Lou Gramm Says Record Label and Mick Jones Made Shadow King Fail

Lou Gramm has opened up about what went flawed with Shadow King, the tremendous group her fronted within the early ‘90s.

Shadow King’s lineup was spectacular, with guitarist Vivian Campbell, drummer Kevin Valentine and bass participant Bruce Turgon becoming a member of Gramm within the band.

“Once I knew I needed to do one thing else, Bruce Turgon and I spoke to Vivian and acquired along with him in California,” Gramm recalled throughout a current dialog with Sirius XM’s Eddie Trunk. “We began jamming on some music concepts and we mutually determined to start out a band.”

“It was touted as a very popular new band,” Gramm continued, noting pleasure on the file label surrounding Shadow King. “We had hoped that when the album got here out, that they might get behind it.”

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Nonetheless, when the band launched their self-titled debut in 1991, it was met with disappointing gross sales. Gramm believes the group’s file label dropped the ball.

“We recorded that album on Atlantic Information and we assumed that it might get a whole lot of promotion and that we might be promoted correctly as a brand new band,” he defined. “And, the factor was, it by no means was promoted correctly.”

“It by no means acquired the push from Atlantic Information that we hoped any new band would,” he continued. “And, the opposite factor was, I heard from lots of people that they could not discover any of the copies within the file retailer.”

Did Mick Jones Sabotage Shadow King?

Gramm additional famous that Shadow King was able to do a world tour in assist of their debut, however issues got here to a grinding halt on account of low album gross sales. The singer then theorized why Atlantic Information – which was additionally house to his former band, Foreigner – might have withdrawn their assist.

“I used to be advised that, simply earlier than the album got here out, Mick [Jones] had a chat with (label co-founder) Ahmet Ertegun, the chairman of WEA (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic) and whoever on the time was the president of Atlantic, and advised them that if Shadow King achieved success, then Lou won’t ever come again with Foreigner.”

Shadow King disbanded on the finish of 1991 and by no means launched one other album. Gramm returned to Foreigner the next 12 months.