And then Russ Ballard emerged atop it all and the cake was baked, the whole concoction rose. That was “Hold Your Head Up.” The ethereal squeal of the intro followed by the pounding drums entranced you immediately, and then when the guitar riff was introduced, you were completely sold. And what they were looking for was instant smashes, tracks people would get on one listen and clamor to hear again. And free-form was history, the music was programmed. Now by 1972, every hamlet had an FM rock station. A year later, Three Dog Night” covered “Liar” and made it a hit, and that take is pretty good, but the dynamics, the ethereal sound, is absent.Īs for the second Argent album, “Ring of Hands,” a year later Three Dog Night included “Chained” in their 1972 LP, “Seven Separate Fools,” but it wasn’t a single and…I’d see Argent albums in the bins, but I never ever knew anybody who owned one.ġ972… Let me see, that summer also saw the release of “Thick as a Brick.” In the U.K., T.Rex was dominant, and David Bowie was exploding with “Ziggy Stardust,” never mind the debut of Roxy Music…but those acts took a long time to cross the pond.
The first album, the eponymous “Argent,” contained one of the best records of all time, “Liar.” Doubt me? Pull it up, the dynamics alone will close you. And the end result sounded nothing like the Zombies, but there was a certain magic, which eluded the public. In this case, the frontman was Russ Ballard, who was also the primary songwriter. Meanwhile, Rod Argent may have written “Time of the Season,” but Colin Blunstone was the frontman, the vocalist, then again all of the Zombies’ success occurred prior to the explosion of rock rags, back then most people hadn’t even heard of “Rolling Stone,” which might have launched in 1967 but truly didn’t hit critical mass until the seventies.īut Argent was a different band. They’d had legendary hits, but they were years before, except for “Time of the Season” from “Odessey and Oracle,” which Al Kooper rescued from the dustbin and made a hit after the band had broken up. No one was waiting for the band, today they would have gone out as the Zombies, just like Led Zeppelin started out as the New Yardbirds, sans name recognition you’re starting at zero. Argent released two albums to crickets before they broke through.
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