Chapter 13- Legend… and it’s a hit!

Legend

The Poco album that wasn’t really Poco… or was it?

Recording Date- 1978

Release Date- November 1978

Label- ABC

Length- 37:54

Personnel-

Paul Cotton- Guitar, vocals

Rusty Young- Steel guitar, guitar, vocals

Charlie Harrison- Bass, vocals

Steve Chapman- Drums

Michael Boddicker- Synthesizer

Steve Forman- Percussion

Tom Stephenson- Keyboards

Jai Windig- Keyboards

Phil Kenzie- Saxophone

David Campbell- String arrangements

Producer- Richard Sanford Orshoff

Recording Engineer- Joe Chiccarelli, David Henson assisted by Jom Hill

Album Graphic designer- Phil Hartman

Manager- John Hartmann

 

The band had been touring in 1977 in support of the Indian Summer album and the appearance at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was recorded as the planned 13^th Poco album entitled The Last Roundup. However, ABC Records caught wind of the fact that Schmit was leaving to join Eagles as a replacement (once again) for Randy Meisner on bass and vocals. ABC cancelled the record.

The whole purpose of recording The Last Roundup was to counteract the damage done by Epic Records with their release of Live (the Horse’s Ass album) on top of the release of Rose of Cimarron. But ABC wanted to punish Eagles and Schmit by holding back the more recent touring material. Richie Furay had made a guest appearance on the recording in an effort to boost its appeal. But ABC didn’t see fit support their own artists and screwed themselves in the process. More about The Last Roundup when it finally shows up in the Poco catalogue in 2004, some 27 years later.

Discouraged, the three remaining members (Grantham, Cotton, and Young) agreed to take a break and figure out their next move. Young and Cotton formed a new group, appropriately named the Cotton-Young Band (not to be confused with the Stills-Young Band) and recorded this album. ABC, by rights of contract, acquired the album and decided to continue the use of the Poco. The album scored well with the hits, “Crazy Love” and “Heart of the Night” and Poco had their largest commercial success to date. There was just one big glitch in the personnel department. George Grantham had agreed to a break but he didn’t agree to quit. Grantham found himself on the outside looking in having been replaced by Steve Chapman without ever having quit the band.

ABC was sold to MCA Records and many feel that ABC used Legend as a way to prove their worth to MCA. The album had a more “commercial” sound and had suddenly become marketable in the “soft rock and pop” category.

Legend also marked the disappearance of the old Poco “horseshoe logo” that hadn’t been seen on several recent Poco album covers. The new graphic, contributed by Phil Hartmann (who also designed the “horseshoe”) featured a line drawing of a “running horse”. This became the new logo for the band and remains to this day (2018) as the overriding image when marketing the name of the band.

 

Just nine tracks long, Legend is all Paul Cotton and Rusty Young.

Track Listing

1. “Boomerang” – (Paul Cotton) (3:48) Coming out of the gate with the same kind of “Joe Walsh groove” that appears on “Life in the Fast Lane”, ”Boomerang” sound like nothing you have heard from Poco in any recording. There are lots of guitar effects and the same kind of blistering lead licks that many songs of 1978 featured. Paul and Rusty fall into rhythm with newcomers Stephen and Charlie and give Poco a harder rock edge than we ever thought this “country rock” band could produce.
2. “Spellbound” – (Rusty Young) (5:13) How intimidating must it have been for Charlie Harrison to step into a position previously held by the like of Randy Meisner, Jim Messina, and Timothy B. Schmit? Each of them brought a distinctive sound to Poco as bass guitarist. Charlie shows on this number that he can bring the same kind of innovation and unique qualities to this ballad. Suitable for stargazing with your beau, “Spellbound” floats along gently and takes the listener downstream and out into the night complete with crickets, lush sounds, and moodiness. Once again, this song fits right into the mood of the late 1970’s with a “softer” touch. Poco explores new ground with this ballad. And Rusty comes up with a new niche for himself.
3. “Barbados” – (Paul Cotton) (3:31) I have to make a confession here… I wasn’t familiar with any version of “Barbados” other than what appears on Bareback at Big Sky. I guess I missed the original on this recording. It has often been written that Cotton’s song provided the inspiration for the Beach Boys hit “Kokomo”. I’m not sure how that occurred. There is nothing here that is as much “pop/kitsch” as the Beach Boys. Driven by Harrison’s bass line, the song has a great hook. The song is so far past anything the Beach Boys wrote in the entire 1970s. Paul gets into an entirely different groove… and pulls it off beautifully.
4. “Little Darlin’ “ – (Rusty Young) (3:47) Hearkening back to those earlier albums where percussion played a large part of the “Poco sound”, Rusty taps into that vein again. Steve Forman had appeared on Head Over Heels and Indian Summer and was a long time percussionist for REO Speedwagon. Forman can be heard on literally dozens of albums and brings his distinctive talents back for a reprise on this youthful Young ditty. There are plenty of critics who say that “Little Darlin’ “ lacks the depth of previous Poco offerings but I find it bright and a little bit romantic. Who wouldn’t want to be “the sun, the moon, and the stars shining”? There’s nothing wrong with feeling good about your sweetheart!
5. “Love Comes Love Goes” – (Rusty Young) (3:55) A lot of criticism directed at this entire recording says “Poco sounds too slick, too produced… they sold out!” I disagree and I offer this song as proof. Rusty’s lead vocals almost reach Furay like intensity. He is saying nothing different than Paul Cotton expressed in “Bad Weather”. And there is another entirely new element introduced musically for Poco. How many other Poco tunes have a saxophone part? The band is trying to branch out and I think it succeeds nicely.
6. “Heart of the Night” – (Paul Cotton) (4:49) Wow… wow… wow. Paul hits the perfect notes with this composition. I had read that Poco gave up Rusty and the pedal steel on this record. What a mistaken impression! Rusty’s pedal is the perfect counterpoint to Paul’s lead guitar. And Charlie and Stephen provide a driving rhythm section. Stephen’s use of the floor tom drum to sound like a tympani on the course puts a great exclamation point. And once again, the use of the saxophone, along with strings arranged by David Campbell, fill out this tune with a lush, layered sound not heard from Poco in a long time.
7. “Crazy Love” – (Rusty Young) (2:55) One guitar, three voices… that’s all it takes. After all these years of being the best steel/pedal guitar player who happened to sing and play dobro, mandolin, banjo, Rusty found it. That song that we all wished we could write. The perfect anthem from a broken heart… “Count the stars in a summer sky that fall without a sound, and then pretend that you can’t hear these teardrops coming down.” Just once… just once I’d like to write something so simple, so poetic, and so touching… just once.
8. “The Last Goodbye” – (Rusty Young) (5:40) I’m not sure about this tune from Rusty. There is an allegory here that I just can’t seem to get a handle on… usually the lyrics give me a clue. But “The Last Goodbye” doesn’t reveal who exactly is singing… the guy or the woman who is saying goodbye. The song is pretty but I don’t understand it. Can anyone help me?Well, let’s try this… when you can’t figure out what a song means, let’s just talk music… the opening of “The Last Goodbye” sounds so much like the other offerings of the late 1970s. You can hear the intro with piano repeated by the likes of Air Supply, Journey, Hall and Oates, and so on and so on. I think this is where the critics get the sense that Poco were stepping away from their country roots and going for a softer “pop rock” sound. The track is very heavy on drums and vocals. The layering of vocals on the end of the tune and the run out of the song echo the music scene of the day. And I am not saying that like it is a bad thing. Poco was trying to play the game and ten studio albums into their run, why not? And it worked. This was the first time the larger listening audience heard a band with a 10 year history!
9.  
10. “Legend” ­– (Rusty Young) (4:16) Is the name of the new “running horse” logo character Thunder Road? What is the legend in “Legend”? Once again, I am confused by the lyrics. But the tune seems to mirror the opening track “Boomerang” for a driving beat and a sharper edge to the Poco sound. The beat sounds like the gallop of a “running horse” and the tune finishes out an album of “new” Poco sounds. Heavy on rock guitar licks, Paul, Rusty, Charlie, and Stephen bring a whole new dimension to the genre “country rock”.

“Legend” was the band’s first “hit” album. Carried by the strength of “Heart of the Night” and “Crazy Love” (which charted at #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent seven weeks at #1 on the Adult Contemporary charts. The song was also name the #1 Adult Contemporary Hit of 1979).
“Heart of the Night” peaked at #20 on the Hot 100 and was featured as a live performance by the band for the “No Nukes: The Muse Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future” in September of 1979.

So there it was… the “new” Poco with Grantham unceremoniously dropped from the band. Grantham recovered nicely becoming the drummer for Ricky Skaggs. A “new” Poco that had two hits on the singles charts and eventually “Legend” was certified as “gold, which gave it the distinction of the first Poco album to be sell enough copies to gain the designation. Just as “Legend” was being released, Kim Bullard joined the band on keyboards. Bullard was a well-known studio musician having worked with Janis Ian and many others. Eventually, Bullard became a significant member of the band that provided backing for Elton John. Bullard played keyboards for Crosby, Stills, & Nash and Art Garfunkel.

The newly refreshed Poco was signed by ABC but they were in the process of being sold to MCA Records and used the strength of the two Poco hits and the gold album “Legend” to help prove their worth to MCA. The album was reissued on the MCA label. In an interview with urockradio.net, for their series “Original 70s Soundtrack”, Young stated (about “Crazy Love”) “for the first big hit- the only really huge hit Poco’s had- [to be] a song that I wrote and sang is pretty ironic. When the band started… I didn’t sing and I didn’t write. I had great teachers… Richie, Neil, Stephen… Jimmy [Messina] taught me a lot… I just had these great teachers that I was around.”

Poco was reborn… again. And this time, they not only survived but flourished. Too bad it was after Jimmy, Richie, Randy, Tim, and George. But that is the way the record spins. Poco had finally achieved a modicum of success with their 11 studio and 2 live albums. Finally.

 

Chapter 12- Too Good and Too Short! LIVE! by Poco

Label- Epic

Recorded- November 1974

Release Date- April 3, 1976

Length- 38:21

Genre- Country rock

Personnel-

Paul Cotton- guitar, vocals

Rusty Young- steel guitar, banjo, guitar, vocals

Timothy B. Schmit- bass guitar, guitar, vocals

George Grantham- drums, vocals

Mark Henry Harman- keyboards

Producer- Poco, Mark Henry Harman

Recording Engineer- Mark Henry Harman

Live! by Poco (sometimes referred to as the “the horse’s ass album” because of the placement of the Poco logo) is a seven track album culled from tour recordings made for Epic Records shortly after Cantamos was recorded.

The band had suddenly lost Richie Furay. The other members had to make up for that loss and they did so by Timothy taking over the vocals done by Furay and Rusty took a much more involved part as a guitar player bring out his Gretsch Country Gentleman and standing up from the steel guitar stool.

Epic Records was still stinging from the loss of Poco on their label after the success of Head Over Heels. Poco had departed Epic after not getting what they felt was “proper support” for their recordings. By now, Eagles, over on Asylum Records, a subsidiary of Geffen, had snared Glyn Johns as their producer. Johns had already achieved success as the producer of Abbey Road and was guiding the Eagles into the pop stratosphere, mining the veins of country rock that Poco had first found and laid claim to, but were unable to exploit thanks to Epic’s halfhearted attempts at marketing.

Epic released Live at the same time as ABC Records released Rose of Cimarron.  This sowed confusion among fringe Poco fans as to which was the newest album, thus helping sales of Live (released April, 1976) and hurting sales of Rose of Cimarron (released May, 1976).

Track Listing

• Medley: Blue Water/Fool’s Gold/Rocky Mountain Breakdown (Paul Cotton, Rusty Young) 6:36 The album kicks off with another medley of classic Poco featuring Rusty on pedal steel. The “Blue Water” portion holds up well when compared to the studio work three years previous on the album Crazy Eyes (Epic,1973).  “Fool’s Gold” also gives Rusty a chance to alternate between pedal and banjo. The transition to “Rocky Mountain Breakdown” is smooth as well. Considering how jarring some medley’s can be (see previous reviews of Deliverin’), this is a good segue. Only problem for me is that RMB seems to slow down about halfway through and loses a little energy. I cannot tell you if this was truly the set opener, but it is a great album opener.

• Bad Weather (Paul Cotton) 3:50 Paul wrote this song sometime before joining Poco. It appeared on the first album with Paul, in the Poco catalogue (From the Inside, Epic, 1971). It rapidly became a crowd favorite when played live. The ballad gives the band an opportunity to prove that studio tricks are not used when recording Poco. The harmonies are genuine and Rusty can play live as well as he plays with multiple takes. Paul’s lead vocal is sweet and honest.

• Ride the Country (Paul Cotton) 7:41 Picked off the A Good Feelin’ to Know (Epic, 1972), once again Paul gets to show off his guitar licks and his vocals. Starting with a slow, cantering beat, it picks up with the instrumental and by the songs end, it is kicking it… kind of like a running horse wanting to be freed from the reins and allowed to just run.

• Angel (Paul Cotton) 5:14 From the album, Seven (Epic, 1974),  “Angel” is the third Paul Cotton composition in a row in this set. I was not a big fan of this tune on the studio recording and it really doesn’t reach out and grab me as I think a live recording should. Most concerts strive to keep the audience on its feet and rocking, but I wouldn’t be standing for this one, if I were in attendance. Maybe that was intentional, but personally, I go to concerts with a band like Poco to get amped up. Following “Ride the Country” on the recording with this choice just isn’t conducive to anything but sleep. As I stated before, I don’t know what the setlist was for the actual concerts, but I would have questioned my bandmates if this indeed was the performance order. Need to spur this old horse back into at least a trot from this snoozy performance…

• High and Dry (Rusty Young) 4:35 Rusty Young comes to the front with this choice from Cantamos (Epic, 1974). Cantamos was the follow-up to Seven and one of the few years that Poco released two albums in the calendar year. “High and Dry” holds up well as a live performance. Dual vocals in the verse and the whole band kicking in on the chorus as well as the instrumental work must have been a real workout on stage. One more example of how Poco provided audiences with concert performances of studio material that was pleasing and enjoyable.
• Restrain (Timothy B. Schmit) 5:13 The only Timothy B. Schmit composition in this live compilation is a track originally released on A Good Feeling to Know (Epic, 1972). Once again, to this listener, the choice was not the strongest for an album that already has two “slow movers”. Granted, Epic made the choices without input from the members of the band themselves. Producer credits go to Poco and Mark Henry Harman, which is rather misleading. It seemed that Epic was trying to showcase a live version of the double album The Very Best of Poco (this album has a sequined shirt version of the horseshoe logo and was culled from the Epic recordings.) As the only Schmit contribution, it is not the strongest choice. “Here We Go Again” is a much better showcase of Schmit’s writing but we don’t know if it was a part of the setlist during the tour. One just never knows…
• A Good Feelin’ to Know (Richie Furay) 5:12 A rollicking finish to this short album of live recordings has Timothy picking up the Furay vocal and Paul playing the guitar parts as Richie was not a part of the band by the time of this tour. The song does not suffer and truly shows the band as capable of continuing as a four piece.

 

I use several different methods to listen to the Poco recordings as I am writing these reviews. This time, I went back to the source material on the original studio recordings to make a comparison to the live versions. To me, the true test of a good band is how they can reproduce their studio work onstage and does it sound as good? Sometimes, it works and sometimes it doesn’t. In fact, the band Steely Dan refused to tour as they knew they could never duplicate the studio recordings on stage. It wasn’t until the 21^stcentury they decided it was okay to not sound as good as they did in the studio. The Beatles moved into the studio exclusively after 1966 as they knew the work they were doing on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band could never be replicated on stage.

That doesn’t seem to be the case here. Live! by Poco is a great album. If there is any single criticism, it doesn’t lie with the band or the performances. It has to do with the choice of material culled by Epic and the track listing. If indeed, there were full recordings of full shows, it would be very interesting to hear all the songs that weren’t included. I wonder if the full concert recordings still exist on master tapes at Epic Records or wherever the Epic archives are held.

I’d like to hear them. Wouldn’t you?