Hush

The Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on "Hush," and if you have been riding with the Zoo Freaks for any stretch of time, you already know this one hits different. Gotthard cut it for their self-titled debut, the record that came out in 1992, and it sits right there as track four, a four-minute swing at a song that had already lived a couple of lives before a bunch of Swiss hard rockers ever got their hands on it. Pull up a stool. This is one of those covers with a paper trail long enough to wallpaper the clubhouse.

Joe South wrote "Hush." South was a Nashville session cat and songwriter, the same man behind "Games People Play" and "Rose Garden." He wrote this one for country singer Billy Joe Royal. Royal later told the story plain. He and South were driving to a Nashville session in the summer of 1967, and South knocked out "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" in the car. Royal did not care for it. So South wrote "Hush" instead. They cut it on July 12, 1967, and it did better than the six singles Royal had put out before it. South was reaching back further than a country session, though. He lifted the hook from an old African American spiritual that ran "Hush, I thought I heard Jesus calling my name," and turned that cry into a lovesick man who will drop everything if he thinks she might be calling him. That is the whole song. One girl on his mind, lovin' like quicksand, and he is not about to blame himself for needing it.

Everybody and their cousin covered it after Royal. The one that stuck in the rock world was Deep Purple, on their 1968 debut Shades of Deep Purple. Ritchie Blackmore heard Billy Joe Royal's record while he was living in Hamburg and figured it would work if the band found a tougher arrangement. Keyboard man Jon Lord later told Mojo he first thought the tune was a bit too disco, or whatever the word was back then, until Blackmore said they could rough it up. A cohort of producer Joe Meek, Rod Freeman, is the one who actually put the song in front of Purple. Their version became the band's first real American calling card. Thin Lizzy took a pass. Kula Shaker rode their own cover to number two in Britain years later. Gotthard walked into that lineage on purpose.

On the Gotthard album, "Hush" is credited to Joe South, arranged by the band with Chris von Rohr, and produced by von Rohr for BMG Ariola. The sessions went down at Fortress Recorders in Hollywood, with Pat Regan mixing and von Rohr and Peavy Tanner assisting. Steve Lee sang it, Leo Leoni played guitar, Marc Lynn held the bass, and Hena Habegger sat the drums. Vivian Campbell, then settling in with Def Leppard, sat in on "Firedance" and "Get Down," but "Hush" is the core four. The album cover looks like it was drawn off the Shroud of Turin, which is a strange choice for a hard rock debut and exactly the kind of thing that makes a record stick in your head. The album landed on March 9, 1992, climbed to number five on the Swiss charts, finished the year at number eight, and went platinum past 50,000 copies. It hung around the Swiss chart for the better part of nine months. Videos for "Hush" and "All I Care For" got spun on MTV, and the band went out opening for Victory in Germany and Magnum around Europe. By December 6, 1992, the "Hush" single had entered the Swiss hit parade, peaked at number 26, and stayed three weeks. The CD maxi on Ariola paired the studio cut with a live "Lonely Heartache" and "Mean Street Rocket." Collectors still chase the debut vinyl in blue, gray, red, and green covers. Gotthard kept the song in the set for years, including the acoustic live album Made in Switzerland in 2006, where "Hush" sits among the covers like an old friend who never left the bar.

The band that cut it did not start under the name you know. Steve Lee was born Stefan Alois on August 5, 1963, in Horgen, near Zurich. His first public gig came in 1979 at the Aula Magna of Lugano-Trevano, in a group called Cromo, where he sang and played drums alongside a keyboard-heavy lineup. In 1988 he joined Forsale. Then, in Lugano, he lined up with guitarist Leo Leoni, bassist Marc Lynn, and drummer Hena Habegger and started a band called Krak. Chris von Rohr, the former Krokus bassist and songwriter, took the wheel as producer and co-writer and steered them toward a new name. Gotthard comes from the Saint-Gotthard Massif and the old pass through the Swiss Alps, with a wink at the English words "got" and "hard." BMG signed them. Lee spoke Italian, German, English, and French, and he built his voice on David Coverdale, with a record collection that ran through Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Whitesnake, Deep Purple, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, and Aerosmith. Covering "Hush" on the first album was not a novelty. It was a nod to the band that had shaped the singer.

Leo Leoni has said he grew up on The Beatles, Deep Purple, and AC/DC, and that he wanted something more melodic than what Krokus were doing at the time. Melody, energy, and songs people can sing along to have been the spine of the band ever since. The debut did what a debut is supposed to do. It put a Swiss hard rock band on the map at home, and the run that followed is hard to argue with. Sixteen albums in a row hit number one in Switzerland. Worldwide sales cleared three million. Lee kept singing out front until October 5, 2010, when he was killed in a motorcycle accident on Interstate 15, about ten miles south of Mesquite, Nevada, after a semi struck a parked bike that then struck him. He was 47. In November 2011 the band introduced Nic Maeder as the new singer, through their site and their Facebook page, with a free download of "Remember It's Me." Leoni and Lynn are still in the lineup, with Freddy Scherer on guitar and Flavio Mezzodi on drums. Leoni has put it simply in interviews. As long as people want to hear the music and the band still enjoys making it, they will keep going.

That is the long road behind the four minutes the Zoo Crew just played. A spiritual turned into a Nashville country side, toughened up by Deep Purple, then claimed by a Lugano band named for a mountain pass, sung by a man who loved Coverdale and Purple in equal measure. If you want the rest of the story from the people who still carry the name, the band keeps house at Gotthard. You can find them on Facebook, Instagram, and X. The official international fanclub, run in daily collaboration with the band, lives on the Gotthard fanclub page, with the shop at Rockdreams, plus the Gotthard Official Fan Club on Facebook and Gotthard Official Fanclub on Instagram. And when you want the deep cuts without the commercials, you already know where the Zoo Freaks gather. That is THE ZOO.