Tag Archives: Can
75 Years of the Album: 24. 1972
1972 was a grand year for the LP. Sales were high, record companies had money to burn, the oil crisis and recession had yet to hit, and a lot of rock and soul acts were at the peak of their game.
These are just two of a bunch of great, forward looking records that were pouring out of West Germany at the time. Others include Kraftwerk 2 (Philips), Tangerine Dream’s sprawling double Zeit (Ohr), Ash Ra Tempel’s Schwingungen (Ohr), Agitation Free’s Malesch (Vertigo) and Faust So Far (Polydor). Most were completely unknown in the English-speaking world at the time. Neu!’s first introduces Klaus Dinger’s motorik beat across six tracks. Dinger also sings whilst the bulk of the guitar and bass is provided by Michael Rother. It’s a revolutionary and yet accessible work. Another great drummer with a distinctive style was Can’s Jaki Liebezeit. Ege Bamyasi introduced new singer Damo Suzuki, and displayed a tauter side to the band. “Spoon” was a surprising top ten hit single in the group’s homeland.
Stevie Wonder’s contract was up for renewal when he reached the age of 21 in 1971. To Berry Gordy’s surprise he refused to sign. He demanded complete creative control of his records, and he was the first Motown artist to be given that. The label had little choice. The first fruit of the new deal was Where I’m Coming From in 1971, but he really hit his stride in ’72 with this pair, the first two of five exceptional albums that would culminate in 1976’s Songs in the Key of Life. Wonder played the bulk of the instruments, but introduced Moog programmers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff. It radically changed his sound. “Superstition” would have been unthinkable just a few years before. This would have been of only academic interest if his songwriting wasn’t of the same high standard. It definitely was!
This is an album that seldom figures in best of charts. The Chi-Lites are seen as primarily a sweet soul singles band, but there was a little more to them than that. A Lonely Man leads off with the big hit “Oh Girl”, but there’s not an appreciable drop in quality through the following eight tracks. The title track and a fairly faithful reading of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues” are capped by the eight and a half minute heartbreak that is “The Coldest Days of My Life”, a stunning song. There were a lot of excellent soul and funk albums issued in 1972, not least the Staple Singers’ classic Bealtitude: Respect Yourself (Stax), Funkadelic’s America Eats Its Young (Westbound), Curtis Mayfield’s supreme soundtrack to Gordon Parks’ Blaxploitation film Super Fly (Curtom), and The O’Jays’ Back Stabbers (Philadelphia International).
Hunky Dory laid the foundations, Ziggy reaped the rewards. There’s little new to be said about this record. There are no weak links. Bowie made more adventurous albums, but nothing that just clicked with its time quite like this did.
One of the reasons that the late sixties and early seventies were such a rich time for new music in Britain was the social provisions that existed. It was possible to go to Art School, get a maintenance grant, and not have to pay a penny towards the course. Then when you’d done, there were plenty of jobs about, rents were cheap, and if you needed time to pursue avenues away from work, then you could sign on. It was the flipside to the high taxation that drove the likes of the Rolling Stones out of the country, which was ironic when they and other bands benefited when they were starting out. Roxy Music are the quintessential art school band. They lucked record company interest, radio sessions and music paper coverage when they’d barely played live. The album was an instant success, consolidated when the non-album single “Virginia Plain” (usually included on reissues) was issued in August.
September ‘72 saw two of prog’s giants issue arguably their greatest LPs. In Yes’s case Close to the Edge is a head and shoulders above anything else they did. The case for Foxtrot is less clear-cut. With a side long title track and two other lengthy workouts, all facets of Yes’s music were distilled in under forty minutes: from bombast to beauty, complexity to calm. Foxtrot also had a side-long suite, the incomparable “Supper’s Ready”. The first side is a little less consistent, although “Watcher of the Skies” is among their best material.
The folk-rock folk came up with a number of excellent releases in 72. Sandy Denny’s best solo album Sandy and Nick Drake’s final, short, stark statement Pink Moon were both issued on the genre’s spiritual home Island. Consistently impossible to obtain over fifty years Lal and Mike Waterson’s brilliant Bright Phoebus (Trailer) came out. A recent Domino reissue was slapped down in court by the owners of the Trailer catalogue which would all be very well if they were able or inclined to do anything about making the music available again themselves. Steeleye Span’s Below the Salt (Chrysalis) is easily found.
Some Brit-rock classics include Wishbone Ash’s Argus (MCA), the Stones’ sprawling Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones), the nearest thing there is to an archetypal Stones album, the Edgar Broughton Band’s Inside Out (Harvest), Rod the mod’s Never a Dull Moment (Philips), and Van Morrison’s St Dominic’s Preview (Warner Brothers). Across the Atlantic, Blue Oyster Cult’s five year transformation from the Soft White Underbelly finally resulted in an eponymous record (Columbia). Little Feat found their, um, feet with Sailin’ Shoes (Warner Brothers) and Big Star invented New Wave pop-rock with their hopefully titled #1 Record (Ardent). Jackson Browne’s songs had already been well-covered before his first album came out on David Geffen’s new Asylum label. Also on Asylum were the Eagles’ debut and Joni Mitchell’s For the Roses. Neil Young’s most user-friendly, middle of the road album Harvest (Reprise) would be followed by several years of heading for the ditch. Surprise hit of the year was Lou Reed’s Transformer (RCA).
TV: Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany
After last week’s generally fascinating, if slightly flawed, Synth Britannia (no mention at all of Suicide, and some of the chronology seemed a bit iffy to me), BBC Four’s music documentary series moved on to look at some of the biggest influences on both the synth-pop movement, and indeed all post-punk and electronica music that’s happened since, from Acid Mothers Temple to Alva Noto and all points in between.
Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany is rather a grand title, and it immediately apologised for the term. Krautrock was coined by anglocentric British journalists and has unfortunately stuck ever since to the various amusement / irritation of the musicians themselves. But at least their music was accepted here – in their homeland they remained, by and large, obscure. I remember when I first met my German friend Olly in the early nineties, I breathlessly waxed lyrical about all the German bands that I was a big fan of, and was astonished that he’d never heard of half of them. I’d simply assumed that acts like Cluster, Faust, Neu! etc would all be household names in Germany, something that turned out to be far from the truth.
The programme offered 1968 as year zero for the movement, suggesting that everything before then was Schlager and classical music. Although that’s certainly true for the electronic and experimental bands that followed, surely things weren’t that simple. After all, many British bands cut their musical teeth in Hamburg at the start of the sixties, and other ex-pat acts like the Monks were pretty successful in their adopted land. There must have been some indigenous equivalent, surely.
That question aside, this was an hour stuffed with great anecdotes and superb archive footage. Those interviewed were a great bunch of characters with intelligent, dry humour and none of the rock star pomposity of their Anglo-American prog-rock equivalents. The central theme was that this wasn’t a scene as such, but a bunch of disparate groups from all over the country whose music was equally eclectic, but whose philosophy was strikingly similar – to create a new art music for Germany untainted by the past and yet specifically German rather than a poor facsimile of the dominant Anglo-American forms. And to challenge the West German establishment, something still riddled with relics of the Nazi era. They succeeded, and collectively became a massive influence on much of the interesting music made in the last thirty years. Indeed, most are probably far more widely known today than they ever were in their heyday.
Nearly all of the big players were present and correct – Amon Düül, Popol Vuh, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Neu!, Harmonia, Can, Faust and, of course, Kraftwerk. The only serious omission was Ash Ra Tempel. There were some great stories – Amon Düül’s uncomfortable association with Andreas Baader and Ulriche Meinhof; Faust being sold to Polydor as the German Beatles (?!); Damo Suzuki’s bizarrely spontaneous induction into Can; Klaus Schulze’s admission that he still had no idea how to properly work his first synth that he’s had for nearly forty years. And also some superb archive footage, including the pre-electronic Kraftwerk. Implied, but not explicitly said, was the contention that Eno was little more than a thieving magpie, appropriating ideas from his collaborations with Cluster and using them in his work with Bowie, that archetypal chameleon.
Cramming all this into an hour inevitably felt a bit rushed. But it was great that somebody had the foresight to step outside the usual Anglo-American axis and tell the stories of the makers of some of the twentieth century’s most forward-looking and influential music.
For UK residents, it’s on the iPlayer.
Song of the day: CAN – Deadlock (1970)
Can’s 1970 album Soundtracks is often overlooked – and if it is discussed, it’s usually the fourteen minute meisterwerk “Mother Sky” which gets all the attention. The first three tracks on the album were all used on the soundtrack of a largely forgotten West German heist movie called Deadlock. The film was produced and directed by Roland Klick and shot in the Israeli desert.
The title track is almost a traditional rock song by Can’s standards. It’s relatively short, and is dominated by Michael Karoli’s soaring guitar, juxtaposed against Irmin Schmidt’s blaring organ. The track marks the debut of Damo Suzuki who replaced Malcolm Mooney as the group’s singer earlier in the year. He brings a relatively calm, almost pop approach to the vocals, contrasting with Mooney’s apocalyptic improvisations. Suzuki’s gift for melody is even more apparent on the track “Tango Whiskyman” from the same movie.
There is also a second, instrumental version of “Deadlock” on Soundtracks. It’s shorter, and Karoli is less prominent. The video below shows the band playing the song live on West German TV in 1970.
Music Musings and Miscellany 