![]() People would start to go to sleep and one of the black singers would just sing a note, I quiet cord would form and then somebody would sing a spiritual. ‘There was a time about three in the morning. ![]() He recalls travelling through the night with fellow acts (WHO) on that first tour, skipping hotels to save money. ‘Patti LeBelle introduced us to so much music and so many parts of black culture - we had never heard of Aretha Franklin or Nina Simone in those years.’ ‘Five skinny 18-year-old kids playing just before people like Patti LaBelle, Lenny King and The Drifters,’ Rod recalls. Shipped off to America to back their hit single, Rod remembers being ‘scared stiff’ playing for the first time at Brooklyn’s Fox Theatre in New York. The band was soon mixing with some of the biggest names in the business. He went on the produce many big acts, notably Elton John. That first recording session in June 1964 at Decca’s West Hampstead studio ended with the recording engineer passed out drunk and being taken over by a young Gus Dudgeon. She’s Not There would become a worldwide number one, including in the US (it peaked at 12 in the UK). The winning song was penned by Rod featuring his electric piano sound. Their big break came when they won a ‘Herts Beat’ competition for a recording contract with Decca in 1964, beating Jim Rodford’s Bluetones. We played to 400 people there, they had a generator that would run out of electricity half way through the evening, my keyboards wouldn’t work so I would just pick up a tambourine and sing with Colin. ![]() ‘Within a year we were playing to a couple of hundred people, within a couple of years they had to build a marquee on it. Persevering, they played their first gig in Lemsford which Rod describes as a ‘curates egg, good in parts but disastrous in others.’ They then played in the interval at a dance at St Albans Rugby Club to around 10 people and went down really well, he says. Russ Ballard’s It’s Good To Be Here is out now (opens in new tab) via BMG Records, and he tours Europe from March 13.Rod thought that the band sounded ‘pretty hot’ but Jim, who had lent them his equipment for the jam, later admitted that he thought they had ‘no chance.’ And that line: ‘If you’re young and you’ll never be old, music can make your dreams unfold’, I still believe that. “I think the song will resonate for the next hundred years,” he considers, “whether people want to believe there’s a god or not. Russ Ballard believes God Gave Rock And Roll To You’s message lives on, now more than ever. ![]() I believed that he could somehow turn things around. Eric showed up and stayed until the very end of the video shoot, which lasted until three in the morning. “We were concerned about whether he was healthy enough or strong enough to do it. “When it came time to shoot the video, Eric begged to be in it, even though he hadn’t played on the record,” Simmons wrote in his book Kiss And Make-Up. Touchingly, God Gave Rock And Roll To You II marked the final contribution to Kiss of drummer Eric Carr before he succumbed to heart cancer, aged just 41. God knows how much money that song has made me, but it’s probably bought me my house."Īlthough Kiss reached No.4 in the UK with their version, in January 1992, for once the song’s commercial performance was not Simmons’s chief concern. Apparently, Gene said on the TV show School Of Rock: ‘When I wrote God Gave Rock And Roll To You…’ But at least the royalties are good. I don’t mind that most people think it’s a Kiss song. “Funnily enough, when I wrote the song, it was about the speed Kiss made it. “That new lyric was more universal, perfect for what Kiss were doing,” he says. Now, instead of the quaint instruction to ‘ love your friend and love your neighbour/Don’t step on snails, don’t climb in trees/Love Cliff Richard but please don’t tease’, listeners were urged to ‘ put your faith in a loud guitar’. The tweaked title of Kiss’s version, God Gave Rock & Roll To You II, denoted that the New Yorkers had raised the tempo and rewritten the verse lyric. That evening, when they came on, I was in the wings, and suddenly Kiss walk up in their makeup and platform heels, about seven-and-ahalf feet tall. At the sound-check, they weren’t in any slap. “One night in about 1973, we were playing in New York with Wishbone Ash and Kiss,” he remembers. They tried out a few bands, then came back and said: ‘ Kiss are going to do it.’”īy this time Ballard had already made the acquaintance of Gene Simmons and co. Nigel told me he was collating the soundtrack, and he’d suggested God Gave Rock And Roll To You for the final scene. Then in the early 90s, Ballard was sitting in the lobby of a US record label, when former Blondie bassist Nigel Harrison stopped and told him about an upcoming movie called Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the sequel to a hit comedy about two rock-obsessed slackers, played by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.
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