June 22 – Runt Went It Alone

Who among us hasn’t stopped dead and listened in awe to a great guitar solo, or sax bit, or piano flourish and wondered how anyone can get to be so good at playing that instrument? Maybe wished we had that level of talent too. Well how’d you like to be able to play just about all the instruments like that! Today we look at one guy who seemingly can do just that. Todd Rundgren turns 76 today!

Rundgren, or “Runt” as many call him, played in bands along the way including Nazz and Utopia, and often has used his musical friends to help out on his solo works (as most musicians do)…but not always. Take his 1978 hit “Can We Still Be Friends?” for instance. The single off his eighth album, Hermit of Mink Hollow, is all Todd. The whole album is really; even the title references that – Mink Hollow Road, in Woodstock, is where his house was and where he recorded the whole thing himself. The haunting song sounds like an entire band, but was just Todd playing instrument after instrument and over-dubbing the tapes. Even all those backing vocals are him. He wrote and produced the whole album at home all by himself, in fact, two decades before Pro Tools and other computer software would make such tasks semi-easy.

“Can We Still Be Friends” was a top 30 hit for Todd in the U.S. Later Robert Palmer also had a hit with his version of it… but Robert needed four backing musicians.

So, Todd went it alone, which leads us to the Stunningly Solo Seven – seven musicians who’ve done it all – literally – on their records. Like…

Paul McCartney. McC, who turned 82 this week by the way, was at his best with a good band around him. A group called The Beatles comes to mind. Wings wasn’t half-bad either. But once in awhile, he’d follow his own instincts without even trying to listen to other opinions or get others involved. The results have been three albums titled McCartney, McCartney II and recently, McCartney III. We always knew he could write a fantastic tune and play bass well but those albums show us his range was quite a bit broader than that. Take the synthesizer-heavy “Coming Up” from the second such album in 1980. Everything on it was “come up” with by Paul – the writing, the singing, the instruments, the engineering and production. And it became his first North American hit of the ’80s. Mind you, he’d had a few more of those in the preceding two decades!

Steve Winwood. Stevie had been a teen prodigy in the ’60s, a good singer, songwriter and keyboardist. He helped both the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic become major acts all before he was 20. But when he decided to go it alone, he often seemed to do just that. His second solo record, Arc of a Diver is a great example of that. He was the main writer of all seven songs (on the title track, Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band is listed as a co-writer) and the producer. The album went platinum in North America and scored him a major hit with “While You See A Chance” and got a bit more airplay for the tasteful song “Arc of a Diver”. On that one, he plays synthesizers of course, but also piano, electric and acoustic guitars, fretless bass, drums and a mandolin!

Dave Grohl, aka Foo Fighters. He was barely noticed behind the drums (and Kurt Cobain) in Nirvana, but when that band came to a crashing halt, Dave went for it, (or took a chance in Steve Winwood’s parlance). Although not as “iconic” as Nirvana, the Foo Fighters have been running for close to 30 years, have a bevy of platinum albums and a museum’s worth of Grammy Awards. Now, of course, as anyone who’s seen them knows, the Foos are a band, led by Grohl. But it wasn’t always that way. The first, self-titled album in 1995, including this great tune, was Dave and … well, just Dave. Except for a wee bit of added guitar from Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs on one single track, Grohl did it all. Wrote the songs, played the guitars, drums, bass, anything else he deemed necessary, recorded it and produced it. He really only started assembling a band when he realized he loved playing live and wasn’t quite good enough to play a guitar, drums, bass and sing all simultaneously on stage.

John Fogerty. Whereas Grohl is Mr. Gregarious it would seem, Fogerty seems… well, possibly just a tiny wee bit prickly to be around. He blew up Creedence Clearwater Revival essentially because he couldn’t get along with the others (including his brother Tom) and seemed to feel that he was the only one in the band with any writing skills. He might not have been totally wrong on that, but it didn’t make him popular with the bandmates. So when it was time to make more music, not surprisingly, John seemed to go it alone. His huge 1985 hit album Centerfield, with the title track baseball anthem and the hit “The Old Man Down The Road” was written entirely by him and produced, and played. He’d done about the same thing with his 1973 solo debut The Blue Ridge Rangers , although that one consisted of cover songs like the old country standard “Jambalaya”.

Stevie Wonder. Like Winwood, this Stevie was a teen sensation in the ’60s and quickly established himself as a fantastic piano player and singer, but by the time he was leaving his teens he showed he was a lot more than just that. In sharp contrast to many other big Motown acts who tended to be micromanaged by label boss Berry Gordy Jr., Wonder showed increasing control over his records in the ’70s and by 1972’s Talking Book, was close to a one-man show. The great song “I Believe” on it, used to great effect at the end of the movie High Fidelity, was all-Wonder. Although his then sister-in-law Yvonne Wright helped write it with him, Stevie played everything – piano, clavinet, Moog synthesizer and bass, sang it and produced it himself.

Lenny Kravitz. Unlike Stevie, Lenny pretty much started out doing it all by himself. His 1989 debut album Let Love Rule was mostly just Lenny. He wrote the songs, played most of the instruments and produced it himself. Although the title track did have a couple of session musicians joining him, the song “Sittin’ on top of the World” was entirely by him.

So there you have it. The Stunningly Solo Seven, great artists who took “DIY” to another level!

May 31 – The Soaring Seven…For The Birds?

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The last day of May means the last day of spring, to most ornithologists at least. The majority of birds have finished their spring migration and are nestled down wherever they summer, raising the next generation of little winged creatures.

The migration up had ended for Manfred Mann‘s song “Pretty Flamingo” too, at this time in 1966. It had spent three weeks at #1 in Britain, but had just dropped to #4.

The song, second of three chart-toppers he’d have in the UK, was about a girl who was pretty like a flamingo… “when she walks she moves so fine, like a flamingo”. The song was described by Cashbox as an “easy-going teen-angled item about a rather fickle young girl” that would be a hit. It was, though more in Mann’s homeland than here, with it reaching only #29 in the U.S.

So, whether or not writer Mark Bakran was thinking of a pink-feathered tall denizen of tropical lakes and the sky when writing it, it’s one of many great songs that seem to be about birds. In fact, it’s one of the Soaring Seven… Songs about birds!

An even greater British act of the ’60s had their own song that sounded like it was about a feathered friend – The Beatles with “Blackbird.” The acoustic song was one of the highlights off their “White Album” and was written and sung by Paul McCartney (although credited, as per usual to Lennon & McCartney.) Paul’s given various answers to what it’s about or inspired him, but the basics seem that he wrote it on a guitar while at his Scottish retreat, but was probably first inspired by hearing a blackbird calling at night while the band was in India. But, he was also disturbed by goings-on in the U.S. and kept hearing the line “you are only waiting for this moment to arise” in his mind and likened that to “about the Black people’s struggle in the southern States” for equal rights. “It’s a bit more symbolic”, than about a poor crippled bird, he added . Whatever its meaning, it has taken wing in the music world… there are over 600 cover versions of it, including one this year by Beyonce.

There are Eurasian blackbirds and American blackbirds, but in general they aren’t the most musical of songsters to our ears. Contrast that to Mockingbirds, arguably the most-gifted and prolific songbirds in North America, singing dawn to dusk much of the time and able to imitate dozens of other birds. They’re beloved, and have been the subject to several songs including one simply called “Mockingbird.”

The song was written and first recorded by Inez and Charlie Foxx back in 1963, basing it upon the kids lullaby “Hush Little Baby”. In that, the father tries to bribe a spoiled child to be quiet by promising it an assortment of odd gifts including a billy goat and a cart & a bull if the goat don’t pull. Also in there, a Mockingbird. The Foxx’s simplify the lyrics a bit to just promise their “baby” a Mockingbird, and if that bird won’t sing, then a diamond ring. Methinks the baby was hoping for an unusually quiet bird! Their version was a minor hit in 1963, and it was soon recorded by Dusty Springfield, then Aretha Franklin but probably the best-known version was done by Carly Simon in 1974, with lots of help from her friend James Taylor. Her duet with him, in which he’d added in some lines about “peace of mind” went gold in the U.S. and was a top 5 hit there and in Canada. Among the fine helpers on that record, by the way, was Robbie Robertson on guitar.

A less happy tune also mentioning the state bird of Florida and four other states is “Mockingbirds” – plural – by Grant Lee Buffalo.

The 1994 tune hit #14 on Alternative Rock charts and according to Grant Lee, is his song fans most request still. He seems to link the chatty birds to bad times, and sings “devastation, my door was left wide open.” He hasn’t said exactly why the reference to Mockingbirds is in there, but the song itself was a late addition to his band’s second album… after a California earthquake had destroyed his house. He and his wife stayed “a number of weeks at my parents house, then managed to fly back into L.A. and slept on a friend’s floor”. “I tried to toe the line and yet life has caught up with me anyhow,” he said, “a feeling all of us can relate to.”

If the Mockingbird is the vocal star of American birds, the night-singing Nightingale is said to be the same of the British flock. Little surprise then that Bryan Ferry and Phil Manzanera wrote a song for Roxy Music of that name for their superb 1975 record Siren. The fact that it was active in the nocturnal hours didn’t seem lost on them and they seem to draw comparisons to a lovely lady …”now while the moon is high, shall we nightingale, duet all the night?” Like the Beatles did on their tune, Roxy add in a snippet of bird song at the end.

Less accomplished as a singer but impressive in their own right, ravens are the largest of songbirds and by most accounts, the smartest. Big, black, bold and found in northern climates worldwide, they are celebrated (the British royal family famously have some “guarding” the Tower of London, and have done so for centuries) and feared… as well as the bird that made Edgar Allan Poe famous! So little surprise then that the “Men in Black”, the sinister The Stranglers named their fourth album the Raven , the original LP covers even had the raven pictured in cool 3D. 40 or more years later, the title track remains one of their most popular. One of the few early songs of theirs sung by JJ Burnel, he tells of being a Viking and being befriended by a raven “my friend you’re black and when you fly, you’re wild; I am White and sometimes I behave just like a child”…

And what’s a list of songs about birds from the U.S.A. without an eagle in it? Of course, the biggest-selling album ever in the country was by the Eagles, but for a song, how about an eagle. “Fly Like an Eagle” was the title track of Steve Miller Band‘s ninth album, which would be their most successful, and the song is one of three gold (or more) singles they scored. It was a bit of a departure for the blues rocker/band, for one thing, being quite heavy on synthesizer. Miller usually is straight-ahead guitars, but he got an ARP Odyssey synth and “I took it home and started fooling around with it and it was very easy.” As well, the guy who was famous for writing about jokers and Texan robbers and good times like that seemed a bit more serious on this one, perhaps meaning the “eagle” as a metaphor for the U.S. itself, urging it to “feed the people who don’t have enough to eat… house the people livin in the streets, – oh, there’s a solution.” The song resonated and flew high to #2 both in that country and Canada.

So there you have it – the Soaring Seven. Songs for the birds! What do you think? Did we miss any first-rate feathery tunes? “Your bird can sing” by the Beatles perhaps? Gerry Rafferty’s “Night Owl.” Kid Creole’s “Stool Pigeon”? Oh , perhaps that one was a different type of “pigeon”! Anyway you hear it, remember – “bird is the word”!

May 9 – Get Your Music Maps Out!

Maybe we should sing him a song, he’s the Piano Man… and that song would be “Happy Birthday to You”. Billy Joel turns 75 today. And despite only putting out a couple of new songs in the last 20 years, he remains as popular as ever – CBS gave him a primetime special a few weeks ago, to air much of one of his famous Madison Square Garden concerts. (They botched it and took some heat for ending it prematurely, while he was just going into “Piano Man” but the thought was there.) We’ve looked at his life before, and some of his better works, today let’s look at another one of his songs that’s become a classic and shows what he does best – play memorable songs that tell a little story on his piano.

“Vienna” was never released as a single, but was one of his most popular tunes off The Stranger, the album that vaulted him from “one hit wonder singer” (upto that point the song “Piano Man” was all that most had heard from his first four albums. The Stranger changed all that with different-sounding radio hits “Only the Good Die Young”, “Just the Way You Are” and “Movin’ Out.” It would go on to sell over 10 million copies in the U.S. alone. Little surprise then that even the album cuts would become popular. “Vienna” was the b-side to the hit “Just the Way You Are” and is in a pretty limited group of his songs that features an accordion. How popular is it? It’s now the fourth most-streamed one of his songs on Spotify. Not bad for an obscure album track nearly 50 years old.

He said that he loved the city of Vienna when his dad took him there as a kid, but it was really a metaphor for growing old… decently. “We treat old people in this country pretty badly,” he’s said “we kinda kick them under the rug and make believe they don’t exist . (The Austrians) don’t feel like that.” He says it was trying to point out “you don’t have to squeeze your whole life into your 20s and 30s trying to make it… getting in the rat race and killing yourself.” Pretty mature thinking for someone who was only in his early 20s at the time.

Anyway, clearly “Vienna” is one of Billy’s more timeless tunes… and it’s also one of many songs in rock/pop with a title that is a city name. In fact, it’s one of the Shining City Singalongs Seven … songs named for a city. Shining City Singalongs. You might not want to say that fast five times. And Joel wasn’t the only one who found inspiration in Austria’s big town. There was also

Utravox, with their song “Vienna.” The title track off their fourth album, the 1980 song didn’t get much notice here but in Europe was their biggest hit, going to #2 in Britain and earning them their only gold single there. It went to #1 in Ireland and the Netherlands. Oddly it peaked at #8 in Austria! Like Joel’s song, it features a prominent piano and has a European feel. They were trying to make a song that sounded like it could have come from a 19^th Century composer and the lyrics were Midge Ure’s. He liked Vienna but had mixed influences for it, ranging from mishearing “Rhiannon” as “Vienna” and an old movie set there.

Moving East from there… far east!… we come to “Tokyo”, Japan’s largest city and the name of another 1980 single, that from disgruntled Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn. It became his second top 50 hit at home, and was loosely based on his visit to Japan. “It does describe some of the things that I saw and felt” when there he says. “Gray suited businessmen pissing against the walls”, “noise and smoke and concrete seem to be going on forever”… he should be writing for the Japanese tourism bureau. He did note that it “is no attempt at giving a fair or objective portrait of that city,” adding “the Japanese of course are extremely hospitable.”

There we had a Canadian writing about an Asian city, how about Canadians writing about one of their own? You got it – “Montreal” by Blue Rodeo. The country-rockers wrote the downbeat reminiscence of a romance long gone – which happened in the cosmpolitan Quebec burg – for their third album, 1990’s Casino.

Speaking of casinos, you might find a few in the next city. “Atlantic City” was a real change of pace for Bruce Springsteen‘s singles. The acoustic song failed to even chart at home in the U.S., it wasn’t what people were expecting after “Hungry Heart” and “Badlands” I guess! It was from his homemade, sparsely-recorded 1982 album Nebraska, and shows it’s not all fun and games behind the neon signs and roulette wheels! The crime show Cold Case based an entire episode once on the song, using lots of Bruce’s music. One suspects the song might have gotten an even frostier reception in New Jersey were it not written and performed by their favorite musical son.

Another coastal city of the States, another one with some deeper meanings. Jimmy Webb wrote great songs about a lineman in a certain Kansas town and about flying off to Arizona’s big city, and one just named for a beach town in Texas. “Galveston” was made into a big hit for Glen Campbell, and it hit #1 on country charts as well as #4 overall in the U.S. The great 1969 song utilized some of his fellow Wrecking Crew members like Joe Osborn and Leon Russell behind him and was written as a sort of anti-war message; it tells of a young man being sent off to war (presumably to Vietnam) dreaming of getting home to Galveston and his girlfriend. Oddly it was first done by the Ukulele man, Don Ho, and Campbell came to hear it through him.

Going inland from there, we come to an interesting Southern city – half is in Arkansas, half is in Texas. Which is probably why it’s called “Texarkana”... but why R.E.M. named a 1991 song that is more of a mystery! The top 10 radio hit doesn’t mention the city although apparently in cryptic singer Michael Stipe’s original lyrics it did mention leaving Texarkana and seeing the county line. It’s said they wrote it in the city and kept the name even after they changed the words. Another oddity – it is the only one of their hits (this not an official single, but played as one by many stations) that Mike Mills sang rather than Stipe.

Texarkana – one of the Shining City Singalongs Seven! There you have it. Which cities did I miss? “Houston” (another R.E.M. song)? “Kansas City”, made popular by the Beatles early on? Or another city Billy Joel immortalized in song, “Allentown”? What’s your favorite song named for a city?

March 24 – O’Jays Engineer The Steamin’ Seven

The O’Jays should circle this day in gold on their calendars, because it was on this day in 1973 they had their only #1 song in the U.S. – “Love Train”. It spent a week on top, interrupting Roberta Flack’s five-week run with “Killing Me Softly.” “Love Train” also has the distinction of being the first disco song to hit the top of the mainstream charts, something not everyone thanks them for perhaps but certainly set the stage for the second half of the decade.

The song urged people to “start a love train” and go around the world, urging love and understanding, in England and “tell all the folks in Russia and China too.” If the sound seemed to predict hits of a few years later and the message seemed to echo the “summer of love” vibes from a few years before, it still resonated with many … and you could dance to it. It’s a great “train” song, and turns out there are quite a few!

Power Pop Blog recently had a short list of great car songs, so why don’t we change the wheels from rubber to steel and present The Steamin’ Seven – great train songs.

If the O’Jays had a great one with “Love Train”, the idea was predated by Cat Stevens a couple of years earlier with his hit “Peace Train”, a top 10 in the U.S., UK, Canada and elsewhere. His message was often one of peace and hope, and he said he came up with the song idea while riding on a train, fittingly. He got to play it in 2006 at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony when a Bangladeshi banker and humanitarian won that award.

The early-’70s might have been the heyday for train songs. Besides those two, the Doobie Brothers told us about a “Long Train Runnin’” in ’73, and it became their first top 10 hit in the States and Britain. The song asked “without love, where would you be right now?” and somehow segued that idea into watching Illinois Central freight trains running, wheels going round and round. Maybe they meant love was a long string of events that keeps on going like a train is a long chain of cars that keeps rolling? We’re not sure, but it’s a good song anyway.

Speaking of the Illinois Central, another early-’70s gem – “The City of New Orleans”, Arlo Guthrie‘s biggest hit single. The song was written by Steve Goodman and was a fairly autobiographical account of people he ran into while riding on the actual City of New Orleans, an Illinois Central passenger train running south from Chicago.

Yet another great train song hit #1 in 1973, about seven months after the O’Jays one – “Midnight Train To Georgia.” It was Gladys Knight & the Pips signature tune, and tells of a disheartened young guy whose dreams of Hollywood stardom didn’t come true, hopping back on a train east to rediscover “the life he once knew.” Interestingly, it was written by Jim Weatherly as a gal hopping on a jet to go back to Texas, but Gladys correctly deduced a train just seemed more poignant and romantic.

Speaking of Georgia, let’s not forget that state’s Alt Rock heroes, R.E.M. who had a great train song with a great train video in 1985 with “Driver 8”. The song urges the engineer of “Locomotive 8” of the Southern Central line to take a break, but metaphorically urges people to keep on towards their goals and aspirations … “We can reach our destination, but it’s still a ways away”.

Not all of the great train songs are from the U.S. mind you. Al Stewart, a great story-teller, added one in 1995, with help from ex-Wings member Laurence Juber. Perhaps he noticed that Alfred Hitchcock used train settings in several of his great thriller films and he in turn wrote a whole little mystery thriller inside of about five minutes with “Night Train to Munich”. The song rolls along jauntily like an express train, with him urging the listener to find a conductor with a stain on his tunic in the restaurant car and obtain some mysterious papers from him but warns they’ll be being watched. If he was alive at the time, Hitchcock himself might have adapted that into another screenplay!

So there you have it The Steamin’ Seven, great train songs. Alas, that still didn’t allow space for goodies like the Stranglers’ “Ghost Train” let alone Gordon Lightfoot’s brilliant telling of the building of the railroad, the “Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” Or the Psychedelic Furs sexy ‘Into You Like A Train’, nor the Monkees ever-popular ‘Last Train to Clarksville.’ What do you think? Did other great train songs speed by my station while I wasn’t watching?

February 8 – Go To The Speed-along Seven

On our other post today, we looked at one of Motown’s biggest hits, “Stop! In the Name of Love” by the Supremes…perhaps the ultimate example of a “stop” song. But that got us thinking, what about “go” songs? So, just to give green lights equal time with the red light, here are the Speedalong Seven , songs about “go”ing!

“Go” Tones on Tail. You can’t get more direct than that for the theme can you? The 1984 song from the Bauhaus spin-off and Love & Rockets predecessor wasn’t a big hit but got people dressed in black “go”ing on the dance floors for many years to come.

“Go Now” Moody Blues. All systems were “go” for the Moody Blues as this single, a cover of a song by Bessie Banks was picked by future-Wing Denny Laine as a “can’t miss” hit and he was right. In 1964 it got them noticed, and actually went to #1 in the UK, #2 in Canada.

“Go Your Own Way” Fleetwood Mac. One of the gigantic foursome of singles off the mega-selling Rumours, it was the only one of them written by Lindsey Buckingham, who got to show off his guitar skills a bit on it. Written as a sort of “sayonara” to bandmate and girlfriend Stevie Nicks, she didn’t like it one bit. But she probably liked that it was their first American top 10 hit and went 4X platinum in Britain1

“Every Time You Go Away” Paul Young. It made people want Paul to stick around a bit! His only North American #1 hit and gold single, the 1985 song was a cover of a little known Hall & Oates song from five years prior.

“Don’t Go Back To Rockville” R.E.M. A rare song of theirs which Mike Mills apparently wrote the lyrics to (they shared writing credits on all their songs but singer Michael Stipe generally penned the words), it reflected his real-life disappointment at a summer girlfriend taking off with her family to Maryland, some 500 miles from Mike and his band. At least he got one of the best songs on their sophomore album, Reckoning, off it.

“Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” The Clash. An odd-sounding little ditty really, from the Clash’s last important album, Combat Rock, it featured lyrics penned by Mick Jones of the band, obstensibly about his then girlfriend Ellen Foley, but arguably reflecting his indecision about his future in the band. Joe Strummer got Texan Joe Ely to sing some goofy-sounding Spanish lyrics behind the main song and Levi’s inadvertantly got the song to #1 in Britain, eight years after it was released, by using it in a commercial.

“The Show Must Go On” Three Dog Night. The California group’s last top 10 hit, from 1974, had been a hit earlier that year for Leo Sayer (who co-wrote it) in Britain. However, they looked at it more optimistically than Leo,he sang “I won’t let the Show go on” whereas the dogs thought “I Must Let The Show Go On”. He didn’t like that change, but the fans did, and while the show did go on for Three Dog Night, the crowds got smaller from there on.

So there you have it – the Speedalong Seven, songs about “go”ing! What do you think? If you have any I missed, please do GO on and let me know!

January 24 – The Sassily Solo Seven

In today’s other post, we looked at Paul Simon’s first solo album after splitting up the incredibly successful duo he was part of, Simon & Garfunkel. At the time, many, including most of the insiders at his record company thought it was rather daft and he was throwing his career away. Until they heard his self-titled solo album, which of course generated a couple of enduringly popular hit singles and set him off on a long and highly-acclaimed solo career. It got us thinking about other artists who’ve left highly successful bands and hit the ground running with good solo debuts. There are plenty it turns out, so along with Simon today we have the Sassily Solo Seven debuts from people who had until recently been in another act. And we’ll pass over the most obvious foursome of superior solo debuts, The Beatles, but it is true that John, Paul, George and Ringo each jumped out of the gates with impressive works within a year or so of the demise of the old band.

For starters, while four didn’t hit it big from this band, three did to some level. The group, Genesis, and the first of them to find success on his own terms was Peter Gabriel. His first album after quitting the band, was his 1977 self-titled one (not to be confused with his following two self-titled ones!) It came about two years after he left Genesis and took their prog rock to unusual new places and ended up in the top 10 in their homeland (the UK) and much of Europe, thanks largely to the first single he released – the now-classic “Solsbury Hill”. Back then it reached #13 in Britain … a better showing than any of Genesis’ singles to that point. Needless to say, Gabriel became a massively successful artist in the ’80s thanks to hits like “Shock the Monkey” and “Sledgehammer” – hits which stood up on their own but were helped along by the creative videos he had made for them. In retrospect, given the showiness of early Genesis shows, largely put together by Peter, no one should be surprised by that.

Even more successful than Gabriel was Genesis’ drummer, Phil Collins. Seemingly a workaholic in the ’80s, he released his first solo album, Face Value in early-’81, only a few months after the band released Abacab. The album topped the charts in both the UK ,Canada and Sweden and quickly made him a household name due to the song that redefined the sound of drums that decade – “In the Air Tonight.” That one went to #1 in Australia and several European countries, #2 in the UK and Canada but a now curiously low #19 in the States. But its popularity grew and grew through the years and it’s now not only one of the most iconic songs of the 1980s, it’s triple platinum there. As we know, Collins managed to remain in Genesis, who grew in popularity and put out several multi-million selling solo albums during the decade making him seem to be everywhere. On July 13, 1985 he really seemed to be – he managed to play on stage in both London and Philadelphia for Live Aid.

Another place Phil was, involved somewhat trying to fill the shoes – or sticks – of John Bonham, drumming on Robert Plant‘s first record after Led Zeppelin broke up. He put out Pictures at Eleven, first of 11 or more solo albums (depending on whether you count his collaborative works with the likes of Alison Krauss as solo) for the former Zeppelin screamer. The first single off the platinum in North America album was the rocking “Burning Down One Side” which echoed Zeppelin while sounding nicely streamlined and made for the times as well. It got to #3 on American rock charts and #11 as a single in Canada.

Not all the solo success stories have been male-made. Stevie Nicks liked being the center of attention in Fleetwood Mac, despite the drama surrounding the band and its inter-personal relationships, but she found it frustrating that they were slow to put out music. With other songwriters in the band, only about one or two of her songs per year got recorded on average. So she took some of the downtime between FM albums to record her own one, Bella Donna, and have more of her songs heard. The record came out in 1981, about two years after Mac’s sprawling Tusk. Although not surrounded by her old bandmates, she did get a good deal of help from her other musical friends in southern California, like Waddy Wachtel, Davey Johnstone (previously Elton John’s guitarist), by-then ex-Eagles Don Henley and Don Felder and of course Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. They played behind her on her first solo hit, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” The album went to #1 in the States as well as Australia and gave her three hit singles, the Petty one, “Leather and Lace” (with Don Henley) and “the Edge of Seventeen.”

While Stevie brought in lots of help for her first solo work, some went the other route entirely. Like Dave Grohl. About six months after Kurt Cobain died and effectively ended Nirvana, the band’s drummer recorded a solo album. Very solo, even if he did name it Foo Fighters to suggest it was a whole band and not just one guy. But one guy it was. Except for a little bit of guitar added by Greg Dulli on one track, the entire record was written, played and sung by Grohl. “This Is a Call” was the first single, hitting #2 on the Alternative charts and the British and Australian top 10s, and indeed it was a call for people to listen up to the Foos. As we know, Dave quickly added in bandmates to allow the album to be played live and hasn’t looked back since, with the Foo Fighters being the most enduringly popular of the ’90s alt rock bands.

A little after that , another popular ’90s band split up and left us with a decent solo career. The Verve at least split up under happier circumstances than Nirvana, but for a group that had finally hit the big-time with an international hit (“Bittersweet Symphony”) they seemed to be calling it quits at the worst possible time. Richard Ashcroft didn’t miss a beat though before putting out his 2000 debut, Alone with Everybody. It didn’t sound radically different than the smooth melody-drenched pop of the Verve’s last album, which wouldn’t surprise anyone if they realized that Ashcroft sang, played keyboards for, was one of the guitarists on and wrote all the singles off Urban Hymns, including “Bittersweet Symphony.” Although by himself he didn’t quite equal the success of the Verve’s one , Alone with Everybody was still a #1 hit in the UK and the single, “A Song for the Lovers” a top 10 there and in Canada.

And last but not least, let’s look at another British band. Roxy Music was wild and boundary-defying in their earliest incarnation, namely the first two albums. They were more or less co-led by Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno (later just known as “Eno”). The two men had differing ideas about where the band was headed, so Eno, a synthesizer pioneer and the more experimental of the pair quit in 1973. Roxy carried on and established themselves as one of Britain/Europe’s favorite acts of the’70s and early-’80s and Ferry himself had a nice solo career with several hits. Eno didn’t really do much, chart-wise, but has been astoundingly busy, putting out over 40 albums, pioneering the sound and idea of “ambient music”, making music for computer sound effects and of course, being a hugely successful producer for acts including U2. His first solo album, 1974’s Here Come The Warm Jets, might be his most fun and contained the cult classic single “Baby’s on Fire.” The song is well… odd… but one of the most popular avante garde ’70s “hits”, with lyrics dealing with a baby on fire and what to do and a tune Blender called it “a two-note wonder built around an all-hell-breaks-loose guitar meltdown by King Crimson’s Robert Fripp.” “Baby’s on Fire”… a hot way to kick off a solo career.

Well there you have it, the Sassily Solo Seven. We could probably do seven more lists like it – John Fogerty, Diana Ross, Neil Young, various Eagles like Don Henley and Glenn Frey, Burton Cummings, Lionel Richie, David Lee Roth. Who’s your favorite solo musician to have come out of a popular group?