Death by Power Ballad: Survivor, “You Know Who You Are”

If a new Survivor track is attached to a greatest hits compilation in the ’90s, will anyone hear it? Read this week’s Death by Power Ballad and find out.

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Monday, October 26th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Bonnie Tyler, “Lovers Again”

by Rob Smith

Back in her late-70s, “It’s a Heartache” period, gravelly voiced Bonnie Tyler was viewed chiefly as Rod Stewart with a vagina (a designation many have claimed simply describes Stewart himself). When that dubious crown was rather quickly lifted from her head and placed just above the Bette Davis eyes of Kim Carnes, Tyler was left bereft of both an identifying hook for her career, as well as the hit songs that usually comprise such a career. This unfortunate situation lasted until she encountered three words that completely turned her life and livelihood around:

Jim. Fucking. Steinman.

Once Meat Loaf’s popularity had disappeared into a fog of dry ice, Steinman was left with a thousand overblown ideas and no one to turn them into crappy records. Oh, sure, he had made a ridiculous solo album (Bad for Good) with ideas he had been saving for Bat Out of Hell’s sequel, but he needed a unique, powerful voice worthy of his theatrical, pomporific muse, and his mangy tenor wasn’t gonna cut it.

See, Steinman has long harbored the wish to be another Andrew Lloyd Webber, when wasn’t trying to recreate Springsteen’s Born to Run, and in Bonnie Tyler, he found just the set of pipes he needed to kinda-sorta do both. He (over)produced her 1983 smash Faster than the Speed of Night, with its internationally loved/reviled hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and the two began what could only have been a beautiful/loud/bombastic partnership. They continued their winning streak with “Holding Out for a Hero,” another Steinman song most of us associate with hick teenagers playing chicken with tractors. (more…)

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Monday, October 12th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Bon Jovi, “Silent Night”

by Rob Smith

Had Bon Jovi been killed in a horrific, fiery airplane crash in 1985, we would remember them much differently than we do today. Had they experienced a painful, flesh-melting demise prior to recording 1986’s monster Slippery When Wet album, we would recognize the band’s name strictly as a hair metal afterthought, a tragic rock and roll footnote. They would have been seen as the perennial opening band, having done the warm-up honors for the Scorpions, KISS, Ratt, and others before their plane exploded in midair and crashed, leaving a trail of flaming debris scattered somewhere in the hinterlands, far from civilization.

Granted, the power ballad arts would have been denied a number of genre classics, had the band’s still-smoking corpses been strewn across a wide swath of land, in and around the crash site. We, of course, would know not of “Always,” “Bed of Roses,” “Never Say Goodbye,” “This Ain’t a Love Song,” or “I’ll Be There for You,” just as surely as the deceased Richie Sambora would never know the touch of Heather Locklear, or taste the sweet nectar of her kisses, sweat, and other exquisite excretions one cannot experience from one’s future beloved when one’s tongue is reduced to ash by gallons of exploding jet fuel before one even meets said beloved. (more…)

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Monday, September 28th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Foreigner, “Out of the Blue”

by Rob Smith

“It’s always that one song that gets to you. You can hide, but the song comes to find you.”
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape)

I dislike Rob Sheffield for many reasons—his writing comes off as pompous, hipper-than-thou snark (and that’s just for the stuff he likes); his greasy, perpetual grad student look smacks so obviously of affectation; his voice on those VH1 shows sounds like he’s gargling bathwater with a tampon shoved up each nostril; and he made music writing safe for a whole army of people just like him (read Spin lately?). I also dislike him out of insane jealousy; in spite of all the above, he wrote one of the most moving books about music and music fans I’ve ever read. The bastard done really good. Go to Amazon now and purchase a copy, or borrow one from your local library, that most wonderful of socialist institutions.

A song I’d relegated to the leaky, cobwebby space in the back of my mind recently came to find me. I’d been in the mood to listen to some vinyl, and one of the hundred or so LPs I had standing at attention on a shelf in my living was Foreigner’s 1987 album Inside Information. Immediately, I knew which song I would drop the needle on first; I flipped the thing over to Side Two, and let my trusty old turntable do its thing. (more…)

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Monday, September 14th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Boston, “Hollyann”

by Rob Smith

Sixties nostalgia is a curious thing—make-a one man weep, make another man sing. Tom Scholz—the guitarist/mastermind/evil genius behind Seventies arena rock behemoth Boston—is one of those people for whom the Sixties never quite ended. I mean, yeah, he can see all of us with our turbo rocket backpacks and Martian girlfriends and such, and recognize it’s not 1967, but in his mind, it’s the Summer of Love, year-round, every year.

Eight years elapsed between Boston’s second and third albums—a longer period of time than the span between Please Please Me and Let It Be—and fans of Scholz and company were left to wonder what Tommy and his band of merry New Englanders were up to. Rumor had it that Scholz had joined a hippie commune and had spent the fortune he’d earned from music trying to discover the best way to rotate marijuana and rutabaga crops in upstate Massachusetts. In reality, though, he had spent the time in various other, non-hippie-related pursuits, namely a) litigation with his record company, b) developing a way to cram a Marshall stack into a box he could wear on his belt, and c) making fun of his contemporary Meat Loaf, who had gone from Bat Out of Hell to Loaf Out of Luck in just eight short years.

Alas, the period of quietude was certain to end, and end it did, in 1986, when Scholzasaurus and the mighty Boston Rawk Party finally managed to crap out Third Stage. Now, the band’s first album had been introduced to an unsuspecting world by “More than a Feeling”—a tremendous, anthemic song, don’t you agree? Don’t Look Back came out of the gate with “Don’t Look Back”—another tremendous, anthemic song. Third Stage—eight years in the making—opened with none other than “Amanda,” a tremendously schmaltzy, limp-wristed ooze of a ballad.

Boo.

Hiss. (more…)

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Monday, August 31st, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Winger, “Headed for a Heartbreak”

by Rob Smith

Everything you’re about to read is apocryphal. No proof exists that anything that follows is true. But I heard it from someone, who heard it from someone, who likely heard it from yet another someone, who should know. Here goes:

When then-Alice Cooper bassist Kip Winger met model Rachel Hunter in the late ’80s, at a party for some long-forgotten leather codpiece manufacturer, the clear blue mid-afternoon southern California sky darkened in seconds. Lightning touched down thither and yon, drifting toward the party, eventually making a rough circle around the pair about ten yards in diameter. Klieg lights materialized out of thin air, training their intense beams at the couple. Someone (probably Paul Stanley) produced a disco ball and tossed it high in the sky, where it was struck by a bolt of lightning, sending tiny shards of mirrored glass down toward them, shards that turned into sparkling glitter dust as it entered their new, unique atmosphere. The party for the long-forgotten leather codpiece manufacturer was over, but the party for Kip and Rachel had just begun.

They rented a room at the Continental Hyatt House on the Sunset Strip for a long weekend, enjoying three days of room service and round-the-clock study of the Kama Sutra, as well as free HBO. In fact, Kip was the only one of the two who left the room all weekend, on a run to the local apothecary to purchase additional 24-packs of prophylactics. (Imagine being the poor housecleaning attendant emptying that wastebasket after they checked out.) (more…)

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Monday, August 17th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Jim Peterik, “Above the Storm”

by Rob Smith

This is the final entry in our DbPB salute to Jim Peterik, and it is, I admit, an odd choice for a conclusion. “Above the Storm” is not Peterik’s best ballad; truth be told, I’m not all that fond of it, certainly not as fond as I am of Survivor’s “Desperate Dreams” or their unreleased “The Love We Never Made”  demo, or of Pride of Lions‘ “Faithful Heart,” or .38 Special’s “Changed by Love,” or a score of other Peterik ballads I could have selected.

Why, then, choose “Above the Storm”? Indulge me, for a moment:

A week from tomorrow, I will have been a parent for ten years. That milestone and a recent event in my extended family got me thinking about perfectionism and parenthood, and how the twain never, ever meet. Oh, sure, I’ve had my moments. Like the time when Dylan was small and suffering from an ear infection, when I rocked him to sleep and, with that sleep, provided him some modicum of relief. I also felt pretty good recently, when he proudly showed off his new copy of the Guinness Book of World Records by showing me the entry for the woman with the world’s biggest breasts. He did this in front of his aftercare attendant, who proceeded to give him no small amount of grief before I took her aside and explained to her that the only thing funnier to a nine-year-old than boobs are farts, and if the Guinness Book of World Records could have passed gas, that’s what he would have shown me.

Truth of the matter is, I’ve screwed up, many times. All parents do. I’m going to do it again, probably as soon as I leave my office, and if not then, certainly in the next 24 hours. I’ve yelled when I should have been calm; chastised when I should have instructed; turned down an activity when I should have participated; let him down in several small ways that only occur to a parent after the fact. (more…)

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Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: A Tribute to Marcel Jacob

by Rob Smith

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Our DbPB salute to Jim Peterik will conclude in two weeks. We interrupt that series to mark the recent passing of one of the cornerstones of modern melodic rock, bassist Marcel Jacob.

My long addiction to music began in earnest when I was a young pup, living in New Jersey, gazing with awe at the record collections of my two cousins, who are, respectively, 10 and 6 years older than I. They had hands-down the coolest stereo system I’d ever seen (with separate friggin’ components—turntable, receiver, cassette deck and 8-track player—whereas I only had an all-in-one system), and probably 120 or 150 LPs apiece. They were both southern rock aficionados, so there were plenty of Skynyrd, Rossington Collins, Molly Hatchet, .38 Special, Charlie Daniels, Outlaws, and Marshall Tucker Band albums. They also enjoyed what’s become known as the Laurel Canyon sound (Eagles, Jackson Browne), as well as the home-grown classics from down the shore (Springsteen, Southside Johnny).

My favorites from their collections, though, were the arena rock of the day—among them Foreigner’s first record, Boston’s debut, Aerosmith’s first four or five records, Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger, Journey’s Departure, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, and that glorious run of Styx albums, from The Grand Illusion through Paradise Theater. I’d buy cheap 90-minute blank cassettes from K-Mart and my cousins would tape these records for me, two albums per tape. It was cool music by men with long hair and loud guitars—stuff my mother couldn’t stand and my dad would tell me to turn down. (more…)

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Monday, July 20th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Survivor, “You Know Who You Are”

by Rob Smith

We continue our DbPB salute to Jim Peterik with the most un-Survivor-like of Survivor songs.  Gather ’round the campfire, kiddies, as Creepy Camp Counselor Rob tells the tale of “You Know Who You Are.”

Once upon a time, back in 1988, Survivor put out one of their best records—an album called Too Hot to Sleep.  It was a cornucopia—nay, a veritable harvest—of melodic hard rock goodness, at a time when melodic hard rock was, as you kids say, tha shizznit.  Frankie Sullivan, the band’s resident hotshot guitar player, grew his blond locks out to lengths only the bassist in Cinderella could match, donned his finest leather outerwear, plugged into a couple Marshall stacks, and showed the hairspray-and-spandex crowd he could fingertap and whammy bar and WEE-diddle-diddle with the best of ‘em.  Half the songs on the record are among the best singer Jimi Jamison ever lent his voice to, and he grew out his hair and donned the leather for the occasion also.  Jim Peterik was there, too, co-writing everything on the record, but looking rather uncomfortable on the album sleeve; he’s the only one not wearing leather.

Sounds great, huh, kiddies?  A sure-fire hit—the guys who brought you “I Can’t Hold Back” and “Is This Love,” not to mention “Eye of the Freakin’ Tiger” turn up their amps and take on the Bon Jovi wannabes, by going undercover as, well, Bon Jovi wannabes.  But it didn’t work.  For during this period, bands like Motley Crue and Poison stalked the earth, raping arenas and pillaging groupies, and they brought along a ton of lesser bands like Pretty Boy Floyd, Britny Fox, and Bang Tango to mop up what they left behind.  Listeners ignored Too Hot to Sleep in droves. (more…)

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Monday, July 6th, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Sunstorm, “Strength Over Time”

by Rob Smith

Our DbPB salute to Jim Peterik continues this week with “Strength Over Time,” by Sunstorm, a collective that’s not quite a band, and yet not quite not a band. Some explanation, of course, is in order.

Most listeners in the U.S. know Joe Lynn Turner either for his three-album stint in Rainbow (which yielded classic tracks like “I Surrender,” “Stone Cold,” and “Street of Dreams”) and his brief tenure in Yngwie Malmsteen’s band (which resulted in the album Odyssey and the hit “Heaven Tonight”). Upon leaving Rainbow, Turner recorded the requisite solo album, Rescue You, which found middling chart success, but was embraced heartily by AOR aficionados (the ballad “Endlessly” will one day have its own entry in this column).

A follow-up record was apparently prepared for but never recorded; or recorded but shelved; or partially recorded and partially shelved; or prepared for, recorded, shelved, removed from the shelf, dusted off, then re-shelved. Something happened — sources are iffy on what, exactly — but the phantom second JLT record never saw the light of day. Bootleg tapes of song demos intended for the record made the rounds of industry folks and journalists who traded in that kind of stuff, and eventually Serafino Perugino, the head of Frontiers Records (the European label that conducts its business as if Rainbow and their ilk were still packing arenas) procured a copy and urged Turner to revisit the songs.

(more…)

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Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Death by Power Ballad: Jimi Jamison, “As Is”

by Rob Smith

The next few DbPB installments will feature the work of a man who, to these ears, has contributed as much as if not more than any other artist to the power ballad arts and the melodic rock genre in general—Jim Peterik.  Many know him as the voice and driving force (no pun intended.  Okay, maybe I intended it) behind “Vehicle,” the great 1970 single by Ides of March.  Many more know him as the bespectacled keyboard player and chief songwriter (along with Frankie Sullivan ) in Survivor.  Yeah, that guy.  “Eye of the Tiger.”  “I Can’t Hold Back.” “High on You.” “The Search Is Over.”

Ah, “The Search Is Over.”  How many makeout sessions/couple skates/lonely nights of the soul in ‘84-’85 had that one as their soundtrack?  Survivor contributed many other fine, powerful ballads—“Man Against the World,” “Everlasting,” “Ever Since the World Began” (read about my personal relationship with that song here)—but none had all the weapons that made “Search” such a killer—the developing tension, the underlying power chords, the dramatic chorus and bridge, plea for redemption, the key change at the end.  The voice.

The voice is so important.  Peterik co-wrote a Survivor track called “It’s the Singer Not the Song”—a sentiment I do not share—in part to focus attention on the band’s new singer at that time, Jimi Jamison.  While Survivor’s first vocalist, Dave Bickler, possessed a monster of an instrument—akin to a Paul Rodgers or a Steve Marriott—Jamison’s baritone was tailor-made for the commercial rock for which Survivor was best known in the mid-’80s.  He had strength to spare and could tackle a rough-hewn rock song, but was also versatile enough to lighten up when the music slowed down.  The Peterik/Sullivan ballads on Vital Signs, When Seconds Count, and Too Hot to Sleep were the perfect canvases on which Jamison could apply all the colors of his voice. (more…)

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