At risk of being insensitive or seeming to make light of it, no renowned music artist died this past week, that I’m aware of, at least as of Thursday night and Friday morning as I prep the show. So, unlike the past two Saturdays when I played songs from The Band (RIP Garth Hudson) and Marianne Faithfull, no tribute set for this Saturday. That is, unless one looks at this three-album play, delayed for three weeks, as tribute to the following artists’ 1970s excellence. We have Elton John’s Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy from 1975, Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals and Who Do We Think We Are by Deep Purple, released in 1973. A commentary on each album appears below each record’s track list. Song clips also available on my Facebook page.

Elton John – Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy

1. Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy
2. Tower Of Babel
3. Bitter Fingers
4. Tell Me When The Whistle Blows
5. Someone Saved My Life Tonight
6. (Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket
7. Better Off Dead
8. Writing
9. We All Fall In Love Sometimes
10. Curtains

A concept album that traces the early careers of Elton John (Captain Fantastic) and lyricist Bernie Taupin (the Brown Dirt Cowboy) as they struggled to establish themselves in the music industry in late 1960s London. There’s loads of available literature on the album, which also works as a collection of individual songs, continuing the duo’s early to mid-1970s hot streak. And, like most EJ albums of that period – and many 1960s and ’70s albums – the so-called deep cuts are as strong as the singles. There was just one single released from the album, Someone Saved My Life Tonight. Two essential songs for me: Tell Me When The Whistle Blows and the title track.

Pink Floyd – Animals

1. Pigs On The Wing 1
2. Dogs
3. Pigs (Three Different Ones)
4. Sheep
5. Pigs On The Wing 2

A concept album about sociopolitical conditions in mid-1970s Great Britain, it doesn’t seem to get the universal critical acclaim of Pink Floyd albums like The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here or The Wall but it’s always been one of my favorites, and that of many fans, amid that run of albums that was predated by another winner, 1971’s Meddle. The album nicely brackets the three extended pieces with the opening and closing acoustic entries. The centrepiece for me is Pigs (Three Different Ones). It’s in part a diatribe against British morality crusader Mary Whitehouse, with aggressive musical accompaniment adding to the impact of the repeated refrain “ha ha, charade you are.”

Deep Purple – Who Do We Think We Are

1. Woman From Tokyo
2. Mary Long
3. Super Trouper
4. Smooth Dancer
5. Rat Bat Blue
6. Place In Line
7. Our Lady

The last album in the first go-around of the so-called Mark II version of Deep Purple that featured Ian Gillan (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Roger Glover (bass), Ian Paice (drums) and Jon Lord (keyboards). The guys who did Smoke On The Water, on Machine Head. That lineup reunited for two albums – Perfect Strangers and The House Of Blue Light – and, after another breakup, another album in the 1990s – The Battle Rages On – before Blackmore took permanent leave. Music critics seem to denigrate it, but most Purple fans I know like Who Do We Think We Are and if the band was in tatters in interpersonal terms and supposedly in musical terms, more bands should use that creative formula. And, of course, there are instances where such push and pull in a group setting results in compelling art.

How can an album with songs like opener Woman From Tokyo, Mary Long – another assault on Mary Whitehouse and fellow morality campaigner Lord Longford, four years before Roger Waters/Pink Floyd had at her – and others be deemed so flawed and not rate with Mark II’s other ’70s stuff? I don’t get it, but everyone hears things differently. Another great track, certainly lyrically, is Smooth Dancer. Gillan and Blackmore never got along, at least for very long, which often fueled Mark II’s breakups. However, they did make musical magic together and Smooth Dancer stands out as lyrically, Gillan takes shots at his rival, called ‘black suede’ in a reference to Blackmore’s clothing preferences. Interesting how Blackmore could play so well – or even not apparently raise a stink over such a song being on the album – given the subject matter. Granted, they didn’t necessarily have to be in studio at the same time but Blackmore would have seen/heard the lyrics, so he probably just didn’t care, which would fit his mercurial nature.

My track-by-track tales follow the bare-bones list. Song clips also available on my Facebook page.

1. The Rolling Stones, If You Can’t Rock Me
2. Uriah Heep, The Magician’s Birthday
3. Scorpions, Top Of The Bill (live, from Tokyo Tapes)
4. Iron Maiden, When The Wild Wind Blows
5. Judas Priest, Burn In Hell
6. Judas Priest, Invincible Shield
7. Arthur Lee, Stay Away From Evil
8. Jethro Tull, With You There To Help Me
9. Blodwyn Pig, San Francisco Sketches (Beach Scape/Fisherman’s Wharf/Telegraph Hill/I’m Falling Out Of The Room)
10. Tame Impala, Elephant
11. April Wine, Slow Poke
12. Savoy Brown, All I Can Do
13. Simon McBride (Deep Purple guitarist), One More Try
14. U2, Surrender
15. Free, Soon I Will Be Gone
16. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Maiden Voyage

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Rolling Stones, If You Can’t Rock Me . . . Energetic rocker with a great mid-song bass break, it’s the opening track on 1974’s It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll album, guitarist Mick Taylor’s last with the band after five fruitful years. He was replaced by Ronnie Wood, who was at least the inspiration if not an uncredited co-writer of the album’s title track, while still in the Faces but inexorably moving into the Stones’ orbit in large measure via his friendship with Keith Richards. The Stones effectively paired this with a rearranged Get Off Of My Cloud during their 1975-76 tours of North America and Europe – available on the 1977 live album Love You Live plus subsequent archival releases – but to my knowledge and research didn’t get back to If You Can’t Rock Me, on its own and well done, until the 2002 Licks tour celebrating the band’s 40th anniversary. They’ve since gone 20-plus years beyond that milestone.

2. Uriah Heep, The Magician’s Birthday . . . We begin a hard rock/metal segment of the set with this progressive 10-minutes and change title cut to the band’s 1973 album. The track shifts between mellow verses and powerful, heavy, what I term ‘galloping’ choruses including rat-a-tat drumming and great guitar soloing. The future members of Iron Maiden were obviously listening. We’ll get to Maiden in about seven minutes but first we’ll sting you with Scorpions.

3. Scorpions, Top Of The Bill (live, from Tokyo Tapes) . . . Originally a three and one half minute track on the 1975 studio album In Trance, this is the pile-driving live version, or at least more pile-driving than the studio song, at double the length, from Tokyo Tapes. The live set was released in 1978 featuring early Scorpions slabs of heavy rock/metal before they became more a pop-metal and power ballad hitmaking machine. A 2015 expanded re-release of the live album includes an 11-minute version of Top Of The Bill, recorded on the same tour that yielded Tokyo Tapes. That version is also available on YouTube if not various streaming services.

4. Iron Maiden, When The Wild Wind Blows . . . Eleven-minute epic from 2010’s The Final Frontier album. It’s one of Iron Maiden’s lengthy prog-metal excursions, something the band has always done but increasingly so later in its career. This track is loosely based on the 1982 nuclear war-themed graphic novel I’ve not read, titled When The Wind Blows.

5. Judas Priest, Burn In Hell . . . Dun, dun, dun, dun dun nun . . . hypnotic, ever-building opening guitar riff preceding all, er, hell breaking loose on this, my favorite track from the Tim (Ripper) Owens on lead vocals version of Priest. It’s from the 1997 album Jugulator, the first of two, Demolition in 2001 the other, released during the period singer Rob Halford left to pursue other projects including the short-lived thrash-metal outfit Fight.

6. Judas Priest, Invincible Shield . . . Smokin’, immediate, heavy riff rocking metal title cut from the 2024 album. It’s the fifth Priest studio platter, as Priest continues to pack a powerful punch, no treading water or resting on laurels, since Halford returned to the fold for the 2005 album Angel Of Retribution. I saw the reunion tour with Halford in 2004, before any new album was out, Slayer opened, great show by both bands.

7. Arthur Lee, Stay Away From Evil . . . Total change of direction into this toe-tapping bouncy funky wah wah guitar-laced groove tune from the band Love leader’s 1981 self-titled solo album. “I wrote the song about myself,” Love says in the album’s song-by-song liner notes. “It means just what it says, but then how can you?”

8. Jethro Tull, With You There To Help Me . . . Progressive folk-rock fusion might be how best to describe this track, and most of Tull’s material in general, aside from the first, blues-oriented album This Was. That album was so named because it ‘was’ Tull before the split between Ian Anderson and Tull’s first guitarist, blues-oriented Mick Abrahams, over musical direction. This is from the 1970 album Benefit which I’ve always thought of as a two-fer musical piece, stylistically flowing together with 1969’s Stand Up which introduced guitarist Martin Barre to the Tull team.

9. Blodwyn Pig, San Francisco Sketches (Beach Scape/Fisherman’s Wharf/Telegraph Hill/I’m Falling Out Of The Room) . . . . A multi-part suite, each offering a different mood while blending jazz, blues, and rock elements, from the band Mick Abrahams formed after leaving Jethro Tull. The song even features some flute, a seemingly obvious tip of the cap to Tull. San Francisco Sketches is from Getting To This, Blodwyn Pig’s 1970 release and second album, after debut Ahead Rings Out in 1969. Terrific name, Blodwyn Pig, Blodwyn being a Welsh name meaning fair, or white, flower. The band name was apparently coined by a stoned friend of the band.

10. Tame Impala, Elephant . . . Retro-psychedelic rock, great riff, could have come out in the 1960s but it’s actually from 2012 by the one-person (at least in studio) project Tame Impala, aka Australian singer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker. I remember my older son mentioning Tame Impala some years ago and I got into the music for a while but, while I like it, it sort of just faded from my playlists until the other day when, rummaging around, I picked up a compilation CD from a 2012 issue of Classic Rock Magazine and, voila. Tame Impala has become worthy of reinvestigation, for me.

11. April Wine, Slow Poke . . . Bluesy ribald subject matter groove tune from the 1975 album Stand Back which featured the hit single Tonite Is A Wonderful Time To Fall In Love. I was generally more an April Wine compilation collector until the 1977 album Live At The El Mocambo, taken from the famous (or infamous) Toronto club shows April Wine opened for The Rolling Stones, and that April Wine live album is actually where I first heard Slow Poke.

12. Savoy Brown, All I Can Do . . . Lengthy, soulful blues rock track, nearly 11 minutes, from the band’s 1971 Street Corner Talking album. As always, it features the sterling guitar playing of the late Kim Simmonds, who I saw live with Savoy Brown at the 2013 Kitchener Blues Festival.

13. Simon McBride, One More Try . . . Gary Moore-like blues rock ballad, when Moore did blues rock as opposed to his forays into hard rock and metal, and another one I pulled from that Classic Rock Magazine compilation CD I found lying around via which I rediscovered Tame Impala. This is from McBride’s 2012 solo album Crossing The Line. As of 2022, he’s Deep Purple’s new permanent guitarist, having replaced Steve Morse. Morse temporarily left Deep Purple to tend to his ailing wife, who has sadly since passed, with McBride taking over on tour until Morse decided to leave permanently, saying he was ‘handing over the keys to the vault” to McBride who, the always classy Morse added, had ‘nailed’ the Purple gig. That was confirmed by a friend of mine who saw Purple last summer and was impressed by McBride’s playing which had its first studio outing with Purple on the band’s 2024 release = 1.

14. U2, Surrender . . . Great song with a terrific rhythmic groove, from the 1983 album War, U2’s third studio release and one that arguably truly broke them big, featuring such hits as New Year’s Day and Sunday Bloody Sunday. Playing it for the show is a classic case, for me, anyway, of rediscovering a song after not having played an album in ages. As soon as it started I was “oh, yeah, I remember this.” Someone on YouTube put it this way and it would be difficult for me to provide a better analysis, so here’s his: “Every great album has at least one or two songs that weren’t a commercial hit, but add to the feel, acts as connective tissue, and gives an album substance and style. This is one of those songs.” Well put.

15. Free, Soon I Will Be Gone . . . And soon this show will be over, one song to go after this one, a beautiful ballad from the 1970 album Highway as I prepare to hit the road home.

16. Blood, Sweat & Tears, Maiden Voyage . . . A cover of the 1965 Herbie Hancock tune that’s become a jazz standard, blending BS & T’s typical jazz and rock elements and recorded for the band’s 1972 studio release New Blood. The album indeed represented new blood for the band, with lead singer David Clayton Thomas having gone solo although he later returned for a few more 1970s BS & T albums. Clayton Thomas was replaced by R & B singer Jerry Fisher on New Blood and other albums, although Maiden Voyage is an instrumental.

I had a show ready to go, then on Thursday came news that Marianne Faithfull had died. So, my show instead is a tribute to Rolling Stones’ frontman Mick Jagger’s 1960s girlfriend Faithfull who was a great artist in her own right, particularly long after leaving the Stones’ orbit.

That was evident on her return to prominence brilliant 1979 album Broken English which fit with the punk/new wave ethos of that time and was the first in a hot streak trilogy of the albums Broken English, Dangerous Acquaintances and A Child’s Adventure into the mid-1980s. The Broken English album in particular and subsequent releases featured her, well, broken english by booze, cigarettes and substance abuse voice. It was a far cry from the sweet sounds of her 1960s material like the Stones’ As Tears Go By, such that she came across as an entirely new artist, possessed by the passage of time and life experience as one of character and authenticity.

So, I’m playing the entire Broken English album plus assorted tracks, covers and otherwise, from throughout Faithfull’s career. Additional commentary after the bare-bones list. Song clips also available on my Facebook page.

Marianne Faithfull – Broken English

1. Broken English
2. Witches’ Song
3. Brain Drain
4. Guilt
5. The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan
6. What’s The Hurry?
7. Working Class Hero . . . John Lennon cover, brilliantly done.
8. Why D’Ya Do It . . . last but not least, the essential centerpiece of the album, a vitriolic rant over a lover’s infidelity.
——————
9. House Of The Rising Sun
10. The Blue Millionaire (extended 8:23 minute version)
11. A Stranger On Earth
12. Strange Weather
13. Falling From Grace
14. I’m A Loser (Beatles cover)
15. As Tears Go By
16. Intrigue
17. Reason To Believe (Tim Hardin cover)
18. For Beauty’s Sake
19. Sister Morphine (1969 version)
20. Sister Morphine (1979 version)
21. Running For Our Lives
22. Sweetheart
23. Bored By Dreams
24. Truth Bitter Truth
25. Monday Monday (The Mamas And The Papas cover)
——————

My track tales, outside of the Broken English album already covered:

9. House Of The Rising Sun . . . From 1964, Marianne Faithfull’s take on the traditional song done by so many but arguably most notably by The Animals.

10. The Blue Millionaire (extended 8:23 minute version) . . . A shorter version was released on the 1983 album A Child’s Adventure. This is the extended 12-inch vinyl single later also released on the excellent 2-CD compilation Marianne Faithfull A Perfect Stranger: The Island Anthology released on Island Records in 1998.

11. A Stranger On Earth . . . A heartfelt, hurtin’ torch song from her 1987 album Strange Weather.

12. Strange Weather . . . And the title cut from that album, similar vein. Among the luminaries on the album: Dr. John and the recently departed Garth Hudson of The Band fame – who I honored last week via a Band song set – on piano and accordion, respectively.

13. Falling From Grace . . . From that hot streak trio of albums I mentioned once Faithfull returned to prominence late 1970s – Broken English, Dangerous Acquaintances and A Child’s Adventure. This one’s from 1983’s A Child’s Adventure.

14. I’m A Loser . . . Her 1965 cover of The Beatles’ tune, with Faithfull’s then-pristine, beautiful voice carrying it to great effect.

15. As Tears Go By . . . Not her original cover of the song written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, which became (to them) an unexpected hit, No. 9 on the UK charts, such that they then quickly recorded it as a Rolling Stones track and made No. 6. What I’m playing, though, is Faithfull’s more haunting version from her Strange Weather album, released in 1987.

16. Intrigue . . . From Dangerous Acquaintances, the 1981 followup to 1979’s Broken English and critically panned, relatively speaking, even by Faithfull herself at the time as it apparently was a difficult recording due to conflicts among the various musicians yet . . . How can an album featuring a compelling ‘lost love’ song like this plus others like Sweetheart, For Beauty’s Sake and Truth Bitter Truth be anything but terrific?

17. Reason To Believe . . . Back to 1967 we go for this Tim Hardin classic also memorably done by Rod Stewart on his 1971 album Every Picture Tells A Story.

18. For Beauty’s Sake . . . Up tempo number from the Dangerous Acquaintances album, a track co-written by Faithfull and Steve Winwood of Traffic/Blind Faith and solo fame.

19. Sister Morphine . . . Faithfull’s original 1969 version, co-written with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, later to appear as a Stones’ track on their 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

20. Sister Morphine . . . And her 1979 version, recorded during the sessions for the Broken English album and later reworked and released in this studio version on the 1998 compilation A Perfect Stranger: The Island Anthology.

21. Running For Our Lives . . . From the 1983 album A Child’s Adventure, it’s always been one of my favorite Faithfull tracks.

22. Sweetheart . . . Back to Dangerous Acquaintances we go.

23. Bored By Dreams . . . A pulsating rock tune, great drumming by various session players, from Faithfull’s 1995 album A Secret Life.

24. Truth Bitter Truth . . . Another of my favorite Faithfull tracks, from Dangerous Acquaintances.

25. Monday Monday . . . Marianne’s 1967 cover of The Mamas & the Papas’ hit as I look ahead to my Monday show, coming up on February 3, 8-10 pm ET.