News

• Jul 23 1988

  "The Steve Winwood Chronicles":...

  

  "I primarily came through rock 'n' roll as a musician," he says, "from the musician's side of rock 'n' roll. Many people think that rock 'n roll is a lot of things .. a way of life, a social statement, etcetera. But for me, rock 'n; roll has always been music. Of course, having said that, I realize that if you sing songs and make records you are actually an entertainer whether you like it or not, and some people say they are artists and all this ..." The quote collapses with exhaustion. Somewhere in the dim lights, coffee is poured.

   

• Jun 30 1988

  Rolling Stone: Review of Roll With...

  

  Winwood on a "Roll"
  First new album and single since 1986 mark his Virgin Records debut

  Roll With It, Steve Winwood's first album of new music since his 1986 multiplatinum release Back in the High Life, hits the stores late this month. The title track of the album was released as a single in May, and Winwood kicks off a two-month tour of the United States on July 7.

  Produced by Winwood and Tom Lord Alge - who helped engineer Back in the High Life - Roll With It was recorded in Dublin and Toronto and picks up where the preceding album left off. "Back in the High Life was a very successful album," Winwood says, "and we wanted to use various elements that we used on it." As on his previous solo outings, Winwood handles the lion's share of the instruments on Roll With It; key-boardists Robby Kilgore and Mike Lawer and drummers John Robinson and Jimmy Bralower appear as sidemen.

   

• Jun 18 1988

  Roll With It Review

  

  When he was only 16 years old, Steve Winwood was credited with the best blue-eyed soul voice in Britain. That was way back in 1963 when he sang with the Spencer Davis Group. He later anchored the groups Traffic and Blind Faith, then disappeared into his country estate for a while before fashioning a Grammy-winning solo career in the '80s.

  The one constant throughout Winwood's career is that voice -- a yearning, deep-from-within tenor that can run from raw to celestially smooth in the blink of a phrase.

• May 22 1987

  New York Post: Review of Back in...

  

  Winwood goes it homey and natural

  Winwood, walking alone in the streets of Fairfax, Virginia, in the countryside, on-stage, dancing and walking with his wife, Eugenia, obviously 'back in the high life" in some way.

  It's all quite natural and homey, and a change from the stylish, pre-marriage "Higher Love" video that posed him with fashion models. Oddly enough, it's vaguely reminiscent of his old "Still in the Game" video that showed him with hisformer wife. In any case, this clip shows a very secure, happy, peaceful Winwood.

  -- Lisa Robinson

   

• Jan 10 1987

  Grammy Nominations Led By Steve...

  

  The singer Steve Winwood received five Grammy Award nominations Thursday to lead the rock category, while Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon and the jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis received four nominations each.

• Sep 16 1986

  Pop Life: New York Times, September...

  

  Although it has been nearly 20 years since he had his first hits, ''Gimme Some Lovin' '' and ''I'm a Man,'' with the Spencer Davis Group, Steve Winwood doesn't wear the predictable aura of a weather-beaten rock veteran. Indeed, the English pop-blues singer and multi-instrumentalist, who is a very young-looking 38 years old, is more popular today than in the late 1960's and early 70's, when he led the English folk-jazz-blues band Traffic. The spare textures and loosely blocked arrangements of his music today make only minor concessions to contemporary pop sounds as he continues to evoke an earlier, more romantic period in rock history.