Chris De Burgh - The Getaway

When I was in high school a friend of mine had Spanish Train And Other Stories, and I remember being enthralled by the title track. I don't recall anything else. When videos were a thing in '83 I remember seeing "Don't Pay The Ferryman" and I was hooked. The album would be a big deal here in Canada where it sold over 100,000 copies.

Chris De Burgh was likeable.

I'll be the first to admit that I never really thought much of the rest of the album at the time. It was decent but I was really hoping for an album full of rockers. Of course I should have known better, but hey I was still a teenager. It didn't matter though - that one song was a killer, and the rest of the album was pleasant enough and I'd play it once in a while. After all, I was a fan of Al Stewart so it wasn't like I didn't listen to what could be loosely categorized as "adult contemporary" music.

Rupert Hine produced this one, and he'd been working with SAGA around this time and brought on drummer Steve Negus for the album. Additionally guitarist Phil Palmer provided the fretwork, and John Giblin played bass, and oh my his fretless work his so good.

Listening to this now, I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would. Some of the sounds now are terribly dated but it was actually a tad ahead of the curve in '82. It's funny how I couldn't remember anything other than "Don't Pay the Ferryman" which makes me wonder how often I actually played this album after lifting the big song for my mix tapes. Probably not often. Which wasn't unusual back then. If an album didn't make an impression right away I generally filed it and more or less forgot about it. My general impression at the time was the album was generally enjoyable, but to me it was a bit of a miss, but it didn't stop me from buying the next one when it came out ... and the one after that.

So here I am now, and I finally get it. I got hooked on the catchy commercial song, but Chris De Burgh had fans and his fans expected Chris De Burgh to sound like Chris De Burgh, and by gum he delivered a Chris De Burgh album, and it caught on.

He loved his sappy ballads. Don't think "Lady in Red" is the penultimate Chris De Burgh ballad, it's just the one that hit at the right time. I think "All The Love I Have Inside" is the better of the two. He likes his dramatic story songs, and he braids a number of songs together thematically into a pretty cool story about conflict, revolution, the cost of peace and then remembrance. Of course I may be full of shit, but starting with "Borderline" that contains the wonderful line, "I'm taking my side, one of us will lose" sums up the price of conflict. He continues through to the climax starting with "The Revolution" that dovetails into "Light a Fire" that contains an absolutely blistering guitar solo by Phil Palmer. The album then settles and ends with "Liberty" and the last line, "Never Forget" - it's a great way to close out.

I find myself sitting here feeling somewhat at odds with my younger self. I was hooked by the commercially successful single, but the rest of the album escaped me. I wasn't ready. It's a strange thing to be enthralled by something I've always known.

I may not have paid the Ferryman, but I still ended up paying.

Post Script. A couple of years ago at Christmas my son, who I don't think had ever heard me play anything by Chris De Burgh, was walking around singing "A Spaceman Came Travelling" and it caught me by surprise. I tried to find out how he knew, he said he just did. We were in the car the other day, and I was playing The Getaway and I offered to change the music and he said It was the spaceman so it was okay.

And it was.