We take it for granted that some artists - Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Ozzy Osbourne, to name a few - were destined for successful solo careers once they moved away from the bands with which they came to prominence.
That's not always the case, of course. Performers often take a big gamble once they decide to start putting their own names on products. Sometimes they zoom to the top of the charts and sell out arenas. Sometimes they don't.
Here's a list of 10 worthwhile "solo debuts," many of which might not be very familiar to the average music fan. (Let's do it in reverse alphabetical order, just to be different.)
- Alexander Spence, "Oar" (1969). Your first question is, Who?!? Well, Alexander was better known as Skip Spence when he played drums for Jefferson Airplane and guitar for Moby Grape. OK ... still, who?!? Suffice it to say he was one of those "casualties" who could stand only so much of that '60s-type atmosphere. In late 1968, at age 22 and having been recently released from Bellevue, he rode his motorcycle from New York to Nashville, where he recorded an album's worth of material (plus) all by himself on guitar, bass and drums. The results is bizarre, even for the time period, with few of the compositions following traditional song structure, and even fewer featuring what could pass for intelligible vocals. Still, the album makes for fascinating listening ... for the very few people who heard it until its CD release. An edition with bonus tracks is available from Sundazed Records, released right around the time of Skip's death in 1999. (He chose to have his name listed as "Alexander" on the original Columbia Records release, which sold only a couple of hundred copies before quickly going out of print.)
- Gram Parsons, "G.P." (1972). The man born as Cecil Ingraham Connor probably has had more words per album written about him than anyone else in rock; this was his only solo release in his lifetime. Was he a genius ahead of his time, the father of "country-rock," or a rich kid just havin' a good ol' time? Take a listen to his one and only album with the Byrds, "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" (1968), and answer in the affirmative to the first two points. Read "Hickory Wind," Ben Fong-Torres' excellent biography of Gram, and you'll get a good idea of the latter. At any rate, both his solo albums - including the posthumous "Grievous Angel" (1973) - show he was in a league with Henley-Frey, etc., and might have been as successful had he lived past age 27.
- Gene Parsons, "Kindling" (1973). Another ex-Byrd, the drummer during the band's latter stages, cut this brief album for Warner Brothers and saw it pretty much disappear without a trace. This rather laid-back affair features some excellent playing by the ill-fated Clarence White, the legendary guitarist (also a Byrds alumnus) who was killed by a drunken driver while loading equipment into his vehicle after a gig. A highlight is one of the many and assorted covers of Lowell George's "Willin'" being recorded around that time. (Good luck finding this one.)
- Paul Kossoff, "Back Street Crawler" (1973). The more I hear of the guitarist for Free, the more I understand why he was held in such high regard for a brief period in the late '60s and early '70s. His band was no more by the time "Back Street Crawler" was recorded, having morphed into the radio-friendly Bad Company, but Kossoff showed he still could play with a fury on two extended instrumental tracks, "Tuesday Morning" and "Time Away." Plus "Molton Gold," featuring a haunting chorus and Paul Rodgers on lead vocal, is held in such high regard that it serves as the title to Free's double-disc Rhino Records anthology. Kossoff fronted a band that took his solo album's name until his death in 1976.
- David Gilmour, "David Gilmour" (1978). As Roger Waters steered Pink Floyd in more of a doom-and-gloom direction ("The Wall," "The Final Cut"), guitarist Gilmour cut an album of highly listenable compositions, including some cool instrumentals, the opener "Mihalis" and "It's Deafintely," and the classic "There's No Way Out of Here," which sounds more like Floyd than, say, "Another Brick." Gilmour's debut didn't fare well on release, perhaps reflecting how little-known the individual Floyds were at the time.
- Robert Fripp, "Exposure" (1979). As a big-time King Crimson fan, I was excited when that group's leader released his solo debut, following some highly experimental collaborative work with Brian Eno. While I enjoyed most of "Exposure" - especially the bizarre effects applied to Terre Roche's vocals on the title track - I couldn't interest any of my high-school classmates in sharing my enthusiasm. The album features plenty of high-profile guests, including Peter Gabriel, Van der Graaf Generator vocalst Peter Hammill, jazz fusionist Narada Michael Walden and, believe it or not, Daryl Hall (of ... and Oates).
- John Entwistle, "Smash Your Head Against the Wall" (1971). Pete Townshend received the lion's share of songwriting glory - deservedly so - in the Who, but plenty of fans always had a soft spot for John's compositions like "Whiskey Man," "Boris the Spider" and "Heaven and Hell." The latter song appears on John's debut, although in a much less bombastic fashion than the way the Who was performing it at the time. The rest of the album is highly listenable as well, containing some remarkable catchy songs: "My Size," "What Are We Doing Here?" and the anthemic "I Believe In Everything." Along with being one of the two fathers of modern rock bass playing (along with Jack Casady), Thunderfingers also could come up with one heck of a tune. We miss him.
- Robert Calvert, "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters" (1974). So, you might have heard of Skip Spence. But I'll bet you have no clue about this guy. The late Mr. Calvert was the lyricist, sometimes vocalist, poet-in-residence for a British band called Hawkwind that would be almost totally unkown in these here parts, had not its bass player once been Lemmy of Motorhead fame. Well, Lemmy played bass on this one, too, and it was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, the mastermind behind Queen's wall of sound. "Captain Lockheed" mixes amusing narrative with the types of two-chord, heavily processed songs that characterized Hawkwind's repertoire at the time. You might look long and hard for this one, but you'll never hear anything else quite like it.
- Richard Betts, "Highway Call" (1974). His fans know his as Dickey, as in the longtime Allman Brothers' guitarist and composer of their sole top 10 hit, "Ramblin' Man." The following year, he released his solo debut, with one side of songs featuring vocals and the other a pair of instrumentals. I'm partial to the latter, especially the 15-minute jam "Hand Picked." The other instrumental is "Kissimmee Kid," the Vassar Clements (1928-2005) fiddle workout that Grateful Dead fans will recognize from its appearance on the "Old & In the Way" album. Considering the Allman' output the rest of the '70s and into the early '80s, "Highway Call" was as good as it got from that point forward for one of America's great rock bands.
- Jeff Beck, "Truth" (1968). The guitarist, all of 22 at the time, had come off a successful year-and-a-half stint with the Yardbirds and his own solo success with a big U.K. single, "Hi-Ho Silver Lining." Fans who were familiar with Jeff's sort of off-key singing on that tune might have been surprised by the raspy, assured vocals featured throughout "Truth," by a relatively unknown ex-footballer (as in soccer player) named Rod Stewart. And on bass was a relatively unkown kid who could play some guitar, too, a young fellow named Ronnie Wood. Anyway, the group as assembled absolutely smokes through a set of mostly blues standards and a few originals, including the unforgettable "Beck's Bolero," attributed to "J. Page." That particular track was a remnant from the short-lived Beck-Jimmy Page collaboration in the Yardbirds, and as Jeff points out in the liner notes to "Truth," he felt he couldn't improve on the original take.
Speaking of Jimmy, he went ahead and recorded his own album a few months after "Truth," released under the name of his fledgling band. Maybe it's just coincidence that much of the material on "Led Zeppelin" sounds very close to "Truth," including covers on both of Willie Dixon's "You Shook Me." And it could be happenstance that Robert Plant's singing on the Zeppelin debut is phrased in a manner very similar to that of the future crooner of "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy." At any rate, if you like Led Zeppelin and haven't done so before ... seek the "Truth."
(Pun intended.)
That's not always the case, of course. Performers often take a big gamble once they decide to start putting their own names on products. Sometimes they zoom to the top of the charts and sell out arenas. Sometimes they don't.
Here's a list of 10 worthwhile "solo debuts," many of which might not be very familiar to the average music fan. (Let's do it in reverse alphabetical order, just to be different.)
- Alexander Spence, "Oar" (1969). Your first question is, Who?!? Well, Alexander was better known as Skip Spence when he played drums for Jefferson Airplane and guitar for Moby Grape. OK ... still, who?!? Suffice it to say he was one of those "casualties" who could stand only so much of that '60s-type atmosphere. In late 1968, at age 22 and having been recently released from Bellevue, he rode his motorcycle from New York to Nashville, where he recorded an album's worth of material (plus) all by himself on guitar, bass and drums. The results is bizarre, even for the time period, with few of the compositions following traditional song structure, and even fewer featuring what could pass for intelligible vocals. Still, the album makes for fascinating listening ... for the very few people who heard it until its CD release. An edition with bonus tracks is available from Sundazed Records, released right around the time of Skip's death in 1999. (He chose to have his name listed as "Alexander" on the original Columbia Records release, which sold only a couple of hundred copies before quickly going out of print.)
- Gram Parsons, "G.P." (1972). The man born as Cecil Ingraham Connor probably has had more words per album written about him than anyone else in rock; this was his only solo release in his lifetime. Was he a genius ahead of his time, the father of "country-rock," or a rich kid just havin' a good ol' time? Take a listen to his one and only album with the Byrds, "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" (1968), and answer in the affirmative to the first two points. Read "Hickory Wind," Ben Fong-Torres' excellent biography of Gram, and you'll get a good idea of the latter. At any rate, both his solo albums - including the posthumous "Grievous Angel" (1973) - show he was in a league with Henley-Frey, etc., and might have been as successful had he lived past age 27.
- Gene Parsons, "Kindling" (1973). Another ex-Byrd, the drummer during the band's latter stages, cut this brief album for Warner Brothers and saw it pretty much disappear without a trace. This rather laid-back affair features some excellent playing by the ill-fated Clarence White, the legendary guitarist (also a Byrds alumnus) who was killed by a drunken driver while loading equipment into his vehicle after a gig. A highlight is one of the many and assorted covers of Lowell George's "Willin'" being recorded around that time. (Good luck finding this one.)
- Paul Kossoff, "Back Street Crawler" (1973). The more I hear of the guitarist for Free, the more I understand why he was held in such high regard for a brief period in the late '60s and early '70s. His band was no more by the time "Back Street Crawler" was recorded, having morphed into the radio-friendly Bad Company, but Kossoff showed he still could play with a fury on two extended instrumental tracks, "Tuesday Morning" and "Time Away." Plus "Molton Gold," featuring a haunting chorus and Paul Rodgers on lead vocal, is held in such high regard that it serves as the title to Free's double-disc Rhino Records anthology. Kossoff fronted a band that took his solo album's name until his death in 1976.
- David Gilmour, "David Gilmour" (1978). As Roger Waters steered Pink Floyd in more of a doom-and-gloom direction ("The Wall," "The Final Cut"), guitarist Gilmour cut an album of highly listenable compositions, including some cool instrumentals, the opener "Mihalis" and "It's Deafintely," and the classic "There's No Way Out of Here," which sounds more like Floyd than, say, "Another Brick." Gilmour's debut didn't fare well on release, perhaps reflecting how little-known the individual Floyds were at the time.
- Robert Fripp, "Exposure" (1979). As a big-time King Crimson fan, I was excited when that group's leader released his solo debut, following some highly experimental collaborative work with Brian Eno. While I enjoyed most of "Exposure" - especially the bizarre effects applied to Terre Roche's vocals on the title track - I couldn't interest any of my high-school classmates in sharing my enthusiasm. The album features plenty of high-profile guests, including Peter Gabriel, Van der Graaf Generator vocalst Peter Hammill, jazz fusionist Narada Michael Walden and, believe it or not, Daryl Hall (of ... and Oates).
- John Entwistle, "Smash Your Head Against the Wall" (1971). Pete Townshend received the lion's share of songwriting glory - deservedly so - in the Who, but plenty of fans always had a soft spot for John's compositions like "Whiskey Man," "Boris the Spider" and "Heaven and Hell." The latter song appears on John's debut, although in a much less bombastic fashion than the way the Who was performing it at the time. The rest of the album is highly listenable as well, containing some remarkable catchy songs: "My Size," "What Are We Doing Here?" and the anthemic "I Believe In Everything." Along with being one of the two fathers of modern rock bass playing (along with Jack Casady), Thunderfingers also could come up with one heck of a tune. We miss him.
- Robert Calvert, "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters" (1974). So, you might have heard of Skip Spence. But I'll bet you have no clue about this guy. The late Mr. Calvert was the lyricist, sometimes vocalist, poet-in-residence for a British band called Hawkwind that would be almost totally unkown in these here parts, had not its bass player once been Lemmy of Motorhead fame. Well, Lemmy played bass on this one, too, and it was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, the mastermind behind Queen's wall of sound. "Captain Lockheed" mixes amusing narrative with the types of two-chord, heavily processed songs that characterized Hawkwind's repertoire at the time. You might look long and hard for this one, but you'll never hear anything else quite like it.
- Richard Betts, "Highway Call" (1974). His fans know his as Dickey, as in the longtime Allman Brothers' guitarist and composer of their sole top 10 hit, "Ramblin' Man." The following year, he released his solo debut, with one side of songs featuring vocals and the other a pair of instrumentals. I'm partial to the latter, especially the 15-minute jam "Hand Picked." The other instrumental is "Kissimmee Kid," the Vassar Clements (1928-2005) fiddle workout that Grateful Dead fans will recognize from its appearance on the "Old & In the Way" album. Considering the Allman' output the rest of the '70s and into the early '80s, "Highway Call" was as good as it got from that point forward for one of America's great rock bands.
- Jeff Beck, "Truth" (1968). The guitarist, all of 22 at the time, had come off a successful year-and-a-half stint with the Yardbirds and his own solo success with a big U.K. single, "Hi-Ho Silver Lining." Fans who were familiar with Jeff's sort of off-key singing on that tune might have been surprised by the raspy, assured vocals featured throughout "Truth," by a relatively unknown ex-footballer (as in soccer player) named Rod Stewart. And on bass was a relatively unkown kid who could play some guitar, too, a young fellow named Ronnie Wood. Anyway, the group as assembled absolutely smokes through a set of mostly blues standards and a few originals, including the unforgettable "Beck's Bolero," attributed to "J. Page." That particular track was a remnant from the short-lived Beck-Jimmy Page collaboration in the Yardbirds, and as Jeff points out in the liner notes to "Truth," he felt he couldn't improve on the original take.
Speaking of Jimmy, he went ahead and recorded his own album a few months after "Truth," released under the name of his fledgling band. Maybe it's just coincidence that much of the material on "Led Zeppelin" sounds very close to "Truth," including covers on both of Willie Dixon's "You Shook Me." And it could be happenstance that Robert Plant's singing on the Zeppelin debut is phrased in a manner very similar to that of the future crooner of "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy." At any rate, if you like Led Zeppelin and haven't done so before ... seek the "Truth."
(Pun intended.)
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