Cover Albums

 

The March 2022 issue of Classic Rock Magazine has its cover story on … covers.  “Covers” are when one musician plays a song by another musician.  Oddly, although Garage, Inc. (Metallica’s double covers album) is mentioned, there’s really no discussion of cover albums per se.  And as I can show you below, there are now plenty of them to talk about.

Morning and Evening.  When bands are starting out, they have to rely on covers until they hone the skills necessary to write acceptable quality material of their own, obviously drawing upon the inspiration of those covers.  The Beatles had gone to 100% originals by the third album, A Hard Day’s Night, but even Please Please Me (#1) and With The Beatles (#2) were less than 50% covers.  The Stones didn’t make it to 100% originals until Aftermath, their fourth album, and the first album had only one original.

Likewise, when the bands get older and run out of gas, rather than put out an album of substandard originals, it’s much easier just to do an album of covers.  Of course, it’s intriguing to hear how they put their mark on other bands’ music.  What I noticed, though, was most of these covers predate the band’s own material and – as Saxon explicitly acknowledge with the album title – were their inspirations.  What I rarely hear are any of these bands playing covers of their own peers and competitors.  Thus no Beatles covers on Blue & Lonesome, no Black Sabbath (and just a snippet of “Dazed and Confused” in a medley) on Turning to Crime, no Megadeth, Slayer or Anthrax on Garage, Inc. 

Here they are, listing the songs and the original artists.

Deep Purple, Turning To Crime.  The most recent of these.  Half are fairly obscure 50s tunes, the rest are more famous 60s tunes.

7 and 7 Is (Love); Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu (Huey “Piano” Smith); Oh Well (Fleetwood Mac); Jenny Take A Ride (Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels); Watching The River Flow (Bob Dylan); Let The Good Times Roll (Louis Jordan & the Tympany Five); Dixie Chicken (Little Feat); Shapes of Things (Yardbirds); The Battle of New Orleans (Johnny Horton); Lucifer (Bob Seger); White Room (Cream); Caught in the Act (medley including “Dazed and Confused” (Led Zeppelin), “Hot ‘Lanta” (Allman Brothers))

Ace Frehley, Origins Vols 1 & 2.  The original lead guitarist for KISS.  These were released separately in 2016 and 2020.  He claims he’ll do a Vol. 3, but the story quoting him saying so isn’t dated.

Vol #1.  White Room (Cream); Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones); Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix); Fire And Water (Free); Emerald (Thin Lizzy); Bring It On Home (Led Zeppelin); Wild Thing (Troggs); Parasite (KISS – really a cover?); Magic Carpet Ride (Steppenwolf); Cold Gin (KISS); Till The End of the Day (Kinks); Rock and Roll Hell (KISS)

Vol #2.  Good Times Bad Times (Led Zeppelin); Never In My Life (Mountain); Space Truckin’ (Deep Purple); I’m Down (Beatles); Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Rolling Stones); Politician (Cream); Lola (Kinks); 30 Days In The Hole (Humble Pie); Manic Depression (Jimi Hendrix); Kicks (Paul Revere & the Raiders); We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place (Animals); She (KISS)

Fu Manchu, The Covers.  I have this on vinyl, and have never seen it on CD.  It doesn’t show up on Amazon or eBay in either format, nor does their Wikipedia discography even mention it.  Apparently it was a limited release of 700 copies by the band itself.  As stoner rock bands go, FM have shorter, snappier, high tempo songs, often about skateboarding, so the punk influence is definitely front center, as the cover choices make clear. 

Who Are You (Void); Nothing Done (SSD); D.O.A. (Van Halen, not Bloodrock); When The Shit Hits The Fan (The Circle Jerks); Moving in Stereo (The Cars); Beach Blanket Bongout (JFA); Freedom of Choice (Devo); Godzilla (Blue Oyster Cult); Things Start Moving (Adolescents); Ride To Live (Live To Ride) (Twisted Sister); Six Pack (Black Flag); Words To Live By (Penance); Jailbreak (Thin Lizzy); Chevy Van (Sammy Johns).

Yngwie Malmsteen, Inspiration.  A few years back before the Saxon album.  YM plays large headstock Stratocasters with scalloped fretboards and took classical music into overdrive, blending it with obvious influences of Ritchie Blackmore, Uli Roth, and Jimi Hendrix, which makes their inclusion on this covers album a no-brainer.  Although he’s obviously talented and practiced those oddball scales rigorously, somehow he doesn’t seem to pull off more bluesier solos that well.  My recollection is that I got the UK album after hearing this one, the only track on the album I wasn’t already familiar with. That’s a prog super group with Allan Holdsworth (guitar), John Wetton (bass & vocals), Bill Bruford (drums), and Eddie Jobson (keyboards).

Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas); Pictures of Home (Deep Purple); Gates of Babylon (Rainbow); Manic Depression (Jimi Hendrix); In the Dead of Night (UK); Mistreated (Deep Purple); The Sails of Charon (Scorpions); Demon’s Eye (Deep Purple); Anthem (Rush); Child in Time (Deep Purple); Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix)

Metallica, Garage, Inc.  Before this, they had “broken in” Jason Newsted with the $5.98 EP, Garage Days Re-Revisited (1987), before his bass was ignored on …And Justice For All.  Fast forward to 1998, when the band released Garage, Inc., which included the EP on disc 2 along with other previously released covers – including “Am I Evil” (Diamond Head) and “Blitzkrieg” (Blitzkrieg) which had been the b-sides of “Creeping Death” and tacked on to the Elektra version of their first album, Kill ‘Em All.  Then they went into the studio and recorded a whole CD worth of new covers, for a two disc set.  I like that they pick more obscure tunes instead of big hits.

Disc 1 (Freshly recorded):  Free Speech For the Deaf (Discharge); It’s Electric (Diamond Head); Sabbra Cadabra (Black Sabbath); Turn The Page (Bob Seger); Die, Die My Darling (Misfits); Loverman (Nick Cave); Mercyful Fate (Mercyful Fate); Astronomy (Blue Oyster Cult); Whiskey In the Jar (traditional, played by Thin Lizzy); Tuesday’s Gone (Lynyrd Skynyrd); The More I See (Discharge)

Disc 2 (previously released):  Helpless (Diamond Head); The Small Hours (Holocaust); The Wait (Killing Joke); Crash Course in Brain Surgery (Budgie); Last Caress/Green Hell (Misfits); Am I Evil? (Diamond Head); Blitzkrieg (Blitzkrieg); Breadfan (Budgie); The Prince (Diamond Head); Stone Cold Crazy (Queen); So What (Anti-Nowhere League); Killing Time (Sweet Savage); Overkill (Motorhead); Damage Case (Motorhead); Stone Dead Forever (Motorhead); Too Late Too Late (Motorhead) 

Monster Magnet, A Better Dystopia.  New Jersey's premiere stoner rock band.  Dave Wyndorf gave us this collection of mostly obscure tunes.  I would have preferred an entire album of Hawkwind covers – or least add in their earlier covers of “Brainstorm” and “The Right Stuff” – but at least he gives us the distinction of the only Hawkwind cover on any of these albums.

The Diamond Mine (spoken word intro); Born To Go (Hawkwind); Epitaph For A Head (Blackfoot); Solid Gold Hell (Scientists); Be Forwarned (Pentagram); Mr. Destroyer (Poobah); When The Wolf Sits (Jerusalem); Death (Pretty Things); Situation (Josefus); It’s Trash (Cavemen); Motorcycle (Straight To Hell) (Table Scraps); Learning To Die (Dust); Welcome To The Void (Morgen)

Motorhead, Under Cover.  Given that the man himself, Lemmy, already did “Motorhead”, “Lost Johnny” and “The Watcher” on both On Parole and Motorhead, I suppose Hawkwind songs weren’t going to show up here, though “Silver Machine” would have been cool. 

Breaking The Law (Judas Priest); God Save The Queen (Sex Pistols); Heroes (Bowie & Fripp); Starstruck (Rainbow); Cat Scratch Fever (Ted Nugent); Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Rolling Stones); Sympathy For The Devil (Rolling Stones); Hellraiser (Ozzy Osbourne); Rockaway Beach (Ramones); Shoot ‘Em Down (Twisted Sister); Whiplash (Metallica)

Ozzy Osbourne, Under Cover.  Yes, the same title as Lemmy’s.  Instead of Zakk Wylde, his guitarist on this is Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains.  Mike Bordin of Faith No More (who also played drums with Ozzy’s solo band, and Black Sabbath on the 1997 Ozzfest tour) is here on drums.  Ozzy gives us lots of hits from left field: a Beatles song, two John Lennon songs, King Crimson, and the hit the Moody Blues had before Justin Hayward and John Lodge joined and they became a prog band with Days of Future Passed, “Go Now”. 

Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh); In My Life (Beatles); Mississippi Queen (Mountain); Go Now (The Moody Blues); Woman (John Lennon); 21^st Century Schizoid Man (King Crimson); All The Young Dudes (Mott the Hoople); For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield); Good Times (The Animals); Sunshine of Your Love (Cream); Fire (Arthur Brown); Working Class Hero (John Lennon); Sympathy For The Devil (Rolling Stones); Changes (Black Sabbath – yes, like Ace, covering a song he was originally on)

The Rolling Stones, Blue & Lonesome.  Eleven years after their last album of original material, A Bigger Bang (9/5/05), the Stones come back with an album of exclusively blues covers.

Just Your Fool (Little Walter); Commit A Crime (Howlin’ Wolf); Blue and Lonesome (Little Walter); All of Your Love (Magic Sam); I Gotta Go (Little Walter); Everybody Knows About My Good Thing (Miles Grayson & Lermon Horton); Ride ‘Em On Down (Eddie Taylor); Hate To See You Go (Little Walter); Hoo Doo Blues (Otis Hicks & Jerry West); Little Rain (Ewart G. Abner Jr & Jimmy Reed); Just Like It Treat You (Willie Dixon); I Can’t Quit You Baby (Willie Dixon)

Rush, Feedback.  Back in 2007, fairly short – just an EP.  They did a tour for this album, which we saw, and for which some of the concert t-shirts were tie-dyes, with the 2112 Naked Man (who may or may not be the same naked guy from the Hemispheres cover) is now afraid of a peace symbol instead of a red star.

Summertime Blues (Eddie Cochran, but homage to The Who version, not the Blue Cheer version); Heart Full of Soul (Yardbirds); For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield); The Seeker (The Who); Mr Soul (Buffalo Springfield); Seven and Seven Is (Love); Shapes of Things (Yardbirds); Crossroads (Robert Johnson/Cream).

Saxon, Inspirations.  Along with Iron Maiden and Def Leppard, among the trio of most successful New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bands to emerge from the early 1980s and not merely survive but prosper, even if they aren't quite as famous or successful as the other two.  Biff & his comrades came out with this relatively recently.

Paint It Black (Rolling Stones); Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin); Paperback Writer (Beatles); Evil Woman (Crow); Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix); Bomber (Motorhead); Speed King (Deep Purple); The Rocker (Thin Lizzy); Hold The Line (Toto); Problem Child (AC/DC); See My Friends (Kinks)

Tesla, Real to Reel (Discs 1 & 2).  Often lumped together with Motley Crue and Skid Row as a "hair metal" band, Tesla were less about image than about the music itself, with a sincerity that was sometimes borderline naive.  Disc 1 was sold outright in CD packaging allowing for two.  The second disc was given at the shows for that tour, which I saw at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore.  Frank Hannon himself was at the merch booth and give me the disc – and signed the insert.

Reel 1.  Space Truckin’ (Deep Purple); Walk Away (James Gang); Hand Me Down World (Guess Who); Bad Reputation (Thin Lizzy); Thank You (Led Zeppelin); I’ve Got A Feeling (Beatles); Day of the Eagle (Robin Trower); Ball of Confusion (Temptations); Rock Bottom (UFO); Stealin’ (Uriah Heep); Bell Bottom Blues (Derek & the Dominos); Honky Tonk Woman (Rolling Stones); Dear Mr. Fantasy (Traffic)

Reel 2.  All The Young Dudes (Mott the Hoople); Make It Last (Montrose); Shooting Star (Bad Company); Not Fragile (BTO); Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones); It’s My Body (Alice Cooper); I Want To Take You Higher (Sly and the Family Stone); Do You Feel Like We Do (Peter Frampton); Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers (ZZTop); Seasons of Wither (Aerosmith); Saturday Night Special (Lynyrd Skynrd); War Pigs (Black Sabbath)

UFO, The Salentino Cuts.  They started off with Mick Bolton on guitar for two space jam-type albums, then found Michael Schenker for five major seventies albums and a later trio of reunion albums; Vinnie Moore has been the guitarist for the last several albums.  The only constant member has been vocalist Phil Mogg, and they give us a rare gem: a LATER song, “River of Deceit” from Mad Season. 

Heartful of Soul (Yardbirds); Break on Through (The Doors); River of Deceit (Mad Season); The Pusher (Steppenwolf); Paper In Fire (John Mellencamp); Rock Candy (Montrose); Mississippi Queen (Mountain); Ain’t No Sunshine (Bill Withers); Honey-Bee (Tom Petty); Too Rolling Stoned (Robin Trower); Just Got Paid (ZZTop); It’s My Life (Animals).

As these are all experienced professionals, I didn’t hear any songs butchered, though I didn’t hear any where I felt they had improved on the originals.  In about 20% of the cases I was unfamiliar with the source material to make any kind of comparison anyway.  As a Monster Magnet fan, though, I was dissatisfied with Wyndorf’s choices; it seems he deliberately picked extremely obscure tracks to continue cultivating his “aren’t I cool?  I wear sunglasses at night” persona. 

Tribute Albums.  I suppose the opposite of a covers album, where one band covers all sorts of different bands’ songs, is a tribute album, in which all different bands cover one band’s songs.  The most recent was Blacklist, where Metallica’s 1991 self-titled, so-called Black Album, gets cover treatment by a host of bands outside their own genre.  The sad apart about it is that almost all of them make the original versions sound that much better.  It’s almost as if the band was thinking, “well, everyone seems to think we sold out on this album, but here are versions of our songs which are far more commercial than our own.  See how you like those.” 

Deep Led Black Matrix

 

I recently finished listening to Whoosh!, the latest album by Deep Purple, which finishes up my listening quest of a particular sort.   About a year ago I compiled a table of all the studio releases by Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath, in order of release.  It’s interesting the way they dovetail with each other.

Deep Purple (Mark I) was the first, with Shades of Deep Purple in 1968.  Ironically, they’re also the most recent, with the aforementioned Whoosh!, although Rod Evans and Nick Simper are long gone; the current lineup has Steve Morse on guitar, Don Airey on keyboards, Roger Glover on bass, Ian Gillan on vocals, and the other Ian (Paice) on drums, now the only member to have been with the band from start to finish.  Led Zeppelin, formed by Jimmy Page from the ashes of the Yardbirds, were next, releasing the self-titled Led Zeppelin album in 1969.  Finally Black Sabbath brought us their first album on Friday, February 13, 1970 (though the US release was in June of that year).  Of the three, Purple’s self-titled album was their third, not their debut.  And the fourth LZ album, although not having a real title, per se, is commonly referred to as LZ IV, as they already had a self-titled album.   

Here are some nuggets, not exactly secrets.   Unlike the other two, Led Zeppelin had only one lineup – when John Bonham died in September 1980, it was game over for the band.  I’ve included the two Page-Plant albums and Celebration Day, but not Outrider, the Plant solo albums, or Them Crooked Vultures (John Paul Jones’ supergroup collaboration with Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and Dave Grohl of Nirvana & Foo Fighters).  I’ve also omitted Rainbow (Blackmore and some DP alumni), Whitesnake (Coverdale and some DP alumni), Gillan/Ian Gillan Band, as well as compilation albums.  However, both Born Again and Seventh Star (with Gillan and Hughes) make the cut.  Also, Heaven & Hell is essentially Black Sabbath with Dio (The Mob Rules & Dehumanizer lineups), and The Dio Years includes three new tracks.  For live albums, I put them in sequence according to when they were recorded, not when they were released (e.g. The Song Remains The Same).  Bootlegs are too numerous to count…

So here it is, year by year.  Just to be cute and lazy, I’ll omit the band names, see if you can recognize who made which albums – it shouldn’t be hard for the veterans amongst us:

1968     Shades of Deep Purple, Book of Taliesyn (Mark I).

1969     Led Zeppelin (S/T = self-titled), Deep Purple (S/T, third of three Mark I albums), Concerto for Group and Orchestra, Led Zeppelin II

1970     Black Sabbath (S/T), In Rock, Paranoid, LZ III

1971     Fireball, Master of Reality, LZ IV

1972     Machine Head, Vol 4, Made in Japan (Live)

1973     Who Do We Think We Are, Houses of the Holy, The Song Remains the Same (Live), Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath

1974     Burn, Stormbringer

1975     Physical Graffiti, Sabotage, Come Taste The Band

1976.    Presence, Technical Ecstasy

1978     Never Say Die

1979     In Through The Out Door

1980     Heaven And Hell

1981     The Mob Rules

1982     CODA, Live Evil

1983     Born Again

1984     Perfect Strangers

1986     Seventh Star

1987     House of Blue Light, Eternal Idol

1988     Nobody’s Perfect (Live)

1989     Headless Cross

1990     TYR, Slaves and Masters

1992     Dehumanizer

1993     The Battle Rages On

1994     No Quarter (Live)

1995     Forbidden

1996     Purpendicular

1997     Reunion (Live)

1998     Walking Into Clarksdale, Abandon

2003     Bananas

2005     Rapture of the Deep

2007     Live from Radio City Music Hall (Live); Black Sabbath: The Dio Years; Celebration Day (Live)

2009     The Devil You Know

2013     Now What ?!, Thirteen

2017     The End: Live in Birmingham (Live), Infinite

2020     Whoosh!           

Opeth

 

Another Friday with writer’s block, but my Opeth hoodie provided the inspiration – plus I checked my records and verified that I have not yet blogged about this band…per se.  So I can take a break waxing poetic yet again about the PONTIAC FIREBIRD FORMULA 350 and bore everyone about this band from Stockholm, Sweden.

They started out as somewhat of a thrash band with “Cookie Monster” vocals, until singer/guitarist Mikael Akerfeldt either discovered prog bands or finally decided to blend those elements into Opeth’s repertoire.  In fact, they have a full-blown prog album, Damnation, which is still my favorite, though Watershed was the first album I bought.   Live, Akerfeldt is highly humorous and entertaining.  An interview with him turned me on to British 70s prog band Camel, and he is also a big fan of Deep Purple.  The artwork for their show at the Royal Albert Hall in London was done up like DP’s Concerto, and I have a Come Taste the Band (DP Mark IV with Tommy Bolin) tribute shirt. 

Studio Discography:  Orchid (1995); Morningrise (1996); My Arms, Your Hearse (1998); Still Life (1999); Blackwater Park (2001); Deliverance (2002); Damnation (2003); Ghost Reveries (2005); Watershed (2008); Heritage (2011); Pale Communion (2014); Sorceress (2016); In Cauda Venenum (2019).  Still Life is the earliest album I have – never got around to getting the first three.  They are long overdue for a covers album.

As the years progress they get more like a prog band and less of a Cookie Monster band, which is fine by me.  Maybe I’m getting older, but my tolerance for the same old thrash, especially with unintelligible, “Cookie Monster” vocals which winds up being just a bunch of angry noise, gets less and less.  Here’s a band which mixes in prog elements to change things up, and they have a singer who can actually sing. Of the big 4 thrash bands, Joey Belladonna (Anthrax) has the best voice, followed by Dave Mustaine (Megadeth), James Hetfield (Metallica), and finally Tom Araya (Slayer), but even he is singing and you can understand the vocals.  Anyone less intelligible than Araya I zone out about, and unfortunately that does include some of Opeth, particularly the earlier material.  Anyhow.     

I’ve seen them live, five times between 2008 and 2020 (yes, this year).  The band consistently plays well, and Akerfeldt’s humor, as previously noted, is much appreciated.   Be prepared to hear earlier material with about one song from Damnation.      

And if you love buying band merchandise, you’ll love Opeth.  The US webstore doesn’t have a whole lot, but the UK/Europe store – which will ship to MAGA-Land, though the shipping costs are a little higher and you may wait a little longer to receive your stuff – has a MUCH larger selection.   Whoever does their merch is highly imaginative.  Their variant on Sweden’s national team soccer jersey (yellow and blue, of course) is excellent, though as yet I’ve resisted the urge to spend $100 on it. 

Storm Corrosion.  Steven Wilson, the main guy from Porcupine Tree and a producer for prog bands, did a joint project with Akerfeldt – if you like Opeth, you’ll probably enjoy this as well.

Whitesnake

Reviewing my blogs I realized I’d never reviewed this band, per se, though I’d mentioned them earlier.  A proper blog entry is in order at this…juncture.

In 1976 Deep Purple had run its course, with the Mark IV line-up crashing and burning.  Although their sole album with guitarist Tommy Bolin, Come Taste The Band, was up to standard, it turns out he had a heroin addiction the rest of the band had no clue about – until they toured overseas in places like Indonesia where he couldn’t score from local sources and he buzzed out on withdrawal symptoms.  Hint:  “drugs are bad, m’kay?”

The band decided to call it a day and go their separate ways, Bolin himself dying of a heroin overdose a few months later. 

Ian Gillan, fired from Mark II a few years before, formed a solo band.   Ritchie Blackmore, who quit after two albums with Mark III, started his own band, Rainbow.  The most substantial project was Whitesnake, centered around vocalist David Coverdale.

Initially this was just the name of his first solo album (David Coverdale’s Whitesnake), followed by Northwinds.  Then he started a proper band, Whitesnake, with an EP, Snakebite, and an album, Trouble.  This early stage of the band was R&B, classic rock, with provocative album covers and a familiar sound.  Maybe too familiar – my high school buddy Sean C. dismissed them as Led Zeppelin clones.

Subsequent discography:  Lovehunter, Ready An’ Willing, Come An’ Get It, Saints & Sinners, Slide It In.  Of these, my favorite is a toss-up.  Lovehunter has by far the best album cover, with the attractively proportioned and above all naked woman riding an improbably large snake (which isn’t even white, by the way), but I’m less keen on the music itself.  I did get the t-shirt of the album before getting the album itself, even wearing it to high school on the last day   Saints & Sinners has my favorite collection of songs, including the original versions of “Here I Go Again” and “Crying in the Rain”, which resurfaced on the self-titled album, and the very first song I ever learned to play on guitar, the title track itself, “Saints & Sinners”. 

The line-up tended to change regularly, with singer Coverdale the constant along with guitarists Bernie Marsden and Mickey Moody.  Ian Paice and Jon Lord ( >> 3/5 of Deep Purple Mark III/IV) served a short stint, as did bassist Neil Murray.  Glenn Hughes was never asked to join.  This era ended with Slide It In, released in 1984.  Sadly, I never got to see this era live; my brother and I only started going to concerts in late 1984. 

At this point Coverdale took the band in a completely new direction, more hair metal, Dokken, Motley Crue, etc. with the self-titled album three years later (1987)  Having said that, he mastered the genre and the album sold like crazy.   It was this tour that I finally got to see them play live – Baltimore Arena, 2/4/1988.  “Still of the Night” is probably one of their best songs.

Whitesnake, Slip of the Tongue, Restless Heart, Good To Be Bad, Forevermore, The Purple Album, Flesh & Blood.

White I have all the prior albums, I don’t have all of these.  We did see the Purple album tour, at NYCB Westbury on Long Island (7/27/15), the night after seeing Deep Purple.   This album has Coverdale, with his current lineup, cover Deep Purple Mark III and IV songs, from Burn, Stormbringer, and Come Taste The Band.  Can’t say I enjoy these versions as much as the originals, but I certainly did enjoy hearing them again, along with the rest of the material, on Long Island. 

MetALiCCa

I saw Metallica’s second orchestral collaboration, S&M 2, on Wednesday night at the movie theater, and enjoyed about half of it:  the half corresponding to their material from 1983 to 1991, which was the beginning and the end of the show.  It occurred to me that Metallica has indulged in a few affectations over the years.   These are represented by the A, L, C and C uppercase.

Acoustic.   I got their Helping Hands album recorded earlier this year.  Of 12 songs, a full third, 4, were covers:  “When A Blind Man Cries” (Deep Purple), “Please Don’t Judas Me” (Nazareth), “Turn the Page” (Bob Seger), and “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” (Blue Oyster Cult).  The remaining songs were “Disposable Heroes”, “The Unforgiven III”, “Bleeding Me”, “Nothing Else Matters”, “All Within My Hands”, “Enter Sandman”, “The Four Horsemen”, and “Hardwired”.

I’m getting really fed up with acoustic albums, and I think we can blame Tesla, a band I’d otherwise be praising, for this thanks to their Five Man Acoustical Jam. 

My assessment is that if a song was originally electric it will not sound any better as an acoustic song. 

I suppose I should distinguish songs which were acoustic from the beginning, and metal bands are surprisingly competent at doing so.   That being the case, their electric songs still work better in their original format than pretentiously reduced to acoustic parameters.   When it comes to bands’ ability to write original material in the acoustic format, I give Alice in Chains & Jerry Cantrell the top honors, with SAP and Jar of Flies being superlative.  Everyone else should stick to electric.

Here’s an idea: instead of this acoustic crap, how about taking songs which were originally acoustic and make electric, heavy versions of those?   Go for it! 

Live.  Actually, I can’t really call live albums an affectation.   For that reason I’ll give them a pass on that.  In fact, I’ll give them credit:  they’re releasing all of their shows from the most recent tour as live albums, not just a single live album per tour.  They haven’t matched their San Francisco comrades the Grateful Dead policy of playing a different set each night; their sets are about 80% identical night by night with 2-3 slots as wildcards.  [Dead & Company, the current incarnation of Jerry Garcia’s classic band, are also releasing all shows on MP3 and CD, as Metallica are.]  I picked up the May 2017 show at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, which is the show my brother and I saw for the Hardwired tour.  Of course I already had Live Shit: Binge & Purge, recorded on the Black Album tour. 

More recently, they have Live at Grimey’s, which is setlist heavy on older tunes – “Fuel” being the only one from later than Metallica.  In fact, it’s excellent enough to warrant sharing:  “No Remorse”, “Fuel”, “Harvester of Sorrow”, “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “Master of Puppets”, “Sad But True”, “Motorbreath”, and “Seek and Destroy”.  THREE songs from Kill ‘Em All!  This show was the night before their Bonnaroo show in 2008, which itself was a remarkable set:  

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/metallica/2008/great-stage-park-manchester-tn-53d6dfc9.html.  Sadly, only one track from that show (“Sad But True”) made it to recording.  We’ll have to enjoy the Grimey’s set instead…

Covers.  Yet again, comrades Tesla did this with Real To Reel, but they did this clever thing of releasing the first disc normally with the second disc picked up on the tour, which of course I attended (fall 2007).  I actually got Frank Hannon, who had been running the concession stand at the Ram’s Head Live at that show (aside from actually performing) to sign my CD insert – after he gave me disc 2.

Anyhow.   Metallica has been doing covers for awhile, and its Garage Inc did a remarkable job of a full new disc (#1) and compiling previous covers on Disc 2.  That’s in addition to the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP, the first endeavor with bassist Jason Newsted.   

Classical.  It’s now been twenty years since Metallica’s first classical collaboration, S&M, which gave us “No Leaf Clover”.  I have it on CD and have listened to it a few times.  At that time ReLoad was the most recent album, so of 21 songs, 7 were from Load and ReLoad, or one third. 

Now there’s S&M 2, twenty years after the first S&M show, a live show with an orchestra backing them up.  They’ll be adding another night, 10/30, on which you can see them in a local movie theater.  I would imagine when the run is over, the soundtrack (DVD/CD/MP3) will be available.  

Here’s what prompted me to do this blog, because I came to two conclusions based on this, one specific to Metallica and the other more general.

Metallica.   I liked Hardwired when it came out, considering it a change from the prior albums, which is to say Load, ReLoad, St Anger, and Death Magnetic, a series I’ll refer to as the Loadwired albums.  However, when it came to the middle of this set of S&M 2, I realized something.  After “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, the band plays nine Loadwired songs, including three (“Confusion”, “Moth into Flame”, and “Halo on Fire”) from Hardwired, before returning to “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)” in set 2.  All nine sounded equally “meh” to me.  Now, “meh” for Metallica isn’t crap, manure, commercial, or unendurable, but with so many other awesome songs on Kill ‘Em All through Metallica, I could do without any of the Loadwired songs taking up place in the set. 

And I could not aesthetically distinguish the three from Hardwired from the other six of that era.  That being the case, Metallica (aka the Black Album), is the cutoff point for the material I’m going to listen to on a regular basis and enjoy.  The Loadwired stuff is to be endured periodically and far less often, and I do have all of it on CD. 

On the other hand, some people arbitrarily stick with the Cliff Burton material, meaning you have only three albums to choose from – Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets.  It also means you’re going to miss the 9 excellent songs from …And Justice For All and twelve of Metallica.  This includes “One”.  Because you’re too pissy about “The Unforgiven” and “Nothing Else Matters”, you’ll also miss out on “Harvester of Sorrow” and “Sad But True”. 

Hey, it’s your loss.

General.  The more I hear these live albums where a band performs its material with an orchestra, the more I consider these to be an affectation. 

For songs I already liked, the orchestra really doesn’t add much more.  And for songs – like those Loadwired songs – which I never cared for to begin with, the orchestra doesn’t turn it into a song I now like. 

Let’s go a step further and briefly address bands releasing original classical music of their own (which disqualifies ELP’s Pictures at an Exhibition, by Modest Mussorgsky).

Atom Heart Mother.  I love this Pink Floyd album, although the band itself doesn’t.  Gilmour has been playing “Fat Old Sun” in his solo sets these days, and Waters has been playing “If”, but that’s side two, isn’t it?  And we all love Wright’s contribution, “Summer ‘68”.   I suppose we should say it’s the “Atom Heart Mother Suite” which takes up all of side A that the band really detests as overindulgent and pretentious, but I listen to the album in its entirety on a regular basis.  Hell, the album cover alone, with the cow, is distinctive and noteworthy. 

Deep Purple can claim the distinction of Concerto for Group and Orchestra, from September 1969, not only the first musical operation of Deep Purple Mark II which had finally formed that summer – Rod Evans and Nick Simper shown the door, and Ian Gillan and Roger Glover finally abandoning Episode Six and joining up – but also one of the first rock & orchestra collaborations.  Mind you, this wasn’t Deep Purple’s regular material – which at that point would have been exclusively Mark I material anyway – but original classical music written by keyboardist Jon Lord expressly for this project.  I have it on DVD and watched it once.  Blackmore plays his red ES335.  It’s done at the Royal Albert Hall.  It was interesting but hardly had me compelled to watch it again.

Days of Future Passed.  The Moody Blues album deserves credit as well, and predates Concerto by two years (1967).  In this case the orchestra was real – the London Festival Orchestra – but the material was expressly written and recorded with the orchestra ab initio.  And this is an album I’ll listen to far more often than Concerto.  The Blues themselves have played the album live in its entirety fairly recently (2017) with the full orchestra.  I can venture to say that Concerto didn’t get a repeat performance, and with Jon Lord resting in peace and the rest of the band close to packing it in, isn’t likely to in the near future.

How did we get to Atom Heart Mother and Days of Future Passed from Metallica???  Classical music, two S&M performances.  Given that we know Metallica has no objection to playing covers, perhaps S&M 3 should add in Floyd and the Moody Blues.  Think about it, guys….

*****

People seem to love hating on Metallica, and I find about 50% of the crap to be justified.  But for all my dozing off during the Loadwired material, I certainly came back when “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)” resumed a set section I knew would be exclusively older material.  Now let me sit back and enjoy the Grimey’s show….

Sell Out!

One beef I hear quite often is that bands “sell out”.  That is, they betray their fans and their heritage by changing their sound to sell more albums and make more money.  I’d like to address this issue.

As professional musicians their job is to write and record music, then perform it, to a sufficient level of competence that a critical mass of people are willing to purchase the music and pay to see them perform it.  It would be odd to suggest that a band deliberately write music to minimize their audience and income.   “We need to write music good enough that people actually buy it, but not so good that too many people like it.”

Having said that, I rarely watch the Grammy award shows and almost never listen to the bands and artists who win the most.  My own tastes center around AC/DC and Black Sabbath, plus stoner rock, the Beatles & Beach Boys, and progressive rock like Pink Floyd (who played stadiums in the late 70s, including Montreal!) and King Crimson (not the same level of popularity).   Some bands I like only play clubs and very likely will never play any larger venues:  Clutch and many stoner rock bands.  But if by some miracle Clutch had a top 10 album and were thrust into a spotlight headlining hockey arenas or music festivals, I’d be just as happy to see them there as I am to see them at the current places they play, mainly small local clubs.

Here are some examples.

Aerosmith.  Originally a classic rock band in the 1970s with an excellent album, Toys in the Attic, years later they hit it big with Permanent Vacation and other similar albums.   These are clearly more commercially oriented than Toys in the Attic, though you can be sure they continue to play the older material live.  Did they sell out?  Probably.  Are they worth seeing?  Sure.   Is the new material worth listening to?  Maybe on Spotify, but I wouldn’t spend my money on it.

Metallica.   Three thrash-defining albums with Cliff Burton on bass:  Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets.  Cliff died touring the last album, replaced by Jason Newsted, and the band blew everyone away with …And Justice For All.  Here’s an example of an album which achieves commercial success based on its merits rather than any deliberate attempt to sell for the sake of selling.  I’d argue the following album, self-titled Metallica, aka the Black Album, is more of the same, roughly the same running time of music divided into 12 songs instead of 9.   Because if you really thought the Black Album was the sellout, you’re wrong: it was the next album, Load.   Subsequent albums Re-Load and St. Anger gave us more of the same, Death Magnetic as well, and Hardwired…to Self-Destruct sounds like a return to the more traditional Metallica sound.

We saw the band tour recently in 2017, but the last show we saw was 1997, on the Load tour – our first show was (yes, I’ll mention it yet again) Donington 1985, on the Ride the Lightning tour.  We were not impressed with Re-Load through Death Man-getic and only Hardwired persuaded us to return to the camp.    

Def Leppard.   Did they sell out?  Yes.  Did they get away with it?  Remarkably, yes.  Initially yet another New Wave of British Heavy Metal band like Iron Maiden, Saxon, and Metallica-inspirers Diamond Head, Def Leppard had a forgettable debut album, On Through the Night, a killer second album, High’n’Dry (my favorite) produced by John “Mutt” Lange – the man responsible for AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, Back in Black, and For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) – and an excellent, if somewhat more commercial third album Pyromania which blew the doors open for them.   The next album, Hysteria, really threw off the pretense of metal and said, “ladies, line up here.”   However, it did eventually catch up with them after subsequent albums simply gave us more of the same and fans lost interest.  They still tour, but none of the albums have come close to matching Hysteria’s sales. 

Pink Floyd.  Here’s a weird case.  Obviously Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall sold far more than Piper At the Gates of Dawn through Obscured By Clouds, the prior albums.  But arguably they should have – they are much stronger albums.  How often does anyone listen to “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party” or “Sisyphus” (Mason and Wright’s studio contributions to Ummagumma)?  I certainly watch “Live at Pompeii” and enjoy Atom Heart Mother, but I’d say the later material is still better.  

  

Some bands actually go backwards, starting out trying to sell millions of albums and then switching to simply writing whatever material they feel like, without any concern for sales.

Deep Purple.  Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, bassist Nick Simper, and keyboardist Jon Lord were frustrated with the lack of success of their respective bands in the late 60s and recruited singer Rod Evans and drummer Ian Paice to form Roundabout, quickly retitled Deep Purple.  From spring 1968 to summer 1969 they had three albums, Shades of Deep Purple, Book of Taliesyn, and (self-titled) Deep Purple, but despite touring the US opening for Cream and Vanilla Fudge, couldn’t get anyone much interested in them.  Their material was 50% covers and generally calculated to sell – and didn’t.   By July 1969 they’d persuaded singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover to quit their now-stagnant prior band Episode Six and by early 1970 had In Rock out in the record stores.  This was followed by Fireball and Machine Head.   Note, of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and this band, only Deep Purple released a live album, Made in Japan, at the same time as the tour it was recorded on.  The band only became successful AFTER it stopped trying to be successful.  So much for that.

The Beatles.   Same deal here.   The earlier material was intended to move units, by Sgt. Pepper they decided to stop touring and record whatever they wanted to.  Of course, by then they had established themselves as a band people wanted to hear, so John-Paul-George-Ringo aren’t quite the same as Ian G-Roger-Ritchie-Jon-Ian P (aka Deep Purple Mark II).  Be that as it may, they also quit touring, foregoing what could have been lucrative tour income – if only they could get all those screaming girls to shut up.   

Note:  Frank Zappa is famous for hating the Beatles, and my understanding is that he disagreed with the prior analysis of Sgt. Pepper representing a break with their prior commercial tendencies, cynically concluding that the band simply changed its tactics but not its strategy.  In fact, he titled his third Mothers of Invention album We're Only In It For The Money and designed the cover as a deliberate parody of Sgt. Pepper's famous cover.  It's hard to miss the point Zappa was trying to make.

Oddly, he liked the Monkees, who if anything were far more egregious than the Beatles.  Zappa’s distinction was that the Monkees themselves were trying to break out of the commercial prison they’d agreed to play in, insisting on playing their own instruments on the albums and writing their own material.  Fair enough, except that the Beatles had been doing so since Please Please Me.  I can scarcely imagine that the Monkees themselves, or their biggest fans, would compare Headquarters to Sgt. Pepper.   Mind you, the bands themselves got along with each other, and the Beatles encouraged the Monkees to expand beyond their original commercial constraints.  In terms of 60s psychedelic idiocy, Magical Mystery Tour and Head are probably about equal.  Getting back to Zappa’s assessment of the Beatles, though, even Rubber Soul and Revolver are far different than Please Please Me, “Tomorrow Never Knows” lights years apart from “Love Me Do”.   I’m a big fan of Zappa, but I’m also a fan of the Beatles, and on this issue I’ll side with the Liverpool guys over Frank.

In general I find this tendency to scream “sell out” whenever a band begins to achieve more commercial success to be the rock equivalent of “snowflake” status.   It’s really convenient that this seem to happen AFTER the person has already been seeing the band in concert.   Anyhow.   Sometimes the material sells more because it’s better, sometimes not, not necessarily one or the other.  As noted, there’s Def Leppard and there’s Pink Floyd.  Decide after listening to the music itself, NOT because the band wound up at the Grammys.   

David Coverdale vs. Glenn Hughes

As noted on Facebook, I’ve digested Burn and Stormbringer – the two Deep Purple Mark III albums – yet again.  Moreover, back in 2015 I caught Whitesnake at the NYCB Westbury on their Purple tour, in which they played ‘Snaked versions of DP Mark III & IV songs along with Whitesnake songs. 

The backstory on the Purple album is that Coverdale had originally planned on working with Ritchie Blackmore.  These days Blackmore is doing his Blackmore’s Night stuff, Renaissance music, though very recently he whipped out the Stratocaster again and did some electric shows.  Long story short, the reunion didn’t work out.  [For that matter, current Purple nixed Blackmore’s bid to play with them at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, despite current guitarist Steve Morse waiving objection to this, presumably because Ian Gillan hates his guts, for good reason.]  So Coverdale is the only former DP member in this project, which remained a late model Whitesnake endeavor.  

One person he didn’t indicate contacting was Glenn Hughes.  His recent deal with Black Country Communion was on hold thanks to Joe Bonamassa’s busy solo schedule.  But I can figure out why.  It looks like the two of them don’t get along together.

Deep Purple Mark III & IV.  In 1973, Mark II fell apart when Ian Gillan quit and Roger Glover was fired.  The remaining members decided to hire vocalist David Coverdale and bassist Glenn Hughes to replace them.  They put out Burn & Stormbringer before Blackmore quit, complaining of the excessive soul/funk direction the band was going, which he dismissed as “shoeshine music”.  They got Tommy Bolin to replace him (Mark IV), did one album, Come Taste the Band, and then disbanded after the trainwreck of a world tour supporting the album.

So what happened next?

David Coverdale.

Whitesnake.   David Coverdale formed this band, which has two phases:  blues-rock (1976-84) (White Snake through Slide It In) and hair metal (1987-present) (self-titled Whitesnake through Purple).   Jon Lord and Ian Paice were in the band on Ready & Willing (1980), making this 3/5 of Mark III.  I prefer the earlier incarnation, and “Saints & Sinners” was the first song I learned how to play on guitar.   The bluesier incarnation certainly has more interesting and provocative album covers, Lovehunter being my favorite.  The Snake is Coverdale’s animal and he’s been the only consistent member.   He really doesn’t need a solo band as this is firmly under his control.   [Steve Harris’ solo album British Lion really makes no sense.] 

Technically White Snake and Northwinds are solo albums, with Trouble being the first actual Whitesnake album. As a practical matter I consider them the first two Whitesnake albums. 

He did a one-off album with Jimmy Page, Coverdale-Page.  It’s heavier and not as AOR as I thought it would be.  I guess this came from all those complaints that Whitesnake was essentially ripping off Led Zeppelin.  Sean C at ASP was a big proponent of this thesis.  After having heard Led Zeppelin I through CODA, and White Snake through Slide It In (not sure anyone would accuse hairmetal ‘Snake of this) I’d say it has a modest plausibility, but not a whole lot. 

Glenn Hughes.

He recorded three albums with Trapeze before joining Deep Purple.  He has 14 solo albums from 1977 (Play Me Out) to 2016 (Resonate), of which I only have Music for the Divine (2006).  There are the three albums with Deep Purple Mark III and IV, plus umpteen live albums associated with those two lineups. 

Black Sabbath & Black Country Communion.    Hughes did a one-off album with Pat Thrall, bounced around, did Seventh Star with Black Sabbath – right after Born Again with Ian Gillan – and eventually wound up with Bonamassa, Jason Bonham, and Derek Shirinian as Black County Communion. 

To be fair, he’s toned down the “shoeshine music” somewhat over the years, but never completely.  And generally he remains on the bass as well as vocals, still a Fender Precision.