Despite my love of an obscure track, most of the tunes that make the playlist this week are reasonably well known. Hopefully it’s still an eclectic mix. Enjoy!
Summer Breeze Parts 1 & 2 – The Isley Brothers (1973)
I’ve been waiting for a period of sustained summer weather to post this track, my favourite summer record. But the North Sea winds cooled the east coast of Scotland during the warm weather that everyone else in the UK got in June. And now with the Jet Stream permanently fixed in place bringing rain to everywhere in the UK throughout July, I’ve given up. So here it is in all its Parts 1 & 2 glory. Six minutes and twelve seconds of sunshine in a record. Originally written and recorded by American soft rock duo Seals and Crofts in 1972, their version was a US top ten hit but did nothing in terms of radio airplay and sales in the UK. However, the Isley Brothers recorded a harder and more soulful version with Ernie Isley’s iconic guitar solo for their 3+3 album in 1973. When it was released as a single, it made No 16 in the UK chart in early 1974. The Isley family group has existed and recorded in various forms since the late 1950s and are among the few groups ever to have hits in US Billboard charts with new music in six different decades. They recorded with Tamla Motown in the 60s where they had a huge hit with the beautiful Holland-Dozier-Holland song This Old Heart Of Mine, covered in the 70s by Rod Stewart. But they formed their own label, T-Neck, in 1969 and added some funk, gospel and rock licks to their soul sound which led to several US hits. Their chart successes in the UK were less but did include the fabulous Harvest For The World and the sly, funky That Lady, which was also from their 1973 3+3 album. But for me it is the long, languid sound of Summer Breeze that is their finest moment. When that opening keyboard motif begins and then Ronald Isley’s vocal starts to riff on the “all in my mind” line, the hairs on the back of my next stand up and I am transported back to those long carefree summers of my youth. “Sweet days of summer, the jasmine’s in bloom/July is dressed up and playing her tune.” Glorious.
Tears Dry On Their Own – Amy Winehouse (2006)
Sunday saw the twelfth anniversary of the death of Amy Winehouse from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27. Looking like the product of an unholy union between Ronnie Spector and Johnny Thunders, Winehouse’s flame burned brightly but briefly. Many, many words have been written about how her musical success was overshadowed by her personal life and her talent being squandered in a tragic descent into the depths of alcohol and drug addiction. The deep and bitter irony of the “No, No, No” refrain in her single Rehab sums up an artist who seemed fated from the very start. When promoting her debut album Frank back in 2003, she had often been too drunk to sing at shows and TV appearances. She is said to have ended up in the darkest places due to her volatile and sometimes violent on-off relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil and this track from her second and final LP Back to Black is said to be about one of their break-ups. Originally recorded in one take as a ballad with Miami producer Salaam Remi, it was Remi who suggested that the song could be given a lift in rhythm by adopting some of the instrumentation from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s 1967 hit Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. Hence writers Ashford & Simpson get a co-writing credit and the tune gets welcome Motown vibe in the chorus which balances the sad lyrics (“He walks away/The sun goes down”) with a more upbeat backing track. There is a great version of her playing it live at a very damp Glastonbury in 2007 here. Her passing meant Winehouse became a member of the so-called “27 Club” joining a list of other famous but troubled musicians who died at that young age with their potential unfulfilled including Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.
Rock On – David Essex (19)
There’s nothing like a teen idol passing his three quarter century to make you feel old. David Essex was 76 on Sunday and this track was a stick on for the playlist. Having made some unremarkable records in the 60s, Essex drifted into acting, getting breakthrough landing the role of Jesus in the London production of Godspell in 1971. This led to him getting the role of working class aspiring rocker Jim MacLaine in the 1973 movie That’ll Be The Day, where he starred alongside Ringo Starr and Keith Moon. The film was produced by David Putnam and he gave a very keen Essex the chance to write the music for the ending. Incredibly, he came up with this unusual, stripped back song which he believed caught the restless and rebellious nature of his character set against the backdrop of late 1950s youth culture. The lyrics reference James Dean and namechecks Carl Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes and Eddie Cochrane’s Summertime Blues. Puttnam ran a mile from it but it got Essex a record contract with CBS. Essex wanted the track released as a single and stuck to his guns when CBS tried to suggest it should be a b-side as it wasn’t commercial enough. The song was an international hit reaching No 3 in the UK chart and helped Puttnam’s movie do well at the UK box office. Essex wrote it on a bass guitar with no drums which gave it a menacing tone. Producer Jeff Wayne developed this from the demo, using synthesised string and horn riffs with echo and delay applied to everything, particularly the vocal track. On the record, it is veteran session man Herbie Flowers that devised and played the double-track bass line, a trick he also did on Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side a year earlier in 1972. Flowers claims he liked this approach as he was paid double his normal session fee, receiving £24 instead of the usual £12!
Hersham Boys – Sham 69 (1979)
When I saw that this single was released this week in 1979, I wanted to stick it into the playlist, not really because it is a thing of beauty but because it gives me an excuse to tell a great story. For those readers old enough to remember, Sham 69 were a band that emerged from the UK punk scene in the late 70s and surprisingly became one of the most successful groups to do so. Led by Ramones fan Jimmy Pursey, the band originated in Hersham in Surrey – their name comes from a worn away bit of graffiti seen by Pursey which was referencing local football club Walton & Hersham securing the Athenian League title in 1969. The group did not have an art school background like many English punk bands of the time which resulted in hip publications like the NME being a very dismissive of them, particularly their football chant choruses and their implicit political populism. Pursey was an outspoken individual whose vocal range was limited to say the least, but he was a natural front man performing tunes like Angels With Dirty Faces and If The Kids Are United which were top twenty hits in 1978. The band attracted a large skinhead following and their concerts were plagued by violence – they gave up playing live when a 1979 gig the Finsbury Park Rainbow was broken up by National Front-supporting skinheads. Hersham Boys was their last and biggest hit reaching No 4 despite a bizarre western themed video promoting it. I was reminded of the song when we were staying with our friends in Walton-on-Thames earlier this month. The proximity of Hersham came up and I immediately broke into the chorus in my best Jimmy Pursey voice: “Hersham Boys, Hersham Boys/Laced up boots and corduroys!”. My friend Carol then told me she was shopping for garden furniture in Squires Garden Centre in Hersham one day a couple of years back. As she was perusing the tables and chairs, she came across Jimmy Pursey sitting in one of the chairs trying it out. As she passed by, he felt the need to advise her in his unmistakeable voice that “it’s not as solid as it looks, you know”. Erm…. thanks, Jimmy!
Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home – Sinead O’Connor (1992)
As I was finalising this week’s playlist, the death of Sinead O’Connor at the very young age of 56 was announced and I wanted to mark this sad news with a track on the playlist. As an artist I’m very aware of but not hugely knowledgeable about, I’m loathe to offer too many opinions on her life and career, but I have been dipping into the outpouring of emotion from her fellow artists and fans that has been published over the last day or so. Author Anne Enright described her as having “huge talent and huge difficulty” and musician Sharron Van Etten noted “she coped with sadness and rage through song”. Unlike the self-destruction of Amy Winehouse, O’Connor’s demons came from within and from her almost pathological desire to court controversy throughout her career. I suppose tearing up pictures of the Pope on live American TV was always going to define you but it could be argued that the fall out of her unswerving desire to be true to herself has eclipsed her music. Her incredible version of Prince’s Nothing Compares To U (and those tears in that video) made her name by giving her an international hit that she will be forever associated with. But the 1990 LP it came from (I Do Not Want what I Haven’t Got) had several brilliant original songs. I recommend you remind yourself of the deeply personal Three Babies, written about her miscarriages, and the politically coruscating but hauntingly beautiful Black Boys On Mopeds, which she worked on with Karl Wallinger of World Party. She continued to pepper her career with her incredible interpretations of other’s songs across a range of genres from her delicate vocal on Cole Porter’s jazz standard You Do Something To Do Me to the hushed, breathy All Apologies released just after Kurt Cobain joined the ’27 Club’. I have chosen to mark Sinead’s passing with her version of the Johnny Mullens song made famous in 1962 by Loretta Lynn which was included on O’Connor’s third LP Am I Not Your Girl in 1992. Released as the lead single, it made the UK top twenty which was remarkable for such an unusual cover. It took the honky tonk sound of the original and ripped it into a dramatic big-band driven ballad, cleverly contrasting her soft voice with the orchestration. From the opening brass riff cutting across the descending strings to the outro with O’Connor’s angst-ridden repeated declamation of the “Am I not your girl?!” refrain as the brass squeals to that final whistle, it’s not for the faint hearted. There is a live performance here which shows that while to some she may have been a devil, but she had the voice of an angel.
[Edited Mon 31 July. Issued Fri 28 July with wrong track on Spotify playlist. Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home has now been added and Black Boys on Mopeds removed – it had to happen eventually as I keep changing my mind!]
Purple Rain – Prince and the Revolution (1984)
This week’s playlist started with a long track with an amazing guitar solo and it’s going to end with one too. This week in 1984, the movie Purple Rain was released which turned out to be the first of four films starring the diminutive pop genius Prince Nelson Rogers. The difference with the first film is that Prince neither writes nor directs it, although it is widely seen as the story of his musical life up until then. It’s actually not that good a film but when you’ve got a soundtrack like it had, I’m not sure that really mattered. The title song arrives at the crux of the movie when Prince sings of his lost love. But that long outro section also serves as a catharsis, releasing the pent-up frustrations that had been building throughout the film as the Purple Rain is celebrated as a place to be free. Following its release, the wee fella performed the song in almost every live show, often as the closing number. Although, the one time when I saw him live at Parkhead in 1992, he dropped it only seven songs into a 22 song set! You can find many versions of Prince performing this iconic song online but one of the most dramatic was when he played the 2007 Superbowl halftime show in a glorious blue suit in a biblical rainstorm in Miami. After cracking through excerpts of a few songs in the short set, he slowed things down to finish with a truncated but sensuous rendition of Purple Rain. The stadium turns dark and purple lights shine through the torrential rain as a slicked Prince dazzled the crowd with a silhouetted guitar solo that produced an amazing visual. Try not joining in with the crowd backing vocals when you watch it – it’s impossible. The story goes that it rained all day leading up to the event and when the show producers called him to make sure he was OK with the weather, he apparently said “Can you make it rain harder?”. Purple Rain was the last song Prince played live as the closing number at a concert at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta on 14 April 2016. He died a week later. Among the many artists paying homage to him afterwards was Bruce Springsteen, who opened his show in Brooklyn on 24 April with a performance of this song with Nils Lofgren given the job of the guitar solo. Springsteen dedicated the show to Prince, saying, “There’s never been anyone better: bandleader, showman, arranger.” A fitting tribute.
Last Word
So another deadline met with some marginally shorter posts which hopefully you have enjoyed. Engagement through the dreaded WordPress app seems to be a real challenge, but if you can find some way to like it, then I’d be very grateful, if a little needy. Comments welcome on the socials too!
The monster that is the master playlist continues to grow at the link below. Go on – you know you want to shuffle it…
AR
Week In Sound 
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