Cult melodic rock/AOR heroes Fortune are back with a new studio album, II! Their first album in 35 years will be released April 26, 2019, via Frontiers Music Srl.Check out “Shelter of the Night” from the album below.
The seeds of Fortune were planted by brothers Richard and Mick Fortune, who came from a family of professional musicians. Their mother was a singer and their father a singer and bassist. Richard started playing the guitar when he was 16 and went on to play guitar and tour with the likes of Buddy Miles, Booker T & The MGs, and Spirit, while Mick started out as an accordion, keyboard, and trombone player before switching to drums.
The brothers formed Fortune in the ’70s and cut a self-titled album, Fortune for Warner Brothers in 1978, but by 1982 had totally revamped the group. A key acquisition for the new version of the band being the recruitment of Roger Scott Craig. A classically trained pianist from the age of 8, the Irish born keyboard player was previously known for a successful stint with the Scouse pop group Liverpool Express in the ’70s. The lineup was rounded out by Larry ‘L.A.’ Greene, also of Top Gun soundtrack fame, on vocals and Detroit area session player and Elton John bassist Bob Birch.
Fortune eventually released their second self-titled album in 1985 (not to be confused with the 1978 album) to a warm reception, especially in Japan and Europe. It is still highly regarded today by fans of the genre as being a crucial AOR/melodic rock release of the time period. For many fans, it is indeed considered one of the best, if not THE best AOR album of all-time. While this is of course very much open to debate, the reality is that Fortune’s album is one of those lost gems from yesteryear that has aged like fine wine while the years have passed.
Camel/MCA Records (the same label that had, at the time, launched Night Ranger and Giuffria to stardom) was the label home for the ’85 album, but unexpectedly declared bankruptcy for undisclosed reasons not long after the release and refused to give up the masters of the album, making an album re-release impossible until fairly recently. The band remained silent for years and while Larry Greene and Roger Scott Craig started working together with the band Harlan Cage (who released several albums in the second half of the 90’s and early 00’s), the Fortune brothers started the band back up again as a trio in 2006, until a proper band reunion happened in 2016 when the band performed at the Rockingham Music Festival that same year and then – thanks to the acclaim that followed that performance – in 2017 as well. These appearances ultimately led to discussions with Frontiers about a new studio album, II. Fortune hasn’t lost a step and their new studio album promises to be one of the AOR highlights of 2019!
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8-YBV9biEY[/embedyt]
