Are you going to the party?

Along with reruns of the 45-year-old Batman series, one of the most enjoyable things on television, at the moment, is BBC Four’s repeats of 35-year-old episodes of Top Of The Pops. Yes, most of it is absolute tosh but each instalment usually contains a gem or two. And I’m not talking about the beautiful Babs - dunno what her name is! This week’s programme opened with Steve Harley And Cockney Rebel performing George Harrison’s Here Comes The Sun from their Love’s A Prima Donna album. Great to see the band again, especially Duncan Mackay on keyboards whom I was lucky enough to meet in Bristol after a 10cc gig. It was the week they were No. 1 with Dreadlock Holiday. Even though not enough rock fans know his name, Duncan has been to the top spot on no less than three occasions, the other two being Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me), by the aforementioned Rebels, and on Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. Also playing with Steve were the incomparable George Ford on bass, guitarist Jim Cregan, later to join Rod Stewart and more recently Katie Melua, and Stuart Eliot on drums, a regular fixture on the early Kate Bush albums.

This week’s edition of Top Of The Pops: 1976 ended with the brand new number one having been on the chart for three weeks according to DJ presenter Dave Lee Travis. Elton John and Kiki Dee’s duet Don’t Go Breaking My Heart also happened to be the first time Reg reached the top. Can’t claim to have met Mr. Dwight but I did spend a whole day once chatting to the lovely Miss Dee. In the late Seventies, and on-and-off throughout the Eighties, I worked in a record store and she paid us a visit. All our customers seemed too shy to come up and talk to her so we got chatting about the record industry. Pleasant lady and, although Elton is good fun in the recorded performance, Kiki sings her part better despite the bespectacled one being the more famous of the two. The pair displaced a certain Greek singer, perhaps now more notorious for being a favourite of Alison Steadman’s character Beverley in Abigail’s Party! I mentioned Doomwatch and Holby City actor Robert Powell’s wife Babs earlier but, by this time, regular dance troupe Pan’s People had been replaced by Ruby Flipper, still choreographed by the recently deceased Flick Colby however. If my memory serves me well, the mix of girls and boys would soon revert to girls only with Legs And Co.

During the course of Wednesday’s TOTP, we were also treated to another showing of the original performance (of two) of The Boston Tea Party by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. In 1975 I bought their album Tomorrow Belongs To Me as well as their live single Delilah, the same song previously recorded by Tom Jones but here given the full rock treatment. Captain Sensible, of comedy punk outfit The Damned, would later ape this when he recorded Happy Talk from the musical South Pacific. The late Alex’s appearances on these repeats has led to a resurgence of interest for me in the music of SAHB. In earlier editions, Bryan Ferry’s been on a couple of times performing Let’s Stick Together with guitar legend Chris Spedding, aided-and-abetted in the whooping department by Texan beauty Jerry Hall, better known to Roxy Music fans as Prairie Rose and the cover girl of their fifth album Siren. Best of all though was the absolute joy of seeing the original 10cc performing I’m Mandy, Fly Me from their masterpiece How Dare You! Shot a little like Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody video, but sadly nowhere near as commercially successful, Lol Crème, Kevin Godley, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman performed to perfection. Again, and apologies for being such a name dropper, I was lucky enough to meet the latter two at the same Colston Hall concert as Duncan Mackay. The colleague with whom I went told the band we’d hyped Dreadlock Holiday to number one. I could’ve shot him - with Rubber Bullets!

Top of My Pops: Five Favourite Albums

I’ve been tagged by Simon, of the “Old Cheeser” variety, to come up with a list of my all-time favourite popular music albums. Being too good an opportunity to waste, I’ve decided to extend the idea to future posts as I feel it’s more worthwhile to dwell a little on each of my choices, and why I like what I do, rather than just state what rocks my boat! In forthcoming “Top of My Pops” features, as well as albums, I’ll also be covering singles and individual songs/tracks. So, without further ado, and in no particular order of preference, here are five of my favourite albums…

1. Country Life by Roxy Music (1974)

The fourth studio album by Roxy Music, “Country Life”, consolidated the achievements of the previous two records without really breaking any new ground but I’ve always felt it to be a substantial collection nonetheless. “Bitter-Sweet”, for example, is a direct descendant of “A Song for Europe” from third album “Stranded” while my favourite track, “Prairie Rose”, a song expressing Ferry’s love at that time for “Siren” model Jerry Hall, builds on musical ideas established in “Editions of You”, a number from the second album “For Your Pleasure”. DJ Alan Freeman believed “Stranded” to be the classic Roxy Music album while many fans opt for its predecessor. I, however, have a soft spot for the sequel to the classic. “Country Life” includes the single “All I Want is You” as well as the energetically vibrant “The Thrill of It All” and the excellent bass-pounding “Out of the Blue”.

2. Aladdin Sane by David Bowie (1973)

While many fans opt for David Bowie’s breakthrough album, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”, I prefer its successor, “Aladdin Sane”, despite the fact that “Ziggy” includes the better single in “Starman”. “The Jean Genie” is my least favourite track on “Aladdin Sane”. Much better is the follow-up, “Drive-In Saturday”, originally offered to Mott the Hoople, to cement the success of “All the Young Dudes”, but rejected in favour of building on initial success, from the Bowie composition, with material of their own creation. For years, my favourite track on “Aladdin Sane” was rock-driven “Cracked Actor” but, on recent re-evaluation, I currently rate the title track above all others in the collection. The reason for this is pianist Mike Garson. He takes conventional pop songs, bends and steers them towards jazz-tinged avant-garde, and produces something unique.

3. The Best Years of Our Lives by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel (1975)

“The Best Years of Our Lives” was Cockney Rebel’s third album but the first with the new line-up that included classically-trained keyboard player Duncan MacKay, who would later work on number one recordings by Kate Bush and 10cc, and guitarist Jim Cregan, future collaborator with Rod Stewart and Katie Melua. This Steve Harley recording spawned the massively successful chart-topping single “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)”, later used to good effect in Brit-flick “The Full Monty”. The follow-up, “Mr. Raffles (Man It was Mean)”, while nowhere near as popular, influenced one of my early songs, “Yvonne (You Turn Me On)”, both musically and lyrically in that I essentially rewrote Steve’s song in the minor while the “Yvonne” of the title was a reference to Harley’s backing vocalist and girlfriend of the time, Yvonne Keeley! My favourite track on “Best Years”, and also my favourite Harley song, is the marvellously nutty “Back to the Farm”.

4. Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles (1967)

The Beatles’ album “Magical Mystery Tour” probably isn’t as highly regarded as its groundbreaking immediate-predecessor, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, due to the nature of its original release in the UK. What eventually became Side One of the LP, nine years after the six songs’ initial release as a double EP, were the tracks actually used in the film of the same name. Side Two was comprised of five A and B-sides released in the same year. But, what a collection! On the first side, arguably the best compositions by both John Lennon, in the anarchic “I am the Walrus”, and Paul McCartney, with the haunting “The Fool on the Hill”, while, on the second, possibly the finest double A-sided single in the history of popular music, namely “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”. As if that wasn’t enough, to top it all, the whole album is rounded off with the anthemic “All You Need is Love”.

5. Forty Licks by The Rolling Stones (2002)

I’m not overly keen on compilation albums but The Rolling Stones’ “Forty Licks” is such good value it’s very hard to resist! It actually packs a whopping 235MB while the quality of the music, throughout the entire two-disc set, is every bit as fulfilling as the quantity. The record does what it says on the sleeve, and includes forty songs spanning a forty-year recording career. Most of my favourite Stones’ tracks are present including “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Brown Sugar”. David Bowie covered “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, at breakneck speed, on “Aladdin Sane” and, on “Forty Licks”, the original version closes the first disc. My one gripe about the collection is that it doesn’t include “We Love You”. This, piano-led, rocker of a tune can be found on the more recent “Rolled Gold Plus”. In the words of The Strolling Bones’ front man, Michael Philip Jagger himself, “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)”!

Another selection to follow, at a later date…

Far Beyond the Pale Horizon

There’s an excellent new rock-documentary series, in seven parts, currently running on BBC Two, on Saturday evenings, appropriately entitled “Seven Ages of Rock”! Last weekend, it’s repeated on Sundays on BBC One, the second instalment moved forward from the rhythm and blues of the Sixties, featured in the first programme, to the era of glam and progressive rock under the title “White Light, White Heat: Art Rock”. It essentially covered the work of five acts, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Velvet Underground, David Bowie and Roxy Music, exploring the links, as the episode-title suggests, between art and rock! Bryan Ferry read Fine Art at Newcastle University, for example, while Andy Warhol managed Lou Reed’s band, the Velvets, in the States. During the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis the movement became increasingly surreal as Gabriel donned a red dress and the head of a fox!! This harked back to the days when Pink Floyd boasted Syd Barrett as their lead singer, detailing the release of their first single, “Arnold Layne”, about a transvestite stealing women’s underwear from washing lines!!! Controversial, for the time, whereas today he could just pop into Primark’s!

Keeping a sharp eye, and ear, on the career of Syd was a young man named David Jones who, after changing his surname to Bowie, picked up where Barrett left off, scoring a novelty hit in the late Sixties with a song called “Space Oddity”. It wasn’t until 1972 that Bowie became a major player, however, with the release of hit single “Starman” from the album “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”. He would later cover Floyd’s second single, the exceptional “See Emily Play”, on his album “Pinups”. Supporting Bowie on a couple of major concert dates in London was an up-and-coming glam-rock outfit called Roxy Music. Again in 1972, they released what became a seminal rock single based on one of Bryan’s paintings, “Virginia Plain”. In my opinion, there hasn’t been a single to top the inventiveness of this recording in the last 35 years. Its strengths lie in the instrumentation and sonority of the track rather than melody and harmony. Chromatic bass line, synthesiser treatments, oboe ostinato coupled with Ferry’s voice and lyric, pulling together an extraordinary list of references, make this song unique in the annals of rock. Programme three, next weekend, documents the rise of Punk in the late Seventies!

Bryan Ferry - To Make You Feel My Love

(intro)

When the rain is blowing in your face,
And the whole world is on your case,
I could offer you a warm embrace,
To make you feel my love.

When evening shadows and the stars appear,
And there is no one there to dry your tears,
I could hold you for a million years,
To make you feel my love.

I know you haven’t made your mind up yet,
But I would never do you wrong,
I’ve known it from the moment that we met,
No doubt in my mind where you belong…

I would go hungry, I’d go black and blue,
I’d go crawling down the avenue,
Oh, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do,
To make you feel my love.

(instrumental)

The storms are raging on the rolling sea,
And on the highway of regret,
The winds of change are blowing wild and free,
You ain’t seen nothing like me yet…

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true,
Oh, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do,
Go to the ends of the earth for you,
To make you feel my love.

Bryan Ferry - Avalon (Paris, 2000)

(intro)

Now the party’s over,
I’m so tired,
And then I see you coming,
Out of nowhere.
Much communication,
In a motion,
Without conversation,
Or a notion.

Avalon.

When the samba takes you,
Out of nowhere,
And the background fading,
Out of focus.
Yes, the picture’s changing,
Every moment,
And your destination,
But you don’t know it.

Avalon.

Dancing, and dancing,
We’re dancing, and dancing.

When you bossa nova,
There’s no holding,
And would you have me dancing,
Out of nowhere.

Avalon.

(instrumental)

Avalon, Avalon,
Avalon, Avalon.

Avalon, Avalon,
Avalon, Avalon.

Avalon.

Bryan Ferry - Stockholm, Sweden 2000

1) Falling In Love Again

(intro)

Falling in love again,
Never wanted to,
What am I to do?
Can’t help it.

Love’s always been my game,
Play it how I may,
I was made that way,
Can’t help it.

Girls cluster to me,
Like moths around the flame,
And if their wings burn,
I know I’m not to blame…

Falling in love again,
Never wanted to,
What am I to do?
Can’t help it.

(instrumental)

Girls cluster to me,
Like moths around the flame,
And if their wings burn,
I know I’m not to blame…

Falling in love again,
Never wanted to,
What am I to do?
Can’t help it.

2) A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

(intro)

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
Walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
Stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
Been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
It’s a hard, and it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
What did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’,
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one one-hundred drummers whose hands are a-blazin’,
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’,
Heard one person starve, many people laughin’,
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, hard, ha’, hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

(intro rpt)

And what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
What’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
Walk through the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, and the none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
Reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand in the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, and it’s a ha-ha’, ha-ha’, ha-ha’, hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, and it’s a so hard, oh so hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Bryan Ferry - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
Walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
Stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
Been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
It’s a hard, and it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
What did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, that roared out a warnin’,
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one one-hundred drummers whose hands are a-blazin’,
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’,
Heard one person starve, many people laughin’,
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, hard, ha’, hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
Walk through the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, and none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand in the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a ha’, ha’, ha-ha’, hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, and it’s a ha-ha-a’, hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

In the Hush of Evening

It turned out that the Bryan Ferry gig on BBC1, last Friday evening, was primarily to promote his new album, of eleven Bob Dylan covers, to be released on March 5th, the same day ITV1 SF series “Primeval” sees the light of day on DVD. It was, nonetheless, an enjoyable show despite not knowing a third of the songs! Ferry and his band played twelve numbers, five of which were written by Bob with four of those appearing on new Ferry release “Dylanesque”. In the end, one of those four new covers turned out to be the highlight of the concert for me. It was great to see the original Ferry Dylan-cover, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, live. Actually, it was just nice to hear it again, after some considerable time, but the delicacy of “(To) Make You Feel My Love” just blew me away. The new album is worth buying for this song alone.

The gig began with second solo single “The In Crowd”. This has always been one of my favourites although I’ve always preferred the extended album version with the air-slicing Phil Manzanera electric guitar solo at the song’s climax. Second in the show was “All Along the Watchtower” with which it’s straight into Dylan territory. Next up followed “Slave to Love” to which I confess an over familiarity. When I was younger, and more naive, I assumed Ferry was looking, literally, for someone to love as opposed to the actual idea of himself being controlled by every whim and desire of the concept of love! Then came the previously mentioned highlight, “(To) Make You Feel My Love”, and the second Dylan song of the evening. As with most songs that really appeal to me, it reeked of melancholy, centring around a tear-inducing chord progression on the piano, played by Colin Good, and that typical Ferry plaintive-cry vocal.

By contrast, it was straight into the raunchiness of twelve bar blues, and that most popular of his solo singles, “Let’s Stick Together”, the first of several in the concert to feature Bryan’s harmonica. Then, back to Dylan, and the new album, with “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, again replete with harmonica warbling. A return to the familiar with “Don’t Stop the Dance” was equally followed by a return to Dylan and “Gates of Eden”. This was the fourth and last of the new tracks. Thus, from here to the end, the audience was now on familiar territory with, firstly, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, then the delicious “I Put a Spell on You” from the album “Taxi”. Mandy Drummond played viola on “Hard Rain” while Ian Dixon played the sax solo, and long-term Ferry collaborator Chris Spedding the guitar, on Lennon-cover “Jealous Guy” as the whistled melody closed an all-too-brief but electrifying re-acquaintance with the Ferrymeister!

Byron Ferrari, Bogart of Rock!

I’ve been blogging now for nearly two years and I realised I’ve never written a post entirely devoted to my all-time favourite pop/rock singer and band, namely Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music. It seems like a good moment to do so as I believe a new Roxy album is imminent as opposed to another solo album, although either is always an appreciated addition to my music collection. The last solo album was “Frantic” which, rightly or wrongly, and knowing Bryan’s penchant for cinema, I’ve always assumed was named after the Roman Polanski movie starring Harrison Ford. The last studio Roxy Music album though was “Avalon”, now a quarter century old!

This post is also timely in that it’s an opportunity to let you know that Mr Ferry can be seen in concert on BBC1 this coming Friday at 11.15pm. The listings describe him as ex-Roxy which I can only hope is poor research on the part of that magazine’s compiler. Anyway, if you’re going out, set your VCRs! It’s only fifty minutes long but, nonetheless, very welcome. I do hope he performs some lesser-known songs, even some rarities would be nice, but I’m sure the programme will also include the better known hits such as “Let’s Stick Together” and, of course, “Love is the Drug”. Get ready to click your fingers to, “Late at night, I parked my car, Made my way to the singles bar…”

I could write a book on Roxy Music’s early history as they were as important to me in the Seventies as “Doctor Who” and the puppet shows of Gerry Anderson had been in the Sixties. Back in 1972, everything about the group seemed unusual which is probably what initially attracted me to them. Bryan Ferry was the singer of course, dabbling a little on keyboards, while the rest of the line-up included Phil Manzanera on guitar, Andy Mackay on oboe and saxophone, Brian Eno on synthesiser and Paul Thompson on drums. Roxy had no regular bass player. They had street cred but also an air of sophistication and it was the combination of the two that was so intoxicating.

The band signed to Island records better known as a reggae label! They released their eponymously-titled debut album before the first single. Usually a single is released a fortnight in advance as a promotional trailer for the longer work. And when the single was released, it wasn’t taken from the album. Perhaps not as business-minded back then, Ferry included no singles on either of the first two albums. In fact only four singles can be found on the first five studio albums before the band took a break from recording together. That first 45, “Virginia Plain”, was such a radical departure from anything else around at the time, even Bowie and Bolan, that I was instantly attracted to this sonic explosion.

“Pyjamarama” followed, as did a second album “For Your Pleasure” and indeed it was and still is! This record is regarded as their classic. It contains “Do the Strand” and “Editions of You”, released as a double a-sided single in the rest of Europe, as well as “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” and that’s even before you flip the LP over! It was also the last to feature Brian Eno before he left to pursue a solo career beginning with “Here Come the Warm Jets”. Meanwhile, Bryan Ferry started a solo career, to run alongside the band’s releases, allowing him to record other people’s songs, cover versions - but not the production-line pap normally associated with that term. Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” was the debut single taken from the album “These Foolish Things”.

Eddie Jobson of rock band Curved Air was recruited as a replacement for Eno, a more classically accomplished musician and violin and keyboard virtuoso. He was always cited as a proper member of the band but I’m not sure he really wasn’t a session musician. He stayed for the next three albums, “Stranded”, “Country Life” and “Siren”. Johnny Gustafson played bass on these, also, and was definitely a session player as when they toured “Country Life”, for example, ex-King Crimson bassist John Wetton took his place. Ironic, as, pre-Roxy, Bryan failed an audition to join Crimson. “Street Life” and “All I Want is You” were the third and fourth singles, from the third and fourth albums respectively. Two singles were released from “Siren”, “Love is the Drug” and “Both Ends Burning”.

Ferry followed up his first solo album with “Another Time, Another Place”, another record of cover versions but for the title track. Already the differentiating factor between solo and group career was beginning to erode. Two singles were released from this opus, “The In Crowd” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”. This period in Roxy’s history came to a close with a live album, “Viva! Roxy Music”, and a “Greatest Hits” collection including the first two singles on a long-player for the first time. They were reissued as a double a-sided single in the UK. By this time, both Andy Mackay and Phil Manzanera also had solo projects underway so there was much material to keep the enthusiast happy.

Several years passed and Roxy eventually reformed to record three more albums. I caught them live, for a third and final time, on their “Manifesto” tour which they followed up with “Flesh and Blood” and “Avalon”, a highly polished swansong but a far cry from the sound with which they started out. Hits were aplenty including “Trash”, “Dance Away” and “Avalon” but, ironically, considering other people’s songs had previously been the province of Bryan’s solo work, Roxy Music’s only number one was a cover of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy”! Drummer Paul Thompson had by now departed to run an antique firearms shop leaving the core trio of Bryan, Andy and Phil to conclude the second era of one of the most musically interesting bands of all-time, Roxy Music.