Robin Trower
Bridge Of Sighs
★★★★★ Chrysalis Catalogue CHRV/C
1057 (3Cd/2lp/blu-ray)
Robin Trower had been going for a decade before Bridge Of Sighs made him briefly – and impressively – an American guitar superstar. From the coffee houses and R&B bands of Southend-on-sea to festivals in California seems a long journey, but not for Trower: a consummate professional, who in personality and demeanour is very much like a genial Essex handyman – no club too small, no stadium too large. This is why he is such a survivor and has made easy professional company with artists known for their painstaking approach – Jack Bruce, Bryan Ferry and Robert Fripp for three.
Bridge Of Sighs – his second solo album after leaving Procol Harum – epitomises the rock that meant so much in the States yet remained relatively underground in the UK. It’s a perfect example of the communication breakdown between the two countries. Many have pondered why Roxy Music, Slade or T.rex never made it in America – the answer is here. US audiences never fully got over Cream splitting or the demise of Jimi Hendrix – hence the popularity of Ten Years After, Humble Pie and Trower – just listen to the AOR of the title track here – pure power, delivered sweetly. That track was very much the starting point for the album, as it had been worked up live on the preceding US tour before the band – Trower, ex-stone The Crows, James Dewar on bass and vocals and Reg Isadore on drums – returned to AIR studios to finish the album they’d begun at Olympic before crossing the Atlantic.
Working with his old Procol Harum bandmate Matthew Fisher as producer, everything is kept spare, nothing here, even the sole seven-minute excursion, Too Rollin’ Stoned, is pared to the bone. The album sounds warm and direct, as one would expect with Geoff Emerick engineering. Day Of The Eagle blasts in like Hendrix’s Crosstown
Traffic on speed, a fierce anti-war number that sets out the band’s stall; there’s the slow blues of the title track, with its key “long time crossing bridge of sighs” breakdown, everything is deep in the pocket. Too Rollin’ Stoned is all throbbing bass prowls and Trower’s high speed wah-wah. James Dewar’s voice is an absolute revelation, especially on the Donny Hathaway-influenced In This Place. About To Begin perfects the plaintive rock ballad. The simpatico playing of the trio is underlined by the supporting live album in this anniversary set, Live at The Record Plant, Sausalito, May 1974.
For this writer, it remains a mystery why Robin Trower’s work is not more greatly revered. A guitar perfectionist, his fluid, expressive and thoroughly funky playing forever plays second fiddle to the standard roll-call of the British rock ‘axe’ hall of fame. Bridge Of Sighs – here newly mixed from the original tapes – is Cream without the whimsy or improvisational flab. To say again, Trower’s innate commercialism and professionalism – an overhang perhaps from his Paramounts days – kept everything in excellent measure. The great thing about an artist like Trower, and an album of such power as Bridge Of Sighs, is that for those who haven’t, it’s there to discover – the freshness of its moment forever contained in these grooves.