The Murder of My Sweet

by Derric Miller
Staff Writer

Angelica Rylin and Daniel Flores of The Murder of My Sweet checked in with Hardrock Haven to talk about their epic new release Divanity; how the band was formed; specific tracks like “Valerie” and “Death of a Movie Star;” upcoming tour plans; the debut single/video “Bleed Me Dry;” and a whole lot more. Angelica also freestyles some Depeche Mode at the end of the interview, something you have to hear …

The Murder of My Sweet is part symphonic, part gothic, but they don’t sound like any of the bands in those genres that you’ve heard before.  Basically, you have to hear them to truly understand what they are all about. Tune in now to get to know the singer (Angelica) and drummer (Daniel) and if you haven’t already picked up Divanity, what are you waiting for?

Online: On MySpace

(If the embedded player doesn’t populate, click here to stream the interview in a stand alone player.)

Lee Altus

by Alissa Ordabai
Staff Writer

Championed by the industry as the next big thing some 20 years ago, Heathen was not only the band which at the time embodied the spirit of all things new in metal, but, in fact, one of those acts who have invented the entire genre of thrash alongside with Metallica, Testament, Megadeth, and other innovators hailing from Bay Area. All those who in the beginning of the Eighties transformed the music scene and gave the word “metal” an entirely new meaning it still bears to this day.

Fast-forward to 2010 and Heathen are back with an album which has been two decades in the making, giving all true metalheads a taste of authenticity which bands today are hardly capable of replicating. And here we are talking not only about the new guard, but also Heathen’s pioneering contemporaries who these days have stridden a long way from the original formula.

What really strikes you about “The Evolution of Chaos” is not just the unmistakable taste of the real thing – whiplash riffs that go straight for the kill, semi-operatic vocals, wall-of-fire rhythm section and riotous firework solos. It is also the urgent, driven atmosphere of thrash’s early days which the new album distills into 11 tracks, the spirit of the genre’s initial aspiration before the whole thing got swallowed by big business. The sense of urgency, the conviction, and even, surprisingly, at times the bona fide naïveté of those golden days, and hence sincerity of the message.

With some material on the record in fact dating as far back as mid-Eighties, the album also shows with amazing clarity the common ground from which Bay Area acts drew their inspiration and which marks them as the children of the same environment who started off on the same aspirations. But what Metallica have over the years lost in spirit and conviction, Heathen have managed to retain, and what Alex Skolnick these days has turned into an almost intellectual pursuit, Heathen’s founding member Lee Altus continues to go for with such primordial fire and fury it makes you wonder if he’s found a way to travel back in time to breathe the Bay Area air circa 1985 each time before going into the studio to throw down those show-stopping solos.

While brilliant execution turns the pleasure of listening of this record into a luxury, the material itself could be seen as a panorama of the development of thrash. From the propulsive, tightly wound rage of “Control by Chaos” to magnificent complexity of “No Stone Unturned”, the record is as diverse as the genre allows it to be. But given its wide spectrum of moods and atmospheres, at the same time it gives a unified, coherent rendition of the road walked by thrash since its early days to 2010.

Guitarist Lee Altus and vocalist Dave White being the only original members on board this time around, the band (in part due to the fact that Altus has always been its main songwriter) have still managed to give the album that classic, unmistakable Heathen sound. And while Altus blames grunge for the demise of the band in the early Nineties, the fact that he never gave up on the music he loved shows that a real musician can be as flexible as he is determined.

After two decades spent pursuing other goals – playing in die Krupps in the Nineties (and while doing that living in Germany) and later joining Exodus where Altus continues to play since 2005, he has decides to revive his old band properly by releasing brand-new material and thus showing that music can exist beyond vanity, ambition or remembrance. For the first time since 1986 Heathen are enjoying being involved in a pure creativity without allowing themselves to be pressured by any external considerations.

What makes a musician stick to his guns and to his vision despite the changing fashions, the inspiration behind Heathen’s resurrection and the new record, as well as his creative process and what makes people care about guitar solos were some of the themes Hardrock Haven has touched upon in this interview with Lee Altus just before Christmas.

AO: Lee, thank you for finding time to do this interview with us. We really appreciate your time.

LA: No problem.

AO: And congratulations on the new album!

LA: Thank you.

AO: Are you happy with the way this record has turned out?

LA: Yeah, overall happy, but are you ever really happy? I heard this, I think it was this a guy from that band Boston, or some other band, who said, “You never ever finish an album, you abandon it.”

AO: That’s what Bruce Kulick said to me a few days back, and he said that this originally came from Sting!

LA: Well, here you go then! When somebody said it to me, it sounded perfect, and I thought, “I will use that!” Because you either run out of time, run out of money, or something. You are never totally happy, you just have to be happy enough.

AO: Do you have favourite tracks on this record?

LA: Favourite tracks? Hmm… Yeah, I guess it would be “No Stone Unturned”, that was the most challenging to record. I would have to say that this one probably is my favourite. But it could change all the time when you write. Whatever is the first song you wrote, by the time you have finished the fifth one, that one is already old you are sick of it. Whatever is the newest one you think is the best one because it’s still fresh.

AO: But “No Stone Unturned” had so much clarity, and spirit, and mystery, and beauty to it that it really took me back to the very early days of thrash – mid-Eighties, early Eighties. Was it a conscious decision to look back and to give an overview of the history of the genre, or did it just come to you spontaneously?

LA: No, it really is spontaneous. I can’t even say it’s spontaneous, it developed over the years. Like you said, some of those riffs were probably written in the Eighties, I don’t even remember because that song developed over such a long time. Sure, it kept changing a little bit here and a little bit there. When you have a lot of time to sit around and wait… But overall, yeah, with Heathen we always had that sprit of the Eighties, and the spirit of the Eighties is kind of all we know. It’s not like with the new thrash bands that are trying to sound like the Eighties. We actually grew up and learned in the Eighties, so it’s natural.

AO: But you listen to “No Stone Unturned” and you listen to “Controlled by Chaos” and you realise how much you, and Megadeth, and Metallica actually have in common, in terms of your roots, where you came from, and that is really amazing. But what inspired you to revive this band and to start writing for it again?

LA: We always talked about it after grunge kind of killed us in the Nineties, saying, “We should put out at least one more album. We have all those riffs and songs, might as well release them.” It was me and Dave [White, vocalist] talking about it. But seriously it came together I think in 2002 or 2003 at Chuck Billy’s benefit. And we actually got together and played, and it was fun again. It was like, “Wow, maybe we should seriously start talking about it and start seriously doing it because we are having fun again.” What finalised it is when we got invited to play that year at Wacken, or if it was the following year I don’t remember, but it was within that year that we played. And at that time we definitely decided to do this, to give it another go, at least to release an album, see what happens.

AO: How long did it take you to make this album – to go from the initial snippet of an idea to the finished product?

LA: If you take it from the original snippet, it would be almost 20 years!

AO: Ha, all right!

LA: I was writing some of those riffs for the follow-up to “Victims of Deception” in 88. So it was supposed to be our next album, it was supposed to take a year or two, maybe three in between, but, unfortunately, it took almost twenty years.

AO: In terms of emotional and intellectual effort that it takes to make an album, which one, do you think, was the most difficult to make – “Breaking the Silence”, “Victims of Deception”, or this one?

LA: I think “Victims of Deception” was the hardest because when we released “Breaking the Silence” everyone was hailing us like, “Oh, you guys are going to be like the next Metallica,” so many promises, every label wanted us…

AO: And you were on MTV…

LA: Yes, and every big management wanted us, everybody was all of a sudden… When you’re hot, all of a sudden everybody wants in. So there was so much pressure that all of a sudden we sat back and realised that we had to put out a great album. Before that we were writing the songs and hoping that everybody would like them. Then you realise that everybody does like it, now everybody is looking to see what you can deliver NOW. So “Victims” was the most stressful album, I would say.

With this one, again, it was this feeling, like, “You know what, we are in our 40s now, it’s not like… We’ll try to make an album, but it’s not like we are going to make it big now.” It’s more like, “Ah, now we are making it again for our own pleasure, just like the first one. Now we don’t care: if it sells, it sells, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. As long as we are happy with it, it’s all that really counts.” So it was like going from that stressful “Victims” album to this one where we don’t care. As long as we like it, that’s all that we really care about.

AO: How does your songwriting process work? Do you have to isolate yourself to write or do those things come to you as you go about your daily business?

LA: It could be different. Mostly I have to sit down and isolate myself, lock myself in a room and play a thousand riffs and maybe one will work out, and I’ll go, “OK, that’s one that I can work with. It could work there or I could build a song around it.” Very rarely it would be where I would be sitting just mindlessly playing the guitar and even watching TV at the same time and come up with a riff and go, “Oh!” and run and record it. Mostly you have to kind of force yourself into kind of, “I have to write.” This time, when you have twenty years to write, it’s a lot easier. You can just sit around doing whatever, and riffs will come to you. You just kind of put it in the vault and move on. Every five years you take it out and put another riff in there. If you had to write an album every couple of years, it would be a little bit different.

AO: Would I be correct to assume that sometimes it’s really the instrument that takes you places? It’s not that you first hear an idea in your head, but sometimes your guitar can lead you – the way it’s constructed, the kind of code that there is in this instrument, would that be correct to say?

LA: Yes, sometimes. Anything can influence and take you places. Sometimes even the environment that you are in. And sometimes it doesn’t, it just depends. With some songs you can just sit down and write, and it just flows, and everything comes together so fast. And with other songs you just keep pounding and pounding it into the ground and nothing’s coming out. For this album I had another six or eight songs that were unfinished, and I could not finish them, I wasn’t happy enough. And I already had those riffs for how many years? So I thought that something would probably come up in another ten years that would make me happy with that song, or maybe it will never. You just never know.

AO: But how would you say being a musician in Germany compares to being a musician in the States?

LA: Ha-ha! I guess in Germany they are treated a lot better. My experience that I’ve learnt from die Krupps days, for example, is that you sign with these… I don’t even know how you call it, it’s not a publishing company, but every country has almost like a musicians’ union that protects you and collects your royalties from the record companies. And that is a very powerful thing. Where in the States they don’t have that. From the States, most of the times, unless you make it really big like Metallica when record companies pay attention, they never really pay you those royalties. A lot of musicians are not even aware that they are supposed to get that. And the royalty rate, if you do a research, it’s 725 cents per song in the States. Different countries have different rates, but all over Europe, whatever country you choose, it’s at least double from the States. So a lot more goes into protecting musicians.

And overall, the way they look at us at European festivals. Why doesn’t that work in the States? Even when you do a small club tour, you are treated a lot better in Europe than you are in the States. In the States they just don’t care. “Yeah, we’ve promised you a PA, but here’s your car stereo, deal with it.” Where in Europe people care a lot more about it at the clubs. But that’s what they’ve always said, “You’ve never made it until you’ve made it in the States.” But I always liked Europe. The band that I’ve really liked was Thin Lizzy. They’ve never really made it huge, but everybody knew about them and they were always popular. You’d mention Thin Lizzy and people would go, “Yeah, I know Thin Lizzy,” but they’ve never had that status of a multi-platinum band. I always thought that that would be the coolest thing.

AO: Going back to the album, the solos on it are quite extraordinary. What was the inspiration behind your fire this time around? What inspired you to play these amazing solos and how many were actually improvised?

LA: Ha! How many improvised? I really don’t remember. There are always some parts that are a little bit more worked out and there are some parts that you just work out in the studio. There is nothing there where you just sit there and go, “Wow, I just played it and the first take was it.” I’d be lying if I said that. No, there’s a lot of work that went into that. It’s like constructing another part of the song and it doesn’t come with the very first take. There could be one or two little parts that could be the first take, but mostly it’s sitting down, working it out, and it’s like working on a song within a song.

But overall, with solos, remember when in the Eighties everyone could shred like crazy and everybody wanted to be faster and better, like Yngwie, and then it went up to where people stopped caring and they stopped playing solos altogether. People always like taking it to such extreme… So I wanted to bring back some solo spirit. I don’t care if it’s in or out, but Heathen without solos – I can’t imagine that. That just wouldn’t work for us. I go out there and show people that solos can be cool, you know? Not an enemy of metal or whatever.

AO: What are you making of this new generation of young shredders like Trivium, and Black Tide, and Dragonforce? Do you find any similarities between what was driving you when you were growing up and between them?

LA: Absolutely, I’m just glad that there are youngsters out there all of a sudden who care about playing solos again. Image if I grew up and the generation before me didn’t care about the solos. Who would I learn from? I wouldn’t have my Uli Roth, and my Michael Schenker, and my Gary Moore. Maybe I wouldn’t even ever play a solo because it wouldn’t be out there. I kind of admire these new guys because they have nobody to look up to, unless they skip a whole generation of new metal and grunge, all those guys who really didn’t care about solos. They would have to skip the whole decade to go back, otherwise where do you learn to play solos? It’s pretty amazing and I’m just glad that they are out there and they are embracing it again. It could go over the top again to where everybody is going to overdo it, and people and going to turn around and go somewhere else because they get bored of it. That’s the nature of the music business where something gets popular and then it blows up, and everybody turns and goes somewhere else to look for something new.

AO: How do you maintain your technique these days? Does it still require everyday practice?

LA: I wish I had the time to practice every day. I would probably be better. It’s mostly like cramming in before the exams. You wait until the week before and then you try to do it all at once. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. One of the most dangerous things that I’ve learnt is when you try to cram in with the solos, your fingers get so sore that you are unable to do what you want to do. So you kind of have to ease into it. But overall you basically start practicing harder and harder and get your skill back right before you are going in to record the solos. It’s kind of like riding a bicycle – you really don’t forget. If it’s been years, then you have to kind of practice to the level where you were.

AO: Tell me something – do you ever play for yourself? Not for practice, not for anybody else, but purely for your own enjoyment?

LA: Honestly, not any more. When I was younger, then I was, of course.

AO: OK, I have just one more question. Are there any plans to take this album on the road?

LA: We were talking about going out in March next year for two or three weeks to test the waters, so to speak, and we’ll see what happens. We really don’t know to what extent we can go out and promote this album. It’s not like back in the days where most of us would live with our parents and have no rent to pay, and no kids, whereas now some of us have kids and family, so we can’t just stay out and leave your family out on the curb. People are asking to what extent we are going to support this album, and I say that we’ll see. It itself should demand how much support it needs. We are not able to just go out and grind it from the bottom up and work this album, and shove it in everybody’s face. If the album really takes off and we need to go out on the road, then fine, that’s OK, we’ll be able to do that.

Then with my other thing too, with Exodus, there is another album, so there are already two plans to go out next year, and I really don’t know how it’s gonna be. Sometimes maybe we’ll tour together and I’ll have to play two sets which we played in Japan, and it was pretty tough. I might have been able to do that a lot better in my twenties. But doing a whole tour like that – I don’t know… It would be hard, but it’s doable. So I really don’t know how much we are going to tour. We’ll see and play it by ear as we go.

AO: You know, for a lot London fans you are a bit of a mythical figure really. There legends still going around here how you’ve declined a spot in Megadeth, and there is another thing about how you were actually born in Russia. Is there any truth to that?

LA: Yeah, former Russia, which is now Ukraine.

AO: Do you have any memories of the country at all?

LA: Very little because it’s been so long ago, when I was a kid. I remember standing in bread lines with my mom [Laughs], playing hockey with my friends, just kid memories.

AO: Amazing. Thank you for your time, we really appreciate that.

LA: Thank YOU.

AO: Good luck with the album and we’ll hopefully see you in London sometime soon.

“The Evolution of Chaos” is out on January 25, 2010 in Europe and March 31, 2010 in the U.S. on Mascot Records.

Andy Brooks

by Deb Rao
Staff Writer

There seemed to be a whole new generation of musicians taking over the music industry in 2009. Young bands are taking breathing new life into the early genre of punk and metal with their alternative punk pop sound. One band that is catching the attention of the New Moon generation is Orlando band Transmit Now. The band’s first gig was on the Van Warped Tour in 2008. Pretty impressive for newcomers in the business.

Transmit Now teamed up in early 2009 with Jeff Hanson (Paramore, Creed) and his record label, Silent Majority Group (Warner Music/ILG). With the guidance and along with producer Brett Hestla (Framing Hanley, Brand New Day), the band recorded their first full-length record Downtown Merry-Go-Round which is due out in early 2010.

This summer they released an EP Test Test and Transmit Now was on a summer/fall tour with Framing Hanley that went across the nation that helped garner new fans that the band won over at their live show.

Their song “Let’s Go Out Tonight” has been played on the VMAs, MTV’s Making The Band 4, Paris Hilton Is My New BFF and ESPN Sports Center. The band was also the winner of MTV’s “I Want My Music On MTV2 Contest” and you can check out the video at this link if you want to view it … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT3wCeTkoXU.

Andy Brooks (vocals), Kevin Parrow (guitar), Greg Parrow (drums), Tony Aguirre (guitar) and Lee Gianou (bass) have a lot in store for their fans come 2010 with the release of their debut full length.

Hardrock Haven is always looking for fresh talent and Transmit Now caught our attention for up and coming band to be on the look out for in 2010, as singer Andy Brooks discusses their debut upcoming release Downtown Merry-Go-Round on Silent Majority Group. Let’s us be the first to introduce to you an Exclusive interview with Transmit Now singer Andy Brooks.

HRH: Andy, Tell us about Transmit Now.

ANDY: We are just getting out there and doing some bigger touring now on a bigger scale. Our new record is going to come out in February.

HRH: Transmit Now recently toured with Framing Hanley this summer. How did that go?

ANDY: That was great. Those guys are awesome dudes. It’s good to have a band take you out and understand being the opening act. There were really cool to us. We had a really cool experience in front of their crowd.

HRH: I know you have a new EP out. Test Test. I heard five of those songs are going to be on your upcoming full-length release Downtown Merry Go-Round. Is this correct?

ANDY: I think two of three are going to be on the album. A few of them are not going to be on the official album. “Posterboys” and “Issues” will be on the new album for sure.

Andy: Tell us about your vocal style. Who did you grow up listening to?

ANDY: I was a huge Michael Jackson as a kid. From the pop side of the game. I was a really big fan of the band Silver Chair. They haven’t really done much in The States in a long time. But they were a huge influence on me. I have always been a fan of Incubus. I don’t know if I sound like any of those dudes but that is kind of where I was coming from.

HRH: You know who you remind me of? The singer from Papa Roach.

ANDY: He is a great singer. Thank you very much.

HRH: How long did it take to write your upcoming release, Downtown Merry Go-Round? What was it like working with Brett Hestla?

ANDY: A few of the songs over the time that we had been together just kind of started crafting and kind of became a lot bigger when we started working with Brett. A lot of the tunes were written just before we went into the studio. We would write all week and would submit the songs and see where they ended up going to. A lot of the record just popped out literally before we went into record it. It was kind of a back pace / recording environment. It happened really quickly from start to finish. Aside from songs we had prior to getting a record deal. I think our first single is going to be “Issues” or “Let’s Go Out Tonight.”

HRH: What are your upcoming tour plans?

ANDY: We hope to go out on the road when our record comes out. We are lining some stuff up for January or February. We are hoping to be back out there. We definitely will be. It is just a matter of with whom at this point.

HRH: What is the music scene like in Orlando these days?

ANDY: It is great. Florida has produced a lot of great bands. Florida is such a long ridiculous state. There are so many different scenes here. South Florida is not known for its rock scene. It ’s seems like Central and North Florida has produced bands such as Red Jumpsuit, Underoath, Dash Board Confessional, New Found Glory just tons of band that have come out of the state. It is a good place.

HRH: How did you get the name Transmit Now?

ANDY: This is a super secret story. But I suppose I’ll divulge it. Our guitar player was messing around with is rig one day. Guitar players have these cool thoughts that they can make cool sounds by manipulating household items. So Tony thought one day somehow he would re-wire a blender from the kitchen. It sounds crazy but it is true. He re-wired the blender from the kitchen and tried to hook it into his guitar rig and he starts picking up radio stations from not anywhere near where we were. It is just crazy how the amp just started to transmit those crazy signals. We were all sitting around laughing hysterically as his amped transmitted these radio stations from God knows where? We decided Transmit Now would be the now for the band. It is crazy but that is how we came up with it.

HRH: How would you describe the sound of the band?

ANDY: We are an alternate band with a pop lean toward it. Some of our tunes are pretty pop and some of our tunes on the full record are a lot more alternate than pop. It is somewhere between both of those genres is pretty much where Transmit Now lays.

HRH: Andy, thank you for checking in with Hardrock Haven.

ANDY: I appreciate it, thanks.

Visit Transmit Now on the web:

www.myspace.com/transmitnow

www.facebook.com/transmitnow

Richie Kotzen

by Alissa Ordabai
Staff Writer

Currently touring England with his brand new album Peace Sign, Richie Kotzen played his first UK show at London’s Underworld club last Thursday. This is where Hardrock Haven caught up with him for comments on the new record as well as some illuminating observations on the nature of his craft and musicianship in general.

Backstage where Kotzen and I sit down for a chat, the atmosphere is austere. The Underworld’s dressing room looks stark and workman-like, for once devoid of its usual clutter of snacks, drinks, make-up and spare wardrobe. This rigour of purpose is perfectly mirrored by the sharply astute stance Kotzen assumes as an interviewee, his conversation style at times resembling the way he approaches guitar playing. Being able to sum up any idea in just a few succinct phrases, he can also expand on any offered theme further, spurred on by both intuition and logic, in the end presenting a unique insight into what being a real musician is all about.

“To me, the difference between being a solo artist and being in a band is like between being at home and staying in a hotel,” Kotzen states before developing the idea some more. “Sometimes the hotel is nice, they have a swimming pool there, but you know what, I have the swimming pool at home too and there is nothing like home. The normal situation for me is what I am doing here. Writing my songs, singing and playing. That’s what I’m happy with. The notion of the band thing has been fun, in my experience, for a period of time. But then it became where I went, ‘OK, I gotta go home now.’ And then I’d go back to making my own records. That’s what I like doing, that’s what I am.”

The new album, of course, supports this view perfectly. A finely wrought, nuanced record, it is all about Kotzen’s well-honed tunecraft, at the same time managing to make space for serious guitar extrapolations as well as to delve deeper for some true emotional depth. It continues in the vein of Kotzen’s trademark melting pot of the late 60s – early 70s styles ranging from blues-rock to funk: on the one hand – deeply routed in the tradition, and on the other – shaping those genres through the prism of his own vision.

This vision, in fact, is responsible for the album’s well-defined distinct atmosphere that only Kotzen is able to create. Peering through the perfectly conceived musical forms and the well-oiled, sleek manipulations of traditional compositional elements, on Peace Sign there is still that distinct sense of longing, at once poetic and disquieting, that deeply emotional undercurrent which has always been responsible for Kotzen’s finest moments – both in his guitar work and his singing.

Kotzen’s trademark combination of virtuosic guitar leads and a voice which can go from trebly quaver to earthy rasp makes tracks like “My Messiah” hit the jackpot, apart, of course, from the fact that they are all hooked to great melodies. After all, how can you have great guitar solos without great songs?

In regards to style and genre, Peace Sign does not trail too off far from the albums Kotzen began making ever since the Mother Heads Family Reunion which he to this day calls his first real record on which he finally found his voice. But in contrast to his previous 2007 studio album, Go Faster, the new album digs deeper. On standouts “Paying Dues” and “Your Entertainer” the effortless floatation of his guitar parts almost touches the ground he covered on Stanley Clarke’s 1999 album Vertu and shows that there has always been way more to Kotzen than perfect chops and polished tunecraft.
Wondering how he himself sees his most recent opus, I start by asking him about the record and the way in which he sees it now when it has finally gone on sale.

Hardrock Haven: Do you think enough time has passed since you have finished working on your new record for you to step back and take an objective view on it, or are you still very much attached to it?

Richie Kotzen: I think that it’s still fresh in my head and unfamiliar in some ways. It’s unfamiliar in that it’s so new. And I’m not the one to listen to stuff over and over. In having to learn the songs – going back and remembering what I did and stuff – it’s still very fresh that way.

HRH: Are you happy with the way the record has turned out?

RK: Yeah, I am. It’s interesting because I’m one of these people who always thinks that the latest thing I did is the most exciting and the best. Which I think is a good sign because it means that I’m current. I don’t really sit back and reminisce on old records. I’m always excited about the latest thing. When I did “Into the Black” I thought, “That’s the best record I’ve ever made,” and now with “Peace Sign” I’m thinking, “It’s the best record I ever did”, so I think as long as I feel excited like that, then I know I’m doing the right thing.

HRH: It seems to me there was also a Woodstock vibe to that record…

RK: Which one?

HRH: The first one, the 1969 one. Seems to me tracks like “Long Way from Home” have that vibe that is seeped in that atmosphere. Is that your way of commemorating the 40th anniversary of the event or is that vibe with you more or less permanently?

RK: I understand the connection you are making and I like that, I agree, it makes sense. But even in 1994 I did a record called “Mother Heads Family Reunion”…

HRH: Your fourth album, yes.

RK: And that was really in a lot of ways, even though, like you say, it was my fourth release, it was my first record in a lot of ways because I finally got comfortable with myself. My first record was an instrumental record, I was 18, on the next one I started singing… By the time I did that, I was 24, I’ve been living on my own for several years, had a lot of different experiences happening, and I think that record was the beginning for me. And there is a common thread between that record and every other record I’ve done which has that sound you are talking about. It comes from the fact that I grew up listening to those kinds of artists, the kind of Woodstock-era artists like Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and the Rolling Stones. My mother had all those records, saw those bands when then all came to America when they were young, when they were fresh and exciting. So growing up, there were all those records playing in the house. And on the flipside, my dad was into soul music, so he had the Ottis Redding and those kinds of records would be played. So in my influences there was a balance between that era of rock’n’roll and also that soul music that I still love to this day.

HRH: And of course you went on the road with the Rolling Stones, didn’t you? Was there any particular musical experience while being on the road with them that stood out, something you perhaps did not expect?

RK: It was very interesting. I didn’t tell anybody I was doing it until after I played the first show. I was so nervous something would happen that I wouldn’t do it. Even when I was flying to Japan I thought that anything could go wrong, so I’d better keep my mouth shut. After I played the first show, then I wrote in my internet blog – I just opened for the Rolling Stones in Japan. I did the whole Japanese tour. We did three weeks, five shows. It was the easiest set of gigs I ever did in the sense that sound-check and everything else was perfect. It was like a machine. I walk in – everything is there, they treated me wonderful, their crew… There were a lot of guys in the crew that I was introduced to years earlier, so I had some familiar faces that immediately made me feel comfortable and at ease. And, of course, when the Stones played, there was nothing like it. And the last show I sat behind the guitar amp of Keith Richards and it was like the sound of the universe for me – hearing his guitar played and literally the amp was right there – I could touch it. Open-back Fender cabinet, sounded incredible. And it was a great experience. I got to meet the guys afterwards and they are all really warm guys, it was a great time.

HRH: Did you challenge yourself technically on this record? Were there any guitar parts that you had to practice several times or perhaps go over again and again before you actually went into the studio to record them?

RK: Well, I’ll tell you what happens to me in my style of playing. Usually the practising comes afterwards. In other words, when I’m in the studio, I go for stuff, right? So I might go for a lick – I know what I’m hearing in my head and play it. If I don’t execute it perfectly, in the studio you have an option to go back and try it again. So I do that, just like everybody else does it. But where I’m a little different is that I don’t work out stuff ahead of time – I create it on the spot. Because I like the idea of spontaneity and reacting on the spot, and being inspired, that’s the part of being inspired. Once I do that, then I gotta go back and listen, and go, “What the hell did I play there?” And oftentimes I find myself sitting back and go, “Wow, how did I do that? Oh, I remember how that is!” Then I have to practise it to get it under my fingers. So it almost comes in a backwards way. Going back and re-learning stuff and practising after I’ve done it.

HRH: How do you maintain your technique? Does it require everyday practice?

RK: No. No, because I don’t think in terms of technique. I’m not one of those players who thinks in terms of that. I think in terms of notes and melodies and musical terms. So what happens is, when I hear something in my head that I can’t make my fingers do, that’s when I sit down and figure it: “I can hear it, so how do I play it?” That’s when that comes into play. What I’ve noticed, because I’ve been playing the guitar since I was 7, and I’m 39 now – I’ve been playing for a long time – it’s not so much about practising as it is about time spent with the instrument in my hands. And what that means is that I can go for 3 days without playing and when I pick up the guitar, if I play it for 2 hours straight, I get into a mode where I can play pretty much what the hell I want. You know, it’s like riding a bike. It’s not like I’m going to sit down and relearn it, I just have to get re-acclimated. I was never much of a practice guy, I was more of a player. I just sit and play stuff and go over things, and if I was in trouble and there was something I couldn’t do, I’d play it repetitively till I could do it. But I never sat down and went, “OK, it’s practice time.” Because I never wanted to do that. It’s boring to me. I don’t wanna practice, I wanna play.

HRH: Do you think the nature of musicianship, as applicable to your instrument, has changed in any fundamental way since the time when you were growing up? Not in terms of technology or distribution, but in terms of pure craft, in terms of being a rock guitarist?

RK: I do. There was the time where musicians, like my generation of guys, we would sit down with a record and listen to it and try to figure out what people where playing. And develop our ears. And the other thing – if you got lucky, you’d buy a new guitar magazine that would have a guitar transcription in there that would be close, so you could see it as well. Maybe later on they started with instruction videos. But the point is – you had to sit and learn the instrument. You had to learn how to play. Nowadays it seems like you don’t have to do that as much and you can still make music. So what you have now is a situation where people who aren’t by nature music-makers are in a position where they can make music. Through technology. Through an the ability to sample something that was played many years ago perfectly and now incorporate that into something else, and they can talk over it, and they can yell over it, or whatever they do, but suddenly it becomes a creative thing. And it’s kind of interesting because you get this other perspective of people who aren’t necessarily musicians by nature, but they are using that as a creative outlet. I think that’s OK. The only downside is that I find there aren’t as many musicians like the kind of people that I play with in my band. There not so many young people around like that around. When I was a kid and I went to school, the guys that were into music where players. Now you get guys that are into music that are DJs and computer guys that are pulling stuff together. Some guys who are making records and making a lot of money – they can’t even play the drums. They are programming them and they are making beats, but they can’t play a beat. It’s kind of interesting, it’s kind of strange. But in a way, like I said, it’s good, it gives a different perspective. Where it will become bad is if we’ll run out of real guys to play the beats. And hopefully that doesn’t happen. I hope that doesn’t happen. I don’t think that’s gonna happen because guys still come up and there are young musicians who still play. But there is not as many.

HRH: Would you say that requirements are more lax these days as applicable to guitar players?

RK: The requirements are more lax?

HRH: Or, on the contrary, the requirements are tougher these days?

RK: What do you mean “lax”?

HRH: When you were growing up, for your generation – what a lot people are calling the post-Van Halen generation, people like Malmsteen and Vai – there was a necessary requirement to…

RK: To be able to play?

HRH: …to be able to play like a virtuoso. Do you think it still stands to this day? Do you think that requirement is still there?

RK: I don’t think that requirement was EVER there. I think there was a TREND. And I don’t think all those guys are virtuosos. The guys you’ve named are. But not all the guys who are thrown together in that basket are really what you call virtuosos. In other words, there was a movement in ROCK guitar to play really wild impossible licks, OK? Just because you can play those licks doesn’t mean you are a virtuoso in music or on your instrument, it means you can do that one thing. To me it’s a much broader scope. Stanley Clarke is a virtuoso. I played with him. And I see why from working with him, I understand the difference. Some of the other guys who excel at a certain thing which is valuable and comes from having put a lot of work in, which is important… But the thing about music, it’s not really relevant. You don’t need to be a virtuoso to touch people. The virtuoso musician could play something that could totally go over someone’s head – at least the guy you are calling a virtuoso – and the guy who only knows 5 or 6 chords can write a song that will move you way more. So I don’t know if any of that really means anything. The only thing that matters is what your objective is and what you are trying to create. So if you want to play a Paganini, you gonna have to have that kind of chops. You’re gonna spend that time to develop some chops. If you wanna play Bruce Springsteen’s songs, it’s a whole different avenue, but it’s a equally valuable development – you gonna have to learn how to take your life’s experiences and translate that into a simple way with lyrics that are heartfelt and still interesting. It’s an equally important talent, just a different focus. And to me music has always been something where there is a connection. It’s not like sports. It’s not like, “I’m gonna beat you at sports.” Music isn’t like that. I’m not gonna beat you at the guitar, I’m not gonna play faster than you. It’s about creating something and people either connect with it or not. And I think in that period of those names of people that vision kind of got lost. And for a minute guitar playing was like sports with all those guys trying to outplay each other and play faster and crazier. It was a fad, and like all fads, it goes away. And there is a couple of guys who are left who are actually making music and they are still around playing. Long-winded answer.

HRH: Yes… But talking about the nature of that fad – lots of young guys trying to be virtuosos – do you think it’s ultimately about domination? Where nothing is left that cannot be absorbed into your technique and that for them that became the nature of artistic fulfilment?

RK: No, because I don’t think a lot of these players were doing that. I think a lot of these players where doing the same thing over and over again. It’s just different guys doing it in a different way. There is not one of those guys that does what you are saying. In other words, each guy has their own style and their won thing which is really great, but there isn’t one guy who can play any type of guitar playing – any type of flamenco guitar playing, and then the blues shit really well, and then play the classical shit really well, and then the classical shit really well, and then the country stuff. It doesn’t exist. And if it does, then that guy can play all that stuff pretty good, but he’s not gonna play the flamenco stuff like the guy who grew up in South America who only ever played flamenco. It’s not gonna happen, it’s a cultural thing. It’s my opinion, but I haven’t seen it. The guy who does the great rock’n’roll guitar playing lives the rock’n’roll lifestyle. He wasn’t studying doing the jazz thing. He was on the streets playing dirty grungy rock’n’roll, living the lifestyle. The same way the guy that plays the jazz is coming up in the jazz circuit playing with horn players. You get guys that kind of play at different stuff, but ultimately people find comfort in a style and a sound and become to identify with it and that’s why you get these kind of artists who say, “This sounds like Jimi Hendrix.” Jimi Hendrix couldn’t play every style of music, he played Jimi Hendrix music, and that’s what he got to identify with. I’m not comparing myself with anybody, but I play my music. I play the guitar the way I play it which is a collection of my influences and then my perspective on it, so I’m at my best when I’m doing what Richie Kotzen does, which is what I’m doing tonight. That’s me at my best. Whatever that is, whatever you call it – rock, whatever it is, blues, metal, I don’t care what you call it. That’s kind of my take on that.

HRH: How do you manage on the one hand your amazing chops and at the same time being a composer and a songwriter?

RK: Well, it’s time, that’s what it is – it’s time. In other words, when I was 15, I wasn’t a very good composer, I wasn’t a very prolific composer, it was new to me, so like with anything, like with riding a bike, you have to do it enough to learn the craft. So during my teenage years I was focusing on playing the guitar and learning to play stuff that I heard other people do, and it was difficult back then. It wasn’t perceived by me as difficult because everyone else was doing it. I mean Greg Howe, Paul Gilbert, Jason Becker, all those guys were putting their records out post-Van Halen, so I was listening to that, thinking, “OK, those guys are doing it, that’s what guys like me are playing like,” so I started getting into it. So in that early time, I would say at 15, 16, 17, 18 in that period I was focusing on the guitar. I wasn’t singing, I wasn’t really writing songs, just playing the guitar. Constantly. So in those years I think is where I developed all the physicality of moving my hands. And then, I after I made my first record, I suddenly realised, “Well, OK, it’s kind of boring now. I did this, but I don’t want to keep doing the same thing.” And I thought, “What made me want to do this in the first place? It is music. What kind of music that I like? I like the Stones, I like the Beatles, I like Jimi Hendrix, I like Janis Joplin.” I started listening to their records and I started writing songs. I started writing songs that were similar to the artists that inspired me. On my second record I was singing. And then from there it’s a natural evolution, so you are looking at something that started at 18 when I made my first record, now I’m 38. It’s 20 years of consistently making records under my own name. Now I am who I am. I now have my own style, but it took 20 years to get there. Some people get there like that. (Snaps his fingers). I’m a lot slower. (Smiles).

HRH: Are you happier being a solo artist as opposed to being in a band scenario? Do you feel freer, you feel less restricted?

RK: Absolutely. To me, the difference between being a solo artist and being in a band is like between being at home and staying in a hotel. Sometimes the hotel is nice, they have a swimming pool there, and they have all that other stuff, but you know what, I have the swimming pool at home too and there is nothing like home. So I look at it like that. The normal situation for me is what I am doing here. Writing my songs, singing and playing. I don’t like dividing that. I don’t like just playing the guitar and don’t like just singing. I like it together as a circle. That’s what I’m happy with. And I like playing with guys who can bring life to my music and bring it to life on stage, and that’s what I’m doing with these guys here. But the notion of the band thing… It’s been fun, in my experience, for a period of time. In the 3 situations, as I’ve only really been in 3 bands publicly, it became where I went, “OK, I gotta go home now.” Do you know what I mean? And then I’d go back to making my own records. That’s what I like doing, that’s what I am.

HRH: Of all rock trios, the Jimi Hendrix Experience excluding, which one do you think has inspired you the most?

RK: I don’t know, it’s hard to say. I like Eric Clapton, I like Cream. I never really sat around and listened to too many Cream records, but I’m hearing stuff on the radio and it sounds great. I just like the trio format. It’s comfortable for me, there’s a lot of freedom in it. And I did tour with an organ player, but we didn’t tour, we did gigs in LA, but he was part of the group. And now it’s really fun too because we connected. But as a trio format is something that just makes a lot of sense. If I couldn’t sing, we’d be a four-piece, we’d have a lead singer. That’s the thing about trios and not a trio. If you get a band like the Who – he’s singing, or Led Zeppelin – he’s the singer, but if the other guys sang like that, he’d be gone, and they’d be a trio. So a trio format is a kind of like a standard rock thing: guitar, bass, and drums. And somebody singing – whether it’s one of the three or an extra dude. So it’s the same format to me.

HRH: I have one last question and it’s a bit goofy, I hope you don’t mind.

RK: OK, we’ll see.

HRH: If you were granted an answer to any question in the universe, what would you ask?

RK: I don’t have any questions, I think I have all the answers. I have every answer you can possibly imagine. (Smiles).

HRH: Steve Vai said exactly the same thing to me.

RK: Did he?

HRH: The only two musicians who have given me this same answer to this question are you and Steve Vai.

RK: Well, I’m number two. The thing that is funny about it is that I am not a person… I don’t want to go on a philosophical rant, but I get a feeling that I am here in this situation and that’s what my focus is always on. So I guess, in a weird way, there aren’t really any answers. I really think that if people spend a lot of time hung up on, “Why didn’t I make it? Why am I short? Why am I too tall? Why am I this, and why am I that?” and they don’t live their lives, you are what you are, make the best of it and do something functional with it, enjoy your time here. You really don’t know where you’re going. Everybody is going to the same place. When you’re dead, you’re dead. But I don’t really sit around asking questions, “Why this, why that?” I’m happy to live my life and be in the moment and enjoy myself. That’s really the way I look at it.

Steve Vai

by Alissa Ordabai
Staff Writer

A spacious, airy room overlooking London’s river Thames gives a sprawling view of the Docklands skyscrapers and lends itself perfectly to an interview with the most futuristic guitarist of our time. Vai says that he loves London and describes it as “a truly great city”. He is here for two days (June 13 and 14) to conduct two of his “Alien Guitar Secrets” masterclasses as well as to perform on stage with Phil Hilbourne, Nicko McBrain, and Neil Murray. The two performances are a part of the London International Music Show (LIMS) and feature Vai playing three songs on each day: Hendrix’s “Little Wing”, Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” and “Goin’ Down”.

The venue for Vai’s two days in London is the famous ExCel Centre – a thoroughly modern glass construction with a hint of space-age futurism recently built in the heart of the redeveloped old dock complexes. It’s probably this mixture of modernity and history that London boasts these days which finds a particular resonance with Vai. After all, his own career has always been a combination of tradition and innovation, beginning with studying at the elite Berklee College of Music and later taking Vai from the confines of the convention into the direction of groundbreaking advancement.

“Artists are here so that people can dream while they are awake.” Steve Vai.

Unlike other musical pioneers who have no inclination to teach, Vai has always had a taste for sharing his knowledge with others. What began in the late Eighties with a seven-part series of columns in Guitar Player magazine, has now developed into 3-hour sessions packed with practical information, some stunning confessions, self-found discoveries and downright revelations that Vai shares with audiences ranging from 30 to 150 people, the latter being the case in London on both days in June.

“I’ve discovered that I really enjoyed speaking about the things that I have found to be important to me in my career,” Vai says during our interview a day before his London masterclasses. “Because I know that there are kids out there that love the instrument the way I did and do. There were so many great things that I’ve discovered when I was young, and even recently through my whole career. When I look back I see pivotal moments, and I like to discuss those things.”

During the masterclass Vai speaks persuasively and with tactful poise on general subjects such as breaking down one’s musical aspirations into bite-size goals, visualising the level of proficiency one expects to achieve, and the importance of perseverance. But he also goes in-depth on things such as ear training and specific guitar techniques.

The audience is inevitably almost one hundred per cent male with ages ranging from early teens to late 50s. At 180 pounds a pop the tickets didn’t come in cheap, but both days of London seminars have completely sold out.

As the class goes on, the ways in which Steve Vai has always been different from any other guitar player suddenly become remarkably obvious. With him it’s not only the sheer strength of his conviction and a sense of purpose he’s put into his instrument over the years but also the special kind of the love he felt for the guitar from the very start. He says he used to practice 9 hours a day when he was in his early teens. And although he gives credit to the lack of modern-day distractions such as the internet for his diligence, it still makes him sound a different breed from anyone whose attitude to the guitar has ever resembled casual.

But before you start thinking of Vai as someone whose career has been all about one enormous sacrifice, it all becomes understandable when he says, “If you are in love with it, everything else is a distraction,” delineating the difference that lies between having a hobby and being driven beyond everyday concerns.

“If you don’t know if you want to be a professional musician, if it’s an option, don’t do it,” Vai continues. “It’s a calling, it’s a gift. Everyone should play and make music. Everyone can play. But being a professional musician is something entirely different. A professional musician has no option.”

Just like his music doesn’t resemble anyone else’s, Vai’s “Alien Guitar Secrets” are as far removed from your regular rock guitar masterclass as Wright Brothers’ first flight from a space mission to Mars. With Vai, his 3-hour class is a true glimpse into the world of someone who has given his instrument all he had and in return received not only phenomenal chops, a unique ability to write, an exquisite musical ear, and fame and fortune, but also a special kind of knowledge which resides beyond the line separating chopsmen from those who are truly inspired.

One such piece of knowledge Vai shares is about being able to lock with the rhythm and to groove. “Understand what it’s like to lock and to groove,” he says to his audience. “Let go, let the groove get hold of you. Listen and let it infiltrate your spirit. Meditate on it. It’s an emotional thing. Being able to lock and to groove will change your personality. It’s like everyday Christmas.”

And he then immediately shows what he means by switching on a backing track and playing two completely different guitar parts on his white Ibanez Flo II. The difference is astounding – one version sounds stilted and dry, the other – an individable union with the groove, at times merging with it in a pulsating clinch, at times trading raucous bumps with it, and at times completely dissolving in it only to separate from it again for both to continue to circle in and out of each other like two high-voltage magnets.

Throughout the class Vai takes questions which range from the bizarre to the enlightened, answering all with equal patience, making a notable exception only once for a portly biker type who shouts from his seat in a thick Cockney accent: “What makes you laugh?” “Your accent,” Vai immediately fires back, chuckling, while the rest of the room breaks out into a spontaneous applause.

But he still draws the biggest applauses when he plays his music, performing several full-length compositions from his catalogue. He even takes requests, but doesn’t fulfil them all – there are some songs dating decades back that he says he would not be prepared to play simply because such a long time has passed since he last did. But despite the intensely vivid, poignant moments of hearing Vai play in such an intimate setting, the focus of the class remains on the nature of the creative process and his main emphasis on uniqueness.

Uniqueness is the concept that Vai elaborates on further during our interview when he says that challenges for guitar players vary depending on their goal. “It’s different for everybody,” he says. “One thing that I talk about the most, is being able to identify with the goal. It’s the importance of having a goal. Once you have a goal, then you have something that you are working towards. When you can visualise something, that’s the first step in achieving it. Your goal can be very simple – you just want to know how to play one song well, a Beatles song, or a Led Zeppelin song, or it could be that you want to be a completely unique elite world-class virtuoso. They all have different steps to get to them, but they are both goals. The important thing is keeping the vision of what that is and learning how to break it down into steps, and achieving each step before you go to the next one.”

Asked if there is a tension between the notion of establishing your own uniqueness and being able to go beyond the confines of the established self, being able to shape-shift between characters and personas as an artist, Vai says that there isn’t going to be a choice. “You can only be who you are,” he says. “And who we are are works in progress. We are constantly changing. Not all of us, but many of us have preconceived notions of what we should be. And the process of life is helping us to discover how to let go of those preconceived notions.”

It’s a process and I go though it constantly. Every year that goes by and I look back at what I’ve done and where I’m going and where I wanna go, I learn to let go more and more of preconceived notions, of stereotypes, of hang-ups and empty concerns. You just let go and this frees you up to find yourself more. And once you start finding yourself… Uniqueness exists in all of us because we are all different.”

“Now, if you hear somebody who plays an instrument the way that encourages you and you are inspired by it, you might learn to play just like that guy. That’s a statement of who you are. It’s not a bad thing. It just shows that you never took the desires to find out what you are interested in. And then there are people who don’t have a choice. They can’t play like anybody else, they can’t make music like anybody else.”

“Once you find out who you are, actually cultivating it and brining it out into the world is a personal statement, and a lot of people have a lot of hang-ups about that because we have these little voices in our head, and they tell us what we think we can’t do, what we shouldn’t do. We don’t want to be criticised. When you create something, it’s an expression of your inner self. If you are drawing a picture just like Picasso, it’s an expression of who you are. But if you are a Picasso, it’s different. So when we do these things, they are little snapshots of who we are. And really we are naked when we play an instrument. Because you don’t really have a choice. So when an artist takes their work and then puts it in the world and it’s open up for criticism, or for people’s enjoyment, or whatever, what happens is that they are not saying, “How do you like my song?”, or, “How do you like my art?” They are saying, “How do you like me?””

This accent on uniqueness doesn’t mean, however, that Vai denies his influences. During the class he names a few: Led Zeppelin, Queen, Ritchie Blackmore, Jethro Tull, and Jimi Hendrix. Talking of Hendrix, it was Vai’s rendition of “Little Wing” that became the focal point of his performances on both days at LIMS. The contrast between the poetic, transparent solos, and the poignantly outlined harmonic shape of the song, Vai’s impeccable handling of the dynamic nuances, his tone, and unpretentious grace of his performance all spoke of a seemingly innate understanding of both the original and what is required to become its successful interpreter.

Back at the masterclass, Vai demolishes the assumption anyone who’s ever heard him play live may have – that he was born great and musically perfectly formed. He admits of being insecure about his abilities when he was a teenager and says that it was hard labour that got him where he is now. “I never thought I was good enough when I was a kid,” Vai confesses to his masterclass. “I thought everybody else was better than me.” And then an even more stunning revelation follows: “Most people in this room, if they put in as much time on the guitar as I did, would probably kick my ass.”

And although over the years Vai got over his childhood insecurities and learnt to deal with fame better than most rock stars, he says that huge-scale fame wouldn’t have worn comfortable on him. “Thank god I’m not as famous as Michael Jackson”, he says during the masterclass, which, uttered just a week before Jackson’s death, sounds ominously perceptive.

Vai also says that in his early days he hasn’t been looking for fame and had low expectations not only for his very first solo album “Flex-Able”, but also for the one that followed it – the renowned “Passion and Warfare”, a breakthrough gem of an album that instantly propelled him onto the 20th century guitar hero pantheon when released in 1990. In fact, he confesses that in his youth he found the idea of fame incredibly daunting. “I was paranoid about getting famous back in the “Flex-Able” days,” he says. “The idea of fame gave me anxiety.”

Feeling uneasy about fame and, unlike 99 per cent of his peers, not being desperate for a record deal, paradoxically, allowed Vai to open up to his full potential. “If you are not expecting anything, you do better stuff than when you are attached by expectations,” Vai says during his masterclass. And as he touches upon the subject, another quote comes to mind, when back in 1989 he told Musician magazine how “…artists reach into themselves when they are young and pull out some really wonderfully originality because they don’t care. They don’t have a reputation or an image to uphold.”

Since the release of Vai’s debut “Flex-Able” back in 1984 which was recorded in his home studio, the album has sold an impressive quarter of a million copies. This year the music press is celebrating the 25th anniversary of “Flex-Able” and Vai is marking the occasion with an upcoming release of the remastered version of the album which is going to include previously unreleased bonus material recorded even earlier than “Flex-Able” itself.

This, however, isn’t the only Vai release to see the light of day in 2009. Throughout the class Vai, apart from illustrating a lot of points on his guitar, he also lets us see snippets of his upcoming DVD entitled “Where The Wild Things Are” filmed live at Minneapolis in 2007.

The DVD proves to be a startling account of the technical brilliance, versatility, and emotion of Vai’s shows. A mulligan stew of styles, techniques, and approaches, this footage makes you ponder if these days Vai is expressing highbrow culture in popular terms or the other way around. Whichever it is, it’s not just about the relationship between orchestra instruments and the electric guitar, or propulsive grooves and delicate rhythmic nuances, or constantly shifting time signatures and bona fide rock barn-burning vibe. Ultimately all this is about the relationship between heart and mind, and Vai seems to have found a perfect balance for both through his open, unconservative attitude to music.

The virtuosity with which he manipulates traditional and new practices, old technical fetishes and free-thinking innovation, can all be experienced first-had in this footage, and it startles how this diversity ultimately liberates him. This is achieved as much through balance and careful structuring as through pure emotion: on the one hand Vai doesn’t dogmatise, but on the other, his show is a firmly directed trip.

While so many bands these days cannot make their own names without referring to the established figures of the past, Vai to this day manages to remain autonomous, self-sufficient and unique. He doesn’t dose his eccentricity, and that is why artistic fascination is simply everywhere during his shows – from the music itself to the way Vai performs it on the stage, to the way the stage is designed, to what he wears. And when the time comes for the call-and-response interaction between the guitar and one of the violins, it’s all stage presence galore – a classic case where visual splendour turns great music into luxury.

Asked if he is happy with the way the DVD has turned out, Vai sounds unequivocally positive. “I am very happy,” he says. “It’s a great band because I have these two violin players who are just extraordinary, really great, they add this whole different dimension, you know. And I try to do things that a relatively unexpected and different than what might be considered the norm. It took finding the right people, and I really found them: Ann Marie Calhoun and Alex DePue, these tremendous players.”

“It really allowed me to take the music into a different dimension with them. It is still very intense Vai music, whatever it is. I didn’t record with them yet, but I’ve decided to do some smattering of touring, and we did a month in Europe and a month in America and it was really great. I recorded one of the shows, it took me forever to edit it and to get it done, and now it’s done and it’s coming out.”

Asked what things need to coincide for a great performance to happen, Vai says that the key is confidence. “The thing that generates an effective performance is the confidence you have when you are performing,” he says. “When I’m on stage, I feel like I own the world. I am fiercely confident in what I do and I know that when I am going to do it, I am demanding that people are being sucked in. It’s a process of making a connection. Because primarily what am I here for, what are we here for? I’m here to create things for the people that are interested in it to enjoy. I’m not going to change the world, my music isn’t of historical brilliance, and if it is, it’s not for me to determine, it’s for historians to determine.”

“My job is like anybody else’s. I have certain tools and I have certain gifts, and I want to do my best to create them in the most imaginative way and powerful way that I can so that other people can enjoy them. I work for other people. Artists are here so that people can dream while they are awake. That’s what you do when you watch and it takes you away, and that’s the goal for me. I want to create something that people can enjoy and be stimulated, and I want to take control of their emotional equilibrium and bring them to different places, and let them go of the world, let go of everything in their life and just enjoy this particular thing. The only way to do that effectively for me or anybody else, I think, is to find a thing that you are most comfortable with, that’s most natural to you, that seems simple to you. That is when you are going to be your most effective. I don’t work on things I’m not good at. I find things that I am good at and I exaggerate them.”

The dynamics of performing live and composing music being different, it feels important to ask Vai about the nature of his creative process. “Well, my creative process is very simple,” he says. “I don’t think it differs from anybody else’s. The impetus of an idea has to start some place. And it doesn’t start in the physical world, it starts in the mental. You get an idea for something and you see it. You do it, we all do it. The process of making idea real in the world varies. And according to the complexity of the idea or the tools that are at your disposal, that is going to determine how much work has to go into it.”

“There are various ways to expressing those ideas. When I’m just playing the guitar, a lot of things go through my head. Sometimes I’m thinking, “What’s coming up next? Am I prepared for this? Make sure you get to your pedal in time, make sure that you look good while you are doing this.” Whatever it is. Or, “Oh my god, am I in tune?” Sometimes those are all the things that are going on, but for the most part it’s just letting go and you know that you are in control.”

The same point Vai emphasises during the masterclass, when he describes how in his early years he visualised how he wanted to look and feel on stage: “I wanted it to look elegant, effortless, complete control, no barriers,” he says. “But most of all I wanted it to be entertaining.” All, this of course, has proven to be a self-fulfilling prophecy based on Vai’s firm belief that you become what you think of yourself.

While a face-to-face masterclass may not be accessible to all for various reasons, travel and fiscal considerations being just some of them, Vai is soon planning to launch a subscription site called Vai-Tunes where subscribers would have an opportunity to get guitar advice, hear some of his previously unreleased tunes and get access to plenty of other material. Asked when he is planning to see the site up and running, Vai says that the subscriptions will take a little while.

“My plan is to move into that direction,” he says. “I have so much music that I want to get out there, but it is not necessarily suited for a particular record. So the idea is to start creating a once-a-month release of a song digitally. And the subscription will include that and a whole bunch of stuff, we are still putting it together. I was thinking of presenting an entire Alien Guitar Secrets concept in bite-size chunks of ten minutes each. And it’d be endless volumes basically, but the subscription will contain one of those also. A lot of musicians are starting to think that way. Everything’s changing.”

Being in tune with the way fans are interacted with in the internet era is just another aspect of the more universal vision that Vai has for his profession. As a result, he proved to be one of those rare Eighties artists who some twenty years ago stood for all things innovative and ultra-modern and who to this day not only continue to evolve but carry on presenting new and innovative concepts.

Vai’s most recent work which integrates orchestra instruments into a rock band scenario prompts a more general question on the secret of successfully doing so, especially given that so many artists – from Metallica to Uli Jon Roth – have recently been experimenting in this area.

“I don’t think there’s any secret,” Vai says. “There are various ways of approaching it. For someone like Metallica you hand it over entirely to an orchestrator who understands orchestra music and you get this heavy metal music that has orchestra overtones. That’s one way of doing it that has a particular effect. And it’s cool, it sounds cool. I’ve seen rock bands do that and most of the times that’s what they do. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a rock band really doing something compositional with an orchestra. Usually they take their songs and they orchestrate it for strings.”

“But it takes a person that understands rock music, and orchestration, and the limitations of an orchestra, being a composer who works with orchestras, who hears things in their head. They know if they are going to mix a flute with an oboe, what it’s gonna sound like, a contrabass with a cello or a tuba. You just imagine it and they know. And when they are creating the colours of their composition, they have all these palettes to choose from.”

“Rock musicians do the same thing, but is it a clean guitar, is it a distorted guitar, is it an acoustic? So because I work with both things, I have the ability to take an overview and mix them both in a different way. I’m not saying it’s superior, its’ just different. It is more compositional.”

“The last time I heard somebody do it to where it sounded organic to me, it was Uli Jon Roth. He does it very well. He has a very singy type of tone on the guitar, so it all works. And he just knows how to kind of like… He understands, you know? But what I do is totally different because what he does is conventional classical music.”

But, after all, Vai has always been different from anyone else. He’s never been filled with nostalgia, he’s never been frightened by the unknown, and his vitality and conviction have been total.

Some twenty years ago Vai has contributed hugely to the changing aesthetics of the Western world, but he did so almost by chance because he’s never been consciously concerned with common artistic values of his contemporaries and wasn’t interested in either upholding them or demolishing them. Instead, he’s taught everyone who cared to pay attention a more important lesson, years before he began doing his seminars – that in this day and age originality is paramount to becoming a truly great artist.

Vai’s ability to harness his own uniqueness and to focus on his own inclinations without conceding to changing fashions is the main reason why his music to this day remains adequate to the contemporary reality. He can cover ground from classical music to classic rock, and be able to absorb not only what preceded him, but also go into unchartered territories, but this breadth of vision is by no means an end in itself. It is simply the result of staying true to who he is and what he wants to convey as an autonomous artist while remaining an entertainer. And it’s this combination of originality and a desire to entertain, as well as the old and the new, that Vai was able to successfully formulate. In the end his efforts brought about major rethinking not only of the place and the role of modern rock guitar, but of contemporary music as a whole.

“Trends come and go,” Vai says during our interview. “There was a time when the Beatles were really out of fashion, and people wouldn’t even say they owned a Beatles record. Or Elvis. It happened to Elvis, it happened to Led Zeppelin, it happened to Beethoven. It happens to everybody because once you so identify with the particular genre or trend, and that trend gets copied and watered down and insipid because of all the people who aren’t really inspired but they are pantomiming the genius of somebody else by creating things that their imagination is capable of more or less copying. But it doesn’t have that fine spark of brilliance that the originators had. The whole genre becomes insipid and it’s time for a chance.”

“But eventually history doesn’t remember those things. History doesn’t remember the critics who tear you apart because it’s not trendy. History remembers the genres and respects those people who were pioneers.”

“Where The Wild Things Are” DVD is out on October 5, 2009.

Photos courtesy of Alissa Ordabai

Sean Peck of Cage

by Derric Miller
Staff Writer

Lead singer Sean Peck of Cage checked in with Hardrock Haven to give us the skinny behind their stellar new release Science of Annihilation; how he manages to control and warm up his vocal chords in a live setting; the story behind songs like “Planet Crusher,” “Scarlet Witch” and “Black River Falls”; how the recent European tour went; and a whole lot more.

Cage has been one of the best bands on the planet for years, and they don’t let you down with their new release, Science of Annihilation. Tune in to hear Sean talk about how damn good they really are, and pick up the new CD immediately thereafter.

www.cageheavymetal.com

Geoff Tate of Queensryche

by Deb Rao
Staff Writer

Queensryche unleashed their epic concept album, American Soldier on March 31. Brutally honest, graphic, and hauntingly real, Queensryche latest release, American Soldier will captivate you from the opening track to the grand finale’. Queensryche are no stranger to a concept album having released Operation Mindcrime in 1988 and have never shied away from controversial subject matter. American Soldier finds Queensryche and lead singer Geoff Tate taking on the perils of war, the good, the bad and the ugly. You will find nothing pretentious and no stone left unturned on American Soldier.

American Soldier features twelve tracks that are carefully orchestrated with a vast array of melodic melodies combat hard driving riffs, fast and furious drumbeats and outstanding vocals by Geoff Tate.

Geoff Tate of Queensryche has checked in with Hardrock Haven to discuss the making of American Soldier and future touring plans for the band.

HRH: Geoff, How did your Dad play a major role in the motivation to write American Soldier?

TATE: I think a conversation that I had with him a couple of years ago that I ended up recording for the record definitely kind of pushed me in that direction. He peaked my curiosity so to speak.

HRH: You also spent a lot of time on the road talking with Soldiers about the war. How did this affect your viewpoint of the military after listening to your conversations with these Soldiers?

TATE: I walked away with this project with a feeling of gratitude of the Soldiers experience and what they sacrificed and what they go through. I think that is one of the main points that I hope people take away with after listening to the music is that same feeling. Especially in America I think that we take for granted quite a bit what our military does. We are very free to follow our dreams and pursue our goals and we don’t worry about an unwelcome force kicking in our door at night. We don’t have to defend our patch of ground. Because somebody else is doing that for us watching our back. What the soldiers do is a very important thing. I hope people realize that with the release of the album.

HRH: When you are a soldier you are in combat everyday. What people don’t realize that when they return home, their lives are forever changed. Did any of the soldiers that you spoke with ever regret going to war?

TATE: No not one soldier that I talked to ever regretted his experience. They all seem to have taken the experience no matter how difficult it was or how easy and learn something from it that has helped them improve their life in some way. By giving them strength, a personality and character. That was really one of the things that impressed me. Out of all the conversations that I had, all of them tended to have such a high sense of duty and honor that is something that really grasps you.

HRH: One of the most moving songs on the album is a song that you did with your daughter Emily on “Home Again.” In retrospect, after listening to the song it can take on two meanings being a Father on tour away from his family, or a soldier leaving his family for war. What was the inspiration behind this song?

TATE: It wan an interview that I did with a soldier that was talking how difficult it was to be away from your family and be thousands of miles away and being in a very dangerous situation. We were kind of plotting in that concept in a sense because of the amount of time that I spend away from children. I can definitely relate to his opinion on it. As he was talking about his experience I was really relating to it that is the inspiration for the song. I had just finished writing the song actually; my daughter came home from school. She asked, “What are you doing?” I said, “I just finished writing this song. Do you want to hear it?” She said,”Yeah.” So I was playing it down for her. After she listened to it I said, “What do you think?” She looked up from reading the lyrics and she had tears rolling down her face. I said, “What is wrong? Why are you crying?” She said, “Well I am just so happy that you wrote a song about me.” So I said, “You think that is about you?” She said,”Yeah, you are gone all the time. I really miss you. I get scared sometimes. I call you and you don’t answer the phone.” It hit me right then that she really connected with this song. I said do you want to sing it with me? She said,”Yeah.” So I quickly put the microphone up and got her headphone mix going and she sang the song. We took two or three takes on it. But the emotion and the innocence that she had in her delivery was really special I thought. It really captured the feeling of the song really well

HRH: Was it hard to orchestrate the music to this album? There was a lot of spoken word by the soldiers on the album.

TATE: What we tried to do is paint the picture musically in support of what the words were. The words were of course taken from the interviews. Actually, the interviews were really invaluable in writing the songs. Because you could sit and listen to the audiotapes and watch the film interviews you would really walk away from those with a musical impression. It really helped us write to it.

HRH: It is so intriguing you used the Soldiers audio for lyrics. Their stories made it ever so authentic. Did you have this idea in mind from the get-go? How did the concept of American Soldier all come together?

TATE: That was something that sort of evolved. As I collected interviews I really started seeing commonalities in their stories and their experiences. So I focused on what those commonalities were and created outlines of their stories and that is what we intended to focus on in constructing the songs. We really just tried to paint the picture of what their experiences were. When the project first begin. It was really just a project of asking questions and collecting answers really. The whole thing really evolved fairly quickly within a few weeks that it would be a good idea to record them, the words and impressions. As I got more and more conversations recorded I realized that the emotion in their voices and just the authenticity of their experiences would really be better if I recorded them. We started filming them and actually conducting interviews with proper microphones so we could use the audio.

HRH: Over how long a time period did it take to record American Soldier?

TATE: I started working on it I believe in the summer of 2006. We just completed it in January 2009. So it was quite a long time really.

HRH: The album cover has a picture of the Soldiers combat boots on the cover. What does this denote to you?

TATE: Do you know the old saying, “How can you know me until you walk in my shoes”? I think the album cover really says that. It is an hour of music where you get to walk in the Soldiers boots for a while. You really get to understand their experiences first hand.

HRH: Did Queensryche ever perform over in Iraq?

TATE: We are going to be going over to Iraq this year.

HRH: How has the political climate changed since the release of 1988 and your release of Operation Mindcrime? I know George Bush Sr. was in office then, and now we have a new President but there is still a war going on. Do you think things are getting better?

TATE: That is really a difficult question to answer because the human dynamic it changes so much. For better or worse, it is really hard to judge. I think politics are one thing and the social situations or social growth is another thing. I think we have come along ways since 1988 as a country. I think we have gone through ups and downs and changes. We have kids that are becoming adults now that were just children in 1988. So their perspectives and experiences will shape how the next few years turn out as well.

HRH: Do you find it easier to write a concept album and gather a bunch of songs with one central theme?

TATE: Well yeah know you have the concept of an album, which in my mind means a collection of songs. I think there is a couple of ways that you can go with that collection of songs. You can write twelve songs that are all very different from one another and explore a lot of different thoughts and ideas. Or you can write around a central theme and focus those songs on that central subject. Which I find to be very challenging and very satisfying creatively to do that. It is very difficult in a song form to explore a subject in-depth. You got a limited amount of time with the attention span that you are dealing with. The album collective gives you much more time and so many different ways that you can explore a theme. You can write about it from so many different angles.

HRH: The Queensryche tour kicked off on April 16th in your hometown of Seattle. Tells us a little bit about the tour. Also, are Queensryche going to be performing Rage For Order and Empire?

TATE: Actually, we are going to be presenting all of the songs from those albums on this tour. We have two set lists that comprise all of the songs from those records. We are gong to be switching back and forth from those set list nightly. So that people that come to multiple shows you can hear all of the songs performed in their entirety.

HRH: Will there be a special stage show and special effects on this tour?

TATE: We have new films and video presentations to support the new album and our past albums as well. We have some very interesting visual technology that we are bringing on the road this year. I don’t know how to describe it but it is an image distortion screen that you can run multiple images into and project them around the venue and re-create new images from the combination of images. We really have an interesting touring group. We have the four original members of the band. We have a new guitar player Parker Lundgren who is going to be joining us on second guitar and Jason Ames who is an Italian guy, he is going to be joining us on third guitar and keyboards and back-up vocals. We have one of the Soldiers that performed on the record; A.J. Fratto will be joining us on vocals. My daughter Emily is going to tour as well with us this year.

HRH: That is great. So we will get to hear her sing, “Home Again” correct?

TATE: That’s right!

HRH: Geoff, You give a really strong vocal performance on “American Soldier”. You have been noted as one of the top singers to emerge out of the ’80s genre and are still going strong today? How do you keep your voice in such great shape with your constant touring schedule?

TATE: I think I get stronger the more I sing. It is the constant practice of playing every night for two and half hours it will early make you stronger or kill ya. (Laughter)

HRH: Geoff, Is their anything else that you want to say about American Soldier?

TATE: I think it is a very good album. For the band it was a wonderful, wonderful experience to be able to participate in portraying the soldiers story. We really, really learned a lot from this project. I think it really changed us. It changed our way of thinking in a very positive way.

HRH: What were your Dad’s thoughts on the album? I know he appears on the song, “The Voice”? He is also a veteran.

TATE: He is very proud of that. He really loves the album and the whole idea behind it. He was very supportive of the project all the way thru.

HRH: Geoff, Thank you so much for talking time out for this interview for the readers and all of the Queensryche fans at Hardrock Haven . We strongly support American Soldier. I hope to be out to see Queensryche perform at Hampton Beach.

TATE: Wonderful. Thank you so much Deb.

Photos courtesy of Gregg Watermann

Don Dokken

by Deb Rao
Staff Writer

DOKKEN burst onto the Sunset Strip metal scene in the early ’80s and never looked back. The melodic distinctive vocal of Dokken frontman Don Dokken inspired a generation of rock fans from the bands early heyday and is still going strong in the music industry today. Be sure to check out concert review of Dokken in Lancaster at Hardrock Haven.

Dokken has never been a band to rely on past laurels. In 2009, the band is still releasing quality music and has garnered a new generation of fans with the recent release with their tenth studio album, Lightning Strikes Again in 2008. Dokken return to their old school roots on LSA and are currently unleashing new material from that album on their current Summer tour.

Sit and back and enjoy one of Metal’s top vocalists, as Dokken front man Don Dokken discusses a variety of subjects including the passing of Michael Jackson and the current Dokken tour.

HRH: Don, the Dokken summer tour is underway. What did you think about tonight’s performance at The Chameleon Club?

DON: Dokken played Penn’s Peak last night in Jim Thorpe. We drove from Penn’s Peak to the Chameleon Club here in Lancaster and we are driving to Michigan tomorrow. I love the Amish Country. It is beautiful. This is what it is all about. There are a lot of Dokken fans here on the East Coast. We were suppose to have a night off tonight, but we are playing three shows in a row. I am glad we played here tonight. All the Dokken fans are out in full force tonight. We are also doing new material on this tour. We played “This Fire” from our new album “Lightning Strikes Again” and we are suppose to play “Standing On The Outside” at the Stars and Stripes Festival in Michigan

HRH: How has the music industry changed since when Dokken first hit the metal scene back in the early eighties?

DON: When I went to Germany to get the record deal, they wanted to sign me as a solo artist. The original album, Breaking The Chains originally came out in Europe and the band was called was called Don Dokken. It was pretty rare. There were 500 copies of it that said “Don” on the cover. So when we got the band together, I just dropped the “Don” and we became Dokken. I am stuck in 1989. I think the ’90s killed music. There were no good songs on the radio. Music was depressing then. Dokken is old school. We come from the genre of Van Halen and The Scorpions.

HRH: Dokken were known for their innovative music videos. What was your favorite Dokken video?

DON: “I would have to say,”It’s Not Love”. We were riding down Hollywood Boulevard in a flatbed truck. We were playing live, yeah know! We kept getting stopped. I think we got stopped four times!

HRH: I recently saw Dokken perform at the M3 Festival in Columbia, Md. Do you prefer playing arenas to clubs?

DON: “The audiences were great this weekend. The sound system at Penn’s Peak was amazing. I kind of like playing the clubs better. It is more intimate. Playing to 10,000 people, is kind of like playing to flies dissected. Everyone is scattered and far away. The venues are varied on this tour from clubs to arenas. We go from playing the Chameleon Club tonight to playing a 10,000 seater tomorrow at the Stars and Stripes Festival.

HRH: As a singer, who first influenced your style of singing?

DON: I listened to Ian Gillen a lot. I love “Highway Star”. I love Ian Gillen’s falsetto. I listened to Ronnie James Dio and Steven Tyler started it all.

HRH: Dokken will be doing a show with The Scorpions soon on July 11 in Greece. Are you looking forward to this?

DON: I am looking forward to working with The Scorpions. It is more like a vacation, I am taking my kids there.

HRH: The music world is mourning the loss of Michael Jackson. What are your thoughts on the passing of this Superstar?

DON: I think it is very sad that we lost the King Of Pop. I can’t believe it. Every generation has their musical icon. He was younger than me.

Photos courtesy of Deb Rao

Steve Blaze and Derrick LeFevre of Lillian Axe

by Derric Miller
Staff Writer

Steve Blaze and Derrick LeFevre of Lillian Axe checked in with Hardrock Haven to talk about this new studio release Sad Day on Planet Earth; why they chose this song/theme as the title; playing at Rocklahoma alongside legends like Twisted Sister and their world tour; and even what Blaze would rate the new release if he was a music critic!

Lillian Axe has always been one of those bands with a unique sound that sets them apart — they sound like no one else. When you hear Sad Day on Planet Earth, you hear they are just as strong as they were on the classic Love and War release. Tune in now to the interview, and pick up Sad Day on Planet Earth as soon as it’s available.

(If the audio player doesn’t populate, click here to stream the interview in a stand alone player.)

Web site: www.lillianaxe.com

David T. Chastain

by Derric Miller
Staff Writer

Guitar God David T. Chastain checked in with Hardrock Haven to talk about his new instrumental CD Heavy Excursions; what he thinks the video game Guitar Hero is doing to “influence” kids to pick up an actual instrument; an upcoming release titled Instrumentalized; what his label Leviathan Records is up to; playing live; and a whole lot more.

Chastain has been compared to everyone from Steve Vai to Allan Holdsworth, but after a couple decades honing his skills and releasing guitar focused Metal that sounds like no one else, he has carved out his own niche in the pantheon of guitar greats. Tune in now to get to know Chastain, and pick up Heavy Excursions as well.