Try the Wine

Too many guitars? Never!

It's been an awful long time, but there was a period when I was all about Canadian rock band April Wine. They were pretty big in the seventies and into the eighties, carrying on sort of for a long while more but not really producing much in the way of interesting new material. So be it... that happens. Few rock stars taste the fame forever. Even the best of them can experience a limited career life span, Maintaining even just a modicum of success after their heyday can be a continuous struggle, unless a band is resigned to simply putting on greatest hits shows for the rest of their lives.

Wine began as a musical force way back in '69, and cut their first record in '71, but it wasn't until the mid-to-late 70's that I became aware of them. I had some growing up to do first. 

I first heard April Wine on the radio, probably Oowatanite or Roller, a couple of their biggest hits. Very riffy and thick with rock guitar class and grit in equal parts, plus the vocal harmonies set them apart from other heavies back then. Other songs began to drift into my sphere, such as I Like to Rock, Weeping Widow, and 21st Century Schizoid Man (a cover of the King Crimson classic), changing my world for the better. These guys really knew how to write and play great, catchy, often heavy songs. They were also responsible for some of the most famous ballads of that era, too. One, from the seventies, was Tonight is a Wonderful Time to Fall in Love. Think you've never heard it? Find it on YouTube and you'll realize you have heard it - many times.

And two massive hit ballads appeared on the Wine's 1981 smash The Nature of the Beast (not to be confused with Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast). Some sort of fanged hairy creature wailing on guitar adorns the cover of the album. April Wine, with this disc, helped set the stage along with Rush and Triumph for a run of amazing Canadian hard rock in the 80's. 

Back to those ballads now.... Sign of the Gypsy Queen, riddled with memorable guitar and vocal hooks, received a massive amount of attention, placing very respectably on both Canadian and U.S. song charts - hitting #11 on Billboard's Top Tracks. No small feat. Just Between You and Me was similarly melodic and dreamily-paced for high school dances. 

The Beast went double platinum in sales in Canada and even hit gold status in the States. I played the hell out of my copy of the album, and was pleased when CDs finally hit the market so I could upgrade from my trashed cassette tape.

It seemed that almost every song on The Nature of the Beast was in the rotation on radio stations. Easily half the album was good enough for that kind of airplay, and the rest of the set was no slouch either. Consistently good, with plenty of anthem choruses and big fun guitar hooks that you still hear on classic rock stations. My favourite track was (and still is) Wanna Rock, with Future Tense and Crash and Burn close behind. 

Wine's follow-up of '82 (the pressure must have been on to ride that wave of success from the previous year's Beast album), Power Play, boasted a couple of big hits which I quite liked: Anything You Want, You Got It... and Enough is Enough. Both sort of lightweight rockers that must have satisfied the band's and the recording company's wallets, and fun enough to keep the fans happy. The rest was rather generic and forgettable, so I ditched the album after a while, and there ended my fascination with April Wine. I prefer to remember them for their better work in the early years. Not really aging like fine wine, eh?