''Romantic Warrior'' is the sixth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by the American

jazz fusion Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...

band Return to Forever, released in 1976 by

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

. After releasing their previous album, '' No Mystery'' (1975), their fourth for Polydor Records, the group moved to Columbia and retreated to Caribou Ranch near Nederland, Colorado to record their next album. It was also their first to be credited solely to Return to Forever, removing the "featuring Chick Corea" tag. The album is more avant-garde and less funky than ''No Mystery'', and remains the band's highest selling album with over 500,000 copies sold in the US.

Production

Recording

''Romantic Warrior'' was recorded in February 1976 at Caribou Ranch, located near Nederland, Colorado.

Music

Chick Corea Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", " 500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and ...

contributed the longest compositions while the other members each composed one piece. The opener, "Medieval Overture", with its distinctive melodic motifs, sets the mood for the rest of the album.

Lenny White Leonard "Lenny" White III (born December 19, 1949) is an American jazz fusion drummer who was a member of the band Return to Forever led by Chick Corea in the 1970s. White has been called "one of the founding fathers of jazz fusion". He has won ...

's "Sorceress" starts with a funky riff and is distinguished by Corea's synthesizers. The title track, "The Romantic Warrior", is fully acoustic. It has a long intro, which is followed by a short theme consisting of one riff. Each group member, excluding White, plays a long solo. An extended outro follows, during which fast unison patterns are heard. On side two, Al Di Meola's song, "Majestic Dance", relies on rock riffs and distorted lead guitar sound, and features fast harpsichord-like synth figures. Clarke's "The Magician" is a complex composition, featuring playful melodies, and rapid unison lines. The last track of the album is Corea's "Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant", the longest song on the album. It has a more conventional melody as a main theme, but follows the style of previous tracks. Notable is the intense keyboard solo showcasing Corea. After this album Corea decided that the group's time had come to an end and he continued with a new Return to Forever line-up with Clarke. Corea dedicated the album to the founder of the

Church of Scientology The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a scientology as a business, bu ...

L. Ron Hubbard Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author, primarily of science fiction and fantasy stories, who is best known for having founded the Church of Scientology. In 1950, Hubbard authored '' Dianetic ...

Critical reception

In a retrospective review for AllMusic, William Ruhlmann praised ''Romantic Warrior'' as "the sound of a mature band at the top of its game, which may help explain why it was Return to Forever's most popular album, eventually certified as a gold record, and the last by this assemblage." In another retrospective review for Sputnikmusic, Brendan Schroer argued that the "true magic of the collective’s work was in how these musicians could work off each other and make something both emotionally resonant and musically abstruse" and opined that "''Romantic Warrior'' plays out as a wonderful - if slightly flawed - melding of incredible technical feats and inner-band chemistry". Noted rock-fusion-despising critic

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

was less enthusiastic about the record. In '' Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies'' (1981), he called it "jazz-rock's answer to Emerson, Lake & Palmer--the worst of both worlds"; and Corea's compositions "pompous", faux classical; while deriding certain members of his group's playing as being on display "in all their dazzling vacuity".

Chart performance

Track listing

Personnel

Return to Forever *

– acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes electric piano, Hohner Clavinet, Yamaha YC45d organ,

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

s (

ARP Odyssey The ARP Odyssey is an analog synthesizer introduced by ARP Instruments in 1972. History ARP developed the Odyssey as a direct competitor to the Moog Minimoog and an answer to the demand for more affordable, portable, and less complicated "perf ...

Micromoog The Moog model 2090 Micromoog is a monophonic analog synthesizer produced by Moog Music from 1975 to 1979. During 1973 and 1974, Moog attempted to produce a synth system, possibly as a result of seeing Yamaha's massive GX-1. The bass and pol ...

Minimoog The Minimoog is an analog synthesizer first manufactured by Moog Music between 1970 and 1981. Designed as a more affordable, portable version of the modular Moog synthesizer, it was the first synthesizer sold in retail stores. It was first popul ...

, Moog 15 modular, Polymoog), marimba, percussion *

Al Di Meola Albert Laurence Di Meola (born July 22, 1954) is an American guitarist. Known for his works in jazz fusion and world music, he began his career as a guitarist of the group Return to Forever in 1974. Between the 1970s and 1980s, albums such as ' ...

– electric guitars,

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

soprano guitar A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...

, handbells,

slide whistle A slide whistle (variously known as a swanee or swannee whistle, lotos flute piston flute, or jazz flute) is a wind instrument consisting of a fipple like a recorder's and a tube with a piston in it. Thus it has an air reed like some woodwinds ...

* Stanley Clarke – Alembic electric bass with Instant Flanger,

piccolo bass A piccolo bass is either an electric bass or acoustic double bass which has been tuned to a higher frequency, usually one octave higher than conventional bass tuning. This allows bass players to use higher registers during soloing while retaining ...

, acoustic bass, bell tree, handbells *

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, timpani,

conga The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...

s, timbales,

snare drum The snare (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used ...

s, suspended cymbals,

alarm clock An alarm clock (or sometimes just an alarm) is a clock that is designed to alert an individual or group of individuals at a specified time. The primary function of these clocks is to awaken people from their night's sleep or short naps; they ar ...

, handbells Production * Chick Corea – producer * Al Di Meola – assistant producer * Stanley Clarke – assistant producer * Lenny White – assistant producer * Dennis MacKay – recording engineer, remixing * Tom Likes – assistant engineer *

Wilson McLean Wilson McLean (born 1937) is a Scottish illustrator and artist. He has illustrated primarily in the field of advertising, but has also provided cover art for music albums, sports magazines (including Sports Illustrated), a children's book, and oth ...

– cover art * Gerard Huerta – logo

References

External links

Return to Forever ''Romantic Warrior'' (1976) album review by William Ruhlmann, credits & releases
at AllMusic
Return to Forever ''Romantic Warrior'' (1976) album releases & credits
at Discogs
Return to Forever ''Romantic Warrior'' (1976) album to be listened
as stream on Spotify {{Authority control 1976 albums Columbia Records albums Return to Forever albums