February 1984
Contents
AH WHAT THE HELL, BLESS EVERYBODY Ah-ha! Finally, a writer with enough skill and sensitivity to put the Police in their true (and deserved) light! God bless Dave DiMartino for that excellent interview (and...uh...um, other stuff) of the Police, the greatest band ever.
Christgau Consumer Guide
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
KING SUNNY ADE AND HIS AFRICAN BEATS: “Ajoo” (Maskossa):: Since his import-if-you-can-find-it The Message is still my favorite Ade, not to mention my first, I thought it wise to check out the five LPs Ade released in Nigeria between Mango albums.
Rock 'n' Roll News
Lotsa fun happenings in the Black Sabbath camp. What you mean, camp? Well, new screamer Ian Gillan decided to sleep in a tent in the recording studio so he could keep an eye on his treasured golf clubs. When he left his babies unguarded for a minute, mischievous Sabsters Toni and Geezer sneaked in and wired the tent with explosives.
The Beat Goes On
Heather Joslyn
NEW YORK—With a dossier the likes of Eddie Jobson, the next obvious step was to graduate from side-man to kingpin. And that’s exactly what happened—it just took a lot longer than planned. We’re talking about Eddie Jobson, accomplished keyboard player and violinist whose credits span 12 years.
X SPOT THE MARKS
Richard Riegel
As I enter Billy Zoom’s Cincinnati motel room, I glance at the usual rockband-on-tour pile of black leather jackets, but I also take note of a big jar of Coffee-mate non-dairy creamer in the corner. “Aha!” I silently register. “Caffeine fiends like meself.
PAUL RODGERS
Laura Fissinger
Sorry, sports fans, but you’d better pass on this particular Paul Rodgers piece if you’re a Free or Bad Company fanatic going through Paul R. withdrawal symptoms (a little late, aren’t cha?). In keeping with its grand tradition of ignorance in journalism, CREEM sent me to do one of the first Paul Rodgers interviews in many years, as per his solo debut, Cut Loose.
ALAN VEGA: LIFE AFTER SUICIDE
Roy Trakin
Once upon a time, in the early ’70s, long before currently voguish “new music” outfits like Soft Cell, Yaz and Human League, there was Suicide. Two zany bohos literally off the Lower East Side streets, one a demented, classically trained keyboardist named Martin Rev(erby), the other, his equally wacky sidekick, a chain-smoking, fast-talking Jew from Brooklyn, who took the moniker Alan Vega partly to sound Puerto Rican and partly in tribute to the Nevada mecca of glitz and gambling.
Features
THE EURYTHMICS WOULD BE LYING IF THEY SAID THEY DIDN’T ENJOY IT
Rick Johnson
“They’re just so fucking boring,” the oddly-accented writer’s voice is informing a novice eddy-tor over the phone.
Features
MICK JAGGER: AS YEARS GO BY
Gary Graff
The Peppermint Lounge is filled with mostly college-aged kids.
NEW ORDER DANCING TO AN EERIE BEAT
John Neilson
Where does one begin to unravel the enigma of New Order?
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
Calendar
WE ARE ALL MARCUCCI
John Mendelssohn
In the bad old good old days, looks were everything. If your name were Fabian, for instance, and you looked every inch the pubescent dreamboat, it mattered not a whit to Bob Marcucci, later to inspire the major motion picture The Idolmaker, that you hadn’t the most exiguous trace of musical ability.
LAUGHTER FOR AFTERS
Cynthia Rose
Dateline: Vacationsville. Just touched down on that International Runway with this month’s dispatch for you under my arm — and what should greet me but seemingly endless “analyses” of the culture behind what American journals apparently insist on terming the Second British Invasion.
Creem Profiles
RICK JAMES
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
MOTLEY CRUE CALLING
Sylvie Simmons
New cosmetic heavy metal show.
CREEM DREEM
CLARE GROGAN
SCRATCH 'N' SNIFF WITH THE GLIMMER TWINS
Richard C. Walls
Yes, friends, here it is. My spanking new, right-out-of-the-bag copy of Undercover, the latest Rolling Stones album.
Stars Cars
QUIET RIOT
ROCK • A • RAMA
Billy Altman
THE BLUEBELLS (Sire EP):: U2 sans the wallof-emotion instrumental density, or Dexy’s Midnight Runners without the hokey Celtic-jig overtones, the Scot lads in the Bluebells have stripped pop down to barer bones than even the skeletal punks suspected.
Creemedia
Richard C. Walls
In the early 1950’s, a wily amoral demagogue named Joe McCarthy managed to infect the entire land of the free and home of the brave with the dread of Communist subversion. The lives of countless hundreds of innocent people were disrupted. And two lives—those of a young Jewish couple convicted not of revealing secrets of the atom bomb to agents of Soviet Russia, but of conspiring to reveal them—on the electric chair.
He's A Maniac, Maniac!
Edouard Dauphin
Some call it a lush life—this film critic’s existence brimming with glamorous world premieres, luxurious private screenings (Sat next to Rex Reed once at The Long Riders—he dozed off even before I did) and exclusive cocktail parties at the Hotel Carlton while the Mediterranean ripples in the sun and starlets parade in Puris naturalibus along the beach.
Media COOL
Bill Holdship
MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD: THE RISE AND FALL OF AN AMERICAN GUITAR HERO by Ed Ward (Cherry Lane Books):: Ward calls Bloomfield the original “guitar hero”—praised by Muddy Waters and B.B. King, a teacher to Carlos Santana, and an influence cited by Eric Clapton—yet he had a strong fear of success.
Unsung Heroes Of Rock ‘n’ Roll
WANDA JACKSON: UNLACED BY THE LORD
Nick Tosches
Wanda Lavonne Jackson was, simply and without contest, the greatest menstruating rock ’n’ roll singer whom the world has ever known.
KISS & TELL
Jaan Uhelszki
Heart On: Wasn’t it convenient that Adam Ant and Jamie Lee Curtis decided to stage their grande passion just in time for our Valentine’s issue? Jamie Lee had no sooner called off her engagement to marry Michael Riva, than she took up with one of rock’s most ineffable insects, the aforementioned Adam.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down