Regarding possible tensions between Roine and Neal, I think I have seen/heard/read some stuff that might indicate that Roine may have had some hard feelings when it came to Neal wanting to do his own version of the album. Despite saying he was an "equal opportunity" editor when it came to taking out people's music, I feel like Neal took out a lot of Roine's music and parts, including one big contribution in "The World We Used To Know", and he even wrote in new guitar parts he played himself.
Like, I get it, Neal wanted to craft a single-disc stand-alone album and needed to edit some stuff around and add new things to make it coherent, but at the same time, it almost felt unnecessary. I think Neal may have felt like he didn't get his way enough during the TAU sessions, and I kind of sensed that watching the Making Of video. They didn't write the album at his home studio, so maybe Neal felt out of his comfort zone, and Roine did end up with quite a bit of good material on Forevermore, probably more material than he is used to having on a TA album (percentage wise).
I think these tensions may have even started during the Kaleidoscope sessions, as Roine didn't even perform on "Beyond The Sun" (the slide guitar is credited to Rich Mouser), as he didn't feel like it needed to be the album at all, and more or less refused to write/record any guitar parts for it, so Neal got Rich to do some. I think Roine didn't think too highly of Kaleidoscope as a whole, though he did contribute to the best part of "Shine" with the guitar solo/bridge, which, without it, would have been a fairly boring Neal Morse solo acoustic guitar ballad, and an even poorer man's "We All Need Some Light".
I think if Pete hadn't initially thought that TA5 should have been shorter, then when Neal had the idea to make an edit, there might not have been a 2-vs-2 vote on how to format the album. Thankfully Mike's idea to present both to Inside Out made it so that the band could continue working on the album and release it, because I'm not sure if it would've happened had they reached an impasse and could not agree on what to do with the album. Perhaps it would've just been edited down slightly to fit 80 minutes, and then we'd all directly compare it to The Whirlwind. Giving us simultaneously the longest and shortest TA album the band has released makes The Absolute Universe stand out among the other four albums because it's a unique way to present the material, and probably something that won't ever happen again (at least with Transatlantic).
If COVID didn't happen, we would've only gotten Forevermore, and I think they would've toured on it just fine, and perhaps there would not be any possible tensions or hard feelings, at least from Roine, but I wonder if Neal would have ever come out and said that he really wanted the album to be a shorter, single disc album. But because the pandemic DID happen, they both got their own versions of the album out, and do not have to worry about how to play the album live for a possible tour. Part of me thinks they are both glad they don't have to tour TAU, because I'm sure the logistics of figuring out how to play it all might have caused some more tension between them. Maybe once a Transatlantic tour is possible, they'll have talked it out and may be things will be good enough between them. I just don't want them to split the band up because of it and never play The Absolute Universe (any version of it) live. It'd be like Spock's Beard's Snow all over again, with no proper tour, and the only hope being a huge reunion show over a decade later (and I doubt they'll all be willing to play a massive album like TAU when they're in their 60s/70s).
-Marc.
Topic: Transatlantic Official Thread (Read 531059 times)