Joan Baez - Joan Baez/5

Released - October 1964

Genre - Folk

Producer - Maynard Solomon

Selected Personnel - Joan Baez (Vocals/Guitar); David Soyer (Cello)

Standout Track - There But For Fortune

This is actually an album I've been familiar with for many years, but has only recently crept its way onto this list. Joan Baez is an artist I've admired and enjoyed for a long time, largely down to my undying love of "Diamonds & Rust," a song of hers from 1975. It's one of the finest love songs ever written and is certainly the finest song Baez herself ever wrote, as well as being, quite possibly, also the best thing she ever recorded. It's also blatantly obvious listening to it that she had a real talent for songwriting that, had she chosen to indulge it more often, might have seen her ultimately remembered as one of the truly great singer-songwriters in folk music, in the vein of the likes of Joni Mitchell, as she certainly had the talent for it. But, for whatever reason, she chose most often to limit herself to interpreting the songs of others, or traditional folk tunes. It's possible that this tendency of hers is part of the reason why she's always remained an artist I enjoy and admire and never become one who's truly captivated me in the way that Mitchell has - there's a lot to be said for cover versions and how a new interpretation or a new voice behind a familiar song can render it totally different, or introduce its message to a new audience, but the artists I've always identified with most tend to be the ones who choose to express their own ideas creatively through writing, while Baez's decision to stay principally rooted to music's past rather than trying to create anything new makes her a slightly less interesting figure to me. It's particularly curious considering she was such an outspoken and passionate activist in matters like war, human and civil rights, the environment and much more besides - she was clearly somebody with something to say and a passion to say it, but it's odd that she so rarely chose to try and express that creatively through writing her own music.

As such, when I first started listening to Baez, I never got much further than a small handful of albums, including Diamonds & Rust, her self-titled debut and this, her third studio album (but fifth album overall including live albums, hence its title). Joan Baez I went for because I wanted to hear how she started out, this I went for because I liked the pretty picture of a tree on the front. At the time, it didn't do much to excite me, although I always loved her cover of Phil Ochs' "There But For Fortune." However, I recently listened to her second album, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, which is another collection of solo acoustic interpretations of traditional folk songs in the same template as her debut, although slightly less successfully achieved in my view. I revisited Joan Baez/5 to listen to it all the way through for the first time in an age and was surprised by how much I found myself enjoying it. If anything, it's actually perhaps better than 1960's Joan Baez in that it sees the range of her musical interests beginning to expand, though it still delivers the same requisite amount of lovely, simple folk tunes sung beautifully as that earlier record did.

Joan Baez/5 was the first time Baez broadened her influences beyond traditional folk and included contemporary songs by artists like Bob Dylan (who would only recently have begun to achieve renown with 1963's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) and Phil Ochs, and also sees her including classical material in "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5," an operatic aria that, ultimately, feels out of place and has always been a bugbear of mine on this album. I'm not a huge fan of opera but it can be powerful enough in the right context. But here, amongst a collection of more homely and comforting folk music, it feels like a forced inclusion, while the striking clarity and multi-octave range of Baez's voice, usually qualities that mark her out as such an exceptional talent, become genuinely quite grating when given free range over such an acrobatic and overwrought piece of music. Still, it's the only moment of the record that I genuinely struggle to get through - there are moments of fairly flat and uninspiring filler, like "The Death Of Queen Jane" or the faintly plodding ode-to-a-racehorse of "Stewball," but there are also some beautiful tunes here that Baez really owns.

The finest is the aforementioned "There But For Fortune," a song as powerful in its bleak and insightful assessment of the world's problems in the mid-60s as it is blessed by a truly beautiful tune. Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" is another lovely tune whose virtues become all the more apparent when sung by a voice like Baez's rather than Dylan's own nasal whine. "Go 'Way From My Window" is hauntingly quiet and pleading, while there's a sort of knees-up sense of fun to the faster-paced "When You Hear Them Cuckoos Hollerin'". There's a sense here that as well as broadening her musical styles, Baez is experimenting in different moods more often than on her earlier records, from the world-weariness of "There But For Fortune" or the soft fear of "Go 'Way From My Window" to songs more feelgood and frivolous like the Latin fun of "O' Cangaceiro", in contrast to the more consistently whimsical and folksy atmosphere of her first album.

It's an album I find I have to go into with expectations adjusted accordingly, telling myself I just want to listen to some nice folk music sung prettily. Ultimately, that's no bad reason to enjoy a collection of good music, but there's something about it that keeps it from truly exciting me. What I enjoy most about great music is the sense of being able to get into the mind of the artist and explore a creative idea, whether that's necessarily solely through writing or by choice reinterpretations of older songs. With Baez, I often feel that she sticks to covering older material purely because she's sticking doggedly to folk traditions, and I rarely get a strong sense of her own viewpoint or character through her music. By 1964 she had already begun her vocal support of the civil rights movement, and her live performance of Pete Seeger's "We Shall Overcome" in 1963 had seen her touted as an important new protest singer. But even with all that passion to explore, there's not a great sense of it here, and only "There But For Fortune" has any sense within it of trying to assess the state of the world around her.

Still, it obviously wasn't an issue that much concerned Baez herself, or her legions of fans at the time. She was a singer who simply enjoyed singing music that touched or moved or inspired, and ultimately it's only the old cynic in me that can really have a problem with that. And when a singer has a voice as crystal-clear and beautiful as Baez, then it's impossibly to deny that sitting and listening to her sing through these songs is a really pleasant experience, and this record is genuinely lovely as long as you're comfortable with its relative lack of ambition. I've not delved into Baez's discography beyond this point - it sees her continue to diversify beyond traditional folk music to incorporate classical orchestration and to experiment with country rock music as well as folk, but by the 70s her greatest period of acclaim and success was behind her. Perhaps it was that sense of no longer being in the spotlight that gave her the requisite space she needed to try and write more often and deliver her finest work in 1975. 

Track Listing:

1. There But For Fortune (Phil Ochs)

2. Stewball (Ralph Rinzler, Bob Yellin & John Herald)

3. It Ain't Me Babe (Bob Dylan)

4. The Death Of Queen Jane (Traditional)

5. Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (Heitor Villa-Lobos)

6. Go 'Way From My Window (Traditional, Arranged by John Jacob Niles)

7. I Still Miss Someone (Johnny Cash & Roy Cash Jr.)

8. When You Hear Them Cuckoos Hollerin' (Traditional)

9. Birmingham Sunday (Richard Farina)

10. So We'll Go No More A-Roving (Richard Dyer-Bennet & Lord Byron)

11. O Cangaceiro (Alfredo Ricardo do Nascimento)

12. The Unquiet Grave (Traditional)

Randy Newman - Good Old Boys

Released - September 1974

Genre - Jazz Rock

Producer - Lenny Waronker & Russ Titelman

Selected Personnel - Randy Newman (Vocals/Piano/Synthesiser/Arrangements); Ry Cooder (Guitar); Jon Platania (Guitar); Ron Elliott (Guitar); Al Perkins (Pedal Steel Guitar); Russ Titelman (Bass); Willy Weeks (Bass); Jim Keltner (Drums); Andy Newmark (Drums); Milt Holland (Percussion); Glenn Frey (Backing Vocals); Don Henley (Backing Vocals)

Standout Track - Louisiana, 1927

Randy Newman's 1972 release Sail Away was, in essence, his breakthrough record as a recording artist in his own right. Up to that point he had been beavering away behind the scenes of the music industry as a songwriter for the likes of Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark, but with the (admittedly very modest) success of Sail Away, it first became apparent that Newman was even better suited recording his own work. Ultimately, Newman will be principally remembered as a composer and songwriter, but for me, his work is always at its most potent, funny, biting and powerful when sung and performed by the man himself. There's something about his strangled, gloopy vocals and bright, jazzy sensibilities that really brings out the layered cynicism or the sense of mischievous fun within his music that no number of covers of "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" or "You Can Leave Your Hat On" will ever achieve. In 1974, though, Newman came the closest he would ever come to stardom in his own right via an album that not only sold well but has gone down as a classic.

The original vision for Good Old Boys was for it to be a fairly ambitious and cinematic concept album following the life of a character named Johnny Cutler - Newman had already firmly established on Sail Away that his writing naturally tended towards speaking in the voices of characters far removed from himself, be it the slave trader of the title track or God himself in "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)," so a character-based conceptual album seems a natural progression for him as a writer. The story was to explore issues of racism in the Deep South via the character of Cutler, and a series of demo recordings eventually released under the title Johnny Cutler's Birthday in 2002 show a real sense of cinematic scale to Newman's initial vision that is impressive but difficult to realise. As he talks through his ideas between songs, Newman suggests shifts of perspective between scenes that would be difficult to really make much sense of in any medium besides film, so it's perhaps for the best that the final version of Good Old Boys is a far simpler thing, consisting of a series of short, simple songs. Many of them are united by their themes of life in the Deep South in the mid-70s, though it's less clear if Newman is still trying to tie these songs into a story or if that idea has been entirely abandoned. References to characters such as Johnny's wife Marie are still present, but in general, it feels like the concept has been loosened to consist simply of a series of snapshots of various everyman characters within the world Newman is constructing.

Though the concept is established as an exploration of life in the Southern States, Newman is careful to very early on establish the precise position of his own politics. Whereas on "Southern Man" Neil Young had prompted the ire of Southerners everywhere (particularly Lynyrd Skynyrd, who would rebuff him years later with "Sweet Home Alabama") by dismissing them as backwards racists, on the opening "Rednecks" Newman makes a far more sophisticated and interesting point. While he mocks the racial prejudices of Southerners, it's actually the hypocritical righteousness of the responses of Northern states that emerges looking most ludicrous - "Down here we're too ignorant to realise that the North has set the nigger free. Yes he's free to be put in a cage in Harlem in New York City, and he's free to be put in a cage on the South Side of Chicago." With biting, provocative cynicism, Newman is careful to paint all of America as a nation steeped either in prejudice or hypocrisy that prevents it from making true progress, and it's this cynical worldview against which he paints his portrait of the South, rather than against one of lofty finger-pointing. That such a provocative political point is wrapped up in a song as jazzy and feelgood as "Rednecks" is just another level to Randy Newman's mischievous genius.

If there's one criticism that can be made of Good Old Boys, it's that the musical style and sound of the record becomes fairly predictable fairly quickly. Either we're presented with bouncy, jazzy pop songs in the vein of "Rednecks" or "Birmingham," or we're given slower, undeniably beautiful ballads replete with lush string orchestrations. Musically, there's very little thrown in to surprise the listener, particularly a listener who's already familiar with the musical style Newman had established on Sail Away. There's not a bad tune here, but there's also very little that really makes you sit up and pay attention. Through the familiar template, Newman smuggles in a series of ideas just as daring as the more controversial moments of Sail Away and then some, from the direct plea to Richard Nixon for social reform of "Mr President (Have Pity On The Working Man)" to the attempt to humanise and draw with empathy a drug-addled, alcoholic wreck on "Guilty." The woozy, slightly off-key string and woodwind harmonies on "Guilty" create a sort of wonky, dreamlike idyll against which Newman's images of cocaine and alcohol addiction unfold.

Halfway through the album comes its crowning achievement, the beautiful "Louisiana, 1927," a slow but stately lament telling the story of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Told from the perspective of an eyewitness, it's almost incongruously majestic, its orchestral arrangements swelling to one of the prettiest choruses Newman ever penned. Its depictions of domestic destruction and homelessness jar with its stirring, beautiful melody, but Newman has always excelled at wrapping up challenging ideas in misleading musical contexts. The album's second half has fewer standout tracks than the first, although the fun, galloping pianos and percussion of "Naked Man" are good fun, and "Back On My Feet Again," while fairly slight, is one of Newman's most immediately catchy and memorable little pop tunes. There's also some disappointing filler like the Newman-ballad-by-numbers that is "A Wedding In Cherokee County." There's also a nice touch in the inclusion of a cover of "Every Man A King" (featuring vocal contributions from the Eagles), a song penned in 1935 by Louisiana's then governor, Huey Long.

Ultimately, it strikes me as odd that Good Old Boys remains the commercial and critical peak of Randy Newman's career as, based purely on the albums I've heard of his (which is only about four or five, admittedly), it's probably my least favourite. There are a couple of wonderful tunes in "Rednecks" and "Louisiana, 1927," and some typically incisive and provocative political ideas that make the slave-trade piss-take of "Sail Away" look fairly tame by comparison, and there's a gleeful sense of fun to the whole thing, but purely in musical terms, it's a long way from being his most compelling record. Too often things are limited to bouncy piano, twaning country guitar and Newman's yowling vocals, all arranged in a familiar country-jazz-pop setting that doesn't do much to surprise anybody who's already familiar with Newman's work. It's by no means a bad album, but I'm always surprised that 1977's wonderful Little Criminals doesn't get more love. Admittedly, lyrically Little Criminals is far less insightful or opinionated even though its songs are far superior, so perhaps it's purely for its political chutzpah and cheeky sense of satire that Good Old Boys wins all the plaudits. On those terms, it certainly delivers, but as an overall package, it's still Little Criminals or Sail Away that takes the prize for me.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Randy Newman except where noted.

1. Rednecks

2. Birmingham

3. Marie

4. Mr President (Have Pity On The Working Man)

5. Guilty

6. Louisiana, 1927

7. Every Man A King (Huey P. Long & Castro Carazo)

8. Kingfish

9. Naked Man

10. Wedding In Cherokee County

11. Back On My Feet Again

12. Rollin'

Neil Young - On The Beach

Released - July 1974

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Neil Young; David Briggs; Mark Harman & Al Schmitt

Selected Personnel - Neil Young (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Harmonica); Ben Keith (Slide Guitar/Dobro/Organ/Percussion/Bass); Tim Drummond (Bass/Percussion); Ralph Molina (Drums/Percussion); Billy Talbot (Bass); David Crosby (Guitar); Graham Nash (Piano)

Standout Track - On The Beach

Over the last few months, Neil Young has slowly been creeping his way from my list of artists I enjoy but don't feel obsessively compelled by, into my list of artists who've come to mean a huge amount to me and who I'd like to try and get a more complete appreciation of. That's for a number of reasons, really - from my very first encounter with Young's music via After The Gold Rush and Harvest about five years ago, he'd already established himself in my mind as one of the finest American folk singer-songwriters, and somebody with a poetic and beautiful insight into life, love, ageing and the like. As I slowly started listening to Young's other records, particularly some of his albums recorded with Crazy Horse, it became clear that what Young was able to achieve and express was so much more than the faintly Dylanesque troubadour image I'd built up of him. Equally as comfortable expressing rage, frustration, despair and bewilderment as at writing a poetic little ditty about lost love or the passing of time, he was also a musician as at home playing brutal, punishing hard rock as with mellow, countrified folk. The man's obvious versatility as a musician and writer slowly caught my interest, and I'm currently in the midst of gradually trying to listen to a greater spread of his discography. The album that first prompted my further interest in him was On The Beach, which I first listened to a little over a year ago.

Musically, On The Beach feels not too far removed from the melodic country folk of Harvest, but there's a bleakness and a sense of despair at play that marks it out as a very different beast. In the wake of the enormous success of Harvest and, in particular, the classic song "Heart Of Gold," Young was dismayed to suddenly find himself heralded as some sort of pop icon. Determined to avoid being perceived as a middle-of-the-road musican, he vowed to head into "the ditch" to maintain his own integrity. What followed was to be remembered as the "Ditch Trilogy," a series of three albums that failed to capitalise on the commercial breakthrough of Harvest but that achieved his artistic ambitions in their frank and raw explorations of despair. The first such record was a live album entitled Time Fades Away that Young was ultimately dissatisfied with. During the tour that resulted in the recording of Time Fades Away, Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten had to be dismissed from the band due to his increasing instability and unreliability due to his growing drug dependency. Not long after, Whitten died from a drug overdose, an event which haunted Young for a long time. The death of Whitten, along with the simultaneous death of roadie Bruce Berry, would be the lurking presence behind the 1973 recording of Tonight's The Night, an album that I'll talk about more when we get to 1975.

Unremittingly bleak and unabashedly raw and lo-fi, Tonight's The Night wasn't met enthusiastically by Young's record label, Reprise, who refused to release it (they would eventually agree at Young's insistence a couple of years later). In the interim, Young set about recording another new album that still allowed him to explore his feelings of desolation and loss but that tried to achieve a slightly more commercial sound that would satisfy Reprise. The result was On The Beach, recorded by a lineup that included former Stray Gators Ben Keith and Tim Drummond alongside Crazy Horse musicians like Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot. The album's first half in particular feels like a bone throne to appease the people at Reprise - opener "Walk On," with its bright, clanging electric guitar riff, sounds like a sunny slice of wholesome optimism, while its lyrics espouse an acceptance of one's mistakes and problems and moving ahead with life. It's arguably one of Young's most effortlessly feelgood songs, and a mischievous piece of misdirection considering how bleak much of the rest of the album would get. "See The Sky About To Rain" is another fairly upbeat song, again suggesting a kind of "weather the storm" optimism, while its pleasant melody and gentle keyboard part make it another genuinely lovely song.

But with "Revolution Blues" Young's genuine mental state and preoccupations begin to come to the fore. A more brutal rock song driven by an angry, ringing guitar riff, it's a character study of murderer Charles Manson, replete with all the rage and highly-strung insecurity that drove him to extremes. "I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars, but I hate them more than lepers and I'll kill them in their cars," is among the most devastatingly angry lyrics Young ever wrote. The last two songs of the first half see a slight dip in quality, with the blandly meditative "For The Turnstiles" and the slightly goofy and hamfisted attack on oil corporations that is "Vampire Blues," but the album's second half is a sort of distillation of Young's creative genius. The sun-kissed, mellow mood of Harvest or the upbeat pop moments of After The Gold Rush are almost completely absent, as is the angry posing of a more attention-grabbing rock song like "Southern Man" or "Cinnamon Girl." Instead, there's an unremittingly bleak and very sad exploration of the man's feelings of isolation in response to his newfound fame.

The extended, bluesy meanderings of "On The Beach" amount to one of Neil Young's very greatest moments. In a series of wonderfully realised images he effortlessly draws the picture of a man trying to find solace in his success but still feeling a yearning for something more meaninful - "I need a crowd of people but I can't face them day to day...now I'm living out here on the beach, but those seagulls are still out of reach." It's a wonderfully sad portrait, and one reinforced even further by the following track, "Motion Pictures," on which Young reimagines himself as a normal guy with very little who hates the idea of trading his simple life for one of fame and success. It's a much more content and warm-sounding song, but one made all the more poignant by the realisation that its criticism of celebrity figures essentially involves Young admonishing himself. "Ambulance Blues" is another lengthy, slow, meditative song, and one that involves some of his most cryptic lyrics, full of oblique references to contemporary American culture and politics as well as to specific personal details of his own past and career. It's difficult to make sense of every reference, but essentially the entire thing dissolves down into one lengthy, weary, defeated reflection on the slow death of hippy counter-culture, and the growing sense of apathy that pervaded American culture in the mid-70s. It's testament to Young's ability as a writer and musician that through nine minutes of barely varying acoustic music, he still maintains a sense of compelling world-weariness that never lets up.

By the time the album winds up, the sense of world-beating optimism that enlivened "Walk On" has been long forgotten, and a sense of sad nostalgia persists. It's all wrapped up in a far more commercial-sounding arrangement and production than the grittiness of Tonight's The Night, meaning Reprise agreed to put it out, though it didn't do particularly big business. Nonetheless, in the years since it's come to be seen as one of the artistic peaks of Young's career, and on a personal note, it was the first time I began to wake up to the fact that Neil Young was far more than just a feelgood poet and songwriter, but a man of far more substance and depth. Tonight's The Night finally saw the light of day the following year and has come to be seen as the pinnacle of Young's bleak "Ditch Trilogy," even though it's On The Beach for me that wins the laurels. Having perhaps finally worked out some of the issues that had been troubling him for the last couple of years, in the wake of that album Young reunited with Crazy Horse and set about trying to record something less personal and pessimistic and more in the vein of traditional rock music, delivering the great Zuma in the same year.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Neil Young.

1. Walk On

2. See The Sky About To Rain

3. Revolution Blues

4. For The Turnstiles

5. Vampire Blues

6. On The Beach

7. Motion Pictures

8. Ambulance Blues