Guitar Player

        February , 1994

"Making single notes cry" 
                                                  By Jas Obrecht 
 

     No early-'70s guitarist came closer than Robin Trower to filling the void left by Jimi's passing.  During his journeyman days with Procol Harum, Trower was more often compared to Clapton, although his "Whiskey Train" and "Song For A Dreamer" were clearly Hendrix-influenced.  After quitting Harum, Trower emerged in '73 with his own power trio.  TWICE REMOVED FROM YESTERDAY brought him cult-status, while BRIDGE OF SIGHS, with its massive sonic dreamscapes, made him a bona-fide guitar hero.  During his July '80 cover story, the soft spoken South Londoner acknowledged his slow, bluesy tour de force "Bridge Of Sighs" as his "most soulful, creative, and powerful piece of music," adding "It's impossible to play a run with as much feeling as a single note. With a single note you can say a great deal more.  I'm into making single notes cry.  I go for as much feeling as I can, rather than show what I can do up and down the neck.  I don't play to show people ability.  I'm interested in making music, and music has nothing to do with your technical ability.  The ability to make music is a gift that you're born with; it's not something you can learn." 
     Asked about criticisms that he sounded a bit TOO much like Jimi, Trower responded: "Bullshit!  Those people haven't heard Hendrix and they haven't heard me, or else they wouldn't say that.  Hendrix definitely opened up a lot of doors.  He rewrote the language of the electric guitar.  I felt, right or wrong, that there was no way you could move forward without absorbing at least part of what he created.  You had to deal with it.  But it wasn't until I started thinking about being a guitar-bass-drums thing that I started to draw on what I'd absorbed from him, because it was more of a challenge than I'd realized to fill that kind of space." 
     Touring in support of his many '70s solo albums, Robin used new, high-actioned maple-neck Strats, a Univox Univibe, an Arbiter Fuzz Face, a custom volume booster, and a pair of Marshall 100-watt heads with factory-modified preamps designed to increase output.  During the early '80s Robin collaborated with Jack Bruce, and since then has been back on his own, producing artists like Brian Ferry and mesmerizing audiences with his mid-tempo rockers and slow, smouldering blues.