Archive Review: Bill Chinnock’s Badlands (1977 / 2008)

Long before CBS Records tried to remake him into the next Bruce Springsteen (no, I dunno why…maybe one wasn’t enough?), Bill Chinnock was one of the last of the young soul rebels. Pursuing a houserockin’ sound that was equally indebted to the Chicago blooze blast of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf as it was to Chuck Berry’s three-chord Sturm und Drang, Chinnock was a white bluesman – born in New Jersey, sure, but his heart was beating pure Delta grit.

One of John Hammond’s many discoveries, Chinnock made his bones as part of the Asbury Park mafia, playing in various boardwalk bands with future and present E Streeters like Danny Federici, Gary Tallent, and Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. At Hammond’s recommendation, Chinnock exiled himself to Maine to work on his wordplay, later emerging as the East Coast poet laureate, his new songs matching intelligent lyrics to a raucous soundtrack that translated well to the stage and made him a bigger performance draw than the Boss during the mid-‘70s.

Bill Chinnock’s Badlands

Of Chinnock’s 1975 debut album, Blues, Hammond said “listening to Bill Chinnock sing blues brings back the days of the old Paramount label with Ma Rainey,” and he oughta know ‘cause John Senior was there in person. Following a live set, Badlands was Chinnock’s third album, originally self-released and the one that finally caught the attention of the suite-sitters at Atlantic Records. The label signed B.C. to what seemed to be a creatively-advantageous deal, bought up all the copies of Badlands floating around the Northeast, and reissued the album with naught but a few additional flourishes.

Not that Badlands needed much tinkering, mind you, the album emerging from Chinnock’s artistic psyche pretty much perfectly intact. The album-opening “Outlaw” is smoky big-band R&B revue stuff, with funky hornplay and Chinnock’s soulful vox shouted out above a driving rhythm. Chinnock sounds like a cross between Tom Waits and David Clayton-Thomas on “Another Man Gone Down,” the sound of heartbreak carved with tears into the grooves of the record. Jazzy guitars and dancing synths sit atop a vaguely disco rhythm, but “Something For Everybody” is a bad-luck tale of homeless life in 1978 America that retains its optimism and hope in the face of desperation, stating “the streets are filled with money, the sidewalks paved in gold.”

Chinnock’s “Crazy Ol’ Rock ‘N Roll Man” is a brilliantly-painted rock ‘n’ soul anthem for every bar band and rock star hopeful that ever climbed onto a ramshackle stage while “Prisoner” is pure ‘70s-era R&B cheese, all soulman tease and ready-to-please with the Brecker Brothers holding down a funkified bottom end while Chinnock’s lusty voice soars just below the clouds. Chinnock’s relationship with Atlantic went downhill fast after the label ignored Badlands in favor of a fresh album, one for which the singer felt they were trying to push his normally rhythmic, soul-driven sound into a more disco-oriented direction when all he wanted to do was RAWK!

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Slamming the door behind him on the way out, Chinnock returned to the indie hinterlands save for the mid-‘80s travesty that was his CBS Records deal, enjoying a lengthy and productive career in music, video and graphic arts until his death in 2007. Badlands remains a favorite with Chinnock’s loyal fans, a soulful romp down the lost highway that separates rhythm & blues and rock ‘n’ roll, the album displaying the attitude of both. (Collectors’ Choice Music, reissued August 12th, 2008)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine, 2008