5 Stars
This is the story of the Welsh rock ‘n’ roll band ‘Man,’ not the people. This Dog can understand rock ‘n’ roll; people are a lot trickier.
Supposedly part one revolves around the recently released live greatest hits album sensibly titled ‘Man Alive.’ A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… well, Swansea, Wales, actually. In 1968 there was a very popular little beat combo called “The Bystanders,” who were doing very nicely thanks to the scampi and chips night club circuit in their native country and North England. Deciding to take themselves seriously (well, somebody had to), they turned professional and invited a certain Deke Leonard to expand the existing foursome.
Deke was amazed to find out that by the time he joined his compatriots, they had decided to change their collective name to Man. Originally that did not sit well with their new lead singer and guitarist, but it was satisfactorily explained to him by fellow singer/guitarist Mick Jones. Man was a wonderful moniker, easy to spell, and could fit in a very short space or, if necessary, fill up a very large space with a few big letters. But best of all, everybody at the end of the sixties, who was hip or more likely thought they were hip, said the name of the band at least once in each sentence – sometimes twice, like “Hey Man, where you going Man?” The band figured they would get free publicity every time somebody opened his or her mouth. With this unbeatable logic, Man began their path down the long and winding road of rock ‘n’ roll fame and glory. Anyhow, that is what they want us mere mortals to believe.
Man is still going strong today; well, actually, the band now has two roots. The original band is still playing, but there is also a band called Son of Man. Yes, you guessed it, in this band, the participants are mostly the children of the original band. That, I find delightful in itself.
But the path has been strewn with rocks, boulders, valleys, etc., made to be crossed. In over fifty-five years, they have released more than 30 original albums (if you add compilations, greatest hits, etc., it runs into hundreds), but no consecutive album has ever had the same lineup. They have done over nine thousand gigs and played in eighteen different countries. The amount of alcohol and cigarettes they consumed over this time is mind-boggling.
Then there were the TV shows. Man was always huge in Germany, where they lived for two years. It would have been more inconvenient exchanging the Welsh valleys for those of the Rhine each time they were due to do their lengthy German tours, often playing to over 20,000 people at one show.
They essentially split up for good in December 1976, only to reform again on April Fool’s Day in 1983.
Then, of course, there is the band’s personnel; the actual people who play the music, not just the music that surrounds them. In over fifty-five years, twenty-five people or more have been featured as official recording members of Man. If you count the ones who have just appeared live with them, again it would run into hundreds. Some, like Martin Ace (Ace the Bass), have joined and left the band on a regular basis. All but two of them have been Welsh. The tiniest in stature but biggest in heart, lead guitarist Mick Jones was the only permanent feature of every lineup, except when some nasty brain tumor surgery laid him low and sadly took him from us.
Deke Leonard is another steadier member of the band. Deke was an amazing guitarist, singer and raconteur. He was also taken from us in 2017. Phil Ryan was the keyboard sound of Man, but occasionally some poor soul has to be dragged in to do a copy job. Again, sadly Phil was taken from us in 2016. If you are lucky, Ace Martin is there, even if it’s not at the time as a permanent member or even on bass. Terry Williams was on the drums for a long time before getting delusions of grandeur, joining Rockpile, and then final world domination in Dire Straits.
For one glorious tour and album, the great American John Cipollina, ex-Quicksilver Messenger Service, joined them, giving Man a three-pronged lead guitar assault.
Man never became top-of-the-bill-stars internationally, although there were pockets of areas solely inhabited by Man-fans, especially in their homeland, Germany, and the East Coast of the United States of America. They never gave less than 100%, whether in the studio or their natural environment, the live stage.
What of the music, I hear you ask. Well, for that, you will have to wait for my forming opinions as we go along. But if you fancy doing a bit of your own research, try bending an ear to any of the following Man albums:
Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day
Back into the Future
Welsh Connection
Twang
2oz of Plastic with a Hole in the Middle
Or read Deke Leonard’s wonderfully frank and funny Autobiography, “Rhinos Winos and Lunatics” – a halfhearted attempt to review the live work of fifty-five years of Welsh Rockers Man on their release “Man Alive.”
Over the last thirty-five years, the goodly folk of Swansea, Wales, have been trying to let the world know about their favorite sons, ‘Man,’ which has mostly fallen on deaf ears. That is all the more remarkable as they really are very good. They are never backwards about coming forward or hiding their light under a bushel. Oh yes, there have been other singers and bands from Wales. Tom Jones and Charlotte Church have flexed their mighty Welsh throats to applause from every nook and cranny the world has to offer. That great flying heavy metal thunder of Budgie once ruled the waves, whilst The Stereophonics and The Manic Street Preachers often charged up the charts. But one feels they aren’t quite as truly Welsh as the sons of Mrs. Jones, Leonard, Williams, Ace, Ryan, and all.
Not that these Welsh musical wizards haven’t dashed up the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic; one just feels that perhaps they haven’t really been given the full acclaim that they deserve. Maybe there are some obvious reasons for this quick change of personnel, as they definitely make Spinal Tap look like a conservative and stable lineup.
All bands have their influences, but Man seems to have absorbed more than most, with sometimes consecutive tracks on one studio album sounding like a totally different band. It is always rock music, but varying from Space/Rock to Heavy Metal.
This collection starts in 1972 with the guitar and vocals of Mick Jones and Deke Leonard joined on stage by bassist Ace Martin and drummer Terry Williams at the Roundhouse in London. It was a benefit concert for the hippie charity group Greasy Truckers in what many would claim to be the ultimate Man track ‘Spunk Rock’.
In its original studio incarnation, it was six minutes long, but here we get the fully improvised twenty-two minutes. One can only wonder how long this track would have been had they not been faded out after the song had been going on for quite some time. Wonderful stuff all the same. Deke Leonard and Mick Jones’ vocals and guitars swoop in and out of the song. The guitar notes fly out like raindrops, either splashing onto the audience with the venom of Thor with his mighty hammer, or reaching out with the caress of a kiss. In today’s live set, Spunk Rock is normally held back to be given a real dusting up as the encore.
But Man being Man, within a year, Leonard and Ace had been unceremoniously dumped out of the band (don’t worry, they will both be back) to be replaced by Phil Ryan on keyboards, Will Youatt on bass, and returning founder member Clive John on guitar. This lineup came up with the classic Man album ‘Be Good to Yourself At Least Once A Day.’ The album had only four tracks but was still over forty minutes long. We get three live versions of these songs in this collection.
‘Life on the Road’ is literally a tale of the woes of life on the road, with its Wishbone Ash dual lead guitar sound and finishing with both guitars wailing away like police sirens. Through the years, Man were no strangers to the long arm of the law, but our heroes usually managed to scamper away in time.
You also get the song from the same concert at London’s Rainbow theatre, ‘C’mon,’ which would be a delight to any Pink Floyd fan, and ‘Bananas,’ which has to be one of the funniest rock songs ever written. The latter two songs are still required hearing at any Man concert today. Even though Deke Leonard was not in at the recording of these classic Man songs, he had been playing them live on and off for thirty years. His unbiased opinion cleverly uttered with the words: “When you go to a restaurant, you expect to find your favorite dish on the menu.”
As if to even things up, we then jump forward in time to 1999 to finish the first disc of this set with a version of 7171 551 recorded by and released on one of Deke Leonard’s solo albums, “Iceberg,” when he was on one of his sabbaticals from the band in the early seventies. There are only five songs on this first disc, but it still times in at over seventy-two minutes.
Mott bangs ‘is ‘ead into Heavy Metal here
Disc two contains ten songs from 1975 to 1999, including three tunes from their triumphant return to the stage for the Glastonbury festival in 1994. It starts off with the two minutes thirty seconds Man boogie ‘Hard Way to Live,’ includes the highly charged ‘Romain,’ the violent story of a certain officer’s dealing with Martin Ace, and finishes with the ten minutes of Glastonbury set closer, the epic ‘The Ride and The View.’
For anybody wondering what the fuss was about from these boys from the valleys, this set, ‘Man Alive,’ makes a marvelous starting point for the ears. For those of you who would like to know a bit more about the origins of Man, look no further than Deke Leonard’s autobiography “Rhinos, Winos, and Lunatics,” the story of a rock ‘n’ roll band. Never has the field of rock ‘n’ roll been so candidly exposed or comically told.
Because of Man’s constantly changing lineup, it is impossible to list all the musicians that played on these two CD sets of recordings. I doubt whether even the players themselves know for sure who was there and who wasn’t, especially in the turbulent seventies. But Mott’s Dream Man Band would be… You can fill this bit in yourself.
Tracks Listing:
Disc One
C’mon
Life on the Road
7171551
Disc Two
Day and Night
Hard Way to Die
Many are Called but Few Get Up
Welsh Connection
Kerosene
Romain
Even Visionaries Go Blind
Chinese Cut
The Ride and the View
Written by Mott the Dog
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