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Portraits of Gillan
Rufus Stone publications have announced a new photo book Portraits of Gillan, covering Big Ian’s career after his first departure from Deep Purple.
ON LEAVING DEEP PURPLE IN JUNE 1973 IAN GILLAN seemed to turn his back on music. Instead of joining or forming a new outfit the vocalist instead invested heavily in a number of business projects and to all intents and purposes appeared to have retired.
But there was more to Gillan than just his work with Purple, and he’d been singing for over a decade by this time so it was inevitable that he would eventually go back to what he did best – fronting a band and so in September 1975, in Paris, the world was introduced to the Ian Gillan band.
Over the next few years the band expanded and transformed into Gillan, releasing a batch of successful albums and singles, sell-out tours, headlining the Reading Festival, guesting at the third ever Monsters of Rock event and playing a final show at Wembley Arena before the band disintegrated. What happened next surprised everyone and in April 1983, Ian Gillan, flanked by Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, was officially announced as the new singer of Black Sabbath.
PORTRAITS OF GILLAN – is a photographic celebration of Ian Gillan’s post Deep Purple career, published as a brand-new coffee-table book tracing his career with a mixture of well-known, rare and unseen photographs from some of rock’s greatest photographers. The book includes an 8000 word essay from rock journalist and writer John Tucker, tracking Gillan’s career through this period. This unofficial book is 230mm square, case-bound, 240 pages, printed on luxury 170gsm matt-coated paper. The book comes with a fold out poster and is presented in a black slipcase with a gold foil logo. The main edition comes in 500 numbered copies and sells for £55 plus shipping. In addition to this, a much larger, ultra-limited Black Leather and Metal Edition measuring 375mm square and presented in recycled leather and a hand welded aluminium metal slipcase with a screen printed logo in a run of 50 numbered copies. This edition also comes with a unique lenticular for framing and will sell for £350.The books will go on sale on Wednesday April 24th at 3pm UK time and will feature a 10% pre-order discount if ordered before April 30th. The first 200 orders will also come with a free Gillan enamel badge worth £6.95. The books will ship worldwide at the end of June 2024.
The book can be pre-ordered through the publisher. Pre-ordering opens on Wednesday, April 24th, at 3pm UK Time.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Gillan @ 0:27 trying to turn the Marshall to 11. Cheers
April 20th, 2024 at 02:31Unless it is Janick Gers @ 0:27, it is hard to tell. Cheers.
April 20th, 2024 at 02:45This morning I have played
April 20th, 2024 at 14:13Cherkazoo and Other Stories by Gillan after long time and it was so exciting to rediscover several gems. It make feel so good!♡
Nice to see the band “Gillan” again.
A very underrated band – too soon fogotten.
And a great “Kind-of-Purple” music in the video.
But why b/w?
April 20th, 2024 at 14:46Ivica meant to put this here:
“The first meeting. 1979 .. the city of Split Croatia.. then an unknown keyboard player in the dark plays the intro (“Second Sight.”) the other three enter the first bars of the fast song Secret of the Dance.” a lot of smoke on the stage .. the first lines in the parterre where they were …after 30 seconds a tall man with long, very long hair comes on stage,headbanging ..
sleeveless denim jacket, white cowboy boots
white pants and a t-shirt, a denim jacket the color of the clear sky without sleeves, followed then a clenched fist with a bent elbow… this is Ian Gillan…”
What I liked about Gillan was that they refused to conform to stereotype. Blackmore and Coverdale were so image conscious (yet dated in their tastes), someone like John McCoy could have never played in either Rainbow or Whitesnake (even the bluesy one), never mind how good he was as a bassist (and he was very good). And Big Ian didn’t stop there, but incorporated someone who looked like he came from Adam Ant and played a weird mix of Punk attitude and Hendrixisms – namely Bernie Tormé – as well. If only the Gillan albums had been produced with a little more care and warmth … The music, for all its Punk energy to set it apart from the more cerebral Ian Gillan Band, was never dumb or safe either, nor fitting a mold like Rainbow and Whitesnake did.
It was both an intrepid image and intrepid music. Yet in Germany at least, it never ignited like Rainbow or Whitesnake, which were both warm blankets for Deep Purple fans left out in the cold after the ‘76 split (or even the ‘75 REXIT). Could be that some of the Brit humor of Gillan went above people’s heads or perhaps the sense of imminent live anarchy that went with Gillan gigs did not gel with prevailing German tastes for a more controlled spectacle.
With Gillan it was the only time I saw and heard Big Ian play guitar. He played rhythm guitar on a Strat for the rock’n’roll medley encore.
April 21st, 2024 at 19:53“And a great “Kind-of-Purple” music in the video.”
Cheapskates! They were only trying to save money rather than using IGB or GILLAN music for which they would have to pay. Considering how Rufus puts a hefty price tag on everything they produce themselves, that is a real miserly move. It’s why McDonalds in the days of old never played originals in their restaurants, they didn’t want to pay the royalties.
But there are actually jingle songwriters who specialize in “write something that sounds like, but isn’t …”-music-made-to-order to market certain products. Justin Hawkins of The Darkness (who has a good, musical ear) lived from “sounds like …”-jingles for a while.
But the composition as such isn’t bad. Though Colin Towns usually went out of his way to not play too much Hammond because he wanted to escape the Jon Lord comparisons. And he was in fact a better synth and piano player than a Hammond organist. Great composer and arranger too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZUGOJ31vo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGE56-ypoik
April 21st, 2024 at 22:04@ 6 – “It’s why McDonalds in the days of old never played originals in their restaurants, they didn’t want to pay the royalties”. I wouldn’t call them that (restaurants) Uwe, something along the lines of a trough of sorts, with a few other words which I will not print. Seriously though in regards to Ian Gillan with a Stratocaster, that would have been interesting to hear & see him playing some rhythm guitar. We notice Gillan is on some of those Montreux Machine Head recording images with Blackmore’s Strat we presume. Which begs the question, is that what it was all about & also messing with the Marshall controls so to speak. From that to getting spaghetti spilled on his head, it is all beginning to make sense. Cheers.
April 22nd, 2024 at 02:44@5
Gillan used to rely a lot on his natural masculine beauty and could afford being not image conscious. He could have a band of hobbits back him up and still guys in the audience would relate to him and gals would want to mate with him. He had both Dio’s depth and DC’s sexiness to him. I’m not even talking about his ability to write intelligent and witty lyrics and being equally witty on stage, which none other DP front man could do. That’s why RB put up with him for so long before calling it a day.
Speaking of the lack of success of Gillan the band outside of the UK, there’s a few reasons: poor promotion, poor production (rough sound, good but unpolished songwriting) and lack of marketable singles. Gillan’s biggest singles were classic rock’n’roll numbers, low hanging fruits so to speak. Still it evades me why they did so poorly in financial terms. Even being limited to the UK market, they could thoroughly milk it with five high charting albums. Bad business decisions, probably?
April 22nd, 2024 at 09:47@5 https://jugosvirke.wordpress.com/category/ian-gillan/
April 22nd, 2024 at 09:58Would Ian Gillan ever do a David Coverdale & sell out in desperation for success & ego etc.? I don’t know about that as he is a different animal than ole Cov’s. It does beg the question, what would he have done if DP didn’t reunite after the Sabbath gig? We will never know & hindsight again makes it easy to look at it all from this angle. At least he can proudly sing the old song ‘I did it my way’ & not ‘I sold my soul for rock ‘n roll’ as Cov’s would have to sing that one. Cheers.
April 22nd, 2024 at 12:15Ian didn’t look bad with a Strat (he strapped it relatively high, but then so did Blackmore or Glenn Tipton of Judas Priest) and played it fine, not Rick Parfitt rhythm guitar quality, but perfectly serviceable for a rock’n’roll medley. He would do it on the 1979 tour (where I first saw Gillan), not sure if it was repeated on later tours. Bonie Moronie was one of the songs they did in the medley and he let Bernie take the lead vocals on that. The pics below are from Reading around the same time.
http://www.deep-purple.net/gallery/reading79/ian-gillan-1.jpg
http://www.deep-purple.net/gallery/reading79/reading79-5.htm
In their prime they were really quite a sight & (raucous) sound, this
performance catches them playing (live) well in high spirits and with a very good TV studio mix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CMzzzvURyQ&t=87s
What also differentiated them pleasantly from Rainbow and Whitesnake was that they had a more varied band member input in their songwriting. Initially Colin Towns (with or without Ian) was the main songwriter, but over time McCoy/Tormé i.e. McCoy/Gers together with Ian would come to the fore. And belying his looks, some of John McCoy’s musical ideas were really quite delicate. He had a penchant for descending chords over his intentionally stoic root note-clinging bass lines in his writing, all very tasteful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC-QisiYFSY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFDsE4OsBIc
April 22nd, 2024 at 13:12“Still it evades me why they did so poorly in financial terms. Even being limited to the UK market, they could thoroughly milk it with five high charting albums. Bad business decisions, probably?”
I would imagine they just about broke even or made a small profit in the UK, but lost money in major markets such as Continental Europe, North America and Japan where Deep Purple had always been strong. Yet they did not stop touring there – without corresponding record sales that must have been burning money. And Ian did not have the funds to rely on like Blackmore could to finance Rainbow. He had left Purple two years earlier (and not been part of Mk I) + lost money with his hotel, the motor cycle company, the Cherkazoo project and during the IGB years. It had all cost him, so his funds must have been steadily depleted and I understand that the royalty flow from Purple Records wasn’t always steady either for whatever reasons.
April 22nd, 2024 at 22:07The good people of
CLUBE DE ADICTOS A DEEP PURPLE (now that’s a name!)
interviewed the late
BERNIE TORMÉ
in 2014 (interesting also for the non-GILLAN contents)
https://eltablerodeajedrez2000.blogspot.com/p/bernie-torme-urge-scrapyard-gillan-ozzy.html
who shed some insightful light on why GILLAN stayed behind their potential. Read for yourself, but it strikes me that Big Ian for all his talents is perhaps not cut out to be a band leader in the sense of being a gifted entrepreneur. Not everyone has that in him and with Purple commercial considerations always rested on several shoulders. He was perhaps simply out of his managerial depth with IGB and GILLAN – that ties in with what he said about joining Sabbath at the time: relishing to be “just the singer”.
QUESTION: With these three albums (“Mr Universe”, “Glory Road” and “Future Shock”) Gillan the band was at the top of the charts in UK. You played many shows but, unfortunately, didn´t achieve massive success. Also it seems that Gillan the band wasn´t successful enough in North America. You had got the songs, the music, the chemistry and the attitude, what did you think that happened for not getting this massive success?
BERNIE TORMÉ: No management. Ian appeared to have a problem about that manager/artiste relationship. Both Rainbow and Whitesnake had powerful old school style management, but when I joined Gillan the band basically managed itself: That was ok, and it meant that we evolved in a different more chaotic and far more individualistic way, but it also meant that we were not really able to make the jump past being big in the UK, or to get a major record deal. There was no one with their finger on any business pulse, or with any strategy, it was basically a case of stagger from one state of chaos to the next. Ian did not want anyone to tell him what to do, he wanted to do what he wanted to do, tour, do albums and have a party every night. He didn’t want to support anyone, he wanted to headline clubs. There was no plan to make it bigger. He did not want that. But I am a bit like that too.
When he finally did get a manager ( just before I left) it was our agent, Phil Banfield, who had no control at all over Ian, he was just there to do what Ian wanted. More slave than manager. He was also not experienced and had no thought of anything other than make the next few quid, a nice enough guy, but not impressive, and an agent, not a manager.
QUESTION: I know that you’ve answered this many times before, sorry for this. But we’re very interested in your own opinion and words about this. Please, would you tell the readers of HUSH and Púrpura Chess what happens with the Top of the Pops recording in 1981 and your departure from Gillan?
BERNIE TORMÉ: I was very unhappy following “Future Shock” that different people in the band were being paid different amounts. I really did not want to stay in a band that operated like that, I had no problem about Ian taking the lion’s share, it was after all his band and his name, but I did have a big problem about McCoy getting more than everybody else and Ian letting that happen. It was for me an explosion waiting to happen, and no way to run a band. There was also a major problem in that we had all been personally promised a share by Ian and his business manager Ted Wood in early 79, which never was paid, and then a few months before I left in 81 they started denying that it had ever been promised, though all of us had been at the meeting. At that stage I really felt I no longer wanted to be part of Gillan, it just seemed to be an essentially dishonest situation. (UWE’s EDIT: That reminds me of how miffed Jon Lord was when he found out that Cozy Powell was on a better salary than he was with Whitesnake.)
The final straw for me came when we were on a European tour and we were offered Top Of The Pops: the musicians union used to pay a fee for each musician who appeared on TOTP, and it turned out that either the management or record company with Ian’s collusion had been taking that money without even asking us. We were being treated like session musicians, but not being paid like session musicians. So I said that in the circumstances I wasn’t going to do Top Of The Pops unless I was being paid my Musicians Union fee. McCoy wound me up about all that, not difficult to do in those days, and said he wouldn’t do it either. I didn’t, he did. And he mimed my guitar solo on Top Of The Pops.
I offered to complete the tour so as not to let fans down, Ian didn’t want me to do that, so I left, and Ian claimed he sacked me because he didn’t want me to complete the tour. Left? Sacked? Bit of both really, depends on your point of view. I was told that situation of not receiving the promised share carried on till the band broke up, so I was glad I left when I did, it was not a happy situation.
QUESTION: I think that your work in Gillan the band was great and felt unhappy with your departure, this was negative for Gillan the band. Looking back, did you think that maybe you and Ian would have done something different?
BERNIE TORMÉ: Yes, I think that’s true, but you can’t rewrite history, and either a band is a band or it is a bunch of session musicians being paid to back the star, that’s a clear difference. Gillan was run in a deliberately unclear and confusing way, you were promised a share in the profits so you did not expect the normal session players payments, which are pretty generous, but you never got a share of anything. Of course it could have been different, but it was not designed or run to last. It was only a matter of time until Ian went back to Purple. We all knew it.
QUESTION: Any chance to reform Gillan the band, (with or without Ian) for a concert or a recording?
BERNIE TORMÉ: I’d be happy to do it for maybe a few concerts, no album, no tour, but it would have to be with Ian for me, I know McCoy had a lot of schemes to do it with other singers, but I would not be interested in that. Basically as I understand it, Ian won’t do it and Colin won’t do it. Both essential, so it really is not going to happen. Even if Ian agreed Colin would not, and I would not do it without Colin. It won’t happen, which is sad.
**********
April 23rd, 2024 at 23:54@13 – Thanks! good quote that explains maybe not all, but most of it. Bad management. That’s what you get when you don’t have a good manager to counterbalance a brilliant but erratic band leader. What Bernie said here has a lot in common with what Viv Campbell said about the situation in Dio the band in the mid-80s: shares promised but never delivered. Except Dio did not implode momentarily; it just dragged on and on with ever diminishing sales and lower chart positions. At least, Gillan stopped on a sort of a high note with Magic, a fairly successful album chart wise, and quite good musically.
This also explains the current DP lust for incessant touring. They, and the big Ian in particular, are just trying to make up for all that wasted or never earned money from the 1970-1980s.
April 24th, 2024 at 09:13Dio was a bit like that abused child (via his days with Rainbow and Sabbath) that became abusive itself once he set up Dio (the band). Ritchie didn’t teach only good things to people.
April 24th, 2024 at 12:57Don’t lay Dio & his attitude on Blackmore Uwe, that is far too easy a thing to do. Are you seriously suggesting Dio as an adult didn’t know better? His heritage for a start & his younger days as a rock’n roller. Plus didn’t he allegedly name himself after a mafia mobster or something? I don’t believe that naming thing at all & as we know the Dio word in Italian = GOD. Poor ole Ritchie cops another whack with a stick. Cheers.
April 24th, 2024 at 23:27@ 11- thanks for the Gillan live concert footage, good to see. They didn’t perform any medley at the 1981 gig I witnessed, so obviously no guitar strapped on there. Talking of obscure guitarists I have been listening to early Budgie & their guitarist Tony Bourge is superb. And what a sound he has with that Gibson SG through those Marshalls. That cover of Baby Please Don’t Go is much better than what we in Oz had a little later with Acca Dacca. I remember those first 3 Budgie albums from my older brothers collection from the mid 70’s & there are some fine songs on there including a few of those lengthier ones. Rush would have been hugely influenced by Budgie, Shelly’s voice & all. Shelly sounds a little like early Percy at times. That then lead me to early Judas Priest on youtube & both their guitarists had the SG for one song & Tipton opted for a Strat on the song. Talk about Rob Halford wearing his sisters wardrobe as such & how effeminate he was. Of course he realised he had to toughen it up a little & the leather & chains etc had it’s impact. I actually prefer that older Priest musically compared to what they became. Cheers. Two live Priest clips below from Old Grey Whistle Test 1975.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvlq1F-X6Ko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvlq1F-X6Ko
April 25th, 2024 at 02:44https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=957N7EAtpY4
Wrong link for the second Priest clip @ 17. Here is Rocka Rolla live. Have to love KK’s outfit also. These guys were a fashion statement back then, what went wrong? Cheers.
April 25th, 2024 at 07:29Those Old Grey Whistle Test outtakes are both legendary and exemplary for young Roberta’s (he really did look like a girl singing in a folk rock outfit and not the Metal God he would become) incredible range and the many voices he had available, it’s like several different vocalists singing!
Sister’s wardrobe? You bet, he even has an older sister (Susan) who recommended him to prototype Judas Priest when they were vainly looking for a singer as she was dating bassist Ian Hill at the time (they later married) and told him “My brother is a bit of a singer, you should try him out.”. Said and done, the rest is metal history; big sis Susan took good care of baby brother Rob, perhaps it had dawned on her that he wasn’t really cut out for steel mill work and football fandom in Walsall of all places. (By then it was well known within his family and his inner circle that Rob was “different”.)
Whaddaya mean “effeminate”?! 😁 Effeminate as hell actually. That set(s) Judas Priest apart, Halford was never an all-male chest beater like Bruce Dickinson, it’s his gay man’s charm that makes Priest special. A female rock journo once wrote about a Judas Priest gig in the late 70ies: “I’ve never witnessed an act so studded with male insignia, yet lacking any true virility.” Unwittingly, she was really on to something. 🤐
I thought by the late 70ies/very early 80ies that Rob was likely gay, his frequent image, wardrobe and hair style changes from album to album and tour (a man hiding behind identites he could project without danger of being “caught”, yet at the same time pointing to his inclinations), his Glenn Hughes-biker look (the mustached one of the Village People, not our Glenn here though he can be effeminate too) straight out of William Friedkin’s gay subculture thriller Crusing with Al Pacino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn31G2SHkVE ,
plus the fact that Rob’s lyric dictionary did not contain the following words: woman, girl, wife, babe, baby, honey, she, her or anything you could interpret as having even remotely to do with the fairer gender. How many albums can you do avoiding those words? Well Rob did the lyrics for 15 JP albums without using them (the first two JP albums in places still contain lyrics from singers preceding him or from Glenn Tipton).
Rob was always as gay as a leather-harnessed goose, and it was there for all the world to see. Yet management and record company insisted as late as 1986 for TURBO (when his sexual orientation was beyond doubt for any fan) to do photo shoots with him alone adorned by bikini-clad, voluptuous “come hither”-type “babes” throwing PLAYMATE shapes around him. When I saw those I could not help laughing: “As if … – Rob doesn’t like women in beachwear, he likes athletic boys in beachwear!” And he looked so incredible awkward and self-conscious on those pics (they are all seemingly wiped from the internet by now, he hated them that much), it made you feel sorry for him.
“I actually prefer that older Priest musically compared to what they became.” I totally get that because JP’s music drew initially from the gamut of British Midlands Heavy and Blues Rock; come the 80ies, however, JP narrowed/streamlined their Heavy Rock to short and snappy Heavy Metal songs, they actually dumbed things down a little, an AC/DC effect so to say.
Budgie? Even Geddy Lee agrees that the parallels in sound to Rush are obvious, yet says he never knew them at the time. I believe him – Budgie were even obscure in Germany too, League 4 (League 1 were DP, LZ, BS, Uriah Heep and Status Quo, League 2 were bands like UFO, Scorpions, Rainbow, Nazareth, Rory Gallagher, Bad Company, League 3 were Aerosmith, BÖC and Ted Nugent) or even lower in popularity. There was only one guy at our school who owned a Budgie album (Squawk) and I never forget how impressed I was when I heard the magnificent Whiskey River after I had loaned it from him, there was something enchantingly raw and archaic to the initial Budgie line-up with Tony Bourge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1ZtBpT5H0
“Like a riiiiveeeerrrr, overflowiiiiiing …”
Just lovely.
April 25th, 2024 at 21:49Here’s a GILLAN fan writing about the band love of his life:
https://getreadytorock.me.uk/blog/2020/04/feature-what-gillan-means-to-me/
I’ve now ordered the Rufus publication – against better insight … but IGB/GILLAN were seldom reported about in the music mags of the time, I have to do some catching up.
April 25th, 2024 at 23:53I cannot believe how well recorded these early to mid 70’s Budgie albums are. Superb they are & it really does show how Black Sabbath lost the plot in regards to a nice clear & punchy sound on their early to mid 70’s records. Ironic as Rodger Bain produced the first couple of Budgie records as he also did with Sabbath. I read Bain also produced Priest’s Rocka Rolla album. In regards to Geddy Lee saying that he had never heard of Budgie, yes I have to admit I have never read anywhere of Rush ever mentioning Budgie at all. I do think on the heavier Budgie songs a more powerful lead vocalist could have come in handy. Shelley is wonderful on the quieter songs, but that high vocal, as is often the case with certain singers, has it’s limitations. Cheers.
April 27th, 2024 at 00:49Closest to the DP atmosphere of all ex …. Torme era 1979-1981
April 27th, 2024 at 15:16An incredible band, Gillan at his vocal peak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvEPXS-d3lk
Well, budgie did call one of their albums Squawk, so you knew what you were getting!
Sure, Burke Shelley’s voice was an acquired taste, but so is Geddy’s. In that interview I read, Geddy, ever the gentleman, was very complimentary about Budgie, regretting that he did not actually get to know them already in the 70ies.
Budgie have probably earned through Metallica’s cover of Breadfan more money than with their combined own record sales and touring. Shelley actually made a comment along those lines once – good gor him, so his pension was safe, he had medical costs to cover in the last decade of his life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H25NEDIIQQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD-YJ7AuXhM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54H3EUAzpVg
April 27th, 2024 at 15:17Afterthought: I actually hear parallels between early Budgie and Hughes era Trapeze.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T65GRD2Fd2I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5YgsZ9tU6E
They both tried to take the tried and trusted Cream-/Jimi Hendrix Experience-format somewhere else. Wonder if they were ever on a double-bill?
April 27th, 2024 at 15:27Ivica @22: Bernie Tormé, rest his Irish soul, was probably the least accomplished lead guitarist in technical terms of pretty much all DP split-off groups, but it didn’t matter one bit: The guy oozed rock’n’roll and was a riot to watch. With Bernie in the band, watching GILLAN was like experiencing a Punk and a Heavy Metal gig at the same time.
And McCoy’s intentionally ostinato bass playing – he would hang on to a note endlessly where other bassists would have long followed a chord change, so long in fact that his “not doing nothing” would eventually attract attention and upstage everyone! – cannot be lauded enough. He had great attack in his pick playing and machine-like precision, his extremely grounded and heavy groove propelled GILLAN relentlessly. Brilliant bassist, both sparse and over the top at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGlKuREFUwo&t=19s
The way he plows on one note through all of the intro chord changes of ‘Restless’ puts him firmly into Ian Hill (Judas Priest)-worthy territory, the “I’m not getting paid to change notes here!”- league of bassmen!!!
April 27th, 2024 at 22:24I much prefer Burke Shelley’s voice than Geddy Lee’s from that era. Shelley doesn’t force the vocal & yell & shout like Lee did way back in the 70’s. Glenn Hughes has more middle strength to his voice, but yes indeed that three piece heavy riffing scenario of Trapeze is similar to Budgie & as you said the influence of Cream, Hendrix etc. I do think Budgie had very good songs though, Trapeze from what I have heard struggle to write stronger songs. I liked the Medusa song though & I probably should have a listen to a few more Trapeze studio recordings to see if there are a few gems hidden away. Regarding those higher vocals, (tenor or alto tenor as Jon Anderson called his). From so many of those lead vocalists & I like a lot of them at times, but what happened to Yes with Trevor Rabin playing heavy riffs against Anderson trying to sing, it doesn’t work. That is what I notice with Budgie in that aspect. The same with early & later day Rush as Lee’s vocals strained against Lifeson’t heavy riffing, madness to my ears in the later Rush as Lee’s voice started waining. I find it non listenable actually. Shelley gets away with it better in the 70’s better than others I have heard. I haven’t listened to any later Budgie as yet. The ‘alto tenor’ vocalists have to push too hard against that heaviness & Glenn Hughes being a more middle range stronger vocalist would survive longer than than Shelly, Anderson, David Surkamp from Pavlov’s Dog & Geddy Lee. When there is nice ‘quieter’ music their voices are sublime, however hard rock has a tendency to ruin the nuances in that style of singing to my ears. I don’t rate Geddy Lee as good as those other vocalists though, he doesn’t have that natural vocal sound for me, he never wanted to be a singer apparently, so I guess someone had to do it. He is a good vocalist but not a great one compared to the others mentioned here. Regarding Budgie & Rush a few fans at youtube said they witnessed both bands on the same bill in 1977. Rush did record the AFTK album in Wales in 1977, so they did recognise each other eventually after their initial beginnings it seems. I have also read about the later day metal bands honouring Budgie. They were a very good blues & rock based band with many other styles in their music. Obviously those heavy riffs influenced others later on. Cheers.
April 28th, 2024 at 00:0325@
I agree with Herr Uwe 100% about Bernie Torme (OP…Gerd Müller wasn’t perfect technically, nor was he fast on long distances and fat, but the best scorer in the history of football:)) In tandem (stage-performance sessions as well as author’s) with John McCoy was a strong force band, also a good drummer (and an important man in arranging the brains of Deep Purple) Mick Undrerwood, an important link of the band
Steve,Joe,Ray…all more technically perfect guitar than Bernie..no one performed SOTW (rif and solo part) more exciting ,raw and in their punk -rock- way than Bernie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9U6tk4o9VA
PS
April 28th, 2024 at 11:02Keyboards are missing..but Berni and John make up for it
Yeah, Tormé punking his way through that riff always had raucous charm. (But there seem to be keyboards present too, just comparatively mixed low into the background which is unusual for Colin Towns, he probably avoided playing the riff in synchronicity though, he never wanted to sound like Jon Lord.)
Geddy’s voice is love or hate – he’s not in the pantheon of rock’s great expressive singers, but it’s impossible to imagine Rush with another voice.
April 28th, 2024 at 20:22