Steve Winwood Back in the High Life (1986)

From ultimateclassicrock.com

Classic rock is about heavy hooks, power chords and tight harmonies. But it’s also about letting loose and enjoying the good times. And there’s no better time for that than Friday evening, when we pick up our paycheck, punch out of work and enjoy a couple days of much-needed rest and relaxation.

One of the messed-up things about those good times is that we often don’t appreciate how special they are until they’re gone — something that tends to weigh on us more as we get older, and we begin to understand just how fleeting everything is and how quickly time passes, no matter how we might try to slow it down. Ironically, many of us spend our youth wishing things would speed up, trying to wave away whatever’s in front of us so we can hurry on to the next in a seemingly limitless series of adventures.

It happens to all of us, and there’s no getting around it, so there’s no point in being maudlin about it — something Steve Winwood understood well in 1985 and ’86, when he was putting together the tracks for what would become his fourth solo album, ‘Back in the High Life.’ Although he was only 38 at the time, Winwood was nearing a quarter century as a professional musician, and his career had already been through plenty of ups and downs. More than most, he knew that they were cyclical, and when things are low, you just have to wait for them to pick up again.

Even though he had no way of knowing it at the time, ‘High Life’ was positioning Winwood for one of the biggest high points of his career and a Grammy-winning comeback that returned him to the charts in a big way after a relatively fallow period following the middling success of 1982’s ‘Talking Back to the Night’ album. Like on its predecessor, 1980’s much more popular ‘Arc of a Diver,’ Winwood performed most of the instruments himself on ‘Night,’ recording at his home studio — a setup that, while certainly convenient, eventually proved a bit stifling and led to a major change in location, from the U.K. to New York.

“I went to New York simply to get the juices flowing again,” he recalled later. “I was in danger of becoming arty in isolation and really missed playing with other musicians. I was spending all my time reading computer manuals and tapping on keyboards rather than getting out and entertaining, which is my job.”

To that end, ‘High Life’ features a slew of musicians, from session ringers like Jimmy Bralower and John Robinson to famous names like Joe Walsh, James Taylor and Chaka Khan. The resulting production, while definitely slick enough for mid-’80s radio playlists, was more expansive and varied than Winwood’s recent solo efforts. Case in point: the title track, which employed a chiming mandolin in the lead and rested on a droning accordion in the background — one of the only times either instrument would appear in the Top 40 during the decade.

But ‘Back in the High Life Again’ almost didn’t make the record. As Winwood’s co-writer, Will Jennings, later told Songfacts, “I called one day and talked to Russ Titelman, who was producing the album. They were doing it in New York. I asked him how it was going, and he said, ‘Oh it’s going great.’ He said ‘Higher Love’ came out great and ‘The Finer Things.’ I asked him how ‘Back in the High Life’ would come out. There was this little pause, and he said, ‘Steve hasn’t shown me that song.'”

According to Jennings, he’d originally left the lyrics with Winwood during a writing session in 1984, but for whatever reason, Winwood had never gotten around to putting together music for them. As it turned out, fate was simply waiting to intervene. “At that time, [Winwood] was going through a divorce,” Jennings explained. “And because of the divorce, his wife got everything in the house, this big house in England. So he came up from London and went out to this house — which he still lives in and he had for years before he was married — and everything was gone, except there was a mandolin over in the corner of the living room. It was winter and it was dreary. He went over and picked up the mandolin, and he already had the words in his head. And that’s when he wrote the melody.”

That melody would go on to anchor a Top 20 hit for Winwood — one of four from the album, which sparked a revival in his solo career that continued into the ’90s. And although his brand of cleanly produced blue-eyed soul would quickly become synonymous with beer commercials and adult-contemporary radio, the emotions that fueled ‘Back in the High Life Again’ remain as resonant as ever. (Check out Warren Zevon’s stripped-down cover for proof.)

“‘Back in the High Life’ was not written to predict what I would be doing but because of what I actually was doing,” Winwood later mused. “I knew that ‘Back in the High Life’ was going to be my last album on my contract, and I had thought for a long time about going into production and stuff. I finally decided, ‘No, I might as well pursue my career as a solo artist and put everything into it.’ I guess I probably had never put everything into it, because I’d always felt that I was above being an entertainer.”

So if you’re in need of a little high life as this weekend approaches, never fear; like Steve Winwood says in the song, we’ll all get back there eventually. But you don’t need to wait to hear that plaintive mandolin — just scroll up to the video above, hit play, turn up the volume and let the weekend start … now.

Steve Winwood interview: From Mr. Fantasy to Mr. Entertainment (1988)

From rollingstone.com December 1988

Rolling with the “Higher Love” musician

” ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ ” is obviously the bane of my life in some ways, because I’ve got to do it all the time,” says Steve Winwood, relaxing in an outlandish Las Vegas hotel room. “But now you actually have a lot more people who have heard ‘Higher Love’ than ‘Gimme Some Lovin’.’ Or, often, people have heard ‘Gimme Some Lovin” and don’t know it’s me. That happens a lot. They say, ‘Why are you covering that Blues Brothers song?’

Characteristically, Winwood – as obliging a bloke as you’ll find – isn’t disturbed that people sometimes fail to associate him with the best-known song of his career, a song that has been a dance-floor burner since he co-wrote and sang it as a teenage prodigy with the Spencer Davis Group in 1966. Perversely, he almost seems to enjoy the lack of recognition.

Warming to his subject, Winwood – who is wearing khaki shorts, a Johnny Clegg and Savuka T-shirt, white sneakers and sweat socks – takes a pull from a bottle of Perrier and tells a story about Tom Lord Alge, who co-engineered Winwood’s 1986 smash Back in the High Life and co-produced his latest album, Roll with It. “We were working for quite some time, and something came up, and we talked about ‘I’m a Man,’ ” Winwood says, referring to the Spencer Davis Group’s other legendary hit, which he also co-wrote and sang. “And Tom said, ‘You don’t mean “I’m a man, yes I am….” ‘ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘You wrote that?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ You know, he just really didn’t know.”

At this point Winwood, who has a day off in Las Vegas, where he’s performing at Caesars Amphitheater, can afford to take such slights in his stride. At forty, he is more successful than ever, on the strength of the massive sales of Back in the High Life and Roll with It. Not that he had been a slouch before.

After bursting on the scene with Spencer Davis, Winwood formed Traffic, one of the most adventurous bands of the Sixties and Seventies, in 1967. He separated from Traffic in 1969 to form Blind Faith, with Eric Clapton, bassist Rick Grech and Cream drummer Ginger Baker. In 1980 his solo career took off for the first time with the platinum Arc of a Diver, a virtuoso studio performance on which Winwood wrote all the music and played every instrument on every track.

Winwood’s youthfully innocent good looks, his disarming manner and his refusal to wear his stature on his sleeve can make for surprises. An offhand, let’s-get-settled question like. “When was the last time you were in Las Vegas?” elicits an equally casual answer: “Nineteen years ago, on the Blind Faith tour. I went to see Elvis on his comeback tour. He was amazing.”

Still, the Las Vegas setting, the impossible kitsch of his Caesars Palace hotel room (the parlor of the suite is a nightmare vision of yellow, brown and mustard tones, with a wild floral pattern on the walls), the mention of Elvis and even Winwood’s distance from his celebrated past create a certain uneasiness. The scene is haunted by a remark Winwood made three weeks before on a brutally hot Sunday afternoon in Chicago, during one of the first stops on his tour.

In a far more subdued suite at the Omni Ambassador East, Winwood explained how three years earlier, after the relative failure of his album Talking Back to the Night, he had “decided to embrace the fact of being an entertainer.” Straightforward as it may seem, the remark sounded strange coming from a man whose exquisite musicianship, outstanding voice and expansive musical vision had long set the standard of integrity.

“This is probably a recent thing that I’ve realized, about music being entertainment,” he said, his voice hoarse from the previous night’s show. “I had a choice to go a couple of ways. If I was to say, ‘Well, I’m a musician, I’m not an entertainer,’ then I have no business going onstage with lights and trying to look … I should be in the back doing the music, and somebody else should be out front.

“So you have the choice. You have to decide which way to go. I thought about it long and seriously, and I thought that if I sing songs to people, you can’t deny it, you’re an entertainer. It’s not just ‘I’m entertaining them’ but ‘I am actually an entertainer.’ “

This decision obviously had enormous commercial benefits. Both Back in the High Life and Roll with It are fine records that have yielded hit after hit. Onstage, Winwood no longer finds an instrument to play on every song. Although he seems uncomfortable at times, he dons fashionable duds and tackles the frontman’s role with determination – and the crowds at his sold-out shows love it.

But it’s hard to escape the feeling that Winwood isn’t challenging himself, that his Eighties work isn’t charged with the passion he displayed early on. “Really, your question is about the value of art in the marketplace,” Winwood says in response to this observation. “That’s a tricky question. It’s got to be a balance, and it’s hard to get the balance right every time. I spent a lot of years doing stuff where people said, ‘That’s fantastic,’ but nobody bought it. That also is a bad situation, because what are you achieving? You do want to be heard – unless you’re trying to create some elitist thing.”

Some of the moves Winwood has made to get his music heard have also raised tricky questions. His sponsorship deal with Michelob – which seems to have included writing “Don’t You Know What the Night Can Do?” for a TV commercial –has made him a symbol of artistic compromise to many people, including some of his former admirers. So if his fans see him as a different man from the one who co-wrote and sang “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m a Man,” perhaps, in a certain sense, they’re right.

The controversy surrounding steve Winwood is all the more problematic because his is one of the most extraordinary careers in contemporary pop music. Though he is only forty, that career extends back over twenty-five years.

Steve Winwood was born on May 12th, 1948, in a suburb of Birmingham, England. His father, a manager in a local foundry, played saxophone and clarinet in semiprofessional bands, and his mother, Winwood says, “was always singing. She didn’t play an instrument, but she would be able to naturally harmonize.” At six Winwood began to take music lessons, primarily on piano, and at nine he began guitar lessons.

When he was barely a teenager, Winwood started to develop his own musical ideas. Through his parents and their families, he learned about parlor music and the big bands. His brother Muff, who was five years older, taught him about blues, jazz and rock & roll. At thirteen, he was admitted on a part-time basis to music college, where he studied piano.

“All the time my brother had these school bands, which were like jazz bands,” Winwood says, running his hand through his reddish-brown hair, “and I would play with them. We’d have the odd gig at the local church hall or something while I was still at music college. I happened to say to my tutor that I quite liked to play jazz and rock & roll. That was it. He said, ‘Well, listen, if you’re learning this, you’ve got to forget that. You can’t do both.’

“So, I figured if I couldn’t do both,” Winwood says, with a gleam in his eye, “I knew which one I wanted to do, and it wasn’t the one he was teaching me.”

Winwood was only fifteen when he was discovered by Spencer Davis, who was teaching languages by day and playing in Birmingham clubs by night. Davis was looking to form a blues band; a musician friend suggested that he check out the Muff Woody Jazz Band.

“Muff played guitar in a sort of jazz style, like Wes Montgomery,” Davis says. “Steve was playing piano in the style of Oscar Peterson – at that age! So I walked in on that, and I was totally blown away. Immediately I wanted Steve in the band.”

Winwood was elated, but he couldn’t get around on his own because he was too young to drive. Muff offered to switch to bass guitar and to drive Stevie, as he was then known, to the gigs. Davis drafted Pete York as drummer, and the Spencer Davis Group was born.

Propelled by the enormous interest in blues and R&B at that time in England, the Spencer Davis Group took off. At sixteen, Winwood was a star. “Steve was such a rich asset,” Davis says, “because even at that age – his voice. When he sang, he was able to copy Jimmy Reed and that style of singing. I thought, ‘Where the hell is this voice coming from? From a diminutive guy like this, at that age, how can he do it?’ But he did it.”

At the height of the group’s popularity, however, Winwood began to find its focus restrictive, and he quit. “I got tired of just copying blues records,” he says. “I wanted to explore other avenues of music.”

Winwood had begun to spend more and more time with players closer to his own age, like Dave Mason, a roadie for the Spencer Davis Group, and Jim Capaldi, the lead singer in a Birmingham band called Deep Feeling. In 1967, Winwood, Mason, Capaldi and Chris Wood, another Birmingham musician, formed Traffic, with the express purpose of opening up some new musical territory. To begin defining their new direction, Traffic moved to a cottage in the English countryside. It was the Summer of Love, and life at Traffic’s communal cottage was dominated by psychedelics and music – a mood perfectly captured on the band’s dreamy debut album, Mr. Fantasy.

“We’d listen to different kinds of music – classical, folk, jazz, all kinds of ethnic music, country music, early rock, blues,” Winwood says, “and the only thing we calculated was to try in some way to incorporate all of them. We were trying to get ourselves a sound which was purely Traffic and couldn’t be mistaken for anybody else.”

Mason, whose taste tended more toward wistful pop, left and rejoined the group several times, often leaving chaos in his wake. After the band released its second album, Traffic, in 1968, Winwood split and formed Blind Faith with Eric Clapton, who had recently left Cream.

The album Blind Faith, released in 1969, features three splendid Winwood tracks – “Had to Cry Today,” “Can’t Find My Way Home” and “Sea of Joy.” But the album’s virtues were quickly forgotten when the group’s American tour – one of the first arena tours in rock history – deteriorated into an oppressive mix of greed and pandering.

“After we’d created an identity for this new band – which wasn’t Cream and wasn’t Traffic – with the record, when we got out onstage, we didn’t have the strength of will to maintain that,” Winwood says. “To start with, a large amount of people who went to the shows wanted to hear Cream. So a couple of times we gave it to them, and of course they loved it.

“That was it then. It’s like an alcoholic having a drink. And then, of course, we did that every night, and it was so easy, because that’s pleasing the crowd. Both Eric and I got unhappy, and we didn’t have the strength to say, ‘No, this is not right,’ and pull it all back together.”

Blind Faith disintegrated shortly after the tour, and Winwood did a brief stint with Ginger Baker’s Air Force. He then began work on Mad Shadows, the solo album that eventually turned into Traffic’s folk-inspired 1970 masterpiece, John Barleycorn Must Die.

Although the re-formed Traffic was successful, it soon became something of a musical revolving door, with Mason and a host of other players coming and going. Winwood’s will to persist with the band suffered a devastating blow in 1972, when, after the release of the band’s most popular record, The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, in 1971, he developed peritonitis as the result of an appendicitis attack. The potentially fatal disease caused him to reexamine his life.

“That was the first time I had anything like that happen, and it had a big effect,” Winwood says. “I was about twenty-five years old, which often is a period where people go through a change. I did what they tell me rock stars do now; I started exercising, eating the right food. I stopped just living for tomorrow.

“From then on, through the Seventies, I came to terms with the real world a bit more. You know, traveling with a rock band, there’s a certain unreality about it. You don’t know where you are, what day of the week it is. People book your plane flights, pack your bag, do your laundry. If you do that from when you’re fifteen, it’s very unreal.”

After Traffic released When the Eagle Flies and completed its 1974 tour, Winwood left the band for good. “I’d had enough of this album, tour, album, tour,” Winwood says. “It was like I was on a treadmill and there was no way of getting off. I just had to say, ‘That’s it with Traffic; no way can I do that anymore.’” At that point Winwood retreated to his rural home in Gloucestershire, in an attempt, as he puts it, “to bring discipline to an undisciplined life.”

“I started deliberately mixing with people who had nothing to do with music or any of the arts,” he says. “You know, there was an idea in the Sixties that people who complied to rules, or who went to work at nine and came home at five and wore suits, that they were wrong. I suddenly began to realize ‘What’s wrong with working from nine till five? That’s great.’ And I started to do that myself a bit then.”

This period of personal regeneration coincided with some of Winwood’s most far-ranging musical experiments. In the mid-Seventies he played and recorded with the Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta, the salsa-driven Fania All-Stars and a number of African musicians – anticipating some of the major trends of progressive Eighties music. He also recorded Steve Winwood, his first solo album. Introspective and lyrical, the album stands up admirably more than a decade after it came out.

At the time, however, the record bombed. Nineteen seventy-seven – the year the Sex Pistols fired the shot heard round the world – was not the best time for a Sixties luminary to release such a refined album. Consequently, Winwood’s memories of punk are harsh.

“It was against everything that I had been or was to that point,” he says bluntly. “It was against music, too. It was antiestablishment. They were really just advanced hippies. I’d been through that antiestablishment thing in the late Sixties, and during the Seventies I suddenly realized the value of being establishment.”

Though Winwood virtually disowns the record today – “I only did it because the record company wanted some product from me” – the failure of Steve Winwood provoked a crisis for him. His tenure with Traffic had ground him down, but his years off the road had made him something of a forgotten man. His experimental records had never reached much of an audience, and his solo album entered a musical and social culture that seemed to have no place for him or his increasingly conservative values. As a result, he seriously considered giving up his career as a recording artist.

“I think because of the experiences I was having through the early Seventies, I was almost preparing myself unknowingly for that, to go into some other area,” he says. “I wasn’t desperate, I don’t think, but I was definitely ready to do whatever was necessary.”

Winwood decided to give recording one last try. To do so, paradoxically, he burrowed deeper into himself, holing up in the sixteen-track studio in his home in Gloucestershire. Over the next three years, he wrote, played and produced all of the music for Arc of a Diver. “I knew ‘Okay, I’ve got one shot left, and I’ve got to make it count,’” he says. “At the point of Arc of a Diver, I wanted to give it everything, and if that wasn’t successful, that would be it. But I had to make sure I was giving everything. And I certainly did — there was nobody else on the record!”

Arc of a Diver‘s first single, “While You See a Chance,” soared into the Top Ten in early 1981. The album’s slick electronic sheen, however, suggested a commercial intent that many of the singer’s longtime fans had a hard time dealing with. It didn’t help that “While You See a Chance” was written with Will Jennings, a professional lyricist from Los Angeles. Though Winwood had rarely written his own lyrics, he’d always worked with friends and musicians like Jim Capaldi and Jimmy Miller, who co-wrote “I’m a Man” and produced the Spencer Davis albums, the first two Traffic albums and Blind Faith.

Winwood, however, says that he values Jennings’s workaday approach to songwriting – “I learned about discipline from Will,” he says – and their collaboration continues to this day. Together they wrote all the songs on Talking Back to the Night and the vast majority on Back in the High Life and Roll with It. Winwood also cites Jennings’s uncanny ability to express Winwood’s emotions, using “While You See a Chance” – which captures Winwood’s optimism as he was attempting to get his career back on track – as an example. “We didn’t talk about what the song was about,” Winwood says. “He just came up with this lyric, and it was right for me, right for him and right for the song.”

Winwood’s exhilaration with Arc of a Diver‘s success was short-lived. He’d always disliked touring, so he didn’t go on the road, and videos had not yet come along to provide artists with another means of staying in the public eye. So Talking Back to the Night – another one-man show – failed to find a substantial audience when it was released, in 1982. By that point Winwood was thirty-four and wondering what the future held for him.

Enter Mr. Entertainment.

I made a conscious effort three years ago to start working with musicians and producers and engineers,” Steve Winwood says. “I got a manager. I obviously did those things consciously. I have to say that those people are directly or indirectly responsible for my success now. There’s no denying it.”

Manager Ron Weisner describes his relationship with Winwood as a “nurturing situation.” Weisner, who has worked with Michael Jackson, Madonna and Rick Springfield, among other artists, met Winwood about three years ago. Winwood was looking for a manager. The only person to play that role for him in the past had been Chris Blackwell, who also happened to own Winwood’s label, Island Records, and the company that published Winwood’s music. “It’s a real conflict of interest going on there,” Winwood says. “I needed to get out of that situation.”

“I’ve always been a fan of Steve’s,” Weisner says. But when Weisner first started working with Winwood, his friends in the business weren’t impressed. “Everybody said to me, ‘What, are you fuckin’ crazy? I mean, why? This guy is washed up, he hasn’t had hits, he’s old news. Forget it.’ “

Winwood had already begun working on Back in the High Life, and Weisner was determined that the record not be another homemade job. The first step was suggesting that Winwood record in London. “As soon as he agreed to that,” Weisner says, “I said, ‘Well, forget London. Maybe you should go to New York.’ “

New York not only provided access to the numerous guest artists who turned up on Back in the High Life – including Chaka Khan, Nile Rodgers, James Taylor and Joe Walsh – it also got Winwood away from a troubling personal situation. His marriage to his wife Nicole had begun to sour; he would eventually divorce her and marry Eugenia Crafton, a Nashville native whom he would meet at a Jr. Walker show in New York in 1986.

Russ Titelman was called in to produce High Life with Winwood. With all this activity, it’s easy to read the album’s title track as an expression of Winwood’s hope for what it would accomplish. But he says the song is more an expression of the moment.

” ‘Back in the High Life’ was not written to predict what I would be doing but because of what I actually was doing,” he says. “You know, I was living in New York. I was going out. I was playing with people onstage. I’d go down to people’s sessions.

“I knew that Back in the High Life was going to be my last album on my contract, and I had thought for a long time about going into production and stuff. I finally decided ‘No, I might as well pursue my career as a solo artist and put everything into it.’ I guess I probably had never put everything into it, because I’d always felt that I was above being an entertainer.”

Videos were the next step. Winwood had always been a shy – but extremely appealing – performer. Good-looking and intense, he seemed insistent on letting his hair-raising skill as a keyboardist, guitarist and singer take precedence over personality. So veteran Winwood watchers were stunned when the “Higher Love” video showed a chicly attired Steve cavorting with models and – could this be true? – not playing an instrument.

“I’ve been a very strong believer in quality video,” Weisner says. “You know, I represented Michael Jackson – I was involved in ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It.’ I kept telling Steve, ‘Look, what we have to do is translate what you do best musicwise to visuals.’

“I found in the past that there are certain artists who are very talented writers who don’t come across in video. You look at, like, a Dan Fogelberg, who I think is a brilliantly talented guy but doesn’t come across visually. I’ve always tried to put Steve in an environment that is presentable and believable. You know, I haven’t shot him out of a cannon.”

The stage show to support High Life – Winwood’s first full-scale tour in over a decade – proceeded along the same lines. Winwood stepped out from behind his keyboard and … entertained. Weisner says, “I said, ‘Steve, I mean, when I saw you in the past, I never knew if you had legs,’ because you would never see him up. He would be very laid-back and timid.”

Audiences have responded to the new Steve Winwood, on both the High Life and the Roll with It tours. During an uneven performance at Poplar Creek Music Theater, outside Chicago, in July and a far better show at Radio City Music Hall, in New York, five weeks later, the crowds were equally ecstatic. Winwood, however, still doesn’t seem entirely at ease with the flashier character running around onstage.

“Actually, the place where I feel most comfortable and most naturally at home is in the recording studio,” Winwood says the day after the Poplar Creek show. “I have to work at being onstage. I’m not a natural at performing, although there is a way to learn to be a natural, if you know what I mean.

“I work, and I take instruction, direction, from as many people as I can in order to learn how to work onstage. Whereas in the studio I have no problem. I don’t need anybody to show me what to do. I can quite happily see myself doing that for the rest of my life. But I couldn’t see myself going onstage, traveling from city to city for the rest of my life. No way.”

Roll with It was Winwood’s first album for Virgin Records, which signed him to a multimillion-dollar three-album contract that even Weisner describes as “insane.” “I felt that Warners did a phenomenal job [distributing Back in the High Life]”, the manager says. “But it kept going back and forth with the numbers, and finally you had to be a little retarded not to look toward the Virgin side.”

Although it was recorded in Toronto and Dublin, Roll with It has a distinctly American feel, partly because of the time Winwood has spent in Nashville since marrying Crafton. “I’ve been learning about the history of R&B,” he says. “A lot of the people from Memphis and Muscle Shoals are all in Nashville now, and I’ve been meeting them.” In fact, the Memphis Horns, a staple of the great Stax-Volt hits of the Sixties, play on the album, which recalls the style of R&B that Winwood used to play with Spencer Davis.

Shortly after the single “Roll with It” began climbing the charts this summer, a Michelob television commercial featuring “Don’t You Know What the Night Can Do?” started appearing. The song had been licensed to Michelob before Roll with It was released, so some assert that Winwood and Jennings had written the song for Michelob’s campaign, “The Night Belongs to Michelob.” Neither man denies the charge, though Weisner insists that the song was written before the deal with Michelob was struck.

“There are two aspects to this,” Winwood says defensively. “The first one is whether the music that I’m doing is worse because they’re involved in it. Are they paying me to write or to record something that’s of inferior quality?

“I mean, I wrote a seven-minute song. Okay, they used fifty seconds of it, Fine. The edits were theirs, although I approved them. I wrote a seven-minute song. It had the word ‘night’ in it, but so have other songs I’ve done. They knew that. There’s no way that their involvement made me present a lower-quality product. There’s no way. The second thing, which has obviously been thrown around, is how rock & roll stood against the establishment. Well, rock & roll has always been sold by major record companies.

“The thing I want to do as a musician is to reach more people with my music. If they can use part of it on a commercial, then I’m reaching potentially more people. The fact that it’s on TV and in commercials – music is entertainment. That’s the way I see it: music is entertainment, and commercials can be entertaining. So I’m happy with it.”

So is Michelob. Winwood appeared at press conferences with representatives of the company, acted in the commercials, permitted large Michelob banners to be prominently displayed at his shows and in every way seemed content to allow his credibility as an artist, built up over twenty-five years, to be used to sell a product.

I‘m happier than I’ve ever been, and I have a family, which is, like, fantastic,” Winwood says, beaming. “It’s wonderful. But aside from that, careerwise, I would never have believed someone who told me ten years ago I was going to have my biggest record ever when I was forty.”

The mood is definitely upbeat in the Winwood camp these days. Winwood and Genia – a lovely blonde with a strong Southern accent – have one young child, and another is very much on the way. They split their time between Gloucestershire and a large farm near Nashville. “We’ll be in the States for when the baby’s due, which is the end of November,” Winwood says. “Basically our home is in England, and we haven’t been there for a while, but obviously it will take a few weeks before we can travel with the baby.”

At the moment, Winwood, Genia and Nobby Clarke, Winwood’s longtime road manager, are perusing the Las Vegas papers to find a show to see that night. It won’t be Elvis’s comeback tour – in fact, the leading contender at the moment seems to be The Magic of David Copperfield – but then that’s not the only thing that’s changed over the years. “I think as you get older,” Winwood says, “you kind of get less radical and a bit more philosophical about things.”  

As for the future, Winwood has two more albums left for Virgin, but the next one is not due for release until the spring of 1990. And once this tour is over, he’s under no obligation to go out on the road again, though he allows that “I’m enjoying it more than I ever have, so maybe I can do a bit more of that next year.” Production work is also a possibility.

Now that he’s back in the high life, will Steve Winwood dare to do more than just roll with it? “Goodness knows what the next album will be like,” he says, shaking his head. “I mean, maybe it will get very radical. I don’t know yet.” 

Steve Winwood A Guide to his Best Albums

From loudersound.com March 2021

With the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith and solo, Steve Winwood has shown himself to be a truly singular talent. These are his best albums

In a career that spans 45 years, Stephen Lawrence Winwood has been many things: child prodigy, leader of one of British rock’s most innovative bands, co-founder of the world’s first supergroup, multimillion-selling solo star… And through it all, three qualities have marked out Winwood as a truly singular talent: his mastery of the Hammond B-3 organ, his brilliance as a songwriter and, above all, one of the most richly expressive and soulful voices in rock. 

Born in Handsworth, Birmingham on May 1, 1948, Steve Winwood was barely into his teens when he served his rock’n’roll apprenticeship playing in a band that backed blues legends Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King and Chuck Berry. 

He was still only 15 when he joined the Spencer Davis Group along with his older brother Muff. Young Stevie was the group’s star, co-writing and singing their now classic 1967 UK No.1 Gimme Some Lovin’. But he didn’t hang around. By the end of that year he’d formed a new band, Traffic. 

Originally based in a cottage in rural Berkshire, their very own hippie commune, Traffic’s idiosyncratic blend of rock, folk, blues, jazz and psychedelia made them trailblazers of the new rock era. But Winwood was always looking for fresh challenges. In 1968 he made a guest appearance on the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s landmark double album Electric Ladyland, playing organ on the extended blues jam Voodoo Chile. And in 1969, with Traffic disbanded, Winwood hooked up with another icon, guitarist Eric Clapton, to form the short-lived, one-album supergroup Blind Faith. 

Winwood revived Traffic in 1970, but by 1975 the group had become passé and Winwood went solo – in the most literal sense; on 1980’s Arc Of A Diver, his commercial breakthrough, Winwood played every instrument himself. In 1988, at his peak as a solo artist, Winwood topped the US album chart with Roll With It. 

These days he operates in a more low-key fashion, releasing solo albums as and when he pleases, his latest being 2008’s Nine Lives. With his status as a rock legend secure, Steve Winwood doesn’t have to push himself too hard. As he once said: “I never wanted to be a great star. I wanted only to be a great musician.”

Traffic – The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys (Island, 1971) 

If there’s one song that best illustrates the genius of Steve Winwood, it’s the 11-minute title track of Traffic’s fifth album, a hypnotic jazz-rock masterpiece and a searing indictment of the music industry. 

Already a veteran at 23, Winwood felt exploited. Two sub-par Traffic albums – the odds ‘n’ sods collection Last Exit and the live Welcome To The Canteen – had resulted from contractual obligations. Winwood’s anger was softly voiced but no less powerful for it. There are many other great songs on this album, but on the track The Low Spark… Winwood truly bared his soul.

Steve Winwood – Arc Of A Diver (Island, 1980) 

Winwood’s eponymous solo debut, released in 1977, was a flop. Coming just two years after Traffic split, it was mostly co-written with former Traffic bandmate Jim Capaldi. Winwood seemed unwilling, or unable, to move on. Three years later everything changed. 

Arc Of A Diver established Winwood as a successful solo star with a new vision. Updating his sound with state-of-the-art synthesisers, he embraced the new decade with a modern, sophisticated blend of soft rock and what critics rather patronisingly dubbed ‘blue-eyed soul’. Arc Of A Diver was the album that defined Steve Winwood as a solo artist.

Spencer Davis Group – The Best Of The Spencer Davis Group (EMI, 1998) 

The songs that first made Steve Winwood famous are still thrilling more than 40 years on. Foremost of these is Gimme Some Lovin’, a jubilant rhythm & blues stomp powered by Winwood’s electrifying Hammond organ riff and sung with the soul power of a Motown superstar. 

The song has been covered many times but nothing comes close to matching the original. Also included on this collection is another classic hit co-written and sung by Winwood, the blistering I’m A Man, which went Top 10 in both the UK and US.

Traffic – Mr. Fantasy (Island, 1967) 

Released in the year of Sgt. Pepper and the Stones’ similarly acid-tweaked Their Satanic Majesties Request, Traffic’s first album was very much a product of the psychedelic age, even though it was originally issued without the quaintly trippy hits Paper Sun and Hole In My Shoe. 

Some of the songs are truly bizarre, such as Berkshire Poppies, but Winwood had a more serious agenda, as illustrated by the soulful Dear Mr. Fantasy and the melancholy No Face, No Name, No Number. Moreover, the jazz-influenced jam Dealer and the sitar-led Utterly Simple posited Traffic as a rock group without limitations.

Blind Faith – Blind Faith (Polydor, 1969) 

Forming Blind Faith, Winwood teamed up with former Cream members Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker, plus bassist Rick Grech, in ‘the original supergroup’. The band made their live debut in front of an audience of 100,000 at London’s Hyde Park in 1969. 

Two months later this album was at No.1 in the UK and the US. In places it was brilliant, Clapton’s Presence Of The Lord a deep, spiritual blues, Winwood’s Can’t Find My Way Home a beautiful acoustic number. But when Clapton bailed, Blind Faith was over, their sole album forever marred by that infamous cover photograph.

Traffic – John Barleycorn Must Die (Island, 1970) 

After Blind Faith and an even briefer tenure in another ‘supergroup’, Ginger Baker’s Airforce, Winwood began work on a solo album. But, having enlisted Traffic drummer Jim Capaldi and sax/flute player Chris Wood, Winwood soon bowed to the inevitable and re-formed the band. 

His decision was quickly vindicated; John Barleycorn Must Die was Traffic’s first gold-certified album in the US. As a trio, the group mixed fluid, experimental jazz rock with English folk themes, reworking a traditional song dating back to 1465 for this album’s title track.

Steve Winwood – Back In The High Life (Island, 1986) 

Winwood’s fourth solo album marked the end of his 20-year association with Island Records, and he left them on a high. Propelled by the chart-topping single Higher Love, it sold more than five million copies. The album is a model of elegant, soul-influenced mainstream rock, all very 80s but so finely crafted that it has aged surprisingly well. 

Having performed his previous two albums alone, this time Winwood called on some big names, including James Taylor, Chaka Khan, Joe Walsh and Chic’s Nile Rodgers. And, once again, there was a co-writing credit for friend Vivian Stanshall.

Traffic – Traffic (Island, 1968) 

Creative tension was always an issue for Traffic. Even when creating their first album in a rustic idyll there was a clear disparity between Winwood and guitarist Dave Mason, who wrote Hole In My Shoe, a song Winwood recorded “under duress”. 

Mason left the group soon after Mr. Fantasy, but, in a surprise volte-face, he returned for this second album. His Feelin’ Alright? was in keeping with the album’s laid-back vibe but, tellingly, he played no part on its key track, (Roamin’ Thro’ The Gloamin’ With) 40,000 Headmen. In short order, Mason was fired, Traffic was put on ice and Winwood was hanging out with Eric Clapton.

Steve Winwood – Talking Back To The Night (Island, 1982)

Winwood’s third solo album has been largely forgotten. Released two years after the classic Arc Of A Diver, and again recorded by Winwood alone, it failed to match its predecessor, stalling at No.28 in the US. 

It is, though, a strong album, and its most famous song, the AOR anthem Valerie, has enjoyed a long and unusual afterlife. When first released as a single in 1982, Valerie stiffed. But a remixed version hit the US Top 10 in 1987, and in 2004 the song was reworked by Eric Prydz for his UK No.1 bangin’ choon Call On Me. Winwood was so impressed by Prydz’s version that he re-recorded vocals for it.

Steve Winwood Nine Lives (2008)

From pastemagazine.com

Quite honestly, I don’t expect much from my ‘60s rock ‘n roll heroes. With the exceptions of Bob Dylan and Richard Thompson, who still manage to surprise me from time to time, most of the artists who made me care about rock ‘n roll in the first place are either dead or have been coasting since the Nixon administration. Paul McCartney? That 1970 solo debut album was really something. And that’s about the best I can muster. Van Morrison is hit and miss (and entirely miss on his latest Keep It Simple), Eric Clapton only emerges from his now three-decades-long lethargy about once every ten years or so, and John Fogerty keeps on chooglin’ while pandering tired Summer of Love nostalgia.

So I really don’t know why I bothered to pay attention to Steve Winwood’s latest, Nine Lives. I loved those early Spencer Davis singles. I loved those Traffic albums, but everybody loved those Traffic albums, and that was a long, long time ago. The first few solo albums from the early-to-mid ‘80s were decent, but they weren’t Traffic. And then I stopped paying attention. Nine Lives is the first new Winwood material I’ve heard in more than twenty years. And I take it all back. There is at least one ‘60s dinosaur out there who is making music that can stack up just fine with his classic material.

Last time I checked, Winwood’s music was being used as the backdrop for Michelob commercials. It was slick, glitzy, synth-driven pop, and it was the perfect accompaniment to nighttime video shots of the Manhattan skyline. Nine Lives sounds nothing like that. It’s a jamband album, a la the Traffic classics The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys and John Barleycorn Must Die, and, like all jamband albums, its biggest drawback is the absence of discernible hooks and singalong choruses. But look, if you’re going to go in for seven-minute jams, who would you rather listen to, boring young Dave Matthews or the suitably ancient but surprisingly frisky Steve Winwood? And how about if we brought along Eric Clapton – a totally resuscitated Eric Clapton at that – to play guitar? Is this sounding like a better proposition now? Because that’s what Winwood has done. It’s Son of Blind Faith, with some Latin rhythms and occasional sax and flute solos thrown in for good measure.

Winwood’s bluesy, soulful voice has lost none of its power, and the synths have given way to a much more organic sound dominated by Winwood’s Hammond B3 organ. It’s an admittedly calculated return to the past, and it recapitulates everything that was great about The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and Blind Faith. Sax/flute player Paul Booth ably fills the Chris Wood role in the band, and Winwood wraps his soulful pipes around, you guesed it, nine tunes that are surprisingly reflective and introspective. Best of all, Clapton shows up on “Dirty City” and unleashes his best guitar solo in at least a decade, a searing and yes, dirty, take on his patented blues playing. There are no hit singles here. Michelob won’t come knocking. But this is a warm, expansive slow burner of an album, and a welcome return to classic form.

Steve Winwood Talking Back to the Night (1982)

From jazzmusicarchives.com

Having proved to himself and the rest of the music industry that he could do it all by himself, thank you very much, on his highly successful album “Arc of a Diver,” Steve Winwood next faced the task of following it up before the public’s notoriously short memory came into play and turned him into a fading blip on the radar. I don’t know this for a fact but I suspect that the chaps upstairs at Island Records were more than encouraging in his adopting that strategy and they may have slipped over into the realm of applying a modicum of pressure to get it done ASAP. The reason I say that is because this record doesn’t have the nearly as much warmth and heart that the previous disc owned in such an admirable quantity. Whereas “Arc” had taken him years to conceive and complete, “Talking Back to the Night” took about seven months to put together and that sizeable difference may be the true culprit in it not measuring up to his high standards. I’ll stop short of accusing Steve of not being as meticulous this time around because I can’t substantiate that allegation. He may’ve been just as inspired and motivated as he ever was before but, as always, the music can’t lie or bamboozle for long and, in the final analysis, it just doesn’t challenge, entertain or move me. Being a huge, lifelong fan, that’s the last thing I thought any of Winwood’s work would make me say but sometimes the truth hurts.

He wisely opens with the album’s most impressive song, “Valerie,” a cut destined to be a hit single five years later after being remixed for the greatest hits package, “Chronicles.” It has an undeniable pop feel but the keyboard chord structures contain a lot of jazz flavorings that keep it from being petty. The tune is well-written and arranged and Steve’s synth solo has a substantial amount of lively zip. I love the line of “So cool, she was/like jazz on a summer’s day/music, high and sweet/then she just blew away…” “Big Girls Walk Away” follows and it’s a slice of jazzy R&B riding atop a steady groove but the song’s fundamental composition is merely average. I detect a New Wave influence in his synthesizer settings that, unfortunately, robs it of any and all depth. Will Jennings’ lyrics about a party girl are the only upside I can find. “You hold your broken heart out/and you say it just won’t stop hurting/like there’s something I can do,” Steve sings. “And I Go” is a classic love ballad with a respectful hint of the famous Philly soul sound and attitude surrounding it. His trusty Hammond organ gives it a cozy backdrop but the number just sorta lies there like a limp dishrag. “While There’s a Candle Burning” is more of a rock/pop ballad in that it has a bit more drive behind it yet there’s still no memorable handle to grab onto. At this point even Will’s words are starting to fail him. They make little sense.

Things briefly get better with “Still in the Game” (despite its beat being entrenched in the then-trendy New Wave clique) because it dredges up enough vitality and spirit to lift itself out of the doldrums. That relentless momentum is its lifeblood and the big, fat synthesized strings at the end are grand enough to hold your interest. “Here’s to letting go/though sometimes it does get lonely,” he sings revealingly. Maybe he should’ve let go more often while making this album. On “It Was Happiness” a mind-dulling sameness takes over. It’s an obvious crutch in his presentation and a deal killer for me if there ever was one. It’s like Winwood couldn’t decide what he wanted this song to be and the result is that it lacks focus in its intent. The ambience is dry and emotionless and the lame lyrics don’t help. “Help Me Angel” sports a light reggae rhythm to provide a welcome change of pace at this juncture but, yet again, it’s the weak and unimaginative writing involved that keeps it from blossoming into something worthwhile. Dynamics are essential to the execution of even the finest of musical material but there are none to be found on this cut. The record’s obligatory dance number with a semi-disco personality, “Talking Back to the Night,” isn’t as drab and that alone makes it stand out from the others. Steve’s vocal contains some decent passion, an aspect of his craft that’s inexplicably missing for most of this album. Maybe he was inspired to emote by Jennings’ lines that describe a musician caught in the web of drug addiction. “His dream is getting smaller/and he wonders where to turn/and he’s trying hard to make it/and he’s trying not to burn,” Winwood croons convincingly. The closer is “There’s A River” wherein an intriguing, old-school pump organ vibe emanating from his synthesizer distinguishes it from the rest of the tracks. It has a folky gospel feel to it that’s inviting but in the end it’s another disappointment because it doesn’t evolve beyond its initial premise. The payoff never arrives.

“Arc of a Diver” had imperfections but they also gave it character and charisma. “Talking Back to the Night” in many ways is too pristine and slick for its own good. It’s as if Steve had, through difficult trial and error, mastered the art of solitary, unassisted music-making and he not only got rid of all the blemishes but all of the soul in the process. It’s entirely too smooth and almost devoid of a jazz presence. I’ve written in other reviews that Winwood’s voice is his ace in the hole that can make even mediocre material rise above its pedestrian status and shine brightly but in this case it doesn’t do the trick often enough. I think he didn’t spend the necessary time this record required, rushing through the preparation too hastily and forgetting the essential ingredient; songwriting. Perspective is a horrible thing to lose. The bad news is that he can’t do anything about it now. It is what it is. The good news is that he learned from this experience and moved on.

Stomu Yamashta’s Go (1976)

From prognaut.com

Stomu Yamashta up to this point had gained great respect for his compositional skills in various styles of music ranging from Soundtracks to Jazz to Classical to Rock. In 1976 he formed this group with a line up that reads like a who’s who of jazz and progressive rock musicians. Traffic’s Steve Winwood, Tangerine Dream’s Klaus Schulze, Michael Shrieve from Santana, Return to Forever’s Al DiMeola… This is almost like a jazz progger’s dream team!

The mood is a little less jazzy and more space rock than expected, considering the players involved. Orchestration from Paul Buckmaster contributes to this aspect of the piece greatly. Originally two sides of vinyl listing songs separately but merged together, the album is a full-blown concept piece that is superbly performed.

Vocalist Steve Winwood is in fine form here, predating his later mega successful solo career. Al DiMeola’s guitar work is amazing as always. Michael Shrieve kicks some major drums all over the place and seems responsible along with DiMeola for the Latin-influenced Santana-like passages here and there. The keyboard players, Yamashta and Schulze, are the real stars here as the spacey nature of the piece is naturally driven by the synthesizers.

There are passages that play games with time signatures (a 4/4 gets arranged to a 3/8, 3/8, 2/8 triplet, very worthy of note) and it gets funky at times like good jazz-fusion of the period (ie: Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jeff Beck). I have only one complaint about the way that the songs work into one another. Instead of finding a way to make the segues work from song to song, the band often just chooses to fade out and fade in the next song at the same time. This does not make it as cohesive a progressive rock epic as it could have been. I also understand a decision was made to make the second half of the piece the first part of the album. This may make better musical sense, but makes the story (such as it is) a lot harder to follow. They of course remedied this in concert, but to me it is a gaffe that is forever unrectifiable.

Let’s see… who to recommend this to… Jazz fans of course will want to hear DiMeola and Shrieve at the top of their game. Fans of spacey music like Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream will want to hear this certainly. Rock fans that enjoy Winwood’s gorgeous tenor will like this as well. Appeals to some or none, depending on your preference of music. It definitely appeals to me.

Steve Winwood Back in the High Life (1986)

From classicrockreview.com

Steve Winwood is an artist who has had two major phases of his professional career. Starting as a teenager with the Spencer Davis Group, he was thrust into the international spotlight with a pair of mega-hits “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m a Man”. This kicked off the first phase of his career playing and fronting several progressive rock bands including Blind Faith and, more prominently, Traffic throughout the late sixties and early seventies.

Then, in the 1980s, Winwood came back with the second phase of his career which was more distinctly pop and blue-eyed soul. He scored some minor hits from the albums Arc of a Diver in 1980 and Talking Back to the Night in 1982. These albums set the stage for the most successful album of his career – 1986’s Back In the High Life. Here, Winwood took some of the styles and methods that he had developed on the previous two albums and brought it to a whole new level.

The album achieves that elusive goal of combining great songs that will stand the test of time while also catering to the commercial appeal of the day. As we mentioned earlier in other reviews, this was no easy task in 1986 when the prevailing pop “sound” was at a nadir. Winwood and co-producer Russ Titelman sacrificed nothing here. The entire album managed to encompass the sounds of the eighties, as it uses its share of synthesizers and modern fonts without sounding dated. This was achieved by counter-balancing the “80’s” sounds with some traditional instruments, styles and Winwood’s distinctive and emotive vocals. There is also excellent songwriting, with most songs co-written by Winwood and Will Jennings and all including some cool lyrics and catchy melodies.

1986 is the third year overall that this new 2011 enterprise called Classic Rock Review has examined, the first two were 1971 and 1981. It may seem like we choose these years at random, there is a method to our madness as we choose to review years with significant anniversaries (that is anniversaries divisible by ‘5’), and it is the 25th anniversary of the music of 1986. With each of these review years, we choose an Album of the Year to review last, and for 1986 that album is Back In the High Life.

For a pop-oriented album, Back In the High Life is unique. Each of its eight tracks exceed five minutes in length which is something not seen much outside of prog rock, art rock, or dance tracks. This may be a further testament to the thought and effort put into these compositions. The album also contains some cameo appearances by popular contemporaries, diversely spread throughout.

The album kicks off with the song which would become Winwood’s only #1 hit of his long career, “Higher Love”. This nicely sets the pace for what we’ll expect from the rest of the album – Caribbean rhythms with synth, horns, funky bass, and the distinctive, upper-range vocals. This song is awash in good feelings; “Let me feel that love come over you…”, almost a gospel-like song, and it features soul star Chaka Kahn singing high background harmonies.

On the other end, the album concludes with a couple of interesting songs with very different co-writers. “Split Decision” was co-written by the legendary Joe Walsh and begins with a distinctive, crunchy riff from Walsh and then smoothly works towards a more Winwood-centric riff with organ and reggae beat in the verse and a soul-influenced chorus. The lyric is another take on the influences of good and evil on a person;

“One man puts the fire out, the other lights the fuse…”

“My Love’s Leavin’” was co-written by British eccentric artist Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and contains stark soundscapes which are ethereal and haunting, about facing reality and singing of hope and faith in the face of a loss.

“Freedom Overspill” contains some rewarding instrumentation with an edgy, whining guitar providing some of the best licks on the album above a masterful arrangement of synths, organ, horns, and rhythm. It is very funky and very eighties, but somehow it is not a caricature. The lyrics paint a picture of a couple up all night hashing out their differences – “Coffee and tears the whole night through/Burning up on midnight oil/And it’s come right back on you”.

“The Finer Things” was another radio hit from the album, with its misty opening, bouncing, Police-like rhythms, and lots of changes throughout. The song rolls along like the river, at some points calm and serene while at others rough and tumbling rapids. This metaphor is explicit in the lyrics;

“So time is a river rolling into nowhere, I will live while I can I will have my ever after…” 

“Wake Me Up On Judgment Day” is a song about wanting to avoid struggle – to get to the good stuff without all of the pitfalls – “Give me life where nothing fails, not a dream in a wishing well”. The song kicks in like a sunrise, the burst of light then explodes from the dawn. Ironically, this song talks of “horns” but actual “horns” are used sparingly with a heavy bass line and much percussion.

But the single element that makes Back In the High Life a truly great album is the title song “Back In the High Life Again”. According to co-writer Jennings, the song was one that Winwood seemed to have little interest in developing when recording began on the album. Until one winter day Winwood returned to his mansion after his divorce to find everything gone except for a mandolin in the corner of the living room. Jennings said, “He went over and picked up the mandolin, and he already had the words in his head, and that’s when he wrote the melody.” The recording of this song for the album includes a lead mandolin along several other ethnic instruments such as acoustic guitar, accordion, bagpipes, and marching drums, with guest James Taylor on backing vocals. This is all as a backdrop for the excellent vocal melody by Winwood, which portrays the feeling of hope and optimism.

The song was later covered by Warren Zevon, whose bare-bones, emotional delivery has an entirely different mood from Winwood’s original release, mournful and melancholy, almost satirical. This despite the fact that Zevon did not change the key or melody for his recording. Perhaps the truest test for a quality song is when it can have several interpretations and “faces”, depending on its delivery, and “Back In the High Life Again” is truly a great song.

Back In the High Life was the final album Winwood would do for Island Records, a label he had been with for 21 years at the time of the album’s released in July, 1986. Despite this longevity, Winwood was still relatively young at 38 and he would go on to do more interesting things in the subsequent years; signing with Virgin Records and producing a few more hit albums in the late eighties, reuniting the band Traffic in nineties, and most recently working with former Blind Faith band mate Eric Clapton, with whom he toured in 2011.

Steve Winwood Arc of a Diver (1980)

From classicrockreview.com

Arc of a Diver is a true “solo” record by Steve Winwood  as he played every instrument and recorded and produced the album in his private studio. The album was a breakthrough for Winwood as a solo artist and it marked a return for him to the top echelon of pop/rock artists as he adapted technology to forge an original contemporary sound for his compositions. The only real collaboration on Arc of a Diver involved the lyrics of the songs, most of which were penned by American songwriter Will Jennings.

Winwood had been in the public eye since the early 1960s, when at age 14 he joined the Spencer Davis Group. The group had a trio of number one hits before Winwood departed in 1967. Next, he joined forces with Eric Clapton in a couple of “supergroups” – Powerhouse in 1966, and Blind Faith in 1969. In between, Winwood spent two phases with the group Traffic, as a supporting player in the late sixties version and taking the lead in his second stint with classic albums such as John Barlycorn Must Die (1970) and The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys (1971). After departing Traffic in the mid 1970s, Winwood launched his solo career with his self-titled debut album in 1977.

Winwood built Netherturkdonic studio on his farm in Gloucestershire, England and began composing and recording music on keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, and percussion. As the compositions matured, he looked outside for lyrics with Jennings, Viv Stanshall, and George Fleming contributing.

The complex synth chords swell like a sunrise to launch the opening track, “While You See a Chance”. When it fully kicks in, this track features solid melodies over complex musical passages and rhythms which patiently make their way to the hook and ultimately the outro, a potent mix that found favor with many types of listeners. The song peaked in the Top 10 in 1981, making it Winwood’s first hit as a solo artist. Next comes the title track with lyrics provided by Stanshall and music built through a funk synth array. The sound is tight with a warm feeling of a graceful arc portrayed.

“Second-Hand Woman” has the most evident, thus far, programmed synth music and features a good use of synth fretless bass, while “Slowdown Sundown” changes direction as a fine acoustic and piano ballad with a soulful organ throughout and reflective lyrics about wanting moments to last longer. The groove-laden “Spanish Dancer” has a subtle synth arpeggio in the background which persists throughout with little variation. Lyrically, the song seems to be a metaphor for a feeling that you just don’t want to end.

“Night Train” is an all out funk/dance song and was a minor hit from the second side of the album. A long intro serves to drive the groove home before Winwood’s vocals, equally as patiently, work towards the catchy pop hook. The final track, “Dust”, is a hybrid between the album’s digital and analog approach. This moderate breakup song does seem artificially lengthy, but Winwood’s vocals are at their finest on this one.

Arc of a Diver nearly reached the top of the Billboard 200 album chart and Winwood was established as a commercially viable act in the 1980s, with 1986’s Back In the High Life being the commercial apex of his career.

Steve Winwood Arc of a Diver (1980)

From theseconddisc.com

Steve Winwood turned 32 in 1980, a grand old man by rock and roll standards.  He was already a veteran, having played with the Spencer Davis Group, Blind Faith and perhaps most notably, Traffic, but a 1977 solo debut failed to yield significant commercial gains.  “I suppose I’ve always been a band leader, rather than a virtuoso like [Blind Faith bandmate] Eric Clapton,” Winwood once mused.  So it might have come as a shock to many when the inner virtuoso emerged on New Year’s Eve, 1980, with the second solo effort from the multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter: Arc of a Diver.  Almost 32 years later, Winwood has revisited this watershed album as a 2-CD deluxe edition from Universal Music, and it still holds up as a taut, vibrant song cycle rather than as a curio of the past.

Though Winwood had a considerable C.V. prior to the release of Arc, and would have subsequent hits like 1986’s Back in the High Life, it remains one of the most enduring albums in his catalogue. Winwood wrote every track on the album, either on his own or in collaboration with Will Jennings (“Looks Like We Made It,” “My Heart Will Go On”), Vivian Stanshall (The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) or George Fleming. Winwood recorded Arc at his own home studios in Gloucestershire, England, joining an elite member of a group of one-man bands including Prince, Todd Rundgren and Jeff Lynne.  Winwood played acoustic and electric guitars, bass, keyboards, synthesizers, drums and percussion.  He produced and engineered the sessions himself, too, ending up with seven fairly sprawling tracks, all but one over five minutes in length.

The opening song, “While You See a Chance,” could have been Winwood’s credo.  A shimmering pop confection with a relentlessly upbeat and optimistic message expressed both musically and in Jennings’ lyrics, it’s also an affirmative statement from a survivor.  It implores all of us to seize that same strength of spirit, to refuse to give up even when the cards aren’t in your favor.  This central theme resonates throughout the album, and is complemented by “Arc of a Diver,” the title track co-written with Vivian Stanshall.  It’s ostensibly a love song, but its striking and unusual imagery also evokes a triumph over adversity.  Even elements of nature won’t stand in Winwood’s way:  “I play the piano, no more running honey/This time to the sky I’ll sing if clouds don’t hear me/To the sun I’ll cry and even if I’m blinded/I’ll try moon gazer because with you I’m stronger…”  Positivity also echoes on another beloved album cut, “Spanish Dancer.”  The central simile (“I can feel the beat/Like a Spanish dancer under my feet”) is repeated as Winwood blissfully recounts the effect music has on him.  Like “While You See a Chance,” “Spanish Dancer” has a universal sentiment.  It’s cannily set to a hypnotic melody embellished with light funk and Latin flourishes.

This being rock and roll, there’s an ode to a “Second Hand Woman,” set to another bright melody with a gleaming, then-contemporary arrangement.  The most overtly rocking track is the insistent “Night Train” with its locomotive metaphors, capturing the frenetic energy of a man who hasn’t slowed down, “looking for the break of day.”  On the other end of the spectrum is “Slowdown, Sundown,” a low-key ballad that could easily be translated to the country-and-western idiom (“Slowdown sundown, all I really need is time/For faded love songs and feelings in the wine/Let them take me down the line…”) and offers a reflective respite in the album sequence.  Yet both of those songs show a yearning for a personal peace.  The album closer “Dust” is another mature reflection on the passage of time in the framework of a love song: “With you, dawn never tasted so good/Swept up like debris on a Saturday night…Dust, the timeless memory of you, I love you.”

What sets this deluxe edition of Arc of a Diver apart from past issues?  Hit the jump!

Winwood’s recent track record for reissues has been a bit checkered, with fans and collectors alike confounded by the differing selections on the 2010 multi-artist, 4-CD box set Revolutions: The Very Best of Steve Winwood and its single-disc distillation.  “While You See a Chance” was a U.S. Top 10 hit in 1981 and a No. 45 hit in the U.K. despite a notoriously-truncated radio edit, and while Winwood included the full album version on the box set, one had to purchase the highlights disc to own that single edit.  It’s likewise absent from this new Arc of a Diver, meaning that a major part of the album’s story is missing.   (“While You See a Chance” did fare better, however, than “Roll with It,” the Grammy-nominated song co-written with Jennings and introduced on Winwood’s 1988 album of the same name. That song was left off the 4-CD Revolutions altogether in favor of an appearance on the single disc.)

What is present, then?  There are just three songs as bonus tracks.  The original U.S. single edit of “Arc of a Diver” (which cuts a little over a minute from the song) has been included, along with the instrumental version of “Night Train” from a period single, and the “radio edit” of the 2010 version of “Spanish Dancer” from Revolutions.  The majority of the second disc is devoted to the documentary Arc of a Diver: The Steve Winwood Story, originally aired on BBC Radio 2.  It’s a bold choice, no doubt, to include this 56-minute history of the artist in favor of session material, alternates, live tracks, B-sides or single versions.  Alas, the three selected songs seem arbitrarily chosen, as they do little to flesh out the story of the album.

Though it’s produced with the same hallmarks of quality that distinguish many of the BBC Radio 2 documentaries about prominent musical figures of our time, The Steve Winwood Story offers little in the way of replay value.  (It’s also sequenced as one track, making it preferable to listen only when the full hour can be dedicated.)  Kate Thornton narrates, and there are musical excerpts from the catalogues of the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and of course, Winwood’s solo career on which it concentrates.  It charts his influences in the blues, rock, folk, jazz and even classical genres (including Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker and Miles Davis) as he set out, in his own words, to “try to create something that was unique.”  Winwood isn’t the only interview subject; collaborators, friends and family members are also heard, including Russ Titelman, Nile Rodgers, Will Jennings, Van Morrison, Pete York, Klaus Schulze, Muff Winwood and the late Jim Capaldi.  The album Arc of a Diver is addressed roughly one-third of the way into the program, but just for a brief few minutes.  Elsewhere, there’s a fun anecdote from Titelman involving Chaka Khan, frank discussion of the tensions within Traffic between Winwood and Dave Mason, and reflections from various personnel about Winwood’s creative process.  It’s illuminating, but can’t entirely make up for the lack of rare, or new-to-CD, material pertaining to the album sessions and releases.  David Hepworth provides new liner notes to round out the package.

If the new 2-CD Arc of a Diver doesn’t entirely illustrate the arc of the album’s making, it remains an important, work by an important, and beloved, artist.  Those wishing to revisit this vivid, spirited album won’t go wrong here, but the specter of what might have been in an all-encompassing, song-packed 2-CD deluxe edition, still lingers.

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood Live From Madison Square Garden (DVD) (2009)

From cloudsandclocks.net

Fall 2007, word leaked out that Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood would play some concerts at the Madison Square Garden. In hindsight, it’s easy to consider Winwood’s participation to the second edition of the Crossroads Guitar Festival, where he also played a few songs from the Blind Faith repertoire in a joint performance with Clapton (some excerpts being featured on this set’s second DVD-V), as a kind of “dress rehearsal” – or, maybe, a kind of “general compatibility check” – for the dates a the Garden and all that logically followed.

For reasons that should be very clear to those who are familiar with “the history of rock”, before one could clearly spell the words “Blind Faith”, people were already running to get tickets, which were decidedly on the affordable side: if my memory works, a lot were priced at $55, with uncomfortable seats added at the very last moment going for a very reasonable $179. Those who attended – I’ve heard from people who attended all the (three) shows from the front seats – talked about a fine experience, that would only prove inferior to the “peaks” the artists are said to have reached during their U.S. Summer tour, 2009.

A symbolic coincidence?, Blind Faith’s U.S. 1969 tour started at the Madison Square Garden. The fact that things immediately took a wrong turn, and that after the end of the tour (August, 24th, Hawaii), Clapton and Winwood were not on speaking terms for a long time, makes it possible to consider that tour as an “unfinished business” which deserved a better “closure”.

(Talking about the famous Eric Clapton 1973 Rainbow Concert in his autobiography published a few years ago, Who I Am, Pete Townshend writes that he had to vigorously call Winwood in order to have him attend the concert rehearsals, Hammond included. While in the long interview that appears on this DVD-V, Clapton himself admits that his jumping off the Blind Faith ship was definitely not a noble gesture.)

It’s true that a lot of things have changed since then – think about it: who would agree today to going onstage in front of 20.000 people who expect you to work wonders when both your repertoire and P.A. are definitely not up to it? (and it’s only the first date of the tour!) – so there’s a lot to enjoy here: perfect amps, clean sound, well-tuned guitars.

As it’s to be expected, there are a lot of close-ups of fingers and picks, something that only a fool would regards as “not really part of music”, or “a pass-time for the few”, or “too much attention paid to self-indulgent solos”. This is music: the inclination of the strings at the nut (just notice the perfect way the E string on Willie Weeks’ Fender Precision is placed over the slot and goes to the machine head), or the clean way the guitar strings pass through the nut, the micro-adjustments on the instrument’s volume and tone controls, the ever-changing way the pick hits the strings – instant equalization! Those who have never seen a Hammond organ and its “drawbars” will learn a lot just watching some fine parts performed by Winwood.

The album comprises of performances from February 25, 26, and 28, 2008. The DVD-V was released on May 19, 2009, just like its double CD counterpart.

The line-up: Ian Thomas on drums, Willie Weeks on bass, and Chris Stainton on keyboards. Thomas is a fine “team player”, quite solid. Willie Weeks needs no real introduction (just check his bass parts on Winwood’s first solo album from 1977). I’m pretty sure most readers already know Stainton’s hands: they appear in close-up in the left portion of the screen in the Woodstock movie, at the start of Joe Cocker’s performance of The Beatles’ With A Little Help From My Friends.

Enormous space, essential sound. Clapton is on guitar, Winwood on guitar, Hammond, and grand piano. Stainton plays a Hammond and two synths: one sounding like a “thin” piano, the other working as a substitute for reeds, flutes, and Mellotron, and as a sort of quasi Mini-moog (all done with restraint and good taste, as I’ll argue when discussing the individual songs).

My mental image of Blind Faith – what I see as I listen to the music – is a b&w picture from the 60s. So I had a lot of trouble combining that picture with a lot of what came later. Of the very famous musicians, who could easily release two “Best of” called “The Versace Years” and “The Armani Years”? Winwood’s case is stranger still. A “musicians’ musician”, and somebody who’s never been a natural onstage, it was weird to see him dancing, having at last accepted the role of the entertainer. Life is complicated – born in Birmingham, Winwood learned to swim at the age of 40, in the United States.

Clapton (1945) was already a celebrity by the time he played with the Yardbirds. Winwood (1948), already a “prodigy” with the Spencer Davis Group, became a familiar voice all over the world thanks to such massive hits as Gimme Some Lovin’ and I’m A Man. Their first official playing together – but Winwood says that Clapton acted as a sort of “older brother” at the time he first came to London – are those sessions released under the name Powerhouse on the album What’s Shaking, in March ’66. Then, it was Traffic time for Winwood, and Cream time for Clapton.

Those long interviews featured on the second DVD-V show Clapton and Winwood as very different individuals. Winwood looks like somebody who would prefer to be elsewhere, but has learned that such things are part of his chosen occupation. Sometimes a rotatory gesture of his right arm appears to imply that certain things can’t be discussed in brief. (Watch his posture onstage: while playing a guitar solo, Winwood bends forward; quite often he looks at the guitar fretboard.) For somebody who was born in the U.K., Clapton moves both arms in the air quite a lot. What came before has made him a fine talker, quite assured, as a result of discipline and self-examination. Well-mannered and never vague, but it’s clear who’s really conducting the interview, and firmly traces the confines of what is off-limits.

(A personal observation: Clapton’s generosity when featuring Winwood in the set, Winwood really coming to the fore during the concert’s anthemic ending. I’m sure readers will have a great time investigating the way they look at each other, my favourite episode being the way Clapton looks at Winwood at the end of After Midnight.)

Both leaders chose songs from each other’s repertory. From what I can tell, I’d say the key of the songs – the “ID card” of the music, so to speak – is the same as the originals.

On DVD-V 2:

The Road To Madison Square Garden is a long documentary (more than half an hour) where Clapton and Winwood talk about their times and career. Nice for all, this is really indispensable viewing for those who don’t know much. Lotsa pictures, also a few live moments of both Traffic and Cream.

Rambling On My Mind comes straight from the soundcheck, solo Clapton playing a Martin acoustic.

Low Down is the J.J. Cale song, performed con brio.

Kind Hearted Woman features solo Clapton playing the Martin, a fine performance.

Crossroads is quite far from the amphetamine-fuelled version released by Cream on Wheels Of Fire. This is a shuffle mid-tempo, with a fine Clapton, Winwood on both vocals and piano, on which he has a solo with fine backing from Stainton’s Hammond.

The concert proper – more than two hours long – appears on the first DVD-V.

Had To Cry Today originally opened Blind Faith’s album, and so is the logical opener here. Not really perfect on Winwood’s part, but one has to take into account the moment, the event, and an “instrument” that’s not warmed up yet. Fine solos, Stainton performs a fine backing on organ, and there’s an exciting finale for two guitars, quite psychedelic-sounding, not too far from the original.

Them Changes is the – quite famous, I’d say – Buddy Miles original. As those things sometimes go, Miles died on that same day, so this performance works as an involuntary post-mortem homage. The performance has a fantastic drive, Winwood is great on vocals, there are fine synth winds by Stainton, and a great Clapton solo.

Forever Man is the smash Clapton had stopped performing, a Winwood choice. Great Hammond, well sung by both, with a convincing guitar solo.

Sleeping In The Ground is the blues song that Blind Faith recorded but didn’t put on the original LP (it has been made available as a bonus). Mid-tempo, fine groove, Winwood on vocals and piano, nice Clapton.

Presence Of The Lord was the only song penned by Clapton on the Blind Faith album, now a de facto standard. Here it’s performed in a style that’s more similar to The Band, maybe closer to the composer’s original intention. Winwood sits on organ, Stainton on “piano”, first verse sung by Clapton, second verse by Winwood – just like the record! – then it’s solo time, featuring the wha-wha and a solo ending that closely reminds one of the original.

Glad is definitely a surprise here, Winwood on piano, Stainton on organ, a not-too-bad version of the Traffic classic. The real surprise here is Clapton’s solo, in Santana style!

Well All Right is the cover featured on the Bind Faith album. Fine groove, fine vocals, Winwood on piano, here the surprise is Stainton playing a quasi Mini-moog solo with pitch-bend, a lot better than my description would make one imagine.

Double Trouble is Clapton’s homage to Otis Rush, but this is a cover one could consider as acting as a multiple homage. Winwood on organ, Stainton on “piano”, when it comes to “feel” this is one of the concert’s high points, with a really great Clapton solo, organ playing “parallel”, and a very moving, fade-out, ending.

Pearly Queen is the classic Traffic song, with many surprises. Winwood is on vocals and organ – sounding just like the original – while Clapton performs parts and solos that Winwood overdubbed in the studio for the album version. The real surprise comes at the end, when one would expect a “cut” ending. Out of the blue, a “psychedelic” move, with “cosmic” organ, “Arabic-sounding” guitar, that for a moment reminds one of Phish!

Tell The Truth takes us back to those (artistically) happy times of Layla and Derek And The Dominoes. Winwood on organ, Stainton on “barrelhouse” “piano”, Clapton plays two solos, with the closing one as one of his best here.

No Face, No Name, No Number is the classic Traffic tune, one of the hardest to sing in their repertory. Clapton plays a chorus arpeggio, while Winwood appears having a hard time singing the “rubato” quasi-solo part. A miracle – a light snare drum, the synth acting as an orchestral Mellotron – when Winwood sings “The scenery is all the same to me/Nothing has changed, or faded” everything is perfect, a real handkerchief moment for a melody sounding halfway between a Gregorian and an Arabic chant.

After Midnight is its usual vivacious self, as its composer J.J. Cale intended. This was the first solo hit for Clapton (I remember reading that when Cale listened to his song performed by Clapton on the radio, he immediately crossed the street and bought himself a Chevrolet; all this happening in those days before streaming was invented, of course!).

Split Decision is the only Winwood song from the 80s performed here. Jointly composed with Joe Walsh, appearing on Winwood’s hit album Back In The High Life, with just a few modifications here it gets a much “darker” mood than the original. The group appears to be quite involved in getting the rhythmic figure just right, while Winwood looks a lot more “in charge” than when performing his “oldies”. There is more sense of “risk” here, and it’s very rewarding.

Rambling On My Mind features Clapton on the Martin acoustic, back to his roots with the Robert Johnson classic.

Georgia On My Mind is Winwood’s back to the roots moment: the Hoagy Carmichael classic, later a classic as performed by Ray Charles, was a feature for “Stevie” Winwood when he was 15. A quite moving performance, in a way also a Hammond lesson.

Little Wing is the Jimi Hendrix song that Clapton recorded on the Dominoes album as a homage while Hendrix was still alive. Here we have a fine guitar arpeggio that closely resembles the original, then the Hammond, it’s sung by both Clapton and Winwood, another concert highlight.

Voodoo Chile is the long Jimi Hendrix song that originally appeared on his album Electric Ladyland. The recording – something like a “scored improvisation” – featured Mitch Mitchell on drums, Jack Casady from Jefferson Airplane on bass, and Steve Winwood at the Hammond organ. Like the original, the version featured here is quite long, and doesn’t ask for a moment-by-moment description. I’ll only say that here Clapton plays well above his usual high standard, and that at the end Winwood – who usually never moves that much – appears like he’s playing an organ that’s about to catch fire. An absolutely essential performance.

Can’t Find My Way Home brings it all back to the ground. Winwood plays a semi-acoustic Fender Telecaster while Stainton sits on organ. This is a take that sounds closer to The Band then to the “English” mood of the very fine original version featured on the Blind Faith album. Excellent guitar performances by all, while Winwood – as it happens quite often in the concert, especially when he’s shot from the right in a thoughtful mood – closely resembles Jack Bruce!

Dear Mr. Fantasy is the fine, clear conclusion, with Stainton at the organ, Clapton and Winwood both taking fine solos, that funny part at the end, and an ending that sounds like a tip of the hat to Beck’s Bolero.

Cocaine is the encore, with great solos by Clapton, Winwood, and Stainton on “piano”.

What’s the moral of this story? Years ago I happened to read an interview with Paul Bley where he said that Sun Ra could play “cakewalks”, a piano style he had read about but had never been able to hear before. (Kinda subtle, uh?)