Rolling Stone
                                                                Date unknown

​

ROBIN TROWER:  'at-home blues' 
By Mick Brown

     LONDON (KFS) - Robin Trower might be a big noise in the United States but here, he's quick to admit, the guitarist is a stranger in his own land. 
     In the four years since he left Procol Harum to front his own trio, Trower has filled the Stadiums on the North American side of the Atlantic and sold gold records, but here, he had to struggle to sell out the 8,000 seat Wembley Empire Pool. 
     It's not hard to fathom the reasons for his comparative lack of success in his home country.  Essentially a stage and album performer, he is rarely heard on the Top 40-oriented radio here.  The taunt of being a "Jimi Hendrix imitator" has haunted him here since the release of his first solo album. 
     Now he seldom plays in England, partly because of his preference for American audiences and partly because playing in Europe simply does not pay off well for a band. 
     "We're actually losing $16,000 doing a handful of European dates ," complained his manager, Wilf Wright. 
     "We can go back to America and make $200,000 in a month.  Still you can't discard England because it's your home country, and I'm sure at the back of Robin's mind is the desire to make it here.  But when things seem to be working against you, it's very frustrating." 
            HALF AGREEMENT 
     Trower half-agrees with his manager.  "Record-wise," Trower said, "I'd love to crack it in England, but as far as live performances go, I really don't feel the challenge anymore.  When we started out, I felt we had something to prove because nobody had heard of us, but now that we've been a bill-topping band in the States, the only challenge I feel is the musician's challenge to better myself as a player." 
     "I'd say that America is much more responsive to our thing, and probably to music in general.  You have to face the fact that we aren't going to appeal to the kind of  people who buy the bulk of records in this country, which is seven-year-old people.  Whether they're actually 20 years old or not is irrelevant - they are really seven-year-old intellects musically speaking.  And I think the main thing about the British people is that they don't hear the main business about our music.  They hear it on a very superficial level.  Funnily enough, that may be because of a lot of people like us, because of the high-energy thing - but they're missing the main business at hand by only hearing that.  I don't think it's given to British people to have an ear to appreciate the kind of thing I'm talking about." 
     What Trower's talking about is the blues.  As a guitarist, he believes himself to be in a tradition that goes to B.B. King and back before a line in which total musical honesty and commitment are all that matter.  His idols are, King, Buddy Guy, Lowell Fulson - and he regards most rock guitarist with indifference. 
            SELF-CONFIDENT 
     He's not being self-consciously arrogant when he declares himself to be one of the best guitarists working today - it's just that he hasn't heard anybody else who's good enough to convince him otherwise. 
     "I've got a great God-given gift, that I am able to play with feeling, which not many guys have.  You've got a great many technical players and a great many intellectual players who are good at what they do.  But you don't have many feel players, especially in rock." 
     Trower's affinity for black American music has been strengthen with the addition to his band, bass player Rustee Allen, who formerly worked for Sly and the Family Stone,  Allen gives the band a more rhythmic and "feel-conscious" edge, Trower said, "more American and funky-sounding - but not too much so." 
            KEYBOARD MAYBE LATER 
     "I want to add that to my personality," he said, "but not get submerged in it." 
     Trower also had it in mind to further augment the band with a keyboard player - but not yet.  "At the moment we're still a working, live rock and roll band, and a keyboard player of the calibre I have in mind would pretty much change our identity and move us in a more jazz-oriented direction which I'm not ready to take yet.  I'm a blues player, not a jazz player.  I don't have the technical ability for that.  I know I could get away with it - a lot of players get away with it - but I'm not interested in doing that.  Just being able to get away with something isn't enough.  Is it?" 
            FIRST SHOW GREAT 
     The first of Trower's two London shows demonstrated that he doesn't need to.  Nowhere is Trower's earliest approach to music more evident than on stage.  His satin outfit seems a minor concession to showmanship in what is visually an austere performance.  He may have half-a-million dollars worth of equipment on stage with him, but the only thing that sparkles or glitters is the playing.  And the crowd responded.  It was an unusually exuberant audience for Trower here, up out of their seats and storming the aisles. 
     After three encores, Trower was exultant, describing the show as "possibly the best English gig I've ever done."  Manager Wilf Wright talked of having finally broken the English jinx. 
     The next evening, however, the jinx was back.  The audience, not quite a sell-out, was subdued, and Trower could later describe the show only as "a job of work."  For Robin Trower, it's really a long road back home.