MARCH 1985
CREEM Contents
That’s right: in January, PolyGram will be re-issuing The Velvet Underground And Nico, White Light/White Heat, and The Velvet Underground in newly remastered form, and a new collection of Velvets rarities. And, in a very real (tho not legally binding) sense, it’s all your fault.
Creem Profiles
THE BANGLES
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
Christgau Consumer Guide
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
Pretty convoluted: great falsetto of great drummer-led black pop band seeks solo identity, turns for production aid (and duet on single) to drummer who’s led great (i.e., best-selling) white art-rock band back into money by ripping off (appropriating?) black rhythms and vocals.
Rock 'n' Roll News
The saga of Edward Van Halen, session player, continues! Eddie, who evidently won’t rest until he’s played onstage with every act in the Western World, was almost recently spied pickin’ with Patty Smyth & Scandal, when he knocked off two tunes at the L. A. Palladium.
LENNY KAYE: RIGHT ON, WRITE ON, RITE ON!
L.E. Agnelli
NEW YORK—If anybody’s got a right, it’s Lenny Kaye. As rock’s foremost young (mid ’30’s) historian-cum-performercum-songwriter, the man who brought us Nuggets, Rock Scene’s “Ask Doc Rock,” the cofounder of the Patti Smith Group and the ultra adorable one-year-old Anna Lee Witt, Lenny is currently involved in more projects per month than most music people dare to even dream of.
GRIM REAPER’S HALLOWEEN HORROR
Gregg Turner
RESEDA, CA—They walked onstage, two with pig-masks and the drummer brandishing a three-pronged kitchen knife. The singer, handed an otter from a stagehand garbed in black, grabbed the animal by its tail and proceeded to lick its snout more than a half-dozen times; then down on his knees he butchered its throat and grabbed a drumstick to gouge the eyeballs.
FROM A CHEQUERED PAST TO A SPOTTED FUTURE
Roy Trakin
NEW YORK—They’ve survived Silverhead, Blondie, the Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop and Soupy Sales, but can these New Wave veterans find happiness among the heavy metal minions? Chequered Past are precisely that— five guys who’ve been through the proverbial mill and lived to tell about it.
THE CREEM CHRONICLE: Where were you five years ago?
Bruce Springsteen scrapped his plans for a live album after discovering that most of the tapes intended for the LP were lifted from right under his schnozz and bootlegged. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! La Spruce was also dismayed/outraged at having his studio tapes stolen, bootlegged, and blatantly sold at his shows!
MERRY XMAL
“Ach, tanks! Gut!!”
CHICAGO—The scene is so perfect that it should be out of some damn movie. A dark club with black cinder block walls, a sweaty crowd pressing against the stage, four sullen, stonefaced musicians of mixed gender setting up a throbbing rock pulse fronted by a strikingly beautiful Aryan blonde singer dressed head-to-toe in black, miming and whirling her fists around and singing in German.
YOU MUST LIKE THE CHURCH!
Dave DiMartino
Let’s get the easy part over with first. •The Church are great. •They have been putting out wonderful records since 1980. •There is every chance in the world that you’ve never heard them. •There is every chance in the world that, if you did hear them, you would think— as I do—that they may be the best rock ’n’ roll band you have heard in many years.
PAT BENATAR: TROPICO DANCER
John Mendelssohn
Asked what the most important thing in her life is in the autumn of her fifth year of stardom.
Features
HEAVY METAL’S REVENGE: DEEP PURPLE RETURNS!
Sylvie Simmons
Deep Purple. Two words that mean so much to so many.
WHITESNAKE: ABSENCE OF THE LORD
Detroit has special meaning for singer David Coverdale. "It’s the first place I ever played in America with Deep Purple. A great fucking town! I think I saw a few children of mine out there tonight. And I haven’t seen that Boy Howdy thing in years!”
DOKKEN: All BOZOS On This Bus!
Bill Holdship
It’s election day in America, and I’m in Washington, D.C.
Kalamazoo and KROKUS, too!
Kevin Knapp
The security man in the red jacket was adamant about it.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
THE WINNERS CREEM '84 ROCK 'N' ROLL READERS POLL
He’p! The results from our ’84 Readers Poll are in, and so are we! In the bathroom, mainly, trying to recuperate from the sheer horror of the grisly results! We knew that Heavy Metal was “back,” but little did we suspect just exactly how back it was!
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Cynthia Rose
As I sit down to write this, a national newspaperwoman is taking her turn on TV’s What The Papers Say. In theory, the show is a review of the week’s hottest items and how they were handled by the press. Lou Grant this prime-time program ain’t. Basically it exists for something rather sinister: to explain the real meaning behind what obtuse Joe Public has heard and seen.
Stars Cars
BILLY SQUIER
A FLIPPY FLOPPY FILM!
Renaldo Migaldi
The Talking Heads performance documented in Stop Making Sense was already an eminently filmable proceeding long before director Jonathan Demme (Melvin And Howard, Swing Shift) got anywhere near it. The visual awareness of the Heads has always been a few cuts above that of most other rock bands, as shown by the interesting ambiguity of their album covers and videos.
LOST RACE UNEARTHED
Richard C. Walls
Bohemia is always with us. But in the late ’60s a curious thing happened in that Bohemia. Instead of merely budding colorfully on the national periphery, it actually extended its multi-hued tendrils into the very heart of mainstream popular culture.
Prime Time
Richard C. Walls
FOUR MORE BEERS: The reason Call To Glory (ABC) bombed is because it didn’t deliver the militaristic thrills it promised—viewers who’d seen the show incessantly hyped during the Olympics tuned in expecting to see some flyboys in heat but instead got the same old cold war liberal morality plays (a cold war liberal is someone who is progressive, in a sodden sort of way, when it comes to social issues—Call’s civil rights episode was square in the tradition of the Kramer/Susskind school of soggy uplift—but just as phobic as everybody else when it comes to the Commie threat).
Video Video
BRINGING TOO MUCH BACK HOME
Mick Farren
It was sometime around 3 a.m. and I’d been watching MTV (or, to be really precise, I’d had my TV switched to MTV.
THE PAT BOONE CONNECTION
Bill Holdship
Hey, this ain’t bad. Any video that begins with a clip from The Adventures Of Ozzy & Harriet is at least a little inspired.
Eleganza
DAVID BOWIE & DEE SNIDER: THE BIZARRE PASSIONS THEY CAN’T CONTROL!
John Mendelssohn
The fact of the matter, though, is that we’ve had effeminate male rock ’n’ roll stars as long as we’ve had rock ’n’ roll.
METAL TO THE MAXX: IT'S VILE FAXX!
J. Kordosh
What’s hotter than the New Metal? Why, the Newer Metal, of course. Hottest of all is the Newest Metal, a days-old trend that’s got the industry a-talkin’. Now Sounds/New Stages is therefore pleased—and incredibly fortunate—to present our interview with Vile Faxx, the newest (best) metal band in America.
Records
MY DINNER WITH MADONNA
Joe (Like A Psychotic) Fernbacher
I realize that what I am hearing is either a very young and unfunked Diana Ross or...MADONNA!!
LOVE’S LABOR LOST
Michael Davis
Pat Benatar grows up. Well, we all do, so they say (those who make it, anyway), but once you get there, you realize that nobody is “grown up” in the same way. And if you’re already successful, you can sometimes grow up the way you want to. Which is sort of what’s happening here.
DARK SHADOWS
Mitchell Cohen
Give My Regards To Broad Street, a motion picture written by, and starring, Paul McCartney, opens across America in October, closes across America by November. George Harrison decides to concentrate on a career as a film producer, retires from the music business.
45 REVELATIONS
Ken Barnes
After last month’s lambasting of critics who don’t cover or appreciate mainstream pop and rock sufficiently, I had a stray thought that I might be guilty of the same offense. It’d be quite a trick to top the obscurity quotient in this column.
ROCK-A-RAMA
Anyone who savored Robert Plant’s great performance of Elvis Presley’s “Little Sister" on Concerts For The People Of Kampuchea will be delighted to know he’s released an EP of roots rock. Now for the bad news: most of it’s junk. Joined by Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Nile Rodgers, and other uncredited helpers, Plant spoils the occasion because he treats most of the songs like throwaways.
KISS & TELL
Jaan Uhelszki
Boy Crazy: You know, it looked as if Boy George had won his recent battle of the bulge when after weeks of strenuous dieting, the Boy whittled himself back down to a svelte size 10—dress size that is. But if his recent behavior at Manhattan’s Tony Cafe Luxembourg is any indication, it looks as if our Boy has again fallen off the wagon.
Backstage
Backstage
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down