ALBUMS: Bridge of Sighs (1974); Live! (1975)
MVC Rating: Bridge, 4.0/$$$$$; Live! 4.0/$$$
If you like rock and blues guitar, I see no reason why you shouldn’t have some Robin Trower in your collection.
Let’s get over the glaringly (hearingly?) obvious. The dude sounds a lot like Jimi Hendrix.
Like Stevie Ray Vaughn he can choose to play like Hendrix when warranted. It’s like when Stevie Ray plays a Hendrix tune, ‘Little Wing, for example. But he puts his SRV stamp on it.
Trower is like Hendrix without without the boots and bandana. Trower next to Hendrix is like a peacock without its feathers. It may not be stunningly garish, but you can still eat it. Um, no, we don’t eat peacocks, do we? Well, you get my drift: Trower’s got chops, they just aren’t as flamboyant as Jimi. But who was?
The question becomes why would you want to listen to Trower when there are seemingly dozens of Hendrix re-issues and found tapes out there? Again I say, if you love well played rock guitar and blues, Trower can deliver that better than 90 percent of his peers.
On the live album ‘Dreamland’ is a song where Trower subdues the guitar and makes it sing. The title cut ‘Bridge of Sighs’ sounds a little like U2’s Edge trying to channel Hendrix. The band has a nice asset in vocalist/bass player James Dewar.
Allmusic.com reviewer Hal Horowitz writes in a review of ‘Bridge of Sighs’:
Guitarist Robin Trower’s watershed sophomore solo disc remains his most stunning, representative and consistent collection of tunes.’
Earlier, Trower was guitarist for the band Procol Harum, which scored in the 1960s with two big hits ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and ‘Conquistador.’