review: Roger Taylor - "Outsider Tour" at Rock City in Nottingham

October 15, 2021.

This was my first gig as an attendee in nearly two years - the last one being The Darkness in 2019.

I never thought I'd see myself attending a solo gig by a Queen member. Such a thing hasn't happened since the '90s, and this part of their lives seemed to be in the rearview mirror. The anticipation leading up to the start of the gig was palpable amongst the 2,000 or so on hand as that reality set in.

(Niek Lucassen)

It was surreal to be in a room full of people singing every word of the title track from Strange Frontier. I haven't experienced that feeling since I saw Dweezil Zappa doing "I'm the Slime."

"You and me seen better times" - these words carried an extra layer of poignancy on this occasion for all the obvious reasons, but at the same time it just wasn't the case in that exact moment, as this is the best thing every one of us could possibly have been doing. The joy of being together with the man whose music means so much to us made it all null and void, even just for a couple wonderful hours.

Point blank, the band was killer - without question it's the best he's ever assembled. They were musically and vocally tight. The five of them smiled at one another throughout, and the elder statesman interacted with his band with the most genuine of joy. The backing vocals in the early Queen pieces like "Tenement Funster" and I'm in Love with My Car" were perfectly executed.

But it's the main man we all came to see. Roger is so unapologetically himself. He never looks fully comfortable as the frontman of a band, but at the same time he also looks like he'd rather be nowhere else. He wears his heart on his sleeve, just like the lyrics on every one of his solo albums. It's incredible he's still this good at 72, singing as well as he did 30 years ago. His drumming chops were in great shape too - far better than 2005 where he sometimes looked out of breath. He's taking much better care of himself now. Most of the old rock stars must have personal trainers and stylists, as they're looking and sounding better than they did in decades past. Aware of his limits, Roger sat down at his drum kit just twice - but both were eventful. These guys are well into retirement age, and we're lucky they're doing this at all.

The band did give him a break half way through, and the interlude of "Rock It (Prime Jive)" with wingman Tyler Warren on the lead vocal was quite possibly the highlight of the evening. Warren needs no introduction, and is absolutely a world class talent. He is unquestionably the best guy on the planet for the gig. He deserves it.

Christian Mendoza was excellent on guitar as well. On "Say It's Not True" it became clear that he was closer to Jeff Beck than Brian May, which is precisely why he's there. Roger doesn't want someone who plays like his old Queen bandmate - he wants someone who makes it his own and isn't too flashy. Mendoza is the perfect guy for the job.

Bassist Neil Fairclough has done the arenas and stadiums of the world with Brian and Roger, but he was just as happy to be in a club, playing spotlessly as always.

But it's Tina Hizon that was the secret sauce, playing four instruments. She was even on double duty, as Spike Edney wasn't on the gig because he was unwell. Roger mentioned how the musical director was at the hospital earlier that day, and near the end of the show to his surprise Spike came on in shorts and a t-shirt to play the last few songs. Hizon nailed Treanna Morris' part on "Surrender," and in my head all I could think was - this was clearly her audition piece. She was a dead ringer. A huge talent.

There was a moment of levity in "Foreign Sand." It's pretty well inarguably the most gorgeous song he's ever composed, but on this night after "just say hello" the crowd literally said hello, and he loved it, laughing his way into the next line. On each night of the tour henceforth the "hello" became more emphatic, and at the final gig in London it cracked Roger up, to which he quipped "it's meant to be serious!" in between lines.

The triumvirate of Roger, Tina, and Tyler on drums at the tail end of "Up" was a high point as well.

For the encore Roger came on sporting a shiny red cigar jacket, looking like a million bucks. They did two covers, and for Heroes the multi-instrumentalist Hizon played the Robert Fripp part on electric violin.

The only complaint is that the mix often wasn't great, as it was a bass trap up in the balcony. We couldn't even hear much of Roger's banter between songs, although the backing vocals were mixed well. A couple of my friends who didn't know most of the material weren't overly pleased, because the lyrics are a fair portion of what's on offer with Roger's earnest and often heartfelt compositions.

But for the most fervent of fans, the setlist was brilliant - songs spanning his solo career from all but one of his albums, as well as a fair chunk of the classics he wrote for Queen. I was thrilled to hear "A Nation of Haircuts" from Electric Fire, and the new tunes all sounded great too. I wish we could've heard something from Fun In Space, but Roger's vocal range isn't quite what it was 40 years ago, and his sense of self-awareness combined with his musical maturity had him assembling a band and a setlist perfect for 2021.

His first four solo albums are all criminally underrated (here's my review of the first two). It seems almost unfathomable that the drummer of the most popular of all the classic rock bands (if their sheer number of Spotify followers is an accurate enough metric to measure this) is playing clubs, but if anything that just amplified the feeling of intimacy. There was this feeling of "he's ours."

There was supposed to be an opening act, Colin Macleod, who is apparently quite good but didn't show for some reason. But honestly, after nearly two years of not being able to see a gig, two hours was the perfect length.

As we exited the venue there were a few hundred kids lined up for a rave. A few hours earlier it was people two to three times their age in that same formation. I hate to sound like an old man or a Luddite, but they had no idea what they were missing.

Roger Taylor: "Fun in Space" / "Strange Frontier" analysis

I recently revisited Roger Taylor's first two solo albums. They are pieces of music history that have barely been spoken about since they came out, and this piece aims to rectify that at least a little bit.

Fun in Space and Strange Frontier came out in the early- to mid-'80s when Queen were one of the biggest bands in the world, and apart from a Top of the Pops appearance and some moderate radio airplay of a couple singles, they soon disappeared without a trace. I'm going to argue that this turn of events is absolutely tragic. By the end of this piece I'm pretty sure you'll agree.

In April 1981 Roger Taylor became the first member of Queen to drop a solo album. Like few of his peers he wrote and played pretty well every part, as he's a more than capable multi-instrumentalist. I found side one of Fun in Space to be pretty solid, save for "Let's Get Crazy" which sounds a bit like an undeveloped idea. But the great tracks stand out. The energetic driving beat of "No Violins" is infectious, and it is cleverly textured throughout. The sentimental "Laugh Or Cry" is gorgeous yet sombre, complete with an emotive guitar solo with phrasing that would make Clapton raise an eyebrow.

But on this latest listen it was "Good Times Are Now" that stood atop the rest. Musically it's similar to "No Violins," but the subject matter is far more meaningful. Roger is often conversational in his lyrics, and rarely is he more down to earth and relatable than he is here:

I had to take a chance 'cause special moments only tend to happen now and then

Point blank, this is one of the best hooks I've ever heard. The syncopation of those words almost implies the urgency of needing to seize those rare moments when they present themselves. He goes on:

Live for the present, it's the only one we have
Nobody gets out of here alive
Life in the future might never come to pass
You know good times are now

Clichés they may be, but somehow he gets away with it and makes you feel like you're hearing such universal messages for the first time. The ensuing guitar solo in the middle sounds very similar to "Coming Soon" off Queen's The Game - but "Good Times Are Now" is considerably better because it actually has something to say. And it's this genuine sense of character that would permeate his next long player from start to finish.

In fan polls people regularly rate the Roger tracks on the Queen albums from 1978-82 as their least favourites of the era, and with good reason - I'm now fairly certain he was holding back his strongest material for his solo album, as the best tracks on Fun in Space are leaps and bounds better.

"My Country" tops any of his output on Jazz, The Game, or Hot Space. But it's understandable that it didn't end up on a Queen album, because it was too blunt and opinionated. It's a crying shame in hindsight, as the change in tempo and timbre when the gated drums kick in is no less effective than "In The Air Tonight." It also has one of the top vocal performances of Roger's career, easily on par with any of the most lauded rock vocals of all time. This should be known as one of the great war protest songs, but sometimes the world isn't so just. For any number of reasons, great art often falls through the cracks. "My Country"  is one of those casualties.

(Peter Hince)

As side two progresses it gets a bit weak in places, although "Airheads" has a badass and bone-crunching riff, and the title track is a unique and Eno-esque ambient new wave science fiction workout. Queen's famed "no synthesizers" label had gone the way of the Dodo the previous year, which Roger even made fun of in the liner notes. With the title track alone he unquestionably wins the race for the first member of Queen to find their identity outside of the confines of the band.

I give the album 3 1/2 stars. Ultimately about half of it is fantastic, which would be the case for the bulk of Roger's albums going forward.

Except for Strange Frontier.

Fun in Space has a few individually better songs and moments, but Strange Frontier is more consistent and cohesive. There's no one song that sticks out. It's not quite a concept album, but there's a uniformity to it and every track is part of the greater whole. And the running order is key.

We're off the tracks, we're off the lines
You and me have seen better times
Now we're on the borderline and I wish I wasn't here

A half minute into the album we're clearly hearing a far more developed artist.

We're trapped inside these dangerous times

The title track lays the groundwork for the nine-part story to follow, and "Beautiful Dreams" starts to get more specific. He speaks to the reality and ease of having dreams come true as children, but that later in life we need drugs (a secret world of "chemical dreams") to achieve the same state of bliss. But there's no solution except "nuclear purity," which is an idea very much of its time as the early '80s were the peak of the Cold War. There isn't a solution, so nuke us all. "This is the final twilight; this is the final cure, it seems." All delivered in ethereal and soaring melodies. Chilling.

It segues into "Man on Fire," where his more optimistic side is on display. Without question it's the most accessible piece on the album, and thus it was unsurprisingly the lead single. But this upbeat feeling dwindles from here onward.

In his 1951 book New Hopes for a Changing World, Bertrand Russell stated how "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." So many of us start becoming cynical by our 30s as certain realities of life expose themselves, and these themes of doubt, frustration, and pessimism permeate the album as Roger's disillusion has started to set in (a few years of Thatcherism didn't hurt, either). In more recent years it's pretty clear he eventually said "fuck it" and decided to have fun with his life. Who can blame him?

Even the cover tunes fit the concept. "Racing in the Street" and "Masters of War" are both excellent examples of making an existing song one's own. He'd achieve the same with "Working Class Hero" a lifetime later.

The interlude of "Killing Time" is a marvellous sonic experience. "Dreams go by just killing time." He's fixated on dreams again, but this time in a different context - being consciously aware of it instead of escaping it.

We're treading the same old wheel
Killing what they can't steal
Smile but we just don't feel

Who would've thought the guy who wrote "I'm In Love With My Car" could come up with something this... real?

"Tears of heartache, tears of rage from living in a tiring age" declares Roger in "Abandonfire." He's a rhyming couplet type of writer, and he's rarely been better than on that line. If you want to see inside this man's soul, it's all over this album.

But he remains briefly hopeful:

Listen to the rhythms of the city life
Listen to the rhythms of your soul
Listen to the rustling in the undergrowth
Follow in their footsteps to your goal

Almost like it represents the inner ping-pong match of persevering vs. giving up. Brilliant.

On the surface "Young Love" is an innocent and nostalgic piece, but amidst the overall narrative it comes across as wistful.

This is your life, this is your age

A typical call to arms, but it is short-lived:

You've seen it before
Like your mum and your dad
They're dying each day
Living a lie that's so sad

He's saying young love is precisely that - for the young. Reality soon sets in. It's messy. David Gilmour and Pete Townshend covered similar ground in "All Lovers Are Deranged" from About Face, also released in 1984. Give "Deep Deep Feeling" from McCartney III a gander too. These guys know what they're talking about.

Nobody sees this American dream just fading away, it's a complete waste of time, just a nursery rhyme

It seems obvious now, but in the '80s this idea was slowly emerging. Neil Peart nailed it on "Between The Wheels," and Roger Taylor nails it on "It's An Illusion" - although with much less subtlety, because Roger Taylor doesn't do subtle. His heart is on his sleeve, always.

Our reason is fading away

A 1979 US postage stamp sported the phrase "fueled by truth and reason." But by the '80s that veneer was starting to get peeled back.

It all comes together with the last track, "I Cry for You."

I hope you're fine, I hope all's well, give 'em hell
Given time hope springs eternal.

Once again, he doesn't sit in his happy place for long enough, as this isn't an album designed to bring comfort. It questions it, constantly.

Life has no fun anymore
Time is on the run for sure

Again, he oscillates between optimism and anything but.

Who finds conclusions with love, hope, and confusion?

A far cry from the man who wrote throwaways like "Let's Get Crazy" and "Fun It" a few years earlier, innit?

And who exactly is he crying for? Himself? The world?

Next time one of us meets him, ask him. He's touring solo next month for the first time in decades - now's your chance. He'll be flattered that you even know the songs - trust me. The greatest gift you can give an artist is your time, and to take the time to ask him about his feelings goes a country mile further than "I first heard your music in year X," "I lost my virginity to song Y," or "can you sign this for me?"

It's criminal that this music isn't more well-known. But alas this is what happens when you're second fiddle to the greatest frontman of all time. Your music doesn't get the distribution it deserves.

At the time he insisted Strange Frontier is far better than its predecessor, and as much as it can be reduced to PR to market his current project, he was right. It's a manifesto to its time and timeless all at once, because it's just as much about the universal human condition as it was about the state of the world in 1984.

Musically it's largely dated like so many albums of its time, but persevere with it and peel away the layers and you'll likely come to see that it's lyrically a masterpiece. A coming of age. He may not be Springsteen or Dylan, but here he gets remarkably close. 4 1/2 stars.

review: Yes - "The Ladder"

Rick Wakeman once referred to his good friend Jon Anderson as "the only guy I know trying to save this planet while living on another one."

The progressive rock band Yes has always had a rotating cast of characters. Wakeman doesn't play on this album, but he's the first to say Yes has always had great musicians in it. Whether or not he was just being diplomatic, he was right.

By the late nineties Anderson's iconic countertenor was full-on into new age philosophy, and amidst this collection of tracks it is inexplicably infectious, making for the most uplifting Yes album since 90125 (and to date).

Roger Dean's artwork is once again sported on the front cover, although they had a new logo for this one.

The Ladder had four of the members from the lauded "classic" lineup—Anderson, guitarist Steve Howe, bassist Chris Squire, and drummer Alan White, augmented by multi-instrumentalist Billy Sherwood and keyboardist Igor Khoroshev (who was well appraised of the shoes he was filling).

Their creative peak was pretty well inarguably in the 1970s, and an unexpected second lease on life led to their commercial peak in the mid '80s. By the late '90s they were in a bit of a creative rut and joined forces with Canadian producer Bruce Fairbairn. Finding yourself aligned with the right set of ears at the right time to coach you through the process can make all the difference. By this time it was clear to anyone watching carefully enough that Canada had spawned more successful record producers per capita than any other nation on earth (Jack Richardson, Bob Ezrin, Daniel Lanois, Bob Rock, and David Foster for starters) so the odds were in Yes' favour that something great could happen.

This is the one latter day Yes album where their '70s compositional prowess blends with their '80s pop sensibility. The arrangements are thoughtful, the melody always comes first, and rarely are two choruses identical. And in an era where the idea of album sequencing was now mostly in the rearview mirror, it flows beautifully and cohesively from track to track. They even brought in a sideman, Randy Raine-Reusch, who played a whole score of ethnic instruments, bringing a welcome freshness to their sound which hadn't been fully realized for quite some time.

Yes is a vocally driven band, but usually not in the traditional sense. Anderson's vocal best functions as a fifth instrument and is not necessarily front and centre. His words are often merely an extension of the music, not the other way around. Even if you don't believe a single word he says on The Ladder, he offers it genuinely and gracefully, with authenticity and joy. You just can't help but want to be on whatever planet he's on.

And it's not just Anderson on the spiritual bent here—Fairbairn nicknamed Howe "Swami" for his role in the process. I'm often a cynic, increasingly hardened by the world, and this album makes me believe magic exists. When these two guys are fully congruent with one another they create magic every time.

Prog fans hailed the eponymous 10-minute opening track as a return to form, but just as much depth is found in the shorter tracks that follow.

"It Will Be A Good Day" sees many baroque-inspired key changes, similar to "And You And I." Anderson and Squire's voices blend together as well as ever, like Lennon and McCartney on "If I Fell."

The genre bending and upbeat "Lightning Strikes" is Yes' boldest move since they teamed up with the guys who wrote "Video Killed The Radio Star." The horn section is well-utilized, and the time signature changes galore never feel shoehorned or laboured, similar to what Rush achieved on "Limelight."

"Can I" is self parody at its finest, with the counterpoint and lyrics evoking "We Have Heaven" from Fragile. On first glance it's derivative, but Anderson takes it a step further, inventing a language long before Sigur Ros. I have such a soft spot for choral music—the same reason I love the title track off Drones by Muse.

On "Face To Face" Squire makes something as rudimentary as a descending major scale sound like you're hearing it for the first time. The Aretha-like backing vocals are not unlike "Houses Of The Holy" (the song, not the album).

Word painting is a musical technique that goes back to Handel, at least—"Ev'ry Valley" from the Messiah first comes to mind. At the end of Anderson's love song "If Only You Knew," on "when I was falling" the textural bit of steel guitar Howe adds literally sounds like something falling. Masterful.

"To Be Alive" is pop perfection. Once again the congruency of Anderson and Squire's voices are on full display in the second verse. Howe's only contribution is a bit of lap steel, and it's sublime—so exceptionally suited to the song that he plays it again like McCartney's solo on "Maybe I'm Amazed." Every note Howe plays on this album is purposeful, crafted with care. His parts are mostly ornamental, and this is not to their detriment. It is an hour-long clinic on how to play for the song, decorating only the spots that need it. This is what musical maturity sounds like.

Many of the songs have outros that are completely unrelated to the rest of it, as Fairbairn felt the ideas were too good to leave on the cutting room floor. And somehow it all works. The bit tagged onto the end of "Finally" has a Tales From Topographic Oceans feel to it. The intro unexpectedly recapitulating later in the song is marvellous as well.

The sudden entry of backing vocals in "The Messenger" is one of the most powerful moments in the entire Yes catalog. Even people who panned this album said they loved this track.

"New Language" is not dissimilar to "Close To The Edge" in that there's a lengthy instrumental intro that precedes the core of the song. The backing vocals in the pre-chorus evoke "Leave It" off 90125, and in the last chorus Squire's bass part moves up an octave. Tiny sprinkles like this are massively effective, as he manages to somehow elevate the track to an even higher place. It's classic Yes from here onward for the rest of the piece.

On "Nine Voices" Howe plays the same 12-string Portuguese guitar he'd played decades earlier on "I've Seen All Good People" and "Wonderous Stories." The "new language" lyrical theme is heard again, similar to "these days" showing up all over the album bearing that name by Bon Jovi (another underrated '90s album). It wouldn't surprise me if the overdubs totalled nine voices, because it wouldn't be Yes at their best if they didn't have that kind of attention to detail.

With this album a bunch of guys in their 50s shunned the idea of following timely trends, and in the post-grunge era they produced what should be hailed as a classic. It's an entirely different discussion why the business mechanisms that were needed to help achieve that didn't come to bat for them, but it's all moot now that you're reading this.

Give The Ladder a spin—you'll almost certainly be glad you did. It's one of the best rock albums this side of OK Computer.