Graham Bonnet - Line Up
#649
November 1981
Graham Bonnet
Line-Up
Genre: Rock
4 out of 5
Highlights:
Night Games
Dirty Hands
S.O.S
I don’t get this record. Bonnet has sung with and written for some of the biggest rock bands of the era, right? Rainbow? MSG? Alcatrazz?
Why is this record all songs written by others? Like he’s just a vocalist? Who’s paying for that?
Oh, well.
How is it?
That opener sounds ready made for radio but I can 100% understand why it didn’t make an impact over here. But it was a Top Ten hit across the pond and that was not on the strength of the Bonnet brand. That song is pretty good.
That Berry cover, “Anthony Boy” takes the master architect’s formal and updates it to the Van Halen era nicely.
I’m a sucker for great backing harmonies and horns in rock songs. (See: “Friend or Foe” and “Staying Power”) So, it’s no surprise that I love “Dirty Hands”. The song is tripe, the arrangement and ferocity is…mwah.
Everything about this album seems to be about a bunch of guys having a good time making rock music together in a studio. I say that because I would expect a Bonnet solo record to be a GRAHAM BONNET SOLO RECORD. He’s just one of the players in a band here. They got a bunch of songs and made them all sound good.
I love the update to The Kinks’ “Set Me Free”. It’s rooted in the past but feels like it took a time machine through the 70s and arrived in 1981 with all the detritus it picked up attached to it. Neat.
A pair of big rocking’ Russ Ballard tunes come firing next and I’m on this train. I want to see and shout to “S.O.S” in concert.
Doubling Graham’s voice and turning “Be My Baby” into a Glam Rock spectacle is a stroke of Pop Rock Confection Factory Deliciousness.
https://music.apple.com/us/album/line-up-expanded-edition/1114571555
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