In 1998 I had the opportunity to interview Bruce Kulick for his new band ‘Union’ (which also featured John Corabi). This was a fun conversation, as I got to inquire about Bruce’s work with Billy Squier and Kiss, as well as the new album from him & Corabi in Union. A few months later Union played a club show over in Buffalo [or nearby….I can’t remember the name of it]. I went with a buddy, had a good time, got a few pics, as well I had Bruce sign my Alive 3 poster – I had had the other 3 Kiss signatures on it already, but at the Alive 3 promotional signing years before I had pulled out a Black Jack LP for Bruce to sign first and then when I pulled out the poster – security stepped in, as there was only 1 signature per guest. So, I was glad to get it signed and hang it it up. I interviewed Bruce again, some years later for his first solo album. I will follow this up with my Corabi interview I did for the release of Union’s 2nd album.
Bruce was with KISS from 1985 to ’95, making him the band’s longest serving guitar player. He is currently promoting his new project ‘UNION’, which features ex MOTLEY CRUE / SCREAM singer John Corabi, Canadian drummer Brent Fritz, and bassist Jamie Hunting. The band’s debut album on Mayhem Music is heavy, yet the songs retain a somewhat commercial edge and melody. Personally, I like it a lot more than the last KISS album! UNION is definitely a band to watch for in the near future!
Billy Squier – You played on his first album. What do you recall of that album?
I really like that album; I really enjoyed that record! He wanted to hire Brian May from QUEEN – and he knew Brian. So for him to settle on me, I was very flattered, as you can imagine. I saw him work very hard. That wasn’t the record that put him over the top, as you know, but there was good material on that album.
I thought that album was a little underrated.
Absolutely! But, you saw the talent the guy had, and the vision. It was just going to happen a year later on the next record. It was a good experience. He asked me to go on the road but I couldn’t because of my band with Michael Boltin at the time, which was called ‘BLACKJACK’. But it worked out. I might not have been available for KISS if I was on the road with Billy Squier.
You did “Rich Kid” on that album, your brother did Paul Stanley’s album and the tracks on “Killers” (KISS). that riff on “Rich Kid” is very similar to “Tonite You Belong To Me” (from Stanley’s album) and “Nowhere To Run” (from Killers).
Well, Paul’s solo record was in some ways like the style Billy Squier was doing at the time, so there was a common thread there – which is just like really cool poppy-rock ‘n’ roll. And they knew each other; they were part of that whole New York scene, New York – Boston.
Regarding KISS, what were some highs and lows of your time with the band?
There was some very exciting times! Like playing Madison Square Gardens, doing Donnington in England, Maple Leaf Gardens – that was fun too. Certain places like South America, traveling to Japan, having kids camp outside your hotel, you know! And going to Europe, Sweden with everybody screaming and stuff! A lot of that kinda stuff. And also doing some cool TV shows like Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien – all those kind of highlights! I guess the only lows I had was obviously that sometimes the relative success of the albums being up and then down. Another highlight was the MTV Unplugged thing, and that also became bitter sweet because that pushed the reunion thing that happened, so that of course being the ultimate low.
Any favorite tracks or albums?
“Unholy”, “Forever”, “Tears Are Falling”. A lot of stuff from Revenge – I really dug. There’s a couple of things on Carnival that really showcased me; so again throughout all the albums there’s some things that stand out.
Did you ever get, I wouldn’t say upset, but a little miffed by perhaps being overshadowed musically by the mystique that surrounded Kiss, a lot of the hype and that??
There’s no doubt there’s a shadow of the make-up era which has not as much to do about music as that ‘set’ element of Kiss – which is an important one, even though I still feel the band was able to hold it’s own as an exciting rock group. But it turns out that’s a part of the band you can’t shake from it. No matter how much you’re pictured without make-up and then going on out there just like any other band. I still think there was a certain attitude and style of the band without make-up that was very different; but it’s hard to compete with platform boots and rockets shooting out of your guitar, and the ‘space’ out-fits, ya know!? And I’m not saying that to take anything away from that; all that’s entertaining and exciting, but it does create a certain thing that you can’t even compare with it, because you’re not playing in the same field. Eric Carr had the ‘fox’ for a while, and even Vinnie (Vincent) became a make-up character, and I think that worked, but I never had that opportunity, and the band never put the make-up on with me, so it was a different form of the band.
Did you ever feel your own playing got over-shadowed by Gene and Paul doing all the interviews and everything?
I knew, press-wise, that the story would always be Gene and Paul’s thing, ’cause they created the band. And even with the make-up and reunion thing – they mostly do the interviews. I’m just really proud that obviously, with UNION, I have a lot to say and a lot to be proud of! You know, the press are going to choose where they feel the story is.
Do you still have contact or connections with the (KISS) guys at all?
Yes, everything’s been really cool with the guys. I just recently gave them a couple of the discs, advanced CDs, and Paul asked me to help him on some of his songwriting demos – to decide which songs he was going to present for the next album. So, that was kinda cool. He’s very comfortable with me, and I really enjoyed playing guitar with him; we know how to communicate that way. So he hired me to do that kind of work, and that’s exciting!
You’ve probably been asked this a million times, but can you clarify – regarding ‘Creatures Of The Night’ – if and what you played on that album?
Actually, I played nothing on that album. At the time Ace wasn’t in the band, so they had a lot of different players on that record; from Dick Wagner to Robin Ford! He played the solos on a couple of things like “I Still Love You”. And Steve Ferris, the guy from MR MISTER, played the solo on the song “Creatures Of The Night”. But basically what happened on that record was they didn’t know what was going on with Ace, and it was obvious, I think, he was going to leave or whatever. That was a good record that got over-looked. And then later, when I joined, I think they said “OK – let’s put a new cover on with the non make-up band. Since you do some of these songs maybe we can sell it like that!” – which was a stupid idea! But, the record companies will always look at ways to try and increase the profits and sales. But, I think it was a mistake that they did it; and there I am on the picture. I didn’t ask to do it, you know!?
Have you read any of the KISS books that have come out recently?
“Black Diamond” – I read. That was kinda cool! I have “Kiss and Sell” – but have not read it yet, next plane ride I’ll take it along. And I still haven’t read “Kisstory”, …but I was there – I know it! (ha ha).
How was the Black Diamond book?
I did find some things that weren’t actually correct, but I realize he’s relying on a lot of different things. It’s kinda weird to read about a situation you’re so close to. I did enjoy it though!
Thoughts on ‘Carnival Of Souls’??
I’m really happy that it came out, of course, because it was so heavily bootlegged, and there was songs missing on the bootleg, the sound quality was terrible. I wanted people to hear it the way we recorded it and mixed it. I spent a lot of time working on that record; we all worked very hard on it. I’m a little disappointed with the packaging, but when I weigh that against whether it’d be out or not – I’m thrilled to death! So, overall I really can’t complain about it – I’m just excited that it finally got released in it’s full sonic glory.
Favorite tracks??
I love “I Walk Alone”. “Jungle” is great! “Master And Slave”. There’s some really interesting playing from me, a lot of different songs. There’s nothing I really dislike on the record. It was certainly a very heavy – dark album. And Toby, the guy who produced it with the band, and mixed it – even mixed it really dark. But I think it stands on it’s own for what it was.
What influenced some of the heavier – darker sounds on it, compared to previous albums?
“Revenge” had some darker stuff on it, maybe not quite as dark as this, but we were kinda getting more into some heavy riffs, and it wasn’t calculated. It was like – I came up with a lot of really dark riffs, which was fun to do. “Childhood’s End” and “I Walk Alone” certainly aren’t that dark sounding at all. But, it just evolved as a real guitar heavy – crunchy record. We’d fooled around with alternate tunings before, but everybody was writing some really heavy riffs in some of those tunings, so it just went a little bit on the heavy side there.
What’s the story behind you and John [Corabi] meeting? Did the high profiles play a part?
Well, on paper – of course the high profiles look like – “wow! this could be cool!”, but it wouldn’t have mattered how cool we look on paper if we didn’t get along and realize we’re into the same kinda music, you know!? And that was the beauty – as soon as I started playing a riff he responded well. We were both having a lot of personal things in our lives, we were in upheaval at the time, and both had careers in a new direction – not knowing where we were heading with. So, there was a lot to bond over. And it turned out that the music just came together very easily – very easy to create, and it was obvious that we were meant to work together.
Was it easy to find a deal?
It was a little difficult. Our first batch we didn’t really play for a lot of people, but we had a couple of acoustic songs on it, and people didn’t understand, you know – “what are they doing?”. But we had to keep writing, and by then we shopped a real cool tape – 4 songs. There was some people at real major labels that really liked it, but there was no way they were going to get it past their ‘higher ups’, because very few rock bands in the whole sense of what UNION is about have been signed of late, and I think they’re missing out. But “Mayhem” got it right away. This is what we’re into, and this is what we want to do. We didn’t try to calculate the market or create something that’s like “OK – this is what the labels are looking for!” We didn’t do a KISS or MOTLEY record because we’re not Kiss or Motley – we’re UNION!
The band’s based on you and John. How much of a part did Jamie and Brett play?
Both of them are very creative. In the sense of songwriting, they weren’t actually involved as songwriters, but certainly they were very creative on their instruments. Jamie’s a really great bass player and moves around in a really cool fashion. He’s definitely a master at his instrument. At times, because he was re-creating some of the demos, because he came in a little later, he had to take some suggestions from me, and I think he was appreciative a lot, because he knew it worked. And Brent was there a little earlier, so some of the beats that are on the record were right there from the ‘formative stages’ – so to say. We’re really proud of their contributions – John and I. It is a band; I wouldn’t want anyone to think that they’re just hired guns. We’re gonna sink or swim all together on this, and profit or not together. We’re not in a position to ‘hire anybody”, so we’re all along for the ride, bumpy or not!
How does the songwriting work with you and John?
Well, generally – he’d play me a riff, I’d play him a riff; he’d come up with something and I’d go “what’s that?”, you know. And off we’d go. Sometimes we’d have a song done in a half an hour, sometimes it would take 3 days. We really worked hard on it, and our co-producer – Kirk Cuomo, got involved in writing and helped out – did a lyric that was missing, an inception or a bridge. We all really worked hard on it.
You both play guitar and (presumably) sing!?
I’m not as strong of a singer as John, but yes.
Is there a lot of duo guitar on the record, or do you do most of the guitar work?
John is just about on every song, on a rhythm track as a scruff guitar, so he was very involved in, you know – “laying that track”. I did more work on guitars, because that’s my job. John’s a good guitarist, very valuable for the whole situation.
I’ll tell you, I’ve had the album for about a week now and I quite like it because it’s got the heaviness of the last Kiss album, and it’s got a certain ‘rawness’ – production wise. And it’s also got a lot of melody and it’s very radio accessible, I think.
Thank you!
Not to put down the last Kiss album, but “Union” is a lot more accessible as far as the harmonies.
I think Union overall – is a bit more melodic than Carnival… Again, it’s not intentional, it’s just what we wanted to do.
What are some of your favorite tracks?
I love ’em all – I gotta tell you! There’s certain songs that really feature me.
Anything that stands out as far as being a single?
I think “Old Man Wise” is great start to show people – “hey – we kick ass, and here we are!” It’s got some real catchy riffs and parts in there. “October Morning Wind” is a very cool acoustic song that I can hear it crossing over. “Pain Behind Your Eyes” has definitely got a very catchy hook that people seem to remember and point out to me as being real hooky. I love “Let It Flow” because of the whole ‘opus’ of it. It’s a long song, with a lot of guitars and stuff. But like I said – I dig all the songs. “Tangerine” – sometimes I can’t get that out of my head! I just dig the album, you know!?
And even the ballad type songs like “Love Don’t Need Anymore” have got quite a bit of bite to them.
Yes!
Any favorite guitar solos?
The stuff on Let It Flow – I’m really quite proud of. There’s a couple of different solos in the songs and each one is a different level of intensity, shall I say!? One’s where I’m showing off a little more classic melody type of thing, and then like Jimmy Page, and then I kinda brewed some nasty unholy thing with the wah-wah. So, it was kinda nice to spread out on that and play a couple of different things. I think the solo on “Empty Soul” was cool. I’m proud of them all! There’s even a little ‘trip of the back-woods’ thing in the song “Get Off My Cloud”. So for all you classic guitarists trying to figure it out – you’re not gonna get it buddy! (ha ha).
“October Morning Wind” – was that Zeppelin influenced at all?
Actually, when I came up with the music for that I was thinking of an old Cream song that had this half-step kind of acoustic thing going on. I forget the title now. Anything from that era I’m turned on to!
Favorite guitar players?
Oh, definitely – Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Brian May…there’s a few there!
Anything to add?
I just want to thank all the Kiss fans who have been supportive over these years, and I hope that they give Union a shot, and they come to check us out live. Mayhem’s really behind us, so if you have any trouble finding it – they have a ‘888’ number (which is toll-free). For this kind of music we need everybody to make the effort. It’s us vs the Spice Girls, you know!? (ha ha!)
Cactus emerged in 1969, following the break up of Vanilla Fudge, featuring Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert, along with Jim McCarty and (singer) Rusty Day. both from Detroit. The original line-up made 3 albums before splintering, with a few members carrying on with various line-ups and adjustments to the name. Cactus was not a huge commercial success at the time, but earned the title ‘the American Led Zeppelin’. In 2006 Appice, Bogert, and McCarty reformed the band with Jimmy Kunes on vocals (Day had been murdered in ’82), and added Randy Pratt on harmonica. Bogert retired in 2008, and sadly passed away in January of this year. After 2016’s Black Dawn, McCarty would retire, and in 2017 guitarist Paul Warren joined. Now, prior to hearing the new album Tightrope I knew very little of Warren (knowing in most recent years he played with the late Brian Howe and before then Rod Stewart). So doing a little research on him I was amazed to see just how long Warren’s career goes back (a quick check on Discogs!) and some of the other legendary acts and recordings he’s been a part of. From Motown acts like The Temptations, Rare Earth, to Funkadelic, Ray Manzarek (Doors), Tina Turner, Richard Marx, Joe Cocker, and Rod Stewart…. Frankly there was so much of interest, I wound up having to skip a few things with my questions.
His work on the new Cactus album as guitarist / co-writer / co-producer is another great step, as he helps the band put together their best album in decades.
You joined Cactus following the band’s Black Dawn album, how did that come about and were you familiar with the band or guys prior to?
I’m from Detroit, so I was familiar with Jimmy McCarty – from Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels. And I was familiar with Carmine and Bogart because I bought the first Vanilla Fudge album when I would’ve been 13 or something. And Rusty Day I knew because he’d been singing with Ted Nugent, another Detroit act. And I’d seen them play at my local high school or something, so. I was patiently waiting, I was anxiously waiting Cactus when I heard about it. So I’d bought the first 2 albums, I saw them live in concert, and I actually introduced myself to to McCarty and Rusty Day the night my band opened for them at a place called ‘ The Eastown’. I was in a band called Justice at the time, I was 15 at the time and Charlie Bosssalini (who guy who got me that Funkadelic session and Rare Earth years later), was the manager of that band. And I introduced myself to McCarty and Rusty that night, they were both very nice. I was a huge fan, but I didn’t pay any attention after the 2nd album, I kinda lost interest or maybe radio wasn’t playing them much. I really didn’t know what was going on with them. But when they broke up Rusty got ahold of me and I was the guitar player in the first band he put together after Cactus broke up. So I’d already had a musical brush with them long before I joined. And then Cactus were playing in Detroit, I was in Detroit, and they were playing a place called ‘The Magic Bag‘, and Doug Podell – a program director / big shot DJ, a sweet guy in the Detroit area, asked me to join him to go see Cactus, so I went. I was really impressed by everything. And I went and introduced myself to Jimmy Kunes that night at the merch table, and he remembers this very well. And I spoke to McCarty a little bit. And I’d forgot all about it. And Carmine had asked me to do another project with him when I was still with the Mod, and it wasn’t the right fit for me, and I passed. And he called me back a few years later and asked me to do that project again , and I agreed to do one show just because I wanted to play with Carmine so bad. And we hit it off like a house on fire, playing together, I mean at the very first rehearsal we were both grinning from ear to ear. So when Jimmy decided health-wise that he didn’t want to tour any more, I get a call from Carmine, I hadn’t spoke to him, maybe in a year, and he said ‘Look McCarty’s going to have to be replaced, he doesn’t want to do this any more.’ And as I recall he said ‘if you don’t do it I’m going to break the band up, because you’re the only guy I can think of that would be the perfect fit.’ And he liked the fact that I also was from Detroit, as McCarty was. And I think not only as a hook, but I think musically too Detroit has a certain thing going on about it, very aggressive the rock players. And I hadn’t really been playing rock in a long time . With Rod I did “Hot Legs” and things like that, but most things were really kind of pop, and I certainly hadn’t been playing Hard-rock for decades, so. But being familiar with Cactus I knew exactly what they were about. So I learned the material and we did some gigs, and so after a period of time they decided they wanted to make an album, and I had a lot of riffs, some had been around – one in particular -“Preaching Woman Man’s Blues “, I wrote that in 1979, it had been sitting around for a long time. “Tightrope” – I kind of rearranged those, there’s 2 main licks in that song that I borrowed from a song I’d done on my last solo album, actually it’s from 2 different songs, so if you listen to those 2 songs you’d go ‘Oh, Ok, there’s Tightrope’. And then, of course, I wrote a bunch of stuff from scratch, as well. I brought in the riffs, Carmine made suggestions, we changed things around, we got an arrangement going, we gave them to Jimmy Kunes once they were done, and he put lyrics, melody and eventually sang the vocals to them.
Is it fair to assume you brought up the idea of covering “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”? Did you have a vision of how you wanted it to sound?
It was not. We were doing a gig in Chicago, a year or so before we actually made the album. We were at sound-check, and I started messing around with it, and you know Cactus does a jamming, and we were, I don’t even remember what song it was, we were jamming and I just started playing “Papa”, and I went up and started singing for the Hell of it, and Carmine went nuts – he loved it. So we actually put that in the show, that one time only, somewhere in the middle of it we did a little bit of “Papa”. And when we went in to record the first song was “Primitive Touch”, which as I recall, we all wrote that collectively in the studio together. And once we got that down, I think Carmine said ‘let’s do Papa’, I can’t remember if just started playing and I just started making shit up, as we went along. But I do know that we all played through it all, one time – with no arrangements, just absolutely flying by the seat of our pants. And we all got kind of excited about how it sounded, so we said ‘Hey – let’s record it!’ So that arrangement, that was no arrangement, I’ll have to learn that again to play it live, if live gigs ever start again. And we just ad-libbed that. And I’m singing half the vocals on it, that’s because Jimmy Kunes wasn’t wasn’t familiar with it, and I said ‘I’ll lay down a work vocal and you can take it home and learn the song from the work vocal.’ So that was a one pass, there was no way we were going to keep it. And everybody, including Jimmy, Carmine, Randy Pratt – they all loved my voice on it. As a matter of fact Randy was pushing really hard for leaving my vocal throughout the whole thing. Out of respect to Jimmy, and the fact that I didn’t want to have to sing it live because it’s a lot more work [laughs], I refused, I said ‘no, I’ll do it as a duet with Jimmy.’ So, my singing on that was a work vocal, no fixes, a one pass, just rough, and we went with it. And I muted myself to make room for Jimmy, and he went in and did his vocals on a separate day.
How did the Tightrope album come together – was much of it done through sharing files and info through email / online? Or was there any band collectively [in whole or part] in the studio together?
Almost all of it was cut live as a band, which was something I hadn’t done in years. It reminded me of Motown – all these guys went in the room, started bashing it out, got it together and hit ‘record’. And I might overdub a lead part or double a part, or something, but it was collective. Then Co-vid hit, and almost everything was 100 per cent done, except for – there was a few keyboard thing I wanted to hear on say “Suite 1 And 2”, and clavinet on “Primitive Touch”, and also I hadn’t laid down the solos yet before Co-vid for the song “Elevation”, which by the way was based on a riff Carmine had around for quite some time, he told me. So I hired a studio hear in Nashville, that’s run by a keyboard friend of mine – Michael Whittaker. And I went in there and laid down the keyboards, just he and I, and then I laid down the solos for “Elevation”. But, other than that everything was done in New York, at Randy’s studio. And when it came time to mix, it went around and around, because it was Co-vid time. There was the engineer – who had files, and myself and Carmine co-producing . Carmine, he was generous, I mean it’s his band – he’s Carmine, he owns the name and he’s been around a long time, but he trusted my instincts. But, like me and the engineer would discuss things and he’d send me something to listen to, and then I’d play it for Carmine and he’d say Yay or Nay. And of course, he made lots more suggestions than that, especially about his drums, his sound. Yeah, so the 3 of us mixed that, basically with files and over the phone.
You co-wrote the tracks – “Tightope” and “All Shook Up”. What can you tell me about these songs. You also wrote “Suite 1 And 2: Everlong, All The Madmen”, Can you tell me a bit about this song? What inspired lyrically, musically?
Well, I didn’t write any of the lyrics on the songs – that was all Jimmy Kunes. “Tightrope”, as I explained – there’s 2 main riffs in that song, one came from a song of mine called “Made To Be Loved” and the other one was a song of mine called “Back Where I Belong”, both from my previous solo album The Paul Warren Project, 2011. So I rehashed those riffs, and then we did an arrangement, and then Jimmy took it and wrote the melody and the lyrics. As far as “All Shook Up”, that was made up in the studio. Carmine had a beat, he wanted to use a certain feel – the drum part, and I just wrote a riff around it in the studio, and wrote some chord changes . We laid it down, and it was a bit long here and there, and I remember we cut a few little pieces out , just to make a bit more tidy , and again we gave it to Jimmy and he went home and wrote the lyrics and melody. As far as “Suite 1 And 2”, that’s a song I had completely done, minus the lyrics. I had written it for a group here I Nashville I was producing called The Cunning, and we never got around to recording that one. So I had that sitting around, the melody, everything but a lyric. And there was a little discussion up front about that one, because Jimmy wasn’t used to singing someone else’s melodies, but I held firm on that and said ‘no, it’s got to be my melody, but go home and write a great lyric.’ – which he did! I did have some words floating around, but what he wrote was so much better, it fit the song and the mood and the style to melancholy [??]. And then his vocal performance! I must’ve told him probably ten times – It’s my favorite vocal on the record. His interpretation of the melody and the lyrics he added, I was just flabbergasted with his work on it. That’s my favorite collaboration between Jimmy and I. And Carmine had “Elevation”, he came in with the main riff, I know I added a couple of chords here and there, but that was basically his baby, but again Jimmy wrote the lyrics and the melody. So I’m a co-writer on everything but the bonus tracks. And I would say the initial ideas in, maybe 50 percent of the cases in those 10 songs came from me. But then Carmine’s a genius with arranging, he can come up with how to change things around, put them in different orders, and drop a beat and add things, you know – he’s very musical for a drummer. I’ve never met a drummer so musical. He’s not just about grooves and tempos and percussion, he’s got a great ear. Yeah, so I mean it was a collaboration musically between Carmine and I to get the tracks together, and then Jimmy put the icing on the cake.
Any insight to any of your favorite moments for you on the album – songs, performances, solos?
Well “Tightrope” attacks, right out. There’s a reason that’s the first song. Carmine and I through out ideas for running order, but ultimately I presented him with the running order that they’re in, and he agreed with it. And I know I did it a little different than him, he was looking at it from tempo-wise, you know – fast song, slow song, shuffle, straight, but I also wanted to look at it from keys, because rock riffs are often written in the same key, so a lot of the songs were in E and A, so I wanted to do it based on Carmine’s tempos and things like that, but I also looked at keys, and flipped it around. So, ultimately it just seemed that “Tightrope” was so good and so impactful that it was a no-brainer to start with that one. I’m really pleased wth the whole thing. “Suite 1 And 2” I’m partial to, and it’s the only thing that really stands out as being completely different to anything Cactus has ever done, and I was actually not sure how it was going to be received, because it was so different. But everybody was enthusiastic about it and I think everyone’s really happy with it. We spent more time mixing that than any of the others, I know that. I really love “Primitive Touch”, I just think that jumps out of the speakers as well, very aggressive and well performed, everybody killed on that one. I really like “All Shook Up”, but that riff I wrote for that I was kind of thinking of “Paperback Writer” by The Beatles, so It brought a little bit of pop sensibility there; that song’s a little poppier in general. But it’s still done the way Cactus plays, which is very aggressive. So yeah, I think stylistically that one and “Suite” are my favorites, only because they’re just so different than all the rest, but I love it all. I can tell you of the tunes I didn’t quite get finished mixing, I would’ve liked to have had a little more time, but we ran out time, the label had to have the record out, was “Preaching Woman Man Blues” and “Third Time Gone”, I wish had maybe a couple more hours for each of those, to tidy them up. But I’m still pleased with them, they still sound great. Randy Pratt plays his ass off on this record, by the way. it’s by far the best I’ve ever heard him. And we spoke last night, and he feels the same way, this is a big step up for him. [“Shake That Thing”, I felt was such a great song] Nobody else could make it that day, except me and Carmine; it was just he and I in the studio and he had a beat that he wanted to use. So he just started playing the beat, and I sat down and started making up the riffs and the chord changes as we were going . And we ran through it maybe once, and I said ‘Yeah, it’s all there’, so we hit ‘record’. And again, there was no arrangement , we didn’t bother, we were just jamming. We only played it twice, and the first time I made up all the changes and the riff, and we got excited, then hit record and just made up and arrangement I made up in my head, as we were going. So that was flying by the seat of our pants as much as “Papa” or “Primitive Touch”. That came from nothing, there was nothing there to be cut when we went in , and when we left that day that track was virtually done.
The last track [“Wear It Out”] features Jim McCarty on guitar and Phil Naro on vocals, who also wrote the lyrics. Were you on this track with Jim? And do you know how Phil got involved?
No, I did help mix it though. They cut the vocals. I wasn’t a party to any of the actual recording, but Josh the engineer had mixed it and sent it to Carmine, and Carmine sent it to me and asked me what I thought. And the only thing that I requested as a change was that that Jim’s solo should be louder. And I think something to do with the effects on the vocal or lack there of, or EQ or something . Primarily I just know for sure that I said ‘turn the solo up’. And then Carmine, from that mix asked me to work with the engineer to try and get a better kick-drum sound; it might’ve just been the volume. I think he asked for more volume, and it was hard to get with the way it was recorded, so I think we may have changed the EQ or something there. I never even met Phil, I wasn’t familiar with him prior to that either. I know Jimmy, for some reason didn’t end up finish writing that or singing it, and I know Carmine went with Phil.
(Bruce Pilato – I managed The Platinum Rock All Stars, which Carmine was in, along with Rudy Sarzo, and Gene Cornish of The Rascals, and Geoff Downes of Asia and Yes, and Bumblefoot on guitar. And there was one point where Jimmy wasn’t sure about his commitment to Cactus because he was doing this Humble Pie thing, that version of Humble Pie. So he didn’t want to cut this track, so Carmine said have Phil sing it, and Phil sang it…….But I’m really glad Jimmy decided to make the commitment back to Cactus, because I think that album is incredible, and I think he realizes now that Cactus is the band where he needs to be.)
(Paul continues) – I think so too. Jimmy from the get has befriended me, which was nice. I mean everyone was nice, and Carmine – I’m there because of Carmine, my respect for him couldn’t be greater, but Jimmy – when I first went out on the road he wanted to hang every night; he’d call me and we’d have a couple of beers together or something. So, we’ve been in communication a lot, last night for example we were texting back and forth for a couple of hours. But he’s in to it. There was a little tension in the mixing, you know what it’s like – the bass player thinks there should be a little more bass, the singer thinks there should be more vocal, the drummer thinks there should be more kick or something, everybody’s got there opinion, which is a difficult way to work when there’s too many opinions, but Carmine ultimately threw it in my lap and let me make the call. So Jimmy and I, there was some issues there about his vocal volume, and / or maybe the sound of it. But then about a month ago, he apparently went and listened to the whole record on a different system than he been listening to, and he contacted me that night just freaking out, and he apologized profusely for stirring anything up, just saying what a great record. He’s very excited about the record, as he should be. It’s a great record and everyone I played it for loves it. It way harder rock, I would not normally put something like that on my stereo. I listen to more song melody type of stuff – Beatles, Burt Bacharach , I’m a big Burt Bacharach fan as writer.
Recollections From Paul Warren’s Career back to his early days….
Joni Mitchell’s one of my all-time favorite artists. I mean when I was 18, on the road, I used to carry a little record player around with me, and all I listened to was For The Roses and Blue. I took those on the road with me everywhere. I set up the little stereo and listened to them on days off . She’s one of the greatest writers that ever lived.
Early influences as a writer, guitar player – favorite players, albums…
The first thing that really stands out, I mean I listened to some stuff when I was younger, rock n roll – ’50s rock, I had older sisters who bought those records, but I think it was around “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen that I just went crazy. I guess that’s considered garage rock now, and that was the first album I bought – Louis Louis by The Kingsmen. I got a guitar when I was 12. I’ve been listening to music almost constantly since I was about 5. And I’d gone through my Elvis phase when I was quite a bit younger. My first guitar influence would’ve been Chuck Berry, and The Ventures, until Hendrix and Cream came out around ’67 and everything changed. I almost had to learn how to play all over again. As far as writers, I really got interested in songs around the British invasion time – The Beatles, obviously, but my favorite band – it’s funny in that era of the British Invasion from ’64 forward there was the standard question ‘are you a Beatles or a Stones fan?’ , and my response always was ‘I’m a Kinks fan.’ It was the Kinks for me. When I heard “You Really Got Me” I literally just about passed out – I was so excited. It just flew out of my speakers and that record has since been the clam to how that sort of guitar sound started, that distorted slap chord – power chord style of rock. Some people say they invented heavy metal, I wouldn’t go that far. And the interesting thing about that is that I’ve since read that Ray Davies when writing that song was trying to write something like “Louie Loue” . So the first song I wrote, I still didn’t have a guitar, but I wrote it in my head was kind of a Kinks rip-off, style wise. And then I got more interested in The Beatles, so I started listening to them closer – as writers. And started really writing pretty regularly around the time I was 15. Favorite guitar players to this day would be Hendrix, early Clapton, all the blues guys – BB King, Albert King, Freddie King. Peter Green from the original Fleetwood Mac was a big influence on me as well.
Working with Motown, recordings with the Temptations…
I was out playing Top 40 in a little dive bar called Jimmy’s Lounge in the Detroit area, and the bass player on that was the one that got me the gig. He was 5 years older than me and he went on to become Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band’s bass player throughout that entire era. And he and Bob both tried to get me to join the Silver Bullet Band a couple of times, and the last time was when I was 20, and I moved to LA instead with Motown. But I was 17, playing underage in clubs, and had been doing for 2 years at that point. At Jimmy’s Lounge, with Little Reuben And The Second Floor. Other than the bass player, it was a pretty lousy band, but we worked 6 nights a week, 4 sets a night. And I made a tidy 200 bucks a week at that time, which wasn’t too bad for a 17 year old. And one night on a break there was 3 guys sitting at a table and they asked me to join them, which I did. And one guy Bob Babbitt, who was a Motown bass player – there was only really 2 guys that did all the hits – Babbitt and James Jamerson. And then there was a drummer, relatively new to the Motown scene at that time, but real good friends with Babbit, Andrew White, and there was a guy named Mike Campbell (who later changed his name to Michael Champion), and he was one of the only white artists ever signed to Motown at that point. And they said ‘Look, we love your playing .’ And Babbit and Andrew White had been in a band with Dennis Coffey prior to this meeting with me, called Scorpio, and they were doing kinda like a ‘rock’ thing . And they said ‘we really want to put a band together and Mike can sing, and they said ‘do you write?’, and I said ‘yeah, of course I write’. So Babbitt arranged for some studio time , free studio time – including an engineer at Motown, late at night, I think we started around 11 at night, and I tossed in one of my songs and we cut that instrumental. And Michael Campbell had a song, and he showed me how that went, and we cut that instrumental, and at 3am, I think, we finished up with all the overdubs and everything. The engineer was tired and wanted to go home, and we never did get around to putting down the vocals on that stuff, but we did a rough mix that night, went our ways, and I got a call from [I can’t remember his name], the guy that ran Motown 9?)… Berry Gordy was the CEO – The Godfather, so to speak. And they had an office downtown and a lot of the day to day record business was run out of that office. And the head guy’s secretary called me, and he said ‘look, I’ve heard this tape, it’s surfacing around and people are handing it around at Motown, and it’s interesting – do you have more songs with lyrics and melodies?’ and I said ‘Sure’. And he asked me to come down to the office with an acoustic guitar to play him some of my material . So I showed up. And my material, the 2 songs (the one and a half I got through) – the one was called “I Wanna Die High”, which was very influenced by Hendrix -lyrics, the material like “If 6 Was 9”, all about ‘freaks flashing by, and no woman could control me’, that sort of stuff. So, I got through that one, and I’d written both of these songs when I was 16, even though I was 17 at the time, so the lyrics were pretty, let’s just say – young . And the next one was called “I Turn To Goo”, which was about having an orgasm [laughs], and I think I was half way through that one and he stopped me and said ‘I have no idea what you’re doing, I have no idea what these words mean – you’re definitely not right for this label!’. So I packed up my shit and went home. But as it turned out that tape found it’s way in to the hands of Norman Whitfield – the producer, who you know, Norman wrote and produced for everybody at Motown – The Temps being probably his biggest act. He co-wrote “Heard It Through The Grapevine” and some absolutely legendary stuff – “Just My Imagination” and “I Wish It Would Rain”. And Norman had just been trying to blend psychedelic with soul music and was calling it ‘Psychedelic Soul’, like a new concept he had come up with. So he had done that with The Temps on Cloud 9, and Psychedelic Shack. And I played rock, and the guy that played the rock for Motown at that time was Dennis Coffey, but Dennis Coffey was literally just a jazz guy with a fuzz box and a wah-wah trying to simulate rock, and Norman could hear by my playing that that’s who I was and that’s what I did. So I got home from Jimmy’s Lounge one night, at my girlfriend’s, I was living with at the time , I received a call from a lady named Asari Graham, who was Norman Whitfield’s assistant and to call her as soon as I got in and don’t worry about waking her up, so I called Asari probably around 3 or 4 in the morning and she said ‘Can you be at Motown tomorrow morning at 10am to do a session for Norman Whitfield?’, and I said ‘Of course – no problem!’ And in the meantime I didn’t have a car or a driver’s license, but I arranged for a friend to drive me down, I got there at 9am, after a couple of hours of sleep and I’d never done a session, I’d only been in the studio one time and that was with a self-contained band when I was 15, so I didn’t really know how it really all worked. But time since dictated that I be there early and ready to go, so when the guys started falling in, I was all set up and tuned up and ready to play. Looking back, it must’ve been funny then because I was looking like ‘I’m going to make a record, I’m going to be a rock star’, so I showed up in platform shoes and a green velvet suit, and my hair spiked up in the back like Rod Stewart, and they all blew in in t-shirts and jeans and whatever. And that session… you know I did a lot of recording for Motown over the years, and sessions go so fast, and Motown was doing it like an assembly line, and Barry’s since even admitted they styled their way after Henry Ford’s car factories. So we cut 3 songs in 3 hours, and as soon as you’re done with one – you’re on to the next, so you don’t often remember what you just finished. And by the time you walk out of there you might not remember any of it. I was driving, once again, back to Jimmy’s Lounge a couple of months later, and I heard a something on the radio, and I was like ‘man – that’s familiar!’, then I recognized my own playing, and it was “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”, but not by the Temptations, it was by a group Norman had signed called The Undisputed Truth; they had a number One with a song called “Smiling Faces Sometimes”, a great song, another Whitfield song. So I heard that once on the radio, and I never heard it again. The record was a flop, and I continued doing sessions for Norman and a couple of other producers, and a session was a union day of 3 hours , and sometimes I’d work for 2 producers in one session. You’d get a flat fee for 3 hours, and another producer might come in and I’d cut something for someone else. I did a couple of albums worth of material for ‘The Undisputed Truth’. I continued recording for The Temps, as a matter of fact I was in Palm Springs about ten years ago doing a benefit concert with Vince Gill and Richard Marx, and I went in to a pawn shop and saw box set of The Temps. I picked up and went through this box set, and I’m on 7 tracks, and some I didn’t remember at all! So I bought the CD, went home and listened to it once, and was like ‘I don’t remember that song, but that’s not me’, but my name’s on there and I know my playing. But in the midst of all this, some how one of the tracks was “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”, Norman had re-written it for The Temps – the bass line was completely different , the riff was different. And I cut it with a band. Everybody knows the great thing about Motown everybody’s set up in one room, pretty much. The percussionist, and maybe the B3 (? this is a long time ago), No, it was the percussionist, he’d be in an isolated booth, and in the main room would be the drummer, the piano, the organ, bass player, and sometimes up to 3 or 4 guitar players. So I cut the track with the normal ensemble of musicians there, and then Whitfield had me come back and do overdubs, just he and I , some lead fills around the vocals, and some other stuff. Yeah the vocals weren’t on there yet, but Norman wrote and knew exactly, he dictated exactly what The Temptations sang. So he sang to me and I played around his vocals. And I did one more overdub, a rhythm overdub on it. And I had no idea at the time how monumental that recording was and how eventful it was going to be for my career. I do remember at the time I was playing at another club in the Detroit area called King Arthur’s, and the Grammies were on that night, and “Papa” won 3 Grammies that night, and between sets I would call my same girlfriend, and say ‘what’s happening?’ and she said ‘oh, it just won Best Instrumental track.. or it just won Best song..’, I don’t remember what the Grammies were for, but it won 3 of them that night. And the doors flew open. And at that point I started doing every session in Michigan, not just for Motown, but for Gladys Night And The Pips, for their producer down in New York, and every jingle, I was on pizza commercials – you name it, practically every session going down in Detroit at that time. And then Motown moved to LA, and Whitfield asked me to join him, and they put me up in a hotel, and paid my fare out there, put me on a small salary, and kept me busy with sessions to pay the bills.
Familiar with other Motown players such as Dennis Coffey and Joe Gutc?
I knew Joe Gutc before I ever worked in Motown, I only met him once – I bought a guitar off of him. He advertised it in the Detroit Free Press, and I went and bought a 1959 335 off of him for 225. bucks. So that was the first time I’d heard that name, and I didn’t hear that name again until I got to LA. I never did a session with Joe Gutc, I never saw him in the studio. Dennis Coffey, sure I did a lot of sessions, he was on a lot of them, as were Robert White and Joe Messina, and of course bass players – Bob Babbitt and James Jamerson, and Pistol Allen, Earl Van Dyke, and Johnny Griffith, Eddie Bongo (or Eddie Brown) were all the main guys, they played on everything. And Joe Gutc I never heard his name or saw Joe until I got to LA, and that was not associated with Motown.
The story behind playing on Funkadelic’s “Get Off Your Ass And Jam”.
When I was 15 in Detroit, I was managed by a guy named Charlie Bossalini, and his partner Robert Middleman. and when I got to LA in ’74, Charlie was managing Rare Earth and Parliament / Funkadelic, along with another guy. And he called me up one night in LA and said ‘Grab your guitar’, the main guitar player for Funkadelic had been arrested that night for heroin possession, and George Clinton wanted to carry on with the session, so I showed up with a guitar, they had an amp. They gave me $50 under the table, no union deal, and a big pile of white powder was on the consul, I was welcome to help myself to it, too. And they said ‘just go in and play’. The track was all cut, the last thing they added was my lead guitar. They said ‘just go in and go wild’, throughout ? the track, so that’s what I did. I got my 50 bucks, I jumped in a cab, and I went back to my apartment.
Was George Clinton happy with it?
Well yeah, he loves it. But there’s a whole mystique around that track. On line there’s been amazingly long threads about who the guitar was, and this was partially George’s fault because he wrote a book and in his book he said they were in the studio and some guy off the street walked in, a junkie, and George gave him 50 bucks to play the solo, and when he was done he left the building and he never heard from him again, he tried to find him to hire him. So I know that makes for a much better copy than the true story, but if you look my name’s on the album. And I injected into this thread arguing who it was, and fans attributed it to numerous other guitarists that worked for Funkadelic, and Bossalini the guy that hired me, actually piped in to it and said ‘No, I’m the guy that hired him – I was there’. I’ve seen George once, but I didn’t have a chance to speak to him.
A short stint with Rare Earth making the Back To Earth album –
Rare Earth had split up at that point, and a guy named Gil Bridges had retained the name. Gil was one of the original members, and primarily played a little sax and tambourine, so he had the rights to the name. And they had just hired Jerry Lacroix from Edgar Winter’s White Trash to sing, and Frosty from Lee Michael’s to drum, I was a big fan of both of those guys, and Reggie McBride from Stevie Wonder to play bass. And Charlie Bossalini, going back to Funkadelic, he was also managing Rare Earth. And I kept calling, when I got to LA, I was trying to hustle up a gig , because what had happened by this time was Norman Whitfield decided to start his own label, and he wanted to sign me as a solo artist to Whitfield Records, distributed by Motown. And he presented me with a contract, which I took to an attorney who told me I’d be insane to sign that contract. He said ‘they’re even joking about it, it’s Delirium Productions, and that’s anyone that signs them to us would have to be delirious.’ So I had to tell Whitfield that after all he had done for me that I wasn’t going to sign with him. And that ended our working relationship. So when I called Charlie, hustling for work he said Rare Earth might be looking for a new guitar player. I was actually living on the fly at that point, I didn’t have a permanent home. And I went to that audition on an RTD bus, I loaded my amp and guitar on to a bus and went to the SIR – the very first SIR in Santa Monica. I got there an hour before them, was all set, knew their material inside and out and aced the gig. And yet they were short on material and so I started writing and presenting songs and they loved them, so that was the first time I ever had any of my material on a record. The first single was one of my co-writes. And I went up to ASCAP, I was so broke, I mean God, they later told me they had no idea I’d ridden the bus and how broke I was, they said ‘you seemed to have your shit so together that we just thought we were lucky to get you’. And I ended up going to ASCAP and making a deal. I said to the guy ‘look you can have me right now for a thousand bucks’. and he said ‘I’ll give you a cheque right now for 500 bucks and I said ‘Done!’ So I signed with ASCAP. And then I got screwed because the album was in the can and then the guys in Rare Earth, the producer Stewart Levine and the leader said ‘look, we got to go back and cut 3 more tracks.’, and I was like Why?’, and they said ‘Just to add them in the can’. So we went back and cut 3 songs I wasn’t familiar with. And just before the record was record to come out and be finalized I got a call from Motown to go down to Jobete Publishing Company , and I went down and they said ‘Ok, we’re going to publish your songs’, and I was green but I had spoken to enough people who said keep your publishing that’s where the money is. And I said ‘No, I’m going to keep my publishing.’ and they said ‘we just happen to have 3 songs in the can that we do publish, and if you don’t sign with us we’re going to put those songs on the record instead of yours’. So it was obvious what I was going to do. So they set me up for that one…. We recorded them and they had them in the can because they owned the publishing on them. So it was all sneakily done. They had us record those so they could threaten me to get my publishing for those songs.
Highlights for you as a player / contributor, working with the likes of Tina Turner, Richard Marx…
Well, Tina – I cut a lot of songs with her that helped get her her record deal. And her producer, a staff producer at Capitol was a huge fan of mine and he got me in on that. So it was all me and other studio guuys, and Tina would come down and we did pre-production rehearsals for a week or 2. And I was singing background with her. Anyway, once we went and cut the tracks, and then when it came time for vocals Carter called me up and said ‘Tina really wants you to be there when she’s doing her vocals.’ So I went down to the studio and it was amazing – I’m watching Tina Turner record vocals, and between you and me, she never sang a bad vocal in her life. At one point I remember Carter asked her to do one more and when she got off the talk-back I said ‘Why?’, and he said ‘I just want to hear her sing!’ [laughs]. You know, because every one was a take. And we were down there and there was a song we’d been rehearsing and I was singing the high part on, and she said ‘I want Paul to come in and sing with me, I need his energy, it’s not the same without him. So Carter said ‘let me hook up another mic’ , and she said ‘no, I want him to sing on the same mic as me.’ So I got to go in and sing, standing right next to Tina with the headphones on, on the same mic, which was a highlight. I remember thinking ‘wow, a kid from the farms of Michigan never thought this would happen.’ Because I admired Tina’s talent so much. Richard Marx – it’s a long story of how I got on that. I really didn’t want to do the gig, but I did it as a favor for the head of his label and his manager, because he had never done live performances. So I was hired as MD, and this was the first substantial gig I was hired as Musical Director on. So I got to hire all the musicians, I put the shows together, Richard would show up. He was there for all the first tour rehearsals, but by the 2nd tour, by that point he trusted me so much I would just go in and I’d put the show together and I’d rehearse the band, and help the lighting director put together the whole package, and then Richard would come in and I’d teach him the show. He’d signal to the band – ‘we added a solo here, blah blah blah…’ So that was exciting. Joe Cocker – playing Woodstock. It wasn’t what I’d hoped, but it was somewhat monumental. It was a lot of fucking people there! That was Woodstock ’94. And it was Joe – and to my knowledge he was the only guy that had been there in ’69 and came back for the 2nd one. So there was a bit of history involved and I got to be a part of that.
From Paul Warren Project FB – on stage w/ Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Ray Manzarek
Highlights of recording and touring with Rod Stewart
I’ll start with the highlights of the live shows. Glastonbury – my nickname for that is ‘Limeystock’ , it’s a 3 day festival every year in Glastonbury, England. And we performed there, and it was a live broadcast all through the UK , and mixed by Bob Clearmountain for TV, as it was going down live. And I had a specially good night that night. That was 115 thousand people out there holding up lighters or whatever, before cellphones became the thing…oh maybe it was cellphones – it 2001 or 2002. But just looking at that sea of light, and fortunately I was On that night, and it was broadcast live and everybody was raving about my performance the next day. And then re-showed that on Boxing Day in England, as well. I’m real proud of that night, that was a magical moment. Also we did Rock In Rio, for what that’s worth. And we did the 10th Anniversary of Princess Di’s death, at Wembley Stadium. And looking out seeing the royal kids playing air-guitar to my solos was kind of a laugh, I got a kick out of that. And with Rod wanting a Knight-hood we played for the Queen, and he was doing a lot of favors for the royal family – we played for Prince Charles – we played there for his birthday, and we stayed at one of his guest houses. Those are moments that you kind of go ‘How the fuck did I end up here?’ And I was also working for 10 years, on and off, for this very famous singer in Europe -Eros Ramazzotti , an Italian singer, and we did Pavarotti And Friends in Modena , at Pavarotti’s house, that he’d do it every year. It was us and The Spice Girls, and Celine Dion, and Stevie Wonder, and Pavarotti would always do a duet with these big stars. And Eros brought me and the piano player to play along with, using the house band. So I’m standing there on stage playing guitar while Pavarotti was singing, and looking out at an open air audience, under the stars in Italy was a moment of ‘Holy crap! How did I get here?’, ya know. It was a real moment of ‘Wake up Paul. Don’t forget this Paul, this is never going to happen again.’ As far as recording, shortly before I left him, Rod was going to do a blues album with Jeff Beck and invariably they had another falling out, so that didn’t happen. So he decided to record a blues album with his touring band, and that morphed in to anybody who had any songs, so of course, I presented some songs. And he was using Chuck his keyboard player to kind of co-produce that. And one song we cut was a cover of “Here Comes The Night” by Van Morrison And Them. Which had a great chorus, but the verses were really wordy. I said ‘How did that go?’ and he said ‘There’s too many words, I can’t sing it, I ran out of breath.’. I said ‘Well, you know you could re-arrange the phrasing on that.’ and he goes ‘What do you mean?’, and I said ‘Well, I can fix that, I can fix that in 10-15 minutes.’ So he said ‘Ok, show me what you’ve got.’ So while they were working on something else, I sat down with a piece of paper and pen, and re-qrote the lyrics, went in and did a work vocal for Rod to learn from, and he said ‘Dude, you’re a genius, you’re fucking brilliant! If you ever done work as a producer?’, and I said ‘Of course I have.’ . And he said ‘Do you want to produce my vocals for this album?’, and I said ‘Absolutely!’ So that album was called Time, it came out in 2013, and it was #1 throughout the UK, it Top 40 for something like 6 months, top 10 for over a month, and the single was #1 – and I produced the vocals on that record. So that was my recording highlight. I played on it, just not on every track, I played on a couple of tracks because he used a variety of musicians.
Working with the late Brian Howe [ex of Bad Company] –
By the time I joined Brian he was no longer in Bad Company, we were touring under the moniker ‘Brian Howe – Former Lead Singer of Bad Company’, because he didn’t get to walk with the name. He’d been out gigging under his own name ‘former lead singer’ logo for some years already. I came in and we were talking, and before I even played a note he told me I was his new musical director, just from the conversation. So I really had a good time with that, and I enjoyed the songs. I was already a huge Brian Howe fan. in the ’80s while on tour with Richard i remember hearing the song “Holy Water” on the radio, and I was ‘Holy shit, this sounds good. The singer’s insane!’ So I bought that on cassette, at a truck stop on the road, and Richard and I used to listen to it every night, the Holy Water album with Brian singing and writing, every night in the back of the tour bus. So, a friend of mine was playing bass for Brian, and he said ‘I’m going to want to get you on this gig. You’re the perfect guy.’ So I was really excited about it; I had a lot of admiration for his talent, and he was still singing his ass off. We became very best friends, we spoke every single day. And then he passed away last May, 2020. And that was that. I lost that gig, but more importantly I lost one of the best friends I’ve ever had.
I don’t know , but there didn’t seem to be a lot of released in 1983. A little scarce. A few decent albums, and sophomore releases. A good list, but not a great one, with none of these releases being their band’s biggest albums or mega successful, thus making it difficult to really place these in order [all pretty close for me] 1984 would be a busier year, I think.
Aldo Nova – Subject
The follow-up to Aldo Nova’s hugely successful debut album. Though not nearly as big, it did contain a lot of great songs like the hit “Monkey On Your Back”, “Hold Back The Night”, “All Night Long”, and a strange cover choice being Coney Hatch’s “Hey Operator.” Released in October.
Coney Hatch – Outa Hand
The band’s 2nd album, produced by Max Norman, and released in the summer. A bit lighter on the production], but still full of good guitar rock songs like the single “First Time For Everything”, as well as favorites “Don’t Say Make Me”, “Some Like It Hot”, “Shake It”, as well as the band’s lone ballad “To Feel The Feeling Again.”
Headpins – Line Of Fire
Saw Headpins open for Loverboy in 1983 at the CNE. The album came out that month as Darby Mills would announce that the band had a new album out the next day – then they only played one song from it! My favorite of the band’s 3 albums with “Feel It (Feel My Body)”, “Just One More Time”, “Celebration”, and “Don’t Stand In The Line Of Fire.”
Loverboy – Keep It Up
[see above] Saw these guys at the CNE in ’83. Their 3rd album, released in June and still good, the band’s 2nd to reach Billboard’s Top 10. [next albums would dip IMO with a number of outside written tracks]. Featured hits “Hot Girls In Love”, “Strike Zone”, and “Queen Of The Broken Hearts”.
Saga – Head Or Tails
The follow up to the highly successful World’s Apart. I played the heck out of this album at the time, a bit more pop-ish, but plenty of excellent songs like “The Flyer”, “Scratching The Surface”, “Social Orphan”, and “Cat Walk”. Released in September.
Helix – No Rest For The Wicked
After 2 independent albums Helix, from Kitchener signed to Capitol and released this in March. The album saw 3 singles — Eddie Schwartz “Does A Fool Ever Learn”, “Heavy Metal Love”, and “Don’t Get Even Get Mad” [by Lisa Del Bello & Tim Thorney] , as well as favorites “Dirty Dog” and the title track. The album made Billboard’s Top 200, and would be the start of a great run of successful albums, hits, and videos.
Red Rider – Neruda
Released in January, the band’s 3rd album featured the classic hits “Power” and “Human Race”, as well as favorites “Napoleon Sheds His Skin” and “Crack The Sky [Breakaway].” The track “Can’t Turn Back” would be used in an episode of Miami Vice.
Orphan – Lonely At Night
Winnipeg’s Orphan debuted in August, featuring singer / songwriter / bassist Chris Burke-Gaffney [ex of The Pumps] . The band’s first of 2 albums featured the singles “Saved By The Bell” and “Miracle”, and most notably the favorite title track, as well as decent pop-rockers in “Hello” and “What Kind Of Love Is This”.
Anvil – Forged In Fire
Anvil’s 3rd album and 2nd to be produced by Chris Tsangerides, released in April. Great title track to kick off the album, as well as favorites “Free As The Wind”, and the single “Make It Up To You”.
Killer Dwarfs – Killer Dwarfs
From Oshawa, Ontario, the Killer Dwarfs debuted in ’83, with bandmembers adopting the name ‘Dwarf’. Not sure how well this did, but it did get a Juno nomination, It included a number of good metallic rockers like “Are You Ready”, “Heavy Mental Breakdown”, and “Prisoner”. A pretty cool debut, but through record company changes it would take 3 years til the next one.
Other releases : Exciter Heavy Metal Maniac, Bryan Adams Cuts Like A Knife, Prototype Prototype.
A Swedish band that appears to have been ‘resurrected’ after decades, with their 2nd album. The band, originally called ‘Burn’ formed in’82 and released their debut LP in 1984. That album doesn’t bare that much resemblance to this one, aside from the vocals of Anders Magnell and bass playing of Robert Hovarth. Fire Breaks The Dawn, from ’84 only saw release in the band’s homeland, as well as Japan, and featured 2 guitarists, and a more NWOBHM influence in their sound, where as Second Act adds keyboards, and takes on a more classic ’80s hard rock / aor sound. Absent is original guitarist Magnus Olson, who also wrote almost every song on the first record, other founding guitar player Peter Horvath is also gone, as Magnelli handles guitar duties here as well. Erik Martensson [W.E.T. , Eclipse] has a hand in this [mixing]. And it definitely sits in that same class of great Swedish hard-rock as Eclipse, and reminds me of latter day Europe [with the use of some excellent keyboards]. Though not very similar to their debut from ’84, Second Act is a solid high energy rock album. Great production, with attention to detail on things like song intros, different keyboard sounds [love the use of organ in a number of tracks, giving it a bit of ’80s Deep Purple feel on occasion], guitar solos, choruses [well crafted with harmonies, tho’ a few being a bit syrupy in that ’80s kinda way] ….. “Sail Away” kicks off this album, a cool little intro builds up before the the band comes in with this upbeat rocker [and video single]. Favorite tracks include “Magic”, “Born For Your Love” [just a solid rock tune, with quite a guitar break], “I’m Ready”, and closing cut “Fly Like An Eagle” [no, not the Steve Miller tune!]. Ten tunes, no ballads! Lyrically, nothing too serious here, much of this coming out of that ’80s hard rock, relationships and anthems approach, which is fine by me. A very good album, well written and put together, not keen on the album cover though 😉 .
Finally, PROUD is back after 36 years, stronger than ever, with ten new powerful songs! PROUD were founded in Landskrona, Sweden in 1982. They started as BURN and were one of many, countless Hard Rock bands that came in the mid-80s. The group changed their name over to PROUD and made an album for EMI which was produced by Caj Högberg (“Fire Breaks the Dawn”). This album is a rare and often elusive title making it an essential purchase when stumbling upon by fans of classic rock/metal of the 1980s. “Fire Breaks the Dawn” achieved success in Japan and parts of South America both.
In 2019, two of the original band members decided to make a new start! Songwriting and recording took place and soon a new record deal was signed with AOR Heaven. “Second Act” was recorded and engineered by Richard Larsson at Handsome Hard Studio 1 and 2, produced by PROUD, mixed and mastered by Erik Mårtensson at Mass Destruction Production and additionally mixed by Thomas “Plec” Johansson at The Panic Room.
The band is: Anders Magnell (Lead vocals, guitars, backing vocals) Roberth Horvath (Bass, backing vocals) Mats Christiansson (Drums, backing vocals) Additional Musician: Richard Larsson (Keyboards)
I gotta start by saying I am not a huge Stryper or a LA Guns fan, no particular reason why, But I do like some of the side projects Michael Sweet has done, such as his albums with George Lynch, and I do like this! Very heavy stuff. Not sure why there’s the forgettable band name, just call it after the 2 main forces here Sweet & Guns [OK, maybe that doesn’t sound so good either]. Regardless, probably the heaviest thing either of these guys have done. “Life” leads this album off with a cool guitar intro, Sweet throwing in one of his many screams here, and the band kicking in to an awesome fast paced rocker. Lots of great guitar heavy rock here, love Tracii Guns’ tone throughout, especially on slower Sabbath rockers “Take Me Away” & “World Gone Wrong”, driving tune “No Tomorrows” [something about this reminds me of Ozzy’s “Steal Away The Night”] , and the not-too-soft ballad “Been Said Before” [a nice summertime feel with the acoustic guitar]. I really like this album, it’s got a ’70s Judas Priest / early ’80s Sabbath feel, IMO. 11 excellent tracks, no filler. Makes me wanna dig a bit more into Sweet’s and Tracii Guns other projects.
SUNBOMB is a highly anticipated new musical alliance between two steadfast warriors of the U.S. hard rock/metal scene, Tracii Guns and Michael Sweet. They have put together an absolute blinder of a heavy metal album, melding influences of classic metal bands such as Black Sabbath and Judas Priest with Tracii’s love of metal subgenres, specifically doom metal.
Tracii leaked the news of the new project in a March 2019 tweet, where he described the project’s debut LP as “the Metal record I would have made when I was 17 years old.” In May 2020, he mentioned on “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” that “The SUNBOMB record is really kind of like [L.A. GUNS’ 2019 album] ‘The Devil You Know’ times three. It’s more on the heavy side of ‘The Devil You Know’ album. And Michael Sweet, he’s a really fantastic metal singer.”
The music style on the record is much heavier than what one would expect from these two musicians and is firmly planted in the ‘metal’ category. While Tracii wrote the music for the album, the fact that Michael Sweet has been writing in an increasingly heavier style on latter era Stryper albums made him a very logical choice to sing for the band. And since doom metal, often known for having powerful singers like Messiah Marcolin from Candlemass and Eric Wagner from Trouble, was a massive influence on Tracii’s songwriting here, Sweet’s ability and range were a perfect match.
Drums on the album were handled by Tracii’s old L.A. Guns bandmate Adam Hamilton and bass was handled by Mitch Davis, with the exception of the track ‘They Fought’, which features current L.A. Guns bassist Johnny Martin.
Tracklist:
Life Take Me Away Better End No Tomorrows Born To Win Evil And Divine Been Said And Done Stronger Than Before Story Of The Blind World Gone Wrong They Fought
Line-up: Tracii Guns – Guitars Michael Sweet – Vocals Adam Hamilton – Drums Mitch Davis – Bass Johnny Martin – Bass (We Fought)
British hard-rock/AOR band Escape returns with their 3rd album, and a almost completely new line-up, based around founding guitarist / songwriter Vince O’Regan, who was with Legion, and has also played on albums by Bob Catley [Magnum] and Paul Hodson. As the bio [below], these songs are mostly reimagined songs from O’Regan’s past, but checking out Escape’s previous 2 albums [2012, 2013] Fire In The Sky is quite an improvement. It’s kinda filled with ’80s type of high energy rock, with heavy guitars and great vocals. Not a lot of original song titles here, reading like a classic ’80s British hard rock record. A solid 11 tunes, with only 2 not fitting that 4 and a half minutes or less formula. Best tracks include – “Blinded By A Lie” [not the UFO tune], “Coming Home”, “Destiny”, “Heroes In The Night”, and the title track – which clocks in over 9 minutes, a lengthy ballad that turns out pretty heavy. A fun sounding album, should sound good in the car.
After decades of silence, renowned Black Country/West Yorkshire AOR/Melodic Rock band ‘ESCAPE’ are reborn and returning to the fray with a new line up, their third studio album entitled ‘Fire in The Sky’ and new on-location video for track ‘Heroes in the Night’.
This comeback album is very much in the vein of breathing new life into old classics, combining a wealth of experience and new recording technology. Some of the tracks are over 30 years old and were in desperate need of a resurgence. They have been re-recorded, reimagined and brought to the forefront of a new era and audience in Melodic Rock.
All of the tracks on the album are taken from previous Vince O’Regan (Bob Catley, Legion, Arabia) releases but that’s where it ends. The production, sound and energy are all new. With new drums, bass and vocals and any original parts being remixed and remastered – the result is a bigger, fresher sound which, whilst still giving a nod to original, has elevated some already great tracks to a new level.
Two tracks on this album are lifted (with permission) from Bob Catley’s solo album “Spirit of Man” album released back in 2006. They are “Blinded by a Lie” and “Walk on Water”. Vince wrote these two tracks many moons ago and felt they needed a resurgence and deserved a new lease of life. Other revisited tracks come from a previous Escape album ‘Borderline’ and an O’Regan solo release ‘Temptation’.
‘Fire In The Sky’ is very much a showcase for the new line-up and a springboard for a brand new album that is already in the writing stages.
This album was recorded at each member’s respective homes during lock down, then sent for mixing and mastering at Pro2 Studios in Castleford by Paul Twohig and will be released on German Label AOR Heaven in April 2021.
Corky Laing is the legendary drummer from Mountain. Laing has had a long and amazing career going back to the ’60’s in Montreal, where he was from. He would join Mountain by the end of the ’60s, playing on all the band’s classic albums, and continue on with the band when he and Leslie West reformed the band in the ’80s. In recent years he’s been playing with his own band, carrying on the Mountain legacy, performing the classics, and a couple of years ago recorded Toledo Sessions, which has recently been reissued on vinyl. Along the way of his 50 year + career, Corky Laing has recorded with numerous bands, a solo album in the ’70s, and a few other projects. I spoke to him recently to discuss Toledo Sessions, as well as some of the other albums he has been apart of . It was a fun conversation, and here’s looking forward to hearing more from Corky in the near future. I did interview Corky some years back for the first ‘Cork’ album, so I am just putting that together and hope to post that as well, in the near future. * For more info on his career and latest releases – check out the links below.
How did the [new album] come about with Mark Mikel and Chris Shutters on there. How did you meet those guys and how did you end up in Ohio?
What happened was I was looking for a guitar player way back, because there’d been a couple of changes over the past 4 or 5 years, and I wanted to get a guitar player that played in that Mountain approach – that vibe. And I went to see Kofi Baker at a show in New York, and he recommended this guy Chris Shutters, who sounds very much like Clapton, he’s really good, but also he could play a lot heavier. So what happened is the show was commended, and Chris Shutters – he’s from Toledo, he drove from Toledo to New York, to get together with me just to so if we could vibe, and I was very impressed with his whole attitude, and at the time I had played with a couple of other musicians that I wasn’t terribly happy with going the long run with, as they say. And Chris said ‘I have this bass player I think you’d really like, and he lives in Toledo also.’ So, he said says ‘why don’t you come to Toledo and check out this guy Mark Mikel?’ , who is apparently a local hero in Toledo, he’s a brilliant musician, and he had his own thing going. And Mark had his own recording studio, and we got together, and played a little bit, and that night – the night that I arrived, apparently says ‘listen, why don’t we go to this place called The Dirty Bird and jam – and really jam’. And Mark at the time had already studied some of the Mountain songs, so we broke right into “Never In My Life” and I’m looking around going ‘how the Hell does this guy know this!?’ Well, Chis had advance messaged him and said ‘learn a couple, maybe we can get right to it.’ and we did, and the response was amazing. So we went back to the studio, and at that time, I think it was about November. And we went in and we started playing, and I must say that after the last 40-odd years of jamming with different people, we locked in – and I’m not saying that to hype you Kevin, but I’m saying it because it is so wonderful when that happens. It doesn’t happen that often. We locked right in, and Chris started singing, Mark sings, and there was this little funky beat up drum set that I was playing, but Mark recorded it, so it sounded brilliant! And that’s when we started going back and forth on these songs over a period of about 6 months. I would go back to Toledo, and to make a long story short we finished off the record, and at the time Jack White [from The White Stripes], he was friendly with this guy I knew Jason Junior, who had his own band.. Anyway there was a little bit of a loop of musicians and record company people around Toledo and Detroit, anyways, this Jason heard the record and he says ‘that’s brilliant, can we put it out?’ And they had a small label , which eventually became Prudential Records. And they put it out, but it was ready because it was just when Co-Vid kicked in. So we had the record, and I put it on hold because we wanted to get some shows, and now it’s been a year and we’re starting to plan the shows for the summer. And I guess you got the press release that the record is now going to be officially available on vinyl, and on CD. And I have to say Kevin, and I’m not a promo slut [well I guess I am], but the point is that we love this record because of the way that it came about, you know – I didn’t go out and hire people off the street, I didn’t hire anybody, they wanted to play and we just played, and as it turned out I’m very very happy with the record, and a lot of people are too. That’s the story.
Well, it’s definitely a ‘band’ sounding album, and will appeal to those Mountain and blues-rock crowd. It’s a great sounding album.
That’s the best thing you could say is that it sounds like a band, right away, because it does. I felt like we’d already been together for 10 or 15 years, with Mark and Chris. It was great! And as soon as you said that in your questionnaire, I said ‘I got to speak to Kevin, he knows his shit.’
Well, a lot of times you get these albums that are listed as ‘solo’ albums and they’re all over the place, but this one sounds like an actual band as opposed to a random solo project.
Yes, I agree. And I’ve had a few of those, so I know what you mean.
Did you do all your recording in Toledo, as well?
All the recording that’s on that record is done in Mark’s studio, in Toledo. And it was mixed by Jason Junior, who is also a drummer for Ted Nugent. He’s a young kid. Jason Junior grew up with Mountain, he’s only 22 years old. He wanted me to teach him when he was 6 years old, and I said ‘come on’. And he stuck with it, and over the last 10-12 years he became a great drummer, a great musician – this is Jason Junior, our record producer, and now he’s playing with Ted Nugent when Ted plays live. What I’m getting at is that it was a bit of a family affair, which is nice.
Can you touch on some of the songs, like did you write your own lyrics or did everyone write their own lyrics?
That’s a good question. Most of the songs, I collaborated on everything. “Knock Me Over” was the first song … Ya know, we were sitting around and we were ‘we gotta write a lyric and it’s gotta be’, and we’re both veterans , so to speak, and I hate that expression ‘Been there – done that!’ I’ve always hated that, and I don’t understand why people say that because if you say that, you’re going nowhere. But the opposite to that is ‘Knock me over’, and Mark and I were saying ‘let’s get a song that really knocks people over’. And you either love it or you hate, but it moves them – it kicks them! And that’s the first song we wrote. And I don’t ever remember playing as much drums on a record as I did then. And they played along, so that record is live – “Knock Me Over”. And as we moved along, I’d come in with a song called “Something’s Got To Give”, which I started writing 5 years ago at my rehearsal place. And if you think politically, this was a couple of years ago, and with the political situation which was stagnant – people were frozen and polarized. So I wrote this song “Something’s Got To Give” in a personal way. You know, like you talk to somebody and they’re totally in distress and they’re languishing, and you give them a little bit of advice and you say to them – ‘hey, something’s got to give – don’t worry about it, it’ll come.’ So the lyric and attitude in that is personal yet political. Some of the other songs Chris Shutter’s came in with and we would tweak them. Mark Mikel came in with “Earthquake”, and I love that song! And we wanted to come up with a track that was relevant for that, because it’s a delicate lyric – “You can cry tears to fill a teacup, but I could weep enough to form a lake”, it’s got some really good metaphors. But that would be Mark’s baby. The other one “Hell Yeah!”, It’s kinda like when we did play shows a year after, and we would get in the back of the car, and I’d be talking and Chris would go “Hell Yeah!”, ya know when you agreed with him. And I thought it was so repetitive. And at one point I came back to my studio and I was playing on my electronic drums, just kidding about, and I sent the drum feel to Mark, and I said ‘what do you think of these electronic drums? which I really don’t like, and he said ‘we could do something – Hell yeah!’ It just became kind of a joke, but it became a favorite on the record because it’s very different, and I love the lyric. And that would be Mark’s baby too. It’s just this thing, and I don’t know if it’s an Ohio thing or a mid-west thing, but it’s kinda one of these trailer park things – ‘Hell Yeah!’ [yells]. (I’ve had 14 coffees so you can tell I’m a little hyped up). and a little background to the music – you know, everybody stretched their playing, Mark stretched the bass playing, and he plays acoustic guitar on “Beautiful Flies”. And “Beautiful Flies” was like the last song we played and I really wanted to get a really ‘up’ beginning to the album, so I went right for the 2/4 beat, the double bass drum, everything I could to jumpstart that baby. And Mark, at the time, picked up the guitar and came up with the lick, and i loved it, I love that feel – it’s really ‘up’. The song itself is just a fun rocker, that we decided to start the album with. And then we had the ballad “The Road Goes On”, which is very much like on the Mountain record, the song “Theme For An Imaginary Western”.
You guys used a lot of harmonies on “The Road Goes On” and “How’s The Weather”. ” How’s The Weather is an interesting one, as soon as I heard that intro I thought of the Allman Brothers.
Could be, that’s a great comparison. Mountain had 2 vocalists, right – Felix sang the ballads, and Leslie had the rustic, gutsy blues voice, so we had a nice dynamic, I loved the vocals in Mountain, when they were vocalizing, so yeah I was really happy with the harmonies on this. And I had nothing to do with the harmonies on this, that would be Mark and Chris, they did a great job. and I agree with you – if it sounds like The Allman Brothers, so be it! A lot of drums for sure, and that’s my fault.
With “Earthquake”, I think the harmonies kinda give it a bit of a Beatles’ feel, and then you got the moog synthesizer in there, which gives it a bit of retro 60/70s feel.
Yea, that’s exactly right. These are things we did think about and a lot of times you think ‘well I made it up’, no a lot of this stuff is big influences. and it seems weird because I influenced them being in the original band, and it’s like a circle. Kevin, in rock n roll – it’s all been done, we played everything. And the thing you’re picking out, which I really respect, is we brought our own thing to what I would consider something that was there. You’ve gotta make it your own, even if you’re doing a cover record. So I like to think that everything we record, or I record, even if I’m copying somebody, I’m bringing my own thing to it. in my case i guess it would be the drumming because I was never really a studio drummer, and I really have my untethered approach to playing, and I got that opportunity with Felix and Leslie, they never told me what to play, they just said ‘show us where the one is, so we know to we come back together’. And that was being lucky, because after that in the 70s, all the drumming was basically tied to a click-track, and I never psychologically or even emotionally – I never had a click-track in my body, I have a heartbeat, but it’s my own – that’s my inventory. So, when it comes to playing, even on this record the guys were beautiful, Mark and Chris just said… and I wanted to edit about 40 per cent of the drumming out of what we did, and they refused, they said ‘no, this is your record, do what you want.’ And who the fuck are they to tell me what to do when it’s my record , and acknowledge me, and it made me feel confident – that’s me and that’s who I am on the record, like it or don’t like it. and i guess it’s sort of a philosophy of life that I’ve been very fortunate to not be tethered or attached to anything else but my own heart. And again, this is who I am and what I do. It’s the philosophy of this record, it’s the Toledo Sessions, it’s a time and place and a creative moment over a period of a few months, at the time.
The other song that stands out is “Information Overload”. I’m curious how much the lyrics have to do with information, technology and the internet.
You nailed it. That’s exactly what Chris had in mind. and also it’s emotional information – like nothing’s personal anymore, it’s just all out there. Ya know, everybody is wearing their heart on their sleeve when it comes to certain things. and maybe there’s certain they shouldn’t talk about. And I don’t know, if you have a relationship and you’re sitting at the table and somebody’s telling everything about how they go to the bathroom – that’s too much information. But the one Chris is talking about is exactly what you said,
Had you done any shows since this album came out?
No, not officially. we’ve been playing Mountain songs, mostly.
I saw some of the last shows you had listed and you had Ritchie Scarlet listed with you…
Yeah, that was one of the changes. That happened about a year ago when Chris was putting out his solo record, and at the time, it wasn’t a break-up, it’s just that we were going to Europe to play, and I needed a guitar player, and I didn’t think twice, I thought Chris would do it, but he was getting married, and he was putting out his record, and he said ‘can I join you in Europe, I need a week’, and it was a 1 month tour?’ , and I said ‘Oh no, it’s going to cost too much’. And Ritchie Scarlet and I had been together with Leslie, Ritchie was playing bass at the time, and I knew he was a great guitar player, and I knew how influenced Ritchie was with Leslie’s tone and Leslie’s attitude towards playing. So since we were playing Mountain songs, and I have to explain that we were playing Mountain songs the way that they were played when we first released the Mountain records. You know, Leslie and I would jam the last last 10-15 years on some of the songs, and go way off the songs, where people wouldn’t even recognize it. So Warren Haynes, from Government Mule came to see me one time, and we were talking and he’s a big fan, and he says “I like it, but I don’t recognize the songs anymore – you’re going off, I didn’t even recognize Mississippi Queen.” – And what he was saying was that Leslie and I were just jamming too much. So why don’t I, when I put the band together with Ritchie and Mark and going Europe, arrange the songs exactly like they are on the record. And it paid off. I don’t think there’s millions of Mountain fans, but the ones that showed up were so appreciative that we played it that way. You know in “Nantucket Sleighride” we put the piano in the beginning, the intro, and it worked. We were very specific and deliberate in the way we played the songs and the way people heard it originally. Because, keep in mind, we’re over in Europe and it’s been 50 years since Mountain Climbing, and people are still coming out for the material.
The other thing that came out was the reissue of Pompeii : The Secret Sessions album. Are you happy with that reissue as well?
This record company found this, and you’ll notice the name of it The Secret Sessions, it’s because nobody ever found out about it. It was a compilation of songs I’d record with different people – Eric Clapton, Ian Hunter, over the years. and this record company, the same record company previous to putting out Toledo Sessions, this was 6 months before that said ‘do you mind if we get permission to put out The Secret Sessions on vinyl because of the archival value of it, and I said ‘great!’ So they wanted to release Pompeii on Record Store Day, and I said ‘fine, you know the repertoire is there’, and we added a couple of bonus tracks, where Jason Junior played the drums on “Growing Old With Rock n Roll”, which was a favorite of Jason’s from a-way back on my solo record. And in capsule form Kevin – Pompeii was a one-off. And to show you how surprised I was, they said ‘we’ll press a couple hundred vinyls’, and I said fine. And Sony got orders for over 1500 vinyls, and they all sold out. I’ve only got one copy, myself. And of course, they’re going to re-release an orange acetate. And apparently the audiophile collectors save those, and I don’t know, it’s new to me. And that particular compilation goes back over 30 years [Ed 40]. People love it. Mick Ronson was brilliant on “The Outsider”. It’s a killer song that Ian was going to throw away! It was in his garbage basket when I went to his house to work with him. I said ‘what’s this?’, and he’s ‘ahh, it’s a fucking ballad, I’m a rocker, I don’t really like ballads’, he says. But he wrote some of the most beautiful ballads in Mott The Hoople. And when you hear it I’m playing the mallets, on the tom-toms, like a ghostly kinda pulse. I love that song! I had a great time with that record. It was done over a period of time and place. And I have to say people like it.
Do you foresee yourself doing a follow-up to Toledo Sessions?
Absolutely! I’m going next week to start doing the demos with a friend of mine there. thing is you can’t go anywhere right now. So to answer your question, we’ll definitely be following it up with another record. Not sure if we’ll call it Corky Laing’s Mountain . The record company wanted to put the Mountain thing in there, and I had no problem with that. And Leslie had no problem with that, he loved the record. I got the endorsement from him because at the time, he told me ‘get a guitar player that can read you as a drummer.’ And that’s when I met Chris. And if I may say so, Ritchie Scarlet was a student of Leslie West, and when we play Mountain songs he [Ritchie] nails it.
You did the Leslie West Band album from 1975, with Mick Jones, and a few other people. That’s an album I really love. Do you have any recall on that album?
What happened there on a business level, Mountain with Felix had just disbanded, and the label – I’m not sure what happened with them, but our manager started a new label called Phantom Records with RCA, and they wanted to put a record out. And Leslie, at that point was thinking ‘where we going with this? We couldn’t call it Mountain, that wouldn’t be fair.’ So Leslie said ‘Do you mind if we call it the Leslie West Band?’ And at the time we had brought in Mick Jones from Spooky Tooth. You know, he was over in England, and through friends and management he wanted to come over. So I was with a guy named Miller Anderson, and we were importing musicians, it was a flowing time Kevin, people were searching for places to land – musicians were looking for places to hook up. And Leslie and I had to really get together and write songs, and I believe “Down By The River” was one of the songs on that record that I played on my solo record that Eric Clapton played guitar on; he really liked it. This was when I was doing my solo record in Macon, Georgia. So what happened was as things moved along, Mick Jones had came in the band, and I was having a difficult time personally, and I left, and Carmine Appice slipped in.
Carmine did the live shows?
He did 1 or 2. I left to do my solo record, and I was having a hard time with Leslie. It was a rough time for us. I called it the ‘7 year bitch’. Leslie and I had been together for 7 years, and I was in a bad head-space, and I wasn’t happy with my playing, so I left, and Leslie went off and did his own thing at that point. And I went to my solo career, which was ’76-77. I have fond memories of Howie Wyatt playing keyboards on that. Howie Wyeth was Andrew Wyeth’s grandson, the artist Andrew Wyeth. And Howie and I became very good friends, and actually Howie introduced me to Kiki Friedman and I would go every Sunday to the Lone Star cafe with Kiki Friedman. That was a time I was bouncing around, bouncing around like a bloody basketball, but it was fun. I have no bad memories of that.
On this album there’s a guy name Ken Asher credited on piano…
A lot of those guys were studio guys. You’re right about that. We did the Leslie West Band, and then he did The Great Fatsby that he put out, and I think I played a couple of tracks on that.
You played drums along with Nick Ferrantella on that album.
Yeah. Nicky Ferrantella was a very close friend of mine, he just passed away last year. He and I were friends when I had my local band in Nantucket, and so when I went in to work with West Bruce & Laing he became my drum roadie, because I wanted to have a friend with me. So for a couple of years, he was my drum roadie, because he’s also a drummer. We had a good time on the road. And I went off the road after West Bruce & Laing, and Nick went off to work with Mick Jones because of the affiliation with Leslie West. And he worked for Foreigner for years. He was a good drummer, and we did a couple of sessions for a couple of soundtracks, which was fun, in Nantucket.
I picked up this album a year ago [Leslie West Band], and i really like the track “Money” ….
‘Whatcha gonna do with the money’ , yeah !
And the “Dear Prudence” take – that was another one. That was very unusual.
Leslie always wanted to do a lot of covers. To take you back – Felix was dead against doing any covers. And Leslie, when he was on his own, he said ‘I want to do these songs’. So that’s why. And “Dear Prudence” was great. I loved that version.
“We Gotta Get Outta This Place” was the other cover.
OK, that’s right…you’re shaking my brains up, Kevin. I gotta think about it.
The other album I’m curious about is you did an album with a band called The Mix, in 1980.
That’s was sort of the new wave, when we came in to the 80s. All the records before that, we were considered the dinosaurs. Then all the punkers came in. I met this guy Stu Daye, through this producer Jack Douglas – the guy who produced Aerosmith. Jack introduced me to Stu Daye. I went to New York to find a band, and they said I had to cut my hair. I felt like Samson ya know, all that rock n roll glam-rock / heavy metal hair – I cut it shorter, so it was more ’80s. And I got together with Stu Daye, who at the time was a local hero in New York, and David Grahame who wrote that song ‘all I wanna do is be with you’ [sings], you know the song by Big Star or something!? Anyway, he was the bass player. And the keyboard player was Chris Meredith. So we lived in New York and we played all the New York clubs. And we were managed by Leber-Krebs, they had Aerosmith, it was bigtime. And they did a great job. And they started their won label called Word Of Mouth. So if you can’t get the record, that’s why, it was a very small label. And quite frankly it was a great little album, I think. But it was on a much smaller scale, the songs were like 2 minutes.
I was curious about that album, as Stu Daye did some stuff with Neal Smith of the Alice Cooper group. And you guys did a cover on there of a song called “Love Is Rather Blind”, which was originally on the Billion Dollar Babies [band] album a couple of years before. How did that come about?
I don’t know too much about that Kevin. But I know Stu, he worked with Cyndi Lauper for a while, when she was local. He’s living in England now. He shows up now and then. Stu is a really good musician. He was a good guy, but he just had no control over his career, he was all over the place. But – a very good musician! And I always liked his voice; he had a really high voice, and it would either drive you crazy or put you to sleep; it was really something.
You did a couple of Mountain albums with Mark Clarke on bass. Do you still have contact with Mark?
Yeah, as a matter of fact he’s playing with Colosseum now. I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago because Leslie had passed away and Mark called me with condolences, and I spoke to him, and he’s doing quite well. We did a couple of tours back then; we did a couple of European and UK tours with Mark.
Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff on Youtube, even from the mid-’80s as well [with Mark].
Are they good? [haha]
There’s some professionally done stuff – TV shows, full shows…
The Dennis Miller Show is the one we did with Ritchie Scarlet for the first time, this was way back in the ’90s. We played “Mississippi Queen”. And Leslie had lost a shit load of weight, because he had lime decease – I didn’t even recognize him! And I hadn’t seen him in 6 years, I was working at Polygram Records as an executive, and he called me up and said ‘David, Dennis Miller wants us to play on this new show he has, do you want to fly to LA?’, and I said ‘Hey, why not!?’. I had a great time. And at that time we al hadn’t seen each other in 6 years, and of course we all remembered “Mississippi Queen”, it wasn’t difficult.
Are you much of a collector of vinyl, do you keep much stuff?
I used to. My son took over my vinyl collection. He has a shitload of stuff. He’s up in Richmond Hill, north of Toronto. I moved down to the States, and I left all my gold records and my stash with Colin; so he is the gatekeeper to all that. But yes I do have quite a few vinyls here, and my son bought me a phonograph player for my studio here, a little portable one, and he has the big one. What I did was I left everything with Colin up there.
The first time I spoke with you was when the first album with Eric Schenkman came out, and you were living in Toronto.
The old Cork band, yeah, we had Noel Redding on bass – that was a lot of fun! Eric is an amazing player. And I met him when I was in New York, and he said ‘let’s get together and jam’, and little did I know that he was moving to Toronto, and that’s where I was living, so.. We hooked up, and quite frankly Speed Of Thought is one of my favorite material records because Eric’s a great writer and a great player. Kevin, I have been really lucky with the musicians I have met and I have played with – I just want to make that clear. I don’t want to boast about what I do, and I will boast about being really fucking lucky because that takes a lot in this business. The first thing you need is a pulse, and the second thing you need is luck to get on.
You’re originally from Montreal. Do you keep up with the Canadian scene?
I would go to the Forum all the time, I was a very big Habs fan, you know when they had the royalty like Maurice Richard. But I am a huge Habs fan, but I don’t keep track of the players right now. And the way the season is this year I can’t keep track. I was a big fan of baseball and Warren Cromartie and Bill Lee, when they played with the Expos. And I did a movie, actually with The Mix, with Stu Daye, we did a movie theme for The Bill Lee Story – I Lost A Grounder In The Sun was the name of the sub-title . And I got to know all the Expos at the time, that would’ve been 1981. When I moved to Toronto I had to be careful because I’m not a big Toronto fan – of any team. Down deep I am very Canadian. I keep track of a lot of the comedians and a lot of the actors that are Canadian. And you know when a Canadian crosses the border in to America, they’re going to try ten times harder, that’s why – Lorne Michaels and the keyboard player from David Letterman – all those guys are Canadian, and people seem to respect the Canadian performers and creative people because they try that much harder, I think – That’s my feeling. There’s something a little extra stock in Canadians when it comes to the creative atmosphere, and that loop. I’m very proud to be Canadian.
Going back to Montreal in the late ’60s, early ’70s – there was a good scene, you had Mashmakan, you had April Wine starting out. Were you familiar with any of those guys back then?
JB and The Playboys, Al Nicholls used to get in touch with me. The Mandala used to come to Montreal [Ed- Mandala was Dominic Troiano’s band]. We played with The Mandala at the Prempter [sp?] lounge, they were playing next door at the Knickerbocker lounge, this goes back to the mid ’60s. The list goes on – The Haunted, I remember all those guys, they were terrific. We did a TV show ‘Something 65’ , or weird little Dick Clark type of show for the Canadians and they did a reunion, and it was a lot of fun. But I don’t know what’s going on these days up there.
The last few years when Leslie was ill, and unfortunately passed last year, can you give me a bit of your memories of him, your first impressions of him and sort of the impact he had on you, and how you got on with him the last few years?
I’ll tell you what it is, Leslie and I were brothers from another mother! we were really close – even in contracts and in divorces; you name it – we’ve been through all of that – record deals, musicians, Leslie and I were in and out of that like sibling rivalry. But if I could make one statement that rings true is that I had the very best of times, at certain times with Leslie West. I mean, we were on top of the world, for years, in and out. And even though the band fell from grace for whatever reason, because of the punk rockers or whatever, I don’t believe that – I had a great great run with Leslie. He had a few personal problems that he had to deal with every day, he was very diabetic, so am I, but he was number one. All I can say Kevin is that here was no better musician to play with, and when I say ‘play’ I talking about – just get right out there – than Leslie. He had the most amazing tone, and above all he had one of the best rock voices ever! and all those guys – Rod Stewart, Paul Rodgers, they all loved Leslie’s voice, and they loved his guitar playing. And in a strange way Leslie never gave his voice much credence, his whole thing was he was a guitar player, but I always loved his voice. And as a matter of fact the last record we did was The Masters Of War, and at the time I didn’t have any ideas to write and neither did he, so what we decided to was – he started playing “Blowin’ In The Wind” by himself – acapala, at certain shows, and people loved it. And Leslie said ‘why don’t we do a whole bunch of Dylan stuff our way!?’, and we did – The Masters Of War – The Mountain versions!
And it was a great time; I think it’s a really great record, we really loved the sound of that record. And here’s the thing, we really didn’t have to worry about writing songs, we had the best songs in the world right there, all we had to do was interpret it. And like I said before I brought what I thought I wanted to bring to the Dylan songs, and Leslie brought what he thought should be his contribution, and it was a lot of fun when you don’t have to worry whether people like the song or not. There was very high points on the Mountain, very high points. And i don’t like to bring up any negatives in any of this business because it doesn’t do you any good. Everybody has their fall from grace, and you fall down and it’s how you get up. And right now Kevin, I’m doing the best I can to get up because a lot of our brothers and sisters in the music business have taken the Nantucket Sleighride, within the whole music promotion and business, and they have not come back. The whole trip in the rock industry is you give up everything to go out there, and again, sometimes you never come back. And we’ve lost a lot of them in the last 3 or 4 years. And I feel very blessed that I am still here talking to you. Here I am talking to you about my history in the music business, and I am very very lucky.
You put out a book a few years ago as well.
Kevin, get the book, because it does have a lot about Montreal, it’s about me growing up in Montreal, and going to New York, etcetera. The book is called “Letters To Sarah”, Sarah’s my mom. And when I was all Toronto and Quebec, in all these shitholes, I would be alone in the hotel room, and I would always write my mother. I wanted to keep in touch with her, she was always worried about me. I have a bit family, I have triplet brothers, a sister, and the only time I got her gratification was when I wrote her letters. So from the early ’60s to the late ’90s, even when I was playing Carnegie Hall – I’d go back to the hotel or wherever I was staying, and write her a letter, and tell her all about it. So what we did Kevin, is we took all those letters, and when I say ‘we’ – it was with my manager Tuija Takala, she’s a Finish academic doctor, and we wrote the book. She took the dates of all the letters, and in between the dates I would talk about where I was, what I was feeling, I would expand upon that time. And that is why the book is called “Letters To Sarah”. It so happens it sort of reads like a memoir, but that’s alright. Get it, it’s on Amazon.
Anything else on the horizon?
Yeah, everything’s all on the horizon now. We have a new booking agency, and we’re going to start booking August to the next decade! I’m looking forward to a lot of shows. I’m looking forward to playing with Ritchie and recording with Ritchie, playing with Mark and recording, and we’re going to expand the actual performances with videos and back screen, try to bring it up to date, even though we’re old school we’ll bring up the performances. And right now I’m going to focus in on that while I’ve still got a pulse.
There are plenty of classic rock songs that share titles. One of those titles is “Gypsy” – a title used by 3 of the biggest heavy bands of the 70s. Songs about Gypsies tend to make for some interesting tales, and there’s loads of songs about Gypsies [be it in title or lyrics]. These tracks each tell a different Gypsy tale. Feel free to drop your 2 cents your take on some of these tales. I kept this list short and to the heaviest songs, so yes on – I am aware there are tracks titled “Gypsy” by Canadian band Abraham’s Children, The Moody Blues, and Fleetwood Mac, but they’re all pretty poppy or soft rock, so… Anyway, let me know your favorites of these [in chronological order], and if you actually know of one I’ve missed. Feel free to leave comments and subscribe to my page.
Anyone familiar with British singer / performer will want to check out this new CD box. Brown who had had a #1 hit in the UK and Canada [#2 in US] with the song “Fire” in 1968. His stage show included his ‘fire hat’, and he wore black make-up around his eyes, an idea that would later be taken on by Alice Cooper, and later Kiss. When his ‘Crazy World Of Arthur Brown’ [which would feature organ player & co-writer Vincent Crane [pre Atomic Rooster] and drummer Carl Palmer] split up, he started the ’70s with a new band – Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come, which featured the great guitar work of Andy Dalby for the band’s 3 albums. 1971’s Galactic Zoo Dossier featured such tracks as “Space Plucks”, the heavy instrumental “Gypsy Escape”, “Metal Monster”, and “Sunrise”. Much of this is not your standard rock or prog writings or arrangements of the ’70s, there’s lots of variety, lots of unique theatrical deliveries, humor, but really amazing performances from the band, including organ, and Brown’s vocal delivery ranging from near spoken, and soft pieces to his powerful and emotional vocals on the likes of “Sunrise” .
This stuff is not to be entered in to lightly – you can’t just play it once and categorize it, as there is so much going on musically and lyrically. The follow up album was 1972’s self titled Kingdom Come, which appears simpler with a colorful and word-free cover, and fewer and short song titles. The album is highlighted by “Love Is A Spirit”, and the comical “Traffic Light Song” [that guitar hook reminding me of James Gang’s “Funk #49”], and closing with the 8 and a half minute spacey ballad “The Hymn”.
The 3rd and final album was 1973’s Journey. This would be even more experimental and a bit lighter overall than it’s predecessors. Journey would be the first album in history to use a drum machine [performed by Brown]. Plenty of experimental and diverse keyboards [less organ], with 3 tracks clocking in over 8 minutes, there’s definitely less vocals throughout this album, but best pics for me are the last 2 cuts “Spirit Of Joy” [the single, and which would be covered by Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden], and “Come Alive”.
Not sure how these albums sold in the day, but it’s a nice collection of a major period in Arthur Brown’s amazing career. Brown has one of Britain’s most powerful and unique voices, and would’ve been an interesting fit for a number of heavy or heavy blues based bands [see Atomic Rooster, Fleetwood Mac]. He would go on to record many more albums, and appear on other’s albums [see Alan Parson’s Project, Klaus Shulze, Hawkwind, Bruce Dickinson]. In more recent years he is still performing [pre CoVid], and has appeared on stage with Alice Cooper, the Hamburg Blues Band, most recently toured North America as part of the “Royal Affair” package [w/ Yes, Asia, etc..].
Press Release:
Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce the release of a new boxed set featuring all of the albums recorded by the legendary ARTHUR BROWN & KINGDOM COME issued between October 1971 and April 1973. The band came together in 1970 following ARTHUR BROWN’s failed attempt to form a new band upon the disillusion of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown in 1969. Based in rural Dorset, Arthur had undertaken rudimentary recordings with the bands The Puddletown Express and Rustic Hinge before forming a new, more satisfactory band KINGDOM COME. The initial group came together with a line-up of ARTHUR BROWN (vocals), BOB ELLWOOD (guitars), DAVE AMBROSE (bass), ROB TAIT (drums) and PETE BAILEY (percussion) to record a lengthy jam session in the studio. This tape was impressive enough to lead to a contract with Polydor Records and the album GALACTIC ZOO DOSSIER was the first album by the band. Issued in October 1971, the album featured Arthur Brown joined by ANDY DALBY (lead guitar / vocals), MICHAEL “GOODGE” HARRIS (keyboards), DESMOND FISHER (bass), JULIAN BROWN (VCS3 Synthesizer) and MARTIN STEER (drums). The band’s debut album was a conceptual work loosely based upon the subject of humanity living in a zoo and subject to cosmic forces. As a group, Kingdom Come took the mantle from where the Crazy World of Arthur Brown had left off, presenting a highly theatrical show which utilized the VCS 3 synthesizer and presented a form of experimental rock music which was far ahead of its time. This led to them becoming a popular act on the festival circuit (their memorable appearance at the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre was captured in the documentary film of the same name). For the band’s next album, 1972’s KINGDOM COME, Desmond Fisher departed and was replaced by PHIL SHUTT. The album was another conceptual work and built upon the impact of their debut. Soon after the album’s release Martin Steer and Goodge Harris also departed the band. American musician VICTOR PERAINO joined the group on Mellotron, VCS3 and Theramin and Brown opted to utilize the Bentley Rhythm Ace drum machine instead of a drummer, bringing a new electronic direction to Kingdom Come’s highly inventive Space Rock. This incarnation of the band recorded their final and finest album in the Autumn of 1972, the highly influential JOURNEY. Issued in April 1973 the album was a superb conceptual work and featured such legendary material as “TIME CAPTIVES”, “SPIRIT OF JOY” and “COME ALIVE”. Despite the excellence of the album, KINGDOM COME disbanded soon after the album’s release leaving an impressive legacy. This new remastered boxed set features the albums “GALACTIC ZOO DOSSIER”, “KINGDOM COME” and “JOURNEY”, along with the archive disc “JAM – THE FIRST SESSIONS 1970” and “AT THE BBC 1971-1972” a twelve track CD featuring sessions recorded for the BBC between March 1971 and September 1972, nine tracks of which are previously unreleased. The set also adds thirteen bonus tracks (two previously unreleased on CD) taken from studio out-takes and a rare single. Also included is an illustrated booklet with new essay featuring an exclusive interview with Arthur Brown and a replica poster. “ETERNAL MESSENGER” is a fine tribute to Arthur Brown, a unique and visionary musician.
• A DELUXE 5 CD BOXED SET FEATURING ALL OF THE ALBUMS BY ARTHUR BROWN & KINGDOM COME • FEATURING THE ALBUMS “GALACTIC ZOO DOSSIER”, “KINGDOM COME”, “JOURNEY” & THE ARCHIVE RECORDINGS “JAM – THE FIRST SESSIONS 1970” & “AT THE BBC 1971-1972” (FEATURING NINE PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED TRACKS) • ALL NEWLY REMASTERED • WITH THIRTEEN BONUS TRACKS, TWO NEVER ISSUED ON CD, DRAWN FROM STUDIO OUT-TAKES & RARE SINGLES • INCLUDES AN ILLUSTRATED BOOKLET WITH PHOTOGRAPHS, NEW ESSAY WITH EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ARTHUR BROWN AND A POSTER.
This was a busy year in Canadian rock, but more so in ‘pop’ . Some great albums, but not a lot of heavy releases. A memorable pair of debuts here, and a couple of final albums from bands that split up. Yeah, this is supposed to be a top 10, but I gave in to a tie for my last choice.
Rush – Permanent Waves
Released in January, the band’s biggest success until the next one, reaching #3 & #4 in Canada and the US . “Freewill”, “The Spirit Of Radio”, “Entre Nous”, and the epic 9 minute + “Natural Science”. The first of my favorite trio of Rush albums.
Harlequin – Love Crimes
From Winnipeg, Harlequin featured the voice of George Belanger [still does]. This was their 2nd and biggest album. Released in the fall of that year, it featured 2 hits [and 2 of the band’s best known songs] – “Innocence” and “Thinking Of You”., as well as favorite aor-ish rockers like “It’s All Over Now”, “Wait For The Night”, and “Love On The Rocks”. A solid album, should’ve been huge.
Loverboy – Loverboy
These guys came out, featuring one-time Moxy singer Mike Reno, and former Streetheart members Matt Frenette and Paul Dean. A huge album released in October, featuring the top 10 hit “Turn Me Loose” , as well as 2 further hits “The Kid Is Hot Tonight” and “Lady Of The ’80s”. A solid album along with live favorite “Teenage Overdose”.
Teaze – Body Shots
The 5th and final album from Windsor’s Teaze. Coming off [arguably] their best – One Night Stands, Body Shots [only issued in Canada] was a good follow up, featuring favorites “Boys Night Out” [reworked from their first album], “Sure Thing”, “Calling All Nurses” and “I’m Not Gonna Cry Anymore”. Sadly, they packed it in after this. *I did get to witness their fantastic return show in 2019.
Max Webster – Universal Juveniles
The last album by the legendary Max Webster, released in October. It boasted favorites like “Check”, “April In Toledo”, “Drive And Desire”, and most notably “Battle Scar” – which featured Rush. +David Stone [ex Rainbow] on keys for much of the album.
Saga – Silent Knight
The band’s 3rd album, and first with the classic line up, released in August. Featured the classics “Don’t Be Late” [the single], “Careful Where You Step”, and “Compromise”. One of those few early Saga albums that saw no US release til years later. Great cover art.
Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush – What’s Next
Released in February, this was the last to use the Mahogany Rush tag for a number of years. Features one of Marino’s best recordings in the fast flying “Something’s Comin’ Our Way”. as well as favorites in the drivin’ “Finish Line” and “You Got Livin'”. Also includes a cover of The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues”.
Cruiser – Rollin’ With The Times
Montreal based Cruiser lead by singer / songwriter Don Beauchamp, and featuring original April Wine drummer Richie Henman. A very overlooked album full of great tunes – very catchy pop, rock, and a bit of prog … all very well produced with favorite tracks like “No Admission”, intro “R & R Survival”, and “Incident At New World Theatre”. A 2nd album was released in 2014. Brothers Tom & Wallie Rathie would later write a few tunes for April Wine.
FM – City Of Fear
Progressive trio FM [well before the British aor band of the same name!] released their 4th album in June. The band consisted of lots of keyboards, bass, drums, electric violins & mandolin. Closest band to compare I’d say is supergroup UK [with Cameron Hawkins even sounding a bit like John Wetton on occasion] One of their best, including “Krakow”, “Power” [the single], and the excellent title track. Would be the band’s last for a few years.
Toronto – Lookin’ For Trouble +
Originally called ‘Sass’, Toronto was [is] fronted by Holly Woods, the band’s debut was released in June. It featured the singles “Even The Score” and “Lookin’ For Trouble”, as well as a cover of The Rascals “You Better Run” [a hit for Pat Benatar a month later], and favorite “Get Your Hands Off Me”.
Triumph – Progressions Of Power+
Released in March. Not my favorite Triumph album [lacking something], but it includes the classics “I Live For The Weekend” [a minor hit in the UK], “I Can Survive”, and “Tear The Roof Off”.
+couldn’t decide, so I left it a tie
Other mentions: Zon I’m Worried About The Boys, The Kings Are Here, Prism Young And Restless , 451 451, Wireless No Static, Bryan Adams Bryan Adams
*Drop me a note in the comments with anything you feel was well overlooked or recommendations, and feel free to subscribe to my page.
Outsider Rock 