ERIC ANDERSEN: Memory of the Future

Eric Andersen

Memory of the Future

© 1999 Appleseed Recordings (611587102829)

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Song poet Andersen has created another dazzling collection of songs about battered romances, restless travels, and the uneasy human soul.

notes

Well into his 30th year of recording, on "Memory of the Future" Eric Andersen picks up where his 1989 masterpiece "Ghosts upon the Road" left off. His 15th album was eight years in the making, pieced together from collaborations with Rick Danko, Richard Thompson, Benmont Tench, Howie Epstein, and Bob Dylan bassist Tony Garnier. It demonstrates the virtues of patient songwriting in sensual love lyrics, sprawling wanderer's laments, and Beat-poetry-inspired litanies of sins and ecstasies.

Although he arrived in New York's Greenwich Village during the urban folk explosion of the early '60s, song poet Eric Andersen's personal, introspective compositions steered clear of topical protest and traditional folk songs, setting the template for the singer-songwriter movement that blossomed later in the decade and still flourishes today. The late Robert Shelton presciently described one of Eric's earliest compositions as "typical of the new language and poetic patterns of what will one day be called 'an Eric Andersen song'."

The distinctive qualities of "an Eric Andersen song" have been recognized for almost 40 years by music fans and fellow musicians - Eric has recorded more than 20 albums of original material, and his songs have been covered by artists including Judy Collins, Fairport Convention, Peter, Paul & Mary, the Grateful Dead, Linda Ronstadt, Rick Nelson and many more.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1943, Andersen grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., where he taught himself to play guitar and piano. As a teenager, he formed folk groups and immersed himself in the writings of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and "Beat Generation" writers and poets. Eric hitchhiked west to San Francisco in 1963 to seek his Beat idols and started performing original songs in local coffeehouses. An encounter with the Beats on the day of President John F. Kennedy's assassination inspired his cinematic 26-minute song epic, "Beat Avenue," the title track of his 2003 double-CD. The rootless freedom of life on the road and the experience of mingling with the Beats were to become major forces on his life and work.

"Discovered" by Tom Paxton in a Bay Area coffeehouse, Andersen returned to New York City at his urging. By the spring of '64, Eric was playing clubs in the Village, creating and recording some of his best-known songs - "Violets of Dawn," "Thirsty Boots" and "Come to My Bedside." Andersen's career suffered a heartbreaking near-miss in 1967 when a potential signing to Beatles' manager Brian Epstein's roster collapsed with Epstein's death.

Ensuing decades found the peripatetic Andersen playing concerts and festivals around the world and recording a series of major-label albums.

Eric's closest encounter with a wide, non-folk audience came in 1972 with the release of his "Blue River" album on Columbia, his best-selling record to date, which was subsequently tagged as "the best example of the '70s singer-songwriter movement" by the Rolling Stone Record Guide. Cruelly, the tapes for the follow-up "Stages" album that would have consolidated Eric's growing audience were mysteriously "lost" by the label. Belatedly found and issued in remastered and augmented form in 1991 as "Stages: The Lost Album," the CD won the New York Music Award as "Best Folk Album of the Year" and was called "a masterwork" in Rolling Stone.

The last half of the '70s saw Eric releasing two albums on Arista and performing at several of Bob Dylan's all-star Rolling Thunder Revue shows before recording several records issued primarily in Europe.

Andersen's first major American release in more than a decade came in 1989 with "Ghosts Upon the Road," which garnered New York Music Awards for "Best Contemporary Folk Album" and "Best Contemporary Folk Performer."

In the early '90s came a new musical partnership for Eric with The Band's vocalist-bassist Rick Danko and Norwegian singer-songwriter Jonas Fjeld. The trio recorded two albums; their self-titled, award-winning debut was reissued with a bonus live disc in 2002 as "One More Shot."

In 1999, Appleseed issued Eric's first new solo album in ten years, "Memory of the Future," and its blues-drenched follow-up, "You Can't Relive the Past," which also featured four songwriting collaborations with country/folk songwriting legend Townes Van Zandt and a fantastic duet with Lou Reed on the title track, in 2000.

Andersen continued his genre-defying creative evolution with 2003's "Beat Avenue," which featured a rock-oriented approach on some songs and presented the 15-years-in-gestation title track, a blend of spoken vocals, sound effects and jazz/funk backing.

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  • A bleakly beautiful album
    author: Garry Brooks

    This is Eric Andersen's finest. Great songs, great lyrics and superb backing, including Richard Thompson on guitar. A must-buy for fans of RT, Dylan, Al Stewart and Leonard Cohen. The stand-out song on this album, "The Rain Falls Down in Amsterdam", a song about the rise of neo-Nazis is Europe, is also simply one of the best sets of lyrics I've ever heard; unusually, it also works as a poem. Buy it now!

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