Bob Catley’s debut solo album from 1998 – The Tower – has a 2024 reissue with revised artwork by Rodney Matthews.
We’re all familiar with Bob Catley – right? Sang with Magnum for a couple of millennia and Hard Rain in between Magnum splitting and reforming. In that same post Magnum/reforming period he started a solo career with The Tower being the first of them.
The album was written by Gary Hughes of Ten. Gary being a self- confessed Magnum fan who wrote the songs with Bob in mind and they do suit Bob’s vocal style well being somewhere between Magnum and Ten.
Indeed – The Tower can be thought of as a Ten album with Bob singing as Hughes handles keyboards and bass along with the excellent Vinny Burns on guitar and Greg Morgan on drums who were with Ten at the time.
Now, I’m far from the biggest Magnum fan – they’ve never resonated with me. However what drew me to this reissue was the Gary Hughes factor. I’m a long-time admirer of Gary’s work so on seeing this reissue of The Tower I figured why not take a chance on it.
Pleased I did – it has a bit of everything. Generally hook-laden melodic hardish rock with Bob’s unmistakable voice and plenty of variety in the songwriting veering from that melodic rock to include along the way symphonic, progressive and some folksy elements which carry the typical Hughes stamp.
Take the opening duo of Dreams and Screams for example. Irresistible pacey rockers with the big hooks and choruses and typically stunning guitar work from Burns. I don’t like the terms “earworms” particularly – though that’s what Dreams and Screams are.
Deep Winter similarly catchy in it’s own way being sort of amped up acoustically-based flowing folkish then Fire and Ice storms in back to the punchy melodic rock and the big chorus.
Madrigal feels medieval the comes Steel, which is perhaps my favourite. A tasty chugfest. Have a listen:
The title track superb as is Fear of the Dark on which Bob has the slower-paced sensitive vocal throughout the symphonic/progressive/folkish style and the general atmospheric feel. Oh, and a superb solo from Burns.
Overall a classy album which grows with each listen. To take it back to Magnum, there are three live tracks from The Gods in 1998 in which Bob belts out three Magnum classics.
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