Emitt Rhodes - Tame the Lion - Rarities, Volume 1: 1970-1980

On July 19, 2020, Emitt Rhodes died in his sleep at the age of 70. If you don't know who he is, you should. He was the lead singer and songwriter for the band the Merry-Go-Round in the late 1960s, then had a series of excellent solo albums in the early 1970s. He then pretty much went musically silent from 1973 all the way until a comeback album in 2016. A documentary movie about him was titled "The One Man Beatles," and for good reason. He wrote and sang highly melodic songs that were often compared to Paul McCartney's, and generally played and recorded all the instruments himself.

To mark Rhodes' passing, I wanted to put together a rarities collection. But there's very little in terms of publicly available non-album material. It took me a while, but I've managed to scrape together two albums.

This album is essentially split into two parts. The first half is all live performances. Rhodes didn't like playing concerts, and did so only infrequently in his 1970 to 1973 prime. As far as I know, no concert bootlegs have ever emerged, and all the known live material from that time is here. It mostly consists of songs played on TV or radio shows. For a couple of them, he only sang live to a pre-recorded backing track. But if you listen closely, the backing track is slightly different than the studio version. The sound quality for these live versions is sometimes just okay, but we have to take what we can get given the limited amount of such recordings.

The second half consists of studio recordings. First, there's "Tame the Lion," which was only released as an A-side in 1973. In my opinion, this is one of his best songs, and one of the best anti-war songs of all time. Unfortunately, it was totally ignored when it came out.

The rest of the studio recordings are from a 1980 recording session. He attempted to complete an album, but apparently only got part of the way through it. The finished songs have remained unreleased, but bootlegged, except for "Isn't It So," which made it onto a best of collection.

01 Live Till You Die (Emitt Rhodes)
02 She's Such a Beauty (Emitt Rhodes)
03 Love Will Stone You (Emitt Rhodes)
04 Really Wanted You (Emitt Rhodes)
05 You Take the Dark Out of the Night (Emitt Rhodes)
06 Love Will Stone You (Emitt Rhodes)
07 Tame the Lion (Emitt Rhodes)
08 More than a Smile Will Do (Emitt Rhodes)
09 Isn't It So (Emitt Rhodes)
10 Good Enough (Emitt Rhodes)
11 Making Love (Emitt Rhodes)
12 I Can't Tell My Heart (Emitt Rhodes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15423575/EmittR_1970-1980_TmetheLionRaritiesVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot taken from one of his rare TV appearances in the early 1970s.