Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Slight warble on CD has been corrected!, October 9, 2001
Due to a manufacturing problem on the disc, the warble problem on John Waite's "Ignition/No Brakes" CD has been corrected in the new batch from One Way Records. If you have a copy that has this defect, return it to: Eddie Wilner, c/o One Way Records,
4250 Coral Ridge Drive, Coral Springs, FL 33065 and one will be sent to replace it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Combination of an '80s obscurity with an '80s classic, pt. 2, May 17, 2003
After a solid, but not too mind-blowing solo debut with 1982's IGNITION, former Babys lead singer John Waite needed to take another tack if he wanted to be taken seriously as a solo artist. For his second album NO BRAKES (1984), he finally decided to create a single that would break him wide open, as well as perfect his performance on uptempo rockers which were pretty stiff on IGNITION. Granted, there are still some moments of unease on NO BRAKES, but overall, John seems to come up more successful on an album that helped make him one of the 1980s' fondest memories of pop music.
Of course, the main reason one would get NO BRAKES is for "Missing You", which topped Billboard's Hot 100 in late 1984, knocking out Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It" from its 3-week reign. Tina would later cover "Missing You" & very well, I might add. But John's version is still a classic, another equally rough-yet-smooth tune that boasted great lyrics along with its memorable instrumentation. Most of all, there's the voice, that wrenching instrument that rivaled Foreigner's Lou Gramm & Journey's Steve Perry for its anguish.
NO BRAKES also had a lot more success to speak of than IGNITION (whose main single "Change" finally reached the charts shortly after "Missing You"), and had two more hits with "Tears" & "Restless Heart". The former is another downhearted rocker that's still fun to listen to, especially its closing "I'm gonna cry you a river" coda. The latter is an acoustic-guitar-driven number that only peaked in the lower half of the Hot 100, but that is certainly no measure on its overall worth, especially since it's a song Waite wrote alone. Most of his best material had & still often comes from outside sources.
The album starts out somewhat inauspiciously with the rock-revved "Saturday Night". Perhaps John wanted a song to kick off the album in grand "beat you over the head with a guitar" style, but it sounds like it was recorded in one take without any room for improvement. Luckily, it lasts less than 3 minutes. "For Your Love" & "Love Collision" work somewhat better, but even they have their moments of stumbling.
NO BRAKES' other rockers are certainly steps up from that of IGNITION's. "Dark Side Of The Sun", "Euroshima" & "Dreamtime/Shake It Up" have John feeling a little more comfortable as gravel-voiced rocker, even if they do still have traces of the new wave polish that IGNITION had. "Euroshima", in particular, is a standout simply for being a rare stab at political commentary from a usually-just-entertaining artist like John Waite. The song was perfect for the political landscape of the 1980s, especially in John's homeland of Thatcher-era England. In fact, I can't think of one musician who was ever pro-Thatcher in the 1980s, which is strange considering her rather long tenure as PM.
Like it or not, NO BRAKES would prove to be John Waite's most successful album as a solo artist. The next time he would see the top of the singles charts would be as frontman for the supergroup Bad English, but while he would never see such heights again on his own, that's not to say he wouldn't see more artistically satisfying moments. In fact, record company politics would be the cause for most of John's commercial woes in the future. Before all that happened, NO BRAKES showed that John had a lot going for him, and even now, he could still have another such masterstroke within him.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thanks One Way Records, November 5, 2001
I purchased an early verison of this release and it did contain a warble problem. However, thanks to Eddie Wilner at One Way Records for providing a new disc at no charge!
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by John Waite 
