My Seventies Music

Tag: Lot

  • Nils Lofgren – “No Mercy” And “Keith Don’t Go”

    Nils Lofgren album "Night After Night" (1978)

    I don’t know a lot from Nils Lofgren, just two songs really, “No Mercy” and “Keith Don’t Go”.

    Nils Lofgren, who has had a long solo career, also worked with Neil Young in the Seventies, as well as playing in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band for 25 years.

    But I didn’t know that until just now…

    Actually I first got to know his 1979 track “No Mercy” (from the album “Nils”) a year or so later through a band I used to write some songs with in Bamberg, Germany, who played it.

    I still remember hearing it the first time crammed into a tiny cellar with just enough room for the band, their equipment and a couple of other people, i.e. right up close!

    Here it is, “No Mercy”, recorded in 1979 (with lyric subtitles in German, how fitting):

    And here is a live version of “No Mercy” twelve years later on German television in 1991:

    The other Nils Lofgren track I am familiar with actually came out a year earlier in 1978.

    It’s from his fourth album “Night After Night”, and is called “Keith Don’t Go” (Keith being Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones):

    Nils Lofgren also plays this one on the acoustic guitar, so here is “Keith Don’t Go” unplugged:

    Which do YOU think sounds better, electric or acoustic?

    Paul

  • Linda Ronstadt – “When Will I Be Loved”, “You’re No Good”, “Blue Bayou”, “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” and “First Cut Is The Deepest”

    Linda Ronstadt single cover "Blue Bayou"
    Linda Ronstadt was a name you heard a lot in the Seventies, her biggest hits included “When Will I Be Loved”, “You’re No Good” and “Blue Bayou”.

    By coincidence, these are just about the only ones of her many songs I can recall…

    I found a couple more that I recognise though, but I can’t say now whether it’s just the songs themselves that are familiar or Linda Ronstadt’s versions of them!

    Songs like “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” and the Cat Stevens number “First Cut Is The Deepest”, best known in the Rod Stewart version.

    Whatever Linda Ronstadt sings, with her powerful voice she certainly makes it her own.

    Here are some of those songs –

    “When Will I Be Loved”, live in 1977:

    From the same concert in Atlanta, Georgia, the quieter track “It Doesn’t Matter Any More”, featuring Linda Ronstadt accompanying herself on acoustic guitar:

    “You’re No Good”, on the Midnight Special (with an introduction by Jose Feliciano):

    This is probably the Linda Ronstadt track I like the best, once again from that 1977 concert in Atlanta, “Blue Bayou”:

    And finally, “First Cut Is The Deepest”:

    “I’m going back in time…”

    Paul

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