The 10 Albums That Made Me - The 70’s

Here’s a list, for anyone that’s interested, of the 10 albums that changed my life, from the 70’s. I’m a 70’s child, born in May 1970, so yes...here’s the records that still, to this day, mean so much to me. In no particular order.

Thin Lizzy - ‘Jailbreak’ (1976)


Before Def Leppard, to me, there was only Thin Lizzy and Queen. End of. The rest of the musical world could fall off a cliff and I’d pretty much still feel fulfilled.
A little let down by it’s production, maybe, but those songs shine out. And...what songs!?! ‘Jailbreak’, ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, ‘Angel From The Coast’, ‘Running Back’, ‘Emerald’, ‘The Cowboy Song’. Musically, Lizzy did the perilous balancing act of catchy yet rocking with some fantastic lyrics. Phil Lynott was a hero of mine. I even bought, later on, his books of poetry!

Queen - ‘Queen II’ (1974)


Mainly known for ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’, Queen’s first hit single, but also known as Axl Rose’s favourite Queen album. Mine too, Axl! It’s bonkers, quite progressive and rocks! The start of Brian’s instantly recognisable harmony guitar style and their layered backing vocals. Starts with the calm-before-the-storm that is ‘Procession’, hits ‘White Queen (As It Began)’, thrashes through ‘Ogre Battle’, goes bonkers on the ‘Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’, goes stately on ‘March Of The Black Queen’ and knocks it out of the park with the aforementioned ‘Seven Seas..’. Brilliant.

Deep Purple - ‘Machine Head’ (1972)


The album that gave us ‘Smoke On The Water’, for sure, but there’s more to them than just the one song, however great it is. Start off with ‘Highway Star’, one of the greatest album openers ever. There’s ‘Lazy’, ‘Space Truckin’’, ‘Maybe I’m A Leo’, ‘Pictures Of Home’, ‘Never Before’ etc. They missed a trick not putting ‘When A Blind Man Cries’ on it, but it is pretty wonderful anyways.

I was always a more melodic rock chick than those at school that liked Black Sabbath and such. I loved Jon Lords’ keyboard playing. Ritchie Blackmore? My favourite guitar player.

David Bowie - ‘Hunky Dory’ (1971)


Of course, I’d heard the singles - ‘Changes’ and ‘Life On Mars?’ - as they were on the radio throughout the 70’s, but it was only....god...in my 20’s...that I got the album. Astonishing.

Heart - ‘Dreamboat Annie’ (1976)


The start of my Heart journey, so to speak, was them being played on the Alan ‘Fluff’ Freedman radio slot on the BBC Radio 1. ‘Crazy On You’, I think was the 1st song I heard, with Nancy’s absolutely stop-this-6-year-old-dead-in-her-tracks acoustic guitar introduction to the song. Blown away!

Back in the days of taping off the radio, I taped all the heart stuff that I could get. ‘Magic Man’, more like Magic Band!

Kate Bush - ‘The Kick Inside’ (1978)


Her debut album, has the hit singles ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’. I remember her unique sound and those videos - there were 2, remember, for ‘Wuthering...’ - and also hearing that she wrote ‘The Man...’ When she was 12....for this 8 year old, at the time, I was thinking that stardom was only 4 years away! Lyrically? God knows what I was happily singing away to...not realising that the title track was about incest and pregnancy, that’s for sure! A startling album!

Fleetwood Mac - ‘Tusk’ (1979)


Alternative music added to the now-standard Fleetwood Mac sound. ‘Rumors’ was all over the radio when I was growing up, and this one was much more experimental. To this day, still my favourite ever FM album. It was the most expensive, at the time, record ever made. In today’s money, that’d be around $5.6 million. Wow! Great double album. Has ‘Sara’, ‘Storms’, ‘The Ledge’, ‘Not That Funny’ and the title track.

KISS - ‘Alive II’ (1977)


Essentially their live show + studio tracks, excluding those tracks that made up their show that were on ‘Alive’, some 2 years earlier. Amazingly recorded. Those explosions at the start of ‘Detroit Rock City’ made you feel just like you were there! Fantastic!

Various Artists - ‘Grease Soundtrack’ (1978)


It was EVERYWHERE! Still, I think, the best soundtrack from a musical! Y’know, there’s some things that you really don’t need to go into detail with, and this is one of them. You could say that Olivia Newton John was a bit of a role model for me, especially by the end of the movie! For the movie, I saw that - alongside ‘Star Wars’, what a wonderful couple of years! - about 4 times at the cinema.

Wings - ‘Wings Greatest’ (1978)


Such a fabulous band and, as a compilation, has all the hits. It ends, of course, with ‘Mull Of Kintyre’, which alongside Queen’s ‘Bo Rap’, was everywhere on the radio and TV in the UK. Still reminds me of growing up in Sheffield, which is far away from the wilds of Scotland as you can get. Blissful!

So...that's mine. You show me yours..

SJD x