Archive Review: Grin's The Very Best of Grin (1999)

Nils Lofgren has gained a fair degree of respect for his role as guitarist in Springsteen’s E Street Band, receiving far fewer props for his solo efforts and studio work with Neil Young and Ringo Starr. Lofgren’s is a career that dates back to the late sixties, however, thirty years as a journeyman rocker and visionary. Grin, Lofgren’s first band, is one of those great cult favorites whose place in rock & roll obscurity outshines even Lofgren’s wonderful, if mostly ignored solo career.

Grin released four fine major label albums during their six years, 1968 – 1974, and toured constantly, supporting folks like Jimi Hendrix, the Faces, the Byrds and the J. Geils Band. The Very Best Of Grin offers a deeper retrospective look at the band than previous “best of” albums, a nineteen song history that pretty well sums up what Grin was all about musically.

Grin’s The Very Best of Grin

Originally a trio, teenage guitarist Lofgren was joined by Washington D.C. music scene vets Bob Gordon on bass and drummer Bob Berberich, forming Grin. Signed by Columbia Records’ Spindizzy imprint with a little help from Neil Young and producer David Briggs, the band relocated on the West Coast to record their debut album. The Very Best of Grin includes four tracks from the band’s first effort, including the surprisingly honky-tonkish “Everybody’s Missin’ the Sun.” The previously unreleased “Nobody” is an outtake from the sessions for the first album and sounds a lot like a Lofgren solo song, offering a foreshadowing of music to come while the also unreleased “Sing For Happiness” from those sessions is a soulful ballad complete with lush backing vocals.

The band’s second album, the conceptual 1+1, proved to be their signature disc, yielding what would be the closest Grin ever came to a hit single, the buoyant “White Lies.” An energetic pop/rock tune with an undeniable hook, “White Lies” again sounds like solo Nils, the young guitarist developing his vocal chops and showing the charisma that would later create a loyal following. 1+1 was broken into two sides, the “dreamy” side and the “rocking side,” and The Very Best of Grin includes a selection of material from both, six songs in all. “Hi, Hello Home” offers a countryish beat with fine harmony vocals by Nils and guest Graham Nash. The turbo-charged “Moon Tears” would become a staple of Grin’s, and later Nils’ live performances, an enduring fan favorite that refuses to die.

Grin expanded to a foursome in 1972, adding Nils’ brother Tom on guitar and keyboards, a pairing that continues even today, the two brothers touring in support of Nils solo material. This Grin line-up would record two albums, the criminally-overlooked All Out, which would be their Spindizzy/Columbia swan song and the ill-promoted Gone Crazy for A & M, which would later become Nils solo label. The Very Best of Grin includes a half-dozen cuts from All Out including the rocking “Love or Else” with Nils and Berberich’s shared vocals playing off each others differences and strengths. “Sad Letter” is a bittersweet love song with a tearful guitar riff courtesy of brother Tom while the title cut is a soulful ballad featuring solid vocals by Berberich and guest Kathi McDonald. “You’re the Weight,” the lone cut here from Gone Crazy, is a flat-out rocker, featuring forceful vocals from Lofgren, a full band chorus and some tasteful six-string work from Nils.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Grin would be dropped by A & M Records after the lukewarm success of Gone Crazy, the band playing their farewell show in front of a hometown D.C. crowd in late 1974. Nils was almost immediately picked up as a solo act by the label, and would go on to enjoy a critically acclaimed if commercially questionably career until joining the E Street Band in 1984. Lofgren’s solo releases have been less frequent since hitting the road with Bruce, but albums like Silver Lining or Damaged Goods show a mature artist mining different musical veins that those enjoyed in his youth.

For those Nils Lofgren fans who know him only through his solo work or E Street Band performances, I’d heartily recommend The Very Best of Grin as a portrait of Lofgren’s roots. With only the classic 1+1 still out-of-print, this is the best documentation of the range and depth of one of rock music’s better, if little-known bands. (Sony Legacy Recordings, released June 8, 1999)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™, 1999

Also on That Devil Music: Grin’s Gone Crazy CD review

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Archive Review: Grin's Gone Crazy (2007)

After touring with Neil Young while still a teenager, singer, songwriter, and guitar hero Nils Lofgren formed the band Grin in 1969 with bassist Bob Gordon and drummer Bob Berberich. While his credentials as part of Young's entourage certainly attracted a few people to the band's early shows, Grin rapidly built a fervent audience of its own in the Washington DC/Northern Virginia area based entirely on the band's dynamic performances and Lofgren's six-string pyrotechnics.

Lofgren further parlayed his connection with Young into a record deal for Grin, and the band released its self-titled debut in 1971. Grin's sound was simple, no-frills, guitar-driven rock 'n' roll with pop overtones and catchy melodies. Although the debut album didn't set the world on fire with sales, it did well enough to merit a follow-up, and in '72 the band released 1+1. The album's lone single release, a clever slice of power-pop called "White Lies," would become a minor hit on AOR radio, rising as high as #75 on the Billboard magazine pop chart and propel the album onto the bottom end of the Top 200 album chart.

To help flush out the band's sound, Lofgren added his brother as a second guitarist after the second album, Tom Lofgren playing rhythm behind Nils' scorching leads. In 1973, the band released All Out, another fine collection of songs that rose almost as high as 1+1 on the charts, but yielded no singles, hit or otherwise. Disappointed by the band's lack of forward commercial momentum, CBS dropped Grin, who would quickly be picked up by A&M Records.

Gone Crazy would be the result, Grin's fourth and final album, released in 1973 and sadly suffering a fate similar to its predecessors. Many consider Gone Crazy to be Grin's weakest album, but I'd disagree – the band's four-album milieu is uniformly and consistently enjoyable. Grin's infectious pop/rock sound was a welcome digression during the hard rock early 1970s, and if Lofgren and crew could easily bang it out with the heaviest of their contemporaries, they also possessed an elfin charm and whimsical nature that sets their music apart from much of the decade's better-known bands.

Gone Crazy opens with a fierce rocker, "You're The Weight" offering up a concrete-hard guitar-bass-drum riff on top of which Lofgren lays down his potent vocals and measured wildcat solos. The song is as infectious as anything Grin had done previously and, in many ways, foreshadows Lofgren's soon-to-come solo debut album. The band slows it down a bit for the mid-tempo ballad "Boy + Girl," which features as much of Lofgren's keyboard skills as it does guitar. With trilling piano play that sounds like an old-timey, Western saloon soundtrack, Lofgren tries on his best blue-eyed soul shoes, the song engaging and hiding just a bit of nasty funk beneath the grooves.
   
"What About Me" returns the band to solid rock territory, Lofgren's wiry fretwork running like an electrical charge across the song's exotic instrumentation. While Lofgren's vocals here are a little more strained, they fit the chaotic feel of "What About Me," with the rest of the band throwing in their own shouted harmonies. Lofgren delivers a scorching solo at just past the two-minute mark, short and shocking and simply devastating while his grinning (sorry!) band members knock out the wild-n-wooly rhythms behind him.

"True Thrill" is a bouncy, pop-influenced tune with a slippery rhythmic arrangement, Nils' trademark guitarplay, a little vocal harmony, and some very fine basswork by Gordon. With a little label push in the right direction – perhaps a judiciously-placed $100 bill in the sleeve for a few station programmers – and the song could have been a hit on both AM and FM radio. By contrast, "Beggar's Day" (Eulogy to Danny Whitten)" is a blistering rocker and strictly FM radio fare. Written for his fallen Young bandmate Whitten, it is lyrically one of the best songs Lofgren has written, with powerful instrumental backing, passionate vocals, and some of Lofgren's nastiest guitar solos.
   
The gentle ballad "Believe" is the closest that Gone Crazy comes to a clunker, the piano-heavy tune relying too much, perhaps, on Lofgren's still-maturing keyboard skills and too little on his six-string mastery. Lofgren's vocals are slight, sometimes too sweet, and the band harmonies are simply precious, and the lyrics come from a solidly romanticist perspective, but the song could have benefitted from a little guitar grit. The album ends with "Ain't For Free," a bluesy mid-tempo honky-tonker that smolders in the grooves and features a different side of Lofgren's guitar skills.

After touring in support of Gone Crazy, Grin would break up in 1974 and Lofgren would stay with A&M Records, delivering his critically-acclaimed self-titled debut album a year later, fully launching a successful and varied career that is still going strong today. Although the Grin chapter of Nils Lofgren's musical history has been obscured by his later work, it's nice to once again hear the underrated Gone Crazy, one of the true hidden gems among the band's sparse catalog. (Hip-O Select Records, released October 26, 2009)

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