The album “Solar Fire” was for me the trailblazer for a series of first rate Rock works which followed in the 70s and early 80s. Manfred Mann as an entity was known in the 60s for a series of quirky and catchy pop tunes. I have the vaguest recollection of grainy black and white pictures of them on Top of the Pops. The simple “My Name is Jack” in particular caught my imagination. The main players left to go into other branches of entertainment, leaving the serious-minded South African Manfred Mann to pursue his own projects. The result was a collection of Rock-Progressive albums, some of them themed, infused with blues, pop, reflective and softly psychedelic moments. At the same time Manfred Mann’s own mystical skills on the synthesiser and the magical keyboard solos were a trademark which took us to other planets and beyond the mundane description of being “classic”.
“Solar Fire” was not Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s first album. It was in fact the fourth after a self-titled work, “Glorified Magnified” and “Messin’”. I sensed that it was experimental with clear indications of what was to follow. One thing which was not on it, on the original release at least, was a catchy pop hit. I remember watching a television interview with Manfred Mann, in which he tried to blow away any idea of creativity. Instead he kept emphasising that his music was just a means of paying the mortgage. One way of doing this was through commercial hits, and whilst MMEB received critical acclaim with the rocky “Davy’s on the Road Again” (1978) and “Don’t Kill it Carol” (1979), they were undoubtedly commercial. Another such song was “Joybringer” (1973), the MMEB song which first made me sit up and want more. The interesting thing about this absolutely captivating song is that as well as mixing the MMEB ingredients into simple form, it’s also based on “Jupiter” from Holst’s Planet Suite – I did hear the original later, and whilst I could see the inspiration, there’s no plagiarism. That’s creativity. Logically, I would have expected “Joybringer” to be on “Solar Fire”, whose central theme is about the earth, the planets, the day, the night anything but the mundane world we live in. On some later editions “Joybringer” is there as a bonus track. Even though I was disappointed that it wasn’t on my original copy, nor indeed was anything resembling a hit single, I still bought “Solar Fire” and was privileged as a result to be introduced to the MMEB experience.
The album starts with a Bob Dylan song, “”Father of Day, Father of Night”. MMEB liked Dylan songs, amongst them “It’s All Over Baby Blue” and most notably “The Mighty Quinn”, the latter complete with a sublime Manfred Mann keyboard solo. I’ve not heard the original of “Father of Day, Father of Night” but I can’t imagine it to be 9 minutes 56 seconds long, nor as deep-rooted as this. An angelic choir, a feature used later with great effect on “The Road to Babylon” on the 1976 album “The Roaring Silence”, opens up proceedings. We momentarily hear the sound of the waves, and what on the face of it could be a plodding track develops into a hymn – again, some 10 years later, hymns are used to create a mystical atmosphere on “Somewhere in Afrika”. Here there’s the sense of something dangerous as well as ethereal about it. The stakes are raised half way in as the track moves into a mellow and thoughtful guitar solo, supported by the enchanting strains of the synthesiser. After this lofty beginning, “In the Beginning, Darkness” is more naïve with its classic 70s riff. The steady drums lead us into a conventional instrumental section. “Pluto the Dog” is an oddity, and proof that this is not all serious introspection. It’s not as eccentric perhaps as The Who’s “Boris the Spider”, but an organ- and bass-inspired instrumental whose chorus is provided by a dog barking is not absolutely normal either. I could imagine this strange piece being played on BBC2’s “The Old Grey Whistle Test”, the televisual temple of Progressive music and, as someone once described it to me, the “Radio 3 equivalent of Top of the Pops”. The title track follows. It is simple, and awesome. The rhythm is steady and powerful, and although I couldn’t have realised it at the time, it has a similar magnetic power to “Spirits in the Night”, the sublime opener on the 1975 album “Nightingales and Bombers”. A typical combination of angelic and Mick Rogers’ meatily clear vocals raise the emotional temperature. Manfred Mann’s keyboards have a psychedelic feel, whistling like the wind. “Saturn, Lord of the Ring. Mercury, the Winged Messenger” is amazing. The steadily developing rhythm has a distinct similarity to the Fleetwood Mac classic, “Albatross”, but instead of being about waves on the sea shore, this is about distant lands and has an extra-terrestrial flavour. This is music to accompany lunar landings, not so inappropriate given that the last of Apollo missions had taken place only the year before this album and therefore there was great interest still in the mystery of space. Musically, the guitar work is funky, and the track climaxes with harmonious interplay between the synthesiser and guitar. “Earth the Circle” is in two parts. The unusual but cheerful Part 2 comes first. Keyboard-led, it has the air of a progressive jazz track. Part 1 is more complex than it first appears, but it’s hard to get away from the view that The Muppets are singing it. One thing I like about this album is that it challenges us with the unconventional. The quality of the music ensures that we don’t regard it as a joke at our expense, indeed “Earth the Circle Part 1” ends on a funky note gain with a touch of jazz, finally culminating in the heavens with the angelic chorus.
Whilst sticking to its other-worldly theme, “Solar Fire” is an album of many elements. I couldn’t in all honesty say that the tracks are glued together, indeed it’s distinctly bits-and-pieces in the way they are so different in lengthy and style. What we do get however is a masterly concoction of atmospheric instrumental and vocal work which showcased the talents of the band members, was very much in keeping with the lofty vision surrounding this album, and set the band up for future musical developments.
