January 1987
CONTENTS
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Metallica Memoriam As we go to press, we’re saddened to hear of the death of Cliff Burton, 24-year-old bassist for Metallica, in a freak accident in Europe. According to a spokesman for Elektra Records, Burton was killed as the hand was en route from Stockholm to Copenhagen, when their tour bus began to hydroplane, skidding off the road.
GETTING PAST JOHN FOGERTY
DANIEL BROGAN
It’s a little before 1 a.m. and John Fogerty is sitting all alone in the vast lobby of Pittsburgh’s William Penn Hotel. Two nights earlier in Memphis, Fogerty had begun his first tour since the breakup of Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1972.
Creem Profiles
ROBERT SMITH
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
LETTERS
IF SHF KNEW WHAT SHE WANTS While listening to the Bangles’ Different Light LP, my mind tripped on an interesting connection only CREEM readers would be proud of. We all know that Prince wrote “Manic Monday,” right? Well, you know that line—“I was kissing Valentino by a crystal blue Italian stream”? Well, this Valentino character struck me as oddly familiar when thinking of Prince’s earlier material.
RECORDS
Richard C. Walls
There are probably all sorts of ways (50?) to justify avoiding this album, but the one that first occurred to me was this: it appeared that the yuppie chronicler of life between the wars had, in pursuit of a much needed change of pace, taken a musicological approach to that trendiest of tragedies, South Africa.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
ASHFORD & SIMPSON “Real Love” (Capitol) If I gave points for attitude, I’d up this a notch for fidelity to formula: Nick and Val wrote it, Nick and Val sang it, Nick and Val produced it, and they hope you like it too, Mr. Crossover Gatekeeper. But there’s no “Solid” here, in fact, there isn’t even a “Babies.” So while they go four for eight overall—one-two-three on the first side, lead cut on the second—only their many fans will care.
45 REVELATIONS
KEN BARNES
On attitude alone, Cameo’s “Word Up” walks away with Single of the Month honors. Clearly the hippest sound in the room. Refining the warped, almost arrhythmic rap style they fashioned on “Attack Me With Your Love,” the trio concocts a psychological romance pairing a garage-style punk-funk bass line (much misused term—punk-funk, not bass line —but for once it fits here) with a host of dry on-the-one-liners.
ROCK•A•RAMA
It’s contractual fulfillment time for PiL while Johnny Boy goes label shopping. Originally released in England a good three years ago, this is a fairly perfunctory outing with whiny droners like “(This Is Not A) Love Song” and furious scorchers like “Annalisa” getting dragged about.
Eleganza
YOU’RE READING IT, YOU ENTITLE IT
John Mendelssohn
Many younger readers haven’t yet had the chance to travel as widely as this column, which, in the past five years, has, at often enormous personal expense, visited England, Spain, France, Italy, Mexico and the South Pacific.
Killer Take All: Jerry Lee Lewis Keeps On
Jim Sullivan
“I thought [tonight’s show] was the best damn show you ever seen in your whole life,” Jerry Lee Lewis says to me, after a Boston rock ’n’ roll concert this past spring, "and if you give me a bad write-up, you dead.” Tonight, Jerry Lee Lewis is on a roll and in love—hell, make that deeply in lust—with his own myth.
I Gotta Be Me! Sez Ex Philly Teen Oddball
Deborah Frost
A big black cloud is sitting right on top of Manhattan as I walk into the midtown office of Daryl Hall’s management. At the last minute, Hall’s publicist has switched our interview site from Hall’s West Village apartment to more neutral territory.
GENE LOVES JEZEBEL
BON JOVI SAYS EVERYBODY INTO THE POOL!
Toby Goldstein
Welcome to Never Never Land, where Peter Pan and his Lost Boys cavort amid a shag rug-covered sea of guitars, barbells and empty Slurpee containers. All right, all right, so it’s really Jon Bon Jovi and a couple of his merry men, lazing around a rented condo in Vancouver while they finish recording their third album, Slippery When Wet.
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ROBERT WYATT
DAVE DiMARTINO
It’s difficult to call it more than coincidence. The driver hired to take me south of London, to the home of the person I’m to interview, spends an extraordinary amount of time telling me how apartheid is inherently good— how the black people “down there” can’t quite take care of themselves yet, that they’re extremely violent themselves, what are they complaining about?—and much more of that talk, talk I’m not used to hearing in England.
JOHN McLAUGHLIN HAS BEEN THERE
John Kordosh
"As musicians, as instrumentalists, we only have two disciplines possible. One is classical and the other is jazz." So says John McLaughlin, the extraordinarily gifted guitarist, whose involvement with (among many others) the Miles Davis Group, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Tony Williams' Lifetime has made his name synonymous with fusion music.
PICK YOUR PICKS... & WIN A CD PLAYER!
OK, ranchers! Here’s your chance to pick the band or artist that will be the “coolest” in ’87! As you know, our crack team of CREEM researchers is actually you! Now you’ve seen the 10 musical whiz kids the handsome CREEM editors have predicted will be the cat’s meow this coming year, we wanna know what you think!! Yeah! Hot Dog! Boy Howdy! Yow! This is cool! Let’s get real gone for a change! Aieeeeee! We’ve flipped...and it’s great! OK, cadets, here’s what we want you to do. Tell us, on the coupon below, your number one choice for the rock ’n’ roll pick of 1987.
CREEM'S "PICKS" FOR '87
Bill Holdship
In what we’re hoping will be an annual event—following the tradition of Christmas, taxes and influenza—CREEM is happy to choose its picks for ’87. What this amounts to is an editorial consensus (and you shoulda heard the screaming going on in the Birmingham offices) of the most interesting bands to watch out for in ’87.
CENTERSTAGE
Bill Holdship
It’s real easy to be sick of this whole American band thing. Sure, it was refreshing several years ago when a wide variety of excellent American rock came along to compete with the tedious onslaught of pretentious British guys in funny haircuts mining Bowie’s legacy with none of his finesse.
CREEMEDIA
John Mendelssohn
Following his heroics in the shrewd producer signed former shortstop Bucky Dent to star in a TV movie about the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Bucky acted as though all of his fellow New York Yankees were standing right behind the camera, poised a deluge of vicious ridicule if he suggested even the slightest emotion or personality.
DRIVE IN SATURDAY
Edouard Dauphin
Ever get mistaken for another party? One drizzly night, The Dauph was loitering outside a theater in the Village when an usher wandered out from the popcorn stand and pointed a butter-smeared finger. “Hey, man, you look just like that guy in the movie,” he stammered, real fear in his thin voice.
MEDIA COOL
With this six-issue mini-series, DC has reinvented Superman, throwing away the excesses that have accumulated about the Kryptonian and, in general, drastically changing the Superman of historicity. Some examples: Superman is Krypton’s sole survivor.
Video Video
THE NO-DOZ, PLEASE
Billy Altman
We’d like to start things off this month by sending out a Video Video salute to selected members of our reading audience.
CLIPS
Best part of this Brit compilation isn’t watching Bob Geldof introducing “She’s So Modern” without actually playing it; isn’t watching the horrid King Kurt, who might be lots of fun to see in person if you were deaf; and it isn’t watching the Lords Of The New Church prove finally, once and for all, that Stiv Bator, nice fellow that he is, good taste that he has, can’t and never could carry a melody to save his life.
NEWBEATS
Harold DeMuir
Over the past decade or so, Rodney Crowell has built a well-deserved rep as one of country music’s freshest resources, quietly bucking the Nashville establishment’s spineless conservatism with intelligent, heartfelt music that’s always owed as much to his rock ’n’ roll influences as it did to his country roots.
Backstage
Backstage
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down