Only in New York would you find people who brag about inventing Chicago house music. 🙂
But more seriously, this is a video documentary covering some of the origins of DJ culture that grew out of predominately gay-oriented clubs in New York City in the late 1970s and into the 80s. Ramos talks to the now-legends of that era, the DJs at clubs like The Loft and The Paradise Garage and that sound did indeed make its way to Chicago to blossom in the Windy City.
What’s interesting and important about this documentary is that it brings together people who danced their night away at those clubs and the DJs behind that music, and how the magic of the sound opened the (closet) door of these gay clubs to women, straight people, and 24-hour party people of all races. Aside from the music itself, the diversity was a very special thing in the 70s and 80s, particularly the largely black, white, and Hispanic crowds.
As the world was grower darker as the 80s began with the election of Reagan and the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, people — especially those in the LGBT+ community — went looking for the sound and the fury, and were drawn by word of mouth alone to a trio of clubs across the years that held out the opportunity for escape and ecstasy of all sorts. In hindsight, it is unsurprising that straight people who got told about the scene found it irresistible.
Everybody, Everybody
These were bold DJs who experimented beyond the standard mixing two records with similar tempos together. People like Larry Levan, David Mancuso, Frankie Knuckles, Nicky Siano, and Francis Grasso (Nu Yoik names if ever I’ve heard some) had an open-door and open-mind policy, and dared to mix rhythms and sounds, created a form of manipulating the vinyl that would lead to hip-hop’s “scratching” in the 90s, and would build the music, over the evening, into non-stop ecstatic dancing.
That said, the production/direction is mostly fine but occasionally the camera work is a bit ham-fisted, as one might expect from a first-time director. That said, Ramos has to rely heavily on interviews conducted between 1999 and 2003 with the former DJs and patrons.
This probably couldn’t really be avoided: there isn’t much surviving video from the clubs from that era (though a bit more than you might suspect), and thus the audience is bounced back and forth between footage from the time and 2003-era interviews with the movers (DJs) and shakers (club-goers) who patronised these clubs, and some of them frankly go on too long. I spotted the late artist Keith Haring dancing in some of the footage, and a later section of the doc spotlighted him.
The DJs, now middle-aged guys, recollect their glory days with real fondness, especially Levan, and paint themselves as friends and colleagues using music as a weapon against the mainstream and it’s close-minded attitudes.
The interviews are mostly good (particularly with the DJs) but get a bit more repetitive with the club-goers, though Ramos wisely mixes single-person and group interview comments. If I have to complain about something, I’ll pick two things: first, I really wish this had been shot on film, though I completely understand why it wasn’t.
Second, there are not enough clips of still-famous DJs like Jellybean Benitez, Dimitri from Paris, and UK DJ Pete Tong singing the praises of these innovative pioneers, and I’m not sure there’s a good excuse for that apart from budget.
As a club patron in those days myself, though not of course in NYC, I recognized a song or three from the soundtrack, like Booker T and MG’s “Melting Pot,” Chocolette’s “It’s That Easy Street Beat” and Sylvester’s “Over and Over.” Here, the song “Release Yourself” by Aleems is used very effectively to relate a story about how a DJ can remix the music to build, and then release, tension.
I’m not personally a huge fan of house music, but I know very, very well that the combination of alcohol, certain recreational substances, fabulous light shows, and attractive people overwhelmed by screamingly loud beat music being built to a frenzy and then cooled back down can be the closest thing to sex you can have while (barely) clothed (and sweating like a pig). The video feels a bit long but is only 88 minutes. The “survivors” of those days, the club goers and DJs, seem to have established a friendly bond that comes from knowing you were a part of something special.
Ramos’ focus on the music means that he has left an opportunity to explore the tight-knit gay community that fostered these club on the table, and that’s a bit of a shame (though it’s certainly a subject that has been covered elsewhere). If you remember your clubbing days, particularly if they were in the late 70s into the 90s, you may want to seek this video out — the DVD version includes a second DVD of more material, and a CD of some of the music featured in the film.
At last, it is time for a (short) break from the audio tracks, and a lateral move into video clips. The fourth disc of this set is in fact a DVD that includes some UK and French television appearances to promote the album.
It also includes a full 5.1 DTS 96/24 or Dolby AC3 Sound remix of the album for those of you with 5.1 surround sound setups. I lack such a home theatre setup, but that said even listening to it with a “spatial audio” assist via AirPods Pro reveals obvious improvements.
THE VIDEOS
Naturally, video clips from 1972 are sometimes hard to find, as videotape oxidizes over time and the tapes are often buried in archives. Thankfully, the band (or their record company) got copies of the tapes and preserved them well enough for presentation here.
The first “track” is a version of “Re-Make/Re-Model” performed live and filmed at the Royal College of Art in London on 6-June, 1972, intended as a promotional video rather than taken from a live show.
The sound is muddy mono as you’d expect, and the video is “marred” by an excess of 70s-era video effects that are so hokey and old they’ve come around to being cool again. The effects get excessive, but the visual and audio message gets delivered nonetheless.
From there we move to the venerable TV music show “The Old Grey Whistle Test,” a BBC show that ran from 1971 to 1988. This appearance was on 24-August of ’72. The video of this performance opens with an out-of-focus disco ball slowly spinning before dissolving into the quiet intro to “Ladytron” being played by the band.
Sleepy-eyed Bryan is off in the corner. The video of the band performing is beautifully sharp and clear, though the sound is of course still mono. Andy effortlessly shifts from oboe to sax with cover from the rest of the band. Manzenera’s bug-eye specs get a fair amount of focus, as well as his and Eno’s interplay of guitar effects vs. electronic efforts.
An extended guitar-and-electronics jam follows, and ends with some video feedback. If you were watching this while high, I can only imagine the either panicked or euphoric reception you gave this.
Likewise, “Top of the Pops” started off with blurry psychedics before sharpening up and focusing on the band in their full splendor for a version of “Virginia Plain.” Bryan is resplendent in his spangly green dress suit, Paul Thompson has now formally adopted (or perhaps this is the debut of) his “long-haired caveman with one black eye” look. Manzenera still relies on his shiny track suit and bug-eye glasses, while Eno is rocking a black ostrich-feather jacket, and the crowd are not quite sure how to dance to this, but they give it a go anyway.
Another live but more echoey (and very brief) performance of “Re-Make/Re-Model” is done for “Full House” on 25-November, with the band also doing “Ladytron” for the show on the same day. The band are positioned on a circular stage, with the camera slowly swooping in over the audience (who are seated).
The camera pans around behind the stage, and the band stops suddenly after the end of the first verse to applause. Yes, just one minute of the song! I believe this was used at the top of the show as a “teaser” for the bands that would be performing.
The (more complete) performance of “Ladytron” starts off with a close-up angle of one of Eno’s synth knobs. He kicks things off with some ambient noise while MacKay does a slightly-shortened oboe intro. Ferry and the band kick into the song proper, with more echo than normal because of the studio.
Manzenera is shown without his bug-specs. You can actually (gasp) see his eyes! Every instrument is clearly heard, so the sound mix is impressive. After Phil’s guitar solo and Eno’s stylings, the song comes to a quick close.
We then move on to a filmed performance at the Bataclan, in Paris, in front of a very large and enthusiastic audience. The set kicks off with “Would You Believe,” and the band are engaging in a bit of 50s style choreography. The song is unfortunately interrupted by an announcer telling the television audience (in French) about the venue and the band.
Eno is shown among those singing backing vocals, and while the sound mix is muddy and shifting, Bryan’s vocals are, as always, very clear. The 16mm film cuts into the instrumental break and second verse of “If There is Something.” This is clearly from towards the end of the concert, as Bryan is very sweaty but still very into it.
We do get the full “Sea Breezes,” with Manzenera doing his impressive “weeping guitar” style as heard on the album. Again, one is reminded that both Ferry’s vocals and the basic direction of the band are very polished and consistent with the album verison, allowing for only minor variations (mostly due to Eno’s electronic squelchiness).
The film cuts slightly to the opening of “Virgina Plain,” which the audience are clearly familiar with, clapping the count-in. Again, the band engages in a little synchronized movement while Ferry pounds that repeating chord. The song returns in full force for the sudden ending, the band waves goodnight and the crowd goes wild.
THE 5.1 MIX(ES)
Finally we arrive at the album once again, only this time a little different: a newly-created “surround sound” mix done by Stephen Wilson from the master tapes. Right away, you notice the crowd sound is floating around before the piano kicks in.
Even using just conventional headphones, there is stronger stereo separation and clear positioning of the players: Ferry in the center with MacKay’s oboe, Manzenera and Simpson on the left side (probably with Manz in front of Simpson front), Thompson on the center “back,” Eno and MacKay’s sax mostly on the right. Backing vocals are likely positioned in the back center, but on normal headphones they just sound a bit distant, like Thompson’s drums.
At the time of this review, I don’t have access to a full 5.1 surround system where I can listen to this mix in the way it is intended; that said, some headphones and earbuds (such as the AirPods Pro) do their best to simulate the experience, doing a good job at the separation but unconvincing when it comes to sounds that are intended to becoming from behind you.
If I can find a way in the near future to put this on at some stereo boutique or some friend’s home with 5.1, I’ll amend the review to include those impressions.
Naturally, the bass can only be as woofer-y as your headphones allow, and cranking up the bass on your stereo doesn’t really replace a true subwoofer. In my experience, however, owners of home theatres tend to crank the subwoofer up somewhat higher than they should, because of the novelty of truly having room-shaking bass at last.
The conventional headphone experience still rates as a novel and “different” way to experience the record, with the two rather different types of “surround” experiences and the appropriate amount of bass if you keep the levels even. For those who are long familiar with the album already, the 5.1 mixes might also be a good place to start, especially if you actually have the setup needed for it.
There’s probably less difference when experienced on a proper 5.1 setup, but to my ears the DTS option seems to give conventional headphone listeners more distinct separation, while the Dolby AC3 version draws it lines fuzzier, with most of the instruments having a better grouping, if you will. The sounds sometimes travel from one “side” to another, though the transitions are very smooth; some sounds seem further away, while others are perceived as being “closer.”
I’m just sorry I’m not getting the full experience. Yet.
THE CONCLUSION
This box set could be called a lab on how to experience the same album in a few different ways, but for me working my way through it, it was more about rediscovering what a remarkably fresh-sounding and original album it was at the time, not to mention re-appreciating a few songs that once forgets about compared to the singles. As a debut album, this thing is damn hard to top.
On top of that, the entire album sounds like it fell through a time warp from the first wave of post-punk “New Wave” bands that started using synths, and at least some of that obviously goes to Brian Eno’s contribution. Take him out of the picture and the band still rocks, but it wouldn’t have that “futuristic” vibe that makes the band stand so far apart from their 1972 contemporaries.
Roxy Music would certainly be a strong candidate for the honour of being “the first New Wave record.”
As someone who certainly hasn’t listened to every possible debut album from that year to compare but is broadly familiar with stuff came out back then, I’d still say Roxy Music is likely to be one of the absolute best and most innovative records. That Roxy Music emerged this fully-formed gives a lot of credit to Ferry as a superb songwriter, as a bandleader, and as an incredible talent-spotter.
Following what has become convention for these multi-disc box sets covering a classic album, Disc 3 is generally the odds-and-sods package, and that’s also true in this case. We get the entire album yet again (except for “Bitter’s End,” oddly enough) in the form of sessions recorded for UK DJ John Peel’s radio show, albeit out of album order, and across several sessions.
We also get a “BBC in Concert” recording with five songs from the album, and this time there is audience reaction noise, which is gratifying. There’s more to come on the live and semi-live front, but that will have to wait for the DVD that makes up the fourth disc in this package.
THE MUSIC
The first five songs hail from the band’s first meetup with Peel — on January 4th, 1972 — and the session is an interesting artifact from David O’List’s time as the guitarist for the band. The session starts with “If There is Something,” featuring a pretty similar vocal from Ferry and a few mistaken notes here and there but otherwise very impressive — this is a very well-rehearsed band that’s not afraid to play around the song a bit but is mostly very tight.
Eno’s synth work here occasionally reaches duck-warbling levels, but is mostly great. The song retreats to just drums and piano, with some fine backing vocals, for a bit before the band fully returns for the finish.
The second track is “The Bob (Medley)” which reinforces its war theme with air sirens and a menacing bass synth undertone ahead of Ferry and the band kicking in. The sax is made prominent in the instrumental break, which gives the middle section a nice lift. O’List proves himself a skilled guitarist, if prone to stick to conventional licks and hard-rock phrasing.
Next up is “Would You Believe?” which is the most direct throwback to the 1950s style and that is played up here. The band vocals, other than Ferry, are noticeably different than the album original, but the instrumention sticks to the script. This song is especially well-suited to MacKay’s sax and O’List’s guitar.
“Sea Breezes” starts off with an honest-to-god Tiny Tim vocal from Ferry, who sometimes skates too close to the thin-yet-warbly vocal line that separates them. We get a very drawn-out version of the song, running 8’15” and threatening to turn into a Grateful Dead jam in the middle.
Almost identical to the album version, “Re-Make/Re-Model” shows off again how tight the band has become under Ferry’s musical direction. Eno’s parts are more prominent here, but apart from that the performances are remarkably similar. This performance, live in the studio as it is, might be my favourite of the three versions we’ve heard so far.
The second Peel Session came in late May, and featured just three songs, but with new bassist Rik Kenton, who would be present for the remaining Peel Sessions. He was let go at the end of ’72 and went to a long career as a session musician.
By contrast to the album version, “2HB” is a little disappointing, in that the edit here cuts off the dreamlike opening that set the mood in the album version, and goes directly into the first verse. Beyond that, the song manages to recapture that feel in the instrumental break, where everyone except Bryan is playing together. There’s a weird channel shift near the end that kills most of the right side in the last 10 seconds or so, but that’s live radio for you.
Thankfully, we do get the dreamy mood-setting instrumental that starts off “Ladytron.” The jam section in the middle is always a treat, and the mix here is just different enough to keep things fresh while still being very similar to the album version.
After hearing these different versions of “Ladytron” in this box (with three more to go!), it’s clear that the key to this song is Kenton’s throbbing, insistent bassline. Unlike most of the songs, which are anchored by either Ferry’s piano or Paul Thompson’s incredibly good, solid drumming, in “Ladytron” it’s the bass that is the foundation everyone else builds on.
“Chance Meeting” is such a mannered song, sung in a clipped manner and based on an almost “Chopsticks”-like chord progression (but Ferry likes those chords, as we heard in “Virginia Plain”). The delivery is so stiff-upper-lip and the band so restrained, it makes for a nice mood break from the other tracks, but it’s still one of my least favourites on this album.
The final track for the Peel Sessions on this disc is of course their killer hit, “Virginia Plain.” Thompson’s bass drum teams up with Kenton’s bass, while MacKay’s oboe and Manzanera’s guitar take turns swooping around like daredevil stunt pilots, while Eno’s sonic decorations dance about wildly.
The remaining five tracks are from a “BBC In Concert” live event from August 3rd, 1972. It kicks off with “The Bob (Medley),” an odd choice for an opener in my view but around the same length as the album version, as compared to the drawn out jam we got on Disc 2’s outtakes.
Naturally, a live performance is going to have a different mix, but Eno really gets into his performance of war effects and sonic warbling early on here, with the band right behind him. After the first part, the band jams out in a now-familiar way that is close to what we’ve heard on previous versions. There’s the brief spoken-word moment, then things get heavy again before the finale, and we finally hear some audience appreciation.
“Sea Breezes” has a different but similar arrangment to the album version, and provides a sombre contrast to the more-bombastic previous opus. I think the problem I have with this song is that it meanders, and — as nice as the second half turns out to be — it never really pays off. That said, Eno goes wild at the three-quarters mark of this seven-minute opus, which makes it really quite different to the album version. Following the ever-shifting “The Bob (Medley),” I have to wonder if the audience thought this would be what every song is like.
Thankfully, the next song is a very good live version of “Virginia Plain.” It still sounds a little restrained from the other versions, but it still rocks along nicely and follows the album version pretty closely. Eno’s magnificent synth riff in the middle eight is nice and LOUD as it should be. The audience clearly liked this one a lot.
Then we come to the more formal “Chance Meeting.” Once again, Eno is more prominent here than he was on the album or Peel Sessions. The instrumental break is nicely mixed and sounds great here.
The last track is “Re-make/Re-Model,” and again the band is back in top form with a fantastic sonic attack, though the band’s vocals caught the sound man napping for a few seconds until he brought their mic levels up. MacKay’s sax is amazing in a live setting, and the whole band are really on fire here — it’s clearly something they love playing.
At the three-quarters mark, Eno really gets to shoot his shot, but all the band members get to show off their chops really nicely, which is one of the reasons I like the song — it’s obvious why this was the concert ender; they are throwing the (sonic) kitchen sink at the audience, and they are are loving it, breaking out into a chant for more at the end that regrettably just fades away.
THE VERDICT
If you’ve listened to the box set in disc order, you’ve heard the album, the demos and out-take versions of the songs on the album, and now the “live in studio” and “actually live” versions, and you’re not done yet (more on that later).
The highlight of this disc, for me, is comparing guitarists O’List and Manzanera (which is like comparing Monet to Jackson Pollack), and judging Rik Kenton’s bass playing to Graham Simpson’s (both quite good, so a more difficult compare — and neither stayed with the band past this album). It’s also been fun to hear the band rehearsed but live on radio and in an audience environment — and very gratifying to hear that Roxy Music found an enthusiastic audience very quickly, given how bold the album was.
That said, the reason this album found its audience relatively easily is because there was a hell of a lot of new sounds coming out around this time. King Crimson was around, Kevin Ayers was around, John Cale and Terry Riley had put out an experimental minimalist album, and there was more of that as the move away from folk-rock had begun.
Audiences were looking for something different from the late 60s sounds, and in Roxy Music they found it. On the very same day it was released, a bubbling-under folk-rocker named David Bowie took a hard turn with a rock concept album (thanks to Mick Ronson) with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, and achieved superstar status.
Bowie won out in the UK album rankings, peaking at #6 while Roxy Music managed a very respectable #10 position. More importantly, it launched Roxy as a huge success right from the start, and has remained a strong influence for art-rock and New Wave bands across the decades.
Just as an example: earlier in 2024, acclaimed folk-rocker Linda Thompson released a successful album called Proxy Music, aping the cover of Roxy’s debut perfectly. Thompson has recently lost the ability to sing or speak due to spasmodic dysphonia, so she recruited others to sing the songs she wrote for the album.
Hopefully you paid attention to my guidance in the prologue to Disc 1, and now you’ve skipped it and come here first. If so, pat yourself on the back — you’re here to watch the house get built, and then when you go back to the familiar sounds of the actual album, you will marvel anew at how well it all came together.
If you didn’t do that, well, I guess the best analogy would be that you already ate a marvelous cake, and now you’re inspired to go to cooking school to learn how such a cake could be made. Here you’re going to hear the false starts, the unfinished lyrics (and in all cases, unfinished songs), the recording fuck-ups either from the band’s missteps or technical goofs, the latter courtesy either their recording engineer (Andy Hendrickson), or producer Peter Sinfield (he of King Crimson and ELP) interrupting sometimes.
Most listeners don’t appreciate the effort that goes into making any album, let alone a great one like this, and so I think it is illuminative to hear bands still working out or tweaking songs while they are in the studio. Not to spoil anything, but Ferry (who wrote all the songs for this album) clearly had his musical ideas more or less lined up for the songs, and often had the central idea behind the song’s lyrics, but frequently added at least some lyrics somewhere along the way to the final song.
An important part on Disc 2 that shouldn’t be glossed over is that we get a taste of an earlier lineup of the band. Before Roxy was quite Roxy, it included bassist Rick Kenton on one track (his part survives on “Virginia Plain,” both the official single included on the album, and the “outtake” version here). Roger Bunn, not Phil Manzenera, handles guitar on the first four tracks on Disc 2, with Dexter Lloyd on drums for those same tracks.
Holy Re-make/Re-model, Batman! This is yet another reason to listen to this disc first — some of this is proto-Roxy before it all really came into focus. We don’t get to hear Ferry deciding his original lineup isn’t working, but things get more interesting starting with Track 5.
You might have picked up on it even if I hadn’t mentioned it, but things get more interesting starting with Track 5.. Manzenera’s contribution in particular helps put a special stamp on the sound.
We also hear that the musicians are still in the process of figuring out the arrangements of the songs. Sometimes they sound like they’re still trying out ideas that may or may not go anywhere, and you’ll hear several portions where solos will later go but aren’t there yet. It’s always kind of weird and jarring when a solo you like just … doesn’t happen.
There’s a feel throughout that Ferry wants to get this very right, and that they know they are doing something different: I mean, it’s not like there were a lot of oboe players routinely adding to rock songs in 1972. Likewise, the demos don’t feature quite as much of an Eno presence, though he is there (especially in th outtakes) — one gets the feeling that he worked out/added his parts himself and tended to add them “live in the studio,” the way it would seem the core of the tracks were recorded.
So, now that the project has mostly come together, let’s go through the demos (rougher) and outtakes (usually very similar to the finished products, sometimes missing parts to be overdubbed later) to spot the differences.
THE MUSIC
Ladytron (demo): A very Eno opening with an electronic atmosphere with a double-tracked oboe and some organ coming in with the introductory melody line as the electronics retreat. Then the electronic soundscape comes roaring back before a cold stop, with a very echoey Ferry and the band finally coming in. Sung in a bit of lower register, and no majestic riff — just a sax solo before the second verse. This is much more avant-jazz in style and just kinda peters out.
2HB (demo): A short bit of that trademark “snake charmer” music, and again it dies out and Ferry and the band come in cold, with a minimal arrangement. The song itself and its lyrics are complete, with Ferry taking front and center. The horns are absent now that the song has started. After the second verse, the whole tune drops out for an echoey instrumental sax break from … well, nothing to do with 2HB, but everything to do with the horns, which eventually devolve into free jazz bouncing off a deep bass sound.
Again, all that drops off the face of the earth and the song returns to finish up. The electric guitar in both song parts is played acoustically.
Chance Meeting (demo): Once again, a quavery verse, a long instrumental break (at least sticking to the song’s tune this time), and then the second verse, then another instrumental break, and another verse, a shorter instrumental break, and out.. Since these songs don’t have choruses, I guess they thought this might be a good way to present them?
The BOB (Medley) (demo): This one does something different: it starts with the first verse. It’s worth noting that there don’t seem to be any difference in lyrics from the finished versions, and the basic melodies also seem to be here for all the songs so far. The structure of the medley and lyrics are also here as it is in the finished song, so the impression of these demos is that Ferry’s got his act together, but the band is starting to work out what they might do in between the verses, and often falling back to easy cliches for now. Not much for Eno to do, though he makes his mark from time to time.
We’re now into outtakes that didn’t work rather than demos, but the band seem to know what each one is supposed to end up sounding like.
Instrumental (outtake): Very short and seemingly improvised riffing against an Eno backdrop. From here on out, it’s the band lineup as credited on the album.
Re-make/Re-Model (outtake): Now this starts off sounding like a song, then dies as Ferry tries to have a second go, and we get something VERY close to what we ended up with for a bit, albeit not mixed well at all. This one has a lot of back-and-forth between the engineer and Ferry, but the third take gels nicely. It kind of shines a light on how the non-vocal parts were shaped (prior to this point) through directed improv. There’s no band call-and-response in this version, though, which to me is second only to the lyrics in importance. The instrumental breaks here are almost identical to the finished product except for the sax.
Ladytron (outtake): By contrast, this one starts out quite a bit differently than the final product, but with the same idea in mind until the oboe comes in. Then a count-in, and Ferry on voice and piano with bass, then drums coming in. More like an actual traditional song after that instrumental break, and they still don’t have that heroic riff at the end of the verses yet.
If There is Something (outtake): trying to get started with the engineer first with Ferry on piano, then they count in and the band get going pretty much as we hear on the final track, except that Ferry hasn’t written past the first couple of lines of the lyric, so it is mostly instrumental — and a bit less “country” sounding. The hypnotic sax riff is here, though. Ferry returns for the … middle lyric? Not-chorus? Whatever you call this bit, the lyric here is done, as is most of the instrumentation. A long break before we get to the middle waiting lyric, with Ferry handling the “when we were young” part also.
2HB (outtake): Not far from the finished product, some unfinished lyrics and much tamer band breaks, and we find out why after the song ends.
The BOB (Medley) (outtake): “There’s no bass guitar or saxophone!” Ferry complains about the previous performance. Doh!
The band begins again in earnest at the 1’15” mark, and now with a just the synth part. It fades out at 3’20, and the second part comes in with the what seems to be the band minus the bass player. They stop and complain about this, and restart only to fall apart almost immediately. Thankfully they laugh about Paul breaking his stick, and suddenly fall into a bass/oboe/piano filler piece briefly. After a bit of natter, they start again and finally all parts can be heard — so they stop again, and faff around for a few more seconds.
Chance Meeting (outtake): Piano and bass only this time. Who the hell is the engineer on this thing?
Would You Believe? (outtake): synth and guitar only this time for the first 1’35”, then the song starts properly, but this is clearly not the final take. You are, however, reminded of Fats Domino’s influence on Ferry.
Sea Breezes (outtake): piano, bass, and drums only this time. This guy is so fired.
Bitters End (outtake): a stately opening, then the sound of the tape being rewound, then the tape jumps around a bit with a odd “fake birdsong” repeated effect. It eventually stops, then some conversation working out a take, then they start again. This is nothing like the 50s barbershop approach they settled on finally, its mostly just the piano and no lyrics. It’s fun to listen to it as almost solo piano, and then they discuss the arrangement a bit.
Virginia Plain (outtake): A false start, then another. Then a harsh cut, and suddenly the song is already in progress. Ferry’s performance is a rote runthrough of the lyrics rather than the actual whole-hearted performance as we ended up with, but we can finally hear the whole band again. Even in this very rough form, you want this song to be in there — it’s the most irresistable thing on the record, and I think they know it full well.
THE VERDICT
Historically speaking, this is fly-on-the-wall time — a glimpse at an earlier lineup (and why some people were replaced), a peek through the door of Ferry working out parts of songs, and a seat at the table as the band starts putting it all together. Re-make/Re-model (which still sounds like a stolen Kraftwerk song title to me) is the closest thing we get here to Athena bursting fully formed from the head of Zeus.
The demos get the basic ideas across but are far from finished, and really I suspect the outtakes were included both to round out the disc as well as embarrass the engineer one final time. Why? Because if there’s one thing we know about Bryan Ferry, it’s that he likes to look polished, poised, and debonair, and the clown in the booth is wasting Ferry’s time and money.
The outtakes remind us that, although he might be a songwriting god (already), Ferry’s a human being and an artist who takes the advice to revise, revise, revise. We are certainly all the better for that discipline, but on top of that we get to hear the new lineup coalesce and figure things out, something you don’t often get to see.
This shines a light on the creative process, and it doesn’t just apply to Roxy Music — these sessions all took place just a couple of years after the Beatles inadvertently documented their disintegration by filming their Let It Be sessions for a TV special.
As indicated by my encouragement to listen to Disc 2 first, I think hearing this first re-shapes how the final album sounds to us. Undoubtedly, most bands could have secret tapes like this, but in the case of Roxy something new and fresh was happening, and I like to think that’s why they kept at it to get this record made.
So now that we’ve already covered the packaging in detail, we can dig into the album proper — but it’s worth remembering that the packaging singularly used “sex” to sell the record. The complete lack of any information about the band (apart from the name) or what the music might sound like — there was just “the girl” — on the front or back cover ensured that only the most curious and intrigued of parties would buy it, if they wanted — or needed — to learn more.
THE PROLOGUE
Luckily for us all the trick worked: the first single was (wisely) chosen as “Virginia Plain,” which served as a calling-card for their elegant, innovative, and varied rock stylings. It went to number four in the UK singles chart, and that pushed the album (which at the time did not include the single) to number 10 in the charts.
This was something different: neither the swamp-rock of Creedence Clearwater Revival, nor the hippie music of George Harrison, and not the R&B white soul sound of Van Morrison, the funk and soul of Gladys Knight or Aretha or Sly Stone, or the gentle pop of Neil Diamond. It was new and different, borrowing from the 50s but adding in sounds of the future and a decidedly eclectic crooner style — and thankfully it caught on with an eclectic group of buyers who took a chance and were richly rewarded.
I used to call the first album “the first New Wave record,” and while I was basing that assessment on my favourite tracks rather than the album as a complete work, I still stand by that description. It took a nearly decade, and the reactionary mid-70s revolution of punk, to create a movement that followed in Ferry and company’s footsteps.
Before we get started, though, a radical rethink: don’t start here. Go directly to Disc 2, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. You will thank me later.
You see, the packagers of this comp (presumably Ferry and various execs) have made a hideous mistake — we should hear how the album came together (aka Disc 2), warts and all, and <em>then</em> you should go back and listen to Disc 1 with enlightened new ears. As I mentioned earlier, if you bought this box then you’ve heard the first album, maybe a hundred times or more.
The real find here is the demos and outtakes, which haven’t been heard before. While the songs (and especially the lyrics) are still familiar, they are cut short, redone, tooled around with, argued over with the engineer, and generally … <em>fresh</em>. Listen to Disc 2 first, then come back to Disc 1 with completely new ears for this album you know so well.
No? Oh all right then …
THE ALBUM
Disc 1 of this set starts off with some false advertising: it’s billed as the “original” album, but it’s not: the original vinyl release in 1972 contained nine songs. The CD version, first released in 1984, inserted the pre-album hit single “Virginia Plain” between “If There is Something” and another popular song, “2 H.B.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the first disc here exactly matches the first CD version, but it’s not the “original” release, is it? And yes, there’s more quibbles to come!
On to my second (minor) gripe: the version used on CD1 here is in fact 1999 remastered edition, which was cleaner and brighter than the original 1984 CD issue. I would kind of liked to have had a Stephen Wilson stereo remix instead — which exists, but isn’t present in this box set.
Most people who would buy this deluxe edition likely already have or had the ’99 remastered version, and the technology has moved on considerably in the last 25 years. Using the 2.1 Stephen Wilson version would have given most buyers something “new” there – if you’re not going to give us the 1984 original CD version – and it would been a thoughtful gesture for those lacking the equipment to properly play back the DVD’s 5.1 SW mix.
Still, for those who bought (and still have) the original CD on first issue, the ’99 remaster is clearly the superior version of the CD.
The single sleeve disc’s front cover does, of course, faithfully preserves the original eye-catching outer cover, while the back lists the album’s contents, players, and production personnel. Thankfully, the “art book” portion of the presentation gives us gatefold’s original interior art, with more information about the band and songs — at the same size as the original LP release.
If you’re reading this, you are very likely to have heard Roxy’s debut album already, so we’ll stick mostly to my refreshed impressions, listening to it again after a few years’ gap from my last listen; we’ll get into more detail once we move on to the discs with the previously rare-or-unreleased material.
Re-Make/Re-Model: the short silence (six seconds) before the crowd noise, which we get for another few seconds followed by a sharp cut and Ferry’s piano, then Thompson’s drum start and the band joining fully just two seconds later … what a way to announce “this isn’t your typical band.” While the bass and drum hold down the basic rhytms, guitar and sax go wild in almost jazz-like improv, with short bursts of Ferry’s vocal, and the band backing him by reciting a license plate number between verses.
There’s no chorus (apart from, I suppose, the license plate thing), and the long instrumental section is like nothing else: a bit of the full band, then a suddent stop and breakout spot by each instrument that feels very on-the-spot improvised, as if the direction given was “you get a five-second solo. Go!”
First drums, then a cheeky bass rip-off of The Beatles’ “Day Tripper” riff, then Eno’s sputting screech noise box, then a shot of sax that flows right back into the music stream, ditto with the guitar, and finally some madcap piano, one last drum break, and then all of them at the same time for a bit before it falls apart and winds down. The way the weird synth noises snake through the deteriorating band and finally signals the end.
By this point, the listener in 1972 must have been wondering what planet these guys were from. What an opening number! After all these years, I still say “wow.” This is just as fresh and wild as it was the day it was released … and there’s not a lot of 1972 albums you could possibly say that about.
Ladytron: With barely time to take a breath, we take another short break of seeming silence (about four seconds) before we begin to perceive a soft electronic bed emulating wind, with an oboe softly winding its way around a melody, accompanied by synth sound effects kind of emulating a lonely wind. The oboe part partially repeats, then Ferry comes in with “You’ve got me girl on the runaround, runaround/Got me all around town/You’ve got me girl on the runaround/And it’s gettin’ me down, gettin’ me down,” as the bass moves in ahead of the full band coming in fully.
Naturally, you get absolutely no clue as to why the song is called “Ladytron,” and the song about a ladykiller gent playing cat-and-mouse with his latest target. After the first full verse, we again take a break to highlight a fabulous echo-drenched oboe. Ferry returns, now double-tracked, and we get that first taste of Ferry’s famous warble.
Without changing the tempo, the furious drums return with fast bass, horns and guitars double-tracked guitars, piano trying to keep up, shakers and the kitchen sink thrown in for good measure. Imagine Elton John playing “Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting” with his full band, and all of them having a nervous breakdown – with Brian Eno aggravating matters – as the instrumental break just floats off into the sunset after a minute, and the song is over.
These first two tracks firmly established that this music was something new to the world of the early 70s, acknowledging influences of jazz, soul, and rock while melding it together into Dali-esque impossible structures and jams, where the singer was not the focus but still riveting when he did appear. Vocals were just another instrument, occasionally contributing something that might sound like a lyric, or words intended more for texture, and then step aside to let the band show off.
If There is Something: The above is what makes the third track all the more confusing: after two incredible tracks, suddenly Roxy Music becomes a country-rock bar band (?!). Something about Ferry wanting to settle down with a young girl and grow potatoes, showing off his vocal quaver — and with nothing for Eno to do until halfway through, then mutating the song into a slow jam?
It’s a little portent of the second half, and while it’s not bad at all, it’s certainly a letdown from the first two killer tracks. Okay, there’s an argument to be made that after two (for the time) bizarre tracks, you might want to give the listener something akin to music they’ve heard before, and I get that.
It’s not until Eno’s synth counter-melody, though, that “Something” reverts to the kind of interesting and non-mainstream sound it has been cultivating so far. Thanks to the sinister undertone of the song after its initial riffs and Eno’s contribution, I can see why Bowie’s Tin Machine wanted to take a stab at it … but frankly, I think Bowie did a better job with it.
Virginia Plain: As “Something” meanders off, the first single pulls up in a new sports car with style and energy to spare, thanks to its playful lyrics: “You’re so sheer, you’re so chic/Teenage rebel of the week” is just a sample of the joy that permeates this song. Wrap it around another fast-tempo’d melody featuring frantic piano and drumming, steady bass with schizophrenic horn, and a motorcycle taking off for good measure. This track is a solid-gold winner, with a brilliantly-framed synth coda before the final lyric, which beautifully brings the song to a flying stop. It was an obvious choice for the first single.
Spoiler! This is the new official music video for “Virginia Plain,” taken from the bonus DVD in the box set.
2 H.B.: This is followed (finally) by a breather, a somewhat-gentler tribute to Humphrey Bogart. Ferry puts on an even thicker Ferry-esque style for this one, which includes a nice long multitracked sax-oboe instrumental break.
The chorus of “Here’s looking at you, kid” ties back to the title so nicely and the repeated line of “failing me never” which fades off as the instruments retreat is a lovely finish. On the original vinyl, that concluded a pretty much all-star Side One.
The Bob (Medley): Now we start off back in ominous synth town for a bit before the band comes in and disrupts whatever mood the opening was going for. It’s like a parody of the indulgent slogs that The Grateful Dead put out, meandering from one musical idea to another with little connective tissue.
We’re clearly in for a rougher ride on the second side, kids. It’s not until the middle of the piece and all the gunfire that you get the idea its about war (specifically, the Battle of Britain). It’s like a notebook of barely-started lyrical and musical ideas, poorly glued together.
Chance Meeting: We transition away from “The Bob”’s car wreck with a slow, beat-less piano-and-guitar first verse, which describes exactly that happening. During the instrumental break, the bass is allowed back in the room for a bit before it quickly fades out.
Would You Believe: Just when you think the second half is going to be the (almost) “all filler” counterpoint to Act I’s “all killer,” this track finally gets us back to the Roxy we thought we were getting based on side A. The soft, falsetto, double tracked Ferry starts off with a ballad verse, then the band breaks out with a 50s-styled main tune, the band shows off their sax-and-piano chops before Ferry returns to his crooning.
It comes off like a real tribute to the kind of music they grew up listening to, and it’s the highlight of the second half.
Sea Breezes: Following that, the next song literally opens with the sound of (synthesized) crashing waves, and then Ferry crosses fully into Tiny Tim territory with his delivery; we’re just missing a ukulele here to complete the effect in this very quiet number. There was so much energy and verve on the first half of the album, listeners might be wondering what the hell happened to the band when they recorded the second side.
Just in the nick of time, however, the second part of “Sea Breezes” sees the return of Ferry’s normal singing voice, far better lyrics, and some lovely contrasting instruments in our left and right ears, which is a fun effect. Sadly, then the finale of the song reverts to the catatonic style that is so inert you want to check the band’s collective pulse, complete with the return of the falsetto. The band seems to have something of a schizophrenic personality.
Bitters End: While maintaining a barely-above-ballad tempo, “Bitters End” returns to the tribute 50-style doo-wop number with a dropped in crowd effect, and works well. Given the lack of pulse present in most of the second side, it was very wise to finish with this number.
It’s Noel Coward as a 50’s ballad, and I do particularly love the occasional background chorus of “Bizarre” to frame Ferry’s amusing lyrics. Once again, a sudden change-up (in this case, Ferry reverting to his lower register) to a sudden stop makes this clever homage into a strong ending for a mostly-disappointing second part.
THE VERDICT
Like Longfellow’s little girl who had a little curl, when this is good it is very, very good, and great respect is earned for continuing to sound so contemporary after more than 50 years since its release … but to rewrite the poet a little bit, when it is bad it is somewhat disappointing.
Few are the albums that can maintain a consistently great standard across 10 tracks, and Ferry’s love of slower ballads will eventually pay off in later albums. But in this case, the flip side just seems laboured and leaden most of the time, or maybe I just don’t have enough of an appreciation for languid love songs. I think it’s fair to say that Roxy Music’s debut is strong, but uneven.
Although Roxy Music as we know it began in 1970, it was two further years before the concept became a recording act, providing evidence of what they were up to in the form of their debut album. For this super deluxe box set, founder Bryan Ferry emptied his vaults for material well beyond the original album, including the early demos, album out-takes, radio sessions, and a DVD of mostly short television appearances, capped (on the DVD) by a new 5.1 DTS and Dolby AC3 mix of the album by Steven Wilson.
Billed as a 45-anniversary deluxe box set — even though it actually came out a year late, in 2018 — this weighty box includes three CDs and one DVD, the latter of which contains both visual and audio-only information (more on that later).
Where the weight gets put on is in the incorporated 136-page book documenting the band’s formation by The Guardian journalist and author Richard Williams, who first wrote about the group for the music paper Melody Maker in 1971. It features a plethora of previously rare or unpublished photos from those early days, along with a Ferry-approved essay on the founding and early days of the band. Everything is on a heavy stock glossy paper, surrounded by a glossy, high-grade cover.
We’ll begin our examination with the packaging and book before diving into the music. The set’s presentation, from the outside, suggests that you might be buying a five-disc vinyl box set and/or a coffee-table art book of the sort you find in museums, but thankfully this hefty tome devotes itself as much to sound as to vision. While there’s no vinyl to be found here, there are three CDs, 1 DVD, and the book on to very pleasurably work your way through.
THE BOX AND THE BOOK
The box is a three-sided slipcase box for the book, and the discs are tucked away in individual sleeves in the back of the book. The box reproduces the cover of the book, which in turn is a recreation the outside cover of the album. On the back of the box is a “removable” — if one is patient and careful — spot-glued paper outsert that shows the band logo, a brief blurb explaining the contents, the covers of the four discs in miniature, and the contents of each one.
This is the only spot on the outside where you will see all the requisite industry logos for the material inside, including the DVD logo, the all-region logo, and a couple of others. Given how radical a departure this album was from the mainstream in 1972, that “exempt from classification” MPAA “E” logo feels very appropriate.
The sound recording and other copyright logos and text are first seen on the stuck-on paper, as well as discreetly placed on the bottom of the slipcase. If one chooses to remove the paper to appreciate the full cover reproduction, the legally-required info is still there — a classy touch.
As packaged, the book spine is showing on the “open” side of the outer box, reproducing the gatefold spine. This of course means that as you pull the book out, you’ll be seeing Kari-Ann Muller’s lower leg and the gold record side of the cover.
If there’s one thing you can count on from a Bryan Ferry-led project, it’s that it should look, feel, and sound like no expense was spared, and that it is an important release. There’s only so much you can do to make a CD or vinyl album into a luxury item — though in the 70s, making it a gatefold album design was one sure way of transmitting that feel to the buyer, and indeed this debut album got the gatefold treatment in its original release.
The inside front and back cover and first and last endsheets showcase film positives of the many alternate takes and poses of Ms. Muller. There’s a title page with just the band’s logo, of course, and then the essay begins on the following page with yet another reproduction of the iconic cover.
A few of the many, many, many alternate images from the cover photoshoot.
Within the first few paragraphs, we learn that the two-tone Roxy Music logo uses a blue and pink that exactly matches the shade of Muller’s eye shadow and lipstick — again a mark of a premium product and that the carefully-constructed image with Muller’s “sultry” gaze was “an explicit taunt to the new rock establishment” that had come to dominate the form in the late 1960s.
Author Richard Williams notes that Elvis Presley had used a similarly bold two-tone logo and provocative photo for his debut album in 1956, and that eight years later, the Rolling Stones used an “unheard of” at the time stark photo with no text other than the Decca logo on the cover — another daring move for a debut album.
Eight years after that, Roxy Music made used the provocative and daring swimsuit-clad Muller, in a “glamour” type shot in a wraparound style, as their attention-grabbing debut cover. Compared to most the album covers of the time, Roxy’s cover was bold and wildly sexy for the time: “a signpost to a future of exotic promise,” as the essay describes it.
The book is a collaborative effort between Ferry, Wilson, Puxley, and a small army of mostly-uncredited photographers, although Ferry himself is among them (his are likely the photos of the other band members in rehearsal rooms). Without delving much into specifics and glossing over any conflicts, it outlines the history of the band, starting with Ferry’s idea for it, with his friend Graham Simpson providing some musical foundation, and the process of recruiting the others — including some, like Roger Bunn and Dexter Lloyd, who didn’t last past the demo tape.
Andy Mackay was an early addition who made the grade, though, and he was the one who the world must thank for bringing in Brian Eno. Eno was initially brought in to play Andy’s synthesizer and mix the sound, meaning he would be at the mixing desk rather than onstage with the band. The group rehearsed at the home of Ferry’s girlfriend Susie Cussins, to whom the first album is dedicated.
Phil Manzerera had been part of that round of auditions, but had been passed over initially, and then called back when Ferry’s first choice — David O’List — eventually didn’t pan out. O’List went on to a fairly illustrious career playing with a bunch of bands, including The Nice, Jet, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and others. He has two solo albums out in the 21st century.
Davy O’List’s prior band, The Attack, from 1966. He’s the curly-haired chap.
By May 1971, “Roxy” was finally deemed ready to cut a demo to shop to record labels. Ironically, the big obstacle with the first round of record companies didn’t turn out to be the band — it was Ferry.
His singing was very out-of-fashion for the rock of the time, with a mannered upper-class style and sort of anguished general tone, as if he is straining to not just say the lines rather than sing them. No hint of blues or soul style could be detected, and he had a rather fey quavering falsetto that was sparingly used.
That first demo tape, which we’ll get to hear on Disc 2, is all pre-Eno, and mostly features the “Mark 1” version of the band, with the early musicians and rougher sketches of the songs they would become, some with different titles.
They had to change the name to “Roxy Music” since there was already a band named “Roxy” in the US. The demo helped solidify the band, specifically helping attract Paul Thompson as the new (and permanent) drummer, replacing Lloyd, and of course eventually adding the mystery ingredient that was Brian Eno and his cutting-edge electronic wizardry.
This lineup, and a dash of glam and glitter and sequins all over the place, got them invited to a lot of events. Eventually, they met the legendary DJ John Peel, who had heard the demo. With the help of John Walters, Peel’s producer, they got a couple of live guest spots on Peel’s popular radio show.
This got them the thing they needed most: some positive press in the mainstream and music papers. From there, everything started to fall into place, and the band we know and love was cemented and offered the chance to make an album.
The essay itself is peppered with early images, and after the words we get many pages of more photos from live gigs and in the studio, some candid shots and a handful of formal pics. Even in these, we see also the band’s visual sense: Ferry’s formality, Eno’s glitter bombing, Mackay’s sequins, Manzanera’s bizarre eyewear. Thompson, who occasionally favored leopard-print and caveman-type clothing when he wasn’t shirtless but for a sequined vest, was the least-photographed member in these as he’s always in the back, of course.
This is followed by pages of lyrics (accompanied by more photos), the typewritten original lyric sheets (with a few scratch-throughs and notes), a page of quotes reflecting on the album by Ferry, a few pages of Puxley’s eccentric descriptions of the songs and key lyrical phrases, a few more pages of Keri-Ann photos including one in a completely different outfit).
This goes on to show images of the master-tape boxes, early press releases and bios, many pictures from the Lincoln Festival in May of ’72 (their first festival show), the UK tour of ’72 program book cover and dates (with a few photos), a brief tour diary, an ad for the album, a montage of small venue notices, want ads the band took out looking for a drummer and guitarist (“for avant-rock group”, single covers and posters from various countries, newspaper notices (mostly positive, but a few not quite complimentary), the US tour listing, and — finally — big colour pictures and stills from TV appearances, and the US and UK shows.
L-R: Mazenera, Ferry, Mackay, Eno, Rik Kenton (who replaced Graham Simpson for the first tour), Thompson
The book wraps with a two-page spread of the CD covers and their contents, a page of credits for the book, the CDs and some of the photos, and another page of Keri-Ann outtakes.
Ten Man Mop, or Mr Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971)
THE OVERVIEW
Following the new lineup’s first album together (recorded in late 1970) and its surprising chart success the following year, the final album of this box set and the third official Steeleye Span album was made in the fall of 1971. As with its predecessor, it continued to draw on the traditional folk music of England (saves a lot of time when you don’t have to write the material, I guess!).
The stability of the lineup was short-lived, however: founding member Ashley Hutchins would leave the band shortly after this was recorded, feeling that the group was relying too much on Irish folk music when his interest was in English folksong. He was also apparently reluctant to travel to the US, where the band had been invited to tour.
Once again, the cover art is pretty terrible, but once again the music is harmonious and well-performed. The band veers a bit more back into “pure” acoustic folk overall, but the electric instruments continue to make their presence felt right from the get-go, along with spoons, a tabor, organ, timpani, mandolin, fiddle, various banjos, and some dulcimer and various guitars for good measure.
Also again, there’s some terminology in the title that requires a bit of explanation. A “mop” in English slang for a job call, where unemployed men would gather to see if they could gain a day’s work — you might see the modern equivalent of a “mop” outside temp agencies, or construction sites, to this day. Some things never change.
As for the origin of Mr. Reservoir Butler, he was a real person, though unknown to the band — apparently he was the original performer of one of the songs on the record (it’s not mentioned which one, even in the extensive liner notes of the original gatefold vinyl album).
The version of the album on this box set copies the 2006 Castle Music CD reissue, including a smattering of bonus tracks (which we’ll get to), but sadly this collection omits the bonus live show that was included on that reissue’s bonus disc: a September 1971 performance on DJ John Peel’s “Sunday Concert” radio programme. It included a selection of tracks from across their career thus far, including a few songs not yet captured on the proper albums. I really must hunt that one down at some point.
THE ALBUM
The very first sounds one hears are electric, on the Christmas traditional “Gower Wassail,” with Tim on lead and the rest of the band contributing a splendid chorus. Tim Hart gives anything he sings a traditional, old-timey feel, but his vocal “instrument” is best used a bit more sparingly, rather than taking sole lead — at least in my view. It’s not clear when this particular wassail was written, but the standard (sung) version comes from the tradition of wassails from the 12th century, which have come to mean a type of song often accompanied by drinking, rather than “wassail”’s original meaning akin to a farewell greeting.
The band did well with a Chrismassy song on the last album, so why not do one again? And while we’re at it, the pair of jigs on the last album went down well, let’s do that again also! This time it’s Paddy Clancy’s Jig and Willie Clancey’s Fancy, a natural pairing if ever there was one. Dueling acoustic guitars and fiddle with a bit of spoon work is always a delightful thing, but here’s that Irish bent that got Ashley all “bent” out of shape.
The third cut features the funny, clever “Four Nights Drunk,” sung by Martin Carthy. It’s a song about a man who comes home so drunk he sees things that may or may not be there, questions his wife about them (who denies his vision), and begins to suspect that he is actually seeing his wife’s lover as her explanations become increasingly implausible.
Following a straight singing of the lyrics, the band breaks out the song into an instrumental for the last minute or so, and again they are very good at it.
We finally get Maddy Prior back on lead vocal, with “When I Was on Horseback.” It’s a traditional Irish folk song-cum-lament about a soldier and his unfortunate end, even though he brags “wasn’t I pretty/wasn’t I gay” (not like that 😜). Already, a pattern that has brought some criticism of this album is emerging — start a song, sing the lyrics, spotlight the instruments for a minute or so after the lyrics are done, and out.
Side 2 of the original vinyl version kicked off with “Marrowbones,” is a delightful traditional English/Irish song about a woman who loves her old husband, but “loves another man twice as well.” She decides to find a way to blind him so he can’t see she’s having an affair.
A local doctor tells her to feed him eggs and 16 marrowbones, which she does, but the old man knows of her plan and pretends to be blind. When walking near a river, the unfaithful wife decides to push her “blind” husband in, but he hears her running towards him and steps aside, and it is she who falls into the river.
As she cries for help, the husband reminds her that he “cannot see.” She eventually drowns, and the moral of the story is “if you want to murder your husband, make sure you poison him properly.” That’s the Irish for you …
This is followed by “Captain Coulson,” a tale of the war-hero title character and his passengers on a six-week sail across the Atlantic to “Amerikay.” One night, he spies a pirate ship in pursuit, and wants the sailors and men on board that it will soon catch up to them.
This story-song, sung by Maddy, is a nice change of pace from the tales of treacherous/cheating spouses, describes the battle as the pirates board the vessel and demand “your gold and precious loading.” A pitched battle ensues, with the captain and his passengers eventually successful in defeating the pirates, capturing their ship and bringing it with them as bounty with them to the New World.
The odd choice of having nearly every song end with an instrumental break, rather than putting it in the middle, becomes almost comically predictable and borderline annoying.
As with side one, a given song early on the given side of the vinyl is then followed by an instrumental track — either a group of jigs or a group of reels, and this case its the latter: a trio of them, “Dowd’s Favourite/£10 Float/The Morning Dew.” Only carefully listening to the chord changes would reveal to a listener when one part ends and other begins, as the instruments are seamlessly strung together.
This strange habit seems to be intended to showcase Peter Knight’s fiddle playing, and he’s excellent at it — but the repetition factor of the album is starting to really kick in.
Maddy returns to sing “Wee Weaver,” for once a song that has a happy ending rather than, you know, death. It’s a tale of of a weaver who loves a beautiful girl named Mary, much admired around the village. Willie proposes marriage, Mary accepts, and they lived happily ever after.
The Norfolk folk music index calls this song “a rarity,” allegedly written by home weavers … in Ireland. This puts Irish songs firmly in the lead compared to the English entries.
Tim sings the lead on the next track, “Skewball,” which also is an unconventional track for the band to do. This is a song about a horse race, and a fast horse (which can “talk”) named Skewball against another horse named Griselda. It’s an exciting tale, told well.
These two unconventional (for this band) songs would have done better being spaced further apart, but they nonetheless make a welcome change from the fairly repetitious choices presented to this point. That said, it closes the original album on a strong note.
We move on to the first of the “bonus tracks” presented here, “General Taylor (Studio Outtake).” This one also has Tim on lead, but duetting with the other band sings, which really makes Tim’s lead even more effective. The song, also known as “Carry Him to His Burying Ground,” is a fairly recent number for this group, hailing from the mid-19th century.
It’s done here in a “pump shanty” style, though technically it should be considered a “halyard” or perhaps a “capstan” style shanty. The subject concerns the defeat of Mexican general Santa Aña by the American general (and future president) Zachary Taylor in 1847.
The song was likely written by one of the surviving British soldiers who jumped ship to aid Aña in the West Indies. Traditionally, the victor of the battle is reversed to be Aña (as it is in this performance), likely due to British sailors serving with Mexicans at the time and not wanting to cause offense, but indeed it was Taylor who “won the day.”
This first bonus track, along with the start off track “Gower Wassail,” are the high points of the album as presented here. While the original album had fine playing and some strong group vocals, the song choices and arrangements were more repetitious than the previous album, and nothing other than “Gower” really stood out.
The rest of the “bonus” tracks here are various versions of “Rave On” — the original single version with a deliberate “Scratch” sound, which is my favourite of the versions because it must have really messed with the original listeners’ minds — and a “proper” two-verse and three-verse version.
The song is really out of step with the traditionals that accompany the album, as it’s a Buddy Holly song — and its presence “breaks the spell” of the band as wandering minstrels. It was originally recorded as a joke for Ashley’s benefit, and he liked it, but then it ended up as a “novelty” single for the band (and flopped).
To be fair, if you take it for what it is — a modern song done a capella, forgetting about the band’s regular motif — it’s very nice, including their strong harmonies. It’s just a bad choice to include on their Olde Tyme folk albums (and of course it originally wasn’t).
The “Peel Session” version, just for variety’s sake.
THE BOTTOM LINE
This third effort touches on a lot of what makes Steeleye Span interesting, but it’s less imaginative and varied than the previous two albums, with the song choices being more repetitive — though when they do break the pattern, they generally shine.
For me, Ten Man Mop leans too heavily on the lead singers, with the band’s strong group vocals too sparingly used. The arrangements seem less imaginative as well, with a few exceptions.
Knowing that Hutchins left the band after this was recorded, it would be interesting to revisit the fourth album to compare how that affected the group (spoiler: a lot), but that’s outside the scope of this box set review, so we’ll have to leave it there. (Second spoiler: the lineup changes very significantly yet again with the fourth album.)
Ten Man Mop is by no means a bad album, but the feeling that it’s a weaker offering than the two before it is hard to shake. The inclusion of very sparse “bonus tracks” is a mild disappointment, but as an opportunity to study more deeply the albums where I first became acquainted with the band, All Things are Quite Silent is an intriguing box set that I’m glad to have, as it does offer some absolutely stellar gems from the band’s early years.
Next time: Nits! (the Dutch band, not the other kind)
The second album from Steeleye Span is very much “more of the same,” and yet wildly different at the same time. Having found an audience that embraced their mix of modern, classic, and ancient instruments combined with mostly traditional English folk songs, they stuck to their unique “formula” of “traditional folk songs with some electric guitar and bass” doggedly.
So much so, in fact, that the first track on Please to see the King is a re-recorded version of “The Blacksmith” from their previous album! It’s hard to guess at the reasons why, but the new arrangement sets a tone of syncopation and other percussion in place of drums, and involves the reformulated band to a bigger degree vocally.
To the casual listener, this sounds very much like the previous album, with familiar vocalists Maddy Prior and Tim Hart and a similar musical mix of acoustic and electric instruments. The Woods, Gay and Terry, left the band before the group had even played its first live gig, and Gay’s presence in particular is missed.
However, this new lineup (adding friend of the band Martin Carthy, who had originally suggested the band’s name, and fiddler Peter Knight to replace the Woods) is widely considered the “definitive” early Steeleye lineup, with the first album personnel considered an excellent but “false start,” since the band would move into a heavier space with more male voices, percussion but no drums, and more group singing.
The cumulative effect is that this is something of a different band doing things a bit differently, but the additional backing harmonies and similar material helps cushion the changes. It helps that this same lineup stuck around long enough to record the follow-up album, Ten Man Mop, and even tour!
This album did pretty well, reaching #45 on the UK album charts, but died a death in the US on initial release. A later re-release of the album following the band signing to Chrysalis Records the following year sold far better in the US.
THE ALBUM
The title of the album refers to a tradition carried out on St. Stephen’s Day (December 26th), the “Cutty Wren” ceremony. A caged wren is paraded around in towns and villages as if it were the king.
This is directly referred to in the album by the penultimate song on the album, “The King.” The lads who would parade the Cutty Wren were referred to as “wren boys.”
“The King” is often sung around Christmastime, and the band sings it a cappella, which will remind listeners of the “Calling-On Song” from the first album and is every bit as charming as that one.
This album starts with notes from electric guitar and bass that begins with the new version of “The Blacksmith,” with another lovely lead vocal from Prior. The middle eight is an a capella la-la chorus from the whole band, an instrumental break, and then Prior returns accompanied by some backing vocals. Organ can be heard in the background, and another instrumental break finally debuts Knight’s fiddle before wrapping up with another a capella section.
“Cold Haily, Windy Night” is, to be blunt, a song about a soldier begging his lover to let him in to the house on the aforementioned night. After some persuading and the possible detection by her mother, the maiden does let him in and they end up making love.
The soldier turns out to be a cad who, having gotten what he wanted, exits stage left — leaving a angry girl and her furious mum. It’s sung by Tim Hart in his stylised “folk song” manner.
Next up: two instrumental jigs combined into one piece. “Bryan O’Lynn” was a character from Irish folk song who was quite the dandy, though none of the lyrics are sung here. “The Hag with the Money” (Cailleach An Airgid) is another traditional song with lyrics, sadly not sung (as the original song is rather amusing).
We get back to lyrics and Maddy on lead with “Princess Charlie Stuart,” a song about good old Bonnie Prince Charlie. It covers the rebellion led by Charlie to restore the House of Stuart to the throne at the Battle of Culloden in 1745. It was ultimately unsuccessful, and Stuart was exiled first to France, then to Spain, the latter of which is mentioned in the song.
It’s a typically beautiful and haunting Scottish ballad, sung from his love’s perspective and hailing both his physical stature as well as the willingness of 700 highlanders to die in battle for him.
“Boys of Bedlam” is a song that dates from 1618, and is one of the earliest folk songs that deals with mental illness and insanity. “Bedlam” is shorthand for St. Mary Bethlehem hospital in London, now known as Bethlem Royal Hospital, which was an insane asylum. The hospital funded itself, in part, by charging townsfolk a penny to come and gawk at the antics of the unsupervised inmates.
The song starts off as a minimalist duet with Maddy and Martin, with just the simplest percussion. This expands slowly with electric bass imitating a bell tolling, then the pace picks up with guitar, mandolin, and organ and the song becomes a bit more … jolly? Both the object of the song and the narrator describe visions that are fairly described as bonkers.
The song shifts again into its last verse with somber, wailing backing vocals, with the faster pace now seeming more … sinister. A touch of banjo rounds out the finale.
“False Knight on the Road” is another traditional, which might be considered the “original version” of the more well-known song, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Both songs document a confrontation between a mortal and the Devil (the false knight), but in this case its a brave boy who stands his ground during the quizzing and riddles from Satan. Ultimately, the Devil gives up and concedes the contest.
This moves us back to Maddy singing, with “The Lark in the Morning,” which always reminds me of the “argument” about whether it is night or day that Romeo & Juliet have in their bed in the wee hours. The fiddle on this track enhances the sweetness of the melody.
“Female Drummer” also features Prior, singing about a young lass who disguises herself and becomes a drummer soldier in disguise. She maintains the ruse until another girl falls in love with her and “finds” that her soldier boy is a girl, reports the drummer to her superior, who “unbuttoned my red tunic and he found that it was true/‘It’s a shame,’ he says, ‘to lose a pretty drummer boy like you.”
We finally arrive to the finale of the album, consisting of the outstanding a capella song “The King,” and the climax of the entire album, “Lovely on the Water.” The blending of the band’s voices on “The King” is just fabulous.
Finally, the song that truly embodies the best of this incarnation of the band, a serpentine guitar line with rock-solid bass, and Prior’s story-song rendition of “Lovely on the Water.” It is yet another naval-wartime ballad, tells the tale of a couple where the man must leave, and their sad parting dialog.
The middle eight takes a forewarning turn, cleverly using the instruments to recreate the troubles and perils ahead, before he may someday return. Unlike most other songs of this nature, the lyrics do not foretell or reveal a tragic ending, leaving their fate open-ended.
THE BOTTOM LINE
If you’re in for a penny with this band, then you’re in for a pound. While putting more emphasis on the electric side of their musical equation, these remain traditional English folk tunes in both style and subject matter, and are lovingly resurrected for a new generation and a wider audience here.
If you enjoyed the first album, you’ll almost certainly like this one as well, despite the shift towards more male voices; Martin and Tim shoulder most of that burden, and are distinct enough in their styles to add flavour to the stew, and clever overdubbing of Maddy doing background vocals to accompany her leads makes Gay Woods’ departure a little easier to overlook. Martin and fiddler Peter Knight add new sounds to the repertoire, nicely making up for Terry Woods’ departure as well.
The selection of material is also very strong, with one new version of an old favourite to start things off and ending on a tremendously strong wartime ballad, with a variety of tunes and subjects interspersed as they were on the previous album, with only the instrument jig break seeming a little out of step. Now that the Mk II Steeleye has gotten off the ground, we’ll see if they can keep it going for another record before the lineup evolves yet again.
As John Cleese has famously said, “and now for something completely different …”
THE OVERVIEW
I’m more of a dedicated Punk/New Wave/Ska type fan when it comes to rock music, but thanks to good exposure to other forms of music and music analysis, there are other genres of music I also appreciate. One of the oddest (to most people) is my fancy for groups that seek to emulate and put their own spin on other styles once popular in centuries past. Peter Schickele in his persona as PDQ Bach and others who poked fun at oh-so-serious classical, Chuck Jones and his operatic Bugs Buggy films, and for reasons I can’t quite articulate, folk music bands who explored traditional tunes, styles, and instruments.
Two prominent examples of the latter sub-genre I have actively enjoyed and collected include the traditionalist Amazing Blondel, and the more modernist Steeleye Span.
There’s a lot of backstory behind the formation of Steeleye Span, and it is nicely summarised in the accompanying booklet to this collection of their first three albums, completed over the course of just two years, 1970 and 1971.
If you’re not familiar with the band, you’re probably not reading this, but on the off chance someone wants to know more before diving in, Steeleye Span were and are a group that added electric guitar and bass, along and contemporary rock-style drumming to otherwise mostly-traditional songs as pastiches of traditional songs of English folk music, arranged for contemporary (70s) instruments including the banjo, but largely sung in traditional stylings.
Apart from this novel approach, they were also known for periodically having two female vocalists in the band (Maddy Prior and Gay Woods), something of a rarity at the time. A form of the group carries on touring to this day, with only Maddy Prior from the original grouping still involved.
THE ALBUM
Unlike the previous box sets I’ve recently reviewed, two of the three discs in this CD-sized set contain just the straight album with no bonus tracks. A handful of previously-unreleased material exists on the third disc, but we’ll discuss those when we get to that album.
This one was their 1970 debut, Hark! The Village Wait, a title I’ve pondered the meaning of for decades until now. It turns out that a “wait” in Ye Olde Englishe is a group of musicians, usually woodwind players, who would play in the village commons in Tudor times, especially around Christmas.
Most, but not all of the songs are traditionals, with the arrangements by the band themselves. The tone is set on the very first song, even though it’s the only a cappella track on this record. The lyrics for “A Calling-On Song” were written by founder Ashley Hutchings (formerly of Fairport Convention), based on a captain’s song of the Earsdon Sword Dance Team.
From the first notes, you know you are being transported back to the roots of English folk music with a song that acts as an invitation and calling-card to the rest of the album. It would in no way be out-of-place at a Renaissance Fair or SCA gathering. The two women and their respective partners, Tim Hart and Terry Woods’ voices blend well.
Traditional acapella songs of a similar nature were often used to attract an audience to a village-green performance, and the lyrics reflect this: I’ve included the first and last verse here:
Good people, pray heed our petition, Your attention we beg and we crave. And if you are inclined for to listen An abundance of pastime we’ll have.
There’s one thing more needing mention: The dances we’ve danced all in fun. So now that you’ve heard our intention, We’ll play on to the beat of the drum.
And that last verse leads directly into the drum into of track 2, “The Blacksmith,” a traditional song that brings in the musical instruments of guitar, bass, mandola, harmonium, and lovely singing from Maddy Prior. It’s a tale of a love betrayed, of course, but with a bit of a twist. Backing vocals from Gay Woods and choruses with Tim Hart and Terry Woods really take you back in time as much as the first song did, but with enough modern sounds (blended with lesser-heard instruments) to keep the hippies listening.
The next cut, “Fisherman’s Wife,” is as Scottish a traditional as ‘ere we’ll get, with lyrics written by the great Ewan MacColl (father of Kristy) in 1959, and sung by Gay Woods this time. An autoharp and 5-string banjo “enter the chat,” as the kids say these days, atop the electric bass and guitar and drums.
It’s about the hardship of life for a fisherman’s wife, but with a hint of pride in herself and her hardworking husband. The variety of the two female vocalist adds a great tonal quality to the singing. But speaking of variety …
“The Blackleg Miner” gives us a styled nasal and northern voice of Tim Hart on lead vocal. His performance here is tuneful, but absolutely not in harmony with modern rock vocal stylings, and indeed his career-long musical interest lay with old folk songs. Despite his voice being a bit of a jarring break from the previous women-led tracks, his acapella singing really captures the old-timey feel of a song about a scab “blackleg” coal miner. It was strangely relevant in the face of the UK miner strikes going on around that time.
With the next track, we’re back to the ladies, with Gay on lead, singing a beautiful traditional, “Dark-Eyed Sailor.” On my first hearing many years ago I was captivated by this story-song of the pains of loving a sailor who may or may not ever return from the sea, and years later the dusky-voiced June Tabor (who once formed a group with Prior) did a more rockin’ version of the song, and I fell in love with it once again.
A lovely 2000 performance featuring both Maddy Prior and Gay Woods
And not just me: the song was one of the standout tracks off this album, and though there were no singles from the record that I know of, it became a popular part of the repertoire as the band played live. It became more popular once this album finally made its way to the US, five years after its initial release.
Terry Woods also plays the concertina with Hart on electric dulcimer, and the instrumentation just couldn’t be more perfect for this type of folk ballad. It’s a marvel how this weird mix of old and newer instruments somehow makes for such a distinct and original sound.
Side one of the original vinyl closes with “Copshawholme Fair,” with Prior on lead vocals, and includes some mandolin and the sound of the bodhrán (an Irish frame drum), along with some recorded sounds of step dancing by Maddy and Gay, giving the song a even older and more acoustic feel.
Side two opens with a twist: Maddy and Gay singing an original short sea-based ballad of a couple separated by enforced service by one’s “true love” in the Navy, “All Things Are Quite Silent,” which lends its name to the boxset. Songs of sailors separated from their true loves are, as one quickly learns, a really common theme of these traditional songs, so Ashley, Terry, and Tim knocked one of their own up.
This is followed by “The Hills of Greenmore,” featuring Tim Woods on vocals, which is pleasant but unremarkable. The next track, “The Lowlands of Holland,” is a quintessential staple of the band’s repertoire, starting with some guitar noodling before getting into yet another naval press gang tale of separated lovers, this time from Scotland.
What distinguishes this one from the others is Gay Woods’ beautiful vocal, a wistfully beautiful melody, and a splendid arrangement that really works with this “rock style added to traditional songs” angle the band has adopted. Like “The Blacksmith” and “Dark Eyed Sailor,” this one easily rises above its roots and is given new life in this treatment, in part thanks to the addition of traditional fiddle.
Gay in particular sells the lyric of a heartbroken widow telling her daughter she will someday find a man, but “alas there’s none for me/I never had a love but one/and he’s drowned in the sea.”
This takes us to “Twa Corbies” (a Scottish variation on the English folk song “The Three Ravens”), a rare one where Hart joins Gay and Maddie for a nice change of sound. This English folk ballad from approximately 1611, or possibly earlier, takes a delightfully dark turn as the song is an imagined conversation between two ravens about where and what they will eat.
In the Scottish version, the ravens chance upon a newly-slain knight, and talk in detail about how they will make a meal of him, using his hair to feather their nests, and how his mistress has already taken another lover. This is the version the band have chosen here.
Other versions have softened the lyric, having the ravens be unable to get at the corpse because it is guarded by his loyal hawks and hounds. In this version, the knight’s lover comes to get the body, and buries him — so the ravens must move on.
The final song is “One Night as I Lay on My Bed,” with Prior handling the lead vocal accompanied by Gay Woods. It’s a simple song about a young man who has a dream of his lover, so he gets up and goes to her house to speak to her.
She worries that her parents will hear them speak, but the man reassures her they are asleep, and she lets him in. If you’ve ever dated someone whose parents might not approve of you, or tried to have a lover in the home of your parents, you can relate to this.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The novelty of these centuries-old folk songs redone, mixing traditional and electric instruments is the big selling point of the album. It caught the fancy of music fans to a sufficient degree that further albums were made with an ever-shifting lineup, and we’ll get to explore the band’s development in the next two of their albums.
As for me, some of these songs are much-beloved, as I had the good fortune to be exposed to some traditional English folk songs early in my life, so this album was a new take on a few old favourites and a chance to explore the style further. It is no accident that I came to Steeleye via my fandom for The Amazing Blondel. Speaking of them, now there’s a box set that’s begging to be made for this same select but enthusiastic audience.
Picking up this deep dive into Bowie’s inadvertent audio diary of 1970 after two years (!) away, it is finally time to examine the second disc. As mentioned, not many artists can claim to have a single year of artistic development so thoroughly documented in CD form as young Master Bowie did here, but thanks in large part to a new band member — Mick Ronson — alongside bassist and collaborator Tony Visconti, we get the rough with the smooth of that year as Bowie evolved through it.
This first disc showcased that growth, with an eclectic but intimate radio concert, sampling from across Bowie’s two-album career thus far (minus his hit single). In a way, it also illustrated the progression he was making from Newley-influenced story-songs from the first record to the better songwriting and more “hippie” influence of his time at the Beckinham Arts Lab.
The second disc of The Width of a Circle is more the “odds and ends” one. It features a set of tunes accompanying a Lindsey Kemp mime performance (one of them soon to be recycled), the singles from this period, including some alternate and/or stereo mixes are used — and in one case, the lead-up to the next album, and a (shorter this time) radio performance for DJ Andy Ferris, wrapping up with some 50th anniversary remixes by Tony Visconti.
The Andy Ferris show appearance, just six weeks after the one that makes up Disc 1, shows Ronson settling in nicely. It more strongly hints at Bowie’s latest change of direction under Mick’s guidance — including a telling cover song.
There’s a little overlap from the concert on Disc 1 to the March 1970 Ferris show, but the feel is quite different musically — and continues to help paint the picture of how Bowie got from his first two albums to his third LP, The Man Who Sold the World. Bowie and band were preparing to go into the studio the following month to record it, and the resulting album came out in the US in November of ’70 — capping off this extraordinarily transformative year.
Although the UK release had to wait until April of 1971, it was already clear by then that this new album was also to be a sales flop — but this time, the critical reviews were much better on both sides of the Atlantic. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, and let’s instead check out this second disc of 1970’s activity, section by section.
Songs that turn on a mime
A still from the TV version of “Pierrot in Turquoise.” David is on the right.
Disc 2 starts off four songs from “The Looking Glass Murders (or Pierrot in Turquoise),” which was a filmed version for Scottish Television of a mime show Kemp staged from late December of 1967 into the spring of the following year under the Pierrot in Turquoise title — the colour being suggested by Bowie, who was studying Buddhist lore at the time, where the colour is associated with the quality of “everlasting.”
In the original stage show, David sang three songs from his first album, accompanied on piano, and performed the role of “Cloud,” a kind of a minstrel narrator who helps bedevil Pierrot. In July of 1970, Kemp got in touch with Bowie to ask him to reprise his role and write some new songs for the now-reworked show, as it was being filmed.
The TV version starred Kemp as Pierrot, Annie Stainer as “Columbine” (Pierrot’s love interest), and Jack Birkitt as Harlequin (the threat to Pierrot’s romance), along with Bowie and pianist Michael Garrett. The new songs included “Threepenny Pierrot” — using the music of “London Bye Ta-Ta” — and two others, “Columbine” (which borrowed bits of “Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed”), and “The Mirror,” a fully original number.
The first song in the STV version was “When I Live My Dream,” a holdover from the first Bowie album. While the melody shows off an above-average musical skill, the lyrics are a really mixed bag — combining a schoolboy-like fantasy romance with some dark underpinnings of bitterness as the hero laments the loss (but hopeful return) of his “princess.” The reprise is just as wincing to listen to as the first time round.
In between is “Columbine,” written to establish the object of Pierrot’s desire and featuring equally theatrical lyrics, the more eloquent “Harlequin” (originally called “The Mirror”), and “Threepenny Pierrot,” performed in a music-hall style with simplistic lyrics. These songs should be considered a side-alley in Bowie’s career, as he was already starting to work on The Man Who Sold the World at the time, and had moved on in every artistic sense by this point.
The Singles of 1970
Tony Visconti, left, and Marc Bolan, right.
From here we move into the singles from this year, and the first is of course “The Prettiest Star,” one of Bowie’s rare flat-out love songs, created to flatter Angela ahead of their marriage. In all honesty, though, Biff Rose should have gotten a co-writing credit, as his influence is all over it (go listen to Rose’s “Angel Tension” if you disbelieve me).
That said, it features Bowie’s first recorded collaboration with Marc Bolan, who played electric guitar, Rick Wakeman on organ and celeste, and of course Bowie on acoustic and vocal. It got great reviews in the UK music press, but was ignored by the record-buying public in the UK, US, and everywhere else it was released.
The singles at this time came out in mono rather than stereo, because AM radio was so dominant. The version here is an alternative mix (still in mono) created back in the day by Visconti for US market promotion, but apparently (and audibly) wasn’t different enough, so it was forgotten about until now.
The “stereo” mix of the original version didn’t appear until The Best of David Bowie 1969-1974 album came along in 1997, and the artificial separation is very obvious. David re-did the song with a doo-wop/50s styling and Ronson rather than Bolan (but at least it was in stereo finally) for Aladdin Sane in ’73.
For my part, I’m delighted “The Prettiest Star” didn’t initially do that well. Yeah, it’s a lovely song — but if it had been another chart success like “Space Oddity,” he might have decided to work in the more conventional vein of love-song writing, because at this point he was still laser-focused on becoming a star. The fact that the song flopped so hard meant he had to find another way to become a rock god, and — thank heavens — he soon did.
“London Bye Ta-Ta” had been originally recorded as a potential single for Space Oddity back in ‘68, but was rejected (Deram dropped Bowie from the label after this). It was re-recorded in January of 1970 at the same time as “Prettiest Star” and with the same all-star guest cast, and was again supposed to have been a single, but got bumped by “The Prettiest Star,” which ended up having “Conversation Piece” as its b-side.
Consequently, this mono version of LBTT too was thrown into the vaults, and didn’t turn up again until Sound + Vision came out in 1989. The 2003 reissue of S+V included a previously-unreleased stereo mix of the song from 1970, which also turned up on the 2009 reissue of Space Oddity, and now appears here next to the mono version. There’s also a 2020 mix later on in the disc.
The final single from Space Oddity was a re-recorded electric version of “Memory of a Free Festival, Part 1” with the b-side being Part 2 of the same song, and they are both here in the 2015 remastered versions made for the Five Years Bowie box set. As the liner notes in the accompanying book for The Width of a Circle point out, this single not only featured Mick Ronson’s recording debut, but also the first use of a proper synthesizer on a Bowie record — no, the Stylophone on “Space Oddity” doesn’t count.
This electric version is also the first hint of Bowie’s stronger and more exuberant voice, hinting he will soon be leaving behind his more boyish and folkier tendencies that dominated the first two albums. This improved vocal style will serve him well on the harder Man Who Sold the World. This, though, is where he starts sounding like a real rock star.
The Hype, L-R: Bowie, unidentified man in stripes, Tony Visconti, Woody Woodmansey, Mick Ronson
Even though that single didn’t do well either, the new growth in David was spotted, and while Mercury had pretty much given up on Space Oddity at last, they seemed to be more impressed by his demo of a new song, “Holy Holy.” The first studio version of it was recorded by Bowie’s former bassist Herbie Flowers rather than Visconti, and released in January of ‘71 but went nowhere — as usual with Bowie singles up to this point.
The song was important, though, as the first indication that Bowie had taken on some influence from Bolan, and was starting to read a lot of Alastair Crowley, which greatly coloured The Man Who Sold the World and, eventually Ziggy Stardust. The first version heard on Width is the original version, produced and played on by Herbie Flowers (but remastered in 2015). You’ll immediately notice how oddly prominent Flowers’ bass is in his production of it …
We’ll be coming back to these records — plus “All the Madmen” — when we get to the all-new 2020 mixes of these singles by Visconti done for this project, and found at the end of this disc. All I’ll say for now is that technology — like Visconti — has come a long way in the interim.
Four singles (almost a fifth, even!) and all were flops. I believe it was The Curse of the Perm.
The Sounds of the 70s: Andy Ferris
Short version: what a difference not-quite-three months makes. Recorded on March 25th of 1970, from the very opening notes it is clear that Mick Ronson has taken over all electric guitar duties, and the band (Tony on bass, John Cambridge on drums) have really gelled — freeing David to be a true R’n’R frontman, pushing his voice and only playing acoustic guitar as needed.
Going back to Disc 1’s live performance for John Peel, you’ll recall that it started with a lengthy solo performance from “troubadour” David before slowly bringing on Cambridge and Visconti for another two numbers, finally adding the just-met guitarist Ronson on for the second and more rocking half — slowing moving from acoustic, to soft-rock trio, and finally to a rock band.
This time, the very first notes we hear are those of Ronson, teasing out the intro to a muscular cover of Lou Reed’s “Waiting for the Man.” As Bowie struts his now completely fey-free vocals, Ronson plays over, under, and all around the band’s music bed like a kid at a new playground. Taking a short break for some noodling, the band pulls it all back together for a hell of a showy finish that only sounds odd because of the lack of 10,000 screaming fans cheering in the stadium that the band are all playing for in their minds.
The session was produced by a man named Bernie Andrews, who had previously helmed a couple of Radio One sessions for what was now (and only briefly) being called David Bowie’s Hype. The next number, “The Width of a Circle,” is one of the overlaps between this radio session and Peel’s live session from January, and the comparison is pretty jolting, even though the same lineup played on both.
To be fair, the previous version was when Ronson had just joined, still dominated by acoustic guitar, and Bowie’s definitely struggling a bit to sing over the band. For this Andy Ferris performance, the songs were recorded ahead of the show’s airing on April 6th, and treated like a studio recording, with overdubs and tracked vocals.
This time, Ronson leads the way, seconding himself on guitar. Bowie’s using copious echo, and this time has no trouble at all with his range and sustains. Following the first voice, we get multiple-overdubs of Bowie accompanying himself, for a better finish — though we’ll have to wait for the album version on the forthcoming Man Who Sold the World to hear the complete, eight-minute version, which was recorded just a few weeks after this.
Next up was a very restrained but definitely electric take on “The Wild-Eyed Boy from Freecloud,” where Ronson and the boys play it pretty safe and let Bowie take the lead. Ronson does take some time near the end to borrow a hook or two from Visconti’s symphonic album version of the song, which appeared on the Space Oddity album.
As the book notes, the song was one of Bowie’s favourites for a long time, and also appeared (in an acoustic version) as the b-side for that album’s title track, which of course became Bowie’s first hit. But the really interesting track here is what I think might be the world debut of “The Supermen,” which as it turns out was a brave thing to do.
Just two days earlier, the book tells us, the band attempted to record the song in studio, but weren’t happy with it. The version we hear on this performance is a re-do of that failed version, and although it is carried off successfully this time it does have some distinct differences to the slightly-rewritten version that made it onto MWStW.
Ronson’s guitar growls angrily on the rhythm track, allowing him to overdub the occasional leads, Bowie also doubles himself on the wailing “So softly, a supergod cries!” refrain, and the whole thing is Very Serious and Nietzchian. “The Supermen,” more than the other tracks in this performance, previews where Bowie’s head was at for the forthcoming third album.
Still images from the Sounds of the 70s sessions.
The 2020 Mixes
For this box set and the 50th anniversary of The Man Who Sold the World, Parlophone went back to Tony Visconti in 2020 and asked him to create new mixes of the singles of 1970 detailed earlier, as well as “All the Madmen” which was almost … but then not … issued as a single in that year in advance of the forthcoming MWStW album. As it turns out, “Holy Holy” came out in its stead, but we’ll get to that.
Naturally, Visconti took full advantage of the masters as well as the latest in technology to create these new mixes. For this portion of the essay, I’ve opted to compare these new mixes to the original single version only. How do they compare?
Starting with “The Prettiest Star,” the immediately noticeable thing is the natural-sounding stereo, again drawn from the original mono recording. Listening to that original single, Bolan’s guitar is also more balanced and less pronounced, but still prominent.
Bowie’s vocal is right in the center as it should be, and echoed slightly in the run up to the title refrain. Everything sounds smoother, more polished, and in particular the synth, background vocal and strings get to move and sway around the channels, giving it the dreamlike effect that was clearly intended.
Ronson’s guitar, which replaces Bowie’s vocal for the break, also stays in the center — but unlike the original single, doesn’t play through to the end. Instead, Visconti gently fades Ronson’s last notes and extends the synth and strings combo to give the finale the same dreamlike quality they’ve had throughout the song — a really nice touch, in my opinion, and of course a huge improvement.
And speaking of huge improvements, the 1970 stereo mix of “London Bye Ta Ta” gets a massive makeover here, starting right with the opening. In the original, you opened with the acoustic in your left ear, followed by a blast of the rest of the band coming in a bar later on the right.
The 2020 mix offers a softer acoustic intro, followed by the band coming in more naturally on both channels. Bowie’s vocal is a little less pronounced, but smoother with just a slight reverb added, and broadly this version is much less “dynamic” and separated than the original single, but it’s also less “busy” — for example, the entire first verse and bridge loses the background singers, known as Sunny and Sue.
You can actually hear the piano work more clearly thanks to their omission on the bridge, but don’t worry — they show up fully on the second verse and bridge. Visconti has added strings, which feels added, but second time around they don’t diminish the BVs and other sounds.
There are some strings in the original, but only near the end, and for the 2020 version they’ve been balanced in nicely. Visconti adds a small bit of studio chat to the very end of the new version that wasn’t present on the single, but it’s contemporary from the original recording. On balance, I have to say I slightly prefer the original 1970 stereo single version, ham-fisted channel separation and all.
Now by contrast, Visconti’s 2020 mix of “Memory of a Free Festival” is a bloody masterpiece compared to the original single. The version of it presented here is the “single version,” running 5’23”, compared to the original single from 1970 which split the longer, 7.5-minute album version into two parts, with part 2 being the b-side.
As with the original, the lovely memory-song of the festival shifts gears halfway through, and becomes the “Sun Machine” jam mantra. But in this new version, every element is so sharp and gorgeous, with Bowie’s vocal so astonishingly clear. Every instrument, every note is so beautifully present and 100 percent mud-free, even with all the overdubbing of vocals in the second part.
On the original version, Bowie and the organ were mostly on the left, other elements mainly on the right until certain points, where both channels are used to full effect, and it was a very effective audio “special effect.” In the 2020 mix, Visconti creates a new version of the same trick: this time, everything is in full stereo, but the moments between the verses (and at other strategic points) are double-tracked and more separated at a higher level. It is a magical effect on headphones, maaaaan.
If you love this song like I do, this version feels like Bowie’s vision for it has finally been realised at long last, and it may even bring a tear to your eye. It makes the original single version sound like an 8-track tape that’s been left out in the rain.
Penultimately, we get to “All the Madmen,” which was intended as an advance promotional single (with the same song on the b-side) from the forthcoming MWStW album, but it never actually got released. The single (in mono) was supposed to be released on 4 November 1970 — the same date as the US album release — but visa problems meant that Bowie couldn’t “work” (perform) on a three-week tour of US radio stations, which didn’t help matters.
Some copies of this truncated version of “All the Madmen” were pressed, and a few still exist — they’re now rare collector’s items. The single edit runs just 3’15” compared to the album version’s more leisurely 5’43”, and really suffers for it.
It misses the eerie spoken word intro, for a start, and skips the first sub-chorus outright, leaving us with a sudden change in vocal mid-song to the “darker” styling more in line with his recent “rock star” singing ahead of the chorus. The intro starts off rather gently — with its intricate arrangement of acoustic guitar, gentle voice, and discant recorder duet (by Visconti and, surprisingly, Ronson).
Pay attention to that opening, because it’s important; it’s Hippie Bowie with a Perm leaving the building for good, even when David revisits his softer side on future albums. Just compare the sing-song ending of “Memory of a Free Festival” from Bowie’s second album with “Madmen’s” chant of “Zain, Zain, Zain, ouvre la chien.”
It’s just mind-boggling how different this same artist has become in under a year. More books, more sex, and maybe some drugs are about the only explanation for such a sea change that I can come up with.
As for the ending chant on “Madmen,” yes it’s willfully obtuse, but definitely sounds secret and potentially sinister. The first part of the chant on “Madmen” may refer to the Sword of Zain from the Qabalah, while the second part literally translates to “open the dog,” or more poetically, “release the hound.”
Bowie had been reading a lot of spiritual works around this time, including Thus Spake Zarathustra, which leads me to believe it’s a reference to Nietzshe’s idea of acknowledging and dealing with the dark side of one’s mind — which Bowie appears to now be embarking on.
This interpretation is reinforced by Bowie’s own experience with mental illness in his family, especially on his mother’s side. “All the Madmen” is, according to the man himself, about David’s brother Terry Burns — who spent most of his adult life in an insane asylum until his suicide in 1985.
According to a contemporaneous interview Bowie gave in ‘71, the song reflects Terry’s attitude that he preferred living in Cane Hill Hospital because the other patients there were “on his wavelength,” as he put it. The reason this unreleased single appears on Disc 2 is because it was created in 1970 and therefore should be included, and because Visconti has gone back and updated it here with a 50th anniversary mix.
The new version does a nice job of creating an excellent new stereo mix of the elements, starting with the open-string acoustic guitar (which seems like it’s been EQ’d for more bass). The second verse, with the recorders coming in and Woodmansey’s cymbal bell, are considerably clearer here than they were on the single, and the transition to electric with Ronson’s guitar and Visconti’s bass right on the phrase “such a long way down,” comes over much more smoothly in the new mix.
After the sub-chorus, Ronson bridges with dual harmonized guitar alongside Woody’s urgent drums, and the atmosphere change of the original is really “amped up” now. When we finally arrive at the chorus, Ron Mace’s strings-like Moog comes in to add the finishing touch, finally fusing with Ronson’s guitars exceptionally well.
Again, Visconti makes you feel like you’re listening to the master tape, rather than some nth-gen repressing. The handclaps, background vocals, and “secret message”-style refrain are truly present even as they slowly fade away, and overall it’s a big improvement to even the remastered version that appeared on the Five Years compilation.
Disc 2 ends with one last single in November of 1970, a non-album A-side of “Holy Holy,” backed with “Black Country Rock” from MWStW for the b-side, both in mono, again for the US market — since the new album was already out there, but wouldn’t be released in the UK until April of ‘71.
This is one of Bowie’s lowest-quality singles, given the repetition of the one-and-a-quarter verses he bothered to write (which are then repeated to fill the time, though less often as the album version), and the rather overwrought Nietzchian “Sex Magick” subject. That said, the chorus and Bowie’s vocal are pretty good, and the “Jaws” opening (predating that movie by a few years!) always brings me a smile.
But the big problem with the original single is the band Herbie Flowers put together for it (not Bowie’s band at all). They are just way too heavy-handed and, as is typical with Flower’s production, bass dominant. But that’s not to say there’s nothing interesting going on: there’s some vocal doubling with Bowie’s vocal, but it cuts out on the sub-chorus.
Naturally, Tony’s first job is to make this into stereo and clean things up, so naturally even just that makes it sound much better. Cheekily, he reprises the “Jaws” opener after the first verse, rather than the original’s guitar rise. Bowie’s doubled vocals are way clearer here, and are swapped for an all-new echo effect on the run-up to the chorus.
On the original, there is a single guitar “pluck” in between the line “I feel a devil in meeee” and the chorus, but in the new mix there’s a portion of a guitar slide that abruptly cuts off — not sure what Visconti was going for there. The first chorus downplays the original’s background vocals (but they are still there), and instead brings out a little bit of guitar noodling that had been buried in the original single.
The repeat of the half-verse just outright removes the (uncredited) background vocalist and instead doubles Bowie again, right through the chorus, throwing some echo on the guitars on the bridge before we go into a now-third repeat of the half-verse. Following that, Visconti moves Bowie singing “lie” a dozen times into an echoey background while more guitar fill, previously buried, is now clearly over the repetition.
As with the original single, the “lie, lie, lie (etc)” repetition simply alternates with the “to be a lie, high, high, high … oh my” to fill the remaining time till the fade out. One gets the feeling that this isn’t Tony’s favourite single then or now, and both the original and the new mix come over as very slight and full of filler … a sub-par production from a different producer then, and nothing Visconti really wants to reimagine now.
The “Digibook” and final thoughts
Despite the lacklustre final track on the second disc, The Width for a Circle as an overall project is both an excellent excavation of everything that was going on with Bowie and company in a particular year, an excellent “appetizer” before one dives into The Man Who Sold the World, and an attempt to document the transition from pop performer to (eventually, but not quite yet) rock god. Only in the pages of Nicholas Pegg’s outstanding “The Complete David Bowie” will you find more minutia and tracking of each and every appearance, song, and other public effort the man and his band put in to trying to make it big.
The book portion of the box set features a few rediscovered photos from the Haddon Hall sessions that produced the “Man Dress” cover of TMWStW for the UK version. In the US, Mercury’s cover was a nonsensical comic-book style cartoon with a cowboy holding a (holstered) rifle walking past what to Americans would look like some kind of mansion, but was in fact the insane asylum where Terry resided. Interestingly, the cowboy has a word ballon coming out of his mouth, but it’s blank … make of that what you will.
Famously, not only was the cover changed for the US market, the title of the album was changed for both the US and UK editions. Bowie wanted it called Metrobolist originally — some kind of play on the title of the 1927 film Metropolis — but Mercury changed it without consultation. In protest, Bowie hired photographer Keith Macmillan to do the “Man Dress” session for the later UK release.
Original UK coverOriginal US cover
In addition to mostly-unseen photos from that period, we also get pictures of the original handwritten lyrics to some of the songs, a bit of correspondence around the single releases, a couple of contemporaneous DB quotes from interviews about the songs, the various covers for the singles, and (best part) extensive liner notes and backstory for the radio shows and singles. Although the text is spare compared to the volume of music on the discs, it’s micro-focused on relevant details about the radio shows and singles, and very informative.
My one and only complaint about the book (called a “digi-book” because it’s part of the “digi-pack” packaging of the discs) is that that type is damn small and hard to read. As I said when summarising the first half of this package — if you love pre-Ziggy Bowie, then you might need this. Plus, it’s very highly-rated by buyers, and damn cheap, and you almost never see those two things together anymore.
(1973, dir. Gordon Hessler) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 52-week film challenge, film 41
The quick summary: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is as good as Sinbad movies with Ray Harryhausen effects get. This one has everything: a great actor for the title role (John Phillip Law), an intriguing and well-played villain (Tom Baker), a beautiful love interest (Caroline Munro), some comic moments alongside the race to victory, and a great selection of original Harryhausen monsters to complement a well-constructed fantasy adventure tale.
This was the second of the Columbia Sinbad movies, a revival of sorts following the first one, 1958’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. While it would really be nice to someday get a mainstream Sinbad movie where the lead was played by an actual Muslim from the actual region in which these stories are set, John Phillip Law charismatically embodies the qualities of the heroic wayfarer, unlike his successor (my review of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is here).
As mentioned there, for the month of November I’m reviewing movies that feature actors who also played the title role in the TV show “Doctor Who.” While Tom Baker may have one of the longer filmographies of that select group of actors, there are only a handful of films where he had such a large role, and this one is a personal favourite.
What’s great about this film is that, while it is a little slower-paced that modern films in terms of setting up the story location, major characters, and conflict, it is well-directed and tightly edited to to ensure that every scene in the film has a purpose that serves the overall story — the main failing of Eye of the Tiger, in my view.
In this tale, we find Sinbad just doing nothing in particular at sea, when along comes a strange flying creature with a shiny bauble. One of his men injures the creature via bow and arrow, causing it to drop the shiny item — a strange piece of jewelry that looks like some kind of puzzle part. Sinbad decides to wear it as a necklace, despite warnings from his crew.
That night, he was strange dreams, including a disguised but ominous man calling his name, and a sequence involving a dancing girl with a tattoo of an eye on the palm of her hand. A storm comes out of nowhere to knock the ship off course, taking them to the land of Marabia, where Sinbad encounters the ominous man, who turns out to be the evil magician Koura (Baker).
Koura demands the puzzle piece back, but Sinbad escapes with it into the city, where he meets the Grand Vizier (Douglas Wilmer), who wears a golden headdress/facemask to hide his disfigured face (from an earlier attempt by Koura to take over Marabia). The Vizier has a matching piece of the jewelry, but there is a missing third that, when matched with the other two, forms a map to the Fountain of Destiny, on the lost continent of Lemuria.
(L-R) Sinbad, Haroun, and the Grand Vizier
Those who can bring the three pieces back to the Fountain will receive youth, a “shield of darkness” (invisibility), and “a crown of untold riches.” Sinbad agrees to help the Vizier find the third piece, but unbeknownst to them, another of Koura’s flying homoculuses has seen and heard their conversation, and related it magically to Koura’s castle. They discover and kill the homoculous, but the race to Lemuria is now on.
Koura with one of his homoculus spies.
Koura is no ordinary magician; he is steeped in the black arts, and calls upon the forces of darkness for his magic — and each time he does so, the darkness takes some of his life force, visibly aging him in small or significant ways, depending upon what Koura calls for.
The aging begins, and gets worse Koura grows more desperate
In a later scene, Koura is desperate to avoid crashing on some rocks that Sinbad knows how to navigate around, and casts a spell to bring the figurehead of Sinbad’s ship to life, so it can steal the map and bring it to Koura. This is, as you might expect, a big “ask” of magic, and when the (terrific) sequence is over, his assistant Achmed (Takis Emmanuel) is shocked to see that Koura is much visibly older.
The chase continues through a series of interesting set-pieces, and the third bit of the jeweled map does at first fall into the right hands — following a magnificent bit of Harryhausen work as Kourna animates a statue of the six-armed god Kali to win over the natives, with the statue fighting Sinbad’s main crew simultaneously — but Koura steals it and takes the completed ornament to the Fountain, where he appears to win the day (going so far as to receive the youth that was promised, which restores him from the very old man he has had to become to try and stop Sinbad).
Koura also receives the shield of darkness, which prevents Sinbad’s attempt to steal the completed ornament back, but Koura makes the fatal mistake of hiding inside the fountain, where his shadow can be seen, and is then killed by Sinbad before he can claim the third prize. Sinbad thus wins the crown of many riches, but chooses to give it instead to the Vizier, where it restores his face and melts away his mask, making him the new Sultan. Now free to marry Caroline Munro’s Margiana, Sinbad and his friends sail off for Marabia.
The Vizier’s true face is restored by the Crown of Untold Riches
As I mentioned in my review of Eye of the Tiger, that film could be edited way down to reduce the padding and come out a much more exciting 90- to 110-minute film. Golden Voyage proves this theory by being much tighter and faster-paced, and clocking in at … 105 minutes.
Once you accept the (excellent) stop-motion effects work, the movie just carries you along on its quest with a rich set of characters, obstacles, and — let’s face it — cleavage (courtesy of Ms. Munro). It’s also worth noting the film’s b-plot — a merchant who enslaves Margiana begs Sinbad to take his drunken, useless son on the voyage to make a man of him, in exchange for Margiana and 400 gold coins.
Initially operating strictly as comic relief, the son Haroun (Kurt Christian, who would go on to play one of the villains in Eye of the Tiger) does complete his story. By the end of the film, he is a keen sailor who loves the thrill of adventure.
Even by today’s standards, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is still an enjoyable Saturday afternoon adventure, anchored by Law’s credibility in the Sinbad role, the judicious use of comic moments to move the story along, and in particular Baker’s strong performance as Koura (so much so that it led “Doctor Who” producer Barry Letts to cast him for the title character in early 1974).
Baker delivers both on the evil the part requires, and his own powerful charisma to rivet attention on Koura without ever stealing the spotlight away from the story. Yet, he still gives us a markedly different performance here than he would bring to the more heroic Doctor, where he created the first truly “alien” incarnation that remains one of the all-time favourite takes on the character. It’s a pity he didn’t get the chance to do more movies, but at least in one of them he got to play Rasputin — yet another definitive interpretation, in my view.
Continuing with our theme this month celebrating the 60th anniversary of “Doctor Who,” we continue to spotlight films that feature actors who played The Doctor over the years for November. This time, it’s the last Harryhausen Sinbad movie, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, featuring one of my absolute favourite Doctors, Patrick Troughton, in a major role.
It’s a pity this is probably the weakest of the three Columbia Sinbad movies, but it had a surprising amount of bad luck behind it. Patrick Wayne (son of John) is a handsome enough Sinbad, but … no charisma. He definitely puts in the work on the buckling of the swashes and such, but he never comes off as the lead of the film, or even as the hero of the story. Even Sam Wanamaker couldn’t pull a convincing performance out of him.
Another issue with this particular entry in the Sinbad series was that they literally gave animator Ray Harryhausen too much to do, resulting in a mix of excellent work and some clearly rushed and less-well-done effects. As a result, the story really drags, and has difficulty building any tension.
But the killer problem is that, as luck would have it, the film opened just three months after the truly revolutionary (and by comparison, breakneck-paced) first Star Wars movie, that instantly made Harryhausen’s mostly-great work look very dated by comparison.
Fans of Harryhausen’s incredible stop-motion work get a feast with this picture, and point to some of the creatures as among his best work — and they’re right, so if you want to see those you kinda have to suffer through the non-animated slog. The best of these effects are really enjoyable, but there are perhaps too many sequences of them for one movie, and the ghouls we see early on seem very lazy —- since they strongly resemble repurposed skeleton soldiers from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.
No, they’re not quite the same, but too close to the Skeleton Warriors of the previous movie for comfort.
The storyline reads well on paper: Prince Kassim is about to be crowned Caliph of the kingdom of Charak, but his evil stepmother, the witch Zenobia (Margaret Whiting), places a curse on him that turns him into a prehistoric baboon. If the curse cannot be lifted within seven (full) moons, Zenobia’s son Rafi (Kurt Christian) will become Caliph.
Sinbad enters the picture by sailing into town to seek the hand of Princess Farah (Jane Seymour), but the town is under lockdown. Farah eventually finds Sinbad, and tells him of Kassim’s curse and that Kassim must be made whole and assume the Caliph before she can marry Sinbad.
Prince Kassim sees exactly what he looks like under the curse, to his horror.
The pair set sail to find the Greek alchemist Melanthius (Troughton), who may be able to help. Zenobia and Rafi, worried that they could succeed in undoing her curse, set off in pursuit using a ship powered by a giant “Minodon,” a Bull-Man creature made of metal, brought to life by Zenobia. The Minodon can do the rowing of six men from a single master oar (an uncredited Peter Mayhew, ironically also playing Chewbacca in the competing Star Wars), so they don’t need a crew.
Our heroes eventually do find Melanthius, who can’t help them, but knows of a temple in the faraway land of Hyperborea that will be able to undo the curse, if they can get there quickly. If they can’t, Kassim will remain an ape forever, so Melanthius and his lovely daughter Dione (Taryn Power) accompany the group to help in the quest.
Farah and others pass the time by playing chess with Kassim, which is beautifully done.
Zenobia, who transformed herself into a seagull to go spy on the group (a really bad effect that’s really noticeable in a movie with mostly strong effects), sees enough of the map they have to navigate her own path there, but some of her potion was spilled when the crew discovered her in seagull form, so when she transforms back, she still has one foot as a seagull — a nice touch (and callback to Koura’s price to pay for his own sorcery, but that’s from another Sinbad movie).
Anyway, it’s a loooonnnngggg journey to get to this mythical land, that keeps getting interrupted by stop-motion creatures (mostly quite good) and some disappointing traveling mattes that don’t quite work. Both ships finally make it to the Arctic, eventually find alternate ways into the somehow-temperate lost city, which provides the opportunity for a brief nude scene of the girls swimming — until they discover a giant troglodyte.
Well, hello there!
Finally, the two opposing crews have their big fight scene that also involve stop-motion creatures inside the temple of the lost civilization. One guess who wins (and who doesn’t end up as an ape permanently, as we were constantly warned would happen if they didn’t hurry things along), but it’s pretty well-done — and of course they make their escape just as the temple and city destroy themselves, and all ends up well for our heroes and very badly for the villains.
Kassim-ape is by far the most consistently excellent effect, almost at times convincing you that in some shots an actual ape was used. The now-friendly troglodyte and friends’ battle against Zenobia-in-smilodon-form in the climax is another standout sequence, though it’s never made fully clear why this creature threatens and then later helps our heroes, other than a weird “friendship” with Kassim-ape, maybe.
You could cut this film down, shorthand more of the interminable “here’s Sinbad’s boat … and here’s Zenobia’s boat” travel sequences, tighten the plot machinations, and have a really pretty good, exciting adventure movie that runs maybe 80-90 minutes instead of the poor pace of its actual 1h53m. It’s a pity they didn’t do that, because there’s some excellent work scattered among the overrunning parts.
I may be biased, but Troughton as Melanthius is far and away the best actor in the film, apart from the stop-motion ape which is kind of mesmerizing. I should add that the two women, Seymour and Power, do a very effective job in their stereotypical love-interest roles even if poor Jane is romancing up against a flat wall named Patrick Wayne sometimes. At least Kassim, once restored to human form, also finds a mate in Dione.
It’s a pity the Columbia Sinbad franchise finished on such an uneven note, both because of the flaws of the film and because it was mistimed to a fluke revolution in sci-fi special effects by Star Wars and Close Encounters at the box office that same summer. The earlier two Sinbad films are much better examples of the adventure genre, with the pinnacle of Harryhausen’s Sinbad work shown off in the second one, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad — which just so happens to have Fourth Doctor Tom Baker in a major role …
The Minodon (Peter Mayhew) does all the henchman work and gets no thanks whatsoever.
The Chasbah 