Blog

Whichever way you look at it, 21 years is a bloody long time. Since 2005 we’ve had economic crashes, global lockdowns, political upheaval and several threats of World War III. It’s also how long it’s been since A released an album. Having formed in 1993, they toured their arses off before finally tasting chart success with 2002 album Hi-Fi Serious.

Three years later, they’d been dropped by their label and were history. But now they’re back, with Prang, a record that has the unmistakable 90s Britrock-meets-US-alternative stamp of the Suffolk five-piece.

Lead single Hello Sunshine was born out of a riff brought into the rehearsal room by guitarist Mark Chapman, a blast of distortion-laden lo-fi rock, pushed by frontman Jason Perry’s high-pitched vocals. The band – completed by more Perrys Adam (drums) and Giles (keyboards), and new boy Richard Trigg (bass) – were off and running. Before long they had an album in the bag.

“It was recorded really quickly, super-DIY,” Perry explains. “In two hours we had a song, and then the floodgates opened.”

Lyrically, A were always the archetypal cheeky chappies. Across their first three albums – How Ace Are Buildings, Vs Monkey Kong and Hi-Fi Serious – they evolved from mischievous young upstarts berating Rocky V, indie rock and GMTV (Bad Idea) to twentysomethings celebrating endless summers (I Love Lake Tahoe), before taking a swipe at corporate adulthood (Starbucks).

But that was then. Prang sees them coming from a very different place. There’s the typically-A take on modern life in the shape of Comment Leaver – a snipe at people who vent their every thought on the Daily Mail website. But today’s A are also a band more weathered by life than before; beaten, not broken, but certainly bruised by two decades out in the world.

“I’d had a bit of a rough time personally,” Jason admits. “I was trying to work out what men in their fifties that were known for their love for life sing about.”

The emotional rawness is never more apparent than on Shit Summer. The song addresses the separation from children that divorce brings (‘I’m really missing my kids and the noise that they bring/I don’t see them till Friday but it’s Wednesday and the weeks go on and on and on’], and Jason admits that it had him in tears in the vocal booth. “

I’ve never had that before where I’ve cried while recording a song,” he says. “It still makes me cry when I listen to it. I’m really proud of that song. But how do you sing a song about depression without resorting to clichés like ‘I’m banging my head on these four walls’ or whatever? Calling it Shit Summer seemed a very A way to sing about it, because it had been a shit summer, so just say that.”

Getting up from knockbacks is nothing new for A. They put in serious road miles before scoring a hit with 2002’s Nothing, a big-riffed, foot-stomping rocker of a tune. They were three albums in and suddenly enjoying the trappings of major-label success. When their label encouraged them to cancel a gig so they could appear on Top Of The Pops, the band remained resolute.

“We did Top Of The Pops with the Chili Peppers, who were on the same label as us,” Jason recalls. “The Chili Peppers cancelled a gig to do it, and the label were putting pressure on us to do the same, and we said no. There’s no way we’re cancelling a gig for a TV programme, even though since the age of eleven all I wanted to do was go on Top Of The Pops.

“We said to the label that we’re not going to pull the gig, so they gave us a helicopter. We did Top Of The Pops, ran to the limo to the heliport, jumped in a helicopter, flew to Plymouth, landed in the car park, ran on stage with five minutes to spare, did the gig. That was an expensive day, but a great day.”

The success was fleeting, however. Album four, the Terry Date-produced Teen Dance Ordinance – saw A chase a sound that wasn’t them. They sidestepped their rough-around-the-edges rock for a big-budget, highly polished, American-sounding arena record. And it fell flat. It left Jason facing a vocal identity crisis.

“I haven’t got the voice or the personality for that [kind of record],” he says. “I’m not Chris Cornell, I’m Jason. I sound like Sting and my voice is really high. We should have been making a Yes record or a Beastie Boys record or something.”

By the end of the Teen Dance Ordinance cycle, A had been dropped by their label and were flat-broke. They had to sell their equipment to pay the bills, and, as thirtysomething rockers, look to find a new path.

“The day my son was born, I went to get some money out of the cash machine to pay for the car park at the hospital and couldn’t even get ten quid out,” Jason recalls. “I’d just spent ten years doing two hundred and sixty shows a year, and I couldn’t even get ten quid out. I went to the Job Centre, and someone recognised me and started laughing. I went back to the car and cried my eyes out.”

Jason eventually found his way, becoming an in-demand songwriter and producer for the likes of McFly and Don Broco. The experience left him well-placed to produce Prang, a record with which the band rediscovered what they lost with Teen Dance Ordinance.

“You always need creative parameters,” he suggests. “I think that’s where we got lost in the end. We had big budgets, big studios. What I need is that kind of DIY, punk rock mentality where you can just do whatever makes you excited on the day. That’s what we did [with Prang]. I’m really proud of it. I can’t believe how good it is. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be.”

With the new record now released, in December they head out supporting fellow Lowestoft guys The Darkness on a run of arena dates. Jason is looking forward to getting reacquainted with old friends and playing at London’s O2 for the first time.

“Dan [Hawkins] used to live with us when we moved to London,” he says. “I got him a job at [publishing company] Rondor as an A&R assistant. I love The Darkness. It was amazing to see what happened to them and how they went crazy-big so quick. I can’t wait for that tour. I’ve never played at the O2. It’s the only London venue, really, that we haven’t played at. It was still called the Millennium Dome when we were in the band last time.”

Prang is out now via Cooking Vinyl.

Named after the 1970s celebrity drinking club of which Alice Cooper was a ringleader, the latter-day Hollywood Vampires are a supergroup comprising Cooper, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, silver-screen superstar Johnny Depp, and Cooper/Crossbone Skully bassist Tommy Henriksen.

Since forming in 2012 they’ve released two studio albums – Hollywood Vampires (2015) and Rise (2019) – both crammed with special guests including Dave Grohl, Slash and Jeff Beck.

“We’ve been away for a while,” says Cooper, as Perry joins him on screen for a Zoom chat to preview a string of arena and outdoor dates, adding with a grin: “It’s about time to drag Johnny out of his castle again.”

Do you remember the first time that the two of you met?

Alice Cooper: Wow, that would have been in blurry days [both laugh].

Joe Perry: Well, we were in the same movie…

Alice:… Oh yeah, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [1978].

Joe: But I don’t remember if we actually met.

Alice: I called up Joe one time because I had to write two songs. They would have been the first thing I did after getting sober [in 1983]. And we ended up working in a haunted house – a genuinely haunted house. I stayed for just one night.

Whose idea was it to form The Hollywood Vampires? Take us back to that discussion, if you will.

Alice: Until the movie Dark Shadows [2012] I had never met Johnny Depp. I was telling Johnny about the drinking club with John Lennon, Keith Moon and Harry Nilsson. During the shooting, I played the 100 Club on Oxford Street and invited Johnny along. He got up with us and nailed every song. I said it would be fun to be a bar band again and play all the songs of my dead drunk friends.

Joe: I was staying at Johnny’s house working on a solo record and I was the last to join. We have so much fun playing together. I always think of the Vampires as the best unknown garage band in the world.

Alice: And certainly the most expensive one. And you know what, we’ve been together for ten years and there has not been one single argument.

Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Tommy Henricksen is the ‘secret weapon’ of the Vampires, right?

Alice: Yeah. Tommy is in my [solo] band and we use him as a musical director. He knows where everything is at all times, and it’s the same in the Vampires. You get lost in song, you look at Tommy.

Joe: He’s got the production chops, too. [Henricksen produced the second Hollywood Vampires album, Rise]. Tommy also writes songs and he’s the backbone of the band.

There’s a concert release coming out from the 2018 Montreux Jazz Festival. Do you remember anything about that particular Vampires show?

Alice: The band got better the more it played, and I remember that show. It’s like when you have all the songs together, suddenly you find little places to make the show happen. I drop out and Johnny sings, you know? And then I sing a couple more songs and I drop out and Joe sings.

And Johnny is a part of that?

Alice: People are shocked that we are so good, and I can see why. It’s sorta glam and you’ve got the movie star in there.

Joe: Johnny has always wanted to be in a band, and now, finally, he’s in one. After the second or third song people get over the shock of seeing Johnny Depp up there with a guitar. And it’s legit. The band really plays. And you know what? He’s a great player.

Alice, you’ve spoken about playing songs by your “dead drunk friends”, but you also play originals and standards from your own catalogues. How do you work out a setlist?

Alice: The thing is, I love playing songs by The Doors, Jimi or the Small Faces, and we worked hard to really nail them as a good tribute to the bands concerned. And yeah, we have two albums of original songs, and songs of our own. How many albums have Aerosmith made? I’m on my thirtieth. Setlists are always the hardest part of any show.

Joe: Tommy really helps. He writes a list, sends it around, and we all make suggestions.

Is there going to be a third Hollywood Vampires studio album?

Alice: I can’t imagine there not being one. But we all have pretty demanding day jobs. And you want to try getting Johnny out of his forty-four-room castle.

Joe: I can tell you that some people in his camp are not happy he’s taking a couple of months out to play music. But when it’s time for Johnny to play guitar, he knows it’s time.

Alice, you’ve described your brand new memoir, titled Devil On My Shoulder, as “definitive”.

Alice: Well, with the first one, Me, Alice [published in 1976 and long since out of print], we never let the truth get in the way of a good story. But with this book we went really deep. We spent a lot of time on it.

Alice, for four of the dates on your book tour of the UK in October, Arthur Brown will act as moderator.

Alice: Arthur and I go all the way to 1968. I always liked him because he’s a total original. What a voice that guy was. He used to be an opera singer.

Joe: When we [Aerosmith] played with Arthur he brought along the flaming hat.

Alice: A perfect moment for Spinal Tap potential right there. The weirdest thing was, I was doing the make-up thing without knowing he did it too. I’d never heard of Arthur Brown – nobody in America had. I was like: “Wow, this guy’s my brother or something.”

What’s the current state of play with Aerosmith, Joe?

Joe: We’re right in the middle of working on a documentary, the story of the band from the beginning. Everyone has a different perspective on what happened back then. We also did a thing with Yungblud [a five-song EP that included a remake of Aerosmith’s Back In The Saddle].

Alice [interrupting]: I just met Yungblud. Wow, what a guy. He out-Iggys Iggy, with some early Mick Jagger in there too, but he’s also his own character.

Joe: Watching Yungblud dance around the studio made me remember what it was like to be twenty-seven years old. He is the real deal, with such incredible energy. When he talks, every other word is: “I love rock’n’roll” and you can tell that he does.

Alice: Until meeting Yungblud I had never heard the F-bomb used as an adjective, a verb and adverb and a noun in the same sentence.

The Jesus And Mary Chain are an interesting choice as special guests on this next tour, although at some shows The Damned will take that spot.

Alice: I know all about The Damned, of course, but I love the fact that the Jesus And Mary Chain don’t necessarily fit. Back in the days of the Fillmore [in San Francisco] – and you’ll remember this, Joe – Alice would play on bills with Paul Butterfield, Melanie and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. None of us connected musically. It was four entirely different worlds of music, and I always thought that was pretty cool.

The Hollywood Vampires’ European tour begins at London’s O2 Arena on August 12. For full dates and ticket links, check the Hollywood Vampires website. Live At Montreux Jazz Festival is out on August 7.

To discover the origins of heavy metal in the 1980s, we must travel back in time to the original era of classic rock. It was a time when rock giants strode the earth and sold out stadiums. A time of private planes and legendary parties and patchouli oil. It was also a time of glam, prog and proto metal, and sounds that would coalesce over time and form what became 80s metal.

Here are 10 classic rock albums that paved the way for heavy metal in the 80s.

Uriah Heep – Demons And Wizards (1972)

Critically panned when released, Demons And Wizards is now revered. The interplay between vocalist David Byron and guitarist Mick Box is seamless, accented by fantastical lyricism and heavy riffing. Uriah Heep drummer Lee Kerslake would go on to play on Ozzy Osbourne‘s Blizzard Of Ozz record in 1981, a true classic of 80s metal.

Blue Öyster Cult – Tyranny And Mutation (1973)

Blue Öyster Cult paved the way through their molten riffs and infectious hooks. Some bands may have generated more radio airplay, but no album exposes BOC’s metal roots better than 1973’s Tyranny And Mutation, and few groups featured a lineup of musicians as nuanced as Eric Bloom, Buck Dharma, Allen Lanier, and Albert and Joe Bouchard.

Nazareth – Hair Of The Dog (1975)

With its bone-crushing rhythms, huge guitars and monster vocals, Nazareth‘s Hair Of The Dog is an important link between the 70s and 80s. A huge influence on Guns N’ Roses – “If it wasn’t for Dan McCafferty and Nazareth I wouldn’t be singing,” said Axl Rose in 1988 – we can but hope that the recent passing of McCafferty and guitarist Manny Charlton alerts new fans to the importance of this album.

Budgie – Never Turn Your Back On A Friend (1973)

Early Budgie albums ushered in a heaviness rivalled only by Black Sabbath, but 1976’s Never Turn Your Back On A Friend further pushed the envelope by introducing some prototype speed metal in Breadfan. The importance of Burke Shelley, Tony Bourge and Ray Phillips’ masterpiece is best illustrated by Metallica‘s cover of the same song, which appeared on the b-sides of 1988 singles Harvester Of Sorrow and Eye Of The Beholder, and later on the 1998 compilation album, Garage Inc.

Led Zeppelin – Presence (1976)

A boatload of attention is given to Led Zeppelin‘s first four albums, but we’d wager that 1976’s Presence was even more pivotal to 80s metal. Take a listen to Achilles Last Stand, and you’ll hear how Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham’s classically-inspired epic lent itself to the more ambitious musings of bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.

Starz – Starz (1976)

A blend of glam, and hard rock, tracks like Night Crawler and Detroit Girls are gritty, pop-oriented cuts from Starz’s 1976 self-titled debut album. Vocalist Michael Lee Smith and guitarist Richie Ranno influenced bands like Mötley Crüe, Black N’ Blue, and Poison to the point where it’s feasible 80s hair metal doesn’t happen without them.

Kiss – Kiss (1973)

Kiss hardly blew the lid off the scene with their debut in 1973, but the success of the breakthrough Alive! album in 1975 ensured that first album classics like Deuce and Black Diamond would set the standard for melodic hard rock in the 70s. You’d be hard-pressed to find a glam band that doesn’t cite Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, and Peter Criss as influences. Elsewhere in the without-whom department, the over-the-top stage shows of the 80s can also be traced back to Kiss.

Aerosmith – Rocks (1976)

Aerosmith made it clear that they meant business through their early records, but they took things to heavier levels with 1976’s Rocks. Through Steven Tyler’s wails and Joe Perry’s riffs, songs like Back In The Saddle and Rats In The Cellar laid the sleaze-rock blueprint for Guns N’ Roses and Skid Row to follow in the late 80s.

Rainbow – Rising (1976)

With vocalist Ronnie James Dio pairing up with former Deep Purple guitarist Richie Blackmore, 1976’s Rising hit the reset button for 70s rock. Teeming with envelope-pushing bombast, songs like Stargazer and A Light in the Black are harbingers for 80s power metal. And if you’re looking for the blueprint for later Dio classics like Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell and his own Holy Diver, Rising is it.

Van Halen – Van Halen (1978)

The 80s metal scene was an unholy amalgam of hot-rodded guitars, aggressive riffs, shredding solos, monster drum fills and soaring choruses, and none of that happens without 1978’s Van Halen. David Lee Roth, Michael Anthony, and Alex and Eddie Van Halen created a musical tour de force through tracks like Jamie’s Cryin’ and Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love, and it’s one that 80s bands would imitate ad nauseam. If there’s one album that set the stage for 80s metal, it’s Van Halen.