Found Or Forgotten; 60 Years Of Great Music
Brian Eno and Waylon Jennings vie for 1974 MVP, but neither one tops my list of greatest albums from that year. Read on to find out which album is the best.
Against my better judgment, I’m undertaking a project to determine my top 10 albums of every year since 1960. Instead of just picking my favorite stuff out of my collection, I intend to explore, re-visit and discover. While I can’t promise to leave no stone un-turned, I am going to go deeper than I ever have before. Why would I partake in a journey that will inevitably take many years and that I ultimately may never finish? Most importantly, to uncover great music that I’ve never heard before. Second, to boost my knowledge of music history and get a sense of what was happening at a macro scale in a snapshot of time. Finally, I want to share my passion for music with you and, fingers crossed, generate a dialogue down in the comments. So without further ado, here is #3 in the series. My random number generator tells me that our next year to explore is 2004.
The Greatest Albums of 1974
My initial exploration of 1974’s musical landscape was a dispiriting affair. If I can peel back the curtain a little bit here, I usually kick these things off with research into what albums were actually released in the calendar year I’m interested in, and dropping everything that sounds interesting (that I don’t already own) into a Spotify playlist. I then spend hours listening to the playlist on shuffle, which affords me the opportunity to weed out some stuff that I will obviously not warm up to before I start listening to full albums, but also gives me a loose feel for what the year sounded like. My first impression of ’74 was that it’s a bland, homogenous drag. I was bombarded by track after track of album-oriented rock with an unhealthy sheen: Kansas, Thin Lizzy, Average White Band. On their own, they aren’t terrible, but in aggregate they speak to an incredible quelling of the individuality and innovation that I heard so prevalently when I explored 1969. Even across genres, there was a shocking sameness. When you listen to songs by Chicago, Bonnie Raitt, Blue Magic and George Harrison one after another, and they all sound virtually indistinguishable, you start questioning your own ears.
I have long been a defender of straight-forward arena rock, the un-hippest of the music. Bad Company, which could be the poster child for the genre, was even in my top 10 for a brief time. After the bombardment of these albums, however, I can sympathize with those who attack the genre. Fortunately, it didn’t completely mar the year for me. The top 10 is arguably a little weaker than the average year, and there was far more that I disliked than otherwise, but I actually came away with quite a bit of new music and the longest honorable mention section so far. Besides the gems hidden in the AOR glut, I discovered some great funk music and some outstanding country. In fact, the MVP of the year would be Waylon Jennings if it wasn’t so obviously Brian Eno. Eno, like Jennings, delivered two terrific albums in 1974. Also, he contributed to the Genesis epic, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and the very solid Fear by John Cale.
In terms of where I depart from critical consensus, a couple of major albums that land poorly for me are Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell and Late for the Sky by Jackson Browne. I know that there must be nuance there which commands such reverence, but they are both like musical Ambien to me. Also, I give credit to Bowie’s Diamond Dogs and the New York Dolls for cutting through the conformity with something different, but I find them too cluttered and haphazard to be demonstrably better. Otherwise, I don’t see a lot of consensus on this particular year. No source that I saw picked the same album as the year’s best, and none of them matched mine, either. Curious what I picked? Then without further ado, let’s get into the greatest albums of 1974.
Sheer Heart Attack – Queen
Sheer Heart Attack finds Queen in the perfect spot along their evolution. Their first couple of albums were competent but forgettable prog-oriented rock. Their later albums, including the generally more appreciated A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, tend to have amazing highs but end up wildly uneven as the group veered further away from traditional rock and roll. On Heart Attack, the highs are still there, but the lows are completely gone. Even campy little eccentricities like “Bring Back Leroy Brown” are welcome when they serve to break up the album, and don’t make up the majority of its content. It’s actually pretty astonishing how much more vibrant and creative the album sounds when compared to the mediocre Queen II, released earlier in the year. Freddie and the boys are practically a new band here.
“Brighton Rock” kicks off the album in grand fashion, a frantic but technically proficient tune that sounds like Yes performing at a carnival on ecstasy. It also features some killer guitar from Brian May, an often overlooked performer whenever history’s best guitarists are brought up. He may not match up to the true upper echelon of greats, but I’ll slot him comfortably in the Pete Townsend/Carlos Santana tier. As miraculous as Freddie Mercury truly is, he had a talented and adventurous band behind him that could successfully indulge his various flights of fancy. “Killer Queen” is a delightful blast of Bowie pop, their biggest hit to this point, and “Stone Cold Crazy” is classic proto-thrash that shows off the nimbleness of Mercury’s flawless voice. Then there’s “Misfire” which may actually be the perfect rock song. If you have a “Summer Rock” playlist (and really, why wouldn’t you?) then it isn’t complete without “Misfire.”
In a year where so much of the music, even the best stuff, is somewhat muted, Sheer Heart Attack stands out for its sense of fun and spirited exploration. In many ways, these are all very different songs, but they don’t necessarily sound that way because they are woven together so expertly. Much like the album I deemed best of 1969, Abbey Road, the individual parts are great but they sound even better all together because the album was crafted with such an savvy sense of flow. A classic.
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Veedon Fleece – Van Morrison
It’s ironic that Van Morrison’s best-known work occurred before he really developed his artistic vision and rattled off an amazing string of seven masterful albums. I wouldn’t say that “Brown-Eyed Girl” is my least favorite Morrison song (it’s ok, just overplayed, and he released some pretty spotty stuff in the 80s), but it is definitely not in my top 50. Just about a year and a half later, in 1968, Van unveiled Astral Weeks, an absolute stunner that remains unique in the popular music landscape. He would go on to kill it for the next six years, finishing up his run with the perfect bookend in Veedon Fleece. While Fleece doesn’t exactly match the ethereal and magical tone of Weeks, it comes the closest of all of Morrison’s subsequent work. Wielding an impossibly elastic voice, one that had grown more weary and fuller in those six years, Van works through a meandering, cathartic love letter to Ireland.
Pinning Morrison’s lyrics down can be easy when they are simple (“Moondance”, “And It Stoned Me”) but virtually impossible when he is in the stream-of-consciousness mode that he occupies here. He often comes off as possessed, spinning evocative lines and couplets, but not necessarily telling a deliberate story. His voice does so much heavy lifting, however, that lyrical content, instrumentation, even song structure become almost moot. I could happily listen to the already six-minute “Fair Play” extended for another ten minutes and never give a damn what it is that he’s singing about. I’m not sure if I could do the same with “You Don’t Pull No Punches, but You Don’t Push the River”, but only because it’s such an intense performance that extending it past its nine-minute run time feels almost punishing. Overall, Veedon Fleece is a draining, soul-bearing effort, and a fitting one to wrap up one of the most prolific and personal periods of any artist’s career. In many ways, it’s the antithesis of the poppy, simplistic “Brown-Eyed Girl”.
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Here Come the Warm Jets – Brian Eno
The back-to-back punch of the caustic, blistering “Baby’s on Fire” and the twisted, poppy “Cindy Tells Me” is enough to recommend this album, but each track delivers its own unusual delights. Eno famously considered himself a “non-musician”, but that always rang hollow to me. You can’t break this many rules with this much success without knowing said rules very well to begin with. Whether he considered himself one or not, Eno did enlist a cavalcade of musicians to help him out with Here Come the Warm Jets, including members of Hawkwind and his former band, Roxy Music. The guitar solo on the aforementioned “Baby’s on Fire” is the best thing Robert Fripp did in 1974, and King Crimson released two albums of their own that year. It’s very obviously Eno pulling the strings, however, using odd production techniques, mixing and matching individual elements and adding nonsense vocals to warp the recordings into the album he wanted. It’s actually the type of thing I would typically approach with some very healthy skepticism. I value sincerity and good songwriting as much as anything in music, and Jets could almost be described as a big joke. Somehow, though, these beautiful and unexpected songs emerged and I can’t really question the intent of the performers or the process by which it happened. I’m just glad it did.
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Fulfillingness’ First Finale – Stevie Wonder
In the period of time from 1971-1976, Stevie Wonder could do no wrong. His output during this stretch is truly unassailable, and parallels the brilliant Van Morrison run in many ways. That is probably the reason that Fulfillingness’ First Finale, released in the middle of this timeframe, doesn’t consistently receive the praise that is routinely heaped upon Stevie’s other albums from this era. Nevertheless, Wonder’s forgotten child is a masterful achievement that ranks right up there with the other three classics he recorded in the 70’s. On FFF, Wonder compiles an eclectic group of songs touching on various topics, but manages to tie them together with a commonality that isn’t matched on his previous effort, Innervisions, or his next, Songs in the Key of Life. The most recognizable track to most listeners is the funk/reggae hybrid “Boogie On Reggae Woman” which Stevie whips into a soulful stew with great interplay between the piano, synthesizers and harmonica (all played by Wonder, of course). Then there is the scathing social commentary, “You Haven’t Done Nothin'”. The best way to describe this track is ludicrously funky. The ambiguously trippy anti-drug song, “Bird of Beauty”, is one of the most bizarre tracks in the Stevie Wonder canon, and it is juxtaposed next to one of his most straightforward and plaintive soul numbers, the amazing “Please Don’t Go”. So, how does he make these seemingly disparate tracks fit together as a cohesive album? It’s hard to say, exactly, but it works. The most evident thread throughout the album is Stevie’s honesty. This may be his most candid album. Obviously, he’s candid on all of his recordings, but he has never worn his heart so plainly on his sleeve. The pair of spiritual songs are vastly different in sound, but equally frank in subject matter. “Heaven is 10 Zillion Light Years Away” attacks (or rather, counter-attacks) critics of Christianity with the same verve that “You Haven’t Done Nothin'” calls out the government. “They Won’t Go When I Go” is a sad, brutally honest, piano-driven dirge about the fate of non-believers who are close to him. “Too Shy to Say” is the most gut-wrenching unrequited love song since Morrison’s “Cyprus Avenue”. Somehow it all comes together to form a forceful artistic statement. Fullfillingness’ First Finale is easily the least accessible of Stevie’s classic records. Even the title is unwieldy. It is a mature album, and Wonder’s stark delivery doesn’t really invite the listener in, nor does the lack of pop hooks. Once you do give it a listen (and a few more), the layers begin to peel away and reveal a beautiful work of art. If FFF had been released by another artist, we would laud it as a supreme, career-defining statement. It seems for Stevie Wonder, in the 70’s, that was simply par for the course.
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This Time – Waylon Jennings
When it comes to ranking the outlaw country pioneers, the Highwaymen if you will, I never really consider Kris Kristofferson, an amazing songwriter but an average interpreter of material (even his own.) Johnny Cash is the most instantly iconic of the four, but his catalogue (some 50+ albums) was mostly treated with little care for consistency until he hooked up with Rick Rubin in the late stages of his career. Cash and Kristofferson released four albums between them in 1974, and none of them were strong enough to be honorably mentioned in this post. My default #1 will always be Willie Nelson, but the more I hear from Waylon’s golden period in the early 70’s, the stronger a case can be made that he is the best.
Jennings has a fairly narrow set of boundaries that he can comfortably operate in, but when he adheres to them, he is unparalleled. This Time finds him completely in his comfort zone. Every song chugs along evenly at a mid-to-low tempo, allowing Jenning’s voice to shine the way it is meant to be. Even the classic Honky Tonk Heroes pushed the pace a little much, allowing for some wobbly moments, but the ten tracks that make up this far less heralded album go down incredibly smooth. The songwriting is uniformly great, as is Jenning’s band, and the production is smartly devoid of bells and whistles. The music is meant to be archetypal, almost elemental, so over-production would spoil the mix. So strong is the work here, that the four tracks contributed from Nelson’s very good Phases and Stages are actually superior in Jennings and company’s hands. Of course, “and company” includes Willie himself, on guitar and sharing production duties, so maybe it shouldn’t be too surprising.
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Up for the Down Stroke – Parliament
The titular first track off of Parliament’s debut album, Up for the Down Stroke, might as well be the band’s mission statement. Here is a new type of funk, different from the aggressive, perfectly syncopated music of James Brown, and different from the heightened soul or jazz music that serves as funk for most other artists. This is a polyrhythmic funk made up of multiple strands of sound, not necessarily related but woven together by George Clinton to achieve some transcendent new level of music. For Clinton, there can never be too many hooks in a song, just so long as they are on the one (which is to say, funky), and that is never a problem for the virtuosos comprising Parliament. Whether it’s Bootsy Collin’s monstrous space bass, the Brides of Funkenstein twisting some doo wop runs, or Maceo and the Horny Horns laying down a scintillating brass segment, Clinton has plenty of elements to work with, pulling them in and dropping them out while masterfully building to a sweaty crescendo. They wouldn’t revisit this blueprint for the rest of this album or the next, but it’s all right there in their first ever song, and it would be the foundation for their greatest albums in the future.
Luckily, the rest of the album contains its own unique charms. Probably the P-Funk album containing the most singing from Clinton, he acquits himself well. He’s not a particularly good singer, to be sure, but he sells the weirdness of his warped soul music with aplomb. Tracks like “Testify” and “The Goose” sound like they exist in an alternate timeline where Isaac Hayes, Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield don’t exist, and the soul music of Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson evolved into this instead. The biggest debt that Clinton and company owe (besides to James Brown because, duh, and also because they swiped so many of his best musicians) is to Fela Kuti. That alone makes them stand out from their peers, as does their willingness to just be plain weird. “I Just Got Back” and “Presence of a Brain” couldn’t be described as funk, or really even described at all, but they are no less transfixing for being so strange. It would be a couple years before the Mothership properly landed on our un-expecting planet, but Up for the Down Stroke is a worthwhile early glimpse of its cleansing power.
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Natty Dread – Bob Marley
Despite being so synonymous with the type of music that he played that 100% of people you ask would provide him as the answer to the question “Can you name a reggae artist?” (and 95% wouldn’t be able to name second one), Bob Marley is actually underrated. We tend to conflate him with his chosen form of music but never consider him when the broader question of musical giants is brought up. How much debate has been spilled over the Beatles vs the Stones, or comparing the legacies of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley? Marley is seemingly never brought into the conversation, and yet if you examine his output, he should stand shoulder to shoulder with all of the pop/rock luminaries that command so much attention.
Natty Dread kicks off with the excellent one-two combo of “Lively Up Yourself” and “No Woman No Cry”, and continues to deliver the goods throughout the remainder of its run time. The music offers surface pleasures aplenty, and you won’t go wrong grooving to it at the beach or driving around in the summer with the windows down. Beneath the surface, however, there is a deeply rich record on the themes of spirituality and human struggle, refracted through the lens of the poverty-stricken lower class in Jamaica. It’s the latter that taps into Marley’s natural gift for singing. The vocals are alternatingly tender, jaded, incendiary and joyful, though all in a way that is subtly contained within reggae’s natural paradigm. Again, you can enjoy the whole thing with a smile on your face and a Red Stripe in your hand if you want, and sometimes I do, but you can also choose to tune into the depth and raw emotion of the piece that land it on my top ten albums of 1974.
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Irish Tour ’74 – Rory Gallagher
“Hello…? Ladies and gentlemen, Rory Gallagher!” is the unassuming way the album starts, followed by 20 seconds of staccato, crackling guitar that flows into a monster blues riff, kicking off “Cradle Rock” and signaling what you are in for over the next 60 minutes. Rory Gallagher is a relatively unheralded guitar hero, but for those in the know, he is revered. His style is very unique, hitting each note of his solos hard and distinctly, not allowing them to blend together even in his most unbridled moments. Besides being precise and fast, his playing comes off as completely organic, which lends it a mesmerizing intensity. It’s really that last part that sets him apart from Satriani or Van Halen, or a hundred other technical shredders. This collection of songs from nine dates in Gallagher’s home country of Ireland is considered the best document of his work. It’s worth noting that the rest of the band does an admirable job keeping pace, particularly Lou Martin on electric piano, but the guitar is the star of the show here. Rory’s voice is fine for the material, but nothing special. Nevertheless, this is a tour de force of animated, vibrant blues, fueled by the guitar of an underrated master.
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Radio City – Big Star
Pop/rock this pure and dreamy is timeless, but I wonder how fresh it must have sounded to ears that were consistently barraged with Tolkein-inspired song cycles featuring pan flute and inscrutable progressive rock epics that have more to do with mathematical algorithms than Chuck Berry. How is it that Big Star didn’t become the biggest band of the 70’s? Alex Chilton proves that he is the heart of the Big Star sound by marching forward without song-writing partner Chris Bell. It’s certainly not addition by subtraction, Bell’s more rock-focused orientation balanced out Chilton’s delicate tracks on their debut, #1 Record, and Radio City is a little worse for the wear without that influence. It’s the mind that brought the pure ecstasy of “Thirteen” and “Watch the Sunrise” to that debut, however, that continues to delight with tracks like “September Gurls” and “I’m in Love With a Girl” on the band’s second album. Awash with warmth and deceptively simple song-writing (deceptive because it’s really easy to land on “dumb” when you aim for “simple”), this one will still be turning heads in another thirty years.
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Standing on the Verge of Getting It On – Funkadelic
For those that never understood the separate branding of Parliament and Funkadelic, the collective’s two 1974 releases stand as a nice document of their divergent aesthetics. While Up for the Down Stroke is clearly a funk album, born of soul and doo wop music, Standing on the Verge of Getting It On is definitely rock and roll. It might be funkier than other rock albums, but it’s still rock. “Red Hot Mama” and the title track are raucous, guitar-driven numbers that stand up to Brian May and Rory Gallagher when discussing the year’s best axe-playing. “Alice in My Fantasies” sounds like a fucking Stooges song, especially compared to the Doobie Brothers and Supertramps dominating the musical landscape at the time. Of course, rock and funk do share some common ground, specifically that sex is a fundamental element of their genetic make-up, and P-Funk always has a way of delivering some of the sleaziest sounding music this side of Mick Jagger. “I’ll Stay” is a prime example, and one of my all-time favorite Funkadelic tracks. The album is rounded out with all the usual Clinton weirdness (including chipmunk voices talking about peeing on each other) and plants the flag for the continuation of his acid-drenched garage band configuration, even while his (slightly) more commercially viable funk collective starts their epic career.
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Honorable Mentions
Rock: On the Beach – Neil Young; Fear – John Cale; The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – Genesis; No Other – Gene Clark; Pretzel Logic – Steely Dan; Country Life – Roxy Music; 461 Ocean Boulevard – Eric Clapton; Rocka Rolla – Judas Priest; Rock Bottom – Robert Wyatt; Hall of the Mountain Grill – Hawkwind; It’s Too Late to Stop Now – Van Morrison; Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) – Brian Eno; Second Helping – Lynyrd Skynyrd; Bad Company – Bad Company; Planet Waves – Bob Dylan
Country: The Ramblin’ Man – Waylon Jennings; Phases and Stages – Willie Nelson; Grievous Angel – Graham Parsons; Jolene – Dolly Parton; “If We Make It Through December” – Merle Haggard; The Grand Tour – George Jones; Various Jimmy Buffet (I’ll add my personal “Buffet ‘74” album listing in the comments)
Funk/Soul: Small Talk – Sly & the Family Stone; Light of Worlds – Kool & the Gang; Inspiration Information – Shuggie Otis; Sweet Excorcist – Curtis Mayfield; Hell – James Brown; Stevie Wonder Presents: Syreeta – Syreeta; Back to Oakland – Tower of Power; “Envy No Good” – Mercury Dance Band; Body Heat – Quincy Jones; Al Green Explores Your Mind – Al Green; A Tabua De Esmerelda – Jorge Ben
Jazz: Phoebe Snow – Phoebe Snow; Thrust – Herbie Hancock; Power of Soul – Idris Muhammed
Electronic: Autobahn – Kraftwerk
So there you have it. Please chime in with a comment to tell me what I got wrong and what I got right. I’d also really love to hear what I missed, and what you discovered by reading this post. Thanks for reading!
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