New LPs from Stones, Neil Young and Byrds

Three from 1970, available now from http://www.1960s.london !

Let The Airwaves Flow Volume 5

The Rolling Stones Live in Paris 1970

1. Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)
2. Roll Over Beethoven (Chuck Berry)
3. Sympathy For The Devil (Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)
4. Stray Cat Blues (Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)
5. Love In Vain (Robert Johnson)
6. Dead Flowers (Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)
7. Midnight Rambler (Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)
8. Live With Me (Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)
9. Little Queenie (Chuck Berry)
10. Let It Rock (Chuck Berry)
11. Brown Sugar (Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)

 

Recording details

All tracks recorded live at Palais de Sports, Paris on September 22nd 1970 and broadcast on French Radio Europe 1

Personnel

Mick Jagger – lead vocals, harmonica
Keith Richards- guitar, vocals
Mick Taylor – guitar
Bill Wyman – bass guitar
Charlie Watts – drums
Bobby Keys – saxophone
Jon Price – trumpet

The European tour that the Stones undertook in the autumn of 1970 represented their first live dates since their US tour of late 1969.. The Stones had spent the intervening months at Olympic Studios in Barnes,  recording  the tracks that would make up the LP Sticky Fingers. However the LP that the European tour was designed to promote was Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out, released on September 4^th and a document of the ‘69 US tour. Comparing the songs played in the US and in Europe shows a few key differences. Out was Carol, replaced by an unprecedented three further Chuck Berry covers. Brown Sugar and Dead Flowers also featured, even though they would not be released on Sticky Fingers for a further six months.

The other major change from the US tour was the addition of a brass section, Bobby Keys on sax and Jim Price on trumpet. The Stones had first met Keys in San Antonio in 1964 when he was backing Bobby Vee. Keys and Keith Richards bonded when they discovered they shared the same birthday. Keys’ first appearance on a Stones record is his fierce solo on Live With Me from 1969’s Let It Bleed. Together with his partner in crime Jim Price they made a fine addition to the Stones live sound where they were used with restraint to fill out the sound and add a new dimension to some familiar songs.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash makes for a perfect opening number, hard and fast. Roll Over Beethoven hadn’t been played live since 1964 and would not be played again after this tour, a shame as this version includes both the rock and the roll (c. Keith Richards). The Paris dates came midway through the tour and a lengthy Sympathy For The Devil illustrates just how well the band were playing off each other. There is a change of pace with Stray Cat Blues and Love In Vain, both with sparing contributions from Price and Keys and the latter featuring a characteristically restrained solo from Mick Taylor. The new Dead Flowers is charming whilst Midnight Rambler is another longer track. The Stones have never been a jamming band in concert but the guitar interplay between Richards and Taylor reaches a peak here with some savage slashing chords. The thumping opening of Live With Me showcases the peerless rhythm section of Watts and Wyman before Bobby Keys recreates his incendiary solo. Staying uptempo Richards leads the band through a brace of Chuck Berry songs in Little Queenie and Let It Rock. The former is transformed from its Ya-Ya’s version through the addition of horns whilst the latter is perfect for the Stones but would be played all too rarely. That  Brown Sugar is still fresh is clear from the succinct and enthusiastic version played here with Jagger at his most commanding.

The European 1970 tour is the blueprint for The Stones ascent to mega-stardom. All the elements are now in place save for the addition of Nicky Hopkins, who would supplement Ian Stewart’s boogie-woogieing. No official recording from Europe 1970 has ever been released, but you can hear from the highly vocal reaction of the Parisienne crowd that the band were in peak form. They saunter, they swagger, they swing. The golden  age of live Stones performances has begun.

Sleevenotes: Alain de Monte

 

Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Santa Monica Civic 1970

1. On The Way Home (Neil Young)
2. I Am A Child (Neil Young)
3. Everybody’s Alone (Neil Young)
4. I Believe In You (Neil Young)
5. Birds (Neil Young)
6. Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing (Neil Young)
7. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
8. Winterlong (Neil Young)
9. Down By The River (Neil Young)
10. Wonderin’ (Neil Young)
11. Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown (Danny Whitten , Neil Young)
12. Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)

 

Personnel

Neil Young – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, vocals

Danny Whitten – rhythm guitar, vocals (tracks 7-12)

Billy Talbot – bass (tracks 7-12)

Ralph Molina – drums, backing vocals (tracks 7-12)

Jack Nitzsche – electric piano (tracks 7-12)

 

Recording details

All tracks recorded live at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, March 28^th 1970 and broadcast on Radio KUSC FM

 

Sleevenotes

Here we are in the years.

Early 1970 found Neil Young simultaneously facing in two directions. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – the conglomerate whose live performances he had been brought in to shore up– were the toast of Woodstock and globally massive. Young referred to them as his Beatles, whereas his Stones side came out  when he was backed by tough roots rockers Crazy Horse. Young had first seen Crazy Horse when they were still The Rockets and “borrowed” Danny Whitten, Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina for his backing band. The story is depicted in Running Dry – Requiem For The Rockets , a song on Young’s highly successful Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere LP (May 1969), co-credited to Crazy Horse. Whitten made a brilliant counterpoint to Young. Their voices fitted together seamlessly and their interweaving guitars  were particularly effective when they hit a live groove, supported by the funky 4/4 rhythm section of Talbot and Molina and underpinned by the haphazard keyboard expertise of wayward genius Jack Nitzsche (Phil Spector, the Rolling Stones, Performance).

The 1970  US tour let Young express both his sensitive singer-songwriter side and his enthusiasm for raunchy proto-grunge : an acoustic set of solo and Buffalo Springfield songs was followed by a very lively electric set with Crazy Horse. Santa Monica was the final night of a ten date tour  which long-term Young afficionado Nick Kent describes as featuring some of Young’s best ever performances.

For many years Neil Young’s extensive fan base could only hear the 1970 tour through bootlegs of varying quality. In 2006 Reprise teased with a six track release Live  At The Fillmore East,  to which a common response was “where’s the rest of the gig?”. With this LP we are delighted to bring you the entire acoustic set that Reprise completely overlooked as well as some complementary electric performances.

Of the six acoustic songs, three are from Young’s days with Buffalo Springfield. Particularly welcome are On The Way Home and Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing as Young did not sing lead on the Springfield studio versions: they are warmly received. I Am A Child fits in seamlessly with solo performances of I Believe In You and Birds, both from Neil’s upcoming September 1970  release After The Goldrush.. Everybody’s Alone was recorded with Crazy Horse about this time but would not see an official release until The Archives Volume 1 in 2009.

Cinnamon Girl was omitted from the Reprise release over concerns with tuning so we are delighted to include it here: it rocks hard with a fabulous one-note guitar solo.  The twin lead vocals of Neil and Danny are a highlight of  Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.. Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown is an upbeat song about scoring smack, the obverse of I’m Waiting  For My Man. Sung mainly by Danny it would also appear on the first Crazy Horse LP (1971) and as a spectacularly unsuccessful single by Mott The Hoople the same year. Winterlong and Wonderin’ would not receive official releases until 1977 (Decade) and 1983 (Everybody’s Rockin’) respectively, the latter with doo wop backing vocals that are mercifully absent here. And finally there is Down By The River where Whitten’s rhythm guitar provides the perfect foil for Young’s “intense sustain and blistering attack” (Barney Hoskins) over a relatively restrained eight minutes.

Sadly the 1970 tour was the last time that Young and Whitten played together live. Whitten’s heroin habit caused his performance to deteriorate to the point where Young sacked him just before the Time Fades Away tour.  Whitten died later that day, from an overdose of prescription painkillers and alcohol. Young felt personally responsible  for Whitten’s death  and wrote the 1975 LP Tonight’s The Night as an extended tribute to Danny,: including a fiery Downtown from the Fillmore East dates.

Neil would carry on with Talbot and Molina under the name Crazy Horse but there is something magical about the first Crazy Horse line up. We are fortunate that Radio KUSC  recorded and broadcast this gig so that today we can hear Neil Young and the original Crazy Horse at their most spectacular.

Sleevenotes: Bernard Shakey

With many thanks to Neil Parison for his invaluable assistance with this release

 

 

The Byrds

Live In Amsterdam 1970

Side One

1. Baby What You Want Me To Do (Jimmy Reed)
2. Willin’ (Lowell George)
3. Black Mountain Rag (Soldier’s Joy) (Leslie Keith)
4. Buckaroo (Bob Morris) /
5. Nashville West (Gene Parsons & Clarence White)
6. You Don’t Miss Your Water (William Bell)
7. Chestnut Mare (Roger McGuinn and Jacques Levy)
8. Chimes Of Freedom (Bob Dylan)

Side Two

1. Turn! Turn! Turn! (Pete Seeger & Book of Ecclesiastes) /
2. Mr Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan) /
3. Eight Miles High (Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby) /
4. Hold It (Byrds)

Recording details

All tracks recorded live at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam on July 7^th 1970 and broadcast on VPRO radio, The Netherlands.

 

Personnel

Roger McGuinn – Guitar, vocals

Clarence White – Guitar, mandolin, vocals

Skip Battin – Bass, vocals

Gene Parsons – Drums, vocals

 

Sleevenotes

Early line-ups of the Byrds had a reputation for erratic live performances. Extensive touring throughout 1969 and 1970 resulted in a highly professional road-hardened band that was the most stable and longest-lived of any Byrds configuration. Talking to Uncut in 2019 Roger McGuinn was fulsome in his praise for Clarence White. ” Clarence White was a brilliant guitarist, he could play anything with a great sense of syncopation. He never played the same lick twice, it was never predictable. I clearly remember the difference between the Byrds onstage before Clarence and after him and it was a tremendous contrast for the better.”

To build on the strength of the Byrds onstage, producer Terry Melcher suggested that the 1970 LP Untitled should be a double LP containing one studio record and one live record. The studio part of Untitled contained songs that McGuinn had written with ex-psychologist Jaques Levy for a country-rock stage production of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. The musical was to be titled Gene Tryp, transposing Ibsen’s work from Norway to America. Gene Tryp would not be performed until 1992, but six of the twenty-six songs were recorded in the studio by The Byrds and appeared on Untitled and its successor Byrdmaniax (1971). The live portion of Untitled featured songs recorded live in New York at Queens College (28^th February 1970) and the Felt Forum (March 1^st 1970). The original LP released in September 1970 contained seven live tracks: a 2000 CD re-issue added a further eight live tracks. This LP has been programmed to avoid any overlap with these 15 tracks.

First up is a  sturdy version of Jimmy Reed’s Baby What You Want Me To Do which showcases the tightness of the Battin / Parsons rhythm section.  McGuinn was an early champion of Willin’, the evocative ballad written by Lowell George prior to his forming Little Feat and here sung by Parsons. Prior to joining the Byrds Gene Parsons and Clarence White had played together extensively, both on sessions and as part of a short-lived band called Nashville West. Their instrumental prowess is exhibited in Black Mountain Rag, Buckaroo and their theme tune Nashville West. You Don’t Miss Your Water is a return to the more country direction instigated by Gram Parsons during his time in the band. Chestnut Mare is the only Gene Tryp song performed here – an edited version would be the Byrds last UK top 20. In contrast Chimes of Freedom was released on the very first Byrds album in 1965 where it was one of four Bob Dylan covers. Three further early singles are revisited during the closing medley. Turn! Turn! Turn! and Mr Tambourine Man from 1965 and Eight Miles High from the following year. Unlike the single version of Mr Tambourine Man McGuinn sings a fuller lyric here. Whilst Mr Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn! are played concisely Eight Miles High features an extended arrangement allowing for lengthy improvisation, including a drum and bass passage that McGuinn claims was inserted to give him and White a cigarette break. The medley concludes with Hold It, the Byrds live going-out theme first heard on the Dr. Byrds and Mr.Hyde LP from 1969.

Clarence White would remain a Byrd until February 1973 when McGuinn reformed the original five-piece band in order to record the deeply underwhelming studio LP Byrds. He was killed by a drunk driver whilst loading his car after a gig in July 1973, prompting Gram Parsons to write In My Hour Of Darkness.  Listening to this fine performance shows just how important Clarence White was in helping McGuinn establish the credibility of the Byrds as a live performing outfit.

Sleevenotes: John Robertson (retired)