Robin Lumley and John Giblin were members of Brand X at
various times.I’ve written before about Brand X, a jazz-rock fusion band probably best known for the contributions of
Phil Collins (who I’ve written about, too), but the band’s
membership was somewhat of a revolving door.(And I wrote about another member, guitarist John Goodsall, for our 2021
In Memoriam theme.)Lumley was a
founding member of the band, on keyboards, and was involved from 1974-1980,
with a brief hiatus in 1978, while Giblin, a bass player, was a member in 1979,
although his recordings were released through 1982.
Robin Lumley was born on January 17, 1948, in Devonport,
England.Originally a drummer, he switched
to keyboards in the 1970s.In 1972, his
former neighbor, David Bowie, rang him up one day, to see if he would be
interested in replacing Bowie’s ill keyboard player, Matthew Fisher from Procol
Harum, starting the next day.He
was interested and joined the Spiders From Mars.After that, Lumley worked as a studio musician
and met Collins, which led to the formation of Brand X.Lumley also became interested in music
production.His hiatus from Brand X in
1978 was to work on production projects, including Rod Argent’s Moving Home,
and Bill Bruford’s Feels Good to Me, and he later produced records for
Orleans, Anthony Phillips and Isotope, among others.
In the 1980s, he formed a jazz-rock band that included Rod
Argent, Graeme Edge (of the Moody Blues), Morris Pert (of Brand X), and Gary
Brooker (of Procol Harum). Lumley later married an Australian and moved to
Australia. In 2001, he formed SETI with Graeme Edge, bassist Rob
Burns, and Rod McGrath (cellist for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra).He also composed and produced music for over
250 television and radio commercials for numerous television productions in the
US, UK and Australia.
Lumley died from heart failure in Plymouth, on March 9, 2023,
at the age of 75.
***
John Giblin was born on February 26, 1952, in Bellshill,
Scotland.He was best known as a studio
musician, contributing bass to albums and performances by artists such as Peter
Gabriel, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Kate Bush, Simple Minds, John Anderson,
Phil Collins, Al Green, and Annie Lennox.Giblin was best known for his mastery of the fretless bass.
As noted above, Giblin recorded with Brand X in 1979, when
the band was being pushed to make more commercial music.The surprising response to this pressure was
to have two separate units record—one with bassist Percy Jones, keyboard player
Peter Robinson, drummer Mike Clarke and Goodsall, and the other featuring,
Lumley, Giblin, Collins and Goodsall.The output of these two groups were released, but no improvement in
commercial success was achieved, leading to a band breakup.
More recently, Giblin was playing more acoustic bass, and
was involved in projects with Peter Erskine of Weather Report and Alan Pasqua
of Tony Williams Lifetime.
Giblin died of sepsis following a long illness on May 14,
2023 in Cheltenham, England, aged 71.
You can hear both men on the Brand X track in the video, “Algon
(Where an Ordinary Cup of Drinking Chocolate Costs £8,000,000,000),” a title
taken from a Monty Python sketch (in which the cup of chocolate only cost £4 million), from the Product album.
We continue featuring drummers who died in 2022. Part I featured Jet Black (Brian Duffy), Jerry Allison, and Dino Danelli, and you can read that here, if somehow you haven’t read it already. We’re proceeding oldest to youngest, and Part III should be posted soon.
Alan White—White was best known as the drummer for Yes, although I admit that I always think of him as “the drummer for Yes who replaced Bill Bruford.” Bruford is my favorite rock drummer, so White was never going to measure up, but he was a fine drummer in his own right, and played on many great Yes songs.
Born in 1949, White joined his first band at 13, turning pro at 17. In 1969, White received a call from someone claiming to be John Lennon, looking for a drummer for the Plastic Ono Band. White thought that someone was yanking his chain, but it turned out to be a genuine offer. White, given three days to prepare, performed with them for a show, and later played on Lennon’s Imagine album, the song “Instant Karma,” and George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. This led to a brief enlistment in Ginger Baker’s Air Force, and work with Steve Winwood and Terry Reid.
White shared a London flat with Eddy Offord, who worked as an engineer and producer for Yes, and occasionally hung out at the studio with the band. Once, when Bruford had to leave a rehearsal session early, White sat in. Later, after Bruford left Yes to join King Crimson in 1972, White was asked to join the band, and again was given three days to learn their repertoire before the Close to the Edge tour started. You can see and hear White playing on “Roundabout” from that tour here:
White played drums and percussion on more than 40 studio and live Yes albums, and occasionally added piano parts and collaborated on songwriting. He also released one solo album and had a few side projects.
White was one of 8 of the myriad members of Yes inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 (as was Bruford, who is not also in as a member of King Crimson, because that band has somehow never been inducted. Don’t get me started.)
After what was described as a “brief illness,” White died on May 26, 2022 at the age of 72. Sadly, two months before his death a large number of personal items, including musical instruments (the drum set he played with the Plastic Ono Band, for example), and platinum records, were stolen from a storage unit.
John Hartman-The original drummer for The Doobie Brothers, John Hartman died on September 22, 2022. Hartman originally moved to Northern California at the request of Skip Spence, who wanted him to participate an a revival of Moby Grape. That never happened, but Spence introduced Hartman to Tom Johnston, and eventually they, along with Pat Simmons, formed The Doobie Brothers.
Here’s Hartman playing “China Grove” on the BBC in 1974:
Hartman drummed with the band, sometimes with a second drummer, until 1979, straddling their early days as funky, bluesy rockers fronted by Johnston, to the smooth purveyors of “yacht rock,” led by Johnston’s replacement, Michael McDonald. He returned for a benefit tour in 1987, and two more Doobies albums (with Johnston and not McDonald) but retired from the band for good in 1992.
After that, Hartman attempted to become a police officer, but the drummer, described by the band at his death as a “wild spirit,” found it hard to break into law enforcement due to his previous drug use, despite having graduated from a police academy.
Hartman was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Doobie Brother, but because of COVID, plans for a performance by the original members were scotched. Interestingly, Hartman was the only living major figure from the Doobies not interviewed for the 2021 biography documentary, Let The Music Play.
Ric Parnell-You know how the drummers in This Is Spinal Tap! all died in strange ways? Remember how Mick Shrimpton spontaneously combusted? Real drummer Ric Parnell was Mick Shrimpton. When Spinal Tap recorded its two albums, and did TV performances and live shows through 1992, it was Parnell who handled the drums. But, you ask, how did he do that if Mick Shrimpton was dead? Turns out, Mick had a twin brother, Rick Shrimpton, who was also a drummer!
Spinal Tap was not Parnell’s only claim to fame. Born in London in 1961, to a drummer father and with two drummer brothers, percussion was basically the family business. In 1968, due to one of his father’s jobs at a TV station, Parnell got to see Jimi Hendrix perform on Dusty Springfield’s TV show.
Parnell had two stints with Atomic Rooster, initially briefly replacing a pretty fair drummer, Carl Palmer, and then rejoining and playing on their last two albums.
You can see Parnell’s Bonham-influenced drumming here, on Atomic Rooster’s “A Spoonful of Bromide Helps the Pulse Rate Go Down” from 1972:
After that, Parnell played in some Italian bands before becoming a sideman for artists including Michael Des Barres and was the drummer on Toni Basil’s hit “Mickey.” He was offered a chance to join Journey, but declined, which probably cost him a ton of money. But if he had joined that band, I would not have written this, because I really do not like Journey. So, he clearly made the right call.
Parnell settled in Missoula, Montana, where he would gig locally, and for a while Parnell hosted a radio show called, yes, “Spontaneous Combustion,” where he played basically whatever he wanted and told stories. (Boy, I miss doing that on the radio....)
On May 1, 2022, Parnell died at the age of 70 from a blood clot in his lungs that led to organ failure.
Part of it, I guess, comes from the fact that prog rock era musicians are getting to that age, but it seems like almost every year at about this time, I’m writing about some of them. This year, I’m taking a broad view of the genre, with one musician probably best known for ambient music, one for a distinctly American take on prog, and one who is more from the fusion world, but I like to do group In Memoriam pieces, and this is the best excuse I could come up with to write about these three artists together. And for no real reason, I’ll discuss them in the order that they passed.
For some reason, I assumed that trumpeter Jon Hassell was European, but he isn’t. He was born in Tennessee in 1937, but did study serial music in Germany, where he befriended the future founders of Can, before returning to the US, where he performed on Terry Riley’s first recording of In C. He also was part of LaMonte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music (which also spawned John Cale) and also studied Indian music.
I first became aware of Hassell when he collaborated with Brian Eno in 1980 on an album called Fourth World Vol.1: Possible Musics (and he also played on Eno’s 1982 album Ambient 4: On Land). Hassell used the term “Fourth World” to describe his work as “a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques.” Hassell used lots of electronic processing and effects on his trumpet, leading to strange, otherworldly sounds. He also appeared on the track “Houses In Motion” on Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, on Peter Gabriel’s Birdy and Passion soundtracks, along with a bunch of solo and group recordings, and guest spots with artists as diverse as David Sylvain, Jackson Browne, Ani DiFranco, Ry Cooder, Tears For Fears, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, and k.d. lang.
Hassell had been in bad health for about a year before dying on June 26, 2021 of natural causes.
I’d argue that Kansas was, during their strongest period, the best American prog rock band (I also love Happy The Man, but most people have never heard of them). Kansas fused the mostly European prog sound with American music, fitting for their origin in the country’s heartland. Most reviews of the band refer to them mixing prog with “boogie,” and I’m not sure I can really describe what that is, but you know it when you hear it. Their albums Leftoverture and Point of Know Return were staples of FM radio during my high school years and one key to the band’s sound was violinist/vocalist Robby Steinhardt.
Steinhardt was born in Chicago in 1950, but grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, where he started violin lessons at age 8, and was classically trained both in the US and Europe. In 1972, he joined a band in Topeka, White Clover, which eventually became Kansas. Steinhardt was mostly known for his violin work, but sang harmony on most of the band’s songs, and lead on more than a few. He also acted as the “MC” during live performances.
I started losing interest in Kansas after 1979’s Monolith, after which the band turned toward a strong Christian influence and began to splinter. Steinhardt left the band in 1982 for “personal reasons,” although one article I read referred to his substance abuse during this time. He was part of a band, Steinhardt-Moon, and performed with other acts until rejoining Kansas in 1997, but tired of the pace of touring, and left for good in 2006. In 2013, Steinhardt suffered a heart attack and underwent quadruple bypass surgery but began making guest appearances with Stormbringer (which had formed from Steinhardt-Moon).
In 2020, Steinhardt began work on a symphonic prog-rock project that included contributions from, among others, Ian Anderson, Steve Morse, Billy Cobham, Patrick Moraz, Chuck Leavell, Liberty Devitto, Pat Travers, and Lisa Fischer. Unfortunately, the album, Not In Kansas Anymore, was not released until October, 2021, a few months after Steinhardt died on July 17, from complications of acute pancreatitis.
Back in 2014, I wrote a short piece about Brand X for our “Side Projects” theme, because it was, for Phil Collins, a side project from Genesis. But one of the few consistent members of that band, and one of its founding members, was guitarist John Goodsall. Goodsall was born in 1953 in England and picked up the guitar at age 7. He went pro at age 15, touring with a few bands, including Atomic Rooster (which also included drummer Ric Parnell, who later played Mick Shrimpton in This Is Spinal Tap, the drummer who spontaneously combusted, and then toured with the Tap as Mick’s twin brother Rick). Brand X performed and recorded from 1975-1982, and to my ear produced a great deal of interesting music.
Starting in 1979. Goodsall moved to Los Angeles, and also worked as a session musician, appearing on albums with Peter Gabriel, Bill Bruford, Bryan Adams, and yes, even on Toni Basil’s hit “Mickey.” He was a member of Zoo Drive in the mid-1980s, and after that, the Fire Merchants, before reforming Brand X in 1992. Later, he appeared with various combinations of musicians and recorded music as a leader and session musician. According to Wikipedia, Goodsall appeared on a few soundtracks, ranging from mainstream films such as No Small Affair, Can’t Buy Me Love, and Point Break, and the somewhat less mainstream Anal Intruder 9.
Goodsall died on November 11, 2021, possibly of complications from pneumonia.
I think that it was in the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract that I read, years ago, something like the only definition of who belongs in the (baseball) Hall of Fame is who gets elected. In other words, even in a statistically driven sport such as baseball (which has become even more so due to the work of James and fellow sabermetricians), there’s no formula to decide who belongs. James, and others, have created various predictive formulas, but they are not an attempt to determine who deserves to be in the Hall, but rather to predict whether the player’s statistics are the type that would convince the voters to vote them in.
This type of determination is even harder to do with the Rock Hall, because there are no stats, really, other than maybe sales, or streams, or concert attendance-but I think most people (at least most people who read this type of blog) are unwilling to equate popularity with quality. Although it is nice when it happens. For the Rock Hall, it sort of just comes to down to gut feelings, considering some objective, but mostly subjective factors—plus a fan vote. Of course to be fair, it is hard to take the Rock Hall all that seriously when it inducted Bon Jovi a few years ago.
My pitch today is for King Crimson, which based on the number of times I’ve written about them, their music or their members (see here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and most recently, here), you might assume are my favorite band. They aren’t (don’t ask me what is, though). But when you look at the quality and variety of their work, the length of their career, even with all of the interruptions, and most notably, the influence of the band on so many genres of music, it is hard to justify their exclusion. There is one full member of King Crimson who is a Rock Hall inductee (and another performer who sang one song for Crimson who is in the Hall……the answer will be at the end of this piece).
It is hard to argue that King Crimson did not influence, among other genres, progressive rock, hard rock, various forms of metal, jazz/rock fusion, punk, new wave, grunge, math rock, jam bands, noise rock, and even hip-hop. There’s a nice summary of some of this in Wikipedia, or just Google “King Crimson influence” and fall down the rabbit hole.
Also, arguably, Robert Fripp belongs in the Hall individually for his solo guitar work/"Frippertronics" and collaborations with Brian Eno, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel and others.
That’s it. Show me a band or artist that is more influential than King Crimson that hasn’t already been inducted.
The answer to the question is that drummer Bill Bruford was inducted into the Rock Hall as a member of Yes, as was Jon Anderson, who sang “Prince Rupert Awakes” on Crimson’s third album, Lizard.
Trying not to overthink this, so I went with the first thing that came into my head when I heard what the new theme was.
Red, the album, released in 1974, was King Crimson’s seventh studio album, and was supposed to be the last, until it wasn’t. It is probably the King Crimson album that I listen to the most, and I still think that it is great. For starters, at that point, the “official” band was a trio, all of whom were among the best in the business—Robert Fripp on guitar and mellotron, John Wetton on bass and vocals, and Bill Bruford on drums and percussion. They were augmented for certain songs by, among others, David Cross on violin (who had recently been kicked out as a "full" member), and Mel Collins and Ian McDonald (both of whom had been in prior versions of the band) on saxophones. Also, there’s a cellist, who is uncredited, and apparently is unknown to this day.
The song “Red” and the album are considered to be influential in progressive rock, but interestingly, they are different from what other prog bands were doing at the time—Yes, ELP and Genesis, for example, were more keyboard driven, with music that was filled with classical influences, while King Crimson’s sound on Red is harder, more metal even, although there are two more “ballady” songs on the record, including the stately “Starless,” which features atmospheric mellotron washes, and numerous jazzy passages. That’s why Red is cited as an influence by artists such as Tool, Primus, Kurt Cobain, Henry Rollins and Dream Theater.
The title track is an instrumental, in the vein of the earlier “Larks Tongues In Aspic, Part Two,” and it is “one of the more muscular pieces of Robert Fripp's, in particular the deployment of open strings and heavily attacked and syncopated bass and drums underlines this aspect.” That quote is from this post, which analyzes that song in truly granular detail.
Clearly, King Crimson’s complex and challenging music has been analyzed by music obsessives, including the band members (and management). So, you can read Fripp’s diary about how the song “Red” was pieced together. Here’s a typically dense Pitchfork analysis of the album. And here’s a piece by David Singleton, Fripp’s business and production partner, about the making of Red. Or, you can buy a 21-CD/1-DVD/2-Blu-Ray box set, The Road to Red, which features recordings of many of the concerts from the tour that preceded the recording of Red, so you can, if you are inclined, listen for improvisational sections that turned into parts of Red songs. I’m not that obsessive.
I’ve learned writing these posts is that sometimes you find something that says what you want better than you can, and when you do, just copy it. This is from a review of The Road to Red:
Red managed to encapsulate all the things that defined mid-'70s Crimson: ear-crunching instrumentals like the title track; improvisation-heavy excursions into the outer reaches of rock, jazz and beyond on "Providence" (recorded live on the penultimate night of Crimson's final North American tour, included in the current box); dynamic, mellotron-driven ballads that morphed into thundering solo opportunities for members past and present via a lengthy middle section that milked the hell out of just a few choice notes ("Starless"); and two songs ("Fallen Angel," "One More Red Nightmare") that suggested a shifting direction for Crimson, with even stronger song form than on [Starless and Bible Black] but delivered with the same—or, even, more—massive weight-bearing load of what was one of the loudest, most mind-blowingly powerful power trios in the history of rock music.
Just to vary things up, though, the version of “Red” that I’ve embedded above is a live version recorded in Mexico in August of this year by the seven-piece version of King Crimson that features three drummers (!), Pat Mastellotto, Gavin Harrison and Jeremy Stacy (who also adds keyboards), along with Fripp on guitar, Tony Levin on bass and Chapman Stick, Mel Collins on flute and sax, and Jakko Jaksyzk on guitar and vocals (although not on this song). You can download it here, for free!
Compare that to the original:
As I noted above, Red was supposed to be the last King Crimson album—and it is amazing that a band that was falling apart could create such a masterpiece--but a few years later, Fripp put together a band with Bruford, Levin and guitarist/singer Adrian Belew that eventually became a new version of King Crimson. The cover of their first album, Discipline, is red.
First, Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s second wife and Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, was not a witch, although she has been accused of being one in popular culture. In fact, her execution was based on (probably false) claims of adultery, incest, and high treason designed to get her out of the way so that Henry could move on to wife III. But she was an incredibly divisive figure in English life of the day, ascending to the throne after the controversial end of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and otherwise contributing to the move of England from Catholicism to Protestantism. The politics of this period is fiendishly complex, with lots of players and shifting alliances, so, I’m not going to even try to explain all of this. I do recommend reading Hilary Mantel’s novels about this period, Wolf Hall, and Bring Up The Bodies, or watching the PBS adaptation of them, Wolf Hall, in which Claire Foy portrays Anne (before being cast in The Crown as the young Queen Elizabeth II, who was a descendant of Anne’s older sister Mary, a mistress of Henry VIII before her sister took her place. Like I said, complex.).
It seems that the witchcraft allegations stemmed from two main sources all derived from basic misogyny—first, if you were a powerful woman, and had enemies (and Anne fit that bill perfectly), it was likely that you would be called a witch. For example, while many contemporary commentators remarked on Anne’s beauty, brilliance and charm, one Catholic writer, long after her death, described Anne as having a “protruding tooth,” a “large wen (growth) on her neck,” and six fingers. You know, sort of like a caricature witch. There is no claim, however, that she wore a pointy hat, rode a broom, or weighed as much as a duck.
The second basis for the claim that Anne Boleyn was a witch is based on a comment reportedly made by Henry VIII, not the most reliable of narrators, to be sure, that he had been “seduced and forced into his second marriage by means of sortileges and charms.” “Sortilege,” however, appears to have been used to mean “bewitched or enchanted” in both the supernatural and non-supernatural sense, and there is significant evidence that Henry was smitten by Anne’s beauty, intelligence, charm, and expertise in flirting, and not so much by witchcraft.
If you are really interested in delving more into this question, check out this page.
Myth 2—Rick Wakeman’s 1973 album, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, is a terrible example of the worst excesses of progressive rock.
Yes, it was a concept album about historical figures, and yes, it is mostly Wakeman showing off his talent on various keyboards and synthesizers, and yes, there are moments of pomp and excess (which, to me, can have their place, anyway). But overall, the album contains beautiful music and great musicianship. And there are many, many worse examples of over the top prog pretension, so I think that, in retrospect, at least, the album holds up reasonably well.
The album was inspired by Wakeman’s dissatisfaction with his playing on his first tour with Yes, and his attempt to find a personal style. In an airport in Richmond, Virginia, Wakeman bought a copy of The Private Life of Henry VIII by Scottish writer Nancy Brysson Morrison, and the chapter on Anne Boleyn reminded him of a musical idea he had previously recorded. Wakeman decided to focus on each of the wives, “interpreting the musical characteristics of the wives of Henry VIII. Although the style may not always be in keeping with their individual history, it is my personal conception of their characters in relation to keyboard instruments.”
Listening to his take on Anne Boleyn, can I hear “a tribute to her feisty temper and valiant courage that she maintained while standing up to her husband,” as the Allmusic reviewer heard? Maybe, but overall, it is a nice piece, and not, to my hearing, excessive or bombastic. Plus, it has Bill Bruford on drums, which to me is always a positive.
The original lineup of U.K. brought together some of the best at their instruments British prog rockers. The band was formed in the late 1970s by drummer Bill Bruford, who had played in Yes and King Crimson, and singer/bassist John Wetton, who had played with Bruford in King Crimson and had also been part of Roxy Music and Uriah Heep. Bruford and Wetton each recruited another musician, with Bruford bringing Allan Holdsworth, who had been with Soft Machine, Tony Williams’ Lifeline, Gong, and Jean-Luc Ponty, as well having played on Bruford’s debut solo album, and Wetton inviting Eddie Jobson, a keyboard player and violinist who had played with him in Roxy Music, and who was in Frank Zappa’s band.
U.K., the one and only album recorded by this lineup is considered by many to be a prog-rock classic. Excellent playing (of course) on interesting, unusual songs, featuring a true fusion of rock, jazz and classical influences, has made this one of my favorites—which is not surprising, considering that Bruford is probably my favorite drummer, Holdsworth is my favorite guitarist, and I have lots of respect for both Wetton and Jobson.
That being said, I have to admit that “Mental Medication” is not one of my favorite songs from the album. There’s something about Wetton’s vocals, particularly at the beginning, that I don’t love. But there’s a thrilling four minute stretch of instrumental music, including a guitar solo from Holdsworth that is both jaw dropping and subtle at the same time, and a violin solo from Jobson, all over Wetton’s stellar bass playing and Bruford’s signature drumming, that makes it worth a listen.
Sadly, after some extensive touring, tensions in the band led to Wetton and Jobson “firing” Holdsworth, and Bruford also left. Rather than find a new guitarist, the remaining members brought in drummer Terry Bozzio, also from Frank Zappa’s band, and recorded Danger Money as a trio. It isn’t a bad album, and actually spawned a minor hit, “Nothing to Lose.” After a live album, Wetton and Jobson themselves disagreed on the future of the band, and they broke up. A couple of years later Wetton formed Asia, with Steve Howe, Carl Palmer and Geoff Downes, which definitely sounded a lot like what U.K. might have sounded like if it tried for a more commercial sound.
Bruford took some of the songs that he had written for a second U.K. album and used them on his second solo album, the great One of a Kind (which also featured Holdsworth on guitar).
There were a few Wetton/Jobson led reunions of U.K. over the years, featuring various drummers and guitarists, but the original lineup never got back together.
Sadly, both Wetton and Holdsworth died in 2017, which I commemorated here.
No, this isn’t an article about Jerry Garcia (who died in 1995) or Bob Weir (still very much alive).
As always, we find ourselves looking back on the past year, marveling sadly at the losses the music world has suffered. And as is my habit, I try to highlight some of the lesser known people who died, because the more famous have been lauded at length elsewhere.
In fact, the first person I considered writing about, Maggie Roche, was the subject of an excellent piece in The New York Times Magazine, and I’m not going to try to compete with that—so read it at the link.
Instead, I decided to write about a few of the many guitarists that passed away in 2017, in many genres (and thanks to KKafa for writing so well about Larry Coryell, and Darius for writing about Walter Becker, so I don’t have to). There should probably be some sort of clever organizing principle, but I can’t think of one, so I’ll do it in order of the date they died:
Tommy Allsup: Rarely does a coin toss turn out to be a matter of life and death, but for Tommy Allsup, losing one to Ritchie Valens on a cold Iowa night in February, 1959 allowed him to escape the fate of Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper (and pilot Roger Peterson). But it would be wrong to focus only on Allsup’s luck—he was a fine musician, who was touring with Holly and went on to a long career as a musician, songwriter and producer. In addition to Holly, Allsup worked with Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, Asleep at the Wheel, George Jones, Don McLean, Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings (also left off the plane in Iowa that night), Earl Scruggs, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dwight Yoakum, and the Everly Brothers, among others. Admittedly, despite that long resume, it appears that pretty much everything ever written about Allsup includes a reference to the coin toss. You can hear him tell the story here. And here he is telling more stories about Holly, before playing “It’s So Easy:”
Allan Holdsworth: Holdsworth is probably the best known of the guitarists in this article, and in some circles, he is considered to be one of the most influential guitarists of all time. I’ve referred to him before, most recently in a piece about a Gong song, one of the many bands that he contributed to over the years. Here’s what I wrote then:
If you don’t know who Allan Holdsworth was (he passed away earlier this year), find his music on the Internet. Days before his death, a 12 CD box set of his solo albums from 1982-2003, entitled The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever, was released. The title was taken from a proclamation on the cover of an issue of Guitar Player in 2008, and it isn’t an overstatement. That’s not to say that there aren’t other guitarists who changed the way guitar was played, but he’s certainly one of them. He was the favorite guitarist of Eddie van Halen; Tom Morello and Frank Zappa, among others, have cited him as an influence.
I really lack the vocabulary to explain why Holdsworth is also one of my favorite, if not my favorite, guitarist, so here’s a quote from Robben Ford, not a bad player in his own right: "I think Allan Holdsworth is the John Coltrane of the guitar. I don't think anyone can do as much with the guitar as Allan Holdsworth can." Apparently, he developed his style attempting to make the guitar sound more like a saxophone.
I may have first encountered Holdsworth from his Gong performances, or it might have been with his incredible playing in Bill Bruford’s band. And from there, I’ve listened to his solo work, his one great album with U.K., and his other recordings, with Tony Williams, Jean-Luc Ponty, Soft Machine and others. I saw him once, in the early 80s at the Bottom Line in NY, and it was a pretty incredible experience.
Here he is playing with Bruford—the guitar solos kicks in at about 3:25, but don’t skip ahead—the band is too good:
Ray Phiri: Like Tommy Allsup, I suspect that most Americans, at least, are familiar with Ray Phiri for something that was really only a small part of his career. Phiri, a South African guitarist, singer, composer and arranger was featured on Paul Simon’s groundbreaking Graceland album, as well as its follow up, the more Brazilian-flavored Rhythm of The Saints. Ultimately, Phiri and Simon fell out over, as usual, issues relating to song credits and royalties. But in many ways, it was Phiri’s African/rock/blues fusion guitar, and his arrangements, that helped to turn Graceland into a huge hit for Simon.
Nevertheless, Phiri’s career in South Africa, as the founder of The Cannibals and Stimela, and as an anti-apartheid activist is his most important legacy. That is why in 2011, the President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, awarded Phiri the Order of Ikhamanga, a national honor, citing “the successful use of arts as an instrument of social transformation.”
Here’s Simon’s “Boy In The Bubble” from the 1991 concert in Central Park, which was later released as a live album. Phiri has a brief solo at about 2:55. Also visible on stage is Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini, who played and recorded with Simon for 30 years, and who died in December, 2017:
John Abercrombie: There was a time, when I was in college, and for a few years afterwards, that I listened to a lot of jazz on the ECM label, which I got into initially by listening to Pat Metheny, with whom Abercrombie shares some sensibilities. In addition to his own, fluid, understated virtuosity, Abercrombie regularly played with other great musicians, including drummer Jack DeJohnette, bassist Dave Holland (who together comprised the Gateway Trio), bassist George Mraz, and drummer Peter Erskine, among many others. I sort of lost track of Abercrombie in the 1980s and am not all that familiar with his later work. But I still occasionally enjoy some of those early ECM albums. Here’s a live recording of the Gateway Trio, which highlights Abercrombie’s playing, as well as Holland and DeJohnette (who is one of my favorite drummers):
Phil Miller: I’ve writtennumeroustimes about bands and musicians from the Canterbury Scene, of which Phil Miller was a significant part. Miller, who was a member of Matching Mole, Hatfield And The North, National Health (which I wrote about here), and other bands, was a fluid and nimble player, whose soloing was imaginative and avoided cliché, but was also a skilled accompanist. I never had the chance to see any of Miller’s bands live, but have long enjoyed his recordings, particularly with National Health. And, based on this video, I wish that I had seen them (you can skip the first minute of noise, if you must):
Bonus Dead Bass Player--John Wetton: The bass is a type of guitar, right? And Wetton is probably more famous that anyone above, having had some actual hits, with Asia in the 80s. Wetton died just shy of two months after Greg Lake, another bass player with a similar voice, who Wetton ultimately succeeded in King Crimson (Lake, interestingly, briefly replaced Wetton in Asia, years later). In addition to playing in King Crimson, on three of their best albums, Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black, and Red, Wetton was a member of U.K., which originally included Holdsworth (and Bruford and Eddie Jobson), as well as Roxy Music, Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash, and other bands, and collaborated with many musicians, including Phil Manzanera, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, Steve Hackett, and Geoff Downes.
Here’s a link where you can download an unreleased track of Wetton playing with Robert Fripp and Phil Collins, and here’s a video of a live U.K. performance with the original lineup, synced to the album track:
There was a time and place when the idea of a “supergroup” combining the members of Hatfield and the North and Gilgamesh would have been a big deal. That time was the late 1970s, and the place was England, particularly Canterbury. I’ve written in the past about the so-called “Canterbury Scene,” focusing mostly on the bands Gong and Soft Machine, but there were many other groups, often with overlapping membership, that created interesting music at that time and in that place. These musicians were, for the most part, profoundly talented, extremely adventurous, and mostly forgotten, certainly on this side of the Atlantic.
Hatfield and the North was one of the best regarded bands from this scene. After the usual musical chairs, its membership essentially solidified as vocalist/bassist Richard Sinclair (formerly of Caravan, later of Camel), guitarist Phil Miller (formerly of Matching Mole), drummer Pip Pyle (formerly, and later, of Gong), and keyboardist Dave Stewart (formerly of Egg and not the guy from the Eurythmics, but later of Bruford), and a trio of female singers known as the Northettes, Barbara Gaskin, Amanda Parsons and Ann Rosenthal. Gilgamesh was somewhat lesser known, was organized around keyboard player Alan Gowen, and included, among others, guitarist Phil Lee and bassist Neil Murray (later of Whitesnake and Black Sabbath). Both bands played music that was a fusion of rock, jazz and classical influences.
The new band, which came to be called “National Health,” was to include most members of both, but, of course, that was unlikely to work out. Initially, Bill Bruford was the drummer, but he was replaced by Pyle, Murray replaced Mont Campbell as bassist, and by the time the self-titled debut album was released, Gowan was credited only as a guest, along with Parsons, the only Northette to participate. Nevertheless, they created a great album, if maybe not quite a masterpiece. Mostly instrumental, it is complex, interesting prog rock without much of the pompousness that has given the genre a bad name.
Leadoff track, “Tenemos Roads,” a 14 and a half minute piece written by Stewart, has a catchy opening theme and a long instrumental section before Parsons’ ethereal vocals enter. Prog rock songs often have spacy lyrics, and “Tenemos Roads” is part of that tradition. Something about a place in the stars, and history and men making war and fish living in the sea. Whatever. After a bit of spacy noodling, the song picks up again, and almost rocks out to the end.
I know that may not sound all that enticing, but trust me, it is really good, so give it a listen.
National Health released a maybe even better album the next year, Of Queues And Cures, and then went into hibernation, reuniting in 1982 for D.S. Al Coda, a tribute to Gowen, who had died the previous year of leukemia. And that was pretty much it from this particular combination of musicians, except for some live releases and Missing Piece, a collection of early songs featuring Bruford, Steve Hillage and others.
I started playing drums in fourth grade, and the next year, because our sixth grade bass drummer broke his leg, and I was big enough to carry it in a parade, our music teacher asked me to play bass drum. Which I did, almost exclusively through high school, to the detriment of my snare drumming. Bottom line, through lack of practice, and probably talent, I was a mediocre drummer. In college, I joined the marching band, because it looked like fun, and wasn’t really a serious musical organization. As a result of the general lack of quality of my fellow percussionists, I ended up playing more snare drum than ever, and actually improved by the time I graduated. Despite my lack of talent, I have always appreciated good drumming, and as I mentioned in my King Crimson post, Bill Bruford is my favorite. His precision and inventiveness amaze me.
Although I was aware that he was in Yes, I’d have to say that my first “ah ha” moment about Bruford was his playing on the live version of “Cinema Show” by Genesis on Seconds Out, where he was hired to allow Phil Collins to take over the singing duties from Peter Gabriel. Although I consider Collins to be an extraordinary rock drummer, Bruford’s playing on that one track took my breath away.
When I heard his first solo album, Feels Good to Me, I was enthralled. It was clearly a “fusion” album, somewhere between rock and jazz, not like the prog-rock of the old King Crimson, or Yes, or Genesis. Fusion gets a bad name, with some arguing that it consists of the worst of both jazz and rock, and others complaining that it was simply instrumental noodling and musical masturbation, with a focus on technique to the exclusion of all else. Like most generalities there is some truth in that. But there are some brilliant and exciting examples of fusion—including albums by Miles Davis, Soft Machine, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Pat Metheny Group, Frank Zappa, Brand X and Jean-Luc Ponty, to name a few—and Bill Bruford.
The four primary musicians on Feels Good to Me are among the best and most interesting players on their instruments, even if they aren’t the most famous—Bruford on drums and percussion (and, apparently clarinet), Alan Holdsworth on guitar, Dave Stewart (from National Health, not The Eurythmics) on keyboards, and the criminally underappreciated Jeff Berlin on bass. Their playing on this album is extraordinary, the songwriting is exciting and the arrangements are exhilarating. Bruford was clearly willing to take chances on this album.
So, let’s talk about this track. Yes, there are vocals, which is unusual for fusion music. The singer is Annette Peacock, whose Allmusic entry says that her “work as a vocalist, pianist, and composer is austere, cryptic, laconic, minimalistic, and relentlessly individual.” Her unusual vocals are the most controversial part of the song—some reviewers love them, others hate them, but few are indifferent. Frankly, I always found them a bit annoying, especially when you add the spaciness of the lyrics to the mix—for example:
What it is, is this Is what it is You and I exist Therefore we are becoming Here we are in this precisely now
Whatever that means. As a result, when I chose a song to play on the radio from this album, I rarely (never?) chose this one. But listening again to the song today in preparation for writing this, I have to say, it works. And it is evidence that Bruford was not just taking the easy way out on his first solo album.
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