Wishbone Ash
Sometime in the nineteen seventies I took a tape of Wishbone Ash’s Live Dates (released 1973) from someone at school. I still have the tape and it just about plays all these years later. My memory is that I played it a lot. It’s a long time ago now, but I think one of the things I liked about them was that they wrote songs rather than relying on 12-bar blues and heavy rock clichés. There was a sense that they were men playing boy’s music, if that isn’t too condescending, a sense that they had more to offer. These days, they’re not really a band I play much any more and, to be honest, Live Dates was the only album of theirs I really listened to.
Nonetheless I’m well disposed towards them.
This was their debut record. It’s slick, professional, very well played, generally melodic, and their twin lead guitars, then something of a novelty, gave them an edge that I find lacking with other heavy bands of the period. I was going to say that I also found the album a little dull, or at least not as engaging as I found them later in their career, but that would be unfair. It’s true that I prefer what they became (and how one or two of these songs developed), but the material here had all been extensively road tested, and there’s enough to keep my interest throughout. It’s classy enough to demonstrate precisely why they became such a major act in their day.
I listened on Spotify. There is also a YouTube playlist
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