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Traffic – On the Road (1973)
During the same period I discovered Deep Purple, Frank introduced me to Traffic. Just recently (November 2024), Frank sent me a message with a photo of the LP When the Eagle Flies.
He wrote, “Got it for my 14th birthday almost 50 years ago. Sold it to Concerto for a few guilders. Regret it! Finally bought it again this weekend. Feels great.”
With Deep Purple, I had to get used to the long guitar solos; with Traffic, it was Chris Wood’s saxophone that initially felt like a hurdle.
In the same message, Frank recalled, “I remember you sitting in my attic room when I played On the Road, and suddenly a saxophone started playing. I felt a kind of embarrassment.”
I can still recall laughing at the saxophone—it just didn’t seem like an instrument for hard rockers like us! But I was entirely wrong. Thankfully, I let go of that narrow-minded thinking and realized how irresistibly good this band was.
The songs were long—the shortest track on On the Road is nearly seven minutes, and the opener “Glad/Freedom Rider” is a whopping 21 minutes. But we were completely swept away by this extraordinary music.
Almost everything Traffic released is incredibly strong, but it was the era of live double albums, and those were our favorites.
Recently, I picked up the CD The Turning Tide by soul singer P.P. Arnold, featuring recordings from 1969–1971. The first track, “Medicated Goo” (written by Steve Winwood of Traffic), grabbed me immediately. Both Traffic’s 1969 original and Arnold’s version are fantastic.
It’s wonderful how, through a message and a soul CD, Traffic has come full circle for me. I’ll likely be spinning their albums a lot again.
