Well, Uwe, he finally did it...

[lowend1]

Can Ritchie be far behind?
And holding a white snake?

[gearHed289]

  JLT?

[lowend1]

JLT?

In the flesh (cough cough).

[uwe]

The garden state snake singer! Actually, he looks kind of cool that way.

Wig or no wig, Joe doesn't look anywhere near as cringeworthy as Coverdale does by now.

[lowend1]

The song doesn't do anything for me - for a guy with such a great soulful voice, he always seems to eschew the stuff that (IMHO) suits him best in favor of either bland pop or, in this case, overblown metal.

[Alanko]

Who is this effeminate slaphead?

[uwe]

An American former singer of some unimportant Brit band known for only one silly song really though this isn't it.



Neither is this one, but still a great track:



With stints in other irrelevant bands ...





He also wrote a minor hit (a bit in the BÖC mode) for your Scottish fellow kilt wearer Brian C:





Finally responsible for a cult favorite AOR album together with Al Greenwood of Foreigner and Bobby Messano of Starz:



Joe has had alopecia since he was a child, Purple and Rainbow fans have been aware of this for quite some time, sort of if you were a Priest fan and not deaf, dumb and blind (plus hopelessly obsessive straight) you knew already in the late 70ies that the only women that played a role in Rob Halford's life were his mom and his sis. Joe's now come out with his hair loss. What you see in the vids above are his assortments of wigs through the years.

I'm not aware that he's gay (and just as happy if that is his personal life style choice or destiny), he's from New Jersey, they don't have that there, he's had that black nail polish for years. The bald promo shot with the juvenile white ball python is also a (not so) small dig at David Coverdale. Some years ago, Joe acccused David of using live backing pre-recordings for his vocals with Whitesnake (and I believe he was right, Coverdale has been struggling for a while and I've seen weird things happen at WS gigs too). David hit back with a real cheap shot, first denying the use of pre-recordings and then adding "What's next, will he accuse me of wearing a wig on stage?" I thought that incredibly low and petty given that Joe had a condition.

So we have a little intra-Purple alumni strife at our hands!

I think Joe looks better bald than with his fake 80ies style hairdo, but if you suffer from alopecia wigs become second nature I guess. I also think that by now there are more effeminate looking ex-Deep Purple singers than Joe ...

[uwe]

The song doesn't do anything for me - for a guy with such a great soulful voice, he always seems to eschew the stuff that (IMHO) suits him best in favor of either bland pop or, in this case, overblown metal.

Sigh, it's run of the mill Yuropean landfill melodic metal, Joe gets asked (and paid) to do this stuff all the time, granted that Rainbow has some DNA responsibility for this kind of stuff. What I do like about it though is that his lyrics are always very audible, not many heavy singers can do that or have you ever tried to understand  what Robert Plant actually sings about on Led Zep songs?   

It's easy to make fun of Joe - not because of his affliction, but because of his overt Sopranos big mouth come-on (he was born Joseph Linquito in Hackensack, NJ) and his horrible stage raps, but, yes, the man can still sing, he's 71!



And that wig was starting to look real crap, leave it off, Joe, you have a nice pate.

[Basvarken]

Glad he got rid of that ridiculous wig. He looks so much better without it than Coverdale with his 80's perm.
Plus his voice has held up much better than Coverdale over the years...

[uwe]

He's finally given up trying to look like Rolf Magnus Joakim Larsson!***


*** aka Joey Tempest

[lowend1]

I'm not aware that he's gay (and happy if that is his personal life choice), he's from New Jersey, they don't have that there, he's had that black nail polish for years.\

I think he's on his second wife - I believe she's a lawyer from Minsk.
I grew up in the one town over from Hackensack, so running into Joe was not uncommon over the years, whether is be seeing his band Ezra at high school dances in the 70s, at rehearsal studios, or when getting his car fixed (a Mazda 626, of all things) the repair shop where I worked in the 80s. As another Bergen County native, Bobby Messano frequented that establishment as well. My wife was a big Rainbow/JLT fan before I met her, so we rarely missed his shows when he was in the area.

[uwe]

He was always a good musician - his stint with Purple is regularly derided, but I thought neither the album nor the tour were bad. Ritchie finally got what he wanted in 1973 already when he drove Ian Gillan out of the band and tried to get Paul Rodgers in. A blues rock Purple.



And he can do Dio justice as well.

[lowend1]

Sigh, it's run of the mill Yuropean landfill melodic metal, Joe gets asked (and paid) to do this stuff all the time, granted that Rainbow has some DNA responsibility for this kind of stuff. What I do like about it though is that his lyrics are always very audible, not many heavy singers can do that or have you ever tried to understand  what Robert Plant actually sings about on Led Zep songs?   

Several years back, Joe recorded an album's worth of material written by yet another North Jersey native, guitarist Scott Rolaf. Whatever their arrangement was for Joe's performance, they were not on the same page ultimately, because Rolaf made the material available free of charge on the internet. Joe was apparently unsatisfied with the final product and its distribution and made his feelings known. Rolaf, likewise, told his side of the story in interviews. In terms of how the songs fit his voice, I think that it was probably some of the best material he had recorded since Rainbow. Not heavy metal and not really poppy, either, it was well-written, soulful AOR fare - and I have no reason to praise Scott Rolaf other than the stuff was catchy as hell. Listen here:

[uwe]

That even has some of the old Fandango vibe, very nice. It could have indeed used a better mix though, sounds like someone left the dolby noise reduction button on with a third generation rip-off tape.

[uwe]

He's obviously skinned the snake and turned it into a jacket ...