Interviews

  • 4 (1)
  • A (3)
  • B (16)
  • C (8)
  • D (26)
  • E (4)
  • F (4)
  • G (20)
  • H (17)
  • I (1)
  • J (50)
  • K (11)
  • L (7)
  • M (26)
  • N (8)
  • O (2)
  • P (13)
  • Q (2)
  • R (19)
  • S (36)
  • T (23)
  • U (3)
  • V (2)
  • W (2)
  • Z (1)
Tue
07
Feb

Journey - Neal Schon (2001)

    Thanks for calling, great to talk to you again. Yeah, Rindell gave me a heads up yesterday, said we were going to finally do this, you know. I've been putting this off because I thought it would be better to do like sometime before the record was coming out...it kept on getting pushed back. Is there any way I can get a little more volume out of your phone? Possibly. You can't hear me real well? Not that well. OK. Now I can hear you pretty well. Maybe its just a case of redialing or... <break> That's definitely what it is, it's a bit of my tinitus. So the years of standing next to an amplifier have taken there toll? That and a lot of the symbols, you know, symbols are like really loud when you get drummers up on risers, you know, the sound comes right down directly at your ears. And, you know, loud motorcycles <laugh>, loud guitars and loud motorcycles. You ride do you? Yeah Where about, just around your home there? Yeah, well, you know, I go for a longer ride sometimes with friends, you know, we'll go...I've ...
 
Tue
07
Feb

Night Ranger - Jeff Watson (2000)

February 2000 and Jeff watson is hard at work at his home studio on a new instrumental album. I talked to Jeff about that, Night Ranger's 20th anniversary, why Neverland never got the exposure it should have, the re-issue of Around The Sun and a bunch of other stuff.... G'Day Jeff! G'Day Andrew Hey how are you? I'm doing good, I'm working in the studio. Oh good, you got a few minutes to talk? Certainly. Tell me about what you're doing right now? At the moment I'm cutting a steel stringed classical guitar piece with a little bit of electric slide over them for another instrumental record like my first one, 'Lone Ranger' that came out early '90's. I'm shopping that in Japan, Europe and America. More of like the 'Windham Hill' and 'Higher Octave' kind of stuff. This is a little more intricate than that because it's a higher degree of difficulty due to some of the classical pieces I wrote. So that's coming out real good. I'm getting a real good response. I just did a song for a movie. It's a huge animation thing, a lot like Pokemon which is very very popular. I had never heard ...
 
Tue
07
Feb

Neal Schon (1998)

Neal, how are you man? I'm fine how are you Fantastic thanks. Its great to talk to you finally! Great. How's the tour going? The tours going great, we had our first show in Marin County - a little dress rehearsal. It went really great, and people were really raving about it. And tonight we start our first show here in Tokyo. First show tonight is it? Yeah, You must be really buzzed then?!! We are really excited about it, and we got so much great feedback from the first show, that now I am not so much worried about it. I got some great responses myself. So it has been 10 years off the road. Suddenly you have a new singer out front. What is it like? It's a little like we are reborn again. The guy that we got, we couldn't have got a better replacement. Actually because we have so much old material that we need to play, that the fans want to hear, otherwise I don't see the purpose of going out and doing Journey. Our 'Greatest Hits' is probably the biggest record we ever had. And it continues to sell and be played on the radio. ...
 
Tue
07
Feb

Newman (2003)

Newman: Modern times, classic sounds. Steve Newman talks about his latest Newman album and the Butterfly Tattoo material and gives some advice to new bands and AOR fans out there! Hi Steve….our first ever interview – thanks for taking the time! What are you up to right now? I am currently in the studio going through the Butterfly Tattoo material. I'm not sure who this is going to be released through, obviously Escape will have first choice on this. I'll let you know what happens. Congrats on the new album - sounding as good, if not better, than ever. Thank you Andrew. There's been a 3 year delay between albums this time around, but you haven't been sitting around the whole time. You recorded a set of songs under the title Butterfly Tattoo. What happened to those songs and why weren't they released? Yes, that's right, I was involved in doing something a little different with regards to Butterfly Tattoo. I got together two other musicians, a bass player, and a drummer and we spent around 2 months in the studio writing songs with the intention that this was to become the next Newman album. We started to actively write together and ...
 
Tue
07
Feb

A 20 Questions interview with Northiwnd's guitarist Chris in France (2002)

G'Day Chris! Tell us all about the band, and the line up? Based in the North of France 'Charleville Mezizères'near Belgium, Northwind is Franck - vocals, Gilles - bass, Nico - Keyboards, Yannick - drums and me guitars. How long have you been together? I started with Franck the band on the summer 2000,the actual line up was drafted in september 2001. What is the best description for the musical style of Northwind? I think Northwind play melodic Heavy Metal mixing old and new influences. Who did the artwork for the CD cover? The artwork was made by Mathiew Bennett, based on a idea from Phil Igram from England. First album ever bought? I think it was Lovedrive by Scorpions. After some AC-DC, Saxon, Motorhead, Van Halen....... Biggest musical influence over career? My favorite band will be forever Thin Lizzy, many melodic bands like UFO, Pretty maids, TNT, Ozzy........and lately Stratovarius. What other bands have you played in? Many unknown local bands, in solo and the last one was a French Metal band call Heavenly (Noise Records). Last album bought and what is on your current playlist? The last album I bought is Thunderstone, Ozzy 'live at Budokan', on ...
 
Tue
07
Feb

Nelson - Gunner Nelson (2001)

GUNNER NELSON - The Nelson Interview       So back to the start of the Nelson legacy, at what point did you put the band together? Well, we actually started putting the band together when we met Bobby Rock. Bobby was sitting behind us at the American Music Awards one year and he was sitting with the guys from the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, they were a bunch of nice dudes, but I guess that band was gonna break up in six months, Bobby wasn't aware of that. And we met him there and kinda just kept in touch and when it came time for us to put our band together, about 8 months later, Bobby was the first guy we called and basically everybody else was word of mouth. Joey Cathcart was a guy we played in high school bands with. Brett Garsed was a guy that our manager from Australia turned us on to. He (our manager) came back from a tour of Australia freaking out about this unknown guitar player he had just seen with John Farnham. So we got a video tape of Brett, we talked to him on the phone and we sent for him and ...
 
Tue
07
Feb

Night Ranger - Kelly Keagy (1996)

Okay, so we all know who Night Ranger are, if not, check out my Jack Blades interview. This however was a slight variation on the form of the band, with original members Kelly Keagy and Brad Gillis joined by ex-Jeff Paris bass man Gary Moon. They went onto record the very fine album 'Feeding Off The Mojo'. Here's the story. So Kelly, how is the band and what are you up to currently? The band is preparing to tour the south behind the newly released single ‘Precious Time’. All the reviews I have read for 'Feeding Off The Mojo' have been excellent, are you happy with the reception for the album? Radio is still focused on playing alternative music, so getting airplay has been frustrating. However, we have been gratified by the reviews. It seems the consensus is it’s a great record and will be a shame if it doesn’t get the proper attention. Many bands have comprimised their sound for the trends. 'Mojo' is a very contemporary sound, while still retaining everything a classic Night Ranger album should. How did you go about the song writing? Writing the songs came naturally, we can’t do it any ...
 
Tue
07
Feb

Neil Kernon - Record Producer (Industry)

Producer Neil Kernon has been in the business for 30 years now. His credits include such Platinum acts as Hall & Oates, Kansas and Michael Bolton. He also the main behind a few AOR classics like Aviator, Valentine and Autograph. In the 80's he turned to hard rock and had great success with acts like Queensryche, Dokken, XYZ, Lynch Mob and Helix. In an interesting look behind the scenes, read what Neil had to say to me a short time ago... How did you start off in the business? My first job in the biz was in music publishing. I went straight from high school into the professional dept. at Essex Music in London. Who introduced you to it? Well, as they always say..it ain't what you know, it's who you know. The owner just happened to be the next-door-neighbour of my Dad's best friend. So he asked him if he could help my Dad out in his quest for openings for me in the music biz. You play piano and guitar....did you initially start your career in engineering as a musician? I started my career in life as a musician. As both my parents were musicians, I was ...