Lucifer's Friend
| Lucifer's Friend | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Hamburg, Germany |
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| Years active |
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| Labels | |
| Associated acts | |
| Website | lucifersfriend |
| Members |
John Lawton Peter Hesslein Dieter Horns Stephan Eggert Jogi Wichmann |
| Past members | Joachim "Addi" Rietenbach Peter Hecht Herbert Bornhold Mike Starrs Adrian Askew Curt Cress Andreas Dicke Udo Dahmen |
Lucifer's Friend is a German hard rock band, formed in Hamburg in 1970 by guitarist Peter Hesslein, singer John Lawton, bassist Dieter Horns, keyboardist Peter Hecht, and drummer Joachim Reitenbach. The group was noted as early practitioners of heavy metal and progressive rock, they also incorporated elements of jazz and fusion into their music, especially in their fourth album Banquet of 1974. Furthermore heavy metal, the band has been cited, too, as one of the pioneers of doom metal, helping to define both genres due to their heavy sound and dark oriented lyrics of their acclaimed debut Lucifer's Friend of 1970, and returning to their roots in 1981 with Mean Machine, although more influenced by speed metal.
In 1969 after a tour with his past band called Stonewall, the British-born singer John Lawton went to live in Germany, there he met Peter Hesslein, Dieter Horns, Peter Hecht, and Joachim Reitenbach, they were members of a band called The German Bonds, the five joined together to record an album under the band name of Asterix in 1970 and soon they changed their name to Lucifer's Friend, continuing their career under that name onwards.
The early albums were released on the Vertigo Records label in Europe, but in the United States those albums were released on a series of small independent record labels (Billingsgate, Janus, Passport), often a year or more after their release in Europe. Thus, despite airplay in some markets and a cult following, the band's albums were hard to find and commercial success eluded them. The band was finally signed to Elektra Records in the late 1970s who released three albums with a more commercial pop oriented sound, but by then interest in the band had waned; those albums were even less successful than the earlier ones.
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