Hard to believe: I had completely forgotten about the Canadian band SAGA over the past few decades. And I really mean completely. Until they announced they were stopping by in Bad Vilbel. After several surprising listening sessions and a fantastic concert, everything is back. And that’s a good thing.

Do you know Jason Bourne? He’s the movie action hero who is fished out of the Mediterranean, seriously injured and with no memory, and must rediscover his identity. Among other things, he discovers that he was part of a secret CIA project. What does that have to do with “tedaboutsongs”? Well, at least with regard to music, I’ve actually been feeling a bit like Jason Bourne lately. I’d long forgotten it and had to rediscover it: I used to be a fan of SAGA.

It started with Wind Him Up, SAGA’s big hit from 1981, being played more frequently on the radio again a while ago. I’d heard it before, and I liked it. My wife said she liked SAGA, and when they announced that the Canadian band was coming to Germany for another concert, we asked about tickets: about fifty euros each – a real bargain at current prices. It was clear to us: SAGA and we won’t be able to get together that young and that cheaply again. So we decided to go to the concert in Bad Vilbel.

I couldn’t find a single SAGA album on my record shelf, not a single SAGA song in my media library… and apart from that supposed one-hit wonder, Wind Him Up, not a single trace of them in my memory. Worse still: At times, I even confused them with another Toronto band, Rush. And for all their virtuosity, Rush had always been a bit of a challenge. So, I looked forward to the SAGA concert with a certain curiosity, a willingness to be surprised once again. Until one cheerful evening, we came up with the wonderful idea of using YouTube to get in the mood for the Bad Vilbel concert. The first song we heard didn’t ring a bell. But then the pieces of the puzzle fell into place ever more quickly. Like Jason Bourne, I began to remember, step by step. Suddenly, I could follow complicated breaks on the tabletop, “play along” with dizzying solos and double solos using air guitar and an imaginary keyboard, and occasionally sing along to a chorus. It was amazing: I knew quite a lot of SAGA songs. And I liked them.

It took a few more days before I could roughly pinpoint when and in what personal circle I had first come into contact with SAGA. I don’t remember who owned all those albums back then, but apparently we in that group had listened to the stuff over and over again together; I probably even had audio cassettes with SAGA songs or albums at some point. The reason for my minor bout of amnesia? Unclear. Perhaps it’s due to my personal life, world events, and all the exciting music that has emerged since then. You eventually block out details from the past.

SAGA’s heyday was the late 1970s to early 1990s. It was a time when pop music was constantly spawning new genres, styles, and sub-styles, from punk, wave, and indie rock, gothic rock and metal, to synthpop and ambient/electronica, techno, trance, and house, drum and bass, nu soul, and rap. SAGA breathed the spirit of great 70s rock and art rock bands like Blue Öyster Cult, Wishbone Ash, Genesis, Gentle Giant, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but came across as cleaner, more graceful, and with a more modern sound, they were using Moog bass and synth drums. Several band members, including frontman Michael Sadler, were experienced keyboardists, and soon top producers like Rupert Hine gave them the finishing touches. And Michael Sadler, in particular, had a smart New Romantic poster-boy appeal; just look at live performances from the 80s circulating online. So, anyone who loved elaborately produced power acts like Foreigner, Toto, Duran Duran, or the elegant wave rockers The Fixx and occasionally needed something a little more intricate and symphonic was well served by SAGA. As much as I loved all the guitar-oriented and fully electronic trends of the time, I always had and still have a soft spot for this finely produced, highly aesthetic artistic bombast that amazes and touches at the same time.

And now I’ve also discovered SAGA’s song lyrics. Back then, the spectacularly playful music and the fantasy artwork of the album covers simply distracted me from them. But recently, upon a more relaxed reassessment, I realized that even and especially SAGA’s biggest hits don’t deal with elves, swords, or science fiction motifs, but with very serious topics like addiction and mental crises. The protagonist, for example, who wanders through the aforementioned hit Wind Him Up as if wound up, has succumbed to gambling and alcohol addiction: “Once he starts it’s hard to stop…” Behind Humble Stance, with its deceptively swaying folk passages, one might suspect a call for humility, but in reality, it’s about the fact that those who play small in life and show too much humility, too much fear, won’t get far: “That humble stance and timid glance makes your world turn so slow / You know, you gotta know / There’s no one going to help you.” Where the anthemic On the Loose initially suggests unbridled celebration and boundless self-confidence, people are actually losing their balance. Quote: “I see the problem start / I watch the tension grow / I see you keeping it to yourself / And then instead of reaching conclusions / I see you reaching for something else.” And then the sobering chorus: “No one could stop you now / Tonight you’re on the loose.” The somewhat quieter piece Time’s Up, on the other hand, warns against wasting opportunities while daydreaming, and Tired World conjures a gloomy, apocalyptic mood – simply because humanity was incapable of saving the planet. Singer Michael Sadler suffered from alcoholism for many years, and the band experienced many ups and downs. Who knows how much of this has found its way into the lyrics. In this respect, the “aesthetes” SAGA, often ridiculed by die-hard indie and underground fans, are more rock ’n’ roll than some of their seemingly “tough” colleagues.

In addition to Sadler, the band’s early members include keyboardist Jim Gilmour and guitarist Ian Crichton. The latter broke his leg before the current tour. Bassist Dusty Chesterfield, a true string prodigy who joined in 2018, promptly took over the guitar parts, and a new four-string collaborator was recruited, although his name cannot be found anywhere online. Sadler himself had recently undergone cancer surgery. It’s a miracle, then, that SAGA was able to pull off this tour at all—and an example of willpower, discipline, and perseverance, as well as professionalism and flexibility. Sadler, now a gaunt, bald man with a bushy beard, turned 70 on July 5. In Bad Vilbel, he joked about aging between songs with the much younger Dusty Chesterfield. “You have to smile and bear it,” he said, in essence. The right attitude. The band had their first major successes in the Netherlands and Germany, not least because their success story began there. It was great that Sadler thanked the audience for this, even with some sentences in German.

And so there were plenty of reasons to celebrate the band’s performance in Bad Vilbel. Even though Sadler no longer mastered every vocal part as powerfully as he did back then, and the sound occasionally seemed a bit uneven, the quintet displayed tremendous enthusiasm for their performance over the course of two hours. They played all the hits and band classics we had hoped for. Younger fans may have been surprised by Mike Thorne’s multi-minute drum solo; something like that was popular in the last millennium and a staple of any decent rock show. The older audience, on the other hand, who were clearly in the majority, fully understood the occasional sprawling instrumental sections and unobtrusive little breaks from Sadler: This allowed the frontman to take a rest and repeatedly gain strength. At the end of the regular set, as well as after the first encore, Wind Him Up, there were standing ovations, and one simply had to grant these brave warriors that. It’s probably not without reason that the tour motto is “It Never Ends.”