The Hollywood Stars
Sound City
Burger Records
The Hollywood Stars are one of a million also-ran rock and roll bands who trod the boards on the Sunset Strip and faded into obscurity. They were one of the dozens of bands who, for better or worse, fell in with Kim Fowley. Fowley considered himself the Svengali of the Sunset Strip. He had a hand in the early careers of Alice Cooper, Warren Zevon and brought together the Runaways. Sure, he helped these bands get started, but they didn’t flourish until they broke free of Fowley. The Hollywood Stars were one of Fowley’s protégés who didn’t fare so well outside of a small cult following in Los Angeles.
Fowley’s inspiration for the Hollywood Stars was to create a West Coast version of the New York Dolls. It’s been almost 50 years since these songs were recorded. I wouldn’t call this a great lost album. It’s a decent album. It’s a ’70s glam rock album. It’s solid, but not spectacular. Alice Cooper contributed to the writing of “Escape” which could is an ok rocker. It has a nice guitar solo and a chunky rhythm and the sorta of stupid lyrics that might have been popular in the mid-‘70’s. Overall, I don’t find anything on Sound City very compelling. It’s an ok record of mid-‘70s hard rock. It’s not bad, but there were hundreds of bands doing more or less the same sort of thing. I guess it’s good that they’re getting their moment in the shade. The members of the band can give this CD to their grandkids and tell them about how they were almost stars. Obsessive collectors of garage rock and early hard rock can rejoice in having these tunes available. That’s going to have to be good enough for guys who’ve waited 40 some years for their tunes to see wide release.
