Unknown Soldier

I can just picture you listening to Smokie with a mug of tea in your hand

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Trollheart

Part II: From the valley to the mountains: Sketches, nocturnes and a gypsy wind
Some of the inspiration for that fourth album would come of course from his mother, but the feel and themes for it would be driven by his purchase of a house high in the Rocky Mountains, where he could feel at one with nature and muse on the meaning of life. Much of this sense of being part of something greater comes through in the album, which was released in 1977.

It's immediately apparent from the cover that Dan has at this point changed his image, and the murkier, darker and more mature face of the man looking out from the sleeve shows you how much Dan has grown. As a matter of fact, it's the first of his albums where he's not looking directly at the camera, but is in fact looking down and a little away, as if either distracted or perhaps deep in thought, maybe communing with the universe. He's grown a beard and to be honest he looks a little like Jesus, though I'm sure he would never have claimed such a resemblance. But it's really a portrait of the artist as a young man, and he is now at this point twenty-six years old, approaching something of a crossroads that all men and women have to pass, the age of thirty.

Like the sleeve, much of the material is darker, too. Songs like “Loose ends”, “Once upon a time” and even the title track betray a perhaps world-weariness, a realisation that life isn't all fun and a deep and abiding love for, and respect of nature. The title track sounds like something out of a movie, with its huge orchestral arrangements and powerful sweeping soundscapes, while in the middle is a simple piano melody, bringing everything back to earth. The overriding impression I get from this opener is of space, and I can see how he wrote it overlooking the Continental Divide, high up in the mountains.

For this album Dan brought back some of the mates who had helped him out on his second outing: Joe Walsh returns, as does Don Henley and Russ Kunkel. Joe Lalas, who had also played on “Souvenirs”, is another who reprises his role on drums, and J.D. Souther is another Eagle who plays on this album. It features, too, the first contribution from flautist Tim Weisberg, with whom Dan would later record two duet albums. Dan has at this point taken charge of production himself, obviously stretching his wings as he develops as an artiste.

This album also sees Dan honing his skill as a writer of gorgeous, tear-jerking ballads, with the fragile “Sketches” almost closing the album, its haunting piano melody almost taking the entire song solo, and the beautifully lazy “Scarecrow's dream”, but it has its fast moments too in songs like “Love gone by”, with its bouncing piano runs. It's probably the first album that features material you would have to call dark or deeper, “Loose ends”, the first song he wrote for the album, being a prime example. In what would become a typical fashion for Dan however, his next album would change all that had gone before, and move in quite a different direction.

When you've achieved the level of success and fame that Dan Fogelberg had by this point, it's usually a bad idea to veer sharp left and try something completely new, but this became something of a hallmark of Dan's output over the next few years, as he broadened his musical horizons and included new influences into his music. This was the first collaboration he made with jazz flautist Tim Weisberg, who had guested on one of his earlier albums. As the two men looked quite similar, the album featured both of them on the cover, and was imaginatively titled “Twin sons of different mothers”. It contained a mix of instrumental, semi-classical pieces and some vocal ones too, and rather surprisingly for such an eclectic album yielded a hit single in the form of “The power of gold”.

Even more of a surprise was the fact that, the album having been made in the face of growing commercial success as a “step back” from the glitz and glamour of the music business, and intended to be for the fans only, and expecting it to be panned that it went top twenty, thanks to the last-minute addition. Yes, “The power of gold” was only thrown together and put on the album at the eleventh hour, when the piece the pair had wanted to close the album hit a snag, and on the success of that last-minute hit single the album was a huge triumph. But it showed that even when he wasn't really trying, Dan could write a hit single. It is in fact a wonderful album, with no input to the writing from Weisberg, who was happy enough to just play alongside Dan.

It features such beautiful compositions as “Paris Nocturne”, with its intentionally French-sounding accordion, mandolin and beautiful string section, the boppy uptempo “Hurtwood Alley”, and the introspective “Guitar etude No. 3”, but for me the standout on it is the gorgeous, softly fragile ballad “Since you've asked”, the only song on the album not composed by Dan, one of two covers, the other being the Hollies' “Tell me to my face”. Weisberg's sprightly flute playing definitely adds something to the music and changes the focus, injecting an interesting flavour of jazz into the mix of classical, folk and rock that already existed there.

Bemused, but also galvanised by the almost accidental success of the album, Dan descended into a flurry of furious songwriting that would culminate in one of his most lauded albums ever, and provide the hit that would forever define him, and for which people would always afterwards know him.

Perhaps the title was meant to refer to the fact that Dan was returning to the soft rock and ballads that has made his name, coming back, as it were, to planned commerciality, but whatever the reason this album did indeed see a resurgence in his popularity, which would continue well into the next decade. The joy and enthusiasm evident in the title track, which is almost the opener but for a short instrumental, shows a man who is delighted to be back recording again, and determined to share that joy with the world. Songs like “Gypsy wind”, “Wishing on the moon” and “Heart hotels” are all infectiously catchy, while having a lot to say.

His biggest triumph however would come with the ballad “Longer”, which would become one his best-loved and best-known songs, just narrowly missing out on the number one spot but would remain at the number two slot for two consecutive weeks. It is also the only of Dan's singles to even chart in the UK. Its theme of the permanence and power of love has made it a favourite at weddings, and one of the most requested love songs ever. There's a lovely flugelhorn solo in the bridge that really adds something to an already great song.

This album is the first one on which Dan would tackle any sort of political theme, with “Face the fire” looking at the issue of disappearing natural resources and the consequences that may have down the line. It's also one of the heaviest tracks on this, or any of his albums prior, with a big growling guitar sound and a pretty screeching solo to finish it off. This would be the beginning of Dan's foray into the world of political songwriting, and the next few albums would tackle such subjects as the plight of the indigineous Native American tribes, global warming, poverty and the aged.

In 1979, Dan achieved one of his lifetime ambitions, to show his proud father that he was a legitimate musician too, when he played Carnegie Hall with his parents in the audience. Buoyed by this success and adulation, he returned to writing, but although one of his biggest hit singles, the Christmas favourite, “Same old lang syne”, resulted from these sessions, Dan felt he had too much material to include in the next album and that his vision for it was that it would have to be a double. His record label were not impressed, eager for a new album they could promote, particularly on the back of the success of the single, but Dan was adamant and Irving Azoff backed him, and the label simply had to wait. In the end, they were glad they had.

Double albums have never been popular, not with record companies. More expensive, often harder to get into for the fan and sometimes filled out with substandard material, they're a hard sell. They must have been delighted then to find that this double album yielded not one, not two, but four hit singles, and became Dan's most successful of his career. Billed as “a song cycle”, it traces the search for the meaning of life, from birth to death, with its opener “Nexus”, describing the process of birth and its closer, “Ghosts”, tackling the subject of death. In between, Dan explores, in more detail than he ever has to date, the human condition, with songs like “The lion's share”, “Hard to say” and “In the passage”.

Dan also invited back some of the icons who had helped him out on previous albums, among them Russ Kunkel and Don Henley, and performed a beautiful duet with country superstar Emmylou Harris on “Only the heart may know”. He also arranged for his father to conduct the “Washington post march” that forms the final few seconds of what became one of his biggest hits, a tribute to Lawrence Fogelberg, “The leader of the band”. There are other hit singles on the album too, including the lead single “Same old lang syne”, as well as “Run for the roses”, which was written by Dan for the Kentucky Derby, and “Hard to say”, on which Glenn Frey provides backing vocals.

If Dan was not already established as a top singer/songwriter, “The innocent age” planted him firmly in the limelight, and became one of his biggest-selling albums, despite the initial reluctance of his label to agree to a double album. Dan was now able to sell out huge concert arenas, playing to audiences he could only ever previously dream of. His songs were on the radio all the time, and people were beginning to know and recognise the talent of this man, now turning thirty, from Illinois. Surely his next album would be the one to capitalise and build on this success, and his rising star would shoot even higher?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Part IV: Back to the river, and out into the universe: a voice in the wilderness
In 1990 he would meet the woman who was to become his second wife a year later, Anastasia Savage, and about whom he would pen a lovesong on his eleventh album. Part of a double set, “The wild places” was in fact released three years before the followup, second part, but he had intended the two albums to bookend each other, telling a story of the abuse of nature and the environment by man, and warning, as he had briefly on previous albums, that something had to be done or we would all regret it in the future.

However, this album also retraced the time he spent at sea on his boat, evoking and remembering the stillness and solitude when he lived in the Rockies (he now lived on a ranch in Colorado); it's full of reflections and musings, remembrances and memories. The pain of his first divorce seems in the distant past now, and his new love has reinvigorated his songwriting. Like “Phoenix”, it's kicked off by a short instrumental which then powers into the title track, an exploration and prayer to the joy of nature. His dedication to the woman who would become his second wife, “Anastasia's eyes”, is one of the loveliest ballads he had written in years, and he returned to the subject of his family, and their family, in the song “Forefathers”, where he chronicled the meeting of his mother and father and their move to the USA, his own birth and that of his two brothers, and the different paths they each took in life.

But the political themes are there for all to see, and the anger evident in songs like “Blind to the truth” and his cover of Bruce Cockburn's “Lovers in a dangerous time" is shot through with frustration that everyone can't see the world as he does, see what we're doing to our planet and decide to stop before it's too late. This is balanced by lighter fare such as “The song of the sea” and his rendition of the Cascades' classic “Rhythm of the rain”, and he also references Native American and other cultures concerned with more spiritual things as an alternative to what he sees as big business choking the world, desperate for a buck.


Dan had always been a strong advocate of human rights and of preserving nature, and he was truly shocked by how the world was going, determined to do anything he could, through his medium, to raise awareness of the wrong path humanity was on, and try to help us see that there was another way. His next album, released in 1993, which formed the second part of the song cycle begun on “The wild places”, addresses this very forcefully, with tracks like “All there is” and “Faces of America”, the latter betraying a familiarity with Springsteen. But there are lighter moments too, like the salsa-influenced and joyful “Magic every moment”, which opens the album, the infectious “Serengeti moon”, which more than any other song really shows Dan's love of and respect for nature and all living things, and the Beatles-inspired ballad “A love like this”.

It's hard however to ignore the small but strong voice that runs throughout this album, at times whispering and at times shouting for change, for understanding, for just basic human sanity in a world that seems to have gone crazy. The title track, with its laidback, sultry, almost bossa-nova rhythm and the anthemic powerful closer, “A voice for peace”, underline this best. I do wonder, however, about the brass-run, jazz-inflected “Holy road”, which seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to both the melody and rhythm of Nanci Griffith's “One blade shy of a sharp edge”, which appeared on her “Late night grande hotel” album, released two years previously. Coincidence? You'd have to hope so.

His second song cycle, as it were, complete, Dan relaxed a little and decided to get in touch again with his old partner Tim Weisberg, but for their second collaboration they shared a joke which would only be apparent to fans and those who had seen the sleeve of the “Twin sons of different mothers” album. On that one, as mentioned, Dan and Tim look quite alike --- whether this was happenstance or contrived I don't know --- but at this point almost twenty years had passed and any resemblance between the two men had disappeared. Consequently, they called the album “No resemblance whatsoever”, but recreated the cover of the first album, making it quite plain that they were no twins of any sort. Nice one, guys.

Once again, Tim was more than happy to leave the writing to Dan, and every song on this album is one of his, other than two covers of Youngbloods songs. The cleverly-titled “Forever Jung” features a truly beautiful flute solo by Weisberg against a bopping, easy beat, with some slick jazzy brass, while the opener, “County Clare”, showcases Dan at his laidback best on the piano joined by Tim on a song that's rather expectedly given a celtic, Irish feel thanks to the lovely, haunting flute. Much of the album, like its predecessor seventeen years prior, is instrumental, and you can tell it's obviously an album made for the sheer joy of making music, that the two men enjoyed working together and were eager to do so again.

Dan is not averse to showing his virtuosity on the guitar either, as evidenced in the Spanish-leaning “Todos santos” and you have to believe that the second-last track, entitled “Stasia”, is intended to be dedicated to his second wife, for whom he also wrote a song on the album “The wild places” in 1990. This would be the last time Weisberg and Fogelberg would work together, but they produced two fine, and very different, albums through their collaborations.


A year after the completion of this album, Dan and Anastasia would break up. I'm not privy to the details --- they're not even available from his own personal website --- and probably correct, too: some things are private and should remain so. Apart from a Christmas album released as the millennium turned, Dan's next, and indeed last album was released in 2003, one year after he met his third, and final, wife, Jean Marie Mayer. With no pressure any more for hit singles or crowd-pleasers, and comfortable in his own musical skin, Dan returned to the folk/country days of his early years, creating an album that would bring, as the title suggested, his music and his life full circle.

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Trollheart

Part III: Falling from the mountain: Never rains but it snows
Although I personally consider it one of his best-crafted and important albums ever, critics hated his 1984 effort, “Windows and walls”. I don't know why, but they did. Maybe it's just easier to tear something down when there's just a tiny foothold to grab, but this album produced no hits and largely went unremarked upon and made no impression upon the charts, but it's a fine album, with again some of Dan's darkest lyrics and some tough subject matter.

Continuing a practice that had begun with “Phoenix” and followed through to “The innocent age”, this album has no picture of Dan on the cover. Instead, there's a picture of an empty room, with an old rocking-chair as the centrepiece. The sleeve denotes loneliness, neglect, age, and indeed “Windows and walls” explores the concept of neglect, most powerfully in the title track but also in the longest on the album, “Tucson, Arizona (Gazette)”, where Dan sings of two lost souls coming together, both of whom have been effectively abandoned by society, and who go off together on one last fatal road trip. The song also contains his first, and only, reference to the use of drugs, possibly a reason why the album was looked down on, and also why this song would get little radio airplay.

But it's one song, one reference, and should not be taken as characterising the whole album. There are the usual great ballads, “Believe in me”, “Sweet Magnolia”, as well as more fiery, uptempo almost rock numbers like “Let her go” and “The language of love”, not to mention his dire warning of the path we're all headed on if we don't change our ways, in the closer “Gone too far”, which features a storming guitar opening and an atmospheric, chilling conclusion almost akin to the end of the world. Dan certainly had a lot to say, and was not shy about saying it.

His commercial popularity however, sadly, would come to pretty much an end here. After the huge expectations of a follow-up to a blockbuster like “The innocent age”, it would seem to the world at large that he had not delivered, and his next album would perhaps be a backlash against that by the artist, a feeling of to hell with them, I'm going back to my roots. Returning to the style of his debut, the new album was even more country-oriented, with a strong bluegrass sound helped along by the likes of Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill and his own idol, Chris Hillman all joining to help him create an album that was so far off the beaten track in terms of commercial appeal, and so removed from his recent bestsellers that he even went back to using a picture of himself on the cover.

Again, I have to admit that I really hated this album. At the time, of course, it came as a great shock to me that Dan Fogelberg would release a country album. The hints, of course, are there if you look for them: in the title of the album (though I had assumed that just to mean, snows in the high country, country with a lowercase “c”) and in the songs. Titles like “Sutter's mill”, “The outlaw” and “Wandering shepherd” can of course now be seen to indicate a country album, but at the time I didn't know he was going in this direction and I mentally lambasted the album. I think I even sold it, not wanting it in my collection. Ah, the naivete of youth!

It wasn't until much later, when I downloaded it in the age of the internet, and listened to it --- really listened to it, this time --- that I realised what a fine album it is. Sure, it's not the Dan Fogelberg I'd come to know and love, and not the music I had expected, but it was a brave step, possibly even a commercially unsound one, for him to decide to go in that direction. The album, unsurprisingly, did not do well --- on the mainstream charts. But it did very well in the country charts, and has in fact gone down as one of the bestselling bluegrass albums in history.

Again, though, for me this was a bump in the road, and I greedily and impatiently awaited his next, ahem, real album. I would have to wait two more years though, but it would be worth it. Dan began writing songs for the new album soon after finishing “High country snows”, at the tail-end of 1985, and during this time he was going through his first divorce --- he was married three times. Whereas he had previously admitted that he had not had much luck in the way of relationships and wrote about the lives and loves of others, observational rather than personal songwriting, he now had more than enough relationship baggage to inform a whole album, and like Phil Collins in 1981, that was exactly the kind of album he produced.

As if to cast aside some of his past, change his image and his outlook, try to put the past behind him as much as he could, Dan sports a totally new look on the cover, which again returns to the practice --- abandoned between 1979 and 1984 --- of using a picture of himself on the sleeve. He's shaven, clean cut. The long straggly locks he sported even on the last album are gone, as are the chunky jumpers and scarves, and for perhaps the first time when an image of him has been used, he's looking directly at the camera, directly at the buyer or owner of the record. His eyes are deep and soulful, serious and just a little intimate, a little dangerous too, and there's for the first time seen in his face the barest suggestions of Native American. I don't think there is any such blood in his family, but his face just seems to have that shape. Maybe it's a trick of the light, or the way the photograph was framed.

The album, too, is more serious. Mostly dealing with relationships and how they break down, there's bitterness in “She don't look back”, anger and frustration in “Look what you're doing”, and yearning emptiness in ballads like “Seeing you again” and “Our last farewell”. The album didn't yield any hits --- that part of his fame was over for Dan, and in ways I don't think he was sorry --- but there are some amazing tracks on it, like the piano-driven “Hearts in decline”, with its soulful vocal chorus, or the staggering closer (on my vinyl copy, anyway) “Our last farewell”, in which Dan finally accepts what has happened and prepares to move on.

By this point, Russ Kunkel and Joe Lalas were both firmly entrenched as permanent fixtures in Dan's band, both on the road and in the studio, and his expertise on other instruments was coming to the fore: on this album he plays guitar, synthesiser, drum machine, vibraphone, bass, acoustic guitar, piano, guitar synth, keyboards and of course sings.

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Trollheart

Part V: Sleeping in light: the final years
It's one of the great cruelties, and ironies of nature that having found the woman he would have been happy to have spent the rest of his life with, that life was cut tragically short. Dan and Jean would only have five years together before fate stepped in. As Dan relaxed, happy in his achievements and looking forward to a new life with his new wife, the world seemed a good place, and he comfortably released what would be his last album, returning to the soft folk rock and acoustic simplicity of his early years.

The album starts off with a beautiful little instrumental and then goes into the first track, which really puts me more in mind of 1979's “Phoenix” than anything, and is quite uptempo. There's a great exuberance about the track, the simple joy of living really. Dan also paid tribute to his heroes on this album, with the title track being a cover of the Byrds' song, “Whispers in the wind” written in the style of Gordon Lightfoot, while “Reason to run” is, in his own words, evoking the Buffalo Springfield/Crazy Horse style. The closer, then, is a song by the Turtles, and one whose subject matter was always close to Dan's heart.

Always a giving person, through the medium of his music and just through his relationship with other people, Dan has included songs of advice and encouragement on the album, like “Once in love”, which is a message of hope and optimism for those whose hearts have been broken, and “This heart”, which he wrote for Jean. Possibly unintentionally prophetic, it may have prepared her for the terrible news and the awful times that were soon to present themselves. But there's introspection too, as there usually was on a Dan Fogelberg record, with “Reach Haven postcard” and “Drawing pictures”, songs that reach back across time and evoke memories of his debut album, as well as “Souvenirs”.

Perhaps the standout though, and a fitting swan song, though it's not the closer, is “Icarus ascending”, in which Dan considers the often painful path of an artist. Life on the road, alone in a studio for often days at a time, living in hotels and on airliners and buses isn't the choice everyone would make, and as he says himself, it's not always about money: many artistes, in every field, struggled during their lifetime and were often not recognised until after their death. Sure, it's great if you can be a legend in your own lifetime, and amass the bank account to go with it, but it doesn't always happen that way. Dan always followed his heart, often sacificing the chance for a stable family life, but right up to the end he never regretted it, nor I think would he have done things differently given a second chance.

Just one year after this wonderful album was finished, Dan and Jean received the terrible news that we all, at that age, dread and hope never to hear. Diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2004, Dan underwent treatment which, for a while, seemed to beat the disease into remission, but heartbreakingly it came back and took him from us on December 16 2007. He was only fifty-six.

A year after his death, Jean released a song he had written for her for Valentine's Day 2005, on the internet for download in support of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. The song was later included in the very last Dan Fogelberg record, a collection of unreleased songs he had been working on for years, an unexpected but extremely welcome last farewell from the man who had enriched the lives of so many through his music, his spirituality and his pure humanity.

It's hard not to listen to this without being moved, even upset. It's like the artist is calling from the Great Beyond, playing one last gig before his voice is forever silenced, though in truth that will never happen as long as people keep playing his records. This album continues the ideas and themes explored in “Full circle”, with lush, gorgeous ballads and some more upbeat numbers, standouts being the title track and the aching “The colour of Eve.”

There are also two cover versions on the album, one from Larry Hickman and the closer a version of Neil Young's “Birds”. Of course, as mentioned it contains the song he wrote for his third wife, “Sometimes a song”, and it's one of the nicest and most emotional love songs I've heard from him in some time. I'm sure she was very moved. The almost-closer is painfully poignant, and “Days to come” looks forward, as Dan always did, to better times, unaware that by the time this song saw the light of day such times would be beyond his reach. However, unselfish as ever, Dan wishes in the song for good times not just for himself, but for everyone. It's an uptempo rocker, enthusiastic and joyful, and probably best reflects Dan's positive outlook on life.


So deep was the impression he made on his hometown, and on the world, that one of the streets in Peoria was renamed in his honour, fitting indeed as not only is it the street where he went to school, where his father taught music, but also the scene of the chance meeting with an old lover that inspired one of his biggest hits, “Same old lang syne”. In 2010, a permanent memorial garden was dedicated to his memory by the citizens, in a beautiful park where no doubt he once sat and wrote and played guitar, and dreamed of becoming a star out there in the wide world.

Despite having three marriages, unfortunately Dan left no heirs behind, so it's left to Jean to keep his memory alive, though in that endeavour she is no doubt helped by an army of fans and lovers of his music. Over a period of over thirty years Dan Fogelberg created music and told stories that have passed into the world consciousness. Even if you're not a fan or have never heard of him, I bet you've heard “Longer”, “Same old lang syne” or one of his other hits. He just had that sort of effect on the world, and it's a poorer, colder place for his loss. A true artist to the end, Dan pursued the path he wanted to take throughout his life, living where his muse took him, sometimes beating his head against the piano keyboard in frustration when the lyrics and the melodies wouldn't come, but they always did in the end. He compromised for no-one, and though he had hit singles he never set out to consciously write them. For him, it was all about the music. The music was the purest thing in his life; it coloured and gave meaning to his existence, and through him, we are all just a little richer for his efforts.

The final word I leave to the memory of the man himself, spoken to music journalist Rex Rutkowski when interviewed about the album “Full circle”. Unaware of course that this would turn out to be the last recording he would make, he nevertheless mused "It has a kind of final feeling to me. It would really be a wonderful way to end, going all the way back to where I started. It feels very complete. It feels like a great place to conclude what I started with 'Home Free' “

Dan, we thank you for the music, and you're finally home now. Rest easy, my friend.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Blue is the colour --- The Beautiful South --- 1996 (GO! Disc Records)

The only album I have from this band in my collection, and why? Well, one sunny afternoon the doorbell rang and there was the figure we all dread to see, the door-to-door trader who has such great bargains that he simply can't live with himself if he lets you go without making a sale. I mean, it would be rude! These guys are, as you probably know, should you have the bad judgement or luck to open the door to them, notoriously intransigent and relentless. If you don't buy something they keep dropping the price, pushing, pushing, trying to wear you down. Normally I just make some excuse --- bedclothes? Nah, just bought a whole new set thanks! Perfume? Don't use it mate! --- and eventually, after a decent effort to try not to be impolite, close the door in their face. Nothing says "No sale!" quite as well as a slammed door.

But this once I found myself mildly interested. This guy was selling CDs. Hmm. Mind you, my hopes didn't get up too high: usually when someone's selling CDs door to door they're a) cheap knock-offs and b) chart rubbish. And so they were. Albums I wouldn't take if he had been giving them away. But then I noticed this album in his voluminous bag and I thought, well, you know, I've heard a few singles, they're popular at the moment but still cool enough to be credible: what the hell? Give it a go.

So I didn't really expect too much once I got around to playing the disc (this was back in the nineties, before I ended up downloading far more music than I could ever expect to listen to, and discs being a physical item tended to get played more or less right away) but I was impressed. It didn't make me a fan of theirs, didn't send me scurrying out on a search for their other albums, but it was decent enough that even now I sometimes play it through, forgetting how good it is.

The opener is well known, with its upbeat acoustic guitar intro and Jacqui Abbot's lilting vocal sweetly singing "Don't marry her, fuck me" as it was a hit single for them, one of four from the album. Nice bit of piano and organ with electric guitar then coming in too, and it's a sarcastic, bitter and yet engaging song that had everyone singing the chorus with drunken glee, a tale of the dangers of getting tied down with a wife and two-point-four kids. Another acoustic effort in "Little blue", this time with Paul Heaton taking the vocal, very laidback but with a dark tone underpinning it, and "Mirror" has a more folky feel to it on the guitar, the percussion from Dave Stead helping it along and it sort of presages the big hit "Rotterdam" later. There are some fairly surreal lyrics: "Imagine a mirror bigger/ Than the room it was placed in/ Imagine a rod / That cannot hold the fish." Jacqui takes vocal duties here again and does well with them.

One of the standouts then is next, as with a lovely flowing piano line "Blackbird on the wire" becomes the first real ballad. Heaton sings this one with a soft, crooning voice, accompanied by Damon Butcher on the piano. Butcher is not a part of The Beautiful South, and is credited as an additional musician on the album, but he's indispensable for this track which it completely built on his keyboard melody. Slightly more upbeat then is "The sound of North America" with bitter recrimination in the lyric --- "The sound of North America / Isn't the sound of Christians praying/ It's the sound of shuffling feet/ That don't know where they're staying" --- and some lovely strings programming and horns. Then the inappropriately-titled "Have fun" is a lovely soft mid-paced song with both Abbott and Heaton singing, with sarcasm and irony dripping from every line --- Have fun/ And if you can't have fun/ Have someone else's fun/ Cos someone sure had mine."

You know something? For all the yelling, screeching and cursing punk spat at us, sometimes it's the simple songwriting craft of a normal band that gets the message across more effectively. I mean, what can you say about a line like "I'm the lighthouse-keeper/ To the owner of this shipwrecked heart"? Lovely rising keyboard lines here and more strings, ending on a nice high guitar passage. Superb. Heaton then emulates my hero Tom Waits in the wonderfully sleazy "Liar's bar", doing a passable imitation of the gravel-voiced music icon, even writing a lyric Waits would probably be proud of: "I'm a stand-up comedian/ But I'd sit down if I could/ The world just seems to want/ People like me to stand." Again great piano work from Butcher --- what else would you have in a Waitsesque song? Strangely though this was released as a single. This is never single material: it's a great album track but the record-buying chart-loving sheep would never entertain this.

The final single, and the biggest hit from the album, is of course "Rotterdam (or anywhere)", which hit a chord with pub audiences everywhere with its upbeat, devil-may-care lyric and party atmosphere. Carried mostly on guitar and keys it's a toe-tapper for sure with Jacqui back on vocals. A real jazzy number next, replete with horns and rockabilly guitar, not one of my favourites on the album to be honest. "Foundations" is a short track, the shortest on the album in fact at just over two and a half minutes and coming closest to their previous incarnation the Housemartins. Another ballad, "Artificial flowers" appears to be a very old showtune and the only cover on the album, driven again on Damon Butcher's lonely piano and warbling organ. Sad little song, along the lines of the Little Matchstick Girl. "One god" is led in by Butcher's soft organ and a sort of tripping percussion, with Jacqui back on vocals, joined by Paul later for a rather touching duet as the song reaches its climax.

Another tip of the hat to Waits in the shuffling closer, "Alone", which gives you the definite impression of a man in a shabby overcoat wending his way home under guttering streetlights, clutching a brown paper bag from which he takes another swig before tossing it into the street, not watching where it lands as he attempts to cross the street against the traffic. Thank you, and goodnight. Great little closer to a pretty unexpectedly great album.

TRACKLISTING

1. Don't marry her
2. Little blue
3. Mirror
4. Blackbird on the wire
5. The sound of North America
6. Have fun
7. Liars' bar
8. Rotterdam (or anywhere)
9. Artificial flowers
10. One god
11. Alone

So I suppose in the end I should be more tolerant of those hawkers, shouldn't I? After all, without that interruption to my day and knock at the door I would in all likelihood never have thought of buying this album, and if I remember correctly (which is never a given by any means) I brought it into work and everyone there wanted to hear it or have a copy of it. So being a pirated copy itself, it got replicated several times. How's that for self-propogating?

But then, when an album is this good you really do want to spread it around as much as you can, which is what I did. The difference being, of course, that I took no payment for the copies I made (yer honour!) --- the appreciation of the music by my workmates was all the reward I needed or wanted.

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Introducing the hardline according to Terence Trent D'Arby --- Terence Trent D'Arby --- 1987 (Columbia)


It was only after reviewing this for my "Classic albums" journal that I was made aware of how great an album Terence Trent D'Arby's debut is, and I felt it deserved a full review. Not only that, but this album marked both the introduction of this artist to the scene as well as the highpoint of his career. Spawning four hit singles and crammed with other great tracks, this album is certainly one to treasure, and yet perhaps D'Arby overreached or oversold himself, claiming it to be one of the most important albums of the twentieth century. Arrogance is never taken kindly, even when that arrogance is in part justified. This is a very important album, but to put it up alongside "Sgt Pepper's"? I don't know, Dayyy-vey...

It certainly allowed TTD (I'm going to have to shorten his name to that) to burst onto the scene in the late eighties like a sun being born, and he without question lit up the charts, with massive hits like "If you let me stay" and "Sign your name" kicking the living crap out of the charts. From nowhere he came, this man who used three names, and then to push the stellar analogy a little further, he burned out and imploded, and nothing more was, commercially, heard of him after that. He actually died, in a way, which I will relate at the end of this review. But for now, it's the album we're concerned with, and to be fair, as an r&b/soul effort it's not something I would have expected to have been interested in, and I wasn't, at the time, my head full of Motorhead and Maiden and Genesis and Supertramp. But listening to it now, I can see how it was something very special indeed.

It opens with a sort of African chant in "If you all get to Heaven", with powerful marching synth and clashing drums, and you can hear from the beginning that this man has definitely got talent. His voice soars above the music, much of which he also plays himself, as well as writing virtually every track. Impressive, for a man just starting out on his career, only twenty-five at the time. There's a very ethnic feel to this opener, and it's a powerful start to the album. The next track is of course well known, one of his hit singles. "If you let me stay" starts with a spoken plea for another chance, behind a very seventies soul piano and bass melody before it takes off into an energetic, boppy song that pops along with great enthusiasm. Not a fan, as my regular readers know, of too much brass, but the horns here really work, and the funky guitar really drives the song. Great happy organ from Andy Whitmore, but it's D'Arby's voice that takes control and draws the attention. It's clear this is a man with a bright future ahead of him.

And up next is his biggest hit, the only song on which he collaborates with another songwriter, this being his bass player Sean Oliver. "WIshing well" is as I'm sure you know, not the Free rock standard nor the Wet Wet Wet song, but an original and has a real stark rhythm yet trips along nicely on a whistly synth hook and a squidging bass from Oliver. "I'll never turn my back on you (Father's words)" has a marching stride feel to it, very boogie in its feel and with some shining keyboard work as well as a superb little bassline, but I personally would class it as the weakest of the tracks on this album, which in fairness has very few low points. Another hit single, "Dance little sister" has D'Arby shouting "Get out of your rockin' chair grandma!" and then amending this to the more respectable "Or rather, would you care to dance, grandmother?" Clever. A Kid Creole style rhythm and melody carries the verses on the back of some fine horn work, with a guitar riff pulled from the best of the Belle Stars (and I use the term loosely), but it's when the chorus kicks in that the song really comes to life. No surprise it too was a hit.

There's a fine downbeat song to follow, in "Seven more days", with some sparkling keyboard and great vocal harmonies that almost puts me in mind of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. A cool shuffle then in "Let's go forward", with drum pads and some nice digital piano with synth sound effects. Again recalling much of the seventies soul greats such as Earth, Wind and Fire, Rose Royce and Odyssey. Again, Darby shows himself to be a hell of a singer on this song, and there are some squibbly little keyboard moves that almost get progressive rock at times, if only for a few seconds. The song itself is somewhat repetitive, and also puts me in mind of Sade, but there's something about it that fails to bore me. "Rain" has a great danceable energy about it, with some uptempo guitar and slick little synth lines. With a kind of gospel feel to it it's just one of those songs that cheers you up every time you hear it. Simple, uncomplicated, fun.

Then of course everyone knows the hit single "Sign your name", laidback, soft and gentle with an interesting little line in percussion, drony keyboard utilising an almost eastern style riff that makes you think of things like Cleopatra and the Pyramids, and a hook in the chorus to die for. Lovely. The superb "As yet untitled" though is where TTD really shows what he's capable of, singing the entire thing --- all four and a half minutes of it --- acapella, almost a lament that just tears through you. He's joined, also acapella, by backing singers on the chorus but takes most of the song himself, proving beyond all doubt that he needs no accompaniment or tricks to enhance that special voice of his. He really goes through the gamut of emotions on this, one of the definite standouts on a superb album, and at the end he grins "Meanwhile, on the other side of the world" and launches into a classy cover of Smokey Robinson's "Who's loving you?" that not only blows away the darker influences of the previous tracks and ends the album on a true high, but shows that he's not averse to paying his dues to those who have blazed the trail he follows.

TRACKLISTING

1. If you all get to Heaven
2. If you let me stay
3. Wishing well
4. I'll never turn my back on you (Father's words)
5. Dance little sister
6. Seven more days
7. Let's go forward
8. Rain
9. Sign your name
10. As yet untitled
11. Who's loving you?

After this incredibly impressive album, Terence Trent D'Arby was all set to conquer the world, and that world waited eagerly to see how he would manage to follow up "The hardline". Sadly, he did not. His next album released two years later failed to make the impression the debut had, creeping in around the fringes of the top ten in the UK and not even making the top fifty in the US. There were no hit singles, and why exactly this album did not replicate the success of "Hardline" I don't know; I haven't heard it, but wonder if it was the old "debut-album-too-good" syndrome? Perhaps expectations were too high, or perhaps it was a backlash against TTD's arrogance as to how good his debut album was, and people were just waiting to tear it to pieces. Some day I must listen to "Neither fish nor flesh" and make my own judgements as to whether or not it measured up to this.

At any rate, his next album would take five years to produce, and though received enthusiastically over here, it did not trouble the Billboard charts and the success he had begun to carve in America faded away as people forgot him. It didn't help, I'm sure, that in 1995 he changed his name to Sanandra Maitreya, legally changing it in 2001 and proclaiming that "Terence Trent D'Arby is dead". Sadly, he was, and he never made any sort of a resurgence under his new name, though he did well enough. But before he went, he left us this album to treasure. So if you haven't already, introduce yourself to Terence Trent D'Arby's Hardline: you won't regret it.

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