Renaissance were an English
progressive rock band, most notable for
their 1978 UK top 10 hit "Northern Lights" and progressive rock
classics like "Mother
Russia" and "Ashes Are Burning".
Original Incarnation (1969-70)
- Keith Relf - vocals, guitar, harmonica
- Jim McCarty - drums, vocals
- John Hawken - keyboards
- Louis Cennamo - bass
- Jane Relf - vocals
In January 1969, former
Yardbirds
members
Keith Relf, and
Jim McCarty organised a new group devoted to
experimentation between
rock,
Folk, and
classical forms. This quintet —
Relf on guitar & vocals, McCarty on drums, plus
bassist Louis
Cennamo,
pianist John Hawken, and Relf's sister
Jane Relf as an additional vocalist — released a
pair of albums on
Elektra (US) and
Island (UK-ILPS 9112), the first one,
titled simply "Renaissance", being produced by fellow ex-Yardbird
Paul Samwell-Smith.
The band had begun performing in May 1969, before recording had
begun for the debut LP, mostly in the UK, but with occasional
forays abroad, including festivals in Belgium (Amougies, October
1969) and France (Operation 666 at the Olympia in January 1970, and
Le Bourget in March 1970, both in Paris). In February 1970, they
embarked on a North American tour, but this month-long trek proved
a mitigated success, as because of their Yardbirds credentials they
found themselves paired with bands like
The
Kinks and their new classically-oriented direction didn't
always go down well with audiences.
Beginning in the late spring of 1970, as touring began to grind on
them, the original band gradually dissolved. Relf and McCarty
decided to quit performing, and Cennamo joined
Colosseum. Hawken organised a new line-up
to fulfill contractual obligations and complete the band's second
album,
Illusion, which was left unfinished.
Transition (1970-71)
Apart from Jane Relf, the new band consisted mostly of former
members of Hawken's previous band,
The Nashville Teens - guitarist
Michael Dunford, bassist Neil Korner and
singer Terry Crowe, plus drummer Terry Slade. This line-up recorded
one track, "Mr Pine", a Dunford composition, and played a few gigs
during the summer of 1970. Meanwhile a final recording session
brought together the original line-up minus Hawken, with Don Shin
sitting in on keyboards, and produced the album's closing track
"Past Orbits Of Dust". The now completed
Illusion was
released in Germany in 1971, although not released in the UK until
1976 (Island HELP 27). The album marked the beginning of
Renaissance's long-standing collaboration with poet
Betty Thatcher-Newsinger as lyricist when she
co-wrote two songs with Relf and McCarty.
The last two remaining original members left in the autumn of 1970
: Jane Relf was replaced by American folk singer Anne-Marie "Binky"
Cullom, then John Hawken left to join
Spooky Tooth and pianist
John Tout replaced him. There is an extant video
of that line-up performing five songs on a German TV program
(Muzik-Kanal). The plan at the time was that Keith Relf and Jim
McCarty would remain involved as non-performing members - Relf as a
producer and McCarty as a songwriter. Both were present when singer
Annie Haslam successfully auditioned in January 1971 to replace the
departing Cullom. But while McCarty would go on to write songs for
the new band, Relf's involvement would be shortlived. Dunford soon
emerged as a prolific composer, and also continued the writing
partnership with Thatcher, who would go on to write most of the
lyrics for the band's 1970s albums.
Second Incarnation (1971-80)
- Annie Haslam (vocals)
- Michael Dunford (guitar)
- John Tout (keyboards)
- Jon Camp (bass, vocals)
- Terence Sullivan (drums, percussion)
Sometime in 1971, new manager
Miles
Copeland decided to re-organise the band, focussing on what he
felt were Renaissance's strong points - Annie Haslam's voice and
John Tout's piano. Until then Haslam had shared vocals with Terry
Crowe, who was in effect the band's chief vocalist. Crowe and
Korner went, the former unreplaced, the latter replaced by a
succession of bass players, including
John
Wetton (later of
King Crimson and
Asia), Frank Farrell (later in
Supertramp) and
Danny
McCulloch (formerly of
The Animals
and a former bandmate of Dunford and Crowe in The Plebs), until the
position settled with the inclusion of
Jon
Camp. It was also decided that Dunford would now concentrate on
composing, and a new guitar player, Mick Parsons, was brought in
for live work. In 1972, shortly before recording sessions for the
new band's debut LP, drummer
Terence
Sullivan joined, after Slade's initial replacement was deemed
unsuited following a European tour. Tragically guitarist Parsons
died in a car accident and was replaced at short notice by Rob
Hendry. The resulting line-up entered the studio having played only
a dozen gigs together.
Prologue was released later in 1972
on EMI-Sovereign Records (UK), composed by Dunford except for two
songs by McCarty, and all lyrics by Thatcher.
Francis Monkman, of the group
Curved Air, guested on synthesiser on the final
track "Rajah Khan".
Hendry was replaced for the
Prologue tour by one Peter
Finer, who in turn left the group shortly before the sessions for
the next album. Michael Dunford then returned as (acoustic)
guitarist, completing what most fans regard as the classic
five-piece line-up, which would remain together through six studio
albums.
Ashes are Burning was released in 1973.
Andy Powell, of the group
Wishbone Ash, was brought in for a blistering
electric guitar solo on the final track "Ashes are Burning", which
became the band's anthem piece, extended to almost twenty minutes
with a long bass solo and other instrumental workouts. (John Tout
returned Powell's favour by playing organ on Wishbone's classic
album "Argus".) The album became the band's first to chart in the
US, where it reached #171 on the
Billboard
200. The band played their first US concerts during that
period, enjoying success on the East coast in particular, which
soon resulted in a special orchestral concert at New York's Academy
of Music in May 1974. Soon Renaissance would choose to concentrate
on the US market, as the UK press virtually ignored them, seeing
the original band as the only legitimate Renaissance.
The band left Sovereign Records, and joined Miles Copeland's new
prog rock stable and label BTM (for British Talent Management). The
label's first release was
Turn of the Cards in 1974. With
a larger budget, the album went from folk-flavoured to a more dark,
lush, orchestral rock sound. One of the album's songs, "Things I
Don't Understand", which clocked in at 9:30, was Jim McCarty's last
co-writing credit with the group (although it was actually in the
band's live repertoire for years). A lengthy tribute to
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, called
"Mother Russia", closed out the album, with lyrics inspired by his
autobiographical novel, "
One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich". The LP was first issued in the United States
on
Sire Records in August 1974, where
it reached #94, some months before an official UK release. Although
the band's fan base was relatively small, its following was heavily
concentrated in the large cities of the northeast US. The album was
eventually released in the UK in March 1975.
It was soon followed by
Scheherazade and Other Stories,
released on both sides of the Atlantic in September 1975. The
album, whose second side was taken up with the epic tone-poem "Song
of Scheherazade" based on stories from "
One Thousand and One Nights",
peaked at #48 in the United States.
A double live album,
Live at
Carnegie Hall, followed in 1976. Despite criticisms that
much of the album was little more than a note for note reproduction
of highlights from their previous four studio albums the album
reached #55 in the US. Revealingly, in introducing the song
Ashes Are Burning Haslam refers to it as the title track
from the group's
second album, rather than their
fourth, suggesting that the Haslam-led lineup by this point
considered themselves a distinct band from Keith Relf's incarnation
of the group.
Its follow-up,
Novella, also saw a modest
chart success in the US, peaking at #46 in 1977, although its UK
release was delayed by yet another label change.
In the 1970s, Renaissance defined their work with
folk rock and classical fusions. Their songs
include quotations from and allusions to such composers as
Alain,
Bach,
Chopin,
Debussy,
Giazotto,
Jarre,
Rachmaninoff,
Rimsky-Korsakov,
Prokofiev.
Renaissance records, especially Ashes
Are Burning, were frequently played on American progressive
rock radio stations such as WNEW-FM,
WHFS-FM, WMMR-FM,
KSHE 95 and WVBR
.
Although commercial success was limited during this period,
Renaissance scored a hit
single in
Britain with
Northern Lights, which reached #10 there
during the summer of 1978. The single was taken from the album
A Song for All Seasons (a #58 album in the US).
With the unionization of professional orchestral musicians that
followed, it was no longer financially feasible for the band to
continue with its traditional orchestral sound. Renaissance
floundered following 1979's
Azure d'Or, as many fans
couldn't relate to a largely
synthesizer-oriented sound. As a result the
band's fan base began to lose interest and the album only reached
#125. Michael Dunford and Jon Camp assumed most of the band's
songwriting.
Later days
After the
Azure d'Or tour, John Tout left the group for
personal reasons, quickly followed by Terry Sullivan. Subsequent
albums
Camera Camera (1981) and
Time Line (1983)
brought Renaissance more into the contemporary
synth pop genre, but neither garnered enough
commercial interest to make a viable future for the band
(
Camera Camera was the band's final album to chart in the
US where it reached #196 in late 1981). In 1985 Camp left, and
Haslam and Dunford led an acoustic version of the band until
finally calling it a day in 1987.
Renaissance albums were not available individually on
CD for some time. Sire issued a two-part
compilation,
Tales of 1001 Nights, focussing on the
1972-79 period, in 1988. In the 1990s most of their catalog
appeared on CD from reissue record labels such as
Repertoire Records (Germany). In 2006
Repertoire did much higher quality remasters of
Ashes are
Burning,
Turn of the Cards and
Scheherezade
with markedly improved sound.
In the mid 1990s both Haslam (who had released a self-titled solo
album in 1989) and Dunford (who had been working on a proposed
musical based on the
Scheherazade storyline) formed their
own bands using the name Renaissance and released albums with
different line-ups.
Renaissance partially reformed in 1998 around a nucleus of Haslam,
Dunford and Sullivan, plus Tout and several new musicians, most
notably
Roy Wood and Mickey Simmonds, to
record the CD
Tuscany. In 1999, Haslam, Dunford and
Simmonds played a one-off trio concert at London's Astoria
supporting Caravan. In 2001, following the delayed release of
Tuscany, a full band tour was organised, consisting of one
London concert (again at the Astoria) and several dates in Japan.
It was documented on the live release
In the Land of the Rising
Sun: Live in Concert. (Tout, although in the audience at the
Astoria, did not perform on this tour). Annie Haslam, who had
become the band's spokesperson, said that several factors made
further touring and recording impractical. The band's short third
incarnation was soon over.
Terry Sullivan has since recorded an album called
South of
Winter with a studio group he named
Renaissant. It is
evocative of Renaissance's music, with lyrics by
Betty Thatcher-Newsinger and keyboard
contributions by John Tout.
On 20
September 2008, John Tout made his first public appearance in the
US in over 25 years, with Annie Haslam and the Jann Klose band, at the Sellersville Theatre
1984 in Sellersville, Pennsylvania
.
Sometime before the summer of 2009 John Tout suffered from a heart
attack. He is recovering at this time
In late August 2009, Annie Haslam announced that she and Michael
Dunford were commemorating the 40th anniversary of Renaissance with
a reformed band, called Renaissance 2009 (including no other
members of the "classic" line-up, but with musicians from the 2001
incarnation of the band), and a concert tour.
Personnel
(Note: The following list includes temporary replacements &
sidemen.)
Discography
Albums
Compilations & archival releases
- In the Beginning (compilation double-album of
Prologue and Ashes are Burning), 1978
- Tales of 1001 Nights (compilation in two volumes),
1990
- Da Capo (Repertoire Germany compilation), 1995 [2 CDs]
[Limited Edition in tall digipak with a much more concise, detailed
booklet]
- Live at the Royal Albert Hall : King Biscuit Flower
Hour, 1997 (live performance recorded 1977; two volumes)
- Songs from Renaissance Days, 1997 (compilation of
out-takes, including one B-side and two Haslam solo tracks, 1979-88)
- The BBC Sessions 1975-1978, 1999 [2 CDs]
- Day Of The Dreamer, 2000 (live performance recorded
1978)
- Unplugged Live at the Academy of Music, 2000 (live
performance recorded 1985)
- Live + Direct, 2002 (edited 1970 live recording plus
demos/misc from 1968-76)
- Dreams & Omens, 2008 (live performance recorded
1978)
Singles
UK
- "Island" b/w "The Sea", 1969
- "Back Home Once Again" b/w "The Captive Heart", 1977
- "Northern Lights" b/w "Opening Out", 1978
- "The Winter Tree" b/w "Island of Avalon", 1979
- "Jekyll and Hyde" b/w "Forever Changing", 1979
- "Faeries (Living at the Bottom of the Garden)" b/w "Remember",
1981
- "Bonjour Swansong" b/w "Ukraine Ways", 1981
- "Richard the IX" b/w "Flight", 1983
US
- "Prologue" b/w "Spare Some Love", 1972
- "Carpet of the Sun" b/w "Bound For Infinity", 1973
- "Mother Russia"
(3'07 edit) b/w "I Think of You", 1974
- "Carpet of the Sun" (live) b/w "Kiev" (live), 1976
- "Midas Man" b/w "The Captive Heart", 1977
- "Northern Lights" b/w "Opening Out", 1978
- "Jekyll and Hyde" b/w "Forever Changing", 1979
- "Bonjour Swansong" b/w "Remember", 1981
Japan only
- "Spare Some Love" b/w "Prologue", 1972
West Germany only
- "Faeries (Living at the Bottom of the Garden)" b/w "Bonjour
Swansong"
Michael Dunford's Renaissance
These albums were essentially collaborations between Dunford and
singer Stephanie Adlington.
- The Other Woman, 1994
- Ocean Gypsy, 1997 (mostly new versions of past
Renaissance songs)
- Trip To The Fair, 1998 (compilation of tracks from the
previous two releases)
Annie Haslam's Renaissance
This album was essentially an Annie Haslam solo release (one of
several).
- Blessing in Disguise, 1994
Renaissant
This album was essentially a Terry Sullivan solo release, with
lyrics by
Betty Thatcher-Newsinger
and keyboards by John Tout. Terry's wife Christine did most of the
vocals, with Terry himself taking lead on two songs.
Major television appearances
- Don Kirshner's Rock Concert
Multi-artist television program with Renaissance performing "Can
You Understand" and "Black Flame." Syndicated (USA), 1974. 11
minutes, original running time unknown.
Multi-artist television program with Renaissance performing "Carpet
of the Sun" and "Midas Man." NBC (USA), 1976. 5 minutes, original
running time unknown.
- Sight and Sound in Concert
First in a series of programs consisting of artists performing
live, with the performance broadcast simultaneously on TV and FM
radio, hosted by DJ Alan Black. Songs performed were: "Carpet of
the Sun", "Mother Russia", "Can You Hear Me", "Ocean Gypsy",
"Running Hard", "Touching Once" and "Prologue". Originally
broadcast on 8 January 1977. BBC (UK), 1977. Approximately 50-55
minutes.
Television talk show features Renaissance performing "Northern
Lights" on 4 May 1978.
Interview by J.J. Jackson with Annie Haslam and Jon Camp. MTV
(USA), April, 1983. 10 minutes.
Illusion
Shortly prior to his death, Keith Relf wanted to try to reform the
original Renaissance. Since the name Renaissance was now firmly in
the hands of the Haslam lineup, he chose the tentative band name
"Now". Jim McCarty was not involved at this point. After Relf's
death, all of the surviving four formed a new band (along with two
new musicians) and named it
Illusion after Renaissance's second
album. Illusion released two albums for Island Records before
splitting, while a third made up of unreleased demos appeared years
later. The original four reformed again for the production of
Through the Fire which was released under the bandname of
Renaissance Illusion. (There
are two second albums entitled "Illusion": the 2nd album of the
original Renaissance (1971); and the eponymous 2nd album of their
reunion band, Illusion (1978).)
- Out Of The Mist, 1977
- Illusion, 1978
- Enchanted Caress: Previously Unreleased Material,
1990
- Illusion: The Island Years, 2003
Renaissance Illusion
Covers of Renaissance songs
This list does not include Renaissance songs performed by
individual former members of the band.
References
External links