I start with a four-song ‘sung by Paul Rodgers’ set from various stages of the great singer’s career with The Firm (along with Jimmy Page), Free, Bad Company and as a solo artist. Then on to a few songs – Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan and three involving session keyboardist to the stars Nicky Hopkins – inspired by conversations I had with friends this past week. I wrap up with Neil Young, some reggae, Deep Purple and The Allman Brothers Band.

1. The Firm, Midnight Moonlight
2. Paul Rodgers, Morning After The Night Before
3. Free, Come Together In The Morning
4. Bad Company, Electricland
5. Pete Townshend, Sheraton Gibson
6. Bob Dylan, Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
7. Nicky Hopkins/Ry Cooder/Mick Jagger/Bill Wyman/Charlie Watts, Blow With Ry
8. Nicky Hopkins/Ry Cooder/Mick Jagger/Bill Wyman/Charlie Watts, Edward’s Thrump Up
9. Quicksilver Messenger Service, Edward, The Mad Shirt Grinder
10. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Sedan Delivery
11. Peter Tosh, Stepping Razor
12. Bob Marley and The Wailers, Concrete Jungle
13. Deep Purple, The Mule
14. The Allman Brothers Band, Mountain Jam (live)

My track-by-track tales:

1. The Firm, Midnight Moonlight . . . From the 1980s supergroup’s self-titled debut album, released in 1985 and featuring singer Paul Rodgers of Free and Bad Company fame and former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Also on board were drummer Chris Slade (Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and later AC/DC, notably on the Razors Edge album) and bassist Tony Franklin. Franklin’s extensive resume includes Page’s 1988 album Outrider and several albums with English folk rock singer/songwriter/guitarist Roy Harper, with whom Page and Zeppelin had a long association, including naming the song Hats Off To (Roy) Harper, from Led Zeppelin III, after him. Harper is also known for his lead vocals on Pink Floyd’s Have A Cigar, from the 1975 album Wish You Were Here.

A nine-minute combination acoustic/electric guitar-based track that ebbs and flows along depending which guitar takes the spotlight along with Rodgers’ vocals, Midnight Moonlight is rooted in the sessions for the Led Zeppelin album Physical Graffiti, released in 1975. It was then titled Swan Song (also the name of Led Zeppelin’s record label) but left unfinished at that point although it is available on YouTube. After a second album, Mean Business, released in 1986, The Firm closed up shop.

2. Paul Rodgers, Morning After The Night Before . . . Appropriate title and tune, for some mornings, perhaps. It’s a good one, a catchy mid-tempo rocker about life on the rock and roll road featuring lyrics like “the morning after the night before, I pick up my suitcase and I head for the door, I may never see this old room again, but the one I’m headed for will be exactly the same” later changing to “I may never see this room again, but I’ll always remember your voice (later changing to your face) and your name . . . ” It’s likely my favorite on Rodgers’ first solo album, Cut Loose, released in 1983 after the breakup of the original Bad Company. It’s a solo album in the truest sense of the term as Rodgers wrote and sang every song, played every instrument – guitar, bass, drums and keyboards – and produced the disc.

3. Free, Come Together In The Morning . . . The beautiful and bluesy sounds of Free, from the band’s final studio album, Heartbreaker, released in 1973.

4. Bad Company, Electricland . . . From Rough Diamonds, the 1982 album that was the last for the original lineup of Rodgers, guitarist Mick Ralphs, bassist Boz Burrell and drummer Simon Kirke. It tends to get critically panned but, and granted I’m a fan of anything Rodgers has been involved in, particularly Free and Bad Company, but I’ve always liked the album particularly this nice groove track and Painted Face, both written by Rodgers. He apparently wrote it while flying into Las Vegas, hence lyrics like “the neon lights go flashing by, electric land is in my eyes, the underworld is on the move and everybody’s got something to prove . . . ”

5. Pete Townshend, Sheraton Gibson . . . First of a few songs in what I’ll call my “inspiration from conversation” set within the overall list. I played The Who’s Quadrophenia album on last Saturday’s show and mid-week a friend texted me, talking about a Pete Townshend solo live performance of the Quadrophenia song I’m One (from Deep End Live!, released in 1986). There’s a lyric in that song “I got a Gibson, without a case . . . ” which my friend cited, prompting me to text back that he had reminded me of one of my favorite Townshend tunes, Sheraton Gibson. To which my friend replied “in my mind is a Cleveland afternoon”, one of the lines in Sheraton Gibson – which opens with the phrase, repeated throughout, “I’m sittin’ in the Sheraton Gibson playin’ my Gibson . . .”
The song, from Townshend’s first solo album, 1972’s Who Came First, is about missing home while on tour. I’ll let Townshend explain it, as he did in the liner notes to the expanded 2006 re-release of the album.

“I wrote this after a really good barbecue with the James Gang, their managers and families outside Cleveland. I had a good, good day. The next day (in Cincinnati), I was not only missing home as usual, but also Cleveland.”

Hence lyrics like “Cleveland, you blow my mind . . . thinkin’ about a sunny barbecue; I’m sittin’ in the Sheraton Gibson playin’ my Gibson, in my mind is a Cleveland afternoon.”

The Sheraton Gibson, a Cincinnati landmark since 1849, closed in 1974 but lives on in Townshend’s terrific tune.

6. Bob Dylan, Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands . . . That text chat got me thinking of hotels, which led me to thinking of the line from Dylan’s stirring song of memories and lament to his estranged wife Sara, who happened to visit the studio and have Dylan look at her and say ‘this one’s for you’ as he recorded the tune that appeared on his 1976 album Desire. She was stunned by the tribute, they reconciled but finally divorced in 1977.

“Stayin’ up for days in the Chelsea Hotel
Writin’ Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands for you”

So, I figured I’d play Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, the epic 11-plus minute track from Dylan’s classic 1966 album Blonde On Blonde.

Sad Eyed Lady brings up another personal memory, about the song and the album from which it came. My older brother had always been into Dylan, which is how I was introduced to his music although for the most part I was into the hits or well-known songs – Like A Rolling Stone, Lay Lady Lay, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, songs like Hurricane from the Desire album, etc. Then came the fall of 1981. I was in Peace River, Alberta, starting my journalism career, sharing a house with a few other people and one Sunday afternoon, everyone else was out and I was lying on the couch reading but noticed a friend’s pre-recorded cassette tape of Blonde On Blonde sitting on a coffee table. I popped it in and within moments down went the book – I am compelled to listen to Dylan undistracted, he’s not background music at least to me – and I lay back and let the album wash over me. Visions Of Johanna, Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, Sad Eyed Lady, on and on. I was transfixed and soon enough was catching up on his catalogue and then moving forward, album by album as they were released.

7. Nicky Hopkins/Ry Cooder/Mick Jagger/Bill Wyman/Charlie Watts, Blow With Ry . . . From Jamming With Edward, a pseudo-Rolling Stones release featuring their longtime session pianist/organist Hopkins and guitarist Cooder that a different friend of mine mentioned this week, we got discussing it, and here we are, the first of two tracks from it for this show. I’ve played material from Jamming With Edward before, but not recently. It was recorded in 1969 during the sessions for the Stones’ Let It Bleed album “while waiting for our guitar player to get out of bed” Mick Jagger writes about the absent Keith Richards in the liner notes to the album, finally released in 1972. It’s the kind of thing that, had it not been a band the stature of the Stones, had they not had their own label, Rolling Stones Records, chances are it would never have been released but it was, after being brought out of mothballs by producer Glyn Johns and Rolling Stones Records founding president Marshall Chess. People seem to like it or dismiss it or consign it to bootleg status, but I like it as do most Stones fans I know – it’s loose, sloppy and fun and there’s some fine, er, jamming on it. As the liner notes on the 1995 Virgin Records re-release state: A curio to top all curios, perhaps?

Here’s Jagger’s full notes/letter to buyers/listeners, from the original 1972 release, which tell the tale:

“Howdy doody whoever receives this record.

“Here’s a nice little piece of bullshit about this hot waxing which we cut one night in London, England while waiting for our guitar player to get out of bed. It was promptly forgotten (which may have been for the better) until it was unearthed from the family vaults by those two impressive entrepreneurs – Glyn Johns and Marshall Chess. It was they who convinced the artists that this historic jam of the giants should be unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

“As it cost about $2.98 to make the record, we thought that a price of $3.98 was appropriate for the finished product. I think that is about what it is worth. No doubt some stores may even give it away. The album consists of the Rolling Stones’ rhythm section plus solos from two instrumentalists – Nicky ‘Woof Woof’ Hopkins and Ry Cooder, plus the numbled bathroom mumblings of myself. I hope you spend longer listing to this record than we did making it.”

Yours faithfully,

Mick Jagger

The album made No. 7 on the Dutch charts and No. 33 on Billboard in the US.

As for the titular Edward, that’s Hopkins, who played not only with the Stones but countless artists including The Kinks, The Who, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart and on solo albums by Beatles John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The late Stones’ guitarist and founding member of the band, Brian Jones, bestowed the nickname on Hopkins during a 1967 session in London. The story goes that Jones was tuning his guitar and asked Hopkins to give him an E chord on piano. Given other studio noise, Hopkins couldn’t quite hear Jones so Jones shouted “Give me an E, like in Edward!” The rest, including some album and song titles, is history.

8. Nicky Hopkins/Ry Cooder/Mick Jagger/Bill Wyman/Charlie Watts, Edward’s Thrump Up . . . Song titles like this one for a nice groove track that is an eight-minute showcase for Hopkins’ talents.

9. Quicksilver Messenger Service, Edward, The Mad Shirt Grinder . . . Another piano showcase for Hopkins via this extended piece he wrote – as briefly a full-time group member – for the San Francisco psychedelic rock band’s 1969 album Shady Grove.

10. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Sedan Delivery . . . Dirty, gritty, grungy raunch and roll from 1979’s Rust Never Sleeps album.

11. Peter Tosh, Stepping Razor . . . A song written in 1967 by Joe Higgs, a mentor to many Jamaican reggae artists, including Tosh, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff, who described him as the ‘Father of reggae’. Tosh released it on his second solo album after he left Marley’s Wailers, the 1977 record Equal Rights. Tosh originally credited it to himself and it’s his memorable performance that made the song well known but, after litigation, subsequent re-releases of the album – and appearances the song has made on Tosh compilations – have credited Higgs. It’s a hypnotic, powerful, angry song with what I’d describe as having a catchy, escalating chorus, culminating in the well-known line “I’m dangerous.”:

“I’m like a flashing laser and a rolling thunder
I’m dangerous, dangerous
I’m like a stepping razor
Don’t you watch my size
I’m dangerous, I’m dangerous
Treat me good
If you wanna live
You better treat me good”

12. Bob Marley and The Wailers, Concrete Jungle . . . From the harder edge of Tosh to Marley, from his 1973 album Catch A Fire, which still featured Tosh along with enduring Marley songs like Concrete Jungle, Kinky Reggae and Stir It Up. Just me, perhaps, but I’ve always seen Tosh as The Rolling Stones to Marley’s being The Beatles in terms of approach but of course four giant artists I enjoy who stand alone within their genres. Marley’s is an arguably more subtle style than Tosh’s more direct approach, perhaps heard in their respective versions of the song Get Up, Stand Up, which they co-wrote. The Stones collaborated with Tosh on his 1978 album Bush Doctor which Keith Richards plays on and contains the Tosh-Mick Jagger duet on The Temptations’ track (You Gotta Walk) Don’t Look Back. It was the first of three records Tosh did while signed to Rolling Stones Records and he also opened for the Stones on some dates on their 1978 American tour in support of the Some Girls album.

13. Deep Purple, The Mule . . . I suppose we all know people who are stubborn as a mule as the saying goes although the song was, according to Purple singer Ian Gillan, inspired by the character The Mule from science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. The Mule is a mutant who can sense and manipulate the emotions of others. “Now I have become a fool because I listened to the mule.” In any case, a good track showcasing Purple’s typical instrumental talents, from 1971’s Fireball album. It was often extended to twice or more its 5:16 studio length in concert and on live albums like Made In Japan as a showcase for a drum solo by Ian Paice.

14. The Allman Brothers Band, Mountain Jam (live) . . . Something of a convoluted history on the release of this one. Originally played and recorded at the March 12-13, 1971 shows that became the landmark live album At Fillmore East, the 33-minute epic wasn’t on the original Fillmore record which was limited to seven songs on vinyl. This version of Mountain Jam first appeared on Eat A Peach, which was released in 1972 and featured new studio material and live work from the March, 1971 shows that didn’t fit on the original At Fillmore East, plus material from Fillmore shows the band did in June 1971. At Fillmore East was re-released in expanded form in 2003 and included Mountain Jam which by then had also come out on a 1992 compilation of all the Fillmore shows the Allmans did in 1971, titled The Fillmore Concerts. As Robert Shaw’s character in the 1973 movie The Sting was wont to say ‘ya falla (follow)?’

It’s 33 minutes that are never boring, which was the Allmans’ genius, their ability to sustain your interest throughout their long jams. A passage in the liner notes to The Fillmore Concerts release perhaps says it best:

“In other hands, the idea of extended jams that The Allman Brothers Band perfected during their early-Seventies heyday has deteriorated into long-winded show-off exercises. But one can’t blame the Allmans for that; it’s not their fault their imitators turned out to be far less inspired, that few could replicate their devotion to the blues and their determination to burn their own trail.”