Author Bill Kopp’s new HoZac book gives the reader 30 concept albums to ponder
When HoZac Books published The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know by Sal Maida, Mitchell Cohen, & Friends in 2021, I interviewed Maida early the following year for Goldmine about the book of lesser known gems and at the end of the session I said, “If there will be a second volume in this series, I would love to participate.” Maida immediately and graciously replied, “You’re invited!” I sent him over a dozen choices, and he selected Jay & the Americans’ Capture the Moment, a solid collection of mainly original songs from 1970 with no hit singles. I became a HoZac Books author with one chapter in volume two of that series. Now, my fellow Goldmine Contributing Editor Bill Kopp has 30 chapters on 30 albums by 30 different artists in the new HoZac Books offering What’s the Big Idea: 30 Great Concept Albums.
Bill Kopp
What’s the Big Idea: 30 Great Concept Albums
HoZac Books (softcover book)
What is a concept album? Author Bill Kopp points out The Who’s Tommy as a key example with a story and characters flowing throughout the double-album, but he stays clear of that well-known and obvious choice, with perhaps the best known of the thirty albums being Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick. The author interviewed artists and people associated with the thirty albums, including Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, who told Kopp, after Aqualung had been labeled as a concept album which he disputed, “I suppose three or four of the songs touched upon elements of conventional religion. Critics were desperate to find something that they could include in that genre that would give them meat to chew on in their reviews.” Regarding the next album, Thick as a Brick, Anderson stated, “Quite clearly, I was ultimately trying to write, arrange, and deliver something that was conceptual. Everything really did hang together under some umbrella theme. If they want a concept album, I’ll give them the mother of all concept albums, something that’s so overblown and ridiculous that it couldn’t be mistaken for a bunch of songs.” Kopp adds, “Each of the LP’s two sides played for a continuous 20-plus minutes, and individual tracks weren’t banded, indicating where one section ended and another began.” The 44 minutes were trimmed to a dozen minutes later in the decade for concert performances as heard on Jethro Tull’s 1978 double album Live: Bursting Out.
“If they want a concept album, I’ll give them the mother of all concept albums, something that’s so overblown and ridiculous that it couldn’t be mistaken for a bunch of songs.” – Ian Anderson on Jethro Tull’s ‘Thick as a Brick’ following ‘Aqualung’
With Al Stewart’s Past, Present and Future, Stewart explained to Kopp, “I was in the middle of this love affair. It was going swimmingly, and then all of a sudden, it stopped. I thought, I’m never going to write another love song as long as I live! I’ve been reading history all my life. The only other thing that I knew anything about was history, so I thought, ‘Well, that’s it then. I’m going to make a historical folk-rock album.’” A few years before Year of the Cat and Time Passages, the historical concept album Past, Present and Future was born with selections including, “Old Admirals,” “Warren Harding,” “The Last Day of June 1934,” “Post World War Two Blues,” “Roads to Moscow,” and more. For the “Present” section, Stewart was living in Soho at the time, so “Soho (Needless to Say)” covered that era. Stewart said that lyrical meter for the song was inspired in part by Bob Dylan, specifically “Subterranean Homesick Blues” from his 1965 album Bringing it All Back Home. In recent years, Stewart has been touring with the opening and backing band The Empty Pockets. On their 2024 double live CD, “Soho (Needless to Say)” opens the second disc.
Goldmine daughter Brianna Kurtz and Al Stewart center, holding an autographed ‘Past, Present and Future,’ surrounded by members of The Empty Pockets, backstage at The Tin Pan, May 1, 2024, Richmond, Virginia, photo by Yhanni Guadalupe-Butcher
Some of the concept albums include spoken word, which is the case with the 1978 double album Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of the Worlds, with actor Richard Burton providing the narration, much to the delight of Wayne, with Burton’s representative calling him and stating, “Count him in, dear boy!” Vocalists for this musical version of the H.G. Wells novel included vocalists Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, David Essex, Julie Covington, and most notably The Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward who was heard on the single “Forever Autumn,” which would also be included on the 1994 Moody Blues 5-disc box set Time Traveler.
Kopp states, “With Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney hatched the idea of creating a sort of fictional band through which The Beatles could deliver a collection of songs exploring musical styles that, he believed, The Beatles couldn’t.” The following year, The Turtles took it a step further with several fictional bands for The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, which Kopp points out, “The album package, songs and record jacket, connects each of the satirical songs to a corresponding photo of the group, outfitted in a style suiting the tune.” As The Cross Fires, The Turtles perform the Beach Boys-style “Surfer Dan,” which was also used as the flip side of “Elenore,” one of two Top 10 hits from the album, along with “You Showed Me.”
Kopp covers a wide range of years from the ‘60s to the present, along with a wide range of music and acts, well-known to lesser known, including Camper Van Beethoven’s 2004 New Roman Times which singer-songwriter and guitarist David Lowery characterized as “sci-fi alternate reality rock opera and political farce.” With its thirty chapters of around six pages each, I started at the beginning of a month, and each day read a chapter and checked out songs online, if I didn’t already own them, which was the case with the relaxing steel guitar driven and orchestrated “The Gum You Like is Back in Style” by Camper Van Beethoven.
Bill Kopp, promotional photo courtesy of the author
Related Links:
goldminemag.com/author/bill-kopp
Goldmine 2022: Flop Albums Vol 1 interview with Sal Maida
Goldmine 2023: Flop Albums Vol 2 interview with Sal Maida
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Warren Kurtz is a long-time music journalist, author and Contributing Editor at Goldmine, writing over 700 articles including the weekly Fabulous Flip Sides and monthly In Memoriam series (both exclusively online at goldminemag.com) covering rock, pop, Americana, R&B and more. goldminemag.com/author/warren-kurtz
Warren’s Fabulous Flip Sides radio segment can be heard most Saturdays, around 9 a.m. Eastern Time as part of DJ Brian Donovan’s Moments to Remember show, on WVCR 88.3 “The Saint” at wvcr.com or iHeart.com (search WVCR). Contact email: [email protected]
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