I've Got My Own Album To Rue. Classic Solo Albums - rock's shortest list?
Why so few great solo albums? That is, albums that were made whilst an artist was still a fully paid-up member of a group. Albums that were as good as those made by their groups to which they belonged. Albums with more than just one or two good tracks on.
Think hard. Members of The Rolling Stones, Moody Blues, Roxy Music, Yes, Pink Floyd, The Who and, of course The Beatles all released solo albums during their tenure with their respective bands. None of the records released as solo ventures even began to approach the quality of their respective group's regular.
Cases in point: -
Paul McCartney's 1st solo album was a mish-mash of half finished ditties. Maybe I'm Amazed and Every Night were great, the remainder exceptionally poor.
George's Wonderwall and John/Yoko's Two Virgins/Unfinished Music etc are universally considered for completists only.
Roger Waters' The Body and Rick Wright's Wet Dream are inconsequential at best. David Gilmour's 1977 self-titled debut and About Face only just managed being pleasant. Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports is actually a very good record, but it's more of a Carla Bley/Robert Wyatt project. So it doesn't count.
Bryan Ferry's These Foolish Things was little more than a vanity effort, propped up by a startlingly good title track.
Pete Townsend's Who Came First was only half good. The excellent Pure & Easy and Let's See Action drowned in filler such as Time Is Passing and Parvardigar.
The mesmerising title track (yes, really) of Brian May's Starfleet Project was swamped by the mindless jams that made up the remainder of side 1 & 2. Freddie Mercury's slightly embarrassing Euro-disco and cod-opera solo work is best forgotten. Roger Taylor's most acceptable (no kidding) singles Strange Frontier and Man On Fire couldn't save the album from whence they came.
Lionel Richie. Go ahead, snigger - but The Commodores made heavyweight black music prior to Three Times A Lady. Lionel's first solo album (made whilst he was still in the band) is a gift to Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs. Ugh.
Talk Is Cheap, She's The Boss and Monkey Grip would never rival Exile On Main Street or Let It Bleed.
And it goes on.
The following buck the trend, in that they compare well against the (contemporary) output of the artist's parent band. It's not a long list…
Phil Collins - Face Value. Ditch that senseless cover of Tomorrow Never Knows and it's a damn near perfect LP. Danger. Unfashionable music taste alert!
Lowell George - Thanks I'll Eat It Here. Cruelly ignored. Heartache is surely one of the best album closers on vinyl.
Steve Perry - Street Talk. Although rather irrelevant to UK rock sensibility, this album trounces anything that Journey was capable of. Not much of a boast, I know…
Rod Stewart. Anything up to and including Smiler is, for me, proof that some sort of God exists.
That's, er, it. Considering the number of solo albums that have emerged over the years, there must be more that rise above makeweight.. But I'm buggered if I can think of any. Prove me wrong…?
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Lowell
I absolutely agree that "Thanks I'll eat it here" is cruelly overlooked, but pedantic point - "Heartache" is a bonus track on the CD - it wasn't on the vinyl album....maybe some bonus tracks are worth having! Valerie Carter fantastic on BVs. Actually Suzy Boguss had a hit with a nice version of this song.
Excellent challenge though - I'm struggling....Paul Weller? Wildwood? Mind you I could take or preferably leave most of his solo stuff.
Morrissey's face glares out at me from the screen - not my bag at all, but were his solo albums any good? Incidentally the looong feature about him this month left me with the impression that he must be incredibly tiresome to be around for any length of time....
Not just solo stuff per se I think...
...aren't we looking at solo stuff released while they were still in their original band?
In which case Weller and Mozza's stuff doesn't count.
I have to say I'm struggling here.
The only two examples I can think of might be Costello and Springsteen albums in between incarnations of the Attractions and the 'E' Street band respectively, but I think you have to say in both cases that neither band actually existed when the solo albums were being made.
How about My Life in the Bush With Ghosts? Talking Heads were still going, but does it fail because its a collaboration?
I speak as a man who met Lowell George....
...shook his hand and saw him every time he played on British soil.
"Thanks. I'll Eat It Here" has three good songs on it and qualifies as a "charming curio", no more than that.
Interesting observation DH
Respect for having met the great man! What was he like?
Which are the three good ones then? Or the poor 7?
"What do you want the Girl to do"
"Honest Man"
"Two Trains"
"Can't Stand the Rain"
"Cheek to Cheek"
"Easy Money"
"Twenty Million Things"
"Find a River"
"Himmler's Ring"
"Heartache"
Personally I can live without "Himmler's ring" but the others are all rather splendid IMHO.
The Knopf
I'm struggling with this one, especially on the basis that the band membership has to be an ongoing concern when the solo album was made. Only ones I can think of that remotely compare or surpass band ventures are Mark Knopfler's soundtracks for Local Hero and Cal, which compare most favourably to the best things that Dire Straits brought out IMHO.
How about...
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man - Out of Season
That's a pretty good one.
Spilling.
We don't normally leap in on nit-picking matters but come on! Lionel Richie doesn't have a "t" in it.
Pull y'self together.
Speling
Ouch. Sorted now. I blame my spel chequer.
Can I just say...
...that I like Pete Townshend's "All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes"?
Pete Townshend
I have to disagree with regards Pete Townshend's solo records. I think 'Empty Glass' is the equal of many Who albums, and miles better than 'Who Are You', 'Face Dances' and 'It's Hard'. It's got fabulous songs, impassioned singing, strange and thought-provoking lyrics, great musicianship... what's not to like?
'All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes' I like almost as much. For me, it was the last period in which Townshend was at a creative peak. He was really challenging himself and his audience on those records.
Unclear...
I have to disagree with Kinkywolfgang, but second Mr Hepworth's comment.
Chinese Eyes
Excellent choice, Sir! The Sea Refuses No River always brings a lump to my throat whilst Slit Skirts and Somebody Saved Me are simply tremendous.
It's no secret that Townsend was keeping back his best writing for his own albums at this time. I can't help but think that Chinese Eyes should have been made as a Who album.
'Somebody Saved Me'...
was an incredibly important song for me when I first heard it 20 years ago or so... it helped me get through some tough times. Aren't songs great for doing that?!
Stephen Stills'
first album when he was also recording with CSN(Y) is excellent.
Not better than the band, but perhaps the equal....
The Eraser, by Thom Yorke?
Jenny Lewis
Her album (ok, with the Watson Twins) must be a contender.
Agreed on Phil Collins'
Agreed on Phil Collins' 'Face Value'; however unfashionable he has been deemed, this is a cracking album. Always felt the inclusion of 'Tomorrow Never Knows' was monumentally pointless (how can you better the original?) and 'Behind The Lines' was IMHO far superior on Genesis' 'Duke', but I love the rest- especially that jazz rock 'Droned/Hand In Hand' medley. By the same token, I'd argue Steve Hackett's debut 'Voyage Of The Acolyte' is as good as the Genesis albums of the era.
The Yes solo albums are mostly terrible ('Olias Of Sunhillow' has its admirers but I can't for the life of me work out why!!) but I do like Chris Squire's 'Fish Out Of Water' and, heaven help me, I often turn to Rick Wakeman's solo albums for a good keyboard wig-out...
Peter Hammill had a solo career running concurrently with that of Van Der Graaf Generator, lots of fine albums; 'The Silent Corner And The Empty Stage' and 'Over' are my favourites of that period.
How about David Crosby's 'If I Could Only Remember My Name'? CSN were still going at that time, right?
Hadn't Gene Clark joined The Byrds again (that eponymous 'comeback' album for Asylum- was OK but didn't match their 60s stuff) around the time 'No Other' came out? I could be wrong though...
Granted
All good, nothing bad. My theory is starting to look a little shaky in the light of that lot.
Can I add that Ramshackled by Alan White was the best of the Yes solos?
Good call
Hadn't listened to RW for years but downloaded a few tracks off "6 Wives" and really enjoyed them!
Bastard!
You made me buy it on impulse, ands I listened to it, all the way thru', as nature intended etc etc, this morning, for the firt time in 20 odd years, it having been a staple of the common room as a lad, all trying to outdo our colleagues in the "I like his organ and it's bigger than the one you like stakes...."
Can you tell it was an all boys school?
A bit cheeky, this one...
but what about Roger Waters' 'The Final Cut'?
hackett's 'voyage of the acolyte'
agree , and slots perfectly between the lamb lies down and a trick of the tail . how about the very neglected 'smallcreep's day' by mike rutherford - another complete piece with no filler .
I like 'Smallcreep's Day'...
...far better than the stuff Mike and the Mechanics did (although I'll admit liking 'Silent Running' and 'The Living Years' under duress!). Have to nominate Tony Banks' 'A Curious Feeling' which I personally have great affection for.
It may not quite be relevant, but Phil Manzanera did an album called 'Mainstream' in another band called Quiet Sun whilst he was in Roxy Music. A great album indeed, but closer to Soft Machine/Hatfield And The North than Roxy Music. Never heard Manzanera's bona fide solo album 'Diamond Head'.
Smallcreep's Day
Good choice. Working In Line for example is excellent - should have been a hit single. Otherwise, prog heaven. Bass pedals, synths, guitars, long songs, all wrapped in a Hipgnosis sleeve. Yes indeed!
I quite like......
Roddy Woomble's effort of last year. And I quite like Idlewild. They are somewhat different, and refreshing therewith and because
'Allo'
Ian Hunter's self-titled 1975 debut was easily as good as anything the Hoople ever did.
Here's another one...
...I guess this might be a stretch but does Crazy Horse's 1972 album count? They were still working with Neil Young at this point, even if it was the band who 'went solo' for that album so to speak! I rate it very highly indeed and I think it's stood the test of time remarkably well. The version of 'I Don't Want To Talk About It' on here is still the best, in my opinion.
Classic Solo Albums
How about Pacific Ocean Blue by Dennis Wilson?...I believe he was just still a member of The Beach Boys when he released it. Indeed he lobbed his by-now-fading-fast-combo a couple of cracking songs (Baby Blue Eyes and I can't remember what else..) when his own follow-up, Bamboo, collapsed. Which is pretty much what he did over the next few years.
It all come's round again.......
Welcome Charlie. This has a whole blog, initiated by Heppo himself, at 9.59 5 days ago.
Am I alone in finding it hard to remember where all these bloody strands start, stop and spread seamlessly into one another?
You like your Fairport references...
don't you?! Are you by any chance Dave "Peggy" Pegg in disguise?!
Heaven forfend!
But he did come up to me in Selfridges, B'ham, about 3 years ago, and mistake me for an old school friend of his. Mrs Path was well surprised to see him chatting to me, as she came out of the ladies, all the more since I had pointed him out to her earlier on. FACT: Bloody Mr Pegg is 10 years older than me!
Also sat next to Ashley Hutchings at a Pancake House in Lichfield. We didn't speak.
Arent we forgetting
Mr Donald Fagen with his three tremendous solo albums. Tremendous but not unlike the Dan albums.
Also Retropath where,pray tell, is the Pancake House in Lichfield? Or do you mean The French Hens at the Heart of the Country in Swinfen which is not technically Lichfield. I ask because I live in Lichfield and love pancakes not out of being pedantic of course!!
Don
Was he/wasn't he in Steely Dan at the time? I tend to think that they were permanently resting when Nightfly et al came out. Anyway, a great solo album.
As was Michael McDonald's first solo effort, If That's What It Takes. The Doobie Brothers still had an album or two left to go when it was released.
Not a trendy choice, I know - but it works for me...
And how come no-one has mentioned Off The Wall & Thriller?Ummm...I'll get me coat.
Strange old world......
Yes I do mean Swinfen, Heart of the Country. I think I mean the other one, where all wear breton pat metheny stylee tops, possibly even called La Creperie???? Tip top french onion soup too.
('scuse us, chaps, whilst we have this interesting perhaps only to us conversation)
Give Pete A Chance
Pete Doherty releases his first solo album later this year. This could be what we've all been waiting for.
Better than
I'm hoping that Pete's solo album will be better than his previous band efforts!
All he has to do is make a shorter album.
It's a covers album...
(1) The Needle and the Damage Done
(2) I'm Waiting For The Man
(3) Heroin
(4) Golden Brown
(5) Dead Flowers
(6) Perfect Day
(7) Mr Brownstone
(8) Shaddap You Face
Let's hope it's
really short eh?
Gregg Allman's "Laid Back"
..has a certain hazy charm, dispensing as it does with much of his day band's noodling.
The version of "Midnight Rider" pips the original by way of its louche swampy vibe.
David is wrong about Lowell's solo album. Compared with the swill Little Feat were churning out around this time, under the Weather Report loving watch of Bill "Fusion rocks!" Payne, "Thanks..." was a welcome return to The Feat's roots. It has at least five good songs, and the rest is supremely listenable.