Introducing Eddie & The Falcons (1974)
Mustard (1975)
Try Explaining Roy Wood To Somebody
My two favorite Roy Wood albums. Not his best, mind you, as his catalog is a strange and wondrous collection of odd passions, strange bedfellows and purposely unfathomable concepts. The fusion of classical music and rock and roll – Electric Light Orchestra – was among the first of his oddball ideas… which may seem obvious now, but at the time the notion was downright unbankable (despite its eventual payoff in Jeff Lynne’s hands). Introducing Eddie And The Falcons was Roy Wood’s tribute to the music of the 50s, as filtered through his typically bombastic, over-modulated, over-overdubbed cacophony of sound. Just what made him think a bastardized 50s throwback, complete with Elvis impressions, would advance his career in 1974 is anybody’s guess, but outside-the-box ideas never seemed an issue in RoyWorld. His follow-up was equally bizarre, as Mustard offered up a pastiche of studio-wired 40s music parody, ghostly Beach Boys haunts (“Why Does A Pretty Girl Sing Those Sad Songs” and the bonus track, “Oh What A Shame”), girl group Spectorisms (“Look Thru The Eyes Of A Fool”) and virtually indescribable forays into melodramatic song craft and epic balladeering. That’s not mentioning the album ending drum solo that must have induced seizures among sound engineers across all continents. I can’t imagine what it must be like to hear Roy Wood for the first time in the new millennium, as it just might appear senseless to the average listener not weened on his alternate world view of music production. But… some of us cherish square pegs, and Roy Wood ranks with the best of them. Both The Falcons (HERE) and Mustard (HERE) are not so nicely priced at Amazon. We got some of Roy’s ELO work in the archives (HERE).
INTRODUCING EDDIE & THE FALCONS
Intro (0:46)
Eddie’s Rock (3:57)
Brand New ’88′ (3:23)
You Got Me Runnin’ (3:16)
I Dun Lotsa Cryin’ Over You (3:22)
This Is The Story Of My Love (Baby) (5:46)
Everyday I Wonder (5:24)
Crazy Jeans (2:54)
Come Back Karen (5:01)
We’re Gonna Rock’n'Roll Tonight (5:49)
Rock And Roll Winter (5:05) – Bonus Track
Dream Of Unwin (3:08) - Bonus Track
Nixture (3:30) – Bonus Track
Are You Ready To Rock (2:30) – Bonus Track
Marathon Man (2:12) – Bonus Track
MUSTARD
Mustard (1:30)
Any Old Time Will Do (4:13)
The Rain Came Down On Everything (6:36)
You Sure Got It Now (5:31)
Why Does A Pretty Girl Sing Those Sad Songs (4:35)
The Song (6:37)
Look Thru The Eyes Of A Fool (2:56)
Interlude (1:25)
Get On Down Home (7:33)
Oh What A Shame (3:52) – Bonus Track
Bengal Jig (2:14) – Bonus Track
Rattlesnake Roll (4:02) – Bonus Track
Can’t Help My Feelings (5:14) – Bonus Track
Strider (2:51) – Bonus Track
Indiana Rainbow (3:55) – Bonus Track
The Thing Is This (This Is The Thing) (5:45) – Bonus Track
24 Comments
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Willard,
Oh yeah! Roy is great. I think I like the BOULDERS LP a little better than MUSTARD but they’re both really great albums. Do wonders never cease? Keep up the great work on my fave o rite Blog on the net.
Wormingly
Newman
Bolders is a great one.
Aloha Cap’n W. Thanks for the “INTRODUCING EDDIE & THE FALCONS” I’ve had a copy of this for a long time… but this has bonus tracks that I didn’t know about. I look forward to giving them a listen. As always… You da man!
Boy, this takes me back. When I first discovered “cut out bins” you couldn’t flip through one without seeing a copy of Eddie & the Falcons. Now this wasn’t one of those LP’s where there would be dozens of ‘em in the bins. Usually just one, but it was always in there. (Like how every junkshop LP bin or yardsale LP box would have the John F. Kennedy Memorial Album.)
Seemed like a joke to me and who the hell was Roy Wood? Whoever he was,his whole catalog showed up in those bins over the years as label after label tried to break him in the U.S. Never happened. Not even with way back when with The Move.
Little did I know then.
Thanks,
Ace K.
It isn’t too far from Eddie And the Falcons to The Clash “Brand New Cadillac”. It’s great stuff.
For most of us here at Willard-World, it’s a fair assumption that we’ve had our rock and roll hearts broken more than once thanks to an over-obsessive passion for a group or artist for whom the rest of the world could give a shit.
Let the record companies worry about sales – Gold or Platinum isn’t the standard by which I make my picks to click.
Sure, you’ll find many of the usual suspects on my personal Top 100 Albums of All Time, but for every Beatles or Stones title on the list, there’s a Twilley or DeVille.
For me, it’s the stuff that slipped thru the cracks that seem to have provided me with the most satisfaction.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have made a career playing rock and roll on the radio over a span of time that began before The Beatles called it quits.
Most of my co-workers have become more than a little cynical about the music we play.
I don’t blame them – consultant-driven tight playlists and mind-numbing repetition have driven many of my friend out their heads.
I’ve learned to compartmentalize the music I have to play at work from the great music that speaks to me. And over the years I’ve come to realize that
I’m a sucker for the guys whose careers have traveled the road less taken.
And that’s where I met Roy Wood.
Here in the States where he shoulda, coulda, but nevah-evah was a contender, loving Roy has been a pursuit I embraced all by my lonesome.
I had somehow stumbled across The Move via their masterpiece, Shazam.
I was going to school at Emerson College in Boston and was the music editor of our school newspaper.
I would have written a rave review for Shazam but it had the sad fortune to have been released the same week here in the States that the National Guard had opened fire on the Kent State campus motivating Neil Young to write, “4 dead in Ohio.” (it was released in England in February, 1970)
That tragic event took place on May 4th, 1970. The following day students at almost every American college and university declared that it was “no business as usual.” We marched, bitched, protested and never returned for classes – school was out for the summer.
Kids went home and Shazam and the Move got lost in the shuffle.
Over the next 2 years I managed to write 3 pieces extolling The Move’s brilliance.
I even got a letter from some guy who wondered if I had a piece of the action. Eventually, The Move mutated into ELO and then Roy went out on his own. Obscure became Invisible.
I recall scurrying to The Harvard Coop to grab Roy’s first solo album, Boulders on the day it was released – I asked a guy in the record department if there’d been any interest in the Boulders. “Nope.”
“Anybody ever buy any Move albums?” “Nope.”
I was resigned to being the only member of my local Roy Wood fan club.
I’d been dutifully scoring my Roy Wood import singles; “Ballpark Incident,” “See My Baby Jive,” Angel Fingers,” and “Forever,” (if you’ve never heard Forever – do go to youtube and prepare to be amazed – imagine that The Beach Boys and Neil Sedaka had a baby and it turned out to inherit only the best genes from both – the result was as a perfect pop single as had ever been recorded – that was “Forever) – they released an album, “Wizzard’s Brew” that sounded nothing like the singles. Forget about a bang – the damn thing didn’t even register a whimper.
In England, Roy Wood’s Wizzard was huge. In the States, it appeared that Wizzard was going to garner even less notice than The Move and then an advance copy of something called “Eddie and the Falcons” showed up at my radio station. WTF?
Aside: leave it to Roy to call his album Eddie and the Falcons when the band’s name was Roy Wood’s Wizzard.
One would think that someone in the label’s marketing department would have pointed out that slapping a fictitious bands name on the cover of an album was probably not the best way to create awareness for the real band who recorded the record.
One would be wrong – UA thought it was a killer concept. As Peter Green once said, “Oh Well.”
A few weeks later, the UA rep told me that Roy Wood’s Wizzard was going to tour the States in conjunction with their United Artists release of “Eddie and the Falcons.”
The first show would be in that hotbed of rock and roll mania, Parsipanny, New Jersey.
In May of ’74, Jon Landau proclaimed his love for Bruce Springsteen in a piece in Boston’s Real Paper. I was living in Boston at the time but having grown up on the Jersey shore (in Belmar – on B Street, 3 blocks down from E Street) I had been part of the very first wave of Springsteen acolytes. It occurred to me that perhaps I could do for Roy what Landau had done for Bruce.
Hmmm – I cracked open the latest copy of the wonderful Creem magazine and found a phone number up in Walled Lake, Michigan. A few minutes later I was talking to a guy who gave me the go-ahead to claim press credentials for Creem and try and score an interview with Roy. He said, “What the hell – talk to him, see the show and send me something.”
On the big day, September 21, 1974, Roy Wood’s Wizzard played a two hour plus 3 encore show at The Joint In the Woods in the aforementioned Parsippany, New Jersey and I was the only member of the Fourth Estate to greet the band.
I spent 3 or 4 hours with Roy and Rick Price (who graced Shazam with his gifts) before the show. Following a more or less traditional Q & A kind of interview (which took all of a half hour) we still had a ton of time to kill and that’s when Roy opened up.
He’d never had any record company support in the States – The Move’s visit to America in ’69 was the stuff of nightmares – they rented a car on the East coast and drove cross country – the band, their gear, a roadie or two – all of ‘em in one vehicle. On their dime.
When they got to their label’s offices in L.A. (A & M) they were shoved into some guy’s office and were treated to an obviously insincere pasting of bullshit about “you guys are fantastic – we’ll all over your album.”
It was more than apparent that the guy had no idea who they were. None.
See, there was no album at that time. In fact, there wouldn’t be one until the following year. As Peter Green once said, “Oh Well.”
They did blow minds at their Fillmore appearance.
42 years later “The Move – Fillmore 1969″ became an admittedly belated release.
Anyway, wherever Wizzard played, they killed.
They were booked into clubs and there enough Roy Wood fans at each stop to pack each house along the way.
But that didn’t translate to anything resembling success and yes, Eddie and the Falcons was probably in cut-out bins before Roy and the band made their way back home.
I sent a novel-length piece to Creem. A month or two later a package from Walled Lake, Michigan showed up in my mailbox.
“Fantastic article. Really. But we were looking for a paragraph or two.
I’m the guy who gets to ramble on and on pointlessly, not you.
Don’t take this as a rejection, it’s great, it’s just way, way, way too long.
Jeez, this makes me feel like a shit-heel.
Tell ya what, next time you get the wild hair to write for us, call Creem and ask for me we’ll figure something out.
Remember, brevity is the soul of something or other. K?
Cheers, Jeff, your bud, Lester. ”
Decades later my wife and I saw “Almost Famous,” and on the way home I
told her about my experience with Lester Bangs.
She said something like, “yeah, right.” I responded with, “why the hell not? It’s not like I’m claiming to have ghost-written Gimme Shelter…”
So I had to go up into the attic and find the manila envelope with Lester’s rejection letter in it.
And that’s my Roy Wood story. As always, Willard, visiting you is a daily pleasure that I don’t take for granted. Thanks
(btw, I still have about a half hour of that Joint in the Woods Roy Wood interview on a CD – transferred from the original cassette by an intern at my radio station a few years ago.
Haven’t listened to it since ’74. If it’s something that you’d find worth hearing, lemme know. I’ve been rejected by the best – I can handle rejection. )
Jeff McKee
Richmond, Virginia
Jeff,
My brother I feel your pain as I couldn’t even get my fellow musician friends to give Roy a chance. Loved the Move from the moment I heard Fire Brigade, the A&M 45 I purchased in a cut-out bin of singles in a drug store in Orange County, CA. I hunted down every release I could at various record stores that featured imports. I agree Forever is an incredible recording that you have described perfectly! I really love Ballpark Incident as well. It’s only recently all these years on that some of my friends are “discovering” Roy and asking me for copies of his stuff! Better late than never. Carry on.
Love
Newman
NEWman!
Thanks Jeff.
I’ve loved Wood’s early partner Jeff Lynne for a long time & I’m only just beginning to discover Wood. Great stuff. Thanks!
Eddie and the Falcons is a terrific album, even though it’s utterly derivative, thanks to Roy’s abundant affection for the music, and the hot band he assembled.
You Got Me Runnin’ is my all-time favourite Roy Wood song. Why it wasn’t released as a single from the Falcons album has always been a mystery to me.
W…geez man, here I thought I had all the Woody bonus tracks, and now there’s different ones here on this Eddy!
What a personal tragedy to have to download and listen to Eddy again!!
Thanx my friend…
and thanx Jeff for your great Roy Wood story…I’d love to hear your interview!!
Al
Different bonus tracks? What a shock?
The thing about Roy Wood that makes him such an invaluable rock and roll essential is that in a medium where “send in the clones” should be the theme song, Roy is a true original; ‘taint nobody never who is even remotely similar.
People without the time, ability or inclination to know any better tend to reduce rock musicians down to their lowest common denominator in an effort to better understand where to put them in the file cabinet of their mind.
If the rock and roll universe took place in comic books, Roy Wood’s superpowers package would be the sum total of what all the other superheroes could do.
And that may be why his immense talent hasn’t translated into success among the masses; it’s impossible to pigeon-hole him.
As someone who has been listening to Roy since the late ‘60’s, I can easily identify Roy Wood music without breaking a sweat.
As rock and roll’s number one chameleon, he has tended to get lost hiding in the plain sight of his latest project.
If you’re not paying close attention, you might not recognize him from one project to the next.
Consumers appreciate the ease of consistency.
Roy’s constant (in addition to the excellence of his work) has been one never knew what he’d do next.
As far as Eddie being derivative, well, duh. That was the concept.
Since no artist can create in a vacuum, rock and roll is literally a combination – a synthesis of all of its previous sounds and ideas.
The trick has been to continue to create something new and original using those old parts. Roy has mastered that ability as well as anyone else who has ever played the game.
The music found on Eddie and the Falcons purposely avoided combining influences in an effort to produce something new.
Indeed, the idea for each track was to literally replicate the sound of
one of Roy’s beloved influences; to create what might have been a follow-up single for the artists represented on the album.
To that end, one might consider “Every Day I Wonder,” the song that Del Shannon might have released after “Runaway,” or “Come Back Karen,” as the 45 Neil Sedaka had in the shops following “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.”
Poor Roy; it had to be tough being rock and roll’s only bagpipe playing cellist who played the sax, oboe, banjar (his own invention – a combination of banjo and sitar) and almost every other instrument found in a symphony orchestra (hell, on Boulder’s “Wake Up,” he played a dish of water as a rhythm instrument.)
Add to those skills, his genius as a producer, singer, songwriter and face-painted loony (and yes, his even painted or drew his own album cover art) and you’ve got, uh…. the one and only Roy Wood.
What fun it is to turn a friend on to the music of Roy Wood. At one point during the indoctrination, there’s a high probability that your friend is going to ask, “WTF?”
And then ask for more. (Good luck – your results may vary)
Thanks for the insight, Jeff.
Brilliant post. Your blog makes it seem as if it could be Christmas everyday.
Cheers!
Ashley
xoxo
Ashley – I wish…
My two favorite Roy Wood songs (compositions, more rightly, and actually two of my favorite songs of all time) are:
The Move: Looking On (title track, 1970)
Roy Wood Wizzo Band: Life Is Wonderful (Super Active Wizzo, 1977)
Both are over seven-and-a-half minutes long (*epics*) and excellent showcases for his multi-instrumental prowess (guitar, slide guitar, saxes, cello, etc.), arranging skills, and emotive singing.
A human jukebox. My mind just explodes every time I listen to Roy Wood, whether it be with Wizzard, the Move, or solo. The way he stylistically weaves all over the road like a drunken radio DJ is dizzying and simply brilliant. That’s all I can say.
And that about sums him up. Thanks.
Dear Mr. Willard,
Once more you have put a big smile upon my face. Growing up in the Midlands (UK) in the 1970′s, Roy, Wizzard, et al. were local heroes and were such a big part of my early listening. And although I have carried around a battered 7″ of “See My Baby Jive” (I was just 6 years old when it was released and it was amongst my first record purchases) since leaving home, I haven’t heard these particular recordings since my early teens.
I am so grateful for the constant flow of music that you provide here.
Wishing you lots of good things.
Verily,
T.
Many thanks. Aren’t memories great? Makes you wonder why we ever left that time. We were young and SO anxious to move on… then, before you know it, we’re even more anxious to get back.