"My Griffin Is Gone" by HOYT AXTON – January 1969 US LP on Columbia Records in Stereo (CBS in the UK in Mono and Stereo) featuring David Cohen of Country Joe & The Fish & Elephant’s Memory on Guitar, James Burton of Elvis Presley fame on Dobro, Larry Knechtel of Bread on Keyboards (with sessionman Mike Melvoin also on keys), Jimmie Fadden of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Ben Benay of Delaney & Bonnie on Harmonicas with Chuck Berghofer and Gary Coleman of The Wrecking Crew on Bass and Percussion (July 2006 UK Acadia CD Reissue and Remaster) - A Review by Mark Barry...

 

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"...Spent It All On Comfort For His Mind..."

 

For a good few years now I've had an e-Book series on Amazon under the general umbrella of 'Sounds Good Music Books'. And one of those 30-or-so releases is entitled "I SAW THE LIGHT - Forgotten Albums 1955 to 1979" with a whopping 458 entries and nearly 1,900 e-Pages.

 

Well, Hoyt Axton's overlooked and largely forgotten Country-Folk pastoral socially conscious gem "My Griffin Is Gone" will be going in there with an unceremonious bullet come next update (which will be early 2022).

 

"My Griffin Is Gone" is not the five-star masterpiece many claim, but there are at least six or seven of the twelve tracks that I play a 'lot' - and they are good man - Nick Drake and Paul Buckmaster flute and acoustic guitar pastoral plaintive good - with a smidge of Tony Joe White and Fred Neil deep-voiced guttural cool thrown in for good measure. The lyrics too are brilliant – life, friends, religion, drugs, the counter culture, childhood lingering and more. Sometimes they can be twee for sure – all flowers and sunshine (it was 1969 after all). But mostly they're intelligent, street-insightful and in the hands of an artist able to communicate them with an unflinching eye.

 

And audio-wise, this sweet-sounding 2006 CD on England's Acadia (part of the Evangeline Records group) is licensed from Sony/BMG who own the tapes for Columbia Records, so the Remaster is genuinely clear and really good (some tiny traces of hiss but nothing that really detracts). Those strings on "Revelations" are gorgeous as are the Brass Arrangements on the brilliant "Way Before The Time Of Towns". Let's get to the babbling people brook...

 

UK released July 2006 (August 2006 in the USA) - "My Griffin Is Gone" by HOYT AXTON on Acadia ACA 8117 (Barcode 0805772811720) is a straightforward CD Reissue and Remaster of his 1969 album (in Stereo) and plays out as follows (35:47 minutes):

 

1. On The Natural [Side 1]

2. Way Before The Time Of Towns

3. Beelzebub's Laughter

4. Sunshine Fields Of Love

5. It's All Right Now

6. Gypsy Will

7. Revelations [Side 2]

8. Snow Blind Friend

9. Childhood's End

10. Sunrise

11. Kingswood Manor

12. Chase Down The Sun

Tracks 1 to 12 are his fifth studio album "My Griffin Is Gone" – released January 1969 in the USA on Columbia CS 9766 (Stereo) and in the UK on CBS Records M 63588 (Mono) and CBS S 63588 (Stereo). The Stereo mix is used for this CD. Produced by ALEX HASSILEV, players included David Cohen of Country Joe & The Fish & Elephant's Memory on Guitar, James Burton of Elvis Presley fame on Dobro, Larry Knechtel of Bread on Keyboards (with sessionman Mike Melvoin also on keys), Jimmie Fadden of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Ben Benay of Delaney & Bonnie on Harmonicas with Chuck Berghofer and Gary Coleman of The Wrecking Crew on Bass and Percussion. All songs written by Axton except "Kingswood Manor" with Peter Steinberg of the US group The Shambles.

 

The six-leaf foldout inlay has in-depth liner notes from ALAN ROBINSON who does a damn good job of explaining Axton and his late 60ts pretty-sounding yet acidic LP – the only real loss being the lyric insert sheet that came with original US LPs – it's not reproduced which is a mistake on an album that relies so heavily on words both hummed and snarled. Still, the Remastered Audio is lovely throughout, so that makes up for the presentation basics. To the music...

 

Axton had been punching out albums since 1964 and his songwriting prowess had not gone unnoticed - Three Dog Night making a No.1 out of "Joy To The World" - while Steppenwolf made a stunner of "The Pusher" - the subject matter of drugs and their destruction being something of a serious bugbear for Axton. In fact, Steppenwolf and their lead vocalist John Kay covered "Snow Blind Friend" off of "My Griffin Is Gone" for their 1970 LP "Steppenwolf 7" - recognizing easily with lyrics like "...did you say you saw your good friend flying low, blinded by the snow, lying on the sidewalk with a misery on his brain...spent it all on comfort for his mind..."

 

Drugs and their devastation were not far from Hoyt's mind at any given moment (as was religion) – take the Simon & Garfunkel quiet prettiness of "Kingswood Manor" which very effectively paints a nightmare picture on an addict interned - "...this jacket is tight, but I feel fine, though they say I've lost my mind...the doctor came, and in his hand, the ticket to the promised land, a trip to paradise, little pills instead of tea, he said he'd come to rescue me from the maddening saddening gloom in the paisley rubber room..."

 

In the lovely "Childhood's End", he sounds so like Fred Neil it's uncanny, while the gorgeous "Way Before The Time Of Towns" was a highlight on the Ace Records compilation "Choctaw Ridge: New Fables Of The American South 1968-1973" that they put out in July of 2021 to mucho praise (see my in-depth review).

 

Will this one eventually rise out of the ashes and be born anew (like its title)?

 

"My Griffin Is Gone" by Hoyt Axton is the kind of album that means a lot to a lot of people who were lucky enough to stumble on it in the racks of record shops in the spring of 1969. A genuine lost gem then and one you need to get mythical figures on...