When Pete suggested this, I didn’t think there were enough rock train songs to be worth getting into. I mean, country acts write about trains. But once we started talking about it, the trains started rolling, so to speak.

Beginning with this one, from a singer-songwriter, an earnest Buddhist known at the time as Cat Stevens:

(What became of Cat Stevens is widely known and not within our purview here.)

This is a fine metaphorical train he’s riding, with 1971 written all over it. This is from Teaser and The Firecat, which also included “Moon Shadow,” a rather nifty piece of fake folk. On the page, there’s not much to “Peace Train” –  “Oh, I’ve been smiling lately, thinking about the good things to come/And I believe it could be, something good has begun.”

But it’s genuinely sweet and hopeful, though very naive — the Peace Train is just something that’s going to happen if we all wish hard enough, rather than peace as something to be worked for and jealously guarded, peace not being humanity’s default mode.

The early ’70s were hardly innocent days, but pop culture wasn’t so addicted to snark and cheap irony as it is now, and this sort of thing could still go over. Stevens was incapable of lyrical irony in any event, writing such uninhibitedly emotional hits as “Wild World,” “Father and Son,” and the deeply touching “Oh Very Young.” Of course, that lack of reserve (or any real humor) as a songwriter also means one is apt to write “King of Trees,” and Cat was a better singles artist than album act.

“Peace Train” is a relic for a lot of reasons, but it holds up to the degree it does on a surprisingly powerful vocal and the way that right-up-front guitar shifts from elegant to driving alongside Stevens as he ramps it up. Handclaps, barely audible bass, and a nicely restrained drum track –and I love that guitar slam at 2:15.

The only thing that gets in the way a bit is the real-but-unnecessary string section that rattles in at about 2:30.  But the gospel-choir backup was somebody’s good idea; those voices give the song a real emotional climax with that drawn-out “Traaaain!” right after the three-minute mark.

The long coda is the most dated part of “Peace Train” — radio knew the song was over at 3:20 and behaved accordingly, and still does, when this gets played.

Some forceful piano chords with rain.

Then the Moon rises with some timpani and piano arpeggios. Setting a mood that sticks with you.

This is powerful without being rude.

As the closing song for The Who’s masterpiece Quadrophenia, “Love, Reign O’er Me” is one of those songs that fits the moment. A moment when Daltrey’s voice really met up with Townshend’s words. A moment when The Who had a producer who really knew what they could do and had the strength to tell them that and make them do it. When all four musicians were at the top of their creative peak in abilities and interests and were just hungry enough to listen to someone not from the same crowd but who had been there from the start.

“Love, Reign O’er Me” is probably the best song The Who ever did from a creative standpoint. Musically, lyrically, and emotionally.

For the Quadrophenia album, producer Glyn Johns had largely banned drummer Keith Moon’s cherished cymbals. They are there, but not as nearly pronounced as in earlier recordings. Johns had a sense about what Moon could really do when given some limits while still letting him play the wild, often nearly uncontrolled style he was known for. For this song ,Johns quite properly relented — a bit.

Raindrops leading into the piano and timpani, then fading slowly into a drum roll before resolving back at the piano, you feel the emotion and importance of what’s happening. When Daltrey’s vocal starts, Townshend’s string synthesizer loop begins to roll back and forth. Townshend was perhaps the first musician from a major band who understood what a tool a synthesizer could be. He looked at it not as a replacement for a string section or other instruments, he took it on as its own thing.

The results are apparent, and wonderful. By not trying to make the synth “sound like strings,” he made it a seamless part of the song.  That’s the beauty and brilliance of it. You hear it, and it fills this space in the mix, and you know it isn’t a string section, but it feels like one. That might sound like a simple thing to do, but, especially with the technology of the day, this was hugely complicated and very new.

Moon’s unusually tight cymbal rolls really push the vocals along as Daltrey goes through the first verse before exploding into a primal scream of “Love.” After The Who hits the chorus, Moon is back in his normal element as Townshend plays a nice descending-scale lead guitar part. Very tasteful, and not too much, as Daltrey’s vocal is the real show here.

Townshend’s synthesizer was such a new thing, it would take hours and hours to get anything resembling music out of it. It could make fantastic sounds and wild roaring noises, rhythmic screeches and popping sounds, but to get it to make music required days on end of fiddling with it to get anything truly usable.  Townshend spent the time and accomplished a major musical breakthrough while establishing the synthesizer as a true instrument and not just a neat toy.

The synthesizer had become part of the “Who” sound with the release of Who’s Next two years earlier, with “Baba O’Riley” being the signature song for its use. That caused no end of problems for the band. Because of the major limitations of synthesizers of the time it was simply impossible to take it on the road. Tapes had to be used for live performances. That’s the reason  “Love, Reign O’er Me” has hardly ever been performed live. Today it would be a quite simple thing, but in ’73 it just couldn’t be done. That meant that they would wait a while before figuring it with the help of their longtime engineer Bob Pridden.

The reason you see Moon wearing headphones during shows from this period is that he was listening to the synth track. He’s got to match that track so the rest of the band can line up in sync and try to stay together. But that wouldn’t always happen, by a long shot. Just the idea of taking along a tape player to put into a mix for the band to follow was about as radical an idea for a live show as you could think of back then. These days, it’s done all the time.

If you notice, Entwistle’s bass is pushed back in the mix, and for the verse he’s playing simple single notes and letting them resonate behind the synth and the cymbals. For the chorus he jumps off into a set of of triplets that are so fast they are hard to pick out of the mix before returning to the single note, almost drone of the verse. When the band crashes into the bridge, Entwistle is at once again at his flaming finest. A series of descending runs with a few hundred extra notes thrown in just because he can, completely filling in the bottom end where usually you would find Moon’s drums crashing through. But they don’t.

The restraint shown by Moon on this song shows that despite all the wild man image, he could be incredibly tasteful if anyone bothered to require it of him. After the bridge Moon was turned loose for a few magical bars of music. The build is something to cherish as it slows down to single bass notes and cymbal rolls with the well placed crash here and there, and then Daltrey’s screams signal that it’s all or nothing at this point. Then Moon and Entwistle are released from their shackles and all hell breaks loose. Moon is all over the set as Daltrey puts everything he has in his vocal, and all the while Townshend is playing actually a very simple lead line. He knows he doesn’t really need to do all that much with everything else going on.

Just when you think it has finally come to an end, Daltrey comes back with one more primordial scream of “Love” and you are served with some classic Moon at his best. He’s hitting everything in front of him as hard and as fast as he can while the guitar has slipped away and some piano sneaks in for some emphasis as they almost literally beat the song to death. At the last second the guitar returns with a string scratch and a final bang of piano, timpani, gong, and bass before fading away with a little bit of guitar feedback and Moon swiping his cymbals.

It leaves you amazed and emotionally exhausted.

I would, and have, listened to this song over and over…

(There are better versions on YouTube, but they’re not embeddable.)

I have to say I didn’t like this record much when it first came out. It seemed like a novelty song from a band I usually liked, and Sting’s participation put me off a bit — artists, especially major established artists, showing up as guests on each other’s records wasn’t nearly as common as it is now, and it seemed like too big a deal but also, in a way, not big enough.

But when I hear “Money for Nothing” now, Sting’s participation seems both cheerful and appropriate.  Of course, by the time this record came out in 1983, “I want my MTV” and the all-music channel it celebrated were already fading into mere memories (sigh), but what they’re really talking about here is the video-driven (really, really video-driven) success of the spandex ‘n’ big hair boys who were grabbing attention away from bands that rolled out in the late ’70s. The newest big thing wasn’t the newest anymore, and Mark Knopfler had some observations to make.

In the persona, of course, of a working man who finds the “little faggot with the earring and the makeup” puzzling, comical, and enviable: “That little faggot he’s a millionaire.”

Though indeed, Knopfler, being a rock star and all, is also making some observations about comments he’d heard himself — he is, of course, one of them yo-yos who plays the guitar on the MTV. And a fine, crunchy guitar it is.

Most rock songs that set out to be funny aren’t, very, but this one is still both charming and pointed — as well as being amusing, it’s just a great bit of ’80s radio rock.

Is it really a song about a rock star? I would say it is. One premise of the Quadrophenia concept album is that the various aspects of the main character of Jimmy — and his complete set of psychological disturbances — represent the four members of the band*. The story line is not very clear, but this song comes after Jimmy, having come right to the edge of drug-induced self-destruction, grows up — the “four personalities” have integrated, into the man who sings this glorious song.

On this dry and dusty road
The nights we spent apart, alone
I need to get back home
To cool, cool rain
I can’t sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh, God, I need a drink
Of cool, cool rain

Obviously, Jimmy has become a traveling man, and, given the premise of the record, it seems clear enough that he has grown to be a rock star, like the men whose characters his character purportedly reflects.

Pete’s the musician on this blog, and he can say more, if he should so choose, about the things that give this record its rolling, driving power. But I do want to point something out about the vocal here, perhaps the best example of the distinctive “roaring” style that was first heard from Roger Daltrey to good effect on 1971′s Who’s Next.

Pete Townshend and Daltrey are of course both tenors, but Townshend’s natural range is so high that he’s practically a male alto. And in the ’60s, Daltrey, singing Townshend-penned songs, was often working in a higher register than was natural. He could get there, but his voice seemed smallish, often nasal, and not very distinctive, and he developed a tendency to yelp on the high end that he never really got over.

There were glimmers of the voice to come here and there, but it was apparently on the Tommy tour that Daltrey or someone else finally realized the great things that could be achieved if they just took the songs he had to sing down about a third (a note less than half an octave), and one of the great hard rock vocalists came into his own.

But what isn’t often talked about is the effect this appears to have had on Townshend as a songwriter. With a Daltrey who could sing like this, Townshend could produce the rock songs on Who’s Next, and then the extraordinary early metal of Quadrophenia. If Townshend had written this music before Daltrey found his voice, who could have sung it? Townshend is of course a capable singer, with a surprisingly muscular voice for such a high tenor, but the raw emotion and masculinity called for by the harder tracks of Quadrophenia have not been within his abilities at any time. Whereas Daltrey in his prime was a fearlessly powerful singer, and on “Love Reign O’er Me,” he balances total commitment with complete command.

Who’s Next and Quadrophenia are so different from what came before from this band, and so different from each other, that it’s hard not to wonder whether, if Daltrey hadn’t found his true abilities, they ever would’ve been written.

*Yes, it is an exceptionally dumb idea. Nonetheless, the album is a gem, the one they’d been building up to since first getting on vinyl in 1965. And Townshend never got close to work of this caliber again. Also, the excellent movie Quadrophenia wisely left out all the four-personalities nonsense and is a great deal more coherent than the concept album. In the movie, whether Jimmy survives his rocky adolescence is left ambiguous, whereas in the album’s story, he clearly makes it through alive.

That same year another really shocking band came along, and I was of course right there wanting to be at the next concert, though that would have to wait a few years. I tried and tried to win a belt buckle from the local radio station for month after month to no avail. I even wanted to join their army.

A rock band with an army?

That can mean only one thing….

I still get a big dopey smile on my face when I hear these guys. Such wonderful excess!

When KISS broke out in ’75 with their double live album, Alive! , parents across the country were being shocked and outraged at the newest bad boys on the music scene. With the wild costumes and makeup, KISS certainly was a spectacle. And their live shows were the biggest, baddest, loudest things going, with lights, lasers, explosions, and bassist Gene Simmons spewing blood and fire across the stage while lead guitarist Ace Frehley’s guitar might burst into flames every now and then during solos. Lead singer and rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley would smash a guitar or two a la Pete Townshend while dodging the pyrotechnics emanating from drummer Peter Criss’ hydraulic drum riser towering over the stage.

All in all, about as perfect a rock show as you can get.

In a bit of musical irony, as KISS was becoming a major hard rock icon, they released their next single, “Detroit Rock City.”

It went nowhere. Except for in Detroit, that is. It failed to get much of a response from radio or sales until some stations started playing the “B” side. The single was re-released with “Detroit Rock City” as the “B” side, and a soft piano ballad became the single.

That was “Beth,” of course, which would become KISS’ highest charting single ever. So a soft piano ballad was KISS’ biggest hit. One of those times when the reality does not fit the image. (See note at the end.)

“Detroit Rock City” would, however, become one of the songs KISS is absolutely required to play live as the crowds still go nuts over it. I wonder if they know what the song is about?

“I feel uptight on a Saturday night, nine o’clock the radio’s the only light.

I hear my song and it pulls me through, comes on strong tells me what I got to do.”

Off into the chorus that every fan knows by heart…

“Get up! Everybody’s gonna move their feet’

Get down! Everybody’s gonna leave their seat.”

And fans being fans, well…

“First I drink, then I smoke, start up the car and I try to make the midnight show.”

Very 70′s here…

“Movin’ fast, doin’ 95, hit top speed but I’m still moving much too slow.”

Written by Paul Stanley and Bob Ezrin about a real incident in which a KISS fan was killed in a car accident on the way to a show, “Detroit Rock City” is rather ghoulish when you get the back story.

“Twelve o’ clock I gotta rock, there’s a truck ahead, lights starin’ at my eyes,

Oh my God, no time to turn, I gotta laugh ’cause I know I’m gonna die, why…”

Such cheery lyrics…

Even with a rather disturbing subject matter, there is no doubt that “Detroit Rock City” lives up to the bombast and attitude of KISS. It just seems right, somehow. If you’re going to be a rock star and people get killed occasionally trying to get to your shows, tragic though that might be, you may as well write a song about it and see what happens.

Very Rock ‘n’ Roll!

(Just a note about “Beth.”)

Ezrin had recently been working with Alice Cooper on his Welcome To My Nightmare album and was the perfect choice for KISS’ new producer, even bringing along Dick Wagner who I mentioned in my “Hard Hearted Alice” story. Wagner provided the acoustic guitar on “Beth” as well as guitars for several other tracks as Frehley was “busy.”

There have been quite a few acts from the Great White North to find their way south and into the sales charts and rock history. Neil Young came to Los Angeles and found success with Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y and, of course, his solo career. Rush is a great example of a pure Canadian band, having started out in their hometown of Toronto and going on to a nearly 40-year run as a major rock act.

And then there was Edward Bear….

I know, I know, it’s about the biggest lump of the primordial pop goo that you can find on every 70′s one-hit wonder collection ever assembled. But there is a reason for that, and I’m just the guy to tell you about it.

First off, it’s an almost tragically dated vocal performance, even for the time. I would have no problem putting this right next to Bobby Sherman singing “Julie (Do Ya Love Me)” from 1969 — not because the voices sound alike but because the style is, well, kind of Dean Martin meets Peter Noone. It’s so well enunciated and yet has a vibrato that makes my teeth chatter when listening to it.

And somehow, even with all its stylistic travesties, I have always been drawn to it.

It has a sweetness and sincerity that is hard to ignore. It’s an audio version of a guy breaking up with Marcia Brady.

“All the times that I spent waiting wondering where you are.
Always knew the time would come when I would start to wonder why.
Now the time is here I don’t know where you are,
So I’ll write you one more song but it’s the last time that I’ll ever try”

It’s crap. But it’s very endearing crap.

Edward Bear is not a guy. That’s also something that might help to explain how this band did not make an impression for the ages. Would two guys from Detroit call their band Edward Bear? Maybe after a long night drinking some Labatt’s Blue in the dead of winter. (After all Labatt’s did give the world Pam Anderson, so it can’t be that bad, can it?)

Edward Bear… I’m still thinking aboot… about that.

Larry Evoy and Craig Hemming formed Edward Bear in the mid-60′s, no doubt hoping to take the music world by storm, but they faded away in 1974 to remain forever a one-hit wonder. They did leave a great little pop love song behind, though.

“It’s the last song I’ll ever write for you”

I wonder what might Edward Bear have become if they hadn’t named
themselves after Winnie-the-Pooh’s real name….

He doesn’t look very Pooh-like, does he?

Gordon Lightfoot is too often dismissed by pop and rock fans who actually know very little about him — they may have heard someone snarking about “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a fine record that got turned into a joke many years ago for no particular reason, but that’s about it*.

But I grew up with this stuff; my parents were folkies when it was a vital and thriving musical style, not yet entirely mutated into “protest songs” and the alt-country Americana ghetto. And the Canadian Gordon Lightfoot was  a star of the genre, based on a remarkable voice and a gift for melody that not only made hit records for him, it made him a hugely successful songwriter. Singers responded instantly to his songs, wanting them for their very own, and his music has been covered again and again.

And today’s life-of-a-musician song, “10 Degrees and Getting Colder” has indeed been much recorded. (Check YouTube; it’s obviously as irresistible to a guy with a guitar as it was in 1971.) It’s a fine song about a scratching-for-a-living singer-songwriter, flattened by life and circumstances, first seen trying to hitch a ride home and holding up “a sign that just said ‘Mother.’”

The sympathetic narrator sings, “How the world fell on his shoulders back in Boulder, I don’t know.” But we quickly flash back to Arizona, and a meeting with a woman who’s come to listen to our musician play. They meet, she makes sweet promises, they head back to Boulder together, and there, “He had told her, ‘I don’t know when/I’ve had a better friend.’”

But now something has gone very wrong, and this unhappy musician has pawned his guitar and is just trying to get home any way he can. The narrator implores:

Won’t you listen to me, brother,
If you ever loved your mother,
Please pull off on the shoulder,
If you’re going Milwaukee way
10 degrees and getting colder
Down by Boulder Dam today.

Fearlessly, un-self-consciously sentimental, and it’s just grand. Lightfoot’s lyrics could be awkward, and often there’s a clunker line or two even in his best songs, including this one. But he was able to write about powerful and very particular emotions, detailing feelings and relationships with a sometimes slightly disturbing precision. Pop, and folk, tend to cover a lot of the same emotional territory over and over. But has anyone ever nailed a case of post-relationship disillusionment with such painful specificity as Lightfoot does in “If You Could Read My Mind”?

“10 Degrees” is also a remarkably pretty record, driven by two guitars and a subtle bass. It was recorded in the heyday of the popular acoustic guitar, with no folkie novelty and nothing twee about it.

The bridge of the song describes that soon-to-be-lost relationship, breaking up the smooth swing  with a big melodic shift at about 1:40. But that second melody has been neatly anticipated in the first guitar break, after the first two verses and about a minute in. It’s nice songcraft, and a little musical warning of the emotional disaster to come — the woman who (evidently) devastated our poor musician is introduced right after that guitar break.

I hate to go all “the old days were better” here, even if we are a classic rock blog, but nobody is writing folk pop like this anymore, at least as far as I am aware. “10 Degrees” is neither political nor drearily self-referential. It’s just a great story, and a great song.

*Yes, I know about the Dave Barry thing. I beg to differ.

The number of world renowned rock stars from Detroit is actually rather staggering. Bill Haley, Bob Seger, Mitch Ryder, Glenn Frey, Ted Nugent. Then there are those Michiganders who made their name in Detroit before reaching the world stage, such as Del Shannon, Don Brewer of Grand Funk, Iggy Pop, MC5, Commander Cody, and, more recently, The White Stripes and Kid Rock. And there are many others — in fact, too many to mention. And there was one band that came to Los Angeles to become stars, and did, but then went back home. To become bigger stars.

What started out as The Earwigs became one of the early 70′s biggest acts. Vincent Furnier and three other guys from his high school track team, along with another guy from a different school’s track team, formed a band. First as the Beatles-mimicking “Earwigs,” as they didn’t know how to play any instruments, but later as a real band, a rock band, they traveled to Los Angeles to make their mark.

They did. Kind of….

After spending several years making their way in the music industry, Alice Cooper (the band) decided that Los Angeles didn’t get what they were doing, so they went back to Detroit to play for fans they felt really got their strange brand of rock. It worked, as they became not only a local smash but shortly thereafter they became one of the biggest acts in rock.

With the major hits “I’m Eighteen” and “School’s Out,” Alice Cooper became a runaway success with nearly constant tours of the United States and Europe for the first several years of their career. Over time, it became too much for the guys.

“Hard Hearted Alice” is from 1973′s Muscle of Love album, which would also be the last Alice Cooper recording with the track team guys. While they were together they had recorded six other albums, with Billion Dollar Babies being a number one hit in the U.S. and England, so the Alice Cooper guys were riding high when they went into the studio to record what would become Muscle Of Love. The only problem was that the other members of the band thought that Alice’s theatrical stage shows were overtaking the music. (I do say Alice’s at this point because Vincent had “become” Alice many years earlier.)

Muscle Of Love is a loose concept album about life on the streets, with perhaps a bit of male prostitution thrown in for good measure. But in “Hard Hearted Alice,” it seems more about the increasing disillusionment with life on the road and within the band.

“Life, coast to coast. White hot as a ghost when you live in a countdown.”

Written by Alice and his usual co-writer, rhythm guitarist Micheal Bruce, the hurt of the band falling apart is apparent.

“Love, cuts deep as a razor, but that ain’t amazin’ when you live in a cancer.”

Starting out with an almost carnival sounding keyboard and some sweet 12-string guitar by Bruce, “Hard Hearted Alice” is one of the most interesting songs the original band recorded. It has a melancholy feel for the first several verses, close to funereal. Alice’s vocals are soft and emotional while still being Alice.

As the lyrics get harsher, so does Alice and the music until the real Alice surfaces, snarl and all.

“Mind, gets scrambled like eggs, get bruised and erased, when you live in a brainstorm.”

“Noise, seems logically right. Ringing ears in the night, when you live in an airport.”

Muscle of Love was not nearly as successful as Alice Cooper’s two previous efforts and with the tensions in the band they all decided to take a break to try their hand at solo recordings.

Alice would return two years later with Welcome to My Nightmare, which would go on to become a platinum seller and signal the end of Alice Cooper as a band. While recording Nightmare, Alice formed a partnership with Guitarist Dick Wagner which continues to this day.

“Hard Hearted Alice, it’s what we want to be, Hard Hearted Alice, is what you want to see…”

Perry is absolutely one of the most gifted pop singers of any era, and the whole crew were first-rate musicians. They were able, once in a great while, to overcome their instincts and rock a little bit, and I have to say that I’m rather fond of “Lovin’ Touchin’ Squeezin’,” largely because of the great vocal and because a kissoff song is so unexpected from this band.

But Journey, with such potential powers for good, largely chose the dark side, producing a long, long run of highly successful vacuum-packed corporate cheese pop. It is snack-food music, a soulless soundtrack for the declining days of AOR and the slow sad doom of MTV.

And “Faithfully” is Journey at their most smarmily grim. As was his custom, Perry sings with such skill and earnestness that he tempts you to listen to the words. This can, in the case of Journey, lead to no good.

Highway run
Into the midnight sun
Wheels go round and round
You’re on my mind

OK, evidently Journey are touring north of the Arctic Circle. In a bus. It could happen.

Restless hearts
Sleep alone tonight
Sending all my love along the wire

Awww. He’s all far from home, sending her his love over the phone.

They say that the road ain’t no place to start a family

Um, dude? If she’s back home and you’re on a bus somewhere outside Fairbanks, I don’t think you need to worry too much about the whole “starting a family” thing.

And loving a music man
Ain’t always what it’s supposed to be

(See above.)

And then he’s rattling on about clowns and circuses (paging the non sequitur department) and time and space and stuff, and it really just doesn’t get any better at all, does it? Honestly, the biggest reason Journey are so insanely irritating is that they are just so consistently disappointing. Hackneyed tunes and dopey lyrics, all performed with tremendous skill and care. Eesh.

But anyway. Tomorrow, Pete’s back up at bat, with a better — or at least a louder — rock song about being a rock star.

Some people become rock stars almost in spite of themselves.  Rod (The Mod) Stewart started his career being so stage struck he would sing his set from behind the speaker stacks. That didn’t last of course as Rod became quite adept at shaking parts of his anatomy at crowds for several decades after he overcame his stage fright.

Some are born to rock star status. What else could Freddie Mercury have done with himself? Jim Morrison with his good looks and rich voice, strutting onstage with mega-attitude and charm. Could Jim have gone into the insurance business? Or the Navy like his father?

Madonna, love her or hate her, shows that with a major drive and at least enough talent, it can happen. She didn’t give the music industry a choice, she was going to be a star.

With all the pressures that stardom can put upon you there is a very difficult situation that comes all to easily and often. Because you are a rock star you must know how to change the world.

All too many artists fall for that one and believe that they really can change the world with a song.

I won’t be bold enough to say that you can’t change the world with a song. But I will say that no one has ever really done it yet… Ever…

“I’m Just A Singer (In A Rock And Roll Band)” is the final track on The Moody Blues’ seventh album, appropriately titled Seventh Sojourn. Released in 1972 Seventh Sojourn was the Moody’s first album to hit number one in the United States though oddly only hitting number five in the U.K. (as their three previous albums had all gone number one at home.)

“I’m Just A Singer” is a great example of classic Moody Blues with it’s full vocal harmonies led by Justin Hayward with John Lodge’s aggressive Bass providing a surprising amount of the melody. Graeme Edge’s drums bang out the introduction and give the drive to the song as Ray Thomas’ percussion fills in the spaces while keyboardist Mike Pinder has a field day with his collection of mellotron, Chaimberlin and other toys adding the full orchestral sound that the Moodys were so known for.

Written by John Lodge, The Moody Blues have it about right here with their story of hope and unrest.

“A thousand pictures can be drawn from one word, Only who is the artist we got to agree.
A thousand miles can lead so many ways. Just to know who is driving, What a help it would be”

So they are quite aware of what is going on around them.

“So if you want this world of yours to turn about you and you can see exactly what to do,
Please tell me!
I’m just a singer in a rock and roll band.”

No claim to special knowledge or abilities, in fact there is great concern expressed.

“How can we understand riots by the people for the people who are only destroying themselves,
And when you see a frightened person who is frightened by the people who are scorching this earth.”

Buy sadly, no answers…

“Music is the traveller crossing our world meeting so many people bridging the seas.
I’m just a singer in a rock and roll band.
We’re just the singers in a rock and roll band.
I’m just a singer in a rock and roll band…”

Lodge’s lyrics show that there are things wrong with the world but he’s just not quite sure what to do about it as he’s “Just A Singer In A Rock And Roll Band.”

A refreshing bit of realistic honesty acknowledging that perhaps a rock band is a rock band and not the answer to all the worlds problems.

And most importantly, it’s a great record!