QUEEN - HOT SPACE @ 40

 

May 21st marks the 40th anniversary of Queen’s tenth studio LP, Hot Space, which was released on this day in 1982. Widely considered the band’s most disappointing and misguided album, it remains grossly under appreciated and misunderstood, even by the surviving band members themselves. It took decades for me to embrace it, but in the end, it won me over with its daring and risk taking and the quality of the song writing.

Queen were never a band to allow themselves to be constrained by stylistic restrictions. Indeed, their willingness to explore genres, styles and techniques was one of their biggest assets and a key reason many people appreciated them, myself included. But their foray into electronic dance music on Hot Space ended up being a measure too far for many, including some members of the band. That shift began in 1980 on The Game with the runaway smash hit, Another One Bites the Dust. Bassist John Deacon, who composed the song, was central to this shift as he’d always leaned towards soul and R&B influences. His interest was reinforced by Freddie Mercury, who was also listening to the counsel of his then manager, Paul Prenter, who like Mercury, was drawn to the gay club scenes of the day and wanted Queen’s music to move into this arena. Prenter, while holding sway over Mercury, was notably hated by the rest of the band, who were troubled by the degree of his influence over the singer. And then there was none other than Michael Jackson, who upon hearing Another One Bites the Dusk, strongly encouraged the group to release it as a single. All of this momentum coupled with the unprecedented success of the single, ended up leaving the more rock oriented May and Taylor in the position of having to reluctantly adapt to the tides of the times.

While Queen had tried to curb their studio time and indulgences after the excesses of landmark albums like A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, recording for Hot Space dragged on longer than any album they’d previously done. Recorded at their studio in Munich, part of this had to do with some in the band getting more heavily involved in drug and alcohol consumption, something which left the group struggling and leaving all of them in "deep emotional trouble".

Technically, while they’d spent the previous decade proudly proclaiming “no synths” on their albums, since The Game, they’d embraced using an Oberheim OB-X. They went a step further on Hot Space by bringing a drum machine into the equation for the first time. Roger hated the muted, flat sound of the drums that was de rigueur for dance music of the day, so he was fine with a machine taking up the role to achieve that sound in this context.

The band didn’t completely abandon their rock roots, but their forays into the style were much lighter and more pop friendly than the heavy rock of their early days. Brian’s role on guitar was substantially reduced within this context as well. Guitars weren’t the central musical component like they had been on previous albums. Instead, they were a mostly textural element or used to shade the arrangements. Fans looking for a flat out rocker on the album were left out in the cold.

When the album was released, it managed to garner some decent sales, but a lot of that was due to the fact it had been used as a home for the massive hit single by Queen and David Bowie, Under Pressure, which was tacked onto the album as the closing track. Bowie had also contributed to another song on the album, Cool Cat, but he was unsatisfied with the results and his contributions only made it as far as a test pressing before the track was remixed to remove his vocals. That version has since survived as a commonly available bootleg. Body Language also managed to do well as a single, helped along by a particularly salacious video which was so sexually charged it was banned in some markets and relegated to only late night rotation on MTV, but it was still enough to propel the single to #11 on the US charts.

Critical reception for the album was decidedly not supportive of their new direction with some commenting on how out of step the band were when disco music in general had become so demonized by this time. This was further compounded by the reaction of fans to the new songs when they were played live, especially in the US where “DISCO SUCKS” T-shirts were a common sight in the audience. Mercury was even captured on stage lamenting the negative response, scolding the audience saying “It’s only music”. That was a major factor in the band’s decision to stop touring in the US after the Hot Space gigs. While the band went on a number of world tours before retiring from the stage entirely at the end of 1986 due to Mercury’s HIV related health issues, they bypassed the US market after 1982, opting for South America instead. They would not return to the US again until well after Mercury's death when they reconstituted with Paul Rogers in the 2000s.

At the time the album was released, my interest in the band was at its lowest ebb. It was a time when I was moving into progressively more experimental and obscure music and my days of being a Queen fan were quickly falling behind me. It wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that I started to revive my interest in them and reconsider their output through the 1980s. When I did take the time to give that work a closer listen, I was taken by surprise by how much I now enjoyed the music on Hot Space, which has become my favorite album of theirs from that decade.

When I listen to it now, I can appreciate its idiosyncrasies. Queen’s willingness to take risks was always something I admired and, in retrospect, I don’t think they ever stepped further out of their comfort zone than this LP. Yet it continues to be maligned and dismissed as a “disaster” or “misguided”. Were they overreaching? What does that even mean for a band like Queen? I can hear so many things on this album that are worthy of praise and appreciation that the criticism is meaningless to me. Michael Jackson, again, loved the album so much that he cited it as a major influence on him when working on his most successful release, Thriller. Though Jackson’s own legacy may be tarnished, that vote of confidence still, I think, means something.

I hope that time will offer up a revision of judgement for this album because it does have charms that become apparent when one is willing to sweep aside preconceptions and expectations and just let the music speak for itself. I only wish I’d been open minded enough to discover its worth sooner than I did.

AMON TOBIN - BRICOLAGE @ 25

Marking its 25th anniversary today is the debut album from Amon Tobin, Bricolage, which was released on May 19th, 1997. Technically, it’s his sophomore release, but his first album was issued a year prior under the artist name, Cujo, while Bricolage was the first album released under his own name.

It’s an album that took the idea of integrating vintage jazz influences with contemporary electronica to new extremes. Tobin, a Brazilian native, started out from the vantage point of break-beat and drum & bass DJ culture and gave it all a hard swing into the territory of cool jazz, exotica, be bop and Latin influences. The results of his hybridization turned out to be a turning point for trip-hop and drum & bass.

I remember when I first heard this album, it felt like a musical sea-change had hit in the dance music underground. Certainly, the jazz influence was present prior to this and downtempo hip-hop music had made a lot of great strides in this direction, but Tobin exhibited a dexterity and fluidity in his music that belied its electronic, sampler based technical production. It seemed to be let loose from any sense of rigidity or slavish repetition and we marveled at the prospect of what he had managed to do with the gear of the day.

It’s an approach which has remained viable for the past quarter century as the album sounds like it could easily be a product of contemporary origin. The fact of its relevance today is striking when compared to the shifts in music we’ve seen in prior eras of popular music. Twenty five years is a long time. When you think about what music was like in 1980 and then compare that back to 1955, it seems like they’re separated by a century. The fact that this album still seems modern for us now means that we’ve reached a kind of plateau in the art form and there hasn’t been a lot of progress in what really is a new century for us now. 

THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE - ARE YOU EXPERIENCED @ 55

 

 

May 12 marks the 55th anniversary of the UK release of the debut LP by The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced, which was issued on this day in 1967 (the US release followed on August 23). It remains one of the most critically and commercially successful debuts by a rock artist and not only redefined the parameters and direction of psychedelic rock, but became a touchstone in the development of hard rock and heavy metal while also staking out an entirely new landscape for blues and R&B music.

 

By 1966, Jimi Hendrix was going nowhere in his career as a backup guitarist on the US R&B circuit, but that would all start to change when he caught the attention of Linda Keith, who was dating Rolling Stones guitarist, Keith Richards at the time. She saw something there and started introducing him to various managers and industry people. Eventually this lead to a meeting with Chas Chandler, who was just coming off a stint managing The Animals. Chandler brought Hendrix to the UK and London, where he set about recruiting a new backing band for him to work with, finding guitarist Noel Redding, who took on bass duties, and drummer Mitch Mitchell.

 

With a group in place, they started hitting the studios over the course of a five month period between October 23rd, 1966 and April 4, 1967. It took a total of 16 sessions to record all the material for his debut LP, which was done at three studios: De Lane Lea, CBS and Olympic. The shifts between studios were in an effort to improve sound quality as the initial sessions at De Lane Lea were not entirely satisfying to Chandler, so they moved to CBS and later Olympic, which had the best quality equipment and latest technology.

 

Because of budget constraints, most of the pre-production work was done at an apartment Chandler was sharing with Hendrix at the time. Chandler also ensured that the creative autonomy remained squarely with Hendrix, deliberately limiting the input from from Redding and Mitchell in order to avoid having to deal with the usual politics of band relations and compromises. It was Jimi’s show and that was made clear from the get-go. Besides, Hendrix had all the details of his songs worked out in his head anyway, so there was little need for additional input.

 

Recording of the album was interspersed between live gigging throughout the UK and Europe. Things were initially a little tense in the studio as the technicians struggled to record Hendrix at the screaming loud volume he insisted upon. The volume of his twin Marshall stack was so loud that it was causing audible rattling throughout the studio, which was getting picked up by the mics. When Chandler insisted on him turning the level down, Hendrix threw a tantrum and threatened to head home to the US. Chandler responded by placing his passport and travel papers on the mixing console and telling him to “piss off”. Hendrix laughed it off and said, “Okay, you called my bluff.” He then adjusted the levels (slightly) and got back to work.

 

Hendrix was far from confident as a vocalist compared to his prowess on guitar. He hated having anyone around when he did his vocals and, at Olympic Studios, had a privacy booth constructed to try to get isolated from the engineers, but this was problematic for them, particularly with the low lighting as it made it difficult to communicate with him and give him the correct cues while recording. The volume wars continued on at Olympic as well with nearby neighbors regularly complaining about the noise coming from the studio.

 

The studio also had to struggle with the distraction of fans showing up, especially the girls. Hendrix wasn’t exactly discreet and had no qualms about blabbing to fans where they’d be at any given time of day, which resulted in a lot of unwanted guests at the studio. Studio staff were tasked with keeping them at a safe distance so that work could continue, but later Chandler commented that he had worked with The Beatles, Stones and Led Zeppelin and none of them had caused such chaos with their followers. However, other than the quibbling about volume, Hendrix himself was generally easy going and not difficult to work with, it’s just that a bit of discretion from him would have been helpful for recording.

 

The songs for the album covered a wide range of genres from R&B to free jazz with each track possessing its own distinct personality. Yet they were all inseparably bound together by the strength of Hendrix’s style and personality, which ignited each like he would set fire to his guitars on stage. And his band, while kept on a short leash in terms of creative contributions, nonetheless stepped up to the task of supporting such a dynamic and distinctive guitar player. Cream may have invented the concept of the “power trio”, but The Jimi Hendrix experience took the “power” knob and added “11” to the dial.

 

The cover for the album had two variations with the UK version coming first, but proving unsatisfactory to Hendrix as he felt it looked to drab given the music it contained. He subsequently commissioned the US label to come up with something more reflective of the content. The UK version featured a muted color palette with only the album’s title on the front, oddly omitting the band’s name. For the US edition, noted graphic designer and fashion photographer Karl Ferris was recruited. His fashion background was put to use in helping to select the group’s wardrobe and he used a fish-eye lens and an infrared technique of his own invention which combined color reversal with heat signature manipulation. Upon listening to the band’s music, the designer had conceptualized the shot as a "group traveling through space in a Biosphere on their way to bring their unworldly space music to earth.”

 

Upon its release, the album was an immediate commercial success in both the UK and US and received rave critical reviews. Since then it’s gone on to become recognized as one of the most significant debut albums of all time. Hendrix’s influence on the world of rock music and the evolution of guitar playing is incalculable as he can lay claim to having an impact on everything from heavy metal to funk to industrial music. Anyone who’s picked up a guitar in the last half century and wanted to do something more with it than strum a few chords eventually has to look to Hendrix as a pioneer and inspiration. His debut LP could not be a more perfect representation of that talent.

THE ROLLING STONES - EXILE ON MAIN STREET @ 50

 

Released on the 12th of May, 1972, The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street celebrates its 50th anniversary today! Considered one of the bands all time best albums, it marked a creative peak for the long running band.

The album was a bit of a hodgepodge of songs recorded over an extended period going back as early 1969 during sessions for Sticky Fingers. This resulted in it sprawling into becoming the band’s first double LP set by the time the dust settled. Much of it was recorded in mid-1971 using their mobile studio at the rented villa Nellcôte in the South of France. At the time, the band were living abroad as tax exiles, thus inspiring the album’s title and the collage graphics on its cover, which Mick Jagger described showing the band as “runaway outlaws using the blues as its weapon against the world". The sessions in France were noted as being something of a chaotic shambles with them going basically all night, every night. Unlike previous album sessions, the discipline was lacking as band members tended to show up at irregular intervals, with not everyone being present each day. Part of this had to do with Keith slipping into a daily heroine habit by this time. Bill Wyman simply didn’t like the atmosphere at the villa and sat out many of the sessions there. Yet from all that madness, the band somehow managed to stitch it all together into something that made sense once all the pieces of the puzzle were in place. Final overdubs and mixing were done in LA in March of 1972. This is where most of the vocals and guitar overdubs ended up being recorded.

Other than the regular band members, the sessions in France also featured a large rotating array of guest musicians popping in and out for sessions throughout their time there. These included the likes of pianist Nicky Hopkins, saxophonist Bobby Keys, drummer Jimmy Miller and horn player Jim Price. The resulting musical stew cooked up by all these players crossed boundaries between blues, rock and roll, swing, country and gospel, while the lyrics explored themes related to hedonism, sex and time. Many of the songs contained on the album ended up becoming concert staples for years after the album’s release. It spawned the hit songs "Happy", which featured a rare lead vocal from Keith Richards, country music ballad "Sweet Virginia", and worldwide top-ten hit "Tumbling Dice".

Upon the album’s release, while it shot to the number one chart slot in the UK, US, Canada and other countries, the critics were initially mixed in their reaction. Some found the song quality inconsistent, something to be expected given the fact it was recorded over so many years. Also, as a double disc set, it tended to meander through its palette of genres. But as time has given context to the album, it quickly took on the perspective as one of the band’s greatest achievements and, for some, the high watermark of their career.

ROXY MUSIC - AVALON @ 40

 

Released in May of 1982, the eighth and final studio album by Roxy Music, Avalon, is marking its 40th anniversary this month. As a capstone to the groups prestigious career, it would offer up perhaps the most perfect example of their sophistication and creativity, at least as far as their post Eno period is concerned. As well as being arguably the greatest artistic achievement of the latter half of their career, the album was also their most commercially successful. It perched on the number one slot in the UK for three weeks and remained in the charts for for over a year. While it only peaked at 53 on the US Billboard charts, it proved to be a “sleeper” hit and continually ramped up sales until it was eventually certified platinum, their only album to do so in the US. Its success was buoyed by the four hit singles which were released from the album.

The album continued the romantic themes common to their last few releases and Brian Ferry has said that he had wanted to interconnect the songs into a kind of narrative, though the finished product would require a bit of stretching to reach that end as Ferry admits he just didn’t have the patience to stitch it all together properly. The concept of Avalon is an Arthurian legend of the afterlife where the Queens ferry King Arthur off to an enchanted island after his death.

The title song features a guest vocal appearance from Yanick Étienne, who Ferry and Rhett Davies stumbled on while doing some last minute re-cutting on the album on a Sunday when the studio would make itself available during the quiet times to young artists to record demos. When Brian and Rhett popped out for a coffee, they heard Yanick singing in the studio next door and were immediately taken with her. She spoke no English, so her manager had to translate, but she was recruited to sing the high parts in the song, which helped to finish the song off after going through a complete rebuild when the first version proved unsatisfactory.

Roxy Music, overall, has become one of an elite number of rock groups who have had an incredibly profound influence on the generations which followed them. Groups like Japan and Duran Duran built their careers on the foundations laid by Roxy Music, both musically and stylistically in terms of their looks and attitudes. Avalon offers up the quintessential expression of their oeuvre with a set of songs that each display their own self contained perfection. There’s no filler on this record and it has retained its presence and power throughout the decades it has had to establish its status as a pop music classic.

CHRIS & COSEY - TRANCE @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary this month is the second studio album from former TG founders Chris & Cosey, Trance, which was released in May of 1982.

Despite its title, “Trance” really has nothing to do with the electronic musical genre which would emerge nearly a decade later in the rave scenes of the UK and Europe. That’s not to say that the duo didn’t create music at this time which was a direct precursor to that style. The track, Dancing Ghosts, from the Elemental 7 soundtrack is indeed an ancestor and inspiration, but this album itself, while ahead of its time for electronic music, veers into other far more exotic territory.

Unlike the group’s debut, this album is nearly all instrumental with vocals only appearing on the track, Secret, and then only as atmospherics. It was designed to function as “mood” music, or a kind of bizarre “easy listening”, though Cosey’s searing guitar flailing on Re-Education Through Labor makes for some challenging meditations. Overall, it tends to exist in an odd netherworld between “ambient” and more rhythmic grooves. While the prior album, Heartbeat, occasionally brushed against "pop-song" conventions, Trance keeps clear of them, striving to remain true to it’s atmospheric ambitions and succeeding consistently throughout.

The front cover of the album offers up a portrait of the couple framed by the ancient Roman gates of London in the background. The location lends a sense of timelessness to the album and reinforces its ability to transcend temporal constraints. Indeed, as it has aged, its foresight and innovation have enabled it to continue to sound futuristic and alien, even after four decades of musical and technological advancement. There’s simply nothing about this LP that sounds dated or of its time. Most of humanity still hasn’t managed to arrive at the fantastical world which emanates from these recordings. Personally, it has always been and remains one of their most beloved releases in their canon.

CABARET VOLTAIR - 2 X 45 @ 40

 

Released in May of 1982, Cabaret Voltaire’s fourth studio album, 2x45, is marking 40 years on the shelf this month. It was the transitional album between their early experimental work and their more dance floor friendly fare which would dominate their career going forward. It also marked a downsizing of the band’s core members from a trio to a duo as Chris Watson left the group half way through its production. The first disc of the set was recorded with Chris at the group’s Sheffield Western Works studio in October of 1981 while the second disc was recorded without Watson at Pluto Studios, Manchester, in February of 1982.

The title for the album is a direct reference to its original format, being a set of two 45 RPM 12” EPs enclosed in a black textured foldout card stock sleeve with Neville Brody graphics concealed on the interior. As the album focuses on a set of long rhythmic tracks, the higher fidelity afforded by the format offered optimum sound quality for the material. Though they were decidedly moving into a funkier groove, the music beyond the beat felt more “jazz” inspired, though still thick with the group’s experimental discordance. They hadn’t quite landed in the “EBM” zone which would define their next LP, The Crackdown, but the remixed single version of Yashar by John Robie would create a direct bridge to that era. For 2x45, however, the rhythms are primarily provided by real drums and the use of electronics is surprisingly limited.

Because the album moved so far outside the “industrial” framework of its predecessor, Red Mecca, and didn’t quite arrive at their eventual EBM destination, it tends to be overlooked by both of the band’s fan camps for their early vs later output. Initial reviews for the album saw it as a lesser success than Red Mecca, but the benefit of hindsight has shown that what the group were doing was still very much outside what anyone else were up to at the time and still on the cutting edge of experimental pop. As such, it remains one of their most idiosyncratic releases.