Glenn Hughes
From Now On...

Let me tell you about the white man with the black voice, The Voice of Rock, who alongside Coverdale on 2 albums, and Bolin on a third, "refreshed" the established sound of the Deep Purple thanks to unique vocal talents and a very funky bass style, as well as a musical background that knew how to break free from the rigid canons of Purple-esque hard rock, enriching it with injections of funk and soul that only made that sound less "heavy" and even more varied. Listened to today, those three albums ("Burn", "Stormbringer", and "Come Taste the Band", of course) still sound incredibly fresh and relevant, perhaps even more than "In Rock": but this, of course, is a completely personal opinion.

After debuting with Trapeze ("Medusa" and "You Are the Music, We Are Just the Band" are 2 noteworthy albums, for those who don't know them) and having, as mentioned, played in none other than the Purple, with whom he achieved global success, Glenn Hughes, in the wake of the band's breakup and the premature death of his friend Tommy Bolin (the young and talented guitarist whom the Deep turned to replace Blackmore, whose epic and neoclassical style was no longer in sync with the band's new sound) found himself having to reorganize his career. Thus began a period more and more troubled and difficult for him, characterized by excesses (in drug use), and failures of projects never born or dead at birth, as well as some exceptional collaborations (I'm thinking of the album with Pat Thrall), striking (see the album with Tony Iommi's Sabbath, "The Seventh Star"), or just decent ("Run for Cover" by Gary Moore), but all too often fleeting, never stable and lasting (I'll also mention, for completeness and the value of the works, the super project Phenomena and the album "Face the Truth" by ex-Europe John Norum).

From this long period of crisis, even internal, which our hero would remember in the lyrics of future albums as a suffering that precedes personal rebirth, Glenn Hughes emerges detoxed and armed with good intentions, and after recording his solo debut in 1993, "Blues", in 1994, he signs this masterpiece that banishes the ghosts of the past, an album that includes some gems that not even the most optimistic of fans dared to hope for anymore.

"From Now On..." contains 12 tracks plus the cover of "Burn", taken from his past with Deep Purple and sung with such power and class as to make even the original interpreter, Mr. Coverdale, pale. In this album, his brilliant voice, with truly unique timbre, recognizable among thousands, is free to express its full versatility, embellishing with tones now warm and dreamy, now sharp, extremely sharp (and here he really is second to none), now bold, beautiful songs very different from each other, keeping in mind that this is an album of AOR and polished hard rock and that albums of this genre do not always present great variety of styles within them, while here we find this 80s genre reinterpreted in an original and always different key.

From the spirited and sparkling start of "Pickin' Up the Pieces" we immediately understand that Glenn's voice is capable of ruling, weaving always spot-on melodies, now speeding up with grit, now slowing down and delivering sweeter parts, because his voice can scratch and then gently touch the heart like no other.

Continuing, we find the paced "Lay My Body Down", with excellent guitar work, and the wonderful "The Only One" (an atmospheric beginning that gives chills, thanks to the purity of his voice, and a sudden acceleration leading to an awe-inspiring choral refrain, worthy of the annals of melodic hard rock).

The following "Why Don’t You Stay" is a slow piece with a chorus refrain once again spot-on, almost gospel; the varied "Walkin' on the Water" and the more tense hard rock of "The Liar" lead us to "Into the Void", the longest (6:25 duration) and most experimental track on the album.

The sweet and ultra-melodic AOR of "You Were Always There" is followed by the slow bluesy "If You Don't Want Me To", which at the end, after a warm guitar solo, presents Hughes's unique vocalizations.

At this point, and we are at tracks 10 and 11, two pieces come that are annals of AOR: "Devil in You" (with riffs and refrains that instantly stamp themselves in your mind) and especially "Homeland", a masterpiece in Van Halen style - Sammy Hagar era - with an ascending structure (as and perhaps better than "The Only One") built to measure to lead Glenn's voice from a relaxed start to an incredible, lethal, fierce refrain, which in the end climbs higher and higher with a stunning solo and voice increasingly high and energetic, all over a base of keyboards and stopped riffs. Applause.

The album's finale is dedicated to the introspective title track, which seems to want to reassure us about the right path taken "from now on" by Glenn, and, as mentioned, to Burn.

After this album, Glenn Hughes would almost never make a misstep again, stringing together a series of beautiful albums and participating in a multitude of others' works (I point out, for example and quality, the beautiful Nostradamus by Niccolò Kotzev or the Voodoo Hill and The Cage projects of our Dario Mollo, but also the 2 albums with J.L. Turner).

I close with an anecdote: I am Ligurian and have had the opportunity to see Glenn Hughes live 3 times in recent years in my region, on the occasion of small, poorly advertised, even free concerts in improbable locations: well, his voice is always frightening for the beauty and power it expresses, but above all his love for what he does was confirmed with passionate and professional performances and a love for the public that the meager reception accorded to him by my compatriots "festival-goers" did not deserve...

A true Artist. A voice given by the Gods.