Fabulously Flamboyant Fridays – Rise Of The Wrinklies

Welcome back my friends, to the flamboyance that never ends! Greetings pop pickers and please be welcome to tonight’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and another of our furious mastications upon the marshmallowy pillows of musical magnificence.

Tonight we shall consider a number of venerable artists who startled us all (well, startled me, at least) by suddenly producing a proper corker of an album or performance late in their career, at a period when most assumed their glory days were long gone.

And so, without further ado, break out the Sanatogen, buff up the Zimmer frame, rub in the Preparation H and fire up the Auto-Tune – it’s the rise of the wrinklies! Not arf…

This article was prompted by the recent release of Hackney Diamonds, the latest (2023) studio album from the very wrinkly and rather venerable Rolling Stones. I, like most, had assumed this album would be just another tedious entry in their long run of fairly lacklustre and instantly forgettable post-millennium albums – and in truth, the Stones’ run of poor albums goes back way longer than that.

But just how wrong can you be? The new album not only turned out to be hugely entertaining, but also raucous, powerful and, above all, energetic. It simply doesn’t sound like an album from a bunch of geezers pushing 80! As a result, more than a few fans have suggested Hackney Diamonds might actually be their best album since the late ’70s.

I fully expected yet another dull and plodding effort, put out simply to justify yet another massively profitable world tour, and I had absolutely no plans to pick up a copy. But the old lags surprised me, cooked up a shrewd mix of nostalgia and modernity and delivered an absolute corker. Is it as good as Exile On Main Street or Sticky Fingers? Absolutely not – not even close. But is it better than all of their albums since the late ’70s? Well, I think that’s an argument that can perhaps be made.

So who are some of the artists that surprised us with top-notch, late career albums? Well, Ozzy Osbourne is certainly one. He of course became famous as a founding member of Black Sabbath. He fronted the band from their formation in ’69, through their glory years, but was unceremoniously booted out of the door in ’79 because of, um, a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle. Given the other boys in the band were hardly shrinking violets on the larks-a-plenty front, Ozzy must have been giving it some serious welly to get shown a red card.

Getting sacked from his own band didn’t seem to bother Ozzy. He simply formed a new band, Blizzard of Ozz, and released seven multi-platinum, chart-rogering albums in a row. He’s racked-up well over 100 million album sales, has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement Award, is recognised as one of the key figures in the development of the heavy metal music, and is affectionately known as The Godfather of Metal.

So, by the turn of the century, Ozzy really had nothing left to prove and seemed to be slipping comfortably into late-career cruise control. He became a very successful television star in the MTV reality show The Osbournes and began a decade of rather lacklustre album releases – the kind of cut ‘n’ paste albums that long-established musicians often seem able to churn out with effortless regularity.

Happily, in 2010, Ozzy put his arse back in gear and proved there was still plenty of life in the old dog when he released his 11th studio album, Scream. I was delighted with it, but many were not; I thought it was a real return to form, but most did not. The reviews were lacklustre, sales were poor and Ozzy quickly moved on (well, back into cruise control, if I’m honest). Nevertheless, it remains a firm favourite of mine, but commercially, it really didn’t do very well at all.

From the late 60s to the mid-70s, Stevie Wonder released a string of peerless albums – often jaw-droppingly good. Sadly, all good things must come to an end and, in Stevie’s case, his magnificent run shuddered to a halt in 1979 with Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants.

This was a quirky little soundtrack album for a low-key nature documentary, and had it been released as such, things probably would have been fine. Unfortunately, Tamla Mowtown were desperate for new material from Wonder, who hadn’t given them a new album since the utterly magnificent Songs In The Key Of Life some 4 years earlier. As a result, they grabbed the album with both hands and ran with it, giving The Secret Life Of Plants the full Monty in terms of publicity and promotion.

The public were expecting a new Stevie Wonder album, but what they got was an odd little experimental soundtrack, variously described by critics as goofy, nerdy, odd, pointless and foolish. 1980’s Hotter Than July was a pretty decent return to form, but the schlocky horror of 1984’s The Lady In Red delivered a hammer blow to Wonder’s musical credibility, and as much of his work in the ’80s and ’90s continued in this sugary vein, he very quickly alienated a lot of die-hard fans.

And that seemed to be that for Wonder: his albums continued to sell well, he picked up countless awards and his tours sold out, but the magical creativity of his 60s-70s heyday seemed to be well and truly over.

And then, in 2005, after almost a decade of studio silence, Wonder released his 23rd album, A Time To Love. To the delight of many, it was a proper return to form and even managed to capture some of the wonderfully warm analogue sound of the classic Tamla Mowtown recordings from his golden era.

Unfortunately, after now almost 20 years without a new Stevie Wonder album, it’s beginning to look like A Time To Love might be his final release. Happily, if that does prove to be the case, at least he signed off with a good ‘un.

Here’s an album I’m not particularly fond of, but I have great admiration for the musician involved: Santana and his/their 1999 monster of an album, Supernatural.

To avoid confusion, I’ll use the name Santana to refer to both musician and band. Carlos Santana is the musician in question and his band, Santana, usually consists of whoever he chooses to hire at the time.

Formed in ’66, the band gained international fame after their appearance at the ’69 Woodstock Festival and their inclusion in the subsequent film. During the 70s they enjoyed great critical and commercial success, shipping albums by the truckload. However, the 1980s were not kind to the band, sales dried up and by the 1990s the band had pretty much ceased to exist. Carlos popped up now and then, but largely seemed to be on sabbatical.

However, in the late 90s, now looking to revive his career, Carlos turned to Clive Davis, president of Arista Records and the chap who had given Carlos his very first record deal back in the 1960s. They put their heads together, plotted a new course, headed into the studio and emerged in 1999 with an absolute monster of an album.

Supernatural was the band’s biggest success by far, went 15-times platinum in the US alone, spent 12 weeks at the top of the album charts, won nine Grammy awards, powered Santana around the globe for a hugely successful world tour, introduced Carlos and his band to an entirely new generation of fans and completely revived sales of his extensive back catalogue. Job done – and then some!

I’m a big fan of Carlos Santana, but I have no love for the Supernatural album. It feels like a cheesy, over-produced, dad-dancing LP, with Carlos sounding like a guest on his own album. But it certainly did the trick, so I don’t begrudge him this late-career monster of an album.

Good Times! by The Monkees is an album that very much deserves its inclusion in this missive. We have already taken a close look at the career of the Pre-Fab Four in an earlier article, so we won’t dwell too long on the subject here. However, The Monkees surprised everyone in 2016 when, after almost a decade of studio silence, they released an album of new material.

Good Times! celebrated their 50th anniversary and the surprise was not that an album of new material was released, but that it was seriously good – quite possibly the best of their career. Happily, the public seemed to agree: Good Times! (which featured contributions from all four members by using posthumous contributions from Davy Jones) was the biggest seller the band had produced for quite some time.

And a few quick honourable mentions here:

Joni Mitchell – Shine (2007). Joni’s Grammy Award winning 19th and final studio album. Her voice was completely shot, but it really works, giving the album a wonderfully poignant quality. It was a very fine way to cap her legendary career.

Johnny Cash – American Recordings (1994). The record that completely revived Johnny Cash’s career just 9 years before his death. It was a rich seam that Cash and his producer, Rick Rubin, would go on to seriously overwork on subsequent albums, but that doesn’t detract from the magnificent 1994 original.

Rush – Clockwork Angels (2012). The 19th and final studio album from the legendary Canadian rockers. It’s an album that, stylistically, sits very firmly in the second half of the band’s turbulent career (a period I have come to appreciate more and more) and it’s a prog-rock concept album! Blimey – brave choice lads. Happily, it works and it was a great way to wrap up the band’s career.

Neil Young – Psychedelic Pill (2012). Grumpy uncle Neil back with the bad boys in Crazy Horse – say no more. A cracking return to form: raw, powerful and in-your-face. The Godfather of Punk back at the absolute top of his game. Magnificent!

David Bowie – Blackstar (2016). We simply have to give a mention here to David Bowie’s 25th and final studio album, the haunting masterpiece that is Blackstar. Famously, it was released just a couple of days before his death and (unsurprisingly, given the circumstances) it’s a somewhat introspective album that probes and prods Bowie’s thoughts and feelings around the topics of mortality and legacy.

I’ve mentioned before in my Friday night witterings that – being a big Bowie fan – I feel unable to judge this album objectively. It’s simply too closely linked to his death for me to do so. However, given my clouded judgement, Blackstar feels like a poignant and powerful epitaph, and a magnificent conclusion to a tremendous career.

And I think we’ll wrap things up for this evening with a shot of sippin’ whiskey and a posse of good ol’ boys: Lynyrd Skynyrd – southern rockers par excellence.

This band is most definitely a game of two halves, with a tortuous history well worth an article of its own. However, in brief, formed in 1964, Skynyrd released a string of highly successful albums before a plane crash in 1977 killed three of the band, seriously messed up the rest and brought their career to a tragic, brutal and shuddering halt.

It was a decade before the survivors reformed the band in ’87 with Johnny Van Zant (Brother of the late Ronnie Van Zant, who had sadly died in the plane crash) now at the helm. The revived Skynyrd went on to enjoy considerable success, but were always in the shadow of the original band.

I was lucky enough to see the original version a couple of times and I’ve seen the revived Skynyrd many times (and also had the honour of working with them on a few occasions). I’ve always thought the original band produced the best albums and the finest compositions, by far. However, the revived version of the band just seemed to get better and better as a live act. In fact, by about the turn of the century, I think they began to deliver performances that were as good, perhaps better, than the legendary mid-70s peak of the original band.

That is of course a somewhat controversial opinion amongst Skynyrd fans, so we’ll leave it there before someone beats me to death with a Jack Daniels bottle or the thick end of a banjo. However, although I was a huge fan of their live work, I was never in any doubt that the original band had produced all the great albums. The revived version had produced some pretty decent stuff, but there was nothing to rival that astonishing run of magnificent ’70s albums from the original band. That was until we got to 2003…

In 2003 the band released Vicious Cycle. It didn’t sell all that well and nobody made much of a fuss, but the band themselves clearly knew they had produced a good ‘un. How do I know? Because on the subsequent tour they played a lot of it live, really looked like they were enjoying the experience and the audience lapped it up.

New tracks had often featured in their gigs, but they had always felt like a token gesture. The audience were there to hear the classics, the band knew it and delivered accordingly. But this time felt different and (IMHO) this album and the accompanying tour marked the point when the revived band finally stepped out of the shadow of the original band and truly became Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I’m not going to claim Vicious Cycle is the band’s best album. It most certainly is not. But it does sit comfortably alongside those legendary 70s albums and doesn’t sound out of place. And coming from a period so late in the band’s career, that really is quite an achievement.

Anyway, I think that’s quite enough of my ramblings for this week’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday. So we’ll wrap things up with a very tasty live performance from the aforementioned Vicious Cycle tour.

May all your pillows be tasty, your gardens inclined and your puddles well jumped.