Progressive rock will never die, but come the eighties panicky progressive rock musicians thought it had, and it led them to do the unthinkable—produce lame, MOR, watered-down pop prog (or in some cases just pop) music that was, and I find this almost impossible to fathom, even more unbearable than the pompous prog-opuses they’d inflicted on the world through their heyday in the early to mid-seventies.
From Tales of Topographic Oceans to “Owner of a Lonely Heart”—in no kind of world could that be called an improvement, and I’d sooner shoot myself in the dick than listen to the former.
GTR never got the traction that Asia or the post-Gabriel Genesis got, and for that reason, it’s a bit easier to hear the quiet desperation—at least the prog rockers turned pop-ulists in Asia and Genesis were scoring hits and getting paid. And one reason could be that GTR held on to at least some of the tenets of progressive rock. Unfortunately, they had no knack for writing hits.
GTR–a five-piece “supergroup” featuring Yes guitarist Steve Howe and Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett (hence the band name), along with journeyman vocalist Max Bacon, sessions bassist Phil Spalding, and sometime Marillion drummer Jonathan Mover—might have seemed like a great idea, but the guitar fireworks you’d expected never happen and the songs are formulaic, generic AOR shlock.
Musician reviewer J. D. Considine’s review of GTR in Musician was both succinct and spot-on. It read, in its entirety, “SHT.” Part of the blame lies with Buggles/Yes/Asia keyboardist Geoff Downes, who produced and went out of his way to highlight the clichéd vocals of prog-everyman Bacon, who never heard a song he couldn’t overemote on. The rest of the blame lies with the songs, which sound like they were written by a committee steadfastly dedicated to writing lowest-common-denominator progressive rock-lite, Starship-meets-Asia swill.
Songs have personalities, or good songs do anyway—the songs on GTR are accretions of character defects, which is a very different thing. The chief problem is that there isn’t a single memorable song on the entire LP. Not one. They’re generic things, played generically, and not one will stick with you, I guarantee it.
From opener “When the Heart Rules the Mind,” a too-bright thing with some nice power chords but nothing else to recommend it, you’re confronted with the same eighties banality that made the eighties such a horror show. The synthesizer line is a cliché, the drums are the same drums that made the Eighties an ordeal, and Bacon’s vocals are a kind of time capsule of the era. This was the big single, but I dare you to remember it—time hasn’t. Following your dreams is as stale a sentiment as you’ll ever regret running across. The acoustic guitar interlude is cringeworthy, and I could go on.
Come closer, “Imagining” we’ve gotten nowhere—trite lyrical sentiment, delicate guitar opening followed by synthesized strings, it’s a kind of prog-lite fantasia that is so pretty you’ll find yourself muttering, like the guy in Fight Club, “I felt like destroying something beautiful.” Then the song kicks into gear and promptly morphs into a fast-paced slice of bad Styx. You can’t accuse the boys of keeping things simple, but the lyrics are Rush dumb (“Is it real, or a myth?”), and the guitar work doesn’t do much but keep the song moving forward.
“Hackett to Bits” is an instrumental, a guitar showcase that goes from horribly New Wave to Prog and back again. You get some excitement-deprived pyrotechnics from the guy in the title, but it’s all showing off and no song. Devo meets Genesis—not a recipe for success. “Sketches in the Sun” is an instrumental as well, moody and sweet, and a chance for Howe to stretch out and demonstrate just how English he is. Boy, can he play! Boy, is it boring! Every note chimes out so clearly, he may as well be playing a harpsichord. Get it away from me.
“Jekyll and Hyde” is as boring as Jekyll and as ugly as Hyde, but by ugly I don’t mean the boys are playing punk or anything—they’re just utilizing every last item in their bag of cliched tricks. Besides some bona fide ferocious guitar in the middle, the song is a juggernaut running over your ears, leaving them broken in a lane in midnight London. As for Bacon, he’s a menace.
“Here I Wait” opens with some mock-Chinese hokum, progs around some, then turns into a forgettable hard rock stomp with cheesy pop choruses. Bacon doesn’t just annoy; he annoys sublimely. He’s the Platonic Ideal of the bad Eighties vocalist. “The Hunter” is a moody thing, and so bad that Asia felt the need to cover it. Again, Bacon goes above and beyond to make the skin crawl. The lyrics are… I lack the words because Bacon never met a trite phrase he wouldn’t take to bed.
“You Can Still Get Through” is stopped dead in its Foreigner-school tracks when Bacon cries, “Stop, look, and listen!” That’s where I turn it off, although the one time I did listen to it, Bacon sounded overheated and the guitars sounded like they’d been processed, compressed, something. And the group vocals are a fright, as is the heartbeat drum that makes me think they should have called the song “The Tell-Tale Heart.” I like the fade out. It means the song is over, and it’s the best part of the song.
“Reach Out (Never Say No)” is a hard rocker that then reaches for transcendence and misses. The guitar hooks sound anemic, the “big” riffs ditto, and Bacon is just too much. GTR would have had to look hard and long to find a worse lead singer, but I’m guessing they didn’t have to. He was there, and they hired him. As for the guitar solo and the guitar interplay in general, it has this kind of fusion sound that negates the possibility of Howe and Hackett ever sounding menacing.
“Toe the Line” opens as an insipid ballad with overly delicate guitars, and Bacon nixes the possibility of profundity by opening his mouth and singing, “Sometimes you want to kick yourself.” He then throws in some hokum about double-edged swords and drifting through the age of reason, only to end up on the shore. Then the band comes in, but they could be the best band in the world, and it wouldn’t change the fact that Bacon is stringing together banalities and won’t stop, which means that he’s saying absolutely nothing and being wordy about it. Shudder.
I would only recommend GTR to people interested in hearing Hackett and Howe trade licks, but I would warn them that these songs are far too high a price to pay for the so-called privilege. People will remember a few Asia songs, they’ll remember Peter Gabriel and the later King Crimson, and they’ll even remember Phil Collins, who, say what you will about the guy, wrote memorable songs so catchy they get stuck in your head, where they raise havoc.
GTR is forgettable. That’s their defining characteristic. You won’t remember them. They’re a footnote and as dull as most footnotes. I’m sure they have their fans, but who are they? Human beings are perverse creatures. I’m betting there’s a person out there who, if you ask him what his favorite album is, he’ll say this one. I can understand the monstrous things that human beings do to one another, but that I can’t understand, or even imagine.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D-
