|
Album Retrospectives
ARGUS
1972
January 1972 saw recording for Wishbone Ash’s third album commencing at De Lane Lea's newly opened Wembley studios, with Derek Lawrence once again handling production and Martin Birch engineering. The new material was premiered during a four week UK tour running from January 26th to February 20th and subsequently on a short tour of Germany during March.
"Argus" was released in the UK on April 28th 1972 and was without doubt the band's most accomplished and complete work up to this point. Whereas previous albums had tended to sound disjointed at times, "Argus" had a solid direction. The band's songwriting had never been stronger and various references to time, history and war throughout, the albums hangs together much better than either "Wishbone Ash" or "Pilgrimage". However, despite a common thread of loosely related themes running through the album, the band maintain that there was no deliberate attempt to record a concept album.
"I don't think there was any initial sort of conscious concept", states Andy Powell. "We'd all got into this wholre frame of mind around the time of "Argus" and the songs were obviously about similar subjects and it just kept sparking us off."
The album opened with "Time Was" - a song in two vastly different sections, both of which would later be performed independently during concerts. The opening acoustic section opened the album in peaceful, reflective style, with Ted and Martin's vocal harmonies backed by Ted's acoustic guitar picking. In direct contrast, the second part of the song was a straight forward rock outing, with a feel similar to much of the Who's early seventies work. Andy Powell would later admit that, having supported the Who on numerous occasions, their style had an enormous impact. "Time Was" was one of several songs on "Argus" that was written on acoustic instruments.
"It wasn't until we were pretty far along that we'd pick up electric guitars and play with any volume", recalls Andy Powell.
"Sometime World" opens in folky style with Ted's dreamy soloing and one of Martin's finest vocal contributions to the album, before breaking into a faster pace with some fine scat-singing from Martin and Andy followed by one of Andy's most fluent solos of all time. With hindsight, the song should have become a live classic, yet ironically the number had, until 1995, rarely featured in the band's live repertoire in its entirety.
Closing the album's first side, "Blowin' Free" (with it's three part vocal harmonies and featuring Ted Turner's first appearance on slide guitar) was without doubt the most commercial track the band had recorded. It would go on to become a permenant fixture in the band's live set - the "Ash Anthem" to many. The lyrics were written a few years earlier by Martin Turner, as a result of a gig the Empty Vessels played at St.Luke's Hall, Torquay.
"The lyrics to "Blowin' Free" were about a Swedish girlfriend I had at the time", says Martin. "She was called Anneline Werdstrom and came from Gothenburg. We were playing this gig at St.Luke's Hall in Torquay and there must have been 200 Swedish girls present, who were over here on holiday. Well, to have all these girls present and only three of us blokes...!! She was the complete opposite of me and loved nature and being in the open air and all that. The refrain in the song "You can only try" came from a reply she used to give me when I was after a certain thing! I met her a few years later in London and she hadn't changed a bit."
Musically, the famous opening riff was a result of Andy Powell getting together in 1971 with an old musician friend, Mick Groome, later of Ducks De Luxe. As Powell remembers:
"We were trying out various chord patterns and inversions of Beatles and Who songs. One was based on the Who song "See Me Feel Me", I think, and this was where the opening riff to "Blowin' Free" came from. Martin reckoned the middle part of the song was influenced by a Steve Miller Band track from 1967 called "Children of the Future", which he was trying to get the band to learn."
Andy Powell recalls all this coming together during a soundcheck at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles during 1971. Such is the influence of "Blowin' Free" that it is not surprising that parts of the song have been "borrowed" by other artists. The most obvious one is Steely Dan's "Reeling in the Years", where the three part guitar harmony near the end of "Blowin' Free" is virtually the same as the middle section of their song. Another one is Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back in Town", where the twin lead guitar break in the middle bears more than a passing resemblance to the aforementioned part of "Blowin' Free".
The album's second side opens with "The King Will Come", fading in with Andy Powell's famous intro guitar chords, which would signal the start of many a Wishbone Ash concert, against Steve Upton's military snare, overlayed with Ted Turner's wah-wah guitar, whilst Martin Turner's melodic bass holds everything in place. The main body of the song is classic melodic rock at its finest, whilst the lyrical content (sung in harmony by Martin and Andy) deals with the Biblical conception that when the end of the world comes, man will be saved.
"I did quite a lot of research for "The King Will Come" and I can remember reading the Bible for quite a long time. The Bible's an interesting book and although I'm not a particularly religious person, I can remember getting into it as a book and being really fascinated by some of the stuff in there."
Perhaps the must underrated cut on the album, due mainly to the band's reluctance in performing it onstage until some 23 years after the album's release, "Leaf and Stream" is a beautiful English folk song with Steve Upton's first lyrical contribution to a Wishbone Ash album (all other lyrics on "Argus" were written by Martin Turner).
The album's two closing tracks "Warrior" and "Throw Down the Sword" are probably the two which are most closely related, and would usually be performed together at concerts.
Says Martin Turner: "Lyrically, a lot of the material on "Argus" is about time and the relationship with time, like the warrior and that classic sort of symbolism. It's written in a very historical way, but it lends itself to a number of different situations, contemporary or otherwise."
"These days, you'd say that "Warrior" was a song about fighting for your rights and not taking any crap", adds Andy Powell. "It was designed to be a very rousing concert-type song with a big ensemble ending."
"Throw Down the Sword" saw Renaissance's John Tout augmenting the band on organ. Renaissance had become good friends with Wishbone Ash, the two bands having appeared on the same bill on numerous occasions. The following year, Andy Powell returned the compliment by contributing lead guitar to the title track of Renaissance's "Ashes Are Burning" album.
GARY CARTER
Additional interview material courtesy of Mark Chatterton
|
