Book review: Decades – MANFRED MANN’S EARTH BAND in the 1970s by John Van der Kiste

SonicBond Publishing [Publication date: 27.01.23]

After seeing the Earth Band live this Summer and being very pleasantly surprised, I found this book in my pile of review material and so I’m following up that excellent gig in Budapest with a dip back into the band’s most successful period.

Published earlier this year, the book takes its place on the burgeoning SonicBond shelf, which includes the ‘On Track’ series as well as these ‘Decades’ tomes.

Having traversed an already-diverse ’60s career path of jazz, blues, R’n’B and pure pop, the enigmatic Manfred Mann regrouped with essentially a new band at the beginning of the 1970s and embarked on a progressive rock trajectory. It is the initial 10-year period of that incarnation that this book covers. And in plenty of detail, too.

John Van der Kiste is an experienced author and biographer who handles the material with aplomb. Given the scope of the book, a context setting 10-page summary and another 10-page postscript that bookend the decade in question feels appropriate. The main body addresses the nine albums released during the period via a chapter on each year. This was undoubtedly the band’s most prolific and fruitful period. The author gives full coverage to the radical reworking of Dylan and Springsteen releases, the band’s focus on cover versions and the instrumental epics borrowed from Gustav Holst; together with the inspirations and processes behind each of the releases.

The full musical career history of the shifting cast of players in the band across the decade is particularly impressive. Van der Kiste also takes time to describe Mann’s favouring of the minimoog over other synthesisers emerging during this decade and draws interesting comparisons with the sounds/set-ups of Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman and others.

I like the sense of rock n roll history that comes with material drawn from contemporary reviews which, with hindsight, are always entertaining. In a balanced approach to this, the rave notices for 1973’s excellent ‘Solar Fire’ are contrasted with, for instance, the perplexed Rolling Stone reviewer of the following year’s ‘The Good Earth’ who found themselves ‘impatiently enduring the instrumental sections waiting for the vocals’.

As ever, these books lean more towards the committed rather than the casual fan, but this is a well-researched, entertainingly written softback that also pulls out some classic pics from the period. A worthy addition to portfolio.

Review by Dave Atkinson

Gig review: Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, 9 July 2023

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

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