Even by Judas Priest’s standards, this is not a terribly good record, though it was a nice little hit for them in 1982 — indeed, their biggest American hit.
Rob Halford’s vocal is pretty generic and in large part unintelligible, which is kind of a shame when you have lyrics like these: “Drive hard/I’m callin’ all the shots/I got an ace card/Comin’ down on the rocks.” So he’s driving, playing pool, playing cards, and doing something that involves coming down on rocks (perhaps skydiving). That is the sort of thing that should definitely be clearly enunciated.
This tune also has a brief guitar solo by Glenn Tipton (and it occurs to me that there are not very many rock stars named Glenn) that is, for lack of a better word, nifty. Sure, he’s a speed demon, and he’s gonna make sure you know it, but Tipton gets a bluesy wail into this sexy solo that makes it vastly more soulful than the dopey song it’s attached to. Complex and precise, but it rocks.
“Out of the Blue” illustrates a couple of things about Roxy Music. (No embed allowed, alas, at least not of a good version. Country Life album cover image at link is pretty much NSFW.)
First, this is from 1974. And in this song alone, perhaps even in the intro alone, Roxy Music did about everything the New Wave and New Romantic brigade of the ’80s were trying to get at. Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Ultravox, the amusing Human League and the unspeakable Spandau Ballet — Roxy Music had it covered, at least half a dozen years before. Though RM had only a couple of minor hits in the U.S., they were wildly popular in Europe and easily one of the most influential bands in pop history.
Bryan Ferry — a truly terrible singer, back when that still mattered — wrote all their stuff, and he had a pretentious streak and a weakness for nonsensical lyrics that were also picked up as habits by many of the bands that followed. He was also all but incapable of writing a hook, and quite capable of being desperately boring (see: “Bitter-Sweet”). What RM was doing needed some translating for pop fans, and that’s what the New Romantic crew and some New Wave acts did, occasionally with satisfying results.
But of course, Roxy Music also had Phil Manzanera, the Anglo-Colombian guitarist who had striking rock sensibilities within this smooth crew. In “Blue,” among all the dense production and the Euro-remoteness that’s not really offset by the relatively accessible lyrics, listen to when that screaming but still bell-like guitar kicks in, right at two minutes. It’s not shredding, it’s not vulgar, but it turns this tune from art pop into rock ‘n’ roll. And right about 3:30 — listen for the open chords followed by that seagull shriek. It’s one of the major guitar cliches of the ’80s, and Manzanera’s doing it in 1974.
“Killer Queen” is probably the most entertaining tribute to a tranny hooker* you are likely to hear on classic rock radio. Released in 1974, this was Queen’s first American hit, but they didn’t stick in the U.S. until a couple of years later. It’s a more or less a novelty tune, much influenced by the music hall fad of a few years earlier, but it was a nice move away from the heavier, proggy, and story-telling material Queen ran to on their first couple of albums.
And having had one offbeat hit, albeit not a huge one (number 12 at Billboard), gave this eccentric band an opening with radio when they came out with “Bohemian Rhapsody” in early ’76. (We’re all so familiar with it now that it’s hard to remember just how odd “Rhapsody” was when it was new. Yes, it’s fantastic, but it still stands as one of the strangest massive hits in pop memory.)
And while introducing Queen in the U.S., “Killer Queen” also introduced to American ears the distinctive guitar of Brian May. The solo is agile and elegant (and fastidious and precise), and it’s also a showcase for the playfulness that is so key to May’s unmistakable style.
Multitracked guitars dip in and out, with a more conventional fill or two here and there (as about 1:02), but the real fun begins at around 1:30. It’s easy to remember this as a long guitar break, but in fact this mostly multitracked solo (if that is not a contradiction in terms) is only 30 seconds. But it is such a delightful match in tone and style(s) to Freddie’s charmingly insinuating vocal that they form a seamless whole, and the guitar break is effectively an extra verse to the song. Delightful.
*That the KQ is male is debatable, but perhaps not very. Cf: the name of the band.
Starting in the late 60′s on rare occasions the music world is treated to the spectacle of what are now known as “super groups.” The collaboration of members of previously well known and sucsessful bands getting together and creating something new is as old as rock itself but there are times when it really is something special.
Most super groups are massively successful and create some of the best music you will ever hear such as Cream, Crosby, Stills & Nash, (with and without Neil Young), Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and perhaps the ultimate super group, theTraveling Wilburys consisting of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynn.
When a Super group hits it big it really can be quite fun and amazing.
In 1989 one of my favorite super groups of all time formed.
Damn Yankees!
Tommy Shaw from Styx, Jack Blades from Night Ranger, Ted Nugent from his solo career and the Amboy Dukes and Michael Cartellone a well respected drummer who was relatively unknown at the time out of the New York rock club scene.
(NSFW!!! Starts out with one word of language, after that, no problem.)
“Come Again” from Damn Yankee’s eponymous debut album is a delightful exorcise in guitar madness.
Starting with Tommy Shaw’s lead vocals and twelve string guitar “Come Again” sounds very much like it could have been a song from Shaw’s early years with Styx. That is until the sledgehammer guitar chords come in at the bridge. At that point you can hear the very obvious nod to fellow member Ted Nugent in the vocal build to the chorus. If you ever imagined how Tommy Shaw might have sung Nugent’s “Stranglehold”, well, this is it.
Once propelled into the chorus by increasingly intense guitars and Jack Blades over the top harmonies the song explodes into a frenzy of guitar god happiness.
The energy from the band is incredible!
From the instrumental break to the end of the last chorus is a nearly uninterrupted blaze of fury from the Motor City Madman’s deadly guitar. Shaw and Blades’ vocal harmonies are so tight you could almost believe they are temporarily violating the laws of physics and are occupying the same time and space.
Blades’ steady bass and Michael Cartellone’s primal attack drumming are right on the edge of letting things spiral completely out of control as Shaw leads them through another round of choruses as Nugent is in real danger of going up in flames as he produces more tones per second than you could possibly count.
All the while I am sitting here grinning like an idiot loving every gloriously, ridiculously excessive note.
Having gone about as far as we can go, or possibly further, with falsettos, we launch a new theme here on WMMCM: Guitar gods!
Starting with the great Mark Knopfler, on what may not seem at first like one of Dire Straits’ particularly guitar-heavy tracks, although it is obviously one of their most beloved.
I do have to say that I think Pick Withers’ emotional drum track really grounds this song. But there is a lot going on from Knopfler too, with that softly played resonator guitar that opens the song, then backs way off, dipping in and out but not taking center stage the way the guitar does on other Straits songs. Instead, the guitar trades phrases throughout the song with Knopfler’s uncharacteristically expressive vocal.
Listen at right about 1:01 to hear what I mean, and in the first refrain, right after he sings “the movie song.” Sometimes it’s a fill, sometimes just a strummed chord, but the song turns into a conversation between voice and guitar, just as the lyrics remember conversations between the heartbroken Romeo and his opportunistic ex. The effect is most explicit just as the fade begins, where the guitar specifically echoes the melody of that hopelessly repeated, “You and me, babe, how ’bout it?”
Thirty years later, this still just kills, doesn’t it?
One of the last and best eighties metal bands to break out over the airwaves was Slaughter with their debut 1990 release, Stick It To Ya.
The album had three charting hits and quickly brought Slaughter to the attention of the metal loving masses.
“Up All Night” rode all the way to #27 on the Billboard charts.
With slick musical production and solid arrangements featuring Mark Slaughter’s smooth vocals and rhythm guitars, Dana Strum’s bass, Tim Kelly’s lead guitars and Blas Elias’ drums, Slaughter managed to stick out on the radio in a time when big guitars and bigger, higher vocals were the norm.
Mark Slaughter’s vocals are quite interesting in that his lower register has a softness and personality that are reminiscent at times of Robert Plant from the early Zep years. He shows that part of his impressive range to good effect on the opening to their biggest hit, the power ballad, “Fly To The Angels.”
There is a richness in Slaughter’s vocals that was so often lacking in the “to the clouds” metal singers of the time. Add in a first rate band, which they were and you’ve really got something great.
1992′s The Wild Life produced three more chart singles, “The Wild Life,”“Days Gone By” and “Real Love” but it was not nearly as successful as their debut album. And by 1994 with Slaughter having arrived on the scene relatively late in the game, they were among the many artists thrown to the street when EMI absorbed what had been the independent Chrysalis label in 1994.
With Kelly having an assortment of legal issues, Mark Slaughter having surgury for vocal nodules, changing musical tastes with the advent of Grunge, adding to that, Dana Strum being injured in a motorcycle accident it wasn’t until 1995 and a new label that Slaughter was able to release Fear No Evil.
It was far too late, music had moved on and the album was not a sucess.
Slaughter still tours occasionally with an assortment of previous members and guests. Tim Kelly, sadly was killed in an automobile accident in 1998.
Obviously, Brian Johnson came into AC/DC under difficult circumstances. The emotions after the loss of Bon Scott aside, the number of bands that have come successfully through a change of frontman (via death, ego, or just the passage of time) is very small indeed. And bands that have been more successful, artistically or commercially, after that kind of transition are even rarer.
But AC/DC, with the benefit of an image built as much around Angus Young as Bon Scott, was able to go on after Scott’s death a different but vital band. And this, of course, was the title track of their first record back:
Now this is great ’80s metal falsetto. Sure, he sounds like a parrot on acid, but didn’t it jump right off the radio back then?
Johnson’s approach obviously covers some of the same territory as Scott’s, but you couldn’t mistake one for the other. And, no disrespect to those who think Bon was better, but I prefer Johnson’s less nasal and more controlled way of going at a song to Scott’s anarchic attack.
And what Johnson is doing here is, I might reiterate from an earlier post, not easy. He’s jumping in and out of falsetto (while singing really fast), apparently effortlessly and absolutely bang on pitch. Sure, his diction is rotten, but that’s a choice: As “You Shook Me (All Night Long)” demonstrates, he’s quite capable of making every word clear when he wants to.
By this late date, the metal falsetto isn’t as subtle (odd word in this context….) or sexy or surprising as in the early ’70s when it was all new, and it was getting a bit played-out by the time of Back in Black. But Brian was certainly the best falsetto screamer of the ’80s — miles better, in my opinion, than any of the hair metal boys.
And a break in our parade of falsettos for some more insanely boring rock classics!
OK, some people still love these songs. And they must do well in music testing (music research is more common than you probably imagine) or classic rock radio would not still be so devoted to them.
But in testing, people are often allowed to choose only between variations of “like it” or “don’t like it.” So you can’t really draw a distinction between “I hate this with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns” and “I used to like it a lot but you’ve played it all the damn time on your station for 15 or 20 years, so now I routinely risk driving into a tree as I leap to change the station when it comes on.” (In one of those proofs the gods are listening, Peter Frampton’s “Show Me the Way” just came on my radio. Briefly.)
So, since you can’t explain why you don’t care for a song, people in tests will tend to say they like songs they once were fond of but are now burned out on. Who wants to say they hate “Ramblin’ Man”? But admiring it as a work of rock art doesn’t mean you have any pressing desire to hear it ever again. Ever. Again.
And these songs — these are so burned you could crush them and get diamonds.
Joe Walsh: “Life’s Been Good.” OK, it’s cute, with its rather mild sendup of the rock star lifestyle. “I have a mansion, forget the price/Ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice.” But why, why, why is this more than 8 1/2 minutes long? “Life’s Been Good” sets off in three distinct stylistic directions in the first 90 seconds — and then it turns out to be just this silly little goof with endless instrumental breaks and a wretched vocal. Turn it on, take a nap.
Eric Clapton: “I Shot the Sheriff.” I admit that reggae doesn’t really speak to me. But I will also say I disliked this washed-out tune from my earliest rock ‘n’ roll days, and certainly long before I was aware that it even was a reggae cover. Why this is one of Clapton’s most-played songs, I can’t fathom — he was never a great singer, and he sounds overwhelmed and clueless trying to get around this.
Santana: “Evil Ways.” I don’t know if anyone would say this was great Santana to begin with, even when it was fresh and new. I think it has survived largely because it’s easy to play and sing and bar bands dig it. But it has run its course, and now it just needs to be gently retired (followed out the door by “Black Magic Woman.” Which at least has a better guitar solo).
War: “Spill the Wine.” All due points to Mr. Burdon for referring to himself as an “overfed long-haired leaping gnome,” but geeze, this is a boring record. Endless, pointless, a failed attempt at being amusing (aside from the gnome thing), and very, very dated. There’s classic rock, and then there’s just stuff that’s been around a long time.
Metal falsetto is just one of those things that when used well by a singer adds to the tension, energy and power of a lyric.
The high and loud masters can sell brilliance or bull– with equal ease and style.
When you have a singer that can hit the high ones, stay on key and sound like he wants to rip your heart out while he is ripping his lungs out, well, then you have got some great music.
Iron Maiden was one of my favorites all through the eighties. The first video I ever saw on MTV when my neighborhood was blessed with the joys of cable television was Iron Maiden’s “Run Through The Hills.” Silly black and white western movie clips and all.
Now the video may have been a bit silly but the song was all power. With the album The Number Of The Beast, Iron Maiden established themselves as a force in metal music for many years to come.
Iron Maiden led by Steve Harris’ mind warping speed bass, Dave Murray and Adrian Smith’s guitars, Clive Burr’s drums melding with the remarkable vocals of Bruce Dickenson created their own small corner of hell with “Hallowed Be Thy Name.” The thoughts of a man getting ready to go to the gallows, interestingly, has come up a few times in rock music. So, they weren’t the first, but they were the ones with the most bang for the buck.
Dickenson starts out with his smooth but tormented mid-range vocal as his thoughts are focused on his impending doom. When he knows his time is up he sings, “The sands of time for me are running low…………….”
He holds “low” for what seems about five minutes all the while climbing from his full mid-range to a bracing “yeah!” at the top. Now that’s impressive!
While Dickenson doesn’t have the same clarity of some of the earlier high and loud guys, he still impresses with his consistency and overall power. And it’s always nice to have metal’s most amazing bass player behind you.
By the late eighties the screaming rock falsetto bit had kind of been run into a rut.
Starting out with high and loud masters like Ian Gillan and David Coverdale then evolving into the macho, scratchy screams of AC/DC’s Brian Johnson and the withering screeching of Rush’s Geddy Lee the whole thing was becoming a parody of itself.
It reached a point where high was good in and of itself and the fact that it was becoming really annoying seemed not to matter all that much.
With that in mind…
Now I like this song. The emotion is first rate. The lyrics are a bit simple minded but they really do convey the point of it rather well. What I have a though time with is that Kix’s lead singer Steve Whiteman sounds like he may have recently swallowed a box of razor blades. It’s not a bad vocal I suppose in that the feel is there, but where is the finesse?
“Don’t Close Your Eyes” starts out with the keyboard doing a simple one/two chord count then the guitar and vocal join in. Sounds great and gets your attention, (Always a good thing). Whiteman’s vocal on the verse is restrained and is appropriately weepy when selling the story, it’s actually pretty nice. When we get to the chorus build the song swells with the legally required big guitar power chords and bigger vocals.
This is where it crashes.
The vocal is so overblown it’s just kind of hard to take it all that seriously. Watching the video helps make it tolerable but when there are no images to push the song along well, it’s just kind of dumb.
From the album, Blow My Fuse, “Don’t Close Your Eyes” made it all the way to the eleventh position on the Billboard Charts in 1988. The band didn’t last very far into the ninties as their follow up album, “Hot Wire” was not released until 1991, right in the middle of the “grunge movement” led by Nirvana and others. The era of the metal falsetto had died an unexpectedly quick and sudden death.
