Genre:
pop
Rating: **
(2 stars)
Title: Stay
with Me
Company: Rocket
Catalog: BXL
1-3011
Year: 1978
Country/State:
UK
Grade
(cover/record): VG/VG
Comments: original
inner sleeve; small cut out notch along side
Available: 1
GEMM
catalog ID: 4733
Price: $9.00
Cost:
$1.00
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Complete with
expensive packaging, an 'A' list of sessions players and a large promotional
budget, here's an album that just screams of being built for massive
commercial success ... and misses the target by a country mile.
Produced
by Bill Schnee, 1978's "Stay with Me'
was Dee's last released for Elton John's Rocket Records. First the
good news. Dee was in good voice throughout the collection and it
started
out with a great track. 'One Stop' had all of the ingredients required
to be a massive radio hit and Rocket actually tapped it as a single (catalog JH-11413)
though it did nothing in terms of sales. Almost as good was the
title track which served as another unsuccessful shot as a single.
Unfortunately from there it was largely downhill. Tracks such as 'Talk
To Me', 'Don't Stop Loving Me' and 'Love Is a Crazy feeling'
were apparently intended to showcase Dee as an AOR torch singer but the results
were simply
plodding and dull.
"Stay with
Me"
track listing: (side
1) 1.) One
Stop (Tom Snow - Glen Ballard) - 3:26 2.)
Talk To Me (Kiki Dee - David Lasley - Zane Buzby) - 3:21 3.)
Don't Stop Loving Me (Kiki Dee - David Lasley - Zane Buzby) -
4:17 4.)
Dark Side of Your Soul (Kiki Dee - David Lasley - Zane Buzby) -
4:40 5.)
Stay with Me (Jerry Ragovay - George Weiss) - 3:58 (side
2) 1.)
One Jump Ahead of the Storm (Troy Seals - Joe New) - 3:23 2.)
You're Holding Me Too Tight (Frannie Gold - Cynthia Weil) - 3:58 3.)
Love Is a Crazy feeling (Bias Boshell - Davey Jonstone) - 4:21 4.)
Safe Harbor (David Lasley - Lana Marrano) - 4:19
| Review |
by Joe Viglione |
|
Bill
Schnee's production on Kiki Dee's final album for Rocket records
is the problem with Stay With Me. None of the passion that Clive
Franks and Elton
John poured over Loving
and Free can be found here, nor the directness and authority Pip
Williams gave to 1981's Perfect
Timing disc on RCA. Kiki Dee is in good voice, but her
originals, like "Don't Stop Loving Me" and "Dark Side
of Your Soul," don't go any further than being nice album
tracks. It was insightful of this huge crew to take on the Ten
Wheel Drive classic, Jerry
Ragavoy's "Stay With Me," let alone title the album
after that chestnut a year before it would get further recognition. Bette
Midler would bring the song to a huge worldwide audience as it
became the pivotal moment in The Rose, Janis
Joplin/Doors
producer Paul
Rothchild polishing the pearl, a song of ultimate desperation.
There is nothing desperate on this album of glossy adult
contemporary music which switches hats too many times. The wild
abandon Ten
Wheel Drive put behind Genya
Ravan's soulful version on their Brief
Replies album is absent here. "One Jump Ahead of the
Storm" sounds like a watered-down "I've Got the Music in
Me," while Tom
Snow and Hank
Ballard's "One Step" is light '70s dance pop. Cynthia
Weil and Frannie
Golde's "You're Holding Me Too Tight" is out and out
disco and is indicative of the project: top-shelf names going
through the motions. Kiki Dee's catalog is more important than she's
ever been given credit for, from Great
Expectations on Motown to the Gus
Dudgeon-produced I've
Got the Music in Me album. Stay With Me is a perfect
example of how the wrong pairing of artist and producer can have
drastic results. Davey
Johnstone and her longtime keyboard player Bias
Boshell's "Love Is a Crazy Feeling" is one of the
albums highlights. It and the final track, "Safe Harbor,"
is worthwhile, but the staggering array of name people, arrangers Marty
Paich, Jim
Horn, Sonny
Burke, Gene
Page, keyboard players galore — from Tom
Snow to James
Newton-Howard — drummers like Jim
Keltner and Jeff
Porcaro, the presence of Steve
Porcaro, Steve
Lukather, even the thanks to Jackie
DeShannon and Randy
Edelman for "stepping in," all go to waste, and an
album at an important time in her career, two years after her number
one hit with Elton
John, misses the mark by a mile. It does feature the best
packaging of her music, beautiful photos and jacket design, but none
of the momentum of albums that came before and after.
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