In Memoriam-Robin Lumley and John Giblin

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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.

 

In Memoriam: Three Vaguely Prog Musicians

Jon Hassell/Brian Eno: Chemistry
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Kansas: Cheyenne Anthem
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Brand X: Nuclear Burn
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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.

Trick/Treat: A Trick of the Tail

Genesis: A Trick of The Tail
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So, my last post was about a band that started off very proggy, then gradually got poppier, before hitting it big. Why not follow that with a post about band that started off very proggy, then gradually got poppier, before hitting it big?

There are some differences, however. First, writing about Supertramp was a new experience for me, and to be fair, they were a band that I liked, but never really loved. Genesis, on the other hand, is a band that I have long loved, even after it was no longer remotely fashionable, and about which I have written a few times. Also, Supertramp’s early albums are pretty much forgotten, while Genesis’ (except their first), are still fondly remembered by those who enjoy the genre. And Supertramp essentially faded into oblivion after their major breakthrough, while Genesis continued to be successful, as they became more and more mainstream, to the point that even I gave up on them.

Many fans consider Genesis’ album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway to be a creative peak, and in some ways, it was—complex, dark, and in many places, brilliant. On the other hand, its attempt at a story was pretty much incomprehensible and there are parts of the album that sort of work in the story, but you really don’t want to listen to more than once. As most Genesis-ophiles know, after The Lamb, singer and visual focus Peter Gabriel decided to stop being part of the scenery and left the band.

Despite what many people may believe, The Lamb was not only a Gabriel project—most of the music for that album was written by the other members of the band, with the lyrics being written by Gabriel—a departure from the band’s prior more collegial practices, which led to the tensions resulting in Gabriel’s quitting. Although the music press assumed that this would be the end of the band, the remaining members wanted to continue—and the fact that they did so successfully does put to lie the myth that Gabriel was the creative heart of Genesis.

Determined to create a great new album, the band wrote a bunch of songs that hearkened back to the album before The Lamb, Selling England By The Pound, with a more pastoral, more English, more fun sound, and also included some jazzier sections, influenced by Phil Collins’ work with Brand X. It is an oft-told story that they auditioned a number of singers, assisted by Collins, but none clicked. So, like many organizations, they decided to promote from within, and Collins seized the front-man role and ran with it, ultimately doing credible versions of many of the songs originally sung by Gabriel. No, he didn’t have Gabriel’s edginess or weirdness, but he had a nice voice, and a genial, amusing stage presence.

The album, A Trick of the Tail may well be the point where Genesis best balanced its prog-rock heritage and its newer pop sensibility. There are many songs on this album that I love as much as anything that preceded them, and the title track, while not my favorite, is still a fine song. Based loosely on one of William Golding’s not-Lord-of–the-Flies books, The Inheritors (remember, songwriter Tony Banks was a graduate of the Charterhouse School, one of the oldest “public” schools in England), it is about an alien character who leaves his own world for that of humans, where he is captured and displayed as a freak, before escaping back to his “city of gold,” evading the humans who sought to plunder it. It is a bouncy pop tune, with the playfulness of older songs such as, say, “Harold The Barrel,” or “I Know What I Like,” and while it has its more complex moments, it is definitely a move toward pop, but to me, not in a bad way.

It also was the first Genesis song to have a video, and it is truly appalling. I mean really, really bad. Which is remarkable, because it was directed by the same guy who did the great video for “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

So, check out both the album and song (but not the video, for god's sake), and you are in for a treat. (Sorry.)

Side Projects: Brand X

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A few weeks ago, when I made the Case for Phil Collins, I mentioned Brand X, the jazz fusion group that he played with as one of his many side projects from Genesis. Before this theme ended, I figured it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to do a quick post about them. Really quick.

Brand X was formed back in 1975, and featured a number of musicians who were either top-notch studio musicians or sidemen. By the time of their first album, the band featured Collins on drums, John Goodsall on guitar, Robin Lumley on keyboards and Percy Jones on bass. Over time, as the musicians’ schedules became more complicated, a number of different musicians passed through the band, with Goodsall and Jones the most consistent members. The band played fusion music, and if you dismiss the genre as dull, I challenge you to check them out—the quality of the musicianship is superb, and the songwriting is often unusual and occasionally inspired (if not always, I guess).

In the original post about Collins, I embedded a video of Brand X, and here’s another live track, although without the live video:


And, for a hoot, check out the interview above, from 1979, featuring Collins and Goodsall, which appears to have been recorded in Wayne and Garth’s basement. The second part of the interview is here:

The Case For: Phil Collins

Phil Collins: In The Air Tonight
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If Phil Collins had disappeared from the face of the earth at the end of 1981, this article would probably not be necessary. He would likely be remembered as a fine drummer who ably backed Peter Gabriel in Genesis, did a nice job succeeding Gabriel as a singer for a few solid albums, was an in-demand drummer for solo albums by other prog rockers, moonlighted in the fusion group Brand X and put out an excellent solo album, featuring one truly memorable track, featured above.

But Phil didn’t disappear, and after 1981, critical opinion of most of his work began to plummet in inverse proportion to his earnings, until he became sort of a punch line. And while it is hard to defend some of his more saccharine later efforts, on the whole, his entire body of work includes enough high points—including some after 1981—to support a claim for respect, not derision.

Collins joined Genesis in 1970, after the band had gone through a number of drummers. Unlike the other members of the band, who were from upper class families, Collins was a middle class kid, who had been a child actor and model (and an extra in A Hard Day’s Night.) After his first real band, Flaming Youth (in which he drummed, sang and played keyboards) broke up, Collins answered an ad, auditioned and joined Genesis, stabilizing the position as the band gained popularity. He quickly proved to be an excellent prog rock drummer, adept in both harder rocking styles and more atmospheric sounds, and able to handle unusual time signatures and patterns. I’ve previously written about “Supper’s Ready,” and you can go back and listen to it for Collins’ inventive drumming. Here’s a later song from the Gabriel era, “Cinema Show” that showcases his drumming (even if it is not quite as good as the Bill Bruford/Collins version from the Second’s Out album).


When Gabriel left, the band reportedly auditioned more than 400 wannabes before settling on Collins, and he proved to be a more than adequate replacement. Lacking Gabriel’s quirks and quirkiness, the Collins-fronted version of Genesis gradually simplified and poppified its sound until it reached massive popularity. Collins, however, was not the only one to “blame” for this change—his fellow band members, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks also wrote the songs, and were completely on board with the turn toward the mainstream. It would not have been possible, though, without Collins’ pleasant vocals, but he didn’t stop being a top drummer. Here’s a post-Gabriel Genesis song that again features Collins’ superb drumming.

At the same time, Collins played (and occasionally sang) with the jazz-rock group Brand X, in which he displayed a slightly different side to his drumming. Here’s a clip of a bearded and hairy Collins being interviewed on English television in 1979 before joining Brand X for a live performance.



Collins also provided drums (and vocals) on Steve Hackett’s first solo album, played on former Yes guitarist Peter Banks’ early solo works, contributed drum parts to tracks on Brian Eno’s albums, including “Sky Saw” from the classic Another Green World, and played on Robert Fripp’s Exposure.

Then came the 1980s. Asked by Gabriel to play on his third (and arguably best) solo album (often referred to as Melt), Collins, abetted by producer Steve Lillywhite and engineer Hugh Padgham, used a booming drum effect, called the “gated drum” sound, which they may or may not have invented, on the song “Intruder.” It proved to be one of the defining sounds of 1980s rock. When Collins decided to record his first solo album, Face Value, he brought in Padgham as co-producer, and the gated drum sound was used to great effect in, particularly, “In the Air Tonight,” which still holds up as a great song. The rest of Face Value is also pretty good and quirky, and Collins makes good use of a horn section and some old school R&B arrangements.

Face Value was a critical and commercial success. Later in 1981, Genesis released probably its last good album, Abacab, which used both the gated drum sound and horns. And while there were the occasional good songs on later Genesis albums, and Collins solo albums, at this point, the dross began to outweigh the quality. Collins’ involvement with Brand X also ended at about this time, and, for all intents and purposes, Collins became a smooth pop musician, with most of the rough and interesting edges gone.

In an article in the New Musical Express a few years ago, prompted by Collins’ (now-rescinded) announcement of his retirement from music, titled “Is it Time We All Stopped Hating Phil Collins?” Tim Chester noted that while Collins is “responsible for some of the cheesiest music ever committed to acetate,” this "obscures some of his most genius contributions to music.”

So, go listen to the pre-1981 Collins (and the occasional bit of latter-day quality), and enjoy some excellent, interesting drumming, fine singing, and pretty good songwriting. And let the haters hate.