Later Professional Career
In 1980 Alan Merrill joined forces with Rick Derringer as a guitarist/vocalist in New York City. They recorded three albums, "Good Dirty Fun", "Live At The Ritz", "Rick Derringer and Friends", and a film, "The Rick Derringer Rock Spectacular". In 1982 Joan Jett released the Arrows song "I Love Rock 'N Roll, " and it went to number one in the US charts for 8 weeks. Lou Rawls recorded Alan Merrill's song "When The Night Comes" as the title track of his 1983 Epic Records album. The Rawls version of the song was taken into space by astronaut Guion Bluford, the first music taken to and played in outer space.
In 1983 Merrill recorded a solo album for Polydor Records, simply titled "Alan Merrill", a collection of self-composed tracks. Some friends contributing to this record were Steve Winwood, Mick Taylor and Dallas Taylor. It was released in 1985 and received critical acclaim. In 1986 Alan Merrill joined the Meat Loaf band for the promotional tour of his "Blind Before I Stop" album, and stayed for several years, recording Meat Loaf's 1987 Live at Wembley album for Arista Records. In 1989 Alan Merrill was offered a role in the television series Encyclopedia Brown on HBO, and was a part of the successful series in his role as principal character Casey Sparkz.
In 1990, a Vodka Collins reunion tour was organized due to popular demand as a result of the successful CD reissue of their debut vinyl LP "Tokyo-New York." The Tokyo based band toured Japan, then several years later recorded the first in a series of reunion albums, "Chemical Reaction" (1996) which was followed by "Pink Soup" (1997) "Boy's Life" (1998) and "Boys In The Band" (2004). The Vodka Collins "Tokyo-New York" album has been reissued again as recently as October of 2011 on EMI Japan.
While working in Japan with his main project Vodka Collins, Merrill also had a side project in New York, starting with a tribute to Don Covay he began recording with R&B producer Jon Tiven. This led to the "Yes I Ram" and "Blue Guru" albums in the mid 1990s featuring Alan Merrill on lead vocals. Many R&B greats later recorded cover versions of material from these two albums.
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