Forty Year Friday (1983) – ZEBRA “ZEBRA”

It’s Forty Year Friday again. For more information on this series, please read the opening paragraph of the first post, which featured Never Surrender by Triumph.

Posted on my Facebook page Feb. 28, 2013:

This week’s Thirty-Year Thursday album is the self-titled debut by hard rock trio ZEBRA. Released in March 1983, it was one of the fastest selling debut albums in the history of Atlantic Records. They’re best known for the Zeppelin-sounding “Who’s Behind The Door” and “Tell Me What You Want,” two excellent hard rock songs that have stood the test of time (at least to my ears). They’ve only released 4 studio albums, all of which are excellent, and “Zebra” is probably their best. I’ve seen them live numerous times and was friendly with them for a brief period in the early ’90s. They always put on an amazing show. Not sure how their records would sound to someone who wasn’t around in the ’80s, but I still think they’re a very underrated band, and this album is the equal of most hard rock/metal of that era. Here’s one of many highlights, “As I Said Before.” Happy 30th birthday to “Zebra.” The years have been kind to you.

I also wrote about this album in my Satur-debut series in 2019, which itself referenced a previous appearance in my Great Out Of The Gate series. Needless to say I love this band and this album. Here’s what I wrote about it:

From the “They Should Have Been Huge” file comes Zebra, the mighty trio from New Orleans that formed in 1975 as a hard/prog rock cover band and finally released their eponymous debut album 8 years later, along the way finding a second home base in Long Island, New York (which is probably why New York rock stations were so supportive of them). As I wrote in the fifth Great Out Of The Gate post (which you can read below), at the time it was one of the fastest-selling debuts in the history of Atlantic Records, achieving Gold status and cracking the Top 30. They weren’t able to sustain that commercial success in spite of two more excellent studio albums in the ’80s, both of which I’ve mentioned in my Wait Until The Summer’s Gone and Thirty Year Thursday posts. They may not be a household name but the original trio of Randy Jackson, Felix Hanemann & Guy Gelso continues to blow away enthusiastic crowds, showing no signs of slowing down, with set lists featuring most of the songs from Zebra.

From GREAT OUT OF THE GATE Part 5:

In the years following the 1980 demise of Led Zeppelin, any artist treading similar musical ground would get airplay on rock radio stations. Billy Squier was an early beneficiary but Zebra had the best shot at becoming huge. The incredibly gifted trio of singer/guitarist/songwriter Randy Jackson, bassist Felix Hanemann and drummer Guy Gelso delivered one of the fastest-selling debut albums in the history of Atlantic Records, combining Zeppelin’s dynamic hard rock with the keyboard & synth textures of progressive rock, ticking all of my musical boxes at the time. Opening track “Tell Me What You Want” is straight-up hard rock, and “Who’s Behind The Door,” a Top 10 hit on the Rock chart, blended the mysticism of Yes’ Jon Anderson with Zeppelin-inspired music. “One More Chance” and “As I Said Before” are killer tracks that might have been more successful a few years later during the “hair metal” era, but it’s the two epics that really make this a special record: “Take Your Fingers From My Hair” and “The La La Song” are showcases for their instrumental abilities and knack for clever arrangements. They never overstay their welcome over the course of the 6- or 7-minute running times. Throughout it all, Jackson’s multi-octave range is one of the key aspects to Zebra’s sound that separates them from their contemporaries. There are three other studio albums in their discography, as well as an excellent live album, but as much as I love just about everything they’ve released, their debut is a classic that still sounds fresh to my ears all these years later.

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