Nineteen Forever: 10 Essential Albums of 1975

1975. Smack in the middle of the Me Decade. President Gerald R. Ford was stumbling around the White House after taking the reins from Richard M. Nixon, who had made his Watergate-weary exit the previous year to slink back to his castle by the sea (not unlike mad King Lear). Former Nixon advisors John Mitchell, Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman were convicted and sentenced for their involvement in the Watergate coverup. The country was in a recession, and people were lining up for hours at the gas pumps due to an OPEC-imposed oil embargo.

And yet…were we not entertained? The top 5 highest-grossing films of the year (domestically) were Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shampoo, and Dog Day Afternoon. Saturday Night Live premiered in October (as NBC’s Saturday Night), hosted by a coked-out George Carlin. The top 5 TV shows were All in the Family, Laverne & Shirley, Maude, The Bionic Woman, and Rich Man, Poor Man. People were spending their hard-earned bucks on Pet Rocks (don’t ask). Those were heady days.

Yeah, I know. “OK, Boomer”.

I was all of 19 years old in 1975. That was the year I visited L.A. for the first time, while still living in Alaska. I went with a friend, a fellow music geek who had grown up there. He introduced me to his “holy trinity” of record stores: Tower Records on the Strip, Aron’s on Melrose (their sidewalk sales were legend), and of course, the original Rhino Records store on Westwood Boulevard. I went absolutely nuts with the vinyl hunting (I remember flying back north with about 150 LPs in tow). We didn’t have record stores like that in Fairbanks.

50 years later, I’m still listening to a lot of that music haul (as I write this, in fact). Does that point to the quality of the music, or simply an adherence to nostalgia? As I wrote last year:

“They” say that your taste in music is imprinted in your high school years. Why do you suppose this is? Is it biological? Is it hormonal? Or Is it purely nostalgia? According to a 2021 study, it may have something to do with “arousal, valence, and depth”. Say what?

Have you wondered why you love a particular song or genre of music? The answer may lie in your personality, although other factors also play a role, researchers say.

Many people tend to form their musical identity in adolescence, around the same time that they explore their social identity. Preferences may change over time, but research shows that people tend to be especially fond of music from their adolescent years and recall music from a specific age period — 10 to 30 years with a peak at 14 — more easily.

Musical taste is often identified by preferred genres, but a more accurate way of understanding preferences is by musical attributes, researchers say. One model outlines three dimensions of musical attributes: arousal, valence and depth.

“Arousal is linked to the amount of energy and intensity in the music,” says David M. Greenberg, a researcher at Bar-Ilan University and the University of Cambridge. Punk and heavy metal songs such as “White Knuckles” by Five Finger Death Punch were high on arousal, a study conducted by Greenberg and other researchers found.

“Valence is a spectrum,” from negative to positive emotions, he says. Lively rock and pop songs such as “Razzle Dazzle” by Bill Haley & His Comets were high on valence. Depth indicates “both a level of emotional and intellectual complexity,” Greenberg says. “We found that rapper Pitbull’s music would be low on depth, [and] classical and jazz music could be high on depth.”

Also, musical attributes have interesting relationships with one another. “High depth is often correlated with lower valence, so sadness in music is also evoking a depth in it,” he says.

“They” may be right…I graduated in 1974, and the lion’s share of my CD collection/media player library is comprised of (wait for it) albums and/or songs originally released between 1967-1982.

OK, enough with the science already. I just wanna dance. Here are my top 10 album picks of 1975, with an additional 10 appended (to temper the hate mail that I’m going to get anyway).

And just remember kids…it’s only rock ‘n’ roll.

T.N.T. – AC/DC

AC/DC is one of those bands that came roaring out of the gate with a such a perfect formula that it required no additional tweaking for the life of the product. Consequently, you only really need one of their albums in your collection to adequately represent the entire catalog. For me, it’s this 1975 Australian release (their second studio effort). It may be simple, balls-out four chord hard rock…but it’s the right four chords that fans (apparently) never tire of. There’s something elemental about their sound that compels you to crank it to “11” and scream along with no inhibitions (my neighbors hate me). R.I.P. Bon Scott and Malcolm Young.

Choice cuts: “It’s A Long Way to the Top”, “Rock and Roll Singer”, “Live Wire”, “T.N.T.”.

Ambrosia-Ambrosia

I imagine this choice may raise a few eyebrows, as most casual listeners likely (and understandably) primarily associate Ambrosia with well-worn Adult Contemporary radio staples like “How Much I Feel”, “You’re the Only Woman”, and “You’re the Biggest Part of Me”. However, their eponymous 1975 debut, while definitely sporting a slick L.A. studio veneer, could easily be cross-filed in the “prog rock” section. Led by gifted singer-songwriter-guitarist David Pack, the quartet delivers a strong set with chops musicianship and lovely harmonies

Choice cuts: “Nice, Nice, Very Nice”, “Time Waits for No One”, “Holdin’ on to Yesterday”, “Drink of Water”.

Futurama – Be-Bop Deluxe

Formed in the UK in the early 70s by eclectic (and prolific) guitarist-singer-songwriter Bill Nelson, Be-Bop Deluxe defied categorization, flitting between art-rock, electronica, glam and prog. This 1975 release (their sophomore effort) is no exception, and chock full of great tunes. Nelson’s solo career (under various monikers) began in the 70s and is still going strong (dozens and dozens of albums in his catalog…this guy is like Picasso, he never slows down!).

Choice cuts: “Maid in Heaven”, “Sister Seagull”, “Music in Dreamland”, “Jean Cocteau”.

Blow By Blow – Jeff Beck

Like all great artists, guitar maestro Jeff Beck (who left us in 2023) was loathe to dawdle too long in a comfort zone; he never stopped exploring, pushing the boundaries of his instrument ever-further with each performance (whether on stage or in the studio). While he was generally relegated to the “rock” section, he could slide effortlessly from blues, boogie, and metal to funk, R & B, soul, jazz and fusion (more often than not, all within the same number). A perfect case in point is this outstanding instrumental album (which went platinum). Inspired by Billy Cobham’s influential 1973 album Spectrum, Beck set out to explore new textures and soundscapes within the realm of jazz-rock fusion. He enlisted legendary producer-arranger George Martin to helm the sessions (to great effect). Stevie Wonder contributed two songs.

Choice cuts: “She’s a Woman”, “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers”, “Thelonius”, “Freeway Jam”.

Marcus Garvey – Burning Spear

A highlight of the 1978 cult film Rockers is a scene featuring Winston Rodney warbling his haunting and hypnotic Rasta spiritual “Jah No Dead” a cappella, backed only by the gentle lapping of the nighttime tide. A true Rastafarian to the core, Rodney (aka Burning Spear) is on a par with Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley as one of the seminal artists of roots reggae music. This 1975 release is one of his best.

Choice cuts: “Marcus Garvey”, “Slavery Days”, “Red, Gold, and Green”, “Jordan River”.

HQ – Roy Harper

Idiosyncratic English folk-rocker Roy Harper has always marched to his own drum, but has nonetheless garnered a rep as a “musician’s musician”, noted as an inspiration by the likes of Ian Anderson, Pete Townshend, Kate Bush, and Led Zeppelin (the latter band gave him a musical nod with their song “Hats Off to Roy Harper”, which appeared on Led Zeppelin III). This 1975 effort is my favorite Harper album, which features guitarists Chris Spedding and David Gilmour. Gilmour was working on Pink Floyd’s Wishing You Were Here album in an adjoining studio, and (as the story goes) was returning a favor to Harper for contributing the lead vocal to “Have a Cigar”. Roger Waters apparently had developed a throat malady during the sessions, and Harper offered to step in (Waters reportedly still carries a grudge for allegedly not having been consulted-but then again he has a rep for being a cranky fellow).

Choice cuts: “The Game (Parts 1-5)”, “The Spirit Lives”, “When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease”.

Dreamboat Annie – Heart

After paying their dues playing the bar band circuit in Seattle and Vancouver B.C. for several years, gifted siblings Ann and Nancy Wilson and band mates built up a loyal following, becoming known for their searing Led Zeppelin covers. Dreamboat Annie is an astonishing debut, a perfect set of dynamic rockers that run the gamut from the whisper to the thunder. While the album was released in 1975, it was on a small label that didn’t have wide distribution, so it wasn’t until the chart success of the album’s first single release “Magic Man” in 1976 that the band really broke big nationally. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Choice cuts: “Magic Man”, “Crazy on You”, “Dreamboat Annie”, “Sing Child”.

Physical Graffiti – Led Zeppelin

With this sprawling two-record set, Led Zeppelin continued to draw from the well of Delta blues, English folk, heavy metal riffing and Eastern scales that had come to define their sound. This time out, however, they really pulled out all the stops…tossing in everything from country honk to pop and hard funk. And it worked; this is Zeppelin at their creative zenith (subsequent albums had their moments, but it was kind of a slow downhill slide from here).

Choice cuts: “Houses of the Holy”, “The Rover”, “Bron-Y-Aur”, “In My Time of Dying”, “Kashmir”, “Ten Years Gone”, “Night Flight”, “Black Country Woman”.

Mind Transplant – Alphonse Mouzon

Alphonse Mouzon made his bones playing drums in Larry Coryell’s Eleventh House, one of the pioneering jazz-rock fusion bands of the early-to-mid 70s (powering through impossible time signatures with dazzling speed and accuracy on a par with Billy Cobham’s work with The Mahavishnu Orchestra). For this (mostly instrumental) solo project, he recruited top flight players, including guitarists Lee Rittenour and Tommy Bolin. One of the best genre entries.

Choice cuts: “Mind Transplant”, “Some of the Things People Do”, “Nitroglycerin”, “Golden Rainbows”,

Horses – Patti Smith

Being a bit ahead of its time in many ways, Patti Smith’s debut album has aged like a fine wine. Backed by minimalist musical arrangements, Smith’s poetry (sometimes recited, sometimes sung) is by turns raw, confessional, and enigmatic, but compelling at every turn. Some of the cuts border on invocations (the first time I heard “Birdland” I was mesmerized, but as soon as it ended I vowed to never again listen to it alone, in the dark). This is not background music.

Choice cuts: All of them. Bring a friend.