Chuck Prophet: Temple Beautiful

Green On Red man’s ode to San Francisco.

By Gavin Martin
( Classic Rock )
published

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The city by the bay, a radical outpost and rich source of urban myth and legend, provides a fine springboard for the ever buoyant Prophet here.

Titled after the long-since defunct punk rock club where he earned his stripes, Temple Beautiful provides a home for the many musical genres Chuck has explored since then.

With songs combining wry world weariness, affectionate homage and emotional depth, the singularly sumptuous production makes Museum Of Broken Hearts’ valediction for the AIDS epidemic a standout, but the pleasures are abundant. The title track manages to combine Stones in the honky tonk groove with a crafty Ramones tribute and Willie Mays Is Up To Bat is what The Replacements might have sounded like, had they been able to stay together and get into a Dylan influenced late period.

A heroic all round smash and grab raid on rebel rock across the generations. Well played, Sir.

Gavin Martin
Gavin Martin

Late NME, Daily Mirror and Classic Rock writer Gavin Martin started writing about music in 1977 when he published his hand-written fanzine Alternative Ulster in Belfast. He moved to London in 1980 to become the NME’s Media Editor and features writer, where he interviewed the Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer, Pete Townshend, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Ian Dury, Killing Joke, Neil Young, REM, Sting, Marvin Gaye, Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Willie Dixon, Madonna and a host of others. He was also published in The Times, Guardian, Independent, Loaded, GQ and Uncut, he had pieces on Michael Jackson, Van Morrison and Frank Sinatra featured in The Faber Book Of Pop and Rock ’N’ Roll Is Here To Stay, and was the Daily Mirror’s regular music critic from 2001. He died in 2022.