1. Roy Harper – Stormcock
2. Beatles – White Album
3. Captain Beefheart – Lick my Decals off
4. Bob Dylan – Bringing it all back home
5. Byrds – Notorious Byrd Brothers
6. Love – Forever Changes
7. Doors – Strange Days
8. Mothers of Invention – We’re only in it for the money
9. Cream – Disraeli Gears
10. Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland
11. Pink Floyd – Wish you were here
12. Country Joe & the Fish – Electric Music for the Body & Mind
13. Neil Young – Harvest
14. Joni Mitchell – Blue
15. Bob Marley – Exodus
16. John Lennon – Imagine
17. Sex Pistols – Never mind the Bollocks
18. Stiff Little Fingers – Inflammable Material
19. Little Richard – Here’s Little Richard
20. Son House – Death Letter Blues
Excerpt – 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 Paperback
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
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)
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.
Another slice of ‘537 Essential Rock Albums’ – my views on what are the best rock albums ever.
I’m not too fussed about the order, that changes from day to day. In my opinion ehese are just albums that everybody should own and listen to constantly! My favourites!
537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books
93. Bruce Springsteen – Darkness at the edge of town
This album was made before Bruce had made that breakthrough into becoming a megastar. His song-writing was near its peak and he’d had a big lay-off due to legal battles with his management. The previous album ‘Born to Run’ had broken him into the mainstream and the two year gap enabled him to get his song-writing and recording together for the next one. It also fired him up with anger and frustration that spilled out onto the tracks. You can hear it on ‘Badlands’, ‘Adam made a Cain’, ‘Factory’, ‘Prove it all night’, and ‘Promised land’.
I love this album because you can feel the intensity of the emotion coming straight through. The production was crystal clear and Bruce’s guitar seared with fury. The lyrics were among his best. He had distilled this out of a huge number of songs that he’d spilled out during his enforced rest. Some of those had gone out to other people and loads stayed in the can for a long time. What finally came out made all the waiting worthwhile. This was a landmark album and took Bruce forward a big step. That sound was now crisp and the songs finely honed.
If only a number of other bands, like Cream, had had that same forced period of rest to recover their creative zest they probably would have gone on to make further masterpieces.
94. Roy Harper – Flat Baroque & Berserk
Roy’s expertise had finally come to the attention of the powers that be. EMI had woken up to the fact that there was a burgeoning Underground scene in England and wanted to get in on the act. They wanted to sign up the best psychedelic and progressive bands and Roy was among the first to benefit. They created this new label – ‘Harvest’ and began to harvest the talent.
For the first time Roy was able to record his material in a sympathetic manner, with a produced and engineers who appreciated his songs and a studio, in Abbey Road previously used by the Beatles, which allowed him to give the material the production it deserved. It was a marriage made in heaven.
I was fortunate enough to get invited to the party and watch it all take shape. The control room was often packed with the elite of Rock Music with Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Dave Gilmour and John Bonham popping in to see how things were going and add their contributions. They were heady days.
Roy usually had at least one epic to add to the mix and there were a couple of weighty pieces on this effort. The major song was ‘I hate the Whiteman’ which was a vitriolic blast at European culture and the great edifice of a society that it had created. This was a song in the same vein as that other masterpiece ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ and Roy did not want to see it go the same way. He wanted to ensure it was properly recorded and he wanted it to be live so that all the passion would come across. He recorded it at Les Cousins as the centre-piece of the album.
This album was a real gem with a range of superb songs. The studio and production really did justice to them and superb compositions like ‘Another day’, ‘How does it feel’, ‘East of the Sun’, ‘Tom Tiddler’s Ground’ and ‘Davey’ all came to life.
Strangely, despite its excellence, it failed to become enormous. For all that it is a triumph.
95. Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde
This was the third of Bob’s brilliant string of mid-sixties electric albums. It was a bit different to the two previous in that the song-writing had changed again, the production was different, and Bob had hit upon this new sound that permeated the whole album. It was really created around Al Kooper’s organ and Robbie Robertson’s guitar. This was a double album of superb brilliance and there wasn’t a filler to be found anywhere. The scope was also enormous from the fun and exuberance of ‘Rainy day women #12 and 35’ (a term for a doobie) and the epic slow and melancholy ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’.
This was Dylan motoring at his very best with poetry leaping from his tongue in one long cavorting stream. Nearly all these songs have gone on to become classics and there were so many of them – ‘Stuck inside of mobile with the Memphis Blues again’, ‘Visions of Johanna’, ‘Pledging my time’, ‘One of us must know, (sooner or later)’, ‘Temporarily like Achilles’, ‘Most likely you go your way, I’ll go mine’, ‘Absolutely sweet Marie’, ‘4th time around’, ‘Obviously 5 believers’ and ‘Just like a woman’.
It had raised the bar again.
Sadly it was also the end of an era. Just as the whole sixties thing, that had been inspired by Bob, began to gain momentum and get underway its architect dropped out. It had all got too much and a motorbike accident allowed him the excuse to get out, clean himself up, get rid of his whole unwanted persona as ‘the spokesperson for a generation,’ dump all the expectations, get over his strung-out nerves, and put things in perspective. He decided he didn’t want the shit.
What came after had some great moments but never reached the heights of his two purple patches in the sixties.
96. Beatles – Let it be
The Beatles were also suffering from careeritis. They had got sick of being with each other. There were personality clashes, jealousies over the inclusion of songs, managerial problems and financial concerns. It was all going pear-shaped. They were baling out and putting their solo careers into gear.
There was some dispute over whether this or Abbey Road was the last album by the fab four. It was all to do with recording dates and the shelving of the album ‘Get Back’. It matters little.
The album was brilliant despite the problems between the various members and their spouses. If this is what discord produces then there should be a lot more of it. The album was certainly a great way to go out. The shame of it is that they never got back together again. They were so much better together as we could see from the various solo careers. Both George and John started brilliantly and faded badly and Paul was all middle of the road. It was tragic that by the time they began to put their personal issues behind them we were robbed of any further reunion by a deranged madman who murdered John.
The highlight of the album for me was John’s ‘Across the universe’ which is my favourite Beatle track. But it was packed with other delights such as ‘Get back’, ‘I Me Mine’, ‘One after 909’, ‘Dig it’, ‘Let it be’, ‘Dig a pony’ and ‘The two of us’.
It was immaculate. Thanks guys.
97. Captain Beefheart – Spotlight Kid
The Spotlight Kid is another tour de force of Beefheart and one of my firm favourites. Don went on and on producing the greatest and most innovative Rock sound ever and using a number of different musicians in the process.
This album was a lot more blues based with slightly less discordant structures to the songs that a lot of people find more accessible. It still had all the Beefheart hallmarks though. His voice, lyrics and the sound of the band were all top-notch.
From the opening guitar riffs of ‘I’m going to booglarize you baby’ you get the feeling that this is something special. The second guitar comes in and then the bass. Beefheart growls into he mic and sends a shudder through you. First hearing and I was fully booglarized. ‘White Jam’ started very differently with its absence of guitar and keyboard emphasis but the lyrics were still as good. We won’t go into what this white jam might be. We’re back to guitars on ‘Blabber ‘n’ Smoke’. We’ve all been there. ‘When it blows its stacks’ is back to that ominous riff and growling. I know I wouldn’t want to be around when that blows!
The album goes on and on in the same vein with track after track of outstanding sound. By the time I’d been down the line with ‘Click Clack’ and got myself ready for a sub-aqua existence with ‘Grow fins’, my friend Paul’s favourite, I was certainly ready to believe that there was certainly ‘No Santa Claus on the Midnight train’. We were on our own!
I soared off into the sky in my slightly dirge-like glider.
What a superb album and it wasn’t even one of his best!
98. Family – Family Entertainment
Family were one of those highly talented Progressive Rock groups who emerged on the British Undergound scene in the sixties. They were one of those bands who were better live than on record. Their live performances were scintillating.
Roger Chapman’s voice was extremely distinctive with its great warbling quality. The band were very Tight. Charlie Whitney played most instruments and Rick Grech’s bass was excellent. He was later snaffled by Blind Faith and drunk himself to death in his forties.
This is my favourite album of theirs because it has the epic ‘Weaver of life’, classic ‘Observations from a hill’ and great ‘Hung up down’.
They should have gone on to greater things.
99. Beatles – Please Please Me
If you are looking for the album that made the biggest impact then this is it. You probably have to go back to Elvis Presley and his ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ album in 1957 to get close.
The Beatles exploded upon the scene and sent napalm cascading over the planet. It was the rebirth of Rock Music. Just when the American Establishment began to relax thinking they’d removed the scourge of Rock ‘n’ Roll the Beatles came and kicked everything into space. They released a swell like a burst damn. There was no way it was going to be put back in that bottle.
This album changed the world and paved the way for everything that came after. What poured through the hole they’d blasted transformed society, sparked off the sixties era of social reform and ushered in a whole new wave of liberalisation. All that from a set of songs on a chunk of waste material made from oil.
My friend Tony played me ‘I saw her standing there’ and I was completely blown away. As soon as you heard it you recognised the significance. This was new, different and modern. Not only that but it was also British!
They blew the past away. None of the Underground, psychedelia or Rock Music would have happened without them. This album was transformative. We’d all be wearing short back and sides without it.
Apart from the sound, and the appearance of the performers, the other incredible thing about this debut album was that seven of the fourteen tracks were written by the Beatles. That was unheard of. In general singers sung other people’s songs. Elvis did write songs. Of course there were exceptions such as Buddy Holly but in general the song-writers of the Brill Building in Tin Pan Alley provided the material or it was stolen from black R&B. This was a departure that gave the Beatles a big boost and enhanced their chances of longevity. Not only that but it was instantly obvious that the quality of even their early material – ‘I saw her standing there’, ‘Please please me’ and ‘PS I love you,’ – were every bit as good as the R&B classics that made up the rest of the album. Even their choice of the R&B material was unusual. It was not the usual songs that other Liverpool bands were covering. The Beatles had selected things like ‘Chains’, ‘Anna (go with him)’, ‘Boys’, ‘A taste of honey’ and ‘Twist and Shout’.
It blew the cobwebs out of the social machine!
100. Jimi Hendrix – Are you Experienced?
Talking of brilliant earth-shattering debut albums then this was another. I can still remember hearing ‘Hey Joe’ for the first time on an old portable tinny, plastic radio and sitting bolt upright to concentrate. My ears had never heard a sound like it. Jimmy exploded on us ready-formed.
That first album blew my young innocent mind. In early 1967 I was seventeen and clearly not at all experienced. When ‘Hey Joe’ came out in 1966 my American pen-friend (we are talking archaic social media here) wrote to me telling me that she and her friends liked getting high on grass and listening to Jimi. I imagined them out in a meadow on top of a hill with a portable radio. It did not take too long for me to catch up though.
Everything Jimi produced was mind-blowing. He shifted the whole music scene into another gear and propelled us into Progressive, Heavy and Psychedelic all at the same time.
The first album may have been all short tracks overseen by Chas Chandler but they spoke in Martian. That was lucky because we were all yearning to speak Martian and lapped it up. From ‘Foxy Lady’ to ‘Are you experienced?’ it was non-stop aural explosive delight. Jimi wrenched new sounds out of the guitar, new chords, new feedback and weaved it round his songs to create something from outer space. We loved it.
There are no stand-out tracks because they were all stand-out – ‘Fire’, ‘Love or Confusion?’ ‘Can you see me?’ ‘Manic depression’ ‘Third stone from the sun’ – it went on and on with one crazy new thing after another. The sound was so new, dynamic and loud. This debut was the start of something outrageously special. There’ll never be another Jimi.
101. Screaming Jay Hawkins – Cow fingers & mosquito pie
There’ll never be another Screaming Jay either! This is the man who back in the early 1950s started Shock-Rock. He developed an act that was so shocking that it must have scared the life out of that staid old world of ice-cream and apple-pie. He started off on stage springing out of a coffin complete with long cape, voodoo amulets, shrunken skulls, snakes, wide eyes and grimaces. Alan Freed put him on his Rock ‘n’ Roll shows as ‘the Wildman of Rock’ and I can’t imagine what effect having a huge Blackman leaping out of a coffin and gurning at the audience had on all those young teenage white girls.
The songs were in the same vein and his classic ‘I put a spell on you’ which came out in the mid fifties was considered so primitive with its grunting and groaning that it was banned from radio play. That song was covered by everyone on the Beat scene back in the sixties. He put his operatic voice to good use creating some outrageous songs and strange parodies of classics like ‘I love Paris’ which were so weird they were wonderful.
This album collects together most of those classic tracks with ‘I put a spell on you’, ‘Alligator wine’, ‘Frenzy’, ‘There’s something wrong with you’ and ‘Orange coloured sky’ though it does miss off the wonderful ‘Constipation Blues’ (for that you have to go to ‘Feast of the Mau-Mau’) and his much later cover of Tom Wait’s ‘Heart attack and Vine’ that was used in a commercial on TV.
His act has been copied and built on by lots of others including Screaming Lord Sutch and Alice Cooper.
102. Tommy Tucker – Hi Heeled Sneakers
Tommy produced two absolutely classic singles that were done in that Jimmy Reed/Slim Harpo style with the infectious beat – ‘Long tall Shorty’ and ‘Hi-heeled sneakers’. Those songs have been done to death by Beat groups and I can see why. They have that easy-going, laid-back jauntiness with a hypnotic bass-line.
Tommy unfortunately died early and never built on the success of his two brilliant singles. The manner of his death was really bizarre. He was touring England in the sixties and died of food poisoning from a hamburger. Surprisingly McDonalds did not feature him or his songs in any advertising (It wasn’t a McDonalds – we didn’t have them here back then!)
This album contains all his early stuff.
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?’
Another slice of my 537 Essential Rock Albums book!
537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502787408: Books
46. Patti Smith – Easter
Patti Smith was that uncompromising powerhouse who crashed out of New York on the wave of all that Punk energy of the mid-seventies. This was the sound that powered McClaren and the British Punk movement. Patti was full of it.
I particularly loved her ‘Piss Factory’ single and used to play it all the time in the car as I was going to work just to put me in the mood. It’s a shame she never put that on the album. ‘Horses’ came out with its powerful version of ‘Gloria’ that blew the arse off everyone else’s. But it was ‘Easter’ that really grabbed me as an album. The fury of her performance was captured on the album and got straight through to me. It was raw and angry and that is often how I like my Rock to be. It launches straight in with ‘Til Victory’ and storms on through stuff like ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger’, ‘25th Floor’, ‘Privilege’ and ‘Space Monkey’. It was high on rebellion and so was I.
Ironically Patti was heavily into the sixties scene with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, the Who and Beatles and these were the very people the Punk movement took to breaking away from. Patti didn’t. You could see that ion the stuff she chose to cover. All that stuff about never trusting a hippie was McClaren’s marketing ploy to create an artificial generation gap and a new image for the Sex Pistol’s. It worked very well but Patti proved that the spirit of rebellion was not just a Punk thing. It’s been there right through the whole of Rock, Jazz and Blues. You just have to tap into it.
Some people said that her hit ‘Because the night’, the Springsteen number, was a bit of a sell-out but I loved it.
47. North Mississippi Allstars – Shake hands with Shorty
Just when you think that Rock is truly dead and buried in a coffin of sanitised overproduction overseen by the major labels in their relentless drive to make more money from ‘product’ that does not offend the ears of the ‘middle of the road’ punter and can consequence reach the largest audience; just when you think Simon Cowell and ‘The Voice’, ‘Britain’s got talent’ and other sanitised shit has stolen the minds of all the world and you’ve given up hope; along comes a bunch of vibrant uninhibited musicians whose approach is rowdy, raw and ‘we don’t give a shit’ we’re going for it.
The North Mississippi Allstars was introduced to me by Lester Jones and I was bowled over again. They tapped into the blues from the Mississippi Hill County with the genius of RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough and they did it with panache and exuberance. Their first album ‘Shake hands with Shorty’ was a breath of fresh air in the claustrophobic fem-fresh atmosphere of manufactured contrived garbage. It’s all one great dive down to the most popular common denominator – garbage for the garbage collectors.
They were real.
‘Shake ‘em on down’ really did shake the place. Luther and Cody Dickinson sure knew how to keep it real.
48. Nirvana – Smells like Teen Spirit
The trouble is that there is no unifying global scene anymore, no youth culture that is pushing the political and social packet. I was lucky enough to live through the sixties and Punk but was just too young for the 50s Rock thing.
Grunge evolved out of the Punk scene. It had attitude and style. I loved it. It’s great when something with a different sound comes along. Not only that but Kurt was writing really good songs with great lyrics and melodies. It was heavy but varied and different. His voice was great. ‘Nevermind’ kind of shot out of left-field for me. I had not heard ‘Bleach’.
My sons were really into it. They had a hard life. They had to rebel and it was hard to find something I hadn’t heard of or wasn’t in to that wasn’t completely crap. They thought they’d cracked it with Nirvana – shame I took to them so well.
I still rate ‘Nevermind’ really highly and play it a lot.
49. Velvet Underground – Velvet Underground with Nico
The West Coast San Francisco scene was into a peace and love Acid Rock thing which I loved. Los Angeles was a tougher, more hard edged with that R&B sound but the New York scene was a different scene altogether. It didn’t have any of that peace and love scene. The Velvet Undergound epitomised that.
They were Andy Warhol’s house band at ‘The Exploding Plastic Inevitable’. Like the Psychedelic scene they had great light shows in what was a multi-media extravaganza.
Andy Warhol put Nico in the lead vocal role cos she looked the part. She’d come out of his Chelsea Girls filming. It was inspired. Her voice, with its German accent, brought a totally different texture to the sound. It was a strange band. Lou had come in from Garage Punk bands, Mo was a female drummer which was very unusual for those times and classically trained John Cale brought all these weird experimental discordant bits and different instruments like the electric violin. It all gelled into something very different with a mixture of soft lyrical songs and harder Rock numbers. The subject matter was also totally different with an emphasis on heroin, sado-masochism, violence and transvestism. The two big numbers that knocked everyone out were ‘Waiting for my man’ about scoring heroin in Harlem and ‘Heroin’ which was a graphic account of a heroin fix that build up to a big climax. The softer numbers created a nice contrast of light and dark.
I visited New York in 1971 but I didn’t get to see the Velvets or get any flavour of that street scene. I guess I was focussed on the Greenwich Village Scene at the time.
This album blew everyone away because of its totally unique varied character. It came out in 1967 and was immediately seen as one of those important albums. There was a whole bunch of them that year. However it didn’t really get universal recognition for a while. But the Velvet Underground were seen as one of those seminal bands that were to prove so influential on all those who came after.
I liked ‘White Light- White Heat’ but I think this first album was the best.
50. Lightnin’ Hopkins – Lightnin’ Strikes
Dick Brunning introduced me to the blues and Lightnin’ Hopkins when I was fourteen. This album was very different to anything I’d ever heard before. I was into Rock ‘n’ Roll with Little Richard, Chuck Berry and co, and Beat music with the Beatles, Stones, Kinks and Who. It took me a while to get my ears attuned to Lightnin’s blues.
This album sounded as if it had been recorded in a really big echoey old building. There was a lot of atmosphere and a great depth to the sound.
There was just Lightnin’ Hopkins with an amplified electric guitar and some bottle tops nailed on to his shoes. You could imagine him sitting in some empty church or a chair with his amplifier, a big guitar and a sombre mood. He was playing these intricate guitar runs with very distinctive rhythms and his rich Texas voice.
I have heard a lot of Lightnin’ and some of it is quite light and folky, some is quite funny, but this album wasn’t; it was very serious and atmospheric.
After I’d got into Lightnin’s voice and got used to the intonation I really started following those guitar lines. I loved it. On some of the tracks he kept time by tapping his feet on the ground with those bottle tops. It was crazy.
I had this album for years but when I went to America I lent it to a friend called Adam along with 37 other Blues classics. When I got back he’d moved and I never saw them again.
There are a number of albums released with the same title. I have it on CD but somehow it is not quite the same. Even so every time I put it on it takes me straight back to Dick’s room, sitting on that bed nodding my head in time as Lightnin’ sang ‘Worried Life Blues’ and hit those amplified runs. It had a rawness I’d never heard. That was the start of my love of the Blues.
51. Leonard Cohen – I’m your man
It is hard to believe that Leonard is 80 years old. I went to see him again last year and he did a really long three hour show, had an amazingly talented band and sang as good as I’ve ever heard him. The fact that the show was three hours demonstrates the number of quality songs he has written over the years.
Some people find him depressing and seem to think his songs are almost suicidal. I can’t understand that because I find such a range of emotions there. A lot of them are very tongue in cheek, celebrations of love or quite droll and ironic humour while others have a serious side. Whatever it is the lyrics are special. Leonard has a way with words.
This album is a favourite of mine. I was talking about it a week ago with one of my kids who told me I used to play it every morning when I took them into school. I can’t believe that. There are too many brilliant albums to have got fixated on one; but I did play it a lot.
The song ‘I’m your man’ is one of those ones I was talking about; it is suffused with humour and never fails to hit my funny bone.
Leonard is a poet and has a rare ability to paint pictures with words. There is a serious edge to a lot of his songs and ‘First we take Mahattan’ and ‘Everybody knows’ have serious social observation. As I love that sort of thing it gets to me.
I love Len he is a songwriter with gravitas.
52. Fugs – Belle of Avenue A
If ever there was an anarchic bunch of lunatics it was the Fugs. They were full of fun and as crazy as Hell. They combined street theatre, poetry and politics in a mad sprawling symphony of madness promoting sex and drugs and opposing war. There was liberal doses of liberalism, anarchy and poetry.
There is nothing like the Fugs. I loved their extreme lunacy. They seemed to sum up that sixties thing. There was a punk craziness to it and home-made, can-do attitude.
The message was that you could do anything you wanted; just get out there and do it.
Their first couple of albums set the tone for what was to come later. They were pretty extreme.
The music was a mixture of styles and ‘Belle of Avenue A’ was a bit more electric. There were almost tender songs like the anti-war ‘Mr Mack’ and Country & Western on ‘Belle of Avenue A’. There were political themes reflecting what was going on with the kids on the streets as the Vietnam War raged on.
I loved the other albums but I tended to play this one more than the others. They reflected the activism and madness, the revolution and social change of those turbulent times to me.
53. Phil Ochs – A toast for those who are gone
Straight out of the Greenwich Village Folk scene Phil was really the epitome of the Left-wing song-writer straight out of the 1950s activism of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Phil wrote his topical songs on war, civil rights and social equality by focussing on the news stories of the day. Dylan cruelly jibed that he wasn’t a song-writer he was a journalist. This was unfair. He was someone who wore his heart on his sleeve and believed in justice and freedom as much as anyone. Phil did his bit to create the world of equality, free of sexism and racism that we now enjoy. He did his bit for the revolution by writing these socially motivated songs which he sang with passion and anger and sometimes even a fair bit of humour thrown in.
These early albums have some great and important songs. He was a major player even though he never really received the attention he deserved. He was a little in the shadow of the genius of Dylan whose powers eclipsed Phil and caused him immense frustration. His lack of success led him to take to drink which destroyed him and led him to sadly take his own life in the mid seventies.
To me he was a great man. His songs still resonate to me and his sad story could have been so much different.
This album features some of his great political early songs such as the title track, ‘Going down to Mississippi’, ‘I’ll be there,’ ‘Do what I have to do,’ and ‘Ballad of Oxford Town (Jimmy Meredith)’. Phil was a voice for justice and like Woody before him he was prepared to stand up against the thugs and sing his songs.
His songs still inspire me today. You have to stand up against fascists, racists and the hatred of the intolerant. Phil wasn’t afraid to sing out against and we should all take a leaf out of his book.
There are things worth standing up for. We have to stand up against injustice and inequality and make our voices heard. The alternative is that the intolerant and bigoted become the violent bullies of the future.
Thank you Phil.
54. Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield were another of those West Coast bands that came out the same folk based sound as the Byrds. The band was short-lived mainly due to the incendiary relationships between the massive egos of messers Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Dewey Martin.
Many people prefer the second album ‘Buffalo Springfield again’ but I prefer this one. It has some brilliant songs on it ‘Flying on the ground is wrong’, ‘Burned’, ‘Nowadays Clancy can’t even sing’ and the more political ‘For what it’s worth,’ which focussed on what was going down on the Sunset Strip as there was confrontation between the burgeoning new Youth culture and the establishment in the form of the police. Heads were getting bust.
They were short-lived but highly influential and spawned the solo careers of both Neil & Stephen as well as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. That’s quite a legacy.
55. Muddy Waters – Chess Anthology 1947-72
I love those later albums with Johnny Winters but I also love the early stuff of Muddy’s with that searing slide guitar. That was the stuff that set the Rolling Stones off and all those other British beat groups.
The anthology is a double album with all those seminal tracks such as ‘I want to loved,’ ‘I can’t be satisfied,’ ‘I just want to make love to you,’ and ‘I’m ready’. I could name a dozen others. Willie Dixon lit the fuse and Muddy Waters detonated. His voice and guitar smoked.
I don’t know how many beat groups covered ‘I’ve got my Mojo working,’ or ‘I’m a Hootchie Cootchie Man’ or ‘Mannish Boy,’ but I do know nobody did them better than Muddy.
Muddy had that swagger. He’d come up from the Delta to Chicago and proved himself one of the big three acts vying with Elmore James and Howlin’ Wolf for that top spot. He probably had the most exciting act in Chicago but then Howlin’ Wolf clawing his way up the curtains was maybe that slight tad better. Who knows? I wish I’d seen them in those sweaty clubs in Chicago. I think they toned down their act for us soft white Europeans. Muddy used to put a bottle of coke down his trousers, shake it up, flip the top off at the climax of a song and spray the audience. You don’t get much more climatic than that.
When I went round Mississippi I went to the Delta Museum in Clarksdale and sat in Muddy’s cabin. They’d taken it down and brought it inside. That seemed a bit strange. I also went along to the place the cabin had been and looked out over those fields he once worked in. Muddy is a legend. I only got to see him perform three times and he was immense. I wish it could have been more.
I’ve got my Mojo working but it doesn’t seem to work for me. Without Muddy there might have been a lot of bands who would never get going. The Stones even took their name from one of his songs and he introduced both Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley to the world as well as Little Jacob Walters and Otis Spann.
Imagine a world without Muddy? It would be different. I saw his son Mud Morganfield play in York this year. He was OK but his pa was something else.
56. Roy Harper – HQ
It is a big debate as to which is the best Roy Harper album. There are at least three jostling for that spot. I usually plump for Stormcock but in the right mood I might go for HQ. On another day I’d go for Lifemask on the strength of the mighty ‘Lord’s Prayer’ and then I might go for ‘Bullinamingvase’ because of ‘One of those days in England’. It matters little. This list is in no distinct order.
HQ is Roy with a Rock band. It has the cream of Rock musicians on it including the amazing Jimmy Page and Dave Gilmour.
Nobody has ever made an album quite like this, merging serious lyrics with intricate, yet accessible Rock. I rate ‘The Game parts 1-5’ as one of the best Rock songs of all time with its social commentary on the direction our civilisation was heading. That riff knocks it straight into your head and hits you right between the eyes.
Then you’ve got the diatribe against religion with ‘The Spirit lives,’ ‘Hallucinating Light’ and the incredible ‘When an Old Cricketer leaves the Crease’ which should have been a huge hit. Never has there been a better and more haunting song about death. John Peel always said he would have it played at his funeral. It was a shame that he didn’t – but I will!
The rest of the album is good but with those monster songs this album has to be one of the greatest albums ever.
Roy has always been lauded by Rock’s hierarchy but has never had the commercial success his talent deserved.
This album deals with the usual big themes of civilisation, politics, religion, love and death. You can never accuse Roy of ducking any big issues. He has never been one for producing nice little albums of ditties; Roy prefers a big, deep canvas of meaningful proportions. Yet he does it so well with great panache and incredible musical invention and originality. There is no one similar.
I would love to someone of Roy’s calibre on one of those dire Cowell-like TV talent shows. I’m sure he’d stun the whole gamut of audience, panel and viewers. They would not know what to make of real talent! I’d love to see it!
Extract from 537 Essential Rock Albums
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.
My Favourite Top 25 Albums
The Albums – an extract from my book- 537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270
- Roy Harper – Stormcock
Roy Harper is the greatest British song-writer and poet. There is no one who even gets close. His acerbic lyrics and social commentary are unsurpassed. He rivals Bob Dylan as the greatest songwriter of all time and is greatly undervalued. This is not surprising as he has constantly shot himself in the foot and sabotaged his own career. He remains the foremost British dissident and commentator on the human condition. His epic songs are legendary and the music sublime.
Stormcock is arguably his best album but is strongly pushed by both HQ and Lifemask. I would place at least ten of Roy’s albums in my top 400 albums. He’s that important to me.
The Stormcock album features only four tracks but the album is one of his masterpieces. It consists of brilliant songs with poetic imagery and wide canvasses that challenge your imagination. The music and musicianship was innovative and of an excellence that puts this album top of my top ten thousand. It is one of four Harper albums that would make it into my top ten albums of all time. I have a penchant for great meaningful lyrics put to brilliant music and this hits the spot. I never tire of hearing these songs and simply cannot understand why Roy has not been lauded from on high. I love the depth and insight he brings to bear and the risks he takes in developing his ideas through epic songs. Few people can match it.
Roy’s shorter songs are also great but these four songs show how Roy has matured and taken his art to another level. ‘Me and my woman’ is one of the very best tracks ever recorded. The scope is immense and Roy was at the top of his game.
I am fully aware that not everybody shares my opinion. I can see that it is never going to be commercial. Roy’s work is thought-provoking, intelligent and musically intricate. You have to concentrate. It’s not your catchy pop song – fortunately! But it is well worth the effort. For me Roy is the James Joyce of music as opposed to Simon Cowell’s Barbara Cartland.
- The Beatles – the double white album
Because the Beatles were so good and popular they often get overlooked in lists like this but their importance cannot be underestimated. They altered history and remain the best Rock group ever.
What is incredible is that they started as a Rock/R&B/Pop group and developed into the forefront of innovation becoming part of the sixties Underground scene while still retaining their popularity and wide appeal. They were a phenomenon. They pushed the boundaries, made music that was different, experimental, with social importance and yet was commercial and well crafted.
They changed from lovable ‘mop-heads’ to long-haired, outspoken critics of the establishment and fully qualified members of the alternative society – yet retained their commercial appeal because the quality was immense.
Most of the pundits plump for Sgt Pepper’s as the definitive album but I always thought the double white album had more scope and adventure. From the raucous ‘Revolution’, through ‘Yer Blues’ to ‘Piggies’ and ‘While my guitar gently weeps’; from acoustic to hard Rock, Folk, Electronic, Country and Brass Band the album soars. The range is immense. It feels more spontaneous and less contrived than Sgt Pepper. I love it.
- Captain Beefheart – Lick my decals off baby
Now I had immense trouble sorting out which Captain Beefheart album was the best. There were at least four contenders and ‘Trout Mask Replica’ is awesome but for me ‘Lick my Decals off Baby’ is just that bit better.
Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) is the most original and accomplished of Rock performers. His voice is amazing, the vocal range is stupendous, the lyrics are poetry to music and totally unique and the music is from another planet. ‘Smithsonian Institute Blues’ sums up where humanity is going to be – we’re heading to be fossils. The sad thing is that we’re devising our own demise and taking a huge number of species with us! ‘Woe-is-uh-me-bop’ says it all! The album is packed with extraordinary numbers – ‘Space-Age Couple’ and ‘I love you, you big dummy’ are incredible.
This is one of those albums that come along when you can sense a band is in the groove. They had just got ‘Trout Mask Replica’ out of their system and seemed to be motoring down that same channel with effortless ease. Don’s voice and songs were astounding. This album was certainly on a par with ‘Replica’ and I actually thought it shaded it.
Not only that but this band was the ultimate live band. Their performances are legendary. I have seen them many times, through many incarnations, and I never cease to be amazed by the intensity of the intricate music. I have heard nothing like it and I never tire of hearing it.
If you want to hear something completely different then this is it. The music is extraordinary. Those interlacing guitars still sends shivers through me and Don’s voice is unbelievable. This should have been enormous. They were the best band in the world!
- Bob Dylan – Bringing it all back home
Of the three electric Bob Dylan masterpieces of the sixties this was the first and the best. Any album that features a track of the brilliance of ‘It’s Alright Ma – I’m only bleeding’ has to be in the top ten albums. What is up with songwriters today? Nobody is dealing with social issues even though the world is full of immense problems. The young snarling Dylan went for them head on and wrestled them to submission. This song ‘It’s Alright Ma – I’m only Bleeding’ is a no holds barred poke at the establishment. I love it. Dylan was the hippest thing on the planet with his shades, tight pants, mass of curls, polka-dot shirt and James Dean sneer. This album was a departure from the acoustic ‘protest’ songs of before and shows Dylan at his caustic best. Everyone was against him and he responded by hitting out big time in all directions at once. This was the underground Beat Poet rebel who spat words like machine gun bullets. Just listen to subterranean homesick blues and Maggie’s Farm. He was one angry outsider.
This album was another unique departure and revelation. We live in an age where we have become used to a diverse range of music. Back then it was limited fare. There had been nothing like this music before. Bob invented it.
It sparked near riots when he took it out on the road live and induced crazy reactions at Newport Folk Festival with Seeger threatening to put an axe through the power cable as Dylan blasted the audience accompanied by Mike Bloomfield and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. (I loved that raw sound they produced and wished they had done a lot more like it!). During the British tour he was called a Judas and the crowd reactions were often hostile.
As we have often seen it only serves to make Bob more entrenched. He does his own thing regardless.
5. Byrds – Notorious Byrd Brothers
The Byrds started out trying to meld the Beatles to Bob Dylan and produced their own uniquely brilliant sound in the process. It was a sound with jingly guitars and flowing harmonies that came to be known as Folk-Rock. They did their covers of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger songs and then started moving into Psychedelia in the mid-sixties. By the time the late sixties Underground came along they were producing more complex songs with relevant lyrics that aligned them with the alternative society.
The Notorious Byrd Brothers is them at their absolute best – great songs with beautiful harmonies and good lyrics. They captured the sound of the sixties.
What is quite ironic that they did this at a time when they were falling apart. After this album it was all downhill. They teamed up with the great rich kid plonker Gram Parsons and headed off into the dire bland country of ‘Sweetheart of the rodeo’ which is probably their worst effort. Then it was incorporating all the Christian crap and they were a shadow of themselves. As far as I’m concerned Jesus is just not alright. They’d lost their way.
6. Love – Forever Changes
The first couple of albums Love produced were quite Punky. But then Los Angeles had a different vibe to San Francisco. It was much harsher. By the time they got to Forever Changes they had refined their sound to create the perfect fusion of voices and instruments. Bryan Maclean and Arthur Lee wrote some brilliant songs. It was a shame that hard drugs got in the way and decimated the group. They could have gone on to produce more stuff of this calibre.
Listening to this album again one is instantly caught in the atmosphere of it. ‘Alone Again Or’ sets the trend at the beginning with its changes of pace and texture, the delicate acoustic guitar, insistent drums, stunning harmonies. It’s a beautiful song. This is no one off. The album continues on in the same vein right though the whole album. Each song is greatly crafted into a tiny symphony. They move through a range of volumes, textures and feeling all within the space of minutes. Each track has been honed to perfection. The lyrics are great, the voices blend and soar. There are loud forceful sections interspersed with lyrical delicate sections.
As with all brilliant albums this one gels into one consistent experience. The songs flow into each other to create one consistent flow. The Production is so good it enhances the performance.
Unfortunately Love could not maintain this level of perfection. It was not so much a question of running out of ideas as indulging in heroin and falling apart.
What followed were break-ups, false-starts, and mayhem with Arthur getting himself imprisoned for fire-arm offences.
In the 2000s Arthur Lee finally got his act together and reformed Love by using ‘Baby Lemonade’ as his backing band. It really worked. The band was hot and sounded as good, if not better, as the original. I saw them live a number of times and Arthur was in fine form and often stayed around to chat at gigs. The band was motoring, audiences getting big and it looked like they were going somewhere.
Then he got tragically leukaemia and died.
7. Doors – Strange Days
If only Jim had not destroyed himself with alcohol we might have had a lot more like this great album. The album ‘Strange Days’ was the second Doors album and the best. I was very taken by the first album but this one seemed to have a greater consistency of songs, production and performance that gave it a greater coherence.
Jim wrote some great songs, Ray arranged them, John’s drumming was innovative and Robbie did some of the most amazing, unique sounding slide guitar. As far as Acid Rock albums go this is one of the best. There’s not a dud track on it and the sound on ‘Love me two times’, ‘Strange days’, Moonlight Drive’ and ‘People are strange’ is so different to anything before. The epic track ‘When the Music’s over’ tops it off for me.
I was introduced to the Doors by my friend Mike. We worked at the bakery together and spent Friday nights talking music. He was nuts about the new West Coast Acid Rock sound. We’d go back to his place and he’d play me Doors, Beefheart, Love, Airplane and Country Joe. I lapped it up. We wore his albums out.
8. Mothers of Invention – We’re only in it for the money
What can you say about Frank Zappa? The guy was a genius and his intelligence shines through everything he does. There is satire, disdain and a unique style in this unclassifiable album. Frank never aligned himself with any of the sixties movements. He was disdainful of the ‘Flower Power’ Love and Peace movement and saw the hand of the establishment in everything. Frank was openly disparaging about the wonders of marijuana and the whole San Francisco scene. He kept himself aloof. What you got from Frank was pure Frank. He turned his attention on every bit of prudery, hypocrisy and pretentiousness he could find without regard to its origins. He was as much opposed to the politics of the counter-culture as he was with the establishment. I suppose that being in the music business and seeing all the double standards first-hand was bound to make you cynical.
‘We’re only in it for the Money’ came out at the height of the counter-culture and even had all the hallmarks of the scene, with the long hair and outrageousness yet it was not of it. Frank always saw himself as a serious artist and did what he wanted. He was scathing of the music business. The cover was a piss-take of the Beatles Sgt. Peppers but the music is certainly in a league of its own. I used to play this non-stop. There’s nothing sounds quite like it. The vocals are different, instrumentation unique, song structure varied and construction inspired. This is no concept album yet it is constructed to be played through from beginning to end. It flows through the interruptions, asides, stops and starts and changes of direction. This is not a collection of Rock songs. It is a serious piece of music that has songs embedded in it.
I remember being round at Roy Harper’s one afternoon and he played this through from a big reel tape on his sound system. You could hear everything in such clarity. Roy turned to me and said ‘That’s probably the best band in the world.’
9. Cream – Disraeli Gears
Cream emerged at the same time as Jimi Hendrix. They came out of the British Blues Scene but almost immediately took off into a progressive style that stretched it into jazz based free-style jams.
Clapton has never done anything worth mentioning since.
This album came out in that magic year of 1967. They had emerged out of their Blues phase into a psychedelic/Progressive unit. Pete Brown’s poetic lyrics were magical and added a dimension to the songs. The band were full of ambition, self-confidence and riding the peak of their creativity before the long-standing bitterness between Jack and Ginger cast a long shadow over everything and the exhaustion of touring drove them into the ground.
The album had the incredibly innovation ‘Strange Brew’, ‘Sunshine of your Love’, ‘We’re going wrong’, ‘World of pain’ and ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’. They had created a unique sound and it placed them at the very pinnacle.
I caught Cream at the Windsor Blues Festival in 1968 and was blown away by their power and expertise. They were simply the Cream of British musicians and this album is arguable the best of the four they released. For a band with such talent and impact it was a shame that they lasted so short a time. Probably Clapton was demoralised by the genius of Hendrix and gave up trying to compete with him.
I saw Ginger play this year with his new Jazz band and they were really good but it was Jazz and not Rock. It is amazing that he’s still going with his Chronic Pulmonary Disease and crippling back problems. It was a privilege to see him. I only wish I could have got to see the Cream get together at the Royal Albert Hall a few years back. It looked good but not as good as when it was all new.
10. Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland
I thought Clapton could play until I saw Jimi Hendrix. He blew everyone out of the water and nobody has matched him to this day. He was simply the greatest guitarist that ever lived, a brilliant showman and a great songwriter. I knew he was something special the moment I heard ‘Hey Joe’ on the radio. He had captured a different sound. Nobody had ever got that sound out of a guitar before. It made your ears prick up and sent chills through you. Today we are bombarded with the full spectrum of music and it is difficult to imagine the aural world that existed before these sounds were invented. It was like wandering around in fields of green grass and stumbling into a meadow full of flowers. Jimi brought colour into the music.
I saw Jimi play three times and he was simply the most exciting thing I have ever seen.
Electric Ladyland was slated when it came out as a double. People wanted the shorter snappier numbers like on ‘Axis bold as love’. Time has changed all that. It was just ahead of its time and still stands as Jimi’s masterpiece.
It takes a while to get into the album. There is a complexity about many of the tracks. Jimi was experimenting with his psychedelic sound, playing with the potential of the studio and elongating the tracks out into long drawn out soundscapes. It created friction with Chas Chandler who left in frustration. He wanted Jimi to continue producing two and a half minute radio-friendly commercial songs. He thought the extended music was indulgent and not going to receive radio play. He was wrong. It was brilliant. It just took people a bit of time to catch up. There were enough shorter rocking tracks such as the definitive version of ‘All along the Watchtower’, or ‘Crosstown Traffic’, ‘Little Miss Strange’ and ‘Voodoo Chile’ to offset the genius of the longer ‘1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) or ‘Moon, Turn the Tides… Gently Gently Away’. But in the long run it was the long tracks that were the greater of Jimi’s creations. This album was immense.
11. Pink Floyd – Wish you were here
Dark side of the moon was the big one for Pink Floyd but I prefer this one. It has a quality to it that grows and grows. ‘Shine on you crazy Diamond’ is so evocative and sums up the sadness of Syd. I met Syd once in Abbey road Studios and his eyes were blown into those black holes Pink Floyd sing about. He was very like a couple of my friends who were also Acid victims. It’s scary to see.
‘Shine on you Crazy Diamond’ takes centre stage but there are great tracks like ‘Welcome to the Machine’ and ‘Wish you were here’. There is also the joy of hearing Roy Harper singing the main vocal on ‘Have a cigar’. The Pink Floyd were meticulous in their arrangements. Nobody has ever used a studio better. This was not gimmickry it was art. They created their sound out of experimentation and an endless searching for perfection to achieve the vision in their heads.
For some obscure reason the Floyd have been associated in many people’s minds with the over-bloated pretensions of Progressive Rock of bands like Yes and Genesis. I don’t see that. I think they were in danger of heading off down there with albums like ‘Atom Heart Mother’ where there was a dearth of songs and too much improvisation and extended pieces. But they came through that. Every song on this album is a masterpiece and no note is unnecessary. They had created another unique sound and style.
The lyrics were intelligent. The album has a real knock at the Music Biz with all its phoney bloated indifference. I love the way it all blends in with tracks segueing and different sound qualities. Pink Floyd were expert at those kind of things. Most of the 1970s Prog Rock was pretentious arrogance vomited on to vinyl that I have very little time for. It was an indulgence and I was glad Punk came along and blew it all away. But Pink Floyd never fell into that trap. Their stuff, even on those iffy early seventies albums, was always innovative and captivating. This album epitomises that.
12. Country Joe & the Fish – Electric Music for the body & Mind
I can still remember the first time I heard Country Joe & the Fish – Barry Melton’s unique West Coast Acid guitar sound completely blew my skull off. On top of that was Country Joe McDonald’s smooth crystal clear voice. Mike played it to me in his tiny room and I instantly knew that this was something completely different. It was a toss up between this album and the follow up ‘I feel like I’m fixing to die’. They are both equally brilliant in my ears. I went for this one as it was the first one I had heard and it made such an impression on me. It epitomised San Franciscan Acid Rock with its political edge and super tripped out music that sent your mind soaring.
I was introduced to this by my friend Mike who worked in the same bread factory as me. He was in to the whole West Coast scene and was attempting to grow his hair as long as he could. I remember that he refused to brush it because he was certain that would create split ends and the hair would break off and not get so long. Country Joe and Captain Beefheart were his favourite bands.
The stand out tracks for me were ‘Not so sweet Martha Lorraine,’ ‘Flyin’ High’ and ‘Porpoise mouth’ but I loved it all. The long trippy sound they created on ‘Grace’ and ‘Bass strings’ was so redolent of the times with Barry Melton’s spacey guitar. For a time they were my favourite band.
13. Neil Young – Harvest
When Buffalo Springfield split up we wondered what was going to happen to Neil Young and Stephen Stills. So many times when bands split up the magic dissipates and the individual members never achieve anything like the heights as the chemistry of when they were together. In this case it was probably for the best. Not only did we get a rampant Neil Young unleashed upon us but we also got a scintillating Stephen Stills and then later Crosby Stills Nash and Young. It’s great when that happens.
I love lots of Neil’s work and put him up there with Dylan and Harper as a songwriter/performer. It’s so hard to choose which his best album is. Neil said Harvest was a lurch to the middle of the road but I just love its mellow sound. It is easy to listen to but it isn’t easy listening. The stand out track is ‘Heart of gold’ but the whole thing has a great vibe. It does not sound at all middle of the road to me. ‘Alabama’ created a bit of a stir, along with ‘Southern man’. Seemingly the Southerners did not appreciate Neil criticising them. Yet, from my perspective, having travelled and hitched through the Deep South, there was much to criticise. It was a hot-bed of intolerance, racism and violence. If you were black or had long hair you were likely to get severely dealt with. The Klu Klux Klan were rampant. Easy Rider was no exaggeration. It’s got a lot better now but there is still an underlying racism that was quite apparent in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.
‘Words (Between the lines of age)’ had a great feel to it. ‘Old Man’ was a beautiful paean of a song to someone who is trying to come to terms with the values and philosophy that make life worthwhile. ‘Needle and the damage done’ was an anti-drug song. We’ve all seen so many friends go down through drink and drugs. They all thought they could control it.
‘Out on the Weekend’ is about the melancholy of life after a break-up.
This was a mature Neil at the top of his form.
14. Joni Mitchell – Blue
Joni is one of the best songwriters to have come out of the sixties. She crafts the most beautiful songs. This album pulls at all the emotions and evokes great memories of those halcyon days back in the sixties. It is one of those magic albums that has a ‘feel’ to it. All the tracks are touched by the same enchantment and flow into each other though the emotions are often quite different. It is the Joni album I always seem to go back to first. She really hit a maturity as both a songwriter and performer.
The pervading mood is one of sadness yet it is done with such optimism that it comes over as a happy album. Joni is so full of love and life. ‘Green’ is about her daughter who she had when she was young and had to give up to adoption. Songs like ‘Blue’, ‘My old man’, ‘Last time I saw Richard’, ‘A case of you,’ ‘Carey’ and ‘California’ are full of broken love affairs, desperate attempts to find love and fulfilment, and a soul in anguish who is searching for stability and an inner peace. The words are so poignant.
This was an album sung straight from the heart.
15. Bob Marley – Exodus
Before Bob Marley came along Reggae was nowhere. In Britain it was largely seen as inconsequential Pop music. The Mods liked it and put it up there with American R&B but it wasn’t taken seriously as an art form to listen too seriously. It was more just music to dance to in the clubs. Bob Marley changed all that. He forced you to listen to it and gave it credibility both as a rich musical form and lyrically interesting. Reggae came of age with Bob Marley. It was once again impossible to sort which Bob Marley album was best. I went for Exodus on a bit of a whim.
It is packed full of great songs – ‘Jamming’, ‘Exodus’, ‘Three little birds’, ‘Waiting in vain’ and ‘One love – people get ready’. But then what Marley album isn’t?
The prevailing theme of the album was Rastafarianism. This was the source of most of Bob’s great work. While I find some of the tenets of Rasta quite amusing – it is so manufactured and cobbled together out of whatever was handy – A bit of Selassie here, a dab of Old Testament there, here a Garvey, there a dreadlock all bound together with the cement of Dope as the sacramental Herb – I can certainly identify with what it represented. This was Black pride. Having their own religion, their own black god, their own pride in where they were going, their own politics of equality and emancipation, created a self-assurance and belief that pervaded the music. The black community of Jamaica, and the world, was no longer going to be cowed and treated as inferior. The music was full of defiance and confidence.
It was that message of liberation and equality that Bob took into his music and out to black people everywhere.
Bob changed the world.
16. John Lennon – Imagine
The splitting up of the Beatles was devastating. They were still the greatest band in the world. They might have had all sorts of internal conflicts but the music they were producing was still the best of their career. It looked like we had lost so much. It was therefore immense to get a brilliant triple album set from George and the first two John Lennon efforts.
Both those Lennon albums were outstanding. It was a hard decision for me whether to go for the ‘Imagine’ album or ‘Plastic Ono Band’. They are both raw and brilliant. In the end I went for this.
The song ‘Imagine’ has become a bit of a strange standard and I find all kinds of incongruous people playing it as if it was an ordinary song. I sometimes wonder if they have actually read the lyrics and understood them. It is revolutionary. John is suggesting that we scrap religion and the idea of countries and start up a brotherhood of all mankind without all the exploitation and racism- sounds good to me. Let’s do it! Lennon was criticised for being a wealthy hypocrite but at least he was saying things and set out to try to make a difference. He tried to use his fame to coalesce public opinion and create a media focus on real issues. That’s laudable in my book.
John was pilloried for doing daft stuff like bag-ins and trying to get the impossible to happen. More power to him I say. Without dreamers and idealists like John we’re in the hands of greedy sociopathic scum. We need more like him. All the bed-ins, acorns and bag-ins were publicity stunts to draw attention to the real message – ‘STOP THE FUCKING WAR!!!
This album encapsulates the Lennon persona. I think he felt liberated when he left the Beatles. He could do what he wanted without having to fit in or worry about the effect on the others. His music, thoughts and ideas were released. Those first two solo albums were him giving vent to it all.
John’s assassination was a disaster. It robbed us of a world of possibility. Paul, on his own, has proved trite, boring and lightweight. George meandered off into mediocrity and Ringo did his own jolly thing. The saddest thing was that John petered out too. Together they complemented each other and were greater than the sum of their parts. There was synergy in that chemistry. Who knows what might have been. They would probably have got back together and the magic might still have been there. After all – look at the vast output of the Stones, not all of it brilliant, produced after the Beatles broke up. We could have had as large an amount from the Beatles. What a loss!
But we do have these two brilliant Lennon albums and that’s something to be grateful for. They are brilliant.
17. Sex Pistols – Never mind the Bollocks
Rock was dead and Punk came along and shrieked life back into it. It roared so loud that it briefly blew all the cobwebs away. Unfortunately they came back with a vengeance.
The Sex Pistols burst upon the scene with full snarling fury, expletives and a new philosophy of nihilism and anarchy. It struck a note with British kids. Overnight the long hair and flares was replaced by spiked hair, safety-pins and skin tight trousers. It was anything to shock. Malcolm McClaren was the master as creating generation gaps to exploit the market with his ‘Never trust a Hippie’ slogan he immediately identified the old revolution as passé and ‘boring old farts’. We were suddenly in the same category as the Straights, even worse! We were not only unhip we were embarrassing! It worked. It was a great marketing ploy and sold a lot of records.
In amongst all the hype it is good to remember that it wasn’t all just hype, slogans and merchandising; there was also a lot of brilliant music generating from a whole slue of brilliant new bans like Stiff Little Fingers, the Clash, Buzzcocks, Gang of Four and Stranglers and it opened the door for lots of New Wave talent like Ian Dury, Billy Bragg, John Cooper Clarke and Elvis Costello who otherwise might not have got going. Long live Punk.
The Sex Pistols only really made one album. Everything else was shit. But what an album that was! The quality and power of the songs was amazing. You sit back, turn it up and you are blown away! ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ started it off – it’s the dog’s bollocks!
This album was full of anthemic incendiary rebellion and the lyrics were clever and married to songs that were really catchy. This was no meaningless tirade of invective. It was targeted and intellectually interesting. Alright – not all of it! Some of it was just revolting for the sake of it – to create shock, outrage and reaction! That was what Lydon and McClaren specialised in. Life was theatre!
But songs like ‘Anarchy in the UK’, ‘God Save the Queen’, ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘Holidays in the Sun’ and ‘EMI’ are as vital now as they were back then.
It’s a shame they did not continue the standard and do something more.
18. Stiff Little Fingers – Inflammable Material
‘Inflammable Material’ is the best Punk albumwithout any shadow of doubt. Jake and the boys used Punk as a medium to harness all their anger and frustration at the terrible situation they were living through in Ireland during the ‘Troubles’ and pour it out into their songs. The lyrics were brilliant and captured the reality of life in Belfast perfectly with both humour and astute observation. The message was superb and the music roared. It was amazing to get such maturity, insight and passion from lads of that age. The song writing was in a different league to most and they even managed to find an excuse for wit. Incredible!
‘White Noise’ is the best and most hard hitting track about racism ever. ‘Alternative Ulster’, ‘State of Emergency’, ‘Suspect Device’, ‘Here we are nowhere’, ‘Wasted life’, ‘Barbed wire love’ and ‘No more of that’ all shrieked their disgust, defiance and fury at the brainless morons on both sides who were destroying everyone’s future. They suffered threats on their lives for speaking out but carried on anyway. They were the voice of all those disaffected young people in Belfast whose lives were a misery and they found an outlet through Punk. They even sequestrated a Bob Marley song ‘Johnny Was’ and moulded it to their experience.
Never has there been such a hard-hitting album!
Yet it was not merely the politics of the album. The songs were well constructed and listenable. The melody was catchy. The lyrics were great. It was an album that you could listen to and enjoy immensely on another level. It was no wonder that John Peel latched on to them. They were superb.
19. Little Richard – Here’s Little Richard
Little Richard was the toughest, most raucous Rock ‘n’ Roller ever. His rawness and individuality was phenomenal and the production at Speciality managed to capture it on vinyl. He had the best set of musicians backing him up and the most dynamic act. He was Mr Rock ‘n’ Roll. Along with Elvis, Chuck, Bo and Jerry Lee he was the driving force of a new music that got kids off their arses, out of their parent’s clothes and rioting in the streets. There was no such thing as teenagers before Little Richard exploded on the scene with his outrageous pompadour. He rocked. Nobody had experienced that level of excitement before. It lit the touch-paper and started an explosion that is still resounding round the world.
Think of how boring the world would have been without Rock ‘n’ Roll. There would have been no sixties, Beatles or Punk. We’d all being mowing the lawn in dreary suburbia and looking like our dads and mums. Dante got it wrong – that’s my idea of hell.
Here’s Little Richard was his first album and the best. The second album was good and after that it was all parody and showmanship. But what a first album! It blew the hair off your head it was so powerful. There was a string of absolute belters.
It all started with ‘Tutti Fruity’ where, quite appropriately, Richard put some slightly cleaned up lyrics to an even bawdier song. It went on through a series of raucous Rock numbers – ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Rip it up’, ‘Ready Teddy’, ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’, ‘She’s got it’ and ‘Jenny Jenny’. They are all here and ready to dynamite your brain. They still sound explosive and that is after our ears have been battered with the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Deep Purple, Metallica and Motorhead. Just imagine how outrageous they sounded when you only had Max Bygraves to compare them to!
20. Son House – Death Letter Blues
Son House started it all. He taught Robert Johnson how to play. He was king back in the early thirties. That Mississippi bottleneck country blues played on that old beat up steel guitar created a sound that was going to beat its way all down the years to infuse Rock ‘n’ Roll and start up a revolution.
Son House was a leading exponent of the style. His playing was raw, sloppy and incredibly powerful. His anguished singing was equal to it. I was fortunate enough to see him perform even though he was an old man. As soon as he started playing it was as if someone had plugged him in to the mains. The energy shot through him and cauterised us. I have never experienced such a transformation and so much ferocity. The opening chords to ‘Death Letter Blues’ were like a thunder-clap!
This album was made after his rediscovery in 1964. He was already old and had to relearn the guitar and his own songs. You’d think it would be an insipid shadow of his old power but it wasn’t. It was awesome. The playing was crystal clear and startling. ‘Death Letter Blues’ is enough to send the hair standing up to the ceiling. He still had it in Spades, Diamonds, Clubs and Hearts.
Hearing him play was a revelation. The album had other great tracks like ‘Pearline’ and ‘John the Revelator’ but who needed more. This was plugged straight back into those steamy Mississippi nights.
This is a glimpse of where it all began. Heaven knows what he would have been like to hear as a young man! It must have been frightening!
21. Elmore James – King of the slide guitar
Elmore James is truly the king of the slide guitar. The guitar sound he created by was unique. He used to work in an electronics store back in Mississippi and devised a system for creating a different sound when he electrified his guitar. I stood on that street at the site of his shop and paid homage. He took Robert Johnson’s sound and brought it into the urban world. His guitar with that slide effect was so rich and clear that it resonated right through you. Nobody has ever quite managed to capture that same quality.
He had a rich, anguished voice that worked so well on numbers like ‘Shake your money maker’, ‘The sky is crying’ and ‘Dust my broom’. When he went to Chicago and recorded those songs he created something special. The first time I heard his music, as a boy of fourteen, I was absolutely knocked out.
It was hard to get hold of Elmore James records back then. I had to make a special trip up to London to go to Dobell’s specialist record shop in order to get two. I played them to death and still have them.
The sad thing is that Elmore never got to perform for a white audience. He died of a heart attack in the early 1960s. I would have given anything to see him live. He would have been bigger than Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters.
This album has collected together most of his best sides. In order to hear all his best tracks though you have to buy every single CD and play everything because everything he produced was sheer genius.
22. Howlin’ Wolf – Moaning in the moonlight
My friend Dick Brunning played me this album when we were both just fourteen years old. I really don’t know how he got into the Blues but I know that I owe him a big debt for introducing it to me.
This album by Howlin’ Wolf is really atmospheric. The backing, featuring Hubert Sumlin on guitar, is a real repetitive driving force that was later further developed by Mississippi North County Blues singers like Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside.
The voice is so powerful it will blow your socks off.
The lyrics are wonderful – ‘I asked her for water and she gave me gasoline’ – outstanding.
Howlin’ Wolf, whose real name was Chester Burnett, weighed in at 300 lbs and stood 6 feet seven inches. He was a powerful man. I remember him appearing on Juke Box Jury as the ‘guest’ when they voted ‘Love me darling’ a miss. He dwarfed the six foot David Jacobs.
His stage act was exceptionally dynamic. He would claw his way up theatre curtains, roll on the floor and strut his stuff. His songs such as ‘Smokestack Lightnin’’, ‘Little red Rooster’, ‘Wang Dang Doodle’ and ‘Backdoor man’ have become classics and were covered by countless bands, including the Rolling Stones.
This album features ‘I asked her for water – she gave me gasoline’, ‘Smokestack lightning’, ‘How many more years’, ‘Moaning at Midnight’, ‘Evil’, ‘Forty-four’ and ‘Somebody in my home’. It was full of an underlying menace and a sinister moodiness. I wouldn’t have like to have been caught messing with his wife. He sounded powerfully mean. Yet there was sadness, melancholy and resignation there as well.
It is probably nostalgia that makes this my favourite album of his. There were others of similar quality though with a different feel to them. Many of his numbers were positively upbeat and full of humour. There was nothing humorous in ‘Moaning in the Moonlight’!
This was atmospheric and chilling.
Sam Philips said he was the greatest talent he ever discovered – so bigger that Elvis then!
23. Elvis Presley – Sun recordings
Speaking of Elvis you just have to have a Presley album in there and this was the seminal stuff when he was the rockin’ Hillbilly Cat.
Elvis came from the poor part of Tupelo and hung out with the poor white kids and black kids. He loved both the white country music and the black Blues and successfully melded them together. He took Blues songs, like Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup’s ‘That’s alright, Mama’, ‘My baby left me’ and ‘So glad you’re mine’ and rocked them up. He did the same with lots of other current R&B tracks and created a new style of music in the process.
The Sun recording were full of vibrancy and menace. Elvis took R&B classics like ‘Good Rockin’ tonight’, ‘Baby let’s play house’, and ‘Mystery Train’ as well as Country songs like ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’, ‘You’re right, I’m left, she’s Gone’ and ‘I Don’t Care if the Sun don’t Shine’ and adding a little pizzazz to them. He speeded them up a bit and slightly altered the beat and rhythm. Those small changes were his genius.
John Lennon said that when they took him into the army they not only cut his hair off but his balls too. But that was not quite true. There was more to it than that. The incredible raw Rockabilly only lasted a short while. Elvis himself was so shaken by the reaction of the screaming girls to every move he made that he soon started playing to it and became a parody of himself. When he moved to RCA he moved into more Rock ‘n’ Roll, Pop and ballad.
I often wonder how good it would have been if he had stayed at Sun Records and never met the atrocious Colonel Parker. Parker was a showman and hustler out for a quick buck. He saw Rock as a short term phenomenon and directed Elvis into a more popular sound and all those terrible movies. RCA were a big record label that did not know how to record Rockabilly or value it. The army merely speeded up the decline.
Strangely the raw Rockabilly sound was not the most popular. All the imitators go for the rather sad late sixties Elvis in those silly costumes and shades. They prefer the Pop to the Rock. They never copy the unique style that Elvis started with when he was truly unique – the contrasting shirt and jackets, tight trousers, long quiff and duck-tail and side-burns. Nobody had looked like that.
The sun sessions were what I consider to be the real Elvis from 1956. The simple Rockabilly trio created a different sound and changed the world. Sun was the real deal.
24. Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow
The West Coast Acid Rock sound was my soundtrack to the sixties. San Francisco was the centre of the alternative Freak culture and led the way, along with London and Los Angeles, in creating the late 1960s Underground music scene.
The San Franciscan sound came out of Folk-rock and espoused a different set of values. This was the sixties social explosion that melded sex, drugs, creativity, music and politics into an alternative life-style that was opposed to the war and selfish, greedy values of the establishment.
Acid Rock was very much album based with lots of long trippy numbers but there were a number of incredible singles that were released and actually got into the charts. The live shows were accompanied with light shows and created a great atmosphere.
Jefferson Airplane was the leading band from the Haight Asbury area and supposedly lived communally in a big house in the area. They played lots of free concerts in the park and along with the Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish and Big Brother and the Holding Company created a vibrant music scene.
Grace Slick joined the band from The Great Society and brought two of her songs with her – ‘White rabbit’ and ‘Somebody to love’. They were released as what is one of the best singles ever and form the backbone of this album.
I love other Jefferson airplane albums but those two tracks make this one my favourite.
25. Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac
The Blues was adopted by white guys in Britain in the early sixties. They saw it as an authentic, raw music unlike the overproduced Pop of that era with people like Tommy Roe and Bobby Vee. It became the basic fodder of the British Beat Bands of the mid-sixties starting with Alexis Korner, Graham Bond and Cyril Davies and including the Rolling Stones, Animals, Yardbirds and Them. When the Underground was coming into being in the late 1960s Blues was still seen as being credible. The later British Blues Boom seemed to mainly stem from John Mayall. So many Blues musicians graduated out of that Mayall Band that it became the nursery for Blues talent.
Peter Green had replaced Clapton when he’d left Mayall to join with Bruce and Baker to form Cream. He joined with John McVie and Mick Fleetwood (Both also from Mayall), and got in Jeremy Spencer on slide guitar. It created a brilliant band with three distinct styles. There was Peter Green’s fluid, crystal clear, Blues guitar, Jeremy Spencer’s Elmore James slide guitar impersonations and live they did some Rocky songs.
I used to see them regularly. They were not only exceptional musicians doing great numbers but they were also fun to see and dance to.
They later went on to develop a Progressive Rock style with Green’s songs like the amazing ‘Green Manalishi’ and ‘Man of the world’.
This first album focussed on a balance between Pete Green’s style and Jeremy’s slide work.
It was a brilliant debut album. Tracks like ‘I gotta move’, ‘Hellhound on my trail’, ‘Shake your moneymaker’, ‘My heart beat like a hammer’ and ‘Long grey mare’ took Blues music up a notch. The quality was so good.