Premonition
1986 was a heady year in many ways. It was the year I graduated from high school. 1985-1986 saw me move out of my mother’s house and in with my dad. It saw me fall madly in (unrequited) love with Stacey Wheeler – and carry that torch much further than I care to admit. It saw a truly tragic experience with another woman, which has shaped me far more than I can say….
But the music….Everyone was at the top of their game. Name an active ‘80s artist, and just look at what they did in 1985-1986. We were only a decade separated from the mid-1970s, and the guitar gods of the time were Page, Beck, and Clapton. Eddie Van Halen had just released 5150, but he really hadn’t become Eddie Van Halen yet. Crazy young guns like Jake E. Lee, Warren DiMartini, George Lynch, Brad Gillis, and Vivian Campbell were all over the airwaves and MTV. It was the golden age of what’s now derisively called “hair metal”.
I spent my senior year working at the county’s educational access cable station from noon until 9pm, shuffling ¾” tapes of Slim Goodbody, Reading Rainbow, and other educational shows and movies. But I always had a monitor set to MTV (kids, this was back when MTV played music, all the time). Suffice it to say, I know my ‘80s music really, really well.
So that year, the Big Three all released albums. Jeff Beck was the first, with Flash. This is the record with “People Get Ready”. Monster hit, but what about the rest of the album? Weeeellllll….”Ambitious” is good fun, with some great guitar work. “Gets Us All in the End” isn’t bad, again with the killer guitar. But the rest of it just doesn’t work well. Nile Rodgers is a huge talent, but trying to cram Jeff Beck into pop music just didn’t work well.
The less said about Clapton’s August, the better. I really enjoyed Behind the Sun, and was hoping for a continuation. Nope. There isn’t a song on this record I can listen to today.
Jimmy Page and The Firm came out with Mean Business, which was largely a commercial failure, save for the single, “All the King’s Horses”. I loved the record at the time, and still listen to about 2/3 of it on a regular basis. “Fortune Hunter” is an absolutely killer song (which was originally planned for a supergroup featuring Page and Chris Squire from Yes).
One night while at the cable station, MTV rolled out a new Peter Frampton song called, “Lying”. Now I was familiar with him, obviously. Frampton Comes Alive was a cultural phenomenon. 10 years later, you still heard those songs on AOR all the time. Frampton had guest starred on the final episode of Baa Baa Black Sheep. There was that awful Beatles movie. So I knew his music, and I’d always liked it, even if not a huge fan. I’d heard his prior album (1982’s Art of Control), which didn’t make much of a splash. Frampton hates the record, and doesn’t even mention it on his website. It’s not as dire as a lot of critics made it out to be, but it just doesn’t sound like him.
What do I mean by that? Going back to 1976, whenever I heard his music, the guitar sounded like joy. I mean, listening to the way the guy plays, and the notes coming out, just sound like pure joy. It’s the opposite of the blues. Like, you can be in a rotten mood, Peter Frampton comes on the radio, and dammit, now you’re happy, because the guitar just lifts you.
So MTV plays a video called, “Lying”. Lying’s a pretty heavy thing, right? Lyrically the song’s about a woman sneaking around and cheating on Peter Freaking Frampton. He should be pissed, right? You’d never know it from the song. It’s a bouncing, keyboard-laden affair, with an absolutely soaring guitar all over it. I was hooked, immediately. Ran out and bought the LP the next day. Weeks later the gang and I were at Stacey’s house (big, huge torch carrying, by the way), and of course the TV was on MTV, and the video came on just as we were about to leave. I held up the group so that everyone could marvel at the song. They were…..ambivalent. At best.
Me? I loved the album. The whole album. Every stinking song. When I went off to college, I didn’t take my turntable, so I bought the cassette. And no, I didn’t record the LP because I wanted Peter Frampton to get whatever he got from the additional cassette sale. And a year or so later I got a CD player, and then I bought the thing on CD.
I wore this album out. My three roommates (Greg, Brian, and Jamie) were exasperated with me. I can air-guitar the hell out of every track (and did). I felt so strongly about it, I actually whipped out my typewriter (1986, folks) and wrote Peter a fan letter – the only one I’ve ever written – and told him that Premonition was a better album with better guitar work than the three albums that Page, Beck, and Clapton had released that year.
And for 36 years, Premonition has consistently been one of my top 10 favorite albums. I’ve posted it in every Facebook, “album challenge” I’ve ever done. I still listen to it quite a bit, and my opinion hasn’t changed. It’s dated. It’s very ‘80s in its production, but that’s a feature, not a bug. And his playing on it is to my ears, much to Peter Frampton’s probable chagrin, the best he ever did.
So it was a nice surprise a couple of weeks ago when I discovered that the album had been remastered in 2016, and that there were two, “new” songs on it. One was a B side from one of the singles, the other was from the soundtrack to the movie Quicksilver, which I saw, but don’t remember the song at all. So what the hell, Frampton gets a fourth purchase of the same album from me.
Before I get to the actual review, I need to state that this is a record from 1986, and it bears all the trappings of a 1986 recording. It’s thin. It’s bright. There are synths all over it. There are synth hits that sound like they were sampled from a Franke Goes to Hollywood song. But Frampton brought the talent, and dragged along some real names to help him out. Tony Levin on bass. Omar Hakim and Steve Ferrone on drums. In other words, a world-class rhythm section. Unfortunately, being 1986, Peter was playing a Pensa-Suhr guitar (Mark Knopfler was another player who adopted the thing). It was one of those, “better idea” SuperStrats, that was a great player, but had very little character. It had a ridiculously clean sound, and you had to rely on your amp(s) and effects pedals in order to create your tone. Peter was using a massive Bradshaw Board at the time, and the guitar on this record (and his next) lacks the sound and feel of his earlier and later outings which use Gibsons and Fenders. I have no idea what amp he’s using on the record, but it’s not coloring the sound much.
And without gushing over every song, Frampton’s voice is just magical. Dude can sing. He’ll never be held in the same regard as Freddie, or Rob, or Ronnie, but there are very few singers who can utilize their voices as well as he can.
My good stereo is still mothballed from the move, and will be until I finish the basement, so unfortunately I had to listen to this in my truck. It’s got a decent stereo though, and I’m ridiculously familiar with the original nine songs, so let’s dive in, shall we?
It’s an odd thing to have the lead-off song on your record titled, “Stop”, but here it is. It begins with a bright synthesizer flourish, and a nice riff. Oh, and the ‘80s bouncing keyboards. Omar’s drums propel the song forward nicely. Right off the bat I can tell that there’s a lot more bottom end. I can really hear the bass and the kick drum. Surprisingly, as I look at the liner notes, this isn’t Tony Levin on bass, it’s Frampton himself. I unabashedly love these lyrics. “I want you to be my lover and my friend, so this story will not end”. The guitar solo is nothing fancy, but man it just soars. And the outro solo’s hammer-ons are something I never thought I’d hear from Frampton. Listening to the 1986 CD back-to-back with the 2016 CD, is jaw-dropping. The new disc (and this is across the board) is far clearer, and has far more bottom-end. It’s still a bright album, but the thinness is all but gone. It’s not the full sound of Blue Murder’s debut, but it makes the entire record much more listenable.
Next up is “Hiding From a Heartbreak”. It’s a synth-driven slow-burner. Levin’s bass and Hakim’s drums really pop. The groove here is really good. Lyrically it’s on. This should have been released as a single, but I think the funk-ish groove would have been hard to slot into AOR. The guitar solo is super clean with a touch of echo, in a nearly flamenco-style. Loved it since I first heard it. This is a perfect example of minimalist playing. There’s not much guitar here, but when Peter deploys it, it slays.
“You Know So Well”. Starts off with what I thought was Tony Levin slapping the shit out of his bass, but nope, it’s Frampton again. Which is shocking, as this is the bass-heaviest song on the record. Again, this should have been a single, because this song flat-out smokes. I’ll put Peter’s guitar playing on this song up against nearly anyone else on any other song. Ferrone’s drums are explosive, and there’s guitar fills everywhere. The synths are a little overbearing, but the new mix fills everything out around them some, so that helps. On any given day, this is my favorite song on the album.
“Premonition” is an odd duck. It’s tight and confining. Ferrone and Levin create a claustrophobic framework, with Frampton wailing away between nearly every line of lyrics. The omnipresent synths work perfectly here. For a, “sinister” song, the guitar fills still sound like they’re smiling. Again, on any given day this could be the best song on the record. Peter sings his ass off on this one, and it really burns, especially when the song opens up in the second half. The outro solo is once again, on fire. The new mix reveals a lot of high-end chimes in the percussion that I’d never heard before, even on the big Klipschs.
The one that hooked me, “Lying”. This song actually charted, and got decent MTV rotation. And again, a song about a cheating, lying partner, and damn it just sounds so happy. This is a perfectly crafted rock/pop song. Bouncing synths, pumping bass (Frampton again, even though Levin is in the video), and Ferrone’s driving drums, and my god the solos…..The first solo is just amazing, the outro just soars. It’s on the same level as the second, “Comfortably Numb” solo. Really, this is just such a perfect song, made better by the new mastering.
“Moving a Mountain” has all the trappings of a Def Leppard song. Rough ‘n ready riff, big choruses, and searing solos. Again, I think this would have made for a decent single. Nothing terribly deep about it, just a solid rocker.
“All Eyes on You” was the second single. It’s a straight-up torch song (hello Stacey). It’s beautiful. The guitar is all acoustic up until the solo, which just rips your heart out with its plaintiveness.
“Into View” took a few listens for me to really come to love. The verse structure rhymes a bit too no-the-nose for me. But it’s saved by a smoking slide guitar solo, and a Talkbox outro (this is Peter Frampton after all). This is probably the weakest song on the original album, but that’s saying that it’s a, “9” rather than a, “10”.
“Call of the Wild” is a great album-closer. This song has always reminded me of something that should have been played over the closing credits of an ‘80’s movie in which a bunch of plucky, oddball high school students had to complete some ridiculous task in order to save their school. Whatever, Peter sounds positively ecstatic singing it, and so does his guitar. He plays his ass off on this one.
And the bonus tracks….
“So Far Away” was the B side for, “All Eyes on You”. The liner notes don’t have the lineup for this one, but I’m assuming it’s some combination of the same band. This is….thin. But I have no reference point, as I’d never heard this until a few days ago. The guitar sounds like a Fender, so that’s different. Overall this song is far more restrained than everything else from the record, and I can easily see how it didn’t make the cut. It’s not bad, but it’s not nearly up to the level of the original nine.
“Nothing at All” is from the Quicksilver soundtrack, and again, I’m assuming this was from the Premonitionsessions given its inclusion here. I want to remaster this one myself and jam the guitars up. This is primarily keyboard-driven, and the vocal performance is too restrained for me. The solo is really good, and the rhythm section just jams through it. That saves the song and will ensure that this one stays in rotation. But it smacks of a soundtrack song, and that’s a shame.
Overall, this was a great buy. The new mastering alone is worth it. The bass in, “You Know so Well” was shaking the mirrors on my truck. The clarity of the songs is vastly improved, and the newfound lower end makes a great record even greater. The two bonus songs are worth a listen, and maybe in another 36 years they’ll be my favorites too, but for now they’re just things to work on.
So yeah, that’s 2,400 words about a 6 year-old remastering of a 36 year-old album that no one bought and even the artist isn’t all that happy with. Tells you a lot about my tastes though. Give it a listen. It’s a really solid record.
Glad to be back. There’ll be more, I promise.
Island of Baroque Weirdos 