Album review

"Pussycat," John Phillips (Varese Sarabande) 3 stars





The estate of John Phillips is busier now than the Wolf King of LA was in his post-Mamas and the Papas career. The first 10 tracks of Pussycat" are the result of his 1976-77 collaboration with Rolling Stones Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood and Mick Taylor. Philips was in England to score the David Bowie film "The Man Who Fell To Earth." Additional recordings took place in New York. These recordings were supposed to be released via Rolling Stones Records. They never were, but came out in a newly mixed form as "Pay Pack and Follow" in 2001. The original 1978 mixes were found in 2003 and are now presented in the way they were presumably meant to be heard.

Too bad more didn't become of this partnership (both sides were partying like lunatics at the time) because Phillips' inherent way with a pop melody finds simpatico accomplices in the Stones guitar team, who give teeth to the pure pop craft of the material. "Oh Virginia" is a wonderful country melody where Phillips longs equally for his dancer wife and his place of birth. Guitarist Taylor, playing with Richards for the fist time since leaving the Stones, provides a raw and tasty country-rock solo. "Mr. Blue" should have been a huge hit in the 1970s. Driving but still at home in the soft-rock realm of that era, Phillips tells of the drug-fueled and jetset friend who might as well have been him. It's impossible to miss how close the rhythm is to "Under My Thumb," which appeared on The Stones' "Aftermath" in 1966. The chorus of "2001" (It's only 24 years/til the year 2000/and maybe everything here/will be so different then) sounds ridiculous now but it's got that unassailable melody that made so much of Phillips songcraft memorable. (Not to mention that the chorus is saved by some regal pedal steel.) Elsewhere, he turns a jaded and too-knowing eye to "Sunset Boulevard" and forecasts daughter Mackenzie's life on "She's Just 14," which gets a huge vocal assist from Jagger and boozily meanders along in the spirit of a barroom jam.
The bonus material consists of two outtakes from "The Man Who Fell to Earth" and three tracks that were not mixed in 1978 but are new mixes from the original recordings. The really interesting part of the disc ends with track 10 and these extras are more for diehards, even if "Feather Your Nest" rollicks along nicely.

These sessions probably could have been more had more sober heads prevailed - then again, maybe not. And there's certainly a quality that dates everything presented on the disc firmly in the mid-1970s. Yet it's an aural historical document at the very least. That at least a handful of tracks are genius is a bonus. The Papa John Phillips Presents series, of which this is the third, has so far made the argument that everything Philips recorded is worth putting out.

- Ray Hogan

- Ray Hogan can be reached at [email protected] or 964-2290.



http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/livingandhealth/ci_10376604

These tracks are certainly quite good, better than a lot of stuff that the Stones worked on at that period, it seems it's the same 5 as before though (10-2-3) ?

Many thanks for this notice!