Graham Bonnet Band – ‘Lost In Hollywood Again’

(Frontiers Records)

Live albums are a funny old business. When they work, they capture lightning in a bottle: the danger, the sweat, the sense that something could go wrong at any moment but somehow doesn’t. When they don’t work, they feel like contractual obligations pressed onto vinyl, existing mainly so fans can say they own it. Lost In Hollywood Again, recorded live at the Whiskey a Go Go, unfortunately falls squarely into the latter camp.

Graham Bonnet is, of course, a legendary name. Rainbow, Alcatrazz, Michael Schenker Group, the bloke’s CV could knock out most singers half his age. There’s no denying his place in hard rock history, and on paper a live album from the Graham Bonnet Band at the Whiskey sounds like a no-brainer. Iconic venue, veteran frontman, a band tight enough to do the material justice. Sadly, the end result never really rises above “perfectly serviceable.”

The first thing you notice is the sound. It’s not bad, exactly, but it’s oddly flat for a club as famous as the Whiskey a Go Go. You expect grit, crowd noise bleeding into the mics, that sense of being crushed up against the stage with a beer sloshing down your wrist. Instead, everything feels a little too polite, a little too controlled. The crowd is there, but mostly as a distant roar between songs, like they’ve been mixed in as an afterthought rather than an active participant in the night.

Bonnet’s voice, to his credit, is still strong. He doesn’t quite hit the sky-scraping highs of his late ’70s prime, but he knows his limits and works within them. There’s a professionalism to his performance that’s admirable, if not especially thrilling. Songs are sung correctly, on pitch, and with conviction – but rarely with that extra spark that makes you sit up and think, this is why this needed to be live.

The setlist is solid enough, leaning heavily on Graham Bonnet Band material with a few nods to the classics. And that’s part of the problem. While the newer songs are competently written and played, they don’t have the built-in emotional punch that might justify revisiting them in a live setting. Without the benefit of nostalgia or reinvention, they often blur together, especially when heard back-to-back over the course of a full album.

The band itself is tight, sometimes too tight. Every riff lands where it should, every solo hits its marks, and every rhythm change is executed with military precision. That’s impressive from a technical standpoint, but rock ‘n’ roll isn’t supposed to feel like it’s being run through a checklist. There are moments where you wish someone would overplay, rush the tempo, or take a solo somewhere unexpected, anything to inject a bit of danger into the proceedings.

Ironically, the Whiskey a Go Go setting works against the album. This is a venue steeped in history, the kind of place where you expect sweat dripping from the ceiling and amps pushed just a bit too hard. Yet Lost In Hollywood Again never quite taps into that mythology. It feels like a solid show on a decent night, not a performance that had to be documented for future generations.

That’s really the core issue here. Nothing on this album is actively bad. No trainwreck vocals, no glaring mistakes, no embarrassing crowd interactions. But there’s also nothing that demands repeat listens. If you’ve seen the Graham Bonnet Band live, this won’t surprise you. If you haven’t, it won’t convince you that you’ve missed out on something special.

Live albums need a reason to exist. They need reinterpretation, raw energy, or at least a sense that the band is feeding off the audience in real time. Lost In Hollywood Again feels more like a souvenir than a statement, something for completists and die-hard fans rather than casual listeners.

In the end, this is one of those live records that you spin once, nod along, and then quietly shelve. Respectable, competent, and ultimately forgettable. Graham Bonnet remains a rock legend, but legends don’t automatically make legendary live albums. Sometimes, a miss is just a miss and this one lands squarely in that category.

6/10

Essential Track – ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ (Live)

Review by Woody