Wolf City

Continuing a creative peak for the band, Wolf City became Amon Düül II's second studio release for 1972. The lineup was mostly stable, with Peter Leopold as the odd man out here. Chris Karrer and John Weinzierl were the primary writers, and the first side shows off their craft. Karrer's "Surrounded by Stars" is chock-full of inventive AD2 sound and great vocals from Renate Knaup; while Weinzierl offers two of his best songs: "Green Bubble Raincoated Man," a classic in title and in execution, and the harder rocking "Jail-House Frog," complete with a mad-scientist middle section; the former also was released as a single. Starting the second side (flipped with the first for the US release), Karrer and Weinzierl's guitar work rides the dark and fantastic groove of the title track until the fade, where the next track, "Wie Der Wind Am Ende Einer Strasse" ("Like The Wind At The End Of A Street"), picks up and gently floats through sitar and tabla. The big-riffing "Deutsch Nepal" blows the proceedings back on course, offering a rare German-language vocal for AD2. Daniel Fichelscher's guitar-driven "Sleepwalker's Timeless Bridge" closes the album with authority and Mellotron. Unmatched by any group—German, British, progressive, psychedelic or otherwise—AD2 marked their finest hour when they released Carnival In Babylon and Wolf City in 1972. The following year saw the excellent Live In London album, which documented their late 1972 tour of the UK; the album was recorded at the Greyhound in London, where they were guests of Roxy Music. 1973 also saw the release of the Utopia album, which was essentially a side project of Lothar Meid that featured Jimmy Jackson, Olaf Kübler and members of AD2.