The BirTh Of The mcauley sChenker Group
“MSG hit the stage like a hairdresser’s nightmare!” Review of their Whitesnake support at Wembley
It was in the early 80s that Irish singer Robin McAuley was first offered an audition for MSG. He declined, for two reasons. One, he remained committed to the band Grand Prix. “I’m not one for jumping ship,” he says. “I didn’t think it was an honourable thing to do.”
Two, he was wary of ‘Mad Michael’. “We all knew the stories – nightmarish stories. Did I want to be part of that? Not particularly.”
Four years later, after Grand Prix fizzled out, a second approach from Schenker was accepted. “I wanted a singer who would give me stability,” Schenker says. “And that was Robin.”
What McAuley had not anticipated was equal billing in this new venture. “I wasn’t ready for the tag ‘McAuley Schenker Group’. That was entirely Michael’s idea.” Schenker says simply: “I was making it an equal partnership. And his name started with an ‘M’, so why not?”
The first McAuley Schenker Group album, Perfect Timing, was released in 1987, at the height of hair metal. As McAuley recalls: “There was this whole new spectrum of bands – Winger, Warrant, Ratt, even Whitesnake was reinvented for the purpose of MTV – and we fell into that time period. We had the power ballads, the commercial songs…”
They also had the hair – in McAuley’s case, the mother of all mullets. “All ten feet of it!” he laughs. “I couldn’t get through doorways. It was pretty ridiculous. And Michael’s hair extensions – he looked like Sitting Bull! I remember when we played Wembley with Whitesnake, one review said: ‘MSG hit the stage like a hairdresser’s nightmare!’”
It was with the second album, Save Yourself, in 1989, that they came closest to major success.
The ballad Anytime – “the lovey-dovey song”, as McAuley calls it – was a minor hit in the US.
But then, in 1991, Schenker formed the shortlived supergroup Contraband with L.A. Guns guitarist Tracii Guns, Ratt drummer Bobby Blotzer, Vixen bassist Share Pedersen and Shark Island singer Richard Black. And while Schenker reunited with McAuley for a third album, titled M.S.G., its release in 1992 came after the ‘big bang’ of grunge. “Nobody wanted eighties music,” McAuley says. “You couldn’t give yourself away. So the dinosaurs went away to graze.”
McAuley took time out from the music business. “I got married, and we had twin boys.”
Schenker also changed course: “I said: ‘I’m done. I’m doing an acoustic solo album.’ I wanted to be completely out of the rock scene.”