801 - 801 Live
On October 29, 1976, "801 Live", the first live album by the band "801", was released in the UK.
The story of this one-off, mesmerizing album begins in the summer of 1976, at a cultural and musical boiling point in Britain where the sophisticated progressive rock and art rock of the early part of the decade began to clash head-on with the raw, explosive energy of punk. In those months, Bryan Ferry decided to take a break from his parent band Roxy Music after a grueling tour and the release of the live album Viva! Roxy Music. The band's lead guitarist, Phil Manzanera, found himself with an open window of time and a strong desire to bring material from his solo album Diamond Head and the only album of his experimental youth band Quiet Sun, called Mainstream, to the stage, two albums recorded simultaneously in 1975 at Island Studios in London.
To fulfill the short-lived stage vision, which was pre-defined as just three shows in two weeks, Manzanera turned to his old friend from the band "Roxy Music", the wizard of synthesizers, textures and avant-garde Brian Eno. Eno, who had left "Roxy Music" three years earlier and developed a brilliant and groundbreaking solo career with masterpiece albums such as "Here Come the Warm Jets", "Taking Tiger Mountain" and the atmospheric masterpiece "Another Green World", immediately jumped on the adventure. The two adopted the name "801" from the song "The True Wheel" on Eno’s album "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)".
(Photo: Eva Rinaldi)
Around Manzanera and Eno, a virtuoso rhythm and instrumental division was formed, consisting of musicians who played on both 1975 albums. Bill MacCormick, formerly of Robert Wyatt's Canterbury band "Matching Mole" and a member of "Quiet Sun", was in charge of bass guitar and vocals, bringing with him melodic, aggressive and flexible bass playing with a tight funky groove. Francis Monkman, founder of the band "Curved Air", was in charge of keyboards and the minimoog synthesizer, who combined brilliant classical training with electronic audacity, and Lloyd Watson was on slide guitar and vocals. The element that completed the line-up and became a sensation of the show was drummer Simon Phillips, then a boy prodigy of only nineteen years old, who demonstrated superhuman technical mastery, dizzying polyrhythmics and a drumming power that astonished the global rock community.
On August 23, 1976, the six-piece met for a filmed and recorded rehearsal at Shepperton Film Studios, and immediately afterwards went on to play just three shows, at the Norfolk Festival, the Reading Festival, and the climax night on September 3, 1976 at the venerable Queen Elizabeth Hall on the banks of the Thames in London. The London performance was recorded by legendary producer and sound engineer Rhett Davies using the Island Mobile. Davis and the band made an unprecedented engineering decision that made "801 Live" a historic milestone in sound. Instead of placing microphones in front of amplifiers and a loud PA system as was customary, all the electric and electronic instruments and all the vocal channels were connected directly to the recording console on the mobile, and only the Philips drum kit and the noises in the hall were recorded with microphones. The result was a live performance sound with crystal clarity, stereophonic depth and studio sharpness never before heard on a live recording, an album that became the official test copy for sound engineers and audiophiles around the world.
The album opens with "Lagrima", a short, lyrical, and contemplative instrumental from the album "Diamond Head," in which Manzanera's gentle guitar and Monkman's ethereal keyboards build a quiet tension that fades into one of the defining moments in rock history, the revolutionary cover version of the song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles from the album "Revolver"), which has earned the abbreviated name "TNK", an acronym for "Tomorrow Never Knows". The young Phillips dismantles and rebuilds McCartney and Ringo Starr's original psychedelic drum loop into a heavy, hypnotic syncopated rhythm, McCormick leads a pulsating bass line, and sends waves of synthesizer and effects floating around Manzanera and Watson's theatrical vocals, in a performance that manages to sound more futuristic and menacing than anything done at the time.
Immediately after comes the dizzying rhythmic leap of "East of Asteroid", a brilliant piece that combined sections by Manzanera from the band "Quiet Sun" with a melody by McCormick. Here the band displays a breathtaking virtuosity of fusion and prog in varying weights, with Phillips and McCormick conducting a telepathic dialogue at breakneck speed, and Manzanera unleashing razor-sharp riffs over Monkman's rhythmic keyboards. The atmosphere softens surprisingly and charmingly on the fourth track, "Rongwrong", a song written by former "Quiet Sun" drummer Charles Hayward. Accompanied by McCormick's warm vocals and Monkman's melodic and refined keyboard solo, the song reveals the lyrical and romantic side of the Canterbury School, before returning to the dark tension with the instrumental "Sombre Reptiles" from "Another Green World," a section in which a desert-like, elusive rhythm envelops a mesmerizing, exotic synthesizer melody.
The second side of the original record opens with an explosion of dark theatrics and electric energy with "Baby's on Fire," Eno's sarcastic art-rock classic from his first solo album. Eno's cold, cynical vocals lead into a monumental, searing, and unforgettable guitar solo by Manzanera, which pushes the boundaries of distortion and feedback over Phillips' murderous double-bass drumming. The band then moves on to "Diamond Head," the instrumental theme song from Manzanera's album, which opens with a melodic, soaring guitar riff in a warm Latin style and gradually develops into a spectacular group showdown in which Monkman and Manzanera trade passionate melodic beats.
The energy continues to climb on "Miss Shapiro," a fast-paced, witty collaboration by Manzanera and driven by a catchy funky groove and fast-paced vocals that set the stage for the two closing tracks that directly herald the birth of punk and new wave. First, the band performs a wild, fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping cover of Ray Davies and The Kinks' 1964 anthem, "You Really Got Me," in which Watson and Eno lead a completely unhinged punk outburst. The album closed with a bang with Eno's "Third Uncle", a masterpiece of aggressive proto-punk and art-rock built on an obsessive and relentless bass guitar riff, intense drumming by Phillips and mechanical and hypnotic vocals by Eno, a piece that would later become one of the main sources of inspiration for the band "Bauhaus" and the entire British post-punk scene. Later CD editions of the album also added two other wonderful songs by Eno performed that evening, the heavenly "Golden Hours" and the dark and theatrical "Fat Lady of Limbourg".
The mesmerizing album cover, designed by artist Stanislaw Fernandes, featured a surreal, futuristic illustration in shades of blue, purple and gold that perfectly captured the meeting of space-age electronics and human warmth. Although the original line-up of "801" disbanded immediately after those three historic shows in September 1976, "801 Live" remains to this day one of the greatest, most original and most influential live albums in rock history. It is a rare and one-off document of six brilliant musicians who broke free from all commercialism on one magical evening in London, seamlessly bridging the sophistication of prog with the explosive power of punk and new wave, and proving that experimental music can be just as exciting, immersive and accessible as a classic rock and roll anthem.
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