Jon Lord - Before I Forget

(CD 2012/1982, 51:20, EMI / Harvest)

The tracks:
  1- Chance On A feeling
  2- Tender Babes
  3- Hollywood Rock'n'Roll
  4- Bach Onto This
  5- Before I forget
  6- Say It's All right
  7- Burntwood
  8- Where Are you?
  9- Bonus tracks:
10- Going home (7″ b-side)
11- Ravel's Pavane (outtake)
12- Bach Onto This (7″ single edit)

Website        EMI Records


Jonathan Douglas Lord was born on the 9th of June 1941. He's an English composer, pianist and Hammond organ player. Jon Lord is well-known for his pioneering work in fusing rock with classical or baroque forms, especially with Deep Purple. Furthermore he's known for his solo work and for contributions in bands as Whitesnake, Paice, Ashton & Lord, The Artwoods and The Flower Pot Men. In 1968 Lord co-founded Deep Purple, a hard rock band of which he was regarded to be one of their leaders until his retirement in 2002. In 2011, Lord was found to suffer from pancreatic cancer. He died on the 16th of July 2012 at the London Clinic after suffering from a pulmonary embolism. In honour of his contribution to the music industry one of his solo albums was released anew lately.

Before I Forget, originally released in 1982, was Jon Lord's only solo album he recorded as a member of Whitesnake (August 1978 to April 1984). During that period of his life we heard little of him. At the time Jon said about this album: “It showed my slightly schizophrenic musical personality. I've got a great love for classical and rock music and I find it very exciting trying to combine the two. Even as a kid I'd go into a record shop and buy something like the new Bill Haley single and a Ludwig von Beethoven symphony at the same time.” Indeed, the album shows these two sides of him and therefore he decided to split up the A- and B-side into two different styles. On the first part the more up-tempo pieces can be found and on the second the mellower material. You might as well say that he split up the album into instrumental and vocal tracks.

The original A-side contained four tracks from which two of them were instrumentals. These tracks are for the progressive rock devotee the most interesting. Tender Babes and Bach Onto This are strongly related to a classical baroque kind of style. The latter song features parts of Toccata and Fugue In D minor, BWV 565 by J.S. Bach. The other two songs on the A-side are more mainstream and influenced by Whitesnake, but in an AOR-like style. The B-side is more interesting and doesn't contain any weak parts. The final four tracks on the original album are very keyboard orientated. You can enjoy a lot of great playing on the acoustic piano and synthesizers, although a great number of well-known guest musicians lifted the music to a higher level, like Elmer Gantry (vocals), Bernie Marsden (guitar, vocals), Simon Phillips (drums), Tony Ashton (keyboards, vocals), Sam Brown (vocals), Vicki Brown (vocals), Boz Burrell (bass), Simon Kirke (drums), Neil Murray (bass), Ian Paice (drums), Cozy Powell (drums) and Mick Ralphs (guitar).

This reissue contains three instrumental bonus tracks. The first one Going Home is the B-side to the Bach Onto This single. It's a great up-tempo piece with fantastic Moog solos. The second one called Pavane is said to be a cover of a piece by Claude Debussy. It's rather mellow and it sounds as if it was taken from Tony Bank's solo album A Curious Feeling (1979, see review). The final bonus track is the single version of Bach Onto This. The booklet includes liner notes of Jon Lord and Neil Murray plus several pictures of this wonderful musician who died much too early. Finally I have to mention the title of this record. It hints at the fact that most of the songs have been built around different memories of Jon's. The cover shows the head of an elephant with a knot in its trunk, a creature that isn't very likely to forget.

For me this album is one of the best solo albums Jon Lord made throughout his long career, especially because it contains enough music that tends towards a style that will be enjoyed by lovers of progressive rock music.

**** Henri Strik (edited by Peter Willemsen)

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