Everything back to the beginning! Five years ago, Glenn Hughes exploded just over a kilometer away from the Cologne hotel where the interview on the current record of Black Country Communion takes place. At that time he promoted their third album "Afterglow": Hughes made a fuss about the fact that nobody else in the band was comfortable talking to the press and that there was no tour either. The result: Joe Bonamassa and his manager Roy Weisman pulled the rip cord and pushed BCC onto the siding. But now the quartet is back, with the best team performance since their debut. And Hughes is visibly pleased.
That's when Glenn Hughes had galloped himself to death: He had complained loudly that Joe Bonamassa and Co. did not want to chase the band project full throttle over all stages worldwide. The misunderstanding: While the band was always a side project for Bonamassa, drummer Jason Bonham and keyboarder Derek Sherinian, the singer/bass player hoped that BCC would become a main thing. The reason: At the debut everything had felt so much like a dream team that Hughes really thought he had reached his final destination after Trapeze and Purple. But the albums number 2 and 3 were basically made because of his pressure. With the exception of producer Kevin Shirley (Dream Theater, Mr. Big, Iron Maiden and others) and Bonham, his friend from his native Black Country, the other participants were only staffage, not much more than Hughes' backing band. On "BCCIV" not everything is different now, but again some things are in the right balance.
eclipsed: Did you believe in a return from Black Country Communion?
Glenn Hughes: The bond between us was never really broken. I've always thought of a sequel to our band.
eclipsed: But for that you had to eat chalk and accept that BCC is the most beautiful triviality in the world, but not yours or your bracelet?
Hughes: I overreacted after the third album. Shortly before I was to promote the album in interviews, which I still think is very good, I got the message from the Bonamassa camp: There is no tour to the record, Joe concentrates on other things. That caught me completely on the wrong foot, because I thought we were a great band, all love this kind of music, so it has to go full steam ahead in this direction. After my not always nice comments about the other BCC members I had served to you and other press representatives on the tray, I was brought down to earth. And at the beginning of 2013 it actually looked as if BCC were history. On the other hand, I felt that the four of us had formed this band not out of calculation, but out of love for this music, and so I always believed that it could and should go on.
