Creem – America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine, Reviewed Issue By Issue – November 1975 (Volume 7, Number 6)
The most interesting piece in the November 1975 issue of Creem is in interview with Roger Daltrey, where he felt the need to respond to a Pete Townshend interview. Daltrey, “I’ve never read such a load of bullshit in my life. To be perfectly honest, it really took a lot of my Who energy out reading that…I think Townshend has lost a lot of respect from that article. He’s talked himself up his own ass.” Those two guys either really didn’t like each other or they thought that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had perfected playing out band drama with the press.
In the cover feature, Rod Stewart seemed gleeful about the imminent breakup of the Faces. Rod, “If we do bust up there’s gonna be no bloody farewell tour. It’ll end in punch up. We’ll have the fight televised and THAT will be our farewell tour, kicking the shit out of each other.”
In “Rock ‘n’ Roll News” we learned that Peter Gabriel had left Genesis. The sound you just heard was Phil Collins’ future accountants uncorking champagne bottles. In her “Eleganza” column, Lisa Robinson wrote about the new scene happening at New York’s CBGB club (“Patti Smith, Television, the Ramones and perhaps the Talking Heads are evolving a totally new look, as well as a sound”).
The Creem Dreem was longtime Black Oak Arkansas associate/solo singer Ruby Starr. Was she smoking hot? Possibly. She died partially due to lung cancer at the age of 45.
Features:
Homeboys on the Range: Tuck’s Gonna Do It by Tom Dupree
Eagles: Fly Me, I’m Vacuous by John Milward
Neil Young: The Unwilling Superstar
Stephen Stills Grows Up by Lowell Cauffiel
Richard Furay: Hooked on the Holy Ghost by Kenny Weissberg
Who’s Last? Roger Daltrey Fights Back by Tony Stewart
Rod Jumps Teams: Can He Cut It in the American League by Barbara Charone
Faces Huddle for Defensive Play: It’s Last Bash on the Gridiron by Lester Bangs
Ritchie Blackmore: Why I Quit Deep Purple by Steve Rosen
Tommy Bolin: Why I Joined Deep Purple by Jeff Burger
Tom Dupree, who would later be an executive editor at HarperCollins, had a good time interviewing Toy Caldwell, a candid good ol’ boy. In a think piece reprinted from the “Chicago Reader,” John Milward grappled with simultaneously admiring and being repulsed by the Eagles. Neil Young did a lengthy interview about his “Tonight’s the Night” album (“It’s custom made for nighttime”) and previewed his next record “about the Incas and the Aztecs.”
Quotable Quotes:
Lou Reed on Lester Bangs, “He’s the best PR agent I have. The worse things he writes about me, the better it is. If he ever started writing good things about me…it would be the kiss of death.”
Toy Caldwell, “There is no such thing as an original fuckin’ lick. I’ll steal a lick from any motherfucker I see, and anybody who denies that is a lyin’ motherfucker.”
Toy Caldwell, “This here feller’s from the CREEM magazine. And I have told him some shit, boy, this article’s gonna look weird.
John Milward, “The Eagles have bound me into a critical quandary: I admire and enjoy their music and also detest them as representatives of the transient vacuum of pop culture.”
Neil Young, “I think ‘Harvest’ was probably the finest record that I’ve made. But that’s a really restricting adjective for me. It’s really FINE.”
Stephen Stills, “On the one hand I see the danger of dope and on the other hand I’m part of the heathen defense league.”
Richard Furay, “No matter what you may have heard about (Buffalo) Springfield being a band of many voices, the truth is that it was Stephen’s band.”
Roger Daltrey, “Every suggestion I make I get laughed at. But I can live with that. I don’t care if I’m just the singer anymore.”
Daltrey, “I don’t want to be in a group with anybody else, although if I could choose three friends to go about with it wouldn’t be those three.”
Rod Stewart, “The world is a lot bigger than Great Britain and the Faces. A lot bigger.”
Lester Bangs on Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” album, “If I seem to OD on superlatives, it’s only because ‘Born to Run’ demands them; the music races in a flurry of Dylan and Morrison and Phil Spector and a little of both Lou Reed and Roy Orbison, luxuriating in them and an American moment caught at last, again, and bursting with pride.”
Nick Tosches in the album review section, “Asleep at the Wheel are not a trendy group. If they ever did a concept album, it would probably be about falling off a bar stool. But they know what they’re doing, they do it well and ‘Texas Gold’ is an American classic.”
Summary: Just heaps of band drama in this issue from the Faces to the Who to Deep Purple to the Stones…
Grade: A-
Latest price on eBay: $22.77 or “best offer.”
