Ian Crichton:
A New Saga Begins
by Tommy Hashman Hash

Thirty years, countless albums, major label status, mainstream radio success, MTV rotation turned VH1 Classic rotation - they were a band truly ahead of their time since their inception in 1977 - and ever since then they have created a template for many bands to follow. WHether it was molded into '70 AOR Pomp Rock, to '80's metallic synth-pop to the prog rock of now, Saga have had a career that has outlasted most bands that try to fit in the mold of any type of scene or flavor of the day, they were often hard to categorize due to their originality. Numerous records behind them the band has had an identity that has kept every record met with open arms; but as their longtime voice, Michael Sadler, announced that he would be leaving the fold to spend time with family, we all wondered what would become of the band.

What became of the band was another record of Saga tunes that completely started a rebirth for the band with Final Frontier vocalist Rob Moratti at the helm; with one listen to the latest work, The Human Condition, with their new vocalist, it is clear that the band's new voice has been found. With the new records being met with open arms and all apprehension gone, as reviews of the record have shown, the band has moved on and there is no need to dwell on anything either. Guitarist Ian Crichton topped by Ytsejam.com to speak about the band's current musical endeavor, the rich history, and what might behold the future, amongst other things.

"It's been going great, fortunately," begins Crichton about the transition, "with a band like us after being with Michael Sadler for 30 years, to even attempt it in any way is straining. But the thing for us, Jim and I, we're brothers so we have been playing together forever and we definitely want to keep playing, keep making this great band happen - so we found Rob Moratti. It's going really good, it's charted in Europe and we are going to do a tour, it has been received very well, all the reviews have been great so it's a nice fresh sound for us. In fact Mike Sadler actually called us up as soon as he got his copy to congratulate us on how well we did."

The band has countless albums, going from records such as their self-titled debut, to their mega blockbuster Worlds Apart, to lesser known records such as Wildest Dreams to progressive rock masterpieces known as Marathon and Trust, the band maintans their own signature sound, but always shuns redundancy, "We have definitely evolved haven't we over the years," laughs Crichton, "Its difficult to say where the new record stands (musically), but it was molded by with Rob during the past year when we were doing this. All the music in Saga has been written by myself, Jim Gimour, and my brother Jim Crichton - every note since the early nineties, over the past fifteen years - it's pretty much the next Saga record, but with Rob Moratti singing on it, maybe fresher"

The Human Condition is a concept record, in fact Crichton reveals that most Saga records hold true to a storyline, but they don't have the harsh atmosphere that most concept records do, where you have to pay too much attention, nevertheless, the concept formula has worked for the band when it comes down to writing the music and lyrics as the guitarist explains, "Most of our albums actually are, we are not very obvious about it, we don't 'make a giant point and do a whole record about it.' It's nice, when you sit down to compose an album, that is entertaining and something that you want to listen to; it's always great for us to always have some sort of type of theme or subject matter to be basing the record on - everything seems to come into place that way rather than songs that are all over the map, which are good, but we always tie it in with a theme"

The band was signed to Portrait/CBS Records (now Epic/Sony) for the early part of their career, at the time the label was home to many successful artists such as Heart, Cyndi Lauper, Eddie Grant, Accept, and Orion the Hunter among others - no slouch of a conglomerate's division. The era with Portrait saw Saga produce hits such as their biggest, "On the Loose;" but even with the cash roll from the record company and the success coming in at the same time, the trappings of a major label - the pressure to create a hit commercial record rather than creating a record on the band's terms did wear thin, as the band would eventually jump to various majors to their current deal with SPV Records and their progressive rock division Inside Out Music, this recent deal has worked well.

"In the 80's we were on MTV for the entire decade, it got a little soft around the end (of the decade)," elaborates Crichton, "When we had the hit with "On the Loose," we broke big in America, which was great and we toured the states for three years and opened up for everybody big at the time - the pressure from our label, oh yeah, they always wanted a hit. In hindsight, I think that we should have kept doing what we wanted to do, most bands should, really - because it ends up being a mixture of what you want to do and also trying to appease everyone at the same time; we tried doing that a couple of times but we always go back to the prog thing - it's always worked the best for us. "On the Loose" and "Wind Him Up" were on our fourth album Worlds Apart, which we just wrote those songs, that material was just "us." I mean, we wrote all that stuff and that was the best stuff that we had written for that record that would became Worlds Apart, it was as simple as that and it became a hit - then the next thing is that you have to duplicate that, so you sit down at the drawing board again and you're not necessarily in the same mood, space, etc... - it's always difficult for a band to duplicate their biggest hit record but the best thing you can do is just be honest to yourself, if you are honest to yourself you can expect other people to like it, if not, it's not for the right cause. I can see the record companies point, but it's still wrong from a creative point of view. With SPV, we have all the freedom in the world; in fact, we are encouraged to go off into left field. Our former management took care of that and the deal was brought to the table, I thankful to be with a label that is much more pro-active than the majors; with the majors you can get lost, unless you are in the circle of the chosen pop bands that they push. All big companies like that work that way, they get a bite they see how far they can go with it. We were also with Polydor before SPV and we were getting dismayed with them, as they were moving into the 'boy bands' and stuff like that, so it wasn't working for us - so SPV was a great choice for us, especially with their Inside Out Division, they have been very supportive of us all the way."

In the past few years, between studio albums Saga has released inventive live projects that go beyond the typical 'live album' stature. Both The Chapters Live and Worlds Apart Revisited are how the band could take their existing music and take it to another level. There are some ideas to maybe do some things in this type of manner, but due to time constrains and financial issues, nothing is in stone, "It's a bit late on the table right now," explains Crichton, "but it was suggested to me a few days ago to do a DVD for what the band is doing now - our very first tour with a new singer, but again, it's a bit late in the day, we have had so much to do with this new record, which was kicked in to high gear late last year, where I had my brother Jim come up here to Ontario from Los Angeles, to a cottage up in Orillia, just north of a town called Barrie - we were snowed in and that is where we arranged The Human Condition, it took two weeks to do that out of all the material the three of us had written and then we went on into January - getting the tour together, the record, the mixing up until now and then this DVD proposal comes into my face. I'd love to do it, but I'll have to talk to the people that proposed it to us, maybe we can work something out during the tour. Another idea was to have somebody film a song every night because we are doing twenty-eight cities, so rather than do DVD as par usual in one venue filmed, it would be a different song at a different venue - great idea, but very expensive, so that idea was kind of shot down. Also we would like to bring a cameraman along for say a bonus DVD fro our next album, maybe he can film some footage here and there, some interviews and stuff like that, that's nice to add to a release - things like that are also important to have as a bonus, especially with the downloading and all; it's good to give people more for their money too. So this next Saga album, I'm trying to talk the guys into doing this double studio album with a giant bonus DVD attached with a big booklet and all that type of stuff, rather than just the CD because it's better for people."

Even though the new record has just hit the racks, the thought process never stops for the band when it comes to writing music, as the band is eager to get to the drawing board to write the follow up to their latest record. "The ideas are flowing like crazy," says Crichton, "I'm dying to sit down and write right now with this new thing, I've got a new blast of life, the band has a new sound and all, I could start writing right now, but I have to go do this tour. As soon as we get back we will dive right into it; we will be doing some sparse shows after this tour, I'm hoping to get some shows in the U.S., we have about five in Canada right now, our North American agent books some great Juno award winning bands, so she has a lot of clout and we have high hope for that"

The final word is about the music industry and with as many albums that Crichton has recorded over the years, it's no surprise that the technology advances in recording have been the biggest thing on his mind when it comes to the changes over the band's career, "The whole recording process, it's like driving a Ferarri as opposed to a broken down VW Beetle," concludes Crichton, "Sonically, analog tape was great, I love it we still use it, but the advantages with Pro-Tools is great for songwriting; when I write for Saga I demo stuff with bass, guitars, drums, everything but we never use Pro-Tools to record our records, it's just used to present demos and songs to the band. I do find that the plug-ins although great too, nothing beats a nice piece of hardware like a compressor, Neve EQ's as opposed to the software version. Both methods are great, but sonically tape is better, and more expensive."

Copyright & Publishing: 2009 Tommy Hash for Ytsejam.com