Going For The Gold: James Gang

James Gang guy Joe Walsh and his wife, Marjorie Bach hang at the Lakers game last week. (\Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

The Wikipedia entry on the James Gang says ” the band was not a huge commercial success, except in the Northeast Ohio area.” So what were their three gold albums? Chopped liver?

The James Gang were hardly pate on the rock and roll buffet table of the early ’70s, recording three albums that went gold for a million sales each.

The first rolled out in ’71, the band’s sophomore set called The James Gang Rides Again. A combination of hits (“Funk 49″) and weirdness (“The Bomber,” a conglomeration of Ravel, Guaraldi and Walsh) propelled the record to #20 on the album chart and won them a gold record within three months of its release.

The appropriately named Thirds came out in April 1971. John Mendelsohn in Rolling Stone echoed the general critical point of view about the JG by saying: “By no exertion of the imagination are James Gang the greatest rock and roll band ever to walk the face of the earth or anything … but they are capable of some nice little treats every now and again.” But it hardly mattered what Mendelssohn believed: the album went to #27 and sold a million copies within a year.

Within just a few months of their third album, the band released Live in Concert, an energetic document of the band’s Carnegie Hall concerts that same year. Split almost evenly between Walsh originals and blues rock covers (“Stop” by Jerry Ragavoy and Mort Shuman and Albert King‘s “You’re Gonna Need Me” being most notable), the record also hit the Top 25. It also sold a million … in less than two months.

Chopped liver indeed.

Read about some more Going for the Gold golden oldies (and not-so-oldies).

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