Saturday 10 March 2018

Chris Farlowe - Live At The BBC, album review

It Was the Best of Times...

This is a delightful collection, the interviews and announcements by almost exclusively Brian Matthew delivers the period feel, and Farlowe is a genuine, nonchalant interviewee – one of my favourites is when he is asked about his song My Way of Giving and who wrote it:

CF: Stevie Merriott of The Small Faces, he brought it along and he said ‘Would you like to listen to this?’, I heard it, it was very nice, I played it to Mick [Jagger, then producing some of Farlowe’s songs], he said it was ‘Very nice’, we all got together for the session, had a great time on the session, and that was it.

BM: Was Steve at the session as well?

CF: Yeah, they was all, all the Faces were there.

BM: And he was happy with the results?

CF: Yeah, very happy.

And thus great music and recordings got made with such ease! All the performances are great, Farlowe in his brilliant husky distinctiveness, so full of distinctive tone too, and many are with his band The Thunderbirds – and then there are full band and light orchestral with backing vocal renditions of songs like Paint it Black [there are 3 versions on the second disc] and Yesterday’s Papers.

There’s soulful covers of Mr Pitiful and It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World, and then fulsome balladry with Burt Bacharach’s I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself to which Brian Matthew plainly concludes and very nice too, thank you Chris.

The best of times in so many ways.




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