Crumbling Land | A Hidden Pink Floyd Treasure

The long forgotten ‘Crumbling Land’ was one of only three Pink Floyd songs included on the original soundtrack LP for the 1970 Michelangelo Antonioni film, Zabriskie Point. 

In 1970, Pink Floyd were still searching for their identity. With Syd Barrett now out of the picture, the classic Floyd line-up had successfully dabbled in film soundtrack work with 1969’s impressive, More. With their most recent offering, the live/studio experiment Ummagumma out of their system, the group was then commissioned by Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni to provide the music for his counterculture drama, Zabriskie Point.

Capturing the political mood of the time, the film was based on a student who steals a plane, flies it to Death Valley in California, and indulges in rampageous sex with a bohemian hippy chick. When he is shot dead by police, she blows up a mansion in protest against the ‘American conformist values’. Unsurprisingly the movie bombed at the box office.

Convening in Rome in late-1969, Pink Floyd famously recorded a lot of material for the project, and much has resurfaced over the years, however only three pieces ended up being selected by the director for the original soundtrack LP, released in 1970 on MGM Records. Instead, Antonioni selected an odd, seemingly random assortment of pre-existing tracks by a selection of contemporary rock performers such as John Fahey, Patti Page, The Kaleidoscope, and the The Grateful Dead, with mixed results.

One of the Floyd songs overlooked for the final album was keyboardist Rick Wright’s piano-led ballad ‘The Violent Sequence‘, which would later be reworked as ‘Us and Them’ for Dark Side of the Moon (1973).

The three Pink Floyd tracks that did appear are: ‘Heart Beat, Pig Meat’ which is not a song as such more the sound of a heartbeat, an idea revisited on Dark Side, with a hypnotic drum pattern accompanying stabs of found sounds; ‘Come in Number 51, Your Time Is Up’ was used for the big explosive scene at the end of the film and is essentially a re-recorded version of ‘Careful with That Axe, Eugene’ in a different key; and finally the country-rock song, ‘Crumbling Land‘. 

David Gilmour once described the song as: “a kind of country & western number which he [film director Antonioni] could have gotten done better by any number of American bands. But he chose us — very strange”, and it certainly has a Byrds-ian, West Coast folk-rock vibe.

Sung by Gilmour and Wright, the pretty harmonies are the centrepiece of the verses before a dramatic interlude ushers in some brutal Roger Waters-style lyrics:

Now the eagle flies in clear blue skies
Drinking in the clear blue well
Back here on the ground another dealer coughs and dies
But fifty more come rolling off the floor production line

The track is an affecting piece of acoustic psychedelia about the people who lost the sense of freedom and ultimately life in the search for glory and wealth, and it reveals the band in perhaps their most transitional phase, moving into the psychological mysticism of latter-day Floyd.

Multiple versions of ‘Crumbling Land’ were released on the massive box set The Early Years 1965–1972  in 2016 where it was retitled ‘On the Highway’, and other versions appear unreleased on bootleg formats of the sessions. This underrated gem would have held up on any Pink Floyd album from that period and is a rich portrait of the band’s musical progression.

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Photo: © AA Film Archive. David Gilmour & Richard Wright, 1970

Barney Bubbles | Hero of Modern Album Cover Design

The rejected album cover design submitted by Barney Bubbles for Elvis Costello’s Punch the Clock (1983), was one of the great British artist’s final works.

Barney Bubbles was a short-lived graphic design hero, and one of the key founding fathers of the now largely defunct art of the modern album cover.

Born Colin Maximilian Fulcher in 1942, he graduated from the Twickenham College of Technology, in London before establishing his own graphic studio and rehearsal space, Teenburger Designs, at 307 Portobello Road in 1969. He became head of the underground mixed media collective Frendz, and kicked off a successful commercial design career.

Hard-working Barney burned bright and was in huge demand if only for a short time.

He was responsible for a staggering number of record covers and music videos for a new generation of artists, and his influence and popularity has only increased since his untimely passing in 1983 at the age of just 41.

Even if you don’t know who Barney Bubbles is, you would be familiar with his many eye-catching and instantly recognisable LP and 45 sleeve designs rendered in his singular DIY style, or through his work in magazines such as The Face and many influential promo posters from the late-’60s through to the early-’80s.

Barney’s audacious cutting edge style was a fusion of pop-art and, at times, soviet poster art, and always incorporated a sense of rhythm, harmony and lightness of touch. He used bright colours and was as adept at design as he was at illustration, yet his name remains in the shadows unlike some of his more studied contemporaries such as illustrator Roger Dean (Yes), and designers/photographers Hipgnosis (Pink Floyd). 

Prior to becoming the original talent of the New Wave era, Bubbles initially formed an association with Nick Lowe’s legendary pub-rocking outfit Brinsley Schwarz, and most notably, cosmic rockers Hawkwind.

His striking poster designs, stage sets, and a run of elaborate gatefold album sleeves, including the remarkable In Search of Space (1971), the Art Nouveau extravaganza for the legendary live album Space Ritual (1973), and the futuristic Hall of the Mountain Grill (1974), gave the West London counter-culturalist’s music a compelling visual identity.

He bridged the gap between the psychedelic space-heads and the advent of punk, a movement that provided a new lease on life for the versatile artist, and his angular and brightly coloured work became increasingly popular with the emerging New Wave bands of the era.

Around this time he was appointed Art Director at Stiff Records by label chief Jake Riviera. Bubbles applied his brilliance to the cover of Ian Dury’s New Boots and Panties (1977), where he cropped the photo of Ian and his son and added the hand-drawn lettering on the front and back. 

The cover design of The Damned’s Nick Lowe-produced debut album, Damned Damned Damned (1977), was credited to Big Jobs Inc, a pseudonym of Barney Bubbles, and while not as elaborate in terms of graphics, the masthead really pops, blending in behind the iconic band photo like a magazine cover.

Barney would go on to work with some of the most dynamic artists of the era including Generation X, Devo, Dr Feelgood, and other notable Stiff and Radar recording artists. Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ Do It Yourself (1979) must’ve driven the record company crazy as it had at least 34 alternative sleeves, each one featuring a different wallpaper design with a variety of colour options. The sleeve had different editions with alternating colour variations, background patterns, and the use of type.

Barney also created The Blockheads‘ “clock face” logo, and re-designed the branding for the NME. His new logo for the legendary British music rag remained in use up to the late ’80s, and forms the basis of the current (degraded) magazine logo. His logos for post-punk record labels Radar, Stiff, and F-Beat remain timeless to this day. 

Among his other work were album covers for Stiff-producer Nick Lowe’s wry pub-rock landmark Jesus of Cool (1978), retitled Pure Pop For Now People for the US market. It featured six pictures of “Basher” decked out in a smorgasbord of over-the-top rockstar getups in front of an assortment of graphic pop-art saturated colours.

The cover works not for the glimmer of “cool”, but rather for the combination of impeccable artifice, and self-effacing charm. It also makes for a great t-shirt. Barney’s playful lettering and distinctive Hammer & sickle logo, the symbol of proletarian solidarity from the Russian Revolution, adorned the cover of Lowe’s follow up album, Labour of Lust (1979).

Standing among his finest work is the striking, day-glow masterpiece that is The Psychedelic Furs original UK edition of their 1982 classic Forever Now. For the American release, Columbia did away with the Barney Bubbles artwork because they couldn’t read the name of the band, replacing it with a generic new-wave instant fossil, without telling Richard Butler.

Barney also collaborated with the great British photographer Brian Griffin for the memorable Graham Parker and the Rumour live album The Parkerilla (1978), and he branched out into paintings, furniture, set designs and promo videos, not least the era-defining film clip for The Specials’ hit, ‘Ghost Town‘.

His career-best work however, would be his visual contribution to the early part of Elvis Costello’s career where he helped calcify Declan McManus’s spiky persona, again going uncredited at his own request.

Bubbles first produced the timeless cover art for the debut album My Aim is True (1977), which came in various editions of collectable background colours.

For the follow-up Attractions record, This Years Model (1978), photographer Chris Gabrin captured Elvis in a variety of positions behind a Hasselblad camera. The Bubbles’ designed initial pressings were made to look like deliberate misprints, showing colour bars and cutting off the letters of the artist name and title, a quirk abandoned on subsequent editions.

Barney enlisted the help of painter Tom Pogson for Costello’s third album Armed Forces (1979), and the result was a baroque tour de force.

The UK edition was a painting depicting a herd of elephants that boasted an elaborate fold-out sleeve containing four colour postcards of the band. The Warhol-ian back cover with its illustrated pop-art geometric patterns, was a startling mix of styles and techniques, ranging from the figurative, abstract, to Chinese propaganda poster art.

Bubbles’ visual stamp is all over Costello’s subsequent releases; from the ring wear pre-print of Get Happy!! (1980); the Kenny Burrell visual stylings of Blue Note designer Reid Miles for Almost Blue (1981), to the Picasso pastiche seen on the cover of Imperial Bedroom (1982).

Just when Barney Bubbles should have been getting the recognition his artistic genius deserved, his career faltered and his work started being rejected by his once loyal record labels and artists. Times were changing, new visual trends were coming into vogue in the 1980s, and his vibrant and splice-up style was looked upon as passé.

The design he would submit was for Costello’s Langer and Winstanley-produced commercial sidestep, Punch the Clock (1983), was considered less user-friendly, and was overlooked by the record company unbeknownst to Costello. It would remain one of the British graphic artist’s final works.

As quietly brilliant as Barney’s Elvis Costello’s sleeves were, the concept submitted for Punch the Clock of an electrified Elvis certainly was challenging.

Elvis’s face leaps out at you in electrical circuit cartoon form below juddered typeface as a tiny metal hand offers him a spanner. The photo montage on the rear displays the Attractions corrupted so their heads are replaced with symbols; a pill capsule for Steve Nieve, a question mark for Pete Thomas, and a circular black cog for Bruce Thomas.

The lyric sheet fashioned disembodied heads of the band and legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, who guests on the record’s high point, ‘Shipbuilding‘. These images would ultimately be replaced by a more conventional inner sleeve, and on the back an uninspiring photo of Costello and the Attractions looking off into the distance with their hands in their pockets.

The final Phil Smee design chosen for Punch the Clock is dated when compared to Elvis’ previous records. The Letraset lettering and stylized layout is very much of it’s time, as the artist dons a black cap and dark collared-up coat, sports his signature spectacles, and flashes a quizzical look while appearing to be scratching his left ear.

Bubbles suffered from bipolar disorder, and mounting woes tragically led to his suicide in November 1983. At the time of his passing, Barney had considerable personal and financial worries, as well as depression, and as aforestated, had fallen out of fashion by the early 1980s. 

Paul Gorman’s book, The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, Graphic Design and the Art of Music (2022), is a must-read for fans of his work, and it reproduces original artwork, printed sleeves, posters and press ads, together with little-seen private work, intimate photographs including the rejected cover for Punch the Clock (1983). You can buy it here on Thames & Hudson.

Barney’s works are held in the collections of the V&A and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Photo: Colin Fulcher, aka Barney Bubbles, in Hammersmith, London 1966.

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References and Further Reading:

♥     Barney Bubbles Official

♥     Design Freaks Podcast with Clarita Hinojosa    

♥     The Psychedelic Furs’ Forever Now on Pop Dose

♥     The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, Graphic Design and the Art of Music. 

Van Halen | The Ultimate DLR-Era Playlist

This compilation hand picks 20 key tracks from Van Halen’s imperial phase.

The original incarnation of Van Halen featured David Lee Roth on colourful and commanding vocals, and Eddie Van Halen’s strikingly inventive guitar prowess; rolling out tricks that included his signature dive bombs with the whammy bar, tremolo picking, tapping, legato techniques, pinch harmonics, and shredding (sometimes all within the one solo) – not to mention his underrated rhythm guitar playing.

When combined with the upfront power and nuance of the rhythm section, older brother Alex Van Halen (drums) and Michael Anthony (bass), Van Halen stood out in the hard-edge sound emerging from the Los Angeles scene in the mid-to-late 70s. 

This 20-song playlist lifts the very best moments from their first six albums, and showcases the perfect balance between Roth’s bravado and Eddie’s spinetingling brilliance.

Their excellent major label debut record VAN HALEN (1978) ★★★★★ stands as one of the genres very best. Producer Ted Templeman (Van Morrison, Little Feat, The Doobie Brothers) achieved a specific sonic imprint for the band over a rough and tumble 11 tracks that included two covers. The album reset the bar for guitar playing in rock, and was a major commercial success worldwide.

Van Halen sustained the momentum with the slightly less-stellar follow up, VAN HALEN II (1979) ★★★½, which included some new and exciting offerings full of hooks that highlighted the band’s somewhat overlooked songwriting abilities. 

The difficult third album WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST (1980) ★★★★ explored a darker, harder edged period for the band. There were more studio overdubs and less emphasis on backing vocals, and the all-original songs often revelled in gutter sleaze with an audible punk influence.

FAIR WARNING (1981) ★★★★ when released, was a slow seller but saw a another huge progression in Van Halen’s sound. Eddie’s super-nasty distorted guitar innovations dialled up his signature “brown sound”, and he added synthesizers into the mix which would feature heavily on forthcoming VH recordings.

That very good transitional album was followed by the covers-heavy DIVER DOWN (1982) ★★★, a slight attempt at a commercial hit in the new MTV age that featured only four albeit very good originals.

It felt like a stopgap album, yet was the logical precursor to the mammoth commercial success that greeted 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) (1984) ★★★★★, an album that effortlessly combined high intensity rock and roll with pop and soul influences. It made Van Halen superstars.

Going out on top, David Lee Roth would then depart the group, form a good band and pursue a brief yet lucrative solo career. Eddie and co. would grind forward into the ’80s and ’90s with Sammy Hagar on lead vocals for four increasingly diabolical albums.

Strap yourself in for some straight-up, good time rock and roll in the shape of 20 key tracks from Van Halen’s original line-up.

Photo: VAN HALEN 1978 © FIN COSTELLO

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Unchained | The Best of Van Halen’s DLR-Era in 20 Tracks

1. Unchained – Fair Warning 
2. Panama – 1984
3. Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love – Van Halen
4. Eruption – Van Halen
5. Little Guitars – Diver Down
6. Jump – 1984
7. Secrets – Diver Down
8. Romeo Delight – Women and Children First
9. I’ll Wait – 1984
10. Mean Street – Fair Warning

1. Hot for Teacher – 1984
2. Dance the Night Away – Van Halen II
3. Jamie’s Cryin’ – Van Halen
4. Runnin’ With the Devil – Van Halen
5. Drop Dead Legs – 1984
6. And the Cradle Will Rock… – Women and Children First
7. D.O.A – Van Halen II
8. Everybody Wants Some!! – Women and Children First
9. Beautiful Girls – Van Halen II
10. Somebody Get Me a Doctor – Van Halen II

Bonus Track: Atomic Punk – Van Halen

Grace Jones | Anatomically Impossible Album Cover by Jean-Paul Goude

The elegant aerobics of Grace Jones is captured by French artist, illustrator, and graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude for the cover of her 1985 greatest hits album Island Life, with the singer, model and actress in an anatomically impossible position, her skin glistening like metal shined to a high-polish finish.

In the photo, which was first published in New York Magazine in 1977, Grace Jones’ then-partner Goude, stitched together photos from various angles to create this arabesque composite image.

It was part of a series of consistently stellar and pioneering album covers, including the cool snarl of Nightclubbing (1981), the iconic Living My Life (1982), and the elongated Slave to the Rhythm (1985), where Goude translates his grandiose vision of Grace Jones into an image of her as a surreal, otherworldly muse.

The rigid femme/masculine binary images are now almost as famous as the music itself: a seductive post-disco fusion of reggae, icy funk, and rock, propelled by the rhythm section of Sly (Dunbar) and Robbie (Shakespeare) and wizz producer Trevor Horn (Yes, Frankie, ABC, The Buggles).

The strong original material and radical and imaginative covers (eg: Bill Withers’ ‘Use Me‘ or The Police’s ‘Demolition Man‘) are performed in a singular vocal approach, sounding both detached and all-powerful.

For the cover of Island Life, Goude wrote in his book Jungle Fever, “I cut her legs apart, lengthened them, and turned her body completely to face the audience, then I started painting, joining up all those pieces to give the illusion that she was capable of assuming such a position.”

These images helped propel Jones from musician to icon, and the duo collaborated on many projects over the course of their respective careers, but the Island Life cover remains cemented into the landscape of modern pop culture.

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Further Reading:

♥     Outsider Art | Howard Finster’s Artwork for R.E.M. and Talking Heads

♥     Pavement | From Doodled Covers to Spectacular Tapestry

♥     Lou Reed’s New York Album Cover | Inspired by Brassai

♥     The Slider by T.Rex | 50 Years On, The Untold Story of its Mysterious Cover Photo

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The Hard Quartet | New Track ‘Rio’s Song’ is a Winking Tribute to The Rolling Stones

Stephen Malkmus’ new band The Hard Quartet have released a brand new track ‘Rio’s Song’ set to appear on their forthcoming self-titled debut album, with an accompanying video that bears an uncanny resemblance to The Rolling Stones’ ‘Waiting on a Friend’. 

Rock luminaries, Emmett Kelly (Cairo Gang, The Double), Stephen Malkmus (Pavement, The Jicks), Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Superwolf, GBV), and Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White), recently announced the formation of a new supergroup we didn’t know we needed: The Hard Quartet.

The band’s excellent debut single, ‘Earth Hater‘ was released last month and offered a glimpse into the forthcoming eponymous double album, announced for release on October 4, 2024 via Matador Records.

Now a new track has emerged, ‘Rio’s Song’, with a priceless accompanying video directed by Jared Sherbert that is a shot-for-shot remake of The Rolling Stones’ 1981 video for ‘Waiting on a Friend‘.

The clip starts with Sweeney singing from the tenement steps in front of the same building in the East Village just like Mick and Keith do in ‘Waiting on a Friend’ (also the same location as seen on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti).

Matt is soon greeted by a street-loping Malkmus, and the pair share a friendly embrace exactly like Mick and Keith, before staggering down the street together towards the bar over a killer Malk solo.

In the video, Pavement bassist Mark Ibold can be seen serving drinks behind the bar as Steve pretends to swig a beer, and there they meet up with Emmett and Jim furnishing the stage with their instruments, with Malk on a Telecaster, to the delight of the small gathering.

Malkmus and Sweeney have worked together previously on 2020’s psych-folk delight Traditional Techniques, which is the most recent album from our hero prior to the latest Pavement reformation.

This new project sees them reunite for what promises to be a classic. The Hard Quartet have also scheduled three concerts, one each in Los Angeles, New York and London in October 2024.

‘Rio’s Song’ is a super-exuberant, loveable and ultracool track bursting with fuzzy guitar solos and vocal harmonies – with shades of Big Star and Silver Jews – that ups the anticipation of the new record tenfold. Pre-order the album here.

“We’re all jazzed.” — S.M.

Photo: JR Reynold, 2024.

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TRACKS

1. Chrome Mess
2. Earth Hater
3. Rio’s Song 
4. Our Hometown Boy
5. Renegade
6. Heel Highway
7. Killed By Death
8. Hey
9. It Suits You
10. Six Deaf Rats
11. Action For Military Boys
12. Jacked Existence
13. North of the Border
14. Thug Dynasty
15. Gripping the Riptide

THE HARD QUARTET is

• STEPHEN MALKMUS: bass, guitar, vocals
• MATT SWEENEY: bass, guitar, vocals
• EMMETT KELLY: bass, guitar, vocals
• JIM WHITE: drums, vocals

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Further Reading:

♥     Buy The Hard Quartet on Bandcamp

♥     The Hard Quartet Tour Dates

♥     Groove Denied | Stephen Malkmus’ Berlin-Inspired Electronic Outlier

♥     The Rolling Stones | Waiting on a Friend

Black Sabbath’s Vol 4 | Iconic Album Cover Photo

More Album Cover Outtakes: Black Sabbath Vol 4 (1972).

The monochrome photo of Ozzy Osbourne in his signature fringe jacket with hands raised triumphantly and two fingers extended, was taken during a Black Sabbath homecoming concert at Birmingham Town Hall in 1971 by influential British cover artist, the late Keith “Keef” McMillan.

A reversed image was later used to create the iconic cover for the band’s seminal, Vol 4 album. The SG in the background is the left hand of God, guitarist Tony Iommi, removed from the final image.

“The peace sign was just a thing to do. Everybody was doing it, so I just did it. It wasn’t my thing. I was far from a peaceful guy.” – Osbourne.

Vol 4 was recorded in Los Angeles, CA in May 1972, it’s no secret the recording sessions were drug-fueled. The band famously spent more money on cocaine than their recording budget, but the album marked a natural musical progression into shimmering heavy rock after their first three “dark and evil” albums.

An incredibly diverse and daring collection, the record was stacked with all-time Sabbath classics like ‘Supernaut‘, the rollicking single ‘Tomorrow’s Dream‘, a rare ballad ‘Changes‘, and multifaceted opener and closer ‘Wheels of Confusion / The Straightener‘ and ‘Under the Sun / Every Day Comes and Goes‘.

The record harnessed the group’s surging popularity and achieved gold status in less than a month after release on both sides of the Atlantic.

Originally to be called ‘Snowblind’ after one of the album’s key tracks, major label Warner Bros. wouldn’t release it with that name, and changed it to the more generic, or “Zeppelin-esque”, Vol 4.

On the back cover, the band got theirs back with a sneaky shout-out to “the great COKE-Cola Company of Los Angeles.” Those were the days.

The album was re-released in 2021 as a Super Deluxe boxed set that included a newly remastered version of the original album along with a treasure trove of 20 unreleased studio and live recordings from 1973, and a quality booklet, resulting in one of the band’s best ever expanded packages. Buy a copy of Black Sabbath’s Vol 4 Super Deluxe set here.

McMillan had worked on the earlier Sabbath sleeves, designing their haunting self-titled cover as well as their follow up Paranoid. He also took the cover photo for Bowie’s famous “man-dress” sleeve, The Man Who Sold the World the same year, and had a roster of other folk and prog acts, singer-songwriters and heavy-metal bands.

He later worked as a video director for Kate Bush on ‘Wuthering Heights’ and the memorable ‘Babooshka’, as well as Paul McCartney’s ‘Coming Up’ among many others.

Photos: Keith McMillan, 1972.

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Further Reading:

♥     Black Sabbath’s Unrivalled Mastery of Riff-Crunching Power in 20 Tracks

Black Sabbath’s Unrivalled Mastery of Riff-Crunching Power in 20 Tracks

The first six records made by the original Black Sabbath line-up was not only the finest stretch in the band’s immense catalogue, but remains an unparalleled lesson in the mastery of riff-crunching rock. The Press unearths 20 of the British legends’ most thunderous tracks of the era.

Black Sabbath’s immortal first six album run invented heavy metal music, and their signature lumbering guitar riffage, and acrobatic drumming, has duly reached classic status, forever setting the blueprint for a style of hard rock that has been copied and diluted, time and again, decade after decade, by bands worshipping at their altar such as Metallica, Kyuss, and Rage Against the Machine, to name a few.

Emerging from the Midlands of England in the late-60s, guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward recruited singer John “Ozzy” Osbourne, and bassist Terence “Geezer” Butler, drawing inspiration from giallo horror movies (see 1963’s Black Sabbath, featuring Boris Karloff) with the intention to deliver the same thrilling, terrifying experience through rock & roll.

Upon changing their name from Earth to Black Sabbath, they developed a distinctive down-tuned guitar sound employed by Iommi on some songs to make it easier on his fingertips, some of which were missing due to an industrial accident early in his adult life.

The first band ever to be classified as “heavy metal”, they essentially reworked basic blues into crunching rock and created an eerie dissonance with their raison d’être: ‘Black Sabbath’. The mighty track used a slow sinister guitar motif based around a tritone known as diabolus in musica (devil in music), and had lyrics about the devil and the dark arts with added atmospherics such as rain, thunder, and bell toll sound effects, crystallising Sabbath’s future approach.

The first album, Black Sabbath, was recorded in a single 12-hour session and was met with instant success (if not by critics) upon release in 1970, on Vertigo in the UK and Warner Bros. in the US. It showcased the group’s raw, powerhouse heavy rock, and paved the way for the follow up later that same year – the now canonised Paranoid. 

Intended to be called ‘War Pigs’ (just look at the cover), Paranoid gets its power from the space it’s afforded as they put their own demented twist on prog over multiple epic tunes. The album hosts some of metal’s heaviest-ever riffs, but it’s swinging, and evil, and often with a sense of humour and infectious melodicism. It might be the most darkly engrossing full-length they ever made.

The album included the throwaway title track written at the last minute by Tony to fill out an LP side, yet it resounded and became a huge hit and one of the group’s most-performed and well-known songs (not included here). The album was again warmly received by fans, topping the charts in the UK and top 10 in the US. 

Relentless touring to large enthusiastic audiences (not to mention substantial partying and hedonistic excess the band would become famous for) lead to another riffmongous album, their third Master of Reality (1971). Featuring some of best grooves of Sabbath’s entire discography, they then stormed the US for the drug-addled masterpiece Vol 4 (1972), an album that offered a more accessible feel to their music, not to mention some of Osbourne’s most effortlessly soulful singing.

Their next two records, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973), and particularly the weird sprawl of Sabotage (1975), found Iommi stepping up with some of his all-time nastiest riffs, harnessing a desperation unlike any of their other Ozzy-era LPs.

They remain crucial rock and roll landmarks of the time and are all expertly sequenced: combining peerless epics with short instrumental passages for light relief before the next onslaught.

By now, Iommi was experimenting with synthesizers and guitar tones, and with Butler’s direct and powerful lyrics adorning increasingly interesting arrangements, and chemically enhanced performances, the band’s decadent state gave the music an added psychological enormity.

Importantly, the power and artistry of all of these influential albums has not dated or diminished over time, in fact it’s quite the opposite. The combination of the band’s melodic yet crushing riffs, the undeniable swing of the rhythm section, and impassioned vocals, ensure that this music still towers over the genres and subgenres it spawned.

Sabbath would make two more albums with Ozzy, Technical Ecstasy (1976) and Never Say Die! (1978) that, despite having their moments, scream burnout and do not match the level of brilliance of the first six LPs.

Inevitable internal problems surfaced such as artistic differences, drug addictions, and disagreements about the future direction of the band, leading to an eventual decline that would result in the frontman leaving the group to pursue a lucrative solo career.

Famously, the story would not end there for the Sabs. The recruitment of Ronnie James Dio as vocalist for the very good Heaven and Hell (1980) would launch a new chapter in the ultimate heavy metal legends’ career well into the 80s and beyond that would see replacement singers (Ian Gillan from Deep Purple), firings and re-hirings (Bill Ward), and even Ozzy’s return for Live Aid (1985) and a reasonable comeback album, 13 (2013).

This 20-track compilation highlights the unrivalled mastery and riff-crunching power from Black Sabbath’s most rewarding era: 1970-1975.

Photo: Keith McMillan, 1976.

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Black Sabbath | Riff Crunching Power in 20 Tracks (1970-1975)

1. War Pigs – Paranoid
2. Into the Void – Master of Reality
3. Hole in the Sky – Sabotage
4. The Writ – Sabotage
5. Megalomania – Sabotage
6. N.I.B. – Black Sabbath
7. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
8. Killing Yourself to Live – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
9. Tomorrow’s Dream – Vol 4
10. Supernaut – Vol 4

1. Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
2. Fairies Wear Boots – Paranoid
3. Sweet Leaf – Master of Reality
4. Children of the Grave – Master of Reality
5. Wheels of Confusion – Vol 4
6. A National Acrobat – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
7. Spiral Architect – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
8. Symptom of the Universe – Sabotage
9. Iron Man – Paranoid
10. Snowblind – Vol 4

Bonus Track: The Thrill of it All – Sabotage

1. Black Sabbath – 2
2. Paranoid – 3
3. Master of Reality – 3
4. Vol 4 – 4
5. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath – 4
6. Sabotage –5

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Further Reading:

♥     Look Closely: Black Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell

Dude ’72 | The Story Behind Mott the Hoople’s Album Cover

Mick Rock’s photo of a young dude posing with a cardboard guitar was originally earmarked as the cover for Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes in July 1972. 

Dude ’72 is the name of the image, and the photo of the London lad was taken by the late-great “Man Who Shot the Seventies” photographer Mick Rock while walking the streets of London’s Camden Town, and was originally intended to adorn the cover of Mott the Hoople’s breakout album All the Young Dudes.

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The Original Concept

Rock photographed some of the most iconic images in rock history – everyone from David Bowie, Syd Barrett, Lou Reed, Queen and Iggy Pop, to Bryan Ferry and Blondie – and had he run with the original concept of Mott’s cardboard rockstar in Regent Park Estate, it may well have become one of his more recognisable images of the era.

The photo appears in his book, Glam! An Eyewitness Account with the intentionally vague caption: “Why it wasn’t used I can’t remember, nor can Ian Hunter, must have been a chemical shift.”

The Bowie-penned title track climbed to number three on the UK charts, the band’s biggest success to date, and the song’s theme captured the glam-emboldened kids of England dreaming of a world beyond suburbia’s oppressive notion of normalcy.

This assimilates perfectly with the anthem of solidarity for the disaffected, and consolidated by the song’s stunning introductory guitar chimes of freedom.

In London, adventure parks for British youngsters sprang up in the 1950s on old bomb sites fitted out as a recreational areas with play equipment.

It is still there today. In the background stands the ornate Windsor House on Cumberland Market.

Unsurprisingly, Mick Rock’s photo was snapped up all too late, eventually used by Third Eye Blind for their album Out of the Vein, released 2003.

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The Album Cover

An illustration of a trio of Gatsby-esque frat boys in a 1917 American advertisement for clothing manufacturers ended up replacing the original idea for reasons that aren’t clear.

The final sleeve concept and art direction was designed George Underwood, fresh off his collaborative work on Bowie’s Hunky Dory, who colour-tinted the vintage illustration that had come from an issue of Saturday Evening Post with old English typeface.

Released 52 years ago to the day, All the Young Dudes put the great Mott the Hoople back on the map.

They were a killer live band with four solid but moderately selling rock ‘n roll albums under their belt, but by 1971 they had essentially split up, playing awful gas tanks in Zurich.

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The Song

Upon returning home to London, Mott bassist Pete Watts had rung Bowie and offered his services but when big-fan Bowie asked why, he explained that they had disbanded.

In response, Bowie offered them a song he’d written and the opportunity to record it along with his services as a producer.

They all met up at the Mainman offices in Regent Street and it was there where Bowie sat cross-legged on the floor with an acoustic guitar and played them perhaps the best song he ever wrote.

“I went cold. I knew that was the one.” – Ian Hunter.

The guitar intro was Mick Ralphs’, and the wry clarion call for a glam-rock army to kick out the old and begin the new at the end of the song was Hunter’s.

With Bowie adding backing vocals, Mott delivered their breakout hit; the dystopian rock ‘n roll anthem ‘All the Young Dudes’.

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The Album

The record found them moving away from their earlier rock-jam style to exploring more hooks and choruses, ushering in their golden period and coming through with a genuine classic.

From their reworking of Lou Reed’s ‘Sweet Jane‘, through an assemblage of originals such as ‘Jerkin’ Crocus‘, ‘Sucker‘ and Ralphs’ ‘Ready for Love‘ (re-recorded a year later as founder of the mega-selling band Bad Company), every song hits the target square down the middle.

The album also spawned the release of a great spin-off single ‘Honaloochie Boogie‘, catapulting them to the upper echelon of the charts again and to the lights and glamour of Top of the Pops.

They followed it up with the release of two more increasingly successful albums, Mott (1973) and The Hoople (1974), and a further string of hit singles, staking their place as prominent members of the credible glam-rock club.

Top Photo: Dude ’72, Mick Rock.

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Further Reading:

♥    Sylvia Morales: The Artistic Vision Behind Lou Reed’s Growing Up In Public

♥    Syd Barrett in Earl’s Court | Captured by Mick Rock

Brian Eno | The Glam Rock Icon & Electronic Pioneer in 20 Tracks

Brian Eno was once the outrageous electronic pioneer behind British icons Roxy Music before creating four wildly experimental solo albums of synthesizer-infused glam rock. Eno: Masterworks 1974-1977, covers 20 of the best and most interesting tracks from those early rock-vocal albums.

There’s a little more to oblique strategist Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno’s career than just that ambient guy or big time producer of bands such as U2 and Talking Heads, or for inventing the startup chime for Windows 95. Few may know that he was once an outrageous art-rock star and electronic pioneer behind British glam-rock icons Roxy Music, playing synthesizer and creating wild sonic treatments.

Eno was flamboyant, weird and outrageous, creating some interesting and influential music with the band not to mention receiving the majority of the attention from press and fans alike. It wouldn’t last. Self-described non-musician Eno departed Roxy Music by the time their second album For Your Pleasure was released in 1973 due to personal conflicts with singer and master of suave front-man Bryan Ferry.

That year Eno flexed his experimental muscle with the conceptual (No Pussyfooting) LP, a ground-breaking album of drone ambience and tape delay manipulation. Teaming up with guitar wizard and ex-King Crimson band leader Robert Fripp, the technique central to that album was the use of reel-to-reel tape recorders whereby sounds recorded to the first deck resurfaced unpredictably when the tape passed through the second. Eno refined this for his expansive solo work and Fripp for the stage and studio with his Frippertronics. Unconventional for 1973, it lay the groundwork for each of the artist’s most iconic works.

Still under contract to Island records, Eno gathered together musicians including Fripp and John Wetton (bass) from King Crimson, basically everybody from Roxy Music except Ferry, to create his frenzied and wildly experimental glam rock debut Here Come the Warm Jets (1974). The sprawling geopolitical concept album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), was released the same year but used fewer guest musicians, and addressed a variety of subjects including the Chinese Communist evolution, espionage, air crashes and sex crazed machines, but was no less experimental or thrilling.

His third solo album Another Green World (1975) made great use of Eno’s ‘Oblique Strategies’, a card deck of creative philosophies designed to upend music creation in one sitting. The largely instrumental album moves like a beautiful dream and finally found a ground level for his genius, marking the point where he moved from rock experimenter to explorer.

The 1977 album Before and After Science marks the end of Eno’s glam rock era. It’s twisted, abstract take on slow-burning funk, precise art-pop, cool vocal cooing, and eerie instrumentals, and offers a sneak preview into the world of Talking Heads, Cluster, David Byrne, David Bowie, Devo and more, which Eno would collaborate with in the months and years to follow.

For such critically lauded and influential albums these pop records remain surprisingly obscure. They spawned no hit singles and still receive zero airplay on classic rock radio, however they are essential collections of vital and visionary music from a creative mind synthesising the sounds of the day, in turn, creating something unique that still resonates, before moving on to more ambient pastures.

This compilation covers some of the best and most interesting works from those early rock albums, including the lively bonus single, Seven Deadly Finns.

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1. Third Uncle
2. Burning Airlines Give You So Much More
3. The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch
4. Another Green World
5. Here Come the Warm Jets
6. On Some Faraway Beach
7. King’s Lead Hat
8. By This River
9. Dead Finks Don’t Talk
10. Sombre Reptiles
11. The True Wheel
12. China My China
13. Taking Tiger Mountain
14. The Big Ship
15. Needles in the Camel’s Eye
16. No One Receiving
17. Sky Saw
18. The Fat Lady of Limbourg
19. St Elmo’s Fire
20. Baby’s on Fire

Seven Deadly Finns (bonus track)

Further Listening:

♥     (No Pussyfooting) | The Birth of Ambient Music with Robert Fripp and Brian Eno

♥     Robert Fripp | Exposure (1979)

♥     Another Green World | The Artistic Fusion of Tom Phillips, Raphael, and Brian Eno

♥     Polyrhythmic Explorations | Talking Heads’ Remain in Light (1980)

♥     David Bowie “Heroes” (1977)

Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime: 40th Anniversary of a Post-Punk Classic

Released 40 years ago, the front cover to the Minutemen’s enduring masterpiece, the 45-track Double Nickels on the Dime, featured a photo of Mike Watt driving his ’64 Volkswagen bug southbound to his home in San Pedro, CA.

Emerging from the greater-LA post-punk scene in the early-80s, the Minutemen were not your average loud/fast trio. The band’s kind of rock was studied yet swinging, precise but full of fun, and incorporated a tuneful mix of jazz and hardcore, played with a rough angularity with a depth to their sound and arrangements. Bassist Watt, the late singer/guitarist D. Boon, and drummer George Hurley’s music lurched from drunken-grooves to agit-funk and back again, best displayed on their now-canonised classic, Double Nickels on the Dime (1984).

The album cover was taken by buddy of the band, Dirk Vandenberg, sitting in the back seat as Watt drove under the sign to San Pedro. In 2024, Mike Watt who came up with the album’s title, explained to The Press:

It has nothing to do with any highway numbering system, the road I’m on in the photo is CA-11 (years later it would get the I-110 designation), “dime” is slang for “exact” and nothing to with any number except for doing fifty-five miles per hour, exactly.

A response to Sammy Hagar’s hit single ‘I Can’t Drive 55’ perhaps, Watt said, “this was not a fuckin accident: I asked my buddy Dirk Vandenberg to somehow capture this and he fuckin did”. The photo finds Watt bang on the national speed limit, 55mph (“double nickels”) at the time, driving through downtown Los Angeles. The LA Grand Hotel Downtown can be seen on the left.

It took three tries before the Minutemen were happy with the result. The photographer later commented: “There were three elements that Mike Watt wanted in the photo: a natural kind of glint in his eyes reflected in the rear-view mirror, the speedometer pinned exactly at 55mph, and, of course, the San Pedro sign guiding us home”.

Out from Pedro, from state to state, meet Mike Watt and D. Boon

The cover concept overlapped somewhat with the German electronic band Kraftwerk’s Autobahn (1974) sleeve. With the above lyrical Kraftwerk reference, the Minutemen even used snippets of car engine sounds at the head of each side, sneakily bridging the two iconic albums – and they didn’t even charge us a bridge toll.

Mike had no problem getting the ’64 VW bug up to fifty-five mph, he even rebuilt the engine himself.

She ran great, and was way econo!

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NB: Thanks to Mike Watt for the information, and emi72 from the Steve Hoffman Music Forum for the inspiration.