stranger than known: BBC Sessions

Showing posts with label BBC Sessions. Show all posts

Tuesday, 22 April 2014

The Faces BBC Sessions - 5 Guys Walk Into The BBC...

In the early 70s there was always great debate about who really was "The Greatest Live Rock 'n' Roll Band In The World". Most claimed the title for the Rolling Stones, many said Led Zeppelin and some said The Who. Also equal contenders were the Faces. The Faces brand of lurching raunch'n'roll rivaled the Stones on a good night and with alcohol fueled cheeky good time cheeriness probably inspired greater levels of audience participation than Mick and Keef, Page and Plant or Daltry and Townshend ever managed to achieve. The best evidence for their live greatness can be heard on their still officially unreleased BBC sessions.

Stewart, McLagen, Wood, Jones and Lane - The Faces

The Faces
The name of the group was The Faces. Not Rod Stewart and the Faces. The Faces. It was a band. Rod Stewart was the lead singer. Ronnie Wood played the guitar and had a sound that rivaled, and arguably surpassed, Keith Richard's for rusty bucket raunchiness. Ronnie Lane played a funky, melodic, chunky bass and also sang and wrote a few songs. Ian McLagan provided a snaky classic Hammond organ sound and Kenny Jones played some of the most propulsive drums in British rock.

The band had grown out of the Small Faces. Singer / guitarist Steve Marriott had decided that the Small Faces weren't serious enough for him and he wanted to put some hair on his chest, play boogie rock and hit it big in the USA. So off he went off to form Humble Pie with his mate Peter Frampton. With the lead singer / guitarist having left them in the lurch, the three remaining Small Faces teamed up with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, both of whom had just left the Jeff Beck Group and were looking for a band. Stewart was the last to join as the wary and unconvinced Ronnie Lane, already let down by one lead singer, had an inkling that Stewart, who already had a promising solo career on the go, probably wouldn't stick around for long once fame struck. Which is pretty much what happened.

The BBC sessions
The band never really recorded a classic album and after Rod Stewart's solo success they seemed to be cast further and further into his shadow. There are some great singles but the band are best remembered live. Unfortunately the official live album "Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners", recorded at the end of their career after Ronnie Lane had left, completely fails to do them justice. The evidence for their true live greatness is to be found on many of the strangely still unreleased BBC sessions from the period. The band recorded quite a large number of live sessions from 1969 to 1973 - probably as a result of their being BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel's favourite band - and they are dynamite. A list of songs and session dates can be seen at the bottom of this post.

Proof? Listen to this mammoth 12 minute version of Ike and Tina Turner's "You're My Girl (I Don't Want To Discuss It)" from a concert recorded at the Paris Theatre in London for a John Peel's Sunday Concert radio show on May 13th 1971. It shows how stunning the band really were live. Ron Wood intros the song with an agitated Meters / James Brown style hard funk guitar riff - kind of punk funk - McLagan's keyboards respond to Wood's riffing, and rhythm section Lane and Jones anchor the heavy funk while Stewart goes into his best soul man mode. Around 4 to 5 minutes in it starts to get almost unbearably intense. And loud. Stewart is lost in the sheer power of a band possibly somewhat overawed at the flow of events themselves. The band go way beyond whatever the sum of their individual parts is to achieve glorious funkified musical transcendence. This is the longest recorded version of this song and is far superior to the version released on the Five Guys Walked Into A Bar 4CD Box. It's far more powerful than anything the Stones were doing at the time and it's classic 70s British rock at its best. Why is it still unreleased?
Listen.

You're My Girl (I Don't Want To Discuss It)

In fact, as far as I'm concerned, the best and most enjoyable Faces music is actually to be heard on these BBC sessions. Here is where you hear the true soul of the band. Their official albums are all dry patchy affairs and it's only on these sessions that you experience what the band really had to offer. Especially on the May '71 gig. That would make a classic live album all by itself. It's 40 minutes of R'n'B drenched supercharged rock'n'roll and includes versions of Bad N' Ruin, Bobby Womack's It's All Over Now, Had Me A Real Good Time and the Temptations' (I Know) I'm Losing You. The tempo, pace and power just don't let up. And of course these are far better versions than the officially released ones.

Here are some more BBC session highlights from youtube

Devotion (from the 19/11/1970 session).
Rod Stewart and Ronnie Lane giving it some nice vocalizing. Stewart really did have one of the great white soul voices of the era.

Too Bad
"Gimme the moonlight...". The entire band sounding three sheets to the wind then... Mac intros, a frenzied riff from Ron Wood and everyone is off like the clappers. The last one to finish buys the next round.

Had Me A Real Good Time
The band's live appeal summed up in one song.

Memphis
An extremely muscular cover of the Chuck Berry song. Almost verging on punk at times. Stewart is overwhelmed by a band going at it like a battalion of tanks.

Underrated
It has been said over the years that the Faces were sloppy and a bit of a mess live. So drunk they couldn't keep it together etc. Rod Stewart, at the end of the band's career, was wont to cast a few aspersions in interviews about their musical prowess but then he had his own agenda going on and anyway was probably being led astray towards the 70s superstar high life by then girlfriend Britt Ekland. Like Steve Marriott, the poor old Faces were simply not good enough for him anymore either.

The recorded evidence on these BBC sessions and other live performances suggests completely the opposite. At least as long as Ronnie Lane was in the band (he quit in mid 73 to go solo) they were easily one of the best live acts around. True, after he left things did seem to slide a bit as they headed off into musical boogieland and played Rod Stewart's more successful solo material. However when they were good they were truly great and the alcohol fueled merry-making was very much a part of the act. Even on a rough night they'd be guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Sounds for Saturday
Here's a show they recorded for BBC2 TV on 26th October 1971 which gives an idea of them at their peak. Recorded before a television audience it doesn't have the sheer rapturous punk energy of the May '71 radio concert but it does show them off in all their raunch'n'roll glory. Rod Stewart was one of the great front men of the era and Ronnie Wood, even if his lead work, especially on Love In Vain is er... somewhat clueless, can be seen here as a demon rhythm guitarist.

Three Button Hand Me Down / Maybe I’m Amazed / Too Much Woman-Street Fighting Man-Too Much Woman / Miss Judy’s Farm / Love In Vain / Stay With Me / I’m Losing You

The End - Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind...
The band pretty much fell apart after Ronnie Lane left. Lane jumped ship when Stewart started to focus more on his solo career. He was never happy about the "Rod Stewart and The Faces" billing they got in the US. They weren't a backing band after all. They struggled on for a year or so with Tetsu Yamauchi as a replacement but Stewart could now barely summon up the interest and they only managed to record a couple more singles.

Ron Wood eventually went off to join the Rolling Stones in their declining years. Kenney Jones joined the Who for a while after Keith Moon died and Ian McLagan formed his own band, worked with the Stones and Dylan, and is still gigging. There is talk of a reunion in the next year or so but relations between certain members still seem somewhat fragile. It's a pity they can't all make up and be friendly as good time mateyness was one of the things the band managed to conjure up so well on stage and was so much a part of their appeal.

If there is a reunion it will be without poor old Ronnie Lane who died in 1997 after many years of suffering multiple sclerosis. However a reunion and a BBC sessions release would be good news indeed. As Kenney Jones said earlier this year when talking about reunion possibilities, "the Faces never finished on a good note, so it would be nice to finish on a good note, and that would be that."

And that, on the back of an official release for these BBC sessions, would complete the legacy of the Faces - one the greatest Rock 'n' Roll bands of the classic rock era.

Bonus clip - London Rock
Faces clip from 1970 TV documentary London Rock
The band are interviewed and seen rehearsing. Kenney Jones talks about his childhood “where we grew up and used to play on bombsites” and the two Rons discuss life and philosophy down by the river with their girlfriends in tow. "What's needed now is a revolution in the nut" says one Ron. "I just came for the ice cream" says the other.
What a wonderful bunch of lads they were.

A list of the Faces BBC Sessions
This is just a list I compiled myself from internet sources over the years. It is not definitive and I don't claim complete trustworthiness for it..
If anyone can see any mistakes or can improve on it let me know.

15 tracks appear on Five Guys Walked Into A Bar 4CD Box.
Still plenty left for an official release

1) 9th March 1970 BBC Top Gear
01 Shake, Shudder, Shiver 2:45
02 Love In Vain 7:12
03 Wicked Messenger (Brian Matthew intro) 2:55
04 Maybe I'm Amazed 5:19

2) 10th March 1970 ‘Dave Lee Travis’,
London, Camden Theatre. Host: Dave Lee Travis.
01 Three Button Hand Me Down
02 Flying
03 Wicked Messenger
Note: Broadcast on the 15th March 70.

3) 28th March 1970, Top Gear, Playhouse Theatre, London
01 Wicked Messenger
02 Devotion
03 Pineapple and the Monkey
04 Shake Shudder Shiver

4) August 27 1970 "Mike Harding Show", Aeolian Hall, Studio 2, London
01 All Over Now
02 Three Button
03 Around The Plynth
Broadcast 1st September 1970

5) 15th September 1970 ‘Top Gear’, Maida Vale, Studio #4, London
Host: John Peel.
01 Had Me A Real Good Time
02 Around The Plynth
03 Country Comfort
Note: Broadcast on the 19th September 1970.

6) 19th November 1970, Paris Theatre, London
1 You're My Girl (I Don't Want To Discuss It)
2 Wicked Messenger
3 Devotion
4 It's All Over Now
5 I Feel So Good
34:02

7) 20th April 1971 ‘Sounds Of The Seventies’ Kensington House, Studio T1, London
Host: Bob Harris.
01 Oh Lord I’m Browned Off
02 Love In Vain
03 Maybe I’m Amazed
04 Had Me A Real Good Time
Note: Broadcast on the 3rd May 71.

8) 29th April 1971 ‘Top Of The Pops’ TV show, London.
01 Richmond
02 Bad’n Ruin

9) 13th May 1971 Sunday Concert, Paris Theater, London,
01 I Don't Want To Discuss It 13:18
02 Bad & Ruin 5:06
03 It's All Over Now 6:35
04 Had Me A Real Good Time 6:15
05 Losing You 6:21

10) 28th September 1971 ‘Top Gear’ Maida Vale, Studio #4, London
Host: John Peel.
01 Stay With Me
02 Too Bad 3:42
03 That's All You Need/Plynth 8:03
04 Miss Judy’s Farm
05 Maggie May
Note: Broadcast on the 6th October.

11) 26th October 1971 ‘Sounds For Saturday - The Music Of The Faces’, TV (BBC2)
01 Three Button Hand Me Down
02 Maybe I’m Amazed
03 Too Much Woman-Street Fighting Man-Too Much Woman
04 Miss Judy’s Farm
05 Love In Vain
06 Stay With Me
07 I’m Losing You
Note: Broadcast 1st April 1972.
Total 43m.17s.

12) 17th February 1972 "In Concert", Paris Theater, London
01 Three Button Hand Me Down 5:00
02 Miss Judy's Farm 4:04
03 Last Orders Please 2:54
04 Devotion 6:32
05 Too Bad 3:42
06 That's All You Need/Plynth 8:03
07 Stay With Me 4:18

13) 8th February 1973 "In Concert", Paris Theatre, London
01. Silicone Grown 2:54
02. Cindy Incidentally 2:45
03. Angel 4:39
04. Memphis, Tennessee 4:11
05. True Blue 4:25
06. I'd Rather Go Blind 5:15
07. You're My Girl (I Don't Want To Discuss It) 5:27
08. Twistin' The Night Away 4:30
09. It's All Over Now 3:48
10. Miss Judy's Farm 4:03
11. Maybe I'm Amazed 5:24
12. Three Button Hand Me Down 5:17
13. I'm Losing You 6:25

14) 12th February 1973 'Radio 1 Club', Paris Theatre, London
01 Cindy Incidentally
02 My Fault
03 Borstal Boys
Note: Broadcast 1st March 1973
Total 9m.10s.

15) 1st April 1973 ‘In Concert’*, Paris Theatre, London
Host: John Peel.
01 Silicone Grown
02 Cindy Incidentally
03 Memphis, Tennessee
04 If I’m On The Late Side
05 My Fault
06 The Stealer
07 Borstal Boys
08 True Blue
09 Twistin’ The Night Away
10 Miss Judy’s Farm
11 Bad 'N' Ruin
12 Too Bad
Note: Broadcast on the 21st April.
Total 48m.05s.

This post is dedicated to the great John Peel. The Faces were Peel's favourite band in the early 70s and he features as MC on so many of these concert sessions.

More on stranger than known
Led Zeppelin at Southampton University 1973

Parallax - The Pink Floyd BBC Sessions

Ry Cooder and Little Feat live - Rampant Slide Zone Syncopation

The Rolling Stones' finest hour - "Get Yer Leeds Lungs Out"

Sunday, 3 February 2013

Parallax - The Pink Floyd BBC Sessions

Photo: David Mainwood

With the surfeit of BBC sessions CDs around nowadays it seems strange that the Pink Floyd refuse to countenance a release of any of the 3 hours worth of material they recorded for the BBC in the late 1960s and very early 1970s. One wonders why. It certainly can’t be a lack of demand. Legal Problems? Band members not agreeing? Quality control? Does David Gilmour really regard them as being substandard?

How do the Pink Floyd sessions compare to the official recordings and are they deserving of release?

The sessions run from the Syd Barrett era in 1967 through to the release of Meddle in late 1971 when they were only a year or so away from massive international success with Dark Side of the Moon. Historically therefore, they are of quite some importance. They catalogue not only the Barrett period but also the transitional experimental years when they got lost in space and wrote slightly scary songs about axes and grooving with Picts. Sound quality varies from “listenable” on the early Barrett sessions (the BBC wiped them and what survives is thanks to fan recordings off the air) to excellent mono on the 1968 to 1970 sessions, and the last “In Concert” recording from 1971 is in stereo.

BBC2 Look of the Week. BBC Television Centre, London, 14 May 1967
Fascinating Syd era performance of part of Pow R. Toc H., Astronomy Domine and interview. Musician and writer Hans Keller asks Roger Waters and a well-spoken and articulate Syd Barrett "Why does it all have to be so loud?" and then declares their music to be somewhat infantile, “A little bit of a regression to childhood. But after all, why not?”
Indeed.

Studio Sessions 1967 - 1969
1) Recorded September 25, 1967 at BBC Playhouse Theater. Broadcast October 1, 1967 (on Top Gear). Flaming / Scarecrow / Matilda Mother / The Gnome / Set The Controls / Reaction in G

2) Recorded December 20, 1967 at BBC Maida Vale Studios. Broadcast December 31, 1967 (on Top Gear). Pow R Toc H / Vegetable Man / Scream Thy Last Scream / Jugband Blues

3) Recorded June 25, 1968 at BBC 210 Piccadilly Studios. Broadcast August 11, 1968 (on Top Gear). Let There Be More Light / Murderistic Women (aka Careful with That Axe Eugene) / Julia Dream / The Massed Gadgets of Hercules (aka A Saucerful of Secrets)

4) Recorded December 2, 1968 at BBC Maida Vale Studios. Broadcast December 15, 1968 (on Top Gear). Point Me At the Sky / Embryo / Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major (aka The Narrow Way, Part 1) / Interstellar Overdrive

5) Recorded May 12, 1969 at BBC Paris Cinema. Broadcast May 14, 1969 (on Night Ride, then rebroadcast June 1, 1969 on Top Gear)
Daybreak (aka Grantchester Meadows) / Nightmare (aka Cymbaline) / The Beginning (aka Green is the Colour) / Beset By Creatures of the Deep (aka Careful With That Axe, Eugene) / The Narrow Way (Part Three)

"Lucifer Sam" Photo: David Mainwood

The first Barrett session at the BBC contains an early brisk version of Set The Controls and a snatch of the unreleased instrumental Reaction in G. The second session is perhaps the most interesting. Pow R Toc H has a slightly more jazz boogie inflected piano solo and demented Barrett guitar playing than the LP version. There are also the unreleased Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream (Old Woman with a Basket) which would have been singles had Syd stayed. However a month after this session was recorded the band “forgot” to pick him up on the way to a gig in Southampton. So Syd bows out here with a version of Jugband Blues where kazoos replace the brass band and Rick Wright provides a short eastern inflected psychedelic organ coda. After making it clear that he’s not here Syd asks, “And what exactly is a dream? And what exactly is a joke?” and then leaves us bereft to rue his madness.

Jugband Blues

Post Barrett the band was left without a major songwriter. However, it comes as no great surprise that they continued venturing into spacier and more pastoral areas as they’d already started to explore these themes in Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy Domine, Pow R Toc H and Scarecrow.

So Julia Dream, on the first (June 1968) session without Barrett, leads us into languid idyllic summer dreamscapes of rivers, trees and meadows. I rather prefer the shorter (6:50) A Saucerful of Secrets (here called The Massed Gadgets of Hercules) as it cuts out some of the rather tedious arsing about on the LP version leaving the rather wistful finale more or less intact albeit with the voices somewhat buried in the mix.

Rick Wright has now become integral to the band’s sound. His ethereal layered keyboards lead us through a December 1968 session notable for a Barrettless Interstellar Overdrive with definite prog-rock tendencies, the flop single Point Me At the Sky and a very trippy Embryo.

On the May 1969 session the songs appear to be thematically connected and it is perhaps the most enjoyable set here. The band was developing an idea of turning some already existing songs into a piece called A Man and A Journey at this time. As Grantchester Meadows / Cymbaline / Green is the Colour / Careful With That Axe, Eugene / The Narrow Way (Part Three) segue musically and thematically into one another, this session seems to reveal the first signs of a desire to come up with a larger more integrated work. Again Wright dominates the sound as the band guide us through a layered audio mist to somewhere which, rather like on an old episode of Star Trek, seems to be another earth like planet but where all the people have mysteriously disappeared and you’re not quite sure what’s going to pop out from behind the bushes.

This last studio session seems to suggest that the band have surmounted Barrett’s loss and now have a few ideas of their own. It is also notable how much Rick Wright contributed to the band’s sound in these years. The sound of the Floyd in space owes an awful lot to his keyboard textures.

The 1968 - 1969 Sessions

In Concert 1970 and 1971
6) Recorded July 16, 1970 before a live audience at BBC Paris Cinema
The Embryo / Fat Old Sun / Green Is the Colour / Careful With That Axe, Eugene / If / Atom Heart Mother

7) Recorded September 30, 1971 before a live audience at BBC Paris Cinema
Fat Old Sun (long version) / One of These Days / The Embryo (later version) / Echoes / Blues Jam

Photo: David Mainwood

The July 16th 1970 show, introduced by the great John Peel, was the first of two one hour long “In Concert” live sessions to be recorded live at BBC Paris Cinema. Green Is the Colour is segued with Careful With That Axe, Eugene and Atom Heart Mother is performed in its entirety with choir and orchestra. To be honest I’ve never been impressed with AHM. It seems to spend its 25 odd minutes chasing its own tail and falling flat on its arse. Here is no exception.

The 1971 show is far superior and reveals a band now confident and mature. David Gilmour's guitar playing has become more prominent and tastefully compliments Wright's spacey textures. The extended version of Fat Old Sun is sublime even if it is a little restrained compared to later performances on the same tour. One of These Days really kicks into a groove and Echoes, although occasionally rather sluggish and not as polished as the studio version, is a far more successful creation than Atom Heart Mother. A much longer Embryo now comes with spooky sound effects and the band encore, as they usually did on the 1971 shows, with a straight 12 bar called Blues.

There are some gorgeous moments on this show (the extended guitar solo on Fat Old Sun especially) and it stands up well against the live half of Ummagumma. Along with the 1969 studio sessions it is some of the best music the band recorded in this rather underrated period between 1968 and 1971. These BBC sessions draw a superb outline of the band's work at a time when the Pink Floyd set off in search of deep space only to find themselves on the Dark Side of the Moon.

So yes, these BBC sessions definitely deserve a release, and as Hans Keller would have said, “But after all, why not?”

The September 30th 1971 show

Moonhead
Instrumental recorded for the BBC’s 'But what if it's made of green cheese'. Broadcast at 10pm on 20th July 1969 - the evening of the first moon landing.