Robin Trower — Robin Trower Live! [50th Anniversary Edition]
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Were you there at the traveling guitar event of ’75?
When a caravan of three—bass, drums, and that magisterial Stratocaster—swept its way across the United States, with Asbury Park’s Convention Hall, New York City’s Academy of Music, Dallas’ Memorial Auditorium, and San Francisco’s Winterland being among the many cross-country stops. The United Kingdom was also part of the conquest, including a London visit to the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test. Copenhagen, Denmark bore the brunt of their heavy magnificence, too.
Yet, of all the stadiums, armories, arenas, civic centers, ballrooms, theaters and coliseums that were blues-rocked along the transcontinental tour route, one particularly special Monday evening stood out. Inside the Stockholm Concert Hall (Konserthuset, in native Swedish tongue), on the 3rd of February, is where and when the Robin Trower Band made enduring history.
This was the performance immortalized in vinyl: Robin Trower Live!.
The British power trio—triangulated by Robin Trower (guitar), James Dewar (bass/vocals), and Bill Lordan (drums)—was captured in both peak form and sterling fidelity (thanks, in part, to the symphonic hall’s stellar acoustics). Ever since being released in March 1976, Robin Trower Live! has dropped countless jaws of stunned listeners while launching an ever-growing army enlisting anyone from around the world with six strings and guitar-god aspirations.
At the push of a button, the vicarious thrill of that night unlocks—now, for the first time, in full.
You see, the only way to have heard this entire show is to have scored one of the venue’s 1,770 seats and eyewitnessed the spectacle in person. Because, due to time constraints of the single LP format, only 41 minutes were issued. Yet those 41 indelible minutes—which snipped some songs, completely abandoned others, and rejiggered their order—still left secondhand earwitnesses blown away. Even though the performance was in partial form.
Imagine, though, immersing in the complete, uncut 71 minutes. Namely, starting properly at a never-heard, high-velocity “Day of the Eagle,” which opened the show, and rolling straight through the unedited encore nicked from B.B. King, “Rock Me Baby.” And within this span, finally experiencing the dark beauty in “Bridge of Sighs” being built onstage in majestic slow-burn fashion, its notes doomfully tolling, hanging in the air like pitch-black storm clouds long after being struck on the strings, defying their sonic weight. In commiserate tonnage, Dewar’s calm, steady, resolute voice rasps out the bleak scenario:
“The sun don’t shine,
The moon don’t move the tides,
To wash me clean.
Why so unforgiving and why so cold?
Been a long time crossing bridge of sighs.”
That never-released track is only one of the many godsends newly unleashed.
Because Chrysalis Records—also home to fellow ’70s blue-rockers Ten Years After, Rory Gallagher, and Blodwyn Pig—has been giving the white-glove treatment to the classic Trower catalogue by sequentially marching through the albums with special 50th Anniversary Editions. In other words, making the great all the greater. 2023 saw the expansion of 1973’s debut, Twice Removed From Yesterday. 1974’s certified-Gold Bridge of Sighs had its day in 2024. Next up was 1975’s certified-Gold For Earth Below, in 2025. Each and every expanded one is a special treat.
That campaign has now reached Robin Trower Live!. Its 50th Anniversary Edition is grand, being newly mixed and restored from the original multi-track tapes. Five previously orphaned tracks reunite with the original seven tracks that now gain back every lost second. Trower’s introductions from the stage are intact. The total concert—roaring as it originally did, in order—consumes one disc. For diehard holdouts, the original 1975 mix remains untouched on the second disc.
Given the genuine organic chemistry between Trower, Dewar and Lordan, it was inevitable that a Live! record—whose setlist summarized those first three albums—would offer concrete proof that when it came to getting gloriously brutalized by sound, the stage was just as vulnerable—if not more so—as any studio. That came as no surprise to anybody even mildly familiar with the trio.
Keep in mind, though, that when it comes to blues—even rocked and psychedelicized blues—
neither speed nor shredding substitute for feeling. And Trower accepts that as a personal pledge, supersaturating his work with atmospheric moodiness. It’s in what his Strat says as well as how those strings say it with such a signature massive tone: thickened and sustained with Jimi Hendrix-inspired Univibe swirl and cranked Marshall crunch. So, while B.B. King and Albert King rank among Robin’s self-confessed guitar idols, the tremendous amp roar and sculpting of feedback for the greater good vouch that Hendrix obviously implanted as well.
Case in point: “Confessin’ Midnight,” one of the five orphans, screams with wah-wah violence atop blunt-force rhythm. Down inside lurks surreal imagery. The package deal, jacked up to the hilt, rages like a wicked cousin of “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).” Even if not indulged with its due volume, the power is incredible. Turn it up and get pinned to the wall.
But the Robin Trower Band was not the first fame for Robin Leonard Trower, a Londoner born on March 9, 1945.
That came as the guitarist for Procol Harum. Although seen performing “A Whiter Shade of Pale” at an early televised date, he joined the group in June 1967. That meant missing out by only a few short weeks on the April session when that original debut single was recorded. (Ray Royer holds the guitar credits, but then promptly quit.) But Robin is the credited fretsman heard on the first five albums as well as the two subsequent 1967 singles, “Homburg” and then “Conquistador.” By 1971, he left; by 1973, the Robin Trower Band was up and running.
And the rest has been history, Part II.
History that took many audacious forms on that wintery Nordic night. Bridge of Sighs’ “Too Rolling Stoned,” for instance, scratched and then sloshed under a wah pedal’s command during the galloped first half before a hard trot eventually settled in. When the green light flashed midway through “Alethea,” Lordan’s drum bedlam organizes into a spotlit solo. “I Can’t Wait Much Longer,” with head hung down, shows why Dewar was the ideal vocalist for delivering the kind of lyric gut punches that Trower tends to write. Two tracks later, “Little Bit of Sympathy” confirms the same, except at turbocharged speed. And at three minutes, “Gonna Be More Suspicious” celebrates its rightful return to the set by making a quick—yet aggressive and deafening—strike.
“Daydream,” however, triples in length. The power ballad, cited as a band favorite off Twice Removed From Yesterday, is a showpiece dedicated to The Man that evening. “That would be Jimi Hendrix, I’m referring to,” Trower recently deciphered in the 24-page booklet of notes for the 50th Anniversary Edition. As with The Man’s output, the live forum provides the ideal conditions for Trower and company, too. Bathed in bronze haze lifting off Lordan’s restless cymbals and gouged from shrieking big-sky bends, this Stockholm version of “Daydream” elevates all the more to in excelsis status.
Oh what a landmark night in ’75!
And to think that Trower hasn’t let up since, still very much out there composing, recording, touring—and roaring—to this day.
Label: Chrysalis
Release date: 4/3/26
Artist website: Robin Trower.com
Label website: Chrysalis Records.com
Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski
Comments