It’s Gone- (Jacques Levy, Roger McGuinn) – not a strong original but, again, McGuinn’s signature is unmistakeable and though it may not range with his best songs it is a fair facsimile.All Night Long – (Peter Frampton, Gallagher) – a strange selection but McGuinn does put his own stamp on the song.This, maybe prophetically, turned out to be McGuinn’s last solo album until 1990. DeVito also produced some other late 70s Dylan albums. The album was produced by Don DeVito who produced Dylan’s “Desire” album ( perhaps that’s how McGuinn got his hands on the “Golden loom” track). McGuinn was in good form coming of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review of 1976 and his band hit all the right notes. In the American music tradition he collaborated (as he had on many occasions) with lyricist Jacques Levy (who also collaborated with Dylan) but none of the songs here reach the heights of “Chestnut Mare”. If things don’t always go right for him musically, you can put that down to the almost inexplicable stew that a hit record, commercially and critically, is. McGuinn has musical good taste based on a wide palette and musical brains in being able to distinguish between good and bad. The rule is, though, that you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. It comes as no surprise, then, that punk would break and make music edgy and challenging again. The experimentation of the first half of the 70s was gone and safe MOR adult country rock and singer songwriter were the norm. McGuinn is taking chances though here they seem to based on commercial considerations. To take chances and to fail is always preferable to smug safeness. But these are aberrations, and ultimately, I’m not sure if you can achieve greatness without putting out crap, as long as the crap is a result of risk taking. That’s not to say everything is good because some of his solo stuff I have heard is patchy as is a lot of the later Byrds stuff. In another comment I had this to say: McGuinn in a way had more vision that his contemporaries and always seemed to be pushing the envelope. If my comments above sound a little pithy all I can say is … it’s late. Having said that I can say that anything by McGuinn is interesting. It never quite flies like a thunderbird or Thunderbyrd (sic). The problem lies more with the fact that the album is neither here nor there. There are only four original songs on this LP but McGuinn, in the folk tradition, has no problems about doing covers as long as they fit in with the concept. A weird album for Roger McGuinn to put out.
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