by Alexandra Mrozowska
— Senior Columnist —
It would be difficult – and frightening – to imagine ourselves how the music industry would have functioned throughout 2020 and the first half of 2021 if it hadn’t been for remote recording. Some artists utilized this way of working way beyond the pandemic, whereas others recognized it as necessary evil once it became virtually impossible to work together in person. Still, it’s how the vast majority of 2020 and 2021 releases were made – including Heaven & Earth’s new album V. Once again, Hardrock Haven caught up with the group’s mastermind Stuart Smith to discuss the creative process behind the album, pros and cons of working remotely with what is now an international band line-up, influences, the current situation with touring in the US and beyond – and much more…
Hardrock Haven: The last time Heaven & Earth was interviewed for Hardrock Haven, was when Hard To Kill came out via Quarto Valley Records. The upcoming album V marks your switch to Frontiers Music SRL – or maybe even more of a return, actually, since I believe Windows To The World were released on Frontiers as well back in the early 2000s. What are the reasons for switching back to Frontiers and are you happy with the decision?
Stuart Smith: Yeah. I think it sort of came to an end with Quarto Valley Records – the guy in charge was really a good guy, but he was just surrounded by a lot of people that were very incompetent, and it came to an end with that. And Frontiers offered us a deal, and we know they really know what they’re doing when it comes to promoting this sort of music, so Lynn [Sorensen, Heaven & Earth’s bassist and background singer] and I decided to go with them.
Hardrock Haven: Some say that you don’t need a record label backing that much these days because of many opportunities for artists to release their music independently. What’s your opinion about that and why the label support still counts for Heaven & Earth?
Stuart Smith: Well, if you’ve got nothing else to do apart from just promote on social media and everything else, you can sort of make it work that way. But when you don’t have the time to do that, as well as play and everything else… I did all of that – I did the managing, booking and playing with various bands and Heaven & Earth. And it just gets too much. So having the record company take that side of it [is a good solution]. Also, they have their physical distribution networks… And especially with Frontiers, they know what they’re doing in this genre of music as it’s all they do. So they’re well-established and they do a lot more than you’d probably do on your own.
Hardrock Haven: Do you think there will come a time when any record label backing is completely obsolete, a thing of a past really?
Stuart Smith: No, I think they’ll always be there because there’s always artists that need that. I mean, there’s some people that have a whole team in place and maybe don’t need the record label, but there will always be people who do, like myself. I mean, I don’t have the time to concentrate on just promoting Heaven & Earth and play and create and tour as well.
Hardrock Haven: Another important difference when it comes to Heaven & Earth A.D. 2021 is yet another line-up change in the band’s camp. What do you think each new member of the band brought into V?
Stuart Smith: I think Gianluca [Petralia, Heaven & Earth’s lead singer] brings a more youthful sound to the band, and it’s a bit more raw than it was before. And with George [Barabas], our keyboard player who’s based in Hungary – he’s added a lot of fire to it in his playing.
Hardrock Haven: So with this line-up change, Heaven & Earth have become an international band in the strict sense of the word…
Stuart Smith: Well, it certainly brought some challenges when it came to recording which Lynn had to deal with because we’ve never got together with our keyboard player and our singer. So we’d basically write the songs and we’d send them to him and Lynn would have the unenviable task of putting it all together. But yeah, I think we got a much more European flavor to the band.
Hardrock Haven: Once it was clear there’s going to be another line-up change in Heaven & Earth, have you considered switching back to an all-star line-up the first Heaven & Earth album had, or was maintaining a band situation a priority?
Stuart Smith: Lynn and I did discuss it. We did discuss the idea of something like having Steven Tyler sing a track, and all these various people. But the problem was that with the first album, some people thought we were would tour – or they wanted us to tour – with all the people involved in it. And I said, if you pay them like a million dollars a gig, you’ll probably get them… You know, that wasn’t sort of viable. We had to pick just one singer to go out and tour. And there’s people always comparing… I think with Heaven & Earth, after the first album we’ve established ourselves as a band. I dropped my name from the title [as it was previously named Heaven & Earth featuring Stuart Smith] so it was a band situation… We did throw around the idea of having lots of guests on it [the album] and everything, but we sort of really wanted a band which has a more cohesive sound.
Hardrock Haven: In what circumstances did the new band members join Heaven & Earth?
Stuart Smith: With Gianluca, somebody recommended I check out his videos on Instagram and I thought, “Oh, this guy’s great.” So we reached out to him and he was really excited – he knew of Heaven & Earth and was a big fan. And as far as George, our keyboard player, is concerned – I discovered him because, again, we’re friends on Instagram and he had covered actually two tracks of Heaven & Earth… really hard ones. [One was] “Dreams Of Desire” off the first one in which he covered the keyboard part, and off the last one that Lynn and I did – that was Hard To Kill – he did a solo from a title track, “Hard To Kill.” And he just blew us away! So we reached out to him and he was like a huge fan of the band – we were his favorite band… He couldn’t believe it, and I think he didn’t believe who I was at first (laughs). As I say, Lynn had to sort of deal with the fact that we were all in different countries, but I know working with George was just a breath of fresh air. He came up with a lot of interesting things. And of course, with Gianluca Lynn was just going back and forth as he’s a singer as well – he was great at producing the two of them.
Hardrock Haven: You’ve just mentioned the Instagram connections. Frequent line-up changes in the band’s camp may be seen as disappointment for some fans – and it’s social media indeed that it’s the most visible at. How do you deal with the potential criticism?
Stuart Smith: I don’t really pay attention to it. I mean, I’m way past the stage where I pay attention when somebody says something negative – or something good. If someone says something good, it’s nice, but that’s it. I just do what I do as far as playing the guitar and the way I write [is concerned]. That’s why I haven’t really deviated from the style that I have had since I began playing music. And so, if people like it – great, but if they don’t, that’s fine as well. Obviously, you’re gonna get a lot of people who say, “Where’s the last singer…? I liked him!,” but they don’t have to deal with the personalities… and Lynn and I decided that there was people we did wanna deal with and people we didn’t wanna deal with. So we move on and it also creates a fresh sound. Ideally, we would love a situation that all the players that we have would be there for every album. But the problem is, people who do music for a living have to survive by doing that. If you’re not working – if you’ve done an album and there’s no tour – then they move on to other projects. That being said, the fans out there don’t understand that side of it. Artists have to make a living and if we’re not touring, they do something else and if that takes off, they go off with that. So until you actually have a breakthrough of some kind, which is very hard in this day and age for this sort of music we’re playing, doing an album you’re gonna have to find people that are available – and also the people that come up to the standard of musicianship you want. So we do what we do, and as I say – if fans like it, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s great as well.
Hardrock Haven: That’s it for the fans, but do you still read the reviews – are you interested in what reviewers want to say about the new Heaven & Earth album?
Stuart Smith: Yeah, obviously I read the reviews and people always make me aware of them and the record company’s publicists make me aware of them. And all the reviews have been good (laughs), so… Obviously, with Frontiers we didn’t have that sort of budget we had before, but with the time frame we had, by the time we got all the members, we were seriously up against the deadline for a contract. And Frontiers were good enough to give us an extension on that. But again, when we finally got the members, we had to write and create and everything else… So it was a challenge to get the thing finished on time.
Hardrock Haven: Speaking about that – Gianluca, the band’s new singer, described the songwriting process as “impulsive,” also indicating that it took as little as five months to complete the material. How do you think the pace influenced the process of making the album?
Stuart Smith: Well, it was a tough process for Lynn, because he was the one who was producing and recording it. Gianluca’s right – it was very impulsive and I think it’s good like that. You’re basically up against the wall and you have to come up with things. I mean, it’s a much more raw album than the previous albums, because it had to be. We had to sort of say, “Well, we can’t spend forever on this.” And the process of writing was [that] I generally come up with a riff and myself, Lynn and Simon Wright [Heaven & Earth’s drummer] were in my living room. Simon was on electronic drums and Lynn had his bass plugged into the computer, and I would have my amplifier in my office, and running a cable to it. So I would play a riff, and the guys would join in and we’d just take it where it when. We’d start jamming on the riff, and somebody would say, “Oh, they just go somewhere” and we’d follow it. And eventually, when a song is played twenty or thirty times, it takes a life of its own – it’s developed. And then what we did is we went into the Total Access Studios in Redondo Beach with Wyn Davis and we replaced Simon’s electronic drums with real drums. Then Lynn sent the tracks to Gianluca and George and had them put on their things. That went back a few times – back and forth – because Lynn and Gianluca, both being singers, they worked it out. Then Lynn sent it to me, and I’d say, “Oh, let’s change that, let’s change that…” So that was sort of the writing process. But a song like “Ship of Fools,” I wrote it when I was about nineteen as a demo for an album. I’ve always thought it was a good song, but it never got included [on the album]. But I thought it was good, so we kept the title and Gianluca wrote a whole new set of lyrics… the song, though, is pretty much the same as it was when I first wrote it at nineteen. Apart from that, with the rest of them we really came up with the new ideas.
Hardrock Haven: With remote recording now more common than ever, do you think it will replace the traditional recording entirely?
Stuart Smith: Well, people have done it for quite a while. I mean, it’s not the ideal situation, but when you have your singer in Italy and your keyboard player in Hungary, it’s really the only way to go. There’s a lot of people that do it – but it’s not the ideal situation because one of the great things about this between Simon, Lynn and I, we have that sort of synergy between the musicians when you’re looking each other in the eye and you just know – you get that communication. When you don’t have the whole band there, you miss that side of it and it’s not what we ideally would want. We’d love to all be in the same place and have three or four months to really hash out the songs all together and then go to the studio and play them down, but with coronavirus and just not having the budget to fly everybody over, that’s how we had to do it.
Hardrock Haven: Just a while ago we’ve mentioned the first Heaven & Earth album full of different artists sharing their talents, and also follow-ups to it featured some notable guest performances. As far as I know, there are no guest musicians on V, so that’s yet another change… Was it prompted by the pandemic restrictions mostly, or perhaps it was more of a deliberate move, so as to move away from the all-star formula?
Stuart Smith: You know – it’s never really been a case of an all-star formula. It’s just that every time Heaven & Earth would play acoustic guitars on a track, Howard Leese [ex-Heart, The Paul Rodgers Band, Bad Company] and I would sort of always play it together. Howard would come over, and I would give him the 12-string [guitar] ‘cause when you’re recording for five hours on a 12-string, it hurts – so I gave it to Howard to play and I’d play the 6-string. But with this one, we’ve had the pandemic. And again, on Dig [2013] we had Richie Sambora [solo, ex-Bon Jovi]. As you know, Richie is my ex-brother-in-law, so we always remained good friends and he’s just such an amazing addition to the mix.
Hardrock Haven: Absolutely!
Stuart Smith: I mean, when we did “Man & Machine” [a track off Dig]… He sort of made that talk box sound famous with Bon Jovi in “Livin’ On A Prayer” and everything, so I just wanted him to come and play some talk box, but he also played some slide on this and the guitar… And he’s just an amazing, connected musician. He really connects to the music so well. What’s more, on Dig we’ve also had David Paich [ex-Toto] on “I Don’t Know What Love Is.” You know, David’s been a good friend for years, but I’ve always loved his orchestration and so we’ve just brought him in for that. Again, this time we didn’t really need anybody else – a lot of that was down to the whole COVID situation. Everybody’s older now and at risk and there really weren’t vaccines available, so we’ve just worked between ourselves.
Hardrock Haven: Can you take us through the new album track by track and share stories behind the songs?
Stuart Smith: Yeah. Let’s see – the first one, “Drive”, was basically made when I put some new strings on the guitar and I was just stretching them out so that it wouldn’t get out of tune – and Lynn and Simon started just playing this groove. And I just picked up the guitar and just did what came naturally, and that’s how that song’s developed.
The second one, “Beautiful”, was actually a song we wrote when we had Joe Retta [a former Heaven & Earth singer] and we were planning writing tracks for another album – which would have been this album – and we thought that was a good song, so we just added it to the mix.
“Never Dream Of Dying” was a song that was originally written to try and get it included in a new Bond movie. I’ve heard from someone in the Eon corporation that the title was going to be “Never Dream Of Dying” – they changed it into “No Time To Die.” But we knew that if we got it, they’d probably have someone fashionable singing it, like Lady Gaga or some nonsense like that. We knew that probably wouldn’t be us – but at least we’d have the track in the movie, which could’ve sort of broken the band. Unfortunately, it didn’t get picked – I don’t know what they used ‘cause the movie doesn’t come out until the next month. It’s a shame, you know, but I think that’s one of the most interesting tracks on the album and a departure from what we normally do.
“Ship Of Fools”, as I explained earlier, was the one I wrote when I was nineteen and we’ve just revamped it for the new album.
With “Poverty”, I was driving through L.A. and I took the wrong turn and I got diverted through skid row. And I was just appalled at the amount of the homeless there – there was families, I mean, kids… they’ve just lost their houses… I just thought, “How did we become so unfeeling about our fellow men?” and that’s really what inspired me to write that song.
“Flim Flam Man” was a song written by somebody who was involved in the last record company. Basically, he got himself in there because the head of the record company had a lot of money which he ended up conning him out of. It was really written about him. But there’s plenty of people like that in the music business, which is one of the reasons why things didn’t pan out any further with Quarto Valley Records, with people that were sort of leeching onto Bruce Quarto [QVR President and Founder] to get a living and sort of badmouthing the rest of us… But you know, from the moment the music business began there were people that would just try to get what they can out of it without doing any real work to make a band successful – which they could have done if they actually did that as opposed to just trying to con money out of people. And “flim flam man” is a term that’s used in England for someone who’s a con merchant.
“One In A Million Men” was written about a friend of mine called Taran Butler. He’s probably one of the best shooters in the world and he teaches people like Keanu Reeves how to shoot for the John Wick movies and this kind of thing. And I was just so blown away of how good he was that we came up with a song about him called “One In A Million Men.”
For “Little Black Dress”, I saw some kind of slogan that said, “Every girl needs her little black dress”. I thought, “No one’s actually written a song about this,” and I had that sort of slink kind of groove to it. And originally, I thought it’d be great for Steven Tyler to sing if we did an all-star guest thing. So that’s where it came from.
“Big Money Little Man” – again, pretty self-explanatory. And again, [it’s about] people in the music business like that… I’m very happy with that track as far as the guitar solo goes. I think that’s a bit of departure from what I normally do and it’s something that I always wanted to do – very open, spacey, bluesy feeling at the beginning and then building it up and building it up…
“Running From The Shadows” was the first song that we wrote, I think. I’ve just had the riff and we had no idea what it’s going to be about. We sent it to Gianluca, who came up with the lyrics for it.
“Nothing To Me” was one of the last tracks that we wrote and again, we were sort of right up against the gun when we did this. The lyrics were sort of thrown together, but they work (laughs).
And with the final one, “At The End Of The Day”, we thought that even though it’s not a ballad, it’s going to be a great way to close out the album – just to say “goodbye” at the end of the album. And the words sort of reflect that; it’s about life in general. You start off and then at the end of the day – at the end of your life – the curtains close and it’s like a play; the curtain closes and the music starts to play. So, that was that.
Hardrock Haven: As you’ve mentioned a couple of times, “Ship Of Fools” was a song from your vault of song ideas. How often does it happen for you to recycle such ideas?
Stuart Smith: That’s happened a few times. I mean, on the Dig album there was [a song called] “I Don’t Know What Love Is.” I came up with that title – and I thought it was a great one – but I didn’t have the music I thought was worthy of that title. I thought, “If we’re gonna do this, it has to be amazing song,” and then I came up with the music and that sort of worked from there. On the Hard To Kill album, the actual title track “Hard To Kill” was one that I wrote, again, when I was about nineteen. It was originally called “Fool’s Gold” and I wrote that with John Elstar who used to sing in one of my first bands. We wrote the one and I thought the riff was great, but we wanted to update the lyrics. That’s how “Hard To Kill” came about… So it’s not sort of unusual – this happens ‘cause you ideas that you think are good, but they just don’t work at the time. And then when you’re doing something, you go, “Oh, this would be really good.” And generally what happens is that I sit at home watching TV and I have my electric guitar plugged in – or my acoustic – and I’d just be playing along with the music on the TV – in a movie or something… Then I’d go, “Oh, that’s good,” so I’ll get my iPhone out and I’ll record like a minute of me playing it. And then [it’s for] when the band gets together – that’s how we did this album – I’d play them a riff and they go, “Meh,” I’d play another one, “Yeah, so-so” and I’d play another one and they go, “That’s great!” So then I’d start playing that riff, the rest can join in and that’s how the song comes together.
Hardrock Haven: You’ve also mentioned the Bond movie inspiration in “Never Dream Of Dying”. So, how often does it happen for you as songwriters to draw inspiration from anything other than your own experience?
Stuart Smith: Oh, a lot. That happens quite a lot. I mean, if I’m reading a book, that might give me inspiration. And sometimes you get inspiration from life, like I said about “Poverty” when I was driving through skid row area. And for the first [Heaven & Earth] album, we did a song which actually we wrote originally for when I had Aliens Of Extraordinary Ability together with Keith Emerson – we wrote a song called “The Eyes Of Man.” And that came about from watching a movie about a woman who was accused to be a witch – she wasn’t, she was just a healer – and we talk about times when women were burnt at the stake because they were considered witches… Monty Python actually did a funny take on that (laughs). But when the judges are questioning the character, they say, “You’re guilty in the eyes of God,” and she says, “No, I’m guilty in the eyes of man.” I thought that was a very profound statement and that’s where this title came from. So, movies and books and life in general – you take your influences from something that moves you, one way or the other.
Hardrock Haven: You’ve been quoted as describing V in terms of the “harder edge” to it, and also you’ve just mentioned you’re happy how different some of the guitar parts were on the new album. So in spite of having your music targeted at the fans of Rainbow, Bad Company and so on, were your inspirations for it any different than before then?
Stuart Smith: Obviously when you grow, you hear things that inspire you. You sort of take parts of that and try to make it your own. As I said, when we’re writing a song, we play it twenty to thirty times just from when we initially start jamming it to when the song is completed and then Lynn said, “Well, all right, we’re going for a take.” I knew that all we really were concerned about was getting the drums done. Lynn was going to replace his bass later on that evening when Simon went home – he replaced his bass and then he’d have me redo the guitars, because I was in sort of a writing mode and was just playing whatever came to my head. But by the time we got round to recording it, I was pretty bored with just playing the rhythm parts, so I stuck a solo on there, just for the fun of it. And like I said, Simon went home at the end of the day and Lynn had me re-do the rhythm guitars and I said, “All right, I’m ready to do a solo.” And he said, “No, you’re done.” And I said, “No, I’m not done!” And he’s like, “Have you listened to what you did…?” Ninety per cent of the solos that I did on this were just the first take, they were just what came off the top of my head. And it’s really better and more creative that way, because after you’ve done a solo, after seven or six tries, you’ve sort of lost the impetus. So the solos are the cleanest that I’ve ever done, but I guess some of the more stylish and more exciting because of the fact that we were up against the time, but also because of the way Lynn worked. Because at first, I’ve said to Lynn a couple of times, “No. no, I can do better,” so he’d give me another track and I couldn’t. I couldn’t do better than the thing that came off the top of my head.
Hardrock Haven: Still, do you think it would have been possible to completely leave all your influences behind and do something that is drastically different from all the things people could expect from you, or associate you with?
Stuart Smith: Well, the furthest away from anything we’ve done before is “Never Dream Of Dying.” It’s just very different from the usual style, but I’m always happy to do it if the mood takes us.
Hardrock Haven: Speaking about associations, Heaven & Earth is a kind of brand now musically, and as there are more bands in the same vein, it’s incredible that the ‘70s-flavored Hard Rock music is still there after so many years. What do you think is so special about it that makes it still popular – do you think it’s only nostalgia factor, or maybe something more than that?
Stuart Smith: I think music runs in cycles. I don’t think it’s really come back to the Rock thing properly. We’re stuck in this Rap and rubbish like that, and Pop music which forced everything – every other style of music – into the background. So you’ll always have the fanbase there, and then you have kids who grow up with their parents listening to [Rock]. But the music of the ‘70s… the musicianship was great, and the creativity… You didn’t have Pro-Tools and all this, so once you went into the studio you had to be able to do it for real. You couldn’t have a computer or Auto-Tune or anything – you had to get it right. So the musicianship level was a lot higher than it is today and also, I think, the songwriting. Now you’ve got some singers singing one line throughout the whole song to a computer beat and that becomes a hit, which is – to my mind – ridiculous. But we have the kids whose parents were listening to Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Pink Floyd, and things like that as these kids were growing up. And then, when they started to listen to outside music and probably got involved in playing some musical instrument, they go, “Well, this is rubbish!” And they start again listening to the early ‘70s style of music. So there’s always an audience out there. Whether it would actually become big enough to be at the very top again, I don’t know. It’s down to the younger generation, I think, somebody that can really come to the top. And record companies are like sheep. It was like when Alternative happened and there was Nirvana, all the record companies were desperate to sign up anyone who’d tie a lumberjacket shirt around their waist and play badly and just shout at the top of their lungs, so… I would just say – “Alternative to what…? To having talent?” You know, the record companies would jump on that. So if you get some young band in their teens… I mean, look at Deep Purple’s In Rock. They did that in their twenties. In their twenties, they were playing with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. You don’t have musicians like that nowadays. So eventually, when one comes out – a band that’s all virtuosos, someone like Deep Purple was – and it becomes successful, record companies then want to sign up every single band that sounds like that. So I live in hope.
Hardrock Haven: Absolutely, let’s keep our fingers crossed for the young to take over. So, Heaven & Earth’s bassist Lynn has been quoted as saying in one of his interviews that “the emotional artistic expression of freedom with those expressions are infinitely greater with rock music than in classical.” And as you’ve both been classically trained, do you agree with Lynn and think indeed that after so many decades, there’s still more place for freedom and individuality and perhaps even evolution in Rock than in the classical music sphere?
Stuart Smith: Oh yeah. I love the fact that Lynn and I were classically trained as it gives you the basic technique, so you don’t have the limitations like someone who’s just self-taught. And I think [in Rock] you’re not bound by the restrictions of classical music – although I never was. When I was playing classical, I’d play a piece of Bach music or something and at the end of the piece, I’d do a bluesy ending to it. And the classical teacher would always say, “Well, I don’t think Beethoven or Bach would have approved of that” – but how do you know?
Hardrock Haven: And obviously we’ve talked inspirations, but there’s also the experience factor. Most Heaven & Earth fans know about your association with Ritchie Blackmore and Keith Emerson and your tenure in the Sweet, your bandmates’ resumes being just as rich as yours. How do you think all you’ve learnt along the way and all the influences of people you’ve been working with translate into Heaven & Earth?
Stuart Smith: Certainly my classical upbringing gave me my technique. When it comes to what turned me on to Rock… My father was a jet fighter pilot in Royal Air Force and one day one of my father’s friends, another jet fighter pilot, said he had a spare ticket to a Rock concert and if I want to go. I was just a typical classical snob and I said, “No, I don’t wanna hear Rock music,” but dad said, “Go on, give us some peace.” So I went along to this concert and I was pretty bored all day ‘cause I didn’t get the artistic expression – for me, it was all about technique. So I was watching these guitarists right at the front and thinking – “Well, I can do that!” And probably I could – probably not with a feel [they had], but I knew how they were doing it. And then they announced the last act, which was Deep Purple, and suddenly this guy dressed in black comes running to the front just tearing off these amazing classical runs with so much emotion… That just blew my mind, and turned me on to Rock music. When I was nineteen, I met Ritchie and I was lucky enough to become best friends with him. We’d go on holiday together and every Christmas I’d fly out and spend that with him. Because I was so in aura of him – even when we were friends – as a musician, everything he said to me as far as the guitar playing [is concerned], I would take as Gospel because he’s Ritchie Blackmore. I’m still a fan, even though we’re best friends, which is kind of weird (laughs) – having dinner and looking across the table and going, “Holy shit, I have dinner with Ritchie Blackmore!” And he was very patient with me. So with him, that was a huge influence on me because I grew up having posters on my wall of him. And then, playing with Keith Emerson of course was an amazing experience. He was such a talented [musician] and a great guy – we were good friends, so I really feel the loss… But we’ve had a great musical relationship as well, so playing with him was just a great experience. And even the times with Sweet… I mean, when I first came to L.A. back in ’86, [the Sweet original bassist] Steve Priest and I worked on getting Sweet back together back then. And then, we tried again in the early ‘90s, but it wasn’t until 2005 that we got it together and it worked and people were interested in hearing it – maybe because of the nostalgia thing… It was a fun band. It wasn’t as serious as the other [bands of the era]. Sweet was the borderline Pop music, but with pretty good musicians, so it was a lot of fun playing that material. And you bring your influences from everything you do, as I did from my classical training to playing with Ritchie Blackmore on acoustic guitars and jamming together and playing with Keith Emerson and Sweet… You take your influences from everything and it all comes together.
Hardrock Haven: So what are your plans now? The album being out since a couple of months already, what’s the future for Heaven & Earth?
Stuart Smith: Well, we’d like to tour. The problem with Heaven & Earth is, as far as America goes, it’s virtually impossible to break a new band in America, because you have Live Nation controlling everything. And what they do is they put these tours together and they’re killing the genre of Classic Rock. It’s because there’s no radio to keep it alive, because the Classic Rock radio plays the same two hundred songs rotated ad nauseam because some consultant told them that’s what people of that age want to hear. That’s utter rubbish. Everyone I’ve spoken to would like to hear some new stuff, but they won’t even play anything new by Aerosmith or the Stones, let alone us. And then you’ve got Live Nation, which is the main culprit in this, because they put together these tours of Journey, Foreigner and Styx. Or Foreigner, Heart and Night Ranger. Once you’ve got Foreigner and Heart on the bill, you don’t need Night Ranger. And that’s nothing against the guys in Night Ranger, it’s just you don’t need the third act of the same genre who already established themselves. If they had any brains, they’d be seeding things for the future and maybe putting someone like Sons Of Apollo or us… There’s plenty of bands out there doing what we do. And if they put us on opening up when we didn’t have to pay 200 000 dollars to get on the tour – if they put a band like us, or someone like Sons Of Apollo – and we go out opening for these bands, by the time you do one tour or two tours you can move them up in a chain, to the second one of the bill and then, eventually, to the point of headlining. But it’s all down to [playing] live – you can’t make money selling albums now, so it’s all down to live performances. But they don’t do that. They just put the same old tired line-ups together, and eventually the people of these bands are gonna die off – retire – but they won’t have seeded the ground for new bands to take their place. So that’s a huge mismanagement – very short-sighted – on behalf of Live Nation. In Europe, we’ve got a problem with COVID and we can’t survive just going out there and playing clubs ‘cause you’ve got plane flights, hotels, road crew, road manager, band wages… you’ve got all this money you’ve got to lay out. And to survive, you have to have festivals – you have to play festivals on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then maybe take Monday off and play clubs the rest of the week to actually make it financially viable to do it at all. But now the problem is the festivals are opening up and then they’re closing down again because of COVID. And when the promoters have to spend maybe a million dollar in advance money for the bands – you know, one or two million for the bands to headline the festival – and then the festival closes down, they have to pay the one third in advance and they lose that… they’re reluctant to put that sort of commitment into festivals and now you’ve got insurance on top of that and it’s just becoming a nightmare. And the problem for us is that we don’t know what the future brings – we’ve had some festivals reach out to us and then they said, “Sorry, it’s not happening now.” So until the festivals are really back to what they used to be, when you had one every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we can’t afford to come out to Europe. And for the reasons I’ve stated before with Live Nation, we can’t tour in the States. Well, unless we just wanna fly our singer over and fly our keyboard player over and get in a van and go… You know, we’re all too old for sleeping in a van or motels. We need a decent hotel and so you can’t afford to do that just playing clubs – and it’s impossible to get on the big tour. So it’s a grim situation until things go back to how they were.
Hardrock Haven: Absolutely… So before we wrap it up, what do you think caused this situation within the US which is obviously a cradle of Rock music? What happened and when did it happen?
Stuart Smith: Back in the day, the band would say, “Hey, we want this band [to open for us].” Like we played in South America with Sweet [in 2011] – we opened up for Journey. And the promoter was a friend of mine, and I just called him up and said, “Hey, what tours have you got going out that we could go on?” He said, “Well look, I’ve got Journey coming on. Let me talk to them.” He talked to the manager, who wanted to talk to me, and we chatted for a while, I sent him Live in America album [released in 2009]. And when the guys were rehearsing, he went, “Hey, how do you feel about Sweet opening up for you?” And they said, “Great, we love the band!” So that’s all it took – but that was South America. Over here, if Journey said, “Hey, we want this band opening up,” Live Nation who would handle the tour would reply, “Oh yeah – if they can pay ten thousand dollars a night, they can open up.” So I don’t know how it started, this whole “pay-to-play” thing… and these people who call themselves promoters and say, “Hey, I want you on this thing and you have to buy a hundred tickets and you’ve got to sell them.” I never did that. I’ve always said, “My job is to play guitar. You’re telling everyone you’re a promoter, so go on, promote it.” They expect us to do the work and they got away with it. In England there was a place called The Marquee Club, which was a great place for Rock, and they started that. And all the musicians got together and said, “Hey, we’re not playing here.” So eventually they stopped that. But over here there’s a much more mercenary attitude, where if you say, “Well, I’m not doing that,” there will be twenty people behind you who’d say, “Hey, I will.” So Live Nation is basically a cold corporate entity and rightful stupidity because they’re killing the genre that’s making them the most money. Classic Rock bands far outsell Rap artists live at this kind of thing. But as I’ve said, they’re not seeding the ground for the new artists, so when these artists do retrire – which a lot of them are starting to do – or die off, there’s gonna be no more Classic Rock because they haven’t made it happen and they very easily could. But that’s just my take on it. I mean, when it started happening or how it started happening, I don’t know. It’s one of these slow things where they got bands to sign contracts with them for a tour and they have to sort of go along with it.
Hardrock Haven: And that’s absolutely crazy. Well, we here at Hardrock Haven are keeping our fingers crossed for the touring situation to resolve – and for now, check out Heaven & Earth’s V!
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Heaven & Earth – “Drive”
