#68 WILDWALL by Malcolm & Alwyn (1974)



WILDWALL by Malcolm & Alwyn (1974)
Myrrh - MSA-6534

A striking figure with pale skin and long, blonde hair steps up to the microphone. Dressed in black leather, he’s illuminated by a bright spotlight in an otherwise darkened hall. He begins to play a nondescript acoustic guitar and sings these words…

Dear Malcolm, dear Alwyn 
You're my favorite singers in England
And I love you so much, You've got the Holy Spirit's touch
You're much more than just a two-man band

I got a memo from Turner, He's a poet I'm a learner
And he says you're comin' back to L.A.
So I'll see you when you land, I hope your schedule's not too planned
I know you can't, but I wish you could stay

I miss you, my friends
I think about you all the time
You're so far away
Well, I hope you're feelin' fine.

The leather-clad troubadour was Larry Norman, of course, and he was singing a song he'd written about two very special men – Malcolm Wild and Alwyn Wall. 

Malcolm and Alwyn have been described as a “popular British gospel beat music group,” plying their wares in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. Their music was primarily soft rock that is said to have been influenced musically by such secular outfits as Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan and The Beatles. But their poetic lyrics described their devotion to the Christian faith with purity and simplicity, and yet with great depth and layers of meaning. The British accents and Wild’s autoharp set the group apart from their peers. 

Malcolm Wild and Alwyn Wall actually began performing together as teenagers in a band called The Zodiacs well before they met Jesus. The story is told that the two became Christians within two days of each other in 1968. Then in 1973, an album titled Fool’s Wisdom put Malcolm & Alwyn on the American musical map and guaranteed them a place in the hearts of Jesus people everywhere. The record featured an all-star cast of session players and the title track became one of the Jesus Movement’s most-loved songs.

But a funny thing happened on the way to their sophomore release. The boys decided to plug in and turn the amps up to 11 for album #2. Well, certainly not all the way up to 11…but it was definitely a more aggressive sound. Their audience noticed. And not all of them were impressed. In fact, it’s been said that a large segment of Malcolm & Alwyn’s audience were actually “alienated” by this record. If true, shame on them.

The album begins with a song that sounds like it could easily have been recorded by their good friend and American fan, Larry Norman. I Feel Fine served notice that the boys were definitely in a more rockin’ mood this time around. In addition to the distortion on the electric guitar, they also injected some humor into this opening track:

Smoked a pipe when I was just thirteen
Must’ve turned a hundred shades of green
I was coughing and sputterin’
Curses I was mutterin’
But you know what’s the matter?
It’s too much tobacco

I been thinkin’ and drinkin’ ‘til I’m stinkin’
Smokin,’ chokin,’ and I’m not jokin’
I been sighin’ and cryin’ like I’m dyin’
Boozin,’ losin,’ and I’m not lyin’
But I never got through ‘til I got my eyes on You

I feel fine now

I Feel Fine took a light-hearted look at the fact that the Lord satisfies where drugs and other vices fail. And it featured a fuzzy lead guitar solo that was anything but buried in the mix.

"We had a lot of fun doing that song," Malcolm Wild told radio host Jerry Bryant in a recent interview. "Alwyn was wanting to get a little more rock and roll with our music, and that's the way that we went with Wildwall."

Fans of a kindler, gentler Malcolm & Alwyn were probably more comfortable with the album’s second track, I Love You More Than Yesterday. Probably my least favorite Malc & Aly tune of all time due to the vague and repetitive lyric content. It did contain a nice saxophone solo, however.

The quirky Spaceman played off the 70s fascination with aliens, UFOs and space travel to make points in favor of unity and against racism. This one had a somewhat psychedelic rock vibe and again relied on humor to get its point across:

No use being friendly with Martians
If you can’t be friendly with your brother
Making the acquaintance of little green men
When black and white are fighting each other

So climb back into your moon machine
It’s time to come back to earth
If you get in touch with the Earthmaker
You’ll fly higher

The song’s weird 70s ending sounds, again, like something Larry Norman would’ve come up with. It does not hold up particularly well to repeated listenings.

Wild’s autoharp is prominent in the mix during the gentle ballad, Someone to Sing To. This song examines motives and how “singing for Jesus” is not just another career choice, it’s a calling. And sometimes one that doesn’t pay really well.

They say leave out the cross
Leave out the blood
That kind of talk won’t
do your career any good

I’m not after a Hit Parade song
I just want someone to sing to
I’m not after a pocketful of money
'Cause it’s Heaven that I’m into

And about that whole debate over Christian vs. secular music? Here’s how Malcolm & Alwyn settled that one:

There’s been a lot of people writing songs
About love and peace and their rights and wrongs
Their songs are OK, the music’s fine
But without the Truth, they’re just wasting their time

Closing Side One was the soft rock I’ll Carry You Through. Reviewers have noted that the guitar intro and solo are very George Harrison-esque. The song is written from the point of view of the Lord Himself:

When you’re weary and feeling down
Don’t you worry I won’t let you drown
My load is easy
So very easy
And I will carry you through

And when you’re alone
I’m gonna love you like no other can

Wildwall (obviously a play on the surnames of Malcolm & Alwyn) was produced by Jon Miller and Roger Hand. Alwyn Wall played acoustic guitar, while Malcolm Wild played autoharp. Both men provided vocals and co-wrote all of the album’s songs. Studio musicians on this record included James Litherland and Davey Johnstone (Elton John’s guitarist) on guitars, Johnny Gustafson (from the original cast of Jesus Christ Superstar) on bass, Rod Edwards on keys, and Mike Giles on drums. The album’s horn section was comprised of Malcolm Duncan, Roger Ball, Chris Payne, and Henry Lowther. Rod Edwards and Roger Hand contributed backing vocals. Denny Bridges and Bill Price served as engineers.

Side Two opens with a rollicking rocker on the subject of…water baptism? Sure! It’s a topic that has rarely been explored in any depth at all over the years. The Oak Ridge Boys, then a southern gospel quartet, recorded The Baptism of Jesse Taylor in 1974 (the same year that Wildwall was released). The classic Water Grave was recorded by an unlikely, eclectic trio of artists: Dogwood, The Imperials, and Servant. And Chuck Girard’s breezy Full Immersion Ocean Water Baptism By The Sea came along in 1979.  But Malcolm & Alwyn’s Buried Alive was perhaps the first song from the burgeoning Jesus Music scene to describe this important, symbolic act of obedience:

Down by the water
A handful of people stood
The sun was up and
the clouds were gone
And all around
you could hear that song
I could tell by their faces
they were into something good
Tho’ their hair may be long
and their jeans may be torn
The sound of their worship
came across gentle and warm

Stand back, I wanna see
What’s taking place here in front of me
They took a dip in the bubbly sea
And now they seem happy to be buried alive

Coke cans and Bibles were scattered along the shore
And a guy with a guitar played some gentle rock
He said the doorway to Heaven has never been locked
The music was good but the message was getting better
I’m a child of the sky and I’m ready to fly
And the way things are movin’ it looks like I’m not gonna die

With the clanging of the piano and the fuzzy distortion on the guitars, this song rocks harder than anything on Fool’s Wisdom. In a recent interview with veteran radio host Jerry Bryant, Alwyn Wall revealed that the inspiration for the song came from one of those famous Calvary Chapel oceanside baptism services under the direction of the late, great Pastor Chuck Smith. 

"I think it was a place called Pirate's Cove at Corona del Mar," Wall recalls. "It was a beautiful place. Everybody said, 'Let's go to the baptism.' I said, 'OK, let's go.' So we went down early in the day, got a frisbee and a beach ball, and we were playing football. We went out into the ocean for a while. I'd already been baptized, but I just wanted to go see it. And then there was literally - literally - three or four thousand people who came forward to be baptized. There must have been ten or fifteen thousand, whatever it was, standing around watching on the cliffsides and on the other side of the whole thing, and probably twenty or thirty pastors out there baptizing people for about four hours. I had never seen anything like that." 

And that was the inspiration behind Buried Alive. It’s a great snapshot of the innocence, passion, and exuberance of the Jesus Movement.

Stay With Me is an acoustic ballad that is musically reminiscent of Fool’s Wisdom, but with lyrics that acknowledge a certain maturity and vulnerability. It’s a love song to the Lord but also a plea that He would stay with us even through hard times. The singer expresses a deep and abiding gratitude for God (You’ve stayed with me / even when I’ve done You wrong for so long / You know this love song is true).

I Love is one of the album’s highlights. It’s a happy little list of the routine things that bring satisfaction in life, culminating with a chorus that says, So it’s easy to see just how good You’ve been to me. It’s a bouncy pop tune that features an excellent horn section. You’ve got to love lyrics like these:

I love stone brown bread
And I like it when my wife brings me breakfast in bed
I love little old ladies
Who make funny faces at brand new babies

Incidentally, this song was my initial introduction to Wildwall, having heard it first on a double-album compilation release titled Jubilation, Too! Another British musician by the name of Cliff Richard later covered I Love on his Small Corners album.

The title track gets a full-on folk-rock treatment, complete with harmonica.

Closing the album is a 5-minute track titled England Goodbye. Opening with acoustic piano, the song also features brass, mandolin, and harmonica. It’s a sad and sobering indictment of their native Great Britain as a once-great nation that had lost its way and no longer functioned as a spiritual beacon for Christ. And this was 1974! Despite the worship revival in England in the 1990s (Delirious, Matt Redman), I think even the most optimistic observers of Church history and current events would have to say that Malcolm & Alwyn were speaking prophetically to their nation in this song:

I’ve been watching you steadily decrease
Being seduced by the demon decadence
How it’s mocked you and it’s rocked you
‘Til your foundation’s crumbled
And somehow you mislaid the master key

Bow your head and cry
You believed in a lie
And the dream has long gone by

Memories you’ve left with me
Lay strongly in my mind
And when I think of you
You’re beautiful and green
But somehow you’ve turned to grey
And I see you’ve lost your way
Like a love who’s unfaithful to his bride

How could you deny the Lord of earth and sky
I hate to see you die
England, goodbye

Wow. Serious stuff. I remember my father leading a team of people on a missions trip to Leeds, England in the early 2000s. England? I thought. A missions trip? Absolutely. The explanation was that England today is full of cold, empty cathedrals, devoid of the life-changing power of the Gospel. Think about it. The Puritans or “pilgrims” who were largely responsible for bringing the Christian faith to our shores originally lived in England. Now, some 3 to 400 years later, we are sending missionaries back to England in an effort to call her to repentance and encourage her to return to her First Love. It’s fascinating stuff.



Alwyn Wall today

Malcolm & Alwyn’s musical career in some ways mirrored that of Love Song. Both groups were only together, officially, for a very short period. Both outfits released only two albums in their heyday. Both groups later reunited to release live albums long after they had officially disbanded. And both groups gave birth to other bands and/or solo ministries. In Love Song’s case, Chuck Girard, John Mehler, and Tommy Coomes released solo albums while Jay Truax and Mehler joined the Richie Furay Band. In the case of Malcolm & Alwyn, they both recorded solo albums, and both men later headed up new bands of their own (The Alwyn Wall Band and Malcolm & the Mirrors). Just an interesting comparison. By the way, The Prize by The Alwyn Wall Band was an absolute classic that will be explored in depth later in this last, as will the boys’ debut, Fool’s Wisdom.

Malcolm Wild today

Both of these men have spent many years serving the Body of Christ as Pastors of Calvary Chapel churches. Their musical output in the early 70s was extremely influential and fondly remembered, but they have literally spent their lives ministering. They were – and remain – the “real deal.”

Larry Norman’s tribute to Malcolm & Alwyn still rings true today:

Dear Malcolm, Dear Alwyn
You’re my favorite singers in England
Your songs are so simple, but they take me to the temple
I guess I’m just your number one fan