Frank Zappa's Roxy Band

Frank Zappa’s prolific career as composer, arranger, guitarist, satirist, dada art conceptualist, producer, and record company entrepreneur spans a breathtaking array of American and European styles, often brought together in combinations through his own idiosyncratic filter.

Zappa first moved into commercial rock & roll music -- relatively speaking -- with his 1973 album Over-Nite Sensation. This was a collection of short songs about sexual deviants and other oddballs, like the dental floss farmer in “Montana,” which turned out to be Zappa’s first hit. Longtime fans cried sellout, while feminists were enraged.

Commercial-sounding rock would be Zappa’s primary mode of expression for much of the remainder of his career. The next album, Apostrophe ('), featured the hit “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” (with its "huskie wee-wee") and the is-he-racist-or-is-he-not "Uncle Remus" in addition to brief gems liks "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast" and "Excentrifugal Forz."

Just as it seemed as though Zappa was descending irrecoverably into commercialism and cheap satire, he did something that saved his career trajectory for the next few years: he hired an absolutely killer band. The live Roxy & Elsewhere, from 1974, was the first document to feature the lineup of tuned-percussion virtuoso Ruth Underwood; reed player and manic vocalist Napoleon Murphy Brock; rhythm guitarist Jeff Simmons; the airy, jazzy keyboards and vocals of ex-Cannonball Adderley sideman George Duke; and the supple rhythm section of Tom Fowler on bass and Chester Thompson and Ralph Humphrey on drums. This band achieved an ideal balance of personal style with the ability to play Zappa’s daunting music flawlessly.

Roxy is a fine album, but the greatest achievement by this band is You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore - Vol. 2, one of the series of live albums that Zappa released in 1992, this one culled from a series of concerts that the band (minus Simmons and Humphrey) played in Helsinki. Where Zappa couldn't rely on his audience's command of the English language, he toned down some of the cheap humor and focused more on the music itself. The result was one of the best live progressive rock albums ever recorded, up there with Phil Manzanera's 801 Live, Magma Live, and King Crimson's Night Watch. The band rips through “serious” instrumentals like “RDNZL” and “T’Mershi Duween” along with pop tunes like “Village of the Sun,” theatrical showpieces like “Room Service,” and repertory favorites ranging from "Montana" back to "Uncle Meat." The communication amongst the musicians is telepathic.

Zappa went into the studio with the Roxy band and produced his best studio album of the mid-70s, the unjustly overlooked One Size Fits All. This sparklingly-produced collection of songs includes “Inca Roads,” featuring one of Zappa’s most memorable guitar solos (pasted in from the aforementioned Helsinki concerts); the heavy-metal-ish “Florentine Pogen,” the two German lieder-influenced “Sofas,” and no cheap porn whatsoever. The programming, material, and playing make this one a standout among Zappa’s rock albums.

Fans of the Roxy lineup should also look for the DVD Frank Zappa: Dub Room Special, which contains clips of that lineup from a live TV special (as well as others of a later, less interesting band).

U.K.

The two-year existence of the prog supergroup U.K. was notable for marking the end of the glory days of progressive rock. Although the initial nucleus of the band was drummer Bill Bruford and bassist/vocalist John Wetton, who made up the rhythm section in the celebrated 1972-74 edition of King Crimson, the band’s collective c.v. read like a Who’s Who of British Prog.

Bruford began in Yes, toured with Genesis after Crimson broke up, and sat in with various bands including the cerebral post-Canterbury-hippie outfit National Health and space-rockers Gong and Absolute Elsewhere. Wetton had stints in Uriah Heep, Family, and Roxy Music as well as Crimson. Bruford brought along guitarist Allan Holdsworth, a true virtuoso who introduced an entire school of legato, saxophone-style playing and was an acknowledged influence on Eddie van Halen; his resume included prog (Soft Machine and Gong) and heavy metal (Tempest) as well as fusion (Tony Williams, Jean-Luc Ponty). Wetton brought in keyboard and violin whiz Eddie Jobson from Roxy; Jobson had also been with Curved Air and (most recently) Frank Zappa’s band.

The lineup was promising enough, as was the 1978 eponymous debut album U.K.. The featured track was “In the Dead of Night,” which showed off the band’s basic style: a mixture of King Crimson-style blockbuster prog and sophisticated fusion. The main elements were Jobson’s atmospheric keyboards; Holdsworth’s liquid-lightning soloing; and Bruford’s crisp, distinctive drumming. The instrumental “Presto Vivace,” which Jobson wrote while touring with Zappa, sounded like Zappa with a British stiff upper lip. The dark, reflective “Nevermore” featured Wetton’s increasingly competent singing – he was clearly becoming more interested in that than in his bass playing – and a mesmerizing Holdsworth solo. In all, a solid slab of up-to-the-minute prog.

Then a schism in the band led to its breakup: Bruford and Holdsworth wanted to keep things on the edge, while Wetton and Jobson had plans for rock stardom. The former duo departed to form the decidedly fusion-y band Bruford, with much the same band that had appeared on Bruford's pre-U.K. debut solo album Feels Good to Me (1977): ex-National Health keyboardist David Stewart and the Berklee-trained American bassist Jeff Berlin.

Meanwhile, Wetton and Jobson kept U.K. going. They brought in drummer Terry Bozzio from Zappa’s band, but no guitarist to fill Holdsworth’s slot.

Danger Money was a transitional album that combined prog epics (“Carrying No Cross”) with poppish tunes (“Rendezvous 6:02”) and a few in between (the ELP-ish title track). Bozzio was a technically impressive but less distinctive replacement for Bruford (he had fit in better with Zappa); the lack of guitar made the sound monochromatic, notwithstanding Jobson’s violin solos. The ensuing live album Night After Night was pure product, and U.K. broke up in 1979.

The final membership of U.K. then proceeded to finish selling out. Wetton formed the mutant arena-rock outfit Asia with Yes guitarist Steve Howe, Yes/Buggles keyboard player Geoff Downes, and ELP drummer Carl Palmer. Bozzio teamed up with his wife Dale and ex-Zappa bassist Patrick O’Hearn to form the new-wave-pop outfit Missing Persons. Jobson, after a brief stint in Jethro Tull, drifted off into the sunset through production and session work. Thus ended the prog saga.

Jeff Beck's Fusion Period

There's a short list in Rock & Roll Heaven of musicians whose influence far outshone their popularity. Jeff Beck has got to be near the top of that list, just before or after the Velvet Underground.

Jeff Beck was the chronological middle of the Holy Trinity of Yardbirds guitarists in the '60s; the fact that the other two (Clapton, Page) are rarely thought of as "Yardbirds guitarists" attests to their own massive fame. The epithet "experimental" is most often attached to Beck's early playing.

When Beck started his own group in the late '60s, he was mining the same territory as Led Zeppelin: heavy rock takes on the blues. The first Jeff Beck Group's debut album, Truth, predated Zep's debut by five months. It featured Rod Stewart on vocals and included a version of Willie Dixon's "I Ain't Superstitous" that hasn't lost its hair-raising, menacing quality. The second Beck band, with Bobby Tench singing, was a strange mixture of Beck's dive-bombing guitar style with R&B.

Blow by Blow (1975) featured Beck's third band, not counting the short-lived power trio BBA (Beck, Bogert and Appice). It's generally referred to as Beck's first "fusion" album and as a "landmark." But is it?

Well, it was the first all-instrumental album by a rock guitarist, at least since Duane Eddy. The pacing and programming of the album are tasteful, as are the arrangements by legendary Beatles producer George Martin. But besides that, if we look at what we have come to expect from fusion guitar albums, it falls short.

His next album was Wired, from 1976, which rock critics described using phrases like "jumped in at the deep end" with respect to jazz-rock fusion. It's true that the album featured two alumni of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, keyboard player Jan Hammer and drummer Narada Michael Walden, both excellent players. But it doesn't really compare to "real" fusion guitarists like McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Allan Holdsworth, or even early Al DiMeola. Many of the tracks tantalize with propulsive grooves, and Beck's guitar melds raw power with thoughtfulness in a way that few others could match; but too often the solos and tunes come to an end just as soon as they are starting to catch fire.

Tracks from Wired like the wonderful "Blue Wind" ought to have been doubly exciting live, with such constraints absent. Unfortunately, Beck's next album, Jeff Beck With the Jan Hammer Group Live, shatters that possibility; it's a mess. It sounds like Beck barely rehearsed with Hammer and his band; they gamely keep up with him on his tunes, while he sounds like he could hardly be bothered playing on Hammer's numbers, and both musicians try to get over on gimmickry.

Beck's final "fusion" album was 1980's There and Back. It was a more consistent, less varied effort than the previous two, featuring the sensitive playing of keyboardist Tony Hymas and the well-traveled drummer Simon Philips. This album moved even further away from jazz -- if the previous albums were even close to jazz (beyond the the Mingus cover on Wired) -- and towards the instrumental guitar rock genre that is Beck's true legacy.

Legions of rock guitarists, from Mick Ronson to Todd Rundgren, claim Jeff Beck's original rock sound as their inspiration. But the progeny of Jeff Beck's so-called fusion period are instrumental rock fretboard-shredders like Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson. In terms of pure technique, they and others can play rings around Jeff Beck, but their eventual sublimation of technique to restraint and soul is the true legacy of Beck albums like Blow by Blow, Wired, and There and Back.

Todd Rundgren's Utopia

One of the strangest tributaries of rock in the mid-70s was Todd Rundgren's foray into progressive rock and fusion with the band Utopia. The band's lineup for its 1974 eponymous debut album featured three keyboard players, a bassist, drummer, and Todd on guitar and lead vocals.

Many critics point to this album as the quitessential evidence of Todd's inner conflict between solipsistic technocrat and first-rate pop melodist. It begs the question of who was responsible for what aspects of the music on this bizarre, uneven album.

The opening track "Utopia Theme" (recorded live) and the 30-minute epic "The Ikon" are the two most emblematic tracks on the album. Both are compendia of what were even by then prog and fusion cliches: low-rent Genesis, bargain-basement ELP, and factory-clearance Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Much of these two tracks are sequences of riffs that repeat ad infinitum, interspersed with glorious "chorus" sections that show Todd's light melodic touch to good effect; the juxtaposition of these two elements is jarring and just plain weird. It helps neither that the band had no virtuoso instrumentalists on the order of Keith Emerson or John McLaughlin, nor that the album's sound quality suffers from the need to jam so much music onto two sides of an LP.

Yet after repeated listenings, the album grows on you. It almost sounds like an enthusiastic young garage band's approach to progressive rock -- especially compared with the jaded, slick later efforts of bands that influenced Utopia in the first place. It's progressive rock that actually rocks.

The Utopia lineup on this album didn't survive, and the band flirted with progressive rock with two more albums before completely selling out. As it turns out, the best prog album that Utopia ever made was not under its own name: it was L, by ex-Gong (and future System 7) guitarist Steve Hillage, produced by Rundgren, with Utopia as one hell of a backup band.

Humble Pie

Back in the mid-1970s, there were a zillion hard-rock bands that sounded like the fictitious band Stillwater in Cameron Crowe's 2000 movie Almost Famous. The band that served as a blueprint -- not only for Stillwater but for bands like that in general -- was Humble Pie. Consider that the Pie's original lead guitarist, Peter Frampton (remember him?), served as musical consultant to the film and appeared in a cameo... as Humble Pie's roadie.

Although Humble Pie was more than almost famous in the early 70s, few remember them now. They were the key transitional band between various British rock styles of the 60s and the Foghats, Bad Companies, and so many other bands that sounded like them in the mid- and late-70s. The Pie was actually something of a supergroup when the band came together in 1968: lead singer and rhythm guitarist Steve Marriott came from the psychedelic Small Faces ("Itchycoo Park"); Frampton came from the pop-oriented Herd; and bassist Greg Ridley had been in the heavy, bluesy Spooky Tooth. (Drummer Jerry Shirley was 17 years old when he was hired.)

The first two Pie albums, As Safe as Yesterday Is and Town and Country, melded "respectful" British blues influences with the rustic feel of The Band. (As Safe as Yesterday Is is superior but only available as a high-priced import CD nowadays.) But when manager Dee Anthony convinced the band to turn up the volume in order to conquer the States, Humble Pie recorded its first album in what became known as its signature style, 1971's Rock On.

Rock On sounds like an almost clinical grafting of crunching guitar riffs and heavy drums onto blues and R&B; the twin influences were both there but hadn't been synthesized into a truly individual style the way Cream or Led Zeppelin did it. If you listen to this album, you can tell where this now-cliche set of influences came from -- and you can see how so many bands found it easier to cop this style than those of Zep or Cream.

Humble Pie's ensuing double live album, Performance: Rockin' the Fillmore (also 1971), was its peak achievement -- and it's a scorching document. Steve Marriott whips the audience into a party-hearty frenzy while Frampton plays at his melodic best on a collection of blues and R&B covers, including Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone," Ashford and Simpson's "I Don't Need No Doctor," and the side-long Dr. John cover, "I Walk on Gilded Splinters," which almost ventures into Allman Brothers jam-band territory.

The Pie's sole gift to classic-rock posterity is "30 Days in the Hole," a paean to drugs, sex, drugs, rock & roll, and drugs, from the ensuing Smokin' album (1972). By this time, Frampton had left for his solo career. The new guitarist, David "Clem" Clempson, felt even more at home in the riff-rockin' style, though ironically enough, his previous gig was with the jazz-rock band Colosseum.

Other bands followed Humble Pie's example by moving from psychedelic, blues, or progressive roots into hard rock, such as Bad Company (Free/Mott the Hoople/King Crimson), Foghat (Savoy Brown), Jo Jo Gunne (Spirit), and Foreigner (Spooky Tooth/Crimson), while the next generation of swaggering hard-rock bands had no such roots.

Yet as they say, what goes 'round comes 'round. Several modern-day bands are deep in hock to Humble Pie, the most obvious being the Black Crowes. Crowes lead singer Chris Robinson married Kate Hudson, who played the female lead in Almost Famous - Penny Lane, Stillwater's muse. Need I say more?