published: 17 /
4 /
2025
With a new box set ‘Car Crash Supergroup – The Island Years 1973-1974’ being released on Cherry Red, Eoghan Lyng looks back at the early career of seminal cult act Sharks
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Ronnie Lane and Ronnie Wood could just as easily have performed with Steve Parsons as they did Rod Stewart, such was the similar complexities of their voices. Stylistically, Faces and Sharks bore much in common: a gorgeous lead singer with a husky voice, a bassist with a mercurial songwriting acumen, a hotshot guitar player who spent much of the 1970s working as a sideman par excellence. Faces enjoyed more success, but Sharks were influential in their own way, creating a soundscape that thrived on spontaneity, gusto and spirit. By 1977, this type of performance had a brand new name: punk.
Their first album, ‘First Water’, is the band's most cohesive, demonstrating elements of soulful introspection (hear Parsons heartwrenching vocal on 'Steal Away') and garage-infused metal composition ‘Doctor Love’ (written by bassist Andy Fraser, who had written 'All Right Now' with Paul Rodgers as a younger man.) Guitarist Chris Spedding shines on 'Snakes and Swallowtails', his fingers floating up and down the fretboard, a stylistic showcase of choppy Stonesque jangles and rapid-fire solos. Opening number ‘World Park Junkies’ is a juggernaut: a layer of metal pouring onto the listener during the verses, before pivoting to funkier terrains during the chorus. (Spedding plays an instrumental passage that sounds suspiciously like a morse chord; what is he saying?) This tidy compendium boasts a live version of 'Sophistication', showcasing their looseness and versatility as a stage outfit.
Fraser left the unit after the first record, no doubt due to creative differences. "He did fantastic work with Free," Parsons admitted to PennyBlackMusic in 2023. "Andy had a very defined compositional style ...but then Paul Rodgers started to develop as a songwriter. And then he came into Sharks, and I was developing as a songwriter." Parsons acted as chief songwriter on the followup records.
Fraser’s input is missed on ‘Jab It In Yore Eye’, but the group sound sufficiently re-energised on ‘The Car Crash Tapes’; sessions guided and produced by The Who's bassist/horn player John Entwistle. In fact, they sound like a new unit altogether, which is why it's a pity the songs weren't heard until the 21st century.
Where Spedding's guitar sounded swampy on their sophomore record, he punches through 'Darlin' with a sharper,more confident tone, as if anticipating the jingle-jangles favoured by 1980s indie songwriters Johnny Marr and Will Sergeant. The drum-heavy 'Poor Little Rich Girls' features one of Parsons' more intricate vocals: a mosaic of whispered purrs and furious shrieks, padded by power chords and what sounds like a backwards guitar pedal.Entwistle's presence looms over 'Amsterdammed', a noisy stomper dotted with piercing bass hooks. Furthering the similarities between Sharks and Faces, 'So Young' opens with a psychedelic hook that wouldn't have sounded out of place on ‘A Nod's as Good as a Wink... To a Blind Horse’.
Between ‘First Wave’ and ‘The Car Crash Tapes’, ‘Jab It In Yore Eye’ sounds a little lost, although it would be churlish to write it off as a victim of the "Second album" curse. The clear standout is 'Sophistication': a stop/start number that may have inspired Mick Jones to compose 'Should I Stay or Should I Go', pieced by blues inflections, passion and a rollicking drum backing. The acoustic ballad 'Surrender' is enjoyable: listening to it in 2024, it sounds like the midway point between the John Lennon of 1965, and the Paul Weller of 1981. And with 'Sun Beat Down', Parsons' lets it all out, enveloping a rage that Rod Stewart (even Steve Marriott) would have struggled to match.
As everyone knows, Parsons and Spedding rebooted the band in 2016, as was depicted in the confessional documentary ‘Not a Rock-Doc: A Shark's Tail’. The shows were feisty, fiery and frenetic. But there was something purer about the earlier lineup, a more spiritual raucous energy emanating from them. ‘SHARKS – Car Crash Supergroup – The Island Years 1973-1974’ is further proof of their talents.
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