Jaygee mentioned this yesterday. Released 49 years ago today – the pinnacle of all albums in the rock era, in my view. Here’s a version from vinyl that someone has just uploaded.
Happy 49th birthday ‘Birds of Fire’
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….”the pinnacle of all albums in the rock era” – is it even better than Fulham Fallout, then?
Think you’ve gone a year early
No, it was released in January 1973…
You should have waited a year for a proper anniversary
It’s celebrating its 7 squared anniversary.
As much as people like to joke about the Mahav Five, this is a splendid record and one of the best of its kind. I bought it on CBS Nice Price in the early 80s because I liked the look of it; that Nice Price series was fantastic. They were a very committed band while they lasted, and this shows it well. Not for everyone, but then, what is?
Excellent – bought on LP second hand at a vinyl exchange shop sometime in the late ‘70s. But no matter how fond I am of Birds…, it’s still my SECOND favourite Mahavishnu album…
Between us, we had most of the Moody Blues’ albums. Steve had a copy of The Yes Album, Ken favoured Unhalfbricking and Andy had Nursery Cryme, plus Chris had the first two King Crimson LPs, and Allen had Nicely Out Of Tune and Fog On The Tyne. We thought we had a lot of the progressive landscape covered, and then I bought Caravanserai and the horizons got even wider. But to top us all, Graham turned up with a copy of Birds Of Fire and that just blew us all away. Heady times, great music all over the place.
Those album sleeves must have seen some rolling action. But no “In the Land of Grey and Pink” or “Camembert Electrique”?
The only rolling that went on was that of the dice during the endless games of Risk we played together, with our own rules devised to improve upon the saddeningly predictable ones printed inside the box. Games would be accompanied by soundtracks provided by each other’s record collections, depending upon whose parent’s house we had adopted to host our board based world domination attempts. We were all 17 or thereabouts, studying for our A levels, and the rights of Rizla were still a year or two away, once we had all flown our respective nests.
I had both of them @Vincent and they both saw some rolling action but the album that saw the most rolling action was Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant.
The ‘Birds of Fire’ tour in the US lasted around three months. Here’s a representative show from the Dinky Dawson soundboard recordings.
01 – Birds of Fire
02 – Open Country Joy
03 – Hope
04 – Awakening
05 – Miles Beyond
06 – One Word
07 – Resolution
08 – Sanctuary
09 – The Dance of Maya
10 – Celestial Terrestrial Commuters
“The ‘Birds of Fire’ tour in the US lasted around three months”… by which time John had finished his first solo.
I’m here all week/month/year.
😀 To be fair, there were versions of ‘One Word’ that lasted around 30 minutes.
30 minutes for one word?
Blimey!
That’d be 16 hours for your opening paragraph then.
Very good! The version in the soundboard above starts at 44:30 but is over by around 61 mins (1:01:00). Only 16 minutes.
@Colin-H
That must have been the legendary night The Fire Engines were the support act
Was there a Vish concert that *wasn’t* a legendary night?
No, not even their night at Pleasley Miners Welfare, which was almost derailed when Billy Cobham got overexcited during the meat raffle and spilled his half* over Colin Crompton’s Racing Post.
(*cautious man, and he was driving the Bedford Rascal)
I saw them at Reading in 73 alas I remember nothing of them.
I think it must be 75 you’re thinking of!
75 you’re right,
They were at Reading in 75? Filed under emmental, I fear. Actually, if I strain, I can sort of remember saying I liked them, because they had a violinist, but didn’t really, was just trying to be cool. Can’t remember if a true or a false memory, mind.
@retropath2
Jerry Goodman having long since flocked off, I imagine the violinist would have been Jean Luc Ponty who also played with them at Knebworth the previous August
No – the Reading version of the band was a sort of residual 4-piece – no violin. The 11-piece MO of Jan-Feb 1975 (UK/Euro tour) with Jean-Luc then became a 9-piece (extensive US tour co-headlining with Jeff Beck April-June) and then became a 4-piece (Euro tour + album, then seeing out US dates in the book until November 75).
Then it’s clearly a false memory…..
What’s the matter with you Mike the man had a stutter ffs.
Sanctuary a favourite track.
Contrary to accepted wisdom my preference is
1. Visions
2. Between Nothingness
3 Birds
4 Inner Mounting Flame
5 That orchestra one.
And happy 80th birthday, John McLaughlin.