April 27 – Senior Sheena

Happy 65th birthday to one of pop’s more versatile women. A “one hit wonder” who actually wasn’t. Scottish, American; pioneering reality TV star, Mexican music award winner, Broadway star, Prince’s girlfriend (perhaps)… guess there’s more to Sheena Easton than her 5-foot frame or “9 to 5” song might suggest.

Easton was born in a small town in Scotland as Sheena Orr. She grew up in a musical household, apparently loving singing and doing so in public as young as 5. She set her mind to becoming a professional singer after seeing Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were.

Around the time she hit the age of 20, two important things happened to Sheena. She married a young man with the last name of “Easton”, and became a TV/music star. The marriage, her first but not last, didn’t even last one year but she kept his name, Then there was TV…

At the end of the ’70s, the BBC in a surprisingly ahead-of-its-time move, had a show called The Big Time which designed to take an unknown and follow their career right the way through into music stardom. Easton won her audition and was the contestant, and eventually got signed to EMI Records. The show filmed her right through the recording of her first single, “Modern Girl”, which took its time but eventually got to #8 in the UK.

Her next single was the one she’s synonymous with, although curiously depending on which side of the ocean you’re on has two different names. At home for her, it was released as the upbeat, perky “9 to 5”. Over here, it was released as the upbeat, perky “Morning Train”, as weeks before it was released, Dolly Parton scored a #1 hit with an entirely different song called “9 to 5.” Whatever you want, the song about the doting housewife waiting for her hubby to come home from work after taking the morning train“so we can play all night” was a delightful pop ditty that the public loved. It got to #3 in Britain but topped the charts in Australia and North America, with it ending among the year’s 20 biggest singles in both the U.S. and Canada in 1981. By hitting #1 on Billboard she remarkably became only the third Brit lady to have a #1 song in the States. Petula Clark and Lulu precedeed her in that.

The popularity of the song made her decide to ditch the cold, misty moors and move to America (she now lives primarily in the Las Vegas area and became a U.S. citizen in ’92) and got her invited to sing for Bond…James Bond. She did the title track of the movie For Your Eyes Only, which was a top 5 hit in North America, making the decade’s second most popular Bond song, behind “A View To a Kill.” As the ’80s progressed, she went on to top the country charts, with a duet with Kenny Rogers (a cover of the great Bob Seger song “We’ve Got Tonight”) and then surprisingly, have major R&B and Tejano hits! She’s nothing if not versatile, this Sheena.

In 1985 she cut an album sung in Spanish, with Spanish versions of her previous hits (like “9 to 5”, now “El Primer Tren”) and some new songs, one of which “Me Gustas Tal Como Eres” won her a Grammy for best Mexican-American recording. Not a bad feat for a little Scottish lass! Around that time she became friends with Prince. Many suggested they were more than just friends, but she never confirmed that. Either way, she toured with the Purple One in the late-’80s, co-wrote a few songs with him including “Love ’89” which was an R&B hit for Patti Labelle and recorded the duet “U Got the Look” with him, which got to #2. She also recorded the mildly explicit “Sugar Walls” that he wrote, which got to Tipper Gore. The Parental Music censors used it as an example of why they should be able to censor music; they lost of course but did get the “Parental Guidance” stickers put on albums with explicit lyrics. Surprisingly, when all was said and done, Sheena would cut 16 studio albums through 2000 and have seven top 20 singles in Britain – five of those in 1980-81 – and ten in the U.S. I’m as surprised as you are by that. She’s scored gold albums in such varied places as Canada, Japan, Ireland and Argentina.

When she became a mother in the ’90s, she decided to cut back on touring, but did devote herself a bit more to acting. She’d got her feet wet with that in the ’80s where else but Miami Vice, the TV show about music and cops, in which she played Don Johnson’s wife. In the ’90s she took to the Broadway stage to play roles in Man of La Mancha and Grease. More recently she returned to Jolly Ole’ to play in a London adaptation of 42nd Street.

So at 65, her slowing career might not have quite equaled Barbra’s but ten American hit singles and three popular stage roles is nothing to sneeze at. And dare I say, Ms. Streisand never won a Grammy for, umm, “Mexican” music. So, even if we here at A Sound Day know about… well, one of your songs, (that one about the guy who takes the train in the morning and then comes home again to find you waiting for him!) we wish you a very happy birthday and salute you for doing well in so many genres of music, thankfully none of which involve your homeland’s bagpipes!

April 15 – A Pipin’ Hot Surprise Hit

If you thought Chuck Berry reviving his career singing about his ding-a-ling was an unlikely prospect for a hit record in the ’70s, hang onto your hat because another 1972 smash was even more improbable than that. How about an instrumental of a piece of music about 200 years old, played without any conventional rock instruments? Well that’s exactly what happened this day that year, when sliding into the top spot of the British charts after Nilsson’s “Without You” and before T Rex’s “Metal Guru” was the year’s top song there … “Amazing Grace” by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards!

We may know a bit about Harry Nilsson and about T Rex, but the Dragoon Guards? The Guards were in fact a military regiment, in fact one deemed the “Scottish Cavalry”, it is the “senior Scottish regiment” and had been formed just a year earlier, when two different ones – the Scots Greys and 3^rd Carabiniers – merged. They had a military band and a pipe and drum one, and when not fighting (they were assigned to the messy situation in Northern Ireland and its civil war that year), they seemed to play classical music. They recorded an album’s worth of music outside of their barracks near Edinburgh and RCA put it out as an album entitled Amazing Grace, or in some markets, Farewell The Greys. Of course, the Brits have particular ways of doing things , especially when anything to do with the monarchy is involved and as representatives of the Crown, according to Wikipedia, “the pipe major was summoned to Edinburgh Castle (where they were officially based) and chastised for demeaning the bagpipes”!

“Amazing Grace” was the standout piece on the LP and was put out as a single. Few would have expected it to take on T Rex on the British charts or Roberta Flack on the North American ones. The Gospel hymn was written by British theologian John Newton in the 18^th Century and had become a popular church hymn. Mahalia Jackson had recorded a popular version (with vocals of course) in the ’40s which was rather resurrected in the ’60s by the American Civil Rights movement. Judy Collins had recorded a version in the Woodstock era as well. Neither were chart hits though, so the odds of an instrumental using bagpipes becoming one… well that was like a Powerball ticket in terms of odds.

Somehow that’s what happened though. It rose to #1 and spent five weeks on top in the UK. You better believe there were probably some happy folk in the RCA offices; Nilsson was also on their label meaning in total the company had the #1 single ten weeks running. In the end it was the #1 song of the year in Britain, and it also went to #1 in Canada, Ireland and South Africa. Even in the U.S. it made #11. When all was said and done, it sold past seven million copies. And, we imagine, somewhere behind closed doors back then, that Pipe Major was having the last laugh!

February 6 – Many Minds Figured Kerr’s Band Simply Sparkled

Call it envy or admiration or simply coincidental change, but once U2 began to sell out stadiums and seemed quickly on their way to becoming the biggest band from Europe, some other acts began to sound just a little more like Bono and Co. than they had before. Case in point, Simple Minds, who on this day in 1984 put out their boldest and most anthemic-sounding record to that point – Sparkle in the Rain.

They had been the opening act for U2 in a number of shows back ’83, including some massive ones in Ireland. That’s where Jim Kerr, the singer of Simple Minds, had the realization that he wanted to sound a bit different than they had previously in their new wave-y, often ethereal previous records. “In places like that, 50 000 people, there’s no room for subtlety and there’s no need for it, no want for it.” That was the concert where they premiered the first single off Sparkle in the Rain, “Waterfront,” a song he’d written for his hometown of Glasgow and its dwindling ship-building industry (a theme that resonated with Sting too as we know.) “You always see your home town differently when you come back,” Kerr explained.

So they decided to write music that had “a bit more dirt in it”. They called in super-producer Steve Lillywhite to help them, who had also worked with two of the other “Celtic new rock” bands, U2 and Big Country. As was often the case, Lillywhite brought his wife, Kirsty MacColl along and she added some backing vocals on a couple of the ten tracks. The band wrote nine of them themselves, with the other one being a cover of Lou Reed’s 1978 epic “Street Hassle.” Although they cut down Reed’s song by half, at 5:14” it was still the longest song on the record. While A&M released a pretty conventional version in the U.S., Virgin Records went all out on the first pressing of LP, making them on white vinyl for the British Isles and on clear wax for the Canadian market!

At the time, most liked the new, louder approach. Rolling Stone gave it 4-stars, Smash Hits, 8 out of 10. The former said “Scotland’s Simple minds continue to dazzle and impress” with their “complex web of sound…churchy keyboards, lace-like appregiated guitar lines and soaring wisps of feedback…” . Their only complaint was the Reed song “which doesn’t bear covering by anyone.” CMJ thought it sounded “more cohesive” than past records and “the words and music (are) forming a complete whole rather than two antagonistic elements.” Britain’s The Guardian however, dissented, declaring “pursuit of U2 and world domination” led them to “shed all that was good about their sound.”

“Waterfront” did sound big and bold and got to #13 at home for them, tying their best showing to then. It was a #1 hit in New Zealand and a top 5 in Ireland, where perhaps they remembered their opening spots for U2. “Speed Your Love To Me” was another UK top 20 while “Up on the Catwalk” didn’t do quite as well, resulting in it later being called their “most under-rated single” by Melody Maker. The album opened a few doors for them in the U.S., crawling to #64, their first significant chart entry there. To the north, it made #14 in Canada and went gold, largely on the strength of play in Toronto, where CFNY ranked it as the #3 record of the year (amazingly, that was less successful than earlier albums of theirs from the ’80s). Of course in Britain they were already established and the album became their first #1 hit, and spent over a year on the charts, eventually going double-platinum. Which perhaps had Jim Kerr hoping we “don’t you forget about me”… which after their Breakfast Club movie work the next year, nobody will!

Although Simple Minds never matched up to U2 in terms of commercial sales later on, they have matched their Irish rivals/friends in durability. They released their 21st studio album, Direction of the Heart, last fall and it reached the British top 5. And they are currently on tour, heading to Australia for nine shows later this month with a bevy of European concerts scheduled for this spring and summer. Thus far though, only one North American date has been set, May 11 at a festival in the L.A. area.

December 21 – Nothing So Average About Scot Band

A hit song that was more or less instrumental. Doesn’t happen too often but it seemed to more frequently back in the ’70s. A British – Scottish actually – band many assumed to be American, the Average White Band, AWB for short. They hit the charts on this day in 1974 with what would be their biggest hit, “Pick Up the Pieces”.

The band hails from Scotland and  continues to this day although they’ve not had much commercial success since the early ’80s. The Scots’ have had a fairly regular turnover of members through the years, at the time they were a six-piece outfit but had additional help from seven more musicians (including three trumpeters which gave the single a distinctively American R&B sound)  on the AWB album from which it came. Though the band itself had only a few hit songs even at home, there was plenty of talent in the group. Onnie McIntyre and drummer Robbie McIntosh on this record were part of another hit single two years prior – they were session musicians used by Chuck Berry on “My Ding-a-ling.”  Guitarist and main vocalist Hamish Stuart has toured as a member of Paul McCartney’s backing band twic and with Ringo Starr’s All Star Band three times, with them usually playing “Pick Up the Pieces” .

It went on to be a #1 hit in the U.S. and a top 10 in the UK and Canada and was typical of the instrumental, or nearly instrumental, singles that were very big at the time (think “Frankenstein” by Edgar Winter, “Popcorn” by Hot Butter, ”The Hustle” by Van McCoy and so on.)

Some call the sound “blue-eyed soul” but the band itself call their material “genuine straight to the core R&B with a lot of funk” . The name is a bit of a joke too; a friend of theirs went to Africa and said “Uganda is just too hot for the average white man,” they decided to modify that for their name since they sounding anything but an average “White” band. and were in fact multi-racial. The follow-up single, “Cut the Cake” was their only other American top 10; at home they scored one more reasonably big hit in 1980 with “Let’s Go Round Again.”

September 22 – Forgotten Gems : The Silencers

The night skies have been colorful for some of our readers this week. The Aurora Borealis, aka the Northern Lights have been visible with their ghostly green and red sheeting lights through parts of the northern States and adjacent Canada, putting on quite a display. Which put me in mind of another colorful phenomenon nighttime attraction which also happens to be the name of this month’s Forgotten Gem – “Painted Moon” by The Silencers. It was the Scottish band’s first single, and lead off from their debut album, 1987’s A Letter From St. Paul.

The Silencers were started a year earlier by singer/songwriter Jimmie O’Neil and lead guitarist Cha Burns. The pair had played together at the start of the decade in Fingerprintz, gone on to different projects. For Burns that included being in Adam Ants band that replaced The Ants. But by 1986 they were working together again, with this new group, adding in bassist Joseph Donnelly and drummer Martin Hamlin.

A Letter From St. Paul is a great collection of jangle rock with thought-provoking, occasionally sinister lyrics touching on a range of topics including abortion, stalkers…and the Falklands War. Turns out “Painted Moon” was written by O’Neill earlier to express his anger at the British invasion of the islands near Argentina, which make lyrics like “news from a distant shore” and “coming to the rescue, angels from another world” seem a little less oblique. It wasn’t the only British song written in disgust about the conflict; Billy Bragg says it really was what made him political in nature and he wrote “Island of No Return” about it and even Dire Straits epic “Brothers in Arms” was inspired by it.

Although they opened for The Pretenders in Europe and Squeeze in North America to promote the record, it received only modest notice and success. It reached #41 in Australia and #57 at home. In the U.S. it missed the top 50 but had limited pockets of success on some college radio stations and Toronto’s CFNY, which ranked it as the 46^th best record of the year.

Curiously, while musically they drew comparisons to The Smiths and Simple Minds, they looked elsewhere for inspiration it would seem. The album says they “would like to thank Elvis Aaron Presley, without whom none of this would have been possible.”

The Silencers have put out eight more studio albums since and continue to this day, although without Burns who died of cancer in 2007.

July 12 – Thomson Challenged His Brother On Charts For One Summer

Quickly compared to McCartney and ties to Supertramp… those were some big shoes for Ali Thomson to fill. He took a shot at it though, and on this day in 1980 his one hit “Take A Little Rhythm” made its way onto the U.S. top 40. The upbeat tune about loving music (“just sit back and let the music flow”) was the title track of the Scot’s first album.

Thomson was only 21 at the time, the younger brother of Dougie Thomson, the bassist for Supertramp. Ali had moved to London from Glasgow as a teen and began singing and playing piano in a few bands as well as writing songs. By the end of the ’70s his brother’s band was huge with Breakfast in America, and perhaps that helped him get a record deal with Supertramp’s label, A&M. He decided that having breakfast in America sounded good, and relocated to California, recording Take a Little Rhythm there.

The album met with decent reviews but many comparisons to Paul McCartney and Wings. Allmusic for instance, say it is “conjuring Wings…fluffy but fun radio pop.” And a little like McCartney, not only did he write almost all the album, but he demonstrated some versatility, playing guitar, bass, piano and vibraphone. The prominent, ever-so-’80s sax was courtesy David Roach, who’d go on to work with Talk Talk and then many well-respected jazz artists.

The single did quite well, getting to #15 in the U.S., #12 in the UK and #22 in Canada. But the album itself didn’t sell much, and the also well-reviewed follow-up single “Live Every Minute” didn’t quite break through. When his 1981 album bombed, he was consigned the title of “One hit wonder”.

He did have one more tie to a hit though, he co-wrote Gary Wright’s last hit, 1981’s “Really Want to Know You” which also hit the top 20.

“I don’t think I was prepared psychologically or emotionally for the world of a pop star and I found the music business frustrating to navigate at such a young age,” he says of it. Since then he’s kept busy as a songwriter (getting a Latin Grammy nomination for a work with Laura Pausini) and has recently gone back to recording, putting out a couple of indie albums including last year’s Last Rodeo. Among those collaborating with him on that is someone else who knows what it is like to be in McCartney’s shadow – guitarist Robbie McIntosh, from Paul’s touring band.

June 14 – Turntable Talk 15 : Not So Average Hamish

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! Thanks once again to all the regular readers and welcome to any new ones. If you’re keeping count, this is our 15^th instalment…if you’re wondering about past topics, I have the previous topics indexed here. For any new readers, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month, our topic is My Hometown. Not about Bruce Springsteen’s downbeat 1984 tune… although if our writers are from Asbury Park, it could be! We’ve asked them to simply write about either an artist they like from their hometown or a song about it. Of course, since not everyone comes from New York or London, not everyone’s hometown is necessarily a hotbed of past musical talent. So I leave it to our guests to interpet what their “hometown” is.

Today we have Paul from Once Upon A Time in the ’70s, a look back at life in that fun decade…especially its music. At this point, I should note that in the past we’ve enjoyed articles from both Paul and that site’s co-host Colin. Colin recently had a heart attack, and is recuperating. While doing so, he wrote a little book I recommend about the situation : No Laughing Matter. Proceeds go to charity, so you might want to check it out. As for Paul, he’s a proud Scot, so who was his hometown great?:

It was great to get the call to arms from Dave again and to contribute to the latest Turntable Talk.

Titled HOMETOWN it’s all about that song or artist that reminds you of your roots and the environment you grew up in…..

My home-town pick is a guy whose band had number one records on the American soul charts and who has recorded and wrote songs for Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan and George Benson.

He’s appeared on Soul Train and his songs have been sampled by Snoop Dogg and NWA,

He’s not from Detroit or Philadelphia, he’s a pasty Scot from the south side of Glasgow and his name is Hamish Stuart.

(Hamish with the rest of the original AWB line up in 1974 in above picture)

I first came across Hamish when the Average White Band appeared from nowhere with their breakthrough hit, “Pick Up the Pieces”.

Like most people, on first listen I thought I was listening to James Brown’s backing band, the JB’s, or some other U.S. funk band, so it was a joy to discover that AWB were a band of six Caledonian soul brothers, with Hamish hailing from the same ‘no mean city’ as me.

Along with bass player Alan Gorrie, Hamish Stuart was the main songwriter and vocalist and possessed an incredibly soulful voice which ranged effortlessly from a Ronald Isley falsetto to a Donny Hathaway tenor.

The other great thing about his voice was that there was no mid-Atlantic twang… he may have loved Marvin & Donny but Hamish was authentic.

I’ve been fortunate enough to see Hamish live many times and he never plays it safe, always striving to hit the notes, as you can hear on this live version of “Work to Do” by AWB from c.1975

“Pick Up the Pieces” and the album it was lifted from (AWB – the White Album) would be the platform for the band’s success but in truth there was a seventh member of the band – Arif Mardin the legendary Atlantic Records producer who along with studio boss Jerry Wexler saw the bands potential and invited them over to Miami’s Criteria Studios where he’d worked his magic on Aretha Franklin and where he would later transform the Bee Gees into the biggest selling band of the ’70s.

As a mentor and friend, Mardin produced the majority of the band’s albums in the ’70s with the quality rarely dropping.

After a run of 7 albums AWB released the album Shine in 1980 featuring the hit single “Let’s Go Round Again” which gave the band its biggest UK hit since “Pick Up the Pieces”.

There would be one more album from the core line-up, Cupids in Fashion, released in 1982, but in truth after 10 years together the band needed a re-set and decided to call it a day.

Post AWB, Hamish was in demand as a gun for hire, writing and recording with some of New York’s finest session-players like the Brecker Brothers, Cornell Dupree, Marcus Miller and Richard Tee on sessions for Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin and George Benson.

Around this time, David Sanborn, the great alto sax player and the guy who played on Bowie’s Young Americans invited Hamish to sing lead vocal on his version of Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” it was an inspired collaboration and became a big hit on the R&B and Jazz charts.

In the late ’80s Hamish’s career took another twist when he got a call from Paul McCartney who asked him to join his band.
A big Beatle’s fan, this was an offer Hamish couldn’t refuse.

A rhythm guitarist by trade, Hamish could also play a mean bass. Inspired indeed by McCartney’s melodic playing style and funk brother James Jamerson, so Hamish was awarded the bass playing duties whenever McCartney picked up a 6-string or manned the keyboards.

There’s a great clip from an MTV unplugged performance with Hamish fronting the band on a version of Bill Withers classic “Ain’t No Sunshine”, featuring McCartney on drums and backing vocals.

By 1995 Hamish was ready to return to recording and playing his own music again and moved back to the UK.

I’d seen AWB play live a couple of times in the ’70s but the next time I saw Hamish perform was when I went to a Hall & Oates gig in London around 2001 and to my great surprise and delight the Hamish Stuart band were supporting. I had no idea that he was even back on the scene, but was blown away by his new material which came from his solo album Sooner or Later.

Over the years I’ve seen Hamish live many times, often at the 606 Club in London and memorably at the pub he used to own in Kent, where he’d invite musical chums like Gallagher & Lyle, Go West, Squeeze, Paul Young, Mick Taylor and Kokomo to play an annual summer festival in the pub garden for 500 people.
Hamish live is a sight to behold, he has a brilliant band who he’s toured and recorded with for over 20 years. They play a great mix of AWB faves and solo material, with selected cover versions from the likes of Al Green, Donny Hathaway and Joni Mitchell thrown in for good measure.

Since 2006, Hamish has also played regularly with another Beatle – Ringo Starr, who he’s currently on tour with as part of Ringo’s All Starr Band.
It’s a pretty cool concept, Ringo invites guys like Edgar Winter, Steve Lukather (Toto), Joe Walsh, Todd Rundgren, Gary Wright and others to tour with him and in amongst the Beatles/Ringo songs he encourages each band member to front the band for a couple of their own songs. In Hamish’s case, it’s usually “Pick up the Pieces” and “Work to Do”.

As you’ll see from the clip the man can still hold a tune and still goes for those notes.

So, there you have it, a tale of a local boy made good.

A kid who when he was growing up in Glasgow loved the Beatles and Soul music, and who along the way managed to record with Aretha Franklin and Paul McCartney.

I’ve been fortunate to meet Hamish on several occasions and he makes time for everyone, a good guy who’s never forgotten his roots and has retained his Glasgow brogue and sense of humour.

The picture below is a favourite of Hamish’s, taken in the mid 70s at a party after Billy Connolly’s first headline gig in London.
Alongside Hamish are five famous sons of Glasgow – The Big Yin (Billy Connolly); Blues singer, Frankie Miller; Bass player & vocalist from the Robin Trower Band, Jimmy Dewar; force of nature and leader of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Alex Harvey and renowned Clydeside union leader Jimmy Reid.

I belong to Glasgow
Dear old Glasgow town
Well what’s the matter with Glasgow
For its goin’ ‘roon and ‘roon
I’m only a common old working chap
As anyone here can see
But when I get a couple of drinks on a Saturday
Glasgow belongs to me

January 29 – Many Were Oblivious To Frame’s Talents

Happy 59th birthday to Aztec Camera! Well, actually to Roddy Frame, who for all essential purposes was Aztec Camera and is now sometimes described as “the elder statesman of melodic wistful Scotpop.” The Scot singer/songwriter/guitarist put out six albums with an ever-changing list of backing musicians under the name Aztec Camera and has since put out several well-reviewed but poor-selling albums under his own name, although none since 2014.

Frame taught himself guitar, recalling “I started learning guitar when I was about four…I was just completely crazy about it.” His list of musical influences is long and varied, starting with the Beatles, Stones and Bowie when he was young to Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes when he was starting to create his own music to Springsteen and Dylan when he moved briefly to the U.S. in the ’80s. His records have traversed quite a range of styles but are always strong on melody. He says he’s most comfortable writing “personal one to one songs” but admires Billy Bragg’s politicism. Allmusic consider their debut album, High Land, Hard Rain a perfect 5-star “must-have” album, something echoed by Creem magazine which said of it “the world ain’t perfect but High Land, Hard Rain comes close.” They started their career off with a bang in Britain, with their first five singles all being Indie top 10 hits, including “Walk Out To Winter” and the great “Oblivious”, which was a #1 on that chart and made it into the overall top 20 there. That success got them signed with Warner Bros. and the 1987 album Love, which went platinum in the UK, largely on the strength of the hit “Somewhere in My Heart.” However, despite the critical adoration and heavy airplay on Toronto’s CFNY (their #17 record of the year) and LA’s KROQ, the band never really took off in North America and have only one top 10 hit or platinum record in the UK to show for their talent.

Frame currently lives with his wife in London.  Although he hasn’t said he’s retired from music, his website hasn’t been updated for five years, leading one to be a bit “oblivious” to expect new material anytime soon from Frame and his Aztec Camera

January 22 – Al Took Us To Another Place, Another Time

The year after the “Year of the Eagle” (the Bicentennial) was the year of the cat? Could be, since Al Stewart‘s lush record hit the American Top 40 on this day in 1977, his first significant radio hit.

The Scottish-born folkie had already put out six albums after his 1966 debut single (“The Elf” which had Jimmy Page playing guitar on it but sold a lofty 496 copies!) prior to his RCA Records debut, Year of the Cat. He became a part of the burgeoning British folk scene in the mid-’60s and was a friend of Cat Stevens and briefly the roommate of Paul Simon! Pretty good foundation for learning to write songs, one would think. The album was recorded at Abbey Road studios and produced by Alan Parsons, a pretty good set of ingredients to add to the recipe of making a hit. The album contained the popular song “On the Border”, but its real standout was the exotic title track. As Stewart later told a Toronto radio station, “if this isn’t a hit, then I can’t make a hit.”

Turns out he could; the single got to #8 on Billboard, and the album went platinum in the U.S. In Canada, it hit #3 yet in his homeland, it missed the top 30 – like all his songs have! He’d score an even higher chart hit the following year with “Time Passages”, but the song about the mysterious woman in the country where they turn back time remains his best-loved and best-known track. It was the only song on the album that he didn’t write entirely by himself. This one is co-credited to Peter Wood, his touring keyboardist at the time (and later a touring member of Pink Floyd during The Wall years.) Green played a piano riff every soundcheck and Stewart says “after I heard it about 14 times, I said ‘you know, there’s something about that. It sounds kind of haunting and nice. Can I write some lyrics to it?” But finding the right lyrics was a bit of a challenge. He tried ones about a comedian who commit suicide and Princess Anne and her horse, but nothing felt right. He says “I had a girlfriend at the time and she had a book on Vietnamese astrology, which is kind of obscure. It was open at the chapter called ‘The Year of the Cat’…I recognize a song title when I see it, and that was a song title.” He was right, and after some unsuccessful lyrics about a tabby that made him crabby, he settled in to watch Casablanca and let his imagination run wild until he had the lyrics that made him a part of music history. The history buff has also referenced everything from Stalin and WWII to Nostradamus in his songs. He continues playing music to this day

January 4 – It’s Elementary… Raff Was The Reluctant Superstar

We remember a talented singer/songwriter who passed 12 years ago today – Gerry Rafferty. He died of liver failure on this day in 2011 at age 63. Rafferty is a talent who’s been compared to Paul McCartney more than once, and had he been a little more outgoing, perhaps might have come closer to the success the latter had. Although with two of the biggest, and most enduring hits of the ’70s to his credit, he didn’t do badly for himself.

Raff was born in Paisley, Scotland to a working class family which loved to sing Celtic folk songs around the table. That, and the music of the Beatles and Bob Dylan when he was a youth set the course for his life. He left school early, and although he worked briefly as a shoe salesman and in a butcher’s shop, “there was never anything else for me but music,” he said.

By the mid-’60s, he was busking in London and joined a folk group, followed by the moderately successful (locally) The Humblebums, a folk trio which also featured Billy Connolly – the comedian. Connolly and Rafferty parted ways commercially by 1971, with them wanting different things. Connolly recalls “I wanted success and fame; Gerry wanted respect.” As well, although according to the “comedian”, Rafferty was hilarious and had a great sense of humor, on stage he wanted to be all-business, all-music, while Billy liked to joke around and tell stories between songs (hence little surprise his career would end up going the way it did.) the pair remained close friends throughout the rest of gerry’s life though.

From The Humblebums, Rafferty started Stealer’s Wheel with his friend Joe Egan; that folk-tinged group put out three albums and surprisingly, had 3 top 40 hits in Canada and the UK in 1973; the memorable one being “Stuck in the Middle” which was a top 10 in most markets and rebounded to popularity with the use in Reservoir Dogs. He then went solo, putting out a total of 9 studio albums, with the greatest output and acclaim coming for the first couple of albums after Stealer’s Wheel, City to City and Night Owl. the former includes one of the finest singles of the decade, “Baker Street”, a semi-autobiographical tune that he says UA (his label) didn’t want to release as a single! “They actually said it was too good for the public,” he later noted. Good thing for everyone concerned they relented – the single was a #1 hit in Canada and Australia, hit #2 in the U.S. and by 2010 was one of a limited number of songs confirmed by BMI as being played over 5 million times on radio! Which set Gerry for life. In 2003, he admitted he got about 80 000 pounds a year (close to $200 000 in today’s cash) in royalties from that one song alone.

The success didn’t last that long however. Although he’d score a couple more critically-acclaimed and big-selling singles, like “Right Down the Line”, Rafferty was not a fan of the “industry”, and disliked touring. A very private person, he more or less quit the music business as a recording star by 1982, working now and again through the ’80s with Mark Knopfler on the Local Hero soundtrack and producing records for The Proclaimers (who were among a number of celebrities who showed up for his funeral) and Fairport Convention’s Richard Thompson. Mainly though he lived a quiet life with his wife and daughter on a farm in England, beginning an unfortunate spiral downwards.

His dad had been an alcoholic; Gerry always liked his drink but by the late-’80s, it was becoming a major problem for him, which was putting a big strain on his marriage, which in turn increased his self-destructiveness and over-drinking. She says it eventually looked hopeless to her. “I would never have left him if there’d been a glimmer of a chance of him recovering,” she later said.

Raff had a brief return to form around the turn of the century, being an early embracer of the internet for music (he put out tunes on his own website as early as 2000 and said “I don’t want to be talking to 23 year-old record executives who are just trying to sell their product to 19 year-olds”) . However, while his 2000 Another World garnered good reviews, lacking a big label deal, very few ever heard it.

He was hospitalized with multiple organ failures in late 2010, and passed away from total liver failure weeks later. Among those at his funeral was Alex Solmond, the First Minister (top politician) of Scotland and John Byrne who delivered the eulogy. Byrne is a noted Scottish playwright who also dabbles quite well in art. He’d done the pictures for the covers of City to city and Night Owl for his friend. A year later, his hometown of Paisley named a street after him.

In summing up Rafferty in a full page obituary, London’s The Times said he was “A consummate songwriter blessed with sensitivity and an enviable melodic flair that at its best recalled Paul McCartney.” And he did it on his own terms. Not a bad way to be remembered.