Music today reminds me that we lost Rupert Hine last month. He was that odd thing, a successful producer of other artists that had his own bands and solo albums. Daniel Lanois is another one like this or Alan Parsons, though his name was more of an umbrella for a giant guest list of musicians. I first heard of Hine without knowing it was him when he had a hit with the band Quantum Jump and the song The Lone Ranger that reached No. 5 in the UK charts in 1977. (Kenny Everett used part of the song as his theme tune, I think?) When I moved to Australia in the eighties I was lucky enough to discover who he actually was when he had a hit in that country in 1981, Misplaced Love. It featured Marianne Faithful in one of the great middle eights! It reached No. 14 on the chart there.

This took me back to his very first album, Pick Up A Bone, released in 1971 on Purple Records and produced by Deep Purple’s Roger Glover. It’s hard to categorise, Hine sings and wrote the music, David MacIver plays guitar and writes the words. Simon Jeffes from Penguin Cafe Orchestra also plays guitar and co-wrote the title track. I was happily enjoying the album and then Kerosene, the longest track, came on. Proggy bits galore that I really don’t mind but a horrible vocal approach. I’m not a fan of the later Floyd albums but can happily be there in the room with them and then that track Dogs Of War comes on…noooooo. Pick Up A Bone has its moments and then some other moments. I don’t have Hine’s second solo album Unfinished Picture (1973) or should I say it hasn’t arrived yet?

Quantum Jump came next in 1975 (I have it), followed by Barracuda in 1977 (I don’t have it), and then a remix compilation of the two in Mixing in 1979 (somehow I have it). Again, it’s hard to categorise whilst being very different to Pick Up A Bone.

In 1981 came Immunity with that great track Misplaced Love, so good I’m posting the video. When Marianne Faithful arrives (sonically, she’s not in the video) it’s an amazing moment:

 
He followed this album with The Wildest Wish To Fly (1982) and Waving Not Drowning (1983) before creating Thinkman with a quite different approach (if you love post-Be Bop Deluxe Bill Nelson, you’ll love this). This from Discogs:

“Essentially a Rupert Hine solo project but presented as a group, with actors hired to play band members for live and TV appearances, including future UK comedy star Julian Clary as keyboardist “Leo Hurll”. By 1990 and the third album, this line-up had changed with the band members now played by others, including Underworld’s Rick Smith and Karl Hyde.”

Unbelievably the eighties solo albums are not on Spotify and Immunity (1981) is a classic.

I lost him soon after this but when you look at his resumé you’ll see how it was easy to lose track. Not only was he a mega successful producer with acts like Stevie Nicks, Tina Turner, The Fixx, Suzanne Vega, Rush, Camel, The Waterboys, Howard Jones, Thompson Twins, Bob Geldof, Duncan Sheik, Geoffrey Oryema…you get the picture, but he also had a supergroup Spin 1ne 2wo with Phil Palmer, Paul Carrack, Steve Ferrone (Tom Petty’s longtime drummer after Stan Lynch and till Petty’s death) and Tony Levin that played covers of Classic Rock songs.

Rupert Hine had the ability to preserve an artist’s sound, let them be what they wanted to be by adding his expertise and not making them sound like Rupert Hine’s vision of sound like say Daniel Lanois, love him for that alone. He died on June 4th, age 72. RIP Rupert, condolences to friends and family.

Song Of The Day is to do with Yesterday and Today so I thought a butcher’s hook at Jules Shear and I performing Yesterday’s Rain on MTV unplugged in 1990.

The musical musings in this post are an excerpt from my daily blog, TO WHERE I AM NOW, featured on my main website. See more pictures and read the full post here.