Creedence Clearwater Revival – Cosmo’s Factory (1970)
I’ve owned and appreciated this album for a long time but with every listen it grows on me. CCR have always been a fabulous band and this their great highlight, but nevertheless, I think I had an underappreciation stemming from my relative lack of interest in more ‘hick’ country rock. There is certainly a less than stellar sequence through the opening part of the album, but the rest is top class. John Fogerty is a supreme guitar player and perfect singer for the music he’s making, and this album hits great peaks both on the poppier direct front, and with its extended jams. On a lot of these bonus 60 albums, at the bottom end, they are carried by 3 or 4 highlights. But this album only falls short of higher consideration because it does dip into some pretty flat filler. There are no less than six of CCR’s biggest and most well-known hits on this album, all simple slick melodic rock gems, including I Heard It Though The Grapevine in its mighty full eleven minute form. On top of this comes the, apparently controversial (hilariously, higlighting the nature of CCR’s demographic) Ramble Tamble, which is a brooding, slippery, dynamic masterpiece. The crisp and clean but direct rockin’ sound of the instrumentation and production is excellent throughout and best featured on these two tomes.
Highlights: Ramble Tamble, Lookin’ Out My Back Door, Up Around The Bend, Who’ll Stop The Rain, I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Greatest Moment: The dynamic, slow-burn centre of Ramble Tamble, shifting from high energy rock, through a pause, into a tension-building and bonafide proggy building jam. Or just anything of Grapevine.
Black Sabbath – Paranoid (1970)
One of the most revered holy hallmarks for all fans of harder and heavier rock or metal. My natural tendency is not in that direction, but this album transcends genre into just being a vital classic in any context. It is both eminently mainstream, fun, direct, energetic and easy to enjoy as a big great, while also ticking the boxes of innovation and defining a whole genre necessary to elevate an album to legendary status. Nothing in 1970 sounded like this. It is impossible to imagine just what a ferocious blast of darkness and fury this must have felt like contemporaneously, ahead of its time. The compositions and production are raw and loud and the lyrics and themes dark and angry. All these factors are why it has an indelible place as one of the first and/or most genre-defining heavy metal albums. But that reputation doesn’t do justice to its mainstream appeal. Classic riffs will always be classic riffs, and there are none as famous or loved as Iron Man or the title track. The music is always simple and direct in structure so its easy to sink your teeth into, and at times deceptively melodic. Ozzy Osbourne is no classically trained virtuoso, but as is forgotten by his modern self-caricature, the man had a perfect fitting voice, with power, control and some necessary tenderness (check out the psychedelic sweetness of Planet Caravan, wow).
Highlights: War Pigs, Paranoid, Planet Caravan, Iron Man
Greatest Moment: Possibly the album’s very first moment. The power and ferocity of the band’s monstrous entry on War Pigs would have mindblowing in 1970. Every instrument is loud and chunky and right in your face, with some terrifying other noises in the background for effect.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1970)
The hype surrounding this new band and its pending first release go some way towards explaining how a debut album can be so immediately confident and assured in its ambition and professional execution. ELP were the ultimate prog supergroup. Only Cream matches them as far as finding and uniting three musicians with as established a set of instrumental credentials. There was massive interest and after an intense 1970 of rehearsal, by late in the year the three were already playing spectacular live shows and had a first studio release ready. It is definitely less polished than their even greater subsequent releases, but it is as consistent and energetic as anything they’ve ever done. Every great quality that made ELP such special talents was on display on this album, arguably without yet descending into some of the excesses and absurdity that would come. There’s periods of driving, energetic but amazing, complex, keyboard dominated hard rock in the Emerson led compositions. There’s quieter solo piano and organ moments. There’s long folksy acoustic sequences and vocal workouts for Lake. Palmer is ferocious throughout and has his own solo showcase. Then at the end of it all, comes the late-addition afterthought that is the gorgeously simple tender Lucky Man, as close to a smash hit as ELP could ever conceive.
Highlights: The Barbarian, Knife Edge, Tank Lucky Man
Greatest Moment: The iconic and unprecedented moog solo at the end of Lucky Man. It was a new instrument that had never been heard on a mainstream rock recording before, and after an otherwise soft, sweet, acoustic song, hearing that first deep attack of those sharp electronic notes remains mindblowing.
George Harrison – All Things Must Pass (1970)
Unquestionably the greatest post-Beatles solo album by any of the fab four. This triple-record monstrosity is just a huge epic in every way, perhaps to its own detriment. Harrison’s final few year Beatles years were characterised by all kinds of experimentation and cultural horizon expanding. But late masterworks like Something and Here Comes The Sun were the clue to what kind of quality was starting to come out of Harrison, still mostly ignored by Lennon and McCartney. By the time the Beatles were done and it was debut solo album time, there was a huge back catalogue of great song after great song which Harrison and his problematic (and at the time, utterly unstable) producer Phil Spector worked through. The album proper is just two discs worth, across eighty minutes, of all manner of works of pristine craft. The highlights are particularly on the first two sides, but the variety is huge and welcome, with some harder rock pieces, some longer more patient explorations, and an ever-present folk influence. The primary issue, as Harrison would acknowledge, comes from just how over-bearing the production is. That wall of sound is so unrelenting and some of the dynamics of the pieces are over-produced into shiny death. Add to that, a somewhat middling and unnecessary third disc of random jamming, and it does all get a bit much. But the quality of the vast majority, and the genius of the absolute best pieces, are just too good to overlook.
Highlights: My Sweet Lord, Isn’t It A Pity, What Is Life, If Not For You, Apple Scruffs, Awaiting On You All
Greatest Moment: The opening of What Is Life. A deliriously perfect guitar riff, over which the bass comes in doubling, then the whole band launch onboard in huge fashion, leading into one of the happiest, largest pop rock classics of all.
Jethro Tull – Aqualung (1971)
As I recently spoke about, early Jethro Tull is largely guitar and flute dominated heavy blues, with a dollop of folk involved. This album was their first true dip of the feet into the epic Prog tomes that would come to define them, but the content on this album remains simple and clearly explains why it is their biggest and most well known crossover-album, to the general rock populace. It was the album’s great to and fro along its tracklist, and repeated references back to the same themes (mostly religious ones) that gave this album its feeling of conceptual flow. But the music itself is quite straightforward. It is also easy, especially given all the unfair flak the band took as ‘flute softies’ many years later over beating Metallica to a ‘Hard Rock’ grammy, just how good a crisp hard rock sound they had, especially at this point. There’s a lot of slow, simple, folk ditties, all lovely but a bit too samey and filler-like to prevent this album ascending further. But all the full proper songs are such perfectly crafted firm, direct pieces of hard rock. The band is rock solid in their execution and Barre’s constant heavy crisp riffs and Anderson’s powerful rasping voice contrast perfectly with the liberal background piano and moments of quiet tension.
Highlights: Aqualung, Cross-Eyed Mary, My God, Hymn 43, Locomotive Breath, Wind-Up
Greatest Moment: Whichever bit of the legendary title track you want, whether its the opening riff, the band and vocal breaking in as the main chords launch, the sweet folky slowdown, or the inspirational cliche chords of the bridge.
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