Much like the Rolling Stones' Stripped, Alan Merrill has gone over his long career and reinterpreted several songs from his days in the Arrows and Vodka Collins. He also offers solo renditions of tracks he wrote for Lou Rawls and Rick Derringer, and even included a song that he originally performed on Meat Loaf's Live at Wembly disc. Although this is a mixed bag of material, it works well as a ramshackle "greatest hits" since so much of his material was either performed by others or is spread out on various labels and bands. But even with a rock-solid band that includes Slade bassist Dave Glover and Peter Phipps (the drummer on Gary Glitter's "Rock 'N Roll Pt. 2"), this is still not quite as good as it could be. Much like the aforementioned Stones album, the performances offered are excellent, but the material is familiar enough to fans where they can't help but compare the original versions. Still, some of the songs here are quite good, especially the blues ballad "Wait for It," the former glam anthem "Automatic Pilot," and possibly the best song in his canon, the beautiful "Sands of Time." Merrill has several other releases that are more essential (the first albums from both Vodka Collins and the Arrows and his work with Jon Tiven springs to mind), but this is a very efficient and compact way to collect his most popular material without having to explore multiple albums. Fans may find this to be redundant, but this would be the perfect first Merrill album since it covers so many different periods from his career.
© Bradley Torreano /TiVo