GTR was the one-off project best remembered for featuring the not-inconsiderable guitar talents of Steve Howe and Steve Hackett. A dual guitar of ex-Yes and ex-Genesis six stringers and all around progressive rock heavy hitters. Howe had recently baled from Asia. It was the mid-1980s when the one and only GTR album came out. I and thousands of others rushed out to buy it expecting a progressive masterpiece with a bit of Yes, a bit of Genesis and a bit of Asia. Simply had to be the bees knees – right?
Well, sort of. Was a bit puzzling. Another puzzle being did the band’s name of GTR stand for anything. Various theories about that. Mine being that it is simply guitar with the vowels taken away. Next – that first listen back then. All those of us expecting the hybrid Yes/Genesis were slightly surprised. It wasn’t prog at all. Well, it was a bit but mostly a sort of melodic rock with arena overtones with a bit of prog in the background. Sort of. Different indeed.
After getting over the shock of no twenty minute twisty and turny prog meanderings and getting in to what was on offer – an enjoyable album was there to be listened to. Perhaps it was a deliberate play of Hackett and Howe to avoid what people would be expecting and go for something which was a band and not a guitar showcase.
GTR did not last long. I think a tour to promote the album and that was about it. But now, thirty years later Esoteric/Cherry Red Records have dusted it down, polished it up and given it the digital remastering treatment so we can discover (or rediscover) this one-off curiosity. Well worth parting with a few shekels for especially as it’s a double-disc job. Oh yes. Along with the remaster you have a fourteen track live recording of the band’s performance from the Wiltern Theater in LA in 1986. Almost the entire album live with a couple of Yes and Genesis classics chucked in. Top stuff.
What about the music? The big hit single starts it off. Insanely catchy with that huge chorus and jingle-jangle of the riff. Max Bacon bursting out his lungs. You shouldn’t like it but you do. The Hunter was the follow-up single which flopped but as an album track it works well. Here I Wait has a nice driving single chord riff to it. Mostly a rocker.
Here’s my favourite track – Imagining. Give it a bit of time for the pastoral introduction to give way to the proper stuff coming it. A proper prog/rock song with all the best bits of Yes and Genesis to enjoy but rocked up a bit and the guitars over the fade out. Lovely.
https://youtu.be/vgGbzL7OcPE
The instrumentals give Howe and Hackett some room to show their skills – Hackett to Bits for example and all points in between it’s a nice mixture of big sounding arena rock generally harking back to the prog backgrounds of the two main men. No fully escaping that. Max Bacon puts in a towering vocal performance with Jonathan Mover and Phil Spalding a formidably solid rhythm section.
It has been a pleasure to add GTR to my collection once again and get my ears around this singular curiosity. The live CD in particular. Does sound a little dated though generally stands up well. Yes, it was a one-off. No, it’ not the prog feast we expected merging Yes and Genesis. But……it is a good, if slightly unusual, rock album with melodic and progressive elements. One of a kind. There won’t be another one……
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Coming soon…….lots more NWOBHM stuff. High Treason, Cloven Hoof, Jaguar etc.
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