Martin Turner left because the band wanted a proper frontman and wanted to restrict him to bass. So they replaced him with John Wetton — Family, King Crimson, Roxy Music, Uriah Heep, UK — who was, by a distance, the best singer any of them had ever worked with. And then they gave him one lead vocal. He walked out before the tour, and eleven months later he surfaced with Asia. This is the only Wishbone Ash album he made, and the missed opportunity is audible in every bar of it.

The short version

Number the Brave is Wishbone Ash’s eleventh studio album, released in April 1981 on MCA and produced by Nigel Gray, who had just made his name with the Police. It is the first record in the band’s history made without founding bassist and vocalist Martin Turner, who had left the previous year. The line-up is Andy Powell on guitar and vocals, Laurie Wisefield on guitar, slide and vocals, John Wetton on bass, keyboards and vocals, Steve Upton on drums. Claire Hamill sings backing vocals and joined the band properly for the 1981 tour. Ten tracks — the running order differs between editions. Powell and Wisefield share the lead vocals, Wisefield taking more of them; Wetton sings one.

The best singer in the room

The logic of hiring Wetton is unimpeachable. Powell and Wisefield were fine songwriters and better guitarists, but neither was a natural frontman, and Turner had been carrying the vocals since 1969. Wetton could sing anything, had a resume that read like a history of the genre, and played bass with a funk that this band had never had. What arrives instead is an album where he plays superbly, contributes one song, sings it, and otherwise stays in the rhythm section. Listeners at the time assumed he must have joined late in the sessions. Whatever the reason, it did not hold: he was gone before the supporting tour, replaced by Trevor Bolder, who had already succeeded him once before in Uriah Heep. In March 1982 he reappeared with Steve Howe, Carl Palmer and Geoff Downes, and the rest is a different story entirely.

The sound

Bright, quick and audibly 1981. Gray was a thoroughly modern engineer and he gives the band a lively, clean, radio-shaped sound that has almost nothing in common with the warm Decca haze of the early records — whether that reads as a refresh or as the eighties arriving with their worst habits depends on your tolerance. Underneath it, the twin guitars are in good order and the duels are still there, Wisefield’s slide is back, and Wetton’s bass gives several of these tracks a push they would not otherwise have. This is straightforward dual-guitar hard rock with tight song structures and no epics; it is among the least progressive things the band ever released, and it is very well played. Powell and Wisefield also wrote well here, which the reviews of the day tended to skip past.

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The songs

Loaded is the opener on most pressings, sung by Powell and Wisefield with Hamill behind them, and it makes clear immediately that the line-up change has not cost the band a step. Where Is the Love brings back the slide over a bouncing blues-rock shuffle. Underground is the one that reaches back — acoustic guitars, a nod to the good years, and a superb closing solo from Wisefield and Powell. Kicks on the Street and Open Road are more wired than this band usually gets, the latter kicked off by an Upton drum intro. Get Ready is the Motown cover, a Smokey Robinson song turned into fairly conventional hard rock. Rainstorm is elegant. That’s That is Wetton’s: the hardest thing here, the bass right up front where it belongs, and the only place on the record where you hear what this line-up could have been. Roller Coaster has a reggae lilt and percussion. And the title track closes it, sung by Powell over vocal harmonies, and it smells like the old band.

Reception and legacy

Polarising and, on balance, better than the catastrophe people expected. One camp files it as the moment Wishbone Ash walked into the eighties and picked up the decade’s bad habits, and notes that the band obviously missed their founder’s spirit. The other calls it one of their strongest, credits Gray’s production and Wetton’s playing with reviving them, and points at Underground, Rainstorm and the title track. Nobody argues that it is Argus, and nobody claims there are weak tracks on it either. It has since fallen so far out of print that finding a copy is genuinely difficult. Bolder came in, Twin Barrels Burning followed in 1982 with a new fondness for ZZ Top, and the road from here is long, winding and mostly downhill.

The verdict

For completists, and more rewarding than you expect. Start with That’s That, all three minutes of it, and hear the album this could have been if anyone had thought to hand Wetton a microphone more than once. Then Underground, which is the best song here and the most Wishbone Ash. Then the title track for the harmonies. Argus is where you begin and No Smoke Without Fire is the late-period one to own. But this is the record where a great band and a great singer occupied the same room for a few months and very nearly made something, and near-misses are their own kind of interesting.

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