I've continued to explore the origins of hard rock over the past few weeks, which might seem like I've been spending far more time listening to '60s and '70s rock than sampling our beloved sounds of the '80s. But one of the coolest things about '60s and '70s hard rock is that it had so much influence on the massive variety of loud guitar rock that so dominated the '80s, ultimately it begins to feel like all this great music blends together like a savory, succulent puree.
For instance, I recently made a stop in the vast realm of British guitar rock, a place I hadn't visited in quite some time, where I encountered the seminal band UFO. This powerhouse band featured one of rock's finest under-the-radar tandems in frontman Phil Mogg and German guitarist Michael Schenker. A vital missing link between the days of Black Sabbath and the seemingly out-of-the-blue emergence of Guns N' Roses nearly two decades later, UFO contributed some unique molten blasts of power rock that stand up incredibly well 35 years later.
Which brings us smoothly if somewhat indirectly to this week's feature, a truly underrated power ballad from 1989, the very heart of the hair metal era, McAuley-Schenker Group's "Anytime." This latter-day version of Schenker's '80s career as bandleader may have looked the part in terms of clothing and hairstyle (check out the song's music video for proof), but there's something about the vocals of frontman Robin McAuley and the Flying V power of Schenker's fretwork that calls to mind hard rock's more classic '70s era. This is a polished track, to be sure, but its deft blend of melodic pop metal hooks and pure overdrive rock and roll stands up quite well all these years later. MTV could have used a few more bands like MSG to give the era's sound a bit more credibility, but alas, tunes like this can perhaps rest on the rich consolation that they couldn't fit more perfectly in this space as (nearly) forgotten gems.
Album Cover Image Courtesy of Capitol
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