A Record We may Never Shootout Again

Some records were just too much work to find, too expensive to buy and resulted in sales that never really justified the investment in time and money required to find Hot Stamper pressings of them.

This is one such album, and the link above will take you to many more.

• For its debut on the site, we present this amazing sounding British original pressing, with a Triple Plus (A+++) side one (the Rod Stewart side)
• Side two (the Elton John produced side) was outstanding as well, earning a Double Plus (A++) for its rich, tubey sound
• No wonder side one sounds like the best of Rod Stewart & The Faces’ early-’70s albums – Mike Bobak engineered them
• “The backing band on Stewart’s side include fellow Face and future Rolling Stone, Ron Wood, on electric guitar and acoustic guitarist Sam Mitchell, who appeared on many of Stewart’s early-’70s solo albums.”

Here’s how this shootout got started.

A few years ago while I was working on the site I had music on youtube playing. The song “Flying” came on from the It Ain’t Easy album, and when the chorus came in I could not believe how big, rich and powerful it sounded — this, on computer speakers!

I tracked down my copy of the album, the domestic Green Label WB pressing with a different cover you no doubt have seen in your local record store bin, and threw it on the table for a quick listen. In moments it was obvious that my domestic original was a big step down sonically from what I imagined the source for the youtube video sound would have been.

CD or LP, didn’t matter. My copy was made from dub tapes and as a consequence had very little of the magic I’d swooned over.

I knew right then and there that I had to get my hands on a British original of the album, and sure enough, as soon as I did I found myself in the presence of that amazingly big, rich, Tubey Magical sound that I knew from the video.

What I didn’t know at the time was how hard it would be to find clean copies of the UK original. It’s took us about three years to track down enough copies to do this shootout. So many that came in were either too noisy or out and out groove- or inner-groove-damaged. This is plainly not a record that audiophiles bought and took care of — just the opposite.

So here it is, finally. If you’ll pardon the pun, It Wasn’t Easy!

Size on “Flying”

The last track on side two — you better have your arm dialed in right to play it — has a huge chorus that is guaranteed to blow your mind (and test the hell out of your system).

The great vintage rock recordings like this one usually have something going for them that few recordings made after the ’70s do: their choruses get big and loud, yet stay rich, smooth, natural and uncongested.

We’ve mentioned it in countless listings. So many records have — to one degree or another — harsh, hard, gritty, shrill, congested choruses. When the choruses get loud they become unpleasant, and here at Better Records you lose a lot of points when that happens.

And in the case of “Flying” the choruses need to be HUGE and RICH.

Engineering

Mike Bobak was the engineer for the Rod Stewart-produced sessions on side one.

He is the man responsible for some of the best sounding records from the early ’70s: The Faces’ Long Player, Cat Stevens’ Mona Bone Jakon, Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells A Story and Never a Dull Moment, The Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, (and lots of other Kinks albums), Carly Simon’s Anticipation and lots of obscure English bands.

Mike Claydon was the engineer for the Elton John-produced sessions on side two.

He recorded albums for The Bee Gees, The Seekers, Al Stewart and a lot of English bands you’ve probably never heard of.