I always want to run away from A to B, and then I get to B and I wanna go back to A. I think everybody wants to run away.
~Del Shannon
One of the best and most original rockers of the early ’60s, Del Shannon was also one of the least typical. Although classified at times as a teen idol, he favored brooding themes of abandonment, loss, and rejection.
~Richie Unterberger (allmusic.com)
Del Shannon’s induction in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame
Runaway:
From Wikipedia
Birth name
Charles Weedon Westover
Also known as
Charlie Johnson
Born
December 30, 1934
Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.
Died
February 8, 1990 (aged 55)
Santa Clarita, California, U.S.
Genres
Rock, country music
Occupations
Singer-songwriter
Instruments
Vocals, guitar
Years active
1958–90
Labels
Bigtop, Twirl, Berlee, Amy, Liberty, Dunhill, United Artists,Island, Elektra, Silvertone
Charles Weedon Westover (December 30, 1934 – February 8, 1990), known professionally as Del Shannon, was an American rock and roll singer-songwriter who had a No. 1 hit, “Runaway”, in 1961.
“Look up in the sky, up towards the north There are three new stars, brightly shining forth They’re shining oh so bright, from heaven above Gee we’re gonna miss you, everybody sends their love”
– Eddie Cochran
The Day the Music Died, dubbed so by Don McLean’s song “American Pie”, was an aviation accident that occurred on February 3, 1959, near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and the pilot Roger Peterson. After terminating his partnership with The Crickets, Buddy Holly assembled a new band consisting of Waylon Jennings, Tommy Allsup, and Carl Bunch, to play on the ‘”Winter Dance Party” tour. The tour also featured rising artist Ritchie Valens and Big Bopper Richardson, who were promoting their own recordings as well. The tour was to cover 24 Midwestern cities in three weeks.
Radio news flash:
Buddy Holly terminated his association with The Crickets and his manager Norman Petty during a reunion in Lubbock, Texas, on November 3, 1958. For the start of the “The Winter Dance Party” tour, he assembled a band consisting of Waylon Jennings (bass), Tommy Allsup (guitar), and Carl Bunch (drums). The tour was set to cover 24 Midwestern cities in as many days. New hit artist Ritchie Valens, J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Dion DiMucci, joined the tour to promote their recordings and make an extra profit.
Graham William Nash, (born 2 February 1942) is known for his light tenor voice and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the super group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Nash is also a photography collector and a published photographer. Nash was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1997 and as a member of The Hollies in 2010.
In the early 1960s he was co-founder with schoolfriend Allan Clarke of The Hollies. Nash was a leading ‘group figurehead’ member of The Hollies, one of the UK’s most successful pop and “British Invasion” groups. Nash wrote or co-wrote many of the band’s original songs, most often early on in collaboration with Allan Clarke and also then together with Tony Hicks up to Nash’s departure from the band in December 1968.
Teach your Children:
Nash initially met both David Crosby and Stephen Stills in 1966 among a group of American musician friends during a Hollies USA tour. In 1968, after a further visit to the US during which he met David Crosby in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, California, Nash left The Hollies to form a new group with Crosby and Stephen Stills. A threesome at first, Crosby, Stills & Nash later became a foursome with Neil Young: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY). With them, Nash went on to even greater worldwide success.
Simple Man:
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young lasted long enough as a performing unit for one major national tour and a live follow-up album before the members went their separate ways. Nash emerged from the chaos of the quartet’s demise as a star in his own right and found a major audience for his music. There have been quite a few reunions.
The album of the day is his solo debut, Songs for beginners from 1971:
Gene Clark will always be best remembered for years as a vocalist with the Byrds. A fine legacy to be sure, but the shame of it is that there was far more to Clark’s body of work than that; he was a superb songwriter, one of the founding fathers of country-rock, and recorded a number of fine albums with an impressive array of collaborators whose quality far outstripped their modest sales figures. (Read more at allmusic.com)
This is an album that has been difficult to get. But now it is finally beeing rereleased on cd (according to Uncut magazine), it was planned released in the summer of 2011, sadly it didn’t happen. I’m hoping all legal issues have been solved now, and that we finally can get a new and, hopefully, remastered version of this forgotten masterpiece. Update: I read somewhere that august 2013 is the new release month for the re-issue, fingers crossed!
Edit: I have done a bit research on different releases, and there appears to have been at least two cd releases before. Well, I cannot find them and have to wait for the much talked about re-release.
I have an old vinyl lp that I have ripped to digital format (I have put the record player away on the loft somewhere…), it doesn’t sound as good but it’s what I got at the moment. I really look forward to getting the re-issue.
Allmusic:
Two Sides was Gene Clark’s last solo album for a major label. Signed to RSO Records shortly after his wildly experimental (and occasionally engaging) 1974 Elektra album, No Other, which is often cited as his masterpiece, Clark and producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye released this. Two Sides is a much lower-key affair, and it succeeds on many more levels than the more heralded No Other. Clark’s explorations into country music are much more at home on this album, as tracks such as “Mary Lou” and “Kansas City Southern” demonstrate. Oddly, one of the highlights of this record is a non-Clark composition, the traditional “In the Pines,” which showcases Clark’s brilliant (and underrated) vocal ability. The following year would see Clark team up with ex-Byrd mates Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman on the forgettable McGuinn, Clark & Hillman project. Two Sides shows Clark in full command of his awesome gifts. Essential for Gene Clark enthusiasts.
– Matthew Greenwald
Two Sides To Every Story came out in January 1977 (exact date ?), and for the most part offered more characteristic Gene Clark country-rock. The ballads are the highlights on the records, especially “Give my love to Marie”, “Hear the wind” and the last two songs on the album are outstandig.
Track listing
“Home Run King” (Clark)
“Lonely Saturday” (Clark)
“In the Pines” (Traditional)
“Kansas City Southern” (Clark)
“Give My Love to Marie” (James Talley)
“Sister Moon” (Clark)
“Marylou” (Obie Jessie, Sam Ling)
“Hear the Wind” (Clark)
“Past Addresses” (Clark)
“Silent Crusade” (Clark)
Give My Love to Marie:
The Critics then didn’t fare well with the album, they were , as always, extremeley negative towards Gene Clark. This didn’t help with his self esteem, and the terrible review in Rolling Stone must have felt like the last nail in the coffin of his career. He never released an album on a major label after this.
Rolling Stone Magazine:
To those who admire Gene Clark, Two Sides to Every Story is a heartbreaker—in the worst way. (“Is this the dullest album ever made?” was my original opening sentence. “Probably” would have been the second.) Lugubrious to the point of laughableness, the once-classy Clark creeps through a series of Gibranian ballads that is so Antonioni-slow the songs actually seem to stop. Dead. Like this. Bereft of either interest or ideas, this plodding work can only be described as California-liturgidical.
Interlarded among the endlessness are some lame bluegrass (“Home Run King,” “In the Pines”), listless rock & roll (“Marylou”) and the worst train song ever (“Kansas City Southern”). Producer Thomas Jefferson Kaye is a great help, offering an interminable supply of nothing but the moldiest clichés.
This is terribly unjust and a review that is not possible to understand when listening to the album. This is an undiscovered treasure, a record that sometimes even surpasses No Other, his masterpiece.
Uncut Magazine:
Even with the chaos and missteps, this is a record that overcomes its flaws, offering moments of hard-won beauty and open-hearted grandeur from an artist fighting for his career.
Sister Moon (audio) with Emmylou Harris:
Featured guest musicians include Emmylou Harris, Byron Berline, Doug Dillard and Al Perkins. Like most of Clark’s albums, it failed to get far on the charts.
John Joseph Lydon (born 31 January 1956), also known by the former stage name Johnny Rotten, is a singer-songwriter and television presenter, best known as the lead singer of punk rock band the Sex Pistols from 1975 until 1978, and again for various revivals during the 1990s and 2000s. He is the lead singer of the post-punk band Public Image Ltd (PiL), which he founded and fronted from 1978 until 1993, and again from 2009.
Throughout his career, Lydon has made controversial or dismissive comments about the royal family and other subjects. There has been a recent revival of a 1980s movement to have Lydon knighted for his achievements with the Sex Pistols – even though he has since turned down an MBE for his services to music. In 2002 he was named among the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote. Q Magazine remarked that “somehow he’s assumed the status of national treasure.”
Lydon’s personally crafted image and fashion style led to him being asked to become the singer of the Sex Pistols by their manager, Malcolm McLaren. With the Pistols, he penned singles including “Anarchy in the U.K.”, “God Save the Queen” and “Holidays in the Sun”, the content of which precipitated the “last and greatest outbreak of pop-based moral pandemonium” in Britain. The band caused nationwide uproar in much of the media, who objected to the content of Lydon’s lyrics, and their antics, which included swearing on live television, in which Steve Jones called Bill Grundy a “fucking rotter”.
Due to the band’s appearance in the media, Lydon was largely seen as the figurehead of the punk movement in the public image although this idea was not widely supported amongst the punk movement itself. Despite the negative reaction that they provoked, they are now regarded as one of the most influential acts in the history of popular music.
Lydon left the Pistols in 1978 to found his own band, Public Image Ltd, that was far more experimental in nature, and which has been described as “arguably the first post-rock group”. Although never as commercially successful as the Pistols, the band produced eight albums and a string of singles, including “Public Image”, “Death Disco”, and “Rise”, before they went on hiatus in 1993, reforming in 2009. PiL released their latest album in 2012. In subsequent years, Lydon hosted a number of television shows in the UK, US and Belgium, as well as writing an autobiography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (1993), and producing some solo musical work, such as the album Psycho’s Path (1997). (Read more on Wikipedia)
Today’s album is, not surprisingly, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols:
