We first caught Guns ‘N Roses in some dingy hall in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, headlining a showcase of hair-metal bands, shortly after they’d signed a record deal and well before Appetite for Destruction. All we knew about them was they’d generated hot local buzz. I for one enjoyed the hell out of them and clearly remember thinking they were doing a really good Nazareth impression.
That was especially uncommon at the time. Nazareth and their brand of hard rock was way out of fashion in those post-punk days. While Nazareth had enjoyed a shining moment in the sun in the mid-70s (“Love Hurts”), they were never able to recapture that bottled lightning, despite endless efforts.
And that is one of the great crimes of history. Nazareth were always much, much more than they were given credit for. And, at the same time, considerably less. They were, at heart, not an arena metal band at all, despite being pegged as one. They were a gutbucket rock and roll band, one of the greats, and Dan McCafferty, who recently kicked off at age 76, is unquestionably (in my mind, anyway, which is all that matters for the purpose of this screed) one of the finest vocalists in the history of this thing we call rock, and his demise came during an exceedingly bad couple of weeks for music, along with Jerry Lee Lewis (where we came from) and Keith Levene (where we went).
Hello again, fans, finks and philatelists. Pinky Tourette here, proclaiming my undying love for the Naz. The band’s eponymous debut, released in 1971, is way uneven; a solid rocker in parts, peppered with boogie, pop, country, lush orchestral arrangements, a touch of blues and even a hint of gospel. It’s also arguably the fullest showcase of McCafferty’s vocal range, from howling rock banshee to Captain Beefheart growl to some of his most delicate singing. Exercises, a year later, largely abandoned the hard rock for a more acoustic lilt, with excessive production from a young Roy Thomas Baker, already on his way to becoming the king of bombast. While the songwriting is certainly sharper, the album stands as an outlier in the timeline of the band.
By the time of 1972’s Razamanaz the band had hit its stride, thanks in large part to Deep Purple, who recognized them as a stellar hard rock powerhouse and not a Roy Thomas Baker studio project. Purple brought them on tour as an opening act and bassist Roger Glover produced Razamanaz, stripping away the excess and emphasizing the raw power. Just compare this LP’s version of “Woke Up This Morning” with the Baker version, which was no slacker itself. Glover steroids it up, turning it from a lament to an eruption. The title track is a pure monster that deserves to be in constant rotation on “classic” rock radio. (Just ask the Supersuckers, who covered it way back when they were just supersaplings.) Buffered by the beefed-up music, McCafferty’s vocals are richer and more swaggering than ever.
The album also highlights their blues roots in a whole new way, with searing bottleneck slide (previously hinted at on the second album) and slow, simmering grooves that build to a blinding burn. The promise of the first album’s rock numbers was more than achieved.
The band was now on a high. Loud ‘n’ Proud, Rampant (a vastly overlooked and underrated album, unreleased in America at the time if I recall correctly), Hair of the Dog – all killer stuff, with plenty of roll to go with the rock. The latter album produced their breakthrough hit, “Love Hurts,” the tune that defined them in the public consciousness. It’s a monumental performance by all, with stunning vocals by McCafferty, and illustrates another important point:
They were a killer cover band, a holdover from their early days in Dunfermline wearing matching suits and cranking out popular hits as the Shadettes. Only they didn’t just cover a song. “Love Hurts,” their radical rewrite of the Everly Brothers original (via Gram Parsons + Emmylou Harris), is no less revolutionary than Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower.” Likewise their “Morning Dew,” “This Flight Tonight,” “Teenage Nervous Breakdown,” “Shapes of Things,” “Beggar’s Day.”
Another important point: After three kickass LPs produced by Roger Glover, Hair of the Dog is the first album self-produced by guitarist Manny Charlton, which might make it the first album to sound on vinyl the way it played in his head. And it’s demonstrably heavy, as opposed to hard, even with its distinct southern-fried trimmings. Since it was also their biggest selling release to date – remaining so to this day – heavy became their public perception, pigeonholing them as a metal band. It didn’t hurt the cause that this was their first LP to truly embrace HM cover art, with David Fairbrother-Roe’s evil, fanged-bat-whatsit image, soon to be followed by Rodney Matthews’ blade-wielding skeleton warrior on “No Mean City” and the ultimate metal coup, a Frazetta spread on “Expect No Mercy.”
As a related aside, they also remain to this day possibly the loudest band I’ve ever heard, playing the Palladium in NYC with so many goddamn amps I’m surprised the venue didn’t collapse into the 14th Street subway station as they out-decibeled even Motörhead’s gig at the same venue a few years later. This was during their brief period with Zal Cleminson (formerly of fellow Scottish furies the Sensational Alex Harvey Band) on second guitar. My ears rang for days afterward and I feared my hearing was permanently damaged. In retrospect, it probably was.
Hair of the Dog was the band’s peak in numerous ways. Not only their most popular album, it was their Sabotage – not the final album with the classic lineup, but the final classic album with that lineup. They were capable of cranking out terrific songs after that (“Telegram,” for ex.), but album-wise it was over.
Cleminson’s induction was geared to juice up the band after the subsequent few albums failed to match Hair of the Dog. And for what it’s worth, as stellar a guitarist as he is, he didn’t add much to Nazareth. Manny had it handled.
Nonetheless, their commercial heyday was done, at least in the U.S. and U.K. They were, in the ears of most, one-hit wonders.
Except to those in the know. Folks like you and me and the Supersuckers and a ragtag Los Angeles hair-band called Guns N’ Roses, who covered “Hair of the Dog” on The Spaghetti Incident. And who remain, to this day, a really good Nazareth tribute band.
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