För en en tid sedan hade jag det stora nöjet att få ringa upp Mr Bigs sångare Eric Martin. Personligen var jag aldrig något fan av bandet som så, men herr Martin har haft en intressant karriär och personligen lever jag för alla dessa fantastiska samtal jag får föra med diverse rockstjärnor. Samtalet kom att vara i prick en timme och bjöd på mängder av skratt. Nedan berättar Eric om senaste plattan med Mr Big, återföreningen, hans audition för Van Halen, arbetet med Kevin Shirley, varför Elvis Costello skrek "Piss off!" till honom, mötet med Bon Scott mm. Man kan väl lugnt säga att det var Eric som skötte snacket...
Hey Eric, it´s Niclas from Sweden! How are you?
Eric Martin: NICLAAAAAAAS! (in a high pitched scream) I love your name! How am I? I´ve had like a couple of cups of coffee, as you can tell and I´m actually e-mailing Paul Gilbert as we speak. Subject: Gilbert travels! The guy´s been out… I think he was in Germany the other day. He´s promoting and playing gigs with his solo album. That guy puts out like five or six solo albums a year. He´s got a new one called “Fuzz universe”. I don´t know. He´s on the road and he´s playing like six shows in a row and then days off for travel. Like driving 10-12 hours to the next gig. Yeah man, that guys a glutton for rock!
Keeping himself busy! Where are you exactly? In LA?
EM: Oh hells no! Billy, Pat and Paul… they don´t live together in the band house anymore, they live in LA and I live outside of San Francisco in a community called Marin county. That´s the way it´s been our whole Mr Big life and so be it, man.
I thought I´d start off with the new album and then go a bit into your history, if that works?
EM: I don´t know! We´ll see if it works. (laughs) Let´s see what comes out of my Mr Big mouth. Have you heard the album?
Parts of it, yeah!
EM: Yeah, it always sounds good on a laptop. (laughs)
Yeah, I hate that stuff and that´s the boring thing with promo records these days, that it´s all digital. You never get a real cd anymore. I want the real thing! I don´t want to listen to it on my computer. It´s not the same thing.
EM: No, it´s not the same thing! Like, people send me demos and they do it the digital way and they go “What do you think?” and immediately I go “Where´s the bottom end?”, because there´s no bottom end! (laughs). I just wrote Kevin Shirley, our producer, yesterday. I just got home from England a couple of days ago. I was doing some press with Billy and a little performance, but I didn´t have the record. I´ve got the same thing that you do and a bunch of our demos and at this point the demos sound better. I just want the record! What am I, just a singer? (laughs)
What´s it like being back together? What has changed since you broke up?
EM: Nobody´s throwing chairs, no blood is being spilled, no mood swings, nobody´s on the rag, nobody´s pointing fingers, nobody´s putting their heart on their sleeves and the fans can all see it. None of that shit´s there anymore! There was a guy from Sweden I was just talking to about an hour ago and after I talked to him about the whole record, he goes “Well, have you talked about your problems that you had in the band or did you sweep it under the rug?” and I just said “Hey man, after 13 or 14 years, I´m not gonna rehash!” you know. When the band broke up a long time ago, I had like major problems. It was like a domino effect. The band breaks up, wife leaves me, parents pass away a couple of years later, I don´t have a career, I don´t have anything and yeah, I pointed fingers and I blamed everybody else and I didn´t blame myself. I went to a couple of… well, my first therapist, let´s call him a bartender, and then I went to a couple of others and then years go by. That´s what happened, man. After five years go by, you kind of lose the taste for hate, you know. Then ten years go by and you´re like “What the fuck was all the fuss about?”. Then here it is 12 or 13 years later and you finally get the courage up to call your bass player, who you all these years thought hated you and you call him up and he goes “Hey, man! I´ve been thinking about you!”. There´s no need to be therapy sessioned anymore. I think we all had lost a little respect for each other. It wasn´t about how cool we jelled together as musicians and on stage. When the audience saw this amazing spark on stage, that´s how we felt too and we lost it. We lost it because of all the other bullshit. The management problems, song writing publishing problems, the “I don´t like the way you grind your teeth on the fork when you eat because I´m with 24 fucking hours a day” problems.
It sounds like a marriage! The same kind of problems!
EM: Exactly! Here´s 13, 14 years later and you would think would you get a new girl, but there had to be some kind of spark at the beginning. I don´t wanna keep going on this marriage analogy, but you´re right. I could go on forever and pain this fucking amazing picture and write a whole song for you. I contacted Billy and it was a total olive branch in a way. I contacted him and said “Hey, I´ve been missing you too and wondering what you´ve been up to.”. Long story short, my son was interested in playing the bass and he was five and he´s gonna be six in a minute, tomorrow actually. He wanted to play the bass guitar and he saw this funky old bass that I had on the wall collecting dust and he goes “I´d like to have a little bass for me daddy!” and I said “We´ll see what we can do!” and I called up Billy and asked him if Yamaha made such a thing. He said “No, we don´t!” and he goes “On my travels I´ll look into it!” and that was it. It was an e-mail and a phone call and it was more like “I don´t want nothing from you Billy, I just wanna reach out and say I´m here and I´m not afraid to talk to you anymore. I just wanna be your friend! I don´t really care about the music!”. Really, I didn´t. I just had this thing going in the back of my head, “Fuck man, I had a lot of friends, except Billy Sheehan! I wanna try and get him back in my life!”. So for their last birthday, I have twins, and Dylan wanted to play the bass and it didn´t come for his birthday, he didn´t find anything. Then a couple of days before Christmas, this huge box comes and it´s a bass guitar. A little custom made thing. He didn´t do it through Yamaha, he did it himself. He got a bass, tore the guts out of it, made it all sound different, left handed and all that and then it came with an instructional video. So at Christmas time, my son´s plunking away on the bass and I´m hearing Billy Sheehan´s voice describe the fundamentals on how you play bass guitar. My wife and I were opening our gifts and I hear Billy Sheehan in the room, like he´s in the fucking room! Anyway, I e-mailed him and told him how funny that was and we got to talk and talked once a week or something and he said, and this is totally ironic too because I had seen Pat Torpey last December before that, two years ago, and he was playing drums behind Richie Kotzen and I was on tour as well in Italy and we had found ourselves playing the same festival and we got to talk. I said “It would be great to get the band back together!”. Long story short, Billy says “I´m gonna go see Paul at the House of Blues, so maybe I´ll talk to him a little bit and pick his brain.”. So he goes to see Paul Gilbert and opening the show is Richie Kotzen (laughs) with Pat Torpey. It´s like one gigantic soap opera! There were like a 1000 to 1100 people at the House of Blues and Paul´s doing really good and at the end Paul goes “I´d like to invite a few friends up!” and there´s Billy, Pat and then Richie came up too and they play “30 days in the hole”, which is a song that we covered at one time. The crowd… and it didn´t say it in the newspapers the next day, but this is how it felt in the headlines “Crowd goes wild! Mr Big back! Where´s Eric?”, you know. Paul, when he was playing up on stage with everybody, he kind of looked over and he imagined me singing instead of Richie and the next day he kind of called us all and said “Let´s get back together!”. We had a conference call and then we all got together and we had dinner at Paul´s house. Me and Pat met like in this parking lot when we were walking up to Paul´s house and Billy and Paul are there and we open the door and I look at the guys and I look at Pat and go “Fuck, did we shrink?”.We had a nice laugh and I didn´t feel intimidated anymore and I felt awesome. A couple of days later we were writing songs… no wait, we rehearsed and started jamming on some stuff, but nothing went on the new album, we were just jamming. Then we came up with this idea of “Let´s do a tour!” and that´s all! In the back of my mind I went “God, I´m not gonna be satisfied with a tour and a t-shirt! I wanna make an album!”. Paul was like “Let´s make this fun and let´s not have a reason to fucking beat each other up!” and I went “Hear, hear! I´m all about that!”, as cliché as it may sound. I kept my Mr Big mouth shut and nobody else picked up a chair and everything was good.
Cool! For this album, how much stuff did you come up with? Just those songs on the album or a bunch of stuff? Was the energy just flowing or was it hard coming up with stuff?
EM: On this new album?
Yeah!
EM: Well, we did this 2009 tour and now we were playing together on stage and when we got together… I mean, fuck! I had this other project that I was doing, this Japanese pop song project. It was a God send four years ago, but I didn´t have shit and I was doing the same thing Paul was doing, travelling around in a van with four Italian guys that didn´t speak any English, playing gigs all over fucking Europe for like, peanuts, and this project came on my lap, singing Japanese pop songs. I don´t know if you´ve heard what I was doing, but it was completely different than Mr Big. It sold petty good and it´s the last album in a trilogy or something and a Christmas album. Long story short, it got in the way of me writing songs for Mr Big. I was doing that and trying to write for Mr Big as well. So Billy, Pat and Paul got together a lot more than I got together with them. I did go down a couple of times to meet Paul and do like we used to. He would write some music and the I would write some lyrics and melodies to it and make a song. Make a baby! (laughs). On this one it was a little bit more difficult. I brought like nine songs in, Pat brought like 25 fucking songs! Everybody brought a bunch of songs. For the longest time, when the band broke up, I didn´t have any more reasons to write Mr Big style songs anymore. That´s what I missed the most about being in Mr Big, I loved the outlet that I could write something cool like a rock song or even a corky kind of song too. I don´t like one dimensional bands. I mean, I do love AC/DC and there are a few like that, the one dimensional sound, and I do like it, but I do like bands with versatility. You´ve gotta establish yourself and get a sound and then you play around with it a little bit. I do like that to an extent, but a long story short, we finally did get in a room and our pre production was hardly anything. I mean, our pre production was in the studio and we basically got on the floor and wrote charts out and the lyrics and Billy would say “What if it went like this?” and somebody said “What if it went like that?”, hence the “What if?” and that´s kind of how that started. Back in the day we used to say that all the time. It was to better a song or to better something, a positive thing, because if nobody said “What if?”, we would probably still have that fucking stupid PC computer or no computers. We´d have an abacus! The same thing with the songs. I would bring a song in and I´d go “I love this song!” and they´d go “Nah, it doesn´t kill me!”, which was another classic, but if somebody said “What if?”, you know. So our pre production was hardly anything and Kevin Shirley goes “You guys put your money where your mouth is, I´ve been hearing. I´ve been hearing about your influences for years. You guys talk a good game, but you don´t… you know, Eric might have some soul kind of sound in his voice but all the blues rock music that you´ve been digging over the years, Free, Spooky Tooth and Cactus, all the bands you fucking dig and you´ve been talking how much they´ve influenced you, your sound has hints of it but it´s not that sound!”. We went “Yeah, what´s your point?” and Kevin goes “I want to create this record for you and how it started out.”. After it got going, it sounded awesome. It sounded pretty edgy and bluesy, but then it was also fucking scary because I´m an old workhorse and the way I´ve done it over the years is that I go in, I do my guide vocals like a pace car and then the band always goes “Yeah yeah, we know when the verse and chorus is! Go read the paper!” (laughs). I used to hate making records because I would sit there reading the paper for two weeks and I´d watch these guys have fun and rock out and play live and I´d go “God, I wanna do that!”, but the other producers and even the band would say “You´re getting in the way of my chops!” or something. And I always used to go “Here´s a thought! I´m singing a guide vocal, why not keep it? Maybe there´s a gem?”. I mean, “To be with you” was like that. I sang it once and then it was my fault because the producer goes “Man, that was brilliant!” and I thought, since the band had two weeks in the studio I would go “no, no, no, let´s fuck it up a little bit!” so I could get a little more studio time. Most of the time they´d let me sing it like 80 times and they´d always take like the first or fourth take, some of the time. But Kevin was the complete opposite. He said “Do the guide vocal!” and it sounded great. I go in there and I crank it out and the band goes “We know where the verse, chorus and bridge section is. We don´t need you!” and Kevin goes “No, no he´s in there and none of you guys are gonna do overdubs, you´re just gonna play!” and we were like “What?”. In the beginning I was “Wow, this is cool!” but after singing for a couple of weeks, no breaks, and just like Frank Sinatra with the orchestras. There was no splicing tapes of fixing it in Pro Tools bullshit, you´d have to do it over again and he was the King and he would say “Ok guys, you 30 people in the orchestra, we have to do it again because some oboe player chipped his tooth and messed it up!” and they would have to do it all over again including Frankie. That´s what I had to do and even when the band would go “That´s awesome! That was a great take!” and I would say “Hey guys, my voice kind of hurts.” And Kevin would say “Well, let´s take a break and let´s do it again.” And the band was like “We don´t wanna do it again!” and he would go “Well, you´ve gotta do it again! We´re not going to another studio and have him sing another song.”. It became really weird. It was like “Get in the box and I´m gonna close the box and you can´t get out until you´re done!” (laughs). It´s funny I´m telling you this, but I went to… we mixed the album in Malibu and let me tell you about Malibu!
I drove through Malibu two years ago actually.
EM: Well, let me tell you! Beautiful ocean, but lifestyles of the rich and famous? Nah, nah! Rude people that hasn´t washed their hair in three days! Kevin´s got this studio called The Cave and that´s where he did the Black Country Communion and Iron Maiden, Aersomith´s “Nine lives” and the Black Crowes, which kind of sold me on Kevin Shirley. Anyway, it´s a kind of house and he mixes in it and it´s a really nice house and I asked Kevin “Can I hang out here while you´re mixing this thing?” and he goes “Sure!”. I stayed there maybe because of the hopes that he could send me in and I could fix some shit on my vocals, but not a chance man. I was there for a week. I got to do a couple of overdubs and the band didn´t even know this, but because I sang background vocals on some stuff and on the background vocal track I added a couple of licks on the lead vocal and I look at Kevin Shirley and he goes “No, you´re not getting that in!” and I was like “C´mon!” and he was “No man, you´re back to your old tricks! I don´t want any bells or whistles, violins or tricks on this record! I want a raw rock and roll record from Mr Big and that´s what the fans want. They don´t want to hear this slick shit!” and I go “Well, what do you mean?”. Kevin says “You´ve already done it! You´ve done the slick rock record. After so many years you owe the fans something different instead of the same old same old.”. So there you go.
Who decided on Kevin Shirley? Did you approach him or did he approach you?
EM: I can´t remember the producers that were named before him, but they weren´t his caliber. I don´t know if it was from a friend of a friend. It´s so funny, but there´s a weird Journey connection. For years we were managed by Herbie Herbert, who managed Journey, and to me it is just a coincidence that Kevin was doing Journey at the same time and maybe someone at the studio said “Well, Mr Big is looking for a producer!”. Well, this is how we work man. After I do a record, I complain big time because I´m a singer and that´s what I do. I go “I don´t fucking wanna do anything for a long time!” but you gotta be careful for what you wish for, because four years ago, like I said, driving around in a van and I went “God, I need a break!” and I did. I got like five irons in the fire. It´s been hard, but it´s been great. That´s how Kevin is. He had a little time because the Journey guys wanted to take a little vacation and they´ve got the luxury. I think he had like two or three weeks and he goes “Yeah, I´d like to do the Mr Big record!” and let me tell you! I´m sure he took a pay cut. He wanted to do the band. Maybe… it could´ve been a Black Country Communion connection. I don´t really know Niclas. Billy´s a really good friend of Glenn Hughes´ and I know that Pat and Derek Sherinian might have a connection, you know. Maybe I should ask? (laughs) But our manager came to us and said that we were gonna have a conference call and all of a sudden this voice is on the other end. This South African/Australian English kind of voice came on, which I can´t even do. (laughs). Every time I think I can talk somebody else´s language, people are taking the piss out of me. I really got along with him great. I had like a really great report with him. Look, I made him laugh and that´s a huge fuel to my fire. I love that! We hit it off great and he´s not a push over. Back in the day I used to sway our producer. Everybody did! It was so funny back in the 90´s. Whoever was talking to the producer longer than anybody else, it was assumed “Oh, he wants to be turned up!”. This didn´t happen, but I can totally see Kevin Shirley with a flyswatter, smacking hands on the faders, you know.
It turned out to be a great combination. It´s good stuff!
EM: Right on! Look, Black Country Communion did their record in eight days and so did we. Our first album we did it like that. When I first heard Black Country, they were calling it a single and it was Glenn Hughes screaming away and then I listened to the whole record and it´s really good. It´s some energetic sound! Joe Bonamassa is on fire!
About the art work? Who came up with the idea of a flying pig?
EM: Pat actually! Pat and Billy come up with these really crazy album covers. Our first album was a hat and a shoe, the second album was a train coming out of a train station and “Hey man”, which I always thought was our best album cover, with the straw man driving the car. Pat saw this pig and I think he messed it up too because… we saw this pig with wings and people have said it before, “Yeah, when pigs fly!”.
Kind of like “When hell freezes over!”.
EM: Right! I think he looked at it and we´d always go “What if?” because we always say it and Pat found this thing and the he photo shopped it and put some wings on it. At the time we laughed at it and then the laughter went away and we got our art director involved, this guy Larry Freemantle, who´s done album covers for us in the past. I said to Larry “It´s gotta be like Leonardo Da Vinci with the notebooks and drawings!”. I mean, Leonardo came up with some sort of flying machine way before the Wright brothers or whoever. So I thought it would be kind of clever to have something like that, like blueprints and ink spots and have this pig that has wings. When I first saw it and I know I´m gonna fuck the whole record up, but I put my finger over part of the B and it looks like it says Mr Pig. (laughs) Now the band´s gonna go “You broke the band up again!”. Anyway, it´s just kind of fun.
Yeah! I´ve got some stuff about the old days that I found interesting. Your band Kid Courage, I read that you opened up for AC/DC on their first tour of the US.
EM: That´s right! Their first tour in America. I didn´t play the whole tour obviously. I played two shows at a place called The Old Waldorf in San Francisco. There´s a site and I found it a couple of years ago and it had a list of every gig and it said Kid Courage, but it said Waldorf. Now all the people that I´ve told a million times about opening up for AC/DC, have moved away or they´ve died. But yeah, I did! This Kid Courage band was like The Rolling Stones meet The Tubes. Really weird and kind of odd. We wore suits on stage, kind of like English suits. We kind of looked like The Beatles but we played like The Stones. But the classic for me was… the woman that snapped this picture, she passed away years ago and I wish I had gotten the picture from her, but I´m playing pool backstage with Bon Scott. I didn´t even know AC/DC that much. It was their first tour and when I first heard their music I thought it was kind of punk rock sounding. Their first album and “The jack” was amazing! So here´s Bon playing pool. “Éllo Eric! Really great to meet you man!” and he wasn´t drunk or anything, but he had painted on jeans, no shirt and he was like my height at the time. He was probably older than me but he was kind of a short fellow and he said “Ok Eric, we´ll take this up after the show!” and then he leans up against the pool table, kind of like a stretch or something. At the time I used to open up for a lot of international acts that would come into town. I opened up for Brand X with Phil Collins on drums and Iggy Pop and David Bowie playing keyboards. I would look at these people and I would study them and watch the way they acted or listen to what they talked about on stage or watch their moments. Kind of like emulating them or studying them on how to be a rock star. So here´s Bon Scott stretching and I´m kind of stretching too and all of a sudden Angus gets up on the pool table and he gets on his (Bon´s) shoulders and Angus´got this guitar with no fucking wire on it and I´d never seen one before. I always thought he played “It´s a long way to the top”, but I don´t think… was that on the first album or was it “Problem child”?
Well, there are the Australian releases and the American releases. In Europe it´s on “High voltage” from 1975.
EC: Yeah, the one where he´s wearing the school boy thing on the cover?
Yeah!
EC: Well, he was playing and you could hear it out in the house and I was like “Holy shit!”. It was amazing! “Hey, it´s called wireless!” and I go “What? Oh I get it, less of a wire…!” and he goes “See you later!” and he walks him in and I was like “Holy shit, what an amazing band!”. It was like time bandits, man. Angus is tiny and there´s Bon and they´re just coming in and the crowd went instant wild. I mean, we warmed them up, but we didn´t warm them up. We kind of slapped them in the face to wake up and AC/DC comes out and the crowd had never seen AC/DC before. There was no MTV! We didn´t get any footage from them overseas and here they come up on stage and the water came to a boil fast. It was fun to do that. That was a big time in my life.
Wow!
EM: Another thing, and I know you´ve gotta go.
No, I don´t have to go! I love these stories!
EC: Well, another classic time was me opening for Iggy Pop and I´m backstage and Iggy is there and… well, anyway, Elvis Costello comes into this little circle of people and at the time “Alison” had just hit the radio and “The angels wanna wear my red shoes” and I remember the guitar player of Kid Courage was saying “Why can´t you sing like this guy?”. I sang really high and it was always “Baby, baby!” (in a high pitched voice) all the time and he goes “I want like words and character. Like Elvis Costello!”. So I´m trying to find out what this Elvis Costello character is all about and Iggy goes “Elvis, how are you doing? I´m James!”. You know, James Osterberg. I was so pleased that “wow, he´s using his real name!” and then he goes “Elvis, this is Eric Martin! This kid is opening for me tonight and they´re called Kid Courage and I was like “Hey, how are you doing?”. It was amazing! I´m bookended by two really great characters and then Iggy goes “I´m gonna go to the little boys room and I´ll be right back.” And I look over to Elvis and I go “Hey man, I gotta tell you ‘Angels wanna wear my red shoes’, I love that song!” and I´m trying to explain to him about my guitar player wanting me to be like him and Elvis cuts me off midstream and he goes “Fuck off!”. He goes “Piss off, mate!” and he turns around and starts talking to other people. I´m hunched over, I spit and I´m drooling, my tounge´s sticking out of my mouth and everybody´s looking at me and I´m going “Holy shit! Elvis Costello just told me to piss off!” all the while a big, huge red fucking streak is going up my face. Anyway, I felt like I did the right thing doing that.
Nice one! I also read somewhere that you actually auditioned for Van Halen. Is that true?
EM: Well, I was asked to… I was being produced by this guy Danny Kortchmar in 1987 (I think Eric means 1985.). We were recording in this studio called Record One and on one side is everybody who played on the Don Henley record (Building the perfect beast), with Danny Kortchmar producing. Just everybody who´s everybody is on Don Henley´s record and then next door, a little studio paid by Capitol Records, Danny Kortchmar is doing double duty and producing me, with this guy Greg Ladanyi. God rest his soul, he just passed away recently, and everybody from the Don Henley camp, who seemed they were taking a break from the “Building the perfect beast” album, to do my record, cocaine and all. (laughs). A lot of drugs and booze and they´re all doing my record. Kooch, who lives in New York City, we finished that record and Kooch was a really good friend of Steve Jordan´s and Steve I hung out with a lot making that record. The three of us hung a lot in those days and at that time, Steve Jordan was the drummer for the David Letterman Show and in the middle of 85, Eddie Van Halen was on as a guest and playing with the band. So Jordan and Kooch are all hanging out with Eddie Van Halen and Kooch goes “Hey, I´ve got this album that I have to play for you man! This kid is an amazing singer! You´re looking for a singer since Dave Lee Roth quit blah blah blah, here it is!”. Long story longer, I´m in this funky part of town in San Francisco, the whole bad sitcom and rats in the cellar (laughs) and the telephone rings. First it´s the answering machine, because I wasn´t home. I was probably painting the house that day. He goes “I gotta tell you man, I love your voice, but I hate your record!”, that´s what he said and he goes on “I absolutely fucking hate your record. I guy like you shouldn´t be in this fucking band!”, but it was my solo record, so it was like “Oh, man that´s… funky.”. Then he said “Well, I want you to come to LA and I want to give you an audition. I want to meet you!. And then he goes “I´ll call back!”. So, he calls back and this is 85 plus no one is going to believe me that Eddie Van Halen is calling me plus he doesn´t like to be called Eddie and I was told a million times in the conversation, “I don´t like to be called Eddie! Cease and desist with that shit!”. He was kidding around in the beginning and said “Call me Edward!”. Well I took a taperecorder out with those suction cup things and I put it on the telephone and he calls back, because he tells me he´s calling back on Friday night and I´m talking to him and he goes “Hey dude, I really like your voice and I want you to come audition for the band!” and I´m like “Oh my God, this is amazing! I can´t believe it!”. Later on I listen to the tape and here´s Eddie Van Halen in a dark voice and here´s me “Oh my God!” (in a high pitched voice). So I was going down to LA. Me and Neal Schon were going. We did a movie soundtrack and we were going down to see the movie premiere. We´re in the airport and guess who´s in the airport? Sammy Hagar! This is a fucking true story! I´ll even send you the picture because somebody snapped a picture. Sammy goes “Where are you guys going?” and Neal says “Well, we´re doing this premiere and Eric´s gonna go talk to Eddie Van Halen!” and I go “Yeah, I don´t know what´s going on.”. First of all, I´m talking but I´m stuttering and stammering. Even though I´m friends with Neal Schon, I´m still starstruck and Sammy Hagar is a friend and even to this day I´m a friend, but I get intimidated easily by rock stars. Anyway, Sammy goes “Man, I just got back from talking to that dude and I got the gig! I got the gig!” and I go “Did you audition?” and he goes “Fuck that audition! I don´t need to audition! I got the gig! I´ve known the Van Halen guys for a long time.”. I used to read Creem Magazine and I go “Man, didn´t you guys use to fight?” and Sammy goes “We never fought! We would say bad shit, but…”. It´s like Sammy and David always badmouthing each other in a magazine and he goes “No, I never had a problem with Edward!” and I went “Oh, he´s got the gig! He´s already calling him Edward.” (laughs). Anyway, I just thought of that at the top of my head. So I go down to LA and we go to the premiere and we have a good time. It´s raining and I don´t know what it was… I´m talking to Eddie Van Halen on the phone and he goes “Go up Coldwater Canyon blah blah blah.” And I also my friend Zeke Clark, who worked for me for years, got his big break and went off to be Eddie Van Halen´s guitar tech. I thought “My God, everything´s perfect!”. Anyway, Eddie says “I´m gonna give you Zeke and he´ll give you directions.”. I go “Hey man, what´s going on? Is he in a good mood?” and he goes “Yeah man, he´s kind of scattered right now, but come down!”. It was weird. The way he talked on the phone. Let me tell you man, for weeks before I went down to LA, I was like “Oh my God! I might be in Van Halen. And David Lee Roth? I can´t do that on stage!” and I´m totally freaking myself out. I bragged about it to my girlfriend and my friends and I´m going “ I might be the Van Halen singer! Oh my God!” and then when I actually go down to LA, I´m pissing myself. So I chickened out. I completely chickened out.
Wow!
EM: Yeah, I know. I went down the road and then I went off the edge of the world. (laughs). Yeah, I totally didn´t go. Then I think I talked to Zeke and then there was another thing, I auditioned for Toto and I thought I was in the gig. I had the gig for a week, but Jeff Porcaro didn´t like me. Well, not that he didn´t like me, but he thought that I was too green. I thought I could sing the funk and the soul and I really felt like I could. I mean, I did a couple of records on Capitol that had this funk soul stuff and Steve Lukather played on my records and I definitely had an in, but anyway, long story short, I chickened out the Van Halen thing, I got kicked out of Toto and then Billy Sheehan called.(laughs).
Amazing stories! One final thing, do you know anything about dates in Sweden? Anything planned for Europe?
EM: The only thing I know is that we´ve got a Japan tour going. What a shock, what a shock! (laughs) Then Europe is right on the top of the wish list. That´s second! We did it sporadically on that last tour. We just picked dates… I mean, Switzerland got in there. I´m not saying anything bad about Switzerland. It was just so weird because it was during a strike, or something like that. I don´t know. So we played Switzerland and Germany. I was actually there within this year, when they had that gigantic volcano. I was there and I had to stay an extra two weeks in Italy, so what a bummer. Eating pasta and drinking wine. But, do we have any plans to go to Sweden? Absolutely! We don´t have any plans. (laughs)
You should play Sweden Rock Festival?
EM: You know what? We´re trying to get on some festivals.
Next summer is perfect. They´ve got Ozzy headlining and tons of bands.
EM: First of all you´ve got everybody and who wouldn´t want to come to Sweden. Oh man, I´ve got another phone call and I´m on a talking spree, but Niclas, I´ve got to say goodbye to you!
It´s cool! It´s been the funniest interview I´ve done in ages Eric, so I just want to wish you all the best with the album and hope to see you in Sweden soon!
EM: Thank you man! It was fun!
/Niclas
söndag 5 december 2010
Ross Halfins bilder av Metallica!
Ross Halfins senaste bok "The ultimate Metallica" är en fantastisk fotobok om världens största hårdrocksband. Ingen har följt bandet så nära som denne korte Lars Ulrich-kopia. SPIN Magazine har 13 bilder från boken för er som ännu inte köpt den, men funderar på det.
Kirk Windstein är äntligen på gång med sitt Crowbar och det låter mer än lovande. Är plattan bara en tiondel så bra som senaste Kingdom of Sorrow blir jag mer än nöjd.
Det här ska tydligen vara den tidigast kända inspelningen av "Heartbreaker". Inte illa alls och dessutom en soundboardinspelning. Musikhistoria!
/Niclas
Hank har nytt band!
Det var något nedslående att läsa om von Helvetes inblandning i det scientologiska sällskapet, men det går ej att förneka att mannen är en rocker innerst inne. Efter film bär det nu åter ut med en ny bandskuta i form av Dr Midnight and the Mercy Cult. Debutplattan ska komma till våren och i bandet ingår bl a svenske Tim Skold (Marilyn Manson) och norske guten Anders Odden (Satyricon).
"Boken om OKEJ - 80-talets största poptidning" 2010
Jag älskade OKEJ. Verkligen. Jag minns hur jag och en kompis cyklade till den lokala kiosken för att inhandla tidningen. Efter ett tag insåg vi att tidningen fanns att köpa en dag innan den officiellt skulle komma ut, vilket gjorde läsningen än mer spännande. OKEJ var länge den enda källan för information om favoritbanden, tv-serier och filmer. Det man inte tänkte på då var ju att reportagen om favoritbanden och exempelvis deras konserter, hade en del tid på nacken med tanke på utgivning och publicering. En stor kontrast till samhället idag med direktinformation inom sekunder. Efter att nu ha läst Holmstedts bok, infinner sig lite av en besvikelse. Den blev inte så kul som jag hoppats på. Det är i mitt tycke alldeles för mycket fokusering på ren nonsens, där artikeln om Anna Book i baddräkt nog står ut mest. Vilken vettig människa/författare citerar inlägg från småkåta killar på Flashback? Tydligen tycker författaren att det finns belägg för det. Jag lusläste alltid OKEJ och främst alla reportage kopplade till hårdrock, vilka överlag var många, men i själva boken är det mer snålt med detta. Bäst är utan tvekan reportaget om Thin Lizzys Phil Lynott och hur han kom att spela på en platta med svenska Heavy Load. Ett reportage med värme, humor och känsla. Annars är det inte så mycket kul läsning om just hårdrock, vilket är synd då tidningen under några år i mitten av 80-talet innehöll mängder av den tunga musiken. Vad som också saknas är uppföljning. Väldigt få artister verka ha kontaktats inför boken för att berätta vad de minns. Något som hade kunnat ge det där lilla extra. "Boken om OKEJ" är lite av en besvikelse där tyngden läggs mer på trams än seriositet, till skillnad från "Boken om POSTER" från samma förlag.
/Niclas
Henry my Henry!
I det senaste inlägget på LA Weekly, befinner sig herr Rollins fortfarande i Afrika. Det är oerhört fascinerande vad denne man får möjlighet att se och uppleva.
"Unless Ozzy wins, somebody in the Grunge family is guaranteed to walk away with a Grammy next year in this category. Here are the official Grammy nominees for Best Hard Rock Performance.
A LOOKING IN VIEW – Alice In Chains LET ME HEAR YOU SCREAM – Ozzy Osbourne BLACK RAIN – Soundgarden BETWEEN THE LINES – Stone Temple Pilots NEW FANG – Them Crooked Vultures
Pearl Jam’s Backspacer is also nominated for ROCK ALBUM OF THE YEAR.
Alice In Chains were nominated earlier this year for Best Hard Rock Performance for “Check My Brain.” AIC were also nominated numerous times in the 90′s but have never won a Grammy. Layne Staley often spoke of how much he wanted to win a Grammy, his final public appearance was at the 1997 Grammys.
Stone Temple Pilots won a Grammy in 1994 for “Plush.” Soundgarden won two Grammys in 1995 for “Spoonman” and “Black Hole Sun.” Neither band have had a Grammy nomination in the last decade.
If all four bands attend it could be the first time they’ve all been in one place since the Grammys back in the 90′s, it should be a pretty cool night for Grunge fans. If only afterwards they all did a Grungeapalooza show together…"
/Niclas
Recension av Faith No More i LA!
MXDWN recenserar bandets första av två gig på Palladium i LA. Dessutom bilder och setlist. Jag hoppas fortfarande på ny platta samt konserter i Sverige nästa år, samtidigt som jag fortsätter att leva på konserten på Lolipop 97.
Både Blabbermouth och Bravewords tar upp detta. Kanske är det dags att slå till med lite konst? Tror nog att "Sabbath bloody Sabbath" hade gjort sig riktigt snygg på väggen här hemma, nu när arkiven öppnas upp och blir tillgängliga för gemene man. Tydligen bygger målningen på två bilder från 1700-talet.
Åttaårige Sam, vars pappa jobbar på Decibel Magazine, skriver här sin andra skivrecension och ger sig i kast med brassarna. Klockren analyseringsförmåga utlovas. "I have nothing to say about “Attitude” because it’s not a very good song."
Har helt missat att den här inspelningen/demon ligger uppe. Med tanke på att den spelades in i Ron McGovneys garage den 14: mars 1982, låter det förvånansvärt bra. Om jag har förstått det rätt bestod den första demon, "Hit the lights", av endast tre låtar, "Hit the lights", "Killing time" och "Let it loose". Som texten anger kan detta då mer röra sig om en ren "replokalsinspelning". Oavsett är det musikhistoria.
/Niclas
Lästips!
Pressbyrån fortsätter sitt priskampanjande. 39 ballesteros även för denna månads nummer av Classic Rock. Dessutom medföljer Cheap Tricks senaste album "The latest" samt en kokboks- kalender med recept från bl a Sepultura, Udo D och Pentagram. Vad som sedan gör att samma tidnings specialutgåvor "AOR" och "Prog" kostar 185 kr styck, är och förblir en gåta.
/Niclas
måndag 29 november 2010
“Going back to make an album with a producer you’ve worked with before is not unlike fucking a girlfriend you had 20 years ago."
Saxat från Grungereport.net:
"Dave Grohl compares working with Butch Vig again to 'fucking a girlfriend you had 20 years ago.' The Foo Fighters frontman is making a record with the producer for the first time since he was the drummer in Nirvana and Butch recorded the band’s defining ‘Nevermind’ album, but said he was at first apprehensive whether it would work out. He told Q magazine: 'Going back to make an album with a producer you’ve worked with before is not unlike fucking a girlfriend you had 20 years ago. 'It can either be really good or a total fucking disaster. But it was perfectly natural and totally comfortable and he’s the same person he was 20 years ago. He wears cologne now, I think that’s the only difference.' The seventh Foo Fighters album will also feature former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic on bass and accordion for one song, ‘I Should Have Known’, and Dave told how it was emotional to be reunited with the other surviving member of the group, which ended in 1994 when frontman Kurt Cobain killed himself. Dave said: 'When I see Krist, I hug him to celebrate our lives, but I also hug him to console him, y’know. When you see each other you’re immediately connected by the good things and the bad things. “The song ‘I Should Have Known’ I thought would sound great with his bass-playing and accordion-playing. It’s probably the darkest song on the album.' Foo Fighters new album will be released in spring next year."
/Niclas
söndag 28 november 2010
Charlie Benante snackar Lennon!
Författaren och skribenten Joel McIver (Total Guitar) snackar Lennon och The Beatles med Anthraxtrummisen och Benante verkar helt klart kunna sin rock and roll. Han berättar även hur The Beatles påverkade hårdrocken med låtar som bl a "Come together" och "Helter skelter".
Den Porsche som Eric Carr fick som en bonus av KISS i samband med kontraktskrivningen 1980 är nu till salu. Även han klassiska Chikara trumset, som användes under "Crazy nights-turnén" finns att köpa.
Kelly Simms på SMNnews.com har snackat med Geoff Tate om bl a nyutgåvan av "Empire", eventuell ny soloplatta och kommande albumet med Queensryche. Kory Grow på Revolver Magazine har snackat med både Geoff Tate och Michael Wilton om just "Empire" och vad de kommer ihåg från själva inspelningen.
Herr Soto är aktuell med en ny liveplatta, "Live at Firefest 2008", samt som sångare i Trans Siberian Orchestra, som just nu turnerar i USA. Jag ringde upp honom i Boise, Idaho av alla ställen och fick ett långt och kul samtal om bl a första tiden med Yngwie, uppväxten, enda låten han spelade in med Journey, TSO, rädslan för KISS, Babylon AD och mycket mer.
Jeff Scott Soto: Hi, how are you?
I´m good. How are you?
JSS: I´m doing alright.
Where are you exactly? Are you in LA?
JSS: I´m in Boise, Idaho. That´s where all the potatoes come from in the US.
Right! Are you playing there?
JSS: We have the night off and then playing here tomorrow.
Is that a big town or a small town?
JSS: It´s actually a big town for this state. I can´t try to think of a small town… Little Rock, Arkansas.
Well, I know of it.
JSS: Ok, well Boise is the state capital and the biggest city in the state.
Cool! I thought we´d start off with a bit about your background and then work our way up to present day, if that works for you?
JSS: Sure, whatever you wanna do!
Ok. I´ve been reading a lot about you and I found out that you were born in Brooklyn and then you moved to San Fernando Valley when you were around 8 years old. What do you remember from that period of time. Did you go to a lot of shows in the 70´s and 80´s? Do you remember the first concert you ever went to?
JSS: Yeah and you´re gonna laugh! The first concert I ever went to was actually The Bee Gees at Dodger Stadium. I think I was in 7th grade. I mean, I´m not ashamed to say my whole musical background was more pop and R&B oriented anyway. I liked a lot of the bubble gum stuff and the hit radio stuff when I was growing up. A lot of my friends and colleagues grew up with heavy metal and hard rock and I actually detested that stuff. I actually didn´t like it at all, growing up. I always kind of followed in my brother´s footsteps. He´s a year and two months older than me and once he started getting into rock, I still kind of hated it but because I wanted to emulate him and he was my older brother and I kind of followed his footsteps and started to get into the heavier bands, the rock bands. On my own, I was always into the whole Motown, Michael Jackson, The Temptations and then later into Earth Wind and Fire and The Bee Gees and the whole disco scene and everything. It wasn´t until much later, in my later teenage years that I got into hard rock and heavy metal and ironically enough, that´s basically how my career started. It started in hard rock and heavy metal.
The Bee Gees were killer back then!
JSS: Yeah, and this was back in their heyday. This would´ve been right after “Saturday Night Fever” and I remember Andy Gibb came on stage and joined them on stage. That was a big deal. That was the kind of music I loved and it was great.
I was born in ´71 and grew up as a teenager loving the stuff from the 80´s and especially the whole scene in LA with the hairspray and all…
JSS: Absolutely! I totally got into that stuff. My favorite era of music is the 70´s. Everything from the soul music to… it was a whole revolution at that time. Everything was changing experimentally. Everything from Queen and Led Zeppelin and all those bands, they were taking it to a whole new standard which led into the whole 80´s scene. But the 80´s became a bit too homogenized. It just became a little too cheesy and homogenized for me and there was a reason for why kind of that whole sound died off. Today we have, I guess, a blend of that melodic rock and a lot of people are mixing it with the 70´s thing and making a kind of a new brand behind it. It´s great!
Back in the 80´s, did you hang out at all the famous places like The Whisky and the Rainbow and?
JSS: Oh God yes! When I was old enough to finally go, I used to see Mötley Crüe all the time and Ratt and all the LA bands that struck it big. It was a short lived period for me, because when I was old enough to go to those places, I must´ve been around 16, I joined Yngwie when I was 18 so it was only two years where I got to do all that stuff and the next thing I was on the road and kind of starting my own career.
Right! I also read that your parents were singers and that you haven´t had any real vocal training.
JSS: No vocal training, no. They weren´t professional singers, they basically were high school sweethearts and they were in a do wop band together and they sang in that format. Once my mother got pregnant with my brother, they basically gave it up. They thought it was a dream and they didn´t pursue or follow up on it. “Now we´ve got to be responsible and get real jobs and raise a family!”. It was a lot different back then too. Do wop bands, they were a dime a dozen back in those days and they looked at it like it was too much of a pipe dream and they basically got real jobs, you know. It´s kind of like when your parents are giving you shit for being a musician and going “This is a hobby! Someday you have to grow up and get a real job!”. Well, I´m 45 years old and I still haven´t got a real job! (laughs)
That´s the way to do it! When did yourealize for the first time, that a professional singer was what you wanted to be?
JSS: Oh, since I was like five years old! Since I saw Michael Jackson doing it at such an early age. It´s so true when you see even things like today like Hanna Montana. They´re huge now and obviously their fan base are kids that are much younger than them. It´s exactly the same thing it was for me when I saw Michael Jackson. “That´s what I waanna do! If he can do that, and he´s just a few years older than me, why can´t I?”. It was already in my blood, already in my frame of thought. That´s what I want to do for a living and that´s all I´m gonna do for a living!
I´m a huge KISS fan, did you ever go see KISS in LA?
JSS: Funny thing, no. I never was a KISS fan growing up. It was always kind of scary for me. It´s like when kids have fears of clowns. When I saw them, it was very evil and very dark for me. And some of the influences, like I told you about, were completely on the other side of the fence. Those were really positive and uplifting and very happy and energetic music, so to me KISS sounded like the devil´s music and they looked like devils. It wasn´t till I was much older and got into rock, that I found out how tame and how calm KISS really was. I got into them when they unmasked and did the whole 80´s thing, like “Heaven´s on fire” and “Lick it up” and that´s when I really got into KISS. But of course now, I truly appreciate everything that they´ve done in their legacy and especially now, being friends with Paul Stanley and some of the newer guys like Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer. It´s kind of cool to say that these guys are your friends now and appreciate what they did when I didn´t even like them as a kid. (laughs)
Funny! Working with Yngwie and those two albums, what do you remember from… you didn´t audition, do you remember what songs you played or did you just jam?
JSS: I remember it like it was yesterday. I met Yngwie and I basically got the call… I was surprised I got the call because because they didn´t expect the demos that I sent them. I was 16 years old when I sang it and I didn´t even expect that I would get listened to and when I found out later, that out of the box of tapes that they brought to Yngwie, only two were taken out and played for him. The first one that they played him was the absolute worse one that was in the box and the second one they played him was my tape. Everything else they didn´t bother with. That is amazing to me, that they got this 18 year old kid who was 16 on the demo and that was good enough to play for Yngwie at that point in time compared to everything else that was sent to him. I went down to the studio to meet him and he was working on the instrumental album and he was kind of cold and reserved. He didn´t put any real interest into meeting me. He was in the middle of doing his record and was like “Yeah, I´ll take some time and meet this guy, whatever!”. He brought me into a little room, pulled out this acoustic guitar and started playing. “Ok, I´ve got this song so just come up with some melodies!”, so I´m kind of singing along and he goes “Ok, this is the chorus and this is the melody for this – ba ba bapa ba!”. And I´m just jotting down lyrics as fast as I can and I´m trying to remember the melody and singing it to him, just me and him, like a duet kind of thing and he goes “Yeah, that sounds pretty cool! Let´s put it on tape!”. He goes into the control room and they set up the microphone in the room in front of him and they start playing that same song, but with the whole band playing and I was like “Oh, Jesus, now I´ve got to sing these lyrics and this melody!” and I´m trying to remember everything right on the spot. I think I even have a copy of that. They mixed me a copy of it on a cassette tape and I still have that somewhere at home. And that was my audition. I basically sang “As above, so below” with my kind of fake lyrics and tried to remember the melody and all he remembered was the soaring high notes I was able to hit at the very end and he said “Man, sounds cool! Let´s get together at my house and demo some more songs and we´ll see what happens from here!”. And it was about three weeks of that, that we did together and which eventually led to “Welcome to the band!”
Wow! When was the last time you met Yngwie?
JSS: I haven´t seen Yngwie in a couple of years. I usually run into him at the NAMM show in Anaheim. He lives in Miami and I live in LA and I´m all over the world and I´m basically never around anywhere he´s at when he´s touring or I´m touring, so the last time I saw him… actually I think I saw him in London, he was playing a gig two years ago and then I saw him at the NAMM show, but I didn´t se him this last year, so I´ll probably run into him in January.
I read in an interview from earlier this year where you called him a “mad genius”.
JSS. Yeah, they were asking me if I had to define him in one sentence.
Right! If it came up, would you consider working with him again?
JSS: I don´t know! First of all, that´s the key sentence right there, “work WITH him?”. I don´t really know what it´s like to work with him, I know what it´s like to work FOR him. To work with him might be a conflict of interest, because he´s so head strong and God bless him for it. He´s very head strong and what he wants and how he wants it and what he he´s gonna do and really doesn´t want or need any input from anybody else, in how to complete that. So that´s not really working with him. If he wanted to work on something where I got to put my influence and I got to put who Jeff Scott Soto is, as much as he´s getting to put Yngwie Malmsteen in it, then that would be something I would be very interested in, because obviously we could finally put our history together and do something that actually works for both of us, as opposed to me just being hired by him again.
Ok. What about Talisman then? How did you all get together? How did it all start? JSS: Talisman was basically a spin off from my participation with Yngwie and during that time of course, Marcel Jacob was the bass player. I left the band first and when Marcel finally left he went back to Sweden and started working with John Norum and when he parted with him, he was working on a solo album or a new concept album, that Göran Edman was supposed to sing on, but Edman decided to stick with John Norum. So all of a sudden he didn´t have a singer for this album, so he just reached out to me and told me into sing on these demos that he called “Guitars on fire”. It was a demo when he sent it to me and actually I knew he turned that into Talisman and that´s how that whole thing was born. It was never intended to be a new band and it wasn´t supposed to be anything more than me singing and being hired. I mean, Marcel paid me to sing on this album, that I was not to receive any future royalties on or have any interest in. I was doing him a favor and he was paying me for that favor and that´s all it was supposed to be, but we had such a great time. We had more of a bonding moment during that recording than we actually had during the whole time we were in Yngwie´s band. From that, obviously “I´ll be waiting” became a hit and he asked me if I could come up and do some promotional shows and promotional shows turned into a whole tour in Sweden and next thing you know, we´re talking about doing a second album and making this a real thing. It was totally by accident, but this accident turned into 19 years of my life.
Wow! Did he come up with the name Talisman?
JSS: Yeah! I don´t know if he got it from the novel “The Talisman” or… a lot of people thought that it was ironic because Marcel was that kind of bass player like Billy Sheehan and Billy had a band called Talis. It was kind of coincidental that he named it after Talis, but I don´t know. Bottom line is that Marcel named the band and he had his own reasons for choosing that. I just kind of went a long with it.
I went through your website and there´s like tons of stuff. Do you have any idea, roughly, how many albums you´ve worked on?
JSS: I think I lost count after 64. (laughs) It sounds crazy and it sounds ludicrous to think that I´ve sung on more albums than the biggest bands in the world combined. Thinking of how many albums The Rolling Stones have done and how many albums any of the biggest bands. Aerosmith even. Bands that have been around since the 70´s and are still going and I´ve done more albums than them. Ok, it´s not with the same group, but the idea that I´ve done over 60 albums, it makes me go “What? How is that possible?”. I don´t even know how that´s possible for one artist to do, but God I wish everyone of those went multi platinum! (laughs)
How does it generally work? Do people constantly send you demos and stuff or do you look for stuff as well and think that “Well, this might be cool! I´d love to do something with these guys!”?
JSS: Well, not so much looking for stuff. A lot of that stuff, especially back in the early days, that´s how I make my living. I´m in the music business and music is my business. If I don´t want to make a living from music, I would turn all that stuff down. Fortunately I have the versatility and the voice and the choices rather, to be able to do these kinds of things. In other ways it´s actually bad for you because it kind of prostitutes you out there. It´s like Gene Simmons said the first time I met him. This is many many years ago, before I did half the stuff that I have out there now, he went: “Oh, mr Soto! The man who´ll sing on anybody´s album for a buck!”, and it was true. Back in the day I couldn´t turn things down because not only was it means to support myself, but I also looked at it as a challenge to be able to sing on so many different things and to kind of put myself out there and challenge myself as a vocalist, challenge myself as a writer and do all the things that I was influenced by, that might channel into something I would do in the future for myself or that I could take something of myself and put it into something that somebody else wouldn´t normally expect of me. It was kind of cool that I could wear all these different shoes and all these different albums and all these different projects, because it was just overextending myself of what I would eventually become.
Cool! Do you remember when you realized that your choice of career was actually going to work? This is really gonna pay off?
JSS: I looked at it as I had no choice! This is do or die and I´m gonna get rich or die trying, like the 50 Cent movie. It´s all about… failure is not an option as far as I was concerned. There was no other thing for me to do. There was nothing else that I wanted or could do besides singing for a living! There was no other option and it had nothing to do with “Well, I´m making money now!” or “I´m not making money now”. It has everything to do with that this is in my blood. It is the only thing I can and want to do.
The stuff that happened when you sang with Journey, was there ever anything put on tape or was it just doing live shows?
JSS: Yeah, we did one song. It was actually for the last show I sang with them before they fired me. It was a big America celebration polo match or something like that. It´s kind of a weird thing. It was organized more like a corporate gig, yet they sold tickets to the public, and with that they asked us to write a song in the theme of celebrating America´s history and Jonathan Cain kind of whipped up this kind of ballady type of thing, but the lyrics were about the pilgrims coming here and settling down and fighting for our freedom and all this stuff. It wasn´t the normal Journey song and it wasn´t meant to actually ever be released. It was only meant for us to write for this event and perform it at this event. We recorded a demo of it, just so we could all kind of whip it up and we sang it at this gig and it never saw the light of day after that. I think later, when they were working with another singer before Arnel, they reworked the song with normal lyrics, like making it more like a love song or a break up song or whatever, but it didn´t even end up on the latest album. It was kind of hokey and when you listen to it now you hear this beautiful Journey song with cool melodies and everything and then you hear these lyrics and go “What?”. It didn´t really work and I think it actually leaked out there. Some of the fans got wind of it and went “This is horrible!”. Of course this is my one and only representation of me singing for Journey and they go “This is terrible! No wonder they fired him!”. (laughs)
I was kind of wondering about the band W.E.T.? Great album and excellent performances of all you guys1 Will there be more or was that just a one off thing?
JSS: Well, you know what, W.E.T. kind of started off in the same way as Talisman. It was an idea and I was brought in. It was basically an album of songs that Robert Sall and Erik Martensson were coming up with and the label came to me and said “This is the kind of album we´d love to release with your voice on it. Would you be willing to do it?” and as soon as I heard a couple of songs I thought “This is great!” and as they kept doing more and more I was like “Man, this is really really good! If people like this it could actually turn into something!”. Next thing you know, people are loving this album, everyone from critics to fans. We have discussed following up and if we do a follow up album, the next step is to actually take it on the road, which I would love to do.
I´m looking forward to it because it´s a great album!
JSS: Thanks! And you know what? In many ways it reminds me of the very first Talisman album where we got such a buzz from something that we kind of went into blind. We didn´t really know what to expect working with each other and in the end the end result was something that we were pleasantly surprised to the point where like “Wow, we might actually wanna think about following up on this thing!”.
You´ve got a new live album out and your singing is awesome, but I´m kind of wondering when it comes to live albums and in this day and age, are there any overdubs? Do you fix anything in the studio when it comes to a live album or do you record it and that´s it?
JSS: I´d be lying if I said no. You have to fix a few things. It´s anything from technical problems that could occur or could´ve occurred and in this case we didn´t even have our own selection of the audio engineer and there were a lot of major glitches here and there that we had to fix, just for that reason alone. It has nothing to do with the performances because the performances were there, but for the most part they were only little fixes here and there, just because something dropped out or the microphone was off or the microphone wasn´t working or the background vocal mic wasn´t on. Little things here and there that occur and this is one of the reasons back in the day, live albums used to be a compilation of a few shows. Looking at all the live albums from the 70´s and 80´s, you would see that most of the albums were from three or four different shows and it was for that reason whether they wanted a particular performance that was better one night or there was a problem with some of the equipment on another night, you know. When you do one show in particular you gotta hope that everything is perfect from top to bottom and it usually isn´t. But I like to leave the mistakes in, I like to leave the glitches here and there for the most part, because it shows that it´s live. But when something completely drops out or if there´s something very noticeable, you kind of have to patch those things up. But I don´t agree with bands going into and just recreating the whole thing where it´s no longer live. Then, what´s the point? Why even bother releasing a live album?
Yeah, and speaking of KISS earlier, when I grew up you always considered ALIVE to be very true and you kind of figured out that ALIVE II was doctored in some way, but later on, as more information surfaced, it turned out that both those albums were doctored in many ways and stuff was done in the studio. So it turned out they weren´t that live anyway.
JSS: Well, that´s disheartening! (laughs) That´s enough to make you go “Ah, that sucks!”
Since you´ve released several albums through Frontiers Records, do you have an ongoing contract with them or is it just taken from album to album?
JSS: Pretty much album to album. I mean, my solo stuff, they do have options for me with my solo albums. The live albums are extras and I work out side deals with them, because that not included in my option . I don´t owe them a live album or a greatest hits album and those don´t count as far as real releases. With every album they release with me, they have the option to do the next one. It´s not like I have a seven or five album option like back in the day. We do it per album. In legal terms I owe them another album, but it has to be of a certain genre. They wasn’t me to actually stick to a certain style and sound and genre and if I record like a country polka punk album, they´re not gonna release it. They´re gonna say “Well, that´s not in the genre that we want you to release it, so we´re not gonna pick up your option.” and that´s what gets me out of that. If I record a melodic rock AOR hard rock kind of album, then that´s gonna fit along their category and they automatically get to release it.
Cool! I just thought of something. Have you ever come across or met Paul Sabu?
JSS: I know who he is and I don´t know if we´ve actually ever spoken. I think we might have had some kind of communication in maybe the 90´s at some point. I definitely know who he is.
Well, he´s a great singer and song writer and the same goes for you and I just thought that you would come up with a killer album!
JSS: Ok, thanks!
What´s next? You´re touring now in the States? What´s next when it comes to new albums and so on?
JSS: Well, I was gonna start diving into a new solo album as well as we were gonna start writing a new W.E.T. album, but unfortunately this winter tour kind of snuck up on me and I thought that after this is done, I´ll start diving into that, but I´ll probably not get too much done because I´ve just committed to do another spring tour with TSO and we start rehearsals at the end of February and this thing is going until June, so they´re gonna keep me pretty busy. In a way it´s actually kind of good because I feel I´ve been maybe a little too out there. I think I´ve been a little bit too exposed, so to speak. I think it´s good to take a few steps back. I keep working and I keep doing what I love doing and earning my keep, on the other hand, removing the JSS brand now for a while and make people want it again, I guess. You start putting the demand out there and then finally I can work on something I know they´re all gonna be jumping on, as supposed to “Oh, there he is, releasing another album again! Whoptido!”. And kind of why we´re releasing the Firefest album so soon after I released my last live album. This is something we had in the can and we didn´t know if or when we were gonna release it and since Frontiers know that they´re not gonna have anything from me, easily, for the next seven or eight months, they thought “Well, let’s put this out there and we kind of fill the pocket of having a JSS product out there until he´s ready to come do something.”
Ok. So when you´re playing Boise, Idaho tomorrow, you´re playing with TSO?
JSS: Yes!
Alright! How did you hook up with those guys?
JSS: I´ve known the musical director and guitar player, Al Pitrelli, for about 20 years now. We actually met in Karlskoga in Sweden. We were doing a big festival. He was playing with Alice Cooper and it was the first Talisman tour back in 1990 and we met at the hotel afterwards. We were staying at the same hotel and I´d already been on tour with these guys for a month, so a hotel full of Americans was like “Oh, it´s like being back home!” and me and Al hit it off and got to be, not really good friends, but we got to be acquaintances and we kept running into each other over the years and I remember running into him about 11 years ago and he was telling me about they were taking this Trans Siberian Orchestra thing on the road and he told me what it was all about and I thought “that´s an interesting concept! Good luck with that, dude!” (laughs) He walked away and helped turn this thing into an empire along with Paul O´Neill, the guy who founded this. Fast forward to three years ago and they were recording their latest album “Night castle” (2009) and they were trying everybody for the final role, the main role of the rock opera, and Al went to Paul and said “What about Jeff Scott Soto?” and he goes “Isn´t Jeff a tenor?” and “”No, he´s a baritone! Check him out!”. They flew me out and I think I got the gig based on meeting them much less actually singing with them and from that it just snowballed into me doing the winter tours and now doing the spring tours and they want me on future albums. I think for the next thing, me and Al are gonna finally get together and start working on some stuff. We have some really cool ideas. We don´t know if it´s gonna be an actual project or or turn into solo stuff for me, but I definitely want to work with this guy. He´s one of the greatest guitar players in my eyes that I´ve ever played with and he´s so underrated. Not many people know of him, but I think he´s one of those guys that needs to be heard and I´ve already played with Yngwie Malmsteen and Neal Schon, why not Al Pitrelli?
Who´s Paul O´Neill?
JSS: He used to work with Aerosmith and Joan Jett back in the 70´s and 80´s and then he started producing Savatage and he produced the first Badlands album. He´s basically a producer/songwriter and that´s how he turned Savatage into Trans Siberian Orchestra. He was already going that direction with the whole rock opera theme and taking a lot of the classics and remaking them with a heavy metal vibe behind them and when Savatage split, he just launched into what is now the Trans Siberian Orchestra.
Right! Just a couple of quick ones. I read that you recorded some demos with Vinnie Vincent back in ´87?
JSS: Yeah, Vinnie had a publishing deal with … I don´t know if it was his own publishing deal or a deal with a company, but he used to write songs for other artists. He´s written for Cher and Celine Dion, things completely on the other side of the metal genre and that´s exactly what these things were. They were kind of ballady, syrupy kind of songs that he came up with that had nothing to do with Vinnie Vincent Invasion at the time. He used to sing on his own demos, but he wanted a soulful kind of R&B singer on there and he knew I had that style in me. He just brought me in and I sang four or five songs and he sent them to his publishing company and that was that. Years later I see that these demos are flying around and everybody´s going “Whatever happened to that project? Why didn´t that take off?”. It wasn´t a project or a band, it was me singing some demos for Vinnie and he paid me to sing on the demos that he did for his publishing company. End of story!
Vinnie Vincent just kind of dropped off the face of the earth.
JSS: I don´t know what happened to him and I haven´t seen or heard from him, so who knows if he´s still in music or doing something as a ghost writer. I don´t know! I haven´t seen the guy in years.
And you also recorded stuff with Zakk Wylde as well around the movie “Rock star”.
JSS: No, only the stuff for the movie. There was only one additional song called “Crown of falsehood” that Zakk had written and submitted as a possibility to be on the soundtrack. I demoed that one song. I don´t know if he recorded it with Black Label Society or maybe Pride and Glory, I don´t know or if he ever did it on his own, but it was something he wrote and I sang in the studio, they turned it down and again, that demo surfaced somewhere on the Internet and people hear it as a “Rock star” demo and that´s exactly what it was. It was just something that we did together as a possibility for the movie.
Finally, which I also found out on your website, you did some backing vocals on this great band, Babylon AD, that I actually discovered just a few years ago.
JSS: Oh yeah! That´s how I got the “Rock star” soundtrack as a matter of fact. Tom Werman, who´s a famous producer from the 70´s, 80´s and the 90´s until he finally retired, I sang backgrounds on the last Stryper album they did as a band when they were signed to Hollywood Records and because I was friends with those guys for many years they brought me in to kind of toughen their background vocals instead of sounding like Angel, like they always did on their past albums. Tom werman happened to be the producer on that album and he loved how quickly I worked in my range and how I helped build the background vocals and from that point on I sang on all the albums that he were producing and Babylon AD happened to be one of them and Steelheart, Lita Ford, a band called Pirayha. I did everything until he retired, but they pulled him out of retirement for the “Rock star” soundtrack and when thys asked him “Who would you cast for lead vocals?” and I was one of the first names he pulled out of his hat.
Babylon AD was a damn good band!
JSS: Yeah, they were a great band! Really cool guys and that was a really good album and it was a pleasure singing on that record.
Well, I´ve kept you really long here, but thank you so much Jeff! It was a pleasure talking to you and I wish you all the best with the show tomorrow and I´m looking forward to more albums and more songs from you in the future.
JSS: Awesome, man! Thank you so much!
/Niclas
O Henry, dear Henry!
Henry Rollins befinner sig fortfarande i Afrika, närmare bestämt Sudan. I veckans inlägg möter han enkla människor som verkligen värdesätter demokratin och möjligheten att få rösta om sitt lands framtid.
Det känns på något sätt helt självklart att Nicke Anderssons senaste konstellation väljer att öppna kvällens konsert med Cheap Tricks "Hello there". Ett rivarröj och en stenhård käftsmäll fint paketerad i Nicke Anderssons själfulla riff. Lika självklart blir det när bandet en timme senare avslutar balunsen med en furiös version av KISS "Take me" från herr Anderssons favoritplatta med sagda band. Jag tyckte det var tråkigt när Hellacopters lade ner sina vapen, men samtidigt gjorde de det nog vid precis rätt tillfälle. Att Nicke Andersson skulle dyka upp i något annat sammanhang var det nog ingen som betvivlade, dock tycker jag fortfarande att ISE är en aning blek på platta. Live däremot, vaknar bandet till live och de nya låtarna får en helt annan stuns och än en gång visar Nicke Andersson att han är Svedalas allra förnämsta rockstjärna och en man med fenomenal fingertoppskänsla för låtsnickeri. Comboöppningen med Cheap Trick följt av "A holiday from my vacation" får fullsatta (850 pers) Debaser att koka av rock and roll och helt plötsligt känns Hellacopters väldigt avlägsna. Imperial State Electric live är något av det bästa jag sett och frågan är om det inte slår alla de 15-17 gig jag såg med Hellacopters. Till och med Anderssons röst är starkare och mer nyanserad än tidigare och bandet sen? Det är inga dåliga musiker han samlat ihop och tillsammans blir de en tight sammansvetsad rockmaskin som fullständigt kör över stockholmspubliken. Dessutom lyckas man göra trumsolon intressanta igen då batteristen Tomas Eriksson och Nicke kör ett gemensamt solo på de två ihopkopplade trumseten. Rock and jävla roll, om man säger så! Den stora frågan är nu vad Nicke Andersson ska göra här näst? Oavsett vad det blir kan jag redan nu säga att det kommer bli bra. Riktigt förbannat bra!
Betyg 4/5
/Niclas
fredag 26 november 2010
Idag för 15 år sedan.
19951126. Bandets tredje och sista album med layne Staley, "Alice In Chains", låg etta på den amerikanska topplistan för 15 år sedan. Utan tvekan ett av de bättre albumen från 90-talet och framförallt regniga Seattle. Skänk en tanke till Layne Staley och spela albumet från början till slut!
/Niclas
torsdag 25 november 2010
Idag för tre år sedan.
"25112007, Kevin Dubrow, the frontman with metal band Quiet Riot, was found dead in his Las Vegas home at the age of 52. Their 1983 release Metal Health was the first metal album to top the US charts. The band's biggest hit was 'Cum on Feel the Noize', a cover of the Slade song which they are said to have grudgingly recorded in just one take."
Mötte Kevin DuBrow som hastigast på Sweden Rock samm år. Det var faktiskt lite surrealistiskt att han några månader senare var död. Han verkade vara "in good spirits" och skämtade om min Misfitströja. Quiet Riots "Metal health" och "Condition critical" är två av alla mina 80-talsfavoriter. Mannen kunde sjunga, det är en sak som är säker, även om han lät kusligt lik Noddy Holder.
/Niclas
Duff reser.
I senaste bloginlägget berättar McKagan om sitt ständiga resande, tulltjänstemän och Thanksgiving.
