Albums that became heralded as masterpieces years after release

Because Rolling Stone said it was album of the year even though Captain Fantastic got the feature review.

 

I'm guessing Elton got over it somehow.

 

I don't think anything could take the wind out of Elton's sails in 1975. It was the absolute peak of his popularity. He was playing in Dodger Stadium, on the cover of Time Magazine, had two albums that debuted at number one and an amazing number of classic singles that were riding the very top of the charts (Lucy and the Sky with Diamonds, Philadelphia Freedom, Someone Saved My Life Tonight, Island Girl, Grow Some Funk of Your Own/Feel Like a Bullet and Pinball Wizard). Bruce got a huge amount of hype (including his own Time cover), but there really was no comparison.

 

^^^THIS^^^

Elton's popularity would soon wane (as it certainly would have to), but it really had nothing at all to do with the new popularity of any other artist, let alone Bruce Springsteen's. And certainly had nothing to do with album reviews in Rolling Stone.

 

The RS review had a full page cartoon that was probably commissioned months before anyone had heard the album. The review was pretty half hearted in comparison to the Springsteen which was over the top positive.

 

OK. Still not getting how this took the wind out of Elton's sales.

Did it affect sales of Captain Fantastic? Were there fans who were thinking of buying it but thought otherwise when they read that it was really Born To Run that Rolling Stone thought was the album of the year?

 

Elton John was setting this album up as a classic. It was hyped enough to get the feature review in RS yet it received an indifferent review while the very next album reviewed was declared album of the year.

 

Still not getting how Born To Run had any effect on Captain Fantastic or Elton John one way or the other. Unless we are only ranking albums in order of how they were reviewed in Rolling Stone, what difference would the review of one album in the magazine have on another?

I suppose it may have affected your opinion of the album or your decision to go out and buy it, but I'd be pretty sure you were just about the only person in the world for whom that would have been an issue.

They weren't even appealing to the same fan base, really.

 

Elton was on top of the world in 1975 and no one cared if Rolling Stone's snarky reviewers liked his music or not. Their criticism was just inevitable backlash after he became a Superstar. Everyone knows it is cool to get behind a new, up and coming artist and then turn against them once the masses adore them. If Rolling Stone reviews were so important to his career trajectory as you suggest, he never would have peaked in 1975. I already posted how they were trying to nuke him on Caribou the previous year. Didn't work. In other words, the Rolling Stone reviews were irrelevant.

And yes, Captain Fantastic is/was a bonafide classic.

 

"But the question remains — is Elton John something more than a great entertainer? I'm not sure. For one thing, despite his ability to sound profound, he seldom projects a tangible personality. After so many albums and tours, few people have any sense of him at all. And for all his productivity and enthusiasm, he remains a largely passive figure, the creator of music that one can get comfortable with but which is never challenging or threatening.

Elton John can be a master of the sleight of hand. The arrangements make it seem like there are substantial melodies underneath the tracks — but almost nothing demands repeated listenings. Similarly, he always sounds like he's singing up a storm, but his voice glosses over the material, reducing most things to an uninteresting sameness".


Jon Landau must have drawn the short straw. Grail Marcus got to review Born to Run

 

I understand. Born To Run got a better review in the same issue of RS than did Captain Fantastic. I believed you the first time you said so.

What I don't understand is how this "took the wind out of Elton's sails".

Again---who cared? Did Elton care? Did his fans? Was anyone at the time (or ever) sitting around comparing Elton with Bruce or those albums against each other?

How did this take the wind out of his sales? Are you imaging he was sitting somewhere devastated when the review came out? That he was really hoping he'd out perform Bruce in the minds of the RS critics?

But I will admit to being impressed you actually know the names of people who wrote record reviews for Rolling Stone 40 years ago.

Somebody was actually named "Grail"?

 

I think the first thing I learned when I started buying albums in the early 70's was to ignore whatever the music press critics said and judge things for myself...

 

Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique

 

We used to get US Rolling Stone in the school library and in Australia Elton John was like a god (they played CFATBDC right through, without commercials on the top rock station in Melbourne it was considered such an important release) so I was interested to read the review of his new album that was supposed to be a 'return to form' after the 'lazy' (Elton's word) Caribou album. So I opened the magazine and saw a full page Rolling Stone style cartoon of Elton followed by a rather halfhearted review. The very next album reviewed that fortnight was Born to Run (I'd only heard of Bruce because they played a song on the local album show which got compared to Layla) which was reviewed in typical OTT Grail Marcus style and was considered the album of the year (in was September so AOTY was pretty relevant). In my opinion Elton's people probably pushed for the feature album position (and even if they didn't more people in 1975 would have picked up RS to read about Elton than Bruce) and it totally backfired.

 

That was considered pretty classic at the time it was released. Or certainly was within a year or two.

 

How did it backfire?

The album was the first album in history to debut at #1 in the US. It went on to sell over 3 million copies. It kept his career going strong enough that his next album was the 2nd album in history to debut at #1 in the US. Where was the backfire? Do you really think Elton John was much concerned with getting a good review in Rolling Stone? Like you hint at, which album got the 'featured' review was probably more a function of which review was likely to move more magazine copies than anything else. My recollection is that spot was usually just reserved for the 'big' release of the issue. It was rarely the best review of the issue.

Maybe kids in Australia paid much more attention to Rolling Stone reviews than did us kids over here. I MAY have read the review at the time? I don't remember (and would apparently remember it incorrectly anyway...lol) If I did read it, it certainly didn't have any effect on my decision to buy the album or how much I liked it.

 

The review in Australian Rolling Stone would been by a local writer and it would have been way positive. We were lucky to get the US edition in our school library.



The BTR review was so OTT I went out and bought the damn thing. It was one of the last albums on the old orange CBS label. During it's chart run the new 'sunburst' label emerged.

 

"lucky" to get a bad review of "Captain Fantastic"?

Whoever gave that album a bad review was an idiot.

 

Jon Landau wrote the review. He's the guy who said “I have seen rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

Richard Goldstein's 'bad' review of Sgt Pepper is the only review that's ever quoted.

 

They both sound like idiots to me. Even IF one of them also happened to be a Springsteen fan.

 

All things Nick Drake.

 

It definitely wasn't considered a classic at the time of release, but rather it was greeted as either a major disappointment or as a major "WTF is this?" Within a pretty short time after release it could be had as a cutout cassette for $1.99 - and this was when cassettes were outselling vinyl and CDs by a wide margin. I dont know what the CD or vinyl (if it was released on vinyl) versions were selling for back then because I never sought it out - on any format. But cheap drill-hole cutout cassettes seemed to find me everywhere I went to buy music for a couple years after release. Not until after another album or two had been released did I see a non-cutout regular priced copy on cassette.

Even the single chart placings are telling:

Fight For Your right To Party from Licensed To Ill US Billboard #7
Hey Ladies from Paul's Boutique #36 Billboard

It was also their lowest charting album ever until "The Mix Up" which I havent heard but according to wikipedia "The Mix Up is an all instrumental album which is reason enough to not be surprised it stole the prize from Paul's Boutique becoming their new lowest ever charting album.

Their next album after Paul's Boutique charted slightly higher, but it took until the one after that for them to hit #1 in 1994 so I would guess that's about the time Paul's Boutique had started its rehabilitation - about five years after release.

But that's popularity. What were the reviews like at the time? I have no idea.

 

Maybe the two critics who actually heard them did. But to the vast majority of people, they were completely unknown. This was a group that nobody had ever heard about until they'd disbanded. Their stature has steadily grown with each passing year. Chart positions show the group made no commercial impact until their last single, and subsequent compilations and reissues far outsold the original LPs: JOY DIVISION | full Official Chart History | Official Charts Company

That tells me that either not many had heard of them back in their day, or not many cared. Or both.

If you look hard enough, you can find praise for just about any album as a "masterpiece" upon initial release. The question is, how many agree at the time vs a decade or three later.

 

Those are valid points. Part of what makes it a masterpiece in my mind is its ambition and the fact that he didn't have the structure he wanted (the rights to 1984). I like the fact that it's rambling rather than a neat package. Often Bowie appeals to me least when it's obvious he had a very clear plan going in to the project. But I can't argue with the critical reception being what it is.

 

Those are valid points. Part of what makes it a masterpiece in my mind is its ambition and the fact that he didn't have the structure he wanted (the rights to 1984). I like the fact that it's rambling rather than a neat package. Often Bowie appeals to me least when it's obvious he had a very clear plan going in to the project. But I can't argue with the critical reception being what it is.