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It is bittersweet to share with you the World Premiere radio broadcast of INXS “X” which I was so fortunate to get to produce and host in September 1990 with guests lead singer/lyricist Michael Hutchence and keyboardist/ composer Andrew Farriss.
It was their fifth album,”Listen Like Thieves” in Fall 1985, where INXS finally picked the lock to the top of the American charts with “Listen Like Thieves”. For the story of INXS’ formative years, 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;
there was high drama and great music before with the third-time’s-the-charm “Lady”, then 1975’s strong Equinox album containing “Light Up”, “Lorelei”, and the timeless “Suite: Madame Blue”. Band leaders even today James “JY” Young and Tommy Shaw look back on the Equinox along with the original former co-founding member who wrote and sang all of those songs, Dennis DeYoung
British blues-rock foursome Foghat’s “Fool for the City” album 50 years ago, with the title song plus “Slow Ride”, dominated American FM airplay from its release in September 1975 all through the following year (#20 Billboard). Foghat were four British electric bluesmen who comprised the most successful limb of the sprawling Savoy Brown musical family tree, albeit that success almost exclusively in North America. This is a bittersweet edition of In the Studio as both of my guests in this classic rock interview, Foghat co-founding guitarist/singer/songwriter Lonesome Dave Peverett and slide guitarist/songwriter Rod Price, have since passed away.
Ozzy Osbourne In the Studio for the making of 1980’s “Blizzard of Ozz” on its 45th anniversary.
…for me in Autumn 1970 with discovering the Allman Brothers Band, as it was their second album, “Idlewild South” , which was my gateway drug to a five decade musical high for what turned out to be, as legendary producer Tom Dowd put it it, “the greatest musical fusion I’ve ever witnessed.”
On the 55th anniversary of “Paranoid”, original Black Sabbath singer / lyricist the late Ozzy Osbourne has fond memories of those days when he and his mates from the working-class neighborhood Aston decided to ditch their trendy blues music, cut the band down from a 6-piece to four, and started doing what Ozzy characterizes in this classic rock interview as “spooky music”.
Selecting the fifty songs over the twenty-one studio offerings for the “50 for 50” massive undertaking proved a challenge for Ian Anderson to curate, not simply for fan expectations. If there ever was a lyrical wordsmith who learned his songwriting trade in the widescreen cinematic tradition of the album format, and who is ill-suited for the one-song You Tube world he found himself in fifty years hence, it would be Ian Anderson.
Widely viewed along with Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and Gram Parsons as fathers of the Americana musical movement, The Band also may have been one of rock’s first alternative groups. In part one of this classic rock interview, main songwriter Robbie Robertson (“The Weight”,”The Night They Drove Ol’Dixie Down”,”Up on Cripple Creek”,”The Shape I’m In”) helps me make that case on the 55th anniversary of “Stage Fright”.
Queensryche co-founder/ composer/guitarist Chris DeGarmo and former singer/ songwriter Geoff Tate may be gone now ( the former pilots corporate jets, the latter heads the band Operation Mindcrime ), but they tell the story of the blockbuster four million-seller “Empire” and the amazing songs “Best I Can”, “Jet City Woman”,”Della Brown”,” Resistance”,”Hand on Heart”, even a live performance from London’s Hammersmith Odeon just weeks after “Empire” ’s 1990 release.