Album review: FAST EDDIE CLARKE – Make My Day The Rock ’n’ Roll Story Of…

BMG [Release date 06.09.24]

Guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke came to prominence as the guitarist for Motorhead, playing on Motorhead (1977, Chiswick), and Bomber, Overkill, Ace Of Spades, No Sleep ‘Till Hammersmith and Iron Fist (1979-82, all on Bronze), and a number of retrospective live albums and compilations. Outside of Motorhead he’s had a longer career than maybe most realise, and this box dips into various segments, giving a good overview.

Disc 1 is Clarke’s early years, with several tracks from the two albums her recorded with Curtis Knight’s Zeus (the same Knight who recorded with Hendrix in the mid 60s), some lovely bluesy prog.

There’s also a few tracks by Continuous Performance, and then uptempo work (and a little punky) from The Muggers (a few fans may already have The Muggers Tapes set).

Disc 2 is the Motorhead years, not something you can do justice to on one disc but there’s a couple of standards and some rarities too (alternate takes with Eddie’s lead vocals). Wonderful music but you know it, a fine sampler to an excellent catalogue most will be largely familiar with.

More interesting is Disc 3, the Fastway years. Intentionally wanting to move away from the Motorhead sound, Fastway were more a straight heavy metal band with a strong blues influence. Here’s a catalogue that really needs investigating, you only need a few tracks to realise that. Additional are a live track, some demos with Pete Way, and some remixes. Clarke’s guitar stands out, proof that he didn’t need to play second fiddle to Lemmy.

Finally Disc 4 is the Solo years, and some more excellent music. Enlightening too as it’s SO good yet few will be aware of the solo material (i.e. outside of Motorhead/Fastway). This is probably the most enjoyable disc of the set. Many tracks are catchy, solid, heavy, a touch of blues, outstanding guitar, all good foot tapping stuff.

In addition, the 4 discs come in a nice fold out set and packaged with that, in the box, is a book, a biography which is a good read.

Much as I love the music and found the music and book enlightening, there a few missed opportunities. The CDs are a little short, the very brief (2 page) insert doesn’t enlighten a great deal as to where the tracks came from; more info such as album, year and line-up should be fairly obvious info to include. But sadly no. On those counts, I think BMG might need to re-visit the price point.

And, as a fan, collector and music lover in general, this may have been good to include (tracks from, or in full), Naughty Old Santa’s Christmas Classics, an album Eddie recorded with Philthy Animal Taylor back in the day.

Price aside, there are definitely more plusses than minuses (there’s a lot here that’s new to me), and it’s well worth checking out. ****

Review by Joe Geesin

Review by Jason Ritchie

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ROBERT JON & THE WRECK Rager (indie)

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