Do you do what I do and search for how one band relates to another one? Actually I don’t search for how they relate, it just occurs to me and my big giant rock brain. Y’see I have this theory that in life that everything relates to everything else in one big picture because I can always connect any two things. I don’t know why this matters really but I’ve always felt that it means we’re all in this thing called life together; a bulwark against the ‘everyone for themselves’ which we’ve increasingly been encouraged to embrace.
Let me explain how it works. Take a band, say The James Gang, how do they relate to, say, The Faces. They seem miles apart but they aren’t really. Y’see it was arranged for the band to open for the Who for six dates during a US tour and their guitarist Pete Townshend was so impressed with them he invited the band to open for them on their fall tour of the United Kingdom. Townshend and Walsh then started a long friendship with Townshend telling Rolling Stone that Walsh was the best American guitar player. In January 1971 they appeared on Top of the Pops in the United Kingdom. Pete Townshend later recorded Rough Mix with Ronnie Lane who was in the Faces. See? That was an easy one.
Let’s take an even more divergent example. How does the Mahavishnu Orchestra relate to Deep Purple? Easy. Billy Cobham was Mahavishnu’s drummer. And he recorded a solo album Spectrum which featured Tommy Bolin on guitar who went on to play with Deep Purple.
Sometimes it can be a longer process. For example finding a link between Gentle Giant and Todd Rundgren. That’s a bit more difficult. But it goes like this… off the top of my head, Gentle Giant were formed out of Simon Dupree and the Big Sound who once toured Scotland using Elton John as a piano player. He recorded Honk Chateau and other albums at Château d'Hérouville in France which was where Jethro Tull tried and failed to record an album ( which is excellent) Tull’s drummer was Barriemore Barlow who replaced Clive Bunker who subsequently played with Steve Hillage whose ‘L’ album was produced by Todd Rundgren. Yay! Everything is related to everything else, y’see. And I’ve yet to find anyone who doesn't relate to someone else. Unless you know different
