The band's first two records Franke and the Knockouts (1981) and Below the Belt (1982) were on Millennium records, whose big claim to fame was Meco and the insufferable disco reworking of John Williams' "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band" back in 1977. The label would fold after the band's second album and MCA would pick up the band, and then not know what to do with their third and final album Makin' the Point (1984).
The band's debut single "Sweetheart" would crack the top 20 in Canada, and hit the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their next album Below the Belt contained "Without You (Not Another Lonely Night)" that sat just outside the top 40 here, and went as high as 24 on the Billboard chart. The third album's lone single "Outrageous" didn't make any ripples.
That would be it, and the band would be relegated to being a footnote on Tico Torres' resume. Tico would famously join Bon Jovi in 1984 although Franke & the Knockouts would soldier on without a record deal for a couple of years before finally staying down.
I'm not sure how the band got on my radar. I had been flipping through the dollar bin a while back and saw their debut, and it felt familiar, but the album wasn't in any shape to being home. Still it got me thinking about the band, and just before Christmas there was a sale of epic proportions at my favourite shop where everything, I mean EVERYTHING was two bucks. Needless to say I spent most of the afternoon going through the store, starting at A and going through the alphabet. I would end up with Franke's catalogue, and about fifty more records that would conveniently make it under the tree as a present for me, from my mum.
Anyway, it was quite a while before I had time to start cleaning my new treasures. Initially I started listening to the Franke & the Knockouts albums out of sequence, and quickly figured it would be better to start at the beginning and work my way through. Which is what I've been doing for the better part of a week now. When I'm not in the basement I've been streaming their Complete Collection.
Franke & the Knockouts was centred on vocalist Franke Previte and guitarist Billy Elworthy. The pair wrote a number of songs on the debut, from the opening track "Come Back" the infectious "You're My Girl" and the big hit "Sweetheart." However, when reading through the songwriting credits it's Franke's name you see first on all the tracks. Keyboardist Blake Levinsohn co-wrote a few as well.
Enough jibber jabber, let's dive into the debut first. The opening track "Come Back" sets the tone. I'm not sure if the album came out before The People's Court back in '81 but I got a little giggle before the guitar riff kicked in, and the song announced that Franke & the Knockouts were the real deal. I have always been a sucker for right hand staccato piano chords. It's why songs like "Hold the Line" by Toto, and "Jane" by Jefferson Starship were so good.
The second song was instantly familiar, "Sweetheart" it was pure pop goodness. I'd not heard this song in decades, but I remembered it. It was in the rockier vein of a lot of emerging AOR bands, or what would now be disparagingly referred to a Yacht Rock. I looked through my collection of anthologies and couldn't find it. This was an unearthed lost gem, at least to me.
The album would stay in the "commercial" lane pumping out one radio friendly song after another. From killer ballads, to straight ahead rockers the band was hitting all the right notes in the right places. It fell into that sweet spot a lot of great bands from the late '70s were able to play in until the mid '80s. As I sit listening to this, I can't quite get my head around why this wasn't huge. I mean, with Toto, Styx, Foreigner, Journey, Rick Springfield and Loverboy working in a similar vein and striking gold, I can't understand how this flew under the radar. Oh sure the album did okay, but it should have been huge.
All I could think of was it was a combination of two things, lack of promotion and the name of the band. Not to be an ass about it, but Franke & the Knockouts would be a great name for a barbershop quartet. Which was a shame, this was (is) really good stuff. Franke Previte's voice was gold, but
for me it was guitarist Billy Elworthy who was adding the flourishing touches to the
songs. His rhythm and solo work was amazing. There's very little out there on Mr. William Elworthy, but be assured the guy could play.
- Claude LeHenaff - drums
- Billy Elworthy - guitars
- Franke Previte - lead vocals
- Blake Levinsohn - keyboards
- Leigh Fox - bass
- Tommy Ayers - synthesizers (his picture isn't on the cover)
The first album was produced by Steve Verroca and mixed by Warren Dewey. Neither name I have heard of, but it is a great sounding record. It was mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound. That's a name I know.
The album stayed the course, and delivered more of the same rocked up middle of the road songs. Which is a good thing and not a shot. Of course the ballad still seemed to be the way onto the charts, and while the band released two singles from the album, the opening rocker "Never Had it Better" which I'd never heard before, and the ballad "Without You (Not Another Lonely Night)" which settled into the mid 20s on the Billboard Top 100, but missed out on cracking the top 40 here in Canada. Again I'd not heard the song before, but it is a decent paint by numbers song. Again not a shot, all of those power ballads were cut from the same cloth. I'm actually surprised the band didn't go with the power ballad "Any Way the you Want Me" which was for me the better and more musically satisfying of the mid tempo songs on the album.
Yeah, the first side was a little heavy on mid tempo songs, but I guess there was a certain amount of pressure to deliver a followup to "Sweetheart" and while I prefer more guitar and energy, the songs were good and nothing made me want to jump to the next track.
I love the cheesy back band portrait. I'm not sure what the band was going for in terms of aesthetics, but I will say I love that Billy Elworthy had a robin's egg blue BC Rich Mockingbird. They had some cool guitars, and in the early '80s Gibson and Fender were losing ground to a new crop of guitar manufacturers.
The second song is another harder song, that had Billy pulling off some squealies. They had a little more to offer than merely being a soft rock band. Again, the guitar tone a little flat for me (it's hard to describe, it's more of a deep mid scoop, but that's not right either), but it was fairly distinctive and while the songs were harder, Franke's voice was still the anchor that kept the songs centred. Although the the last two songs were more mid tempo and fitted in pretty well with the rest of the album.
It's been interesting listening to this one right after the debut, and I'll acknowledge that trying to process a series of forty year old albums one after another is going to be different than having gone through this in real time. I don't have any baggage packed.
While I liked the album, and it is a decent follow up, some of the elements that made the first album so good seemed to be absent this time around. Particularly the guitar tone on many of the songs just felt wrong here. I know that in '82 things were going in a more processed direction and many of the players of the day were embracing the more is more adage, it just didn't work for me. Which was a shame.
By all accounts the album didn't perform as well as their debut, even though the band managed to crack the top 50, peaking at 48 from what I've read. It was considered a swing and a miss, but it's still a feat most bands never achieve. To add insult to injury the band's label Millennium shuttered. and it would be a couple of years before the band would reemerge on MCA and release, what would end up being their final album, Makin' the Point in 1984.
The album opens up with the lone single MCA would pull from the record. "Outrageous" which was a mid tempo rocker that was had all of the ingredients but somehow seemed half baked. While I'm not going to take shots at the band for sounding generic, because let's face it most of my favourite bands of that era were somewhat interchangeable when viewed at 10,000 feet. The single didn't catch on with radio, and I'm going to guess that MCA more or less stopped any promotion that may have been in the budget.
Which is a shame as there are some really good songs in here. The second track "You Don't Want Me (Like I Want You)" that was co-written by Billy Elworthy and Blake Levinsohn is a great track. These are the same guys who wrote "Outrageous" as well to be fair.
Of course the ballads take centre stage, and two of the four songs on the first side are slow dance fodder. They're really good songs, and despite the number of slow songs the first side is actually quite strong. So far this is a much stronger album than Below the Belt. Guitarist Bobby Messano seems to have stepped up and his lead work throughout is tasty and services the songs. I know I was particularly taken by Billy's guitar work, especially on the first album, but I hate to say it but if I didn't have the credits, I might not have picked up on the change. Like I said, Bobby slipped right in and it felt seamless.
"Carrie Why?" opens up the second side and is one of the best songs so far. Franke is killing it, and the keyboard part goes back to those piano chords that always put a grin on my face. The guitar during the breakdown pays homage those early "metal" years. The train keeps rolling with "So Cool (Nobody's Fool)" the album has now fully embraced AOR, and this is the kind of stuff that really got under my skin. I wasn't enamoured with the lead guitar tone here (that mid scoop and flat reverb seemed out of place with the rest of the song. It just sounds punched in from another room and doesn't feel like it was part of the performance), but dang it was still a tasty bit of fret work - praise where praise is due.
"One Good Reason" suddenly changes gears and goes back to R&B with a nice driving bass. This is more along the lines of the Yacht Rock stuff that has popped up on previous albums. If nothing else it keeps the listener on their toes.
"Blame it on my Heart" opens sounding very much like Gary Moore's 1983 song "Empty Rooms" but with some wicked sax work by Mark Russo. As far as power ballads go, this is as good as anything the band has done. At this point it's more than a little clear that Franke was driving force behind the band that bears his name.
Franke would sort of have the last laugh by writing two of the big songs from Dirty Dancing back in '87. The first was "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" sung by Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes and then Eric Carmen's comeback hit "Hungry Eyes" a song that apparently up to the last moment was supposed to be sung by Franke. Who knows if it would have jump started his career. Hindsight is weird, but we know that Eric Carmen didn't have the big career resurgence he was hoping for, and as for Bill Medley, it was a nice moment that helped solidify his place in pop history, but his greatest hits that came out in '88 didn't even chart.
I know it's somewhat unfair to compress the band's output into a single listening experience, but I tried to make up for lost time. I binged the three albums over and over, and while Below the Belt feels like the weaker album, it had it's moments, and frankly, Franke & the Knockouts managed land more than enough shots to make these albums a really enjoyable experience. I'd go so far as to say the band deserved a lot more love than they got.
Franke & the Knockouts covered more musical ground than you'd expect. They were adept at what's now associated with Yacht Rock, but they also flirted with AOR, could kill with a ballad, and sounded good doing it all. They were the real deal, and over the three albums, there's more than enough to warrant a listen.
I still think Billy Elworthy was a young guitar god in the making and his writing and playing was so good. Franke has a set of pipes that really and truly should have propelled the band to the top.
I guess you can't win 'em all, but at least they got in the ring.
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