Steve Winwood and Traffic

important work in color

1967: (British release date): Dear Mr. Fantasy. 1968: Traffic. 1969: Last Exit. 1970: The Best of Traffic * John Barleycorn Must Die. 1971: Welcome to the Canteen * Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. 1973: Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory. 1974: Traffic on the Road * When the Eagle Flies. 1975: Heavy Traffic * More Heavy Traffic. 1991: Smiling Phases.

Steve Winwood: 1977: Steve Winwood. 1980: Arc of a Diver. 1982: Talking Back to the Night. 1986: Back in the High Life. 1987: Chronicles. 1988: Roll With It. 1990: Refugees of the Heart.

Steve Winwood’s reputation as a wonder-boy with precocious talents - as a singer and multi-instrumentalist (keyboards, guitar, bass, etc.) - helped sustain his career through a long series of badly crafted and fairly impersonal albums with Traffic. He maintained a veneer of importance as a pop music figurehead as he struggled with his inability to write lyrics or set fire to static instrumental tracks. Winwood took 20 odd years to fully capitulate to corporate pop expectations. When he won a Grammy in 1987, his music seemed only a little worse than what we’d come to expect. Glorious expectations had been long forgotten.

From his ecstatic hits with the Spencer Davis Group ("Gimme Some Loving" and "I’m a Man"), to the child-like, British "psychedelia" of Traffic’s first album (Dear Mr. Fantasy), to Big Pink-inspired folk-qualities on the second album (Traffic), to the long-winded 70’s inclinations of the Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys, Winwood’s constant drifting of attention finally came to rest on pop negligibility. It speaks well for the music of the 60’s that bands like Traffic and artists like Winwood could travel unimpeded from one style of music to another (Winwood also served stints in Blind Faith and Ginger Baker’s Air Force). But what was ambition in some bands seemed like listlessness in Winwood.

Traffic’s main distinction, besides Winwood’s talents, was the addition of Chris Wood’s flute and saxophone, which gave the band a superficially exotic flavor. Dear Mr. Fantasy, inspired by Sgt. Pepper and the Jefferson Airplane, is well-played and fun, but lyrically strained and not as intellectually or musically inspired as the personal psychedelic visions of the San Francisco bands or Syd Barrett. Despite the band's reputations as musicians’ musicians, Dear Mr. Fantasy remains Traffic’s most complex work. On later efforts Traffic wouldn’t always sound like a band: hampered by Winwood’s studio foundations which didn’t allow for much natural instrumental maneuvering, the musicians often sounded stuffed and squeezed. Chris Wood’s solos in particular are almost always tentative, his phrasing a bit breathless. On long pieces like "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" and "Many Miles to Freedom" the soloists are never involved in the kind of interactive support that less talented bands managed when kicking out the jams. If this music was a precursor to anything, it was the light-jazz, lounge approach of future rock bands from Steely Dan to Billy Joel. There’s nothing wrong with extemporizing, as any number of bands proved, but if you’re gonna extemporize it’s better to strive than diddle about. Even in some of their shorter, more structured, songs Traffic seemed poised on a dangerous precipice whenever forced to traverse bridges and instrumental breaks, opting many times to pray their way over. On the highly praised second album - Traffic - the lyrics are sadly underwritten (as are most Traffic lyrics) and redundantly repeated. John Barleycorn Must Die is a Traffic smorgasbord with a bit of cool jazz ("Glad"), trad-folk (title track), and enough rock/blues styling to show off Winwood’s strengths.

There’s something both odd and probably necessary about Winwood’s desire to shy away from band formats and continue to forge his way as a multi-instrumentalist. He definitely hasn’t mastered the form as well as Stevie Wonder, who himself only occasionally transcends the problems of one-man recordings. Not only did Winwood’s solo projects become boring, the unique sound of his voice started getting lost in modern production techniques (much like Elton John’s, Cat Steven’s, Todd Rundgren’s, etc.), and Winwood’s once powerful organ/guitar embellishments were pretty much abdicated in pursuit of the next new sound. Gone were the reasons so may people rooted for him for so long in the first place.

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