Jack Nitzsche: Hearing is Believing 1962-1979

I mostly try and avoid record shops these days, to avoid the risk of making what we might call 'non-essential' purchases. The only exceptions are Fopp, if I'm in the neighbourhood, or Clerkenwell Music, which has a reputation for being one of the best independent stores, and is only a fifteen-minute walk away. It was there that I bought this CD last year, lovingly compiled by Ace Records, with a 28-page booklet of sleeve notes. There's even a list of the tracks that Ace tried but failed to license for inclusion on this album. (See Ace's publicity for the album.)

I mostly know of Nitzsche through his association with Neil Young: he did the string arrangements for Buffalo Springfield's Expecting to Fly, and continued to work with him off and on for a few decades, I think. He also worked closely with Phil Spector and is sometimes credited as playing a significant role in devising the original 'wall of sound'. He worked on the soundtrack of Performance, and there's an implication that, like co-director Donald Cammell, he started taking Aleister Crowley and all that occult stuff a little too earnestly. I believe David Crosby thought Nitzsche was a really nasty piece of work and didn't like the fact that Neil Young associated with him (Jimmy McDonough called him the Dark Prince). After Neil split up with Carrie Snodgress, Jack Nitzsche started seeing her, and was arrested for assaulting her (echoes, forgive the unintentional pun, of Spector there, too).

As for the music, the tracks I like most are Nitzsche's own instrumentals, which have that surf guitar sound reminiscent of The Ventures. It's noticeable that 21 of the 26 tracks are from the 1960s — and the 1970s ones are generally not as good, which suggests that Nitzsche either burnt out creatively quite early, or lost the patronage of influential friends.