1966 - The Beatles escape the madness of the road to create Revolver

The Beatles in '66

"You clink a couple of glasses together, or take bleeps from the radio, then you loop the tape to repeat the noises at intervals."

By 1966, the Beatles' music was starting to reflect their indulgence in marijuana and LSD. The extra time the band would have in the studio led to a much greater level of experimentation. The first fruits of this psychedelic vision appeared on Revolver in August 1966. It has come to be seen as their high point, musically. 

The band had begun recording sessions in the Spring of 1966, at a time when they were still playing live. They played their final show on August 29 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, concluding that they were stagnating as a band because they couldn't be heard above the screaming.

In his interview for the 20th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine, George Harrison said he had wanted to stop touring in 1965.

The NME's reappraisal in 1976

"I was getting very nervous. They kept planning these ticker-tape parades and I was saying I absolutely do not want to do that. I didn't like the idea of being too popular."

On one occasion, he said the Beatles landed in Houston. "There were thousands of kids - and four policemen. The kids were actually running along the runway. The pilot brought the plane to a stop and within minutes they were all over the outside of the plane, knocking on the windows and all over the wings. It was ridiculous."

The retrospective review of Revolver by the NME's Steve Clarke in 1976 (pictured here - click on it to read the clipping) reflects a growing appreciation of it as "their most listenable and durable work".

Revolver was still largely a Lennon and McCartney show, but George was tangibly more involved at this point, contributing three songs including the opening track 'Taxman' - "a tight, spare rocker," said the NME. Clarke notes how the band had evolved as players, with Paul's bass lines being "vibrant and imaginative" and the guitars harder and louder.

In the mid 60s, the majority of vinyl albums were still released principally in mono. Stereo was emerging but for bands like The Beatles it was still an afterthought. There were mono and stereo versions of Revolver released and the mixes were often very different between the two formats. 

For example, on Taxman, the mono version gives more prominence to the bass guitar and John's rhythm guitar has more attack. A cowbell appears prominently in mono but is buried in the stereo version. 

While John's songs reflected his increasingly cerebral preoccupations, Paul's work on Revolver showed a classic songwriter in the making. Songs such as Here, There and Everywhere, For No One and Eleanor Rigby would become standards covered by many other artists.

Eleanor Rigby is such a unique but assured piece of work, really one of their best compositions - probably more Paul than John but once again proof of their potency as a writing partnership. 

The psychedelia is turned up a notch for John's 'I'm Only Sleeping', with its dreamy feel the result of vari-speeding of the vocals and rhythm track, and some 'backwards' guitar (actually written out backwards and played as a melodic run by George).

The Fabs pay the price for standing up Imelda

World tours interrupted the sessions. On one leg of the tour, in the Philippines, the band failed to attend a reception arranged for them at the Presidential Palace by Imelda Marcos. "I'm very pleased to say that we never went to see those awful Marcoses," said George. 

"They sent people out there to beat us up. We couldn't even get a car ride to the airport. After half the people with us were beaten up, we finally got on the plane. Then they wouldn't let it take off. They announced that Brian Epstein and our road manager Mal Evans would have to get off the plane. 

"We sat there for what seemed like eternity. Finally they got back and they let the plane go. But they took all the money we earned at the concerts from us."

George and sitar master Ravi Shankar

On their return from Manila, The Beatles made their first brief visit to India, where George pursued his interest in the sitar, first used on Rubber Soul's Norwegian Wood. This resulted in the Indian raga-influenced track 'Love You To'. 

It is the wide variety of styles and the sheer quality of the songs that is so remarkable about Revolver. Even Yellow Submarine was "perfectly in tune with Ringo's persona," said Clarke. "It's simplicity was engaging, rather than dumb."

Yellow Submarine certainly captured the imagination of a younger audience. I started junior school in the Autumn of 1966 and one of my abiding memories is sitting next to the window in my classroom and hearing a young pre-schooler in his back garden singing "We all live in a Yellow Submarine" over and over again. 

The American version was significantly shorter

Three tracks from the Revolver sessions - I'm Only Sleeping, And Your Bird Can Sing and Dr. Robert were omitted from the North American release of Revolver, having been used on a US release 'Yesterday..And Today'. This definitely spoils the flow of the album for those of us who were used to the UK original release. 

Yellow Submarine aside, there was a maturity about the songwriting and the subject matter. The extra time in the studio allowed the band to work on arrangements and to get the bass and drums sounding more solid. Most importantly, it gave them the freedom to experiment, which culminated in the album's final statement, Tomorrow Never Knows.

Ringo created an iconic drum track

This was where the various influences - psychedelia, Indian raga, electronic music, came together. It starts with a drone and Ringo's drum pattern, which is absolutely essential to the atmosphere and feel of the song. The seagull-like noise is a distorted and sped up guitar. John said he wanted the vocals to sound like he was singing from a Himalayan mountain top.

There is all manner of sound effects, sped up and run backwards - primitive stuff by today's standards, but an act of true artistic creation in the context of the very basic analogue recording techniques they had at their disposal.

The willingness to not only try new ideas, but work out a way of getting the required sounds, is credited to Geoff Emerick, then just 20 years old and newly installed as The Beatles engineer, working under producer George Martin's direction. 

According to Mark Lewinsohn's book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, "Geoff walked in green, but because he knew no rules, tried different techniques. The chemistry of George Martin and Geoff was perfect. With another producer and engineer, things would have turned out quite differently."

The Beatles all had their own home tape machines and Emerick recalled that Paul in particular would come into studio 3 at Abbey Road with little reels of tape saying 'listen to this'.

"We did a live mix of all the loops," remembered George Martin. "All over the studios we had people spooling them onto machines with pencils, while Geoff did the balancing. There were many other hands controlling the panning". 

This was a performance in itself. "I laid all the loops onto the multi-track recorder and played the faders like a modern-day synthesiser," said Emerick.

The solution to John's request to sound like the Dalai Lama on top of a mountain was to feed his vocal through a Leslie speaker. "It meant breaking into the circuitry," said Emerick. "I remember the surprise on our faces when the voice came out of the speaker. After that, they wanted everything shoved through the Leslie!"

The lyrics left no doubt as to the direction The Beatles were headed.

But listen to the colour of your dream
It is not living
It is not living

In the 1970s, after their break-up, the Beatles were still held to be at the pinnacle of pop music. The 1975 list of the 100 greatest albums, voted on by the writers of the NME, had Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band  at number one, Blonde on Blonde at two, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds at three and Revolver at four. 

Sometime in the 1980s, this hierarchy changed and Revolver eclipsed Sgt. Pepper, to judge from lists compiled of the greatest all-time records. 

In 1985, hipsters had hijacked the NME listings, placing John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album at number 9, two places above Revolver. (Yeah, right. I mean, come on). And Sgt. Pepper? Nowhere to be seen in the '85 top 100.

But by 1993, a degree of sanity had been restored to the NME writers' list, with Revolver up to Number 2 behind Pet Sounds. Sgt. Pepper was back in at 33.

It's all down to personal taste, of course, but it's hard to disagree with the view that Revolver is their high point, when you consider the scale of their musical maturity in 1966.

However, this new mature and experimental sound was something many Beatles fans found less appealing. This was a long way from "She Loves You, yeah yeah yeah!" though it would be a few more months before their loyalty was severely tested.

The following year, during the making of Sgt. Pepper, a Life Magazine profile noted that the group "are stepping far ahead of their audience," but the possibility of losing support "does not bother them in the least."

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Elsewhere on this blog:

My visit to Abbey Road Studios

LIFE magazine reports on 'The New Far-out Beatles', 1967

Sgt. Pepper Is The Beatles - Who Knew?
 
At Home With the Lennons, 1967

A Night With John Lennon - The Fab Faux at Radio City Music Hall

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's artistic peak in the 1960s 

Pink Floyd - On tour in 1974 and 1977

  The program on the left is from Pink Floyd's UK winter tour in 1974.
                                                  On the right, the program from the 'Animals' tour in 1977

This a tale of two concert programs. Somewhere along the line in the 1970s, concert programs became expensive and rather boring.

Certainly between these two, from 1974 and 1977, Pink Floyd became a corporate monster and their programs became all style and no content.

The 1974 tour program was a treat though, being made to resemble a comic, with each member of the band given their own comic strip: Rog Of The Rovers, Captain Mason, R.N. - you get the idea.

Little quiz pages were interspersed and, most notably the program included the lyrics to the new songs the band played in the first half of the show.

Lyrics to the new songs

Pink Floyd's way of working up new material was to take it out on tour and gauge audience reaction, before committing it to record. Hence, the prototype for Dark Side Of The Moon was premiered as Eclipse - A Piece for Assorted Lunatics at live shows in 1972.

During the winter tour of 1974, the songs being tried out were Shine On You Crazy Diamond, You Gotta Be Crazy and Raving and Drooling. Of the three, Shine On... was the most impressive and the one clearly more complete than the other two. 

It was ready to appear on their next album, Wish You Were Here. Despite its unfamiliarity, Shine On You Crazy Diamond got a great reception from the audience at Wembley's Empire Pool.

You Gotta be Crazy and Raving and Drooling, with alterations to their lyrics and arrangements, would become Dogs and Sheep on the album Animals. So fully three years before they would appear on an album, these songs were being road-tested.

First half: New Songs
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Raving and Drooling (Sheep)
You Gotta be Crazy (Dogs)

The circular screen and rapid-fire projections

Second half: The Dark Side of the Moon
Speak to Me
Breathe
On the Run
Time
The Great Gig in the Sky
Money
Us and Them
Any Colour You Like
Brain Damage
Eclipse

Encore:
Echoes

The show was spellbinding and the audience loved it - the recordings show that clearly. But not everyone was impressed. That sniffy hipster at the NME, Nick Kent, a man who almost certainly never played a three-hour show in his life, thought the Floyd were too detached from the audience.

My bootleg CDs of the '74 Wembley shows,
bought about 20 years ago from record shops in Tokyo

Kent missed the point, then. With Pink Floyd, it was never about the band members as rock stars. They were not throwing shapes and projecting themselves in the manner of other groups. Above all, it was about the music and the visuals. Right back to their earliest shows at London's UFO club in 1967, the light show was the focal point.

And by the time of the Dark Side Of The Moon tours, the show was all about the images projected on the circular screen, stage centre.

My ticket

Melody Maker's Chris Charlesworth, reviewing an earlier show in Edinburgh, said of Dark Side of the Moon: "On this tour it takes on magnificent proportions with that truly brilliant movie screen designed, I think, to take the observer on a space flight to the other side of the galaxy."

In the Classic Albums show about Dark Side, they show many of the visuals projected on the circular screen. This was innovative staging at the time.

Nowadays, stage lighting and visuals are way more advanced at arena shows, but the Floyd were at the forefront of concepts to transform live shows into a much more visual and engaging spectacle - a process that developed into flying pigs with the Animals tour and, ultimately, The Wall.

'74 tour

"Visions flash past all too quickly," said Charlesworth. "But stand-out bits include various tumbling buildings, a pilot’s view of a take-off, coins and clocks in profusion, plenty of sea and surf, and the closing sequence depicting prominent politicians apparently well satisfied with the Floyd’s performance."

The Wembley '74 show climaxed with the giant screen showing the sun being eclipsed by the moon.

On the bootleg recording of the Empire Pool show, you can hear the audience response as the Eclipse reaches its crescendo. It was very well done, the whole thing, topped off, let's not forget, by this timeless classic of an album.

Here's an audio recording from Wembley 1974

UPDATE: I have just found some great quality film of Pink Floyd live from June 28 1975, at the Ivor Wynne Stadium, Hamilton, Ontario. Filmed by Jim Kelly 'Speedy' in super8 reels. With thanks to the Genesis Museum for 4k reel conversion, and audio sync by Ikhnaton and NUFF.

Here's the link

By 1977 and the Animals tour, the Floyd had taken the live experience to another level. "Roger had an idea for the next Pink Floyd album," according to the withdrawn liner notes for the new 5.1 mix of Animals: "He borrowed from George Orwell’s allegorical story, Animal Farm, in which pigs and other farmyard animals were reimagined anthropomorphically.

"Waters portrays the human race as three sub-species trapped in a violent, vicious cycle, with sheep serving despotic pigs and authoritarian dogs. You Gotta be Crazy and Raving And Drooling perfectly fitted his new concept."

The show was again split into two halves.

First half: Animals
Sheep
Pigs on the Wing (Part I)
Dogs
Pigs on the Wing (Part II)
Pigs (Three Different Ones)"

Second half: Wish You Were Here

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I–V)
Welcome to the Machine
Have a Cigar
Wish You Were Here
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI–IX)"

Encore:
Money
Us and Them

Part of the show at the V&A

If you saw the Pink Floyd exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum a few years ago, you will have seen the flying pig, the war plane and the various other stage props that made up the Animals show. 

The album cover photo shoot of the pig flying over Battersea Power Station has passed into legend. Apparently they hired a marksman to shoot down the flying pig if it broke free of its moorings. 

Unfortunately, on the first day of the photo shoot, the weather was not conducive and so the session was postponed. 

But the marksman had only been hired for the one day, so when the pig broke free and entered London airspace untethered, there was no one to shoot it down.

Contact sheet from the Battersea photo shoot

The 1977 live shows were suitably over the top, to match the music. The pyrotechnic stage lighting was choreographed from two articulated towers. At the climax of Sheep, fireworks burst out from the towers.

At various points during the first set, an inflatable family, larger than life household items like a fridge or a car and various animals would appear. 

I believe these concerts utilised quadrophonic sound and the band made good use of the available technology. The sound of dogs barking and pigs squealing was particularly freaky.

The four-piece band was augmented by second guitarist/bass player Snowy White. The overall sound was much more punchy and aggressive than the 1974 show had been. 

My ticket

I suppose that's a lot to do with the songs. The lyrics by Roger Waters became darker and more political on Animals. There's a barely disguised anger at the heart of the album. 

The unused liner notes to the 5.1 mixes of Animals said: "Despite being recorded in London during the long summer heatwave of 1976, Pink Floyd’s Animals remains a dark album. Its critique of capitalism and greed caught the prevailing mood in Britain: a time of industrial strife, economic turmoil, The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the race riots of Notting Hill."

The alienation and distance from the audience, that Nick Kent sensed in 1974, also became quite real, particularly on the last date of the North American tour in Montreal. By all accounts, including his own, Waters became increasingly angry with the rowdy American audiences. It culminated with him spitting in the face of a fan at the front of the stage. The experience fed into the writing of the next Pink Floyd album, The Wall.

1977 Animals tour program

Despite the improved audio facilities, there were no official recordings made of the Animals tour and no decent unofficial audio exists from the Wembley shows. Here's a recording from the US tour

The Animals tour program was black and glossy. It contained no words, apart from Pink Floyd - Animals on the cover; just a bunch of so-so photos. A waste of money frankly, but a memento nonetheless all these years later.

I gave up buying concert programs after that.

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Also on this blog:

Reviewing Pink Floyd at the V&A: Their Mortal Remains

March 1973 - 'Dark Side of the Moon' enters the charts https://bangnzdrum.blogspot.com/2018/11/march-1973-dark-side-of-moon-enters.html?m=1

Vegetable Man - Syd Barrett's last Floyd recordings

Wish You Were Here - A Flawed Diamond

When Tangerine Dream's Phaedra outsold Tubular Bells

Sometime in 1974 or '75 I was watching 'The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau' on British TV. They were filming a cave dive. It was beautifully shot and was complemented by the mellotron and early synthesiser sounds of German electronic music pioneers Tangerine Dream. 

I recognised the music as a track from their album Phaedra. It was one of those perfect combinations of music and visuals. I wish I could see it again, but I'm not sure the tapes are still in existence.

Froese, Franke and Baumann - Tangerine Dream

The track was called 'Mysterious Semblance at The Strand of Nightmares' - a beguiling if rather unsettling title, entirely in keeping with the other-worldly atmospheres evoked by Tangerine Dream. 

The Phaedra album became massively popular in the UK in 1974 on the strength of late-night exposure on John Peel's Radio One Top Gear programme.

Peel was the only national radio DJ playing progressive music in the early 1970s, be it Pink Floyd, Soft Machine or so-called 'krautrock' bands like Can, Neu and Faust. 

An advert from the NME in 1974

This new psychedelic synthesiser music was a popular complement for those late night sessions. The advert that appears here, from the New Musical Express in 1974, shows what a phenomenon Tangerine Dream were at the time. 

The ad says, "No airplay, few reviews, yet Phaedra has already hit the top 30 only two weeks after release - faster even than Tubular Bells."

John Peel said, "I have been introducing Top Gear for 6 years and during that time we have had sessions from Cream, The Who and Hendrix. 

"We were the first to broadcast Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Family, the Fairports and King Crimson. 

"Yet we have had more mail about Tangerine Dream than any other group."

For their 1975 UK tour in support of the follow-up album, Rubycon, Tangerine Dream had the inspired idea of playing in some of the UK's most impressive ancient buildings.

The concert at Coventry Cathedral in October 1975

The first show, at the new Coventry Cathedral, built on the site of the bomb-damaged ancient cathedral -  was filmed. A short film made by Tony Palmer was shown on the BBC at the time. The original sound recording was dubbed using recordings from later in the tour, with overdubs added at The Manor, Virgin's Oxfordshire studio. Some of this appeared on the live album Ricochet. The film linked to above is the closest I can find to the original concert.

The musicians often worked spontaneously on stage, improvising around pre-agreed thematic changes. The technology has advanced massively since those early days of monophonic synthesisers and sequencers. But the music created by Tangerine Dream in the 1970s, along with the solo albums by Edgar Froese, Chris Franke and Peter Baumann, have stood the test of time. Tangerine Dream were the progenitors of the ambient and space musicians now featured on streaming services such as Hearts of Space. Highly recommended if you like to use music to be transported to another dimension.

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See also on this blog:
Music While You Work From Home - A Guide

A visit to the Annual Nick Drake Gathering

What is Led Zeppelin's best acoustic song?

NickDrake - better programming might have helped

2-Tone and possibly my best gig ever

Queen's 1976 Free Concert in Hyde Park

Memories of the Reading Festival, 1975

Five Days of High Drama at the Isle of Wight, 1970

From Pinner to LA - Elton's Big Breakthrough, 1970

My Woodstock 50th Anniversary Diary

A Wizard, A True Star - my all-time favourite album

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's Artistic Peak in the 1960s

 Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns

 

'A Wizard, A True Star' - my all-time favourite record

I love this record. For me, it's the greatest album ever made.

I bought Todd Rundgren's 'A Wizard, A True Star' in 1974 - it was the record that awakened my sense of musical wonder. Although it is now 50 years old, it still sounds, as the author Barney Hoskyns put it: "more bravely futuristic than any ostensibly cutting-edge electro-pop being made in the 21st Century." 

A Wizard, A True Star was a single album that had more musical ideas on it than many artists could muster in a whole career. It ranges across a variety of styles, reflecting a precocious talent channelling everything from The Beatles and Laura Nyro to glam rock, classic soul and Jimi Hendrix.

I came to know Todd Rundgren via the single I Saw The Light, which was a radio play hit in the UK, with its catchy piano melody and George Harrison-like guitar solo.

I decided I wanted to investigate further. I remember being in a record shop in the West End of London, looking up at the albums on display. I don't remember what the price difference was (probably only about 50p) but I couldn’t afford Something / Anything, the album that contained I Saw The Light,  because it was a double. Todd's follow-up album was also on sale and I was attracted to its kaleidoscopic cover.

Having gained an audience for his singer/songwriter-style songs
like 'Hello It's Me', Todd got weird on their asses

So I bought that instead. It’s fair to say the record blew my mind.

From the opening fuzz tones of ‘International Feel’, it was clear that 'A Wizard, A True Star' wasn't going to sound anything like 'I Saw The Light'.  This was exciting though; I had something none of my friends had. My musical universe was about to expand.

I was 15 at the time, a suburban kid eager for just this kind of adventure. If a record can be life changing, this was it.

That first side has 12 tracks on it; it's like watching a fast action cartoon. Todd's influences are all over the shop but if you can keep up with the stylistic shifts and the slightly crazed delivery, it's a wild ride.

The mood and style of side two is in marked contrast; Todd takes a more measured approach, with the middle of the side devoted to his soul medley.

Rolling Stone magazine's review considered the soul medley to be "the highlight of the record, in which Todd plays tribute to the Impressions, the Miracles, the Delphonics and the Capitols. 

"The first three selections, 'I'm So Proud', 'Ooh Baby Baby' and 'La La Means I Love You', feature Rundgren's plaintive singing that conveys a feeling of a kid vocalizing along with the originals late at night, fantasising about crooning to his dream girl," said the review. "The lovely synthesizer and harpsichord arrangements reveal Todd's respect for Stevie Wonder's recent recordings."

Unlike side one, where the tracks come thick and fast, on side two each track is a given the chance to soar. The songs still seque into each other, but do so beautifully, particularly towards the end, as the fuzz guitar of ‘Hungry for Love’ tails off to the solo piano of ‘I Don’t Want To Tie You Down’ which in turn echoes away into the guitar frenzy of ‘Is It My Name’.

The album ends with the majestic ‘Just One Victory’, the national anthem of Utopia as Todd called it.

It's a trip - in less than an hour you've heard a whole world of music. 

John Siomos, Ralph Shuckett, John Siegler & Moogy Klingman
the core band members, at Secret Sound recording AWATS

Rundgren has always made it clear this album was not a solo performance, like much of Something/Anything, where he played all the instruments on three sides of that album.

'Wizard' was recorded at Secret Sound, a small  studio created in a loft apartment in New York that was rented by Todd's keyboard playing friend Mark 'Moogy' Klingman.

Secret Sound was really Todd's creation, said Moogy. He did all the wiring and the equipment installation himself. "That studio was really put together with band aids and bubble gum. It just barely held together.”

A Wizard, A True Star was one of the very first things they recorded at Secret Sound. In Paul Myers' book about Todd's recording sessions in the 1970s, Moogy recalls, "One day Todd said ‘Okay I’m gonna start recording'. He was in the room by himself and he laid down the bass part to “International Feel” and then he started adding on to it. I said wow he’s making some really weird noisy sounds. 

Todd at Sunset Sound

"Then he was overdubbing and it started to sound like something and he said 'OK Moogy, I want you to bring your band in and we're gonna do the track. One of the first tracks we did was 'Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye' but he’d changed it to 'Da Da Dali'.

"We spent the next month or so recording A Wizard, A True Star with Todd as the sole engineer. We didn’t even have an assistant to just watch the levels and bring things down a bit. But that’s how he liked to work. He was a solo guy, he was a hermit nerd.”

Todd's new girlfriend Bebe Buell is sitting on the sofa at the back

The list of session musicians on AWATS includes the Brecker Brothers, Rick Derringer and David Sanborn. Moogy was responsible for bringing in all the musicians, using second keyboard player Ralph Shuckett, bassist John Siegler and drummer John Siomos as the core band. The contribution of Siomos (who later played on Frampton Comes Alive) is notable as he provides the solid groove and highly distinctive snare and tom-tom fills for much of the album’s more soulful and rocked-out moments.

Because he had crammed so much on the record, Todd urged the listener to crank up their stereo to get the full effect. In fact he suggested people tape the record and then crank it up, to avoid having the stylus jump off the vinyl.

The inside gatefold

First issues of the vinyl LP in the US were die-cut, giving the record sleeve an odd shape, and psychedelic images on both sides of the gatefold cover. I have an early US pressing and I have to say the sound is superior to my UK copy. There's more detail audible and you really get a sense of how amazing the mix is, considering the amount of instrumentation and studio effects.

The original album package also included a ‘band aid’ poem written by Todd’s friend Patti Smith, as well as a postcard encouraging purchasers to send their name to be included on a poster, which was given away with Todd's next album.

Patti Smith's beat prose inspired review of 'A Wizard, A True Star' for Creem Magazine in April 1973, described the album as "Rock and roll for the skull. A very noble concept. Past present and tomorrow in one glance. Understanding through musical sensation. Todd Rundgren is preparing us for a generation of frenzied children who will dream in animation."

inner sleeve side one

inner sleeve side two

By the time he came to record 'A Wizard, A True Star', Todd had tasted success with the hit singles Hello It's Me and I Saw The Light. But he set the template for the rest of his career, by not giving the fans or the record company more of the same.  

A Wizard, A True Star was his take on psychedelia, with a dash of rock and soul. And despite all the indulgence, it worked.

That wasn't always the case with Todd; he went on to make some other really good records, but he confounded expectations at every turn, which his fans learned to tolerate, or not.

Glam'd up in '73, playing Clapton's SG

Even in those early days, just before he made AWATS, an appearance on the US music show Midnight Special playing Hello It's Me had his PR advisers tearing their hair out. Todd appeared in full Glam Rock style, with elaborate face make-up and multi-coloured hair. You don't have to camp around, indeed. Commercial suicide, it was the first indication that Todd wouldn't be playing the game the way they wanted. 

On this swing to the left, Todd said: "I threw out all the rules of record making and decided I would try to imprint the chaos in my head onto a record without trying to clean it up for everyone else's benefit. The result was a complete loss of about half of my audience. This became the model for my life after that."

If he'd stuck to releasing just the pretty love songs, he would have been a superstar, no doubt about it. But after AWATS, for every A Dream Goes On Forever, there was a piece of self-indulgent primitive synth bollocks. I still enjoy listening to his 70s albums, skipping the odd track that, even then, was annoyingly indulgent on his part. There have been times when he has unfuriated me in a live situation - ignoring his considerable body of work to play an extended version of Peter Gunn on the 'Liars' tour, for example. It's never been easy being a TR fan, and he is unapologetic about that.  

A Wizard, A True Star, though, is the high point of a prolific musical journey.

The following links include some rare footage from the 1970s and some more recent clips, including some good quality film of the performance of AWATS 10 years ago.

1974 low-fi film of Todd and the AWATS band, playing material from the album including Just One Victory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8gpABtL7sk&fbclid=IwAR26QUOjPxSzryBZTl8vp2-UWuWySGey7aOIljBDUmSSSRVyCNZpCs2-DbY

Here's video of Todd appearing on the Daryl's House show, singing Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel

And here, as part of the 2009 AWATS shows, he performs I Don't Want To Tie You Down

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Also on this blog:

2-Tone and possibly my best gig ever

Queen's 1976 Free Concert in Hyde Park

Memories of the Reading Festival, 1975

Five Days of High Drama at the Isle of Wight, 1970

From Pinner to LA - Elton's Big Breakthrough, 1970

My Woodstock 50th Anniversary Diary

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's Artistic Peak in the 1960s

 Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns