Sounds Magazine(UK)
1974
The TaxmanCometh
But Robin Remains
( by Chuck Poulin)
On the face of it, Robin Trower seems to have very little in common with his music.
On the turntable you have R.Trower, a guitarist possessing, notably in "Bridge Of Sighs", a brooding emotional intensity, which is sensual , more than sensitive, and powerful way beyond the traditional heavy three piece band.
Trower's music conjures up deep dark images from the mind, and could well be the soundtrack for a doomed love story with perhaps some horrific or sadistic overtones.
There is a relentless sadness about Trower's better work that suggests a tragic intensity like, "Fall Of The House Of Usher"
At the least , you might expect the man behind the guitar to have a touch of Vincent Price Grand Guignol haunting around the eyes. Certainly considering the stylishly sad image his music conjures up, you would expect Robin to be a Man With Heavy Image, maybe dressed all in black with high heeled boots and a stetson pulled low over a pair of brooding dark eyes....
In fact, even among a run of the mill rock and roll band, Robin would look extraordinarily ordinary. The main thing that you notice about him is the cheeky, distinctively school boyish expression.
Robin finds the rock lifestyle about as interesting as last weeks socks. He liked playing guitar on stage and has his own ideas about what music should be and how it should be played, which has meet with a lot of agreement among rock fans used to more mechanical fare, especially in the U.S.A.
British recognition hasn't really had the same chance yet, and yet , although the band has played rarely, Bridge Of Sighs has enjoyed an encouraging word of mouth reputation and healthy sales of around 30,000.
All that seems necessary here is a proper tour and a decent push for a tie in album, all of which is about to become fact.
So the trower Band looks a fair bet to come squelching out of the puddle of ' also released' albums and take their place among the handful of bands that spark instant recognition and instant sales.
After just two albums Robin and cohorts have already established themselves as a totally distinctive group, and as Americas most popular three-piece, I reckon. (Grand Funk are a four piece now).
So, your friendly next door non-druggy Londoner family man as bluesy guitarist works after all. It's a refreshing change I mean. Robin's new drummer, Bill Lordan, left Sly Stones employ to work for Robin which must be some strange case of culture shock
If Robin's a long way from Britain's idea of a rock star personality, he's a million miles from what is expected in the States.
It takes a lot of talking to discover a thread of the intensity that comes across in his music, because Robin's mild -mannered easy going and looks like a fairly successful market gardener.
But he does have very definite views on what's good and what isn't when it comes to music. While adhering to the old show biz maxim " Knock not thy competitors by name" Robin is highly unimpressed by the competition in general terms, even though he describes himself as "someone who can't play the guitar". Most guitarists are rotten, it hits you when you're hearing a lot on the radio. It just hits you that most of them are pretty duff. " There are some good guitar players but...."
"Surely the guitar, as main rock instrument almost since the music began, is a hard instrument for creating something original? "It is but it's also the easiest instrument to play badly, which a lot of people do"
The Trower attitude can well be summed up by comparing Eric Clapton with his Mayall successor Peter Green : " From a guitarists point of view , Clapton has incredible touch, but he's not particularly noted for his originality, I think he should be in somebody's band really. But great technique, Peter Green I really liked. Fleetwood Mac when he was with them, were one of my favourite British bands because Peter Green had something to say musically which interested me, and that's the point ... so few guitarists have something to say".
Emotionand not technique is the basis of Robin's approach, intuition before knowledge.
"I'm very anti a lot of things going on in music. I do stand for something, which is "feel" music, and which is, like it or not, a bit outside of what is being done elsewhere. If you hear it on the radio, it's pretty different from everything else."
" One difference is that I am writing music specifically for the guitar where most people are writing songs which happen to have guitar accompaniment. I try to avoid being conventional in any way, so the music we're making is like an anti-establishment statement"
It's Robin's untutored "I only knew three cords" approach to music that makes his intended collaboration with the scholarly Bob Fripp all the more surprising. " Well nothings really happened with Bob yet, but we do talk about it. He did some gigs with us, and I think when he's heard us, he was a bit upset that someone that can't play the guitar was making such great music. compared to him, technically, I'm not even a beginner, you know, but I think we've both been a big influence on each other."
" He's taught me a lot on the technical side of playing which I hadn't even thought about before. He made me a lot more aware of what I was doing, and gave me a lot more confidence in myself. My style is all done by feel really."
And are there any guitar players Mr. Trower would buy a ticket to see? " Nah, not really. I still like to see some of the blues guitarists, B.B. King and Albert King."
End of subject. at the moment Robin's more enthusiastic about drummers, and after hearing the difference Bill Lordan makes on the new album you can see why. Robin says he's made the music more "danceable". He learned a lot in his year with Sly.
A listen to a rough mix of one side of the new album "For Earth Below" shows he's right, and if anything underestimating. Bill's drumming is far more aggressive than that of Reg Isadore, and as a result, the main difference from "Bridge Of Sighs" is that there's more energy.
Otherwise, it's generally a continuation of the ideas that spawned "Bridge Of Sighs" and in particular the atmospheric title track, and none the worse for that. To me that track summed up everything the band had seemed to be aiming at on the first album, and Robin feels much the same about it.
"That track was more "me" than anything I have ever done, and it opened up to directions to go on from. Sometimes things open on to a blind alley, but there seem to be possibilities there."
Singer Jimmy Dewar came through more strongly on that album too. The single, "Too Rolling Stoned" is a good example, and Robin says he is strongly featured on the new album, which is due to be released on February 7.
One of the ideas that hasn't been implemented yet is the addition of keyboards, which Robin has considered for quite some time, and when you think of the sort of combination Stevie Windwood made with Jimmy Hendrix on " Electric Ladyland" and with Clapton in Blind Faith, that's something I wouldn't mind hearing.
"It would have to be a very special keyboard player, because at the moment, there's a lot of freedom for the three of us, and he would have to be as good as the spaces we have at the moment. I did an amazing jam with a guy called Bobby Lowell, who's an old friend of Bill's and is playing for Sly at the moment, and it was so good I was thinking about putting something from it on this next album.
" But then I thought it would be better to save it and maybe do a whole album with him as a special project."
Without wishing to dwell on Hendrix, as Trower interviewers tend to do, it's difficult to do a whole interview without mentioning him, and it's no coincidence that drummer Bill Lordan (oddly the third successive white drummer Sly has used) was all set to play in a band with Hendrix at one time.
At the time, after the Experience, and before Band Of Gypsies, Hendrix seemed to be perpetually changing his mind about who to play with next, and according to Robin, he wanted to form a trio with Lordan and Willie Weeks, but he had promised his old army buddy Billy Cox that he's play with him one day, and that is what eventually
happened.
Having reached the usual situation where dollars are coming in about 200 times for every pound, it's a pleasant change that the Trower Band is doing a decent British tour, and that Robin is set on staying here to live, whatever the tax men ask him for.
"It's still the freest thing country in the world in my experience, and as long as we still have that then this is the place to be. It really pisses me off when you get these rock people complaining about how much income tax they have to pay.
" A guy, I won't say who it was, came into the studios, he's a British guy living in Los Angeles. I was saying "How can you live here? Don't you miss good old Blighty?"
"He said, ' Ah no, I couldn't possibly live there with the income tax the way it is', and grumbling about it. What I'm saying is that relatively, you've got no complaints. But people should realize that we are a poor country and have to tax people that much. The point about it is that these people all come from working classes, but now they're saying that they've never been part of that.
" And that's what's gone wrong with music to a large extent. People with too much money. They've got their heads in the clouds and they just don't know what's going on anymore. Music should be just what you are, and not all that."
can this attitude survive in the dung heap we call modern society? Will success spoil Robin Trower? Well, "Bridge Of Sighs" has already gone gold. Not bad for a 'three-cord' guitarist.
