Love music (The Four Tops) (LP 42-43)

The Four Tops Keeper of the Castle (Vinyl - Probe, 1972) *****
The Four Tops Meeting of the Minds (Vinyl - Probe, 1974) *****

Genre: Soul

Places I remember: Marbecks Record Shop (stickers on the albums!)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: These songs instantly put a smile on my face - Love Music, Ain't No Woman, One Chain are just the heaviest hitters on two classic albums.




Gear costume: Keeper of the Castle bookends that album superbly. Midnight Flower on Meeting...Minds is another beautifully sung Four Tops effort.

Active compensatory factors: Yes, I gave these albums classic five star status!

You're probably wondering what's going on - The Four Tops is the group who had all those great hits of the sixties on Motown: I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch); Reach Out, I'll Be There; It's The Same Old Song; Baby, I Need Your Loving and on and on.

You're right, they are, but...the story doesn't stop there. By no means were they washed up as the seventies started.

When they moved to ABC-Dunhill/Probe, the hits kept coming and the quality did NOT diminish. In fact - as an album band - they only got better!!

Writer/producers Denis Lambert and Brian Potter took over the roles previously held by the immortal Holland/Dozier/Holland and did a mighty job.

They also allowed The Four Tops' social conscience to emerge. The cover painting to Keeper has a lovely mansion on the front cover. The back cover has a black American family living in a dilapidated version of the same mansion! 

Keeper of the Castle, and Love Music most successfully merge the social commentary with great music.

And then there's the singing! Levis Stubbs is in his usual peerless form but the harmonies also lock in right from the off. It's transcendent music!

Where do they all belong? Marvin Gaye and The Temptations.

Lord, we don't need another mountain (Bacharach/David) #117

Tom Clay 1 What The World Needs Now Is Love 2 Abraham Martin And John /The Four Tops Reach Out I'll Be there (Motown, Gold 51, ?) 

I think this piece of cynical Motown product came out in the late eighties, after The Four Tops had returned to Motown. Someone in the marketing department at EMI had a thought and here we are.

It's a weird combo - DJ Tom Clay's 1971 creation is paired with the sublime Levi Stubbs lead vocal from 1966. Go figure.

I remembered hearing the Clay song in the early seventies on the radio - must have been - there was no music TV, interweb, social media aside my friends at Mt Albert Grammar lending me stuff, so - must have been the radio.

As you know I'm a sentimental old fluff and growing up I was obsessed with American culture. I loved the Kennedys and Martin Luther King so this 'song' left a deep impression.

Of course MLK's dream speech creates goosebumps still and I love Edward Kennedy's eulogy that's included here along with the real time sounds of the assassinations.

The use of the Bacharach/David song is inspired. For years growing up I thought it was about the events. I interpreted the mountain in the title metaphorically for many years.

There is a really wistful melancholy aspect to the music that seemed perfect - still does.

Hidden gem: The official B side is the Four Tops song but I have the single filed in the F's because how can this song be side 2?? Impossible. Levi Stubbs is immortal and this Holland Dozier Holland song is a classic. 

The Four Tops are easily my favourite Motowners - as big as Hendrix, Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee, Miles, Coltrane and Chuck Berry as far as I'm concerned.