Iowa native Tommy Bolin seemed to operate according to the less sensible principle that if you had a good song, a great guitar, a couple of hours and enough nerve, you might as well see what happened. What happened was usually interesting. Sometimes it was brilliant. Occasionally it was dangerous. And in the case of Private Eyes, his second and final solo album, it was both.
Released in September 1976, Private Eyes is the sound of a young musician who had already lived several musical lifetimes and apparently had no intention of slowing down. He had been the teenage prodigy in Zephyr, had joined the James Gang, had played on Billy Cobham’s jazz-fusion landmark Spectrum, had become the guitarist in Deep Purple and had made his first solo record, Teaser. He was twenty-five years old.
Whilst the majority of twenty-five-year-olds were trying to work out whether they could afford a beer, Bolin was trying to work out how many musical languages he could cram onto one LP.
The answer was: quite a few.
The record was recorded principally at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles in June 1976, with additional work connected to Trident Studios in London. The sessions moved at a frankly ridiculous pace. The basic tracks were cut over a handful of days, with overdubs following almost immediately. Bolin had already developed demos of several songs, and the album was assembled after Deep Purple collapsed in March 1976. By June he was back in America, putting together his own band and getting Private Eyes onto tape.
And you can hear the urgency.
The opening track, “Bustin’ Out for Rosey,” immediately announces that this isn’t going to be Teaser Part Two. The previous album had been a glorious musical junk drawer, with Bolin wandering through hard rock, jazz, funk, reggae and balladry. Private Eyes is more focused. The songs are more obviously songs. Bolin is still capable of turning the guitar into a small weather system, but the emphasis has shifted toward the band and the compositions.
Then comes “Sweet Burgundy,” and suddenly the man becomes vulnerable. It is a beautiful, wounded song, carried by a melancholy that doesn’t need to shout. Bolin had a remarkable ability to step away from the obvious guitar-hero pose and write something intimate.
That ability is one of the secrets of Private Eyes.
Bolin could shred. Everybody knew he could shred. The more interesting question was what he did when he didn’t.
“Gypsy Soul” is one of the clearest answers. Acoustic, reflective and deceptively simple, it demonstrates the melodic side of a player too often reduced to the phrase “guitar virtuoso.” Bolin wasn’t merely interested in playing more notes than the other fellow. He was interested in making the notes mean something.
“Post Toastee” is the monster. Nine minutes of funk, hard rock, jazz-inflected musicianship and extended guitar playing, it is the track people should hand to anyone who thinks virtuosity is necessarily boring. It starts as a song and gradually mutates into an expedition. The rhythm section locks in, Bolin takes off, and the whole thing begins behaving like it has escaped from the laboratory.
There is a grim irony hanging over the song because its subject concerns addiction. Bolin would perform it as the final song of his final concert, opening for Jeff Beck at Miami’s Jai Alai Stadium on December 3, 1976. The following day he was dead from a drug overdose.
That fact can make “Post Toastee” difficult to hear without turning it into some grotesque prophecy. It shouldn’t be. The song is a warning, not a Ouija board. Bolin didn’t know he was writing the soundtrack to his own obituary. He was a young man writing about something he was already surrounded by, while his own substance problems were worsening around the making and promotion of the album.
“Shake the Devil” continues the album’s harder edge, while “Someday We’ll Bring Our Love Home” provides another change of scenery. “Hello, Again” slows things down beautifully, and the closing “You Told Me That You Loved Me” brings together the rock, soul and horn-driven elements that make the record feel considerably larger than its running time suggests.
There are only eight songs.
Thirty-seven minutes.
And yet there is more personality here than in records twice as long, which is generally what happens when somebody remembers that an album is supposed to contain music rather than simply occupy plastic.
The musicians deserve some credit for that. Reggie McBride supplies bass, Mark Stein contributes keyboards and vocals, Bobby Berge plays drums and percussion, Bobbye Hall adds percussion, and Norma Jean Bell contributes percussion, vocals and saxophone. Carmine Appice plays drums on “Someday We’ll Bring Our Love Home.” Bolin himself handles guitars, keyboards, vocals and piano.
This was important to Bolin. He didn’t simply want another solo album where a collection of hired guns stood around waiting for the guitar hero to finish showing off. The Tommy Bolin Band was intended to function as a band, with other musicians getting room to contribute. The result is one reason Private Eyes feels more cohesive than its reputation sometimes suggests.
Therefore this album feels heartbreaking only if you insist on knowing the ending before you listen. If you don’t, it’s simply a terrific record made by a young musician who had not yet come close to exhausting his possibilities.
There was supposed to be another album. Another tour. Another band. Another strange musical left turn that nobody saw coming. There was supposed to be time.
There wasn’t.
So Private Eyes has acquired the uncomfortable status of a final statement, although it wasn’t intended as one. It is not a perfect record, and pretending otherwise would do Bolin no favours. Some of the production can sound compressed, some performances are less assured than his best work, and the album occasionally seems to be reaching for several different destinations at once.
Good. That’s part of why it lives.
Bolin was still moving. Still experimenting. Still trying things.
The record doesn’t sound like a monument. It sounds like a musician.
Donnie’s Rating: 8/10
