The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
Red velvet-covered double which almost killed them.
Record label: Polydor
Produced: Robert Stigwood and the Bee Gees
Recorded: New York, August–December 1968; De Lane Lea and IBC Studios, London; early 1968
Released: January 1969
Chart peaks: 10 (UK) 20 (US)
Personnel: Barry Gibb (v, g); Robin Gibb (v, o); Maurice Gibb (v, b, p, g); Colin Petersen (d); Paul Buckmaster (c); Bill Shepherd (m); P Wade, E Sharp, A Barber (e)
Track listing: Odessa (City On The Black Sea); You’ll Never See My Face Again; Black Diamond; Marley Purt Drive; Edison; Melody Fair; Suddenly; Whisper Whisper; Lamplight (S); Sound Of Love; Give Your Best; Seven Seas Symphony; With All Nations (International Anthem); I Laugh In Your Face; Never Say Never Again; First Of May (S); The British Opera
Running time: 63.47
Current CD: 825 451-2 omits: With All Nations
Further listening: Horizontal (1968); Idea (1968)
Further reading: The Bee Gees: Tales Of The Brothers Gibb (Hector Cook, 2003); www.beegeesonline.com
Download: Not currently legally available
Beautifully sung, delicately orchestrated and filled with highly individual songs about lost love, electric light and sinking ships, Odessa was the culmination of a burst of creativity which almost destroyed the Bee Gees before the ’70s had begun. Returning to the UK from Australia in early 1967, the Gibb brothers followed their breakthrough New York Mining Disaster 1941 with a further six hit singles and three highly successful albums in just 16 months. It was hardly surprising that by the time they re-entered the studio in 1968 some strain was beginning to show. While working titles such as Masterpeace and American Opera might suggest some grand artistic design, Barry Gibb recalls that the real motivation came from manager Robert Stigwood: ‘I think it was basically a financial deal. If we do a double album everyone makes more money – except the group. So we were doing something that we weren’t motivated to do and it became full of all this stuff that didn’t necessarily blow me away.’
Yet the finished work justified Stigwood’s faith in his young protegés. Opening with a dramatic swirl of strings, acoustic guitar and cello and the line ‘14th of February 1899, the British ship Veronica was lost without a sign,’ the dense, melancholy title track set the tone. Bill Shepherd’s sympathetic orchestration, which went far beyond mere sweetening – three of the tracks were instrumental – allowed the melodies to shine and in Sound Of Love and the Eleanor Rigby-influenced Melody Fair the Bee Gees produced two of their finest ballads. Less predictably, there were also nods towards American country rock: Marley Purt Drive was a deliciously languid number complete with electric piano, slide guitar and banjo.
Unfortunately, discord arising over the choice of the album’s single precipitated Robin’s departure to pursue a solo career: it would be another 18 months before all three brothers were reunited on one record. Yet Odessa remains one of the Bee Gees’ finest albums, a work of extraordinary depth of feeling and a fitting end to an important chapter in their career. With little nostalgia, Barry suggests the key to its success: ‘Maybe it’s because there was so much trouble and strife going on at the time. I think there’s probably a little bit of that in every song.’
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Happy Trails
Hippies get heavy, live and loud.
Record label: Capitol
Produced: No producer credited
Recorded: Fillmore East and West; Calvary recorded live at Golden State Recorders, San Francisco; November 19, 1968
Released: March 1969
Chart peaks: None (UK) 27 (US)
Personnel: John Cipollina (g); Gary Duncan (g, v); David Freiberg (b, v); Greg Elmore (d, v)
Track listing: Who Do You Love Suite: Who Do You Love [Part 1] (S/US); When You Love; Where You Love; How You Love; Which You Love; Who Do You Love [Part 2]; Mona; Maiden Of The Cancer Moon; Calvary; Happy Trails
Running time: 50.18
Current CD: Capitol CAP912152
Further listening: The band’s previous album, their self-titled debut (1968), is also worth hearing, as is Anthology (1973), which compiles 1968–1971 tracks
Further reading: www.penncen.com/quicksilver/
Download: Not currently legally available; some tracks can be found on iTunes
Anyone who has ever sneered at drippy, wimpish hippies should have their attention forcibly drawn to Happy Trails, on which Quicksilver play with a visceral, crunching power that is the absolute antithesis of drippiness or wimpiness.
As acid rock adventurers Quicksilver were peers of The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, but, unlike those bands, their roots weren’t in the folk, bluegrass or jugband scenes. The band’s John Cipollina, raunchiest of the great ’60s psychedelic guitarists, has explained: ‘I cut my teeth in blues and hard rock. My biggest influence was Link Wray … the grandfather of punk. I heard that sound and thought, “God, you can swear without using four letter words!”’
Much of the album comprises various live tapes from the Fillmores East and West, spliced together. ‘We were always better live,’ Cipollina later told Zigzag magazine. ‘We found the [studio] atmosphere a little strange when we cut our first album and we decided to cut the follow-up live in a familiar setting and with a familiar audience, so we could really cook and let ourselves go.’
The album’s highlight is an improvisation, comprising the whole of the first side of the original album, on Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love, an exuberant deconstruction and exploration of the song’s every nuance, described by critic Greil Marcus as ‘one of the best rock’n’roll recordings to emerge from San Francisco [and] some of the finest hard rock ever recorded.’
Throughout the track, Cipollina’s distinctive, quivering, vibrato-heavy playing, with its surprising hint of flamenco, is massively exciting, while one section of the performance features the Fillmore audience exchanging yelps and howls with the band, an interlude that Marcus describes as ‘a beautiful example of the kind of communication rock’n’roll is all about.’ With the exception of the title track, a brief and amusingly straightfaced rendition of the corny old Roy Rogers ditty, side two also comprises one extended piece of music, the most thrilling element of which is Calvary, recorded live in the studio and described by Cipollina as ‘our interpretation of the Crucifixion: it starts with the condemnation, goes through the journey to the cross and ends with the angels coming.’ Full of ideas, these hippies, huh?
The Flying Burrito Brothers
The Gilded Palace Of Sin
Gram Parsons’ finest work: fusing soul, country and R&B in one package.
Record label: Asylum/A&M
Produced: The Burritos, Larry Marks and Henry Lewy
Recorded: A&M Studios, Los Angeles; February 1969
Released: April 21, 1969
Chart peaks: None (UK) 164 (US)
Personnel: