I am fortunate to live in a town that still has a record store. I picked up two LP's today: Who's Next, by The Who, of course, and Ram, by Paul McCartney. Each under $20.00, used and in good shape. Having picked up a turntable last year, I am slowly building a vinyl collection, more than 20 years after I dumped off my remaining records for lack of space in our old house, using the money to buy CD's. This was before the Internet, before iTunes, and before Spotify.
There is still value in owning music. You don't own the music on Spotify. You pay to access the streaming service. I already have these albums on CD. The vinyl copies have now re-entered my life.
It occurs to me that these albums have something in common. If you are a fan of classic rock, you know these albums. It was not by design, but my purchases today were both released in 1971. They are both arguably the best albums these artists ever released. And they were both important in the careers of these artists.
For The Who, it was not their first classic album; that would be Tommy, released in 1969. Tommy featured a different band than the one that had given us My Generation, Substitute, and Magic Bus from their early period. Those were good songs, pop songs, but Tommy was a much more serious effort, a rock opera with newly-confident vocals from Roger Daltrey. Maybe people in 1969 thought Tommy was a novelty, a double-album where songwriter Peter Townsend had exhausted his creativity in writing about a pinball messiah who overcomes childhood trauma whose followers turn against him. Who's Next proved any such suspicions wrong. Song for song, Who's Next is one of the great classic rock albums of all time, with every song receiving airplay on FM radio, including Baba O'Reilly and Won't Get Fooled Again, the granddaddy of all-time rock songs. Plus Bargain, Song is Over, and Behind Blue Eyes. And maybe the greatest rock drumming we've ever heard. Who's Next told us The Who were here to stay. This is the second album of a three-album hat trick, finalized with Quadrophenia in 1973, a double-album bonanza with more FM radio classics.
Ram was an important album for Paul McCartney. As an ex-Beatle, Paul had nothing to prove, but he needed to release a great album in 1971. His first solo record, McCartney, issued in 1970, right after the break-up. By early 1970, Paul had run out of songs, having carried the songwriting workload for the Beatles in 1969. So McCartney included some leftovers from 1968-1969 and a new one, Maybe I'm Amazed. McCartney also had a few instrumentals, and the album was only around 30 minutes long, mostly recorded in secret at his farm in Scotland as he began picking up the pieces following the breakup. Paul also played all the instruments on the album. The critics did not like Ram, and while the album had some pleasant melodies, it did not seem serious like the initial John Lennon and George Harrison solo records; Lennon gave us the "primal scream" album, a musical therapy session. None of this would have mattered had the Plastic Ono Band been a lousy album. It was not; it would be Lennon's greatest solo record. George broke out with a double-album, All Things Must Pass, that showcased his spiritual songwriting, shocking everyone who saw him as the third-fiddle in the Beatles. So when Paul dropped Ram on us, with lush production but no "serious" songwriting themes, critics attacked it as the music of a content family man and inferior to the early John and George albums. This criticism was motivated in part by the rock and roll community's having blamed Paul for the Beatles breakup.
Time has been good to the Ram album. No one places it in the context of 1971, and no one compares it to the early Lennon and Harrison solo albums. People hear Ram on its own merits. It is now regarded as Paul's best solo album. You know some of the tracks, like Uncle Albert, but there's all sorts of creativity on Ram. It's good natured and serious in its own way.
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