“That’s uncomfortable”: The artist Ian Anderson felt terrible for
Artistry and individualism go hand in hand. As every creative dreams of being pioneering, they know that they must first be unique. That’s why so many musicians protest the idea of the ‘for fans of’ label, only speaking about their music in reference to the work of other people. It leaves them in the shadows, and as Ian Anderson watched that happen to a talent he knew deserved more, it broke his heart on someone else’s behalf.
Really, it’s a lazy form of music journalism that the whole industry needs to be shifting away from. Even beyond journalism, again and again, we see publicists promoting an artist with the leading line of “they sound like [insert another famous or buzzy band name]”. Or we see labels signing new artists simply because they share a similar makeup or could reap the same rewards. They’ll watch one artist blow up at a rival label and go out scouting for a copycat, hoping to replicate the results.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, as labels so often forget that the general public can smell a phoney. But, on other occasions, an artist outside of that whole situation, who isn’t trying to be anyone they’re not, accidentally trips up and lands in the dark, away from those labels, dragging a shadow over them.
That is what happened to Robin Trower, a British guitarist who made his name in Procol Harum and then later in his trio, Robin Trower Band. He’s a great player, and especially in the 1960s and ‘70s, he was noted as a truly great player. But the problem is that when it comes to music, people so often simply fall back on lazy comparisons and limit someone in the process.
Seemingly with no other way to explain or describe Trowers’ talent, people flitted around, scrambling for a way to articulate his power by looking around at the current landscape. They landed on another great, and a name that everyone knew by then: Jimi Hendrix.
They were big at the same time. Procol Harum released their debut in 1967, the same year as The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut. Both were busy for the next few years, but obviously, Hendrix’s career ended untimely early in 1970, while Trower is still playing today, blessed to have more years.
But from where Anderson was standing, the Procol Harum guitarist never truly got his flowers, and instead, all he ever got was Hendrix comparisons. “It must have been bad enough for poor Robin Trower, an electric guitar player from Procol Harum, who had a relatively short solo career being endlessly compared with Jimi Hendrix, who,” even Anderson admitted, “unfortunately, he had a tendency to sound rather like.”
Even if Trower did sound like Hendrix, is that such an issue? It is not simply that both were great players, but more specifically, thrilling players who were able to excite and electrify their crowds. To Anderson, it was exactly that. Trower’s only crime was being good and simply happening to be good at the same time as someone else who was better-known.
Or maybe the issue, especially, was that Hendrix had just beaten Procol Harum to it, breaking out just before the band. “That’s an uncomfortable place to be if you’re a musician; to always feel as if you’re in the shadow of somebody else who got there and did that first,” Anderson said, regretting that Trower was simply stuck walking in the shadow Hendrix was casting as he stepped a few paces ahead.
