Vanilla Fudge - Vanilla Fudge

The Fudge are sometimes forgotten, especially in the UK, a primo, early heavy psychedelic band. Their 'fudged up' versions of songs like Ticket to Ride, You Keep Me Hangin' On and Eleanor Rigby are wonderful excursions into heavy riffing. I often think you can hear elements of Page's Led Zeppelin sound in the Fudge's guitar by Vince Martell. He's not cited as an influence by anyone very much, but I always thought he should be.

And this was a hugely popular debit album in America where it topped out at number 6 on the charts and an edited version of You Keep Me Hangin' On also made the singles chart.

An original UK copy of plum Atlantic is a £40 record, my copy is mint but is an American copy on Atco and comes in one of those thick, unyielding card sleeves that all USA albums seemed to come in until the mid 70s.

This is their best album by some way, was truly original and still satisfies today.