'Fearless' - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago yesterday, the British band Family released their fifth album, Fearless.

This blog entry about Family's Fearless LP is not meant to be a proper review; for that, you can go here to an October 2011 repost of my original review of the album from my Family fan page.  It is, like my January 2020 post about Family's A Song For Me, a celebration and acknowledgement of the album, an album I believe to be the band's greatest album ever.

Family were known to be innovative and unorthodox in arranging music and writing lyrics, and on Fearless, they pulled out all the stops to make an adventurous, immaculately produced album that encompasses progressive rock, soul, folk, and straightforward rock and roll and delivers high-caliber musicianship and sold professionalism.  Fearless, fifty years on, is still a spellbinding work that fulfills all of Family's promise.  The die-cut layered paging of the album sleeve, with portraits of the band members melding into one, was the perfect metaphor for their ambition.

Fearless, ironically, had less to prove for Family or for rock and roll than A Song For Me did.  A Song for Me came out at at time of uncertainty as to whether rock and roll could carry on in a new decade without the Beatles and with the Rolling Stones chastened by Altamont.  By the time Fearless came out in October 1971, rock and roll was still peaking, thanks to the Stones' resilient Sticky Fingers, the Who's Who's Next, Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story, and, a week or so, after Fearless's release, Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album.  Less was riding on Fearless than on A Song For Me, as Family had settled into a more or less permanent lineup of Roger Chapman on vocals, Charlie Whitney on guitar, Poli Palmer on vibraphone and keyboards, and Rob Townsend on drums.  They could put out a solid album with little if any effort.  But with so many masterpiece albums - too many to list here - having already been released in 1971, would that be enough?  Of course not.  That's why Fearless went beyond just being solid and effortless.

Family's secret weapon was John Wetton, their new bass player, whose fluid bass lines anchored Family and gave their songs a more melodic flair in the rhythm.  Wetton's vocal chops proved to be indispensable - his sharing of lead vocals with Chapman on songs such as "Spanish Tide" and "Save Some For Thee" created a new dimension to their sound.  Chapman's vibrato bleat, though, remained Family's signature, particularly on tough-minded songs like "Between Blue and Me" and "Blind."

Fearless was overshadowed somewhat by other events in rock music going on at the time.  Duane Allman died n a motorcycle accident the same day of its release, and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" and Don McLean's "American Pie" would soon suck up the oxygen as both songs vied to define epic seventies classic rock.  But with an album as perfect as Fearless, with a closing track like "Burning Bridges" - which summed up the entire concerns of a morality-play album like Jethro Tull's Aqualung album -  Family remained a band to be reckoned with.

Reckon with this - "Save Some For Thee," the best and best-produced song to grace Family's Fearless album, on which Wetton's lead vocal dominates.  Plenty of living for free here.   

'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?

'Music In a Doll's House' - Fifty Years

The 1968 debut album from the British rock band Family, released fifty years ago this week (the exact anniversary date is July 19), Music In a Doll's House, isn't necessarily the best debut rock album of all time, but it is definitely in contention for the best debut rock album of 1968 - and the fact that it gets serious competition from Fairport Convention's self-titled debut and the Band's Music From Big Pink (the title is a reference to another tiny abode, the little pink house in upstate New York that the Band rehearsed in with Bob Dylan) means that even that distinction is not assured.  But in terms of innovation, imagination, and sheer chutzpah, Music In a Doll's House clearly has the edge.  Fairport Convention and the Band both aimed their music toward more traditional folk and pop form, while Family set out to create a new sound altogether.  And although it was recorded in the heady days of post-Sgt. Pepper psychedelia, Music In a Doll's House went beyond mere trendiness. Family incorporated all sorts of forms, from standard balladeering and blue-eyed soul to heavy rock and avant-garde experimentation, into their music.

While many rock acts, including the Beatles themselves, answered Sgt. Pepper with a return to basics, and various bands who were more adventurous were in a quandary in trying to push rock music farther, Family set a course that honored tradition while being open to new ideas.  Ironically, their mindset restricted them to a cult following; they had qualified commercial success in Britain and continental Europe and no such success whatsoever in North America.  Leaders Charlie Whitney and Roger Chapman refused to compromise their vision, and their unique approach restricted Family's appeal.  But they set a standard with Music In a Doll's House that remained resolute with each subsequent album they recorded, the music changing with each LP but still retaining a distinctive Family identity.  That identity was what made this LP and all six of their subsequent albums so essential to Family's fan base.           

Music In a Doll's House was, in some ways, a vision of what rock could be as the sixties were coming to an end.  Eventually rock stopped going forward, the roots-oriented sound of groups like the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival homogenized into a standard country-rock sound, hard rock and heavy metal played themselves out, and progressive rock become innovative for the sake of innovation but rarely produced anything lasting.  Punk and grunge only bought rock a little more time as other pop forms gained on and overtook it.  But in 1968, Family found a way forward that kept them grounded in rock and R&B but allowed them to innovate, and they carried that ideal through their recording career (and many personnel changes) to the point where they felt they could go no farther, wisely calling it quits in 1973 as their well began to run dry.  Music In a Doll's House is an important debut album because it showed how the promise of musical progression could be achieved . . . and was.  That message resonates fifty years on.

This blog entry is not so much a proper review of Music In a Doll's House as it is a celebration of it as I mark its golden anniversary.  For a more detailed review, please consult my Family review page. :-)     

Family - Fearless (1971)

Forty years ago today, the British rock band Family released their landmark album Fearless, and to recognize that anniversary, I offer here my review of the album from my Family page. I originally wrote this in October 2002. :-)

This album, released in October 1971, is the masterpiece, the best album Family ever made. My opinion is admittedly biased, as this was the first Family album I ever got (on vinyl, no less), but I stand by it. Everything the group had become known for over the previous three years - curious arrangements, abrupt tempo changes, imaginatively abstract lyricism, stellar musicianship - clicked together here like a well-made combination lock. The group's quest for innovation paid off handsomely on Fearless, with the band offering its tightest, most cohesive performances and an adventurous sampling of different rock styles. Like A Song For Me, Fearless is superb from beginning to end, but Fearless is better - albeit only slightly better - for two reasons. One is Fearless's superior production, owing to the band's greatly improved command of technical skills in the recording studio. The other factor was the result of their latest personnel change.

In June 1971, John Weider, having grown tired of playing the bass as his principal instrument, left the group. He was quickly replaced by an ambitious 22-year-old musician named John Wetton, whose steady, economical pacing anchored the music with great subtlety. Also, Wetton was an accomplished singer in his own right, offering a magnificent, unencumbered voice that stood out on its own and blended wonderfully with Roger Chapman's voice - no small achievement - in harmony arrangements. Chapman remained the center of attention, though, as his primitive bleating and the undeniably powerful passion that fueled it continued to make for decidedly uneasy (but still intriguing) listening.

Fearless documents Family boldly blazing through treacherous terrain. In addition to Wetton's bass and his and Chapman's vocals, Charlie Whitney's guitar navigates twisting (and twisted) chords, Rob Townsend's drumming eases the band through slow tempos and propels them through rapid ones, and Poli Palmer contributes complex piano performances along with intricate vibraphone playing. (Plus, for the first time on a Family LP, synthesizers.) Family wastes no time in setting their course, as demonstrated on the opening cut, "Between Blue And Me." The gentle riff from a solitary guitar pulls you in as Chapman's intially gentle and earnest voice sings of longing for a lost friend. As the sound slowly builds, with a bass and bongos slipping into the mix, images of a vast, empty sea swell in the lyrics and the music. Then the unexpected happens - a searing electric riff breaks the receding calm, and a cacophonous rhythm conjures up stormy, churning waters. The lyrics - now delivered by Chapman in a hideous screech - speak of betrayal and abandonment with tension that could snap at any moment - but doesn't. It is oddly exhilarating and terrifying at once - powerful, chilling music that slowly grabs you and doesn't let go.

Having thrown down the gauntlet, Family take the opportunity to display an earthy sensibility in a variety of unorthodox fashions throughout. "Sat'd'y Barfly" is a stunted ragtime romp in which Chapman, doing a good imitation of Rod Stewart, sings with bravado of visiting a seedy bar on the wrong side of town, getting drunk, and picking up a woman; the muted brass and sly maracas help add to the intrigue. By contrast, "Save Some For Thee," a song about enjoying the "living for free," finds Chapman and Wetton sharing lead vocals along a piano riff that starts strong, slows down, then starts up again - pop style without the pop sound. (It ends, curiously, with a marching-band brass and drum ensemble!) Palmer gets to sing his own composition "Larf and Sing," delivering lyrics about aging and isolation brilliantly against a Latin-tinged guitar and his own dexterous flute. It all leads up to a hilarious group harmony on the choruses, offsetting the fatality of the verses.

Family really let loose, though, on the incomprehensible "Take Your Partners" - a backward drum intro ushers in a tight jam, with Whitney and Wetton playing a smoldering blues riff in perfect synchronization, while a strange synthesizer line fades in and out of the background. Finally, the band steps aside and allows Chapman to scream out what is all but a declaration of war: "God knows I'm hip, but I ain't yours or his - everybody's ass is up for kicks!" Subsequent lines make less sense - Chapman's admonition "Here, boy, have a snake / That's where you're sleeping and I'll wake / But don't strut me and my way" has defied explanation for years. On the other hand, Chappo can sing "Can you lend me thirty quid for petrol?" and make it sound like great rock and roll, so who am I to wonder what the hell he's talking about?

While Family has a lighter side on Fearless, it is by no means soft. The bewitchingly terrifying "Spanish Tide" is ostensibly a folk rocker, but don't expect James Taylor. A haunting harpsichord introduces the song, the acoustic guitars dissolve into melancholia, and Wetton's bass digs a trench for the rhythm to move through, complemented by Wetton's desparate vocal. By contrast, "Children," a pleasant ballad, is more optimistic, and Chapman shows unexpected gentleness in his delivery, but the halting rhythm undercuts the sweetness of the words. Family puts other so-called "progressive" rock bands to shame as well with Poli Palmer's "Crinkly Grin," a jazz instrumental led by Palmer's vibraphone. It doesn't go off into the wilderness like the classical workouts of, say, Emerson, Lake and (Carl) Palmer do; it lasts 65 seconds before fading out. You're left wanting more of it, not less.

The culmination of Family's intense experimentation on Fearless comes in the two final tracks. "Blind" rushes out with plodding, slashing meld of guitars and bass while the drums swing from left to right. As the arrangement - if it can be called that - picks up steam, Chapman roars in, screeching out lyrics warning the blind and the deaf of all the pain and suffering they'd be witness to if they could see or hear. As the band continues its assault, Chapman offers a warning to those in power responsible for the world's ills that their time is going to come. The closing song, "Burning Bridges," presents a creeping guitar line with a slow Gothic overtone, and Chapman's voice eerily resembles that of Peter Gabriel as he sings of being taunted by spirits even as anonymous holy men exploit his faith in God. The song says as much about organized religion as all of Jethro Tull's morality-play songs put together. Small wonder that Tull leader Ian Anderson himself, like many others, considered Family criminally underrated.

Fearless is a challenging and demanding work that lives up to its title; Family was not afraid to go where other bands dared not tread, even as the group remained true to its rhythm-and-blues roots. In short, it's a re-affirmation of everything rock and roll is meant to be. The sleeve was no less innovative; it featured computer-generated portraits of the band members along the edge of a page diagonally cut in serpentine fashion, with four layered and similarly cut pages visible underneath showing the pictures melding into a blur. (Of course, Castle Music was unable to replicate this with the CD edition.) The album not only peaked at number fourteen in the U.K., it even made a dent on the Billboard charts in the U.S. After the first Family LPs issued in America by United Artists, A Song For Me and Anyway, failed to chart, Fearless bubbled at the bottom of the Top Two Hundred album listings (peaking at number 177) and got radio airplay from intrigued DJs. Finally, Americans - albeit a handful of them - were beginning to listen.

(The original die-cut sleeve for the Fearless album on vinyl, opened out.)

Family - A Song For Me (1970)

Normally I don't repost anything from another page or blog of mine, but this case I'm willing to make an exception. Forty years ago today Family released their landmark album A Song For Me, and to recognize that anniversary, I offer here my review of the album from my Family page. I originally wrote this in October 2002. :-)

When Family went into the recording studio in late 1969 to make their third album, with new members John Weider and Poli Palmer, the stakes couldn't have been higher; they had suffered various blows throughout the year, and it seemed as if the group was irrevocably damaged. Furthermore, this was to be their first self-produced LP. All Family had to do to prove that they had rebounded from their setbacks was to concoct a decent album. Instead, they went far better and surprised everyone by making one of the most astonishing rock albums of the early seventies.

Issued in January 1970, A Song For Me is an act of defiance from a band that refuses to surrender to the kind of adversity that would have devastated other groups and comes back stronger and sharper than ever. Family had formed a new production company to replace John Gilbert's management, and they gained a sense of freedom along with confidence in both their music and in taking full control of the recording process. The ten cuts on A Song For Me are an eclectic mix of country, folk, twelve-bar blues, and brutally hard rock in which conventional rock and roll boundaries are outlined and subsequently smashed. Weider's rough bass certainly helped, and Palmer contributed an awesome array of skills as a pianist, flutist, and vibraphone player, but the remaining original members were no less potent. Charlie Whitney's guitar slashed through chord changes with raw intensity, and Rob Townsend's drumming was nothing short of a major assault. But it was Roger Chapman, as usual, who outdid everyone; his voice had now mutated in a hideously wonderful screech that, to paraphrase Robert Christgau, could kill small animals at a hundred yards.

Independence is the main theme on A Song For Me, as the songs mainly deal with refusing to bow to conformity and accepting the risks of freedom as well as its rewards. (This had obviously been a recurring theme in Family's music, as a few of the songs here had actually been part of the band's legendarily powerful live set long before this album was recorded.) "Drowned In Wine," the opening cut, is an incredible band performance alternating between subdued, intense folk rock and slashing power riffs, accentuated by Chapman's scorching bleats and Palmer's overamplified flute. There are elements of danger throughout. "Some Poor Soul," in which Chapman displays his gentler side, depicts a nighttime rural landscape where the wildlife scurries nervously beneath the seemingly placid surface (nice acoustic guitar from Whitney); "Wheels," a song about trying and failing to achieve personal fulfillment, is highlighted by choppy guitar chords. The song is full of self-doubt, but without the self-pity. "Stop For the Traffic," by contrast, finds the song's narrator liberated by the sense of possibility as onlookers who "are smiling desperately" crave his carefree attitude, to the backdrop of echoey guitars.

As Family frees itself from the past, it offers stunning insight into the idea of doing so. "Song For Sinking Lovers," a tale of regret and separation from a woman, bristles with a strong country-rock arrangement that climaxes with a heavy raveup between Whitney's banjo and Weider's violin. But Family mostly looks ahead here musically, changing tempos and styles within songs more radically than on previous albums. They also change moods by directly cutting from one song to another, as in following a short nightclub jazz song, "Hey - Let It Rock," with the hard rockabilly song "The Cat and the Rat," as well as adding instruments in a seemingly implausible manner (vibes in the steaming blues rocker "Love Is a Sleeper").

The absolute masterpiece on the A Song For Me LP is the title song, which is one of the nastiest hard rock performances ever committed to disc. Throughout the song's nine minutes, against the backdrop of a blistering electric riff, Whitney sprays notes from his guitar like bullets from a machine gun while Weider's violin passages rush out like ghosts from a haunted house. As Palmer bangs on his piano with full force, Townsend's drums explode all over the stereo spectrum. Topping it all off is Roger Chapman's incendiary vocal, shredding whole verses while drowning out everyone else. As "A Song For Me" progresses, the initially medium tempo picks up for a rousing finish comparable to the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" of a year later.

If there's one flaw in A Song For Me, it's the somewhat muddy production, owing to Family's difficulties with studio technology as first-time producers. The decision to record the guitar, bass, and drums together as a three-piece set complicated the mixing stage as well. This, however, is a mere quibble; A Song For Me (which peaked at number four on the U.K. album chart, the best showing there for the group) remains an explosive document of a group determined to overcome adversity. It is more than a great album; it is an indisputable classic.

End Of a Web Site

"STRANGE BAND - the Family Home Page," created by Michigan Family fan Patrick Little, has been removed from the Web, presumably forever. AOL Hometown, which hosted the site, was shut down permanently recently. Too bad. Patrick's site was undoubtedly the best source for information about the greatest band to come out of Leicester, England, and was chock full of details on their discography, their tour dates, their biographical data, you name it. But the truth is, Patrick hadn't updated it since Tony Ashton, the group's last keyboardist, died of cancer in May 2001. In fact, he kind of disappeared. Meanwhile, I put up my Blogger-based Family page, a link to which is to the right of the screen, and I've been updating it ever since.

Anyone who wants to visit my page devoted to the greatest band you've never heard is encouraged to do so. I've never found a Family page as good as Patrick's, and even though mine is a poor attempt to imitate his, it seems it's up to me to help keep Family's legacy alive in America.

The torch has been passed . . ..