AC/DC Engineer Mike Fraser Talks BLUE MURDER Debut - “US Customs Thought The Album Was Pornography”
April 23, 2015, 9 years ago
Arguably one of the greatest hair metal releases of all-time, Blue Murder’s under-rated self-titled debut from 1989 saw former Whitesnake/Thin Lizzy guitarist John Sykes team up with drum legend Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge, Cactus, Beck, Bogert & Appice, King Kobra, Rod Stewart), bassist Tony Franklin (The Firm, Paul Rodgers, David Gilmour) and keyboardist Nik Green. Sykes was all part of the Coverdale firing frenzy after the immense success of Whitesnake 1987 and would go on to write an album some say was the logical progression from said album. While Coverdale’s Slip Of The Tongue (1989) floundered, Sykes stormed back earlier that year with Blue Murder, which was elegantly recorded at Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver, BC with Bob Rock (Metallica, Mötley Crüe) and engineer/mixer Mike “Fraze” Fraser (AC/DC, Metallica, Aerosmith, The Cult).
Fraser goes on to explain that when you have a band called Blue Murder and a song called “Sex Child” - coupled with the fact that it was all on analog tape, so they had a master reel and a slave reel - it raises a major flag!
Click here to listen to the entire tale!