Author: fgt

For a few lucky people – people like Jeff Lynne – dreams really do come true. As a teenager growing up in Birmingham in the early 60s, Lynne, like so many other aspiring musicians, worshipped The Beatles. But unlike so many other dreamers, Lynne not only made it as a rock star but also ended up working with The Beatles themselves. As co-producer of two long-lost Beatles songs, Free As A Bird and Real Love, released in the mid-90s on their Anthology series, Lynne made a boyhood fantasy real.

Lynne has enjoyed a lengthy, varied and hugely successful career spanning five decades. His first big break came in 1970 when he joined friend Roy Wood in The Move, rated by Paul Stanley of Kiss as one of the great British pop rock groups. But it with his next venture, the Electric Light Orchestra, in which Wood also briefly collaborated, that Lynne truly found his voice.

As that arch, punning name indicated, ELO fused electric rock and pop with classical influences, creating a sound that was truly unique. Their classic line-up had Lynne backed by six musicians, including a violinist and two cellists – which, in 1977, was somewhat out of step with the rising tide of punk rock.

But Jeff Lynne’s grand vision extended far beyond punk’s narrow parameters. In their pomp – and in ELO’s case, there really is no other word for it – they sold over 50 million albums in 11 years and performed on stage beneath a giant ‘spaceship’.

It couldn’t last, of course. By 1986, with sales dwindling, Lynne disbanded ELO to work as a producer for George Harrison, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison, with whom he also starred, alongside Bob Dylan, in the super-supergroup The Traveling Wilburys. In a bizarre twist, several members of the classic ELO line-up, minus Lynne, reunited in the late 80s as ELO Part II. But in 2015, the main man relaunched a new version of the group, billed as Jeff Lynne’s ELO, with a world tour and a new album, Alone In The Universe. Four years later, he did it again, with From Out of Nowhere.

It was Lynne’s genius – illustrated in songs such as Mr. Blue Sky, Livin’ Thing and Evil Woman – that led Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield to proclaim: “ELO are better than The Beatles!” And even Jeff Lynne never dreamed he’d hear that.

15) Balance Of Power (Epic, 1986)

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In the mid-80s, after 15 years of ELO, Jeff Lynne was seeking new challenges. He was recording as a solo artist and working as writer and producer for others, including Dave Edmunds and ABBA’s Agnetha Faltskog. When he returned to ELO (now reduced to a core of three), the whiff of contractual obligation was in the air.

Balance Of Power completed a sorry decline into bland soft rock. It wasn’t so much bad as plain average. “I’m actually quite pleased with the way this one turned out,” Lynne said recently. But back in ’86, he wasn’t so happy. Shortly after this album’s release, a tour aborted, ELO split up.

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14) Secret Messages (Jet, 1983)

Conceived by Lynne as a double album – an idea nixed by ELO’s major label distributor CBS – Secret Messages was whittled down to a regular 10-track album, and even then it was thin gruel. Rock ‘N’ Roll Is King was a top 20 hit, but the song was as hokey as its title. Four Little Diamonds sounded like something The Beatles had knocked off in five minutes when they were bored. And while the album’s title track had a decent tune, its processed 80s sound was evidence of a band losing its way.

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13) Xanadu (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Jet, 1980)

On ELO’s 1981 concept album Time, Jeff Lynne pondered mankind’s future and sang in a voice from a far-off age: ‘Remember the good old 1980s/When things were so uncomplicated…’ What Lynne the visionary didn’t foresee was ELO’s demise in the coming decade. But they began the 80s with another massive hit, albeit one that alienated many rock fans.

Xanadu, the soundtrack to a silly Hollywood musical, featured five songs by the movie’s star Olivia Newton-John (including a sappy duet with Cliff Richard), four by ELO, and a camp title track performed by ELO and Newton-John together. Mercifully, ELO’s songs were strong, especially All Over The World, one of the last classics from the band’s golden era.

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12) Zoom (Epic, 2001)

A Jeff Lynne solo album in all but name, Zoom featured one other member of the definitive ELO line-up in keyboard player Richard Tandy, plus guest appearances from George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The album was not quite the return to the classic ELO sound that fans might have wished for, but in its best moments – notably on the elegant ballad Moment In Paradise – Lynne proved he could do ELO pretty much on his own. Or rather, as the old song goes, with a little help from his friends.

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11. From Out of Nowhere (Columbia 2019)

Like 2015’s Alone In The Universe, Lynne plays almost every note on the album – guitars, bass, piano, drums, keyboards. He sings all the lead vocals and harmonies. He produces (of course). The only other musicians who play on it are engineer Steve Jay, who adds a little percussion, and ELO keyboard player Richard Tandy, who plays a piano solo on One More Time.

Some of the tracks are a little throaway, but some are truly worthy of the legacy. Down Came The Rain, the upbeat Time Of Our Life and One More Time rock, the way Traveling Wilburys or post-Beatles Lennon rocked. Losing You uses many of the same studio tricks used on Lynne’s co-production of The Beatles’ ’95 single Free As A Bird. But why not?

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10) Alone In The Universe (Columbia, 2015)

Although this album was credited to Jeff Lyne’s ELO, it was, like Zoom before it, a solo record. Only more so. Apart from Lynne himself, only two other people were on it – his daughter Laura singing background vocals on two songs, and engineer Steve Jay playing percussion.

If Lynne wanted to call it ELO, he had every right – it was always his band. And while Alone In The Universe was not the full-blown ELO of Mr. Blue Sky or Evil Woman, it was still a fine late-career comeback for Lynne, with a couple of beautiful and magical songs in When I Was A Boy and All My Life.

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9) Discovery (Jet, 1979)

By 1979 ELO were one of the biggest bands in the world, but Jeff Lynne faced a tricky dilemma: how to follow an album as brilliant and successful as Out Of The Blue? Lynne’s response was bold, to say the least.

With disco music still flourishing, ELO got funky on an album later nicknamed “Disco-very!” by keyboard player Richard Tandy. Amazingly, it worked. Discovery was ELO’s first No.1 and produced four UK Top 10 singles: Shine A Little Love, The Diary Of Horace Wimp, Don’t Bring Me Down and double-A-side Confusion/Last Train To London. Moreover, ELO’s signature sound remained largely intact.

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8) ELO II (Harvest, 1973)

After a promising start, ELO could have fallen at the second fence when Roy Wood quit during the making of this album to form Wizzard. But Lynne carried on with an expanded line-up, and the album was moderately successful, breaking the UK Top 40 and yielding the band’s second Top 10 hit, a version of Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven, a natural fit for ELO.

With just five tracks on its original vinyl format, ELO II has a heavy progressive rock influence, most evident on the King Crimson/Beatles hybrid In Old England Town (one of two songs recorded with Wood) and the 11-minute Kuiama. But the best song was Mama, the first sign of Lynne’s pop genius.

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7) On The Third Day (Harvest, 1973)

Although it bombed in the UK, ELO’s third album was a minor hit in America, where “the English guys with the big fiddles” were, by 1973, a major concert draw. They also had friends in high places. Glam rock superstar Marc Bolan played lead guitar with Lynne on this album’s big rock tune, Ma-Ma-Ma Belle. And to Lynne’s delight, John Lennon raved about the album’s hit single Showdown, subsequently dubbing ELO “son of Beatles”.

Lynne paid his own tribute to Lennon on Bluebird Is Dead, and went completely overboard with a rocking version of Edvard Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King. But Showdown is Lynne’s favourite song on an album even he admits is “very obscure”.

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6) Electric Light Orchestra (Harvest, 1972)

Lynne was still a member of The Move, alongside Roy Wood and future ELO drummer Bev Bevan, when he wrote the very first ELO song, 10538 Overture. With Wood playing a cheap Chinese cello, multi-tracked by Lynne, the song sounded to Wood’s ears like a “monster heavy metal orchestra”. 10538 Overture became the new group’s mission statement, the opening fanfare on a debut album described by Melody Maker as “a gas”.

Wood’s left-field sensibilities led the nascent ELO into what Lynne later called “some really strange places”, but 10538 Overture was a Top 10 UK hit. Def Leppard covered the song in 2006, but as Leppard’s Joe Elliott noted, Paul Weller ripped it off for The Changingman in ’95.

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5) Time (Jet, 1981)

It’s strange that an album that went to No.1 in the UK should end being largely forgotten many years down the line, but so it is with Time. It is revered by some diehard fans as one of ELO’s greatest albums. Beyond that is remembered only for its one major hit single, Hold On Tight.

But it is one of the most ambitious records that Jeff Lynne ever created – a concept album in the classic prog rock tradition, based on time travel, but with the influence of synth-pop prevalent throughout, and some wonderful songs including Twilight, Ticket To The Moon and Another Heart Breaks. If there is a lost classic in the ELO catalogue, this is it.

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4) Face The Music (Jet, 1975)

1975 was a strange year for ELO. Face The Music, their fifth album, reached the Top 10 in the US, but in the UK, like the group’s previous two albums, it didn’t even chart. It did, however, produce a UK hit single, albeit belatedly.

Evil Woman, a song written in 20 minutes and initially dismissed as filler by Jeff Lynne, gave ELO their first domestic Top 10 hit in three years, and set them up nicely for the next album, A New World Record. Evil Woman remains one of ELO’s best-loved songs, a genuine 70s pop classic and the highlight of an album that includes several great songs (Strange Magic, Waterfall) and one outright turkey, the daft Down Home Town.

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3) Eldorado (Jet, 1974)

Loftily subtitled A Symphony By The Electric Light Orchestra, the group’s fourth album is described by Lynne as “one of yer actual concept albums.” The concept itself was somewhat vague. “It’s about a dream world,” said Lynne. But undoubtedly, Eldorado represented a big leap forward for ELO.

Working with a full orchestra for the first time, instead of multi-tracking violins and cellos, Lynne was finally able to realise the sound that was in his impressively furry head. The album’s centrepiece, Mister Kingdom, is a grand orchestral take on John Lennon’s Across The Universe. But best of all is Can’t Get It Out Of My Head, one of Lynne’s most beautiful songs, surprisingly covered in 2007 by Velvet Revolver.

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2) A New World Record (Jet, 1976)

ELO’s sixth album was their big international breakthrough. Hitting the Top 10 in every country in which it was released, A New World Record sold five million units worldwide. Its title – inspired by the Montreal Olympics, which held the world’s attention while the band were recording in Munich – was fitting for an album that elevated ELO to global fame.

At home, the album produced three Top 10 singles with Livin’ Thing, Telephone Line and Rockaria!, the latter a prime example of Lynne’s classical/rock style, complete with boogie riff, sawing strings, trilling opera singer and references to Wagner, Beethoven and more. “I was quietly confident about the songs,” Lynne later commented. No wonder.

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1) Out Of The Blue (Jet, 1977)

Jeff Lynne’s magnum opus is one of the classic double albums, his answer to The Beatles’ White Album, and ELO’s crowning glory. Lynne wrote the whole of Out Of The Blue, 17 songs, in just four weeks, alone at a Swiss Alpine retreat. Inspiration came to him on the first sunny morning, when, as he later recalled, “The mountains were lit up, and I came up with Mr. Blue Sky.”

A mini-symphony in itself, Mr. Blue Sky was the touchtone for an album on which Lynne gave full rein to his ambitions: a deluxe rock odyssey incorporating dazzling arrangements, state-of-the-art studio wizardry and, most importantly, great songwriting. Selling eight million copies in a year, it was a global phenomenon.

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Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO and Q. He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss, and currently works as content editor for Total Guitar. He lives in Bath – of which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!”

The hornet’s buzz of a tattoo needle echoes down a ground-floor corridor in Kaue, a venue-come-arts centre perched on the edge of a roundabout in a quiet suburb of the modest-sized German city of Gelsenkirchen. Usually this place is home to a mix of comedy and music – recent international names to play here include Walter Trout and Ten Years After. Today it’s being used for something different. 

Later this evening, the nearby Veltins-Arena stadium will host the opening night of AC/DC’s first tour in eight years, and Kaue has been repurposed for the occasion. For the next few days this Tardis-like brick building, with its warren of passageways, performance rooms, bars and outdoor drinking spaces, has been transformed into the High Voltage Dive Bar. 

Inside it’s an AC/DC fan’s fever dream. A giant display of classic AC/DC posters greets punters as they walk in. Upstairs the darkened main room is lit by the red glow of the massive AC/DC logo from the Shot In The Dark video, its outline reflected in the glossy black floor as people pose for photos with Angus Young-style Gibson SG or Malcolm Young signature Gretsch guitars. 

There are merch stands where fans can buy AC/DC vinyl, T-shirts, caps, baby grows, bath robes, shot glasses and pretty much anything else their name can be printed on, before hitting the food stall for a burger that has the AC/DC logo stamped on the bun. And for those brave souls who want to prove their love of the band is more than skin-deep, there are a pair of tattooists inking era-specific variations of that same logo on the bodies of devoted fans. 

Dominik is one of them. He has a raw-looking Razors Edge-era logo on his arm. It looks like it hurt. “The pain was okay,” he says casually, as the tattooists behind him clean their needles in readiness for their next victim. “I can tolerate pain.” Dominik was introduced to the band via the mix tapes his dad made for him, although he gets bonus hipster points for having 1975’s Aussie-only TNT as his favourite album. He’s attending the second of the two shows AC/DC are playing here in Gelsenkirchen in a couple of nights, and it will be the first time he’s seen them.

“The last time they played in Germany was the exact week I was doing my last exams in school, so I had to decide between the exams and the concert,” he says. “I was not expecting another tour, especially now that not all the long-time members are in the band. There was no way I was missing them this time. Does anyone know if they’ll be back?” 

It’s a sentiment echoed by Hansi, an early 50-something currently drinking a beer under one of the canopies in the beer garden. He’s one of several people who have gone full Angus cosplay: schoolboy cap, white shirt, shorts. It’s a release from the suit he has to wear as the boss of his own small business. “Which other band can you dress up as a schoolboy for?” he says with faultless German logic. 

Hansi first saw AC/DC as a kid in the mid-80s, and hasn’t missed them on any of their tours here since. “I considered flying to see them in the desert,” he says, referring to their comeback appearance at last year’s Power Trip festival in the US, “but my wife said it was too expensive.” 

He’s excited for tonight, even if German reserve prevents him from duck-walking in circles at the prospect. “I hoped they would return, but I didn’t expect them to,” he says. “It might be the last chance I have to see them.” He takes a gulp of his beer and adjusts his schoolboy cap. “So I am going to enjoy them.”

Guten abend, then, and welcome to the show no one expected but everyone wanted. When AC/DC bowed out at the end of their Rock Or Bust tour eight years ago they were battered, bruised and depleted. 

Malcolm Young, their founding rhythm guitarist and steel-hearted commander-in-chief, was at home, stricken by the dementia that would claim his life the following year. Phil Rudd, AC/DC’s all-time greatest drummer, was on the naughty step after being caught fag-deep in some ill-advised drug-and-death-threat-related shenanigans. Singer Brian Johnson retired injured halfway through the tour, his hearing in danger of failing completely (last-minute sub Axl Rose famously stepped in to save the day, although even he did it while sitting on a giant throne with his leg in a cast). 

When bassist Cliff Williams announced he was retiring at the end of the Rock Or Bust tour, that seemed to be that. So long, and thanks for all the riffs. Except AC/DC are the world’s least sentimental band, and there was no way retirement, potential hearing loss, legal trouble, death or any combination of the above was going to stop them. 

While 2020’s Power Up album might have been a surprise, it wasn’t actually that much of a surprise to long-time ’DC watchers (although just how good it sounded compared with the pedestrian Rock Or Bust was unexpected). Even last year’s Power Trip appearance, along with Metallica, Judas Priest, Tool and more made sense, although all but the most optimistic devotee saw that more as a valedictory one-off than the start of a new chapter for this venerable band. 

Yet here we are, at the Veltins-Arena, a vast covered stadium that usually plays home to football team FC Schalke O4 (currently in the German equivalent of the Championship, but sleeping giants according to locals). 

Tonight, 70,000 people – at least a third of whom are wearing light-up devil horns in grand modern AC/DC fashion – are here for a moment many of them doubted would happen. The fact that it’s being trumpeted as the band’s 50th anniversary is cause for double celebration, even if pedants will point out the band played their very first gig on New Year’s Eve 1973.

The lights dim at 8.30 on the nose, and the giant screens that span the stage pop into life with an animated intro video featuring a flame-red hot rod with lightning-bolt furry dice hanging from the rear-view mirror and an Angus Young hood ornament, screeching down the local autobahn and into some virtual backstage area. There’s a roar from the crowd as the band appear, not exactly erupting on to the massive stage as ambling unassumingly into view, and crack straight into steamrolling version of If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It).

“It’s wonderful to see ya all again,” Johnson mutters cheerfully at the end of tonight’s opening number, like he’s walked into an afternoon session at his local boozer rather than kicking off his band’s first tour in eight years. “Enjoy yourselves, okay?”

If his voice isn’t the force of nature it once was, he’s still a top-level showman – the Andy Capp of rock’n’roll, complete with between-song patter that seems to consist of a series of unintelligible mumbles, phlegmy coughs, random noise and what at one point sounds like a Tarzan impression.

The AC/DC on stage tonight are a different band to the one that crossed the finish line on the Rock Or Bust tour. Malcolm is gone for ever, and so, seemingly, is Phil Rudd. Stevie Young is back for his third tour of duty, 36 years after first deputising for Malcolm on the Blow Up Your Video tour while the guitarist dried out off the road. 

Then there’s the new boys: 54-year-old American drummer Matt Haug, who played his first show with AC/DC at Power Trip, and 53-year-old Chris Chaney on bass, who is making his AC/DC debut. The former goes for hard-hitting power over Rudd’s effortless, fag-in-the-gob snap, but it suits a venue this big. Chaney, meanwhile, has clearly been briefed on the job of AC/DC bass player, which is to hold things down in front of the wall of amps and speakers cabs at the back of the stage, venturing to the microphone twice per song to sing a backing vocal in time with Stevie Young then back-pedalling straight to the back to where he started. It hasn’t been broke for the past 50 years, so why fix it now? 

Yet those changes are purely cosmetic when it comes down to it. As long as there’s a man in a school uniform up on stage, AC/DC remains AC/DC. Angus Young may be a silver-topped 69-year-old who isn’t quite as limber as he used to be, but he’s still the absolute blueprint of what a rock’n’roll guitarist should be, duckwalking through Riff Raff and spinning on his back like a silver-haired turtle at the climax of the extended, ever-electrifying Let There Be Rock. And if his mid-solo striptease is now a thing of the past, well, maybe that’s one concession to age we can grant him.

Tonight’s set-list is a lightly remixed version of the one they played at Power Trip, with the same songs played mostly in the same order. If You Want Blood and Shot Down In Flames aside, the first half of the 24-song set is loaded with post-Back In Black songs: Hells Bells, You Shook Me All Night Long, Back In Black itself (which sees the band rendered in black-and-white on the screens), Thunderstruck, Stiff Upper Lip and Rock And Roll Train. The new album is represented by Shot In The Dark and Demon Eyes, but sadly there’s no place for Through The Mists Of Time, one of the best songs they’ve written since Back In Black. 

The second half reverses things, focusing on the Bon Scott years (which, amazingly, ended 24 years ago): Sin City, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, High Voltage, Whole Lotta Rosie, TNT and so on. There’s nothing that anyone who has seen AC/DC previously hasn’t heard them play before, but then no one’s complaining, given that most people never expected to hear them again. 

It’s a steamrolling experience, and one that’s difficult to criticise in the moment. Looking back, maybe there could have been a few more surprises in the set list – there are people here who’d pay good money to hear Nervous Shakedown, Shake Your Foundations and Heatseeker again, or even The Jack once more for old time’s sake. And as impressive as those screens are, they’re no substitute for inflatable Rosies or giant wrecking balls. 

Thankfully, the enormous bell that descends from the ceiling during Hells Bells has survived, as have the six massive cannons that explode from the back of the stage during the inevitable show closer For Those About To Rock (We Salute You). 

As fireworks explode on either side of the stage, threatening to take off the roof with them, there’s a roar of appreciation from the crowd that’s edged with a mix of familiarity and relief. 

As the Classic Rock contingent heads back to our hotel, we take the long route past the High Voltage Dive Bar at the Kaue club. The lights are off, the tattooists’ needles have fallen silent, and there’s no sign of what’s inside. But it’ll be open again when AC/DC return to town for their second gig here in a couple of nights. Then it’s onwards to the next venue, and the next one. What happens after this European run ends in the summer is anyone’s guess, but history has proven time and time again that only a fool writes AC/DC off.

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.

On Earth As It Is In Heaven is the album that most divides opinion among Angel fans. While you could hardly call it their Marmite album, as I’ve yet to encounter an Angel fan who truly loathes the record, it is – bar their 1999 comeback album In The Beginning – the Angel release that has disappointed fans the most. Its mixture of songs remains confusing, while its production promised so much, but didn’t quite deliver. Still, the album has enjoyed a great deal more respect in the years since its release, as fans have learned more about its gestation and grown to understand this most curious record. 

Angel’s third album, released in March 1977, On Earth… contained the kind of pomp rock epics that the band had excelled at on their earlier releases – including Cast The First Stone (a holdover from the group’s second record, Helluva Band) and the haunting Just A Dream – as well as straight-ahead hard-rock fare such as Can You Feel It. It was also, however, a rather ambitious record. 

We now know that the group who wrote and recorded it were in a state of flux, awkwardly moving from their progressive hard-rock roots towards what they – and, perhaps more pertinently, the record company – hoped would be a more chart-friendly sound that leaned heavily on their undoubted Beatles influences. The poppier Telephone Exchange, ridiculously titled Big Boy (Let’s Do It Again) and quirky That Magic Touch seemed a little out of place. 

White Lightning, meanwhile, was a reappraisal of a song that Angel guitarist Punky Meadows and bassist Mickie Jones had first recorded with former band Bux. Co-written with that band’s vocalist Ralph Mormon (who sadly passed away in August 2014), the Angel version retained some of the funkier elements of the original, but was now topped with a sprinkling of Gregg Giuffria’s piano skills and had been finely rehearsed as part of Angel’s live set throughout 1976.

Having issued their self-titled debut album in October 1975 and followed it up with Helluva Band a mere seven months later in May 1976, Angel had suddenly come to something of a premature crossroads in their career. 

Despite making their presence known on the live circuit, where they established loyal pockets of support for themselves in places like Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis, the quintet (completed by vocalist Frank DiMino and drummer Barry Brandt) had failed to make serious headway into the Billboard charts, either through album sales or via the singles market. This was despite the group being voted the best new band of 1976 in the influential Circus magazine’s readers’ poll, ahead of Heart and Boston. 

When it came time to begin work on the third album, Casablanca Records felt that fresh input was required and that the production team of Derek Lawrence and Big Jim Sullivan – who had helmed the first two records – should be replaced by someone with a more impressive reputation. And it would appear that there was no one bigger in the eyes of Casablanca executives at that time than former Hendrix producer Eddie Kramer, who had helped propel Kiss into the international spotlight through his work on Alive! and the recent Rock And Roll Over album. 

Kramer wasn’t Angel’s first choice. “We had talks with Roy Thomas Baker of Queen fame,” Frank DiMino once told me. “But Eddie was an intriguing guy, and we got along really well with him.” 

Well, to a point. Gregg Giuffria once admitted he “locked [Kramer] out of the studio when I recorded my keyboard intros!” 

Although the album was originally set to be recorded at the Record Plant in LA, the group reconvened in the Emerald Castle, located above The Source restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, using a mobile facility to record in the empty rooms. The band also used some quite expensive – not to mention innovative for the time – technology by installing video monitor hookups in the rooms to view each other laying down the various tracks. 

While the majority of the album was recorded at the Castle, some of DiMino’s vocals were later cut at the Record Plant and at Electric Lady Studios in New York City. 

“Eddie and I were in New York when [band manager] David Joseph called to say that the album was going to be released in Japan earlier than everywhere else, as we had an impending tour there,” recalls Frank. “It wasn’t really ready, but we agreed that we’d mix it quickly and then go back and spend more time on it. At least two tracks, including Can You Feel It, have early mixes on the Japanese record. The different running order on the Japanese version was down to putting something together quickly. We put more thought into it once the album was ready for release for all other markets.”

It’s this Japanese mix that Rock Candy tastefully reissued in 2012 and, I have to say, the running order is, to these ears, rather more cohesive than the more common version. 

Angel toured Japan in February 1977. It would be the only time the original band would play outside of North America and, according to the band’s tour manager, Bill Schereck, the visit was against expert advice as the main promoter in Japan had felt it was a little too early for the band to have toured there. 

“It was a great adventure, but a bit of a debacle,” Bill told me. “David Joseph wanted to push things faster. Another promoter offered us a lot of money to do it, so we went.” 

One of the main issues concerning the crew was that the Japanese tour would introduce the band’s new stage set. There was an awful lot of it, adding to the logistical headaches of touring abroad for the first time. Developed with the aid of illusionist Johnny Gaughan and featuring talking logos and miraculous onstage appearances and exits – not to mention an over-the-top introduction voiced by Marvin Miller of 50s US TV show The Millionaire, set to the theme tune from Ben Hur – Angel’s stage show has long since become the stuff of legend. 

It was actually touch and go whether the equipment would make it back in time for the commencement of Angel’s next US tour. The last Japanese show was in Nagoya on February 17th, and the first date in the States was at the Santa Monica Civic a mere two days later, but there was a problem flying the equipment back to the States – the promoter had paid for the freight costs with a rubber cheque that bounced before the gear left Japan, meaning there was a real danger that the band, who had already flown ahead on an earlier flight, would get to the venue and have nothing to work with. Thankfully, the problem was resolved with seconds to spare.

Still, from the band’s perspective the Japanese trip was a success. “It was absolutely crazy,” recalls Frank DiMino. “We couldn’t work out why it was happening for us in Japan but not in the States. We played eight shows and they were amazing. The kids followed us everywhere.” 

Of course, when discussing, some mention must be made of the packaging, as On Earth… introduced Angel’s infamous ambigram logo, based upon an original design by Bob Petrick. 

“I started randomly doing invertible lettering pieces in 1975,” Petrick himself told me a few years ago. “The word ‘Angel’ was one of the first pieces I designed. Although I wasn’t very familiar with Angel’s music, I had liked the graphics on their records, but sensed they were looking for something to set them apart, since they were already an extremely eccentric and flamboyant act. I had heard the band was performing at the Spectrum in Philadelphia – this was back in 1976 – and decided to be bold and go directly to the management. 

“I showed my artwork in a rough stage and to my shock everyone liked it and immediately saw its potential. That was all I needed, to be inspired to do the best piece I had ever done. Thanks to the Angel logo, I later got a gig at the Art Hotel design studio in LA. I wish that went better than it did, but it was quite an experience, and I did do logos for Lipps Inc and a few others, including a piece for Donna Summer.” 

Even with great packaging and unique logos, the chart breakthrough that both Angel and Casablanca craved would still elude the group. Despite heavy touring throughout the US until mid May ’77, On Earth As It Is In Heaven would only peak on the Billboard charts at No.76, with That Magic Touch reaching No.77 in the singles chart. Frustrated, the band went back to the drawing board. Changes were afoot, the most significant of these being the decision to fire bassist Mickie Jones. “We had gone as far as we could with Mickie,” states DiMino. 

Jones’ replacement was St Louis-born Felix Robinson, at the time playing in a jazz rock troupe called The Word, who just so happened to be managed by Bill Schereck. Felix had previously played in a band called Griffin with Danny Prosser (later of the Jack Street Band) and had made his recording debut back in 1974 on an album released through A&M by trumpet player Phil Driscoll. Robinson’s recruitment would lead to a new phase in Angel’s trajectory and, at that point in time, the future looked White Hot…

A resident of Germany in the late 1970s, Dave Reynolds returned to the UK a full-on metalhead thanks to life-changing exposure to Kiss, Angel, Cheap Trick, Van Halen and Status Quo. Arriving home with the NWOBHM in full swing, he would go on to write for Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Metal Forces and AOR. He is a co-author of the International Encyclopaedia Of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal.