The more laidback Loeb was one part hippy, one part hustler as a kid he had run around with future Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley. Arnell was a chain-smoking hipster with a machine-gun repartee who wouldn’t have seemed out of place in the creative department of a Mad Men-style ad agency. At that time in the Big Apple, if you were a rock band who weren’t called Led Zeppelin, you faced an uphill struggle to get noticed.īut Riot had what most other rock’n’roll hopefuls didn’t: a go-getting management team in the shape of Billy Arnell and Steve Loeb. New York in the mid 70s was in the grip of disco fever: glitterball hedonism and white powder were the order of the day.Įlsewhere, the burgeoning punk scene had taken root at infamous dive CBGB, spearheaded by the likes of The Ramones, Patti Smith and Television. In a taste of what was to come, their timing was atrocious. They knew they had more to offer they certainly hoped they had more to gain. Reale and Speranza were writing their own material, for starters. Like Speranza, Reale had served time in several going-nowhere teenage bands, serving up Humble Pie and Foghat covers to drunken schoolfriends at backyard parties. Whoever he was hanging out with, that’s who Guy was going to be.” When he joined Riot, he became the singer of Riot. Guy was very adaptable he was like a blank slate. “He was singing with a Top 40 band in Brooklyn – he could take it or leave it. “Mark told me that he had to talk Guy into joining the band,” recalls future drummer Slavin. But his unobtrusive manner suggested that he wasn’t necessarily cut out for a life in rock’n’roll. A wiry Italian-American with a striking afro-style hairdo, Speranza looked at first glance like the archetypal 70s rock god-in-waiting. It was Reale who founded the band in his native Brooklyn in the summer of 1975 with bassist Phil Feit, drummer Peter Bitelli and vocalist Guy Speranza. A tall, skinny Montrose fanatic with thinning hair – which he later covered with a series of wigs – the unassuming but quietly ambitious Reale would be the only constant member throughout the band’s history. Still unquestionably the band's best effort, Metal Health would eventually earn one-hit wonder status thanks to Quiet Riot's inability to deliver anything resembling a decent follow-up.If one man was the driving force behind Riot, it was guitarist Mark Reale. Even though "Run for Cover" is quite a stomper, the closing triplet of "Battle Axe" ( Carlos Cavazo's half-assed guitar showcase), "Let's Get Crazy" (downright embarrassing jock rock), and "Thunderbird" (painful sub- Journey balladry) tend to understate the hugeness of the occasion. "Love's a Bitch" closes side one with plenty of venom and attitude, but despite a valiant attempt by the driving coulda-been-a-hit "Breathless," side two falls way short of the mark. The surprisingly laid-back groove of "Don't Wanna Let You Go" follows the storming "Cum On Feel the Noize," which leads into the slightly '50s-ish "Slick Black Cadillac," a rehashed early band favorite. With its crushing guitar riff, inane lyrics, and goofy bravado, it's heavy metal personified in all its glorious, ridiculous excess. ![]() Say what you will, but the album's title track continues to deliver after all these years. Though it has received its fair share of criticism, Metal Health isn't nearly as average as some would have you believe. ![]() Prior to their "overnight success," QR had been toiling in relative obscurity for years, so that by the time they finally turned the corner, Metal Health's meteoric success must have surprised the band even more than it did their critics and newfound fans. Quiet Riot seemingly came out of nowhere in 1983, racing up the singles charts with their over-the-top cover of Slade's "Cum On Feel the Noize" and crashing the Billboard album chart's number one spot with their multi-million-selling Metal Health LP - the first heavy metal record to ever do so.
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