Year: 2021

How did the old Classic Rock Albums perform in the Top 200 album sales in 2020?  I wasn’t positive there’d be any Classic albums on the list.  Don’t most fans already have them?  Rolling Stone magazine released the sales figures for the year, which is a combination of actual sales and equivalent sales by streaming.  It turns out Classic albums made the list…starting at #46.

What Classic Rock album did the best?  If you knew it was an album by the Eagles, you might guess Eagles Greatest Hits (the biggest selling album of all time), or Hotel California (the 3rd best selling album of all time).  The surprise is that it’s Eagles, their very first album!

The album features “Take It Easy”, “Witchy Woman”, and “Peaceful Easy Feeling”, but those are on on the hits album too, so people must want to hear the other tracks on that first album (unless Rolling Stone listed the wrong album).  The number to the right side of the ranking is the number of equivalent sales from a combination of actual sales and streaming.

The second highest Classic album is a little more predictable, because Queen has had a major surge in popularity since their big biographic movie.

A Beatles album made the list, and it’s the one that younger Beatles fans seem to favor.  The 50th Anniversary remix of Abbey Road was released in the fall of 2019.

If I would have guessed which Classic album did best, it would have been Rumours by Fleetwood Mac.  That’s because of the “Dreams” viral skateboard video.  Fleetwood Mac didn’t get the top Classic album, but they were one of only two Classic Rock acts to place two albums on the list.

And here are the rest of the Classic albums in the Top 200 list of equivalent album sales in 2020.

The top album of 2020 was by the only artist whose album actually sold over one-million hard & digital units, Taylor Swift.  The next highest album sold less than half as much.  Add in the streaming, and it’s still Taylor Swift’s folklore at #1.

Taylor Swift had a total of five albums in the Top 200 for 2020.  Extra trivia:  Of her first 8 albums, 5 of them have been the biggest selling albums in the year they were released (a record).  Swift’s 9th album, evermore, was released very late in 2020, so it could at least have a slight chance to be the biggest seller in 2021.  However, the smart money would be on a new release by Adele.  Her last two albums led sales for a total of two years each.

It’s right that new albums in 2020 are the biggest sellers, but it’s impressive that some Classic albums are still selling and streaming as much as 50 years after they were released!

So, after I wrote the above article…

I checked how Billboard  ranked the top selling albums of 2020.  The only real agreement between Rolling Stone and Billboard is that Taylor Swift’s folklore is the top album.

Here’s the ranking of the Classic albums and four new albums by Classic artists (James Taylor, The Who, Bruce Springsteen & Bob Dylan) in the Billboard 2020 sales chart. This ranking of the Top 100 albums is based on real sales, and do not include streaming (that’s the big difference).

It looks like the Billboard chart makes a little more sense, or at least it shows which albums people were actually willing to buy.  By the way, 2020 was the first year since 1986 that vinyl records outsold CD’s, and the most vinyl albums sold since 1991.  Pretty amazing popularity for a technology (vinyl albums & turntable cartridges) introduced in 1948.

What both lists show is that some great Classic Rock albums are still being purchased and streamed, with one of them, Abbey Road, being the 12th best-selling album 51 years after it was released!

The first rivals for The Beatles were Gerry & The Pacemakers.

Both groups were from Liverpool, and were regular performers at The Cavern Club.  The two bands also played in the clubs of Hamburg, Germany, and both had Brian Epstein for a manager & George Martin as their producer.

You can see that Gerry Marsden performed with his guitar held unusually high.

Gerry & The Pacemakers won the race to #1 on the English charts in 1963 with the song “How Do You Do It?”.  George Martin first presented the song to The Beatles, and they recorded it, but they convinced Martin to release their own song, “Love Me Do”, instead.  It made it to #17.  Gerry & The Pacemakers’ “How Do You Do It?” went all the way to the top.  They followed that with two more #1 songs, “I Like It” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, also in 1963.  That last one is a ballad from the 1950’s musical/movie Carousel.

Gerry Marsden’s vocal on “You’ll Never Walk Alone” was so popular that the recording was played at the games of the Liverpool Football Club, and the song has remained their official anthem ever since.

Gerry & The Pacemakers and The Beatles were friends, and toured together in 1963 with Roy Orbison.  Here’s a posed photo from the tour, as the groups pretend to be fighting over singer Louise Cordet.

After The Beatles broke big in America, the “British Invasion” began, and bands like Gerry & The Pacemakers became popular here too.  Their first American hit was “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying”, which was also the band’s first self-written hit.  It went to #4 in 1964, and was followed successfully by their previous English releases…”How Do You Do It?” #9, and “I Like It” #17.

I bought all the singles by Gerry & The Pacemakers.  They were on the Laurie label, because Capitol Records in the U.S. had turned them down, just like they did the early recordings by The Beatles.

Gerry & The Pacemakers had three hits in 1965…”I’ll Be There” #14, “Ferry Cross The Mersey” #6, and “It’s Gonna Be Alright” #23.  They also made a movie named after their second biggest hit.

Unfortunately, like most of the British Invasion bands, Gerry & The Pacemakers hit-making only lasted a short time.  Their final hit was “Girl On A Swing” #28 in 1966.  I even bought that one.  After that, it was just the release of multiple “Best Of” albums.

The band officially split up in 1969, and Gerry Marsden had a short, but successful acting career.  He later did some touring with various musicians in the role of “Pacemakers”.  After that, I would see him from time to time being interviewed for a number of documentaries about The Beatles.  He was always upbeat, interesting, and very likable.  He obviously had enjoyed his time as a part of the British revival of Rock & Roll in the sixties.

In an interview, Marsden said…”The main thing is to enjoy what you’re doing.  All the pressure crap you hear, people bring that on themselves.”

On January 3rd, 2021 it was announced that Gerry Marsden had died after a short illness from a heart infection.  He was 78.  Among the many musicians paying tribute was Paul McCartney.

McCartney is right about remembering Gerry Marsden with a smile.  Gerry wrote and recorded uplifting songs that are still fun to hear.