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<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nBernie Torm\u00e9 was one of my first ever guitar heroes. He in some way took the genres of punk and hard rock and made the songs he played on sound like something altogether different, then when it came to his image Bernie looked like no one else on the rock scene back in in the early eighties, in fact he looked more like a cast member of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy than a bullet belted jeans and t shirt rocker. And in my teenage mind this meant everything. Bernie Torm\u00e9 (as some singer would later declare on live TV) really was a STAR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I caught up with Bernie for a chat at the very first Hard Rock Hell festival all the way back in 2007 that tired old adage of \u201cnever meet your heroes\u201d never entered into my head, being introduced to the man by his then fellow GMT band mate John McCoy (yup THE John McCoy) with strict prior instructions to tell Bernie just how much his music and playing had meant to me growing up. I soon found that the cocksure Wild Irish six stringer I\u2019d only ever previously seen flaunting his insane talent on stage was anything but that off it. Bernie was initially shy and oh so humble in my presence, but once he\u2019d relaxed into our conversation he opened up about his time being the hippy on the punk scene and playing the Vortex, then becoming the punk in the hard rock band Gillan, before then regaling me with tales of his brief time with Ozzy, his (in my eyes at least) perhaps finest hour in Torm\u00e9 (with Phil Lewis) and then his time with Dee Snider and Clive Burr in metal supergroup Desperado.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m, getting ahead of myself here though, because this four CD box set released via HNE Recordings\/Cherry Red Records (the first in a series of such Bernie boxes I\u2019m lead to believe) covers the years 1982 to 1983 and includes the two studio albums Bernie released during this time, initially solo whilst he was still a member of Gillan and then following his departure from that band alongside his bandmates as the Electric Gypsies. Together with these discs we also get two live albums from 1983. It was around that time I also saw Bernie live for the very first time and his ferocious playing that night saw him not only cut his hand but also bleed all over my Wrangler jacket, something that in 2007 Bernie not only apologised for but also offered to pay to get cleaned. A sincere gesture that still makes me smile to this very day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something that also makes me smile (a hell of a lot) is the album that kick starts this box set, 1982\u2019s \u2018Turn Out The Lights\u2019. It\u2019s a record that at the time confused quite a few of us hard rockers, not least because after the initial Gillan-esque bluster of the opening title track and the album\u2019s only single, up next was a tune most of us had grown up knowing as being by Boney M. All these years on of course I now know \u2018Painter Man\u2019 was originally a \u201860s hit for The Creation, but there\u2019s nothing quite like hearing your guitar hero in an all-new context to shake up the senses. Looking back now I can see it was really no different to what Gillan had been doing with their series of cover versions something that had provided them with UK chart hits and saw the band making several appearances on Top Of The Pops. Elsewhere, \u2018Turn Out The Lights\u2019 is an interesting mix of up-tempo hard rockers like \u2018America\u2019 and \u2018Lies\u2019 mixed up with the more elaborate songwriting of \u2018Possession\u2019 (which is still my favourite song on the record) and then there\u2019s the brooding instrumental \u2018Inda\u2019. I do wonder what Gillan (the band) might have done with some of these songs and what Ian himself might have made of covering the Velvet Underground\/Nico\u2019s \u2018Chelsea Girls\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The version of \u2018Turn Out The Lights\u2019 included here not only contains the three bonus \u2018Back With The Boys\u2019 tracks that were included on Bernie\u2019s very own Retrowrek Records\u2019 version of the album but also adds a live rehearsal of \u2018Chelsea Girls\u2019 from 1982 alongside an also previously unreleased version of \u2018Boney Maroney\u2019 from 1979?, which I\u2019m actually quite happy to turn a blind eye to timeline wise as it\u2019s a top notch version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n