Stone Fury

The product of manager / mentor Marty Wolff's imagination, Stone Fury was put together in Los Angeles during 1983. German born frontman Lenny Wolf had been playing in a group called Funhouse in Hamburg and was introduced to Marty Wolff by his then guitarist. Wolf and Funhouse recorded some demos and Marty took them to Elektra in Los Angeles with a view to getting a deal, but things didn't work out and Lenny wound up quitting Funhouse in order to go to Los Angeles. Marty Wolff introduced Lenny to guitarist Bruce Gowdy upon his arrival in Los Angeles and this pairing recorded 'Life Is Too Lonely' and 'Tease' as demo tracks. Having returned to Germany, Lenny Wolf was amazed to find something of a bidding war had erupted between a number of major labels looking to sign this new group on the strength of the two tracks. MCA Records won the day and the then untitled project signing to the label took place on 4th May 1983. With the record pretty well written, Gowdy introduced drummer Jody Cortez into the line-up. He would be followed by bassist Rick Wilson. The Stone Fury debut album, Burns Like A Star, was released in 1984 and the group shot a video in London for the track Break Down The Walls a few weeks before it hit the racks. The debut sold well but just failed to break into the American charts. Jody Cortez quit late in 1984, and drummer Randy Castillo promptly replaced Cortez for touring purposes. Castillo's colleague Randy Rand filled the bass slot as Wilson opted out as Stone Fury opened up for Aerosmith. In 1986 Stone Fury was joined on drums by Jay Schellen, who later joined Hurricane. Randy Castillo would go on to work for Ozzy Osbourne and then in would join Motley Crue in 1999. But sadly, after succumbing to a lengthy battle with cancer, he would pass away on March 26th 2002. The 1986 'Let Them Talk' album saw Stone Fury essentially trimmed to the duo of Wolf and Gowdy and teamed with producer Richard Landis. Session players included bassist Dean Cortez, keyboards from Alan Pasqua and drums by Vinnie Colaitua. The record veered off into Pop Rock territory as the duo went all experimental, eschewing the Zeppelin-esque traits of Burns Like A Star. As Lenny Wolf went off to resurrect the earlier Stone Fury sound with the Led Zeppelin influenced Kingdom Come, Bruce Gowdy put the Progressive influenced World Trade together with Billy Sherwood before forming Unruly Child with vocalist Mark Free. Meantime, Jody Cortez had played drums in a session capacity on Cinderella’s 'Night Songs' debut in 1986. To cash-in on the success of Kingdom Come, MCA released the compilation album 'The Best Of Stone Fury' in June 1988 which turned out to be a reasonable representation of both albums nonetheless with five tracks taken from each. Wolf eventually re-located Kingdom Come to his native Germany where the band continues to issue a first class melodic rock product.