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‘Beat Instrumental’ Article - Thanks to Martin Hughes

Trower to the People By Gary Cooper

’Beat Instrumental and International Recording Studio’ magazine
February 1976 [price 30p] Beat Publications

Back in the summer, during that now annual event the Reading Festival, it was, curiously enough, a British three piece band who took the laurel wreath for crowd excitement no doubt much to the disgust of those who had predicted massive success for high fashion acts like The OzarkMountain Daredevils. Even the intellectual heights and speed-freak playing of John McLaughlin failed to provoke quite the reaction of Robin Trower's three piece band.

He started his set during the twilight minutes that left the band weakly lit and perhaps visually indistinct from the back of the herds of rock freaks camped right out to the rear of the huge field. But, even if they couldn't all see him, the crowds were trapped by Trower's feel. Excited by the power of the band and won over by the incessant rhythms and wailing of his Strat to a pitch when, from the Press enclosure at the front of the stage, all you could see was a summertime hailstorm of paper, hats, jackets, bags, just about anything that was throw-able being hurled skywards in time to the music of a man who had brought his rock roots back home to Britain to remind us what raw excitement felt like.

Conceited?

But who is Robin Trower? We know that some interviewers have dubbed him conceited and we know that some have called him a Hendrix rip-off and we know that he played with Procul Harum until almost overnight he metamorphosed into the bluesiest guitarist currently playing in the U.K. I decided to track the man down during the sessions for the band's next album to try and find out just where he is at and what he can show us as a musician of the very first class.

The first questions were quite obvious but totally important — gear. What does Trower use to produce that sound that is so full of feel?

Powercells

"On the amp side I'm just using Marshall 100's boosted on the input stage and I use two types of speakers. One type is the Marshall 4x15in cab with Powercells in them and the other stack has two Marshall 8x10in. On most gigs I'll use just three amps and whatever speakers fit the type of acoustics in the hall we're playing. On the guitar side it's been Strats since about a year before I left Procul.

For me it's just more of a musical guitar than a Gibson but I'll admit that it's only a matter of taste. When you play chords on a Strat it's just that much more musical — I can't put it any other way, it's something to do with the harmonics of the guitar — they just seem to be more in tune to me than anything else. Again you can get a clean sound out of a Strat just by plugging it into a Marshal] but then you can go further and can get a cleaner distortion, if you see what I mean."

Contrary to popular legend, Robin isn't exactly festooned with effects units. His sustain comes largely from a pre-amp which he has had made for him but recently he has found himself moving back to his basic idea of using a fuzz box.

"Originally I found that I couldn't get a clean enough sound with a fuzz box but now I've found that by using it just on the edge of fuzz and having the guitar on full I can get a decent sound. Then, for backing, I can move the volume control on the guitar back a couple of notches and it just cleans up the sound. For backings' I just want a clean sound though so I'm just as likely to switch the fuzz box off."

Back on the guitar side for a while, Robin has found that the massive volumes needed to fill American halls can create problems with interference being picked-up by the non-humbucking pickups that Fender use on the Strat.

The answer there was to buy pickups from the inevitable source of John Birch and replace one of his Strat's units with Birch humbuckers. Of the Strats that he has, one especially is a favourite which is more often than not the one you'll see on stage.

Strings

"I've got something like six or eight Strats but I've only got two that I really like as far as the necks go and one of them is a '56. I was very lucky to get hold of that one. I only used to play new ones till I got the '56 — somehow I'd always found that I just couldn't get the necks to hold the tuning, that was a problem for me with new Strats and also they don't seem to have the tone anymore.

Stringing of those Strats varies according to the feeling of the night as he explained, "I use Ernie Ball strings, usually a 10, 12, 14, 20, 32 and 42 but if my hands are feeling strong enough I'll go for a 10, 13, 15, 22, 32, 42, which are just that bit heavier on the middle."

Stockholm

Stringing, of course, is a vital part of the Trower sound because he'll go for the heavier strings when he can to get under those single notes and hold them in a sustained vibrato which increases in power with a heavier gauge string as well as staying in tune better for longer periods.

Although we met during recording sessions for the next studio album, the immediate forthcoming Trower release will be a live recording made by Swedish Radio during a live date in Stockholm.

"We did the show and didn't think much about the recording side of it at all but a couple of weeks later the radio people sent us a cassette of the final mix they'd done for the show. Nobody wanted to listen to it, but Bill took it and came back and said 'I think we've got a live album'. Bill's that bit more perceptive about things and I trust his judgment implicitly. I've never heard a drummer like him except perhaps some of the old big band drummers — he's so consistent and not consistently boring, but consistently sparkling."

The thing that, for me, characterises Trower's music from so much of what is currently played these days is feel — a word that he takes very seriously. This began to emerge when I asked whether he enjoyed the jamming which seems to make up such a vital part of the band's live gigs.

"That's what I really look for, to jam. It's not quite as free-form as I'd like it to be because you are constricted by having an audience there and you are being paid to entertain but there are moments when you just take off out there and that's the essential part of playing live. To me the studio is merely a compromise because you just can't blow. When I'm recording I'd really rather play live on the whole track, solos and everything because overdubbing is just unreal."
 

Technique

Trower's technique as a guitarist is, according to him, quite simple — based around three different types of vibrato.

"I have about three different speeds of vibrato depending on which finger I'm using. On the vibrato when you bend up the string I've got a fast speed and a slow speed and then I've got the vibrato on the string itself and then when I push the string down and away from me. It's very much an extension of the Blues, not that I'm a Blues player, it's just that most of what I play is based on that sort of style."

Was that reflected in the way he tackled a solo, i.e., more by Blues scale than melodic intent?

"I sometimes work out a melodic solo but more often I just go in and blow — I prefer to just do that. It's maybe not so musical but it's got a feel."

As I said at the start of this article, Trower has been attacked by some writers for apparent conceit. When we got onto the subject of influences the fallacy of that accusation became quite apparent.

"There're still a lot of players that I like to hear but I'd say that Hendrix is the one I sit and listen to although I play a lot of the old Blues men's stuff — people like Otis Rush, not so much B.B. these days, but Muddy Waters and people like that. I'm a great admirer of Clapton and I like some of the things that Jeff Beck does especially that solo he played on Stevie Wonder's Talking Book album. Where he is now is where he belongs, a bit more on the jazz side of things. Beck's a very musical player."

We got onto the subject of his own influence on other musicians, and although Trower is quite obviously delighted that he is reaching a young audience, the thought that he might be copied worries him in the way that it might affect those younger players.

"If you were to be influenced by top players I'd rather that you listened to people like the old Blues men than me. It's no good just learning the licks and the riffs of people like me; you've got to bring the music out of yourself. Everyone's got their own music inside of them but it just takes a long, long time and a lot of hard work to get right at it. Even non musicians have their own kind of music. I'd say don't try to play like Clapton or me, I'd say listen to B.B. King or Elmore James."

The interview had already over-run considerably so I fired one last question before bidding my farewells. How did Robin see the band's music and its audiences in terms of the current trends in Rock?

“There's a mood about a lot of our stuff that makes it what it is. It's very stoned music — I reckon that's why we're maybe more popular in America than over here — they're more stoned than we are! I don't think that's a good thing or a bad thing, it's just the way it is. It's not the superficial things about our music that have an appeal it's more what we understate than anything else — certainly more than any instant impact which is what you normally get out of rock music or pop. I wouldn't say that it's any better than anything else, it's just what it is, a feel. I suppose in a sense it's a psychedelic thing although I'd like to think that there's Blues and Soul and Rock there as well."

Intense

Trower's reputation for conceit is rubbish. Of all the people I've interviewed I'd stick my neck out and say that he was perhaps one of the most proud, but one of the least conceited. That pride is born of the intense feel that he puts into his music and that is something to be proud of because he's, as he admits, merely playing himself and it's that total honesty of expression that appealed to the fans at Reading, a totally un-contrived emotional quality which set his music apart from heavily considered intellectualism or carefully contrived funkiness, a natural flow that is something very close to the feel of the very best musicians be they black or white.

As a guitarist, his technique comes second to that feel and that is what makes him one of the world's very best players because music is quite literally the conveyance of emotion by sound. Trower is a musician and a very fine one indeed.

Thanks Martin!
 

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