Diesel Hepfidelity

It’s a bold artist who steps away from a successful project to go it alone. Diesel made that move in 1991, casting aside his chart-topping band Johnny Diesel & the Injectors to pursue a new direction, and ditching his first name in the process. That band’s muscular, bluesy pub rock was replaced with a sound more aligned with classic soul, funk and R&B on 1992’s Hepfidelity. Recorded over 10 months with producers Don Gehman (John Mellencamp, R.E.M.) and Terry Manning (ZZ Top, Joe Cocker), it boasts a who’s who of session musicians: keyboardist Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic), legendary horn section Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love (The Memphis Horns) and Al Green’s backing singers, Rhodes Chalmers Rhodes. Equal parts elastic funk (“Too Much Of A Good Thing”), Memphis soul (“One More Time”) and smooth acoustic pop (“Tip Of My Tongue”,), the singer-guitarist also embraced modern elements such as loops (“Get Lucky”) and even hip-hop (“Love Junk”). With Hepfidelity, Diesel’s solo career was off to a flying start.