The Lost & Found Department…rare and not-so-rare items worth finding again…

Item #0003 – Screaming Lord Sutch And His Heavy Friends

Who: English dandy and eccentric with a studio chalk-full of new talent.

What: His second full-length and further proof that Led Zeppelin would’ve been much better without Robert Plant. Sorry.

Where: Available as an import CD with the famous and rather stunning cover photo of Sutch standing next to his Rolls Royce painted with the colors of the Union Jack. The original LP is out there fetching steep prices. Also available domestically completely retitled as Smoke & Fire, (Thunderbolt/TB-51848312, 1994) with no mention of Sutch’s name and a seriously horrid cover illustration of a double-necked guitar engulfed in flames. Very square.

Why: Screaming Lord Sutch was a white, English equivalent of Screaming Jay Hawkins. This boy liked it wild and weird. He started recording 45’s in the mid sixties with a band called the Savages that included a revolving door of soon-to-be famous musicians like Jeff Beck, Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple), Nicky Hopkins (session pianist extraordinaire, see: Rolling Stones, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane) and Matthew Fisher (Procol Harum). Radio play was non-existent (BBC actually went as far as banning some of his singles due to his rather extreme publicity stunts) but the group’s reputation spread among other already-famous musicians and they ended up being a hot commodity. These early sides were produced by legendary British producer Joe Meek and sported such titles as “She’s Fallen In Love With A Monster Man” and “Jack The Ripper”. When the Savages broke up around 1968, Sutch called up some friendly associates to play with him for his second full-length album. The resulting LP is a freakishly brash hard rock record that may go down in the history books as one of the best freakishly brash hard rock records.

Along with various ex-Savages (Beck and Hopkins) are Jimmy Page (just out of the ashes of the Yardbirds and starting Led Zeppelin), John Bonham (Page’s new friend in Led Zeppelin) and former Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding; bassist Daniel Edwards; drummer Carlo Little and guitarist Kent Henry. Most songs have a different combination of the above players and every song seems to better the last.

The most memorable tracks are with the Page/Bonham team who steal the show only because their simple, heavy musicianship plays perfectly into Sutch’s hands. Beck and Hopkins are almost too advanced for Sutch’s asinine lyrics and delivery….which isn’t necessarily bad, either. “Gutty Guitar” is nothing but a showcase for Beck’s hyper playing and many of the other songs that don’t feature Page/Bonham are astounding in their own right: “Smoke And Fire”, “Would You Believe” and “One For You Baby” are all nice chunks of psychedelic rock…the kind that heavy hacks like Iron Butterfly could only hope to write.

Although Page’s guitar work never seems to have changed through out the years, Bonham’s drumming became more labored by the time of his death in 1980. Here, however, is the 1968 model Bonham: one of the finest drummers on the planet at that time. On the eight songs he plays on, his drumming is amazing; his bass drum work in particular is astounding. Simple and heavy.

Over all this strum and drang are Sutch’s fantastic vocals. “Thumping Beat” and “Union Jack Car” are both so sweetly dumb and ROCK that the mind reels…(sample lyric: “A thumping, thumping, thumping beat is what I’ve gotta reap / Play it hard on that guitar / that’s the way to be a star.”) His voice lands somewhere between and growl and and sneer, I don’t care what the Zep enthusiasts will say, the combination of these three makes one re-consider Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant’s career. After a listen to this record, imaging Screaming Lord Sutch taking the vocals for Zeppelin’s career is both hilarious as it is daunting.

Dig the perfectly dumbed-down lyrics Sutch lays down in his dirtiest growl on the track “L-O-N-D-O-N” as well as the crazy accents he throws around: “L is for the lamp-posts you see on the street; O is for the old things were you never go / N is for the nice people who live there / D is for the dampness you get in the air / O is for the opportunity you get there / N is for the nightlife you see there …Lon-don’s the place and it’s not too faaaarrrrrrr.” See? So crazy, yet so right. Sutch was serious about it all and it’s his enthusiasm that brings it all home and makes this entire record a small piece of gold. A year after this one, he tried the same thing by bringing in other famous friends but the chemistry wasn’t quite up to par. By the end of the eighties Sutch was more involved with politics than music yet would still play the odd shows to packed audiences.

Having nothing better to do in the mid-1990’s, the London Times polled it’s readers on the 10 worst albums of all time. Screaming Lord Sutch & His Heavy Friends cruelly came in at number one. Just behind it at number two on the list was Lou Reed’s uncompromising heroic Metal Machine Music, proving even further that you can never trust a reader of the Times: very square.