Tony's Favorite 1990s Albums

When in doubt, make a list. I subscribe to several YouTube channels, some of which are run by amateur online music critics. As is their wont, they too make lists – top ten prog rock albums, top 10 Deep Purple albums, etc. You get the idea. Thus inspired I thought I would list my Top 10 albums from the 1990s, which to these ears is the last good musical decade. To be clear, this isn’t a “best of” list, because any such pronouncements by anybody are completely subjective. These are “favorites,” so opinions [like recollections] may vary. Without further ado:

U2 - Achtung Baby (1991) – After The Joshua Tree [1987] and Rattle and Hum [1988], U2 faced an existential crisis. The Joshua Tree was their big artistic statement. To punctuate that statement, they decided they would film their subsequent tour. They envisioned a U2 version of A Hard Day’s Night. Rattle and Hum was more like a home movie, four guys looking to discover American music, and a joyless home movie at that. The reviews of Rattle and Hum were scathing, and the guys in the band were a bit shell shocked. Up to this point they were critical darlings and weren’t used to people telling them they weren’t perfect. And they [most especially Bono] had gotten too caught up in their own self-importance. Bono’s wife Ali summed it up best – she told him “you’ve gotten so serious.  The boy I fell in love with was so full of mischief, so full of madness.  You were a much more experimental character – what’s happened to you?” They went away to re-invent themselves, but in the process discovered they weren’t on the same page musically, hence the existential crisis. They pulled themselves together and re-invented themselves. They exorcised the “preachy” U2 [for a while, anyway], stopped Bono’s posturing and hectoring for social justice, and became rock stars that could make music that was fun. Achtung Baby is my favorite U2 album by far.

Rush - Counterparts (1993) – After a five-album run where all kinds of keyboards served as the focus of Rush music, Alex Lifeson finally re-emerged from the shadows with a vengeance. Rush started out as a guitar band, but after Moving Pictures [1981] they moved further and further away from that ethos to the point that Alex Lifeson became a musical afterthought.  There were just too many damn synthesizers for my liking, and the songwriting was pretty weak after Grace Under Pressure [1984]. Counterparts is the album for which I waited nine years. Keyboards were relegated to the background, and Lerxst’s guitar was finally front and center again. Of the eleven songs on the album [one is an instrumental: Leave That Thing Alone], nine are strong, while the remaining songs are merely “ok.”  Once again, Rush was a fire-breathing beast, and I couldn’t be happier as a fan.

R.E.M. - Out of Time [1991] and Automatic for the People [1992] – I’m cheating a little bit here because I think of both of these albums as two sides of the same coin. Both are mostly acoustic, and unlike the louder album that preceded them – Green [1988] – they have aged very well. They don’t sound dated. I admit I didn’t get into these guys at the time, as ubiquitous as they were in the late Eighties/early Nineties. But with the passage of 32 years, and with Carol passing away, I was nostalgic for a happier time and thus I did a reappraisal. For the most part, I haven’t a clue about what Michael Stipe was singing about. I don’t think he had any idea, either. But there is a moment of clarity on Man On The Moon, an elegy for Andy Kaufman. It proved to me that if he wanted to, Michael Stipe can make complete sense. And he had a sense of humor. With that said, I cut him some slack on the rest of his lyrics, which can be very obtuse and impenetrable. At a time when grunge and alternative music were all the rage [some of which I like very much], these two statements, released nineteen months apart, were outside the norm. Instead of loud, detuned guitars, there are mandolins, acoustic guitars, pianos and bouzoukis. There’s a lot to be said for going against the grain, and R.E.M. are to be commended for it. I appreciate them now – better late than never. But when I think I’ve had enough of quiet music, I’ll throw on Dirt or Superunknown.  Speaking of which…

Alice in Chains – Dirt [1992] – A long time ago, MTV had this show on Saturday nights called The Headbangers Ball. It was on this show that a video caught Carol’s eye. It was made by a band from Seattle. The singer was going on about being buried in his own shit. Carol didn’t impress easily, but she liked what she heard and told me “you’ve got to hear this.” The band was Alice in Chains, and the song was Man in the Box. The song was from their debut album, Facelift [1990]. We were both immediately hooked. A couple of years later, I saw a movie called Singles [1992]. It takes place in Seattle and is about the love lives of twentysomethings, with the burgeoning grunge movement serving as the backdrop for the story. It was here that I got a preview of the next AIC album. Their new song, Would? [an elegy for Mother Love Bone vocalist Andrew Wood], featured in the movie. Dirt, the album from whence it came, is a musical 2x4 across the forehead. Jerry Cantrell’s riffs were dark and sludgy, very Sabbathesque but recorded a helluva lot better. Though not a concept album per se, this harrowing album has drug addiction as its theme for the last half of the album. Layne Staley, in a vice grip of heroin addiction that just wouldn’t let go, articulated his own downward spiral and self-destruction. The album also includes themes of mortality, relationships, and depression, with a tribute to Cantrell’s father [a Vietnam vet] thrown in for good measure. Of note, they began recording Dirt during the LA riots in the summer of 1992, which only added to the album’s vibe of doom. Alice in Chains have recorded some stellar music since 1992, but Dirt remains their magnum opus. It still remains in heavy rotation for me.

Soundgarden - Superunknown (1994) - Of the four big bands to come out of Seattle in the early 1990s [Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden], Soundgarden was the first to get a major label record deal, but the last to get the big break. They got people’s attention with Badmotorfinger (1991), but in 1994 Superunknown launched them into the stratosphere. Superunknown opens with a thunderous one-two punch of Let Me Drown and My Wave. Fell On Black Days which follows slows the pace and is dark and very moody. Mailman is one of Matt Cameron’s songs. As the title says, it’s about a mailman, who is about to “go postal.” Kim Thayil pours the sludge on thick with his detuned guitars in a grinding riff, and Ben Shepard’s bass makes the sludge even thicker. I have no idea what Superunknown [the song] is about, and I don’t care. It’s loud, it’s fast, it’s brutal in its intensity, and it’s relentless. Black Hole Sun is the monster hit, which is more of a mood than a song, but that’s ok. Spoonman is another fast one…and another hit. It’s all good. Carol and I saw them at Red Rocks in 2011, and they played most of this album. To date, it’s the loudest concert I ever attended. We lost some hearing that day.

Pink Floyd- The Division Bell [1994] – The last real Pink Floyd album. I don’t count The Endless River because there’s only one real song on it, and not a very good one. As much as I like 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, it’s really a David Gilmour solo album in all but name. It has more in common with Gilmour’s About Face [1984] than it does with Pink Floyd. Rick Wright didn’t play much on it, and Nick Mason didn’t play at all. But that album served its purpose. In the aftermath of Roger Waters’ 1985 departure, it proved the band could function without him, much to Waters’ distress. After touring AMLOR for two solid years, Wright and Mason were back in playing shape. Wright has five songwriting credits on The Division Bell and sang on a Pink Floyd album for the first time since Dark Side of the Moon. Unlike AMLOR, this sounded like a Pink Floyd album. David Gilmour isn’t a lyricist, and he isn’t big on the whole “concept album” thing. But in contemporary interviews, he did say the underlying theme of the album was the inability of people to communicate. Both he and Rick Wright opined that The Division Bell sounds more like Wish You Were Here [the favorite of both Gilmour and Wright] than anything else in Pink Floyd’s canon. For me, it took just one listen to Keep Talking to know that this album was going to be a good one. But, the emotional center of the album is the final song, High Hopes. It is a wistful look back on happier times in Cambridge before fame. Carol and I saw two shows on this tour. They were the best shows we had ever seen, with film clips playing on a giant screen behind the stage, flying pigs, lasers, and a giant mirror ball that illuminated everything during Comfortably Numb. The music was pretty good, too. 😊

Deep Purple - Purpendicular (1996) – One can’t discuss Deep Purple without talking about the interpersonal drama of the players. They shocked the rock world by reuniting the classic Mark II lineup [Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice] in 1984 with the album Perfect Strangers. The House of Blue Light [1987] followed, but the disagreements between Blackmore and Gillan that led to their 1973 split resurfaced. Soon, Gillan was fired in 1989, to be replaced by Joe Lynn Turner. The resulting album, Slaves and Masters [1990] sounds like a bad Rainbow album. Blackmore was happy, but the rest of the band wasn’t. They wanted Gillan back, so he returned in 1992. They recorded The Battle Rages On [1993], and it was Ritchie’s turn to be unhappy. The band toured in Europe and played their last show [Helsinki] in November 1993. In three weeks hence, they were supposed to go to Japan, but Ritchie tore up his visa and left the band. The band had to honor the Japan dates, and somehow, they got Joe Satriani to fill in for Ritchie. They had a world tour ahead of them and they played the dates with Satriani, but there was a hitch. Satriani had his own career and couldn’t stay with Deep Purple. Deep Purple needed a new guitar player [or, as Gillan would say, a “banjo player”]. Each member made a list. The only player on everyone’s list was Steve Morse. Morse turned out to be an enlightened choice. He’s nothing like Blackmore, and that’s the point. If one doesn’t hire someone to sound like Ritchie Blackmore, the less likely people are going to make comparisons to him, other than to say “he doesn’t sound like Ritchie.” With Morse, they could afford to take a fresh approach, to exercise the musical muscles that had atrophied and get away from making generic hard rock albums. Morse’s own work before joining Deep Purple spanned a variety of styles, genres and moods. This is what he brought to Deep Purple, and to their credit they embraced the change. This album swings like no other Deep Purple album. Ian Paice gets to do more than just a 4/4 bash like he had to do from Perfect Strangers onward. The rest of the band was able to write and contribute more than they had when Ritchie was the musical director. The result was Purpendicular, which would be their most experimental album since before Gillan and Glover joined the band in 1969. This album proved that there was life after Blackmore, so much so that the Morse-Purple marriage lasted twenty-eight years. Highly recommended.

Gov’t Mule - Dose (1997) – The Allman Brothers Band reunited in 1989 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the band founded by Duane Allman. Guitarist Warren Haynes and bassist Allen Woody were the new guys. After the success of the Dreams tour, the band decided to create new music. The new album, Seven Turns [1990], was their best album since Brothers and Sisters [1973]. Subsequent albums [Shades of Two Worlds (1991) and Where It All Begins (1994)] were almost as good. To occupy themselves during ABB downtimes, Haynes and Woody had formed power trio Gov’t Mule with Matt Abts, who played with Haynes in Dickey Betts’ band before the 1989 reformation. It was going to be a busman’s holiday, like what Hot Tuna started out to be vis-à-vis the Jefferson Airplane. They recorded one self-titled album in 1995. The plan was just one album, but the ABB was a dysfunctional unit. Gregg Allman had his substance abuse issues, and Dickey Betts was in and out of the band due to his own substance abuse issues [to be charitable, he was a mean drunk]. The interpersonal dynamic was a bit toxic. Haynes and Woody decided they had enough and left the Allman Brothers in 1997, and they didn’t look back. The Mule would be their full-time gig. Dose is jam band music at its finest. This album spawned three (!) sprawling, monster classics – Blind Man in the Dark, Thorazine Shuffle [known in some spiritual circles as the “Thorazine Clusterfuck”], and Game Face. Throw in two instrumentals [Birth of the Mule and Thelonious Beck], the folk blues of Son House’s John the Revelator, and a jam take on the Beatles She Said She Said, you have a classic.

Bob Dylan – Time Out of Mind [1997] – At the conclusion of the 1980s, Bob Dylan released an outstanding album, Oh Mercy, about which I have already commented. As he had more than enough songs for that album, he rerecorded those leftovers [and a handful of newer songs] for the next album, Under the Red Sky [1990]. This wasn’t a bad album, but in the wake of Oh Mercy it was a bit of a letdown. Afterward, he went silent. Not for the first time, many began to doubt whether he could still be creative. The man himself had his doubts, wondering aloud whether he had enough songs to sing and stop writing. He went back to his folk roots and cut two albums - Good as I Been to You [1992] and World Gone Wrong [1993] - that were traditional folk songs, performed by him alone with only an acoustic guitar and a harmonica to accompany him. It took him until 1996 to find the inspiration to write new material. His new songs addressed love, heartbreak, betrayal and loss, old age and mortality. For his sound, Dylan found his inspiration in the blues. When in doubt, go back to the source. I’ve waxed poetic about 2001’s “Love And Theft” in these pages before and how I thought [and still think] that album was the best he had done since Blood on the Tracks. I had done a Top 10 list of Dylan albums. I had Time Out of Mind at #6, Oh Mercy at #3, and  “Love And Theft” at #2. Thanks to a remix of the entire Time Out of Mind album as presented on the Fragments box set [released in 2022], I may have to rethink the order of things. Time Out of Mind is truly extraordinary.

Tom Petty – Wildflowers [1994] – Tom Petty had a new record deal with Warner Brothers, but there was a catch. He was still signed to MCA, and he wanted out. His relationship with MCA was tempestuous. MCA had originally rejected Full Moon Fever. They butted heads over his compensation, artistic control and album prices. The price for his freedom was a greatest hits compilation, but it had to include two new songs. One song turned out to be Mary Jane’s Last Dance. Tom wasn’t done with making clean breaks. After recording Mary Jane’s Last Dance, he fired drummer Stan Lynch. In his place he hired Steve Ferrone, an inspired choice. They didn’t get along anymore, and Tom thought it was time for a change. No change was more drastic for him than his marriage. His 22-year marriage to Jane Benyo was falling apart. Daughter Adria took one listen to Wildflowers and knew immediately that her parents’ marriage was over. Welcome to middle age. Another break Petty made [though not permanent like the rest] was with Jeff Lynne. Lynne produced Petty’s first solo record, Full Moon Fever [1989] and Into the Great Wide Open [1991]. For Wildflowers he worked with Rick Rubin at Mike Campbell’s suggestion. For this record, Petty said that after spending almost twenty years making records with the Heartbreakers, he wanted to branch out and work with others in order to learn and grow. He credited Rubin with guiding him back to a musical place where he would feel very comfortable. At this point in his life, Petty got more comfortable making music that wasn’t just loud rock ‘n roll. To be sure, there is plenty of loud rock ‘n roll on this record, but there are also folky, confessional moments as well. The album alternates between the loud and the quiet. Originally, Petty planned Wallflowers to be a double album. He wrote twenty-five songs for it, but when he finished it and played it for Warner Brothers, they said it was too long. He pruned Wildflowers to fifteen songs. Some of the leftovers came out for his soundtrack to the movie She’s The One. Others remained unreleased until the Wildflowers & All the Rest box set came out in 2020. There was quantity as well as quality. He wanted to revisit the whole Wildflowers thing after his final tour, but fate had other ideas. Wildflowers is Tom Petty’s masterpiece.

Frank Zappa's Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

It was the first week of December 1971. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were on tour in Europe. December 4th saw  them in Montreux, Switzerland. They were playing at the Casino, one of the regular venues on the European circuit. Deep Purple were in town to record their next album [Machine Head] with the Rolling Stones mobile studio. FZ’s show was to be the last show at the Casino before it closed for the season. Once they cleared out, Deep Purple would load in and record Machine Head. But it didn’t quite work out that way.

While Don Preston was performing his synthesizer solo during King Kong, somebody in the audience fired a flare gun. The flare got lodged in the trunking in the ceiling, and before too long, the entire place was an inferno. FZ and the Mothers lost all of their equipment in the fire. Deep Purple lost their venue for recording Machine Head. Amazingly, nobody was killed. This incident inspired Deep Purple’s song Smoke on the Water. If you want the details, they’re all there in the lyrics.

Fast forward six days to December 10th. FZ’s tour continued on to the Rainbow Theatre in London. As fate would have it, FZ and the Mothers were playing King Kong when a crazed fan went on-stage and pushed FZ into the orchestra pit. The fall was about ten-fifteen feet onto a concrete floor. FZ suffered severe injuries. He had a crushed larynx, head trauma and multiple fractures. The crushed larynx left him with a lower voice, and the fractures [including a broken leg, broken rib, broken pelvis] left him with a limp and a bad back for the rest of his life. FZ was wheelchair bound for several months, during which time he made the albums The Grand Wazoo and Waka Jawaka.

According to FZ:
“My head was over on my shoulder, and my neck was bent like it was broken. I had a gash in my chin, a hole in the back of my head, a broken rib, and a fractured leg. One arm was paralyzed… I was taken to a public hospital. I remember being in the emergency room which, like the rest of London at that time of year, was freezing cold. They were clearly understaffed - a guy two beds down from me had his balls smashed in a brawl someplace, and was howling, unattended… They couldn't give me any anesthetic because I had a head injury, so after a while I just passed out, and woke up later in a bad-smelling room with beds all around, in a circle, with curtains hung between them. I remember the curtains parting in front of me and a black nurse coming in and seeing my face; like she had just seen a monster. I was pretty mashed up… I was later transferred to the Harley Street Clinic where I stayed for a month. I had a twenty-four-hour bodyguard because the asshole who had hit me was out on bail, and we didn't know how insane he was.”

The guy who nearly killed Frank Zappa is named Trevor Howell. He was wacked out on weed and LSD. He thought he saw FZ making sexual gestures toward his girlfriend, freaked out and pushed FZ into the pit. He did only a year in prison for "assault with malicious intent to commit bodily harm.”

Deep Purple - Machine Head

For those who don’t already know it, here’s the story of the making of Machine Head:  Deep Purple didn’t like recording studios.  They would rather record anywhere but a recording studio.  Other bands didn’t like them much either.  Led Zeppelin was famous for recording much of their untitled fourth album and most of Physical Graffiti with a mobile studio at a house called Headley Grange.  The Rolling Stones built a mobile recording studio so they could record at Mick Jagger’s house, Stargroves.  They used it to record the bulk of Sticky Fingers in 1970 and Exile on Main Street in 1972.  The Who used the Mobile to record Won’t Get Fooled Again for Who’s Next.  So recording an album anywhere but a proper studio in London was becoming less and less of an unusual thing.  DP had played in the Casino in Montreux, Switzerland in in spring 1971.  It was a regular stop on the European touring circuit.  It was the home of the Montreux Jazz Festival.  Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd had also performed there.  They liked the place and decided to record there if they had the chance.  DP went to Montreux to record a new album, and took the Rolling Stones Mobile with them.   

 

When they arrived in Montreux in December 1971, they were greeted with gift baskets from Claude Nobs, the founder and director of the Montreux Jazz Festival.  Included in the gift baskets were tickets to see a matinee show of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.  Since FZ was playing the Casino, DP decided not to unload their equipment until after FZ was gone [a most fortuitous decision].  During the FZ show, somebody shot a flare gun from behind where Ian Gillan was sitting.  The flare got stuck in the wooden trunking above the stage and caught the building on fire.  I was listening to a bootleg of the FZ show last night, and you can hear FZ directing people to calmly head for the exits on the sides of the building.  In a matter of a few minutes the Casino turned into an inferno.  While people were evacuating the building Nobs knew of some places where people might hide to get away from the flames.  He kept going into the building and pulling people out of these hidden places.  As the smoke rose from the Casino, drafts from the nearby Swiss Alps pushed the smoke out over Lake Geneva, hence the title Smoke on the Water.

Montreux Casino [pre-fire]

The Casino Fire

The Mobile Studio

With the Casino in ruins, the band had no place to record.  Claude Nobs found them a place called Le Pavilion, located in the center of Montreux.  They recorded one song there [called 'Title #1'] before they got complaints about the noise from the townspeople of Montreux.  Their roadies held off the police just long enough for them to finish 'THE take.'  Claude Nobs found them a more suitable, more isolated location to record.  The location was the Grand Hotel. It was a hotel that was closed for the season.   Jon Lord described it as a very forbidding place, a Victorian-era pile.  They found an alcove at the end of a corridor off the main lobby to record in.  It was a "T" shaped alcove, so that's where they stuck Ian Paice's drum kit.  The rest of the band recorded in the corridor.  They parked the Rolling Stones Mobile studio outside the front door, so it took some gymnastics to get from the recording area to the Mobile to hear any playbacks.  Maybe it was because of this set-up that the band usually nailed a song in only one or two takes.

Le Pavilion
 

The Grand Hotel

Highway Star - This was the only song the band had written and performed before they went to Switzerland to record Machine Head.  During a fall tour of the UK in 1971, Deep Purple and some members of the music press were taking a bus to a gig in Portsmouth.  On this trip, they asked "how do you write a song?"  Ritchie Blackmore said 'like this,' picked up a guitar and started playing a one-note rhythm part.  Ian Gillan started to ad-lib a vocal about being on the road in a rock and roll band. A song was born.  When they got to Portsmouth Guild Hall, the rest of the band worked out the song during the soundcheck, and Highway Star was in the set that night. Roger Glover said that about the only things he contributed to Highway Star were the title [he was the band's 'title' man] and a few words.  It's mostly Ian Gillan's lyrics. Ritchie did most of the music.  Jon Lord came up with the chords over which he played his solo. He called it a quasi-Bach chord sequence.  He showed these chords on the Classic Albums episode for Machine Head.  Some and members didn’t think it would work, but Ritchie thought it would, and would be proven to be right.  As for Ritchie, he usually made up his solos of the cuff, but for Highway Star he worked one out ahead of time and committed it to memory.  Ritchie once confirmed the chord sequence was, like Jon Lord’s part, inspired by Bach.  His solo is probably his best in Deep Purple.  Roger Glover called Highway Star the quintessential Deep Purple song.

Maybe I'm a Leo - This song originated from a Roger Glover riff.  On the Classic Albums series, he said he got the idea for the riff after hearing John Lennon’s song How Do You Sleep [from Imagine].  He liked the idea that the riff didn’t start on the down beat.  Gov’t Mule covered this song on their The Deep End, Volume 1 CD.  It was one of Allen Woody’s favorite songs so Warren Haynes decided to cover it.  As a bonus, Roger Glover played on their version.

Pictures of Home - This is Ian Gillan being homesick, singing about 'emptiness, eagles and snow' [though there weren't any eagles].  Jon Lord said he thought Ritchie got the idea for the song from a short wave radio that he kept hidden in his hat [he used to wear pilgrim hats back then - see below].  Ritchie did hear the riff from either Bulgaria or Turkey on his short wave radio. The revelation on this song was Ian Paice’s drumming.   Included besides the Blackmore/Lord interplay, Roger Glover played a brief bass solo.  On the deluxe version of Machine Head, Roger Glover [who remixed the album for the deluxe release] opted to let the song progress to its conclusion rather than to fade it.  During that extended ending you can hear Ian Paice make up the drum bits on the fly.  Paicey demonstrated what a truly talented drummer he is.

       

Never Before – This song closes out Side One.  The band was very sure this would be a hit single.  Little did they know the next song on the album would be the big hit, not this one.  It’s a good song, but not a great one.  I’ve heard one live version – from the In Concert 1970-72 album of BBC shows.  They rarely played it live.  On their 2004 tour they played it because they were playing the entire Machine Head album for the tour.

Smoke on the Water – On the live Made in Japan album Ian Gillan introduced this song thusly - “This song is also from the last album.  It tells the story of how we recorded it and what went wrong when we did it.  It happened in Switzerland – the song is a thing called Smoke on the Water…”  This was 'Title #1' that the band recorded at Le Pavilion.  Ritchie came up with the riff, one of the most simple, indestructible and unforgettable riffs in rock history.  It is such an insistent riff that when you hear it you can't get it out of your head.  People used to tease Ritchie about the riff's simplicity, but his comeback to that was always 'what about Beethoven's Fifth?'  Then his teasers would shut up.  As for the riff itself, don't strum it - pluck it.  Roger came up with the title in a dream.  The words are mostly Gillan's.  He tells the entire story of the recording of Machine Head all in one song.  On the deluxe version of Machine Head, as the song is ending you can hear Gillan say "ah, break a leg, Frank..."  The show Frank Zappa did after the disaster in Montreux was at London's Rainbow Theatre.  For some reason, a member of the audience who was jealous of FZ, leaped on stage and pushed him into the orchestra pit.  He broke his leg, his pelvis and fractured his larynx.   This incident nearly killed him.   It was not a good week for FZ.  Of note, the fire in Montreux and the assault on him in London happened during the same song [King Kong].

We all came out to Montreux

On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground
Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky, smoke on the water

They burned down the gamblin' house,
It died with an awful sound
and Funky Claude was running in and out
Pulling kids out the ground
When it all was over
We had to find another place
But Swiss time was running out
It seemed that we would lose the race
Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky, smoke on the water

We ended up at the Grand Hotel
It was empty cold and bare
But with the Rolling truck Stones thing just outside
Making our music there
With a few red lights and a few old beds
We make a place to sweat
No matter what we get out of this
I know, I know we'll never forget
Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky, smoke on the water…

Lazy – Deep Purple plays the blues with a long introduction from Jon Lord.  Ritchie’s riff sounds like Steppin’ Out, an old blues song Cream used to play in concert.  The guitar/organ back and forth went on for over four minutes until Gillan started to sing.  He didn’t sing much – he didn’t have to because the soloists were driving the song.  In concert, Jon Lord’s long intro got even longer.  His Hammond would be so overdriven and distorted it sounded like a spaceship about to land.

Space Truckin' - Ian Gillan thought it might be cool to combine the ideas of rock and roll and space travel in one song.  He was inspired somewhat by the old "Keep on Truckin'" cartoon from the early '70s.  Gillan demonstrates why he was one of the greatest hard rock singers of his generation.  He could do a scream and sing at the same time, and you could understand him when he did it.  My son and I still don’t know how he did that without losing his voice for a week.  [Note:  he’s 67 now and can’t do it like that anymore…]  Ian Paice got to show off for about 30 seconds before the whole band comes back full throttle with Gillan screaming at the top of his lungs.  In concert, this 4 and a half minute song stretched out to over twenty minutes.  They added the instrumental part from Mandrake Root onto the end of Space Truckin’, where both Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore would solo their brains out.  I saw them do this in ’85 – most excellent!

When a Blind Man Cries – This is the song that didn’t make Machine Head.  It ended up as the B-side of the single Never Before.  It’s a ballad that Ritchie didn’t like.  They never played it live when he was around.  I don’t know why he didn’t like it because his playing is very emotional, like any good blues player.  Someone else must have written it.  Immediately after Ritchie left the band for the final time in 1993, this song has been a staple of the band’s setlists.

DP recorded Machine Head in two weeks in December 1971.  They just went in, wrote the songs on the spot, banged them out, and they were done.  That kind of efficiency is unheard of these days.  It cost them £8,000 to make the album, £5,000 of which was rent for the Mobile.  Machine Head ended up becoming a good chunk of DP’s setlist until this particular line-up [Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord, & Paice] broke up in June 1973.  A live document of the tour that supported Machine Head was released as Made In Japan [December 1972 – UK, April 1973 – US].

DP had been on the constant album/tour/album/tour treadmill since these five guys came together in 1969.  The cracks were starting to appear, and you can find them in Ian Gillan’s lyrics.

Here in this prison
Of my own making
Year after day I have grown
Into a hero
But there's no worship
Where have they hidden my throne... Pictures of Home

Had a friend once in a room

Had a good time but it ended much too soon

In a cold month in that room

We found a reason for the things we had to do… When a Blind Man Cries

This is foreshadowing of the problems that led to this line-up disintegrating.  The problems apparently began during the making of Fireball.  Blackmore wanted to continue in the heavy rock direction of Deep Purple In Rock, while Gillan wanted to experiment, be more “progressive” [whatever that means].  Blackmore and Gillan didn’t see eye-to-eye, and the overwork from constant touring didn’t help.  The DP Mark II lineup wouldn’t last long after Machine Head.

Machine Head is a very good album.  With Highway Star, Lazy, Space Truckin’ and Smoke on the Water, it’s a bonafide classic.  If you’re a serious hard rock fan, you need a copy.  Absolutely essential.

As a postscript, I read that Claude Nobs died at age 76 last week from injuries he sustained in a Nordic skiing accident.  It is not an understatement to say that were it not for him, Machine Head wouldn’t have been made.  Rock in peace, Funky Claude.

Claude Nobs

February 4, 1936 – January 10, 2013

Jon Lord - Concerto for Group and Orchestra

“Attempting to talk about a piece of music you have just written is difficult.  There is no retrospect.  So, without the benefits of hindsight, I will try to put into words what I hope will be apparent in the music...The problem of putting together two widely different field of music, ‘classical’ and beat (to label but a few) has interested me for a long time.  In fact, doing away with’ labels’ altogether has interested me for a long time.  The idea is, then, simply to present, in the First Movement, the group and the orchestra as antagonists, and in the Second and Third Movements, as unexpected allies…”

-          Jon Lord, 1969

Concerto for Group and Orchestra has a long and interesting history.  In June 1969, Deep Purple fired original vocalist Rod Evans and original bassist Nick Simper.  The remaining founders [Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice] all decided to take their music in a harder direction.  They replaced Evans and Simper with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, respectively.  The new line-up began almost immediately to work up new material for their new direction.  However, the group’s management had seized upon a chance remark from Jon Lord that he’d like to “do something” with an orchestra.   When they asked him if he was serious about this, he told them yes, at which time they informed him they had booked the Royal Albert Hall for a September performance and that he’d better get to work.  So the keyboard player of a rock band who had no experience writing classical music had three months to come up with a score.   A new hard rock album from Deep Purple would have to wait.

One of Jon Lord’s influences was composer Sir Malcolm Arnold, who had written numerous symphonies and chamber works as well as movie scores [Bridge on the River Kwai anyone?].  Jon Lord asked Sir Malcolm to look over his work-in-progress.  Sir Malcolm not only liked what he saw, he offered to conduct the piece himself.   This support was most helpful because the band was apprehensive at best, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra was outright hostile.  After a half-hearted run-through of the piece with the LPO, Sir Malcolm gave them a good tongue lashing, telling the musicians they played “like a bunch of cunts.”  Ian Gillan waited until the last moment to write the lyrics, having done so the afternoon of the performance over a bottle or two of wine.  Sir Malcolm and Jon Lord managed to pull it off, with a stirring performance on September 24, 1969 that was recorded and released.  Deep Purple played the piece once more almost a year later [August 1970], this time with the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.  Their conductor wasn’t as supportive as Sir Malcolm.  He made changes to Jon Lord’s score.  After this performance, the original score vanished.

Conductor Paul Mann contacted Jon Lord about the possibility of performing the Concerto on the 25^th anniversary of its debut.  Lord thought about trying to reconstruct his lost score, but given that Deep Purple toured heavily after Ritchie Blackmore left the band, he thought the task was too daunting and too time-consuming.  In 1998, the unthinkable happened.  While Deep Purple was on tour in the Netherlands, he was approached in Rotterdam by a Dutch composer named Marco de Goeij.  He told Lord “I think I’ve recreated your Concerto.”  On his own initiative, de Goeij spent the better part of the previous two years transcribing the original Royal Albert Hall performance.  He watched the performance as filmed by the BBC, and listened to the album over and over again.  He did it for free, for the love of the music.  It was a sheer act of musical altruism if there ever was one.  Lord and Paul Mann got together to look at de Goeji’s transcription.  The transcription wasn’t complete, but enough of it was there for Lord and Mann to fill in the blanks.  Once completed, Deep Purple and the London Symphony Orchestra [conducted by Mann] performed the Concerto on September 25^th and 26^th, 1999, just over thirty years to the day after its debut.  

In addition to performing the Concerto, the music program featured songs from each member’s solo careers.  Vocalists Miller Anderson and Sam Brown each performed one song from Jon Lord’s Pictured Within album.  Ronnie James Dio sang two songs from Roger Glover’s Butterfly Ball project. The Steve Morse Band performed the Dixie Dregs song Take It Off the Top.  Ian Gillan performed two songs from his solo catalog.  Ian Paice played the old Deep Purple instrumental Wring That Neck with a horn section.  After Wring That Neck the full band took the stage.  They played several Deep Purple songs with the orchestra.  The songs:  Pictures of Home [Machine Head], Ted the Mechanic [Purpendicular], Watching the Sky [Abandon], Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming [Purpendicular], and for the encore…Smoke on the Water, of which Dio sang the second verse.  It’s hard to imagine a version of Smoke on the Water with brass, but it’s entertaining.  Steve Morse sounded more comfortable playing this piece than did Ritchie Blackmore.  I think he was a lot more open to the idea than was Ritchie in 1969.  The entire performance was released on CD [Live at the Royal Albert Hall] and on DVD [In Concert with the London Symphony Orchestra].  Unlike the London Philharmonic in 1969, the LSO were very enthusiastic about performing with Deep Purple.  What a difference thirty years makes.  After these performances, Deep Purple did the unthinkable and took this show on the road.  They and the orchestra played the Concerto in over 30 cities around the world [in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico City, throughout Europe and later in Japan].  But the story of the Concerto doesn’t die here…

Roughly a year after this tour ended, Jon Lord retired from Deep Purple.  He was 61 at the time, there were other musical things he wanted to do with his life, and a heavy touring schedule left little if any room for pursuing such interests.  His classical composition and recording career began to flourish.  His classical works include:

Boom of the Tingling Strings [2004] – a piano concerto of four movements recorded in Odense, Denmark with pianist Nelson Goerner and the Odense Symfoniorkester [conducted by Paul Mann];

Durham Concerto [2008] – a concerto commissioned by Durham University to celebrate its 175^th anniversary.  This concerto has soloists on cello, violin, Northumbrian pipes, and Hammond organ [played by Jon Lord himself].  This was recorded with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra [conducted by Mischa Damev];

To Notice Such Things [2010] – a six-movement suite for solo flute, piano and string orchestra.   Jon Lord created this work in memory of his close friend Sir John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey.  This was also recorded by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra [conducted by Clark Rundell].

But what about the Concerto for Group and Orchestra?  After leaving Deep Purple, Jon Lord took the Concerto on the road again and played it another seventeen times.  With more than forty public performances of the Concerto, Lord had the opportunity to fine-tune the score so it could receive a proper studio recording.  For this recording Jon Lord wanted to use different singers and guitarists for each of the Concerto’s three movements.  As with Durham Concerto and To Notice Such Things, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra [conducted by Paul Mann] played on the studio version of Concerto for Group and Orchestra.

Track Listing:

Movement One – Moderato-Allegro:  Darin Vasilev - guitar

Movement Two – Andante:  Joe Bonamassa – guitar; Bruce Dickinson, Steve Balsamo, Kasia Laska – vocals;

Movement Three – Vivace-Presto:  Steve Morse – guitar.

Guy Pratt – bass

Brett Morgan – drums

Jon Lord – Hammond organ

The First Movement features guitarist Darin Vasilev.  Vasilev is a Bulgarian guitarist from the band TE.  I wondered how Jon Lord came to invite him to contribute to the studio version of the Concerto.  After a bit of research I found out why.   In 2009-10, TE performed the Concerto with Jon Lord in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, so Vasilev was more than familiar with the material.  Vasilev shreds a bit, but he doesn’t overdo it.  His solo is shorter than that of Ritchie Blackmore from the first performance in 1969, but it works fine.

The Second Movement is the vocal bit.  At first it was a bit jarring to hear someone else sing Ian Gillan’s words.  After many listens one gets used to how something sounds. I knew nothing of Steve Balsamo and Kasia Laska, but they were a pleasant surprise.  They didn’t sing much – just the first couple of verses.  I knew what to expect from Bruce Dickinson – he pulled off his parts with his usual flair.    Joe Bonamassa was very good, though is appearance here was brief.

What’s my favorite part of the Concerto?  The Third Movement.  Steve Morse reprises his role from the Live at the Royal Albert Hall set.  It is good to hear him play with Jon Lord one final time.  He doesn’t copy his solos from the Albert Hall.  Jon Lord gives him the leeway to play what he wants to play.  Ian Paice is a hard act to follow on the drums, but Brett Morgan does a more than capable job.  Jon Lord was his usual, spectacular self.

Concerto for Group and Orchestra is a fitting epitaph for Jon Lord.  He always wanted a studio version of his Concerto.  Before he passed away, he approved the final mixes of this release, so at least he knew what it sounded like.  This was his first classical composition, and 43 years after its debut, this studio version has gotten it right.  It is a joy to listen to.

Rainbow Rising

It all started when Ritchie Blackmore wanted Deep Purple to record a song from a band called Quatermass.  The song’s name – Black Sheep in the Family.  Deep Purple took a pass on the song, so Ritchie recorded it with another band.  In 1974, Deep Purple recorded the Stormbringer album.  He had no use for the funk and soul music favored by David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes [who replaced Ian Gillan and Roger Glover in 1973, respectively].  Having expressed his distaste for what he called “shoeshine music,” Ritchie left Deep Purple in 1975 to form Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow.  Blackmore’s band was Elf [minus their guitar player] and included singer Ronnie James Dio.  This band recorded Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, which included the aforementioned Black Sheep in the Family.  It also included the AOR classic Man on the Silver Mountain and the moody ballad Catch a Rainbow.  

After recording the album, Ritchie sacked the entire band [except Dio].  In their places, Blackmore hired Cozy Powell [drums], Jimmy Bain [bass], and Tony Carey [keyboards].  The new Rainbow toured, and then they recorded an album – Rainbow Rising.  Rainbow Rising is a short record – six songs at just over 33 minutes.  But the elements of the Rainbow sound – Ritchie Blackmore’s classically-tinged lead guitar, Cozy Powell’s relentless drumming, Ronnie James Dio’s superhuman vocals – they’re all here.  The first four songs are just that – songs that have nothing to do with each other.  But the final two songs, which occupy all of what used to be Side 2 – Stargazer and A Light in the Black – tell a story.  Musically the songs take on a bit of a baroque character.  This can be attributed to Ritchie Blackmore having taken up learning the cello.  He wrote some of the songs using a cello – he wanted to try a new, unfamiliar tool for songwriting.

The songs:

Tarot Woman – Tony Carey starts things with a spacey 1:15-long synthesizer opening, after which Ritchie Blackmore starts playing a riff for about 20 seconds, when Cozy Powell comes storming in.  Ritchie and the Bain/Powell rhythm section gallop along while Dio sings about a mysterious woman he doesn’t want anything to do with.  At 3:20 Ritchie starts a jaw-dropping minute-long solo that’s equal to anything he did with Deep Purple.

Run With the Wolf – Werewolves!  Dio felt the need to write a song about werewolves.  This song and Starstruck are short, catchy tunes which would have been at home on a Deep Purple album.  Perhaps rocking songs like these would have made Stormbringer easier to listen to.

Starstruck – Here’s the story of RJD [or perhaps Ritchie Blackmore] being unable to shake off a stalking groupie who “wants a souvenir.”  No matter where he goes, there she is [If I'm away from home and think I'm all alone, she's there, somewhere… I could fly to the moon, but she'd soon find a way to be there…].

Do You Close Your Eyes – This is the only real clunker on Rainbow Rising.  Luckily for us, it’s also the shortest song [3:02].  The tune is good, but the lyrics are just plain bad.  For years, Ronnie James Dio said he wouldn’t write songs along the line of “hey baby, let’s make love under a tree.”  And yet, here’s a song the expresses almost that exact sentiment – Do you close your eyes when you making love, yeah, yeah /Making sweet love to me, yeah… Please…I expect much better from RJD. 

Stargazer – The story of an evil wizard who enslaves those around him.  For nine years this evil wizard forces his people to build him a tower made of stone so that he can watch the stars and so that he can fly [High noon, oh I'd sell my soul for water/Nine years' worth of breakin' my back].  This wizard is omnipresent - There's no sun in the shadow of the wizard… The task of building the wizard’s tower is all-consuming [In the heat and the rain with whips and chains, just to see him fly, so many die/We built a tower of stone with our flesh and bone just to see him fly/Don't know why, now where do we go?] When all is done, the wizard climbs the completed tower.  Ritchie’s solo is like listening to the guy climb to ever-increasing heights until the wizard gets to the top.  But when he tries to fly, he falls to his death instead.  Ritchie’s slide down the neck of his guitar is the wizard falling to his death.  When he was in Deep Purple, Ritchie was wary of playing with orchestras, but on Stargazer Rainbow is accompanied by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.  Their arrangement gives the song a bit of a haunting, Eastern character.  The Rainbow/orchestra combination works very well.  Without a doubt, Stargazer is Rainbow’s crowning achievement.

A Light in the Black – The wizard from Stargazer is dead, but those whom he enslaved can’t believe their sudden emancipation [All my life it seems, just a crazy dream, reaching for somebody's star/ Can’t believe it all, did he really fall? What to do now I don’t know…].  The only thing to do is to go home, wherever “home” is.  They’ve been at the task of building the wizard’s tower for so long they don’t know what to do or how to feel [Breathed the air before, heard the thunder roar, never knew it was for me /Always looking down, lost and never found, eyes that looked but not to see…] Instrumentally, this song is like a Deep Purple song.  Tony Carey takes a one-minute mind-bending synth solo, Ritchie matches him note-for-note for about 30 seconds, then takes his own solo [4:06 – 5:43], then Tony Carey matches Ritchie note-for-note until Dio’s vocals come back.  The Blackmore/Carey interplay is like a lot what Ritchie did with Jon Lord in Deep Purple.  While Tony Carey and Ritchie are performing their musical gymnastics, Cozy Powell is hammering away while his double-bass drums sound like Rommel’s Panzers rolling across Africa.

Rainbow Rising was released in May 1976.  Rainbow would tour the rest of 1976 with the line-up that created Rainbow Rising.  But after 1976 turned to 1977, Jimmy Bain and Tony Carey would be out of the Rainbow picture.  The core of Ritchie Blackmore, Cozy Powell, and Ronnie James Dio would record one more album together – Long Live Rock and Roll [1978].  Afterwards, Ritchie decided he wanted Rainbow to sound like Foreigner.  When that happened, Dio split.  But Dio wouldn’t be unemployed for long.  He soon joined Black Sabbath and made Heaven and Hell [1980], but that’s another story.  Rainbow Rising is an essential part of any Ritchie Blackmore or Ronnie James Dio collection.  It is good enough to be mentioned in the same breath as Deep Purple In Rock, Machine Head, and Burn.