Montrose - Montrose

Growing up in Southeast Iowa, one of the most ubiquitous hard rock albums you could find on Saturday night was the debut album from Montrose. I’d only heard bits and pieces of the album on the stray FM signals that worked their way up the banks of Mississippi river from St. Louis or down from the Quad Cities.

Those signals were few and far between, so much of the Montrose legend came from rock and roll uncles and older brothers. And it only one listen of it before you understood why it was so revered.

I think the only reason Montrose isn’t noted more is because it came during a time, 1973, in which everyone seemed to be releasing albums of incredible consistency. Montrose was a just another band from Southern California with Sunset Strip chops and a young unknown Sammy Hagar fronting an upstart guitarist as its namesake.

This album would turn out to be the best record that either one of them would do in what stands as pretty lengthy careers for both.

Ronnie Montrose was best know as one of the guitarists of the Edgar Winter Group’s They Only Come Out At Night release. Montrose also worked his way into the Herbie Hancock band previously, and he counts Tupelo Honey as one of his credits.

Warner Brothers records viewed Montrose as a potential star and put him together with producer Ted Templeton for the major label debut.

Clocking in with eight songs in just over a half-hour, Montrose is the perfect training manual for future SoCal hard rockers, including Van Halen, who mirrored much of the record for their own debut.

It is here where Sammy Hagar introduces some of the first entries of his endlessly questionable lyrical choices, and it is here where another guitarist of enormous talent saves his ass again.

Montrose possesses none of the flash of a Eddie Van Halen, but he comes from a school of hard working guitarist who starts with a few blues chords and ends up with otherworldly talent.

“Space Station No. 5” should be required listening for any self-serving bar band thinking of introducing their own material into the set. And if that band is of any merit, it should sound just as convincing as Montrose’s version of Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight” that’s found on side two.

“Rock The Nation,” “Bad Motor Scooter,” and the closer “Make It Last” also feature memorable riffs and themes that qualify for rock and roll’s most anthemic performances of all time. Why Montrose-and even Hagar, to some extent-couldn’t move beyond this benchmark is one of the hard rock’s biggest mysteries while becoming the pair’s own fuel for future disappointment.

Ronnie Montrose R.I.P.

Ronnie Montrose died today at the age of 64.

Growing up, we’d joke around that his band Montrose was actually named for the town of Montrose, Iowa. It’s an odd town nestled on the bank of the Mississippi river where the chief export is crystal meth.

I’m being mean, but you get the idea of the kind of weird I’m talking about when I drawn these kind of examples to this town of a thousand or so residents.

But I’m being honest when I tell you that Montrose (the band) found their initial audience not with Ronnie’s previous work, or even in the talent of then unknown Sammy Hagar, but instead with a name recognition with the small town of the same name and some awesome music found within Montrose’s debut.

The real shit of Ronnie’s passing today is that you never heard of him. I think that debut album did go gold, which means that it did game some bit of notoriety during its time, but it was never the success that it should have been and not as much credit for Ronnie Montrose is given as it should have been.

You could even go on to suggest that a band like Van Halen wouldn’t have been possible without Montrose paving the way. The two were obviously different and Montrose may not have been able to achieve the same kind of success that V.H. had, but there are linear similarities aside from the Sammy Hagar connect and the use of producer Ted Templeman.

It’s unclear how he died at this point-most outlets are suggesting that he succumbed to prostate cancer-but some of them are also hinting at other things, referencing things like “personal demons” and the nature of how his life ended.

There are hints that Ronnie was more of a right-winger than most typical rock and rollers and even Hagar has suggested that Montrose could have been a lot bigger than they were had Ronnie been easier to work with.

Regardless of all of this, he left us with a perfect hard rock debut and a catalog of unrealized potential. But more than anything, he left us with another chance to explore his body of work and grant him the credit he deserves.