In The Studio with Redbeard

Category: Beard’s Blog

  • REO Speedwagon- Hi Infidelity 45th- Kevin Cronin, Neal Doughty

    REO Speedwagon- Hi Infidelity 45th- Kevin Cronin, Neal Doughty

    The hard-charging Illinois band named after an Oldsmobile fire engine (don’t laugh, Buffalo Springfield was the manufacturer of a steamroller, for heaven sake ), REO Speedwagon believed in their long game, and their long-suffering record label gave them TEN trips to the plate until the band touched all the bases in November 1980 with Hi Infidelity. Lead singer Kevin Cronin and band keyboard player co-founder Neal Doughty tell the worst-to-first “ten year overnight sensation” story behind “Don’t Let Him Go”,”Follow My Heart”,”Tough Guys”,”Take It on the Run”, and the #1 “Keep on Lovin’ You” here.

    Legendary major league baseball manager Leo Durocher reportedly uttered that famous quote,”Nice guys finish last”, but with the November 1980 release of REO Speedwagon’s Hi Infidelity,  at least one exception refuted Durocher’s platitude spectacularly. Matter of fact, if REO Speedwagon was a baseball team, their statistics for their 1980-81 season would be as follows: 9- Hi Infidelity  was the band’s ninth studio album; 4- the number of times REO changed lead singers; 2- the number of times Kevin Cronin was hired to be that lead singer; 5- the number of charted singles from that sole album; 1- the chart sales peak of both the Hi Infidelity  album and its first single,”Keep on Loving You”; plus the first band live concert ever presented on the emerging MTV video music channel; 15- the number of weeks as the top-seller in the US; 10,000,000+ -the number of copies sold of REO Speedwagon’s Hi Infidelity.

    In a lot of ways, REO Speedwagon was much like the Midwest region from which they sprang at the University of Illinois at Champaign: solid, unassuming, hard-charging musical journeymen determined to make it. They set it up with songs including “Roll With the Changes”,”Time for Me to Fly”, and “Back on the Road Again” before releasing Hi Infidelity forty-five years ago as Cronin and co-founder Neal Doughty reveal in my classic rock interview, which also serves as a tribute to the late REO guitarist/songwriter for the first twenty years, Gary Richrath.

    When Hi Infidelity by REO Speedwagon was released in early November 1980, it was the band’s ninth studio album in ten years of trying. While rock radio listeners in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco were just introduced to REO Speedwagon two years earlier with “Roll with the Changes” and “Time for Me to Fly”, millions of other Americans between the Rockies and the Ohio River could recall seeing REO play their high school proms, college homecomings, and countless state fairs for ten long years. With the release of Hi Infidelity forty-five years ago, the tumblers all clicked and the jackpot was stunning. –Redbeard

  • Queen- A Night at the Opera @50- Brian May, Roger Taylor

    Queen- A Night at the Opera @50- Brian May, Roger Taylor

    Life’s big breaks don’t come with an engraved invitation, yet Queen’s big star-making effort A Night at the Opera actually did, right there on the album cover in November 1975. But it is a miracle that Queen ever got the chance. Already one album past their initial three-album deal with their record company, the London four-piece had  only a couple of  hits to show for their effort and expense in the UK, but only a single mid-chart success in the States with “Killer Queen” in 1974. Their first US tour supporting Mott the Hoople ended abruptly when Queen guitarist Brian May contracted hepatitis, only to then have emergency surgery for life-threatening ulcerated impacted intestines. The band was more than $100,000 in debt, while all earnings from record sales and concerts “mysteriously disappeared about the time our first manager sported a new swimming pool and Rolls-Royce”, as Queen drummer Roger Taylor told me here In the Studio.

    It would be next to impossible to overstate the importance of Queen’s  1975 fourth effort,  A Night at the Opera, both to the band’s career and to the album’s influence on rock thereafter. There has never been a day in the last fifty years when some American radio station has not played “Bohemian Rhapsody” from Queen’s fourth album A Night at the Opera. And who can forget the car radio scene immortalizing the ubiquitous response in Wayne’s World? But none of this universal acclaim can begin to explain  just how close the London-based quartet came to being dropped from their record label and drowning in debt five decades ago.
    Brian May, one of the finest guitarists in rock history (and one of the sweetest souls ever) is joined again In The Studio by Queen drummer Roger Taylor in my classic rock interview for  this eclectic mix of hard rock (“Death on Two Legs”, “I’m in Love With My Car”), progressive rock (“The Prophet Song”), skiffle pub sci-fi singalong (” ’39”), mainstream pop (“You’re My Best Friend”), campy vaudeville (“Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon”), drop dead gorgeous love song (Freddie Mercury’s “Love of My Life”), and mock operetta (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) on Queen A Night at the Opera golden anniversary.  -Redbeard

  • ZZ Top- Afterburner- Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard

    ZZ Top- Afterburner- Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard

    ZZ Top’s Afterburner  joined an  elite list of  multi-million selling albums including For Those About to Rock, New Jersey, Load, Don’t Look Back, and I’m in You populated by some of music’s biggest-selling stars such as AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Metallica, Boston, and Peter Frampton. But don’t go looking for Afterburner in the 2019 ZZ Top rockumentary film That Little Ol’ Band from Texas. That otherwise well-done pastiche of just some of the chapters in this colorful trio’s fifty-plus year telenovela implied that all meaningful recording by ZZ Top wrapped at the conclusion of Eliminator  way back in 1983. Let’s be honest, trying to top Eliminator‘s international success was a fool’s errand, but nevertheless our intrepid Texas trio kicked in the Afterburner  for their ninth studio album in October 1985, peaking at #4 sales on the Billboard  Album Sales Chart and selling over 5,000,000 copies. That’s a chalupa grande in any barrio, mi amigo.

    In spite of the superstar sales and MTV celebrity through kitschy music videos, Afterburner  was criticized by some longtime fans and music writers as being too slick and synthesized. But nowhere in the volumes written since its October 1985 release has anyone pegged the reason why: Afterburner  was the first album since Rio Grande Mud, their second way back in 1972, without secret weapon veteran recording engineer/producer Terry Manning. Without Manning’s steady hand which had guided such legendary recordings as Hot Buttered Soul  by Isaac Hayes, Led Zeppelin III , and ZZ Top’s own Tres Hombres, Deguello , and Eliminator, there was no one effectively to advise Billy Gibbons when to put away the ever-growing electronic toy box in the studio. Billy, the late Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard join me here In the Studio  on the fortieth anniversary of “Sleeping Bag”,”Rough Boy”,”Stages”,”Woke Up with Wood”, and “Planet of Women”. (This episode is dedicated to the memories of Dusty Hill, Terry Manning, Bill Ham and Joe Hardy.) –Redbeard

  • Ozzy Osbourne- Ozzmosis

    Ozzy Osbourne- Ozzmosis

    Ozzy Osbourne’s biggest seller in about fifteen years, October 1995’s Ozzmosis contained “Perry Mason” (with the legendary Rick Wakeman on mellotron) and “See You on the Other Side”. Ironically Ozzmosis was released after Osbourne had announced a very high profile retirement. The album, his seventh solo studio project, peaked at #4 on the Billboard album chart with US sales over three million copies. So was Ozzy serious about retirement at the time? “I wouldn’t say that I was serious,” the now-deceased hard rock godfather didn’t mince words. “I’d say I was DUMB.”

    “I have what we call in the family ‘wobblers’,” Ozzy explained, “I get pissed off. I had a pissed off day, and I said to (wife/manager ) Sharon (Osbourne), ‘I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m sick and I’m tired of being on the road, I’m sick of going to doctors. My voice is never right…’ Meanwhile, all the time I’m selling tons of records, the gigs are filled up. No one’s really complaining, but I am. And Sharon said to me, ‘Do you want to retire?’ And I replied, ‘ That’s it. I’ve done it, I’ve done it, I’ve achieved everything that I wanted to achieve. I want out. I want to know what it’s like to be a regular guy.’ So I learned one big thing: don’t ask for too much, because sometimes you’ll get it.” “Then when I had calmed down, I thought, ‘What have you done? It was fun for awhile. I didn’t have any commitments. I had my little house in England, I had my toys, my motorbikes, my cars…I got this weird habit when I get antsy. I sit in the kitchen, then keep standing up, open the refrigerator door, look in, close it, sit back down. Then stand up, open the refrigerator door, close it, sit back down.

    And my wife says, ‘What’s wrong?’

    ‘I feel like a fish out of water.’

    And she said, ‘Well, I only do what you tell me to do. You tell me you wanna disband, I disbanded. What you wanna do now?’

    And I said, ‘Me without a band is like I’m walking around naked or something.’ ”

    So hear about the emperor’s new clothes with the dearly missed Ozzy Osbourne in my classic rock interview about Ozzmosis (#4 Billboard, two million+ sold ) in this revealing in-depth conversation. –Redbeard

  • Police- Zenyatta Mondatta- Sting, Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland

    Police- Zenyatta Mondatta- Sting, Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland

    Amazing to realize that it has been over forty-five years since The Police copped their first hit album in America with their third effort, Zenyatta Mondatta. On their first U.S.tour in early 1979, the three members of The Police, Stewart Copeland, Andy Summers, & Sting arrived for their first interview with me at Memphis radio ROCK 103 studio in a station wagon. Barely 15 months later they returned to take me to lunch, except this time they were in a chauffeur-driven limousine. I learned never to doubt the talent or determination of Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland.

    It seems that stardom for The Police had occurred in the UK with the release of their second album Reggatta de Blanc containing the excellent “Message in a Bottle”, but mainstream popularity in the U.S. still eluded them. Thinking aloud back then during my classic rock interview, main songwriter Sting remarked rhetorically, “I wonder what it would take to write a hit song in America? The idea appeals to me.” So when the third Police album Zenyatta Mondatta  appeared barely ten months later in October 1980, containing the hits “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”, “When the World Is Running Down”, “Driven to Tears”, & “De Do Do Do”, I had to smile and admit to myself that Sting certainly did not take long to figure that out. – Redbeard

  • Moody Blues- Days of Future Passed

    Moody Blues- Days of Future Passed

    The Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed in November 1967 stands even today as one of the pillars at the portal to Progressive Rock (the other being In the Court of the Crimson King about a year later), and for the first-person story of this essential album, we have Justin Hayward and  the late John Lodge as our guides here In the Studio. But you may be surprised to find that much of the legend of Days of Future Passed is actually myth.

    The many musical assumptions surviving the Moody Blues’ groundbreaking November 1967 second album, Days of Future Passed, were variously confirmed, corrected, and embellished by my guests Justin Hayward and John Lodge here In the Studio in this classic rock interview. Among them:

    -After singing “Go Now” in 1964, lead singer Denny Laine left the Moody Blues with the name, one hit, and 5,000 British pounds in debt to their record company. Young unknowns Justin Hayward and John Lodge were added. Hayward claims that he got the gig “…because I had an amplifier!”

    -The Moody Blues did not have a record album contract with label Decca, just a deal for a few single sides.

    -Reduced to playing supper clubs, the band had to sell their equipment van to survive.

    -Hayward, Lodge, drummer Graeme Edge, flautist Ray Thomas, and keyboard player Mike Pinder could not afford recording studio time, so in an effort to recoup their modest 5000 British pound investment, the label allowed the band to record at times when the studio was vacant, usually a few hours in the middle of the night. -The first recording of Justin Hayward’s “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues was for a BBC radio program. After the one-time broadcast, the network reused the tape by recording over it, effectively destroying the only recording of “Nights…” at the time.

    -The Moody Blues did NOT record with the London Festival Orchestra on Days of Future Passed. “They only played in the gaps between our songs,” points out Justin Hayward.

    -Though technically not the first rock opera (there are no characters), the album’s song cycle of a 24-hour day is one of the first rock concept albums, and is widely cited as the dawn of Progressive Rock.

    -Some 70 million album sales and over half a century later, the Moody Blues have been able to replace their van, and have  been invited to park it permanently at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You  helped correct that inexplicable omission by voting  the Moody Blues in for the Spring 2018 ceremony. ( Justin Hayward (l) and John Lodge (r).

    Moody Blues mainstays Justin Hayward and John Lodge document the fascinating story of a true Hail Mary pass to avoid abject poverty and starvation, resulting not only in timeless hits “Tuesday Afternoon” and “Nights in White Satin” but also igniting a musical movement, Progressive Rock, that combined the psychedelic sounds of 1967 with the orchestral grandeur and literary purpose of the classics. –Redbeard 

  • Led Zeppelin III @50- Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Terry Manning

    Led Zeppelin III @50- Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Terry Manning

    Led Zeppelin’s third album did not have the first blush of discovery like the debut, nor a bonafide hit like “Whole Lotta Love” on Led Zeppelin II, but now in hindsight Led Zeppelin III is revered for being the musical bridge to even greater successes soon to come. The second Led Zeppelin album had been a surprisingly mass appeal hit in America, and truth be told, we had not really waned in our ravenous repeated plays of it when Led Zeppelin III  appeared October 5, 1970 with surprisingly little notice. Containing “The Immigrant Song”,”Gallows Pole”, and “Since I’ve Been Loving You”, Led Zeppelin III  also planted exotic seeds of sounds in “Friends” with its Middle Eastern orchestration, which would skip several subsequent albums only to germinate with legendary impact on Physical Graffiti.

    In the careers of the great legendary bands, there are less-than-bestselling transitional albums which, in hindsight, clearly show you where they were headed: Meddle  by Pink Floyd, Desperado  by the Eagles, Beggars Banquet  from the rapidly evolving Rolling Stones, and Eldorado  by Electric Light Orchestra come to mind as musical suspension bridges to glory which stand up mighty well over time but, like Led Zeppelin III, went under-appreciated in their time. Truth be told, for many years that third effort was remembered as much for its unique interactive “wheel” album cover, which is quite a collector’s item.And speaking of collectibles, before the digital compact disc and box sets in the Eighties, the most sought B-side in rock was the flip side of “The Immigrant Song” which came out in Japan with a song from the III  sessions called “Hey Hey What Can I Do”, which was as good as anything on the album. My guests Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and Led Zeppelin III  recording engineer at Ardent Studio in Memphis, the late Terry Manning, tell the story here In the Studio. –Redbeard

  • Santana- Abraxas- Carlos Santana, Gregg Rolie, Michael Shrieve

    Santana- Abraxas- Carlos Santana, Gregg Rolie, Michael Shrieve

    In more than 1600 documentary episodes spanning over thirty years, I can honestly say that we never featured a more influential, important, essential album than Santana ‘s second effort Abraxas, released in October 1970. Containing the infectious”Oye Como Va”, the heavy Gregg Rolie organ rocker “Hope You’re Feeling Better”, the gorgeous guitar instrumental “Samba Pa Ti”, and the classic cover of the late Peter Green/Fleetwood Mac blues “Black Magic Woman”, Abraxas conjures up mystical, steamy Afro-Cuban, jazz, Tejano, soul music electrified by the searing guitar of Mexican immigrant Carlos Santana. Simply stated, this is the Rosetta Stone of World Music. Carlos and Gregg are joined by drummer Michael Shrieve  of Santana here In the Studio.

    When a young Carlos Santana first was recognized as possessing a remarkable talent for playing the guitar, he was a Mexican immigrant working as a dishwasher in a San Francisco Bay Area Tick Tock restaurant. Humble beginnings, which he shares in my classic rock interview In The Studio for October 1970’s Abraxas. Only Santana’s second release, this iconic album is ranked at #203 on Rolling Stone‘s Top 500 Albums of All Time (the debut Santana  ranks even higher, at #149) . The leap in maturation and production sophistication on Abraxas, as compared to their first album, is striking. In 1970, nothing else sounded like it, and scarcely anything quite like it since has so successfully integrated rock, blues, jazz, and Latin music. In this classic rock interview, Carlos Santana tells me, “Ever since I crossed the border, my life has been like Disney Land.” But apparently the American Dream continued , as former U.S. President Barack Obama  awarded Carlos the prestigious Kennedy Center honors for Santana’s contributions in music and humanitarian efforts. –Redbeard

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  • INXS- Listen Like Thieves- Andrew & Tim Farriss, Kirk Pengilly, the late Michael Hutchence

    INXS- Listen Like Thieves- Andrew & Tim Farriss, Kirk Pengilly, the late Michael Hutchence

    If in Autumn 1985 you were fortunate to catch Australian band INXS in a medium-sized hall or theater upon the release of their fifth album Listen Like Thieves, what you witnessed first-hand was a precision, smartly rehearsed band’s star rising like a bottle rocket toward international stardom. With sales of three and a half million, two million of which were in the US alone, Listen Like Thieves contained INXS’s first Top 5 hit “What You Need”, plus “Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)”, “This Time”, and the title song. When two fresh-sounding songs made it to America late in 1982, “Don’t Change” and “The One Thing” from the Australian band INXS, most Americans couldn’t find the huge continent on a map. Little wonder, according to INXS keyboard player/songwriter Andrew Farriss, who grew up with older guitarist brother Tim and younger drummer sibling John in the far western Australian city of Perth. “It is still the most remote geographical city in the world,” says Andrew. “To the west is the Indian Ocean. To the north is two thousand miles until you reach the next Australian city. To the south is the Antarctic. And to the east you have Adelaide which is, again, two thousand miles away.”

    Andrew Farriss continues, “As kids growing up (in Perth)…that sense of space and openness is something I truly remember with a lot of fondness…It was a very secure environment, too. Nobody locked their houses much, there was no point to even locking your car, really. If someone stole a car, where are they going to drive it to?”

    When we Americans first saw the MTV videos and heard INXS sing “The One Thing” and “Don’t Change” in late 1982, Tyranosaurus Rock that had roamed and roared in North American stadiums and arenas throughout the Seventies was about to stumble. Led Zeppelin was gone. The Rolling Stones, The Who, Eric Clapton, and Pink Floyd self-consciously  were making forgettable albums around 1982 after the Punk Rockers had rattled their dinosaur cages. Then the Punks’ promise was never kept and they self-destructed. By 1982, progressive rockers YES and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were as equally anachronistic for the MTV Eighties as the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band. Lynyrd Skynyrd had fallen from the sky five years earlier and Southern Rock was running out of ammunition for its 38 Specials. America’s premiere hard rock band, Aerosmith, appeared to be on a permanent vacation by 1982, and the cinderella band Boston, with only two albums, had more court dates than concert dates back then. Journey, Styx, and REO Speedwagon, emphasizing the “pop” side in rock popularity, would never gain critical acclaim or equal their respective previous sales peaks again. So where else but the historical music business meccas of London, New York City, or Los Angeles could we expect to find music that was tight and right for the time? The answer, as it turned out, was “down under”. AC/DC, Split Enz ( later to morph into the great Crowded House) with “I Got You”, Men at Work with the phenomenal #1, all set the table for INXS. The band’s keyboard player/songwriter Andrew Farriss, guitar-playing brother Tim Farriss, and guitar/sax man Kirk Pengilly tell of the tough and tender early days forming in the most remote city in the world, Perth Australia; surviving the one-nighters there,  in Sydney and in Melbourne; allying with a talented singer from Hong Kong-via-Hollywood,  the mercurial snake-hipped Michael Hutchence.It was their third album Shabooh Shoobah where INXS finally made the leap to America and the UK late in 1982 with “The One Thing”and “Don’t Change”. For the  story of INXS’ breakthrough album Listen Like Thieves  in 1985 ( Billboard sales peak at #11), I stumbled upon my 1988 interview with the late lead singer for INXS, Michael Hutchence, in which he matter-of-factly admitted to me that INXS was his first and only band!  And then the title song to October 1985’s “Listen Like Thieves”, “This Time”,”Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)”, and the Top Five hit “What You Need”. Along with the charming memories of Andrew and Tim Farriss, and Kirk Pengilly, we include my rare archival  classic rock interviews with the late Michael Hutchence, who we lost tragically in November 1997. –Redbeard 

  • Ozzy Osbourne- Blizzard of Ozz

    Ozzy Osbourne- Blizzard of Ozz

    It has been four and a half decades since the unheralded release in the UK of Ozzy Osbourne ‘s first post-Black Sabbath solo album, The Blizzard of Ozz  in September 1980, and in that lengthy time in rock music, Ozzy had always been the big kid who got caught with his hand in the Cookie Jar of Life. For the ten-plus years fronting the original Black Sabbath, and continuing right to the day he died, Osbourne  remained a hard rocker’s dream, a parent’s nightmare, a record company president’s sure thing, and one of my favorite guests In the Studio.

    “We lived on that early (Blizzard) tour from hand to mouth,” Ozzy recalled in my freewheeling and uncensored classic rock interview.”We used to stay in these really cheap, sleazy Holiday Inns out by the highway, with no safe deposit box, and I’d carry the cash (from each concert’s receipts)  in a briefcase handcuffed to me in bed with me. No flying first class, caviar, champagne. Caviar is like eating fish’s nuts, man. But it’s what posh people eat! We were used to Spam sandwiches.”

    It is safe to say that when Ozzy Osbourne’s first post-Black Sabbath album Blizzard of Ozz  came out in the UK in September 1980, it was fairly common then for the American release to come out a couple of weeks later for the North American retail appearance. But not over six months later, as was the case here. Hard to believe now with Osbourne’s subsequent popularity and fame, but truth be told, at the time Ozzy Osbourne was perceived as damaged goods by practically every American record company. When finally somebody took a shot and released Blizzard…, it was fully embraced by American rock radio this time, unlike the whole of his time fronting the highly influential but blacklisted Sabbath. But as you will hear Ozzy tell in my classic rock interview, it is a miracle he lived to see that day when the radio and every major US sporting event would blare “Crazy Train”,”Mr Crowley”, and “I Don’t Know”. You can be in the know on fact vs fiction on many urban myths as Ozzy Osbourne guests In the Studio as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame welcomed the Batman of Rock! –Redbeard (Ozzy’s drummer on this album, Lee Kerslake, who had also drummed for Uriah Heep all through the Seventies, passed away at age 73. )