The third post in which I blog my reactions as I plough through Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

This was the first section where I was listening to most of the albums for the first time and I had an intense reaction to every one of them.

OK. Except Robert Johnson. I mean, I love the blues. The blues wouldn’t have been possible without Robert Johnson. And then we wouldn’t have had Clapton or Page or The Rolling Stones. But it’s like looking at a Daguerreotype. OK. It’s really cool to see what Paris looked like in 1838, but people take much better pictures these days. Just take a look at one of Roongko’s.

I always liked Chuck Berry – even after My Ding a-Ling – and I am happy to concede that he – not Elvis or Bill Haley – invented Rock ‘n’ Roll. But he never really grabbed me the way some of the other pioneers did. He did write some good music though. Why a greatest hits album? Did he not release any decent albums? *shrug*

Rolling Stone says

In the latter half of the fifties, guitarist, singer and songwriter extraordinaire Berry released a string of singles that defined the sound and spirit of rock & roll. “Maybellene,” a fast, countryish rocker about a race between a Ford and a Cadillac, kicked it all off in 1955, and one classic hit followed another…

How did this one escape me? I guess I had my John Lennon’s Greatest Hits and I thought I was done. Didn’t need to hear any more.

But this one is greater.

I remember coming across Working Class Hero in the soundtrack of the monumental The Leaving of Liverpool and rushing to the internet to find out who it was by. But then I remembered that the internet had not been *invented yet so I rushed back in time to catch the credits and saw that Holy Crap! It’s John Lennon. It has been my favourite John Lennon song ever since. Imagine.

My much younger step-sister was really into U2 when they first made their appearance and she used to play them all the time but this was the first time I sat down and listened to The Joshua Tree. I have other U2 albums but not this one. Odd. Because this is certainly the best.

Rolling Stone says

On U2′s fifth full album, the band immerses itself in the mythology of the United States, particularly the wide-open spaces and possibilities of the Western frontier, while guitarist the Edge exploits the poetic echo of digital delay, drowning his trademark arpeggios in rippling tremolo.

I am ashamed to say that I had never heard Led Zeppelin I either. I know all the songs of course but the actual album managed to avoid me for all these years. I’m wondering now whether this album should actually be up there at the top instead of Sgt Pepper. It’s crazy good – and I’m not even a Led Zep fan.

Rolling Stone says

On their first album, Led Zeppelin were still in the process of inventing their own sound, moving on from the heavy rave-up blueprint of guitarist Jimmy Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds. But from the very beginning, Zeppelin had the astonishing fusion of Page’s lyrical guitar playing and Robert Plant’s paint-peeling love-hound yowl.

Wait! Blue?… Not Clouds?

I have Clouds. It’s quite marvellous but Blue? Isn’t that the one she made when she was already a has-been?

OK. OK. I’ll listen…

…OMG! That is the most incredible album I have heard in years and years. It won’t be to everyone’s taste – maybe not even to mine (and certainly not to my wife’s). But at least give it a listen and marvel at what Joni has created.

Rolling Stone says

With song after song of regrets and sorrow and a smoky-blue cover shot of Mitchell on the edge of tears, this may be the ultimate breakup album. Its whispery minimalism is also Mitchell’s greatest musical achievement.

Expeditions like this are what music subscriptions are for and what you people who still buy their music don’t seem to get. You probably wouldn’t want to run out and buy Blue and, if you did, you’d probably only listen to it once. But with Rhapsody or Napster – for five bucks a month – you can listen to any crazy album that takes your fancy [as long as it is not by the Beatles or Led Zep or the Eagles or AC/DC -ed].

All in all, this has been the most exciting section of the journey so far. Who knew that Stevie Wonder was this good? Or James Brown? Amazing stuff. I am looking forward to the next section.

21. The Great Twenty-Eight, Chuck Berry

22. Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon

23. Innervisions, Stevie Wonder

24. Live at the Apollo (1963), James Brown

25. Rumours, Fleetwood Mac

26. The Joshua Tree, U2

27. King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. 1, Robert Johnson

28. Who’s Next, The Who

29. Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin

30. Blue, Joni Mitchell

* Yeah, yeah. I know the difference between the internet and the world wide web but that wouldn’t have been so funny, would it?

The next ten albums in my quest to listen to 500 Greatest – according to Rolling Stone – Albums of All Time. It’s handy, on a quest like this, to have access to all the music in the world. Imagine if you had to buy them all on iTunes at 99c a track. It’d be even handier if The Beatles albums were available on Rhapsody which is kind of important when THERE ARE 5 BEATLES ALBUMS in the top 14!

OMG Elvis at #11.

Elvis is kind of unfashionable right now – especially in America. People still have this image of a fat greaser in a sequined jumpsuit but that is totally unfair. It’s like remembering Frank Sinatra as an old man or Marlon Brando as an obnoxious tub of lard.

Frank Sinatra will always be a super-cool young crooner with a voice from heaven. Marlon Brando will always be Fletcher Christian casting Captain Bligh into the long boat and Elvis will always be the nineteen year old trucker who walked into Sam Phillips’s studio and changed music forever.

I got my first Elvis album for Christmas in 1972 and hearing his voice still gives me chills.

Rolling Stone says:

Many believe Rock & Roll was born on July 5th, 1954, at Sun Studios in Memphis. Elvis Presley, guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black were horsing around with “That’s All Right,” a tune by bluesman Arthur Crudup, when producer Sam Phillips stopped them and asked, “What are you doing?” “We don’t know,” they said. Phillips told them to “back up and do it again.”

I came to Miles Davis late in life. I always liked jazz but Miles Davis never grabbed me – until I sat down and listened to A Kind of Blue. I could put this on a loop and never get bored with it.

I used to think that Hendrix was the greatest guitar player ever, But, now that I am learning to play the guitar, I am starting to doubt that he was a guitar player at all because there is no way that those sounds could come out of the same instrument that I strum away at every night. I think he was some kind of magician.

Rolling Stone says

This is what Britain sounded like in late 1966 and early 1967: ablaze with rainbow blues, orchestral guitar feedback and the highly personal cosmic vision of black American emigre Jimi Hendrix.

I bought Nevermind a long time ago but, after one listen, decided it was too heavy for my taste and didn’t play it for another ten years. Now I can’t get enough of it. I blame Guitar Hero.

Rolling Stone says

his slashing riffs, corrosive singing and deviously oblique writing, rammed home by the Pixies-via-Zeppelin might of bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl, put the warrior purity back in rock & roll. Lyrically, Cobain raged in code — shorthand grenades of inner tumult and self-loathing. His genius, though, in songs such as “Lithium,” “Breed” and “Teen Spirit” was the soft-loud tension he created between verse and chorus, restraint and assault.

I hated Michael Jackson in 1983 but my girlfriend of the time couldn’t get enough of him. She played Thriller back to back, hour after hour, over and over, every night of every weekend for nearly three years. When I listen to it now, the only song that strikes me as really great is Billie Jean but, like it or not, it’s a part of my life.

Rolling Stone says

It is hard now to separate the wonder of Thriller from its commercial stature (Number One for thirty-seven weeks, seven Top Ten singles, eight Grammys) and Jackson’s current nightmare of tabloid celebrity and self-destructive egomania. But there was a time when he was truly the King of Pop. This is it.

Except for The Velvet Underground (did they throw these outliers in to see if we are paying attention?), the rest of the top 20 is kind of obvious although I might’ve picked a different Van Morrison album.

11. The Sun Sessions, Elvis Presley

12. Kind of Blue, Miles Davis

13. Velvet Underground and Nico, The Velvet Underground

14. Abbey Road, The Beatles

15. Are You Experienced?, The Jimi Hendrix Experience

16. Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan

17. Nevermind, Nirvana

18. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

19. Astral Weeks, Van Morrison

20. Thriller, Michael Jackson