Arthur Brown's New Album is a Ball
The God of Hellfire is set to release a hauntingly fun Halloween album, "Monster's Ball."
Hello, and thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. If you’re one of those people who has to make a playlist for every occasion (that’s like a digital mixtape for those of you who keep it old school), this week’s subject has some potential material for your Halloween tunes playlist.
English vocalist Arthur Brown has been recording dramatic rock music since the late 1960s and is still probably best known for the song “Fire” with his first rock band, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. The man, who is still known as “The God of Hellfire” due to his spoken word intro to that song, is still going strong and is set to release Monster’s Ball, a collection of haunting songs with an impressive array of guests. The album comes out just in time for Halloween with an Oct. 21 release date.
Let’s get to that story.
Arthur Brown is a unique artist in the rock genre. Despite having his biggest hit, “Fire,” way back in 1968 with his former band, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, he’s still making music at age 80 and performing live. He reached the eight-decade mark of his life back in June and yet he’s got another solo album coming out Oct. 21 on Cleopatra Records — Monster’s Ball.
While many legacy artists put out holiday albums, most of those are of Christmas music. That’s not Brown’s bag. The flamboyant and dramatic performer, who has influenced such artists as Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, Peter Gabriel, and KISS, is much more suited to music for a different holiday, and his upcoming Monster’s Ball is the perfect companion for Halloween.
Brown’s new release consists of 12 tracks — 13 if you buy the CD — of macabre and spooky (yet fun) tunes, with titles like “Screamin’ Ball (at Dracula’s Hall),” “Bucket O’Blood,” “Zombie Yelp,” and others of that ilk. Arriving at the height of spooky season, Monster’s Ball is much more likely to appeal to Brown’s existing fans than it is to create some new ones, but it should provide a great soundtrack to your Halloween festivities.
The list of guest artists on the album is incredible. Drummers Ian Paice (Deep Purple), Rat Scabies (The Damned), and Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge, Cactus) appear; as well as guitarists such as Steve Hillage, the late Roye Albrighton (Nektar), as well as James Williamson (The Stooges); keyboardists Mark Stein (Vanilla Fudge), Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater, Liquid Tension Experiment), and Brian Auger; bassist Alan Davey (Hawkwind) — who co-wrote and produced several songs — multi-instrumentalist Shuggie Otis; and Hawkwind’s Nik Turner. This host of amazing musicians, and more, helped bring Brown’s vision to life.
Brown, a soft-spoken gentleman when not donning his on-stage persona, has been working in music for a long time. Although best known for the 1968 single “Fire,” which reached No. 1 in the UK and Canada and No. 2 in the United States, he and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown have been around in several incarnations, releasing six albums between 1968 and 2019 — although the initial band originally turned out only one record. His band Kingdom Come released three albums from 1971-73, and he has released five solo albums prior to Monster’s Ball. He’s also collaborated with many other artists, including The Alan Parsons Project, Klaus Schultze, and Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson.
His 50-plus-year recording career wasn’t planned, but its origins began with him noticing the sounds around him as a child. Brown said his early impressions of music came from the rhythms he heard in his everyday life.
“Of course we had radio, but popular music of any interesting kind, for me anyway, was sort of rare,” he said. “There were all kinds of other rhythms about for me, initially. I was in Whitby in Yorkshire (England), where I was born. Of course, the rhythms of the sea is one of the main backgrounds there, and the howling gales, and the buzzing bees in the heather. So there were a lot of natural sounds at that time. And of course, when I was very little, there was the mechanical rhythms of bomber planes coming over. So that was one kind of music, as well as the noise of the animals. And there was the rhythm of the trains.”
Brown’s parents had a phonograph in the house, with a big, curved horn where the sound came out. His parents — his father was a pianist — had some jazz and opera in the house. These dramatic sounds would add to Arthur’s palette.
As a young man, Brown went off to the University of London to study philosophy and law but was captivated by the burgeoning jazz scene and he was delighted to meet people playing guitars and singing folk songs.
“I bought a banjo, not realizing it didn’t sound like a guitar, really,” he said with a laugh.
Brown credits a Howlin’ Wolf album as being another eye opener for him when he had left London to attend the University of Reading. It was in Reading where he formed the group Blues and Brown.
As Brown’s band played blues and jazz, he began to latch onto influences from popular musicians such as Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and James Brown, who had a great influence on his theatrical style as well as his dramatic vocal style.
“Elvis was my man,” Brown said. “Elvis and Little Richard. The unbelievable vocals. As for somebody singing with that edge in the gospel style, that was my first hearing of them. It was, ‘Wow.’ I was just amazed at the energy, the joy, and with Elvis, the passion in his voice was very lyrical. I got thrown out of a cinema for bopping in the aisles during the movie Jailhouse Rock.”
Brown was immersed in the British counter-culture, hanging out and performing at the UFO Club in London, where he rubbed elbows with the likes of early Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Procol Harum, Soft Machine, and The Incredible String Band.
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown captured the imagination of audiences with their unique non-guitar-oriented approach. It was a group driven by Hammond organ and drums with some bass and Brown’s otherworldly vocals. Brown’s stage theatrics included donning a flaming helmet — something that burned his head many times — and face paint. “Fire” caught on because it was so different. Part of its uniqueness was Arthur’s shout of “I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you…”, which opened the song and led right into the music. For its time, it was a stunning and dramatic way to open a song.
“Bands all over the world heard ‘Fire’ and they found it exciting and musically quite challenging,” Brown said. “George Clinton said he got his style from seeing me set my head on fire. It seems to be enduring. There must be something about the energy of the music which really communicates.”
Brown, who is still known as “the god of hellfire,” and whose website is thegodofhellfire.com more than 50 years since that song became a hit, has re-recorded that song for Monster’s Ball. The album is made up primarily of songs that were recorded over the past couple of years, mainly since the pandemic, although some were recorded a bit earlier.
“(The album) again is sort of dramatic,” Brown said. “It’s playful and scary and features some songs that you wouldn’t think would fit that until you really examine the lyrics again from a different viewpoint.”
The album kicks off with one such track — a cover of a song by his UFO Club contemporaries, Pink Floyd. He rips through a scorching version of “Lucifer Sam,” which originally appeared on the Floyd’s psychedelic Piper at the Gates of Dawn debut album. Paice drives the song with his powerful drumming and Hillage’s guitar work gives the song a unique flavor that sets it apart from the original. It’s one of the album’s highlights with its high energy.
“I enjoyed doing an interpretation of that,” Brown said. “Quite a few evenings down in the UFO, we’d be on at different times of the evening, but you always watched and you’d kind of chat with all people from different bands, pick up ideas and perspectives. You can do (‘Lucifer Sam’) from different angles as to what the story really is. What is he saying about the cat? I think that’s why it was included.”
“Screamin’ Ball (at Dracula’s Hall)” has a campy (in a fun way) opening with organ out of a vampire movie and an evil laugh from Brown, but it quickly moves into another energetic, driving, rock number that has a 1960s vibe to it.
A surprising inclusion is a cover of Cream’s “I Feel Free,” which features Scabies on drums and Williamson on guitar. Brown said he was asked to cover the song and obliged, making it his own. He does make sure it sits well alongside the other songs on Monster’s Ball by giving a bit of a creepy, theatrical vocal performance.
“I concede that it was a song that they asked me to do a version of,” Brown said with a laugh. “So, I did my version of it, and it’s their inscrutable inclusion into the album. I think it’s a wonderful stretching of the imagination.”
“Bucket O’Blood” is a fun song that combines southern boogie, space rock, and punk, with Turner adding sax and flute flourishes. “Zombie Yelp” has been around for a few years, and features Albrighton on guitar and organ from Stein. These last two songs would be right at home on a K-Tel Halloween songs album out of the late 60s or early 70s.
“Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard” is a cover of Tom Waits’ song from his 1978 album, Blue Valentine. The Sinclairs provide musical backing for Brown’s vocal performance, which is less gritty and easier to understand than Waits’ original.
The re-recording of “Fire” has outstanding keyboard work from Auger and has some added crunch to it from Appice on drums and Williamson’s guitar. Brown’s voice still does the song justice and he sings it with a rawness and power that aren’t quite there on the original. It’s a fine version, whether the listener ultimately prefers the original or not. While most of the songs were recorded in separate home studios and flown in, “Fire” is one song that Brown recorded with other musicians in studio.
“The Monster Hop” starts as a bit of a poetry reading but evolves into a nice, crunchy groove with an otherworldly space rock vibe. It name checks some of the more famous monsters throughout cinematic history.
Brown covers the 1960s Terry Teene novelty song, “Curse of the Hearse,” complete with screams and the well-known line, “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout,” which was taken from “The Hearse Song,” a popular World War I-era song. That’s followed by another cover of an old song, Dave Gardner’s “Mad Witch,” which is a bit of a gallop
Another spooky novelty-type song, “The Vampire,” features music from surf rockers The Coffin Daggers. Brown is obviously having a (monster’s) ball singing this one.
“Late Last Night” is an atmospheric closing track (except on the CD version), with ambient music that Brown playfully sings over. The spooky factor is ramped up a bit when you realize that two of the musicians who play on it — Albrighton and former Gong musician Gilli Smyth — are no longer with us. Both died in 2016. Brown said some bits were recorded as early as 2015 but the majority of the record is much more recent.
The CD version of Monster’s Ball contains a bonus track, which is a cover of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Karn Evil 9” with help from Rudess covering the late Keith Emerson’s parts. Brown has some history with ELP and with this particular song. He performed it while on tour when he shared a bill with Yes, Asia, and Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy, and he’s known Palmer since the 1960s, when the iconic drummer filled in with The Crazy World of Arthur Brown while that band was in the midst of falling apart. Brown puts his own stamp on “Karn Evil 9” and Rudess’ keyboard work shines, as it usually does.
Brown said he plans to incorporate at least one track from Monster’s Ball into future live performances — yes, he is still performing live! His performances marry music and visuals in a multimedia spectacular called “The Human Perspective,” which spans Arthur’s music career.
“I love music. I love performing,” Brown said, explaining his career’s longevity.
Anyone looking for a fun, Halloween-themed album will find it in Monster’s Ball. It’s got Brown’s typical sense of theater and humor, but it’s also catchy and, at times, it rocks. There’s a little something for everyone, as the record melds genres from psychobilly to space rock to electronica to classic rock to heavy metal. It also blends humor and terror in a way that only Arthur can do it.
Monster’s Ball is available from Cleopatra Records and other online outlets on digital, CD, and red marbled vinyl. Find out more about Arthur Brown and shop from his webstore at his official website.
Tracklist:
Lucifer Sam feat. Ian Paice & Steve Hillage
Screamin' Ball (At Dracula's Hall) feat. Alan Davey
I Feel Free feat. James Williamson & Rat Scabies
Bucket O' Blood feat. Nik Turner
Zombie Yelp feat. Roye Albrighton & Mark Stein
Whistlin' Past The Graveyard feat. The Sinclairs
Fire feat. James Williamson, Brian Auger & Carmine Appice
The Monster Hop feat. Shuggie Otis
Curse Of The Hearse
Mad Witch
The Vampire feat. The Coffin Daggers
Late Last Night feat. Steve Hillage, Roye Albrighton, Gilli Smyth & Joel Vandroogenbroeck
Bonus Track [CD Only]Karn Evil #9 feat. Jordan Rudess
There’s no video for this week’s issue due to technical issues. However, you can hear my entire interview with Arthur Brown on Episode 82 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast. The podcast version includes some brief music clips from the album, and from some of Brown’s past work, and can be found on all major podcast platforms. Arthur spoke at length about his background in music, how he came to work with such legendary acts as Carl Palmer, the Alan Parsons Project, and Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, what keeps him making music and performing live at age 80, and more.
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