Steve Howe 2: The Steve Howe Album

Seeing as his first solo album didn’t really show him at his best, Steve Howe started fresh with his second outing, even giving it a more bold title in The Steve Howe Album. Naturally it had a Roger Dean cover, where he looks like he’s drowned, and not necessarily swimming. (This unfortunate figure would be removed on some but not all later CD editions.) Inside were photos of all the guitars and other stringed instruments he used, and a handy chart showing which tracks had what. Both Yes drummers helped out, as did the exiled Patrick Moraz. Best of all, he kept the singing to a minimum.

He starts out rockin’ and riffin’ with “Pennants”, though we wonder where the vocals would go if there were lyrics to fit, and “Cactus Boogie” is a more countrified piece for several guitars. “All’s A Chord” sports a gentle, classical-tinged theme that’s soon taken over by other styles until it sounds like an unused Yes track, complete with falsetto vocals as if he’s trying to sound like Jon Anderson. “Diary Of A Man Who Vanished” has all the hallmarks of a television theme song, perhaps something involving cowboys. Guest vocalist Claire Hamill takes the mic for “Look Over Your Shoulder”, even harmonizing with herself, while Ronnie Leahy’s Hammond organ also makes a Yes contender.

Side two is even more disparate, beginning with another descendant of “The Clap” in “Meadow Rag”, while the jaunty “The Continental” came from a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie 45 years earlier, for which it won an Oscar®. Here it has a Reinhart/Grapelli feel, thanks to Graham Preskett’s violin. “Surface Tension” is an original Spanish guitar piece, and something of a prelude to “Double Rondo”, where he’s accompanied by a 59-piece orchestra. Ambitious as it is, it pales in comparison to the closing rendition of the second movement of Vivaldi’s concerto in D major, originally composed for lute rather than the Les Paul he plays here, and one of the loveliest classical pieces ever composed. It’s a fitting conclusion to a surprisingly cohesive album.

Steve Howe The Steve Howe Album (1980)—3