[Suf22ism]

Hello everybody,
For what it’s worth, I think Sound Elixir lacks focus, drive and a sense of where exactly the band was going at the time. The production is the only poorly produced album that Manny was responsible for; all the others veer from the brilliantly produced / ‘HOD’, ‘NMCity’ ‘Close Enough…to the good ‘Expect NO Mercy, ‘Playin the game’. The demos of Sound Elixir that Billy has kindly uploaded on the site are SOOOO much better than the finished product, although I agree that ‘Rain on the Window’ is probably the best song on the album.

[Suf22ism]

Thanks for the answers Billy. As regards the royalties situation you alluded to the fact that Zal was in a similar situation to yourself; that is, not an official member of Nazareth Dumf but rather ‘a hired hand’. Given that he wrote ‘Hearts Grown Cold’ Big Boy, ‘Simple Solution etc all of which were recorded by Nazareth and remained in their live set for decades, this state of affairs must have struck him as a bit ironic. Fair enough, none of those were hits the way ‘Dream on’ was a hit….but still, it must have been a few pennies.
I found it interesting how you said that Pete was very much the leader of the band; I had always assumed it was Manny, given that he produced the albums, wrote most of the songs and was the lead guitarist…just goes to show.
I agree with you about the production of ‘Move Me’…Tony Taverner did a stonkin’ job on that album; Keith Richards once said that one of the problems with a lot of contemporary so-called Rock&Roll bands is that they can do the ‘rock’ but ignore the ‘roll’…that certainly can’t be said of that album.
One final question (if I may). Did you write ‘Thinking Man’s Nightmare’ from NO JIve? That’s a f….great rock(and Roll) song!!

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