Released - April 1972
Genre - Hard Rock
Producer - Derek Lawrence
Selected Personnel - Andy Powell (Guitar/Vocals); Ted Turner (Guitar/Vocals); Martin Turner (Bass/Vocals); Steve Upton (Drums); John Tout (Organ)
Standout Track - The King Will Come
Wishbone Ash's landmark third album has been a hugely significant album for me and for my musical awareness for about five years now, and is one I never, ever tire of going back to. As I've detailed several times already on this blog, my musical life up until uni had involved becoming obsessed by the music I naturally found myself surrounded by - growing up on my stepdad's classic rock collection or my mum's folk records, and loving all of them, letting them turn into some kind of comprehensive and exhaustive soundtrack for my life, but rarely digging particularly deep or following my curiosity. I would listen to the albums we had at home, sometimes perhaps buy a new CD of a band I really, really liked or of something I heard in a film that I enjoyed, and that was it. I very rarely even bothered to listen to something I didn't already own, or already had a huge passion for and a real vested interest in finding out more about. That started to change at uni, where I was driven to discover more in the discographies of the artists I already liked (Supertramp, Focus, Bad Company et al). And then in my second year I started being prompted to go outside my comfort zone a bit and to listen to artists I'd never even heard of before, let alone being familiar with their work. It was the same sort of time that drove me to discover artists already covered in this blog, from Steely Dan to Pink Floyd to King Crimson, but one of the first was Wishbone Ash. My friend Jack gave me a copy of Argus, saying it would probably enjoy it if I had even a vague fondness for classic 70s rock. I wasn't disappointed. Wishbone Ash would shortly after become the first band I ever saw live and, while their studio output was never consistent enough for me to bother listening to their entire back catalogue, their early 70s work is up there with the finest blues/hard-rock outfits around and Argus in particular is one of my all-time favourites.
After the band's self-titled debut album, which presented a fearsomely talented and innovative new group but was let down in places by weak material (certainly compared to what they deliver here), it took them a little while to really achieve their potential. The followup was a decent but forgettable album called Pilgrimage, which included the great "Jail Bait" but also a lot of fairly hum-drum bluesy jams or acoustic instrumentals. Quite what seismic shift prompted the incredible leap in the quality of material on Argus isn't clear, but it's not long into the classic opener "Time Was" that it becomes clear just how good an album this is going to be. While the general mood is of heavy-hitting, bluesy hard rock, the opening of "Time Was" grounds the album squarely in earthy, introspective folk music via the pastoral acoustic intro. It's a mood that runs throughout the album, even in its hardest and most urgent moments. There's something about the harmonies and the sound of the album itself that keeps this feeling akin to folk music in some way, no doubt helped by its recurring antiquated themes of high fantasy - "The King Will Come," "Warrior" and "Throw Down The Sword" effectively form a blisteringly good trilogy of songs revolving around the Medieval iconography of battles and war, reinforced further by that iconic artwork.
But, though it feels grounded in an earthy, folksy sensibility, this is at its awe-inspiring best when the band really lets loose. After that folksy intro, "Time Was" picks up the pace and turns into a free-spirited bluesy jam in the vein of the Allman Brothers Band, and the band's signature trick of its twin guitar leads from Andy Powell and Ted Turner makes its first appearance, the two trading licks and solos and interweaving harmonies effortlessly. "Sometime World" repeats the trick of the opening track, shifting from a slow, introspective opening into an urgent monster of guitar riffs and solos, but is brilliant enough to get away with it. "Blowin' Free," despite being one of Wishbone Ash's most popular songs, is easily the most tedious and predictable song on the album, and ably demonstrates the appalling lows the band had to stoop to when it came to writing lyrics, a long way from one of their strengths - "Her hair was golden brown, blowing free like a cornfield." It's also where the joint vocals of Powell and both Turners are at their most grating, and the listener is reminded that when they try to shift focus too far away from their innovative guitar techniques, their weaknesses begin to show more readily.
Thankfully, "Blowin' Free" leads into one of the most undeniably brilliant hard rock songs of all time in the form of "The King Will Come," which slowly builds through its quiet, ominous opening until its ferocious, brutal riff explodes into the air, heralding the arrival of what is, "Phoenix" aside, Wishbone Ash's finest song. After the brute force of "The King Will Come," "Leaf And Stream" comes as a pleasant acoustic interlude before "Warrior," more than any other song here, anticipates the heavy sounds of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the 80s (which would mimic Wishbone Ash's twin guitar approach). Then there's the epic lament of the closer, "Throw Down The Sword," which is simply one of the most beautifully elegiac and powerful songs in the catalogues of simple guitar-based rock, with its climactic guitar solo a moment of incredible catharsis that channels all the awe and grandiosity of the album as a whole into one final moment of release.
As a whole, it's an undeniable masterpiece - the songs all mine similar musical and lyrical territory so that they sit together wonderfully as a collection, but never become so similar that the album feels tired or predictable. Powell and Turner acquit themselves as two of the most innovative and harmonious guitarists around, while also having an all-important ability to not just play their instruments with speed and power but to make them sound cool, and interesting and different. Argus would deservedly prove to be their commercial peak and would go down as their finest, crowning achievement. The follow-up was a fairly tepidly-received album called Wishbone Four that I've never even got round to listening to, after which original lead guitarist Ted Turner would leave the band. With a new guitarist, they released one more album a couple of years after Argus that's also managed to find its way into my good-books (albeit a lot more slowly than this immediate classic), after which it was a case of continuing fading fortunes and a string of poorly-received albums that I've never been able to convince myself to listen to. A shame that such an innovative band should fade to obscurity to such an extent, but in their early 70s prime they were virtually peerless, and this album is the ultimate testament to that fact.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Andy Powell, Ted Turner, Martin Turner and Steve Upton.
1. Time Was
2. Sometime World
3. Blowin' Free
4. The King Will Come
5. Leaf And Stream
6. Warrior
7. Throw Down The Sword
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