Lucifer’s Friend
This is the first of many upcoming reviews of classic heavy metal releases that came out during the time of Black Sabbath. Today the genre is called proto-metal and there are very few places to get quality information regarding artists. Every genre of music has scores of bands that come out around it with records of a certain sound. These bands aren’t ripping each other off in any real way, they just so happen to come up with a similar vibe.
A more recent example of bands with a similar style was the Seattle scene of the early 1990’s. Lucifer’s Friend was formed in 1970, when members of Asterix (krautrock) from Hamburg enlisted British singer John Lawton. Lawton sang lead on the sole Asterix LP and the band soon changed their name to Lucifer’s Friend. The 1971 debut S/T album from Lucifer’s Friend is an amazing combination of heavy prog laden organ (a la Deep Purple) mixed with hard riffing guitars and searing high vocals.
Knowing that the entire band (other than Lawton) was playing Krautrock before playing hard rock is important because you can hear flourishes of kraut in the grooves. Lucifer’s Friend switches gears from harder songs to more blues based jams that sound like what Zeppelin was doing around the same time. Think of Lucifer’s Friend as the zeitgeist for everything that was going on in hard rock music in the early seventies. They absorbed what they were hearing around them and spat out an album that should rank among the greatest of the early metal genre.
Speaking of Led Zeppelin, the song “Ride The Sky” contains a riff that is identical to “Immigrant Song” which has caused people to claim theft. The truth is that “Ride The Sky” was written and released BEFORE “Immigrant Song”. I wouldn’t claim Zeppelin ripped off anyone, so let’s just end the debate. I personally love these sorts of controversies because it gives credibility to artists other than the over exposed (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath).
Lucifer’s Friend went on to record four albums with John Lawton. I can only recommend the first album entirely and parts of the second entitled “Where The Groupies Killed The Blues”. After that the band changed their sound for worse adding horns and orchestration (think Blood, Sweat & Tears or Chicago). Stay away from these!! John Lawton went on to sing lead for Uriah Heep in 1976 and was in that band until 1979.
Now with the bad news…the Lucifer’s Friend CD has been out of print for about 20 years and changes hands for large sums of money. I paid about $40 for it on eBay a few years ago (and that was a bargain!!). The CD was released by German reissue label Repertoire with 5 bonus tracks (a few that are just awful). You might be able to find a copy on the German eBay.de for a decent price. Be careful, expensive bootlegs are rampant. If you ever wanted to hear other heavy metal bands of the early 70′s that were comparable to the well known, Lucifer’s Friend were the ultimate underdogs.
Check out the YouTube clip of Lucifer’s Friend playing “Ride The Sky” on German TV in 1971.
Seeing this sort of thing on prime time TV while on drugs in the 70′s would have scared the shit out of me!! Can you imagine seeing this sort of thing on “America’s Got Talent”, or even a band like Sunn O))) droning out? That would restore my faith in humanity.
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David R.
