aor issue 13

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CONTENTS ISSUE 13

48 Bryan Adams The groover from Vancouver revisits the making of his breakthrough album, Reckless, and discusses his parallel career as a photographer.

54 Emitt Rhodes His gift for classic songwriting and deft, bluesy rock should’ve made Emitt a star, but the business laid him low. Now, 40 years on from his last album, Rhodes rides again.

60 20 More Surprising AOR Albums The AOR triumphs of Celine Dion, Cliff Richard and Toni Basil – prepare to have your assumptions challenged!

64 Survivor An exclusive extract from Jim Peterik’s new autobiography Through The Eye Of The Tiger tells how the group hooked up with late, great frontman Jimi Jamison.

70 TNT As original vocalist Tony Harnell returns to the microphone, the group open up on their reunion and the truth behind former singer Tony Mills’ exit from the group.

76 Beau Hill When his band Airborne crashed, Beau Hill went on to become one of AOR’s greatest production heroes.

82 Dennis DeYoung The former Styx-man tells the tales behind the group’s greatest anthems.

88 Jean Beauvoir The wild life and outrageous fortunes of the Mohawk-sporting rock hero from Voodoo X, Crown Of Thorns and The Plasmatics.

Babylon AD leave Firefest well and truly rocked, p114.

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34AerosmithThey entered the 1980s a drug-addled shambles. They’d exit the decade as comeback kings…Houston 46 Angels Or Kings 58 Ten 74

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CONTENTS

REVIEWS

Album, reissue and live reviews with Foreigner,

Heart, Vega, Danger Danger, Nubian Rose, Asia, Mr Big, Kix, White Widdow.

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10 Best Shot Mick Jones gazes into AOR’s lens and discusses Foreigner’s future as he approaches his 70th birthday.

12 On Air Our keenest newshounds hunt down the truth about Cher’s health scare and Richie Sambora’s exit from Bon Jovi. Plus: all the new and nearly-new bands you need to know.

28 AOR Obsessions Ken McIntyre soundtracks his life with the balladry of Frank Stallone.

29 Classic Ads Frampton! Kiss! Huge tape-recorders!

30 Q&AOR Teri Tims on growing up country, her long-awaited AOR debut, and how she met husband Paul Sabu.

32 Retro Perspective Angel confound their fans with On Earth As It Is In Heaven.

130 Hi Infidelities Joe Lynn Turner tunes in to tell us the truth, and only the truth.

Can’t stop this thing he started:

Bryan Adams and the story of

Reckless, p48.

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Here’s lookin’ at you, kid: Permanent Vacation-era Aerosmith, 1988. (l-r) Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton, Steven Tyler, Joey Kramer, Joe Perry.

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t’s January 1980 and Aerosmith are playing Reefer Head Woman from their new Night In The Ruts album at the Civic Centre in Maine. It’s a sold-out show, but singer Steven Tyler doesn’t care.

Frustrated at having no cocaine to counteract the intoxicating effects of all the booze he’s swallowed since waking – rounded off by two double martinis gulped

minutes before taking the stage – he gives up and pretends to pass out. Throwing himself to the stage he fakes a seizure, twitching his leg to make it look authentic.

Such is his level of chemical dependency and alcoholic intoxication, this is the best idea he can come up with to avoid the indignity of playing a gig just plain old-fashioned drunk.

To this point in the tour Aerosmith have just about been getting away with it. Though with guitarist Joe Perry no longer in the band – replaced by JP-lookalike Jimmy Crespo – they are a shadow of their former selves. They’ve played shows where the singer has frequently forgotten his lines, and, when not at the mic has just sat on the drum riser, too unsteady to stand, much less move about.

As the 80s began, Aerosmith were in the grip of debilitating substance issues, estranged from their genius guitarist, and at their lowest ebb. Only a fool would’ve bet on them to return, bigger than ever. But that’s what happened…Words: Neil Jeffries


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Where’d Joe go? Steve Tyler and Jimmy Crespo, 1981.


Having paid his dues – and then some – 1984 found Bryan Adams entering a creative

purple patch, writing a timeless hit of the future seemingly

every single day. The big time was coming, and the

groover from Vancouver was more than ready. This is the

story of Reckless… Words: Ken Sharp

Playing till his fingers bleed: Bryan Adams in concert, 1983.


lmost 30 years ago I was one of the fortunate 100,000 fans who attended the historic Live Aid festival in Philadelphia.

I arrived at JFK Stadium on the day of the show with my then girlfriend, Merrie, at the ungodly hour of 5am – she was working backstage at the event. Also tagging along was her friend, Patty, who at that time was perhaps one the world’s most ardent Bryan Adams fans. Decked out in a worn Bryan Adams T-shirt, in deference to her hero, she took her fandom one step further: she spent all night baking brownies for Bryan in the hopes that she’d somehow finagle her way backstage and personally hand the chocolate goodies over to him.

Not surprisingly, that oversized tray of brownies never made its way to Mr Adams and they took up residence under her seat, half eaten, baking in the scorching heat on that sweltering July day. However, one thing’s for sure: when you have a fan willing to go all Mary Berry and bake for you in the middle of the night, fer chrissakes, you have arrived.

Fast-forward almost three decades to the present. The year 2014 marks another milestone in Bryan Adams’ illustrious career, the 30th anniversary of Reckless, the multi-platinum 12-million-plus-selling smash that catapulted the Canadian rocker into a global superstar on the heels of five radio-ready, perfectly crafted pop-rock miniatures – Run To You, Summer of ’69, Heaven, Somebody and It’s Only Love, their million-dollar hooks blasting permanently blaring out of radios non-stop in the 80s.

The just-released 2CD Reckless deluxe edition chronicles the artist’s best-selling release with significantly expanded content. As well as collecting the songs heard around the world, the reissue is enhanced by a bounty of revelatory bonus cuts.

Also out now is a new Bryan Adams album, Tracks of My Years, which finds the gifted artist essaying thrilling covers of songs by a disparate array of artists numbering The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, the Jeff Beck Group, Ray Charles, the Beach Boys, Eddie Cochran, Bobby Hebb, The Association, Kris Kristofferson and others. And if that’s not enough for this

man for all seasons, he’s also carved out an unlikely second career as an in-demand photographer.

Now and into the future, Bryan Adams, best-selling rocker and acclaimed lensman, lives up to the promise of his artistry and ideals; he’s not content with sitting still and resting on some pretty lofty laurels. Instead, he’s determined to continue to grow and challenge himself as an artist, and forge new frontiers in his career.

How did the success of your third album, Cuts Like A Knife (1983), set up the stage for Reckless?Quite a bit, because at the time for me it was the beginning of a very long treadmill between touring and recording, touring and recording. We concentrated for most of ’83 on America and nowhere else. Actually, we did a few shows in Canada and the UK, but we really set up America for the next album. You could feel it growing on Cuts Like A Knife; you could feel the momentum as the tours went on. People started recognising the songs; it was no longer just a set list of literally unknown songs, it was suddenly becoming a set list of very well-known songs.

The first take of Run To You is the track you hear on the album.

No edits, nothing.

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Beau enjoys a moment of levity during sessions for then wife Fiona Flanagan’s

second album, Beyond The Pale, 1986.

Taking flight: Airborne, 1979 (Beau, second from left).

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His band – pomp-rock pioneers Airborne – should have made him a star. But after their debut crashed and burned, Beau Hill installed himself in the studio and helped Warrant, Ratt, Winger and Alice Cooper make the greatest AOR of their careers. Words: Dave Reynolds

t’s open to debate as to which record producer most helped mould the sound of 1980s American rock’n’roll. Bruce Fairbairn and Bob Rock are prime candidates, obviously. Desmond Child – whose songwriting pre-eminence undoubtedly had a considerable influence

in shaping the decade – could be another. But while the subject of this feature might not be such an obvious choice as those aforementioned gentlemen, Beau Hill’s involvement as producer of gold- and multi-platinum-selling albums from Ratt, Warrant, Winger and Alice Cooper certainly lends weight to any argument that he belongs on the shortlist.

Hill’s emergence as a producer took a number of people by surprise – not least the members of Ratt, as we shall shortly learn. But having been mentored early on in his own career by none other than Keith Olsen, it was only a matter of time before the amiable Texan would begin to earn a solid reputation for himself behind the console.

Having entered the Texas Conservatory of Music at the age of six, studying classical piano and composition, by his early teens Beau had progressed to playing in local pop and rock bands such as Heaven & Earth. Having declined a place at the prestigious Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, he had, instead, set his heart on a career as a recording artist or in music production.

Having chosen to attend the University of

Colorado, majoring in music and history, Hill gained employment at Applewood Recording Studios as a studio engineer and progressed to the position of Head Engineer, while also attempting to gain a break with Heaven & Earth. Beau’s job at Applewood allowed him to record on his own after hours. By the time he had started working with a guitarist/vocalist named David Zychek, Beau had already become friends with Grammy-winning producer Keith Olsen.

“Keith was enjoying his initial popularity on the heels of his work with Foreigner and The Babys by then,” says Hill. “Keith was managed by Irving Azoff, who heard our demos and loved them. The thing was that there wasn’t actually a band at that point. It was just me and David, but that project resulted in the Airborne album.”

The story of Airborne is an epic tale itself, but Beau was so demoralised by what happened to the band’s 1979-issued, self-titled debut – long since considered a pomp-rock classic – that he quit the business and moved to the Bahamas, where he worked as a divemaster until being persuaded by Olsen to audition as touring keyboard player for Foreigner’s world tour, promoting 1981’s mega-successful 4.

He didn’t get the gig, but a meeting with Aerosmith’s soundman Nitebob led to Hill joining New York-based pop-rock outfit Spider. By the time the Amanda Blue-led troupe had signed a new deal with Chrysalis for a brilliant but under-promoted album, they’d changed their name to Shanghai. It was while Shanghai’s self-titled first album was being finalised for release in 1982 that Beau got the opportunity for his first production credit with Cat Dancer, the debut record from fellow Texan Sandy Stewart.

“A friend of mine in Dallas, Gordon Perry, owned a studio and had discovered a band from Houston called Sirens,” explains Beau. “Sandy was the singer. I came in to produce some tracks, but as time went on and other people became involved, the focus switched from Sirens to just Sandy herself.”

A complex chain of events began to unfold, one which would benefit Beau’s career enormously. Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks

happened to hear some of Sandy’s rough demos and, suitably impressed, decided to take Sandy under her wing. Beau’s production talents, in turn, came to the attention of Doug Morris at Atlantic Records, who also handled the Modern Records imprint that Nicks was signed to as a solo artist.

“Three weeks after Sandy’s record was delivered,” says Beau, “I got a call from Doug’s office informing me about a band he’d sign if I wanted to produce them. I got on a plane to LA with Doug to see Ratt. It was a pivotal moment.”

Beau’s first impression was that he liked the band and he liked their music. “But they didn’t

“With Ratt I had a love/hate

relationship, with mostly them doing

the hating.”

aor issue 13

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