Lost In Tyme Blog

Graham Bond - 1967 - Love Is The Law

Tracks :
1 Love Is The Law 4:31
2 Moving Towards The Light 4:29
3 Our Love Will Come Shining Through 3:05
4 I Couldn`t Stand It Anymore 4:08
5 Sun Dance 2:24
6 Crossroads Of Time 2:35
7 Bad News Blues 2:49
8 Strange Times, Sad Times 4:00
9 The Naz 5:10
10 The World Will Soon Be Free 3:55
Bonus Tracks :
11 Long Tall Shorty (A'side 1964) 2:21
12 Long Legged Lady (B'side 1964) 2:17
13 Tell Me (A'side 1965) 2:50
14 Love Come Shining Through (B'side 1965) 2:03
15 Lease on Love (A'side 1965) 2:46
16 My Heart's in Little Pieces (B'side 1965) 3:22
17 St. James Infirmary (A'side 1966) 3:39
18 Soul Tango (B'side 1966) 3:10

Graham Bond :Keyboards, Saxophone, Vocals
Dave Sheehan :Drums, Percussion
Diane Stewart :Vocals
Hal Blaine :Drums

After Graham Bond moved to the US in the mid '60's having lost Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce from his band to Cream, he recorded two weird moody albums for the US label Pulsar.
This is the first one and it's a spooky occult tinged keyboard/mellotron led collection
of bluesy, jazzy, soulful rock.

~@~@~

Grahame Bond was an innovative rock musician from England, who would have certainly been more well known today had he not died at the age of 37. Bond sings and plays every instrument on this record, except for the drums.

Although a musical genius, he spent a great deal of his time dabbling in the Occult and believed he was Aleister Crowley’s son.

He was an innovator in the British rhythm & blues boom in England in the 60’s, and also the first rock musician to use a mellotron. His previous band, The Grahame Bond Organization (GBO), was known for playing the most evil-sounding and dirty r&b heard in the UK in the sixties. That band also included Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.

Bond’s personal life included much substance abuse, and he was known for continually fighting depression. Near the end of his life, Bond’s friends say he was getting even deeper into the occult. He died under the wheels of a train in London in 1974, and his death was ruled a suicide.

~@~@~

Bio :
An important, underappreciated figure of early British RB, Graham Bond is known in the U.S., if at all, for heading the group that Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker played in before they joined Cream. Originally an alto sax jazz player -- in fact, he was voted Britain's New Jazz Star in 1961 -- he met Bruce and Baker in 1962 after joining Alexis Koerner's Blues Incorporated, the finishing school for numerous British rock and blues musicians. By the time he, Bruce, and Baker split to form their own band in 1963, Bond was mostly playing the Hammond organ, as well as handling the lion's share of the vocals. John McLaughlin was a member of the Graham Bond Organization in the early days for a few months, and some live material that he recorded with the group was eventually issued after most of their members had achieved stardom in other contexts. Saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith completed Bond's most stable lineup, who cut a couple of decent albums and a few singles in the mid-'60s.

In their prime, the Graham Bond Organization played rhythm blues with a strong jazzy flavor, emphasizing Bond's demonic organ and gruff vocals. The band arguably would have been better served to feature Bruce as their lead singer -- he is featured surprisingly rarely on their recordings. Nevertheless, their best records were admirably tough British RB/rock/jazzsoul, and though Bond has sometimes been labeled as a pioneer of jazz-rock, in reality it was much closer to rock than jazz. The band performed imaginative covers and fairly strong original material, and Bond was also perhaps the very first rock musician to record with the Mellotron synthesizer. Hit singles, though, were necessary for British bands to thrive in the mid-'60s, and Bond's group began to fall apart in 1966, when Bruce and Baker joined forces with Eric Clapton to form Cream. Bond attempted to carry on with the Organization for a while with Heckstall-Smith and drummer Jon Hiseman, both of whom went on to John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Colosseum.

Bond never recaptured the heights of his work with the Organization. In the late '60s he moved to the U.S., recording albums with musicians including Harvey Brooks, Harvey Mandel, and Hal Blaine. Moving back to Britain, he worked with Ginger Baker's Airforce, the Jack Bruce Band, and Cream lyricist Pete Brown, as well as forming the band Holy Magick, who recorded a couple albums. Bond's demise was more tragic than most: he developed serious drug and alcohol problems and an obsession with the occult. He committed suicide by throwing himself into the path of a London Underground train in 1974.
~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide