Legal Weapon Pg 3

The band's first recording session after "Interior Hearts" was for the song "Time Forgot You", recorded in spring 1987 for the soundtrack of the Penelope Spheeris film "Dudes". The song was produced by Jeff Eyrich, a onetime session musician who had previously worked on albums by The Plimsouls and The Gun Club. "Time Forgot You", a twangy country song which bears little resemblence to anything Legal Weapon had done previously, featured an inspired, emotional vocal by Kat Arthur that confirmed my belief that Kat was really capable of singing mainstream pop music. I remember the first time I heard it... I had called Kat at the El Dorado studio in Hollywood (LW was recording their next album "Life Sentence to Love") and during our conversation, she mentioned that they had a song on the "Dudes" soundtrack. It was still early in the evening, so after the phone call, I ran out to a Tower Records and rummaged through the soundtracks section. "Dudes" was still in theaters then, and I managed to find a copy of the soundtrack album.

The disc features tracks by The Little Kings, WASP, Megadeth, and others, but I quickly skipped forward to side 2, which led off with "Time Forgot You". The country ballad wasn't typical Legal Weapon, but Kat's melencholy vocal was beautiful. I always felt that Kat's voice was good for this kind of singing, but her heart was never really in it. LW never performed "Time Forgot You" in public.

After the Whitley apartment was destroyed by fire around New Years 1987, I fell out of contact with the band, and it would be several months before I would hear from anyone in Legal Weapon. I once again caught up with them in Fall 1987, when I learned that they were finally back in the studio, recording their MCA debut "Life Sentence to Love".

It had been well over a year since Legal Weapon had signed with MCA, but it was only then, in the fall of 87, that production on the debut disc had begun. Jeff Eyrich, who had produced the band's last studio effort, the "Time Forgot You" sessions, was originally slated to produce "Life Sentence to Love", but scheduling conflicts led the band to pursue another producer. After an extensive search, engineer Dave Jerden was brought in to direct the recording of LW's big label debut. Jerden had worked on records by The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Jane's Addiction, among others.

The 5th Legal Weapon album, "Life Sentence to Love", was recorded primarily at El Dorado studio, near Hollywood & Vine, starting in late September 1987. I spoke to Kat on the phone a few times as she was taking a break between sessions, and she seemed upbeat at the time about the new album's prospects. Although the band had shunned the overproduced sound that A&M had favored, the MCA effort, "Life Sentence", would still be in every sense a pop album. MCA clearly had their sights set on radio airplay, and every effort seemed to have been made to make the album as radio-friendly as possible. Once the album was released in May 1988, Kat would be sent by MCA to visit various radio stations, including east coast album rock powerhouses like Boston's WBCN, to gin up support for the album. The label had decided to push the song "Hurt" as a single, and a few commercial AOR stations would eventually put the song into light rotation.

After going on a several month hiatus from live performances while recording "Life Sentence to Love", Legal Weapon returned to the stage in late March 1988 for an appearance at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood. Several bands performed at the outdoor fundraiser, including Thelonius Monster and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, but according to L.A. Weekly writer Dierdra Hoffman, the consensus was that Legal Weapon had stolen the show. Hoffman wrote that the slimmed-down Kat Arthur, in a black miniskirt and waist length bleached-blonde hair, "Ran around the stage wailing like an Iranian air raid siren" on the windy, sweltering hot afternoon. I wasn't in L.A. that day and missed the performance, but Ms. Hoffman's review made it clear that Legal Weapon was back as a live act on the eve of their major label debut.

Hearing of LW's appearance at the open air Ford Amphitheater reminded me of another legendary outdoor performance by the band, at the L.A. Street Scene multicultural music festival in downtown L.A. a year and a half earlier. Legal Weapon was one of dozens of bands scheduled to perform at the 2 day music fest, and just before LW was to take the stage, a riot broke out when local troublemakers began hurling bottles at the crowd below from atop a high rise parking garage adjacent to the stage. The ensuing melee made the national news, and Legal Weapon's set was postponed until the following day.

The Circle Jerks were onstage when the trouble started, and things got out of hand when Jerks singer Keith Morris exhorted the bottle-throwers to target horse mounted police officers instead of audience members. The cops didn't like hearing that, and they attempted to clear the area around the stage, further agitating the crowd.

Kat was none too happy with Morris' onstage ranting, which she felt had caused the situation to deteriorate to the point where Legal Weapon, who were preparing to take the stage next, were deprived of a chance to play to a large and enthusiastic crowd. Morris later denied causing any trouble, pointing out that the bottle throwing had already begun before he said anything. "The bottles were already flying", Morris said recently, recalling the long-ago incident. "I was just telling them to throw at the cops instead".

As was the case at the Anson Ford benefit, LW was more than capable of upstaging the headliners at a multi-band event. A year before the Street Scene riot, in September 1985, Legal Weapon was one of several bands performing at Fender's Ballroom in Long Beach. Billed alongside L.A. punk heavyweights TSOL and Social Distortion, LW once again stole the show. TSOL and openers D.I. were greeted with an apethetic response from the crowd, and Legal Weapon began their set with some of the more pop-sounding songs from their then-new "Interior Hearts" album. Like LW, TSOL and Social Distortion were experimenting with more accessible, mainstream sounds by 1985, but on that night at Fender's, the crowd was there for punk rock. Despite leaning toward a more commercial sound in the studio, Legal Weapon could still let loose onstage. Sensing the crowd's restlessness, the band shifted gears mid-set, launching into a medley of their punk classics "Hostility", "Daddy's Gone Mad", and "Equalizer". The crowd went wild. LW roadie Steven Bracamonte recalls having to get on stage and deflect overzealous stagedivers away from the band. "Brian just sort of looked over toward Kat and they started playing their old punk songs", Bracamonte remembered recently. "Everyone went wild. I never saw anything like it". It wasn't uncommon for rough-housing skinheads or other would-be toughs to rush the stage to try and test Kat's mettle, but she was hard to intimidate. "I was throwing people off the stage all through the set", Bracamonte continues. "I was surprised the crowd didn't tear the place apart. I was black and blue the next day".

By the time Legal Weapon was finished, the crowd was in a frenzy and screaming for an encore. LW had once again proven they were a great live band. As headliners Social Distortion prepared to take the stage, SD guitarist Dennis Danell turned to Steven Bracamonte and wondered, "How are we going to top that?". Bracamonte just shrugged. "You don't".

"Interior Hearts" had gotten some criticism after its 1985 release for what some considered a "thin" sound and a musical style that strayed too far from LW's roots. The criticism would build with the release of 1988's major label debut "Life Sentence to Love". The album's sound was light years removed from the roaring punk sound of albums past. It's actually kind of amazing to listen to the evolution of Legal Weapon from the snotty punk band it was on "No Sorrow" 6 years earlier to the polished pop group it was on "Life Sentence". Cynical observers might have been tempted to call it one of the most spectacular sellouts in punk history, but I didn't fault them for evolving into a legitimate rock band. Brian Hansen just happened to be a pretty good guitarist, and Kat Arthur's vocal range and songwriting talent seemed to be naturally destined for a bigger arena than the punk clubs that the band had been performing in for years.

The change to a more melodic, commercial sound was, however, a bit more than a case of artistic evolution. Years of screaming over a loud rock band had begun to take a toll on Kat's voice. "I needed a rest", she told L.A. Times writer Jeff Spurrier in a 1986 interview. "The loud bass, loud guitars, and loud drums- it's all percussive. It just blew my voice out".

Legal Weapon was now in uncharted territory. Their old fans seemed alienated by the band's new, more commercial sound, and winning over radio programmers and fickle mainstream audiences was far from certain. "Life Sentence to Love" is well produced, the musicianship fine, and Kat's voice as great as ever, but only a few of the songs are particularly memorable. The only new songs on the album that stand out are "Indigo Blue", a twanger like "Time Forgot You"- its one of the few times on the album the band really seems to let loose- and the haunting single "Hurt" which MCA was pushing as Legal Weapon's breakout song, but most LW fans considered "Life Sentence" to be just too lightweight. New versions of "Tears of Steel" and "Interior Hearts" rock fairly hard, but mostly they reminded of how much more consistent the "Interior Hearts" album had been. Despite the criticisms that were leveled at "Life Sentence to Love", it was as apparent as ever on the album that Kat Arthur is not only a great singer, but a great songwriter as well. When she was expected by MCA to write accessible, radio-friendly pop songs, she delivered. Most of the songs on "Life Sentence to Love" sound like typical late 1980s radio fare.

In addition to the generally poor reception "Life Sentence to Love" had received, the band's lineup, which had remained fairly stable over the previous 5 years, began to fray. Drummer Adam Maples had participated in the studio sessions for an album by San Francisco glam metal band The Sea Hags shortly after Legal Weapon's "Life Sentence" album was completed in early 1988. Despite rumors, Maples originally insisted that he was not leaving LW for the Sea Hags. In the fall of 1988, however, he did just that - citing his dissatisfaction with the "Life Sentence" album and Legal Weapon's general artistic direction - and was replaced by longtime Social Distortion drummer Derek O'Brien. Maples would remain with The Sea Hags until that band's breakup in 1992, and would later be on the short list to replace drug-addled Steven Adler as Guns n Roses' drummer. To this day, Maples remains an in-demand session drummer in L.A.

A year after Legal Weapon's major label debut, it was apparent that MCA's vision for the band was ringing false. "Life Sentence to Love" hadn't sold well, and the band's relationship with the label was soon over. Within a year of Adam Maples' departure, bassist Eddie Wayne would also leave the band, as Legal Weapon entered the 1990s- an era that would be characterized by both artistic successes and periods of inconsistency and inactivity.

With the band's short, unsatisfying stay at MCA finished, Legal Weapon would spend much of the next decade trying to regain credibility as a hard rock band. 3 years and several lineup changes after "Life Sentence to Love", the band, now consisting of Kat Arthur, Brian Hansen, bassist Tom Slick, and drummer Danny Halperin would once again enter the studio. This time, signed to the smaller, more upstart Triple X label, they were free of the big label pressure which had led them to water down their sound on the previous album. With all the bashing "Life Sentence" had received from critics and fans alike, the band was determined to make a record which was true to the heavy sound they were known for. Triple X would allow Legal Weapon to be Legal Weapon. Armed with a dozen new songs and a new record deal, LW would set out to make the hard rock masterpiece they were always capable of.

With its arena-rock bombast, Brian Hansen's guitar heroics, and a performance by Kat Arthur that is downright spectacular, a strong argument can be made that 1991's "Take Out the Trash" is Legal Weapon's best album. It's the best performance of the band's career, and the best-produced album as well. Though their punk days were pretty much behind them, "Trash" rocks as hard as anything they've done, and still manages to be commercially viable. It's slightly amazing that "Take Out the Trash" wasn't all over FM rock radio in 1991-92.

Ronnie Champagne, who had previously worked with Jane's Addiction and Alice in Chains, served as producer on "Take Out the Trash", and his big-project experience served the band well; the heavy rock monster that LW had evolved into called for an equally outsized production. Champagne had been the assistant engineer on "Life Sentence to Love" 3 years earlier, and his direction on "Take Out theTrash" is, by far, the best among Legal Weapon's albums.

While some old-time LW fans may still have grumbled that "Trash" was too mainstream, Legal Weapon never rocked harder than on the album's 2nd track, "No Amount of Devotion", in which Kat Arthur delivers the greatest vocal performance of her career. After years of hit-and-miss pop albums, hearing Kat's scorching vocal on "Devotion" reminded me of what I always loved about Legal Weapon. It was worth the wait. Also featured on the disc is a clever reworking of the 1960s-era Question Mark and the Mysterians chestnut "96 Tears", and flashes of the old, punk era Legal Weapon can still be heard on "Charlamaine" and "Push", which I remember hearing at that practice session at the Whitley apartment 6 years earlier. Some of the album's most superbly crafted pop-rock is heard late in the disc, with "Vail", "City in Tears", and "Sorry" representing the apex of Kat Arthur and Brian Hansen's songwriting talents. "Take Out the Trash" is everything "Life Sentence to Love" should have been, but Triple X just didn't have the distribution and promotional clout of an A&M or an MCA, and the album passed largely unnoticed in the U.S. (Triple X also distributed the album in Europe, where it received a somewhat more enthusiastic response- setting the stage for a series of European tours by the band in the mid 1990s).

The 1990s were unfortunately marked by long periods of inactivity for the band, and after the artistic success of "Take Out the Trash" in 1991, Legal Weapon's next full length album wouldn't be released for another 3 years. Perhaps still reeling from their mostly unsatisfying forays into pop music in the late 1980s (even the hard rocking "Trash" was deemed too "pop" by some), Legal Weapon seemed to be trying to put as much distance between themselves and the mainstream as possible. The result was 1994's dark, angry "Squeeze Me Like an Anaconda".

With its dark themes and cynical lyrics, "Squeeze Me Like an Anaconda" is easily the hardest and edgiest of LW's albums, and proves Legal Weapon can bang heads with the best of them. The disc opens with the explosive, in-your-face "Irony", in which an angry-sounding Kat Arthur repeatedly shouts "Listen Up!" over a barrage of drums-and-guitar fireworks. It is interesting, and at times amusing, to hear how hard, and crude, Legal Weapon could get on "Anaconda"- one of the songs, "Ass Attack", is Kat's ode to Montezuma's Revenge and about as far from "Time Forgot You" as you can get. The band, now with former Zarkons bassist Steve Reed and drummer Jerry Jones Haskin completing another lineup change, leaves behind the radio-friendly pop of their past 3 albums and unleashes an uncompromising assault that is borderline hardcore. Kat's vocals are so heavily altered by electronic processing on some of the songs that her voice is rendered nearly unrecognizable, and the often angry lyrics, head banging tempo, and hardcore-style "umpa umpa" drumbeats seem out of place on a Legal Weapon album.

Amidst all the teeth-gnashing there are a couple of well written mid tempo quasi-pop songs- "Don't Ask Why" and "Windows"- in which Kat's vocals have a certain sad, vulnerable quality underneath all that electronic processing. The fun, and a bit silly, finale "Happy" sounds like one of those decade-earlier "Cowpunk" songs, and at 1:31, it's the shortest song Legal Weapon has recorded.

After the longest recording hiatus of the band's career, Legal Weapon reappeared one more time, in the fall of 2002, with a new, albeit extremely limited, CD release. Recorded mostly in 2001, the "comeback" CD dispenses with the metalcore of "Anaconda" and returns to the classic Legal Weapon sound. Steve Reed was still on board as bassist, while L.A. punk veteren "Mad Dog" Karla (The Controllers, Leaving Trains) hit the drums in the 2001 recording sessions. While the band still rocks hard, Kat Arthur, as always, has a way with lyrics that has genuine pop appeal. The disc's catchiest track "Pocket Knife" has a bouncy chorus that makes you feel like you're hearing the cliched line "I'd die just for you" for the first time. Kat's vocals dart and soar over a wall of rapid-fire guitar on "Harriot"- with its lyric "You can't change me" sounding both defeated and defiant.

By 2002, it had been more than a decade since I had seen, or even heard much about Legal Weapon. I was unaware if the band was even together during the late 1990s, but one night in October 2002, after a Phoenix performance by The Damned, I spoke to Damned bassist and long-ago Legal Weapon member Patricia Morrison. That I had known her former LW bandmates was soon the topic of conversation. I was surprised when Patricia told me that not only was Legal Weapon still together, they were playing at a party that night in Hollywood. Apparently the band had reformed with original member Charlie Vartanian back on drums, with the rest of the mid 1990s lineup of Kat, Brian, and Steve Reed still intact. The band had planned several "test run" shows around L.A. as LW planned on emerging from their late 90s hibernation. The abortive comeback stalled in 2003, and as of this writing, the final Legal Weapon performance was at the KingKing nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard on the night of December 22nd, 2002.

On the flight back to Phoenix at the end of my 1985 L.A. trip, I drew up an outline for an article about Legal Weapon. It was originally intended to run in Phoenix's New Times, a weekly news and arts journal, and was designed to promote a planned Fall 1985 LW performance in Phoenix. That show ended up getting postponed, but nearly 2 decades later, that unpublished article would serve as the basis for this unofficial history of the band. For 20 years Legal Weapon was a fixture in the L.A. rock scene, and through 8 albums and countless performances they evolved from punk to pop to hard rock, and managed to create memorable songs in each genre. Although Kat Arthur was more than capable of writing and performing catchy pop or even country songs, she will always be best known for her fiery hard rock performances. Nobody could belt out a song like she could.

If their 2002 comeback CD turns out to be the final recording of the band's long career, then Legal Weapon can be remembered for returning to their roots- going out with one last heavy rock tour de force, with Kat's voice defying age and years of hard living to reestablish her as one of punk's greatest female voices.

As I put the finishing touches on this article, I looked through some of the old letters Kat had sent me years ago. One was from September 23rd, 1985, just 2 days after the riotous Fender's show in Long Beach, and only a few weeks after my L.A. trip. She wrote that the video for "Interior Hearts" was almost finished, and that the album was doing well. A tour of the U.S. and, eventually, Europe was in the works. With a highly regarded album and major record labels beckoning, Legal Weapon seemed to be on the fast track to success at the time. They never quite achieved that success, even as lesser bands did. The music industry can be a matter of timing and trends, and the band's forays into big label pop music may well have been missteps- but as tough as the music business could be, it was a life Kat Arthur knew well. Her energy and amazing voice made her one of L.A. punk's most unforgettable performers. She closed her letter the way she always did: "Love, Kat... Legal Weapon '85...Keep the Faith".