"While I was with Procol Harum, the only time I'd see my guitar was either when I walked onstage or in the studio"
About this Quote
There is a particular kind of confinement hiding in Robin Trower’s matter-of-fact line: the guitar as both identity and absentee. If the only time he “saw” his instrument was onstage or in the studio, that’s not romance, it’s labor. The sentence quietly punctures the mythology of the band as a bohemian family where creativity spills into every hour. Instead, Trower sketches an assembly-line version of rock stardom: show up, perform, record, disappear into the machinery again.
The phrasing is telling. He doesn’t say “played my guitar” or “practiced”; he says “see my guitar,” turning the instrument into a prop managed by someone else. That hints at a professional ecosystem where gear is handled by crew, schedules are dictated by management, and musicians can become employees inside their own story. It also carries the subtext of distance - from the instrument, from autonomy, from the intimate routines that build a personal sound.
Context matters: Procol Harum were a serious, touring-and-recording outfit in an era when bands could be worked relentlessly, and when a “guitarist” might be expected to slot into arrangements rather than reshape them. Read this way, the quote becomes a backdoor explanation for why Trower’s later solo identity hit with such force. It’s the sound of someone remembering what it felt like to be indispensable on the bill, yet oddly removed from the thing that made him indispensable.
The phrasing is telling. He doesn’t say “played my guitar” or “practiced”; he says “see my guitar,” turning the instrument into a prop managed by someone else. That hints at a professional ecosystem where gear is handled by crew, schedules are dictated by management, and musicians can become employees inside their own story. It also carries the subtext of distance - from the instrument, from autonomy, from the intimate routines that build a personal sound.
Context matters: Procol Harum were a serious, touring-and-recording outfit in an era when bands could be worked relentlessly, and when a “guitarist” might be expected to slot into arrangements rather than reshape them. Read this way, the quote becomes a backdoor explanation for why Trower’s later solo identity hit with such force. It’s the sound of someone remembering what it felt like to be indispensable on the bill, yet oddly removed from the thing that made him indispensable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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