The golden age of vinyl LPs has passed, and the silver age of CDs may well be passing. Yet there is a real beauty in the LP: it looks better and often sounds better than any other music format. It feels more like a work of art and less like a generic product. In the late 60s and the 70s groups tried to live up to these possibilities, printing liner notes and lyrics, using gatefold sleeves, and sometimes turning the fold-out album into a book, with pages of photos inside.
Nowadays most bands who record a CD feel a need to put 70 minutes of music on it, even if the last 30 minutes suck. But 30 years ago, if you released a double album it was a manifesto, a kind of boast: "We had too many good songs, and just couldn't edit them down to one disc." Sometimes the boast was hollow, and many second-rate double albums could have been good single albums. But if you look back at the moments in their careers when bands released double albums, they usually came after a couple of groundbreaking LPs, at a time of confidence and experiment. Bands often saw this larger canvas as a challenge to prove their chops and diversity, to show all that they could accomplish. Some double albums push the envelope for miles, until it’s a hot-air balloon soaring above whole new musical landscapes.
I started writing a list of the best rock double albums, but once I had about thirty I realized my poll would be too big. So I cut out all the double LPs that had live tracks, like Eat a Peach and Rattle and Hum. I cut out, with some regret, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, because it is 122 minutes long. That is not a double album, it’s a double CD. The longest LPs I know are Blood on the Tracks, which is 51:40, Atom Heart Mother at 52:44, and A Wizard, a True Star which is 55:56 (Rundgren was clearly trying to break the record – which he did in the wrong sense: the sound quality suffers in places from the crammed groove). So I figure a double album has to be less than 112 minutes long. Finally, it is debatable whether some of these qualify as rock at all (though they have all appeared on lists of top "rock" albums).
I still had a list of 25 double albums, so I skimmed the top ten (not my personal favorites, but the ones critics tend to vote for), and put them aside until next week’s diary. So the albums below are, by my estimate, the 11th – 25th best rock double albums. The quotes come from many of my record guides and magazines with "best album" lists. Here is a key to the abbreviations: RGR (Rough Guide to Rock); AMG3 (American Music Guide, 3rd Ed.); Spin (Spin Alternative Record Guide); Spin100 (Spin Magazine, 100 Greatest Albums ’85-’05); RS3 (Rolling Stone Album Guide, 3rd Ed.); RS4 (RS Album Guide, 4th Ed.); RS100 (RS Mag. 100 Best Albums ’67-’87); RS200 (RS Mag. 200 Best Albums, ’97); RS500 (RS Mag. 500 Greatest Albums ‘03); RS80s (RS Mag. 100 Best Albums of the 80s). That’s a lot of sources, I know, but I really wanted to find quotes that gave you the flavors of the different double albums.
Here, then, are 15 very good double albums, and the top five winners from this week will move forward into next week’s poll:
Trout Mask Replica (Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band; June ’69; 77:38)
Captain Beefheart spent a year teaching the band how to play these weird and complex songs. 'An avant-gardist determined to annihilate all rhythmic and harmonic conventions, Captain Beefheart (born Don Van Vliet) achieved the apex of his bent ambitions on Trout Mask Replica, his fourth record. Produced by Frank Zappa, the album stands as a prodigious anthology of fractured song structures, demented blues fragments, cracked funk, squawking free jazz, Ginsberg-meets-Beckett poetry and surreal conversational bits worthy of Gertrude Stein. The likes of Devo, Public Image Ltd. And Jon Spencer have taken heart from these mad experiments.’ RS200
Bitches Brew (Miles Davis; April ’70; 93:53)
Three drummers, three keyboardists, two bassists and a horn section, who would later split off to found Weather Report, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and other bands. ‘Davis wanted, he said, "the best damn rock & roll band in the world," to connect jazz with the forward motion of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. Davis’ band was superbad (Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, etc.). But the word fusion was never big enough to describe the visceral thrill of these explosive studio explorations and the pioneering tape-edit wizardry of Producer Teo Macero, arguably the original Chemical Brother.’ RS500
The Basement Tapes (Dylan & the Band; June ’75; 76:41)
These songs were recorded in 1967, but not released for eight years - except many appeared on a famous bootleg, Great White Wonder. ‘The Basement Tapes was a rare, albeit low-fi, opportunity to hear some of Dylan’s best songs practically at the moment of their birth, midwifed by the band – his most empathetic backing band ever – with a low-key but rock-hard assurance rooted in the bands own intuitive assimilation of folk, country, blues and Sun Studio-boogie influences. This was...home music, barroom music played for pleasure and for the hell of it by and for musicians with a shared experience outsiders may not fully understand.’ RS100
Tusk (Fleetwood Mac; Oct. ’79; 68:570)
In interviews, 4 out of 5 members of the band named this as their favorite Fleetwood Mac album. ‘Tusk reveals Buckingham’s secret fixation: to become Brian Wilson with a touch of Brian Eno thrown in. "Sara" maintains the band’s pop profile, but the bulk of Tusk sounds cold and fussy next to the emotional heat of Rumours.’ RS4 ‘In some ways even more impressive than Rumours, this is an ambitious effort full of unusual arrangements and striking instrumental passages, plus a wealth of topflight songwriting.’ AMG3
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Genesis; Nov. ’74; 95:17)
The liner notes credit "Enossification by Eno." ‘This, the last Genesis album with Peter Gabriel, is a sprawling two-disc thematic album concerning a character named Rael. Keeping with that theme, it includes pastiches of Broadway show music, plus the group’s typical mixture of folk, rock, and classical influences. If this is not the first Gabriel Genesis album to buy, it ultimately may prove the most satisfying.’ AMG3 ‘Many fans see this as the group’s finest moment, and the culmination of Gabriel’s genius, for he alone wrote its songs...Lamb was grandiosity personified...’ RGR
Zen Arcade (Hüsker Dü; July ’84; 70:23)
‘With this landmark 1984 album, the Minneapolis trio Hüsker Dü picked hardcore punk up out of its monotonous rut and drop-kicked it into the future. Structurally, Zen Arcade is defiantly anti-punk – a double album with an operatic narrative and unorthodox segments of acoustic folk, backward tape effects and psychedelicized guitar.’ RS80s ‘Between the coldly acoustic "Never Talking to You Again," merciless "I’ll Never Forget You," flat-tire boogie "What’s Going On," piano moistened "Pink Turns to Blue," therapeutic "Whatever," and Clash-like "Turn on the news," Zen Arcade bulges with unleashed possibility.’ Spin
Double Nickels on the Dime (Minutemen; April ’84; 73:35)
‘An astonishing record, Double Nickels remains the Minutemen’s finest moment. It was on this record that the music, political activism, and band chemistry coalesced into a forceful document of rage during the height of the Reagan administration’s marketable "me-first" jingoism. Boon’s guitar splutters, clanks, and cajoles, while Watt and Hurley explode in rhythmic splendor.’ AMG3 ‘The sardonic Californians serve up 43 diverse haiku of febrile ingenuity that sound like bare-bones rock essayed by funky free jazzers and read like entries in a political poet’s journal.’ RS200
Sign o’ the Times (Prince; March ’87; 80:06)
‘Prince’s ninth and mightiest release is the last classic R&B album prior to hip-hop’s takeover of black music and the final four-sided blockbuster of the vinyl era. It’s also a one-stop superstore for the last two decades of pop: "The Cross" is as raw as the Pixies; no love rocker ever wrote anything more twee than "Starfish and Coffee"; and the spare weird grooves of "Ballad of Dorothy Parker" and "If I was Your Girlfriend" anticipate Tricky, DJ Shadow, and the artier end of house and techno.’ Spin100
Metal Box/Second Edition (Public Image Ltd.; Nov. ’79; 60:29)
‘Heralded by a remarkable single, "Death Disco," and originally released in a metal film canister, this remains an unearthly collection of songs. Lydon’s vocal was no longer the cocky punk sneer but a tormented moan amid a distressed landscape of bass detonations, bursts of manic keyboard and, most compellingly, clusters of fractured guitar...A sense of unlocatable disquiet permeated the whole album. On "Careering", a dub bassline struggled for life under an almost unbearable pile-up of electronic screams. "Radio 4" was like muzak from beyond the grave...this was a model for subsequent deconstructions of rock.’ RGR
Something/Anything? (Todd Rundgren; Feb. ’72; 86:15)
‘Rundgren’s masterpiece, on three sides of which he played everything himself, recording the fourth with a studio group. This was Todd at the top of his game, taking on straight pop ("I Saw the Light", "It Wouldn’t Have Made any Difference"), psychedelic pop ("Couldn’t I Just Tell You"), pop parody ("Wolfman Jack"), oddball whimsy ("Song of the Viking"), hard rock ("Little Red Lights"), and balladry ("Torch Song", "Cold Morning Light") with equal aplomb...one of the greatest distillations of popular music ever recorded." RGR
Daydream Nation (Sonic Youth; Oct. ’88; 70:47)
‘After years of obsessing over death, art noise, and urban decay, Sonic Youth were reborn with Daydream Nation...the album’s secret power lies in its sonic forward motion, from the stutter-stops of "Candle" to the heaven-sent harmonics of "Hey Joni" to the super-charged "Silver Rocket". "It was a sprawling container for all our band contained," Renaldo says." Spin 100 ‘Kim Gordon’s bounding bass holds aloft intricate skeins of aggressive guitar, a sound so widely imitated that it defined an entire school of noise-loving modern rock.’ RS200
The River (Bruce Springsteen; Oct. ’80; 82:58)
‘The River is Springsteen’s most generous album...what comes through is assurance: the E Streeters sound lean and relaxed, Springsteen’s voice is strong but unstrained. And the songs – dazzling variations, mainly, on fundamental three-chord rock – are more efficient than anything he’d done before. "Cadillac Ranch" swaggers like Duane Eddy; "I Want to Marry You" is soulfully direct; "Wreck on the Highway" is a chilling snapshot; "The Ties that Bind" speaks with a new, unforced seriousness. "Hungry Heart is the crowd pleaser, and it worked - The River made Springsteen a household name.’ RS3
Quadrophenia (The Who; Oct. ’73; 81:33)
‘A mod elegy and an attempt to render in music the characters of the Who’s four members...the foursome had conquered entire new worlds in rock & roll, but their ambition would not let up. Horns and orchestral adornments sometimes threatened to overcome Townshend’s most complicated set of melodies and lyrical ideas – but on a song like "The Real Me", the group flourished its mastery of the baroque gesture, the operatic stance.’ RS3 ‘The closest the Who ever came to heavy metal.’ RGR
Songs in the Key of Life (Stevie Wonder; Sept. ’76; 105:04)
‘Making this record, Wonder would often stay in the studio forty-eight hours straight, not eating or sleeping, while everyone around him struggled to keep up. "If my flow is goin’, I keep on until I peak," he said...The highlights are the joyful "Isn’t She Lovely" and "Sir Duke," but Wonder also displays his effortless mastery of funk, jazz, balladry, Afrobeat and even a string-quartet minuet. Nineteen years later, Coolio turned the haunting groove of the quiet "Pastime Paradise" into the number one single, "Gangsta’s Paradise."’ RS500
Freak Out! (Frank Zappa & the Mothers; June ’66; 60:55)
‘With a riff aping the Stones’ "Satisfaction," "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" provided the anthemic intro to Freak Out!. Lyrically, the record’s anti-love songs and daft non-sequitors raised the rebel flag for the misfit clowns and underdogs Zappa and his first band, the Mothers of Invention, would henceforth champion; the music was both a triumph and mockery of psychedelia, folk rock, blooze, and doo-wop.’ RS4 ‘The lyrics in songs like "Who are the Brain Police?" and "Trouble Every Day" mark composer Frank Zappa as having a social conscience and a wickedly satiric sense of humor.’ AMG3
Here’s the Quiz:
1> What was the best selling 12" single ever?
2> What LP was almost called ‘Everest’?
3> Which famous guitarist played in a band with Rick James as a teenager?
4> What song provided the bass line for both ‘Rapper’s Delight’ and ‘Another one Bites the Dust’?
5> Who was the sixth Rolling Stone, who their producer kicked out for looking too normal?
The next nine are all lyrics (mostly pretty hard)– name the band, the song, and the double album they’re from:
6> "Trying to tell the difference tween the goods and grime"
7> "And no one knows the gypsy’s name"
8> "Hey you with the pretty face welcome to the human race"
9> "Her voice is soft and cool"
10> "Revealing corridors of time provoking memories"
11> "The beggars stain the pavements with flourescent christmas cheer"
12> "In a plane flying back to winter in shoes full of tropic sand"
13> "Like a star exploding in the night"
14> "Here I come again and I’m bringing my friends"
The hardest question:
15> What are the ten "better" rock double albums that I’m saving for next week? (Small hint: two of next week’s artists have LPs in this week’s poll).
The most interesting question:
16> What is your favorite double album? And why? (I would particularly appreciate descriptions of a few sentences, so that in next week’s diary I can quote Kossacks as well as rock guides and magazines).
All the answers to questions 1 - 15 are scattered throughout the comments, if you're patient enough to look for them.
Finally, here’s the poll: