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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
At the age of just seventeen, Nils Lofgren formed Grin in Washington, a melodic hard-rock quartet in which he stood out as a composer of romantic, dreamy ballads and as a nimble, savvy rock guitarist.
Grin (Spindizzy, 1971) is a melodic hard-rock album that announces an important variant of the genre invented by Led Zeppelin.
Their masterpiece, 1 + 1 (1971), alternates tear-jerking numbers like Lost A Number, Like Rain, White Lies with party rave-ups like Moon Tears and Slippery Fingers.
The group disbanded after All Out (1972) and Gone Crazy (A&M, 1973), perhaps also because Lofgren was busy accompanying Neil Young.
The guitarists first solo album, Nils Lofgren (A&M, 1975), is a tour de force performed by a transformed power trio, devoted to a pathos of confident innocence (the brilliant Back It Up, Keith Don't Go). After the mediocre Cry Tough (1976) and I Came To Dance (1977), more important for his image as a proto-punk figure than for the music, Lofgren returned to high levels with the tragic ballads of Nils (1979): Steal Away, No Mercy, and Shine Silently (probably his masterpiece). During the 1980s, Lofgren was distracted by working alongside Bruce Springsteen: Night Fades Away (Backstreet, 1981), Wonderland (1983), Flip (Towerbell, 1985), Secrets In The Street are distracted albums.
An eternal promise of rock music, Lofgren has remained trapped in a fundamental inconsistency, between adolescent soap-opera melodramas and the white rhythm and blues of the Rolling Stones that animates his best work.
Silver Lining (Rykodisc, 1991), the first album in six years,
contains the soulful Valentine. Crooked Line (1992) has the
energetic Drunken Driver. Damaged Goods (Rykodisc, 1995) adds
Life (Branford Marsalis on saxophone and a string quartet) to his
repertory of elegant ballads.
Six more years had to elapse before Lofgren released another album:
Breakaway Angel (Hypertension, 2001).
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