[Review] Steve Winwood: Roll With It (1988)
Steve is back in the high life again with another multiplatinum smash.
Kronomyth 6.0: Rolling in it.
Steve Winwood had been on a roll since Back in the High Life. He had gone on tour, divorced his wife, won just about every meaningful Grammy, re-married, became a father, dumped Island for a shiny new multimillion-dollar contract with Virgin, turned 40 and topped the charts with another multiplatinum record, Roll With It. All the while maintaining that he didn’t feel the pressure to make a big hit record with Roll With It, which is likely a lot of hokum. Whether you believe him or not, Roll With It is the very modern model of a big hit record complete with all the trimmings including, this time, the Memphis Horns. The opening title track, which nicks Junior Walker’s “(I’m A) Roadrunner” (original songwriters Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and Eddie Holland were later given a credit on the song) kicks the album off on a grand note. That track, Holding On and Don’t You Know What the Night Can Do gave Winwood three more big hits and continued to make him an 80s radio mainstay. Yet the album is in many ways an artistic step back from BITHL, favoring synthetic white soul over the exotic and uplifting music of his last record. Strip away the gloss provided by the hired studio hands and this is Talking Back to the Night part two. Of course, Virgin wasn’t paying him $12-$13 million to make an artistic statement; they wanted hits and they got what they paid for here. And so will you, provided you’re not expecting more than those three hits and a handful of warm ballads and pop songs delivered in the cool contrivance of late 80s studio frankensteinery popularized by Phil Collins, Howard Jones and others.
Original LP Version
A1. Roll With It (5:17)
A2. Holding On (6:14)
A3. The Morning Side (5:12)
A4. Put On Your Dancing Shoes (5:10)
B1. Don’t You Know What The Night Can Do? (6:53)
B2. Hearts On Fire (Steve Winwood/Jim Capaldi) (5:14)
B3. One More Morning (4:58)
B4. Shining Song (5:29)
All songs written by Steve Winwood and Will Jennings unless noted.
The Players
Steve Winwood (vocals, Fairlight programming, drums, bass guitar, guitar, piano, Hammond organ, Moog bass, keyboards, Mini Moog, horn arrangements), Bashiri Johnson (percussion), Mike Lawler (keyboards), The Memphis Horns (horn arrangements, featuring: Wayne Jackson – trumpet, trombone, Andrew Love – tenor sax), Tessa Niles (backing vocals), John Robinson (drums), Mark Williamson (backing vocals) with Jimmy Bralower (drum machine, percussion), Robby Kilgore (keyboards), Paul Pesco (guitar). Produced by Steve Winwood and Tom Lord Alge; engineered and mixed by Tom Lord Alge (tambourine on track 1). Executive producer: John Clarke; production coordination by Lee Charteris.
The Pictures
Original album design by Mick Haggerty. Art direction by Jeff Ayeroff & Mick Haggerty. Photography by Herb Ritts.
Did You Know?
- Winwood met his second wife, Eugenia Crafton, at a Junior Walker show in 1986 at the Lone Star Café in New York.
The Plastic
Released on elpee, compact disc and cassette on June 1988 in the UK and Hong Kong (Virgin, V/CDV/TCV-2532), the US (Virgin, V2-90946/-4), Canada (Virgin, VL/VL4-2532), Germany (Virgin, 209.165.630), Greece (Virgin, VG 50373) and Yugoslavia (Jugoton, LSVIRG73254) with lyrics innersleeve. Reached #4 on the UK charts and #1 on the US charts (RIAA certified double platinum record on November 28, 1988).
- Re-issued on compact disc in 1993 in Japan (Virgin, VJCP-23156).
It’s too bad that Steve got himself into a “My Sweet Lord” situation with the title track. Like George, it was probably a case of “unconscious plagiarism”. It’s an exciting song. It gave us hope that Steve would be getting back to his roots on the album.
That hope was totally misplaced. The rest of the album was a huge disappointment. Steve totally abandoned rock and leaned heavily into adult contemporary pop. “Hearts on Fire” (oddly similar to the Genesis B-side of the same name) and “Holding On” (he forgot that he already wrote “Hold On”) show a little bit of energy, but not much. “Put On Your Dancing Shoes” makes the listener want to put on his sleeping jammies instead. Whether the tempos are fast, medium or slow, it’s all boring. Will Jennings’ lyrics are totally uninspired and useless. The concluding “Shining Song” obviously wants to be another “Higher Love”. Trite lyrics like “Love’s a light. /It keeps leading us on. /When it’s right, /it’ll shine till we’re gone” doomed that mission to utter failure.
This isn’t even as good as “Talking Back to the Night”. That had some good songs undermined by the production. This had a slicker, full band production, but you can’t polish a bunch of you-know-whats. The singles were all huge AC hits and the album was a commercial monster. Between the awful songs, the new haircut and the beer ad, however, it was clear that Steve had found a new niche. He pleased a whole new (and larger) audience with this but alienated his old one.