So here we are in what can only be described as the most surreal, strangest of times in mine or indeed any of our lives, and whilst we should never underestimate the seriousness of what we are all going through it’s important to remember that it will pass and we will get back to normality someday soon.
In the meantime then, what better way to pass some time in our newly-enforced hiatus than to get re-acquainted with each other and some of the greatest music ever made.
Have a read, have a listen, wash your hands, look after each other….
Week 32
23rd March 2020
Derek And The Dominos
Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs
After making no less than three previous appearances on these pages in various guises – with The Yardbirds, Cream, and a solo album – here we have yet another entry from the legendary Eric Clapton and the sole studio album from his Tran-Atlantic Blues outfit Derek & The Dominos.
Released in November 1970, this is a Double LP containing several of Eric’s most well-known songs, including that all too familiar title-track which we will speak about shortly.
After becoming frustrated with the excessive fan-worship he was receiving in Cream and then later Blind Faith, Clapton decided to head out on the road with American Soul Revue act Delaney & Bonnie and Friends in an attempt to enjoy life in a band without the spotlight on himself.
It was whilst on tour across Europe that he teamed up with fellow Delaney & Bonnie members Bobby Whitlock (keyboards), Carl Radle (bass), and Jim Gordon (drums) and were invited by George Harrison to play on his iconic “All Things Must Pass” album. It was during these sessions that Derek & The Dominos became a band.
The story goes that it was during their first gig together that the stage announcer mis-heard their original name of Eric & The Dynamos and coined the now famous moniker but Clapton has denied this saying he tried to keep an air of anonymity around the band and as such it was a purposefully misleading band name.
After a period of writing the main bulk of the album at Clapton’s UK home in Surrey, the band flew out to Criteria Studios in Miami to record and it was here that all four band members started to use heroin more frequently after experimenting with it during the “All Things Must Pass” sessions, with Eric later admitting, “We were staying in this hotel on the beach, and whatever drug you wanted, you could get it at the newsstand. The girl would just take your orders.”
It was during the Criteria sessions that producer Tom Dowd brought the Dominos to watch an Allman Brothers concert and it was here that Eric would invite Nashville-born guitarist Duane Allman into the fold where the two would form an instant bond with each other with Clapton later calling Allman “The musical brother I never had but I wished I did.”
A mixture of original songs and some old Blues covers, the running theme of the album is one of hopeless unrequited love due to Eric’s infatuation with his friend George Harrison’s then-wife Pattie Boyd.
It’s all well and good being able to sing the Blues but listening to the songs featured here you get the feel of a man who is living and breathing the Blues through his music.
You can hear the pain and longing coming from Clapton’s very soul in the classic “Bell Bottomed Blues” – which he wrote after Boyd requested he bring her back a pair of sought after blue jeans from America – and also on “Anyday” where he implores, “If you believed in me like I believe in you we could have a love so true.”
Which leads us to that monumental title-track and it’s one which was voted No.27 in Rolling Stones “500 Greatest Songs Of All Time”.
Originally written as a ballad with Clapton declaring his love for the then Mrs. Harrison, “Layla” was transformed after Duane Allman came up with that now legendary signature riff.
As well as Pattie Boyd, the song was also inspired by a love story which originated in 7th Century Arabia and later appeared in the form of “The Story of Layla & Majnun” which was written by 12th Century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, a copy of which Clapton was given by a friend.
Telling the story of a young man who falls so hopelessly in love with a girl he can not marry that it drives him insane, Clapton identified with it so much that he used it as the basis to the track we now all recognise as the true shining moment in his career.
Recorded in two parts, the songs second movement or “piano exit” as it’s known was only added onto the track after Clapton heard Jim Gordon playing it after they had recorded the main parts of the song.
It has since been claimed that it was actually Gordon’s ex-girlfriend, composer Rita Coolidge, that came up with the part although she has never been credited for it.
Whoever it was, they can certainly be proud of turning what would have been an already brilliant Rock song into one of the most beautiful endings to any song in Rock history, and while were at it, who can forget its appearance throughout the final moments of Goodfellas when Jimmy & Henry’s associates are turning up in bin wagons and frozen solid in meat trucks.
Anyway, after going their separate ways the band suffered from tragedy in every way shape or form with Duane Allman dying in a motorcycle accident in 1971 aged just 24 years old and Carl Radle dying in 1980 from a drug and alcohol induced kidney infection at the age of 37.
Even more tragedy followed with Clapton’s four year old son Conor dying in March 1991 after falling out of a 53rd floor window of a New York City apartment, whilst Jim Gordon is currently serving life imprisonment as the result of brutally killing his mother in 1983 after suffering from an undiagnosed form of psychotic schizophrenia.
Although he did play the drums on “Apache” so it’s not all bad!
This then is the one and only studio album from “Derek” and the last word I feel should belong to Pattie Boyd, without whom this song or even album as a whole would probably have never happened, (and as we all know, she did eventually marry Eric, with George Harrison even attending their wedding!).
“I think that Eric was amazingly raw at the time… He’s such an incredible musician that he’s able to put his emotions into music in such a way that the audience can feel it instinctively. It goes right through you.”
A must own.
My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
Listen To: Layla
The Grateful Dead
American Beauty
“Lately, it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it’s been.”
FUN FACT: The Grateful Dead were the offical sponsors to the 1992 Lithuanian Olympic Basketball Team!
These lads are a band I’ve only ever heard good things about and yet believe it or not this album is actually the very first time I’ve ever listened to any of their stuff, so it’s safe to say I was looking forward to giving it a once-over when it popped up on the playlist on Wed – or as it was known officially in our house – “Day Two of Lockdown”.
Formed in Palo Alto, California in 1965, The Grateful Dead consisted of founding members Jerry Garcia on lead guitar and vocals, Bob Weir (rhythm guitar and vocals), Ron ”Pigpen” McKernan (keyboards, harmonica and vocals), Phil Lesh (bass and vocals) and Bill Kreutzmann on drums.
Two years later they added a second drummer in Mickey Hart and he was joined by lyricist Robert Hunter.
They became one of the main acts associated with the Counterculture movement that sprung out of San Francisco in the late 1960’s and this particular record is their fifth studio album, released in 1970.
Famous for the spaced out sound of improvisational jams at their gigs, the country-tinged folk-rock of this record was a departure from the more psychedelic rock of their first three albums, and it was released just four short months after its predecessor “Workingman’s Dead”, which is where the move towards a more “Americana” sound began in essence.
Usually led by the songwriting duo of Garcia and Hunter, this was the first time that a bulk of material from the rest of the band made up most of the album and it’s the Phil Lesh-penned “Box Of Rain” that gets us under way here.
You can certainly pick up on the influence Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had on the band during this period as the vocal harmonies present on this track are reminiscent of something on their “Deja Vu” album.
Lesh commented later that he wanted to write a song he could sing to his terminally ill father and as soon as it was complete he rushed to his bedside to recite it to him as he lay dying from cancer.
“Friend Of The Devil” is apparently written about the bands womanising road manager Rock Scully and the scrapes he would get himself into, whilst “Sugar Magnolia” was written by Bob Weir about his girlfriend at the time.
One of The Grateful Dead’s most famous tracks – and the standout song on this album – is the beautiful “Ripple” and I was hearing it for the first time here whilst I was in the middle of doing some work in the garden. For a few moments with this playing in my earphones and the sun on my face, I forgot all about what was happening in the news and the world was a better place for it. It’s certainly a new favourite of mine.
Another of the bands most famous songs – and yet another one I had never heard – is album closer “Truckin” which is all about life on the road and was inspired by a drugs raid in the bands hotel room in New Orleans earlier that same year.
In 1997 the song was recognized as a National Treasure by the United States Library of Congress whilst the album itself was named by Rolling Stone as No.258 in their “500 Greatest Albums” list.
Personally I’d like to give this record another few listens as I feel it’s one I could grow to love. It has been labelled by some as the bands masterpiece and whilst I really enjoyed the songs mentioned I think it fell a little short on the rest of it.
We shall see. One to go back to.
Incidentally, the Lithuanians won a bronze medal. Good for them.
My Rating: ☆☆☆
Listen To: Ripple
Supergrass
I Should Coco
Oh to be sixteen again.
I felt a warm pang of nostalgia float over me as this old favourite began playing on Thursday morning.
May 1995. Stan Collymore is on the verge of signing for Liverpool. GCSE’s are done and dusted. School’s out forever and one of the hottest summers on record is spent listening to what seems like the freshest collection of bands for a whole generation. For some of them – the good ones anyway – their music would be fondly remembered by all of us who lived and breathed it on a daily basis, so as I headed out on my early morning run I couldnt wait to get re-acquainted with Gaz, Mick and Danny for a listen of their debut album.
Formed in Oxford in 1993 and originally calling themselves Theodore Supergrass, the band were heavily influenced by The Buzzcocks, The Jam, Madness and The Kinks and released their debut single “Caught By The Fuzz” a year later.
It appears here in all it’s glory and is based on singer Gaz Coombes real-life arrest and caution for possession of cannabis at the age of fifteen.
Speaking about it in 2004 Gaz commented, “It wasn’t trying to be a real statement, but at the time we knew that it was a big deal. Kids all around England were getting nicked for having a bit of hash on them. In Oxford that kind of thing happened quite a lot. It’s all true so it was easy to write. It was a funny experience – not too funny at the time ’cause I was only 15 and shitting myself. The song has that disturbing energy. It’s comparable to your heart racing. The adrenaline rush you get when your mum walks into the police station is similar to the energy of the song.”
Three more singles followed shortly after in “Mansize Rooster” “Lose It” and “Lenny” (which all appear here) but it wasn’t until the release of their hugely successful fifth single that things really took off for these three likeable lads.
It may have been played to death by now, some twenty five (really?) years later but if ever a song epitomised the innocence of youthful optimism and British youth culture in general during this period then surely “Alright” wins hands down and hearing it properly again here for the first time in a long time it’s easy to remember just how good it sounded back then too.
It helped shift sales of this album past the million mark with half of those coming in the UK alone where it got to No1 in the Album Charts.
At the same time it also became the most successful debut release on Parlophone Records since The Beatles “Please Please Me” some thirty years earlier. Not bad at all.
Personally though, what I like most about this record is not the singles we all know and love but the hidden gems also contained on it.
“Strange Ones” and “I’d Like To Know” are both about the weird and wonderful inhabitants of Cowley Road in Oxford and speaking about both tracks Mick said, “There’s a few people who are just really out there. There’s a lot of people around Oxford who are real spliffheads and that, who go and lie down in Port Meadow, but I’m not really sure about them. I’m not really sure that they’re individuals: they’re part of a much larger thing.”
The standout song for me has to be “Sofa Of My Lethargy”, a song slightly more laidback and trippier than the rest of the album and it was apparently all recorded in just one take in Mick’s living room when trying to rush through the final tracks for it’s completion.
Maybe it’s the hammond organ, or maybe its the guitar solo it contains that reminds me of Peter Green’s in “Albatross” but something about it will forever remind me of summer.
Simpler times. An old favourite rediscovered thanks to these Diaries.
I can’t believe we finished talking about 1995 without mentioning it was the last time Everton won a trophy….oh.
My Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Listen To: Sofa Of My Lethargy
Van Halen
1984
What an album cover that is!
It was designed by graphic artist Margo Nahas and its image of a cigarette smoking cherub is supposed to depict the transition of purity into mischief, which could be used as a metaphor for what happened to a lot of wholesome Pop Music-loving American kids after buying this album on the back of its biggest hit.
That’s right, after we spent Thursday evening with the rest of the country on our doorsteps saluting our heroes of the NHS with an emotional, fully deserved round of applause, I ran back inside and had this long forgotten old favourite blasting over the kitchen – much to the annoyance of my daughter Caitlin who stormed downstairs and asked me to keep the noise down!
Taking its name from the year it was released, it’s Van Halen’s sixth and most commercially successful album containing one of the biggest songs of the decade and a collection of 80’s Heavy Rock at its absolute finest.
I still have the copy of this album my uncle Ian gave me when I was around 11 or 12 after he made me a mixtape which just so happened to have “Jump” by Van Halen included on it – and after the opening title track on this record which is just a short, Tangerine Dream-sounding keyboard instrumental, we are hit with that monumental intro from Eddie Van Halens Oberheim synthesizer and the song that catapulted the band into the mainstream (much to the dismay of their keyboard-hating hardcore fans).
After unsuccessfully bouncing ideas around with his bandmates and producer Ted Templemen at the start of the decade about introducing a more electronic sound into their music, Eddie Van Halen decided to build his own studio situated in the backyard of his home in Los Angeles.
He named it “5150” which is LA Police Code for “Escaped Mental Patient” and it was here that the majority of this album was conceived. Forging a compromise between the keyboard-heavy new sound Eddie wanted for the band and the more intense guitar-driven rock that they were known for.
After hearing the music for an unfinished demo, singer Dave Lee Roth remembered a news story from the night before about a man threatening to commit suicide by jumping from a high building. He commented that one of the many onlookers there would probably have got bored and shouted, “Go ahead and jump!”
He decided against writing a song about suicide but instead made it about an invitation to “jump” into love.
It reached No.1 on the US Billboard 100, becoming by far the bands biggest selling hit, was ranked No.15 on VH1’s “100 Greatest Songs of The 80’s” and was even inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the “500 Songs That Shaped Rock And Roll”.
Despite this being the bands only No1 single, 1984 also spawned three other Top 20 Hits in “Panama” – named after a car called Panama Express which Dave Lee Roth seen racing in Las Vegas, “I’ll Wait”, which is another keyboard-heavy song co-written with Doobie Brother Michael McDonald, and everyone’s MTV favourite “Hot For Teacher” which unsurprisingly came under scrutiny from the Parent Music Resource Centre who protested that the video and the songs lyrics were too sexually suggestive.
As for the rest of the album, I had completely forgotten just how good the likes of “Top Jimmy” and “Drop Dead Legs” were as it must be a good fifteen years since I last listened to it in its entirety and it was pleasure getting to know them again.
1984 got to No.2 on the US Album Chart where it stayed for five weeks behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album (which if you remember included that famous Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on “Beat It”) and speaking to Rolling Stone magazine a few years later, producer Ted Templemen said, “It’s real obvious to me why 1984 won Van Halen a broader and larger audience – Eddie Van Halen discovered the synthesizer.”
I for one am thankful he did.
My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
Listen To: Jump
Daft Punk
Discovery
Is this my favourite Electronic album of all time? It may just well be….
After spending the best part of Saturday morning having my brain wrecked from various Maths puzzles being sent over WhatsApp to get us all through the day (really, Day 5 and this is what it’s come to?) I was relieved to see this stone cold “Great” finally show itself on these pages.
After speaking about their 1997 debut “Homework” way back in Week 17 of these Diaries, it’s taken around the same amount of time Thomas and Guy-Man had between actually making these albums than it has been for us to write about them in here.
Released in 2001, almost four long-awaited years after its predecessor, mesdames et messieurs I give you the truly magnifique “Discovery” from Daft Punk.
After they finished their Daftendirekt Tour at the end of 1997 the duo started work on what would eventually be this album at the beginning of 1998 and over the course of the next two years set out to make a record that would reflect their childhood spent growing up in the decade between 1975 and 1985 and the Discovery of their musical tastes.
The title is also a play on words and can be read as “Disco” “Very” with one of the tracks that appears on it given a faux-Latin name of “Veridis Quo” or “Very Disco”. Clever, oui?
The duo intended to create a playful, open and honest attitude towards listening to records in the way a child has no agenda or analysis whenever it hears a song playing whilst at the same time keeping a focus on song structure using more musical instruments and sampling of songs from that decade mentioned above.
This was in contrast to the bands previous effort which had a raw, clubbier feel to it and one which was noted by Thomas when he said, “Homework was a way to say to the rock kids, like, ‘Electronic music is cool’. Discovery was the opposite, of saying to the electronic kids, ‘Rock is cool, you know? You can like that.”
It was during the lead up to this albums release that the duo famously took on the personas of two robots claiming, “We did not choose to become robots. There was an accident in our studio. We were working on our sampler, and at exactly 9:09 am on September 9, 1999, it exploded. When we regained consciousness, we discovered that we had become robots.”
In reality it stemmed from an initial shyness and reluctance to show their real selves to the media which then grew into a feeling of being an average guy with a superpower that their fans ran with and as such became an iconic look for them just as say, makeup was for KISS.
The album opens with a song featuring the late, great Romanthony on guest vocals – remember his House classic Hold On – and when all is said and done it is quiet simply one of the greatest dance songs ever.
Whenever I have been on any dancefloor in the world be it a club or a festival, if “One More Time” comes on you can guarantee it will still take the roof off, nearly twenty years after its release. Now that is the mark of a legendary dance record.
In fact only recently it was voted “The Greatest Dance Record Of All Time” by readers of Mixmag Magazine. Personally I’d have it as No.2 behind “Music Sounds Better With You” by Stardust but that’s just my opinion. Although Thomas from Daft Punk was one half of Stardust so I’m sure he won’t mind!
All of the songs used on this album were featured in the Anime movie “Interstellar 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem” which was a collaboration between the band and one of their childhood heroes the Japanese Mangaka, Leiji Matasumoto and as such all of the videos for each single released were taken from said movie.
Using a sample of “Cola Bottle Baby” by Edwin Birdsong, the duo gave us the futuristic, funky, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”, which was itself sampled of course by Kanye West in 2007 for his track “Stronger”.
What was interesting at the time were the number of homemade videos to accompany “HBFS” which appeared online and went viral such as Daft Hands or Daft Bodies and they are probably more memorable than the songs actual video with some 90 Million Views between them on YouTube alone!
Another personal favourite is the single “Digital Love” which samples George Duke’s “I Love You More” to great effect and any Supertramp fans out there surely cannot help but fall in love with that Wurtlitzer piano solo on the bridge. I clearly remember it being one of the early things I loved about this album when I listened to it for the first time back in the day.
Another favourite of mine and possibly my pick of the bunch is near the end of the album and it’s the song “Face To Face” which was co-produced with another of the bands musical heroes in US House & Garage producer Todd Edwards who also sings lead vocals on the track after Thomas & Guy-Man asked him to “Make it sound like Foreigner”.
Todd would again team up with The Robots some twelve years later and perform with them on “Fragments Of Time” for their 2013 album “Random Access Memories”, but that’s a conversation we can have at another date.
My Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
Listen To: Face To Face
That’s it for this week’s entry. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to click on any of the links highlighted in blue to hear or watch any of the media mentioned.
Also click on any of the albums mentioned above to give them a listen should you wish to do so.
I hope you find something in amongst them to make these hours go a little quicker whilst we are all going through this together. X
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