Vanilla Fudge: Vanilla Fudge (Atco)

HAS THERE ever been such a start to an album as on Vanilla Fudge (Atco)? 'Ticket to Ride' is such an ear-popping masterpiece that it immediately lifts the Fudge into that rarefied major-group category. Not only that but it stills a lot of this "against interpretation" theory dealing with the New Music — i.e., that a group must only perform its own material. There is not a single "original" song on Vanilla Fudge, yet it is one of the most truly "original" LPs issued this year, and the Fudge's incandescent treatments of Lennon-McCartney's 'Ticket to Ride' and 'Eleanor Rigby' are creativity incarnate.