Def Leppard News - VIVIAN CAMPBELL Show 2nd October 2018 Playlist/Transcript

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Wednesday, 3rd October 2018

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VIVIAN CAMPBELL Show 2nd October 2018 Playlist/Transcript

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Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell hosted the third edition of his new rock show last night on Radio Ulster.

This week's show included songs by Sweet Savage, Montrose and Bryan Adams.

Vivian's third show featured 11 songs.

The full playlist is shown below and a full transcript.

The show is available for 29 days on the BBC iPlayer.

Viv Campbell Show - 2nd October 2018 Playlist

01 - Montrose - Bad Motor Scooter
02 - Phil Lynott - Old Town
03 - Gary Moore - Don't Believe A Word
04 - Wild Horses - Reservation
05 - Sweet Savage - Take No Prisoners
06 - Gary Moore - Bad News
07 - Whitesnake - Still Of The Night
08 - Riverdogs - I Believe
09 - Queen - Now I'm Here
10 - Bryan Adams - Run To You
11 - Last In Line - Martyr

Show Intro/Montrose

"Montrose from their self titled album in 1973. That was Bad Motor Scooter and I was 11 years old when that was released. Imagine being 11 and something like that. Actually I was a couple of years older when I first heard it thanks to the late great Tommy Vance on The Friday Rock Show. A show that exposed me to many many many great bands and songs and tracks. But still you're a kid and you hear something and it just, it blows your mind. I hope 11 year olds today get as excited from whatever it is they're listening to. I have no idea what it is."

"Anyway welcome back or indeed if this is your first listen. Where the hell have you been?. I am Viv Campbell. This is number three in a series of ill advised shows."

"Montrose, as some of you older geezers and geezettes may know, was the launching pad for the career of a young singer named Sammy Hagar. Sammy went on to have a very very successful solo career after Montrose and eventually even replaced Dave Lee Roth in Van Halen for a couple of years. I don't know Sammy personally. My only connection to Sammy is he once bought a car that I owned. It was a very beautiful 1973 E Type jag convertible. I sold it to a broker who a week or two later sold it on to Sammy. So it's not like Sammy came round to my place on a Saturday morning to kick the tyres or anything like that. Incidentally I bought it from a guy who produced porn movies, but that's a whole other story. Los Angeles is indeed an interesting place."

"But anyway I am a bit of a car guy. I hear Sammy is too. I also hear if you ever need a shot of Tequila Sam's your man, but I can't stand the stuff however so moving on."

Phil Lynott

"Speaking of musicians I've met along the way and there's been an awful lot of them. There's also a saying you should never meet your heroes. And I happen to put a lot of stock into that edict and I'll tell ya why. My greatest ever guitar hero was Gary Moore. Another Belfast native as it happens and a man that I'd never met until one Sunday morning in the Summer of 1985. It was in a kitchen but not just any kitchen it was Phil Lynott's kitchen at his house in Kew Gardens over in London. I was there for a week or so to record some demos for what would have been another one of Phil's solo albums after the breakup of Thin Lizzy."

"Phil however was in a really really bad way back then. He was very very deep in the throes of heroin addiction and frankly it was really scary to be around. I'd been there at his house about three or four days and I was the first one out of bed this Sunday morning. I'd made my way downstairs to make a cup of tea. I walk into the kitchen. I got the sense that someone was in the corner of the room and it was Gary Moore. And I was just gobsmacked. I introduced myself and I was just blabbering on like an idiot about how much of an influence he was to me and how much I respected his playing and blah blah. And he just wasn't having it. He was just, he was not in a good mood. And you know looking back it actually makes perfect sense now. He probably thought that I was complicit in Phil's drug addiction. And you know that kind of did make sense. Phil was slowly killing himself and Gary as his old friend was rightfully deeply concerned which is why he'd shown up there on a Sunday morning. I never did figure out how Gary got into the house however. I've never been one to let facts get in the way of a good story."

"And it is quite a long story but it's not a good one because it had a very very sad ending. I won't go into all the details here. I might save that for a book or something. But suffice it to say it didn't end well and four months later Phil Lynott one of my great heroes was dead."

Gary Moore

"Gary Moore featuring Phil Lynott from Gary's Back On The Streets album of 1978. That was a more subdued version of Phil's Thin Lizzy classic Don't Believe A Word. And speaking of subdued that track showcases the more subtle side of Gary's playing. Beautiful stuff indeed."

"Before that you heard old Town which was from Phil's first solo album. Both those men were great great heroes for me and it was very very sad to lose them both."

Wild Horses

"But incidentally that song Old Town was actually co-written by a dear old friend of mine Jimmy Bain. And Jimmy was actually the guy who got me my gig with DIO back in late 1982 after he had heard me play with Sweet Savage. Sweet Savage opened for many many rock bands that came over to Ireland back then and Wild Horses were one of them. If you didn't already know Wild Horses were a band put together by Jimmy and Brian Robertson after Brian had left Thin Lizzy. And Jimmy was no longer with Rainbow so and you can see the connections there through my musical history.

"So back then anyway I had this thing called a WEM copicat. It was a tape echo delay unit. It was part of my guitar rig and they were useful but very very noisy guitar effects of the day. And when I did the shows with Wild Horses it turned out that Brian Robertson used it too except that he didn't just have one. He had four and one going into another into another into another and they were really really noisy things. And in between songs his guitar rig, it sounded like a chip shop in Glasgow on a Friday. The noise was just off the hook."

"But relating back to my earlier story about meeting Gary Moore in Phil Lynottt's kitchen. I was only there because Jimmy suggested it to Phil that he get me playing on the demos. I sort of knew Phil Lynott from the many many shows that Sweet Savage played opening for Lizzy. But I'd never go so far as to say we were peers in any way. And certainly not in the way that Jimmy and he were. And I always just felt like I was a kid on the fringes of all that stuff and to be honest I don't know if I should have thanked Jimmy or cursed him for inserting me into that situation 'cause my memories of those sessions are not at all great. Like I said I'll save the details for if I ever write a book but it never felt like a happy or a good set of circumstances. But anyway here is Jimmy and Wild Horses from their self titled album of 1980. This is a song called Reservation."

Sweet Savage

"I laid into that track for the Gary Moore connection and talking about his Back On The Streets album. That album and a few of Gary's other records were produced by a chap called Chris Tsangarides. And being such a fan of Gary's that I was I actually tracked down Chris and asked him if he'd be up for producing the first Sweet Savage recordings Take No Prisoners and Killing Time. And amazingly Chris agreed and we went into Windmill Lane Studios down in Dublin. Which is incidentally where U2 recorded their early albums. It's a wonderful wonderful studio. And we were recording this double A-Side single. Still not entirely sure what that means but there you go. In any event I did play Killing Time on my first show and that's perhaps the more well know track as it went on to be recorded a few years later by Metallica. But other than Sweet Savage no one's ever recorded Take No Prisoners and so that should be reason enough for me to play it hear for you on my show. Don't you agree?."

"Sweet Savage Take No Prisoners. A track released before a lot of you were probably born. Not a sobering thought. For me at least."

Gary Moore

"Sweet Savage, Wild Horses, Thin Lizzy, U2, DIO. All of this diverse music going off back then and it was a great time to be a music fan. In fact the only thing better than being a music fan back then was to be a musician back then. And as such I feel truly blessed 'cause I fell squarely into both camps. So when we were at Windmill Lane recording these songs with Chris Tsangarides I kepy going on and on and on about Gary Moore like the fan boy that I was and still am. And Chris, perhaps in an attempt to get me to shut up, he gave me a cassette tape, remember those?, of an album he just recorded at Morgan Studios in London. And that album featured Gary on guitar. Tommy Aldridge on drums. The aforementioned Jimmy Bain on bass. Don Airey on keyboards and an American guy, name of Charlie Huhn. The singer who used to perform with Ted Nugent. And I was just blown away. So much so that we actually copped a couple of those songs for the Sweet Savage live set. And as that album for whatever reason wasn't released until a few years after that I'm sure some people may have actually thought that these were original Sweet Savage songs. Anyway here is one song from that album which was eventually released a few years later. The album is called Dirty Fingers. This track is called Bad News."

"Gary Moore and a track called Bad News from the Dirty Fingers album. I love how that was cut live in the studio. You now you need to be seriously good players to get away with that sort of thing and indeed there was a lot of pedigree on that album. I previously mentioned Jimmy Bain was responsible for me getting the gig with DIO back in late 1982. I wrote, recorded, toured with DIO from there until about mid 1985 when I was unceremoniously dumped and replaced with a more compliant guitarist who wouldn't ask the awkward questions I did. But there you go."

Whitesnake

"Sometime after being thrown off of the DIO wagon I found myself a member of Whitesnake. Possibly version 37a although I could be mistaken. Through the years there's been a great many players through that revolving Whitesnake door. Drummer Tommy Aldridge who I previously name checked on the Gary Moore Dirty Fingers album was also a part of that lineup. So here I was again amongst a group of internationally famous and legendary musicians and I'm thinking to myself what the hell am I doing here?. I never did get to play in Ireland with Whitesnake on that tour. But we did undertake a massive world tour and and all in all it was a wonderful experience. The album we were touring, with a couple of minor exceptions, didn't actually feature any of us other than David Coverdale. David had written and recorded the album with guitarist John Sykes. Another great great Gary Moore fan John is and an exceptional guitar player in his own right. And it truly was an epic album featuring many great songs and exceptional playing from John."

"The first thing that we the new band did together was to shoot three music videos over the course of a week in Los Angeles. So I think that kind of set the tone for what that band was about. You know it was 1987 and MTV was in its heyday and we were a band that was tailor made for just such a vehicle you know. As such personally always felt that the emphasis was on the image rather than the playing, Everyone in that lineup you know drummer Tommy Aldridge as I mentioned, David Coverdale. Rudy Sarzo on bass. Adrian Vandenberg and myself on guitars. We were all seasoned and very capable players but it didn't always sound as such to my ears. At least in the very beginning. I remember after the videos and the photo shoots we finally went into the rehearsal room to play together. For the very very first time before hitting the road and we only had three days I think of rehearsals. So it was a really rough and hurried start. I think we just about got away with it to be honest. But then again I was probably expecting the magic and chemistry of the original DIO band. As a comparison a but experience has since taught me that that kind of chemistry is a very very rare thing. And anyway this is the track that launched it all. Ripped jeans. Big big big hair. Even bigger shoulder pads. Oh the 1980s. Whitesnake in the Still Of The Night."

"Still Of The Night from the 1987 version 37a I think of Whitesnake. Of which I was a part. Good good times. I still have to cringe a bit when I see some of the photos from that era. But there you go. The follies of youth and all that."

"Shortly after that massive world tour my Whitesnake days unfortunately were numbered and yet again I found myself booted out of the band. Sensing a bit of a pattern here you know. Can't keep a job. But there's always a lot more to these things than meets the eye. And you know the more I'm doing these radio shows the more I realise that maybe writing a book isn't such a bad idea. Hmm you know. Anyway moving on."

Riverdogs

"After Whitesnake then there was this."

"Riverdogs and I Believe. A song from the late 1980s self titled album. I'm sure many of you here won't be familiar with either the band or the album. And that's actually where I ended up after Whitesnake. Again a bit of a long story but I was actually producing some demos for the band Riverdogs and once I got booted from Whitesnake I found myself with time on my hands so I ended up joining them. Lead singer Rob Lamothe is to this day one of the great great unknowns. He's just such an immense talent. Not just as a world class singer but also as a truly gifted writer and lyricist and a genuinely nice guy to boot."

"So speaking of singers that song, that song was my debut singing on a record. I'd been working up to it for a few years. Taking singing lessons and stuff and finally with Rob's very very generous encouragement decided to give it a go and that was it. That was me singing a bit there."

"Unfortunately Riverdogs was yet again to be a short lived home for me. During the writing and recording of the album our record label was sold on to Sony. And there were whole sale changes in staffing across the entire company. And we had a new managing director who took us out for dinner the very week that the album was released. Probably on our dime no doubt and told us that he just didn't, he didn't hear it. He didn't get it and could we start work on the follow up record. Now there's a great great many things I could say about my emotions in relation to that. But at that point it had been a solid year and a half's struggle just to make a record we genuinely felt was a really really credible debut album. And just in terms of survival paying the bills etc I had to seek work. I had to leave and sadly said goodbye to Riverdogs."

"You know we parted on really good terms. We've remained close friends to this day. And it would be decades before we worked together again. And we did a couple of times over these decades and I'll be sure to get into that in a future show."

Queen

"But for now here's something completely different. From the album Sheer Heart Attack this is Now I'm Here."

"My first big public appearance as a member of Def Leppard in 1992 was at the Freddie Mercury AIDS Awareness show at the old Wembley Stadium. And we played three or four songs and to close that show Brian May got up on stage and played a song with us. And what a guitar legend Brian is and even more importantly what a sweetheart of a human being he is too. He actually came to a Def Leppard show a few weeks back and spent most of the evening with my dog Stuart. All the more reason to like the man. Anyone who wins Stuart's approval is a winner in my book."

Bryan Adams

"I'm recording this weeks show from Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia. And just because of that and the fact that Def Leppard have toured with his chap too. Here's a little something from Canadian native. Although I do believe he's from the other end of Canada. Here's a little."

"Badams with Run To You. I believe that was released in 19, about 1984. It's kinda go that 1980s snare drum reverb to prove it. We, Def Leppard we, toured with Bryan in 2005. Nice chap, great singer. And the reason that got me thinking about Badams was whenI was with the aforementioned Riverdogs Rob Lamothe and myself flew up here for several days of song writing with Bryans writing partner Jim Vallance who lives in Vancouver. Jim wrote many of Badams biggest hits including Run To You with Bryan. We wrote a song with Jim called Caroline. Great tune it didn't end up on the Riverdogs album. We felt it wandered a little bit too much from the sound we were aiming for at the time."

Show Outro

"Now I feel like I've waffled on quite a bit this wek so I'll keep it tight on this last link. Earlier on in the show I mentioned my dear dear friend Jimmy Bain. Jimmy sadly passed away in January of 2016. It was just a month before of this the last recording of his long and illustrious career. I'll get into more detail about this band next time. But in short it's the remnants of the original DIO band. Put together about a year after Ronnie's passing. And Jimmy Bain, Vinny Appice and myself were the force behind Ronnie on the first three DIO albums. And we took the name of this band from the second DIO record Last In Line. We found a singer in Andrew Freeman who could match the ferocity of the band behind him and from the album Heavy Crown this is Martyr. Another classic Jimmy Bain riff. I'm Viv Campbell. I'll see ya anon."