<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Yikes!\u00a0 As I scanned <\/span>USA Today <\/span><\/i>writer Melissa Ruggieri\u2019s list in her article <\/span>Timeless albums, tunes are turning 50 <\/span><\/i>in the <\/span>Milwaukee Journal Sentinel <\/span><\/i>(published 6-13-22), all I could say was, \u201cYikes!\u201d\u00a0 How could fifty years have gone by since some of my favorite albums first began climbing the record sales charts?\u00a0 While some of my musical memories of that period are based on my social behavior patterns in my college days, many others came directly from what we were playing in the band I was in at that time (Knockdown).\u00a0 In the early 1970s, my social group frequented several \u2018watering holes\u2019 in the Marquette area, but all had one thing in common:\u00a0 music blasting from the house system, a jukebox, a live band, or a DJ sound booth (although the last one had not become commonplace yet).\u00a0 When I joined Knockdown in the spring of 1972, much of the music I played with them was tried and true old time rock.\u00a0 As soon as I was comfortable with the playlist, we made a conscious effort to add some newer stuff to our sets. \u00a0 Ruggieri\u2019s list compelled me to dig a little deeper into the music of 1972 and what I found stirred a lot of pleasant memories of what was happening in the music world fifty years ago.\u00a0 The following remembrances are by no means a complete list of 1972 albums.\u00a0 They are discussed here in a rather random order and if one is of a certain age, readers are sure to insert their own favorites from that period.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the first albums Ruggieri mentions is the Allman Brothers Band <\/span>Eat a Peach <\/span><\/i>(released on February 12).\u00a0 I knew about the Allmans and heard quite a bit of their music at our social gatherings, but I never did pick up any of their albums.\u00a0 When our guitarist, Ray \u2018the human jukebox\u2019 taught us <\/span>Stand Back<\/span><\/i>, I didn\u2019t realize it was an Allman Brothers\u2019 tune until we had been playing it for several months.\u00a0 I remember it fondly because it was the first time Ray suggested I play a song \u2018kind of funky\u2019.\u00a0 He must have liked what I did because the first time we played it live, he turned around and said, \u201cYeah, that\u2019s it!\u201d\u00a0 Once I heard the ABB version, I sought out more of their records and instantly fell in love with tracks like <\/span>Statesboro Blues<\/span><\/i> (a song Ray didn\u2019t want to cover because he didn\u2019t play slide guitar).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Alice Cooper\u2019s single <\/span>School\u2019s Out<\/span><\/i> first hit the airwaves on June 30.\u00a0 An instant radio hit, it was impossible to escape but it wasn\u2019t a tune we tried to work up.\u00a0 We were already doing <\/span>Smokin\u2019 in the Boy\u2019s Room <\/span><\/i>by Brownsville Station so perhaps we figured we had already mined enough music dealing with school.\u00a0 Alice would become big, but I never played any of his music in any of the bands I was in.\u00a0 The eponymous <\/span>Eagles <\/span><\/i>album<\/span> was released on June 1 and it plonked a bunch of songs on the radio and jukeboxes.\u00a0 <\/span>Witchy Woman, Take It Easy, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Peaceful Easy Feeling <\/span><\/i>apparently arrived with no \u2018sell by date\u2019 because I didn\u2019t start playing their music until the fall of 1974 with my third band, Sledgehammer.\u00a0 By then, <\/span>Take It Easy<\/span><\/i> was already two years old but the Eagles were big enough that any of their songs, new or old, got instant reaction.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0David Bowie\u2019s <\/span>The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars<\/span><\/i> appeared on June 16.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t much of a Bowie fan until his <\/span>Diamond Dogs<\/span><\/i> album came out when Mick Ronson\u2019s <\/span>Rebel Rebel<\/span><\/i> riff caught my ear (February 1974).\u00a0 I did go back and mine some of The Spider\u2019s earlier tunes like <\/span>Suffragette City <\/span><\/i>from 1972, but again, it was all radio and jukebox fodder, not songs we worked into our playlists.\u00a0 Elton John\u2019s <\/span>Honky Chateau<\/span><\/i> would become his first number one record not long after its May 19 release.\u00a0 <\/span>Rocket Man<\/span><\/i> blared from the speakers in every bar we frequented and the album marked the first of EJ\u2019s seven No. 1 albums over the years.\u00a0 The inclusion of the song <\/span>Honky Cat<\/span><\/i> left Ruggieri wondering if <\/span>Honky Chateau <\/span><\/i>really should be on the \u2018hallmark albums list\u2019, but for me, it fit the album just fine.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One band that isn\u2019t really remembered from 1972 is the Canadian outfit Brave Belt.\u00a0 When Randy Bachman left The Guess Who, he hooked up with an original member of The Guess Who (Chad Allen) and formed Brave Belt.\u00a0 The trio later added bassist C.F. \u2018Fred\u2019 Turner to their touring\u00a0 lineup but Brave Belt were not getting much traction.\u00a0 Allen\u2019s country flavored songs were not cutting it and after he left the lineup, the band struggled on.\u00a0 Brave Belt were doing a college gig in Thunder Bay, Ontario and their repertoire of Chad Allen\u2019s songs was not going over well.\u00a0 The promoter was going to fire them and bring in a \u2018rockier\u2019 band for the second night.\u00a0 Failing to find one on short notice, he begged them to dig into their roots and perform classic rock songs like <\/span>Proud Mary, Brown Sugar, <\/span><\/i>\u00a0and <\/span>All Right Now.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0According to Bachman, \u201cWe instantly saw the difference between playing sit-down music people could talk over and playing music they would jump out of their seats and dance to.\u201d\u00a0 The template for Bachman Turner Overdrive came out of this gig in 1972, but BTO didn\u2019t start making waves until 1973.\u00a0 We covered a fistful of BTO songs in Sledgehammer and I could not agree with Randy\u2019s above statement more.\u00a0 We had some gigs where they wanted \u2018dinner music\u2019 first and we would do our best to accommodate with some softer fare like BTO\u2019s <\/span>Blue Collar<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 The gigs with Sledgehammer never really came to life, however, until we got to BTO\u2019s first mega-hit <\/span>Taking Care of Business.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>For this reason, I mark their album <\/span>Brave Belt II <\/span><\/i>from 1972 as a milestone.\u00a0 Okay, it would not pay off for them until they changed their name to BTO the next year, but it was a landmark album for them just the same.\u00a0 I should add that their albums were well regarded in Japan but they never got the opportunity to tour there as Brave Belt.\u00a0 Now that I have digressed a bit, perhaps we need to get back to other noteworthy albums that made it big in 1972.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I fully understand that in the limited space she had to work with, Ruggieri had to pick and choose.\u00a0 Certainly we would disagree in some places as to what would or would not make the list as an indispensable record from 1972.\u00a0 I am a little surprised Uriah Heep\u2019s <\/span>Demons and Wizards<\/span><\/i> didn’t even get mentioned in her list of \u2018good but not notable enough to make the cut\u2019 albums.\u00a0 Released in May of 1972 on the Bronze label in the UK and Mercury Records in the US, <\/span>D&W<\/span><\/i> was the band\u2019s fourth LP.\u00a0 It was also the first record featuring what is now considered the \u2018classic\u2019 Uriah Heep lineup.\u00a0 Guitarist Mick Box and vocalist David Byron said the band clicked immediately when drummer Lee Kerslake joined with his former bandmate Ken Hensley (song writer, guitar, keyboards) and new bassist Gary Thain.\u00a0 Hensley called the album, \u201cJust a collection of our songs that we had a good time recording,\u201d but they also meshed well with the medieval fantasy cover art of Robert Dean.\u00a0 The album captured the imagination of record buyers on both sides of the pond.\u00a0 Even <\/span>Rolling Stone Magazine<\/span><\/i> (who had slagged the band\u2019s earlier releases) changed their tune, writing, \u201cThey may have started out as a thoroughly dispensable neo-Cream & Blooze outfit, but at this point, Uriah Heep are shaping up into one hell of a first-rate modern rock band.\u201d\u00a0 Kerslake said Randy Rhoads loved Heep and was inspired to write the riff that would become Ozzy\u2019s <\/span>Diary of a Madman <\/span><\/i>with a little help from Kerslake and Bob Daisley<\/span>.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Rolling Stones album <\/span>Exile on Main Street<\/span><\/i> hit the streets on May 12.\u00a0 Many felt this double album recorded when they were in \u2018tax exile\u2019 in the south of France (hence, the title) was a lesser effort than their previous album from 1971, <\/span>Sticky Fingers.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>True, there were some standout tracks like <\/span>\u2018Sweet Virginia, Happy, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Tumbling Dice, <\/span><\/i>but they<\/span> had a hard act to follow.\u00a0 <\/span>Sticky Fingers <\/span><\/i>tracks like <\/span>Brown Sugar, Wild Horses <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Sister Morphine<\/span><\/i> set the bar pretty high.\u00a0 Regardless, dedicated Stones fans couldn\u2019t get enough of the \u2018new\u2019 Rolling Stones sound as they distanced themselves from their poppier 1960s period.\u00a0 Marquette\u2019s fabled band Walrus was one of the best purveyor\u2019s of live Stone\u2019s music around.\u00a0 The more I sawWalrus play tracks from both of these early 1970s LPs, the more I came to appreciate this era of the Stone\u2019s music.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Steely Dan arrived on the scene with the November release of the <\/span>Can\u2019t Buy a Thrill<\/span><\/i> album and the infectious first single, <\/span>Do It Again.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>I had a half year under my belt with Knockdown by then and I remember <\/span>Do It Again<\/span><\/i> as one of the first songs I brought to the band to learn.\u00a0 Ray was the master arranger in the band but he had not heard the song when I showed up with the lyrics and chord changes.\u00a0 I played it through once and he said, \u201cLet me take this home and learn it\u201d which he did.\u00a0 One rehearsal later and we were playing it in our set.\u00a0 As much as I would have also liked to learn <\/span>Reeling in the Years<\/span><\/i> off the same album, it was too complex for me to figure out and Ray just never got around to arranging it.\u00a0 <\/span>Can\u2019t Buy a Thrill <\/span><\/i>turned out to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of Steely Dan\u2019s album output.\u00a0 I was thrilled (pun intended) when I attempted to get <\/span>Do It Again<\/span><\/i> on the Sledgehammer setlist and guitarist Barry countered with, \u201cHow about <\/span>Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me) <\/span><\/i>instead?\u201d\u00a0 We later added the title track of their <\/span>Pretzel Logic<\/span><\/i> album and were always proud we were the only local band covering Steely Dan songs.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If there was ever a band with a cult-like following, it would have to be Blue Oyster Cult.\u00a0 They had several other names (like Soft White Underbelly and Oaxaca) in their formative years. They didn\u2019t exactly embrace their BOC moniker (taken from a poem by their manager, Sandy Pearlman) but as their audience grew past cult-like numbers, they got used to it.\u00a0 In Pearlman\u2019s poem, the Blue Oyster Cult was a group of aliens who had assembled to secretly guide Earth\u2019s history.\u00a0 BOC\u2019s eponymous first album was released in January of 1972 and featured songs like <\/span>Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Stairway to the Stars.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Again, this was not heralded as one of the big albums of 1972.\u00a0 Their next few albums, while containing other songs that would become staples of their live set, were an acquired taste.\u00a0 When I finally heard the band live at Marquette\u2019s Lakeview Arena on September 23, 1979, I had already become a fan via the albums <\/span>Agents of Fortune <\/span><\/i>(1976) and <\/span>Spectres <\/span><\/i>(1977).\u00a0 These records put me on a quest to seek out their 1975 live double disk, <\/span>On Your Feet or On You Knees<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 By the time I heard the band in Marquette, I was familiar with most of their concert list, much of it dating from as far back as 1972.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0BOC made it a habit to release a new live album every few years (as of 2022, there have been at least five) so I ignored their studio output in favor of picking up the latest live LP.\u00a0 I opted back into their studio recordings in 1998 for <\/span>Heaven Forbid, <\/span><\/i>followed by <\/span>Curse of the Hidden Mirror <\/span><\/i>(2001) and their latest, <\/span>The Symbol Remains <\/span><\/i>(2020).\u00a0 With the core duo of Eric Bloom and Donald \u2018Buck Dharma\u2019 Roeser still in place, they have maintained a rabid fan base and continue to tour behind their extensive catalog.\u00a0 Perhaps they looked into the crystal ball in 1972 and saw this long career ahead of them, but I doubt it.\u00a0 Their album sales started out modestly in 1972 and they built their audience the way the best bands do:\u00a0 on the road.\u00a0 Eric Bloom stepped to the mic after a particularly loud ovation at the 1979 Marquette show and said, \u201cMan, we have to get out of New York more often!\u201d\u00a0 That they did, returning to Lakeview in 1981 for a double bill with Rainbow.\u00a0 Rainbow canceled at the last minute, robbing me of my chance to see Ritchie Blackmore live.\u00a0 BOC ended up doing two sets and I, for one, am glad I was there to see it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Other notable albums from 1972 kicked off long and storied careers for bands and artists who are still in demand on the concert trail in 2022.\u00a0 Neil Young\u2019s <\/span>Harvest <\/span><\/i>(released in February) spawned two hits (<\/span>Old Man<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Heart of Gold<\/span><\/i>) but it is hard to say if it created any type of template for his career.\u00a0 Neil has performed so many changes in direction in the last fifty years it is a wonder he has not suffered whip-lash.\u00a0 I remember <\/span>Harvest<\/span><\/i> from my second summer at the Huron Mountain Club because one of the young guys down the hall played it every day before we headed off to dinner.\u00a0 The rooms in our employee dorm were small and one could feel the music through the walls. \u00a0 I am pretty sure if he had been a few rooms closer to the older guys who worked on the river crew (what the maintenance and carpentry guys were called), they may very well have planted this kid in the river attached to several cement blocks.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Jackson Browne\u2019s eponymously titled first album was often called (erroneously) <\/span>Saturate Before Using<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 The cover art was made to resemble those cloth sacks that used evaporation to keep their contents cool.\u00a0 Those words stenciled on the picture of the fabric that covered the album sleeve gave many the impression it was the name of the record.\u00a0 Soon after the album came out in January, the single <\/span>Dr. My Eyes <\/span><\/i>began climbing the charts.\u00a0 Browne was also an early member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but his association with the Eagles would make him a lot of money down the road.\u00a0 Rod Stewart\u2019s <\/span>Never a Dull Moment <\/span><\/i>didn\u2019t make quite as big a splash as 1971\u2019s <\/span>Every Picture Tells a Story<\/span><\/i>, but the single<\/span> You Wear It Well <\/span><\/i>carried it into the No. 1 spot on the UK charts and No. 2 in the States.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the biggest band coming out parties was held when the Doobie Brothers\u2019 <\/span>Toulouse Street <\/span><\/i>hit the streets on July 1.\u00a0 With three hit singles spun off their introductory album (<\/span>Listen to the Music, Jesus is Just Alright, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Rockin\u2019 Down the Highway<\/span><\/i>), they made a buzz louder than a room full of bees.\u00a0 One could not turn on the radio in 1972 without hearing the Doobies.\u00a0 The radio play stimulated massive pre-release orders for their 1973 follow up <\/span>The Captain and Me.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 The sets they did on the TV concert shows like <\/span>The Midnight Special<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>In Concert<\/span><\/i> were chocked full of hits.\u00a0 This is no big surprise when one considers <\/span>The Captain and Me <\/span><\/i>also produced a trio of hit singles:\u00a0 <\/span>Long Train Runnin\u2019, China Grove, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Without You.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>When Barry and I first started jamming together (just drums, guitar, and vocals), <\/span>Without You<\/span><\/i> was the first song he taught me from the Doobie Brothers\u2019 catalog.\u00a0 By the time Sledgehammer was fleshed out with Mike and Lindsay on bass and second guitar, we were doing six songs by the Doobies and six more by BTO.\u00a0 No wonder our business cards said, \u201cSLEDGEHAMMER – WE DON\u2019T DO POLKAS\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Certainly, 1972 wasn\u2019t the only magical year in terms of great albums, but it would have to rank somewhere near the top of the list.\u00a0 We would need a much longer article to include the likes of <\/span>Machine Head <\/span><\/i>(Deep Purple), <\/span>Close to the Edge <\/span><\/i>(Yes), <\/span>