Freedom Suite

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Freedom Suite
Studio album by The Rascals
Released	March 17, 1969
Recorded	May 14, 1968 - December 18, 1968
Genre	Rock
Length	64:17
Label	Atlantic Records
Producer	The Rascals in cooperation with Arif Mardin
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link
The Rascals chronology
Once Upon a Dream (1968) Freedom Suite (1969) See (1969)

Freedom Suite is a double album by rock band The Rascals, which was released in 1969. The first LP contained conventional songs, while the second contained instrumentals. Some top-flight session musicians augmented the normal group line-up. The album was RIAA-certified as a gold record on April 21, 1969, although it only rose to #17 on the Billboard Top LPs chart. It also made it to #40 on the Billboard Black Albums chart, the last Rascals album to appear there.

Freedom Suite was an ambitious effort and something of a concept album, as musicians were wont to produce at the time. Packaging included a shiny silver gatefold album cover, colored sleeves with the song lyrics printed on them, and illustrations drawn by members of the group. The latter varied from idealistic visions of trumpeting angels to Eastern-influenced sketchings to drummer Dino Danelli's faithful homage to El Greco's Christ. The inclusion of the instrumentals - one polished track ("Adrian's Birthday"), one jam session ("Cute"), and a Danelli drum solo ("Boom") - seemed an effort by The Rascals to establish themselves as an "album" group rather than a "singles" group. It was not especially well received; critic Lester Bangs would later write that Freedom Suite suffered from "excess",^[1] while critic Dave Marsh would later write that it "sowed the seeds of the group's demise, [as it] reflected an attempt to join the psychedelic craze,"^[2] and later generations would value "singles" acts highly anyway.

Contents 1 Track listing 1.1 Record One: Freedom Suite 1.1.1 Side One 1.1.2 Side Two 1.2 Record Two: Music Music 1.2.1 Side Three 1.2.2 Side Four 2 Personnel 2.1 The Rascals 2.2 Additional musicians 2.3 Production 3 References

[edit] Track listing

[edit] Record One: Freedom Suite

[edit] Side One

1. "America the Beautiful" (Felix Cavaliere) – 2:50
2. "Me and My Friends" (Gene Cornish) – 2:42
3. "Any Dance'll Do" (Cavaliere) – 2:19
4. "Look Around" (Eddie Brigati, Cavaliere) – 3:03
5. "A Ray of Hope" (Brigati, Cavaliere) – 3:40

[edit] Side Two

1. "Island of Love" (Brigati, Cavaliere) – 2:22
2. "Of Course" (Brigati, Cavaliere) – 2:40
3. "Love Was So Easy to Give" (Cornish) – 2:42
4. "People Got to Be Free" (Brigati, Cavaliere) – 2:57
5. "Baby I'm Blue" (Cavaliere) – 2:47
6. "Heaven" (Cavaliere) – 3:22

[edit] Record Two: Music Music

[edit] Side Three

1. "Adrian's Birthday" (Cavaliere, Cornish, Dino Danelli) – 4:46
2. "Boom" (Danelli) – 13:34

[edit] Side Four

1. "Cute" (Brigati, Cavaliere, Cornish, Danelli) – 15:10

[edit] Personnel

[edit] The Rascals

• Felix Cavaliere - organ, piano, lead vocals on most songs, backing vocals
• Eddie Brigati - conga drums and tambourine on "Cute", lead vocals on "Any Dance'll Do" and "Island of Love", backing vocals
• Gene Cornish - guitar, lead vocals on "Me & My Friends" and "Love Was So Easy to Give", backing vocals?
• Dino Danelli - drums

[edit] Additional musicians

• Chuck Rainey, Richard Davis, Gerald Jemmott - bass guitar
• David Brigati - backing vocals
• King Curtis - tenor sax solo on "Of Course"
• David Newman - tenor sax solo on "Adrian's Birthday"

[edit] Production

• Arif Mardin, Charles Morrow - arrangements
• Adrian Barber, Tom Dowd, Don Casale - recording engineers

[edit] References

The Rascals
Discography
The Young Rascals: The Young Rascals (1966) | Collections (1967) | Groovin' (1967)
The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream (1968) | Freedom Suite (1969) | See (1970) | Search and Nearness (1971) | Peaceful World (1971) | The Island of Real (1972)