MC: You’re diving deep into the Van Halen part of your catalog this year, which once would have been an ambivalent experience I’m sure. What’s it like to play those songs now?

Hagar: I love it. I love those songs. I’m very proud of them. We made some great records with that band, really special... and people still love ‘em, y’know? 

MC: And with Eddie gone now do you feel a kind of responsibility to make sure that music lives on and still gets played on a stage?

Hagar: Y’know, thank God for that music. I remember right after Eddie died and we were doing the birthday shows [on Santa Catalina Island in California]. It was terrible timing; Here we are putting on this big party, celebrating Sammy’s birthday instead of Eddie’s funeral. That felt horrible. But when Mikey and I got onstage and played the first Van Halen song, “Right Now” we had a moment of silence and we looked at each other and it was like, “Oh, man, we’ve got a job to do. We need to keep this music alive. We need to play this song better than we’ve played it in our lives. here we go...” It was so spiritual, just wonderful. That was the healing, right then and there. To know we can never play with Eddie again, that’s the craziest feeling in my head.

MC: There was talk about that maybe happening at the time back then.

Hagar: Even when we were arguing, I knew we would play together again someday. You don’t make music and legacy like that and say, “Nope, that’s it, sorry.” I just knew there would be a reunion. It didn’t happen, but Eddie and I had our own reunion, and that was great.

MC: When did you last connect with him?

Hagar: It was probably around February [2020], before COVID. For Eddie’s birthday [in 2015] I said [via social media], “Hey, happy birthday, dude. I hope you’re good,” and I was sincere. I wasn’t trying to get back in the band or anything like that. And he got back to me, “Oh, thanks, hope you’re doing well, too.” Then my birthday came up, and I didn’t hear from him. (laughs) But then George Lopez was really the guy who instigated this; he was like, “Sam, I was just with Eddie. He’s not doing too good and you need to call him, man. He loves you.” And I was going, “He loves me? I thought he hated me?” and [Lopez] goes, “No, no, he loves you.” OK, gimme his number,” and I just called straight-up. I said, “Ed! I’ve been trying to get ahold of you through your brother, through this person and that person...” I’d say, “Give Eddie this message for me; if he ever feels like wanting to patch it up, call me.” I kept throwing him the ball. And then he finally goes, “Why don’t you just call me?” I said, “that’s what I’m doing, man,” and we just laughed. It worked out beautifully. We were texting like teenagers for the last few months before he died. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be able to take it.

MC: Your first idea for a Best of All Worlds tour was actually for Van Halen, with both you and David Lee Roth on board. You’ve invited him to make guest appearances with you this year, too. Magnanimous, but... dangerous?

Hagar: With David? (laughs) Yeah [a Van Halen tour] would’ve been a fuckin’ circus again like the Sam and Dave tour was [in 2004]. But it would’ve been good for the fans, man. It would’ve been the best. Dave, he just brings a strange element of trying to take over things and make other people look bad and make himself look good. I hate to say that about the guy, but that’s who he is. He’s always been like that, so it ain’t like he’s changed. I would have no problem with it now because I would be like, “Who cares?” I’m a grown man now. This is silly stuff. But It would’ve been great. I don’t want to put any negative spin on it. I would’ve sucked it up and done it in a second, and I think people would have loved it. 

MC: As “a grown man” now, what do you see when you look back at that kid who sang for Montrose all those years ago?

Hagar: That guy was very, very young and green but wanted it bad. I became a solo artist too soon; in Montrose I had a seasoned guy like Ronnie Montrose to guide me, but we got out on tour and bumped heads, so I got thrown out of the band because Ronnie was a hard guy to get along with, God rest his soul, and I was trying to get the other guys to side with me. So as a solo artist I was too green. I didn’t know what I was doing yet. I thought every song I wrote was great. I could care less about fame; it was more important to just sing and play guitar and get out on stage. I wasn’t looking for a free ride; I was, “I’ll get out there and sing until I’m rich and famous. I’ll make it.” But I was young and inexperienced, and then as I got better and realized what the business is and writing better songs... I just matured slowly, but that slow maturing is what made me who I am today. If I would’ve made it in my early 20s and got rich and famous I would probably be burnt out now. A lot of guys that make it overnight don’t last as long as me. But my work ethic made me what I am, so by the time I made it, it was like, “Oh, I enjoy this work. I ain’t trying to make it anymore; I just dig this.”

MC: Alongside the music, where did the famed Hagar business sensibility come from?

Hagar: From being dirt poor growing up. The first money I made my good Italian mom was like, “You gotta save your money! You gotta invest it or you’re gonna end up broke and a drug addict and in jail!” (laughs) So she kind of instilled it in me. I never invested; I don’t like to make money with money. I want to DO something and make money, so I always invested in myself. I did some real estate... and then building the Cabo Wabo in Cabo [San Lucas], that was not a business deal; it was strictly passion. And that turned into an unbelievable business that led to the tequila and the rum and everything else... Everybody thinks I’m smart. I’m not sure I’m that smart (laughs); I’m just a pretty lucky guy and I surround myself with good people.

MC: Because of those extra-musical business interests, a lot of people put you in the same boat—if you will—with Jimmy Buffett. A fair comparison?

Hagar: Oh, sure. I think it’s kind of in your face. The big difference between Jimmy and myself, God rest his soul, is my stuff is in your face and it’s more high-energy, and Jimmy of course was like subliminal music. It was like background music for your relaxation and your party having fun, but it wasn’t all up in your face. People that don’t know either one of us, they get us confused, but we’re not really confusable. It’s just two different styles. 

MC: And you were friendly?

Hagar: Of course. He was so kind, man. I can’t say enough about Jimmy. He changed my songwriting. I never wrote songs like that until after I got hip to Jimmy—the songs that are those types of lifestyle songs that I started writing later on. It just influenced my lyrics. I started writing about my life and my lifestyle instead of just rock ‘n’ roll, fast cars and loud music—which is great but [Buffett] certainly expanded my lyrical content, and God bless him for that, man. He was a great songwriter. 

MC: You’ve really enjoyed being in the booze industry, haven’t you?

Hagar: There you go—now you hit it. I really do. It’s big fun and it’s creative, as well. It was such a square industry... so a guy like me jumps in and gets so excited about a blend or this or that, a new project, and it’s fun jumping in that game. It seemed like it needed a little shot, and Cabo gave it its first one and now look at all the celebrity brands; there’s got to be, what, 20 tequilas out there with people’s names on them. But nobody did what I did, and I’m doing it again.

MC: Is there a key to doing it “right?”

Hagar: Y’know what it is? We make the product. We own the product. We start it from scratch. We don’t go to some producers and say, “Hey, I want to put my name on your stuff” like everybody else is doing. We invented it. We owned it, from the bottle to the juice in there to the marketing plan. And that’s what’s so rewarding and fun.

 MC: A year does not go by when Sammy Hagar isn’t on the road, playing. Where does that drive come from?

Hagar: I feel like I’ve got to tour before my voice goes. I was singing those songs last night with an acoustic guitar, and I’m thinking to myself, “Damn, I can still hit those notes!” I was on a boat with some friends and they were going, “You can still sing those songs?” I’m like, “Fuck yeah I can!” But I don’t know for how long, so I better get out there and give my fans a little treat before I can’t do it anymore. 

MC: Is that something you’re really concerned about?

Hagar: So far I can do it, but I know there’s gonna come that day—everyone can tell ya—when, “Man, I can’t sing that anymore.” I feel like some kind of semi-superhuman being or something because I shouldn’t be able to sing like I do. I really shouldn’t. I’ve abused my voice my whole life, screaming and yelling and singing—not with drugs and alcohol, not cigarettes, anyway. Alcohol, a little bit of drugs but not cigarettes or weed. But I’ll tell ya, the more I sing the stronger it is. If I don’t sing and then went on tour and tried to sing five nights a week, a two-hour show, that would not be good. I’d start losing my top range and I’d get really hoarse and start sounding more gruff—and I sound gruff enough at my age now. I like the scruffy voice, but... I just think giving it proper rest, but don’t let it get out of shape. It’s like an athlete, like boxers when they take two years off. Muhammed Ali, the greatest fighter of all time, he took a couple years off and came back and was never the same. I know so many singers who take so much time off and they come back and can’t sing. They open their mouth and it’s not there and then you’re head goes, “I’m done! I can’t sing anymore.”

MC: Do you have a technique for keeping your voice strong?

Hagar: I stay in shape, that’s all. I go down to my basement and crank up my Les Paul and a little Marshall and I scream my ass off a couple times a week. (laughs) I recommend that to everybody. Just don’t take too much time off.

MC: What are the hardest of your songs to sing now?

Hagar: Oh, the damn Van Halen stuff. Because I didn’t play guitar I didn’t care what key they were in; I just sang and then I picked up a guitar and was like, “What the fuck? I can’t hit that note” and Eddies’ going, “Well, you just hit it...” (laughs) But, like, “Dreams,” a song like, “When It’s Love,” that chorus—(sings) “I can’t tell you but it lasts forever.” Every now and then you slip around that a little bit, but I can do it. 

MC: Losing these people, whether it’s Jimmy or Eddie or whoever, does it put a little more rocket fuel behind you to keep doing it and maybe do more while you’re still here?

Hagar: No. I mean, these people dying around me make me look at my mortality, but I’m so damn driven that I don’t need any more motivation. My wife’s trying to close my fuel factory over here; she says, “Look, you gotta stop and enjoy life.” I said, “I’m enjoying life.” This brings me joy, to have an idea. The creativity is all it is for me. It isn’t the money. It was at one time; when I was broke on my ass, I wanted to make money. But once you get enough money, then you’ve got to figure out what really makes you happy— and it’s not money. And I hate to say that to somebody who’s struggling. It will make your life easier to have money if you’re struggling, but it’s not gonna make you happy unless you know what to do with it. And what makes me happy is having an idea, whether it’s a song or a beer or whatever, and seeing it through and seeing it win and seeing my fans happy with me, seeing my cantinas full, seeing my tequila and my rum fly off the shelves and stuff like that. And just seeing the audiences at my shows singing along with me, every word to the song. That friggin’ makes me happy, and that’s all you can get.

MC: So what effect has looking at mortality had on you?

Hagar: It’s like when I wrote the song “Father Time” that was on the Crazy Times record...At my age I’m looking at how many years I’ve got left, and so I’m still driven and I’m gonna get ‘em all done, but I’ve got to start to prioritize a little bit, not taking awhile to swing as something but do something I feel I can get done and it won’t make my life too complicated. My time’s spent on the beach, at the dinner table and creating, and that’s it—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That’s everything. 

MC: Does it impact the kinds of songs you write, too?

Hagar: Absolutely. I think any artist my age that just goes out and writes silly pop songs—unless it’s a really good one, like Paul McCartney would write, or Paul Simon—but an average rock guy like myself, I’m sorry, I don’t want to write about “I Can’t Drive 55” and “One Way to Rock” right now. I don’t mind singing them on stage, but to sit down and write that song again, I just don’t’ feel it in my heart. I want to go into my head and into my soul more.

MC: What have you been working on recently?

Hagar: Musically right now I’ve been on a real cool kinda streak. I wrote a couple of blues songs for Joe Bonamassa. I’ve known him a long time, little by little; we’re not great friends or anything, but I wrote this song and I thought, “God, this is just such a good, real blues song.” It’s called “Fortune Teller Blues,” and I thought, “Who can I give this to? Billy Gibbons? Nah; I love ZZ Top, but they’re more rock-blues. I need a more traditional blues guy, like Robert Cray or someone like that.” And then I thought, “I’m gonna send it to Joe,” and he got back in 10 minutes and said, “I love this song. Can I do it?” And I said, “Absolutely” and we did a duet on it and now I’ve written another one like that. I’m writing more like Jimmy Buffett, but with a blues twist instead of a lifestyle twist, which is kind of interesting. I don’t know if I’m gonna make a record or not, but I’ll get around to it some day, I think.

MC: It’s not like you have to put out an album every year like you once did.

Hagar: I’m not driven to do a record again. I lose a few hundred thousand dollars every time I make a record these days. I don’t mind that, but I have to really be in a mood to go in and record. But I’ve been in a mood for writing, and I’ve been writing some really cool stuff and it’s gonna drive me crazy eventually, and I’ll go in and make a record—no matter what I say. (laughs) 

Contact info@redrocker.com for more

CHEERS TO THE RED ROCKER

SPIRITS HAVE BEEN an integral part of Sammy Hagar’s entrepreneurial spirit over the years.

He started during the late ‘90s with Cabo Wabo tequila (sold to Gruppo Campari for a reported $80 million in 2007), then continued with Sammy’s Beach Bar Rum (in partnership with Rick Springfield), Santo Spirit with food celebrity Guy Fieri and Sammy’s Beach Bar Cocktail Co.— along with restaurants and nightclubs in Mexico and other locations.

Now the Red Rocker is in the beer business—which is something he’s long wanted.

Last October, Hagar formally launched Red Rocker Lager in partnership with the Detroit-based Red Rocker Detroit brewery. “I tried to make beer first,” notes Hagar. “My fans back in the ‘80s, when I was in my heyday, were beer drinkers, man. They didn’t know nothing about tequila. I’ve been trying to make beer forever.”

Hagar’s opportunity finally came about four years ago, when businessman Eric Schubert, who at the time was developing an app-based on-demand delivery service and looking for partners. He reached out through channels to Hagar, who proposed doing it with beer. “They came to me,” Hagar recalls, “and I said, ‘For a beer? Hell yeah! American made? Double hell yeah! Made in Detroit, triple hell yeah!’ It just felt right to me.”

Red Rocker Lager is being brewed in Detroit’s historic Corktown neighborhood by Schubert’s son Cameron, who worked with Hagar to perfect the recipe. The company describes it as “golden, medium-bodied... light, crisp and refreshing, with just a touch of sweetness,” and Hagar likens it to the original recipe used by the Mexican brewing company Modello. 

The Lager has been in production, quietly, for about a year, and Eric Schubert estimates it will be available in several states by the summer. “I’m real proud of it,” Hagar says. “It’s not like this just came out of the woodwork in the last week or so. I’ve been working on this for frickin’ over 20 years, before I made tequila. So it’s about time.”

Don’t, however, expect Hagar to write a song for the Lager like he did with “Mas Tequila” back in 1999. 

“I think pretty much all my songs fit with beer—with any booze,” Hagar explains with a laugh. “I write songs for driving in cars—which is not symbiotic with drinking. But if you get an a convertible, the top down and crank up some of my music—‘Badmotorscooter,’ ‘One Way to Rock,’ ‘Heavy Metal’—those are car songs. And if you’re sitting in a bar or a pub or your backyard having a barbecue, the music works good, too, with beer and food.

“I’m pretty versatile,” he adds. “My music touches on a lot of angles. My lyrics and my lifestyle, it goes pretty good with everything.”

Cooper also came up with a new stage show he debuted at the end of April and has been on the road all year since, both on his own (including the Freaks on Parade 2023 tour with Rob Zombie and a support slot on Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe’s The World Tour) and with the Hollywood Vampires, the all-star collective with Johnny Depp and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry that launched during 2013. 

Other projects he maintains include his Solid Rock Teen Centers in Phoenix, AZ where he resides, and Mesa, AZ and his “Nights With Alice Cooper” radio show that’s currently on hiatus due to an ownership change with his syndicator but that he hopes to bring back in the near future. And don’t be surprised when he pops up at a Comic Con near you. The road has been a long one, but Cooper is happy to keep it under his wheels for the foreseeable future...

Music Connection: Road is your 29th album. Do you still get excited about putting something new out?

Alice Cooper: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I never have gotten bored with the idea. A lot of people just go, “Well, why are you still going?” I go, “Look, I love writing songs. I love recording songs. I love making albums that are thematic albums. I love working with Bob Ezrin and all the great musicians we play with. And I love hearing it on the radio and going out and playing those songs in front of an audience.” I say, “That’s what I do. What am I gonna do—go home and play golf? I play golf anyway. I play golf in the morning and rock & roll all night.” So, no, there’s no thought of retirement here. 

MC: As the Road song says, the dead don’t dance...

Cooper: (laughs) That’s right. Everybody is retiring now. This is gonna be the great rock & roll retirement year. I talked to Gene Simmons (of Kiss); we did a show with him in France and he says, “December, it’s over.” And you always go, “Yeah, yeah, that’s gonna go on forever” and he goes, “No, it’s over. December,” pretty vehement about the fact it’s gonna be no more Kiss live shows. And Aerosmith, same thing. Elton, the Eagles. So I’m gonna be the last band standing. 

MC: It’s appropriate, then, that you have this new album that completely celebrates being on the road and really lays out why you love it.

Cooper: I see the fun in the road. I see the disasters. I see the humor. If you don’t know how to navigate the road, it’s gotta be awful. But I’m in a great situation; I finally maneuvered myself into a point where Sheryl is in the show, so I don’t have to leave her at home. And without her, the way our show runs, we can’t really do it without her. She does all the high vocals in both bands...

MC: And she cuts your head off every night.

Cooper: (laughs) Yeah, and that. So that’s one problem solved. I don’t have to leave home; I take home with me.
    And secondly, I’ve got the best touring band out there and they’re all best friends and I never hear anybody griping about, “Oh, I don’t get enough solos,” stuff like that. Everybody in that band cares about the show as much as I do.
    So all the ducks are in a row and all we’re doing is having fun out there. It does get a little bit exhausting, the travel, but you just have to put your mindset into the fact that for the next four months we’re gonna be living in and out of a suitcase, in a hotel, on a bus, in an airplane—”Alright. Great. It’s gonna be fun!”

MC: What led you to make Road this way, with the road band?

Cooper: I felt this was the way I can show this band off. I went to Bob Ezrin, I said, “I want to do an album with my live band,” and honestly I haven’t done that since The Eyes of Alice Cooper (in 2003). That was the only other time. We would write the song in the morning, rehearse in the afternoon and record it that night, live in the studio, and I think you could tell. There was a freshness to it. It didn’t have time to get old. Same thing with his. They brought the songs in; I said, “I want everybody to write songs about the road. I don’t care what the concept is, as long as it’s about the road, some angle about the road, and then Bob and I will do surgery on it and we’ll turn it into what we want it to be for this album.” And that’s what happened. 

MC: Sort of like giving the inmates the keys, or some of the keys, to the asylum.

Cooper: Exactly. Everybody brought songs in and Bob and I just kind of took off in the studio and started constructing them the way we wanted them to be, then we brought it back and the band would come in and play it live in the studio.
    I said, “I want you to play it live, every bed track is gonna be live” and then we would just pick the best bed track and I’d put the vocal on. It really shows how good the band is, to take a brand new song, play it live and make it sound like they’ve been playing it for years.
    I like the freshness of it. If it speeds up a little bit, if it goes a little bit left or right, as long as the feel of that song is great, that’s what I care about. I don’t want to make a perfect album.

MC: The opening track, “I’m Alice,” sounds like your next show opener. 

Cooper: It has to be. When I got done with that song, Bob and I looked at each other and went, “Opener!” And that’s Alice again, exaggerating, talking about himself. I’m not talking about me; I’m talking about Alice talking about himself, and of course he’s an overblown, egotistical, condescending villain—so of course he’s talking about how wonderful he is. I think that’s just part of it; Alice is talking about, “Okay, here’s the album. It’s all about me. It’s all about the road, and here we go!” 

MC: A few of the songs address Alice as this hated character, the pariah you were, or he was, back in the ‘70s when you started out. That’s not really the case anymore, though.

Cooper: I think that there’s still a smattering of people out there that don’t get it. There are people that are so out there they get Ozzy (Osbourne) and myself and Kiss and Rob Zombie confused. One day a guy walked up and said, “Oh, man, I thought it was so cool when I saw you bite the head off a bat,” and I go, “That was Ozzy.” They put us all into one little place and they think we’re all the same guy somehow. But I want the Alice Cooper character to still have that danger involved, to still have that certain amount of villain involved. So, yeah, I paint him that way on the album. 

MC: There are some other great and archetypal characters on this album. “White Line Frankenstein,” for instance.

Cooper: I know guys like that in both Europe and in America—truck drivers, bus drivers. When they’re done with our tour they go right to another tour and I’m going, “So, you basically live in the cab of this truck? This is, like, your world?” I take each character as they come along and exaggerate them, so now I’ve got this guy who lives in his truck—he’s a White Line Frankenstein. All he sees is white lines all day on the highway, and there’s probably white lines in other places in his life. But he is the king of that cab. He’s the Frankenstein of that cab, and he loves it. 

MC: “Go Away” seems like a timeless tale of the rock & roll road.

Cooper: It’s one of those things where every guy, I think, in his career has had that one girl that obsesses and cannot give you up and will go to space to find you, or go to the Bermuda Triangle to find you. I think everybody’s had one or two characters like that in their life. I just said, “Yeah, that’s a common denominator with most rock guys to find that one somebody who’s so obsessed, and that (song) is a funny way of talking about it—”Could you please just go away?”

MC: You preceded Road this year with deluxe reissues of the Killer and School’s Out albums as well as a new Quadio mix of Billion Dollar Babies. What’s it like having your past and present coexist in the marketplace like that?

Cooper: Those (reissues) never affect me. I never, ever think about them. They just happen. It doesn’t affect the show. It doesn’t affect the new album. Every day somebody comes up to me and says, “Hey, it’s the 64th anniversary of Lace and Whiskey” and I go, “That’s nice.” I honestly can’t keep up with any of that stuff. As much as I enjoy the history of Alice, I just don’t live there. People remind me all the time of anniversaries and this and that, and I do appreciate it. I understand how the fans, especially the collectors, love those things. But I don’t live in the past. 

MC: Let’s ask you to, for just a second, though. Muscle of Love, the final album with the original Alice Cooper band, turns 50 in November. What’s your 2023 perspective on it?

Cooper: There were a lot of great songs on that album, but it wasn’t cohesive. The album didn’t feel like it was locked together by one idea; and as much as the production is great on it and everything like that, it still missed the Bob Ezrin cohesiveness. The band didn’t want to work with Ezrin, but I did. I was the one going, “No, we gotta stay with Ezrin.” Like I said, (Jack Richardson and Jack Douglas) did a great job on production. The album sounded great. I just felt there was something missing in it that (Ezrin) would usually get out of us. But, I mean, I listened to “Man With the Golden Gun” the other day, and I listened to Teenage Lament ‘74. There were some really good songs on that album. I just felt like we were sort of reaching for straws there. 

MC: That was the second album you released that year. What a different time that was.

Cooper: But it was that era where that’s what you did. You did an album and then you’d tour and then while you were touring you were writing the next album, and then as soon as that tour was over you went in the studio and did an album. And then you toured again. In fact, there was a period of time where if you were to say to me, “I want to send you this” I’d go, “I don’t live anywhere. Send it to the next Holiday Inn,” because we didn’t really live anywhere for a long period of time. It was just touring and recording. 

MC: What wisdom do you have now that you’d impart on those guys if you could time travel back to 1973?

Cooper: Y’know, you’re bulletproof at that point. You don’t mind that you just did 64 cities in 72 days. As long as there was beer, we were fine. It’s the most exciting time of your life; not only are you out there on stage doing this kind of show, but it’s successful and people are paying you, which is something we weren’t used to. I could tell them whatever, but they wouldn’t listen. (laughs) 

MC: You put together a new show this year, which is always notable.

Cooper: We had the Haunted Castle for a couple of years, which was really a lot of fun to do. That was sort of like what my Friday night horror movie would look like if I had a Friday night horror movie. But this show is totally different. Like anything else, we have to do the hits; the audience wants to hear the hits, so it’s how do you decorate those hits? How do you put them into a storm form or some kind of new way of looking at the show? So, we added some new things and really made use of video technology more than we ever have before. 

    Like, when Alice does “The Ballad of Dwight Fry,” you can see all the facial things he’s doing, right up close. We just kind of got tired of people not being able to see some of the real intricate parts and details, so we made that a real focus this time out.

MC: How hard is it to put a set list together every time you go out?

Cooper: It happens while you’re doing it, really. We take a set list into rehearsals and it’ll change seven or eight times—”Ah, that song doesn’t go into that song right. Let’s put this song in there,” that kind of thing. It’s putting a puzzle together, really, just connecting the dots in the right way. But I’ve got people who have done this for 50 years. Sheryl and I have been putting a show together like this forever. And musically my (band) can learn a song in an hour, any song, so we’re not crippled in any way.

MC:  Something else exciting this year was having “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” from Alice Cooper Goes to Hell (1976) show up on the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 soundtrack. 

Cooper: Y’know, I was at the new Ant Man movie and Michael Douglas and Catherine (Zeta-Jones) were there. They said, “You gotta come down to the premiere, so we went down and there was a guy from Marvel and he was a big Alice Cooper fan and he says, “I’ve got one of your songs in the new (Guardians of the Galaxy) movie.” I said, “Really?!” I didn’t even know about it, but I’m a big fan of the Guardians of the Galaxy. I think they’re really funny. It’s what Marvel should do. It’s all that action, all that great CGI stuff, with a sense of humor. 

MC: How did it feel to have the Hollywood Vampires back in action this year?

Cooper: I’ll tell you what; the band is as tight as I’ve ever heard it. The band is really, really good now. We’ve had enough time off, so everybody’s ready to get back out there on the road.
    It’s funny, ‘cause I hadn’t seen Johnny in three and a half years because of the Covid thing, and he was playing with Jeff Beck here in Phoenix. So I went backstage and I opened his door and went, “So...what’s new? Did I see you on TV or something?” (laughs) We were laughing ‘cause of the whole Amber (Heard) thing. I said, “I have either the best idea or the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life.” He goes, “What?” I go, “You and Amber do a remake of War of the Roses,” and he started laughing, and then he kinda went, “Not a bad idea...” I mean, who wouldn’t want to see that? The press for it is just built-in, you don’t even have to push it. Just let it happen and report on it.

MC: The group put out a live album (Live in Rio) earlier this year. What are the prospects for new Vampires music? 

Cooper: We haven’t had time, really, any chance to record anything new. We had a lot of live tapes, and this band is great live. We were surprised that the Wembley show was voted the best show of the year at Wembley, which had a lot to do with the fact the band was really good and tight and unique, so we were really proud of that. It’s basically a bar band, but it puts out a really good vibe, a really fun vibe on stage and yet it’s still a little dark. But in the end people are just having a great time, ‘cause all the songs that are being played are songs everybody wants to hear.

MC: You’re working on some other new music too, right?

Cooper: Well, I can’t talk about that one too much, but let’s just put it this way—it’s historic and at the same time really kind of quirky. Sometimes you’re working and you go, “Really? Okay, let’s go with that and see what happens.” So, that one will be really cool. What I like is it’s a very creative time now. We put a new show together this year—that’s always the most creative time you can have—and there’s a lot of laughing and a lot of “Let’s try this” and it doesn’t work and all of a sudden something works that you’re never expecting to work... That’s really why I do this, for the creativity and these adventures we’re having. There’s so many of them now; it’s really inspiring. 

Contact Zoe Hines, zoeh@grandstandhq.com

Photos by Jenny Rischer

Cooper & Crüe

By all rights, Alice Cooper should have cut the heads off the founding members of Mötley Crüe during the past couple of years. 

The shock rocker—who, of course, has his own noggin lopped off every night of his own concerts—served as the special guest for nearly the entirety of the Crüe’s Final Tour during 2014-15. On Jan. 28, 2014 announcing the trek the four Crüe members—Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee—signed a binding Cessation of Touring Agreement preventing them from going on the road again under the band name.

And part of the punishment for breaking the deal was a trip directly to Cooper’s guillotine. 

Flash forward to 2019 and Mötley Crüe, fresh off the success of the Netflix film adaptation of its band biography The Dirt, decides to reunite for The Stadium Tour, co-headlining with Def Leppard. The Covid-19 pandemic delayed the outing until the summer of 2022, but Mötley was nevertheless back on the “Wild Side.”

“We did that Final Tour and that’s it, and then, of course, when they came back out I went, ‘Okay, so I’m the big liar,’” Cooper says now. “But I laughed about it, and their explanation was, ‘We’re Mötley Crüe, man. We don’t believe in contracts.’ And I said, ‘That’s so perfectly rock & roll, and so perfectly Mötley Crüe.’”

By accounts, the Cessation of Touring Agreement was able to be set aside if all four of the signees decided to play together again. That ultimately resulted in more drama, of course; after the 2022 leg guitarist Mars, who’d long suffered with ankylosing spondylitis, a form of arthritis, since he was 17, retired from touring but with the intent of remaining in the band. The Crüe, however, hired John 5 as his full-time replacement, setting off dueling lawsuits. 

The current Crüe, meanwhile, made good to Cooper by having him open the six U.S. dates on The World Tour, a continuation of The Stadium Tour. “They said, ‘It’s gonna be Mötley, Def and you,’ and I said, ‘That’s fine,’” explains Cooper, who did the dates alongside his continuing Too Close For Comfort Tour. “I don’t care when we go on. We’re gonna do our show no matter what. I’m past the ego thing of, ‘We have to go on last!,’ that whole thing. We’re gonna do our show, I don’t care what slot we’re in.

“Tommy Lee recently said that the worst thing you can ever do is have Alice open for you. I thought that was great, a nice compliment.”

    But it’s not like Joel hasn’t earned his spot. He’s a bona fide—as the songs says, “Big Shot”—with more than 160 million records sold worldwide, 18 platinum or (mostly) better albums to his credit, and a ranking as the fourth best-selling solo artist of all time in the U.S. according to Recording Industry Association of America. Joel has also logged nearly two dozen Top 40 singles, and his 1985 compilation Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II is the second best-selling album by a solo artist, behind only Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Add to that five Grammy Awards, inductions into the Rock and Roll and Songwriters Hall of Fame, the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001 and a Kennedy Center Honor 12 years later and it’s an abundance of laurels to rest on. 

   But check out Joel’s still-exciting concerts these days and you know the man isn’t exactly resting on any laurels. He’s just working in the different kind of manner all those achievements allow for....

Music Connection: You had an unexpected 17 months off during 2020-21. What was that like for you?

Billy Joel: It was kind of frustrating, ‘cause I don’t like to have to reschedule or cancel. It was a two-year period where we weren’t working at all, so it was very frustrating. Musicians have to perform live. That’s what we do. And when you can’t do that, what are you doing? You’re not doing anything. You’re just sitting around twiddling your thumbs.

MC: And since the mid-‘90s you’ve been almost entirely a live performer rather than a recording artist.

Joel: Yeah, I don’t even record anything anymore. The only kind of music I write now is instrumental music for my own gratification, and there’s not a whole lot of other interaction with other musicians going on. I have two cute little girls and it’s a lot of fun, but once in a while I feel like I have to justify my existence.

MC: You play your monthly shows at the Garden and then go out and play a few stadium dates every year—kind of like a home and away series. Do you treat them differently?

Joel: Well, yeah, there’s a big difference. The Garden, even though it’s a famous venue, it’s basically a coliseum and an arena, whereas the stadiums are these outdoor monstrosities where you can have up to 80,000 people. So, there is a big difference, especially if you’re a piano player, because you’re fairly static, and when you’re sitting at a piano it’s not like you can jump around and make guitar faces. 

MC: So how do you make it work in that kind of setting? 

Joel: I guess because we’ve done it enough, I just talk to the audience like I’m in my living room. I have a sound man who’s been with me now for almost 50 years, so he knows how to EQ my voice so that people can understand what I’m saying in a baseball stadium. I don’t even know what they’re saying in a baseball stadium when they’re announcing the players, but he’s able to get that place to be audible for an audience. So, I’m just comfortable. I sit there and talk. I’m not Mick Jagger, so I don’t have to worry about bopping around and dancing. We’re pretty used to it now.

MC: How have the shows felt any different since coming back from the pause?

Joel: When we went to do the first gig after the Covid layoff (Aug. 4, 2021 at Fenway Park in Boston), yeah, I had a little bit of nerves. Two years is a long time for a musician to be off. You wonder, “Do I still have muscle memory? Am I gonna screw up the lyrics? Are we any good anymore?” So, it was a little nerve-wracking. But after you get that first show over with, you’re like, “Oh, I can do this. Right. I’m THAT guy.” You forget you’re THAT guy. So, it comes back.

MC:  “That” guy has a pretty formidable legacy after all these years. What’s your own view of who “that” guy is?

Joel: I kinda have a split opinion about it. Part of me thinks it’s absurd; I’m 73 years old and I’m doing the same gig I was doing when I was 16! This is a job for a young person. I am now considered elderly, and I’m still doing the same crazy-ass job, so that part of it is kind of absurd. The other part it means to me is it’s wonderful. I picked a great job to have. They’re paying me all kinds of money. The audiences are bigger than they ever were. People are still coming to see me, and there’s a lot of young people out in the crowd who still know my stuff. That’s wonderful. I’m a lucky guy.

MC:  Not only that, but you’ve had shout-outs in songs by Bob Dylan...and Olivia Rodrigo, among others. How does that happen?

Joel: You got me. I have no idea where it’s coming from, but I’m very grateful for it. I appreciate the shout-outs and the recognition. It’s nice to feel like you’re somewhat relevant in this day and age, ‘cause I’m a dinosaur. But I guess dinosaurs have antique value. So, it’s kind of a miracle. If anybody had said I’d be doing this at this age and have the kind of success we’re having, I’d have told them they were nuts. This is rock & roll. I didn’t cure polio. 

MC: Do you ever allow yourself a moment of pride, though, to appreciate what you’ve accomplished—musically as well as statistically?

Joel: From time to time. There are songs in the show that I really like to do, which are the more obscure ones. I tend to like the album tracks more than the hit singles. I feel a certain sense of pride and satisfaction after I finish those songs. I think to myself, “That wasn’t bad. I don’t remember how I wrote it or why I wrote it, but that’s pretty good.” So that hits once in a while.

MC: Are we ever going to hear the piano music you mentioned you’re writing?

Joel: No. I try to play some of those pieces from time to time, but it kind of lays there like a lox. It’s not something people are very familiar with. I’ve tried it, but I’m not beating it to death.

MC: And you’re still not writing songs?

Joel: Not yet. I haven’t shut the door on it. I am still writing music; I’m just not writing lyrics now. I’m not writing in song form. I’m writing in a more abstract form, and I’m comfortable with it. But if I get an idea for a song I’m not gonna stop myself from writing it. I’ll do it. I just haven’t woken up recently with a great song idea. The reason I stopped writing pop songs, and songs in general, is because I felt constrained by song form. There’s an orthodoxy to pop; you’re writing inside of a box. Y’know, it can’t be too long, you have to repeat the verse over and over, you gotta have a hook, you gotta have lyrics in it, you gotta have rock n’ roll instrumentation, you gotta have bass, drums, guitar, there has to be a voice taking the lead. Then I thought to myself, “Well, why? Why? Who says I have to do this?”

MC: After writing it for so long, is it disappointing not to, or are you liberated in a way?

Joel: For me it’s liberating because I never enjoyed writing. I always enjoy having written. When I would get to the end of a song I was writing I was wrung out, ‘cause I wanted it to be a certain quality. I have high standards, and if I don’t meet those standards I’m pretty angry with myself and I’m hard on myself and I beat myself up. 

I read a quote once from Neil Diamond where he said he’s come to grips with the fact that he’s not Beethoven. He’s forgiven himself that he’s not Beethoven. And when I read that, I realized I haven’t forgiven myself for not being Beethoven. I struggle and I suffer from it. So, I’m happy not to do that anymore, because I beat myself up enough during my lifetime.

MC: You have written classical music, on the other hand. 

Joel: Yeah, but I didn’t record it. I actually had a classical pianist (Richard Hyung-ki) play those pieces, because I’m not good enough to play them properly. I didn’t study long and hard enough to be able to play that kind of music. I can write it, but you only write it in short shifts. You don’t sit down and write the whole thing in one fell swoop. Once in a while I’ll kind of play a little piece, but that’s about it. 

MC: It’s been a long enough career that you have some significant anniversary pop up about every year. This year it’s 35 years since your groundbreaking tour of the former Soviet Union. What’s your perspective that trip now?

Joel: Well, with what’s going on with Russia nowadays, I’m very disappointed. I mean, I’m glad we did that trip. I was very proud of that trip, and I think we helped kick the door in a little bit to open it up to democratic stuff. But nowadays...I’m hoping the Russian people really get to know what’s actually happening, but I don’t know how much real information they get, because they’re kinda in a closed medianow, between Trump and what’s going on with Russia and Covid and what’s going on with the economy, this is a hard time now.

MC:As an artist do you feel a responsibility to reflect that or provide escape from it? Or both?

Joel: Well, I realize at this point I’m more a court jester than a court philosopher. There’a a line in “Piano Man” that I sing—”I know that it’s me that they’re coming to see to forget about life for a while”—and the audience applauds after that line and I realize, “Wow, they’re really here to get away from the news. They needed a break.” They wanted something to take them somewhere else, and that’s my job. I never thought of myself as having to be a socially conscious documentarian. My politics are my politics, but the music is something else. 

MC: You took on that role with the Nylon Curtain album, which turns 40 during September. 

Joel: Yeah, well, that was right in the middle of the Reagan era, and things were changing in America. I was very aware of it. It was baby boomer peaking time, the early ‘80s. Things did change then. I was very proud of that album. The songs seem to still resonate with audiences, and with younger people as well. I’m always amazed at how many kids are in the crowd. Here I am, I’m 73, I figure there’ll be a lot of gray hair out there but there’s a lot of kids, and they’re relating to what I’m singing about. So, it has resonance. 

MC: The Stranger turns 45 this year, too. Want to weigh in on that one?

Joel:My thoughts nowadays are I can’t believe how long ago that was. I don’t do a whole bunch of retrospective on my own material. I’m not someone who sits around and thinks about the old days. I’ve got my hands full with the little ones.

MC: They’re very young, but do they keep you up on current music at all?

Joel: They love Taylor Swift. They love Olivia Rodrigo. They like what kids are listening to now, and they know a lot of the music. They kind of educate me because I don’t really listen to it, consciously. They’ll just point to me, “Dad, listen to this.” They know what I do. They like the fact I have this job. They like going to gigs and hanging out. They like the rock & roll life. 

MC: Do you get inspiration from watching colleagues like Paul McCartney or the Rolling Stones keep going?

Joel: It does make me aware that it’s doable. I figure they’re going to stop eventually, so I can stop. I love the job, but I don’t want to get to that point where I outstay my welcome. Like I said, I’m considered to be elderly now, so the fact that I’m doing this...we go back to absurd. If I get to a point where I don’t think I can do it well anymore—if people stop coming, or if they boo—then I’m gonna stop, ‘cause I love the job too much to not do it well.

MC: Any idea how you’d say goodbye?

Joel: I had an idea for a farewell tour. Everybody’s doing these farewell tours and they just keep going. I think the Who have done, like, 20 farewell tours, right?
    So, my idea for a real farewell tour is the stage is set like a living room—there’s a TV, there’s a couch, there’s some chairs, there’s a refrigerator with some food in it. I come out, look in the fridge, take something out, make a sandwich, then I turn on the TV and I sit on the couch and watch TV. Now, the stage will be surrounded with bulletproof Plexiglas because eventually the crowd is going to start going, “Boo! Boo! Do something!” And after about 15 minutes I’ll pick up a mic and say, “Hey, I just said I was gonna be here. I didn’t say I was gonna do anything.”
   And then we’ll know that they’ll never pay a nickel to see me again. THAT’s a farewell tour. So, if you ever see me just watching TV, you’ll know it’s over. 

Contact Claire Mercuri, claire@clairemercuri.com

Sidebar with Sax Man Mark Rivera

During the nice weather months each year, you’ll find Billy Joel playing a selection of mostly baseball stadiums around the U.S. in addition to his monthly shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden. But this fall he’s taking fans back to a particularly special outdoors engagement—June 22-23, 1990 at the old Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, which was filmed and released later that year. An expanding edition of the film returning Oct. 5 and 9 for screenings at theaters around the world (BillyJoel.film for locations and tickets) and on Nov. 4 will be released in Blu-ray, CD and LP formats. These were landmark shows that paired the man who made the “New York State of Mind” with one of the Big Apple’s most iconic spots, a match made in musical heaven. As the release nears, multi-instrumentalist Mark Rivera—celebrating his 40th anniversary as a member of Joel’s Band—took us back to the Bronx to remember those special shows...

MC: It must’ve been a thrill for a New Yorker like yourself to perform at Yankee Stadium back in 1990.

Mark Rivera: Oh man, you have no idea. It was incredible. It was hallowed ground—it really was. I have these pictures of myself with a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt on, hugging the monument of Babe Ruth, back there with (Mickey) Mantle. And it was my second son Derio’s sixth birthday, on June 23rd, when Billy introduced me, “Playing center field, from Brooklyn, New York, Mark Rivera” and he added “It’s his son Derio’s sixth birthday!” It was wonderful, just wonderful.

MC: And the gig itself? 

Rivera: It’s hard for me to put into words particular things that stood out. The whole thing was amazing. It’s joyous to see it—the players, the faces, the crowd. It’s Yankee Stadium, and now we’re the house band at Madison Square Garden. You know what I mean? It doesn’t stop.

MC: Playing stadiums is a challenge, not only technologically but also for performing. How do you do it successfully?

Rivera: I think the biggest challenge is your enthusiasm, your own, personal enthusiasm. I think Nureyev or somebody like that said that if you try to project out as far as you can go—in other words as far as the venue is—you’ll always lose. You can’t go out and try to reach everybody. But if you go inside and you’re there and you’re present in that moment, people will see it from the rafters. I’ve had people say to me, “I was up in the (section) 200, 300 seats. I saw you smiling.” I’m like, “Really?,” and I guess it’s true. Presence is everything.

MC: Interestingly, Billy is the only performer to play both Yankee and Shea Stadiums (July 16 and 18, 2008). Can you compare the two?

Rivera: It’s so different. First and foremost, it’s a completely different band and technologically speaking it was a completely different animal. We also had, what, 12 different people come up and join us, and you had (Paul) McCartney to put a cherry on top. But I’ll tell you, the hardest thing to do is carry a stadium alone, which Billy did at Yankee Stadium. It was just the band. There weren’t’ any guests—not to negate how great Shea was, because Shea was fanatics, and one of my favorites. But at Yankee Stadium, Billy stood alone with his band, and that to me was huge.

MC:  You’re 40 years with Billy this year, a very long and happy tenure. Do you get a watch or a fruit basket or anything?

Rivera: I’m gonna have a mud wrap at the spa of my choice. (laughs) But y’know what? Forty years, and I hope he tells me that we still have another chapter ahead of me, and I believe we do. Someone said, “When are you going to retire,” and (Joel) said, “What the hell would I do?” This IS what we do—we play, we perform. Being on stage and performing, it’s oxygen for us, and without it we perish. I really believe that. It’s not ego, it’s just a sense of purpose, and believe me we have a sense of purpose in this band, and as musicians it’s very important to us. •

The multi-platinum quintet, which this year celebrates the 45th anniversary of its formation in Sheffield, England, wrote and recorded its 12th album, Diamond Star Halos, remotely, trading files and knitted together by longtime engineer/co-producer Ronan McHugh, including contributions from Alison Krauss and Mike Garson on two tracks each. The diverse 15-song set covers a lot of ground, from proto arena anthems such as the glammy, T. Rexish first single “Kick,” “Fire It Up” and “U Want Mi” to the Americana flavor of the Krauss tracks “This Guitar” and “Lifeless,” and moody, textured pieces like “Liquid Dust,” and the album-closing “From Here to Eternity.” 

The album has actually been wrapped for a year, held back until Def Leppard could be on the road once again, which it will be starting June 16 on the twice-delayed The Stadium Tour with Mötley Crüe, Poison and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Back in active duty, Def Leppard is feeling some long-awaited euphoria again, and hoping a little, er, hysteria will follow...

Music Connection: When you realize it’s been 45 years of being Def Leppard, does it feel like it’s been that long—or 45 minutes? Or 450 years?

Joe Elliott: I don’t think we expected to get as far as 1983. When we formed in ‘77, Led Zeppelin was still together, the Beatles were only seven years gone, the Stones were only 15 years old and the Who were maybe 13 years old or something like that. The only thing that had been around 20 years or so would’ve been a solo artist. And you don’t see headlines like, “Frank Sinatra Splits!,” y’know? So it’s just been a forward momentum thing, and then someone tells you it’s been 45 years and you’re like, “Oh? Really?!”

Phil Collen: Someone has to tell you about it. It’s not something where we go, “Oh, guess what? It’s gonna be 40!” or 45 or whatever. We’re so busy doing other things, so those things are surprising us that way. It’s kind of neat. 

MC: It’s been an eventful history. You’ve had members quit, die, get sick or injured. What keeps this going?

Collen: We haven’t achieved what we set out to do, and it’s to be kind of what we’re doing now. This is exactly what we want, and this is the stuff we want to do—an album like this, a tour like this, this frame of mind, all these things together. That’s what you want to achieve. Even with, like, massive albums, two Diamond award albums, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, it’s still not enough. 

Rick Savage: We’re also still excited, as well. We’re excited to write new songs. We’re excited to record them. We’re always excited to go back on tour. We still have that very young enthusiasm that you have when you’re a teenager. Everything’s still great, and we still feel that we’ve got places to go that are valid and we can get better and bigger and just keep going.

Elliott: We’ve always said that what we’ve got to try and achieve before we kick it all in the head or we’re gone is to be bracketed among the greats: Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend. We probably never will, but we’re never gonna stop trying. We’re not interested in trying to be some second division, “Oh, that’ll do” kind of thing. We’re just gonna try our best and keep going for it.

Collen: The singing gets better, the playing gets better, the songwriting...it’s still growing in quite a vast, speedy way. That’s so exciting, so you don’t want to put the kibosh on it. You want to keep that going. The wheels are nowhere near falling off. They’re actually well-oiled and speeding up!

MC: Since your last album in 2015 you’ve put together a greatest hits collection and four archival box sets. What kind of longview perspective did you get about the group from that kind of immersion in the past?

Elliott: Our true mission was always to follow on the tailcoats, if you like, of all our great British pop-rock that came out in the ‘70s. Bowie, Bolan, Mott, Queen, Slade, Sweet—that’s where our three-minute pop-rock songs like “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages” came from. We’re always getting roped into either the L.A. hair metal scene or the (New Wave of British Heavy Metal), but it’s not like we’re channeling (Black) Sabbath all the time. We wanted to do the harmonies and the melodies. We’re happy to be called a hybrid of AC/DC and Queen.

MC: Diamond Star Halos certainly draws from that hybrid, and beyond. You were kind of coy about what was coming until you actually announced it in March. 

Elliott: Yeah, there were people who were like, “What are you up to?” and I really don’t like telling lies to people. So I said we’d been doing a lot of writing, which was true. I just didn’t finish it off with “and some recording as well...” We’ve watched how some people like to put a camera in their studio and broadcast on their website their daily recording sessions, so by the time the record finishes everybody already knows what it sounds like, so there’s no impact. We wanted to keep it nice and quiet, like Bowie did his last couple of records. Then, boom, big announcement, like, “Omigod, where’d THAT come from?”

Collen: And the mystique, like back in the day when Zeppelin or Bowie or the Stones put something out. It made it an event. It made it something special. And with Covid and the tour getting pushed back, it made the album more special because of that. 

Elliott: Had we done the tour when we were supposed to (in 2020), we’d have been doing the tour with no new music. Now we’re doing it with a new album to promote, which puts a total different slant on it. I think the fact we’re going out there refreshed and energized by new music that we can incorporate into the show, which we wouldn’t have been able to do in 2020, is going to make a huge difference in the way we present ourselves.

MC: How’d you like recording remotely?

Collen: I think it’s the best thing we’ve ever done. There was so much more energy by not having to go to a studio or a situation where you’re always waiting while someone else is recording their part. That stops creative flow and expression. With this, everyone could do their thing; I’d be in California and Joe and Sav would be in England and Ireland. I’d finish something, send it to Joe, he’d get it, put some stuff on it and we’d just be back and forth. I’d wake up in the morning and there’d be something in my inbox.

Elliott: Everybody was at home, so you didn’t have to work on it constantly or be waiting around in a hotel room in a foreign country, waiting to do your bit. You could get on with doing other stuff, and when we were working we could concentrate wholly on the record. It was a leisurely way of recording. 

Savage: There was such a forward momentum by doing it this way. There was somebody working on the record any time of the day.

Elliott: It was joyful to do. As Sav says, at any one time there’s possibly four songs getting worked on at once. When you finish your bits you just sent them to Ronan, and we had this kind of central collection program called Bouncebox where you got the songs together and we could A-B different mixes and post your opinion and it goes to everybody to read and the communication lines are actually wider than they would have been if you sat next to each other.

Collen: We definitely don’t want to go back to whatever that standard way was that we did before. This is so much better. 

MC: You originally planned to make the album in that “standard” way, right?

Elliott: We were originally gonna get together at my studio in Dublin, physically. Literally the day they were due to fly in was lockdown, so we canceled all the flights and there was this kind of rushed phone call of, “Okay, now what?” and we made this game plan of, “Let’s try it remotely.” We had seven songs to be getting on with—”This Guitar” dated back 17 years, even. And we just kept on writing and recording. 

The big difference was, pre-pandemic, we may have gone, “Well, let’s hear these songs before we make any decisions,” but now we were just instantly open to, “Whatever it is we’ll do it and then make a decision later about whether the songs are up to scratch or not. So we just kept writing and writing and writing and we ended up with 14 finished songs. The album was finished and Phil called and said, “I’ve got another,” so it became a 15-song album.

MC: What was the last one?

Elliott: “Kick.” Phil rang me up, and because there was no delivery date, there was no record deal yet, I said, “Okay, send me an MP3. We’ve got to go band-wide with it,” and everybody loved it. It’s a stadium anthem, and we were about to go into stadiums, so...”Yeah!”

Collen: It also represented where we were at, as well. It’s got that glam rock feel, that hand-clap groove, big vocals. It was just a no-brainer. It was not only “it’s got to be on the album,” it’s also got to be the first single.

Elliott: Sav was the first one to comment, “OMG. ‘Sugar,’ anyone?” He wasn’t comparing one song to the other. He was comparing the situation. Back in late ‘86 “Sugar” (aka “Pour Some Sugar On Me”) was the last song written for Hysteria. We were already done. It was an 11-track record, finished, and then the idea of “Sugar” came along and it became arguably the most important song on the record, if not our entire career, eventually. So with (“Kick”) it was like the same kind of feeling, that this could be a very important song for us, and it’s come right at the end when we weren’t expecting it. It’s a nice little gift, totally unplanned.

MC: Speaking of the glam aspect, there’s a lot of T. Rex in “Kick,” and in the album title. How did that come about?

Collen: It’s got a ‘70s thing about it. One of the words we use to describe the era of when we were all baptized into music is “it’s very hubcap diamond star halo,” which is a Marc Bolan lyric from “Get It On (Bang a Gong).” We used that to describe something, and as we were doing the record it became apparent that era and that feeling from when we first got introduced to [music] was readily apparent on this album as well—the vibe, the lyrics, the look, everything. So it just seemed like the obvious phrase. That’s what we call the era, so let’s call the album that, as well.

MC: And yet here’s Alison Krauss on a Def Leppard album. How’d that happen?

Elliott: Pretty simple, really—she’s on the other end of the phone. We’ve known Alison for a long time. Other than hearing of her and knowing she was an amazing artist and angel, really, she wanted to interview me for Q magazine back in 1996, for the Slang album. She wanted to pick our brains regarding our harmonies. Over the last 20, 30 years we’ve had people coming by, tipping their hat to us—Keith Urban, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, obviously Taylor Swift and Alison. By coincidence, our manager was talking to her manager-lawyer about some other stuff and just happened to mention these two songs. When we saw how these two songs, “This Guitar” and “Lifeless,” had a bit of country-rock to them it just kind of became obvious, “Why don’t we ask Alison if she wants to add something?” I sent her a text and she was like, “Yeah!” She got back to us, going, “I can’t pick one. I love ‘em both so much,” so we just said, “Okay, why don’t you do them both?” So she did, and what she delivered was amazing.

MC: What was it that intrigued her about Def Leppard’s harmonies?

Elliott: Most people don’t realize this, but the harmonies on the past albums that we’ve done with Mutt Lange, they’re kind of tinged with a little bit of country, sometimes. I’m guessing when a country artist has accidentally heard a Def Leppard song, walking past the telly and MTV’s on or they hear it on the radio, they’ve gone, “Wait a minute, that’s a country harmony!,” which is why over the last 20, 30 years we’ve had [country artists] coming by, tipping their hat to us.

MC: The other big guest is Mike Garson, who worked so closely with David Bowie for so much of his career. A natural fit?

Elliott: (laughs) Who would’ve thought the avant garde jazz fusion notebag that is Mike Garson would have fit nicely on a Def Leppard record? Nobody, really—except we did. I’ve worked with Mike on and off the last two or three years on a bunch of Bowie stuff, live and virtual. So, I’ve got a pretty good relationship with Mike, and with these songs I wrote on the piano (“Angels (Can’t Help you Now),” “Goodbye For Good This Time”) with my very bleaky, funky, rudimentary playing, it got to the point where I was, “Okay, who’s gonna REALLY play these?” And because he was on the forefront of my mind, it was “Why don’t we get Garson to do it?” He lived with the songs for a couple of hours and literally mapped out a rough that we loved and then sent us the (finished) track a couple weeks later and it was beautiful, it really was.

MC: What are you anticipating for The Stadium Tour now that it seems like it’s really going to happen this summer.

Collen: Even more spectacular, really. We feel like we’re moving into a different league. There’s a lot of bands who have stopped touring, stopped performing or lost interest. We’re the complete opposite. We’re rarin’ to go, so everything about it is gonna be bigger. We’ve got this album, and we’re a really “live” live band, so we can’t wait to get out there and prove it. 

Savage: It’s a brilliant package. It’s Mötley Crüe, the real guys. Same with Poison. Those are the guys who formed the bands, so you can’t get better than that. It’s genuine. It’s the biggest tour that Def Leppard will have done in our career, and after 40 years it’s just a fantastic achievement to be able to do that. 

Elliott: And let’s not forget Joan Jett as well, who’s a complete ball of energy. We’ve basically been looking at this thing since it was announced, as it’s like taking a festival on the road. It’s a  four-band festival, and we’ve always been into the idea of everything we do being an event. We’ve toured with some amazing bands...but this is a big deal. All those three artists out there with us makes it a special tour.

MC: Also on the special tip, any plans to acknowledge Hysteria’s 35th this year?

Elliott: Y’know, we did 25 and 30. So we’ve made a pact that we’re not going to indulge in anything Hysteria until it gets to 40, and then we’ll open that door again. Our main focus is now and the future. The past is great and we’ll embrace it and talk about it at very special occasions, but the focus right now is what we’re doing—promoting the new record, telling everybody about it, hoping everyone loves it as much as we do, and getting on this tour to help shoot this record out there. We’ll celebrate the past as well as the present, which is going to be our future, we hope.

Quick Facts

Forget the gold rush; Def Leppard charged out of Sheffield, England, and went on a platinum parade during the 1980s and early 1990s. The group notched five consecutive platinum or better studio albums, trailed by a pair of compilations that also broke the million mark. It’s reached those heights only once since—with 2005’s platinum Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection—but it remains a streak that’s not only impressive, but keeps us excited for whenever the Leps lay another new album on us...

•On Through the Night, 1980, platinum

• High ‘n’ Dry, 1981, double platinum

• Pyromania, 1983, Diamond

• Hysteria, 1987, Diamond 

• Adrenalize, 1992, triple platinum

• Retro Active, 1993, platinum

•Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits (1980-1995), 1995, quadruple platinum

Contact Nina Lee, nina@theoriel.co

Photos by Anton Corbijn

During the tour, meanwhile, frontman Brian Johnson dropped out due to hearing issues and was replaced by Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose for 2016 legs in European and North America. And once the tour wrapped, bassist Cliff Williams (who’d been with AC/DC since 1977) announced he was retiring. There was justifiable reason to wonder if we’d ever see the iconic Australian rock band again. But anyone who’s paid attention over AC/DC’s 47 years knows it’s not a band easily counted out.

Proof positive of that came with the recent release of Power Up, the band’s 17th studio album. Recorded quietly in Vancouver with producer Brendan O’Brien, the 12-song set of prototypically Spartan, hard-hitting heavy rock finds Johnson (thanks to groundbreaking hearing aid technology), Rudd and Williams back in the fold and songs again written by the Young brothers from riffs they’d been working on before Malcolm’s death. (Their nephew, Stevie Young, remains in his stead since 2014.)

The new release debuted at No. 1 on album charts in more than 18 countries––including the Billboard 200 in the U.S.––while the singles “Shot in the Dark” and “Realize” vaulted to the top of Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs survey. Absence indeed made hearts grow fonder, though with its ubiquitous airplay AC/DC has never really been absent from its fans hearts, or ears, for several decades now...

Music Connection: Were you at all surprised at how powerfully Power Up came out of the box?

Angus Young: I don’t think you can take anything for granted. You always hope it’s gonna be accepted, but...the public’s their own, y’know. I mean, the Romans were saying to the mob, y’know what I mean? The mob. You never know when the mob can go the other way.

MC: There were a lot of people who thought we’d maybe seen the last of AC/DC after the last go ‘round. Were you always confident there was more on the horizon?

Young: To be honest with you, I didn’t know. I had a little bit of a break, and then I thought, “Well, I’ll start doing some work,” which I’d always done. I always go to my little room and try to put together some ideas. There were a lot of ideas that Malcolm and myself had done through the years, which was a lot of great AC/DC song ideas we always had meant to record, but usually when it comes to doing one record you go, “Okay, we got this amount of songs” and this group of songs might have missed out because of what we had already done. So this time I went through a lot of the older stuff to see what was there.

MC: At what point did you start to feel like there was another AC/DC album on the horizon?

Young: I think it was mainly our management who more or less got the ball rolling. They were asking when are we gonna get together, or “Are you gonna do an album or what?” I had said, “Well, I’m just still going through some ideas,” and they said, “Do you want us to contact anyone?” I said, “Yeah, let’s see who wants to be on board. See if Brian and Cliff and Phil and Stevie, would they like to be participating in it?” And everyone was pretty eager to be involved, so that was a good sign.

“Malcolm is in every song. He was in the studio, and I’m not talking spooky and stuff like that. Malcolm was there.”

MC: How did that go down on your end, Brian?

Brian Johnson: Yeah, I first heard from management; they just said, “Would you like to do an album?” and I just said, “Absolutely! I’d love to,” ‘cause I hadn’t been around music for two and a half years, and you really miss it. And then Ang had a great pot of songs, let’s put it that way, and Phil was gonna be back and good ol’ Cliff was gonna be there and Stevie was coming in, so it was like the family. Back together again, obviously excited to get back in the studio.

MC: Was it like riding the proverbial bike?

Johnson: Oh, yeah. When we all got there, Vancouver, it was just that feeling in the room, that positive feeling and excitement and electricity that comes with people who had worked together for most of their adult life but hadn’t seen each other in a while. You get in the studio and the boys just powered up those amplifiers and started hitting the guitars and everybody was in, hook, line and sinker. They just loved it. It was a wonderful way to see the bond within the band was still strong. I was just so happy, I really was.

MC: There was a lot of doubt about the rhythm section, Cliff and Phil, and Cliff had even announced his retirement after the last tour. Was it surprising to get them both back on board.

Young: It was really, I guess, just part of the thing, y’know? You’re right about Cliff, ‘cause he was saying he was gonna retire and everything. But he had said if I was going to do something to let him know, so I did and I said, “If you want to be on board, y’know...no pressure. It’s up to you if you want to do it, and he was, “Yeah! I’ll be there.” He was wanting to be involved, so that was great.

MC: And Phil?

Young: I’d also communicated a few times with Phil and he came to Mal’s funeral, and he was in very good shape. He had managed to get a lot of his problems sorted out and he was in good, healthy condition and, like Brian said, he was rarin’ to go. He was, “Yeah, I’m there, ship shape. You tell me when and I’ll be there with bells on.”

MC: Power Up is very much an AC/DC album––which is a compliment. You have a sound and you’ve stayed with it, unapologetically.

Young: It’s just...how we sound, y’know? When people would say to Mal, “All your albums sound the same” he would say, “Yeah, it’s the same band.” (chuckles) Even when we started, we weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. We just wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll band. My older brother George (formerly of the Easybeats) produced a lot of what we’d done in the beginning, and he always said, “You’re just a guitar band. The guitars are so dominant in what you do.” He always saw that as a big plus factor, that the guitars were so strong. So we’ve just stayed with that. It’s just a groove.

MC: But it’s not an easy thing to do––at least not successfully.

Young: Everyone listen to it and thinks, “Oh, it’s simple,” but it’s not. Even if it’s a straight eight or something, keeping it solid and even, that’s not a simple thing to do. That was Mal’s thing, and Cliff’s the same, very solid. But there’s the clever things, too––a different note here or there. Even though it’s straight, major guitar chords or something, underneath you get, like, a harmony note that just changes up the whole thing. His role is to make it come together and make it swing, and that’s a big part of the sound, too.

MC: It goes without saying, almost, but Malcolm is a big part of this album just like he was on (2014’s) Rock or Bust, even if he wasn’t in the studio with you.

Johnson: Malcolm is in every song. He was in the studio, and I’m not talking spooky and stuff like that. Malcolm was there. He was such a strong character in life, and it seems to have just passed on. He’s just there. I’m sure there’s not a guy in the studio that didn’t turn around and think of Mal, ‘cause that’s his legacy, with Angus––it’s the band. I think we all felt it. You cannot help it, and it’s in the songs as well. Angus knows what that feels like, because he was very, very close to his brother.

MC: What kind of emotions did you feel as you were dipping back into all those old song ideas you had created with Malcolm.

Young: At the time, especially after his death and everything, it was very hard. And it was very hard before that ’cause it’s a hard thing to go through. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone to go that route. But (Malcolm) himself, while he could still communicate, would say, “I know I’m gonna try...,” and he was trying to get himself through. He thought maybe he might get through it, but unfortunately didn’t come to pass. So he was always pushing, even as he said to me, “You got to keep writing, deep doing it...”

MC: There’s a kinship between Back In Black, which came out of the death of (frontman) Bon Scott, and Power Up 40 years later.

Young: Well, they are alike in that respect because Back in Black was a tribute to Bon Scott, and it was our way of paying our respect to him. Even the color of it, we did it in black because it’s the mourning color, for people in mourning. And this album was for Mal. I thought, “Malcolm always liked things very simple and straight,” so I just thought we’ll put a little candle (on the cover) and let him know that the album was for him.

MC: What was the timing for the song ideas?

Young: A lot of them are from just before we did (2008’s) Black Ice. We’d had a lot of years, a lot of time, a lot of space (between albums) and we had gotten together for quite a bit of time working together and going through a lot of ideas and coming up with new ideas for new songs. So a lot of songs came from that period––in fact, when we went to do the Black Ice album we had so much stuff it was like we started on the first [album], coming out of the box with ideas, and there were just piles of boxes to go through.

MC: How did the two of you write together?

Young: In different shapes, really. Sometimes it was a case of we’d have just the two guitars, or Mal would go out and put a quick drumbeat down, then we would drop on a couple of guitars and a bass. And then other times Malcolm would just hop on the drums while I was playing a riff and bang down a quick drumbeat, playing along with me. Sometimes he’d come in and get the bass and we would knock around a little bit of bass while I played guitar, or vice versa. Or if he was really desperate (laughs), ‘cause he knew how lousy a drummer I was, he’d go, “You hop on the drums” and then he’d get on his guitar and do a bit of rhythm.

“Underneath you get, like, a harmony note that just changes up the whole thing.”

MC: This is the third album you’ve made with Brendan O’Brien. What makes that relationship work so well?

Young: Brendan...he knows how to work with bands, really. And he’s a musician, too. He gets me in and he’ll just say, “Okay, let me hear” and I’ll do a rough kind of thing of what I’ve done––and of course Malcolm had knocked out a few little melody ideas, so I’m relaying some of that as well and I try to copy what Mal did.

Then I put that through to Brendan and we just run a track and he’ll let me do a scratchy vocal thing and then he’ll translate it for Brian. Then he’ll say to me, “Is this what you’re hearing? Is that what you want?” and once we’re set he’ll get Brian running. And while Brian’s doing that he’ll get the rest of us in the other studio and be like, “Okay, let’s get another new track down. Work it up,” and then he’ll come back in when we’re ready to start putting down the track. He keeps everyone busy, which is a good approach, because it gives everyone something to do and there’s no sitting around bored.

Johnson: At the end of the day you have to do the lyric and sing the song the way Angus imagines it in his mind. When I’d be doing the vocals, Brendan and Angus would sit over them, even to the point of just changing a couple words to make it flow easier. You have to try to get as close to that as you can, and if that works, well, fuckin’ bingo, y’know?

MC: There are a couple of songs that fit well with 2020, even though you recorded them the year before.

Johnson: Yeah, like “The Mists of Time.” I still get a bit of goosebumps when I hear that, even now. And “Code Red” and “Systems Down,” too. It’s just kind of spooky sometimes when you look at some of these and it looks like we already knew what was coming. But the main thing is it’s upbeat, and that’s what we need right now. The songs just get your toes a’tappin’. I had a ball doing [the songs]. There were some nice little tricky ones to get through. That just makes it exciting when you’re doing them, a challenge. A good challenge.

MC: Does all feel right with the world when Brian’s the voice of AC/DC again?

Johnson: It’s just a brilliant feeling. There’s not many things that can make you as excited as you were when you were young, but this did. This is right up there with any of the great things I’ve done in life, right up there on the top. Getting back and just feeling part of it, being back with your family, it was just brilliant. It’s the one thing I’ve always loved doing.

MC: One thing AC/DC also loves is playing live. No one knows when that will happen, but have you allowed yourself to think about what your next show might look like and how the Power Up songs will fit into the set?

Johnson: The thing is we can’t even plan to make plans at the minute. It’s bloody frustrating. I don’t think we’ve even got to the stage of basic ideas for the stage; I’m sure they’ve got ideas in the back of their heads, but [the Covid-19] pandemic just came and put everybody on the skids. We were already having a cracking time rehearsing together in Holland, all just rockin’ and rollin’ all this stuff like we’re supposed to do and getting excited about the prospect of going out [on tour]. Then about three days after we left, all the shit hit the world. It was crazy.

Young: We’ve been in rehearsal and tried out a few of the new things. Of course Brian had new ear-specialist people working with him, and he wanted to know if it was gonna work out live and he was really happy with the results and having a ball. We were running through a lot of old tracks, a couple of these newer ones each day. It was a good test to see if everything was gonna work live, and it really helped Brian. He got to see how the new technology and stuff they’d been working on would be. He was really happy with everything the way it was going, so it was working out great, very positive.

Johnson: We’ll obviously be the first ones to get out there, when there’s a chance.

Young: We can keep our fingers crossed, that we all get through it, and as soon as you get the all-clear and we’re back to normal I’m sure we’ll get a chance to get out and perform again.

MC: In the meantime, are there enough other ideas in the batch you drew from to maybe start work on the next AC/DC album sooner than later?

Young: There’s a lot of ideas and stuff, yeah, that I’ve still got, in different shapes. We’ll see. When we first started working together, my older brother [George] who was working with us––he was producing us, him and Harry Vanda––he used to always say to me and Malcolm, “You’ll always save yourself a whole heap of time if you make sure you’ve got good ideas ready to go when you go in the studio.” He always said if you were prepared before you got in, all you had to do was get the sound you wanted and hit the [record] button. You didn’t really have to concentrate so much on the songs––maybe the odd tweak here and there. But if you had ideas around, you didn’t have to be under pressure to come up with 10 or 11 good tracks all at once. That was good advice that we followed, so that’s why there’s a lot of stuff around.

Contact kimberly.harris@sonymusic.com
Photos by Josh Cheuse

QUICKFACTS

• AC/DC started during 1973 in Sydney, Australia.

•  The name was inspired by a power supply message on a sewing machine.

•  Its first two albums, High Voltage and T.N.T.––both 1975––were released in Australia only before an international High Voltage a year later combined tracks from both.

•  The group’s lineup has included 20 members. Guitarist Angus Young is the only founding member.

•  Its top-selling album, 1980’s Back in Black, has been certified 25 times platinum in the U.S., with more than 50 million copies sold worldwide––the third highest-selling album by any act.

•  AC/DC has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide.

•  The group has won one Grammy Award––Best Hard Rock Performance for “War Machine” in 2010––and three ARIA Awards in Australia.

•  AC/DC was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, and into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1988.

•  Current rhythm guitarist Stevie Young, who joined AC/DC in 2014, is the nephew of Angus and the late Malcolm Young, the son of their oldest brother, Stephen Young Sr.

• Their latest, Power Up, is the group’s 17th studio album. It debuted at No. 1 in over 18 countries after its recent release.

It is an unexpected pause in the Ohio-bred duo’s comeback campaign; Let’s Rock (which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and spawned the No. 1 Alternative Rock chart hit “Lo/Hi”) is the Black Keys’ first album in five years, ending the longest break of an 18-year recording career dotted with multi-platinum triumphs and five Grammy Awards.

Auerbach and Carney were hardly idle, however––quite the opposite. Auerbach won the Grammy for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, in 2013, and was nominated again this year. His Easy Eye Sound studio and record label have been going non-stop, and he’s helmed releases by Lana Del Rey, Dr. John, Ray LaMontagne, Cage the Elephant, Marcus King, John Anderson, Yola and many more.

Carney, meanwhile, opened Audio Eagle Studio and got behind the board for Michelle Branch [who he married in 2019], Tennis, the Sheepdogs, the Black Lips, Jessy Wilson and more, as well as writing the theme song for TV’s Bojack Horseman and other music for its soundtrack.

They found it easy to open the Black Keys again, however––even taking the production reins themselves after making four previous albums with Danger Mouse. And you can be sure, with some time on their hands now, they have more music cooking––including an expanded 10th anniversary edition of the Black Keys’ first platinum effort, Brothers.

Music Connection: So what have things been like in your corner of the quarantine?

Dan Auerbach: You know...the same. Kind of hunkered down, working a bunch in the studio, hanging out. It’s allowed me to finish up a bunch of projects that needed some time to be worked on that I just didn’t have with all the other things that were going on. So, yeah, I got to catch up with some projects, which feels really good.

Patrick Carney: I’ve been producing a record for Michelle, slowly, in my studio, just a couple hours a day, maybe. I’ve been working a lot and I’ve been watching a lot of weird shit on YouTube, since there’s no sports on, and getting to hang out with my kids. I’ve had a few weeks that were really productive and a few weeks where I couldn’t get it together to do anything––which is kind of how I am, anyway. I wait to feel inspired, I guess.

MC: It’s been great to have you guys back as the Black Keys. What led you to take a hiatus?

Carney: We had kind of just burned out by 2014, definitely by 2015. I’d broken my shoulder in early 2015 and we had to cancel a bunch of dates. When we came back to finish a few dates we decided to not book any more shows and give ourselves some time off. Dan was going to go on tour with his band The Arcs, which led to him doing a solo tour and led to me doing a tour with Michelle. One thing just kind of followed the other. That break we took, I think it saved our relationship, really. It proved to both of us that it’s okay to slow things down. It’s not a prison sentence; when we’re excited about doing it we can do it, and if we need a break we can take a break.

MC: Could anything have kept the band going without interruption?

Carney: If I could go back and change one thing, I would’ve taken 2013 off. Before that it had always been “plow ahead” for us. We reached some sort of threshold and milestone, and then we’d get to the next level and then the next one. It culminated in 2012 with us doing our first arena tour––and that was arenas and festivals worldwide, not just the U.S.

Then 2013 started off with Dan going through a divorce and us trying to make a record and then going back out and touring all of 2015. I think we realized there’s a lot to be said for taking care of things at home and it can’t just all be work, work, work. So we took those couple years off to reset, and it ended up with me figuring out my own personal life, getting divorced a second time, meeting Michelle and starting a family. That seems to be what happens when we take time off.

MC: So how did the group come back together?

Auerbach: I was making a record with [the late James Gang co-founder] Glenn Schwartz. He was my guitar hero growing up in Akron, and man, I just borrowed so much from him when I was starting, especially when I was starting the Black Keys. A couple of years ago I invited him to Nashville to record, and it was amazing. It got me excited about the idea of making a Black Keys record, so as soon as I finished that Glenn Schwartz record I got in touch with Pat and we put it in the books. We didn’t even talk about it; I said, “Hey, let’s record some stuff” and he said, “Cool,” and that was about it.

Carney: Around the end of 2017 my uncle passed away. Then we found out Michelle and I were having a baby. I guess through all that Dan and I reconnected quite a bit and started talking and decided to make another record. So we went in the studio and made this record.

MC: What’s different about being the Black Keys now?

Carney: I think part of the process of making the record was figuring out how we burned out last time, what caused us to burn out. And a lot of that came down to the touring. This time we agreed not to do too much. Initially we agreed to 30 shows [in 2019] and I think that’s the right way to step back into touring. I can’t imagine if we were still out there for, like, eight months straight again. At this point we’re really excited about doing it and doing it smartly.

MC: What kind of perspective about the band did you get from the time off?

Carney: I always appreciate what Dan and I have. I do get reminded of it, what it’s like to be in a band with just one other person who’s equally as driven and on the same page and willing to do the work in spite of whatever bullshit is happening. I think when you have a partner like that, you can kind of do anything you want; It doesn’t mean it’s gonna be successful, but you’re gonna be accomplishing something with your friend and it’s gonna be meaningful. Just taking stock of the things Dan and I have managed to accomplish is pretty fucking crazy.

MC: Was being the Black Keys again like riding the proverbial bike?

Auerbach: We just had this wild flurry of writing songs, just bashing them out––like, recording two, three songs a day, making them up from scratch, doing that a couple weeks at a time. It was like we didn’t miss a beat.

Carney: It was easy. It’s always easy for us to make something we’re happy with––has been since the first time we played. I found some recordings recently of us in the late ‘90s, just fucking around, and I made a little archive of all the shit I had and sent it to Dan and he’s like, “Oh shit, this is crazy!” He’d forgotten some of this stuff existed. That was pretty inspiring. And the very first idea [“Breaking Down”] made the Let’s Rock record. I think that pretty much sums it up.

MC: You produced Let’s Rock yourselves after a four-album run with Danger Mouse. How come?

Auerbach: It just felt like the right thing to do. We hadn’t made a record in so long, it just seemed like it should be just the two of us. We didn’t have any meetings beforehand. We didn’t do any pre-production. I sat down with the guitar, Pat sat down at the drums and we just kind of did our things. It didn’t even occur to us to talk about working with someone else, especially on this record.

MC: Anything surprise you in making this particular album?

Auerbach: The only song on the record that has any sort of synthetic sound is “Walk Across the Water,” just a little. There’s a little drum machine Pat brought in called the Auto Orchestra. It gives you a little drone note that goes along and a foot controller that controls the major and minor of that note. I just played bass along with this drum machine and controlled the major/minor with my feet and Pat was annihilating the drums and we just made up [the song] almost instantly. So that was one that we didn’t expect. It just came along.

MC: Could the two of you feel the kind of pent-up appetite for the Black Keys during its absence?

Auerbach: Yeah, it was awesome. It felt really good. It made us even more excited about doing it again and going out and playing the shows.

MC: You expanded the band in a different way for the Let’s Rock Tour. It’s the first time you’ve had more than one guitarist on stage, in fact. What’s that been like?

Auerbach: Every time we’ve had other musicians before it was mostly for keyboard and bass, and on this tour there’s absolutely no keyboard on stage. It’s pretty wild hearing the songs with the triple guitars, because since the very beginning I’ve always doubled and tripled the guitar parts, but I’ve never heard that sound on stage before. So it’s really interesting. It’s a lot of fun, and really different for us.

Carney: It makes it easier to play “Free Bird.” (chuckles) Dan describes it as we basically have our own Crazy Horse now. It feels great. The old stuff, we used to triple Dan’s guitars anyway, so it kind of sounds more like us than when it was just the two of us, or the two of us with a couple other guys. A lot of those records were basically the same set-up as what we’re touring with now. So it’s exciting, and everybody gets along really well.

MC: You’re both very busy producing and writing for and playing with others. What kind of reward do the two of you get from that work?

Auerbach: I feel like I’ve gone to graduate school these last few years, getting to make records with all these crazy, incredible musicians. I learned so much; so, yeah, there are all kinds of things that are different about me this year than there were four, five years ago––and with Pat, too.

Carney: Obviously, Dan and I both love making music and love recording bands and producing bands. No matter what, we’ll always be doing that. I really don’t know if I’ve ever made a penny off it, but I always learn a lot.

I tend to gravitate towards these David vs. Goliath projects; I always naturally side with an underdog––even with Michelle. When I agreed to help Michelle make the record [Hopeless Romantic in 2017] it was because I really liked Michelle and wanted to get to know her, but also her struggle with trying to be heard, with being dropped by a record label which she had sold millions of records for. That really drew me in and made me want to help her.

So, yeah, it’s not just making music. It’s also to offer a little perspective to artists and maybe remind artists that just because they’re not getting the support they should, they should still persevere through it.

Auerbach: My first love was playing music with my family, and my second love was making records. The first time I saw a four-track recorded was when Carney showed one to me, and ever since then I have been so in love with making records. It’s just a really big part of who I am. I probably spend more time making records than anything else I do.

MC: What are your respective studios like?

Carney: I built the studio I have now about eight years ago. It’s centered around an old API 1604 desk that I bought off Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, that they used to teach recording on. So all the great Olympia, Seattle, Portland punk bands have done recordings on this desk. I made a record with Calvin Johnson from K Records and Beat Happening and he was looking at the desk, remembering the times different bands he was in had done stuff with it.

I have a few other things that are really kind of special that I always wanted. I have a plate reverb from Chung King studio in New York. I have a Mini Moog Model D that I have a hunch is connected to Devo; there’s a plaque on there that says “Especially for Mark,” which may be Mothersbaugh, which would be very cool. I have every one of my uncle’s main saxophones I purchased from his estate. There’s a lot of cool synthesizers. Lately, I’m into guitars.

Auerbach: The whole studio is centered around a Spectrasonics console, very rare. They had Spectrasonics at Stax, Ardent, all kinds of amazing studios. We have a beautiful one, and that’s the heart of our studio. From there, I’ve collected instruments for 30-something years, other gear. I’ve tried to whittle it down to things that work well. If it’s broken it’s asked to leave. I hate wasting time. We’ve rented studios that send you their gear list, and when we got there half the stuff was broken. I hated that so much, so that started me off making sure everything I have is working. It’s mandatory, because it helps the flow.

Carney: Between Dan and I we have every single thing you can imagine––it’s ridiculous––’cause we’re both obsessed with this shit. He has more stuff than I do, but I almost intentionally get the stuff he doesn’t have, so we have it covered––like, I have a [Neumann] U47, he has a U67. Between us, we have everything.

MC: You’ve both had success of varying degrees. Do you go in hoping for that, or does the success of the Black Keys give you a kind of freedom to be a little more pure in your intent?

Auerbach: I’ve never really thought about it like that. Different records have different aspirations, but there are very few records where I’m even thinking about radio, let alone winning awards.

Carney: I’ve worked on records I know are great but I can’t get even Warner Bros., OUR label, to listen to it, let alone respond to whether they’ve received it. That’s a reminder of how necessary it is for people like Dan and I, who have managed to be successful in this industry, to actually go to bat for music that we really believe in.

MC: Dan, you made some noise with Yola’s Walk Through Fire, to the tune of four Grammy nominations, plus your own Producer of the Year nod. Satisfying?

Auerbach: Oh my God, I’m so excited for her. To be nominated in four different categories was so huge. She’s tearing it up on the road, converting people every single night when she’s out on stage. It’s just great to find a talent like that, let alone get to work with one on a level like that. So, yeah, I’m really extra excited for her, and we’ve recorded some fun new songs she’s gonna release––but I can’t spill the beans about that yet.

MC: Patrick’s big 2019 project was with Jessy Wilson. What brought you to her?

Carney: Jessy’s a very talented singer––she’s a star, in my opinion. She and her former bandmate asked me to work on a Muddy Magnolias record. I took a meeting with them and basically told them I wasn’t a big fan of the band. I offered them a little guidance or something, at which point they told me one of the singers was leaving the band. The whole thing was very confusing, so I ended up talking with Jessy and told her if she was interested to come to my studio to work on a song. She did and it went really well, and then we booked some time and made this record, without a label. It soon became apparent that she was in that type of situation in her career where no one was willing to take a gamble on her, but we made a great record and worked it and put it out there.

MC: One thing you’ve done on the road is have the acts you’ve both produced open for the Black Keys. Might as well use all available resources, eh?

Carney: Dan and I divided the tour in half and brought our artists out, which is what you do when you believe in something. An artist like Jessy, she needs to be in front of people for them to understand who she is and how she feels and that talent she has. We believe in these [artists], so we’re happy to put them out there.

MC: Dan, you mentioned working with your guitar hero Glenn Schwartz before. How was that?

Auerbach: Oh, man, it was so awesome. It was so good to see him. I had Glenn’s guitar there, and as soon as he walked in the door he said, “There it is!” I just gave it to him and he just started combing over every little inch of it, looking at it, talking about it. Then I got to play a song, and it was just so much fun, really cool. He was the inspiration for the Black Keys’ record, the reason we ultimately went on tour. And then when we had Joe Walsh play with us in LA, it felt like it all came full circle.

MC: You’re also working on an anniversary edition of Brothers, which was a real breakthrough for the band. What’s going to be on it?

Auerbach: We’re just in the middle of doing the artwork and packaging. There’s going to be some extra stuff, some new photos and things. There’ll be a vinyl component to it. I can’t really say all the stuff,  because we haven’t totally agreed on it yet, but it’ll be very cool.

Carney: My brother’s doing the artwork for it, which is cool. It’s the first time we’ve done an actual anniversary edition. When we had the 10th anniversary of The Big Come Up, that was right in the middle of the El Camino tour, and I think it maybe wasn’t beneficial for us to highlight the fact we’d been a band for 10 years already at that point. At this point, it’s a badge of honor, so [Brothers] is the beginning of a bunch of things like that we’ll have coming down the pipeline.

MC: Do we feel like the Black Keys are back for good again, or should we expect another kind of break from you guys?

Auerbach: I’m not sure. I really don’t know. Only time will tell. Nothing’s for sure in this life––we find that out every day. But I’m definitely excited for the shows... and for having new music out. It feels good.

Carney: In our almost 20-year career we’ve taken one break, y’know? I imagine the next time we make a record it will not be a five-year gap. I think it will be much sooner than that. As far as the extent of the touring we’re gonna do, we’re trying to figure that out. I don’t think there will ever be anything as extensive as we used to do.

Auerbach: We might already have [another album] done.

MC: Really?

Auerbach: No––but we could. (laughs) That’s what I’m saying. You just never know.

In between, Carlile has been a busy and moving target, blending rock, country, folk, alternative and even blues and R&B into a focused and distinctive sound defined by her robust and fluid voice and an unsparing, introspective lyricism. Carlile plays nice with others, too––evidence her long musical partnership with twins Phil and Tim Hanseroth––and her Looking Out Foundation is a non-profit that has provided grants to Doctors Without Borders, War Child UK, the Women’s Funding Alliance and many other charities.

In January, Carlile also launched a music festival, Girls Just Wanna Weekend, in Mexico, an all-female endeavor that featured performances by Patty Griffin, Indigo Girls, Margo Price, Maren Morris and others. Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray describes Carlile as “just fearless, someone who makes me feel like the future’s in good hands.”

And Carlile’s present makes that sound like anything but hyperbole...

Music Connection: It’s been quite a year or so. How are you feeling about everything?

Brandi Carlile: I feel, like, tons and tons of joy and gratitude for the whole thing. It was certainly a long time coming, but I never expected it.

MC: Does it feel like a culmination or do you feel like with this album you did something or hit some nerve that’s very different from what you’ve done before?

BC: I think it’s (the album). I just feel like it says as much about the country and where at as a nation as it does about my actual album. I just feel like, the album had a truth-telling element to it that I certainly never explored in myself before. But I also think it landed in a way on willing ears to maybe reflect on some self-criticism underneath, forgiveness, loss and some hopefulness. It just felt like maybe it was a needed thing at this given time. If I had done it in 2015, it might not have been the same.

MC: Is it fulfilling, or disturbing, that it’s still of use in the same way now as it was when you wrote it?

BC: It’s on an arc, for sure. It’s evolved past what I actually wrote for the record. When I was writing the record I felt that what was happening is that some of us here in this country were starting to address our complacency and not understanding the institutionalized afflictions, things that we were living within and around––until the rhetoric starting pouring in, politically, and the acts of the country started to tilt in this direction we just didn’t expect it to.

As a gay person who got married before it was legal, then started to embark on this journey of mothering two daughters, I realized how asleep I’d been to some of the problems I was suddenly taking issue with. During the prior administration we felt that we were so eloquently represented by someone who was assuring us and, rightfully so, that the country was headed in the right direction as far as love and acceptance, communication. When that changed so suddenly, I think everyone did what everyone needed to do, which was take a good long look in the mirror.

MC: How have the songs on “By the Way, I Forgive You” changed and morphed between the time you wrote them and now?

BC: There’s tons of ways. When I wrote the second verse of “The Joke,” for instance, I was writing about Syria and the work I was doing with War Child, and what happened on our southern border hadn’t happened yet, or word wasn’t getting out that it was happening yet. And watching that evolve from a far-away concept to a right here at home concept was alarming to me. I watched “The Mother” evolve from what I thought was the semi-uncharted territory of gay motherhood into just parenting––fathers, mothers, gay people, straight people, trans people. That was certainly an unexpected journey that I was really happy to see it take.

Songs about tragedy and reconciliation, like “Sugartooth” or “Most of All,” I think that they landed on ears in a way that I truly desire, which is that there’s no political affiliation if you’ve lost someone to an opiate addiction. There’s no political party affiliated with that kind of loss. And I feel like everyone can understand that it is a problem, everyone can understand that we are losing our brothers and our sisters and our kids.

And then songs like “Most of All,” which is about parental reconciliation, for better or worse it sort of touches on all the themes that I know I’m dealing with in my life, and I feel like we might just be in a time where some of those things are universal.

MC: Those sobering topics are not exactly the stuff of anthems, are they?

BC: I made a really conscious decision to be precious about the music this time. It was starting to get to me the amount of summer touring...and I love summer touring. That’s the problem––I do love it so much that when I get on the big stages outside I become, like, The Entertainer. I want everybody to do waves, I want everyone to stand up with their beers and sing along to the big, ballsy choruses. That’s what I want my summers to look like, but it was starting to affect my songwriting. So setting down my guitar and visualizing big fields full of people was messing with my equilibrium and my truth, so I made a new year’s resolution to do a different kind of record with the twins.

MC: How is that collaboration changed over the years, with the twins and writing with them?

BC: It’s always been a real mystical tripod, like two of us can’t stand without the third. And we’ve been in situations where we tried before, and the night that I made that New Year’s resolution they looked at me like they were seriously worried. I think they thought that it meant that I wanted to stop summer touring or something, which would inevitably lead to us all going broke. Then they really got on board. They started sending shit to me that was, like, bringing me to my knees by the things they were saying, for the first time in their writing. We all started saying it together because we’ve been together for so long now that their ideas were all shared experiences.

MC: You mentioned “The Joke” before. Having a former president shout it out at the end of the year had to be a trip.

BC: Well, Barack Obama had a profound influence in my life. I proposed to my wife the day that he became the first American president to publically support marriage equality. That was a big day for me because I had always admired him and it always bothered me that he hadn’t up until that point. I was surprised about the relief I felt when he did. If you listen closely to “The Joke” you can hear him in it. He influenced me on that song, probably more than any musician.

MC: You’ve had Grammy nominations before, but quite a few this time. How did that feel?

BC: It was such a shocking and alarming revelation to me when I had that first one (in 2015); I was so far removed from understanding that I would ever be seen or recognized by something of that magnitude––not because I didn’t want to be, but I just didn’t think it was going to happen. I didn’t even know when they were or when the submissions were, when you were supposed to turn in your record. I had no idea. So I’m on a plane and I get this text message from the guy that ran the record label at the time and it said, “Congratulations on your nomination.” And without even thinking I wrote back, “No, this is Brandi,” because I was that shocked, you know? (laughs) So here I am one record later with these six nominations and I’m in total disbelief. It’s exhilarating, that’s really the only way I can put it.

MC: What was it like to put your own festival together?

BC: It’s certainly been interesting. I’ve learned a lot of things about a festival, about what it takes. And one of the things I’ve learned is that despite what the promoters are saying, it’s not that hard to secure a female headliner, and it’s not that hard to secure multiple female headliners. We’re sitting here, we want to do the gigs and we need y’all to let us do the gigs. How hard is that?

MC: One would have thought that Lilith Fair taught us that.

BC: Lilith Fair was monumentally successful, and the fact that it came back (in 2010) and didn’t do well doesn’t say shit. It was great, and I thought all of them were great, even the one that “didn’t do well.” It was still a great show. I think it needs to happen again. I’ve got some ideas about that. I’ve reached out to Sarah (McLachlan) a couple times on Instagram, because she’s obviously a hero for me. But I think she’s very busy.

MC: Was the festival your idea or were you approached to do it?

BC: I sought it out and I’d been planning it for about 13 years, ever since I did the Cayamo Cruise. There’s just something about removing people from their environment that puts them on an equal playing field. If you put them on a cruise ship or a vacation destination and you’re in each other’s pace and you’re learning each other’s songs and you harmonize up on stage with each other, you’re borrowing each other’s guitars––it changes the dynamic. It makes it a community dynamic. That’s really what I see the future for rock & roll and festivals in general, a much more collaborative, much less competitive environment––especially when women make a comprehensive decision to abandon competitiveness with each other and make one solid push ahead, together.

So my idea was to take the template of Cayamo and make a vacation destination, like the Avett Brothers do and the Dave Matthews Band does, but make it all women to make a really powerful statement about what women can do together. A sold-out women’s festival in Mexico means that thousands of people spend thousands of dollars to leave the country and watch women headline a festival, and I hope that’s something that translates to more of it.

MC: You were in A Star is Born, too––a small part, but what’s it been like to be part of that orbit?

BC: I found it really foreign, really jarring. It’s been neat to see that success, for sure, especially for all my friends who were involved in it. I was asked to do a tribute to Roy Orbison (“Oh, Pretty Woman”) on the soundtrack, to sing it with his young guy (Marlon Williams) whose voice just blew me away.

So I flew down to LA and Bradley Cooper was actually in the studio and produced my track. And while I was down there they said, “Would you be open to doing this scene in the film?” And I was like, “Yeah, I’ll do it;” I’m an uncomfortable person in front of the camera, but I did it and it was a really cool experience and I was really happy I did it. I got to sing all day on stage at the Shrine (Auditorium) and it was killer. They didn’t put the song in the soundtrack, but I wound up in this cameo scene and went to the theater and saw it and loved it.

MC: You’re in a lot of high-pressure situations these days––A Star is Born, the Grammys, the Joni Mitchell 75th birthday concert. Are you good with those?

BC: Yeah, yeah, I am. I think I thrive on it, but I definitely worry sometimes that maybe I’m building too many high-adrenaline, pressure moments into my life. Maybe I should grow more tomatoes and spend more time fishing after all this––although pressure keeps your blood flowing, which is good for you.

MC: You’ve been doing this long enough to have some perspective on a career. What’s the key to staying creatively fulfilled?

BC: I will only be creatively fulfilled if I have four or five things going on that I’m absolutely, show-stoppingly passionate about at any given time. And I do. I have five projects and a side project I can’t talk about yet. And I’m producing three records and I’m trying to get two other artists to let me produce their records. And I’m still working and touring behind By the Way, I Forgive You. And raising two little girls.

MC: That’s a full plate

BC: And I love it.

Contact asha.goodman@sacksco.com

Music Connection: Is there anything that accounts for this year’s spurt of work from you?
Neil Young: Y’know, it’s just...good. Just moving on. Just got a lot going on. I’m enjoying everything. It’s pretty healthy.

MC: Is that a cyclical thing for you? Do these kinds of periods come and go with any semblance of rhythm?
Young: Well, things are good right now because I’m with Daryl and we’re very happy and it’s kind of new beginning for me. I’m still in touch with my family and everything, the kids, so everything’s good. When you feel good things tend to come to you.

MC: Paradox brought you back into the movie world. How did that happen?
Young: We just talked about making a movie for a while, just for fun. And Promise of the Real is a bunch of characters and they’re down for anything and they’re all really good at what they do. It looked like an opportunity and Daryl had some ideas; she always wanted to do kind of a Western-style thing and we had a gig at Desert Trip (in 2016) and we started (the tour) in the Rockies and we had to get up there to acclimate for a week or so before we started playing at 9,000 feet. So we set up the tent there and did some rehearsing, and when we started setting everything up we said, “This is the ideal time to make the movie” and we could have some fun. Everybody’s gonna be here and we should do it right now. She started buying clothes for everybody and getting the costumes and she wrote the script and we just started going and shot the whole thing in four or five days.

MC: You’ve directed a lot of your previous film work yourself, as Bernard Shakey. What was it like to be directed this time?
Young: It wasn’t really that different because I have a lot of respect for Daryl. She knew what she wanted to do. She had a good direction, so there were no issues. I knew the movie was going to be fun and something I could believe in, so we just did it. I just followed the direction and followed the dots and we had a great time. And it was incredibly frugal; we made the film for pennies compared to any other film.

MC: It’s gotten a polarized reaction, which is often the story with your film work––and some of your music work, for that matter.
Young: You get any reaction to anything. People who have no idea what to expect, they’ll probably shoot it down ‘cause it’s not made by Cecil D. Eastwood or something. It’s not the best Western they were looking for. But we just wanted to have fun. We just made this movie for fun. It’s already a hit as far as we’re concerned.

MC: How did you approach the soundtrack for Paradox?
Young: I had just finished doing Peace Trail and recorded some more things and a couple of jams for instrumental passages for different things. Then I recorded a bunch of electric guitar stuff to go with the scenes, a la Dead Man. It was very much in the moment, not a lot of planning, which is how I like to work.

MC: Paradox brought you to the Netflix world. What do you make of that?
Young: It’s outside the box for me. Usually we try to go out and present our stuff and go to the people who we know are going to love it and it’s made for them, so we go and find ways to locate them and let them know it’s happening. This is not like that. It’s more like we’re on the world stage with Netflix. It’s like being on Facebook––anything can happen. It’s something that I’ve never done before and Daryl’s never done before, so the jury’s out. We’re still kind of coming to grips with what it is and what it means to be working on a “platform.”

MC: You’re certainly no stranger to that kind of concept, however.
Young: Well, I’m not so sure about all that stuff. I’m not a big believer in Facebook’s responsibility to the planet, their responsibility to humanity, Google’s responsibility to humanity. All those things, they’re weighing on my head, the way these algorithms treat the arts and the fact that there’s no algorithm to protect the arts or the rights of artists. There’s nothing that really addresses the values that I have, so I’m not overly impressed with the progress in big technology. I think they, largely working with the record companies, have ruined the sound of music.

MC: Which is something you’ve been crusading about for a long time now.
Young: The record companies are the stumbling block. Their prices for high-res music are too high. I’m trying to show them that they should have all music be the same price so people can access whatever they want and get whatever kind of music they want, and if they have the high-res music cost more it doesn’t serve anybody. There’s just a lot going on with that stuff that I’m not settled with.

MC: Do you feel like Pono made that case convincingly?
Young: It’s an ongoing search, and it’s really a mission. I don’t feel like it’s a battle; We’re really just trying to open up windows so people see what’s out there. We have a streaming service, the best-sounding streaming, on this site in the world. There’s no reason a hippie from Canada should have this fuckin’ site. I don’t have millions of dollars––it didn’t cost that much, by the way. But there’s no reason why all the music in the world can’t sound this way. The only reason is money; the record companies want three times as much for their high-res tracks as they do for the shit (MP3) tracks they’re selling. That’s stupid ‘cause a minimal fraction of their sales is high-res music. Why not just price it like MP3s and everything else and let people decide what they want, because they’d sell more music and people would have a chance to hear the real music.

The people who make the phones are ready for high-res with Firewire and the lightning cords and all that. The technology is there. It’s the 21st century. Spotify has two levels of quality. Apple has two levels of quality. If we have a good place and good bandwidth, you’re gonna hear high-res off your phone, off the computer, you’ll hear it off of anything, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t.

MC: The Archives site is getting rave reviews. Where else are you going with that?
Young: Our phone app is going to be ready in November or maybe October, maybe even September. And then people will be able to plug their earphones into their phones, into the bottom input and get high-res music on their phone. And anybody can do this. Spotify could do this. It doesn’t make any difference. They could serve their shit that they serve now AND high-res and people decide which one it is. It’s no big deal.

MC: You seem to feel a sense of mission to be a voice in that world, moving it forward––not just with the music but also with the essays you do online. It’s pretty provocative stuff sometimes.
Young: It’s essential for my audience to be in it. They like it, a lot of them, but we’re educating them, too. There’s going to be a lot of stuff out there, but we’re doing it so when you use Facebook to come into the (Archives) we’ll give you a chance to read an article about Facebook. We’ll give you a chance to read about what they did and how they did it and how it affects children and how it gets children hooked on pornography and all kinds of weird shit that’s happening because of Facebook and how they have no responsibility for what goes on in their own house. That’s not right. That’s not good. I think even Zuckerberg’s beginning to realize he’s got a monster on his hands. He’s created something that’s out of control. It’s not about politics. It’s not about the U.S. election. It’s bigger than that. It’s children’s minds.

MC: You’re going to be turning the Archives into a subscription site later this year. What all can we look forward to?
Young: There’s twelve unreleased albums, and almost half of them are finished studio albums that I didn’t put out, and we’ll be releasing those over time. There’s a lot of things, like movies, videos and albums that have never been seen or heard. A lot of my albums I did in the ‘90s and the late ‘80s have videos; we filmed everything as we did it and that’s never been seen by many people. We have all that, so we’ll be adding it to the experience. There’s a high percentage of our info cars that haven’t even been populated with stuff yet; well over two-thirds of them are not populated compared to what we have. We just don’t have the manpower to populate them, so that’s a process.

MC: Your career is littered with projects that never came out, probably moreso than any other artist. What’s that about?
Young: Usually it’s because I had something else I made right after it that I was into right then.
These albums are all finished records. There’s nothing that different from any other record I ever made inasmuch as the quality. It’s the same quality and the same guy. I’m doing the same thing. It’s just that I made too many, especially in the ‘70s. I made too many.

MC: Quantity...but over quality?
Young: I don’t think so. I just didn’t spend as much time making my records as other people. I don’t care about perfection; perfection to me is a great, soulful rendition of something. It’s not making every harmony part perfect. That’s something for somebody else with a lot of money, maybe if they made zillions of hit records they can do that, if that’s what they want to do. But for me we just made it so it had soul. We just wanted them to drip soul.

MC: Any specific releases we should look forward to from the Archives?
Young: I know the Alchemy album is gonna blow people’s minds, and I think Crazy Horse’s early days will. There’s an album called Garage, which is another Crazy Horse album, and a movie called Rusted which is a complete Crazy Horse concert like Rust Never Sleeps that’s never been shown. It was shown one night in the ‘80s. So we have all that stuff, and it’s interesting. Plus there’s at least two or three times as much stuff as that that I haven’t mentioned. There’s a lot of movies. There’s Muddy Track. There’s the Homegrown album, which is like the Stray Gators, who did Harvest with me. That’s another album I did and never put it out. I went and did something else.

MC: Does trolling through the past like that impact on what you’re doing now?
Young: I don’t know. It might––I mean, it should. When you look at my creative output I made Peace Trail last year and that was a real album, but it’s not a real album like other people would make. There’s not a lot of production in it. We played the songs and played them well and I delivered the vibe and that’s how we make a record. So I can make a record like that in very little time compared to what other people take. But I’ve always been like that. Harvest didn’t take very long to record, either.

MC: The Tonight’s The Night Live album is a very cool slice of your history.
Young: That’s a very interesting record and a very fine record. It has every bit of the vibe the Tonight’s The Night (studio) record had; it’s just a live version of that record. We know it a little better, plus you’re presenting it for people who are looking at you and you’re right there. Live records are always a little edgier, but that Tonight’s The Night original record is very edgy, so we weren’t missing an edge. I play better live than I do in the studio. That’s just the way it is.

MC: Those Tonight’s The Night shows were edgier, too, because it was all about that album, which was brand new at the time.
Young: We weren’t giving them anything they wanted, but it didn’t matter. That’s not why we’re here. We didn’t do it for that reason. I don’t really give a shit about that. I was doing that for me because I wanted to do it.

MC: Isn’t it risky to keep putting your fans through that, though?
Young: I’ve trained my audience. They know. I won’t go out unless I have something to do that I believe in doing and that I want to play and new songs I want to play that I think are relevant. That’s why I go out. If I don’t have any new song to play in front of people, they don’t see me very often.

MC: Is there any factor in particular that leads you to work with Crazy Horse or Promise of the Real?
Young: They’re both great. It’s really the material; the band I’m playing with will affect the material I write when I’m with that band. I’m only writing because of what’s in my head, so I don’t know who I’m going to play with. But they’re both great bands. Each one has its advantage over the other. It’s a very good situation to be in, and it’s a temporary situation ‘cause nothing’s gonna last forever. But I don’t want to wear it out, either.

MC: Speaking of bands, CSNY seems over and done with––or is it?
Young: I don’t know. I’d rather see Willie (Nelson), Bob (Dylan) and Neil, myself. That’s what I would want. I think that would be fantastic––but it’s just a dream of something I wouldn’t mind doing, there’s nothing going on. I just look at things I would like to do and things I don’t want to do, so I try to find the things I do want to do. I don’t like to go into a big barn with my name on it anymore. I don’t want to do that. It seems like I’ve done that to a point where there’s something that just stops me. But I do like playing music, and I like playing with people that I love.

MC: You’ve never been shy about politics. What’s your view of what’s going on here now?
Young: It’s a fuckin’ mess. This guy is bent on destroying the environment. He has absolutely no knowledge of what’s real. He’s decided because he doesn’t believe in science he can lead the country with no regard for science. All the environmental policies he’s changing and taking away, all the protections he’s taking away...Regardless of the tasteless shit he does, it’s not important compared to those things. I don’t know how America is sleeping through this.

MC: The last time you got pissed off like that we got the Living With War album. Think another one like that is coming?
Young: I don’t know. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.

Contact Rick Gershon, rick.gershon@wbr.com

He's been an actor on both stage and screen, and in 2013 he launched his own stage musical, The Last Ship, which chronicles the boatyard culture of Newcastle, England, near Sting's home town. And as an activist he's thrown his weight behind all manners of causes, from the political (Amnesty International) to the social (Band AID) to the environmental, the latter via his own Rainforest Foundation Fund that Sting supports with an annual concert gala in New York. The artist’s efforts have not gone unrecognized, of course; in addition to massive sales he's also won or shared in 16 Grammys, an Emmy Award and a Polar Music Prize and has been nominated for four Academy Awards for movie contributions.

He's been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he's received a Kennedy Center Honor in the U.S. and a CBE award in Britain from Queen Elizabeth II. The beat goes on, too... Last Fall, Sting released 57th & 9th, his 12th studio album and most straightforward rock/pop set since 2003's Sacred Love. And he'll be touring to support it, likely into 2018.

Music Connection: 57th & 9th has been trumpeted as your return to rock––at least on album. What led you back?
Sting: Well, I don't really know what people are on about saying it's my first pop-rock album in however many years. I thought that was just a record company kind of marketing tool, because for me it's just a record. Rock & roll or whatever, pop music, is just part of my DNA, and every time I make a record, to a certain extent less or more it's rock & roll and pop. So I've always been bemused by the question when it comes up. I say, "Really? It's just a Sting record."

MC: You do tend to change directions from project to project, however. Is there a reactive quality to your creative approach? Is each project a reaction in some way to what came before it?
Sting: There was no overriding concept, which I suppose is the biggest difference. With The Last Ship it was meant to be one thing, a cycle of songs about one subject, or at least one community, and this is just me going in the studio and having fun with people I know and love, musicians I trust and who trust me and saying, "Let's just play musical ping-pong and see what kind of things transpire." No more than that. I think it's a traditional record in that sense. I think the concept album was something that had its day, but originally bands would go in the studio and have the privilege of making a record of their songs, and there was no sort of overarching arc, if you like. It was just having fun. This record's no different.

MC: Were some of these songs around for a while, waiting for their moment while you were working on The Last Ship?
Sting: Not really. Most of it was conjured up there and then, and I think having that pressure to make a record in a short amount of time was a helpful one. Normally I have a very open-ended remit––It'll be released when I'm finished or it'll be written when I feel like writing. This one I said, "Okay, we're gonna go in the studio on this day and we'll make a record by this day, and we'll have it on the street by Christmas." I enjoyed that, actually, even though it hasn't been my method in a number of years.

MC: What was the allure of doing it that way?
Sting: My feeling about creativity is that it is a very, very mysterious and very difficult-to-catch animal, and you're hunting for it all of the time so you have to change your methods the whole time because it does, too. You have to trick it, somehow, or trick yourself into finding it. So approaching it from a different angle a surprising angle, a different method than you've used before is always a benefit.

MC: How does the songwriting method change in that kind of environment?
Sting: I was writing subconsciously, first of all, improvising the music with the boys and then taking that music home and asking it to tell me a story. But of course what's going on in the world, what's going on in MY world or my personally history or so has an effect. So in a way you open yourself up to this kind of automatic writing, just focalizing, and an idea will come into your head, a phrase which you hadn't really planned on or a theme which you hadn't really planned on.

MC: Talk about that external influence of current events.
Sting: Well, you read the papers every day, what's going down in the world, so it's not surprising that some of those themes or some of those elements come through—lo and behold, some of them are connected, even! You may start off with the idea of resisting the concept album, but then you end up with concept, or connective tissue, by accident.

Fortunately, the singer, songwriter, occasional actress and fashion entrepreneur has made a, well, sweet escape from the turmoil and into happier terrain all the way around. That includes the deeply personal This Is What The Truth Feels Like album, which debuted at No. 1—Stefani’s first as a solo artist—upon its mid-March release. She’s in a new and very publicly happy relationship with country star Blake Shelton after the two met while judging TV’s The Voice, and their duet “Go Ahead And Break My Heart” gave Stefani her first-ever appearance on the country charts.

The tour, meanwhile, kicked off July 12 in Mansfield, MA, and will have Stefani and her array of dancers and special effects as well as opener and guest Eve blowing minds until at least October, and probably beyond. She’s still grappling with some of the darkness that brought her here, but Gwen Stefani sounds positively buoyant, even a bit defiant, and excited to talk about what she’s learned about songwriting and performing her own material.

Music Connection: This Is What The Truth Feels Like is obviously you digging deep and digging in, emotionally. What does the album represent to you?
Gwen Stefani: I feel like when I was at my darkest hour, I was trying to figure out, “What is the purpose? Why am I here? What is my gift?” and discovering that my gift is music and being confident in that and receiving these songs, I feel like [my purpose is] to share that now.

MC: You were working on another album that got scrapped before you made This Is What The Truth Feels Like. How did you get from there to here?
Stefani: I needed to do those. I felt so inspired during that time period. I mean, I created (fashion lines) L.A.M.B. and Harajuku during that time period. I had just gotten married. I then went on to have two babies during that time as well, so there was a lot of output, and it was such a creative time and there was no stopping me. I was just ready to go.

Then I came back and I wanted to do a No Doubt record. I felt like I needed to do the No Doubt record, but when I gave birth to Zuma they were like, “First, we’re going on tour. That’s how we’re going to get inspired.” I was like, “Okay. Let’s go.” So we went, and that tour, I think, almost killed me. At that point I felt really burnt out, physically, and I think mentally I felt so much pressure to make the No Doubt record, like it was all up to me. We were going to get in the room and there was not going to be any outside writers and I didn’t feel secure enough to have outside writers, because I was starting my journey of insecurity basically at that point.

MC: It was pretty difficult to balance things that were happening in your life.
Stefani: Yeah, the next five years was a really challenging time. I had spent a lot of time trying to make the No Doubt record, but also trying to balance being a mom and a lot of guilt, like, “Okay. I’m going to go to the studio right now, but I’m going to miss dinner and I’m going to come home.” It was a lot of that, and it wasn’t helping my creative center at all. So I went through that for a long time, just finding out what is the purpose. And that’s when I got pregnant with Apollo, and being pregnant with him was a time for me to just stop everything.

MC: And by stop you mean...
Stefani: I just stopped everything. I was like, “I’m done doing everything for everyone. I’m just going to be pregnant.” And I gave birth to him, and four weeks later, I got called to [be a judge on NBC’s talent series] The Voice, and that’s when I was like, “Wow... I hadn’t thought about doing something like that.” And I just kind of went, “Yeah, let’s go.” I didn’t even know what I was getting myself into.

And that was the beginning of the end of insecurity. I was on the show. I had this new baby. I’m around all this music. I’m looking at my life. I’m looking back at myself, at what I’ve done. It made me think about how many great songs I’d written and how much I’d accomplished and how did I do it? You know what I mean? And so my confidence was coming back slowly.

MC: Ironically, this was around the time you and Gavin split, right?
Stefani: Sometimes really bad things happen just so that really great things will happen, and I think that’s what happened to me. It was like a wake-up call––“Get back on track and stop being insecure about writing and your gift and what you’re here for, and stop being selfish and share what you’ve got.”

It was really hard, because I just wanted to get under the covers and eat pizza and cry, but I went to the studio and this is what the new album is, and that’s what I celebrate on tour––that I was put on this earth to write these songs. Everybody has their own purpose; for me, it’s music.