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Torme - Back To Babylon
(Enigma, 1986) |
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“Here’s little Jimmy with a new sensation,
more white noise for the next generation. |
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| The opening moments of the record start out a bit dicey, with the intro to “All Around the World” sounding like I wrongly judged this book by its cover and ended up with some kind of lame AOR/prog-rock record. Thankfully, I’m quickly proven wrong by the crash of a power chord and Phil Lewis’ trashy wail of “Born to the sound of a siren’s wail, run you can run, but you can’t get away”. It sent a shiver up my spine in 1987, and has the same effect today. And it didn’t let up. “Star” and “Eyes of the World” are a one-two punch about wanting to be a star…and then…the perils of being a star. A combined mini-epic, “The Rise and Fall of Bernie Torme”, in nine minutes. |
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| Who needs an entire record to document one’s rise and fall when it can obviously be squeezed into side one of your debut? The only obvious negative of the record at this point is the downright terrible recording. I mean, I’m no audiophile. I think Johnny Thunders records sound good. But this sounds like the “producer” (John McCoy, of Atomic Rooster/Gillan fame) punched ‘play’ on a tape recorder and dropped it into a trash can before leaving for the pub. Torme says it best on his own website-- “We did three albums on shitty independent labels (Back To Babylon, Die Pretty, Die Young, and Official Live Bootleg), which all suffered from dire production, and never even vaguely approached the level and excitement of the band live.” – but so far, the songs and attitude are good enough to hold it together. Its got all kinds of things going on. First, there’s the Hanoi-esque lyrics, with “outlaw boys of the rebel kind” and the “thieves and the tramps and the slaves and the saints”. And there’s crazy guitar noodling, like Eddie Van Halen… but it was tasteful (turns out this guy was an actual guitar hero overseas, but not here, cuz his name was Bernie). And it was punk. And it was metal. And it was all these things. | |
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It continues with “Burning Bridges” with its Evil Dead reference, always a plus in my book. “Hardcore” about, well hardcore, and “Here I Go”, I guess about…wanting to go. The first chink in the armour shows with “Family At War”, where we’re treated with a serious song with a message about…a family at war. Yeah, I get it, guys, but it ain’t good. Keep it simple, you’re really good at it. Luckily, we’re back to the good stuff with “Frontline”, which again tries to be a little heavy-handed lyrically, but at least it rocks. “Arabia” is a throw-away that nearly lasts long enough to kill more momentum, |
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but everything is quickly righted with closing track “Mystery Train”.
Again, not exactly an original theme for metal, but done well enough to
make you forget that fact.
“Love, Guns & Money” does not appear on the original album release,
but was tacked on as a bonus track to the Metal Blade CD release in
’89. The only “bone-us” being the song has a name good enough to
fool you into thinking its going to be a flash
metal classic. A minute in, its obvious it’s not.
No wonder it was left off the original release.
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| I won’t even go into detail on their posthumous 2nd release, “Die Pretty Die Young”. Mainly because it doesn’t deserve it. What better way to “cash in” on the success(?) of the debut than by releasing a follow-up consisting of even more poorly recorded half-hearted demos? The only notable track is “Sex Action”, which later ended up as the title of a Phil Lewis-fronted LA Guns song. I never even bothered picking up their final release, the creatively titled live record, “Official Live Bootleg”. Seemed as pointless at the time, as it does today. So where was the flash metal suicide? It was less a suicide and more a case of being flash metal stillborn. Although Torme as a band existed for a couple years, they seemed more like a stopgap for its members. For Phil Lewis, it was just a way to kill some time between his post-Girl outfit New Torpedoes and LA Guns. Although he stopped by long enough to nick “Electric Gypsies” (Bernie’s pre-Torme band) & “Sex Action” (from the “Die Pretty Die Young” album) for Guns. For Bernie, it was simply about deciding he did not want to be a frontman, which he was in his previous outfit, Electric Gypsies. If you need more standard Flash Metal Suicide reasons… | |
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1) Today an indie rock band named after Mel Torme would probably be
considered kitschy and cool. In ’86, a metal band named after him wasn’t.
Its hard to be a cool flash metal band when the first thing people think
of when they hear your name is the Velvet Fog. 2) The name “Bernie” does not = “rockstar”. The only other Bernie to come close was Taupin, and he had to find a guy named Elton to sing his songs. Why? Because his fuckin’ name was Bernie, which in no capacity = “rockstar”. 3) They simply didn’t care. To be a successful flash metal band in the ‘80’s, no matter what country you were from, your main goal had to be conquering America. Torme were content enough to sell out the London Marquee. And that’s just not gonna get it done. For more info… Bernie Torme’s official site |
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___________________________________________________________________ - S.R.M. Back to List Home |
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I remember the day this record showed up unannounced at Tempo Records
in Valencia, CA, where I worked at the time. Even though I didn’t know a
thing about ‘em, it had all the right elements to woo me into taking it
home that night. Let’s start with the title, “Back to Babylon”.
Babylon has long been an important word in the
flash metal lexicon. From the New
York Dolls (“Babylon”) to Faster Pussycat (again, “Babylon”)
to Backyard Babies (a cover of FP’s “Babylon”)
to Hanoi Rocks (okay, they never had a Babylon song, but I’m
pretty sure Mystery City was only one zip code away). So the title
alone is enough to coerce me into checking out the back cover, where I’m
greeted by some bored looking dudes. But a couple of ‘em have good hair,
and one’s holding a gun, so I peruse further. Let’s take a look at the
song titles – “All Around the World”, “Star”, “Hardcore”,
“Here I Go”, “Mystery Train”, “Love, Guns & Money” –
now I don’t know about you, but I’ll listen to any record with that many
flash metal clichés in the track listing alone. It wasn’t
until later that night, when I opened the record at home, that I realized
I may have just opened a pandora’s box of rock. Lead singer Phil
Lewis?? Wasn’t he in Girl with Phil Collen? And
Bernie Torme, the band’s namesake, hadn’t he been Ozzy’s first
replacement for Randy Rhoads? This was getting infinitely more
interesting.