Milestones: 'Back in Black'

Has it really been 40 years, 50 million copies sold worldwide and now generations of fans grooving to this album? Yes, indeed.

It was their seventh album, second with producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, and first with new singer Brian Johnson which catapulted them to mass international success, as well as eventually being recognized as among the greatest albums in the history of rock and roll.
But the beauty of it all—if one could use such a term with this band and this album in particular—is that stripped of all the myth and legend, at the end of the day, it’s a collection of, as the cliché goes, all killer no filler, that sounds so, so good and rocks as hard as it did on that summer day it was released all those years ago.
If, as the lyrics state on album closer and fourth and final single “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution", this music “ain't never gonna die”, then these 10 songs will very likely have something to do with it. Yeah...

Recorded in the Bahamas and mixed in New York City, this perennial favorite was released July 25, 1980.

Thursday Throwback: Black Sabbath [1971]

Milestones: 'Appetite for Destruction' [1987]

If at the time you felt the Winger-Warrant-Poison contingent was a joke and the Metallica-Slayer-Megadeth-Anthrax front was a tad intense, you could probably turn to Aerosmith, right? Except they were in the midst of a, um, permanent vacation. Talk about the right place at the right time, huh?

One of the greatest debuts in rock and roll history (and the best selling debut album ever by a rock band), it still rocks as hard as it did then. Hell, maybe harder now.

Released July 21st, 1987.

Today in Music History (July 21)

1967 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience play the first of three nights at the Cafe-a-Go-Go in New York City.

1969 - The Beatles start work on the John Lennon song “Come Together” at Abbey Road studios in London. It became the opening song on The Beatles' Abbey Road album and was later released as a double A-side single with George Harrison’s “Something”.

1973 - Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” begins a two week run at #1. Croce was killed in a plane crash three months later.

1977 - Despite protests, the Sex Pistols make their first appearance on the UK music show Top Of The Pops where they lip-synched to their third single, "Pretty Vacant". The performance helped push the song up the charts to #7 there.

1987 - Guns N' Roses release their debut album Appetite For Destruction becoming the best-selling debut album by a band in the US.

1990 - Roger Waters' performance of The Wall takes place at the Berlin Wall in Potzdamer Platz, Berlin to commemorate the fall of the Wall eight months earlier. Over 350,000 people attended and the event was broadcast live throughout the world, with Van Morrison, Bryan Adams, Joni Mitchell, The Scorpions, Cyndi Lauper, Sinead O’Connor and others taking part.

1994 - Oasis play their first ever American show as part of the New Music Seminar at Wetlands in New York City.

1995 - A judge in Los Angeles throws out a lawsuit against Michael Jackson by five of his former security guards. The guards had claimed they were fired for knowing too much about night-time visits by young boys to Jackson's estate. Jackson denied any improprieties.

2002 - Producer Gus Dudgeon, who worked with artists including Elton John, David Bowie, The Beach Boys, Kiki Dee, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Strawbs, XTC, and Joan Armatrading, is killed at the age of 59 in a car accident along with his wife Sheila.

2004 - Composer Jerry Goldsmith dies after a long battle with cancer at the age of 75. Goldsmith created the music for scores of classic movies and television shows including Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Dr. Kildare.

2005 - Long John Baldry, one of the founding fathers of British rock 'n' roll in the 1960s, dies of a chest infection. He was the inspiration for half of Reginald Dwight’s stage name: Elton John. (Sir Elton legally changed his name in 1972.)

2007 - Music mogul Don Arden, nicknamed “the Al Capone of Pop” for his uncompromising business practices, dies at the age of 81 at a Los Angeles nursing home. Arden managed Black Sabbath, ELO and the Small Faces and was the father of Sharon Osbourne.

2017 - Justin Bieber is banned from performing in China, according to Beijing's Culture Bureau. In a statement, the ministry said it was not appropriate to allow in entertainers who have engaged in "bad behavior." Bieber who had previously toured China in 2013, joined a long list of similarly blacklisted artists like Oasis and Maroon 5.

Today’s Birthdays include…Herman’s Hermits drummer Barry Whitwam (74); singer/songwriter Cat Stevens aka Yusef Islam (72); and former Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin (59).

Nothing's Shocking Anymore

When it comes right down to it, these guys have made 4 albums—one in each decade of their existence (1988, 1990, 2003, 2011) over a span of 30+ years. The first two are alt-rock classics; the other two, well…
In short, not the best batting average out there.

As someone who is still under the spell of those aforementioned classics (Nothing’s Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual) all these decades later, their subsequent output has been both deflating and disappointing. Their last time out, they essentially left behind their classic sound and with TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek on board, contributing to the album on bass guitar and songwriting, they aimed for a darker but less aggressive and less intense sound than they are known for. If Shocking and Ritual were beacons shining thru a fog, The Great Escape Artist is the fog itself.

After his triumphant return to the band, a decade after his departure, original bassist Eric Avery decided his stint would be limited to live performances and voiced his disinterest in recording new material with Farrell, Navarro and Perkins. (Did he hear these new songs and bail? Hmm…) Enter GnR’s Duff McKagan, who spent nine months with the band but left before the recording of this album due to creative differences. (No, really.) He did, however, work with them during the writing phase and contributed to two of the album’s songs. This is one of them.

I guess this was just a long, drawn out way of saying that this is the only thing on the album that caught my ear. And if they continue with their release pattern and put out another album during this new decade, I might check it out for old time’s sake, but my heart belongs to those first two records that blew my mind and remain their greatest musical statements.

Who knows? Maybe they’ve got another great one in them. I’ll wait in a comfortable chair, tho.

Today in Music History (July 19)

1954 - Sun Records releases the first Elvis Presley single, “That's All Right”, a cover of Arthur Crudup's 1946 tune "That's All Right, Mama". Only about 7,000 original copies were pressed, but the disc became a local hit in Memphis.

1968 - Pink Floyd play the second of three nights at the Boston Tea Party in Boston.

1969 – The week’s episode of ‘The Johnny Cash Show’ includes appearances by Ed Ames, Roy Clark, The Monkees and Joni Mitchell. Cash introduced The Monkees by playing the first verse of their hit “Last Train To Clarksville” with The Monkees on backing vocals, The Monkees then performed a version of the Johnny Cash song “Everybody Loves a Nut”, with Cash.

1972 - Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are arrested in Warwick, Rhode Island on charges of assault after a fight broke out with a newspaper photographer.

1975 - While on the Natty Dread tour, Bob Marley & the Wailers appear at the Lyceum Theatre in London. The show was recorded and the live single “No Woman, No Cry” was later released.

1975 - Paul McCartney and Wings hit #1 with “Listen To What The Man Said”, his fourth US #1. Wings also had the #1 album with Venus And Mars, McCartney's fourth #1 album since The Beatles.

1976 - Deep Purple split up at the end of a UK tour. David Coverdale went on to form Whitesnake, Jon Lord and Ian Paice formed a band with Tony Ashton. The classic line up of Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord & Paice reformed in 1984. Glenn Hughes returned to Trapeze and Tommy Bolin put together his own band, (but would die before the end of the year).

1987 - Bruce Springsteen plays his first ever show behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin in front of 180,000 people. The show was broadcast on East German TV.

1989 - James Brown changes accommodations behind bars after $40K in cash and checks was discovered in his minimum security cell. The Godfather of Soul had been given a six year sentence the previous December after several run-ins with the law, including illegal gun possession, resisting arrest, assault and leading the authorities on a number of car chases.

1991 - Steven Adler, ex-drummer with Guns N' Roses, files a suit in Los Angeles alleging he was fraudulently removed from the group and that the band introduced him to hard drugs.

1997 - Oasis go to #1 in the UK with “D'You Know What I Mean?”, the first single from their third album Be Here Now.

2001 - Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol' Dirty Bastard, is sentenced to spend between two and four years behind bars after being found guilty of drug possession.

2010 - Ozzy Osbourne and his former Black Sabbath band mate Tony Iommi settle a long-running legal dispute over the use of the group's name. They later released a joint statement confirming they have settled the dispute "amicably".

Today’s Birthdays include…keyboardist George Frayne aka Commander Cody (76); bassist for Scottish funk and R&B group the Average White Band, Allan Gorrie (74); former Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon and Queens’s Brian May (both 73); and Bauhaus/Tones on Tail/Love and Rockets drummer Kevin Haskins (60).

Happy Birthday: Geezer Butler

A metal icon, his old band's primary lyricist and perhaps one of the genre's most underrated instrumentalists, Mr. Terence Michael Joseph "Geezer" Butler (71).

John William Coltrane [September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967]

Milestones: Sting - 'The Dream of the Blue Turtles' [1985]

Plagued by internal discord that eventually broke up the band, Synchronicity was for all intents and purposes a dry run for what became his solo career. And so, free of the other Policemen, Mr. Sumner teamed up with a cast of first-rate jazz musicians for his first full-length album. Despite the critical shorthand of this being his “jazz” album and there being a taste of it throughout, courtesy of the assembled musicians (including the great Branford Marsalis), it opens with “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free”, a funky pop tune that was the album’s first single and remains the highest charting song—reaching #3 in the US—of his post-Police output. (It’s also, thematically speaking, the exact opposite of the Synchronicity hit “Every Breath You Take”. Hmm…)

As his old band broke up at the height of their popularity, commercial expectations were high for this one. And in that regard it delivered, as it became a Top 5 album in both the US and UK. (As well receiving 4 Grammy nominations.) But it ultimately suffers from “serious artist” disease, in this case the afflicted trying a tad too hard to shed his pop star image and history. However, there are some rewarding moments throughout, as evidenced by “Consider Me Gone” and the singles “Fortress Around Your Heart”, “Love Is The Seventh Wave” (which quotes “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”) and the aforementioned “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free”.

He would set his future musical template on his next album, but this one was a decent if flawed first step.

Released in the Summer of 1985.

Victor Victor [1948-2020]