A Return...with Enigma
With the success of The Best Of and fans' desire for new material, Shooting Star was offered a new recording contract with Enigma Records. Returning to the group were original members Ron Verlin and Van McLain. Charles Waltz was originally slated to rejoin but had moved to California and was busy with another band, Toledo Waltz, while Gary West had left the music business entirely. Steve Thomas had played drums on "Touch Me Tonight" but was not able to return to music full-time. To fill out the band, McLain and Verlin recruited Dennis Laffoon on keyboards, Rod Lincoln on drums and vocalist Keith Mitchell. In Los Angeles, the band made a video for "Touch Me Tonight." It received extensive airplay on MTV, making their request chart, and rose to #67 on the Billboard Hot 100. This was the highest charting single of the band's career. The song also appeared in the Dolph Lundgren movie I Come in Peace.
In 1991 the band released their sixth effort, It's Not Over. During the recording of this project, Enigma Records went bankrupt and the group decided to finish it on their own. Released on their own V & R label, the album received critical acclaim throughout Europe and helped broaden the Shooting Star audience. After the album's release, Ron Verlin was replaced on bass by Eric Johnson (not the famous guitarist) and the band toured with Bad English, Bryan Adams and 38 Special. After selling about 10,000 copies of It's Not Over, the group was contacted by JRS Records (whose parent company was SCS Music), which agreed to take over distribution of the album nationally. But the group became dissatisfied with JRS, claiming they did very little to promote the album, and filed a lawsuit against them on October 14, 1992 in Johnson County, Kansas District Court.
By 1993, disappointed over the collapse of Enigma, the JRS fiasco, and the general decline in popularity of classic rock music, the band went into semi-retirement. They resurfaced each year to play occasional concerts, with Verlin back on bass. In 1997 the violin became a part of their sound again with the addition of violinist Terry Brock. Brock had performed as a background vocalist with Kansas on their Drastic Measures tour.
In 1998, after recovering from a battle with esophageal cancer, Van was asked to perform at a cancer benefit concert in Chicago. On stage were members of Night Ranger, Cheap Trick, Survivor and 38 Special. Van received a heartfelt response from the fans and his friends on stage, which rekindled interest in playing again. Upon returning home from the show, he began writing songs and contemplated recording them.
In the summer of 1999, while vacationing in Nashville, Tennessee, Van was reunited with producer/engineer Kevin Beamish. Among many others, Kevin's list of credits include REO Speedwagon, Jefferson Starship, Elton John and Clint Black. Kevin and Van had met 20 years earlier while Shooting Star was recording its first album. At that time, Kevin was a young engineer for Gus Dudgeon. Out of this chance meeting grew the plans to record and release Shooting Star's seventh album, Leap of Faith. The recording took place at Sound Stage Studios in Nashville, Tennessee from December 1999 through February 2000.
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Famous quotes containing the word enigma:
“His moving impulse is no flabby yearning to teach, to expound, to make simple; it is that “obscure inner necessity” of which Conrad tells us, the irresistible creative passion of a genuine artist, standing spell-bound before the impenetrable enigma that is life, enamoured by the strange beauty that plays over its sordidness, challenged to a wondering and half-terrified sort of representation of what passes understanding.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)