Blue Cheer -Biography

It’s hard to believe it’s over 30 years since the birth of what we now know as Heavy Metal. Hendrix and Cream were the midwives, the likes of Sabbath and Zep the progeny. But what about the half-brother lurking in the corner, giggling, and sucking on the gas and air? Step forward please, Blue Cheer.

The Summer of Love had barely ended when Blue Cheer formed in late 1967, taking their name from a type of acid tab. They came from San Francisco, but, although part of the psychedelic set, love ‘n’ peace this was not. In some ways they were the antithesis to the hippy trip, the Bay Area’s revenge on the invading peaceniks, the musical equivalent of Manson.

Scott MacKenzie would’ve shuddered. They made raucous, frantic slabs of greasy noise, took trips by the truckload and hung around with Hell’s Angels. They used the basic heavy psychedelic blues format of Hendrix and co, added giant, heavily discordant guitar workouts and a pounding, overdriven bass, then played it all at full blast.

Legend has it that whilst recording their second album, "Outsideinside", they were so loud they blew up the studio monitors and the album could only be completed with the band playing outside. Even listening to the CDs today, they just sound so... LOUD!!! Whereas many bands of their era were injecting jazz or pop influences Blue Cheer weren’t interested in all that poncing around. Theirs was music to split skulls to. Unsurprisingly, the critics hated them.

It’s perhaps typical of the chaos embracing Blue Cheer that they started life - and one of their gigs as a six piece, and by the time they emerged to perform the second half of the set that particular night they’d contracted to a trio. This ‘original’ line-up of Leigh Stephens guitar/vocals), Dick Peterson (bass/vocals) and Paul Whaley (drums) recorded two albums, the debut "Vincebus Eruptum" and the aforementioned "Outsideinside", both released in 1968 on the Philips label.
Stephens left after "Outside", and Blue Cheer struggled to settle on a line-up thereafter. A succession of guitarists - mostly with more psychedelic leanings - drifted in and out, and gradually the heavy blues influence lessened, the band becoming more of a typical West Coast psychedelic act. They split in ‘71, Peterson reforming the band a few years later. I first stumbled across ‘em in the early 80s, just in time for an album on Megaforce called "The Beast Is Back" featuring revamped classics. A couple of other albums came out in the late 80s, aimed at the German market, and then... well, they could be still going for all I know or care, probably touring Mongolia with Uriah Heep.

The two albums with Leigh Stephens are what it’s really all about, though. "Vincebus" is as primal an album as you’re ever likely to hear, bristling with nervous energy and aggression. Built around sensational performances from Stephens and Peterson, it wounds right from the opening fuzz of a hatchet job on Eddie Cochran’s "Summertime Blues" that out-blitzes even The Who’s version. Mose Allison’s "Parchment Farm" suffers a similarly gory, glorious fate - all flailing guitar and subterranean bass -and Dickie Peterson’s own numbers are no more subtle. Every track on this LP bears the hallmark of men too fucked to know what they were doing.
"Outside" is a tad more refined, and for my money has the edge. It lacks nothing of the power, but there are some songs here to go with the racket. The originals are far stronger, the proto-ZZ Top thrash of "Come And Get It" the choicest, and the covers uncompromisingly wacky. The Stones’ "Satisfaction" is dispatched to a brilliantly trippy end, whilst "The Hunter" is deconstructed in a way none of the many other blues revisionists to record it ever managed.

In the years since Blue Cheer first charged out of the Bay Area on their Harleys some people have hailed them as the first ever Heavy Metal band, an epithet I_ve also heard applied to The Kinks! In my view, Blue Cheer were too unstructured and unrestrained for the tag to really be true, but they were definitely a prototype. Who gives a shit though, cuz, whatever label you put on it, Blue Cheer have a special place in heavy music’ pantheon of greats, and their legacy’ still relevant today. Many of the bands I hold dear have a few recycled Blue Cheer-isms in there somewhere. Fu Manchu, Monster Magnet, the Heads, maybe even the likes of Soundgarden and Nirvana, can all trace their lineage back to Blue Cheer.

Blue Cheer’ albums are now out on CD in the UK for the first time thanks to Track Records. And about time too!

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