wanted the story of Tommy to have several levels, a rock singles level and a bigger concept level,’ Pete wrote later. ‘I wanted it to appeal as a fairy story to young kids and also be intellectually entertaining. And I wanted it have a spiritual message too.’
Not everyone bought it. ‘It’s sick!’ denounced horrified Radio 1 DJ Tony Blackburn, and plenty of critics shared his view.
‘Tommy wasn’t as big a success as people now imagine,’ says Roger Daltrey, ‘not when it was released anyway. It wasn’t particularly big at all – it was only after we’d flogged it on the road for three years and played Woodstock and things like that it got back in the charts. Then it stayed in the charts for a year and took on a life of its own.’
Richie Havens
Richard P Havens 1983
Double folk apocalypse from the Woodstock Freedom man.
Record label: Verve Forecast
Produced: Richie Havens and Mark Roth
Recorded: RKO Sound Studios, New York; early 1969
Released: May 1969
Chart peaks: None (UK) 80 (US)
Personnel: Richie Havens (v, g); Arnie Moore, Carol Hunter, Brad Campbell and Stephen Stills (b); Skip Prokop and Don MacDonald (d); Weldon Myrick (sg); Paul Williams (g); Jeremy Steig (flute); Colin Walcott (sitar); Paul Harris (p); Warren Bernhardt (k); John Ord (p, o); Carter CC Collins (congas)
Track listing: Stop Pulling And Pushing Me; For Haven’s Sake; Strawberry Fields Forever; What More Can I Say, John; I Pity The Poor Immigrant; Lady Madonna; Priests; Indian Rope Man; Cautiously; Just Above My Hobby Horse’s Head; She’s Leaving Home; Putting Out The Vibration And Hoping It Comes Home; The Parable Of Ramon; With A Little Help From My Friends; Wear Your Love Like Heaven; Run Shaker Life; Do You Feel Good?
Running time: 69.37
Current CD: Not currently available
Further listening: Mixed Bag (1967); Alarm Clock (1971)
Further reading: They Can’t Hide Us Anymore (Richie Havens and Steve Davidowitz, 1999); www.richiehavens.com
Download: Not currently legally available
It’s been said about a lot of albums recorded between 1967 and 1971, but what were they on when they made this?
Thanks to that landmark performance at 1969’s Woodstock Festival – hollering ‘Freedom!’, hammering away at a battered acoustic guitar – and such albums as 1967’s Mixed Bag and 1971’s The Great Blind Degree, the common perception of Richie Havens is of a rough-edged folk shouter dealing in ten-cent peace ’n’ love. His background was a folk one, growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of New York, hanging out with street-corner harmony groups and watching the legendary Dino Valente and Fred Neil harmonise at The Cafe Wha?. He studied the songs of Neil, Hardin and Gene Michaels and perfected his trademark open tuning technique (playing all six strings and using his thumb to make different chords at every fret stop). However, his first two albums for Jerry Schoenbaum’s MGM offshoot, Verve Folkways, pushed that ‘folk’ definition to the limits. It was a new label with free reign and on Mixed Bag and 1968’s Something Else Again producer John Court told Havens to try everything.
‘He said we should avoid songs of any one type,’ says Havens. ‘He told me I could sing opera if I wanted.’ It all made for a distinctive combination of Village folk, New York pop and a rumpled psychedelia which sold over a million copies. Richie became a valuable commodity and MGM gave him the freedom to set up his own Stormy Forest production company and make the Richard P Havens 1983 double album.
It was a stunning, labyrinthine achievement – combining the fractured hippy visions of Leonard Cohen, Donovan, The Beatles and Dylan with such cryptic Havens folk puzzles as Indian Rope Man and Just Above My Hobby Horse’s Head.
‘The year was 1969,’ he explains. ‘The title 1983 was based on the idea that I thought we were already in the world created in George Orwell’s 1984, which warned about the dangers of a monolithic society. My album said there was still time brother, but not much …’
After Woodstock, Richie Havens was set for life, securing a $650,000 deal with MGM that included his own office on the twentieth floor. Apocalyptic urgency went out of the window. He would make other great records but nothing ever approached the bewitching insanity of this one.
Neil Young
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
First electric album with Crazy Horse blueprinted the guitar-driven sound that would later inspire grunge.
Record label: Reprise
Produced: David Briggs and Neil Young
Recorded: Los Angeles; March 1969
Released: May 14, 1969
Chart peaks: None (UK) 34 (US)
Personnel: Neil Young (g, v); Danny Whitten (g, bv); Ralph Molina (d, bv); Billy Talbot (b, bv); Robin Lane (v); Bobby Notkoff (vn)
Track listing: Cinnamon Girl (S/US); Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (S/US); Round And Round; Down By The River (S); The Losing End; Running Dry (Requiem For The Rockets); Cowgirl In The Sand
Running time: 40.32
Current CD: Reprise 7599272422
Further listening: Tonight’s The Night (1975); Zuma (1976); Rust Never Sleeps (1979); Arc/Weld (1991)
Further reading: Neil Young: Here We Are In The Years (Johnny Rogan, 1982); http://hyperrust.org (fan site); www.neilyoung.com (official)
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
Neil Young was in search of something new. Freed from the burning intensity of Buffalo Springfield, he had signed to Reprise as a solo artist and issued a lavishly arranged, predominantly acoustic album which gained solid reviews but sold poorly. His voice had been buried in the mix, which briefly caused him to disown the album. Now, he was determined to start afresh. His new direction owed much to a debilitating bout of flu which had rendered him helpless but simultaneously unleashed his imagination. High with fever, he’d written three songs – Cinnamon Girl, Cowgirl In The Sand and Down By The River. The lyrics were understandably vague and dreamy and the chords simple yet arresting. In his mind, Young began to hear a hypnotic beat that cried for electric instrumentation. He could have assembled a crack team of LA session players but instead he chose a bar band that he knew from the Springfield days. The Rockets had made one album for White Whale but weren’t exactly setting Hollywood alight. ‘He took the rhythm section, which was me, Billy Talbot and Danny Whitten,’ drummer Ralph Molina recalls. ‘It evolved into Crazy Horse. We hadn’t played many shows as The Rockets anyway.’
Crazy Horse was one of Young’s most inspired moves. They provided him with the same excitement he remembered from the heyday of Buffalo Springfield, albeit without the mind games and rivalry that characterised his dealings with the fiery Stephen Stills. Although the partnership would drift at various points in his career, Young would always return to Crazy Horse in search of renewal. This album proved one of the best electric guitar albums of its era and established Young’s reputation as a player of great passion and unrestrained intensity.
‘I still think that us being with Neil was fate,’ Molina concludes. ‘We were just four guys. That Crazy Horse sound came