Their fourth album, “Reach for the Sky”, had seen the band continuing to stick to their guns in this regard, and though they had a charting single in “Way Cool Jr”, the sales for the album were not as strong as they had been for their first three releases. Some music critics felt that the similarity in the songs had finally caught up with the band, that there was not enough growing in the music itself, and that this was what had affected the album’s performance. True or not, Ratt decided on a change of tactics.
For their follow up album, the band parted ways with long time producer Beau Hill, instead deciding to team up with the man who had become known as the ‘hit-maker’ in the music industry. That man was Desmond Child, whose partnership with bands like Kiss, Bon Jovi and Alice Cooper had produced multi million selling albums such as “Slippery When Wet” and “Trash”. Child came in with his personal sound engineer Arthur Payson who both produced the album, with Child having his fingers all over the writing of the majority of the songs on the album as well. "Reach for the Sky” had been the first time the band had utilised an outside writer on their tracks, which had been producer Beau Hill, but here they had a Bonafide five star collaborator with an amazing track record of producing hit singles. And coming off the success of Alice Cooper’s “Trash” album, where he had performed the same role, Ratt had to be confident that they could produce something that would win back the admiration of their fan base. All of this moved into the release of the band’s fifth album, released in one of the most interesting years in metal music history in 1990, and given the suitably inflammable title of “Detonator”.
The album opens with Warren De Martini’s one minute guitar noodling titled “Intro to Shame” before bursting into the true opening of “Shame Shame Shame”, replete with Bobby Blotzer’s excellent drumming and Stephen Pearcy’s de rigueur vocals. The guitaring throughout the song is terrific and it has Desmond Child’s vision all over it. It starts off the album on the right foot. De Martini’s solo burst on the guitar greets the beginning of “Lovin’ You’s a Dirty Job”, a more typical Ratt section, styled in a mid-tempo range that settles into it groove and allows Pearcy to take centre stage and explain to you his love quandary. Its main problem is that it sounds as though it was WRITTEN to be a single, which indeed it was, released as the first from the album. It’s a bit stereotypical. “Scratch That Itch” has a far more pleasing upbeat tempo, Blotzer’s drums driving the song in his hard hitting way. There’s a bit of Def Leppard about Robbin’s rhythm guitar in this song too, whether it is deliberate or not. De martini solos beautifully, all together making the marks of a great Ratt song.
“One Step Away” again channels those darlings of the hard rock scene, Def Leppard and AC/DC. A great rhythm throughout from Blotzer, Crosby and Juan Croucier’s bass guitar sets the tone, with harmony vocals through the bridge and chorus that give it that slightly softer feel, a more commercial feel perhaps. This would have been a far better fit for the band to release as a single than the two that they did. They may have missed a trick with that. Apart from the rather obvious comparison here it is another excellent song. Then comes “Hard Time” which focuses more like an historical Ratt track, with the harder guitar and the tougher vocal from Pearcy. These are the type of songs that work well for the band in this environment, no compromise with the music and Stephen being forthright in his delivery. Read the same description for “Head I Win, Tails You Lose” which follows, one that sounds like an old school De Martini/Pearcy collaboration. Croucier’s bass is prominent in the mix throughout for this song which gives it a slightly more booming quality.
“All or Nothing” bounces like a track off the first two albums, that head and body bobbing quality that gets you moving with the track. De Martini’s guitar solo is a highlight. This then explodes into “Can’t Wait on Love” that also channels those early Ratt albums, the energy from the outset is catchy as hell, Pearcy’s vocals sound like he means what he’s singing, getting his lungs behind them and hitting those great fun heights that he can, and which generally makes the best Ratt songs when he does. This is one of the best on the album. “Givin’ Yourself Away” is the one true power ballad on the album. There are some out there that claimed that Ratt has never done a power ballad before this album and this song. Well, you probably need to check your definition of a power ballad if that is the case. This one however is a Desmond Child special, you can hear his influence all over it. It is also co-written by Diane Warren, who wrote a number of hit singles for artists – all of which happened to be ballads or power ballads. So, the direction this song goes is no accident. Skip please.
The album then concludes with “Top Secret” which returns us to where the band is at its best and plays us out to a satisfying finish.
It wouldn’t be new information to say that I was less enamoured by the album “Reach for the Sky” when it came out. There was a big push of the single “Way Cool Jr” - a song that just never really resonated with me – and I always felt the album was weaker than I liked. In recent years I have come around to it more than I did, but those feelings still remain whenever I think of that album. On the other hand, perhaps I always held "Detonator” in higher regard simply because of the fact that Desmond Child was involved, and that I had enjoyed so much what he had done for Alice Cooper’s “Trash” album. I won’t deny that that wasn’t a factor, indeed a very big reason that I followed up and bought this album after my less than positive reaction to the previous album.
At the time when the album was released, I enjoyed it... but as we all know 1990 was a year of spectacular indulgence, a year when an incredible amount of amazing heavy albums were all released in a very short space of time. Within just five weeks of this album being released, for instance, we also saw the release of Alice in Chains’ “Facelift”, Anthrax’s “Persistence of Time”, Queensryche’s “Empire” and Judas Priest’s “Painkiller”. Ratt weren’t to know then, but how in the hell do you compete against a quartet like that?! I can tell you – it can’t. This album was really enjoyable for about two weeks after I got it, and then it just got swallowed up in the gigantic enormousness of those other albums, and amazingly some others that equally that within a couple of months. The back half of 1990 was somewhat ridiculous. And – for me at least – if this album had come out a couple of months earlier, it would have gotten a much fairer listening time than it did on its release.
It did however, find its way back into the listening cycle, like many bands did for me in the second half of the 1990’s where all the bands I followed were dead or changed, and I was ambivalent about much of the music being produced. It was when I went back to the albums of the 1980’s and of 1990, and Ratt came back into vogue. And this album for me stood out from the other four of their releases during that period – not because it was necessarily better, but it was different. It had its own sound, and though it was definitely Ratt it had a more modern feel than the other four albums.
Flash forward to this week, and I have had the album out again for about a week, though mostly at a lower level at work with a couple of other albums I have been reviewing at the same time. Because it was acting as background music for me, I wasn’t taking a lot in, it wasn’t making itself known to me. But over the past two days, when I have concentrated my senses on the album, listening not only at home but increasing the volume at work to allow it to envelop me, I have had a ball. I have truly enjoyed this album, listening to it again, and not exactly discovering it again but making my acquaintance with it again. Because it HAS been a while since I last indulged in “Detonator”, and it has definitely been too long. The album has a great up vibe feel about it, it is played at a great clip, and the tempo and energy are enjoyable throughout. In many ways, it set the band up for its push into the new decade and the way it felt at the time that the genres were beginning to head.
This of course was a false dawn, as the onset of grunge almost from the moment this album was released changed the course of almost every band in the business. For Ratt, their internal problems came to a head, with Robbin Crosby’s substance abuse seeing him ejected from the band while he checked into rehab, sadly his final moments with Ratt before his passing in 2002 from a heroin overdose. Stephen Pearcy soon left for another project, and Ratt as a band went on a hiatus that was to last for several years, and remove all of the headway they had created with this album. Their return would come, and there is more to be told of the tale, but that is all for another podcast episode down the road a ways.
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