You've got to admit, he's a pretty ugly guy. Trower looks like some junior high scag who, for some unknown reason - perhaps to please some cruel, ironic god - has a big crush on you and follows you around and stands by your locker and so forth with that basset hound look on her face that doesn't even elicit pity. Let's face it, White Hendrix or no, he has none of that Super Badass thing going that Jimi had.
"Yeah, me and Jimi are on a first name basis."
Personally, I was never that much into Hendrix. Not at all, in fact. I'm not down on the guy - I like his voice more than his playing, though, and I just don't need to hear the tracks they keep ramming down our throats anymore. These guys and all the others made hours of music; why are we subjected to hearing only a select few minutes of it ad infinitum?
Classic rock programming aside, I don't listen to Hendrix on my own time, either. So I have no problem with where Trower is coming from. I take him on his own terms, not from the point of view that he is standing in some unfulfillable shadow.
But let's face it, Trower has lots of problems. Besides looking like a troll and having his career dismissed as psychedelic karaoke, his cover art sucks. Take a look at some of those early albums...nothing but one awful shade of orange or some hospital room blue and some lame geometric shape. Is this supposed to be cosmicly significant or something? It just looks boring, and the music inside confirms your suspicions. Caravan to Midnight looks like it was done by the same guy who did all of those early Styx covers, some vague attempt at recreating neon or pop art or something...really lame. Although some of Caravan's music is pretty good.
We all chiefly know Robin Trower as 'Day of the Eagle', and more prominently as 'Bridge of Sighs' (which was used to great effect in the film Rush, by the way. Jennifer Jason Lee's ass, Robin Trower's spaced out riff, what's-his-name method acting with an iron, and Duane Allman...or is he the dead one?...being totally scary without saying a word). Great song, but a pretty dull album, with another dull cover. Same could be said for most of the Trower catalog. But not all.
Strangely, Trower's overlooked masterpiece appears at the outset of the 80's, when most (if not all) classic rockers had run for cover or tried their damndest to hide their total lack of any remnant of songwriting enthusiasm behind some expensive studio, some fat record producer, and a pile of cocaine. There's a million of those albums in the used and cutout bins worldwide, and they all suck. Where Trower summoned up his energy from I don't know, but he, drummer Bill Lordan, and vocalist James Dewar clicked on Victims of the Fury, Trower's 1980 release for Chysalis, as they never had before - and never would again.
Dewar deserves a good deal of the credit for why this album works as well as it does. His vocals are moody and insinuating; he implies volumes without stating much of anything. His delivery is very relaxed, and yet he manages to summon up a kind of controlled intensity in "The Shout" and "Madhouse". (Not surprisingly, it was these two rockers that made it to the radio, not the simmering slow numbers that comprise the bulk of the record). Dewar also contributes an interesting lyric sense, and his themes seem to revolve around eternity, pain, and loss; they manage a certain myth-like quality without devolving into the ludicrous sort of quasi-mysticism that plagues rock's lesser talents. Dewar's understatement and ambiguity become his strength rather than his curse.
As for Trower himself, he seems to be having a field day, alternating between loopy riffs full of attitude and wah, and simple supporting fingerpicking that support the general sense of quiet foreboding.
Granted, I was 15 at the time I first heard it; there may be some nostalgia at work here. But I was a much more devout listener of Spandau Ballet, Talking Heads, etc, around that time, and those records sound like shit now. Victims of the Fury still sounds good.
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