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CONTENTS
ISSUE 10
46 Reuben Archer The Stampede singer and solo artist remembers old jobs he’s had, and old cars he has loved.
52 Winger The untold story behind the New York rockers’ timeless eponymous debut album.
58 Angelica The Murder Of My Sweet singer ditches the symphonic metal and gets back to her AOR roots.
60 REO Speedwagon Frontman Kevin Cronin on the Speedwagon’s salad days – and their recent resurgence.
68 American Dream Promotions
The men behind the Shades record shop had a dream: bring the best of AOR over to Blighty!
72 Planet P Project How former Rainbow man Tony Carey sought refuge from sex and drugs in outer space.
78 Brighton Rock Ready for lift-off again: Tom Scholz celebrates the return of Boston, with Life, Love & Hope, p12.
Canada’s melodic titans on being Young, Wild And Free – and everything that came after.
84 Angel They were The Beatles to Kiss’ Stones, but Gene Simmons was terrified of playing with them. We find out why… Eden’s Curse 50 Place Vendome 76
36 Styx
How their disillusionment with success inspired the Windy City wonders’ pomp-rock masterpieces.
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CONTENTS
ISSUE 10 Oh, Canada: Brighton Rock pose with actress/model (and star of their One More Try video) Monika Schnarre.
REVIEWS 10 Best Shot
Following the sad news of her recent, tragic passing, a classic portrait of Vixen frontwoman Jan Kuehnemund – remember her this way…
12 On Air AOR’s bumper jamboree bag of news, views and tittle-tattle from Boston, Johnny Lima, Coney Hatch, Michael Des Barres, rock star Tweets, Ups & Downs, Million $ Misfits, Keyboard Kings, Kylie’s Column, your new fave melodic bands, and the glorious return of Franke Previte.
30 Classic Ads Remember how we used to live, with this compendium of antique blurbs.
31 AOR Obsessions Ken McIntyre recalls ex-Foreigner bassist Ed Gagliardi’s side project, Spys.
32 Q&AOR Stryper’s Michael Sweet submits to our most invasive questioning, talking about their religion, their newfound heaviness and his tour with Boston.
34 Retro Perspective Canadian singer/songwriter Ian Thomas looks back over The Runner, perhaps the finest Westcoast album to be recorded so very far from the West Coast.
130 Hi Infidelities Dirty deeds and dastardly doings as rock stars ’fess up. This issue: Houston’s Hank Erix and his high-speed moped.
Album, reissue and live 95 reviews with Europe, Fleetwood Mac, Reckless Love, Stryper, Dokken, Winery Dogs, MRF3 & more…
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est known for fronting Stampede in the early 80s, Reuben Archer also sang with Lautrec, Lionheart and Wild Horses. Having gone to school in west London with members of the Yardbirds, by the 60s he was a mod who saw everyone from Georgie Fame to the Rolling Stones. Studying art and design at Kingston College of Art he hung out with Eric Clapton, though while Eric dropped out to pursue the blues, Reuben was obliged to complete his studies – after all, his father was the principal at Kingston. However, while Reuben later found rock fame, he also pursued a parallel career in design, following spells as a commis waiter at the now-demolished Karsino hotel on Tagg’s Island in the Thames (built by the architect of Dave Gilmour’s floating studio), and three years in the Merchant Navy. A die-hard ‘petrolhead’, Archer spent much of the 70s interviewing racing drivers and editing car magazines. He reckons he has owned 129 cars, and testdriven countless more around tracks like Brands Hatch and Silverstone. After returning to the stage in 2000, he fronted various blues bands, re-formed Stampede in 2009, and – alongside guitarist and producer Rob Wolverson – released the star-studded Personal Sin solo album in August.
Reuben Archer lays bare his nearreligious passion for the automobile. 4 classicrockmagazine.com
mutineers
The starry cast of 1962’s Mutiny On The Bounty – some of whom Reuben met in the cells – included such luminaries as Marlon Brando, Trevor Phillips, Gordon Jackson and legendary carouser Richard Harris.
➙ ”I started Auto Enthusiast mag in the 70s. Later it morphed into Fast Car, which is still around today. In the early 90s I edited The Ferrari Club Of Great Britain Magazine.”
nuts, bolts, washers: big JOhn all other shots: Reuben Archer
Renowned as the singer of Stampede, petrolhead Reuben Archer has enjoyed a 100mph life outside of rock’n’roll – like that time quizmaster Hughie Green called him a word we can’t even publish… So tell us, what’s a commis waiter? It’s the lowest level, basically setting up tables, serving veg, et cetera. Black dinner jacket, starched shirt, tie – very clean! One day Hughie Green [presenter of TV’s Opportunity Knocks] comes floating up the river on his motor yacht after he’d been filming at Shepperton just a few miles down the river. He was in a tuxedo with all his mates surrounded by Champagne bottles. His boat moored up, he walked in and demanded a table for 12. “Very sorry sir, we are fully booked, we have no room at all.” But he started kicking up such a fuss that to avoid upsetting everyone else they set up a table right there in the foyer. Hughie is holding court, talking to this actress he’s trying to impress. Now I know I’m supposed to serve from one side and remove from the other, but I can’t get to Hughie because he’s in the corner. As I come up to him he suddenly waves his arms to make a point in his story and knocks the silver terrine out of my hands. The buttered peas went everywhere – but mostly over his white tuxedo. He tore into me, calling me “a fucking c**t”. Everyone was stunned, but he kept it up, so I picked up the rest of it and threw it at him. When I went back later the manager just laughed: “I know it wasn’t your fault but we are going to have to let you go.” But he said: “I’ll give you a silver service reference and
➙ ”We got to test
with that you can get a job in the merchant navy – they’re going to be hiring soon.” Two days later I was on the docks in London signing up for a trip to Canada. I did five trips there and back, then switched to the New Zealand run. So you went to sea? First trip to New Zealand, we had a month ashore while they rebuilt the engines. We went via Tahiti where there were two bars. One was called Quinns, which was just 200 yards from the dock. All the people in it were Americans – turns out they were filming The Mutiny On The Bounty with Marlon Brando [released in 1962]. One of the cast was Irish actor Noel Purcell who asked if we could get him any decent cigarettes – we were smoking Senior Service but he complained they could only get Gauloises. So me and my mate went back to our ship to get our weekly issue of 200, plus about a thousand or so others from our mates, stuffed into our jacket pockets – and we got stopped by the gendarmes who recognised us. It’s classed as contraband so it’s all confiscated and they threw us in a cell. Later that night all hell broke loose when a bunch of gendarmes came in dragging this actor who’d asked for the cigarettes, along with half the film crew and Trevor Howard [who played Captain Bligh in
top-end sports cars and Formula One cars such as this Tyrell. With a track licence you could give it a blast at Brands Hatch or Silverstone. I only got a short time in this car as the guy was racing it that day.”
After his death in 1997, the star of Opportunity Knocks and Double Your Money was revealed to be the biological father of Paula Yates, offspring of an affair between Green and his producer Jeff Yates’ wife.
➙ ”HRG,
originally raced by Bluebelle Gibbs. It won its class at Le Mans. Totally rebuilt by me and raced at club events in the early 70s.”
➙ “A 1930s
BSA Scout – the fourwheel version. Restored by me back in 1968 – I ended up using it as a road car.”
REX/FremantleMedia Ltd
hughie green
➙ “1968 Chevrolet Camaro, with a highly modified 350 V8 engine. This fine vehicle was my road car for four years.” classicrockmagazine.com 5
I never wanted to use my name. I thought it was a terrible idea. But as we couldn’t think of anything else, I agreed to go along with this plan Hands up, baby, hands up: a hirsute and sweaty Kip greets his fans, 1988.
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A painful onstage mishap involving Alice Cooper and a pool of fake blood marked the genesis of Winger and their platinum-selling debut album. This is their untold story… Words: Malcolm Dome
frank white
winger
Winger’s debut album peaked at No.21 in the US album charts, off the back of singles Seventeen and Headed For A Heartbreak, which reached No.26 and No.19 in the US Hot 100, respectively. Their first single, Madalaine, did not chart, while a fourth single taken off the album, Hungry, only reached No.85.
here are some bands where you know what they’re all about, because it’s written boldly on their surface. But there are other bands where the surface doesn’t tell the full story. Winger is such a band. “People don’t get this about me,” says Kip Winger, singer and bassist in the band that shares his name, “but I care a lot more about other musicians thinking that I am a good musician than being a rock star and having a bunch of fans. I’d never knock the fans who like what I do, but I really care about getting respect from musicians.” Kip Winger and the rest of his band – guitarist Reb Beach, keyboard player Paul Taylor and drummer Rod Morgenstein – are so talented that they enjoy a level of acclaim and appreciation from their peers that many others would envy. But then they always were far more than just a successful melodic hard rock band riding on the coattails of the late80s big-hair wave. Just listen to their 1988 debut album – which is actually not called Winger, as most people believe, but is actually titled Sahara. But we shall get to that part of the story a little further down the line. This is a tale with so many guest appearances it’s almost like a ‘who’s who’ of the era. But for Kip Winger, it all began with the friendship he forged with Beau Hill while growing up in Denver. “I was friends with Beau from an early age,” remembers Winger. “I was in a band back then with my brother [Blackwood Creek]. Beau produced us, and it was his first job as a producer.” When Blackwood Creek broke up, Kip moved to New York, where he got classicrockmagazine.com 7
We expected every album to sell 10 million copies… …But when REO Speedwagon’s career took a sudden downturn it came as an almighty reality check for singer Kevin Cronin. The veteran AOR frontman recalls the highs and lows of REO’s history – and how he’s still trying to get that ultimate performance of Can’t Fight This Feeling.
A
s Ian Dury once noted, there ain’t half been some clever bastards. Singer Kevin Cronin is one. His melodic sensibility transformed REO Speedwagon into one of America’s biggest bands in the 1980s, while his songs gave them two US No.1 hits, the quintessential power ballads Keep On Loving You and Can’t Fight This Feeling. Born on October 6, 1951 in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, Cronin has experienced the best of times and the worst of times with REO Speedwagon. In 1972, he was fired from the group, only to be reinstated four years later. In 1981 the band enjoyed their greatest success with the 10-million-selling album Hi Infidelity. And in the late 80s, as the band’s popularity declined, Cronin kept REO afloat following the departure of key members, guitarist Gary Richrath and drummer Alan Gratzer. A resident of southern California since 1975, Cronin continues to lead REO Speedwagon alongside founding keyboard player Neal Doughty, long-serving bassist Bruce Hall and two more recent recruits, guitarist Dave Amato and drummer Bryan Hitt. “We’ve been able to sustain this band for 40 years,” Cronin says. “And we’re still operating at a high level.” A genuine AOR legend, Kevin Cronin has survived everything from “mindboggling” success to what Guns N’ Roses called “the perils of rock’n’roll decadence”. He describes his career as “a wild ride”. And for Cronin, it all began when he first saw four guys from England on TV… You’ve always said that The Beatles had a profound effect on you as a kid. Yes, like probably every other person of my generation. I was around 12 years old when 8 classicrockmagazine.com
The Beatles played on The Ed Sullivan Show. I’d been taking guitar lessons for a couple of years and I didn’t really know why. Then I saw The Beatles and it all made sense. Of course I saw how the young girls reacted to them. And from that point I needed music like I needed air. There was no other choice for me. Did you come from a musical family? No. My mom was a social worker and my father worked in the newspaper business. And I was an only child ’til I was seven, when my parents adopted three children. How did you react to that? It’s interesting, man. I never thought that it was an issue, but when I went through some therapy as an adult it turns out it was [laughs]. That’s a whole book right there…
What was your first professional band? That was Fuchsia. We played a lot of originals but also covered songs that at the time were underground: Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, the folk-rock thing. After I heard The Byrds and Mr Tambourine Man, I had to play a 12-string Rickenbacker. I loved that jangly sound, and the vocal harmony thing. Did you have to work shitty jobs before you joined REO? I was a guitar teacher. For one summer I sold women’s shoes, which was an education. And when I got the call from Gary Richrath about joining REO, I was driving a yellow cab in Chicago.
What was the first song you ever wrote? It was called My Little XKE – written about a Jaguar car. I was influenced by the Beach Boys, writing about cars. But my first real song was Little World Of Make Believe. It was never recorded or anything, but when I think back on it, it had some decent chord changes, and it had a story. It was pretty cohesive for a 14 year-old!
This was in 1972. What did the band sound like then? Pretty heavy. They were riff-oriented, a hard rock band, like Deep Purple. The first time I saw them play live was at a little roller rink in Joliet, Illinois, and I was blown away by their energy. They already had one album, and I didn’t really see how my songs were going to fit into their approach. REO had this power and I didn’t want to mess with that. They had their thing and I had my own thing.
Was that the age when you started playing in bands? Yeah. At 14 I was in bands with kids a few years older. Guitar came pretty easily to me, because I had a natural sense of rhythm.
What convinced you to join them? The first time I met Gary, we just jammed on acoustic guitars. It was right after Elton John’s Madman Across The Water was released, and there was a song on it, Holiday Inn, that I used to sing it in folk clubs
We were riff-oriented, a hard rock band, like Deep Purple. Pretty heavy.
Lewton Cole/Alamy
Words: Paul Elliott
Sitting on top of the world: Kevin Cronin looks gleeful as REO Speedwagon hit the big time in the early 80s.
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in Chicago. I played that song and Gary freaked out – he thought he was the only person who knew that song. That’s how we connected. REO Speedwagon was named after a flatbed truck. Did you like the name? I thought it sucked, to tell the truth. But I went with it. You recorded an album with the band in 1972, R.E.O./T.W.O. But while making the next record, Ridin’ The Storm Out, you were fired. I was not used to singing with the sheer volume that REO required – the giant stacks of Marshalls behind me. So I blew my voice out. I went to a doctor and he told me I shouldn’t sing for three weeks. I was afraid to tell the band. I felt for sure they would kick me out. So I just started trying to sing as little as possible at rehearsals. I was freaking out because I feared I would lose my voice permanently. But the guys thought I was being a prima donna.
Neal Preston/CORBIS
Pass the Marcel: Kevin Cronin in Nine Lives guise.
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Why didn’t you just tell them straight? Well, as a singer, when your voice is failing you, it puts you in a bad place. So when they fired me it was more of a relief than anything else. I was ready to go. As Neal [Doughty] says: “When I found out they were firing me, I quit!”
You had already recorded vocals for Ridin’ The Storm Out, but new singer, Mike Murphy re-cut your parts. Yeah. The artwork was already done too, so they airbrushed me out and put Murphy in. Nowadays with Photoshop that would be easy, but in 1973 that was quite a technical accomplishment! And then you went solo. I thought I was gonna be the next Dan Fogelberg! I opened for The Eagles, and could carry an audience of 3,000 by myself. But I wasn’t meant to be a solo artist. In your absence, REO made two albums. They were less well-received. But there was never bad blood between us, and I kept in contact with the band. I went to a show, and it was weird to watch the band play my songs with a different guy singing them. “No! This is all wrong!” Mike Murphy is a tremendous singer, a redheaded Irishman with a feel for R’n’B, and a great guy. But he was never a good fit for REO Speedwagon. Did you take much persuading to rejoin REO in ’76? Oh, no. When I got the call I was ready to go. My solo career hadn’t set any world records. We realised we needed each other at right around the same moment. Your comeback was the REO album. But it bombed, peaking at No.159 on the US Billboard chart. Did you panic? Honestly, at that point, we didn’t know what Billboard magazine was. We had a deal
Barry Schultz/Sunshine/retna
Barry Schultz/Sunshine/retna
REO Speedwagon visit Amsterdam, a city infamous for high infidelity.
“We partied our brains out”: REO hit Montreux, May 1985 (l-r) Gary Richrath, Neal Doughty, Alan Gratzer, Bruce Hall and Kevin Cronin.
with Epic Records, and we sold just enough of that album to break even. Thankfully, the honchos at Epic believed in us. That faith was repaid when the next album, You Can Tune A Piano, But You Can’t Tuna Fish, hit the Top 30 in 1978. Who the hell came up with that title? I’ll take the credit [laughs]. We were at a party in our hometown, Champaign, Illinois. There were all kinds of nefarious activities going on. And when I woke up the next day, somehow that phrase – You Can Tune A Piano, But You Can’t Tuna Fish – was in my mind. No one is sure who uttered the phrase first, but I was the guy that said: “That’s a pretty cool title for the album.” Everybody thought I was crazy. But Joe Walsh had called his record The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get. So the stage was set for wacky album titles.
Ridin’ the storm out
Though sessions for REO Speedwagon’s third album began with Kevin Cronin behind the mic-stand, throat problems saw him bow out halfway through the sessions. Though he’d recorded most of his vocal parts, they were erased and new singer Mike Murphy sang replacement parts.
When that album made the Top 30, did you feel like you’d made it? Well, that record didn’t do as well as we’d hoped. We had some songs we really felt were strong – Roll With The Changes and Time For Me To Fly. But there was a schism at Epic Records: they dropped the ball, and the album just kind of got left in the lurch. I was pretty hurt by that. That record was made more on my terms than Gary’s. So when it was time to make the next record, Nine Lives, Gary felt that we should rock a little harder. Nine Lives included one of the all-time classic REO songs, Back On The Road Again, written and sung by bassist Bruce Hall, who joined the band with You Can Tune A Piano…. Did you want to pull rank and sing it yourself? Oh, no. Bruce used to sing Back On The Road Again with his own band in Champaign. So when he brought the song to REO, it was a no-brainer that he would sing it. Bruce was a Champaign guy and I wanted to get him in the band from the day I met him in 1972, when we bonded at a party, singing Beatles songs.
Nine Lives was another Top 40 album. It did Okay. But then, in 1980, came the big one, Hi Infidelity… I don’t know that anyone could have foreseen what was gonna happen with that record. I guess the stars were lined up. But we’d toured so much that all of our relationships at home were kind of shredding, and that bonded us as a band. Everything else was falling apart around us, so the band became our primary relationship. And as you’re writing songs, you’re trying to make sense of it all. There’s a lot of emotion running through you, and we were all caught up in that energy. Was there a pivotal moment in the making of Hi Infidelity? Yeah, when I wrote Keep On Loving You. During rehearsals I started playing it on the piano, and the guys looked at me like I was from a different planet. “What is that? What are you, Barry Manilow?” That’s what the song sounded like at first. But it was a really important song for me, very personal. I wasn’t about to let go of this song. I kept playing it over and over until, one day, Gary plugged in his Les Paul and hit these big chords. Honestly, I think he was just trying to drown me out. But I said: “Dude, that’s perfect!” The song had been a little too sweet. It needed that nasty guitar tone. And that’s when the lightbulb went on: “Ah, that’s how we do this!” Kevin writes a little folk song, Gary trashes it out, and then you got something. That’s where it all coalesced for us. Another key song on that album was Take It On The Run, written by Gary. Did
speed’ freak
REO took their name from a truck built by the REO Motor Car Co., after Neal Doughty saw the name written on a blackboard during a Transportation class at university.
Andre Csillag / Rex Features
PART
1
THAT CRAZY ALBUM COVER
The story behind the artwork for REO’s 1978 album You Can Tune A Piano, But You Can’t Tuna Fish. “The art director we hired was a real organic dude,” recalls Kevin Cronin, “so we went down to Long Beach harbour in Los Angeles and picked out the proper tuna fish, put it on ice and drove out to Joshua Tree National Monument for the photo shoot. We stuck the tuning fork down the fish’s throat and held it up at sunrise so that the sun would reflect off the tuning fork in just that perfect way. There were no camera tricks. “The fish was photographed at dawn, but the band photo was done at sunset. We hiked you have as much input on that song as he did with Keep On Loving You? Sure. Gary didn’t think that much of that song, but I heard something in it. Originally it was called Don’t Let Me Down. I said: “I think The Beatles already did a song called that!” But the chorus started with ‘Take it on the run…’ I said: “There’s your title!” And of course, that song had one of the greatest opening lines in rock history: ‘Heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from another you been messin’ around…’ I wish I’d written that! Take It On The Run and Keep On Loving You were pretty much the same story but from different perspectives. In February 1981, as Keep On Loving You swept into the US Top 5, Hi Infidelity hit No.1. Where were you when you heard the news? We were in the midst of a four-night stand at the International Amphitheater in Chicago – the biggest music venue in the city at the time. By that time we did know what Billboard magazine was, and to see our
I thought [the REO name] sucked, to tell the truth. But I went with it. classicrockmagazine.com 11
Oliver Pumfrey/Alamy
Don’t look for it, it’s not there anymore: London’s late, lamented Astoria.
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In the early 90s American Dream Promotions staged concerts by cult US rock bands in a top London venue. It was a brave but misguided plan… Words: Mik Gaffney
kets:
Mik g affne
y
and we felt we needed a venue, and we were possibly slightly optimistic in some cases, that held around 1,200 to 1,500 people,” Price recalls. The Marquee, by then located on Charing Cross Road, was too small, while Hammersmith Odeon was too big. So all eyes fell on the Astoria, on the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. The venue was a stone’s throw from Shades (well, if you were good at throwing stones it was) and, as Price remembers now, fit the bill perfectly. “We literally just knocked
T-shir ts & t ic
that in mind, a wish list of 12 bands was drawn up. Of course, this was merely step one. The tricky bit was coming up with a package so attractive that the usually tight-fisted US label bosses would actually put some promotional weight behind the American Dream guys to help bring their bands over. Price and the team put together what they thought was a tempting enough plan to convince the suits behind the desks over in the US. “To be honest it came together very quickly,” Price recalls now. “We knew we had to have something really strong and getting MTV on board was critical.” The duo brokered discussions with MTV, agreeing to give MTV’s Headbangers Ball TV show (fronted by Vanessa Warwick) access to film two songs from each set and interview the bands, which in turn gave the American Dream crew a powerful bargaining chip in their discussions with the record labels. Not only would they bring the bands over, they could also guarantee them prime-time promotion – and the day after the show, Shades would host a signing session with the band to help further their cause. “Although that would obviously help us out just as much,” admits Steve now, “as it meant we got the chance to shift some product.” With the plan in place, the team started to look at various London venues to find a suitable location for these shows. “We looked around
etna Roz Sweeny/r
s 1991 turned into 1992, CD and record sales at London’s legendary heavy metal record store Shades were in serious decline, due in no small part to the arrival in the capital of now-defunct record chain Tower Records, which not only stocked all the sought-after import items that were Shades’ bread and butter but, as a large chain operation, could also sell them much cheaper. And so store owners Steve Price and Mike Shannon began “looking for another revenue source,” as the former puts it today. One such alternative revenue source would be the short-lived American Dream Promotions series of concerts. Shades was a mecca for all kinds of US melodic hard rock enthusiasts, and the store had maintained a reputation on being the first place to pick up albums by the likes of Diving For Pearls, Danger Danger, Cry Wolf, Valentine and countless others. But as Price says: “These bands were selling lots of records, but none of them were coming to the UK. So we decided to see if we could actually do something about that.” Getting in touch with the groups wasn’t an issue. “We had great contacts at the UK arms of the labels,” Price remembers. “People like Geoff Gillespie, who was at East West/Atlantic; we had a guy on the inside at Sony/CBS too.” The Shades pair also knew exactly which bands they wanted to target with this ambitious plan. “Our main aim was to pick bands that were really unlikely to come over to the UK and play, but who were selling well in the shop,” Price admits. With
I want to where Lon know don Lou Gramm is: Shadowki of ng.
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