The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
cussedness, Dusty took an age to agree on material – though the eventual selections were impeccable, with Randy Newman, Goffin/King and Bacharach/David to the fore – and sessions in Muscle Shoals had to be cancelled.
Once actually in Memphis, Dusty’s painstaking way of working was at odds with Wexler’s, and she froze. Tension filled the air (as did a flying ashtray, at one point) in the absence of Dusty’s vocals. In fact she didn’t sing until she’d left Memphis, cutting the final vocals in Atlantic’s New York studios. Despite all the problems, the music was gorgeous. Clipped and slinky Memphis funk complements the easy-going material with great sophistication. Son Of A Preacher Man became the key track, but even more seductive were Breakfast In Bed and Just A Little Lovin’. Even in Wexler’s exalted company it is Springfield’s intuitive feel for each song’s emotional possibilities that remains the record’s ultimate virtue.
The Youngbloods
Elephant Mountain
New York quartet go West to make sprawling Sgt. Pepper-inspired masterpiece.
Record label: RCA
Produced: Charles E Daniels with Bob Cullen and The Youngbloods
Recorded: RCA Studios, New York City; RCA’s Music Center of the World, Hollywood; autumn 1967–winter 1968
Released: April 1969
Chart peaks: None (UK) 113 (US)
Personnel: Jesse Colin Young (v, b); Lowell Levinger, aka ‘Banana’ (g, ps, p, k, o, harpsichord, v); Joe Bauer (d, pc); David Lindley (fiddle); Victor Feldman (vibes); Plas Johnson (s); Joe Clayton (t); Richie Schmidt, Hank Cicalo, Mickey Crofford (e)
Track listing: Darkness, Darkness (S/US); Smug; On Sir Francis Drake; Sunlight; Double Sunlight; Beautiful; Turn It Over; Rain Song; Trillium; Quicksand; Black Mountain Breakdown; Sham; Ride the Wind
Running time: 39.51
Current CD: Beat Goes On BGOCD741 adds: The Youngbloods and Earth Music albums
Further listening: The Youngbloods (1967) contains the band’s two biggest hits, Get Together and Grizzly Bear, while Best Of The Youngbloods (2002) is a good introduction despite being a little thin at 10 tracks.
Further reading: Jesse Colin Young raises coffee in Kona, Hawaii. The web page for his business – www.jessecolinyoung.com – also has some music information.
Download: HMV Digital
In 1967, two years before a television ad promoting brotherhood turned it into a national smash, The Youngbloods’ Get Together had been a regional hit on the West Coast. Excited by its success, the New York City-based quartet headed west, settling in bucolic Inverness, California, 30 miles up the coast from San Francisco. The dominant feature of the landscape was Black Mountain, which resembled an elephant’s back, so when it came time to name the ambitious album they seemed to have been working on forever (two years, in fact), The Youngbloods did not hesitate: it was Elephant Mountain.
‘Recording actually began in New York,’ says Lowell Levinger, who played just about every instrument on it except bass and drums, and also wrote arrangements. ‘When we were all living out here, we would fly down to LA for two or three weeks at a time to work on it. We’d stay at the Tropicana Hotel and go to the studio every night.’ The commute cost them their second guitar player, Jerry Corbitt.
‘Just about when we first began flying down to Los Angeles, Jerry developed an aversion to flying,’ says Levinger. ‘Then he developed an aversion to a lot of other things.’ The Youngbloods’ sound was always distinguished by the soft, airy tenor of founder Jesse Colin Young, ‘the Golden Throat’, as Levinger calls him. But they were actually one of the more eclectic, adventuresome bands of their time, with a repertoire of styles ranging from folk and upbeat country to jazz, blues and even ragtime. Inspired by the ambitiousness of Sgt. Pepper and their own live shows, which often sprawled over three hours, the band conceived Elephant Mountain as an organic whole. Its 13 tracks flow into one another with the help of short instrumental segues and studio banter.
‘We used to do a lot of improvising in the studio with the tape running,’ says Levinger. ‘Joe spent a lot of time going through those tapes and finding good snippets.’ One amusing snippet is Turn It Over: an obsolete 12 seconds since no one needs to be reminded to turn a record over in the CD age. The album’s centrepiece is Darkness, Darkness, a minor-key meditation on the seductiveness of oblivion. ‘Producing that song took forever,’ says Levinger. ‘I played the echo on Jesse’s voice the same as I would any other musical instrument.’ Levinger’s raw, intense guitar solo is just one high point of this beautiful, ambitious record.
The Who
Tommy
Huge double concept-album, the first rock opera, spawning a movie, an orchestral spin-off and a stage musical.
Record label: Track (UK) Decca (US)
Produced: Kit Lambert
Recorded: IBC Studios, London; September 19, 1968–March 7, 1969
Released: May 23, 1969
Chart peaks: 2 (UK) 4 (US)
Personnel: Roger Daltrey (v, hm); Pete Townshend (v, g, k); Keith Moon (v, d); John Entwistle (v, b, k); Damon Lyon-Shaw (e); Chris Stamp (executive producer)
Track listing: Overture; It’s A Boy; 1921 (You Didn’t Hear It); Amazing Journey; Sparks; Eyesight To The Blind (The Hawker); Christmas; Cousin Kevin; The Acid Queen; Underture; Do You Think It’s Alright?; Fiddle About; Pinball Wizard (S); There’s A Doctor; Go To The Mirror!; Tommy, Can You Hear Me?; Smash The Mirror; Sensation; Miracle Cure; Sally Simpson; I’m Free; Welcome; Tommy’s Holiday Camp; We’re Not Gonna Take It
Running time: 74.00
Current CD: Universal 9861011 is a 2-disc Hybrid/SACD set that adds a second disc of outtakes and demos.
Further listening: The Who’s other classic rock opera, Quadrophenia (1973)
Further reading: Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle Of The Who 1958–1978 (Roger Daltrey, 2005); The Complete Guide To The Music Of The Who (Chris Charlesworth, 2004); www.thewho.net
Download: iTunes
Early in 1968, Pete Townshend had emerged from an encounter with Indian mystic Meher Baba with a growing sense of frustration at the limitations of rock in general, and The Who in particular; he announced to the NME that on their next record he wanted The Who to ‘preach’, a notion he’d first approached in an aborted song called You’ve Gotta Have Faith In Something Bigger Than Yourselves. However, he recognised that Roger Daltrey might not look convincing singing that one, so he went back to work on their fourth album – provisionally titled Who’s For Tennis – and started coming at the idea from a different direction.
Townshend had often been musically ambitious. A Quick One was an unprecedented nine-minute song cycle, The Who Sell Out packaged itself as a pirate radio show devoted to the band. But that was primitive stuff compared to the scope of what he eventually unveiled: Tommy – the seemingly bizarre idea of a thematic double album telling how a deaf, dumb and blind boy found salvation in his genius on a pinball machine and became the leader of a reclusive religious cult. It still sounds mad, but in an age when rock heroes were taking on the persona of prophets, Tommy was both credible and captivating, orchestral links lending gravitas to The Who’s characteristically colourful pulsating rock which swung from the proto-prog grandeur of Amazing