Excerpt # 1

In 1974, Robin Trower released “Bridge of Sighs,” a collection of eight original songs that form as powerful a collection of music as any album of that time or since. Matthew Fisher hired Geoff Emerick, former recording engineer with The Beatles. Emerick and Trower were definitely on the same page when it came to experimenting with guitar sounds. Each song is a masterpiece, as is the album as a whole. The mixing of the record and the performances were superb. 

Robin Trower: “(Matthew) did a great job producing the first couple of albums but we were lucky. Especially with ‘Bridge of Sighs.’ We had Geoff Emerick, who had a huge input with how that album turned out. He was brilliant. He actually got the sound. I wouldn’t say we particularly had an idea of how it should sound. That’s why ‘Bridge of Sighs’ sounds so different from the first album, because of Geoff.”

​

Matthew Fisher: “Geoff came into it fairly late. We’d already recorded a couple of tracks at Olympic. Geoff had been working at Apple. Apple was wound up by then by the Official Receiver or something. The Beatle thing was all falling apart and Geoff came to work at AIR. At the time I was sort of planning my first solo album using this drummer, Geoff Wetner. His brother was a tape op at AIR. So his brother told Geoff about Geoff Emerick joining the staff at AIR, and Geoff told me. So I thought, ‘Wow. The Beatles engineer!’ Geoff didn’t record any of my album but he mixed it. And although we already had a couple of tracks in the can, we switched from Olympic to AIR and Geoff did the engineering for most of it.”

​

Author: Was working with the band an easier task second time around?

​

Matthew Fisher: “I don’t think it was much different. I suppose we spent more time on things. Rob’s band was never one to work things out in the studio. They were always rehearsed. They actually would go and play the stuff live before they recorded it. So really all we had to do when we got to the studio was set the mikes up and go for a good take. Everyone knew what to do. I was particularly fussy. I used to wait until one sounded particularly right to me. That had something that I thought, ‘Yeah, this is the one.’ And sometimes it might come on the second take or sometimes not until the fifth or sixth.”

 

Robin Trower: “Matthew’d sort of sit there and say if that was the take. Whether the parts were working well. Basically oversee the performance and make sure it sounded good. I think it is a good idea to have an objective viewpoint. I really believe in that. It’s very hard to judge your own work. You can hear it two weeks later and decide about it but the minute after you’ve performed it, it’s impossible to actually know what its effect is. 
     “I was always there. With ‘Bridge Of Sighs.’ I remember we all sat there at the desk and moved the faders and did the mixing. Me, Geoff and Matthew. But Geoff really was the guy. He would set it up and I would say to him, ‘Can I have this guitar louder?’ And he’d say, ‘Turn it up as loud as you like’ (laughs). He was the one that set the sounds up. Give us the effects. Stuff he had brought from The Beatles.”  
  
Author: Did you have a sense of how good that album was at the time?

 

Matthew Fisher: “You can go make an album and you can think, while you’re making it, that it’s your best and it sounds really good. But if you put it out and nobody likes it, it colors your own judgment. And the reverse can happen. You can think, ‘Yeah, this is pretty good,’ and then it goes triple platinum. It’s difficult to be objective about what you do. There were a lot of things on that album. I can remember really being impressed by what Rob was doing. Specifically, the track ‘In This Place.’ He put down loads of tracks at the end. Just layered things on top of each other again and again. He was playing a tune on a bass guitar through a wah-wah pedal, which Geoff Emerick was kind of going crazy about. ‘It won’t work, it’ll never work!’ And it did work (laughs). Rob was incredibly inventive on that album. And the same with the track ‘Bridge Of Sighs.’ On the fadeout section of that he was coming up with all sorts of weird ideas. On that very long fadeout, there are things going on in the background and him standing in front of a microphone and mumbling. But it all sort of works.” 

The opening riff for the song “Bridge Of Sighs” was a melody that Robin carried in his head for close to half a year before he could come up something to turn it around with. It was important that the music meshed with the opening notes and formed a perfect union.

 

Robin Trower: “It’s what I call the bridge/chorus part. It’s a straight lift. It’s the only time I’ve ever lifted something straight from another record. And it was ‘Down And Out In New York City’ by James Brown.” 

 

Author: Wouldn’t you agree, though, that everything has pretty much been done before?

 

Robin Trower: “Oh, yeah (laughs). It’s very hard to come up with anything completely original.”

Author: When “Bridge of Sighs” started to take form, did you know how good the album was?

 

Robin Trower: “No. I remember being in the middle of doing it, I said to Matthew, ‘How good is this album, do you think?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s not “Sgt. Pepper” but it’s going to be very strong.’ And that gave me a sort of sense that I’d done some good work.”

 

Derek Sutton: “I have an image in my mind of the day the tapes for ‘Bridge of Sighs’ arrived. We had an office on Hollywood Blvd. in a major office building. I can actually picture, in my mind, sitting behind my desk, putting this reel-to-reel tape into my player and turning it on. And the hairs on my body standing up when the first few notes came out! We had been asked by the building not to play any music really loud. I cranked this thing so I could really get it. Everybody from the floor came in with their mouths open! People from all kinds of businesses. It was just outstanding! Michael Papale, head of promotions at the time, came running into the office screaming, ‘Jesus Christ, what’s that?’ We knew what we had got.”

 

Author: Chrysalis knew immediately that “Bridge Of Sighs” was great. Were you made aware of how the record company felt?

 

Robin Trower: “No. I didn’t have a lot of contact with them. I didn’t seem to be able to communicate with people that weren’t musicians. I was somewhere else.” 

 

Reg Isidore: “I honestly would have to say that I didn’t know it would have that effect. It’s a good album but it took me by surprise, actually.”

 

Derek Sutton: “Radio was all over it! It was an absolute staple for radio. There were three tracks that were played to death. ‘Bridge of Sighs,’ ‘Day Of The Eagle’ and ‘Too Rolling Stoned.’ And ‘Daydream,’ from ‘Twice Removed,’ got played a lot. They went back to the first album looking for something that was in a different kind of tempo. ‘Daydream’ is such a brilliant song. One of Jimmy’s best ever vocalizations. And you’re hearing my personal preference coming through. I love that song.  
     “At that time, radio was in a space where they would play three, four, five tracks deep off an album and play them consistently. Not just one track, play it to death, next track … until people got sick of it. They would actually get into an album. Different from today of course.” 

 

Robin Trower: “It’s quite a thrill when you think people are that into it. I also sort of felt that we were a bit unique in what we were doing.” 
 

Excerpt #2

The Band has just gone through the Bridge Of Sighs period, some band member changes have been made, they have travelled the world, played the stadiums and are riding high on the success and attention this album brought .........

Author: What was the attitude when you went in to record “For Earth Below?”
 

Bill Lordan: “Pretty much upbeat. But the album was actually kind of experimental. Robin was already going off in some kind of different direction, with more of an R&B approach. It was in L.A. at The Record Plant. Everybody was flown over from England and rented houses.” 

 

Author: Did you feel you were living beyond your means at that time?

 

Robin Trower: “No, not really.” 

 

Derek Sutton: “They had three houses in Malibu. They had drivers. It took three weeks in lockout time at one of the studios to get a sound. People were telling Robin how much money he was wasting all the time but he didn’t care. Remember something, please, and that is to English musicians from that period, the only money you ever made from a record was the money you got from the advance. And if you could con the record company into giving you a damn good time for a long time while you make a record, you’ve scored. When Humble Pie did their last tour of America for Dee Anthony, having been raped for every tour they’d ever been on, they just said, ‘To hell with this. We’re gonna spend every penny we get and we’re gonna leave Dee Anthony with a debt instead of a profit.’ That’s the kind of mentality that Robin came from. With Pie, there wasn’t any money to pay for it. Dee almost had a heart attack! It was the same thing with Procol Harum. Procol Harum used to do things like be on tour, and we’d come into New York and they would have a competition to see who could have the biggest room service bill. They would do dumb things like that. And they’d say, ‘Well, how come we have to pay for this? Why doesn’t the tour pay for it?’ It’s more an attitude of they know they’re gonna get screwed by somebody and so they’re gonna have a good time while they’re getting screwed. ‘We’ll spend the money now because we know we’re not gonna get it anywhere else.’ ‘Bridge of Sighs’ was so huge but no one ever told Robin that he wasn’t making any money from it.” 

 

Matthew Fisher: “There was a lot of pressure on them. It wasn’t the same relaxed atmosphere that had been going on in previous albums.” 

 

Bill Lordan: “I don’t think the band had developed into the style that I thought was better depicted on the later albums. Matthew was there to produce. It felt like the beginning of something good. We were all looking forward to the future and the tour coming up. The wave had started. The interest and the excitement of the people that were into it. The jobs were getting better and bigger and the response was really incredible.” 

 

Robin Trower: “Obviously, we were trying to make another great record. But I don’t think I had enough time to prepare for it. I had just come in off the road and hadn’t really had time to sit about and come up with new songs. But that was the way they were managing me. ‘He’s a machine. Get him back into the studio and get another album out.’ You were either on the road or you were in the studio. They had no idea of the ‘art’ side of it, what goes into creating it.”

 

Author: They weren’t interested in investing the time to have it develop? 
    
Robin Trower: “They just didn’t have any idea. They didn’t have a clue. They thought, ‘This guy can just turn this stuff out.’ And that was it. They didn’t think, ‘Oh, give him six months to cool off and get regenerated.’ They had other acts. But how many of those got better and better, do you think? Not many. It’s a money machine, isn’t it?”

 

Author: But after a while you would hope that they would see a pattern.

 

Robin Trower: “Yeah. Maybe they did eventually, but it was certainly too late (laughs)! I just don’t think people thought in those terms in those days. That we, as people, needed time to create stuff. I think artists nowadays have more control over what they do. An artist today would say to their manager, ‘Look, I need a year before I go back in there.’ They put their foot down. They’re much more in control of their own destinies as it were. ‘Cuz they’ve learned. They’ve seen what’s happened to the previous generation.” 

 

Author: Do you feel indebted in any way?

 

Robin Trower: “No (laughs). I’m sort of bitching a bit now but I’ve had a great career. I’ve gotten to play guitar as much as I’ve wanted to.”

As the band when in to record “For Earth Below,” two glaring omissions were engineer Geoff Emerick and the studio he worked out of.

 

Robin Trower: “Matthew and I both thought that some of the drum sounds that were coming out of America were good. I just felt that there was so much great stuff happening at the time in America that it would be a good change. And I knew I didn’t want to make the same album over again.”  

 

Matthew Fisher: “I was quite keen on the idea to record in America. I was interested in American recordings as opposed to British recordings. But I was kind of presented with a fait accomplis most of the time. ‘We’ve booked the studio and we’re going to go over to Hollywood, blah, blah, blah.’ It’s difficult to think thirty years ago what I would have done if I’d actually been asked. I don’t know if Hollywood was really the place. It was a really nice place to hang out. They were living in these houses with swimming pools and the rest. But was it really appropriate for the music that we were doing? Maybe if we’d have been in Chicago there might have been a better vibrancy. I don’t want this to sound like they went against what I was saying. I got carried along by what was happening. I suppose I could have objected if I’d wanted to. It all seemed to make sense to me at the time. But in retrospect I don’t think that was the best thing to do.”

 

Robin Trower:  “I don’t think there was a depth of great material on ‘For Earth Below,’ but I thought there was some very good stuff on it. The whole idea was an attempt to do something different from ‘Bridge Of Sighs,’ which was not a good commercial move if I were just into cashing in. But I wanted to do something that was away from ‘Bridge Of Sighs.’ You like to think you’re moving forward all the time.” 

Author: How was “For Earth Below” taken by Chrysalis as a follow-up to “Bridge Of Sighs?”

 

Derek Sutton: “(long pause) Not well. There was a certain amount of Procol Harum-induced death wish in Robin. Self-sabotage. My remembrance of that time is that it had taken us a while to get this album together and Robin had refused input from everybody around. And rather than building himself a base of support, he had alienated a bunch of people. I don’t remember any details. I just think that he had not done himself justice. I remember that there wasn’t a track on the record that people could seize on like they could seize on ‘Bridge of Sighs.’ And the result was, ‘This is a sophomore effort,’ even though it wasn’t, ‘and it’s a bit of a duff album.’ ”

Robin Trower: “I remember Chris Wright saying to the guy that was tour managing me at the time that he thought I’d blown it with that album.”

 

Matthew Fisher: “It’s a bit difficult to compare the two albums because ‘Bridge Of Sighs’ is such a classic. It was a number of things that all came together. A lot of Rob’s ideas crystallized and the chemistry with the band all kind of crystallized. It was a magic time where everything really just happened. And I suppose the material was written over a longer period of time as well. But all sorts of things started to change after ‘Bridge Of Sighs.’ I get the feeling that Rob got more into writing the lyrics as well as the music. I think he wrote a lot of the lyrics on ‘For Earth Below,’ where I think Jimmy wrote the greater portion of the lyrics on ‘Bridge Of Sighs.’ I don’t actually listen to it anymore. But then I don’t listen to ‘Bridge Of Sighs’ either. I don’t listen to music much at all besides classical, so we’re kind of groping in the dark here. I can’t tell you what I think of the album, but what I remember of it. And what I remember of it is I think it had some good things on it. But it just didn’t have the magic for me. Whether that was the change in drumming style between Reg and Bill, that might have been part of it. It was just sort of a looser feel we had with Reg. I kinda liked that. If you compare those two albums just from the point of view of the music, that’s the sort of difference I’m talking about between ‘Bridge Of Sighs’ and ‘For Earth Below.’ It’s a bit harder. It’s a bit more rigid. It doesn’t have the same kind of swing to it. So that’s one thing why I would prefer ‘Bridge Of Sighs.’ ”

 

Bill Lordan: “It went gold. They say any album that follows a big album will automatically do that much business. Which might be true. Like I said, we were just starting to develop the style. A lot of the songs that were on there came out of jams and rehearsals. Where Robin later became more songwriter-oriented with structure. We’d do a song just around a guitar riff and Jimmy would write words. If it felt good we went with it. So it became more the ‘guitar stylings’ of Robin Trower. But we weren’t disappointed on a creative level.”