HOLLYWOOD BRATS CD Promo early ’70s glam-rockers. Pre- Hanoi Rocks / New York Dolls. Greatest UK pre-punk band! Check audio + video review!

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Hollywood Brats had a fascinating history. Those glam-rockers formed their band as Andrew Matheson and the Brats in 1971 and disbanded in 1974, with their sole album, “Grown Up Wrong” getting a posthumous release in Norway only in 1975; selling only a handful of copies. Then the story gets interesting! In 1979, Cherry Red reissued the album as “Hollywood Brats” where it presumably sold somewhat better. Their non-gender switched cover of “And Then He Kissed Me”

Hollywood Brats Hollywood Brats
Label: Cherry Red CMRED 106
Format: CD, Album
Country: UK
Released: 1994
Genre: Rock, Punk, Glam

Track list:
1 Chez Maximes 3:47
2 Another School Day 3:13
3 Nightmare 3:47
4 Empty Bottles 0:41
5 Courtesan 3:56
6 Then He Kissed Me 3:14 cover  Written-By Spector/Greenwich/Barry*
7 Tumble With Me 3:55
8 Zurich 17 3:05
9 Southern Belles 2:43
10 Drowning Sorrows 3:26
11 Sick On You 5:09

  • Total length: 36:58

Phonographic Copyright (p) Cherry Red
Copyright (c) Cherry Red
Recorded At Olympic Studios

Bass Wayne Manor
Drums Lou Sparks*
Guitar, Vocals Brady*
Piano, Organ, Acoustic Guitar, Vocals Casino Steel
Producer Hollywood Brats
Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Percussion Andrew Matheson
Written-By Matheson* (tracks: 1 to 5, 7 to 11), Steel* (tracks: 1, 3 to 5, 7, 10, 11)

Recorded at Olympic Studios, London, England, December 1973, January 1974

Barcode: 5 013929 110625

1994 UK CD reissue of 1973 album (originally released in 1980). Formed in 1972 the Hollywood Brats were Punk long before the term was invented. Dressed in make-up & womens blouses they sought to shock, whilst making the music they wanted to make. The packaging for this CD has been lovingly assembled with biographies from both vocalist Andrew Matheson & guitarist Brady plus all the lyrics. The digital mastering was undertaken by keyboard player Casino Steel.
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5.0 out of 5 stars absolutely real glam — frill, bite, and guitar,
You will not hear a better example of what glam, even as opposed to glitter, represents. The Hanoi Rocks guys are familiar with this, of course, and you will hear the similar New York Dolls vein, but this is prettier (and more cunning) and absolutely catchy, actually quite pleasant. “Sick on You,” “And Then He Kissed Me,” and “Tumble With Me,” the titles alone say it all. The musicianship is here, and so is the camp…an intense romp.
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5.0 out of 5 stars BUY THIS ALBUM RIGHT NOW.,
I was eagerly awaiting this album, and when it arrived in the mail today I quickly popped it in my stereo. Holy Cow. From the first tinkering of the piano on the intro to the last note of the final track, I was in awe. Did the Brats rip off the New York Dolls? Who knows. While the Brats can be compared to the Dolls on many levels, there is a punk like snottiness to the Brats that isn’t as obvious with the Dolls. There is not one weak track on this CD. Buy this CD immediately. This is rock and roll.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Absolute groin kicking, cheek/… kissin’ muzak,
Ok a lot has been written about The Brats, they have become icons of a music age long gone, but not forgotten. Often compared to the New York Dolls, no way, the Brats have their own style, more raunchy, punchy and grab yer by the balls. Yes they were Punk (if thats the term) before it was invented and long before Johnny Rotten & Co were learning joined-up writing! Mathesons vocals come across as a mixture of Ray Davis and Jagger with a hint of someone else whos name escapes me. Some of the high notes (and bum notes) don’t quite make it, but along with the rough n’ ready mix it adds to the charm! Without doubt the driving force of the Brats is guitarist Brady, a true talent slashing and raunchy at the same time subtle guitar playing but showing no mercy. The rhythm section (for you dumbos out there, that’s bass and drums) drive it all to the limit. Listening to Brats songs covered by other artists I can only say forget it, the originals are best. The Boys rendition of Sick On You is like a flaccid member in comparison!
This album is unique, it should be in every ones collection.
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In England 1972 the Hollywood Brats were shopping at thrift stores for huge platform boots, feather boas, women’s blouses, applying tons of makeup and nail polish and banging out fast paced rockers. Meanwhile over the water The New York Dolls were doing the same. Of course the Dolls went down in history getting all the plaudits and a good record deal with Mercury before royally fucking up. The Brats however got nothing except a record deal with some Mafiosi care of Keith Moon who then refused to release their record. Unsurprisingly the Brats aren’t well known except to the punk cognoscenti.

Apart from singer Andrew Matheson (who came over from Canada in 1971 to form a band) there was ES Brady (Guitar) Wayne Manor (Bass) Casino Steel (Piano), Louis Sparks (drums). While the Dolls built a scene around the Mercer Arts Centre and Max’s and were getting publicity The Brats had no chance building anything similar in the UK.

Andrew Matheson. The Brats were always being booed offstage – sometimes even beaten up by all these people who only ever wanted to hear Barry White or Billy Paul. They never wanted fast rock ‘n’ roll music…We went round every record company, even the small ones and all they kept saying was that rock ‘n’ roll music was dead and that that kind of raunchy music would never come back.*

Though aware of the Dolls, the Brats didn’t set out to copy them though bands had obvious similarities, visually and sonically. All the songs were written by Matheson and Steel, bar their cover of ‘Then He Kissed Me’. In those days a man singing lyrics like those were outrageous.

With no takers The Brats signed the worst possible record deal and recorded an album in 1973. The LP was produced by Matheson and featured only one slow song, ‘Drowning Sorrows’. which is a like the Stones doing ‘Love In Vain’. The rest of the album was fast rockers. Also on the album was the pre punk classic sick On You.’

Amazon review: This is the way British Glam should have been headed. Comparisons with the Dolls are fair enough but these tracks stand up on their own and sound suitably trashy and melodic. Anyone who enjoys the trashing punky glam that the Dolls, Hanoi Rocks and others play will love this … with an especially British tinge.

With little media interest and their record company refusing to release anything the band split acrimoniously but not before Steel and Matheson stole the tapes.

The splendid Hollywood Brats in November 1973, with frontman and author Andrew Matheson, centre front


July last year saw the publication of Sick on You: The Disastrous Story of Britain’s Great Lost Punk BandAndrew Matheson’s chronicle of his band The Hollywood Brats. The essential book was impossible to put down. It took in picaresque encounters with Sixties pop star and songwriter-turned impresario Chris Andrews, Andrew Loog Oldham, Keith Moon, Cliff Richard, a pre-Sex Pistols Malcolm McLaren and more.

July last year saw the publication of Sick on You: The Disastrous Story of Britain’s Great Lost Punk BandAndrew Matheson’s chronicle of his band The Hollywood Brats. The essential book was impossible to put down. It took in picaresque encounters with Sixties pop star and songwriter-turned impresario Chris Andrews, Andrew Loog Oldham, Keith Moon, Cliff Richard, a pre-Sex Pistols Malcolm McLaren and more.

At the book’s core was a band convinced of its greatness, yet painted so excessive and ham-fisted that they were bound to fail. The Hollywood Brats formed as The Queen in 1971 and fell apart during 1974. They thought they were destined to be as big as The Rolling Stones. Instead, they became London’s bargain-basement New York Dolls, whose name they had plagiarised. Sick on You was hilarious and if not quite the rock’n’roll Rake’s Progress was certainly a cautionary tale in how not to do it. But the glorious failure of four decades ago is today’s triumph. History can indeed be written by losers. It’s also made by the band’s former frontman, a writer of rare flair.

The Hollywood Brats Sick on YouWhat the book lacked was the actual music. And one year on from it hitting the shops comes Sick on You, a new, expanded 2CD edition of the album they never issued during their lifetime. Although The Hollywood Brats recorded at the swanky Rolling Stones-patronised Olympic Studios from December 1973 to January 1974, no one wanted the release the results. After the band folded, the album leaked out in Norway in 1975 where it was credited to Andrew Matheson & the Brats and titled Grown up Wrong after the Stones’ B-side of the same name. It sold in the low hundreds. Copies now fetch upwards of £350.

Although few people had heard of The Hollywood Brats as they unsteadily lurched through the London of the first half of the Seventies, those in their path were deeply affected. Eighteen months before The Clash took shape, Mick Jones was so smitten with the extinct band he adopted the name of their guitarist Brady. Jones’ rehearsal-only band The London SS was a direct outgrowth of The Hollywood Brats. When punk came along, the Brats’ keyboard player Casino Steel cropped up in The Boys, whose repertoire included his former band’s “Sick on You”, “Tumble with Me” and their cover version of The Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me”. The Boys sounded like a speedier Hollywood Brats, though no one knew this in 1977 as barely anyone had heard the earlier band.

The Hollywood BratsIn due course – mostly thanks to a 1978 article in the monthly magazine Zigzag – The Hollywood Brats were identified as integral to Brit-punk’s family tree.   Matheson hadn’t vanished. He made a solo album in 1979. In 1978, his former fellow Brat Brady had also resurfaced to play with Wreckless Eric. The disjointed pieces united to ensure their old band had a living legacy and its musical aspect crops up again here.  The publication of Sick on You has moved the goalposts. As a critical success, the book will have opened new ears to The Hollywood Brats. One thing needs making clear: they were not a punk rock band. Their attitude may have been snotty and don’t-care punky, but they were a rough-and-ready Rolling Stones knock-off that also ripped-off The New York Dolls big time. In other words, they were terrific.

Andrew Matheson & the Brats Grown up WrongSongs like “Courtesan”, “Empty Bottles” and “Drowning Sorrows” are so indebted to the Exile on Main Street Rolling Stones that if they were all The Hollywood Brats were about, the band would be seen in retrospect as a glam-inclined Faces. It’s the swaggering Dolls-style songs which make the case. The jagged, absurdist “Sick on You” is a fine starting point, as is the stomping “Chez Maximes” (a rewrite of the Dolls’ “Personality Crisis”) but it’s the hook-filled “Zurich 17” which proves The Hollywood Brats could have found an audience if they had not been the self-sabotaging buffoons of Matheson’s account. This was pop as such.

The Hollywood Brats did not burn brightly: their entire existence took place in the shade. It couldn’t have been otherwise. But their monumental chutzpah was underpinned by an unreleased album which really did justify the subsequent interest. On its own, Matheson’s book is an extravagant, riveting memoir of excess. But without what his band recorded, it would have been hubris. Engaging, entertaining and essential hubris, but hubris nonetheless. For those without it, which version of The Hollywood Brats album to buy is a matter of choice but it may as well be this latest edition.


While the New York Dolls were getting beer bottles tossed at ‘em in the Bowery, across the pond in Blighty, an eerily similar quintet of He-Venuses in Faux-Furs were suffering through much the same abuse. As frontman (and transplanted Canuck) Andrew Matheson explains: “We simply couldn’t stomach what was happening in music at the time. It was all denim and drum solos. Where was the excitement, the danger, the outrageous clothes, the aggression, the glamor that made rock ‘n’ roll the erotic narcotic we craved?” To answer his question, he and fellow lace ‘n frills aficionados Brady (guitars), Wayne Manor (bass), Lou Sparks (drums) and keyboardist Casino Steel (more about him later) donned frilly lace and lipstick and set about getting their lamé-covered asses kicked. They shuffled their platform heels in earnest in 1972 as The Queen, but a certain band with a recent hit single objected to that particular moniker as you can well imagine. Thus, they decided to be mere Brats instead.

They garnered the attention of none other than the Loon Keith Moon who got ‘em a chance to sign on the dotted line. The resulting recording, originally called “Grown Up Wrong,” for one reason or another was only released in Scandinavia at the time (chances are good that they were seen as a tax write-off by the very Good Fellas who ran their record company). ‘Tis a shame as their brazen brand of sleazery holds up every bit as well as the Dolls’ debut LP. Truth be told, upon first hearing this opus, I gasped in amazement that two bands who were unlikely to be aware of the other managed to sound so uncannily alike. It’s all here– the malformed Keef cops, the buzzing amplifiers, the pouty vox and the Spector Girl Group aspirations. Speaking of which, they cover the Shirelles’ “And Then He Kissed Me”– without changing the gender (something Paul Stanley didn’t have the “balls” to do).

Casino Steel would make another grab at the brass ring. Forming a songwriting partnership with Matt Dangerfield after the Brats’ dissolution, they would soon become Pop-Punk stalwarts The Boys, who received some modest chart action during the Punk Years (remember “Brickfield Nights?” What a catchy fuckin’ song that was!). They also recorded an inferior version of “Sick on You,” a Brats number that y’all can check out here in its original incarnation– wreckless proto-punk at its best!

They were years ahead of their time in 1974

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