Last Exit
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Last Exit is the name of two different musical groups:
Last Exit was a music group composed of Ronnie Pearson (drummer of the Phoenix Jazzmen, who is rumored having been asked by The Beatles to part them before eventually Ringo Starr became their drummer), John Hedley, a well-known guitar player around Newcastle, England, Gerry Richardson, teacher and long time companion of the fourth member of the group, Sting.
The band formed in 1974 and was a major act around Newcastle for some years; even in the time when Sting had first success with The Police Last Exit reunited for a last gig there. Richardson invented the name inspired by the book Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr..
In 1976 the band records some demos in the Pathway Studios in London but it does not seem that there is any LP/CD available; in 1977 Sting quits Last Exit to go to London to enforce his musical career and Last Exit play their last concert in Newcastle.
More information can be found in the Sting Autobiography Broken Music
Last Exit was a free jazz supergroup composed of bass guitarist Bill Laswell, electric guitarist Sonny Sharrock, drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, and saxophonist Peter Brotzmann. They were active in the late 1980s and early 1990s; Sharrock's death in 1994 closed the book on Last Exit.
Last Exit was remarkable for their musical ferocity, matched by confrontational attitudes, toured with a Black Flag-like tenacity.
Their music was largely impovised; John Dugan writes "Granted, one person's free improvisation is another's tuneless chaos, but Last Exit, due primarily to the skill of its individuals, only infrequently fell off the precipice into the netherworld of arty wanking ... The playing is intricate, wildly adventurous, frequently funny, and, perhaps most important, a tribute to musical democracy in action."[1]
Far louder than most jazz bands (even than most free jazz groups) Last Exit found a modest following among some more open-minded heavy metal fans like James Davis, Art Director of Privateer Press in Seattle, WA. Greg Kot writes that they broght a level of "volume and violence that makes most rock bands sound tame."[2]
The band is documented by Iron Path, their only studio album (enhanced by Laswell's typical studio atmopherics) which found them somewhat more restrained; and many live recordings.