Interview with John Wetton of Asia
Heat of the Moment -- podcast

Asia is coming to the Van Wezel this Wednesday; their lead singer, John Wetton, discusses a brief history of prog-rock with Venice Florida! dot com's John Patten, with a stop along the way in Larry Norman's recording studio and a look at Life, the Universe, and Wetton's Rock of Faith
-- John Patten, 06/09/07
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Listen to John Wetton's music on MySpace

My first memory of Wetton's music was when I picked up a copy of Lark's Tongue's in Aspic by King Crimson shortly after it was released in 1973. To a teenage ear, the album was mind-numbing -- adventurous, exotic, extremely dense with packed notes and strange rhythms, and wildly different than anything else anyone had ever thought of recording.

I immediately despised it.

But I only owned two or three dozen albums at the time, so I ended up coming back to it again and again. And at some point in time, the light went on and I understood what it was that these guys were doing. I was hooked and became a King Crimson fan for life.

Holding things together vocally on the album was a raspy, dangerous sounding lead singer/bass player named John Wetton. Although King Crimson was Robert Fripp and anyone Fripp had around him at the time, Wetton became the front man and voice of Crimson until their untimely demise just a few years later. While Robert Fripp would bring the name King Crimson out of the mothballs nearly a decade later with an entirely new band that continues to morph and record to this day, it was the three studio albums with Wetton that would forever define the band.

Wetton would go on to different, if not greater, fame in Bryan Ferry's Roxy Music, Uriah Heep, and the short-lived jazz/rock/synth band, U.K. Finally, in the early 1980s, Wetton hit his stride in the British super-group Asia, and the rest is well-known prog-rock history.

Lesser known, though, is some of the session work that paid the bills at the beginning of his career, like his appearance on Peter Banks' now-legendary album, Two Sides of Peter Banks (1973), and the George Martin-produced Christian-rock album by Larry Norman, Only Visiting This Planet (1972). That last-mentioned album would single-handedly launch an entire gospel music industry in America based on an electric guitar instead of a southern gospel quartet. The album would remain largely ignored in Britain where it was recorded.

Then a few years ago, Wetton released a beautiful and yet painful autobiographical album, Rock of Faith (2003). The entire album is angst-ladened, a tale of a man at a spiritual breaking point who somehow finds the faith that he never knew about and the strength to pick himself back up from emotional wreckage. Listening to Rock of Faith for the first time immediately made me remember that Wetton had sessioned with Larry Norman all those years ago on an album that centered around the same strength from nearly the same emotional and spiritual wreckage.

So, when given the chance to interview Wetton about his upcoming reunion tour with his bandmates in Asia, I had to ask about these two albums, especially as I had never read any interviews over the years where Wetton talked about the Larry Norman sessions.

Bear in mind: in 1990, CCM magazine (the main industry periodical for gospel music) had named Only Visiting This Planet as the number 1 album of their 100 best Christian albums of all time. For Wetton, the album was paid session work and he knew very little about Norman. It would be years before he understood the historical significance of being included in those sessions.

Most of the serious questions about Wetton and his history in prog rock have been answered over the years in numerous interviews and music articles, and we touch on those during the interview, but I really didn't want to spend a lot of time treading the same tedious ground that has been tread and retread before. You can find out most of the stuff just by Googling his name.

I've never read anywhere the one minor bit of esoterica that I have been somewhat curious about: how the hell did he end up in George Martin's studio during the recording of one of the greatest gospel records ever made? What caused that bizarre and major career swerve? It's a minor mystery as mysteries go, but one I've been mildly curious about for years.

The answer turned out to be remarkably simple and, now that I know the answer, should have been obvious.

That said, I am looking forward to hearing the song Starless (the only rock/heavy metal equivalent of Ravel's Bolero) sung live by the same voice that sang it originally on King Crimson's Red album some years ago. Sometimes life is a circle.

As I write this, tickets are still available for Wednesday's show. If you're a fan of rock music or an amateur musicologist, this is a show not to miss.

Hidden reference: Wetton mentions the line "drinking whiskey from a paper cup.." -- it's the opening line in Larry Norman's song, Why Don't You Look Into Jesus, arguably the most well-known song of the Jesus-music hippie movement in the 1970s. You're either gonna love the song or find it annoyingly preachy and didactic, but the song's importance in the history of American gospel music cannot be understated.

Pics: Asia banner and Wetton promotional portrait, courtesy of John Wetton's and Asia's official web sites; videos courtesy of YouTube; album covers: Asia's eponymous first album (Geffen Records, 1982), Larry Norman's Only Visiting This Planet (Verve, Street Level Records, 1972), John Wetton's Rock of Faith (Giant Electric Pea, 2003)

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.