"It's like The Who channelling Cheap Trick, filled with catchy pop songs slathered with hard rock guitars." How the folk songs of Pope John Paul II buried one of rock'n'roll's great lost albums

1979 wasn’t a great year to deliver a debut rock album, even one as remarkable as TKO’s Let It Roll. Everybody was doin’ the hustle in ’79. Blondie, Kiss, Rod Stewart, even burly, bearded pop-country champ Kenny Rogers released disco records that year. Of course, it’s not Brad Sinsel’s fault that he was born too late (or too early; the jury’s still out), and so, Let It Roll.

Singer Sinsel was the grand schemer/dreamer behind TKO, and throughout the band’s history, the only consistent member. Praise him or blame him, TKO is Brad Sinsel’s baby. The band’s roots are planted firmly in Yakima, Washington – a city two hours outside of Seattle, and known more for apples and wine than rock’n’roll.

In the beginning, they were The Whiz Kids, a New York Dolls-inspired band formed while Brad and his cohorts were still in high school. Eventually, Sinsel and fellow Whiz Kid Rick Pierce (guitar) joined a Seattle-based band called Mojo Hand. A quick name change – honestly, what the hell is ‘Mojo Hand’? – and Shazam! TKO.

At this point, it was 1977-ish, and thanks to the success of Heart, the idea of a Northwest rock band breaking out beyond Seattle seemed possible. Not surprisingly, the band ended up with Heart’s management and landed a semi-sweet record deal. Since it was the 1970s, they took full advantage of Big Rock’s money train and took over a hundred grand and two years to craft their debut album. While the shrugging public back in ’79 might argue the point, I think it was well worth the wait.

Here’s the thing with AOR. It’s a guilty pleasure. I think we’re all mature enough to accept that. Being into Styx does not make you cool. Girls don’t gravitate towards guys in REO Speedwagon t-shirts. AOR is something we do in secret, like photographing tanks. There are, however, a few exceptions to that rule, and TKO’s Let It Roll is one of them. It’s actually a cool record. Like, black leather jacket and dangling cigarette cool.

Let It Roll sounds, mostly, like The Who channelling Cheap Trick. It’s filled with catchy pop songs slathered with hard rock guitars and tasty dollops of pomp rock keyboards. There’s also a very hep glam rock influence threaded through the album’s tunes, a slinky, streetwalkin’ cheetah vibe that you won’t find on any other AOR-stamped record from that era. Most importantly, Brad Sinsel’s glass-shard growl is a thing of wonder. It’s amazing to think he was but a 23-year-old kid at the time this was recorded, because I would honestly stack his vocal charms against any major 70s frontman. This cat had serious chops, right from the start.

I’ve got no arguments with any of the songs on Let It Roll, although the obligatory ballad Kill The Pain is a bit wince-worthy in its earnestness. That one I’d leave off my summer beers’n’boners party-mix tape. Everything else would make the cut, though: the bouncy power-pop of Gutter Boy, the soaring, cowbell-abusing title tune, the Journey-meets-The-Knack ear-sugar of Only Love, the climactic powerhouse of the show-closer Rock ’N’ Roll Again; all of it is pure radio-ready bliss.

Perhaps the most remarkable track on the album, however, is Bad Sister. The song is clearly supposed to sound like Aerosmith. Brad’s vocals ooze Tyler-esque sleaze as he describes the virtues and terrors of a local pass-around girl (‘Her skirt’s so tight, it’s bound to snap/A downright damn disgrace’), and the band gets dirtier, funkier, and more outright cozmik here than on any other song. It’s a classic, and although the vast majority of rock fans may have missed it, the tune clearly struck a chord with a young Andrew Wood, since Bad Sister is nothing if not the blueprint for Mother Love Bone’s woozy ‘Love Rock’ sound. Wood was a friend/fan of Sinsel’s, and it showed.

Every story I’ve read has Let It Roll selling upwards of 150,000 copies between 1979 and 1980. While that seems phenomenal here in the twilight of the music industry, it was a drop in the bucket back in the 70s, especially for a major label band that toured extensively with some of the biggest acts of the era. Personally, I never saw a copy in a record store that wasn’t either in the cut-out bin or plastered with a radio-promo sticker. Let It Roll was a commercial flop. Ah, well. At least they had fun making it.

Let It Roll was released on Infinity, a sub-label of MCA. The label spent the majority of its capital ($6 million bucks, reportedly) on an album of folk songs warbled by Pope John Paul II, and TKO were dumped when MCA came to their senses and dissolved Infinity. By this point TKO had toured with everyone from Cheap Trick and The Kinks to Foreigner and Van Halen, criss-crossing the country in a relentless campaign to hop over the bar-band hurdle and become major players in the late 70s FM-rock movement.

Unfortunately, by the time TKO were ready to record their follow-up, not only had their label ended, so had the decade. Luckily for Sinsel and company, they had already invented 80s rock, as evidenced by their sophomore album, the frankly majestic pop-metal masterpiece, In Your Face. Unluckily for them, by the time anybody would hear it, they were already too late to join the party.

In Your Face was recorded in 1981; had it been released that year, TKO would likely have been considered the architects of the coming billion-dollar spandex ballet. Instead, it was shelved for three years, which gave bands like Ratt and Mötley Crüe enough time to accessorise and preen their way to stadium-sized mega-stardom, leaving our soggy midwestern heroes with little more than cult-level adoration from more sophisticated 80s glam-bangers. And so, after a couple of disappointing years, they broke up.

What else could they do? Later on, Sinsel formed the very TKO-ish War Babies. Naturally, he did this smackdab in the middle of the grunge era (1992), ensuring nobody would pay attention. One of these days, he’ll get his timing right, I’m sure of it.

Until then, we are left with a sparse-but-lasting legacy of radio-ready shoulda-been hits. It’s a singular pleasure to hear a hungry young band playing with such effortless self-confidence, and decades of indifference have done nothing to diminish Let It Roll’s glittering star. Regardless of what happened afterwards, in 1979, TKO nailed it. And that’ll last forever.