Notable Songs
"Theme for an Imaginary Western," which Allmusic describes as "Bruce's greatest hit that never charted," is perhaps the album's best-known song. According to Allmusic, "Theme" has a "fresh, rootsy sound" reminiscent of The Band's Music from Big Pink, derived from the combination of "Bruce's overdubbed piano and organ parts" and "the country-tinged lope of the rhythm section".1001 Songs profiles the number, describing it as an "elegant, masterfully-constructed piece of jazz-rock", though it suggests that Brown's lyrics for the song are "opaque at best". Leimbacher, though generally dismissive of the lyrics, found an exception for this song and "To Isengard", while The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music finds the song "evocative", indicating that the album contains "ome of" Bruce's "finest lyrics". The song was famously covered by Mountain, whose bassist-singer Felix Pappalardi had previously worked with Bruce as Cream's record producer, and also produced and appeared on Tailor. (One of Mountain's earliest performances of "Theme," at the August 1969 Woodstock Festival, predated the song's release on Songs for a Tailor by several weeks.) Colosseum (whose drummer Jon Hiseman played on Tailor's rendition of the song), and the progressive rock group Greenslade also recorded cover versions.
"Weird of Hermiston" and "The Clearout" were candidates for inclusion on Cream's 1967 landmark album Disraeli Gears, but deemed too uncommercial by Cream's then-U.S. label Atlantic/Atco Records for release on that record. Bruce's dissatisfaction at this is noted in the liner notes for Cream's box set Those Were the Days: "I played them for Ahmet (Atlantic executive Ahmet Ertegun), Tommy (producer/engineer Tom Dowd), and whoever else was around ... they thought it was rubbish, just psychedelic hogwash." Demo versions of the two songs, recorded by Cream in early 1967, are included on Those Were the Days.
In 1989 Fricke described "Never Tell Your Mother She's Out of Tune" as a "wacky, brassy" "enigmatic Bruce-Brown ".
Bruce has continued to refine and re-record the tracks from Songs for a Tailor throughout his career, both in live and studio albums. Only "To Isengard" has not been revisited.
Read more about this topic: Songs For A Tailor
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