Recorded at Decca's West Hampstead Studios on: October 11, 1966
October 12, 1966
October 19, 1966
October 24, 1966
November 11, 1966
Mastered at Universal Mastering Studios-East, Edison, New Jersey
Analog to digital transfers at The Audio Archiving Company, London
Sadie transfers done at Glenn Schick Mastering, Atlanta, Georgia
Special thanks to Vikki Silver
Original album liner notes:
The personnel of the Bluesbreakers having changed since our last LP, this album serves as a proper introduction to two new members of the group...Peter Green on lead guitar and Aynsley Dunbar on drums. I think that most people will realize what a tough time lay ahead in the way of comparison and criticism for any guitarist in this country faced with replacing the acknowledged master of blues guitar, Eric Clapton, in my band. However Peter Green took over the job and managed to brave out the storm. At first he sounded like a Clapton copyist, not unnaturally since he was having to play the current repertoire that Eric helped to make famous, and the transition to new material had to be gradual. Within weeks though he began to develop his own ideas, and the technique to express them, until now it is obvious that both Peter and Eric have separately improved beyond recognition but in totally different directions. Speaking of the modern young blues guitarists that I've heard ‘live’ I would certainly cram Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Eric Clapton and Peter Green on the same pedestal. In my opinion they all sound completely individual but they share the same emotional greatness. All I can say of Peter is that, having worked with him nearly every night since last July and witnessed his rapid progress as a blues player, he is the ideal guitarist for the overall band sound and a great person to work with.
Our new drummer, Aynsley Dunbar, is also a major musical talent and throughout the album he shows his strength and blues feel along-side bass guitarist John McVie in the rhythm section. Although John has been through good and bad times with us, I know from experience that a better blues bass guitarist would be difficult to find in this country. As a great rhythm section Aynsley and John should not be underestimated in their importance to every number on which they are heard.
A quick word about the use of horns which are heard on “Another Kinda Love”, "Someday After Awhile" and a couple more...I find them an advantage on some numbers but I would assure all our followers that I have no intention of augmenting the Bluesbreakers in the future, except for recording purposes.
These days I play guitar on many of the numbers in our repertoire and my 5 string can be heard on the great Elmore James classic “Dust My Blues” and again “Top of the Hill”. I play my old 9 string guitar on “The Same Way” and “Living Alone”. Harmonica crops up on “It's Over”, “Living Alone”, “Leaping Christine”, “You Don’t Love Me” and “There's Always Work”. The weird backing sound for the latter was achieved by greatly amplifying the faulty pedal click and hum emanating from the organ tone cabinet whilst Mike Vernon, Gus Dudgeon and I did the chanting and moaning sounds. As it is almost impossible to use a piano for club appearances. I always look forward to using one on our recordings. I overdubbed piano onto a few of these titles and featured it on “A Hard Road”, and “Hit The Highway”.
Peter is featured, as lead singer on “You Don’t Love Me” and on his own composition “The Same Way”. His guitar playing is well exposed on “The Stumble” and particularly on “The Super-natural” which he wrote specially for inclusion on this LP. I consider this one the most meaningful instrumentals I’ve heard and certainly stand as one of the high spots on the record.
The music contained here means far more to me than anything we’ve recorded before and I hope you will find your own special favorite tracks from the many contrasting types of blues represented here. Blues in it’s true form is a reflection of man’s life and has to stem from personal experiences good and bad, I accept that I’ve unwittingly hurt a lot of people who’ve known me, I’ve few friends left, and now the only thing to live for is the blues. “I’m trying to tell you people that the blues have hit me in my life. You know I was born for trouble and it’s a hard road ‘till I die”.
John Mayall
2003 Expanded (CD) Edition Liner Notes:
JOHN MAYALL AND THE BLUESBREAKERS A HARD ROAD
One of the most enduring albums of the 1960s British blues revival, A Hard Road marks the historic convergence of two of the movement’s most important figures, singer/multi-instrumentalist John Mayall and soon-to-be-legendary guitar hero Peter Green. Green’s year-long tenure in Mayall’s seminal combo the Bluesbreakers yielded a wealth of memorable music that ranks with the most accomplished and influential electric blues ever recorded.
By the time his third LP, A Hard Road, was released in February 1967, John Mayall had already established himself as one of the U.K. blues boom’s leading lights, combining a deep affinity for tradition with a restless experimental streak. While most of his peers were concentrating on covering material by American blues greats, Mayall’s repertoire was comprised largely of his own compositions, which merged a knowledgeable mastery of trad blues idioms with a more personal, contemporary sensibility. Mayall was also an exacting bandleader with a knack for discovering and nurturing instrumental talent; a remarkable number of future stars would pass through the Bluesbreakers’ ever-shifting lineup.
Mayall, who’d performed in semi-pro blues outfits around his hometown of Manchester since the mid-’50s, was already in his early 30s in 1963 when, at the suggestion of British blues godfather Alexis Korner, he moved to London. After relocating, his career quickly gained momentum.
Signing with Decca, he released his first album, the live John Mayall Plays John Mayall, in early 1965. The debut disc was followed by the landmark Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, which emerged as a surprise commercial smash in the U.K., and played a crucial role in establishing ex-Yardbird Clapton as a star.
When he first teamed with Mayall, Peter Green (nee Greenbaum) was a 19-year-old working-class Londoner whose limited resume included membership in Shotgun Express, alongside a young Rod Stewart, future Them/Camel keyboardist Peter Bardens and drummer Mick Fleetwood. After Clapton abruptly left the Bluesbreakers in mid-1965 to take an extended holiday in Greece, Green successfully lobbied Mayall for the job, but only got to play a handful of gigs before Clapton returned. Six months later, Clapton quit for good and Green was back in the lineup. He quickly proved himself up to the challenge of filling his predecessor’s formidable shoes, overcoming fans’ initial skepticism with his impassioned, economical playing, which conveyed a broad range of emotion with a minimum of gimmickry.
Producer Mike Vernon was reportedly apoplectic when Mayall and band-which also featured the dynamic rhythm section of bassist John McVie and drummer Aynsley Dunbar-first showed up at the studio without Clapton, but was quickly won over by Green’s instrumental skills. The new guitarist’s emphasis of tone and nuance over showy pyrotechnics was apparent on his recorded debut with the Bluesbreakers, on a non-LP single pairing distinctive covers of Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s upbeat R&B workout “Looking Back” and Otis Rush’s “So Many Roads”, both recorded on September 30, 1966 and released three weeks later. Even when slugging it out with an aggressive horn section, Green’s raw tone, fluid riffing and concise solos announce his arrival in fine style.
Green also makes his presence felt within the first few seconds of A Hard Road’s eponymous opening track, complementing Mayall’s pleading vocal with a tightly-coiled restraint that exemplifies the tension and subtlety that he consistently brought to his work with Mayall. Elsewhere, the chugging “It’s Over” boasts some sublime interplay between Green’s guitar and Mayall’s harmonica, while “Another Kinda Love” features an ominous groove that’s driven home by Green’s menacing riffage and Mayall’s burbling organ. Mayall’s double-tracked vocal and buoyant barrelhouse piano drives the spare “Hit the Highway”, while the boisterous boogie “Leaping Christine” bubbles with nervous energy and hyperactive harmonica. Meanwhile, the dual harmonicas and ethereal vocal chant of the minute-and-a-half “There’s Always Work” illustrate the penchant for adventure that’s always made Mayall more artist than archivist.
Green steps into the spotlight on a pair of his own compositions. He delivers a persuasive vocal and an explosive solo on the loping, stop-start “The Same Way”, followed by the exotic instrumental “The Super-natural”, whose brooding mood and proto-psychedelic effects presage the mystical vibe that would infuse Green’s subsequent work with Fleetwood Mac.
The album’s cover material is similarly impressive. A steamy take on Willie Cobbs’ “You Don’t Love Me” features a strong lead vocal by Green, while a raucous dual-guitar rendition of the Elmore James standard “Dust My Blues” offers a riveting vehicle for Green’s stinging tone and fleet-fingered picking. Ditto for a pair of Freddie King classics, i.e. the assertive instrumental “The Stumble” and the torchy “Someday After A While (You’ll Be Sorry)”. The latter finds Mayall in particularly compelling vocal form.
Along with the fourteen songs that comprised the original A Hard Road LP, this package incorporates 22 more tracks-many of them previously collected on the Mayall compilations Looking Back (1969) and Thru the Years (1971)-that further document the richness of Green’s tenure with the Bluesbreakers. These include outtakes from Hard Road sessions, e.g. the haunting Green showcases “Evil Woman” and “Out of Reach”, as well as Green’s solo interpretation of J.B. Lenoir’s “Alabama Blues”; several non-LP singles, notably a smoldering reading of Otis Rush’s “Double Trouble”; some Bluesbreakers numbers cut by Green, McVie and Dunbar without Mayall, including the jazzy “Greeny” and the proto-metal “Curly”; and four tunes cut with American singer/harpist Paul Butterfield for the one-off EP John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Paul Butterfield. (Although it isn’t represented here, in March 1967 Mayall, Green, McVie and Aynsley Dunbar also backed veteran Mississippi singer/pianist Eddie Boyd on Boyd’s Mike Vernon-produced LP Eddie Boyd & His Blues Band).
Also included here are a trio of songs recorded by Mayall and Green after Green’s departure from the Bluesbreakers. The languid ballad “Jenny” and the country-bluesy “Picture on the Wall” originally comprised a 1968 single that briefly reunited the pair. The eerie “First Time Alone”, from Mayall’s 1968 LP Blues from Laurel Canyon, finds Green guesting with a Bluesbreakers lineup that includes his replacement, future Rolling Stone Mick Taylor.
By mid-1967, Green had moved on to launch Fleetwood Mac, taking Bluesbreakers John McVie and Mick Fleetwood (who’d recently replaced Aynsley Dunbar) with him. Fleetwood Mac made its public debut in August 1967, a month before Mayall introduced a new Bluesbreakers band on his next LP Crusade. Green would lead Fleetwood Mac through several albums of forward-thinking psychedelic blues-rock through the end of the ‘60s, when a heartbreaking descent into mental illness would lead him to withdraw from the music industry; he would make an unexpected return to active duty in the mid-1990s, touring and recording extensively with the Peter Green Splinter Group. Mayall has continued to record and perform prolifically, remaining one of the world’s foremost-and most adventurous-exponents of contemporary blues.
Meanwhile, the music that John Mayall and Peter Green made together retains its original passion and resonance, standing as a timeless testament to the talents of these two one-of-a-kind musicians.
Scott Schinder
New York City, July 2003