BLOODY WELL WRITE
Missives, musings and tweets from Planet Prog.
Those of us of a certain age will remember clearly experiencing the raw excitement, originality and sheer quality of the music of the 60s. The eager anticipation of a new single or album by any one of a number of amazing artists, all of whom delivered the goods regularly and without fail, was almost unbearable. Two of my favourites in those halcyon days were, no surprises, The Beatles and Eric Clapton: both of whom were unquestionably ‘progressive’ (using the word in its original sense).
The brilliance of The Beatles is well documented, as, of course, is the genius of Lennon and McCartney. I tended to prefer the Lennon songs but McCartney wrote some indisputable masterpieces: The Fool On The Hill, Eleanor Rigby and Let It Be to name but three.
Eric Clapton moved around a bit in the 60s – The Yardbirds, John Mayall, Cream, Blind Faith and solo – and yet he established the role of the lead electric guitar virtually single handedly (or should that be slow handedly) with his groundbreaking guitar playing (at least until the arrival of a certain Jimi Hendrix).
So here we are in 2018, 50 years since the release of two of the greatest double albums ever in The Beatles’ White Album and Cream’s Wheels Of Fire. Indeed,
The Beatles and Eric Clapton even got together on the White Album to produce the stunning While My Guitar Gently Weeps, with a piano intro from McCartney and one of most emotional guitar solos you’ll ever hear from
Clapton: still one of the greatest songs ever by anyone. And if you need another demonstration of guitar virtuosity, just listen to Clapton’s soloing on Crossroads
– that’s live, one take!
Still in 2018 and what have we got? New albums from both musical legends: Egypt Station by McCartney and Happy Xmas by Clapton. Should be amazing right? Er, well not quite. Egypt Station sounds like an album by an also-ran
60s band given a one LP record deal and then allowed to fade into obscurity as they couldn’t compete, either lyrically or musically, with the likes of, inter alia, The Beatles. As for Happy Xmas, if you’d said to me in 1968 that Clapton would be releasing an album of Christmas carols, including Jingle Bells, Silent Night and White Christmas 50 years later… well, my reply would have been unprintable. Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra have already been there, done that and produced the album (rather more than 50 years ago).
Thankfully we still have musicians from that era, or thereabouts, producing the goods: Yes, Ian Anderson/Jethro
Tull and, of course, until their recent retirement, Rush. No coincidence, methinks, that those three bands are prog and how wonderful that we have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of topquality new and not-so-new prog bands making quality music and flying the flag. Of the better-known bands, Opeth top the list for me along with Steven Wilson, Mostly Autumn and Riverside. Of the lesser-known bands, take a listen to Cloud Over Jupiter, Koneskin, Kylver and Chaometry to name but a few: none of whom I would have picked up on were it not for the excellent Prog mag CD (long may it last).
Graham Smith