When the Eagle Flies
| When the Eagle Flies | ||||
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| Studio album by Traffic | ||||
| Released | September 1974 | |||
| Recorded | July 1973 – June 1974 | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock | |||
| Length | 39:45 | |||
| Label | Island | |||
| Producer | Chris Blackwell | |||
| Traffic chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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When the Eagle Flies is the seventh studio album released by English rock band Traffic, in 1974. It was the final album released by the band until their 1994 reunion Far from Home. The album featured Jim Capaldi on drums, keyboards and vocals; Rosko Gee on bass guitar; Steve Winwood on guitar, keyboards, and vocals; and Chris Wood on flute and saxophone. (Percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah was fired prior to the album's completion, but his contributions are heard on two of its tracks.) The album uses a broader variety of keyboard instruments than previous Traffic albums, adding Moog to their repertoire.
When the Eagle Flies was the band's fourth consecutive studio album to reach the American Top Ten and have gold album status. It was far less successful in the United Kingdom, where it entered the charts at number 31 only to drop off the following week. Traffic toured to support the release, but they disbanded in the middle of the tour in 1974.
The Chris Wood composition "Moonchild Vulcan" was recorded for the album, but ultimately left out in favour of "Memories of a Rock N' Rolla". The song was played on the supporting tour for the album, however, and a live recording by Traffic was later released on Wood's posthumous 2008 solo album Vulcan.
Rolling Stone called the album uneven, saying that its bleak tone works superbly on "Graveyard People" and "Walking in the Wind", but elsewhere it often "turns anemic as a result of either a poorly conceived arrangement or inadequate production." However, they regarded the use of tighter and more concise songs as a promising change in direction for the band, and recommended the album based on the renewed strength of Winwood/Capaldi's songwriting and Winwood's work with the keyboards.Allmusic's retrospective review asserted the opposite: that the album indulged in long and meandering instrumentation more than any other work by Traffic, with even the vocals doing no more than "improvising his melodies over the music, paying little heed to the meaning of the words".
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