The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
Personnel: James E Bond (b); John T Forsha (g); Peter Childs (g); Al Wilson (hm); Billy Mundi; Cyrus Faryar (g, bouzouki); Rusty Faryar (finger cymbals); UFO (bv); Fred Neil (v, g); John Kraus (e); Pete Abbot (e) Norma Sharp (producution coordinator)
Track listing: The Dolphins; I’ve Got A Secret (Didn’t We Shake Sugaree); That’s The Bag I’m In; Everybody’s Talkin’; Everything Happens; Sweet Cocaine; Green Rocky Road; Cynicrustpetefredjohn Raga
Running time: 38.27
Current CD: Collectors Choice CCM00702 The Many Sides Of Fred Neil compiles Fred Neil, Sessions and The Other Side Of This Life
Further listening: Bleecker And Macdougal (1964)
Further reading: Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of ’60s Rock (Richie Unterberger, 2000) www.wirz.de/music/neilfrm.htm (fan site); www.fredneil.com
Download: Not currently legally available
The author of simple but affecting blues-stained folk songs, Fred Neil was notoriously studio-shy, and a reluctant participant once coaxed there. Elektra producer Paul Rothchild had managed to squeeze two albums out of him, the excellent Tear Down The Walls (1964) and the exceptional Bleecker And Macdougal (1965). But when plans for a third Elektra album to be cut in Nashville fell through, producer Nik Venet signed him to Capitol in LA.
Venet had known Neil since their intersecting Brill Building experiences in the late ’50s, and had a pretty good idea how to approach this difficult proposition. ‘I used three engineers and recorded directly to stereo,’ the late producer told Goldmine’s Simon Wordsworth. ‘None of those songs are remixed; everything you hear on the albums I did with Fred are as they happened in the studio. What you hear there is all Fred Neil. There were no arrangements; no one rehearsed.’
It was the East Coast folkie meeting the electric West Coast mob that Venet had used with Linda Ronstadt And The Stone Poneys. Fred was in superb, rumbling voice, and had what most would come to consider his best collection of songs, yet it remained difficult to pull them out of him.
‘Getting Fred to even let you in on what songs he was going to record was damn near impossible,’ says then-manager Herb Cohen. ‘We went in and started putting down whatever songs he had. That was the way it was. We might have known a couple of titles ahead of time. We certainly didn’t know Everybody’s Talkin’, because he didn’t know it. We needed another song, and he said he might have one more. Matter of fact, I think he completed it in the toilet of the Capitol Records studio. As you can tell by the lyric, all he wanted to do was finish the album and go back to Florida.’
Though it originally fared little better than his Elektra albums, Fred Neil captures an elusive artist at the peak of his powers. It contains his two best-loved songs (Everybody’s Talkin’ and The Dolphins), and his loveliest blues rewrites (Shake Sugaree and Faretheewell). By the time of the album’s release, Neil had retreated to his Coconut Grove Sanctuary, from which he’d ventured forth only under duress. When Harry Nilsson’s cover of Everybody’s Talkin’ was used as the theme for the Academy Award-winning 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, the duress factor and Fred’s stubbornness both went through the roof. Everybody’s Talkin’ would go on to become one of the most performed songs of all time (over five million performances!); the thing that drove him away for good was also what provided him his means of escape.
The Left Banke
Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina
Fey New York band combine pop with chamber music.
Record label: Smash/Phillips
Produced: Harry Lookofsky, Steve and Bill Jerome
Recorded: World United Studios, New York; December 1965, January, March and November 1966; Mercury Studios, New York; January 1967
Released: February 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) 67 (US)
Personnel: Michael Brown (k, v); Steve Martin (v); Jeff Winfield (g); Tom Finn (v, b); George Cameron (v, g, d); Warren David (d); George Hirsch (g); Hugh McCracken (g); Rick Brand (g)
Track listing: Pretty Ballerina (S); She May Call You Up Tonight (S); Barterers And Their Wives (S); I’ve Got Something On My Mind (S); Let Go Of You Girl; Evening Gown; Walk Away Renee (S); What Do You Know; Shadows Breaking Over My Head; I Haven’t Got The Nerve (S); Lazy Day (S)
Running time: 28.50
Current CD: Their work is collected on the CD There’s Gonna Be A Storm: The Complete Recordings 1966–1969 (1992).
Further listening: See above
Further reading: www.members.aol.com/bocad/lb_main.htm (fan site); www.leftbanke.nu (official)
Download: Not currently legally available
‘Baroque-rock’: this was the label attached to a young band who emerged in 1966 with a new sound on a Top 5 debut single. The Left Banke came together around keyboard player Michael Brown while he was working at the tiny Manhattan recording studio owned by his father, the arranger and producer Harry Lookofsky. The only trained musician in the group, Brown was just 16 when he wrote Walk Away Renee.
Inspired by his unrequited adoration of Renee Fladen, Tom Finn’s girlfriend, the lyrical mixture of heartfelt yearning and salvaged pride displayed an astonishing maturity. As Brown later recalled: ‘It’s not a love song about possession – it’s about loving someone enough to set them free.’ The song’s production was equally striking (amazing for 1965, when it was done): Lookofsky’s unorthodox arrangement kept the guitars low in the mix, and the string quartet allowed Martin’s distinctive voice and Brown’s mellifluous harpsichord to shine.
Defying the custom of its time, the subsequent album was far more than just a vehicle for the group’s hits (follow-up single Pretty Ballerina, also inspired by Fladen and arguably even more beautiful, had reached number 15 in the US charts), being composed entirely of originals, which were driven for the most part by Brown’s old-master keyboards. Barterers And Their Wives was, perhaps, the most literally baroque, but the songs also encompassed slow ballads (the aching Shadows Breaking Over My Head), country (What Do You Know) and brash fuzz guitar (Lazy Day).
With a raft of catchy, if rather melancholy, pop tunes, ‘English-style’ long hair and a look that critic Lillian Roxon described as ‘almost too pretty for rock’, The Left Banke looked destined for greatness. But the album, recorded piecemeal over a year, was released too late to capitalise on their early success and Brown, disillusioned with touring, left to form a rival outfit under the same name. When both Left Bankes released singles simultaneously, writs began to fly and radio stations quickly shunned the band. Subsequent recordings, including an enchanting second LP, produced diminishing returns and by 1969 the band had dispersed to other projects.
Aretha Franklin
I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You
Breakthrough of a soul legend.
Record label: Atlantic
Produced: Jerry Wexler
Recorded: Muscle Shoals Studios, Alabama; January 24, 1967; Atlantic Studios, New York; February 8 and 14–16, 1967
Released: March 10, 1967
Chart peaks: 36 (UK) 2 (US)
Personnel: Aretha Franklin (v, p); Dewey ‘Spooner’ Oldham (k); Jimmy Johnson