Back in the mid to late 1970’s, we saw a British band in a small New Jersey Club. They combined a fusion of rock and classical elements with a bit of jazz mixed in. They also had a female lead singer which back in those days was still relatively unique. Combined with the deep range of Annie Haslam’s expansive vocal range, they blended in orchestral elements with the piano being prominent across the spectrum of their songs.
Initially they played small clubs and my friends, and I would travel around New Jersey to see them. Soon the band started recognizing us at their performances and they realized they had a small group of fans showing up wherever they played. The band was formed in the late 1960’s by members of the Yardbirds. They were called Renaissance and consisted of Annie Haslam, composer Michael Dunford, pianist John Tout, guitarist Jon Camp, and drummer Terry Sullivan.
They were extremely generous, sharing time after performances with us, where from time-to-time we would go out with Michael, John, and Terry to local diners. It was Terry Sullivan who introduced us to getting a fried egg on top of our burgers which made for the perfect late-night remedy to a long night of drinking. Once we traveled down to the Jersey shore to see them perform and I remember Annie Haslam taking us back to her hotel room and showing us her assortment of gowns and dresses.
We first became acquainted with their music with the release of the album Renaissance in 1969. This was followed by Prologue (1972), Ashes Are Burning (1973), Turn of the Cards (1974) which featured a tribute to Aleksander Solzhenitsyn and Sheherazade and Other Stories (1975). As the group evolved, they added acoustic guitar elements to the band’s already unique sound.
By the mid 1970’s, the band had developed a small but devoted following, particularly on the east coast. Paradoxically, they were more popular on this side of the pond than in their native United Kingdom. We continued to catch performances around the New York City area, but the highlight was seeing them perform live at Carnegie Hall on June 20, 1975, with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. This was the apex for the band’s five members that we came to know, and that night was best described as magical. Featured at the Carnegie Hall performance was Scheherazade and Other Stories, in particular the second side of the album with a ballad entitled “Song of Scheherazade” based on stories from One Thousand and One Nights.
In the fall of 1975, two friends and I decided to drive cross country. Because one of my friends was an alumni of a fraternity, any place that had that chapter was obliged to put us up, which was a welcome respite from camping out or sleeping in the car. We ended our trip in San Francisco and the fraternity at Cal-Berkely let us stay in an attic apartment with a door up to the roof with spectacular views of the Bay area. By sheer happenstance, we saw in the paper that Renaissance was playing at a club in San Francisco. So, with the enthusiasm of unbridled youth, we bought tickets and decided we would drive straight through to New Jersey after the performance.
We did not go out with them for a burger that night, but we did go backstage to say a quick hello. I remember Terry Sullivan telling us that while performing, he looked out at the crowd and saw us but said to himself; “No it can’t be.” Running on adrenaline, we made it from San Francisco to New Jersey in three days. A few years later, Renaissance released an album of composite performances at the old Fillmore West.
After returning from our trip west, it was time to move on and we all got jobs or continued with our education and so the carefree days of following a band around ended. I would keep track of Renaissance with the release of their album Novella in 1977 and the bands various iterations that existed in the 1980’s forward but San Francisco was the last time I would see them in person.
Sadly, Michael Dunford passed away in 2012 and John Tout died in 2015. But the Renaissance albums of the 1970’s have stood the test of time and my playlist are littered with great songs such as Carpet of the Sun, Mother Russia, Running Hard and Can You Understand. Renaissance was an extremely talented and vastly underrated group of musicians that evolved and endured for the past fifty years. For my friends and I it was an honor to have met and got to know them.
