Rocking with curly leeds

[Old Wild Men]

... i don't think the other Shads have a high regard for it now...

What evidence to you have for that comment? I've never heard or read of any negative comments about it from any of the band and I would really like to hear about your source.

John Farrar has great affection for it and considers making that album to have been one of the most enjoyable projects of his career.

Specs Appeal is my favorite Shads album, particularly the Eurovision songs (go figure) but Rockin' is by far my favorite instrumental Shads album and I consider it to be the finest of their career. Listening to it now, 37 years later, it sounds fantastic on CD, the production is excellent and Alan Tarney's bass playing puts him on a par with any other Shads bassist from any era. It was the first Shads album I ever bought, it was completely un-cool at school and I didn't care.

[Phil from Melbourne]

Does anyone know anything about the title Gracie? It's my favourite track on the album. To me, this track evokes images of a lady (young or possible old) called Gracie wandering down Abbey Road!

[flingal64]

Sorry for that wrong spelling, it should LEADS, I have the album in frontof me now!!!!

[Arpeggio]

For what it's worth (gleaned from various conversations / interviews with Hank, Bruce and Brian during the course of several years) I believe that the various members of the Shadows feel that "R W C Leads" was an excellent LP and that they're proud of it. It was an album that THEY wanted to make and THEY had total control over it. Brian described it as one being of the most artistically, musically and scocially satisfying times that they ever had during the creation of an album. All of them were totally up for it and Bruce & Hank in particular were both fired up by John Farrar - whose own contributions were superb.

Best wishes,

Rob

[flingal64]

Thanks, for all this inputs,

[flingal64]

And some small input, again. Do we know if Hank, Bruce, Brian,
is on this site, I know Waffel is , but....

[drakula63]

A truly incredible, fantastic album. To me, this represents the Shadows at their very best - writing/producing and playing music of the most outstanding quality.

I got this album for Christmas 1978 and it has been one of my all time favourite albums ever since. It has been played, by me, more times than I can possibly ever remember! In many ways, I feel that it is the sound of the Shadows 'growing up' and finally moving away from the slightly less satisfying pantomime/light entertainment era of the late 60s. No disrespect intended, but just compare this album with, say, 'From Hank, Bruce, Brian and John'. I too am only sorry that they didn't feature the material more heavily on their tours or, indeed, tour extensively to support this album. I have visions of them appearing on The Old Grey Whistle Test, circa 1974, and absolutely blowing everyone way!!! Sadly, this didn't happen... but it should have!!!

Quite simply, the defining Shads album of this era.

[flingal64]

on curly LEADS, is it Burns or Fender

[Bill Bowley]

The RWCL Album IMHO got them (the remaining Shads proper) out of the 'elevator music' trend for a short time - (the term 'elevator music' is used by my younger relatives to describe stuff that you hear as background music in elevators and being TV test patterns etc,) which some of the albums before and after RWCL could easily be categorized as by non- dedicated Shads fans. With reference to 'what if John Rostill had been available' I personally thought at the time that Alan Tarney had put a new life into the bass 'component' of the Shads offerings that had not been there since John had left, I rank Alan alongside John Rostill in my bass player preferences and thought that (with due credit to the original arranger) his 'bass tunes' added a low frequency 'harmony' to the tracks on RWCL that gave depth to the lead instruments on many occasions.

I believe RWCL was the 'we don't just play 'Apache' smack in the face to a lot of musicians around the world, and indeed I enjoyed seeing the looks from some of my 'heavy metal' friends when I played a track from RWCL to them and asked them to tell me who it was - names like 'Clapton, Beck etc were usually the first guess on their part.

RWCL rates alongside 'Live at The Paris Olympia' IMHO, together they rate as the two best Shadows Albums of all time, I have yet to hear any offerings from the lads that would change my opinion.

[flingal64]

I agree with you, that album, made a new direction,