From 'Free Appreciation Society' magazine. Issue 59. Nov1993
Cry From the Soul
January 1971. Cry of Love was the last ‘artist authorised’ album from Jimi Hendrix, released some four months after his death. The end of an era.
September 1993. A band calling themselves Cry of Love release ‘Brother’ one of the most exciting debut albums since Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ (as far as I am concerned!). They arrive in the UK for a whirlwind promotional tour playing some of the hottest gigs I’ve seen for years, including a sell-out London show at the packed solid and red hot Borderline club.
I became aware of Cry of Love first on MTV’s Headbangers Ball when they started playing the video to PEACE PIPE in August. The mix of Free, Skynyrd and Hendrix influences were immediately obvious in this song, and that guitar player. Oh yes, I knew right then, from that first viewing, that this was a band to check out. So I nip to the local record store the next day to find out the album isn’t even out yet, nor the single. Major bummer, and that video just keeps getting played. Finally, weeks later the album is released ands I’m impressed. In fact I’m blown away because it’s even better than I hoped it would be!
“Let’s go back to yesterday. If only for a song…” – CARNIVAL. From ‘Brother’.
The debut album, ‘Brother’ really does set Cry of Love’s cupboard out before you. Every influence is there, laid completely open. Robert Kearns and Jason Patterson (bass and drums respectively) are a totally Free-based rhythm section. They hold everything down tightly and know instinctively how to leave plenty of space for the music to breathe. They never overplay and they never clutter the sound. Audley Freed is sensational. A guitar player with great feel maintaining a superb sense of melody, even when he’s melting the fretboard. He’s a class player and there’s lots of Hendrix and Allen Collins in his roots as a musician. Don’t worry though he knows how to riff just like Free did too. Check out the grooves in PRETTY AS YOU PLEASE or HAND ME DOWN. More than a little Kossoff in those eh! Listen to the final part of the solo in PEACE PIPE too. High Kossoff trills abound. Wonderful. Kelly Holland isn’t a straight Rodgers clone, thankfully. He comes in somewhere between Rodgers and a classy Bon Scott. A very white sounding blues/ soul voice. On the album I had some trouble with the vocals at first. Not the voice but more the mix. On some numbers they tend to ride over the track a little too loudly rather than blending in to the raw sound. On SAVING GRACE, the albums final cut, he’s absolutely awesome. Lots of feel and emotion and a great depth to his rich voice.
I was lucky enough (very lucky actually) to catch two of their gigs over here. The first was in Nottingham at the renowned Rock City (17/9/93). They were going to headline but ended up supporting Little Angels. This pissed off a number of people, me included. We arrived at 8:15pm to find them blistering through CARNIVAL. The sound quality was fantastic and as soon as you entered the hall you were just blown away. The wash of music just swept over you in endless waves and it was a joy. I can’t remember a band ever making me smile so quickly. The whole gig made me feel so ridiculously happy. Ecstatic actually! I was really buzzing after the show. I did a short interview with a jet-lagged Audley after the gig, you’ll find some choice cuts from that at the end, and we chatted quite a while about Free and Bad Company, Lynyrd Skynyrd and all that good stuff.
What hit me most was how much this band just love music. I had a chat with Robert backstage, and long after, the Little Angels set and we were just sitting drinking beer and gassing about Andy Fraser and Free and loads of music. It was just like talking to a friend in the pub, really good. Robert asked if I was going to come to London to see them. I don’t think there was ever any doubt!
We arrived at the Borderline (21/9/93 – my birthday too!) early and met up with everyone. The Jet Lag had finally been thrown aside and they were much brighter and cheerful. Kelly seemed much happier. He was really tired in Nott,. The soundcheck included an absolutely steaming long version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free-influenced ON THE HUNT. Stunnning. Again the sound quality (Hi James) was absolutely excellent. We had a wander around Tottenham Court Road looking for camera film for Robert and throat spray for an infected Kelly, then settled down to the business in hand. The gig was recorded for a future BBC Radio ‘In Concert’ tho’ I’ve not heard about the broadcast date as I write this. Also MTV shot the gig and have since shown a good chunk of it on Headbangers Ball (3/10/93) with a long interview. Backstage just before the show there seemed to be very little nerves. Myself Robert and Audley were talking about our favourite Fee tunes. Robert headed straight for MR BIG and the bass solo. Audley went for WALK IN MY SHADOW and played a neat version of BE MY FRIEND on his home built Strat. Business people wandered in endlessly for handshakes and pleasantries. The gig was a killer as the packed venue were blown away by there performance. Andy Ryan and myself just kept lookng at each other and smiling. “That was F***ing amazing”, said an excited Ryan at the end. “That was the best gig I’ve been to for a long time.” He was right too. The gig just flew by and in seemingly no time at all it was over. Myself and long time buddy Rich (or Red as Robert christened him) Hung out and chatted. Fast Eddie was there, and Scott Gorham, which freaked the band as they had photo’s taken with him. I noticed Vic Reeves, a big Free fan and former FAS member (your subs are up Vic!) wandering around but by the time I’d gone looking for him for a chat he’d left! At around 2am we headed to the bands hotel for a more relaxed drink in the comfort of the bar (which wasn’t open, we got room service!) Kelly told some terrible jokes, 99% unrepeatable it must be said, including one about a Leprechaun and well….unrepeatable, like I said, (so far so little at the end) and we all had a good time. The conversation flowed. I don’t think I‘ve ever been in the company of better people. They’re honest, soulful and great to be with. That includes the tour manager (Bob( and small crew (James). There’s also a very genuine band feel here. It’s very much a gang, just how I would have expected Free to be in the early days. At about 5am everybody headed to bed. The best birthday I’ve ever had, guys that is from the heart.
We got up at about 9:30, with something of a hangover, and headed to HMV to catch the in-store acoustic set. The lack of sleep and somersaulting stomach made the tube ride a nightmare for me. Deep breaths and a cold sweat by the time I got off. Phew, just made it! The acoustic set was something of a revelation actually and I was amazed how easily the songs converted to the acoustic format. TOO COLD IN THE WINTER sounded great and this format gave it a much more straight blues feel. CARNIVAL was exceptional with both Audley and Kelly playing acoustics while Robert added Mandolin and Jason played bongos. It was here that I noticed fro the first time that Robert was wearing his Free Appreciation Society T-Shirt. That blew my mind! The first of the new songs, TAKE MY SINS AWAY was superb. A great acoustic song and I look forward to hearing a recorded version. The last number 16 DAYS was great too. I’m trying to think of how to tell you what they sounded like, or who. But I can’t, so ‘pretty damn fine’ will have to do. After all the signing in-store we said our goodbyes, sad to be leaving them but buzzing with having been able to spend some time with some great people. Going home we played the album back to back, three or four times and I swear for the next few days I just kept smiling. The people at work thought I’d finally come unhinged! That’s what music should be all about. Cry of Love. What a great band. I love these guys. Check out the debut album ‘Brother’, it’s out now (Columbia records 473767 2) and has a fab cover too! You won’t be disappointed. Jump on this train now, don’t wait to be told how good they are again.
LET’S
TALK
The ‘interviews’ were done post gig and really we were just chatting,
hence the subject matter wandered around quite a bit. Here are the edited highlights.
AUDLEY
FREED
[Dave] There’s a lot of Free in your sound but it seems to me that you’re
influenced a lot by Hendrix.
[Audley] “Yeah, Hendrix was a big influence on my guitar playing but many,
many other things as much or more. Free was an amazing band. Their ability to
leave space, those holes in the music, that’s the most important thing.
The push-pull of the rhythm section and the guitar, and bands just don’t
do that anymore.”
[Dave] Was it
a thing with the band to keep the album more or less ‘live’? Because
it’s a very ‘live’ sounding album.
[Audley]”Yeah, Oh yeah, I mean we rehearse so much…I mean, that’s
all we know how to do man, is play. It just kinda a really ridiculous concept
to me that these days people hear an album and it’s very dry and live
sounding, and that’s like the exception rather than the norm. Things have
gotten so far away from what rock use to be that people go ‘Wow, that
just sounds like a band playing live. What a weird concept’, that’s
just crazy.”
[Dave] The album
sounds very similar to FIRE AND WATER really, where there’s no, or very
few, overdubs.
[Audley] “We did all our basic tracks live and all of them were done in
under three takes. We just isolated things so we could play live”.
[Dave] So if your
talking in terms of days then, how many days did it take to record the album?
[Audley] “Well, twenty days. We did all the basic tracks the first five
days plus we wrote a song in the studio and cut two others that didn’t
make the record (these can be found on the PEACE PIPE single). Then the next
fifteen werespent doing vocals and guitar overdubs and guitar solo’s.
There are ten songs on our record. I did four solo’s one night and the
rest of them the next day. Just got it over with. (laughs)”
[Dave] You’ve
got a lovely warm tone. For the people that play, how do you get that sound?
[Audley] “On the record I used a guitar that I built out of parts by a
company called Warmoth and a ’73 Marshall Super Lead Head with 65/50 tubes.
Then on the other side I overdubbed second guitar on all the songs to get a
sort of James Gang, Joe Walsh type sound, AC/DC, Who type thing, and I used
a Telecaster on some songs and a Les Paul Junior and a Les Paul on some songs.
And the amp for all of those was Fender Deluxe.
[Dave] I heard
you’ve been playing with the Skynyrd & Bad Company tour. What was
that like?
[Audley] “We only did one show with them but it was fun. We did six days
with Paul Rodgers and we’ve done dates with lots of other bands. Some
of them one-offs. We’re getting ready to go out with Robert Plant. That
should be fun.”
ROBERT KEARNS
“Andy Fraser is my main influence. He was just incredible to me. His tone…Have you seen the video (Best of Free). He’s playing through this Marshall stack on this EB3 and they do RIDE ON PONY and man, his tone is just so great. He’s one of those guys that I think was way underrated as a whole, and I mean out of everybody. He’s more of a musicians musician. Like I saw an article with Jeff Berlin, the bass player, and he was gong off about Andy Fraser, how great a bass player he was.”
“The whole thing about it is it’s so understated. When he and Kirke would go off and the 4/4, I mean it’s so simple but yet it’s so… There’s so much space that it kicks ass, you know, in that space. That’s the thing… And then he would go from that to just some incredible melody on the bass. It was just great.”
“With Free of Bad Company it was all blues influenced. They go the blues from America, the Delta. You know, Robert Johnson and all that. It’s all blues from America, and they just brought it over here and made it rock. And that’s what influenced us. So we got it from over here (British Blues Rock) but they got it from over there (US Delta Blues, imported by the likes of Alexis Korner). So now we’re getting back to the blues thing, you know, discovering Robert Johnson and all those guys like that.”
“Ronnie Van Zant was a big Bad Company fan, and I don’t know if you know this but he named his fishing boat Bad Company!”
I’d really like to thanks Robert, Audley, Kelly & Jason for their time. Cool dudes one and all and now my friends. Thanks to Bob for all his help, friendship and my birthday presents, which were way too much (and you Robert, thanks man!). Hello to James, the man of the killer ‘live’ mix and another new friend. Andy, Katherine & the Cat that climbs people! Thanks for putting us up (putting up with us!) once again. I love you guys. Special love & thanks to Amanda Williams, who made it all happen at short notice. xx Hello also to Jo, shame about the leaflets. How about the re-scheduled shows?