Glenn Hughes

The biggest "whore" in classic rock -- this guy's worked with just about every band you can imagine, including Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Phenomena, Trapeze, Pat Travers, and others, as well as guest appearing on several records, including the tribute CDs for Jethro Tull and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

Ok, here's the story behind these CDRs. A hardcore Glenn Hughes fan saw my piddly compilation disc on this page, laughed, and offered to send me a "box set" consisting of a complete overview of his career, plus several rare demos & bootleg live tracks. As it happened, I got the package during the six months I was unable to listen to ANY MUSIC AT ALL, due to the trauma inflicted by listening to the Gathering's "How to Measure a Planet?" all the way through, and had a backlog of about 100 other CDs that needed a proper listen first. So I stuck these in my desk... where they promptly wound up buried and forgotten. Two years later, I found them.

Unfortunately, I've since lost touch with the person who sent me these discs (hey, SK! Drop me a line if you're out there!) so I'm a little hazy on the source and chronology and such of these songs. Anyways, here we go...

"Glenn Hughes: I" (CDR compilation)

  1. "No Stranger to Love"--Black Sabbath (4:25)
  2. "Seventh Star"--Black Sabbath (5:17)
  3. "Angry Heart"--Black Sabbath (3:07)
  4. "Make My Day"--Amen (4:40)
  5. "Child in the Mirror"--Amen (5:45)
  6. "Kiss of Fire"--Phenomena (4:51)
  7. "Believe"--Phenomena (5:49)
  8. "Twilight Zone"--Phenomena (4:11)
  9. "Beg, Borrow, or Steal"--Hughes/Thrall (3:43)
  10. "Where Did the Time Go"--Hughes/Thrall (2:55)
  11. "Muscle and Blood"--Hughes/Thrall (4:17)
  12. "Hold Out Your Life"--Hughes/Thrall (4:48)
  13. "Who Will You Run To"--Hughes/Thrall (3:40)
  14. "Only Women Bleed" (5:41)
  15. "I Don't Want to Live That Way Again" (8:20)

Some overlap here, but that's okay. The "Amen" songs (not sure if that's a band or an album title) fit in very nicely with the Sabbath/Phenomena tunes -- very moody and keyboard-driven, though definitely less hard-edged. (One gripe I have is that "Make My Day" sounds EXACTLY like Foreigner's "That Was Yesterday", but since I have no idea when this was recorded, hard to say who's stealing from whom here.) The Hughes/Thrall tracks are a different sort altogether, they sound vaguely new wave-ish in an 80's rock sort of way. "Only Women Bleed" comes from an Alice Cooper tribute, I presume. "I Don't Want to Live That Way Again" is from the Addiction CD, and is a very nice song.

"Glenn Hughes: II" (CDR compilation)

  1. "King of the Western World"--Billy Liesgong solo CD (4:01)
  2. "I'm Not Your Slave" (3:52)
  3. "Cover Me" (4:54)
  4. "Addiction" (4:30)
  5. "Madeleine" (4:51)
  6. "Burn" (6:13)
  7. "Death of Me" (3:48)
  8. "Down" (4:43)
  9. "Justified Man" (3:43)
  10. "Have You Read the Book"--LA Blues Authority (4:58)
  11. "Big Time" (4:41)
  12. "Talking to Messiah" (4:35)
  13. "Devil in You" (3:56)
  14. "The Only One" (4:37)
  15. "From Now On" (5:03)
  16. "Talk About It" (4:50)

This disc definitely shows a much harder edge to Glenn Hughes' solo work. Good stuff. Tracks 2-5, 7-9, and 16 are marked as from the Addiction CD, whereas "Burn" (a studio cover of the classic Deep Purple song, of course, with Hughes doing all the vocals) and tracks 11-15 are not annotated.

"Turn to Glenn/Eighth Star" (2CDR compilation)

    disc one: Black Sabbath, 3/14/86
  1. "Supertzar"--instrumental (2:54)
  2. "The Mob Rules" (3:30)
  3. "Children of the Sea" (6:15)
  4. "Danger Zone" (4:53)
  5. "War Pigs" (8:12)
  6. "Symptom of the Universe/Sweet Leaf" (3:21)
  7. "Zero the Hero/The Sphinx/Seventh Star" (8:15)
  8. "Turn to Stone" (4:41)
  9. "No Stranger to Love" (5:16)
    Glenn Hughes live, date unknown:
  10. "I Got Your Number" (6:04)
  11. "Reach for the Sky" (5:04)
    disc two: 1994 demos w/Tony Iommi
  1. "Not the Same" (4:26)
  2. "I'm Gone" (4:34)
  3. "Real World" (4:55)
  4. "Don't You Tell Me" (4:16)
  5. "I'll Be Fine" (6:23)
  6. "From Another World" (6:33)
  7. "Through the Rain" (5:19)
  8. "To Cry You a Song"--Jethro Tull tribute (5:09)
  9. "No Stranger to Love"--Black Sabbath (4:07)

Okay, now we're getting to the rare stuff. First of all, I gotta explain why the Turn to Glenn bootleg is listed here instead of under Black Sabbath...without a doubt, it's one of the WORST bootleg recordings I've ever heard!! Not only is the sound complete shit, but Glenn's voice is TOTALLY shot. And I mean BAD! He even apologizes at one point, saying he's "got bronchitis" or something. Or maybe it was the drugs. In any case, Glenn got fired from the band shortly thereafter, so live recordings of this era of Black Sabbath are exceedingly rare. (Tracks 10-11 are from a completely different show, not with Sabbath, and happily Glenn's got over what throat problems were plaguing him then.)

"Eighth Star" is the legendary rare demo session with Tony Iommi, recorded in 1994. However, there's a mistake on one of the songs -- track #8, listed as "Shakin' My Wings", is actually "To Cry You a Song" from the Jethro Tull tribute CD!!! (I've heard that this mistake occurs on many versions of this bootleg, so who knows if that other song really exists?) Plus there's the regular studio version of "No Stranger to Love" tacked on...I really didn't need to hear that song three times in a row, by the way. Sound quality on the genuine demos is okay, although they suffer from some mild distortion.

"Lost World" (2CDR compilation)

    disc one: Trapeze demos w/Gary Moore
  1. "Real World" (4:50)
  2. "Don't Ever Give Your Heart Away" (4:15)
  3. "Fighting" (3:51)
    unreleased demos w/Robin George:
  4. "Real World" (4:10)
  5. "Don't Come Crying" (3:38)
  6. "Loving You" (3:33)
  7. "Sweet Revenge" (4:44)
  8. "Homeland" (4:44)
  9. "It's Not Too Late" (4:21)
  10. "The American Way" (4:07)
  11. "Flying" (4:37)
  12. "Haunted" (3:56)
  13. "Overcome" (4:00)
  14. "Things Have Got to Change" (3:45)
    misc demos:
  15. ??? (unknown song - 4:55)
  16. "Child in the Mirror" (5:00)
  17. "Make My Day" (5:03)
    disc two: 1988 Dokken sessions
  1. "Distant Face" (4:19)
  2. "Desperate Man" (5:07)
  3. "When Love Finds a Fool" (5:58)
  4. "Matter of Time" (4:59)
  5. "I Ain't That Kind of Fool" (3:04)
    misc. live tracks, source/date unknown:
  6. "The Liar" (4:36)
  7. "Highway Star" (6:00)
  8. "I Got Your Number" (6:05)
  9. "Reach for the Sky" (5:09)

Hmm, scraping the bottom of the barrel, are we? Well okay, the music itself isn't terribly bad, but the sound quality reminds me why I don't get into demo recordings, even with bands I'm actually big fans of -- they sound like they're playing on a cheap transistor radio packed in a box stuffed with cotton. I do like the song "Real World", though -- would like to hear a properly recorded version of that one! (Yet it's a completely different song from the one on "Eighth Star"...strange, that.) Tracks 15-17 on disc one aren't even listed, and I have no idea what track 15 is called (it's a full-on soul/funkadelic track, if you believe that! Sounds like a duet with George Clinton, or something...)

The Dokken demos are interesting because, if I've got my chronology right, they come from the time when Dokken was more or less broken up. What's the story here, was Glenn actually trying out for the lead singer position?? Couldn't find any reliable info, except that "When Love Finds a Fool" is the only song to see the light of day, on Don Dokken's solo CD. The last two live tracks are the same ones tacked on to the end of Turn to Glenn...grr.

"Incense & Peaches" (2CDR compilation)

    disc one:
  1. "Down the Wire" (4:13)
  2. "Against the Grain" (3:55)
  3. "Jackie Got the Call Today" (5:11)
  4. "Jolayne" (5:32)
  5. "Let's Get Together" (4:48)
  6. "Stoned" (3:35)
  7. "What is Your Role" (4:52)
  8. "You Are My Dream" (5:11)
  9. "Doublelife" (5:28)
  10. "Push"--demo (4:48)
  11. "Inside and Above" (4:39)
  12. --unlisted, spoken word track (0:46)
    disc two:
  1. "The State I'm In" (4:58)
  2. "Midnight Meditated" (4:27)
  3. "It's Alright" (4:32)
  4. "Switch the Mojo" (4:33)
  5. "Angela" (5:57)
  6. "The Way It Is" (5:44)
  7. "Neverafter" (5:13)
  8. "Rain on Me" (5:26)
  9. "Stoned in the Temple" (4:08)
  10. "Too Far Gone" (4:54)
  11. "Should Have Known Better"-- Bobaloos (3:34)
  12. "Highway Star"--live (5:46)
  13. "Against the Grain" (3:52)
  14. "Let's Get Together" (4:45)
  15. "Nothing to Lose"--w/Gary Moore (4:37)
  16. "Dance with the Devil"--Phenomena (4:43)

Well, paint me yellow and call me a chicken...I don't know if "Incense and Peaches" is an album title or an ill-chosen band name (and only applies to tracks 1-9 on disc one, I'm getting lazy with the titles here) but these songs are COMPLETE FUNK!! I never would have known that Glenn had an R&B streak in him (which explains the mysterious track #15 on the previous set, I guess.) Not something I would care to listen to on a regular basis, though.

Disc two is another mixology of the regular hard rock stuff, with tracks 1-5 from The Return of Crystal Karma and tracks 6-10 from The Way It Is. (Again, the liner notes are scant, so I can only assume that those are album titles.) I'm a bit miffed with the filler, though..."Highway Star" is the same live version from the above set, tracks 13 & 14 are REPEATS from the previous disc, and there's a Phenomena song incongruously tacked on. That's just bad planning.


...well, that's it for the "Glenn Hughes Box Set". All it needs now is some artwork, a 54-page booklet with rare photos and interviews, maybe a trinket or something for the limited collector's edition...

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