Alcatrazz is a hard rock band that was built up around vocalist Graham Bonnet. Having been a member of Rainbow as well as Michael Schenker Group in the years prior, it may have made sense for him to start his own project where he was more in control and could avoid unwanted situations developing that would either make him want to leave or being asked to leave.
Alcatrazz should have been huge, but struggled to get the attention they deserved. Their combined pedigree alone should have been enough to command some attention. Bonnet’s first recruits were Jimmy Waldo (keyboards), Gary Shea (bass), and Jan Uvena (drums), which means they had musicians with a past in Rainbow, Michael Schenker Group, Alice Cooper, Iron Butterfly, and cult band New England. Then add guitar players like Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai – hardly nobodies!
Finding the guitar player took the longest, but eventually they crossed paths with Yngwie Malmsteen and the first line-up was complete.
“The first one was kind of a tester,” Bonnet told Songfacts, “because my idea was to put a band together that was kind of like Rainbow, basically. Rainbow Part II: keyboard player, guitar player who played like Ritchie. Yngwie had been a big fan of Ritchie and people like Uli Roth, so he fit the bill perfectly.”
The band recorded the album No Parole From Rock’n’Roll in 1983 and started touring it extensively. The album didn’t make much of a splash, stalling at #128 in the US charts.
They had also released a video for the single Island In the Sun, which was given decent support on MTV but nearly no radio play, in spite of the song’s commercial qualities and Rainbow-like feel.
A second video was released for Hiroshima Mon Amour, which became popular in Japan and helped the album and band do well in that market. The band ended up touring and even recording a live album there, released as Live Sentence in 1984.
Malmsteen and Bonnet were strong personalities, and it did not surprise anyone that the combination would prove too volatile. Bonnet is quick to give Malmsteen credit for all his musical contributions. He told rockandrollgarage.com: “Yngwie was great because he would play the song, not just say, ‘Oh, here comes my guitar solo.’”
There were disagreements, though – such as when Malmsteen was unhappy with the sonic quality of the live album and tried to prevent its release, although he failed. Bonnet and Malmsteen both saw themselves as leaders of the band which led to several clashes. It all came to a head during a physical altercation on stage which ended with Malmsteen punching Bonnet after trying to strangle him. A rock’n’roll war story if there ever was one.
Suffice to say, that was the end of Malmsteen’s time in Alcatrazz. The band looked forward and found another world-class guitarist in Steve Vai. It was the drummer Jan Uvena who first heard that Vai had left Frank Zappa’s band, and through him Vai came on board for an audition. “I knew he was really interested in being in the band, because he liked the first version with Yngwie” said Bonnet. “He was very excited to be part of the songwriting.”
They quickly started creating new material with Vai. The vibe in the band could not have been different at this point. Everybody were working well together, and they were able to focus on the music again.
That does not mean it was smooth sailing from day one. “With Steve it was more challenging,” Bonnet told Songfacts in 2013. “He didn’t do the obvious arrangements. At first I thought, ‘Oh God, we’re never going to get anything together.’ Then after a couple of weeks, it became easier and he would know what I was thinking and I would know what he was thinking. We suddenly gelled really well.”
The band headed to California to record their second album at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood. Produced by Eddie Kramer, Disturbing The Piece was released in the spring of 1985, and fit very well with what was going on in the metal scene of the mid-1980s.
In speaking with Songfacts in 2013, Bonnet still loves the album: “I like the second album best, myself. When Steve came along, for me it was more interesting, because it didn’t take the same kind of roads as so-called heavy rock would normally take, because he was from Frank Zappa and he had a different approach to music. He was very, very different, and I found it good fun to write tunes with him, because of the way he directed his arrangements guitar wise. And it gave me more space to write better melodies and think about better lyrics, as well. So I prefer the second album. That’s my favorite album of all.”
The album certainly is a bit of a hidden gem in the mid-1980s period of quality hard rock music. The combination of Bonnet’s powerful vocals, Vai’s guitar wizardry, and the melodic hooks played extremely skilfully created a combination that was ready-made to dazzle the audiences.
Except… it didn’t.
The album performed worse than the first one upon its release on 22 March 1985, stalling at #145 in the US charts. The tour had average attendance at best. The band struggled in spite of having a very strong album, but they had a plan: they were going to release some interesting singles and cool music videos.
The first song they had earmarked for this was God Blessed Video.
Written by Vai and Bonnet, the song is filled with glorious fanfares, Bonnet’s powerful and soaring vocals, amazing guitar harmonics and Vai’s effortless technique. The song was and is interesting, so why didn’t it catch on?
Perhaps a certain issue with MTV has something to do with it.
It was unthinkable at the time to launch a single without a music video to match. The band had gotten some airplay for their two videos from the first album, but nothing like what their photogenic New Wave counterparts were getting. This is the direct inspiration for God Blessed Video’s lyrics.
Lead singer Graham Bonnet was watching a Duran Duran video one day. It is fair to assume he wasn’t a fan, and that’s probably why it struck him that a good video could compensate for a terrible song. Bonnet told Songfacts: “It was a gift that video came along and made these great videos of nice looking women in exotic places, but the song wasn’t that good, and that’s basically what it’s about. It’s like Video Killed the Radio Star, if you remember that song. It was my sort of version of that, just saying, ‘Well, if you’ve got a great video, doesn’t matter what the song’s like. It’ll help you a helluva lot.’”
A music video was commissioned for the single. The band did not see that it could be a problem that the song – and the video – sends up music videos as a phenomenon, as well as music television as a medium and as a broadcasting model. They were targeting the very people they relied on to have their video shown.
Let’s take a plane and go somewhere exotic
To play with a non-descript song
We’ll shoot all the crotch shots for 12 year old hopefuls
To make you a real man my son
Ahhhh real man my son
Some cheap kid from Birmingham
Blessed with an accent
That pours like the darkest brown ale
Just one more puppet, piss elegant marionette
He’s just a fast buck for sale
Ahhhh fast buck for sale
Don’t you know that God blessed video
We know that God blessed video
The first minute of the video is taken up by a skit where an angel and devil discuss recent developments in music videos, the angel making Alcatrazz his countermove to the devil’s more speculative efforts. It is a mildly amusing intro, but seeing it once is really enough. Throughout the main part of the video, the angel and devil both try to exert influence over the direction of the video as the band performs the song in between footage and clips that are sent towards them.
MTV have always been more than happy to show videos celebrating the medium itself – they loved Video Killed The Radio Star, and adored Money For Nothing which even coined the slogan “I want my MTV.” It was a clever ploy by Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits, which resulted in that video being played ad nauseum.
Alcatrazz, unfortunately, ended up in the opposite category. The title God Blessed Video could have worked in its favour, but unfortunately the powers that be realized that most of the song was actually critiquing the music video phenomenon rather than inviting any kind of celebration.
Some of the lyrics might have been hard to swallow as well. Bonnet is no doubt trying to make an uncomfortable but important point when he says “We’ll shoot all the crotch shots for 12 year old hopefuls,” but he succeeds a little too well. He also probably hit a bit too close to home for the MTV brass with lines like “Just one more puppet / Piss elegant marionette / He’s just a fast buck for sale” and “Break out the cameras that re-shape my face / And get someone to carve up my hair / If you can’t beat them, you might as well join ’em.”
While the video wasn’t blacklisted by MTV, it might as well have been. It might actually have been easier for the band if it had, because then MTV would then have to point out what their issues with the video was. Having a video banned could also have led to some notoriety and even increased fan and media interest.
Instead, MTV in America simply decided not to put God Blessed Video into any type of rotation. They quietly buried it, and would likely not reconsider this stance without changes to the video and possibly omission of certain lyrics, but Alcatrazz were quietly holding a stance of their own. They were never going to go crawling to MTV to have those type of discussions with them. Quite rightly, in many ways, but that might also have been their undoing.
Without MTV’s support at the time, other bands who got their videos shown were always going to have a huge advantage. Alcatrazz saw several bands climb past them on the ladder of success, headlining the arenas large clubs and even arenas that they had aimed for themselves. This was the beginning of the band’s end. With momentum dwindling, Alcatrazz never grew beyond their small following, and had to cut a tour short due to financial problems.
In the end, this led to the single not even being released in America. It got a UK release on 22 June 1985, as MTV Europe were at least willing to show the video during their metal programming – I remember seeing it on at least a few occasions – but it wasn’t on much of a rotation there either.
Later on, Will You Be Home Tonight was released as the second single from the album, and the first one to be released in America. Rather tellingly the band opted not to spend any money creating a music video for that one.
Things would get worse for the band when Steve Vai got an extremely lucrative offer to join David Lee Roth’s solo band in 1986. Vai was very open with the band about this. He offered to fulfil commitments and do anything to help the band until they could get a replacement, and the split was on good terms. Everybody knew it was an offer Vai could not refuse. Nobody could blame him, as they would have done the same thing.
Vai was replaced by guitarist Danny Johnson, who recorded what became Alcatrazz’s final studio album, Dangerous Games, released in the fall of 1986. The album failed to chart and shortly afterward, Johnson also quit to join the band Private Life. Disheartened by an ever-revolving door of guitarists, and dwindling album sales, Alcatrazz split up in 1987.
Alcatrazz have reunited again in more recent years and have, somewhat ironically, seen more success during these years than they ever did in the 1980s. Many have discovered Alcatrazz over the years and were more than ready to embrace them when they came back.
It says a lot that over the years, the Disturbing the Peace album continues to mean a lot to the people who were involved with it. Bonnet said, “I spoke to Steve a couple of years ago and he said, ‘That’s still my favorite album. Every song on there, I love!’ He says, ‘That’s some of the best stuff I’ve done.’ And so, thanks, Steve, now you’re a big guitar star! Because Steve went off on his own, as you know. He’s doing very well.”
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