What's Going On

The album widely regarded as Marvin Gaye's masterpiece almost never got made at all. At the turn of the 70s, Gaye had fallen out of favour at Motown and developed a reputation for wayward behaviour. Traumatised by the death of duet partner Tammi Terrell in March 1970, he had retreated from the limelight and was smoking grass in prodigious quantities.

His return to the studio was therefore met with some scepticism by Motown boss Berry Gordy. The first track to emerge was the titled track, which in itself had a convoluted genesis. Written by Four Tops member Renaldo Johnson and lyricist Al Cleveland, it had already been turned down by the Tops and Joan Baez. Johnson and Cleveland persuaded Gaye to record it only by dangling the carrot of a cut in the publishing.

From then on, recording proceeded in a relaxed atmosphere amid clouds of dope smoke. What's Going' On reflected a new mood of dissatisfaction with contemporary America. The promised Great Society had failed to appear and the inner cities were awash with race conflict, hard drugs and poverty. As well as the continued conflict in South East Asia, America was at war with itself.

Some musicians used this as a platform for belligerence, confrontational lyrics and a rising militancy. Gaye, however, took the opposite view. What's Going On was a relaxed, inclusive record, epitomised by the 'brother, brother' opening. Gaye cast his eyes over a range of social ills, from the plight of the ghettoes to the state of the planet. Throughout the message was sweetened by David van DePitte's smooth string arrangements and expertly assembled rhythm tracks, over which Marvin double tracked his vocals. Gaye was partial to protracted bouts of masturbation to rid him of sexual tension and to help achieve a suitably relaxed ambience. Tellingly, the album's themes were all resolutely non-sexual.

However, the relaxed vibe didn't make Gaye easier to work with. He was regularly late for sessions, or missed them altogether. When he did appear it could take hours to nail a good take. Confidence in the album wasn't high, and it took the unexpected success of What's Going On in the single charts to change Berry Gordy's mind and finally give Marvin free rein in the studio.

Gordy, whose reputation was forged in Hitsville USA with a string of classic singles throughout the 60s, suddenly seemed like a man out of time. The album was a massive critical and commercial success, re-establishing Gaye as the company's premier artist even while he drifted further away from the man who was both his boss and brother-in-law. He followed it up with his tremendous soundtrack for the blaxploitation film Trouble Man, before returning to politics of a sexual nature on Let's Get It On. However, What's Going On remains his best.

Fear and Loathing in Wimbledon - Lou Reed's "Transformer"

When Lou Reed left the Velvet Underground in 1970, it seemed rock and roll's loss was accountancy's gain - he found employment with his dad's accountancy firm. What's more the minute sales of his debut solo album were hardly likely to trouble balance sheets at his record company.

It no doubt came as a relief to Lou when David Bowie, then at the peak of his Ziggy success, offered to produce a new album. Transformer was aptly named - it would change Lou Reed from shadowy cult figure to (albeit unusual) pop star, and also become possibly the best album ever inspired by New York, even though it wasn't recorded there.

In July 1972, Reed moved to London and rented a house in Wimbledon, an area not renowned for its abundance of low life cross dressers and drug users. Recording commenced at Trident Studios, overseen by Bowie and his trusty guitar sidekick Mick Ronson, who also lent his trademark crunch to several of the tracks. Also involved where Beatles associate Klaus Voorman and ace session man Herbie Flowers, whose double tracked bass line on Walk on the Wild Side practically made the song, even if credit was never fully given for his contribution beyond the standard session fee.

Lyrically, Reed's obsession with the seedier side of New York street life can be placed in a tradition exemplified by novels such as Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn. Reed saw his work as a celebration of the dispossessed, saying "I always thought it would be kinda fun to introduce people to characters they maybe hadn't met before, or wanted to meet." By comparison, Bowie's flirtation with gay subculture smacked of affectation when placed against Reed's harshly realistic portrayals.

Transformer eventually hit number 13 in the UK charts, helped considerably by the success of …Wild Side, a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic after its release as a single. It brought Reed the wider audience that had been denied the Velvets, and also contained many of his most enduring songs, such as Perfect Day and Satellite of Love. The former took on new life in the 90s in a BBC ad campaign, hardly suiting its genesis as a thinly veiled ode to heroin which had informed its appearance in the Trainspotting soundtrack.

Reed would return to the Big Apple for inspiration again and again - most notably on 1989's New York, which saw him using the ills of the city to mount a withering attack on contemporary American society - but Transformer remains his most popular album. Informed by the mainstream sensibilities of Bowie and Ronson, it hit the top 30 on both sides of the Atlantic and is the Lou Reed album every home should have.

The Personal Touch - John Martyn's "Solid Air"

“I got bored with the folk/acoustic thing,” said John Martyn. “You can’t keep churning that out, it stifles innovation, kills the personal touch.”

Solid Air was certainly a personal album for Martyn, and certainly it was innovative. A moody masterpiece, it blends folk, rock and jazz into a heady and evocative mixture, and marks the point at which Martyn finally wrestled free from his folkie origins into altogether more interesting territory.

The atmospheric title track was written as a tribute to Martyn’s friend and Island label-mate Nick Drake, who by this point was already in the grip of the depression which 18 months later would claim his life. “Nick was a beautiful man,” said Martyn, “buy walking on solid air, helpless in this dirty business, an innocent abroad.”

The song itself makes full use of Danny Thompson’s sliding bass and the delicate wash of vibes and drifting sax, and became a favourite of the chill out set in the 90s, bringing Martyn a whole audience. However, the album contains a wealth of other great tracks, not least the valedictory “May You Never”, which remains a staple of many folk club repertoires to this day, even surviving an assault by Eric Clapton.

Martyn was also becoming increasingly interested in the use of echo and fuzz effects to enhance his signature snapping guitar sound, applying them to great effect on a cover of Skip James “I’d Rather by the Devil”. Elsewhere, songs such as “Over the Hill” and “The Man in the Station” dealt with themes of separation and loss, the latter casting a weary eye over the lot of the traveling musician.

Solid Air was a major hit from Martyn, making him a popular concert attraction at home and in the States. It also allowed him to feed an appetite from excess which has since become legendary. Further great albums followed, including Inside Out and One World, which found Martyn moving further into jazz and rock territory, but Solid Air remains the one the critics – and fans – keep coming back to.

"Myth, Mystification and Mellotrons" - In the Court of the Crimson King

Gonzo rock critic Lester Bangs labelled it a mix of ‘myth, mystification and mellotrons’. Poor old codeine guzzling Lester thought this was a bad thing. He was wrong, of course. Although routinely lumped in with the excesses of progressive rock, In the Court of the Crimson King remains one of the most defiantly adventurous, rigorously experimental and downright strange records ever made.

King Crimson originally formed from the remains of Giles, Giles and Fripp, a folky trio who had cut one poorly selling album (The Cheerful Insanity of…) in 1968. Briefly boasting ex-Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble in their ranks, the band gelled with the arrival of multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald and bass player/vocalist Greg Lake. Assisted by suitably portentous lyrics courtesy of band roadie and light show operator Pete Sinfeld, the band made their debut before 650, 000 people on the bill of the Rolling Stones’ free concert in Hyde Park in July 1969.

The warm reception their appearance gained no doubt inspired them when it came time to record the album later that month. Self produced in an era when such artistic freedom was still relatively rare, it was an immediate success, catching the emergent vogue for progressive music and resonating perfectly with the darker mood beginning to cloud the end of the 60s.

From the crashing chords and distorted vocals of 21st Century Schizoid Man to the eerie textures of Moonchild, In the Court of the Crimson King is a million miles away from soothing flower power homily. Occasionally the music seems to break free from structure altogether, flowing into jazzy improvisation and jarring chord and tempo changes. Sinfeld’s lyrical flights have enough lysergic bite to keep them on the right side of pretentious, perfectly matching the musical foreboding on the doom laden title track.

Unfortunately the strength of musical personalities was too much to sustain. Even as the album was becoming a head favourite, the line-up was splintering, with McDonald and Michael Giles baling out first, disenchanted with the band’s musical direction. McDonald would later re-surface in that renowned band of avant-garde adventurers Foreigner. Greg Lake hung around long enough to record vocals for the band’s second album before following his own particular road of excess into ELP.

Fripp, meanwhile, has kept the Crimson flame alive through the years, continuing to record challenging and exciting records with a variety of line-ups (1995’s Thrak was a powerful return) while collaborating with other maverick talents such as Brian Eno and David Bowie. In the Court... was recently re-mastered by Fripp, restoring the sonic clarity missing from earlier CD pressings.

The Dark Majesty of Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division

Punk rock took a while to filter out of London into other parts of the UK, but when it did the results where often more interesting. Take Joy Division, for instance. The band had come together in the wake of the Sex Pistol's gig at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in 1977. Initially trading under the suitably doomy moniker of Warsaw, they recorded a debut album in 1978 for RCA, but production problems led to it being scrapped. They reconvened with producer Martin Hannett in April 1979, and recorded Unknown Pleasures in less than a week.

The band, relative novices in the studio, were treated as a blank canvas by Hannett, whose production swathed the instruments in his trademark harsh metallic reverb and augmented Steven Morris' metronomic rhythms with drum machines. The overall mood of darkness is powered by Peter Hook's driving bass lines and Bernard Sumner's jagged guitar, apparently influenced by the decidedly non punk Black Sabbath. Above this eerie soundscape floats the spectral baritone of the late Ian Curtis, whose lyrical themes dealt in existential dread and pessimism, the darkness at the heart of the modern urban experience. Ironically for a band so associated with the recession hit post-punk years, Curtis was a Tory voter.

Enormously influential, not least on U2's early sound, Joy Divison would only record one more album, the glacially monumental Closer, before Curtis' untimely suicide. With Unknown Pleasures they created a template that would spawn hordes of angst ridden, black clad doom merchants in long overcoats, but few of its imitators matched its disturbing power, which still sounds defiantly strange and vaguely unsettling today.

Bryter Layter - Sad Genius

Nick Drake's image as a paralysed depressive serving as a conduit for existential angst is never proven more wrong than with Bryter Layter. The best part of a year in the making, it called on the talents of some of the biggest hitters in the UK folk rock scene. Richard Thompson, Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks from Fairport Convention contributed, and the incomparable Joe Boyd produced it. It was even graced by the presence of an ex-Velvet (John Cale, who arranged and played on Northern Sky and Fly). Drake's performance was incredibly assured for someone so young - he was just 21 when recording commenced.

The commercial failure of Five Leaves Left, Drake's previous album, had stung him deeply. As Joe Boyd told a BBC documentary in 1998, Nick was determined to make his next record even better. To this end, Boyd was given free reign to experiment with new arrangements and groups of musicians.

That meant bringing back Nick's Cambridge friend, Robert Kirby, whose string arrangements had blessed the debut. Danny Thompson, whose jazzy stylings on bass had underpinned Five Leaves Left, was replaced for the most part by Dave Pegg, who along with Dave Mattacks leant the album more of a rock feel on some tracks. John Cale, so the story goes, called up Joe demanding to work with Nick, and virtually kidnapped him until they had concocted a suitable result. Cale's mournful viola playing and tinkling Celeste became highlights of the album.

Drake would later strip his music of the lush arrangements on his third album, the bleak Pink Moon. But on Bryter Layter Boyd makes equal use of craft and accident to create something ineffably beautiful. Chris McGregor's startling piano solo on the slyly self deprecating Poor Boy is a live first take - the jazz pianist happened to be dropping by the studio on other business, and was persuaded to sit in, with remarkable results. Listen to the clip below for evidence.

It's sometimes remarked that Bryter Layter is Nick's city album, as opposed to the pastoral tones of the debut. An atmosphere of urban alienation certainly hangs over At the Chime of a City Clock, with it's meandering sax . During the making of the album Nick was living in Hampstead, a shadowy figure on the London folk scene. It was during this period, according to his mother Molly, that Nick's youthful introspection soured into the crippling depression which eventually claimed his life in 1974.

Perhaps the benefit of hindsight causes us to read more into the lyrics than we should, but there is a tangible sense of an observer on the edge of reality in them, sitting on the fence watching the world pass by. This detachment lies at the heart of the album's best known song, Northern Sky, once called the greatest love song ever written by the NME.

Of course most people know the story. Bryter Layter was another commercial failure, stymied by zero airplay and Drake's reluctance to play live to promote it. Failure hit him even harder this time, and frustration turned to depression. Drake is the quintessentially English cult hero - his appeal doesn't lie in monumental drug use, excessive womanising and compulsive hellraising. Instead, he's renowned for being young, gifted and miserable. But then, these days, Drake is often no more than a lazy journalistic shorthand for anything acoustic and slightly fey (preferably sung by earnest young waifs from Bergen or Oslo or some such Nordic locale with unruly fringes and ill fitting polo necks). Any new listener's perception is coloured by Drake's status as the #1 pin up boy for clinical depression and its particular sepia toned English variety. And yes, his music is quintessentially English, even if Drake's idiosyncratic guitar tunings often move him far from his native folk tradition. In their dedication to craft, structure and precision, Drake's songs are every inch the product of a society built on deference, restraint and suppressed emotional turmoil, particularly in the genteel middle class background from which he emerged.

However, listening to Bryter Layter or any of his albums, free from the clouding influence of Drake's tragic biography, all that is left is the art, passion and spirituality at the heart of it all. It's this which gives Drake's music, for its delicacy, a gravitas missing from the countless imitators, and which explains why his records sell more today than they ever did in his lifetime.

Sweetheart of the Rodeo - Country Classic

With the current fascination for all things alt.country, it's a fine time to revisit one of the early classics of the genre. Sweetheart of the Rodeo was a brave excursion for The Byrds into what was widely held by the rock community as a genre characterised by hick attitudes and boho sentiments, the kind of things the younger generation were busy rebelling against.

However, country music had always been in the Byrds sound - bassist Chris Hillman had played with bluegrass groups before joining the band - and could be detected on many of their previous albums such as The Notorious Byrd Brothers from January 1968. There, country shared space with psychedelia and space rock, but by the time Sweetheart was made, the band had all but jettisoned them in favour of a return to what Roger McGuinn saw as the roots of American music.

McGuinn's original plan was to create a history of 20th century music, from jazz and folk right up to modern synthesiser experiments. Traditional country was supposed to be the starting point for this expedition. However, under the influence of new recruit Gram Parsons (ironically hired as a jazz pianist) the concept never got further than the country. Parsons found an enthusiastic ally in Hillman, and the pair set about turning McGuinn away from his original plans, embracing their new direction with the passion of zealots. The songs were largely drawn from a mix of classic country artists such as The Louvin Brothers and Merle Haggard, a brace of twanged up Dylan covers and the odd folk tune. Despite writing many of the band's classic songs on previous albums, neither McGuinn nor Hillman contributed any original material. Parsons, on the other hand, brought the achingly beautiful Hickory Wind and the mildly rocking One Hundred Years From Now.

The album marked a turning point for The Byrds. They became the first rock band to play at the Grand Ole Opry, and were set for tour of South Africa when Parsons quit, ostensibly in protest at the apartheid regime. His vocal contributions to the still unreleased album were removed, although they would later resurface on CD re-issues. He was later joined by Hillman, the pair going on to form the superlative Flying Burrito Brothers, before Parsons left once more to pursue his vision of "Cosmic American Music" before overdosing in 1974.

McGuinn, the sole remaining original member, would lead ever changing line-ups of the band through a succession of increasingly patchy albums before finally calling it quits. Sweetheart of the Rodeo marked the last time the band was truly groundbreaking. It also proved, however unintentionally, to be their most influential album, marking a retreat from psychedelic excesses to a more comforting terrain which was visited by Bob Dylan on Nashville Skyline and by The Band on Music From Big Pink. Eventually even those psych visionaries The Grateful Dead would make country influenced albums. The path started by Sweetheart of the Rodeo also led directly to the blow dried cocaine country of The Eagles, but why hold that against it?