{"id":720703,"date":"2026-06-23T07:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T07:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/720703\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T07:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T07:10:10","slug":"rocks-20-greatest-one-album-wonders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/720703\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock’s 20 greatest one-album wonders"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s better to burn out than fade away, as the old saying goes. While countless bands from the Rolling Stones<\/a> down would argue with that, there\u2019s something to be said about releasing one brilliant album and then vanishing.<\/p>\n

Rock\u2019n\u2019roll has served up its share of one-album wonders over the decades, from psychedelic mavericks to hard rock hotshots. Some have imploded due to intra-band bust-ups, some butted up against the brick walls of record industry apathy and public disinterest, while others met a more tragic end. But they all had something in common: namely, a legacy that amounts to one perfect record.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve rounded up the very best of rock\u2019s one-album wonders here. There are rules, naturally. We\u2019re talking bands who made just one studio album during their lifetimes \u2013 posthumous records, remixes, compilations and live albums don\u2019t count. But we are including one-off solo albums by established musicians, and albums by supergroups<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From Louder<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So here they are. Rock\u2019s greatest one-album wonders.<\/p>\n

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\"Lightning\n<\/p>\n

Mother Love Bone \u2013 Apple (1990)<\/p>\n

It was the perfect album. At the perfect time. Not just for music, but also for me. Apple, which I picked up on its day of release, remains one of a handful of records of which I genuinely wore out the grooves. And what grooves.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Led by the flamboyant Andy Wood \u2013 his voice the bastard larynx of Axl Rose and Steven Tyler \u2013 alongside future Pearl Jam men Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, Seattle\u2019s Mother Love Bone<\/a> combined the wham, glam, thank you, ma\u2019am of the hairsprayed LA set (who had been my music of choice) with the nascent, rain-sodden doom merchants of grunge (who would capture my heart from here).<\/p>\n

From the kaleidoscopic This Is Shangri-La to the gentle Stargazer, the delicate Crown Of Thorns and the scorching Holy Roller, Apple had something for everyone.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

Sadly, Andy Wood never saw his album released, a heroin overdose taking his life weeks before it hit the shelves. His death would inspire Temple Of The Dog<\/a>, but that, as they say, is another story.<\/p>\n

Si\u00e2n Llewellyn<\/p>\n

Lift To Experience \u2013 The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads<\/p>\n

Come the turn of the millennium, anyone fortunate enough to have seen Lift To Experience<\/a> live will have witnessed a fearsome roar of shuddering intensity, delivered by three scary-looking Texans with beards as long as their songs. That apocalyptic power was duly loaded into 2001\u2019s The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, a shattering concept album in which the Lone Star State was an end-of-days Promised Land crawling with Biblical visions; a place where the sustained drone of My Bloody Valentine met free-form noise-rock in an epic sheet-wave of sound.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, it was a very real piece of psycho-geography, at least for those who made it. Both frontman Josh \u2018Buck\u2019 Pearson and drummer Andy \u2018The Boy\u2019 Young were sons of southern preachers, raised in deeply religious households in which God was a dual symbol of beauty and terror, lending the album a visceral charge that served as the band\u2019s proof of existence. You can hear this conflict all over tracks like Down With The Prophets and the 10-minute With Crippled Wings, pieces that feel like titanic struggles of faith as much as like conventional tunes.<\/p>\n

The band blew apart \u2013 undone by drugs, booze and familial grief \u2013 shortly after the release of The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, relegating Lift To Experience to the province of one-album wonders.<\/p>\n

Rob Hughes<\/p>\n

Blind Faith \u2013 Blind Faith (1969)<\/p>\n

Even taking into account everything else the three main protagonists (bassist Ric Grech was, really, an Economy passenger flying Upper Class) have in their back catalogues, Blind Faith is an album Eric Clapton<\/a>, Ginger Baker and Steve Winwood could be proud of. \u201cIt was pretty good and stands up well,\u201d said Winwood. \u201cIn retrospect, people even think it has a few classics on there.\u201d<\/p>\n

More soulful than Cream, heavier and bluesier than Traffic, it features terrific performances. On its three standout tracks \u2013 Had To Cry Today, Sea Of Joy and Presence Of The Lord \u2013 Clapton\u2019s playing is focused, crafted and wonderfully melodic; Winwood\u2019s Hammond adds colourful washes, his at times on-the-limit vocal delivery recalling his R&B belter days with The Spencer Davis Group.<\/p>\n

While the band was never going to live up to expectations for those who had it on equal billing with the Second Coming, the album did offer a tantalising glimpse of what might have been had Clapton\u2019s plan to reshape Cream with the addition of Winwood come to fruition. But even with this line-up, none of them expected it to hold their interest for more than just the one album.<\/p>\n

Critically acclaimed and derided in equal measure \u2013 often for the same things \u2013 in the US it had staggering advance orders of 250,000, although conversion to sales stalled when half the stores there refused to stock it because of its controversial cover. And still it was a UK and US No.1.<\/p>\n

Paul Henderson<\/p>\n

Sea Hags \u2013 Sea Hags (1989)<\/p>\n

If ever there was a band that had it all and then blew it, it was the Sea Hags. After getting Metallica\u2019s Kirk Hammett to produce their demo, the San Francisco quartet roped in the hottest producer around for their debut album: Mike Clink, fresh from working on Appetite For Destruction. \u201cWe\u2019ll be the new Guns N\u2019 Roses if anyone wants to point that at us,\u201d said frontman Ron Yocom, acknowledging the expectations.<\/p>\n

The album came out at the height of hair metal, but the band\u2019s \u201cmusicality\u201d and \u201c70s vibe\u201d (Yocom\u2019s descriptions) translated into the kind of dirty, funky rock that Aerosmith<\/a> made in the 70s. It was loaded with great songs, from the charged Half The Way Valley to the menacing finale Under The Night Stars.<\/p>\n

But the Sea Hags screwed up, big time. When they played London\u2019s Marquee club, Yocom was so drunk he fell head-first into a flight case. He was also addicted to heroin, as was bassist Chris Schlosshardt. And after the album stalled at No.150 on the US chart the band split up.<\/p>\n

Yocom planned to re-form the Sea Hags, but Schlosshardt died in February 1991. This one great album became his, and the band\u2019s, epitaph.<\/p>\n

Paul Elliott<\/p>\n

Hughes\/Thrall \u2013 Hughes\/Thrall (1982)<\/p>\n

By the end of the decade it wasn\u2019t easy being a 70s supergroup refugee. Exhibit A: Deep Purple<\/a>\u2019s singing bassist Glenn Hughes. His first solo album, 1977\u2019s Play Me Out, sounded too much like Stevie Wonder for the denim brigade, and it bombed. Then, in 1981, he met Pat Thrall, guitarist for Canadian rocker Pat Travers.<\/p>\n

Within months the pair had signed a deal and were recording in a Malibu studio with Eric Clapton\u2019s old producer Rob Fraboni. So far, so good. Soon, though, Free\/Stones engineer Andy Johns replaced Fraboni, and session drummers came and went in H\/T\u2019s irresolvable quest for perfection. \u201cCocaine was consumed nightly,\u201d Hughes admitted.<\/p>\n

The duo\u2019s only album was released in August that year. Its futuristic sound encompassed the blue-eyed soul with which Toto were raiding the US charts (The Look In Your Eye), new wave-ish pop (Beg, Borrow Or Steal) and priapic hard rock (Muscle And Blood). Yes, those overwrought lyrics and jingling guitar-synths are pure 1982, but the spooked-sounding power ballad First Step Of Love and Thrall\u2019s idiosyncratic guitar playing on Hold Out Your Life are still laughably brilliant, while the whole record thrums with nervous energy.<\/p>\n

Sadly, Hughes\/Thrall tanked. The Class As didn\u2019t help, but its USP was also its biggest drawback. Most rock fans preferred the simpler charms of fellow Deep Purple offshoots Whitesnake or Rainbow, while American pop audiences opted for that first Asia<\/a> album instead. Since then, H\/T has been hailed as a lost AOR classic, but it\u2019s too heavy \u2013 and peculiar \u2013 to fit neatly into any category.<\/p>\n

Apparently, a second album was started but remains unfinished. It couldn\u2019t possibly be better than this.<\/p>\n

Mark Blake<\/p>\n

Jeff Buckley \u2013 Grace (1994)<\/p>\n

In 1991, the son of a dead folk singer sat down to jam with an ex-Beefheart guitarist in a West Village apartment. And when <\/a>Jeff Buckley sang the first line of Grace\u2019s title track, Gary Lucas knew they had something.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy jaw dropped,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI said: \u2018Man, you\u2019re a phenomenon.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That octave-straddling swoop of a voice may be Grace\u2019s calling card, from the operatics of Mojo Pin to the shimmering cover of Leonard Cohen\u2019s Hallelujah, but equally impressive is its eclecticism. Buckley\u2019s influences pinballed between Led Zeppelin<\/a>, The Smiths, Bad Brains and Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Accordingly, Grace knows no boundaries, visiting smoky jazz on Lilac Wine, sprouting chest-hair on the bombastic Eternal Life and carving a buzzsaw riff through So Real. You sense a writer having creative differences with himself \u2013 and thriving on it.<\/p>\n

Released in the wilderness between grunge and Britpop, Grace was a commercial slow-burner, despite plaudits from Jimmy Page and Thom Yorke<\/a>. But Buckley\u2019s promise was curtailed when, in June 1997, his body was dredged from the Mississippi. The vaults would be swept for 1998\u2019s Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk, but Grace remains his spellbinding last goodbye.<\/p>\n

Henry Yates<\/p>\n

Toy Matinee \u2013 Toy Matinee (1990)<\/p>\n

It begins with some radio dial roulette; an orchestral crescendo\u2026 a blast of vocal harmony\u2026 a speedy flamenco guitar riff\u2026 Back in angsty-grungy 1990, this opening salvo was music to my ears. As I dug in I marvelled at their Foxtrot-era-Genesis-meets-Beatles balancing act. Virtuoso noodling looped through tight pop structures, huge hooks wrapped in hyper-literate, humorous lyrics about the apocalypse, surrealist art and Elvis impersonators. \u201cI wanted to write songs you could sink your teeth into,\u201d said singer\/multi-instrumentalist Kevin Gilbert.<\/p>\n

Gilbert formed Toy Matinee with Pat Leonard after a \u2018battle of the bands\u2019 contest. Leonard was a judge. Gilbert\u2019s band Giraffe won. The two bonded over a love of Jethro Tull and Steely Dan. Leonard, who had produced and written hits for Madonna, supplied studio time and an ace band. \u201cNo strings, no expectations,\u201d was how he described the sessions. \u201cWe made it without pressures to create a hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the single Last Plane Out generated radio buzz, the album never transcended cult status. Leonard, unwilling to tour, soon returned to his lucrative life as a producer. Gilbert, after helping then-girlfriend Sheryl Crow create Tuesday Night Music Club, and making a fine solo album, took his own life in 1996.<\/p>\n

Having gone in and out of print three times, Toy Matinee\u2019s heady charm still enthralls. \u201cAs bizarre as either of us could get,\u201d Leonard said, \u201cthe other could keep up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill DeMain<\/p>\n

The La\u2019s \u2013 The La\u2019s (1990)<\/p>\n

Lazily pegged as a proto-Britpop band, the self-titled album from The La\u2019s has more in common with 60s British pop than with the self-important strutting of Oasis et al: ringing guitars, fierce strumming and elliptical lyrics, sugar-coated with effortless melodies.<\/p>\n

Opener Son Of A Gun sets the scene: short, sharp and sweet, with singer\/songwriter Lee Mavers asserting his vocal presence amid tight harmonies, though the peak is the incandescent There She Goes with its chiming guitars and Scouse romanticism. Only the final introspective Looking Glass breaks the three-minute barrier, opening up new vistas to explore.<\/p>\n

The perfectionist Mavers hated the production and disowned the album. His issues ran so deep that, all these years on, he hasn\u2019t come even close to following it up.<\/p>\n

Hugh Fielder<\/p>\n

Burning Tree \u2013 Burning Tree (1990)<\/p>\n

\u2018Coulda, shoulda, woulda\u2019 sums up many one-album wonders, but in the case of Burning Tree, fronted by future Black Crowes<\/a> guitarist Marc Ford, it holds particularly true. Their sole record might have been a hit in another era. Instead it sank, thanks to bad timing, bad judgement and bad luck.<\/p>\n

While they took their cue from Jimi Hendrix and Cream, what separated them from many others was an exquisite pop ear, noticeable on the hook-heavy chorus of Mistreated Lover and the harmonised outro to Crush, one of the great unheralded songs about being in a band.<\/p>\n

Sadly, someone at their label decided to unbung the schedules by releasing nine albums on the same day, under the banner \u2018Epic Rock\u2019. Eight of the nine disappeared; Burning Tree glowed briefly and beautifully for the few who got to hear it. It remains a classic awaiting rediscovery.<\/p>\n

Jon Hotten<\/p>\n

Pride Tiger – The Lucky Ones (2007)<\/p>\n

It was a CD plonked on my desk by James Gill, a writer on Classic Rock\u2019s sister magazine, Metal Hammer: a plain white disc with the words \u2018Pride Tiger\u2019 scrawled on it in red marker. \u201cI think you\u2019ll like it,\u201d he said. It wasn\u2019t promising: three of the band had been in underachieving hellions 3 Inches Of Blood before leaving to scratch a more melodic itch. (\u201cAfter a while,\u201d singing drummer Matt Wood explained, \u201cmetal just becomes the same thing over and over.\u201d) Out went Iron Maiden<\/a> dual guitars, in came, er, Thin Lizzy<\/a> dual guitars.<\/p>\n

I did like it. I didn\u2019t stop listening to it for months. Fill Me In became the \u2018Most Played\u2019 song on my iTunes \u2013 an irresistible Boys Are Back In Town knock-off that could stand with Lynott\u2019s best. I bought the video of the title track from iTunes \u2013 it remains the only music video I have paid money for. Full of cool dudes and hot girls (but not in the usual leery way), it was a seductive vision of a future where the soundtrack to the best party in town had big riffs and swaggering choruses.<\/p>\n

So good was The Lucky Ones \u2013 and so frustrated were we by the fact that no UK label would sign bands like this \u2013 that we set up Powerage Records and signed them ourselves. The band played a triumphant set at Hard Rock Hell, winning over a hungover Saturday-morning audience, and stumbling around for the rest of the weekend, stoned and raving about being at a festival that featured Budgie and Thin Lizzy.<\/p>\n

And then? The album sold 850 copies on Powerage. Rock\u2019s future did not look like The Lucky Ones vid. It looked like Hard Rock Hell, like lots of hard work peppered with small victories and little financial return.<\/p>\n

The band split in the summer of 2009. Powerage shut up shop not long after. We\u2019re not embarrassed. For a moment there, Pride Tiger renewed our faith in new rock music, and The Lucky Ones stands as a lost classic. Someone should send a copy to Scott Gorham and Ricky Warwick asap.<\/p>\n

Scott Rowley<\/p>\n

Sex Pistols \u2013 Never Mind The Bollocks (1977)<\/p>\n

The Sex Pistols<\/a>\u2019 only proper studio album was just 39 minutes long, included four of their previous singles, and pre-dated the end of the band by a mere three months. Yet it remains one of the most influential and controversial records in history.<\/p>\n

With Johnny Rotten\u2019s abrasive vocals and provocative lyrics splayed across a wall of thrillingly direct guitars, Bollocks is a barrage of both gratuitous angst and elemental purity. While many punk \u2018classics\u2019 survive as nostalgia or well-meaning polemic, these compelling tirades against British society, hypocrisy and intellectual torpor still send rushes down your spine. Problems, Liar, Bodies and EMI (\u2018and you thought that we were faking\u2019) were miniature sonic snuff-movies, a dive into the previously unsayable. \u201cMy words are my bullets,\u201d said Rotten\/Lydon in 2008. \u201cThey meant a lot to my generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

As 1978 dawned, he was growling: \u201cEver get the feeling you\u2019ve been cheated?\u201d and the Pistols were shot. But they\u2019d hit the bullseye. Job done.<\/p>\n

Chris Roberts<\/p>\n

David + David \u2013 Boomtown (1986)<\/p>\n

Studio musicians and sometime producers David Baerwald and David Ricketts would find real, if fleeting, fame in 1993 as part of Sheryl Crow\u2019s Tuesday Night Music Club band. But that was a world away from the pair\u2019s collaboration Boomtown, released six years earlier.<\/p>\n

A bleak reading of America\u2019s underclass in the depths of the Reagan era, this was a collection of vignettes of lives full of wrong turnings, of dead-end jobs, of drink and drugs. First single Welcome To The Boomtown began with the desperate howl of Ricketts\u2019 guitar, before Baerwald dispatched his bitterly ironic lyric about a high-living drug addict and her lowlife dealer: \u2018Pick a habit, we got plenty to go around,\u2019 he sang over a thrumming pop-rock hook that date-stamped it to the mid-80s. Both unnerving and eminently hummable, it gave the duo a US Top 40 hit. The album followed it to No.39.<\/p>\n

The success was short-lived. Ricketts was apparently put off the hard rock fans they were attacting, and they disbanded before the album caught its second wind. Sheryl Crow beckoned, ensuring neither David would get this bloody again.<\/p>\n

Philip Wilding<\/p>\n

GTOs \u2013 Permanent Damage (1969)<\/p>\n

No one was ever sure what GTO actually stood for. Girls Together Occasionally? Girls Together Often? Girls Together Only, Outrageously, Orally, or Orgasmically? Essentially the GTO\u2019s were a crew of enterprising Hollywood rock groupies led by Pamela Ann Miller (later Pamela Des Barres) and Linda Sue Parker, who used the stage names Miss Pamela and Miss Sparky.<\/p>\n

With four other like-minded young women from the Sunset Strip they formed a performance group known as the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company, switching to The GTOs as they approached the orbit of Frank Zappa.<\/p>\n

Back in \u201969 Zappa was augmenting the Mothers Of Invention with pet projects on his Straight and Bizarre labels, such as Alice Cooper<\/a> and Wild Man Fischer.<\/p>\n

The GTOs became another of these endeavours. Lowell George, Russ Titelman and Ry Cooder were brought in to supply the music, and contributions also came from Jeff Beck, Davy Jones, Rod Stewart and Cynthia Plaster Caster. (Who wouldn\u2019t want to work with an ensemble of wild and sexually adept young women?)<\/p>\n

Sadly, somewhere along the line Zappa lost interest or ran out of budget. Permanent Damage was released as an unfinished social document, with potential songs staying as synchronised recitation, padded with anecdotes and snatches of conversation. Which is unfortunate, since the finished tracks \u2013 not least Do Me In Once And I\u2019ll Be Sad, Do Me in Twice And I\u2019ll Know Better (Circular Circulation) \u2013 suggests the GTOs deserved better.<\/p>\n

Mick Farren<\/p>\n

Coverdale Page \u2013 Coverdale Page (1993)<\/p>\n

In 1993 Jimmy Page was a guitarist in desperate need of a singer. I know because his manager had asked me to help find him one. I wish I could say teaming up with David Coverdale<\/a> was my suggestion, but that brainwave was Geffen executive John Kalodner\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The result was exactly what everybody secretly wanted: a Zeppelin album from the band\u2019s earliest, sexed-up days. Opening with blues rock colossus Shake My Tree, it was sheer bombastic bliss, from the mystic blues of Don\u2019t Leave Me This Way to grand finale Whisper A Prayer For The Dying \u2013 where Stairway To Heaven met Kashmir, no kidding.<\/p>\n

They played a few shows in Japan, before Page put in a call to Robert Plant, leaving this as one of rock\u2019s great \u2018What if?\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Mick Wall<\/p>\n

Derek And The Dominos \u2013 Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs (1970)<\/p>\n

If great music comes out of tragedy, then it\u2019s little wonder Derek And The Dominos<\/a>\u2019 sole album is a masterpiece. It was recorded amid drink and drug abuse and undiagnosed schizophrenia. But for all the travails surrounding it, the five musicians involved \u2013 Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Jim Gordon, Carl Radle and Bobby Whitlock \u2013 created something passionate and timeless that would stand as arguably the finest album of their respective careers.<\/p>\n

Layla itself is the most high-profile track, but the likes of Bell Bottom Blues and Tell The Truth are just as beautifully realised, combining pin-sharp musicianship with earthy spirituality and a true sense of joy. The overall impact is diverse, devastating.<\/p>\n

They attempted to record a second studio album, but the project was sunk by drugs and paranoia. Layla remains a stellar legacy. \u201cIt touched people where they needed to be touched,\u201d Bobby Whitlock says. \u201cIn their soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Malcolm Dome<\/p>\n

Temple Of The Dog \u2013 Temple Of The Dog (1991)<\/p>\n

Chuckles were hardly high on the grunge agenda at the best of times, but this one-off tribute to late Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood \u2013 a collaboration between Soundgarden singer\/Wood\u2019s flatmate Chris Cornell and the surviving members of MLB \u2013 had fewer laughs than your average BBC3 sitcom.<\/p>\n

Astonishingly, what could have been a turd in the swimming pool turned out to be the greatest album of the era. Cornell dialled down the wailing, imbuing Say Hello 2 Heaven and the Eddie Vedder-assisted Hunger Strike with a nobility that was alien to the plaid-shirted hordes, while Reach Down was a glorious exercise in rocking-out-as-catharism. Grunge had never been so moving, and it would never be again.<\/p>\n

Dave Everley<\/p>\n

Lowcraft \u2013 Manticore (1999)<\/p>\n

By the turn of the millennium, glam rock had been hijacked by the goth-spattered bumps and grinds of Manson, and Bowie-era grand gestures were in short supply. With the gilding on the Suede lily dulled by five years of familiarity, Portland, Oregon\u2019s Lowcraft crash-landed in post-Britpop London as the very exemplar of a band out of time.<\/p>\n

Fronted by Nathan Khyber \u2013 a statuesque fop who punctuated studied Bryan Ferry ennui with the androgynous allure of a Ziggy made flesh \u2013 Lowcraft dealt in emotive anthems, perpetually teetering on the brink of delicious desperation.<\/p>\n

Listening to the album now it\u2019s almost inconceivable that it should have been allowed to fall between the cracks: the hook-heavy crescendos of One Of Us, the narcotic dreamscape of Transcendental Meltdown, the pulsating prurience of Pornstar. It\u2019s glam\u2019s last hurrah, its lost masterpiece.<\/p>\n

A dispiriting toilet tour followed, but without adulation and stardom Lowcraft lost their mojo and duly split.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s naivet\u00e9 that allows you to create grand gestures,\u201d says Nathan, now making music both in a solo capacity and with Manticore producer Clark Stiles as The Good Listeners. \u201cWhen you\u2019re writing in the void you have an enormous voice, but once you see the wall you become diminished again. There was a lot of passion in our writing because we thought we could conquer the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ian Fortnam<\/p>\n

Sledgehammer \u2013 Blood On Their Hands (1983)<\/p>\n

John Betjeman might have wanted it bombed out of existence, but the unremarkable Berkshire town of Slough survived the poet\u2019s brickbats to spawn one of the NWOBHM<\/a>\u2019s most remarkable bands: power trio Sledgehammer.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d had a self-titled song on 1980\u2019s Metal For Muthas compilation but they failed to capitalise on it. When their one and only album, Blood On Their Hands, came out in 1983, the NWOBHM had long-since peaked and it sank without trace.<\/p>\n

Guitarist\/singer Mike Cooke was a serious-minded individual with strong religious beliefs, and Blood has an eccentric, off-kilter undercurrent that gives it an unusual edge. Over The Top 1914 is a bitter anti-war anthem, the Who-like 1984 offers a dose of Townshend-style cynicism, and the trippy Perfumed Garden sounds like an undiscovered 60s proto-metal anthem. Sledgehammer itself isn\u2019t about having your skull caved in at all, it\u2019s actually about God: \u2018It struck me like a sledgehammer that faith can move every mountain\u2019.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost impossible to find out what happened to the band. Google their name and you get Peter Gabriel. However, we did discover that drummer Ken Revell still lives in Slough. In an air-raid shelter, probably.<\/p>\n

Geoff Barton<\/p>\n

Shadow King \u2013 Shadow King (1991)<\/p>\n

It was fitting that the band formed by former Foreigner singer Lou Gramm and ex-Dio\/Whitesnake guitarist Vivian Campbell played their only live show on Friday 13th in London, if only because their luck was lousy. Within six months of their self-titled debut album, Campbell had quit for Def Leppard<\/a> and Shadow King\u2019s initial promise had withered on the vine.<\/p>\n

Poor timing aside, there\u2019s no doubting the quality of the music they made during their frustratingly brief existence. The 10 songs that made up the album were consistently classy hard rock. Campbell displayed his full arsenal of tricks, showboating his way through Once Upon A Time and displaying more restraint on the fragile Russia, but the defining moment came with Don\u2019t Even Know I\u2019m Alive, a slice of top-drawer, lighter-waving wimp-hem \u2013 which is ironic, since Gramm had cited ballad overload as his reason for leaving Foreigner.<\/p>\n

The singer blamed the group\u2019s fate on a lack of label attention, although the changing musical climate didn\u2019t help. Whatever the reason, Shadow King remains an underground classic.<\/p>\n

Dave Ling<\/p>\n

Skip Spence \u2013 Oar (1969)<\/p>\n

I chanced upon this wonderful thing while wading through the import racks at Harlequin Records in Soho circa 1971. John behind the counter smiled: \u201cNever heard it? Lucky bastard.\u201d<\/p>\n

The platter that hit my Bush turntable sounded like someone enveloped in demons but laughing at his plight. Oar? Or? Awe. The stoner on the cover was 23 yet appeared to have accumulated decades of experience, not all agreeable. Come along for the ride \u2013 at your own risk.<\/p>\n

Canadian-born, California-raised Alexander \u2018Skip\u2019 Spence<\/a> ran with the West Coast San Francisco elite. He played guitar with Quicksilver Messenger Service in 1965, before Jefferson Airplane poached him to play drums on their debut album Takes Off.<\/p>\n

More maverick than team player, his wanderlust lead him to form Moby Grape<\/a>, who sacked him when he tried to axe his way into one of his bandmates\u2019 rooms in 1968. Deranged from LSD abuse and believing he was the antichrist, he was committed to a psychiatric ward and diagnosed with schizophrenia.<\/p>\n

On his release, he took himself to Nashville where he recorded an album of Old Testament intensity laced with moments of lucid self-realisation. The 12 songs that became Oar were made in virtual solitude, except for engineer Mike Figlio, in producer David Rubinson\u2019s Nashville studio on a primitive tape machine. He\u2019d only intended to demo, but Rubinson was so enthralled that he released the album naked \u2013 every stick played by the Skipper himself.<\/p>\n

This one-man psychedelic masterpiece dealt with childhood (Little Hands), the warp of fame (Lawrence Of Euphoria) and acknowledgements of madness (Weighted Down (The Prison Song), delivered in a vocal that sounded like a man living at the bottom of a mine shaft. Even so, that\u2019s a lovely, lovely voice, and the album\u2019s combination of cranky time signatures, labyrinthine lyrics, acid-drenched electric and acoustic guitars, and epic percussion (not least on closing track Grey\/Afro, a masterclass in drumming) are the products of true artistry.<\/p>\n

Alt-minimalism taken to the nth degree, Oar made zero chart impression when it was released in 1969 \u2013 in fact it was Columbia\u2019s worst-ever-selling LP at the time. It was subsequently hailed as a masterpiece by the likes of Robert Plant and Tom Waits. Sadly, Spence never benefitted from their plaudits. He died of lung cancer in 1999, aged 52. Oar is a great, if occasionally troubling, testament.<\/p>\n

Max Bell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s better to burn out than fade away, as the old saying goes. While countless bands from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-720703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}