THE GEORGIA SATELLITES

The Georgia Satellites were one of the most ferocious bands of the Eighties, and what set them apart from the other 10,000 groups that cranked their amps to 11 was that their wild riffs and tanked cries came from a quartet that understood its place in rock tradition and fought hard to solidify it with each recording. "Let It Rock: Best of the Georgia Satellites" shows, they expanded forever the limits and the promise of what a band could do with those three chords (well, sometimes only two) played harder than ever before.

The story here starts in Hedgen's, a country club for the spiritually impoverished and emotionally destitute. Hedgen's lay in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, the group's home. It was a lonely Thursday night, pushing 2:30 in the morning, and the Satellites were about to begin their third set to a handful of creditors and future ex-girlfriends. Plugging in his Gibson Les Paul Jr., Rick Richards eyed the band with a wilder than usual look, announced "It's in D. It's fast. Trust me," and guided the band through a high-octane explosion of Ringo Starr's "Don't Pass Me By." Surprisingly, the Satellites didn't put it on a record until their second LP, Open All Night. "We loved the Beatles. We couldn't possibly have gotten away covering Lennon/McCartney or Harrison. That left us with the two songs Ringo wrote: 'Octopus's Garden' and 'Don't Pass Me By.' Tell me which one you'd pick." Before you believe such modesty, remember that the Satellites did take on compositions bigger that themselves: they covered "Every Picture Tells a Story" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" on record, and everything from "Highway 61 Revisited" to "Suspicious Minds" onstage.

Most Satellites fans were introduced to the band through "Keep Your Hands to Yourself," the absurdly successful first single that went to Number Two in 1987. A remixed version of a Baird tune that an early iteration of the group had recorded in 1983 for its eventual debut EP Keep the Faith, the song's wit, yodeling and an over-the-top video made the quartet overnight hick superstars. Lyrically, it set the pattern for the group's concerns on its first two LPs. Throughout their career, the Satellites tried to stretch ideas of what it meant to be a bar band. Many of songs can be defined as "the story of a Jethro Bodean with a good education, some simple guy worrying." Hit record or not, The Georgia Satellites made their imprint from the start most early as a barnstorming live act.

How the band came together

The first incarnation of The Georgia Satellites formed in the early 80's. After a stint together, the band decided to go their separate ways. Rick Price (bass and vocals in the The Georgia Satellites) played guitar for The Brains, a fine Atlanta rock-and-roll band that inexplicably got lumped in with the new-wave skinny-tie boys. Rick Richards (lead guitar and vocals in The Georgia Satellites) formed The Hellhounds, an up and coming rock band out of Atlanta in the mid-80's and soon recruited Price as bassist for the band.

In mid-1985, Dan Baird began missing the rock n roll feel he established with his former band-mates, and began sitting in with The Hellhounds. Soon after, ex-Satellites road manager and number one fan Kevin Jennings casually let drop that he had sold a Satellites EP, Keep the Faith, to an independent label in England, so they'd better start using that name again. Hence, The Georgia Satellites began performing again under that name, and continued to pulverize audiences with songs like "Open All Night," a song with a primitive swing, and fairly suggestive but without spilling the beans. Another high point of their sets was the sturdy rocker "Battleship Chains," which since has been covered by many bands, most notably The Replacements in a version that screams for a warning sticker (among other things).

The Satellites saw continued success from their version of the John Fogerty standard "Almost Saturday Night," as recorded for Elektra's Rubaiyat anniversary collection of Elektra artists covering their label mates, with a bit of Fogerty's "Rockin' All Over the World" grafted to the end. The Satellites' arrangement, built around Price's open-hearted mandolin, was a thrilling mix of acoustic and electric, plus a heart full o' soul. The Satellites originally wanted to do something by the MC5 or The Stooges, and toyed with the idea of doing something by The Cars, perhaps a hick version of "My Best Friend's Girl," but the band ultimately decided the Fogerty song was the best choice.

Next on the recording books was a whiplash version of Chan Romero's "Hippy Hippy Shake," recorded for the otherwise forgettable "Cocktail" starring Tom Cruise. The group knocked it out in one day at Doppler Studio in Atlanta. The director had cut the movie to the Swingin' Blue Jeans version and the group played along with a videotape of the film, extending the drum fill so it would synchronize with images of Tom Cruise slapping down bottles on a bar. It might not have been the best reason to make a record, but it burned holes in playlists around the country and became the band's biggest hit since "Keep Your Hands to Yourself."

The Satellites' final record was the sprawling "In the Land of Salvation and Sin." Even the group's longtime fans were shocked and thrilled at how the group had reinvented themselves, discovering how to channel the energy of their engaging bar-room stomps into a wider variety of forms. Even their tributes--unavoidable in a group so conscious of history-- had gained depth. (As an example of the 14-cut record's overflowing strengths, the vivid "Saddle Up" was left off because the group didn't want any of its standard 12-bar-three-chord-turnover blues on the set. It was exiled to a CD-5.) Augmenting the band on half the record was Faces vet Ian McLagan, an obvious role model for the group, who helped them achieve their dream of sounding sloppy and inspired, and fit in perfectly with the group's purposeful lunacy. But on the record, the band was all business. The devastating "All Over But the Cryin'" had elements of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Neil Young, and Tom Petty, their hardest, most direct lost-love foray. "Six Years Gone" was written about an old relationship of Rick Richards'. "Rick was wonderful subject to write about," Baird says, "He'd go through all the things that I wouldn't." Many of the tunes had shiney surfaces, yet the writing on "In the Land of Salvation and Sin" was his darkest and most emotionally complex. Think of it as Jethro Bodean bumping into Carl Jung at a double feature Cape Fear and Night of the Hunter.

The breakthrough track on In the Land of Salvation and Sin, and the one that best showed how far the band had traveled, was the acoustic single and last song written for the record, "Another Chance." The tune overtly recalled The Faces and cruised on the interplay between guitars and hearty, vulnerable vocals and has a world-weary but optimistic quality. The first line of the song--"Livin' with my back against the wall/Nowhere but forward to fall"--was a Paul Westerberg rip. Similar to the first three Georgia Satellites albums, "Another Chance" took advantage of having multiple lead singers, trading off lines throughout the song. The lyrics reflect Price's fascination with racecars and Richards' lines reflected his rock-and-roll lifestyle. The track also features Rick Price putting the "man" back in the mandolin.

From the start, The Georgia Satellites were full of audacity and talent to justify that fearlessness, demanding entry into the room that housed the top rank of rock and rollers. It didn't take long to smash down the door. Any band now exploding out of a garage that wants to live out the dreams of Chuck Berry's "The Promised Land" now has the greatest role model the U.S. has yet produced.

THE GEORGIA SATELLITES made their imprint on rock n roll as a barnstorming live act and are holding true to that today with original members Rick Richards (lead guitar and vocals) and Rick Price (bass and vocals); Robert Page (keyboards) and Todd Johnston on drums, playing over 60 dates a year including public, private, fair, festival, Biker & NASCAR events!

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