Eloy: Inside (1973)

1973 is regarded by many as the first real Eloy album. In 1971, they released their self-entitled debut on Philips, which was basically a hard rock album, with political overtones. The band was lead by Erich Schriever, and Frank Bornemann was basically doing extra guitar duty. But with Schriever gone, as well as original drummer Helmut Draht, in comes new drummer Fritz Randow. Bassist Wolfgang Stöcker was still around, as well as Manfred Wieczorke, who now got his chance to change from guitar to keyboards. Frank Bornemann was now firmly in control, now he handles not just guitar, but vocal duty. They got a deal with Harvest Records and Inside was the results.

Gone are much of the Deep Purple and Uriah Heep influences of that first album, for a more exploratory form of progressive rock, dominated by Bornemann guitar playing and Manfred Wieczorke’s organ playing. The album is taken up by the side-length “Land of No Body”. Starts off rather mellow, with some nice spacy organ, and then the band gets rocking. In the middle part, they really get experimental, before rocking out more. And during this early period, Frank Bornemann sounded a lot like Ian Anderson. Bornemann admitted he wanted to sound like Anderson during this period (it was with the album Dawn in 1976 he dropped the Anderson-like vocals), not to mention he was big on Jethro Tull. The rest of the album has three shorter pieces. “Future City” by and far the best cut, having a rather strong Tull-like feel, but no flute. I really love that guitar and percussion solo in the middle. “Up and Down” is a bit different, only that Frank Bornemann isn’t singing this piece, but Manfred Wieczorke. Some Dylan-like spoken dialog are also included. It’s a rather mellow piece.

This is regarded as their best earlier release. Remember: if you started with an album like Ocean or Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes, be prepared for a shock!

This is obviously the album to start to know Eloy’s earliest work.