If the turbulence of the 1960s opened up new cultural horizons, it was in the 1970s that these buds reached full bloom. Across the board, in fine arts and film, television, and design, youth-centric culture challenged all that had come before. Music, as it often does, led the way.
As we begin our search for five perfect albums from the 1970s, we are immediately struck by the extraordinary breadth of the decade. In 1970, the Beatles disbanded, but their counterparts – the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin - were all riding the crest of their creative peak.
Every record label was looking for the new hot commodity – the singer-songwriter. Standard rock n’ roll was expanded in all directions – from folk rock to prog rock. Carole King’s Tapestry and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon shattered all records by taking up permanent residence on the Billboard charts.
Five of the best albums from the 1970s
In short, there’s a lot to choose from, even if we restrict ourselves to the first few years of the decade. As the ‘70s moved along, other less-mainstream forms of pop music gained traction. Black artists already had Motown, but in the ‘70s they began building on their legacy of blues-tinged rock. Funk and Soul grew more mainstream early in the decade, before ceding pop music to disco in the decade’s second half. In New York, an underground movement called Rap was popping up.
By the end of the ‘70s, some critics were declaring the death of rock ‘n roll. It had grown staid – or rather, it had grown stadium. There were new forces shaping it. In addition to Funk and Rap, the harder edges of punk and metal were coming of age at a pace that alarmed the flower children who only ten years prior were on the culture’s cutting edge.
All right, enough of the back story. Let’s get on to the albums, shall we? Here are five perfect albums that help capture the 1970s.
JOHN PRINE - JOHN PRINE (1971)
John Prine had served in the Army and was delivering mail outside of Chicago when he was discovered by a music industry that was gobbling up anyone with a guitar who could write a decent song. Prine could go well beyond that. His debut album, released just as he turned 25, offers 13 outstanding songs. The weakest of them, songs like “Pretty Good,” “Quiet Man,” “Flashback Blues,” brim with the wit Prine would come to be known for. They have catchy tunes and intricate word play. And those are the weak numbers.
The stronger songs – well, it’s hard to conceive of a postman who had not yet turned a quarter century, writing songs as sensitive to aging as “Angel From Montgomery” or “Hello in There.” It’s hard to imagine anyone of any age writing with the empathy found in “Sam Stone” or “Donald and Lydia.” There’s the wit of “Illegal Smile” and “Spanish Pipedream.” The political intelligence of “Paradise” and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” Then there is the quiet emotional devastation of “Far From Me” and “Six O’ClocK News.”
Prine would go on to a long career as a respected songwriter and performer, but he would never have that one big hit. Some critics complain about the simplified production on that first album, or about his twangy vocals, which manage to blend his Kentucky ancestry with his adoptive Chicago vowels. If that’s your complaint, I think you’re kind of missing the point. These are thirteen perfect songs. They didn’t need high-gloss production or pure voices. They demanded authenticity, and that’s just what they got.
CURTIS MAYFIELD - SUPER FLY (1972)
The 1972 movie Super Fly (remade in 2018), was a fairly good entry in the early-‘70s Blaxploitation trend that sold urban crime stories to a curious suburban public. It has several good elements but also suffers from some of the stereotypical tropes and over-acting associated with the sub-genre. It also had what may well be the greatest soundtrack of any American film before or since.
Curtis Mayfield had graduated from the R&B group The Impressions and by 1970, was creating his own original music. Super Fly was his third solo album, composed for Gordon Parks Jr’s movie. It yielded two top ten hits – “Freddie’s Dead” and the title track. What is most remarkable about the album is how well it serves both of its purposes – both as a movie soundtrack and as a stand-alone album.
It begins with the expansive “Little Child Runnin’ Wild” which cracks open an entire world. Then Mayfield narrows his vision on the personal characters that inhabit this world. The seductive “Pusherman” and the tragic story of Freddie complete one of the greatest trio of opening songs. Side one concludes with one of two instrumentals on the album – the pulse-pounding, horn-driven “Junkie Chase.”
Side two is where Mayfield could have easily gone off track. The songs branch out in terms so style and subject. But even on the gentler, more poignant tracks, Mayfield’s songs never lose their funk and their energy. Often, he relies on frequent collaborator Lucky Scott and his super-cool bass runs to carry the song. Other times, it is Mayfield’s pure, street-aware tenor. There are saxes and horns and pianos that all seem to appear magically whenever needed. And it all wraps up with the most perfect movie soundtrack closer you will ever find – the title track. “The only game you know is do or die.”
BOB DYLAN - BLOOD ON THE TRACKS (1975)
I had another Bob Dylan album on my 1960s perfect album list. Don’t worry, I have no intention of turning to him again. But I cannot leave Blood on the Tracks off this list because I think it may be the greatest single-disk album ever created. As we’ve already discussed, greatness and perfection are not always synonymous. In this case, they are.
Dylan was already a legend by 1975. A mysterious legend. He had changed stripes several times in his career – from folkie to rock star to country singer to just a lot of avant-garde weirdness. A devastating motorcycle accident had kept him out of the public eye for almost a decade, but he had recently shown a return to form. There was his epic Tour ’74 with The Band, and their collaboration on the Planet Waves album a year earlier.
But nothing prepared us for Blood on the Tracks. Right from the opener, “Tangled Up in Blue,” Dylan showed he was at his absolute peak, writing songs about relationships that dwarfed what even many would-be poets had accomplished. Dylan’s marriage to Sarah Lownds was in the process of dissolving, and songs like “Simple Twist of Fate,” “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” and “If You See Her Say Hello” are almost too painfully personal to listen to.
The bitterness of “Idiot Wind” and the tenderness of “Buckets of Rain” constitute as wide a range of emotions as two songs can manage. And, just for fun, he tosses in one of his sensational short stories – the nine-minute “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.” The following year, he would follow Blood…with the almost-as-perfect Desire.
THE RAMONES - RAMONES (1976)
The Ramones didn’t invent punk rock. They just made it something everyone wanted to hear. They blew up the pretentiousness and big-budget mid-‘70s arena rock with an in-your-face DIY attitude that would be copied by countless other kids and is still being copied to this day.
Joey, Johnny, Tommy, and Dee Dee (none of whom were related or named Ramone) had cheap equipment and limited chops. But they had a sense of pace and melody. They didn’t write about dewy-eyed romance. They wrote about their lives and their friends. Bass player Dee Dee’s distinctive “1,2,3,4” kicked off most of the songs. He was the primary songwriter on that first album and those songs are a blueprint for what punk would become.
Meanwhile, singer Joey contributed pop-punkier numbers like “Beat on the Brat,” and “Judy is a Punk.” They even had a bit of proto-emo punk in drummer Tommy’s “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.” And some surf punk in the only cover of the album, “Let’s Dance.” These songs added variety which kept the album from growing monotonous without ever losing the driving “1,2,3,4” that defined the Ramones, and a lot of early punk.
14 songs. Under 30 minutes. Oh yeah – and “Blitzkrieg Bop.” Perfect.
MOTORHEAD - OVERKILL (1979)
And then there was metal. You can certainly make the case that Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden was more central to the popularization of metal as it moved into the early 1980s. But no one was more perfect than Motorhead. Because no one was more metal than Lemmy.
He wrote brilliant songs, played a ferocious bass, and couldn’t sing at all. Lemmy assembled Motorhead after he was fired from Hawkwind, and Overkill was the band’s second album. The songs give plenty of space to Fast Eddie Clarke’s roaring guitar and Phil Taylor's machine gun drums. But Lemmy’s voice is always a dominant presence.
The album does not let up for a moment, from the pulse-pounding title track through to the grinding blues closer “Limb to Limb.” Of course, there is variation within the theme, whether it comes from borrowing a ZZ Top riff for “No Class” or doing a Dee Dee Ramone countdown (in German, no less) on “Tear Ya Down.” They can flirt with funk or get a little bit spacey, but Lemmy’s bass always pushes past any possible pretense.
I could have easily chosen their follow-up, Ace of Spades. But that came out in 1980, and I’m not doing the ‘80s today. That’s for next time.