A look into the musical world of Trevor Rabin: composer, performer, and a man of many careers.
Introduction:
A series of essays wherein I explore the numerous musical identities of my favorite musician: from child prodigy to teen idol to guitar hero to singer/songwriter to award-winning in-demand film composer.
Featuring news/updates and commentary/analysis of Trevor's career and associated projects. Comments are disabled but please feel free to contact me at rabinesque.blog@gmail.com.
My thanks to Yumi Toshimitsu for providing the images herein.
Sometime in 1979, the Japanese music magazine Rock Show ran an article featuring a joint interview with Trevor and former Bay City Rollers frontman Les McKeown. As teen idols both gentlemen enjoyed very enthusiastic followings in Japan and neither were strangers to the pages of such publications. But it is surprising - to me at least - that Trevor would find himself in the same room with the lead singer of the very band which his former bandmate (Duncan Faure) had been hired to replace.
Small world, huh?
Thanks to some handy translation work from my dear Rabinite BFF fiendish_thingy, it appears the primary topic of conversation had to do with the benefits of a solo career, as by that point both Trevor and Les had departed successful bands to go it alone. And all the photos - but particularly the ones where they are seated at a recording console - were most likely taken at Konk Studios, the facility in North London owned by Ray Davies of The Kinks, where both Trevor and Les worked that year: Trevor producing albums for Wild Horses and Noel McCalla, and Les recording his solo debut All Washed Up. Trevor would also record his third solo album Wolf at the studio.
As part of Tidbit Tuesdays on Facebook, an anecdote about Trevor was posted on Varese Sarabande's official Facebook page yesterday, an entry in their ongoing Score Stories series, courtesy of cellist Armen Ksajikian.
https://www.facebook.com/varesesarabanderecords/photos/a.425284527663838.1073741838.190580891134204/479326552259635/?type=3&theater
However, regarding the timeframe of the story, the only gig I could relate this to was Yes' performance at the Hollywood Bowl on July 30th, 2001 featuring the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra as part of their Yessymphonic tour. But I have never read any other account which indicated that Trevor actually performed at the show, though I can definitely believe he was there. So if this is correct, that's another example we can add to the pile of: "You can leave Yes, but you can never really leave Yes."
Thanks to timely updates on social media from the band, we've been informed GROUPLOVE is now finished with the recording of their upcoming third album (which was referred to as #tonequest), and it will include a cameo from Christian and Hannah's totally adorable daughter Willa (who I'm assuming is the sixth member of the band, maybe?).
Last week an inside glimpse of the production was posted on Instagram, featuring producer/engineer Ryan at the console in his studio, working on vocal takes, multitasking as we all do in the wired world (and here I thought cellphones were usually banned in the studio, but I guess when you own it you can make/break the rules).
Last Thursday, Paul Rodgers shared a photo on his official Facebook page of his star-studded backing band for the Paul Rodgers and Friends show in San Francisco, May 1993.
https://www.facebook.com/paulrodgersofficial/photos/a.1452670728287469.1073741828.1450800035141205/1766450073576198/?type=3&theater
(Sadly, Trevor did not wear his leather pants to the soundcheck.)
And of course this would not be the last time Trevor was featured in a group of guitar-slinging luminaries, so for today's #tbt, here he is at the Guitars In The Round seminar in the company of Steve Vai, Steve Lukather, Tom Morello, Joe Satriani and Stanley Jordan. The event was held at the Los Angeles chapter of The Recording Academy and Musicians Institute in September 2000 and was a rare rock music-related appearance for Trevor in the early years of his scoring career.
Thanks to Getty Images there are additional photos now available to view - as for many years photographs from the event were extremely difficult to find.
A rare performance of "Final Eyes" from The BIG Tour, 11/14/87.
As a band, Yes - and the incarnation which I choose to comment upon in this blog - was never particularly direct regarding the subject of human desire in their songs most of the time. As a lyricist Jon Anderson focused primarily on cosmic concerns and his lyrics are often incredibly metaphorically dense. But then that all changed, at least somewhat, with the appearance of Trevor Rabin, who was no stranger to love songs in the course of his career.
For evidence, consider "Changes" from 90125, which on the surface seems to be about the last days of a romance. But Trevor doesn't always write about what we think he's writing about (in a 1989 interview he noted "sometimes I edit my lyrics down, when I go a little inside myself or get too self-indulgent"), and in past interviews he's stated that the song is really about the career chaos he was experiencing at the time he wrote the song - in the early 1980s - as well as concurrent world issues.
As quite a fan favorite in the YesWest catalog, the song "Final Eyes" from Big Generator is an interesting example of a merging of aesthetics, expected or otherwise. On the surface it is a love song, or rather, a breakup song - perhaps a song in which the protagonist seeks to attempt to avoid that terminal destination. On an album which contains a number of musings about love and sex, it developed in an entirely different direction from its' original work-in-progress version (which can be heard on the bootleg compilation The Alternate Generator) but it's quite possibly the first true example of this version of Yes emulating the classic sound. Given Jon's expanded role in the songwriting (but not as involved as he would have preferred, the resultant power struggle a primary motivation for his departure after touring concluded in 1988) it's not so unusual as much as interesting to consider how and why the elements combined in the end result.
"Final Eyes" is really two songs in one, and if you listen carefully you can see - or rather hear - the seams.
Trevor expressed his reservations about the track back in 2003 when interviewed by Mike Tiano: TR: "Final Eyes" I don't think quite worked... MOT: Really? I like that song. TR: No, I like it, but I think it could have gone further. I think more could have been done. I mean, there's a part where I kind of cringe a little bit, because... how do I put this politely, but it starts sounding a bit like Journey, which I mean I've liked a lot of what they've done, but I don't think it's right for Yes to sound like Journey.
And I understand what Trevor means by that, but I would say he is the greatest offender in that some of his soloing in the song sounds more than a bit like Neal Schon from a tonal perspective. The song itself is far more developed that anything Journey was doing at that time. As I noted some years back in a particular discussion at Yesfans, Trevor had been approached in 1984 to co-produce a Journey album (which would have been Raised On Radio - a production apparently fraught with as many difficulties as Big Generator,and the band ended up utilizing engineer Jim Gaines as an associate producer) so one supposes there was at least a sympathetic stylistic vibration happening on some level.
"Final Eyes" was the third single from Big Generator, going as high as number 20 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts, which definitely supports its' particular charm among listeners. I believe one of the best things about the song is its' title, it's so evocative and relational - I imagine any number of us have either looked at someone or been looked at by someone through final eyes, that moment when you know a relationship has reached its' end. It's a question I think would be interesting to ask Trevor: did this clever phrase just come to him out of the inspirational blue, or did he hear it from someone else, and was it something he carried around in his brain for a while, or was it an immediate assignment to a particular musical idea? Because the initial foundation of the song is his, a song Trevor presented to the band which then was elaborated upon by Jon with different verses, though in the original idea the refrain is sung by Jon in a sort of call-and-response type of arrangement. Musically there were further contributions by Chris Squire and Tony Kaye. Just slightly shorter than the two "epics" of the album - "Shoot High, Aim Low" and "I'm Running" - it features the same stylistic philosophy of those tracks in terms of the structure of the arrangement and dynamics of the overall sound. But when I consider the song, I think of it more in terms of the mood it means to convey rather than the subject of the lyrics. During the musical interlude which begins at 4:47 I never fail to feel as though I'm walking in a sunlit glade, the air itself shimmers around me and the possibility of encountering the fae is never far from my thoughts. In other words, a typical Andersonian experience.
In the final "Final Eyes" we are greeted with beautiful acoustic guitar and Jon's high clear vocal which is then augmented with New Age-y percussion and keyboard textures as well as harmonies. After the second verse and chorus, the song then takes a turn into what was the original version, so in the transition at 1:37 you can hear the exchange between Jon and Trevor, as the phrase begins with Jon's voice and ends with Trevor's, you can actually hear the key change at about 1:41. The figure Trevor plays on guitar is exactly the original chord sequence, and frames his refrain, though in the original the transition is the same, just less pronounced. It creates the same dynamic we hear in other tracks (most notably "Shoot High, Aim Low"): the marriage of earth (Trevor) and air (Jon).
And this consideration is as essential an aspect of what made YesWest successful as any other: Trevor's deliberate creations of juxtaposition between himself and Jon within the arrangements, contrasting both their vocal and compositional styles. I tend to think "Final Eyes" is an especially obvious example of this strategy in that it takes what was a somewhat anthemic song about a rift of some kind (and knowing Trevor as we do, it's not necessarily a romantic one) and transforms it into a musical statement which borrows from both old and new to create its' evocative landscape. And also a song which is truly, deeply far more romantic than its' origins suggest. The mix of the primal and the ethereal is entirely wonderful.
And then there is that bravura transition at 3:32 which is admittedly a bit of studio trickery but still quite thrilling to hear.
It's an interesting consideration that Jon's musical persona could inform the arrangement of a song, but it is apparent to me that Trevor might have been crafting the mood and movement of "Final Eyes" to encompass those musical values which Jon represented not only within Yes, but his career as a whole. And thus much of what fans may love about the song is also what reminds them of why they love Yes. Critic Mike McGuirk referred to the track as "an effective throwback to the band's salad days."
As an aside, I've always found the line "Don't hide behind the headlines (oh yeah)" reminds me of this famous montage from Citizen Kane, which depicts the evolution, and disintegration, of a marriage within the microcosm of the breakfast table.
The song was only played four times early on in the touring cycle, and the best things about the live version are - in my estimation - the beginning, which features a sort of overture to the song rather than starting from the same point the studio version does; and the end, where Trevor has a little more space to play his lovely ride-out. Some of the most beautiful guitar parts on Big Generator are also the most brief, on record the coda of "Final Eyes" is a little over 20 seconds. But ultimately most of BigGen's more expansive songs proved to be too unwieldy for live performance.
With thanks to En Stars, here's an article about what to expect in season two of 12 Monkeys, which debuts on Monday, April 18th.
http://www.enstarz.com/articles/133238/20160107/12-monkeys-season-2-premiere-date-set-prepare-for-year-of-the-monkey-video.htm
I have to say, this doesn't come as a surprise to me. Since Trevor's initial announcement last month, in fandom discussion I had speculated that the reason Trevor announced the status of ARW rather than the progress on his solo album was because the one project had supplanted the other. But of course new music is always welcome and I'm very happy the guys are choosing to make this project a priority now, as they have all noted on social media. Here's hoping there will be news of their album for third or fourth quarter release this year.
