8. Atomic RoosterDeath Walks Behind You
Atomic Rooster, just listen to the name! Another amazing band with a sound all its own. That’s Vincent Crane, the organ player who got his start with The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown in the sixties in England. He played all the bass on the organ, that was their thing. So it sounded different, a different thing. And there was all this jazz stuff thrown in, but obviously it’s around the time that Black Sabbath were making it big, because their record is called Death Walks Behind You. It’s not metal by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s just kind of doomy in its vibe. A really great guitar player named John Du Cann who played a Les Paul and was fucking manic! Again, just a little bit out of control. He also had a great voice and he sang the songs. The production is really cool, it’s almost vacuum-packed, like really compressed, something to do with that bass pedal on the organ. I don’t think they put that through an amp, it’s just direct in.
They have tightly-crafted rock songs and then they do one or two of them and then they do a seven-minute jazz odyssey. Of course the guys who formed the band was an organ player so you’d have to have at least two-minutes of organ solos. Terribly long. But it was great! Great because it was so outlandish. This was around the same time as Emerson, Lake & Palmer, so people were starting to look more at organ players and go, "It’s ok, let ’em go!" They never made it very big, but they had a thing, you know? A thing that was so unto the seventies, I can’t describe how it represents it, but it’s the kind of stuff you could only get away with in the seventies. It’s kind of dour, kind of a bummer! Even when they tried to be uplifting, it wasn’t. They were trying so play the new flavour of the day, which was Sabbath. I would love to talk to these guys someday because they are one of my favourites. My favourite song on the record is ‘Sleeping for Years’ which starts off with a guitar solo. Just a guitar solo, no band. Just John Cann fucking ripping it! One of the best solos of all time, like they went, "Should we do that again? NO." He doesn’t care, he’s just slamming all over the place, making all these mistakes, because it sounds fucking powerful and awesome. Highly recommended.
