https://exchange.prx.org/p/586427
Just about everyone is familiar with the opening notes of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, as used in the film The Exorcist. The rest of the album side is almost as well-known, but this week we are instead presenting the seldom-heard second side of Tubular Bells, along with tracks from Jeff Beck, Gentle Giant and more. We finish with a pair of tunes never heard on Rockin' in the Days of Confusion before, both from the debut albums of their respective artists.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: You Can't Always Get What You Want
Source: CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1969
When the Rolling Stones called for singers to back them up on their recording of You Can't Always Get What You Want, they expected maybe 30 to show up. Instead they got twice that many, and ended up using them all on the record. The song, which also features Al Kooper on organ, was orginally released as the B side of Honky Tonk Women in 1969. In the mid-1970s, after the Stones had established their own record label, Allen Klein, who had bought (some say stolen) the rights to the band's pre-1970 recordings, reissued the single, this time promoting You Can't Always Get What You Want as the A side. Klein's strategy worked and the song ended up cracking the top 40 and becoming one of the Stones' most beloved tunes.
Artist: Jeff Beck
Title: AIR Blower/Scatterbrain
Source: CD: Blow By Blow
Writer(s): Beck/Middleton/Bailey/Chen
Label: Epic
Year: 1975
After dissolving the group Beck, Bogert and Appice in 1973, guitarist Jeff Beck spent the next year supporting various other musicians both on stage and in the studio before going to work on what would his first official solo album since Truth was released in 1968. Produced by George Martin, Blow By Blow is Beck's first album made up entirely of instrumentals, with Beck being joined by keyboardist Max Middleton (a veteran of the earlier Jeff Beck Group), bassist Phil Chen and drummer Richard Bailey. The album features several tracks that cross-fade into the next song, such as AIR Blower (the only track on the album that credits all four band members as songwriters) and Scatterbrain (written by Beck and Middleton). Blow By Blow turned out to be Beck's most commercially successful album, leading to more instrumental LPs over the next several years.
Artist: Gentle Giant
Title: The Face
Source: CD: The Power And The Glory
Writer(s): Shulman/Minnear/Shulman
Label: Alucard (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1974
The Power And The Glory is a 1974 album by Gentle Giant that focuses on an individual that chooses politics as a means to make the world a better place. Like his predecessors, however, he becomes corrupted by power and ultimately becomes that which he originally fought against. The piece called The Face is the climax of the album itself, in which the protagonist declares himself to be the ultimate authority and demands total loyalty and obedience from his subjects (kind of like certain current political leaders). As of 2014, The Power And The Glory is available on Blu-Ray, with each song fully animated with various abstract patterns and all the lyrics displayed prominently on the screen. The latter makes a huge difference in the ability to enjoy the album, as Gentle Giant's vocals are often hard to decipher.
Artist: Mike Oldfield
Title: Tubular Bells (side two)
Source: LP: Tubular Bells
Writer(s): Mike Oldfield
Label: Virgin
Year: 1973
After shopping demos of his compositions to various record labels, multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield was almost out of money when he was invited to have dinner with Richard Branson, who was in the process of forming his own record label. Branson liked Oldfield's demos and invited him to spend a week recording at The Manor, Branson's recording studio in the outbuildings of an 18th century manor house north of the city of Oxford, England. Oldfield was able to complete the first half of what would eventually become Tubular Bells in November of 1972, but would not re-enter the studio until the following February. During the hiatus Oldfield mapped out the entire structure of what would become side two of Tubular Bells, spending the better part of two months recording it. Starting more quietly than the first side of the album, Tubular Bells part two eventually includes drums (played by Steve Broughton) and the album's only vocal segment, sometimes known as the "caveman" section. Oldfield actually screamed out the vocal segment while the tape was running at high speed, giving the vocals a gutteral quality when played at normal running speed. The album cover refers to them as Piltdown Man vocals. The entire piece ends with an increasingly fast rendition of The Sailor's Hornpipe, a piece familiar to fans of old Popeye cartoons. Tubular Bells was the first LP to be released on Branson's Virgin Records label, and after a slow start, the album eventually reached the top of the British, Canadian and Australian charts, peaking at #3 in the US.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Casey Jones
Source: CD: Skeletons From The Closet (originally released on LP: Workingman's Dead)
Writer(s): Hunter/Garcia
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1970
After three albums worth of studio material that the band was not entirely happy with, the Grateful Dead finally achieved their goal with the 1969 release of the double-LP Live Dead. So where do you go when you've finally accomplished your original mission? For the Dead the answer was to concentrate on their songwriting skills. The results of this new direction were heard on their next two studio LP's, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, both released in 1970. One of the highlights of Workingman's Dead was Casey Jones, a song based on an old folk tale (albeit updated a bit for a 1970 audience). Casey Jones was just one of many classic songs written by the team of guitarist Jerry Garcia and poet/lyricist Robert Hunter.
Artist: Leslie West
Title: Storyteller Man
Source: LP: Mountain
Writer(s): West/Pappalardi/Ventura/Landsberg
Label: Windfall
Year: 1969
After spending several years as lead guitarist for the Vagrants, Leslie West released his first solo LP, Mountain, in 1969, working with producer Felix Pappalardi, who also played bass and keyboards on the album. Pappalardi, in fact, had more writing credits on the album than West, including Storyteller Man, co-written by the two of them with Norman Landsberg, who played Hammond organ on the track and the mysterious John Ventura, who I can't seem to find any information on whatsoever, despite the fact that he is listed as co-writer on six of the album's eleven tunes.
Artist: Nazareth
Title: Witchdoctor Woman
Source: German import CD: Nazareth
Writer(s): Charlton/McCafferty
Label: Eagle (original UK label: Pegasus, original US label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1971 (US release: 1975)
Formed in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland in 1968, Nazareth moved to London in 1970 and released their debut album the following year. The opening track of that album, Witchdoctor Woman, was written by lead vocalist Dan McCafferty and guitarist Manny Charlton. Initially only successful in the UK, they broke out internationally in 1975 with the release of the album Hair Of The Dog. Nazareth continues to perform regularly, although only bassist Pete Agnew remains from the group's original lineup.
No comments:
Post a Comment