While You See a Chance by John Van der Kiste

Author:John Van der Kiste
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fonthill Media
Published: 2018-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

‘I wanted something else’

The splitting of Traffic in 1974 marked the end of a phase in Steve’s life. He realised he had had enough of the album-tour-album-tour treadmill (part of his life since leaving school so early) and needed to step off. Calling an end to Traffic was the only solution, a way to bring discipline to an undisciplined life, broadening his horizons and deliberately mixing with others who had nothing to do with music or any of the arts. He had not only seen people whose whole lives had been spent touring in rock groups, but he used to be like that himself:

They can’t do anything. They’re hopeless, can’t get their laundry done, or buy a plane ticket, or go to a bank. They really don’t have a clue. I’ve seen that and I’ve been like that and I guess I made a point of making my life more than rock ‘n’ roll. I’d had enough of the touring syndrome and I wanted something else. Suddenly I looked around and realized there was a whole world out there that I really didn’t know. Starting out so young, I missed out on a lot.1

He no longer wanted to be a prisoner of the ’60s idea that individuals who complied to rules or who went to work at nine and came home at five and wore suits were doing anything wrong. It was a dawning of the realisation that there was nothing wrong with working from nine to five, ‘and I started to do that myself a bit then.’2

At the same time, there was freedom to explore different musical genres with other players. One of the most fruitful was Go, a studio project led by Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta, who played synthesisers, percussion, tympani, and others. Apart from adding vocals, Steve played piano, organ, electric piano, and string synthesisers, and from the last Traffic line-up, Rosko Gee played bass. All the songs on the album were written by Stomu and Michael Quartermain, except ‘Winner/Loser’ by Steve. The trio took the show on the road as documented on the live album, Go Live from Paris, recorded at the Palais des Sports in Paris on 12 June 1976. They also performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London later that year, with a line-up including Stomu, Steve, Michael, Al DiMeola, Rosko Gee, and others. That same year, Steve played guitar with the Fania All Stars, a revolving door collective of salsa musicians based in New York. They recorded an album, Delicate and Jumpy, and he performed as a guest with the band in their only British appearance, a sold-out concert at the Lyceum Theatre in London early in 1976.

Such projects were all part and parcel of Steve’s broadening his horizons and playing something new. He was deliberately looking for different, more unusual things to play as part of his keen interest in various kinds of ethnic and traditional music. It all added to the material he would write in his later years. Within

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