Private Eyes by Tommy Bolin

Private Eyes, the follow-up to Teaser, came out on Columbia in 1976, the year Tommy Bolin was running a solo career alongside his stint as Deep Purple's guitarist. He died on December 4 that same year, which gives the record an ache it never asked for.

It roams the way his résumé did: the heavy stomp of hard rock, a psychedelic haze, and the slippery jazz fusion runs of a player who had sat in with Billy Cobham on Spectrum after his years in Zephyr and the James Gang. "Post Toastee" is the centerpiece, a loose, simmering groove that Bolin worries at until it glows, all fluid lines and sly phrasing, the sound of a guitarist who could never quite pick one lane and didn't much want to.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.