ASIA PHOENIX COMES FROM THE HEART

Asia’s forthcoming album Phoenix comes from the heart, quite literally.

After a successful tour in 2007 the original Asia, as they like to be known, are set to release their new album, Phoenix, on April 15 in North America. Drummer Carl Palmer, bassist and vocalist John Wetton, guitarist Steve Howe, and keyboardist Geoff Downes will tour in support of the album starting later on this month in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and then move on to other parts of the world.

The album was made with heart, literally, as John Wetton explains that it was started while recovering from his impromptu open heart surgery ordeal.

“Well, what precipitated this was the fact that I had this surgery in July last year and we had to cancel a tour. There was no way I could sing for two hours and play bass at the same time after being cracked open like a lobster, but what I could do when I got home was to start sittting at the piano and started to work out ideas about songs. And within a month or two, I was home all during August, Geoff [Downes] came down from where he lives and we spent a few days sitting at the piano formalizing ideas for the studio. It kind of forced us into making an album. We had no plans to do so up until then. We were going to go on tour again up until this happened. It kind of forced our hand to make a record, which isn’t a bad thing.”

Wetton said that it was a very dangerous condition of which he felt no symptoms.

“I didn’t. I went for a routine medical, which I passed, that was just before we were supposed to go on tour last year. My doctor being extremely bright and on top of things said, ‘There is one more test I want you to do. It’ll take ten minutes.’ I went along and had the test, and they sent the results through that afternoon to my doctor that afternoon who called me and said, ‘We’ve got a problem over here, I want you to see a cardiologist.’ I saw the cardiologist and he said, ‘Yeah, you’re blocked up. We’ve got to operate tonight, tonight?!”

Drummer Carl Palmer said the new album, Phoenix, is a little more “adult” when compared to their groundbreaking first album.

“It’s light. It’s more kind of Moody Blues. It depicts where we are now. There’s nothing heavy about it. There’s nothing really progressive about it, if you use the word progressive in such a way as having strange time signatures and having lots of arrangement. The arrangements and the orchestrations are extremely well worked out. There’s a lot of detail. It depends where you start to drop this coin. I don’t believe we are a progressive rock group anyway, that we came from that. I believe we have a style of our own. This is very adult sounding, I personally think. It’s for people who are our age I suppose. There are tracks like ‘Never Again’ and ‘Extraordinary Life,’ which are uptempo kind of rock songs, but it’s on the softer side. It’s on the softer side of life rather than the Metal side.”