Press play, your ears will thank you for it:
If I could magically learn one guitar riff perfectly, without all that dreadfully unbecoming practice and bleeding fingers jazz, then it would be ‘Breadfan’ by Budgie. I just love how nonchalant Tony Bourge is in this clip, like it was absolutely no big deal and he could actually reel off this riff whilst doing chores around the house, or piloting a plane. Respect.
Never Turn Your Back On A Friend by Budgie turns 50 this year, unlike me who has just turned 51; sadly honesty compels me to say that the LP has aged better than I have*, just.
Budgie’s third LP was recorded at that font of all that is great and good in this world, Rockfield Studios. It is a jump in quality from its predecessor Squawk, which was produced by Rodger Bain. Never Turn Your Back On A Friend, sage advice by the way, is one of those all too rare instances where everything just aligned and the quality of the songs, the performances and the (self) production is absolutely spot-on. It is also the LP where the band’s lyrical quirkiness rings most intriguingly true.
Thanks to a certain Danish chap’s covers band Never Turn Your Back** kicks down the doors with Budgie’s best known song, ‘Breadfan’. What a tremendous way to open an LP too. As someone who’s parents often referred to money as ‘bread’, or to ‘bread heads’ this was the song I was waiting all my life for.
Folks out there call it the first speed metal track, it isn’t but it is definitely an early staging post en route. That fast stuttering riff is just supreme and you should hear the speed they played it live on occasion. I love how sparing the trio’s instrumentation was and yet how full the sound is, in addition to the dynamic shifts in the track. When that riff kicks back in after the lull … I am complete.
Their gonzo cover of Joe Williamson’s ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ is another cracker, up there with AC/DC’s cover two years later, in fact. It is great showcase for Burke Shelley’s bass playing too, if not his vocals which are slightly strangulated on this one.
Then Never Turn Your Back pitches us unexpectedly into the acoustic balladry of ‘You Know I’ll Always Love You’, it manages that rarest of things for a ballad, to sound heartfelt, as opposed to rote. Then Budgie manage that second rarest of things for a ballad, it doesn’t overstay its welcome; 2:12 and gone.
The stalking riff of ‘You’re The Biggest Thing Since Powdered Milk’ is prefigured by two minutes of phased drums from Ray Phillips, a touch unnecessarily in my book. Shelley comes over all Robert Plant on this one, to great affect. This is pure progressive blues, with sections and movements and a genius bit of guitar linkage that Iron Maiden stole years later. Again, it barely needs saying but Tony Bourge … wow.
‘In The Grip Of A Tyre Fitter’s Hand’ is even better, it struts with real intent and roll. As a clever song about the pressures of work and life, it can’t be beaten. Phillips’ drumming is just insanely good on this track in particular, I really like his style because it is pretty sparse, not a hit wasted anywhere.
I will skip ‘Riding My Nightmare’ as I can’t think of anything much positive to say about it. Never Turn Your Back climaxes with the epic sweep to end all epic sweeps of ‘Parents’^. At just over 10 minutes long, it feels too short to me every time I play it. This really is Budgie’s masterpiece, all three chaps absolutely play out of their skins here and Shelley’s vocals are quite strikingly non-gendered, several times recently I have thought it would sound brilliant covered by a female singer. Weirdly, despite the lyrics (‘Mind your manners, or you’re dead’ is amongst the parental advice given) it has the epic quality of some alternate reality bond theme^^.
There are several wonderful recurring passages of sweeping melodic slightly melancholic guitar playing by Bourge, where he somehow seems to rain down the notes upon us. The production is absolutely remarkable here too, especially as it was by the band themselves for the first time. Don’t get me started on the seagull noises either, masterful.
Budgie were really something else – strikingly idiosyncratic, wry, uncompromising in their artistic vision and impossible to pigeonhole. They were, of course, doomed precisely by all their virtues never to make it big.
Never Turn Your Back is my favourite iteration of theirs, the last LP that Ray Phillips played on too. It is surely no coincidence that Never Turn Your Back supplies 5/9 of the tracks on The Best Of Budgie. This is a wonderful snapshot of how untethered and odd rock could be back in the early 70’s, no following in the furrows of various genres for Budgie as they swooped across the fields of heavy metal, prog and other as-yet-undefined mad shite.
Buy this album.
My copy of Never Turn Your Back is a 2014 reissue and I have to say it has been done superbly well, cut with great sound.
1167 Down.
*honesty is right up there with modesty in any list of 5 things I am perfect at.
**as it will henceforth be called in order to save pixels.
^hypocrite alert! I didn’t like this one much when I reviewed The Best Of Budgie. I’m better now.
^^maybe a nouvelle vague influenced one where Bond has a few too many drinks, gets miserable and watches the rain making patterns on a window pane for an hour. For Grey Skies Only? The Spy Who Shrugged At Me?