Boxer
Bloodletting

I rarely listen to this album, it makes me melancholy… It’s because my two magnificent losers per antonomasia play on it, chosen by my heart among the thousands of splendid musicians discovered and absorbed through countless records and concerts.

The Boxer, an English quartet active between 1975 and 1977, no longer existed at the time of the release of this collection of eight songs in '79, unfortunately half of them no longer even physically… Bassist Keith Ellis had died of an overdose in December '78, followed three months later by singer Mike Patto, who succumbed to a fulminant leukemia. These two losses prompted the record company to bring to light these recordings dating back to 1976, the day after the release of their debut work “Below the Belt” and just before the lineup was revolutionized, with only Patto remaining in his place to work with other companions on the second album “Absolutely.” So “Bloodletting” is historically the band’s second album, though released third and last, and posthumously.

The work here is almost entirely in Patto’s hands who, tired of receiving praise and enthusiastic applause only from insiders and four cats for the excellent jazz/progressive/soul/rock of Patto— as exquisite as it was uncommercial — had opted for a decidedly more straightforward and digestible approach, for a while even convincing his old adventures partner Ollie Halsall to lend a hand. The latter, however, an all-round artist with a pure spirit, was not so convinced of this thing and you can feel it on this record, much more than in the previous debut.

Halsall here almost only does the bare minimum (with a striking exception… I'll explain it later), albeit with the usual freshness and personality. But for a genius like him, not composing anything, just putting in a couple of clean rhythm guitars and sporadically taking an eight-bar solo, occasionally touching the piano (often in Patto’s hands) and never the vibraphone, is too little!

Let’s say something else: the feeling is that the record company here put together some leftovers from the first album “Below the Belt,” some covers perhaps tried during those recordings, and finally, since the running time was scarce, a (great) finale with a live track. The original songs are all by Mike Patto, in that pub rock/rhythm&blues style somewhat reminiscent of Joe Cocker, an artist with whom Patto had much to do a few years earlier, opening for him in concerts in America and then in the Far East and Australia.

Halsall, with the sincerity of the pure soul he was, spoke of these tours with the Sheffield singer whose career at the time, still fresh from the media explosion of Woodstock, was riding high: “We would perform for half an hour, sometimes even less… We did our jazz rock blues stuff, played and sang fantastically, brilliant and passionate, and nobody cared… Then this disjointed, stoned band would get on stage, all drunk and approximate, and the crowd would go wild… Honestly, it was… frustrating!”

Patto knows how to put together music, his songs are light but well-crafted, modest but delightful. His voice is perfect, powerful, expressive, and ironic, the best for me of British blues in the seventies (and I'm comparing him to Paul Rodgers, Rod Stewart, Eric Burdon, Steve Marriott. Jack Bruce…). The repeated, essential and musical little piano guides the compositions without infamy and without praise, aiming for a completely vain attempt at success. Yes, Patto is good at doing Cocker, but ‘so what it seems to tell the record. Because before this stuff there were the Patto, and there it was really a whole different story…

Notable, however, is Halsall’s solo on “Rich Man’s Daughter”… Extended to well beyond the eight bars I laconic generalized, and then angry, effected, convinced; oh my, give Halsall a bit of leash and he creates mind-blowing guitar situations! This is precisely what happens in the closing “Teachers,” an astonishing live cover of Leonard Cohen’s song. The Boxer turn it inside out like a sock: they add chords to enrich it harmonically, Patto sings it in his own way instilling rhythm&blues phrasing into the rather monotone singing of the Canadian minstrel. And, thank goodness, the stage allows Ollie to crank his Fender amplifier to ten and let his priceless white Gibson “Diavoletto” roar, spewing out healthy distorted chords and unstoppable high-class solo bursts. At the moment of the solo, the group even plants him, and he solitarily embarks on a diatribe of legato runs that have little of guitar and much of saxophone and piano in his unique and unrepeatable style. The song is worth purchasing the album.

There is another remarkable cover, that of “Hey Bulldog”, a Beatles song, which opens the work. It is one of the best rock tracks by the Liverpool four, a Lennon creation to which however the mate McCartney injected precious lifeblood by moving the bass line in a certain way, His way so musical and ingenious, enriching thus the resolute and carnal but somewhat scholastic rock’n’roll of his friend with a peculiar and valuable melodic component. The Boxer, admirers and absorbers of the Beatles like almost all rock musicians in the world, perform with grit and conviction, the rest is done by the quality of the composition, practically the main reason to own “Yellow Submarine,” their somewhat career album, in which it appears.

Midway through the album the Boxer covers, without particular genius, “The Loner”, one of Neil Young's early successes. The fourth cover (out of nine tracks) is the relatively unknown “Dinah-Low” by their friend Terry Stamp, and it is a filler.

Nothing, the album is certainly not a masterpiece, but it is good and has Patto and Halsall playing, so for me it’s a must. I couldn’t see Patto play live, and I regret it. But Halsall, yes, I saw him twice (with Tempest) and I was stricken, for life. One day I'll go on vacation to Majorca, and between a swim and a fish meal I'll certainly find the time to go up to the cemetery in the town of Deja, where he has lain since 1992, under a small tombstone to which someone has glued two guitar knobs, one for volume and one for tones…