ROCK & ROLL

As the cover and title of this album painfully point out, the inspiration is gone (I don't think they were trying to make that particular point with this album or they missed altogether the mark) . A few numbers could have filled up the previous album (replacing the jam) and would have made ithat one another excellent one but instead we end up with two lacklustre LP. Do listen to Windmill of Your Mind as this is still a classic from them but there is not much else in here. Maybe Need Love but don't we all?

A fulfilling first finale

"Rock'n'roll" was the final album recorded by Vanilla Fudge during their creative days in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Further albums would be released in the name of Vanilla Fudge, but it is to their first incarnation we must look for their significance in the prog timeline.

The band went out on something of a high with an album of largely original material. Thankfully, there are a couple of the band's trademark covers, "Windmills of your mind" being a particularly excellent choice. Uriah Heep must have been impressed as they would use a very similar melody on their song "Dreams" a few years later. Another cover, Carole King and Geoff Goffin's "I can't make it alone" is a wonderfully soulful rendition with one of Mark Stein's best vocal performances on any of their albums.

Of the original songs, "Need love" is arguably the most striking, being a brash out and out rock song with screaming guitars and distorted vocals. The song has an almost punk like live feel. The band composition "Street walking woman" is for me the weakest track. It has a decent arrangement, but the basic song is uninteresting.

In all, an excellent final album which showed that the band were still well endowed when it came to originality and endeavour. Recommended.

The bonus tracks are single A and b sides, some of which also appeared as album tracks here or elsewhere.

This last Fudge album from their classic period isn't really good, unfortunately. The band is out of steam and Bogert and Appice are thinking more to their trio project with Beck than to the Fudge.

It seems that they were rather keen on releasing as many albums as they could in a short period of time (five albums in just over two years).

"Need Love" although sounding very raw is one of the very few bearable songs from "Rock And Roll". A true rock song with an incredible beat. Good but not brilliant. The gospel oriented "Lord In The Country" is absolutely dreadful. To press next is by far the best thing you can do. Probably the worst Fudge experience although "I Can't Make It Alone" is pretty poor as well. This time, the soul influence is dominant. Difficult to pick up which one is the poorest. A draw I guess. Keep on pressing next.

"Church Bells Of St. Martins" reminds me at times of the "Paul Butterfield Blues Band" (especially their great Woodstock appearance. But this song is pompous and chaotic. Still, I guess that 10CC must have listened to it because some of their crazy and complex arrangements have such a flavour. But in a very much harmonic pattern.

There is ONE very good song on this album : "The Windmills Of Your Mind". A great cover version of this soundtrack piece ("The Thomas Crown Affair"). But one song (even excellent) can't save an album. OK, let('s add "Need Love" to the list.

A pitiful effort, I'm afraid. Mostly influenced by rhythm & blues and soul which are absolutely not my cup of tea.

Two stars for this uninspired album.

My knowledge on this American band is too narrow considering its importance in prog's developing years. I'm told it should be in the same level with The Nice, but personally I strongly doubt it. I know this final studio album is not VF at their best, so it's definitely not a good introduction, to me or anyone. It's now re-released by Esoteric Recordings. The liner notes tell about the very hard circumstances of the recording: the group was practically divided in two camps unable to communicate to each other. Since this is my first VF album I can't evaluate how much that can be heard in music (the playing itself is OK), or how much more would I have liked their best works. But this one was as uninteresting to me as the red'n'white cover.

Two - or was it three - of the songs are covers. 'I Can't Make It Alone' is from the Carol King songbook, and not the best part of it. The only track I found worth repeated listenings was the Michel Legrand composition 'The Windmills of Your Mind' because the song is dear to me, mostly due to Dusty Springfield's version. Also Noel Harrison's original performance in the film The Thomas Crown Affair is worth hearing. I can't say I was charmed by Fudge's version, but it's listenable enough. On the whole this feels quite uninspired album of organ-dominated rock'n'roll.

The last full year as a band, VANILLA FUDGE followed suit after releasing two albums in 1968 by once again releasing two more in the calendar year 1969 before the band ran out of steam and called it quits in early 1970. After a two year roller coaster ride that began with the surprise success of the band's self-titled debut which propelled VANILLA FUDGE to the big boys' league in the world of 1960s psychedelic rock, the band had derived a wide variety of styles to its repertoire and to its credit never really stagnated however the relentless push to constantly move on to the next thing yielded varying results.

The band ended its career with its fifth and final album ROCK & ROLL which emerged on 25 September 1969 and thus not only ending one of the most dynamic decades in the entire history of musical innovation but also the end of one of the bands that became an extremely influential force for the many other acts that would soon adopt its unique perspectives on merging the seemingly disparate worlds of soul music, pop and experimental psychedelia that would soon take on a greater role in morphing into hard rock and progressive rock. VANILLA FUDGE's last offering featured a more streamlined approach after the rather scattered "Near The Beginning."

One of the primary forces that whipped the band into being focused was by having a producer who could offer a perspective that a bunch of drifting musicians could realize on their own. ROCK & ROLL welcomed Adrian Barber who had worked his magic with The Velvet Underground and would eventually go on to usher Aerosmith into the limelight. His contributions forged ROCK & ROLL into another cohesive album's worth of material that coexisted snuggly side by side and teased out all the brilliance that had put VANILLA FUDGE on the music map in the first place without all those annoying excesses that emerged when the band was left to its own devices on the self-produced "Near The Beginning."

This final chapter once again saw a track listing of self-penned psychedelic rock tunes along with cover songs stripped of their hit making immediacy and given the proper psychotropic makeovers. ROCK & ROLL begins with the fiery "Need Love" sung by guitarist Vinnie Marteli and showcases what sounds to me like an early prototype of what Deep Purple would crank out the following year on its classic "In Rock" album. This feisty track mixes energetic blues guitar rock with the fuzzy organ and boogie-woogie piano rolls along with a sizzling rhythm section that finds bantering bass and drums rolls screaming that the band has successfully taken the genre of ROCK & ROLL into the world of hard rock and a sampling of proto-metal intensity.

"Lord Of The Country" follows and features some of the earliest examples of what i would call Queen. The soulful gospel rock track crafted by Mark Stein almost sounds like something that would fit in on Queen's "The Night At The Opera." The style only awaits Freddie Mercury to charismatically animate it to the next level. The first cover track, Carole King's "I Can't Make It Alone" is another soulful heavy psych reinterpretation that the band excelled at from its earliest origins. Tight vocal harmonies, skillful rhythm section and a reweaving of the melodic fabric to allow for another tasty treat of VANILLA FUDGE charm. "Street Walking Woman," another Martelli sung track allows another band original to follow suit with the same soft / hard tradeoffs.

Another captivating song is the brilliant "Church Bells Of St. Martins" which features an army bugle i believe and military march drumming introducing the main song which goes on into folk and rock territory but once again highlighting the band's evolution of its vocal harmonizing. Once again this sounds exactly like what Queen would build its career on throughout the 70s but once again Stein's vocals don't quite have that Freddie Mercury magic. It's still a highlight of the album though as the arrangement is brilliant.

The near 9-minute "The Windmills Of Your Mind" is the other cover, this time a song written by Michel Legrand, Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman for the film score "The Thomas Crown Affair." While originally sung by Noel Harrison, the track was covered by Dusty Springfield in the same year as this version in 1969 except her version found its way into the top 40 whereas VANILLA FUDGE was imploding and failed to capture much fanfare with this final release. This soulful interpretation pulled out all the usual VANILLA FUDGE punches and the band owned it much like it did with Donovan's "Season Of The Witch" on its previous album. The original vinyl ended with the 1961 James Ray hit "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody" sung by drummer Carmine Appice which the band teases into a soulful hard rock sensation. Some remastered versions also feature a studio version of "Break Song" which appeared in a side-long B-side on "Near The Beginning" only this version is far superior as it emphases the band's strengths.

Given all the low ratings of ROCK & ROLL and almost ubiquitous panning by critics and reviewers alike, i was quite surprised to love this final offering from VANILLA FUDGE. This is one of the most focused album of its five album run and mixes all the things that made the band so unique. It retains the soulful covers turned heavy psych while emphasizing the newfound love for hard rock turned up a few notches. Likewise the band's unique vocal harmony arrangements took a leap in ingenuity and clearly passed the baton on to Queen whereas the organ dominated hard rock in the vein of Grand Funk Railroad only more soulful was ripe to gift to Deep Purple for an upgrade. It's a shame VANILLA FUDGE couldn't develop its own creations into the next phase of rock and metal but it cannot be understated how influential this band was to the next generation of rockers that dominated the 70s. I personally love this album a lot and find it to be third in line after the masterpiece "Renaissance" and the crafty self-titled debut. A great way to go out and i'm surprised very few have taken notice.