Greenslade

Greenslade came together in 1972 as an English progressive rock outfit when keyboardist-composer Dave Greenslade and bassist Tony Reeves, both recently departed from Colosseum, decided to build a new group around dual keyboards. They enlisted former Episode Six member Dave Lawson for the second keyboard chair, where he also contributed flute and lead vocals, and brought in drummer Andrew McCulloch, whose résumé included stints with King Crimson and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. The quartet’s debut album appeared on Warner Bros. that same year and earned widespread critical praise, its Roger Dean artwork becoming as recognizable as the band’s layered sound. Two further releases followed in 1973, among them the much-admired Bedside Manners Are Extra.

By the sessions for Spyglass Guest the following year, guitarist Dave Clempson, late of Humble Pie, and violinist Graham Smith had joined the lineup. Tony Reeves departed soon afterward and was succeeded by Martin Briley. The resulting 1975 album Time and Tide proved to be the original configuration’s final statement; the group dissolved in early 1976 once Dave Greenslade launched a solo career. A short-lived attempt to reconvene a new lineup in 1977 came to nothing, after which Greenslade participated in Colosseum’s various reformations that continued in one form or another until 2015.

More than twenty years later, in 2000, Greenslade and Reeves reunited with keyboardist-vocalist John Young and drummer-producer Chris Cozens to record the studio album Large Afternoon and to revisit the band’s distinctive progressive style on the road. John Trotter later replaced Cozens, and the revised ensemble issued Live 2001: The Full Edition in 2004, mixing archival and newly recorded material before disbanding once more in 2002. While the original studio catalog received multiple reissues over the ensuing decades, fresh archival concert documents continued to surface, including Live in Stockholm: March 10th, 1975 in 2004 and The Birthday Album: Live Switzerland, 1974 in 2016.

In 2018 the Esoteric label prepared deluxe, remastered editions of the 1970s albums complete with extensive bonus material. Three years afterward the same company assembled Temple Songs: The Albums 1973-1975, a boxed presentation of the four remastered titles—without the bonus tracks—accompanied by a poster and a detailed historical essay by journalist Malcolm Dome. Concurrently, Japan’s Wasabi imprint issued the five-disc concert collection Live Manners 1973-2001.