AVAILABLE FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY
A percentage on digital download sales will be given to charity.
***
This video talks about this Tour:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwWV2faLtnU

This OFFICIAL Live album, by legendary guitarist/songwriter Walter Lure (of 'Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers'), originally released by Nicotine Records on CD and long out of print, is re-released today as a digital release only and for a limited amount of time.

Recorded Live at the "Wild at Heart" (Berlin, Germany) on April 14th 2007.
This show was the last gig of Walter's first European Tour in over 20 years.
It was also Lure's first official album release since his Waldos "Rent Party" in 1994.

After a few years in the early 2000's of mostly only playing shows in NYC (a large majority of them at the 'Continental') to smaller audiences of devoted regulars (yeah you guys and girls know who you are! I was there too!), this 2007 Euro Tour came as a game-changer, subsequently re-launching Walter's Touring career both on a national and international level, bringing along with it a regain of interest in his music.

It all happened after I wrote a 4 pages piece/interview with Walter Lure in the US nationally published (now long-defunct) magazine "Loud Fast Rules", in which I asked Walter "Would you ever go back and tour in Europe?"...and my good friend, Belgian musician Dee Jaywalker (also lead guitarist in 'Marky Ramone & the Speedkings') ,after reading the interview, reaching out and telling me: "why don't we make it happen?"

The rest is history (well, a lot of work first...then history).

It was thanks to the hard work and dedication of Alberto Bia and his independent label Nicotine Records that we could arrange for this final show of the tour to be professionally recorded and then released in 2008.

(Incidentally, Jaywalker had already recorded a Live album in the same venue with 'Marky Ramone & the Speedkings' a few years earlier).

Walter took care of the mixing in NYC, unfortunately - when he sent back the tracks over to Europe for Mastering, the people involved felt like the production/mix wasn't really doing justice to the actual tapes. Which came a bit as a disappointment for the rest of us. However, If you are a "Heartbreakers" fan you already know it was nothing new to Walter's music: great music, great performance...not so great mixing (The "Heartbreakers" LAMF has been re-mixed a bunch of times over the years, and still people who saw them Live will tell the rest of us "You had to be there!").
However, despite some flaws in the prod/mixing "Live in Berlin" remains quite an enjoyable record...capturing great musicianship, raw power, and representing a special moment in time.
Really, you had to be there! But If you weren't, well this is the next best thing.

I still remember being anxious before the first show of that Tour, not knowing if the whole project would turn into a disaster. Not knowing if people would show up.
It was in North of France...and the small venue (formerly a wine cellar) got so packed...so steamy...and so full of rock and pure joy.
After the show Walter found me outside, he was beaming, and with a big smile on his face he exclaimed: "This feels like the old days!" and called it a "success".
From having seen him play to 25 people in NYC, to seeing him realizing he was still very much loved Worldwide...I felt that my mission was accomplished.

In fact, by the end of the Tour, Walter had already been offered to be an headliner at a big festival somewhere in Europe the following year. And offers kept coming from all over.
It hadn't been that easy for us to book 2 weeks worth of shows, quite the opposite, but words quickly got around about how good these 2 weeks had been.

He never played to small audiences in NYC anymore after that.
He was back, like a phoenix rising from its ashes, but he had never been gone. It was just that NYC had been taking him for granted for a bit too long (except for his 'Continental' aficionados, who knew how lucky they were), until us Europeans gave him the rock royalty treatment again. Then NYC woke up and realized it should care for, and celebrate, its living Legends.

For the past decade Walter played successful shows, overseas with pick-up musicians, in the US with his loyal and talented Waldos, and sometimes with an 'LAMF All Star line up' (which would sell out shows on the East and West coasts of the USA).
After one of these' LAMF All Star' gig in NYC, I remembered us joking...about how there was no difference between these gigs, and the ones he had been playing for decades in NYC at Continental...same thing, different name...Full house.


***
In 2020, Berlin's famous rock venue "Wild at Heart" -where this album was recorded- had to permanently close due to the pandemic.

In August of the same year, Walter Lure passed away.

With no plan to re-release this Live recording on either CD or Vinyl, the people originally involved in this Tour and in the making/release of this Album, decided to offer the chance to fans around the world to get this release, Digitally and for a limited time, in memory of Walter Lure and of the 'Wild At Heart'.

A percentage on sales will be reversed to Saint Jude's Children Hospital in New York.

RIP Walter
You are, and will be, greatly missed.
Thanks so much for the Music and for the memories.

Hey 'Continental NYC': Miss ya too.

(Thomaxe, November 2020)