Jack Bruce Shadows In The Air

Jack Bruce has always been able to bring something else, something jazzier to an otherwise straight-laced heavier rock fraternity. The Bruce jazz/rock chameleon is very much at work again on his latest release Shadows In The Air (available July 9th on Sanctuary Records). This time the focus is on the Latin Rhythms permeating nearly every track (a self-admitted jumping on the Santana/Buena Vista Social Club bandwagon), brought to bear by co-producer Kip Hanrahan (Latin rhythm percussion's and avant-garde leader), however, someone did have the sense to leave the purest blues ballads alone.

Rhythm has always been of great interest to me, having played with Ginger Baker, Tony Williams, Billy Cobham, people like that. I've always loved Indian and African rhythms. I think the main theme that runs through the album is the drummers, Robby Ameen and Horacio Hernandez on the traps, along with my voice. Those three elements are on all the tracks.

What Shadows In The Air doesn't do is employ the full contemporary production of Supernatural, preferring rather a stratified rhythm section more reminiscent of a early Santana combo. The result is a feel truer to where we know Bruce to have come from, 60's British blues, pop and 70's fusion/rock (were Cream the first fusion band?). That all 15 of the tracks are first takes also contributes to this rawness. Bruce's vocals are, of course, exemplary.

The album is balanced throughout. No doubt Hanrahan 's organisational skills were used to arrange the extensive list of collaborating superstars; Jack Bruce (vocals, bass, piano, acoustic guitar), Gary Moore (guitar), Dr. John (piano, organ), Vernon Reid (guitar) [Living Color, the Black Rock Coalition], Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez (drums) [Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Roy Hargrove, David Sanchez], Robby Ameen (drums) [David Byrne, Kirsty MacColl], Milton Cardona (percussion) [David Byrne, Rabih Abou-Khalil] and Richie Flores (percussion) [David Sanchez, TropiJazz All-Stars], Miguel Zenon (alto sax)[David Sanchez, Gabriel Rodriguez], plus Bruce's son Malcolm (guitar, synth). For Latin versions of the Sunshine of Your Love and White Room who better than Eric Clapton (guitar)?

The Latin reinterpretations work on the whole with some minor doubts. White Room always sounded a bit like a James Bond theme, but this version could have you slipped into something more comfortable and pouring a Martini, shaken not stirred, before you know it.

Another doff of his cap to the past is the track Directions Home, dedicated to Tony Williams and Larry Young.

Tony just seemed to reinvent percussion, but he was also within the tradition, and he didn't go outside of that. My own first band was playing the Fillmore East, and John McLaughlin brought Tony down to the concert. And Tony just said, "would you like to join the band [Lifetime]?" I said, "sure." [Laughs] I was thrilled to be asked. I think Tony was quite surprised, because he knew me as the bass player from Cream, but I was able to sight-read quite difficult pieces and so on, I had no problem with that. But when we went out and did what we did, it proved to be rather difficult to gain any acceptance, at least the kind I thought we deserved. We were being criticized from both sides: rock people said it was too complicated, too many notes, and the jazz people were saying that Tony had sold out, which was very, very far from the truth. Absolutely not true.

I do regret that when Tony Williams and myself were talking to Jimi Hendrix about forming a band, that Jimi decided to leave the planet. This is my only regret in my career.

Tony was the finest drummer of the 20th century, and it was like a dream come true when I joined. It was no doubt the high spot of my career up until Shadows in the Air. Check out the drumming on there.

Without a doubt the drumming is excellent, alas with the side-effect that the multiple layers of percussion imported to give that feel hide a rather important aspect of Bruce from us - his wonderful bass lines. Space is needed in the arrangement to hear those lower tones - something that there was plenty of in Cream and that is more readily found in jazz, but superimpose percussion and you need to turn the bass up in the mix - this is why you can hear David Brown, Doug Rauch, Greg Walker and Benny Rietveld.

Other than Turn It Over and the poorly received single One word/Two worlds, JM played on Bruce's Things we like and they both featured on Carla Bley/Paul Haines' Escalator Over The Hill

In the late 50's when I was a kid in Glasgow, we used to play in a club called The Cell. We used to get, somehow, printed Carla Bley tunes, I don't know where they came from. There was a kind of magic in this name, and the tunes were pretty deep as well. She was in one of my bands, of course, with Mick Taylor from the Stones. We did Escalator Over The Hill, and not long after we did Mike Mantler's first record. I've worked more with Mike, but I met him through Carla. He inherited me somehow. They like the fact that I can sight-read atonal music or whatever, and hit notes, and perfect pitch - it's kind of useful, being a rock singer who can do that.

Then of course you know the story about how Steve Swallow switched to electric bass. He was playing with Gary Burton (with Larry Coryell). They were opening for Cream at the old Fillmore. Steve saw me play bass with Cream and he went out the next day and got an electric bass. So you can blame me for it.

A world tour will follow (London June 18th, U.S. in late September). For this The Cuicoland Express a nine-piece band including Vernon Reid, Bernie Worrell (keyboards) [Herb Alpert, Ginger Baker, Black Uhuru], Mick Hutton (bass) [Gordon Beck, Bill Bruford] and all four main drummers will perform virtually all the material from this album, plus a few other things.

It's gonna be a fun set, because I want it to segue, I don't want it to stop, I want to keep the momentum going. I was very influenced by some of the late Miles Davis concerts that I saw in Europe. It's kind of different if you're playing in a straight rock band you play a song, you finish. That's nice, but I want to get this mood thing going. I'm really excited about the live performances. I think it's gonna take it to another level.

Bruce has a future plan for a trio, with guitarist Andy Summers [The Police] and drummer Dennis Chambers [The Free Spirits, Front Page].

We've been writing a lot together, but at the moment I'm so excited by the prospect of having my own band that we've agreed to put it on hold for a while. There's time.

Andy used to play on the London scene when I was first around in the early 60's, but I only really became aware of him when he was with The Police. I had a band with Billy Cobham and David Sancious and Clem Clempson, and we played a concert in Germany with an early version of The Police. I also did a live thing with Mike Mantler, and Andy was playing in another band that was there too. We were talking about doing something together, and it finally came together last year.