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Is Pat Travers criminally underrated? Rush’s Alex Lifeson certainly thought so. But in recent years, Travers’ most famous champion has been Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt. Describing Travers’ 1979 in-concert album Live! Go For What You Know as his “funk rock bible”, Bettencourt often cites Toronto-born Patrick Henry Travers as a major influence. Indeed, the two guitarists played on stage together in Orange County, California, only last year.
Like his hero Jimi Hendrix (Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Ronnie Montrose were also influences), Travers made it in the UK first. One of his Stateside rock star mentors, Ronnie Hawkins, had cautioned: “Play to the world, kid, don’t just play to locals.” The precociously gifted Travers took his advice, moving to London in 1975 aged 21, and quickly scoring a deal with Polydor Records after a false start making demos with Steve Lillywhite (later producer for U2) and Mutt Lange (later Def Leppard’s Midas-touch producer circa Pyromania).
A powerful, soulful vocalist, a sterling songwriter and a guitar magus whose unique sound owed something to his earlier adoption of chorus, flanger and delay effects, Travers soon found a key foil in ace bassist Peter ‘Mars’ Cowling, who would help anchor the Pat Travers Band for much of the following decade. Drummers Nicko McBrain and Tommy Aldridge also spent time in his band.
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It was Neil Schon – whose band Journey the Pat Travers Band would support in the UK in 1979 – who introduced Travers to Pat Thrall, whose complementary, more histrionic lead guitar playing brought new colours to records such as 1978’s Heat In The Street. But even after Thrall bailed to join Glenn Hughes in the short-lived duo Hughes/Thrall, Travers proved to be more than capable of making other fine and forward-looking records – witness 1982’s Black Pearl, a true last-lost classic which Travers fought tooth and nail to make after legal wrangling with Polydor.
Today, Travers’ studio and live album release tally stands at well over 50. He has guested on records by Glenn Hughes (1977’s Play Me Out) and Extreme (1990’s Pornografitti), made a full-on jazz record (2019’s Swing!), and still gigs regularly in the US. Thanks to Rage Of Travers, a track on The Mountain Goats’ 2017 album Goths telling of Travers’ ire when Bauhaus declined to jam with him, he has also been immortalised in song. Long may he rock.
…and one to avoid
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