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.

Inevitably, a follow-up was called for, so Bonnie and Jim went back into the studio to record the ridiculously named Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire. Steinman passed four steaming blasts of rock-and-roll gas (totally nearly a half hour of CD time) and contracted out the rest to guys like Bryan Adams and the prince (little P) of melodic rock anthems, Desmond Child. Chiefly famous for co-writing KISS’ “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” (not to mention “Heaven’s on Fire”), Child would soon help put Bon Jovi on the map (“You Give Love a Bad Name,” anyone? How ’bout “Livin’ on a Prayer?”) and within a year or two would have Aerosmith and Cher ringing his doorbell, begging for material.

None of them got “Lovers Again,” though. That went to Bonnie and Jim, and thank God for that.

An echoed-up piano starts the song, playing the chorus’ melody. After the second time through, Bonnie’s voice steps in, wearing a low-cut white dress (probably just like Bonnie was at the time), covered in silky echo:

I’ve got pictures of you in funny poses
Letters from you with pressed yellow roses
I’ve got souvenirs of fun times together
And I’ll cherish those years, and you can bet on forever

(SPOILER ALERT: Pay very close attention to the roses. The roses will make an appearance later in the song, and that appearance will be quite poignant. You’ll go, “Ah, the yellow roses—I got it, man. I got it.” You’ve been warned).

Nice establishing shot—the lady’s looking through some mementos of a lover who might be from a past encounter, or perhaps still with her. We’re just not sure, until the chorus reveals the truth of the situation:

I know we’ll be lovers again, darlin’,
I know we’ll be lovers again
It’s a matter of time
‘Til you see that I’m
The one in the end
Always your friend
Lovers again

Okay, they broke up. So this is a bittersweet scene—a lost love for whom she still pines, whose letters and dead yellow roses and pictures she’s kept all this time, however long it’s been. It’s a sad song, but she’s hopeful it will all come full circle, and she’s holding the olive branch of friendship, in any event. It’s nice. Nicely done, Desmond Child. Well sung, Bonnie. The second verse will doubtless advance the narrative a bit, right?

I’ve got pictures of you and stolen kisses
We looked so young and so full of promise
We had those dreams—they’re not forgotten
‘Cause I’ll build that house with the yellow rose garden

Ah, the roses return—didn’t I tell you the roses would return? And isn’t it poignant? She’s pining for her ex-lover, considering deeply how time and age have changed them. But she won’t forget the things they promised one another, nor will she forget the rose garden they were going to plant together, to grow flowers they could pluck from the ground, kill, and press into letters.

There’s something else afoot, and you have to listen for it. A guitar is introduced into the mix, which is cool, but you can also hear the faintest presence of other voices—Steinman has introduced a choir to the proceedings, very quietly, mixed back, back, back so that you think it’s another keyboard. Those familiar with Steinman’s work who are hearing this for the first time can be forgiven for running away from their speakers and hiding behind the nearest large piece of furniture.

Doesn’t take long for the choir to assert itself—the next chorus finds those heavenly angels chiming in behind Bonnie, echoing her words and giving a nice, reassuring, sustained “Ahhh” when it’s needed. The sound builds and recedes back again, into the final verse:

There’s a picture of you in yesterday’s paper
With that smile I knew and the new name you’ve taken
And I’ll live each day without being bitter
‘Cause we weren’t that way and I know it’s not over

It’s a sad ending. You realize what has transpired to cause Bonnie to look at old pictures and letters and dead roses and ruminate on a love gone by—her ex has gotten married to someone else, with the picture in the paper and the smile and the new name. Big gender confusion moment, though—typically it’s the woman who changes her name in marriage; Bonnie is a woman. Of course, the song was written by a man, but the gender of the narrative voice remains that of a man, even though it’s sung by a woman, and we weren’t aware of this until this very moment. Added bonus: Desmond Child is gay, which could mean he was writing about a girlfriend he’d had before he realized he was gay, or maybe he’s just fucking with all of us.

See, but Jim Steinman is a smart man. He knew the listener might have this confusion over the gender roles being explored or ignored, not to mention the stalkerish tone of “I know it’s not over.” That’s why he chose this very point in the song to unleash the hounds of hell in the form of the choir, which returns in a Wagnerian explosion worthy of Götterdämmerung, Apocalypse Now, and KISS Alive II. And dem angels from on high have brung with them the most obnoxiously reverbed drum kit known to man, manned by the ghost of John Bonham himself, or some session hack mixed to sound like the ghost of John Bonham himself. Thus distracted, the listener takes his/her pummeling until the end of the song, when it’s just Bonnie, then the choir “hoo-ing” and “whoa-ing” til the fadeout.

Those of you hiding behind sofas and big comfy chairs can come out now. Jim Steinman can’t hurt you anymore, because he’s not that way. But you know … it’s not over.

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.

“Never Say Goodbye” would have been a particularly egregious omission, since many people my age became enamored of the genre as a result of that particular entry in the pantheon. But, in a world denied that particular ballad—due to the fickle finger of fate and the inability of humans (even New Jerseyans) to remain alive when blown out of the sky in a hellish midair inferno—we would have had to make do.

Nay, the ballad for which Bon Jovi would be best remembered would have been “Silent Night,” the languid, keyboard-driven standout from the band’s sophomore disc, 7800° Fahrenheit. You remember that album—with the cover that featured Jon-Bon and his sprayed coiffure surrounded by what appear to be flames (ironic, because with all that Aqua-Net, Jon-Bon’s hair would have likely been the first thing to catch fire in the plane). “In and Out of Love,” “Only Lonely” (still one of his best songs), “Toyko Road”—the choruses still rang in your head long after the headliner took the stage.

“Silent Night” starts with a piddly keyboard, a crash of guitars, and a grammatical error. David “Curlicue” Bryan discovers the “Horns and Echo” setting on his Casio and plinks a little riff, which only pisses off Sambora, who responds by pounding his distortion pedal and slamming out a couple fierce power chords in an attempt to drown out Bryan. Jon-Bon hears enough of this, and sets the scene:

After the smoke clears
When it’s down to you and I
When the sun appears
And there’s nothing left but goodbyes

Ugh … the incorrect pronoun usage in the second line (it should be “you and me”) is disappointing, but there’s little time to reflect upon the situation, because Sambora rears back and slams out another couple of power chords, goosing Jon-Bon to finish the verse and get to the bridge already:

It’s too late
Now you’re out and on the run
It’s too late
Held up in love without a gun

She’s “out and on the run?” What the hell for? What the hell did Jon-Bon do to her? Or is she just playing her last cliché card, having already been under the wire, with her desire catching fire, up then down, lost then found, dancing and romancing with lovelight in her eyes? Christ, and she’s “held up in love without a gun?” Does she realize she’s making a direct reference to the B-side of Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart?” Did Jon-Bon realize at that time that, barring any fiery plane crashes, he would one day make a career of both clichés and sub-Springsteenisms?

Like most great power ballads, however, the chorus is where it all comes together—the dénouement, the moment of catharsis, where, in this case, Bryan and Sambora play nice and serve the song’s emotional dynamics, encapsulated in the towering scene Jon-Bon paints for us:

Silent night
We hold up our candle light
Silent night
The night our love died
No words to say
And we’re both too tired to fight
Just hold me close and don’t let go

While I’m not sure why one would “hold up our candle light” (save for a rousing chorus of “This Little Light of Mine [I'm Gonna Let It Shine],” which doesn’t seem appropriate here), I can report with fair certainty that many slow dances were consummated with the line “Just hold me close and don’t let go.” If you could only hear me sigh right now …

Anyway, the song goes on from that point, and we find that Jon-Bon and his lovely lass were to be king and queen (probably news to the Reagans, who were in power when this came out), but wound up “victims of the night,” which sounds really cool, but means very little—a trademark of many Bon Jovi songs. And Sambora uncorks one of the silliest whammy bar-abusing guitar solos this side of C.C. DeVille, who was still three years from being known by anyone, but who would have made a great passenger on that plane.

Yes, this is what we would have remembered Bon Jovi by, had Slippery never happened. Hold up your candle light and sniff the air for embers.

Wanna see the video?  Universal Music Group won’t let me embed it here (I dated their daughter once and it ended badly), so you’ll have to visit YouTube at this link to check it out.

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.

I don’t have anything to say about first love that hasn’t been said before, more eloquently, by writers far more articulate on the topic than I, some of whom write for this very site. I can say, however, that I hadn’t really thought about mine in years, and I wasn’t prepared for the tidal pull that took me out into the deep water the moment I heard that familiar keyboard figure that begins and runs through the song “Out of the Blue.”

See, like Sheffield and Nick Hornby and many of you reading this, I was a mix tape maker back in the day, and I put together a doozy for this particular object of my affection. Scene: fall of ‘87; we’re seniors; and I stock this 60-minute love bomb with the heavy stuff—Aerosmith’s “Angel,” Triumph’s “Let the Light (Shine on Me),” at least one song each by Journey, Survivor, REO and the like—the hairy men with loud guitars and the ability to wear their hearts on their sleeves without staining their denim jackets. And, just so my intentions were crystal clear, I put George Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set on You” on the tape—every other song. Aerosmith, Harrison, Triumph, Harrison, Journey, Harrison, etc., etc., ad infinitum, forever and ever, world without end.

Pretty slick, huh? Yeah, not really, but hey—it worked. I wooed and won. We were inseparable for two years, and I had that tape, in part, to thank for it.

It’s been 20 years since we broke up, and on occasion she crosses my mind, albeit usually in the abstract—I’ll run into an old friend from high school, or read about the exploits of a former classmate, or throw away yet another of the fucking alumni information cards I get every couple weeks. She’ll pop in and out, a blur, a faded photograph (the one of her in a sweatshirt and jeans, sitting in front of her parents’ fireplace) borne on a cool autumn breeze.

I made her tapes fairly regularly, and the one after The One began with “Out of the Blue.” At the time, I thought it perfectly encapsulated the strange and wonderful world of a high school senior in love for the first time and trying to engage in the daunting task of putting together the rest of his life:

Not a lot of time to think today
It’s almost over now
Didn’t need it anyway
Guess I knew somehow

True dat! I’da said, had that expression been around then. Thinking wasn’t really the issue, though—it was all about feeling. Seventeen is the age of heartfelt emotion, perhaps the last age—do we ever in adulthood feel anything as intensely as we did then, when we were virtual hormone factories, earning the trust of our peers and superiors at an age when we were perhaps least trustworthy, when our brain chemicals were at their most volatile?

I feel love around me
And the feeling grows
As your love surrounds me
How was I to know
That straight out of nowhere
You’d come to me

I feel love around me. That feeling is like stepping out into the cool of a late October morning and taking a deep breath, the deepest you can muster—that sting in your nose, that ice in your lungs, that slight wisp of chill against your face, all the things that make you feel indisputably alive in that moment. Multiply that by your heart rate at the prospect of a few hours alone with your beloved, plus the number of times your lips touch hers, plus the number of times you notice the scent of her perfume, or her shampoo, times the number of instances it occurs to you how lucky you are to be in her presence, times the rate at which your knees wobble at the sound of her laughter, or at the sight of her smile or the beyond-comfortable fit of her hand in yours. That’s what you feel when you feel love around you for the first time—all that and more. Inexplicably, wonderfully more.

Out of the blue
Into my heart

The needle dropped and for a little under five minutes, the song came to find me, and it pulled me out into those moments again, and as Lou Gramm’s voice enveloped my living room, I was no longer there, but somewhere else, 22 years ago, in the chill of the autumn of my senior year. And it didn’t matter that so much time had passed, or that she and I had split acrimoniously, or that we had eventually found the true loves of our lives, had both started families, hadn’t seen one another in many years, didn’t need to see one another, didn’t need to interrupt pleasant echoes of then with awkward small talk today. It didn’t matter that the plans we had foolishly made as teens never came to fruition.

As the song played, I felt that first love around me once again.

My eyes were closed and I was smiling.

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.

Where the hell was the “More Than a Feeling” sound? “Long Time” was long gone. No one, certainly not Scholz, appeared to be “Smokin’” much of anything. Though it shot up the charts like my blood pressure at the sight of Glenn Beck, Third Stage managed but one decent rocker, a turbo-fueled humdinger called “Cool the Engines.” But the bulk of the record seemed empty of all that made the band the stadium-rockin’ juggernaut they had been the previous decade.

The album’s finest moment, however, was reserved for its final moment—the most powerful of power ballads, the majestic “Hollyann.” Now, what is one to think of an album that starts out with a devotional to one woman (the aforementioned “Amanda”) and ends with a paean to a different woman? The answer may lie in the context of each song. “Amanda” is pure weepy, loviny-doviny, we’re-gonna-be-together-forever-and-I-gotta-impart-this-revelation-to-you, sentimental mush, albeit impeccably recorded mush (the acoustic guitars sound like they’re piped in from heaven itself).

“Hollyann,” however, packs all of Tom Scholz’s Summer of Love nostalgia and happy hippie vibe into five loud, power-chord-fueled minutes. Addressing the lovely Hollyann directly, he notes that in his mind, “I can see reminders of a past decade” (pronounced decayed by likewise hippiefied pipesman Brad Delp). He reminisces about “the nights you came to me / A blue jean lady so eager to be free” (of course, freedom’s just another word for being stoned, naked, and horizontal in a pasture somewhere). “Aquarius was really meant to be,” he marvels later. Time was when that sentiment would be answered with nods and “yeah, man”’s and such; by ‘86, though, that time had long since passed.

As with the best examples of the power ballad arts, though, the chorus is where the money is. A swell of about 300 iterations of Scholz’s guitar meet an army of 475 Delps in the middle of the studio and, instead of doing battle, they dance like hookers in a Pat Benatar video:

Hollyann
We made the dark into the light.
We saw the wrong and the right.
We were for life
And we would never concede it.

Hollyann
We left the world behind
A million hands gave the sign
We held the line
Can you believe it?

The Delp army wins—the harmonies that converge on the phrases “never concede it” and “can you believe it” never cease to give me goose bumps. Of course, a line like “A million hands gave the sign” opens up all manner of possibilities to the snarkmeister in me (the middle finger, of course, but also the devil horns, the surfer “hang loose,” or even my favorite sign language figure). In all, though, it’s a lighter-worthy chorus, anchoring the song and encapsulating its nostalgic sentiments.

I imagine, however, that all the positive Sixties vibes Scholz espoused were tested when Boston went on tour shortly after Third Stage was released and insisted on devoting a segment of each concert to playing the album in its entirety. It’s not difficult to envision what sign the audience’s hands were giving during that particular death march, but at least they knew that it would culminate with a mighty ballad about peace, love, and “freedom.”

Yes, Sixties nostalgia is a curious thing, but when placed in this decidedly Eighties musical framework, it can also be a powerful thing. Can you believe it?

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.)

When the weekend was done, they went their separate ways for a time—she to Paris for a tasteful photo shoot in Donnez- une fesséelui magazine; he to the studio, where his new band, Winger, was one song away from finishing its debut album.

That song was a ballad called “Headed for a Heartbreak”—a big, big production that sounded like a mountain coming down in slow motion. The instrumentation was finished; the 25-minute guitar solo to close the thing had been whittled down to two minutes; the keyboard player had even layered in some wicked new cosmic noise synth samples (albeit low enough in the mix that it didn’t distract from the guitar work). It was a sure-fire hit—the band knew it; their producer, Beau Hill, knew it; even Rachel Hunter knew it, since Kip Winger had played it for her a dozen times in a row, as they practiced “splitting the bamboo” midway through the first night of their weekend. All it needed was a vocal.

Problem was, Kip’s voice was shot. He had, for some reason, begun yodeling like Tarzan while he and Rachel enjoyed “congress of a cow” the night before, and his throat was spent. He sank into a chair behind the mixing board and looked around at the dejected faces of his band mates. They knew the rest of the record was strong—they had a song about statutory rape that was going to rock arenas; they also had a cover of “Purple Haze” that featured a slide guitar solo from Dweezil Zappa. Dweezil Zappa! This was so going to rock!

But a hit was a hit, and this big, beautiful power ballad was gonna be huge. If only there was some way to get Kip’s voice onto the tape.

Producer Hill looked Kip in the eye, pointed toward his belt line, and said, “Can Li’l Kipper do it?”

Kip laughed. “You have got to be kidding,” he croaked. “Li’l Kipper has had more activity this past weekend than you’ve seen in your life. I put miles on Li’l Kipper. The odometer is flipped back around, man. There’s no way.”

Suddenly, a tiny, muffled voice emanated from Kip’s leather-clad pelvic area.

“Kip,” it said, “it’s okay. I can do it.”

Kip Winger shook his head in disbelief. He lifted the front of his waist band up slightly with his thumb and gazed into the darkness. “Are you sure?” he spoke into the abyss. “I mean, you haven’t even had a shower yet.”

“I’m ready,” the voice answered. “I’ll do it for the band.”

The vocal booth was prepared with a reclining chair, some candles, two bottles of Courvoisier, and a specially angled microphone. At the appropriate time, the lights were dimmed; Kip unsnapped his leather pants, edged them down slightly, then reached down into the tight crevasse with his right hand. The hand went down empty, but came back out holding Li’l Kipper.

The fresh air of the studio was bracing at first. Li’l Kipper appeared sunburned, and, like Big Kip, was wearing four days’ growth of beard. But as Kip lowered the microphone, Li’l Kipper stood straight up, ready to take his moment in the spotlight.

And what a moment it was. The music began—that huge sound with the stutter-step drum pattern and distorted gee-tar chordage. Moved by the spirit of the thing, Li’l Kipper let out a “Yeah-yee-ee-yeah!” that rattled the plexiglass windows of the booth. Big Kip sat back—it was going to be okay. Li’l Kipper took it down a notch for the opening verse:

Morning came and I was on my way
When you reminded me
I had too soon forgotten
It was you that set me free

A second “Yeah!” propelled Li’l Kipper into a more forceful voice, biting down hard on the next line:

You were here when I came
And you’ll be here when I’m gone
So don’t be waiting for love
Cause I’ll be waitin’ to ramble on

The pause after “You were here when I came” was brilliant. Li’l Kipper nodded in the direction of Big Kip, the previous weekend fresh on both their minds. “And you’ll be here when I’m gone” followed, and a cheer went out from the control room—you can hear it, faintly, in the final mix—for Li’l Kipper had turned the line into a double entendre (the Big Guy could barely manage a single). Later in the song, on the line “Don’t you think I can feel the pain,” you can hear the weariness dripping from that voice. By the time the guitar solo enters the picture, any energy present at the beginning is spent. Li’l Kipper relaxed and lay down, and Big Kip tucked him back into his stinky little cocoon.

Of course, the elation of the moment was short-lived. Li’l Kipper left the band after Geffen Records refused to let him appear in the video (Big Kip lip-synched the vocal and performs it live to this day). Kip Winger and Rachel Hunter carried on their romance for a while longer, but it was never the same as it was that first wild weekend, and she eventually left him to run into the leathery arms of Rod Stewart.

The seed of a hit, however, had been sown. “Headed for a Heartbreak” lives on.

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.We forgive the minor offenses of our parents as we get older; things that to a young boy or girl appear unforgivable are eventually reconciled and/or forgotten. We let go. We move on. We pray our children do the same, much as our parents were able to let go of their own parents’ downfalls and dust-ups. Forgiving the little stuff helps when it’s time to forgive the big stuff, the real lifetime-of-resentment bile that can sit in your throat for years, bubbling up and burning you when you least expect it. To let go is to take control of your hurt, even your hatred, setting it aside in an effort to cleanse yourself, make yourself whole again. The best way to retaliate is to live the best, cleanest life you can.

My father, the only hero I’ve ever had (except for Joe Walsh, when I’m really drunk), had a profoundly contentious relationship with his parents, who never seemed to quite muster love or support for him. With virtually nothing and no one to use as a model, he became a husband and father, building from within himself — and himself only –  the capacity to love, to teach, and to care for his wife and kids.

It is his example I use when I consider the job I have done as a father this last decade. I can imagine no better man to use as a role model, or a measuring stick.

What does this have to do with Jim Peterik? “Above the Storm” states, in very simple terms, the hope all parents have as they show love for and struggle to protect their kids. Using a child’s fear of storms as a metaphor, Peterik’s words offer comfort and a promise of safety:

The sun’s gonna shine
The rain will stop
The healing wind’s gonna fill your heart
My love will keep you safe and warm
Little one, I’ll carry you above the storm.

Granted, there’s not much power in this here ballad — the strings and background vocals ooh-ing and ahh-ing hint not even a bit at the dynamics and bombast the man typically has at his command.  Air Supply would blush at these production values; the song kinda makes Graham Russell look like a badass.  There’s no hairspray or fire or codpieces or leather jackets or groveling or groupies or paeans to life on the road.

It’s gooey and sentimental, just like I get when I see this:

Happy birthday, Dylan. And thank you, Dad.

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.

One gets older, though, and one’s tastes go through phases. Over time, I’ve embraced folk music, had a lengthy affair with jazz, let punk help me voice my frustrations, chilled with trip-hop, mellowed out with country-rock, and invited countless other genres into my consciousness. I amassed an enormous collection of recordings that, much like my colleague Scott Malchus chronicles in his fine “Basement Songs” series, provided the soundtrack to a life, to my life, my own unique set of experiences, my loves, my triumphs, and my disappointments. I once read a quote from Robert Plant, in which he mused over bequeathing his record collection to his children when he dies, how those recordings would give them a well-rounded and accurate picture of who their father was. I couldn’t agree more.

One gets older, but one can return to what feels most comfortable, most comforting. Those arena rock staples that comprised much of my early listening experiences never left me, and I returned to them time and again over the years. One gets older and one’s favorite bands get older, too. Members come and go, or bands break up entirely. For a long time, my memory of that music seemed preserved in amber; it never got older, never got weaker. But it was never different.

That changed in the late 90s, when I discovered Talisman—an honest-to-God modern melodic rock band, still making the kind of anthems and powerful ballads I had fallen in love with as a kid. Built around two former members of Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force—vocalist Jeff Scott Soto and bassist Marcel Jacob—Talisman made arena-ready music as if it were 1985 again. Listening to their albums Humanimal, Life, and, later, Cats and Dogs and 7, it was as if glam and grunge had never happened—these records would have been quite at home in my adolescent record collection. No more amber preservation—rawk was alive! Aliiiiive!

Discovering them opened the door for me to find other bands of their ilk, still making music, albeit mostly in Europe and mostly on a small scale (and mostly for Frontiers Records, gawdblessum). It was a potent discovery, and my personal soundtrack has been richer for it.

Marcel Jacob, I came to find out, was the foundation of Talisman, not simply in his bass playing—which showcased amazing technique, always in the service of the song at hand—but in his songwriting and production work as well. Talisman songs leap out of whatever speakers the listener happens to be using, a testament to Jacob and Soto’s prowess with studio sonics. Theirs was a unique partnership, resulting in music that is both comfortingly retro and defiantly modern.

Jacob took his own life on July 21, shortly before Talisman were to begin work on their eighth album. Medical, emotional, and financial issues aggravated him for much of the last several years, though he kept making music right until the end (one of his projects, a band called Last Autumn’s Dream, released a very good record earlier this year). He gave little if any indication he was considering suicide. Soto, clearly devastated, noted in a blog post that he and Jacob had made plans for the Talisman project right up until the night before Jacob’s death.

I offer these examples of Marcel Jacobs’ art in the hope others discover this wonderful music and incorporate it into their own personal soundtracks. May he rest in peace.

Talisman—Seasons
Talisman—Sorry
Last Autumn’s Dream—Frozen Heart
Last Autumn’s Dream—Who Needs Love

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.

That’s sad, huh?  Well, it gets sadder.  Peterik and Sullivan decided to shut down the band indefinitely, ostensibly so Sullivan could decide whether to grow his hair further down toward his ass, or to just invest in extensions.  Big decision.  Jamison said, “Screw you guys—I’m going solo.”  Made a record and everything.  Then he realized that no one knew who Jimi Jamison was, but they kinda knew who Survivor were, so Jamison took off on tour, calling himself “Survivor,” or “Jimi Jamison’s Survivor,” or “Jimi Jukebox and the Survivorettes,” or, for one drunken evening, “The Jimi Survivorson Experience.”  He got gigs at state fairs, hotel convention rooms, rib bakes, nightclubs, and the occasional funeral.  Peterik and Sullivan heard about this and decided they didn’t like it—they didn’t want Jamison dragging their band’s good name down by playing low-paying, sparsely attended concerts.  They themselves wanted to go out and play low-paying, sparsely attended concerts, with their old singer, Dave Bickler. Lawyers were contacted.  Litigation ensued.

Pass me a S’more, will ya?  Thanks.

So everything progressed into the ’90s and things were looking not-so-great for these guys.  They split into two factions, each paying for a bunch of lawyers’ kids’ college tuition, fighting over the name.  Sullivan’s hair was, by this point, down to his leather boots—he looked like Cousin Itt, wearing a Stratocaster.  He and Peterik and Bickler put together a set of really cool demo recordings—old-school melodic rock, really choice stuff—that completely fell on deaf ears.  It was grunge time, kids—Nirvana and Soundgarden and their ilk had wiped out hair metal like a damn plague.  Motley Crue had a different singer; Poison had a different guitar player; neither were selling that many records.  The guys in Pretty Boy Floyd, Britny Fox, and Bang Tango?  All of ‘em went back to their Wal-Mart jobs.

Then, in ‘93, the boys got an interesting offer—to make another greatest hits record.  Their first one, which came out in 1989, sucked.  Royally sucked.  Ten tracks, crap packaging, lousy graphics—it wasn’t just bad; it was hideous.  So they got the opportunity to replace it with a new greatest hits record, plus they got to add two new songs.  One of them, “Hungry Years,” is prototypical early Survivor; it sounds like a Premonition outtake.  The other one, though, is something else entirely.

“You Know Who You Are” sounds like something you’d hear around a campfire.  Lyrically, it’s decent—a song about a fleeting glance that turns into a long-distance love affair.  Probably some code words for masturbation in there somewhere, I don’t know.  But the music is what is so jarring—just acoustic guitars and a drum machine (real drummers, even bad ones, don’t sound as artificial as the percussion on this track).  And three voices—in three-part harmony—chime together for nearly the entire song.  The voices mesh and tangle around each other, like a Crosby, Stills, and Nash arrangement.  It comes at you from nowhere—nowhere in the grand Survivor corpus is there another track like this—you wouldn’t know it was them, were it not for the name on the label.

I’m telling you, though, kids, what really throws you off is the middle eight—that bridge portion of the song that is neither verse nor chorus.  The lead voice in the section is this high, keening warble—it’s not Bickler (you know, the lead vocalist), but none other than Frankie Sullivan!  Rumor has it the record’s producer had to cut a hole in his hairdo, around the mouth area, so that the studio microphone would pick up his voice.

Survivor would descend further into soap opera territory after this—Peterik would leave shortly thereafter, then Sullivan fired Bickler a few years later and brought back Jamison.  They’d make a hilarious Starbucks commercial and a disappointing album together before Jamison would once again be out, in favor of former McAuley Schenker Group singer Robin McAuley (faithful DbPB readers know all about him).  Rumor has it if McAuley doesn’t work out, Ian Astbury of the Cul — I mean, Riders on the Storm, will come aboard, donning a beret and Members Only jacket to channel Dave Bickler (who is still very much alive, which will make it even weirder).

Oh, yeah—Frankie Sullivan eventually cut his hair back to a more manageable length.  He’s still known to rock the leather jacket, though.

Now—who wants to hear a ghost story?

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.

In 2006, Turner agreed, and the demo songs were augmented by no fewer than seven tracks either written or cowritten by — you guessed it — Jim Peterik. Perugino tapped Pink Cream 69’s Dennis Ward to produce and play bass, brought in European AOR stalwarts Uwe Reitenauer and Thorsten Koehne to play guitar, and added Gunther Werno (keyboards), Chris Schmidt (drums) to round things out. This was not the Joe Lynn Turner Band, though — this was a project, not a group, per say, though the differences between these distinctions are mysterious (can a “project” technically have groupies? If a member of a “project” chucks a TV out a hotel window, who pays?) and, quite frankly, irrelevant. Sunstorm was born, and its self-titled debut was one of the finest AOR releases of 2006, and one of the best front-to-back albums of Turner’s career.

“Strength Over Time” is one of two songs on the record written solely by Jim Peterik, and it stands as one of the album’s highlights. As is the case with much of Peterik’s recent work, it’s a song by adults for adults — a midtempo yearning to return to the permanence of love, to the ability of relationships to “burn through the years like a star.”

He acknowledges the difficulty of the search for such durability:

I’m not looking for guarantees
I can’t hold on to fantasies
If there’s someone who shares my dream
Send for me

That request — “Send for me” — is telling, like a flare shot into the night to attract a rescuer. The consequences are dire in the song, as well; the voice wants to commit, but is afraid his lover cannot. “I look in your eyes,” he sings, “and I see / The promise, the hope, and the doubt.”

The chorus ties it together — the desire for stability in an unstable environment:

Time was
When true love was judged
On how well it weathered the tears
And time was
When love meant to trust
And romance was measured in years
And time was
When I was a fool
For the rush and the thrill of the climb
I believe, I believe, I believe
In strength over time

He looks back, not as an old curmudgeon insistent on some impossibility, but as one who is hopeful that such commitment is still possible, hopeful still that perhaps he has found it. As listeners, we can all hope we are able to do (or to have already done) the same.

All this is delivered by Turner, whose voice has (in defiance of all that is physically and aesthetically probable for rock singers pushing 60) gotten stronger over the years. At one time considered a poor man’s Lou Gramm, Turner has somehow matured his instrument and now occupies a realm of his own: he tours incessantly, both as a solo artist as well as with “voices of rock”-type package tours and in something called Over the Rainbow, featuring several ex-members of Rainbow, along with Ritchie Blackmore’s son, playing old Rainbow tunes.

That Turner can still go out and play truly exhibits a “strength over time” to which too few vocalists of his generation can lay claim. That material this rich is still being written by people like Peterik and performed by people like Turner is a heartening display of strength as well.

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.

In fact, without seeming dismissive of Bickler, Don Barnes (of .38 Special, which has recorded many Peterik tracks), Toby Hitchcock (Peterik’s vocal partner in Pride of Lions), or any of the other singers Peterik has worked with over the last four or so decades, Jimi Jamison may well be the perfect voice for the man’s music.  This sentiment made the news of their recent collaboration on Jamison’s solo record, Crossroads Moment, all the more exciting.  They may not know it, but they need each other; they certainly bring out the best in one another, as evidenced by the wonderful ballad “As Is.”

Jamison was apparently Peterik’s muse for most of the tracks on Crossroads Moment—Peterik would use conversations between the two over meals or drinks as fodder for the songs he wrote for the project.  If that’s true for “As Is,” Jamison must have been going through a doozy of a time.

The piano intro gives way to a weary-sounding Jamison (is he Auto-tuned?  Just a little?  God, I hope not), setting the scene, explaining his current standing in life:

I’m out of time, I’m out of place
And looking up it seems I’ve fallen from grace
Ragged and torn these clothes I wear
I’ve paid my price, fallen out of repair

This is characteristic of much of Peterik’s oeuvre—”I’ve been through hell, I’m busted up, but I’m still standing here.  Is that all you got?”  Very Rocky.  Very tough.  And, as we soon discover, very vulnerable:

But look beyond my doubt and fear
You’ll find a treasure beneath the tears
Inside this timeless heart betrays my trembling hand

There’s that nugget of goodness, of determination, still inside him—the “treasure beneath the tears,” the burning heart, if you will, that keeps him standing.  Whatever had him down has been overcome; there’s just one thing left to find, and he reveals it as he slides from verse into chorus:

Won’t someone take who I am

As is?  Take me as is—
You could restore me, shine down you glory
From under the dust and the rust
Won’t you take me
As is?

It’s the voice of a man who is sufficiently self-aware to know he’s broken and in need of redemption, but he also knows there’s enough good in him to be worthy of that redemption.  One is tempted to believe he’s talking to a woman—this is, after all, the man who asked us to listen to him “tell you ’bout the girl I had last night”—but there’s something deeper here, something considerably more spiritual.  While there’s no indication of a Michael Sweet-ish God/girl switcheroo, that spiritual aspect becomes more explicit as the song progresses.

As the second verse moves forward, we get more detail about what has punished the singer so—”When love goes wrong or can’t be found,” Jamison sings, “The tug of life forever pulling us down / That’s been my tale, that’s been my plight.”  He’s once again on a search—this one not over, but ongoing—for “the missing part,” someone to “take this broken heart / As is.”

Then something extraordinary happens in the bridge.  Jamison spends more time listing his infirmities, before coming to really the pinnacle of the song—three lines that make explicit the spirituality that merely served as underpinning until this point:

Well, I met the man who cast the giant shadow
And I stand before the kingdom that is his
As is

Now, unless he’s at the gates of Graceland, this is a reference to a higher Power, and it ties the song together perfectly.  He wants redemption and acceptance—indeed, he has earned it—but if the objects of his entreaties in his life will not oblige, he’s got a backup plan, a spiritual redemption of which he can be sure, regardless of how ragged his appearance, or how hard that big Russian hit him.

Crossroads Moment is the true successor to Survivor’s Too Hot to Sleep, 20 years after the fact, and the songs therein bring Peterik and Jamison’s musical approach from that era into a modern context, with all the accumulated maturity one would hope for, if not expect.  “As Is” is a song by adults for other adults, and it extends both Peterik’s and Jamison’s legacies into the here and now.