Nazareth - Rock 'n' Roll Telephone

  by John Clarkson

published: 18 / 6 / 2014

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The word “legendary” is an over-used term, yet for longevity alone Nazareth are exactly that. First forming in Dunfermline in 1968, the Scottish hard rockers’ musical career has taken them across a remarkable six decades. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Telephone’ is their twenty-fourth album. The group chiselled out a pattern for their music many years ago – a thunderous sound topped with Dan McCafferty’s elongated wail of a vocal – and they have rarely strayed from that formula since. Nazareth were a large name in Britain in the early and mid-1970s when they had several bestselling albums and four Top 20 hits. While their fortunes have dipped at home in the years since then, they remain a considerable live force, drawing huge audiences especially in mainland Europe where they have now toured the Eastern bloc several times and also in America. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Telephone’ fits the blueprint of most of Nazareth’s previous albums – several raucous numbers at the beginning, some slightly gentler tracks in the middle, and then several more loud songs at the end. As routine and predictable as it is, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Telephone’, however, never tries to be anything else than what is and is earthily unpretentious. That throaty yell of McCafferty’s is always commanding. Pete Agnew and Jimmy Murison’s bass and guitar lines are as melodic as they are hard-stoned, and ‘Long Long Time’from the new album in particular is highly catchy. While lyrically it gets off to a bad start with a weak opening track ‘Boom Bang Bang’, a song about sexual attraction (“Wanna go Boom!Wanna go Bang Bang!”), there is elsewhere an intelligence here too. ‘Punch a Hole in the Sky’ takes reference from the jet test pilots of the 1940s and 1950s and the 1983 Philip Kaufman film ‘The Right Stuff’. The title track, inspired by Jimmy Murison’s loss of his phone, watch and wallet on a Russian tour, meanwhile shows that Nazareth take themselves none too seriously and is self-deprecatingly funny. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Telephone’ is, however, as bittersweet as it is valedictory. It is 67-year old McCafferty’s swansong with the group. After battling a worsening pulmonary disease for years and also collapsing on stage after suffering a burst stomach ulcer at a gig in Canada last year, McCafferty -who with Agnew has been there since the band first got together - has announced his retirement from music. Nazareth will be continuing with a new singer Linton Osborne who joined the group with McCafferty’s blessing. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Telephone’ is no no better and no worse than any of the other of Nazareth’s albums. Nazareth know their audience, what works for them and have stuck to it rigorously again here, and that for the down-to-earth Dan McCafferty as he leaves rock and roll is a splendid epitaph.

Track Listing:-

1 Boom Bang Bang
2 One Set of Bones
3 Back 2B4
4 Winter Sunlight
5 Rock 'n' Roll Telephone
6 Punch a Hole In the Sky
7 Long Long Time
8 The Right Time
9 Not Today
10 Speakeasy
11 God of the Mountain
12 Just a Ride
13 Wanna Feel Good?
14 Big Boy (Live In Somerset 2008)
15 Kentucky Fried Blues (Live in Milton
16 Sunshine (Live In Barrie, Ontario, C
17 Expect No Mercy (Live In Somerset
18 God Save the South (Live In Barrie,

Band Links:-

http://www.nazarethdirect.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/nazarethofficial

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