Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies

 #Alice Cooper #hard rock #heavy metal #shock rock #glam rock #art rock #classic rock #glam metal #garage rock #1970s

The title track off of Alice Cooper’s most successful album up to that point, ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ presents the dangers of overindulgence. The background falsetto is provided by Scottish singer/songwriter, Donovan. In spite of the oftentimes comically distorted and grotesque subject matter throughout the album, Cooper says that Chuck Berry provided the bulk of his inspiration while making the album: “Berry was my favorite lyricist. When I first heard something like ‘Nadine,’ or ‘Maybelline,’ I understood those songs told a story. As the lyrics went along, you really got a picture of what was going on. He took the girl out; he couldn’t get his seat belt off – things like that. I always wanted to write three-minute stories that were funny, or maybe not just funny, but also dramatic. The idea was to compact everything into three minutes, which is really hard to do.” 

Donovan, during a post-show interview, on adding lyrics to Cooper’s ‘Billion Dollar Babies’: “Alice was downstairs and I was upstairs at Morgan Studios when he was doing ‘Billion Dollar Babies’, I had heard this track and he asked me to put a vocal on it and I said ‘Sure. But it’s so big and so bouncy and so loud, I think I’m going to have to get into a falsetto!’ No one believed it was me!”  

From: https://genius.com/Alice-cooper-billion-dollar-babies-lyrics

The Rolling Stones - Jumpin' Jack Flash

 #The Rolling Stones #Kieth Richards #Mick Jagger #blues rock #hard rock #classic rock #British blues rock #rock & roll #folk blues #garage rock #R&B #British invasion #1968 music video

Long before the advent of MTV, music videos (then referred to as promotional films, or “promos” for short) were few and far between, with very limited outlets to air them. The most popular bands, such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Who, made these “promos” with the intent of allowing broadcast in several different countries without the bands having to travel to perform in TV studios where there were “genuine security issues” according to Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who directed pioneering videos for all three acts. Top of the Pops, the aforementioned Ready Steady Go!, Shindig!, Hullabaloo and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the US were early participants in broadcasting such materials. The Rolling Stones, who were already international superstars by the mid-1960s, now had another tool to help push a single such as “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Before capturing The Rock and Roll Circus on celluloid, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg had helmed many of The Rolling Stones’ promotional video clips: “She’s a Rainbow,” “2000 Light Years From Home,” “Child of the Moon,” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” as well as The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” “Rain,” “Hey Jude” and “Revolution.” Lindsay-Hogg is the legendary music video director behind The Beatles’ Let It Be feature film and many of The Rolling Stones’ seminal video clips.  From: https://www.musicconnection.com/kubernik-the-rolling-stones-jumpin-jack-flash-restored-in-4k/ 

Jethro Tull - A New Day Yesterday

 #Jethro Tull #Ian Anderson #progressive rock #folk rock #hard rock #blues rock #English folk rock #art rock #classic rock #progressive folk #1970s

Much of the Stand Up album is about Ian resenting the constant travel and work-load of being a rock star. This song talks about how he's constantly away from his new girlfriend (and future ex-wife), Jeanine.

"It was a new day yesterday but it's an old day now"

It was kind of thrilling not knowing when or how long the two would see each other, but now it's growing old and Ian just wants to be with his new love.

"Oh I had to leave today just when I thought I'd found you"

Even when the two are together, it's an all-too-brief moment as Ian has to go back on the road again.

From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858514097

Jethro Tull (baptised 30 March 1674 – 21 February 1741) was an English agriculturist from Berkshire who helped to bring about the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century. He perfected a horse-drawn seed drill in 1701 that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows, and later developed a horse-drawn hoe. Tull's methods were adopted by many landowners and helped to provide the basis for modern agriculture. Influenced by the early Age of Enlightenment, he is considered to be one of the early proponents of a scientific – and especially empirical – approach to agriculture. He helped transform agricultural practices by inventing or improving numerous implements. Tull made early advances in planting crops with his invention of the seed drill – a mechanical seeder that sowed efficiently at the correct depth and spacing and then covered the seed so that it could grow. Before the introduction of the seed drill, the common practice was to plant seeds by broadcasting (evenly throwing) them across the ground by hand on the prepared soil and then lightly harrowing the soil to bury the seeds to the correct depth.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jethro_Tull_(agriculturist)

The Jerry Garcia Band - Rubin And Cherise

 #The Jerry Garcia Band #Grateful Dead spinoff #John Kahn #Keith and Donna Godchaux #folk rock #blues rock #classic rock #1970s

If you took a listen already to Day Of The Dead, the mammoth Grateful Dead tribute collection which was curated by the members of The National and includes many of the most celebrated artists of today covering the band’s music, you might be at a loss to explain the inclusion of “Rubin And Cherise,” a story song done by Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Friends. You have to widen your search beyond the Dead’s catalog to find it; it was done by the Jerry Garcia Band on their lone studio album, 1978’s Cats Under The Stars.
The album was a huge commercial disappointment, but it was nonetheless one that Garcia maintained was a favorite of his in later interviews. “Ruben And Cherise” opens up the album with a bit of funky intrigue. The music pulses with life thanks to bold keyboards and Garcia’s guitar, which, filtered in such a way to sand off all its hard edges, flows through the song like liquid gold. Meanwhile the lyrics of longtime Grateful Dead collaborator Robert Hunter are engaging yet elusive, challenging the listener to make sense of this modern musical myth.
Set at Carnival in New Orleans, the song features three main characters: Rubin, the mandolin-playing axis of a love triangle, whose music is so magical “the breeze would stop to listen in/Before going its way again”; Cherise, whose love for Rubin invokes suspicion that manifests itself in visions of death; and Ruby Claire, who shows up later in the song and seems at first to be the other woman of the story who has coaxed Rubin away from Cherise, at least until the layers of Hunter’s tale unfurl and make us second-guess that setup entirely. It ends with Cherise being carried away in Rubin’s arms, apparently lifeless (and most likely the victim of Ruby’s jealousy), the hair that she once combed so assiduously now hanging limp.
If you focus too hard on the story, you might find yourself getting a bit tangled up and missing out on the nuance in Garcia’s performance, as he taps into the innate sagacity of his voice. Hunter’s lyrics also hit home when you’re not worrying about wondering about who did what to whom. His descriptions put us right into the scene: “Masquerade began when nightfall finally broke/ Like waves against the bandstand dancers broke.” And all of the machinations of the characters pale next to the wisdom of the narrator’s summation: “The truth of love an unsung song must tell/ The course of love must follow blind/ Without a look behind.”
That last line seems to suggest that those in the throes of love don’t have time for regrets or ruminations due to the straightforward, relentless track of their ardor. But it actually paves the way for the final verses of Hunter’s complete lyrics, which went unrecorded by Garcia and show Rubin travelling to the underworld to retrieve Cherise, a la the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. As Hunter told Rolling Stone in 2015, Garcia’s reluctance to mess with a finished product led to the exclusion.
“One thing Jerry wouldn’t do is go back over and redo parts of songs,” Hunter remembered. “I’d written that extra verse for ‘Friend Of The Devil’ and he said, ‘Why the hell don’t you give me these things before I record them?’ And also the same thing with ‘Rubin And Cherise.’ I had some ending Orpheus and Eurydice stuff in there to complete the story. He liked it but he said, ‘I’ve already recorded it and can’t go back and do it again.’”
Hunter’s version may spell out the story a bit more clearly, but there’s something compelling about the unfinished nature of Garcia’s take. Besides, his lustrous playing in the song’s closing moments tells us all we need to know about both the irresistibility and impossibility of love. So if you’ve just discovered “Rubin And Cherise,” go back and check out the original by the Jerry Garcia Band and get lost in the wondrous mystery of it all.  
From: https://americansongwriter.com/jerry-garcia-band-ruben-cherise/

Cats Under the Stars is the only studio album by the American rock band the Jerry Garcia Band. Released in 1978 on Arista Records, the album was the first release by the group, which was a long-running side project of Grateful Dead singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia. While the band continued until 1995, they were primarily a live concert act following the release of Cats Under the Stars and never recorded another studio effort. Grateful Dead members Keith and Donna Godchaux, who were at the time also part of the Garcia Band, contributed to the album.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_Under_the_Stars

The Jeff Beck Group - I Ain't Superstitious

 #The Jeff Beck Group #Jeff Beck #Rod Stewart #blues rock # hard rock #British blues rock #British R&B #heavy blues rock #proto-metal #classic rock #1960s

Despite being the premiere of heavy metal, Jeff Beck's Truth has never quite carried its reputation the way the early albums by Led Zeppelin did, or even Cream's two most popular LPs, mostly as a result of the erratic nature of the guitarist's subsequent work. Time has muted some of its daring, radical nature, elements of which were appropriated by practically every metal band (and most arena rock bands) that followed. Truth was almost as groundbreaking and influential a record as the first Beatles, Rolling Stones, or Who albums. Its attributes weren't all new - Cream and Jimi Hendrix had been moving in similar directions - but the combination was: the wailing, heart-stoppingly dramatic vocalizing by Rod Stewart, the thunderous rhythm section of Ron Wood's bass and Mickey Waller's drums, and Beck's blistering lead guitar, which sounds like his amp is turned up to 13 and ready to short out. Beck opens the proceedings in a strikingly bold manner, using his old Yardbirds hit "Shapes of Things" as a jumping-off point, deliberately rebuilding the song from the ground up so it sounds closer to Howlin' Wolf. There are lots of unexpected moments on this record: a bone-pounding version of Willie Dixon's "You Shook Me"; a version of Jerome Kern's "Ol' Man River" done as a slow electric blues; a brief plunge into folk territory with a solo acoustic guitar version of "Greensleeves" (which was intended as filler but audiences loved); the progressive blues of "Beck's Bolero"; the extended live "Blues Deluxe"; and "I Ain't Superstitious," a blazing reworking of another Willie Dixon song.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/truth-mw0000262744

Black Sabbath - The Writ

#Black Sabbath #Ozzy Osbourne #heavy metal #hard rock #classic rock #heavy blues rock #British blues rock #doom metal #1970s

"The Writ" is one of only a handful of Black Sabbath songs to feature lyrics composed by vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, who typically relied on bassist Geezer Butler for lyrics. The song was inspired by the frustrations Osbourne felt at the time, as Black Sabbath's former manager Patrick Meehan was suing the band after having been fired. The song viciously attacks the music business in general and is a savage diatribe directed towards Meehan specifically ("Are you Satan? Are you man?"), with Osbourne revealing in his memoir, "I wrote most of the lyrics myself, which felt a bit like seeing a shrink. All the anger I felt towards Meehan came pouring out." During this period, the band began to question if there was any point to recording albums and touring endlessly "just to pay the lawyers". Thematically, "The Writ" and "Megalomania" are intertwined, according to drummer Ward, as they both deal with the same tensions arising from these ongoing legal troubles.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage_(Black_Sabbath_album) 

Tony Iommi – identified by engineer Mike Butcher as Black Sabbath’s “unofficial leader” – has stated that Sabotage was in part a reaction to the complex style of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, on which the band had combined their signature heavy metal with elements of progressive rock, aided by Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman and even an orchestra. “We could’ve continued getting more technical,” Iommi said, “using orchestras and everything else. But we wanted to do a rock album.” Iommi was also reacting, on a deeper level, to the ongoing litigation with Patrick Meehan. “We were in the studio one day and in court or meeting with lawyers the next,” the guitarist said. And his anger and anxiety fed into Sabotage. “The sound was a bit harder than Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” Iommi explained. “My guitar sound was harder. That was brought on by all the aggravation we felt over all the business with management and lawyers.”

Am I Going Insane (Radio) is essentially a pop song written by Ozzy on a Moog synthesiser, which he played on the finished track. “Oz drove us all nuts with that Moog thing,” Ward recalls, “but the song was great. And in hindsight, it was kind of a precursor for his solo career. His personality was blooming on this song.” The ‘Radio’ in the title was British rhyming slang: Radio Rental – mental. Ozzy’s lyrics were “definitely autobiographical”, Butler says. Even better, and even more pointedly autobiographical, were Ozzy’s lyrics for the album’s heavyweight final track, in which he poured scorn on Black Sabbath’s tormentor, Patrick Meehan. ‘You bought and sold me with your lying words,’ Ozzy sang, before threatening a curse on his enemy. The song was named The Writ, a title that was suggested by Mike Butcher after Meehan’s lawyers arrived unannounced at Morgan Studios. “Some guy walked in and said: ‘Black Sabbath?’” Butcher recalls. “And Tony said: ‘Yeah.’ The guy said ‘I have something for you,’ and gave him a writ.” Adding to the threatening vibe of The Writ was a sinister intro mixing laughter and cries of anguish. The laughter was that of an Australian friend of Geezer’s. “He was a complete nutter,” the bassist says. “We invited him into the studio when he was visiting London.” The cries were those of a baby, recorded on an unmarked cassette tape that Mike Butcher found lying on a console at Morgan. When he played it at half speed, the baby’s crying took on an eerie quality. “It was so weird,” he says, “that it worked perfectly for that track.” Butcher never found out whose tape it was. For Ozzy, writing and singing the words to this song had a therapeutic effect. “A bit like seeing a shrink,” he said.  And yet, for all the vitriol in The Writ there was a note of hope, and defiance, in its closing line: ‘Everything is gonna work out fine.’ And, in the short term at least, those words would ring true. Patrick Meehan would not break Black Sabbath.

From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-black-sabbath-made-sabotage

The Beatles - Cry Baby Cry

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #British psychedelia #folk rock #1960s

"A piece of rubbish!" This was John Lennon's reaction in 1980 when asked about his "White Album" composition "Cry Baby Cry." Why would he react so negatively about this song? Those who take the time to examine the writing style of John Lennon through the years will easily notice the changes within the context of the time period. For instance, his output in 1967 generally used imagery to paint a picture that didn't necessarily make sense but sounded as if it did, such as with “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and “I Am The Walrus.” By 1968, he put this aside for the most part and dealt much more with real occurrences in his own life and/or his interpretations of real events, such as with “I'm So Tired,” “Sexy Sadie” and “Revolution.” It is within the context of his 1968 output that we experience a “throwback” of sorts with “Cry Baby Cry,” a song which started to take shape the previous year and exuded the obscure but effective lyrics Lennon was known for at that time. Concerning John's negative opinion of the song in 1980, Beatles writer David Quantick offers the explanation that he “might have dismissed the song for not being about anything concrete.” This appears to make sense in light of the fact that, when looking back at his career as a songwriter, he would cite autobiographical songs, such as “Help!” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” as his best work. If that was the criteria he used in his later life, songs about imaginary characters involved in nonsensical activities could be seen as useless to him, or “rubbish.” Most Beatles fans and authors would wholeheartedly disagree, however. Ian Mac Donald, in his book "Revolution In The Head," describes "Cry Baby Cry" as “one of the most evocative products of that creative channel.” “An underrated Lennon royalty satire; it's his most accomplished Lewis Carroll pastiche,” writes Tim Riley. “A song with an air of a particularly dreamlike ghost story - one of the strangest and most beautiful lyrics on the 'White Album,'” writes David Quantick. “Alice trips gently through Lennonland for just about the last time. It ranks among his most magical,” writes Nicholas Schaffner.  From: http://www.beatlesebooks.com/cry-baby-cry

Black Sabbath - Spiral Architect

 #Black Sabbath #Ozzy Osbourne #heavy metal #hard rock #classic rock #heavy blues rock #British blues rock #doom metal #1970s

With 1973's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath made a concerted effort to prove their remaining critics wrong by raising their creative stakes and dispensing unprecedented attention to the album's production standards, arrangements, and even the cover artwork. As a result, bold new efforts like the timeless title track, "A National Acrobat," and "Killing Yourself to Live" positively glistened with a newfound level of finesse and maturity, while remaining largely faithful, aesthetically speaking, to the band's signature compositional style. In fact, their sheer songwriting excellence may even have helped to ease the transition for suspicious older fans left yearning for the rough-hewn, brute strength that had made recent triumphs like Master of Reality and Vol. 4 (really, all their previous albums) such undeniable forces of nature. But thanks to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath's nearly flawless execution, even a more adventurous experiment like the string-laden "Spiral Architect," with its tasteful background orchestration, managed to sound surprisingly natural, and in the dreamy instrumental "Fluff," Tony Iommi scored his first truly memorable solo piece. If anything, only the group's at times heavy-handed adoption of synthesizers met with inconsistent consequences, with erstwhile Yes keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman bringing only good things to the memorable "Sabbra Cadabra", while the robotically dull "Who Are You" definitely suffered from synthesizer novelty overkill. All things considered, though, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was arguably Black Sabbath's fifth masterpiece in four years, and remains an essential item in any heavy metal collection.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/sabbath-bloody-sabbath-mw0000194838

Cover by Drew Struzan

Jethro Tull - Nothing Is Easy

 #Jethro Tull #Ian Anderson #progressive rock #folk rock #hard rock #blues rock #British folk rock #art rock #classic rock #progressive folk #1970s

No, Jethro Tull is not just another English blues band. ‘This Was’, their first album, made some gestures in that direction, obligatory, in a way, for the time (summer of 1968); in its differences it was intriguing even as it disappointed. Its inadequacies were unconventional; the essential problem seemed to be a style in search of a subject. Bob Dylan once said that the English know how to pronounce “marvelous” better than Americans, but that they have a little trouble with “raunchy.” ‘Stand Up!’, Jethro Tull’s new album, has a fairly low raunch quotient, true to form, but it is quite marvelous. For one thing, the band’s orientation is more definite than before. With the removal of Rick Abrahams to form Blodwyn Pig, the musical tug-of-war which could be heard on the first album has here been effectively curtailed. Ian Anderson simply dominates the proceedings — doing all the writing and singing, and playing a potpourri of instruments. He reveals a melodic gift on this album not apparent on the earlier one, a fuller awareness of the coloristic possibilities of the flute, and a catholicity of taste. ‘Stand Up!’ has great textural interest, due, in part, to a more sophisticated recording technique, in part to the organ, mandolin, balalaika, etc., which Anderson plays to enrich each song. The band is able to work with different musical styles, but without a trace of the facile, glib manipulation which strains for attention. I can hear ethnic influences throughout the album — a hint of Greek rhythms on the flute break of “We Used to Know” and in the body of “For a Thousand Mothers” — but they are too well assimilated to be easily pinpointed. “Bourree” has that unmistakable baroque swing, a suggestion of the traditional English round, some jazz interludes, and a straight-forward yet breathtaking bass solo before, it winds its way to completion. “Jeffrey Goes to Leicester Square” has a sense of the vague, charming disorganization of medieval music. “Look into the Sun,” which finishes side one, is in its melodic twists and turns, a song of genuine poignance, with Martin Barre’s guitar playing a model of lyricism and understatement.  From: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/stand-up-192622/

The Beatles - Revolution

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #British psychedelia #folk rock #1960s #music video

‘Revolution’ was John Lennon’s response to the popular calls for uprising in the US and Europe. It was a revision of a version already recorded for the White Album, and became the b-side of the ‘Hey Jude’ single. Although taped after ‘Revolution 1’, this faster, louder version was the first to be released. The song was written in India while The Beatles were studying meditation in Rishikesh.
John Lennon: “I wanted to put out what I felt about revolution. I thought it was time we fucking spoke about it, the same as I thought it was about time we stopped not answering about the Vietnamese war when we were on tour with Brian Epstein and had to tell him, ‘We’re going to talk about the war this time, and we’re not going to just waffle.’ I wanted to say what I thought about revolution. I had been thinking about it up in the hills in India. I still had this ‘God will save us’ feeling about it, that it’s going to be all right. That’s why I did it: I wanted to talk, I wanted to say my piece about revolution.’”
While ‘Revolution 1’ found Lennon uncertain about whether to join the struggle, on the faster ‘Revolution’ he emphatically demanded to be excluded. The urgency of the new arrangement was a result of Paul McCartney’s resistance to Lennon’s hopes of ‘Revolution 1’ being The Beatles’ next single after ‘Lady Madonna’. With the backing of George Harrison, McCartney argued that the recording was too slow, inspiring Lennon to re-record it in an up-tempo, distorted and spontaneous outburst of anti-revolutionary fervor. After two years lost in an LSD haze, and newly energized in his love for Yoko Ono, Lennon gladly rose to the challenge he perceived.
John: “We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting real tense with each other. I did the slow version and I wanted it out as a single: as a statement of The Beatles’ position on Vietnam and The Beatles’ position on revolution. For years, on The Beatles’ tours, Brian Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn’t allow questions about it. But on one of the last tours, I said, ‘I am going to answer about the war. We can’t ignore it.’ I absolutely wanted The Beatles to say something about the war.” ‘Revolution’ featured the most distortion on any Beatles recording, particularly in the twin fuzz-toned guitars plugged directly into the Abbey Road desk and deliberately played loud to overload the meters.
George Martin: “We got into distortion on that, which we had a lot of complaints from the technical people about. But that was the idea: it was John’s song and the idea was to push it right to the limit. Well, we went to the limit and beyond.”  From: https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/revolution/

The Beatles - Come Together

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #British psychedelia #folk rock #1960s #animated music video

‘Come Together’, the lead song on The Beatles’ Abbey Road album, was conceived by John Lennon as a political rallying cry for the writer, psychologist and pro-LSD activist Timothy Leary. ‘Come Together’ was composed for Timothy Leary’s campaign to stand against Ronald Reagan as governor of California. Leary and his wife Rosemary had traveled to Montreal for John and Yoko’s bed-in for peace, which took place on 1 June 1969. The Learys participated in the recording of Lennon’s ‘Give Peace A Chance’, and were both name-checked in the lyrics. The following day Lennon offered to help Leary’s campaign. His slogan was ‘Come together, join the party’. Lennon sent Leary a demo tape of song ideas. However, the campaign ended when Leary was imprisoned for cannabis possession, allowing Lennon to record the song with The Beatles.
“The thing was created in the studio. It’s gobbledygook; ‘Come Together’ was an expression that Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, ‘Come Together’, which would’ve been no good to him – you couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right?”
Leary was bemused when he came to hear The Beatles’ recording of the song. He said, “Although the new version was certainly a musical and lyrical improvement on my campaign song, I was a bit miffed that Lennon had passed me over this way. When I sent a mild protest to John, he replied with typical Lennon charm and wit that he was a tailor and I was a customer who had ordered a suit and never returned. So he sold it to someone else.” ‘Come Together’ was Lennon’s last politicized stance in The Beatles, although much of it was shrouded in imagery: the song lampooned the hippy figureheads who would seek followers among the dropouts of society. Musically, ‘Come Together’ took its cue from Chuck Berry’s 1956 song ‘You Can’t Catch Me’; both songs contain the lines “Here come old flat-top”. Lennon was later sued by Berry’s publisher Morris Levy. They settled out of court, and Lennon agreed to record more songs owned by Levy.
“‘Come Together’ is me – writing obscurely around an old Chuck Berry thing. I left the line in ‘Here comes old flat-top.’ It is nothing like the Chuck Berry song, but they took me to court because I admitted the influence once years ago. I could have changed it to ‘Here comes old iron face,’ but the song remains independent of Chuck Berry or anybody else on earth.” The result was his 1975 album Rock ‘N’ Roll, which contained Berry’s ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and ‘You Can’t Catch Me’, along with Lee Dorsey’s ‘Ya Ya’ (also recorded with the 11-year-old Julian Lennon on drums for 1974’s Walls And Bridges).  From: https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/come-together/

The Who - Tattoo

 #The Who #Pete Townshend #Roger Daltrey #hard rock #heavy blues rock #psychedelic rock #art pop #classic rock #1960s #1970s

Pete Townshend originally planned The Who Sell Out as a concept album of sorts that would simultaneously mock and pay tribute to pirate radio stations, complete with fake jingles and commercials linking the tracks. For reasons that remain somewhat ill defined, the concept wasn't quite driven to completion, breaking down around the middle of side two (on the original vinyl configuration). Nonetheless, on strictly musical merits, it's a terrific set of songs that ultimately stands as one of the group's greatest achievements. "I Can See for Miles" is the Who at their most thunderous; tinges of psychedelia add a rush to "Armenia City in the Sky" and "Relax"; "I Can't Reach You" finds Townshend beginning to stretch himself into quasi-spiritual territory; and "Tattoo" and the acoustic "Sunrise" show introspective, vulnerable sides to the singer/songwriter that had previously been hidden. "Rael" was another mini-opera, with musical motifs that reappeared in Tommy. The album is as perfect a balance between melodic mod pop and powerful instrumentation as the Who (or any other group) would achieve; psychedelic pop was never as jubilant, not to say funny (the fake commercials and jingles interspersed between the songs are a hoot). [Subsequent reissues added over half a dozen interesting outtakes from the time of the sessions, as well as unused commercials, the B-side "Someone's Coming," and an alternate version of "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand.”].  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-who-sell-out-mw0000652659

The Beatles - Rain

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #folk rock #1960s

Released on the ‘Paperback Writer’ single, ‘Rain’ is considered by many Beatles fans to be their finest b-side. Much like Revolver’s ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, ‘Rain’ found The Beatles exploring LSD-influenced feelings of detachment from the real world, and the belief that heightened consciousness can be found within the self. The song is generally credited to John Lennon, although Paul McCartney claimed it was co-written.
The Beatles had discovered during the ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ sessions that slowing down the speed of their recordings revealed hidden depths. They recorded the rhythm track of ‘Rain’ at a fast tempo, then slowed the tape down so the song was a tone lower. Ringo Starr’s drums, locked in to McCartney’s high bass guitar notes, were a key feature of the song.
Paul said, “The drums became a giant drum kit. We got a big, ponderous, thunderous backing and then we worked on top of that as normal, so that it didn’t sound like a slowed-down thing, it just had a big ominous noise to it. It was nice, I really enjoyed that one.” Ringo Starr later said ‘Rain’ was among his favourite performances on a Beatles recording. “I feel as though that was someone else playing – I was possessed!”
The other key feature of ‘Rain’ was John Lennon’s backwards vocals, heard during the coda at the song’s end. Lennon claimed that the discovery was the result of a stoned accident, when he threaded his rough mix tape of the song into his reel-to-reel player the wrong way round. John said, “I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana and, as I usually do, I listened to what I’d recorded that day. Somehow I got it on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint. I ran in the next day and said, ‘I know what to do with it, I know - Listen to this!’ So I made them all play it backwards. The fade is me actually singing backwards with the gutars going backwards. [Singing backwards] Sharethsmnowthsmeaness [Laughter] That one was the gift of God, of Ja, actually, the god of marijuana, right? So Ja gave me that one.” Lennon’s version of events was backed up by George Harrison and studio engineer Geoff Emerick. Producer George Martin, meanwhile, recalled the discovery as being his. He said, “I was always playing around with tapes and I thought it might be fun to do something extra with John’s voice. So I lifted a bit of his main vocal off the four-track, put it onto another spool, turned it around and then slid it back and forth until it fitted. John was out at the time but when he came back he was amazed. Again, it was backwards forever after that.”  From: https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/rain/

Cream - Tales of Brave Ulysses

 #Cream #Eric Clapton #Jack Bruce #Ginger Baker #blues rock #psychedelic rock #acid rock #hard rock #British psychedelic rock #psychedelic blues rock #classic rock #1960s

Cream switched to a more psychedelic sound for their second album Disraeli Gears, which was helmed by producer Felix Pappalardi, who pushed them in this direction. Their first album, Fresh Cream, was produced by Robert Stigwood and was filled with Blues material. "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" is one of the trippiest songs on the album, thanks in part to the wah-wah pedal Eric Clapton used on his guitar. According to Pappalardi, their first attempts to record the song fell flat. Taking a break, he and Clapton went to Manny's Music store, where they found some wah-wah pedals - Clapton only agreed to use them because he heard Jimi Hendrix was experimenting with one (he was - Hendrix used one on his song "The Burning Of The Midnight Lamp"). This guitar effect became a distinguishing feature of the song. An Australian painter named Martin Sharp helped Clapton write this. Sharp painted the album cover of Disraeli Gears. Clapton was in his phase where he was experimenting with distortion devices on his guitar. He used a fuzz-box and wah-wah pedal on this, as well as some echo. This was Eric Clapton's first use of the wah-wah pedal. He used it again for background effects and an extended solo on "White Room."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/cream/tales-of-brave-ulysses

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

 #Black Sabbath #Ozzy Osbourne #heavy metal #hard rock #classic rock #heavy blues rock #British blues rock #doom metal #1970s #Fantasia #Night on Bald Mountain #animated music video

Listening to Black Sabbath’s self-titled 1970 album is a lesson in heavy metal history. Though bands such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple influenced the formation of the genre, Black Sabbath is often considered the first true heavy metal band, perhaps because they were the first to devote their focus to the darker themes that became an often controversial element of metal. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin also has been quoted as saying he thought Black Sabbath was the first true heavy metal band. Living in an impoverished English town where career choices for most were limited to factory worker or criminal, the boys of Black Sabbath could not relate to the idealistic hippie music that was popular when the band formed in 1968, considering themselves a blues band. Guitarist Tony Iommi, observed the lines that formed at the local movie theater whenever it showed horror films and remarked that if people were so willing to pay to be scared, perhaps they should try playing evil-sounding music. With that in mind, they took their name from a Boris Karloff film.
The title track exemplified Sabbath’s goal of capturing horror in music. It began with atmospheric sounds of heavy rain, thunder, and a single, tolling bell. Then Iomi played a slow, ominous riff based on the “devil’s tritone,” an interval notoriously avoided in medieval music because its dissonance evoked a sense of evil - perfect for Sabbath’s purposes. Though speedy, seemingly effortless shredding has become nearly synonymous with heavy metal, the slogging pace of this formative song was truly heavy, creating a feeling of immense weight and pressure intensified by the dread-soaked vocals of Ozzy Osbourne in his prime. The story of being dragged to hell by a figure in black was not conveyed so much by the lyrics as by the despair in Osbourne’s voice when he moaned, “Oh no, no, please God help me.” The song was haunting in a way that most listeners in 1970 had no idea how to process. This dire sound eventually became the primary influence of the doom metal subgenre in the early 1980s.  From: https://www.classicrockhistory.com/black-sabbath-album-review/

Black Sabbath - Hole in the Sky

#Black Sabbath #Ozzy Osbourne #heavy metal #hard rock #classic rock #heavy blues rock #British blues rock #doom metal #heavy metal pioneers #1970s

Sabotage is the final release of Black Sabbath's legendary First Six, and it's also the least celebrated of the bunch, though most die-hard fans would consider it criminally underrated. Sabotage came at a time when Sabbath was turning in one platinum record after the next, and critics were finally starting to appreciate the band as much as their fans. It also came during a lengthy and bitter legal battle between the band and their former management, which no doubt informed lyrical themes of betrayal and paranoia as well as the pervasive overall feeling of life itself unraveling. Musically, the band continues further down the proto-prog metal road of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and this time around, the synthesizers feel more organically integrated into the arrangements. What's more, the song structures generally feel less conventional and more challenging. There's one significant exception in the blatant pop tune "Am I Going Insane (Radio)," which rivals "Changes" as the most fan-loathed song of the glory years, thanks to its synth-driven arrangement (there isn't even a guitar riff) and oft-repeated one-line chorus. But other than that song and the terrific album-opener "Hole in the Sky," the band largely eschews the standard verse-chorus format, sticking to one or two melody lines per riffed section and changing up the feel before things get too repetitive. The prevalence of this writing approach means that Sabotage rivals Vol. 4 as the least accessible record of Sabbath's early material. However, given time, the compositional logic reveals itself, and most of the record will burn itself into the listener's brain just fine. The faster than usual "Symptom of the Universe" is a stone-cold classic, its sinister main riff sounding like the first seed from which the New Wave of British Heavy Metal would sprout. Like several songs on the record, "Symptom" features unexpected acoustic breaks and softer dynamics, yet never loses its drive or focus, and always feels like Sabbath. Less immediate but still rewarding are "Thrill of It All," with its triumphant final section, and the murky, sullen "Megalomania," which never feels as long as its nearly nine-and-a-half minutes. But more than the compositions, the real revelation on Sabotage is Ozzy Osbourne, who turns in his finest vocal performance as a member of Black Sabbath. Really for the first time, this is the Ozzy we all know, displaying enough range, power, and confidence to foreshadow his hugely successful solo career. He saves the best for last with album-closer "The Writ," one of the few Sabbath songs where his vocal lines are more memorable than Tony Iommi's guitar parts; running through several moods over the course of the song's eight minutes, it's one of the best performances of his career bar none. Unfortunately, after Sabotage, the wheels of confusion came off entirely. Technically, there were two more albums released, but for most fans, the story of Osbourne-era Sabbath effectively ends here.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/sabotage-mw0000652467 

The Rolling Stones - Torn and Frayed

 #The Rolling Stones #Kieth Richards #Mick Jagger #blues rock #hard rock #classic rock #British blues rock #rock & roll #British R&B #1970s 

In May of 1972 the Rolling Stones released their 10th British studio album and first double LP, Exile on Main St. Although initial critical response was lukewarm, it is now considered a contemporary music landmark, the best work from a band who rock critic Simon Frith once referred to as “the poets of lonely leisure.” Exile on Main St. was both the culmination of a five-year productive frenzy and bleary-eyed comedown from the darkest period in the Stones’ history.
By 1969 the storm clouds of dread building around the group had become a full-blown typhoon. First, recently sacked member Brian Jones was found dead, drowned in his swimming pool. Then, as the decade ended in a rush of bleak portents, they played host to the chaos of the Altamont Speedway Free Concert, a poorly organised, massive free concert, which ended with four dead including a murder captured live on film.
Yet amidst all this the Stones produced Let It Bleed (1969) and Sticky Fingers (1971), two devastating albums that wrapped up the era like a parcel bomb addressed to the 1970s.
Songs like Gimme Shelter, the harrowing Sister Morphine, and Sway, which broods on Nietzche’s notion of circular time, exuded the kind of weary grandeur that would define Exile.
The story behind Exile on Main St. has become rock folklore. Fleeing from England’s punitive tax laws, the Stones lobbed in a Côte d'Azur mansion that was a Gestapo HQ during World War II. Mick Jagger was largely sidelined, spending much of the time in Paris with pregnant wife Bianca. The musicians were jammed into an ad-hoc basement studio, a cross between steam-bath and opium den, powered by electricity hijacked from the French railway system. The house was beset by hangers-on, including the obligatory posse of drug-dealers. Yet with control ceded to the nonchalant, disaster-prone Keith Richards – the kind of person a crisis would want around in a crisis – they somehow harnessed the power of pandemonium.
The result was a singular amalgam of barbed soul, mutant gospel, tombstone blues and shambolic country, as thrilling in its blend of familiar sources as works by contemporaries Roxy Music and David Bowie were in the use of alien ones. Jagger shuffles his deck of personas from song to song like a demented croupier, the late, great drummer Charlie Watts supplies his customary subtle adornments, and a cast of miscreants – most crucially, pianist Nicky Hopkins and producer Jimmy Miller – function as supplementary band members.
All 18 tracks contribute to the ragged perfection of the document as a whole. Tumbling Dice and Happy are textbook rock propelled by a strange union of virtuosity and indolence. And there is an undeniable beauty to the likes of Torn and Frayed and Let it Loose, albeit a beauty that is tentative, hard-earned. The package is completed by its distinctive sleeve art, juxtaposing a collage of circus performers photographed by Robert Frank circa 1950 with grainy stills from a Super-8 film of the band and a mural dedicated to Joan Crawford.
Exile confused audiences at first: Writer John Perry describes its 1972 reception as mixing “puzzlement with qualified praise”. The response of critic Lester Bangs was typical. After an initial negative review, Bangs came to regard it as the group’s strongest work. Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine confirms that the record over time has become a touchstone, calling it a masterful album that takes “the bleakness that underpinned Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers to an extreme.”  From: https://theconversation.com/exile-on-main-st-turns-50-how-the-rolling-stones-critically-divisive-album-became-rock-folklore-181704

Queen - Father to Son

 #Queen #Freddie Mercury #Brian May #Roger Taylor #hard rock #glam rock #progressive rock #heavy metal #classic rock #1970s

A month after releasing their debut album Queen returned to Trident Studios to commence work on the follow-up, tentatively titled “Over The Top” – an idea that didn’t amuse EMI any more than “Dearie Me” had for its predecessor. Despite positive reviews for “Keep Yourself Alive” the individual members still weren’t convinced Queen was a going concern and maintained outside interest in physics (Brian May), electronics (John Deacon), Freddie Mercury and his art studies and potential dentist, Roger Taylor keeping on their side-line of a Kensington Market stall because who knew how long this thing would last?
Still they were anxious to resume work before going back on the road and preparing for a tour with Mott the Hoople so they grabbed a vacant August slot in Trident and began making the record that is many a fan’s favorite. It is certainly the first time one hears their trademark multi-layered overdubs, those rich harmonies, and the sheer joie de vivre of a group of young men refusing to be hindered by boundaries and conformity. So while other rock stars went on their holidays Queen worked like Trojans.
All four took to the recording process like a duck to water with the notable assistance of Roy Thomas Baker and in-house man Robin Geoffrey Cable, an ally of the band since he’d produced Larry Lurex aka Freddie Mercury on a spectacularly operatic attempt at the Phil Spector-Ellie Greenwich-Jeff Barry masterpiece “I Can Hear Music.” Also on that session was engineer Mike Stone, yet another highly talented sound man who’d learned his trade at Abbey Road, sitting in on The Beatles’ Beatles For Sale album and more recently thrown some magic dust over Nursery Cryme for Genesis and Joe Walsh’s heavy guitar gem The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get. Quite a team in other words, and May and company had plenty of their own ideas to bring to the party.
What became Queen II was done and dusted in that hot month. Realizing that as songwriters Mercury and May had radically different lyrical agendas – Brian the guitarist preferring a personal or emotional slant, while Freddie the singer liked to operate in realms of the phantasmagorical – it was decided to give the record a loose concept, splitting the material into “White” and “Black” sides to match the light and shade of the songs. The gatefold sleeve and the album’s label reflected the B&W mood and when they hit the road to support it they invested in monochrome stage gear designed by Zandra Rhodes. Photographer Mick Rock was hired to shoot the cover on the strength of his striking images of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed, and he had the band posed to look suitably moody and vampish a la Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express. Freddie, of course, couldn’t resist the faintest of smirks as he looked up at Rock with arms crossed.
For the debut Queen’s friend Douglas Puddifoot had depicted Mercury holding his soon to be familiar short microphone stand, performing in a spotlight on what looked like an arena stage. A fine conceit, considering Queen were far from that status yet, it didn’t really give the viewer a sense of what lay inside. Mick Rock’s photograph, which the boys thought was slightly pretentious at first, showed them to be a band or a gang and this time the potential purchaser was left intrigued by the potential content.
Inside there were many wonders. It starts with “Procession,” played by May in funeral march time on multi-tracked guitar, the Red Special hand-built by Brian and his father, Harold, when the aspiring musician was a teenager. The instrument, also known as the Old Lady or the Fireplace, became iconic for Queen fanatics.
Brian’s “Father to Son” was written with Harold in mind and combines metal guitar bridges and introspective piano played by the writer as well as John Deacons’ acoustic guitar and a neat vocal harmony.
The fortuitously titled “White Queen (As It Began)” was a song Brian had written in 1968 when he was just about to go to Imperial College to study physics. Inspired by the Robert Graves treatise on poetry and myth, The Golden Fleece, May also had a female muse in mind, a girl from his A-Level biology class at Hampton Grammar, and the combination of courtly love lyrics and an ideal of feminism struck a chord with Queen’s audiences who would soon realize this wasn’t just another standard glam rock group.
May makes his debut as sole lead vocalist on “Some Day One Day” and also contributes startling guitar overdubbing, with the outro section featuring three instruments playing different parts rather than meshing together in synch. Trident’s 24-track came into its own and Brain was exultant to achieve the sound he’d always craved.
Drummer Roger’s “The Loser In The End” closes out the “White” side with a variation on the Mother to Son theme, albeit with a slightly tongue in cheek or ambiguous humor in the verses and some lovely marimba work.
If Freddie’s contributions thus far were sporadic he took over for the “Black” side. “Ogre Battle” was carried over from the first album and given a proper arrangement, a damn heavy one with chilling vocal screaming and a taut thrash of guitars and drums, a classic gong, and plenty of sound effects to herald a suite that is Queen at their most progressive. Mercury wrote it on guitar and his heavy metal riff was leapt on with relish by May for its martial power and would become a staple in their live sets over the next four years.
“The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke” was inspired by frequent visits to the Tate Gallery, taken by Freddie and the others to admire Richard Dadd’s nightmarish painting of the same name. To replicate the strangeness of Dadd’s canvas the band employed heavy stereo panning, Fred’s piano and harpsichord parts, Roy Thomas Baker’s castanets, and multiple vocal overdubs and harmonies. Claustrophobic and deranged, the medieval fantasy world of the artist was brought to life with startling success. The reference to the “quaere fellow” in the lyric is nothing as obvious as some people imagine, rather another literary reference to Brendan Behan’s play, The Quare Fellow, given an arcane spelling.
“Feller” flows in segue form with Mercury at the piano picking up the closing three-part harmony to introduce “Nevermore.” Freddie and Robin Cable would also play pluck or string piano (again no synthesizers) on a song that deals with relationship breakdown, with a nod at Edgar Allen Poe’s poem The Raven.
The octave bending, polyrhythmic “The March Of The Black Queen” was written by Mercury at the piano and developed as an electric and acoustic guitar extravaganza with May adding symphonic tubular bells. As such it was virtually impossible to replicate live but remains an album highlight.
Another segue leads the listener into “Funny How Love Is” a Mercury song blessed with one of his most poignant and lovely lyrics (“Funny how love is coming home in time for tea”). The singer felt more comfortable working with Cable on this track and the pair revisited the Wall of Sound technique they’d employed on “I Can Hear Music.” It was Freddie in a nutshell.
And so to the finale – “The Seven Seas Of Rhye” – a song first heard by many when Queen snapped up David Bowie’s cancellation of a Top of the Pops engagement to debut “Rebel Rebel.” The show’s producers asked Mike Stone if he could recommend a replacement and so Queen made their first major TV appearance on February 21st playing the newer, fully fleshed track before the cameras and landing in living rooms with such panache and insouciance that switchboards jammed. The song was released as a single two days later.
Noted for its panning and arpeggios and a cross-fade that leads into a brief rendition of “I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside” (with Baker on stylophone, still not really a synth!) this is a magnificent piece of work on every level. A classic glam rock item of the era, one that recalls the brutal intensity of The Move. Good work all round.
Queen II is now acknowledged as a landmark in the band’s development and while it is hardly obscure, in America it is considered to be a cult artifact revered by the likes of Billy Corgan, Steve Vai, and Axl Rose, and remains an obvious influence on everyone from U2 to Muse. Even Bowie sat up and took notice, no doubt allowing himself a wry smile at Queen’s arrival due to his no-show and probably basking in some of their limelight. Finally, some competition.
But while the album was ready to go by September, fully mixed etc., it was held back by EMI since the first album was still in its infancy. The oil crisis of 1973 also led to a shortage of vinyl as Britain slumbered in the three-day week, galloping inflation and increasing political and social unrest. Even so, those who heard the album when it did come out on March 8, 1974, were impressed and spiritually uplifted. Queen had arrived in style and Freddie could give up his weekend job and concentrate upon the great times that lay ahead. Goodbye Kensington Market, hello the world.  From: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/behind-the-albums/queen-queen-2/

The Rolling Stones - She's A Rainbow

 #The Rolling Stones #Keith Richards #Mick Jagger #blues rock #hard rock #classic rock #psychedelic rock #British blues rock #British psychedelia #rock & roll #1960s

Part druggy experiment, part musical rivalry with the Fab Four, and a total anomaly in the Rolling Stones' catalogue, Their Satanic Majesties Request contains at least three trippy classics in "Citadel," "She's a Rainbow," and "2000 Light Years From Home." That it also contains an extensive sample of Bill Wyman snoring and an eight-minute stoned jam that begins with the timeless phrase "Where's that joint?" is a measure of Satanic Majesties' breadth of genius and folly. There's a lot going on here - try comparing the wayward Eastern atmospheres of "Gomper" to anything on Beggar’s Banquet, and marvel that you're listening to the same band. The fact that Jagger and Richards could still come up with the unimpeachably charming "She's a Rainbow" - baroque pop at its finest - and a fair stab at heavy R&B in "The Lantern," while attempting to negotiate the band's rocky passage through Flower Power is a tribute to their vision, their perseverance, and their drugs of choice.  From: https://www.amazon.com/Satanic-Majesties-Request-Rolling-Stones/dp/B00006AW2M  

The Rolling Stones song ‘She’s A Rainbow’ was met with a mixed reaction when it was first released back in 1967 but, as the years have gone by, the track has quite rightly grown in appreciation. Now, the track is firmly seen as a highlight from the psychedelically twinged Their Satanic Majesties Request. Remarkably, John Paul Jones, who would of course later go on to conquer the world with Led Zeppelin, arranged the strings of this song during his days as a session musician. The backing vocals were a joint effort by the entire band apart from Charlie Watts who had managed to escape his duties. In truth, the whole recording process for the record was a giant mess. Their legal ongoings at the time were causing issues after the infamous Redlands bust that saw Mick Jagger and Keith Richards spend time behind bars immediately after the time they began recording. This meant that it took the band over eight months in total to record the album as the legal problems coupled up with their newfound adoration for psychedelic drugs created a recipe for professional disaster that somehow created incredible art.
In his 2002 book Rolling with the Stones, Wyman describes the situations in the studio: “Every day at the studio it was a lottery as to who would turn up and what – if any – positive contribution they would make when they did,” he said. “Keith would arrive with anywhere up to ten people, Brian with another half-a-dozen and it was the same for Mick. They were assorted girlfriends and friends. I hated it! Then again, so did Andrew (Oldham) and just gave up on it. There were times when I wish I could have done, too.” “Sometimes I think it was a miracle that we produced anything with all the emotional upheavals within the group,” Wyman also noted. The late Anita Pallenberg was rumoured to be the muse for the track, with a 2020 biography by Simon Wells on the late model even being titled She’s A Rainbow. Pallenberg had just come out of a relationship with Brian Jones in 1967 after he was physically abusive to her in Morrocco, Keith Richards saw the violence and took her back safely to England with the two falling instantly in love with one another — even going on to have three children together.
The trippy sounding track isn’t a sound that one would associate with The Stones outside of Their Satanic Majesties Request but ‘She’s A Rainbow’ has become a true cult classic with their ardent fans as the years have passed. It took 30 years before they took to performing it at a touring show and then, following that run of dates, it was yet again put back on the shelf until 2016 with it now finally being a deserved regular in their sets.
From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/story-behind-the-rolling-stones-shes-a-rainbow/

Black Sabbath - The Wizard

 #Black Sabbath #Ozzy Osbourne #heavy metal #hard rock #classic rock #heavy blues rock #British blues rock #doom metal #1970s

Every Metal Subgenre Began as a Black Sabbath Song
Nathan Smith
Some people out there argue that heavy metal was not invented by Black Sabbath. These people are wrong. To be sure, the Led Zeps and Deep Purples of the world certainly had their metallic moments, but it wasn't until Tony Iommi sheared off his fingertips in a metal stamper and down-tuned his guitar to compensate for this maiming that a new and sinister strain of rock and roll was truly sired.
Now, it's a fact that Sabbath didn't consider themselves heavy metal - not at first, anyway. They viewed themselves simply as putting a slightly new twist on the thunderously heavy blues-rock pioneered by the likes of Cream. There's a lot of truth in that self-assessment. But not even Clapton and co. can claim quite the broad influence on rock and roll that Black Sabbath has produced.
Need proof? Well, how's this for a premise: Practically all of heavy metal's 18 jillion, multifaceted subgenres can be traced back to a specific Black Sabbath song. In cranking out nearly an album per year back in the '70s, the band did a lot more stretching and exploring than they're sometimes given credit for. The result is that they managed to create an entire heavy-metal universe, one track at a time.
They didn't do it alone, of course, and today's metal is as rooted in hardcore punk as it is in '70s hard rock. But the seeds are there. Behold:
10. DOOM METAL
"Into the Void," 1971
Let's start with an easy one. Nowhere in the wide, wacky world of heavy-metal subgenres is Black Sabbath's influence more keenly felt than in doom metal. The band's slow grooves, down-tuned guitars and murky riffs embody the style to this day. The eerie spirit of impending doom on their early songs remains the template for the majority of doom metal's modern practitioners. "Into the Void" is a particularly good example of the doom metal sound from Master of Reality, but it could easily be replaced on this list by any number of tracks from the band's first few albums.
9. POWER METAL
"War Pigs," 1970
Black Sabbath wouldn't truly lead the charge toward power metal until Ozzy was replaced by Ronnie James Dio, one of the preeminent operatic voices in rock history. But the predilection for power was there almost from the very beginning. "War Pigs," possibly the greatest anti-war screed ever set to a backbeat, ranks as one of the most spine-tingling songs in heavy-metal history thanks largely to the most powerful vocal performances of Ozzy Osbourne's long career. It doesn't get a lot more anthemic than this one. If you needed any additional proof of the profound influence of "War Pigs" on the formation of the power metal subgenre, consider that it was a favorite cover tune of Dio's pre-Rainbow group, Elf.
8. THRASH METAL
"Symptom of the Universe," 1975
Sabbath infinitely preferred a slow, rumbling sound to high-octane speed. Almost nobody had more influence on the powerful guitar riffage that was the hallmark of thrash metal than Tony Iommi, however. The chugging crunch of "Symptom of the Universe" clearly predicts the rise of bands like Metallica and Slayer in the decade to come, not to mention Geezer Butler's lyrical themes dealing with evil, war and, uh, dirty women that were employed throughout the group's run in the '70s.
7. DEATH METAL
"Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," 1973
A gore-obsessed outgrowth of thrash metal, death metal retains almost none of the blues-based rhythms in which Black Sabbath trafficked. Thematically, though, Sabbath's influence still looms large. The song "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," with its lyrical allusions to "living just for dying," strongly hinted at the attraction to oblivion that would be cranked up significantly by early death metal bands in the '80s and early '90s. Not to mention the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath album cover! Seemingly scientifically engineered to freak out your mom, the artwork depicts a terrified man tormented by demons on a bed evidently possessed by Satan himself. It set a benchmark for horrifying imagery that death metal bands are still trying to outdo today.
6. BLACK METAL
"Black Sabbath," 1970
Black Sabbath never sounded anywhere near so ugly and extreme as the earliest practitioners of black metal did, but there's no denying that their influence is present. In particular, there's black metal's fascination with Satanism: While never expressing overt sympathy for the devil, early Sabbath flirted heavily with the Adversary; never more so than on their signature tune, "Black Sabbath." The song was constructed around a tritone, a dissonant musical interval derided as diabolus in musica (the devil in music) since at least the 18th century. The song's moody, cinematic opening, full of heavy rain and droning church bells, would also heavily inform the softer, more atmospheric strains of black metal that would arise in the genre's second wave.
5. CHRISTIAN OR WHITE METAL
"After Forever," 1971
The Satanists weren't the only rockers finding inspiration in Sabbath's music and lyrics. While they typically preferred to explore the dark side of the struggle between good and evil, Geezer and the gang weren't above occasionally inserting Christ and the Church into their musical morality plays. The song "After Forever," in fact, makes the claim that "God is the only way to love," and scolds nonbelievers for their faithlessness. While no one has ever called Black Sabbath "Christian rock" with a straight face, there's no doubt the band throws in solidly with the light side on this tune. Lord knows it rocks a damn sight harder than Stryper, too.
4. HAIR METAL
"Changes," 1972
Birmingham, England, is a hell of a long way away from the Sunset Strip, and while Tony Iommi has rocked a few questionable poodle-dos in his day, nobody has ever confused Black Sabbath with Poison. That doesn't mean their contributions to the now-reviled subgenre known as hair metal can be ignored, however. Though Sabbath's dark, sludgy sound was a far cry from the upbeat, overdriven L.A. style of '80s metal, they did practically invent one of the hair bands' most infamous tropes: the metal power ballad. "Changes" would be ripped off by a slew of teased and permed groups in the '80s, from the plaintive vocals right down to the piano accompaniment. Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home," for instance, could have never existed without it.
3. STONER METAL
"Sweet Leaf," 1971
Black Sab loved the herb as much as they loved any other drug - which is to say, quite a lot. Marijuana smoking was damn near universal at their '70s concerts, with the band's deep, slow grooves matching up with weed's pleasant effects like peanut butter and jelly. An out-and-out love song, "Sweet Leaf" cemented the connection between banging and stoning very early on in metal's development. Its sound has been replicated and expanded upon by the likes of Weedeater, Electric Wizard and other dojah aficionados. The song remains a cherished staple of the band's live show today, and it's possibly the most-covered tune in Black Sabbath's history. Draw your own conclusions.
2. FUNK METAL
"Behind the Wall of Sleep," 1970
Sabbath aren't thought of as a particularly funky bunch, despite their preternatural ability to lock into deep grooves. While they'll never be confused with James Brown, they did have their moments - the funkiest of which can be found on their debut album. In addition to the irresistibly bouncy "N.I.B.," Black Sabbath contains the song "Behind the Wall of Sleep," a riff-sterpiece featuring a sublimely funky drum break by Bill Ward. How funky? Well, funky enough to be sampled by the likes of Outkast, Beck, Too $hort and the Fugees, among others, according to WhoSampled.com. Not a lot of funk metal bands can claim to have influenced a roster of hip-hop artists that talented. Pretty much none, I'd say.
1. PROG METAL
"The Writ," 1975
Much of Black Sabbath's heyday coincided with the rise of progressive rock, and though they were never a part of that scene, they were certainly touched by it. Hell, as a hard rock band in the '70s, it was hard not to be. Particularly as the decade wore on, Sabbath toyed with some proggier elements - even adding a Moog synthesizer to tracks like "Who Are You?" and "Sabra Cadabra." For my money, though, "The Writ" from Sabotage stands alone as the first truly progressive heavy metal song. Coming in at more than eight minutes, the weird, lengthy song is notable for providing the first glimpse of the more dynamic vocal range that Ozzy would later employ to great effect on his '80s solo records.
From: https://www.houstonpress.com/music/every-metal-subgenre-began-as-a-black-sabbath-song-6510141