Reid's Digest - Celebrating The Music Of Terry Reid

My way to Terry Reid wasn't as straightforward as some others, obviously because Terry's heyday - as much as he had one - was way before my time - both lifetime and music listening time. So the person to bring me to Terry Reid's music was...Rob Zombie! Yup, shlock rock grunter Zombie turned shlock shock horror film director Zombie. I absolutely hated House Of A 1.000 Corpses when it came out, and was more than dubious about its follow-up The Devil's Rejects. And while Zombie's grinning sadism isn't as entertaining or funny as he thinks ut is, at least Rejects was a hundred times better visually than the epilepsy-inducing Corpses. Zombie also got another thing right: the soundtrack, filling up his movie with classic rock from the 70s, the time frame of the movie. And while I could have gone without him styling his merry mass murdererd into martyrs tduring a long slow-motion shootout set to the entire full-length "Freebird", his other choices were better, especially the opening titles with its freeze frames being set to The Allman Brothers' immortal "Midnight Rider" and two tracks that sounded great, from an artiost unknown to me: That artist was of course Terry Reid, with a trio of tracks off Seed Of Memory, "Brave Awakening", "To Be Treated Rite" and the title track. For some reason, I didnt investigate further. 

The second run-in with Reid was a couple of years later, when River fell into my hands. I had heard of it as some kind of cult record, and the essay in the booklet does a great selling job of making it sound like an underappreciated classic - but yeah, I don't get it. For once, Allmusic is spot on: There is an amiable, relaxed vibe to the songs, but they sound unfinished, like a guy working out some tunes in the studio, then releasing these bits before they've developed into real songs. The essay actually touches on this, talking about "songs without lyrics, lyrics without songs", with Reid not being able to find words for some songs and sometimes not being able to sing over the existing backing tracks. Anyway, so River again temporarily quieted down my interest in Reid, until a couple of years ago I checked out his entire discography, with interesting results. 

Reid's music is interesting in that, like a river, it seems to go with the flow of whatever his mood was, and with which musical friends and partners he hung out. His first albums are still really heavy on blues-rock and loud guitars, as well as superboosting old standards with crunchy guitars. River was, well, jam- and improvisation-heavy. Seeds Of Memory three years later showed how he had made friends with some of the West Coast crew, notably Graham Nash, leaning into a more acoustic South Cali vibe. Rogue Waves three years later, maybe as a belated reaction to punk , new wave and and the beginning of post-punk, showing him as a guitar hero again, literally in the case of the front cover. And his comeback album, The Driver in 1991, was heavily influenced - for better or worse, arguably worse - by his burgeoning frinedship/partnership with Trevor Horn, which means lots of chunky keyboard and a real glossy mainstream sound, that Reid himself later derided as "unlistenable".

There is, however, also a less charitable way to look at Reid's dispersing or developing work. The fact that there are only six studio albums through a career spanning almost fifty years, and all of them appeard on a different record label shows that stability, long-term investment and support by record labels weren't on the menu, and finally the artist's own issues, creatively and otherwise, reared their head, that prevented Terry Reid from becoming a household name, despite being an idol to many in the music business. Every obit that is coming out these days is of course going to mention that Reid ws asked to front Led Zeppelin, but politely declined, and then suggested Robert Plant as lead singer. But Reid could never really pull it together, to stay with a label and develop his music. After his first two records, when he was still sold as somewhat of a teen idol, the next three records followed in intervals of three or more years of each other, an eternity in those days. So whatever momentum Reid got going with an at least artistically interesting or lauded record dissipated, together with label relations. 

Despite these changes in musical direction and musical homes, Reid could always be counted on to deliver some quality cuts, and Reid's Digest - The Music of Terry Reid is supposed to showcase that, while also giving folks a couple of song that they might not have already. When I heard of his death two days ago, I finally got myself to sit down and put together a Terry Reid compilation that I had been planning for a long time. At first I wanted to just reuse a comp I did for myself a couple of years ago, but finally - as these things tend to - the project got a lot more work-heavy, as I finally relistened to a ton of tracks and switched at least half of the line-up, did some editing and necessary volume equalizing, etc. yadda yadda yadda. Of course I had too many tracks to fit onto a CD-length comp (I know, I know, sue me...), so I had to drop a couple, rethink and replace again, and so forth.

But now I think I've landed on a compilation that represents pretty well all sides of Terry Reid. This isn't a greatest hit record of any type, even if he didn't really have any, but I didn't include his version of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)", for example, which is his early signature song. But like a lot of the heavier numbers from his first to records (Bang Bang You're Terry Reid and Terry Reid) his singing syle on these songs is a little too shouty for me, as if he had to show how gritty he was by accentuating a clipped, growling vocal style. So, from these albums I tended to take the more melodic, well-sung numbers, while still letting Reid cause a ruckus on tracks such as "Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace". 

River, as described above, is a bit of a particular case, as it's an important album in Reid's thin discography, but I'm not a fan, so while I included the title cut (in an alternate take), I otherwise used outtakes from the River sessions ("Anyway", "Let's Go Down") that I prefer to most of the songs that made the cut. As also said above, my first entranceway to Reid's music was Seed Of Memory - and more precisely that album's first side - which is presented here in its entirety. Rogue Waves was a more workmanlike effort at a time when he really could have used a hit, so I only kept his heartfekt version of "(All I Have To Do Is) Dream". And then of course Reid went radio silent for a decade, as the Eighties barely had any use for rock'n'roll heroes of the 70s, and no use for a niche figure like him. His fortunes changed when he hooked up with pop megaproducer Trevor Horn, from the ensuing album The Driver I kept the only acoustic tune, the lovely "Hand of Dimes", the admittedly slightly overproduced "The Whole Of The Moon" (which has great impassioned vocals by Reid, though) and the title track that I've edited into a very specific - and obviously eclusive to this comp - version. I'll have more things to say about "The Driver", but that would explode all reasonable word limits, so I'll keep that for another write-up, possibly coming quite soon. 

For now, I let you rummage through some of the best music that Terry Reid had to offer, even when audiences wasn't always willing and ready to lend their ears. A cult figure among cult figures, Terry Reid coul've been a contender, he could've been somebody...and he has the tunes to back this statement up. So enjoy Reid's Digest - The Music Of Terry Reid, and I might be back with more stuff to say about the man soon. Until then, let the bends and turns of the river of Reid's inspiration take you away...

R.I.P. Terrance James Reid, 1949 - 2025