The mid-70s was a mid-life crisis for the rock album, wedged as it was between its golden era and the explosion of punk, which seemed to consciously take a dump on the dinosaurs mentioned in my previous posts and heralded a new golden age of New Wave. Some of those dinosaurs survived this brash meteor, but not always without injury. 1975 saw a final burst of sunshine before the rain, which appears to have fallen in 1976 (metaphorically, because in actuality 1976 witnessed an unprecedented heatwave).
Enjoying a second summer was Bob Dylan, who released "Blood on the Tracks" (10/10) in '75, which just about all Bob fans would rank as one of his 3 best albums; but Bob himself was quoted as saying that he didn't understand "people enjoying that type of pain" in reference to his divorce from Sara, which threaded its way throughout the album. Much as I love Bob, I'm sorry to say that I do enjoy his pain on "Blood on the Tracks". Bob's follow up in '76's "Desire" (9/10) and Rolling Thunder tour further demonstrated for the first time in rock history that you should never write anyone off. My favourite story related to "Desire" is the fact that he recruited violinist Scarlet Rivera, whose input on each track gives the album its distinctive character, by driving past her in the street and deciding that she just looked like she should join his band. He stopped and said hop in. So, you just would, wouldn't you?
Another artist, resisting extinction and continuing to evolve and fascinate was David Bowie. This was his 'Thin White Duke' era. The term 'Thin White Duke' pretty much refers to the fact that he looked SHIT at this time, like a famine victim, consuming more heroin than protein and risking professional suicide by releasing an album of white soul music. The words WHITE and SOUL go together like chocolate and fish or Jimmy Saville and children. But Bowie being Bowie, even when he doesn't quite pull it off, manages to pull it off enough to admire his artistry. "Young Americans" was too steeped in white soul for me, but "Station to Station" (9/10) developed from this to be more uniquely Bowie-esque
1975's top ten has mostly 10/10 and 9/10 albums for me. Neil Young continued his beige (not purple, because beige is best) patch with the postponed release of "Tonight's the Night" (9/10) in which he laments the deaths of friends to heroin - the drug which best symbolised the 1970s' dystopianism in contrast to the idealistic '60s drugs of acid and pot - and "Zuma" (10/10) in which Crazy Horse are utilised once more as a very early precursor of '90s grunge. Queen hit a peak with "Night at the Opera" (9/10), which features a great song that you might not know, but is worth checking out, called 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and "A Day at the Races" (8/10). Both albums were named after Marx Brothers films. This works much better than the titles "Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein" and "Abbot and Costello meet the Mummy", but at the time it was the latter films that I was personally enjoying more on a summer holiday morning on BBC2.
The artistic curves were also moving in the right direction for Bruce Springsteen, whose album "Born to Run" (10/10) begins with perhaps the most poetic series of lyrics of all time (look up 'Thunder Road' and prepare to weep) and Roxy Music who put out "Siren" (8/10) in this year. And Pink Floyd performed the impossible by following up and arguably equalling "Dark Side of the Moon" with "Wish you were Here" (10/10), the recording sessions for which were poignantly interrupted by an unrecognisable Syd Barrett, founder member and subject of the album's lyrics, who just wandered into Abbey Road like a ghost, clearly physically transformed by his drugs and mental health traumas.
But the cracks were beginning to show in the mid-70s. Led Zeppelin conjured up a very decent double album "Physical Graffiti" (9/10) in '75, but following a near-tragic car crash that nearly killed him and his wife, Robert Plant was singing from a wheelchair on 1976's "Presence" (7/10), their first disappointing album. Roy Harper and Willie Nelson both released their best albums in 1975 - respectively "HQ" (8/10) and "Red Headed Stranger" (8/10) - but 1976 produced so few great albums that I don't own enough to comprise a top 10. And those I do own, average a score of about 7/10 only. It's a real dip.
Tull's "Too Old to Rock and Roll: To Young to Die" (7/10) perhaps summarises the problem. The giants of rock were pushing 30 or in some cases not far off 40 and the next generation were still popping their zits and spending too much time appreciating the shower page in the Argos catalogue. Willie Nelson's "The Troublemaker" (7/10) failed to match its predecessor and I even have to put a 5/10 album on my list, which is "Jailbreak" (5/10) by Thin Lizzy, a band who always flattered to deceive.
Although meriting only 6/10, Blondie's self-titled debut at least provides a seed for a renaissance of rock music in the late 70s, as you'll see in my next post. Well. To an extent, anyway. I've just looked ahead. I won't pretend that I've packed it with cool new wave, post punk albums. I am, after all, a bit of a sad bastard, with more in common with Alan Partridge than John Peel, so please expect more Kate Bush and Supertramp than The Jam and Ian Dury next time round.
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