BRITMETAL: Vermin Hunting

BRITMETAL: Vermin Hunting

Sylvie Simmons

Sleep with vermin and you wake up with fleas. We’ve warned you, but do you listen? We’re talking to YOU. Apollonia. Erstwhile pal of Prince, one-time darling of David Lee Roth, concubine of the sublime, and now? Rubbing up, we hear, to Robbin Crosby of Ratt.

Enough to make her mentor hide his head under his sequined jacket in shame? Oh? Someone nicked it? At a party? And what were his minders doing? Making plans to beat up the entire population of Britain, that’s what.

Tell everyone in Britain I will never be back/' murmured Prince after popping over here for an awards show (useless! Wham! beat Queen in the Best Rock Group category. How could they do such a cruel thing with Brian May reportedly “inspired” by the sweet butt-wiggling duo?) and getting No Respect. Not from the show’s DJ host who said something rude about his mumbling; not from Holly of Frankie Goes To Hollywood

who said something ruder about having had sex on the phone with him. So he’s not coming over here to do his tour this summer and that’s that. Z.Z.Top, Springsteen, Foreigner and Deep Purple have no such qualms.

Especially not Purple. That Ritchie Blackmore—Apollonia take note— he’s all man. Not merely a great guitar player but “a good footballer,” so Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, who’s scored a few goals in his time, confided to Mick Wall of Kerrang. “He’s really good when he’s got the ball, but he’s not the kind of geezer who would run 100 yards to get the ball. I’m not saying he’s lazy or anything, he’s great on the ball, he’s just not what you’d call a grafter.” Training which must have come in handy for kicking Giuffria off the tour. Like Apollonia and Julian Lennon, the relationship just wasn’t to be Girlschool have taken their place, flying out to the States and leaving behind a just-finished London.

' ■ Scorpions are in Cologne a double live album, due for release in summer. Yes. I know they've already done one. So do they But it's "all new songs on there,” Herman tells me. if that isn’t enough, them’s also “the feeling of the tour.” seconding to cis. “The tracks we heard, t mosphere is unbelieveable. Wfien I back to it it gives me goosebumps, a that’s not a giant goosebump on Schenker s eyebroyyB He didn’t look where he was going when he was running around onstage in Rio, poked himself in the eye, and had to get stiched up.

Dave Tregunna poked Nick Turner in the eye during a “playful” drunken brawl in Switzerland, so drummer Nick broke the bass player’s nose. Fair enough; and few things are fairer than their band The Lords Of The Church s version of Madonna s A Virgin.' Truly puts the grit in th tom of the belly-button. Nice-guy Rudy Sarzo has left Quiet Riot The only surprise is that he didn't leave sooner Kevin DuBrow

all, a man only a mother could love, and only then if she'^put on the payroll.

^^^^^^^^Hrehind is QR’s Frankie Banali .vhaprooks like taking the job of

Ozzy Osbourne. And ^^^^^Kened to Tommy Aldridge then? Ozzy booted him out—for the second time!—he’s going to be forming a band with: Rudy Sarzo'^^^^^

More stuff on ex-MSG members: Chris Glenn, bassist, has got together

in Operator with ex-Motorhead drummer Phil Taylor and three former

Grand Prix people; and Ted McKenna, one-time MSG drummer, has a new group called Blue Murder. There will be a test next week. Meanwhile, who said: “I do like heavy metal bands because they’re not polite. It’s like Fuck You!” No? Jimmy Page, that’s who. What a guy! If only he wasn’t such a big fan of Rush...

Two more questions. Who’s going to break up first, Van Halen or the Police? And who’s going to get together first, Rod Stewart and Boy George—there’s talk of a satellite show from Canada before long—or Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons, who’ve been talking of doing a project together?

Good news for Andy Warhol (who told The Face: ‘‘I masturbate to Duran Duran videos”)! Topless Jim Dandy's

starting work on a new Black Oak Arkansas album, so far titled ‘‘The Black Attack Is Back.” Good news for

Lemmy and Noddy Holder: two big

free-drink parties in London. They were at both—the Ramones do at the Embassy, where Nasty Suicide of Hanoi Rocks, John Sykes of Whitesnake

and a handful of Banshees rubbed elbows with Ian McCulloch and Phil Lynott, and a get-together to launch a video club (see what we Brits are driven to without MTV!) where Chris Jagger, Stewart Copeland, Captain Sensible, Jon Moss, and Feargal Sharkey joined then in a drink, and Brian May got within feet of the inspirational George Michael of Wham!

And Rick Allen of Def Leppard is back with his band in Amsterdam, adding some vocals and checking the drum tracks for an album which should be out in August, one year after they began work on it.

David Byron, the former Uriah Heep vocalist, collapsed and died last week in his South England home. A post mortem's underway to determine the cause of death. He was 37 years old and rather fond of the bottle. Byron left Heep in ’76 and did a couple of solo albums. R.I.P.