Garbage Days Revisited #83: Torme - "Back To Babylon" (1985)

 

"Outlaw boys of the rebel kind, gotta keep movin', don't look behind..." - Torme - All Around The World

Now here's a rum one. I'm not sure Torme strictly count as a "supergroup" as such as at the time they existed, none of the members had quite got the reputations they'd subsequently build up afterwards but it was definitely an interesting meeting of minds. The group were formed by guitarist Bernie Torme (obviously) shortly after he left Ozzy Osbourne's band and Phil Lewis who at the time had just left the band he'd made his name with, Girl.

Bernie Torme had actually first come to prominence in the punk era when he'd moved across to London from his native Ireland. Although he was a rock guitarist, he saw the prevailing trends at the time, cut his hair short and became a regular with his group at the punk clubs like the Roxy and the Vortex - he even appears on the Live At The Vortex compilation alongside other late in the day punk first wavers like Mean Street (featuring a pre-Tubeway Army Gary Numan), the Maniacs (a very underrated '77 punk band who sadly lasted for just the one single featuring future Damned guitarist Alan Lee Shaw) and the Art Attacks.

After this, Torme would move through the ranks of Gillan and Atomic Rooster before getting what looked like his big break when he joined Ozzy Osbourne's band after the untimely death of Randy Rhoads but his spell there was a short one and he'd soon be turfed out to make way for Jake E Lee. Which led to him returning to London and meeting up with Phil Lewis.

At this point, Lewis was still a few years away from joining L.A. Guns, which is what he's best known for, but had a minor reputation thanks to Girl who were briefly tipped as Brit metal's next big thing but never quite made it. If anything, they were probably half a decade too early as they got lumped in with Maiden, Priest, Saxon et al in the whole New Wave of British Heavy Metal but were coming at it from a much more glam rock based direction. The group also featured future Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen and were managed by Don Arden (Sharon Osbourne's dad). They managed a pair of albums, 1980's Sheer Greed and 1982's Wasted Youth and got a couple of minor hits with My Number and Hollywood Tease (which Lewis would re-record with L.A. Guns on their debut album) but the departure of Collen to the Leps who were just about to hit paydirt with Pyromania pretty much finished  them off. After this, Lewis would join up with fellow West Londoners and Johnny Thunders associates Steve Dior and Barry Jones in the London Cowboys (another group who I'm sure we'll cover in GDR at some point) before his meeting with Bernie. The group were rounded out by bassist Chris Heilmann (later of Sunset Strip second divisioners Shark Island) and drummer Ian Whitewood (who'd join a reformed Sham 69 as the decade wound to a close).

Basically, Back To Babylon comes across as this gang of raggle-taggle misfits attempting to pick up the baton from Hanoi Rocks who'd disbanded the previous year and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Opener All Around The World lays down the manifesto in fine style with the pounding drums, Lewis' siren wail vocals and Torme's flashbomb guitar soloing combining to create a proper fist-in-the-air anthem for "the thieves and the tramps and the saints and the slaves". A proper lost Soho sleaze classic which you really should listen to asap if you haven't already.

Side one keeps up the quality throughout as well with Star (which Torme would continue to play live right up to his death) and the excellent Eyes Of The World almost being a two-part style rise and fall of a rockstar saga (think the old David Essex film Rock On distilled down to ten minutes) which works way better than it really has any right to while the likes of Burning Bridges, Hardcore and Here I Go are prime slices of rabble rousing glam-punk even if the production's a bit shaky in places.

The songs on the second side are bit longer and more mid-paced (including a re-recording of Family At War which was originally on the second Girl album) and I think that's the only slight drawback here - they're still good but it feels like a bit of a slowdown after the full throttle first side although there's still some good stuff especially the sinister closer Mystery Train.

Torme wouldn't be long for this world afterwards - the group were able to command a healthy following in London but never really broke any further than that (trust me, there's plenty of similar bands I've seen who've fallen into that exact same trap down the years) and by late '87, they'd be no more with Lewis moving to California to join L.A. Guns (though I remember reading an interview with him where he says that he basically jumped from Torme before Bernie pushed him!). A second album, Die Young Die Pretty, would surface towards the end but this one really isn't anywhere near the same standard that Back To Babylon is and sounds more like a collection of unfinished demos than anything.

We've already dealt with Phil Lewis' time with L.A. Guns in Garbage Days Revisited columns of the past but Bernie Torme would go on to play with former Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider in the bands Desperado and Widowmaker as well as providing guitar skills on another underappreciated Soho scuzz-glam classic in the form of ex-Hanoi Rocks guitarist Rene Berg's The Leather, The Loneliness And Your Dark Eyes (stay tuned for a future GDR on that one) before forming GMT with his former Atomic Rooster bandmate John McCoy and ex-Antiproduct and Rachel Stamp and current Sham 69 and Fiascos drummer Robin Guy and then going on to a solo career proper which spawned four albums in the 2010's. He'd also collaborate with Ginger Wildheart on his underrated Yoni album before sadly passing away from pneumonia in 2016. I don't think there's any doubt the guy left an impressive legacy behind him and is much missed.

Anyway, Back To Babylon...I'd certainly say it's a bit of an underrated classic of the mid-'80s Brit-sleaze genre which we seem to have ended up visiting on a fair few GDR's in the last couple of years. Certainly for any Hanoi fans out there, this one comes highly recommended and it's a real shame that Torme basically ended up being more of a footnote in the careers of the guys in the band but sometimes that's the way the cards fall unfortunately. Anyway, crank this one up, pour yerself a beverage of choice and enjoy.