May 1983
Creem Profiles
DURAN DURAN
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
Contents
I was just reading some mag’s fan mail, and can you believe how many people wrote on Ozzy, AC/DC, Kiss, Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin? I personally think all of those kinds of bands are sick! It’s getting to where I don’t even know if the bands I listen to on the radio are Satan worshippers or not! I really love the Lord a lot, and everyone is supposed to, but some people don’t! I’m only 12 years old, and I really like the Who, they’re a decent band.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART And The MAGIC BAND: "Ice Cream For Crow” (Virgin/Epic):: Two cuts have no lyrics, one has no music, and guess which your humble wordslinger prefers. Ornette or no Ornette, the Captain’s spring Delta atonality still provides surprising and irreducible satisfactions, but his poetry repeats itself more than his ideas warrant.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
It was a totally awesome wedding, we’re sure. Stevie Nicks got married at her home on L.A.’s Sunset Boulevard on January 29th. The groom wasn’t a stuffed teddy bear, but Stevie’s long-time friend, Kim Anderson. Wedding guests included fellow Fleetwood Mac members Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood, as well as Don Henley and Kenny Loggins.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Rick Johnson
NEW YORK—I had already dismissed Catholic Girls as well meaning but not very inspired musicians by the time my niece Hyam picked them as her pet band. Hyam is all of nine and has become something of a populist barometer to me—she loved Asia after one viewing of their video.
MEMBERS OF PUNK-REGGAE WEDDING CLAIM NOT ALWAYS BRIDESMAIDS
We’re down in Bogart’s new dressing room, a concrete-block bunker beneath the stage, and as I retrieve a Budweiser from the tub on the amenities table, it seems that I’m surrounded by at least eighteen British eyeballs, observant if friendly.
TONI BASIL'S MICKEY MANIA
Sylvie Simmons
“Well, dear. What seems to be the problem?” “It’s like this, Doc. There I’ll be, minding my own business, listening to Motorhead or something, and all of a sudden it—Doc, help me Doc, I can’t hold it back any—OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND HEY MIC-KEY, HEY MICKEY!! See what I mean, Doc? It’s been the same ever since that single came out.
THE TEACHINGS OF CAPTAIN BEEFHEART: A WACKY WAY OF KNOWLEDGE
Roy Trakin
“If you’ve got ears, you gotta listen,”— Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart “I have a beef in my heart against the world,” he says, in response to queries about how he got his unusual name. “The way they treat humanity and animals. It’s the shingle that’s given me shingles after 15 years as Don Van Vliet. My friends don’t call me Captain.
PHIL COLLINS DOES EVERYTHING BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE
J. Kordosh
Things seem to be going poorly for drummers of late, what with Buddy Rich undergoing bypass surgery earlier this year and a regular series of untimely deaths (Moon, Bonham, Carpenter) continuing unabated. It’s nice to see that at least one of the fraternity—Phil Collins—has escaped the curse.
BOB SEGER BIG VICTORIES
Bill Holdship
It’s always been a little difficult for me to perceive Bob Seger as a major rock ’n’ roll star. That isn’t meant in any negative sense, but if you grew up in Michigan during the ’60s as I did, you sort of ended up taking Seger for granted. The guy’s just always been around here as a regional cult figure, starting in ’66 when he scored his first local hit with “Heavy Music.”
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Cynthia Rose
1982 was the year “The Message” topped all those year’s-end polls in the U.K.—but, in the second month of ’83, one begins to wonder just who got that message. Henry Ford himself might enjoy a perambulation along the Kings Road on a Saturday; you can find anything there in any color you want, as long as you want black.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
STRAY CATS
Features
SPOT CHECKING DEF LEPPARD
Dave DiMartino
Metal youths you shriek shorthand.
TIME FOR THE PRINCE WHO WILL BE KING
Vernon Gibbs
Halfway through the concert, the long legged blonde keyboard player has stripped down to her underwear.
EXTENSION CHORDS
Allen Hester
Advertising makes magazines possible. The cost of the advertising space helps pay for printing, staff salaries, writers, photographers and cost of circulation and distribution. Some readers find the advertising annoying; others read the ads first, then read the articles.
CREEMEDIA
Vernon Gibbs
Smithereens is the story of a no-talent girl from New Jersey trying to make a name for herself in the “glamorous” punk rock fast track of New York’s decaying “new music” scene. The film was shot on location by unknown Susan Seidelman, making her directorial debut with a spartan budget of $100,000—the kind of bucks that don’t even buy toothpicks in today’s megadollar film mentality.
CREEM DREEM
MARTIN CHAMBERS
Confession of a FILM FOX
Well, hello there, darlings, it is I, the Fox extraordinaire, feeling zappy, zippy and—tee hee—somewhat trippy! So if your fervent fox reads as if she’s having an off day, you’d best not blame it on the news that Erik Estrada and actress/model Kathy Shower are about to wed —because frankly, dearest readers, it may well be the very first shower that grinning gargoyle has taken! I despise him! Don’t you?
Records
DOOM A GO GO
Joe Fernbacher
ROCK • A • RAMA
MILLIE JACKSON—Hard Times (Spring) :: Millie Jackson sure isn’t kidding when she sings “The Blues Don’t Get Tired Of Me.” In the title song, she enumerates a former lover’s “charms”: “He beat me every night...he killed the dog...he put roller skates on granny’s crutches,” and on “Blufunkes,” she limns the current situation: “Everybody’s suffering from Reaganomics/They got nuclear fright and atom bomics.”
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down