(Evel Knievel successfully jumping 19 cars—a world record—at the Ontario Motor Speedway, February 1971)
Welcome to what may be the most spectacular year of the 1970s! One of my earliest posts here listed the Rolling Stone year-end awards from 1968-1976, and in the 1971 awards, the magazine awarded three albums—Tapestry, What’s Going On, Who’s Next—the Album of the Year. Now, this was well before the era of impeccably groomed & ranked top 50 EOY lists, but it still seems like an appropriate choice—1971 holds the record on the AM site for most albums in the all-time top 100 (nine), including my favorite Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, T. Rex, and Who albums, as well as the #1 AM album of the decade. This is one of those years like 1967 or 1991 where quite a few albums could have been the runaway AM album of the year winner if it had been anything like a normal year.
Billboard's Best-Selling Album of 1971 in the United States: Various Artists – Jesus Christ Superstar
Billboard’s top single of 1971: Three Dog Night – Joy To The World
Biggest Hit Single of 1971 (Wikipedia, 1971 in Music): George Harrison – My Sweet Lord
This is all music from 1970
In less pleasing news for Mr. Gaye, the first Pazz & Jop awards go out for 1971 (published the following February). This is the only year that includes and merges a readers poll, and both the readers and critics pick Who’s Next for #1, while What’s Going On is entirely unranked, Sticky Fingers and Blue fare well at #2 and #9 in the merged totals, and Led Zeppelin IV scrapes #30 out of 30. As far as Black Sabbath’s Paranoid goes, released in the U.S. in January ’71, well, Rolling Stone cracked a joke in their 500 Greatest Albums book like, “Try going into a time machine and telling a critic from 1971 that he’d still have to write about Black Sabbath in 2005.” If you could imagine the P&J critics & readers submitting a 1971 list for this forum today, I’d bet their lists would look a bit different now. So keep looking out for those dead-last and unranked albums…
Most of my '70s picks are on this site already. Here's a few that aren't (plus Baba O'Riley).
Detroit Feat. Mitch Ryder - Rock and Roll
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mag6jxiHXXk
Stranger Cole - Crying Every Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSvMDL_iaaY
Jimi Hendrix - Angel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83OD6JTe5pg&feature=kp
***Some 1971 landmarks (good, bad, ugly, take your pick)***
Some of these are a preview for next year
---The (future) Eagles play together for the first time, backing Linda Ronstadt at a summer show at Disneyland.
---July: Jim Morrison and Louis Armstrong pass away a few days from each other. (If only I could find the Saturday Night Live picture with Val Kilmer and Tracy Morgan playing these two guys in the same band.)
---August 1: The Concert for Bangladesh takes place, the first mega-benefit concert (for refugees following both a cyclone and civil war). George Harrison blamed infamous Rolling Stones/Beatles manager Allen Klein for much of the money being held in escrow and not being sent until ten years later. (Klein received a jail sentence for tax evasion for defrauding the Concert for Bangladesh and UNICEF.)
---November: In an early example of Anglo-worldbeat, Paul Simon records “Mother and Child Reunion” in a new genre that he’s never heard of called reggae, after heading over to Kingston, Jamaica to attempt a ska version.
---December 4: Some stupid with a flare gun burns down the Montreux Casino.
