Jimmy Kay from The Metal Voice recently spoke to guitarist and vocalist of Zebra, Randy Jackson. In the chat, Jackson talks about the band’s upcoming new studio album, Zebra 5, how the first single was co-written with Paul Stanley and then talks about the band’s legacy and his audition for Ace Frehley’s position when he first left the band.
Watch the interview below.
When asked about the Musical Direction of *Zebra 5* “
” I’m going to say that as far as Zebra records go, it’s got a little bit of ‘Zebra 3’ in it because there’s a lot of songs that have great hooks, nice choruses to them but it’s heavier than the third Zebra album. I think people are going to love the album. I really do. It’s a variety without being too confusing.
I also did a couple of songs with Edgar Allan Poe poems. One of them is called “The Conqueror Worm,” which people may be familiar with but there’s another one that’s called “Ulalume,” or you may call it you say “Ulalume.” You know, I’ve heard it pronounced both ways, but I pronounce it “Uli,” and it’s a love song, you know. It’s strictly a love song. I usually write music around lyrics. So, this was kind of a challenge, especially because of the language and the way the sentences were formed, and the words that he used and the order that he used them in. That’s where the challenge was, you know, to figure out where, where’s the chorus going to be? Where’s the hook? What do I do?
When asked about his Paul Stanley Collaboration
” (Going back )My manager at the time, a guy named Scott Ross, he put us together. He made the connection. And, you know, I don’t really remember how he did that, but he put the whole thing together. Kiss all knew of Zebra. I mean, we had opened up for them at that point down at the Superdome in New Orleans. And, uh, yeah, and we were on the local scene. They lived in New York, so they heard Twisted Sister and Zebra, and all these bands. So they were well aware of us.
Well, the first single is going to be a song that I wrote with Paul Stanley. It’s a song called “Walk With You,” and we wrote it back when I was doing the China Rain album but it never made it to the record. Always a great song, but it was just one of those that, you know, well, we’ll put, do it on the next album or something, and there was no next album. So, going through the older material that I had, I said, this is really good, we should do this with Zebra. So, I called Paul, got in touch with him, and he said, “Yeah, that sounds good. It was one session we wrote the song in. It was very quick, about two hours. I went to his place in Manhattan. That was like 1990, right around then. The song came out great. Did a demo. It was good. I still, of course, had the demo and we just kind of went off of that. We changed the arrangement a little bit.”
When asked about his audition with KISS when Ace Frehley left the band
“They were looking for somebody after Ace originally left. So, they had heard of me and they flew me out to California and I went in and I’m going to audition but there’s no band. It’s just going to be me playing, by myself. And they put me with this little bitty amp. I did what I could. I had learned a couple of the KISS songs but they weren’t even interested in that, and it was very quick. It was interesting, and I was flattered that they called me.”
