Having gone Back to the Roots,
John Mayall returned to his forward-looking musical explorations with 1971's
Memories, the true follow-up to
USA Union, on which he retained bassist
Larry Taylor, replaced
Harvey Mandel with guitarist
Jerry McGee of
The Ventures, and dropped
Sugarcane Harris, for an unusually small trio session. Actually, he was still looking back on a set of autobiographical lyrics about growing up, starting with the title track, and including "Grandad," and "Back from Korea." (Forced to compete with the simultaneous release of the London Records compilation Thru the Years,
Memories managed to reach only Number 179 in the U.S. charts.) ~ William Ruhlmann