National Health - Nazareth

  by Andrew Carver

published: 27 / 10 / 2011

intro

Andrew Carver examines through new box set 'The Nazbox' the forty year and career of Scottish hard rockers, Nazareth

Scottish hard rockers Nazareth have their work cut out for them constructing a box set that encompasses more than 40 years and 20 albums for fresh ears while providing the rare and unheard stuff hardcore fans will enjoy. The embarrassment of riches in their early back catalogue means there are a few painful omissions, and some of the odds’n’ends included in sixty nine tracks of 'The Nazbox' are quite odd indeed but otherwise it’s an excellent encapsulation of the group’s career. The first two CDs collect forty tracks from the band’s studio albums. Previous collections have generally picked up with album No. 3, ‘Razamanaz’, which stripped the band to the hard rock core that set the template for its further recordings but the set kicks off with barroom piano rocker ‘Dear John’, the single from their 1971 multi-faceted, self-titled first album and a nice bonus in its B-side, the countrified, loping ‘Friends’, which sounds a bit like something the Lovin’ Spoonful might have laid down. While their second LP, ‘Exercises’(1972) upped the jangle quotient, the track plucked to represent it, ‘Woke Up This Morning’, is a full on fuzz-fest that presaged tunes to come with its thumping beat and buzzing riff. A contemporary single track, ‘If You See My Baby’. breaks out the cello and will probably have some listeners wondering if Roy Wood or the Move were anywhere in the vicinity when it was laid down. ‘Razamanaz’(1973) and its title track really shoved the group into the spotlight, with Dan McCafferty’s rasping vocals and Manny Charlton’s sizzling guitar stamping the mould for the band, abetted by the production of Deep Purple bassist Robert Glover. The set also includes the album’s two Top-10 hits, the slipping and sliding ‘Bad Bad Boy’ and hard luck ballad ‘Broken Hearted Angel’. ‘Loud and Proud’, which also came out in 1973, kept up the pace; the band saw more chart action with their surprise reworking of Joni Mitchell’s ‘This Flight Tonight’; hard-hitting lead-in track ‘Go Down Fighting’ also gets the nod. Nazfans wondering where more likely picks such as ‘Turn On Your Receiver’ or ‘Teenage Nervous Breakdown’ are can console themselves with other versions (sort of, in the case of the former) on the third and fourth discs. ‘Rampant’ from 1974 added a bit of southern boogie to the band’s sound and stomper ‘Shangai’d in Shanghai’ once again put the band in the charts; it makes the cut, as does ballad ‘Loved and Lost’, which sticks Charlton’s phased guitar well behind McCafferty’s melancholy vocals. Then it’s on to two songs that no one whose lent an ear to Top 40 radio can have missed: the cowbell extravaganza of 'Hair of the Dog' and the band’s biggest hit ‘Love Hurts’. They probably could have added another track or two from ‘Hair of the Dog’, but choose to jump ahead to their cracking cover of Tomorrow’s 1967 psychedelic trip tune ‘My White Bicycle’. After the hard rock masterpieces of ‘Hair of the Dog’, the band cooled things off a bit for 1976's more radio-friendly ‘Close Enough For Rock’N’Roll’, which is solely represented by ‘Vancouver Shakedown’ - for some reason the set skips on the album’s hit ‘Holy Roller’, or the other two singles, ‘Carry Out Feelings’ or ‘You’re The Violin’ (the latter in particular would have been a fine choice). ‘Play the Game’ (1976) also gets one track, the band’s cover of Joe Tex’s monster 1965 R&B hit ‘I Want to Do Everything For You’, an album high point. Having dabbled with AOR for two albums, the band wisely headed back to a tougher sound for ‘Expect No Mercy’, and its ripping title track really picks up the pace. The other two picks from the album are a bit more offbeat: ‘Place in Your Heart’ is a steel-guitar lickin’ country-bar weeper, while ‘New York Broken Toy’ insert a tiny morsel of funk. With nine albums under its belt, the band decided to expand, and recruited Sensational Alex Harvey Band axeman Zal Cleminson for 1979's ‘No Mean City’. Although Cleminson added some serious oomph to the band’s hard rock recipe, while ‘May The Sunshine’ shows off some serious chops; ballad ‘Star’ starts off with some tasty acoustic guitar before launching into its tale of love lost. The band’s second album with Cleminson, ‘Malice in Wonderland’(1980) is represented by ‘Holiday’, a kicking tribute to rock star and show-business excess with a few AOR trimmings, and the Cleminson-penned hit ‘Heart’s Grown Cold’, which is gilded with backup singers. Unfortunately, from one of the band’s best albums, the collection must also select from its worst. 1981's over-polished ‘The Fool Circle’, made after Cleminson’s departure, is represented by ‘Every Young Man’s Dream’. The bass and drum rhythm which underpins the tune has a certain krautrock potential, but the lyrics, guitar and vocal performance drag it down. Much better is ‘Crazy (A Suitable Case For Treatment)’, rescued from the soundtrack to ‘Heavy Metal’, The set skips over super live set ‘Snaz’ which introduced another two-guitar lineup with the arrival of Billy Rankin (a veteran of Zal Cleminson’s post-SAHB band) and heads to 1982’s ‘2XS’ and ‘Boys in the Band’, a hard-rocker chugger that could be the band’s theme song. The set also includes ‘Dream On’; the piano-driven ballad didn’t make a huge mark in Britain or North America but climbed high on the continent. Rankin also appeared on 1983's ‘Sound Elixir’, the band's first record for MCA. By this point in the band’s career songs like ‘Whippin’ Boy’ and the mournful ‘Where Are You Now?’ are, however. just plain average and make one wonder why the latter was selected as the album’s single. ‘Sweetheart Tree’ from 1984’s ‘The Catch’ sees the band back to its original foursome, and showing a little more spark. ‘Cinema’, the title track from the 1986 album, could really only come from the 1980s, with its almost robotic drums, compressed guitar sound and soaring backing vocals. The box’s fine liner notes admit that the band was not really made for the 1980s, though ‘Hit the Fan’, also fro ‘Cinema’, shows some of the band’s old snap. On the downside ‘Piece of My Heart’ from 1989’s ‘Snakes’n’Ladders’ was presumably included as an example of how far wrong a band can go. As the band headed into the 1990s, original guitarist Manny Charlton left the band, with Billy Rankin returning to fill his shoes. The group’s next album, ‘No Jive’ (1991), showed a little more life but seems to get three tunes based on a desire to show there’s still gas in the tank. ‘Rocker ‘Hire and Fire’ still has the production polish that hamstrung earlier albums while ballad ‘Every Time It Rains’ is often trite. ‘Cry Wolf’, however, has a bit more bite, with its buzzing riff and some tasty leads by Rankin. The box heads into the home stretch with ‘Can’t Shake Those Shakes’ a good boogie rocker in a ZZ Top vein from 1994’s ‘Move Me’; while ‘Light Comes Down’ from 1998's ‘Boogaloo’ suffers from an overwrought vocal from McCafferty and a bit too much weedling from new guitarist Jimmy Murrison. In 1999 drummer Darrell Sweet died on tour and was replaced by bassist Pete Agnew’s son Lee. ‘A Day at the Beach’ from 2008's ‘The Newz’ features some bizarrely poppy background vehicles, while ‘Big Dogz Gonna Howl’ from their latest alabum, 'Big Dogz', starts off slow but features some chunky riffs that could have hailed from twenty five years earlier. The latter half of the box kicks off with a Bob Harris radio jingle version of ‘Turn On Your Receiver’, followed by 13 tracks recorded in The Paris Theatre in June 1972, April 1973 and November 1975. The sound quality on the three tracks from 1972 - ‘Called Her Name’, ‘Country Girls’ and a cover of The Allman Brothers’ ‘Black-Hearted Woman’ - is a bit dodgy, but the performance is lively and McCafferty is in excellent form, particularly on ‘Black-Hearted Woman'. The 1973 set offers a bevy of covers, starting with Don Nix’s blues standard 'Goin’ Down' (the engineers had some fun with a touch of reverb when McCafferty intones “Goin’ down, down, down”), Leon Russell’s ‘Alcatraz’ (which had appeared on 'Razamanaz’), a bluesy version of Woody Guthrie’s ‘Vigilante Man’ and ‘Ruby Baby’, made famous by the Drifters. The set concludes a medley of the band’s own ‘Woke Up This Morning’ and ‘Boogie’ which starts off with some hefty slide guitar work. The 1975 set is also covers heavy: After tearing into a super-tough version of their own ‘Changing Times’, the band takes a bite out of the oft-covered Dallas Frazier songbook with ‘Honky Tonk Downstairs’ - I dare say it’s the fuzziest version ever -, Doris Troy’s equally beloved ‘Wat Cha Gonna Do About It’ which gets a reggae update, the Porter Hayers chestnut ‘You Got Me Hummin’, which perhaps should have been retitled 'You Got Me Gruntin’ for this version and Randy Newman’s 'Guilty'. Disc Four begins with another live set, this one from the Golders Green Hippodrome. A slow-burning version of ‘Telegram’ that includes a chunk of the Byrds' ‘So You Want To Be a Rock’N’Roll Star’ (as it did on ‘Close Enough For Rock’N’Roll’). ‘Night Woman’ (originally on ‘Razamanaz’) opens up with a two-minute snatch from Edvard Grieg’s ‘Hall of the Mountain King’ before switching moods for the song itself. After a brief intro the band gets right into the fast-moving ‘Born to Love’ from ‘Play ‘N’ the Game’. The live version of ‘Gone Dead Train’ from their at-the-time latest ‘Expect No Mercy’ boogies along next. A version of ‘Kentucky Fried Blues’ also shines, and things wrap up on a high note with a Chuck Berry-adulating ‘Teenage Nervous Breakdown’. The set wraps up with nine unreleased tracks, starting off with ‘Paper Sun’ - an occasional live offering from the band, but one that was never laid down for a studio album - and a previously unheard track, ‘Storm Warning’, both from the band’s early days and sounding excellent. The set then jumps ten years ahead for a series of demos and outtakes from ‘2XS’ and ‘Sound Elixir.’ A gently fingerpicked version of ‘Mexico’ with some sepulchral organ in the background. Next up is an acoustic guitar-driven ‘Laid to Wasted’, a synth-lacquered ‘Read the Book’ and the plaintiff ‘SOS’ - yes, the ABBA tune. Nazareth make a game attempt at the Swedish band’s polished pop, and might have done even better if they’d stuck to their tried and true hard rock formula instead of bringing in superfluous keys. As for the version of Cream’s ‘Sunshine Of Your’ originally intended for ‘Snakes’N’Ladders’, and wisely scrapped, that goes double. ‘See You See Me’, one of the band’s own compositions, is another track with a good guitar and vocal performance sandbagged by production gloss. A cover of soul favourite ‘Heatwave’ largely escapes from being strangled by synthesizers wraps the box up. Hard core Nazareth worshippers may find 'The NazBox' unnecessary, but folks with a couple of albums who want to hear more with plunging into the band’s voluminous discography will find it a great place to start.