Apathy for the Devil (47 page)

 

In recent years this has become a global biker anthem like ‘Free Bird’, as well as the victim of a side-splittingly funny Christopher Walken ‘More Cowbell’ routine on America’s
Saturday Night Live
. Back in ’76 though this majestically creepy rumination on looming death hit all the right buttons amongst record buyers and rock critics alike, both of whom couldn’t get enough of its ingenious ‘Byrds meet Darth Vader’ ambience.

 

Full-tilt seventies testosterone rock was what Phil Lynott’s boys served up to the masses, and this breakthrough single proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were the toughest and tastiest in their field.

 

Rundgren was an oddity throughout the seventies. Early in the decade he looked set to become America’s answer to Bowie but - after experimenting with psychedelic drugs - veered away from his more commercial instincts to clumsily embrace prog rock. Result: his fan base never grew beyond a cult. Still, in ’76 he released some of his best-ever work on the album
Faithful
, specifically this killer salute to everyman that packed into approximately three minutes everything you needed to hear from his wide-ranging talents.

 

For my money, this remains the most intimate and breathtakingly
beautiful album released during the seventies bar none.

 

The haunting title track - inspired by the suicide of Browne’s girlfriend - was an unforgettable ‘how to survive the seventies’ burst of lyrical self-exegesis.

 

One of the first ‘indie’-distributed 45s I ever heard or saw. Mad as a sack of wild cats. Pure cerebral psychosis with a flaming back-beat and demons for guitar picks.

I remember spending an evening with Nick Lowe and Jake Riviera at their Kensington flat listening to a rough mix of this track - which Lowe had just produced - over and over again. I’d already heard Costello’s
My Aim Is True
record and thought it was good. But this was monumental. Still one of the only examples of white blokes playing reggae that hits all the right spots for me.

 

I’ve already praised these two Iggy/Bowie sonic groundbreakers sufficiently in the 1977 chapter.

 

Several London punk notables took me to task for raving about this record so extensively in the
NME
that year. They said it was just ‘music for old hippies’ and that it would never last the test of
time. Thirty-two years later though I see
Marquee Moon
routinely perched in the highest branches of all those ‘greatest-ever albums’ polls instigated by the media whilst the recorded output of those who castigated them barely gets a mention.

 

The album
Heroes
could well have been the creative blueprint for the late-seventies ‘new wave’ musical hybrid. Everyone from the Human League to Simple Minds drew their core musical cues from its sulphurous contents. But no one ever merged US funk with European avant-pop drama more artfully than the Bromley Alien, and the album’s second selection-a skewed homage to performance artist Chris Burden - was uncommonly inspired even by Bowie’s exacting standards.

 

‘Anarchy in the U.K.’, ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Pretty Vacant’ were all brilliant blockbuster singles but the uproariously venomous ‘Bodies’ best captured the full foul-mouthed, flint-hearted essence of who and what the Sex Pistols really were from my vantage point.

 

It’s amazing to think the Sex Pistols’ debut album and this sublime collection were released during the same year. The Dan’s creative high point was the sonic antithesis of punk and took Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s noble quest to merge penetrating pop songcraft with sophisticated jazz-drenched chords and arrangements and five-star musicianship to a level of accomplishment no one has since come close to matching.

 

Greil Marcus really laid into this record via a long
Rolling Stone
review but I actually preferred its sleeker sound to most of Newman’s early-seventies output.

 

In the mid-seventies, Green’s mighty run of hits was interrupted by the singer’s sudden urge to become an ordained preacher.
The Belle Album
was his first self-produced effort and first post-religious-conversion musical statement. Rarely has music promoting the ‘I’ve found God and you should too’ message sounded as compelling and persuasive to non-believing ears.

 

I stopped listening to David Byrne and his pals in the eighties when they opted to concentrate on manufacturing yuppified funk pastiches for white people with no sense of natural rhythm but this overlooked song from their debut album was still one of my favourites from 1977.

 

New Boots and Panties!!
- Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Dury truly found his form once he’d disbanded the Kilburns at mid-decade and thrown in his lot with the more musically accomplished Blockheads. This seminal celebration of English eccentricity was one of the decade’s stand-out musical statements.

For most Europeans,
Darkness
was the place where Springsteen
finally rose above all the formative musical influences that had previously defined his recorded output and became an unstoppable rock superpower strictly on his own terms. These eloquent anthems for blue-collar Americans struggling to keep their faith in uncertain times sounded even better on the various live bootlegs that started appearing hot on the heels of this studio album’s ’78 release date.

 

Predecessors
Small Change
and
Foreign Affairs
both had their share of stellar moments but
Valentine
was Waits’s real ‘coming of age’ artistic triumph during a decade that never quite knew what to make of his music.

 

Considering we almost came to blows back in 1973, you could be forgiven for thinking that I’ve always felt only contempt for the Bee Gees but - like virtually everyone else in the late seventies - I fell under the spell of their
Saturday Night Fever
contributions such as ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘How Deep Is Your Love’. Even more irresistible was this lilting soul ballad from their
Spirits Having Flown
album.

 

This infectiously demented samba was all the proof I needed to show me that Beefheart had bounced back from his mid-seventies wilderness years to re-establish his rightful place on the throne as rock’s very own King of Weird.

 

Zevon started out hell-bent on portraying himself as West Coast rock’s very own Hunter S. Thompson and this - his second solo
album - still ranks as his most successful and imaginative attempt at spicing up LA-centric, radio-friendly tunesmithery with an authentic ‘gonzo’ edge.

 

The highlight from ’78’s otherwise lacklustre
Street-Legal
, ‘Señor’ is the gloomily compelling sound of Dylan staring down the black hole of despair and betrayal just prior to being touched by the hand of God.

 

LA’s rockabilly renegades outstripped even Roy Orbison’s original version of this song by investing it with just the right hint of authentically psychotic swagger.

 

To my ears this remains Young’s all-time career peak. Every song is a masterpiece.

 

The Pretenders’ second single was the one that really brought it home to me that my old flame Chrissie Hynde had developed into a songwriter of consequence.

 

I was never the world’s biggest fan of the Clash’s various studio recordings but always kept a special place in my heart for their ferocious rendition of the old fifties rocker first recorded by Vince Taylor.

Thanks to Kalina Villeroy, Angus Cargill, Lee Brackstone and Richard Thomas.

Adam Ant

Allison, Morse

Allman Brothers Band

Allman, Duane

Allman, Gregg

Almost Famous
(film)

Altamont Speedway concert (1969)

Amis, Martin

amphetamine sulphate

Anarchy package tour (1976)

Anderson, Ian

Anger, Kenneth

Arden, Don

Asheton, Ron

Atlantic label

B-52s

Bacharach, Burt

Bad Company

Baker, Ginger

Band, the

Bangs, Lester

Barres, Michael Des

Barrett, Syd ‘Golden Hair’

Basie, Count

Bath Festival (1970)

Bay City Rollers

Beach Boys ‘Surf’s Up’

Beal, Michael

Beatles ‘Love Me Do’

Beck, Jeff

Bedford College

Bee Gees ‘Too Much Heaven’

Beefheart, Captain (Don van Vliet) attack on Zappa
Clear Spot
concert at Brighton’s Dome interview with
Safe as Milk
Strictly Personal
‘Tropical Hot Dog Night’
Trout Mask Replica

Belushi, John

Bernstein, Elmer

Betts, Dickey

Beverley, Ann

Beverley, John ‘Sid’
see
Vicious, Sid

Bickershaw festival (1972)

Bicknell, Ed

Big Star: ‘The Ballad of El Goodo’

Bindon, John

Bingenheimer, Rodney

Birmingham (Michigan)

Blackmore, Ritchie

Blondie

Blue Oyster Cult: ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’

blues-rock

Bluesbreakers

Bolan, Marc death ‘Get It On’

Bolder, Trevor

Bonham, John

Bono, Sonny

Boomtown Rats

Boushell, Debbie

Bowie, Angie
Backstage Passes

Bowie, David
Aladdin Sane
‘The Bewlay Brothers’ changes in music style concert at Cobo Hall (Detroit) (1973) ‘Cracked Actor’ and disco and drugs and exorcism ‘Fame’ intelligence of interview with
Playboy
(1977) ‘Joe the Lion’ legal battles with Mainman living in Los Angeles
Low
The Man Who Fell to Earth
meeting with musical collaboration and relationship with Iggy Pop physical appearance sexuality smear campaign against
Station to Station
work method
Young Americans
Ziggy Stardust role

Boycott, Rosie

Boyd, Joe:
White Bicycles

Brando, Marlon

Breslau, Marty

Brock, Dave

Brown, James ‘King Heroin’

Browne, Jackson
The Pretender

Bruce, Jack

Buckley, Jeff

Buckley, Tim
Greetings from L.A.
‘Monterey’

Buell, Bebe

Buffalo Springfield

Burchill, Julie

Burnett, T-Bone

Bushell, Debbie

Buzzcocks

Byrds ‘Chestnut Mare’

Cale, John

Callan, Alan

Calvert, Robert

Cammell, Donald

Can
Future Days
Tago Mago

Capitol Cinema (Cardiff)

Capote, Truman:
In Cold Blood

Carr, Roy

Carroll, Ted

Carson, Phil

Cash, Johnny

Cassady, Caroline

Cassady, Neil

Cassidy, David

Cave, Nick

CBGBs scene

Chandler, Chas

Channel, Bruce

Chaucer, Geoffrey

Chelsea Hotel (Manhattan)

Cher

Chimes, Terry

Churchill, Sir Winston

Clainos, Nicholas

Clapton, Eric

Clark, Dick

Clarke, John Cooper

Clash, the ‘Brand New Cadillac’

Cobain, Kurt

Cohen, Leonard

Cole, Richard

Collins, Joan

Cooder, Ry

Cook, Paul

Cooper, Alice ‘I’m Eighteen’

Costello, Elvis ‘Watching the Detectives’

Cramps, the: ‘Domino’

Creem
magazine

Crosby, David
If I Could Only Remember My Name

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Crowe, Cameron

Cure, the