Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1646 (starts 11/16/16)

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Friend Of The Devil
Source:    CD: Skeletons From The Closet (originally released on LP: American Beauty)
Writer(s):    Garcia/Dawson/Hunter
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    The Grateful Dead spent three years and four albums trying to capture the energy of their live performances on vinyl. Having finally succeeded with the 1969 Live Dead album the group began to focus more on their songwriting capabilities. The result was two outstanding studio albums, both released in 1970: Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. Of the two, American Beauty is made up almost entirely of songs played on acoustic instruments, including pedal steel guitar, which was played by Jerry Garcia. One of the best-known tracks on American Beauty is Friend Of The Devil, which lyricist Robert Hunter referred to as "the closest we've come to what may be a classic song."

Artist:    Mother Earth
Title:    Seven Bridges Road
Source:    LP: Bring Me Home (promo copy)
Writer(s):    Steve Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1971
    Seven Bridges Road, as recorded by the Eagles in the early 1980s, is a staple of classic rock radio stations across the world. What many people don't realize, however, is that the song was originally recorded in 1971 by a band called Mother Earth. Led by singer/guitarist Tracy Nelson, Mother Earth started off in the San Francisco Bay area, appearing alongside such artists as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Eric Burdon at Bill Graham's Fillmore West auditorium. After their first album, however, they relocated to a farm near Nashville, Tennessee, where they remained until the group's demise in 1977. The band championed the cause of young unknown songwriters such as Steve Young (who wrote Seven Bridges Road) and John Hiatt, who would later go on to greater fame. Nelson began recording as a solo artist in the mid-1970s.

Artist:    Randy Newman
Title:    Mama Told Me (Not To Come)
Source:    LP: The Big Ball (originally released on LP: 12 Songs)
Writer(s):    Randy Newman
Label:    Warner Brothers (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1970
    Although it is best known as a Three Dog Night song, Randy Newman's Mama Told Me (Not To Come) was actually written for Eric Burdon, whose version appeared on the album Eric Is Here in early 1967. Newman's own version of the tune, written from the perspective of a strait-laced young man experiencing his first Los Angeles style party, was included on his 1970 LP 12 Songs, which came out at around the same time as Three Dog Night's cover of the tune. Newman's version features slide guitar work from Ry Cooder, supplementing Newman's own piano playing.

Artist:    Joni Mitchell
Title:    People's Parties/The Same Situation
Source:    LP: Court And Spark
Writer(s):    Joni Mitchell
Label:    Asylum
Year:    1974
    Released in January of 1974, Court And Spark was singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell's most successful album, going to #2 on the Billboard album charts (#1 in Canada) and eventually achieving double platinum status. It was her first album since For The Roses, released in November of 1972, and reflected her growing interest in jazz, combined with her own brand of folk-rock to create something that went beyond both genres. This new style is well represented on the final two tracks of side one, People's Parties and The Same Situation, which blend so seamlessly that it's difficult to tell exactly when one song ends and the next one begins.

Artist:    John Lennon
Title:    Jealous Guy
Source:    CD: Lennon (box set)
Writer(s):    John Lennon
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1971
    Jealous Guy is one of the most covered songs in the John Lennon catalog, with over 92 known recorded versions, including one by Roxy Music that was an international #1 hit three months after Lennon's death. The song had its origins in the Beatles' famous visit to India in 1968, when both Lennon and fellow Beatle Paul McCartney were inspired to write songs following a lecture by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi about the "son of the mother nature". McCartney's new song was included on the 1968 double LP The Beatles (aka the White Album), but Lennon continued to work on his own Child Of Nature right up through the Get Back sessions that became the basis for the Let It Be film. At some point Lennon decided to abandon the nature theme altogether and wrote new lyrics for the song, which was retitled Jealous Guy and included on Lennon's second solo LP, Imagine. The song was eventually released as a single in the UK in 1985 and in the US in 1988, in conjunction with the film Imagine: John Lennon.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Thick As A Brick (Edit # 1)
Source:    LP: "M.U."-The Best Of Jethro Tull
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1972
    Surprised by the rock press's characterization of 1971's Aqualung as a "concept" album, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull decided he would "come up with something that really is the mother of all concept albums." The result was Thick As A Brick, which was presented as an epic poem by English schoolboy Gerald Bostock set to music by Anderson. To further reinforce the concept, the album was packaged as an entire small-town newspaper, complete with a puzzle section and an editorial page. The front page story (including a picture of Bostock) was about the various reactions of the adult community to Bostock's "scandalous" poem, the text of which was printed within the paper itself. Musically, Thick As A Brick is one continuous piece, split up over both sides of the original LP. A special version of the album was sent out to radio stations breaking up the piece into edits that could be played as separate pieces. As can be heard on Edit #1, however, the natural flow of the original piece is so strong that the shorter version, that fades out around the three-minute mark, sounds incomplete.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Brown Sugar
Source:    CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released on LP: Sticky Fingers)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: Rolling Stones)
Year:    1972
    The Rolling Stones had good reason to have bitter feelings toward Allen Klein. Just as they were finally able to release their albums without record company interference on their own label in the early 1970s, they discovered that they had unknowingly signed away all of their rights to their own 1960s recordings to Klein's company, Abkco. To add insult to injury, they were forced to share copyright ownership of two of the new songs, Wild Horses and Brown Sugar, with Klein as well. As a result the songs, which were both on the band's 1972 album Sticky Fingers, are to this day also available on any album or CD that Abkco chooses to put them on, including Singles Collection-The London Years, which contains every A and B side the band put out on the London label in the US and the Decca label in the UK. Of course, the Stones themselves don't get any royalties from recordings released by Abkco, which might explain why they have nothing good to say about Klein.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix
Title:    Drifting
Source:    CD: Voodoo Soup (originally released on LP: The Cry Of Love)
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA
Year:    1970
    There have been several attempts made to piece together what would have been Jimi Hendrix's first post-Experience studio LP since his death in 1970. The first of these was The Cry Of Love, released as a single LP in 1971. With the advent of CD technology attempts were made to make it a double-length album. The first of these, Voodoo Soup, was released in 1995. At this point Alan Douglas was still in control of the Hendrix catalog, and Voodoo Soup included a couple of tracks that had been modified by replacing the original drum tracks with new ones from Bruce Gary of the Knack, recorded in the late 1970s. Two years later the Hendrix family gained control of the guitarists' recordings and a new CD called First Rays Of The New Rising Sun was released, replacing Voodoo Soup. One song that remained unchanged through all three iterations of the album is Drifting, recorded on July 23rd of 1970 with Mitch Mitchell on drums, Billy Cox on bass and guest Buzzy Linhart on vibes.

Artist:    Mahogany Rush
Title:    Strange Universe
Source:    Canadian import CD: Strange Universe
Writer(s):    Frank Marino
Label:    Just A Minute (original label: 20th Century)
Year:    1975
    Although there are countless guitarists that have been influenced by Jimi Hendrix in various ways, only one has been able to capture his entire sound from a production as well as performance standpoint. That one is Frank Marino, whose band, Mahogany Rush, has been recording since 1972. A listen to the title track of the 1975 album Strange Universe pretty much proves my point.

Artist:    Genesis
Title:    Ripples
Source:    LP: A Trick Of The Tail
Writer(s):    Rutherford/Banks
Label:    Atco
Year:    1976
    When Peter Gabriel left Genesis there were a lot of people wondering if the band could survive his departure. The 1976 album A Trick Of The Tail was the band's answer to that question, with songs like Ripples showing that the group was indeed capable of making listenable music without its original front man. Unfortunately, as the 1980s approached, Genesis made a conscious decision to move in a more commercial direction, abandoning most of what had made them a great band in the first place.

Artist:    Queen
Title:    Death On Two Legs/Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon/I'm In Love With My Car
Source:    German import LP: A Night At The Opera
Writer(s):    Mercury/Taylor
Label:    Virgin (original label: Elektra)
Year:    1975
    It may come as a surprise to listeners of modern classic rock radio, but there were actually other songs on Queen's 1975 album A Night At The Opera besides Bohemian Rhapsody. The first three tracks on the album are all worthy of giving a listen to, but for various reasons never get played on commercial radio. Death On Two Legs is an angry angry song from the pen of Freddie Mercury directed at the band's former manager, Norman Sheffield. When Sheffield first heard the song, he initiated a lawsuit for defamation of character. Did I mention that it was an angry song? Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon, on the other hand, is a short, somewhat whimsical piece that features Mercury on piano as well as all the vocal parts. Drummer RogerTaylor was responsible for I'm In Love With My Car, both as songwriter and lead vocalist on the song. The song was inspired by and dedicated to one of the band's roadies, Jonathan Harris, who, according to one source, was in love with his Triumph TR4.

Artist:        O'Jays
Title:        Back Stabbers
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:        Huff/McFadden/Whitehead
Label:        Philadelphia International
Year:        1972
        The two hotspots of soul music in the late 60s were Detroit, Michigan (Motown Records) and Memphis, Tennessee (Stax Records). By the early 70s, however, Memphis was eclipsed by Philadelphia, thanks to Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, founders of and in-house producers for Philadelphia International Records. One of the first major hits for the label was Back Stabbers by the O'Jays, a Cleveland, Ohio vocal group that had been recording with only moderate success since the early 60s. Back Stabbers hit the top spot on the R&B charts in 1972 and crossed over to the top 40 as well, peaking at #3.