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The Hit
You might know Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” from commercials for Aspercreme, Esurance, or mabye even a vintage Gatorade ad; all you NHL fans out there might recognize it from a promo for…some season or another. That’s all I could find easily, but I’m confident that’s the short list of buyers.
Older fans, or even just fans of Scotland’s Nazareth, might actually recall hearing it on the radio, maybe pulling that special someone close. I don’t know, maybe you don’t listen closely to lyrics. No judgment.
One thing I can say for sure is that, unless you bought your album in the U.S. market you did not hear “Love Hurts” on Nazareth’s sixth album, 1975’s Hair of the Dog, because that’s the only release of the album that includes it. It only ended up there thanks to a savvy intervention by A&M Records’ Jerry Moss. As recalled by Pete Agnew, the band’s bassist and only remaining original member, the original 45 offered the title track (“Hair of the Dog,” but there’s a story there) b/w a song called “Guilty.” In a couple interviews (the quote below comes from a site called The College Crowd Digs Me), Agnew explained how bands released singles back in Nazareth's hey-day - e.g., “So what bands started doing was to record just B-sides. Just throwaway tracks that they didn't necessarily spend a lot of time on.” In any case, Moss heard “Love Hurts” before he heard all of Hair of the Dog, and he gave dropping “Guilty” (a Randy Newman song, btw) for their eventual hit as his first piece of advice. Agnew remains graciously grateful for the tip.
The original came from the Boudleaux-Bryant songwriting team by way of The Everly Brothers, but Agnew says the band listened to a version by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris during the long nights on the road touring around Europe. All members of the band loved it, something that helped it come readily to mind when they knocked about for one of their B-sides. And yet there’s more to the story. As the album was coming together, Agnew and Nazareth front-man, Dan McCafferty, traveled north for a wedding, leaving the remaining members, Manny Charlton (guitar) and Darrell Sweet (drums) alone in the studio for a night. As related to Classic Bands in 2008:
"So, when we came down the next day, they recorded it and recorded it in exactly the same key as Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Of course in the octave they were singing, it's too low, far too low. Then you have to take that up an octave. So that's how it ended up being sung in that key. If we had been in the studio when they did that, it probably would never have been a hit 'cause we would have never have done it in that key.”
Accident upon accident upon oddity; that’s what it takes sometimes. For Nazareth, it took the better part of a decade...
The Rest of the Story
The band formed in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland in 1968, when the remnants of a band called The Shadettes decided to keep playing. I named all the original members above - Agnew, Charlton, McCafferty and Sweet - and they pulled the name “Nazareth” from a line in “The Weight” by The Band. The band relocated to London around 1970 and took the first steps toward getting serious, but that requires a couple detours.
First, at some point during their journey to rock stardom (in Europe, mostly), they sort of backed into regular financial backing in the person of “a bingo millionaire” named Billy Fehilly (more on him and another project). As Agnew told Classic Bands, all the members had wives and day jobs (good ones, in both cases, presumably), and most of them were content to continue working and playing nights. Wanting to get into music management, the pitch from Fehilly offered to match what they earned on their day jobs. The band accepted, but Agnew’s specific choice of words - e.g., “But they said, ‘we’ll do it for a year.”’ - implies that it didn’t last very long, but I’ve seen nothing to confirm that and, honestly, my first impulse is to say, good for them, no matter how long it lasted.
Nazareth also took a while to find their sound. Their eponymous debut dropped in 1971, but it didn’t go far…well, anywhere except (of all places) Wichita, Kansas. Per an excellent reminiscence from The College Crowd Digs Me:
“It was being played in Europe a little bit here and there, But I remember finding out it went to number one in Wichita, Kansas. We'll never forget that. Some radio station in Wichita, Kansas liked the album and for some unknown reason, they played that album upside down! And somebody told me about it being #1 in Wichita, and I went, 'What?!' (laughs) We couldn't believe this because we were hardly being played anywhere else. So we kinda got a soft spot for Wichita because of that.”
Their second album, Exercises (1972), might have been even worse - in Agnew’s words, “it was a very strange conglomeration of Soft-Rock and a bit of orchestra. As far as I'm concerned, it was a complete disaster. I think my mother had a copy of it” - but it punched their ticket on a tour with Deep Purple and connected them to producer/Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover, who would put out their next three albums, Razmanaz (early 1973), Loud ‘N’ Proud (late 1973) and Rampant (1974). And that brings the story current to Hair of the Dog. Nazareth ended their association with Glover and the rest is…well, a very, very long history.
The first half or so of that interview with Classic Bands covers two main questions: 1) how surprised Agnew is that Nazareth is still going, and 2) what it’s like touring (primarily) the former Eastern bloc and why shows there end so damn early. To his credit, Agnew is an unassuming and charming interviewee who gives good, and often funny answers to questions that could put some “one-hit wonders” on edge - though, for the record, I haven’t come across that all that often over the course of this series. Going the other way, it almost certainly helps that Nazareth was anything but a one-hit wonder.
It’s fair to say Nazareth’s “real” story begins with Razamanaz, an album that gave them two UK hits with “Broken Down Angel” and “Bad Bad Boy” (that's live, btw); that…form of stardom continued with their cover of Joni Mitchell’s “This Flight Tonight” (Loud ‘N’ Proud) and a(nother) cover of Tomorrow’s “My White Bicycle” (Rampant). Even after their star dimmed and the line-up shuffled…like a lot, Nazareth scored another (again, non-U.S.) hit with “Holiday” (1979’s Malice in Wonderland), they got “Crazy (A Suitable Case for Treatment)” on the soundtrack for 1981’s animated mash-note to metal, Heavy Metal; they even snuck another hit in the 1980s with “Dream On.” That last one’s still big in Germany, btw. Nazareth continued through the 80s and 90s even as, per Wikipedia, “their popularity had declined such that some albums no longer received either a UK or a US release.”
After reading a few things about Nazareth, the “why” of that seems neither complicated nor pathetic: they had fun. They haven’t been able to play the States for awhile - due to visas, and probably a dash of economics - but they fun/big shows when they did. In his chat with The College Crowd Digs Me, Agnew recalls meeting up and touring in the States with Slade and Thin Lizzy - and playing at the end of that order. They did the 70s hard-rock festival circuit too, performing in arena-festivals with major acts like Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, Ted Nugent, Heart and Boston. Agnew even shared his memories of their first show in the States, opening for Deep Purple at Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium in 1972 and freaking out at the sight of cops with guns (oh, whatever would he make of police departments with massiv,e militarized vehicles and SWAT teams…). In fewer words, small wonder they kept going, even if Fehilly stopped bankrolling them….whenever that happened…
…oh, and they passed on an offer to play at Axl Rose’s 1993 wedding, but Guns N’ Roses still covered “Hair of the Dog” on The Spaghetti Incident…
About the Sampler
To start with a funny side-note, Nazareth either didn’t grant Spotify access to their first two albums, or Spotify took a pass on them. Spotify does, however, have a Nazareth anthology and I dicked around with that for a bit before I gave up trying to drink from the proverbial firehose and focused on their third (Razamanaz), sixth (Hair of the Dog), and seventh (Close Enough for Rock ‘n’ Roll) albums - which happened to be the first three albums on offer. At any rate…
I linked to some songs on the sampler above - their U.S. hit, obviously, but also “Bad Bad Boy” - but, when I was making the final cut, I decided I’d dub those bonus tracks and serve up some buried points of interest instead.
All in all, Nazareth files under 70s hard rock more than heavy metal - but they play in several sub-categories under that broad banner, even within each album. Razamanaz, for instance, opens with a straight, balls-to-the-wall rocker for the title track, before down-shifting into funk-blues numbers like “Night Woman,” the blues-rock “Woke Up This Morning,” and the…frankly, semi-mysterious “Alcatraz,” which seems to reference the AIM takeover of the famous island in the early 70s…it’s either that or some of those tonal choices are badly misplaced…
Even with the metal-inspired vocals - see, “Beggars Day” and “Changin’ Times” (whiffs of Robert Plant on the latter) - a blues-rock sound dominated Hair of the Dog…of which. Nazareth’s original title for that song was “Son of a Bitch,” and they couldn’t see a reason to change it until A&M told them that “Sears wouldn’t sell it.” Apparently, they saw “son of a bitch” as an “Americanism” or something John Wayne would say. It wasn’t a thing in Scotland. Also, Agnew figures that having "Hair of the Dog" on the front of "Love Hurts" helped their audience understand that Nazareth was a hard rock...funny how the world works... I rounded out Hair of the Dog with the quite possibly too-epic, “Please Don’t Judas Me,” a journey that wraps up just under 10 minutes.
Last…and probably least, I represented Close Enough for Rock ‘N’ Roll with another epic in “Telegram,” which is shorter than “Judas,” but also has three songs’ worth of passages. Because ballads hadn’t been repped enough, I added “Homesick Again” (not bad, btw) and one of Nazareth’s bigger departures from hard rock, “Carry Out Feelings,” which I’d call, for lack of a better phrase, heavy easy listening. Finally, I returned to their hard rock medium with “Vancouver Shakedown” (but which Vancouver?) which has a little something the rest of the stuff on these three albums didn’t. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s…different. "Roots rock" versus "blues-rock"?
That’s it. Till the next one
You might know Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” from commercials for Aspercreme, Esurance, or mabye even a vintage Gatorade ad; all you NHL fans out there might recognize it from a promo for…some season or another. That’s all I could find easily, but I’m confident that’s the short list of buyers.
Older fans, or even just fans of Scotland’s Nazareth, might actually recall hearing it on the radio, maybe pulling that special someone close. I don’t know, maybe you don’t listen closely to lyrics. No judgment.
One thing I can say for sure is that, unless you bought your album in the U.S. market you did not hear “Love Hurts” on Nazareth’s sixth album, 1975’s Hair of the Dog, because that’s the only release of the album that includes it. It only ended up there thanks to a savvy intervention by A&M Records’ Jerry Moss. As recalled by Pete Agnew, the band’s bassist and only remaining original member, the original 45 offered the title track (“Hair of the Dog,” but there’s a story there) b/w a song called “Guilty.” In a couple interviews (the quote below comes from a site called The College Crowd Digs Me), Agnew explained how bands released singles back in Nazareth's hey-day - e.g., “So what bands started doing was to record just B-sides. Just throwaway tracks that they didn't necessarily spend a lot of time on.” In any case, Moss heard “Love Hurts” before he heard all of Hair of the Dog, and he gave dropping “Guilty” (a Randy Newman song, btw) for their eventual hit as his first piece of advice. Agnew remains graciously grateful for the tip.
The original came from the Boudleaux-Bryant songwriting team by way of The Everly Brothers, but Agnew says the band listened to a version by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris during the long nights on the road touring around Europe. All members of the band loved it, something that helped it come readily to mind when they knocked about for one of their B-sides. And yet there’s more to the story. As the album was coming together, Agnew and Nazareth front-man, Dan McCafferty, traveled north for a wedding, leaving the remaining members, Manny Charlton (guitar) and Darrell Sweet (drums) alone in the studio for a night. As related to Classic Bands in 2008:
"So, when we came down the next day, they recorded it and recorded it in exactly the same key as Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Of course in the octave they were singing, it's too low, far too low. Then you have to take that up an octave. So that's how it ended up being sung in that key. If we had been in the studio when they did that, it probably would never have been a hit 'cause we would have never have done it in that key.”
Accident upon accident upon oddity; that’s what it takes sometimes. For Nazareth, it took the better part of a decade...
The Rest of the Story
The band formed in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland in 1968, when the remnants of a band called The Shadettes decided to keep playing. I named all the original members above - Agnew, Charlton, McCafferty and Sweet - and they pulled the name “Nazareth” from a line in “The Weight” by The Band. The band relocated to London around 1970 and took the first steps toward getting serious, but that requires a couple detours.
First, at some point during their journey to rock stardom (in Europe, mostly), they sort of backed into regular financial backing in the person of “a bingo millionaire” named Billy Fehilly (more on him and another project). As Agnew told Classic Bands, all the members had wives and day jobs (good ones, in both cases, presumably), and most of them were content to continue working and playing nights. Wanting to get into music management, the pitch from Fehilly offered to match what they earned on their day jobs. The band accepted, but Agnew’s specific choice of words - e.g., “But they said, ‘we’ll do it for a year.”’ - implies that it didn’t last very long, but I’ve seen nothing to confirm that and, honestly, my first impulse is to say, good for them, no matter how long it lasted.
Nazareth also took a while to find their sound. Their eponymous debut dropped in 1971, but it didn’t go far…well, anywhere except (of all places) Wichita, Kansas. Per an excellent reminiscence from The College Crowd Digs Me:
“It was being played in Europe a little bit here and there, But I remember finding out it went to number one in Wichita, Kansas. We'll never forget that. Some radio station in Wichita, Kansas liked the album and for some unknown reason, they played that album upside down! And somebody told me about it being #1 in Wichita, and I went, 'What?!' (laughs) We couldn't believe this because we were hardly being played anywhere else. So we kinda got a soft spot for Wichita because of that.”
Their second album, Exercises (1972), might have been even worse - in Agnew’s words, “it was a very strange conglomeration of Soft-Rock and a bit of orchestra. As far as I'm concerned, it was a complete disaster. I think my mother had a copy of it” - but it punched their ticket on a tour with Deep Purple and connected them to producer/Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover, who would put out their next three albums, Razmanaz (early 1973), Loud ‘N’ Proud (late 1973) and Rampant (1974). And that brings the story current to Hair of the Dog. Nazareth ended their association with Glover and the rest is…well, a very, very long history.
The first half or so of that interview with Classic Bands covers two main questions: 1) how surprised Agnew is that Nazareth is still going, and 2) what it’s like touring (primarily) the former Eastern bloc and why shows there end so damn early. To his credit, Agnew is an unassuming and charming interviewee who gives good, and often funny answers to questions that could put some “one-hit wonders” on edge - though, for the record, I haven’t come across that all that often over the course of this series. Going the other way, it almost certainly helps that Nazareth was anything but a one-hit wonder.
It’s fair to say Nazareth’s “real” story begins with Razamanaz, an album that gave them two UK hits with “Broken Down Angel” and “Bad Bad Boy” (that's live, btw); that…form of stardom continued with their cover of Joni Mitchell’s “This Flight Tonight” (Loud ‘N’ Proud) and a(nother) cover of Tomorrow’s “My White Bicycle” (Rampant). Even after their star dimmed and the line-up shuffled…like a lot, Nazareth scored another (again, non-U.S.) hit with “Holiday” (1979’s Malice in Wonderland), they got “Crazy (A Suitable Case for Treatment)” on the soundtrack for 1981’s animated mash-note to metal, Heavy Metal; they even snuck another hit in the 1980s with “Dream On.” That last one’s still big in Germany, btw. Nazareth continued through the 80s and 90s even as, per Wikipedia, “their popularity had declined such that some albums no longer received either a UK or a US release.”
After reading a few things about Nazareth, the “why” of that seems neither complicated nor pathetic: they had fun. They haven’t been able to play the States for awhile - due to visas, and probably a dash of economics - but they fun/big shows when they did. In his chat with The College Crowd Digs Me, Agnew recalls meeting up and touring in the States with Slade and Thin Lizzy - and playing at the end of that order. They did the 70s hard-rock festival circuit too, performing in arena-festivals with major acts like Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, Ted Nugent, Heart and Boston. Agnew even shared his memories of their first show in the States, opening for Deep Purple at Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium in 1972 and freaking out at the sight of cops with guns (oh, whatever would he make of police departments with massiv,e militarized vehicles and SWAT teams…). In fewer words, small wonder they kept going, even if Fehilly stopped bankrolling them….whenever that happened…
…oh, and they passed on an offer to play at Axl Rose’s 1993 wedding, but Guns N’ Roses still covered “Hair of the Dog” on The Spaghetti Incident…
About the Sampler
To start with a funny side-note, Nazareth either didn’t grant Spotify access to their first two albums, or Spotify took a pass on them. Spotify does, however, have a Nazareth anthology and I dicked around with that for a bit before I gave up trying to drink from the proverbial firehose and focused on their third (Razamanaz), sixth (Hair of the Dog), and seventh (Close Enough for Rock ‘n’ Roll) albums - which happened to be the first three albums on offer. At any rate…
I linked to some songs on the sampler above - their U.S. hit, obviously, but also “Bad Bad Boy” - but, when I was making the final cut, I decided I’d dub those bonus tracks and serve up some buried points of interest instead.
All in all, Nazareth files under 70s hard rock more than heavy metal - but they play in several sub-categories under that broad banner, even within each album. Razamanaz, for instance, opens with a straight, balls-to-the-wall rocker for the title track, before down-shifting into funk-blues numbers like “Night Woman,” the blues-rock “Woke Up This Morning,” and the…frankly, semi-mysterious “Alcatraz,” which seems to reference the AIM takeover of the famous island in the early 70s…it’s either that or some of those tonal choices are badly misplaced…
Even with the metal-inspired vocals - see, “Beggars Day” and “Changin’ Times” (whiffs of Robert Plant on the latter) - a blues-rock sound dominated Hair of the Dog…of which. Nazareth’s original title for that song was “Son of a Bitch,” and they couldn’t see a reason to change it until A&M told them that “Sears wouldn’t sell it.” Apparently, they saw “son of a bitch” as an “Americanism” or something John Wayne would say. It wasn’t a thing in Scotland. Also, Agnew figures that having "Hair of the Dog" on the front of "Love Hurts" helped their audience understand that Nazareth was a hard rock...funny how the world works... I rounded out Hair of the Dog with the quite possibly too-epic, “Please Don’t Judas Me,” a journey that wraps up just under 10 minutes.
Last…and probably least, I represented Close Enough for Rock ‘N’ Roll with another epic in “Telegram,” which is shorter than “Judas,” but also has three songs’ worth of passages. Because ballads hadn’t been repped enough, I added “Homesick Again” (not bad, btw) and one of Nazareth’s bigger departures from hard rock, “Carry Out Feelings,” which I’d call, for lack of a better phrase, heavy easy listening. Finally, I returned to their hard rock medium with “Vancouver Shakedown” (but which Vancouver?) which has a little something the rest of the stuff on these three albums didn’t. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s…different. "Roots rock" versus "blues-rock"?
That’s it. Till the next one
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