Stevie Wonder - Innervisions (1973)

When one attempts to come up with a list of great 70s albums, Innervisions by Stevie Wonder is one of the first that always comes to mind. Released in 1973, Innervisions was Wonder’s 16^th studio album and formed part of an amazing run of great albums for him during the 70s.

The amazing thing about Innervisions is the fact that not only did he produce the album, whilst also compose and play on every track, relying only slightly on the odd helping hand from a session player, but he was also only 23 when it was recorded. The recording of this album was pretty much a one man band, with Wonder playing drums, piano, bass and about fifty thousand different synths and keyboards, or at least that’s how it seemed. This album also represented quite a landmark recording for an African American in popular music, as Wonder became the first black artist to experiment with the newly evolving synthesizer technology and in particular the ARP Synth which he used to compose all the tracks on the album.

The lyrics on Innervisions play an important role and in fact you could make a case for this album being a concept album, with the songs often socio-political themes offering a commentary on early-70s American society. Just some of the things Wonder talks about in his songs include drug abuse in “Too High”, social anger and the poison of city life in “Living for the City”, and political ethics in “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” which in itself was a subtle dig at Richard Nixon. Wonder also has time for optimism and positivity despite the bleak outlook of American society he portrays. Love is a common theme on “Golden Lady” and “All in Love Is Fair”, while focussing on the good things in life and continuing to look upwards are championed in “Higher Ground” and “Don’t You Worry Bout a Thing”.

From a musical perspective Innervisions sticks largely to the soul, funk, R&B hybrid which Wonder had begun to develop successfully during the early 70s, but there are also hints of other influences in particular Latin in “Don’t You Worry” and even reggae in “Higher Ground”. As I mentioned earlier this album was quite revolutionary in its use of synths and keyboards which dominate all the songs across the album. Wonder experimented significantly with keyboards during the recording of this album and the results of this are seen throughout. This is particularly the case in his use of different keyboard sounds to achieve an overall layered and often heavily textured sound that ends up driving many of these songs, songs that are built entirely around piano and keyboard motifs. Wonder’s reliance on keyboards can also be seen in how he chose different sounding keyboards for different songs. On the more funk oriented up-tempo numbers such as “Too High” he tends to utilise more the Fender Rhodes electric piano, clavinet, and Moog synths, while on the soulful ballads such as “Golden Lady” he goes back to the more traditional piano. What this shows is that he knew what he wanted out of the keyboards and was able to match the right keyboard up with the right song, which is probably why the overall keyboard sound of this album sounds as good as it does, while working so well in the process.

In terms of the standout tracks on this album, well there is quality right through Innervisions and it is actually quite hard to find a dud song. Innervisions is definitely one of those albums that is almost completely perfect from start to finish, from the synth grooves of “Too High” to the story book masterpiece “Living for the City” and the amazing one-two album closer “Don’t You Worry” and He’s Mistra Know-It-All”. This is definitely a case of there being no real standout tracks but simply one complete standout album.

Innervisions has developed a strong legacy in the forty years since its release and is now widely considered as one of Wonder’s best albums, if not his best, as well as being one of the great albums in popular music. Rolling Stone magazine even ranked it as high as 23 in their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The praise around this album is no real surprise to me as Innervisions is an amazingly good album of melody, soul, funk and musical experimentation. In my opinion it is in the top five greatest soul/R&B albums of all time and helped to set the bar for future releases within the soul/R&B genre, not to mention its influence on studio production and recording full stop. But what probably makes this album that extra special is how Wonder used all his musical and creative talents to produce a social commentary on early 70s American society like nothing else at the time. He had a definite sense of what was going on and was able to translate it into music in such a vivid way, painting a picture through song of what it really was like in America at the time. Innervisions was the final result of an artist going out on his own musically, breaking away from his Motown routs to take a step into unchartered territory of which the results were nothing short of outstanding.

 

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- Sam

 

 

Led Zeppelin - No Quarter (1973)

Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy (1973)

Released in 1973, Houses of the Holy was the fifth studio release by Led Zeppelin and in many ways was quite a significant moment in the history of the band. It was on this album when Led Zeppelin began to branch out musically and explore other musical sounds, as up until that point they had pretty much stuck within the confines of blues, hard rock and a bit of folk thrown in for good measure. On Houses of the Holy there is still hard rock and there is still folk, but there is also funk, reggae, progressive rock and even an eastern inspired song, with the band spreading their wings stylistically and experimenting with whatever they thought sounded good. Along with this somewhat change of direction musically, the band were also beginning to incorporate new production techniques into their recording which helped to evolve their sound more. Jimmy Page’s guitar playing for one on this album is more layered and less bluesy, while in keeping with the technological advances of the early-70s, keyboards and a mellotron also make an appearance. This combination of new styles and new sounds helped to make Houses of the Holy a completely different beast from the bands previous release, the classic Led Zeppelin IV. But despite this change in direction the results were just as good, all be it in a different way.

The album starts with fast-paced rocker “The Song Remains the Same”, a song which sounds more progressive than their previous work and contains heavy layers of multi-tracked guitar. This is followed by “The Rain Song” which is a progressive folk ballad that features a mellotron providing the orchestral baroque effects. This song was probably the furthest removed from Led Zeppelin’s traditional sound up until that point and was definitely a radical departure for the band at the time.  “Over the Hills and Far Away” is a folk rock track which starts with an acoustic folk section before transforming into a heavy guitar track much like one of their earlier songs “Ramble On”. This song highlights well how much the band was developing as songwriters, with many of their songs now beginning to feature different sounding sections as well as multiple genres.  

The middle of the album is where they really begin to mix it up stylistically, starting with “The Crunge”, a funk rock track that is a play on James Brown’s style of funk. As a track it is more a studio experiment rather than a complete song, and contains no bridge or chorus, something which Robert Plant is keen to point out in a tongue and cheek way at the end of the song. For me this is the weakest track on the album and I’m not sure whether their foray into funk was a good idea. They have better success in their stylistic experimentation on the next two tracks, firstly on “Dancing Days” which has a Middle Eastern feel to it, especially in the exotic guitar riff that makes the song sound so good. “Dancing Days” was actually inspired by an Indian tune which Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had heard in Bombay, an inspiration which can clearly be heard throughout the song and that gives it what I would describe as quite a hypnotic-like feel. They take their stylistic experimentation further on “D’yer Mak’er”, a reggae influenced track with a reggae drum beat and guitar riff. The title of the song is even a play on the word Jamaica leaving no doubt as to where the influence for this song came from.

The album concludes in explosive fashion with two of the better tracks on the album.
No Quarter” is a mellow progressive rock track which features John Paul Jones talent on the keyboards, something which in most unlike Led Zeppelin fashion dominates this song. This song more than any also highlights the changes the band was making in terms of song production, with studio effects and trickery featuring strongly. Things such as a compressed guitar track, as well as the use of the theremin and a moog synthesizer gives this track a magical quality and ensures it is one of the album’s standouts, as well as being one of the bands best songs. Finally, the album closes with heavy rocker “The Ocean”; a track which works well as an album closer with its heavy guitar and drum sound. This track also has the effect of reassuring the listener that the band still had the ability to rock out when they wanted to.

Although Houses of the Holy was a huge success commercially on its release, its critical reception was mixed, which leads me to believe that maybe the music press didn’t really know what to make of a traditional rock band playing reggae and funk. However, as time has passed it has generally held up quite well and has been acknowledged as a pivotal release in the bands career. In summing up I firmly believe Houses of the Holy is one of Led Zeppelin’s greatest albums and certainly is one of their most diverse musically. What this album showed was that this band was full of great musical ideas and that they were not just one trick blues rockers, while highlighting also their prowess as songwriters especially in their ability to mix up songs with different sections, tempos and rhythms. If you want to see how Led Zeppelin developed musically in the mid-70s Houses of the Holy would be the place to start, while if you ever thought that they were just a plain and simple hard rock band then this album I am sure will help to change your mind. Houses of the Holy for me is experimental and eclectic; it is full of magic, surprise and intrigue and captures strongly everything good about Led Zeppelin.

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- Sam

 

 

The Who - Quadrophenia (1973)

The Who were ambitious in many things they did, they had an ambitious sound not to mention an ambitious song-writer, but it didn’t get more ambitious than their 1973 release Quadrophenia, a double album and the bands second rock opera. Released during the height of their success in the mid-70s, Quadrophenia was the bands most complex offering both thematically in terms of the concept behind the album and performance with the sound and production of the album making it very hard to replicate on stage.

The concept of the album involves the social, musical and psychological aspects of coming of age in London and Brighton during the mid-60s from the perspective of a teenage boy named Jimmy, who also happens to be slightly schizophrenic with multiple personalities. This is when the concept gets a little complicated. Taking the idea of multiple personalities Pete Townshend then used the term quadrophenia to refer to the four distinct personalities of Jimmy, with each one also set to represent the four individual member of the band and used this idea to create four separate musical themes on the album in order to link the songs together and stretch the concept across the entire album. The four musical themes or motifs were contained in four individual tracks “Helpless Dancer”, “Doctor Jimmy”, “Bell Boy” and “Love, Reign o’er Me”, but also appeared in some form as recognisable musical motifs on other tracks on the album, which included the four motifs being mixed together on two instrumental tracks “Quadrophenia” and “The Rock”. So in a nutshell the lyrics of the songs deal with Jimmy, mod culture and teenage angst, while the musical motifs link in the idea of Jimmy having multiple personalities whilst also ensuring some form of connection between the individual tracks.

Moving away from the ambitious concept behind the album, musically speaking Quadrophenia is classic Who and sticks by in large to their 70s hard rock sound that they had become famous for. There are power chords a plenty, ferocious bass lines, wild drum fills, and layers of synth sequencing everything The Who are a good at,  and what in a sense contributes to their trade mark sound. This album also contains some wonderful songs, some of their best in the form of “5:15” and “Love, Reign o’er Me”, as well as some underrated and lesser known gems like “Sea and Sand”, “The Punk and the Godfather” and “I’m One”. Despite containing everything that is good about The Who’s sound, I feel at the same time that Quadrophenia sounds quite different to their other albums and in many ways stands on its own musically as being quite distinctive. Aspects of the album that contribute to this feeling for me include how many of the songs are structurally all over the place with some containing no choruses, the recurring thematic motifs, and the experimenting the band does especially with synths on the instrumentals. I guess also the lack of big hits, or singles (there are no CSI tracks to be seen) ensures that Quadrophenia stands alone as a single entity or collection of songs rather than just an album containing a handful of big hits along with some filler. This is probably a good thing as it allows the theme/concept behind the album to come through strongly on the material and ensures that all the songs tie in together to the theme. Other concept albums have been guilty of containing songs that don’t link in with the theme of the album and in turn often appear out of place. This is certainly not the case on Quadrophenia with each song in some way linking in to the albums overall concept whether it be lyrically, musically, or even via the use of sound effects which in this case took the form of waves crashing on Brighton beach, and a radio report from 1965 reporting on mod’s and rockers clashing.

Since its release the album has been turned into a successful film of the same name released in 1979, while the band are also currently playing the album in its entirety on their 2012-2013 tour. Pete Townshend himself declared it “the best music he’s ever written” and “the best album he will ever write”, but this is not surprising when you considered he came up with the idea for the material and has also become the albums biggest defender within the band. Quadrophenia is my favourite Who album and I prefer it to their other highly regarded rock opera Tommy which I feel was a bit uneven in places even though there were some good songs on it. Quadrophenia for me is more interesting musically and as a single piece of music if you consider the rock opera confines of the album is more coherent and consistent. It achieves its purpose well of portraying the theme behind the album, while the individual tracks link nicely together to tie into this theme. The concept in places maybe ambitious and hard to understand, but the music is interesting and contains some of the bands finest moments. I’d definitely recommend it to classic rock and Who fans alike everywhere.

 

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- Sam