Album review: BERNIE TORME – Lightning Strikes 1982-83 (4 CD boxset)

Cherry Red [Release date: 27.10.23]

Four CD Boxset of some of Irish guitar wunderkind, Bernie Torme’s best stuff, remastered:

Turn Out The Lights (1982)
Electric Gypsies (1982)
Live 1983
Live In Sheffield (1983)

When Torme decamped to London, in 1974, aged 21, he quickly discovered that it’s what goes on “behind the camera” rather than in front that dictates success or failure in rock’n’roll.

He emerged from the seventies punk scene with shorter hair than he went in, but with a renewed desire to nail down the hard rock sound that had energised him in his youth.

Talent spotted by Ian Gillan, Torme joined Gillan, the band, in 1979 and enjoyed the fame (but not the fortune) that goes with 4 best selling albums.

Pissed off at his slice of the financial cake, Torme jumped ship and dallied briefly with, in turn, Ozzy, Atomic Rooster and Dee Snider.

None of these relationships lasted. In 1980, Torme formed his own band and went on to release two studio albums, Turn Out The Lights (1981) and Electric Gypsies (1982).

Cherry Red Label has repackaged these as cutting edge remasters, with a dozen bonus tracks between them.

Torme’s love of quality sixties pop shows its face with covers of the Creation’s fabulous art/rock song, ‘Painter Man’ and The (Wild Thing) Troggs’ ‘I Can’t Control Myself’, a song banned on US Radio for its “blatantly suggestive lyrics”.

That said, his own material predominates in both albums. Look no further than ‘Lightning Strikes’ and ‘New World’ to hear Torme’s bluesy squalls burning down the house.

It’s a sound we can hear too in the raw, down to the bone axework on the live bonus tracks, esp ‘Search & Destroy’ and ‘Star’.

One of the reasons Torme gave for quitting Gillan (apart from the money) was the lack of opportunity to improvise during the live gigs.

He took maximum opportunity on tour to right that wrong. The two live albums, Live 1983 and Live In Sheffield (1983) are jampacked with Torme’s controlled guitar freewheeling, as he wrings out maximum mileage from every melody, every riff, and every axe solo.

Naturally, the bulk of the setlists are taken from the studio albums. The comparison in treatments, track on track, are a joy to behold. In the studio or on stage with classy musicians, like Phil Spalding and Everton Williams, Torme knew when to damp down the guitar histrionics and when to catch fire.

He died of Double Pneumonia in 2019, and is sadly missed.

RIP Bernie. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

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