Audio Autopsy, 1988🎸Phil Keaggy and Sunday's Child: The Beatles Influenced Album We Didn't See Coming
Phil Keaggy & band wanted to re-create the sound of albums from the mid-'60s à la The Beatles, using only vintage guitars played through vintage amps. They even used Ringo's old drum kit!
The album’s first track, “Tell Me How You Feel”:
Complete album on both YouTube and Spotify featured at end of article.
This is a timeless record that always manages to sound fresh with each listen.-Mark Allender/Allmusic.com
Allender: “The title track [co-written, with Keaggy, by longtime CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) mainstay, Randy Stonehill] comes closest to an early Beatles sound, with its jangly guitars, lyrics, and simple 1-4-5 major blues progression”:
Keaggy (KAY-ghee) is interviewed about his meeting with Paul in 1990:
Deface the Music, 1980: Todd’s Utopia & Their Similar Project
On September 24, 1980 (eight years before Keaggy’s project), Todd Rundgren’s Utopia released Deface the Music, the band’s 5th studio album, on Bearsville/Warner Bros. Records, produced by the band. Per the album’s Wiki page, “the concept of the album was to pay homage to the Beatles and create [original] songs which sounded very similar to the Fab Four’s tunes throughout the various stages of their career.”
Meet Phil Keaggy!
Initially, it was not the guitar that attracted Keaggy to playing music: “I asked my dad for a set of drums for my tenth birthday, but he came home with a Sears Silvertone guitar.”
If your frame of reference for “ingesting” popular music only included the “secular” world of Top 40 radio, TV music shows, the large “rock” and other sections of the record store, it wouldn’t be surprising if Keaggy’s name and his music were brand new to you.
I knew his name from my late-’70s record store days, but can’t say I ever heard his music then. Cut to 1990, when I meet a gal (we ended up marrying the next year for a short time) who worked at Long Beach’s Lighthouse Records and Books, a large Southern California retail haven for Contemporary Christian recordings and literature. Through her, I was able to learn about and hear a whole new world of music, and she must’ve turned my attention to Sunday’s Child.
Keaggy was born March 23, 1951 in Youngstown, Ohio, and was raised Catholic in a small farmhouse in nearby Hubbard, OH with nine brothers and sisters. He is missing half of the middle finger on his right hand due to an accident at age four involving a water pump:
“We lived on a farm in Hubbard, Ohio which had a big water pump, and I was climbing up on it. As I was kneeling on top of the platform, it broke and the faucets came crashing down on my finger and cut it off.
“I can remember it very vividly—as if it happened yesterday, and I can see my dad running down the hill, rescuing me, and taking me to the hospital. I can recall having a white cast and bandage; it was gigantic! They tried to sew it on, but it didn’t take, so I grew up with nine fingers. As a young kid, I was embarrassed about it a lot, especially when I was beginning to get into guitar.”
In a 1976 interview with Harmony Magazine, Keaggy reflected on his 1969 and ‘70:
“The 18th year of my life was very dark; I was into drugs by now....back in ‘69, I was experimenting with LSD. I had done some trips and it was terrible; I thought it might enhance my creative ability in music, but it didn’t. I once heard a tape of me playing when I was high and it was awful. I sang weird and I played badly. I thought I was doing such a great job, but it was a deception.
“People I was supposedly very close to, who were close to me, were turning on me. It seemed really strange...I was experiencing such fear...it was just...terrible...During these days I would take naps in the afternoon because I’d be so tired playing at night, staying up till 4 in the morning, getting up early and napping again in the afternoon.
“I’d wake up having nightmares...I had ‘Peace’ written on my wall and I went around giving the peace sign, but I didn’t experience peace in my life. I didn’t know what peace really meant; it was just a cliché.”
On Valentines Day 1970, Keaggy’s mother was seriously injured in an auto accident. After her death a week later and inspired by his sister, Keaggy became a born-again Christian. After recording three albums on Decca Records with Glass Harp, Keaggy left the band in 1972.
Starting the following year, his career of nearly 70 solo albums (several instrumental) began. Most of his labels have been in the CCM lane (Myrrh, NewSong, Sparrow), but in 1994, he landed on Epic/CBS Records (U.S.) for his Blue album, where he covered Van Morrison’s “When Will I Ever Learn to Live In God” (from his 1989 Avalon Sunset on Polydor), and, notably (given our album focus today), Pete Ham/Badfinger’s Todd Rundgren-produced “Baby Blue,” produced by Lynn Nichols.
Enjoy Phil’s burning guitar solo and “old” Glass Harp friend and drummer, John Sferra’s furious workout in the song’s last minute-plus:
Interestingly, A&M Records gave Keaggy a mainstream pop platform when they released, in a distribution deal with Myrrh Records, his Sunday’s Child album (as well as 1990’s Find Me in These Fields)! Maybe not too surprising, as Herb Alpert’s and Jerry Moss’s label had fully appreciated and championed CCM superstar, Amy Grant, propelling her to pop chart consistency with her A&M/Myrrh albums from 1985 through 2003!
Many heard Amy Grant’s Billboard #1s in 1991’s “Baby Baby” and “Every Heartbeat,” and thought she was just some unknown newbie, never realizing she was already a 14-year-veteran singer/songwriter/recording artist just over 30! Sometimes the often fine music “hidden” in the Contemporary Christian Music slot was hard to find for Top 40 listeners of the day…but, much of it, especially now with streaming, is well worth searching out.
Drill-Down: Keaggy and Sunday’s Child Album
Before producing Keaggy’s ‘94 Blue album for Epic, Lynn Nichols did the honors for Sunday’s Child (credits/liner notes for the album, click here). Power pop aficionados will recognize the album’s engineer: Jack Joseph Puig, who was one of a few engineers on this job.
Puig co-produced both Jellyfish albums: 1990’s Bellybutton and ‘93’s Spilt Milk, both on Charisma. He also co-produced the 1991 promo live EP, which features the band also tackling a Badfinger song (“No Matter What”👈…this one isn’t from that EP, but, a cool TV studio video take on YouTube) and McCartney & Wings’ “Jet”/”No Matter What” medley (also not from Puig’s promo EP, but, video from a live show, with Roger Joseph Manning’s biting Linda-parody keyboard solo!).
Back to Allmusic’s Mark Allender: “They did a fair job with their little anthropological exercise. Many of the licks and chord changes simply were not around back in the day -- and the keyboard sounds on ‘Everything Is Alright’ could not have been created with any instrument in the ‘60s.
“Opening with a brilliant, heartfelt, happy-go-lucky ‘Tell Me How You Feel,’ Sunday’s Child rocks one punchy number after another. ‘Big Eraser,’ or the opening to ‘I’ve Just Begun (Again)’ harken back to a more psychedelic time. Keaggy’s guitar sounds amazing (as usual), and his playing is very refreshing to hear on these old fat guitars!
“There also is excellent bass work by Rick Cua throughout. Other standout tracks include ‘Walk in Two Worlds’ and ‘This Could Be the Moment.’”
Picking up on “This Could Be the Moment,” CCM’s 500 Best Albums of All Time (2011) adds that the song “returns to the more fun rock and roll. This is a good old-fashioned, put-the-top-down-on-the-convertible-and-hit-Pacific-Coast-Highway song. The chorus is a monster with some great harmonies. The instrumental break just pounds with Mike Mead’s great driving beat and Keaggy’s subtle and building guitar work. Even Cua gets a short solo here!
“It’s hard to decide which song stands out as the ‘best’ on such a great album, but ‘Somebody Loves You’ would have to receive recognition. The acoustic driven rock song is pure Keaggy and one of the songs Keaggy penned entirely by himself. Keaggy here shows his guitar prowess is not just limited to electric and solo, but tasteful and smart acoustic rhythm work as well. This alone gives it more of a Byrds feel.
“‘I’ve Just Begun (Again)’ brings the album back to the joyful musical expressions that dominate the vast majority of the album, while the following ‘Walk In Two Worlds’ represents the darker, rougher edge. One would have hoped future releases would expand upon this sound as it worked so incredible well here.
“The album closes with a wonderful version of the traditional spiritual ‘Talk About Suffering.’ Starting nearly a acapella (only drums backing) before adding the band, this version is both beautiful and unforgettable. A fitting ending to a great album.”
The complete album on Spotify:
The complete album on YouTube (click here):
We held a little promotional “Guess the Recording Artist” Quiz on Substack’s social media Notes on Friday (tub-thumping this article’s upcoming publication), with the only correct answer of “Phil Keaggy” coming from former Tune Tag guest,
of Daydreamin’ ‘Bout the Way Things Sometimes Are! His Tune Tag:
A wonderfully detailed look at Sunday’s Child and its Beatles-inspired roots. I especially enjoyed your recounting of Keaggy's encounter with Paul McCartney, adding a personal touch to the album's story.
An underrated musician, for sure! I knew he was religious, but his earlier music never came across as preachy. I also didn't know this backstory, nor did I know he felt that way about his earlier work. I don't know anything from his lengthy solo catalog, but I love Glass Harp's first three albums (S/T, Synergy, and It Makes Me Glad).
I also have some Glass Harp rarities on a CD-R, which I was sent decades ago via a mega collector. In it are demos from 1969 where they sound much more like a West Coast acid rock band, like Quicksilver, rather than what they would later become. This may be the period he is talking about earlier in your post (that he says he doesn't like), and bands all change; however, he clearly knows more about the story than our ears do because I love it! On that same CD is also an early (and longer) demo of "Coming Home" (from 'Synergy') that is brimming with West Coast-sounding slide guitar and brings to mind Stephen Stills. It's so crisp and fluid, and at the ending where he says, "I Love You," Keaggy's guitar just howls, but it also has a very cool funk to it.
Finally, there is a 2nd disc in the set I was sent that includes the entire rare live set from Pacific Highways Recorders from 1971 that has a monster 32-minute jam of Glass Harp's "Can You See Me?" It sounds like Led Zeppelin meets the 70s Canadian band, Triumph. It's tremendous and helps complete the story of early Glass Harp.