Dead End Drive-In: Now Showing – The Four Horsemen
Written by Johnny H
Sunday, 09 February 2014 04:00
The Four Horsemen – ‘Death Before Suckass’ (Self Released)
STOP!!!! Before you go any further with this review, do yourself a favour. Click on the link at the end of this article (unfortunately there isn’t a flashy trailer for this DVD that I can link), crank up your speakers and then you really are ready to read on…
Done that?
Good, now let’s crack on with some ‘Welfare Boogie’.
There is one bunch of long haired rock ‘n’ rollers I will never get the chance to see, largely due to the fact that two of the original members of the band are no longer with us, so when I happened upon this ‘Death Before Suckass’ DVD (many thanks to my Uber amigo Ben Hughes for pointing me in its direction) I simply leapt at the chance to finally get as near as I could to finally seeing The Four Horsemen live.
It’s not that I didn’t try to see the band back in the early ‘90s though. I had my ticket for the Cardiff University show on their intended UK tour with Californian rockers Love/Hate, but as the history books will tell you that set of dates in support of the headliners ‘Wasted In America’ album was sadly not to be, the title of the tour having something of an ironic quality when applied to The Horsemen themselves.
One thing I’m certainly not going to do here is the history lesson regarding The Four Horsemen because we did that back in 2010 when Dom Daley caught up with band lynchpin and guitarist Stephen ‘Haggis’ Harris (an interview you can read right here) and together pretty much wrote the definitive lesson on the band. So instead I’m going to focus on this DVD and why it is such a “must buy” item for any fan of the band, especially those of us residing here in the UK.
The origins of this release started not long after the band’s long form ‘Left For Dead’ DVD first saw the light of day. ‘Left For Dead’ is still tauntingly available via the band’s website, and being something I still don’t have a copy of myself (I guess due to its rather hefty price tag), this more reasonably priced, almost bootleg like, follow up release focusses in on a segment of the aforementioned DVD where the band are captured supporting Lynyrd Skynyrd Live at Miami Arena. ‘Death Before Suckass’ then is an enhanced version of the full set from that show and due to the fact that it is shot from the side, within the audience, and on one camera, as I have mentioned already it is available at the suitably bootleg price of $9.99, again from the band’s website.
So with Brett Kull re-mastering the sound and Haggis adding an irreverent commentary track in his best Welsh/American accent, I poured myself a cold beer turned out the lights and did exactly what I told you to do in my introduction, cranking up the volume to a white noise level ready for what would be my first time with The Four Horsemen, and. Wallop! We’re straight in with ‘75 Again’ which hits me square in the jaw, just like a wayward punch from the band’s infamous frontman Frank C Starr. Okay the picture is a bit shaky, the sound at best good, but I’m there watching my Highschool Rock N’ Roller heroes in all their filthy glory on October 4th1991, and if you turn the commentary on Haggis is your guide for the evening too. The mercurial guitarist explaining how this tour with Skynyrd was such a fantastic opportunity for them, especially when they were suddenly playing 20,00 plus seat arenas whilst their ‘Rockin’ Is Ma’ Business’ video, (the one you are listening to right now if you followed my instructions) was ripping up MTV coast to coast.
On an arena stage the band use every available rock star pose at their disposal, with guitarist Dave Lizmi pretty much covering every available inch during his relatively short time on stage. Not far behind him though is Starr, who commands the stage with his polite yet “take no shit” stage manner. At this point though I also have to agree with our commentary host as Starr does look a little at odds with the ultra-cool image of the other band members, the bullish singer prowling the stage from side to side, his white bumper boots barely staying still for more than a second, as he effortlessly dispatches tracks such as ‘Let It Rock’ (all two chords of it), ‘Hot Head’ (where the film has its one and only tape roll) and ‘Wanted Man’ where he cajoles the audience into clapping along, and I don’t envy those who didn’t comply.
‘Wanted Man’ not only being the first song written for ‘Nobody Said It Was Easy’ it also features one of the funniest Starr stories anywhere via the commentary, I’m not going to spoil it here, but let’s just say you’ll never look at a MacDonald’s restaurant in the same way again once you hear what Haggis has to say.
Ending their short but not so sweet set with the opening 1-2 of their debut album, it is a head scratchingly cryptic introduction to the title track of said record from Starr that perfectly sets the scene for what is to follow, and trust me when I say once seen and heard you will never ever doubt that ‘Rockin Is Ma’ Business’ was in fact the band’s defining moment as a live band. It sounds HUGE here, and slick as fuck too. You know Starr, Harris and Lizmi, plus drummer Kenneth ‘Dimwit’ Montgomery and bassist Ben Pape really were the real deal, and the book of rock n’ roll, these muthafuckers definitely tried to rewrite it.
Rockin’ was The Four Horsemen’s business and here, in all its six songs and twenty five minutes of celluloid glory, business was most definitely much more than simply good. ‘Death Before Suckass’ – fuck yeah!!!!!