Automatic Man
With both releases being reissued on CD in 2004 after 28 years of only being available in vinyl format and with the advent of the internet, Automatic Man are being rediscovered and roundly praised for their genre-defying, boundary-breaking musical sound and unique lyrics.
[3] Automatic Man formed in San Francisco around 1975 when drummer Michael Shrieve decided to quit Santana to explore other musical avenues.
Cochran, then known under the alias of "Bayete" (pronounced Bye-yet-tay), was a child prodigy and formally trained keyboard player who had attended the Trinity College of Music in England as a teen.
Allusions to space travel, Atlantis, astral projection, karma, angels, aliens, belly dancers and other mystical and exotic subjects are covered on nearly every album track.
(My Pearl was released with a B-side entitled "Wallflower") Produced by Automatic Man and Lou CasaBianca Mixed by Keith Harwood and Chris Kimsey Painted by Bay Area artist Dwain Zerio (1950–1995), both front covers of each Automatic Man album feature a simple luminously painted blue alienlike face staring out from space.
The inside liner art of the first album includes the blue face with Egyptian wings, floating above a pyramid, rising Atlantis-like out of a raging ocean with a maelstrom in the background.
The artwork for the "My Pearl" single featured a woman's face suspended over a misty crevasse crowned with wings and a self-consuming serpentine rainbow.
The band was also feted by fellow artists and luminaries of the day including the Rolling Stones and Hunter S Thompson who wrote a concert review.
Though they would make a few more live appearances in their original Bay Area stomping grounds, infighting, clashes over music and disagreements over how the bands finances were being directed, this led to Automatic Man's first line-up dissolving after returning to the United States in 1976.
Guitarist Pat Thrall was still a member but Shrieve and Harvey were now replaced by bassist Jerome Rimson (also from the "Go" project) and drummer Glenn Symmonds.
Originally from Detroit, Rimson played bass on the track "Man from Manhattan" which features on the album Ghost of a Smile with a pre-Queen Freddie Mercury on piano and vocals, and Brian May on Guitar.
Music reviewer Doug Watson's description is that Visitors is "just a mediocre shot at mesh funk-rock, although arguably ahead of its time in predicting the ghastly and overblown rock guitar productions of the 80s."
Like the music of Santana, Automatic Man was on a quasi-mystical quest that relied on the conventional language of funk/rock but also rode beyond those borders in pursuit of a grander statement.
[7]Partially due to no longer having the name recognition of Shrieve, the album failed to make waves in the music press and Automatic Man permanently disbanded in 1977.
All four members of the original Automatic Man line up became prolific and well respected solo and session musicians with Shrieve and Cochran emerging as sought after composers and arrangers.
His credits number well into the hundreds and include work on Pete Townshend's 1981 disc, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes and for artists Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Steve Winwood, Police guitarist Andy Summers, film composer Mark Isham, Freddie Hubbard, Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Horvitz, Bill Frisell, Zakir Hussain, Airto Moreira and Amon Tobin.
A few years later (1983), Shrieve got involved with the power group HSAS, featuring Sammy Hagar, Neal Schon of Journey fame and former bass player from Derringer Kenny Aaronson.
The group recorded the album "Through the Fire" and the single "A Whiter Shade of Pale", originally written and performed by Procol Harum, peaked at #94 in 1984.
Shrieve is also the past President of the Pacific Northwest Branch of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and is currently writing the memoirs of jazz drumming legend Elvin Jones.
Todd Cochran's career continued to see many radical musical shifts in direction as he wrote, produced, performed keyboards, guitar and/or synthesizer programming for a widely diverse number of artists including Aretha Franklin, Eminem, Maynard Ferguson, Juan Carlos Quintero, Stewart Copeland, Peter Gabriel and Grover Washington Jr in genres that included funk, new age, jazz, disco and combinations thereof.
His first full soundtrack was for Doug McHenry's TV movie "Keep the Faith, Baby" from 2002, a portrait of the black senator Adam Clayton Powell.
In 2006, Robert L. Watt, Assistant Principal French horn with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, commissioned Todd Cochran to write a musical composition in memory of Miles Davis.
Rimson has played or sung on albums for Steve Winwood, Donovan, Topper Headon formerly of The Clash, Ron Roesing the drummer of the Smashing Pumpkins and many others.
From his base in L.A. Symmonds continued to tour and record with many diverse musical groups including Steve Perry, John Klemmer, Elvin Bishop, Dave Mason, Duncan Sheik and Etta James.
In 2004, Cherry Red released, under their UK based Lemon subsidiary, a remastered version of Automatic Man to receptive music collectors.
Tom Karr of Progressive World gave the disc a five star rating in his review, People have a strong desire, an urge, to categorize things, to put them in boxes.
And no, in the sense of Automatic Man fitting into a preconceived subgenre of progressive rock as understood now is concerned, then no, they are not a prog band, but they are much, much more than any label given them could describe.
