Vanilla Fudge
Near the Beginning

Introduction:

The New Yorkers Vanilla Fudge were, in their heyday towards the end of the sixties, a sort of Dream Theater of that time: spectacular and innovative musicians but without adequate thematic depth, therefore useless or highly revered depending on the point of view, sensitivity, and musical priorities of those who approached them.

At the time, they were essentially the state of the art of rock in terms of instrumental skill. They applied their strong personality and executional dexterity primarily to the hard rock and rock blues genres, bending them to their virtuosic urgencies (inspired in this by Cream and Jimi Hendrix, especially), but also to the search for new sounds, new blends, spontaneous arrangements, psychedelic contaminations, and elaborate vocal harmonies.

However, everything was made decidedly futile by an equally extreme lack of conceptual direction, purpose, coupled with weak compositional inspiration... in short, they cared more about astonishing as performers and arrangers than as authors. No wonder their repertoire was filled with covers, with the constant artifice of making them as overblown and spectacular as possible.

There have always been, in the history of rock, bands "for musicians," for whom the first and sometimes even the last adjective that comes to mind is "good." People like Mothers of Invention, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Yes, Rush, Toto, the already mentioned Dream Theater. All these names are more or less possessed of other virtues as well, but for all of them, the particular skill and instrumental insistence stands out. Well, Vanilla Fudge was the first of these realities, followed and envied certainly not for the repertoire, but for how they played it. They were undeniably inspirers of people like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Grand Funk, basically the best of hard rock and the emerging proto-metal with the new seventies decade.

Even here in Italy, there were convinced admirers/imitators, and I'm referring to the New Trolls especially: their "La prima goccia bagna il viso" is an shameless search for the atmospheres and intricate vocal and instrumental sequences characteristic of the four Americans in question. Led Zeppelin themselves, who during their first tour across the Atlantic at the beginning of 1969 opened for their concerts, took valuable lessons in skill and naturalness on stage. John Bonham, in particular, was very careful not to miss a gesture from their drummer Carmine Appice, obtaining several pointers to expand and perfect technique and equipment (he was particularly enthusiastic about Carmine's dexterity in grabbing the cymbals with his hands right after hitting them, stopping the sound to create unnatural and spectacular syncopations in the pieces' rhythm).

It all didn't last very long: three years from '67 to '69 and five records. In the long run, all the compliments from experts and the wide-eyed astonishment of those who had the fortune to see them play (such as at the usual Italian festival, this time not Sanremo but the Venetian "Gondola d'Oro"... but more on that later) couldn't compensate for the already mentioned conceptual shortcomings, and their era ended at the dawn of the seventies, with their mantle firmly grasped by others.

Context:

"Near the Beginning" is the fourth album of their career and dates back to early 1969. The Beatles (among their main inspirations, like for almost everyone) were still together and very productive at that point, surrounded by utmost respect and unaltered veneration as always, but by then no longer avant-garde, no longer gurus to chase and absorb completely but "only" consecrated masters and pioneers to be considered, but no longer just hinging entirely on their words and deeds.

The panorama of popular music around the Beatles had indeed irreversibly expanded in those last years: from the few rivals struggling to keep up with their level (Stones, Beach Boys, Who, Dylan), it had moved to a nice crowd of new avant-gardes: Cream, Doors, Mothers, Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Zeppelin, Creedence... and also Vanilla Fudge, who however couldn’t manage to put together at least one super record, a masterpiece capable of elevating them to an important and lasting role over time, as happened to all the others.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Even this work, despite being among their most accomplished, cannot rise to the ranks of the unmissable, being interesting, pleasant, softly explanatory of how avant-garde rock music was made and recorded at the time, but nothing fundamental or memorable. The string of groups listed earlier was doing, or had already done, much else to earn eternal glory. The virtuosic Vanilla Fudge here found no better, after filling the first side with three extended and organic compositions (only one of their own making), than to resolve the second with a long live jam session of over twenty-three minutes, naturally tediously hopeless.

Album Highlights:

Of the four single episodes present on the record, two are strong, fascinating, and successful, the other two much less so.

Let's start with "Some Velvet Morning," the track that made them known even in Italy. Speaking of Venice: this "Gondola d'Oro" was the prize at stake in that mythical "International Festival of Light Music," practically at the time the number three event in importance in Italy (being the number two the Disco per l’Estate and the number one the universally famous Sanremo Festival)... in short, it was the usual Italian kermesse with the fashionable presenter of the time and with the not negligible virtue of being live, without playback.

Well, in 1969 someone invited Vanilla Fudge to compete in Venice... unknown American outsiders whose arcane commercial convenience destined to this unexpected landing among us. When it’s their turn, they resolutely hook their instruments to the amplifiers and blast without further ado in front of the astonished audience, well-thinking and song-oriented, over nine minutes of this highly psychedelic proto-progressive hard rock suite, derived from an ethereal and harmless little song published a couple of years earlier by its author, one Lee Hazlewood, in duet with Nancy Sinatra, daughter of Frank.

Text obscure to the point of insipidness as mandatory in psychedelia, slow and hypnotic lullaby... the Vanilla Fudge turn it inside out compared to the original with full-blown instrumental plenitudes, guitar strings pulled to the breaking point and distorted bass, gospel/liturgical choruses in four voices, and handfuls of Hammond organ waves.

The spectators, unprepared for such energy and power, in short for real rock not the soft kind of Little Tony, Celentano, Rokes, and Caselli, remain petrified in astonishment while the "good presenter," namely the ignorant Mike Bongiorno, is all ruffled because those four unknown brutes are making him look bad, with all that "noise." Indeed, after the Mino Reitanos and Johnny Dorellis accompanied by groomed orchestra members all dressed the same, with suit pants pressed and jackets embroidered, these four instrument bashers in jeans and floppy t-shirts appear as if landed from Mars.

And the Festival jury rewards them! The ignorant one hands them, reluctantly, this blessed Gondola d’Oro... one of the four tucks it under his arm, they thank and leave, and no one will ever see them again in our parts. But their small, great contribution to the cause of rock in Italy is now an accomplished fact: the broadcast is live on the RAI first channel and who knows how many kids that night instantly changed their musical tastes. The response is remarkable and the song enters the Italian Hit Parade for a few weeks, so different from all the others that accompany it on the chart. Pioneers!

The studio version on the record is more or less the same as that evening in Venice in terms of structure, clearly less powerful, urgent, and aggressive. Lasting over seven minutes, it is undoubtedly something unique and well distinguishable from any other song, probably the career high point of the group if only for originality. Thanks again to Vanilla for this spoonful of rock poured onto the still almost unspoiled Italian scene of 1969.

The other notable episode, precisely the only one signed by a group member and specifically by the paisà Carmine Appice, is the somewhat long and articulated "Where Is Happiness," a sort of progressive psychedelic hard rock suite that resolves a harsh and metallic instrumental opening, blatantly borrowed from Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets," with a churchly organ arpeggio, also good to support the characteristic muffled singing of the organist Mark Stein, later joined by others for the usual gospel/liturgical choirs.

The piece extends further into a vehement unison duet between guitar and organ, stuff at the time completely avant-garde and therefore precursor to the numerous prog-rock rides that will take place shortly thereafter, those between Howe and Wakeman, between Blackmore and Lord, between Banks and Hackett, to name a few. The guitar is left free to improvise on the chord sequences of the keyboard with the galloping rhythm until its catharsis constituted by shrill and lyrical notes over now quiet, now staccato, now arpeggiated chords. All in an intense scent of the late sixties, of dawn of instrumental rock, of the beginning of the most vigorous and fruitful era for this music.

The Rest:

The rest... small fry! The opening "Shotgun" is a Cream-style rock blues with the same stubborn instrumental persistence: wah-wah pedal as if it were raining, busy drum breaks, short and broken blues phrases shouted by drummer Appice, a much more bluesy and much less psychedelic animal than his organist as the rest of his career will widely demonstrate. Basically bombastic and tedious bluesy rock, energetic but formulaic, "cliché-ridden."

The final piece "Break Song," then, more than twenty-three minutes constituting as already mentioned the entire second side of the original LP, is a pure filler, nothing more than a live jam session developing from a brief choral theme then reprised in closure, jazz-style. In between, everything and more: guitar improvisations on supported boogie rhythm, subsequent ultra-distorted and blasting bass solo, subsequent liquid right-hand skirmishes on the Hammond keys, accented to perfection by that drummer who already at twenty-two was intimidating. Followed by a little singing in slow old blues style ("Babe, babe, babe..." etc.), as well as the inevitable tedious drum solo, garnished with the mandatory slowdowns and subsequent accelerations, and to conclude an orgasmic and clamorous finale.

Final Judgment:

A non-essential record but... useful, a clear and explanatory page on how music was made at the time, and little else. With the added value constituted, as already explained, by the peculiar and fascinating atmosphere of "Some Velvet Morning" and especially "Where Is Happiness," a song to which I am particularly attached because in the early seventies it was continually broadcast on wire radio.

I was a very young kid at the time... At home, we did not have this blessed wire diffusion however the radio's second program, at a certain hour in the evening, more or less after eleven o'clock, would connect with the "fifth channel" of this wire diffusion for almost an hour, until the midnight news. At that hour the wire broadcast program was called "Quaderno a Quadretti" and was the only one, among all the others that cyclically followed one another, proposing pop and rock music, avant-garde English and American music.

Well, almost every evening I would find myself in bed in my little room, with the radio under the pillow set to the minimum volume, listening to that dozen pieces of my beloved music, then turning off the device at the news’ arrival and falling asleep. The playlist obviously changed every evening, but numerous songs often recirculated... the Rai programmer perhaps did not have a vast record library to draw from or maybe had his tastes or his laziness, I don’t know.

But I do know that in this way I had my first contacts with dozens of memorable groups and songs that even today I carry with me, among them the aforementioned "Where Is Happiness," pearl of this four-star album by the legendary Vanilla Fudge, a group of virtuoso players lacking conceptuality, but honest and likable.

On this last note, I quote a statement by Carmine Appice: "At the beginning of 1969 the Led Zeppelin arrived in the United States opening our concerts and... they paved us! But it was right this way... a month after their arrival we were the ones opening their concerts! We were good, but someone stronger than us, more intense than us, more powerful and concrete than us had to come, and it was good and right that it was them." Thank you, paisà, you are a gentleman!