Turn Up The Radio with The Rockets!

Detroit in the late-70s was a true rock 'n' roll Mecca. Ted Nugent was hitting the charts, and Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band were blowing up nationwide. The MC5 were long gone, but Fred "Sonic" Smith had his Sonic's Rendezvous Band to kick out the jams on stages from Ann Arbor to Toledo, and all points in between. The street scene was vital as well, with a mix of punk, pop, and art-rockers knockin' 'em down at the New Miami club every weekend. Bands like the Mutants, Flirt, Cinecyde, Destroy All Monsters, and the Romantics were redefining the Motor City sound, and those of us in the audience just hung on for a wild ride.

Into this musical maelstrom stepped the Rockets. Formed earlier in the decade as "the Detroit Rockets" by guitarist Jim McCarty, fresh from the band Cactus, and drummer Johnny “Bee” Badanjek, both musicians were veterans of Mitch Ryder's Detroit Wheels. The original incarnation of the Rockets featured Badanjek on vocals, belting out the songs from behind his drum kit. Although they had begun to develop a local following, it wasn't until they added singer David Gilbert in 1976 that the Rockets truly took launch.

Gilbert was the sort of rock 'n' roll wildman that was typical of the 1960s/70s…a golden-tressed Adonis with a larger-than-life voice and the sort of charismatic presence to take the band to the top of the heap. Gilbert's bluesy baritone had been honed by fronting a half-dozen Detroit-area garage bands, which brought him to the attention of Ted Nugent.

The Nuge enlisted Gilbert to front his early-70s incarnation of the Amboy Dukes, and Gilbert spent a year in the dim spotlight of minor stardom. It lit a fire in the young singer, and he would relocate to L.A. to join New Order, the pre-punk outfit formed by the Stooges' Ron Asheton and the MC5's Dennis Thompson. A little more than a year later, Gilbert returned to Detroit and would be discovered fronting an Ann Arbor bar band by Rockets' guitarist Dennis Robbins. Although McCarty was reluctant, the band recruited Gilbert as their singer and hit the road.

Gilbert brought an entirely different dimension to the band's sound, one that was exploited by their debut album, 1977's Love Transfusion. The album received favorable reviews, including a nice write-up in Rolling Stone, and the Rockets status changed from Detroit bar band to opening act for nationwide tours by Kiss and Bob Seger. By the time that they convened in Muscle Shoals, Alabama with producer Johnny Sandlin (The Allman Brothers) to record their self-titled sophomore effort, tensions were already high and relationships strained by touring, drugs, and alcohol.

Tension and stress often times create great art, and if The Rockets isn't a great album, it's a great example of Detroit rock 'n' roll nonetheless. Sandlin coaxed great performances out of singer Gilbert, guitarists McCarty and Robbins, and drummer Badanjek. Most of the bass parts on the album were played by Muscle Shoals session legend David Hood. The result was a fine collection of high-octane Motor City raw meat tempered with a little Southern soul seasoning.

The Rockets is remembered fondly by fans for the minor regional hit "Turn Up The Radio" and an inspired cover of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac gem "Oh Well," which earned the band it's first Top Thirty charting single. There's plenty of other stuff to like here, though. The album-opening "Can't Sleep" is a sly piece of Southern-friend funk that mixes a pop-rock chorus with a slippery rhythm to great effect, similar to what Wet Willie had done on early albums. As the second single off the album it rose to a respectable #51 on the Billboard Top 100 chart. The fan-fave "Turn Up The Radio" is a no-frills Motor City rocker with blustery vocals, the sort of rebellious rock 'n' roll fable that fueled the 70s-rock sound and is sadly missing from today's music.

The band surprised many with the deft hand applied to Green's "Oh Well," a difficult song that has been covered by many but mastered by few. The Rockets come mighty close here, with McCarty and Robbins' dueling guitars outpacing the band's rhythmic accompaniment. Gilbert's vocals are dropped a little low in the mix for my taste, but phrased nicely and appropriately echoed; it is the guitar framework that drives the song, however, and the two fretburners add just enough feedback and fireworks to claim this turf for the Motor City.

The moody, atmospheric "Lost Forever, Left For Dreaming" shows Badanjek's skills as a songwriter, the song's bittersweet lyrics delivered with some fine emotion by Gilbert and echoed by some rare harmonies. The song showcases Donnie Backus's pianowork, which adds to the ambiance of the song. Bob Seger gave the band his "Long Long Gone" to record, and lyrically it sounds like a typical winsome Seger song from this period, but this isn't the Silver Bullet Band, and the Rockets deliver it their way with Gilbert perfectly expressing the song's wanderlust while the band follows with a lush soundtrack that again emphasizes Backus's keyboards.

McCarty's "Love Me Once Again" is a balls-to-the-wall rocker with Chuck Berry-inspired duckwalkin' guitar licks and reckless Jerry Lee-styled piano-pounding. A cover of Little Richard's classic "Lucille" amps up the guitars and pumps the keyboards full of steroids and Gilbert delivers his stomp-and-stammer vox above screaming guitars and explosive drumbeats. The Rockets closes with Badanjek's "Feel Alright," a happy-go-lucky mid-tempo rocker with crashing rhythms, shouted harmonies, and scraps of molten fretwork.

After the minor success of The Rockets album, which rose as high as #56 on the Billboard album chart, the band would return to the same well for their follow-up, 1980's No Ballads. With the addition of bassist Dan Keylon, the band plumbed much of the same musical territory as their sophomore effort, i.e. no-frills rock 'n' roll with occasional strains of Southern funkiness creeping into the grooves. The album would keep the band on the cusp of success, the first single "Desire" only climbing as high as #70, although No Ballads itself would beat its predecessor by a few notches, hitting #53 on the chart.

No Ballads shows the band stretching out a little, augmenting its hard-rockin' guitar-bass-drums-energy formula with a few flourishes. The album's charting single, "Desire," is a nifty lil' slab o' period rockola, a screaming rocker with a locomotive rhythm, great vocals, a few memorable guitar licks, and an overall riot-inciting vibe that should have taken it higher up the charts if not for those new wave wimps that were beginning to creep onto the 1980s rock scene.

The band's label at the time must have given up on the Rockets, 'cause No Ballads has a couple of other tunes that coulda, shoulda groped their way up the charts and onto the radio airwaves. The swaggering, muscular "Restless" features a bluesy undercurrent that synthesizes blues-rock and pop-rock in way that the J. Geils Band would hit gold with a couple of years later, and McCarty's (or Robbins') guitar solos here sound just like Geils' on that band's Sanctuary album. A spry cover of Lou Reed's "Sally Can't Dance" literally drips with Southern funk spirit and badass cock-rock strutting that could have fought its way into the upper reaches of the Billboard singles chart.

Badanjek's "Takin' It Back" is nothing more than "Turn Up The Radio" redux, with a similar boogie-rock based rollicking rhythmic soundtrack, scattershot vocals, plenty of potent guitar riffing, and mile-a-minute drumbeats that swing harder than John Henry's legendary hammer. McCarty's "I Want You To Love Me" is a blues-rocker not dissimilar to some of the best of Cactus' songs, an up-tempo barn-burner with honky-tonk piano and imaginative guitarplay that evokes the sound of British blooze fretburners like Eric Clapton and Peter Green.

Both The Rockets and No Ballads albums fell short of Gold Record status, selling around 400,000 copies each and failing to break the band with a the mainstream rock audience. The latter album, in particular, had its commercial prospects hamstrung by label RSO's desperate financial condition. When RSO went belly-up, the Rockets signed to Elektra Records. Still seeking that monster hit, they moved from Detroit to Los Angeles to record Back Talk with noted producer Jack Douglas (Aerosmith, Cheap Trick). The partnership didn't work out as they had planned, however, and the album barely crawled into the Top 200 at #165, stiffing even in their Detroit stronghold.

While tensions in the band were already stressful, drug and alcohol use – especially by Gilbert – didn't help the band's fragile musical chemistry, and it showed with 1982's Rocket Roll, the band's final studio effort and a last gasp attempt at relevance in a world that had clearly moved past them. Friction between band co-founder Badanjek and Robbins would result in the guitarist's removal as the band stumbled back home to record Rocket Roll. The label even budgeted for a video for the album's lone single, "Rollin’ by the Record Machine," but even MTV couldn't save the Rockets by this time. A live album represented the band's swansong; recorded in the Rockets' backyard, it did little to capture their previous magic. Shortly after its release, the band broke up….

Dave Gilbert would move onto other bands, none nearly as remarkable or successful as the Rockets. Years of alcohol abuse finally caught up with the singer, and Gilbert died in 2001 at the age of 49 years. Guitarist Dennis Robbins, unceremoniously sacked from the band, ended up having the last laugh, moving to Nashville where he became a successful country songwriter with hits by Garth Books and Travis Tritt to his credit. Jim McCarty would spend much of the '80s and '90s with the Detroit Blues Band and Mystery Train before taking part in a Cactus reunion in 2006 that resulted in the album V. McCarty recently reunited with his long-time friend Johnny "Bee" Badanjek in the Hell Drivers, the Detroit rockers performing songs by the Rockets, Bob Seger, Iggy Pop, and Mitch Ryder to appreciative audiences.

Often overlooked in an album-oriented-rock world dominated by the likes of Journey, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon and their ilk, the Rockets never received the acclaim they deserved, nor did they ever deliver the masterpiece album that would endear them to cultists and collectors. The band retains a small albeit loyal following worldwide, and the Rockets' catalog goes in-and-out of print with alarming regularity. This 2009 Renaissance Records reissue pairs The Rockets with No Ballads so that you can experience the band's two best albums on a single disc. (Renaissance Records)

Related Content:
Cactus - Cactus Live DVD review
Metro Times article: "Rocket To The Crypt"

(Click on the CD cover to buy The Rockets/No Ballads from Amazon.com)