Long ago and far away, an aspiring young Canadian rocker named John Thor was performing at Las Vegas’s newly refurbished Aladdin Hotel, in the Bicentennial-themed Red Hot and Blue show… the Strongman Star, they called him, and with good reason.
A champion body builder, becloaked and be-glittered, exploding hot water bottles with his breath alone, wielding a hammer and bathed in pyrotechnics, even veteran rock fans (and yes, that includes the KISS army) had never seen anything like Thor.
And neither had America at large, at least until this vision in muscle and mayhem turned up on the Merv Griffin show in June 1976, to perform a cover of a recent single by UK glam rockers The Sweet that itself might have been written for him. It was called “Action,” and it was killer.
Thor recalls, “Merv saw me perform at the Aladdin Hotel and invited me to appear on his show, live from Caesars Palace.”
It was a stunning appearance, although Thor acknowledges that things did not go quite to plan. For the last few years he had been touring with fellow Canadians The Imps – so-called, he says, because they were “small characters. During the show, I would hold Frank Soda up with one hand and dance while he played his lead guitar break midway through ’Action,’ which was our signature tune.” (Another crowd pleaser was when Thor would have bricks broken on his chest with a sledgehammer.)
Although Thor performed without the band in Vegas, he requested that The Imps also appear on the Griffin show. “I would fly them out from Canada. But Merv said an emphatic ‘no,’ as he felt the band was too heavy for prime time. So the Mort Lindsey Orchestra backed me up instead.”
Another misfortune, however, proved most providential. “I was set to wear my white sequined jacket for the Griffin show, an Elvis-looking outfit which was popular in Vegas at the time. But just before the show, the jacket went missing. Possibly stolen, so I switched over to my unique stars and stripes glam superhero outfit, complete with hammer and cape. And I’m glad I did, because it established and represented the Thor character I was developing. It got showcased on national TV.”
So yes, long ago and far away. But “Action” not only retains its place in Thor’s heart, it also opens his new album Rock The Universe, and it’s his latest single as well. Which is great news for everyone because the accompanying video – you guessed it!
Clips from the Griffin show are cut throughout the video, but so is footage of today’s Thor taking another step back into the past by reuniting with Frank Soda. “It’s an opportunity to make things right, many years later. It imagines that Frank and the Imps appear in Las Vegas and join me on stage, this time to see what it might have been like had we done this back in 1976.”
SINGLE: https://orcd.co/thor_ action
As for Rock The Universe itself, the action does not end with “Action.” Eleven tracks, all covers, range across the the classic rock spectrum, from an impassioned take on Eric Burdon’s epic “Sky Pilot” and The Doors’ “Love Me Two Times,” to a spellbinding medley of Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” and “Black Night,” and a raucously riffing take on The Yardbirds’ “Heart Full Of Soul.”
“In the 1970s I toured extensively, over 300 days a year across North America, and Rock The Universe is chock-full of songs from that era. These are favorite songs of mine that we played each night, and thus enabled myself and the band to become seasoned performers.
“It also gave me the opportunity, almost 50 years later, to join forces again with Frank Soda to lay down those magical tracks we played live from yesteryear, that would fuel our tours. Songs by our heroes.” Kevin Stuart Swain (who also produced the album), Al Harlow (Prism) and Ray Roper (Stonebolt) complete the line-up, and when Thor describes their performances as “stellar,” it’s not hyperbole.
A thunderous take on The Beatles’s “Back In The USSR” is as fab as the foursome that performed the original; and, in case anyone should need a break from the mayhem,Thor also takes on one of the most underrated ballads in Ray Davies’s entire Kinky kanon, the 1966 b-side “I’m Not Like Everybody Else.”
Another one, incidentally, that could have been written for him. “Since I was a child, I was never looked at by others as being normal. I loved Superheroes and would wear a Superman costume underneath my regular clothes at school. And change into Superman at recess. I also loved monsters and I would scare my nieces and nephews as I would transform myself into Frankenstein. Through my life, I was always regarded as “different”.
“During my whole life walking the earth, I never followed the beaten path. I was always defiant, non-conforming and plainly different from the rest. I have always seemed to find my own individual identity. So “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” is my anthem.
“After all how many of those classmates from school still wear Superhero costumes and put out albums at 72 years old?”
CD/VINYL: https://cleorecs.com/search?q=thor+rock+the+universe
DIGITAL: https://orcd.co/thor_ rocktheuniverse
