Stan Bush

Guitarist and singer Stan Bush is best known to AOR collectors for the melodic, crunchy pop/rock albums he recorded during the ’80s, with and without his backing band, Barrage. Bush began his career as a member of the AOR band Boulder, which released an album on Elektra in 1979. He later landed a solo deal with Columbia and released his self-titled debut in 1983; the record leaned toward the Rick Springfield-ish power pop side of AOR, and the track “All American Boy” was later covered by Y&T. Bush next put together Barrage, featuring guitarist Don Kirkpatrick, keyboardist Rick Seratte, bassist Mike Seifrit, and drummer Jack White. Featuring “The Touch,” which became the theme for Transformers: The Movie, Bush’s second album, Stan Bush & Barrage, was released in 1987, and grew to become an underground favorite among AOR devotees, who generally considered it his finest work. Bush also contributed songs to the Charlie Sheen flick The Wraith (“Heart vs. Head,” 1987) and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Kickboxer (“Never Surrender,” 1989). By the time Bush recorded a follow-up album, 1991′s Every Beat of My Heart, the golden age of AOR had passed, and despite songwriting collaborations with Jonathan Cain (of Journey and Bad English) and Jim Vallance, the album attracted little attention stateside. Bush was able to continue recording for a European and Japanese fan base, however, and released an import-only album in 1994 titled Dial 1-818-888-8638. His 1996 follow-up, The Child Within, brought him a surprising degree of success in his homeland: “Until I Was Loved by You” won an Emmy for Best Original Song after appearing on the soap opera Guiding Light, and “Capture the Dream” was used heavily by NBC in its coverage of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. In 1999, the retrospective Capture the Dream: The Best of Stan Bush was released, along with Heaven, a collection of previously unissued post-1987 Barrage tracks. In 2001, Bush released a new CD, Language of the Heart, with many songs co-written by producer Curt Coumo. In 2007, as the Transformers franchise expanded into its first live action movie, Bush submitted a pair of tracks to the film’s producers. Although they didn’t make the soundtrack, he released them as bonus cuts on his 2007 solo album, In This Life. A newly updated recording of “The Touch” sparked rumors that it might be included in the 2009 sequel Revenge of the Fallen, but instead ended up on his critically lauded 2010 album, Dream the Dream. “The Touch” continued to find renewed life, appearing on the Transformers video game War for Cybertron as well as on television shows like ABC’s The Goldbergs, NBC’s Chuck, and Fox’s American Dad. Bush also continued to find success in the video game market with his song “Warrior,” from the game Shadow Warrior 2. That song was later released on his 13th studio album, 2017′s optimistically inclined Change the World. ~ Steve Huey & Timothy Monger