After Gillan’s departure from Deep Purple, he was in the musical wilderness for a few years. The releases were very patchy until he released Mr Universe in ’79 when the NWOBHM was in full swing. With the addition of a hotshot guitar player (Bernie Torme) and a more raw rocked up sound, Gillan found some solo success. Gillan’s love of old school rock’n’roll is evident with the inclusion of what was a hit single, New Orleans, and the Lieber/Stoller classic, Trouble. One of his first professional bands was Episode Six, and two of his band mates from that band join him here, Colin Towns and Mick Underwood.
Opening track is the title track and is a decent tune with good vocals and some raw guitar from Torme. Night Ride Out Of Phoenix is again a decent tune with an odd groove and a cool riff. Mutually Assured Destruction is a strange tune, not a bad vocal from Gillan and some cool guitar – I just think it’s a weak song. Bite The Bullet is the best song on this side. It starts off with a cool barroom piano, then we are off with a great up tempo rocker with some nice guitar from Torme. Side 1 ends with If I Sing Softly, the obligatory power ballad.
Side 2 begins with the best song on the album, if not Gillan’s best solo track – and to add extra sauce – it was also a hit single. Borrowed heavily from Gillan’s love of rock’n’roll, but twisted around to give it that huge dose of originality. His vocal is fantastic and Bernie’s over driven guitar is just perfect. Don’t Want The Truth and One More For The Road are fairly straightforward rockers. For Your Dreams is an interesting ending to the album with an almost Supertramp feel to the song.
The one thing you get from Gillan’s solo albums is the material was never that strong. Each album had its highlights for sure, but the quality never stretched to the whole album. I think this was the main reason he went back to Purple as the money was guaranteed.
7/10 from The Grooveman.
