Solo Effort: Solo Albums by Famous Artists Part I

Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue

I’m currently reading Dana Spiotta’s excellent novel Eat The Document, which tells the story of a woman who got involved with a fringe campus radical group in the 60’s, did something horrible (I haven’t gotten to the part where they tell us what) and had to go underground, i.e., develop an entirely new and false identity. Much of the book centers on her life in the present day and how her 17 year old son has started to suspect something’s amiss with his mom’s past.  Anyway the reason I’m sharing this is because her son is, to be as polite about it as possible, is a musical “completist” like myself who is constantly singing the praises of incredibly obscure albums, particularly ones by famous artists.  It got me thinking about the whole idea of solo albums, particularly those by members or former members of famous groups. 

Artists release solo albums for a variety of reasons.  Most obviously they do so when the famous group they are in breaks up or kicks them out (or they quit, depending on whose version of the divorce you believe).  But sometimes they release albums while still members of the group.  These can occur because the group is on hiatus but more often it occurs because the artist in question may feel confined by the group dynamic and the constraints of the expectations for the band and its sound.  The dividing line between this sort of solo album and a “vanity project” can be alarmingly thin, but even still it’s a way for that particular artist to scratch a particular creative itch that can’t be accessed within the confines of their main band. 

One interesting thing about solo albums is how they illustrate the concept of “hiding in plain sight” in the sense that most of them came nowhere near being as popular as their work with their main group.  So while nobody is more well-known in music than, say, Paul McCartney or Keith Richards, actually most people, even hardcore Beatles or Stones fans, might not have listened to their solo work to any great extent.  So in a twisted sort of way these solo albums become almost as obscure as “regular” albums released by less popular groups. 

Arguably the first “real” solo albums were the Beatles’; they were really the first real popular group in rock music, and even before their breakup the individual members started feeling constrained by the Beatles’ popularity and therefore started releasing solo albums.  The first Beatle to do so, somewhat surprisingly to most people, was not John or even Paul but George Harrison.  In December 1967 Harrison recorded the soundtrack to his director friend Joe Massot’s film Wonderwall.  Harrison was primarily the architect of the sound here, writing and arranging the music.  The music is interesting; very soundtrack-y, with no vocals and featuring a wide variety of instruments, both traditional (such as guitar and drums) and less traditional (like banjo and a wide assortment of Indian instruments).  As someone who actually likes soundtracks (even though I’m not particularly fond of movies and almost never watch them, figure that one out) I kind of like it.  Notable songs are “Red a Lady Too”, “Tabla and Pakavaj”, “Wonderall To Be Here”, and “Party Seacombe”, the latter of which comes the closest to being an actual rock song and which evokes a vague Beatle-esque jauntiness.  Wonderwall Music was also notable as Apple Record’s, the Beatles’ vanity record label’s, first official release.  This album isn’t currently commercially available but some nice fan has uploaded all the tracks to YouTube for everyone to check out.

 

Even more surprising is Harrison’s second solo effort, 1969’s Electronic Sound.  This album was the second and final album released on Zapple Records, a subsidiary of Apple dedicated to avant-garde music.  Electronic Sound, as the title truthfully states, consists almost entirely of strange synthesizer clangings, buzzings, and burblings recorded in collaboration with synth musician Bernie Krause.  Krause himself was an odd and fascinating musician.  A musical prodigy who supposedly started learning violin and classical composition by the age of four, he worked as a session musician at Motown Records before joining the folk group the Weavers (as guitarist) after the departure of Pete Seeger in 1963.  Upon the breakup of that group the next year, he studied electronic music under avant-garde pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen and took up the newly invented Moog synthesizer.  Krause formed the duo Beaver & Krause in 1966 and released a couple of albums of electronic synthesizer music.  Krause was something of an evangelist for the Moog in particular and synths in general, supposedly setting up a booth at Woodstock demonstrating the Moog (this reminds me of the stores in the malls in the 70’s that would sell organs and would have some cheesy guy in a cheap suit playing something like “Penny Lane” on the organ to entice people into buying one).  This and other interactions with some of the biggest starts of the day led to his playing on a wide array of late 60’s albums, including ones by the Monkees, the Byrds, and the Doors. 

 

Krause in fact later pursued legal action because, according to him, part of Electronic Sound was an unauthorized recording of him simply demonstrating the synth to George Harrison.  Listening to it today (it’s not available on iTunes or Pandora or any other commercial site that I can find but it has been uploaded to YouTube), it seems as if Krause might be telling the truth.  Most of Electronic Sound consists of what seem to be random tones and knob twirlings; some of it actually reminds me of parts of the soundtrack from the seminal 70’s sci fi film Rollerball (which is one of my favorite movies of all time); very spacy, very “futuristic”.

 

Harrison would subsequently focus on albums with a much more traditional bent, and in particular in 1970 shortly after the Beatles’ breakup released his magnum opus, All Things Must Pass.  Consisting primarily of Harrison’s voluminous backlog of songs and musical ideas going back deep into the Beatles heyday that had been left off their albums by the growing hegemony of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting axis, Pass is an outstanding monument to Harrison’s songwriting ability.  Originally released as a 3-LP triple album, Pass has several outstanding songs, most of which contain lush production and highly polished studiocraft (the album was produced by Phil Spector), including the introspective piano-centered song“Isn’t It a Pity”, “I’d Have You Anytime” (co-written by Bob Dylan), the upbeat and powerpoppish“What Is Life” (which reminds me of the Bay City Roller’s “I Only Want To Be With You”), and the smash hit single “My Sweet Lord”.  Another personal fave is the beautiful cover of Dylan’s “If Not For You”, a sweet and affecting song that features Harrison’s beautiful voice.  The album notoriously ends with a series of massive jams which take up the entirety of disk 3 of the triple album and probably wouldn’t be noteworthy except that out of them grew Eric Clapton’s short-lived project Derek and the Dominoes.  Sadly, aside from Pass’ followup Living in the Material World (which it’s excellent hit “Give Me Love”) and 1979’s George Harrison (which contains the sweet, happy “Blow Away”), none of Harrison’s subsequent mid-70’s albums are available on iTunes.

 

John Lennon was the next Beatle to release a solo work, and like Harrison his first two albums were as un-Beatle-esque as can be imagined, 1968’s Unfinished Music #1:  Two Virgins.  This album (not available on iTunes, Pandora or Spotify but posted to YouTube) is half an hour of recordings of Lennon and Yoko Ono talking, walking, tweaking various instruments, whistling, shrieking, etc.  There is tape looping and often lots of effects such as reverb.  Recorded during the heyday of late 60’s avant-garde experimentalism in music, a time that saw the first recordings by La Monte Young and John Cage (a neighbor and friend of Lennon and Ono’s), this record can at least be placed in this context.  But aside from Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, I can’t think of a less listenable album in the past 40 years. 

 

Except, perhaps, Lennon’s second solo effort, Unfinished Music #2:  Life with the Lions.  Another highly avant-garde offering, Ono predominates here, particularly with song/side 1, “Love Comes To Everyone”, a live recording of Lennon accompanying Ono as she sings/shrieks atonally.  “No Bed For Beatle John” is Ono singing a capella a song about how Lennon was denied a place to sleep in the hospital as she had one of her miscarriages.  “Radio Play” and “Baby’s Heartbeat” are exactly what they describe.  You get the picture.  There’s little here to interest any but the most extreme Lennon completist.  The Wedding Album, also released in 1969, continues on in this almost irritatingly avant-garde vein (such as the four minute “John and Yoko”, which consists of the two shouting each other’s names over yet another heart beat).

 

John returned to a more recognizably pop/rock form of music with 1970’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.  This is widely considered one of the most personal, honest, and confessional albums ever recorded.  For example, songs like “I Found Out” and “God”, which are scathing indictments of both religion and his former bandmates and band.  “Working Class Hero”, a folksy ballad that decries the destructive forces of conformity that squeeze the working class into the middle class, and the funky, stomping “Well Well Well”, which seems to poke fun at the very liberal sensibilities Lennon and Ono embraced, are other examples of this naked and raw take on songwriting.  Lennon often seems to be retreating into himself and his relationship with Ono, attempting to turn his back on his fame and former band.  “Look At Me”, a quiet, tender song built around Lennon’s finger picking guitar, emphasizes a point made in other songs (notably “God”) that Lennon is looking only to himself and his wife to define who he is.  For an album that is as confessional as this, lyrics like this are definitely a boundary put up by Lennon to separate himself from his former band, his stardom, and even his fans. 

 

Lennon’s second proper solo album, 1971’s Imagine, continued in this vein.  “How Do You Sleep” is a vicious attack on former bandmate Paul McCartney (“The only thing you done was ‘Yesterday’; “The sound you make is Muzak to my ears”, etc.). “Gimme Some Truth” lashes out at the conservative right and was covered by Billy Idol’s first punk band Generation X on their first album.  “Jealous Guy” is an apology to Ono that was famously covered by Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music.  But of course the standout track is the title track, which has rightly become one of the most beloved and revered songs of Lennon’s and indeed of all time.  A magnificent composition that, unlike many of the other songs on this and its preceding album, does not hector or berate but instead simply asks in the sweetest way possible for the listener to simply consider harmony and peace as options.  In a career filled with songwriting high points, this ranks at or very near the top.

 

Lennon’s output for the rest of his life never really reached the apogee of Imagine.  That isn’t to say he didn’t put out some interesting stuff, but it often varied between being a little TOO strident (like most of the songs on 1972’s Some Time In New York City, which features songs about the Attica prison riots, radical feminism, the strife in Northern Ireland, and noted radicals Angela Davis and John Sinclair) and moving toward a more generic rock formula (such as in 1974’s Walls and Bridges, which gave him his biggest hit, the duet with Elton John “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”).  Most critics adored his 1975 cover album Rock and Roll, but I’ve always found it tepid; with the exception of a rave-up version of Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” (the Beatles were named in honor of Buddy Holly’s band, the Crickets, and indeed Holly was arguably one of the strongest influences on Lennon and McCartney’s pop songcraft) most of the other covers sound limp and weak; Lennon had so grown past these antecedents that covering them simply underscores how greatly he and his bandmates advanced rock from those simplistic beginnings, and Lennon mostly sounds like a middle-aged man trying to relive a past that isn’t all that relevant to his life anymore.  Lennon himself wrote a song that drew upon 50’s influences like doo-wop that was vastly better than most of the stuff here:  “Woman” from his final album, 1980’s Double Fantasy.

 

Like the other two Beatles who released solo albums before him, drummer Ringo Starr also used his cachet from the Beatles to indulge his innermost musical desire; in his case it wasn’t to make a soundtrack or an atonal avant-garde album but a cover album, called Sentimental Journey, released in 1970 weeks before McCartney’s solo effort.  Releasing a cover album itself wasn’t unusual—as mentioned above, Lennon himself eventually released a covers album in 1975—but the covers themselves were:  they were all pre-rock pop standards like “Night and Day”, “Bye Bye Blackbird”, and “Stardust”.  Listening now the album registers as a somewhat silly but heartfelt tribute to a simpler, pre-rock world.  

 

Starr took a radically different take for his follow-up album, 1970’s Beaucoup of Blues.  Here Starr relocated to Nashville, and, availing himself of the best session players that fine city had to offer, produced a country album which many feel was his best solo work.  The sweet fiddle work and smooth backing vocals by Elvis Presley’s former backup singers the Jordanaires, give songs like the title track a strong country authenticity.  “Without Her” is another excellent song, a cry-in-your-beer country moper that’s sweetly affecting.

 

It wasn’t until 1973’s Ringo that Starr seemed to rediscover his inner Beatle.  Pulling heavily on both his former bandmates (all three other Beatles contributing instrumentation, vocals or songwriting) as well as a host of other luminaries (including Marc Bolan, Robbie Robertson, Billy Preston, Steve Cropper, Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, and Stephen Stills), Ringo released an album that was every bit as infectious and enjoyable as anything released by his bandmates.  The album had not one or even two but three bona fide hits:  the pleasantly maudlin “Photograph” (with its strings, horns, and heavy background vocals), the insanely catchy “Oh My My” (which, if it had different, less silly lyrics could easily be mistaken for a Beatles song), and Starr’s rock-solid cover of Johnny Burnette’s “You’re Sixteen, You’re Beautiful, and You’re Mine”.

 

Alas, Ringo’s consequent 70’s releases did not fare nearly so well either commercially or critically.  1974’s Goodnight Vienna was a modest success, buoyed by two covers, the Platters’ “Only You (And You Alone)”, and Hoyt Axton’s “No No Song”, but otherwise little stood out except a couple of songs:  “Husbands and Wives” lilts along like “Here, There, and Everywhere” or “She’s Leaving Home”.  “Back Off Boogaloo” has a twangy country backbone but the relentless rhythmic drive of “I Am the Walrus”.  1976’s Ringo’s Rotogravure fared even more poorly; only his cover of Carl Groszman’s “A Dose of Rock and Roll” (which featured Peter Frampton on guitar and Dr. John on keyboards) made the charts.  The songwriting was particularly degenerated; Ringo only contributed to the writing of three of the tracks her, relying instead on his former Beatle bandmates and others to shoulder the load, and it shows.  1977’s Ringo the 4^th was even weaker, producing no hit singles and failing to chart.  Clearly the bloom was off this particular Beatle rose.  Mired in a slick disco production, the entire album seems desperate; indeed, “Gave It All Up” seems to lament what he and the other Beatles lost by breaking up. 

 

Paul McCartney was the last Beatle to release an official solo album, but in another way was actually the first.  Like George Harrison, Paul was asked to create the soundtrack to a film, The Family Way, between recording Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s in fall of 1966.  The result, a purely orchestral affair, was once one of the most highly sought after records for Beatlemaniacs because of its rarity, and because it evokes the ramped-up production of the latter album and its use of horns, strings, etc.  It is now available on iTunes and makes for a fun listen, though I’m not sure it needs purchasing. 

 

Paul’s first proper solo album was released shortly after the Beatles officially broke up, 1970’s McCartney.  Recorded in his home with Paul playing all of the instruments, McCartney has a homespun simplicity that seems light years from Sgt. Pepper’s.  At the time critics and fans alike were a little alarmed at how throwaway much of the album seemed to be, but with time it has come to be appreciated for its simplicity.  Indeed, with the recent “beard rock” trend in alternative music (as practiced by bands like Band of Horses, Vetiver, and Bon Iver), which has emphasized acoustic singer-songwriter music on traditional, typically acoustic instruments and recorded often outside of major studios, this album seems more relevant than ever. “Lovely Linda” (written, of course, for his wife Linda Eastman McCartney), is a sweet acoustic folk song along the lines of Gordon Lightfoot or James Taylor.  But this is Paul the popster at his most stripped down and still most melodic, and it’s one of my favorite songs on this album. “That Would Be Something” has a funkier, blusier vibe but is still a very basic song, consisting of Paul’s voice, acoustic guitar, and some simple rhythm tapped out.  “Every Night”, with its “ooh ooh oooh’s” almost pokes fun of Paul’s Beatle past (specifically songs like “She Loves You”).  “Junk” is another pop gem that deserves a listen.  Only on “Man We Was Lonely” does Paul seem to talk about his Beatles past specifically, singing, “Man we was lonely, yes we was lonely, and we was hard pressed to find a smile”, and “I used to ride on my fast city line, singing songs that I thought were mine alone, now let me lie with my love for the time I am home.”  Paul, like the other Beatles, felt trapped by the Beatles’ success and now is happy to be off the fame bandwagon, free to do whatever he wants.  The only hit from this album is the very Beatle-esque “Maybe I’m Amazed”, which is rightly considered a classic, with its piano accompaniment and Paul’s shouted vocals. 

 

To the frustration of critics and fans, McCartney continued in this relaxed vein for his sophomore effort, 1971’s Ram.  But Ram also contains Paul’s first real comments toward his former Beatles; Paul later confessed that on “Too Many People”, two lines were directed toward John Lennon:  “You took your lucky break and broke it in two” and “Too many people preaching practices”.  On “3 Legs” (which supposedly was his nickname for the other Beatles), he sings “Well I thought you was my friend but you let me down and put my heart around the bend”.  While the other Beatles and critics derided the album, it did have a couple of passable Beatlesque numbers, the more produced “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” and the string-and-horn accompanied “In the Back Seat of My Car”.

 

After Ram, Paul decided to work in more of a group setting and formed Wings.  While these are not technically solo albums, they nevertheless remain stamped almost exclusively by the imprimatur of Paul alone and while often derided for their light take on 70’s rock, Wings brought him the most success of any ex-Beatle.  “Live and Let Die”, “Silly Love Songs”, “With a Little Luck”, “My Love”, “Let ‘Em In”, and my two favorites, “Band On the Run” and “Jet”, were ubiquitous on the radio in the 70’s. “Band On the Run” contains one of the greatest bridges of any song ever, and is really more like two separate songs connected by this majesterial guitar/symphonic piece.  In that regard it has always reminded me of “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions” by Queen.  And “Jet” to me, with its fuzzed out, rumbling bass, braying horns, and sweet backing vocals always struck me as being almost a glam rock song, a suspicion confirmed by the fact that it was quickly covered by Scottish glam rock band Iron Virgin. 

 

Interestingly, the other huge group of the 60’s, the Rolling Stones, didn’t start releasing solo albums until well after their band had dissipated most of its musical relevance in the mid-80’s.  However, another famous band from the 60’s, the Byrds, yielded an alumnus who made several solo albums that have become highly prized obscure classics.  Gene Clark formed the Byrds along with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn in 1964 and became their most noted songwriter, penning such classics as “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and “Eight Miles High”.  But discord in the band led to his departure in 1966.  In 1967 Clark released his first solo album, Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, which highlighted Clark’s incredible songwriting talent and his ability to fuse country and rock.  Clark worked here with a stellar array of musicians, including some former Byrds (Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke), future Byrds (Clarence White), bluegrass banjoist Doug Dillard, the Wrecking Crew sessions players (Glen Campbell and Leon Russell), and country harmony masters the Gosdin Brothers.  The standout track here is the sweet, jangly “Tried So Hard”, which stands proudly next to the best of other country rock greats like Gram Parsons. 

 

Clark’s second album was a more formal collaboration with Doug Dillard titled The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark, which is an extremely rare and valued recording even to this day (it is not available on iTunes but is uploaded to YouTube and is available on Pandora) and has achieved near-legendary status among country rock aficionados.  Dillard’s banjo is usually utilized in a subtle, highly complementary way to Clark’s songs, never overpowering them but adding wonderful country nuances to each song.  “Out on the Side”, the album opener, is simply fantastic, and highlights Clark’s mournful vocals, reminding me of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What Its Worth”.  “She Darked the Sun” brings Dillard’s banjo playing a little more to the fore, but the focus here is still Clark’s quavering country voice.  “Train Leaves Here This Morning” and “With Care From Someone” are also fantastic, the latter particularly highlighting Dillard’s smooth, sweet banjo picking.   But there really isn’t a bad song here; if there’s a flaw, it’s that the entire album is so solid and strong that nothing really stands out for better or worse.  But it remains a highly respected if obscure country rock accomplishment.  Clark and Dillard released a second album together, 1969’s Through the Morning, Through the Night, which continued in this vein (the title track and “Polly Come Home” were covered by Robert Plant and Alison Krause on their 2007 smash Raising Sand). 

 

After breaking up Dillard & Clark, Gene Clark recorded and released an album alternatively known as White Light (for its cover photograph and for one of its standout songs) or Gene Clark.  Like his previous collaborations with the Gosdins and the Dillards, this album has since become revered as a staggering country rock accomplishment.  As mentioned, the title track is phenomenal but again it’s hard to pick out any songs that aren’t outstanding. “For a Spanish Guitar” with its aching, plaintive vocal and simple arrangement, is another stunner.  On “The Virgin”, Clark’s voice sounds almost like a more quavery, countrified version of Arlo Guthrie’s.

 

Alas, despite being hailed at the time as a masterpiece, White Light didn’t sell, and Clark’s next album, the almost equally revered Roadmaster, was released only in Holland.  Clark even recorded two songs on Roadmaster featuring all five original Byrds, “One in a Hundred”, a magnificent song that is a perfect balance of the jangle and harmonies of early Byrds with the countrified touches of late Byrds, and the lilting, almost haunting “She’s the Kind of Girl”.   This album is also sadly not widely commercially available but has been kindly uploaded to YouTube for people with taste to check out.  It’s almost criminal how under-appreciated Clark, and this album, are; “Full Circle Song” off it could indeed be a commentary by Clark himself about the vagaries of life: “Funny how the circle turns around; first you’re up, then you’re down again”. 

 

Undaunted, Clark came back with 1974’s No Other, which again utilized a dizzying array of top shelf musicians and collaborators but ramped up the production, adding big choruses, strings, and other touches that had been mostly lacking from Clark’s previous, more spartan records.  But the album spawned three more (at least by my reckoning) Clark classics:  “Silver Raven”, which may be one of the most beautiful country songs ever recorded.  Leaving aside the usual country tropes, Clark’s song evokes the dignity and desolation of the plight of the American Indian in a way that few songs have ever managed.  His plaintive, twangy voice manages to bridge the entirety of the Western experience, from that sad fate of our Native Americans to the cowboys who once rode the lonesome range to the ecological changes that have destroyed much of the Old West.  Sad, sweet, desolate, but never depressing, this song is almost stunning in its beautiful simplicity.  On our recent vacation through South Dakota, northwestern Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana, this song kept playing through my head as we hammered across the stark but stunning landscape.  “Strength of Strings” also has a Native American feel to it musically and a lyrical emphasis on the invariance of change.  And finally, “From a Silver Phial” is another sensationally beautiful home run, with its central piano focus; it reminds me of a cross between the coda of Eric Clapton’s “Layla” and Michael Martin Murphey’s classic, tragic 70’s country rock story song “Wildfire” (which, despite its corniness, I adored as a child in the 70’s and still love today).  This and “Silver Raven” showcase Gene Clark at his finest, as easily the equal of such country rock luminaries as Gram Parsons.

 

Another hugely popular 60’s group was the Beach Boys.  While Brian Wilson was rightly considered a pop/songwriting genius (“Good Vibrations” is one of the best songs recorded in the 60’s in my opinion), his brother Dennis Wilson was mostly known for two things:  being the only Beach Boy who actually surfed, and for befriending Charles Manson before the latter became more renowned for his sociopathy than for his music.  But in the late 70’s Dennis released a solo album called Pacific Blue.  By this time Dennis was a dissolute wreck from living the high life after years of Beach Boys success, and his voice had become gravelly and hoarse in places.  But on occasions he produced a capable version of the sweet harmonies for which he and his brothers are known.  The album (which is actually the focus of the character in Eat the Document which prompted this post) is a heavily produced sprawling mess of singer-songwriter ambitions, but played alongside other 70’s monoliths like Fleetwood Mac or the Doobie Brothers it doesn’t sound out of place and actually has a sweet if maudlin charm.  “The River Song” is a huge, lush, strings and production affair but comes the closest to extending what he and his brothers did in the Beach Boys in a new 70’s direction.  “Dreamer” and the title track have a weird, funky vibe that makes them sound like something midway between Joe Cocker and Joe Walsh.  “Thoughts of You” and “Time” feature Wilson bordering on mawkish, crooning at the piano (though the former also has a big, orchestral bridge) about his regrets and losses over the years.  “You and I” is another soft rocker that evokes a less prog Steely Dan. 

 

Wilson was reputedly disappointed in Pacific Blue, and set about recording a follow-up in 1978 known as Bambu.  Wilson never completed this album but it the studio tracks were heavily bootlegged even before his death in 1983 from drowning.  Bambu continues on in this mostly low-key vein (it should be recalled that Wilson was co-author of what was arguably one of the biggest soft rock ballads/prom slow dance songs of all time, “You Are So Beautiful”, so this mellow, melancholy vein should perhaps not be surprising).  “Love Surrounds Me” almost sounds like a moped out Supertramp song but is probably the best song here, but I like “Wild Situation” for its soft gospel-like backing vocals and pulsing rhythm, “Common” for its uplifting tone, and the largely autobiographical “He’s a Bum” for its naked honesty. (Pacific Blue and Bambu are available as a combined album on iTunes).  Its interesting to speculate what might have happened had Wilson released Bambu in 1978; while disco was obviously making huge inroads into the rock/pop charts, there was still plenty of singer-songwriter stuff like this all over the charts then.  Instead it’s become a cult classic.

 

Few groups were as huge as Kiss were in the late 70’s.  But Peter Criss left (or was kicked out) in 1980 and embarked on his own solo career.  Now, Criss and the other members of Kiss had all released solo albums together in 1978, but those were more or less under the Kiss imprimatur.  In 1980 Criss released his first true post-Kiss solo record, Out of Control, which perhaps not surprisingly found him carrying forward in two familiar veins:  some of the songs sound extremely Kiss-esque while others ape his one successful turn as Kiss vocalist, “Beth”, in being more R&B oriented.  An example of the former is “In Trouble Again”, which has the driving rhythm and cowbell of early Kiss classics like “Strutter” and in particular “Deuce”. The title track sounds eerily like “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor but presaged that song by over 3 years.  “By Myself” is Criss’ attempt to recapture the lightning in a bottle of “Beth”, a quiet ballad of acoustic guitars and Criss’ raspy vocals.  It isn’t terrible, but it seemed obvious that lightning wasn’t going to strike twice.  “I Found Love” is a straight-ahead new wave tinged early 80’s rocker that again while not terrible doesn’t raise to the heights of his previous band either.  Criss also covers Pat Benetar’s “You Better Run” and this is probably the album’s low point; he puts little of the spunk and energy into it that Benetar did.  “My Life” walks arguably the best line between his attempts at balladry and his rocker tendencies.

 

Criss released his follow-up, Let Me Rock You, in 1982.  Somewhat more new-wave-y than its predecessor, it didn’t have much success either.  But “Let It Go” is a catchy slice of early 80’s rock that straddles the line between the catchy pop rock and the new wave tinged rock of the time.  “Tears” is a mellower song, not quite a ballad but not quite a rocker, it’s nevertheless catchy in a John Waite sort of way (unsurprising since Waite co-wrote it).  “Destiny” is another straight-ahead but melodic rocker written by famed songwriter Charlie Midnight (who has written songs for everyone from Carly Simon to Britney Spears) and Neal Schon of Journey (and sounds not a little like the latter’s “Separate Ways”).

 

There are obviously numerous more examples of solo albums from the 70’s, 80’s, and into the current day, and I’m sure I’ll be returning to this topic in future posts.  But it’s very interesting to me to roam across some of these albums by huge named artists, some of whom continued to have success but many of whom didn’t.  They left behind albums that at the time didn’t strike a chord with listeners but with the tincture of time have often found receptive and appreciative audiences.  Like I said, it’s hard for me to listen to early solo albums by artists like Paul McCartney or Gene Clark and not hear the echoes of much of today’s alternative rock, which has rediscovered 70’s singer songwriters and folk/country/traditional sounds (most notably artists like Bon Iver and the Avett Brothers) in a big way.  And I’m glad.  This is good music and its enjoyable to see where today’s kid can take it.  As I write this I’m listening to Vetiver’s cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Hurry On Sundown”, a raucous, infectious take on this classic song.

 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here one of my favorite solo songs, a song that actually celebrates going solo, Peter Gabriel’s “Solbury Hill”.  Written by Gabriel in 1977 after his departure from the 70’s supergroup Genesis, it discusses a mystical experience he had during this period, as well as his doubts and fears about leaving this popular group at nearly their peak of popularity.  This is one of my favorite songs of all time, and I think of it any time I experience fearful life changes, like recently, when my job and actually career have undergone some pretty dramatic changes and the future seems scary and anxious.  When Gabriel sings the final lines,

Today I don't need a replacement

 I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant

My heart going boom boom boom

"Hey" I said

"You can keep my things, they've come to take me home”,

I always think about him taking the biggest chance of his life, and not only surviving but thriving, and I instantly feel better about myself.