An album which is so undervalued, it is almost painful to view. I was listening to BBC Radio 2 yesterday, when a listener's "tracks of my years" had Since You've Been Gone played, and she said that that track had opened the world of rock music to her, a lifelong passion.
Well, she was amongst many such people. I have very fond memories of this album. I was fourteen years old when it was released, and at the time I was a member of the school brass band. One of the privileges we had was being able to stay in the music room at lunchtime, which was a blast when all others were freezing outside in sub-zero temperatures! This album, and Genesis' And Then There Were Three, were constant players on the stereo deck. Happy days!
This album is the perfect fusion of heavy rock and commercial rock, and the irony is that Blackmore jettisoned this line-up after only one album, drafted in a good looking American singer and others, in order to finally crack the American market. It largely failed, and the shame is that if he had stuck with this classic line-up, that commercial success, as well as critical kudos, would have been his.
From the outset, this album is a blinder. All Night Long is the type of rollicking rock single for which FM radio was made. Prog fans especially would take huge joy at the one and only nod on this album to the sword & sorcery era of Dio, Eyes Of The World. Six minutes plus of pure heavy prog joy, and easily the best track the band did outside of Stargazer.
I would also go as far to say that this album represented the epitome of guitar playing by Blackmore. He never, ever, sounded better than he did here. The solo on Since...is utterly sublime. The riffing on the incredibly catchy No Time To Lose is wondrous. But all that wonder pales into comparison with the delight he served up on Love's No Friend, the almost perfect rock ballad. Add to this the sound of the late, great, Cozy Powell drumming as if his life depended upon it, the whirling keyboards of Don Airey, the return to recording form of Roger Glover, and last, but by no means least, the sound of a man called Graham Bonnet who could, allegedly, break glasses in a room by a single scream, and this was a heady cocktail which added a huge amount to the renaissance of heavy rock in the late 1970's & early 1980's.
You also get sensual on this. Makin' Love is about the sexiest rock track I have ever heard, and wonderfully performed.
There is not one weak track here. The cover is also one of the reasons why us oldies lament so much the demise of the gatefold sleeve.
From here on in, the band would take a sharply downward spiral, and, whilst I have all that followed, as a Blackmore nut, it wasn't until the formation of Blackmore's Night that I felt the great man had rediscovered his true mojo.
This is the band's true masterpiece. My only regret upon listening to this as I write this review is that the great man at the time didn't realise it, because I genuinely feel that this line-up promised so much more but were never given the chance.
Don't be fooled. This is not AOR. That period was to follow. This is classic British heavy rock, delivered with panache and style. A true masterpiece.
This is the last of the great Floyd quartet that started with Dark Side of the Moon.
This album has never been one to approach lightly. It certainly isn't one that will be playing on your deck every night of the week. No, this is like one of those fine wines, a work to be savoured occasionally and treated with the huge respect it deserves.
The album was born out of two major events in Roger Waters' life. On the preceding Animals tour, he had become so disillusioned with the music business, as witnessed initially in Welcome To The Machine from Wish You Were Here, and the horrendous stadia the band were now obliged to play in on US tours that he felt a terrible disconnection between the band and audience. This culminated in him spitting upon a fan in Canada when the said fan refused to listen to new material, screaming instead for "classic" stuff. In addition, the band had lost a fortune through the crash and financial management of Norton Warberg. They needed a hit album, and one fast, at that.
Waters had, of course, touched on themes of the war, modern society, and disenchantment in previous works. This was, though, to be the culmination of all those themes into one coherent whole.
Many contributors have argued that Walters is merely a moaner and was not unique from his generation in having his father die during the war. The latter is certainly true. However, I think they miss the point a bit. Wars tend to produce very exceptional, and rare, written artists who seem to encapsulate the horrors and futility of it all, such as Remarque. In much the same way, I believe Waters spoke for an entire generation scarred by the horrors of losing a parent or loved ones during that conflict.
The album then takes us through a narrative on sides one through to three of a young boy growing up without his father, cast into an uncaring and unemotional school career, with an overbearing mother, through to adolescence, marriage, divorce, and, latterly, rock super stardom.
The great dividing line in the narrative is Comfortably Numb at the end of side three. For it is there that the semi-autobiographical nature of the story is ripped asunder, and we then deal on side four with the true disengagement of artist from audience, and the slide into megalomaniac madness, with Pink at the head of a crazed fascist like movement before being cast asunder by society into the madhouse by the establishment judge re-establishing order. This part has always been played by Waters with utter glee live.
That, therefore, describes the narrative, one that spoke to many people at the end of the seventies such as me, an angry young man despairing of the world. It still does, by the way, as an angry middle-aged man.
This would be essential enough, but, of course, it would be nothing without the music as well, and, on this score, the band reach such heights that are only dreamed of by other mere mortal bands.
There are so many highlights on this. Ironically, Brick in the Wall part two became a monster smash hit in the Christmas of 1979. I still, to this day, cannot believe the sheer dark beauty, with the images of killer bombers, in Goodbye Blue Sky, which, to these ears, features some of the loveliest guitar and vocals ever performed by Gilmour.
Any man who has had a row with a loved one, which has turned morbidly dark and angry, will empathise with One Of My Turns, culminating in objects being thrown out of a window in glorious surround sound. Equally, the joys of sowing one's oats are explored brilliantly in Young Lust, featuring a classic rock riff by Gilmour.
Gilmour continued to play the two most popular tracks on the album, Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell, live long after Waters left. They are stunning. I saw the band perform live at Earls Court on the original tour, and i still have shivers running down my spine each time THAT guitar solo is played at the end of Comfortably Numb. An incredible piece of music.
I would also add here Hey You, the first track of side three, a plaintive plea from behind the wall to anyone passing who might just catch a glimpse of madness and come to the rescue, which features such delicate playing and vocals that you could cry in sympathy.
I can think of only one artist who could possibly match Waters' sense of theatre and narrative, and that is Pete Townsend. Like Townsend in The Who, by the time the Wall was released, Waters was the driving force behind the band, with the rest as a kind of "surrogate band" (this was not an accident, by the way, in the stage show). But what a surrogate band! Richard Wright, on his way out, plays superbly, Mason is reliable as ever, whilst Gilmour utterly excels.
Politics, you know, does matter. This is a political album, as well as being a personal and social narrative. It works on every level that it explores, and I simply love it.
This is an utterly essential album without which no prog collection would be entirely complete.
When one thinks of mega selling (or, in the words of some, "sell-out") pop/prog monsters, most turn to Genesis in the 1980's or Yes with 90125. Well, forget it. As well as they sold, I would imagine there is barely a household on earth with a member of the family over 40 who did not, at one time, own a copy of this album. BIG goes nowhere near describing just how colossal this work was.
Of course, the million-dollar question is; is it as good as its sales record suggests? Is it, for prog fans, rather better than one remembers when spitting out that dirty word, commercial? To this reviewer, the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. I love this band, and I think they thoroughly deserved their success.
In terms of album track layout, it follows a familiar pattern, this being separate Hodgson & Davies compositions bound together in a common identity of Supertramp. It's just that they got better at flogging and producing the stuff.
The highlight for me will always remain one of my favourite all time songs of any genre or generation - Logical Song. This is easily Roger Hodgson's finest moment, apparently written when he was still a teenager. In 1979, it struck a chord with me as a 15-year-old immediately. It still does. A song full of angst, regret, and passion, detailing the confusion that any decent, right-thinking person must have when he views the inequalities, inequities, and sheer injustice of the world run by elected and unelected dictatorships. It also has that unique trick of turning a very serious lyrical piece of work into an instantly accessible musical piece, catchy, well performed, and, overall, a sheer delight to listen to. A song I want played at my funeral.
The one track that, to these ears, takes away from the masterpiece status is the title track itself, which, to me, takes the concept of whimsical to absurd heights. For sure, it was a monster smash hit, and is still played on radio's the world over to this day, but I remain of the opinion that this is Hodgson's worst ever composition. Grating, annoying, and instantly throwaway. Always, without fail, skipped on my MP3 player when it comes on.
Compare that to another single from the album, Goodbye Stranger. Commercially, it bombed in comparison, but I don't think that Davies ever sounded better, or, indeed, wrote better in terms of commercial, blues-based rock. This is one of the finest singles ever released, and Davies managed his usual trick of throwing himself in emotionally to compensate fully for the obvious comparisons with Hodgson's better singing voice.
Of this, Lord Is It Mine is perhaps his finest example. This is an exceptional piece of music, and, alongside Logical Song, is amongst the very best in fusion of pop and progressive rock music. Sung with absolute sincerity, theatrical, dripping with emotion, and extremely well performed by a band right at the top of their game, it is a pure joy.
Take The Long Way Home, though, comes close. Another theatrical piece, telling a sad story, it fuses symphonic prog with pop sensibilities perfectly.
The longest track is the closer, Child Of Vision, and the closest to "pure" progressive rock the album came to. It is a natural successor to Fool's Overture from its predecessor, having the same symphonic burn, albeit far catchier.
In comparison to all of this, the other Davies ballads, Oh Darling, Just Another Nervous Wreck, and Casual Conversations sound almost throwaway. They're not that. They are, in fact, very good ballads, but he was, and is, capable of better, and they are bit of a let-down when compared to all else on this album, and also his work on previous albums.
So, the Davies song Goodbye Stranger aside, this is most definitely Hodgson's album, easily his most successful and finest recording ever. This is an excellent album, another in a long line which puts paid to the fiction that commercial is bad. It isn't.
Go on. We all deserve a guilty pleasure every now and again, don't we?