Discover Top Posts Tagged with #paul kossoff

Remembering Paul Kossoff from Free

(September 14, 1950-March 19, 1976)

Paul Kossoff † March 19, 1976

Back Street Crawler: The Band Plays On (1975)

It's almost as though guitar legend Paul Kossoff knew his days were numbered when, less than a year before his death, he decided to call the debut album by his post-Free rock group, Back Street Crawler (named after Koss' 1973 solo LP), The Band Plays On.

In fact, I was originally going to write this blog last year to mark the album's 50th anniversary, but I decided to hold off and time it closer to Kossoff's passing at the age of 25 on March 19, 1976, instead, so here we are ... well almost.

Signed to Atlantic Records by chairman Ahmet Ertegun himself, Back Street Crawler's every move was unfortunately clouded by Paul's well-publicized drug abuse, which saw him hospitalized for an assortment of heart ailments and seizures shortly after this album's release.

And that's a damn shame because his cohorts, singer Terry Wilson-Slesser, like-named bassist Terry Wilson (what are the odds?), drummer Tony Braunagel, and, last but not least, keyboardist and primary songwriter Mike Montgomery, were a talented bunch.

Sure, The Band Plays On falls flat on its face right out of the gate with "Hoo Doo Woman," which briefly suggests a straight-up Free clone job via Koss' signature, snail-paced vibrato, only to morph into bad funk, verging on disco (see also the title track's pumping bass).

But Back Street Crawler quickly recovers with maybe the best rock song about New York you've never heard (I sure hadn't) in the obviously named "New York, New York" (the lyrics are a little corny, but also fitting), and a more acceptable nod to Free in "Stealing My Way."

Another favorite, "Train Song," may have been a blueprint for Lenny Kravitz’s "Always On the Run" (as could countless other slinky shuffles from the '70s), and standout "Rock & Roll Junkie" is a cowbell-accented, deliciously stereotypical statement of rebellion:

"Back in junior high school, I started out so poor; But rock'n' roll on the radio just made me want some more; My family used to warn me about common sex and dope; When I started playin' guitar, they finally gave up hope ...

I'm a bought-and-sold rock & roll junkie, yeah; Payin' dues, playin' blues, yes I am; A hard-to-control rock & roll junkie, yeah."

(Lest I mislead you into thinking this is some forgotten, classic album, I'll let you know that the more modest "Survivor," "All the Girls are Crazy," and the simply heinous "Jason Blue" bring down the average song quality to a more realistic middle ground.)

But the most ironic number here is the slow-boiling "It's a Long Way Down to the Top," whose title virtually mirrors AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)," mere months before the 'Thunder from Down Under' landed on British shores and proceeded to wipe the floor with Back Street Crawler on tour in the summer of '76.

Indeed, their fateful pairing even begs the question of whether it was some small blessing that Kossoff didn't live long enough to see this wholesale changing of the musical guard (let alone the looming punk rock revolution) in the second half of the '70s. To be sure, in an era of fretboard-burning guitar heroes Kossoff’s minimalist style may have unfairly mislabeled him as more of a "guitar zero" to uninformed, next-generation "rock & roll junkies," jacked-up on deafening Marshall stacks cranked up to eleven.

In any case, just a few weeks after Kossoff's passing, Atlantic somehow pulled together a 2nd (that was the title: 2nd) Back Street Crawler LP, which allegedly barely even featured the guitarist, save for some overdubbed leads, but nevertheless dedicated to his memory.

And the band did, in fact, play on without him -- and without Montgomery, who was replaced by journeyman and former Koss associate John 'Rabbit' Bundrick -- under the shortened moniker of Crawler, but that's another blog ...

More Obscure Mid ‘70s Hard Rock: Agnes Strange's Strange Flavour, Armageddon’s Armageddon, Baker Gurvitz Army’s Elysian Encounter, Bedlam’s Bedlam, Black Sheep’s Black Sheep, Black Spirit’s Black Spirit, Blackfoot’s No Reservations, Blackfoot Sue’s Nothing to Hide, Bloontz’s Bloontz, Blue Goose’s Blue Goose, Bux’s We Come to Play, Brownsville Station’s Motor City Connection, Cain’s A Pound of Flesh, Diamond Reo’s Diamond Reo, Dirty Tricks’ Dirty Tricks, Earth Quake’s Rocking the World, Elf’s Trying to Burn the Sun, Epitaph’s Outside the Law, Gedō’s Gedō, Goliath’s Hot Rock & Thunder, …

Even more Obscure Mid '70s Hard Rock: Good Rats’ Ratcity in Blue, Granicus’ Granicus, Granmax’s A Ninth Alive, Growl’s Growl, Hammersmith’s Hammersmith, Hustler’s High Street, Legs Diamonds’ Legs Diamond, Magi's Win or Lose, Mariah's Mariah, Max Webster’s Max Webster, Mother’s Finest’s Mother’s Finest, Moxy’s Moxy, Murasaki’s Murasaki, Nitzinger’s Live Better Electrically, Nutz’s Nutz, Painter’s Painter, Pentagram’s First Daze Here, Piper’s Piper, Plus’ No Pisar el Infinito, Primevil’s Smokin’ Bats at Campton’s, Silver's Children of the Lord, Starz’s Starz, Stepson’s Stepson, The Storm’s The Storm, Strider’s Exposed, Strife’s Rush, Thunderhead’s Thunderhead, Tiger’s Tiger, Trooper's Trooper, Truth and Janey’s No Rest for the Wicked, Widowmaker’s Widowmaker.