Traffic – "Freedom Rider" (1970)

By the time you hear that silent sound

Then your soul is in the lost and found

Forever!

[NOTE: Traffic's John Barleycorn Must Die is almost certainly the greatest guitarless classic-rock album.  It's an album with a deep bench, but I've chosen "Freedom Rider" for the inaugural class of the 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME."  Here's an updated version of my original 2010 post about that song.] 

Rice University didn't offer a music major when I was a student there – they offered only a music history course and a couple of music theory and composition classes.  (I was born a few years too soon.  Rice's Shepherd School of Music was created the year I graduated, and now is considered once of the top 10 music schools in the United States.)

You could say that the advanced theory and composition class I took as a senior had a very good student-teacher ratio:  I was the only student in the class.

Three times a week, I went to a small rehearsal room and met my professor for what were essentially private lessons in composing and arranging music.

A vintage McIntosh tube amplifier

My music class was at 11 am.  I had an English class at 9, but no class at 10.  So I would head to the library at 10 and work on my music composition homework while listening to reel-to-reel tapes in one of the library's music listening rooms, which were equipped with turntables, reel-to-reel tape players, and state-of-the-art McIntosh tube-type amplifiers.  

*     *     *     *     *

The tape I asked the librarian for most days was Traffic's John Barleycorn Must Die.  Because it was a reel-to-reel tape, I usually started at the beginning and listened straight through to the end without skipping or repeating tracks.  It was the antithesis of the way I listen to music on my iPod today. 

That record, which had been released in the summer of 1970, was originally planned as a Steve Winwood solo album.

Winwood was a rock-and-roll prodigy.  He became the frontman of the Spencer Davis Group when he was only 15, and was not quite 19 when Traffic was formed in 1967.

After releasing two remarkable albums, Traffic broke up in 1969, and Winwood joined forces with Eric Clapton to form Blind Faith, which was perhaps the superest of all the "super groups" of that era.  Blind Faith released one album and toured for about three months before it broke up. 

After recording a couple of tracks for his planned solo album, Winwood decided to invite two of his old Traffic mates – drummer and lyricist Jim Capaldi, and saxophone/flute player Chris Wood – to join him.  Winwood took care of everything else (lead vocals, guitar, bass guitar, piano, and Hammond organ). 

*     *     *     *     *

The title song of the album is an English folk song, the earliest known version of which dates back to 1568.  Beer and whiskey were made from barley, and the name "John Barleycorn" was used to personify those alcoholic beverages.

The song describes the sowing and harvesting of barley and the post-harvest processing that turns barley into beer and whiskey as if it were telling the story of a man who is persecuted, tortured, and eventually killed – e.g., "They've hired men with their scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee."  

Royal Doulton's John Barleycorn jug

Of course, John Barleycorn has the last laugh on his enemies, who are powerless to resist the allure of drink, which has the power to lay even the strongest man low.

A lot of other British groups recorded "John Barleycorn," including Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Jethro Tull, and Fairport Convention.  (The Fairport Convention version used the same tune as the well-known Thanksgiving Hymn, "We Plough the Fields and Scatter.")

*     *     *     *     *

"John Barleycorn" is my least favorite song on John Barleycorn Must Die.  It's clever, and it takes some time for you to see the punch line coming.  But it's not a song that's very interesting or satisfying musically – it's more of a novelty song, a one-trick pony.  And it's l-o-n-g.

But I think the album's other tracks are all very good, although I can't really explain why.  Most of them are relatively long, with lengthy instrumental passages dominated by Winwood's Hammond organ.

If I wasn't required by my own format to start each post off with a few lines of lyrics, I'd be tempted to feature the first track of the album, an instrumental titled "Glad."  Instead, I've featured the song that "Glad" leads right into, "Freedom Rider."

Freedom Riders

The "Freedom Riders" were civil rights activists who rode Greyhound and Trailways buses through the South in defiance of local "Jim Crow" laws requiring segregation in bus station waiting rooms and cafes.  Those laws had been held unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, at least to the extent that they applied to interstate travelers.  

The lyrics of this song appear to have nothing to do with the anti-segregation "Freedom Riders."  But I can't tell you what they do signify -- your guess is as good as mine.     

There's nary a guitar to be found on this track.  Rather, the song alternates between short, transitional saxophone-and-piano bridges and longer passages that feature Chris Wood's inspired flute playing and Winwood's dense, vibrato-heavy Hammond B-3 organ. 

Hammond B-3 organ

And, of course, there's Winwood's singing.  His tenor voice is often husky in the lower registers but becomes pure and clear and piercing when he goes up the scale.  It's a unique vocal instrument, but his style is distinctive as well.  

I'm not wild about his post-Traffic music.  Like Rod Stewart and Steve Miller, he put out a lot of crap in the 80's and 90's.  But John Barleycorn Must Die was the culmination of a long and remarkably productive period – and he was barely 22 when it was released.  

Click here to listen to "Freedom Rider."

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Spencer Davis Group – "Gimme Some Lovin' " (1966)

Better take it easy

’Cause the place is on fire

The Spencer Davis Group – guitarist Spencer Davis, vocalist and keyboard player Steve Winwood, Steve’s older brother Muff (who played the bass), and drummer Pete York – originally called themselves the Rhythm and Blues Quartette, which is a truly horrible name for a rock band.

The Spencer Davis Group

Steve Winwood, not Spencer Davis, was the group’s star member.  So why was the band named the Spencer Davis Group?  According to Muff Winwood, 

[Record producer Chris] Blackwell wanted to call us the Vipers or the Crawling Snakes or some outlandish thing.  Spencer was the only one who enjoyed doing interviews, so I pointed out that if we called it the Spencer Davis Group, the rest of us could stay in bed and let him do them. 

Steve Winwood was only 14 when the band formed.  He left the Spencer Davis Group went he was 18 to form Traffic.  

But before Steve left, the group recorded two truly great rock singles: “I’m a Man” (not to be confused with the Bo Diddley song of the same name, which was covered by the Yardbirds in 1965) and today’s featured song, “Gimme Some Lovin’.”

From the February 25, 1967 issue of Billboard

“Gimme Some Lovin’,” which climbed all the way to #7 on the Billboard “Hot 100,” is propelled by Steve Winwood’s Hammond B-3 organ part.  It was released in October 1966, when Winwood was only 18.

Here’s “Gimme Some Lovin’,” which 2 or 3 lines has chosen as the best song of February 1967.  It may be 50 years old, but it’s still a stick of dynamite:



Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Blind Faith -- "Had to Cry Today" (1969)

I'm taking the chance 

To see the wind in your eyes

While I listen

You say you can't reach me

But you want every word

To be free

Guitar World magazine recently named what it believed were the 20 greatest supergroups of all time.  Click here if you'd like to read it.

Here’s how Guitar World defined a supergroup:

1. There have to be at least three members.  (In other words, two big stars getting together and playing with more-or-less anonymous backing musicians is not a supergroup.)

2. They have to have released at least one album – no all-star jams.

3. A majority of their band members have to have been in well-known bands before the supergroup formed.

4. A supergroup cannot be formed by a well-known musician joining a pre-existing band.

Blind Faith: superest supergroup?

I think that’s a pretty good definition.  Ideally, you’d like to see all the band’s members be stars – although it’s rare that every member of a supergroup is a star of equal magnitude.  (It’s like an all-star baseball team.  Everyone on an all-star team is recognized as a very good player, but not everyone is equally good – you always have a few superstars whose talents dwarf even other all-stars.)

Given that, who is the greatest rock supergroup of all time?

Guitar World says Cream, and there are others out there whose supergroup rankings are also topped by Cream.  There’s no doubt that Cream was a fabulous group.  But was Cream really a supergroup?

Eric Clapton was a member of the very successful Yardbirds before joining Cream, so he qualifies on that count.  The other members of Cream – bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker – came from the Graham Bond Organisation, which was a highly-respected British blues/jazz group that was not commercially successful and didn’t make much of an impression on the public before breaking up.  So I’m not sure Cream really qualifies as a supergroup.

*     *     *     *     *

Clapton and Baker’s next band, Blind Faith, clearly does qualify.

Clapton and Baker were certainly superstars on the basis of Cream alone.  The band’s keyboard player and lead vocalist, Steve Winwood, came to Blind Faith by way of Traffic (one of the greatest rock groups of all time) and the Spencer Davis Group, which wasn’t too shabby either.

Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton in 2007

The remaining member of Blind Faith, bassist Ric Grech, wasn’t nearly as famous as Clapton, Baker, or Winwood.  He came to the supergroup from Family, a progressive rock/psychedelic group that had several top ten albums in the UK, but sold very few records in the U.S.

But I don’t think having one less well-known member disqualifies Blind Faith from being a supergroup.  The other three members were much bigger stars, but Grech certainly was no amateur – and (fairly or unfairly) bass players are usually the least-noticed band members.  

I also think supergroups should have a relatively short life – one or two albums at most.  (Think Edna St. Vincent Millay:  “My candle burns at both ends/It will not last the night/But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends/It gives a lovely light!”)  Blind Faith released only one studio album – which was eponymously titled (of course) – and toured for only a few months before breaking up shortly after that album’s release.

*     *     *     *     *

The Blind Faith album sold half a million the first month after its release, and made it to #1 on both the American and British charts.  The original album cover featured a topless pubescent girl holding a vaguely phallic silver spaceship model.  That cover was replaced before the album was released in the U.S.

The original Blind Faith cover

Here's the story behind the album as told by photographer Bob Seidemann:

I received a phone call from Polydor Records' London office.  It was an assistant of Robert Stigwood, Clapton's manager.  Cream was over and Eric was putting a new band together.  The fellow on the phone asked if I would make a cover for the new unnamed group.  This was big time. It seems though the western world had for lack of a more substantial icon, settled on the rock and roll star as the golden calf of the moment. . . .

I could not get my hands on the image until out of the mist a concept began to emerge.  To symbolize the achievement of human creativity and its expression through technology, a space ship was the material object.  To carry this new spore into the universe innocence would be the ideal bearer, a young girl, a girl as young as Shakespeare's Juliet.

If she were too old it would be cheesecake – too young and it would be nothing.  It was the beginning of the transition from girl to woman, that is what I was after.  That temporal point, that singular flare of radiant innocence.  Where is that girl?

I was riding the London tube . . . when the subway doors opened and she stepped into the car.  She was wearing a school uniform, plaid skirt, blue blazer, white socks and ball point pen drawings on her hands.  It was as though the air began to crackle with an electrostatic charge.  She was buoyant and fresh as the morning air.

Photographer Bob Seidemann

I approached her and said that I would like her to pose for a record cover for Eric Clapton's new band. Everyone in the car tensed up.

She said, "Do I have to take off my clothes?"  My answer was yes.  I gave her my card and begged her to call.  I would have to ask her parent's consent if she agreed.  When I got to Stigwood's office I called the flat and said that if this girl called not to let her off the phone without getting her phone number.  When I returned she had called and left her number.

[A friend and I] headed out to meet with the girl's parents.  It was a Mayfair address.  This was a swank part of town, class in the English sense of the word.

[We] made our presentation, I told my story, the parents agreed.  The girl on the tube train would not be the one, she was shy, she had just passed the point of complete innocence and could not pose.  Her younger sister had been saying the whole time, "Oh Mummy, Mummy, I want to do it, I want to do it."  She was glorious sunshine.  Botticelli's angel, the picture of innocence, a face which in a brief time could launch a thousand space ships. 

 . . . I called the image "Blind Faith" and Clapton made that the name of the band.  When the cover was shown in the trades it hit the market like a runaway train, causing a storm of controversy.  At one point the record company considered not releasing the cover at all.  It was Eric Clapton who fought for it. 

Times have certainly changed, have they not?  What would happen today to parents who did something like this?

*     *     *     *     *

The girl on the album cover's identity remained a secret until 1994, when a British newspaper reporter tracked her down and wrote a story about her.

Mariora [Goschen], now a 36-year-old graphics programmer with an 11-year-old daughter, was on holiday  . . . in Big Sur, California, when I spoke to her.  "I have only just started to find the whole thing amusing," she said.  "At the time it was a nuisance, being recognized in the streets."

"The nudity didn't bother me.  I hardly noticed I had breasts. . . . [W]hen people tell me they can remember what they were doing when they first saw the cover, and the effect it had on them, I'm thrilled to bits."

Mariora Goschen as an adult

*     *     *     *     *

Guitar World ranks Blind Faith #7 on its list of the greatest supergroups.  The MSN Entertainment website also placed Blind Faith #6 in its top ten supergroup ranking. 

That’s WAY too low.  Ranking Blind Faith behind the Traveling Wilburys, Bad Company, Velvet Revolver, Audioslave, and Them Crooked Vultures is crazy – when you consider their superstar quotient and their musical output, none of those groups compares with Blind Faith.

I think the only classic supergroup that competes with Blind Faith for the #1 spot in the rankings is Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.  David Crosby came from the Byrds, Graham Nash came from the Hollies, and Stephen Stills and Neil Young were alums of Buffalo Springfield – all of which were great bands.  

And all four of them were accomplished songwriters and musicians who contributed significantly to the group’s records – this wasn’t a case of one supergroup member being the equivalent of Napoleon, the pig who was more equal than the other animals in George Orwell’s Animal House.

L to R: Young, Nash, Crosby and Stills

I can’t argue with you if you think CSN&Y is the superest supergroup of all time.  But I’m going with Blind Faith.  

Blind Faith’s album – especially Steve Winwood's three compositions -- is like nothing else I’ve ever heard.  It really left you wanting more.  But the band self-destructed so quickly that we’ll never know what it could have been. 

Blind Faith was the rock-and-roll equivalent of James Dean – to borrow the famous line from the 1949 movie, Knock on Any Door, they lived hard, died young, and left a very good-looking corpse. 

*     *     *      *     *

Click here to listen to the first track from the Blind Faith album, "Had to Cry Today."  

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: