continued from page 22
Fri Nov 9
Sun Nov 11
7:30pm
Doobie Bros Tribute + Allman Bros Tribute
CHINA GROVE
AND
MIDNIGHT RIDER
Fri Nov 16
HAPPYSLIP
3PM COL.
OBADIAH GUNN'S
WILD WEST SALUTE TO THE VETS
Sat Nov 17
8pm
Stand Up
Comedy
7pm
Tribute to
Woman in Rock
8pm
him and said, ‘Hey – would you like to be
in our new music video?’ And he loves the
band, so he was like, ‘Yeah! Let’s do it!’ So
we did a whole bunch of stuff. He was sup-
posed to be playing my dad in the video,
but it was so rushed. Still, we ended up
with these incredible scenes, like where he
was showing me how to use these throw-
ing knives backstage. It was really cool.”
Although he grew up in a religious
household, Spiller knows his heavy-metal
history. Maybe when you’re denied the
exotic music you love as a child, it makes
you fight that much harder to find it, and
treasure it like gold once you’ve secured it.
Because throughout an average conversa-
tion with him, he can go on at length about
the compressed space that’s tangible on
every AC/DC album, contradicting the
concept that they’re just a wall of noise —
they’re actually skeletal, serpentine riffs
about songwriting than he’ll ever learn.
And Spiller seriously wants to discover
exactly what makes a great chart hit click.
“Now every time I go to Nashville, I try to
meet up with him,” Spiller says, adding
that Frederiksen is often along for the con-
versational ride, “So we have these big
boozy dinners, and we talk.” Correction,
he coughs. “I just sit back and listen to
Marti and Desmond talk and tell all these
amazing stories that they’ve got. I can’t
help but soak it all up like a sponge. And I
get inspired by it.”
With his longtime collaborator Slack,
Spiller became a solid tunesmith himself,
in a chiming style that combines the sym-
phonic-sweet of E.L.O., the exaggerated
‘70s glam of Sweet and Slade, plus the
punky modern pluck of The Strokes, all
steeped overnight in some Sigue Sigue
Sputnik sauce. He’d come of age in the ho-
hum hamlet of Bristol, where he began imi-
tating the late Bon Scott in his teens – the
perfect role model for the risqué double
entendre wordplay he would conceive
with Slack, once the two met then moved
in together for a three-year gestation peri-
od in 2009. Before the group had even
released the Mach One 2014 edition of
Everybody Wants, it had opened for The
LOVE & ROCK SHOW
Wed Nov 21
8pm
Classic and
Modern Rock
HOBO JUNKIES
WAKE SQUARED
WITH
Sat Nov 24
8pm
Classic Rock
with Horns
Fri Nov 23
8pm The Beatles Trib-
AMERICAN ENGLISH
Sun Nov 25
3pm
The Eagles
Tribute
photo by Anna Lee
BRASS FROM THE PAST ONE OF THESE NIGHTS
Fri Nov 30
WITH
7:30pm Sabbath, Dio
Tribute
LIGHTS OUT CHICAGO
Sat Dec 1
8pm
Chicago
'60s Pop Legends
NEW COLONY SIX
Coming to Mainstage Theater at Pheasant Run Resort
Dec 2
NEW ODYSSEY (3 GUYS-30 INSTRUMENTS) Classic Rock covers
DENNIS O'BRIEN BAND'S HO-HO-HOLIDAY-SHOW
Dec 7-8
NEW YEARS'S EVE ROCK N' ROLL TRIBUTE
ELVIS TO THE BEATLES FEATURING
FROM
THE NEVERLY BROTHERS
Ticket Box Office (224) 944-2591 • www.MainstageTix.com
Artisit and Music Booking in part by:
United Talent Coordinators
Sigman Brothers
Pheasant Run Resort
4501 East Main Street • St. Charles IL 60174
Phone: (630) 584-6300 • www.PheasantRun.com
held together by an undulating melody
line. This time, he’s up for chatting about
one of rockdom’s most crucial collections –
the first four Aerosmith albums, master-
pieces one and all, from the brutal experi-
mentation of its underrated sophomore
disc Get Your Wigs to the definitive, gutter-
trashy Rocks, which showcases the
Tyler/Joe Perry Toxic Twins songwriting at
the height of its creativity. “Those were
fantastic, timeless rock records,” he sighs.
“And they’re all very different from the
later ones, like Done With Mirrors, where
Desmond Child was getting involved.”
Younger Struts fans might not recall the
halcyon era of Child, of Desmond Child
and Rouge, or the cold, clinical term ‘song
doctor,’ the task he was hired to do in the
‘80s and ‘90s for composers who had lost
their once-proud mojo. Sure, there were
negative showbiz connotations to such ter-
minology, pre-Max Martin. But don’t jump
to conclusions about how Spiller views
Child, who met him in Nashville – the base
camp for song doctors, essentially – and
started inviting him out for dinner when
The Struts were in town. You might predict
a negative response, but you’d be wrong.
He’s said yes every single time, and today
considers Child a close chum, an ally, and
a misunderstood legend who knows more
Rolling Stones in Paris. Then – as the
demand grew – it found itself appearing
alongside The Who, Guns N’ Roses, and
even The Foo Fighters, with whom Spiller
performed a heartfelt, non-ironic version
of the old Queen/Bowie duet “Under
Pressure,” a song that could easily sound
tongue in cheek spoofed in callous hands.
But Spiller - like Dave Grohl – instinctively
understood the hit’s importance, and, as he
attacked it with his own idiosyncratic
Cockney-accented, rolling-R’ed vocal
style, “Under Pressure” was somehow ele-
vated to the next elegiac level for a genera-
tion of fans that never heard it before or
won’t until the sales-looking new Freddie
Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody hits the-
aters. But Spiller originals like “Kiss This,”
“Dirty Sexy Money,” and “Could Have
Been Me" were every bit as sing-song
memorable. And – just in case you missed
the chic cheeseball glamor of where they
were coming from – Spiller and company
actually wore their heart on their candied
sleeve with a dead-on cover of Sweet’s
“Ballroom Blitz” for the Edge of Seventeen
soundtrack. One must always acknowl-
edge one’s ancestors. It’s just an excellent
aesthetic protocol.
The Struts giddily keep the Brian
Connolly momentum going on Young &
continues on page 44
24 illinoisentertainer.com november 2018