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Tommy Bolin in Iowa Hall of Fame
Tommy Bolin along with his brother Johnnie will be inducted this year into the Iowa Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. Tommy has previously been inducted there in 1999 as a member of A Patch of Blue, one of his early bands, which he joined in Sioux City at the age of 13. Johnnie has been inducted in 2010 (as a member of a band called DVC), in 2012 (as a member of Rockestra of Sioux City), and in 2014 (as a member of Instant Blues Machine). This time both brothers are honoured as individual artists. Tommy has also been inducted in 2016 into the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, just up the road from Sioux City.
The induction ceremony and associated festivities will be held in Arnolds Park, IA, on September 1-4, 2022.
Thanks to Jim Collins for the heads up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Better late than never.
I often wonder what Tommy would be playing today if he was still alive. Post-Purple, if he had been in the hands of the right management and kicked his drug habits, I could have envisaged a Peter Frampton-type career for him: he had the looks, the guitar chops, the songwriting skills and a pleasant, immediately recognizable voice.
Darn waste his death was. In memoriam for the man who managed to sound intimate in the Budokan Hall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXyjp-h0OQE
There used to be the respective live footage of this available too, but I assume that rights of the Bolin Estate prevent it from being on youtube anymore.
January 20th, 2022 at 17:41A great talent (as were all DP members). What a shame that he died so young.
January 20th, 2022 at 21:19It’s so sad that a lot of people only know Tommy from his Purple year.
That’s like only knowing Jimmy Page from The Firm.
I do love CTTB, but Bolin’s other work shows him in such a better light, and LCIJ is so freaking rough.
January 23rd, 2022 at 03:46@Jim: LCIJ is rough and Bolin bluffs his way through most of the time, but if you see the live footage then he was in good spirits and made the best of the situation, handicapped as he was. I always thought he pulled it off against all odds, with the rest of the band very supportive.
And I actually treasure that gig for the fact that it had Jon and Paicey have to work harder too. Even a DP with a broken wing could still pull itself to astonishing heights. The renditions of Mark IV original material and of course of Tommy’s own Wild Dogs do not have to hide. To me, the band sounds more enthusiastic on LCIJ than on Made in Europe.
January 24th, 2022 at 13:18Bolin crammed a lot into a short space of time. Apart from CTTB and his solo albums (all of which are top notch) he shone like a beacon on James Gang’s “Miami” and “Bang” as well as Billy Cobham’s “Spectrum”. Also check out his Energy band.
January 25th, 2022 at 10:54Uwe @1 – I think you’re right, “Bolin Comes Live” would have made a great career for TB.
The Live in Long Beach ’76 is a much better representation of Tommy’s skills as a guitarist with Deep Purple. I went to this concert and Tommy was in top form, sadly, his performances fluctuated throughout the tour and on the UK tour as well. Fortunately, LB was a good night for both him and the band.
February 7th, 2022 at 02:51Indeed, his guitar work with Zephyr, James Gang, Deep Purple and Billy Cobham was outstanding. But I also would like to mention his wonderful contributions to Alphonse Mouzon’s ‘Mind Transplant’. Really mindblowing !!! It’s a must for all guitar freaks. Tommy Bolin, what a loss !
February 18th, 2022 at 19:27Have to disagree with the Frampton comparison, he probably would have had success in that genre, but he didn’t have Peter’s charisma. I think Bolin if he didn’t have the drug problem would have fit in perfect with an REO Speedwagon type band.
January 4th, 2025 at 05:55But sidroman, almost all his contemporaries said that Bolin had incredible charisma, he charmed women, men, record executives and musicians into everything at first meetings without too much of an effort. His addiction issues weren‘t immediately apparent. Plus he had that androgynous Marc Bolan’ish shtick.
I actually think that his two solo albums with his voice, songwriting, introspective lyrics and warm playing show loads of charisma. More charisma than sheer technique actually.
Finally, by all acounts, he won that DP audition as much through his flamboyance as his playing. Jon Lord said of it: “I immediately noticed that Tommy wasn’t as technically accomplished on guitar as Ritchie, but he was exciting and inspiring.”
I don’t see Tommy finding solace as a member of another band, he wanted to sing and play his own songs, he had that cut out for him – similarly to Peter Frampton, but the latter was more disciplined and held his act better together. Tommy was all over the place.
This is a real interesting 2001 interview by Art Connor (AC) with someone who played with both Tommy and Peter, namely bassist Stanley Sheldon (SS), Tommy’s old Energy buddy, partner in lamentable substance abuse and of course later on mainstay bassist for Peter Frampton (without ever having a contract!).
https://www.rampantzone.com/art-connor/stanley-sheldon-interview/
Some excerpts, but it’s really worth a thorough read, not only for the pointed revelation that Stanley played three consecutive nights with Peter Frampton at the LA Forum on heroin to get over the grief after Tommy’s drug death (and not being allowed to join Tommy’s funeral by the Peter Frampton management):
“AC: Now, you’ve played with Peter and you played with Tommy, both great guitarists in their own way and their own fashion. How would you compare and contrast them?
SS: Well, that is an interesting question. I would say that Tommy was this unbridled, unrestrained player. He had no restraint whatsoever in his playing, and that could have been a weakness at a point. It was also the strongest thing about his playing, so it was like a double-edged sword. With Peter, it’s just the opposite. It’s inverse. Like we already talked about, he was almost too afraid to take chances on stage. Too methodical, too thought out, too calculated, just too contrived in a word.
AC: He is capable of doing it though, or it least he was.
SS: Oh, he is very capable. We used to have jams on stage at the sound checks, and we had some amazing jams, because Peter is such a great guitar player. He’s just so clean and studied and practiced. To his credit, he has a lot of soul. Tommy was unrestrained, “Go for it, balls to the wall” and that’s what made him great.”
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“C: Speaking of jams, at the big Denver show at Mile High Stadium, was there a jam with Peter (Frampton) and Tommy? That’s one of the rumors that have been floating around for years.
SS: Unfortunately, no. That never happened.
AC: OK, you just killed that one!”
SS: Well, I’m going to tell you a story here about that show. It was real personal moment for me. Tommy and I were alone in the dressing room, and it was big pill for Tommy to swallow, having to open for us, and all of that. My cousin was there that day too, he was playing with Gary Wright.
So Tommy was opening, then Gary Wright with my cousin Tom, and then I got to play! All of Energy was right there except for Bobby, and I’m sure he may have been somewhere in the stadium. And Tommy, he was actually crying. We were partying backstage, and suddenly he just broke down. We just started hugging each other, and I said “Shit man, it’s just the way it ended up Tommy!”
AC: You were right, it’s just the way the cards fell. But, a year before Tommy was touring the world with Deep Purple.
SS: Tommy wanted to be the Number One and Peter was the Number One right then and it was tearing him apart. It was just the pure showman in his blood. He wanted what Peter had, and he wanted to be headlining. And not having that, it brought him to tears. I don’t think that detracts from Tommy, he was a brave player.”
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“AC: I’d like to go back for a minute to Peter and Tommy if we can. You were on the road with Peter when Tommy died. Can tell us what happened with you when you heard the news?
SS: Now that’s a story in itself. On the days between when Tommy died and his funeral, we had sold out the LA Forum for three nights in row. And Dee Anthony (Both Peter Frampton’s and Humble Pie’s notorious manager) made it quite clear that I had to stay there. So I couldn’t even go to his funeral. And that haunts me still to this day.
AC: Did Peter and the rest of the guys in the band talk about it with you? They must have known how close you and Tommy were, or was it a personal and private thing for you?
SS: It was very personal. Peter was very elegant about it. He said very few words, but he kind of let me know that he knew and he understood. He was real considerate, as a matter of fact everyone in the band was very supportive, because they all knew who Tommy was.
AC: So I can imagine it was a very hard time for you.
SS: It was really difficult to play those gigs at the Forum. But again, I got through it with the help of substances.
AC: Good old “Mr. Brownstone” as Guns and Roses would say.
SS: And quite frankly, that helped, it got me through it at least, for whatever that is worth.
AC: Well… again we’re talking about twenty-five years ago, that’s the way it was back then.
SS: Yeah, and I’ve gone through a pretty good healing process psychologically since then, and I did finally grieve over my best friend’s death. And I know Tommy would forgive me for not being at his funeral and not being a pallbearer.
AC: I’m just going to talk off the top of head here. I don’t think there was anything to forgive. I think he would have said, “You have a show to do, you worked hard for this day, you need to be there!”
SS: I’m sure he would have! (laughing again)
AC: You just raise a glass in his honor after the gig.
SS: Exactly… but when I see the video of his funeral, and to me nothing is more morose, and that’s really the last place I would want to be, even if I had been able to. I just don’t like funerals. But of course, out of respect and love, I still would have wanted to be there.”
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“AC: Stanley, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation tonight, and I want to ask you just a few more questions, one of them my signature question — If Tommy had survived through the decades, where do you think he would be musically, and what would he be doing today? Perhaps something similar to what you are doing?
SS: Maybe… (really thinking about his answer) I know Tommy loved nothing above rhythm – rhythm was “god” to him, and it was king to him. The rhythms… He was, I think, more inspired by drummers, and he’s the one that pointed me in that direction. It’s what I’ve been studying here at KU. My master’s thesis has to do with the slave society in the Caribbean, and that whole Afro-American element in culture and art, and you know it’s pretty obvious, but it still can never be overstated. Tommy’s the one that led me to that understanding. I think he would be probably be doing what any of the great guitarists like Carlos Santana or somebody like Bob Marley, or any of those great players are doing. Tommy would be playing some great music and some great rhythms with a lot of fantastic musicians, and some of them would be Afro-American.
AC: That seems to be the general consensus, I’ve asked this question a number of times.
SS: Really, you’ve heard that before?
AC: Yes! At last years Bolin Fest, I ran around backstage bothering all of these musicians, making a nuisance of myself and basically they have all said the same thing. Even Glenn Hughes said he felt he probably wouldn’t be playing guitar as we knew him to be playing , he may have been into programming or drumming. Glenn Hughes of all people!
SS: That is wild, because Tommy was a powerful rhythmic innovator. And when I think about it, and the way he used that Echoplex, he used it like a drum, he really did. That was Tommy’s first instrument, the drums.
AC: That’s right! I remember reading about that. It’s funny, Jan Hammer said something similar, that Tommy was very rhythmic.
SS: Yeah, well, I guess I’m not too crazy!”
January 5th, 2025 at 15:00I’ve only realized now that Billy Cobham’s Spectrum was #1 in the Billboard Jazz Albums Charts in 1973 and in the regular Billboard 200 #26 in 1974. For a fusion album consisting of only instrumental music filled with drum, synth and guitar improvisations, those are stunning placings. I always knew the album found wide acclaim and was popular, but nothing like this!
So that is why everybody and his brother knew about it, including the Purple guys. I’m not aware that any of them listened to the James Gang’s subtly titled Bang album which was released in 1973 one month ahead of Spectrum, but had nowhere near the same commercial impact, being relegated to #122 in the Billboard 200. And Bang is a hell of an album, similar to CTTB in its unbridled exuberance and inspiration.
Spectrum only cost US-$ 22.000 to make, but Billy had been granted a budget of US-$ 35.000 by Atlantic, wisely he kept the balance for himself! 😂 And the whole album was recorded in three days via first and second takes with the whole band playing live together in the studio. It has chalked up worldwide sales of one million by now, no mean feat for a fusion album by a, yes, drummer – those people that like to hang out with musicians.
January 6th, 2025 at 19:42Interesting points Uwe. Speaking of the James Gang, I was never really a fan except for the live album at Carnegie Hall which is excellent and very underrated. That one was with Joe Walsh though.
January 8th, 2025 at 02:52Of course the Walsh era of JG is untouched. By the time Tommy came (on the recommendation of Joe Walsh to his former band mates btw), they were with Canuck Roy Kenner as lead vocalist basically a different band featuring the former JG rhythm section.
But I really liked the Bolin phase of JG too, ‘Bang’ is an outburst in creativity and in a way a companion album to CTTB. By the time, ‘Miami’ came out though, a lot of spirit had been drained.
More recently, new live material by the Gang has cropped up on YT and it is well worth watching, Bolin in full flight.
https://youtu.be/wztMkhwC6DA
https://youtu.be/2n0DUsQDYtQ
https://youtu.be/mnoLYNGpFhw
People always go on about Roy Kenner’s singing and stage demeanor, but I have no issues with him. He had a fine voice, perhaps closer to Doobie Brothers Michael McDonald era (they both had blue-eyed soul backgrounds) than a typical hard rock shouter, but I don’t hear it jarring with either Tommy’s playing or what Dale Peters and Jim Fox rhythm-sectioned.
I really listen to Bang quite a bit, it’s my favorite Bolin album alongside CTTB and Private Eyes.
January 8th, 2025 at 14:36“I’ve only realized now that Billy Cobham’s Spectrum was #1 in the Billboard Jazz Albums Charts in 1973 and in the regular Billboard 200 #26 in 1974. For a fusion album consisting of only instrumental music filled with drum, synth and guitar improvisations, those are stunning placings. I always knew the album found wide acclaim and was popular, but nothing like this!”
Billy Cobham’s name attached to that would have garnered plenty of attention, as at that time there were plenty of ‘jazz’ fusion artists dominating the charts, in that sense. Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Miles Davis, Chick Corea & Return To Forever, Zappa & even Santana just to name a few ‘rock’ artists mingling with the jazz crowd and vice versa. Wonderful to see. It was the glorious early 70’s & as we know (certain) record companies endorsed those artists at that time. ‘Go out & do what you do’ was a sort of record company mantra in certain aspects (that soon changed unfortunately). Here it is listed at number 12 in best Jazz albums of 1973. Note the different genre types listed next to each artists name, those were the days my friend. Cheers.
https://www.albumoftheyear.org/genre/35-jazz/1973/
January 8th, 2025 at 22:58Imagine a fusion album by a drummer today climbing that high. What the fuck happened?
January 9th, 2025 at 01:39Uwe when was the first time that you saw Purple? Mine was in 96 on the Purpendicular tour. It would have been 91 on the Slaves and Masters tour but less than a week before the show they cancelled! I was crushed!
January 9th, 2025 at 04:48I saw them open air in Mannheim 1985 for the first time, that gig was special because Jon’s Hammond broke down and he had to play piano for nearly half the gig – so it sounded like Elton John doing a DP tribute! 😂 It wasn’t the greatest gig for other reasons too, the band sounded a bit knackered. Nürnberg the next day was supposedly better, but I didn’t see that. In 1985 they only did two German gigs, strangely.
I wasn’t disappointed from the so-so gig, by then I had heard enough Purple boots to know that they had off nights too. And the collector in me thought, how cool, I saw DP with mainly piano, how often does that happen? 😎
The next time I saw Mk II was on the THOBL tour and one of those gigs (the first one) was excellent, the second one (another open air rock festival) just very good.
Next stop was London Hammersmith, I saw Mk V there on the second of three nights and contrary to public sentiment that was a very musical and enjoyable gig. Much better than any Rainbow gig I had seen with Joe which had always been a bit naff.
Then I saw Mk II two more times in 1993 – Frankfurt was great and Mannheim two weeks later the pits, I left the hall musing “Ritchie, I think you will be leaving soon, and you know what? Maybe that’s a good thing, you’re destroying the band.” He tore up his Japanese work permits not much later.
Finally, I saw Mk VI in Kassel a year later or so (Satriani played well, but I missed Ritchie) and then the Morse Era arrived in which I guess I saw Mk VII and VIII between 20 and 30 times, I lost count.
Mk IX, I’ve seen four times by now or was it five? 🤗
So I’ve been to lots of post-reunion gigs by DP, a few brilliant ones, many very good ones, a large share of good ones and some (especially towards the end of Steve’s tenure) that were workmanlike to perfunctory. But Mannheim 1993 was no doubt the worst: When Ritchie doesn’t feel like it, he can be really atrocious and musters little self-discipline.
January 9th, 2025 at 09:27Uwe, have you noticed that ‘Devil is singing our Song’ contains the riff to Love Child in the middle?
I like both JG albums with Tommy a lot. Music to drive to the lake to with the windows down…
January 9th, 2025 at 12:22Max, it does, you’re right! I always found it faintly familiar and very Bolin’esque, but I never quite made the connection, thanks.
Yeah, James Gang with Bolin was feelgood music and he actually played (and sounded!) there very much like he did with Purple on CTTB later on – strange that apparently nobody from Purple ever checked ‘Bang’ and ‘Miami’ out, they all focused on Cobham’s “Spectrum” (back then the way more popular and successful record). Purple gave Tommy’s guitar more oomph in support and didn’t sound quite as happy as the Gang though CTTB was still an upbeat album.
Nice to hear that you own and like those albums too, I always feel like I’m preaching in the desert when I laud the James Gang albums with Bolin. Much like Trapeze, they are not really viewed as essential listening here.
January 9th, 2025 at 18:24Uwe…don’t get me started on Trapeze! What a treat! I prefer You are the music to the rather dark Medusa but they’re both great stuff anyway. Got those recent releases of course but am not too impressed with them. Cash in, of course, but still of interest.
I still marvel about the fact that some songs accompany me through decades (that changed pretty much anything else for me including a lot of the music I listen to) withoiut ever losing their impact on me. “Feeling so much better now” is one of them. As is “Slags to Bitches” or “Sneaky Private Lee” or “Goldie’s Place”, “Northwinds” and then some. But we talked about those 70s pearls noone seems to notice before …
January 10th, 2025 at 09:16Yes, immediately after Mk IV folded, all ex-Purplites (+ from MK II and III too) made good and interesting albums, everyone of them. With the exception of Rainbow, none were really close in style to the defunct mothership, rather most ex-members went the other way, all that pent-up creativity while having to write and perform Purple style stadium filling heavy rock finally released. It wasn’t what most distraught Purple fans were yearning for at the time as they still licked their wounds from the split: Neither PAL, nor Jon Lord, nor IGB, nor Roger Glover, Glenn Hughes, Tommy Bolin or DC picking up the Purple baton, but looking back at all those releases from that immediate post-split phase from 1976 to 1978, the music has held up remarkably well.
January 11th, 2025 at 03:01Lest we forget, honorary mention of Fandango’s Slipstreaming debut in the summer of 1979 among the noteworthy first generation of post-Mk IV split albums. I really liked that record, Peter Parks’ guitar tone (not totally unlike a more subdued Ritchie’s) and terse melodies as well as Jim Proops’ husky and pleasant vocals. Yes, the album was more of a budget production (but at least you could hear everything well), it sounded a bit like a very good demo, certainly not the production quality of Rainbow or Whitesnake albums of the time, but the material was promising.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky0mNz8N9Mg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxDipmtA7nA
If someone had financed them a German tour back then, I think they could have at least established a solid club circuit presence in the Fatherland, the name Nick Simper would have still drawn people in these Purple-starved times and the band wouldn’t have disappointed live (especially if they had thrown in a handful of Mk I numbers to keep punters happy). I was back then hoping for them to tour, but they never did, Nick Simper’s Fandango remained a studio-only-project.
Jim Proops still performs though and has his voice intact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyd7ImV3V0E
https://www.nicksimper.net//wp-content/uploads/2020/05/JimProops.jpg
January 13th, 2025 at 01:47