Album Review - Led Zeppelin IV

Last month I posted the tracklists for the first four CDs of the Taiwanese pop music compiliation I put together many years ago. I was going to post the tracklists for the next few CDs this month, but the other day I happened accross a music writer's ranking of all Led Zeppelin songs, and it occurred to me that I hadn't done any entries on that classic 1970s band. I thought about doing a list of my favorite songs by the group, but even if I avoided trying to rank them it's often a difficult task to pick a set number of songs, and anyway some albums would inevitably get shortchanged as I haven't listened to them in a long time. So instead I decided to do a review of the band's most familiar album, though I may get around to making a list encompassing other favorites, or reviewing some of their other albums.

Album Title: Led Zeppelin IV
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Release Date: November 8, 1971

Side One
Black Dog (Jones/Page/Plant)
Rock and Roll (Bonham/Jones/Page/Plant)
Battle of Evermore (Page/Plant)
Stairway to Heaven (Page/Plant)

Side Two
Misty Mountain Hop (Jones/Page/Plant)
Four Sticks (Page/Plant)
Going to California (Page/Plant)
When the Levee Breaks (Memphis Minnie[/Kansas Joe McCoy]/Bonham/Jones/Page/Plant)

All of Led Zeppelin's albums were huge in the 1970s, a decade that was the heyday of "album rock", in no small part because of Zeppelin themselves (granted, the band's first two albums were actually released at the tail end of the 1960s, but even those albums remained radio staples throughout the following decade) and continued to sell well for years afterward. However, their fourth album
has to be their most well-known, largely though not entirely because of the presence of "Stairway to Heaven", the song that consistently topped "best songs of all time" votes on classic rock radio for decades after its release. Whether it is actually their best album is of course highly subjective; I'd say a good case can be made for Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti (II and III are also very good, if not quite as varied, and I'm even quite fond of much of the somewhat inconsistent In Through the Out Door, but none of these can match the middle three albums - in my opinion, of course). But this album is certainly one of their best, and not just because of "Stairway". Several of the eight songs on the album are almost universally regarded as classics, and none of them are truly weak. I'd say that if this album falls short anywhere in comparison with its two successors, it's in terms of variety. Not that it lacks variety - songs like "Going to California" and "The Battle of Evermore" are quite different both from each other and from the stereotypical heavy rock song that many people associate with Zeppelin. But there is even greater variety on Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti, particularly the latter - though that is a somewhat unfair comparison, since Physical Graffiti, as a double album, has far more songs. The other two albums also each have a number of songs that rank among the band's best, though that is true of IV as well.

Note on album title: Technically, this album doesn't have an official title, since there isn't one on the cover. It is sometimes referred to using the four symbols that appear on the inner sleeve, each representing a band member, for example as Runes, Four Symbols, or Zoso (after Jimmy Page's symbol, the first of the four, which resembles those letters). It is also sometimes called simply Untitled. But since the band's first three albums were titled Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, and Led Zeppelin III, the title most commonly given to the fourth album is Led Zeppelin IV, a title often used by Page himself. 

Note on links: There don't seem to be links to the studio versions of a few of these songs on You Tube (presumably either the record company or the band blocks any attempts to upload them), so some of the links are to live versions, which are often noticeably different from the studio versions.

Led Zeppelin IV Song by Song

Black Dog: The iconic opening track, famous for its call and response structure (which Peter Green had previously used to great effect in the Fleetwood Mac song "Oh Well") and the riff written by bassist John Paul Jones. Pretty much anyone who has listened to any amount of classic rock will recognize Robert Plant's opening line and then the thundering riff. Some of Plant's lyrics are (not
for the first time in the band's career) on the misogynistic side, but that aside the song is very much deserving of its classic status.

Rock and Roll: Another widely recognized classic, powered by some intense drumming by John Bonham. Plant's vocals are excellent, though his lyrics (paying tribute to the early rock & roll of the 1950s) are not always intelligible - again not unusual for the band. Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart also played on the track, his piano connecting the song more closely to the music it celebrates, though of course Zeppelin's version of "rock & roll" is kicked up a notch. Another high point on an album full of them.

Battle of Evermore: After two hard rocking tunes, the band wisely decided to slow things down with this song, the music for which Page wrote on Jones's mandolin. The mandolin alone makes the song unique in the band's catalogue, and Plant's Tolkienesque lyrics add to the medieval atmosphere. The song is a duet between Plant and folk singer Sandy Denny, another unique feature of the song, as it
is the only time the band featured a guest vocalist. While this song doesn't have quite the classic status of the two that precede it (or the one that comes after it), it is a solid album track and gives the album greater variety.

Stairway to Heaven: What hasn't already been said about this song? The features of it that appeal to me are the same that appeal to many others - its slow build up from gentle folk tune to powerhouse rock song, the musical variety encompassed in its eight minutes of playing time, the vague yet appealing poetry of the lyrics, and the impressive performance by the band. As it was for some many
others (to the point that the movie Wayne's World made a joke out of it), its opening was one of the first things I learned to play on the guitar (I got to the point where I could play the whole song, though not with any great facility and without any soloing, but now I just remember the beginning and a few bits here and there through the remainder of the song). It is still one of my favorite
Led Zeppelin songs, though nowadays I'd have to say I like "Kashmir", "Over the Hills and Far Away", "Houses of the Holy" and a few others about as much. As for the question that recently has been debated widely in the media and the courts, i.e., did Zeppelin and Page in particular rip off the tune "Taurus" by the band Spirit and its guitarist Randy California? I have to say that the jury probably made the right choice in denying the claim (though apparently the decision is being appealed). There is unquestionably a close resemblance between the opening bars of "Taurus" and "Stairway", and I have no doubt Page was, consciously or unconsiously, influenced by the Spirit track. But even the opening bit is not completely identical, and the progression is a rather obvious one that had been used many times before in the past, as was pointed out in Zeppelin's defense, meaning that while Page's "composition" wasn't entirely original, but then neither was Randy California's. As for the rest of the song, it is completely different. So this is not a case where Zeppelin should be forced to share credit, unlike "Dazed and Confused" or "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You". The fact that the iconic opening is not as original as many fans thought does puncture somewhat the song's aura of near sacredness, but then no song, however good, deserves to be treated like it's a holy relic, and anyone who knows music history well knows that complete originality is virtually impossible, at least in any song that has mass appeal.
Misty Mountain Hop: While this song isn't played quite as often as some of the others on the album, I've always been quite fond of it, and its a contender for my favorite track on side two, though "Going to California" in particular is hard to beat. This one is a pretty straight forward rocker with a nice groove to it, and some fun, California hippy inspired lyrics by Plant.

Four Sticks: This is another solid track, and one I enjoy when I'm actually listening to it, but for some reason I've never found it quite as memorable as the rest of the album. Still, most heavy rock bands would no doubt be thrilled to have something as good in their catalogs.

Going to California: A folk ballad inspired by Joni Mitchell is pretty far from most people's idea of a typical Led Zeppelin song, but that's exactly what this is, and it's a great piece of work. Page demonstrates his acoustic guitar chops and Plant shows his versatility as a vocalist. This song is regarded by many as one of the band's best, and with good reason.

When the Levee Breaks: Another song generally regarded as a classic, with Bonham's crashing drums in particular inspiring a generation of drummers and ending up widely sampled in hip hop. I tend to prefer "Going to California" or even "Misty Mountain Hop" from this side of the album, but it's a pretty close call. Notably, this song harkens back to the band's first two albums in that it is a total rewrite of an old blues song, in this case one from the 1920s originally written and performed by the husband and wife team of Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. Zeppelin co-credited Memphis Minnie on their original release (unlike some other recordings where they failed to credit the original writers of the songs they redid, though in many cases probably through ignorance of the song's origins). But as with similar tracks on earlier albums, the band drastically transformed the song, making it into something quite different from the original song.

Album Review - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan by Bob Dylan

Album Title: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Artist: Bob Dylan
Release Date: May 27, 1963

Side One
Blowin' in the Wind
Girl from the North Country
Masters of War
Down the Highway
Bob Dylan's Blues
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

Side Two
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Bob Dylan's Dream
Oxford Town
Talkin' World War III Blues
Corrina, Corrina (Traditional, Adapted and Arranged by Bob Dylan)
Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Henry Thomas, Bob Dylan)
I Shall Be Free

All songs credited to Bob Dylan except where otherwise noted (but see below)

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is not Bob Dylan’s most representative album and it is arguably not his best, given contenders for that spot such as Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Bringing It All Back Home and Blood on the Tracks. But it is certainly one of his most important and best known, and I’d certainly rank it as one of his top five. It is the album that made him famous, catapulting him to the top rank of contemporary artists and causing him to be dubbed the spokesperson for his generation by the media, much to his dismay.

Some of Dylan’s most famous songs are included on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The opening track, “Blowin’ In the Wind”, is still perhaps his best-known song of all, with numerous covers beginning with the hit version by Peter, Paul and Mary; it is certainly the one best known here in Taiwan. “Masters of War”, “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall”, and “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right” are also among his most popular recordings. Among the less widely played songs, a favorite of mine is “Oxford Town”, a song about the civil rights movement, but really I enjoy all of the album, from the English folk of “Girl from the North Country” to the humor of songs like “I Shall Be Free”. Songs like the latter, or “Talking World War III Blues” provide a contrast with the intensity of songs such as “Masters of War” or “Hard Rain”. It’s this variety in styles and lyrical content that makes the album more exciting to listen to than many other folk albums. The album represented a big leap forward for Dylan as an artist, showing progress far beyond his more run-of-the-mill first album (which only had two originals on it, and nothing with nearly the dramatic impact of the best songs on this album). Indeed, it represented a leap forward for contemporary folk music in general, as no one was doing anything quite like what Dylan was doing.

Dylan justly gained fame for his brilliant lyrics, particularly on songs like “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall”, “Blowin’ In the Wind”, and “Masters of War”, but his skill as a writer (recognized last year with a Nobel Prize in Literature) is also evident on songs like “Oxford Town”. The music that accompanied these lyrics was also excellent, but despite what the album credits say, it wasn’t entirely original. Nearly all his melodies were based on older folk tunes, though in some cases he adapted them to the point that they were quite different from his source materials. Still, at most he properly speaking should only be considered a co-writer of the music on these songs, and in some cases only the lyrics are his. Even with the latter he often retained lines and themes from the original songs, though generally the lyrics were at least 80% original, and essentially constituted a new creative work. From today’s perspective, claiming credit for melodies and words that are not your own is considered dishonest, but for what it’s worth it should be remembered that Dylan came out of a folk tradition where such practices were widespread. His hero Woody Guthrie also took his many of his melodies from older songs but then copyrighted them under his own name, as did Pete Seeger (though the latter took pains in the liner notes to later compilations to talk about his sources). The same practice was widespread in the blues as well, with performers like Robert Johnson taking bits and pieces from older songs to make their own. For that matter, while he hasn’t been as meticulous about explaining the origins of his songs as Seeger, Dylan himself has been open about the origins of at least some of these tunes. In any case, it is beyond debate that while perhaps “Blowin’ In the Wind” couldn’t exist without “No More Auction Block” and “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall” couldn’t exist without “Lord Randall”, these songs are still highly original creations that go far beyond their source material, and no one but Dylan could have created them.

It is actually an interesting exercise to compare the folk songs Dylan used as the basis for his songs on this album to his final product. In many of the song descriptions below I've included references to the older songs to make it easier to do this. While the relationships are pretty obvious in most cases, it's also clear that Dylan's songs still ended up sounding quite different, particularly in terms of lyrics, but often in arrangement and even melody. At all events, while Dylan was clearly building on what went before, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan remains a highly original album, and also Dylan's definitive statement as a folk singer (along with his excellent follow-up single "The Times They Are A-Changin'"), as it was not long afterwards that his style evolved dramatically, with his lyrics become more abstract and less direct and his music incorporating more rock elements, as on albums like Highway 61 Revisited. Along with several of those later albums, it is an essential part of any substantial music collection.

Note 1: Unfortunately, the studio recordings of most of these songs are rather hard to find on YouTube. One person seems to have posted most of the album, though whether those will remain available for long is hard to tell. There is an "official" posting of the audio of the album version of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and there's one video accompanied by what sounds like the album version of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". The links in the album track listing above are all to these album versions. Some of the links in the song descriptions below, however, are to various live versions from around the same time as the album; for instance, the versions of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Girl from the North Country" are from a 1964 TV.

Note 2: A few early copies of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan were pressed with a different track listing, including four tracks that were dropped from the later version: "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", "Let Me Die In My Footsteps", "Rambling Gambling Willie", and "Rocks and Gravel". These songs were replaced by "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues", and "Bob Dylan's Dream". While the later version is generally considered a big improvement, the dropped songs are interesting in their own right. "Let Me Die In My Footsteps" is even mentioned in the liner notes for the original album (written for the final version), where it is compared to "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", and "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" gained notoriety when Dylan was told he couldn't sing it on the Ed Sullivan Show, leading him to refuse to appear.

Blowin' in the Wind: The song that first gained Dylan nationwide recognition, and still one of his best known songs. It is both a civil rights anthem and an anti-war anthem, and this wide applicability no doubt helped make it so widely sung. Though it was Peter, Paul and Mary who had a big hit with it, Dylan's own version has always been widely played as well, and remains definitive. Dylan himself acknowledged that he based the melody on the African American spiritual "No More Auction Block" (which was also a major influence on the anthem "We Shall Overcome"), but "Blowin' in the Wind" still manages to sound quite different from the original spiritual (though the similarities between the two are fairly obvious).

Girl from the North Country: As most fans of 1960s pop will immediately recognize, this song is based on the old English folk ballad "Scarborough Faire", which Simon and Garfunkel famously covered a few years after this album came out. Dylan even retains several lines from the original: "Remember me to one who lives there/She once was a true love of mine". But Dylan altered the melody and wrote new lyrics for most of the song, updating the ballad to tell the tale of a modern romance rather than a medieval one.

Masters of War: The most lyrically vicious song on the album and one of its highlights, this song attacks those who profit off of war. The words are entirely original, but the music is based fairly closely on Jean Ritchie's arrangement of the folk song "Nottamun Town" (he apparently had to pay her a few thousand dollars to settle a suit over the matter). Though the relationship between the two songs is instantly obvious, Dylan's song has an additional edge to it, in part due to the lyrics but also due to the way he performs it.

Down the Highway: A 12-bar blues lamenting the absence of a departed lover, this song doesn't have the impact of the songs that came before it, but it makes a nice change of pace.

Bob Dylan's Blues: Another blues-based tune, this one a more humorous one. Nothing really exceptional, but a decent album track.

A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall: If I had to pick a single song as the best on this album, it would probably be this one. It's a lyrical tour de force and Dylan's performance is also excellent. Musically it's based on the Anglo-Scottish folk song "Lord Randall" (or "Lord Randal"), but Dylan altered the original tune and his delivery is quite different from what went before. The result is one of his most powerful songs.

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right: This song also became a hit when covered by Peter, Paul and Mary in the same year Dylan's own version was released. A rather vitriolic song sung to a lover the narrator is about to abandon, it represents another facet of Dylan's writing, one further developed on songs like "It Ain't Me Babe", "Like A Rolling Stone", "Positively 4th Street" and "Idiot Wind". The melody ultimately derives from the traditional song "Who's Gonna Buy Your Chickens When I'm Gone", but Dylan's immediate source was fellow folk singer Paul Clayton's "Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I'm Gone?", from which Dylan also borrowed a few lines.

Bob Dylan's Dream: An evocative song based on the traditional song "Lady Franklin's Lament". Dylan reworks the original fairly drastically, turning it into something new while retaining the feeling of the original folk song. Another solid album track.

Oxford Town: As noted above, this is one of my favorite songs on the album. The lyrics are very cleverly written, and the jaunty tune is very enjoyable and yet still doesn't seem like a mismatch for the rather serious subject matter. Where the tune comes from I am uncertain; I seem to recall reading it somewhere, but I can't track it down now. In any case, even if it's not an original, it's a good choice and quite different from the other tunes on the album.

Talkin' World War III Blues: The talking blues is a style Dylan picked up from his idol Woody Guthrie. Here he uses it to good effect in the humorous take on the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Corrina, Corrina: This is the one song that is officially credited as being a traditional song, perhaps because Dylan didn't alter it much, though he threw in a few lines from songs by bluesman Robert Johnson, another performer Dylan admired. Not as interesting as the songs for which Dylan wrote original lyrics, perhaps, but a decent nod to his various roots.

Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance: This and "Corrina, Corrina" were the only tracks not solely credited to Dylan. He based it roughly on "Honey, Won't You Allow Me One More Chance?", a song popularized by Texas bluesman Henry Thomas, who recorded it in 1928 (though he didn't actually write it either). In fact Dylan changed the song considerably, such that it only vaguely resembles Thomas's version, though it retains almost the same title phrase. Another humorous song, it's a good album track.

I Shall Be Free: This song was based roughly on Lead Belly's "We Shall Be Free", originally performed by Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston and Sonny Terry, though Dylan altered it quite a bit. This is perhaps my favorite of the humorous tracks on the album, and makes a good closer. Some listeners would perhaps have preferred Dylan to end with another major statement like "Blowin’ In the Wind", "Masters of War" or "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", but Dylan decided to close on a lighthearted note, and I think it works just fine.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at 50: What Makes a Great Album?

The Beatles’ landmark album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released 50 years ago last week, so not surprisingly there have been a number of articles about the anniversary in the news. I have already posted my own retrospective review of the album, so instead I want to talk about a more general question: what qualities make a great album? Obviously, there is a large degree of subjectivity involved, which is why everyone will have a different list of favorites. Nevertheless, certain albums appear with much greater frequency in such lists than others. Some of that may be just the weight of reputation (a conviction among some that that is the case with Sgt. Pepper, for example, is why, aside from often appearing at or near the top of “greatest albums of all time lists”, it has also appeared in “most overrated” lists). Nevertheless, it is clear that there are certain qualities that albums like Sgt. Pepper have that cause them to be highly rated by most music critics and fans. While everyone may have somewhat different views as to what those qualities are, I will explain what I personally find attractive in the albums that I like best.

The first and most essential quality, of course, is great songs. Of course, even on the greatest albums, not every song will be a work of genius that is likely to appear on a list of the greatest songs of all time. But on the best albums, all of the songs will generally be at least good, and most of them will be great. An example of this is the Beatles’ Revolver. Many of the songs on that album are absolute classics, and even the weakest of them are at least good. But Revolver is hardly the only example; one thing all the best albums have in common is a preponderance of excellent songs. Occasionally a great album may have a song or two that is mediocre or even bad, but on many good albums even a weak track may serve some purpose in context, even if it seems dispensable in and of itself.

This has to do with another important quality in most albums that I personally would rate as being among the best, namely variety. Even if the songs on an album are great individually, if they all sound too similar to each other the album will end up being monotonous. On most of my favorite albums, the songs have a wide range of arrangements and musical styles, and in quite a few cases the instrumentation varies as well. Revolver is again an excellent example of this – “Eleanor Rigby”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “For No One” and “Love You To” are all completely different along with all being brilliant songs. Likewise, Queen’s A Night at the Opera covers an incredible range musically. In fact, both these bands managed to be stylistically diverse through much of their careers, and this, along with the more basic capability of writing good songs, is one of the reasons why I like pretty much every album they released. Musical variety is also a strength of many other favorite artists of mine, including Genesis, Randy Newman, Sting, the Super Furry Animals, Taiwan’s Luo Dayou and Thailand’s Carabao, to name just a few examples, and this ability to write a wide variety of songs can be seen in all these artists’ best albums. In many of these cases, having more than one songwriter or even more than one lead vocalist helps, though a talented individual songwriter like Newman can cover quite a bit of ground on their own. While there are some albums with less stylistic diversity that I still consider excellent, it’s generally the ones with more variety that I prefer.

Adding variety can also help make the occasional weak track much more palatable in context. Take the Beatles’ eponymous double album (best known as the White Album). Some have suggested that they should have narrowed it down to a single album of consisting entirely of great songs. But aside from the fact that in my opinion there are more than a single album’s worth of great or at least very good songs, one of the White Album’s greatest virtues is its sprawling stylistic diversity. Songs like “Wild Honey Pie” and “Revolution No. 9” are not exactly great songs in and of themselves, to the extent that they are even songs at all. But they both (particularly “Revolution No. 9”) add even more variety to an already incredibly diverse group of songs. To take another example, “Who Dunnit?” from Abacab is many Genesis fans’ pick as the worst track the band ever released. While it is certainly not a great song by any means, it has a bizarre tongue in cheek element of humor that in the context of the rest of the album makes it listenable and even gives it a certain attraction (it helps that it, like “Wild Honey Pie”, is short; if it were any longer its rather limited charms would not be enough to save it). Of course, tracks such as these have to be balanced out by a large number of great songs, which is fortunately the case on both the White Album and Abacab. But context can be key even for tracks that most critics and fans enjoy. Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier”, for instance, isn’t exactly a song, so it would sound odd in isolation, but in the middle of OK Computer, it serves as a sort of interlude, if a somewhat usual one.

The flip side of variety is thematic unity, or at least a certain degree of musical consistency. From the examples I’ve cited above, it should be clear that I don’t think it is necessary for an album to be a full-fledged concept album to be great. I do like many albums that could be considered concept albums, and if an artist can pull off the difficult feat of assembling a group of songs that are great individually and musically diverse and yet are tied together by some overarching concept, that can make their album even better than it would be if it only possesses the first two qualities. This is very hard to do, however. On many concept albums, some of the lyrics ended up sounding a bit forced, which can negate any advantage gained by the thematic unity. Also, it can mean that individual songs taken out of context don’t make much sense. Perhaps this is why my very favorite albums are usually not full-fledged concept albums. The Who’s Tommy, Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall are all great albums that I like very much, but none of them are my favorite albums by those artists (though admittedly I don’t own a copy of Tommy, so it’s possible that if I get one and listen to it enough, I may decide it’s better than Who’s Next, my current favorite by the Who).

What often works better is a loose concept, where the overall theme is vague enough that all sorts of songs can fit it comfortably (such as on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon), or simply tying songs together musically, as was done on the Beatles’ Abbey Road, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or several of Queen’s early albums, as well as on Dark Side. Sometimes the concept will be so loose as to be virtually non-existent, as is arguably the case with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band itself. John Lennon was fond of pointing out that his songs on the album had nothing to do with Paul McCartney’s Lonely Hearts Club Band concept, and in truth even many of Paul’s own songs don’t have any obvious connection to it. But just by tying together the first two songs and reprising the title track near the end, just enough of a feeling of unity was created to make the album seem like a single unified work. Indeed, the trick of reprising an early track near or at the end often helps create a feeling of thematic unity, as when Queen ended A Day at the Races with the same Brian May guitar instrumental piece as they used to begin it, or when Genesis reprised elements of the opening tracks of Duke in the mostly instrumental ending to the album. In any case, while I personally tend to value variety more highly than thematic unity, it helps to make the album feel like something more than a random collection of songs.

Another issue is length. Revolver and Sail Away are quite short, but perhaps because they each still have a lot of songs they don’t seem as short as they are. However, anything shorter than Sail Away, which is barely over 30 minutes, would almost certainly feel unsatisfyingly brief – even Sail Away itself might be improved by adding another song or two. At the other end of the spectrum, there are quite a few excellent double albums; aside from the ones mentioned previously (the White Album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, The Wall and Tommy), other examples include Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life and Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. However, even the best of artists have difficulty writing that much good material, so the best single albums are generally more consistently good than the best double albums.

A final consideration, but one that is largely independent of subjective personal taste, is how influential the album was. If I was making a list of my own picks as the greatest albums of all time, I would certainly take the albums’ impact into consideration, so that one that had a major influence on later music would rank higher than one that I personally enjoyed listen to as much but which didn't have as much impact on the course of music history. In other words, my list of the greatest albums would differ somewhat from my list of personal favorites, though of course there would still be a great deal of overlap, and I would not include albums I don’t particularly enjoy listening to on any but a very long list of “the greatest albums of all time”, no matter how influential they were.

I’ve mentioned just a small sampling of the albums I’d rate among the great ones, or as personal favorites. Others include several albums by Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced and Electric Ladyland, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Fleetwood Mac’s eponymous album and Rumours, Radiohead’s The Bends, and more. But what about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band itself? Yes, that one is definitely up there, even if it isn’t my absolute favorite. After all, it’s got great songs (if not quite the equal of Revolver), plenty of variety, and a loose concept tying it together. Part of its reputation is due to the last consideration I mentioned, namely that it was incredibly influential, indeed one of the most influential albums ever. But even considered independent of its impact, it certainly qualifies as a great album, if only one of many.

My Review of Queen Forever for KKBox

I mentioned in a number of earlier posts on this blog that I had done some reviews for the music service KKBox, most of which are online here. However, since KKBox apparently abandoned their efforts to expand into the Malaysian and Singaporean markets, a few of the later ones didn't get published. A few months ago, I posted my complete article for KKBox on the Genesis compilation R-Kive (as noted in that post, only the first part was published on the KKBox website). Another article that never got published online was the one I did on the 2014 Queen album Queen Forever. I discussed this in the second of my two posts on posthumous Queen releases (i.e., those released after Freddie Mercury's death), where I noted that it should have been released as an EP or else more unreleased material should have been added. I was less critical in the KKBox article, where I stuck mainly to discussing the background of the album and the songs that were included (whether or not they were previously released), but it's still basically an honest appraisal, particularly if viewed from the perspective of a reader who might not have all of Queen's albums already.

Coincidentally, I recently saw Queen + Adam Lambert live. This was my first time seeing any of the band live, and I'll say it was a pretty good show. Lambert might not be Freddie's equal in every respect, but he sounded good on all the songs and great on some of them. Brian May and Roger Taylor were of course great, and I liked the fact that the keyboardist was Spike Edney, who was the fifth member of the band for their last live concert tours with Mercury and even played on a couple of studio tracks on A Kind of Magic. This made it seem even closer to the "real" Queen. The extra drummer/percussionist was Rufus Taylor, Roger's son, which was another plus (he seemed to be a chip off the old block as far as his drumming skills went). Bassist Neil Fairclough was even more quiet on stage than John Deacon used to be (not only did he not say a word, I don't think he was even introduced), but he filled the musical role well and probably sang more backing vocals than Deacon (who admitted to having a poor singing voice) ever did. Maybe someday I'll write a full review of the concert, but for now this article will do.

"Queen’s Reign Continues with Queen Forever"

Formed in 1970, by the end of the 1970s the British rock band Queen had risen to become one of the most popular groups in the world, a status they maintained through the 1980s. Songs like “Killer Queen”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Somebody to Love”, “We Will Rock You”, “We Are the Champions”, “Don’t Stop Me Now”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, “Another One Bites the Dust”, “Under Pressure” (a duet with David Bowie), “I Want to Break Free”, “Radio Gaga”, “One Vision”, “I Want It All” and “The Show Must Go On” were big hits in countries all over the world, and the band sold well over a hundred million albums. However, Queen’s reign seemed to come to an end in 1991, when lead singer Freddie Mercury, widely regarded as one of the greatest singers in rock music (he had even recorded an album with top opera singer Montserrat Caballé), succumbed to AIDS at the age of 45. But in 1995, the band came out with a new album, Made in Heaven, put together from outtakes, re-arrangements of solo tracks, and recordings made in Mercury’s last months. After a performance with Elton John and the release of “No-One But You”, a tribute to Mercury, bassist John Deacon retired from music. While guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor continued to perform occasional concerts and do occasional recordings under the Queen name, working with vocalists like Paul Rodgers, Robbie Williams and Adam Lambert, it seemed that fans had finally heard the last of the classic four man lineup. However, this has changed with the release of the band’s new compilation album, Queen Forever.

Queen Forever is mainly a collection previously released songs, some of them hits like “Somebody to Love” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and others album tracks from throughout the group’s career. But the attraction for dedicated fans of the group is the opening tracks, which are previously unreleased Queen recordings with Freddie Mercury on vocals. The first song, “Let Me in Your Heart Again”, was written by Brian May and recorded by Queen in the early 1980s. The band didn’t end up using the song, though Brian May produced a version for an album by Anita Dobson. It is a melodic ballad with powerful vocals by Mercury and plenty of Brian May’s distinctive guitar playing. “Love Kills”, the album’s second track, was originally released as a solo single by Mercury, who co-wrote it with Giorgio Moroder, but apparently the rest of the band played on his version. The version here is a ballad, slower and with more guitar and less synthesizer than the previously released version, giving it more of a Queen sound. The third previously unreleased track, a version of Mercury’s solo song “There Must Be More to Life than This” with vocals by Mercury and Michael Jackson and Queen instrumentation, is only available on the CD release.

While long-time fans of Queen will mostly be interested in the new songs, for those whose knowledge of Queen is restricted mainly to big hits like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Will Rock You” the rest of the album will be a revelation. While previous greatest hits collections gave a taste of the band’s musical variety, this collection, in particular the deluxe edition, allows listeners who don’t own any of the individual albums to explore Queen’s catalog in greater depth. While many of the band’s hits appear, including really big ones such as the aforementioned “Somebody to Love” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” as well as favorites like “It’s a Hard Life”, “You’re My Best Friend”, “Save Me”, “Who Wants to Live Forever”, and “These Are the Days of Our Lives”, there are also many tracks that were never released as singles in most countries. Some, such as “Love of My Life” and “’39”, are as well known as many of the hits, but others like “Lily of the Valley”, “Long Away”, “Drowse”, “Bijou”, “Nevermore”, “Spread Your Wings”, “Jealousy” and “One Year of Love” are relatively obscure. What is impressive is that many of the less well-known tracks are just as good as the hits, and at the same time are very different from them in musical style. Also, while even casual fans of Queen have heard the voices of Brian May and Roger Taylor on backing vocals and isolated lines and verses from the hits, here they can hear May sing lead on his songs “Long Away”, “’39” and “Sail Away Sweet Sister” and hear Taylor sing lead and play guitar on his song “Drowse”. They can also hear Mercury’s last recording, “Mother Love”, with the final verse sung by May because Mercury never made it back to the studio to finish it. In effect, Queen Forever is not a greatest hits album, nor is it a posthumous album like Made in Heaven, but rather it is a Queen sampler with a few completely new songs as a bonus. Dedicated fans can check out the new tracks and reacquaint themselves with old, forgotten favorites, while new fans can use the album as a starting point before going on to explore the band’s classic albums like A Night at the Opera.

R-Kive – A Musical History of Genesis

As noted in some of my older entries in this blog, I did some freelance writing for the Taiwan-based music service KKBox as part of their attempt to establish themselves in the Malaysia-Singapore market. Most of the articles I wrote for them can be found here. However, KKBox seemingly abandoned this effort last year (or so I was told), with the result that one or two of my later articles were never published online. Most notably, only the first part of my long article on the Genesis collection R-Kive was published. While I wrote a separate (and less commercial, so to speak) entry on the set for this blog, I'd like to make the entire original article available here as well. I thought about just putting the second part here, but it seemed better to have it all in one place. For the sake of any readers who may have read part 1 on the KKBox website, I've included subheadings for the two parts, so you can just scroll down to part two.

R-Kive – A Musical History of Genesis (Part 1)

Genesis was one of the longest-lasting and most commercially successful bands in rock history. Not only did the group itself sell tens of millions of albums, but the band’s key members had successful solo careers, and two of them became superstars. The recently released three CD collection R-Kive provides an excellent chronological overview of the band’s history. Not only does it include many of the band’s best known tracks, it provides listeners with a taste of the band members’ solo careers by including three solo tracks from each of the band’s five chief members. As founding member and original lead vocalist Peter Gabriel says, it shows “different musical histories merging together in a powerful way.”

Genesis was founded in the late 1960s by public school students and aspiring songwriters Tony Banks (keyboard/guitar), Peter Gabriel (vocals), Mike Rutherford (bass/guitar) and Anthony Phillips (guitar). Recruiting a classmate as drummer, they formed a band to perform their own songs, soon evolving a style that emphasized long, complex songs in the genre that came to be known as progressive rock. R-Kive opens with “The Knife”, a song from the band’s second album Trespass and their first in this genre. After Phillips left in 1970, the remaining three added Phil Collins as drummer and backing vocalist and Steve Hackett as lead guitarist, creating the group’s classic five man lineup and quickly becoming one of England’s top progressive rock bands. It is this lineup that features on fan favorites like “The Musical Box” from 1971’s Nursery Cryme and the epic 23-minute “Supper’s Ready” from 1972’s Foxtrot. Two songs from the 1973 album Selling England by the Pound are included, “The Cinema Show”, which included a lengthy instrumental section that became a concert staple, and “I Know What I Like”, the band’s first UK hit single. The band’s last album with Peter Gabriel, the 1974 double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, is represented by the title track, the unusually hard-edged “Back in NYC” (later covered by Jeff Buckley) and the lovely “Carpet Crawlers”. The first disc of R-Kive closes with “Ace of Wands”, a track from Steve Hackett’s 1975 solo album Voyage of the Acolyte, the first solo venture by any of the five group members.

After Gabriel’s departure, Genesis continued as a four piece with Phil Collins taking over on lead vocals. This period is represented by “Ripples” and “Afterglow” from the well-received 1976 albums Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering. The beginnings of Gabriel’s solo career are represented by the hit single off his debut self-titled album, the excellent “Solsbury Hill” (in part about his departure from Genesis). Hackett also decided to quit Genesis for a solo career, but Banks, Collins and Rutherford carried on with the ironically-titled And Then There Were Three, which featured the hit “Follow You Follow Me”, and also represented a trend toward shorter, more straightforward songs. Tony Banks, in some way the most important member of Genesis in terms of songwriting and overall sound, released his first solo album A Curious Feeling in 1979 (represented here by “For a While”, featuring vocalist Kim Beacon), and Rutherford released an album as well. Neither was a big commercial success; nor for that matter were Hackett’s solo albums, but albums like 1979’s Spectral Mornings, which opened with “Every Day” (featuring vocalist Peter Hicks), attracted praise from critics and a following of loyal fans. Peter Gabriel’s third album, released in 1980, was both a critical and commercial success, and included the anti-apartheid anthem “Biko”. That same year Genesis released Duke, a mix of progressive and pop rock that became their best selling album yet. For the first time, Collins took an equal share in the writing with Banks and Rutherford, and the group began writing more and more songs together, including the energetic hit “Turn It on Again”. Collins released his own debut solo album Face Value in 1981, launching the most commercially successful solo career of all with the iconic hit “In the Air Tonight”. That same year, the band itself moved further toward pop with Abacab, but as the hit title track shows, their music was still highly distinctive. Their self-titled 1983 album contained the quirkily inventive “Mama” and the very catchy “That’s All”, big hits in the UK and the US respectively. Meanwhile, Collins was reaching his commercial peak as a solo artist, a period represented here by “Easy Lover”, his 1984 hit duet with Philip Bailey. The following year, Mike Rutherford found commercial success outside Genesis with his band Mike & the Mechanics, starting with their self-titled debut album and the hit “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)” (featuring vocals by Paul Carrack, who sang lead on all three Mike & the Mechanics songs on this collection), which closes the second disc of R-Kive.


R-Kive – A Musical History of Genesis (Part 2)

In 1986, Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford reconvened for the most commercially successful Genesis album of all, Invisible Touch, including the infectious US chart-topping title track and the excellent top five hits “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” and “Land of Confusion”, which open the third disc of R-Kive. Mike & the Mechanics had their biggest hit three years later with “The Living Years”. Tony Banks, meanwhile, had also continued his solo career with albums like the underrated The Fugitive (on which he did the lead vocals himself). In 1991, he released what many consider his best solo album, Still, featuring several guest vocalists including Nik Kershaw, who sang and wrote the lyrics for the excellent “Red Day on Blue Street”, but commercial success remained elusive. Genesis reunited once more later in 1991 for what proved to be their last studio album with Phil Collins, We Can’t Dance, which included the hits “I Can’t Dance”, “No Son of Mine” and “Hold on My Heart”. Mike & the Mechanics had another hit in 1995 with “Over My Shoulder” from Beggar on a Beach of Gold. In 1997, Banks and Rutherford, having recruited vocalist Ray Wilson, released what has (so far) proved to be the last new Genesis studio album, Calling All Stations (here represented by the title track), which sold well in Europe but made little impact in the US. Though Banks, Collins and Rutherford reunited for a last concert tour, and all five members of the classic early 1970s lineup have participated in projects such as this one, Genesis as a band has not released any new material this century, so the final tracks on the collection are from solo projects. Gabriel has continued to release solo albums that have been well-received critically and have sold well, though his commercial peak, like the band’s, was in the mid-1980s. Here he has included one of his more recent releases, the highly original “Signal to Noise” from 2002’s Up. From the same year, Testify, Phil Collins’ last album of original songs to date, is represented by the opening track, “Wake Up Call”. Steve Hackett has also continued to release interesting new material, such as “Nomads” from his 2009 album Out of the Tunnel’s Mouth. Tony Banks, meanwhile, has concentrated on classical music in recent years, releasing two albums. The final track on R-Kive, “Siren”, is from the second of these, 2012’s Six Pieces for Orchestra.

This Genesis retrospective provides an excellent musical history of the band and its members’ solo efforts. Of course, any dedicated fan will find a lot of favorite songs missing, from early tracks like “Watcher of the Skies”, “Firth of Fifth”, “Dance on a Volcano” and “One For the Vine” to later ones such as “Misunderstanding”, “Keep It Dark”, “Home by the Sea”, “Throwing It All Away”, “Jesus He Knows Me” and “Driving the Last Spike”. Many will also notice that some of the biggest songs from the peak of the two vocalists’ superstar solo careers were also left out, including Gabriel’s “Here Comes the Flood”, “Shock the Monkey”, “Sledgehammer”, “In Your Eyes”, and “Digging in the Dirt” and Collins’ “Against All Odds”, “Take Me Home” “One More Night”, “Sussudio”, “Another Day in Paradise” and “I Wish It Would Rain”, among many others, and fans of the others’ solo albums may also regret the lack of more of their songs. But that is inevitable for a band with as long a history as Genesis and with so many members with prominent solo careers. So while fans might quibble about a few of the selections, there is no doubt that R-Kive is just about the best introduction to Genesis and the solo ventures of its members that one could hope for in a single package. As Rutherford says, “it’s a wonderfully impressive array and variety of songs.”

As noted above, I wrote an additional commentary on R-Kive for this blog, including some thoughts on how I might have changed to song selection if I had been in charge. It also includes further links to some of my other Genesis-related writing, including overviews of the careers of each major member of the band. One day I hope to put together my own deluxe version of R-Kive with a lot of the most significant ommissions from the band's career and at least one more song from each solo career added in, though I suspect I may have to make it a five CD set.

Posthumous Queen Releases Part 2

This is a continuation of my previous blog post on "posthumous" Queen releases, i.e., ones that came out after the death of lead vocalist Freddie Mercury.

No-one But You (Only the Good Die Young)
This 1997 recording was the last newly recorded release to involve bassist John Deacon, who subsequently retired from music. The song was written by guitarist Brian May and was originally intended for a solo project, but when drummer Roger Taylor heard it, he suggested it could be released as a Queen song. Taylor also helped with the arrangement and suggested some changes to the lyrics. While Freddie Mercury himself was of course not on the recording, since he had been dead for six years, and so some might argue it isn’t a true Queen song on the basis that only songs with the full four man lineup are real Queen songs, there are also good arguments for including it as a legitimate part of the group’s canon. First of all, there were actually quite a few Queen songs that didn’t include the full band on the recording or that one or more members played a very minimal part on, including some without Mercury himself. May and Taylor, who handle the vocals here, of course sang lead vocals on a lot of their own compositions on the band’s classic 1970s albums and occasionally on later tracks. While Mercury usually did some backing vocals or even co-lead vocals and sometimes played piano on a lot of these, there were a few he seemingly didn’t appear on at all, so his absence on a “legitimate” Queen song is not unprecedented. What’s more, since the song was inspired by him and the lyrics are largely about him, he is arguably present in spirit (using the phrase loosely). As for the song itself, it is a very solid effort with a good melody, arrangement, and lyrics, and the three band members’ playing is up to their usual standards. It may not be one of their best songs ever, but it is still quite good and makes a nice farewell to Mercury, as well as a suitable swan song for Deacon as an active member of the band.

Queen + Paul Rodgers and The Cosmos Rocks
In 2004, Brian May and Roger Taylor teamed up with Paul Rodgers, formerly the vocalist for Free and Bad Company and the man behind hits such as “All Right Now”, for a concert tour and eventually a studio album named The Cosmos Rocks (released in 2008). They used the moniker “Queen + Paul Rodgers”, inevitably exciting debate among Queen fans about whether it was right to use the Queen name for the combination. This was not the first time the “Queen +” appellation had been used, as the EP featuring George Michael’s performance with May, Taylor and Deacon at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert had been billed as by “Queen + George Michael”, a one off live cover of “The Show Must Go On” with Elton John (Deacon’s last live performance) was released under the name “Queen + Elton John”, and May and Taylor did a cover of “We Are the Champions” with Robbie Williams using the name “Queen + Robbie Williams”, and other performances with guest vocalists had been similarly billed. The recording with Robbie Williams had generated some controversy, not least because Deacon made a statement critical of the combination, but May-Taylor-Rodgers grouping was the focus of even more intense discussion because it was not merely a one-off performance.

Of course no vocalist could replace Mercury in the sense of being exactly like him, and someone who attempted to imitate him would inevitably ring false. On the other hand, there is no reason that May and Taylor shouldn’t want to perform together as much as possible, and it is no surprise that their performances should focus on their work under Queen’s name, as most of their own best songs and recordings were originally performed by Queen. It is true any combination without Mercury or even Deacon can’t be considered Queen in the classic sense. But while May and Taylor’s decision to use the Queen name was obviously motivated in part by commercial considerations – not nearly as many people would turn up for a concert if they used the name Smile (May and Taylor’s pre-Queen band) or some other new name, or even their individual names – they were half of the classic band, they were performing Queen songs and the addition of “+ Paul Rodgers” (or “+ guest singer” for other combinations) to the name helped to distinguish the new grouping from the original group. So I don’t have any real objections to May and Taylor using the name, though I would still make some distinction between their performances with Rodgers and others and the classic four-man group.

As for the merits of the Queen + Paul Rodgers combination, it has been said with some fairness that while Rodgers is a good singer, he wasn’t necessarily a great fit for some of Queen’s material. I think there is something to this criticism. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with radically different reinterpretations of songs, and in that sense it was interesting to hear Rodgers’ take on Queen’s songs, but many of them did sound less like Queen than they might have with a different vocalist. Adam Lambert, who May and Taylor have toured with more recently as Queen + Adam Lambert, seems to be a much better fit in this sense, since Lambert is stylistically much closer to Mercury while still being his own man (George Michael was the best guest vocalist at the tribute concert for much the same reasons). I tend to agree with the critics who have said Rodgers sounded best on the heavier tracks but sounded a bit out place on some of the other material. But since my goal here is to talk about new material released under the Queen name after Mercury’s death, I will just focus on The Cosmos Rocks, specifically the songs that struck me as being more Queen-like in my admittedly limited experience with the album.

Basically, while I enjoyed some of the songs that were written mainly by Rodgers, it is the ones written chiefly by Taylor or May that sound the most Queen-like, especially the ones the latter two sing lead on. This is not surprising, of course, as not only did May and Taylor write around half of Queen’s songs between them, they also sang prominently on quite a few of them. The standout songs for me were “C-lebrity”, “Small”, and “Say It’s Not True” (written by Taylor) and “Some Things That Glitter” and “We Believe” (written by May). These songs struck me as worthy of addition to the Queen canon, or at least as good candidates for inclusion. Some of the other songs were let down by weak lyrics – Taylor was particularly inconsistent in this area, writing good or even great lyrics on the above songs and terrible lyrics on others – and others just didn’t make much of an impression on me, though perhaps my view of them will change when I listen to the album more (for that matter, my favorable impressions of the songs mentioned might also change on closer listening).

Queen Forever
This compilation, which came out late last year, is the most recent Queen release and the first since Made in Heaven to feature previously unreleased material recorded with Freddie Mercury. Unfortunately, the new material is limited to three songs. The rest is previously released Queen songs. While these are of course mostly very good, they are unnecessary for fans like me who have the albums already, with the possible exception of a few songs like “Lily of the Valley” which on the original albums opened or close with segue-ways to other songs, making it difficult to separate them for purposes of making mix tapes or compilations. It would have been better to have released the new material with some demos or other unreleased material, if at all possible, or perhaps as an EP. Regardless, here’s my take on the new songs.

Let Me in Your Heart Again
This song, written by Brian May, was the only song that was completely new to me. It had been previously released, but only on an album by Anita Dobson, then May’s lover and later his wife. Queen had attempted a recording for the 1984 album The Works but abandoned it, and those initial efforts served as the basis for this recording. It’s a pretty good song, though not a great one, and qualifies as an authentic Queen song, if not a classic.

Love Kills
This song was familiar to me and most fans as a Freddie Mercury solo track. Supposedly it was also considered for The Works but rejected before being released by Mercury as a solo track from the soundtrack of Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of the classic film Metropolis, and apparently all four members of the group, including Deacon, appear on it. If it had been on The Works, it would have been the first Queen song to have been co-written by someone outside the band (in this case Moroder, who wrote it with Mercury), with the only later examples being “All God’s Children” (written by Mercury and Mike Moran) and “Too Much Love Will Kill You” (written by May with Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers). The version on Queen Forever is much slower than the Mercury solo version. It’s a decent track, though I haven’t decided whether I like this version or the Mercury solo version better. In any event, both versions fall into the “good but not great” category.

There Must Be More to Life Than This
This track, a version of a song written and previously released by Mercury on his first solo album Mr. Bad Guy, was the most widely discussed new release on Queen Forever because it is a duet between Mercury and Michael Jackson. It was one of (supposedly) three songs Mercury and Jackson recorded together in the early 1980s, but unfortunately this was the only one May and Taylor were able to get permission to release. I’ve previously heard a pirated recording of this song with just Jackson on vocals as well as a duet version, and I’ve also heard a pirated version of the Jackson song “State of Shock” sung by Mercury and Jackson (I’ve never seen or heard any version of the third song, said to be called “Victory”). It was one of the better songs on Mr. Bad Guy, and this is a reasonably good version as well, though it’s a little hard for me to think of it as a Queen song.

Though some of the songs discussed above (including "No-one But You" and the songs from The Cosmos Rocks) only seem to marginally qualify as Queen songs, they are all pretty good and if assembled together could make a decent Queen album, though a somewhat short one. In any case, while it is probably too much to expect any more releases of unreleased material by the classic Queen lineup, I hope May and Taylor continue to make music, including perhaps some new recordings together (it might be interesting to see what they could do with Lambert, for example). The old Queen may be gone forever now, but as the song says, "the show must go on".

Posthumous Queen Releases Part 1: Made In Heaven

Having recently done a review of Queen Forever for KKBox (though it doesn't seem to available online yet), I figured it might be interesting to do a review of posthumous Queen albums and songs. First, however, I should explain what I mean by “posthumous” in this situation. Of course Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon are alive and (in the first two cases and as far as I know the third too) well, and May and Taylor continue to perform and occasionally record using the Queen name. However, I think even they would not argue too strongly with the assertion that in some sense Queen came to an end with the death of Freddie Mercury. Even if Mercury wasn’t almost impossible to replace, the band’s classic four man lineup was together for so long that unlike other bands with more fluid lineups, it’s hard to think of any other combination of musicians as Queen, much as only John, Paul, George and Ringo could be the Beatles (with apologies to Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe). So by posthumous releases I mean anything released by Queen after Mercury’s death, and especially anything with Mercury (and Deacon) on it. Though May and Taylor have both released solo material in this period, including a few pretty good songs, I’m also excluding purely solo tracks, except where they were re-arranged as Queen songs.

Made In Heaven
The main posthumous Queen release was the 1995 album Made in Heaven. This was an entire album of previously unheard Queen recordings – previously unheard as Queen recordings, that is. About half the album was made up of songs that had been released in other forms, and in fact one song, “My Life Has Been Saved”, had even been released by Queen. This shouldn’t detract from the listeners’ enjoyment of the music, which is equal to that on most other Queen albums (though not their very best albums from the mid to late 1970s), but it is rather interesting to see how the band managed to create a fairly cohesive album from a mix of unfinished recordings, solo tracks and relatively obscure prior releases.

When I first bought this album, I assumed that most of it had been recorded in the months between the release of the album Innuendo in early 1991 and Mercury’s death late that same year. While I was big enough of a Queen fan to have all the band’s albums in some form or another and even some of the members’ solo albums, there was a lot I didn’t have. I had Mercury’s solo album Mr. Bad Guy, so I recognized “Made In Heaven” and “I Was Born to Love You”, and even with those I briefly (and looking back somewhat naively) entertained the notion that Mercury had actually recorded new vocals, especially in the latter case, as there are some noticeable differences between the Made in Heaven version and the older one, though no doubt it was actually because the band simply used part of an unused take from the original sessions. I also had Brian May’s Back to the Light, released just after Mercury’s death, so I was familiar with “Too Much Love Will Kill You” (I also knew that he had sung it at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, though it was cut from the broadcast I saw at the time). But the other songs were new to me, and so as far as I knew, they had been recorded after Innuendo had been finished. Not that I was the only one to think so; many reviewers at the time were seemingly under the impression that with song titles like “Let Me Live”. “My Life Has Been Saved”, and “Too Much Love Will Kill You”, much of the album was about Mercury and his struggles with his illness, as most people assumed that the songs had been written in Mercury’s last year or two. In fact, only three of them were post-Innuendo, with the others dating back further and some of them also having been previously released. What follows is a rundown of the songs on the album and their origins.

It’s a Beautiful Day
This is one of my favorite tracks on the album, though I think (after 20 years I can’t be sure) that even when I first heard it I noticed that they had deliberately stretched it out. In fact, it dates back further than anything else on the album. During sessions for the 1980 Queen album The Game, Freddie Mercury recorded a brief demo of this song with only his piano and vocals. While the lyrics rather simple and possibly ad-libbed, the melody, vocals, and piano part are all lovely, as can be heard in the original recording, released on the bonus disc for the 2011 remaster of The Game. But for whatever reason Mercury never took the song any further, and it is this 1980 recording that was used on Made In Heaven. What the other three did was to add a lot more instruments to Mercury’s recording, and in particular add an instrumental section that was apparently mainly the work of John Deacon. This was all done with the band’s usual skill, though as I noted the seams show in places, particularly in the transition where they simply copy and paste Mercury’s line “No one’s gonna stop me now” several times. But it remains a great track, even if Mercury’s original demo is in some ways just as enjoyable. The song ended up being credited to Queen (even the recording on The Game reissue), but it seems almost certain that the core song itself is entirely the work of Mercury, while as noted the rest of the Made in Heaven version is said to have been mostly written by Deacon.

Made in Heaven
As noted above, this song was originally from Mercury’s solo album Mr. Bad Guy. Though I am certainly a big fan of Mercury’s singing and songwriting, I have to say that, speaking as objectively as possible, only a handful of the songs on this album reached the standards of the material he wrote for Queen. But from the time I first acquired the album, I considered “Made in Heaven” the best song on it, and the Queen version (created by combining new instrumentation played by the remaining three with Mercury’s original vocals and keyboards) is even better than the original. This is definitely one of the strongest tracks on the album, even if it was also one of the few that I knew from the start not to be an entirely new recording.

Let Me Live
At first listen, this song sounds almost like it was recorded live in the studio, with the band’s three singers (Mercury, May and Taylor) trading verses supported by a choir of backing vocalists. Also, the title and lyrics leave the impression that it was about Mercury’s illness. In fact, the song is an example of the impressive job May, Deacon and Taylor did in assembling the album. The song supposedly dates back to 1983 and was recorded when Queen was fooling around in the studio with Rod Stewart. Apparently it was intended to be a duet between Mercury and Stewart, though as far as I know no bootlegs of the original recording were ever leaked. It’ s quite possible that the song as recorded at the time was incomplete. In any case, it seems that Mercury only recorded one verse and the chorus, so to complete the song May and Taylor had to record additional verses. Whether the lyrics for these had already been written or were added when the band was working on Made in Heaven I don’t know, though my guess is that the latter was the case, and that the bridge (sung by Taylor) was also a late addition. Regardless, the final result is pretty successful.

Mother Love
Unlike the first few songs on the album, this really was written and recorded during Mercury’s last year of life. In fact, it was the last song he ever recorded vocals for, and he proved unable to finish it, never making it back into the studio to do the third and final verse, leaving May to sing it. Even without knowing this, I felt from my first listen that the song had a poignant, emotional edge to it that was not common to Queen songs. Mostly written by May, Mercury contributed to the lyrics (whether he wrote most or just some of them is unclear), and it’s possible that in this last recording he let some of what he was going through show in the song. In any case, this is another strong track, though it is relatively dark and subdued for a Queen song.

My Life Has Been Saved
A melodic piece of pop rock, it probably should have been obvious that this was the work of John Deacon, though it’s credited to the whole band. This alone among all the songs on the album had already been released as a Queen song, but as it was a B-side from The Miracle and was not included as a bonus track on the re-mastered CD of the album I owned, I had never heard it before. Once again, some listeners undoubtedly took lyrics like “I read it in the papers/There’s death on every page” as a reference to Mercury’s situation, but since he hadn’t even officially told his bandmates about his illness at the time (though they may have started to guess the truth), it seems unlikely that Deacon was making any reference to it. The Made in Heaven version is an improvement on the original version, though the latter is pretty good as well.

Heaven for Everyone
This song was the first single released off the album, and as the first new Queen release since Mercury’s death (discounting the “Bohemian Rhapsody”/”Those Were the Days of Our Lives” single released immediately after he died) it went straight to number 1 in the UK. But like much of the rest of the album, it wasn’t a new song; in fact, two different versions of it had been released previously. Written by Roger Taylor, it was originally released in 1988 under the name of his band the Cross on their debut album Shove It and as a single off that album. On the single version, the lead vocals were by Roger Taylor, but Freddie Mercury made a guest appearance as backing vocalist, and on the album version (in the UK, at least), Mercury sang lead. The Queen version was apparently recorded using Mercury’s vocals from these recordings with a new instrumental backing track, much like the new versions of “Made in Heaven” and “I Was Born to Love You”. While the Cross version was known to a few dedicated Queen fans, most listeners probably assumed “Heaven for Everyone” was a new song, as I did at first. Ironically, though this was the biggest hit from Made in Heaven, I prefer many of the other songs on the album. It’s still a good song, but it lacks the energy of songs like “Made in Heaven”, “Let Me Live” or “It’s a Beautiful Day” and is not quite as poignant as “Mother Love” or “A Winter’s Tale”.

Too Much Love Will Kill You
This is yet another song that had previously been released as a solo track, in this case by Brian May. In this case, I (and most other Queen fans) knew it already, not only from May’s solo album Back to the Light, but because he’d performed it at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert (though his performance was cut from the broadcast I saw). At the time some critics apparently assumed that May had written it in response to Mercury’s death (I seem to recall that one even criticized it for being in somewhat bad taste), but as we learned with the release of Made in Heaven it had been previously recorded by Queen at the time of The Miracle with Mercury on vocals. The Made in Heaven version was presumably just a release of that recording, though perhaps with a little later tweaking. I tend to rank this song a little above “Heaven for Everyone”, though it’s not my favorite track on the album. Mercury’s impassioned vocals are a plus (though May's version is not bad), but the song meanders a bit.

You Don’t Fool Me
This is another of the few truly new songs, though in fact it was apparently patched together from various bits by producer David Richards, who from what the band members have said deserves a lot of credit for creating the song – indeed he arguably should have gotten a writing credit. However, the limited nature of the recordings he used to assemble the song shows to some degree, as there really isn’t that much substance to the track. Perhaps for this reason, it’s one of the weaker tracks on the album, though it’s still entertaining in its way, and as the only funk-oriented track on the album, it adds diversity to the album.

A Winter’s Tale
Along with “Mother Love” and “You Don’t Fool Me”, this song was apparently one of the only tracks on the album that was entirely written in the months following the release of Innuendo. While credited to Queen as a whole, it is said to be the last song Freddie Mercury wrote. The liner notes in the reissue merely say that it was his last complete lyric and that the chorus was completed in the studio (whether this is referring to the lyrics or the music is unclear), but presumably he wrote most of the music or at least the melody and he may even have played the keyboard. It’s a pleasant song with evocative lyrics and a heartfelt vocal from Mercury, though I can’t say it is the equal of his very best compositions on previous albums, particular in his peak years in the 1970s. In other words, it is a good song but not quite a great one. Still, it is a fitting farewell from Mercury as the composer of so many brilliant songs over the years, and it also works well as the final new track on the album.

It’s a Beautiful Day (Reprise)
Despite the briefness of Mercury’s original tune, the rest of the band evidently liked “It’s a Beautiful Day” a lot and enjoyed finding different ways to add to it, as not only did they open the album with it, they reprised it at the end. As I mentioned above, I really like the core song, short though it is, and I think it’s an excellent choice to open and close the album.

Yeah and Untitled Track
The remainder of Made in Heaven consists of a single “Yeah” from Freddie Mercury that is treated as a separate track. It is followed (on CD) by a 22 minute untitled track that consists of looped sounds and other musical samples and bits. It was put together mainly by producer David Richards with some contributions from May and Taylor. While both of these tracks are interesting in different ways, neither is a Queen song in the conventional sense, so it makes little sense to judge them by the standards of the rest of the band’s catalogue.

Heaven for Everyone was a very successful album at the time, and it was an effective coda to the band’s years with Mercury. May, Taylor and Deacon managed to put together an album which at least on the surface was a fairly unified whole, with an overall quality that was comparable to most of the band’s albums from the previous decade, though not equal to those released in their peak years in the mid to late 1970s. A closer examination reveals that the album was in truth a bit of a patchwork, but in some ways that makes the three remaining members’ achievement more impressive. To fans who had been obsessive enough to collect all of the band’s releases, including solo work, half the songs would have been recognizable, but even for them the rest would have been new or at least unheard (since “It’s a Beautiful Day” and “Let Me Live” had not been previously released in any form, even though their origins dated back to the early 1980s). For that matter, the new arrangements of the previously released songs were arguably better than the originals, or at least were interesting variations. So while it wasn’t by any means the band’s best album, it was a pretty decent one, and in my opinion (and probably that of many other fans) the last true Queen album, though a number of individual Queen songs have been released subsequently, as I will discuss in the forthcoming second part of my examination of Queen releases after Mercury’s death.

[As a side note, it occurs to me that in many ways Heaven for Everyone is a bit like my series of post-breakup “Beatles” albums. Like them, it consists at least in large part of solo recordings by various members re-imagined as songs by the band. Of course, there are many differences, such as the inclusion of older unreleased tracks originally recorded by the band as a whole (though I did have one such track (“Not Guilty”) on Working Class Heroes, my second post-breakup Beatles album) and more importantly the fact that, even though their parts were mostly recorded separately (especially Mercury’s), all members of Queen appeared on most of the tracks, while since the songs on the “Beatles” albums were all actually solo tracks, other Beatles only rarely played on them. In this respect, Heaven for Everyone more closely resembles “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” from the Beatles Anthology sets, with John Lennon in Mercury’s role as the deceased member whose recordings the rest of the band built the song around.]

Some Thoughts on the Genesis Compilation R-Kive

I only became aware of the release of R-Kive, the 3-CD Genesis compilation released in the fall of 2014, a few months after it came out. I wrote a lengthy review – actually more of a description simultaneously serving as a summary of the band’s career – of it for the music service KKBox (the first part is online here, though I'm not sure what happened to the second part). As long as that article was, there was a lot more I could have said about R-Kive that I didn’t include there, so this is sort of a supplemental review. First of all, I should note that my earlier article, though written in the knowledge that it would be mainly used to promote the album, is an honest summary of my feelings about the compilation. I really do consider it to be an excellent summary of the band’s career, and I love the idea of including songs from each of the five key members’ solo careers to provide a fuller picture and introduce people to music that they might not have heard before. Also, all things considered, I think the song selection is a good one, and for the most part it’s hard to argue with the choices. I really do recommend the set very highly to any music fan who isn’t familiar with the music of Genesis or is only familiar with a small part of their career.

Of course, like any other fan, I can think of alternative choices that I might have preferred over the songs included. However, I must admit that I like all the songs that were chosen enough that I would have a hard time dropping them, with maybe one or two exceptions. The truth is, if I were to make my own version of R-Kive, I’d be tempted to expand it to four CDs in order to include even more songs I think it’s a shame to leave out while keeping the vast majority of what’s already on there. In particular, I’d be inclined to add more solo tracks, not because I necessarily prefer them to the Genesis tracks (on the contrary, on the whole I prefer the Genesis material throughout the band’s career, even in the 1980s – though that sentiment would no doubt horrify a vocal segment of fans), but because I think that would make the set an even more thorough introduction to the complete world of Genesis. In fact, even four CDs isn’t quite enough to fit all the songs I consider essential listening, especially since many of the Genesis tracks I’d want to add are very long (and just four eight to ten minute tracks take up half a CD). I will talk about my attempt to assemble a 4-disc R-Kive set in a future essay.

First, some additional thoughts on the collection as a whole. I particularly like the chronological sequencing, as it allows listeners to hear how the band (and its individual members) evolved over time. While the previously released Platinum Collection is also a great overview of the group’s career, one reason it is surpassed by this collection, aside from the inclusion of solo tracks in this one, is that the previous set was sequenced backwards, starting with the newer material and going back. While this is more or less how I was exposed to Genesis myself, having first heard the hits in the 1980s and then gone back to the early years, I prefer to listen the band’s evolution in the forward direction, not least because, unlike some other fans, I think the later material is just as good in its way as the early stuff, if not always quite as inventive. In any case as in reality the band’s evolution happened in this direction, going forward in time is the best way to hear it.

The exclusion of the first album – most likely mainly because of licensing issues, not because the band prefers to ignore that part of their career – means we don’t hear the very first part of this evolution, but “The Knife” does make a much better opening track than anything on the debut would have. While some of the same fans referred to above, namely those who only like complex songs in the progressive rock vein, may think that the compilation is too heavily weighted toward the later material – particularly as Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance are represented by three songs apiece, whereas the early albums, with the exception of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, are only represented by a single song each, this is in fact debatable, especially given the length of the early songs. In fact, “Supper’s Ready” alone takes up more space on the collection than all the songs from either of the above-mentioned albums. In fact, if anything is underrepresented, it is a few of the albums in the middle period, like Wind & Wuthering and Duke (which incidentally indicates that Tony Banks, despite his central role in Genesis – to the point that some, including at one point Steve Hackett, accused him of controlling things – did not make the final decisions on the Genesis songs, as he has often said that these two albums are, along with Foxtrot, his favorites). My biggest objection to the selection of Genesis songs included, and it’s not a big one, probably lies here, though it’s hard to fix it within a three CD format.

The solo songs were apparently chosen by the relevant band members themselves. It’s interesting to note that both Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel avoided picking their very biggest commercial successes and most widely known songs such as “Against All Odds”, “One More Night”, “Sussudio”, “Sledgehammer”, and “In Your Eyes”, while Mike Rutherford’s picks are more obvious (since Banks and Hackett have had less mainstream commercial success – aside from Hackett’s involvement in GTR – their choices can’t really be judged on this basis). I’ll have more to say on the individual song choices later on, but I’ll say that while I might have chosen slightly differently, overall the solo songs accomplish the stated purpose of providing representative examples of each member’s solo work and showing how they fit into the context of the history of the band itself.

So if I had to stick to the three CD format, how would my version of R-Kive differ from the one that was released? All the songs on the first disc are great, so it would be hard to make any changes. I would be a little tempted to substitute “Firth of Fifth” for “The Cinema Show”, as the former is perhaps my favorite Gabriel-era Genesis song, but as the latter is another favorite, it’s hard to imagine actually taking it off. I would consider dropping “I Know What I Like” instead, but I like it too, if not quite as well as the other two songs from Selling England by the Pound, and as the band’s first hit single, it has too much historical significance to leave off (anyway, since it’s much shorter, dropping it wouldn’t create enough room for the much longer “Firth of Fifth”). As far as the other albums are concerned, while there are one or two songs I like as well as the ones that were included (e.g. “The Fountain of Salamacis” versus “The Musical Box”), the ones that were picked are pretty much what I’d have picked. I don’t have especially strong opinions about most tracks on Steve Hackett’s Voyage of the Acolyte (except that I dislike some of the keyboard sounds, which hinders my enjoyment of a few tracks), but “Ace of Wands” is a good choice.

On the second CD, it’s a little easier to think of possible substitutes for what was included, but again the latter are still great, so I’m not sure I’d actually change anything, with maybe one exception. I like most of the tracks on A Trick of the Tail about equally, so while if starting with a blank slate I might well have chosen “Dance on a Volcano”, “Entangled”, “Squonk” or “Mad Man Moon”, I like “Ripples” just as much as any of these, so I probably would just stick with that. Wind and Wuthering has three of my favorite Genesis songs, “One for the Vine”, “Afterglow”, and “Blood on the Rooftops”. If I were forced to rank them, they’d probably be in that order, but it would be a close match. So while I think it’s a shame that they left off “One for the Vine” and “Blood on the Rooftops”, especially the former, if they’d left off “Afterglow” I would have thought it was a shame, too, so probably I’d keep their selection. “Solsbury Hill” is one of my favorite Gabriel songs, so I’d definitely keep that, and while there are songs on And Then There Were Three I like as well or even slightly better than “Follow You Follow Me”, the latter is still good and is historically significant as the band’s first big hit in both the UK and US. The Tony Banks and Steve Hackett songs are reasonable choices (though if I had been making the selection I might have picked a song from Banks’s 1983 album The Fugitive, and there are other Hackett songs I would have considered), “Biko” is a great choice from Gabriel’s third album, and the Genesis songs from Duke, Abacab, and Genesis are all obvious choices, though each of these albums has at least one or two more songs that are excellent candidates. “In the Air Tonight” is an even more obvious choice for Phil Collins, and “Silent Running” is probably still my favorite Mike & the Mechanics song, so there’s no arguing with that selection either. In fact, the only pick I’d be strongly tempted to change is “Easy Lover”. I like the song, but there are better choices. My favorite Collins song other than “In the Air Tonight” is “I Wish It Would Rain Down”, but of course chronologically that would have to go on the third CD, and adding it there would push at least one Invisible Touch track onto this disc, which would mean splitting up the tracks from that album. Also, “I Wish It Would Rain Down” is quite long, so it might not fit. An easier option would be to pick another Collins song from the 1984-85 period. In that case, rather than choose one of the hits (though I like them well enough, particularly “Take Me Home”), I’d choose “Long Long Way to Go”, my favorite song from No Jacket Required and one of his best songs.

On the third CD, there are some things I might change, though again most of it I’d leave as it is. The three selections from Invisible Touch are fairly obvious ones, though I’d at least consider putting on “Domino”, in which case it’d have to replace “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”, which is the only one that is nearly as long. I’d consider substituting it for “Invisible Touch” (though unlike many people, I like the latter), but it’s so much longer that there wouldn’t be space. However, as I like “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”, and “Land of Confusion” is the best of the hits from the album, I could also imagine just keeping the original selections. “The Living Years” was somewhat overplayed at the time and I can understand those who feel it is overly sentimental, but it’s still a good song with emotional depth (not to mention being by far the best known Mike & the Mechanics song), so I’d keep it. As mentioned above, I’d have liked to have seen “I Wish It Would Rain Down” on the set, as it is one of Collins’s best songs, but as it is quite long it might be hard to squeeze on. There’s also the question of what it should replace; as noted above, ideally it would replace “Easy Lover”, but that would require a lot of reshuffling. It could replace “Wake Up Time”, but the latter is a decent song and I can sympathize with Collins’s desire to include a track from a more neglected album rather than yet another hit. “Red Day on Blue Street” is an excellent choice from Still, though there are a few other songs I’d have considered from that album, which is overall the best of Tony Banks’s solo albums.

Then there are the selections from We Can’t Dance. Unlike most fans of the older Genesis material, I don’t dislike songs like “I Can’t Dance” or “Hold on My Heart”; on the other hand, there are quite a few songs I like better just on We Can’t Dance, not to mention on earlier albums. I might still keep “I Can’t Dance”, as it was a pretty big hit and has a sort of quirky charm, and I’d certainly retain “No Son of Mine”. But I’d probably replace “Hold on My Heart”. Ideally I’d replace it with something like “Driving the Last Spike” or maybe “Fading Lights”, but these would probably not fit. Of the other singles off the album, my favorite is “Jesus He Knows Me”, so that’d probably be my choice, but I’d also consider one of the relatively short album tracks like “Living Forever” or even the non-album track “On the Shoreline”. As for the rest of the disc, the remaining selections from Mike & the Mechanics, the Ray Wilson-era Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, and Tony Banks’s classical ventures all are good choices, though there are other possibilities, particularly for Gabriel. All in all, if I had to redo R-Kive within the 3-CD format, my version would differ very little from the actual one.