Speaker 1so let's let's move on from new wave to singer-songwriters is next on the list and you've already mentioned bruce now i'm going to come clean i've never been a bruce springsteen fan i think he's amazing yeah um i can totally see why people um get very obsessed with him and why for many people he's the greatest and he's the boss and all that i've never liked it i've never i've never liked his i quite like nebraska the stripped down acoustic porter studio record it just doesn't resonate with me what about you absolutely the same here and i've
Speaker 2all of his albums at least once and there are bits i like you know jungle towns great across the rivers great nebraska the lyrics are amazing the lyrics are amazing philadelphia yeah and some of the lyrics and actually you know his album this year darkness in the edge of town some of the lyrics are fantastic his ability to create stories quite similar in a way to randy newman or um tom waits um who had a great album this year as well so i do you know i rate him i i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him i do rate him touch me there's something about it that i think meatloaf tapped into because i think obviously meatloaf's debut bit out of hell is part part rock opera and part bruce springsteen and they tap into the excessive theatricality because one of the things about bruce springsteen is that he's seen as the great blue collar singer-songwriter and i think his background was um was a lot more middle class than the characters he sings about and i think he's a great singer-songwriter and i think there's something to me that as much as he's a great songwriter great lyricist great vocalist it's it's theatrical you know to me it's almost as theatrical as the lamb lies down on broadway if that makes any sense to you but you
Speaker 1like that but you don't like bruce springsteen
Speaker 2i do partly because i think with something like the lamb was done on broadway for whatever reason when somebody like gabriel drinking game favorite again sings mythical stories for whatever reason they're tremendously emotional the emotions kind of get through his greek mythological characters you know he's a really repressed upper middle class englishman he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown and you can hear it in the lamia how does that speak
Speaker 1to you when bruce talking about real life real i'm playing devil's advocate yeah yeah bruce talking about real life and real people in real situations and you are very much a lyricist that comes from that tradition you don't come from gabriel not at all at all of it you come from the tradition of real stories real people kitchen sink right so how is it that bruce doesn't resonate with you but peter gabriel talking about whatever it is i just remember it being ridiculous does resonate with you how is that how does that work
Speaker 2obviously in warrington we did have lamia in our local pools as you can imagine what is the lamia again i think it's another greek mythological as the lamia seems to be some that in a sense um takes away the purity and virginity of the character and strips them down and turns them into the slipper man if i'm is it a metaphor is that what you're saying is it a metaphor i think you're right there's a metaphor in there yeah i don't know look for me the lyrics do nothing for me but i can answer your question quite easily because it's something that both of us believe in actually and that is that great songs and great lyrics are not necessarily the same thing so there are great lyricists whose lyrics i can look at and think that is brilliant but the music does nothing for me
Speaker 1no absolutely no yeah yeah some of the
Speaker 2best songs of all time have got terrible terrible lyrics ultimately it's about the emotional conviction of the singer it's about the arrangements it's about the song itself the melody does it enchant you so something like the carpet crawlers i can't for the life of me tell you what it's about but i can tell you that there's something really beguiling and something cracked in gabriel's vocal performance that makes me love it so same with kate bush i mean kate bush this year has produced two brilliant albums that emotionally floored me then and emotionally floor me now but i don't necessarily relate to them i don't necessarily think they're particularly great lyrics but there's something very intense and on the edge emotionally about the vocal delivery and also in the case of both bush and genesis harmonically this music is quite exotic it has twists and turns that i find quite fascinating and quite moving i i really
Speaker 1like kate's lyrics on the first two albums i've got to say a song like wow for example i think the lyrics are very very clever and very very touching but anyway but i take your point and i was playing devil's advocate because of course i agree with that when i read bruce springsteen lyrics i think they're brilliant i don't relate to the the musical setting i don't i don't relate to his voice his performance the way he delivers and i don't relate to the the sort of music my bad i'm sure it just doesn't do it but i love a lot of i do love a lot of artists that have been very influenced by bruce springsteen early water boys and mike scott stuff massive massive chunk of bruce springsteen influence i love i love those records you know so interesting there's there's actually another artist here that was a very influenced by bruce uh warren zeven or warren zeven i don't know how you say excitable boy now you're a big fan i don't know much about him um except i've read a book about him so i do know a lot about him yeah but i don't i've i've never explored the catalog because the bits i've heard didn't necessarily resonate with me but you you you've got something to say about this album
Speaker 2excitable boy i just really like it i don't know why and and again you're right it has a certain bruce springsteen characteristic um he produced an album i think about two three years earlier his debut 75 76 self-titled which was much more country singer songwriter you know in some ways it was much more like a lyrically incisive eagles it was coming from a totally different place this album has got a very very clean late 70s production that echoes springsteen but for whatever reason i love it lyrically he's clearly influenced by somebody like randy newman again he's telling stories more than anything else um and he had the fluke hit with werewolves of london um which i do know
Speaker 1which i do know yeah
Speaker 2yeah so it's one of those albums that is inventive fun serious it has beautiful ballads and it's got a really nice shift from quite up-tempo pop rock tracks to very cutting emotional ballads and the title track i suppose it is a good example of a lyric that i think is both good but one that i find interesting because on one level it's some kind of jaunty pop rock piece about the excitable boy but the excitable boy of the of the song is in effect a psychopath and you gradually realize this so it it's interesting you know it kind of subverts the forms and i just think it's a you know he he is a kind of an underrated uh singer-songwriter whether he made anything better than this album i'm not sure
Speaker 1so you mentioned earlier another contemporary of bruce springsteen's tom waits and and blue valentine came out this year i i just think i mean everything i feel about bruce springsteen i feel the opposite about tom waits i absolutely adore him um the the voice everything the context the character everything does it for me yeah and in in many ways it is as blue collar and working class and american deeply seated in america americana as bruce there's a song on this record that is just the lyrics just destroy me i'm sure you know a postcard from a hooker in minneapolis and it's again you talk about the the warren zaven track having that kind of twist you know of course you you and i both know the twist i won't spoil it for the people who maybe haven't heard this song the twist in the song is that it's a song that's in this song is devastating when it comes and it is that idea of storytelling something not new york or la but some deadbeat dusty out of the way town in the in middle america or somewhere out of the way where people feel frustrated where people feel trapped where people feel unable to get out of their kind of paralysis their sort of paralyzed lifestyles of drugs and being hookers and shooting pool and drinking beer and there's some i know we talked about this before on the show you've always felt that character of his was slightly contrived yeah um i never did i always completely bought into it i think there is a lot of him in his characters and i i totally believe in him and his characters and for all the the sort of plaudits that the 80s and the reinvention of tom waits in the 80s gets and i love those records too i do adore these records he made in the 70s when he was playing that kind of slightly sozzled piano bar room barfly troubadour and when he gets it right on an album like this i just think the songs are just genius kentucky avenue on this record wow you know just heartbreaking songs heartbreaking songs about people that have just become trapped in their own sort of
Speaker 2sort of small town world and i think that's something that definitely spoke to me you know obviously i was in a very different small town in a very different country but yeah it it did and does And I sort of agree with you that, you know, Blue Valentine especially is arguably his best album, actually. You know, I loved Swordfish Trombones when it came out and I loved Rain Dogs and so on. And I slightly grew tired of the character and the forced experimentation. But at this stage, the stories are brilliant. They are very tender. I think that's the thing that they're very literate and they're very tender and they managed to kind of capture another period quite well. Because almost I think there's kind of an imagery in his work that reminds me of great American short stories of the 30s and 40s. And he's sort of, you know, he enters that world. And yeah, I agree. You know, I think there's a real tenderness in the title track. Blue Valentine's is one of my favourite.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, you listen to an album like Blue Valentine or some of the other records from the 70s, things like Nighthawks. The Diner, Small Change. And it's almost like you're listening to a musical musical equivalent of a Bukowski novel, isn't it? I mean, it's got that same sort of atmosphere of relentless. No matter what you do, whatever you try to achieve, life will just slap you down again. There's also that really sinister picture on the back of the album cover of him sort of standing over Ricky Lee Jones as she's sort of pushing her onto the cover. He's playing that kind of downbeat pimp character to perfection at this time. So. So another another artist, I have to say that I've never completely this. This would go into the same category as Bruce Springsteen for me or less. So Bob Dylan. Amazing. I've just never been a big fan. I like a few songs, a few records. It's I've just never completely connected with Dylan. But you've here you've put here an album on the list. I've never heard Street Legal. Yeah. Which originally you had on the guilty pleasures list. I just want to say that to the folks out there. Tim obviously has. Some reason. Why is this? Why would this potentially be a guilty pleasure?
Speaker 2Well, I mean, I really like Street Legal. It's a very dense album. He's using a lot of gospel backing vocals, full band. I think he's a Christian albums. No, it's his pre Christian album. And it's got a real kind of wall of noise production. So it's quite. I mean, I really like his sort of mid 70s. But it's funny with Dylan. I love his very early stuff. So times are changing. I mean, I think he's in the era where it's real stripped down folk and his voice has such a presence. And then after that, I become slightly less interested. But then again, I get interested around some blood on the trucks, which I think is a devastating album, brilliant record. And I like that one, you know, desire, I think, is fantastic. And this kind of comes out of desire in that it's got that dense band sound. And what's interesting about the album is, is that Street Legal in Britain had a big hit, got brilliant reviews in America. It was seen as the death of Dylan for whatever reason. There was a major schism between how the Americans and the British perceive this album. So that's why I put it in the guilty pleasures that, you know, if you read your great American critics, you know, Dave Marsh or whoever on Street Legal, you know, this is the all time bottom of Dylan's career before he gets even worse with his Christian albums, of course, as far as their consent. But I think there's a great exuberance, a brilliant density of sound. Dylan's enjoying it and he's finding himself in a different sonic space. So for me, it was a strong Bob Dylan album that comes off desire quite nicely.
Speaker 1So also in singer songwriters this year, Comes a Time by Neil Young. I love this record. You know, again, for every Dylan or Springsteen that I don't quite get, there is a Waits or a Neil Young that I completely get and completely adore. Comes a Time is one of my favorite Neil Young albums. And it's interesting because it's. You were talking earlier about we were talking about Elvis Costello and how this so-called sort of post-punk, angular post-punk figure a couple of years later was making very, very lush country records. And Neil Young, somebody that's kind of always played that gag, isn't he? I mean, he's gone from making sort of proto grunge records to doing these very sentimental country records. And this one is one of his most sentimental in the sense that it has these very lush string synthesizer parts. On some of the songs, which makes it a very sort of warm bed of acoustic guitars. It almost sounds like Alan Parsons might have produced a Neil Young album. It has that very sort of golden, lush quality to it. And some of his most beautiful songs. The title track, I think, is a wonderful song. Very, very country. And certainly in the UK, growing up in the UK, you and I, country music kind of been further away from the mainstream. Kenny Rogers, Coward of the County being the possible aberration and the exception that proves the rule. We just didn't know country. I mean, I don't know about you. I just didn't know country music. I had never heard it. I had no interest in hearing it. So I wonder what I made of. I can't quite remember what I would have made of things. I don't think I would have heard it at the time, but certainly would have heard it reasonably shortly afterwards. Just thinking it was an absolutely beautiful, touching, emotional singer songwriter record. Yeah. Which I think has grown with age. It's one of those ones that probably was a little bit overlooked. I mean, I might be wrong, but it was probably just seen as, oh, another Neil Young album.
Speaker 2It seems as if it's lost in the middle somewhere, because I think obviously American Stars and Bars. I mean, Zuma, I think, is brilliant. It's one of my favourite Neil Young albums, 75. American Stars and Bars, which preceded this, is much more raw, really. And you can see how it fits in with the zeitgeist. And this, as you say, it's kind of smooth. It's gentle. It's much more the logical follow up to Harvest, isn't it? In a way, it's more conventional in terms of its songwriting. But much more slick,
Speaker 1much slicker than Harvest. Yeah. Harvest still has a songwriting. It's sort of playing it in the barn-like quality. This doesn't have that.
Speaker 2No. And 79, he's back into his guitar, crazy horse extravaganzas and name-checking Johnny Rotten, you know. And I guess it's kind of lost. But yeah, it's a lovely album. I suppose it kind of has that, although it's not as out there. It's got that Van Morrison common one aspect that it's just him making an album for himself, drawing from influences he likes. And I was slightly more aware. Because my dad actually liked Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. And obviously in later years, I kind of really grew to like people like Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash. I'm just slightly more familiar with its vocabulary. But yeah, really sweet album. And I guess that's why it's almost kind of a forgotten album, because it's not the angry Neil Young that, you know, the punks loved.
Speaker 1But I think what I'm saying is that amongst the real fans of Neil Young, this is an album that has. It has grown in stature over the years. I mean, I might be wrong about that, but I certainly feel that. And I know there are other people that feel the same. Lovely record. So one last record in this category that I think maybe you want to talk about, which you've referred to already, Tim, is Al Stewart's record from this year, Time Passages, which is an Alan Parsons production and also has a hypnosis sleeve, if I'm not mistaken. And great guitar player on this record. I think it's Tim Rennick plays guitar. They're a fantastic underrated guitar player who ended up playing with Floyd a couple of years later. On the wall tour, I think. So tell us about this album then, Tim. This is the follow up to Year of the Cat, isn't it?
Speaker 2Yeah, it still was a big success, especially in America. But I guess, again, as we're talking this year of beginnings and endings, you know, this is the last Stewart album where he's developed his sound to a certain level, you know, enhanced by Alan Parsons. It's a very lush singer songwriter album with great playing, great solos, lovely songs. And again, with Stewart, lyrically, he's always been an interesting character because he's used history as his. His darting point, historical stories and so on. And the only thing really to say is that it's a logical follow on from Year of the Cat. It's a really strong follow on from Year of the Cat. Title track was big hit single in a few territories, but it kind of marks the end really of this style and of his cultural impact, which is a pity because, you know, he remained an interesting songwriter and has got quite a lovely voice, which I think we've said before. You know, you can certainly hear Neil Tennant as listen to Al Stewart. So, yeah, it was more that it was kind of it was it was an end to that phase that from, you know, 66 to 78, he's built up this career and unexpectedly he's become an enormous concert drawer and chart artist in America.
Speaker 1But what you're saying is he moving into the 80s, he wasn't able to reinvent himself in the way that perhaps people like Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen were able to reinvent themselves. So. I think he tried, but failed. Yeah, I'm a fan. I do like Al Stewart. I particularly love, you know, the first, not the very first record, but the second and third record, Love Chronicles, Zero She Flies, big fan, Modern Times, great record. There's a whole string of great records through the 70s. He kind of became known for doing that kind of historical song, didn't he? It became his gag that he would sort of take take things from history and almost use them as metaphors for whatever was going on in his life or in the modern world, which is a very. Very unique and very interesting perspective. So great, great lyricist. What's the state of the mainstream in 1978? And just to let's just quickly go through the records that are in this category. Bloody Tourist by 10cc. Some Girls by the Rolling Stones. Who Are You by The Who. A Single Man by Elton John. The debut Dire Straits record. Another debut record. Jazz by Queen. All This in Heaven 2 by Andrew Gold. And Level Headed by Sweet. Maybe we should talk. First about the album that really didn't come off, which for me is the 10cc one as a massive, massive fan of the. previous 10cc album deceptive bends which was quite unquestionably eric stewart and graham goldman proving that they could make a fantastic record without godly and cream suddenly the magic's gone the single which was massive dreadlock holiday is almost a novelty record um and 10cc always they were they always had kind of gags behind their records but i never thought of them as a novelty band and this is quite a crass novelty record isn't it the impersonations of jamaican people are kind of in this in this day and age they sound very crass so i think this is this is a very disappointing record this for me is the end of 10cc as i as i kind of know it you feel the same oh totally
Speaker 2yeah again in that beginnings and endings this is it you know and what's interesting is because i kind of had a category 5cc because godly and cream have produced l in 1978 which is a brilliantly inventive record and what's funny is if you look it's almost like overnight 10cc have gone prematurely gray and put on 40 pounds it's almost unrecognizable whereas godly and cream have got the childlike curiosity of sheet music in l still you know they're finding new territories to explore and they sound excited and excitable the 10cc album is suddenly very very staid and very middle-aged and and i did buy it at the time and like you know deceptive bends was almost like a placeholder it was almost like gullman's to it saying you know what we can do 10cc just as well and they did you know deceptive bends yeah is a really confident um response it's a
Speaker 1brilliant record yeah
Speaker 2yeah you know so i totally agree with you but this one they've become i think it's a six-piece band and it feels a bit more diffuse there was some great you know to be fair i think it's old father time and um tokyo there are a few good tracks on it it's not
Speaker 1yeah i agree it's not terrible it's just very disappointing based on the bar they set with the previous record yeah because you're thinking to yourself you're thinking to yourself as i'm sure a lot of people are thinking at the time they've lost half their members they've lost the creative core of the band they've lost the quirky element of the band they're not going to be able to cut it now and they prove everyone wrong with deceptive bends which is a brilliant i mean it's just the singles alone things we do for love it's funny i was watching afterlife the new richie gervais series and it's massively featured at the beginning of the season and it works brilliantly um and you just think what a great song you know that's in many ways that's as good as i'm not in love i mean it's a love song it's right up there with i'm not in love and then good morning judge fantastic another fantastic scene and then the 14 minute epic feel the benefit they're doing everything right on this album what suddenly creates this creative um downturn it's almost like how could it have gone and it's like you say it's not terrible it's not terrible it's just not very good it's just not
Speaker 2very good yeah i don't know because again even thinking of good morning judge the production on that is as fizzy inventive and unusual as a production on cheap music again it's them saying you thought this was a quirky inventive art pop band it is and they do everything right you know the stereo separation it sounds great whereas this um it's very comfortable you know there's nothing particularly imaginative about anything in the production it's very standard and at times they sound incredibly tired and some of the stories i think there's one about the um falling asleep on the tube whatever this it's it's just a terrible idea for a lyric pretty terribly executed and they almost sound bored and asleep while doing it at times
Speaker 1do you think this would be an example of a band that were maybe looking at what was going on in music punk and all that stuff and suddenly thinking to themselves what do we do how how can we still be relevant because the reason i ask is we're going to talk about another album in a moment which is the who album from this year which i think is definitely pete townsend responding you know these some of these guys the mick jagger maybe also feeling that some of these guys feeling like these young kids are looking at them as like the old the old guard the old geezers the irrelevant old fogies even though as you pointed out the age difference well in some cases the punks are older aren't they jet black from the stranglers is probably older than pete john fox you know
Speaker 2john fox day formula jet black they're older than most of the artists they replaced yeah and
Speaker 1yet i wonder if people like eric stewart and graham goldman pete townsend uh mick jagger looking at this new thing going on and thinking oh christ we're obsolete the you know the kids no longer are going to relate to us what are we going to do and in the case of 10cc it's like okay let's make a record for middle-aged people instead let's make a record for middle-aged people instead let's not even try let's not try you know let's i wonder i mean i'm reading
Speaker 2perhaps too much it's difficult isn't it i mean i think that there was a lot to prove on deceptive bends and they proved it and maybe that was it that they had the massive success and they became more of what they were and let's face it goldman and stewart are incredibly talented but they were always the more mainstream parts of 10cc and maybe whereas you know i've done this before because they you know with when i'm doing albums sometimes i think about how you might force me to sing something or do something or how brian who i work with so sometimes as much as i'm following my own instincts i also think okay i don't want i don't want to slip into my own cliches and i try and access what other people i work with and respect would suggest i do and i wonder that on deceptive bends they're accessing godly and cream they're thinking you know we're going to show them and on this album there's none of that godly and cream influence so you know they had nothing left to prove and they're not going to show them or they felt it because they'd had huge hits and then dreadlock holidays number one all over the world i think i would i would
Speaker 1agree with you were it not for one thing that on deceptive bends there are two songs which i think are as good as any lush ballad they ever produced which have no aspects of godly and cream people in love and things we do for love they're corny and i mean in a positive way romantic love songs classic eric stewart love songs they're brilliant they're as good as any of the ones they made during the classic the so-called classic godly and cream era but on bloody tourists the attempts to write those songs again are suddenly sounding pretty flat so
Speaker 2for you and i is the attempt i'm not in love and people in love on that album and it does i can't even remember it i can't quite exhausted yeah i mean the voice sounds exhausted it it uses that vocal sound you know the master vocal sound that defines i'm not in love and people in love the beginning of the things we do for love that's in it and it just just doesn't rescue the peace and people in love was the track that destroyed the band of course because they presented that to godly and cream and godly and cream hated it and there's a version on one of the box sets with godly and cream providing absolutely demented backing vocals on people in love um and kevin godly always said i hated that track so we they were almost going to destroy they're trying to destroy the track i mean i love it and i actually love the deceptive bands version the straight i i don't know because you know we've often queried this that you know when bands have gone off so conclusively so quickly what is it is is it you know is it boredom is it drugs is it success i'm not quite sure but yeah it is a conundrum so let's ask let's ask the question about some
Speaker 1of these other albums and tim have any of these also gone off right who are you by the who have they gone
Speaker 2off on this record oh yes and no i'm going to say with that on one level this is a great continuation from that kind of fusion of minimalist synthesizers you know the terry riley aspect and rock that they pioneered on who's next and quadrophenia and it's a logical conclusion to that and it's damn good um on another level suddenly it sounds quite tired it sounds quite middle-aged it sounds quite reflective about their position in the pantheon of rock greats very self-conscious um i mean a lot of this is is either entwistle or townsend musing on their relevance in the present day and age and as much as i love old roge and i do you know i think roger is great he's a great rock vocalist and and he has the look of the great rock vocalist he sets the template he suddenly sounds as if he doesn't know what he's singing about you know he's singing townsend's lyrics and it sounds very blustery very middle-aged very excessive so in some ways this album doesn't match what i think townsend wants it to be who are you is a great single and there are a few really good pieces on it but for whatever reason it sounds a lot of bluster a lot of excess um it isn't matching what it thinks it's saying i think you're right
Speaker 1there's i like the record very much but it does sound suddenly a bit middle-aged and again we just remind people that they were barely 30 i think townsend maybe was just just at 30 they're still young but they sound like they're threatened by what's going on around them and the attempt to sort of you know put on their dr martin boots and be the who that they were the furious the who that they were on live at leeds or it just isn't quite coming off and i think it's because townsend was in a different place and actually there's a beautiful song which didn't make the record called um i think it's called no road romance it's a townsend ballad it's a bonus track on the stunning and it's not it wasn't recorded for the who are you who are you record probably because he felt it wasn't angry enough to put on the record you know what i mean but it's actually one of the best songs i think he wrote during that period what about Some Girls by the Rolling Stones, gone off?
Speaker 2No, I mean, that was actually, it got very good reviews at the time. I love that record. You know, it's a good Rolling Stones record. I mean, but going back to Who, one of the things is maybe there was too much fine wine and fargois in their gullet. And I think Pete Townshend recovers his voice. You know, if you think of All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, I mean, brilliantly poetic and pretentious. And he sounds like himself on the album. It's almost like, and it merges quite nicely with the more self-conscious art pop of the early 1980s. So I think there's a real disconnect in Who Are You? Whereas actually the Rolling Stones, they do sound like they're having fun by comparison. What about, right, Elton John, A Single Man, gone off? To a degree, yeah. I mean, I think that era he had two of his best singles. I really liked Ego, the non-album single. Brilliant. Which was like a kind of, I don't know, late 70s psychedelic pop. Classic, in my mind. A bit like David Essex's Imperial Wizard. It was reinventing psychedelia for the MOR 1970s. And obviously Song for Guy is a really touching masterpiece with such a beautiful, simple arrangement. I mean, people forget because it's ubiquitous. It's one of those tracks, a bit like I'm Not In Love, I guess, where people think of it as this ubiquitous 70s ballad. But it's such an imaginative, stripped-down arrangement. It's very unnerving. Unusual and, of course, incredibly long for a single as well.
Speaker 1And very dark as well. I mean, the only lyric in it is, life isn't everything, you know. No, again, I'm a big apologist for this record. I adore the previous Elton John record, Blue Moves. I think it's one of his great masterpieces. A Single Man is a slight step down. He's obviously not working with Bernie Taupin for the first time ever in his career to this day. He's trying to work with another lyricist. The lyrics are a little bit more generic, a little bit more banal. Which I don't think helps. And it's interesting that the strongest track on the record is the song with virtually no words at all in it. But I think it's still classic Elton in a way. It could be no one else. The sound is still there. The classic Elton John sound. The songs perhaps aren't quite as inspired. They're a little bit more meandering. And lyrically, they're a little bit more banal than we're used to. But I think he's definitely still holding his head up. And, of course, as you say, the ego. The single, the non-album single is as imaginative as anything he'd done during the 70s.
Speaker 2Isn't this another album, though, that might be slightly defined by the cover? It's not a love beach. It's a brilliant cover. Yes. But what I'm saying is it's not a love beach. But you look at that cover and there's an aspect of that time of people like Townsend, Moon, Daltrey, Elton John living lives that are very detached from the ordinary person.
Speaker 1Lording it over their audience with how rich they are. Yeah, exactly. No, you're right. You're right. Yeah, which is the antithesis of the sort of punk.
Speaker 2Yeah. In a way, I admire that because it's almost the exact opposite. You know, it's like what I'm going to do in the time of punk is I'm going to take a photograph in Top and Tails outside my mansion house with a Rolls Royce. Yeah. That'll do it. That'll teach Johnny Rotten.
Speaker 1I love that. That's very Elton in a way and then very not Elton in a way, too. I mean, I remember when we were doing Personal Shopper and he was doing the voiceover of Personal Shopper. The one thing he didn't want to say was personalised number plate. He said, I hate. I fucking hate that. I hate people who have personalised number plates. So I think part of him still is that young kid from Pinner that hates that idea of nouveau riche and stuff. But, of course, that's also part of what we love about Elton John, isn't it? You know, the fact that he does have a whole room full of scarves and, you know, whatever it is he carries around to, you know, the sort of excess, the sort of Lord of the Manor thing about him. What about Queen? Certainly they haven't gone off at all, have they? This is one of the great, one of the best records. I was going to say, I was going to say it's we were talking about things that grow in stature. We were talking about the Neil Youngham, how it seems to have grown in stature. Don't stop me now. This song has become a standard, hasn't it? And yet at the time it was a minor hit. I remember when it came out as a single, it got to like number 17 and then kind of disappeared. It wasn't considered one of their big songs for years and years and years. It wasn't considered. It wasn't considered one of their big songs. And then I might be wrong about the timeline here, but it was used in Shaun of the Dead and it's been used in so many movies. And it's one of those. So Queen were always very clever, weren't they? They came up with those kind of slogan songs like we are the champions. We will rock you. Don't stop me now. Songs which seem to have endless applications for for syncs on TV and in movies. Yes, yes. And don't stop me now has become one of those, hasn't it? I mean, it's my my stepdaughters. They know this song very well because they've seen it in kids cartoons. And movies and TV shows and it's become a standard and it's and it's on this this record jazz.
Speaker 2I think you're right. I mean, Queen had the ability to, as you say, almost make simple slogan songs that everybody could remember after the first couple of plays. Yet were very complex. Now, you think of the arrangement and don't stop me now. Vocally, it's stunning. You know, you think of even we will rock you. That is a very clever stripped down arrangement. I know that's the album before this. But, yeah, I quite like. Use the world and jazz because they're all over the place. They're still quite inventive, still quite mad, and they're still at the top of their game in terms of their ability. You know, they're not albums that are perhaps as coherent as their greater albums, Night of the Opera and so on. But they're still very playful and very on form, if that makes any sense. You know, this is an album that's all over the place. Jazz. No, you're right.
Speaker 1I mean, I perhaps slightly controversially feel Queen never really made coherent. Records to the level, perhaps of some of their contemporaries. They were ultimately the most incredible. A bit like Habba. They were the most extraordinary singles band you could ever imagine. If you listen to all their records, there's you even on the peak albums like Night of the Opera and Sheer Heart. There's always a couple of novelty tracks or something that's not quite strong enough. And I think that's one reason why you don't tend to see Queen albums in the greatest albums of all times lists. Certainly not up there with your Sergeant Peppers and your Nevermines. And your Blonde on Blondes or whatever, or your Exile on Main Street. You don't see Queen albums up in that kind of vaulted company. And I think the reason for that is the albums were usually about three or four extraordinary flashbulb moments. Just brilliant songs. I mean, let's face it. Freddie wasn't trying to be down with the punks, was he? At all. I mean, he was he was still playing, playing it being Freddie Mercury. You know, this is a very flamboyant, exotic front man, which, again, was very much against the punk. It was a massive record. It had big hit singles, other singles off this record. Bicycle Race, Fat Bottom Girls. They had a lot of great, great pop singles off this record that I think leave you with the impression the album is maybe better than it actually is. And I think that often is the case with with Queen records.
Speaker 2Well, it's probably telling, isn't it, that their best selling record is The Greatest Hits, one of the best selling records of all time, of course. Yeah, they were always a brilliant singles album. And, you know, maybe Queen, too, and A Night at the Opera aside. And they're even quite variable. There aren't many. I think so.
Speaker 1I think Sheer Heart Attack actually, for me, is their most consistent record. But even that has a couple of tracks I could do that. Do you want to talk about. Oh, actually, before we do that, another great debut record this year, Dire Straits. Dire Straits, a band that instantly passed go. Do not collect 200 pounds. Go to the mainstream. Because most of these other bands that we're talking about here kind of almost started off as, as you say, drawing on new wave. But Dire Straits never were. They went straight to the mainstream. They went straight to the mainstream in spectacular fashion. I mean, it's a really great debut record.
Speaker 2But what's interesting about it is it's very unflashy because, you know, they came from, I guess, a sort of pub rock background with roots blues, roots country, root folk influence. And it's a very unselfconscious record. One of the things I kind of like about this is probably really along with Love Over Gold, the album I like most by Dire Straits. And it's because it's oblivious to the trends that are out there. It's loving. It's beautifully recorded. The guitars are beautifully recorded. You know, you can you can see why people in guitar shops got excited when they listen to it. I mean, he is.
Speaker 1I mean, he you say there's not flash. There's nothing flashy about it. He is a flashy player. He's a flashy guitar player. I think a lot of people, people like my dad, who probably would have given up on, you know, listening to pop music, would have heard Mark Knopfler's guitar playing. And so, oh, well, you know, he can play the guitar and probably bought the record for that reason. You know, he's a I mean, it's very tasteful. He's a very tasteful player, but he's he is a very accomplished, technically flashy player, isn't he?
Speaker 2I guess. But just I mean, you know, Solitaire Swing was it was a great single. The covers are really understated, almost ECM jazz style cover, isn't it? There's nothing about it that screams big hit is what I'm saying. And a lot of the songs are quite understated, partly because Knopfler has got an incredibly understated non-voice, you know, which you could link in a way to early Bob Dylan. But even then, you're struggling. But he yeah. He comes out, sounds like himself and sells millions of an album that on paper should be a disaster.
Speaker 1Yeah. It's almost like they've been one of the biggest bands in the world by stealth, you know, without trying. Yeah. But great. I mean, it's like, again, you know, we talked about some of that music. It's almost impossible to dislike, you know, the Jerry Rafferty's and the Fleetwood Mac rumors and those. And Dire Straits are another of those bands. I think I defy anybody to say that there's not any there's not something in the Dire Straits catalog that they don't admit to liking. Um, they're just, they're just great songs. beautiful production beautifully performed so tim you you've put here sweet level-headed sweet sweet go prog art pop okay they've kind of got their timing a bit wrong haven't they in that if that's the case well they
Speaker 2have and they haven't because basically you know they were the ultimate glam pop band with anthems you know hard rock riffing i say the ultimate obviously t-rex for me are the ultimate and the best of that but they were there along with slade along with t-rex banging out the hits in the early 70s i was never a fan never particularly liked it but i did go out and buy you know this is the thing where i went out and got x-ray specs oh bondage up yours probably with sweet love is like oxygen at warrington rumbelows and um love is like oxygen is a really complex art pop single in the 10cc meets floyd style and the album has even got a multi-part epic you know as you say suddenly they've become aware of other strands of 1970s music just at the point when it's not going to help them so the album didn't sell but love is like oxygen was a deservedly huge single and a very good one i thought yes i
Speaker 1know the single too i don't know the album but if you if it is the way you describe it is like they've it's like their timing could not be worse it's like you've gone prog at exactly the moment that everyone else is is banishing their progress and they're not going to be able to do it again so i think it's banishing their prog rock albums to their local charity shop and changing their flared trousers for drain pipes but i like that about it i like that about it yeah yeah and the sweet single obviously being i think probably their their biggest hit for some years wasn't it if i remember
Speaker 2rightly yeah yeah well northern lights renaissance you know they made the band their biggest success with an album you know produced by david henchel multi-section epics orchestra no concessions and i kind of like the albums with no concessions i suppose in a bullish way van morrison rode out of this period because he was just van morrison he did not care for what was around he cared for what he loved and i sort of respect that bullishness whereas renaissance had this huge hit with an unexpected album really and song and then i think became a little more self-conscious afterwards it's like how do we replicate this success how do we maintain and of course through self-consciously doing it they lose it that that magic that success slips away from them it's
Speaker 1interesting isn't it it's almost like you know you're pushing the stone up the hill you're trying to get the big hit you're trying to get over a career you know and then finally you have it and it is the beginning of the end and i think that that may be true of some of these other artists that we're looking at here that finally achieved this big crossover here of course yes had just had their first real big hit of their career as well with wonder stories
Speaker 2the year before yeah sorry i was gonna say in the case of genesis um the follow you follow me is what then defines what's to come they have their big hit on an album that otherwise ignores 1978 but they have that hit which becomes the template for the rest of the career
Speaker 1which is the exception that proves the rule as there always is one tim i think we should stop there because we've been talking for two and a half hours and we're just about halfway through now i think so this is definitely going to be a two-parter so we'll forego all the other stuff about picking our favorite record of the year most influential record of the year until we've we've done part two but let's pause there hold that thought and we'll come back and do the rest of the show of 1978 disco r&b one-offs rock the old embrace the new electro pioneers progressive rock jazz and classical serious composition all to come on another bumper fun-packed episode of the album years i can't wait i can't wait either tim i can't wait another fun-packed episode with myself steven wilson and tim boness bye-bye bye for now you
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