Albert Hammond Albums (9)
What The Critics Say
When I Need You should have been a monster album for Albert Hammond. His label at the time, Epic, had just scored with Engelbert Humperdinck's After the Lovin' while Leo Sayer hit number one on both Top 40 and AC charts with Hammond's title track from this disc. Add to all the attention and label savvy the fact that this is an exceptional recording by a songwriter of note, and the fact that it failed to generate any serious renown on its own is a real mystery. There are four co-writes with Hal David, four co-writes with Carole Bayer Sager, a songwriting team up with Molly Ann Leiken on "Tangled Up in Tears" (no doubt inspired by Bob Dylan's 1975 recording for sister label Columbia, "Tangled Up in Blue"), and an extraordinary Charles Calello production of the Brenda Lee 1962 Top 5 hit "All Alone Am I." The timing for this song to come back couldn't have been better, and Albert Hammond, resplendent in his best "Adult Contemporary look" album cover which Mac Davis, Kenny Rogers, and Tom Jones could envy, recorded each track on this with a seriousness missing from earlier long players of his. To show just how serious, three titles from his 1976 album, 99 Miles from L.A. appear in updated versions on When I Need You. All three titles were co-written with Hal David, a sublime rendition of what would become a hit in 1984 for Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias, "To All the Girls I've Loved Before," "Rivers Are for Boats," and an extremely commercial reading of "99 Miles from L.A.." Both "99 Miles..." and "All Alone Am I" should have obliterated the competition on AC and Top 40 in the mid-'70s. Perhaps programmers never forgave Hammond for the dreadful "I'm a Train" from 1974, and if his previous label, Mums, was forcing that "hit" down their throats, it could have cost Hammond credibility at radio. "When I Need You" is as good a performance as Leo Sayer's, but the production on Sayer's is a few notches above Calello's work on the title track, and there is the difference. If John Fogerty almost got sued by Fantasy for copying his own song with the "The Old Man Down the Road"/"Green River" controversy, Hammond's songwriting partner Mike Hazelwood, on "It Never Rains in Southern California," should have been up in arms with what Carole Bayer Sager and Hammond did to "Midnight Lady," you can actually sing "It Never Rains In Southern California" over this clone tune! But the interesting thing here is that Albert Hammond's When I Need You is almost as exquisite as the Carole Bayer Sager/Burt Bacharach album on Boardwalk, Sometimes Late at Night, and when you see the contributions here from Bacharach's partners -- Hal David and Sayer, it qualifies When I Need You as a perfect bookend to that Carole Bayer Sager classic. Some hip label should combine both because these discs are exemplary easy listening recordings. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
99 Miles from LA doesn't have the problem of shifting tones the way its eponymous predecessor did: Hammond abandons the flirtation with Caribbean rhythms as well as the darker introspection and makes a lush, easy rolling Californian soft rock album that screams 1975 in its warm, gentle pastel tones created with strings, harmonies, fuzztones, saxophones and the mild disco rhythms that drive "Lay the Music Down." Which isn't to say that Hammond has abandoned serious subjects, as the title "A Job Is a Home to a Homeless Man" suggests, or even the friendly hippie good vibes of "Love Isn't Love Till You Give It Away" proves -- he's just united it under the warm umbrella of soft rock. This makes for a more consistent album sonically, and his writing is more consistent as well; it may not be as ambitious as "I Don't Wanna Die in an Air Disaster" but it's more successful, capturing his melodic gifts and talent for winding, folk-inspired tales. The best-known tune here is "To All the Girls I've Loved Before," which was popularized several years later by Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson, and its blend of sweet melody and slightly sappy sentiment is typical and atypical of 99 Miles from LA: that sense of melodic craft is evident throughout the album, but it's the only tune here that courts commerciality quite so clearly. The rest of the record is very good, very '70s soft rock: lush and easy, melodic and breezy, something that may not always be memorable but it always sounds good while it's playing -- and it's best appreciated as an artifact of its time, a record that's mid-'70s to its very core and all the more appealing because of it. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Albert Hammond displays a heavy Paul Simon influence in how Hammond incorporates Caribbean rhythms and writes stark folk-rock: "Dime Queen of Nevada" is a dead-ringer for "Mother Child and Reunion" and "I Don't Wanna Die in an Air Disaster" recalls "Duncan" so strongly it's fortunate that Hammond didn't sequence these two back-to-back, since that's the only way they'd echo Paul Simon even more. Of these two sides, the Caribbean has a bigger presence here: "Everything I Want to Do" rides a chant-along, steel-drum chorus quite cheerfully as does the light-as-air "The Girl They Call the Cool Breeze" while "We're Running Out" bounces along on a white reggae beat, and these sun-kissed songs are balanced by contemplative introspection ("New York City Here I Come") and dramatic symphonic pop with a nearly cinematic pull ("Half a Million Miles from Home"), along with songs that split the difference between these two extremes (the quite excellent soft rock sweep of "Names, Tags, Numbers and Labels," "Candle Light, Sweet Candle Light"). At times, it seems like Hammond is in conflict with himself since the sunny world pop doesn't mesh with the introspection or the symphonic pop, but it does make for an interesting listen as it vacillates between nearly bubblegum pop and weighty, almost too-ambitious songs. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
