GLENN HUGHES - Pipes Up!
by Martin Popoff

The Voice Of Rock is a sort of large and presumptuous tag to put on anybody, but if there ever was a man who has proven range and accuracy despite age and leviathan drug use (well in the past - Glenn is 14 years clean and sober), it is the illustrious Glenn Hughes. Voice Of Rock though? Unfortunately recognition and fame have not been game enough to bestow those sorts of superlatives upon Hughes. I'd prefer to call him Voice Of Rock - Best Kept Secret Division, 'cos the man certainly, through the sheer will and emotion in his voice, is one of the few rare talent that can inspire and frankly, brighten your day, with his voice alone. And it doesn't hurt that the Hughes solo albums are big, bold, and very expensive sounding, written and crafted with a bravado that matches the guy's devastating and torrid singing skills.

Hah! But the guy's current and one looming releases are not that at all, one being an unearthed demos record with Tony Iommi, one being an impromptu live album with lots of jamming, and one, his next studio album, set to be... well, let's hear from the man himself, first, on that soon to be born rock baby.

"The next record is going to be is going to be a very cohesive, focused Glenn Hughes album," begins Hughes, "where from start to finish, there's a thread through it. It definitely has got a lot more groove to it than most of my work. The songs are strong; the arrangements are strong. The passion in everybody's playing is way up, and I'll tell you why, Martin. This album was recorded live, as I used to do in Trapeze and Deep Purple. Three or four guys standing in a semicircle, in the same room, with the amps bleeding into each other's equipment, headphones, one ear on, one ear off, and we're playing, looking at each other. As you know, most things today are done in ProTools and you add things as you go along. This is recorded live, so the ends of some of the songs are absolutely dripping with passion. It's all done live. And I can thank Chad Smith (Glenn's drummer, also drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who, by contrast have a crappy singer) for that, my collaborator and co-producer on this project. Because the Peppers do this live too. You gotta cut live, man. Shit happens. There is some shit going on on these songs that is just fantastic."

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