It’s 1979. The 1960s are long gone. Get over it. Unless you’re Embryo (German hippies with hot musical chops), in which case, you pile into a bus with a film crew and a load of recording gear and go further, go east, across Persia, Afghanistan, down the sub-continent into India, mix it up with masters and untouchables, deliver the ancient news. There’s even a movie about it.
“Tony Banks (keyboard guy and founding member of Genesis) partners with Toyah Willcox (actress, proto punk, emergent pop songstress, and in 1986, only recently married to Robert Fripp) to deliver the definitive Genesis track of 1980s. Sort of. Because it was definitely the track that made me realize it wasn’t my former favourite band that I’d become allergic to, but their front man. Because given a big, ambitious Banks composition to work with, she sent things out of the stratosphere. At least that’s how it hit me late one night, alone, a little high, headphones on, listening to a mixtape a friend had left in my car. Suddenly I was that lion, free and savage and symmetrical (whatever that was supposed to mean). Epic stuff.” (Philip Random)
In which the Eurythmics, at the peak of their 1980s pop success, take a sideways step and deliver the soundtrack to 1984 (the movie), which was pretty good in a harrowing, all-too-faithful-to-the-book sort of way. But in the end, almost none of the Eurythmics music made it to the final cut. Not because it was bad. It just wasn’t what the director had in mind. Philip Random recalls Room 101 getting lots of play on his car stereo during the prophetic year in question, “A nifty little nugget about torture, propaganda, the malevolent destruction of human souls. What wasn’t to love?”
Rick Wakeman (wearer of shimmering capes, keyboard master from prog rock superheroes Yes) never played a bum note, which unfortunately didn’t guarantee a brilliant solo career. Except occasionally, as with White Rock which was required listening whenever the parents were out and you could finally crank the stereo as the gods intended, put those woofers to test. Found on the soundtrack from a movie of the same name concerning the 1976 Winter Olympics that nobody ever saw.