Fearless

author unknown

Publication unknown, c. November 1971

FAMILY: “FEARLESS” (REPRISE).

THIS is Family’s masterpiece. It has been a long time coming in terms of writing and recording, but the result is a superbly structured album and quite the best thing they have done in a studio.

Bassman John Wetton told me he thought a few things might “surprise and maybe shock” some Family people, and suffice to say synthesisers, low-down booming trombones and some marvellous vocal combinations are the proof of this prophesy. Meticulous attention has plainly been paid to each track as a separate entity, especially in the mixing stage. So the overall feel is a complex but consistently melodic one, with Family and singer Roger Chapman not having to bust a gut straining for effect.

Side one:

“Between Blue And Me” — acoustic intro followed by electric guitar, and then the first signs of the incredible, croaking, cracking voice of Chapman. Rob Townsend’s drumming pins everything down and that’s the way it is right through the album.

“Sat’d’y Barfly” — nice plonky piano presumably from Wetton leads into period piece about this guy on the pick-up cruising down-town in his automobile wearing best mohair suit and new spats. Bar-room piano, trombone and acoustic guitar adds to the atmosphere which is proper spoofy.

“Larf And Sing” — A quicker one with vocal chorus support for Chapman. It’s a real turn-up as the band sounds a cross between the King Bros. and a miniature male voice choir.

[ROGER CHAPMAN: straining vocals — photo caption]

“Spanish Tide” — Drumming provides the base with a Flamenco-style guitar break amidships while Chapman keeps the Voice under control.

“Save Some For Thee” — Another piano intro and Chapman croaks again until a whistle leads it away into a marching song with rolling drums.

Side two:

“Take Your Partners” — Changes of pace and synthesiser punctuate this as the band riffs towards climaxes. Longest track and a little disjointed.

“Children” — Closer harmonies than anywhere else. Acoustic accompaniement help it to move along with repetitive beauty.

“Crinkly Grin” — Minute long jazzy interlude with bass and vibes.

“Blind” — Solid foreboding start sparks a full-throated and swirling sound that a Scotsman might even thing were bagpipes.

“Burning Bridges” — Chapman leads his Family away with strong, straining vocals.

by N.L. (likely Nick Logan)

Unknown publication (probably New Musical Express), c. November 1971

FAMILY: FEARLESS (Reprise K54003; £2.49).

EVER since Doll’s House and Entertainment, Family have been threatening to produce a classic rock album. I’m loathe to make snap judgements, and Fearless is a difficult product to assess because its immediate impact is one of surprise, but this could well be the nearest they’ve got yet to achieving that long-promised goal.

I should maybe first explain what I mean by surprise impact. Having lost the violin that had become a trademark of the band, Family have chosen not merely to attempt to replace it but have fearlessly and wisely chosen to expose whole new avenues that have opened up for them.

Thus, on Fearless, we find a brass section, copious use of harmonies — Roger Chapman assisted by new bassist John Wetton — and, more pointedly, we find them writing some of the best material of their career. There are several exceptional melodies here that will lodge themselves in your brain.

Yet many of the songs are so different — like Poli Palmer’s spoof Larf And Sing, with Inkspots / Sing Something Simple vocals, and the acoustic, tenderly-lyrical Children — that the change requires a period of adaptation. It’s rather like bracing yourself for having your brain punched in, and being handed a sweet instead. A good stereo — because there are some deft touches of production to relish — would be an advantage.

Taken as a whole then, Fearless is more an album of subtlety, possessing a strong streak of humour, the usual top class lyrics, yet still retaining sufficient of Family’s characteristic restless aggression to counter any foppishness. They ain’t poofs you know.

To this end you get cuts like Blind, Between Blue And Me and Take Your Partners contrasting their aggression against a lighter number like Children where, against a restrained boot-stomp rhythm, Wetton and Chapman harmonise a beautiful little song.

Again, now that the violin has gone, so has some of the schizoid pace. Between Blue and Partners are both more even-paced compared to past cuts like Weaver, with guitar breaks where Charlie Whitney allows himself the luxury of laying back on guitar, slicing with deliberated menace on the one track, mellow and stirring on the other.

The brass wheezes merrily on the semi-novelty Sat’d’y Barfly, and again on the march-tempo Save Some For Thee. Both also use Poli Palmer’s honky piano, and the latter a rousing military percussion. The fact that four in the band get credits for percussion on the sleeve is evidence of the attention given to that department.

Spanish Tide and Burning Bridges are other good strongly melodic examples of Family mixing roots and evolution. Tide is a cleverly constructed composition, using Palmer’s vibes strongly, where subtle almost ballad-like qualities are contrasted with a characteristic Family staccato arrangement.

Bridges, the closing cut, again uses harmonics, and is a particular favourite for the way it seems, to my mind, to crystallise all the best elements of the first Doll’s House album. That should give an indication that this is Family in the melting pot, and that Fearless is a deucedly fiendish stroke. — N.L.

Full text of the contemporary reviews as reproduced in Galactic Ramble.

Sounds — 6 December 1971

Family’s finest album… With their new bassist John Wetton, one of Britain’s best rock bands has produced a work of complete contrasts. They jolt you with weird harmonies, low-down tubas and spoof songs. Superb.

Cream — December 1971

Fearless isn’t an easy record to get into. By Family’s standards, it’s a pretty subdued piece of work. The first few plays were disappointing, and it only started coming across when I settled down and really started paying attention. Headphones and a blow are a big help with this one… Relaxed, down-key passages gradually build to insistent climaxes, and haunting piano breaks are balanced against beautifully economical guitar.

FEARLESS review from Creem magazine (Vol. 3, No. 11; April, 1972)

“I never liked Family. I got their Reprise albums, played them a couple of times and took ’em down to the used book store. They were completely incomprehensible, and Roger Chapman sang like an electric goat. Then about a year ago, I somehow got a copy of an album called Anyway on British Reprise. It was beautifully packaged, in a vinyl pouch that had a flap at the top, out of which you could pull the record in its sleeve and a folded-over piece of cardboard with a reproduction of a Leonardo da Vinci print on it. Just because the packaging fascinated me I put it on. The first side was live, and it made my hair stand right on end. The second side wasn’t bad, either. But Reprise over here in the States announced that they’d dropped Family because they only sold a couple hundred copies of their albums, and it didn’t matter how big a following they had in England, it was plain that they didn’t have one over here.

“So Anyway didn’t get released over here, and I thought we’d heard the end of Family until United Artists signed them and announced that they would release it, albeit with modified packaging, soon. And now, their first album since they left Reprise is out, and it’s called Fearless. UA assures us that they still intend to release the other one, but meanwhile, here’s a stopgap. Well, it’s not quite as good as Anyway, but it’s still a good, strong album, loaded with some of the most intense, high-energy British rock and roll being made these days. The filler cuts pass quickly enough, the few of them that there are (“Spanish Tide” and “Children”), and what’s left is fine indeed.

“What makes Family such an exciting band is primarily their lead singer, Roger Chapman, who insists on choosing material that is just ever so slightly too high for his singing range. When he reaches for those upper notes, screaming as he does, it is a scary thing to hear. Beyond this, though, the band provides a backing of finely-wrought, semi-dissonant excitement. It is not difficult, when listening to Family, to imagine why they are rural England’s favorite band. Even to somebody who’s never been there they manage to evoke the moors and rocky wastes of legend, and Chapman’s quavery voice could belong to an 80-year-old sheep farmer as well as to a rock singer.

“The most notable cuts on Fearless are the full-tilt, loud, high-energy ones, since that’s what the band does best. My favorite is “Blind”, with Chapman’s upper register climb, a bagpipe-like violin, and some truly ethereal keyboard (?) noises at the beginning. “Sat’d’y Barfly” could be a Rod Stewart outtake, and in fact it has me wondering who’s borrowing from whom. No matter, though – it’s good. “Larf and Sing” has a nice acappella chorus on it, and “Between Blue and Me”, a fine song that just builds and builds, features a killer lead guitar duet.

“Yeah, I’ve come to like Family, and I’ll go on record as saying that Fearless more than fills the gap. By the way, the cover is a computer graphic, with pictures being added to one another, culminating in the sum picture under the word Family in the upper right-hand corner. It’s as good a cover as the one on Anyway, and just wait’ll they release that.

Reviewer: Ed Ward

by Jack Breschard (Crawdaddy, April 1, 1972)Since 1968 Family has been kicking around the edges of being discovered by a large American audience and the underground has buzzed with stories of this far-out English group, their fantastic live act and their remarkably vibrant albums. Their first record, Music in a Doll’s House (Reprise), got some good notices and things looked promising. Somehow nothing happened. Some say Roger Chapman, the lead singer, offended Bill Graham, and the Fillmore’s Pharoah black-listed the group. Others claim that when Ric Grech split mid-first-American-tour to join up with Clapton, Winwood and Baker in Blind Faith, Family lost confidence and fell apart. Stories of mismanagement, artist temper tantrums, and the like also circulate, but none of them tell the story of Family’s music which continued for four more albums.

Fearless is the group’s sixth album and their first on United Artists. It is, in short, nothing less than brilliant. The band is a blast of energy right when rock can use it. Family is fronted by madman Chapman and it derives much of its direction from his highly frenetic style and his crazed delivery. When I saw the group live in England I was totally knocked out. On three occasions they generated excitement approaching The Who on a very good night and they recreated these levels each time. Chapman gets into a performance slowly until the music and he are both swirling about the stage, ricocheting off amplifiers, musicians, walls and anything else that crosses their maniacal paths. The vocalist, with his arms flailing in all directions, pushes the band to unknown heights and uncharted regions. It is always a cathartic experience.

Fearless captures the band’s power and its art. The album is an extraordinary collection that mixes countless styles of music, always sounding distinctively like Family. Shades of Tony Williams, Miles Davis and the Soft Machine can be heard in the jazz tinged numbers while Family delivers equally with the power of Rod Stewart or Jethro Tull. The Mothers of Invention and classical composer Charles Ives (from whom Frank Zappa learned so much) both influence the mix, and harmonies drift in and out that recall CSN & Y and the Beach Boys. The studio work brings back the refreshing inventiveness of the Beatles and, as a final touch, the vocal and instrumental nuances of Traffic and even the Grateful Dead are present. Now, doesn’t that give you a clear idea of what Family sounds like?

Side one is remarkable, being the catchiest album side I’ve heard in a very long time. One listening was all I needed to get caught up completely in the music. “Between Blue And Me” opens the album and goes from folk acoustical to heavy rock in a blink of an eye. “Sat’d’y Barfly” with its double pianos sounding like inebriated Randy Newman, and its insanely correct tubas, is thedrinking song of the ’70s. Following is “Larf and Sing” which deserves to be the most listened-to cut because it catches in its two minutes and forty-five seconds the totally lovable idiocy that is Family. “Spanish Tide” and “Save Some for Thee” close out the side with wild studio flourishes within some super-fine electric music.

Although side two might not be as memorable as side one it is still full of great moments. “Take Your Partners,” “Blind” and “Burning Bridges” are overpowering compositions despite their lack of incisive lyrics. “Children” is a very pretty song that allows the band to stretch out vocally and “Crinkly Grin” could have been a dynamite instrumental but they choose to fade it out after a mere one minute and five seconds. The multi-instrumentality of the band members account for much of the album’s strength. The range is wide but al1 areas explored are seemingly familiar territory and no one gets hung up in a bunch of musical pretensions.

Family captures the sound of the machine age which fairly represents their working class backgrounds. Although some people might not be attracted by their eclectic approach, all rock fans should be turned on by their skills. Family deserves to be heard and Fearless should be their passport back to America. This time, hopefully, we’ll show the good sense to welcome them with open arms. We’ve heard a lot of bands that have been influenced by Family and now we deserve to hear the real article.

Expanded-edition assessment. Joe Marchese hears Fearless living up to its title through constant stylistic movement. “Between Blue and Me” pivots from folk to hard rock; “Sat’d’y Barfly” turns barroom piano into a ragged singalong; “Larf and Sing” crosses funk, jazz harmony and wah-wah guitar; and the album continues through acoustic, progressive and instrumental forms without settling into a single category.

John Wetton’s arrival expanded Family’s vocal range as well as its instrumental weight. The reissue’s two additional BBC discs are central to Marchese’s assessment, demonstrating how much heavier the band became in performance. He also notes that the earliest 1971 session still features John Weider on bass—a useful correction to an easy line-up assumption. The package’s remastering, booklet and extensive sessions make it a substantial archival edition rather than a routine re-press.

Read the original assessment ↗