05/06/2024
JUNE 1972 (52 YEARS AGO)
Foghat: Foghat is released.
# ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 4.5/5
# Allmusic 3.5/5 stars
# Rolling Stone (see original review below)
Foghat is the eponymous debut album by Foghat, released in June 1972. It reached #127 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart, with the single "I Just Want To Make Love To You" gaining them a bit of radio attention. The band quickly followed this up by recording and releasing "What A Shame," which crept up to #82 on the Billboard Hot 100. "What A Shame" would later be included in remixed form on their second album, "Foghat" (aka "Rock & Roll").
The album was produced by Dave Edmunds, whose idiosyncratic style in the studio can be heard throughout the album. "Dave was very much into early Elvis and the Sun Records thing," Dave Peverett recalls. "I loved the phasing effects he got on the vocals. He wasn't scared to try off-the-wall sound ideas."
__________
RECORD WORLD, June 3, 1972
FOGHAT Bearsville BR 2077 (WB) New band is made up of former Savoy Brown members Tony Stevens, Roger Earl and Dave Peverette, and they can look forward to one exciting future. Their forte is clearly defined solid hard rock. Smashing rendition of Chuck Berry's "Maybelline." Good tight pro- duction from Dave Edmunds. Listen.
__________
ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW
That's Foghat, not Hogfat. And not Savoy Brown either, although with Lonesome Dave Peverett and Roger Earl in the lineup, one might see Hog-- uh, Foghat as a direct spinoff of that tedious British group. Foghat is in fact the antithesis of that Savoy Brown kind of dreary, plodding music, and the group's first album is a fast-moving, tough, completely unpretentious collection of rock & roll. The album, produced by rock neo-classicist Dave Edmunds, makes a perfect companion piece to Edmunds' own Rockpile, released earlier this year. Producer Edmunds places the emphasis on sound, and a quirk of schedules has enabled the listener to hear just what magic Edmunds performs in his mixes: Edmunds mixed five of the nine tracks, but was evidently not around to do the rest, so the chore was taken care of by Nick Jameson. The tracks that Dave mixed are echoed, phased, and sharpened to a startling razor-like edge, while the rest sounds like regular humans playing music. The contrast is most apparent in the sound of Peverett's lead vocals: Jameson brings out the actual timbre of Lonesome Dave's even, unspectacular, sometimes Daltrey-like voice, but Edmunds turns him into a human scythe, his jagged voice ripping across the songs with demon-robot abandon. Let it be said that the self-taught Edmunds is nearly without peer as the creator-in-the-studio of that raw, edgy, primitive sound so closely associated with rock and roll.
But it's the music itself that is the single most impressive aspect of this album. Foghat is a two-guitar, bass, and drums band that knows exactly how much to bite off for itself. Within the strict limits imposed on them by the type of music they're playing, the group displays a keen imagination coupled with a shrewd sense of dynamics. The album begins with a spirited, irreverent remake of W***y Dixon's "I Just Want to Make Love to You." A low, thumping bass and two guitars alternating a short riff open the song in a steady but relatively quiet manner. The low volume is a set-up, a false start causing you to reach over and turn it up at just about the point at which the song's real beginning roars through the speakers. Peverett's vocal, with its ominous, full-treble tone, matches the evil guitar sound on the track almost perfectly, as if all the elements emerge from a single, alien source. This may be a W***y Dixon song, but it is most assuredly not the blues these guys are playing. "I Just Want to Make Love to You," with its sly, crushing intro and raspy intensity, was the natural choice for the first Foghat single.
Lonesome Dave's "Trouble, Trouble" and the group-written "A Hole to Hide In" are strong examples of the classic rock & roll song, with controlled but impatient verses followed by inevitable explosive choruses. Guitarists Peverett and Rod Price make a powerful team; each seems preoccupied with controlled, pungent rhythm guitar playing, to the exclusion of all but the briefest, most necessary solo. I suppose there had to be a Chuck Berry song on here -- it's "Maybelline," which has been done so often that it's getting a little frayed around the edges. Without the Edmunds supermix, "Maybelline" falls short of the two Berries on Rockpile, but it's still more than just competent. The third non-original, "Gotta Get to Know You" (this ain't the song popularized by Spanky and Our Gang), throws a slight change-up, ending the album. The pace is slowed, textures are muted, and the inclusion of what sounds like a mellotron both softens and fills out Foghat's stark and abrasive sound. It's not "Layla," but it's a classier way of ending the album than a no-holds barred, big-gun climax would've been.
If your best-of-the-year vote goes to Exile on Main Street, you're gonna like both Foghat and the Edmunds LP. Hearing them may prompt you to move the Stones back a notch or two.
~ Bud Scoppa (September 14, 1972)
TRACKS:
Side one
"I Just Want to Make Love to You" (Willie Dixon) - 4:21
"Trouble Trouble" (Dave Peverett) - 3:20
"Leavin' Again (Again!)" (Peverett, Tony Stevens) - 3:36
"Fool's Hall of Fame" (Peverett) - 2:58
"Sara Lee" (Peverett, Rod Price) - 4:36
Side two
"Highway (Killing Me)" (Peverett, Price) - 3:51
"Maybellene" (Chuck Berry) - 3:33
"A Hole to Hide In" (Peverett, Price, Roger Earl) - 4:06
"Gotta Get to Know You" (Deadric Malone, Andre Williams) - 7:44
