Wednesday, April 10, 2019

All Yes Studio Albums Ranked - from 'Yes' to 'No thanks'...





20 to 1 - 50 years of Yes Music 


When discussing anything related to Prog rock, two things are generally agreed: the '70s were its golden period, and the leading lights of the genre can be distilled to the 'big 6': ELP, Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Yes.
Of these, only Crimson and Yes are still going strong as a live act under their original name, which when you think about it is incredible. Half a century of creativity is rightly being celebrated this year, and in the case of Yes one thing holds true - despite the ever-revolving door of personnel, the legacy of this remarkable band remains intact.
To mark fifty years of Yes music, we've taken each and every one of their twenty studio albums and attempted to do the improbable - rank them accordingly. It's completely subjective of course, but hey, that's what makes these lists the fun they are.

20. Heaven and Earth (2014)

What a pity that the late Chris Squire’s swan song with Yes was such a damp squib.  With Jon Davison firmly established on vocals, Yes seemed to play it oh-so-safe here with only closer Subway Walls having any of the flair and fire of earlier glories. And is that really the same Alan White who played drums so joyously and powerfully on The Gates of Delirium? (Although perhaps we should point the finger at the paper thin production values for stifling the vim and vigour that all Yes albums should contain). It’s probably all of the above so let’s move on.



19. Open Your Eyes (1997)

Falling firmly between two stools, Yes tried to please everyone with Open Your Eyes but ending up pleasing almost no-one with this disjointed affair. The old harmonies are there in abundance and pop and sparkle at times, but something’s missing and on tracks like No Way We Can Lose they sound like a poor parody of themselves. Most fans sadly agreed with the critics’ disdain with album sales well down on previous releases.



18. Union (1991)

Where do you start with Union? It was of course anything but a Union, with tracks pulled in mostly from the two factions of Yes that existed at the time. If you have love for Union, fair enough, there are some great songs on it, not least the delightful Lift Me Up but take a look at how many people took part in the recording sessions (10 synthesiser players??) and ponder just how accurate Rick Wakeman’s eye-stinging ‘Onion’ assessment was.



17. Magnification (2001)

For some, Yes ended here -Magnification was Jon Anderson’s last studio album with the band (at least to date). It’s not a bad album by any stretch and probably deserved to do better than it actually did, such was the strength of many of the songs (and despite Anderson’s occasionally cloying lyrics). The use of additional strings provided depth but were also divisive - it meant that keyboards were sacrificed, something unthinkable for most Yes aficionados.



16. Fly From Here (2011)

An album of two halves, the ‘epic’ title track, mostly composed some 30 years earlier has some wonderful flourishes (We Can Fly and Madman at the Screens take a bow) and singer Benoit David does a sterling job despite being handed a thankless task. However the rest of the album was worryingly bland with compositions such as Hour of Need ominously pointing the way as to what was to come with Heaven and Earth a few years later. The fact it was remixed, remastered and Trevor Horn's vocals added for the 'Return Trip' version recently only adds to the confusion.





15. The Ladder (1999)

Let’s get one thing straight, opening track Homeworld is (almost) up there with the great Yes tracks, Squire has his mojo back and Anderson’s vocals are as superb as ever. The rest of the album  subsequently falls a little short of this outstanding high (although New Language comes mightily close). There was more than enough on The Ladder to give fans fresh hope that Yes would be a force to be reckoned with going into the 21st Century.



14. Tormato (1978)

Coming off the back of the triumphant Going For The One, Yes seemed to have had a new lease of life which makes the steep dip which was Tormato all the more baffling. It’s a good album but simply cannot compare to what went before. For the first time since 1970’s Time and a Word there wasn’t a track over eight minutes long, maybe a sign of the times but this brevity coupled with the thin production did nothing to enhance the music on offer. Squire’s Onward and On the Silent Wings of Freedom were outstanding but in hindsight, this feels like an unsatisfactory ending to 70s Yes.




13. Keys to Ascension 1 & 2 (1996 & 1997)

We have taken the studio tracks from the Keys albums (see the Keystudio album from 2001) and put them together as a whole for the purpose of this countdown, and in doing this it shows that Yes definitely still had it. What’s perhaps surprising is that this is (currently) Rick Wakeman’s farewell to Yes’s studio output but as with anything Yes related never say never. Highlights include the lengthy Mind Drive and That, That Is, along with the powerful yet subtle Be The One but there isn’t a duff track in sight which makes Wakeman’s resultant departure all the more disappointing.





12. Yes (1969)

History tells us that Yes’s debut album was full of promise and was truly the start of something special, but fifty years ago it would have taken some strong conviction to believe that they would go on to become one of the giants of Progressive Rock. With the band pulling in influences from everywhere in the musical spectrum, there is a lot to admire here and the band are clearly trying to hit their stride very quickly but compared (unfairly perhaps) to what was to come, the album stumbles somewhat as it reaches to achieve the standards they were trying to set themselves.





11. Big Generator (1987)

There are similarities to Tormato in that Big Generator was also a bit of an anticlimax after the superb album that went before. In truth Yes probably left it a little too late to capitalise on the success of 90125 but a recent reappraisal of this album has demonstrated that there were some gems hidden in the 80s production, namely the sublime Shoot High Aim Low and the anthemic I’m Running and in Love Will Find a Way, Yes should have had a hit single on a par with Owner of a Lonely Heart.



10. Talk (1994)

We’d probably struggle to find another equivalent list with Talk so high but indulge us. With the disorganised chaos of the Union era well behind them, Yes reverted to the 90125 line up and produced a corker of an album. Some long-term fans lamented the rocky, more direct approach but with Trevor Rabin taking the band by the scruff of the neck (and the production is so crystal clear it’s almost sterile) there is real power and beauty here, in particular the euphoric I Am Waiting and - in a nod to ‘classic’ Yes - the 15 minute, three part Endless Dream. It wasn’t to last though, as Yes switched back to the more traditional sounds and personnel of earlier times soon after.


9. Time and a Word (1970)

Yes’s follow up to their self titled debut saw the ambition reaching even further as they started to really build on the foundations of their earlier release. The opening track, a cover of Richie Havens’ No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed, stretches the envelope wonderfully well and is all the more extraordinary when it throws in excerpts from the classic Western movie The Big Country. Using strings so early in their career was a bold move and caused some internal conflict which in part led to guitarist Peter Banks bowing out, but Yes were starting to get on a roll and Banks’s departure made little difference to the juggernaut that was about to take the progressive world by storm.



8. Tales From Topographic Oceans (1973)

Overblown, overbearing, remarkable, ground breaking. So many adjectives have been written to demonstrate how divided people feel about the double album behemoth from 1973. Four tracks spread across four sides of vinyl, critics were mostly positive at the time and are kinder now as well but were scathing and harsh of the self indulgence in the years in between as Prog fell out of favour in the 1980s and 1990s.  Wakeman’s disillusion caused him to depart at this point although his attitude to the project has softened over the years. There is a lot love for Tales in 33.3 Towers but we’d be lying if we said our attention doesn’t drift at times, particularly on some of sides 2 and 3 (in old money that is) but when they get it right, it’s as good as anything Yes ever did.



7. Drama (1980)

There will be some that will never accept Drama as a true Yes album but frankly it’s their loss as in our opinion it’s well worthy of its lofty heights in our countdown. From the prototype Prog-Metal stomp of opener Machine Messiah to the whirling breathlessness of the glorious Tempus Fugit, every track is a fine example of a middle finger up to those that said it could never work with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes in the band and the sublime 80 or so seconds of White Car showed that Yes could do short as well as epic. It sadly didn’t last with Howe and Downes swiftly departing to form Asia and Horn returning to his first love of production but the Drama era line up and album burned very brightly- if briefly.







6. Relayer (1974)

Coming off the back of the double whammy of …Topographic and Wakeman’s departure a year earlier, Yes could have been forgiven for adopting a somewhat more accessible approach to their seventh release, but nothing doing. With jazz influenced keyboardist Patrick Moraz on board, Yes roared back with Relayer, their most harsh, metallic sounding album to date. The Gates of Delirium, loosely based on Tolstoy’s War and Peace, was an epic to end all epics spread across nearly 22 minutes of  music and sounded sonically wonderful. The two tracks taking up side two were Yes at their most experimental and if they didn’t quite match the genius of side one, they did a damn good job in trying. The surprise departure of Moraz after the Relayer tour heralded a three year hiatus for the band during which the musical landscape in the U.K. changed dramatically.



5. 90125 (1983)

Over the years of their existence, Yes have pulled victory from the jaws of defeat a number of times but none more so than on their 1983 release 90125. Yes were effectively dead after Drama, and Squire and White started working with South African guitarist and vocalist Trevor Rabin on material for a new band to be called ‘Cinema’. Jon Anderson heard some of the early material and was blown away by it – so much so the other three asked him to put some vocals down. This combined with a call to original keyboard player Tony Kaye later, and Yes were back. And how. Opening with the smash hit Owner of a Lonely Heart, 90125 propelled Yes into levels of popularity previously unseen even by their standards and deservedly so. A few curmudgeons in their fan base fell by the wayside but with tracks like the moving Changes and the stirring Hearts, Yes opened up a path to a whole new audience.



4. The Yes Album  (1971)

With new guitarist Steve Howe on board Yes truly exploded onto the music scene with their magnificent third release. Tracks such as the brooding Yours Is No Disgrace and the celestial Starship Trooper still sound relatively fresh nearly half a century on and in I’ve Seen All Good People they found the anthem they were searching for. It appeared that the final piece of the jigsaw had fallen into place but instead it signalled the end of Tony Kaye’s first tenure with the band as Yes looked to embellish their keyboard sound even further. Kaye’s replacement was a master-stroke and elevated  the band even further into superstar status. Enter Rick Wakeman.



3. Fragile (1971)

With 22 year old Wakeman now part of the band and artist Roger Dean designing their album covers, Yes were on a real creative charge with their second album of 1971, Fragile. Although it was perhaps a little surprising that five of Fragile’s nine tracks were solo compositions and performances, that mattered not a jot as the remaining four tracks took up most of the album’s duration and were simply astonishing in their depth and dexterity. Roundabout is a bona fide classic across any genre and closes Yes’s live shows to this day; Heart of the Sunrise demonstrated a band seemingly at the peak of its technical and melodic powers. However, that proved not to be the case because even as Fragile was released Yes were already plotting to scale even greater heights.







 2. Going For The One (1977)

After a three year absence (a hell of a long time in 1970s terms) and with Rick Wakeman back in the fold, initially as a session player then swiftly as a full time member, Yes produced a stunning and triumphant comeback with Going For The One. The title track was a euphoric rabble-rousing rocker which incorporated Steve Howe’s string bending performance on steel guitar and Anderson hitting notes so high they nearly disappeared off the scale. Turn of the Century highlighted the band’s brilliant story-telling abilities and in Wonderous Stories, they unexpectedly hit the U.K. top ten singles chart for the first time. However, with the astonishing Awaken they saved the best till last. Reaching out over nearly sixteen minutes of perfection, they produced arguably their finest ever track. Anderson cites Awaken as everything he wanted to accomplish with Yes encapsulated into one piece of music and who are we to argue? It’s bloody magnificent.



1. Close To The Edge – (1972)

The motherload. Yes’s one true fully fledged masterpiece was released in September 1972 at the pinnacle of Progressive Rock’s golden age. Comprising of just three tracks it catapulted Yes fully into the big time and was the culmination of everything the four earlier albums were trying to achieve. The eighteen minute title track - broken down into four exquisite movements - was and still is a roller coaster of genius from the frenetic opening of The Solid Time of Change through the calm of I Get Up I Get Down, to the final swirl of Seasons of Man. It confidently set out a blueprint for Progressive Rock that so many bands that came after tried to follow. And they weren’t finished there, And You And I saw Yes at their most majestic, painting as it did a musical work of art and album closer Siberian Khatru pounds along at a furious rate of knots and shows another, slightly funkier side to this ever developing musical entity. Yes’s defining moment came at a cost however.  The seemingly endless hours it took to create took its toll on founder member and drummer extraordinaire Bill Bruford who departed for the jazzier and more spontaneous King Crimson shortly before the subsequent tour, leaving replacement Alan White having to rapidly and bravely learn the tour set list in a very short space of time. Close to the Edge remains a benchmark not only for Yes but for a whole genre, which tells us all we need to know about its genius.




Tuesday, March 19, 2019

The Top Ten Metallica Songs from Load to Hardwired






The top 10 Metallica tracks from Load to Hardwired…




There are still many ‘Tallica fans who think that the Black Album marked the end of their golden period (come to think of it there are some who gave up on them after Ride the Lightning but that’s another story). That hasn’t stopped them seeing the band live of course, which to this day remains one of the best experiences you’re likely to have with your trousers on.

But for those who heard Load for the first time in 1996 and then quietly put it away in a corner, never to purchase another Metallica offering, there is much they’ve missed. Yes it’s true that overall their output has not been as brutal as ‘Lightning, as mesmerising as ‘Puppets, as trillion-selling as Metallica, but one thing has remained, and that is Metallica’s stuff is rarely dull. Diverse yes, overlong in places yes, bad production on occasion yes, but hardly ever boring. Here we pull out ten of the best from 1996 to date (and – SPOILER ALERT - there’s nothing from Lulu or St Anger)…



Until it Sleeps (Load, 1996)

This was massive. Massively important that is, the first new material anyone had heard since the Metallica – and it proved just how brave the band were. Eschewing the safe route by not putting out an ‘Enter Sandman’ soundalike, this was the maturing Metallica daring the fanbase to like a song that had elements of the Black Album but somehow sounded completely different. Its soft verses,  shoegazing lyrics and strange drum pattern was unnerving to the average fan of ‘Battery’, but then a killer bridge/chorus kicks in and we realised that things were never going to be quite the same again – particularly when accompanied with the extremely ‘arty’ video.





Bleeding Me (Load, 1996)

A metaphor for the juxtaposition between the good and bad within oneself, Bleeding Me is still one of James Hetfield’s most personal and accessible lyrics, perfectly fitting with the meandering nature of the music. Again this was new territory for the band – the song’s structure starts slow and builds but with control (unlike ‘One’ for instance). It remains the high point of Load and told the world that from this point on the band were going to do things their way – whether we liked it or not.





Fuel (Reload, 1997)

The Load sessions produced a ridiculous amount of songs and Metallica decided (rightly or wrongly, you decide) to pretty much release them all across two albums, a year apart. Strangely the production on Reload is very different from its predecessor and suffers as a result, but with this riproarer of an opener all was (un)forgiven (sorry). A straight ahead rocker, ‘Fuel’ is still part of the current live set on occasion and for good reason; sure, it’s a big dumb rock song, but when ‘Tallica do big dumb rock songs they still kick the proverbial ass.






The Memory Remains (Reload, 1997)

As part of an opening salvo with Fuel, TMR is its polar opposite – sensitive, intelligent and poignant. Metallica’s take on a theme previously examined brilliantly by Rush (Losing It), TMR takes us into the mind of a fading star struggling with the end of a career, but in true ‘Tallica style they throw something unexpected into the mix – in the shape of Marianne Faithful’s despairing backing vocals, brilliantly conveying the subject’s pain. It’s a masterstroke.





Turn The Page (Garage Inc., 1998)
The band have always loved a cover version and their career is dotted throughout with tributes to their heroes, encapsulated best by the $5.98 Garage Days Revisited EP way back when. In 1998 they expanded the concept and Garage Inc. appeared with a whole bunch of new covers, the most popular of which was their take on Thin Lizzy’s Whiskey in the Jar. But it’s Bob Seger’s tale of life on the road, Turn the Page, which steals the show. It’s a great song made greater given the Metallica treatment, and James Hetfield’s world-weary vocal delivery seals the deal.




No Leaf Clover (S & M, 1999)

Written specifically as one of two new songs for their dalliance with the San Francisco Symphony, No Leaf Clover was a highlight of another fearless move by the band. Many bands have attempted to marry the orchestra and rock band with mixed results, and while the S & M album was patchy, certain songs worked brilliantly. None more so than this mid-tempo stomper, allowing enough room for the classical musicians to really stretch their legs to great effect.





All Nightmare Long (Death Magnetic, 2008)

Following the turbulent St Anger years, that documentary and all the subsequent fallout, Metallica needed a rethink. By bringing in the maestro himself, Rick Rubin, the band allowed themselves (unusually) to be led by an outsider. The edict for Death Magnetic was ‘imagine it’s 1986 all over again’ and to a large degree Rubin delivered. Their most immediate material for years, DM revisited many of the hallmarks that got them here in the first place, and although some of the tracks are a little too close to their forebears, there were outstanding exceptions, including this absolute brute, complete with a genuinely disturbing video. Metallica were back, and how.





Cyanide (Death Magnetic, 2008)

Another DM screamer, this impressed Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson so much he berated Lars when interviewing him for not making it the album opener. It bears all the hallmarks of what makes ‘Tallica great – two kick ass riffs, a groove to die for and vicious lyrics spat at you Hetfield-style. If this doesn’t get you nodding nothing will.



Hardwired (Hardwired…to Self-Destruct, 2016)   

Eight long years on from Death Magnetic, Metallica finally got around to finishing a proper album. And as most of their material over the last twenty years had been of the mid tempo, lengthy type (sometimes they can be guilty of not self-editing), we were expecting something similar, right? Wrong. Once again the band confounded us with the heaviest, thrashiest (and shortest) track they’d done in god knows how long. It’s a cracker, and rightly has opened every show on their seemingly endless tour in support of HTSD.




Spit Out The Bone (Hardwired…to Self-Destruct, 2016)


If they wanted to kick off HTSD in style with the tasty title track, they bookended it with another beauty. Spit Out The Bone immediately kicks straight into a typical Lars snare attack, followed by James & Kirk’s crushing riff; it then checks itself, building back into the verse and just doesn’t let up for the next seven-odd minutes. A reminder if any were needed that when they want to Metallica are peerless at this stuff.





Friday, February 1, 2019

Face Value...?


See the source image





Ticket prices have risen exponentially over the last few years, but is it justified?



The case for:

If you polled 100 people under the age of, say, 35, and asked them when they last bought a CD, or actually paid for an album directly (vs listened via streaming services), there is a high likelihood that less than 20 of them would answer in the affirmative. A recent survey even suggested over a quarter of younger music fans don’t even listen to the music they download. The reality is the music industry as we knew it is well and truly dead. 
No longer are bands making money from album sales – even some of the biggest bands around don’t rely any longer on selling albums, rather getting kickbacks from the Spotify’s and Apple’s of the world. So how do the artists we know and love make their money? Simple. They tour. There is still a healthy audience out there who want to see their favourite artists live, meaning that demand for tours is still (in the main) in a good place. Currently there are more festivals than ever before; more gigs are sold out (pro rata) than at any time in the last 15 years. As a result, bands are touring across more territories and for longer than previously, in order to get a decent income.

But there’s a payoff; touring doesn’t come cheap. The list of outgoings is exhaustive – a full time crew and tour management team, travel costs, tour bus, accommodation, feeding and watering everyone, everyday, venue hire, merch production. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the most expensive item of the lot – the tour production itself. 
The bigger the band, the bigger the production, the bigger the cost. And these days, the audience expect a big show. That’s nothing new, but the onset of technology has meant expectation levels have gone through the roof. The result? Bands are spending more than ever trying to ensure they deliver the biggest, most spectacular show there is. A band like Muse have taken it to such extremes that on their last tour the band were almost incidental to the show around them.

The expense of running these huge tours is mind boggling, and if there’s one thing an organisation like Metallica (for that is what they have become) don’t want to do it’s lose money. And they are very good at ensuring the opposite is in fact true. So the ticket price is set at a rate that a) is seen as fair in order to cover all tour costs, and b) makes them a half decent profit. 
Oh, and guess what? The vast majority of Metallica gigs are sold out. Supply and demand – it’s that simple. If you have an audience willing to pay over £120 for a ticket, why would you charge them less?



The case against:

Yes, the music industry as we knew it is dead. Yes, very few people are buying albums as they once did. And it’s also true that many bands have to tour to make money. But here’s the kicker. The artists that really need to tour to make money are inevitably the smaller and mid-size bands who play smaller venues, and as a result can’t set ticket prices too high or they risk pricing themselves out of the market. 
Of course there will always be a hardcore base who would pay silly money for a smaller band and show, but the more casual fan (who represent the majority of the audience) want good value for money. The Muse’s, Guns N Roses & Metallica’s of the world - in all cases – have reached a level where they don’t need the money. They are expected to put on big shows, true, and there is a cost to that, but the punters’ argument against the ticket cost is not about paying a ridiculously low price; it’s that it’s got to a point where it’s beyond the reach of an awful lot of true fans. Take Metallica’s current tour; an average ticket is around £110-£120 (and that doesn’t even get you near the stage).

The result is that – as with last year’s Gn'R gigs – the venue is 40% filled with middle-class people who know about three songs (you know, the ‘famous’ ones), and thought it would be fun to see if Axl loses it and throttles a security guard. 
Now, it is true that the bands mentioned have an older audience with more disposable income, and the supply-and-demand argument is a strong one. However, do the management of these artists not realise that they are alienating the very people who have over the last 20-30 years invested hugely in them? They are the ones who bought all the albums, the t shirts, the re-issues, the box sets, saw them on every tour.

The reality is this is a false economy. By pricing many older fans – and for sure most of the newer ones who can’t afford it – out, there is a danger that in the years to come there simply won’t be the number of fans able to attend future shows. But perhaps in the land of corporation rock, that’s not important. Make the profit while you can and to hell with the rest of it. Which is a shame.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Happy Talk?

Watching a gig through a screen is one thing - constant chat is quite another


Disclaimer: This was written back in 2014 after witnessing the (now sadly defunct) band Messenger. While my levels of discontentment have - happily - never reached the same heights as that night, I did consider ‘retiring’ from gig going for a while afterwards. I still attend many gigs, but it does appear this issue hasn’t really gone away. Read on.
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Recently I went to The Borderline, a rather famous music venue in the heart of London’s West End. The reason for my going was to see an up and coming band called Messenger whose album ‘Illusory Blues’ is a favourite of mine from earlier this year. Having seen the band capably support Devin Townsend’s Casualties of Cool back in early September, I was looking forward to seeing how the band would fare with their own headlining gig. 
For those that are not familiar with The Borderline’s layout, it is a small venue with a bar to the left as you look towards the stage and it is renowned for attracting some well known faces from the music (and other) industries who sometimes drift down to the venue from The Crobar and other watering holes close by. 
Consequently, the noise levels can be quite high as people congregate at the bar to socialise and hang out at a ‘trendy’ venue with absolutely no intention of listening to the music. For that reason, it isn’t one of my favourite venues to watch music, but the prospect of seeing Messenger again far outweighed any concerns I had about the noise.

Messenger topped a three band bill and the first two bands came and went with the usual chatter plaguing their performances. I naturally (and perhaps naively) thought that the babble of conversation would dissipate once the headlining band took to the stage. 
After all, the vast majority of the audience would be there to see and enjoy the band, wouldn’t they? It turned out that I couldn’t have been more wrong. Messenger’s music is varied and at times extremely powerful but there are just as many wistful and quiet interludes that make their album such a good listening experience. 
Sadly, those quiet moments were completely drowned out by the relentless prattle, not only from the bar area where it could at least be expected and ignored, but also, and perhaps more worryingly, from the ‘floor’ just a few feet from where the band were performing. The band couldn’t have failed to hear the noise but to their credit, they ploughed on to produce a very good performance. 
As good as the band were, it still left me with a feeling of real disillusionment; this time the degree of noise had reached a new level of annoyance and there was no challenging the talkers as they were so numerous. I’ve long been resigned to hearing people having isolated conversations at gigs but this was on a completely different plateau with people clearly not there for the music but for the ‘event.’ Had I not been reviewing the gig for an online rock magazine, I would have departed as there was no point in staying just to grow more frustrated as the evening progressed.

By the way, this isn’t a case of an old fart about to launch an attack on ‘the youth of today’ and its lack of respect; I’m sad to report there were a number of older ‘fans’ there just as happy to babble on over the band. Assuming that these people go to gigs regularly, they must remember when this didn’t happen. 
Have they now given up and adopted an “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” mentality? I must also point out that I’m no pompous, self-righteous ass who demands the audience are totally quiet when the band are playing; if people want to have a good time that’s fine, but not at the expense of others watching. I don’t even get too huffy if people want to watch the show through their phone; as long as it’s not obscuring my line of sight, please go right ahead! I don’t understand it, but I’ll get on and watch the band thank you.
Up until the Messenger gig, the most extreme act of talking during a show I’d witnessed was still only an isolated incident. In 2013, I went to see Rush at the O2 Arena in London, only to be assailed about an hour into the show by two guys who finally made it to their seats –beers in hand- then proceeded to talk to each other for the rest of the first half of the show. 
They chatted so much that they were actually standing sideways on to face each other in an effort to seemingly improve their chatting experience. At the interval, they disappeared, presumably for more beer, but failed to return at the resumption. As happy as that made me, it left me figuratively scratching my head as to the point of them being there. 
At £70+ per ticket, plus all the beers they’d thrown down their necks and the probable cost of travel, it wouldn’t have been a cheap night, so why spend the little time they were actually in the Arena shouting at each other?


Although the Messenger gig was the first time I’d experienced such a startling level of chatting, this phenomenon is sadly nothing new. There is some YouTube footage that dates back several years of Jeff Tweedy from the band Wilco, pleading with the audience to stop talking and pay attention to the music. 
What’s interesting is that although the audience at the time cheered and applauded Tweedy’s outburst, the comments on the YouTube page aren’t quite as supportive; indeed some of them are quite belligerent in their defence of those making the noise. Is that just one or two trolls with nothing better to do, or is it actually becoming acceptable to criticise in this manner and tell the artists performing to just shut up and play.
Before her 2014 run of London dates, Kate Bush famously put out a statement on her website to ask the audience not to film or take photographs the show. Reports from the shows indicated that the vast majority of people respected her wishes and significantly, this appeared to extend to chatting as well. On the night I was there you could have heard a pin drop when Bush performed ‘Among Angels’ - a song which featured her alone onstage simply playing a piano and singing. So it can be done! 
Maybe there’s a link to the respect the audience has for the artist, or perhaps more artists should challenge the talkers. Of course it could simply be a case of I’m just getting old, but I sadly suspect not. In the end, if it gets to a point where the experience I had at The Borderline becomes more frequent and the enjoyment of seeing a band live is diminished by the noise levels then it may just be that after the best part of 40 years, my gig going days are coming to an end. I have a few gigs lined up right through to next summer so who knows, maybe things will be different by then. Maybe…

David Lack





Thursday, November 1, 2018

I Can't Quit You Baby







As they celebrate 50 years, what is it about Led Zeppelin that makes most rock fans go weak at the knees?


There are literally libraries written about the eight-legged legend that tore up the 70s – tales where everything is gargantuan: record sales, tour profits, egos, Jimmy Page’s double-neck, Bonzo’s drinking, groupie numbers, that aircraft – even their manager’s girth. Much of which has grown from tale to myth to legend. As Robert Plant once said “I wish everything that’s been written about us had actually been true”. 


However, when looked at with a slightly cynical eye, there’s much to empathise with people who’ve never understood what the fuss was about. They didn’t have ‘hits’ like their contemporaries; many of their tunes weren’t exactly easy to sing along to; they were all over the place in terms of style (certainly from Led Zep III onwards); they had a singer who looked the part but had a divisive sounding voice; the guitarist had a great tone but wasn’t overly technically gifted (compared to the likes of Hendrix, Richie Blackmore or Eric Clapton) and seemed extremely aloof; the bass player was – well – just another boring bass player; and the drummer was incredibly powerful but looked like he wanted to punch everyone, all of the time (which to be fair was probably true). Above all, they were riding a wave of popularity seemingly based on a song about a woman going shopping and the theme tune to Top of the Pops.  




So on the face of it, understanding why someone wouldn’t like the Zep isn’t too difficult. But of course we know different, so let’s examine what keeps the Zep flame burning…

1.       The Mystery

It’s difficult to name another band who so consciously went out of their way to portray themselves as an enigma. A decision not to release singles (Page and manager Peter Grant were convinced singles would negatively affect album sales) was at the time seen as commercial suicide, but it had the opposite effect, driving album sales through the metaphoric roof. So confident were they of this approach that when it came to releasing the fourth album, the outer cover contained no mention of the band, had no title and no wording on the spine. Nothing but a decrepit picture of a decrepit old man; Andy Warhol it certainly wasn’t. From a distance it does appear much of this came from Page and manager Peter Grant. One gets the impression that Percy, Bonzo & JPJ were mostly along for the ride when it came to these decisions, content to let Jimmy & Peter deal with all ‘that stuff’. This is also borne out by Page’s apparent reluctance to talk about his private life (which is still the case), leading to not unfounded rumours of his obsession with the occult, Aleister Crowley and his alleged relationship with a minor in the US. In the end the level of fame and success they achieved afforded Page exactly what he wanted – millions of adoring fans who loved them for the music and couldn’t give two hoots about what they did behind closed doors. The one thing they were masters of – one could argue they created the model – was an innate understanding of marketing the brand.  It’s a curious thing to imagine Zep being at their peak now, and how they would handle the glare of social media etc. I’d like to think they’d milk it for all it’s worth without giving away anything significant – and they would be bigger than ever as a result.



2.       The Reunion (of lack thereof)

2007. I remember it clearly. The gig was announced, over twenty million people applied for twenty thousand tickets, and no, I wasn’t successful. But I worked with a guy who was. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to punch someone in the face as much as him when he told me. Why? Well, along with the Beatles reforming, this was the other thing that was never going to happen. Plant had said so on, oh, about four thousand occasions since Live Aid. Yes, he’d dropped the most subtle of hints that he might think about it, but then in almost every case had immediately contradicted himself and denied any such thing. Yes there was the Page thing in the mid 90s – Walking Into Clarksdale has its moments, and the No Quarter live album is sublime, but without JPJ and John's son Jason sitting in for his father it was never going to be Zeppelin. (I actually have a theory about the Page/Plant thing; I’m convinced Plant was so incensed about the Coverdale/Page project in ‘93 that it fired him up to show Little David who was the real love in James Page’s life. I’m probably wrong but it’s a fun train of thought).



             3.       Bonzo

There’s a line in the Dream Theater song ‘Just Let Me Breathe’ – “The big machines take care of you until you kill yourself and the sales go through the roof”. Now in the case of Zep that’s not strictly true as they’d already sold gazillions by the time John Henry Bonham drank himself to death in 1980; but it's played a huge part in maintaining the Zep legacy, and sales have indeed continued to rise in no small part due to Bonzo’s demise. As time has gone on – as with many dead rock stars – his own legend has grown, and he continues to be cited as either the greatest rock drummer ever or the most influential (and not just by other drummers). Is the hype justified? Quite often death is the best advert, so it becomes less objective comparing the dead to the still living – particularly as the longer the career, the more likely there are blots on the copybook. In Bonzo’s case, in my humble opinion, the answer is categorically yes. I would point to Bonham’s playing on the softer Zep tracks as the key to his greatness; his sensitivity to the song, regardless of the tempo or style, was always – without exception – spot on. Epics like 'No Quarter', 'Ten Years Gone' or 'Since I've Been Loving You' would not have the same impact had he played them with the same intensity as 'Rock and Roll' or 'When The Levee Breaks', and man could he play hard when he needed to. Legendry status? In the bag.

4.       The Influence

Name a band - any band – that have found success in the rock / blues / hard rock, modern folk, and - to a degree - metal genres over the last forty years, and there is a high probability that they have cited Zeppelin as a key pillar of their direction, writing, sound or a combination of all three. It’s difficult to understate what impact Zep has had – and continues to have. The sheer breadth of their styles across the catalogue ensured their feelers would stretch out far and wide. The legend has inevitably grown way beyond the norm, but the waves created as a result of everything previously mentioned show no sign of abating – and why should they?



5.       The Money Tree

Given that the Zeppelin organisation pretty much created the marketing model that many bands have used since, you’d expect them to be masters of keeping the money rolling in. And how. Between 2011 – 2016 it’s estimated they earned over $60 million; not bad for a band that disbanded 38 years ago. That figure is unlikely to drop off anytime soon, with new box sets out annually, a coffee table book that’s just hit, and Jimmy Page’s seemingly inexhaustible archives. It makes one wonder when the well will run dry – but it’s been running very well for almost 40 years thank you very much, so  let's look forward to the next set of ‘archives’ and to hell with the overdraft.



6.       The Music

If you really want to know why Zeppelin will always be held in a similar bracket to the Beatles & Stones, it’s simple. It’s the songs. If you put everything else to one side (and there’s a lot of it – the level of musicianship, the arranging, the stylistic changes, the blistering live performances etc), it comes back to the fact that Led Zeppelin wrote a shitload of great – not just good – songs. What makes a great song is a highly subjective subject, but there are some basic ground rules most agree on: It needs a highly memorable melody (or melodies); it needs either a chorus you can sing along to or at worst sections that send shivers up your spine; and it should connect with the listener on some emotional level. There are a wealth of Zeppelin tracks that tick all of those boxes – one could argue the vast majority of their material achieves this. Yes, there are a bunch of throwaway songs – but even the Beatles had a bucketload of those. There are even albums that may not be worthy of their name (I’m looking at you, In Through The Out Door). But the simple truth is, their musical legacy is undimmed by time because it is so rich in depth, colour, savagery and beauty. It’s a combination that few have ever matched.