Author: Web Rock Radio News Dept

As a founder member of the Strawberry Hill Boys, Dave Cousins helped move the band through bluegrass and folk until they finally became international prog icons Strawbs, who could count Led Zeppelin among their fans. In 2019 Cousins told Prog about his journey from underground band to the household name that helped give Sandy Denny and Rick Wakeman their breaks.

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Having notched up 19 studio albums since Strawbs’ 1969 self-titled debut, Dave Cousins has remained the one constant at the centre of the band, amid various shifts in musical directions and sometimes turbulent personnel changes. And the prolific songwriter and vocalist intends to stay busy. “While I still enjoy it, I’ll keep on doing it,” he says.

In 2019 Strawbs celebrated their golden jubilee at a gala event in Lakewood, New Jersey. Backed by a 30-piece orchestra and a choir of staff members from New York’s United Nations building, the gig covered their lengthy career from start to present day. Cousins recalls: “Tony Visconti, who’d worked with us on our very first records, agreed to come and conduct.

“It was unbelievable to have Tony there. We did our very first single, Oh, How She Changed, with Dave Lambert singing, backed by the orchestra. We also had the choir sing an amazing rendition of Lay Down and they accompanied us on We Have The Power from our 2017 album, The Ferryman’s Curse. That was extraordinary.”

The three-day celebration featured many musicians who’ve played live or recorded with the band. “Strawbs are a family. You can never overlook that. And we all get on very well together. Even though people left the band there was never really any hard feeling. Yes, there might have been aggravation at the time – but by and large, we’ve all stuck together and looked after one another.”

Whether it’s touring on his own or with The Acoustic Strawbs alongside longtime members bassist Chas Cronk and guitarist Lambert, 2020 looks like another busy year. When Prog caught up with Cousins at his home in Kent, he was still at the early stages of working on Strawbs’ 20th studio album.

“At the moment I’ve got ideas and a few scraps of paper with titles on them. I’m going down to my local pub, who’ve agreed to let me have the back room on an afternoon, where I can sit on my own and get on with the writing.”

You started out playing the folk circuit in the early 1960s.

Yes – though we were never a folk group as such. I was the fastest banjo player around, Tony Hooper was the lead singer and we had a double bass player. Before that we’d done a BBC audition which we passed, and I started ringing up BBC producers trying to get us work. One of them returned our call and told us we were recording the next week. The show was broadcast in 1963 and we shared billing on Saturday Club with Chris Barber’s Jazz Band and The Beatles.

Captain Beefheart said, ‘I can’t do this interview without running water.’ He put the tap on. It sounded as if he was having a pee!

At the time, I was the cloakroom attendant at Eel Pie Island Jazz Club in Twickenham; Arthur Chisnall, who ran the club, heard us on the radio and asked if we’d like to do the intervals for a group he had coming in. They were booked for the next six weeks and they were called The Rolling Stones. No idea what happened to them!

A bit later you were a producer on a pop show for Danish radio. How did that happen?

Tom Browne, who was later a Radio 1 DJ, did an interview with me about the Strawberry Hill Boys and he helped set up a tour of Denmark. I got booked for a Danish TV show. Also on there was The Who, promoting I Can’t Explain, and I got chatting to them afterwards. Pete Townshend gave me his phone number and told me to give him a ring sometime.

Anyway, Tom Browne had been asked by Danish radio to do a pop show from London called The London News. He said to me, ‘I know nothing about pop music – will you produce it?’ He and I interviewed all sorts of people: David Bowie, Sandy Shaw, Marc Bolan, Mary Hopkin, Keith Emerson.

We even interviewed Captain Beefheart on his first visit to England. We went up to his hotel off Oxford Street and he said, ‘I can’t do this interview without running water.’ So he went into the toilet, put the tap on, came back in and then we talked. Of course, when we came to edit, it sounded as if he was having a pee throughout the interview!

How did you meet Sandy Denny?

I’d gone to The Troubadour in Earl’s Court, and there’s Sandy down there wearing a long white dress and a straw hat playing a Gibson Hummingbird, singing the Gaelic song Fear a’ Bhàta. I introduced myself after she came offstage and asked if she wanted to join my group. ‘What’s the name?’ she asked. ‘Strawbs,’ I told her, and she said, ‘Yeah, okay.’ It was as simple as that!

“It was in 1967. She was 20 at the time and living at home with her mum and dad. She joined us and we were booked to play in Denmark. We really got to know Sandy on the ferry from Newcastle to Aarhus where we sat up all night, rehearsing and drinking every bottle of beer that was on the ship.

Sandy joined Fairport Convention – which I didn’t mind. We were still the best of friends. She was an absolute icon

We got signed to Sonet Records, run by Karl-Emil Knudsen, and made a record in Copenhagen in an old cinema. We could only record during the day because people had to be let into see the film in the evening. So we’d go off and play in Tivoli Gardens with Sandy singing.

It was the only time we performed on stage with her, really. She came back to England and, after three months, I hadn’t been able to get anybody in England interested in releasing it. By then Sandy had joined Fairport Convention – which I didn’t mind. We were still the best of friends. She was an absolute icon.

And you were the first British act to sign to A&M Records, weren’t you?

Yes. That was through Knudsen, who distributed A&M in Denmark. He played them the recordings with Sandy; and although they were disappointed she wasn’t with us anymore, Jerry Moss – the M of A&M – phoned to tell me they were excited to have us and wanted a single. We were in the studio with Gus Dudgeon as producer, who shared his office with Tony Visconti.

A&M had sent $15,000, which at that time was a colossal amount of money, and it was all spent on that first record because Gus Dugeon wanted to prove himself with orchestras and Christ knows what. So when they said they wanted another album we asked for more money. They told us the cash they’d originally sent was to be spread across three albums!

So we went from London back to Denmark, but we took Tony Visconti with us because Gus had buried my voice on the first album. So Tony produced Dragonfly [1970].

How did you hook up with Rick Wakeman?

We’d been asked to do a session for the John Peel show and we wanted to do a piece called The Battle, but we didn’t have a keyboard player. Tony suggested he bring Rick along, and it was great – we got on famously. When it came to Dragonfly we had him play on The Vision Of The Lady Of The Lake.

I asked Rick where he was going for the honeymoon. He said, ‘We can’t afford one’ … So he came to Paris with us and had his honeymoon there

I put his name on the sleeve notes, and when it came out sent him a copy. He said he was thrilled – that was the first time he’d had his name on the back of an album.

We met up and had a beer and I asked him to join the group. Our first gig with him was to be in Paris a fortnight later, but he said, ‘I can’t do that; I’m getting married.’ I asked him where he was going for the honeymoon. He said, ‘We’re not; we can’t afford one.’ So I said, ‘Well, I’ve got an idea…’ He came to Paris with us and had his honeymoon there!

After Dragonfly your music shifted towards a more electric sound. Was that deliberate?

We’d been using acoustic bass but it just wasn’t working for what we needed. At the time I had a folk club and then an arts lab in Hounslow and I’d booked Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera. It had guitarist Paul Brett, who’d guested with us on Dragonfly; and Richard Hudson and John Ford on drums and bass respectively. I thought they were great and invited them to join.

I still viewed us as a folk group, so the fact that Richard played percussion rather than a regular drum kit is what attracted me. It was only when we made From The Witchwood [1971] that we brought drums in for the first time, but they were very much mixed down because I didn’t want them to overwhelm the songs.

From The Witchwood has quite an eclectic mix of sounds and instruments, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does. On A Glimpse Of Heaven you’ve got multi-tracked voices to create a choir, Rick steaming in with a ferocious Hammond organ solo, and me playing bluegrass banjo behind him. Witchwood has me playing dulcimer and Rick playing clarinet – his second instrument at college. The Shepherd’s Song has that great Mellotron part as well as Rick’s great synth solo.

That was the first time we used a Mellotron. Also in the studio was a Moog synthesiser, the really big one. Rick sat with Tony and they got a sort of piccolo trumpet sound which Rick overdubbed. I’d been influenced on that song by Alone Again Or by Love. I adored that song and still do. So Rick dubbed that Moog on top of the strings.

We recorded a version of Part Of The Union that was far more left-wing, but that wasn’t released

You must have been really sorry to lose Rick to Yes.

Well, of course – but we’d been paying Rick £25 a week and Yes offered him £100, so it was understandable really. Funnily enough history repeated itself, because we had Oliver, Rick’s son, playing with us for a while, and he left us to join Yes as well!

1972’s Grave New World had a grander, more dramatic feel to it, and of course it had that fantastic triple fold-out sleeve which must have been very expensive to produce at the time.

The sleeve was immensely powerful. We’d become quite a significant band so A&M didn’t mind spending the money. We went from selling 5,000 copies of From The Witchwood to selling 98,000 in the UK with Grave New World.

A&M did the artwork and we had no involvement, other than me writing the sleeve notes and choosing the bits of text from the Egyptian Book Of The Dead and the Tibetan book of the dead [Bardo Thodol].

I had no idea what was going to go into the artwork until I saw the finished thing. I was staggered. The William Blake painting The Dance Of Albion [also known as Glad Day] is an immensely powerful picture as well. As for the middle picture, I’ve got that hanging on my wall at home.

You had an unexpected hit single in the UK with Part Of The Union, which got to No. 2 in 1973. Was that a blessing or a curse?

That song has been an albatross round our necks since it came out – in this country anyway. It was No. 1 in Germany because it’s an oom-pah song. In America nobody heard it. The first song we recorded for what became Bursting At The Seams was Lay Down and that was very much in my style.

At the same time, Hud and John had recorded a demo of Part Of The Union, and were going to put it out under the name of The Brothers. The publicity we got from the song at the time of the miners’ strikes and the three-day week and so on, was colossal.

But the problem was we didn’t come out and say whether we were left-wing or right-wing; we kind of sat on the fence. I think, unfortunately, that clouded the judgment of us for a few people. We recorded a version that was far more left-wing, but that wasn’t released. I have that on a cassette still.

The album title Bursting At The Seams was very apt. Things in the band had become quite acrimonious, hadn’t they?

Yeah. I was taken to one side by our manager, who said, ‘The band have decided to fire you. ‘We’re going to keep you on as a solo artist and they’re going to carry on as Strawbs.’ I said, ‘Over my dead body.’ There was a bloodbath in Hollywood, where we were at the time, and so John and Richard went their separate way and had some success as Hudson Ford.

Your next album, 1973’s Hero And Heroine, is regarded as a classic, featuring John Hawken from the original Renaissance on keyboards.

When John came in he’d never touched a Mellotron or a synthesiser. ‘What do I do with this?’ he said. But he was such a useful piano player with such a wonderful touch. I’d first heard him on that first Renaissance album [1969] when I was producing my Danish radio show. Hero And Heroine was when we became a proper progressive rock band. It was probably our biggest album worldwide, especially in America.

The most satisfying shows we did at the time were the double-header shows with King Crimson. Both bands liked one another’s company. There was a sympathy between Hero And Heroine – tracks like The River and Down By The Sea – and King Crimson, who were doing a lot of Larks’ Tongues In Aspic at the time.

Led Zeppelin would fly out to wherever they were playing, come back on their private jet and watch our last set

Life on the road can take its toll in terms of relationships and personal health. How did you cope with it?

We weren’t into drugs. We loved a good old drink, you know? Yes, we occasionally smoked a few joints, but not coke or anything like that. It’s only when we met up with Led Zeppelin in Hollywood that I had coke with John Bonham, which was an extraordinary experience. He kept pushing my head down to the table, saying, ‘More, more, more!’

Our first gig in the States was a week-long residency at the Whiskey A Go Go. Zeppelin would go flying out to wherever they were playing that day, come back on their private jet to the Go Go and watch our last set. They did that two or three nights running. Our audience were astonished that Led Zeppelin were there watching us.

Your 1976 album, Deep Cuts, was given the deluxe reissue treatment last year. How you think it stands up?

It’s probably the best-sounding Strawbs album of the lot – but we were rushed into doing it. I didn’t have any songs. I’d just sold a cottage in Devon that I was about to move out of, so it had no furniture in it. I invited Chas Cronk to come down.

We went down the pub first and then went back, sat on the floor with two guitars, and in less than five days we’d written six or seven songs. It turned out to be more of a pop album due to the pressure of management saying we really needed a hit single.

Were you pleased by the reception for your 2017 album The Ferryman’s Curse?

Yes! It went into the prog rock album charts and I was thrilled. It wasn’t easy to make that album. I had a terrible hernia and it made singing a lot of the songs incredibly painful. I was also suffering from kidney problems; I was in and out of the hospital a lot of the time.

It was well-received by fans and critics so that was great. Some of the joy was taken from it, however, because our producer, Chris Tsangarides [Colosseum II, Brand X] sadly died a month later, which really broke my heart.

I asked Universal if they could get Steven Wilson to remix Hero And Heroine, but they weren’t keen

What’s the Strawbs album you would point to and say, ‘This is what you need to listen to?’

Grave New World. There’s one thing wrong with the studio version – we put it right in the live recording from our 50th anniversary show, which we’re going to release soon. We reprise Grave New World in a different key and suddenly the whole thing goes circular, comes to a resolution and makes sense.

Rolling Stone magazine listed Hero And Heroine as one of the 50 greatest prog rock albums of all time. Universal owns the masters of the biggest albums on A&M. When Steven Wilson started remixing all the classic albums by King Crimson, Yes and others, I wrote to Universal and asked them if they could get Steven to remix it to 5.1, but they weren’t keen on the idea.

Yet 50 years on our albums are still selling. We repaid our advance from A&M 20 years ago and we’ve been receiving royalties ever since. They’ve totally recouped. Now, for argument’s sake, say the royalty is 10 per cent and we’ve been paid over £100,000 – that means Universal has grossed a million pounds over the last 20 years. There aren’t many bands from that era still selling those kinds of quantities.

Sid’s feature articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Prog, Classic Rock, Record Collector, Q, Mojo and Uncut. A full-time freelance writer with hundreds of sleevenotes and essays for both indie and major record labels to his credit, his book, In The Court Of King Crimson, an acclaimed biography of King Crimson, was substantially revised and expanded in 2019 to coincide with the band’s 50th Anniversary. Alongside appearances on radio and TV, he has lectured on jazz and progressive music in the UK and Europe.  

A resident of Whitley Bay in north-east England, he spends far too much time posting photographs of LPs he’s listening to on Twitter and Facebook.

A marketing man’s dream, Asia were billed as a prog rock supergroup: Yes guitarist Steve Howe and keyboardist Geoff Downes, ELP drummer Carl Palmer and King Crimson / UK / Uriah Heep bassist/vocalist John Wetton.

With such a line-up, nobody expected the concise, radio-friendly vivacity of Heat Of The Moment, Sole Survivor and Only Time Will Tell, but Wetton and Downes knew all about writing hit singles. “We took our twelve-minute songs and removed the ten minutes of noodling,” explained Wetton.

Hugely commercial but with strong prog undertones and impeccable musicianship (plus the prog stamp of approval of a Roger Dean logo and cover), the album earned Asia a huge audience, topped the US chart for nine weeks, and sold 10 million copies worldwide. At one point it was selling 80,000 copies a day.

“John Wetton and I were driving somewhere in the States and Heat Of The Moment came on the radio,” Downes later recalled. “We hopped stations and it was there again and again. It was crazy!”

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Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.

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Other albums released in March 1982

• Windows – Charlie Daniels Band
• Hex Enduction Hour – The Fall
• The Gift – The Jam
• One Vice At A Time – Krokus
• Shoot Out the Lights – Richard and Linda Thompson
• Five Miles Out – Mike Oldfield
• The Number of the Beast – Iron Maiden
• Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet – Rick Springfield
• The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads – Talking Heads
• The Blurred Crusade – The Church
• Angst in My Pants – Sparks
• Blackout – Scorpions
• Filth Hounds of Hades – Tank
• Bill Wyman – Bill Wyman
• Walk Among Us – The Misfits

What they said…

“Produced by Mike Stone, Asia’s strengths were the powerful vocals of John Wetton, the nimble, classically tinged guitar work of Steve Howe, Geoffrey Downes’ majestic keyboard playing, and anchoring the band, Carl Palmer’s propulsive drumming. The lyrics are overwrought at moments, but there’s no denying the epic grandeur of the music, which provided some much-needed muscle to radio at the time, and did so with style.” (AllMusic)

“The art-rock Foreigner is a find – rare that a big new group is bad enough to sink your teeth into any more. John Wetton and Steve Howe added excitement to contexts as pretentious as King Crimson and Yes, but this is just pompous – schlock in the grand manner, with synthesizers John Williams would love. And after listening to two lyrics about why they like their girlfriends, three about “surviving,” and four about why they don’t like their girlfriends, I’m ready for brain salad surgery.” (Robert Christgau)

“Only Time Will Tell is the best song on the album. Although the song was composed by Downes and Wetton, the mocking guitar by Howe throughout makes this a real centrepiece for the former Yes axeman. The song contains instrumental rudiments and the guitar licks all above and almost-Barry-Manilow-like ballad somehow makes this a very interesting listen. The biggest flaw of this song is that it fades out way too soon.” (Classic Rock Review)

What you said…

Andrew Cumming: I hadn’t listened to this for years until recently. I figured I like 80s Yes – Drama, 90125. And this is 40% of the Drama line up plus John Wetton and Carl Palmer. So I reckon this could be a bit similar. And it kind of was. Sound is parpy-80s prog. The songs are generally very strong. Heat Of The Moment, Only Time Will Tell, Wildest Dreams, Sole Survivor. All great songs. I think it stands up well as a strong album. And anyone who thinks Drama is a good Yes album I think will really like it.

Robert Baptista: Could have been better.

Bill Griffin: I always considered John Wetton to be the guy people went to when they couldn’t get Greg Lake. How odd then, that Greg replaced John in Asia for a bit.

Anyway, this album is not at all what I, or probably anybody else, was expecting. It still succeeds in spite of that. It really is a good album. Not a great one but I never think about changing the radio station if a song comes on.

John Davidson: I bought this on release. To be honest, I was expecting a bit more prog given the pedigree of the artists but this is high quality pop rock with the occasional prog flourish, more reminiscent of Boston and Journey than Yes, ELP or King Crimson. Though its no surprise perhaps that when Yes returned in 1983 (sans Howe but with a restored Anderson, they also produced an AOR classic in Owner of a Lonely Heart).

Heat Of The Moment and Only Time Will Tell remain the standout tracks with Sole Survivor chasing down the opening salvo of AOR but the album rewards multiple listens , as the less obvious crowd pleasers start to reveal their charms.

Time And Again starts off with one of those heavy prog riffs based on something classical before transforming into a progged-up version of the sort of sing-along swaggering rock that Thin Lizzy made their own for a while.

Wildest Dreams starts with Steve Howes wailing guitar over a heavy beat before reverting to a softer, call and response style that made me think of Hall and Oates albeit channeling War Pigs through a background of prog keyboards.

Cutting It Fine (at least the first 3.30s of it) comes closest to the opening three numbers but its extended outro diminishes its impact too much.

Overall its an album I admired more than enjoyed (even back in the day) but if you can see past the 80s AOR production there are some really good songs on here played by seriously talented musicians.

Mike Canoe: While I try not to read too much into Spotify plays, my experience with Asia’s self-titled debut matches that of the streaming services’ plays. I don’t know that I’ve heard Heat Of The Moment 230 million times but it still feels ubiquitous, popping up regularly on online playlists or what’s left of commercial radio. As much as it still pops up by osmosis, it’s not one I’m likely to skip. Moody teen that I was at the time, I preferred the moody second song, Only Time Will Tell, and remembered the third track, Sole Survivor, from the halcyon days of FM radio but never thought it was in the same realm as the first two songs. The other six songs, like for most Spotify listeners, are unknown territory to me.

If I had ever heard the full album before, it would have been around the time it came out in ’82. I don’t remember any hidden gems among the other tracks from back then and I haven’t discovered any new ones this time around. It’s serviceable workmanlike 80s prog but doesn’t necessarily live up to the hype of “first supergroup of the 80s.”

At the same time, as a teen in the ’80s, Asia was what I considered progressive rock, same as Genesis’s Abacab or the Moody Blues’ Long Distance Voyager or Yes’s 90215. Speaking of Yes, these were the years that I started thinking that most UK prog bands (that I knew of) were within three degrees of separation from Yes.

As for Asia, I was surprised to see they have a rather extensive discography. It’s unlikely that I’ll ever listen to any other Asia albums but only time will tell.

I’ll see myself out.

Gary Claydon: I couldn’t find my copy of this album. I’m not sure if it’s still in my possession even. If it is, it’s probably tucked away in a box, most likely nestling next to Def Leppard’s Hysteria, unloved and unplayed for many a year, the pair of them. While I have no love for Lep’s monster and it is decidedly not to my personal taste, I will readily admit that is very well done pop-rock.

The same can’t be said for Asia. That the band pursued an unexpected commercial route wasn’t (and still isn’t) an issue for me. Hey, we’ve all got bills to pay, right? But did they really have to come up with something this bland? Insipid pop-rock with a few added widdly bits to try and add an air of prog-tinged respectability. The only good thing I can think of to say about Asia (the album) is, that, despite it being so bad, it’s still, by far, the best thing that Asia (the band) ever did. Which says it all.

Artlessly artificial, anodyne AOR. An annoying aural assault. Awful.

Evan Sanders: I remember when the Asia debut album came out, and it quickly became a staple on classic rock radio. As some have pointed out, the songs are more straightforward rock with keyboards and not prog rock. Although I will point out that by that time prog had become more commercial, e.g. Yes and 90215.

About half of the songs are strong, especially the first three of Heat Of The Moment, Only Time Will Tell and Sole Survivor. Wildest Dreams is a good start to side two, for those who remember when albums had sides. The remaining songs are middling, reducing the album to good but not great. I can’t picture myself listening to the entire album very often, but the four strong tracks are always worthwhile on a classic rock playlist. 6/10.

Philip Qvist: I’m not a huge prog fan, so perhaps it’s no surprise that my favourite prog albums are two that were recorded during 1982/83 – a period when prog rock music was supposed to have been killed off for good. Those records are Yes’s 90125 and this, Asia’s self titled debut album.

Asia’s debut takes me back to my final year of high school; and while both the songs and the production definitely have an 80s feel to it, it still sounds as good now as it did nearly 43 years ago. The three opening tracks, the evergreen Heat Of The Moment, Only Time Will Tell and Sole Survivor are the strongest tracks on Asia. That said, Wildest Dreams and Here Comes The Feeling are also pretty good songs, while there are no stinkers on the record.

Asia is proof of what can happen when prog rock starts cutting the excess and puts a pop feel to the songs. You get a classic.

Unfortunately, Asia is also proof of what happens when you have a Supergroup with differing egos and ambitions. The squabbling begins – with a resultant drop in quality.

Alpha was an okay follow up record; but even if the Asia name still continues nearly 45 years later, it should come as no surprise that they have never come up with an album that is even half as good as their debut was. An 8 this week from me.

Ralf Weßbecher: It sounds very eighties, but the songs have stood the test of time.

Greg Schwepe: I freely admit it… I really like this album and band. Guilty as charged. An album that filled a void for me when it came out and provided something I have commented on before that I like; “slick and polished.” When my ‘music pendulum’ swings away from the really raucous hard rock I like, it’s stuff like this that hits the spot. Memorable music that sticks with you; leaves you humming a riff of repeating a lyric at the end of the album. Liked this album so much I even bought Alpha and Astra right when they both came out. And yep, bought more Asia albums that also began with an “A”, even when Geoff Downes was the only original member left. Guilty, I said!

Being in a dorm with new friends mean they had their own peaches crates of albums, your musical palette gets expanded during your college years. Tons more albums to borrow and record. Yes and ELP were two examples of that. Totally loved the Yes Drama album and lineup while it lasted, and while ELP was basically spent by then, I had really gotten into their catalogue.

Then, to my surprise, I had heard of an album by a new supergroup comprised of Steve Howe, Geoff Downes (“cool, Yes and The Buggles!”), Carl Palmer, and some bassist/vocalist guy named John Wetton who I hadn’t heard of yet. Then I read list of bands he’d been in before. All bands I had heard of and liked but it seemed he didn’t play on the really popular releases for those bands.

So now we have Asia’s debut, complete with a Roger Dean cover… and a pretty unexciting one at that (“Hey, where’s all the mystical little floating islands and stuff? What the heck with the dragon and ball?”). And they say don’t judge an album by the cover. Heat Of The Moment leads off and you wonder where Steve Howe got that distortion pedal and those power chords. Riff #1 to stick in your head. Synth intro and drum fill on Only Time Will Tell. Riff #2 to stick in your head. Keyboard sweep and Howe guitar lead on Sole Survivor. Riff #3 to stick in your head. You get the picture. Rinse and repeat for remainder of album.

I know Asia usually gets derided as “prog lite” and other derivations of that. In this case you have the musicians that previously put out albums with songs sprawling out over an entire album side, but now chopping them down to concise 4-5 minute songs. With just enough solos and instrumental flourishes to let you know these guys can play.

And to some, is this set of 9 songs a little formulaic? Sure! But you get the end of this 44 minute debut and there’s plenty of stuff that sticks in your head. You find yourself playing a little air guitar, mimicking Palmer’s drum fills, or adding your own vocal harmonies. Unlike some albums where you get to the end and you have no recollection of what you just spent 40+ minutes listening to.

8 out of 10 on this one for me. Greatest debut album and band ever? No way! Slick and polished collection of tunes that fit radio and MTV formats perfectly at that time? You got it!

Joe Barry: Absolutely loved it and still listen to it.

Mark Herrington: This appeared on my radar in 82, primarily because of the single Heat Of The Moment. I managed to listen to most of it in HMV at the time, and enjoyed the more rhythm driven tracks like Sole Survivor , but much of it made little impression .

At the time , I just gravitated to other stuff , and spent my money in 82 on the likes of Priest’s Screaming for Vengeance. Listening again , it’s not a bad album, but it’s not a great album in soft rock history. 6 or 7 /10

Graham Tarry: I was so disappointed when this came out. Little sign of prog anywhere; just corporate American pop-rock, with a few catchy tunes, and few chops.

Joe D Dominguez: First album I ever purchased…love this album!

Andy Elliott: Love it from start to finish

Andrew Bramah: The best selling album of 1982 took everyone by surprise. Probably including the band themselves.

An album that sounded the complete opposite of what I expected considering the backgrounds of the players.

At it’s simplest Asia is high quality well played and produced commercial rock. With a very radio friendly production every song had a sing along chorus and all the elements there in abundance. Like a lot of so called supergroups it proved impossible to follow up to the same standard. Also music fashion changed rapidly leaving Asia looking dated very quickly.

It’s a shame as Asia is a superb piece of work.

Duncan Godfrey: I am a prog fan, but I’m fed up with other factions of prog fans slagging it off because it’s not what they expected. It is what it is meant to be, a commercial AOR album designed to shift units globally, and they did it very well and I love this album. Sadly though I felt the follow up sounded rushed in an attempt to emulate the debut and the quality declined in subsequent releases which makes this a total one-off.

John Holden: I don’t care what the stiff prog lovers like, this is an absolute classic rock album, in my top 100 all time fav albums.

Adam Ranger: Lead single Heat Of The Moment is a classic bit of radio-friendly pop prog that works really well. The rest of the album isn’t sure if it wants to do the same or whether it wants to be more “authentic ” prog. It has a foot in both camps and that doesn’t always work so well for me.

However it sold very very well so obviously worked for many. Not an album I would rush to listen to but it’s certainly well played and well produced.

James Erik: This is the album of my teenage years. It is a capsule of the 80’s sound and time, but retains its genuine enjoyment and delivery by four very talented musicians not interested in rehashing the past but reaching different heights in their career. This album was astonishingly big.

I was a teen working at a record store at the local shopping mall when this came out. It didn’t explode out of the gate, but once the radio and MTV promotion kicked in, it was like a rocket. Many people hate on it and that’s their opinion and right to do so. For me, it reminds me of my teenage years in the 80s and the excitement of the future. The heat of the moment, as they say.

Sanaya Choksey Sethna: No claim on being a prog fan. I just know that I love this album. Everything that came after, all those ridiculous numbered albums, is irrelevant. But this one is gold.

Michael Anderson: I was 10 in 1982, and of course was very familiar with the two hits that got tons of airplay. So 42 years later I listened to this LP for very first time ever. This is a great record from front to back. There are no duds on this at all.

Alan Mcalister: Class album.

Pete Miles: Contrary to prog rock snobs opinion, I love this album. First cassette I bought after switching from vinyl. Wore it out and bought it again. Then bought it again on CD. Still listen to it.

Chris Elliott: The moment I see the sleeve Heat Of The Moment starts on loop in my head. It’s very dated in it’s production – my main criticism would be its engineered rather than produced and needs just a little polish to bring it together. If an album ever cried out for Trevor Horn it’s this. Fundamentally the songs are strong and it’s still an album I enjoy

Wesley Winegarden: The first two tracks on this album stand up to the test of time, but the rest of the album doesn’t do a lot for me, and sounds very much like an 80s album.

Final score: 7.46 (101 votes cast, total score 7.54)

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The Manics ended the 20^th century in celebratory fashion, playing a momentous show at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium and signing off a decade that they’d ended as one of the UK’s biggest and most important rock bands in triumph. But James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore were determined not to rest on their laurels and the trio began the new millennium with a song as spiky and snarling as anything they’d done in a while. It’s 25 years next week since the release of their one-off single The Masses Against The Classes, a curio that feels like a song-apart from anything else in the Manics catalogue (and one that rolls off the tongue a lot easier if you’re not a Southerner: The Masses Against The “Clarsses” doesn’t really cut it). It was a release that showed they weren’t ready to settle into a life of being comfy Radio 2 big-hitters just yet.

Built around a barbed wire riff, a pummelling groove and some larynx-shredding hollering from Bradfield, the single was deleted on the day of release but the ploy didn’t harm its chart prospects – The Masses Against The Classes went straight to Number One in the UK single charts, the group’s second chart-topper after 1998’s If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next.

“It feels like our last punk single, this mad little blip on the radar where we couldn’t stop ourselves,” Bradfield said of the song’s creation in an interview with The Times a few years ago. “When I listen back to The Masses Against The Classes now, I hear delusion, I hear folly, I hear needless aggression, all the kinds of things I love in my music basically.”

Bradfield explained that he originally wrote the music to the song whilst visiting his parents in Portllanfraith in the valleys, where he grew up. “I was writing it in my mum and dad’s house,” he said. “My mum was ill at the time and she subsequently passed away shortly after unfortunately and I remember being cowed by the domestic situation and what was going on at that point, so I remember being slightly respectful when I was writing and playing the song in the bedroom, singing in a much more hushed tone. For a long time, the song was much more lower case in the verses and then the chorus would explode, it was much more of a quiet-loud song.”

Everything about the song, from its raucous bite to the decision to delete it on the day of release, was a reaction to the huge success they’d experienced, Bradfield said. “It feels like this mad little blip on the radar where we couldn’t stop ourselves, our old reflexes started working again and this happened,” he recalled. “I like to think it’s still a vital part of our map that shows where we came from, it shows the origins of what we were initially trying to do and what shaped us.”

The song remains out of print but featured on the reconfigured tracklisting to Know Your Enemy when that record was reissued in 2022. Watch the video, filmed at their iconic Millennium Stadium show, below:

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he’s interviewed some of the world’s biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.