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Judie Tzuke

I have been listening to an old favorite from the early 1980's - the British singer, Judie Tzuke. I have her first record, "Welcome to the Cruise," which was released in 1979. She had one hit single, "Stay with Me Till Dawn," which was recently voted by BBC Radio Two one of the top fifty British songs of the past fifty years, coming in at No. 39.

She toured with great success as Elton John's opening act in the early 1980's, and recorded "Sportscar" in 1980.

You can visit her website, Tzuke.com, to read more of her history. It seems like she did not get the record company support that she richely deserved, and kept bouncing around to different labels throughout much of her career. She still put out albums and has around 18 to her credit.

At some point in her career, she decided to pay for her own recordings, and to not sign away rights to her music. In fact, Elton John released to Judie all of the musical rights to the records she did under his Rocket Man label. She is now in charge of her recordings and has a record label call Big Moon Records.

Check out her wikipedia entry here, which can tell you much more about Judie than I. She has a MySpace page here, where you can listen to a few of her songs. She is a great singer, who has continued on with a successful career despite the problems with the record companies.

Review of U2 "Boy" album from July 1982 Guitar World

I was going through a few of my other old Guitar Player magazines when I came across this piece of paper stuck in one of them. It is a review of BOY, U2's first album, from the July 1981 issue.

I became a fan of U2 around this time, after hearing a live version of "The Electric Co." on the radio one late night. It is amazing that this piece of paper has survived all these years.

I am still a fan of U2, although I did not really like the Zooropa and Pop phase. I find their music inspiring and I am glad to say our kids like them, too.

The members of U2 are basically the same age as me. We would have grown up hearing the same music, taking it all in and figuring out what to do with it. Whereas Edge was keeping his guitar playing simple, I was trying to be the next Hendrix, by attempting to play as fast as I could. Edge had limited skills, which worked to his advantage. He came up with something totally different than everyone else, probably by accident. It was the discovey of the Memory Man echo unit that led to his distinct sound. That, and his Gibson Explorer. His use of Vox AC-30 amps was part of it,too, as Marshall and Fender ruled then, with Mesa Boogie coming into fashion later.

I have another early article on Edge written around this time. I will look around for it today, as I am home today. We now have about 6 inches of snow on the ground, just waiting for me to shovel it out of the driveway. Click on the image for a larger version.

Paul Kossoff

I started playing guitar in 1974. I thought I knew all the great guitar players of the time, the ones who I would spend hours trying to learn from. Paul Kossoff flew under my radar, even though I knew of him and of Free, from the hit "All Right Now."

I never listened to much of anything that he did until today. I sit here listening to him pour tons of emotion out of his guitar on the song, "Time Away", which came from his Back Street Crawler band, the last before his death at age 25 on March 19, 1976. This song was apparently influenced from his brush with death.

I went on YouTube and watched as much Free and other videos that are out there and have come away with the opinion that he had the best vibrato in rock, and did more with a Les Paul and a Marshall than most of us dream of. Not many effects - just straight in to the amp, maybe a touch of a Leslie rotating speaker here and there.

I have to say that the music that Free did sounds like it was recorded in the present. These songs came out in 1971! How did I miss this guy?

Listen to Angus Young of AC/DC. You can tell he spent hours listening to Paul Kossoff, as the use of vibrato and the Gibson/Marshall tones are very similar. I love Angus and Malcolm's playing for just keeping it simple.

So many of the great musicians I have liked haved die young and left behind a legacy of music that carries onto the 21st century. Paul, Randy Rhoads (who also died on March 19), Duane Allman, and Tommy Bolin accomplished so much in their short lives, and even years after their passing, here we are still talking about them.

I hope the aspiring guitarists of tomorrow give a listen to Paul Kossoff and learn a thing or two about the art of simple, plug-in and play rock.

Here is his Wikipedia entry, one from MyGuitarSolo.com, and one from Vintage Guitar.