The first question is
what time of day do you want to play this? Late evening when lights are low or
early Sunday morning as the sun burns off the mist? It’s perfect for both times
and many others. First hearing suggest that this is supper jazz but you
wouldn’t want to dine, you’d want to listen, and insist that everyone else used
wooden cutlery and ate off paper plates.
Part of this album’s strengths lies in the song selection. None are originals but all play with moods, tragic, mainly but mixed in with some hope and, even, low levels of celebration, all to illustrate the many ages of man. This range from despair is captured in Don’t let Me Be Misunderstood with plaintiff vocals giving way to a string wrapped piano solo, the lushness offset by the interpolation of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells/Exorcist theme. Stop This Train deals with the eternal stay/escape dichotomy with Sassoon’s light tenor working its way through all the options. The next song is Mose Allison’s City Home with its longing for home decorated by some lovely organ playing by, the near ubiquitous, Ross Stanley.
The next three songs form
a triptych covering the aging process with Marc (Walking in Memphis) Cohn’s The
Things We’ve Handed Down which considers what we hand down to our kids with
Sassoon’s bold two handed piano playing giving way to a flowing, rising,
delicate solo. The arrangement owes a little to early Elton John. Lovely, rich
and warm are the words that spring to mind. That is followed by the aching
beauty of Janis Ian’s At Seventeen which
opens with the line that “Life is meant for beauty queens” whilst the rest of
us bumble along with a lack of social graces and whatever beauty we manage to
scrape together. Whilst the original was desperate, Sassoon’s distance brings
more sympathy and hope to the lyric and his piano solo rolls elegantly away
before Steve Parry’s burnished flugelhorn (is there any other sort) takes a
short flight. Sassoon’s phrasing and piano punctuation in Let It Be brings out some of the gospel, blues and soul that was
only hinted at by the original. Sassoon has also presented a show of Ray
Charles’ music and this version owes as much to Ray as Paul and John.
A mellow, plaintiff Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight is
followed by the full string section opening for the title track which is
described in the sleeve notes as the thoughts of an old man reflecting back on
his life during his final minutes. A rousing guitar solo from Mike Walker exposes
the song’s prog rock roots and makes for a grand finale. It feels like an
encore after the simpler songs that have gone before.
The Bandcamp page for
this album uses the ‘Easy Listening’ tag twice and that does this album a
disservice. Whilst it is easy listening adjacent and won’t scare the horses, it
is more than that. It is passionate, and most of all, human music; in the olden
days Terry Wogan would have played this to a breakfast time audience of
millions and Sassoon would have enjoyed a deserved spell in the spotlight.
There, and I haven’t mentioned the fact that he’s a mithering Manc who bemoans
the poor position his ‘beloved Manchester United’ were in when he recorded
this. They’re now 3rd in the League; Newcastle should have their
problems. This moan is the only thing that mars Sassoon’s Premier League album
and I can live with that. Dave Sayer
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