Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Tony Hazzard (1969)

Anthony Hazzard was born on 31 October 1943 in Liverpool, and is best known as a successful songwriter of the late 60's. He learned the guitar and ukulele when young, but didn't start his music career until he finished his education at Durham University, and with the encouragement of Tony Garnett of the BBC, he moved to London where he signed a contract with publisher Gerry Bron. Bron could see potential in Hazzard's songs, and wanted him as a solo artist, releasing his first single 'You'll Never Put Shackles On Me' in 1966. Although it didn't chart, another of his songs was submitted to Herman's Hermits, who had a Top 20 hit with 'You Won't Be Leaving' in 1966. Following a dry spell where he struggled to write anything that he considered worthy, he gave 'Ha! Ha! Said The Clown' to Manfred Mann, who took it to the upper reaches of the UK charts. In 1968 his psyche-tinged 'The Sound Of The Candyman's Trumpet' was recorded by Cliff Richard and entered into the 1968 'Songs For Europe' preamble for the Eurovision Song Contest, although it lost out to 'Congratulations' in the final vote. Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, The Casuals, The Family Dogg, and The Swinging Blue Jeans all turned to Hazzard's pop tunes in the late 1960's, and many of them scored hit singles with their recordings. In the midst of all this success as a writer, Hazzard released his first solo album 'Tony Hazzard Sings Tony Hazzard' in 1969, and despite the fact that every single track had been successfully released as a single by another artist, it was commercially unsuccessful, although his second album, 'Loudwater House', fared much better. It could have been the fact that he was a relatively unknown singer which caused that first album to flop, as it certainly wasn't the quality of the songs, and so to make it appeal to a wider audience I've replaced Hazzard's own versions of his songs with the hit single versions from a wide variety of 60's artists, and we end up with a great tribute album by some of the biggest names of the era, and a fitting celebration of Hazzard's songwriting. 

Track listing

01 Listen To Me (The Hollies)
02 Brown Eyed Girl (The Family Dogg)
03 Me, The Peaceful Heart (Lulu)
04 The Sound Of The Candyman's Trumpet (Cliff Richard)
05 Hello It's Me (The Casuals)
06 Fox On The Run (Manfred Mann)
07 Hello World (The Tremeloes)
08 Goodnight Sweet Josephine (The Yardbirds)
09 Ha! Ha! Said The Clown (Manfred Mann)
10 Hey Mrs. Housewife (The Swinging Bluejeans)
11 You Won't Be Leaving (Herman's Hermits)
12 Fade Away Maureen (Cherry Smash)

The Hollies - I Had A Dream (1974)

After Allan Clarke left the band in 1971, the hits dried up for The Hollies, Their first album with Rickfors as singer - 'Romany' - was released in 1972, but he single from it, 'Magic Woman Touch', failed to chart in the UK, becoming the band's first official single to miss the UK charts since 1963, although it did chart in seven other countries. In 1973 they issued the 'Out On The Road' album, which was recorded and issued in Germany, and later that year, egged on by the success of his last album with the band, Clarke decided to rejoin them, and Rickfors left. Because of this the 'Out On The Road' album was not released in the UK or the US, giving this 'lost' Hollies album legendary status among the band's fans, and subsequently commanding high prices for the original German release. After Clarke's return, the Hollies returned to the UK Top 30 with another swamp rock-style song penned by Clarke, 'The Day That Curly Billy Shot Down Crazy Sam McGee', and in 1974 they scored what was to be their last major hit single with the Albert Hammond/Mike Hazlewood-composed love song 'The Air That I Breathe'. After the US failure of the Hollies' single release of the Bruce Springsteen-penned 'Sandy (4th July, Ashbury Park)', Epic gave up on the band in the US, combining their two 1976 albums into their last US release of the decade, 'Clarke, Hicks, Sylvester, Calvert, Elliott'. The Hollies continued to have hit singles during the rest of the seventies, but mostly in Europe and New Zealand, and so this second collection mops up their sole non-album single of 1973/74, plus some b-sides and quite a few out-takes, for an over-view of the last two years of their most productive period.

Track listing

01 I Had A Dream (b-side of 'Jesus Was A Crossmaker' 1973)
02 If It Wasn't For The Reason That I Love You (previously unreleased)
03 Papa Rain (previously unreleased)
04 Witchy Woman (previously unreleased)
05 Born A Man (b-side of 'The Day That Curly Billy Shot Down Crazy McGee' 1973)
06 Tip Of The Iceberg (previously unreleased')
07 Mexico Gold (previously unreleased)
08 Burn Fire Burn (previously unreleased)
09 No More Riders (b-side of 'The Air That I Breathe' 1974)
10 Son Of A Rotten Gambler (single 1974)
11 Layin' On The Music (b-side of 'Son Of A Rotten Gambler')
12 Come Down To The Shore (previously unreleased)
13 Hello Lady Goodbye (b-side of 'I'm Down' 1974)

The Hollies - Sorry Suzanne (1972)

The Hollies have always been one of my favourite bands, with classic singles like 'Bus Stop', 'On A Carousel', 'King Midas In Reverse' and 'Carrie Anne', but I've always thought that they produced some of their best work between 1969 and 1974. Singles such as 'Sorry Suzanne', 'Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress', 'The Air That I Breathe', and 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother' are among the very best of 70's pop music, and I was amazed to discover recently that 'He Ain't Heavy...' never appeared on a UK album. It prompted me to investigate how many other songs of theirs from the period were tucked away on b-sides or languishing in the vaults, and it was way more than I first thought. This era was a turbulent one for the group, and after Graham Nash was replaced in January 1969 by Terry Sylvester, the band turned to outside writers for their single A-sides, and scored four consecutive UK Top 20 hits, including the Geoff Stephens/Tony Macaulay song 'Sorry Suzanne' and 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother', written by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell, and featuring Elton John on piano. Elton also helped out on their next single 'I Can't Tell The Bottom From The Top', and the hits continued with 'Gasoline Alley Bred' (written by Cook/Greenaway/Macaulay), and Allan Clarke's hard-edged rocker 'Hey Willy'. Like Graham Nash before him, frontman Allan Clarke was growing frustrated with the band, and after clashing with producer Ron Richards over material, he was eager to leave the group and cut a solo album. After the release of the 1971 album 'Distant Light', which concluded the band's EMI/Parlophone contract in the UK, Clarke left the Hollies in December, a move which surprised both the band's fans and the public in general. Swedish singer Mikael Rickfors, formerly of the group Bamboo, was quickly recruited by the rest of the band, and sang lead on their first Polydor single 'The Baby', and while it didn't fare as well as those earlier releases, it wasn't actually that bad a song. By taking the six stand-alone singles released between 1969 and 1972, and adding in the b-sides and a few out-takes, there's enough material to make up a superb album, which could easily have been released as a mopping-up exercise in 1972, and with all those singles on here it's almost a greatest hits collection. 

Track listing

01 Sorry Suzanne (single 1969)

02 Not That Way At All (b-side of 'Sorry Suzanne')     

03 He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother (single 1969)

04 Cos You Like To Love Me (b-side of 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother' reissue 1973)

05 Sign Of The Times (previously unreleased)

06 Eleanor's Castle (previously unreleased)

07 I Can't Tell The Bottom From The Top (single 1969)

08 Mad Professor Blyth (b-side of 'I Can't Tell The Bottom From The Top')

09 Gasoline Alley Bred (single 1970)

10 Dandelion Wine (b-side of 'Gasoline Alley Bred')

11 Hey Willie (single 1971)

12 Row The Boat Together (b-side of 'Hey Willie') 

13 Indian Girl (side of 'Magic Touch Woman' 1972)

14 The Baby (single 1972)

15 Oh Granny (b-side of 'The Baby')

The Hollies - Listen To Us (1968)

This album should have should have followed the release of 'Butterfly' in 1968, but following the release of that album Graham Nash started experimenting with drugs, and under their influence he produced a flurry of new songs. When he took them to the band, however, they were less than impressed, but recorded some of them anyway. Shortly after this Nash left the band (supposedly because he didn't want to record covers of Dylan songs, although he seemed happy enough to play on 'Blowing In The Wind') and moved to the US, where he joined up with David Crosby and Stephen Stills to form CSN. The songs that the Hollies recorded with him were all shelved, and they recorded a collection of Dylan covers for their next release 'Hollies Sing Dylan'.
This reconstruction is what that album could have sounded like had it been released as intended, and includes nearly all the songs recorded with Nash before he left the band. As an added bonus there is an extremely rare instrumental version of Nash's 'Marrakesh Express', which the Hollies did record, and a fan has synced this up with the vocal demo that Nash took to CSN, to make the only Hollies version of this song in existence. It's not perfect, but it's the only place you'll hear it.

Track Listing

01 Open Up Your Eyes
02 Do The Best You Can
03 Relax
04 Tomorrow When It Comes
05 Man With No Expression
06 Like Every Time Before
07 The Times They Are A-Changin' (live)
08 Wings
09 Jennifer Eccles
10 A Taste Of Honey
11 Blowing In The Wind
12 Listen To Me
13 Marrakesh Express (Hollies backing track synced with Nash's demo vocal)

A couple of these songs slipped out as singles during 1968 - 'Jennifer Eccles' and 'Listen To Me' -  but the rest were kept under wraps until some of them turned up on the 'Abbey Road' and 'Rarities' albums. I thought it would be nice to have them all in one place, so that you can hear great songs like 'Man With No Expression' and 'Tomorrow When It Comes', the full orchestral version of 'A Taste Of Honey', the 'lounge' version of 'Blowing In The Wind', and the superb live recording of 'The Times They Are A-Changing'.