"Fast" Eddie Clarke - guitar, backing vocals; Charlie McCracken - bass; Dave King - lead vocals; Jerry Shirley - drums
Recorded only a year after they formed; and just weeks after the release of their second LP, this Fastway show is proof positive of how strong the early line-up was. The band was still playing showcase clubs (in this case, the hot L'amour club in Brooklyn, NY), but they performed as though they were filling a baseball stadium.
Recorded for the King Biscuit Flower Hour, the band came together when "Fast" Eddie Clarke (lead guitarist for Motörhead) and Pete Way (bassist for UFO) were both fed up with their current bands and wanted to do their own thing. The name Fastway came from the merging of Clarke's nickname and Way's last name.
Just as soon as they had formed, Way had to bow out of the project when he could not break his record deal with Chrysalis (UFO had all signed as individual artists to the label), and was then asked to join Ozzy Osbourne's band. Way was eventually replaced by Charlie McCracken, who had played bass in Taste. Although they recorded the initial LP with session players, by now the permanent line-up of Clarke, McCracken, drummer Jerry Shirley (ex-Humble Pie), and singer Dave King (who now fronts the popular Celt-rockers, Flogging Molly) was in place.
Opening with the bombastic "Steal the Show," the band blasts through a killer set that also included "Tell Me," "Misunderstood," "Telephone," and "Feel Me, Touch Me (Do Anything You Want)." Musically, the band was closer in its sound to a bluesy Judas Priest than either of the two bands that Clarke and Way came from.
The group was promoting All Fired Up, its second LP which, despite making it to #59 on the Billboard chart, failed to break the band worldwide. McCracken and Shirley left soon after, and Clarke and King replaced them with former members of Stillwood, the band that King had left to join Fastway.
Through the late 1980s and most of the 90s, Clarke revamped the band numerous times, working on and off again with King. However, once King found success in Flogging Molly in 1997, Clarke has had to settle for replacement vocalists.