'As a child prodigy (he was in his mid-teens) with the Spencer Davis Group, Winwood handled not only vocals and lead guitar, but also the organ which distinguished the band's sound. He left the group in 1967, after a string of hits, to form traffic, and he and his new mates found themselves under pressure to come across with the goods.'
Next to a splintered fence in the Gloucester Farm country, two men stand working. One, a local named Gordon Jackson, is commonly seen tending sheep nearby. The other, despite his short-cropped hair and casual tweeds, looks less like a gentleman farmer than an artist of some kind.
Something about his birdlike features and angular build would ring a bell in the mind of any Traffic fan. Yet this farmer has taken a wide detour from the intensity of those winter evenings in the early 70s when Traffic, the band he fronted, held sway over American Stadiums with its hypnotic rock & roll. Why is Steve Winwood, the maker of such hits as "Freedom Rider", "Dear Mr Fantasy", and "Gimme Some Lovin'", mending a fence? Hasn't it been three and a half years since the last Winwood album? Doesn't he have songs to get on with?
When Steve Winwood was 16 years old he was a rock star in England, as vocalist, pianist and guitarist with the Spencer Davis Group. When he was 20 he made an impressive American debut with Traffic, one of the finest and most influential progressive rock bands of the 1960's. Traffic rapidly won a large and loyal American following but by 1975, when Mr. Winwood was only 26, he had lived through 12 years on the road and felt he badly needed a rest. So Traffic disbanded, he bought a small farm north of London, and little was heard from him until last week, when his new solo album, ''Arc of a Diver,'' was released by Island Records.