Another Instalment – ‘537 Essential Rock Albums’

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Find out which albums I think are the best – and why!

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


153. James Taylor – Sweet Baby James

James Taylor came to prominence with his mellow voice and beautiful crafted songs. He first came to the attention of the Beatles who signed him to their new Apple label. This was his second album released on Warner Brothers and produced by Peter Asher.

It was filled with delightful songs such as ‘Sweet Baby James’, ‘Suzannah’ and ‘Steamroller’ but the absolute stand out track was ‘Fire and Rain’.

Sweet Baby James set the tone for his later albums. It made James one of the biggest names about.

He was fortunate to have associations with many of the fine lady singers of his day such as Carly Simon whom he married but there were musical inputs from Joni Mitchell and Carol King. James had problems with depression and drug use which hampered his career.


154. Cliff Richard & Drifters – Cliff

Cliff has got himself a bad name as the sugar Pop singer but it wasn’t always like that. He started as an authentic British Rocker and produced a series of excellent Rock ‘n’ roll singles that were among the very best of British efforts. They included the excellent ‘Move it’ which was up there with Johnny Kidd and the Pirates ‘Shakin’ all over’ as the best British Rock ‘n’ Roll single. The problem was that all those fine efforts of Cliff’s such as ‘Dynamite’, ‘Livin’ Lovin’ Doll’, ‘Mean streak’ and ‘Apron string’ were all overshadowed by his saccharine Pop songs.

Fortunately this album showed Cliff at his best as a raw Rock ‘n’ Roll singer. It was recorded in 1959 live in the abbey Road studios in front of a crowd of enthusiastic girls who screamed appropriately at all the right moments. It was like Beatle mania before Beatle-mania was invented. Cliff rocked and the Shadows (called the Drifters at this point in time) were raw and rocking. They were better than their later incarnation.

The result was the best album of British Rock ‘n’ roll ever produced. It is superior to all the others including ‘The sound of Fury’ and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. The album never stops; it storms through high energy Rock ‘n’ Roll with a series of great covers such as ‘You’re so square (baby I don’t care)’, ‘Ready Teddy’, ‘Too much’, ‘Don’t bug me baby’, ‘Apron Strings’, ‘Down the line’ and ‘That’ll be the day’ as well as the brilliant ‘Move it’. The Drifters did a couple of their early instrumentals.

Cliff’s voice was spot on and he rivalled Elvis!

This was an brilliant album quite unlike anything else he ever did!


155. Little Richard – Little Richard No.2

After the brilliance of his first album it was always going to be difficult following up with something of the same standard and he did not quite manage it. This is still pretty good though. When it comes to raw Rock ‘n’ Roll you can’t get better that Richard Penniman.

This second album was not quite so raw and seemed to have a couple of tracks that were a little forced. None the less there were enough dynamite tracks to make this a special album. As far as Rock ‘n’ Roll goes it was spectacular.

It starts off with ‘Keep a knockin’’ which was a tidied up version of the old blues number ‘Busy Bootin’’ recorded by Kokomo Arnold. With it’s great crashing drum intro it was as good as anything he’d done before. Also on the album were classics like ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’, ‘Send me some lovin’’, ‘Lucille’, ‘The girl can’t help it’ and ‘Heeby Jeebies’.

It was the last great album that Richard would produce. Shortly after this he had a fright on a flight to Australia when an engine failed and supposedly chucked his rings off the Sydney Harbour Bridge and dedicated himself to religion as thanks to God.

However the pull of the excitement of Rock Music coupled with his love of orgies pulled him back to the limelight in the early sixties. His ambiguous sexuality came to the fore and he developed a camp act which was almost a parody of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

I saw him perform in the early 2000s and it was the strangest act ever. His voice was still good but he seemed a bit frail on his feet but the odd thing was that it was a mixture of good Rock ‘n’ Roll, camped up over-the top gayness and preaching about Jesus. Afterwards his ‘mafia’ extracted hefty sums of money for an audience with the man in which he signed a poster for you and you were told to make no other requests under fear of broken limbs. A strange evening.

After this album Richard only made sporadic works of genius such as ‘Bama Lama’ and never recaptured the sound or rawness of those Specialty sessions.


156. Meters – Cissy Strut

The Meters were a late sixties Funk band from New Orleans featuring Art Neville. They, along with James Brown, were pioneers of the Funk sound and were used as the house band for the Sansu label where they were largely responsible for the New Orleans sound. They were the Louisiana equivalent of Booker T & the MGs.

They recorded a number of mainly instrumentals in their own right. These were really tight with great rhythms and bass runs. The most successful of these was called ‘Cissy Strut’ and launch a series of other ‘Struts’.

This album is right up there with ‘Green Onions’ by Booker T.


157. Beatles – Rubber Soul

This was a bit of a transition album for the Beatles. They were moving out of their more Pop orientated self-penned songs into a more complex and mature style that was going to lead on to the more experimental and complex music of their later albums.

Rubber Soul was a bit of a halfway house. It featured songs like ‘The word’, ‘Drive my car’, ‘Nowhere man’, ‘Norwegian Wood’, ‘In my life’ and ‘Run for your life’ which had a different sound to their previous songs.

At the time in London this was the start of ‘Swinging England’ with all the ‘Beautiful people’ and the Beatles epitomised this hip style. They were extremely Mod and fashionable in the best Carnaby Street fashion.


158. Johnny Kidd & the Pirates – Memorial album

Johnny Kidd and the pirates had one of the best stage acts in British Rock ‘n’ Roll. They dressed up in pirate gear complete with eye-patches, cutlasses and the works. The idea had come about when Johnny had got whacked in the eye from a snapped guitar string and had to wear an eye-patch. It set the ball rolling.

The band created some of the greatest British Rock singles ever including ‘Restless’, ‘Please don’t touch’, and the infamous ‘Shaking all over’.

Where the Larry Parnes school with Billy Fury, Cliff Richard, Vince Eager, Marty Wilde and Adam Faith all suffered from poor British studio production (British studios did not have a clue how to record authentic Rock ‘n’ Roll) and/or management guidance into becoming more commercial all-round entertainers and Pop Stars, Johnny Kidd and the guys managed to keep it real.

At their best their sound was on a par with the American studios.

When Mersey hit they changed their sound to fit in and became more poppy.

Johnny was killed in a car crash in 1966. The Pirates went on as a much admired live band, hardened up their sound and had a new lease of life during the Punk era as a hard edged R&B band. They had hits with ‘I can tell’ and ‘Casting my spell’.

All the best tracks are on this memorial album (along with some that might have been best left off!).

159. Jerry Lee Lewis – Great balls of fire

Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the original great Rock ‘n’ Rollers from Sun Studio in Memphis. He was not only a great star in his own right but house pianist for everyone else.

His wild act, where he pounded the piano with his hands, feet and backside before kicking his stool across the stage and climbing up on the thing, was as good as his songs. He had a running battle with Little Richard over who was the greatest. It culminated one night when he was performing earlier that Richard in his dousing the piano with petrol and setting fire to it – saying ‘Follow that!’.

His first smash was a rocked up cover of Big Maybelle’s ‘Whole lot of shakin’’. He followed that up with a string of great classic Rockers such as ‘Great balls of fire’, ‘Breathless’, ‘Jerry Lewis Boogie’, ‘Milk-shake mademoiselle’, ‘High School Confidential’, ‘It’ll be me’, and ‘Pink pedal pushers’.

It all came to a jarring halt on his English tour when the Press discovered he’d brought his thirteen year old wife who was also his cousin. It caused a slight bit of controversy.

This album is a compilation with all his greatest Sun hits and selected tracks.


160. Fats Domino – Fat man sings

Fats Domino can lay claim to having released one of the earliest Rock ‘n’ Roll records of all time with ‘The Fat Man’ in 1950. He was an R&B singer song-writer out of New Orleans who developed a rolling piano style and lazy vocal that slipped straight into Rock ‘n’ Roll because of its great backbeat.

He had huge hits with ‘Blueberry Hill’, ‘Ain’t that a shame’, ‘Walking to New Orleans’, ‘I’m walking’, and ‘I Hear you knocking’ and is one of the great early Rockers.

All of those hits were gathered on this EMI album.


161. Bob Marley – Rebel Music

This is a Marley album with political teeth. While it is a compilation it does feature some rare tracks as well. It pulls together a whole album of Bob’s tougher political songs and there are some immaculate versions. Some of them are live and others are off albums or B-sides of singles. There is not a poor track among them. My favourites are ‘War – No more trouble’ off the Babylon by bus album, ‘Crazy baldhead’, ‘Them belly full (but we hungry)’, ‘So much trouble in the world’, ‘Get up Stand up’ and ‘Slave driver’.

If you like your Marley angry and messianic then this is the album for you. Every track is perfectly executed and has a hard edge.

This is just how I like him.


162. Elvis Costello –  This year’s model

This is Elvis Costello and the Attractions at their snarling Punk best. This was when Elvis was at the peak of his angry song-writing abilities. It was his second album and his first with the Attractions. The energy they produced was obvious to all. ‘Pump it up’ was one of the best tracks of the Punk/New Wave era.

The hit single was ‘(I don’t want to go to) Chelsea’ but the album was packed with memorable songs such as ‘Little triggers’, ‘This year’s girl’, ‘The Beat’, ‘You belong to me’, ‘Lip service’, ‘Radio radio’, and ‘Lipstick Vogue’.

Elvis had a reputation as an angry young man who liked to play with words. He was a clever songwriter with a shrewd observational eye and dislike of the media.

New instalment of ‘537 Essential Rock Albums’.

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

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143. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin

Out of the ashes of the incredible Yardbirds Jimmy Page resurrected a new band. It was really an incarnation. The Yardbirds had been getting increasingly heavier with Page and Jeff Beck as scintillating dual lead attack yet they were floundering.

Jimmy put together a new band and took to the road as ‘The New Yardbirds’ and that mutated into Led Zeppelin.

The first album was made up of a number of songs that had been touted round by the Yardbirds and was quite heavy. Numbers like ‘Dazed and confused’, ‘Communication breakdown’ and ‘Good times bad times. Set a new tone. They borrowed heavily from the blues but were on their way to creating a completely new style. The band had the musicianship to break into the big time. The solid rhythm section with Bonham’s huge thumping drums and Jones’s bass created a firm bass for Page’s riffs and Plants soaring vocals. Even on this album they were not just a heavy unit and combined other styles such as on the track ‘Black mountain side’ a guitar instrumental very similar to Bert Jansch’s song. There was already controversy about them nicking blues songs and others without crediting the individuals.

The band started off with mixed press reviews but rapidly won everyone over with the strength of their live performances. Page’s guitar was such a strong feature such as on ‘You shook me’. The album was a success.

I saw them at the Toby Jug in Tolworth when they came over from the States and were looking to break in Britain. It was a room at the back of a pub where I used to go regularly to see bands like Captain Beefheart, John Mayall and Fleetwood Mac. They were very loud and impressive.

I’m not sure I would call them heavy metal. They were too varied and complex for that. It was no wonder they became one of the top bands in the world. The elements of their new style would be explored in later albums.


144. Crosby Stills Nash & Young – Four Way Street

‘Four Way Street’ was a double live album from Crosby, Still, Nash and Young. They’d come together through hanging out in Laurel Canyon in the Rock community in LA. They had discovered that their harmonies gelled brilliantly.

Their first two albums, with Crosby Stills and Nash, were excellent and set them up as a super-group. But by the time that this live album came about their feuding had become legendary. I saw them ten years ago in Manchester when they were touring together without Young and the results of the fall-out were still tangible. Their stage performance was brilliant. Afterwards I went backstage and only Graham Nash was there. The other two had split. On stage they each had their own square of carpet. Seemingly they had vowed never to appear on the same stage together. This was their way round it.

The tensions were not visible on this double live album though. It was superb. There were a lot of the old numbers with a smattering of new songs. It also had a hard political edge. This was the height of the anti-war riots with the students shot dead at Kent State University by the National Guard troopers. Neil wrote the angry song ‘Ohio’ in protest at the four dead young students. Other strong songs on the album included ‘Find the cost of freedom’, ‘Chicago’, ‘Southern man’, and ‘Carry on’.

The double album was packed with memorable songs and performances that made it the strongest of all their albums. I loved the power and anger of it. CSN&Y had become the foremost voice of protest and they did it with melody, beauty and musicianship.


145. Leon Rosselson – The world turned upside down

Leon Rosselson is not to be confused with Leon Russell. Leon Rosselson is an English left-wing song-writer who is much better than Leon Russell. Leon’s songs are much better than Leon Russell’s.

This choice of album is yet another cheat for it is none other than a four CD compilation but it has all his essential songs: – ‘Palaces of gold’, ‘World turned upside down’, ‘Ballad of spycatcher’, ‘It wasn’t me, I didn’t do it’, ‘I heard it on the radio’, ‘Who reaps the profits’, ‘Bringing the news from nowhere’, ‘Battle hymn of the new socialist party’ and ‘Jackboot democrats’ plus a whole load more. It was all top class observation served with plenty of wit. This is perfect social commentary released on the Fuse label.

Leon has often linked up with Roy Bailey. For a duo of caustic comment. Billy Bragg covered ‘The world turned upside down’ which was a powerful song about the Diggers. They set up a commune on waste ground at St Georges Hill. They were brutally destroyed.

I was brought up near St George’s Hill and so this song of social injustice speaks loudly to me.

We need people like Leon who shout out for justice and fairness in a world of selfishness and greed. This CD set is a must for anyone with intelligence and a conscience.


146. Quicksilver Messenger Service – Happy Trails

Quicksilver Messenger Service were another of those San Franciscan bands fro m the late sixties Acid Rock underground scene.

This album released in 1969 was their second album and recorded live at the Fillmore East and West.

The major part of the album was one long extended Acid version of the Bo Diddley number ‘Who do you love’ which was extended out into six different sections of improvised guitar-based instrumentals. The best of it featured John Cipolina who was one of the fore-most Acid Rock guitarists to come out of the era.

The second side followed a similar theme with the stand out track being another Bo Diddley track – ‘Mona’ – given the psychedelic treatment.

Incongruously the album concluded with a short version of Roy Rogers ‘Happy Trails’


147. Bo Diddley – Bo Diddley is a gunslinger

This was a typical Bo Diddley album with the opening bragging track in which as a gunslinger he cleans up the OK Corral and scares the life out of the whole town.

The stand out track is ‘Cadillac’ which was covered by the Kinks on their first album.

The album is suffused with Bo’s rhythm but has a lot more variety than most with slow numbers like ‘No more lovin’’ and ‘Somewhere’. There was also a Bo Diddlified version of sixteen tons the Tennessee Ernie Ford number.

‘Diddling’ was a great little Bo Diddley instrumental. I selected this because most of the best tracks on his first two albums were included on Bo’s Big twenty album I included early. This album is fairly typical of Bo’s output with a range of styles.


148. Arthur Brown – The crazy world of Arthur Brown

Fire was one of the first psychedelic albums of the 1968 London Underground scene. The album was released to great acclaim following both the huge success of ‘Fire’ as a single and the reputation Arthur quickly amassed for his theatrical live performances complete with burning head-dress.

I saw his stadium act at the Sunbury festival in 1968 when he was lowered onto the stage with his burning head-dress. Unfortunately the act was concluded early when there was the collapse of a lighting stanchion which fell onto other structures and caused some outbuildings to collapse resulting in a lot of injuries.

I later saw Arthur in Klooks Kleek. There were only about eight of us in the audience and he did his whole act complete with fire and costumes.

The album consisted of two distinct sides. Side 1 was the Fire suite with extended tracks around the Fire theme with Poem, suites and visions of Hell. The second side contained more traditional songs with covers of Screaming Jay Hawkins ‘I put a spell on you’ and James Brown’s ‘I’ve got money’ though they were all down in the same style which created a uniformity to the album.

The major features of the album were Arthur’s great anguished wailing vocals and the organ and keyboards of Vincent Crane.

Unfortunately the band fell apart with Vincent citing that Arthur was beginning to believe he really was the God of Hell-fire.


149. Them – Them

Them came out of Ireland with Van Morrison on vocals. They were the second band I ever saw live. They had come across for a tour of England and ‘Baby please don’t go’ went straight to the top of the charts. Fortunately they honoured their commitments and played in Walton at the Walton Hop. ‘Here comes the night’ had just been released and had gone straight into the charts. I remember being very impressed with the music and Van’s voice but disappointed that they didn’t leap about and put on an act. They stood there and played. The only other band I’d seen live was the British Birds and they’d put on a really wild and exciting act. At the end of the concert I went back-stage and got two postcards of the band signed by all the band members. I later gave one to a friend – Phil – who was nuts on Van Morrison and my mum threw the other away.

This album – ‘Them’ – was a very bluesy album with some storming R&B such as ‘Gloria’ and ‘Mystic Eyes’. There were great cover versions of ‘Bright lights big city’, ‘Just a little bit’, ‘Route 66’ and ‘I like it like that’ and some more unusual numbers ‘I’m gonna dress in black’ and  ‘Don’t look back’.

The whole album was unique because of Van’s distinctive already mature voice with its Belfast twang.


150. Chuck Berry – After school session

This was Chuck’s debut album shrewdly aimed at the burgeoning white teenage market in 1957. Chuck was in his late twenties and knew exactly what he was doing.

The album was brilliant and came full of Chuck’s signature guitar riffs and distinctive Blues-based Rock ‘n’ Roll on numbers like the opening ‘School days’ and ‘Back in the USA’. It featured the classic tracks like ‘Too much monkey business’, ‘Brown eyed Handsome man’ and ‘Roll over Beethoven’. There were the songs about automobiles with ‘No money down’ and instrumentals like ‘Berry picking’.

Chuck was so much more than a distinctive guitar riff. Johnnie Johnson’s boogie piano added as much to the sound and the firm beat was definitely Chicago Blues based. The other incredible thing about Chuck was his poetic lyrics which were all carefully annunciated so that white audiences could pick up on them’

Chuck’s guitar prowess was accentuated on tracks like the bluesy instrumental ‘Deep Feeling’ with its almost Hawaiian guitar sound.

It was an incredible debut that introduced a new dimension and sound to Rock ‘n’ Roll.

151. Crosby Stills Nash & Young – Déjà vu

This was the second album by the group. After forming out of the three escapees from the Hollies, Buffalo Springfield and Byrds they decided that they needed Neil Young’s musical input to beef them up a bit. The result was this marvellous album. It had everything and the range of songs and styles added to the success of the album. They all contributed songs to the album

It started with the Stills’s electrifying ‘Carry on’, then on to Nash’s ‘Teach your children well’, Crosby’s ‘Almost cut my hair’, and Young’s ‘Helpless’ – then side one finished with Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’ that they had made famous at Woodstock.

Side two carried on in the same vein starting with Crosby’s ‘Déjà vu’, Nash’s ‘Our House’, Stills’s ‘4+ 20’, Young’s ‘Country girl’ and finishing with Neil and Stephen’s ‘Everybody I love you’.

It was a format that worked brilliantly.

As with their debut it featured the wonderful close harmonies crafted to delightful songs with strong melodies.


152. Joni Mitchell – Ladies of the canyon

The title refers to the close-knit community that existed within the musicians of Los Angeles in the late sixties in Laurel Canyon.

Joni’s first two albums were great but this one has a maturity about it. Her voice and song-writing had taken a step forward. The production was great with sympathetic instrumentation. There was a lot of interaction between all the members of this community so the musicianship was great and the inspiration was superb. They drove each other to greater heights.

The whole album was of a good quality but the second side was stronger for me. I loved the soft flow of ‘The Priest’ but ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, ‘Woodstock’ and ‘The Circle Game’ made the album special for me.

‘Big yellow taxi’ summed up all the stupidity of modern existence with its overpopulation, pollution and environmental destruction. We don’t know what we’ve got til it’s gone. This was a major green song such in a light lilting manner but with an incredibly important message.

Joni had come of age with this album.

Another chunk of ‘537 Essential Rock Albums’

Posted on by Opher

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

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

103. Bo Carter – Banana in your fruit basket

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

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


104. Band – Music from Big Pink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


105. George Harrison – All things must pass

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

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

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


106. Donovan – Sunshine Superman

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

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

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

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


107. Bert Jansch – Bert Jansch

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

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

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

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

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


108. Grateful Dead – American Beauty

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

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

Their fans were rabid and became known as Deadheads.

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

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


109. Chuck Berry – On stage

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

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

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

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


110. Bo Diddley – Bo’s big 20

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

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

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


111. Bob Dylan – Another side of

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

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

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

Altogether it was another incredible album.


112. Roy Harper – Folkjokeopus

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

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

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


113. Pink Floyd – Saucer full of secrets

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

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

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

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

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


114. Jefferson Airplane – After bathing at Baxter’s

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

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

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

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

1967 was a good year for great albums.


115. Love – Love

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

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

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

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

Posted on by Opher

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

Another ten essential Rock albums.

82. Eddie Cochran – Memorial album

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

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

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


83. Yardbirds – Roger the Engineer

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

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

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

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

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


84. Roy Harper – Lifemask

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

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

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

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

But what an epitaph this album would have been!


85. Bob Dylan – Highway 61 revisited

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

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

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

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

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

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


86. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon

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

The answer was a resounding yes.

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

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

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

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

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


87. Jefferson Airplane – Volunteers

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

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

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

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


88. Bob Marley – Catch a fire

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

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

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


89. Robert Johnson – King of the Delta blues singers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


90. Fleetwood Mac – Blue Horizon sessions

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

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

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

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

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


91. Paul Simon – Songbook

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

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

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

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


92. Cream – Goodbye

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

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

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

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

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

Extract from 537 Essential Rock Albums

Posted on by Opher

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

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

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

26. Free – The Free Story

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

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

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

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

Another case of what could have been.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is reggae taken to a different dimension.

28. Rolling Stones – Exile on Mainstreet

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

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

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

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

29. Woody Guthrie – Dust Bowl Ballads

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

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

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

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

30. Downliners Sect – Downliners Sect

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

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

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

31. Elvis Costello – Armed Forces

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

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

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

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

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

32. Ian Dury – New Boots and Panties

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

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

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

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

33. Eels – Daisies of the Galaxy

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

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

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

34. Billy Bragg – Brewing up with Billy Bragg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

35. Jackson C Frank – Blues run the game

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

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

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

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

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