hair metal

Part 173: Gene Simmons’ Asylum Demos

RECORD STORE TALES Part 173:  Gene Simmons’ Asylum Demos

Back in 1994-95, when I was working at our original store, I would always proudly fly the Kiss flag.  This was before the mega reunion, and on the heels of the Revenge album, which I was really into.

I had a small online presence back then, I had created our very first online ads in 1994.  I was talking about music on every single BBS (Bulletin Board System) in the area, and on one board, called Wanderer’s Rest, I had a forum for my reviews.  I was going by the online name “Geddy” (hah!) back then, and I was extremely prolific.  Very little has changed since!

One guy, name long forgotten, messaged me.  “Hey, I’m a customer at your store.  I have some rare Kiss demos.  Do you want to do a tape swap?”  Of course I did.  For him, I made a copy of the March 25 1974 show in Washington at the Bayou club.  It was a cool show because they played an unreleased song called “You’re Much Too Young”.

For me, he made a tape of Gene’s Asylum demos, on one of our Maxell UR60’s that we sold in our store.  Gene is a very prolific songwriter.  Not everything he comes up with is gold (clearly!) but he usually submitted a dozen tunes or more for consideration on each album.  Judging by this cassette, Asylum was no exception, even though he was very distracted by Hollywood at that time.

The tape, which unfortunately did not survive the years very well at all, contains 13 of Gene’s demos, 3 being instrumental ideas, and a bonus track.  A couple songs made the final album.  I tried to listen to the tape, to see if I recognized any ideas.  Unfortunately, this tape now sounds terrible and is unlistenable.  I ripped only one song, which was “Russian Roulette”, to see if it resembled the version that later ended up on 2009’s Sonic Boom album.  From what I can tell, only the title survived to Sonic Boom.

Musically however, the song was recycled on the Monster album, as “Eat Your Heart Out”!  It’s the same riff.  Although you can’t make out the lyrics on the demo version at all, you can tell they are completely different.

See the pictures below for the tape made for me by the Mystery Kiss Fan back in ’94-95.   If you know any of these Gene songs, please comment below!  We can hope that good quality versions will come out on Gene’s “Monster” box set, if it ever comes out!

REVIEW: Cinderella – Long Cold Winter (1988)

Longcoldwinter

CINDERELLA  – Long Cold Winter (1988 Polygram Records)

I remember how excited I was upon hearing the first single, “Gypsy Road”, in the summer of ’88.  Cinderella had managed a bluesier, more “authentic” hard rock sound for their critical second LP.  Night Songs was OK, but Long Cold Winter was better in every way.  The cheese factor had been replaced by pedal steel guitars, pianos, and Hammond B3 organs.

Drummer Fred Coury was touring with Guns N’ Roses (Steven Adler had broken his hand punching a wall) during much of the making of Long Cold Winter.  It’s not clear how much of Long Cold Winter he played on, as the band pulled in two incredible session drummers for the project:  Denny Carmassi (of Heart and later Coverdale – Page), and the late great Cozy Powell!

From the bluesy opening of “Bad Seamstress Blues”, it was clear that the AC/DC clone Cinderella that featured Bon Jovi cameos in its videos had evolved.  Two incredible, throat wrenching rockers follow this:  “Fallin’ Apart at the Seams” and “Gypsy Road”.  Both songs easily stand up today as forgotten classics of the “hair metal” era.  But truthfully, Cinderella only made one “hair metal” album.  Long Cold Winter doesn’t really fit in with that scene, and their next album Heartbreak Station would leave it behind completely.

“Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)”, the epic power ballad, is more Aerosmith than Poison, and still features a great guitar solo straight out of the Iommi blues notebook.  I’m not too keen on “The Last Mile”, a straightforward rocker, but it was still chosen as a single from this album.  Much better is the side-closing “Second Wind”, amped up and stuttering.

Side two opened with Cinderella’s “serious” blues, the title track.  It’s a bit too contrived for me, it has a vibe of, “Hey, let’s write our ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’!”.  Lots of repeated “baby baby baby” Plant-isms.  At the time it was released, this song was seen as a serious departure for the band, but in hindsight it’s really just a first step into a larger world.  It’s somewhat reminiscent of the rare occasions that Black Sabbath has attempted a slow blues (I’m thinking “Feels Good To Me”, also featuring Cozy Powell) mixed with Zeppelin.

“If You Don’t Like It” is another standard rocker, nothing special, but this is followed by no less than three great songs in a row.  First is the single “Coming Home”, not really a ballad, but a hybrid.  This was one of the most immediate songs that I fell for when I picked up the album.  You can tell that Cinderella wrote a lot of this album on the road, by the lyrics.  “Coming Home” is one such road song.

“Fire and Ice” is heavy, sort of a revisited “Second Wind”, another standout!  Then the album closes with the slide-laden “Take Me Back”, which strikes me as another road song.  Just as good as “Coming Home”, but heavier, it was a great album closer.  Personally if this album had spawned a fifth single, “Take Me Back” would have been my pick, hands down.  And I think this album could have justified five singles.

The band evolved further with album #3 (which featured strings by John Paul Jones!), but I think Long Cold Winter strikes the perfect balance between screeching rock and bitter blues.  From the classy album cover on down to the perfect production, I don’t think they’ve ever made a better album.

4.5/5 stars