The Gospel, According to Power of Zeus
- Abigail Devoe
- 2 days ago
- 18 min read
This is the story of the Power of Zeus, the coolest Detroit band you’ve never heard of. Unless you have. Then you're cool too.
Joe Peraino: guitar, vocals
Dennie Weber: keys
Bill Jones: bass
Bob Michalski: drums
Produced by Russ and Ralph Terrana
art by Jim Wilson
I believe that, in life, you’re already tied to who and what you’re supposed to be tied to. Once you have that thing you’re supposed to have, looking back through your life, you’ll see all the little things that hinted at it.This happens to me a lot with people. In high school, I took the SATs two towns over, but wound up taking the test in the same room as my future college roommate. Then I met our two best friends in an elevator two years before we actually met.
This time, it happened with music. Many moons ago, I had this boyfriend out in LA. He was a photographer, a real talented guy, who set his psychedelic light show films to music. He found a copy of The Gospel According to Zeus at some fair or something in some time before we met. He set one of his films to the album’s opening track, “It Couldn’t Be Me.” We’d connect over this mysterious Zeppelin-Sabbath-adjacent band called Power of Zeus. I quickly found a full-album upload of The Gospel on YouTube and played it as often as I could. If you were to distill the most specific and essential components of my music taste, you would get something like this album. It’s psychedelic, a little weird at points, heavy. It’s “proto-” a lot of things. It’s a niche I grew to love.
I kept that love for this album after our relationship ended. I got my own copy of The Gospel According to Zeusin time. I knew it was on Rare Earth Records, but for whatever reason I didn’t look more into it. Imagine my surprise when I finally made the connection that Rare Earth was a subsidiary of Motown. It was revelatory: I discovered Power of Zeus six whole months before the MC5. The love of this sound opened my mindto my favorite band. And, well...you already know that story. My presence on the internet is synonymous with the Detroit music scene in the late 1960s.
Unlike the 5, who went on to become founding fathers of punk, Power of Zeus never quite broke out of “local band” status. Seeing as they only released one album, there’s next to no photos of them, and the station that aired their lone television appearance taped over their performance, there was very, very little information out there about these guys. That’s why a Gospel episode took so long to make: in order for there to be a story chapter of the episode, I’d need to speak to someone close to the band. Reaching ex-members of obscure bands seemed like a pipe dream. I didn’t even know if any of these guys were alive, let alone if they’d be willing to speak with me!
In March of this year, I held my first interview for Vinyl Monday. Interviews were always a part of my vision for the series. But still. Who the hell remembers Power of Zeus?
If there’s one thing I should’ve learned by now, it’s that you can count on Chris McGovern to remember literally anything you say ever.
In the comments section of the Climbing episode, Chris suggested in that nudging Chris way, “Abby, when are you going to do a video for the Power of Zeus?” I answered honestly: “if/when I have some contacts, a full episode would be impossible without interviews.” In a few days, Chris somehow procured a contact I’d hoped to have for years. I hastily set up an interview, prepared questions, and sent along an example of my work. All of an hour after filming the New Basement Tapes video, I got to speak with Power of Zeus guitarist and bandleader Joe Peraino.
So, here’s a brief history of the coolest Detroit band you’ve never heard of.
Growing up in Detroit in the 1950s, Joe remembers hearing doo-wop and rock-and-roll, of course. But his father collected all manners of music; country, opera, you name it. He wasn't the only musical one in the family: his brother Victor went on to play in the first lineup of the Up, then with Arthur Brown, then recorded Victor Peraino's Kingdom Come. When Joe was seventeen, he joined the Marines. Stationed in San Diego from about 1962 to 1965, he learned how to play guitar from the other guys in the barracks. Of course, being in southern California, surf rock was the thing. He formed a little band at Camp Pendleton with his fellow Marines playing the top 40 hits; since their bassist was Mexican, he could get them gigs at Mexican clubs downtown. Meanwhile, future Power of Zeus bassist Bill Jones was serving in the Air Force, stationed in Charleston, South Carolina. While Joe returned to Detroit and worked at the Chrysler factory after his service, Bill joined the Villagers; house band of a local TV show called the Village Square. The band was popular enough in this southeastern pocket of the US to tour on their own, but they fell apart when they touched down in Atlanta. Bill moves back to the Detroit area with his wife and kids.
By 1967, Joe met a guy at the Chrysler stamping plant who was starting his own band. The Detroit rock-and-roll scene was about to explode: the 5 had just become house band of the Grande Ballroom, and the Stooges were in their embryonic stages. Joe was listening to heavier music like Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. He put an ad out in the paper for a bassist. Only one guy answered: Bill. He was this real hippie guy, sporting long hair and purple bellbottom pants when the two first met. The complete opposite of the Detroit thing. It seems he brought a lot of that psychedelic flavor, in the form of songs like “Green Grass and Clover,” to the group. Bill got a job playing in the Jerry Michaels Band at a country bar on Jefferson called the Wooden Nickel. Bill invited Joe to jam – since Joe is self-taught he doesn’t know a damn thing about chord changes so Bill has to yell them out. Thanks to some good-old-fashioned mutiny, Bill and Joe took over the band and Gangrene was born. “Music to infect your mind!” Very psychedelic. Once the patrons developed a taste for their of heavy psychedelic rock, Gangrene took over the bar, too! Apparently they found some art students to transform the place into a bonafide psychedelic club; painting it up in day-glo bright paints, lining the walls with black lights, and “tulips dripping blood.” They left the tin angels on the ceilings because they produced crazy effects with the strobe lights. All walks of life came to the Wooden Nickel: doctors, nurses, lawyers, and hippie freaks alike...usually out of their minds on drugs. Hey, it was the sixties! Around this time, drummer Bob Michalski joined. Gangrene became a really good power trio, though Joe confessed he was never too good at replicating what other guitarists played. They built up enough of a loyal audience with their hard-hitting cover tunes to appear at other Detroit haunts – yes, including the Grande.
It took everything in me not to go asking Joe about the 5. My Rob Tyner’s MC5 poster is right over my shoulder,and my Yardbirds/MC5 Gary Grimshaw print was just out of frame. Joe knew the guys. But this is the Power of Zeus’s story.
Dennie Weber and his Hammond B3 were the last to join; making the power trio a power four-piece. Soon, Gangrene garnered enough of a following for Motown to come knocking. They signed to Motown, who changed their name from the positively un-bookable “Gangrene.” Under the direction of Russ and Ralph Terrana, formerly of the Sunliners – the band that became Rare Earth – they got to work recording their first LP. But from the jump, there were problems. Though Motown had high production value and access to any instrument the newly-christened Power of Zeus could want (harpsichord, piano, synths, and gong all appear on The Gospel,) Hitsville USA was a tiny little studio entirely ill-equipped to record rock-and-roll. Bob played “the biggest drums (Joe) had ever seen,” not unlike “cannons.” Sitting this powerhouse at the Funk Brothers’s little kit must’ve been laughable. The guys were “twelve times as heavy” as Motown could’ve ever captured. Even if they could’ve done it, the higher-ups felt they had to round out the corners of Power of Zeus’s sound to gain a mainstream audience outside of Detroit.
The Gospel According to Zeus was released on the Rare Earth Records subsidiary; for more rock-and-roll-oriented acts than Motown or Tamla. Despite groovy art by Jim Wilson and his girlfriend at the time Evelyn, The Gospel sold about three copies. Jim organized a grueling tour through the northern United States and Canada but still, no one would bite. An agency in New York expressed interest in Power of Zeus, but Motown put the kabosh on it. Perhaps they saw the writing on the wall: the band folded within the year. Dennie and Bob’s vices were getting in the way of playing, and there was no money with which to live. Joe’s days at Motown weren’t over, though. He worked in their A&R department through the mid-70s. He still remembers the day Norman Whitfield came into his office with the rhythm track of “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone.” Two weeks later, while in Atlanta, Joe heard The Temptations’ recording on the radio.
It’d appear this is where Power of Zeus’s story ends. But it didn’t. Though the temple fell, a small cult in the Detroit underground still preached The Gospel. Is any language truly “dead” if people still study it? Beginning in the 1990s, hip hop producers studied “The Sorcerer of Isis.” The point of focus? Bob's innocuous drum groove.
Its earliest known appearance as a sample was in 1993, on Markey Fresh’s “Ain’t No Thang.” Common sampled it the year after on “Resurrection,” Cypress Hill sampled it twice in 1995. “Sorcerer” would ascend to a whole new level of veneration come the new millennia, thanks to a certain other Detroit native…
About a decade later, Jay-Z and disgraced philosopher Kanye West sampled it on their collab album…
...and the rest is rock-and-roll history. “The Sorcerer of Isis” has been sampled ninety-three known times. Meaning there’s definitely more!
But thanks to a “corrupt” record company, Power of Zeus never saw a penny. In fact, Joe didn’t receive his first royalty check until 2024; from Ancient Grease Records putting out Gangrene’s Wooden Nickel demo tape as the 2nd Power of Zeus LP, Uncertain Destination. With it is a booklet containing vintage publicity photos of the band – the first most of us fans had ever seen! – and the first real biography of the band. Dennie and Bob have both since passed. Neither saw monetary compensation from The Gospel songs being sampled, or knew the impact their work would have.
This week was a real treat. Not only do I get to serve an underserved pocket of psychedelic music nerd-dom, not only do I get to cover an album I’ve been itching to cover since I started my YouTube channel three years ago this week, but most of my writing for this episode actually got to be about the music itself. I have to admit, I die inside when I get to the review portion and the script is already eight pages of my hard twelve-page limit. That didn’t happen this week.
Prepare yourselves: the word “heavy” will almost definitely be overused in this review.
Looking at these songs, It Couldn’t Be Me was the obvious choice for opener. It’s Joe’s favorite song they recorded, and it’s the song that made me fall in love with Power of Zeus. I’ll never forget the first time I heard it on my own, outside of that psychedelic film. “It Couldn’t Be Me” is bold, hard psych; with a simple, no-nonsense riff for the rest of the song to form itself around. It’s a good opening track for a band’s discography too. I talk about “21st Century Schizoid Man” all the time, and I should really talk about “Good Times Bad Times” more. But I don’t talk much about debut album opening songs on my channel because, frankly, not every debut album hits. Not every band is capable of capable of delivering a mission statement right out of the gate. Power of Zeus was, though: “All I want is what’s mine, I don’t care who I hurt.” We are a band named after the king of the Greek gods! And we are hurdling our thunderbolt at you!
I was shocked to learn Joe had only been playing lead guitar for all of a year before recording The Gospel. (That’s what happens when you suddenly find yourself the only guitarist of the band!) I’ve always thought the “It Couldn’t Be Me” solo was perfectly structured. As a guitarist, a soloist especially, you’re always thinking ahead of your hands. It’s like driving, right? Only look to the end of the hood and you’re going to veer off the road. To trust your head to think ahead of your hands and trust your hands not to jump the gun, be thinking on your feet, and keep that going for a whole minute, making a full cycle through a verse and chorus like the “It Couldn’t Be Me” solo does, is not easy.
Clearly Power of Zeus wore their influences on their sleeve. I wasn’t surprised to hear Cream on Joe’s shortlist of groups he was listening to while recording The Gospel. Detroit loved Cream, Cream loved them back; they gave arguably their best-ever performance at the Grande. I hear them most in Bill’s bass playing. He lifted Jack’s playing style, rooted in jazz, but filtered it through something distinctly Detroit. Where Cream was the ’60s power trio, Power of Zeus were in the tradition of the ’70s power...four-piece.
Case and point: Mountain. They made the same choice as Power of Zeus: organ as their fourth piece. Dennie’sorgan is central to Power of Zeus’s sound, and to moving “It Couldn’t Be Me.” As are the drums: a band is only as good as their drummer, and Bob was phenomenal. “It Couldn’t Be Me” is arguably the best-built track on The Gospel.
What a lot of “heavy” bands miss out on by nature of their craft is negative space. What’s not there is just as important as what is. In The Night’s intro uses negative space to cast a tonal shadow. We’ve experienced the liquid light show, now we walk down the long blacklit corridor. “Here comes the night, dark and cold/Here comes the night where the devil takes hold.” It’s fascinating how environment alters the music that comes out of it. Laurel Canyon in the mid-late ’60s was perfect for folk. The New York artists’ underground made the Velvet Underground. Industrial cities on both sides of the pond, Detroit and Manchester, produced what we might call punk and doom metal today. In moments like these, “When I was a boy, it was told unto me,” Power of Zeus are contemporaneous to Sabbath. Motown-inspired group vocals, not unlike something the Temptations would’ve done at this time, boot “In The Night” into a blues-inspired groove. Quite ’60s thanks to a tambourine, itwouldn’t be out-of-place at the Whiskey. Dennie plays a wonderful organ passage, not unlike Zeppelin used to take “Black Mountain Side” to “Your Time Is Gonna Come.” This one doesn’t link one track to another. It just links to more chorus and a fadeout. A helpful tool is a bit mishandled here.
Bill brought Green Grass and Clover in. The oddball of the album for sure. Joe said it was representative of Bill’s “true personality,” he was very much the hippie of the band. It isn’t dated for the time, but compared to the other sounds on this LP, the harpsichord, soft, pretty acoustic guitar, and timpani read as quite dated. How we went from Detroit to Canterbury, I’m still not sure.
The Gospel’s weak spot is the lyrics. A typical and forgivable offense for album number one. Oftentimes through the first, a band is transitioning from being a really good cover band to their own sound. This pitfall is glaringly apparent on The Gospel’s slower numbers, like “Green Grass”: “It’s up to you and me to understand if we can, man!”
I Lost My Love is a two-minutes-and-change, no-frills rocker you could very much picture as a house band staple. “Girl you’re the one that I love, don’t you know it/Love is a thing that I need...” It does some cool stuff with production here: the rhythm guitar pans from one channel to the other through the rhythm section break. Otherwise, it’s a pretty interchangeable number. Nothing groundbreaking.
Until...
What the fuck was that?
When asked what inspired The Death Trip, Joe said, “Probably too much mescaline!” A portal is opened in the most innocuous song on The Gospel. We’re sucked backwards, with reversed group vocals singing “Amen,” and we’re spit out into “The Death Trip.”
At a certain point, it occurred to me: oh my god, this was intentional. “I Lost My Love” was meant to lull us into complacency so “Death Trip” could have maximum impact. It completely takes you by surprise, just like dropping dead. I was just going about my grooving day writing this song for my lady. “And then I died.”
Of course I love “Death Trip.” It’s big, unabashedly dramatic with sturdy drumming, dark and freaky and esoteric in that way only the late ’60s could be. Plenty of group vocals swirl like the souls in the River Styx. It’s even a bit progressive! The guitar morphs into the shape the backing vocals were in; putting lead shoes on that endless drag down that the lyrics describe. It makes space for another organ solo, not a moment too soon. When“Death Trip” reaches the depths, it comes back to the waltz time tacked onto the back of “I Lost My Love.” Thefeel lightens as this soul rises to nirvana, guided to the heavens. “Follow me into the sunshine and I will show you the way.” It builds into a fervent frenzy, through Joe’s wailing and a perfect exorcised scream. Thethunderstorm sound effect and bells are all Sabbath self-titled.
From the poem on the back of The Gospel’s jacket, written by Jim Wilson’s girlfriend at the time Evelyn:
“This is my sacrifice and my struggle:
That of creation.
That is the lifeblood I give to you.
Not my possessions (that is no sacrifice.)
Not my love – not my time
Not my body or mind or soul or even my life!
These are all too easy for me to give!
My sacrifice is the hell I go through…”
To get to heaven, you have to go through hell first.
Opening up side two of The Gospel is No Time and its Page-y riff. It brings the album’s central energy back to psych rock, but with a slightly different, more dramatic flavor. It’s given an extra minute or so of run time than “It Couldn’t Be Me” to develop; blending piano with organ. It gives “No Time” a certain flair Sabbath wouldn’t get hip to until “Sabbra Cadabra.”
I heard the harpsichord again at the beginning of “Uncertain Destination” and got worried.
Thankfully, there’s an effort to blend it with what Power of Zeus has already got instead of trying to reorient themselves around this instrument. Power of Zeus have proven most successful on two fronts so far: the blazing-hot, assertive rocker, and the progressive, doomed, extended trip; both with a heaping helping of psychedelia. For whatever reason, the folksy thing didn’t work for them the way it could for Zeppelin. But it works for Power of Zeus when it’s blended with something they do well; like tumbling drums and a prominent bassline.
“Uncertain Destination” is another high point on The Gospel. Melody on “I know, I know” just works so well with the chanting backing vocals. They come together to mirror the motif played on guitar a couple movements back. Power of Zeus were also pretty good at writing about death and ideas of the afterlife, however loose they are. It fits with their mythology-themed name. Clearly, being holed up in that cabin got the guys thinking of these concepts; “Uncertain” is about a Cain-like figure, condemned to walking the earth endlessly. The song has the room to make this journey, it’s one of three long ones on The Gospel. It transitions through different movements and coming back to others, as if wandering the same globe endlessly. Joe delivers another well-structured, economic guitar solo. It makes the most of the notes and its place in the song, headed into the big finishes Power of Zeus seem to be prone to.
Realization and Hard Working Man are The Gospel's weak points. “Realization”’s got some very of-its-time harmonies; not in a good way or a way that the music can elaborate on so it digs up and out of cliché. The solo is great, though! It’s energized, with the most aggressive guitar tone and attack on the album. Bill gets to do his Jack Bruce “I’m soloing under the solo!” thing. But listen to the bassline too hard and you’ll realize, “Oh my god, it’s literally ‘In A Gadda Da Vida.’” Bill is a hair’s width away from it! Iron Butterfly didn’t come up in my conversation with Joe, but that album did come out in 1969 and it was everywhere.
“Hard Working Man” reads as Motown nudging Power of Zeus into something single-length. An easy, palatable hard-rocker, and dangerously close to the butt rock fad of the 2000s. It’s fine, but a letdown when you consider the rest of the record showing us what Power of Zeus is capable of.
Oh shit, there’s a gong! Now that I think of it, this is my second gong in three weeks.
No, third, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart both used one on Anthem of the Sun.
Oh my god, fourth if you my recent Pink Floyd at Pompeii review! It’s the year of the gong, people!!
And there it is. One of the most sampled drum breaks in rock-and-roll history. Neo-soul should be eating The Sorcerer of Isis up. It’s loose, in the pocket, with a deep psychedelic soul groove. It’s indebted to funk as well: George Clinton & Co. hit their wacky psychedelic peak this year. Though funk didn’t necessarily come up in Power of Zeus’s list of influences, “Sorcerer” follows that mantra: free your mind and your ass will follow. (The kingdom of heaven is within!)
“Sorcerer” does the exotic eastern thing the psychedelic ’60s loved. This was probably the time the west was most receptive to eastern philosophies, visual languages, and sounds. We hear this in “Sorcerer”’s exotic melody and finger cymbals. There’s a Detroit-area-specific layer to this as well: a sizeable population of middle Eastern immigrants. The guys would’ve had some knowledge of these sounds. Isis, of course, is the ancient Egyptian mother god. Our best-surviving evidence of the ancient Egyptians revolves around their ideas of the afterlife; an idea that came up over and over again on The Gospel.
Funny enough, cult worship of Egyptian deities popped up in the Greco-Roman world. Power of Zeus invoking Isis isn’t so far-off after all.
“Sorcerer” employs some heavy studio wizardry. Synths sling us into outer space and the backwards “Amen” makes a return, as do bits and bobs of past songs. I feel like I’ve suddenly done shrooms when so much of this album was weed or acid. Very different high. Consider my mind freed. We return to that laidback drum groove, with a high-pitched zip of a synth. “Sorcerer” is freaky. It’s the dark side of psych that I love.
This might’ve been nauseating had it been done with a lower budget or less focus. I’m grateful Motown’sresources brought something as positively weird as “Sorcerer” to fruition. It fades off into the night, or whatever portal we accidentally opened back in “Death Trip.”
The Gospel was in a weird spot. Released in 1970, it came a bit too late for psych, too early for the psych revival, and was too psych for funk. A label like Motown couldn’t – or wouldn’t – capture the slab of sound that Detroit rock bands delivered. What they did do was bring out the funk and soul side. As much as Brother Wayne cited him, I never heard James Brown in the 5. I hear funk in Power of Zeus. They brought out the rhythm section; Bill and Bob were absolutely worth spotlighting. Access to Motown’s facilities made The Gospel’s more “out-there” ideas happen. Some lyrics are cheesy, some harmonies are dated, but as a whole? The greater part of the album lands. A lot of first albums are not afforded that, let alone first albums from groups with as potent a sound as Power of Zeus’s.
If my math’s right, Joe’s almost eighty now. He still works with bands, still listens to Jeff Beck and the like, and occasionally plays guitar. (He’s got a pretty sweet collection, but a hand injury put the damper on playing. “I’ve gotten other interests now, that takes up a lot of time,” he says.) Bill found Jesus after Power of Zeus, leaning into the spiritual aspect of the peace-and-love-for-your-fellow-man thing. If given the opportunity, I’d like to reach out to Bill for more of his side of the story.
I would have loved to see how Power of Zeus built on this album; if they went more funk, prog, or stripped the day-glo paint jobs and took it right back to basics, as the decade unfolded. Instead, we just have The Gospel; a cool artifact of the Detroit scene at its peak. I don’t know what was in the water there then, but it put guitars in their hands and made them into demigods. If the big bands were that good, of course the lesser bands would be thisgood too. It’s a shame Power of Zeus never really made it past “local band” in their time, but what little of their mythology remains is worth passing down.
Thank you to my ex, who introduced me to “It Couldn’t Be Me.” Thank you kind subscriber, who took matters into their own hands to end my white-whale search. Thank you Adam at Ancient Grease Records for facilitating the release of more Power of Zeus. Please consider getting The Gospel onto streaming services, or at the very least, the rest of Uncertain Destination. (As of me posting this, all that’s available is the demo for “It Couldn’t Be Me.”) Thank you Plastic Crimewave for writing those liner notes; they were a crucial resource for the stories Joe and I didn’t get to talking about in our interview. Thank you Chris for putting me in contact with Joe – I still don’t totally understand how you did it.
Most of all, thank you Joe for speaking with me and telling the story of the Power of Zeus. I’ve heard a lot of “no”s in my time doing this, and for every no I’ve hit five more dead ends. Sagittarius, Ultimate Spinach, the flaming circle surrounding the MC5. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band? My god, there must be a forcefield around them. I’ve trying to write that episode since January. NOTHING! This episode made the hardest and most rewarding aspect of my job, detective work on bands nearly lost to the sands of time, feelpossible.
God bless, Bill. Rest easy, Dennie and Bob. Thanks for making it possible to preach The Gospel.
Personal favorites: “It Couldn’t Be Me,” “In The Night,” “The Death Trip,” “Uncertain Destination,” “The Sorcerer of Isis”
– AD ☆
Watch the full episode above!