Jon Anderson: In the City of Angels

ou may remember I've been conducting a price watch on Jon Anderson's (pretty shoddy) Christmas album 3 Ships. Last July it was an implausible 52 quid; but by February this year that was up to an incredible 260 quid. Evidently Jon spotted the market demand and put out a "22nd Anniversary" CD issue, which has deflated the price of the vinyl to £19.99.

In the City of Angels is the follow up to 3 Ships, bought out of loyalty to my younger self (plus curiosity), and it's not much better. One assumes Jon had recently moved to LA — never a wise move for someone whose grip on reality was already tenuous. Evidently he had also absorbed a desire to make more money as quickly as possible. His divorce was still several years in the future, so that can't have been behind it, surely. Maybe it was just born-again materialism that inspired this glossy, inane, FM/CD-friendly pop-rock?

Not that the trademark uplifting spirituality has disappeared completely. It's certainly there is the stirring sweep of the choruses of the last two songs. And, at its most ludicrously pretentious, in their subtitles. Hurry Home is, to give it its full title, Hurry Home (Song from the Pleiades) — first verse: "The breakthrough was needed / By the sign of the day / Singing out our revolution / Children show the way". Let's be charitable; maybe Pleiades was the name of Jon's house in Laurel Canyon or wherever. But as for Top of the World (The Glass Bead Game), well, I've read The Glass Bead Game. Granted, it was 25 years ago, and my memory isn't perfect, but I'm pretty sure the book had no mention of a "tiger mystic" or a unicorn, or indeed, one single element of the lyrics of Top of the World. So what gives, Jon? Were you just taking the piss?

Get well soon, all the same.

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