Vertigo 1970 / Think Like A Key 2026
Sharing his mental room with the world, Liverpudlian dreamer finds himself lost in transition.
Half Baked
When a certain ensemble had left Merseyside, the city’s music scene didn’t become less inventive, despite the pull of London where the fortune seemed to lie, yet while Jimmy Campbell, an alumnus of a couple of local collectives, heeded the call and traveled down south, he didn’t let go of the poetic liberties enjoyed so much by domestic audiences. But if the singer-songwriter’s first solo album, “Son Of Anastasia” from 1969, often sounded rather bleak, resorting to a Nick Drake sort of melancholy, 1970’s “Half Baked” felt like a burst of color, as the platter’s pregnant-clown cover suggested quite impressively via its vivid reference to the record’s title. And that was the very reason the artist’s sophomore effort fell through the cracks of glory: although aficionados cherished the longplay, and it’s seen a fair share of reissues over the years, the eleven songs on offer failed to find the audience they deserved.
The problem resided with the sheer stylistic spectrum these pieces tried to span. Though there are enchanting chamber ballads such as “In My Room” or “Don’t Leave Me Now” – the gorgeously misty former shocking the audience with an image of a Hitler poster on the vocalist’s wall, and the dramatic latter revealing deeper sentiments in a previously unreleased live variant laid down for the “Sounds of the 70s” show – Campbell chose to usher the listener in with “Green Eyed American Actress” in an unexpected country-rock fashion, its shimmering harmonica and steel strings as far removed from Liverpool as can be. However, whereas “Loving You Is All I Do” feels charming, as orchestral passages contrast Jimmy’s deliberately dry voice, “Dulcie (It’s December)” takes him towards the middle-of-the-road mawkishness, but not before the acoustic “I Will Not Mind” gives him a chance to get drenched in echo and tap into folk tradition.
Still, the album’s fantastic titular cut – referenced on the cover photo of a pregnant clown – finds a bluesy cleanse thanks to juicy guitar figures courtesy of BADFINGER’s Joey Molland, whom Campbell replaced a little earlier in THE MERSEYBEATS. Elsewhere, “So Lonely Without You” slashes the anguish into boogie splashed with piano and brass, and the handclaps-helped, rambunctious “That’s Right, That’s Me” toys with Dylanesque poetry. It’s impossible not to admire the warm sincerity that “Forever Grateful” exudes and the wistful wonder that “Closing Down The Shop” discharges, demonstrating Jimmy’s attention to melodic and lyrical detail – or the glam stomp of “Lonely Norman,” which he supplied for the “Heads Together, First Round” comp in 1971. This piece is one of the bonuses here, the rest coming from the Beeb stages, with the Liverpudlian’s sparsely accompanied delivery of “In My Room” on the “Disco 2” programme being supremely poignant.
There would be only one more record the singer put out, “Jimmy Campbell’s Album” from 1972, after which he vanished from the music business. The “Could have made it easily. Why I didn’t, well I really don’t know” line that opens “Half-Baked” sums up his career most eloquently, so it’s immensely gratifying to have this record restored to all its flawed glory.
****3/5
