They rented a holiday cottage on Anglesey in the dead of winter because out of season it was cheap, and spent the early weeks of 1973 writing there. The weather, by Martin Turner’s account, was brutal. Traffic and Led Zeppelin had done the same thing and it had worked for them. Then Wishbone Ash went into the studio without Derek Lawrence for the first time and produced themselves. The album that came out went to number 12 — their second-best chart placing ever — and has been argued about ever since.

The short version

Wishbone Four is the band’s fourth album, released in 1973 on MCA, one year after Argus. It is the first Wishbone Ash record produced by the band themselves. The line-up is Andy Powell and Ted Turner on guitars and vocals, Martin Turner on bass and vocals, Steve Upton on drums — the last studio album by the original four, and the last with Ted Turner, who left in early 1974. Eight tracks, all credited to the group. George Nash plays keyboards, Graham Maitland piano, and Bud Parks, Dave Coxhill and Phil Kenzie make up a horn section — the first horns the band ever used. So Many Things to Say was the single. It reached number 12 in Britain and 44 in America.

A cottage on Anglesey

Writing in the countryside was simply what bands did in 1973 — Traffic, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple had all prepared albums that way — and the point, as Turner tells it, was to escape ordinary routines and give the music twenty-four hours a day. What he does not gloss over is that tensions flared and the writing stalled. He was also, by his own description, the only one of the four fascinated by recording itself: he had begun assembling his own equipment and taping song sketches at home with acoustic guitar, voice and bass. That habit runs straight through this band’s story — by 1979 he had a full studio at home and was producing Just Testing, which is the album he left over. Here it is just a man with a tape machine and some ideas, and no producer in the room to argue with.

The sound

Varied, which is the polite word, and unbalanced, which is the accurate one. Where Argus had cohesion, a mood and a loose thread of medieval England running through it, this has eight songs pulling in different directions: half of them built on acoustic folk, two aggressive melodic rockers placed one per side, and a horn section on another. Some of it is lovely. What is missing is the thing the band exist for — the extended harmonised twin leads are present only in hints, and the long guitar flights that made Argus soar never quite arrive. It is not a bad album by any measure. It is a band choosing breadth over the one trick nobody else could do, and doing it without an outside ear in the room to tell them.

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The songs

So Many Things to Say opens heavy and intense, the guitars in a fine symbiosis, and it is the best rock moment here. Ballad of the Beacon is the folk one, sung by Powell, with lovely solos and distinct vocal harmonies — typical of the band at their best and a genuine highlight. No Easy Road is short, direct and carries the horns; it had already been out as a single the previous year. Everybody Needs a Friend runs eight and a half minutes with George Nash’s keyboards underneath, recalls the finest moments of Pilgrimage, and is held by a good many people to be one of the loveliest things the band ever wrote — though others find it drifts. Doctor wakes everything up: hard rock, flaming guitars, and Martin Turner’s bass at its most underrated. Sorrel is intimate and the most expressly folk thing here, and is often named the best track. Sing Out the Song leans country. Rock ’n Roll Widow closes it as straight rock and roll.

Reception and legacy

Number 12 in Britain and 44 in America says the audience of 1973 had no complaints, and the fans of the time read it as growth — a band willing to experiment rather than remake Argus, the way Led Zeppelin III had confounded people two years before. The dissenting view has hardened since: a wobbly record, good tracks next to average ones, missing the guitar flights that are the band’s whole signature, and produced by four men who could have used somebody else’s ears. Both are fair. They did not repeat the experiment — the next album went to Bill Szymczyk in Miami. Live Dates followed later in 1973 and remains one of the great British live albums, and in December they headlined Alexandra Palace with Renaissance and Al Stewart supporting. Then Ted Turner left, and the first Wishbone Ash was over.

The verdict

For people who already know this band, and better than its reputation in some quarters allows. Start with Ballad of the Beacon, which is Wishbone Ash doing folk-rock as well as they ever did it. Then Doctor, loud, for the rhythm section. Then Sorrel. Everybody Needs a Friend is the one to decide for yourself — eight minutes that either move you or do not, with no middle ground on offer. Argus is where you begin and this is not that. But it is the last record the original four made together, it charted higher than anything except Argus, and there is more here than the standard verdict suggests.

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