JANUARY
THE YEAR KICKED off with a significant moment in instrumental guitar history, as 24-year-old Steve Vai unleashed Flex-Able, the first studio offering under his own name. The record was recorded at Stucco Blue Studios, AKA Vai’s shed, and features little of the tried-and-true shred-heavy antics of his later Eighties records, which was surely a result of Vai’s time working with Frank Zappa.
Over in the Biggest Band in the World Department, Eddie Van Halen and company (also known as Van Halen) dropped the aptly titled 1984 on January 9. It features some of the explosive SoCal group’s most iconic cuts, including “Jump,” which went to Number 1 on the U.S. Billboard chart, and “Hot for Teacher,” which came with an inescapable MTV music video for the ages.
And then there was Judas Priest, who released Defenders of the Faith (a name Guitar World borrowed for one of its longest-running recurring features) on January 13. The record was seething with doubled-down licks from K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton, but what the album — specifically “Eat Me Alive” — is known best for is drawing fire from Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center [PMRC], which deemed Priest’s record “objectionable” for its themes of “oral sex at gunpoint.” Ouch!
Beatles fans who were still smarting from the 1980 murder of John Lennon finally got to hear Milk and Honey, the album Lennon recorded — with guitarists Earl Slick and Hugh McCracken — at the same time as 1980’s Double Fantasy. The album is awash with odd textures (“(Forgive Me) My Little Flower Princess”), catchy riffs (“Nobody Told Me”) and rough-around-the-edges charm (“I Don’t Wanna Face It”). For an interview with Slick, head to page 28.
January wrapped with the Pretenders’ Learning to Crawl, their first record without the late James Honeyman-Scott — but it did feature “Back on the Chain Gang” and a talented new guitarist named Robbie McIntosh. Bon Jovi’s self-titled debut was released on the 23rd and contained the Richie Samboraheavy single, “Runaway.” Whitesnake’s Slide It In — aka their first album to feature the brooding wall-of-Marshalls sound of John Sykes — appeared a week later.
Anthrax’s hefty debut, the Scott Ian-packed Fistful of Metal, joined the party on the 28th, followed by Gary Moore’s fourth solo album, Victims of the Future, which is best remembered for its cover of the Yardbirds’ “Shapes of Things” (not to mention its blazing guitar solo, which picked up where Jeff Beck left off 18 years earlier).
FEBRUARY
RELEASED , an album awash in Charlie Burchill’s New Wave sounds as heard on “Waterfront.” In a similar vein, followed up their early Eighties success (1982’s “I Melt with You”) with . There were no huge hits on the cards this time around — just a solid pop rock album with some pithy and even over-driven sounds courtesy of Gary McDowell. Meanwhile, well-received , the singer’s first solo album to be released after the Who’s initial breakup. Easing on over to the hair metal section, debut, , which hit the streets in the middle of the month, spawned the hit “Round and Round,” but it was the video for “Back for More” — which not only harbored a mega solo by Warren DeMartini but featured the lovely Tawny Kitaen — that was the most memorable.
