'A Song For Me' - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago today, the British band Family released their third album, A Song For Me.

This blog entry on A Song For Me is not meant to be a proper review of the LP, as I originally reviewed it on my Family page and I re-posted here back in January 2010.   Rather, it is a celebration of such a monumentally groundbreaking album that, after half a century, is one of the most direct and ferocious statements from rock music's classic age.  A Song For Me was recorded with two new members, flutist/keyboardist Poli Palmer and bassist/violinist John Weider, both having replaced two members (Jim King and Ric Grech, respectively), in the aftermath of a rough period for the band.  Their first American tour had been a disaster, and their first hit single, "No Mule's Fool," was a qualified success at best.  That an album of such magnitude could come out of Family at such a time shows how resilient they were.

My fellow Family scholar Patrick Little, a fan from Michigan whose own Family Web page has long since been discontinued, bought A Song For Me before getting any other Family album, and his recollection of how first responded to lead singer Roger Chapman's vocal sums up the spirit behind the LP and the group that recorded it.  Little wrote that when he heard Chapman's wailing voice for the first time on the opening cut, "Drowned In Wine," "I thought, 'What is he doing?'  The answer: rock and roll!"

A Song For Me is rock and roll, fiercely blazing a path through country, blues and folk and doing what all the best rock albums do - connecting the present to the past traditions that formed rock and roll in the first place.  As a piece of classic rock, contemplated in 2020, A Song For Me still holds up well, and it still offers the promise of what rock can be today and should be always.  Bear in mind that when A Song For Me was released in January 1970, rock was entering  the first of many rough patches to come.  The Beatles were in the middle of breaking up, the Rolling Stones were still reeling from Altamont, and egos threatened the prospects of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.  Also, middle-of-the-road pop was already taking over the pop charts in both Britain and America - in late January 1970, the number-one song in Britain was a cover of the music hall ditty "Two Little Boys" from Australian comedian Rolf Harris and the number-one song in America was B.J. Thomas's recording of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head."  A Song For Me stood out as a piece of music for its brutality, its beauty, and its power, an act of defiance not only on behalf of Family but on behalf of rock and roll itself.  With more verve than virtuosity, Weider, Palmer, and guitarist Charlie Whitney spearheaded the assault with drummer Rob Townsend backing it up, led by the bleated-goat vibrato of Roger Chapman.  No retreat, no surrender. 

The album's impact should have matched its power.  Though A Song For Me charted higher in Britain than any other Family LP in Britain, at number four, Americans couldn't be bothered with it - understandable, perhaps, since the U.S edition included the non-album single "No Mule's Fool" despite its lack of context with the rest of the LP, had a changed running order of some of the tracks, and somehow - incomprehensibly - excluded the heavy rockabilly tune "The Cat and the Rat."  But A Song For Me is still there in its original form to seek out and treasure, and it still provides a beacon of hope at a time when rock is undergoing its worst period since Elvis got drafted and Buddy Holly's plane went down.  Family's music remains a statement against naysayers ready to dismiss rock and roll as a form no longer worthy of consideration.  All you have to do is listen.

So listen to this - A Song For Me's epic, nine-minute title song, which is some of the most thunderous and thunderously brilliant rock and roll Family got on record.  Who turns deaf to what they say?