DAY 273.
David Bowie..................................Aladin Sane   (1973)











Aladin Sane picks up where Ziggy left off to serve as a brutal memoir to one rock Martian's meteoric rise to the top. The tracks ooze desperation and alienation as the central character strives, through a haze of drugs and alcohol, to find some kind of enlightenment, and, perhaps, rediscover himself.


Admittedly, the theme never gets in Ziggy-like fashion, but the album proved to be a worthy, if more mercurial, follow up, thanks to such diversely addictive songs as "Panic In Detroit," "The Jean Genie" and "Time" ("falls wanking to the floor" was always a bit much for my old mum, god bless her)
 

DAY 270.
The Rolling Stones..................................Exile On Main Street   (1972)









Exile On Main Street was a good listen but nothing more, the recording sounds a bit ropey (which I'll come to in the Bots & Bobs) as usual a double album turns out to be a bit much for this listener, although all decent tracks I found it too much.


There were several quality tracks, but my favourites were the Robert Johnson cover, "Stop Breaking Down," Turd On The Run" and "Tumbling' Dice," In my humbles if they had released this single albums even without changing the tracklist, I would have enjoyed it better, I know that sounds strange but for me sides 3&4 suffer because I all Stoned out.


As i have already got a few Stone's albums in my collection this one will not be getting added.


Just a wee story, I hope I haven't mentioned before in a Stones post ( believe it or not many's the night I post with maybe a bit too much gabby water inside me, and get quite the surprise when I read it next day)
Anyways went to see The Stones at The Apollo in Glasgow in '76, a mate of mine at the time had a relation who was the manager of the Apollo at the time and said he would get tickets, I'm sure his name was Jan and his surname was Polish I think, anyhoo finds out all the tickets are gone, but here's the best part he says "wear a white t-shirt and you could work with security" so not only did we get in for free, my position was in the aisle to the right of the stage, a perfect view and also nobody standing up in front of me, a brilliant night and a brilliant show, I don't think I've seen another performer who controls an audience and has them eating out of his hand as much as Jagger did that night, epic!



Bits & Bobs;
Already wrote a few posts earlier about The Stone's (if interested)




Found this piece QI,



Commissioned in 1854 by a businessman named Eugene Thomas, in 1971 Villa Nellcôte, in Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Côte D'Azur was the temporary residence of Rolling Stones guitaristKeith Richards, his partner Anita Pallenberg and their son, Marlon. Upstairs, a beautiful entourage socialised, often illicitly. In Nellcôte's many-roomed basement, the Rolling Stones recorded material for what became their most storied album.
"It's got a raw sound quality, and the reason for that is that the basement was very dingy and very damp," says Mick Taylor, Stones lead guitarist for the five years between 1969 and 1974. "The roof leaked and there were power failures. We had to deal with all that, and go with the flow."


 The flow to which Taylor refers was the fragrant drifting in and out of some of the era's most interesting characters. Musicians like Bobby Keys, the sax player who taught Keith Richards the pleasures of throwing furniture out of windows. Drug dealers like Tommy Weber, who arrived with his children, and a plentiful supply of cocaine. Glamorous friends like Stash Klossowski, son of the painter Balthus. There were record execs, family members, groupies, wasters and journalists.



 "People appeared, disappeared, no one had a last name, you didn't know who anybody was," remembers Robert Greenfield, who was at Nellcôte to interview Keith Richards for Rolling Stone. "There were 16 people for lunch, and lunch went on for three-and-a-half hours. It was an unparalleled cast of characters."
  For all the relaxed atmosphere at Nellcôte, it was, however, pragmatic business practice that had taken the Stones to the south of France. With the disaster of the 1969 Altamont free concert behind them, the band had spent the previous 18 months putting their affairs in order. They had started their own record label, and were about to release the classic Sticky Fingers album. They were planning a massive US tour for 1972. They were musicians, and major celebrities, but if they stayed in the UK, they would have to pay 93% income tax.


 The band's financial advisor, Prince Rupert Lowenstein, came up with an ingenious solution. After playing a short "farewell tour" in England, in April 1971, The Rolling Stones went into tax exile in France. At Keith's residence, they parked their new acquisition, a £65,000 mobile recording studio, and set, erratically, to work.


 "It was an impressive house," remembers Andy Johns, who engineered and mixed Exile. "Somewhat baroque. The heating vents on the floor were gold swastikas. Keith told me that it had been a Gestapo headquarters in the war. But he told me, 'It's OK. We're here now.'"


 While the Stones soaked up the hospitality, producer Jimmy Miller and Andy Johns waited in the van for inspiration to strike the band. As Keith's recreation continued, it was clear they would be waiting a long time. "Keith's euphemism was, 'I'm going to put Marlon to bed now …'" remembers Johns. "Nobody really went upstairs. I remember being at the bottom of the stairs once with Mick Jagger and Jimmy Miller, and we wanted Keith. I said to Mick, 'It's a band thing, why don't you go and get him?' He said, 'I'm not going up there …'"


 "There was a friction at that time," says Marshall Chess, who ran the Stones' own record label. "Mick didn't like Exile; it was being made in Keith's domain. And then there was the drug issue, which I was somewhat naive about. But I could see the effects."


 "Keith was open about everything," says Robert Greenfield of his interview with Richards, "apart from the heroin." He remembers how he watched Mick Jagger wait in vain for Keith Richards to emerge so they could begin a songwriting session, then leave disappointed. Meanwhile, the friendship between Keith and another Nellcôte guest, singer-songwriter Gram Parsons wasn't helping the band's productivity.


 'If the kids wouldn't sleep, we'd take them out in a speedboat ride to Monte Carlo. We'd have cocktails, and the kids would fall asleep on the way'
"Keith invited us down," remembers Gretchen Carpenter, then married to Parsons. "Keith and Gram were two peas in a pod. They were best friends, exploring music. They were instantaneous friends, and instantaneous troublemakers." As time passed, it became clear that something was needed to help kickstart the writing and recording process. When it did arrive, it came not from the exotic south of France, but – bizarrely – from the south of London. For several years prior to 1971, the Stones had kept a rehearsal studio-cum-equipment store in Bermondsey. On a visit there in 1971, Trevor Churchill, then the European label manager for Rolling Stones Records, noticed a pile of tapes lurking in the corner of the room. "I thought, 'What the hell are they doing here?'" remembers Churchill. "So, I bounced them on to cassette, then took them to the south of France."


 The tapes Churchill took to Nellcôte were a mixture of demos and incomplete tracks, with names – like Bent Green Needles and Good Time Woman – that even today sound unfamiliar. What they went on to become – respectively, the Exile classics Sweet Black Angel and Tumbling Dice – are rather better known. "That's how Exile turned into a double album," explains Churchill. "They got an extra half a million dollars. They were quite pleased with that."


 While the band continued their intermittent recording, the days at Nellcôte passed in a slow, dazed enchantment. To pass the time, Andy Johns and horn player Jim Price set up a casino in their own villa. A guy lived on the front lawn, in a tepee. "There wasn't really any pattern, that wasn't the way they rolled," says Gretchen Carpenter. "If the kids wouldn't sleep, we'd take them out in a speedboat ride to Monte Carlo. We'd have cocktails, and the kids would fall asleep on the way. It was the most perfect summer, but everything seemed to go wrong after that."


 There was a burglary, during which several guitars were stolen from the house. Producer Jimmy Miller began getting more involved in the heavy drug use among the musicians. Ultimately, there was a drugs bust, which precipitated the Stones' rapid departure for America in October, where they worked to make sense of the Nellcôte tapes, and, says Marshall Chess, "Mick took control". The deserted mansion, and the beautiful people who had temporarily resided there, meanwhile, were left to take their place in rock legend.


 "Sometimes turmoil and trouble in art make it come out good," says Marshall Chess. "Toulouse-Lautrec drank absinthe. Great jazz musicians shot heroin. It made for a strange scene, but that colouration, that quality is there in Exile."


 Today, the most famous house in Villfranche-sur-Mer remains cloaked in mystery. While he was making Stones In Exile, director Stephen Kijak asked to visit Nellcôte, but the current owners declined to let their property be filmed. In a way, it's a fitting end to this chapter in the Exile On Main St story. Everyone has their own take on what one might be going on inside. The truth, though, is behind closed doors.


 

"Stop Breaking Down"


This was originally recorded by the Blues singer Robert Johnson in 1937. In the liner notes to Johnson's Complete Recordings, released in 1990, Keith Richards explains: "Brian Jones had the first album, and that's where I first heard it. I'd just met Brian, and I went around to his apartment - crash pad, actually, all he had in it was a chair, a record player, and a few records. One of which was Robert Johnson. He put it on, and it was just - you know - astounding stuff. When I first heard it, I said to Brian, Who's that? Robert Johnson, he said. Yeah, but who's the other guy playing with him? Because I was hearing two guitars, and it took me a long time to realize he was actually doing it all by himself. The guitar playing - it was almost like listening to Bach. You know, you think you're getting a handle on playing the blues, and then you hear Robert Johnson - some of the rhythms he's doing and playing and singing at the same time, you think, This guy must have 3 brains! You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it."


 
The Stones recorded in 1970 at Olympic Studios in London. Most of the album was recorded in France, where The Stones went to avoid paying taxes in England.


 
The Stones' record label at the time, ABKCO Music, lost the rights to this in year 2000 when a court ruled that this, along with "Love In Vain," were the property of Robert Johnson's estate. The Stones thought the copyright on the song had expired.


 
This was one of three songs on Exile on Main St. where Ian Stewart played piano. They used Nicky Hopkins on most tracks from the album.


 
The White Stripes covered this on their self-titled debut album.


 
Andy Johns, who engineered the Exile on Main St. sessions, told Goldmine magazine in 2010: "'Stop Breaking Down' is probably my favorite track. I remember getting Mick to play harmonica on that. It did not seem like it was finished. My brother (Glyn) had recorded earlier. I said, 'We've got to use this' because Mick Taylor plays some gorgeous lines and I'm very sure that it's Mick Jagger playing the rhythm guitar as well. That's why it's a little choppier."




"Tumbling Dice"


This was originally titled "Good Time Woman," with different lyrics. Mick Jagger told the story of the song to The Sun newspaper May 21, 2010: "It started out with a great riff from Keith and we had it down as a completed song called Good Time Women. That take is one of the bonus tracks on the new Exile package; it was quite fast and sounded great but I wasn't happy with the lyrics.




Later, I got the title in my head, 'call me the tumbling dice' so I had the theme for it. I didn't know anything about dice playing but I knew lots of jargon used by dice players. I'd heard gamblers in casinos shouting it out.




I asked my housekeeper if she played dice. She did and she told me these terms. That was the inspiration."


 
The Stones recorded this in the musty basement of the Villa Nellcote, a place Keith Richards rented in France so the band could avoid paying taxes in England. They would sleep all day and record at night with whoever showed up. For this track, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards played guitar, and Mick Taylor, ordinarily lead guitarist, played bass.


 
Jagger played guitar on this, something he rarely did.


 
This was the only track from Exile to chart in the Top 20 of the singles chart. Jagger told The Sun: "It's obviously the most accessible and commercial song on the record. After 'Tumbling Dice,' I remember there wasn't really a follow-up single. People said, 'So, what are you going to release now then?'"


 
Jagger: "It's like a good guitar-hook tune. It's a bit like Honky Tonk Woman in a way, in the way it's set up. But it was done for Exile. It's got a lot more background vocals on it. A very messy mix. But that was the fashion in those days.


 

This features Bobby Keys on sax and Jim Price on trumpet. They showed up in France to help with the album, and played with The Stones through the early '70s. Keith Richards and Bobby Keys were born on the same day: December 18, 1943.


 
Background vocalists include Vanetta Fields and Clydie King.


  

Exile on Main St. was a double album, and the victim of poor sales and harsh criticism when it was released. Over the years, it has become more appreciated and is considered some of The Stones' best work.


 
Andy Johns, who engineered the Exile sessions, told Goldmine in 2010: "Obviously it was going to be great but it was a big struggle. Eventually we get a take. Hooray! I thought, 'Let's kick this up a notch and double track Charlie.' 'Oh, we've never done that before.' 'Well, it doesn't mean we can't do it now.' So we double-tracked Charlie but he couldn't play the ending. For some reason he got a mental block about the ending. So Jimmy Miller plays from the breakdown on out that was very easy to punch in. It was a little bit different than some of the others. That song we did more takes than anything else."

DAY 271.
Lynyrd Skynyrd..................................Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd   (1973)













I thought this would be a quick listen and a line about how shite it was and move on to the next album, wrong!
I thoroughly enjoyed this album, even the 9 minute "Free Bird" evoked a hell of a lot of memories which seemed to cancel out/cloak the problems of the longevity of the song, and the triple lead guitar? gotta say wisnae bad either, I liked all the tracks on this album, and while I know I'm typing this I do find it pretty bizarre to be liking this, but that's how the cards fall in life, sometimes you can surprise yourself without it being a dirty secret.

This album will be getting added to my collection, something I never believed would occur when I initially seen it in the book.



Bits & Bobs;


The members of the band all went to school together in Jacksonville, Florida. They had a teacher called Leonard Skinner who demanded that they get their hair cut before returning to school. This was the catalyst for them to not only leave school permanently and form a band but also to name the band after Skinner (with a few letters changed so he wouldn't sue them).
Skinner died on September 21, 2010 at age 77. Gary Rossington released a statement saying: "Coach Skinner had such a profound impact on our youth that ultimately led us to naming the band, which you know as Lynyrd Skynyrd, after him. Looking back, I cannot imagine it any other way. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time."


 
On October 20, 1977, Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines died in a plane crash in Mississippi. Gaines' sister, Cassie, who was a backup singer with the group, also died. Walter Wiley McCreary (pilot) William John Gray (co-pliot), Dean Kilpatrick (manager) were also killed in the accident.


 
Johnny Van Zant took over vocals when his brother died. Their other brother, Donnie is lead singer of .38 Special.


 
Allen Collins survived the 1977 plane crash, but became paralyzed from the waist down in a 1986 car crash (a girl he was with died in the accident). He died January 23, 1990 from pneumonia as a result of decreased lung capacity from paralyzation.


 
Wilkeson died in his sleep in 2001 at age 49. The band continued their tour as a tribute to him.


 
King and his replacement, Steve Gaines, were both born on the same day, September 14, 1949.


 
Ronnie Van Zant, Collins, and Rossington all played together in high school in several different bands. Names included: Sons of Satan, Conqueror Worm, and One Per Cent.



 
After the plane crash, the remaining members said that Lynyrd Skynyrd was finished, with Collins stating, "Some people are telling us we should keep the name because it obviously has value since people recognize it. To hell with them. In 1980, Rossington, Collins, Powell, and Wilkeson formed the Rossington-Collins Band, but they later decided to revive Lynyrd Skynyd with the addition of Johnny Van Zant.



 



Van Zant's marble slab from his gravesite was stolen in 1982. Police found it two weeks later in a dried up river bed.



 
They played schools, parties, and bars for years before they hit it big. The band was first discovered in a rock club called Funnochio's, on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1972. They were found by the famous (or perhaps infamous) Al Kooper, who had just landed an executive position at MCA Records and was itching to find some new talent for MCA's "Sounds of the South" label. Kooper was on tour supporting Badfinger at the time.





Other acts Kooper signed included Mose Jones and Blues Project, but Skynyrd was the only band to sell well, and MCA dropped Sounds Of The South while keeping Skynyrd.



 
Al Kooper told Rolling Stone magazine, April 15, 2004: "Ronnie Van Zant was Lynyrd Skynyrd. I don't mean to demean the roles the others played in the group's success, but it never would have happened without him. His lyrics were a big part of it - like Woody Guthrie and Merle Haggard before him, Ronnie knew how to cut to the chase. And Ronnie ran that band with an iron hand. I have never seen such internal discipline in a band. One example: These guys composed all of their guitar solos. Most bands improvised solos each time they performed or recorded. Not them. Ronnie's dream was that they would sound exactly the same every time they took the stage."


 
Rossington, Burns and Ronnie Van Zant met at a Little League game. Van Zant hit a line drive off Burns' head, but after the game they got together and formed a band.


 
They pride themselves on writing songs that are easy to understand.


 
On many of their songs, all 3 guitarists play at once.



 
Ronnie Van Zant wrote most of their lyrics, but usually didn't write them down. He would come to the studio with them in his head.



 
The band formed in 1964 and settled upon the name Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1966. Their very first band name was "My Backyard." The band at this time consisted of Ronnie Van Zant, Bob Burns, Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and Larry Junstrum.



 
Lynyrd Skynyrd put the "Y"s in their name in reference to The Byrds



 
Lynyrd Skynyrd are in the Guiness Book of World Records for a Rock band which is still going while having the most original members to die. The plane crash that killed so many also killed one of their managers. The total dead is five.



 
In one of the oddest pairings since Jimi Hendrix played with The Monkees, they played 4 shows in Germany with Queen in 1971. The groups did not get along.



 
The initial recordings for their first album began in 1972 at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, but the original album did not receive much attention and the band continued to play concerts around the South and add tracks to the album. By the time it was released, 20 tracks had been recorded for the debut. Some of these tracks were refined later and selected for other albums. Skynyrd's First... The Complete Muscle Shoals Album captures all of these recordings in one album.



 
Ronnie Van Zant didn't wear shoes when performing live.



 
The bodies of Ronnie Van Zant and another Skynyrd band member were illegally removed from their graves by vandals, apparently to confirm the rumor that Ronnie is wearing a T-shirt featuring rival Neil Young. Their bodies have been moved to an undisclosed location.



 
It took them 7 tries to get into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. In 2005, they were finally voted in. At the ceremonies in 2006, Kid Rock was their presenter.



 
Billy Powell, who was one of the survivors of the 1977 plane crash, died on January 28, 2009 after a history of heart trouble.



 
None of the band members were wearing shoes at the time of their 1977 planecrash.



 
On their very first national tour, they opened for the Who. And got encores.




This is from the Al Kooper ( who produced their first album) book I bought;



When Hendrix became a Worldwide legend, he invited me to play on his third album, Electric Ladyland, and for my efforts, he rewarded me with one of his personal guitars. The day after I played on his session, it was delivered to my apartment in New York City, More about that guitar appears in a following chapter.


When we were recording Skynyrd's first album, I brought the Hendrix guitar to the studio in case the sound of it might be suitable for any of the tracks we were doing. One of the Skynyrd boys started jamming with it unplugged. "Hey Al......this guitar plays nice," he said admiringly. From across the room, Ronnie Van Zant looked up and said: "that guitar used to belong to Jimi Hendrix, he gave it to Al...."  The guitar player immediately let it fall out of his hands onto the couch. "OOOOO.....I just got some nigger on me"

You can take the boy out of the South, but....





"Tuesday's Gone"



In this song, Tuesday is the name of a girl. It's about going away and leaving her behind.


 
There was a train track near the place where the band rehearsed. The sound of the trains inspired lead singer Ronnie Van Zant to write the first line, "Train roll on, on down the line."


 
This was Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album. The group was discovered by Al Kooper, a producer and session musician who had previously worked with Bob Dylan, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and The Zombies.


 
Kooper played some instruments and sang backup on the album, but his contributions were credited to "Roosevelt Gook." On this, he played a synthesizer-like instrument called a Mellotron.


 
"Gimme Three Steps"


This song is based on a true story. As Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington tells it, lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, who was about 18 at the time, used a fake ID to get in a bar while his younger band mates Rossington and Allen Collins waited for him in a truck. Van Zant danced with a girl named Linda, whose boyfriend, who was not too happy about it, came up to Ronnie and reached for something in his boot. Figuring he was going for a gun, Van Zant told him: "If you're going to shoot me it's going to be in the ass or the elbows... just gimme a few steps and I'll be gone." He ran to the truck, and he, Rossington, and Collins wrote this song that night.


 
According to the Freebird Foundation, which is run by Van Zant's widow Judy Van Zant Jenness, the events of the song took place at a bar called The Little Brown Jug, which was located on Edison Avenue in Jacksonville, Florida, where the band is from. Thus the lyrics, "I was cuttin' the rug, down a a place called The Jug," which is where Ronnie ran into an angry local man with a gun.



 
The pace of the chorus is fast, to signify Van Zant running away from the guy he thought was going to shoot him.


 
This made the cut for Skynyrd's first album. Their producer, Al Kooper had them play all their original songs, and out of the 14 they had, picked 9 to record for the album.


 
This was one of the few songs Skynyrd released as a single. It was their first major-label release, and it didn't chart.


 
The band's name was a mocking tribute to Leonard Skinner, a physical-education teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, who was notorious for strictly enforcing the school's policy against boys having long hair. Despite their high school acrimony, the band developed a friendlier relationship with Skinner in later years, and invited him to introduce them at a concert in the Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum.
Interviewed by the Florida Times Union in January 2009, Skinner said he was just following the rules about hair length. It bothered him that the legend had grown that he was particularly tough on the band members. In fact, he didn't even remember them when they were in high school. He said, "It was against the school rules. I don't particularly like long hair on men, but again, it wasn't my rule."

Though he hasn't been shy of the attention he received because of his name, Skinner never really warmed up to the group's music. "No," he said when asked if he liked their tunes. "I don't. I don't like rock 'n' roll music."

On September 20, 2010, Skinner died at a nursing home in Jacksonville, at age 77 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for several years.




"Simple Man"



Shortly after Ronnie Van Zant's grandmother and Gary Rossington's mother died, they got together in Van Zant's apartment and started telling stories about them. Rossington came up with a chord progression, and Van Zant wrote the lyrics based on advice the women had given them over the years. They wrote it in about an hour.



 
Even though the lyrics state, "Sit beside me, my only son," Ronnie was not the only son. He had 2 younger brothers along with one older sister and one younger sister.



  
Skynyrd producer Al Kooper didn't like the way this was coming out, so the band recorded it without him and had him add his organ part later. He didn't think they should release it, but realized he was wrong when it went over so well with their fans.



 
When Skynyrd toured in 1987, they dedicated this to Van Zant.



 
The studio and live versions of this song are tuned to different keys. The studio is in Ab while the live is the key of A



  
Frontman Johnny Van Zant discussed this song in a track-by-track commentary to promote the band's 2010 CD/DVD Live From Freedom Hall. He said: "Well that's a great song and something that I think we all live by. I think anybody out there needs to respect their mother, and the words of their mother. It's mama talking to you in that song and I think it's probably one of my favorite's if not my favorite to do live. It's just a great song and that one stays in the set and the crowd always goes crazy on that one."




"Things Goin' On"



This is Ronnie Van Zant's protest song. Instead of writing from the perspective of the war, it is written from the perspective of the government.



 
An acoustic version of this song is featured on the album Endangered Species sung by Johnny Van Zant.



 
This song, track one, side two, of their debut album (pronounced 'l?h-'nérd 'skin-'nérd), was part of Lynyrd Skynyrd's initial audition tapes. Then-producer Al Kooper brought them all into the studio to record every original song they knew to live-to-two-track, so he could then pick and choose from that to make the first album. However, it turned out that all 14 songs were top-notch, so Kooper used everything that didn't go on the first album for either B-sides for single's releases or on later albums.


Kooper's initial work with the band was sometimes a power struggle. In his memoir, , Kooper mentions how they broke in Billy Powell, a keyboardist with training in classical music. While the classical music training gave him a rich, textured sound, he tended to play too much with his left hand, drowning out the guitars. Kooper got so frustrated trying to break him of this habit that he took to tying Powell's left hand to the piano bench during takes!

    "Poison Whiskey"


This is about the effects of alcoholism, which is a bit ironic since Lynyrd Skynyrd played almost every concert under the influence of alcohol.



 
Johnny Walker, as mentioned in the lyrics, is a Scotch whiskey that comes in four types: red label (basic), black label (12 year), gold label (18 year), and blue label (very top shelf).



 
An acoustic version sung by Johnny Van Zant appears on their album Endangered Species.



 
This song is track three, side two, of Lynyrd Skynyrd's landmark first album. Their producer Al Kooper was initially nervous about the band name, and begged them to change it. When they wouldn't budge, he devised a clever ad campaign before the first album release, in a bid to drive the name of the band into the public's mind. He designed a skull head and a bones-styled typeface, and took out ads in music trade magazines and major-city alternative weekly newspapers, with an ad that simply said "Who is Lynyrd Skynyrd?" Each week, the size of the ad grew and held a few more details, until finally it became a huge two-page ad on the day of the album's release.
Immediately after the MCA ad campaign, Pete Townsend of The Who dropped by MCA studios looking for an opening act for the Quadrophenia tour. Who should they find but the hot, young and eager Lynyrd Skynyrd? Thanks to the lucky coincidence of their first album's ad campaign, it looked like they'd planned to tour with The Who the whole time!




"Free Bird "



Frontman Johnny Van Zant discussed this song in a track-by-track commentary to promote the band's 2010 CD/DVD Live From Freedom Hall. He said: "For years Skynyrd has always closed the show with that song and the song has different meanings for different people. This kid was telling me that they used it for their graduation song and not too long ago somebody told me that they used it at a funeral. And really it's a love song, its one of the few that Lynyrd Skynyrd's ever had. It's about a guy and a girl. Of course at the end it was dedicated to Duane Allman from the band Allman Brothers because it goes into the guitar part. If you can get through that one you've had a good night at a Skynyrd show."



 
This song began as a ballad without the guitar solos at the end, and Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded it that way for the first time in 1972. Guitarist Allen Collins had been working on the song on and off for the previous 2 years. At the time of recording, the song was only 7 1/2 minutes long, but throughout the next year, Collins continued to refine the song until it was recorded for the final cut of Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd in 1973.



Collins wrote the music long before Ronnie Van Zant came up with lyrics for it. Van Zant finally got inspired one night and had Collins and Gary Rossington play it over and over until he wrote the words.


 
The lyrics are about a man explaining to a girl why he can't settle down and make a commitment. The opening verse, "If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?" was inspired by Allen Collins' girlfriend Kathy, who had asked him this very question during a fight.



 
Allman Brothers Band guitarist Duane Allman died around the same time this was released. Skynyrd sometimes dedicated it to Allman at concerts, but it was written long before his death. The double guitar solo at the end is the same style as many early Allman Brothers songs on which Duane played.



 
Skynyrd has played this only as an instrumental since the 1977 plane crash that killed lead singer Ronnie Van Zant. His brother, Johnny, took his place. For a while, he wouldn't sing it - the band played it as an instrumental and the crowd would sing the words.



 
The band's record company did not want this on the album. They thought it was too long and that no radio station would play it. Even the band never thought this was going to be a hit.



 
 
In 1976, a live version was released from the One More For the Road live album. It went to #38.


 
Skynyrd always plays this as the last song at their shows.



 
In the US, this wasn't released as a single until a year after the album came out. By that time, Sweet Home Alabama" " had already been released, and the single version of "Free Bird" was edited down. The long version from the album has always been more popular.


  
Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd was Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album. They gave it the title because they knew people would not be able to pronounce their name.


 
Gene Odom, who was Lynyrd Skynyrd's security manager, explained, that this song came about when Allen Collins' wife asked him the question, "If I leave here tomorrow would you still remember me."


 
Skynyrd's 1991 boxed set contains a demo version of this


.
Ronnie Van Zant thought at first that this song "Had too many chords to write lyrics for," Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington commented in an interview with Blender magazine, "But after a few months, we were sitting around, and he asked Allen to play those chords again. After about 20 minutes, Ronnie started singing, 'If I leave here tomorrow,' and it fit great. It wasn't anything heavy, just a love song about leavin' town, time to move on. Al put the organ on the front, which was a very good idea. He also helped me get the sound of the delayed slide guitar that I play - it's actually me playing the same thing twice, recording one on top of the other, so it sounds kind of slurry, echoey."




 
While the lyrics contain the phrase "free as a bird," the title itself ("Free Bird") is used just once, right before the guitar solos begin: "Won't you fly high, free bird."
 

More about my opinions on the albums after you, A/C, but trying to keep up to date, I never liked Lynyrd Skynyrd, and on re-listening still don't.

Funny selections and timings coming up with the book, the two Bowie albums so close together, and that King Crimson album being far from their best being included. Even that Stones collection, surprising it's there and Satantic Majesties missed out. And a lot of UK bands grouped together here (which can only be a good thing, for me).

The album above by The Wailers too, I never got into them, although I've always loved Reggae, but will give them another shot. Reggae is a really happy form of music, and I found The Wailers a bit too serious.

DAY 276.
Hawkwind.....................................Space Ritual   (1973)









This double live album is Hawkwind's magnum opus and perhaps the ultimate sonic trip.

Their 1972 tour was a multi media concept involving naked dancers, cosmic stage design and costumes, and a kaleidoscopic, lights and laser show. Songs from their second and third albums, were linked by eerie sound collages and spoken word pieces, these formed a pseudo-operatic  narrative of seven cosmonauts traveling in a state of suspended animation.


Dinna like pre-judging things but, seems a bit wanky but will give it a go,

people of a certain vintage may remember Stacia







 

DAY 273.
David Bowie..................................Aladin Sane   (1973)











Another superb offering from Mr Bowie, from the honky-tonk opening of "Watch That Man" to the sublime ivory tinkling of Mike Garson on "Lady Grinning Soul" this is a very good album, and not forgetting the input of all the members of "The Spiders From Mars" who never played as a group on a Bowie album again, and more's the pity for this listener.


The only fly in the ointment for me was "Let's Spend The Night Together" what the fuck was he thinking about, having owned this in various formats over the years, I still find myself without a copy, but this album will be added to my vinyl collection asap.



Bits & Bobs;




The decision to get Duffy in to shoot the Aladdin Sane album cover was made by Bowie’s then manager, Tony Defries. “I was looking for an iconic cover image and artwork that would help me to persuade RCA that Bowie was sufficiently important to warrant megastar treatment and funding, in order to propel him to exactly that status,” Tony Defries remembers in the book Duffy/Bowie. “Engaging a master, world-class photographer to shoot the product/brand and to design the artwork was the best way to send that message. Brian had the ability to make the mundane image interesting and the interesting image fascinating.”



The famous red and blue lightning bolt which is painted across Bowie’s face was, in fact, inspired by the logo on a Panasonic rice cooker in the studio kitchen. “In the studio we had a sort of mobile make-up table with mirrors on it, and on wheels,” Duffy's studio manager Francis Newman recalls. “I remember David sitting in front of that with Pierre Laroche, and they had obviously talked about using this flash. Well, Pierre started to apply this tiny little flash on his face and when Duffy saw it he said, ‘No, not fucking like that, like this.’ He literally drew it right across his face and said to Pierre, 'Now, fill that in.' It was actually Duffy who did the initial shape – I’m not saying he did the actual make-up. It then took Pierre about an hour to apply properly. The red flash is so shiny because it was actually lipstick.”



"Watch That Man"



Watch That Man (New York) is the album’s raucous opening gambit. One of those loud and proud honky-tonk glam numbers that is Bowie’s blatant annexation of the The Rolling Stones sound, particularly the soupy sonics of the previous year’s Exile On Main Street. Indeed, the spectre of Jagger/Richards and co looms large over the entire Aladdin Sane project, as we’ll get into throughout this feature.

 With a level-triggered ambience, Watch That Man’s downright druggy lead vocal is submerged beneath Ronson’s guitars: at times sounding like a trebly part of the horn section. Producer Ken Scott, trying to get a Stones meets Spector wall of sound, pushed all the instruments up in the murky mix, drowning Bowie’s voice in the process. MainMan, Bowie’s management company, balked and asked Scott to bring the vocals up front: “Then a couple of weeks later I got a request from RCA: ‘Can you do another mix with the voice louder?’ And I did it, and they obviously thought the original mix worked better as well, because that’s what’s on the album.” Bowie and Ronson revisited and re-recorded Watch That Man just a few months later, with lead vocals provided by Lulu, one of The Dame’s numerous lust interests in ’73. And much like The Man Who Sold The World – the A-Side it was backing – it somehow managed to make David’s own version sound almost demo-like.

 

"Aladin Sane (1913-1938-197?)




The song title includes the parenthetical phrase "(1913-1938-197?)". The first two years refer to the years before the two World Wars broke out, and thus the third year reflects Bowie's belief at the time that World War III was imminent, a theme that is dominant throughout the lyrics of this song, and Bowie's songwriting in general at this point.


 

In 1999, at the Bridge School Benefit, an annual charity concert organized by Neil Young, Bowie played this song acoustically and said that it was "about young people, just before the two wars, wanting to go and screw girls and kill foreigners."


 
The title is a play on words "A Lad Insane." Bowie's previous album introduced the Ziggy Stardust character, and many people thought he was a little nuts.


 
Bowie reportedly took inspiration from Evelyn Waugh's novel, Vile Bodies, when writing this song.



 
This song features a piano solo by the American keyboardist, Mike Garson. Bowie reportedly rejected Garson's initial solo attempts, one of which was in a blues style, the other in a Latin style, instead asking for something akin to "avant-garde jazz." Garson thus decided to improvise and the solo that you hear was recorded in just one take. Garson commented: "I've had more communication in the last 26 years about that one solo than the 11 albums I've done on my own, the six that I've done with another group that I'm co-leader of, hundreds of pieces I've done with other people and the 3,000 pieces of music I've written to date. I don't think there's been a week in those 26 years that have gone by without someone, somewhere, asking me about it!"


 
The Aladdin Sane cover features the iconic image of Bowie with a red and blue lightning bolt painted across his face. This would later be imitated by Lady GaGa.


 
Mike Garson told Mojo regarding his piano solo: "For the title track, they used my third take. I played a blues solo on the first and a Latin on the second. Then Bowie said, 'Well, why don't you play an avant-garde solo like you do in New York?' and I joked, 'Well, that's why I'm not working Saturday night!'"




"That solo was one take and I brought everything I'd learned to the table in a condensed way."





"David's son (Duncan) told me about 20 years ago that the solo used to give him nightmares, but finally he fell in love with it."




"Drive In Saturday"


In this song, Bowie is imagining inhabitants in a post-apocalyptic future looking back at old video films that they have kept from the 1960s and '70s. In 1972, Bowie introduced the song at The Public Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, with the following: "It's about a future where people have forgotten how to make love, so they go back onto video-films that they have kept from this century. This is after a catastrophe of some kind, and some people are living on the streets and some people are living in domes, and they borrow from one another and try to learn how to pick up the pieces."



 
This was originally written by Bowie for Mott The Hoople as their follow-up to "All The Young Dudes." However after they rejected it, their professional relationship effectively ended and Bowie took it for himself. Bowie recalled on VH1's Storytellers that he drunkenly shaved his eyebrows when Mott the Hoople turned this song down. ("that taught them a lesson").



 
Bowie wrote this during his 1972 US tour. It was influenced by the barren landscape between Seattle and Phoenix, Arizona.


 
Bowie first performed this just hours after it was composed, in Phoenix, on November 4, 1972.


 
The one time David Batt, who later fronted the new romantic band, Japan, got his stage name David Sylvian from the song's lyric, "He's crashing out with Sylvian." (never knew that)



 
The lyrics name-check several cultural icons, including Mick Jagger ("When people stared in Jagger's eyes and scored"), the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung ("Jung the foreman prayed at work"), and the supermodel Twiggy ("She'd sigh like Twig the Wonder Kid"), who would later appear on the front cover of David Bowie's covers album, Pin Ups.




As a way to repay this compliment, Jagger traveled to David's Earls Court Show with Bianca Jagger on May 12, 1973. Jagger was already a legend while Bowie was still coming up, and the gesture was compared to a "passing of the scepter" by tour manager Anthony Zanetta.




"Panic In Detroit"



Panic In Detroit (Detroit) has a leading man. A fading revolutionary/sex symbol whose final act is suicide, though he graciously leaves behind one last autograph. Inspired by Iggy Pop's’s stories of the 1967 Detroit riots and the rise of the White Panther Party, this semi-protest song’s main ingredient was Bowie’s encounter with a former classmate from Bromley Tech, after a concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall the previous September. This nondescript middle-class British kid from Kent had become a drug dealer operating out of South America (any names?), and had come to the show in his private plane. Che Guevara and Mick Ronson to a ‘cisco meet.





"Cracked Actor"



  Cracked Actor (Los Angeles) opens with some monstrous Ronno power chords and a flash of Bowie on harmonica. One of the album’s ballsy rockers, it tells the bawdy story of an ageing Hollywood star in a naked and wired encounter with a prostitute. The song became a theatrical centrepiece of Bowie’s Diamond Dogs show of ’74 when he would act out the song wearing sunglasses, regal robes and snogging a real dead skull (à la Hamlet). He was still pulling the same stunt on the Serious Moonlight tour a decade later. The track also gave its title to Alan Yentob’s acclaimed BBC documentary of the Diamond Dogs shows, the Los Angeles concert audio reels of which were later stolen from Television Centre and in 2017 were used for Parlophone’s official live album of the same name.



"Time"



Time (New Orleans)* may be a cabaret-quoting, overblown vaudevillian melodrama but it’s also a much needed Eurocentric breather from the grungy Americana of the preceding pair; boasting more superlative piano work from Garson, as well as a coruscating and cacophonous prog rock solo from Ronno. Previewing Aladdin Sane in a January 1973 interview, David spoke about how he was powerless to stop his lyrics acquiring a life of their own:


“I’ve written a new song on the new album which is just called Time, and I thought it was about time, and I wrote very heavily about time, and the way I felt about time – at times! – and I played it back after we recorded it and, my God, it was a gay song! And I had no intention of writing anything at all gay. When I listened to it back I just could not believe it.”


Camp, crass and more than a little pompous — it’s the one song that Freddie Mercury would have hocked his last bottle of Brut to have written — Time’s music hall histrionica was perfectly suited to the stage, where it served as recitative between the rockers, a moment for The Thin White Dame to smoke a cigarette and play the weary roué.






"The Prettiest Star"




Bowie wrote this for his future wife, Angela 'Angie' Barnett. Bowie reportedly played it to Barnett over the phone when he proposed to her. Writing in The Mail On Sunday February 9, 2013, Angie recalled: "David wrote many of the songs for Aladdin Sane on his 1972 tour of America but 'The Prettiest Star' dates back to Christmas 1969. I was staying with my parents in Cyprus when he phoned and sang it down the phone to me. Two days later, I was back in London and our first stop was the recording studio, where Marc Bolan was adding the guitar solo. I was crazy about Aladdin Sane, loved the songs, especially 'The Prettiest Star.' That was the most personal. He wrote it for me."



 
This was released as a single in 1970, but it flopped, shifting just 800 copies.

Three years later, the Spiders’ sparkly remake turned a pretty ditty into a gritty doo-wop pastiche, with Ronno replicating Marc Bolan’s guesting guitar lines on the original almost note for note. With its ’50s aesthetic meets wonderfully modern chordal twists, the re-recording provided divine inspiration for one of Britain’s most under-rated musicians, one-time Siouxsie & The Banshees and Adam & The Ants axeman, Marco Pirroni. Marco recalled that “Mick Ronson was a huge influence on the Ants,” and The Prettiest Star has “the best guitar sound ever. Ronson has got this brilliant, overdriven, mad guitar sound. I’m still trying to get that guitar sound today. Aladdin Sane made me want to play.”



"The Jean Genie"


This song has two likely influences: Iggy Pop and Cyrinda Foxe. Many of the lyrics reflect Iggy Pop's lifestyle and stage antics (he often slithered around on stage and cut himself). Cyrinda Foxe was an actress who starred in commercials for Jean Genie jeans. Legend has it that Bowie wrote this in Foxe's apartment in an effort to entertain her. Foxe would go on to appear in the song's official video alongside Bowie.




Cyrinda Foxe was Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler's first wife - they married not long after she broke up with David Johansen of The New York Dolls. They had a daughter together, but got a bitter divorce. In 1996, she wrote a tell-all book about Tyler called Dream On, alleging that he didn't pay much child support. Tyler tried unsuccessfully to stop publication, and was very angry with Foxe, but they became friends once again when Cyrinda learned she had brain cancer. Tyler paid her medical bills until her death in 2002.


 
On the Santa Monica '72 live album, Bowie says that this is about a "a New York lady and a guy who lives in New York and he's called The Jean Genie" (referring to the rebellious French writer Jean Genet).




David Bowie added in his 2005 book Moonage Daydream: "Starting out as a lightweight riff thing I had written one evening in NY for Cyrinda’s enjoyment, I developed the lyric to the otherwise wordless pumper and it ultimately turned into a bit of a smorgasbord of imagined Americana ... based on an Iggy-type persona .The title, of course, was a clumsy pun upon Jean Genet."


 
This was one of the first tracks Bowie wrote in New York City. He loves the city and has written many of his songs there. In 2001, Bowie opened the "Concert For New York," a tribute to the police, firemen, and rescue workers involved in the World Trade Center attacks.



 
In 1973, Bowie spoke to NME about this song: "I wanted to get the same sound the Stones had on their very first album on the harmonica. I didn't get that near to it, but it had a feel that I wanted – that '60s thing."


 
The lyric, "He's so simple minded, he can't drive his module," provided the inspiration for the remaining members of Johnny & The Self Abusers to become Simple Minds, who later scored a #1 US hit with "
Don't You (Forget About Me)."


 
In 2011, a cameraman named John Henshall found a tape of Bowie performing "The Jean Genie" live on the British music show, Top of the Pops, in 1973 - a performance that had thought to have been erased. In December 2011, the performance aired for the first time since January 1973. You can watch the footage - which was filmed using Telefex Fisheye lenses which Henshall himself designed.


 
"Lady Grinning Soul"


 
David Bowie (from the Mail on Sunday June 29, 2008): "Mike Garson's piano opens with the most ridiculous and spot-on re-creation of a 19th Century music hall 'exotic' number. I can see now the 'poses plastiques' as if through a smoke-filled bar. Fans, castanets and lots of Spanish black lace and little else. Sexy, mmm? And for you, Madam?"


 
In the same Mail on Sunday interview, Bowie mentions that this "was written for a wonderful young girl whom I've not seen for more than 30 years. When I hear this song she's still in her 20s, of course." The "wonderful young girl" he refers to is most likely the American black soul singer Claudia Lennear for whom Mick Jagger also wrote "Brown Sugar" A number of authorities have cited her as the inspiration for this song.


 
Cherie Currie, as played by Dakota Fanning, mimes to this song during a school talent show in The Runaways, a 2010 film about the '70s Rock band of the same name. Currie was The Runaways' lead vocalist.




Lady Grinning Soul (London) is one of the most eloquent and moving items in the illustrious Bowie canon. And it’s even more amazing when you realise it was a last minute addition to the album, bumping off the John, I’m Only Dancing re-record at the final hour because David thought there wasn’t enough original material. He had a point. By the time Aladdin Sane was released five of its ten tracks had already been available in some form. Mike Garson said: “Lady Grinning Soul brought out the romantic playing in me that comes from composers like Franz Liszt and Chopin. I mixed this with elements of Liberace and Rodger Williams, which were styles of music that were always put down because they were so mainstream. I played in a very un-dissonant way here, where Aladdin Sane is about as dissonant as you can get.”


  The Dame was always one to wear his influences and passions on his gaily-cuffed sleeve and among an album littered with Stones vibes, it’s no surprise that the Lady in question is said to be Claudia Lennear, the black American soul singer who’d famously inspired Jagger and Keith Richards to write Brown Sugar in 1969, and another ex-squeeze of Mick’s that Bowie had been dating in ’73. With an impressively heartfelt vocal, it’s one of the most intensely personal songs Bowie ever wrote, one he refused to perform live and one he felt so strongly about that producer Ken Scott recalls it was the only song he can remember David being present for its mixing.  

Although rarely aired at the time, Aladdin Sane was the first Bowie album trailed by a single with a promotional video, which was shot for Jean Genie by photographer Mick Rock in San Francisco with a minimum of sophistication but a maximum of style. Strangely, for such a visual artist, Aladdin Sane was also the last Bowie album trailed by a single with a promotional video until 1977’s Heroes. David’s next two clips were for old songs, Space Oddity and Life On Mars?, with a film for Be My Wife, the second single from Low, taking place four years later. 

DAY 275.
Bob Marley......................................Catch A Fire   (1973)








Listening to reggae almost always puts me in a happy mood, and this album is no exception.Although a lot of the lyrics are quite deep and political, the reggae beat for me at least, wont let it bring you down, "Kinky Reggae," "concrete Jungle," and "Stir It Up" were stand outs but I also enjoyed Peter Tosh singing "Stop That Train" to be fair I didn't have a problem with any of the tracks.


This album will be going in my collection as I could picture myself in my hammock, sun sweltering, an ice cold drink and this blasting oot in the background, roll on the summer



Bits & Bobs;



You may have noticed that the album photey has changed, the first pressing of which there was 20,000 zippo-stylee album covers are now very sought after and are now  highly collectable so also valuable. The next pressing had the second photey of Bob spliffed up, as the album cover, the first one had too many flaws which I'll go into later.



Marley was very generous with his money. He bought houses and supported many of the poor in Jamaica.


 
His mother Cedella was a 17-year-old Jamaican native, his father Norval was a white British military officer in his 50s. Bob rarely saw his father.


 
He left school at 15 to become an apprentice to a welder.


 
Marley spent a month in prison in 1968 for marijuana possession. He identified with the prisoners he met and started writing more political songs.


 
Until Jamaica gained independence from Britain in 1962, the radio stations played music for the white, upper class. Marley and other natives set up mobile sound systems to play the Reggae beats they were making.


 Marley passed away from Melanoma cancer - a cancer which only affects white people. The cancer was located on his toe, under his toenail. He found out when he injured his toe during a soccer game in 1977, and the wound did not fully heal for nearly 3 years. His doctors were baffled as to how he could have Melanoma, but they came to the conclusion that since Bob Marley's father was a white Jamaican of English decent, Bob had the gene that made him susceptible to that form of cancer. Marley refused to have the toe amputated, as the Rastafarian religion forbids modification of the body. The cancer spread to his stomach, lungs and brain and killed him.


 
His nickname was "Tuff Gong." He set up a record label called Tuff Gong Records.


 
There is a Bob Marley museum on Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica, where he once lived.


  
Time magazine named Marley's Exodus album the best of the 20th century.


 
Jimmy Cliff helped Marley get his first record contract. Chris Blackwell of Island Records signed Bob Marley and the Wailers after Cliff, who was a famous reggae star, left the label.


 
His group The Wailers were kicked off a tour in 1973 because they were upstaging the headliners, Sly And The Family Stone.


 
Bob's oldest son, Ziggy, experienced early fame with the family act The Melody Makers, which also consisted of several other members of Marley's progeny. Damian Marley, the youngest of Bob's 13 children, is a half-brother to the rest of the Marleys, the product of Bob's former lover Cindy Breakspeare. It could be argued that Damian is the most successful of the many Marleys; he is the only reggae artist in history to ever win two Grammys on the same night. Stephen Marley is also an entertainer in his own right and for a short time he was part of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers along with sisters Cedella and Sharon Marley. Cedella is the child of Rita Marley with Bob while Sharon was Rita's daughter from another man and was subsequently adopted by Bob.


 
Even though he died in 1981, Marley still sells more albums each year than any other Reggae artist.


  
Marley was a Rastafarian. As such, he was a vegetarian and believed that marijuana (ganga), is a sacred herb. Rastafarians do not cut their hair.


 
His name was actually Nesta Robert Marley, "Nesta" meaning messenger, as his mother Cedella had great visions of his birth and she believed he was blessed by God. His name was changed when he got a passport to travel to America to make money for the Wailers. The the worker taking his details said he should put his middle name down as Nesta because it would be seen as a girl's name in America. That is why he is called Bob Marley.


 
Marley was employed as a waiter, assembly line worker, fork lift operator, and lab assistant before finally hitting it big.


 
Marley collapsed while jogging in 1980 in New York City's Central Park. He died eight months later from a combination of brain, lung, and liver cancer.


 
Two days before the Smile Jamaica Concert, a gunman went into Bob's house and shot him in the arm. Bob still performed at the concert to prove that a gun man would not scare him off.


 
Bob's first home was a one-room shack in the village of Nine Miles, St. Ann.


 
Marley married Rita Anderson on February 10, 1966. He had 4 children with Rita and another 8 with other women. Jamaican men were rarely monogamous.


 
Bob Marley's home - Trenchtown - was so named because it was built on the sewers.


 
In January 2008, the Jamaican National Archives reported that about 80% of the musical archives from the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation have been stolen, including many rare recordings from Marley, Peter Tosh and many other Reggae artists.


 
Marley didn't have a will, which resulted in numerous disputes over his estate since his death.


 
Amid the violence and political turmoil in Jamaica, Marley spoke out for peace and understanding, blaming much of the problem on economic injustice. Said Marley: "You have to share. I don't care if it sounds political or whatever it is, but people have to share."


 
Bob Marley was buried with his red Gibson guitar, a soccer ball, a marijuana bud, a ring that he'd worn every day and a Bible open at Psalm 23.

 

Unless you bought this album around the time of its initial release, chances are your copy is enclosed in a regularly constructed cover featuring a picture of Bob Marley smoking a joint. But if yours is in fact one of the first 20,000 copies issued of Catch A Fire, you are -- according to Tim Clark, former director of marketing and art at Island Records -- the lucky possessor of a collector's item.


 Label head Chris Blackwell had commissioned designers Rod Dyer and Bob Weiner to strike up something special for this LP. Dyer and Weiner conceived of a cover modeled after a Zippo cigarette lighter, which has a hinged top. "The top half," says Clark, "was riveted to the bottom half, which was a receptacle for the record and its inner bag, so the thing literally opened as a Zippo lighter would."


 A clever idea, but not a practical one, as it turned out. "The problem was getting the top half to fit the bottom," says Clark. "Each copy had to be hand-assembled." Since this was hardly cost-effective, a more standard design was substituted after the first shipment -- with a shot of Marley catching his own sort of fire.



Released in April 1973, Catch A Fire did for reggae what Please Please Me, the first Beatles album, had done for pop and rock exactly a decade earlier. An album of revolutionary genius, which combined perfect timing with lasting cultural significance, Catch A Fire laid a foundation stone for the career of the world’s first and indeed only reggae superstar and established a bridgehead between the deep roots music of Jamaica and the commercial pop mainstream of the First World. Its release marked the moment that reggae truly did begin to “catch fire” on the international stage.



 Although Catch A Fire introduced Bob Marley to the world beyond his Caribbean homeland, it was not the singer’s first album. Indeed, it wasn’t even a Bob Marley album. Catch A Fire was the fifth album by the group known and billed simply as the Wailers who had been playing and recording together in Jamaica for a decade or more before it was released.


 It is difficult to convey how little was known about Jamaican music in pre-Marley Britain and America at the start of the 1970s. Despite the rich and varied history of reggae and its antecedents of ska, bluebeat and mento, only a smattering of reggae songs had ever made an impression on the charts outside the island. In the UK, reggae had unfortunate associations with the skinhead boot-boy tendency and Max Romeo’s lubricious (and banned) Top 10 hit ‘Wet Dream’. In the US, occasional pop hits by American acts such as Neil Diamond (‘Red Red Wine’) and Johnny Nash (‘Hold Me Tight’) skimmed sweetly across the surface of the reggae/rocksteady tradition.



 But this was about to change. The Harder They Come, a movie starring the Jamaican singer Jimmy Cliff, with a soundtrack of reggae songs performed by Cliff, Desmond Dekker and others, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1972 and became a slow-burning international success. Later the same year, Nash scored a Top 15 hit in both the UK and the US with his recording of Bob Marley’s song ‘Stir It Up’. The American star brought the Wailers over as support act on his 1972 tour of the UK, where the band met up with Chris Blackwell who signed them to record an album for Island Records.



 The Wailers recorded Catch A Fire in three different eight-track studios in Kingston. In contrast to previous recordings, they now had a budget that could do full justice to the songs, seven of which were written by Marley – who also produced the album – and two by the group’s other singer and lead guitarist Peter Tosh. Even so, when Marley returned to London to deliver the master tapes, Blackwell insisted that more work was needed and promptly took over the production reins. Adding overdubbed contributions from the session guitarist Wayne Perkins, Blackwell tweaked arrangements and adjusted mixes, rolling back some of the heavier bass-end parts and generally moulding the sound into a shape that remained true to the band’s roots, but which would also sit comfortably in the mainstream rock marketplace of the day.


 The result was an album with a groove that was languid, soulful and sun-drenched, yet lean and taut as a coiled spring. The bass and drum parts – supplied by Aston “Family Man” Barrett and his younger brother Carlton Barrett, respectively – were welded together by the distinctive staccato scratch-strokes of Marley’s rhythm guitar. The irresistible rhythmic tug which this produced was a revelation to the great majority of listeners discovering the band for the first time. So too were the incredibly intricate vocal parts. It is often forgotten that the Wailers had begun life as a vocal group and now, aided by Rita Marley (Bob’s wife) and Marcia Griffiths, the band, including percussionist Bunny Wailer, wove a rich patchwork of harmony and counterpoint vocal parts around Marley’s and Tosh’s melody lines on numbers such as ‘Stop That Train’ and ‘Baby We’ve Got A Date (Rock It Baby)’. The keyboard parts, supplied by John Rabbit Bundrick, completed the sonic picture with organ, clavinet and a sprinkling of modern electronic effects.


 It was an album of two sides; literally, in those days when vinyl was the only commercially-viable format, but also in its lyrical preoccupations, which were evenly divided between a cry of anguish from the ghetto and the cry of a young man in pursuit of something else. The album’s most enduring song, ‘Stir It Up’ – already a hit for Johnny Nash – was followed by the even more explicitly amorous ‘Kinky Reggae’, in which a certain Miss Brown was said to have “brown sugar all over ’er booga-wooga.”


 But the emotional meat of the album was in the passionate, street-poet lyrics of protest songs including ‘Slave Driver’ and ‘400 Years’. “No chains around my feet/But I’m not free/I know I’m bounded in captivity,” Marley sang in ‘Concrete Jungle’, the first of several searing cries on behalf of the oppressed and dispossessed of his homeland which echoed what used to be known as the “negro spiritual” music of previous generations.The cover of the Wailers first album The Wailing Wailers, released in 1965, carried a picture of the three principals – Bunny Wailer, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh – neatly groomed in tuxedos and bow ties above the strap-line “Jamaica’s Top Rated Singing Sensations”. Things had changed somewhat by the time the group made their first UK TV appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test on May 1, 1973. Marley in a blue work-shirt, eyes screwed shut, looked like a young messiah. He was flanked by Wailer on percussion and Tosh in a rasta-coloured beanie hat and rock-dignitary shades playing lead guitar with an extreme wah-wah effect. Alongside keyboard player Earl Lindo, the heavy-duty rhythm section of Barrett and Barrett locked on to the strangely loping groove in a way that had no precedent in UK music. Their performance on the show of ‘Concrete Jungle’ and ‘Stir It Up’ opened the door to a new musical world for an audience accustomed to a diet of Jackson Browne, Focus and Manfred Mann’s Earthband. With exposure for popular music of any kind still a rare occurrence, it became one of those pivotal TV moments, rather like the first appearance of David Bowie singing ‘Starman’ on Top Of The Pops the year before.The exotic provenance of Catch A Fire contributed to the indelible impact it had on anyone and everyone who was paying attention. But by the same token, the battle for mass-market acceptance was not to be won overnight. Incredibly in retrospect, the album made no impression on the UK chart and only reached No.171 in the US.A more appropriate indicator is that Catch A Fire now stands as the highest-placed reggae album in Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time (at No.126; it was outranked only by Marley’s posthumous compilation Legend at No.46). But whatever the statistical data may or may not suggest, it is difficult to overstate the historical importance and groundbreaking brilliance of Marley’s first international album release.




 

Last edited by arabchanter (13/5/2018 4:38 pm)

DAY 277.
John Cale....................................Paris 1919   (1973)










Orchestration features extensively, but this is not a classical work like "The Academy In Peril" (1972.) Rather, it's a memorably lush pop album used by the artist to exorcise his past as a sonic experimentalist  with LaMonte Young and The Velvet Underground.


Other Cale albums might be closer to the challenging spirit adored by a minority, but none has penetrated pop history like Paris 1919.
 

DAY 276.
Hawkwind.....................................Space Ritual   (1973)









Just finished listening to this load of nonsense, how anyone who's not high or tripping can call this music is beyond me, breaking it down to the bare bones in my humbles, overlong tracks, peppered with the weirdest noises that for me didn't lend any favours to tracks, a boy doing his best impression of a Dalek waffling on and on and on,and Lemmy what the fuck got you involved with that mob, a wee bit of respect for yourself son, sheesh!


This was a live album where the crowd was mainly excluded from the recording, and lasting  86:55 mins, which is far too long for a good album let alone this pish, the tracks that I least hated were "Brainstorm," "Master of the Universe," and "Time We Left This World Today" I implore you if you do decide to listen to this one, dodge "10 Seconds of Forever" "Sonic Attack" and "Welcome to the Future" just writing their titles is fuckin' me off.


This album is not coming anywhere near my collection.



Bits & Bobs;


Make of this what you will;



Hawkwind had been traveling long and hard on the road and in (and out) of their minds for the previous two years, and their sound reflected this by getting harder, louder and faster. And it was all captured on this beautiful, psychic roar-out of a double live set. Culled from recordings made at The Liverpool Empire and The Brixton Sundown in late December, 1972, two tracks were so long they needed to be edited down to into order to fit the whole shebang onto two albums. Ads promoted it as “88 minutes of brain damage” and “Space Ritual” did not disappoint, outside or in: the cover housing these two discs folded out into a double-sided 24” x 36” poster of scientific miscellany, obscure quotes merged with colourful sci-fi pop art from the ever-wonderful Barney Bubbles. All but two songs from their previous studio album, “Doremi Fasol Latido” are present and given strenuous workouts: stretched out beyond all recognition into space metal jamming sprees that took off and never came back. The sheer power of the repetition represented here become mantra-like walls of sound, all held together by Dave Brock’s sonic mortar guitar and the stunning rhythm section of Lemmy Kilminster on bass and Simon King on stamina-driven drums that (according to one recent source) hit 250 beats per minute! They are joined by Nik Turner on sax and vocals, Robert Calvert on spoken link incantations, and electronics duo Dikmik and Del Dettmar on audio generator and synthesizer, respectively. They were joined in these and many of their performances throughout the first part of the seventies by Stacia, their dancer immortalised on the cover as a naked astral mama proffering fireballs flanked by two equally fiery dragons.




The opening track, “Earth Calling” is a brief spoken passage that smears right into the Calvert composition, “Born To Go”: a barnstormer deluxe that for nearly ten minutes immediately loses you in a blur of distorted metal guitar repeat patterning and quick, pulsating rhythms. “Lord Of Light” is another example of this consciousness-altering, repetitious zone-out. Its holding pattern continues for half the album side it kicks off as a huge battering ram making its way across the universe as it gathers momentum and finally lands on the back of your head. Huge, patterning shapes appear and disappear; galaxies collide in slow motion and are all driven by Lemmy’s neck-snapping pulsebass: as architecturally perfect as they are full-blown rockin’. Another Calvert original, “Orgone Accumulator,” is a tripping cousin of “Green Onions” gone horribly awry. Just about every word in the English language that rhymed with ‘accumulator’ were used by Calvert for the lyrics to this space-boogie stomp -- ‘greater,’ ‘later,’ ‘integrator’, ‘isolator,’ ‘stimulator,’ ‘vibrator,’ etc. -- and it continues like this for a very long time, singular in its purpose. “Sonic Attack” is a psychotic rant orally transmitted by the self-styled space age poet, Robert Calvert in a furious manner that is both sinister and funny, and it trails off -- BLAM -- Right into a version of “Time We Left This World Today” even more disorientating and nausea-inducing than its studio counterpart. You can practically see the strobes start up.




“Brainstorm” is a heat-seeking missile to the centre of your cerebral cortex: more relentless, distorted riffing with unbalanced electronics over pagan-simple drums all race to the end of each chorus, where they trail off like comets…only to start up all over again as they gun full blast into the next dimension with thrusters full on as Starship Hawkwind begins to buckle with metal fatigue. This interstellar rollercoaster ride repeats for what seems the quickest eternity until it breaks down a final time to wild cheering and applause. ”Welcome To Future” ends the album, with evocative oratory from Calvert. It ends (of course) in a massive burnout of distortion, feedback and electronic swirls to wild applause. This is Hawkwind’s best album...Sorry, man, I seem to have dropped my mandies...   



Talking of mandies, found out the other day Keith Richards named his speedboat Mandrax and his Deerhound Syphilis, hope he picked better names for his kids.



Lemmy’s real name is Ian Fraser Kilmister. His nickname apparently came from his younger wheeling and dealing days when he would ask people “lemme borrow a fiver”.



It’s well known that Lemmy played bass in the seminal psychedelic rock outfit Hawkwind before he started Motorhead. What is perhaps less well known is the fact that (or at least he claims it to be so) he’d never picked up a bass guitar when he ‘auditioned’ for the band. A six-string guitar player until then, he happened to be at a gig where the Hawkwind bassist didn’t turn up. Hawkwind’s keyboard player, Dik Mik, was asked if anyone in the room played bass, pointed to Lemmy, who got up on stage, played a few bars, and got the gig.
Yes, that's how they did things back then.

Lemmy is famous for his stint in Hawkwind — but the manner in which he was fired is equally infamous. According to Lemmy, the rift developed after he was asked to re-record the vocals on a certain track because Hawkwind’s bi-polar-suffering vocalist Robert Calvert was unavailable due to the fact that he’d been admitted to hospital. The track, Silver Machine, became a major hit but the fact that it was Lemmy’s voice on the recording stirred up intense animosity among the other members of the band. Lemmy was eventually fired after being busted in Canada for drug possession (a charge that was later dropped). He has always claimed that it was “just an excuse to get rid of me” and reckons he was only bailed out because another bass player couldn’t be found to fill in on time. “So I did the show and at 4.30 in the morning I was fired,” says Lemmy.He had the last laugh though. In addition to starting Motorhead, he adds that he really enjoyed “coming home and fucking all their old ladies. Not the ugly ones of course. But at least four. I took great pleasure in it. Eat that, you bastards.”


Here's a story that's closer to home;


On the 29th of July 1972, Hawkwind played a gig at the Caird Hall which resulted in them being banned from Dundee straight after the show. What caused the commotion was not so much the band, but their female dancer, Stacia, who liked to perform naked on stage. Predictably, the concert made the local papers next day and revealed a rather amusing sideshow. It turns out they had actual procedures in place at the Caird Hall to prevent such an incident occurring, but it didn't go to plan on the night.


It was Dundee Lord Provost Fitzgerald who announced the ban the next day, then went on to state what the emergency procedure should have entailed. The strategy was this- someone in charge would be on standby for any controversial event that took place on stage, at which point the lights would be switched off, the police would be called and those responsible would be charged. However when the time came to put this into practice, the person in charge wasn't present and the instruction never carried out. ( he maybe had his hands full, if you get my drift)
 

DAY 277.
John Cale....................................Paris 1919   (1973)










Surprisingly surprised by this one, at least once it got going. I can't say I was looking forward to it but, after the first four tracks I think he must have got a nudge as it started to liven up a little then.


I enjoyed the next three tracks, "Macbeth" "Paris 1919" and "Graham Greene," the next track "Half Past France" was probably my favourite (and not just because Dundee gets a mention) because when you realise it's about a soldier in WW1, and listen to the words it really is quite poignant, here's the verse that got me;

From here on it's got to be
A simple case of them or me
If they're alive then I am dead
Pray God and eat your daily bread
Take your time


Anyway this album wont be getting added to my collection, not that I disliked it, but more that I probably wouldn't play it too often, now if I was to get it for say a birthday, it wouldn't be exactly an "Oh ye Fucker" moment, but would be accepted gracefully, and placed in the vinyl collection, and it certainly wouldn't look out of place.


Bits & Bobs;


Born: March 9th 1942, Garnant, Wales.
Cale's father Arthur George Cale was a miner in the Gelly Geidrum coal mine. His mother Margaret Davies was a school teacher until she married Arthur at the age of 36. John was their only child.He attended the primary school where his mother had been a teacher.


 He is a multi-instumentalist: viola, guitar, bass, keyboards, harpsichord, harmonium, celeste, marimba, sarinda, horn, harp, piano and organ.Cale composed his first piece while attending grammar school: Tocatta in the style of Khachaturian.


Studied musicology at Goldsmith's College, London, from 1960 to 1963. Cale was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Scholarship. Influenced by avant-garde composers John Cage and La Monte Young.



Co-founder of The Velvet Underground. Left after the second album White Light/White Heat



Went solo in the seventies. Has released numerous , released a handful compilations of and has written the soundtracks for dozens of movies.solo albums


 Cale is highly valued as a producer. He started producing bands in the late Sixties, stood at the forefront when punk exploded and is still much in demand.He produced the debuts of The Stooges and Patti Smith. Other production feats include the Happy Mondays, the Mediæval Baebes, Nico, Siouxsie & The Banshees and Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses.



From the nineties on providing movie soundtracks became an important part of his income.



Cale returned to rock in the 21st century, releasing a string of highly acclaimed EPs and albums and hitting the road with a full backup band on a regular basis.

during one gig he chopped the head off a dead chicken with a meat cleaver, and his band walked offstage in protest. Cale’s drummer–a vegetarian–was so bothered he quit the group.He produced Squeeze, Patti Smith, and Sham 69, among others. He produced a number of important protopunk records, including debuts by Patti Smith, The Stooges and The Modern Lovers.



 You produced Patti Smith's first album, Horses.

We had great fights. Patti has a way of connecting in conversation by shadowboxing. One of the things I did when I got there was take away all the band's instruments because they were all warped and out of tune. I spent the first day getting them all tuned, and then when they were in tune, the band sounded awful. So I got them all new instruments. I handed all these guys who were sensitive musicians completely new axes to do what they're used to doing. But the results were inestimably better.



 What do you make of kids these days?

The Beck generation? Fucking fantastic. Best thing to happen to rock in a long time. I turned on Top of the Pops one day, and here's this guy loping around singing, "I'm a loser." I was like, "Where does this guy come from?" It worked in the way that rock & roll is supposed to work.




you once killed a live chicken on stage?

 Oh, I look back on that fondly. The whole thing was fucked up to begin with. We stopped at a farm between Oxford and London to pick up the chicken. I said: "Keep the damn thing in the box, don't pull it out." And the guy, this idiot, comes walking out of the farm house holding it up high, proud. You could feel the tension in the car on the way down to the gig, everyone was murmuring. Then sure enough someone said: "What are you going to do with the chicken? Are you going to hurt it?" I said: "No. I won't hurt it." After the show they said: "You lied, you said you wouldn't hurt it." And I said: "I didn't hurt it, I killed it." That was kinda silly.



 Who are your favourite hip-hop artists?

 The funny ones more than anything. Snoop is really funny, there's a lot of humour in there.Chingo Bling is a Tex-Mex guy with a song called They Can't Deport Us All, he's funny. There's a group called Not the 1s with a track called You Dress Like an Asshole, which nails the fashionistas pretty well. I generally go in that direction rather than the gangster stuff.


 Did hip-hop draw you towards working with Happy Mondays?
 I didn't know about hip-hop at the time, that came later.


 The story from your time producing them was that you avoided the temptation of taking their drugs by eating tangerines …


 I love tangerines and I found a bunch that had no pips in them! So I was like: "Wahey, I'm going to be in the studio and have my vitamin C!" I was on a health kick but I paid for it. They never let me forget this. It was a black mark on me for not being the John Cale they thought they were going to get.  Did they ask for their money back?

 Nothing like that. But those sessions were full of folly. You know, Bez not being able to stand up straight even when he was sober. Seeing Bez try and play a tambourine was like watching a building collapse. It was very funny. But we got it all done.


 

Last edited by arabchanter (14/5/2018 6:29 pm)

PatReilly wrote:

I thought I'd written a comment about that King Crimson album, cannae have pressed submit.

Not my favourite Crimson album, but Easy Money and especially Book of Saturdays stand out for me.
Bowie was a big fan of Robert Fripp, the only constant over the years in the King Crimson line ups, and I'd argue there's not another guitarist like him.

No arguments here

arabchanter wrote:

PatReilly wrote:

I thought I'd written a comment about that King Crimson album, cannae have pressed submit.

Not my favourite Crimson album, but Easy Money and especially Book of Saturdays stand out for me.
Bowie was a big fan of Robert Fripp, the only constant over the years in the King Crimson line ups, and I'd argue there's not another guitarist like him.

No arguments here