Dan Reed Network - A "polished" Debut

A "polished" Debut

The band signed to Mercury Records with the aid of Derek Shulman, (who was enjoying huge success with Bon Jovi and Cinderella), and were managed by legendary concert promoter Bill Graham. In winter 1987, the group released an eponymous debut album which was produced by Bruce Fairbairn (who had worked with Bon Jovi) and was engineered and mixed by Mike Fraser at Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver. They released their first single "Ritual", which peaked to No. 38 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The Dan Reed Network album received positive reviews, not the least of which being a four-star write-up from the notoriously hard-to-please Rolling Stone magazine. Most reviews lauded the band's ability to blend elements of heavy funk with a gritty rock edge peppered with pop hooks, pulled together in an '80s radio-friendly production. Rolling Stone wrote that "Producer Fairbairn deserves a nod for adding just the right amount of pop polish where it's needed," and giving even the weaker songs on a strong album an appeal. Still, while People magazine's review of the album as being "polished to a brassy sheen" saw the glass half-full, some music critics saw Fairbairn's pop-savvy commercial production as minimizing the band's funk grooves and heavy rock guitar. Newsday (New York) said "the songs don't stand up to repeated listenings due to Bruce Fairbairn's absurdly pristine production ... Fairbairn, best known for recordings by Loverboy, Aerosmith, and Bon Jovi, is a master at neutering hard rock and rendering it antiseptic." Those bands, however, managed to notch several major hits with such production, and no better musicianship. The Washington Post approached the issue with a constructively balanced context, comparing the Dan Reed Network's debut album to its live performances, saying, "numbers such as 'Get to You,' irritatingly synth-heavy on the record, were played with enough soul and engagingly invidious guitar to redeem them."

The poor promotion of the Dan Reed Network's debut album impeded the band's traction in the United States market. Def Leppard's Hysteria was having disappointing sales at Mercury/Polygram and the label was pulling support from new artists to focus on saving the British rock band's return to the scene. Ironically, it would be Def Leppard's managers Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch who would offer the Dan Reed Network the final leg of the "Hysteria" tour in the US if they would switch to their management company, Q Prime. The band was initially reluctant to jettison Bill Graham, but by the beginning of 1989, they signed with Q Prime and the band enjoyed its greatest success.