https://exchange.prx.org/p/615653
This week we present an entire side of a band that usually gets featured on our companion show, Rockin' in the Days of Confusion, along with a long battle of 60s songwriting superstars. And speaking of long, we have opening sequences from a couple of different albums along with lots of cool tracks ranging from 1964 to 1970, including Eric Clapton's last single with the Yardbirds and the opening track of his first album with John Mayall.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: I'm A Man
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Winwood/Miller
Label: United Artists
Year: 1967
The Spencer Davis Group, featuring brothers Steve and Muff Winwood, was one of the UK's most successful white R&B bands of the sixties, cranking out a steady stream of hit singles. Two of them, the iconic Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man, were also major hits in the US, the latter being the last song to feature the Winwood brothers. Muff Winwood became a successful record producer. The group itself continued on for several years, but were never able to duplicate their earlier successes. As for Steve Winwood, he quickly faded off into obscurity, never to be heard from again. Except as the leader of Traffic. And a member of Blind Faith. And Traffic again. And some critically-acclaimed collaborations in the early 1980s with Asian musicians. Oh yeah, and a few major solo hits like Back In The High Life Again and Roll With It in the late 80s. Other than that, nothing.
Artist: Tol-Puddle Martyrs
Title: Time Will Come
Source: Mono CD: Tol-Pubble Martyrs (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Peter Rechter
Label: Secret Deals (original labels: Pacific/Spiral)
Year: 1967
The Tol-Puddle Martyrs' Time Will Come was originally released in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia on the Pacific label, until the owner of the Pacific label was informed that there was already a Pacific label operating in Melbourne. At that time the label was hastily changed to Spiral, with the record having the same catalogue number. Although not a popular release at the time, both Time Will Come and its B side, Social Cell, are now considered classic examples of garage-rock, Australian style.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Change Is Now
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer: McGuinn/Hillman
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
1967 saw the departure of two of the Byrds' founders and most prolific songwriters: Gene Clark and David Crosby. The loss of Clark coincided with the emergence of Chris Hillman as a first-rate songwriter in his own right; the loss of Crosby later in the year, however, created an extra burden for Hillman and Roger McGuinn, who from that point on were the band's primary composers. Change Is Now was the B side of the band's first post-Crosby single, released in late 1967 and later included (in a stereo version) on their 1968 LP The Notorious Byrd Brothers.
Artist: Pretty Things
Title: Don't Bring Me Down
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Golden Days Of British Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Johnnie Dee
Label: Sire (original label: Fontana)
Year: 1964
Once upon a time in London there was a band called Little Boy Blue And The Blue Boys. Well, it wasn't really so much a band as a bunch of schoolkids jamming in guitarist Dick Taylor's parents' garage on a semi-regular basis. In addition to Taylor, the group included classmate Mick Jagger and eventually another guitarist by the name of Keith Richards. When yet another guitarist, Brian Jones, entered the picture, the band, which was still an amateur outfit, began calling itself the Rollin' Stones. Taylor switched from guitar to bass to accomodate Jones, but when the Stones decided to add a "g" and go pro in late 1962, Taylor opted to stay in school. It wasn't long, however, before Taylor, now back on guitar, showed up on the scene with a new band called the Pretty Things. Fronted by vocalist Phil May, the Things were rock and roll bad boys like the Stones, except more so. Their second single, Don't Bring Me Down, was their biggest hit single, making it into the British top 10 in late 1964. As was the case with all the Pretty Things' records, Don't Bring Me Down was unable to crack the US charts.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: For Your Love
Source: Mono CD: British Beat (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Graham Gouldman
Label: K-Tel (original label: Epic)
Year: 1965
The last Yardbirds song to feature guitarist Eric Clapton, For Your Love was the group's first US hit, peaking in the #6 slot. The song did even better in the UK, peaking at #3. Following its release, Clapton left the Yardbirds, citing the band's move toward a more commercial sound and this song in particular as reasons for his departure (ironic when you consider songs like his mid-90s hit Change the World or his slowed down lounge lizard version of Layla). For Your Love was written by Graham Gouldman, who would end up as a member of Wayne Fontana's Mindbenders and later 10cc with Kevin Godley and Lol Creme.
Artist: John Mayall with Eric Clapton
Title: All Your Love
Source: Mono LP: Blues Breakers
Writer(s): Otis Rush
Label: London
Year: 1966
Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds following the release of For Your Love, decrying the band's move toward a more commercial sound. Looking for a more blues-based group, Clapton soon hooked up with John Mayall, who already already released a well-received live LP. The two of them, with Jack Bruce on bass, recorded a live set at the Flamingo club that they hoped to release as an album, but the quality of the recordings was poor and the project was scrapped. In March of 1966, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, which by now included John McVie on bass and drummer Hughie Flint, went into the studio to record the album Blues Breakers. Although there are a few original songs on the album by both Mayall and Clapton, the bulk of the material was covers of blues classics such as All Your Love, which opens the LP. The song was originally recorded in 1958 by Otis Rush and is generally considered to be the most well-known of Rush's compositions.
Artist: 13th Floor Elevators
Title: Slip Inside This House
Source: British import CD: Easter Everywhere
Writer(s): Hall/Erickson
Label: Charly (original US label: International Artists)
Year: 1967
The 13th Floor Elevators returned from their only California tour in time to celebrate Christmas of 1966 in their native Texas. Not long after that things began to fall apart for the band. Much of this can be attributed to bad management, but at least some of the problems were internal in nature. Lead guitarist Stacy Southerland was caught with marijuana in the trunk of his car, thus causing his probation to be revoked, which in turn meant he was not allowed to leave the Lone Star state. This in turn caused the entire rhythm section to head off for San Francisco, leaving Southerland, along with electric juggest Tommy Hall and vocalist Roky Erickson, to find replacement members in time to start work on the band's second album, Easter Everywhere. Despite this, the album itself came out remarkably well, and is now considered a high point of the psychedelic era. Unlike the first 13th Floor Elevators album, Easter Everywhere was designed to be a primarily spiritual work. Nowhere is this more evident than on the album's opening track, the eight-minute epic Slip Inside This House. Written primarily by Hall, Slip Inside This House was intended to "establish the syncretic concepts behind Western and Eastern religions, science and mysticism, and consolidate them into one body of work that would help redefine the divine essence". While whether he succeeded or not is a matter of opinion, the track itself is certainly worth hearing for yourself. Enjoy.
Artist: Turtles
Title: Tie Me Down
Source: German import CD: Wooden Head
Writer(s): David Gates
Label: Repertoire (original US label: White Whale)
Year: 1970
Rather than continue butting heads with the shirts at White Whale Records, the Turtles chose to disband around 1970 or so, with Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman and Jim Pons hooking up with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention in time to record the classic Fillmore East – June 1971 album. Meanwhile White Whale, which didn't have any other successful artists on its roster, dug up a bunch of B sides and unreleased recordings to put together an album called Wooden Head. Many of the tracks used came from the group's early years, including Tie Me Down. The song was written by David Gates, who would go on the achieve star status as the front man for Bread in the 1970s.
Artist: Love
Title: I'm With You
Source: LP: Four Sail
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1969
Following the success of the top 40 single 7&7 Is in 1966, the members of Love were faced with a choice: go on tour on the chance that they might gain a national following or stay in Los Angeles, where, as the house band at the Whisky a Go Go, they were kings of the Sunset Strip. They chose the latter, which led to unexpected consequences. Some of the band members became deeply involved in the local drug scene, which caused them to show up unprepared when it came time to record Love's third LP, Forever Changes. Although they did manage to get their act together in time to finish the album, and one subsequent single, the band's two songwriting members, Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean, were increasingly distrustful of their bandmates. MacLean soon left the band for a solo career and Lee, as bandleader, fired everyone else. This left Lee with a problem, however, as Love was contractually obligated to provide Elektra Records with one more LP. Lee quickly assembled a new version of Love consisting of guitarist Jay Donnellan, drummer George Suranovich and bassist Frank Fayad, and used his own money to rent equipment to record a total of 27 songs with the new group. He then gave Elektra first choice of ten songs, which became the 1969 album Love Four Sail. Other than enhancing the tracks with reverb, Elektra used the songs as originally recorded and produced by Lee, without any remixing or overdubs. The result is a very personal sounding album, as can be heard on tracks like I'm With You.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Dharma For One
Source: CD: This Was
Writer(s): Anderson/Bunker
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
By 1968 it was almost considered mandatory that a rock band would include a drum solo on at least one album, thanks to Ginger Baker's Toad (on Cream's Wheels Of Fire) and Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Jethro Tull's contribution to the trend was Dharma For One, the only Tull song to give a writing credit to drummer Clive Bunker. Compared to most drum solos, Bunker's is fairly short (less than two minutes) and somewhat quirky, almost resembling a Spike Jones recording in places.
Artist: Janis Ian
Title: Pro-Girl
Source: LP: Janis Ian
Writer(s): Janis Ian
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1967
It took guts for a fifteen-year-old to write and record a song that is basically an open letter to a prostitute. It took maturity to do it without either condoning or condemning that kind of life. Janis Ian displayed both with the song Pro-Girl on her 1967 debut LP.
Artist: Santana
Title: Singing Winds, Crying Beasts/Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen/Oye Como Va
Source: CD: Abraxas
Writer: Carabello/Green/Szabo/Puente
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
To finish out the first hour we have one of the greatest opening sequences in the history of rock: the first fifteen minutes of Santana's second LP, Abraxas, presented uncut in its entirety.
Artist: Ventures
Title: War Of The Satellites
Source: LP: The Ventures In Space
Writer(s): Danny Hamilton
Label: Dolton/Sundazed
Year: 1964
Despite having only three top 10 singles to their credit (two of which were different versions of Walk-Don't Run), the Ventures managed to record over 200 albums, by far the most by an instrumental rock band. Most of these albums were based around a particular theme; indeed, the Ventures are generally acknowledged to have invented the concept album. One of their most unusual albums was The Ventures In Space, from 1964. Joining the band for this effort was noted session man Red Rhodes, who created many of the album's unusual sounds using a pedal steel guitar. In fact, all of the effects heard on tracks like War Of The Satellites were created using just guitars, rather than electronic devices such as a theramin. Quite an achievement for 1964, and one that holds up remarkably well nearly 50 years later.
This week I thought it might be fun to have a battle of bands vs. a duo, but that whole concept sounded a bit awkward. Then I realized that all the songs I had selected were self-penned, and that the songwriters in question are considered among the greatest in rock history. Thus we have a battle of 60s superstar songwriters, specifically Paul Simon and the team of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Enjoy!
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Honky Tonk Women
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1969
After revitalizing their career with Jumpin' Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man in 1968, the Rolling Stones delivered the coup-de-grace the following year with a true monster of a hit: the classic Honky Tonk Women. The song was the first single without Brian Jones, who had been found dead in his swimming pool not long after being kicked out of the band. Jones's replacement, Mick Taylor (fresh from a stint with blues legend John Mayall), plays slide guitar on the track.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: Punky's Dilemma
Source: LP: Bookends
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Originally written specifically for the 1967 soundtrack of the movie The Graduate but rejected by the producers, Punky's Dilemma sat on the shelf until the following year, when it became the only track on side two of Simon And Garfunkel's Bookends LP that had not been previously released. The lyrics are about as psychedelic as Paul Simon ever got.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Back Street Girl
Source: CD: Flowers
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
Back Street Girl is a tune that was originally released on the British version of the 1967 LP Between The Buttons, but left off the US album. Instead, the tune appeared later the same year on the US-only album Flowers. The album itself was a mixture of new and previously released material; in fact, half the songs on Flowers had already appeared on the US versions of Aftermath and Between The Buttons, while several more (including Back Street Girl) were available in the UK. This led critics to initially dismiss Flowers as a promotional ploy, but in more recent years the album has been recognized as a strong collection of songs based on the social scene surrounding the band itself.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Somewhere They Can't Find Me
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds of Silence)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Simon and Garfunkel's success as a folk-rock duo was actually due to the unauthorized actions of producer Tom Wilson, who, after working on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album, got some of the musicians who had worked on that album to add new backing tracks to The Sound of Silence. The song had been recorded as an acoustic number for the album Wednesday Morning 3AM, which had, by 1965, been deleted from the Columbia catalog. The new version of the song was sent out to select radio stations, and got such positive response that it was released as a single, eventually making the top 10. Meanwhile, Paul Simon, who had since moved to London and recorded an album called the Paul Simon Songbook, found himself returning to the US and reuniting with Art Garfunkel. Armed with an array of quality studio musicians they set about making their first electric album, Sounds of Silence. The song Somewhere They Can't Find Me was one of the new songs recorded for that album. From a lyrical standpoint, the song is actually a reworking of the title track of Wednesday Morning 3AM. Musically, the song shows a strong influence from British folk guitarists Bert Jansch and Davey Graham, both of whom Simon greatly admired.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Paint It Black
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1966
The 1966 Rolling Stones album Aftermath was the first to be made up entirely of songs written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The opening track of the LP, however, was not included on the British version of the album. That song, the iconic Paint It, Black, had already been released in the UK as a single, and would go on to become one of the Stones' defining recordings of the era.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: We've Got A Groovey Thing Goin'
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM B side and included on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
In late 1965, a New York based Columbia Records staff producer, Tom Wilson, decided to perform an experiment. He had just put the finishing touches on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album, and was high on the potential of integrating electric rock instruments into folk music. Around this same time, The Sound Of Silence, a song by the folk duo Simon & Garfunkel that Wilson had produced the previous year, had begun to get airplay on radio stations in Boston and throughout the state of Florida. Without the knowledge of the duo (who had by then split up) Wilson remixed the song, adding electric guitar, bass and drums, essentially creating a whole new version of the song and, for that matter, a whole new genre: folk-rock. The new electric version of The Sound of Silence, backed by We've Got a Groovey Thing Goin', was released in September of 1965, and it soon became obvious that it was going to be a hit. The only problem was that by the time all this happened, Simon and Garfunkel had gone their separate ways, briefly reuniting in April of 1965 to record We've Got a Groovey Thing Going, but not releasing it at the time. Simon had relocated to London and recorded a UK-only LP called the Paul Simon Songbook in June of 1965, releasing it two months later. By mid-November The Sound Of Silence was the #1 song in Boston, and had entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Simon returned to the states, got back together with Art Garfunkel and, on December 13, 1965 began recording tracks for a new album. On January 1, 1966 The Sound Of Silence hit the #1 spot on the Hot 100. Two weeks later the LP Sounds Of Silence, which included a new stereo mix of We've Got A Groovey Thing Going made from the original 4-track master tape, was released. By the way, this song is the only instance I know of of the word "groovy" being spelled "groovey".
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Dupree's Diamond Blues
Source: CD: Aoxomoxoa
Writer(s): Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1969
The third Grateful Dead LP, Aoxomoxoa, was one of the first albums to be recorded using state-of-the-art sixteen track equipment, and the band, in the words of guitarist Jerry Garcia, "tended to put too much on everything...A lot of the music was just lost in the mix, a lot of what was really there." Garcia and bassist Phil Lesh would return to the master tapes in 1971, remixing the entire album for the version that has appeared on vinyl and CD ever since then. In 2010, however, Warner Brothers and Rhino released a limited edition pressing of the original mix on vinyl as part of a five album box set and made a standalone version of the LP available a year later. All of the music on Aoxomoxoa, including Dupree's Diamond Blues (which was also released as a single) is credited to guitarist Jerry Garcia and bassist Phil Lesh, with lyrics by poet Robert Hunter.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Magic Carpet Ride
Source: LP: Vintage Rock (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf The Second)
Writer(s): Moreve/Kay
Label: K-Tel (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
Steppenwolf's second top 10 single was Magic Carpet Ride, a song that combines feedback, prominent organ work by Goldy McJohn and an updated Bo Diddly beat with psychedelic lyrics. Along with Born To Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride (co-written by vocalist John Kay and bassist Rushton Moreve) has become one of the defining songs of both Steppenwolf and the late 1960s.
Artist: Genesis
Title: From Genesis To Revelation (side one)
Source: British import LP: In The Beginning
Writer(s): Banks/Gabriel/Phillips/Rutherford
Label: Decca
Year: 1969
In 1967 a group of students from the Charterhouse School in the market town of Godalming, Surrey (about 30 miles southwest of London) recorded some demos, which found their way into the hands of Charterhouse alumni Jonathan King, who in 1965 had an international hit single with his own composition Everyone's Gone To The Moon. King, who was now looking to become a producer, booked studio time for the group, which consisted of guitarist Anthony Phillips, bassist Mike Rutherford, lead vocalist Peter Gabriel, keyboardist Tony Banks, and drummer Chris Stewart. They hadn't come up with a name for themselves yet, so King gave them one: Genesis. After recording a pair of light pop singles, King felt the band was ready to begin working on a full-length LP, but felt that Stewart's drumming wasn't up to par. On King's recommendation, Stewart was replaced by John Silver, whose drumming can be heard on From Genesis To Revelation. The album was initially a flop, reportedly selling less than 700 copies, and causing the group to disband, their contract with the British Decca label having been fulfilled. A few months later Phillips, Rutherford, Gabriel and Banks, who by then had graduated from high school, decided to reboot the band with yet another drummer, John Mayhew, who played on the 1970 album Trespass. Both Mayhew and Phillips (who suffered from stage fright) would leave the band following the recording of Trespass, to be replaced by guitarist Steve Hackett and drummer Phil Collins, thus completing the classic Genesis lineup.
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