In 2013 Elbow leader Guy Garvey told Prog how long he’d been in love with Genesis’ music, and why former lead singer Peter Gabriel was his prog hero.
“My older sister Becky introduced me to Genesis. I don’t remember hearing them for the first time; they’ve always been there from my childhood onwards.
As a very, very small kid, they were my nursery rhymes, really, because of the magical quality and the storytelling nature of the lyrics.
The dark edge of it didn’t really shock me as a child. I didn’t consider the skewed look at middle England that Peter Gabriel was obsessed with. It was just stories to this beautiful music.
It’s still magical when I listen to it – Selling England By The Pound is probably my favourite album in its entirety.
So is my favourite Peter Gabriel solo album. It’s such a significant one for me. My parents divorced when I was 12 and my mum really found some solace in that difficult time through listening to that record.
I remember we’d drive to see my grandparents, which is about an hour’s drive through the hills to the north of Manchester. We became obsessed with the record – it was exactly the right length for the ride.
My life has taken me all over the place and I’ve met many of my heroes, but the first time I met Peter was when our band did our first album, the first version of Asleep In The Back. It was recorded at Real World; what Peter has done for music through his Real World label can’t be quantified.
I met him there and struck up a bit of a friendship with him, which has led to us covering his song Mercy Street. And he covered Elbow’s Mirrorball as part of the Scratch My Back series.
That was incredibly intense – hearing that incredible orchestration and hearing him really belting out my lyrics. That was an ambition I didn’t know I had.
I went to see him perform it live. Peter had hired one of the Thames ferries for a little boat party after the gig. He came off stage and, moments later, he was walking toward the boat in a big towel and dressing gown.
As soon as I introduced him to Becky [who funded Elbow’s debut album and offered moral support as the band struggled to survive], he knew exactly who she was.
He said: ‘So you’re the one responsible for all this!’ He put his arm around her and chatted to her, and it was the thrill of her life.”
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It’s been five long years since the last Brazilians album Black Wolf, and the wait was worth as the band present A Scar Is Born, their best album yet, bursting with classic bar room bangers. Includes the hit singles Out Of My Hands and The War For Rock’n’Roll which have both received generous amounts of […]
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Arguably Cannock, Staffordshire’s most famous son (though he does face strong competition from footballer Stan Collymore and one-time Britain’s Strongest Man Richard Gosling), Glenn Hughes has enjoyed a renaissance in his fortunes in the past couple of decades.
Throughout his career Hughes has been equally blessed and cursed: respectively, with arguably the most distinctive voice in hard rock, and by drug addiction that saw him ricochet from one project to the next with no real cohesion or direction, although almost all were flecked with flashes of brilliance.
Impressively, even during his drug years, he contributed to landmark albums either as a fully fledged band member or bassist/singer for hire. Infamously, while touring with Black Sabbath, with his band due on an LA stage in a matter of hours, Tony Iommi couldn’t find the errant Hughes. It turned out that the elusive bass player wasn’t even in the state of California.
Since experiencing some sort of epiphany on Christmas Day 1991, which resulted in him forsaking his cocaine mainstay, Hughes has intensified his work ethic. Despite a self-destructive impulse and years of abuse, he’s still blessed with a voice that can straddle funk, soul and rock (sometimes critically to his detriment), but it’s to his eternal credit that he can genuinely say that he sounds absolutely like no one else; vocally he has no peers.
It was the three albums he recorded as bassist/vocalist with Deep Purple (Burn, Stormbringer, Come Taste The Band) that brought Hughes international attention and acclaim, but it’s the durability of his extensive catalogue that may turn out to be the cornerstone of his legacy.
From his relatively brief tenure with British hard rock quintet Trapeze, to the aforementioned hazy days with Deep Purple, through his first solo album, the quite excellent Play Me Out, to the landmark Hughes/Thrall album years later – and many people are still waiting breathlessly for its successor. Hughes is equally at home tied to the mast of The KLF’s Viking longboat in the video for America: What Time Is Love? or as Tony Iommi’s foil on the 2005 Fused project.
Though both were vital and vibrant sidemen, no one could have foreseen the impact of Glenn Hughes and Pat Thrall uniting for what still remains a frustratingly elusive one-off. The Hughes/Thrall album still sounds crisp – a rarity for an album recorded four decades ago.
Given the strength of the songwriting, it could have been made on a wax cylinder and it would still have had the power to startle. With the exhilarating I Got Your Number, the tough-as-leather Muscle And Blood and the understated take on Trapeze’s Coast To Coast, it’s a heady debut, and almost certainly their swansong.
Given the upheaval in Deep Purple’s personnel (singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover had departed, and been replaced by Hughes and a shoe salesman and part-time singer from Yorkshire by the name of David Coverdale), surprisingly Burn – the first release from the new line-up – remains one of the band’s most enduring albums.
It may have divided their fans with its funkier feel, but Hughes and Coverdale’s combined vocals and the creativity on tracks like Might Just Take Your Life, You Fool No One and the title track still guaranteed the album an eager audience.
The third album from Trapeze, and the last that Hughes would play on before he left to replace Roger Glover in Deep Purple, was a more soulful proposition than the hard rock Hughes would become famous for. With jazz, funk, soul and rock influences, You Are The Music… was the perfect showcase for Hughes’s warm vocal.
He’s equally at home with the harder-sounding title track or the rattling Keepin’ Time, but it’s on the beautifully paced What Is A Woman’s Role and Coast To Coast – with some great sax and vibes work – that the singer really makes the song.
After the fallout from Deep Purple’s break-up, Hughes finished work on an album that he’d been recording intermittently while still touring with the band. David Bowie was originally pencilled in to produce (a nice idea that didn’t materialise), and appearances from former Trapeze bandmates Mel Galley and Dave Holland helped Hughes abandon his hard rock leanings almost entirely.
Closer to Motown in feel, Hughes showed how at home he was with funk and soul. Vocally he was rarely better, cruising through a range of rich material like Soulution, Space High and the lingering I Found A Woman.
Criminally overlooked on its release, Fused saw Tony Iommi discard the idea of working with a series of guest vocalists as on his self-titled debut in 2000 in favour of forming a trio with Hughes and drummer Kenny Aronoff instead.
The pair had already worked together in a fitful version of Black Sabbath and on a demo set that became The 1996 DEP Sessions album, but it was with Fused that the collaboration came to spectacular fruition. Relentlessly heavy with Hughes in blistering form on songs like Grace and Dopamine, the best is saved for last with the epic I Go Insane.
It’s only a shade over 36 minutes long, but Hughes’s second album with Deep Purple sounds anything but slight. Most notable for giving both the band’s singers their chance in the spotlight – Coverdale must have been far from delighted, originally thinking he was joining the band as lead singer.
Hughes shone on the wonderfully understated Holy Man, the blistering title track promised a hard rock tour de force, and all in all it was a funkier record than Burn; the band’s ever-evolving direction was rumoured to be one of the reasons for finally parting with an exasperated Ritchie Blackmore.
The last Deep Purple album for the best part of ten years, Stormbringer was also the only Purple record that featured guitarist Tommy Bolin. Bolin, of course, would be dead little more than a year after its release.
It was considered uneven at best at the time of its release, but over the years the album has grown in stature. Bolin proved himself to be as adept – if not quite as erratically brilliant – as Blackmore, and alongside Hughes and Coverdale he was the perfect foil on songs like Gettin’ Tighter and the more melodic material like Dealer, Lady Luck and the expansive You Keep On Moving.
This is clearly less of a ‘project’ than the first BCC disc, and more the real deal. It’s what four musicians sound like when you put them in a room and throw away the key, with Hughes contributing more songs than he did on album number one.
Hence, swaggering riff-monsters like Man In The Middle and Smokestack Woman. More impressive still are genuinely stirring soul-searchers like Faithless or the eight-minute epic, An Ordinary Son. The soulful Crossfire even veers the band towards prog – in a good way. While not the easiest of albums to embrace on first listen, persevere with BCC2 and you’ll find it worth the effort.
On their only album (so far) Hughes nails his freak flag to a post-Zeppelin juggernaut. He revisits the bluster of BCC’s Afterglow and revels in his partnership with Jason Bonham, while showcasing young guitarist Andrew Watt, (now the man behind Ozzy Osbourne‘s late-career revival, the Rolling Stones’ late-career revival, etc).
This is ball-busting rock framed by an incredibly busy production, with a big sonic impact and an imposing wall of sound. There’s no denying Hughes’ visceral performance on Sweet Tea, the burgeoning Chemical Rain, the sweeping single Midnight Oil and the explosive The Grey. Chickenfoot have been here before, but here Hughes realised his own vision.
The voice of an angel he might have, but it’s hard to forgive Glenn Hughes for this cloying collection of Christmas favourites. Even the sleeve – a grinning Hughes posing next to a vase of unfestive sunflowers, for some reason – grates.
Although his vocals are keen and sometimes quite brilliant, it’s still hard to take as Hughes warbles all over Ave Maria or drones through O’ Come All Ye Faithful, and there’s a point during his take on Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas where you almost want to beg him to stop. And this from a man who made a song called Get You Stoned palatable.
It’s been five long years since the last Brazilians album Black Wolf, and the wait was worth as the band present A Scar Is Born, their best album yet, bursting with classic bar room bangers. Includes the hit singles Out Of My Hands and The War For Rock’n’Roll which have both received generous amounts of […]
