because of the tracks ‘Born on the Bayou’, ‘Keep on Chooglin’ and ‘Proud Mary’. They are good tracks to be motorin’ to even if you never hunted on the Bayou with your dogs.

They had a string of great sounding hits and certainly did not fit the mould for the sixties sound. There was nothing psychedelic, progressive or Acid about Creedence. It was good driving Rock ‘n’ Roll.

This style was continued in ‘Green River’ with its classic ‘Bad moon rising’ and ‘Green river’.

You could have had either one of these albums in my essential 537 albums but not both.

A hunk of my ‘537 essential Rock Albums’ – I wrote the first part but haven’t got around to the second yet!!

Posted on by Opher

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

These are 537 of my all-time favourites – not in any particular order – that would change day to day.

Why not buy the book and check them all out?

Please leave likes and a review on Amazon – Means a lot!!

110. Bo Diddley – Bo’s big 20

Where would the British Beat groups be without Bo Diddley. Bo was short for Bad Boy and Bo certainly lived up to his name. He started as a boxer and street busker in McComb Mississippi before becoming discovered, moving to Chicago, encountering Muddy Waters and becoming a Blues Rocker. No one ever has quite that swagger that Bo Diddley had. He was one for the garish clothes and outrageous home-made guitars with weird tuning, weird effects, weird fur, weird shapes and incredible rhythms.

All these top 20 Bo Diddley compositions, plus a lot more, were the staple diet of British Beat Bands back in the 1960s. Along with his maraca man Jerome Green and the Beautiful Duchess in slinky dresses on bass he took the place over like a hurricane coming through. There was never a more boastful set of songs with ‘Bo Diddley’, ‘Hey Bo Diddle’, ‘Bo’s a lumberjack’, ‘Run run Diddley daddy’ and ‘I’m the greatest lover in the world’. Yet nobody deserved to be shouting out loud about their talents. This was the man who had written and performed all those great Rock songs that will go down in history – ‘I’m a man’, ‘500% more man’, ‘Cops and Robbers’, ‘Pretty Thing’, ‘Say man’, ‘Pills’, ‘Roadrunner’, ‘You can’t judge a book by the cover, ‘I can tell’, ‘Who do you love?’ and a load more.

A lot of them are on here and they sound as good as ever!


111. Bob Dylan – Another side of

In this, Bob’s fourth album, there was another departure. There was a more poetic approach with less overt politics. It brought a lot of criticism at the time from people who thought he was getting out of touch with the Civil Rights and anti-war movement. Yet this album was suffused with social concern. Even the humorous ‘Motorpsycho nitemare’ was painting a picture of the narrow-minded conservative anticommunist farmer.

This was the third acoustic album of note and contains one of my favourite Dylan tracks in the sensitive ‘To Ramona’. I always saw this as a poem to a young black girl who was feeling defeated by the institutionalised racism of sixties Northern America.  Bob was telling her she would be OK she was better than all of them. It was a deceptive song that sounded soft and gentle yet disguised a real bite. The same was true in a different way for ‘Chimes of freedom’. This was an extraordinary poem that was based on a thunder storm in which the sounds of the church bells melted into the flashes of lightnin’ and crash of thunder. It was one of those mystical moments where Bob was imagining the wondrous spectacle being put on for all the unfortunates and socially deprived. Bob summed up his stance of moving away from preaching at people with both the songs ‘All I really want to do’ and the humorous ‘I shall be free No. 10’ in which he states that it wasn’t any use talking to him that it was the same as talking to yourself; in other words he did not know anything more than anyone else; he had no answers.

Though nothing was overt the album’s heart was still firmly based on fairness, justice and freedom. This was coupled with a number of great personal songs about the break-up of his relationship with Suzie Rotollo.

Altogether it was another incredible album.


112. Roy Harper – Folkjokeopus

Folkjokeopus should have been the album that launched Roy into orbit but it failed. That failure was due to the lack of understanding displayed by the Liberty label. They had seen Roy’s potential, wanted to realise it and create a commercial proposition and brought in the seasoned hit-maker Mickie Most to produce the album. The trouble was that this was not the direction Roy wanted to go off in and the two of them rapidly ended up at loggerheads. The album was largely made in a series of rushed first takes and the potential of Roy and the songs was not fully realised.

So why is it in here among the best albums of all time? Well it is here simply because of the immense quality of the songs. ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ in particular is one of the most important songs of the whole sixties. Very few songs even attempt to tackle the vast spectrum of society and its ills that Roy sets off to do and even fewer manage to pull it off.

When I first heard Roy do it live I was transfixed. The poetic lines hit straight into the centre of my cortex like cobra venom. I’d never heard anything as acidic. This was biting vitriol of the first order. It still is.


113. Pink Floyd – Saucer full of secrets

This was the first album of Pink Floyd’s after Syd Barrett left. There was much conjecture regarding the future of the band as Syd was seen as the creative element. It was widely regarded that the band would flounder in his wake. Even management sided with Syd and backed him rather than the rest of the band. The band were dropped.

The sceptics were confounded. The album picked up the threads from the first album and developed them. The band went on from strength to strength after that and established themselves as one of the top bands in the world. Syd produced two excellent albums and faded off into seclusion and the life of a hermit. Management had let it slip through their hands.

Syd’s only writing contribution to the album was ‘Jugband Blues’ with lyrics that were very apt. The rest of the album ran with the spacey theme of ‘Astronomy Domine’ from the first album. It seems that the acid experience of psychedelia’s voyage into inner space was to be expressed as an exploration of outer space. Other bands, such as Hawkwind, would head down the same direction. Psychedelia was melded to Fantasy, Sci-fi, Space and Madness. It made for interesting explorations.

The stand out tracks on the album were ‘Saucer full of secrets’, ‘Let there me more light’ and ‘Set the controls for the heart of the sun’ all of which featured heavily in their live performances.

Far from being finished the creative reins had been taken up by the other members and the band was really just beginning. Syd’s ghost was to haunt them forever but they had found a way forward and it was good.


114. Jefferson Airplane – After bathing at Baxter’s

This was Jefferson’s third album and was released in 1967 at the height of the San Francisco hippie dream. It was more of a concept and not so commercially rocky as the previous album. The sound was more developed into an Acid drenched feel which reflected the bands adventures with LSD. There were not particular stand-out tracks so much as a general feel to the album that reflected the philosophy of the hippie generation. The five suites were: ‘Streetmasse’ ‘The War is over’ ‘Hymn to an older generation’ ‘How suite it is’ and ‘Shizoforest love suite’. They related to the hippie themes of love and peace. This album summed up the rejection of the commercial society with its exploitation, money-driven aggression, violence and war.

The album reflected the communities dream of creating a new order with different values; where everything was not all about grabbing what you could whatever the cost.

Jefferson Airplane were the standard bearers for the San Franciscan hippie movement and this album was a statement of that; they were the band of the people. This was a new world and the old one was yesterday.

The album was full of experimentation, acid guitar, harmonies and lyrics that reflected the changes the band were part of. This was music from the new generation to the new generation.

1967 was a good year for great albums.


115. Love – Love

This was the first 1966 debut by Love. It was punkier and more unpolished than later albums and was replete with brilliant songs. It started off with a rocked up version of David & Bacharach ‘Little Red book’ and went on from there.

The stand-out tracks were ‘A message to Pretty’, ‘My flash on you’, ‘No matter what you do’, ‘Coloured balls falling’, ‘Mushroom clouds’, ‘And more’ and the sombre ‘Signed DC’ with its theme of heroin addiction. The themes were nuclear war, hard drugs and relationships. It immediately established the band as a major Los Angeles band and put them right up there in the forefront of the new counter culture.

Ironically the stark theme of the anti-drug song ‘Signed DC’ was to bounce back at them as hard drugs were principally to blame for the band falling apart a little while later.


116. Beatles – Revolver

Rubber Soul was the album that first showed evidence of the band reaching out towards songs that were a bit more substantial to what had preceded them with songs like ‘In my life’ and ‘Nowhere man’ but it was Revolver that really made the break.

This was 1966 and the Beatles once more asserted themselves as a creative force that was right on the apex of what was happening in youth culture. This was a departure from everything that went before with its over-amplified guitar and experimentation. They were not merely creating one new sound but a whole pile of them. There was the incredible electronic experiment of ‘Tomorrow never knows’ with its LSD soaked sound and lyrics, ‘She said, she said’ with its trippy sound, ‘I’m only sleeping’ with that new floating sound and backward guitar, that guitar sound on ‘Taxman’, strings on ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and on and on. This was an album where every track was an experiment, a new sound a departure from what had gone before.

The Beatles were loose in London and London was raging. The Beatles were soaking up art, beat poetry, electronic music, LSD and anything that came up. It was the greatest creative phase of their career. All the themes that were to surface in the rest of their output were nascent here. Revolver was a melting pot of experiments and all of them were successful. There wasn’t a dud track and few of them sounded similar.

While this might not be the best Beatles album it was the most ambitious and creative. It set the scene for their development and fed into the melting pot for all the other bands. This album helped spark the flame that was going to create the incandescence of the late sixties Underground Psychedelic, Progressive and Acid Rock scenes in England and America. The bands were all listening to what each other were putting out and trying to go one better. This sparked a period of great experimentation all fuelled on the new youth counter-culture. It was a great time to be alive. It was a can-do culture. Anything was possible. You just had to try. We were about to change the world.

Heady days.


117. Captain Beefheart – Clear spot

This was the Captain’s seventh album and continued the more commercial style of the previous Spotlight Kid without diluting the quality of the songs. It was quite apparent that Don Van Vliet was unhappy with the reception the band had received and the lack of sales. He desired greater recognition. This was all to explode in his face when after this the band up and split and he produced, in an attempt to become commercial, the dire Bluejeans and Moonbeams album. Fortunately that was in the future and this album continued the string of brilliant albums the Captain had produced using a large number of different musicians. John French, AKA Drumbo, was the only constant, having the task of interpreting Don’s strange musical requests and organising the other members of the band to put his ideas into practice, and he was absent on this one.

The result was great though. The album featured some of the Captain’s greatest numbers such as ‘Crazy little thing’, ‘Sun zoom spark’, ‘Clear spot’, ‘Low yo-yo stuff’ and the wondrous show-stopper ‘Big eyed beans from Venus’ along with a number of other brilliant tracks. The album should have been enormous but failed to ignite apart from the substantial group of cognoscenti who marvelled at just about everything the Captain produced. They thought it was superb.


118. Rolling Stones – No.2

This seems to slip through the net when we think of the Stones. The first album gets all the plaudits for that early Blues debut and rightly so; it was a great debut. But this album is its partner and almost equal. Once again it was made up of mainly R&B covers from the likes of Chuck Berry, Drifters, Solomon Burke, Muddy Waters and Dale Hawkins but there were three numbers attributed to Keith and Mick ‘Off the hook’, ‘What a shame’ and ‘Grown up all wrong’, which did not stand out as being out of place.

The album had a slightly mellower feel than their first album which was probably down to the production. It was not quite as sharp. But none the less it continued the reputations of the band. They were a good blues group who were putting their own very English interpretation on the blues songs and R&B they were covering.


119. Jimmy Reed – Bright lights, big city

Jimmy was one of the stalwarts of the British Beat groups. He, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley provided the majority of the material that was covered by those British Beat bands. Jimmy was also the most commercially successful of the Blues singers. His languid, laid-back style with it’s distinctive beat proved very popular. It was copied by a number of the Rockers, such as Elvis, and also gave Jimmy a lot of personal chart success. Part of that fluid style was due to fluid. Seemingly Jimmy liked a nip or two and they used to ply him with booze before recordings because they reckoned they got the best out of him that way. It seemed to work. I had a couple of Jimmy reed albums when I was fifteen and I used to play them to death.

I was fortunate enough to catch Jimmy in London in 1971. He was pissed out of his head and had his son on bass and was brilliant.

That rhythm and beat that Jimmy invented had found its way everywhere and permeates music. It was the basis of all those swamp-blues artists in the 1960s such as Slim Harpo.

I could have chosen any of the Jimmy Reed albums. They are all great but ‘Bright lights, big city’ has all the big numbers on and there are a whole load of these: ‘Bright lights, big city’, ‘Big boss man’, ‘Shame shame shame’, ‘Take out some insurance on me baby’, ‘Baby what you want me to do’, ‘Ain’t that loving you baby’, ‘Hush hush’, ‘Honest I do’  and a whole lot more.


120. Billy Bragg/Wilco – Mermaid Ave

Billy had proved himself a great songwriter and someone who espoused a social conscience. It was in this capacity that he was asked, along with the band Wilco, to put music to a number of Woody Guthrie lyrics that were discovered in his estate. Woody’s legacy was immense. He had always been scribbling songs, poems and bits of prose on scraps of paper.

Woody’s daughter Nora had been sorting these lyrics and come up with the idea of them being put to music by someone sympathetic to Woody’s music. Billy was ideal.

It proved to be a magic choice because, although Wilco and Billy seemingly did not get along, the combination was electrifying. The album brought those lyrics to life and the music lived and breathed Guthrie.

The result was nothing like either Billy or Wilco had done before or since. It had a mystical nature of its own. The essence of Woody’s hand was in them all and the album was greater than the sum of its parts.

This is an album that I come back to time after time. I find it haunting. The songs are full of Woody’s wit and detailed observation. His tales of childhood and sexual awakening, the McCarthy witch-hunt, lust and social justice are all moving and stirring.

I saw Billy doing these songs with his own band and the stirring ‘You fascists bound to lose’ was a fitting finale to the show and great summary of Woody himself.

Another chunk of ‘537 Essential Rock Albums’

Posted on by Opher

I started to list and write about all the greatest Rock Albums I simply could not do without. I reached 537, I probably missed out a few!

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

103. Bo Carter – Banana in your fruit basket

A lot of the Blues we have recorded was sanitised for general output. The Blues came from rural areas in Mississippi and Louisiana and was the music of the hard-working sharecropping families who worked there. It served many functions – as work-songs – to speed up the repetitive labour in the fields – as dance songs at the country barbeques – as busking songs in the streets – as songs for entertainment in the bars and brothels – and as protest and cathartic anger. I think a lot of these never saw the light of day. They were considered too dangerous to risk putting on vinyl. Life was

Bo Carter was performing back in the early 1930s and specialised in risqué acoustic Blues songs with double entendres. His guitar playing is very highly developed rag-time style. This album, as the name suggests, is full of these type of songs. Some of them are very amusing and some highly inventive. It includes such gems as ‘My pencil won’t write no more’, ‘Pussy cat blues’, ‘Don’t mash my digger so deep’, ‘Pin in your cushion’ and ‘What kind of scent is this?’


104. Band – Music from Big Pink

The Band started as Rocker Ronnie Hawkin’s backing band before ending up as Bob Dylan’s backing band. Big Pink was the name of the big house in Woodstock where Dylan & the Band used to hang out and rehearse after his motorbike accident in the late sixties.

They went back to playing around with a lot of musical styles that would now be termed Americana. This was at odds with the prevailing psychedelia of the day as well as the styles that Dylan had been developing shortly before. It was as if Dylan needed to shut the door on that and open a new chapter.

The impromptu sessions were recorded in that basement and have since been released by Dylan, mainly due to all the bootleg versions I suspect, as ‘The Basement tapes’.

‘Music from Big Pink’ came out of those sessions as well. It was a studio album featuring a couple of Dylan originals and a new style of music.

This is the album that blew Eric Clapton away so that he moved right away from Progressive Rock. So in that sense it was a bad influence.

It is a great album stuffed full of memorable tracks such as ‘The weight’, ‘Tears of rage’, ‘Long black veil’ and ‘To kingdom come’ as well as the two Dylan tracks ‘This wheel’s on fire’ and ‘I shall be released’.

It’s a great album but I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest it should usurp the whole of Progressive, Acid and Psychedelic Rock.


105. George Harrison – All things must pass

When the Beatles split I don’t think anyone thought that George would emerge with an album of this quality. He came out with all arms flailing and legs pounding. He’d been saving up all his songs and blasted them out on this triple album. One of the tensions in the band was that George did not feel his contributions were valued; it was hard getting them past the Lennon/McCartney machine. Perhaps he wanted to prove to everyone that he was just as good a song-writer.

I’d always valued his efforts and this album continued with those gems. There was ‘Wah-Wah’. ‘Isn’t it a pity’, ‘My sweet Lord’, ‘What is life?’, ‘If not for you’, ‘the art of dying’, ‘Apple scruffs’ and ‘Beware of darkness’.

It was great to see that we were still going to get some decent stuff coming through even if the Beatles were no longer a band.


106. Donovan – Sunshine Superman

Donovan doesn’t get enough recognition for some of his achievements. That is probably because a lot of his stuff was seen as hippie-dippy and Pop trivia. But that isn’t completely fair. Don did some great acoustic stuff on his first couple of albums. His ‘Ballad of a Crystal Man’ and cover of Buffy St Marie’s ‘Universal Soldier’ were brilliant and by no means alone.

Sunshine Superman comes from the mid sixties and was quite a departure and also a real innovation. Donovan captured a real new sound and was probably the first with Psychedelic Folk. I really adore this sound. ‘Sunshine Superman’ with its acid guitar and trippy lyrics set the tone for what was to come. This came out in 1966 in the States – before all the psychedelic stuff took off in 1967.

The Acid scene was set with ‘Season of the Witch’, ‘The Trip’, ‘The fat Angel’, ‘The three Kingfishers’ and the sitar/tabla influence of ‘Ferris wheel’. Bert’s Blues was about Bert Jansch.

It was way ahead of its time, not at all poppy and with some great songs and great vibe.


107. Bert Jansch – Bert Jansch

Bert Jansch came down from Scotland to join the London Folk Blues scene in the mid sixties. He was the wild young Scot with the rough and ready attitude and his playing reflected that. He was immediately up there with the likes of fellow acoustic guitarists John Renbourn and Davey Graham. Davey had recently come back from Morocco with the instrumental ‘Anji’. The three of them set a formidable pace for acoustic folk-blues guitar playing and soon got recording contracts.

I see the first two albums as being very similar – ‘Bert Jansch’ was the first and ‘It don’t bother me’ was his second album and both were released in 1965.

I selected ‘Bert Jansch’ because of the iconic songs that it featured although both albums had a similar sound, style and feel. I remember when I was 16 years old sitting on the bed in my tiny bedroom playing this album over and over again. It was totally different to all the Rock, Blues, Pop, Folk and Beat music I was listening to. I think it was Neil Furby, a friend from school, who introduced me to both Bert and John Renbourn. Shortly after that I started going up to Les Cousins in Greek Street and to the Barge at Kingston to catch them all. It was at one of those Les Cousins concerts that I first caught the young mercurial Roy Harper.

The songs that really grabbed me were ‘Needle of death’, ‘Do you hear me now’, ‘Your love is strong’, ‘Running from home’ and the instrumental copied from Davey Graham and re-titled ‘Angie’.

This album is very evocative to me of the mid-sixties with all its social changes.


108. Grateful Dead – American Beauty

The Grateful Dead started out as the Warlocks as an R&B outfit. They rapidly transformed into an Acid Rock band and provided the feedback for Ken Kesey’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests.

They were a leading light at all the San Franciscan Free events and one of the original and first Acid Rock bands to get signed. They were a great live band with Jerry Garcia’s guitar style creating wafting patterns as the band free-formed through their elongated trippy soundscapes.

Their fans were rabid and became known as Deadheads.

I personally never really got into their early albums and did not think that they ever truly captured their sound on vinyl.

In the mid-seventies they underwent a change of style into a more country influenced sound. This album ‘American Beauty’ comes from that period. It features great tracks like ‘Box of rain’, ‘Sweet Magnolia’ and the infamous ‘Truckin’’.


109. Chuck Berry – On stage

This was the first Chuck Berry album I bought and I reckon it captures the excitement of Chuck’s early act though there is some conjecture as to the recording. It was actually studio recorded tracks with audience sound dubbed in. I still find it absolutely electric.

Chuck was the most exciting act around with all his stage moves with that guitar – the machine gun, duck-walk and splayed leg antics – as well as the distinctive guitar blues based riffs. He was right up there with Bo and Little Richard.

This album starts with the stormin’ ‘Go Go Go’ and went on with ‘Memphis Tennessee’, ‘Maybelline’, ‘Rockin’ on the railroad’, ‘Jaguar and the thunderbird’, ‘Sweet little sixteen’ and ‘All aboard’.

Whether it was authentically live or not it worked for me.


110. Bo Diddley – Bo’s big 20

Where would the British Beat groups be without Bo Diddley. Bo was short for Bad Boy and Bo certainly lived up to his name. He started as a boxer and street busker in McComb Mississippi before becoming discovered, moving to Chicago, encountering Muddy Waters and becoming a Blues Rocker. No one ever has quite that swagger that Bo Diddley had. He was one for the garish clothes and outrageous home-made guitars with weird tuning, weird effects, weird fur, weird shapes and incredible rhythms.

All these top 20 Bo Diddley compositions, plus a lot more, were the staple diet of British Beat Bands back in the 1960s. Along with his maraca man Jerome Green and the Beautiful Duchess in slinky dresses on bass he took the place over like a hurricane coming through. There was never a more boastful set of songs with ‘Bo Diddley’, ‘Hey Bo Diddle’, ‘Bo’s a lumberjack’, ‘Run run Diddley daddy’ and ‘I’m the greatest lover in the world’. Yet nobody deserved to be shouting out loud about their talents. This was the man who had written and performed all those great Rock songs that will go down in history – ‘I’m a man’, ‘500% more man’, ‘Cops and Robbers’, ‘Pretty Thing’, ‘Say man’, ‘Pills’, ‘Roadrunner’, ‘You can’t judge a book by the cover, ‘I can tell’, ‘Who do you love?’ and a load more.

A lot of them are on here and they sound as good as ever!


111. Bob Dylan – Another side of

In this, Bob’s fourth album, there was another departure. There was a more poetic approach with less overt politics. It brought a lot of criticism at the time from people who thought he was getting out of touch with the Civil Rights and anti-war movement. Yet this album was suffused with social concern. Even the humorous ‘Motorpsycho nitemare’ was painting a picture of the narrow-minded conservative anticommunist farmer.

This was the third acoustic album of note and contains one of my favourite Dylan tracks in the sensitive ‘To Ramona’. I always saw this as a poem to a young black girl who was feeling defeated by the institutionalised racism of sixties Northern America.  Bob was telling her she would be OK she was better than all of them. It was a deceptive song that sounded soft and gentle yet disguised a real bite. The same was true in a different way for ‘Chimes of freedom’. This was an extraordinary poem that was based on a thunder storm in which the sounds of the church bells melted into the flashes of lightnin’ and crash of thunder. It was one of those mystical moments where Bob was imagining the wondrous spectacle being put on for all the unfortunates and socially deprived. Bob summed up his stance of moving away from preaching at people with both the songs ‘All I really want to do’ and the humorous ‘I shall be free No. 10’ in which he states that it wasn’t any use talking to him that it was the same as talking to yourself; in other words he did not know anything more than anyone else; he had no answers.

Though nothing was overt the album’s heart was still firmly based on fairness, justice and freedom. This was coupled with a number of great personal songs about the break-up of his relationship with Suzie Rotollo.

Altogether it was another incredible album.


112. Roy Harper – Folkjokeopus

Folkjokeopus should have been the album that launched Roy into orbit but it failed. That failure was due to the lack of understanding displayed by the Liberty label. They had seen Roy’s potential, wanted to realise it and create a commercial proposition and brought in the seasoned hit-maker Mickie Most to produce the album. The trouble was that this was not the direction Roy wanted to go off in and the two of them rapidly ended up at loggerheads. The album was largely made in a series of rushed first takes and the potential of Roy and the songs was not fully realised.

So why is it in here among the best albums of all time? Well it is here simply because of the immense quality of the songs. ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ in particular is one of the most important songs of the whole sixties. Very few songs even attempt to tackle the vast spectrum of society and its ills that Roy sets off to do and even fewer manage to pull it off.

When I first heard Roy do it live I was transfixed. The poetic lines hit straight into the centre of my cortex like cobra venom. I’d never heard anything as acidic. This was biting vitriol of the first order. It still is.


113. Pink Floyd – Saucer full of secrets

This was the first album of Pink Floyd’s after Syd Barrett left. There was much conjecture regarding the future of the band as Syd was seen as the creative element. It was widely regarded that the band would flounder in his wake. Even management sided with Syd and backed him rather than the rest of the band. The band were dropped.

The sceptics were confounded. The album picked up the threads from the first album and developed them. The band went on from strength to strength after that and established themselves as one of the top bands in the world. Syd produced two excellent albums and faded off into seclusion and the life of a hermit. Management had let it slip through their hands.

Syd’s only writing contribution to the album was ‘Jugband Blues’ with lyrics that were very apt. The rest of the album ran with the spacey theme of ‘Astronomy Domine’ from the first album. It seems that the acid experience of psychedelia’s voyage into inner space was to be expressed as an exploration of outer space. Other bands, such as Hawkwind, would head down the same direction. Psychedelia was melded to Fantasy, Sci-fi, Space and Madness. It made for interesting explorations.

The stand out tracks on the album were ‘Saucer full of secrets’, ‘Let there me more light’ and ‘Set the controls for the heart of the sun’ all of which featured heavily in their live performances.

Far from being finished the creative reins had been taken up by the other members and the band was really just beginning. Syd’s ghost was to haunt them forever but they had found a way forward and it was good.


114. Jefferson Airplane – After bathing at Baxter’s

This was Jefferson’s third album and was released in 1967 at the height of the San Francisco hippie dream. It was more of a concept and not so commercially rocky as the previous album. The sound was more developed into an Acid drenched feel which reflected the bands adventures with LSD. There were not particular stand-out tracks so much as a general feel to the album that reflected the philosophy of the hippie generation. The five suites were: ‘Streetmasse’ ‘The War is over’ ‘Hymn to an older generation’ ‘How suite it is’ and ‘Shizoforest love suite’. They related to the hippie themes of love and peace. This album summed up the rejection of the commercial society with its exploitation, money-driven aggression, violence and war.

The album reflected the communities dream of creating a new order with different values; where everything was not all about grabbing what you could whatever the cost.

Jefferson Airplane were the standard bearers for the San Franciscan hippie movement and this album was a statement of that; they were the band of the people. This was a new world and the old one was yesterday.

The album was full of experimentation, acid guitar, harmonies and lyrics that reflected the changes the band were part of. This was music from the new generation to the new generation.

1967 was a good year for great albums.


115. Love – Love

This was the first 1966 debut by Love. It was punkier and more unpolished than later albums and was replete with brilliant songs. It started off with a rocked up version of David & Bacharach ‘Little Red book’ and went on from there.

The stand-out tracks were ‘A message to Pretty’, ‘My flash on you’, ‘No matter what you do’, ‘Coloured balls falling’, ‘Mushroom clouds’, ‘And more’ and the sombre ‘Signed DC’ with its theme of heroin addiction. The themes were nuclear war, hard drugs and relationships. It immediately established the band as a major Los Angeles band and put them right up there in the forefront of the new counter culture.

Ironically the stark theme of the anti-drug song ‘Signed DC’ was to bounce back at them as hard drugs were principally to blame for the band falling apart a little while later.

Another section of my book – ‘537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270’:

Posted on by Opher

537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

Another ten essential Rock albums.

82. Eddie Cochran – Memorial album

It was yet another tragedy that put pay to a multitude of possibilities. Eddie was another one of those unique personalities similar in many ways to Buddy Holly. He had the looks, voice, guitar playing and song-writing skills that could have blossomed even more. What we have are the vestiges of what was surely to have become even more.

Eddie’s guitar playing was not only good but also extremely innovative. The riffs he created on ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘Something Else’ and ‘Come on Everybody’ are still informing guitar playing now. I would loved to have heard what songs he might have come up with in the sixties. It was not to be and he met his death in a road accident in Britain while touring. Gene Vincent was badly injured in the same crash.

The memorial album was one I got when I was about thirteen and I used to play it a lot. It had all those tracks I’ve already mentioned plus ‘Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie’, ‘Milk Cow Blues’ and ‘Hallelujah I love her so’.


83. Yardbirds – Roger the Engineer

I loved the Yardbirds right from that first live album ‘Five Live Yardbirds’ and the first couple of Blues singles ‘I wish you would’, ‘A certain girl’ and ‘Good morning little schoolgirl’.

There was that speeded up Blues that stormed into complete freak-outs. They then went through their chart singles phases after Clapton left and became increasingly adventurous and experimental with Jeff Beck and ended up with that pre-Led Zeppelin phase with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page giving them a dual lead guitar blitzkrieg.

It’s a shame Keith Relf accidentally electrocuted himself on his amplifier. I would love to have seen them reform for a concert or two.

I did get to see the Yardbirds last year but they only had Jim McCarty the drummer out of the original band. Chris Dreja had been replaced with Top Topham. The young lads did a great job but it was really a tribute band.

I chose ‘Roger the Engineer’ because it was a brilliant example of the way the band had developed from its Blues roots to create a psychedelic album fully at home in the Sixties London Underground. Jeff Beck’s guitar was amazing. ‘Over under sideways down’ and ‘Psycho Daisies’ are great examples.


84. Roy Harper – Lifemask

Well we had to get around to another Roy Harper album and this one is another contender for his best album of all time if only because of the incredible ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. That twenty three minute epic is surely the most adventurous epic ever written?

But this album did not stop at that. There were also great songs such as ‘Highway Blues’, ‘All Ireland’ and ‘South Africa’ making it an album of considerable social and political content as well as exceptional musicianship.

This was one of the Abbey Road albums that I was fortunate enough to get to sit in on and I was mighty lucky to do so. Jimmy Page was a revelation and I got to meet up with Keith Moon, Dave Gilmour and Keith Moon among a pile of others. Roy was certainly the centre of a lot of attention from the Rock elite due to the quality of his songs.

This was Roy at his absolute peak when everything seemed possible. His gigs were exceptional and it looked as if he could do no wrong and was about to go mega. Sadly that was not to be. Roy had a hundred ways to sabotage his own career and that was probably for the best. If he had become mega we might not have had all those fabulous later concerts in small venues and all those great albums. Besides he’d have probably killed himself.

But what an epitaph this album would have been!


85. Bob Dylan – Highway 61 revisited

This was the second of Bob’s great electric album trilogy of the mid-sixties.

Bob had progressed from the acoustic troubadour singing songs of social import about civil rights, anti-war and racism to electric songs about society and dark rambling dreams delivered in a spitting stream of consciousness poetry that came straight out of the Beat Generation of the 1950s. There’s not a weak track on it and it has the wonderful ‘From a Buick 6’ and ‘It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry’ ‘Tombstone blues’ and ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. The album was another milestone in the long line of milestones. Dylan continued to forge his craft into new directions, dig up new ground and develop his persona into the hippest dude on the planet with his shades, polka-dot shirts, wired out hair and cool expressionless ace.

The only problem looming on the horizon was the fact that he was getting so strung out on the amphetamine rush, the speed of life and the harrowing weight of expectation. He was full of nervous tics, nicotine stained fingers and restlessness.

The next album was to be his last for a bit. If he couldn’t get off this treadmill then he was bound to explode. His neurones were firing pure plutonium. It was either going to be spectacular or go down with a whimper.

In the event it was going to be the whimper. Perhaps we should be incredibly grateful. We still have him. That did not look likely at one point.

I do wish that the single ‘Positively Fourth Street’ had been included in the album. It was Bob’s attack on all the Folkies that were putting him down because he had gone electric. It is the most vitriolic record ever made and my favourite track of all time for a long while. I’m sure it would have fitted in.


86. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon

After the splurge of psychedelic mayhem with Syd and a great follow on the Floyd languished slightly as if looking for inspiration and direction. There were a few meandering albums that were good, experimental but seemed to lack shape. The question was did they have the song-writing skills to hit the heights again? Did they have the impetus to write great songs and get the band motoring?

The answer was a resounding yes.

‘Dark side of the Moon’ was a change in direction. It was a different sound altogether and it came in ready formed.

This wasn’t psychedelia and it wasn’t Prog-Rock. At least not like anything we knew. It was something else.

In many ways it was sparked by what had happened to Syd and was a story of madness.

The lyrics were there and so were the songs. They were coupled to that same innovation we had come to expect with all its weird sounds, asides and experimentation.

It’s hard to remember the impact it had on me when I first heard it. I have heard it so many times now that it tends to become too familiar. It was immense. The tracks are so varied and each is an extraordinary masterpiece. You can hear the attention to detail that has created them yet they are not over-produced. They retain their vitality.


87. Jefferson Airplane – Volunteers

Well the album starts with ‘We can be together’ and ends with ‘Volunteers’ and has a big theme of the revolution, activism and getting out on the streets. They were still out there pushing the Hippie philosophy with a tougher political edge.

This was the album that was urging the kids to continue the struggle to build something better. It was about social change.

The music was a little tougher but still full of those harmonies with a swapping around of lead vocals.

I saw Jefferson Starship recently and they only had one member of the original airplane. I’d love to see them get together again. I caught them a couple of times in their heyday and they were great.


88. Bob Marley – Catch a fire

‘Catch a fire’ is the third album I’ve put in from Bob. I actually had a ticket to go and see Bob Marley in Santa Barbara back in 1979 on what turned out to be his last tour. It was spectacular. I’ve heard the CD and seen the DVD. The only hole in it is me. I was prevented going by family commitments. I thought I’d catch him some other time. It was not to be.

Bob stood for a lot of things but I think the most important was respect. You can hear the emphasis on bringing the black races back in from the cold starkly on this album on numbers such as ‘No more trouble’, ‘Slave driver’, ‘400 hundred years’ and ‘Stop that train’. This was an album all about emancipation and freedom.

This an album by the original Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. It was the first on Chris Blackwell’s Island label and sounds most subdued than later Marley albums which seemed a bit more unrestrained. That’s not a bad thing but it does create a mellow vibe which is exemplified by ‘Stir it up’.


89. Robert Johnson – King of the Delta blues singers

Robert Johnson is considered by many to be the consummate Blues singer. There is still some consternation as to how he managed to play some of the tracks and people have suggested that it was speeded up. I think that is highly unlikely.

Robert only recorded twenty nine tracks in two sessions but they are considered so important that many people trace the whole Blues and Rock phenomenon to his door. I’m not sure about that either. I think it would have got there anyway. But, none the less, Robert was remarkable and highly influential.

He was dead in 1938 at that magic age for Rockers – twenty seven! Perhaps he started all that on that dark night at the crossroads and Jimi, Brian, Jim and Janis were all part of the deal!

But no – we are getting absurd. There was no crossroads, devil or pact of any kind. Robert was a young lad about town ladies man who got himself poisoned when the landlord put strychnine in his whisky because he was making eyes at his wife.

I spoke to Dave ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards about this last year before he died. He claims to have been with Robert that night. The two of them were playing together and Dave refused the whisky. He helped Robert home as he had bad gut ache but nobody expected him to die. They thought he’d get over it in a day or two. His death came as a shock.

I visited all three of his graves but Dave reckoned it was the one at the back of the church of Mount Zion that was his real grave.

The sad thing was that he was being checked out to come and play for a white audience at Carnegie Hall. It could have all taken off for him. Who knows how that might have gone if he’d lived? We’ll never know. They got Big Bill Broonzy instead and he became a bit of a celebrity, touring Europe and recording.

I saw Son House, who taught Robert how to play guitar, so I suppose I saw the very beginning of Rock Music. It’s kind of like the astronomers looking around for the energy left hanging around from the Big Bang. Robert was the Big Bang in music.

Reputedly Mick Jagger paid millions for a short piece of 1930s film that had someone busking in the background who just might have been Robert Johnson!

Those albums are all we have and they are superb and much covered. If I listed the people who had covered them it would fill pages. The songs are etched into the canvass of Rock – ‘Crossroad Blues’, ‘From Four til late’, ‘Sweet home Chicago’, ‘Terraplane Blues’, ‘I believe I’ll dust my broom’, ‘Last fair deal going down’, ‘Come on in my kitchen’ and ‘Last fair deal going down’, to name a few.


90. Fleetwood Mac – Blue Horizon sessions

One of the bands who were influenced by Robert Johnson, if mainly indirectly through Elmore James, was Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. Jeremy Spencer was an Elmore James fanatic and the band performed a lot of Elmore James’s slide guitar songs with a great deal of panache.

I’ve rather cheated here putting the Blue Horizon sessions because that is really not an album; it’s a whole bunch of six CDs with all their material with Mike Vernon at Blue Horizon. Sorry about that but it is all absolutely mandatory in anyone’s collection.

Liz and I used to go and see them regularly at places like the Toby Jug at Tolworth and they were always great value for money – after all – it did cost all of 25p to get in! They were great fun live, really exuberant and great to dance to because of that rhythm section.

When that first Peter Green album came out it was amazing. The album had a different atmosphere to anything else. I just adored it. It had all these songs by my idol Elmore James – ‘Shake your money maker’, ‘Got to move’ and ‘My heart beat like a hammer’ and all these great things by Pete Green like ‘Long grey mare’ and Robert Johnson’s ‘Hellhound on my trail’. I’d seen Pete play a lot when he was with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and I loved his fluid guitar style. The band seemed to have everything. McVie’s bass was spot on and Mick’s drumming was so crisp. It just worked perfectly.

All those sessions were brilliant. They were the best British Blues Band on the scene. They then went on to add the incredible Progressive Rock sound created from Pete’s brain – ‘Green Manalishi’ and ‘Black Magic Woman’ and then added Danny Kirwin into the mix.


91. Paul Simon – Songbook

I discovered Paul Simon through this album before he teamed up with Art Garfunkel and went into the more commercial side. This was nice and simple and allowed the songs to shine through. In a way I suppose I thought this album was more pure and honest; it hadn’t had the gloss put on it. These versions were unadorned. They seemed more real and passionate to me.

Paul was obviously attempting to muscle in on the mid-sixties Folk scene which had risen to prominence because of Dylan and Greenwich Village. There were the anti-war sentiments in ‘On the side of a hill’ and the civil rights issues with ‘A church is burning’ and ‘he was my brother’ which became labelled by the media as ‘Protest’ songs. And it is probable that these type of songs were not Paul’s forte. He was naturally inclined to the more personal songs. But I loved the raw versions of ‘I am a rock’, ‘Sound of silence’ and ‘A most peculiar man’. The album was splattered with his delicate love songs.

Paul was living in London and trying to insinuate himself into the vibrant London Folk Scene when he recorded this album. Then the ‘Folk-Rock’ Simon & Garfunkel album took off unexpectedly and he beetled off back to America and a new life.

Paul did not want this album out. He probably thought it would be at odds with the more polished later albums. I prefer it.


92. Cream – Goodbye

Cream had come to the end of their life. Relationships between Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce had deteriorated to the point of violence and animosity. Not only that but Clapton thought that their creativity and innovation had got itself into a rut. Despite the fact that they were taking everywhere by storm and their shows were searing Rock at its very best they wanted out.

The heavy schedule of touring and recording had exacerbated the situation and Ginger blamed his hearing problems on Jack who he said was turning his amp up to max all the time and blasting Ginger with deafening sound.

Eric had also been beguiled by the Band and seemed to want to leave behind his loud Rock style for a more sedate type of music.

They were persuaded, fortunately, to do one last album and this was it. It was supposed to be another double album like ‘Wheels of Fire’ with one album of live and one studio, but there was not enough material for this so they opted for a single album with a live side and a studio side with one live track. I would have liked more but this is still good. The live version of Politician was particularly good. I’ve always loved that song.

Goodbye was not quite the epitaph it could have been. It was good but it could have been even better as that double album with five or six more studio tracks. All three of the studio tracks ‘Badge’, ‘Doing that Scrapyard thing’ and ‘What a Bringdown’ were excellent. Cream certainly had not lost it.

Extract from 537 Essential Rock Albums

Posted on by Opher

I thought it was about time I put up a few extracts from some of my books. This one is the first part (I still have to write the second part). I did get a little stick for putting in some ‘best of’ compilations – but in my opinion that is valid. I accept that usually an album is put together with great thought and has a distinctive feel and that a ‘best of’ is often just a random bunch of disparate tracks, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes I like to listen to a ‘best of’ and find it very satisfying. A matter of taste I guess.

Anyway, here are the next ten of my 537 essential Rock albums – it’s available on Amazon: 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books

Thanks for the ratings and reviews – a writer lives and dies on reviews! Thanks for buying and taking the trouble! I hope you enjoy:

26. Free – The Free Story

This band was so young to be so very good. They were Blues based but the sound they achieved was so much more than that. They had quite a range and repertoire. They are probably best known for ‘Alright now’ with that riff of Kossof’s guitar but they had a range of different sounds that were all equally glorious. I chose this album because it combined a number of the tracks that I adore such as Albert King’s ‘The hunter’, ‘Be my friend’, ‘I’ll be creepin’’ and a host more. They were so good. Paul Rodger’s voice is still one of the best in Rock.

I saw them play once in a tiny pub. There was no stage and they stood there in the corner and did it. There was only a small crowd and I got to stand right at the front. The power shook you. When Paul Kossof stepped forward to do a solo, with feet apart and that anguished look on his face it made you hair jump out of its follicles.

It was a tragedy that they split up and a tragedy that Koss killed himself with his drug taking. We all loved him. He was such a gentle soul.

I remember walking into the dressing room with Roy Harper and him giving me such a welcoming friendly smile. There was none of that Rock Star bullshit.

Another case of what could have been.

But this album shows off some of their best numbers. There were a lot that weren’t included though.

27. Lee Scratch Perry – Time Boom and de Devil Dead

Lee Scratch Perry was responsible for a great deal of quality reggae in the 1960s and 1970s. His Upsetters were renowned and his studios always produced the most experimental sounds. That’s not really surprising when you hear the stories of his prodigious dope smoking.

This album is a one off to me. It was a mixture of spoken intros, great grooves, political and Rasta lyrics, and some brilliant songs and production.

Lee was at his strutting arrogant best. I have heard nothing like it.

I saw Lee last year. He was well in his seventies and still strutting his stuff in the most outrageous costume and a cookin’ band.

This is reggae taken to a different dimension.

28. Rolling Stones – Exile on Mainstreet

The Stones are still one of the greatest Rock bands in the world despite not having produced anything brilliant for years. Their live performances and back catalogue are scintillating and Mick Jagger can still bound about with more energy than your average sixteen year old! Keith Richards guitar riffs (and he wasn’t the main or best guitarist in the original line-up – Brian Jones was) really blast you.

When Brian was ousted in the late sixties it was uncertain how they would go on. They brought in Mick Taylor from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and he brought an edge with him. In Mick Taylor’s time with them they went on to produce a great number of tracks that are now considered classics.

They disappeared off to France to escape paying taxes – hence the ‘Exile on Mainstreet’ title. During that time, which was supposedly drug addled and a bit of chaotic mayhem, they managed to record what was probably their greatest achievement. It came out as a double and was pretty much slated as being overblown and uncommercial.

It took time to digest but later when it was in perspective it was possible to see that it was a masterpiece. Mick’s guitar work is searing and the band is raw and aggressive. The sound is seminal and it rocks.

29. Woody Guthrie – Dust Bowl Ballads

Woody was the original social dissident. He wrote the first songs with social content and has influenced everyone from Dylan through to Springsteen and Billy Bragg. Never has there been a social commentator to match him. His ‘This land is your land’ should be the American anthem.

Woody put his heart on his sleeve and his head where it hurts. He believed in equality and took people as he found them. He didn’t care if they were white, black or green. He roamed and rambled, rode the blinds, worked as a merchant seaman, sign writer and labourer and sung his songs on radio shows and picket lines. He was always the same Woody. He believed in the power of the Trade Unions to fight for justice and fair pay and conditions and stood up to the establishment who exploited people for profit. He was a card carrying communist who had a sign painted on his guitar that read: ‘This machine kills fascists!’ He believed you destroyed prejudice, superiority and arrogance through education and not threats.

Woody fought for what he believed in and what he felt to be right and just. He sang his songs on picket lines and in the face of threats and fury. He wasn’t afraid to use his fists or take a blow.

Back in the 1930s the Oklahoma dust bowl was created by over-farming. The farms became unprofitable and the wealthy bankers instead of helping and investing in ways of solving the problem, called in their mortgages and drove the families off the land into destitution. They headed for the land of plenty in California where they were exploited and abused by people who were selfishly out to make a fortune. It was cheaper to buy in goons to break strikes than to pay people a living wage. They were used as cheap labour. The whole story is portrayed by John Steinbeck in his novel ‘The grapes of wrath’. Woody wrote a series of songs about their plight and released them under the title of ‘The dustbowl ballads’. They are some of the best songs ever written and sung with a passion we don’t hear too much of these days.

30. Downliners Sect – Downliners Sect

When the Rolling Stones burst upon the scene heralding the start of the British Beat boom of the 1960s in the wake of Merseybeat they were joined by a host of other R&B bands. The best of these, and sadly the least known, was the wonderful Downliners Sect.

I was fortunate to stumble across their album in a rack at my local record store the week it was released in 1964. There was no means of playing it in the store and I bought it on the strength of the album cover. The long haired band looked just my cup of tea. My instincts were correct. The album was extremely distinctive and utterly brilliant.

Probably because they chose the wrong tracks to release as singles the Downliners Sect did not take off into the charts like the Stones, Animals and Yardbirds did. That might have been OK if they had stuck to their guns and produced a second album of similar material and quality. Unfortunately they panicked, jettisoned their R&B roots and tried to jump on every trend going. The second album was Country – then an E.P. of sick songs – then a Rock album. They lost credibility and merely confused everyone. So we are just left with this one album of driving, highly original R&B. Fortunately it is a classic!

31. Elvis Costello – Armed Forces

One of the brilliant outcomes of the Punk movement of the 1970s was that it enabled a lot of brilliant but overlooked musicians to get a hearing. The Stiff label was set up by Dave Robinson and Jake Rivera to become one of the leading Independent labels. They specialised in recording artists that the industry had rejected. They called themselves ‘Undertakers to the industry’ because of this and had the motto ‘if they’re dead we’ll sign them’.

They were very lucky to get such a good production and great sound with Nick Lowe playing a big part and for a period of time it was as if Stiff could do no wrong. They were exceptionally good at self-promotion with free badges that they gave out with mottoes like ‘If it ain’t Stiff; it ain’t worth a Fuck’.

Declan McManus was one of the brilliant artists that they picked up from the gutter of Rock. He changed his name to Elvis Costello and rewrote history.

There were so many great albums to choose from that it was impossible to select one that I liked best. ‘My aim is true’ the 1977 debut was amazing and I adored songs like ‘Alison’ and ‘Less than zero’ with their clever wordplay. It was followed up with ‘This Year’s Model’ which was equally good with fabulous songs like ‘Pump it up’, ‘This year’s girl’ and ‘I don’t want (to go to Chelsea)’. But in the end I went for ‘Armed Forces’. It had a feel about it that was slightly better and numbers like ‘Goon squad’, ‘Oliver’s Army’ and ‘Sunday’s best’.

Elvis is most definitely one of Britain’s cleverest songwriters. He is a master with lyrics and a number of his albums will feature in my top 400. I saw him live in York a while ago and he still had the whole thing. He had the floor bouncing as he spat out the words and the Attractions stormed.

32. Ian Dury – New Boots and Panties

Another of Stiff’s signings was the incredible wordsmith Ian Dury. He was a one off. Though he is sadly gone the Blockheads are out there keeping his songs alive and doing a great job of it.

‘New boots and panties’ was an incredible debut. I suppose Ian had served his apprenticeship with Kilburn and the Highroads but he seemed to come out of the woodwork fully formed. The album was a masterpiece of varied styles fitting together like a jig-saw. The stand out tracks for me were: ‘Clever Trevor’, ‘Billericay Dickie’, ‘Sweet Gene Vincent’ and ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll’ – though the rest of it weren’t bad neither.

I saw Ian at Bridlington just after the success of this album. He was being managed by Pete Jenner who I knew from his days with Roy Harper and we had a chat.

The show was amazing. The band really rocked but Ian stole the night. It wasn’t so much the great songs or brilliant music – his singing was not so much brilliant as distinctive – but the stage act. He was all dressed up in colourful rags and scarves and jackets and hats and canes with lots of dangly things. He stuffed scarves in his mouth, produced weird things from his pockets, blew whistles and walked about like Charlie Chaplin. Somehow it all fitted together and worked.

33. Eels – Daisies of the Galaxy

The Eels are really Mark Everett with a backing band. I was first aware of the Eels when a friend Dave introduced me to ‘Beautiful Freak’ with its incredible ‘Novocaine for the soul’. I was tempted to chose that or the extremely emotional ‘Electro-Shock Treatment’ but instead I went for ‘Daisies of the city’.

Mark is another incredible song-writer. His life has been one long sad journey which has been well documented in his great autobiography ‘Things the Grandchildren should know’. He has more than his share of death, suicide and cancer and his answer was to pour it all out in song.

The reason I like ‘Daisies of the City’ is that it is a beautifully produced album of nicely constructed songs full of sad optimism. I too like birds and won’t take a single wooden nickel. It puts a tiger in my tank.

34. Billy Bragg – Brewing up with Billy Bragg

Billy Bragg burst upon the scene with his two speakers on a harness on his shoulders and an electric guitar busking in the streets, singing political songs at the height of the miners’ dispute. He was an unlikely Pop Star yet he managed to get a song like ‘Between the wars’ into the top ten and accepted by the ordinary apolitical public.

I like my Billy raw with that distorted guitar and energy. I went off him a bit when he got too refined and the music became sophisticated.

‘Brewing up with Billy Bragg’ sounded like it was sung by a soldier. It had that straightforward style and yet the words were not military; they were more complicated and told the story of class struggle and love.

This was a completely different voice and style to anything I’d heard before. The lyrics were perceptive and distinctive.

I thought ‘It says here’ sums it up. How can you have democracy if you can’t trust the media? The tabloid newspapers control the thoughts of a large percentage of the population. Who owns the media controls the minds of the people. Goebbels knew that. If you told a lie often enough people would believe it.

My faith in the BBC’s objectivity was severely shaken when I saw them deliberately reverse the course of events to misrepresent what had happened at the Orgreave Coke Plant in the miner’s dispute. That was a political decision. They lied to mislead people. It showed that the BBC is not objective. We cannot trust them.

People like Billy Bragg are the voice of reason and integrity. He has my respect.

Brewing up was recorded around the time of the Falklands war. His songs reflected that. We all know that war generates hate.

35. Jackson C Frank – Blues run the game

I was introduced to Jackson C Frank by my friend Robert Ede in 1965. I was lucky enough to see him live in a tiny pub in Ilford High Street with my mate Pete. He was a delight and performed most of the songs on this wonderful album.

Jackson was a warm and friendly man and didn’t deserve all the unpleasant things that happened to him.

This album is a batch of pure delights. The soft lilting songs with great guitar picks and great words are sung with Jackson’s soft and pure voice. It is beautiful and set the scene for all the singer-songwriters who were to follow on in that London scene centred on the Soho club ‘Les Cousins’. These include Roy Harper, Al Stewart and visiting Americans like Paul Simon.

I was knocked out by ‘Dialogue’, ‘Just like anything’ and ‘Blues run the game’.

The tragedy is that he did not really deliver a follow up. His later recordings did not match up to this high standard.