Ian Crichton of SAGA

by Alexandra Mrozowska
— Senior Columnist —

When it comes to Metal, band mascots are somewhat a standard – we’re all more than familiar with the lovely countenances of Motörhead’s Snaggletooth or Iron Maiden’s Eddie. For whatever reason, it’s significantly different with other genres, including Progressive Rock. But there are some visually bold exceptions to the rule, including the trademark alien insect that graces the album artwork of the first three records by the Canadian band SAGA and resurfaces on 1999’s Full Circle after what we could call a total makeover.

The locust-like creature can be also seen on the cover of the brand new album by the aforementioned Oakville-based veterans, Symmetry. Set to be released on March the 12^th via earMUSIC/Edel, it finds SAGA revisiting their rich back catalog and delivering the classics in completely new, acoustic arrangements. Hardrock Haven caught up with the band’s guitarist Ian Crichton to discuss the challenge of turning Progressive Rock staples into the acoustic format, the circumstances of recording Symmetry and changes within the music industry he’s been a part of for more than four decades now.

Hardrock Haven: SAGA is one of these bands that planned to retire from touring but eventually changed their mind. With all that happened to the live music industry throughout the last twelve months, can you imagine yourself the band’s future with no live gigs?

Ian Crichton: No, I don’t really see that. It wouldn’t make me very happy just doing livestreams and things like that… If COVID keeps going for another year or so, possibly we might do something like that. Right now we have shows starting in June and we feel pretty good about Europe and the outdoor ones – and possibly Scandinavia in the fall, as they’re all booked as well. But you know, we don’t know for sure.

Hardrock Haven: And what do you think will be the long-term effects of the pandemic on the music industry?

Ian Crichton: Well, I think once it dies down, it’s gonna be flooded with all these bands going out and trying to play. You know, since the 1990s downloading free music has pretty much taken the market away as far as records go, so most income is derived by playing concerts. I think that when the pandemic is over, you’re gonna see a hell of a lot of bands up there (laughs).

Hardrock Haven: That’s one long-term effect of it we can all look forward to.

Ian Crichton: Yeah, there may be like five or six bands to see in a week.

Hardrock Haven: Obviously, the reason I’m starting with questions about the pandemic is that you’ve recorded your new album Symmetry during the lockdown. Where did the idea of re-recording SAGA’s classic songs in an acoustic format come from?

Ian Crichton: Well, in 2017 we did a last tour with my brother Jim [Crichton] as he’s not touring with us right now. And we talked about it for a while – about breaking our Progressive Rock down into acoustic versions… and I actually worked on some acoustic versions about eight to ten years ago. But when we’ve decided to do this tour with Jim, the idea was to open up for ourselves. So we had a backdrop aid – forty feet by thirty feet – which looks like the front cover of Symmetry really, an old library with plants growing in… And that covered up the main show, so in front of that we had accordion, clarinet, piano, me on acoustic… We did a forty-five minutes set and the audience loved it. And that kind of led to doing the record.

Hardrock Haven: Do you think celebrating the band’s legacy this way may actually introduce your newer or younger listeners to the classic catalog, or is it more of a nod and a wink to the fans who have been with you since the very beginning?

Ian Crichton: The idea of making the acoustic record was to make it exciting – not just strumming chords and sleepy. So I re-wrote the whole ending of “Wind Him Up,” with the fiddle player so that it’s a bit exciting. So it’s a bit of both really… I mean, there’s something for the people who have always liked the songs, but hopefully it attracts more people who like these new versions.

Hardrock Haven: You’ve also released a couple of videos for Symmetry, including “Always There” with fan footage…

Ian Crichton: That came from the record company, earMUSIC/Edel. [Before that] we’ve released just the lyric videos that earMUSIC/Edel put together for us. The idea on the last single was from them and they suggested that fans send in little pieces of footage that they could put together a video for – SAGA has just said, “Yeah, that’s a really good idea.” So they really put it together.

Hardrock Haven: Making such a video would be difficult – if not impossible – if we traveled back in time to when SAGA started. So would you say access to technology and all these things like social media are more of a blessing or a curse these days?

Ian Crichton: Well, social media and all that has been a blessing really. All of the social media makes you able to get in touch with people that like your band and announce things that you’re going to do… You know, the only downfall of the Internet in the music business was the whole audience taking music for free. That hurt the whole record sales thing. But outside of that, it’s a great tool.

Hardrock Haven: The issue most musicians have with music piracy is obvious, but what’s your opinion on what seems to be the actual alternative to that – streaming platforms?

Ian Crichton: People around Spotify and so on are extremely wealthy, but they pay the artists only the fractions of pennies. I’ve heard the biggest artists complaining about those people, so in a way, it helps a tiny bit – but in another way, it’s all one-sided.

Hardrock Haven: Unfortunately. Back to the new album, the cover artwork of Symmetry that you’ve mentioned as being inspired by the stage backdrop also features the alien insect character that is closely associated with SAGA even though it wasn’t present on most album covers. What was the idea behind resurrecting this figure on the cover of 1999’s Full Circle and having it resurface as the band’s “mascot” ever since?

Ian Crichton: Yeah, it has been with us since 1977 on our first records. It started with my brother Jim, whose concept was the story on our first four albums – it was all Chapters, each song was a Chapter. The first eight Chapters were split over the four albums [SAGA, 1978; Images At Twilight, 1979; Silent Knight, 1980 and Worlds Apart, 1981] in a different order and then a bunch of years later Jimmy finished the story and on Full Circle, we have Chapters on that record too. The creature comes back, again as a part of the story – he’s always been a logo for SAGA at the same time, and he’s always around.

Hardrock Haven: For recording Symmetry, you’ve joined forces with Shane Cook on fiddle and Stefany Seki and Beth Silver on cello. What do you think each of them brought into the recordings?

Ian Crichton: They brought their own personalities, especially Shane Cook. It’s been great playing with him. You know, we really wanted [to have] a real fiddle player [on the album] rather than samples. You can really tell the difference – you can hear the style and the feel… To use real instruments instead of synthesizers was also the idea, them taking the place of what we normally do.

Hardrock Haven: And speaking about the tracklist of Symmetry, what’s prompted the choice of these particular songs on the album and was it challenging to make this album cohesive?

Ian Crichton: When we started working on the album, I just had to figure out what was gonna work. You know, I had the guitar and the banjo sitting there – I thought of “Wind Him Up” for instance, that it’s a good idea to do this song and I asked [myself] what I can do with it. So I sat down and started to playing with it just to see how it comes out – pretty much how the other songs did. You know, the medleys on the record… I mean, the tracks are all from different records and one of those [medleys] is what I put together years ago and presented it for this record. My brother Jim rearranged it and it just fits musically. And yeah, I actually did a couple of acoustic guitar things in between songs and Jim Gilmour did a piano piece in there too, just sewing the record together… trying to tie it all together as a one record,

Hardrock Haven: Has the process of working on the album made you see the songs you’ve written and played for years in a new light and discover something new about them?

Ian Crichton: I didn’t discover anything new except for the implementation of turning them into acoustic songs. It was challenging to make them come across the way we wanted to. Like I’ve said, I didn’t want this record to be sounding sleepy, so we wanted to keep it exciting overall – except for the slower songs, of course.

Hardrock Haven: So would you agree with what’s been said about Symmetry – that it still shows the complexity of SAGA’s songs?

Ian Crichton: Shows the complexity – yes. As far as complexity is concerned, we don’t really do that so much on purpose, just putting a different twist on things.

Hardrock Haven: Do you as a listener like when other artists revisit and re-record their catalog, for example in the acoustic or orchestral format?

Ian Crichton: No, I don’t. When we started doing it, our record company thought we might be doing it like a small orchestra, like others have been doing it, but it wasn’t the idea for this record. Some other bands, like Foreigner and other stuff, do a full Metal record and then have an orchestra and a choir behind them and that’s really quite big. And we didn’t the album to be big like an orchestra; we wanted it to be more like six or seven people type of thing.

Hardrock Haven: Genre-wise, SAGA’s albums has been classified very differently by the reviewers over the years, from Progressive Rock to even Pomp Rock/AOR. From the viewpoint of the creator, which influences you would say were more prominent?

Ian Crichton: SAGA’s definitely a Progressive Rock band. We’re a Rock/Progressive Rock band. I mean, we have songs like “On The Loose,” which was Top 10 US and really made it for us, and on the other hand we have songs like “Don’t Be Late” which has orchestration in it and [is] complicated. So, we’ve always been [playing] in what’s really the SAGA’s style. It’s our own style, and it’s a mixture of Rock and Progressive Rock. We are guilty (laughs) of having a couple of AOR type songs in our career, but I don’t think they really worked for us and that’s not really us.

Hardrock Haven: Speaking of genres, when we think the golden age of Prog Rock we usually think the ‘70s and the early ‘80s, but differently from other sub-genres of Rock, it never went completely underground and managed to maintain a steady fanbase. Why do you think it is so?

Ian Crichton: Well, I think the thing with Progressive Rock bands is that every band sounds different. I mean, bands in general didn’t sound like one another only until the ‘80s came along and it all became ‘80s Rock songs, you know, power ballads and these kinds of things. All these bands started to use the same sort of formula, and then just continued with that. Then the ‘90s came, Grunge came in and every band sounded like a Grunge band. But getting back to the ‘70s, everyone had their own style and everyone wanted to do [things] their own way and that’s what spurred so many different things.

Hardrock Haven: Absolutely. And being active since 1977, SAGA couldn’t avoid certain line-up changes. How do you think these changes influenced the band and the band’s sound?

Ian Crichton: Yeah, changes happen when you’ve been working for so many years. It definitely affects the record – you know, a different drummer, different keys… I think we only did two records – Wildest Dreams [1987] and The Beginner’s Guide To Throwing Shapes – without Jim Gilmour, ‘cause he came back for The Security Of Illusion and has been here since. So overall it was mainly changing drummers and I have to admit it did add a flavor to each record.

Hardrock Haven: As you’ve been observing the music industry for so many years now, both in Canada and worldwide, do you think it’s changed for better or for worse especially in the last two decades?

Ian Crichton: It’ll never be as healthy as the ‘70s and the ‘80s. I mean, it has a business, a world business where people have to go out and buy your CD and record – that creates a really great business. I don’t know what’s happening with that, but fortunately SAGA fans internationally still buy our CDs. It’s not like in the ‘80s, but they still prefer to have something in their hand rather than just download a song. I don’t think it’s more difficult now – back in the day you had to have a record company’s approval to get any advertising or your record out, anything. For years and years now, social media allowed everybody to put out their music and the market became very saturated. Anyone can put anything out. So, there seems to be a pile of product out there that just kind of clutters [it]… But that’s never gonna stop. Is it healthier now…? I don’t think so, but there’s just no other way to move on.

Hardrock Haven: And speaking about moving on, you’ve mentioned the band’s plans as far as scheduled concerts are concerned. Are there any other plans, related to recording for example, once everything’s back to normal?

Ian Crichton: Yeah, we’re talking about it lately – about some song ideas for a new SAGA record… But we’re not announcing that we’re doing that yet, so we’re just thinking about it. We’re getting a rave reaction from the acoustic record and getting a lot of requests to go out touring with that, so that could be in the future too. We’ll see what happens with that. But the more the COVID hangs in, the more recording and all that will be considered, you know.

Hardrock Haven: Absolutely. And do you also consider perhaps to resurrect your solo career sometime in the future?

Ian Crichton: Wow, now I’m impressed! Yeah, that was a long time ago. You know, in ’95 I whipped out that record [Welcome To The Boom Boom Room] with a lead singer of a famous Canadian band called Haywire, Paul MacAusland. And we just made these songs in the studio and that’s okay. The next one that I went on [Ghettos By Design, 1997] was with some younger guys, and it’s a whole different style – and at this point, it has been probably like twenty three years since I released a record. And… I am working on something right now actually, with somebody from England and California, but I can’t really talk about it right now… ‘cause until it’s for sure, then I shouldn’t be saying anything. But that is a possibility of coming up with something else guitar-wise.

Hardrock Haven: We’re looking forward to some official announcements then, hopefully. And is there anything you’d like to add in the end?

Ian Crichton: I just want to wish everyone good health and I hope that vaccine really does it as it seems to be the best hope for the moment. Let’s hope for the people to be getting back together again – and I wish everyone well!

Photo credits: Alexander Mertsch

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