1960s
Gary Naylor
If Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1966 was anyone under the age of 25, why couldn’t a teenage student write a musical in 1967? There are plenty of answers to that question of course, none of which stopped the composer Stephen Schwartz, who conjured Pippin while still at Carnegie Mellon University. By 1972, with a little help from Bob Fosse, the show was on Broadway. And now it’s back in London, having been seen here as recently as last summer. The work has lost none of its craziness in the half-century or so since it was first picking up Tonys. Pippin himself is still a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Instability coursed through the Yardbirds in 1966. When their first studio album Yardbirds was issued in July, the band seen on stage was not the one which had made the album. Bassist and in-house producer Paul Samwell-Smith had left between its recording and release. His replacement was session player Jimmy Page. In time, Page switched to guitar to play alongside Jeff Beck, and guitarist Chris Dreja moved to bass. Next, Beck was off and the new four-piece Yardbirds had one guitarist: Jimmy Page. All this happened between mid-June and the end of November 1966.There had already been upsets. Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A revival of a multi-award winning musical, with a big star or two, may look like a safe choice to re-open London’s largest theatre, the Coliseum, but there was a tingle of jeopardy in the air, exemplified when the show catches you by surprise, the curtain rising when (surely) people remain in the bar? And then you notice (for the last time - hurrah!) that all those seats all around you are deliberately left unoccupied and the game’s afoot. And besides, we'd already been given a glossy, garish programme: the West End is back, baby! At first with this new reiteration of the Broadway Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The latest edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl combines the best new sounds on plastic with the vinyl reissues that are pressing buttons. Ranging from heavy rockin’ book-style boxsets to the funkiest summertime 7”s, all musical life is here. Dive in.VINYL OF THE MONTHThis Is The Deep The Best Is Yet To Come (Part 1) (B3)London indie outfit This Is The Deep make wonderfully eccentric but catchy music. The Best is Yet to Come (Part 1) is a mini-album that plays at 45 RPM, whose eight songs mingle quirky post-punk dub-funk with something altogether poppier and frothier. They are unafraid of Read more ...
David Nice
When the history of 2021’s slow emergence from lockdown comes to be written, musical administrations will stand out among the heroes. That’s especially true of the country-house opera organisations which have mushroomed in recent years. Don’t ask where some of the money comes from, or who it’s for, but celebrate for now how much work these set-ups have given top-notch singers, players and production teams, many of whom have hardly worked in the previous 14 months. Michael Chance at The Grange Festival has had a particularly tough time – we don’t know the half of it, though I learnt a little Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Empty Sky, Elton John’s first album was released in June 1969. Now, an album titled Regimental Sgt. Zippo has turned up. It’s marketed as “The debut album that never was.” The 12 tracks are annotated loosely as having been recorded from November 1967 to May 1968.Regimental Sgt. Zippo is great. The album opens with “When I Was Tealby Abbey”: string-drenched psychedelic pop easily as good as the early Blossom Toes or a Mark Wirtz confection. As the album goes on, what was being absorbed is evident. The Zombies are in there. “And the Clock Goes Round” has the rolling piano chassis of The Left Read more ...
Richard Bratby
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra believes that its current post-lockdown summer series features the largest orchestra currently performing live in the UK. It’s not an easy claim to verify, and the full string section certainly wasn’t on stage for this matinee performance under the orchestra’s associate conductor Michael Seal. What’s clear though, is that the platform at Symphony Hall, stripped of risers and choirstalls, offers ample space for a large orchestra that’s socially distanced but doesn’t sound like it. The Hall’s pristine acoustic isn’t suited to every kind of music, but Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Early last month, Donovan issued his extraordinary new single “I am the Shaman”. Recorded at David Lynch’s Los Angeles studio, it was produced by the polymath director and fellow transcendental meditation devotee. The accompanying video was also directed by Lynch. The powerful “I am the Shaman” haunts. It also confirms that Donovan remains an active force.He first entered the public consciousness on 22 January 1965. On that date, Donovan Leitch wasn’t yet signed to a record label but the producers of the weekly pop show Ready, Steady, Go! put him in front of the cameras in the first of three Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
The glamorous unreliability of Esther Freud’s father, Lucian Freud, is an inescapable force in her novels. There he is, turning up like a bad penny in Love Falls, or The Wild, or Peerless Flats, leaping from taxis into restaurants or betting shops, ordering champagne, driving too fast, shifting from foot to foot in the darkness, ambivalent, alluring.Although I Couldn’t Love You More, Freud’s ninth novel, is a re-imagining of her Irish mother’s pregnancy and its repercussions, some of its most vivid parts concern her father. Here he’s in the guise of Felix Lichtman, a sculptor who haunts the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Things got out of hand at theartsdesk on Vinyl this month and these reviews run to 10,000 words. That's around a fifth of The Great Gatsby. It's because there's so much good music that deserves the words, from jazz to metal to pure electronic strangeness. That said, this is the last time theartsdesk on Vinyl will reach this kind of ludicrous length. So enjoy it. Dig deep. There's something for everyone. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Fratellis Half Drunk Under a Full Moon (Cooking Vinyl)Look, I’m the first one to gleefully, mercilessly dance on the grave of so-called landfill indie (the wave Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
With over eight million copies sold in its 50-year lifespan, Déjà Vu was, as Cameron Crowe writes in the booklet accompanying this compendious four-CD edition, “one of the most famous second albums in rock history”. It was originally released in March 1970, only some nine months after Crosby, Stills and Nash’s influential debut album, yet in the space between the two, the tectonic plates had somehow shifted.CS&N had now gained their Y in the brooding form of Neil Young, and the indivisible tightness of the original trio – so exactly mirrored in their radiant harmony singing – now had to Read more ...
John Bungey
If you want to understand the psychic harm that prolonged lockdown can do to a man, then take a listen to Van Morrison's new 28-song set. Actually, you don't need to listen, the song titles say enough: “Where Have All the Rebels Gone?”; “Stop Bitching, Do Something”; “Deadbeat Saturday Night”; “They Own the Media”; “Why Are You on Facebook?”While Sir Van's vast catalogue is revered for transcendent love songs and joyous R&B, it also includes a sub-genre of complaint songs (“They Sold Me Out” on Magic Time or “School of Hard Knocks” on Keep it Simple, for example). With the singer stuck at Read more ...