Underworld King

The Zoo Crew has got "Underworld King" rolling out of the speakers right now, Legs Diamond from the album Fire Power, and if you have been riding with the Zoo Freaks for any length of time you already know this is the kind of record that belongs on a freeform night. Hard rock with a little keyboard smoke in the corners, a singer who can still reach, and a story that never quite got the radio it deserved the first time around. Over on THE ZOO we spin the deep cuts the way the old stations used to, and this one opens the 1979 album like the band already knew the room was about to get loud.

Michael Diamond and Roger Romeo wrote the song, and it sits right at the front of Fire Power, three minutes and change of riff before the rest of the side even gets a word in. The record was cut, mixed, and mastered at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood, the same room that had already heard plenty of California rock history, with Walter P. Marriner Jr. producing and Don Snyder and Jerry Napier engineering. Rick Sanford handled the lead vocal and the flute, Romeo the guitar, Diamond the bass and the album concept, Jeff Poole the drums, and Michael Prince the keyboards. Listen close on this track and you can hear Prince threading synthesizer through some of the tightest guitar figures the band ever put on tape. Writers who came back to the album years later pointed at that blend and said Legs Diamond were already leaning toward the eighties while most American hard rock was still stuck arguing with the disco boom.

The story behind the album is less pretty than the riff. Legs Diamond had done two records for Mercury, the self-titled debut and A Diamond Is a Hard Rock, both in 1977, and neither one cracked the charts the way the road work suggested they might. By the time 1978 rolled around they were free agents, and the independent Cream label took them on. Cream wanted singles, and they wanted them from outside material. The band got pushed into a Boxer cover, a Righteous Brothers cover of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," and a soft job called "Help Wanted." The official band biography on their own site still lays it out plain: Cream insisted on the covers and was keen to chase hit singles from those covers, unwilling to promote Legs Diamond as a heavy band and not strong enough to put them in the pop charts. The breakthrough stayed out of reach. What the band kept for themselves was the good stuff. "Underworld King" is the opener they would not give up. Rock Candy, when they remastered Fire Power years later with a stack of bonus tracks, called it arguably one of the greatest things the group ever cut, the song that kept the American Deep Purple comparison alive.

Romeo has talked about what happened after that record in more than one sit-down. In a Vinyl District interview he said there was a fragmentation after Fire Power, that the band was not doing a whole lot, and that he wanted to put his own group together during the downtime. Bands were locked up in those days. They butted heads, and he was the first to leave. The official bio marks 1980 as the first of several quiet periods, with Michael Diamond's departure making it look like Legs Diamond might stay a seventies memory. Years later, writing about another stalled stretch, that same biography calls the band the Underworld Kings, forced into inactivity by the bad luck that seemed to follow them. The song title had become a nickname. They did come back. Prince and Sanford rebuilt the lineup ahead of Out on Bail in the mid-eighties, Romeo returned, and the cult that had been growing on the first three albums, especially down in Texas, kept the name alive. San Antonio in particular never let go. Drummer Jeff Poole has said they owed a lot of that to Joe Anthony and the power of radio, the kind of disc jockey who would play a whole side and let a band become local heroes a thousand miles from Los Angeles.

How they got started is a Bay Area story that only finished in Los Angeles. Poole and bassist Michael Gargano, who took Diamond as a stage name, were kicking around gangster names because they were fans of The Untouchables. Gargano floated the Purple Gang. Poole came back with Legs Diamond, the Prohibition-era figure the papers called the clay pigeon of the underworld because the bullets never quite finished him. Poole's pitch was simple enough to hang an album title on: a diamond is the hardest rock in the world. They moved south, picked up Prince on keys and guitar, Sanford on vocals, and finally Romeo, a Detroit kid who has said he was the last of the original crew to join. Romeo's own start was earlier than the band. He has told interviewers he was about fifteen, messing around in a trio with two buddies, and that his road to Los Angeles included a stretch as the lead singer in an all-Asian disco band, which he still offers up as a true story. Before Legs Diamond ever had a deal, they crashed a Kiss after-gig party. Gargano, Romeo has said, was the best person he ever saw at getting into a room he was not supposed to be in. Gene Simmons took an interest, wanted his management and booking people involved, and the band landed early slots on the Rock and Roll Over tour. Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth, still unknowns, asked to open for them. Mercury signed them in November 1976. The road after that ran through Styx, Sammy Hagar, Alice Cooper, Montrose, Angel, and Golden Earring, with a friendship toward Deep Purple that included sitting in on each other's rehearsals. That is the crew that walked into Gold Star and cut "Underworld King."

Fire Power did not save them, and the band has never pretended it did. The covers drag the second half, and the commercial plan did not work. What survived is the original material, and the opener most of all. Romeo has said in later interviews that he is thankful his job is to play music and make people smile, which is about as unfussy a mission as a guitar player can claim after fifty years of quiet periods and comebacks. Prince went on to studio work all over Los Angeles. Poole and Romeo kept the riff alive in side bands. The current lineup, with Keith England up front, still plays, and San Antonio still shows up. If you want the paper trail, the band's own discography still lists Fire Power right where it belongs, 1979, between the Mercury years and the long quiet spell.

You can read that history on the official site, including the Fire Power chapter in the Legs Diamond biography and the album listing on the Legs Diamond discography. The band keeps the conversation going on their Legs Diamond Facebook page, the same place that points back to legsdiamond.com and still posts road and studio notes under Roger Romeo's name. No separate official Instagram or X account for this band turned up that a browser can actually open and tie to Fire Power, so those stay off the table rather than send anybody down a dead road. The song does not need a bigger platform than the one it already has. Turn it up, Zoo Freaks. The underworld king is still standing.