[Heeplist] Living The Dream in UK 57th

[Pete Wharton]

Sorry Don, still no "wow" from me. I think it will come over better live though. I just hope they don't waste time with the lightweights "Waters Flowing" and "Goodbye To Innocence" :-)

I think lyrically it's weak, really lacking in imagery. That opening to "Its All Been Said", "Stop talking, stop speeding", what a ridiculous line just so that in the next line reading has something to rhyme with! Heep are better than that!

"Waters Flowing" has a better, different guitar opening from Mick but just develops into a c & w shuffle. The chorus is simple and annoying with the the na na nas
and stupid lyrics at the end of last verse about the only song the guitar would play.

"Goodbye to innocence" A simple shuffle that is very quickly boring like "nail on the head" is.

"Falling under your spell" is another shuffle but more interesting and Mick is at least better between the last 2 choruses.

"Dreams of yesteryear" has a different guitar opening and is at last a meaningful song and drums not overpowering it all. But still you get the rubbish lyric about how "the young will make it better" . At last though you get Mick's guitar sounding different to wah wah wails.

Where is the real class of "Against The Odds", "Time of Revelation" a beautiful image full song like "Mistress Of All Tme" or "Fires Of Hell" or "Dream On", "Between Two Worlds" "Question/Change". I could go on. Even Bob Winward's favourite "Sweet Sugar" ranks higher than most of the tracks on LTD!

There, just a few random thoughts for people to disagree with me on.

Oh incidentally we've had a decorator in this week who's into his music, though more recent stuff like the early Level 42. I loaned him D&W and LTD. His preference was for D&W (he even made a copy of it)  saying that LTD sounded just too forced, like they were trying too hard. His words not mine, but I honestly don't think I can disagree. He's a bass player too, so he's been loaned the Live 73 album this weekend and told to play it loud :-)

Here's a question for you all though. If you just heard LTD somewhere randomly and it didn't have the Heep wrapper on it, would you buy it? Unfortunately, being totally honest I would have to say no personally. However I do expect that to change after hearing it live, well at least I hope so. But I can be pretty sure I won't still be picking it out of my Heep collection as first choice play in even 5 years time, never mind the 47ish of Salisbury/LAY and D&W!

Pete

Living is a great album, no doubt about it.
the sounds of the instruments are great. A few things I would have liked to hear differently , just my opinion, but it is  solid .
Lyric writing , backup vocals, melodies,  a little better on outsider!
We still haven’t heard the “ wow “ from Pete yet! Lol.


Don