Dr Simon Reads...

  Probably Paul and Art’s masterwork? Certainly this one contains a very large batch of their most well-known and sophisticated tracks. The title track is a soaring epic that builds to a climax in the same kind of way beloved of Roy Orbison, and I wonder if Paul Simon wrote it specially to showcase his friend’s voice. It is perhaps a trifle overblown with the orchestral crescendo, but it does what it does. I read that it has gospel inspirations, and I can see that. I’d always assumed that it was a romantic song, but listening to it, it’s as much about friendship (one of many where Paul Simon is missing Art, perhaps – see below). It could also be taken spiritually, although a gospel track would probably be the singer addressing Jesus – “be my bridge over troubled water”, not “I will be your bridge”. Other slow tracks on the album return to Paul Simon’s common theme of isolation – The Boxer tells of a struggling prizefighter, while The Only Living Boy In New York again speaks of th...

  Now here’s a strange one to begin the Seventies, as a lot of it musically harks back to the psychedelia era. Which to be fair is only three or four years ago from the time of the album’s release, and by all accounts it had a fairly troubled production process, going in and out of production three times and eventually passing through the hands of his old Pink Floyd comrades, David Gilmour and Roger Waters (who had basically abandoned Syd by just not bothering to pick him up to go to gigs any more). The tracks all have characteristic Barrett oddness (he was apparently way ahead of the meme curve in one sense. Other musicians: What time signature are we playing in Syd? Syd: Yes.) But despite this, there are some arguable bangers on here, which would probably be better if they were performed with a better singing voice than Barrett who, it has to be said, is a bit thin and slightly tuneless sometimes. This is probably on purpose to an extent. No Man’s Land is glorious fuzzy psych...

  Dave Swarbrick joins the band more fully for this album, providing violin and mandolins, as does Dave Mattacks on drums, and all vocals are now performed by the pure folk voice of Sandy Denny. It’s a more folky and less rocky album overall compared to Unhalfbricking, with a lot of adaptations of traditional tunes, and consequently chock full of elfin knights, besmirched maidens, shapechangers, and going a-walking one May morning. The ballad Matty Groves for example has a story that wouldn’t be out of place in an Americana folk song either – the lady of the house takes a fancy to Matty Groves, only for her husband to come back unexpectedly and kill Matty in a duel, then kills his wife when she proclaims she would rather kiss the dead Matty than her husband. You’ll love it; everybody dies. That the trappings are of a Lord in a Castle and the fight with swords, rather than six-guns, makes it more English (possibly Scottish actually since he is Lord Donald). Farewell, Farewell,...

  The Stones get a little bit gospel on this album, with the opening and closing tracks Gimme Shelter and You Can’t Always Get What You Want featuring choral/gospel elements. The   refrain “ Rape, murder  [which I’ve always heard as “Bladerunner”] are just a shot away ” from Gimme Shelter are sung with great angst and force from singer Merry Clayton, who was pregnant at the time and later miscarried, an event blamed on the emotion that she puts into this song. It’s probably unlikely to be causal, but it’s a dark little frisson that suits the track well, if you're happy to gloss over personal tragedy. As is the fact that the increasingly erratic Brian Jones wound up dead in his swimming pool while the album was still being recorded. I do wonder if, tragic though these sudden deaths are, there isn’t a sigh of relief among band members when the drug-crazed loose cannon is finally out of the picture and the rest of them can get on with making music again. Because despite th...

  I did own a Grateful Dead album once, but it never really grabbed me, and I wondered if that’s because it was a later one from the 80s. Thus I never really pursued them further, despite their legendary nature. I was aware of the “Deadheads”, the army of loyal fans and, although I’m probably not going to become one of them, I now have more of an understanding as to why they exist. The Grateful Dead are another classic Californian-sound band that essentially were Jerry Garcia (possibly the only figure in this list with an ice-cream flavour named after him, unless Phish are on here) plus a revolving door of other musicians, as far as I can tell. They were pioneers of the “jam band”, with live performances forming lengthy jams around their songs, thus each live performance was a unique event and hence the growth of a loyal fanbase who would follow them from concert to concert. I have made my thoughts on live albums known before, how sometimes they can capture a particular moment ...

  This album was, for some reason, released under Walker’s real name of Scott Engel and subsequently flopped, maybe because people didn’t realise it was him? It’s kind of more of the same as Scott 2 previously on this list, but minus the Jacques Brel influences, instead being entirely written by Walker. He eschews the more orchestral style as well, leaning somewhat into a more sparse arrangement. That said, the track opens with the gloriously lush The Seventh Seal, wherein the plot of the Bergman film is given a soundtrack straight out of a Western, and oddly works very well, conjuring up images of stark and lonely landscapes. And isn’t the mysterious Man In Black archetype of many Westerns not just a version of Death? Or am I just thinking of Pale Rider? Sounds a little like Zager and Evans’ In The Year 2525 as well, which is something of a guilty pleasure. This is probably for me the best track on the album, the other more interesting one being The Old Man’s Back Again, which...