Some amazing music.

[Perfect Stranger]

One of my first, and all-time favorite guitarist played with Billy Cobham on this album. Of course, I mean
Tommy Bolin. Dayum, I wore his albums out! To give you an idea of how far ahead of his time he was...
...this album was released in 1973. That's almost 50 years ago! Give a listen if you've never heard him.....
or revisit some of his own albums. The man was a master....



4th track (without intro) of his 1973 released solo debut "Spectrum" featuring Tommy Bolin on guitar and Jan Hammer on keys. Unlike rest of the
tracks, the intro on "Stratus" was not separately named and has been edited from this take. So, if you feel you are left missing it and for some
strange reason do not own the album already I would suggest to go and buy it for yourself immediately.

Billy Cobham - Spectrum (Atlantic Records 1973)

May 14--May 16, 1973 at Electric Lady Studios, New York City

* Billy Cobham - Percussion

* Tommy Bolin - Guitar

* Jan Hammer - Electric piano, Acoustic piano, Moog synthesizer

* Lee Sklar - Fender bass

* Joe Farrell - Flute, Soprano sax & Alto sax

* Jimmy Owens - Flugelhorn & Trumpet

* John Tropea - Guitar

* Ron Carter - Acoustic bass

* Ray Barretto - Congas

IF you're interested....a little about Tommy Bolin

He was playing with Deep Purple,
The James Gang, Solo and all styles of music ! Read more here and the link that follows.

Glenn Hughes, Bolin’s one-time bandmate in Deep Purple, agrees with this assessment. “Tommy was different, wasn’t he?” he says. “He had a very South American-flavoured, Brazilian, reggae-ish way of playing guitar; it wasn’t European. It was be-boppy, it was jazz, it was everything Deep Purple weren’t. He was a genius.”

Born on August 1, 1951, Tommy Bolin discovered rock’n’roll via Elvis Presley, and got his first guitar when he was 10. Although he did time with bands such as Denny & The Triumphs, Patch Of Blue and The Velairs, he became increasingly fed up with the going-nowhere local music scene. He told his parents he was moving to the then musical hotbed of Denver, Colorado.

As Bolin’s brother, Johnnie, recalls: “Mom and dad were behind him 100 per cent. I mean, to let a kid go hitchhike to Denver at 15, it’s not like they didn’t care, but he said: ‘That’s what I really want to do’. And my mom didn’t like the fact that they kept throwing him out of school because of his long hair.”

Shortly after arriving in Denver, Bolin met up with a singer called Jeff Cook and joined his band, Crosstown Bus. The two later formed American Standard. “Tommy was very humble about his gift, and he never made any of us feel that we weren’t as good as he was,” Cook recalls. “In that environment, we were able to grow, and become better players and better people.”

When Cook decided to relocate temporarily to England, Bolin looked elsewhere and hooked up with a band called Zephyr in 1968. But instead of showcasing the young guitarist’s talents, the group’s sound was based largely on singer Candy Givens’s Janis Joplin-like wailing. The group did give Bolin his first appearances on a major label, however, on 1969’s Zephyr and 1971’s Going Back To Colorado. Zephyr were signed to Probe, a subsidiary of ABC, and later moved to Warners.

But Bolin’s burgeoning love of jazz caused ructions within Zephyr. Taking drummer Bobby Berge along with him, he formed a new group called Energy. Based in Boulder, Colorado, the duo went through several musicians until they found a steady line-up, with Bolin’s old pal Jeff Cook on vocals, bassist Stanley Sheldon and keyboardist Tom Stephenson.

“It was an interesting time, because Boulder was a musical Mecca,” Sheldon says. “Joe Walsh had moved to town, Steve Stills was there. All these people were putting bands together.”

Despite the fertile local music scene, Energy found it difficult to gain a foothold. Sheldon: “Nobody really understood what we were doing. We were playing in a lot of bars and doing this instrumental fusion music, which no one out there had heard before.”

Energy stuck at it, and began to back many well-known artists who passed through town, including John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry and Albert King. Also, it was during this time that Bolin discovered glam rock. His on-stage appearance became flashier: a gold lamé suit made by his long-time girlfriend Karen Ulibarri; multi-coloured hair; leopardskin platform boots. More seriously, this was also the era when Bolin’s love affair with hard drugs blossomed.

Sheldon: “The club owners back in Boulder used to pay us with coke. We’d do a gig for a week, and they’d give us like a quarter ounce. And then Tommy and I would go to everybody’s houses and portion it out to the players. Of course, our portions were enormous and everybody else’s were considerably smaller [laughs].”

Sheldon recalls one particular episode, which sadly served as a sign of things to come for Bolin: “Tommy and I were always the romanticists, thinking heroin would be fun. I can remember we were up in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He had shot up, and he almost died right then. I stood there and watched him almost die; he went into convulsions. At that point, I knew that Tommy’s system was a little more susceptible to these things. He was only 20 years old at that point.”

With Energy still struggling to make an impact, one day Bolin received an unexpected visit. Sheldon: “I was in his apartment the day [Mahavishnu Orchestra drummer] Billy Cobham knocked on Tommy’s door, and invited him to play on the Spectrum album. Tommy had previously met Billy Cobham out in LA through Jan [Hammer, Mahavishnu Orchestra keyboard player]. The next thing I knew he was inviting Tommy to play on his new solo record.”

Cobham’s Spectrum album, which Bolin played on, helped launch the fusion boom of the early and mid-70s. According to drummer Carmine Appice, Bolin’s expert playing also inspired Jeff Beck on his future instrumental classics, 1975’s Blow By Blow and 1976’s Wired. “I was with Jeff in Beck, Bogert & Appice. We would listen to Mahavishnu Orchestra and the Billy Cobham album with Tommy on it. Jeff really liked the whole vibe of that jazz-rock mixture.”

While Cobham’s drumming and Jan Hammer’s keyboard virtuosity were extraordinary on Spectrum, it was Bolin’s fluid guitar playing – especially on the over-the-top jamfest Quadrant 4 – that had everyone talking. Soon, The James Gang came a-callin’.

Led by guitarist/singer Joe Walsh, The James Gang were a hard rockin’ outfit who had no problem filling out their music with only three players. When Walsh left the group at the height of their popularity, the rhythm section of bassist Dale Peters and drummer Jim Fox decided to soldier on, and expanded the group to a quartet with singer Roy Kenner and guitarist Domenic Troiano. After a pair of disappointing releases, Troiano left. At the suggestion of their old pal Walsh, Bolin was invited to saddle up and ride with The James Gang.

Peters recalls Bolin relocating to their home base of Cleveland, Ohio: “He was great. He just seemed like the right guy, played the right way – a spectacular guitar player. Tommy was actually relatively quiet, but the drug thing was hideous. He’d get up in the morning and take, like, 20 aspirins just to get going. When he was high he was great. But when he wasn’t he was just miserable.”

[tonebender]

Private Eyes is in my top 5 favorite albums. TB was amazing.

[bc rich]

Favorite drum solo

1.

[OMB]

Not into instrumentals BUT quite good. He played some tasty licks on this. Also interesting read. Thanks JIm.