Vocalist
John Lawton's band Stonewall broke up while on tour in West Germany in 1969. While the band returned to Britain, Lawton stayed in Germany, where he met Peter Hesslein, Dieter Horns, Peter Hecht and Joachim Reitenbach, members of a band called The German Bonds. The five joined together to record an album under the name Asterix in 1970, soon changing their name to Lucifer's Friend. The early albums were released on
Vertigo Records in Europe, but in the United States those albums were released on a series of small independent record labels (Billingsgate, Janus, Passport), often a year or more after their release in Europe. Despite airplay in some markets and a cult following, the band's albums were hard to find and commercial success eluded them. The band was finally signed to
Elektra Records in 1977: it released three albums with a more commercial pop-oriented sound, but by then interest in the band had waned. Those albums were even less successful than the earlier ones. Lucifer's Friend was known for changing musical styles and influences on each album. The self-titled 1971 debut had dark lyrics and a stripped-down guitar and organ style that sounded similar to
Deep Purple,
Uriah Heep,
Led Zeppelin and
Black Sabbath . That album is sought after by fans of early
heavy metal music. The second album,
Where the Groupies Killed the Blues (1972), took an entirely different direction. It was an experimental album of progressive and
psychedelic rock, mostly composed by John O'Brien Docker. On the third album, ''
I'm Just a Rock & Roll Singer'' (1973), they changed direction again, this time in the straightforward rock style popularized by such groups as
Grand Funk Railroad, and gritty "life on the road" themes in the lyrics.
Banquet (1974) featured extended, multi-layered
jazz fusion compositions and a 30-piece backup band, alternating with shorter tracks reminiscent of
Chicago and
Traffic. Those first four albums are concept albums of sorts, and along with the self-titled Asterix album, are the most sought after today.
Mind Exploding (1976) established a holding pattern and tried to combine the jazz of
Banquet with the garage-rock of
Rock & Roll Singer, but was not as well received as the earlier albums. Vocalist
John Lawton left in 1976 to join
Uriah Heep. He was replaced with
Ian Cussick. With him, the band recorded and released the 7" single "Old Man Roller / Writing On The Wall" in June 1977. That same year, he was replaced with
Mike Starrs, former singer of
Colosseum II. John Lawton returned for the 1981 album
Mean Machine. On the two albums without Lawton, the band moved to a more commercial sound, on 1978's
Good Time Warrior and 1980s
Sneak Me In. John Lawton's 1980 solo album on
RCA,
Heartbeat, was a Lucifer's Friend album in everything but name, with the lineup from
Sneak Me In performing as backup musicians. Lawton's official return,
Mean Machine, went back to heavy metal, in the vein of
Rainbow and
NWOBHM. The band officially broke up in 1982, but thirteen years later, in 1994, John and Peter Hesslein briefly reformed to release a new CD,
Sumo Grip under the name Lucifer's Friend II, with Curt Cress, Andreas Dicke, Jogi Wichmann and
Udo Dahmen replacing the classic line-up. After this they broke up once more.
Recent years Although
John Lawton stated that the band weren't interested in getting back to record or perform live again, in August 2014, he announced on his website that the original lineup would reunite to play some dates in 2015, including
Sweden Rock Festival in June, after almost 40 years since their last show together. They released a new compilation album called
Awakening, followed by four new tracks. The late Joachim "Addi" Rietenbach was replaced with Stephan Eggert. Original keyboardist Peter Hecht refused to participate in the reunion, so guitarist Peter Hesslein played the keyboard on the new album. Jogi Wichmann (who had played on
Sumo Grip) was the live keyboardist for the shows in 2015 and 2016. Lucifer’s Friend released two further albums,
Too Late To Hate in 2016 and
Black Moon in 2019. Bassist Dieter Horns died in December 2020, followed by John Lawton in June 2021, effectively ending the band. The Lucifer's Friend song "Ride in the Sky" is played in the Bulgarian film
Love.net, starring Lawton, as a song by a fictional band called Tabloid.
Legacy Tim Baker, lead singer of
doom metal band
Cirith Ungol, cited Lucifer's Friend as an influence on Cirith Ungol's sound in an interview with
Metal Forces, stating that "We really wanted to be like [''Lucifer's Friend'']". == Members ==