Sunday, April 7, 2013

Steve "Intro" Hunter: Swept Away


In the history of live-recorded rock albums - there is perhaps the best first song on a side A, and the credited "Intro" to that song  by a guitar played is as famous as the (other) person whose record it is.  I am talking about Lou Reed's Rock and Roll Animal, arguable the great SLA (single live album) of all-time.  Let's talk about that record for a moment: Rock n Roll Animal is a live album by Lou Reed, released in 1974.  In its original form, it features five songs from different periods of  Reed's creative career, including several songs by the Velvet Underground. The songs are all re-arranged into a powerful hard rock set. The musicians were Pentti Glan (drums) and Prakash John (bass), Ray Colcord (keyboards), and Dick Wagner and Mr. Intro himself - Steve Hunter on guitars (those two guitarists would later form the second Alice Cooper band, first on Welcome to My Nightmare, which also featured Glan, Colcord and Prakash John). The album was recorded live on December 21, 1973, at Howard Stein's Academy of Music in New York.  So this Steve Hunter plays six-minute intro leading nicely into Sweet Jane.  It is the version of the song that makes you never need to listen to the studio version of Sweet Jane - making it mostly irrelevant.   Intro/Sweet Jane is a rock anthem for the ages.  And it put Steve Hunter on the map.  Give it a listen.

2 comments:

  1. hi Curtis, its a nice blog you have here. always nice to come across people who share an interest (or call it obsession).
    i just started a blog on this topic myself, maybe you would like to take a look at it sometime?

    http://finestvinylalbumcovers.wordpress.com/

    in the coming weeks i will publish some realy gorgeous covers...

    greetz,

    peTer

    ReplyDelete
  2. Now we have two LP/album cover blogs to enjoy!
    Spencer

    ReplyDelete

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