By Carl Begai
If you grew up in Canada during the ‘80s hair band cock rock era you were well aware of Brighton Rock. They were a fixture on MuchMusic and video shows as of 1986 with their Michael Wagener-produced full length debut Young, Wild And Free and first single ‘We Came To Rock’; the same year Poison blew their wad all over Los Angeles, thus making mega-glam ultra-cool in North America. Unlike Bret Michaels and his ‘Talk Dirty To Me’ crew, however, the big push behind Brighton Rock was focused on the band’s lighter side. Second single ‘Can’t Wait For The Night’ and ‘One More Try’ from the 1988 follow-up Take A Deep Breath were massive hits that ultimately came to define the band. It was a travesty for those of us that truly knew Brighton Rock in that there was nothing prim or proper or fluffy – read: stereotypical Canadian rock – about the vast majority of their material. And anyone who saw Brighton Rock perform live will argue (successfully) that the band stood toe-to-toe with any of their glammed-up L.A.-based peers… when they didn’t crush them entirely.
And for the record, the title of this story is ripped off the back of a Brighton Rock tour shirt…. that I so foolishly didn’t buy when I had the chance some 24 years ago.
“That was the piss-off of being Canadian,” says frontman Gerry McGhee, the head honcho at Canadian music distributor Isotope for over 10 years now. “They always wanted to stick us in that box of fluff. I remember one time we were on tour and we did ‘Unleash The Rage’ at a soundcheck; we came off stage and some guy says ‘Are these the same guys that do ‘One More Try’?’ That was one song on the record, man (laughs). I love the tunes, don’t get me wrong, but if I had my way it would have all been the heavy stuff like ‘Unleash The Rage’, ‘Bulletproof’, ‘Nightstalker’ put out there because that’s what the band was all about. We kind of captured that on (third album, from 1991) Love Machine because it was close to that raw sound, but it was the label pressure that put us in that ballad box. That would have been fine if they’d at least released some of the rockers. I got in shit on MuchMusic once because I said ‘The new album doesn’t come wrapped in a condom, so open up and say aaah.'” Continue reading BRIGHTON ROCK – Take A Deep Breath And Suck On It