Trower’s Travails

IT’S ONE THING to be influenced by Jimi Hendrix, it's something else altogether to be hounded by Hendrix' ghost, as Robin Trower has been for a decade-and-a-half. When the now 40 year old guitarist launched his solo career in 1973 after leaving Procol Harum, Jimi's forlorn legions identified Robin's Stratocaster underseascapes as the genuine article – if not quite The Real Thing – bestowing an almost cosmic significance to his quicksilver runs and hazy astral atmospherics.