by Will Romano
By the end of March ‘76, as the band hit the road in support of Moonmadness (with saxophonist/flutist Mel Collins in tow) Camel had begun to come apart at the seams. Though the band was winning fans, the good reviews couldn’ t alleviate the tension between drummer Andy Ward and bassist/vocalist Doug Ferguson, which had finally come to a head. Ward simply told Latimer, “It’s either him or me.” Knowing Ward was the more musically competent of the two, Camel backed Ward.
It was difficult for Latimer, a close friend of Ferguson since his teenage years, but he dropped the boom on him, and the bass player was sent packing.
To stop the Camel ship from going adrift, the remaining three members of the band (Latimer, Ward, and keyboardist /songwriter Peter Bardens) agreed to bring in Richard Sinclair of Caravan, Hatfield and the North (which had recently dissolved), and the granddaddy of all Canterbury scene bands, the Wilde Flowers. Since the Hats’ split, Sinclair had pursued a number of different ventures, from a musical equipment business to the short-lived band Sinclair and the South—a kind of twisted reference to the Hats.
Sinclair began asserting himself immediately after joining Camel in 1977: Caravan and the Hats were always interested in exploring the jazzier side of things as well as the more ridiculous and unadulterated aspects of rock songwriting, and Sinclair had a mind to bring these elements to Camel.
“It was probably a reaction against Moonmadness,” Latimer said, “but we wanted to do more concise material, and we also wanted to get into jazzier areas. Richard could play all the jazz things we wanted—and some of them were quite complex.”
The band spent months at Island Studios, tinkering with already written material and developing new music for what would become Rain Dances, their fifth studio record.
Rain Dances entered the U.S. Billboard charts on November 12, 1977, stayed there for five weeks, and peaked at 136 on the LP chart. (Over in Britain, the band scored a Top 20 hit with the album.) Further vindication came in the form of sold-out British dates, which were followed by a continental tour.
But with increasing regularity, it seemed, Camel were becoming a studio band. This was the era of new wave and punk, and with 1978’s Breathless, Camel were slipping further down the path to becoming a streamlined, cybernetic band manufacturing the kind of sterilized prog-pop perfected by the Alan Parsons Project. (Appropriately, APP’s 1977 record I Robot played on a well-trod sci-fi/progressive motif: that of man usurped by his own machines.) But if Camel did briefly stare directly into the abyss, the band never completely lost its soul. There was still plenty of emotion in the tracks.
Still, shellacking the LP with production gloss (“Summer Lightning” is rescued from sinking to disco-rock sap only by Latimer’s burning outro guitar solo) couldn’t mask the interpersonal pettiness undulating just under the surface.
It was during the recording of Breathless that Bardens officially announced he was leaving the band, due to creative differences with Latimer. He’d agreed to stay only to complete the LP, but touring and future recordings were out of the question.
After his time with Camel, Bardens was buoyed, perhaps exclusively, by his skill as a keyboardist. He hooked up with Them buddy Van Morrison for the recording of the latter’s 1979 record Wavelength, then released a solo record, Heart to Heart. It wasn’t long before Alan Parsons Project stalwart Eric Woolfson invited Bardens to join Keats, a band formed by APP members when not working with the Project, a side project featuring members of APP.
In the mid-’80s, Bardens finally achieved that elusive hit record he’d been chasing. His “On the Air Tonight,” recorded by blue-eyed soul man Willy Finlayson, the Scottish guitarist/singer formerly of Meal Ticket, became a Top 20 hit in 1984. Subsequently, Bardens released three solo records; his 1994 album Big Sky featured Mick Fleetwood.
Fans long held out hope that Latimer and Bardens would put aside their differences and renew their musical partnership. Peter Bardens died in January 2002 from complications of a brain tumor.
CAMEL: RESURGENCE
With Bardens gone, Camel recruited a cast of new musicians—opening what would become a revolving door of talented but constantly changing personnel.
Recorded at Trevor Morais’s Farmyard Studios just north of London, in the green, leafy suburb of Little Chalfont, I Can See Your House from Here (the title taken from a very bad joke about crucifixion, which was oddly represented by a crucified astronaut on the LP cover art) was produced by Rupert Hine (who had recently finished recording with ex-Genesis guitarist Anthony Phillips and with Scottish prog-pop band Café Jacques, and who had just completed his own influential solo studio production single “Snakes Don’t Dance Fast,” which was reportedly constructed solely of vocal noises).
Camel (1973)
Mirage (1974)
FMusic Inspired by The Snow Goose (1975)
Breathless (1978)
I Can See Your House From Here (1979)
Curriculum Vitae (DVD, 2003)
I Can See also featured Phil Collins on percussion; two new keyboardists (Caravan’s Jan Schelhaas and Kit Watkins, formerly of American prog rockers Happy the Man); bassist Colin Bass; orchestral sections (recorded at George Martin’s AIR Studios in London); a beautiful, slow-moving and bluesy ten-minute instrumental called “Ice”; and funky electronically sequenced rhythms, proving Camel were willing to collaborate with outside artists and keep up with music technology to effect different sonic flavors in their progressive rock.
By the end of October 1979, I Can See Your House From Here had reached number forty-five in the British charts. Into early 1980, Camel released singles, though the mainstream public largely ignored them. Unhindered, Camel were already onto the next project, Nude, a concept album based on the true story of a Japanese soldier who was stranded on an island in the Pacific, years after WWII had ended.
“I think this period was the beginning of some disintegration of the original energy of the band,” says Bass. “It seemed everything was going off in different directions.”
Nude marked the end of an era and the first true sign that Camel would never be the same again. After recording was finished, drummer Ward had called it quits. “I didn’t so much leave Camel [as] fall off,” said Ward in the DVD Camel: Curriculum Vitae.
Ward would soon briefly join Marillion, leaving Latimer as the only original member of the band, making Camel more the “Andy Latimer Project” than ever. As such, whatever Latimer said pretty much went. That prospect, in and of itself, didn’t seem such a bad proposition.
“You must change,” Latimer said. “I think most of us do. You have to change. I think that goes for people like King Crimson, too. You have to go and experiment or else you’ll go crazy. For me, personally, I have to keep on doing as many diverse things [as] I can.”
The back cover of Camel’s 1976 record, Moonmadness. Left to right: bassist/vocalist Doug Ferguson, key- boardist/vocalist Pete Bardens, drummer/vocalist Andy Ward, and guitarist/vocalist/flutist Andy Latimer.
Camel were dormant for most of the second half of the 1980s, largely due to near-crippling legal wrangling with former manager Jukes over songwriting royalties. Latimer moved to America in 1988, established a new label (Camel Productions), and kick-started the band for the 1990s with strong efforts such as 1991’s Grapes of Wrath-inspired concept record, Dust and Dreams, and 1996’s tale of Irish immigration, Harbour of Tears.
Camel were experiencing a resurgence of interest in the 2000s when things came to a screeching halt. Latimer has been a strong character, in and out of music, and, God willing, he’ll be back recording, touring, and delighting longtime and new fans alike, doing what Camel does best: surviving against all odds. As of this writing, Andy Latimer was living in England and recovering from stem cell transplant surgery.
Stationary Traveler (1984)
(Michael Putland/Getty Images)
GENTLE GIANT
On Reflection
FORMED BY THREE BROTHERS, DEREK, RAY, AND PHIL Shulman (who were all
born in Scotland but raised in Portsmouth, England), Gentle Giant created intricate and multidimensional compositions that stand as some of the most complex music in progressive rock.
Though never as popular as their British prog compatriots Yes, ELP, and Genesis, Gentle Giant gained a loyal following through intense touring and memorable performances, just as they’ve served as inspiration for younger rockers, who’d one day stand on their tall shoulders to grab their own piece of prog history.
Prior to forming Gentle Giant, the brothers played in bands such as the Howlin’ Wolves and the Road Runners and the blue-eyed soul/R&B group Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, which scored hits with the Eastern and Mellotron-tinged 1967 psychedelic pop tune “Kites,” the Top 40 British LP Without Reservations, and 1968’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
There wasn’t really a Simon Dupree, but Derek Shulman assumed his identity, just as the band began recording under yet another pseudonym, the Moles, a marketing ploy hatched by the brothers to make people think they were actually the Beatles incognito. (This charade came to an end when Syd Barrett revealed that the Moles, not the Beatles, were indeed Simon Dupree.)
Simon Dupree soon discovered that writing and recording a hit record, especially one that was not indicative of the band’s music, was the wrong type of success. “By default, we turned into a hit-single band,” says Derek Shulman. “Therefore we started to play to audiences that weren’t much bigger, and we weren’t making that much more money, but the audiences were expecting hits as opposed to involvement.”
The Shulman brothers became increasingly uncomfortable with being a pop band and wanted to write more serious music. The boys even turned down the possibility of stardom by refusing to work with material written by Simon Dupree keyboardist Reg Dwight—the future Elton John—and his friend Bernie Taupin.
“[Elton] actually wanted to join. .. Gentle Giant,” says Shulman. “He’d played us things like ‘Your Song’ and ‘Skyline Pigeon,’ and myself and Ray said, ‘Nah. Next. That’s not going to work for us.’ We wanted nothing to do with anything resembling a hit-making machine.”
ACQUIRING THE TASTE
Simon Dupree folded, and Gentle Giant, whose name was inspired by François Rabelais’s sixteenth-century work Gargantua and Pantagruel (a book Phil had read), formed in 1970. Along with the brothers Shulman (lead vocalist /saxophonist Derek, bassist/violinist Ray, and saxophonist/trumpeter Phil), Giant featured keyboardist/percussionist Kerry Minnear (a composition major who had attended the Royal Academy of Music with a concentration in piano and percussion), guitarist Gary Green (a blues rocker who’d been in a North Londonbased band called Fishhook), and former Simon Dupree drummer Martin Smith.
Encouraged by then-manager Gerry Bron to experiment, Giant exploited the fact that they featured multi-instrumentalist members. “We had a group of characters who were generally good musicians and well trained and from different worlds,” says Derek Shulman. “Ray was a classically trained violin player but also loved jazz. I was a singer, a pop singer, and had learned to play saxophones. Phil played trumpet and sax as well. Gary was an incredible blues player with incredible technique.”
In 1970, the band recorded their self-titled debut album (appearing on the Vertigo label) with producer Tony Visconti (who Shulman says “introduced us to the recorder,” an instrument the band later used onstage for “recorder quartets”).
While Shulman admits that the band, during the writing and recording stages, behaved more as six individuals than as a single creative unit, the album is rarely ponderous, despite the fairly long compositions and many different elements the band stirs up.
Songs such as “Giant,” “Isn’t It Quiet and Cold?” “Alucard,” “Why Not?” and “Nothing At All” display the band’s multicolored stripes proudly, with church organ textures, bluesy guitar riffs, layered harmonies (four of the six members sing on the record), synthesizer-driven jazz-rock, touches of “early music” (at this time, composer/bassoonist /pianist/recorder player and professor at the Royal Academy of Music David Munrow was instrumental in a rebirth of interest in European Renaissance and medieval music), a flair for rhythmic bombast, and chamberlike retro-pop.
“We were babies on the first record,” says Shulman. “Where it was going to go, we had no clue.”
By the band’s sophomore record, 1971’s Acquiring the Taste, Giant had expanded upon and improved its sound to include Renaissance hymns (à la Palestrina and Holst, both Minnear influences), counterpoint vocal structures, backward audio snippets, orchestral drumming and percussion, angular musical sections (à la Bartók), rapid changes of complex tempos, a hint of medieval balladry, intricately interweaving baroque musical lines, and Green’s ever-present blues guitar grit in songs such as “Pentagruel’s Nativity” (another reference to Rabelais), “Edge of Twilight,” the title track, “The House, the Street, the Room,” “The Moon Is Down,” and “Plain Truth.”
“Ray was the younger brother,” says Kerry Minnear, “and he was the one who was musically most creative, in my opinion. Phil had great ideas, but most of the musical lines came from Ray. I remember he always wrote awfully difficult keyboard parts, too: The [finger] spacings would be different for every chord. In the earlier days, especially, Ray would write a line and then write another over the top of it. Yet, it wouldn’ t be parallel in any way. It could be totally independent. ‘Pentagruel’s Nativity’ is an example of working together: I’d written the middle part, with the guitar riff and the strange vocal harmonies. Ray wrote the first section of the song, and I continued it.”
Though Visconti is credited as producer of the record, the band believed they had enough experience under their belts to claim ownership of important musical decisions, a trend that would continue throughout the 1970s.
“[Visconti] was around on the second album but really was not involved at all,” says Derek Shulman. “We said, ‘We can do it ourselves.’ We were quick learners. Ultimately, I think, we learned fairly well.”
THREE FRIENDS & OCTOPUS
However, this teamwork approach was soon shattered when the band asked drummer Martin Smith to leave in favor of Malcolm Mortimore, a more technical player, influenced by jazz-rock fusion of the day (from the Mahavishnu Orchestra to drumming legend Tony Williams), who appears on the band’s third release, the 1972 concept record Three Friends (the band’s first record issued in America, via Columbia).
“I believe the actual concept was Phil Shulman’s,” says Mortimore. “The story follows three friends from their early days at school to adulthood and shows how their lives are both different and strangely parallel. [Of] the three friends, [one was] an artisan, working all day; the second was a gogetter, a very ambitious materialist; and the third an artist.”
Within the strict confines of thematic structure, Giant produced what may be its greatest work to date, with startling compositions such as “Prologue,” “Peel the Paint” (check Green’s guitar solo here), “School Days,” and “Working All Day,” among others.
“Three Friends was like our adolescent years,” says Derek Shulman. “We weren’t mature, but we weren’t children anymore. But the music was quite good. I can say that without any compunction.”
“Prior to forming Saga, the drummer in the band I was in bought an import LP from across the pond,” says longtime Saga vocalist Michael Sadler. “He put the album on and after side one was done I said, ‘I want to make music like this.’ It was Three Friends. I had never heard anything like it in my life.”
The band was all set to tour the record in America, marking Giant’s first appearance in the U.S., when Mortimore was involved in an unfortunate motorcycle accident.
“Instead of allowing Malcolm to take some time off and get another drummer for the tour, my brother Phil said, ‘If you want to be in the band, you have to be on this tour,”’ remembers Shulman. “Phil made him strap a stick to his cast. When I think back on it, that was totally hilarious and spiteful. But such was life in the 1970s.�
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Mortimore simply couldn’t continue, and the band hired touring drummer replacement John Weathers, largely a British R&B drummer, who’d spent some time as a teen playing in Liverpool-based Merseybeat bands and had played with Eyes of Blue, Pete Brown and Piblokto, Wild Turkey, and Graham Bond’s Magick Band in the early 1970s. (An interesting side note: Just before Weathers joined, Crimson’s Michael Giles jammed with Giant but declined the gig.)
Gentle Giant’s big talent. Left to I
right: Derek Shulman, Ray Shulman, I
John Weathers, Gary Green, and
Kerry Minnear. (Courtesy of Chrysalis)
“Then I got a call from Phil [Shulman],” says Mortimore. “He said that John [Weathers] was getting on really well with the band and was going to stay. I knew that page had turned, if you like. Once I got better, funnily enough, I wound up working with [Weathers’s] old band—the Grease Band with Henry McCullough.”
“Malcolm was a technician bar none,” says Shulman. “But since the orchestration of the music was pretty complex, we needed someone to keep the middle ground.”
That’s exactly what Weathers had done for Giant: he banged out appropriate accents while pinning down the arrangements so listeners could have a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the music.
“John’s playing style changed the way I wrote from [1973’s] Octopus onward,” says Kerry Minnear. “I gave more credence to the fact that he could hold things down, which allowed me to take the music into more complex directions.”