Metal Sludge The Power and the Glory
BURNING FOR YOU
A Metal Sludge exclusive with Burning Rain and GUNZO singer Keith St. John
By Gerry Gittelson
Metal Sludge Editor at Large
LOS ANGELES — Like a lot of us, rock singer Keith St. John has endured his ups and downs through the years, surviving in a business that applauds you one minute, then turns its back on you the next.
The curly-haired New Yorker has enjoyed his share of success with a series of original projects, plus being hired-on as the voice of Montrose, Neal Schon’s band and even the mighty Sweet for a few gigs.
He played a key role in X-Drive, the critically acclaimed throwback project featuring a hot debut CD last year through Frontiers Records, and in the meantime St. John is doing double duty with labelmates Burning Rain, featuring an all-star cast rounded out by guitarist Doug Aldrich (Whitesnake), bassist Sean McNabb (Dokken, Quiet Riot, House of Lords) and drummer Matt Starr (Ace Frehley, Beautiful Creatures).
Burning Rain played a Los Angeles show just recently (check the review HERE), and St. John totally kicked ass. His voice is strong and distinctive while being totally accessible and radio-friendly at the same time, and that’s why St. John has always been in-demand.
The singer is also part of the new super-group GUNZO. The band just launched and features guitarist Tracii Guns (L.A. Guns), bassist Rudy Sarzo (Quiet Riot, Whitesnake) and drummer Shane Fitzgibbon
Keith recently took a break to sit with Metal Sludge for an exclusive interview.
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GUNZO is Rudy Sarzo, Keith St. John, Tracii Guns and Shane Fitzgibbon
METAL SLUDGE: You’ve been in a lot of bands, a lot of projects, and it looks like Burning Rain is doing very well. How do you feel about the way things are going?
KEITH ST. JOHN: It’s going really killer. We’re going over to Europe for the first time with this lineup in April. We’re playing just two dates, though, because of everyone’s time constraints, and one of the shows is the Frontiers Records festival in Milan. Lynch Mob and Joe Lynn Turner are going to be there, too. It’s going to be a fun time.
You’ve got a great guitar player in Doug Aldrich, one of the best in the world. He was in Whitesnake, for god’s sake.
JOHN: Yeah, Doug and I, basically we’ve been doing this thing together on and off since 1999, and he’s not only a great guitar player to play with because he’s so proficient in everything he does. The thing is, his style meshes together with my style really easily, and when we get together, we can write songs on the spot. As a singer, you’re always looking for that right-hand man on guitar, and Doug Aldrich is everything you would want. I have that with him, 100 percent. I’m really happy.
But I see Doug has also joined another band (Revolution Saints) with (Journey drummer) Deen Castronovo (and Jack Blades).
JOHN: Yeah, that band with Deen, to be honest, I don’t think that’s a band. You’d have to confirm it, but I think it was just a recording session. As far as I know, they’re not playing live or anything, but you’d have to check that out and confirm it, but that’s what I’ve been told.
I’ve got to ask you about Ronnie Montrose. He killed himself almost three years ago, and you had been his singer for a long time.
JOHN: I was in his band for 14 years. We played a lot of festivals, some good festivals in front of big crowds, like 80,000 at the Woodstock 40-year anniversary show, and maybe even more when we played the Alamodome.
Why do you think he shot himself? Did you have any clue?
JOHN: It was a huge shock to everyone around him. There were circumstances revolving about why and about what happened, but it was not health-related, because I was close to him, and he had won his battle with cancer. He had defeated cancer sometime prior.
Well, what happened then?
JOHN: You know, I can’t speculate at this time. I mean, it seems like it’s been a while, a few years, but for me, I feel like the best thing is for me to just let it rest at this point and to cherish the times we had together.
Well, what was Ronnie like? Did you enjoy his company?
JOHN: He was a nice guy, fantastic. I’m really super shocked. He was a super honest guy who always took care of all his people. It was his duty to be like our father, big-time, and we could just talk about anything with him. If I was unhappy about something, he would never pull this rock-star trip and tell me to fuck off. He would figure out a way to work things out and take care of it.
He was a person of character, and that’s not something you see every day, someone who would take you and treat you as an equal. I only have great things to say about him. He was just super conversational, and if I had a problem, something personal, he would want to know about it and to talk about it with me.
You’re also the singer for Neal Schon from Journey, when he does solo stuff.
JOHN: We had gotten together during a year period, and since then, a little less over the years, but I see him here and there. The Neal Schon project, he was a killer guy, too, a really sweet guy. I enjoyed working with him a lot.
He’s been divorced four times. Why do you think he’s been divorced so many times?
JOHN: Well, that’s tough to say. Some people, they have fiery personalities, and they enjoy life to the fullest that way, but I’m not really sure. You’d have to ask Neal that, definitely. I don’t want to put my foot in my mouth, but I will tell you, of the ex’s that I met, they all seemed like really cool people, so god bless him.
And we have to talk about X-Drive, of course, the project from last year on Frontiers. I know you’ve had a falling-out with (guitarist) Jeremy Brunner, so you didn’t do anything to promote that band, but the truth is, that CD turned out great.
JOHN: That X-Drive CD, it turned out it was easy to write to, something about that driving kind of rock that I like to sing to.
They’re mostly your songs.
JOHN: Well yeah, in terms of the melodies of lyrics, most of it is.
Dude, if that record came out in the 1980s, it would have sold a million copies.
JOHN: Not to toot my own horn, but I think you’re right. Other records during that time that sold like 12 million, compared to this one, it would have sold like nine million. The way it was done, there were a lot of producers, and Andy Johns put the finishing touches on it.
You had that batch of songs with Dave Jenkins, who had produced it first.
JOHN: The Dave Jenkins stuff, we didn’t hold onto that. Wyn Davis came in, and there were just so many tracks and overdubs that Jeremy was holding onto, every instrument, and Wyn basically came and had to pick and choose from multiple options for every song. Bascially, he was focusing on elements that held up sonically with each other and sounded coherent. That was great, though, because a band like Fleetwood Mac with “Rumors,” which was remixed and re-produced like three times because nobody was happy, and it finally came out the way it did. That X-Drive record with Jeremy Brunner had a lot of incarnations.
A lot of people really like X-Drive. Some critics even put it on their best-of-the-year lists.
JOHN: I know, but all in all, because of the way the band came together, the fact that it’s bascially a guy working out of his house on his own time schedule with his own tapes, the band really doesn’t have a presence in the industry.
Well, I know Jeremy has rubbed some people the wrong way. What do you think of him?
JOHN: You know, Jeremy has great artistic vision, but a lot of times, I think, guys that are super-creative, they can be also be socially unpredictable. Let’s just leave it at that. I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect, he’s not perfect. Nobody is. At the end of the day, though, with writers and artists, when you’re play on a song together and you’re happy, that creates a bond that goes along whether you get along or not, whether you get along with someone hangin’ in line at the grocery store.
Doug Aldrich and Keith St. John
It sounds like you want to work with him again in the future — or are you totally dedicated to Burning Rain?
JOHN: I am totally dedicated to Burning Rain, but at this point I wouldn’t rule out working with Jeremy again. It’s fun, and it worked out great.
Let’s not forget you have a new band too, called Gunzo with Tracii Guns and Rudy Sarzo.
JOHN: It’s actually going to be billed as Tracii Guns’ L.A. Guns, but I guess Tracii already made up some Facebook page >HERE< with a logo.
You played for the first time just a few nights ago with BulletBoys and Faster Pussycat.
JOHN: Yeah, it was spectacular. It’s all good. We opened and closed with L.A. Guns songs, but we also played some Ozzy because of Rudy Sarzo and some Montrose. Those hard rock songs, playing hard rock up there, it just gets you fired up.
And the drummer was the tech for Devil City Angels, or Rikki Rockett’s roadie, I guess.
JOHN: Shane Fitzgibbons. He’s great.
There were a series of other projects you’ve also done like Medicine Wheel with Marc Ferrari and Ray Luzier.
JOHN: With Medicine Wheel, I don’t think we knew where the business was going at that time to be honest, in 1997, and I was doing other projects at the same time. Medicine Wheel was one of those bands where we all took a stab at making a record, and I thought it came out great, but like I said, by the time it came out, a lot of us were involved in other things, and that’s the way the industry works sometimes. If the album would have caught on, then maybe some promoters from around the world might have called, and we would have gotten together for a tour, but during that period, that kind of music didn’t have a lot of sea legs. It was just a little late for that style.
And the first band for you was Sun King, right? With Rudy Sarzo and John 5?
JOHN: Actually, the first one was a band called Big Trouble in New York. We were signed to Atlantic in 1989, but the record was never released. That whole thing kind of came into my life out of no where. I had sent someone a demo tape in 1988 for another project, and the tape ended up being sent to someone else, and the next thing I know, I’m sitting in an office with Jason Flom on Rockerfeller Center.
Who was in that band?
JOHN: It was Jon Levin on guitar, who plays in Dokken, and bassist Tommy Henriksen, who is with Alice Cooper now, and drummer Bobby Rondinelli, who was in Rainbow; all three were in Doro Pesch’s band just before. It was my first experience musically, and it really wasn’t what I expected. There were a lot of people involved, different producers, and it was all very corporate-feeling. But that band had a crazy talent, talent up the ass.
Eventually you came to L.A. I remember you from a long time ago.
JOHN: Yeah, that Big Trouble project indirectly got me out there, because someone liked my voice and kind of financed my way out here to L.A., and when I got here, it was everything I dreamed of.
You put together your band St. John. Whatever happened with that?
JOHN: Well, I had some money behind me, so I auditioned like 500 guys, and I got Brent Barker, the guitar player from Sweet FA. I remember (BAM journalist) Jon Sutherland, I was told he helped get bands together, and he showed me his list of guys that actually included Doug Alrich, but his name was crossed out on the list. Jon had said Doug wasn’t interested in doing new projects because he was working on House of Lords, but years later I ran into Doug randomly, and he said we probably would have done something together all the way back then.
Interesting.
JOHN: You know, I have no regrets about the past, but if I could do it all over again, with St. John, I would have kept that band going because it was a good band with good songs, and people were responding to it, but I had some personal issues with the drummer and just decided to walk from the whole situation.
What was the fight about?
JOHN: It was a big blowup because our bass player left town and moved to Boston, so I hired this guy Jerry Best to do the next gig at the Whisky, and the drummer didn’t like that. But it didn’t really matter because two days later I got the call and joined Sun King.
That was supposed to be your big break.
JOHN: Yeah, Irving Azoff was involved, the guitar player was Johnny 5, who was really young back then, like 20 or 21 because I remember his 21st birthday. And Rudy Sarzo, he was the brainchild, and the drummer was Richard Danielson, who had been in Imagine World Peace and later the Poorboys (and Vintage Trouble).
John 5 is insanely good, one of the best in the world. No one is more flashy than that guy.
JOHN: Oh, he was insane. We knew he was someone that was ready to arrive because he slept, ate and breathed every second with his guitar, and it showed. He has some amazing technique. He had gone to MI, and there was a well-known buzz about the guy, even back then.
So what happened with that band?
JOHN: What happened was, Charlie Minor, who was with the record company at Giant and was a big part of the band’s inner-promotion within the label, he passed away, and the new A & R guy, Jeff Aldrich, we learned later that he had no plans to promote it but instead just shelf it, and Rudy Sarzo ended up finding out about that. The record never came out, and the songs are still just sitting there, and some of them are really good, just timeless.
Keith St. John @ WebSite – Facebook – Twitter
Gerry Gittelson can be reached at gspot@metalsludge.com
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