This Scottish band captures the attention of rockers for one primary reason: 1975’s Hair of the Dog album, with the chanting chorus of the title track, “Now you’re messin’ with a … a son of a bitch!” And my oh my if that’s still not a catchy song, and really a pretty solid and creative album overall. I won’t argue too much with those that saw Nazareth as Zeppelin Light, but they did play good bluesy rock, they could write a hit song, and Dan McCafferty did have the requisite whisky-soaked vocal style so much in vogue in the ’70’s.
I like Nazareth for a couple other reasons as well. First, I have a lot of respect for a hard rock band that shamelessly covers songs by Joni Mitchell (“This Flight Tonight”), and the Everly Brothers (“Love Hurts”). Plant and Page never showed that kind of hutzpah. But what really captures my imagination whenever I think of Nazareth is the unqualified brilliance of their 1980 Malice in Wonderland release.
It has always been my favorite Nazareth album by a long stretch, but this week I played it through for the first time in a number of years, and I was anxious that I might not like it as much as I did. I wasn’t disappointed; in fact, I found myself stopping and really listening to many of the songs again. I couldn’t reconcile why Nazareth had a fair amount of “OK” releases, a few good ones, one hit album, and then Malice, which rises so high above all their other efforts that it’s perplexing. I couldn’t resist checking the liner notes.
I found two major explanations for the added sumptuousness. Jeff Baxter produced the album, a fact I never caught before. Jeff “Skunk” Baxter was the guitar wizard on the first three Steely Dan albums, the soloist that added so much meat to the emerging jazziness of the Dan sound. Baxter later took the slick production technique he learned with Fagen and Becker of Steely Dan to the Doobie Brothers and, along with Michael McDonald, was responsible for the great pop hits the Doobies stacked up in the late seventies. Without question, Jeff Baxter applied this experience to smooth out and polish the rough Nazareth edges.
Then there was Zal Cleminson. I won’t pretend to know much about Zal – he joined the band one album prior to Malice in Wonderland (No Mean City) and left afterward. On Malice, he contributed to the songwriting on 9 of the 10 songs, and is given sole credit on 3 of the songs, “Showdown at the Border”, “Big Boy”, and “Heart’s Grown Cold.” Along with “Holiday” and “Fallen Angel,” both of which Cleminson co-wrote, these are the best songs on the album, and “Heart’s Grown Cold” is, in my opinion, the best song in Nazareth’s entire body of work. I’m now determined to go find more of the work of Zal Cleminson. In the meantime, give this album some serious attention.
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