Too Rolling Stoned: Robin Trower’s Bridge of Sighs at 50
Looking back on a genuine guitar rock essential
Bridge of Sighs, Robin Trower’s second solo outing, was the effort that not only established him as a star in his own right following his tenure in Procol Harum, but also allowed him to secure his stature as one of the top guitarists of the era.
That said, the influence of Jimi Hendrix was obvious in Trower’s early efforts, particularly on his initial solo album that followed his departure from Procol Harum, Twice Removed From Yesterday. Nevertheless, with the arrival of his sophomore set on April 20, 1974, it became clear that Trower had successfully created a sound and style that could be indelibly identified as his own. His eponymous outfit — featuring Trower on guitar, James Dewar on bass and vocals and drummer Reg Isidore — retained the power trio format procured by Cream, making it little of a surprise that he would later join forces with the late Jack Bruce to form the band BLT along with American drummer and former member of Sly and the Family Stone Bill Lordan. That said, a tie to Procol Harum still remained intact, given that Procol Harum organist Matthew Fisher sat behind the boards for this and Trower’s other two initial solo albums.
Nevertheless, the split from his former band may have seemed inevitable given Trower’s obvious intent to create a harder edged sound that was distinctly different from the stately style for which Procol Harum was known. “Whiskey Train,” Trower’s co-composition with lyricist Keith Reid on the album Home, affirmed that fact in the form of a hard rocker that differed decidedly from the sweeping orchestral textures the band were so proficient with before. Still, the notion that Trower had been part of the pre-Procol band, The Paramounts, meant that he retained a definitive stake in the band’s development throughout their first five albums.
Eventually thought, it became clear that he had his own sonic terrain to explore, and with Bridge of Sighs, that sound fully coalesced. Even now, some 50 years later, it remains the definitive Robin Trower album, as evidenced by an upcoming reissue that will expand the LP with a number of unreleased live tracks.
Indeed, the original album was a revelation in itself given that it featured any number of songs that have since become seminal stand-outs — among them, the sweeping, searing title track with its rock-steady rhythm, the bluesy and blustery “Too Rolling Stoned,” the didactic delivery that characterized “Day of the Eagle” and the relentless rocker “Little Bit of Sympathy,” which clearly retains a tie to a Hendrix motif. Each found a fit in Trower’s live repertoire. Other entries — the driving, funk-fueled “Lady Love,” the slow blues of “About To Begin” and the teeming tension that echoed through “In This Place” in particular — helped heighten the overall sonic suggestion.
Trower would later credit the efforts of The Beatles’ engineer Geoff Emerick for the spectral sound that illuminated the album overall.
“He came up with a way of recording the guitar I don’t think had been done before,” Trower once said in retrospect. “It was a big room and he had one mic in close, one mic set in the middle distance, and one mic set fifteen feet away to get the sound of the room. That was a very big factor in how the song and the whole album sounds.”
In the decades since its release the album has only grown in stature while leaving a lingering legacy which has inspired many of those players that followed, Toto’s Steve Lukather among them. “It blew my mind,” he recalled. The sound of Robin’s guitar hit my soul. The tone-touch and feel was so incredible.”
VIDEO: Robin Trower “Day of the Eagle”
As for the origin of the album title, Trower told Guitar World that he had the first line of the song on hold for several years, but it was only when he noticed an item in the sport pages about a racehorse called “Bridge of Sighs” that he knew he had found his title. Of course, the origins of the name go back even further — specifically to the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, Italy that was built in the 1600s.
Ultimately, the effort paid off. The album reached the Top Ten in the U.S. and its tenure on the charts lasted some 31 weeks. It was eventually certified to have attained gold status, underscoring the fact that it was destined to become a milestone.
In a very real sense then, Bridge of Sighs allowed Robin Trower to cross over the chasm to the mainstream.
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