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Bands as precursors to better known bands

Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

By Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand
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UTCzech III

UTCzech III 2907

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^^^^ Interesting story as to how this song even came about...

"Neanderthal Man" is a song by Hotlegs, an English pop band that was later relaunched as 10cc. The song, initially created only as a studio exercise to test drum sounds on new recording equipment, sold over two million copies and reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 22 in the US. It reached No.1 in Italy and Germany and was also a Top 20 hit in Australia, Canada, France, Ireland and Japan.

The song was the first to be recorded at Strawberry Studios inStockport, England, on new four-track Ampex equipment purchased by studio owners Eric Stewart, Graham Gouldman and Peter Tattersall. It featured a simple repeated chorus and a heavy drum rhythm that Gouldman's manager, Harvey Lisberg, has claimed became influential in pop music. He said: "I think a lot of people were very influenced by 'Neanderthal Man', which was something new in drum sounds, using four drums on a four-track machine. When Gary Glitter came along with his records, I thought I could hear the same sort of sound deep down in there. I think there were a lot of other people who copied the sound, maybe unintentionally."[1]

Stewart recalled that when the recording equipment had been set up, Kevin Godley set up his drum kit, Lol Creme got out his guitar and Stewart sat down at the control desk. "It was the first time we'd had a real control desk with a four-track machine and we were excited to try it all out," he said. "The whole thing was just an experiment because Kevin wanted to lay all sorts of different drum beats down that he hadn't recorded before, and there was this crazy sort of nursery rhyme that had just got into our heads."

"As we laid down the drum tracks, Lol was singing in the studio with Kevin keeping time – and after we'd laid four drum tracks down Lol's voice came through at a very high level, sounding like something none of us had ever heard before on a record. It really sounded very strange, so we carried on working on the number, adding little bits of piano to it."[1]

He said there was one further hitch before the song was released: a loud metallic burst towards the end of the song blew a ₤1200 cutter head as the track was being mastered in the Phonogram cutting suite. He explained: "We had a sound on that track that was something that had never been recorded before. We'd made the sound by taking a large 6 ft by 4 ft sheet of steel into the studio. It was actually a sheet we were going to fireproof one of the doors with – and then at the right moment we had hit it with a hammer. The hammer blow gave it such a shock frequency-wise that the equipment just couldn't take it. At the time this was an embarrassment to all of us, but that faded into insignificance when we found ourselves with such a massive hit on our hands.

Edited by UTCzech III
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Bojack

Bojack 2074

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6 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

Mother Love Bone was such a shitty band. They were like a bad Warrant knock off or something.  

This is the truth.  After the Temple of the Dog record came out, I checked out Mother Love Bone thinking it'd be another Soundgarden or Alice in Chains.  Not quite. 

 

My brother, being a big Billy Joel fan, bought the Attila record and it took a while before I was convinced it wasn't an elaborate joke on his part. Billy Joel with long hair, wearing armor, in a meat locker. 

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Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14902

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Everyone says The Melvins begat Nirvana.

Mother Love Bone was a cheesy step towards grunge, but Warrant knock off? I’m not feeling that.

Nirvana and Pearl Jam definitely inspired the abomination that is Bush.

Korn says they were the first ones to combine hard rock and rap. Which angers me.

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Rimbo

Rimbo 25911

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4 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

And of course, this is the correct answer.  

Ozzy's recollection of this in his autobiography is hilarious. Basically, Geezer was the guy who knew everyone in the Brit music scene, and they met a young, scrawny Robert Plant, who wasn't sure if he was going to join this new band with some ex-Yardbirds guys. And Ozzy's all, "Are you nuts? I'd kill to be in that band..."

Of course he was in some band called "Earth" at the time, as has already been covered.

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