Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Wendy Dio for the upcoming Deluxe DVD, Blu-Ray release of ‘Dreamers never Die’ the Dio documentary.
She also spoke about upcoming Dio’s, box set, his legacy and about Ronnie thinking of doing an animation movie in the 80’s using David lee Roth as main character.
In the interview The Metal Voice asked Wendy Dio to confirm whether it was true or not that Ronnie James Dio in the 80’s was thinking about doing an animated musical using David Lee Roth’s voice as the main character she said, “yeah, (laughs), it was true. It was very true. We wanted a cartoon, (laughs) the story of Murray (bands mascot). Then the Metal Voice asked if it was middle-earth themed and how far did Ronnie get she said, “yep it was middle earth, it was a musical. I don’t think it got to paper (to be written down). Ronnie was very much doing one thing at a time. If he was home writing songs he was only doing that. So he did not multi-task very well. It was going to be (animated movie) the story of Murray. Murray is the name Ronnie gave to that monster (album of Holy Diver).
The acclaimed film, which world premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, enjoyed a special event theatrical release in more than 600 cinemas worldwide last fall and is streaming on SHOWTIME, will be released worldwide by Mercury Studios on September 29, 2023 on DVD and Blu-Ray+4K and as a special Deluxe Edition featuring the DVD and Blu-Ray packaged with exclusive merchandise.
Jimmy Kay and Giles Lavery from The Metal Voice recently interviewed Don Dokken about Dokken’s upcoming new album ‘Heaven Comes Down’ set for release on October 27, 2023 (Silver Lining Music).
When asked about the new album ‘Heaven comes down’‘Every song is killer on this record. They’re all (songs) are different, ‘I Remember’ or ‘Gypsy’ or ‘Like a rose’. Dokken always used to end our records with a big fast double bass burner. But I ended this record with one guitar and me singing about my journey from L.A. to New Mexico you know (the song) Santa Fe. A great song, very simple, this guitar is just a vocal. I wrote this record in my comfortable range and it still has the Dokken harmonies and you’ll notice on the record there’s no real songs about love and love loss and love found, which used to be me kind of go to. These (new) songs are like stories, like ‘Gypsy’, ‘Fugitive’. ‘I remember’ is probably the only one that’s kind of uh, reminiscent of I was thinking about my past and my life and I wrote the song I remember but they’re all (songs) Still rocking.”
When asked about making music videos for his new album “We did the video for ‘Heaven comes down’ and my record company, no offense to them but they gave me like a tiny little budget and I said I want to make a great video. It’s my last record. My hands paralyzed. I can’t play guitar anymore. I shipped my piano to my daughter, it’s over and I said but it’s gonna be a great video that people are interested in. And the money they gave me (not much), I said so you want me to film this video on iPhones okay? (Laughs). I’m not doing that. Back in the 80s we were using film and get it developed and we had to edit it and you know no special effects. Now you have AI you can look at the new Queensrÿche video. It’s all AI, it’s crazy animation, it’s amazing but I said nope uh-uh I’m gonna do something different. It’d be very simple for us to just rent a stage. Go on stage lip sync make a video with three cameras done nope not gonna do it. So we filmed ‘Fugitive’ (song) and it’s a very cool and interesting video, it’s got over a half a million hits and it’s only been out for six weeks. And now our new video came out ‘Gypsy’ and I said okay we did that and we only got we only got away with that video because I had people that are famous directors editors directors of Photography there were fans of Dokken and they said Don we’ll fly to Santa Fe and we’ll do it for free we just want to we just want to make a great video.Tom Strickfaden (director) dragged all his 5K cameras he does football now these are movie cameras that’s why it looks so amazing. I was talking to John Levin (guitarist) . He was very good friends with Tommy who manages Extreme (band) and he says you know Extreme plans on doing a video for every song on their record so they can keep the album alive for a year. And I said we should do that. Let’s make 10 videos, be It Animation, AI, film, GoPros whatever so we plan on doing that. I’m already working on the next song, ‘Is it me or is it you’ we’re working on that video right now.”
When asked Don to further elaborate if this was Dokken’s last album
“Yes (it is), I feel guilty because I said that after Broken Bones (album) but yeah it’s that’s it, we’re done. We’ve made our statement in Rock and Roll history uh you know we’ll continue to tour. I mean my problem now is when we tour we’d had so many hits and they only want you to play 90 minutes. What songs do we kick out of the set and add . I came to a very Revelation two years ago when I got paralyzed that I spent my whole life, my whole career to keep the fans happy, to be on the road for a year and a half no life. I had a son and a daughter and I didn’t watch him grow up. I’d come home and they’d sprouted a foot and I said you know I don’t have any obligation to the fans to keep going on. I do it because we love to play but I would like to play songs that are near and dear to my heart so that’s what we’re gonna do right now. Maybe I’m speaking too soon, I was at the airport with John (levein) we landed in Dallas. I said John , you want to do another record? And he says I don’t know if I have it in me and I said well let’s just work on ‘Heaven comes down’, we’ll talk in a year about it and John goes I have eight songs I’ve written and I still have four or five songs that are finished. Never Say Never.”
Track Listing: 1 – Fugitive 2 – Gypsy 3 – Is It Me Or You? 4 – Just Like A Rose 5 – I’ll Never Give Up 6 – Saving Grace 7 – Over The Mountain 8 – I Remember 9 – Lost In You 10 – Santa Fe
DON DOKKEN – Vocals JON LEVIN – Guitar CHRIS McCARVILL – Bass BJ ZAMPA – Drums
Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to former Samson and Legacy Iron Maiden Drummer Barry Graham Purkis also known as Thunderstick.
In the chat Thunderstick spoke about his upcoming new album ‘Lockdown’ as well as his time in Samson (with Bruce Dickinson) Plus joining and being asked to rejoin Iron Maiden in the early years.
When asked about Thunderstick’s upcoming new album ‘Lockdown’ “It’s been a while, I actually put the drum tracks down for that album just before uh Christmas 2019 and the deal was that I was going to start track laying in 2020, so that the album could be out in 2020. But as we all know along came Covid and kind of put it all back. I also ended up with two guitarists leaving because they just didn’t feel part of it anymore. Everybody was self-isolating and it was a shame and it left just the hardcore three of us, which was Rex my Bass player, myself and the wonderful singer Raven Blackwing. So I started calling friends and saying do you know anybody that would fit Thunderstick band, the theatrical side of things and just the general style. We’re a power rock band. I don’t ever really regard myself as a heavy metal musician. I don’t think we’re metal enough to actually be called that but that is a kind of you know the dichotomy of what, I’m known for in the NWOBHM era and was once the figurehead for that movement. So I called a lot of friends and a lot of them came back and said well we don’t know anybody that we could recommend for live shows but we’d be more than happy to put some stuff down on the album if you’re doing an album. I thought about it for a while and then I thought you know I’ll do that. Why not, what’s better than having a load of friends that are really musically competent to play on your album and I ended up doing that so I have guest artists all over the place. And what happened with the album is because of the input of everybody’s playing style, I have got such a varied album. And funny enough the main job I had with it was trying to make everything sound like an album rather than random tracks that have been played. I got there in the end and I’m really happy with it. I think the material is really strong. There’s a lot of material that I wrote back in the day that had never got to demo stage but never actually seen the light of day. So I dipped into some of those and then I started co-writing with other people. So up until now as you probably know with 2017 everything to that point was me, Thunderstick was my baby. I produced it, I arranged it, I wrote all the lyrics etc.. or had up until this album. So this time my vocalist Raven had written two song lyrics and absolutely astounding lyrics and I think to myself this is great because I can use these people to input into Thunderstick and it just makes it fresher. This album is a little bit more technical. I’ve been able to play as a producer on it, which I thoroughly enjoy. I actually love the arrangements and production of the album. The album shows that the band are heavier on this album than they were on the last one.”
When asked about the Thunderstick live setlist “I’m playing Riding with the angels (Samson) we’re doing Earth Mother (Samson) Too close to rock (Samson). And what they could expect is a lot of theatricality. We have a kind of storyline. It’s not a concept album or anything like that but live we have a storyline and we record a lot of narrative. This narrative takes over a storyline and so therefore Raven (singer) goes through many character changes during the course of the gig. Which is great and I get to watch this from behind my kit, I can watch this lunacy that’s happening up front. People go away from a Thunderstick gig thinking how wonderful she was (Raven) but she was probably slightly unhinged [Laughter]. We have loads of props, we should have a tour bus for the amount of props that we carry around with us, I always worship at the altar of Alice Cooper. “
When asked why he left Samson in the 80’s “I’ll tell you what I found funny was that the main reason that I left Samson was because of theatricality. We went through a period where the music press would only write about Thunderstick and Thunderstick did this and Thunderstick did that and blah blah blah Etc. And there came a point where both Paul Samson and Bruce (Dickinson) were really getting cheesed off with all that they were really getting fed up with it. And that led to a lot of altercation between myself and the others because I wanted to take the theatricality even further and they didn’t want it. I can remember we were showcasing the Shot Tactics (Albums) at the Marquee and I was really sort of alienated because they went on wearing jeans and Bruce wore a rugby shirt or something like that and he was really against any kind of theatricals. I find it somewhat ironic because if you see the Iron Maiden shows of today (they are theatric).”
When asked about co-writing Iron Maiden’s Ides of March and Samson’s Thunderburst as they were two of the same songs “I was with Iron Maiden, Steve (Harris) was the first person to introduce to me rehearsals of just the Rhythm Section. Up until then every band I’ve been in used to rehearse as a band all the time and yet when I got with Maiden Steve started rehearsing just the two of us. And Thunderburst was a drum rolling pattern that I came up with and he came to me with ideas for that song and I would do this drum roll pattern as well, as I threw in a couple of ideas. So when I was with Samson we did the ‘Head On’ album and we were still looking for a couple of other tracks to use. I said well there’s a track that’s an instrumental and played it to them and they said yeah let’s do it ,so we did it as an instrumental. So we did this instrumental and Paul was still friends with Clive Burr and Clive went over to Paul’s (Samson) house and Paul said look you know we finished the album do you want to hear it, yeah great. So we put the side one on wonderful everything was great, side two goes on and comes Thunderburst and Clive fell off his chair and he went oh my God we’re using that as an intro (to shows). And Paul said what are you talking about so Clive went in his bag and he pulled out a cassette, put a cassette on and there was Ides of March. So as soon as this got heard by the Iron Maiden camp I was summoned to an a meeting at the EMI and Rod (Smallwood) was there and Steve (Harris) was there a couple of the record company people were there and the legal team from Iron Maiden were there. And I was told with no uncertainty Steve is going to take 50% of the songwriting royalties on Thunderburst with Samson. We were a four-piece songwriting team, so we only got 12 and a half% each from Thunderburst track and Steve Took 50%. And then the legal team said if you insist on trying to claim songwriting credits on Ides of March we’ll see you in court and that was the end of that. It was something that had happened prior to me joining Samson. The management and band (Samson) didn’t want to know anything about it, so I was totally unrepresented by anybody and I went there to that meeting alone and the rest as they say is history.”
When asked how much he and Steve Harris contributed to the Song Thunderburst/ Ides of march “Never totally my thing, if we were to break the whole song Down Steve (Harris) probably 75% me 25% of that song. It’s many many years and a lot of blood has passed under the bridge so you know it’s just another one of those stories.”
When asked about the stories of him falling asleep while playing on stage with Maiden in the early years “I mean how ridiculous I mean I don’t know where that came from. I mean it’s just so stupid, it’s so stupid I have actually got a copy of that gig that I did the one that they were talking about that I supposedly fell asleep and I am right on everything. I really am. I mean I listen to it. In the video (documentary) of the early days (Iron Maiden) Steve (Harris) talking about it and he went oh Barry or Thunderstick must have dropped something and it wasn’t his drumsticks. So it was interpreted as the fact that I was out of it or whatever but as I say I have a copy of the live performance that we did and there is no way that I’m out of it.”
When asked about being asked to rejoin Iron Maiden, after Doug Sampson and before Clive Burr Joined “What happened was we toured together, Samson headlining, Iron Maiden second on the bill and Angel Witch opening and it finished Christmas 1979. At the time the Iron Maiden drummer Doug Sampson and he had some kind of medical condition that he was losing power in his arms. I don’t think that there was any kind of firing or anything like that. It was a mutual agreement between the band and Doug that he wasn’t actually cutting it at the time. So we finished the tour and before Christmas Eve the phone went and I answered it and he said hello it’s Steve Harris, hi what can I do for you. Would you consider coming back and rejoining Maiden and I literally was stunned. He didn’t want anything to do with the Thunderstick image, it was already on the Sounds (Magazine) cover and Thunderstick was really gaining momentum for me as a character and was getting a lot of publicity for the band for Samson. And Steve obviously didn’t want any of that at all, he wanted just me. So I said can I have a couple of days, it’s Christmas can I have a couple of days to think about it and he said well you know we’ve got we’ve got an itinerary that we’re working at and you know we really need to know what’s going on, what’s going to happen we need to put the band together because we’ve got all these these gigs and we’re recording and blah blah blah. And what happened was I said how about you hire a drum kid and after Christmas I come down and play with the band and he said great okay let’s do that. But in the meantime Rod Smallwood phoned me up and said we need an answer because you know we’re really under the cost here as far as our timeline is concerned. And I said I just can’t at the moment, I can’t give you an answer so for Christmas it ruined my Christmas. I’ve got it all written in my diary because at the time I was keeping a journal every day and uh it’s just you can see the angst in my writing because I really didn’t know what to do. So anyway I went the day after Boxing day which is the day after Christmas Day in the UK I went down to the East End. There was a foot and a half of snow. I only just managed to get over there and they’d hire the drum kit and I started playing with them. Rod was there and I can remember Rod at the time said this band (Iron Maiden) is going to be bigger than Led Zeppelin. I thought that was wonderful anyway, so I played. I can’t remember how many tracks there are, three or four tracks. We did Running Free which was the single they were just about to record and by the time I got to the fourth track I thought this is not going to work because our Styles I think are incompatible now. So I finished playing and Steve said and? I still needed a couple of days to think about it and I left it at that. There was never a definitive no or yes, I just needed a couple of days to think about it and the phone call never came and by that time I had well and truly decided that I was sticking with the Thunderstick image and sticking with Samson. I mean they were really pissed off when you know when they (Samson) found out that I’d gone and and auditioned as it were for them they weren’t none too happy.”
Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke with singer Ronnie Romero (Rainbow, Michael Schenker, Elegant Weapons) about his new solo album Too Many Lies, Too Many Masters’, that was released on Sept 15, 2023 via Frontiers Music s.r.l.
Romero also talks about his new solo album; Ritchie Blackmore’s inner circle and surviving and overcoming depression from personal and professional issues.
When asked what it was like being in the Ritchie Blackmore’s inner circle compared to the outer circle “It is a huge difference. You’re on a stage and you play songs and you are in the Rainbow band and that’s great and there were another seven of eight singers who did the same thing before, counting the Rainbow and Deep Purple. There was a lot of singers working with. him. But as you mentioned it’s like to be with him (inner circle), having a beer after dinner and talking about UFOs or whatever there was the topic that night until three in the morning. And sometimes he’s taking the guitar and we’re just singing whatever from the Beetles, Queen, Deep Purple Rainbow and whatever it comes to that moment. And that was probably the most enjoyable thing. It is great. Obviously all of this character that people know from Ritchie like he’s a tough guy and he’s a difficult person all that stuff, is how you see him outside the circle. And that’s in my opinion there’s a character and he behaved that way to keep the people away. Which is very understandable, in the way that there is a lot of people trying to get in the (inner) circle.
But when you’re in (inner circle) he is a very nice guy, he is very loyal, he is very cool, he treats you really well. I have nothing to say bad about Richie Blackmore during the five, six years we worked together or even with my family, they were all nice, all the people they were great they would treat me very good. “
When asked if he was allowed to disagree with Ritchie “You can have disagreements with them but he remembers the next day. (laughs) But it’s cool, it’s because he is very smart and very clever person. So it’s very challenging to have a chat with him because all the time you need to be on the same level and I like that because I’m probably the same kind of person. He’s joking all the time and sometimes he’s telling jokes, very clever jokes. Because of my English especially at that time when I met Richie for the first time I didn’t talk English at all. He was telling jokes and I was just like question mark? A he was doing on (telling jokes) on purpose that I didn’t understand. “(laughs)
Romero’s voice and prolific musical activity have brought him to the forefront of the hard rock/metal scene where he can be seen/heard with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, The Michael Schenker Group, Lords of Black, The Ferrymen, Sunstorm, and the recently launched Elegant Weapons with Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner. With an impressive discography already under his belt, TOO MANY LIES, TOO MANY MASTERS is arguably the crown jewel of Romero’s recorded output thus far.
Here’s the track listing for TOO MANY LIES, TOO MANY MASTERS:
1. Castaway on the Moon 2. Mountain of Light 3. I’ve Been Losing You 4. Too Many Lies, Too Many Masters 5. Girl, Don’t Listen to the Radio 6. Crossroad 7. Not Just a Nightmare 8. A Distant Shore 9. Chased By Shadows 10. Vengeance
Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently interviewed former Genesis guitarist and solo artist Steve Hackett.
In the chat Hackett talks about his Foxtrot at Fifty & Hackett Highlights North American tour as well as his time and departure from Genesis. Plus pioneering finger taping and how he influenced Eddie Van Halen as well as metal Guitarists.
When asked about the Foxtrot Album and Foxtrot at 50 North American Tour “Foxtrot is a Genesis album from 1972 originally, So it’s not just 50 years ago, it’s 50 years plus because of Covid catch-up. We haven’t taken this show to North America yet, we have played it extensively in Europe, Scandinavia and other places in the world and finally we get to take it to Canada we get to take it to America. I think it’s one of Genesis Classic Albums of a certain era. ‘Foxtrot’ and ‘Selling England by the Pound’ are my two favorites of the ones I did during my time with Genesis with Peter Gabriel. I think it’s a classic and the version that my band did at Brighton in the U.K. is gorgeous. It looks and sounds wonderful and it’s an absolute class if you like early Genesis. I think it’s a must for music that’s detailed and at times complicated. The style of music is pan-genre; it ranges from sci-fi to social commentary, to humor. Most of the songs are stories; they tend not to be a Boy Meets Girl, it tends to be more complicated than that.”
When asked how he is the only former Genesis member performing the Peter Gabriel Genesis Era “I think it’s an aberration that the others don’t but I think the band (Genesis) became something else later on post Peter Gabriel or post MTV should we say. But I’m talking about music from an era when John Lennon gave us a name check and said he considered Genesis to be true sons of The Beatles and I’m very proud of that and it’s this era that he was talking about. So you can hear that influence if you hear ‘Willow Farm’, in the middle of Supper Ready a great long piece you can hear the Beatles all over, let’s be honest it is really the son of Walrus. It’s kind of circus music in a way, it’s cartoon music, it’s it’s parody. There’s a kind of Vaudeville tradition that it’s drawn from as well. It defies description really but the stuff on Foxtrot it’s very wide ranging there’s a lot of different styles, as I say pan genre is how I see it. It’s inclusive music, there’s so many styles that were being hinted at on that album. I think the original sounds good but I think the live version that I’ve done, you know 50 years plus later with my band I think it sounds better because we can play it better. It’s more in time, it’s more in tune. These guys are virtuosos. Genesis at that time were a Young Band struggling to keep up with the ideas that the entire team were able to come up with together. So you can say well that’s sacrilege and shoot me down in flames but hey you know until you’ve heard what this sounds like in its entirety which Genesis did not do. Genesis never did Foxtrot in its entirety, some songs were considered to be too difficult or insufficiently, or not audience worthy. But now with the passing of time the fact that it’s come to be regarded as a classic, stuff like Time Table and Horizons they’ve all found their place.”
When asked about also performing his solo material on upcoming tour “It’s 40 minutes 50 minutes or an hour of solo stuff. I think it’s got a lot to offer, it’s a really great show if I may say so I’m very proud of it.”
When asked about being a finger taping and hammer-ons guitar technique pioneer and how he influenced Eddie Van Halen “I love Eddie’s playing and he credited me with an influence that’s good enough for me. It’s a prototype tapping, the technique that I did and that he (Eddie Van Halen) named, that’s something that I was doing from 1971 onwards. You can hear it on Nursery Crime (album), Musical box (song) you can hear it on the song ‘Return of the giant hogweed’ on the same album. You can hear it on Selling England by the Pound (album), the first track, ‘Dancing with the moonlit Knight’. When we were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the band Phish, they were talking about the guitar solo. So the first thing that gets talked about was that guitar solo which included sweep picking, tapping and octave jumps which all of which I think you know it’s all part of the glossary of terms. No heavy metal guitarist wouldn’t want to be seen dead without being able to do all of those things. “ When asked about the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis live experience “Pete (Gabriel) was, I think, extremely important, really clever and marvelous lyrical ideas. I think his sense of theatricality rivaled Alice Cooper at times, once he embraced that totally. What that means is that an audience that might have walked out during an earlier era of complicated music. When you had visuals to accompany it, that made a big difference so production values the show itself that’s what really makes the difference. And so you know you hope that if you’re in a band like Genesis you’re going to survive the departure of your lead singer. You hope that you’re going to survive the departure of or leaving the group, as I did but what survives is the quality of the music. “
When asked about his departure from Genesis “I joined a band that was a democracy, a songwriters collective. I left the band that was becoming a dictatorship. I think that when I was told by Mike (Rutherford) and Tony (Banks) that I could no longer do solo work the hackles rose there because they also wanted to control who was writing the songs and that wasn’t the basis that I joined the band.Great band (Genesis) probably the best band in the world but at the end of the day you can’t keep a good Hackett it down. So you’ve got to be true to yourself and your Muse I think once a band starts to lose people, it lost Peter Gabriel, it lost me similar to sort of circumstances in in terms of being told that you can’t have a parallel solo career blah blah blah blah blah blah and all of that. And you figure well why not because it would have strengthened the band and of course the great Poetic Justice at the end of the day was that Phil Collins solo career outpaced the band in terms of sales. So I think that’s ironic justice for them but I still love the guys in the band. It’s different now we’re all very much older and I think that there would have been a rethink if anyone had been sensible enough frankly. Why would you want to lose the singer of the quality of Peter Gabriel, a great performer, writer, humanitarian all of that. You have to allow people room to grow. You can’t run a band by thinking that you own people, you can’t run it like that. You can’t suppress.”
When asked if he joined Genes as a full member or a hired gun “I was a fully fledged equal member that’s what I joined, that’s how I joined, on the understanding that there would be that. I joined on the understanding that there would be a Mellotron. I joined on the understanding that there would be a light show, that we would work towards these things. I joined on the understanding that we would get a synthesizer. I joined on the understanding that we would become more than a folk singing band. Now the band surpassed my intentions and desires. I felt my job was done, now I’ve got to see what I can do on my own.”.
When asked about the roadblocks and hurdles over the years of reuniting the Gabriel led era “The extreme competitiveness at the core of the band and I think there’s always been this idea that oh well if we let these guys back in again this is going to be seen as the real band where as the real band we want it to be seen as three-man team. At one point we all had a meeting, this is right back in I think in 2005. Anyway, nearly 20 years ago we were having a meeting. If we can make Lamb Lies down on Broadway, the thing that we will all do together and can we do it as a musical? Is that possible? Can we use avatars way before the stuff with ABBA. But competitiveness that’s the problem. We had this meeting in Glasgow where Phil (Collins) was doing a gig and straight away Tony (Banks) said I think that it won’t work, it won’t work as a musical, it’s too complicated. Well if it had worked it would have changed the shape of musicals. If Queen could do it, then I think that Genesis could do it. But it’s maybe too much power to Pete (Gabriel) you know because Pete very much wrote the story not the music, we all wrote the music. But the idea of relinquishing that amount of power and reflected Glory was just a little too much for the guys who were holding the name. Sadly because because I think Genesis was capable and is capable of of much.”
About Steve Hackett Steve Hackett joined Genesis at the beginning of 1971 and gained an international reputation as the guitarist in the band’s classic line-up alongside Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins. Hackett’s intricate guitar work was a key element of Genesis’ albums from Nursery Cryme (1971) to Wind And Wuthering (1977) including the classic Selling England By The Pound.
After leaving Genesis at the end of 1977, Hackett’s solo career, which now spans more than 30 albums, has demonstrated his extraordinary versatility with both electric and acoustic guitar. Hackett is renowned as both an immensely talented and innovative rock musician and a virtuoso classical guitarist and composer and this was recognized in 2010 when he was inducted into the Rock Hall Of Fame. He has also worked alongside Steve Howe of YES in the supergroup GTR.
Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Ex-Whitesnake guitarist and solo artist Adrian Vandenberg about Vandenberg’s new album ‘SIN’ that was released on August 25, 2023 via Mascot records.
Vandenberg also spoke about how he was asked to join Ozzy Osbourne’s band during the Speak to the Devil tour and how he was asked to join Whitesnake multiple times throughout the years and refused.
When asked what the difference is musically from Vandenberg’s latest album SIn to their last album 2020. ” I realized I was really happy with the 2020 album but when we started doing a bunch of live shows under our belt I realized I would like to try to get a little closer to how we sound live. So I turned everything up a little bit, a little bit more umph out of the amplifier, a little bit more punch on the drums. Just a little bit more of everything and go a little heavier, heavier than the 2020 album.”
When asked if he was ever approached by Kiss or Ozzy to join their bands, since Vandenberg supported these two bands in the 80’s ” I did. A story that I never told before. Ozzy actually. First time I met him (Ozzy) during the tour. But I must say he was not quite sober, which was unusual for Ozzy of course (laughs). His tour manager introduced me to him and he was in a lunchroom of one of the hotel and he said Adrian do you want to join my band? (Adrian said), we are supporting you guys and Jake (E Lee) is a fantastic player. He (Ozzy) mumbles something, like stay in touch or whatever. But later on um some people mentioned that Don Airey (keyboardist) and a couple of other guys in the band um mentioned to Ozzy that my style of playing had a lot of resemblance with um Randy Rhods’ playing and in the sense of classical influences like Euro metal type of stuff combined with American and blues.
Adrian Vandenberg. Joined by vocalist Mats Levén, drummer Koen Herfst and bassist Randy Van Der Elsen, the influential axe-slinger delivers a vibrant, visceral, and vital vision on the group’s fifth full-length offering, “Sin”, brought to life in broad strokes of anthemic hard rock and airtight metal and produced by Bob Marlette (OZZY OSBOURNE, ALICE COOPER, ROB ZOMBIE).
Recorded in Holland and Los Angeles with Marlette, “Sin” represents a natural evolution for VANDENBERG. Scorching pinch harmonics light up the first single “House On Fire” as the groove underlines a chantable chorus from Mats.
TRACKLIST
Thunder And Lightning
House On Fire
Sin
Light It Up
Walking On Water
Burning Skies
Hit The Ground Running
Baby You’ve Changed
Out Of The Shadows
Chief Shock Video
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s ASA unveil the long-overdue release of "Collective Failure" + first music video for title-track! Check it out and stay tuned for more news! Click image to watch the video
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
Ads
Visionary artist KIMMO KUUSNIEMI's ANCIENT STREAMING ASSEMBLY (ASA) have released “Aurora Nuclearis”, a powerful 12-minute audiovisual experience, dedicated to the Late Keyboardist Esa Kotilainen. - Click image to watch the video
Click image to watch the video
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 