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| JACK STARR - Out of the Darkness LP | |
HRR 864LP, ltd 500, 200 x black, 200 x deep purple + 100 x bone/ oxblood mixed vinyl, insert, poster | |
| Rhett Forrester - Lead Vocals Jack Starr - Lead Guitar Garry Bordonaro - Bass Carl Canedy - Drums GUEST PERFORMANCES: Gary Driscoll — Drums on “Let‘s Get Crazy Again” Ned Meloni — Bass on “Odile” Emma Zale — piano and strings on “Can‘t Let You Walk Away” and “Odile.” Additional vocals and Choir Director on “False Messiah.” Paul Kane — Guitar Harmonies and Good Vibes Laura Kaye — Vocal Harmonies on “Can‘t Let You Walk Away” and “Eyes of Fire.” | |
| 01 Concrete Warrior 02 False Messiah 03 Scorcher 04 Wild in the Streets 05 Can't Let You Walk Away 06 Chains of Love 07 Eyes of Fire 08 Odile 09 Let's Get Crazy Again 10 Amazing Grace (BONUSTRACK) | |
AVAILABLE | |
Transfer, audio restoration and mastering by Patrick W. Engel in September 2021. (www.engel-mastering.com)
Jack Starr was a founding member and original guitarist of US metal legends Virgin Steele from New York. After their second album »Guardians Of The Flame« was recorded in 1984, Starr and Virgin Steele parted ways. As a direct result, his first of many solo albums (under the name of Jack Starr as well as Burning Starr) »Out Of The Darkness« was released before the year had come to an end.
“I was still in Virgin Steele when I recorded »Out Of The Darkness«,” tells the guitarist extraordinaire his version of the story, “but David (DeFeis, vocalist of Virgin Steele), like Brutus in ancient Rome, was conspiring to get rid of me, so he could seize the power and become the leader of the band. He was aided by a fellow named Zoran Busic who was the manager of a Canadian group called Saga. I contacted Zoran because I thought he could help Virgin Steele achieve more success and get played on MTV like Saga, but I didn’t realize that he and Dave would plot to get rid of me, and the reason was very simple. Jack Starr was older and more experienced than the other band members and he was making deals with record companies and publishing companies, and David was jealous and thought he deserved more money, even though Jack started the band and hired him, and without Jack there would have been no Virgin Steele, so Zoran played on David’s insecurities and greed and convinced him to get rid of me, and now 40 years later Virgin Steele has only one original member (David) and is less known and less popular than it was in 1983! And the last ten years of Virgin Steele’s recorded output have been sad and not at all what should be expected from a band with such a glorious past. While Virgin Steele was making albums with drum machines and poor production, Jack Starr and Burning Starr were making iconic albums with the great drumming of former Manowar drummer Rhino and the bass playing of ex Joe Lynn Turner and Steve Whitman bass player Ned Meloni, as well as the great vocals of Todd Michael Hall, who later joined Riot but prior to that recorded three great albums with Burning Starr. So the story has a happy ending in that Jack Starr, the humble and short in stature nice guy who was stabbed in the back, has now won the race by sticking to his guns and making great music, no matter what the cost.”
Back in 1984, however, Jack Starr had been under pressure: ”I was asked to leave Virgin Steele, and at the time I was offered a deal. I needed the money as I was married and had two baby boys to feed. There was a court case which was very complicated and convoluted and I still don’t really know if David had a real legal right to the name Virgin Steele or if Zoran does.”
As the rhythm section for his first solo effort »Out Of The Darkness« Jack got drummer Carl Canedy and bassist Garry Bordonaro (both from fellow New Yorkers The Rods) on board, he recalls: “I did know them because we had done some shows together during my time in Virgin Steele.”
The singer on the record was no other than Rhett Forrester, who had just departed from Riot. “Rhett was a great singer and in a just world should have been as big as David Lee Roth or bigger,” Starr praises the well remembered front man. “Rhett was a kind and considerate man who liked me a lot, and that was amazing because he didn’t like many people. So I was very grateful to have him as a friend, and also he had a great voice and could sing blues and rock and gospel. He reminded me of Elvis Presley and I think he reminded women of Elvis because they would come by at all hours of the day or night to try and be with him, and they would bring gifts and alcohol and drugs and would drive him around and cook food for us.”
Finally, there also was Gary Driscoll on drums (with a guest performance on the song “Let’s Go Crazy Again”). Gary had been in Elf and Rainbow, a true rock legend …”It was a dream come true,” comments Jack Starr, “Gary Driscoll who I admired was playing on my album. It was crazy and when one day he told me ‘Jack, you are just as good as Blackmore’, I felt proud, and I knew that the insults I received from Dave in Virgin Steele were no longer important because I had the drummer of ‘Man On The Silver Mountain’ telling me I played great and that was all that mattered.”
For Jack it was clear from the start that one day he’d be recording a solo album: “Yes, that was clear because most of the publicity and positive reviews of Virgin Steele were about the guitar playing of Jack Starr more than anything else, and even the reason that people bought the first Virgin Steele album had to do with the fact that Mike Varney from the magazine ‘Guitar Player’ had liked Jack’s playing on ‘Children Of The Storm’ and put Jack on the Shrapnel album which led to a record deal with Music For Nations. So of course I knew that all this good will would lead to a record deal.”
“I wrote all the songs on »Out Of The Darkness«,” continues Starr, “and some of them would have likely appeared on Virgin Steele 3 »Noble Savage« which was a name I came up with, and which David was only to happy to use and never mentioned that the name and concept of the noble barbarian, or noble savage, came from me and how I viewed myself.”
Stylistically »Out Of The Darkness« ranges from straight ahead metal (“Concrete Warrior”, “Chains Of Love”), epic stuff like “False Messiah”, a ballad (“Can’t Let You Walk Away”) to party metal anthems (“Wild In The Streets”), with some strong instrumentals thrown in for good measure (“Scorcher”, “Odile”). Without the shadow of a doubt, the album still holds up in 2022. “Thank you, I think that good songwriting never gets old,” laughs the guitarist. “The recording was done in a very good studio and a lot of money was spent on it because I believed in giving the fans the best possible product, and so I spent every penny of the advance on recording. Carl Canedy mixed the album and really all I can say is that Carl is the man with the golden ears. »Out Of The Darkness« was released everywhere in the world and I am still finding out about different pressings almost 40 years later. It is the album that refuses to die!”
Not a lot of people know that Jack Starr is actually from France. He went to America when he was nine years old, his father is American and he took the family back to America. The ties to his homeland were never cut though, rumours circulated for a long time that Jack Starr actually once was a member of number one French rock/metal band Trust. He confirms: “Yes, I played live with them. I have a video that I have not shown to anyone of me playing with Trust at their very first show at the Olympia in Paris, and also Bernard, the singer from Trust, really liked my song ‘Seventeen’, so Trust recorded a French lyric version of it. I remember I was in the recording studio with Trust, and in the next studio were the Rolling Stones and we would watch them. But the guys in Trust did not like them and sometimes would go outside in the parking lot and stand on their cars and piss on them. I think that it was part of the punk rebellion thing but I could not piss on Mick’s car because I liked the Stones, and I am not an angry person and was never part of the punk movement. But that said Bernard, Nono, Momo and Jeannot were all great guys, and I even had a band with Jeannot for a time, so yes, our destinies did cross.”
MATTHIAS MADER