I could have launched into a tirade about terrible decisions made by their former record companies, but the Wilsons seem to have that under control. They said plenty in their interviews for VH1 Behind the Music. All this has me thinking about the real difference between a solo act and a true band. What makes a great band successful? A second superstar. The rest of the band members only need to be above average, and they can be easily replaced. Every legendary band has two phenominal talents. Here are a few obvious examples: Beatles - Lennon & McCartney Stones - Jagger & Richards Led Zeppelin - Plant & Page Bon Jovi - Bon Jovi & Sambora Eagles - Frey & Henley * Aerosmith - Tyler & Perry Journey - Perry & Schon Van Halen - Roth & Van Halen Foreigner - Gramm & Jones Who is the second superstar of Heart? Not Nancy, as record company marketing people would have you believe. It was Roger, then Howard. Unfortunately, Chris Bartock isn't quite at that level, so Heart has really become just the Ann Wilson band. That's not such a bad thing, considering her talent level, but it isn't what Heart used to be. Don't get me wrong, I like Nancy. Hell, I'd like to be Nancy! If my sister was as talented as hers, my life and career would definitely be better than it is! I'd also like to think I could look as good as she does, at her age (a little over 10 years older than me). She may be the luckiest woman in America. * (Can a band have three superstars? Too many big egoes? Maybe the addition of Joe Walsh was the kiss of death for the Eagles. And in Chicago, Peter Cetera couldn't learn to share the spotlight with Robert Lamm and James Pankow, after the death of Terry Kath.)
Bon Jovi and Sambora don't belong on that list, they had to call in industry cat Desmond Child to write their best shit songs written for Bon Jovi by Desmond Child (wiki) "You Give Love a Bad Name" "Livin' on a Prayer" "I'd Die For You" "Without Love" "Bad Medicine" "Born to Be My Baby" "Blood on Blood" "Wild is the Wind" "Keep the Faith" "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" "Something for the Pain" "This Ain't a Love Song" / "Como Yo Nadie Te Ha Amado" (Spanish version) "Hearts Breaking Even" "Diamond Ring" "One Wild Night" "The Distance" "Misunderstood" "All About Lovin' You" "Hook Me Up" "Bells of Freedom" "Dirty Little Secret" "(You Want to) Make a Memory" "Let's Make it Baby" (demo, special release) "Broken promise land" "Fast Cars" "Happy Now" "Learn to Love" Aerosmith made use of Desmond as well for their 90's comeback Songs written for aerosmith by Desmond child "Heart's Done Time" "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" "Angel" "What It Takes" "Flesh" "Crazy" "Hole in My Soul" "Ain't That a Bitch" Perry and Shon? Shon is a highly respectable guitarist indeed even since his time in Santana. I prefer the time of Shon/Rollie though... Journey sold out IMO when they agreed to the industry decision to install Perry and it certainly paid off for them. IMHO Joe Walsh saved the eagles from country-rock lite by somehow injecting the energy for them to become a world class rock band, thank you Joe Walsh! lol Roth and VH I will reserve comment except to say Eddys virtuosity aside, (even while falling-down drunk lol) I saw them twice and twice I wanted my money back... As for Heart, yeah it was Ann and Roger and it was good! :2thumbsup:
I was thinking about performance, not songwriting. Bon Jovi without Richie up front just wouldn't seem right at all. If another band member got replaced for one performance, you might not notice it right away. If you want to consider songwriters, then you can't ignore record producers. Who would Michael Jackson have been without Quincy Jones? Where would half the great hard rock bands in the world be without Mutt Lange? Still playing for tips in bars, most likely. If there's some kind of formula for knowing the right number of great writers and producers, I don't know what it is. Could anything in music suck more than being a great instrumentalist who can't find the right lead singer to work with? Carlos Santana could write a book about that problem, and Neal Schon has his stories to tell. Roger Fisher seems to have been stuck in that zone for the last 35 years. Maybe it would suck worse to play on the level of Neil Giraldo and be stuck for life in your wife's nameless backup band. He wasn't even openly given credit for the outstanding work he did for Kenny Loggins and Rick Springfield. Maybe he needs to stand up for himself a little more. Joe is great! I love everything he's ever done. He rescued the Eagles from Glenn Frey's country obsession (how does that happen to a guy from Detroit? :willy_nilly. But if those two had never met, you and I might never have heard of either one of them. It's tough as hell to carry a rock band on your shoulders, by yourself. Not many have done it. You have to be a top-notch vocalist and instrumentalist. A few names come to mind: Hendrix, Stevie Ray, John Fogerty, George Thorogood, Bonnie Raitt, and Melissa Etheridge.
Oh ok I gotcha... Absolutely... George Martin for the Beatles, Allen Parsons for 'Floyd, etc One...my idol Frank Zappa. lol Oh you know he does! I saw him with the original journey line up back in 77 In hindsight I kinda feel like it was the pinnacle of progressive rock, went away completely soon after. There was a guy here on HF a while back that described a conversation with Greg Rollie after a recent solo show in vegas, when asked why he didn't perform any pre-perry stuff he replied ; "it's not what anyone wants to hear" I love Giraldo! I was proud to cover a couple of his Bennetar solos back in my working days..."Best Shot" and "Heartbreaker" fun stuff JW is awesome! I once covered "Standin' in the Rain" from his James Gang days. :2thumbsup: lol fates a funny thing isn't it? I played with a frontman like Roth for a while, excellent showman decent vocalist, unreliable as fuck, never showing up for rehearsal, highly resistant to remembering lyrics, set lists, and generally an unbearable asshole! lol I'll bet dollars to doughnuts if asked today, Eddy would say the same thing about Roth. lol I think the only 'top notch' vocalist you've mentioned is Bonnie Raitt... the thing they all possess though is ability to make you believe it!
The thing that makes most of them memorable is that their voices carry a lot of personality. Steve Perry has more of a "generic excellence" sound, which may explain why so many Journey fans haven't been particularly loyal to him or to the group. Sometimes an intensely ethnic sound can be the key factor for success. John Fogerty made Louisiana bayou music about as mainstream as anybody will ever make it, and I've never heard a vocalist who sounds blacker than Hendrix. Nobody in music communicates the hell-raising urban punk role better than George Thorogood, and nobody can sound more like an angry and defiant lesbian than Melissa Etheridge. Ann Wilson has always gone for the bitchy sound, almost like a female Billy Joel, where she has faced some fierce competition from Pat Benatar. If there was a way to prove it, I'd bet that Benatar is a bigger bitch in real life too. But over the long haul, Ann Wilson has produced a bigger and better body of work than Benatar, which has started to pay off in terms of recognition. Benatar hasn't done anything worthwhile in a long time, while Heart is making better music now than they did during their career sag in the early eighties. I love their newest album, even though I found a big surprise in the liner notes. A lot of the music seems to be built around the heavier, darker natural style of lead guitarist Craig Bartock, but he doesn't play on the CD! The record producer did it for him. I have no idea why this happened, because Bartock is currently touring with Heart, and I'm sure he's absolutely killing the guitar work, because it's a perfect fit for the way he wants to play. It's just a touch closer to heavy metal than typical Fisher and Leese.
Not bad for a guy from Berkley lol Hahaha, interesting speculation. I think Anns voice has more character, Benatars operatic training pops out and she gets the 'generic excellent' thing going too.. Gawd I hope so, I was very disappointed in their turn after Fisher left. Wow thats sounds very cool, though I was always impressed with the production of Hearts heavier shit, they got a heavy sound (perhaps not by todays standards) without tons of compression or the use of heavily distorted guitars. If you listen to the individual instruments say in Magic Man, they almost sound thin, the guitars kinda tinny... it's amazing how they managed to construct such a robust spectrum from such seemingly weak sounds. So who is the lead guitar on the cd then, just some studio cat or something?
Roger Fisher did lead guitar. That they were not inducted into the hall of fame until 2013 is really a sad statement of the industry.
Early Heart was awesome. I saw the complete original band in 1978 in Tucson and they rocked the house. Sadly, by the early 80s they were a shadow of what they once were, by the mid 80s they were playing less rock and more chick music, and since then they've rested on their laurels. Sad.
I'll PM my Benatar story to you, since I've already posted it in another thread. Based on interview footage, I'd say Ann is the calmer of the two Wilson sisters, which isn't a surprise when you consider the age difference. I don't know Benatar's family situation, but she acts like a spoiled only child. If you look carefully at the CD booklet for that next album, Private Audition, it seems like they dumped too much responsibility on Howard Leese. He seems like the kind of loyal guy who will try to do anything he can to help you out, but he needed more help than he got from the rest of the band. That's why Private Audition had no hits, and you can't even buy it in a CD store today. Passionworks wasn't much different. Maybe the girls were just burned out and needed a break. Finally, the reformulated group found a pop sound that would sell, and the self-titled Heart album came next, in 1985. It sold over 5 million copies, their biggest seller so far. Marketing consultants from Capitol Records obviously had a heavy-handed influence over this project. I like the next one a little better, Bad Animals. (The title, by the way, came from comments by the disgusted staff of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, TN.) Not only was Alone one of the best power ballads of the decade, but the screaming guitar solo was the best one that Howard had written for himself, up until that time. For my taste, it still has far too many tracks that sound like they could have been written for Peter Cetera. Brigade came next, and it's definitely my favorite from the Leese era. There is some incredible musical diversity on that album, including some serious rock. I can't find The Night on YouTube, but it's surely the heaviest and darkest track Heart has ever laid down. Howard proved that he could play heavy metal style with the best of them. :reddevil: Desire Walks On brought that era to a forgettable end, and was followed by a drought of eleven years. There wasn't another Heart album until Chris Bartock took over at lead guitar, and all three of those projects have been good. During the big gap, there were three Lovemongers albums, and also Nancy's primitive but endearing Live From McCabe's Guitar Shop, a solo performance for purists. It was played by producer Ben Mink. Apparently, Bartock just doesn't like working in the studio. Of the last three albums, Chris can be heard only on the first, Jupiter's Darling. I guess this arrangement works for them, as long as they can find record producers that understand Chris' style extremely well. As far as I know, Bartock still plays every stop on every tour. Strange, isn't it? In the old days, either you were in a band, or you were out. There was no halfway. Maybe the problem is that the Hall of Fame has a low limit on how many people can be nominated each year. Looking over the list of current members, I see a lot of missing names, who will hopefully be added before they die.
cool, thnx :2thumbsup: Record companys and tour backers don't take the kind of risks they used to...Bands are product, especially now that the revenue has shifted from selling recordings to big blockbuster tours with only a few top names taking the bill. Kudos to Bartock for calling his own shots.
