While it had appeared, when Illusion’s self-titled debut album was released back in 1985, that the band had only just recently emerged in their native Atlanta, Georgia and quickly gained a deal with the mighty Geffen Records, the reality was remarkably different.
Illusion had originally been formed by vocalist/guitarist Jay Willard and keyboard player Tom Reed back in the late 70s. The band slowly but surely built up a solid and ultimately sizeable reputation on the Atlanta club and bar scene. In the early 80s they had contributed to a couple of promotional albums released by local Atlanta radio station WKLS/96 Rock. Indeed, the original version of ‘Get It To Go’ – a song that would be re-recorded for the later debut album – would appear on the ‘96 Rock Home Cookin’ II’ album, which was issued in 1981. The track took pride of place alongside future Epic Records signings Fortnox’s ‘Storm Inside My Head’ and later MCA Records act Billy The Kidd’s early version of ‘Heart Of Steel’ (note the appearance of the second ‘d’ in that band name back then). Illusion’s second 96 Rock appearance, with ‘She’s All Right’, was a featured track on the ‘...Home Cookin’ III’ collection from 1983.
However, the band’s profile quickly began to rise when Mother’s Finest guitarist Gary ‘Moses Mo’ Moore joined a group that by that point comprised the aforementioned Willard and Reed alongside bassist Ken Kersey, his keyboard playing brother Chris Kersey and drummer Chuck LaRue.
Formed in 1970, the Atlanta-based Mother’s Finest were a ground-breaking, multi-racial Funk Rock band that would be an influence on a fair number of groups that would emerge in the 80s and 90s. Indeed, no less an individual than Dan Reed once admitted to me that MF were a huge influence and he would later take the band out on the road as the opening act for Dan Reed Network throughout the UK in 1993
Having originally signed to RCA and released a self-titled album in 1972 that failed to display the band’s true potential because of producer interference, a follow-up album remained shelved for decades. However, with a brand new deal from Epic Records and the support of the label’s in-house producer Tom Werman, MF re-emerged in 1976 with one of the greatest albums ever released in the 70s, if not of all time. With a line-up featuring the amazing duo of Joyce ‘Baby Jean’ Kennedy and Glenn ‘Doc’ Murdock on vocals, Wyzard on bass, Mike Keck on keyboards, B.B. Queen on drums and Mo on guitar, Mother’s Finest would release two further studio albums and a live record before the close of the decade and the 80s dawned. They also toured heavily, playing on the same bills as AC/ DC, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Frank Marino, Angel, Parliament and even on one occasion with Black Sabbath.
However, Mother’s Finest pretty much went on a long hiatus after 1981’s amazing ‘Iron Age’ album had been followed by a record that certainly long-time fans (and those who had picked up on the band with ‘Iron Age’) had not anticipated. 1983’s strictly R&B and Soul flavoured ‘One Mother To Another’ was seen as something of a disappointment. By this time the band had lost drummer B.B. Queen (aka Barry Borden) to Molly Hatchet, changed management and were being guided towards a direction that really wasn’t what they were all about. To cut a long story short, in the aftermath of ‘One Mother To Another’, Mo was at a loose end.
“Nobody knew what was going to happen with Mother’s Finest. We kinda left it in the air,” he offers on the subject. “We didn’t know if we would get back together, but we’d been a band for so long anyway that everybody wanted to try something different. Joyce, Glenn and Wyzard wanted to go to L.A. and check out things there. I really didn’t want to do that, so we had this time where everyone got a chance to do what they wanted to do and that was a good thing.”
“Illusion actually had a local hit with ‘Get It To Go’ from that ‘...Home Cookin’ II’ album. Everybody loved that song. So they were on the way up, but the guitar player was leaving just at the same time when I had nothing to do and didn’t know what was on the horizon,” furthers Mo. “They were a good band, good people and we sounded good together. So we just went with it. They had been playing together in the clubs for three of four years. They had two keyboard players at the time. It was a great-sounding band playing all over the place. It was really fun to hook up with them.”
Once Mo joined Illusion in 1984 he became very involved in the songwriting process alongside previous main songwriter Willard. As an aside, one thing Mo has constantly been asked is whether he and Jay are actually brothers. There is an uncanny likeness between the two, but they are not actually related. Anyway, one song Mo brought to the band himself had originally started life as ‘Evolution’, which had appeared on Mother’s Finest’s aforementioned ‘Iron Age’ record. With alternative lyrics, it was turned into ‘Squeeze Me’ which, funnily enough, had already been covered by the German Hard Rock outfit Fargo on their 1982 issued ‘F’ album.
“That was a result of combining ‘Evolution’ with different ideas from a couple of other things that were floating around,” notes Mo in discussing the song.
Before the debut Illusion album was recorded there were a few changes to the line-up that would result in the Kersey brothers departing, Paul McCoy being drafted in on bass and Mo’s former Mother’s Finest colleague B.B. Queen coming in to replace Chuck LaRue on drums.
“B.B. wasn’t doing anything at the time (having left Molly Hatchet), so he came over and he was just a natural fit.”
The job of producing the debut Illusion album went to Jeff Glixman, someone who was certainly no stranger to Mo or B.B., both men having worked with the producer on ‘Iron Age’. It also helped that Glixman was based in Atlanta. Now, those who have heard ‘Iron Age’ would possibly agree that it was one of the meanest sounding records of the era. As Mother’s Finest bassist Wyzard was keen to point out to me a few years ago when speaking about the record, he believed MF established a grunge-heavy sound a decade before the upstarts in Seattle had got round to down-tuning their guitars and experimenting with Black Sabbath and Kiss riffs. It could be argued that MF was also delivering prototypical Thrash Metal a few years before Metallica had perfected it. I mean, just listen to opener ‘Movin’ On’....
Glixman’s approach to working with Illusion appeared to be following the blueprint set with ‘Iron Age’, heavily focussed on creating a wonderfully guitar-led vibe.
“Jeff had grown up with Kansas. He was buddies with them, and he had worked with them as a tech guy before he began producing them. That’s how he got his name. He was someone who was always around town in Atlanta. He would come out to see shows and it was kinda natural he would get involved with us in Illusion.”
Glixman not only became the band’s producer, he also began managing them (alongside Larry Mazer, as the album credits show), which led to Illusion’s deal with Geffen.
Illusion actually had a local hit with ‘Get It To Go’ from that ‘...Home Cookin’ II’ album. Everybody loved that song.
“Jeff was friends with John Kalodner (Geffen’s legendary A&R man). He brought Kalodner along to see us play live. He liked us and promptly signed us to Geffen.”
Illusion commenced recording their self-titled debut album with Jeff Glixman in Cheshire Sound Studios, a facility located at 2093 Faulkner Road NE in Atlanta. The studio would also play host over the years to the likes of Steve Morse, the Georgia Satellites, Victory, Gregg Allman and even Black Sabbath.
“Illusion was very much along the lines of where Mother’s Finest had been with ‘Iron Age’,” responds Mo when I ask him for confirmation as to what kind of direction the band was after musically when they began recording. “We wanted to be heavy, although we didn’t want to be Metal. We were more after something that had a lot of melody to it. We applied that to everything we wrote and it just came out sounding like we did. It actually took us three or four months to prepare to record the album, in terms of steady writing and eliminating all the bad stuff to ensure we had only good songs when making the final choices.”
Amongst stone-cold classics like the aforementioned ‘Get It To Go’, alongside ‘Call In The Law’, ‘Next To You’ and ‘Saint’, one of the most interesting songs on the album was ‘Weighs A Ton’. This just happened to be a co-write between Jay Willard, Moses Mo and Humble Pie’s Steve Marriott. Mo had become great pals with Steve during the period in 1980 when Humble Pie and Mother’s Finest had toured together with Mahogany Rush, Angel and Russia on the ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon’ tour throughout the States. “That was a good time. That tour was just musician city,” recalls the guitarist.
‘Weighs A Ton’ not only features a co-writing credit for Marriott, but he provides lead vocals alongside Willard as well. The song is a great, punchy, up-and-at-'em rocker, but is by no means the album’s high point. Not by a long shot. Opening with the new, ‘85 version of ‘Get It To Go’, with a distinctive funky, bluesy riff from Moses Mo and typically 80s keyboard fills from Tom Reed, the album finds a band on a high and offering up a selection of songs that you just wonder why the Atlanta quintet weren’t as successful as they should’ve been. ‘Bad News’, for example, is a riff-heavy slice of genius as good as anything any of Illusion’s peers were offering at the time. ‘You Got The Touch’ has an almost progressive, gothic Led Zeppelin feel about it, ‘Squeeze Me’ offers a keyboard-laden, vastly more embellished, heavier version of the song than the previously released, more basic Fargo rendition, while ‘Next To You’, ‘Saint’ and ‘Call In The Law’ are a smash and grab trio of brilliant songs that hit the ears solidly in quick succession.
‘Next To You’ is actually the closest track here to the sound Mo delivered on Mother’s Finest’s ‘Iron Age’ album. It’s a quite monstrous slice of Hard Rock. The sassy, anthemic ‘Saint’, with a chorus the Black Crowes would’ve surely been proud of, is the type of track that, had it been far better known, could’ve filled the dance floors of Rock clubs from Atlanta to Nottingham and beyond very easily. Meanwhile, ‘Call In The Law’ was such a great song Illusion ended up recording it twice! More on that a little later....
The album closes with two of the more melodically inclined songs the band had in their arsenal at the time. Both feature Tom Reed’s keyboards pretty heavily. In the case of ‘Want You’, he even gets a little piano tapping going on as well. While that’s a fun, Melodic hard Rock track, the closing ‘Go On Your Own Way’ is a keyboard-soaked number that, to these well-worn ears at least, sounds like the kind of thing Angel could’ve been delivering had the L.A.-based five-piece still been around at that point in time.
With artwork courtesy of Scottish-born art director and designer Norman Moore (who had previously worked on a vast array of albums, including those from the likes of Y&T, Spider, Elton John, Peter Frampton and was notably responsible for the graphics on the debut Giuffria LP), ‘Illusion’ was released in the first half of 1985. Mo and friends then gained the opportunity to hit the road during the summer that same year (on a trek dubbed the ‘Monsters Of The Universe’ tour) with Florida-based Hard Rock outfit Savatage and Brit upstarts Rogue Male. An interesting combination to say the least!
“Yeah, it was weird, but we were just anxious to play and we took anything we could so that people could hear our stuff,” remarks the guitarist. “The thing was that none of us had a big record out or a big following on that tour, but we did have a great time though and the musicians in the other bands were nice. There was a lot of camaraderie between us all, so it was a lot of fun to do, but nobody got much out of it really. We mainly played in the north of the US and there wasn’t anywhere that could be called a particular stronghold for any of the bands. It was strange for everybody because no one had a ‘home’ place to play. Rogue Male had a bit of a following, but no one knew who Illusion was. But that’s just the way it was booked. I think we were out for around two to three months in total.”
One of the problems Illusion appeared to face was a noticeable lack of promotion from the label to really push the record in places that could’ve made a huge difference to the band’s career. While a couple of very nice looking shaped picture disc singles were issued as promotional items and the video for the extremely catchy ‘Get It To Go’ was available for TV usage (albeit one that had actually been made as a six-piece in 1984 after Mo had first joined and still featured Chuck LaRue on drums as well as the Kersey brothers), no official single was issued to retail.
With little support being shown by Geffen (and Kalodner’s attentions seemingly being distracted elsewhere) and with nothing else on the horizon tour-wise, Illusion began making plans for record number two. They had already begun writing new material while out on tour, so once back home in Atlanta it was a case of tightening things up to do everything they could to make the next record the best they could make.
“We had no problem with the songs or the way the first album sounded,” offers Mo on the lack of a breakthrough with that first album (one of the most overlooked HardRockalbumsofthe80s).“If you don’t have anyone on your side at the label then you don’t have that push needed to get to where you wanted to go. You had to have people behind the records to do that. I heard the album sold pretty well in Japan and we gained a following in Europe, so I knew the music was being liked and could be liked by a lot more people out there if they heard it. It was just never given its chance.”
With determined plans to press on, the quintet quickly returned to Cheshire Sound with Jeff Glixman. The songwriting was once again a shared responsibility between Mo and Jay.
“We stuck with the same direction we’d had on the first album because we all liked that style and to ensure Jay’s voice was always supported with the best material. We always were comfortable in the knowledge we would do a second album because that was the deal we had signed with Geffen.”
However, there was a line-up change as recording commenced on what would become ‘I Like It Loud’, with former Billy Squier drummer Bobby Chouinard being drafted in to replace the departed B.B. Queen.
“B.B. was just losing interest. He had other stuff to do. He’s a lovely guy and I love him to pieces, but he just wasn’t in the right head space at that time. We had been in the studio and had cut a couple of tracks already when he decided to split. There was no doubt about it, he didn’t want to wait until the album was finished; he wanted to go right then. So Jeff knew Bobby Chouinard and gave him a call. We paid him a bunch of money and he came down to do the record.”
Opening with the title track itself, it’s clear to hear that Bobby Chouinard brought his Billy Squier ‘Big Beat’ drums to the party. There’s that distinctive, warm Moses Mo guitar tone well up in the mix as well. The album takes a few diversions musically from the debut though. The brooding, almost menacing sounding ‘I Can’t Wait’ takes a strikingly darker approach, there’s a bit of a ZZ Top boogie sheen to the construction of ‘Heart Attack’ and, just as with the first album, the closing brace of tracks offer something rather different in approach. It’s quite possible that ‘Get To You’ and ‘Lifetime’ reveal the musical path Illusion could’ve taken on any subsequent recordings, both offering wide cinematic landscapes with an interesting, almost Celtic approach to the guitar tones and huge, canyon-spanning drums.
However, the good time, up-tempo vibe of the first album was by no means avoided. ‘Call Me Up’ is very much reminiscent of the material on the debut, almost Autograph in sound too, while ‘Shake’ is injected with some Deep Purple-esque organ work from Tom Reed to a rowdy rockin’ backdrop. Meantime, the fantastic ‘Red Light’ displays a level of amazing musical ability comparable to the type of thing Winger would be lauded for a few years later.
The album also offers up a new version of ‘Call In The Law’, one of the stand-out tracks featured on the debut album. It sounds a little richer from a production point of view to the original rendition.
“I don’t know what happened there,” admits Mo with a laugh. “It’s so long ago now that it’s hard to recall exactly, but I think we cut a second version of the song that sounded much better than the original version on the first record so we decided to add it to ‘I Like It Loud’.”
With a cover designed by Sandi Young, who is the sister of Little Caesar vocalist Ron Young, once the album was completed and released in 1986 there was, unfortunately, no touring undertaken to promote it. Apart from a radio promo issued for the catchy ‘Call Me Up’, as had happened with the debut LP, no singles were released from the album.
“The record got finished up and the band kinda got dissolved right around the time it came out,” reveals Mo. “Everyone was getting a little disillusioned (no pun intended) about the industry and about the lack of progress. It was a tough time. We realised it just was not going to happen. Everyone had lives to go on to. When you have a band together you need success to pay the bills and to be able to stay out there.”
Was there too much competition at the time; too many bands putting records out, looking for tours, looking to get on MTV?
“Maybe, but when you look back you can never really tell. The things that happened to us occur all the time with bands. Good albums are put out and no one hears them and you can’t explain why. I don’t blame anybody because our records didn’t go over better than they did. I’m still proud of the albums. They came from us and there were people out there who liked them, so all in all it was a great experience.”
While Mo would ultimately rejoin Mother’s Finest as well as venturing into solo projects (he’s still combining both very well indeed) and is currently working on an album with his latest band project Moses Mo and The Real Cool Band, Jay Willard would join the Charlotte, North Carolina based melodic rock band The Creek. The frontman recorded a cassette only EP entitled ‘Loaded And Lethal’ with that particular band in the early 90s. One of the four songs on that release was a version of the title track from Illusion’s ‘I Like It Loud’. All four The Creek tracks with Willard on vocals were added as bonus tracks to Escape Music’s 2 CD set reissue of the Charlotte band’s previous two albums ‘The Creek’ and ‘Storm The Gate’ in 2004.
After leaving The Creek, Jay also fronted the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina-based Reckless Abandon, with whom he released the mini-album ‘Showdown’ on the Reckless Music imprint in 1996. According to Mo, Jay is still out there writing songs and still playing in bands in Myrtle Beach. They are still in contact with one another.
Sadly, the man Willard co-founded Illusion with all those years ago, Tom Reed, passed away in July 2017. He was a huge part of the band and to the excellence of both Illusion records.
“Because Mother’s Finest had been together for so long they had really been, apart from a few bands I had been in while in high school, the only band I’d played with. That was from 1970 right up until 1982. To get into another band and to play with other musicians gave me a whole different outlook,” adds Mo on his time with Illusion. “My writing certainly improved that’s for sure, because no one can do anything if you don’t have a good song.”
There are plans afoot by Mo and Jay to finally have the Illusion albums officially released on CD. This, I’m sure, will be news welcomed by all those who picked up on the original vinyl releases either back in the day or over the years since. They certainly are both deserving of a long overdue reissue! Stay tuned for further news on this particular subject!
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This article was in issue #100
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