Happy 45th: Ten Years After, Watt

45 years ago this month, Ten Years After released their fifth album, an effort which built on the success the band had found in the UK with their single “Love Like a Man,” and provided them with what would prove to be their third and final top-5 album in their native land.

Ten Years After had been steadily cementing their status in the UK as a solid blues-rock act, but they'd failed miserably to score any hit singles until they released their 1970 album Cricklewood Creek and surprised more than a few folks when “Love Like a Man” soared into the top 10 of the UK Singles chart. Unfortunately, “I'm Coming On,” the lead single from Watt, failed to duplicate that success in any fashion, but the album's showing on the UK Albums chart - it topped out at #5 - made up for it a bit.

Probably the biggest surprise in Ten Years After's chart history is that their next album, 1971's A Space in Time, only just barely cracked the UK top 40 (it never made it any higher than #36) and provided the band with no UK hit singles. Why is this a surprise? Because that album provided the band with the biggest US hit - and their only US top-40 hit - of their career: “I'd Love to Change the World,” which remains in classic rock radio rotation to this day.

Getting back to Watt again before we go, if you've never heard this album, we'd highly recommend that you investigate its seventh song, “She Lies in the Morning.” It's almost seven and a half minutes long, but you'll find that the time flies by, so entertaining is the song throughout its run time.