Winwood calls the tunes in a live spectacular
WHENEVER historians chronicle the evolution of British music, Steve Winwood’s name is routinely overlooked.
The unassuming Birmingham singer and keyboardist has often been overshadowed by bandmates such as Eric Clapton, but his long career is well worth celebrating in its own right.
From its roots in Sixties beat to the Stateside superstardom he enjoyed in the Eighties, Winwood’s tale mirrors that of British rock itself, even though he wisely avoided the excesses that took such a toll on many of his peers.
This impeccably played double live album, out today, is a timely reminder of both his songwriting talent and an enduring voice that has lost little of its sunny, soulful edge.
‘I’ve recorded every show for many years, so this evokes many memories,’ says the singer, 69, of his first live solo effort, out on CD (£ 13) and as a four-disc vinyl package (£30).
PRESENTING
assured new arrangements of songs by the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith, plus solo hits, this offers a glimpse into a personal archive assembled from different concerts across the years.
It opens by acknowledging the Spencer Davis Group, the West Midlands rhythm and blues band that Winwood joined as a teenage prodigy of 15.
That band’s I’m A Man gets a loose, funky makeover on which his Hammond organ jostles with guitarist José Neto. Another single Gimme Some Lovin’ is also featured on the album. It was during 1967’ s fabled summer of love that Winwood really made his mark, though.
Still only 18, he formed Traffic and embraced psychedelic pop before graduating to a sophisticated fusion of folk-rock, jazz, soul and Latin music — and he revisits all those styles here. In keeping with the era’s hippie ethos, Traffic were one of the first groups to flee city life and ‘get it together in the country’.
Their debut album, Mr Fantasy, was recorded in a candle-lit cottage without electricity in the Oxfordshire village of Aston Tirrold, and one of its key songs, Dear Mr Fantasy, ebbs and flows over the course of eight impressive minutes here.
Elsewhere, the instrumental Glad is recreated as a keyboarddominated jazz piece with flute and sax, while the folky influence of Fairport Convention is obvious on the acoustic John Barleycorn. The only letdown is a sprawling take on Traffic’s Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys.
Blind Faith, the ‘supergroup’ Winwood formed with Clapton, Ginger Baker and Ric Grech, is the source of two elegant blues compositions in the form of Can’t Find My Way Home and Had To Cry Today, while the album finishes with a celebration of his glossier solo years.
Having moved to New York in the early Eighties, he grew a mullet hairstyle and became an MTV staple — and Higher Love and Roll With It, both of which were American chart-toppers, remain sparkling examples of the decade’s streamlined pop.
But here, on covers of Buddy Miles’s Them Changes and Timmy Thomas’s Why Can’t We Live Together, Winwood, who still tours regularly, shows why he remains one of the great blueeyed soul singers.
NEW YORK musician James Murphy decided to spread his wings after disbanding his dancerock group, LCD Soundsystem, following a three-hour farewell concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2011.
Since then he has opened a wine bar, launched his own coffee range, produced Arcade Fire’s Reflektor album and even played percussion on David Bowie’s Blackstar.
BuT
the lure of his own band proved hard to resist. Murphy, 47, reformed LCD Soundsystem last year and this album, their first in seven years, is a triumphant return that mixes electronic dance with the magnificently gloomy strand of British rock pioneered by the likes of The Cure and New Order.
The legacy of Bowie, too, is never far away. The guitars on Change Yr Mind and Other Voices owe something to the sounds created by Robert Fripp and Carlos Alomar on Bowie’s Heroes, although Murphy’s staccato, halfspoken vocals look more to fellow American David Byrne.
Other songs hark back to LCD’s dance roots, with Tonite addressing the theme of technological overload that informed Arcade Fire’s Everything Now. While Call The Police contains a short but touching tribute to Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed — ‘for the Leonards and the Lous’.