This thread has gone on a lot longer than I anticipated. In retrospect, any rock group, when putting out a double album, was making a 'big statement', so naturally most of these albums would be pivotal in their history. What's surprising is the number of groups who didn't put out a double. King Crimson, the most progressive of British acts, for instance, would seem a cinch, but while there are countless live doubles, not a single studio duo was ever released.
One double album that should have happened has been posthumously titled the 'Chateau D'Isaster Tapes' by Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. Tull had managed the trick of straddling many different musical styles; folk, hard rock, jazz and progressive. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, they managed a series of best-selling albums. Pretty nifty considering they had a lead singer would bound around stage looking like a child molester.
Tull hit it big on both sides of the Atlantic with 'Aqualung', a semi-concept album with songs about God and the homeless. Next up was 'Thick as a Brick', both a grand concept progressive album and a parody of one at the same time. A number one hit everywhere, Ian Anderson wanted to go even bigger than that, teetering on the edge of bloated excess. He took the band to the Chateau D'Herouville in the French countryside and started recording like mad.
The material was top notch, and there was a lot of it. Individual songs instead of the continuous twenty minute side-long pieces like the last album, there was still a grand concept, this time about heaven and hell, as well as an expanded musical palate. Glockenspiels and synthesizers show up, as well as a healthy amount of sax from Anderson himself, augmenting his usual flute work and acoustic guitar. They finished around an hour of music when Ian Anderson pulled the group out and went back to England, where he started again from scratch.
Exactly why he did this is still a mystery. He tells his side of the story in the box set version of 'A Passion Play', remixed by Maestro Steven Wilson, but it doesn't ring entirely true. Ian claims that the studio wasn't up to standards, the tapes full of pops and glitches. Problem is, Elton John recorded his albums there at the same time, including 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road', and they all sound magnificent.
Ian Anderson was a notorious workaholic and hard task master, one of the few rock stars who wouldn't touch drugs, barely drinking. Being a member of Jethro Tull was no picnic. Members got fired for using drugs or partying too much. The only reason that this was tolerable was that Anderson held himself up to an even higher standard, constantly isolating himself on the road to write songs, the only source of material for the band.
The album was partially reworked and released to much lesser effect on 'A Passion Play', which still managed to go to number one on both sides of the Atlantic on the momentum of the band's success. Yet it is the one album from the 1970s that most Tull fans really don't like that much. Using the same side-long song concept as the last album, it feels like a warmed-over version of 'Thick as a Brick'. The use of synths and sax give it an alien feeling, not the organ-flute-guitar warmth typical of Tull.
Immediately after, Jethro Tull went into a period of musical wandering in the desert, so to speak. Still capable of the odd hit single, one factor that separates Tull from the other progressive bands of the period, it wouldn't be until four years later, with 'Songs from the Woods', that Ian Anderson truly got his mojo back. In fact, one of those hit singles, the superb 'Skating Away (On the Ice of a New Day)', was from the Chateau D'Isaster sessions.
Anderson, no fan of nostalgia, finally released some of the material in 1993 on a charity double CD of unreleased material. It is a testament to his work ethic that he could easily pull two hours out of the vaults on 'Nightcap' and come no where near scraping the bottom of the barrel. Unfortunately, he remixed it himself, re-ordering it and editing out much of his sax work, as well as withholding a few songs. Still, the quality of the material, even in this bastardized version, was still far better than 'A Passion Play'.
Finally coming to terms with the demands of his very loyal fan base, Ian did a very good series of archival re-issues, all with state-of-the-art remixes in both stereo and 5.1, during the last five years. I own them all and cherish them, even the ones that I didn't like that much when they first came out. Each one is packed with alternate takes, unreleased material, and b-sides. The Steven Wilson remix of the Chateau D'Isaster tapes, true to the original sessions, is the absolute highlight of the series. This stuff is so much better than the released 'A Passion Play' that one has to wonder if Anderson was going through some other issues in his life, blinding him to the quality of the material that he abandoned.
Another band that, IMHO, screwed the pooch when it came to doing their grand opus magnus was Emerson Lake & Palmer. I really like this band, in particular a fan of Keith Emerson's always brilliant and innovative keyboard work. They had five groundbreaking and best selling album in four years, touring relentlessly all over the world between 1970 and 1974. At the first California Jam, they even headlined over both Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, a sign of how popular they were at the time.
Taking some well-deserved time off, during which they released a triple disc live album, a warning of things to come, each worked on independent projects. The idea was to get a side apiece for solo work, then to come together at the end with twenty or so minutes of group material. By the time the pompously titles 'Works, Vol. 1' came out, punk was knocking on the door. Frankly, regardless of the quality of the music, these guys were going to look like elitists.
Much of the music didn't help. Emerson's Concerto was very good but entirely over the head of the average rock fan. Palmer farted around with various session musicians. Worse was Lake, who looked like a Neil Diamond impersonator in his glam shot, sounding like one in his songs. The group effort, as good as it was, could not save this train wreck.
Never in the history of rock music has one album so ruined a band as 'Works Vol. 1' did to Emerson Lake & Palmer. With impeccably bad timing, they decided to go on tour with a full symphony orchestra, hemorrhaging money in front of half-empty stadiums. Again, the quality of the music didn't matter; it was the absolutely wrong thing to do and the absolutely wrong time to do it. In reality, the music was pretty good, but the band went down in flames. The trust and cohesion was gone forever. Within a few years, they broke up, never to recover.
Another double album that nailed the coffin shut on the life of a band was 'The Wall' by Pink Floyd. I already made a few comments on this turkey earlier when discussing rock soundtrack albums. Judging by the very healthy sales, there are a multitude of fans, but to me, this could easily be reduced to one disc. The only road block would be the ego of Roger Water, swollen like a tick engorged with blood of his band mates.
Pink Floyd had grown in stature from underground darlings to mammoth stadium act over a decade of hard work. While some of their early albums, most notably the one disc live/one disc studio turd 'Ummagumma', are a little weak (a huge understatement), they lived off a state-of-the-art live show. Gradually, as the performances became more complicated with props, films and lighting cues, the early jamming material was dropped. Floyd became a group that had to play the same thing every night, exactly like most stadium bands today.
"Dark Side of the Moon' was bigger than big, one of the greatest albums ever made, selling forever. Pink Floyd had a hard time following it up. 'Wish You Were Here' might very well be the slowest tempo album ever released, but it does work. 'Animals', mostly made up of leftovers from the previous album, doesn't for me, despite being significantly more rock oriented. The problem was that Roger Water now insisted on singing all his own words, despite the fact that there were two better vocalists in the band, Rick Wright and David Gilmour.
Gilmour in particular was Pink Floyd's secret weapon, the reason for their tremendous commercial success. Both his guitar playing, a unique combination of blues and spaciness, as well as his voice had an instant appeal. Having to sneak into the band to try and prop up seriously faltering Syd Barret before the Madcap evaporated mentally , it took a few years for Gilmour's talents to emerge. Once they did, the band took off like a sky rocket. Everyone seemed to know this except Roger Water.
Water was convinced that it was his great conceptual thinking and lyrics that made Floyd great, and he was mostly wrong. Sure, 'Dark Side of the Moon' benefited from it's doomy theme, but it was both Wright's 'The Great Gig in the Sky' and Gilmour's playing and singing that really sold the album, along with Alan Parson's stellar production work. By 1978, Water was so full of himself that, over the course of the sessions for 'The Wall', he fired half the group, drummer Nick Mason as well as Rick Wright. No dummy, he convinced Gilmour to go along with his plans.
The results are two slabs of vinyl that sound like a suicide note in more than one way. Endlessly mumbled Water vocals, all desperately depressing about the burden of privilege. It sounds like an operetta, with only sporadic eruptions of anything resembling rock. When things get too boring, do another reprise of 'Another Brick in the Wall'. It doesn't even sound like Pink Floyd, instead like some emo shoe gazer masturbating into a microphone.
Despite my revulsion at the finished project, it sold in typically massive numbers, the second largest selling double album of all time. Perversely, all the defects of the album work when it was turned into a movie. The mumbling becomes an interior dialog, the endless sound effects and dull atmospherics just waiting for the right visual accompaniment. Needless to say, despite another album that was in reality a Roger Water solo album, 'The Final Cut', it was kaput for the Pink Floyd.
In one of the greatest moments of cosmic irony, David Gilmour re-united with the two fired members of the band and cut Water out, producing two more best sellers and touring the world in the largest venues possible. Water was left to seethe on the sidelines, not getting the attention he felt he deserves as a conceptual genius. It took over a quarter century of neglect for him to develop anything resembling humility.
There were other double albums by bands that I personally don't like, everything from Genesis' 'A Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' to Bruce Springsteen's 'The River'. They all have their fans, but not being one, I've skipped them. In soul and rhythm and blues, Stevie Wonder produced a very influential double back in the 1970s, when he could do no wrong, 'Songs in the Key of Life', great from beginning to end, even with a bonus disc. Marvin Gaye used a double album to get out of his Motown contract and pay alimony to his ex-wife, Berry Gordy's sister, with 'Here My Dear'. The music is good, but the words are too self-pitying to be a happy listening experience.
Going out on a high note, some mention must be made of the phenomenon known as Prince, who produced nearly as many double or triple albums and CD sets as nearly anybody. An absolute genius, the only frame of reference for his ever-expansive talent would be Frank Zappa, both being more prolific than the record companies ever wanted. Like Zappa, I was always waiting for Prince to get out of his own way, finally producing that true masterpiece that he was so obviously capable of. Sadly, his death in 2016 deprived the world of one of the greatest musical talents ever.
I went into this series not realizing how many important albums, artists, and moments in rock history I would be talking about. I also didn't know in advance that 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' would be my choice for best rock double album ever. I'm really not that big a fan of Elton John, but evidence pointed to that conclusion, so I called it as I saw it. Seems like, in retrospect, that a little self indulgence could often bring the best out in these artists.
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