Garbage Days Revisited #92: Spiders & Snakes - "2000 Retro" (1993)
I remember a while back while writing the Rock City Angels GDR entry that it might just be the most convoluted band story we've ever done on Garbage Days Revisited. Well, stop the clocks, we have a new winner. Spiders & Snakes frontman Lizzie Grey was arguably the great nearly man of the Sunset Strip and the story of the three bands he's best remembered for, namely London, Ultra Pop and Spiders and Snakes, is one of those that's got more twists and turns than all the rollercoasters on Blackpool Pleasure Beach combined. And although it's arguably his finest hour, Spiders & Snakes' debut album, that we're here to discuss today, we should probably start right at the beginning over a decade before in London. No, not the city, the band. Who were from L.A. See what I mean about this being convoluted?
Okay so first up, a quick point of clarification - there were two bands called London doing the rounds at this time and as I mentioned couple of sentences ago, this is the American one we're talking about. There was also a Brit band of the same name who were a year zero punk band probably best remembered for being where future Damned and Culture Club drummer Jon Moss started out. They put out an album, Animal Games, in '77 which had one absolutely killer single No Time (which I've been nice and posted below) and pretty much nowt else of value on it and split soon afterwards. Anyway, back to the main story.
The American London were formed probably about the same time as their British counterparts around 1977-78 but it would take them seven years to finally get their debut album out. The group had actually evolved out of an earlier outfit called Sister who were formed by Blackie Lawless, then best known for being the bass player for the New York Dolls in their dying days, after his old group had finally limped to a halt. Lawless would move to rhythm guitar and hook up with guitarist Lizzie Grey, bassist Nikki Sixx and drummer Dane Rage to form this new band who by all accounts were very Alice Cooper influenced so you can kind of see where him and Sixx's future groups originally got the whole debbil-worship idea from. Anyway, Sister weren't long for this world as Grey, Sixx and Rage all split away from yer man Lawless to put London together. The group would go through a couple of lead singers before bringing in none other than Nigel Benjamin, last seen in his native England fronting the post-Ian Hunter line-up of Mott the Hoople.
London would do a number of demos with the Benjamin/Grey/Sixx/Rage line-up, three of which would very belatedly surface as part of Spiders & Snakes (see later on in this article)'s London Daze album in 2000 but if you're expecting Crue style shrieking sleaze here, think again - the tunes in question sound more like the tuneful AOR of REO Speedwagon or the Babys with the pianos and Benjamin's vocals definitely owing a bit of a nod to John Waite. Mind you, the production on these tracks is so awful that you might struggle to hear anything about them to be honest! Soon afterwards, Sixx would hook up with Tommy Lee and split to form Motley Crue to be replaced by none other than Blackie Lawless. This line-up would limp on for a few months before Benjamin left to join shock-rockers Sorcery and Lawless went on to put the original line-up of W.A.S.P. together (which also included former Sister guitarist Randy Piper).
Lizzie Grey would briefly put a band together with future D'Molls frontman Desi Rexx before resurrecting the London name in 1984 with new members Nadir D'Priest on vocals, Izzy Stradlin on guitar, Brian West on bass and Bobby Marks on drums. And here's where the merry-go-round really speeds up. Marks would quickly be poached by Keel and replaced by Steven Adler. Stradlin would leave the band to co-form Hollywood Rose with L.A. Guns guitarist Tracii Guns (who, just to prove how incestuous Sunset Strip rock is, would end up forming Brides of Destruction with Nikki Sixx some two decades later) and an old mate of his from Ohio called Axl Rose which, obviously, would quickly evolve into Guns 'n' Roses who would subsequently poach Steven Adler. Grey would replace him with Fred Coury who would stick around long enough to play on the group's debut album but would then leave to join Cinderella soon afterwards. He was initially replaced by Billy Dior who was promptly poached by Grey's former bandmate Desi Rexx for the D'Molls. So basically by the time London had even got around to start promoting this album they'd already gone through enough band members to make L.A. Guns blush.
But the surprise is that Non-Stop Rock actually isn't that bad an album. I mean, similar to Keel's Lay Down The Law, it's simplistic to the point that you would literally have to have about 90% of your brain removed to not "get" what it's about (rocking out, basically) but while a large majority of Sunset Strip at this time was tedious metal fretwanking and humourless posing, at least London, similar to the Joneses (albeit not quite of the same quality) inject a bit of snotty urgency and Dollsy swagger into their music, ripping through the nine tracks on this album in just 31 minutes with the likes of Dirty City, Stand Back and the title track ripping through while the horror-rock atmospherics of Werewolves In London is pure Raise Your Fist And Yell era Alice Cooper.
Despite this, London never really got off the ground and Non-Stop Rock slipped out to very little fanfare. They brought in Kim Fowley (it's that man again...) to produce the follow-up, 1987's Don't Cry Wolf which saw them trying to branch their sound out taking in everything from thrash (Hit And Run Lover) to horror-rock (For Whom The Bell Tolls, not a Metallica cover before you ask). It was a brave attempt although not everything they tried worked (the blues-rock of Killing Time is predictably dull) but it didn't do any better than its predecessor commercially and Grey would end up calling time on the band again soon afterwards (although a D'Priest-led line-up would stagger on for one more album, 1990's frankly rather crap Playa del Rock).
Supposedly Grey's reason for bailing on the group was that he wanted to return to the sound he'd originally envisaged the band having when he set it up a decade earlier which was a much more '70s Brit-glam influenced sound but the others weren't so keen. The net result was Lizzie cutting what was effectively a solo album under the Ultra Pop banner (also the album's title). Ultra Pop is a bit of a curio - rather than the Bolan/Bowie/Roxy sound it was touted as, it actually sounds more like it was influenced by '60s psychedelia and power-pop, especially the Beatles' latter-day output (there's definitely a bit of a hint of Redd Kross in there as well which is no bad thing). Upon release, apparently it completely threw those who'd been into Grey's previous group for a total loop and it's not hard to see why - there's hardly any guitars on it with the synths and Lennon-indebted vocals doing most of the work. That said, if you take it for what it is, it's actually quite a charming album with the likes of Hard Times and the gentle Chasing A Rainbow being good efforts.
It's the second Ultra Pop album where Grey really nails it though and Adventures In Fantasy really is a proper hidden gem from this latter day Sunset Strip era, one of those records with a wide set of influences which somehow just gel together perfectly against all the odds. The Bolan/Alice style early '70s glam influence is a lot more pronounced on this one with the strutting likes of The L.A. Jets, 1990s Girl and the cheeky innuendo of Snakes In Love ("She's the kind of girl who sends a shiver down your spine/Watch out Mr Tarzan, she'll be clinging to your vine!") being proper bangers. Elsewhere, the whiplash riff of Take What You Can Get sees a bit of a nod back to London's old sound and Danny's Lament is pure Ramones by way of the Sweet. Best of all though is the genuinely lovely psychedelic ballad Fields Of Clover which seems to be about making the most of the time you have because life is short. You may just feel a bit of a lump rising to your throat during this one. A real lost classic of an album which I heartily recommend.
Ultra Pop would undergo a bit of a line-up shift after Adventures In Fantasy with the new members bringing a harder playing style which nudged them back towards the old London sound a bit and, perhaps aware of this, they changed their name again to Spiders & Snakes. They didn't exactly get off to a great start under their new guise as their Arachnomania EP was very hit and miss, showing them trying to go back to the heavier London sound but with Grey's vocals on California Slide and Mr Tripps veering towards the sort of full on screechiness that made the guy from Lizzy Borden sound almost reasonable.
However, as with Ultra Pop, they realised where their sound needed refining and their debut album 2000 Retro was where it properly came together for them, mixing the flashbomb dynamics of London with the old school glam/psychedelic melodies of Ultra Pop to come up with an album which genuinely blended the best parts of both bands to excellent effect - basically it's the album that groups like Poison would have absolutely killed to have written. Tunes like the strutting So Far So Good, the Sweet-esque Little Dynamite and the excellent High Society which is reminiscent of the Stones covering Mott the Hoople's All The Way From Memphis (yup, seriously, that good) are fine stuff indeed. It's impressively varied as well from the haunting Alice In White to Nuke The Sun which brings up the strange but enjoyable image of Joe Strummer writing a song for the Alice Cooper Band. Just a shame that it didn't surface until 1993 when the glam-rock ship had long since sailed leaving it as an absolute diamond among the dying embers of the Sunset Strip scene.
Spiders & Snakes would remain a going concern for another two decades although they'd never quite manage to top this album - given their love of '70s glam, it's probably not a surprise that 1995's Glitter Classics (which included a bunch of re-recorded Ultra Pop songs but hey, if you've got a good set of tunes then why not?) would again see Lizzie teaming up with Kim Fowley as producer while 2000's London Daze would see them going even further back and revisiting Grey's '80s band's back catalogue. Thereafter, productivity would slow down a bit due to the untimely death of bassist Leigh Lawson and Grey suffering from LBD dementia which would sadly claim his life in 2019.
Fair play to Lizzie Grey - there's not many musicians we deal with in this column who've clocked up a decent album with three different bands but he definitely falls into that category and respect is most definitely due. Certainly for those with a love of the swagger of '70s glam rock, the melodies of '60s psychedelic pop and the sense of fun that the best '80s glam metal had should check 2000 Retro and Adventures In Fantasy out as a matter of urgency and Non-Stop Rock's definitely worth checking out for those into the none-more-dumb-but-fun headbanging likes of Twisted Sister and early Keel. RIP Lizzie, you left a pretty damn good legacy behind feller.
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