In 2022, SteeLover, with his new opus Stainless, was one of the sensations of our second GARF during the opening day on Friday. The hard rockers from Liege were unanimous: it was indeed their best concert since their reunion. The public acclaimed them and then after a few striking appearances (including the Spirit of 66 last november), a concert in Poland last June sounded like a revelation.
It is in this great Eastern country where SteeLover is the most popular! He had still sold around 80,000 copies of his Glove Me (1984 album) in the country of Mazurka. That explains it. The actuality of the hard-working SteeLover is precisely the CD reissue (with two bonus tracks) of this sparkling Glove Me. The opportunity was therefore a good one to ask them to come and perform it on the GARF stage. Let’s not forget the legendary concert of SteeLover on this same stage of the Cultural Center of Chênée in December 1984: that evening, our brave steelworkers had been in a state of grace marking the history of Liège rock and Walloon hard rock forever.
Michel Leclercq was a great guitarist! Too unrecognized. With a strong character. Has heightened sensitivity. His knowledge of music was abysmal. His taste ? very safe… In addition to this range of qualities, Michel was a pedagogical and passionate teacher. Dozens of Liège guitarists owe him a lot.
Beyond the panegyric, groups or rather one: Danger. Formed at the turn of the 70s/80s, this “hard” academy from Liège could compete with many groups of the time. British upbringing and US sound were the hallmarks of this unique LP that was much better packaged than Irish Coffee, Jenghiz Khan or Kleptomania. A big fan of Wes Montgomery, Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen and later a fervent follower of Robben Ford, Michel sailed towards more jazz and more blues horizons with always a particular appetite for the Californian sound.
After The Waiting was his last band and his final album. He was to perform at our GARF 2020. The Covid crisis wanted it otherwise before our Michel left without too much warning to meet the stars… His friends will pay him a vibrant and deserved tribute. Around Julian, his son. His pride.
Woodstock heroes! Ten Years After have seen their name shine endlessly since a beautiful evening of August 1969. Before this lollapalooza, the quartet was formed ten years after the explosion of rock’n’roll (this is the meaning of the band’s name). Our Ten Years After have a creed from the beginning: to stay in the beautiful purity of rock’n’roll and to be immersed in the general feeling of British blues (which quickly makes a boom!).
It is at the famous Marquee Club in London and at the Windsor National Blues and Jazz Festival that guitarist Alvin Lee shows virtuosity and ostentation. Equal to Clapton, Beck, Green or other Page, Lee is this guitar hero (on his eternal Gibson 335) adored for his technicality and his speed. Ten Years After are more agile and swing than many other bands. More psychedelic and mysterious too. They have no cause to be envious of Cream and that bunch of dirty kids called Led Zeppelin.
With “I’m Going Home”, TYA have a unifying anthem that lead them through the mud of the mythical Festival. The 70s are a bit rough with the band and his guitar hero even if the last Nottingham fellow who would cooperate never loosens the grip.
After a legendary gig at the Boogie Town Festival in Louvain-la-Neuve in May 1999 where we saw the original line-up one last time (Alvin Lee, Chick Churchill, Leo Lyons, Ric Lee) Ten Years After reinvent themselves (Alvin Lee disappeared in 2013) with a stable line-up since 2014: Ric Lee and Chick Churchill crossed swords with bassist Colin Hodgkinson (Alexis Korner, Chris Rea, Whitesnake, Jon Lord, Jan Hammer, The Spencer Davis Group…) and with Italian/London guitarist Marcus Bonfanti (Ginger Baker, Eric Burdon and a remarkable solo career). This madman of Rory Gallagher, BB King and Stevie Ray Vaughan is not afraid of anything and especially not of ghosts.
Ten Years After return to the Chênée Cultural Center after a memorable gig there in 2009. Aren’t legends eternal?
Sweden and melodic hard rock: a great love story! Fed to the haughty melodies of ABBA, Europe, Rising Force, Silver Mountain, 220 Volt and other Treats determine themselves and fight the speed/thrash trend which is too quickly becoming the mainstream of music.
Treat seems to be the most talented of his generation, especially after “Scratch and Bite” (summer 85) and “The Pleasure Principle” (end 85), their first two musical opuses, which catapults our cool dandies into the circle of the high dignitaries of melodic hard rock/AOR.
But Europe is experiencing extraordinary happiness with its “Final Countdown” and Treat can only grin and bear it despite small international hits as times goes by which have the titles “Get You On The Run”, “World Of Promises” or “Ready For The Taking”.
Treat protects himself tooth and nail against misfortune with a great support on the last tour of Queen (1986) and with remarkable performances at the Monsters of rock 1988 in Bochum and Schweinfurt with Iron Maiden, Kiss and David Lee Roth. The group is making it more discreet in the sad grunge years.
He literally rose from his ashes in 2006 (they sign a deal with Universal and a presence at Sweden Rock) before signing “Coup de Grace” in 2010, perhaps the ultimate masterpiece of the genre.
Vocalist Robert Ernlund and guitarist Anders Wikström promised to be all dressed up to the nines to celebrate their 40th birthday. For a new “Coup de Grace”?
1968. Free has the bluesy rock in his blood and is crazy about seminal hard rock. Paul Rodgers already is a kind of ultimate singer. The rhythm section (Kirke-Fraser) challenges the one from Cream, as for Paul Kossoff, the guitar player, he fights with blunted foils with Beck, Page, Clapton and especially Peter Green, the great Mac guitarist.
After a revamped Free in Bad Co, Paul Kossoff prefers to sail solo but soon comes back in 1975 with a band called Back Street Crawler and finds the good complements with in particular Terry Slesser, a frontman to make your hairs ruffling.
Unfortunately, this case goes wrong despite two premium quality bluesy rock albums: The Band plays On and 2nd Street, the most successful, produced by the famous Glyn Johns (Led Zep, The Stones, Eagles, Clapton…). While on a working out well tour for BSC in April 1976 with AC/DC in support, the Koss fell dead (victim of his addictions) on a Los Angeles-New York flight. End of the story !
Now, what a surprise to see this BSC again with Terry Slesser in 2023. A new album (Rome In A Day) to be released this year and the best skilled workers in English rock: John Buckton (guitar-the reincarnation of the Koss!), Rhino Edwards (bass-Status Quo, Dexys Midnight Runners) Clive Edwards (drums-UFO, Pat Travers, Wild Horses) and Mark Taylor (Keyboards-Simple Minds, The Alarm, Elton John) should convince the most skeptical. “We are older now but the fire still burns inside us like the good old days” unfolds a Terry Slesser, a carnivorous smile and a knife between his teeth.
That bodes well…
Rudy Lenners, drummer ex-Scorpions and SteeLover, Jean-Pierre Froidebise, bluesy renowned guitarist, Alain Pire, guitarist/singer – expert in the English psychedelic music, and Jean-Pierre Cocco, singer/bass player with a Latin feeling, founded Such A Noise in 1989.
Veterans of the Liege rock scene, this quartet runs at the top on all the stages of Wallonia with their bluesy rock on fire perfectly mastered and with surgical precision.
Two albums (1992 and 1994) are well rated in the medias (and relayed by Radio 21, ancestor of Classic 21) but S.A.N. loves the job and it is on the stages that he shows his quintessence and his great science of music that never ceases to rise from its ashes in times that are less and less favourable.
Such A Noise toured with Uli Jon Roth for a tribute to the great Hendrix in 1991 and even opened for Deep Purple at Forest National in 1993.
The golden quartet hasn’t existed for quite a few years but as the majority of his stakeholders have already played at GARF, they have decided to offer us a final concert in Proust’s Madeleine mode. Spread the word…
Geordie wasn’t meant to see the light at the end of the tunnel or stand out from the rest. And yet Geordie is known and greatly prized by die-hard AC/DC fans.
It was in 1980 that the huge number discovered this harsh and festive band from Newcastle, the flagship city of the industrial English powerhouse. Geordie is also Newcastle’s demonym and Brian Johnson, the vocalist, is the official successor for the great Bon Scott within the AC/DC institution. It is since this year that we know that Geordie is a band in the glam movement of Sweet and Slade (they were support act for both!) which is not content to be a party band of the best effect but also a band with a seventies sound well established.
If Geordie toured (for a few dates) in 2021 with Brian Johnson (what a good guy!), the post-covid reformation seems to be much more invented and promising. Tom Hill and Brian Gibson (the seventies rhythm section) are backed by Back Street Crawler vocalist Terry Slesser.
For the little story, Slesser was in competition with Brian Johnson and Gary Holton (Heavy Metal Kids) for the succession of Bon Scott. It’s a small world!
This group from Visé (on the outskirts of Liège, within a short walk of Netherlands) was formed in the mid-1980s and immediately got post-punk under their skin.
A 5-track mini-album increased their small notoriety, mainly in Wallonia. Thus were profiled the support acts of bands such as Fuzzbox, And Also The Trees or Minimal Compact (ex-Cassandra Complex). After a split in 1989, the band of leader Jean-Paul Devox (involved in multiple projects) briefly reunited in 2005 for about fifteen gigs.
The return in this year 2023 seems much more serious. In addition to its performance at GARF, Vox Populi is preparing a new opus that will combine new and vintage stuff.
To claim that Arthur Brown is at the center of everything is not an exaggeration. Psychedelic rock, seminal hard rock, theatrical rock (an influence for Alice Cooper), crazy and protest rock and other pleasures, Arthur makes it his daily life and his business from 1967 in the aromas of a swinging and bubbling London. 1968 is his year. The time for signing for his album (“The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown”) with Vincent Crane (pre-Atomic Rooster), Carl Palmer (pre-ELP) as well as Kit Lambert and Pete Townshend of The Who waiting in ambush.
Arthur Brown especially lays the single Fire, haunting refrains, which will give ideas to hard rockers and will become a psyche anthem. This signature song of the English shouter from the north of England is No. 1 in the British charts and No. 2 in the USA. After a riotous life in the communities of Notting Hill (a hippie district in central London) and unforgettable concerts at the mythical UFO Club on Tottenham Court Road, Brown emerged from the hubbub and stardom despite Kingdom Come (a band not finding his audience) and the role of a priest in The Who’s ‘Tommy’.
Arthur, the man with the fire helmet, is reborn from his ashes at the turn of the millennium. Twenty good springs later, the always very sprightly Arthur Brown serves us a particularly bluesy Long Long Road, just psychedelic but loud-mouthed, incredibly vicious.
A vintage album that has the audacity to drive drunk without shame: “the desire to always create new approaches and cool musical pieces has always been my vision. It’s stronger than ever” laconically drops this lanky, hyper-focused madman.
Those who have always appreciated awesome and hallucinated rockers (Screaming Lord Sutch, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Alice Cooper…) will be well served and will thus enjoy a legendary and very rare Arthur Brown in our regions. Our 3rd GARF could not have ended better than with these touches of madness and musicality.
French rock? It’s like English wine, it exists… The good John Lennon didn’t live long enough to hear the Frenchies band that could have contradicted his witticism. Yes, Satan Jokers was different: more original, more brilliant than many others and above all very jealous (the privilege of the best!).
Its story begins at the end of the seventies with Renaud Hantson, a crazy drumming excellence award from the great Phil Collins and great admirer of Michel Berger. His Satan Jokers took shape in 1981 then, after a first part of Trust in 82 at the Rose Bonbon where the youngsters killed the father, it was the start of a series of misunderstandings and harmful relationships with everyone. Yet “Les fils du métal» (83) and «Trop fou pour toi” (84) are above the lot with a frank, syncopated and technical hard.
Would Satan Jokers be a compromise between Magma and Judas Priest? The third opus – a six-track mini album – is perhaps his Prix de Rome. It is his peak of inspiration and a work of inestimable richness.
Considered the French Glenn Hughes (an instrumentalist with a voice of solid gold), Renaud Hantson gradually unleashes his Satan Jokers for Starmania (between 1988 and 1990 in the role of Ziggy) and for a pop/rock solo career that does not meet more his audience.
In perpetual fight against his demons, Renaud Hantson continues his merry way (Furious Zoo music school…) then he could not resist a last show of Satan Jokers (group stopped for several years) at our Golden Age, reputed for its attraction to bands that have disappeared or never been released. Too crazy for you?
