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Joe Cocker
Mad Dogs & Englishmen - 36th Anniversary Deluxe Edition/ The Motion Picture
A&M / Universal Music Chronicles

"As the film of the tour illustrates, the whole enterprise served to elevate Leon Russell into the star attraction at the expense of Cocker."
-- The Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Rock

Of course, that's a load of hooey 'cause the film illustrates no such thing. Nevertheless, it does behoove me to admit, that 36 years later, it still remains impossible to discuss Joseph Cocker's Flying Circus without mentioning its swampy swingmaster.

True, the movie posters did showcase Leon in all his style-setting top hat and Holy Trinity baseball tee finery, but that was more of an opportunistic marketing afterthought than anything else as the original equal opportunity tour adverts showed the entire Mad Dogs ensemble cheerfully sitting as one in front of a circus backdrop.

However, as these two timely reissues show, the entire Mad Dogs & Englishmen shebang was less of a three-ring circus than it was a good old-fashioned traveling revival show. By hiring veteran session man Leon to ramrod his new megagroup commune, Joe's sound was given a spiritual subtexture that surpassed anything his original Grease Band was capable of providing.

But every self-respecting circus has a freak show and it's easy to forget that the first time most people saw Joe Cocker perform was in the Woodstock film when they all laughed at his epileptic seizure stage presence. Like it or not, this visual geek appeal was just as responsible for making Joe into a major star as his singing was. Indeed, the above-noted Mad Dogs movie posters capitalized on this by prominently proclaiming the singer as "Joe Cocker The Rotating Rocker." And if you think this whole sideshow angle is a bit of a stretch then you haven't studied the cover of Exile On Main St. recently.

Meanwhile, this new extended version of the Mad Dogs album provided more of a well rounded feel for what the eclectic Mad Dogs troupe was all about. And although it's always a drag to memorize a classic album only to have it resequenced decades later with the wholesale addition of many new songs, I guarantee that once you've heard this new Mad Dogs album, your brain will immediately erase the old sequencing and unconditionally accept this new configuration one without any residual memory residue. Besides, compared to the earlier analog incarnation, this new remastered sound is positively ferocious. In fact, the only thing missing from the original release is the glyph notation that informed whether Russell and Stainton were playing guitar, piano or organ on any given track.

Oh, and you can forget about the film showcasing anyone's hidden agenda master plan for world domination because it's strictly Joe's show all the way. Although he's the star first and foremost, being surrounded by so many stellar supporting players only make Joe look all that much better. Whether it's Leon leading a pre-show prayer meeting or Joe's road manager giving a hobo-style depression-era reading of "The Face On The Barroom Floor," everyone in the film is showcased equally.

Of particular interest is an uncomfortable encounter that Joe and Leon have with an unbilled Tom Donahue. Although clearly exhausted, Joe genially indulges the legendary San Francisco disc jockey but, even so, Donohue's clearly boxing outside his considerable weight-especially with Leon who, although equally polite, is clearly aware of the intellectual one-sidedness of the encounter.

Oddly enough, when I last saw the rotating rocker over a decade ago he was still using Leon and Chris Stainton's exact same Mad Dogs arrangements note for note. Every time I closed my eyes it was as if I'd been sitting in the Fillmore back in 1970. Now, thanks to these two new reissues, those spastic sights and sounds remain forever fixed in space and time.

-- Jeffrey Morgan
September 30, 2006