ATTILA — Atilla (review)

ATTILA — Atilla album cover Album · 1970 · Heavy Psych Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Bmiler
Let me tell you this that I cannot stand the music of Billy Joel. In the 1970s and 1980s I've been inflicted by all that pop mush he inflicted everyone. You know the songs, "Uptown Girl", "Tell Her About It", "We Didn't Start the Fire", "River of Dreams", and so on. I never could imaged he'd so something as so radical as Attila. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This the same guy who did "Piano Man" three years later? It sure was, only his voice was recognizable. No piano here (although I suspect an electric piano was used on "California Flash"). If you thought those organ-dominated hard rock groups like Purple, Heep, Atomic Rooster, Quatermass, even early material from Birth Control rocked, Joel and his former Hassles bandmate, Jon Small, takes this format the the extreme. They don't even bother with a guitar, unlike those groups, instead Joel simply hooked a Hammond organ up through a Marshall amp (instead of a Leslie which is more traditional for Hammond users). Just get a load of these songs: "Revenge is Sweet", "Rollin' Home", "Tear This Castle Down", "Amplifier Fire" and so on. "California Flash" is about as close to typical Joel as you'll get here. I dig those silly lyrics. Of course Joel pretty much wished the Atila album never existed, he deemed it "psychedelic BS". But I never, in my life, dream of owning anything from Billy Joel, but with Attila I did and I'm glad I did. Who'd ever thought I'd be blown away by an album featuring an artist I detest? Yes many people won't like this, but I do. If you can find it on the cheap, go for it, you might be surprised.
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