Baroness's Purple @ 10

The miraculous comeback album

It’s kind of amazing Baroness made Purple at all. Their 2012 album Yellow & Green had been a creative leap forward. Though it only contained 75 minutes of music, they released it as a double CD for artistic reasons, and its two halves were indeed very distinct. Each disc was introduced by an instrumental “theme”/overture, and Yellow focused more on pounding, psychedelic hard rock, while Green drifted in almost Radiohead-ish directions at times. Those who had seen them as perhaps the artiest of a wave of Southern art-metal acts that included Mastodon, Rwake, and Kylesa now had to reckon with their evolution into something new and utterly individual. I loved it instantly, and still do.

With it out in the world, they launched a tour. The first show was on April 26 in St. Louis, MO. They played 21 shows in North America before heading to Europe, where they played 32 more shows.

Then the unthinkable happened. On August 15, 2012, their tour bus suffered a major crash between Bristol and Southampton, England¹. Emergency services were called and the four bandmembers, plus five other people, were taken to local hospitals. Bandleader John Baizley suffered a broken arm and leg on his left side; touring bassist Matt Maggioni and drummer Allen Blickle each suffered fractured vertebrae. Guitarist Pete Adams had only minor injuries. The band canceled their remaining tour dates and Baizley, Maggioni and Blickle spent months recovering from their injuries. Ultimately, the latter two left the band. (Allen Blickle died this year of neuroendocrine cancer.)

There were no updates until October, at which point Baizley told the whole story in horrifying detail. In a statement, he wrote in part:

On August 15th, just before 11 a.m., Baroness and our crew were involved in a very bad crash while on tour. The brakes in our bus failed completely, on a notoriously dangerous, incredibly steep (12% grade) hill in Monkton Combe, U.K., on our way from a show Bristol to another show in Southampton. Our bus went entirely out of control, and we had no choice other than hitting a perpendicular guardrail going about 50 mph at the bottom of the hill. The guard rail and the 20 or 30 trees we ploughed through snapped like matchsticks as we went fully airborne and fell down more than 30 feet off of a viaduct to the ground below. Half of the band/crew were asleep while we lost our brakes, and a few of us were awake and sitting in the rear lounge. I was up front with our driver, and I bore witness to the entire thing. Once our brakes failed, the bus could do little more than gain momentum and plummet down the hill. There was nothing anyone on the bus could have done during our descent to avoid the crash, and no one, the local residents, the police or any of us can believe we survived the impact.

Most people who have been in accidents understand the pre-trauma sensation of time slowing down. There were almost two minutes during which I knew we were heading for a collision. It felt like two hours. I remember the sound of the air-brakes failing, and the panicked cursing of our driver as we slowly realized how desperate the situation was. I tried as hard as I could to yell and wake everyone up to prepare for impact. I remember the sounds of confusion from behind me as our collective terror rose. I remember seeing the guardrail split, then a cluster of trees smacking against the front windshield. While we were airborne my eyes met with our driver’s. I knew then that we each shared the same look on our face; and I won’t soon forget it. We had spent enough time in the air to appreciate, make peace with and accept a fate we thought inevitable, and we looked at one another with a horribly silent ‘goodbye’ in our eyes.

When the bus hit the ground, I flew like a missile into the windshield. I can still see the double-paned auto glass turning blue and the spider-webbing cracks spreading outwards from the impact my body made. I hit the glass so hard, that the entire windshield flew from the frame to the ground, and I bounced back inside the bus. I landed on the ledge of the windshield. This came with an immediate and overwhelming pain throughout my body. I surveyed the damage to see instantly that my left leg was very obviously and badly broken. Then I lifted my arms forward to see if either had been damaged. My right arm was covered in burns, blood and broken glass, but working well enough. My left arm was crushed beyond belief, broken in the middle of the bone in my upper arm (humerus),and hanging 90 degrees backwards, with many spurs of bone poking through muscles and sinew at the surface of my skin. The bone was shattered into seven free-floating pieces, and my wrist and hand were swinging behind my back, spasming freely. Instinctively, I reached behind my back, grabbed my wrist and re-broke my arm forwards, hugging it to my chest, where it remained for the next three hours until it was cast in plaster. Meanwhile, I watched as some of the band was able to get off the bus and help the others, many of whom were broken-up as well, and several of whom were unconscious. There was blood, glass and diesel fuel everywhere.

We were all rushed to the hospital in Bath, and treated for our various injuries, broken arms, legs, vertebrae, bruises, cuts, etc. Our driver was air lifted to a separate hospital with many breaks as well. A few of us had to remain in the hospital for a few days, I was hospitalized for two weeks, following an eight-hour surgery in which my arm was rebuilt with the aid of 2 massive titanium plates, 20 screws and a foot-and-a-half of wire. The 15-inch incision took almost 50 staples to close up. I was left completely immobilized for the remainder of my hospital stay, able to do next-to-nothing on my own and in need of constant care. Following those excruciating first two weeks, I was quite literally stuck in an apartment for another three weeks with my family while waiting for my doctor to allow me to safely board an airplane, for fear of bloodclots and swelling. I have just this past week returned back to the U.S. and my home, where I am wheelchair-bound for another several weeks of physical therapy, learning to use my arm and leg again.

While I cannot lift a glass of water to my lips to drink with my left arm and hand, I am still able to play music with it. I picked up a guitar and played the day after I returned. Not without pain (for the time being),but the hand still acts out the creative impulses I give it. I’m told I was quite lucky to have regained any use at all of my hand and arm, though I have sustained quite extensive nerve damage. In spite of this and against my logic and reason, when I pick up an instrument, my hand remembers exactly what to do. It’s far from perfect, and will require a lot of therapy in order to recover mobility and strength, but I am encouraged by the ability I have been allowed. I do not believe in superstitious signs, but I am truly overwhelmed to have been granted the continued use of my hands.

The statement concluded on an optimistic note; Baizley wrote:

I feel encouraged not only to recover, but to move forward with Baroness, as we had been doing every day previous to August 15th… We can do nothing but attempt to make something constructive and beautiful out of all this disaster, and we are well on the way to becoming active again. I have used this time, stuck inside my own head, to consider the importance of music and Baroness in my life. I can say, after nearly 6 weeks of reflection, that I feel more resolute and passionate about our music than ever. I have come to realize the importance of time in this particular equation, that is, I have none to waste and none to spare. There is no better moment than now, broken and in physical stasis, to devote ourselves more fully towards our art than ever.

In early 2013, Baroness began to re-emerge, slowly and cautiously. Baizley and guitarist Pete Adams, the two remaining members, performed a stripped-down five-song set in Philadelphia, opening for Neurosis. In March, Maggioni and Blickle’s departure and the arrival of two new players, bassist Nick Jost and drummer Sebastian Thomson (formerly of synth-rockers Trans Am), was announced. The band spent most of 2013 and early 2014 on the road, as Baizley began writing new material. In March 2015, they entered Tarbox Road Studios in upstate New York with producer Dave Fridmann, probably best known for his work with Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips (he’s also produced albums for Low, Café Tacuba, Sleater-Kinney and many other groups).

Fridmann’s influence on the sound of Purple is audible in seconds, and prominent throughout. The first track, “Morningstar,” features a massively blown-out drum sound, something of a Fridmann trademark. Other tracks bear more subtle signs of his influence. While the album is front-loaded with big riff-happy rock songs (“Morningstar,” “Shock Me,” “Try To Disappear” and “Kerosene”), there’s always some extra layer of sound — a weird little synth thing, a strangely treated vocal, an extra acoustic guitar line — tucked inside the storm like a special treat for headphone listeners. And the way things shift from heavy to slightly clean and back again, and the way Baizley’s and Adams’ guitars intertwine for soaring harmonized leads, brings to mind ’70s forebears like Thin Lizzy, Wishbone Ash, and Blue Öyster Cult. After those four blasters, the first side winds down with “Fugue,” a short instrumental.

The album’s second half is dreamier than the first, kicking off with “Chlorine & Wine,” on which we hear a synth that seems intended to sound like a vintage Mellotron, and four-part vocal harmonies that recall Kansas. The energy level leaps into the red again on the next track, “The Iron Bell,” which is driven by galloping bass and thunderous drums. “Desperation Burns” might be the heaviest track on the whole record, but the roaring guitars are underpinned by a moody, almost Pink Floyd-ian synth. And the last track, the ballad “If I Have To Wake Up (Would You Stop The Rain?)” is filled with disruptive elements, from drum distortion to eerie drones to sudden dropouts. And then, when you listen closely, you hear the tinkle of a glockenspiel buried in the mix.

Purple may be superficially less arty than Yellow & Green — the songs are much more direct — but it’s a much more artful album, crafted with mind-blowing care so that its secrets and surprises only reveal themselves over time. Upon release, it proved that Baroness were in for the long haul; they were lifers. The fact that it was released on the band’s own label, Abraxan Hymns, was even more evidence of that.

Baizley said of that transition in a 2016 interview with Westword, “We [started the label] because we had the opportunity to do this… when the stars aligned and it seemed like something we could do, and something we had the experience, background, relationships and desire for, we did it, and it’s been great. It’s been difficult, but we wanted something difficult. As we get older, we want things to change. We want to adapt and grow and get better at what we do — more well-rounded.”

They haven’t stopped moving forward, either. Baroness have made two more albums since: 2019’s Gold & Grey, produced by Fridmann, and 2023’s self-produced Stone, still on their own. Pete Adams left in 2017, replaced by Gina Gleason, and to my ear they’re better than ever. I’ve been a fan for almost 20 years, since their full-length debut, Red Album, was released in 2007, but I’ve never seen them live. I hope to do so next summer, when they play the Fire In The Mountains festival out here in Montana.

That’s it for today. See you on Friday!

1. I used Baroness’s bus accident as partial inspiration for a novel, Under The Bus, which you can purchase as a paperback, or as an ebook, if you like.