After taking it in the teeth from two of the '80s greatest young guitar heroes,
Yngwie Malmsteen and
Steve Vai (both of whom performed on but one
Alcatrazz album each, before abandoning ship for greater solo glory), vocalist Graham Bonnett decided to anchor 1986's
Dangerous Games to a slightly less gifted, but much better traveled guitar wiz in the plainly named
Danny Johnson (ex-
Rick Derringer,
Rod Stewart,
Alice Cooper,
Blackfoot, etc.). Unfortunately, ironically, and through no fault of
Johnson's, just when Bonnett regained control of his own group,
Alcatrazz wound up delivering their least distinctive album; more consistent, perhaps, than the previous year's idiosyncratic but frankly song-challenged
Disturbing the Peace (
Steve Vai defined), but also "safer" and utterly subservient to the 1980s' soulless mainstream rock conventions. Rare highlights such as "Ohayo Tokyo," "Only One Woman" (actually a re-recorded tune from Bonnett's first name band,
Marbles), and the title track still saw the singer's passionate delivery rising victorious above the generalized, over-produced blandness (further exacerbated by that synthetic cleanliness and punched-in drums typically used throughout rock's "lost decade"). But, more often than not, utterly faceless fare like "It's My Life" and "That Ain't Nothin'" found Bonnett wallowing in a trough of mechanized AOR alongside his dispirited and long-suffering bandmates: bassist
Gary Shea, drummer
Jan Uvena, and, most tragically of all, keyboardist
Jimmy Waldo, wasting all of that classical training on synthesized sequences a machine could have handled (sorry, Mrs. Waldo). And, for his part, though he certainly had chops to spare,
Johnson only contributed truly scintillating solos to "Undercover," "Blue Boar," and the aforementioned "Ohayo Tokyo" (where he does his best
Brian May impression) -- probably reflecting his selfless sideman's discipline, rather than lack of inspiration. At the end of the day, though, inspiration was exactly what
Dangerous Games lacked most, as it ushered
Alcatrazz towards their ignominious demise in a desperate state of (no doubt record company-assisted) formulaic coma, sounding nothing like the same band responsible for 1983's monumental
No Parole from Rock'n'Roll. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia