It was all quiet on the western front, until someone screamed Eureka!
Hands up all those rabid Thin Lizzy fans who’ve come back out the woodwork in recent years in righteous celebration of one of the UK’s finest bands.
Now take a red loon-panted step forward if you can name at least three extra-curricular activities by the guitarist who stood stage left. What’s that? Black Star Riders, yep, obvious. Supertramp, Pat Travers, Phenomena, Asia and more, all boxes ticked for guest appearances. 21 Guns, the band he formed in the 90s once recovered from the aftermath of the Lizzy split, good one. What about The Western Front? Eh, you say, and not because you’ve gone deaf listening with the volume set to 11!
It transpires that new projects were happening sooner than we expected for Scott Gorham. Between 1983 and 1984, he was recording an album even then titled ‘Eureka’ with a band of musicians collectively tagged The Western Front. Circumstances prevented its release but now, after four decades hiding in the vaults, Music Theories Recordings will release this near-mythical album on 10th July.
Now you might take a fair guess about the kind of tunes you might expect to hear, given the musical environment of the time, but no doubt you’re also asking: aside from Scott Gorham, who was in the band?
One of the initial two guys involved was Marty Walsh, and he also played guitar. In fact he’s played with the likes of Supertramp and Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s John Fogerty, and recorded with a truly diverse bunch during his now lengthy career, from rocker Eddie Money right through to country icon Dolly Parton. Alongside him was keyboard player Derek Bergmann, whose CV includes singer Yvonne Elliman and singer/songwriter Jeff Barry. The pair were known session aces and had previously played together in various bands, achieving praise but each being fleeting.
In Los Angeles, California, back in 1980, they hooked up with another guitarist and more importantly writing partner Dennis O’Donnell, these days perhaps more renowned as a music executive.
“Dennis and I had seen Richard ‘Moon’ Calhoun singing with his band The Strand at a club in the San Fernando Valley,” recalled Walsh. “Moon was incredibly impressive, so Dennis, Derek and I had a conversation about bringing him in.”
While they picked Calhoun out as a singer, he’d put time in playing drums for Rufus, then later with their singer Chaka Khan, and again talk about diverse: his CV ranges from Andy Gibb to Lita Ford.
The man tagged to play behind the kit for The Western Front was Darrell Verdusco, who now holds that position with Starship (as in formerly Jefferson) and has played with the likes of Dire Straits‘ Mark Knopfler and Van Morrison.
Thin Lizzy‘s Scott Gorham was an old friend of Walsh’s, with whom he was then working at Supertramp drummer Bob Siebenberg’s Unstable Studio, and that’s how he came on board.
“I remember the Lizzy tour ending in LA,” Gorham picked up. “My old friend Marty came over. I hadn’t seen him for years, so I was excited about all of it.” Conversations led to playing together, and there was chemistry between the players. The band then spent the next two years writing and recording the ‘Eureka’ material. “This was such a great group of guys that egos were left at the door,” Bergmann remembered.
The Western Front‘s debut was due for release in the mid-80s, Atlantic Records having promised a major-label deal, but then internal label upheavals within the company swept ‘Eureka’ off the schedule. “It was disheartening,” reflected Walsh. “I felt so bad that we just couldn’t get it. Scott went back to England and started 21 Guns. The whole Western Front thing was over. That was the last shot.”
And all went quiet on The Western Front until three years back when a Swedish record executive out in Stockholm somehow heard a couple of Western Front tracks online and reached out to ask why their near-mythical debut never saw the light of day. The renewed interest drew the attention of other record labels. At the recommendation of friend and Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, Walsh was able to strike a deal with the Mascot Label Group.
Now, ahead of the actual album release, ‘Set Me Free’ has been issued as a single from ‘Eureka’.
“That one started out as the guitar gods’ baby,” Derek Bergmann remembered. “Scott is just a force to be reckoned with. And Marty tends to play the cleaner parts. As a keyboard player in between those two guys, I had to find my lane and play parts that made sense musically, that didn’t obscure them in any way but also didn’t just get buried in the mix. The idea was to have a kind of Foreigner or Journey approach to the overall sound, and that was true of ‘Set Me Free’. It’s a great song.”
You can listen to ‘Set Me Free’ and check out the official lyric video here at RAMzine.
The full track listing for ‘Eureka’ is: ‘The Law Of The Jungle’, ‘Set Me Free’, ‘1000 Nights Away’, ‘Just Go’, ‘If I’m The One’, ‘Rain’, ‘Chain Of Light’, ‘Danger’, ‘Heartland’, ‘I Would Rather Be Lonely’, ‘Man To Man’ and ‘This Is War’.
The recordings are said to echo the times they were recorded in while remaining vital to this day. Anthemic openers ‘The Law Of The Jungle’ and ‘Set Me Free’ are powered by the call-and-response of Walsh and Gorham’s guitars, making them likely ones for Thin Lizzy fans, while Bergmann takes centre stage with a shimmering synthesiser melody on ‘1000 Nights Away’, and ‘Just Go’ is said to feature an instant hook and be a masterclass of light and shade.
Bergmann was also behind the soaring chorus of ‘If I’m The One’ and the hard-driving ‘Rain’, with Gorham’s riff propelling ‘Chain Of Light’ alongside Moon’s shout-it-back vocal. The light-footed groove of ‘Danger’ features double-edged lyrics, and the Bergmann-initiated ‘Heartland’ fuses dystopian themes with a pitch-bending synthesiser.
“We wrote and recorded all these great songs, and it just got left on hold,” reflected Moon. “But here we are, 40 years later, and The Western Front‘s ‘Eureka’ lives. And I love it. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done as a singer.”
“‘Eureka’ was a labour of love,” reflected guitarist Marty Walsh. “Finally, people will hear this album that we worked so hard on.”
“If it had not been for the dedication and inventiveness to the mixes of this 40-year-old album by Marty Walsh and Derek Bergmann, it would never have seen the light of day,” Gorham now reflects. “From the very first mix I was completely blown away with the result.”
Both a time capsule and a timeless record, The Western Front‘s ‘Eureka’ is heading your way this July.
