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Volume 1-2016
MUSIC BOOKS FINE ARTS FILM THE WORLD
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Alan MerrillWhen You Start Big In JapanBy RAR Some people have no choice, they are just built to be rockers. So it has been for Brooklyn, New York native Alan Merrill, who tells his own story quite well in the videos below. Merrill, who is now 62 years old but still quite actively performing at home in the U.S. and abroad, working solo acoustic and with his band the Arrows, has had success with everything he has done. Merrill was an adorable kid, sort of destined to be somebody's music industry tool. More than that, he can sing and he can write and he can play instruments. He is what in major league baseball they call a five-tool guy, meaning he is dripping with talent. He is also whip smart, so he was just bound to be somebody in the entertainment world. He signed with Atlantic Records in 1969, after having the hit in Japan ("Aoi Bara") with the by-then defunct band The Lead, and they and his management company, Watanabe Productions, changed his name to better suit the Japanese market. Alan Merrill was born Allan Preston Sachs, and apparently the word "Sachs" spoken by a native Japanese speaker sounds lascivious. He recorded an album, "Alone in Tokyo", and scored a hit single, "Namida" (Teardrops), which made him a pop star in Japan. That landed him an acting job on a soap opera, "Jikan Desu Yo", and further landed a spot on a morning TV show for teens called the TBS "Young 720". He got modeling gigs, too, doing ads for Nissan cars, Jun clothing, and GT Jeans. In 1971, a tune off his "Merrill 1" album (Japanese language produced for Denon/Columbia by Mickey Curtis) was selected for a Tiny Tim album ("Movies"). He then, in 1972, formed a glam rock band called Vodka Collins, which included big Japanese stars Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu and Hiroshi Oguchi, and they released an album (Tokyo-New York) that is still available 42 years later. Merrill moved to England in 1974, where he formed a new band, the Arrows. They immediately charted in the U.K. with a single, "Touch Too Much", that locked him into the teen market there, just as he had been in Japan. Merrill had outgrown that audience by this point. A kid who had grown up with junkie parents, he was old and experienced beyond his years and he insulated himself from drugs and the other influences that might have torpedoed him had he had not been the places he had been. He was in the company of some of the biggest names in the rock world. (The video below has some interesting sections in which Merrill discusses Punk Rock producer Malcolm McLaren and his development of the Sex Pistols.) In 1975 he co-authored "I Love Rock'n Roll" with Jake Hooker, which The Arrows had success enough with to attract the attention of television producer Muriel Young, who in 1976 got the Arrows a weekly show on Granada ITV. It was a replacement program taking over the Bay City Rollers' "Shang-a-Lang" series. Joan Jett, in 1982, scored the big hit with "I Love Rock'n Roll", making her a staple of American culture, but leaving the credits and royalties in the hands of the song's publisher and songwriters.
In 1977, Merrill founded a band in the U.S. called Runner, which scored a slot on the Billboard Top 100 with its initial album release, keeping Merrill in top-tier company in the music industry. In 1980, Merrill joined company with legendary guitarist Rick Derringer, with whom he released three albums. The good fortunes just continued. Merrill landed a tune he had written ("When the Night Comes") with Lou Rawls, whose 1983 version got publicity for astronaut Guion Bluford's broadcast from space. Merrill worked with
Alan Merrill has released solo albums Never Pet A Burning Dog (1998), Cupid Deranged (2002), A Merrilly Christmas (2001), Double Shot Rocks (2003) - a tribute to songwriters Otis Blackwell and Arthur Alexander, Aleecat (2004), At The Candy Shop (2006), Rive Gauche (2007) - a tribute to The Left Banke. There was a reissue of Alien in Tokyo, an EP single "Hard Road", and an in concert album The Aleecat, Live In Japan, all in 2008. The Face Of 69 (2010), Numbers (2011), Snakes and Ladders (2012), Songer Singerwriter (2013) and "Arrows, 40th Anniversary Edition" (2014) all demonstrate the non-stop force of this life-long rocker. The Arrows 1974 top 10 UK hit "Touch Too Much", featuring lead vocals by Alan Merrill, was used on the soundtrack of "The Look Of Love", a 2013 film biopic of London legend Paul Raymond. Alan Merrill has a book on his life story in the works, which should be a rich vein of history to revisit.
"I Love Rock'n Roll"The Arrows, who wrote the classic rock anthem most associated with Joan Jett, had their own television show in Granada, from which this performance clip comes.
Alan Merrill Acoustic - NowAlan Merrill has a level of talent that propelled him to the top of the rock charts in the late 1960s and '70s and that has kept him at the top of the music business hierarchy to this day. As this performance video, from Puma Perl's Pandemonium in January 2014, Merrill has the stuff still. Whatever he has been and done in his life, it seems like he was always right where he was meant to be, which is pretty charmed for a hardscrabble New York kid.
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 When St. Paul's Lifestyle's reporter asked Alan Merrill to get personal, she may have expected a more nuanced or philosophical answer. Merrill, after all, is a very well-spoken and introspective guy. Q: What has made you happiest in life? A: Really, you really want the answer? Great sex. In fact, Merrill's sexual appetites and his appeal to women were prominently featured in the autobiography of former teen-TV star Mackenzie Phillips. The daughter of Mamas and the Papas John Phillips, Mackenzie was an actress on the hit series "One Day At a Time". In her book High On Arrival, Mackenzie recalls Alan Merrill and the path he cut through London's nightlife culture in the 1970s. It starts with Judy Garland's daughter Lorna Luft and an introduction.
The Company You Keep: Malcolm McLaren, Punk-Rock, and the SituationistsMalcolm McLaren, who died in 2010 of mesothelioma, was the force behind Punk Rock, as it developed in Great Britain in the mid-1970s, voiced most profoundly through his legendary Sex Pistols. McLaren designed the Sex Pistols to represent a vision that he had, a life style brand. It was built from a clothing boutique in London, operated by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, called Sex, which became the place for the outfitting of nihilistic "creatives". McLaren's vision was an outcropping of his interest in the philosophy of French Situationists, who believed in staging absurdist or provocative incidents as a spur to social change. That pretty much described the promotional stunts he staged to promote his Punk Rock avatars. The most notable was arranging to have the Sex Pistols sign their contract with A&M Records outside Buckingham Palace followed by a performance of “God Save the Queen” on the Thames, outside the Houses of Parliament, on a boat named the Queen Elizabeth. St. Paul's LifestyleSo what is St. Paul's Lifestyle? From their website: St Pauls Lifestyle inc OVERGROUND SOUND is the free, independent and ethical multi media magazine with the "influential" and "exciting" OVERGROUND SOUND - regarded as "vital for musicians". We do this to support striving artists. We are passionate about music and love comedy. We do filmed sessions/ interviews/ films/ reviews/ features/ podcasts/ festival coverage on big and small names, signed and unsigned. We sell music in our SHOP and 90% of proceeds from the music we sell go to the artists who created that music. We care a great deal about this. We want to give artists a way of getting paid decent money for their creativity – and keep ownership of the songs they write, too. Some musicians come in and record with us and sell that music. Contact us if you're interested in doing this: info@stpaulslifetsyle.com LISTED ARTISTS If an artist makes it as a "LISTED ARTIST" on OVERGROUND SOUND it means we think it has "something serious to offer". – LISTED ARTISTS are able to use our "LISTED ARTIST" logo on their web sites etc: STUDIO We have a studio at our premises where we can do full, live, and acoustic sessions as well as stand-up and prose and poetry recording. We mix, edit and film. SUPPORT We support new artists by interspersing features on them with big features like sessions, interviews, reviews etc – e.g. Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine) ; Duff McKagan (Guns n Roses, Loaded), Walking Papers, Stone Sour, Papa Roach, Alt-J, Levi Roots, Kirk Brandon (Spear of Destiny, Theatre of Hate), Christian Scott, Gary Numan; Frank Turner, We Are The Ocean, Rise Against, Alabama3, Dukes Spirit, Courtney Pine, Bury Tomorrow; Pulled Apart by Horses, Paul Smith, Joel Plaskett and Peter Elkas, Chris T-T, Soweto Kinch...we do not discriminate against genres. Following a trip to Berlin for Rise Against and Coliseum's last night together, we released our first rockdoc on 14 August 2011 - features include an exclusive interview with Coliseum – which Coliseum liked so much they dedicated a song to Rose Paul during their huge ColumbiaHalle gig! Don't hesitate to contact us ...info@stpaulslifestyle.com HOW TO GET LISTED All our "LISTED ARTISTS" have passed our "something serious to offer" benchmark test. How is this tested? - We look at: artistic integrity, originality, determination and application. Determination and application tend to be measured by what you do for your art - how you tell people about it; how many gigs you do; how you promote it etc This is the same criteria as for our exclusive "WATCH LIST" of bands - except all our WATCH LIST bands have something extra special which means we have "tipped them for the top" - like Alt-J here So, first off, send us your art/ music/stand up/prose/words and food and we'll listen up/read up! Ways of sending us material: Email us: info@stpaulslifestyle.com Links etc via Twitter: @stpaulslifestyl Facebook: facebook.com/stpaulslifestyle
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ARTIST NEWS THIS EDITION ABOUT MUSIC MUSIC REVIEWS BOOKS CINEMA FASHION FINE ARTS FEATURES SERIES MEDIA ESSAY RESOURCES WRITTEN ARTS POETRY CONTACT ARCHIVES MUSIC LINKS
Copyright © November, 2018 Rick Alan Rice (RARWRITER)
