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Thread: John Tout.....where does his legacy rate?

  1. #26
    Member bill g's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ProgArtist View Post
    And about songwriting credits:

    RF: You are obviously a songwriter: you contributed songs to Renaissance, you are doing a solo album now. During the Renaissance years, your songwriting didn’t appear on the albums until Scheherazade, and really not full bore until Song for All Seasons and Azure D’or. Why was that?

    JC: Do you want the truth? (laughs) I was writing for Renaissance for a long, long, long while before that. But I was just putting it into the band and was completely naïve and unfortunately other people took the credit for it. The beginning of Can You Understand: probably our greatest opening instrumental piece—writers Camp and Tout! I wrote most of the instrumental sections in Mother Russia. I was putting everything into the band, John [Tout] wrote a tremendous amount that he never got credited for. But I had been writing for a long, long while before that.
    Wow, that's interesting if true. Michael Dunford just doesn't seem the type to take credit for someone else's music, or maybe whoever did the album notes got it wrong??

  2. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by ProgArtist View Post
    Out of all my time here the thing that has surprised me the very most is how under-esteemed albums such as Scheherazade and Novella are in the community.
    Interesting thought. Without trying to be controversial or provocative, I would offer because they aren't really "rock" albums. Outside the obvious, there was always something about Renaissance's music that put it outside the din of rock music, perhaps they were larger than "just rock music". I think the live album Carnegie was such a popular album for them because it was the occasion where one could hear the band "rock out" .
    IMHO, of course
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  3. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by strawberrybrick View Post
    Interesting thought. Without trying to be controversial or provocative, I would offer because they aren't really "rock" albums. Outside the obvious, there was always something about Renaissance's music that put it outside the din of rock music, perhaps they were larger than "just rock music". I think the live album Carnegie was such a popular album for them because it was the occasion where one could hear the band "rock out" .
    IMHO, of course
    That could easily be the case, although I'm not sure there's that much more "rocking out" on Carnegie beyond the extended version of Ashes, which certainly has a lot of it, however! I think your suggestion is very plausible, though.
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  4. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by bill g View Post
    Wow, that's interesting if true. Michael Dunford just doesn't seem the type to take credit for someone else's music, or maybe whoever did the album notes got it wrong??
    Yeah, I wonder about this as well. Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly, but I thought I read that the rest of band didn't like Camp much towards the end, that he was something of an egotist? In any case, I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle. Of course, we know this sort of thing happened in many bands, Yes and Pink Floyd being the most obvious, where one person took credit for the work of the whole band (though in the case of Floyd, Waters usually did create the skeletons of all the songs, if not more).

  5. #30
    Member StevegSr's Avatar
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    That John Tout did not get many writing credits for the many piano intros and mid song instrumentals on numerous Renaissance songs was not an issue at the time, but his never getting credit for the band's song arrangements most certainly was.

    The 70's were draconian times when it came to songwriting credits and fairness was never the watchword.

    The reason the band the didn't like Camp towards the end is that he was very pushy about the band going into a pop direction in the early 80's and split after they lost their last recording contract around 1983, on short notice, while Annie Haslam and Micky Dunford stuck it out until 1987, playing small clubs and college campuses, without record company support, in the US until they were almost on the dole. Camp was a pushy but charismatic front man for group and was a great contrast to the reserved Haslam and quiet Dunford while on stage. I don't know what he was like off stage, however, and that might have been the problem with his relationship with Haslam and Dunford. Apart from splitting with the band on short notice years before.
    Last edited by StevegSr; 04-14-2016 at 03:58 PM.
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  6. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by infandous View Post
    Yeah, I wonder about this as well. Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly, but I thought I read that the rest of band didn't like Camp much towards the end, that he was something of an egotist? In any case, I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle. Of course, we know this sort of thing happened in many bands, Yes and Pink Floyd being the most obvious, where one person took credit for the work of the whole band (though in the case of Floyd, Waters usually did create the skeletons of all the songs, if not more).
    I'd recommend reading the interview I took those quotes from. http://renaissance-fanfare.net/forum...interview-2012 I skimmed a bit of it since I'm supposed to be working , but what I read was interesting. Camp talks a bit about his relationship with Dunford and Haslam at the end and being shafted from inclusion in Tuscany because of whatever happened. It also sounds like there would have been a full blown Renaissance reunion later with all 5 of the classic mid-70s members, but then Tout had a heart attack.
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  7. #32
    Member bill g's Avatar
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    Interesting points all. One thing I feel impelled to comment on. The last couple days I've embarked on a Renaissance binge, and listening to the DaCapo 2-disc compilation, I was struck at the difference in quality between the first and second incarnations of the band. The first four tracks are nice enough, folky, Jane Relf had a pretty good voice, and Hawken plays very well. But then the Haslam/Dunford/Tout incarnation comes in and BAM! Wow! The track, 'Prologue' just blew the socks off of the first four tracks, and then 'Bound For Infinity' comes in and Annie sounds so incredibly beautiful, I have to decide whether to fight the emotion, or just let the tears flow. And John Tout's playing is pure perfection. As good or better than anyone from the day. And I've become convinced he wrote the instrumental intro to 'Trip To The Fair'. I hadn't heard Renaissance in a very long while, and I am thinking they are better than I realized.

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