Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Saga
Label: SPV Records
Released: 2005
Running time: 80:40
Rating: 5/5
(review no. 2 by: Peter Podbrežnik)
The double live album “The Chapters Live” is one of the most majestic and most important releases in the story of the legendary Canadian art rock band. The pieces of a mysterious sci-fi puzzle that began turning up at the very start of their studio career have finally come together into one complete picture.
The big conceptual enigma, which through the so-called “chapters” (special songs tagged with the number of a chapter in a story that was waiting for its ending) has teased and fired up the imagination of their fans all these years, has at last been revealed and wrapped up. After 25 years (with a few breaks along the way), the saga of “The Chapters” has reached its triumphant finale with this fantastic live recording. The dreams of their fans have finally come true. And “The Chapters” isn’t just a spotlight on a concept that has been messing with fans’ heads for ages, it’s also a top contender for their best live album.
Let’s start with the basic core of “The Chapters Live”. The concept for “The Chapters” was inspired first by a bizarre news story about Albert Einstein’s brain sitting in the home of his pathologist, and second by assorted Cold War incidents. It all started in 1978, a year after the band was formed, when Jim Crichton, their bassist, occasional keyboardist and producer, read in a newspaper that the brain of the famous physicist was at the home of Thomas S. Harvey, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Einstein’s body in 1955. The big riddle of why the brain of a genius who unraveled the secret of atomic energy had been in the hands of his pathologist for so long instantly set his imagination on fire. And so the mysterious sci-fi concept was born, popping up now and then on their albums over a period of 25 years. That way the band very successfully kept alive the interest of those who were eagerly waiting for the big payoff.
After the first four albums came a break of several years, lasting until the end of the 90s and the album “Full Circle” (1999), when the “chapters” resurfaced. That went on all the way to the album “Marathon” (2003), which saw the release of the last of the “chapters”, the one that was supposed to close the story for good. What’s most fascinating and unusual about both the music and the lyrics of the “chapters” is that they didn’t appear on the albums in order (not to mention the huge gap between 1981, when they stopped appearing, and 1999, when they came back), yet, as it turned out in the end, namely on this recording, the individual parts/songs fit together beautifully into one complete story. Legions of Saga fans have tried over the years to come up with their own explanations and string the individual “chapters” into some sensible concept. In that time they produced a whole heap of more or less interesting sci-fi stories, but everyone was waiting for the moment when the band members would finally reveal the truth about the mysterious concept.
The story of “The Chapters” goes something like this: Earth is being watched by well-meaning aliens who look most like giant grasshoppers. They grow worried about humanity’s ever-increasing self-destructiveness. They realize they have to find someone on Earth they can communicate with, someone who could turn the situation around. Someone very intelligent. Soon they find out that the person they were looking for, Albert Einstein, is already dead, after he, a great humanist, ended up disappointed and completely broken when he realized how humanity had used his scientific achievements in a devastating way to build nuclear weapons (“Images” Chapter 1). At the same time the aliens discover that his brain had been kept safe all this while and that the only way to save humanity from itself is to bring Einstein back to life (“Don’t Be Late” Chapter 2).
To that end, they fit his brain into a special robotic exoskeleton and the legendary scientist comes back to life in a new body (“It’s Time” Chapter 3). With Einstein’s help they start doing everything necessary to prevent the final tragedy. They begin carting nuclear warheads out of military depots to their bases on other planets, where they destroy them with a special procedure. The Earth’s military, of course, gets in their way the whole time (“Will It Be You” Chapter 4). Humanity is unable to face the truth. Senseless conflicts and wars go on, and in the end the aliens are forced to disable all means of mass destruction and, where needed, even take control of government buildings (“We’ll Meet Again” Chapter 15).
Just in case, they also draw up a backup plan in case the mission goes wrong. They pick a planet where humanity could make a fresh start should Earth meet a sad fate and life there become impossible (“Worlds Apart” Chapter 16). So the ending of the story is left completely open, up for each person’s own interpretation. Some will say that plenty of better sci-fi concepts have been dreamed up in the past, but if you consider that Saga are musicians first and not writers, you have to admit the story has its charm, and, sadly, it’s still very relevant. In the liner notes the band thanked all the fans who sent in their own versions of the story over the years and urged them not to stop doing so. Jim Crichton didn’t rule out that the “chapters” might return someday in the future, although that’s unlikely (as we learned two years later in an interview with keyboardist Jim Gilmour).
As for the quality of this recording and how well the individual “chapters” are played, I can’t find the right words to praise this release enough. The recording boasts phenomenal performances of every single “chapter” and the incredible energy of a live show that only Saga can deliver, with no noticeable or needless studio polishing.
It probably goes without saying that most of the “chapters” are among the best things of their career, appealing to all fans of their progressive rock side, and that some of them have rarely made it into their live set. While they still set the place on fire with long-time classics like “Don’t Be Late”, “It’s Time”, “Will It Be You?” and “Too Much To Loose”, the excellent renditions of some newer songs, which earned classic status not so long ago, thrill just as much. Whenever I hear the “The Chapters Live” versions of songs like “Remember When?”, “Ashes To Ashes”, “Uncle Albert’s Eyes” and the closing “Worlds Apart”, I’m basking in the live perfection of these masters of fusing progressive rock and classic rock.
Saga have always been fantastic musicians, both in the studio and live, so it’s no surprise to hear, all through the recording, the deeply felt singing of the charismatic and irreplaceable vocalist Michael Sadler, the virtuoso antics of guitarist Ian Crichton and keyboardist Jim Gilmour, the melodic finesse of bassist Jim Crichton and the mighty drumming of Steve Negus (his last release with the band) at the peak of their stage powers.
“The Chapters Live” is pure live fantasy and without a doubt one of the better rock live albums of the early 2000s. What more could a fan of the band wish for, with a live surprise like this prepared just for them? The mystery has been wonderfully revealed, but I have no doubt there will still be plenty of people who’ll want new “chapters”, which for so many years were among the main trademarks of this incredible band. Even though the saga of “The Chapters” seems to be wrapped up, let’s hope the saga of Saga won’t get its epilogue for a long, long time.
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(review no. 1 by: Aleš Podbrežnik)
Saga fans have waited an eternity for this moment! I’m talking as if these fans were as thick on the ground as leaves and grass, heh, heh… well, there are a few of us… still surviving! Why would this live album be anything special? From their debut “Saga” (1977) all the way to the record Marathon (2003), Saga have been putting out songs on individual albums that carry a “chapter” tag and a Roman numeral in brackets after the title. Ever since the band began, putting out more and less successful records over its career, we’ve also been able to follow the development of a mysterious story, a concept that unfolds across sixteen installments released so far. So sixteen songs from the band’s career, if you recorded them back to back over the 28 years it took Saga to write them, add up to a good 80 minutes of conceptual storytelling, or in other words enough material for two studio albums. So that Saga wouldn’t torture their fans with skipping between tracks and swapping CDs in the CD player, and having to think about it too hard, they recorded all 16 parts one after another. And live, at that!
Just how cunning the band was in building this concept “in opposition” over 28 years is shown by the fact that, for instance, there are no two ballads back to back in the sequence; instead the compositions dynamically alternate. It would be really interesting to ask the band how many ideas they already had ready in their heads while building the concept, back when they recorded their debut 28 years ago, and how they decided when to record which part of the whole concept. The first disc rounds up eight parts that were written between the first four studio records, that is, from the debut “Saga” (1977) to “World’s Apart” (1981).
That period was hugely successful commercially for Saga, and rock fans especially remember the songs from those first four albums. It was followed by a period of experimenting with modern sounds, which Saga weren’t exactly great at, and then in the second half of the nineties came a swing back to their roots. The solos came back, Saga released “Full Circle” (1999) and with that record revived the concept, even putting the hero’s name on a record (Uncle Albert’s Eyes, part thirteen). Saga wrapped up the concept with the record “Marathon” (2003) and the sixteenth part, called World’s Apart. Recorded back to back, they now neatly fill in the picture of the concept. The second disc contains the remaining eight parts of the concept, released on the records “Full Circle” (1999), “House Of Cards” (2001) and “Marathon” (2003).
Here are a few lines of the “Chapters” concept as presented by Jim Crichton. The idea goes back to 1977, when Jim was reading an article in some magazine reporting that Einstein’s brain had been preserved after his death for further study at some institute. Later this news was brilliantly supplemented with rumors of nuclear war, and humanity found itself on the brink of it, and on top of that the “Star Wars” film trilogy started coming out around that time. All of this influenced the band’s concept. The basic idea of the concept is that someone else, far, far away in space, is diligently keeping watch over the development of planet Earth. These extremely caring extraterrestrial beings feared that at some point in that development Earth would destroy itself. So they decided they needed someone “down there” (on Earth) who would be strong and successful enough to put things back in their place and restore a state of balance on Earth. They soon figured out that the only man capable of something so big was Albert Einstein. The plan was to give Einstein a body again (this body was first depicted on the band’s debut and appears on all the covers of the albums that carried individual parts of the concept, and it looks like a cross between an insect and a human) so that Einstein could return (come back to life) and, whatever the cost, do everything necessary for his activity to trigger the changes needed for planet Earth to survive. In the first part (Images) we meet Einstein as an old man on the edge of madness, struggling with all his might to grasp the meaning of life and painting on the pavement images of the people and events that shaped the path he chose in this life. Rain washes away the images painted by our colleague Einstein, symbolizing his natural death…. The rest of the story, which only now really picks up speed, with a gripping plot and an edge-of-your-seat resolution, you’ll piece together yourselves, right?
No after-the-fact studio touch-ups and polishing were used on the album, so you can expect moments that sound less than perfect to audiophiles, since the sound isn’t always balanced. But the fact that Saga didn’t play around with “overdubs” preserved the necessary “live feel” that this record convincingly has. The band is tight and well-oiled, the singing fantastically heartfelt, the soloing superb, the sound properly “Sagarian”. Strictly recognizable and unique. Saga are Saga. Nobody can sound even remotely like them. Nobody in rock history has ever attempted anything like this. That’s why the release of “The Chapters Live” is a truly special kind of surprise, one I wouldn’t have expected even in my wildest dreams. It’s really nice of the band that, after such a long wait, this mysterious story has finally been untangled too.
Line-up
Michael Sadler – vocals
Jim Crichton – bass guitar, keyboards
Ian Crichton – guitar
Jim Gilmour – keyboards, backing vocals Steve Negus – drums
Production
Jim Crichton
Track list
1. Chapter 1 : Images (5:03)
2. Chapter 2 : Don’t be late (6:27)
3. Chapter 3 : It’s time (4:09)
4. Chapter 4 : Will it be you (6:27)
5. Chapter 5 : No regrets (3:48)
6. Chapter 6 : Tired world (6:36)
7. Chapter 7 : Too much to lose (3:18)
8. Chapter 8 : No stranger (6:23)
CD 2.:
1. Chapter 9 : Remember when ? (5:24)
2. Chapter 10 : Not this way (2:57)
3. Chapter 11 : Ashes to ashes (4:37)
4. Chapter 12 : You know I know (4:01)
5. Chapter 13 : Uncle Albert’s eyes (4:55)
6. Chapter 14 : Streets of gold (4:11)
7. Chapter 15 : We’ll meet again (5:40)
8. Chapter 16 : Worlds apart (6:44)
