3 February : In My Union Jack Car

Lord Sutch and his Union Jack Car

How could I resist an album voted ‘Worst Album of All Time’ in a BBC poll in 1998?

Lord Sutch And Heavy Friends was recorded during 1969 and released in the US in February 1970, though it didn’t appear in the UK until May. There was an almost immediate attempt by at least one of the ‘heavy friends’ to distance himself from it: Jimmy Page. A number of the artists seemed to think they were tarnished by association with it. The ‘Heavy Friends’ included Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, John Bonham, Nicky Hopkins and Noel Redding.

Melody Maker Review

It didn’t sell especially well, though it did make the Billboard album charts. And the initial review by Chris Welch in Melody Maker was remarkably positive.

Wikipedia quotes a Rolling Stone reviewer saying that the album is absolutely terrible and the big names are like a fouled parody of themselves. This is not true, they are not parodies, they are themselves, just not how we’d like to imagine them, and not how they’d like to imagine themselves.

Jimmy Page gets his excuses in early

So I had a listen, and guess what? I’ve heard an awful lot worse acclaimed as a cult classic. I fancy that had this been recorded in 1976, even Sutch’s vocals would have been forgiven and the album treated as back to basics rock’n’roll. I hear echoes of The Kinks, Dr Feelgood, early Hawkwind and early Black Sabbath in it. Thumping Beat is pretty decent heavy funk.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a classic album, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it’s painted. I listened to it twice without pain and, the second time through, with some enjoyment. As George Michael once said, listen without prejudice.