The Georgia Satellites
Ultimate
TEarthy southern rockers’ first three albums, now laden with extra tracks.
hey came and went in an instant. In 1986, Atlanta’s Georgia Satellites reached No.2 in the United States with the single Keep Your Hands To Yourself, as sizzling a slab of cheery southern rock as they come. The attendant self-titled album went platinum, and it seemed like the missing link between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Aerosmith had been found. Three years and no hits later, third album In The Land Of Salvation & Sin stumbled to No.130 in the US chart and the game was up, except for a current reincarnation that features only one original member, guitarist Rick Richards.
What happened? Ultimate comprises the core line-up’s three albums, all for Elektra, plus 19 live tracks, B-sides and barely tweaked remixes, and suggests that while never world beaters the Georgia Satellites deserve more than footnote status. In one sense it’s easy to see why they never took hold. Dan Baird’s voice was appealingly gritty, Richards’s guitar always soared and the engine room never faltered, but the good-time albums are essentially rewrites of each other. The band could hardly have conquered the world when their own was so small.
But dig a little deeper and a more complex picture emerges. At their best – on the debut’s Railroad Steel, second album Open All Night’s Cool Inside and Salvation & Sin’s Bottle O’ Tears – they were a turbo-charged rhythm machine licensed to thrill. And then there was their claim to immortality: Terry Anderson’s Battleship Chains. That swaggering, irresistible follow-up to Keep Your Hands To Yourself sounded like a massive hit back then, and the passage of time has only enhanced its charms. It scraped to a baffling No.86 in the US, and at No.44 was their biggest UK hit.
And they did gently evolve. For all that Baird dismisses the rushed Open All Night in the sleeve notes (“I hadn’t written many good songs… I suffered from head up rectum syndrome”), it features Faces keyboard player Ian McLagan and is a stepping stone to In The Land Of Salvation & Sin, which also feature McLagan and which both Baird and Richards agree is the Satellites’ best work. They’re right, too. The twinkling, almost bluegrassy Another Chance should have been the signpost to better musical days. It wasn’t to be, but the Georgia Satellites have nothing to be ashamed of.
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