Log #104 means I've reached the 2 year point in my weekly log of album listening. That's a year on than the original plan. At the one year point I wrote a review of the first year. It now makes sense to do that at the end of the calendar year so I'll do one in December from now on. Having said that it's always interesting to take a quick snapshot of where we've got to. Here is the top of the leader board as of today (by number of appearances in the weekly log):
So this means that Neil Young is out in front: Statistically in the 104 weeks I've been logging my listening, at least one Neil Young album has appeared in 15 of those weeks (14%).
Now without further ado here is the listing for this week:
Bob Dylan - Hard Rain
Bob Dylan - New Morning
Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy
Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
Bob Dylan - Slow Train Coming
Uriah Heep - Sweet Freedom
So I continue on my Dylan journey this week. He nearly achieves a clean sweep throughout the full magazine but is just pipped for slot 6 by an unlikely usurper in the form of the 70s British rock band Uriah Heep. Why? Well two things this week. One was there was a discussion about Uriah Heep on a facebook group I follow, more specifically a discussion about their singer David Byron. The second was the track Easy Livin' which was used in one of the episodes of the now showing excellent TV drama Trust about the Getty family. The drama is set in 1973 and has a superb soundtrack of rock music from those days.
David Byron
David Byron was the angelic looking lead singer of Uriah Heep from their "ever so 'umble" beginnings" in 1969 through ten albums before being dismissed in 1976. With his flamboyant charisma and operatic vocal range he was the focal point of the band but as keyboardist Ken Hensley put it "when the show started to come second [to the drinking] the problems began":Stood on a ridge and shunned religion, thinking the world was mine
I made my break and a big mistake, stealin' when I should have been buyin'
All that fightin', killin', wine and those women gonna put me to an early grave
Runnin', hidin', losin', cryin', nothing left to save
But my life
(from Stealin')
After leaving Heep, Byron went on to a solo career before reaching that early grave succumbing to an alcohol related death in 1985 at the age of only 38.
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| Uriah Heep - Byron centre |
David Byron also appeared on the cover of the band's debut album, his face unrecognisable under cobwebs:
Sweet Freedom from 1973 was the (prolific) band's 6th album:
The album is characteristic of Hensley's heavy organ but also note the melodic bass playing from the late Gary Thain (heroin overdose 1975).
Uriah Heep are still going and have actually just released a new album Living The Dream this month although guitarist Mick Box is the only founding member remaining. Their trajectory was typical with a gradual watering down of their rock (and sometimes goblins and wizards flavoured prog) towards the late 70s before a brief revival in the early 80s when heavy metal became popular. They then drifted on in relative obscurity, and through the usual personnel changes, while continuing to appear at festivals and play numerous shows to a loyal fan base each year. Tracks like Easy Livin' and Stealin' continue to receive air time in both the UK and US.
A Hard Rain Fell
Hard Rain is a live album taken from Dylan's celebrated Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975/76. It's very rough and on initial listening one may be forgiven for wondering why it was released in such a state. But over the years it has become an important document (along with a film) of this mythical tour. |
| A masked Bob Dylan with Mick Ronson (centre) |
Dylan was at the time going through some personal issues most significantly the break up of his marriage which he had written extensively about on two powerful albums of the period - Blood On The Tracks (1975) and Desire (1976). Touring with a ramshackle and varied collective of musicians from these album sessions, including the amazing gypsy violinist Scarlet Rivera, and various guest appearances from the likes of Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg and even more surprisingly Mick Ronson from Bowie's Spiders From Mars, Dylan had a wealth of current material to draw upon. But don't expect polished renditions of the album tracks - here Dylan is angry, the band are jamming, and the versions are fast and furious.
Once you appreciate the circumstances and accept the roughness of the sound you can enjoy the pure energy and passion in these performances.
The guitars are loud ((and sound out of tune in places (as are the backing singers) - you can hear the musicians tuning between tracks)). The pace is breakneck from the off with a rollicking Maggie's Farm, and Dylan, sometimes made up with a whited out face and dark eye liner (checkout the haunted look on the cover), sometimes wearing a hanky over his head, sometimes his flowered-up Desire stetson, barks his anger.
Always one to alter songs live Dylan provides some shambolic yet exhilarating electric versions of One Too Many Mornings (unrecognisable from the gentle solo version on The Times They Are a-Changin'), the brilliant Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (one of my favourite ever Dylan songs), and especially Shelter From The Storm which is given new momentum with Dylan's screeching slide guitar over a grinding guitar riff. Highlight is a vitriolic Idiot Wind directed towards his soon to be ex-wife apparently standing side stage (Bob and Sara Dylan divorced in 1977 after 12 years of marriage):
Idiot wind
Blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind
Blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots, babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves
It was hurricane season on the Gulf Coast leg of the tour and many concerts were rained out giving the album it's name:
Everybody's soaked, the canopy's leaking, the musicians are getting shocks from the water onstage. The instruments are going out of tune... everybody is playing and singing for their lives, and that is the spirit you hear on that record.
Bassist Rob Stoner
You can now view the tour film here:
So not the purest Dylan album and likewise not one for the purists who prefer their Dylan in the form of the contemporary Blood On The Tracks album. Also not one for a new fan or one to play in a room of listeners unaccustomed to the ways of Bob Dylan. But for the established fan Hard Rain offers something new and exciting and I would not be surprised if I return to it more often than some of his more celebrated albums.
The track listing from the film which differs from the album is:
Hard Rain
Blowin' in the Wind
Railroad Boy
Deportee (Guthrie)
Pity the Poor Immigrant
Shelter from the Storm
Maggie's Farm
One Too Many Mornings
Mozambique
Idiot Wind
Knockin' on Heaven's Door
The album track listing is:
Maggie's Farm
One Too Many Mornings
Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
Oh, Sister
Lay Lady Lay
Shelter from the Storm
You're a Big Girl Now
I Threw It All Away
Idiot Wind
Interesting Rock Trivia Fact: Scarlet Rivera was married to Sensational Alex Harvey Band keyboardist Tommy Eyre.