Long Live Rock!

From metal to punk, hard-rocking bands have always thrived in the Bluff City.

by

The history of Memphis music is celebrated in a host of local museums and venues where one can take in the rockabilly, rock-and-roll, soul, R&B, and blues that put this city on the map. And while those genres were indeed indispensable aspects of the Memphis sound, they tend to obscure another style at which the city excels: hard driving, guitar-fueled rock, loaded with full-throated screams and chugging riffs. While that slice of the rock and roll pie is not often honored in the halls of music history and doesn’t rule the charts as it once did, it’s still an undeniable element of what makes Memphis music great. Despite national trends, this is where rock, aka RAWK, lives on.

In decades past, one couldn’t have guessed that rock’s power might wane. Starting in the late ’60s and ’70s, that was the sound of American radio from coast to coast. The birth of rock, as opposed to rock-and-roll, is often marked with the distorted guitar riff that opened the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” in 1964; the following year gave us The Who’s “My Generation,” and as the decade closed, Cream, Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and others were championing that heavy, pile-driving sound. By 1969, Moloch was an early adopter of the new aesthetic in Memphis, led by the fiery guitar of Lee Baker, who’d been studying with folk blues legend Furry Lewis but aspired to a more metallic approach.

Over half a century ago, Memphis was already a destination — and a point of origin — for some of hard rock’s biggest names. But it was in the 1980s that a home-grown heavy-metal rock sound would really take off.

At the same time, a variant of rock now known as power pop was also taking shape here, epitomized by the sleeper group Big Star. But while co-founder Chris Bell was enamored with Led Zeppelin, the band’s other resident genius, Alex Chilton, famously hated that heavy sound, and in any case, power pop was more pop than power, though hints of heaviness peeked through on certain tracks.

Meanwhile, Led Zeppelin themselves would end up mixing their third album in Memphis, and guitar legend Jeff Beck recorded an album here that borrowed one song, “Going Down,” from Moloch’s debut. Also parlaying heavier sounds into radio play at the time was local band Target, featuring lifetime rocker Jimi Jamison, who would later join Survivor. And in 1973, ZZ Top began their long and fruitful relationship with Ardent Studios, recording tracks for their Tres Hombres album there.

And so, over half a century ago, Memphis was already a destination — and a point of origin — for some of hard rock’s biggest names. But it was in the ’80s that a homegrown heavy rock sound would really take off.

Glory Days

While punk groups like the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and Clash claimed to overthrow the dinosaurs of classic riff rock, in retrospect one can see the many similarities between the two opposed genres. The Sex Pistols’ debut, for example, was full of leaden guitar riffs, even if Johnny Rotten delivered the vocals with a newly contemptuous ferocity. When the ’70s closed and punk rock built up steam, the big metallic sounds of Van Halen, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Motörhead were also ascendant. As those groups came to rule the world’s airwaves in the ’80s, so too did hard rock flourish in the home of the blues.

As the new decade dawned, Memphian Jimi Jamison led the band Cobra, which in turn prepared him well for his stint with the mega-group Survivor. Joining the latter combo in 1984 (after they’d already hit it big with “Eye of the Tiger”), he helped keep them in the charts with hits like “I Can’t Hold Back” and “High On You.” Like the bigger hard rock bands in the charts, Survivor was a prime example of “Album Oriented Rock” (AOR), which mixed heavy guitar riffs with catchy choruses and sparkling production values.

Meanwhile, another Memphian who’d previously dabbled in country rock, Jimmy Davis, adapted to the times and dove into AOR himself, fronting Jimmy Davis & Junction. Their debut album, Kick the Wall, was produced by Jack Holder, who’d helped pen songs for Southern Rock outfit 38 Special, and the title song became a minor hit. Clearly, the big, slick sounds of riff rock were only growing.

Stations like Rock 103 and Rock 98 really supported local music. They had showcases where industry people would come in, with a lot of money going around, big record budgets. And they were coming to Memphis! — Anthony Corder

That was the context when four local teens teamed up out of a common love for those sounds, in a combo that survives to this day. Singer Anthony Corder recalls the day he ran into fellow Kirby High School student Patrick Francis, who’d been playing bass with guitarist Keith Douglas and drummer John Patterson, both attending Germantown High School. “Patrick came up to me at the mall and asked me if I wanted to audition for their band,” Corder recalls today. Thus, in that supremely 1980s milieu, was the group Tora Tora born.

“We won some local competition,” Corder remembers, “and the prize was a day at Ardent. And when we went in, the engineer happened to be Paul Ebersol.” As it happened, Ebersol was to become a key figure in the heavy rock coming out of Memphis, ultimately producing local angst-metal hitmakers Saliva in the early 2000s. “Paul just saw something in us that we didn’t even see,” says Corder. “And he said, ‘I’m going to talk to the studio and see if we can get you guys back in here.’ That was around 1987.”

The studio took the band under its wing, and it was a particularly charmed era to be playing what’s often called glam metal or hair metal. “As we were coming up, the scene was exploding,” Corder says. “We were also into older bands like Target, one of Jimi Jamison’s bands who were on A&M [Records].” Before long, with Corder still in high school, Tora Tora was signed to the same label, and their debut album reached #47 on the charts.

By the dawn of the ’90s, other Memphis groups, like Roxy Blue, Every Mother’s Nightmare, and Mother Station (fronted by noted singer/songwriter Susan Marshall), were also thriving, albeit not with the same success as Tora Tora. In addition to studios like Ardent, local radio had a hand in nurturing the burgeoning scene.

“Stations like Rock 103 and Rock 98 really supported local music,” Corder notes. “They had showcases where industry people would come in, with a lot of money going around, big record budgets. And they were coming to Memphis! There was a DJ named Malcolm Ryker who had an hour-long show for local bands, and he also had regular shows at the New Daisy Theater, called the Amro Jam.” You might have almost believed that Memphis was the next big thing. But even as Memphis metal was going big time, the seeds of its demise had already been sown.

The Antenna Club

Well before Tora Tora and others found their footing, an alternative approach to hard-rocking sounds had been gestating in the legendary Antenna Club, originally known as The Well. Some punk rock was morphing into what is now called hardcore, played at such a frenetic pace and with such little melodic content that it constituted a genre unto itself, outside of this article’s purview. But others played metal-inspired music that kept a punk attitude, such as the Modifiers.

“The Modifiers poured their sweat and souls into every performance, breaking ground and opening doors for every original punk/alternative band in this town,” wrote J.D. Reager in the Memphis Flyer when the band’s guitarist, Bob Holmes, died in 2019. Those other bands included the Psychic Plowboys, the Pump Action Retards, and, slightly later, Neighborhood Texture Jam, all specializing in sledgehammer guitar riffs.

Underscoring the Modifiers’ influence, Reager quotes Memphis native and David Catching, who, after playing with the Modifiers for ten years, went on to be a producer and guitarist for the Eagles of Death Metal and Queens of the Stone Age: “I’ll never forget meeting Bob at the Well. He and Alex Chilton were my first guitar heroes I could actually talk to.”

Yet the Modifiers failed to make a splash on the charts, even as slicker modes of riff rock began to wane. Musical tastes were changing rapidly by the late ’80s, and when Nirvana’s breakthrough smash Nevermind was released in 1991, it spelled the end of hair metal’s dominance. Tora Tora’s second album failed to chart as high as their debut, and a third album recorded in 1994 was not even released.

Meanwhile, the so-called grunge movement that burst out of Seattle developed in a milieu not unlike the Antenna Club when groups began playing “seventies-influenced, slowed-down punk music,” as producer Jack Endino told Rolling Stone in 1992. Like the heavier bands at the Antenna, grunge bands rejected the more pop elements of glam metal, and their audiences followed suit. It was an ironic turn of popular taste, for by 1995, the Antenna Club had closed its doors. Still, the riffs kept coming.

Hard Rock Meets Punk

The reign of grunge was itself short-lived, and by the mid-’90s it was on the wane. But hard rock lived on in multifaceted ways. One unique Memphis group from that era was Son of Slam, whose album Trailer Parks, Politics & God was released in 1994. According to LastFm.com, they “spit in the face of pretty boy glam bands” and “found legions of loyal fans in cities throughout the South and the Midwest.” Fronted by the flamboyantly unhinged Chris Scott, the group also featured guitar virtuoso Eric Lewis and the rhythm section of Terrence Bishop (bass) and John “Bubba” Bonds (drums). All four would impact the scene for years to come.

Now, it’s no longer a novelty to be a female playing guitar in a band, although I feel like rock is still mainly dude territory.

— Alicja Trout

Meanwhile, the ’90s also saw the rise of the Oblivians and the first stirrings of Goner Records, then a tiny label without a brick-and-mortar location, run by band member Eric Oblivian. While the trio rocked righteously right out of the gate, and Greg Oblivian and Jack Oblivian later pursued much-lauded solo careers, they have never been considered a metal or hard rock band, but rather a variety of the faster, more jagged garage punk genre. But a young fan of theirs, James Lee Lindsey Jr., would be inspired to begin a career of his own that, like the Modifiers before him, would sometimes straddle the line between punk and metal.

Taking the name Jay Reatard, Lindsey began firmly in the punk camp, yet as the century turned, he partnered with Memphis songwriter/guitarist Alicja Trout to form the Lost Sounds, who slowed the tempo slightly and added synths to their distorted guitars. Beginning in the early 2000s, long after hair metal’s star had fallen, the Lost Sounds and other Goner-affiliated bands kept the torch of hard rock riffs burning, though without the major label support that Tora Tora had enjoyed. Hard rock was surely giving way to hip hop and electronic music on the charts, but it still percolated in Memphis with a fierce, rebellious energy.

“We were trying to challenge ourselves,” Trout says today of the Lost Sounds’ debut, Black-Wave. “It was not quite prog-rock, because there weren’t any jam-out moments there. We called it Black-Wave because we were trying to mix black metal and new wave.”

The Lost Sounds challenged listeners’ preconceptions as well, not least because a woman playing heavy guitar riffs was an uncommon sight, even after a generation of strong women in rock had emerged with punk and new wave music. Yes, Memphis had boasted all-women groups like the KLiTZ, the Hellcats, and the Marilyns in the ’80s, but none of them purveyed that chugging “rawk” music that had traditionally been a male domain. Mother Station had featured guitarist Gwin Spencer, but they’d been short-lived, despite taking a single to #34 on the rock charts. Even with these precursors, Trout represented something new.

“When I started playing, it was novel to have a woman playing guitar and playing heavy,” Trout says. “Now, it’s no longer a novelty to be a female playing guitar in a band, although I feel like rock is still mainly dude territory.”

Nonetheless, she persisted, even as she parted ways with Lindsey, who carried on as Jay Reatard, eventually releasing the popular punk/metal hybrid albums Blood Visions and Watch Me Fall in 2009. Tragically, the next year he was found dead, the cause of death a possible drug overdose, a loss that the city still mourns.

Meanwhile, Trout had struck out on her own years before, recruiting Bishop and Bonds from the then-defunct Son of Slam to found the River City Tanlines in 2004. “I think the River City Tanlines is the most rock-and-roll band of any band I’ve ever been in,” Trout says. “The Lost Sounds were just getting further and further from conventional songwriting, getting into time changes and epic outros and noise intros and all these layered keyboards. It really came down to me thinking, ‘Man, I just want to do something simple and fun.’ Going back to basic songwriting with a good verse or chorus riff. And then Terrence and Bubba put their rock experience twist on it, but it really got filed under garage rock, which is you know, very different from the kind of bands they were playing in before.”

The Son of Slam rhythm section felt perfect for Trout, for whom the ‘punk’ label never was quite appropriate. “Whenever I’m put in with punk,” she notes, “the only thing I can think of is the Ramones, Blondie, and maybe the Velvet Underground — the New York definition of that word. Other than that, I only like smatterings of punk. It’s not me at all.”

Long Live Rock

One thing Trout shares with more punk-identifying bands that began in the 1990s and 2000s is longevity. Though somewhat eclipsed by Trout’s other projects, the River City Tanlines still play today, as rock churns on, oblivious to national trends. Other active lifers in the rock game include Pezz and the Subteens.

The 30-year-old band Pezz, who, according to Chris McCoy, have always had “a melodic streak that endeared them to pop-punk fans,” are rightly dubbed punk rock, but with more singable choruses and catchy riffs than many hardcore bands. Theirs is a rock style more reminiscent of the Clash. The group’s politically charged anger has only made them more relevant today, and the cover of their 2018 release, More Than You Can Give Us, pairs images of the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike with Black Lives Matter protests from six years ago.

Meanwhile, the Subteens, who also feature Bonds on drums, have soldiered on for nearly as long, and only last year released what is perhaps their greatest work, Vol. 4: Dashed Hopes & Good Intentions. A Memphis Flyer review situates their sound squarely in the Memphis rock tradition: “Propulsive anthems, driving riffs, and soaring solos that offer portraits from an underground community teetering between hope, exultation, rage, and despair,” comparable to older bands from “those Antenna Club godfathers, the Modifiers, to the Psychic Plowboys, Neighborhood Texture Jam, and beyond.”

For her part, Trout is now best known for her more eclectic, sometimes lighter work as Alicja-Pop, and for her hard rock outfit Sweet Knives. The latter band’s 2022 album Spritzerita is a masterful punk/hard rock hybrid not unlike the Lost Sounds. As Trout explains, that’s no accident. “I formed Sweet Knives to play all the Lost Sounds songs that had been put to sleep. But it wasn’t long until [original Lost Sounds drummer] Rich Crook and I started writing songs together. I wrote songs that I knew Rich could play with a certain hyper energy. We are still symbiotic and it was easy and fun to write songs with him.”

Music tastemakers continue to fret over the demise of hard rock. Six years ago, Salon marked a major turning point in the industry, noting, “For the first time in Nielsen Music history, R&B/hip-hop has become the most consumed music genre in the United States … It’s a watershed moment for the Black-dominated genre. Former longtime volume leader rock … dropped to second with 23 percent of the total volume.” And only last year, Louder magazine decried, “There’s not one new rock/metal album among this year’s 200 best-selling albums in America.”

Somehow, the news of rock’s death hasn’t made it to Memphis. Beyond the above bands, new groups that occupy the space between riff rock and punk are flourishing here. The Dirty Streets have purveyed a rocking guitar sound harking back to the Faces or the Rolling Stones for over a dozen years now, with no sign of flagging. Heels combined Clash-like politics with up-tempo riffs in last year’s masterpiece, Pop Songs for a Dying Planet. The prolific Opossums have released three albums since their 2018 debut, skewing towards pop punk melodicism in their latest, Bite. The duo Turnstyles have perfected the rock sound, with a touch of surf music, in its most minimalist expression: a guitarist and a drummer, both of whom sing.

And some masterful guitarists are keeping the rock spirit alive here. Robert Allen Parker’s recent double album, The River’s Invitation, mines a classic mashup of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Allman Brothers in an original, genre-hopping tour de force. Mama Honey, a trio led by guitarist Tamar Love, relies on her Hendrix-inspired, unabashedly rock-and-funk-fueled riffs. The Hold Steady, a Brooklyn-based group who’ve combined a pile-driving rock sound with Craig Finn’s trenchant, literate lyrics for twenty years now, have employed Memphis guitar wizard Steve Selvidge since 2010.

And no group tours more regularly than Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre, the brainchild of guitarist Joey Killingsworth, who’s specialized in masterminding charity albums that draw on cameos from the metal, rock, and punk worlds (such as J.D. Pinkus from the Butthole Surfers), often in tributes to classic ’70s rockers like Black Oak Arkansas and Nazareth (with an MC5 tribute to be released later this year). Killingsworth is also the axe man behind A Thousand Lights, who started as a Stooges cover band but soon morphed into an original goth rock band in their own right.

Perhaps the clearest sign that hard rock is rooted here for good is the ongoing work of Tora Tora themselves, who began playing again in the late 2000s and still draw considerable crowds in the region. Not only have they released compilations of previously unreleased tracks from the ’80s and ’90s, they recorded an album of all new material, Bastards of Beale, in 2019 — still with the original four members that met in high school.

“Rock has always stayed big over in Europe and Japan and South America,” Corder muses. “People kept jamming to rock there even when the market shifted in the United States. But there’s still an audience here that I’m playing to, and they’re like super fans. They’re super passionate. We jumped on the Monsters of Rock cruise for the first time back in 2017, and man, it was the most awesome experience. We’ve rediscovered our heavy metal tribe.”