Page 38 - Classic Rock (February 2020)
P. 38
David Bowie
It was the dawn of the 70s, a period that delivered some now iconic albums – although some
could easily have gone straight to the bargain bins. So why were they dismissed at the time?
Words: David Sinclair
ou can make a case that Layla And achievements. A work of bleak, gothic, self-titled debut by The Allman Brothers Band were
Other Assorted Love Songs is Eric otherworldliness, featuring guitarist Mick Ronson both commercial non-starters. The subsequent
Clapton’s greatest post-Cream and the prototype Spiders From Mars band, it success and longevity of the Texan trio has
achievement. A double-album of found Bowie at an early heavy-rock peak with The prompted a predictable reappraisal of their
Y musical grit and emotional Width Of A Circle and She Shook Me Cold, and boasts fledgling effort, while the Allmans’ album has long
tenderness featuring the heavenly glissando of another iconic title track, elevated by the famous been viewed as an outright classic, with songs
guitarist Duane Allman, it reshaped blues rock version by Nirvana, among including Trouble No More,
into a new soft-rock genre. And the title track is others. Rolling Stone called Dreams and Whipping Post
about as iconic as a song can get. The album was Bowie’s album “uniformly ‘1970 was a strange, among the most evergreen
inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 2000 excellent”, and it has since in that long-running
and it figures in just about any ‘Greatest Albums been lionised as his “first in-betweener year. band’s repertoire.
Of All-Time’ chart you care to name. great album” (it was So what was going on at
But it was an almighty flop at the time of its actually his second album). The 1960s were over the turn of the 1970s? Were
release in 1970, when it made a brief, mediocre Yet when it was released in and The Beatles were audiences and critics really
showing at No.16 in the US chart and failed to 1970 in the US (1971 in so cloth-eared? How could
chart at all in the UK. The reviews were not great UK), it stiffed. No chart on their last legs.’ these all-time great albums
either, with Melody Maker action whatsoever. have been ignored at the
complaining of “pretty It was only two years later, after the first time of asking? What has happened since then
atrocious vocal work” success of the Ziggy Stardust album, that to change our minds?
and songs that induced The Man Who Sold The World finally entered
“complete boredom”. the charts and began its long, gradual f course, we look back on the past, in
David Bowie’s The Man ascent to hallowed status. this case on certain albums, through
Who Sold The World is likewise Other albums released around the Oa telescope that zooms in with a clarity
an album that stands close to same time suffered a similar fate. In provided by hindsight, while ignoring the bigger
the summit of the starman’s America, ZZ Top’s First Album and the picture of the times in which they were framed. ALAMY
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