AOR Blog: Album Oriented Rock

Blackjack (Michal (Bolton) Bolotin, Sandy Gennaro, Jimmy Haslip, Bruce Kulick)

80s R&B hitmaker Michael Bolton went through a rock phase early in his career.  After a couple of failed singer-songwriter solo albums in the mid-1970s, Bolton gave hard rock a try as the frontman of Blackjack, a four-piece unit that also featured future KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick.  Bolton (then going by his real name Bolotin), and Blackjack released two albums on Polgram; their self-titled 1978 debut and “Worlds Apart (1980), but never found much success other than the single “Love Me Tonight”, which hit #62 on the Pop Singles chart in 1979.

Promo Film for Blackjack

Rarely seen promo film produced for Blackjack gushes with praise for the band and features  performances of “Love Me Tonight” and the Bad Company-sounding “Without Your Love”.

In 1983, Bolotin christened himself “Michael Bolton” and released another solo album in the hard-rock/AOR genre with the help of Bruce Kulick and his brother Bob. “Fool’s Game” was released as a single as the album climbed to #89.

Fool’s Game:

“Fool’s Game” was more in the pop-rock vein, complete with prominent keyboards and hand claps.  As a result, it was a moderate success on the charts, hitting #27 on the Mainstream Rock chart, and #83 on the Pop Singles chart.

Everybody’s Crazy:

The harder-rocking single from Bolton’s 1985 album “Everybody’s Crazy” was the title track, which hit #38 on the Mainstream Rock Chart.

Minor success on the rock charts was not enough for Bolton, so he shifted gears again, releasing “The Hunger” in 1987, on which he collaborated with Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain of Journey.  Bolton’s more R&B/Pop-oriented approach on “The Hunger” scored him two Top 20 hits with his overwrought cover of Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of The Bay (#11), and “That’s What Love is All About” (#19). Bolton’s career went through the stratosphere, and he has sold 53 million albums to date.

While Tom Scholz was known as the mastermind and lead guitarist of Boston, the band also featured another talented guitar player that was featured on a few leads himself: Barry Goudreau. After Scholz created the Boston demos in his basement and laid in Brad Delp’s vocals, the song “More Than a Feeling” was instrumental in landing them a record deal with Epic in 1976. The only problem was that Scholz needed a band to play the songs live. He and Delp recruited Fran Sheehan (bass), Sib Hashian (drums), and Barry Goudreau as a second guitarist to recreate the Boston wall of guitar sound on tour. After Boston’s debut album hit BIG, the lineup stuck together through the second album “Don’t Look Back (1978)”, which Scholz was forced to put out by Epic before he deemed the record to be ready. A lawsuit ensued, time passed and eventually the other band members grew impatient with Scholz and his studio tinkering with what would be Boston’s third album. Scholz gave his blessing and the band members pursued other projects.

Goudreau’s self-titled solo album came out in 1980, and featured Boston-bandmates Brad Delp on vocals and Sib Hashian on drums. The result was a great Boston-sounding album (which bothered Scholz) that climbed to #88. The standout track “Dreams” received substantial airplay on rock radio but did not chart. “Dreams” should have been a hit, as it is just as good as anything on “Don’t Look Back”. The video below is a rare promo clip featuring the full lineup from the Goudreau band:

UK-based power-pop band The Babys formed in 1976 and scored two Top 20 singles with “Isn’t it Time” and “Every Time I Think of You”. Of particular note is the fact that two of The Babys later achieved even greater success in the 1980s. Vocalist/bassist John Waite went solo and had a number one hit in 1984 with “Missing You“, and keyboardist Jonathan Cain went on to co-write many hits as a member of Journey. Waite and Cain even reunited in the 1989 to form the AOR supergroup Bad English (“When I See You Smile”).

“Midnight Rendezvous” appeared on The Babys’  final album, the Keith Olsen-produced Union Jacks (1980).  The song  only climbed to #72 on the Pop Singles chart, but remains an AOR classic. Check out the new wave influenced keyboards …

Heart began as one of the few female-fronted hard rocking bands of the 1970s, and they had a lot of success on FM radio with such singles as “Barracuda”, “Magic Man”, and “Crazy on You”. Lead singer Ann Wilson’s powerful wail was similar to that of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, her idol.

In the early 80s, declining success led Heart to reconsider their sound and they opted for a more commercial, slick sound that emphasized keyboards. This approach led to their #1 self-titled album in 1985 featuring “What About Love”, “These Dreams”, and “Never”. In 1983, however, the transition from rockers to pop stars was still in progress as shown on the album “Passionworks”, produced by Keith Olsen (Starship, Bad Company, Whitesnake). The album did not fare well, only hitting #39, but it did produce a great AOR track, “How Can I Refuse (lyrics)”, which hit #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart (their final hit on this chart) and #44 on the Pop Singles chart.