Manfred Mann's Earth Band: The Odd Mann Rocking Out

Last December, I've seen Manfred Mann's Earth Band live (not for the first time). The band are also due to release a new album sometime soon (the first since "2006", which was released in 2004, of course!, and the first proper band album since 1996's "Soft Vengeance"), and should be touring with Status Quo if the world has become somewhat normal again by then. I think those are enough reasons to talk about a band with a remarkable longevity, despite always being 'outsiders' to some degree.

Manfred Mann, of course, is just the pseudonym or stage name of Manfred Lubowitz, a keyboard player born in South Africa almost eighty years ago. His interest in jazz music was not particularly appropriate in a society that oppressed people who weren't "white", and that also didn't have much of a music scene to speak of. So Manfred dared to venture to England, and played with various musicians before eventually finding stardom (without searching for it) with a band that was simply called Manfred Mann. Despite the band having his stage name (which he derived from jazz drummer Shelley Manne, and first used when writing as a jazz critic), the keyboardist wasn't the frontman as such. This was so confusing to the public (and still is) that Manfred waited until 2014 to release an album under just his name ("Lone Arranger").

Manfred Mann, the original 1960s group, had two singers – at first Paul Jones, who left to become a solo star (didn't quite work out), then his follow-up Mike D'Abo. Other band members also came and went, including Mike Vickers, Tom McGuinness, Jack Bruce, Henry Lowther and Klaus Voormann. The one constant was drummer Mike Hugg. Now, both incarnations of the group made some really good music, and Manfred Mann stands as likely the only British beat band that could effortlessly switch between blues, pop, R&B and jazz. However, in the eye of the public they were defined by rather banal pop melodies supplied by outside writers ("Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Pretty Flamingo", "Sha La La", "Ha! Ha! Said the Clown", "My Name Is Jack", "Fox on the Run") that, at times, felt almost immature compared to what the competition was evolving into. The boys also didn't enjoy success as much as you might think: Being chased down the street by screaming girls, as Manfred put it, wasn't nearly as fun as a young man might imagine. The band eventually stopped playing live (according to Manfred, the line-up with Mike D'Abo wasn't great live, although none of the musicians involved was bad – something that Klaus Voormann would agree with in his book), but Manfred then realized that he really liked performing on stage. It was just that the whole band image had pigeonholed him and Mike Hugg, who continued to stick with him.

The two formed a new group that was the complete antithesis to Manfred Mann: First called Emanon (at this point the pop outfit still existed), then Manfred Mann Chapter Three. This was an outfit that broke all the rules and severely confused the still existing fanbase: They recorded only self-penned material mostly written by Mike Hugg, who'd also become the singer (although he hardly had a strong voice), and switched from the drums back to his original instrument, the piano. Manfred himself stuck to electric organ. This was a band with two keyboard players and no lead guitarist! However, they had a horn section to make up for that, and lead sax player Bernie Living essentially did what, in the late-60s jam-friendly times, would normally be done by a guitar player. Still, Chapter Three was a most unusual sounding band – jazz rock with the occasional pop melody, but not linked to the US fusion scene at all and only loosely related to bands like Colosseum. It was really original, experimental and highly interesting music, but essentially too uncommercial to reach a large audience. Chapter Three disbanded before the third album (which is still unreleased in full, although six tracks were included on "Odds & Sods" and "Radio Days Vol. 3") could be released. Manfred was fed up with constantly having financial worries (Chapter Three was a big band, after all, and didn't sell that many albums or tickets), and only recording Mike's songs.

So, as I like to put it, every revolution gets followed by a counter-revolution. The new band should evolve naturally. Manfred Mann, guitarist/singer Mick Rogers, bassist Colin Pattenden and drummer Chris Slade started playing together and worked hard to find a groove and an audience willing to listen. By this time, Manfred had discovered the wonders of the Moog synthesizer (still a very unusual instrument in rock 'n' roll), and so the band could produce a big, powerful sound with just four players. One of the first recordings to showcase Mann's new instrument, besides "So Sorry Please" from the unreleased Chapter Three's third album, was actually Uriah Heep's anthem "July Morning".

The debut album of the new group (then still simply called Manfred Mann) "Stepping Sideways" was cancelled as the band had already evolved to a point where they felt the material wasn't representative of their live sound anymore. Large parts of the album surfaced in 2005 on "Odds & Sods" and show a lighter, poppier side to the band that did betray Manfred's 60s past, as did the first single, Randy Newman's "Living Without You".

By the time the actual debut was released, Chris Slade had come up with the name Manfred Mann's Earth Band, which had a nice "ring" to it (apparently "arm band", "head band" and "elastic band" were also considered!) and also tied in with the growing ecological awareness of the time. The self-titled debut album did show the harder rocking direction in some songs such as "Captain Bobby Stout" (which is still in the live set today), a much heavier re-recording of Bob Dylan's "Please Mrs. Henry" and the dissonant-but-catchy "Prayer", which was actually a re-write of the song "Dealer" from the Mike D'Abo era album "As Is". Here you can see some of Manfred's typical tricks in action: 1. Obscure songs re-arranged in a more accessible fashion, 2. using songs by master writers such as Bob Dylan (preferably, less famous ones), 3. Re-recording and re-writing of material already recorded in an earlier incarnation. All of these traits actually aren't unusual in the jazz scene, but rather uncommon in rock.

In some ways, the debut was not perfect though (and this is also something that would come back to haunt Manfred), since some of the songs were rescued from "Stepping Sideways" (including the wonderfully atmospheric instrumental "Tribute", which actually foreshadows Pink Floyd's later sound), and therefore it wasn't a really coherent recording. Even though the LP wasn't particularly long, Manfred's jazz piano solo in the Dr. John song "Jump Sturdy" was shortened. And the finale is quite disappointing, two sleepy songs sung by Manfred himself… (who was clearly inspired by Dr. John's vocal style on "Gris-Gris", but couldn't pull it off to anywhere near the same effect)

Nonetheless, a beginning was made. And MMEB started to pump out albums at an alarming pace, while playing incredible concerts. "Glorified Magnified" (which introduced the famous band logo) was another rather mixed affair with lots of dissonant and shrill moments ("Our Friend George" is a must-hear!), but also another Dylan cover ("It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"), a re-recording of a Chapter Three song ("One Way Glass"), a much better version of "Ashes to the Wind" (from "Stepping Sideways") and the Leadbelly song "Black Betty", which Manfred had already recorded on "As Is" as "Big Betty" but now became "Look Around" with a new lyric. "Messin'" showed the band's progress with longer and more focused tracks, especially "Buddah" and the spine-chilling "Black and Blue". The title track actually came from the unreleased Chapter Three album! And of course there was another Dylan cover ("Get Your Rocks Off").

"Solar Fire" became the apex of early MMEB. Considering the circumstances, it wasn't inevitable. The success of the standalone single "Joybringer" (based on "Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity" from Gustav Holst's "Planets" suite) had led to the wish to adapt the entire cosmic (or astrological, if you wish) piece, but the band didn't get the permission to do so. Still, "Solar Fire" remained "cosmic" and includes such spectacular tracks as the hard rocking "In the Beginning, Darkness" (with Mick's voice sounding uncannily like Jack Bruce), the spherical 7/4 title track and the epic medley "Saturn, Lord of the Ring/Mercury, the Winged Messenger". True to form, the first half was actually another track from Chapter Three's unreleased third album, then titled "Fish"! And the band's tradition of covering Dylan songs (which, of course, had already yielded the 60s band hits such as "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", "Just Like a Woman" and "Mighty Quinn") also reached a total triumph in the form of "Father of Day, Father of Night" – a massive epic with lots of dramatic moments, introduced with a spectacular "sound cluster" destroying the soft choir intro, led by a solemn Mellotron melody, fueled by Mick Rogers' flaming guitar work (and also showing possibly his best vocal ever) and topped off by an emotional Moog solo. You just can't beat it!

"The Good Earth" is an album I never warmed up to. Although essentially cut from the same cloth as "Solar Fire", it always seemed to lack good material to my ears. Gary Wright's title track is one of the better songs, the crazy instrumental "Sky High" is entertaining but unfortunately without much hooks. "I'll Be Gone" is rather boring and "Launching Place" might just be the worst thing the line-up ever recorded; worst of all, it drags on for six minutes! In the end, only "Earth Hymn" (based on a Vivaldi motif) satisfies me, and the fact that it appears twice seems to underline that the band were struggling. Even the publicity surrounding the LP gimmick (if you registered within a certain time, you had the claim to one square foot of land somewhere in Wales) didn't help the album's success, although it turned out to have interesting consequences, as the area of land bought by the band is still in a very natural condition today. With hindsight, they could've also titled the album "Protect the Earth"!

MMEB were, essentially, a niche within a niche. They played hard rock with a Minimoog, progressive rock with a commercial edge – and in those early years, they stayed more or less within their own bubble. That doesn't mean they didn't socialize: They went on tours with Deep Purple and Uriah Heep, and a fledgling Rush opened for them. I'm not sure Rush ever acknowledged the influence of MMEB, but if you listen to "Nightingales & Bombers" you can hear it: The title track's intro sounds like "Xanadu"'s opening, and the odd meter in the same song foreshadows the immortal "Tom Sawyer" – as does the keyboard/guitar duel from "Time Is Right" (which is another song with a very complex structure). The album also includes the beautiful and haunting "Visionary Mountains" (which was a first hint at the coming direction) and an eternal classic in the form of "Spirits in the Night" from Bruce Springsteen's debut album. At the time Springsteen was being touted as the new Dylan, so trying the "Father of Day" formula on one of his songs made sense, and Mick turned in a fantastic wah-wah solo. Otherwise, the album was chock full of instrumentals – some great like the eerie "Countdown", some less interesting like "Crossfade", and "As Above So Below" actually turns out to be the middle section of MMEB's live arrangement of "Mighty Quinn". On the whole it's a very, very dark album, claustrophobic and discomforting in places (it also comes through in lyrics like "Fat Nelly was killed with a butcher's knife"). And apparently, this was also a reflection of the state MMEB were in.

In a way, the Earth Band of 1975 resembled Chapter Three in late 1970. Mick Rogers wanted to do other things (apparently he was among the vocalists who auditioned for Peter Gabriel's vacant place in Genesis, but Steve Hackett obviously didn't want another guitarist in the band), and the last two albums were evidently not commercial enough to garner any success. MMEB were stuck. Mick's departure could've been a fatal blow for the band, but in fact his two replacements (Chris Thompson on vocals and Dave Flett on guitar) gave the outfit a new direction and spark. Chris was an incredible vocalist and also a capable guitar player, which allowed more possibilities. And the material, this time, was only top-notch: "The Roaring Silence" turned out to be a masterpiece of sorts, effortlessly fusing the different facets of MMEB together to a majestic whole. Thompson's vocal pathos, often underpinned by a "heavenly" Mellotron sound-bed, helped to elevate the material into new spheres. One of the songs, Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light" had already been rehearsed with Mick still in the band, but only in 1976 did the band manage to cut their version. The track rocketed up the charts, and suddenly, MMEB were a name in the US again. Although, as with all of Manfred's singles, you really need to hear the album version to appreciate the full beauty of the song. Other highlights include the total-freak-out 7/4 instrumental "Waiter, There's a Yawn in My Ear" (once again recorded live), the stirring "The Road to Babylon" (with Thompson's voice stabbing right into your soul), a Moog solo in "This Side of Paradise" that always gives me a lump in the throat, and the beautiful closing ballad "Questions" based on a Franz Schubert "Impromptu". (I made an attempt to cover that song, but it's just a pale shadow…) Chris also sang a new version of "Spirits in the Night", which eventually did become a hit, but doesn't really showcase Thompson's "X-factor" – you'll have to listen to live recordings to hear what the guy could do with the song.

Curiously, 1978's "WATCH" did not repeat the chart success of "The Roaring Silence" even though the material was just as strong: In fact, the album established itself over the years as THE eternal fan favourite and is widely accepted as the best album of the Thompson-fronted outfit, if not of the entire Earth Band catalog. There simply isn't a weak song, although it takes time to unfold. "Circles" is a beautiful mini-drama, the sandwich medley "Drowning on Dry Land/Fish Soup" (starting as a ballad, then morphing into a prog instrumental) packs a lot of excitement into six minutes, and Chris' voice on the coda is goosebump-inducing. Same goes for "Chicago Institute", a rocking but spooky track with astounding guitar solos, chilling chord sequences and clever vocal arrangements. "California" is a beautiful but sad acoustic-led ballad with Chris putting a lot of heart into the words (even if he apparently didn't like the song!), a guitar duel in the middle and Manfred turning in a tear-inducing Moog solo at the end. The second side contains three songs that are a must at any MMEB concert (and two were actually recorded live): The hard-rocking "Davy's on the Road Again" with a showcase synth solo, the no less dramatic and intense "Martha's Madman" and the reworked version of "Mighty Quinn" with a mind-blowing midsection. An edited (and less exciting) version was released on the tenth anniversary of the 1968 single and achieved moderate success.

Internal issues led to the band breaking up and reforming with a new line-up; only Chris Thompson and Pat King (who'd already replaced Colin Pattenden after "The Roaring Silence") remained, new additions were the inimitable Steve Waller on guitar and vocals and Geoff Britton on drums. And in an unusual move, Manfred decided to share production duties for "Angel Station" with Anthony Moore of Slapp Happy, himself a keen sonic experimentator and musician in his own right. Moore's touch helped to give "Angel Station" its mysterious atmosphere. The new sound worked especially well on the nervous six-minute "Don't Kill It Carol" (the fourth MMEB opener in a row with cello!), which featured a talkbox, piano, Moog and guitar solos and a hugely catchy chorus, and its side B counterpart "Angels at My Gate", a masterpiece in sonic layering that again shows Waller's talkbox abilities. "Hollywood Town" was originally a folk song by the relatively obscure singer/songwriter Harriet Schock, but got updated with a dramatic arrangement. True to his jazz roots, Manfred wrote a new song over the exact same changes and used more or less the same backing track for the corresponding "You Are - I Am". Amazingly, both songs work well and include stunning Moog solos! The short but captivating "'Belle' of the Earth" shows that Manfred's claim not being a good composer is totally incorrect. Another Dylan song, "You Angel You", sounds playful, and gave the band another hit. I'm less fond of the sugary "Waiting for the Rain" and the misguided attempt at a closer "Resurrection" (sung by Manfred himself).

If "Angel Station" showed that the Earth Band could get good results from developing a more polished studio sound, "Chance" proved that it could also backfire. There is nothing wrong with the performances on the album, but there are two issues: One is that Chris Thompson had tried to break away and is therefore only featured on the first three songs. Not that there's anything wrong with Peter Marsh, Dyane Birch or Willy Finlayson, and both Steve Waller and Manfred himself had already sung bits on previous albums, but at times, it feels more like "The Manfred Mann Project" as opposed to a band. Secondly, the songs just aren't as good. At least not on side 2. Side 1, on the other hand, boasts the exuberant "Lies (Through the 80s)", one of the band's best social anthems (written by Denny Newman), the dark "On the Run" (actually a re-working of "The Heat is On", which would be a hit for ex-ABBA lady Agnetha a few years later, and which is anything but "dark"!) and an eternal classic in form of Springsteen's "For You". Again, Mann's strength is making a song much more focused and extruding hooks that barely existed in the original, and Chris' vocal just seals the deal. Another remarkable track is the jolly instrumental "Fritz the Blank".

After a few singles and the longest pause between MMEB albums so far, "Somewhere in Afrika" marked the last true high point in the band's career. The album dealt mostly with Manfred's place of origin and railed against South Africa's apartheid policy by fusing the Earth Band's rock power with authentic Zulu and Xhosa chants. Untrue to form, the most striking melodic motifs (the various instances of "Brothers and Sisters of Africa") actually were written by Manfred himself. True to form, they were derived from the band's re-working of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song"! Chris Thompson actually only appears on four songs, but nonetheless remained MMEB's live frontman, as can be heard on "Budapest Live". Sadly, the live album is way too short, badly sequenced, heavily edited and over-produced ("Spirits in the Night" probably isn't a live recording at all), but still essential listening (especially with the three bonus tracks that appeared on the 1998 reissue). A full double album with uncut recordings is long overdue.

"Criminal Tango" marked the return of Mick Rogers, but ironically, it did not mark a return to the prog roots, although Mick's guitar does shine on some tracks. The artist was listed as "Manfred Mann's Earth Band with Chris Thompson". Chris' vocal role was much larger than on the previous two records, while Mick only gets to sing "Rescue" and some additional vocal parts (as he already did on the cool non-LP single "Runner", which was one of two tracks added to the US release of "…Afrika"). Some of the songs are rather good, but watered down by the synthetic sound. Even Manfred, normally very well endowed with good taste, chooses some unfortunate synth sounds. The lack of direction is evident in the closer "Crossfire", an interesting but confused sounding instrumental. A version with vocals later slipped out on the 40th Anniversary Box Set and shows that turning the song into an instrumental was a mistake. The band also fell flat on its face when trying to cover The Beatles for the first and to date only time. Although Manfred has to be commended for choosing the relatively unknown (but excellent) "Hey Bulldog", the overproduced cover lacks everything that made the original so great. There are some highlights though – "Killer on the Loose" was once again supplied by Denny Newman and harkens back to the best MMEB material as it combines a chilling topic with a dazzling instrumental section. And the aggressive "You Got Me Right Through the Heart" features Chris at his vocal best and a fantastic guitar solo.

"Masque" marked the end of an era. Chris had left the band and Manfred returned to the theme of "The Planets" with a few Holst adaptations, but there are also some unexpected synthetic jazz excursions featuring Maggie Ryder's voice. Denny Newman performed vocals on his "Telegram to Monica". Drums were officially still credited to John Lingwood, but the album's main fault is the lack of proper drumming – a lot of it sounds programmed, giving the LP a very cold atmosphere. My personal highlight is the cover of Cream's "We're Going Wrong", which is at least as good as the original (and Mick Rogers tackles Jack Bruce's vocal melody with total ease). Playing the classics live with a female vocalist in Chris Thompson's place was not an option though, and so the Earth Band officially disbanded. Manfred tried to continue in a pop vein for a while (some tracks later appeared on "Odds & Sods") but then took a different turn.

Covering Michael Murphey's "Geronimo's Cadillac" (not the Modern Talking abomination!!) set Manfred on a path that eventually led to his solo project "Plains Music". This mostly consisted of music by Native American tribes arranged in a timeless, sometimes lightly jazzy manner. The two-part "Sikelele" celebrated the end of Apartheid in South Africa. This track, as well as "Medicine Song", had vocals by soul singer Noel McCalla, who would then front the new Earth Band that started playing live in the early 90s. The new band was drastically different from the old one, although Mick Rogers and bassist Steve Kinch remained. But the repertoire included a lot of new, yet unrecorded songs. Some of them eventually saw a studio version on the album "Soft Vengeance", although the result was a bit of an overproduced "bastard", with Chris Thompson replacing some of Noel's vocals late in the process. It was also perhaps a bit too safe and AOR-sounding with a lot of commercial songs and not nearly enough Mick Rogers guitar and live power, but it also included some of Manfred's most beautiful keyboard solos and some great tracks, e.g. the Dylan cover "Shelter from the Storm", the slow-burning opener "Pleasure and Pain", the dramatic "Complete History of Sexual Jealousy" (which was also a working title of the album, unsurprisingly given the main theme of the lyrics), the mournful instrumental "Adults Only" or the rocky "Miss You".

The tour, which featured both Chris (already deteriorating) and Noel on lead vocals, was captured on the live album "Mann Alive", which is longer than "Budapest" but still suffers from edits and messed up setlist (the LP reissue corrects the order, at least). Manfred then started working on the album that was eventually released in 2004 but called "2006"! It was credited to "Manfred Mann '06 with Manfred Mann's Earth Band", because Manfred felt that some of the material wasn't in the style that fans expected from the Earth Band. While it contains some good tracks like the instrumentals "Happenstance" and "Black Eyes" (a well-known Russian song) or an unexpected twist on The Coasters' "Down in Mexico", it remains my least favourite Mann album. Some of the Russian or Gregorian sounding choir stuff in the second half does not appeal to me at all, "Independent Woman" (based on a melody by Tchaikovsky) is a total disaster, not to speak of the awfully fuzzy mix. Even some of the better tracks get ruined by things like the unnecessary German rap in "Demons & Dragons" or the horrid drum programming in "Mars" (another Holst adaptation). Chris Thompson's reappearance also isn't so great because his voice was now clearly shot.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band continued to play live, including songs that never appeared on studio albums, but it seems that the recording days were finally over. In 2008, Jimmy Copley's drumming gave the band an extra edge that they hadn't had for years, but Noel McCalla eventually left in 2011 to be replaced first by Pete Cox and then permanently by Robert Hart. Manfred explained that he was working on a solo album, to be called "Rational Anthems". A single called "(Lick Your) Boots" was already released in 2011, but then withdrawn for legal reasons… The album finally came as "Lone Arranger" in 2014. It's clearly a solo album (with contributions from various musicians, including some MMEB members past and present) because the style is much more electronic and modern than MMEB's sound, and Manfred didn't shy away from covering some really well known songs such as "All Right Now", "We Will Rock You", "Light My Fire", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", "Nothing Compares 2 U" or "Get It On", but doing them in very unusual ways. The album also contained three songs by other artists that had sampled Manfred's work, which now in turns was reworked by Manfred again. "One Hand in the Air" is a heavily shortened version of Kanye West's (!) "So Appalled", which contained a sample of "You Are - I Am". "One Way Stand-Up" featured Manfred playing keyboards over The Prodigy's "Stand Up", which was based on Chapter Three's "One Way Glass". He did the same with The Disco Boys' headache-inducing version of "For You", although he thankfully shortened it a bit. The album isn't always successful, but surprising and interesting.

The only thing to keep fans of the Earth Band happy besides live gigs  are various archive releases. Sadly, a lot of classic era stuff got destroyed in a fire at the end of the 80s, but the "Bootleg Archives" (Vol. 1-5 & 6-10), "Odds & Sods" and "Radio Days" plus a few DVDs do plug some holes in the discography, and continue to prove what a great live band MMEB were in almost all its incarnations.

In 2020 though, it's looking very likely that we'll finally see the release of a new, proper Earth Band album! According to Robert Hart (who just released a solo album too), it was recorded over the last four years. I had the chance to talk to Robert at the gig and asked him whether Jimmy Copley, who sadly died of leukaemia in 2017 (John Lingwood came back to fill his place in 2016), would still be on some of the recordings. He said no. I suppose this means that the recordings made before 2017 won't see the light of day anytime soon, but this is to be expected with Manfred's perfectionist tendencies (there are still tracks from the "Soft Vengeance" and "2006" sessions that have not been released). Nonetheless, I'm very much looking forward to what the guys bring forth. Robert also said there are "some Bruce Springsteen covers". I just hope the sound quality (drums especially) will be better than on "2006" and that there's no drum programming!