Tony Macalpine, Joey Tafolla: Demos 1984

So, there is a lot of mystery surrounding these demos and I figured I would share my point of view on them - Merely theories, not facts! (EDIT 01/24/2019 : Read SatanicAlien's comment :

Paul didn’t necessarily teach Joey... if anything he spent more time learning from Tony and Tony’s then girlfriend Gina Demos back in the 80’s... especially since there was actually a time when Joey was living with Tony and Gina, taking lessons and developing the ‘Out of the Sun’ Demos you hear here.

 Now for who’s playing what..... on the Demo you hear, Tony and Joey shared playing here, with Tony doing guest solos, playing some of the melodies, and of course keyboards... while on the actual Out Of The Sun album Tony let Paul do the guest solos, while he stuck to the keyboards.

 But, make no mistake, Joey was already a great player before Out Of The Sun, he was in Jag Panzer, was offered a gig with Ozzy, and even had his own record label to which he signed Yngwie before Mike Varney did... it was actually kinda Joey that helped land Yngwie on Shrapnel.

 Also, there are more demos like this with Tony and other Shrapnel guitarists, that no one will ever hear!

 Mike Varney would send some of the newly signed guitarists to ‘train’ and write with Tony to be groomed... and it was tough work according to these guys

If anyone has more insight on this, please leave a comment and share! First off, a lot of these songs are actually Joey Tafolla songs, but if you look at the credits for Out of the Sun, Tony MacAlpine actually wrote some melodies for it, as he also played keyboards on the album and acted as producer. 

Theory 1 : Tony wrote and demoed these tracks in 1984, handling both guitars and keyboards. Instead of using these ideas for his solo albums, he gifted these melodies to Joey Tafolla whom re-arranged them for his own album 3 years later. 

Theory 2 : Those are actually the "Out of the Sun" demos recorded in 1987 (that I am unable to find anywhere), with Joey Tafolla handling guitars and MacAlpine doing keys only. But if that's the case, Joey's solos are sounding like what MacAlpine would do here. I always thought Tafolla had more of his own thing going, and I've always heard some Paul Gilbert in his licks during that era.

 I'm gonna go with theory 1. One can immediately recognize Tony's style, tone and licks even with through the lo-fi sound quality of these recordings. His playing is absolutely mindblowing here. Some great keyboard work on there too. With that said, I prefer the Out of the Sun versions and Joey Tafolla's arrangements by far. It's still pretty interesting to hear the earlier versions as well as other unheard demos. 

1 - Redline 

2 - The Summon (05:08) 

3 - Nine Tomorrows (12:59) 

4 - Untitled (19:14) 

5 - Eternity's End (20:40) 

6 - Dragon Fly (25:26) 

7 - Untitled 2 (29:07) 

8 - Zero Hour (30:28) 

9 - Stalingrad (31:45) 

10 - Under Siege (36:15) 

11 - Fool man (41:05)