Tora Tora

Hailing from Memphis, Tennessee, Tora Tora fuse robust heavy metal guitar riffs with the blues-infused attitude long associated with Beale Street. The group surfaced toward the close of the 1980s, scored three charting singles in 1989 including one placed on the Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure soundtrack, saw their momentum halted by the grunge wave of the early 1990s, disbanded, and later resumed activity during the 2010s.

The quartet coalesced in 1985 around Anthony Corder, Keith Douglas, Patrick Francis, and John Patterson, selecting their name from the Van Halen track that appeared on the 1980 album Women and Children First. After prevailing in a regional Battle of the Bands competition, they secured studio access and issued the independent EP To Rock to Roll. Local station Rock 98 gave repeated airplay to “Love’s a Bitch” and “Phantom Radio,” prompting A&M Records to sign the rising act. Their major-label bow, Surprise Attack, reached stores in 1989 and yielded the singles “Guilty,” “Walkin’ Shoes,” and “Dancing with a Gypsy,” the last of which landed on the soundtrack for the comedy hit Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Follow-up Wild America surfaced in 1992 but failed to duplicate that commercial reach; a third set, Revolution Day, was completed yet remained unreleased. Grunge curtailed their progress as it did for many hard rock and heavy metal acts of the period, leading to the group’s dissolution by 1994.

Original members reconvened in 2008 for concert dates, and the long-delayed Revolution Day finally appeared in 2011. A 2017 agreement with Frontiers Records produced Bastards of Beale, their first entirely new studio collection in twenty-five years.