Lie Back and Enjoy It

by Dave ThompsonIf Juicy Lucy's debut album ranks among the most haunting, haunted blues-rock albums of the late 1960s, its follow-up only illustrates how damaging the last six months had been for the band. Fully half the band had been replaced, including vocalist Ray Owen and guitarist Neil Hubbard, and with them went much of the evil electrics and swamp-conscious blues that gave Juicy Lucy its most scintillating shivers. The players who replaced them -- former Zoot Money singer Paul Williams, ex-Jeff Beck drummer Rod Coombes, and guitarist Micky Moody -- were no slouches, of course, and the interplay between Glenn Ross Campbell's steel and Chris Mercer's sax is as chilling as ever. But songs like "Built for Comfort," "Thinking of My Life," and even a cover of Frank Zappa's "Willie the Pimp" owe more to a premonition of ZZ Top than a bad dream in the bayou, while the rest of Lie Back and Enjoy It found the group pursuing a distinctly country-rock flavored direction. Even the first-album era "Changed My Mind, Changed My Sign" sounded more like the Dils than Dr. John, and Lie Back and Enjoy It emerged a distinctly unenjoyable disappointment, at least by the standards Juicy Lucy once held so high.