THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
755) Freddy Lindquist — “Woman Running Around”
Norway? No way! Yes way! Savage Saint says that “[b]ack in the 60’s, Freddy Lindquist was known as one out of two super lead guitarist[s] in Norway. . . . hailed as the Hendrix of Norway.” (https://savagesaints.blogspot.com/2015/05/freddy-lindquist-menu-1970.html). “Woman” is a rather mellow prog number from his ‘70 album Menu that asks the eternal question “how can a man make a good living when he got a woman running around?”
Thore Engen from the Norwegian prog/hard rock band Lucifer Was calls Menu “the best Norwegian heavy proggy rock album of 1970 and beyond.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZZ3ybHIClo) Dan Bartko says it is “[p]robably the crown jewel of Norway for hard Rock.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZZ3ybHIClo) And L. Salisbury proclaims “So . . . this is what Norwegian musicians who DON’T burn Churches and stab former band members to death sound like!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZZ3ybHIClo)
Savage Saint gives us some history:
Freddy started out his rock path as a member of Gibbons in the early 60’s. In 1965 he was offered the job as the new lead guitarist in one of the leading band at the time, The Beatnicks. The band was changing their musical style from a Shadows inspired band to a proper beat-band then. Freddy stayed with them for a couple of singles, until he was headhunted to play lead guitar in an even more popular band, The Vanguards, in 1966. Their former lead guitarist, Terje Rypdal, then went to play the organ, until he quit, diving into psychedelia with The Dream. In addiction to some singles, they both played on both LP’s released by The Vanguards. . . . After some more singles, Freddy quit the band in 1969, to join his old mates in The Beatnicks/New Beatnicks. One more single followed before Freddy left again, and the rest of the band transformed into Titanic. Hardrock was then the new formula and Freddy formed the supergroup Jumbo, inspired by the likes of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. Two singles was released . . . . The band then started recording an album, but in the midst of that the band fell apart, and the remaining members fulfilled the album and released in under the name Finjarn/Jensen. . . . Freddy . . . felt that the time was right for a proper solo album now, and his Menu was recorded and released in 1970. . . . The album did not sell too well, and soon went into oblivion. . . . one of the rarest albums from Scandinavia, but also as one of the very best.
https://savagesaints.blogspot.com/2015/05/freddy-lindquist-menu-1970.html
Toroddfuglesteg asks Thore Engen “which album was the first real heavy metal album by a Norwegian band.”. . . Engen responds:
That depends a lot of the definition of metal of those early years. Metal was not a term then. The relevant terms were mainly ”heavy”, ”underground” and “progressive”. Progressive by this time was not necessarily linked to art-rock like Yes, Genesis, ELP, but to a development from the 60’s pop, rock’n’roll and blues-scene. A wailing blues-album by Johnny Winter, for instance, could easily be labeled progressive. But by (early) metal you mean unison bass and guitar-riffing and screaming lead guitars? To me the first Norwegian progressive and heavy LP (also psychedelic) is Dream’s ”Get Dreamy”, featuring Terje Rypdal, from 1967! After that one Freddy Lindquist’s ”Menu” from 1970 is definitively 50% very heavy and I’ll rank this as the first.
https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=65724
Oh, and Wikipedia (Norway) notes (courtesy of Google Translate) that:
The idea was that the cover of Menü should attract attention. It should be something that record buyers stopped at regardless of whether they knew the artist name or not. Thus Rune Venjar came up with the strange idea of taking his wife down to a photo studio and taking a nude picture of her for the front cover. In 1970, this was probably as politically incorrect as possible, and as destructive to sales as possible. Both the record reviewers and the general public failed the release.
https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_Lindquist
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