Another Lifetime

Fifty-odd years later, the original version of Tony Williams’ Lifetime remains the most exciting band I ever saw. At Ungano’s in New York in the autumn of 1970, the three-piece Lifetime, with Larry Young on Hammond organ and John McLaughlin on guitar, produced a howling noise that seemed to take music into the next dimension.

It was jazz, it was rock, it was somehow psychedelic, it was all of those things and none of them, with the burners turned right up. In that time and place, made by a trio of innovators, it was the sort of music that made you reach for the word ‘beyond’. It also made everyone else’s attempts at some kind of jazz-rock fusion sound like Muzak.

Their double-album, Emergency!, had created a bit of a stir, but its appeal was seriously undermined by very dubious sound quality, as if they’d used poor-quality equipment and had left the final mix to the studio cat, and then pressed the result on twice-recycled vinyl. Listening to it was a bit of an ordeal, which is not how it should have been at all.

The day after I saw them, I interviewed Tony in his manager’s office. He was less than communicative, something I reflected in the piece I wrote for the Melody Maker, suggesting that it might have been at least in part the fault of my stupid questions. He was reading the newspaper as I walked in and said hello, and he barely looked up from it for the duration of our talk.

It wasn’t a lack of sympathy on my part. I’d been an admirer since he became the drummer in the Miles Davis Quintet seven years earlier, aged 17. I’d devoured the albums he’d made for Blue Note, both under his own name and with people such as Jackie McLean, Eric Dolphy and Andrew Hill.

Maybe it was me, maybe it was the day, maybe (as I took the liberty of suggesting in my piece) he was still learning how to handle fame. Whatever, I left in disappointment but with just about enough to turn into something publishable.

When I asked him about the murky sound quality of Emergency!, mentioning that someone close enough to know had told me it came out exactly the way he wanted, he gave a somewhat puzzling response: ‘Oh no, that’s not true. Wait a minute. Did someone tell you that? Well, write down that it’s true. I got tired of clear things — everyone was recording with the same sound, and I didn’t have time to experiment before going in there, and that was the best way to get a different sound. Just distort it and make it fuzzy.’

But now, finally, 56 years later, someone has sorted it out. For its release on the Reference series of reissues from Werner Uehlinger’s Thingamajig label, Emergency! has been subjected to a process of sonic restoration and mastering by the Swiss engineer Michael Brändli which reveals, for the first time, the music that was always there. Clearing away the fog while leaving some of the distortion and fuzz has turned it into what I heard at Ungano’s, and what Tony must have had in his head, if that’s not too presumptuous a claim.

If you ever shared my reservations, listen to the way McLaughlin’s epic guitar flights, Young’s completely original approach to the organ and Tony’s dramatic contribution to the three-way conversation (which sounds as if he might have been listening in a very creative way to Keith Moon) now emerge with light shining on every component part. It’s still not polished — this was never going to be polished music — but it’s much easier to appreciate.

During our conversation, Tony also mentioned that Jack Bruce was joining the group. In London two years earlier, after Cream had broken up, Bruce recorded a quartet album with McLaughlin on guitar, released in 1970 as Things We Like. Now he seemed to have found a perfect berth, and during Lifetime’s UK tour that November they stripped the paint from the walls of the Marquee in front of an audience containing many well-known musicians, who were suitably gobsmacked.

Jack was now doing the singing, as well as playing bass. Tony had sung with the three-piece line-up, and he wanted to keep a vocal element in the band. He told me that he’d sung doo-wop as a kid in Boston, and made the rather surprising claim that his own vocal efforts were inspired by Arthur Prysock, Nat King Cole and Billy Eckstine. But then Lifetime was a surprising band on every level. I wish we’d got on better that day, but nothing has ever dimmed the memory of the night at Ungano’s, which now has its perfect souvenir.

* Emergency! is reissued on the Thingamajig label, containing the uncredited photograph used above.