Garbage Days Revisited #78: Shooting Gallery - "Shooting Gallery" (1992)

 

"Welcome to Silicon City, it's all tits 'n' ass to me/Where Tropicana mud wrestlers marry rockstars, must be some social disease...L.A. sleaze (ugh!)" - Shooting Gallery - Restless

It's been a bit of a busy summer for the former members of Hanoi Rocks with new albums surfacing from both Michael Monroe (who lest we forget has Sami Yaffa in his band nowadays) and Nasty Suicide (or Stenfors as he's now known). So it seemed like a good opportunity to fill in a few of the gaps in the story which we briefly touched on many moons ago here on Garbage Days Revisited. I'm going to do a quick look back at Michael Monroe's output in the '90s next week here with a revisit of one of his most overlooked moments but this week, we're taking a look at the Keef to his Mick, Andy McCoy.

I s'pose Andy McCoy has always been the loose cannon in Hanoi, clearly influenced by Keef Richards and Johnny Thunders (and with a lot of their bad habits as well), the guy's left a wonderfully erratic trail across the rock 'n' roll scene in the forty plus years since Hanoi first emerged blinking into the sunlight at the dawn of the '80s (in fact his legacy stretches back even further as his teenage band Briard were the biggest punk band in Finland in the late '70s). He's definitely a bit of a legend - a slightly flawed one maybe but then aren't all the best ones?

Following Hanoi Rocks' messy break-up in 1985 while Mike Monroe and Sami Yaffa would head to the States, the former to launch his solo career and the latter to eventually end up in Jetboy, McCoy and Nasty Suicide would stay in London and plot their next move which ended up being the Cherry Bombz. They would bring in ex-Clash drummer Terry Chimes (who'd actually replaced Razzle in the dying days Hanoi Rocks line-up), former Sham 69 and Lords of the New Church bassist (and one of the bass players who massively influenced this writer's style of playing) Dave Tregunna (McCoy and Stiv Bators had been good friends until the former stole the latter's girlfriend) and singer Anita Chellemah formerly of early '80s girl band Toto Coelo. I'm honestly not even sure how to describe Toto Coelo to the uninitiated - think Girls Aloud on acid with some of the most fantastically gibberish lyrics you ever did hear. Oh and Bob Holness' daughter in the ranks as well. They chalked up one hit, I Eat Cannibals, before bombing back into obscurity.

The Cherry Bombz lasted for a few singles and a live album and...well, it could've been better to put it kindly. There was definitely a high pedigree among the membership but it just felt a bit less special than it should've been. I mean, the fact that they chose a cover of dismal '80s MOR rockers Loverboy's Hot Girls In Love as their lead-off single ahead of any of their originals was telling. There was the odd diamond in with the dust such as the storming House of Ecstacy and 100 Degrees In The Shade and Chellemah does a better job with Hanoi's Taxi Driver than you'd maybe expect but it all kind of felt a bit like right ingredients wrong mix for the most part.

The group would break up when Chellemah ended up running off to Ibiza with Billy Idol - there had already been tension in the group as McCoy and Chellemah had been an item before McCoy ended up getting together with Stiv's ex and this was pretty much the end result. McCoy and Nasty would then end up putting the two-man operation the Suicide Twins together and their 1986 album Silver Missiles and Nightingales was a much improved effort with a similar stripped-back feel to the Jacobites. McCoy would also put out a decent solo album, 1988's Too Much Ain't Enough, around this time as well as becoming part of Iggy Pop's live band in the Cold Metal era before following Monroe and Yaffa out west to the States at the start of the '90s. Which is how Shooting Gallery came to be.

From what I can gather, it seems that Shooting Gallery came about as McCoy had realised that a fair few guitarists out in L.A. were citing him as an influence and decided he wanted a piece of that particular pie. His first call was to Dave Tregunna again - after the break-up of the Cherry Bombz, Tregunna had briefly stopped off with the Dogs D'Amour before Steve James joined, then returning to the Lords before that fell apart very messily (long story short - Brian James had got frustrated with Stiv Bators' perceived lack of commitment to the project and advertised for a replacement singer. Stiv duly saw the advert and went onstage at the band's next gig wearing a T-shirt with the ad on the front! And that was very much that). After that, he would join a new group, the Kill City Dragons, with the excellently named trio of Billy G Bang (vocals), Stevie Von Saint (guitar) and Danny Fury (drums). I remember in my early London days I had a bandmate who was friends with the Dragons and with McCoy's wife-to-be Angela at this time and told me that Tregunna had invited McCoy along to do a guest slot with the band at their showcase London gig and he duly got up with them for the encore. Afterwards, the group were apparently absolutely buzzing, convinced that a breakthrough was just around the corner for them. Only for Stevie and Danny to find out a few days later that McCoy had basically come along to poach Tregunna for his new band and had taken Billy with him as well with the trio already having got on the plane to Los Angeles! That's gotta sting...

The group would be rounded out by McCoy's former bandmate in Iggy's group Paul Garisto on drums and, later, Dogs D'Amour guitarist Jo Dog (the Dogs were on hiatus at the time following Tyla's infamous broken bottle incident on the Straight tour - see their SFTJ entry for more details). The group would record their sole album out in L.A. and it would see the light of day in 1992 but by all accounts the band were already falling apart even at this stage - apparently there were regular punch-ups between the members as early as during the recording process.

Shooting Gallery got pretty much slated at the time (certainly I don't think their decision to re-record Don't Never Leave Me as a power ballad helped endear them to the long time Hanoi fans - they would also dig the Cherry Bombz's House of Ecstacy and the Kill City Dragons' Devil Calling out of storage for a re-recording) but on reflection it...well, it's not a classic but it could've been far worse. Certainly the spindly paranoia of opener Restless is a highlight and the likes of I Mess Around and Nature Of My Business aren't bad either. There's even something a bit endearing about their decidedly klutzy attempt to turn Brown Eyed Girl into an Exile-era Stones soundalike rave-up complete with Nicky Hopkins on the keys.

Shooting Gallery wouldn't last beyond 1992 with McCoy doing the off and putting out another solo album Building On Tradition. The band attempted to soldier on by changing their name to the Slum Lords and bringing in former Cats In Boots guitarist Takashi O'Hashi to replace McCoy but that never went further than one EP. Tregunna would end up back in a 21st century Lords reunion attempt without Stiv (sadly the less said about which the better) and can now be found back in Sham 69. Tregunna would also return to the Dogs (bringing Danny Fury with him) for a bit in the late noughties. Billy (now Billy Douglas) is still out there as well (bizarrely we seem to have a few mutual friends on Facebook!) but I'm not sure what he's doing in terms of music nowadays while Takashi was last heard working with Faster Pussycat/Bubble's Brent Muscat.

McCoy's next move would be to reunite with his Briard bandmate Pete Malmi for the Briard Revisited album which saw the group re-recording their early singles and a few new tracks with Jussi and Archzie from fellow Finns the 69 Eyes providing rhythm section backup. Again, it was a decent effort, giving those rickety '70s punk tunes a bit of a '90s power overhaul. And from there, he went back to Hanoi Rocks which is where we picked up the story many moons ago.

As I've said, Andy McCoy has left a brilliantly checkered legacy down the years but I'll always have time for the guy even if only for his work on those brilliant early Hanoi albums. Like I say, the guy may be a bit of a flawed legend but he's definitely one of those guys who's got the sort of rock 'n' roll war stories to tell that most of us could only dream about. Respect, I think, is due.