Souls in Isolation

A sonic companion to our young men’s search for meaning

It was an emotional journey. I’ve been trying to see The Chameleons for decades, missed them before the 1987 break-up and didn’t catch the reunion before their second divorce. A 2021 tour was canceled by the pandemic. I had tickets to see them in 2022 but that too was cancelled. I could not attend the rescheduled show a year later — when they played a short opening set for The Mission — because Blair was pacing our friend Luke at the Bear 100 and I wanted to be there with them. By the time they played my favorite SLC venue, the Urban Lounge, in 2024 I had moved to Montana. That crushed me because I later learned they played a ten-song set, four more tracks in the first encore and two in the second. The 2022 “Edge Sessions” live album would have to be enough.

Then, in March 2026, Scott Backes sent a text, “I have two tickets. Minneapolis is as far west as they will go on this tour. Are you coming?” I replied that it was too far in advance to answer, and promised to do so when I knew. I felt stuck, anchored in place, physically and mentally. Too hard thinking and trying to write the result had me spiraling instead of progressing, and I needed something to knock me loose from the circle I was walking into the dirt. Those somethings tend to show up in surprising ways but I didn’t think a concert was it.

Until I did.

Tim Jones from Urban Renewal Records introduced me to The Chameleons by playing “Intrigue in Tangiers” off of their second record, “What Does Anything Mean Basically?” I copied the vinyl to a cassette tape the day before Blitz and I drove north to climb and ski in the Bugaboos. One day, after we had done many laps on perfect corn snow below the east face of the Howser Towers, I warmed myself in the sun outside the Kain Hut and listened to the wind-down of “One Flesh” over and over. I knew then that the band would be with me forever.

I bought “Script of the Bridge” and “Strange Times” as soon as we got home, and looped all three albums while I trained for a winter expedition to Nepal. Sometimes, when I rode my Seca 550 out to a trailhead, I pressed buds into my ears under a black, full-face helmet so the band was in my head then too.

Of course, Scott had found The Chameleons before he and I ever met. He lives in Minneapolis, which has a vibrant, dense music scene. Virtually every band touring the U.S. has played at First Avenue since it opened in 1970 and Scott attended hundreds of shows there.

The Chameleons moved us in a way that short, hard punk and two-dimensional, synthesizer-driven pop and rock could not. The punks who shouted “smash the state” with no plan to rebuild from the rubble were fun but we saw their way for the dead end it was — many went from protesting that they had no future to ensuring it came true. Our path was different; we saw overcoming as a higher ideal than confrontation. Singalong keyboard pop triggered a smile and head bop, moved our feet to clubland tracks that quickly outlived their too-clever novelty, and never asked us to do any real thinking. Sure, we could meet girls in those clubs but we were seeking a soundtrack to salve the ache of our uncertainty, a sonic companion to our young men’s search for meaning where we struggled to discover and to become the best possible version of the selves we didn’t even know.

The Chameleons’ sound was thunderous, soaring, melancholic, hopeful, sad, two guitars nested within the relentless drive of Mark Burgess’s bass riffs and John Lever’s unusual drumming. Despite his relative youth, Burgess wrote grand poetry and sang of a search for common ground, for others who were also searching for Self, and human connection in a wilderness of post-industrial, politically bankrupt, dying Manchester. We saw and heard the banner he flew, and beneath it, discovered other young men whose hearts ached for contact and reassurance. He acknowledged the human vices and their seductive nature, and showed us we could avoid being consumed by them. Songs of hope and congregation helped us turn our self-destructive tendencies into art and physical pursuit.

Sometimes the band cut deeply with songs of identity, and love, and the longing that came in the wake of losing it. Sometimes they percussed the senses with ferocious rhythm, and an energy that crushed self-doubt into dust before turning it into action. Dave Fielding and Reg Smithies slammed and caressed their guitars with intuitive synchronicity, one’s rhythm supporting the flight of the other. They crafted an ethereal, melodic mist that either drifted in the background or formed up front, impenetrable, forcing our inquiries inward instead of out. While one guitar drove on — rounded and punchy, or perhaps brittle and sharp — the second shimmered over stories of balance and its opposite, of discovery, strife and redemption, those six strings a wordless backing vocalist, hinting and secretive.

Between 1983 and 1986 The Chameleons released three epic albums and then split. We wanted more but there wasn’t so we wore grooves in the vinyl, manually repeating tracks that we can loop with a simple button click today. We learned every word. Explored every possible meaning, making up what the songs themselves couldn’t answer. And they were with us everywhere — on basement turntables, in cheap old cars, compiled on tapes, and eventually CDs and mini discs and ultimately, digital files, sometimes played offline and sometimes streamed. Burgess’ voice was present before, during and after some of our greatest climbs, on journeys to and from those mountains, in our ears as we trespassed through cultures and continents on our way to the icy, granite crucibles of our transformation.

“Oh, when you think on it, we’re all souls in isolation”

As we aged the music changed with us, or its meaning did. The melancholy of youth gave way to the melancholy of adulthood, the soundtrack to our search for like-minded souls became the score for our gratitude for having found those men. The anthems accompanying our desire to achieve mellowed into tender ballads played quietly in the safe afterglow of having done so. Scott and I introduced our friends and partners to the band, and enjoyed watching them either be carried along in our dream or not. For he and I, the songs and their weight endured.

Most of the bands that have been around for 45 years are no longer the same bands. When the Chameleons founding members separated they formed side and solo projects, some equal to the original and some not. Burgess played and recorded as Mark Burgess & the Sons of God, The Sun and The Moon, Invincible, Bird, Black Swan Lane, and eventually ChameleonsVox, while other members in various configurations played as The Reegs, and Red Sided Garter Snakes or joined Burgess in one of his projects. There was a hint and reminiscence to each of those groups; “Think (It’s Going to Happen)” by Invincible could easily have been a Chameleons track, and “The Nasty Side” by The Reegs wouldn’t be out of place towards the tail end of the Strange Times double album. Still, the majestic synergy that fueled those first three albums was missing.

In 2022 Burgess reunited with original member, Reg Smithies, and in 2024 brought three younger guys (Stephen Rice, Todd Demma, Danny Ashberry) who’d played with him on other projects into the fold. They recorded a new album, “Arctic Moon”, 45 years after the band’s first. Of the new material Burgess says, “We’re not rehashing the previous sound. If we’re going to do it, we have to move forward.” The tracks are splendid — “Saviors Are a Dangerous Thing” does indeed tickle a memory of the band’s original sound — but as good as the new songs are, they don’t move our matured hearts and minds as the older work did when we were growing from mid-20s boys into over-30 men. We haven’t lived and grown with them. The original songs however, especially played live, hit with the force of a lifetime of accumulated experience and emotion, superimposing then and now strongly enough to write a new chapter in our book of days.

“The time has come for all of us to scatter … caution to the wind”

Scott and I don’t see each other often enough these days but every time we do a strong experience of some kind is guaranteed. In December 2020 we went ice climbing together for the first time in 15 years, Scott commented, “I didn’t think we would do that ever again.” I didn’t either. A couple of years later we hiked up the lower slopes of Lone Mountain trying to stay ahead of the hard-chargers at the front of the VK race. It was like the old days, trying to run as fast as Mats and Bjorn could speed-hike up the trail to Montenvers. As we came down from our high heart rate high the first competitors in the women’s field arrived, and there was Blair, moving fast, head up, and somehow able to breathe and greet us through her enormous smile. And last Tuesday, when we took our seats in the Varsity Theater before the lights went down I said, “I never imagined this could happen.”

We have lived and loved and lost a lot across thirty years of friendship. I was nervous when he showed up at a party in Seattle because I’d read a description of him in Mountain Magazine, a climber, “with a penchant for settling traffic disputes out of court and in the street.” Perhaps I paraphrase and perhaps the author took some artistic license but it was still powerful stuff, and I knew Scott was a serious climber who had done routes I was not equal to at the time. Our formal meeting four years later in Chamonix was punctuated by quoting lyrics of obscure bands his partner was not familiar with. We were apart, speaking in code, realizing we had found in each other someone who would impact and change our lives. Two years later I spotted him on the street in Kathmandu. It was evening, dark, and he hadn’t seen me yet so I leaned against the wall and stared at the back of his neck, willing him to notice he was being hunted. And he did. It was a raucous reunion during which we promised to link up back in the States and swing some ice tools. When we did our partnership kicked into overdrive.

We climbed in Utah and the Canadian Rockies, he came to Chamonix for a month in the spring but we got skunked by weather, then rockfall, and finally it all came together on the beautiful granite and ice of the Mont Blanc Massif where we did two new, hard routes in the autumn of 1993. We put up “Deprivation” on the north buttress of Mount Hunter in 1994, climbed Denali a few times in 1995 and rescued or recovered some others who couldn’t, and eventually reunited in Alaska to climb the Slovak Direct in a single, 60-hour push with Steve House. After that climb, we shared some hours back in base camp, safe, warm, dead tired and transformed, trying our best to blow the powered speakers as we shared music and fellowship and food. The arc of the music peaked then wound down and I don’t think I’m wrong to remember that we all cried when, as “Second Skin” carried us along, we unconsciously realized our lives wouldn’t be the same, and probably wouldn’t be lived together. We united for that incredible experience and then, our paths separated.

“Smiling as we climb … “

Scott was concerned the group might suck, struggling with accumulated age and miles. Reunion concerts are hit or miss, maybe 50-50. I’ve attended brilliant shows by the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, New Model Army (who never really broke up), and Chrome as well as some barely-present performances by Echo and the Bunnymen (McCulloch’s fault, Will Sergeant was great), and the Sisters of Mercy when Eldritch sang like he was a few hours from death. If The Chameleons were flat Scott thought I’d be disappointed because I bought a plane ticket to attend. I shared his nervousness but also knew the concert would be the cherry on the sundae of beautiful time shared.

The show was glorious in the most reverent sense of the word. The band welcomed us with a raucous version of the newer track, “Where Are You?” and then hit the time machine, transporting us back through the years. I was the most emotional I have ever been at a show; goose bumps and tears, memories of hardship shared and friends lost, of love loved and enduring bonds formed, of struggle in the shade and transcendence in the sun, of bitter cold and fear balanced by the warm confidence of learned and earned competence. We sang, we clapped, we shouted and stomped our feet. Every opening drum clap or chord transported us to a moment or memory indelibly marked by that particular song. The whole set was incredible and we knew every word.

When they returned after having closed the set with “Feels Like the End of the World” the energy in the hall was expectant, and the band came out explosive. They launched immediately into “In Shreds”, held the high with “Monkeyland”, came down to the heartbreaking and hopeful “Second Skin”, and finished with the crushingly powerful, “Don’t Fall” that morphed into Bowie’s “Rebel, Rebel”. Scott said it was the best encore he has ever seen, and he’s been to over a thousand shows.

Back at his home, we sat on the sofa and talked for an hour before heading off to sleep. Scott admitted that, when he first heard The Chameleons, “It was like reading your first two articles (”Kiss or Kill” and “Glitter and Despair”) and realizing I wasn’t alone in the world. Your words showed me there was someone else for whom climbing was The Way, a way that was apart from the strong pull of my less healthy addictions, a path I could follow to its limits and—ideally—become a better man for it. When The Chameleons came along I knew the search for meaning, and for brotherhood was not restricted to climbing. And now I had a soundtrack.”

I was moved, and still wired, my mind racing so instead of sleep I finalized the set list and read before falling into a pleasant, warm state of restful semi-consciousness, with ears ringing gently and an easy smile that never left my face. We closed a circle, filled a gap in our shared experience, and got to see each others’ hearts, our true nature.

When we met 35 years ago I didn’t know Scott would be my climbing partner and dearest friend for my entire adult life. We have grown and changed, of course, but the search for meaning and self-mastery we bonded over remains. We aren’t clawing at it as our younger selves did but holding it more tenderly; searching, conscious, aware, and tolerant. We have less road ahead than behind and that feels OK, settled. I’m grateful for our friendship and also for the music that’s been integral to the bond made when we first tied into the rope. That music has carried us up and guided us down the mountains. It has driven and solaced as we turned our lungs inside-out to prepare for those climbs, and played quietly while we sat in the valley learning to assimilate what we had just come through. Decades later the music brought us together once again, carried us over and through the timeline of our lives, leaving a braille of goosebumps across my forearms as a reminder that it has always been with us, and always will be.

I woke to the smell of coffee and opened my eyes knowing that I was unstuck. It wasn’t only the concert, of course. Over caffeine and food we shared the music we’ve each been listening to since our last visit — just like our first meeting in France. Together, Scott and I raised the anchor holding me in place, illuminating a path forward that was blocked or hidden until we reunited and then separated again at the airport. I boarded the flight home wearing a broad smile, eager to see Blair who I miss whenever we are apart but this time more than usual, and began writing, freed of the barrier I’d been up against. When I’m blocked I trust the well to refill, and that patience rather than resistance is the key. As I thumb-typed to a backing track of jet engine hum I realized the turning point came when I heard the first soaring notes of “Pleasure and Pain” and understood that all would be well.

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In Cody after our first ice climb together in 15 years

Blair and Scott on a day out in Cody, a lifetime or two in the making