Saturday Morning Records: #24 — “AWB” by (the) Average White Band

A new series for paying subscribers — celebrating favourite albums for the weekend

For years I thought AWB by Average White Band — almost self-titled, but not quite — was the band’s debut. Makes sense. It’s got the enduring hit, it’s got the band logo, and yet there is the mawkish, cartoon-covered oddity that arrived before it. I guess that’s like Elton John - his 1970 album Elton John feels like the debut, his picture on the sleeve, Your Song there for all to hear and know and love forever, and yet the year before there’s Empty Sky (the actual debut) and only the absolute hardcore would tell you that’s worth your time.

So, yeah, I’ve settled that AWB totally is the debut — at least as far as I’m concerned.

I’m up in Hawke’s Bay this weekend, so it’ s always a chance to reconnect with a few records I left here. I used to DJ this record a lot, but retired it to Hawke’s Bay when I stopped playing records in public. The other reason I left it up here is because that’s my association with the band. My dad told me they were good. He was a fan. So one Christmas I bought him a compilation of the best of the band on CD. And we used to groove to that as a family. Around that time we saw Paul McCartney in concert, his bass player at the time was from the Average White Band. And a few years ahead of that we’d seen Eric Clapton in concert, his drummer (the godly Steve Ferrone) had been an AWB drummer, he’s now known — alongside all his incredible session work — for supporting Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for the second half of their career.