Guitar Player August, 1990
ROBIN TROWER
IN THE LINE OF FIRE
By Jas Obrecht
Damn the racks. Chuck the digital processors. Off with those MIDI'd heads. For Robin Trower, only the big, big sound of the natural guitar is good enough: "A lot of these guitar players are into having a rack of all these processors," he says in a thick south London accent. "When I've gone through them, I've lost the personality of my own individual sound. See, I like the sound of the guitar. All I want to do is amplify it."
To help drape the ultimate sonic landscape, Robin hired Eddie Kramer (of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin fame) to produce In The Line Of Fire. Trower's new LP begins, oddly enough, in a decidedly synth-pop direction, with singer Davey Pattison and keyboardist Bobby Mayo lushing it up while the guitar's relegated to the background. A visceral solo or two later, the real Robin Trower begins to emerge. He weaves a Layla-lovely line through "Under The Gun," scuffs-up the anthemic "Turn The Volume Up," and taps blues roots for "Natural Fact." Slow ballads, "If You Really Want To Find Love" and "(I Would) Still Be Here For You" smoulder in the heavenly heavy Bridge Of Sighs tradition. Trower saves some of his best jabs for "(Let's) Turn This Fight Into A Brawl," and pays tribute to Jimi Hendrix with the "Voodoo Chile" motifs of "Climb Above The Rooftops."
At 45, Trower feels as strongly about individuality as he did a generation ago, when he won acclaim playing with Procol Harum. "I have to get off on playing something," he insists. "It can't just be a melody line and lyrics. It's got to have a very strong identity - my identity - in the guitar parts." Raised in London, Robin made his professional debut in 1962 with the R&B-oriented Paramounts, and he began his celebrated stint with Procol Harum in 1967. While soaring on portions of Procol Harum, Shine On Brightly, A Salty Dog, Home and Broken Barricades, Trower felt increasingly frustrated at having to share solos with keyboards. In 1971 he decided to quit. "On Broken Barricades I was starting to spread my wings, getting more into writing songs," he told Jim Schwartz in the July '80 issue. "Obviously, if you write a song and you're a guitarist, there's going to be more guitar in it. That was the beginning of the leaving the Procol Harum; I was fascinated by being able to write music for the guitar."
And write he did. He cast his next project, Twice Removed From Yesterday, in the classic power-trio mold of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. "What we're dealing in," he said upon its release, "is pure, simple feeling, a direct contact with the audience. Soul to soul - with as little in between as possible." The audience received the message, and Trower was hailed among fans as another Jimi Hendrix. His follow-up releases Bridge Of Sighs, For Earth Below and Robin Trower Live! all made the top 10, while his band regularly packed 20,000 seaters. By 1980, Long Misty Days, In City Dreams, Caravan To Midnight and Victims Of The Fury had also cracked the top 40. The guitarist was back under the spotlights in 1981 with B.L.T., a power-trio with Jack Bruce that lasted two albums. He was rejoined by his long-time singer James Dewar on 1983's Back It Up and then, without Dewar, released the partially live Beyond The Mist in 1985, followed by Take What You Need.
We spoke with Robin at home in England. This fall, he plans to bring his In The Line Of Fire tour back to the U.S.
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Your new album gets progressively heavier.
As you go through the album, it gets more and more me, doesn't it? The opening has got all the poppier kind of songs - on the first side, particularly. The B side is definitely the more rock and roll side. The way it's mixed is more of a produced kind of sound. It's mixed to radio and to fit into more of a formulated kind of thing, as much as my stuff ever will - I don't think that's ever going to be anything I'm really accused of.
What was it like working with Eddie Kramer?
It was great! It's excellent. Not only does he know how to get a great sound, but he knows how to capture performance and retain it through the whole process. Quite often by the time you've gone through the whole process and it's mixed down, you end up with less than you thought you had, somehow. It quite often has happened to me, in terms of the vitality of the performance. It's happened to me on a lot of stuff. The beauty of what Eddie's done is he's retained the vitality of the performance. You can still hear that in the product.
There's some very emotional guitar playing on it.
Thank you very much. Great. Well, that's exactly what I'm talking about, as far as Eddie capturing the performance.
Did you learn anything new about recording guitar while working with Eddie?
I noticed the way he went about recording it. The method of miking up and all that was completely different than anything I've ever come across. He used a tremendous amount of microphones. I was using three heads - three Fender Twins - through three different 4x12 Marshall cabinets and he had about three mikes on each cabinet, plus a load of them at different distances. A real lot of microphones, you know.
Did you run all these amps at once?
That's right, yeah. It was loud. It was very loud because the studio has this room that's not big. but it's all completely live. It had a marble-faced wall. You couldn't actually stand in there and play - even when you tried to turn down, it was so acoustically loud. So I played in the next room, which was a control booth. The studio was an old Catholic church - quite a big building. I would say it probably held about 200 people when it had the pews in. They hadn't changed anything about the building, apart from taking the seating out. So the main room where the drums were recorded was just a huge, great, wooden, beautiful-sounding room, and it had such a lovely vibe to it, a real natural warmth. The guitar parts were all done in the smaller room off of the big church; I suppose it was the old vestibule. Quite often I would have one of the three cabinets out in the big room, as well, when Eddie wanted some washier kind of sounds. The speaker cabinet would be at one end; the microphone would be down at the other end up in the organ mezzanine. He recorded some of the things from that far away to get a very dreamy kind of sound. Yeah, he got up to all sorts of tricks.
What mikes worked the best?
I know he had Shure SM-585 on everything, and some other stuff, as well. There were quite a few different kinds. We found that the close miking sounded best with the Shures. For the distant mikes, I think he was using those big German Neumanns.
Did he try to find the best speaker in each cabinet?
Yep. He did all that.
Did you use any guitars that were not Fender Stratocasters?
No. The only difference between any of my guitars is that some of them have Lace pickups. But most of the stuff on that album certainly had just the standard Vintage Reissued guitars.
Do you believe in buying Strats made during the late '50s and early '60's?
Not anymore. I did have a very good collection of '50's and early '60's Strats, but they were all stolen in 1979, when I lost 15 vintage Strats, two Les Pauls, and a Telecaster. Since then, I've decided that it's got to be newly made, replaceable instruments. And now Fender has made these Strats specifically for me, and I wouldn't want to lose any of them, either.
Is any particular guitar close to your heart?
Not really. There was one I had years ago, a '56 maple-neck Strat that was a real beauty, but it was stolen. I've got about eight guitars that Fender has made for me in the last three years, and three of them I really love. The rest are all very good, but you know how you just make a connection with certain instruments. I've got a Martin, too. I do a bit of writing on acoustic sometimes.
What do you look for in a Strat?
Well, I personally like not too dense of a body - obviously, not too light, but not a dense, heavy piece of wood, either, because I tend to think it might sound a bit brittle, and thin. I like to couple it with a fairly big neck - I go for more of a fat, '50s-size neck. That way you get a nice openness, a good sustain, and a broader kind of depth and width to the sound. Always listen to them acoustically and pick the ones that sound the best, that have the open, ringing quality. That's where the sound starts, and if that isn't right, there's no way you can do anything to it that's going to make it sound right.
Are yours modified?
No. There as built, but they are built to my specifications. They're a combination of the Vintage Reissue bodies and electrics and metalwork, but the necks are American Standards, which have less of a radius. They're a little bit flatter and a bit easier to play. It's got the biggest frets . That's the only concession I make. I still prefer the sound of the Vintage Reissue, especially because of the saddles. They make a tremendous difference to the sound.
What's the difference between the stock pickups and Lace Sensors?
Well, there is a big difference, but they are both very good. The Vintage Reissues have a very dirty top end; they have that kind of character to the top end, which is really the Strat sound. The Lace pickups have a bolder sound; it's much more forthright, but it's still a very, very good sound. I vacillate between the two. When I'm on the road, I'll play a Vintage Reissue-pickup guitar for a while and think that's the greatest; and then after a couple of weeks I'll try out the Lace and think that's the greatest. I definitely go between the two. And a pickup is a good half of the sound; the other half is the actual acoustic sound of the guitar.
Do you ever have trouble staying in tune?
I haven't since I've used these locking keys that Fender's got now. You lock the strings into the tuners themselves, and they work fantastic. You basically don't have any wrap-around with the string; you just feed it in and lock it from underneath with a screw. By not having any wrap-arounds, you have a lot less movement; there's a lot less to play with when you're using the tremolo arm.
How long does a set of strings last you?
I change mine every day when I'm on the road, so a couple or three hours. I suppose I use pretty heavy gauges - it's a .012 on the first, .015, .017, .026, .036, .048.
Why the .012?
If you're going to get sound out of the guitar, that's where it all comes from.
Has your equipment set-up gotten increasingly high-tech?
I don't think so. It's gotten less if anything. I'm using less stuff now than I was in the '70s. On the last tour I used four Marshall heads into four cabinets, and I was using three pedals - a Jennings Cry Baby wah-wah, a [Tube Works] Real Tube, and the cheapest, very simplest Boss Chorus. I had tried these rack things - you know, a lot of these guitar players are into having a rack of all these processors - and when I've gone through them, I've lost the personality of my own individual sound. See, I like the sound of the guitar. All I want to do is amplify it, really. I don't need to change it that much. I just like the actual acoustic guitar sound, and I like to hear that coming back through the amp.
Which pickup settings work best for soloing?
Well, it varies. On the album, I was using these new Fender Twin amps and just the chorus, and I was using the preamp in the amp, instead of an outside one. So for soloing, I was using a lot of the neck pickup. But it varies more live. I tend to go between the bridge and the neck, mostly, but I use all three pickups. There are certain songs where I use the middle pickups, like "Bridge Of Sighs" and stuff like that. I like all three. They've all got their own personality, and they're all very usable.
Do you work the volume and tone knobs a lot?
Just the volume. I very rarely touch the tone.
On the new album, "If You Really Want To Find Love" has the classic Robin Trower solo sound.
Yeah. That sound is the Boss Chorus going into those three Twins going into the Marshall 4x12. I've got a feeling that for those solos, I used an in-between pickup sound, in between middle and neck.
What about "Turn The Volume Up"?
That was my Lace-pickup guitar on that. The first half of the solo was done on the bridge pickup and halfway through I changed over to the neck. It's a different sound, the Lace pickups - there's no doubt about it. It seems to me that the Lace pickups suit the maple neck better than they do the rosewood, because with the maple necks you get a little more of the top end that you're missing a bit from the Lace pickups, so they make up for it.
What's the most enjoyable aspect of the recording process?
It's a great thrill when things start to really come to the finish, when you're starting to hear the completed tracks. Obviously, the most fun for a guitar player is playing the guitar. Playing the solos is probably the most fun. I love to solo. I quite often have all my guitar parts done even before the vocals and overdubs like keyboards and percussion. It varies, though.
Do you do all the solos at once?
No. I usually work on the guitar parts, the background. When I've got those down, I start to get an itch to lay some solo work on it, so I usually have a go at it, then and there. I don't always get it, but quite often because I've done the guitar part, I start to get a feel for what the solo could be. It tunes me into it, rather than just coming in cold one day and having to go at so-and-so. When you've just played the background for about an hour, you're really into the track and you've got the atmosphere of it, so it's a good time to do solos.
Do you always know when you've done the take?
For instance, that "Turn The Volume Up" solo - that was the first take, the first solo I tried on that track. When I finished it, I thought, no, that's going to be too silly. I knew it was a lot of fun because it was so wild, and when I heard it back I said "Oh, no. We've got to keep that, because it's just a happening." It isn't perfect. but it definitely has the feeling to it. Very suitable for the song.
"Still Be Here For You" also has a strong solo.
In actual fact, that's one of the tracks that's just really a better version of my demo. I made demos of all the songs that I'd written with a drum machine. I got almost to the point of having the solos good enough to go to a master. So I really had defined what I wanted to do - to a certain extent. Obviously, when you go in, you're going to blow, but I had the approach for that song in my mind. I wanted to make it as soulful as possible.
This is the first album I've ever done demoing on, and I was thrilled with the results because I managed to completely sort out what I wanted to do with each piece of music, in terms of the whole feel and arrangement and tempos. Most of the songs managed to retain the initial idea about them when they were first written all the way through the process, because they were pretty well defined by the time I played them to everybody else involved. For two or three of them, the bass and drums just more or less did what was on the demo. They added their own feeling, but it was pretty close to that.
Being more three-piece oriented, "Natural Fact" has a feel like your earlier material.
Yeah. We tried to rock that one out as much as possible. I didn't have anything specific in mind for that solo; I just tried to have fun and blow with it.
Are those electronically harmonized guitars layered near the end of the solo?
That's all overdubbing. That's not harmonized. I've messed about with harmonizers, but I've never actually used them on anything. The effect is too synthetic for me.
Your new singer, Davey Pattison, sometimes sounds a lot like your original singer, James Dewar.
They're both Scottish and have a lot of similar influences - the old Bobby Bland, Donnie Hathaway, James Brown kind of influence. Scottish vocalists tend to be more earthy. I heard from James a little while ago. He's not been well, unfortunately. It's a shame. He's not able to work at the moment.
What do you expect from your bassist?
I like the bass to be rhythmic, without in any way encroaching upon guitar territory. I don't like the boinky-boinky stuff, which gets in conflict with my guitar sound, the way I play. I tend to stray into bass territory quite a bit. You get a bassist that's coming my way, and you're going to get a lot of clashing.
Any plans to tour with a keyboardist?
No. I don't really like the idea of using keyboards live because it ties me down. I like to switch about a bit.
On record, "Sea Of Love" relies heavily on keyboards. Can you do that as a three-piece?
Yeah. Works great, too. We rock it up a bit more - that's usually how you get away with not having keyboards. There are definitely two different sides to what one has to do today. One is making records, and one is playing live. There should be a noticeable difference between the two. So often today, you go out and hear people, and they are just doing pretty close facsimiles of their records, albeit very well performed and blah blah blah. But live, I like to get that little bit of danger into it. It's not just a matter of energy and excitement, but that's an important thing. I like to be wilder. People appreciate the fact that it does seem more than the record, that you are putting over as much as you could possibly give it, rather than just being happy to reproduce the record.
Do you ever have off nights?
Oh, yeah. You do. Things beyond your control are sometimes going to blow it for you. With a Strat, especially, you pick up a lot of RF [radio frequency] interference. Sometimes that can be so heavy that it just spoils the whole night for you. I find that I pick up RF in America more than anywhere else, I've never had that problem in Europe.
Is it necessary for you to warm up or practice?
Oh, yeah. I have to get a minimum of 15 minutes, but I like a bit more than that before I go on, just to get the hand working. Also, using new string, you've got to warm those up, as well. I don't have exercises - I just play, just doodle.
Do you play many cover songs?
I do a version of B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby," which I did on the first album. That's the only cover I do live.
Are there songs that you have to play in concert?
Oh, yeah. "Bridge Of Sighs," definitely. "Day Of The Eagle," definitely. Those two. People feel cheated if I don't play them, and I don't feel right going on without playing them.
They are your signature pieces?
Yeah, that's it. Another song I like to do is "Daydream," from the first record. I get a lot of kick out of doing that.
Do you ever perform songs that predate your solo career?
I haven't ever done this before, but I'm thinking about putting in a song from Procol Harum called "Whiskey Train." I keep getting requests for it. I've had a thing against doing any Procol Harum stuff, but I might give it a try. After all, I wrote the music for it.
Are you more at ease playing ballads or rockers?
My stuff tends to lean towards my natural flow, which is definitely from mid-tempo down to slow stuff. Whenever I play for my own enjoyment, it's always a slow blues. If I sit down with a guitar, I tend to doodle around a slow, slow thing. I write more slow stuff than up-tempo; I have to work hard at the up-tempo stuff.
Do you ever jam along with other people's records?
No. When I was starting as a player and teaching myself, I tried to work out the old B.B. King lick or anything like that. I didn't get the same feeling from me playing it, even though I'd worked it out as close as you could possibly get. So I quickly dropped that idea of lifting other people's stuff. I didn't get a response from inside, because it was his soul, not mine. It's a bit limited, that, as far as being a teaching tool, I always tell young players to try to find out what the music inside them is, rather than lifting other people's stuff. By doing too much of that, you're going to put a block on your own music coming out.
There was a time when you were seen as playing very Hendrixy.
Yeah. Well, he was a big influence on me; there's no doubt about it. When I try to work out who the main people are who made the music that I make what it is today, it's always James Brown, Howlin' Wolf and Hendrix. Those are the three. All through the early '60s, when I was forming my personality, those were the guys I listened to the most. Obviously, there are a lot of other influences, too - Albert King and B.B. King have been very big influences on my lead style - but the music of those three guys is really the nucleus of what I do. It was great music, see Howlin' Wolf wasn't necessarily a great player, but the music he made was the best. That's something I always try to stress to players: The technical thing has nothing to do with the actual music you make. That side of it is only a tool. Howlin' Wolf is the best example of that; Muddy Waters is another one. These guys weren't great players by the accepted terms that we use today, but they made better music than anybody that's come since. I'm still absolutely fascinated by these people. Howlin' Wolf - I still listen to that stuff, and I just can't figure it out. Hubert Sumlin did some brilliant work for Howlin' Wolf; there's no doubt about it.
Who's the best guitar player you've ever seen?
Albert King. I've heard that he's complaining about all the young guitar players who are ripping him off, pinching all his licks. There are a few about today who are copying his stuff and making fortunes out of it.
How do you feel when someone mimics your playing?
I'm not sure I've ever heard anybody steal my stuff. I occasionally hear some music where maybe I've influenced the guys idea, but it's not like Albert King, where his licks are just so... well, he's the only guy who's ever played like that. And if you hear his licks, you know who they belong to. He's the only guitar player that you can actually say that about, at least in terms of the blues guys. He's got such a personality and an unbelievable identity. His whole style is more unique than anybody I've ever heard. I've always been a huge fan - particularly the Stax stuff. When I saw him last year, I was completely floored. That was the best guitar playing I have ever seen. Unbelievable amount of soul. After I'd heard that, for a couple of days I didn't want to play guitar. He's definitely the man.
Do you keep a guitar at home?
Oh, yeah. I've got to have a guitar all the time, because I'm trying to write all the time. You always think about the next album. I always have a portable tape recorder, too. It's like a Sony Walkman, but it's got a built-in mike, so you're instantly into it. I always have a tape ready to go at all times. Say, for instance, you could be warming up in your hotel room and come across an idea five minutes before someone's going to knock and take you to the show. You've got to bang these ideas down quick, because by the time the show's over, there's no way you're going to remember it. I have actually come up with good songs in that circumstance.
Many songwriter claim that the best songs happen very quickly.
I've got a very good example of that: "If You Really Want To Find Love." I'd almost finished writing that music before I'd realized that I was writing a new song. It was wonderful, the way that one came. The best ones always do come very quickly. For me, the good ones never take more than half and hour to get 95% of the music. They come from somewhere else, really. Songs have a real mystique to them. One minute it's not there, and then it is. As a musician, the greatest thrill is to write a new piece of music.
Have you got a backlog of tunes?
No, but I've got some stuff that didn't make it onto this album, a couple of things. One of them I do live, because I was choked it didn't get onto the record. To make up for it, I put it in the set. I've got material for the next record, but I'm a long way from having enough.
Do you experiment with other styles of music?
No, I don't think so. That's it. What you hear is what you get.
