Many, many years ago, when I was first learning to drive, I raided my parents' cassette tape collection so I would have music to play on the car tape deck. This was due to me haven gotten into vinyl in the preceding years and swapping my cassette albums for their vinyl counterparts. Many of these were compilations of UK classic rock acts e.g. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, 10cc, and included '20 Golden Greats' by The Hollies.
This compilation, released in 1978, heavily lent on my preferred Graham Nash line-up from the 60s but the first track, however, was 'The Air That I Breathe', a 1974 No.2 hit from the Terry Sylvester line-up and their last significant single. At the time, I found this to be fairly saccharine and mostly ignored or skipped it (my deck had a seek feature which came in handy for this) for one of the more poppy numbers such as 'Just One Look' or 'Jennifer Eccles'.
Over the years, my opinions have changed and I'm now rather fond of this song. Alan Parsons (he of 'The Project' and the engineer on both this and Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon') once claimed that Eric Clapton believed that the first note of 'The Air That I Breathe' had more soul than anything he had ever heard! I'm not sure that I would go that far but it does have a rather lovely arrangement and production.
Bonus Clips: 'The Air That I Breathe' was first written and recorded by the British/Gibraltarian singer-songwriter Albert Hammond (him of 'It Never Rains in Southern California' and father of The Strokes' guitarist) for his 1972 album...
... and was then covered by Phil Everly the following year in an arrangement that was heard by The Hollies' producer Ron Richards who suggested to the band that it would be a huge hit if they recorded it...
... unfortunately the publishers of 'The Air That I Breathe' sued Radiohead for copyright infringement due to similar sounding elements being used in the song 'Creep'. Have a listen to this mash-up for a comparison.
