“Valley of the Kings” by Blue Murder

"Valley of the Kings" rides in on Blue Murder's self-titled debut, which Geffen put out in 1989, and it's John Sykes's show from top to bottom. Freshly fired from Whitesnake, he built the band, co-wrote this one with Tony Martin, played the guitar and, when the hunt for a frontman kept coming up empty, sang it himself; he had already handled the vocals on the first demos anyway.

Tony Franklin plays bass, Carmine Appice drums and Nik Green keyboards. Bob Rock produced, with Mike Fraser engineering, on the album the band started cutting at Little Mountain Sound Studios in early 1988. Critics praised the playing and the production, but the record stalled commercially, and it has survived since as a cult item.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.