Spring - The springtime of prog romanticism

There is something about the way spring comes to England that reminds me of a timid puppy trying to make friends. It takes a reckless step forward, then scurries away in terror, then creeps forward again, fearful, and finally, having gained confidence, rushes in with vigor and joy.

(P. G. Wodehouse)

“Memories of us as we walk in the rain”

On January 8, 2011, at the age of 63, Pat Moran lost his long battle with illness for good. For rock fans, that name was hardly unfamiliar: Pat had worked as a sound engineer with bands such as Queen, Rush and Van Der Graaf Generator. In the Eighties, he went on to produce, among others, Iggy Pop, Hawkwind, Robert Plant and Big Country. Still, I prefer to remember him above all as the founder, in the early Seventies, of one of the cult bands of the entire progressive movement: Spring.

The son of Irish immigrants who had settled in Leicester, Pat got into music during his high school years, taking up the drums. It's 1965 when, together with some friends, he founds Sleepy John's Opus, later known as Sissy. Meanwhile, the progressive revolution is just around the corner, and the lads from Leicester want their say too. So, amid various line-up changes and a handful of sporadic live shows, in 1969 – the year the bombshell "In The Court Of The Crimson King" by King Crimson dropped – Spring take shape, a band that would only settle into its classic line-up on the threshold of the Seventies: Pat Moran (vocals, mellotron), Ray Martinez (6- and 12-string guitar, mellotron), Adrian "Bone" Maloney (bass), Pique Withers (drums, glockenspiel) and Kips Brown (piano, organ, mellotron).

The band immediately made a name for itself as something of a curiosity, given that no fewer than three of its members played one of prog-rock's most distinctive instruments. It was Fate that opened the doors of a recording studio for them: after a show in Cardiff, the band found themselves stranded in the middle of the Welsh countryside when their van broke down. Not far away stood Rockfield Studios, founded in 1963 by brothers Kingsley and Charles Ward. These were the first "residential" studios in history, designed to host artists amid the peace of the countryside and put them in the best possible conditions for recording. Struck by the coincidence, Kingsley Ward (who had long been racking his brains trying to spot some talented artist or band) was captivated by the presence of the mellotron, so much so that he invited the five young musicians over for the following week, just to see... whether a spark might catch. In the end, things worked out, because producer Gus Dudgeon, who had come to visit the Ward brothers, heard them, fell in love with their sound, and offered to produce something for them. From there, it was a short step to recording a whole album.

Released by Neon Records in 1971 with a gorgeous gatefold sleeve by Keef, aka Keith MacMillan, the first and only official album by Spring (8 tracks; 40:14) is one of the finest debuts in all of progressive rock, a moving record in which folk roots, a melancholy pop spirit and a desire to broaden musical horizons go hand in hand with an enviable sonic cohesion – the latter also thanks to Dudgeon, who recorded the tracks live, adding only a handful of overdubs afterward.

The album opens with the sweetly elegiac "The Prisoner (Eight By Ten)", its three mellotrons carving out, in unison, a phrase laden with delicate resignation, while the rhythm section alternates between a martial gait and suspended digressions. Caressed by Moran's voice, the song gives voice to the lament of a prisoner who, upon returning home, discovers he is now utterly alone (“Friends aren’t waiting/ Contemplating/ Or concerned in/ My returning”), so much so that he ends his life by suicide (the entire final section seems to escort him toward this extreme act with a progression heavy with fatality). The opening of the superb "Grail" (in my view, the band's absolute masterpiece, as well as one of the most beautiful pieces of prog romanticism ever written) is breathtaking: an unreal outpouring of timeless fragrances, with Moran voicing inner torments ("If I lay my hands on the Grail/ Show concern with anguish, soon to lose" and, above all, the unforgettable refrain: "Nights go on when days pass by/ Storms blow up and darkness rules my sky"), before the scene shifts and the distorted bass and drums take on monumental proportions, carrying us first through King Crimson-like peaks and then down jazz-folk slopes. When the circle finally closes, we return to where it all began: the atmosphere is still dreamlike, but now the mellotrons breathe at full lung capacity, closing out on an epic, triumphant note. "Boats" is glittering folk magic (the austere delicacy of the voice, the crystalline breath of the 12-string, the bluesy electric riff) and represents a moment of pure poetry of memory, with Moran's voice carrying a certain fatalistic quality as he sings the lines: “Sitting and watching the Boats on the River/ The last train from the station that takes you away/ Though I was taken, you left me forgiven/ Is this the way that you leave me to stay”).

In the following "Shipwrecked Soldier", the martial rhythms return in full force, first doubled in octave variations by the mellotron, then as a powerful backdrop to a more markedly rock-driven phrasing that continues to unfold the threads of an anti-militarist anthem, perfectly in tune with the cover image (“Orders given, rule my living/ There can be no turning back/ But in the end, my only friend/ Was a dead man dressed in black”), finally resolving into a stormy coda that seems to reproduce the sound of an air raid.

"Golden Fleece", opened by a melancholy mellotron spiral, is another great example of the fusion between folk-pop spirit and prog guts, in a crescendo of bittersweet intoxication that explodes into symphonic supernovas halfway between a liberating cry of joy and one of the darkest despair ("Free them from their disillusioned minds"), before veering off, always cautiously, into jazz-blues variations for electric guitar and organ, splendidly sustained by the Withers-Maloney partnership. The intensity gradually tapers off into a finale of gentle organ embroidery. The structure of the catchy "Inside Out" stirs up contradictions in the shadow of hard rock influences, continuing to show us a band that never wastes a note, instead working almost nonchalantly in layers and shades.

In the piano ballad "Song To Absent Friends (The Island)", in some ways reminiscent of the most intimate Elton John (a year earlier, Dudgeon had produced his self-titled album), Moran sings of the time when dreams lit up his path, before reality came to stake its claims: “Once I was the Dreamer/ Now my dreams are past and gone/ Like the Waves along the Shoreline/ To the Isle that is no one”. The mellotron is again tasked with opening the album's final panel, "Gazing", which opens onto scenes of desolation, giving way to a dreamlike arabesque that leads into a dramatic interlude dominated by harder sounds.

The remastered edition of the album, released on Laser's Edge in 1992, includes three bonus tracks. The first, "Fool's Gold", is, believe it or not, an outtake from the sessions for the first album, blending serene folk-rock landscapes with hard rock surges that lead into exciting instrumental flights. From the sessions for the second album come instead the steady, blues-tinged "Hendre Mews" (dominated by the Hammond organ, which by then seems to have taken over from the beloved mellotron) and the loose-limbed midtempo "A Word Full Of Whispers", with its acoustic guitar counterpoints.

Following a modest success for their debut on the British underground scene, Spring had the chance to open some shows for the Velvet Underground, but things suddenly fell apart when Neon Records went bankrupt. As a result, the tracks they were preparing for their second album also remained in the archives (RCA refused to release them), until 2007, when Second Harvest put out that material. 2 (9 tracks + 3 bonus; 57:40) should obviously be taken for what it is: a collection of not entirely finished songs, though here and there a few interesting ideas do emerge.

As mentioned, the mellotron took a back seat, while the band showed a desire to try new paths, bringing in horns for still-tortuous arrangements ("Jack & Jim"), working on restless fairy-tale scenarios and cabaret-jazz divertissements (another version of "Hendre Mews"), offering ballads that only distantly recall the tormented romanticism of the first album ("Painted Ship", "Losers", "Fernley Avenue", the latter featuring a fine acoustic guitar solo from Martinez), returning more decisively to progressive shores on "Get My Share" and, with an unmistakable nod to Emerson, Lake & Palmer, on "High Horse", before brushing up against plain and simple pop on "Helping The Helpless".

Following the band's breakup, Pat Moran launched his career as a sound engineer, setting up a harmless soft-rock project (Airwaves) in 1978, while Ray Martinez became a decent session musician. As for the others (with the exception of Withers, who was recruited by Dire Straits), they faded from view.

(28/02/2016)

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