Bullets

Bullets

THE NAKED TRUTH!

Sylvie Simmons

We’re sitting in the Palm Court lounge at the Ritz, Lee Aaron and I, sipping cappuccini as the golden cherubs hop and cavort around the naked gilt god pouring an urn of fluorided water into a fountain. We’re talking about bathrooms, David Lee Roth, having David Lee Roth pouring an urn of bubble-bathed water in the bathroom. Lee is taking vitamins; I’m not. Lee is wearing more leather than I, in fact a lot of clothes all round, considering last time I saw her she was sporting a very naked bosom in the pages of Oui magazine...

“It’s not one thing I personally like to talk about,” says Lee, but the gilt in the Palm Court lounge is too much for any girl to bear, especially a nice girl, “and I am a nice girl—I think a lot of people have this impression that I’m going to be this real raunchy, tough broad, and I’m not like that at all...

“Back about three years ago when my first record came out”—The Lee Aaron Project it was called, helped out by representatives from Canada’s Finest: Triumph! Moxy! Wrabit!, released on a tiny local label—“no one gave a shit about Lee Aaron, especially in Canada. Canada is a very strange country, sort of prudish in a way—mind you, I’m not knocking my own country, I love Canada and I don’t think I’d want to live anywhere else—but a woman? in a heavy metal band?” Pause for the entire unlikelihoodness to set in. “They like safe music over there...Loverboy or Bryan Adams, it’s pretty safe.” And, if you’ll pardon another interruption, say what you will about Lee Aaron’s music, it’s certainly not coy or commercial. Carry on, Lee. “No one really wanted to give me a push and it was very hard for me-to get started.

“My manager had seen that Oui magazine were putting in a lot of entertainers who were willing to take their shirt off— that’s all it was; I didn’t do a spread or anything, just so you know; maybe you’ll respect me a little bit more,” she laughs. “Linda Blair had done a thing with them, Ozzy Osbourne...” Ozzy? Naked? “He didn’t take his clothes off, but he was with all these nude women.” The manager sent in some promo material, “and they called back two days later, ‘We want her on the cover.’” And so she was.

“When he first said, ‘What do you think about doing a topless shoot for Oui?'—\ mean here, you’re talking to an honors student from a little suburb outside Toronto who would scream if a guy put his hand on my knee when I was 16 years old! My parents had a fairly strict upbringing of me, contrary to popular belief. My first reactions were, are you serious? No way in the world am I going to do anything like that! But somehow I ended up doing this thing—here I am, trying to be taken seriously as a legitimate vocalist, put out my first record, sing as good as I can, tour Canada, and I do this,” Lee shrugs at the ludicrousness of the situation, the lot of women, the meaning of life, the British weather, everything, “and suddenly everybody wanted to talk to me and interview me!”

So, obviously, no regrets. “I’m the type of person, I never like to regret anything. And it worked! But I’d never do anything like it again.”

She’s up to her third album now, out just about the time you pick up this magazine, produced by the famous Bob Ezrin, and with (yet again) allnew band members. She says it’s hard for a female group leader to keep a happy, allmale band, what with egos, scaring off their groupies, getting all the attention, things like that, claiming she’s “the easiest person in the world to work with. I’ve tried to make it more of a band thing, but when you’re female—it’s much easier to sell a solo artist than a group of people, especially if they can build you into a sexsymbol type thing,” which they can with Lee, what with the pout and the skimpy outfits onstage. A serious woman, she reckons she’s helping girls who want to get into this masculine stronghold of heavy rock—something she did by accident after spending her teenage years singing in high school musicals and impersonating Barbra Streisand in front of the mirror.

“But I don’t think I could have ever been happy doing that type of music,” she says. “I have too much aggression, too much energy to work out. And it’s more fun anyway. Much more fun.”

FEEUN’ UP HEAVY PETTIN’

by Jeff Tamarkin

Heavy Pettin’ is a group from Scotland who’ve just released their second album, Rock Ain’t Dead. But they’d rather you consider it their first album. In fact, if you happen to own a copy of their debut, go scale it out the window before reading on. That record doesn’t exist, according to the band that made it. The band quickly learned to love the U.S., though, and now hope to relocate here. ‘‘There’s nothing for us in Glasgow anymore,” says the singer. “I’d like to settle here and be a success. All I’ve ever wanted was to be a rock star, and now I actually think I have a chance.”

“We were really naive when we did the first album,” stresses Hamie (Steve Hayman), lead singer of the quintet. “It was our first time in the studio, and we’ve matured since then. Well, we haven’t matured, but as musicians we have.”

That debut was produced by Queen’s Brian May, and while all involved were enthusiastic at the outset, the project simply fell apart. “Brian heard tapes of us and usually everything he gets sounds like Queen,” explains Hamie. “So when he heard us he made inquiries and flew to London to see us; he’s still a rocker at heart. So we’re in the middle of a rehearsal and this guy walks in who we think is Brian May. And we’re all nudging each other while still trying to play. Anyway, we stopped and adjourned to the bar and he said he wanted to produce us.” They didn’t realize it till the album came out, but, Hamie says now, “Something just went wrong. There was no balls to the record. If you played it next to something that was done cheaply for an independent label, that sounded better. We’re still friends with Brian, but we expected more.”

More is what they got on album #2. Rock Ain’t Dead was recorded after a year—to the day—of constant touring. “On this album,” boasts Hamie, “everything is better: the production, the playing, my singing. I hit notes I never even dreamt of a year ago.” Still, they almost had problems in the studio this time, too. At the last minute, the engineer scheduled to work on the record went off to work with Asia, forcing Heavy Pettin’ to scotch the project for a while. “The record company was panicking and we were slapping our wrists wondering what we were gonna do,” Hamie recalls. Finally, engineer Mack (AC/DC, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple) signed on as producer and an American, John Jansen (Lou Reed), as engineer. The five Glaswegians—Hamie, guitarists Gordon Bonnar and Punky Mendoza, bass and drum team Brian Waugh and Gary Moat—finally feel comfortable with a record they’ve made.

For Heavy Pettin’, who formed in 1981, that is how you spell relief. Considering how they struggled during their early days, it’s a wonder they didn’t give up and go back to their day jobs.

“We had rough times at the start, that’s for sure,” remembers Hamie in his thick Scottish brogue. “We were playing in pubs and never had any money. We borrowed to buy a tour bus and then we used to have to steal food and that kind of stuff. We’d run off from gas stations after filling up with petrol. And that wasn’t easy; you can't miss an old, wrecked tour bus. We never had any heating on the bus, either, so we used to freeze.”

The band’s big break came when they were asked to open a show for Black Sabbath. ‘‘We went from playing a bar in front of 50 people in December 1982 to playing before Sabbath at the Reading Festival a month later. And I’ll tell you, we were shitting up there! We were so scared it was unbelievable. We were so nervous we rushed through our songs so we could hurry and get off. I spent the whole morning before the gig going to the toilet. But then we got an encore.”

After their first LP was released the following year, Heavy Pettin’—the name came from a magazine article discussing ‘‘heavy petting before sexual intercourse”— toured the U.S. as openers for Motley Crue.

‘‘Let me tell you, that was a wild introduction to American touring,” says Hamie. ‘‘I can tell you some extremely filthy stories. I thought we were crude.”

BUCHANAN BACK AND LOUD

by Andy Hughes

Blues legends don’t die, they just fade away. True sometimes, but at least one blues legend is poised on the verge of a comeback.

Roy Buchanan, the guitarist’s guitarist, has been without a major-label recording deal for six years now. How the man who taught Nils Lofgren to play guitar and has been hailed as the greatest guitar technician since B.B. King can be without a deal may seem a mystery. Over an apres-gig cigar, Roy considered his career, past, present and future.

“I was born in 1939 in Ozark, Arkansas, and we moved to California when I was about 15. The school bus went one way, and I went the other, and ended up in L.A. I did some sessions, and some work with Jimmy Nolan. He taught me how to play ‘After Hours’ and introduced me to Leiber and Stoller, and I did some session work with them for a while.”

Names like Jimmy Nolan and Leiber and Stoller roll from Uncle Roy (as his most devoted fans refer to him) as simply people he has passed by along the way, and “really no big deal.”

The most famous incident in Roy’s history—also dismissed with a wave of his cigar as, yet again, “no big deal”—was his invitation to join the Rolling Stones.

“That’s right, it’s true, the rumor is true. I was told that their guitarist had kicked off and they were looking to replace him if maybe I was interested. The thing was, I’d just got my own band together, and I was reckoning this was my one chance to play some of my own music, so I turned the gig down. I really like Keith Richards he’s a sweet man. Mick too, a very patient guy.”

At 46, a little generous around the waistline, Roy Buchanan is hardly the stuff of which modern pop icons are made. His was a time when bands were known for their dexterity with a plectrum, not an eyebrow pencil—so how does Uncle Roy see himself fitting in in 1985?

“I don’t really think about comparing myself to those guys. I read the ads for my concert at The Dominion Theatre in London. I haven’t been over here for 10 years, and the blurb in New Musical Express did that thing about being the greatest...what was it? That’s it, the greatest guitar technician since B.B. King...I had a damned good laugh about all that stuff!

“No, to be honest, I’m not a purist. I play the blues, but to me blues and rock and all that is the same sort of stuff. I have six kids, and my daughter’s friends come around some time, and they talk about fights with their families...see, it seems to me, it’s not the kids that need to be sorted, it’s their parents!”

For the past six years, since his last contract lapsed, Uncle Roy has continued in the finest blues tradition, touring regularly and even taking guitar lessons!

“That’s true, I’ve been doing a postal course with this guy called Dave Whitehill from New York. He knows every style there is and he sends me stuff in the mail to learn.”

Should the unthinkable occur, and you don’t get a deal with a major label, what will you do?

“I’m not too concerned, to be honest with you. In the past, I’ve not been happy with the way I’ve been recorded— mostly my own fault I guess. I’m looking for the right deal, but if I don’t get it, I shall go on to teach music. I’ve been offered a chance to do some demonstrations at Julliard and Berkley, sort of master-class situations.”

For anyone who feels he’d like to hear where modern rock came from, check out any of the Roy Buchanan albums, Second Album being perhaps the best. It’s an education. Failing that, check out his newest release on Alligator Records.

You’ll see.

ANTIX! HOWGREAT!

by Karen Troupe

Picture this, if you will: a local band finally lands itself in the studio after its demo tape falls into the right hands and makes the proper impression.

During the recording process, the well-known producer who has lent his services to the project gets so emotionally charged that he falls asleep. The manager appoints himself executive producer and sees to the important functions of this task—taking out the trash, going to Burger King and making certain he’s included in the photo sessions.

Sounds like a rough blueprint for the Spinal Tap movie, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s a typical day in the life of a notso-average band called Antix.

Depending on which member you choose to believe, it is an accurate or slightly exaggerated account of the various hijinks that contribute to their image of having a good time while making good music.

“I was lying in bed one night,” recalls drummer Ian Evans, “and I was thinking, I need a name that describes us four guys to a T. So I thought, ‘Antix! How great.’”

Evans, along with Greg Clewley (lead singer) and Jace White (lead guitarist), have gathered along with manager Jeff Gordon in the Enigma offices in Los Angeles to reveal their life history to any and all within hearing distance. The only noticeable absence? “BJ” Norris, he of the bass instrument. “He’s at home watching midget wrestling,” says Ian.

Antix began in 1982, when Clewley and White, then with a group called Jailbait, decided to merge their talents with Norris and Evans, then with Pax. The four had attended school together, so the camaraderie that already existed eradicated any potential bad feelings. They were rivals, yes, but benevolent ones. “There was Antix for ya,” says Greg.

“We loved each other, we respected each other. We just didn’t like each other.”

“Yeah,” Ian chimed in. "We used to see each other’s band play and we used to throw things at each other. I used to throw things at Greg while he was in Pax. And he didn’t really like me too much.”

“I used to throw his drumsticks back,” said Clewley, “when he was in Jailbait.” Ian pretends to look mad. “We love each other now. Whenever Greg puts me down, I go into a corner and cry.”

Upon the completion of their demo tape, Gordon (who had also worked with Great White) brought it to the attention of Don Dokken, who was so impressed with what he heard he decided to work double time. When not slaving over Tooth And Nail, he devoted the rest of his time to Antix’s Get Up, Get Happy.

“It worked out really well. We just went in, rehearsed for a while for him, got some ideas down,” remembers Greg. “We spent a month-and-a-half in the studio, including preproduction, mixing and the whole deal. Basically, it was a whole 200 hours.” The guys are currently working on some deals with major labels, including a possible deal with Heavy Metal Records in the U.K. “That’ll be a big step in the right direction. And if our album takes off really well, there will be a tour. Things are looking really well. They want to push the hell out of Get Up, Get Happy.

“We’re fighters, man. We have our problems from time to time, but we always stick together. Keep fighting.”

Ian looks as though he’s addressing some invisible army.

“That’s the name of the game.”

HELIX HUNGER!

by Harold DeMuir

I have this theory, that the dogged persistence of Canadian rock musicians is directly attributable to the climate of their homeland. According to the theory, they’ve got to spend as much time as possible in sweaty clubs and centrally-heated recording studios, just to keep themselves from turning blue. You don’t have to accept this; it’s only a theory.

The core of Helix—singer Brian Vollmer and guitarists Paul Hackman and Brent Doerner—has been together for a decade, with drummer Greg Hinz joining in 1981 and token American bassist Daryl Gray signing on last year. The hoser-heavy fivesome’s new LP—tipped as the proverbial Big One—is Long Way To Heaven, the group’s third for Capitol and fifth overall. And if they don’t attain their goal of international headlining status, it won’t be for lack of hard work or sincerity.

“We’ve always emphasized the team,” says main talker Vollmer. “There’s a family atmosphere in this band, nobody’s the main man, and we all care a lot about each other.” The more reserved Hackman adds, “It’s like being married to four guys. Naturally, you’re gonna have some fights occasionally, but we all have the same goals and we all have our heads on straight.”

Although the aforementioned goals are set pretty high, the band isn’t looking for instant gratification. “We just want to keep showing a progression from album to album and tour to tour,” says Hackman. Vollmer explains, “You can either try rammin’ everything down everyone’s throats at once, or you can take your time and build a solid foundation. The money thing has just become irrelevant to us, because we’ve gone so many years without it. When you go through periods of not having money, you learn to get your pleasure from working and creating.”

Sounds reasonable enough. But I don’t buy Vollmer’s lame rationalization of the band’s occasional use of sexist imagery, particularly in last year’s MTV-banned “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’” video. “We live in a sexist society,” he offers. “We put that stuff in our videos because people find it entertaining, and when people are no longer entertained by scantily-clothed women, then we won’t have any reason to put that in our videos.”

He admits, though, “We did get negative feedback from women about that video. In fact, when my sister saw me after not seeing me for a year, instead of saying hello, she said ‘I hate your video.’ We’re human, we make mistakes, and we’re tending to go away from that stuff now. It didn’t work, so we won’t keep banging our heads against the wall. But I don’t think that censorship is the answer.

“We’re still kids at heart,” Vollmer continues, “and we’re probably a little naive at times. My friends who are the same age as me tend to look at me like I’m an immature kid.”

Hackman nearly gets in the last word: “It’s been a pretty good childhood so far. A lot of our friends are starting to get a little surprised now. Back when we started, they’d say, ‘Why don’t you grow up, why don’t you get a job?’ Now they’re looking at us and saying, ‘Wait a minute, maybe these guys have got something.’”

Vollmer sneaks in and observes, “Class reunions are big because people want to go back and see who fucked up and who didn’t. We didn’t.” While the singer may harbor revenge fantasies about attending his high school reunion and rubbing his success in the frozen faces of his exclassmates, the band’s touring schedule probably won’t allow it for a while.