L'album Hughes / Thrall fut , paraît-il , salvateur pour notre ami Glenn.
Cult Heroes No. 26: Hughes/Thrallgbarton /
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In rockin’ retrospect no one should’ve been surprised when the debut – and so far
only – album from Glenn Hughes and Pat Thrall turned out to be such a consummate release. The shrewdly titled, and supremely crafted,
Hughes/Thrall was, and remains, a prime example of – if you’ll pardon the variation on a theme – Heroic/Teamwork. Or as the headline in
BAM magazine read back in the day: ‘A Match Made In Hard Rock Heaven.’
Check out all the past Cult Heroes here.Words: Geoff BartonEven today, many people – most notably
musicians – speak about
Hughes/Thrall in hushed, reverential, we’re-not-worthy tones. That this tremendous record never enjoyed the success it deserved first time around is completely inexplicable. Or
is it? You better read on…
Making
Hughes/Thrall was to prove an inspirational, not to say spiritually uplifting, experience for both bassist/vocalist Hughes and guitarist Thrall. But for the former in particular, it was also a cathartic exercise after a lengthy time spent in kicking his dusty heels in the backwoods of the Los Angeles music scene.
“I had been bored to death for five years,” Hughes affirms today. “So, yes, thank God the formation of Hughes/Thrall came about.”
Since the 1976 demise of the Mk IV version of Deep Purple – and also the tragic death of Hughes’s buddy and soulmate in the Purps, guitarist Tommy Bolin – Glenn had been biding his time. Or something like that, anyway.
“When Tommy died it was difficult for me,” says the Cannock, Staffordshire-born Hughes, his Midlands accent now firmly tinged with a Californian twang. “I was still in my dark period. From March or April 1976 when Purple broke up, to August 1981 when Hughes/Thrall began to take shape, I was definitely just hanging out rather than working. That five-year period… I hate to use the word hiatus, but that’s what it was. I wasn’t interested in doing very much at all.”
Immediately post-Purple, Hughes had released a masterful solo album, Play Me Out. Away from the pressures of DP, Glenn gave himself free rein to wallow in his two great loves besides rock’n’roll music: sensual, slinky funk and smooth, blue-eyed soul.
But then Hughes fell firmly off the radar. One of his first attempts at a comeback revolved around a supergroup comprising himself, fusion guitarist
Ray Gomez and R&B/soul star
Narada Michael Walden. The trio was supposed to sign with Atlantic Records but Gomez opted for a solo deal with Columbia instead. (Nevertheless, Hughes continued to work on and off with Gomez, while keeping his options open.)
“I had
Play Me Out which came out in Europe but not in the US, at least not initially,” Hughes recalls. “Besides the so-called ‘supergoup’ you mention, me and Gary Moore tried to do an album with [Elf, Thin Lizzy and Ian Gillan Band drummer] Mark Nauseef, called
G-Force. But that was aborted in 1980 – for numerous reasons. Sharon [Osbourne] was managing us.”
That he once claimed to have fired himself from G-Force – on his birthday, no less – says a lot about Hughes’s state of mind at the time. Moore’s new outfit continued on without him, recording a single album for Jet Records, but with false starts aplenty it really did seem as if Glenn’s career was going nowhere fast.
Thankfully, a hot guitarist called Pat Thrall was waiting in the wings. A native of San Francisco, Thrall got his first break in his early 20s when he joined
Go, a weird spiritualist outfit featuring Stomu Yamashta, Stevie Winwood, Santana drummer Michael Shrieve and a cast of several… including the mysterious ‘Thunderthighs’ on vocals! While in Go, Thrall also formed a futuristic combo called
Automatic Man with Shrieve. With heavy reliance on electronic drums and polyphonic synthesisers, Thrall once described Automatic Man as “Pink Floyd meets Sly Stone with a bit of Hendrix thrown in – very electronic”.
Despite his growing reputation as a fusion guitarist
par excellence, Thrall maintained his roots had always been in rock’n’roll. And those roots broke ground-surface when he eventually opted to join the band of Canadian guitarist Pat Travers. “Like Glenn, I spent some time playing with Narada Michael Walden,” Thrall remembers. “I was out in New York working with Walden on his
Awakening album. Journey came into town to play at Nassau Coliseum and they got in contact with me, because I’ve known those guys, like, forever. They’re from the Bay Area like me. They told me Pat Travers was looking for a guitar player; his band had been a three-piece up to that point.
“I was aware of Pat because when I was in London doing Automatic Man and the Go project, his first album had just broken – this was 1976 and I remember thinking: ‘Who’s this guy whose name is almost like mine?’”
Of his fusion work, Thrall adds: “It was all about experimentation and seeing how far we could push the boundaries. But eventually it got to this place where it hit a wall, where it was all about how fast you could play… and I felt it lost some of its musicality.”
Thrall had a very successful stint with Travers, joining in 1978 and co-writing one of the latter’s best-known songs,
Snortin’ Whiskey, Drinkin’ Cocaine. (Don’t try that at home, kids.) But how exactly
did he manage to hook up with Hughes?
“I was aware of Glenn from Purple, but the first time I really
heard him was when I was hanging with Pat Travers and he put on the
Play Me Out album. Travers plays on it; he was very proud to be a part of Glenn’s record. I was hugely impressed by
Play Me Out. At that point I thought: ‘Great, I’m starting out with Travers now, but at some point I
know I’m going to be playing with Glenn Hughes.’”
Hughes was similarly impressed by Thrall. “At the beginning of the 80s I went to see Def Leppard open for Pat Travers at the Santa Monica Civic. It was Travers together with ‘Mars’ Cowling [bass], Tommy Aldridge [drums] and Pat Thrall. And I saw first-hand what Travers was talking about when he told me: ‘You’ve got to see my new guitar player, Pat Thrall.’ The two were sharing lead guitar duties. Immediately after the show I said to Pat Thrall: ‘Do you want to form a band with me?’ Because I just loved what he was doing.”
Thrall, however, remembers the events leading up to the formation of Hughes/Thrall a little differently: “After I left Travers’s band I got in touch with Glenn to see what he was doing and he said: ‘I’ve already got something going with Ray Gomez.’ So I went up to the San Francisco Bay Area, where my family is and where I grew up, and I started a band with my brother.
“About four months later I got a call from Foreigner’s manager, Bud Prager. He said he was concerned because it wasn’t working out with Glenn and Gomez. Apparently Prager had invested a lot of his own money into the project and it wasn’t going anywhere. Prager knew Glenn had expressed an interest in working with me, but I thought his [Prager’s] approach was kind of disrespectful. He wanted me to haul my ass down to LA, and spend a lot of my own money on rehearsal studios, demos and suchlike. Prager implied that, in the unlikely event of things working out between me and Glenn, if I was lucky he might take us on.
“But all I cared about was playing with Glenn, so I moved to LA and we began working together regardless. Eventually Prager came into town, and when he heard what we were doing he flipped out and wanted to sign us. But I wasn’t so sure because of his attitude, and because of the way he’d approached me initially. So Glenn and I decided not to get involved with Prager, although obviously he did play a role in bringing us together.”
Hughes, for his part, didn’t see any problem in linking up with a guitarist who, prior to his time spent with Pat Travers, had gained a rather eclectic, left-field reputation as a player. “I enjoy things that are totally out of the box – particularly after the experience of playing with Tommy [Bolin], which was total fusion in some respects. I’ve always wanted to work with people who’re a little on the edge, a little different. When we put Hughes/Thrall together we immediately had all these amazing signatures and this great sound. As a trio [drums being supplied by a varying cast including Gary Ferguson, Gary Mallaber, Peter Schless and Frankie Banali] we sounded huge. Pat had his synthesiser guitar back then, and we had this amazing depth to pull from. We wrote a lot of material. We were in pre-production for maybe six months before we went into the studio.”
Hughes has since described Thrall as “the best guitarist I’ve worked with in my entire career”.
“That’s a huge compliment considering all the guys he’s played with – that’s wonderful,” Thrall says. “But Glenn and I have a natural chemistry. When we get into a room and start playing, we just click. That’s the bizarre thing. So it’s really easy for us to make music together. You can’t force that to happen, it’s either there or it’s not, and Glenn and I just have that
thing.”
Hughes agrees: “When we strap on our guitars and stand toe-to-toe in the studio there’s an instant vibe. It’s just there. It’s wonderful. We’re like a force of nature.” A Hurricane/Tornado, if you like…
But despite the storming new music being generated by Glenn and Pat,
Hughes/Thrall does contain one cover version:
Coast To Coast,
which was originally recorded by Hughes’s pre-Deep Purple band, Trapeze, on their 1972 album You Are The Music… We’re Just The Band.Hughes: “I wanted to give it another stab – it’s such a great song. We thought Hughes/Thrall were going to have a lot of success Stateside and I wanted
Coast To Coast to get some airplay over there. Most people don’t know it was a Trapeze song; most think of it as a Hughes/Thrall track.”
Thrall: “Glenn had cut a version when he was with Ray Gomez and that’s what I had been listening to. Gomez is a fantastic guitar player; he’s one of my favourites. The solo I take on
Coast To Coast is note-for-note what Gomez’s solo was on the demo with Glenn. It’s actually more of a melody than a solo. I thought: ‘I’m just going to pay homage to Ray on this.’ So I was more familiar with the Gomez version than the original Trapeze one. But then, of course, Glenn and me did our own thing as well – all the arpeggiated guitars and the rhythmic colours… all that stuff. But Gomez’s solo was perfect – how are you going to beat perfection?”
The producer on
Hughes/Thrall was initially Rob Fraboni. But it didn’t work out.
Thrall: “Rob worked on
Hughes/Thrall in the evening and into the night, but during the day he was producing
Bonnie Raitt’s album
Green Light. He’s more oriented toward that kind of music. We’d done probably four songs with Rob when we realised we needed to get a bigger sound. So we brought in Andy Johns, because of Led Zeppelin and all the stuff he’d done. You can definitely hear that bigger sound – particularly with the drums – on tracks such as
Muscle & Blood and
I Got Your Number. So that’s why we made the change. It was an education working with Andy because of his history – he’s a star in his own right, basically.”
Hughes expands: “I really wanted Andy because of the work he’d done with Free, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, of course. Andy’s a wild card, a six-foot-four Brit in California. He wears a cowboy hat, has been known to carry guns from time to time, and he was larger than life. He still is. He was massive character in the studio. He was great at fixing the stew… although he’d probably call it making the sauce!
“Andy was very good at combining Pat and me’s vibe together. The groove was very important to Andy, that great groove that carries on through the record, from
Muscle & Blood to
Beg Borrow Or Steal, to
First Step Of Love. All those songs have got great grooves to them. That still survives today.”
There was no great falling-out when Fraboni was replaced by Johns, as Thrall explains: “No, not at all. It was exciting and the whole thing needed to be invigorated anyway, because Rob and us weren’t quite the perfect match, production-wise. I’ve worked with Rob since – I played on a Phoebe Snow album that he produced – but his approach wasn’t fitting in with what Glenn and I envisioned Hughes/Thrall to be. So when Andy came in it was a shot in the arm for us – and you can certainly hear it on the record.
“We did overdubs with Andy on the tracks we did with Rob [which included
Coast To Coast and
First Step Of Love]. And then of course Andy mixed the whole record. Although I have to say it’s a little bit small and reverb-y for my tastes in this day and age. I’d give anything to be able to remix it, but unfortunately the master tapes were stored at the studio in Los Angeles [United Western Studios]. The ownership of the studio changed hands and any tape in the library that hadn’t been claimed was erased and used for bulk tape. That’s what happened to
Hughes/Thrall. It’s horrible. We don’t have the multi-track masters any more. Glenn and I were pretty devastated when we found out.”
Hughes/Thrall was released on the little-known Boulevard Records, a subsidiary of Epic. How did that happen?
Hughes: “We were one of the first artists to sign for Boulevard – we may have been the
only artist, in fact. We could have gone with Atlantic, we had three or four offers, but we chose this company.”
Thrall elaborates: “The reason we went with them [Boulevard was run by Dennis Lavinthal and Lenny Beer] was that they were two of the biggest independent record promoters in the US at the time. The labels would pay these guys upwards of $100,000 to get radio play. So Epic said: ‘Since we’re paying this much to you guys to do that, we’ll give you a couple of hundred thousand more and you can go sign some new acts.’
“With Dennis and Lenny’s juice at radio, Epic reckoned it should be pretty much a slam-dunk for acts signed to Boulevard Records. So that’s why me and Glenn decided to go with them, because they had such good connections with radio. Plus they were a small company so we felt like we’d get a lot of attention.”
But despite the reputation of the two prime-movers behind Boulevard, the
Hughes/Thrall album struggled to get off the blocks. It wasn’t exactly Hot/To trot…
Thrall: “It happens, you know. It happens with films – classic films like Disney’s
Fantasia, when that first came out, failed. Eventually the
Hughes/Thrall record really connected with musicians – but not, unfortunately, with the public at large. At least not initially. A lot of musicians got into it; it was like an early template for some of the other music that happened in the 80s. We were mixing some pop elements in with rock sensibilities, but in a way that no one had quite done before.”
Hughes: “Most of my friends in the music industry talk about
Hughes/Thrall more than any of my other records. And that’s right across the board – from black artists, to jazz artists, to rockers, they all love the album.”
Posthumously, however,
Hughes/Thrall has come to be regarded as one of the – if not
the – finest releases of Glenn Hughes’s career. “That’s because Pat is the perfect partner for me,” Hughes reiterates. “He understands all the genres of Glenn Hughes’s music, whether it be rock, funk, soul, jazz, pop, even reggae – all those elements are very evident in
Hughes/Thrall.”
However, both Hughes and Thrall recognise the roles they played – or, crucially,
didn’t play – in their album’s relative failure first time around.
Hughes: “It was probably down to Pat and I… not focusing. We did an abortive tour of America [with Tommy Aldridge on drums and Jesse Harms on keyboards] opening for Santana and, you know, we weren’t in the best of shape back then… and we should’ve really have been. The record company probably saw that, and we didn’t get to tour much afterward. And that’s when we started to fall to pieces, if you will.
“If Pat and I had been really on the money I’ve no doubt we’d’ve gone on to huge success with Hughes/Thrall. If we’d’ve been teetotalers – as I am now, and have been for many years – with no drinking, no drugging, no anything, it would’ve been different.”
Thrall agrees: “We did a few dates with Santana. But Glenn and I weren’t really ready for touring at that point. That was basically the problem. I think there was a little too much drug influence in those days. We really didn’t have it quite together for touring. And the bill wasn’t necessarily a great match musically… the audience, of course, was primarily there for Santana. We did a couple of club dates on our own in Los Angeles and that was about it. For whatever reason the record wasn’t going at radio and the label pulled the plug pretty quickly on it.”
Nevertheless, the promo photos that accompanied the release of
Hughes/Thrall in 1982 showed the duo not as raddled rockers, but as remarkably healthy and fresh-faced individuals – even though they also looked like cheesy extras out of the soap opera, Dynasty.
Thrall laughs: “Those pictures were very much of their time. I guess we were trying to look as good as we could, but believe me we were not living a very healthy lifestyle.”
Hughes: “I was really healthy when we started the Hughes/Thrall project and I lost a lot of weight; I was very California-looking. But unfortunately it didn’t last…”
Thrall isn’t a big fan of the album’s cover, either. “It’s one of the worst in the history of rock,” he laughs again. “They gave us two choices. The other choice was a scantily clad woman riding on the back of a dinosaur. They said: ‘Which do you want, the masks or the dinosaur?’ We said: ‘I guess we’re going have to go with the stoopid masks.’ If you ever saw
the video for The Look In Your Eye – ha-ha! – the director had everyone holding up those damn masks. It’s awful.”
Hughes/Thrall stumbled on for a while, and fans of walrus-moustached keyboard players will be delighted to know that the semi-legendary
Claude Schnell (of Dio fame) was part of their line-up toward the bitter end.
Hughes: “Claude was in the band when we started to make demos for the second record. But we never really completed them; we were sort of falling apart. We were also working with Tommy Bolin’s old drummer, Mark Craney. He passed away from diabetes and kidney failure, poor fella. But I like Claude, he’s sort of a Jon Lord type of character.”
These days, Glenn Hughes is philosophical about what might have been: “Hughes/Thrall had a short life span. It was
extremely short! But I’m glad that we’re embracing the record again now,” he says enthusiastically.
Lun 25 Fév 2008 - 12:18
