BRIAN SETZER: A STRAY CAT ALONE

BRIAN SETZER: A STRAY CAT ALONE

Brian Setzer was the main man behind the Stray Cats. Sure, Slim Jim Phantom and Lee Rocker may have given the band its rocking backbeat, but Setzer was the brains, the face, the voice, the guitarist and the songwriter behind the Stray Cats’ sensational appeal. Who’d have thought when Setzer formed a band in his native Long Island that he’d be kicking off a national phenomenon by aping the rockabilly music that people like Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran had created over two decades before? Setzer and his two cohorts left their New York island for Great Britain where they initially kicked off the rockabilly craze (after all, the appeal of that kind of music never really faded in the U.K.) before returning to the States, releasing two hit LPs, several hit singles and sold-out tours from coast to coast. Before long, every town had its own rockabilly band...or two or three, all trying to ape the Stray Cats, who in turn were aping something that was big before they were even born.

The Cats called it quits nearly two years ago, and many people believed that the band had taken the money and ran. After all, how much further could they go in the rockabilly medium? Brian resurfaced last summer, though, when John Cougar Mellencamp asked him and his new band, the Radiation Ranch, to play Farm Aid. Setzer’s set was one of the highlights of that event, and he soon went into the studio, using Mellencamp’s drummer, Kenny Aronoff, and producer, Don Gehman. The result is a stunning new LP called The Knife Feels Like Justice. And you know what?

There isn’t a rockabilly song to be found on it. The LP is definitely American rock ’n’ roll— running the gamut from neo-country to Motownish pop, and it even includes a song co-written with Little Steven Van Zandt of “Sun City” fame.

So Setzer has proven his critics wrong, showing that he’s one person who isn’t stuck in a musical dead end. As the ex-Cat recently told Jeff Tamarkin: “I don’t think people want the same old stuff. I think they want to grow into new things...1 couldn’t just sit down and write a straight rockabilly song anymore.”