Crossings

In February 1972, Hancock and his group entered Pacific Recording Studios in San Mateo, California to make Crossings. Rubinson suggested that Pat Gleeson come in and set up his Moog synthesiser for Hancock to play. “Electronics was associated with rock n’ roll at the time. The synthesisers, just the sound of the stuff,” said Hancock. “And so we felt like if we could do anything that could link us somehow to a wider audience, as weird as the music was, it could possibly help sales.” Although sceptical at first, Hancock was quite taken by the synthesiser and asked Gleason not only to do the overdubs on his album but join the group, making it one of the first groups to take a synthesiser out on the road.

On the strength of the new ‘electronic’ sounds, the band was booked into rock venues such as Fillmore, Fillmore East, the Winterlands and San Francisco’s Both/And. The spiritual/sensual ‘space’ grooves of his Crossings music and the spiral of rhythms swirling within created music that not only was of its time but has outlived them, music that is of a piece. “Sometimes you can take someone who knows nothing of the kind of music you’re doing,” Hancock once reflected, “Their hearing can sometimes be so pure that it can go right to the heart, and they can really love it without having any intellectual understanding of it. And that kind of music, even though intellect went into playing it, the purpose was really non-intellectual. It was purely emotional.” – Stuart Nicholson, 2001 Remastered Edition Liner Notes