I never intended to piss off Joey Ramone, but you know what they say about the road to hell. Unfortunately, my 1994 interview really ripped his leather, but thankfully, Joey had a surprise up his sleeve.
“I always tell my band there are three things I can guarantee you: You’ll see the world, you’re gonna get paid and you’re gonna get stitches,” Alice said.
Michael Monroe knows the pitfalls of being an outsider. For all his influence, street cred and legendary swagger, the glam-rock firecracker with a punk-rock fuse remains a perennial underdog — a cult hero, a distant comet, the world’s forgotten, left-for-dead boy.
Much to my giddy delight, the following interview with my childhood hero, Gene Simmons, was published in three of the four biggest Texas newspapers (San Antonio, Houston and Austin) in December of 2009 as KISS was touring to promote the “Sonic Boom” album.
The glory days of the Sunset Strip produced bigger names than L.A. Guns, but none can match the number of rock-solid albums triggered by the combustible duo of singer Philip Lewis and guitarist Tracii Guns.
Some times it’s the shock rockers who get the biggest fright of all. So says axe-wielding heavy metal maniac, Lizzy Borden, who’s calling from his home in Las Vegas and kindly obliging requests for Spinal Tap moments.
Junkyard’s first album in more than two decades will almost certainly finish the year in my Top 3. Hell, it might even score Numero Uno.
On April 15, 2017, we were invited aboard the Anthrax tour bus outside Grizzly Hall in Austin Texas where the band was headlining an all-day, outdoor metal festival. Our interview covered the band’s latest releases, choice of cover tunes, the Big 4 and first concerts (there’s even a playful jab at the Bulletboys!).
In 2013, I reviewed an advance copy of Saxon’s “Sacrifice” album on 2Fast2Die. Much to my surprise, the wife of drummer Nigel Glockler saw it and got in touch to kindly extend thanks on behalf of herself and her husband.
Scorpions guitarist Rudolf Schenker was a rock star before he knew it.
When the Misfits called it quits following a Halloween gig in 1983, they left behind a legacy of ghoulish makeup, guitars that looked like weapons and ultra-fast punk-rock songs that celebrated alien invasions, demonic possession, dismemberment and cannibalism.
In 2004, I took my wife to her first KISS concert. By then, of course, she had been subjected to the KISS albums, my off-limits collection of memorabilia and the ceaseless, to-the-grave blathering about the band’s indelible influence on my life.