Peter Banks – Two Sides of Peter Banks
Peter Banks began life as the original guitarist with high-pitched, space-age prog noodlers Yes. Leaving the band following their second album, Time and a Word, he formed the similar sounding Flash in 1970. Following three albums he teamed up with Focus guitarist Jan Akkerman to record this solo debut, Two Sides of Peter Banks, in 1973.
In the process, he also managed to pull in guest spots from Genesis’s Steve Hackett and Phil Collins, and King Crimson’s John Wetton. The result is a peculiar progressive rock piece devoid of words, which serves as a showcase for the fretwork thread work of Banks and Akkerman.
Now those less disposed than myself to the odd kind word and a permanently affable perspective may well say that this sort of thing should be left in the studio. After all, it could very well be construed, at best, as being a self-indulgent ramble – particularly when the last the two tracks ‘Stop That!’ and ‘Get Out of My Fridge’ are nothing more than spontaneous jams – and at worst, as downright boring.
Whereas I can see where such a uncharitable naysayer might be coming from, I assert that A) everything has its place, and B) I’ve heard worse.
True, listening to Two Sides of Peter Banks in anything less than the right frame of mind may well have the nine tracks blending into one indistinguishable, grey-hued whirr, and you reaching for the eject button long before the “two sides” have run their course, but if tackled on a Sunday afternoon when there’s nowt on the telly and the lunchtime roast is in the procees of digestion, it can be a pleasantly meandering diversion.
Of course, if your circumstances differ then it might not gel. I once read that Camel’s The Snow Goose was one for Sunday afternoons, but found that only to be true if you spent your Sunday afternoon in a coma.
For the most part, Peter Banks’ album does indeed blend into a proggy whole, with proggy themes meeting proggy titles, and tracks split into proggy suites. In places it’s intricate stuff, but the pace never threatens to jolt you too far from a post-Sunday dinner languor. The final track, the aforementioned jam ‘Get Out of My Fridge’, kicks things into a frenetic overdrive, but by this time the last spud will have broken down into a more manageable state and you’ll be just about ready for The Antiques Roadshow.
This is the first time Two Sides of Peter Banks has been reissued on CD and, for that reason alone, should prove to be of interest to fans of the prototypal Yes and Peter Banks’ other, superior offshoot, Flash.
Two Sides of Peter Banks is reissued by Esoteric Recordings and available from Amazon.co.uk
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