Characteristically, Winwood - as obliging a bloke as you'll find - isn't disturbed that people sometimes fail to associate him with the best-known song of his career, a song that has been a dance-floor burner since he co-wrote and sang it as a teenage prodigy with the Spencer Davis Group in 1966. Perversely, he almost seems to enjoy the lack of recognition.
Mr. Winwood has drawn on soul music since his teens, when as the lead singer for the Spencer Davis Group he delivered some of the richest, reediest vocals in British pop. With Traffic, in the late 1960's and early 1970's, he also dipped into jazz and Caribbean music. With his first solo album in 1977, Mr. Winwood began to smooth out and focus his songs to provide reassurance above all. His current hit, ''Roll With It,'' echoes his first Spencer Davis Group successes, but where the old songs were frantic with lust, ''Roll With It'' is reflective; it's also deliberately backward-looking, copying old Memphis soul instead of adapting it.
"I primarily came through rock 'n' roll as a musician," he says, "from the musician's side of rock 'n' roll. Many people think that rock 'n roll is a lot of things .. a way of life, a social statement, etcetera. But for me, rock 'n; roll has always been music. Of course, having said that, I realize that if you sing songs and make records you are actually an entertainer whether you like it or not, and some people say they are artists and all this ..." The quote collapses with exhaustion. Somewhere in the dim lights, coffee is poured.
Winwood on a "Roll"
First new album and single since 1986 mark his Virgin Records debut
Roll With It, Steve Winwood's first album of new music since his 1986 multiplatinum release Back in the High Life, hits the stores late this month. The title track of the album was released as a single in May, and Winwood kicks off a two-month tour of the United States on July 7.
Produced by Winwood and Tom Lord Alge - who helped engineer Back in the High Life - Roll With It was recorded in Dublin and Toronto and picks up where the preceding album left off. "Back in the High Life was a very successful album," Winwood says, "and we wanted to use various elements that we used on it." As on his previous solo outings, Winwood handles the lion's share of the instruments on Roll With It; key-boardists Robby Kilgore and Mike Lawer and drummers John Robinson and Jimmy Bralower appear as sidemen.