GARY HOLTON & CASINO STEEL - Ruby - The Very Best Of

GARY HOLTON & CASINO STEEL Ruby - The Very Best Of cd 1995 320 kbps

Baby I Love You / Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town / No Reply / Blackberry Way / Gary's Song / Runaway / Goodnight Irene / Daddy Don't Cry / B-17 / Jimmy Brown / Almost Persuaded / Ghost Riders In The Sky / Stay With Me / Lover's Lane / Gary's Back In Town / Mary-Ellen Jones / Honky-tonk Angels / Who's Sorry Now / Ruby's Arm / We gotta Go.

Produced by Bjorn Nessjoe

G. Holton : vocals / C. Steel : vocals , keyboards + The Tequila Band (T. Rake : guitar / C. Waadeland : drums / "B." Svendsen : keyboards / B. Nessjoe : bass).

Born in London in 1955, Londoner Gary Holton was a child star with the Sadlers Well Opera Company, and a graduate of both the Old Vic Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Just 17 when he joined the touring company of Hair, in 1972, it was there that he began making the contacts which would serve him in such good stead when he left, two years later, and formed the Heavy Metal Kids.

A raucous blend of streetwise rock, reggae, and balladry, permanently wrapped up in a Dickensian image of street urchin chic (homage to another of Holton's childhood gigs, playing the Artful Dodger in a production of Oliver), the Heavy Metal Kids cut two albums, with their eponymous debut ranking among the finest LPs of 1974.

Holton quit the band in late 1976, amid a tidal wave of drug-tinged accusations. He was always a drinker, but drugs brought a new, and troubling, influence into play. Friends blamed the American tour, where the very nature of the venues where the Kids were booked lent themselves to such introductions, but whatever the cause, the rest of the group couldn't deal with it.

Holton spent the next two years cleaning up and concentrating on his acting career again; by the time he rejoined the Heavy Metal Kids in 1978, he had landed roles in both the disco movie Music Machine and the upcoming film version of the Who's Quadrophenia epic. The band's rebirth, however, was doomed. The group played a string of increasingly disheveled gigs around London, then retired to the studio with producer Mickie Most, to record their much delayed (and mostly disposable) third album, "Kitsch". The band then broke up.

Holton continued to record sporadically, most frequently alongside Casino Steel of punk power poppers the Boys. He also played a handful of gigs with the Damned (subbing for an absent Dave Vanian) and was one of the leading contenders to replace the late Bon Scott in AC/DC. But he was more interested in acting again, taking well-received roles in the movies "Breaking Glass" and Bloody Kids before finally grasping stardom in 1983, as Wayne in British TV's Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. He returned to the stage, in the London cast of Pump Boys and Dinettes, and was just completing the much-anticipated second series of Pet when he died in his sleep from an overdose of alcohol and morphine. He left behind him one of the most enduring characters in British TV history, some truly memorable movie roles -- and one of the greatest unknown albums ever made.

With the Hollywood Brats' & Boys' keyboardist Casino Steel, Gary Holton recorded four albums (all of them selling well but only in Norway) in which you cand find covers of country and western songs "Ruby", sixties standards "Runaway" , "Baby I love You" or the Beatles' "No Reply" , songs from their own bands : The Boys' B-17 and the Heavy Metal Kids' "She's No Angel" and a few original songs. A stunning punk-country version of Kenny Rogers's "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" became a number one hit (in Norway : the C. Steel country) . They also write a song simply titled "Auf Wiedersehen Pet" about Garys' experiences in the T.V. show.

With Slaughter & the Dogs guitarist, Mick Rossi , Gary recorded also a good lp (soon on SOTD) finally released by Receiver Records in 1989. Allmusic & Wikipédia