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Walls And Bridges
Walls and Bridges shows John Lennon to be as mercurial as ever. I anticipated an unbearable suffering occasioned by the collapse of one of this century's most public love affairs — after all, Yoko Ono was presented as the membrane between agony and peace for Lennon, between illusion and reality. Yet the relative clear-headedness of […]
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Aladdin Sane
A lightning bolt streaks across David's face; on the inside cover the lad is air-brushed into androgyny, a no less imposing figure for it. Though he has been anointed to go out among us and spread the word, we find stuffed into the sleeve, like dirty underwear, a form requesting our name, address, "favorite film […]
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School's Out
The question before us is whether Alice Cooper is a threat to civilization itself or merely to our beloved rock & roll. Both parents and kids commonly see Alice as eroding the former, which they respectively deplore and celebrate. Alice is variously an actor, rocker, comic, madman and exorcist, the culmination of rock's subversive tendencies. […]
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Thick as a Brick
Although not in the shops yet, I was able to acquire a 'white label' pressing of the current Jethro winner Thick As A Brick from their London agents, Chrysalis Artists…. The group consists of Ian Anderson, Martin Barre, John Evan, Jeffery Hammond-Hammond and Barriemore Barlow. Written around a poem by St. Cleve child prodigy Gerald […]
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Farther Along
Farther Along is the Byrds' first completely self-produced LP, and exists as a kind of backlash to Terry Melcher's elaborate string and choir-laden production of Byrdmaniax. Farther Along was recorded within three months of Byrdmaniax, so eager was the band to make amends. Because of their closeness in time, their programmatic similarity is not surprising, […]
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Electric Warrior
So elegant, so fey (check the cover of T. Rex, his first on Reprise), Marc Bolan is a stripling, a sylph. Too old to be innocent in today's world, though his years number 23, he plays to the post-J.F.K. set, yet with enough decadence and sarcasm for any war baby to hum along. He's been […]
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Imagine
Not content to be merely an ex-Beatle. John Lennon has carved out a new career for himself as political gadfly, floating member of the international avant-garde and as rock's most psychologically daring tightrope artist. John has always displayed an amazing capacity for growth, and if one is impatient with the speed with which he takes […]
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Aqualung
Dating from at least the Electric Prunes' Mass In D Minor, rock and religion have evinced an unlikely affinity for each other. Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer, Peter Townshend, John Lennon, George Harrison (and let us not forget the Reverend Richard Penniman) have all at some point dedicated themselves and their music to God […]
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Mud Slide Slim & The Blue Horizon
When an artist has finally achieved success he is subjected to the kind of critical evaluation which will either legitimize that success or destroy it. Today, the consensus seems to be that this is the season for the demolition of James Taylor. It is the sheer vastness of his success which condemns him, somehow, even […]
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Tea For The Tillerman
Is it on the roads of Provence or the tube to Portobello Road that I visualize Cat? He is both the next in a long line of troubadours and very much the London neighborhood musician, encompassing at once the allure of the exotic and the ability to domesticate it. He wanders, but he returns home. […]
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