Chart entered : 21 October 1972
Chart peak : 41
Another comeback hit for a pre-Beatles rocker, this was Rick's first single to chart since " For You " in 1964. After that single his sales had nosedived both here and in the US and following contemporaries Brenda Lee and Jerry Lee Lewis he started dabbling in country although his singles only sporadically appeared in the country charts, His comeback in the US charts started with a countrified version of "She Belongs To Me" in 1969. He acquired a backing band the Stone Canyon Band that included Randy Meisner who would become one of the founding members of Eagles. He also continued to enjoy steady TV work as an actor.
When I prepared the lists I didn't think I knew this one but it does sound vaguely familiar. There's an interesting back story to it as the whole song refers to Rick's experiences at Richard Nader's Rock And Roll Revival Concert at Madison Square Garden the previous year. He appeared in long hair and jeans and played contemporary material as well as his old hits. When the crowd started booing during his version of Honky Tonk Women he flounced and didn't return for the finale. Subsequent accounts have suggested the booing was caused by some heavy-handed bouncers but Rick took it as disapproval of his new image and material.
The song's interest lies mainly in the lyrics with its American Pie-esque references to Chuck Berry ( who performed ) , John and Yoko and George Harrison ( who attended ). Harrison had a pad close by to Ricky's house and Ricky knew that he used the alias "Hughes" to travel and so he's referred to as "Mr Hughes hid in Dylan's shoes" as he was planning an album of Dylan covers at the time. Musically it's a pleasant country rock strum with Rick's voice as flat and neutral as ever, conveying little of the anger that inspired the song.
It was a big hit in the U.S. reaching number 6. Airplay and its featuring in an episode of McCloud ( remember that ? Probably the last one that would come to mind if you listed the classic 70s cop shows ) nudged it into the bottom end of the charts here.
Its success proved a false dawn. The "Garden Party " LP reached number 32 in the US and produced another hit ( number 65 ) there with "Palace Guard" which is musically ponderous but has some of the most poisonous lyrics this side of Marvin Gaye's There My Dear . Thereafter his sales fell off a cliff. The taster single for his next LP "Windfall" entitled "Lifestream" a John Denver-ish strum with none of the venom of his last two singles sank without trace. The vaguely Mexican-flavoured title track was a minor hit in Australia and the album just scraped a placing in the US charts. A third single "One Night Stand" which sounds very like Eagles made a minor showing in the country charts.
In 1975 he released two more singles with The Stone Canyon Band , both covers. Neither "Try ( Try To Fall In Love) " nor "Rock And Roll Lady" bothered any chart and both are irredeemably bland. After that he was dropped by the label and his personal troubles started to get more attention than his records. His marriage was disintegrating with wife Kris wanting him to stop touring ( and bonking everything that moved apparently ) and concentrate on acting and both were spending more than he was earning. In October 1977 she filed for divorce overshadowing his soft rock comeback single "You Can't Dance" which failed to trouble the charts. The parent LP "Intakes" sank without trace and the rest of his seventies output wasn't released in the UK.
Kris was persuaded to shelve the suit but retained the services of her attorney and turned to drink. "A second single from "Intakes", the Hall and Oates-ish "Gimme A Little Sign" came and went in January 1978. At the beginning of 1979 a countrified cover of "Dream Lover" ignited a brief spark of hope when it was a moderate country hit. It wasn't enough for Epic who dropped him.
In 1981 he re-emerged , now looking alarmingly like Mike Read, on Capitol with a cover of John Hiatt's "It Hasn't Happened Yet" which has a good Jack Nitzsche arrangement but Rick's voice sounds shot to pieces. Although it didn't make the singles chart it enabled the album "Playing To Win", his last to feature new songs to make a minor showing on the album chart.
The following year Rick and Kris finally divorced and the settlement hit him hard dooming him to more endless touring. He took up with a woman called Helen Blair who became his "personal manager". His ex-wife and family believed that one of her main duties was keeping him supplied with drugs including cocaine, marijuana and quaaludes. In 1985 blood tests confirmed that another woman's child was his so maintenance payments were added to his financial pressures. He declined to play Atlantic City to avoid contact with them. That same year he re-recorded his old hits for an album "All My Best" and played a TV concert to promote it in August.
After that it was back on the road. Back in May he had leased a private plane which immediately gave him problems. In September a malfunction forced him to miss the first Farm Aid concert. On New Year's Eve 1985 the plane crash-landed just short of Dallas and caught fire. All but the two pilots who escaped through the cockpit perished. Helen Blair died with Rick. If it made the news in the UK at all I missed it. A welter of unseemly lawsuits failed to establish the precise cause although did put to bed scurrilous rumours that they were freebasing cocaine. The most likely explanation is that a faulty cabin heater caught fire and caused the pilots to panic.
In the US the re-recorded "You Know What I Mean" failed to cash in on Rick's death. In 1991 a re-release of "Hello Mary Lou" reached number 45 after featuring in an Impulse ad.
This post concludes the "prehistoric" phase of this blog. All subsequent singles discussed post-date my awareness of the charts and pop music in general. That's not to say I remember them all - far from it - but this is the major watershed.
No comments:
Post a Comment