THE BEST GOES ON

THE BEST GOES ON

Long Distance Runaround

NEW YORK—Is Rick Wakeman boring? Old? Does he reek of excessive flatulence? Actually he's a rather animated and witty talker, sports shoulder-length hair with an almost teen impishness, and had nothing to do with the Sex Pistols being dropped from A&M Records, his label.

"That story is quite amazing," said Wakeman. "See, I live in Switzerland, I don't live in England—and Yes was there and we were doing the Going For The One album. You get all the papers a bit late, y' see. Melody Makers and like that come over about a week late . . . the newspapers about three days late.

"So I read in the paper one day—about five days previous—'A&M SIGN SEX PISTOLS FOR HUGE FIG-

The Kiss Of Mutation

Wherein two genuine current phenomena of the species homo taplmn effect what they assume to be a harmless gesture—only to undergo a catastrophic metamorphosis, wrought from their latent prurience. Even the poor chap in the background is by-standerishly irradiated by the appearancesapping emanations. ..

photos by

URE.' I thought 'Interesting.' I'd never heard any of their stuff, but I found it interesting.

"So we get. the paper a little later: 'SEX PISTOLS LEAVE A&M RECORDS.' I thought 'That's interesting.'

"So I carry on doing the album, and pick up the paper for the following day, and: 'WAKEMAN AND FRAMPTON TO BLAME FOR SEX PISTOLS LEAVING A&M RECORDS?' I said 'WOT!' " said Wakeman with a laugh. "I couldn't believe it! I'd never even seen the band or heard them do a thing.

"It started getting a bit out of hand, actually. Somebody somewhere—nobody actually knows who—was looking for a scapegoat. And they decided, I think because they knew I didn't live in the country and was a long ways away, that I wouldn't worry about it.

"But it started getting out of hand. It started getting front page news in national newspapers."

After all the slagging folks like Wakeman and Yes had already gotten from the new wave, it was a bit too much.

"None of the knocking came from the Pistols though," said Wakeman. "I

mean I have a flight case company in England that makes flight cases and does instrument repairs, and they do all their business with my company. So if there's anything between us, they're not going to do business with me, right?

"It got a bit out of hand," he repeated once again, "so I just sent a nice little solicitor's note to about three newspapers saying 'What you're printing is libel,Mn a polite sort of way because English newspapers are in a funny way. They'll print anything until somebody tells them it's wrong.

"So I just sent a little note from my lawyers saying I suggest that you refute all that you've written in there and we'll say no more about it. And they did, and that was fair enough.

"T thought it was quite funny."

Wakeman noted that he quite enjoys Tom Robinson Band ("great band!"), Elvis Costello ("He's good, he is . . . magic!") and the new Stranglers single ("quite good—nice work on it"), while taking his own pot shot at the Carpenters ("In Britain they're known as 'music to knit by.' ").

But new wave has not changed the man's music. "If I do another solo album, in the next year or so, it'll be the most outrageous extravaganza that's ever been done —'cause I've enjoyed doing them. Everybody knocked 'em, everybody knocked 'em really hard. I just thoroughly enjoyed doing them, and I thought there were some interesting things going on there.. I thought they were great fUn.

"I used to really listen to what people said, and I tried to do ^a lot of it, but I found I wasn't enjoying it very much. So the next solo thing that I do will be totally over the top. Totally outrageous . . . and, uh, ludicrous! And I shall thoroughly enjoy doing it, and I shall most probably do my own press release pointing out areas most useful for journalists to knock. I shall say—'This area over here is open to knocking, because it is pretentious.'

"I take my life and music very seriously, but life is tongue-in-cheek. Just because somebody does something outrageous, does not mean somebody should rip it apart."

God Save King Arthur! BERKELEY—As the Friday nite police cars go drooling thru the streets the air inside Keystone, Berkeley is thick enough to cut with a chainsaw. The wall to wall crowd has gathered here to watch George Thorogood and his band, the Destroyers, play the blooze. Thorogood is a 19-year-old slide guitar axe killer from Wilmington, Delaware who has become a major cult figure on the bar band circuit. With his two cohorts; drummer Jeff Simon, and bass player Billy Blough, George has been shredding minds and over-

Rob Patterson

George Thorogood And The Destroyers

The Winners!

#1 BOB MAKAR —-Buffalo, New York Grand Prize: An Arp 2600 Synthesizer plus: • Four hours of recording time in a professional studio * The free services of a commercially experienced producer* And.. .CREEMwill take the Winner's songs or music

Be sure to stay tuned for more as CREEM follows the futures and fortunes of these heavyweights 111

Harvard i Kissed-Offff

CAMBRIDGE, MASS-In a misguided attempt to psychout the opposition, four members of the Harvard track team smeared on some Kiss make-up for a big meet.

The javelin thrower came as Bat Lizard, Space Specs was a natural for the high jump, and the broad jump went naturally enough to Pout Smooch. Kitty Kat just hung around the sandbox.

"I guess it didn't work," observed javelin javver Dave

Where ItCounts! And let them have a chance to hear what the Winner sounds like! 11__

#2 THE WILD GIRAFFES Chris King, Edgar Reynolds, Alan McGinty, Dave Ivan—Mentor, OH 2nd Place Prize: A15 piece set of Gretsch Grand Prix Drums.__

#3 SWEET CRYSTAL Mel Cooper, Steve Wieser, Maaq Speck, Bill Blatter, Bob Rundell —Royal Oak, Ml 3rd Place Prize: A complete Bass Amplification System from Marlboro Sound Works._

«4 JIM HAYER—Miami, FL 4th Place Prize: A Hagstrom Swede E lectr ic Gu itor.

#5 RAD AG AST Don Semco, Dan Cormier, Micah Tasker—Rochester, NH 5th Place Prize: Two DiMarzio Pick-ups for each member of the band that plays guitar or bass, including installation.

Kinney, noting that Harvard lost the meet. Too bad one of the events wasn't the Tongue Leap.

Rick Johnson

working sweat glands from coast to coast, while an LP they cut for the semi-obscure Rounder label has been selling slow and steady without a cent spent on advertising. It's mostly a word of mouth phenomenon and the word is that the Destroyers are one of the hottest bar bands in the land.

Amid the screams of the more avid female fans the Destroyers take the stage. George plops his ass down on an old wooden chair and holds a big f-hole electric guitar on his lap. The drummer and bassist stand there slightly bemused by the seething, panting SRO crowd. A quick countdown and they roar off into the first tune as desperate as a trucker with a semi fulla nitroglycerin hitting an icy patch of downgrade without any brakes. They don't cook, they melt the stove and set fire to the kitchen. The bass is solid, the drums nail your ears to the wall and Thorogood's guitar licks flash faster than summer lightning. The audience jumps, screams, daps, sweats and howls.

After a few numbers Thorogood takes off his glasses, kicks the chair away and sez "So much for the art, now for some rock 'n' roll". He jumps feet first into a sleazy version of Bo Diddley's "Josephine" that's greasier than a pimp's hairdo.

While most bands play their own tunes a typical Thorogood set consists of classical blues and early 50's rockers penned by such as Chuck Berry, Elmore James, Robert Johnson, and John Lee Hooker, and while it's fun to get drunk and go crazy as Thorogood ducjkwalks across the stage to the strains of "No Particular Place To Go" one is left with a strange feeling of deja uu after the end of the set.

There's no doubt that Thorogood has the moves, the talent and the charisma to become a major star if he wants to but he must transcend the blues or else transform them into something all his own.

At least, those were my thoughts as I stumbled out

with the rest of the crowd after a show that had really destroyed the majority of the audience. As I walked back to the car with my friends I wondered aloud if Thorogood could make the leap from the traditional to the personal.

As we drove away, I saw a strange sight. Outside in the bleak deserted late nite lite of the city's klieg lamps Thorogood and the Destroyers were on the sidewalk loadr ing their equipment into a U-Haul van that was fastened to the rear bumper of a funky old Cadillac. They were bleary-eyed but smiling as they stuffed their tattered amps and drums into the van. As we passed Thorogood nodded to our salutes and I thought maybe that's a man who doesn't need to be a star. Maybe he's just happy living with the blues.

j. poet

5 Years Ago

The Shapes Off Things To Come

Latest hotso rumor from across the pond have the Stones and Faces joining forces. Melody Maker has a "suggested line-up of Jag* ger, Richard, Ron Wood, Ian McLaglen, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts and Kenny Jones." Sez Wood, "We did an old Curtis Mayfield number the other night, just making up the words. But there's nothing that could come out of it, we're just having fun."