Joan Baez - Diamonds & Rust

Released - April 1975

Genre - Folk

Producer - David Kershenbaum

Selected Personnel - Joan Baez (Vocals/Guitar/Synthesiser/Arrangements); Larry Carlton (Guitar); Dean Parks (Guitar); Wilton Felder (Bass); Jim Gordon (Drums); Larry Knechtel (Piano); Joe Sample (Piano/Organ); David Paich (Piano/Harpsichord); Tom Scott (Flute/Saxophone); Jim Horn (Saxophone); Joni Mitchell (Backing Vocals)

Standout Track - Diamonds & Rust

Diamonds & Rust is the album where we get a glimpse at the astonishing singer-songwriter Joan Baez could have been if she'd ever felt much of a calling to follow that road. Best known as an interpreter of the songs of others, whether that be traditional folk songs or compositions by her contemporaries like Bob Dylan. In the late 60s she started to write her own songs, but rarely made it a priority and still mostly occupied herself with covers. She writes four songs on Diamonds & Rust, all of which show a really strong talent for writing, most notably the peerless title track.

It's also an album on which Baez puts a sense of fun ahead of all else - throughout the 60s she had used her mainstream popularity as a soapbox for her political views and her desire for social change, and had become one of music's most predominant political activists thanks to her various protest concerts and marches and demonstrations. By the mid-70s, though her talent hadn't faded one bit, her role as the voice of a generation was more or less over, so on Diamonds & Rust the focus is less on po-faced political statement and more on fun, upbeat pop music. Teaming up with a band of seasoned LA session musicians, many of whom had worked with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Steely Dan, Baez and producer David Kershenbaum create a tight, crisp sound as crystal-clear as Baez's voice and the band swings jauntily along on pretty much every track, never letting the feelgood nature of the album drop. Mitchell herself pops up on one of the album's most joyoudly silly tracks, trading vocal improvisations with Baez on the excellent "Dida," a one-word nonsense song that never fails to put a smile on my face for the pure enjoyment of hearing two such wonderful vocalists simply having fun singing together.

Even on the slower, down-tempo ballads the mood is still one of bright-eyed pop eanestness rather than on any searing, emotional sincerity. Stevie Wonder's "Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer" may not have the rumbustious energy of "Fountain Of Sorrow," but Baez and her band, complete with cheesy string arrangements, still turn in a hugely fun rendition rather than a particularly moving one. Dylan's "Simple Twist Of Fate" is another major highlight, its ringing guitar riff and Baez's mischievous Dylan impression making it one of the album's most fun moments, and Baez's cover of the Allman Brothers Band's "Blue Sky" is great as well, though it doesn't do much to meddle with the formula of an already great song.

The album's one moment of genuine, heartfelt sincerity and depth is, of course, the mighty title track, undoubtedly Baez's finest ever composition, and maybe even the best song she ever sang - it more than holds its own against the numerous other songs she covered in her career. It's an expertly drawn portrait of a long-finished relationship and how the ghosts of it linger years later. Baez tells the story of an out-of-the-blue phone call from an old lover and the memories it stirs, reflecting that "we both know what memories can bring, they bring diamonds and rust." The song, of course, alludes to her relationship with Dylan ten years earlier (the lyric "You burst on the scene already a legend" is a big clue, but Baez herself has confirmed that the song is about him since). My favourite story about the song concerns a concert where Baez and Dylan were singing together shortly after the song's release, at which Dylan, having picked up on the clues to his identity within the song, complimented her on it only for her to claim it was written about her ex-husband David, presumably simply to rile Dylan. She later confirmed she wrote it after receiving an unexpected phone call from him, in which he read her all the lyrics to a new song while calling, as the song explains, from a phone booth in the mid-West. It's a beautifully expressed song, and Baez's simple acoustic guitar part and soaring vocals make it one of the great highlights of her career.

For me, it's no bad thing that "Diamonds & Rust" is the only moment on the album where we get a glimpse at the earnest, authentic folksinger of old that Baez had established herself as. Everything else here is simply exemplary pop music and, just as many 70s artists simply decided to kick back and have some fun in the 80s and leave authenticity to a newer generation, one can't hold it against Baez that here she succeeds in putting together a joyously upbeat collection of pop songs that it's impossible not to enjoy. I've never listened to anything from later on in Baez's career - there's already a sense with Diamonds & Rust that her need to make music was waning, and her album output over subsequent decades became ever more sporadic, reflecting an increasing sense that she would only make music when she felt like she wanted to, rather than out of any sense of obligation. Throughout the 60s she firmly established herself as one of the most significant voices in the folk music scene, as well as one of its most beautiful voices, and on Diamonds & Rust she proves herself as someone able to simply have fun with great music as well.

Track Listing:

1. Diamonds & Rust (Joan Baez)

2. Fountain Of Sorrow (Jackson Browne)

3. Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer (Stevie Wonder & Syreeta Wright)

4. Children And All That Jazz (Joan Baez)

5. Simple Twist Of Fate (Bob Dylan)

6. Blue Sky (Dickey Betts)

7. Hello In There (John Prine)

8. Jesse (Janis Ian)

9. Winds Of The Old Days (Joan Baez)

10. Dida (Joan Baez)

11. I Dream Of Jeannie/Danny Boy (Stephen Foster/Frederick Weatherly)

Jethro Tull - Minstrel In The Gallery

Released - September 1975

Genre - Hard Rock

Producer - Ian Anderson

Selected Personnel - Ian Anderson (Vocals/Flute/Guitar); Martin Barre (Guitar); John Evan (Piano/Organ); Jeffrey Hammond (Bass); Barriemore Barlow (Drums/Percussion); David Palmer (Orchestral Arrangements)

It's been a while since I wrote about Jethro Tull here, largely because Ian Anderson & co. chose to spend the years 1973 and 1974 slowly erasing any credibility or mainstream success they'd amassed over the course of their early albums. It's a shame, as much of their very best music was still ahead of them, and the two albums they released in those two years aren't necessarily bad (there would be far worse to come in the 80s), they just fail spectacularly to follow through on the breakthrough success of Aqualung and Thick As A Brick. In 1972, they had released the latter, an album that succeeded not only as one of the finest prog rock concept albums of all time, but also as a superbly tongue-in-cheek piss-take of the whole genre. In 1973 they made the odd decision to try and replicate the album with A Passion Play, another album consisting of one forty-five minute song split into two halves. While it has its moments, it's nowhere near as good as Thick As A Brick, and its intentions have always been unclear to me - aside from the obviously tongue-in-cheek spoken word section "The Owl Who Had Lost His Spectacles," it's never quite clear if it's another joke or an attempt to do seriously what they had done flippantly before. For me, it doesn't really succeed on either front. Then in 1974 came War Child, an album that is by no means the worst album Tull ever released, but, unlike even the worst of their 80s records, commits the cardinal sin of being totally forgettable. By the time 1975 rolled around, Tull hadn't yet totally lost their ability to sell out huge venues or have hit albums, but their critical lustre had begun to wane.

A shame, as Minstrel In The Gallery as perhaps one of their three very best albums alongside Aqualung and Thick As A Brick. Perhaps feeling that he'd exhausted the kitsch and knowing tone of his prog rock persona, Ian Anderson took the wise decision to simplify things, and Minstrel is closest in sound and style to Aqualung, back when the band was labelled "prog" for their accidental moments of bombast and excess but before they started self-consciously trying to write within that mould. As such, it feels a lot more genuine, committed and honest than A Passion Play or War Child ever did. As the title implies, the style is frequently quite close to Medieval balladry and has a sort of timeless, earthy Englishness to it. The hushed spoken word introduction to the album ("My lord and lady...") sets the Baroque tone, into which Anderson's mandolin and flute and trilling vocals, backed by David Palmer's lush orchestrations, fit seamlessly. Most of the songs are strongly grounded in that rich, folkloric atmosphere, and then the rest of the band, led by the metallic heft of Martin Barre's lead guitar work, storms through it all with a more hard-rock approach then Tull had ever mustered before. Barre's work is exemplary here (and he gets one of his few co-writer credits on the title track), with lengthy passages serving purely to showcase his knack at a knotty solo or crunching riff.

As ever, it's rare that anybody other than Anderson or Barre gets much of a chance to shine here and, while John Evan, Barriemore Barlow and Jeffrey Hammond provide great support here (Evan's piano intro on "Black Satin Dancer" is lovely), mostly it feels like another collection of Anderson's songs with Barre having a riot soloing all over them. The dynamic between folklore and hard rock is best exemplified on the opening title track, which establishes itself with nothing more than Anderson's mandolin flourishes and troubadour-like vocals before Barre crashes onto the scene with one of his finest solos, eventually settling down into a brutal, punishing riff as the main melody returns, certainly one of Barre's very finest moments on record. "Cold Wind To Valhalla" does a similar trick, starting in hushed folk mode and expanding into a swaggering hard rock number. "Black Satin Dancer" mixes things up a bit more, playing with dynamics between its quiet, slow passages and angry, frenzied instrumental freak-outs led by Barre's guitar solos once again. Anderson also shows off some of his most acrobatic and lunatic flute work on "Black Satin Dancer."

"Requiem" is one of Tull's most beautiful ballads, consisting of little more than Anderson's voice and acoustic guitar and a gentle string accompaniment. Minstrel In The Gallery was recorded in the wake of Anderson's divorce from his first wife Jennie Franks, and the imagistic poetry of "Requiem" serves as one of the few Tull songs with a real emotional heft and poignancy to it. My other favourite track is, of course, the lengthy epic that serves as the (almost) climax of the album, "Baker St. Muse." While the songs on Minstrel are fairly complicated, many of them stick closer to traditional rock song structures than anything on the likes of Thick As A Brick and A Passion Play, so the 16-minute "Baker St. Muse" is their concession to their prog fans longing for lengthy suites and overblown excess. For me, the piece is one enormously lengthy slow-burn, building in intensity and feeling until the gentle, acoustic riff of the "There was a little boy stood on a burning log" section, which explodes into a marvellous hard rock finale with Anderson's exultant cry of "One day I'll be a minstrel in the gallery."

There's not a single weak track on Minstrel In The Gallery, making it easily one of their most consistent albums - even the brief, light closing number of "Grace" is perfectly lovely despite being a sort of perfunctory afterthought. Its best moments rank as some of Tull's very finest, and it shows them rediscovering their muse after a couple of years of basically trying to live up to a joke that had gotten out of hand. It's simpler, more heartfelt and harder hitting than anything they'd done since 1971, even than the masterful Thick As A Brick. It sold fairly well, and was generally regarded as something of a return to form by critics, but didn't ignite the charts quite well enough to slow their gradual decline. Their next move would be another more conventional rock album, Too Old To Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young To Die!, that again made the mistake of being a little too conservative and unmemorable, before they made a slight change of direction with an acclaimed "folk rock trilogy" that finished off the decade, a series of albums that foregrounded the softer elements of English folk music that had always lingered in the background in all of their music.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Ian Anderson except where noted.

1. Minstrel In The Gallery (Ian Anderson & Martin Barre)

2. Cold Wind To Valhalla

3. Black Satin Dancer

4. Requiem

5. One White Duck/010 = Nothing At All

6. Baker St. Muse

7. Grace

Hall & Oates - Daryl Hall & John Oates

Released - August 1975

Genre - Pop

Producer - Daryl Hall; John Oates & Christopher Bond

Selected Personnel - Daryl Hall (Vocals/Synthesiser/Guitar); John Oates (Vocals/Synthesiser/Guitar); Jim Gordon (Drums); Christopher Bond (Synthesiser/Guitar/String & Horn Arrangements); Michael Baird (Drums); Scott Edwards (Bass); Ed Greene (Drums); Clarence McDonald (Keyboards); Tommy Mottola (Synthesiser); Leland Sklar (Bass)

Standout Track - Sara Smile

1974's War Babies will always be something of an anomaly in the discography of Daryl Hall and John Oates, for better or worse. Despite the fact that their early blue-eyed soul albums had gradually been building up a loyal fanbase, and that "She's Gone" was a relatively decent hit in 1974 (it would become a far bigger success when rereleased in '76), the duo made the commendable but unusual decision to change their tone and style, hiring prog rocker Todd Rundgren to produce War Babies, resulting in an album with elements of their classic pop and soul style, but swathed in art rock trappings that must have alienated a number of fans. Personally, I think it's a really great rock album, but it's fair to say that the space-age synths, lengthy guitar solos and distorted voices booming "Quasar! Quasar!" must have confused those who had enjoyed Abandoned Luncheonette. It's possible that, had they forged on with this new style they may eventually have built up a whole new fanbase (and Daryl Hall's solo work with Robert Fripp a few years later is further testament to that), but the lack of chart success for War Babies prompted the duo to go back to the formula they knew worked, implying that perhaps Rundgren may have pushed them outside of their comfort zone rather than reflecting what they really wanted to do on the album. While the prog rock version of Hall & Oates remains a sadly unfulfilled possibility, the sheer quality of the pop albums they released afterwards, and the enormous success they achieved with them, means they probably made a good call.

1975's Daryl Hall & John Oates, then, is something of a scorched earth policy to demonstrate to fans that they could still produce the catchy pop melodies and crisp, clear soul sound of their earlier stuff. Even the fact that it's self-titled seems to imply a kind of clean slate and back-to-basics approach. Most notably, this album restores John Oates to a position of prominence, having been relegated to little more than a session musician by Rundgren. Here, Oates writes or co-writes eight of the album's ten tracks, in contrast to Daryl Hall's seven writing credits, and his two solo compositions are two of the album's high points. This album also sees the beginning of a group of regular collaborators, rather than the shifting stable of session musicians who had appeared on the duo's earlier albums. Keyboardist Christopher Bond from Abandoned Luncheonette was recalled and bumped up to co-producer status, and other future regular band members such as bassist Leland Sklar, drummer Jim Gordon and synth player Tommy Mottola, made their first appearances. All this lends a tighter and more coherent feeling to proceedings than the looser and more unpredictable War Babies. That predictability and clarity may sound like negatives, but, as I've mentioned before, Hall and Oates, above all else, are just impeccably good pop songwriters, and when the tunes and arrangements are this good, their relatively "safe" nature or the crispness of the production helps rather than hinders as it might with different material.

The big hit was "Sara Smile," which became their first Top Ten hit, written as a tribute to Hall's girlfriend at the time, Sara Allen. It's a smoky, sultry soul ballad and easily the most irresistible pop tune they'd penned up until now, alongside "She's Gone." It forms part of the album's amazing trio of opening tracks along with Oates' two solo compositions, the poppy and upbeat "Camellia" with its glorious, soaring chorus, and the the jazzy, syncopated rhythms and bleeping synths of "Alone Too Long." Oates gives two of his best lead vocal performances here - it's generally impossible to deny the fact that Hall is simply a stronger vocalist, but these are two occasions where Oates proves that he's by no means short of vocal talent himself. "Out Of Me, Out Of You" is an annoying little pop song that just doesn't work for me, but then there's the wonderful "Nothing At All," which takes the sultry vibe of "Sara Smile" and dials it up to eleven, setting Oates' laid-back guitar licks against dense string arrangements and glimmering keyboards, while Hall gives a typically passionate, heartfelt vocal.

The album's second half features the buzzing, pop fun of "Gino (The Manager)" and another pair of classics in "Ennui On The Mountain" and Hall's one solo composition, "Grounds For Separation." The former is great fun, with a great sing-along melody and swaggering, rockabilly guitar riff, and the latter has one of the few moments on the album where the band get to rock out, with the wonderfully angry guitar solo the perfect accompaniment to the slightly muffled vocals and choppy, clanking chord sequence. While there are a couple of tracks on the second half that aren't classics, the only song on the whole record that I actively dislike is "Out Of Me, Out Of You," making it one of the most consistently enjoyable albums the duo ever recorded.

The general public responded positively, too - it became a big hit, driven by the major success of "Sara Smile," and marked the beginning of the duo's major mainstream success. That success would peak in the early 80s, and there would still be a few slightly leaner years to come before they were a genuine pop sensation, but the days of struggling to hone their sound and to find a truly receptive fanbase were over. From now on, Hall & Oates would become regular hitmakers, and the following year they would achieve their first Number One single and another album of consistently brilliant material.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Daryl Hall & John Oates except where noted.

1. Camellia (John Oates)

2. Sara Smile

3. Alone Too Long (John Oates)

4. Out Of Me, Out Of You

5. Nothing At All

6. Gino (The Manager)

7. (You Know) It Doesn't Matter Any More

8. Ennui On The Mountain

9. Grounds For Separation (Daryl Hall)

10. Soldering (Ewart Beckford & Alvin Ranglin)

Gavin Bryars - The Sinking Of The Titanic

Released - 1975

Genre - New Age

Producer - Brian Eno

Selected Personnel - Gavin Bryars (Composer); Rhett Davies (Engineer)

Standout Track - The Sinking Of The Titanic

Oddly enough, Gavin Bryars' 1975 record entitled The Sinking Of The Titanic is one that eventually came to me via three completely separate musical strands in my life - Tom Waits, Brian Eno and my good friend John. As it happened, John was the one who actually first got me to hear this actual album, but I would almost certainly have eventually discovered it through one of the other avenues too. My first brush with it was through my love of Waits - back in 2010, when my fanaticism for Waits' life and music was at its peak, the man himself happened to guest edit an issue of Mojo magazine which I eagerly snapped up. The articles Waits contributed and curated were interesting enough, but the main point of interest was an accompanying CD in which he had hand-picked a number of songs of personal significance to him. Many were old blues, gospel and folk songs by the likes of Howlin' Wolf, Son House and Bob Dylan, while others were more eclectic - a heartbreaking rendition of "Ich Bin Von Kopf Bis Fuss Auf Libe Eingesteldt" by Beat legend William S. Burroughs, or Cliff Edwards' magical performance of "When You Wish Upon A Star" from the Pinocchio soundtrack. But the piece that really stopped me in my tracks was a four-minute edit of a composition entitled "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" by Gavin Bryars, which featured Waits himself on guest vocals. It's a heart-stoppingly brilliant piece and one I'll discuss properly in a minute, and over the next year or so it obsessed me and I listened to it all the time.

By 2011, while I loved that piece, I hadn't yet gotten round to hearing more of Bryars' work. Enter John. Over the years, John and I have always shared an enthusiasm for any music that's vaguely otherworldly or transcendental - Steve Reich, Bowie's Berlin trilogy, Sigur Ros, the Caretaker, and so on - and he lent me Bryars' 1975 album in the knowledge I'd enjoy it. After hearing it a few times, I researched Bryars further and was shocked to find that this very album was initially released on Brian Eno's Obscure label, which I discussed a little in my review of Eno's own Discreet Music (back at this time, I was already a big Eno fan but hadn't yet probed far into the more eclectic corners of his musical output). If John hadn't passed The Sinking Of The Titanic into my hands when he did I would almost definitely have heard it eventually via either the Waits or Eno link, and it would've been terribly disappointing if all these disparate links had led me to an album that was ultimately underwhelming. What a relief, then, that The Sinking Of The Titanic is one of the most captivating, unique and transformatively powerful musical recordings ever released by any artist.

Though now renowned principally as a composer, Bryars was never formally trained as such, first dabbling in music as a jazz bassist while studying philosophy. He quickly rejected any kind of musical performance that he felt was artificial, and started practising free improvisation before deciding he was more interested in composition. Like Eno, his interest in music wasn't strictly musical, per se, but far more conceptual and artistic. He was interested in constructing pieces of music by unconventional and challenging means, rather than necessarily writing a pretty tune. He was a founding member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia, the famed orchestra for non-musicians where every member was enforced to play an instrument they didn't know how to play, and it was within this orchestra that Bryars and Eno met. Far more enamoured of avant-garde New Age music than with rock or pop in his early days, Eno was keen to start up a record label which could showcase experimental compositions by himself and his friends in the Portsmouth Sinfonia circle, such as Bryars, Michael Nyman and Simon Jeffes, but it wasn't until 1975, when his solo career had picked up some steam, that he got his wish and launched Obscure Records.

The very first recording put out on the Obscure label was a showcase for Bryars and was to include his two most impressive compositions to that date. The second of these was to become perhaps his best-known composition, the aforementioned "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet." The core idea of the piece came from a documentary film project that a friend of Bryars was working on in 1971 about street life in and around Elephant & Castle in London. Going through the footage his friend had filmed, Bryars found a brief snippet in which a homeless man sang a simple refrain that went "Jesus' blood never failed me yet, this one thing I know, for he loves me so." From this simple, humble beginning Bryars developed a grand, orchestral arrangement of enormous emotional resonance, building up layers of strings and brass around the simple melody of the man's tune. The first few minutes of the recording comprise of nothing but the loop of the old man, a loop Bryars had inadvertently left playing in his office as he went out. Coming back later he found that the repetitive loop of the man's singing had moved everyone in his office to tears, convincing him of the emotional power within this frail, trembling man's rendition of such a simple musical motif. Across 26 minutes the refrain is sung again and again, its emotional resonance building in intensity gradually as the orchestra swells and builds around it. The 4-minute version I first heard in 2010 condenses all the piece's emotional heft into a short burst, but the slow, slow build and release of emotion across the piece's full length is far more satisfying and moving. Legend has it that Bryars eventually tried to find the homeless man who had created this piece of music for him to show what he had done with it, but that the man had passed away. That he died with no idea of what a powerful piece of music he had been so crucial to the creation of makes the optimism and hope and faith in his voice all the more poignant and affecting.

"Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" is perhaps the more accessible and easily understandable piece of the two on this album thanks to the very simple and very human story at its core, but, in my opinion, it is the less rewarding. Don't get me wrong, it's an astoundingly powerful piece of music that moves me to tears to this day, but the altogether more alien, terrifying and unapproachable title track is the one that ultimately provokes and challenges and moves me the more, and therefore lingers in the memory the most. "The Sinking Of The Titanic" is a heavily open-ended and indeterminate piece, one that originally had no actual score when it was first composed in 1972. Inspired by the legend that the string band on board the Titanic continued to play as the ship sank, Bryars devised a conceptual idea that would be a testament to the disaster in which so many lives were lost, and is one of the most toweringly accomplished tributes to loss ever recorded. Much like the technique Eno and Bryars would use on Discreet Music to cut up and arrange three different reinterpretations of Pachelbel's Canon, Bryars would use the traditional hymn "Autumn" as his starting point, the piece which the Titanic's wireless operator Harold Bride claimed the band were playing as the ship went down. A full string section plays slow, disjointed fragments of the piece throughout the 25 minute run-time of "The Sinking Of The Titanic," and Bryars explores the idea of how the music would reverberate and change as the water swallowed it up. So we have the low, apocalyptic drone of tape loops and effects applied to the strings themselves that render the simple beauty of the melody itself all the more glacial and terrifying. In the distance, music boxes and piano tinkle away almost inaudibly within the watery caverns of the sound, and occasionally muffled voices are heard, distant and hazy as if the listener themself is totally submerged. Supposedly the voices also consist of sources relating to the sinking of the Titanic - letters, diary entries and the like. The overall impression is that of drowning along with the hundreds of others who lost their lives, and is one of the most frightening, humbling and desperately moving musical collages ever made.

While none of the Obscure Records sold particularly well compared to the more mainstream solo albums Eno put out with Island Records (the parent company who had granted permission for Obscure to go ahead), this recording of Bryars' two masterpieces undoubtedly brought wider attention to the composer that he would have achieved on his own, and now stands as an often forgotten masterpiece of avant-garde composition and New Age music. Bryars would go on to be an enormously respected composer, though these two pieces would always be his most respected and admired. In the early 90s a new, far longer version of "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" would be recorded that featured Waits singing along with the homeless man, and it was from this newer version that my 4-minute version was culled. I've not heard the full version of this later rearrangement, but the consensus tends to be that it tries to overcomplicate the beautiful simplicity of the piece's original vision, despite sterling work from Waits. "The Sinking Of The Titanic," meanwhile, being an indeterminate piece, would change and shift with every recording or performance depending on how that orchestra or conductor wanted to rearrange the collection of sources and musical ideas Bryars had prepared for them. In 2012 it was performed in a new arrangement to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the event itself.

Track Listing:

All pieces composed by Gavin Bryars.

1. The Sinking Of The Titanic

2. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Elton John - Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy

Released - May 1975

Genre - Glam Rock

Producer - Gus Dudgeon

Selected Personnel - Elton John (Vocals/Piano/Keyboards/Mellotron); Davey Johnstone (Guitar/Mandolin); Dee Murray (Bass); Nigel Olsson (Drums); Ray Cooper (Percussion); David Hentschel (Synthesiser)

Standout Track - Someone Saved My Life Tonight

Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy is a weird one. It's frequently regarded as Elton John's last "great" album of the 70s, one last hoorah before his musical output began to slide for the rest of the decade before becoming truly atrocious in the 80s (with the notable exception of 1983's excellent Too Low For Zero). Personally, I have a lot of affection for 1976's Blue Moves, but it's probably fair to say that a sort of rot does begin to set in on Captain Fantastic. I find it difficult to consider it as one of Elton's truly excellent albums, considering that getting on for half the album is either mediocre or actively poor in my opinion, and I feel that its status as the "last great 70s" album of Elton's discography gives it an unfair prominence over far greater, more overlooked records like the forgotten early classics Elton John and Tumbleweed Connection or even 1974's unfairly neglected Caribou, which has, I think, many more standout classics than Captain Fantastic. This might sound like an overly negative way to kick off a review on a blog that's supposedly about my favourite albums, and I should temper it with some positivity - while Blue Moves is sporadically great, it probably is true that Captain Fantastic is the last Elton album of the 70s where the good outweighs the bad, and it deserves credit for that. It also features possibly his best song, and a decent handful of great songs besides. I just think its reputation puts it ahead of other Elton albums that are actually deserving of more affection.

One of the most singular things about the album is its autobiographical nature, which is another thing I've always felt slightly sceptical about. While glimpses of autobiography and personal insight had shown up in Bernie Taupin's lyrics over the years of his writing in collaboration with Elton, he tended to favour fairly opaque and imagistic, poetic lyrics that left their meaning largely in the imagination of the listener rather than going for a conventional narrative approach. On Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy, the duo decided to make it a chronological, narrative album telling the story of their own time writing songs together and rising from lowly staff songwriters in the late 60s to Elton's role as one of the biggest megastars of the 70s. One would expect that this approach might herald a very different lyrical approach from Taupin, but, one song aside, I've never really been able to discern much personal feeling or discernible narrative in many of the songs. By and large, it seems to be more of his usual imagistic writing. Perhaps I haven't been looking hard enough for meaning in these songs, but they've never managed to grab me and convey something really honest and authentic. Perhaps there's a whole wealth of meaning in the title track, but to me "While little dirt cowboys turn brown in their saddles, mmm, sweet chocolate biscuits" sounds a lot like nonsense.

The exception, of course, is "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," easily one of the most powerful songs in Elton's entire discography. It tells the story of a key turning point in Elton's life in the late 60s when his friend Long John Baldry convinced him to cancel his wedding plans to Linda Woodrow. Elton experienced such doubts about the marriage that he contemplated suicide, and it was through Baldry's counsel that he managed to find the drive to keep going, and to find solace in his music again. It's always struck me as odd that Elton still handed the lyric duties over to Taupin for such a personal story rather than having a stab himself at expressing what that time meant to him, but I suppose it's a testament to the closeness of their working relationship, and in Elton's trust in Taupin to deliver the goods. Taupin more than delivers, however, with the most searingly powerful lyrics of any Elton John song, married to a majestically epic and soaring tune. Elton's vocal performance is also one of his best, all the better for the obviously significant nature of the story - the audible crack in his voice on "Damn it, listen to me good" is perhaps the most stirring moment of any Elton John album ever.

"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" was the album's only single, and deservedly won all the acclaim directed towards the album, but it's not the only great song here. "Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy" (its title, of course, a reference to Elton and Taupin themselves) is a great song that swings from its gentle, lilting verse to a heavier rock chorus where Davey Johnstone's guitar riff steals the show. Johnstone also gets a great moment to shine on the great "(Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket," where his scuttling, catchy guitar drives a great, danceable rock tune that's like a slightly inferior "The Bitch Is Back" but still stands as one of the album's finest moments. "Tower Of Babel" is my other favourite, another song whose meaning is totally obscure as far as I can see, but which boasts another typically hummable and memorable Elton John chorus.

It has to be said, though, that little of the rest of the album excites me. Some of the songs, like "Tell Me When The Whistle Blows" are really eye-rollingly dull and even get skipped some of the times that I listen to this album, while "Better Off Dead," despite having a fun sense of theatricality and a genuinely cool effect applied to Nigel Olsson's drums, is just a bit too hokey to really convince. Much of the rest, even the mostly decent closer "Curtains," just aren't particularly memorable. I always enjoy "Curtains" when I hear it, but even after years of listening to this album, I can never sing it from memory without having it playing. Considering one of Elton's great talents is writing an instantly memorable melody, they're actually in short supply on this album. It's a fault largely applied to the second half of the record, admittedly - the first side is almost consistently brilliant, with all the strong tracks front-loaded.

Not that the general public minded - it was another huge seller, and became the first ever album to debut at Number One of the US charts, and went just one step further to cement Elton John's place in the firmament of music megastars. But it was also the beginning of declining fortunes for Elton. In the wake of personal disagreements, he dismissed bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson shortly after the album was completed, meaning Captain Fantastic is the last album until Too Low For Zero where his classic band would play together. Although numerous hit singles continued to emerge over the rest of the 70s, like "Philadelphia Freedom," "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word" and "Part-Time Love," his albums would get gradually less consistent or essential. 1975's Rock Of The Westies is enjoyable but hard to get excited about, and 1976's Blue Moves is massively overlong and has some terrible rubbish on it. It also has some of my favourite Elton John moments, so will still feature in this blog despite being objectively far from brilliant. More on that another time.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

1. Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy

2. Tower Of Babel

3. Bitter Fingers

4. Tell Me When The Whistle Blows

5. Someone Saved My Life Tonight

6. (Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket

7. Better Off Dead

8. Writing

9. We All Fall In Love Sometimes

10. Curtains

David Bowie - Young Americans

Released - February 1975

Genre - Funk

Producer - Tony Visconti; Harry Maslin & David Bowie

Selected Personnel - David Bowie (Vocals/Guitar/Piano); Carlos Alomar (Guitar); Mike Garson (Piano); David Sanborn (Saxophone); Willie Weeks (Bass); Andy Newmark (Drums); Luther Vandross (Backing Vocals); John Lennon (Vocals/Guitar); Earl Slick (Guitar); Dennis Davis (Drums)

Standout Track - Fame

Young Americans stands out within Bowie's discography in a couple of significant ways. Firstly, it's perhaps the most consistently feelgood and irresistibly danceable album he ever recorded. While not every single track is a masterpiece, it's difficult to listen to the whole thing without a smile on your face and is one of few Bowie albums to never once dip into introspection or paranoia. Even songs with darker lyrical themes, like "Fame," are just too catchy to really harm the album's party vibe. It's also the first time Bowie did a complete about-turn within his music, cementing his reputation as one of music's great chameleons, shifting between different personae and borrowing different musical styles. Admittedly, by 1975 he had already moved from psychedelic folk to hard rock to glam rock and taken on alter-ego pseudonyms including Ziggy Stardust and Hallowe'en Jack, but every single change had seemed like a natural evolution from what had come before. The glam rock of the Ziggy years was a natural enough combination of the fey psychedelic pop of Hunky Dory and the hard rock of The Man Who Sold The World. Young Americans was the first time Bowie offered not a single olive branch to those who had enjoyed his earlier work. A couple of songs on 1974's Diamond Dogs had pointed towards some of the soul and funk influences Bowie had picked up during his American tour, but that album had still principally been dominated by the glam thrash familiar from the Ziggy-era albums. This time, Bowie's old fans were completely forgotten and he decided to throw himself completely into making a Philadelphia-styled soul record.

Since Diamond Dogs, Bowie's prominence in the US had been rising, and the dream of making it in America that he'd harboured for years was closer to coming true. Although his personal life was disintegrating - his marriage to Angie Bowie falling apart, and his growing cocaine dependency becoming ever more devastating to his health due to the constant access to the drug he had while living in LA - his American tour was a huge success, accompanied by a lavish stage production choreographed by Toni Basil. David Live, an album documenting that tour released in '74, is a fairly wooden and uninspiring artefact that does little to sell the excitement of that show, but sold in its thousands. As he launched into making a new album, Bowie threw himself entirely at the American market, refusing to make an album about his personal struggles or with any trace of his musical roots. Many fans castigated Bowie for making what seemed to be a concerted effort to win American fans, regardless of what his fans back in Britain may have thought. To Bowie's credit, he easily achieved his aims, with his first US Number One single in "Fame," and Young Americans is an album that, while it may have aggravated die-hard Bowie fans at the time, has come today to be regarded as one of his very best.

On Diamond Dogs, Bowie had been reunited with his former producer Tony Visconti, who would go on to be Bowie's closest collaborator and musical ally over the subsequent forty years. Visconti had mixed the strings on that earlier album, and now was called in to produce a Bowie studio album for the first time since The Man Who Sold The World five years earlier. Also recalled from his earlier recordings was pianist Mike Garson, who Bowie had met in America in '72 on his first visit. Besides those two old allies, the lineup on Young Americans consisted on Philadelphia session musicians with plentiful experience working on soul and funk recordings, including Andy Newmark of Sly and the Family Stone, a young unknown singer named Luther Vandross, and guitarist Carlos Alomar, who would also become one of Bowie's most frequent collaborators over the subsequent thirty years. The result is an album that sounds totally unlike anything else Bowie had ever recorded - even the familiar, avant-garde jazz stylings of Garson are totally absent, with his playing kept rather restrained and low in the mix. Instead, there's the rubbery bass of Willie Weeks, the languid guitar playing of Alomar, the lush strings and gospel-styled backing vocals, and of course the fluid sax of David Sanborn, a million miles from Bowie's own more asthmatic and amateurish abilities with the instrument on older recordings. Bowie described the music as "plastic soul," and it feels like an apt description - there is something oddly synthetic and crystal-clear about the sound hear, one that must have shocked British fans used to the crunchier, muddier sounds of the Spiders From Mars. And at the centre of it all is Bowie's usual thin, mannered vocals. On occasion Bowie tries a little too hard to impersonate a more conventional soul singer style, as on the otherwise brilliant "Somebody Up There Likes Me," but vocally he's more impressive here when not trying to disguise the highly mannered sound of his own voice, such as on his theatrical performances on the title track or "Fame."

Quite what these songs must have sounded like before they were developed in the studio by such capable soul musicians is difficult to say - here, they soar and swing so much on the lush arrangements and the stellar contributions of the likes of Sanborn and Alomar that it's difficult to imagine an original solo performance on just guitar or piano, but certainly this feels like a band that gelled together well and took Bowie's compositions into really stellar territory. "Young American," from that opening, clattering drum fill and squawking sax, is a classic party anthem. While its lyrics tell of the uncertainty and anxiety of a newlywed couple, its sound is totally joyous, and one of the most relentlessly feelgood songs Bowie ever wrote. "Fascination" was co-written by the young Vandross, who was some years off solo success himself, but it's telling that it sounds the most like a genuine funk song of all the songs here, rather than sounding like funk and soul filtered through Bowie's own mind. It has an infectious riff, and Bowie really enjoys himself with the looser role of funk band leader, as opposed to true frontman or lead singer. His call-and-response vocals with the backing singers are masterfully done, and the most authentic soul music moment on the album. "Win" is a plaintive ballad with one of Bowie's most interesting lyrics - "You've never seen me so naked and white," presumably a reference to his own constant need to obfuscate his true self with personae and performance, and ironic that it was to come a year before the most starkly personal and vulnerable record of his career.

"Somebody Up There Likes Me," for my money, suffers slightly from a slightly wooden vocal performance from Bowie, but the band has so much fun on it that it can't help but be a hugely enjoyable song, if only for Sanborn's scene-stealing sax. "Can You Hear Me?" is a really beautiful song, and perhaps the only point on the whole album where the party atmosphere drops for a while. It's a desperate plea for communication and for understanding set to a particularly stirring string arrangement from Visconti. Finally, there's the masterpiece that is "Fame," a late addition to the album. After the entire record had been mixed, Bowie happened to encounter John Lennon in New York and set about recording some material with him and Alomar. One song they recorded was a truly tedious cover of the Beatles' "Across The Universe." I've not heard the original so have no idea if it's just an awful song, or if Bowie and Lenonn's version does it a terrible disservice. It's a real shame it ended up on the finished album, as one of the songs cut to make room for it is the wonderful "Who Can I Be Now?" But the other song recorded was a new one based on a guitar lick by Alomar and co-written by Bowie and Lennon entitled "Fame." That central, distorted guitar riff is one of the most confidently, sassily cool moments Bowie ever captured on record, and the lyrics, angrily spat out by Bowie and Lennon, are a savage, biting attack on celebrity culture ("Fame - what you like is in the limo, fame - what you get is no tomorrow.") That this lyric came five years before Lennon's own murder at the hands of a fan, the ultimate example of rock & roll idolisation gone too far, makes it all the more striking. That they managed to make such a cynical, angry song also so eminently danceable and such a huge hit is also a massive testament to their musical prowess.

"Across The Universe" and "Fame" were snuck onto the finished album, and the success of the latter helped Young Americans to be Bowie's breakthrough album in America. It's easily one of Bowie's most purely enjoyable albums, but perhaps the only thing counting against it is its lack of authenticity. Considering the personal and mental anguish Bowie was in at the time of its recording, it's surprisingly upbeat (to its musical credit, admittedly), but Bowie himself has been critical of the album in retrospect, dismissing it as "phoney." At the end of the day, Bowie concertedly put his own personal problems to the back of his mind in order to focus on winning new fans, and to his credit, he achieved that in spades. Regardless of the fact that he rarely strays into true autobiography or soul-baring honesty in his music, there's still a sense with Young Americans that something is being held back. As his drug dependency took an even greater hold on him, and his mental health began to deteriorate, this would all change. In 1976 Bowie would release Station To Station, an album that emerged from the same soul and funk influences as Young Americans but was injected with all the paranoia, megalomania and vulnerability he had refrained from letting into view on the earlier album. To this day, I still consider Station To Station to be the best album he ever made.

Track Listing:

All songs written by David Bowie except where noted.

1. Young Americans

2. Win

3. Fascination (David Bowie & Luther Vandross)

4. Right

5. Somebody Up There Likes Me

6. Across The Universe (John Lennon & Paul McCartney)

7. Can You Hear Me?

8. Fame (David Bowie; Carlos Alomar & John Lennon)

Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run

Released - August 1975

Genre - Rock

Producer - Bruce Springsteen; Mike Appel & Jon Landau

Selected Personnel - Bruce Springsteen (Vocals/Guitar/Harmonica/Percussion); Roy Bittan (Piano/Organ/Keyboards); Clarence Clemons (Saxophone); Danny Federici (Organ/Percussion); Garry Tallent (Bass); Max Weinberg (Drums); Ernest Carter (Drums); Suki Lahav (Violin); David Sancious (Piano/Organ); Steve Van Zandt (Backing Vocals/Horn Arrangements); Michael Brecker (Saxophone); Randy Brecker (Trumpet); David Sanborn (Saxophone)

Standout Track - Born To Run

There's an odd contradiction at the heart of all that Bruce Springsteen has come to represent. While his working class origins and his passionate empathy with the everyday struggles of the honest American are entirely at the centre of the heroic figure he has become, his legend has seen him become such an iconic hero that today those working class origins seem slightly absurd. He's become adopted as an emblem of traditional American values, yet often at the expense of what he's trying to say - 1984's "Born In The U.S.A." was preposterously adopted as a patriotic anthem by the Reagan administration despite the fact that its lyrical content made it very clear that it was a scathing attack on America's actions in Vietnam. It's with Born To Run in 1975 that this strange legacy first began to take shape. Today, even though all his songs and all he represents is bound up inevitably with the idea of working class struggle, he's achieved such megastardom that the idea of the Boss once being on the brink of being dropped by his management unless he could come up with a decent hit seems utterly out of place.

But that was the situation Springsteen found himself in by 1974. First touted by manager Mike Appel as a sort of latter-day Dylan for the 70s, his debut album Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., was a fairly tedious affair that saw Springsteen trying way too hard to justify such claims with verbose folk ballads with little depth or musical virtue to them. The follow-up, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle was a massive step forward musically, seeing him and his band-mates (soon to be dubbed "The E Street Band") settling into a more conventional R&B/rock & roll vibe, but while it achieved some critical notice, it struggled to capture the imaginations of the American public. Its sprawling songs, from the epic "New York City Serenade" to the extended jam "Kitty's Back" were a long way from catchy, radio-friendly material, so the gauntlet was thrown down - Springsteen needed to deliver a big hit single or risk being dropped altogether. Born To Run saw him call in some new helping hands in the form of pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg, both of whom would become long-term members of the E Street Band to this day, and producer Jon Landau. Having seen Springsteen live in 1974, Landau had written a review in which he described the singer-songwriter as "the future of rock & roll." Tensions between Springsteen and Mike Appel, who had produced his previous albums, were already beginnnig to show, and to help smooth things over and increase productivity, Landau would co-produce the new album along with Appel and help Springsteen to realise the sounds in his head. He reportedly was trying to recreate a Phil Spector-esque Wall of Sound approach, and the resultant sound of Born To Run is suitably air-tight, no longer sounding like a band jamming loosely together but like a well-oiled machine augmented to perfection. It's an approach that frustrates me on certain types of music as it sometimes sucks the life out of the music, but when the songwriting is as tight and anthemic as on this album, a pristine sound actually serves to sell those choruses all the better.

It would be possible to be cynical about Born To Run and point out that it sounds exactly like what it is - a calculated bid for stardom. But it's a testament to just how good it is that it succeeded 100% in its aims. The stories he tells within these songs are less wordy, less exhaustively autobiographical in their recreations of New Jersey locations and aim for a more everyman appeal. "Thunder Road" and "Born To Run" are both coming-of-age tales that see their young protagonists yearning for a freedom that's kept from them by authoritative powers, while "Backstreets" and "Jungleland" are more downbeat epics of loss and relationships fractured and broken by the social pressures that surround them. "Born To Run" itself, of course, was Springsteen's big single, and it was only after hearing an early pressing of it that the record company agreed to continue funding a full album, knowing that they had a hit single on their hands. It finally manages to take the rousing, anthemic sound of Springsteen's songwriting and condense it into a memorable, chest-thumping, iconic piece of music, and the engine-like roar of Springsteen's guitar playing has rarely sounded better.

Speaking of which, Born To Run is the point at which Springsteen's guitar first becomes, essentially, a secondary instrument within the ensemble of the E Street Band. Whereas his two previous albums had been largely guitar-centric, here the songs were composed principally on piano, so Bittan's piano is the principal melodic instrument for many of the songs, such as the delicate tune it chimes out on "Thunder Road" or, most notably, the extended piano-and-organ intro to "Backstreets." Were it not for the pure undeniable anthemic qualities of "Born To Run," "Backstreets" might be the big standout of the album. From its stately prelude to Springsteen's howling finale, it's one of his most powerful and primal marriages of writing and performance. "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" is one of the other great highlights, an autobiographical account of the formation of the E Street Band whose punchy horn chorus is a great showcase for saxophonist Clarence Clemons and a full horn section that includes veteran session musicians like Randy and Michael Brecker. As a side note, "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" contained one of the most genuinely emotional moments when I saw Springsteen live a couple of years ago, when archive footage of the recently-deceased Clemons was played onscreen as Springsteen eulogised him with the words "The Big Man joined the band." Clemons's iconic role within the band was cemented by the cover of Born To Run which saw Bruce leaning companionably on him (since we don't have gatefold sleeves any more, most versions of the cover reduce poor Clemons to just an arm and a bum, but at least he gets some kind of credit), and his great sax playing form some of the best moments of the records.

It's a shame that in an album consisting of only eight tracks, three of them prove fairly unmemorable, with "Night," "She's The One" and "Meeting Across The River" all being fairly generic, but the epic "Jungleland" finishes things off in fine style, a nine-minute epic that feels a little like a two-fingers up to those who might have dismissed his lengthier pieces from The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle as uncommerical. Despite its orchestral grandeur (complete with strings), it became a staple of rock radio stations and a concert favourite and proved that, even though he was able to condense his musical sensibilities into radio-friendly chart singles, he was still able to cut loose and create a piece of great drama and scope.

Born To Run was, of course, an enormous success, largely thanks to its title track, which became ubiquitous. As I mentioned in my review of Bad Company's Straight Shooter, 1975 sees a discernible return to prominence of traditional, unabashed rock & roll as patience with androgynous art rock and pretentious prog wore thin. Springsteen's traditional working class hero values and anthemic rock and roll songwriting fit perfectly into that template and he became America's biggest new rockstar. While various tours would see him capitalise on that success and spread his fame worldwide, it wouldn't be until 1978 that the world actually got to see him follow up his success with a new creative project. Springsteen's creative differences with Appel became more pronounced and he would soon instate Landau as his manager, prompting several years of legal wrangling over the rights to his back catalogue of recordings, meaning no new album could be made until a settlement would be reached. All the while, the success of Born To Run would continue to cement him as a legendary figure and the album to emerge from it all may not have achieved quite such iconic status but is just as compelling and masterful an example of the man's genius.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen.

1. Thunder Road

2. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

3. Night

4. Backstreets

5. Born To Run

6. She's The One

7. Meeting Across The River

8. Jungleland