https://exchange.prx.org/p/604060
We're in free-form mode this week, with a mixture of well-known tunes by people like Jethro Tull and the Rolling Stones mixed with lesser-known album tracks from people like Mott The Hoople and Jeff Beck. And as promised a few weeks ago, we have the original 1968 live version of The Motorcyle Song from Arlo Guthrie.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Sympathy For The Devil
Source: CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released on LP: Beggars Banquet)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1968
Beggar's Banquet was a turning point for the Rolling Stones. They had just ended their association with Andrew Loog Oldham, who had produced all of their mid-60s records, and instead were working with Jimmy Miller, who was known for his association with Steve Winwood, both in his current band Traffic and the earlier Spencer Davis Group. Right from the opening bongo beats of Sympathy For The Devil, it was evident that this was the beginning of a new era for the bad boys of rock and roll. The song itself has gone on to be one of the defining tunes of album rock radio, and occupies the #32 spot on Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list. Allen Klein, who had taken control of the band's 60s catalog, issued Sympathy For The Devil (all six and a half minutes of it) as a B side in 1976.
Artist: Jeff Beck
Title: Blue Wind
Source: LP: Wired
Writer(s): Jan Hammer
Label: Epic
Year: 1976
After dissolving the power trio Beck, Bogert and Appice, guitarist Jeff Beck participated in several studio projects before returning to the spotlight as a purely instrumental front man. His second solo album, Wired, featured his strongest supporting band yet, including Max Middleton (from the second Jeff Beck Group) on clavinet and Fender Rhodes electric piano, Jan Hammer on synthesizer, Wilbur Bascomb on bass and Narada Michael Walden on drums. Probably the song that got the most airplay, however, was Blue Wind, which featured only Beck and Hammer (who wrote and produced the track) on all instruments.
Artist: Santana
Title: Hope You're Feeling Better
Source: CD: Abraxas
Writer(s): Gregg Rolie
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
Gregg Rolie's 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 compilation anthems since its initial release.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Locomotive Breath (single version)
Source: 45 RPM single (original version from LP: Aqualung)
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1971
I occasionally get asked why I don't do commercial radio anymore. Here's a clue. In 1989 I was working for a station serving the Elmira, NY market. The station had recently undergone a change of ownership, and was slowly transitioning from a kind of hybrid adult contemporary format developed by Johnny, the original owner, to an album rock format favored by Dom, the music and program director. Dom, in addition to his management duties, hosted the midday shift and one day, while on the air, got a call from Guy, the new owner, telling him "get that song off the air right now and don't ever play it on my station again!" So Dom had to cut the song off midway, because Guy objected to the line "got him by the balls". The song in question, of course, was Jethro Tull's Locomotive Breath, from the Aqualung album, which was, at that point in time, eighteen years old, and had been getting played on rock radio pretty steadily for most of those eighteen years, even being released in edited form as a single in 1976. Seriously, who needs that kind of grief?
Artist: Spirit
Title: Mr. Skin
Source: CD: Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus
Writer(s): Jay Ferguson
Label: Epic/Legacy
Year: 1970
Mr. Skin, an R&B-oriented tune originally released on the 1970 album The Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus and later issued as a single, shows just how far Spirit had moved away from the jazz influences heard on their first LP in the space of only a couple of years.
Artist: Uriah Heep
Title: Sweet Freedom
Source: LP: Sweet Freedom
Writer(s): Ken Hensley
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1973
Uriah Heep hit their Apex in 1972 with the back-to-back LPs Demons And Wizards and The Magician's Birthday. They followed those up with a double-LP live album (pretty much a standard thing for rock bands at the time) and, in 1973, released the album Sweet Freedom. Sweet Freedom saw the band moving beyond their own fantasy-based image, both lyrically and musically, with mixed success. The title track, which closed the album, was probably the most stylistically similar song on the album to their earlier material, and with a six and a half minute running time is the longest track on the album itself.
Artist: Arlo Guthrie
Title: The Motorcycle Song
Source: LP: Arlo
Writer(s): Arlo Guthrie
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Arlo Guthrie originally recorded the Motorcycle Song as a straightforward three minute long folk song for his 1967 debut album, Alice's Restaurant. He then opened his 1968 live album Arlo with a nearly eight-minute long rendition of the song that included his somewhat fanciful explanation of how the song came to be. But when it came time for his label to release a compilation album of his best-known tunes in 1977, an entirely different live version in which he stated that he had been doing the song for twelve years was used. Although there has never been any official explanation of the substitution (or for that matter any information about where the later version even came from ), I believe it has to do with the part of the story about landing on a police car. The 1968 version includes the words "and he died", while the later one says "and it died" and goes on to tell a revised version of the rest of the story in which he is confronted by a rather short, but very much alive, police officer.
Artist: Elton John
Title: Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun
Source: LP: Tumbleweed Connection
Writer(s): John/Taupin
Label: Uni
Year: 1970
The Wikipedia entry for Elton John's third album, Tumbleweed Connection, calls it a "concept album based on country and western and Americana themes." Well, I guess two out of three ain't bad. It certainly contains both Americana and Western themes, having been heavily influenced by Marty Robbins's El Paso, but I have to take issue with the use of the term "country and western". The fact is, that, until the 1950s the two were separate musical genres, with country music based in the music of Appalachia and the South, while western music was more sophisticated, drawing elements from other genres. The aforemention El Paso, for instance, incorporated elements of Ranchero music, something that never would have occured to someone like Jimmie Rodgers or Hank Williams. Of course, more than anything else, Tumbleweed Connection sounds like an Elton John album, as can be plainly heard on songs like Ballad Of A Well-Known Gun.
Artist: David Bowie
Title: It Ain't Easy
Source: CD: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
Writer(s): Ron Davies
Label: Ryko (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1972
David Bowie had little need to record cover songs. He was, after all, one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century. But when he did record the occasional cover tune, you can bet it was a good one. Take It Ain't Easy, for instance. The song was already well known as the title track of two different albums, one by Three Dog Night and one by Long John Baldry, when Bowie recorded it, yet he still managed to make the song his own. The song itself was written by Nashville songwriter Ron Davies, whose younger sister Gail is notable as the first female producer in country music.
Artist: Mott The Hoople
Title: Soft Ground
Source: LP: All The Young Dudes
Writer(s): Verden Allen
Label: Columbia
Year: 1972
Although he was a founding member of Mott The Hoople, keyboardist Verden Allen only sang lead vocals on one song on any of their albums. The tune, which he wrote, was called Soft Ground and it appeared on the band's breakthrough album All The Young Dudes. Allen would leave the group not long after that album was released, not reuniting with his former bandmates until 2013.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Mary Long
Source: Japanese import CD: Who Do We Think We Are
Writer(s): Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1973
Deep Purple took satirical aim at holier-than-thou moral crusaders on the song Mary Long, from their 1973 LP Who Do We Think We Are. The title character was an amalgamation of two well-known figures in British society, Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford. According to vocalist Ian Gillan, the song was about "the standards of the older generation, the whole moral framework, intellectual vandalism – all of the things that exist throughout the generations… Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford became one person, fusing together to represent the hypocrisy that I saw at the time."
Artist: Steely Dan
Title: Show Biz Kids
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Becker/Fagen
Label: ABC
Year: 1973
Steely Dan's second LP, 1973's Countdown To Ecstasy, did not sell as well as their 1972 debut LP. The reason usually cited for this dropoff in sales is the lack of a hit single, although at least two singles were released from the album. The second of these was Show Biz Kids, a song that sums up the Los Angeles lifestyle, a theme that songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen would continue to explore for the rest of the decade.
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