The rock music milieu is littered with collaborative projects involving richly-gifted musicians which do not quite ‘fly’ – sometimes disastrously so, or more frequently, the results can simply misfire – those involved play it safe, or there is no sense of creative friction, or the musicians just cancel one another out. There are, however, examples of where such collaborative albums do deliver on the promise held, and the 1981 album ‘Untold Passion’ by guitarist Neal Schon with keyboard player/ multi-instrumentalist Jan Hammer and renowned British bass guitarist Colin Hodgkinson, is a fine example.
Guitarist Neal Schon was, by the time of recording ‘Untold Passion’, a veteran of such combos as Santana, and was a founder-member of melodic rock outfit Journey. His father was a big band musician, arranger, and composer, and played and taught all reed instruments with emphasis on jazz tenor saxophone; his mother was a big band singer. Schon started playing guitar at age ten, and he attended Aragon High School in San Mateo, California, later dropping out to pursue his career in Rock music.
His burgeoning talent on guitar came to the attention of none other than Eric Clapton, who asked him to join the short-lived Derek & The Dominos, but instead he chose to enlist with Santana in 1971, staying with the band for the albums Santana III and Caravanserai. He also played briefly with the Latin-Rock ‘big band’, Azteca, formed by fellow Santana alumni Coke and Pete Escovedo in 1972, playing on the bands’ self-titled debut album of that year, as well as its follow-up, ‘Pyramid of the Moon’ (1973). Together with another Santana member, Gregg Rolie, Schon formed The Golden Gate Rhythm Section in 1973, eventually to be renamed, in rather more economical style, Journey by roadie John Villaneuva. Journey would go on to become one of the USA’s most enduring and commercially-successful of bands.
At the time of recording ‘Untold Passion’, Schon was still a member of Journey; perhaps the opportunity of hooking up with Jan Hammer gave him a chance to scratch a particular Fusion-based itch. However, ‘Untold Passion’ is an album that leans less on the often empty approach of bewildering flurries of notes in favour of a more melodic, more mainstream set of songs and performances. Indeed, some of the material consists of fairly straight-ahead rock songs.
The album was a modest US Billboard chart hit, peaking at number one hundred and fifteen. Hammer and Schon would follow ‘Untold Passion’ with the ‘Here To Stay’ album, released in 1982, before the pair went their separate ways. Hammer would go on to achieve considerable success for his soundtrack work on the Miami Vice TV series, as well as numerous other musical ventures. Schon has pursued many projects, such as Bad English, Journey (of course), and many solo releases.
‘Untold Passion’ is a very listenable, musically diverse, artistically rewarding set that sees Schon, Hammer and Hodgkinson playing up a musical storm, with thrills a-plenty and a few real (pleasant) surprises in there, too.
With thanks to Alan Robinson