Getting It Wrong

I tend to be somewhat proud of what I consider to be my independence in matters of judgement, especially of an artistic nature, so it's useful to be reminded, if a little painfully, of just how self-deceiving I can be in this particular area.

An instance that's been prominent in my mind of late, for reasons I'll try and explain, is that of my utter under-valuation of a guitarist with whom I've been reasonably familiar since first hearing him on stage and vinyl in the early 1970's. The musician in view is one Robin Trower, guitarist with Procol Harum and later leader of his own guitar, bass and drums trio.
 
Now if you'd asked me about Mr Trower and his work just ten years ago I would have been airily dismissive of the stuff outside Procol and probably called him a Hendrix-wannabe who produced a series of crowd-pleasing rocking-out albums in the seventies before rightly going out of fashion with the arrival of punk and the new wave which drove such rock dinosaurs to their inevitable extinction. And how did I know this? Sad to say, because I'd read a fair number of critics who said so and taken their opinions on board despite my lack of familiarity with what the trio actually had produced. I had listened to a track or two from the early albums, notably Bridge of Sighs, but the basic power trio seemed a bit passé at the time and, truth to tell, I hadn't listened hard or with my own ears.

Anyway, in recent years I finally started to notice a fair amount of commentary on Trower that took it as read that he was a very fine musician including comments from folks I hold in very high regard, especially one Robert Fripp. Here's what the Frippster found to say about him quite a few years back, a comment that only came to my notice very recently indeed:

Robin Trower is one of the very few English guitarists that have mastered bends and wobbles. Not only has he got inside them, with an instinctive knowing of their affective power, but they went to live inside his hands. It is the rare English guitarist who has been able to stand alongside American guitarists and play with an equal authority to someone grounded in a fundamentally American tradition.

Trower has been widely criticised for his influences. This has never bothered me. I toured America in 1974 with Ten Years After top of the bill, King Crimson second, and Robin Trower bottom. The chart positions were the opposite: TYA in the Billboard 160s, Crimson in the 60s and Trower climbing remorselessly through the top twenty. Nearly every night I went out to listen to him. This was a man who hung himself on the details: the quality of sound, nuances of each inflection and tearing bend, and abandonment to the feel of the moment. He saved my life.

Later, in England, he gave me guitar lessons.

Robert Fripp, Wiltshire, England, 19 November 1996.

So it was that I began to consider getting hold of some of the early albums and really listening. By chance I recently came upon one of those cheapo cheapo collections of 5 CDs at a silly price, in this case comprising the first 5 albums of the trio, including the first live album. And having really listened I am chastened to admit I managed to miss out on a very fine, very tasteful band indeed. Just how the critical consensus got it so wrong I am at a loss to understand, except for the fact that, as we all know, critics are fools. Apart from the fact that Trower is a supremely thoughtful, expressive player who channels the possibilities that Hendrix opened out in some of the directions they needed to go, in James Dewar he found a rock steady bass player with a voice to die for. As good as Paul Rodgers - seriously! 

And I didn't listen to them and never got to see them because I took on board tired, idiotic, second hand, second rate prejudices.