A Strange Prog-Rock Dinosaur Finds Rebirth in the ’80s
Another relic of the seventies found himself reborn again in the eighties, and we had no idea how it happened. “Higher Love” had to have been one of most played videos in MTV history. From Back in the High Life (1986), the song sounds like endless summer days and driving around after church in the family car wondering how much bluer the sky could possibly get.
There is a road that goes by our church, and by the time we finished with Sunday School about 12:30 or so, I joined the family in the fellowship hall, and then we all filed out, our fancy shoes echoing over the hollow part of the floor that perched over the basement. I remember all four of us driving somewhere – maybe lunch, a little shopping, maybe back home, but the afternoon sun was always glorious, and this is coming from someone who’s never really noticed or cared about things like that. Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown played loudly on the way home, and we continued the show throughout the afternoon on the big radio in the den or at our small, portable radios in the garage or in our rooms, Kasem’s warm, velvety voice making us momentarily forget the upcoming week and all its terrors.
“Higher Love” potently reminds me of this very narrow window of life when we really cared about who had moved up and down the charts that week. Well, it was important at the time.
As we drove up and down that big hill, I gazed at the field there where we held our church Easter egg hunts, and I gulped at the site of the intimidating high school just over the ridge. I’d be going there in a couple of years. Best not to think about that today. If we drove north, we could get to one of the main arteries of the town, and maybe we could convince dad to take us to the buffet at Pizza Inn, where the untold delights of food, soda, and video games would satiate us for the rest of the day. Or we could turn the other direction and hit up Premiere Video for a couple of rentals – maybe The Breakfast Club, season one of The Transformers or probably Enter the Dragon or Enter the Ninja.
If we went south, we could pass through the backroads by the old gas station/market that sold the best steaks in town — one of those places where the staff knew you by name and came around from the back of the counter with your favorite stuff and a hug. We might fly by the drug store and the grade school and the one barbecue joint that had a Joust video game near the magazines. At some point, “Higher Love” plays, a little thing of harmless joy by a guy with a great haircut who happened to be the old lead singer of Traffic, those prog-boogie weirdos, and before that, he fronted The Spencer Davis Group, whose “Gimme Some Loving” was always included on those endless compilation albums they sold on TBS in the afternoons (1-800-257-1234).
Winwood, with his high, reedy voice and great flowing, blown-back locks, had several improbable hits in a row. “Back in the High Life” also stood out – the accordion and the melody line in the chorus made me feel an ache even at age twelve that I can’t explain. The lyrics celebrated a return of some sort that I didn’t quite grasp but must have been about Winwood himself and his good fortune to find the charts again.
“Valerie,” overly saturated with compressed synths and phased vocals, still had a sweet, comely melody that tracks today. But once he came out with Roll With It (1988) he had fully leaned into the boring VH-1 personality he seemed destined for and anyway the song found its own life as background music for beer commercials.
For a brief, sunny time, Winwood stood on top or near the top of the world – another faded Englishman who smartly progressed from moribund (and captivating) sludge like Traffic’s “John Barleycorn Must Die” to having Chaka Khan sing the hell out of some background vocals on a song that represented the best of the sunlight-pop idiom of our youth.