https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/347913-dc-2048
This week we continue a tradition that dates back to the early days of FM rock radio and present, in its entirety, Arlo Guthrie's 1967 classic Alice's Restaurant Massacree, along with sets from 1970 and 1972. You're welcome.
Artist: Peter Gabriel
Title: Solsbury Hill
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single (promo copy)
Writer(s): Peter Gabriel
Label: Atco
Year: 1977
Vocalist Peter Gabriel's first single after leaving Genesis was Solsbury Hill, a song inspired by a spiritual experience Gabriel had atop Little Solsbury Hill in Somerset, England. Gabriel said of the song: "It's about being prepared to lose what you have for what you might get ... It's about letting go." The song hit the top 20 in the UK and shows up from time to time in various TV and movie soundtracks.
Artist: Derek And The Dominos
Title: Bell Bottom Blues
Source: CD: The Best Of Eric Clapton (originally released on LP: Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs)
Writer(s): Clapton/Whitlock
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1970
Bell Bottom Blues, from the Derek And The Dominos album Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, is at once one of the many and one of the few. It is one of the many songs inspired by/written for George Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd by Eric Clapton, who was in love with her at the time. At the same time it is one of the few songs on the album that does not include guitarist Duane Allman on it. Clapton wrote the song after Boyd asked him to pick up a pair of bell-bottom jeans on his next trip to the US (apparently they were not available in London at that time). The song was released twice as a single in 1971, but did not chart higher than the #78 spot. In 2015 drummer Bobby Whitlock, who had helped write the third verse, was given official credit as the song's co-writer.
Artist: Faces
Title: Flying
Source: LP: The Big Ball (originally released on LP: First Step)
Writer(s): Stewart/Wood/Lane
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1970
Although credited to the Small Faces in North America, First Step was actually the debut album of Faces, a group combining the talents of Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood (from the Jeff Beck group) with what was left of the Small Faces (Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan) following the departure of bandleader Steve Marriott, who left to form Humble Pie. Unlike later Faces albums, First Step featured songwriting contributions from all five band members, including Stewart, Wood and Lane collaborating on the album's centerpiece, Flying.
Artist: Three Dog Night
Title: Joy To The World
Source: Mono CD: Billboard Top Rock 'N' Roll Hits-1971 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Hoyt Axton
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1970
Rock and country music have always had a unique relationship. Some of the earliest rock stars either came from a country background (like Elvis Presley) or ended up having a career in country music (such as most of Presley's labelmates at Sun Records). In fact, it could be argued that rock 'n' roll was as much a child of country and western music (as it was then called) as it was of rhythm and blues (called race music in the 40s and early 50s). By the late 1960s, however, rock and country had come to represent opposing sides in a growing generation gap, with country the preferred choice of many older, more conservative Americans, while rock was becoming the music of choice of the anti-establishment youth of the time. This distinction, however, was not as strongly felt among the musicians themselves. In fact, one of the musical trends of the early 1970s was country-rock, pioneered by bands like the Byrds (post David Crosby) and Poco. Many country artists scored hits on the country charts with their own versions of rock hits, and, on occasion, a country song would cross over and become a top 40 hit (Roger Miller's King Of The Road being a prime example). Some artists were themselves hard to define. Hoyt Axton, a folk singer whose style reflected his Oklahoma roots, was popular among the country crowd, yet some of his songs, such as The Pusher, resonated with the underground rock audience as well. His biggest crossover hit, however, was a song he wrote in 1970 called Joy To The World. The Three Dog Night recording of the song was, in fact, the #1 song of the year 1971. Axton would continue to have a successful career as a songwriter for many years, sometimes even as a recording artist, as was the case with Bony Fingers (with Renee Armand), a top 10 country hit in 1974.
Artist: Velvet Underground
Title: Rock & Roll
Source: LP: Loaded
Writer(s): Lou Reed
Label: Cotillion
Year: 1970
Lou Reed has said that the song Rock & Roll, from his last album with the Velvet Underground, Loaded, is somewhat autobiographical. In his liner notes for the box set Peel Slowly And See, Reed says "If I hadn't heard rock and roll on the radio, I would have had no idea there was life on this planet." The song has become one of Reed's signature songs over the years, but on Loaded the bulk of the work is done by Doug Yule, who played bass, organ, piano and lead guitar parts on the track.
Artist: Santana
Title: Hope You're Feeling Better
Source: CD: Abraxas
Writer(s): Gregg Rolie
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
Hope You're Feeling Better was the third single to be taken from Santana's Abraxas album. Although not as successful as either Black Magic Woman or Oye Como Va, the song nonetheless received considerable airplay on progressive FM rock stations and has appeared on several anthology anthems since its initial release.
Artist: Arlo Guthrie
Title: Alice's Restaurant Massacree
Source: LP: Alice's Restaurant
Writer: Arlo Guthrie
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
The original Alice's Restaurant Massacre was released on Arlo Guthrie's debut LP, Alice's Restaurant, in 1967. The record tells the true story of Guthrie's 1965 Thanksgiving adventures in a small town in Massachusetts, and of his subsequent adventures with the draft board a few months later. The story became the basis for a movie and over the years Guthrie has performed the piece hundreds of times, never the same way twice (some performances have reportedly lasted nearly an hour).
Artist: Graham Nash and David Crosby
Title: The Wall Song
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): David Crosby
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1972
Such was the popularity of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in the early 70s that each of the members, both as solo artists and in various combinations of two or three members, released albums in addition to official group recordings, all of which sold well. One such effort was the 1972 album by Graham Nash and David Crosby. One of the more notable tracks on the album is The Wall Song, featuring (in addition to Crosby and Nash) Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann on guitar, bass and drums. The version heard here is the rare mono mix of The Wall Song, issued as a B side in 1972.
Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Title: The Ghost
Source: CD: Bare Trees
Writer(s): Bob Welch
Label: Reprise
Year: 1972
Bands lose members for a variety of reasons. Often, it's because of a desire on the part of one band member to embark on a solo career, as was the case with Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green. Other reasons include conflicts with bandmates (both musical and personal), mental health issues and outside influences (such as a producer's opinion of an individual's musical abilities). Possibly the strangest departure of all involves Fleetwood Mac's Jeremy Spencer. A founding member of the band, Spencer had become one of the band's principle songwriters following Green's departure in May of 1970. In February of 1971, in the midst of a US tour, Spencer told his bandmates he was going out to get a magazine. He never returned. Several days later the other members of Fleetwood Mac found out that Spencer had joined a religious cult known as the Children Of God. After getting Green to temporarily rejoin the band to finish out the tour, the group began looking for a replacement for Spencer. That summer, based purely on a tape submitted by a friend of the band, Fleetwood Mac, which at that point consisted of Mick Fleetwood, John and Christine McVie and Danny Kirwan, added Bob Welch as their second guitarist. Although not as prolific a songwriter as Kirwan, Welch's contributions, including song like The Ghost on the 1972 LP Bare Trees, were significant. Welch remained a member of Fleetwood Mac until December of 1974, when he left the group for personal reasons.
Artist: Nektar
Title: Waves
Source: LP: A Tab In The Ocean
Writer(s): Nektar
Label: Passport (original German label: Bellaphon)
Year: 1972 (US release: 1976)
On the surface it seems like a story you've heard before: a group of young British musicians go to Hamburg, Germany to hone their craft, building up a cult following in the process. But this story is not about the Beatles. It is about Nektar, formed in 1969 by Roye Albrighton on guitars and vocals, Allan "Taff" Freeman on keyboards, Derek "Mo" Moore on bass, Ron Howden on drums, and Mick Brockett and Keith Walters on lights and special effects. The band's first LP, A Tab In The Ocean, was originally released in Germany in 1972 on the Bellaphon label, leading many people to assume Nektar was in fact a German band and an early example of "Kraut Rock". Nektar would eventually become closely associated with the progressive rock movement of the early to mid 1970s, thanks in large part to A Tab In The Ocean finally being released in a remixed form in the US in 1976. Like fellow prog-rockers Genesis and Gentle Giant, Nektar began to commercialize their sound with shorter songs containing fewer time and key changes as the decade wore on; unlike those other bands, however, Nektar did not become more popular because of the changes. Indeed, by 1978, the band had decided to call it quits, although two of the members reformed the band briefly the following year, releasing one album in 1980 before disbanding again in 1982. Waves is somewhat atypical of the Nektar sound, however, as it is basically a short instrumental that serves as a coda to a piece called Desolation Valley.
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