In The Studio with Redbeard

Tag: “Woman”

  • James Gang- Rides Again 55th Anniversary- Joe Walsh

    James Gang- Rides Again 55th Anniversary- Joe Walsh

    May I be so presumptuous to assume that it’s been years, maybe decades even, since you sat down and actually listened to The James Gang 1970 second album, Rides Again ? Sure, you know “Funk #49” backwards and forwards, and you know Joe Walsh graduated to great things after only one more studio album with the Cleveland/Akron/Canton trio. But the other rockers “Woman” and the guitar spectacular,”The Bomber”, are perfectly balanced by melodic, intricately-arranged songs “Tend My Garden”,”There I Go Again”, and the stunning orchestral “Ashes, the Rain, and I”, all written by my guest Joe Walsh here In the Studio for the story of The James Gang Rides Again on its fifty-fifth anniversary.

    Rides Again  was the reason I hitched a ride with friends in 1971 to Denison, a small Central Ohio college, to sit in the dirt infield of the indoor track fieldhouse: to see & hear Cleveland/Akron band The James Gang on a low riser stage, the spotlight reflecting blindingly off the guitar of singer Joe Walsh. Up until then we had heard radio ads on Akron station WHLO most weekends inviting the public to see the band at an Akron-area high school dance for 50 cents. Precious few outside the Northeast Ohio Cleveland-Youngstown-Akron triangle had purchased the first James Gang album, but their follow-up Rides Again  was both a critical and popular success. Sure, radio stations then and now play “Funk #49” (yep , there’s a “Funk #48” on their debut, Yer Album), but songs like ” Woman”  and “The Bomber” influenced American hard rock well into the 1980s, and “Tend My Garden”, “There I Go Again”, and the melancholy “Ashes, the Rain, and I ” are all  timeless and the arrangements surprisingly sophisticated more than half a century later. Joe Walsh is my guest for this classic rock interview. –Redbeard  

  • Free- Fire and Water- Paul Rodgers

    Free- Fire and Water- Paul Rodgers

    It’s now been more than a half century since the release of Fire and Water in early Summer  1970, the breakthrough  album by the erstwhile teenage London band Free. With the exception of B.B.King’s Top 40 hit “The Thrill Is Gone”, most  American white Baby Boomer teenagers had gotten our limited exposure to the blues second-hand via young English bands such as Led Zeppelin. And even though the members of London-based Free were no older than me in 1969 (bass player Andy Fraser was a veteran of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers at 15 !), the sound of lead singer Paul Rodgers’ voice and lead guitarist Paul Kossoff’s crying sustained notes, in very sparse arrangements, really appealed to me then.

    I won’t hesitate to admit that indeed it was “All Right Now” on US Top 40 radio in 1970 that got me to check out Free’s essential third album, Fire and Water. But when he heard me play “The Stealer” by Free on my radio show in Findlay OH while he was waiting to do soundcheck before a performance, no less than Bob Seger approached me to discuss our mutual admiration for Free, and it was during that conversation that Seger turned me onto the earlier Free album and the even more obscure Tons of Sobs, both of which preceded June 1970’s Fire and Water.

    Drummer Simon Kirke (far left) would go on with Paul Rodgers (2nd from right) to found Bad Company by 1974, & Kossoff (far right) succumbed to the ravages of heroin addiction in 1976, but not before recording six Free studio albums containing “Woman”,”Fire and Water”,”Heavy Load”,”All Right Now” written by Fraser (sadly Andy Fraser, bass player who as a teenager wrote and performed “All Right Now”, passed away a few years ago after a chronic illness); “The Stealer”,”Catch a Train”, the shoulda-been-a-hit “Little Bit of Love”, and often-covered “Wishing Well” from the breakup and seemingly swan song At Last  in Summer 1972; and the actual finale, Heartbreaker, six months later. It’s all  in this classic rock interview with Paul Rodgers documenting Free Fire and Water. –Redbeard