Having spent the 1970s taking UFO and Scorpions to the top of the heavy metal pantheon, Michael Schenker chose to take the 1980s into his own hands. Enter MSG, or Michael Schenker Group. While mainly serving as a solo vessel for Schenker, the same way Rainbow did for Ritchie Blackmore, MSG featured an all star cast of heavy hitters. Cozy Powell, Don Airey, Paul Raymond, Graham Bonnet, Simon Phillips: The list goes “On and on and on and on and on”. By the mid 1980s, poodle haired crooner Robin McAuley joined the band, transforming them into McAuley Schenker Group. For simplicity’s sake, we’re including both incarnations of MSG in this Top 10. The group is still going strong today. Their 14th album, Immortal, comes out this Friday, January 29. Now, without further ado, are you “Armed and Ready” for this list? We are!
10. “Into the Arena”
MSG instrumentals typically showcase blistering, melodic guitar solos. After all, the band is called Michael Schenker Group. What gives “Into the Arena” an edge over other classic instrumentals like “Ulcer” and “Captain Nemo” is that it showcases the entire group. It’s a testament to the unbelievable talent Schenker surrounded himself with in the 1980s, many of whom still surround him to this day in Michael Schenker Fest. Your air guitar playlist isn’t complete without this one…or your air drum playlist…or your air keyboard playlist.
9. “Love is Not a Game”
I’m probably in the minority here, but I’ve always had a spot in my heart for McAuley Schenker Group. It’s easy to dismiss this chapter in Schenker’s career as a shameless jump upon the pop metal bandwagon. I mean, for crying out loud, during this era he started wearing hair extensions. Hair extensions! But it doesn’t matter how much hairspray, bling, or tinny 80s drums the record execs pushed to polish his image. At the end of the day, Schenker is still Schenker, as evidenced by our #9, “Love is Not a Game”. Even your run of the mill Bon Jovi flavored ditty wasn’t safe from the Mad Axeman’s lethal leads.
8. “Anytime”
Coming in at #8 is the biggest hit of MSG’s career, “Anytime”. This mega melodic power ballad received considerable airplay on MTV’s Headbangers Ball and peaked at #5 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. That’s a pretty big deal for a guy who had been in the game for close to 2 decades at this point! Little did Schenker know we’d still be waving our lighters to this one as we celebrate his 50th anniversary.
7. “The Dogs of War”
Built to Destroy is an overlooked record, though I understand why. It came right off the heels of MSG’s finest hour, Assault Attack. And if we put these two albums side to side, well, Built to Destroy doesn’t even come close. One’s a full blown heavy metal masterpiece. The other teases the hard rock/AOR sound that was to come for Schenker, though done not nearly as competently as it would be with McAuley. With all that said, Built to Destroy features one of the most underrated songs in the MSG catalog, “The Dogs of War”. It’s as heavy and tough as they come, with a vocal from Gary Barden that begs the question, “Did you miss me?”
6. “Dancer”
I will never for the life of me understand how this wasn’t a Top 40 hit worldwide. From the song structure to the singer himself (Graham Bonnet), “Dancer” is cut from the same cloth as such Rainbow smash hits like “Since You Been Gone” and “All Night Long”. Perhaps the Chrysalis marketing department consisted of a bunch of braindead neanderthals? That must be it. There’s no other reason “Dancer” couldn’t have crossed over and torn up the AM airwaves alongside Judas Priest’s “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'” and Scorpions’ “No One Like You” that same year.
5. “Armed and Ready”
This, my friends, is how you open up an album. No ominous buildups. No acoustic “calm before the storm”. No spoke word prologue. Schenker goes straight for the jugular with the nastiest riff of 1980 to not come out of the NWOBHM. To quote Barden in the first verse, “If you don’t approve, you can use the door.” Amen.
4. “Save Yourself”
McAuley Schenker Group wasn’t all about sugar coated, radio friendly rockers. No, sometimes they’d throw you a curveball, like the title track to their second album, “Save Yourself”. The song starts with a neoclassical tinged intro from Schenker, before revving into overdrive and taking no prisoners. I’d never take McAuley for being a “tough guy”, but this song is pretty damn convincing in making me believe otherwise.
3. “Lost Horizons”
If “Armed and Ready” is how you open an album, “Lost Horizons” is how you close it. I don’t care how cliché it sounds. Every time I listen to this song, I get goosebumps from beginning to end. Has any other guitarist outside of Gary Moore been able to balance heaviness and soul so flawlessly? I think not. Feel free to prove me wrong in the comments.
2. “Samurai”
An MSG song where Schenker isn’t the highlight is about as rare as a total eclipse. Yet such a rarity makes it all the way to #2 on this list. Don’t get me wrong. I envision myself treading slowly, sword in hand, to that proto-chug riff (Did I really just type that?) just as much as the next person. But the icing on the cake is Graham Bonnet’s immaculate vocal performance, in which he harmonizes with himself! Because the only thing better than one Graham Bonnet on a track is two Graham Bonnets!
- “Assault Attack”
Speaking of Graham Bonnet, our #1 features possibly the finest performance of his career. For nearly 40 years, “Assault Attack” has been remade, redone, and reimagined by metal bands all over the globe. And guess what? No singer has yet come close to the original. If anything, it’s one of those songs that singers always butcher like “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “My Way”. Anyways, enough about Bonnet. Let’s talk about the rest of this amazing band.
There’s no “shredding” per se on this track. Just a gargantuan riff and a gentle, mesmerizing interlude. For most 80s metal guitarists, the lack of a full blown solo would be a death sentence. For Michael Schenker, it was just another day’s work. It may be lonely at the top, but joining him and Bonnet were the former Sensational Alex Harvey Band rhythm section of Chris Glen (bass) and Ted McKenna (drums). This thunderous rhythm section rounded out what was truly the finest incarnation of MSG.
While Glen and McKenna would stick around a bit longer, Bonnet was soon out of the band due to an incident of indecent exposure. Who knows what could’ve been for this lineup had Graham been able to contain himself…literally. But instead of lamenting about what could’ve been, I’ll be grateful for what was and is one of the greatest traditional metal albums of all time, Assault Attack.