''Band Wagon'' is the 1975 debut solo album of Japanese musician Shigeru Suzuki recorded with musicians from Los Angeles. Two singles were released from the album "The Smell of August"/"Snow Express" and "100-Watt Lover", both in 1975.

Background and recording

The solo album followed the disbanding of Happy End and formation of Tin Pan Alley with Haruomi Hosono and

Masataka Matsutoya is a Japanese arranger, composer, music producer, and motor journalist. He currently resides in Setagaya, Tokyo. He is a graduate of Keio Senior High School and Keio University (literature department). His wife is singer-songwriter, composer, an ...

. Suzuki's fellow Happy End bandmate Takashi Matsumoto wrote the lyrics to the songs. The album features American musicians from notable acts such as

Little Feat Little Feat is an American rock band formed by lead vocalist and guitarist Lowell George and keyboardist Bill Payne in 1969 in Los Angeles. George disbanded the group because of creative differences shortly before his death in 1979. Surviving ...

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and Sly and the Family Stone. Suzuki had previously worked with

Bill Payne William H. Payne (born March 12, 1949) is an American pianist who, with Lowell George, co-founded the American rock band Little Feat. He is considered by many other rock pianists, including Elton John, to be one of the finest American piano roc ...

, Dick Hyde and Kirby Johnson on Happy End's final album. The track "Woman in the Dunes" was named after the novel of the same name and its

film adaptation A film adaptation is the transfer of a work or story, in whole or in part, to a feature film. Although often considered a type of derivative work, film adaptation has been conceptualized recently by academic scholars such as Robert Stam as a dial ...

Touring and live recordings

To tour the record, Suzuki formed the band , consisting of keyboardist Hiroshi Sato, bassist Akihiro Tanaka, and drummer Toshiaki Hayashi. The group played around 10 shows, before disbanding on November 16, 1975. Live recordings from the tour appear on 2008's ''Shigeru Suzuki History Box - Crown Years 1974-1979'' box set. In 2014, Suzuki performed ''Band Wagon'' in its entry for his ''Get Back Sessions Special "Band Wagon" Live'' concert video. It peaked at number 272 on

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nov ...

's DVD chart. A 2-disc live album recorded during the original 1975 tour on April 4 and May 15 was released on September 23, 2015 under the title ''1975 Live''.

Track listing

Personnel

According to 2008 re-release CD booklet: * Shigeru Suzuki – all vocals & guitar, strings synthesizer on track 9 *

– piano on tracks 2, 5, 6, 8 & 9,

electric piano An electric piano is a musical instrument which produces sounds when a performer presses the keys of a piano-style musical keyboard. Pressing keys causes mechanical hammers to strike metal strings, metal reeds or wire tines, leading to vibrations ...

on tracks 3 & 4 *

Doug Rauch Douglass Haywood Rauch (September 14, 1950 – April 23, 1979) was an American bassist. He played with Carlos Santana during his jazz fusion period in the early 1970s. He also teamed up with David Bowie for his Diamond Dogs tour for a month i ...

– bass on tracks 1–3, 5–7 & 9 * Greg Errico – drums on tracks 3, 5, 6 & 9 * David Garibaldi – drums on tracks 1, 2 & 7 * Don Grusin – keyboards on tracks 1 & 7,

clavinet The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds by a rubber pad striking a point on a tension ...

on track 3 * Wendy Haas – clavinet on tracks 5 & 6, strings synthesizer on track 6 * Richie Hayward – drums on tracks 4 & 8 * Ken Gradney – bass on tracks 4 & 8 * Sam Clayton –

congas The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest) ...

on tracks 4 & 8 * Gene Goe – trumpet on track 2 * Pete Christlieb –

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

on track 2 * Dick Slyde Hyde – trombone on tracks 2 * Kirby Johnson – horn arranger on tracks 2, 3, 7 & 9 ;Technical * Dane Butcher – engineer * Mike Boshears – recording engineer * Bernie Grundman – mastering engineer

References

External links

* from Suzuki's 2014 ''Get Back Sessions Special "Band Wagon" Live'' concert video {{Authority control 1975 debut albums Shigeru Suzuki albums