CRY OF LOVE guitarist Audley Freed is not a big fan of the complicated things in life. To him and the band, technology is a means not an end and to those who hear their music, technology is irrelevant. Cry of Love’s music is pure and uncomplicated, straight from the heart, a heart full of soul. It rocks, make no mistake, but it rocks with a passion and a feel that is so rare and precious in this hi-tech decade that the quartet’s debut album, ‘BROTHER’ has captured the imagination of both those who remember the first time rock sounded like this – as well as those younger, who have maybe only heard of names like Free, Jimi Hendrix, Humble Pie, Led Zeppelin, Bad Company…

But the band are not of that era either, they merely appreciate the finer things in life and have the talent and good sense to cast an eye backwards in order to see the way ahead. “We all grew up listening to and loving this kind of music,” explains singer Kelly Holland. “If somebody mentions our music in the same breath as Free, Hendrix or Otis Redding, I embrace those influences – I don’t deny them.”

No one could deny the impact of the album ‘BROTHER’, the recipient of glowing reviews all over, or the unprecedented success of the first single from it, ‘Peace Pipe’, which became the most played track on US rock radio for three consecutive weeks in August 1993. No mean feat for a band less than two years old…

Cry of Love’s line-up is, unsurprisingly, more experienced than that. Audley, Kelly, bassist Robert Kearns and drummer James Patterson were all born in tiny rural communities in the state of North Carolina. Live music was mot easy to come by, but all had access to radio stations. Kelly recalls sneaking around his big sister’s bedroom door whilst she played records by The Beatles, Elvis and Aretha Franklin. Audley lived near a military base and his local radio station would play the album bands he read about in Circus and Creem magazines. He remembers hearing the Blues on early ZZ Top records and being so excited he wasn’t even sure it was legal. “They were kinda like forbidden fruits, the music was almost sexual and I felt too young to be allowed to hear it!”

But hear it Audley did and inevitably, music became his life. Like Kelly (who started out as a drummer), he joined numerous bands and took to playing anything from Tina Turner and Deep Purple songs to samba nights in tuxedos and bow ties on the circuit around the south-east and midwestern part of the States. It’s a tough apprenticeship: three to four one-hour sets a night, six nights a week. The samba nights paid best but generally they lived for about a year-and-a-half on $10 a day. “At the time I didn’t care,” Audley reflects. “But you begin to realise that trying to write your own material and save up enough money to go into the studio are virtually impossible in that kind of situation.”

In 1989, seasoned and determined, Jason, Robert and Audley baled out of the bands they were in and got themselves a rehearsal space in Raleigh (pron: ‘Rawley’). NC. At that time Kelly was in another band and although he was always first choice to be the Cry of Love singer the three counted the other members of his band as friends and weren’t about to upset them by stealing their frontman. Two years later, he quit, and Cry of Love were the first in line for his world-class services. From there, it all happened very quickly.

They began recording a demo with friend-cum-producer John Custer. John – who had produced US Hardcore-cum-Metal band Corrosion of Conformity – helped them by working in ‘down time’ around the studio’s paying customers. Sessions were cheap but might only last a few hours before a two week break. In short, everything was far from finished when a friend of Audley’s – Pepper Keenan of COC – was rehearsing for a tour in the studio right next door to Cry of Love.

“He was going, ‘Man, you gotta give me a tape! I just want to have something to listen to while we’re out there’. I told him, ‘It ain’t finished. Wait till you get back. I’ll give it to you when it’s finished…’. But he was adamant so I found this tape – I didn’t even know what was on it – and gave it to him. It turned out to be a couple of songs we had thrown up late one night to go home and listen to in our car until the next time we came back, see what we wanted to change, just ‘cue mixes’. I said to him, ‘Don’t you play it for ANYBODY. Just you keep it for yourself…’ Next time I saw him he went, ‘Man I played your tape for this guy at Colombia and he’s really interested. Next thing I knew he’d called us up, said set up a show, came down and that was that.”

The A&R man, Josh Sarubin, later said after hearing the first 10 seconds he had already made up his mind he wanted to sign the band…

“We’d had our first rehearsal with Kelly on November 1st, in ’91. Played our first show January ’92. Got offered our deal 1st day of June, signed it on August 10th and we were in Muscle Shoals studios on November 1st, ’92…”

Within another year, ‘Peace Pipe’ was at the top of US magazine Billboard’s Album Rock Chart, Cry of Love had opened Stateside for Lynyrd Skynyrd, Paul Rodgers, Bad Company and Robert Plant and were flying to Europe (in September). These days, home is something they’ve seen in books and on TV since they took to the road in April.

But modestly and typically, it’s something the band are grateful for, as Audley explains: “All the way from the tip of your toes to the band as a whole, there is no substitute for live work…for what we call ‘seasoning’. As in seasoned players, seasoned performers, seasoned professionals. You know it’s not glamorous – you’ve got to be at soundcheck, you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that – it’s all part of the routine…”

That refreshing simplicity of approach is the very stroke of genius that makes Cry of Love so special. One day, all things in life will be this simple. – Neil Jeffries