/ cbsmornings
Watch CBS News: http://cbsn.ws/1PlLpZ7c Midnight Rose - Paul Rodgers
Sun Records (Released: September 22nd, 2023)
Available on Vinyl LP and CD
'Voice' needs better songs.
So given the 24 year gap between the sub-par 'Electric' and this, you might expect an album that contains NO filler at all. 24 years should provide enough time for an abundance of great material... Or maybe not. Over the years Paul has sometimes sprinkled the odd new song into a show. 'War Boys', 'Far Distant Shore' and 'Lift Your Glass' popped up around 2006, none of them are here, but 'Highway Robber' goes back to Bad Company in 1974. There are two very good versions of it recorded by them, and it was in fact put forward for the 'Straight Shooter' reissue, but Paul vetoed it. 'Take Love' goes back to Queen, where it was performed 'live' in 2006, and I understand recorded for 'The Cosmos Rocks' (2008), though it wasn't used. I seem to recall 'Photo Shooter' goes back quite a way too, as Paul has played this in the past with Howard Leese and Todd Ronning from what I remember. So a selection of songs from quite a long period. The best of the best?
Well this album cuts out at 30 minutes, and only eight songs. By today's standards it's short. I don't really mind that, as Paul has worked with the LP in mind. He loves his vinyl. However, I can't say if the vinyl for this album is all analogue to pressing (AAA), but I can say the digital version provided for review sounds a bit squashed. Produced by Bob Rock, you can hear his 80s pedigree. Great drum sounds, everything well recorded, but getting 'everything' on here is part of the problem, and some of the mixes could be better. Also given production credits are Cynthia Rodgers and bassist Todd Ronning. Really? Too many cooks and all that... It might explain some of the problems maybe... I assume the drummer is Rick Fedyk, (both he and Ronning get a writing credit for 'Living It Up'), but in the press blurb no guitar player/s are mentioned. Howard Leese? More than one guy? I don't know.
Straight in, and 'Comin Home' reminds me a little bit of 'Cut Loose' but it's so dense. Every gap, as we move
into the song a bit, is filled with random guitar licks, which actually don't
add anything. The arrangement is pretty good, and Paul sounds great. No issues
there at all. Time has done nothing to wither this man's voice. He sounds like
he's in his twenties! Nice middle eight here, which breaks the song up, and
punches out of the heavier tempo for a bit. So far, okay. The guitar solo seems
to come from a number of different chopped up takes, audibly so, and doesn't really
lift the song, or go anywhere sadly. Not great, but it's one of the better
tracks here. I can understand why it opens the album.
'Photo Shooter' sounds like a cross between The Firm & The Law. Clunky lyric and guitar riffola filling every gap between the vocal performance lines. Very cluttered. The slide guitar is a nice touch, but it's everywhere like a rash. I'm sure I can hear someone playing the kitchen sink here. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, nice enough guitar solo, back to the chorus. No real dynamics. It's like being on a mid-tempo runaway train, balls to the wall, flat out all the way. No subtly on show here, thick black lines, no shading. Okay, but really a bit of a b-side.
'Midnight Rose', the title track, is again, okay. Not the best lyric (lots of 'not alone' repeats, and the same verse three times), but nice piano and slide guitar. Howard on mandolin I guess. Another song and arrangement that really just doesn't go anywhere. No climax, no crescendo, no build up, verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Very basic stuff. The vocal is a bit too loud in the mix as well.
'Living It Up' has a pseudo-Hendrix feel, including the best guitar playing on the album, with lots of Frank Marino type licks. Great solo tone too. I understand what Paul is trying to put across here, but it's another clunky lyric (he's 'not alone' again....) This would likely kick ass 'live', especially as an opener, and I can see why this was the first thing released for public consumption when the album was announced. Seems like more time was taken with this. The arrangement actually has some dynamics, some really nice drum and bass touches in there. Also the song does feel like it's going somewhere as it moves through the changes. The best track so far.
'Dance In The Sun', is 'Midnight Rose' with a flamenco (ish) guitar filling every gap. This isn't a great song despite some nice moments in the arrangement (some great drum parts). There are guitar fills everywhere, and they suffocate the song. Where there isn't guitar (even sometimes where there is) there are superfluous wailing backing vocals.
'Take Love', is another electro-acoustic type song (think 'Radioactive'). Seems to me most of this album was written acoustically. Like the previous song, too much female wailing going on for me. The Queen version of this was pretty good, but immediately here there's those random guitar fills everywhere again. So far there are four out of the eight songs that work out pretty much the same. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus... Where is the middle eight? A bridge? A key change? Some kind of dynamics other than dropping the band out for a couple of lines? What saves this is Paul's vocal. He sounds great here, but that endless arbitrary guitar just wears me out. Cramming every space in the audio field makes the album a tiring listen.
'Highway Robber' isn't as good as the Bad Company version, period. It was interesting coming from that time, and perfect for the 'Straight Shooter' reissue a few years ago as an unreleased song. Unreleased because it wasn't as strong as the other material there at the time. Good, but not great. For that, 'See The Sunlight' and 'All Night Long', from the same period, showed how much material Bad Company were turning over at that moment. Remember then they were also using non-album b-sides like 'Little Miss Fortune' and 'Whiskey Bottle'. An over abundance of material meant they could be selective to what was used where, and what was NOT used, something I don't think was the case with this album! This is the longest cut on 'Midnight Rose' at just over five minutes... It seems like ten!
'Melting', the final cut, is actually my favourite song from the record by FAR. It moves in a different way to anything else on here, and in fact this could have been from 'Muddy Water Blues' or even 'Now'. While there is still too much indiscriminate solo guitar 'filling' going on in places, it's not so exhausting here. I think this is a great song. It has a fantastic vocal performance, and the best lyric on the record too. In fact all the players here sound very fine. It's a refined performance by all involved. It also breaks, what Michael Heatley rightly refers to as the "relentless transatlantic rock backing", in his 'Record Collector' magazine review (2/5 Stars). I'm reminded a little bit of 'Voodoo' on the Queen album. Not that it sounds the same, but that it's the highlight of an otherwise pretty run of the mill set of songs. Music by numbers, or going through the motions. Call the rest of it what you will.
So, eight songs, but only three that really appeal to me personally, one if I get really harsh, and honestly, four here don't really work for me at all. 30 minutes is enough. Surely Paul has better songs than this? We needed much more material of the calibre of the final song, and less 'Photo Shooter', 'Midnight Rose', 'Dance in The Sun', verse chorus repeat. The production overall is a bit exhausting, (or rather it's the mixes) but in fact, if asked who I thought could produce Paul, Bob Rock (Metallica, Bon Jovi, Tragically Hip) would have been on my list, top 3, along with Kevin Shirley (Baby Animals, Black Crowes, Joe Bonamassa) and John Custer (Cry Of Love, Automatic Slim, Dag). However, Bob needed to reign it in a bit, pull the band (guitarist) back, and perhaps listen to some of the Free stuff to get a feel for Paul, as much of this is too frilly and jumbled. It needed a bit more restraint, and some more work on the majority of the song arrangements. There's no room for any of the music to breathe at all. Far too much going on in such undemanding songs, or maybe that's why there's so much crammed in there! Trying to make things sound better than they actually are. Much on show here is pretty basic, rudimentary songwriting, very linear, and there is little done to elevate to songs, to lift them, and make them fly.
Having said all of that, I think generally fans of Paul will be getting what they want, and anticipate. I wasn't really surprised by anything here. It was all pretty much as expected. Great vocals, some decent band performances, but a lack of really great songs. Of the record, Paul himself has said "My new album 'Midnight Rose' grew from sparks of ideas I had, The sparks developed into a raging fire when the band and everyone involved brought their absolute 'A' game. I think it is my best album to date, I like it. I hope you do too."
In fact this album sits behind 'Now' for me. It's a 6/10, and I have to wonder what happened to the guy who wrote some of my favourite songs, and lyrics. However, Paul is 74 in December, and he's already said there are no current plans to tour with this record. I'm sure that will disappoint a lot of people, but that may change if he needs to scratch the itch. But you know what, he's living happily in Canada with Cynthia, and his catalogue with Free and Bad Company speaks for itself. This might not be something I'm going to play endlessly (or much at all), but the man has done enough, and at this stage I'm grateful for the bits here I do like as additions to his very considerable cannon. This isn't a bad album, it's just not as good as it should be for someone like Paul Rodgers. The expectation should he high after so long, and this just doesn't deliver. He's better than this, but having not done any proper solo recording for so long, and seemingly not an awful lot of song writing for a while from the sound of material on offer here, the lack of that kind of activity shows in the finished result, which is generally okay, but rarely great.
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David Clayton
Free Appreciation Society
September 2023.
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Other voices below...
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Paul Rodgers
Midnight Rose.jpg)
Two stars/five
Sun 5047806263 (CD, LP)
Nice voice, shame about the songs
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Rock god Rodgers needs no
introduction, and his vocal chops remain enviable at age 73. Midnight Rose
breaks a 25-year silence in terms of original solo material but has a “lockdown
project” vibe, vocals somehow detached from a relentless transatlantic rock
backing. Sun Records labelmate Ian Hunter could teach him a thing or two about
dynamics, if not singing
It’s no coincidence that Paul’s most recent work has focused on songs by Muddy Waters, the Stax R&B stable and a revisit to his Free heyday. There’s nothing here to approach that calibre of material, the autobiographical 'Live It Up' and Bad Company-reminiscent 'Highway Robber' the relative highlights. Since Rodgers is now a naturalised Canadian, maybe a phone call to Bryan Adams next time?
Michael Heatley
Special review for Paul's 73rd Birthday
Back Street Crawler
Kursaal Ballroom, Southend - May 31, 1975
Angus Manwaring
I remember in 1976 or 1977 shortly after my Free and Paul Kossoff journey
had moved from fandom to fixation, a friend showed me an article in the music
press announcing a double Kossoff album, with one record being "live"
and there just being "a few legalities to sort out" before it was
released.
That was the June 15th Fairfield Halls, Croydon concert that John Glover had control over and used for the album "Koss" - amongst other things. When the album finally arrived, the live record was, in my view, not bad, with some good moments, but definitely not a great concert. Since then it has become clear to me that the band were, on occasion, capable of a great deal more than that. The '76 Starwood performance, for example, sounds to me like a much better band. What I hadn't appreciated until recently however, was that they, Kossoff in particular, had actually turned in some truly excellent performances. The Southend gig (some two weeks before the Croydon concert) is one such an example. The sound leaves something to be desired on this recording, but Kossoff is as clear as a bell (well, nearly) through most of it. I assume the person recording the concert is right in front of Kossoff, which would explain the relative levels between the guitar and the rest of the band.
Excuse my nostalgia here, but I remember a guy, from around 1980, that I used to see in my local secondhand record shop, in Tunbridge Wells. He had seen Back Street Crawler, and was therefore a person of interest for me. Dave, I think it was. Long hair, bald on top with a cowboy hat, white afghan and, as often as not, a Patti Smith T-shirt. I asked him about to tell me about the gig, but he wasn't a very chatty type. What he did say, and was still angry about, was that according to him Kossoff had to pretty much ask permission from the band to play The Hunter, and they were reluctant and dismissive about it, He (Dave) felt they were not even worthy to be playing with the man, much less to be dictating what was played. I have no idea if there's any truth in his recollection, I've certainly not got that impression from any of the recordings I've heard, and I only mention it as a personal anecdote from over 40 years ago. But I'm sure Dave (not that Dave!) believed it to be true, but he did seem like a pretty angry guy.
Anyway, on to the concert itself.....
'The Band Plays On' starts the proceedings, sounding tight and assured. Kossoff's rhythm playing sounds very good, with the powerful chords in the chorus on the edge of feedback, and the odd fill ringing out in excellent style. The keyboard solo is unfortunately pretty much drowned out. Then Kossoff takes the first solo which he executes flawlessly. The song progresses to the "I wanna hear you play" build up, culminating in the second solo and again, it's flowing and effortless. A million miles from those nights when Koss was playing okay but you could tell he was struggling to keep it together. It's as if he decided to demonstrate exactly how he'd developed as a guitarist since Free, laying it out for everybody, happy to be judged and confident in his ability.
The more up tempo 'Sidekick to the Stars' follows, and it starts off slightly clumsily, but things are soon organised with everybody performing well. Aggressive rhythm guitar, with superbly played fills and a frantic solo add to a song that is very well received by the audience. After the song, Sless introduces the band as they slide into 'Long Way Down to the Top'.
Koss pours on the fills with
seemingly infinite sustain. The Phase shift solo works much better than the
Croydon version with waves of sound burying the audience in molten Kossoff. The
microphone struggles with the nature of Koss' playing here and the sound
seriously drowns out the band, before possibly some manual adjustment to the
recording levels improve things.
Sless gives his "recording in Cornwall" introduction to the 'Train Song' before Kossoff knocks out the riff, still in phase shift mode. This sounds
like full on Koss (Free style) riff playing. A song that would perhaps fit in
with the 'Free at Last' album very well. His playing is tasteful and inventive
with some nice country inspired touches. Again, the audience respond
enthusiastically.
Mike Montgommery takes over the lead vocal for 'Survivor' and there is more
muscular rhythm guitar - although I'm not quite convinced about how well the
keyboard rhythm playing works with such a powerful guitar sound. It's a bit
like Rambo marching round the block accompanied by his elderly mother, nagging
him about his unshaven chin, the fact that he needs to go clothes shopping, as
well as his various other shortcomings.... There's a great full on solo with
Kossoff effortlessly switching between fully committed rhythm and wailing lead
guitar. The song ends powerfully with some great chords.
Sless introduces 'Jason Blue' and his "Had to have a taste" comment
elicits an "Ooh Betty" response from
our intrepid recording crew, a reference to the 'Some Mother's Do 'ave
'em' TV series, for some reason. The keyboards sound much better here, and
there's fine singing from Sless. The band mix is much better and this is a
mature arrangement with the band working really well together. Koss lights it
up again with some majestic playing in his solo, and I'm convinced if any Free
fan was there, they'd have had nothing to grumble about with his playing, far
from it. Again, very positively received by the audience.
'New York, New York' is next and the funny thing in this version of the song,
once it gets going it sounds not so much "the city that never sleeps"
as a really nice country rock vibe, more West Virginia than New York to my ear,
but it sounds great, especially the guitar. Kossoff is clearly enjoying himself
and throws in another spectacular ending.
At this point, there seem to be some microphone issues, and there's some
fumbling around until somebody says, "How about 'Just for the Box'?". I
am really glad they did, because dear reader, if you haven't heard this before,
you are in for a treat. In fact, if on the strength of this review, you are
wondering if I'm just gushing, and whether you should indeed obtain this
recording, you can find this track on Youtube and judge for yourself. If you're
like me, it'll take a couple of listens to properly appreciate it - but in my
book, this is huge. The sound is awash with phase shift on chords in
particular, in a good way. After he strums the "chorus" chords he
fills out the sound with (I think) some arpeggio of that chord, and it sound
huge, orchestral even. We're pretty much in Koss-cam mode, or rather Koss-mic
mode here, it's like fate has descided to give us an up close study on his
playing. More Koss than you could shake a repaired neck at. Although they're a
fair way back, from what you can hear, the band are doing a great job of
supporting him. I'm reminded of an interview with Kossoff when he described
going to see Clapton and wondering if he still had his former ability:
"That bastard's better than he ever was!" Seriously, his playing is
superb, very assured and inventive. It's rather different from the esteemed
studio version, but like Hendrix, this is a man who can take things to the
limit of the particular situation he is in; recording studio or live venue, and
tonight he's playing live, and he's had his three Shredded Wheat (and seemingly
nothing else). This is a master at play. He throws in the Kitchen sink, dish
washer, oven and ironing board, and they all land smack in the right place.
Kossoff does a quick tuning check and they're off with 'Stealing My Way'. The
band sounds very good, as does Sless' vocal. The sound balance is better
between Koss and the band here. Again some superb lead from Koss, giving a
clear idea of the sort of sound he'd been moving towards since Free at Last.
Sometimes molten and thick, sometimes incisive, always appropriate.
I always really liked Koss' lead playing on the studio version of 'All the Girls
are Crazy'. They take it with a slightly more aggressive attitude here. Koss
comes shrieking in on the first bit of lead, and keeps up the tension with some
razor sharp playing, a short but very cool bit incorporating an open string
with a fretted string and even throwing in some unison bends at one point, I
believe. He's certainly not holding back.
'We Won' is another fine song, and I felt it was perhaps underated. Koss drives
it along with some hard rock chord work. I don't think they'd fully ironed out
the slower tempo sections, which are actually very nice, and the song sounds
like it had massive potential. In the slow section here with the solo it sounds
like some extra improvisation is going on, but whatever the case, it's an
environment that Koss thrives in and he sounds very good.
It is, for me, a performance I will turn to on those anniversaries and occasions when I want to remember, in his words, what a "bastard" of a guitarist the guy was, and what a massive potential he had. Perhaps you'll feel the same way. I hope so.
Photographs © Dick Polak & Michael Putland
