Four years in the making, this swansong album from the electronic music pioneers swapped samples for session musicians. Steve Sutherland celebrates its brilliance
What if you could reinvent your life and have another go at it, starting somewhere, somewhen else? Me, I'd opt to have been born a decade earlier and I'd have moved to Los Angeles in 1965, aged 17. That way I'd have been hanging around the Sunset Strip in 1967 where, at the Whisky A Go Go alone, I'd have seen Love, The Doors, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, Spirit, Janis Joplin, and Them with Van Morrison. I might even have hopped a short haul or thumbed a ride to Monterey where the Pop Festival was, as they say, happening.
This debut record didn't launch the band to stardom, but remains much-loved by fans and the musicians it influenced. Steve Sutherland hears the 180g reissue
A funny thing happens when you get to a certain age and you've had a bit of a past life; people start writing about you. You crop up in their memoirs or they mention your name in interviews and reminiscences. As a rule these things are best avoided, especially if you're thin-skinned about personal criticism, although I can mostly handle the contrary opinions and character assassinations, writing them off as differences of perspective or sour grapes.
This fifth album by the glam rock/hair metal pioneers from Finland (and Leamington Spa) should have been the start of something beautiful, says Steve Sutherland
Let's say you are walking along Shaftesbury Avenue in London in the general direction of Cambridge Circus. It is the mid 1980s. Maybe you've been to the Shaftesbury Theatre just over the road to see a show. Or maybe you've just been for a dip in the Oasis swimming pool next door. Whatever, you've worked up a bit of a thirst so you duck through the door of the Oporto public house, just on the corner opposite St Mungo's home for the homeless, and take the couple of steps to the bar.
The anger-filled debut from the English punk/reggae group sparked fans far and wide, and a near 30-year search for the original cover art, says Steve Sutherland
Occasionally I get asked who was the most unpleasant rock star I encountered during my decades writing for the music press. That's a toughie, although Robert Palmer and Phil Lynott hover near the top of the pile. Far easier to say who was the scariest. Answer, without doubt: Henry Rollins.
Under new management, the mod quartet got creative on an album of three-minute pop gems, but struggled when it came to the title. Steve Sutherland listens...
Considering we currently find him being dangled by his ankles off a balcony four floors above the pavement, you could say, without too much exaggeration, that Robert Stigwood is having a bit of a bad day. The bloke dangling him – with the aid of four fierce-looking heavies – is Don Arden, a gentleman who, shall we say, has a bone or two to pick with our Stig.
Adding Neil Young to CSN brought supergroup status and a multi-selling album, but the band were not happy, says Steve Sutherland, as he hears the 180g reissue
This is Graham Nash talking about David Crosby just over a year ago: 'Who are you? Are you a decent person? Or are you an a**hole? It would be very easy for me to get into why I don't want to do any more Crosby, Stills and Nash or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young work. There are too many reasons. It's too complicated. It's too painful. I'm just telling you, it's over. It's an incredible shame because when we're good, we make very good music that touches people's hearts and changes their minds. But he tore the heart out of CSN and CSN&Y because he's not a really great person'.
Musically accessible, lyrically inscrutable, and buoyed by stellar session work, this 1972 debut ensured Steely Dan weren't buried by Bowie et al, says Steve Sutherland
What's the greatest guitar solo ever? Well, off the top of my head I'd say Jimi Hendrix on his version of Bob Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower', where he makes a number of miraculous stylistic changes and creates mysterious sounds never heard on this planet before or since. Then I'd go for Frank Zappa just letting rip on his dope-growing satire 'Montana' from Over-Nite Sensation. And thirdly I'd plump for Jimmy Page ascending into the stratosphere on Led Zeppelin IV's 'Stairway To Heaven'.
Four years after their electrifying debut, Axl, Slash and co returned with not one, but two double albums – and it was all downhill from there, says Steve Sutherland
Back in the late 1960s there was a band hailing from San Francisco called Moby Grape. They had five talented members who could all sing, play and compose to an incredibly high standard incorporating pop, rock, country and blues styles. They looked pretty cool too, with a perfectly contemporary anti-authoritarian attitude that saw one of their number flipping a middle finger against the American flag on the cover of their self-titled debut LP in 1967 – naughtiness that was airbrushed out by their spooked record company.
Featuring sitar, violins, backwards recordings and some sage words from Peter Fonda, this 1966 album found the Fab Four firing on all cylinders, says Steve Sutherland
I coulda been a contender, but Revolver did me in. There I was, nine-and-a-half years old, living the high life – well, as high as life could get for a small boy in Salisbury, Wiltshire – and in a band called The Little Beatles. I was Ringo, my friend Keith McArdle was John, Kirsteen, his sister, was George, and Robert 'Bo' Parr was Paul. We wore home-made Beatles suits and Beatles wigs and mimed behind toy instruments to Beatles hits.
For the group's tenth album, Roger Waters put his own spin on George Orwell's famous parable. The result was 'nobody's favourite Pink Floyd LP', says Steve Sutherland
Kate Bush had her Bronte. And her Joyce. The Doors had their Blake via Huxley. Dire Straits had their Shakespeare. Led Zeppelin had their Tolkien. The Police had their Nabokov. It seems like since time immemorial rock and pops stars have plundered literature for lyrical inspiration. Even Ozzy had his Crowley. And Pink Floyd were no exception.
This uplifting R&B and gospel album from the family band was the highlight of a long career, evangelises Steve Sutherland as he hears the 180g reissue
One of last year's musical highlights was the release of Summer Of Soul, the documentary lovingly assembled by Questlove about the Cultural Festival that took place on six Sundays between June the 29th and August the 24th 1969 at Mount Morris Park in Harlem, New York.
Cobbled together by Malcolm McLaren to bring the 'Burundi beat' to the masses, this New Wave group made a brief but memorable impression on Steve Sutherland
Anyone remember SFX? Anyone? No? Nobody? Not to worry. It didn't live that long. SFX was a music magazine launched in November 1981, and which died on the vine in the Summer of '82. It was edited by ex-NME writer Max Bell and the twist was that all the content was on a cassette tape, not printed on paper. Billed as 'The only music magazine on C-60', there were about 19 issues in all, sold in the shops mounted on cardboard.
A great TV or movie soundtrack can introduce you to long-forgotten music – and nothing does it better than this eclectic double LP on 180g, says Steve Sutherland
Say hello to Jesus Malverde. He may or may not have actually existed, apparently sported a handsome moustache, and today he's Mexico's patron saint of drug smugglers. Yup, you read that right. Mexico is such a marvellously messed-up place that it remains highly religious but simultaneously economically reliant on the dope trade.
Marc Bolan gave kids of the '70s a new exciting sound with this chart-topping LP, now reissued on 180g vinyl. Steve Sutherland celebrates the 'rock 'n' roll poet'
It might not have been as seismic, say, as Judas dobbing Jesus in to Pontius Pilot, or Bob Dylan hitching his wagon to The Band and suddenly turning electric, but a betrayal's a betrayal, right?
Through rare tracks recorded at the producer's backyard studio, this 180g triple vinyl LP serves as a testament to the genius of Lee 'Scratch' Perry, says Steve Sutherland
Prior to the current condemnatory climate where all fake news is regarded as a deadly sin, we often used the word 'apocryphal'. It meant an event of dubious authenticity which was so enticing that, despite the lack of any absolute proof, it was widely and enthusiastically embraced as being true. In other words, we didn't always let the facts get in the way of a good story.
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