Bullets

Bullets

YE PALACE 0’ TALAS

Anne Leighton

Once upon a time in the land of Buffalo, New York, there was a kingdom. This was a unique kingdom—because it was the king, and not some common knave, who led its band of merry men.

King Billy Sheehan sought to wear his uncompromising crown of rock ’n’ roll. As bass player in the royal band of Talas.

Scribes took notice of Billy’s active bass pluckings on a Van Halen tour. He was taking leads—which is the common reserved role for guitar players.

And it came to pass that Billy’s heart was troubled. “I had to take over the show. If I didn’t, nobody would.” He wanted to work with musicians who’d put out as much as he did—who were as hungry for rock ’n’ roll success as he was.

Drummer Mark Miller was one of the chosen. He is the Serf, the symbolic, emotional and literal working backbone of Talas, providing the nondeviating beat. Mark" sayeth he is a follower of Billy’s. ‘‘He wouldn’t be the leader if we all didn’t feel he should be. We stand behind him.”

Johnny Angel (his real stage name) was also chosen. He is the Knight, wrestling with his conscience mounted on a guitarist’s ego and the realization he’s in a band with a bassist who must adhere to a reputation. Johnny proclaimed, ‘‘I play a solo on everything. I don’t feel like Billy hogged the spotlight.”

The Herald, Phil Naro, sayeth he has the biggest spotlight. He grasps the fists of people in concert. He is the singer. He has the audience singing along. ‘‘As long as I’m singing a melody, the little girls like it,” he addeth with a drool.

It feels like there are four lead instruments when Talas performs.

‘‘Articulated rage,” sayeth Billy. Talas has a song, ‘‘King Of The World” which was written because Billy believed that monarchy is a better form of government than democracy. That is really how Talas works. ‘‘Art cannot work as a democracy, sayeth he yet again. “We’d have a grey canvas.”

He writes with the group members in mind. “I always demand more from the band than they think they’re capable of. Phil goes, ‘I don’t know if I can sing that’ and I say, ‘Yes you can—this is how.’ And he’s singing it.”

“Benevolence is the key. Your ability to make decisions, but also be responsible for their success or failure. All a good leader does is coordinate everybody.”

One of the servants beckoned to METAL, “It’s a Midas touch. Someday what Billy touches will turn to gold.”

The King clenched his hands together. "I hope so,” he addeth.

RAVEN: SUITABLY SOOTLE

Barbara Pepe

They’ve got a drummer named Whacko who wears a football helmet and Mean Joe Greene’s hand-me-down protective underwear so he can play defensive lineman with the group’s gigunda stageside monitors. And they’ve got a pair of brothers who rack up Herschel Walker type mileage, zooming around plexiglass ramps while their fingers run up and down guitar necks. They’ve had to take out Lloyd’s of London insurance and hire a nurse (male—no woman who values her sanity would tour with them) to patch up the cuts, bruises, concussions, broken arms and legs, minor annoyances like these that have a tendency to sideline roadshows and fell even the gonzo-ist of heavy metal bands. In case you haven’t guessed, Raven is hazardous to your health.

Having been prepped with this info, I expected to face something about the size of the Oakland Raiders front four, with an attitude to match, when I meekly tiptoed into Atlantic Records’ beige and brown conference room. Who, I wondered, were these normal type scruffy rockers, one with popping, though not “Pumping Iron” biceps, the other whose tight blue T revealed that he was not as well defined? Don’t tell me these are the Gallagher siblings, John and Mark. Ah, this is more like it, I thought, as they were followed by Lyle Alzado’s shorter clone who perched nicely on a chair arm. Disappointment. He turned out to be their manager. Seems I wasn’t about to be honored with Whacko’s presence, as he busted his right forearm the other night, going crazy on his drumkit, and was being forceably restrained from putting the bone shard through a major artery.

What gives with these guys? If I were a student of Freud, I might conclude they have a serious self-destructive streak. However, being a rock ’n’ roll journalist, I simply asked.

“The whole key word to the performance is spontaneous,” John explained in his Newcastle Queen’s English. “The way we put it across, it’s real entertainment, it’s like a circus, a wrestling match or whatever. It’s physical, it’s aggression, there’s a lot of violence. But it’s not sinister at all, it’s like, ahaaaa. Pick up a guitar—bye bye—and drop it. We break a lot of equipment.” Mark likens their roadies to clowns in a rodeo. “They spend almost as much time onstage as we do,” he says, collecting Whacko’s flying cymbals and sweeping up the pieces of the 12 guitars John dismembered during the 21 dates they were able to play on their current club headlining tour, now aborted by Whacko’s injury. For boys who won’t get their big New York break cavorting in front of 3,500 loonies at Studio 54 that night, they were pretty philosophical. But then they’ve been struggling in the metal grind for 11 years now, so what’s six or eight weeks mending time more?

The Gallaghers began this hospital litany as schoolboys.

“We started out with a band together, just like hittin’ acoustic guitars over our heads ’n’ stooff, bein’ brothers ’n’ all,” Mark articulates. With two others, they slogged through English pubs, “fur the experience ’n’ all,” then dumped the deadweight in early 1980 and searched their native north England for a new drummer. “Went to a music store and saw this guy testing cymbals with his head. This bloke looks interesting,”’ laughs John. “So we had one rehearsal and that was it.”

Neat Records, a small independent label, snatched them in Britain, selling 40,000 copies of their debut single and charting their first album, which is not an easy feat. Supporting Whitesnake and Ozzy Osbourne, they scourged the U.K. and Europe, venturing sporadically to this side of the pond with nothing but import discs to sell. Last year they undertook their third tour, with full lights and stage production, and packed Roseland with A&R scouts. Atlantic scored, issuing their real introduction to America, Stay Hard.

To the right of the thrash ’em and bash ’em mishmash and to the left of plain old rock ’n’ roll, Stay Hard is meant to fit in its own original pocket with “good songs that have melody,” defines Mark. “It’s fun to write songs that make people laugh a bit. ‘Stay Hard’ is actually about weight lifting,” insists John. C’mon, with lyrics like “stay hard, stay wet,” you expect us to believe you’re talking about weight lifting? “But it’s got a real sootle dooble meanin’. Well, not that sootle,” he admits. “We try to keep back so you have to use your brain a bit. ‘Pray For The Sun’ is about being trapped in Antarctica, but it never says that. We always try to pick different subjects, rather than the usual ‘hey babe, I’m a rock ’n’ roll star,’ or ‘kill yer mother.’ That’s been done to death. Try somethin’ different.”

Professing they want to make their mark in the tradition of Led Zeppelin, the Who or “even, God forbid, the Beatles,” the Raven team has leased a house in Syracuse to better launch their U.S. assault. That their video of “On And On” has been added to MTV in the face of a heavy metal ban is a source of pride, as is the fact that they were refused the opening slot on the Deep Purple, Triumph and Ratt tours. “Other bands are worried about us,” John says quietly. “What we do appears to appeal not only to the heavy hardcore audience, because it’s powerful. It appeals to a wider crossover, the rock ’n’ roll audience as it’s termed. Millions of people.”

Well, Raven has a good start on their professed goal of world domination. Now if they can just stay healthy...

MORE MOUTHWASH, PLEASE!

by Moira McCormick

“I’ve often said,” says Kim Mitchell with an ironic grin, “that to survive in the music business, you need a good manager, a good lawyer, a good accountant, and a bottle of mouthwash.” He pauses. “The mouthwash is no less important than the rest.”

The 32-year-old Canadian has been knocking around the circuit since age 17, and so knows whereof he speaks. In the late ’70s, Mitchell had gained notoriety in the Great White North as leader of idiosyncratic rock outfit Max Webster, which left a trail of gold records in its wake. Canuck popularity and managerial ties to fellow countrymen Rush notwithstanding, however, Webster never cracked America, and Kim disbanded the group in 1979. Now, he’s struggling to get a solo act off the ground.

Fortunately for Kim, his first album release Akimbo Alogo (Bronze Records) has been making some noise—in Yankeeland, no less— primarily via a nifty single called “Go For Soda.”

Contrary to popular misconception, the tune has nothing to do with combatting demon rum. But as long as the record’s getting airplay, that’s fine by Kim. “I guess Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other people are picking up on the song, because [alcohol abuse] is such a big thing in America,” Mitchell says. “And that’s OK, ’cause that’s what music is there for: to form your own opinions.”

What “Go For Soda” actually signifies, says Mitchell, is the throw-in-the-towel stage of a personal argument. Like, let’s go grab a Coke before we start slugging each other.

“You know that point of conflict between two people, when you throw your arms up in the air, and you go, ‘boy, we’re not getting anywere, may as well drop this’?” Kim elaborates. “That’s all we’re saying.”

In addition to its notorious single, Akimbo Alogo offers nine other cuts' worth of Mitchell’s muscular but tuneful hard rock, cut through with his nimble guitar work and propelled by his lean vocals. As with Max Webster, almost all songs were co-written by Mitchell and longtime lyricist Pye Dubois, with whom Mitchell grew up in Sarnia, Ontario.

Says Kim, “I’m not fond of people who write music and then spend their last 15 percent slopping on some lyrics that everyone has heard before.

“Pye, on the other hand, has been [writing lyrics] all his life, and has gotten very good at it. He can be witty, sensitive—he can pull all these components together very easily, because he’s got a technique down.” Mitchell quotes some Tom Waitesian lines from the LP: “ ‘Late night weekend at the Bojar Grill, I got decisions to make between lager and ale...’ It’s nice stuff. It’s different.”

Mitchell and his three-piece band toured our East Coast through most of the spring with Autograph and King Kobra, working on winning over those discerning American audiences once again. “I like getting out on the road, and I enjoy touring,” he says, and then gets philosophical.

“I look at the whole business this way: I feel like I’m fortunate at this point to be making a living doing what I do,” Kim muses. “If something big happens to me, and it pays off from a material standpoint, great. It’d be lovely.

“But if it doesn’t, I won’t get out the razor blades. If I have to get up at 5:00 in the morning and work some sort of straight job some day, that’s OK, because I’ll still always be able to jam with friends, I’ll always be able to play guitar, I’ll always be able to write music. I just might not be able to do it for a living.”

Spoken like a trouper, which Mitchell is. He’s also a devoted husband and soon-to-be-father (Mrs. Mitchell’s expecting bambino number one in July). Kim and wife reside in downtown Toronto, where the lanky guitarist has been known to draw crowds while on Saturday shopping sprees with the missus.

“There’s a real healthy scene for musicians here in Toronto,” Mitchell notes. “Even without a record contract, you can support yourself playing in bars and stuff like that without needing a day job.

“You won’t save enough for a day job, mind you,” Mitchell smiles, “but you can have an apartment and a couple of cats. And maybe even support a girlfriend.”

MACHO

MEN?

by Sylvie Simmons

If you bumped up against Jim Lyttle in the subway during rush hour you’d emerge with an Airtex jacket and a complexion like Bryan Adams’s. But we’re four feet apart, me and the shoulderand-waist-and-wrist studs, and the long, red hair with the impertinent spike at the front, separated by four feet of office table. I feel like I’m interviewing him for a job. He’d get it.

It’s not often I find myself quoting Don Dokken, let alone agreeing with him, but when he told me British HM was getting samey, wimpy, melodic, above all safe—in other words copying the Yanks of recent yesteryear—I had to concur. Although there are, thank God, exceptions. Like Rogue Male: loud and splendid, dangles its influences in front of you— Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, Motorhead, Priest, Clash, even—but dances off on its own two feet. Strange man, indeed. They write lines like “we don’t want another war,” but wear army camouflage and bullets; they’ve got a frontman who talks about voting for the Ecology Party, but wears fur and dead cow; his voice has traces of Phil Lynott and Lemmy, but he hates ligging, doesn't take drugs; their idea of love songs is a pounding track about a girl shooting her cheating man, yet Jim Lyttle talks about supporting the Greenham Woman, the peaceprotesters, if he wasn’t “such a lazy cunt.”

So who are these Rogue Males? Jim Lyttle, vocals, guitar and songwriting, Johnny Fraser Binnie, lead guitar, Steve Kingsley, drums, Kevin Collier, bass. Jim’s from Belfast, Johnny’s a fellow Celt, the other two are “foreigners,” South-of-England boys.

“I started this band in 77,” says Jim. "I’ve changed the name with each line-up. Rogue Male was the favorite name, so I saved it till the right line-up. And this is the first right lineup. I won’t say what the others were, because what happened in the past is irrelevant to what’s happening now. I couldn’t believe how bad the standard was; the musicianship was embarrassingname people, I won’t name them but they know who they are. This is the first line-up where the guys know what’s happening. It’s real gut energy and that’s it, fuck the posing and ‘your make-up’s gonna run.’ Before, I didn’t get off on it at all. This is the first time I’ve got off. That’s why we’ve been signed up, because it’s working.” Music For Nations in Britain, Elektra in the States. “I’d really like to get across to everyone it’s not a sell-out thing,” he says of the major label deal, “because everything on that contract is what I said. It’s because I’ve been hanging around for five years, trying to get something together, and we’ve been offered deals before that were shit, so I thought I’m not going to be made a cunt out of by those people. I just stuck to it and it paid off.

“I'll never change. A million quid won’t make no difference to me. I’ve never voted for anyone but the left and I never will, unless there’s a real radical change in the direction of the whole system. I think I might vote Ecology Party next time.” And this a heavy metal singer?

“I hate this thing where people say that HM, or whatever you want to call it, is emptyhead music. I listen to a lot of stuff and it’s just as empty as HM. I like everything that’s good. I like r&b, punk, rock, HM. I’m not into the blood-andguts side of HM, the Devilworship thing, I’m into what’s happening on the street and this shit that we’re having to suffer. If there’s anything I can do, this is my way of saying it, Ban The Bomb and stuff like that...I think rock people should really stick together. They’ve got the media, they’ve got the capability to change things, so I think they should come out and say a lot more.

“We’ve all got the same things in common: we all want to live, we all want to be happy, we all want to make love, we all want to eat, and the rest of it. So I can’t understand why we can’t do that. With all that sort of crap hanging around, the only thing that makes me happy is playing.”

He’s played in a punk band before (won’t name it) but doesn’t reckon that’s where he got the inspiration from to write songs like “Unemployment” and the like; doesn’t even reckon that coming from Ireland made any difference. He just wants to play, he says. And Rogue Male will be playing this summer with Motley Crue in the States.

An odd combination: the socially-conscious and the often-unconscious.

“Musically I don’t think we sound like Motley Crue, but at least they’ve got a bit of energy.” As to the image, “I’m not really into it, the make-up and stockings. I think men should look like men.” Even if they’ve got nice legs? “Even if they’ve got nice legs.” And the lifestyle? “They think they’re living the great rock ’n’ roll lifestyle—I call it shit. I like fast cars, wheeling about on a motorbike, but as far as drugs and all that shit’s concerned, go ahead and kill yourself. I’m all right sitting at home watching TV! None of us are into drugs—I’ve tried a few and I don’t know what all the fuss is about. OK, now and again we get pissed, but not every bloody night.

“We’re not doing this to pose for anybody. We’re doing it because we enjoy doing it. It makes us feel happy,” says Jim, “and hopefully it’ll make other people feel happy as well.”

TKO, SCHWARTZ

by Karen Troupe

TKO are four men whose music lives up to the boxing term ‘‘Technical Knock Out.” These guys definitely pull no punches when it comes to being good at their given profession.

When founding member Brad Sinsel talks, you get the feeling he should be up for some sort of longevity award. The only remaining founding member of the band, Sinsel has undergone so many changes since 1977 it would make a chameleon envious.

The first couple of years weren’t so bad, says he, since they were spent touring with big-name acts—and the exposure they gained from appearing with the likes of Van Halen, Heart and AC/DC didn’t hurt in the least. In 1979, their debut album—Let It Roll, on Infinity Records sold close to 120,000 copies; not bad for a bunch of rockers from the Northwest. But, in the middle of the third round, Sinsel saw his champions get lost in the strategy as things began to get shaky.

‘‘When we went out for that first tour, we were awfully young,” he related. ‘‘We got cut out of some pretty long tours, from playing 80,000 seat arenas to bars in Seattle. And being suddenly abandoned by the safety of having a label that’s behind you, and also being at war with the management, all reflected on people leaving the band.”

So, the only thing Sinsel could do at this point was...

‘‘Pull the plug. Because if it’s not working, there is no use in kidding yourself. And since I didn’t run it on a democratic system, a lot of people would get their noses rubbed and out of joint, because I knew what I wanted, and made sure I’d get it as much as possible.”

For the next four years, Sinsel found himself without a band—and with loads of free time, to boot. He took to scouting for replacements, and soon ran into Kjarttan Kristofferson and Scott Earl, both from a band called Culprit.

The three found they had much in common. ‘‘It was an emotional buy-out They weren’t satisfied with what they were doing. It was in a different direction than what the other band members wanted; closer to my side of the fence.

‘‘So, we just did a lot of talking and got blazing drunk and decided that we had to do it, since we all thought the same way.” Then, after finally rounding out things by recruiting drummer Ken Mary, the newlyresurrected TKO signed on to a new management, Wartoke. With the aid of Combat Records, they released their first album in over five years, In Your Face in late 1984. This marked the band’s return with an even raunchier sound—one that gave new meaning to the phrase, ‘‘kick ass and take names later.”

"In Your Face was a kind of ‘vendetta’ album. A lot of pain and misery went into that album. I guess that’s because I’m a blues singer at heart.”

Currently TKO are putting finishing touches on their upcoming release, tentatively titled Below The Belt. Not too long ago they were on tour, but that was abruptly halted when they realized it would overlap into studio time for the new record. They also decided to retain the services of producer Rick Keefer. ‘‘We were going to hook up with Talas, but broke the thing off since it was the only available time to get in the studio. Keefer has been negotiating with Ted Nugent and had to leave some time open for Ted because Ted’s gonna go and do an album. And that,” chuckled Sinsel, ‘‘is going to be interesting. Because Ted’s an interesting guy.”

Will it be safe to assume this next record will be their Rocky III?

‘‘I just came out of the sessions with a smile on my face. Rick’s a brilliant engineer. He has the ability to draw things out of you and say ‘no’ when it’s time to say no—without offending you. We got a lot accomplished that we weren’t able to with In Your Face.

‘‘I’m getting better, and I’m getting happier.”