Kingdom Of Madness (1978)

Personnel:

Tony Clarkin: all guitars and backing vocals

Bob Catley: vocals

Richard Bailey: all keyboards, flute and backing vocals

Colin 'Wally' Lowe: bass guitar and backing vocals

Kex Gorin: drums

Additional musicians:

Dave Morgan: bass guitar on the Nest Demos and 1975 'Sweets For My Sweet' single; lead vocals on 'Sweets For My Sweet' and (possibly) 'Baby I Need'

Produced at De Lane Lea Studios, London, by Jake Commander

Engineers: Dick Plant, Barry Kidd and Dave Strickland

Release date: 2 August 1978 on Jet Records

Cover Design: Original US cover by Stewart Daniels; Original UK Iris cover by David Pilton Advertising Limited; re-released 1998 album cover by Rodney Matthews

Highest chart places: UK: 58, West Germany and Sweden: Did not chart

Running time: 39:41

The story of Magnum's debut album really began around 1975, when Tony Clarkin and then-bassist Dave Morgan, became involved in construction work on a recording studio in Birmingham. In return for their labour, the band were given studio time to record demos that were passed on to Jet Records, possibly via the influence of Jeff Lynne, a friend of Clarkin's, whose band, ELO, were signed to Jet. The label liked the demos, signed the band and booked them into the prestigious De Lane Lea Studios in London, where The Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Queen had all previously recorded. As Clarkin told the Birmingham Evening Mail at the time: 'We sent Jet some tapes and they said: "Do an album". It was as casual as that'.

However, the relationship with Jet seems to have been strained from the beginning. The band had to sleep in the foyer of the studio because the hotel the label had booked was so poor; when they were moved to a better hotel, it was clear that Jet had unsettled bills there, too.

The initial De Lane Lea sessions took place in 1976, but it was another two years before the Kingdom Of Madness album was finally released.

The reasons for the delay are not entirely clear. A 1988 Metal Hammer interview referred to a 'series of insurmountable problems, inexplicable to this day and typical of Magnum's association with the Jet label'. A more precise explanation, outlined in press reports at the time of the album's release, is that the delay resulted from prolonged legal problems related to a management deal the band wanted to be freed from.

Whatever the reason, the long delay gave Clarkin the chance to write new material that reshaped the final album. The guitarist's affection for British and American progressive rock bands such as Yes and Kansas may well have been an impetus for the development of more complex material, while tours supporting bands such as Judas Priest in 1977 surely helped to harden the sound. Three newer songs, including opener 'In The Beginning' were recorded during an intense 36-hour session, replacing 'some of the lighter tunes' from the original recordings, such as 'Find The Time', 'Without Your Love', 'Everybody Needs' and 'Master Of Disguise', on the final album. In an October 1978 interview, Sounds' Geoff Barton interpreted the album as 'a mixture of songs from two projected LPs, the fairly straight-ahead material from the first being mixed with "loosely conceptual" numbers from the second'.

In spite of this, the album, produced by Jake Commander, a friend of the band and Jeff Lynne's guitar roadie, is fairly cohesive. This is aided by the fact that most of the songs segue into each other and are presented as a comprehensible entity even though there's no clear conceptual unity. Clarkin noted in 1988 that he still looked at the tracks 'Kingdom Of Madness' and 'In The Beginning' 'with real fondness' despite the 'aerie-fairie' subject matter and some 'duffo' sounds. More recently, he has distanced himself from this and the other Jet albums, remarking that he hasn't listened to them for decades. However, Kingdom Of Madness was well-reviewed at the time, particularly by the aforementioned Geoff Barton. He gave the album four stars in Sounds, comparing it to bands such as Styx, Kansas, Yes, Queen and Starcastle and applauding the '[t]itanically powerful musical passages and soft, subtle acoustic interludes [that] combine to create an LP of great stature'.

It is the intricacy and diversity of Kingdom Of Madness that sets it apart from anything else in the Magnum catalogue. The progressive influences - from both sides of the Atlantic - were more pronounced here than they were to become. Clarkin noted in the sleeve notes to the 2005 reissue that at this time, he was trying to 'draw pictures' with his songs: 'In those days, I looked at music a bit like an animated film'. Yet it was also a record with a strong melodic spine and a keen understanding of the interaction between the lighter and heavier elements of the band's emerging sound. While the material was to become more consistent on subsequent albums, Magnum were never able to reproduce the quirky personality of this debut album.

Kingdom Of Madness has boasted a number of different album sleeves. The original US version featured an illustration by the American artist Stewart Daniels, who worked for Jet as well as other labels like Motown and Warner Brothers. A literal interpretation of the album title, it depicts food and furniture flying from the banquet table of a seemingly crazed monarch. For the UK, Jet used a more restrained black sleeve showing a close-up eye with a colourful depiction of a medieval city in the iris. Designed by David Picton advertising, this became the standard sleeve. FM's 1998 reissue came with a third cover - a Rodney Matthews illustration called 'The Dwarves Of Belegost' based on an episode in Tolkien's The Silmarillion that has little obvious connection to the theme of the album.

With few exceptions, Tony Clarkin has been the sole songwriter for Magnum throughout their career. Thus, all songs are written by Clarkin unless indicated.

'In The Beginning' (7:52)

The first song on the debut album is as prog rock as Magnum ever got. It was a bold idea to open with a complex, multi-part piece rather than one of their more conventional rock tunes. But 'In The Beginning' is brilliant stuff; a winding, melodic colossus of a track that sounds dated and a bit daft at times, yet still mesmerises.

A song in three parts, it opens with a brief twin guitar and keyboard introduction before phased synths and acoustic guitar give way after 44 seconds to a busy, ringing keyboard phrase reminiscent of Genesis and Yes. Mark Kelly was probably also listening as the sound is not unlike elements of early Marillion. There's another catchy keyboard riff before Catley's wordy vocals come in and take the song up another notch. Although Bailey is the dominant force in this section - with melodies and counter melodies crossing and intersecting - Clarkin makes his presence felt with a warm Thin Lizzy- style twin guitar break at 2.26.

The 'Prince Of Dreams' section, arriving at 4.15, is mellower, with acoustic guitar and spacey synth effects. Slightly buried in the mix in the first movement, Clarkin comes to the fore with an expressive performance here. A tight rhythm unit also ensures that the song's shifting moods and dynamics flow naturally. Strummed acoustic guitar at 6.52 presages the final sprint to the finish. Clarkin lets rip with a brief solo; there's an even briefer reprise of the opening bars of the song, then some backward recording, vocal improvisations, and an echoing chant of 'Madness' (hinting at the forthcoming title song) to bring things to a close.

'In The Beginning' is a fabulous slice of prog-rock Magnum style. There may be too many ideas crammed into nearly eight minutes, but the song maintains a coherence that some contemporaries struggled to achieve. Lyrically, it has tended to be dismissed as other-worldly, fantasy fare, but there's also a strong strain of Christian imagery, from the title through to references to the 'prince of dreams', 'prophet of the morning star' and the final 'I am your light/I am your god given light'.

An edited version cutting out the entire 'Prince Of Dreams' section was released on the reverse of the 'Kingdom Of Madness' single.

'Baby Rock Me' (4:05)

Oh dear! From the brilliantly conceived, bombastic opening track, we move on to possibly the worst song in the entire Magnum catalogue. 'Baby Rock Me' is just awful. Quite how this sub-standard, Queen-soundalike slice of boogie rock made it onto the album ahead of some of the superior culled songs from the 1976 album session, such as 'Master Of Disguise' and 'Everybody Needs', is hard to fathom. It certainly wasn't down to the lyrics, which are appalling, misogynistic nonsense even by the low standards of the mid-1970s. The second verse is especially pitiful: 'Now if you're looking to please/Well, then that's all I need/But when you're giving me head/ Remember what I said'.

Bizarrely, it was released (with...