40 Year Itch : If I Crossed A Million Rivers

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Thundering right out of the gates with its lead off track "Keep Yourself Alive", Queen released its debut album on July 13th 1973 and immediately drew comparisons to Led Zeppelin.

"With its first album Queen has produced a driving, high energy set which in time may be looked upon with the same reverence Led Zep I now receives" said the Chicago Tribune. 

Rolling Stone's Gordon Fletcher added "There's no doubt that this funky, energetic English quartet has all the tools they'll need to lay claim to the Zep's abdicated heavy-metal throne, and beyond that to become a truly influential force in the rock world. Their debut album is superb.".

It took them long enough. 

     Queen played very few gigs. Its members were all college students. Guitarist Brian May was working on his Ph.D. in astronomy. It took Queen almost all of 1971 just to record five demos at the state of the art De Lane Lea studios in Wembley. Checking out the studio, producers Roy Thomas Baker and John Anthony heard the demos and signed the band to their management company Tribute. What did Queen get out of the deal? An opportunity to record their album only when the studio wasn't booked. 

Usually between 3 am and 7 am.

Pulling all nighters, Queen recorded all the songs by November of 1972 but had to wait another 9 months for the album to be released by EMI and Elektra. 

Thus the poignant point in the liner notes:

"Representing at least something of what Queen's music has been over the last three years."

Despite good reviews, Queen's debut did not sell. It wasn't glam enough for the now waning glam rock scene nor hard enough for the hard rock crowd. There are multi-tracking moments that will remind listeners of what Queen would become but not enough.

A strange footnote: 

While recording the album Freddie Mercury  and the boys agreed to record a cover of the Beach Boys' hit "I Can Hear Music" as  Larry Lurex.

What would push Queen to the next level? Certainly not publicity photos like the one below.

 In August of 1973 they were back in the studio working on Queen II.

40 Year Itch : Adventures in Soul

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Two Great Artists Challenge Themselves and Their Fans

With his dazzling live album in 1972 and his partnership with Roberta Flack on the Grammy winning "Where Is the Love", the multi-talented Donny Hathaway had finally struck Gold. Now, to show his new fans what he was really capable of, Hathaway recorded his most ambitious set yet.

I decided to call it Extension of a Man because I am in the process of expanding and developing styles. I would like to record as many styles as humanly possible for one person.

-Donny Hathaway

The album's best known cut is the beautiful easy listening anthem "Someday We'll All Be Free" ( used in Spike Lee's Malcolm X). When Hathaway first heard the finished take of the tune he broke down in tears. The lyrics, by friend Edward Howard, were written not as an anthem but as a message to Hathaway:

 "What was going through my mind at the time was Donny, because Donny was a very troubled person. I hoped that at some point he would be released from all that he was going through. There was nothing I could do but write something that might be encouraging for him."

But there's also the symphonic opener "I Love the Lord; He Heard My Cry ( Parts I & II)" , a Tijuana Brass inspired "Flying Easy", a funky revisiting of  "The Ghetto" called "The Slums" and a Latin instrumental called "Valdez in the Country". Added up, it's a masterpiece from one of soul music's great visionaries. 

This would be Hathaway's final album. The man Curtis Mayfield described as "instilled with the depth of religious feeling in black music" was also suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. The year after his 1978 comeback duet with Flack, "The Closer I Get To You", Hathaway apparently leaped to his death from the 15th floor of New York City's Essex House.

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I think we've found a winner for worst album cover of 1973.

Perhaps taking a cue from the progressive rock experimentalists , Aretha Franklin followed up her double live album of gospel music, Amazing Grace, with what initially was going to be a jazz vocal album, Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky). There's a straightforward take on Stephen Sondheim's "Somewhere" and a swinging rendition of James Moody's "Moody's Mood". Had producer Quincy Jones, record execs and Aretha herself not gotten cold feet, this might have a great, if underselling gamble. 

Instead they padded the album with filler and a song written by Aretha's sister Carolyn ( who sings background with Erma Franklin)  called "Angel" which hit #1 on the R and B charts and peaked at #20 on the pop charts. It was the first album Aretha recorded for Atlantic not to crack the Top 25 pop chart.

Quincy Jones also produced an astonishing Grammy winning single for Aretha in 1973 called "Master of Eyes ( The Deepness of Your Eyes)" which made it up to #33 on the pop charts but for some reason did not appear on Hey Now Hey.

40 Year Itch: Don and Phil Call It Quits

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By July of 1973, Don and his younger brother Phil Everly were barely talking. They would stay at different hotels, take separate cars to the gigs and even use separate dressing rooms. They'd fight like cats and dogs until the curtains were pulled apart and the show started. They were making good money as the Everly Brothers and, like Siamese Brothers,  seemed to be stuck with each other for life.

Then on July 13, 1973 at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California,  Don walked on stage after knocking back a few margaritas. He slurred the words. He sang the wrong words. He sang flat. At the end of the show, as Don took his bow, Phil smashed his guitar, walked off the stage and announced "I'll never get on a stage with that man again."

They only met once over the next decade : to bury their father.

40 Year Itch: This and That...

 

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Bits of Music news from the early Summer of 1973:

Richie Havens begins an 8 city tour to promote Portfolio, an album containing eight lithographs Havens himself drew.

Why is John Dean's picture in a music blog? Because the Time Magazine cover story was promised to Paul Simon.

  Buck Owens was spotted in San Diego for farewell ceremonies to two US Navy Destroyers sold to Brazil:
 The USS Buck and the USS Owens.

Gemini announced that their Watergate poster was outselling posters of Donny Osmond, David Cassidy and The Jackson 5.
                                 

Billy Paul bough his wife a Mercedes with the money he earned from "Me and Mrs Jones."

40 Year Itch : Of Love in Boulder Canyon

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  In the Summer of 1973, you could not escape the cheery mop top with the granny glasses. John Denver was everywhere. "Rocky Mountain High" had already peaked at #9 in the Billboard charts. Now his new album, Farewell Andromeda, was rising into the Top 20.




    He hosted a BBC variety show and guest hosted The Tonight Show. On a chairlift in Aspen, he had just written "Annie's Song", a future #1 song on the Easy Listening Charts. Swenson had just introduced a new ice cream flavor called "Rocky Mountain High".

And, with a backdrop of films showcasing the Rocky Mountains, Denver was about to perform a seven night engagement at the Universal Amphitheater. My dad and stepmother --who both knew Denver before he became a households name took me to a John Denver concert in 1973 and again in 1974.

After the latter concert Dad wrote Denver this letter:

Dear John:
 Your concert in New Haven was stupendous! My God, when you came on stage that first moment and the Coliseum roared...it must be an extraordinary sensation, rather frightening, rather pleasing, rather contemptible even. I mean how is it possible not to react with something approaching scorn at the animal that gets unleashed. There is that crowd aura, that same frenzied grip that politicians strive for, that Hitler achieved ( he, too, had at Nuremberg that astonishingly staged and managed show which created a crowd frenzy). I don't mean to compare you to Hitler, my friend, all I mean is you have achieved that same quality of having crowds react to you but that, unlike Hitler, of course you deserve it. 

 You gave the impression of being perfectly at ease, in control and professional all of which you are, but it came across. And I think your music--that is, the songs you write, are getting more and more beautiful and lyrical. I think "Sunshine on My Shoulder" (sic) is one of the loveliest songs I've heard in years. Very simple, very true like all good writing must be. And "Goodbye Again" is lovely too. Of course "Rocky Mountain High"--the title suddenly for the first time struck me as perfect for a high school in Denver. Wonderful idea, the little girl saying "I'm at Rocky Mountain High" and the other responding "I'll say..."--anyway , Rocky Mountain High is such a pleasing song and a nice thought.

 

40 Year Itch : Samba Soul from 1973

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Inspired by a West Coast heat wave, I present here three great Samba Soul tunes from 1973. 

Let's begin with Tim Maia and "Gostava Tanto de Voce" from his 1973 self-titled album. Maia was one of music's great wild men and ranked by Rolling Stone as the greatest Brazilian singer. Ever.

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Nobody could fuse Brazilian samba with soulful jazz rhythms like Luiz Melodia who released his highly acclaimed solo album, Perola Negra, in 1973. The title track is a classic.

Marku Ribas , the King of Samba Soul, died in April of this year. A master percussionist and vocalist, Ribas had already been recording for 20 years when he worked on the Dirty Work album with the Rolling Stones and even appeared in the music video for "Just Another Night". 1973's Underground is the place to start with this artist.

40 Year Itch: Lemmings

In the Summer of 1973, National Lampoon released Lemmings, a soundtrack to its off Broadway show that mocked Woodstock. Future SNL stars John Belushi and Chevy Chase and Mockumentary master Christopher Guest were among the performers. Belushi did his classic Joe Cocker impression in what would now would fail the PC test with its jokes about Muscular Dystrophy (41:40). Chase plays adequate drums on most of the cuts and apparently pulled off a John Denver impression. Guest impersonated Bob Dylan ( at 7:45) and James Taylor ( at 26:00) . One year later a 30 year old TV executive named Lorne Michaels began searching for a cast for a show to be called NBC's Saturday Night.

It's not so funny today but in 1973 the show ran for 350 performances and the album peaked somewhere near #100 on the Billboard charts.

Meanwhile, in 1973, the magazine published the only thing they've ever had to apologize for: