Silver Bird [Import]

Leo Sayer | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 8, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Teichiku
• ASIN: B00018GZRS
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,144,735 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Innocent Bystander

2. Goodnight Old Friend

3. Drop Back

4. Silverbird

5. The Show Must Go On

6. The Dancer

7. Tomorrow

8. Don't Say It's Over

9. Slow Motion

10. Oh Wot A Life

11. Why Is Everybody Going Home

12. Living In America (Patches

13. Quicksand (Non Album Single B-side)

Editorial Reviews

Original album plus bonus tracks and a specially recorded interview. Packaging includes photos and memorabilia from Leo's own archive. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The original life of Leo Sayer, October 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Silver Bird (Audio CD)

Most people familiar with Leo Sayer know him for his pop hits like You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and When I Need You. While well constructed, and fine for what they are, these decidedly pop, radio-friendly, rather saccharine Top 40 tunes are relegated to their time and beyond that not especially insightful or memorable. But before all this there was a whole other side to Leo Sayer, and this is what you find in Silverbird.

Silverbird is his first album, originally released in 1973, quite a few years before his metamorphose to the popster that most know, and whatever fame and success he achieved later. In the beginning, starting with this album, he was a melancholic intriguing figure in pop/rock music, arguably ahead of or outside of his time. In these early days he performed in clown persona, complete with costume and makeup. The image was androgynous, and when combined with the music, created a dark aura of irony, isolation, vulnerability and emotional depth that was at once highly personal, in some ways relatable, and powerful enough to make him, as an artist, songwriter and performer, an intriguing figure that seemed to be verging on nightmarish.

Set to a backdrop of mournful, eerie string arrangements and a sparse piano based band, the songs on this album are dark, strange and disturbing, and ultimately captivating. The themes are isolation and loneliness; a youthful cocktail of depression, separation, failure and angst, with an underlying desperation for love and connection.

The album opens with a rocker, Innocent Bystander. The lyrical image of "running down the track, trying to reach the end, but the train never comes..." work as a metaphor for unfulfilled hopes and dreams; time going by with nothing accomplished to the point of near insanity. Goodnight Old Friend comes across with the same feeling of Robert Johnson's Hellhounds. You get a sense that the "old friend," may well be his personal demons or the devil himself. Drop Back has a chorus set to an incessant pleading string arrangement reminiscent of Eleanor Rigby, with a lyrical storyline about being rejected by a rather upset, almost shocked love interest. You hear a sense of frustration and misunderstanding that leads to unhealthy introspection and confusion. The title track Silverbird is a brief, haunting, wordless vocal and piano piece that evokes both a circus sense and a haunting echo that reveals again, a sense of isolation underlying this deceivingly somewhat happy tune. The Show Must Go On was a Top 40 hit for Three Dog Night, and as a result perhaps the most, if not the only, familiar song to the early Leo Sayer uninitiated. His version is starker, more sideshowish, almost vaudevillian, and more foreboding with the mixed image of the happiness of a circus clown and the reality that he has somehow angered his audience. The Dancer is a mournful tale about a tragic fall for a high wire dancer. Tomorrow (Is The First Day of the Rest of Your Life) is a thumping rocker, which turns this clichéd ironic phrase on its head with a sense of being less purely optimistic as encouraging, yet aware of the difficulties and challenges of life.

For the most part these are the themes and images of the entire album (I am going by the original record and these comments don't relate to bonus tracks since I have not heard them).

This is the kind of music that should appeal to fans of artists like Nick Drake, Love's Forever Changes, The Zombies Odyssey and the Oracle and Roger Daltry's first solo album, Daltry (most popular track Giving It All Away), which is Daltry performing songs written by Leo Sayer in that period. It probably will not appeal to the fans of Sayer's disco era Top 40 music. To them this will be startlingly different. But for those who appreciate the artists and albums mentioned here, this will probably be a satisfying experience, not to mention for those unfamiliar with Sayer's pre-hit life - a fascinating, almost mysterious look into the abandoned direction of an artist who once upon a time made some very self reflective, dramatic, and in this reviewer's view, artistically intriguing, honest, revealing music.

I for one, can't wait to get this CD.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Total agreement!, January 21, 2004

By 

Gary Morrow (Ventura, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silver Bird (Audio CD)

I can add absolutely NOTHING to "A Music Fan's" review other than to say I wore the record out listening to it back in 73/74. My son, who is now 31 years of age, could sit for an hour with the headphones on listening to it seemingly mesmerized rocking back and forth on the sofa.

I couldn't wait for his subsequent recordings but ultimately found them wanting as it seemed he sidestepped his roots and original soulful stylings to appeal to a broader audience. Unfortunate. This, his first album, was without a doubt his best.

I had the good fortune to see him perform on a late night TV program around the time this album was released. He was dressed in his clown personna. I was absolutely captivated. The showman's, showman.

Again, congratulations to "A Music Fan" for his or her ability to put down in words what so many of us feel toward Leo Sayer's first and best effort.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...another music fan fan..., October 24, 2006

By 

rocky-o "...jazzville skyline..." - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silver Bird (Audio CD)

i agree infatically with 'a music fan's' assessement as well...i remember buying this vinyl when it first came out...there was just something about his face on the cover...you can see a little of the 'pancake/clown' makeup still left on his cheek, and his eyes just had such depth to them...

and when i played the album...wow...what soul this man had...what a songwriter he was, to scrape the inner-essence of every emotion...his version of 'show must go on' is the only version...it is the 'real, honest' version'...

i also remember how 'the dancer' used to touch me every time i listened to it...heck...the whole album from side to side engulfed me in it's presence...it was, and is, extraordinary...

and then came 'just a boy', another sign of the brilliance that continued forth from this man, with, sadly, a hit single...and i think that was the beginning of the end...

the last good record that i think he ever made was 'another year', which featured an extraordinary song called 'only dreaming', which i'm amazed you never find on any of his collections...no, it wasn't a 'hit', but, in the early world of leo sayer, that never mattered anyway...if you ever get a chance to listen to it, listen to it with the same ears you listened to 'show must go on' for the first time with...lyrically, it's a powerful blend of angst and fear, with a compensity for false bravado and overcompensation...

but this is where it all started...and this is the true core of the man...ignore the paths that he latter stumbled upon...appreciate this time we had with him...