21st April - 4th May 1983 (No 40), price 60p
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KERRANG! 21st April - 4th May 1983 (No 40), price 60p |
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| Page 1 · Page 2 · Pages 32 & 33 · Pages 36 & 37 |
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Front Cover OZZY'S NEW BLOOD! EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS MERCYFUL FATE! MOLLY HATCHET! CONEY HATCH! BIG COUNTRY! LEMMY! TOTO! UFO! Picture: JAKE E LEE: picture by Ross Halfin. Inset: GILLAN JOINS SABBATH! PLUS: DEE SNIDER REVIEWS THE SINGLES! |
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Page 2
The official HM charts specially compiled for Kerrang! from a nationwide survey of 50 specialist shops. SINGLES 13, 18, Market Square Heroes Marillion (EMI) 16, 12, He Knows, You Know Marillion (EMI) 18, -, I Am The Future Alice Cooper (Warner Bros) (This week / last week) Compiled by MRIB U.S. ALBUMS 6, War U2 (Island) The most-played rock albums on American radio stations as compiled by Billboard magazine ALBUMS 1, 1, Script For A Jester's Tear Marillion (EMI) (This week / last week / weeks in chart) Compiled by MRIB |
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Pages 32 & 33 MUSIC TO MOVE MOUNTAINS BY! The heaviest guitar sound around comes from BIG COUNTRY sez Chas De Whalley. But leader STUART ADAMSON (left) ain't flattered... Picture of Stuart by Justin Thomas. THOSE OF you who do more than simply bury your noses in the latest issue of Kerrang! (and your ears in your Rainbow albums) can hardly have missed Big Country. Or their epic single 'Fields Of Fire'. It seems to me like it's been blaring out from radio sets and reeling its way through the hit parade for the last six weeks or more. And it's been virtually impossible to switch on the telly without seeing Big County at full throttle on almost everything going from 'The Tube', 'Riverside' and 'Whatever You Want' to 'Tops Of The Pops'! But just in case you've been lost in space for the last month let me tell you that 'Fields Of Fire' is a whirling dervish of crashing guitars, a maniac Scots jig with a fiercesome six string ring and a hard, headlong beat which has cut a swathe across the charts and scattered drum machines and synthesizers like grapeshot. Let me add too that Big Country, the band who have done it, are fast limbering up into one of the finest and probably most important twin guitar outfits to hit British rock since Wishbone Ash in the earliest Seventies. Of course, you've only got to take one look at them to tell they're not your standard Kerrang! fodder. You won't find Big Country sporting spandex, studs and King Charles Il curls. Razor cuts and lumberjack shirts are more in their line. But that doesn't mean they can't make it with the mayhem merchandise when they want to. In fact Big Country have quite enough krank-it-up-kredentials to satisfy any real rock fan born with steel strings for hair and machine heads for ears. So where else, pray, should a band like that belong but the in the pages of Kerrang!? Stuart Adamson still isn't convinced, mind you. He has this theory about Heavy Metal and Heavy Metal fans, you see. God knows where he formed it. probably when he was a punk rocker in the late Seventies and his bullwhip guitar lines lashed The Skids onto 'Top Of The Pops' with New Wave classics like 'Into The Valley' and 'Masquerade'. Or maybe it was just a little later after an earlier line up of Big Country was virtually bottled off Alice Cooper's last British tour. Either way he has this theory and he's sticking to it. For the time being anyway. Until you prove him wrong. "I think a lot of Heavy Metal fans are simply too narrow-minded. That's good in a sense because it means they're very loyal to the groups they like — probably more than some of those groups deserve - and I wouldn't dream of knocking that. But there should be scope for all sorts of things in music, only the majority of Heavy Metal fans don't seem prepared to listen to anything which is even a little bit different. So their music has grown too cliched. A lot of the bands could actually be each other and nobody would know the difference. "Heavy Metal's become really conservative. It only looks back at the old ideas and never concerns itself with anything new. Everybody forgets that when the original bands like Cream, Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin first appeared they weren't considered Heavy Metal or anything else for that matter. They were simply the newest, most exciting and innovative bands going. But all these new groups nowadays seem to do nothing but rewrite all the old riffs. I think it's very sad." NOW, BEFORE you consider rearranging Stuart Adamson's face for him, take a deep breath, count to ten, and answer me this: can you honestly put your hand over your heart and swear that there isn't a grain of truth in what he has to say? I mean, when did you last hear a genuine, red-blooded rock band doing something even a little bit new and different? "I've always said I wanted to do things with the guitar that have never been done before," mused Adamson, calling for yet another lager. "I almost got there with The Skids only the enjoyment went out of it after our second album 'Days In Europa'. After we split I could have got a singles deal immediately and traded on my success but I felt that would have cheapened what I was trying to do. Now I think Bruce and I have really cracked it. It's not a question of lead and rhythm or first and second guitars. We play off one another and build up sequences and rhythms and orchestrated lines which are an integral part of the songs. We don't play solos either. There's none of that 'Look how well I can play' crap. Who needs that?" Don't go away with the impression that a Big Country gig is one more avant-garde experience. Privately Stuart Adamson may still harbour a few of the philosophies of punk but that doesn't mean the rest of the band have to agree with him. There's bikers' blood rushing in their ears. Take Bruce Watson, for example Under inteview he may be swamped by Adamson's verbal flood but privately here's a man with a definite taste for the obnoxious and the 'orrible, whether it be Twisted Sister or the Ramones and Iggy pop. And let us not forget either Big Country's rhythm section of Tony Butler (bass) and Mark Brzezicki (drums). Still in their early twenties these two may be, but, long before joining Big Country, when they were in the ill-fated On The Air, their exceptional skills were noted by both Pete Townshend (who used Mark's drumming on almost all of his last solo album 'All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes') and The Pretenders who had Butler in to add bass to their excellent 'Back On The Chain Gang' single. You only have to see Big Country in action to discover what a difference that sort of skill and expertisee can make. The Big Country show is, on the surface, an all-action, running, jumping, standing-still extravaganza. And a feast of fierce, flailing guitars. But underneath the wild rover riffs that are as Scots as kilts and sporrans Londoners Butler and Brzezicki have the beat well under control and provide the kind of poise that sorts out the men from the boys. Not everything is taken at the blistering breakneck pace of 'Fields Of Fire' or its predecessor 'Harvest Home'. Check out the wonder 'A Thousand Stars' and the emotive 'Lost Patrol' and beneath those rousing shout choruses you'll hear music that is measuured and magnificent and moody. Big Country live are as loud and proud as anybody else you'll read about in Kerrang! And probably louder and prouder than most. With those two guitars lurching and lungeing as dangerously as a Glaswegian attempting a Highland Fling after fifteen pints of heavy they're liable suddenly to punch out at the pit of your stomach at the slightest provocation. Strangely though Stuart Adamson tries to play down the Scottish angle. Even though the flavour and feelings of his homeland colour every song he writes and every note he plays on the guitar. But then he also hates labels and refuses to allow anybody to pin tags on Big Country and what they do. "How can you describe anybody's music? As soon as you come up with some kind of definition then you put up barriers and draw boundaries. And then you become identified with one particular scene and you find yourself compartmentalised. "There's too much of that going on at the moment. I don't want it happening to us. If you really want me to describe what Big Country are about I'd say we played stirring, spirited stuff. Music to move mountains by!" That certainly sounds like Kerrang! talk to me. What do you think? |
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Pages 36 & 37 KONCERTS U2 Hammersmith Palais, London. PEOPLE WHO are currently knocking U2 for their outmoded approach and for being 'just another rock band' have, and here we go again, obviously never seen or have any intention of seeing the band in action. It seems to be nail-U2-to-their-own-cross year, a shame really, but with 'War' going straight in at No. 1 and a sell-out UK tour behind them, this being the final night, the band now have ample opportunity to poke two fingers at their critics and to get on with being one of the finest live acts of the past decade. Whether or not you can stomach Bono's quasi-religious, banner-carrying quest, becomes of secondary importance in the concert setting, and from the first glorious steps the crowd ignited as if plugged in to some universal power socket. It's clear that Bono is genuinely sincere when it comes to crowd control - something that has been the band's major asset from the outset. HE IS convincing, even more so than on vinyl, and, with the band behind him dismissing the decadence of bass/drum/guitar line-ups with ferocious attacks, U2 have never looked stronger. The rhythm machine of Larry Mullen and Adam-Clayton cascades into shuffle and skiffle thunder, whilst The Edge drives his rasping guitar astutely from one peak to another. As Bono's sidekick, he is the perfect man to compliment the singer's crowd manipulation, and in taking on keyboards and flute as well as that familiar guitar drill he deserves far more acclaim as a musician than people are willing to give him. At the end of the day however, U2 belongs to Bono. As a frontman he can't be faulted. Neither patronising nor aloof, he commits himself to an audience and stirs something in all of us, whatever your preconceptions beforehand. Amicably calming the many fans who leapt onstage to embrace him, plucking objects from outstretched hands and inviting a couple of swooning girls to hand out the obligatory flowers, he comes across as a secure yet adventurous performer who genuinely enjoys his vocation. He led us through the very best of the U2 repertoire, the opener 'Gloria' swiftly giving way to tracks from 'War' such as 'New Years Day', 'Seconds', 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' and 'Surrender' the latter transformed here into an emotive masterpiece. 'Tomorrow' was briefly interrupted by an over-enthusiastic fan who, in his manic attempts to reach Bono and seemingly strangle the man, succeeded in briefly wiping out the PA. For one fleeting moment the situation hung in the balance. Many other acts would have lost their spark, but U2 pulled through and came back twice as strong. As the encores rolled, so Bono invited both Stuart Adamson of support act Big Country and Mike Peters of The Alarm, support for the early part of the tour, to join the band in the Dylan tune, 'Knocking On Heaven's Door', so ending an uplifting show from one of the most exciting bands to have graced the UK. As the echo of Larry's snare shuddered round the hall and the band bounded up the exit stairs, there can't have been too many people who had not been touched by U2's efforts. for the duration of the gig, the critics had no weight and the adverse reviews didn't mean a damn thing. Nothing can stop U2 now. CHRIS WATTS |