GIUFFRIA FOR ALL! METAL Q & A

GIUFFRIA FOR ALL! METAL Q & A

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J. Kordosh

Editor's note: This month's unexpur-gated interview was conducted by J. Kor-dosh. who met with Gregg Giuffria and Dave Eisley of Giuffria at the Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit. Herein, the guys discuss the rapid rise of their L.A.-based band:they were formed, signed to a record contract, placed their first record in Billboard's Top 30 and toured with Deep Purple and Foreigner-all in their first year. Giuffria, ex of Angel, also discusses some of the ups and downs of the music business. This is your first album, right?

G: Yeah.

You know what they say about bands with their first album: that they use all their good stuff and—

G: No! Well, uh, actually, with their particular situation and my situation, I was in a band before that had a few albums out...and, uh, I was real aware of that. And prepared for that. So instead of using any of the songs that we had from before we wrote all new songs prior to going into the studio. So we actually saved some of our ace material for the second album.

I thought the album did well.

D: I think it’s going to do well.

G: I think it’ll be a good summertime album.

It hit the 30’s, didn't it?

Both: Twenty-six.

That’s really pretty good.

G: For the first time out, yeah. A lot of people—with their first albums—bite the bullet. And we were lucky.

Lucky?

G: Yeah, there’s a lot of luck. It’s a good album, it’s got all the ingredients and everything, but it’s like everything else: you can have great songs, great band, great musicians, great production, all that—and you still have to have luck.

D: Timing.

G: Yeah, timing. Timing is a big factor—it came out at the right time.

I’m gonna ask if you guys are heavy metal and you’re gonna say “no, we’re not heavy metal, ” so let’s do that.

G: No, we’re not heavy metal.

D: I think we’re a song band. I don’t like labels.

Well, you have a lot of keyboards, so that helps there.

G: More than the metal bands, yeah. I’ll tell you, we’re hard rock, though, live. We’re going through the thing now where some of the songs that were released are the band, but they’re not the live side of the band...the band’s so much heavier. And pushes real heavy live.

Could you guys give us a rundown on everyone in the band, just so we ’ll know?

G: Oh, OK. The band consists of Alan Krigger, the drummer, who used to play with the Beach Boys, Doobie Brothers, Ike & Tina Turner—

Session work?

G: No, live; touring with them for a long time.

D: And Chuck Wright, the bass player, is a studio cat. He did a lot in town— L.A.—and he played on quite a few of the Quiet Riot albums.

G: Well, both of them.

What about Sarzo?

G: Rudy? Contrary to belief, I think he played on a few songs on a Quiet Riot album—and never played on the Ozzy album—

I interviewed those guys and they never told me that. Rascals.

G: Yeah, they wouldn’t tell you that. He didn’t even play on Ozzy’s album and he was voted best bass player of the year in one of those polls.

Does Chuck get the award now?

G: (laughs) No. No; y’know, I always wondered if Rudy was gonna send Chuck the award. No. But Rudy was in Angel for awhile.

He really gets around.

G: Yeah, he’s a nice guy. But he just got himself in predicaments joining bands after the album had been done. But he’s a good bass player; he’s a real good bass player. But, OK, Craig Goldy, the guitar player, came from San Diego. He came from a band called Rough Cutt, which was a local band in L.A.

They’re doing something now.

G: Yeah, they’ve got an album deal or something. But when I was putting the band together, the guitar player was a key thing. A rock ’n’ roll band without a guitar player, y’know? Finding the right guy was a thing that was kind of tough. And when I saw him play in Los Angeles for the very first time I went up to him and said, “You’re the guy.’’ And it worked real good.

Where was this?

He was playing in a local place in Los Angeles. I forget the name of the place. Some kind of place. And then the following night I went to see them and they were opening for Night Ranger. As coincidence enough, Bruce Bird was even at the show.

D: Everybody was there.

G: It was funny, ’cause that night—after the Night Ranger show—I said, “It’s definitely a lock, you’re in.” So he left that night. Loaded up his equipment and said see you later.

What about you, Dave?

G: Let me tell the story about Dave. Now, we were auditioning singers—

D: This is back in ’83.

G: And I’d gone through 116 different singers and, uh,—

Surely you exaggerate.

G: No. Surely I don’t. I’ve got the list— there was a list of people and phone numbers.

OK.

G: I think there was 150 people on the list that I had, that I was going through.

D: This is all throughout the United States, cats in different cities.

G: Everywhere. Lots of people. And then he came in and sang the first song and we wrote two songs that day, so it was—

D: The chemistry was right.

G: Yeah, the chemistry was right. Were there any names on the list that we might recognize?

G: Oh...yeah...lotta names on the list you’d recognize.

Care to tell me some of them?

G: Naw, ’cause some of them it might bother—no, there was just a lot of people. Well, I don’t want to embarrass anybody. But this is the stuff of public interest.

G: Yeah. Urn, we went through a lot of singers from the guy who’s with Toto now to—let’s see, God, there’s a lot of them— my mind’s runnin’ blanks. I’ll rattle ’em off as we go along.

Tell me what happened to you after Angel. Or during Angel.

G: I went to the French West Indies for about eight months. Just to rest—right after Angel. And then started thinkin’ about trying to put together a band.

So how long has Giuffria proper been together?

D: A little over a year last month.

Did you have any problems getting a record deal?

G: The record deal—there’s always a problem with record deals.

D: We had done—Gregg and I had done a project in ’83. We were just doing projects. And what came out of that, anyway, was us. As songwriters and such. But in ’84—a story he’ll elaborate on, I imagine— we just gave it a shot

“Our hair... we didn’t cut it. ’’ -David Eisley

again, did it again. Did a tape—and the kid here went out to shop it. Stopped off at Bruce Bird’s to get a straight answer and (snaps fingers) got it like that.

/ noticed you guys thank Bruce Bird all over the place.

D: Yeah, we thank Bruce Bird on the back of our album.

G: Yep. He’s a good guy. He’s a real nice guy. He’s a record guy—I met him in my Casablanca days. He was with Neil Bogart back in the days when Casablanca used to own the back cover of your guys’ magazine. Remember that?

Back and front covers.

D: We were ready to shop.

G: We had 25 tapes ready. It was—to make the story printable—it was well planned-out. I knew what I wanted to do with the thing because I’d made all the possible mistakes. Made every possible mistake before, so I don’t think there was any luck in how I wanted this thing to come down. So when the tape was done, the band was technically put together on January 16th—we said, here’s the band—and then we went into rehearsals and did the demo tape, the whole works. I got a gentleman by the name of Andy Johns to engineer a demo tape. Put four songs on it. And—I had 25 copies made. I said, “Well, get humble, welcome back to the world...you can’t live on the past, you’re only as good as the record you made yesterday afternoon.”

Surely you knew people, so that kind of helped.

G: Yesss—it did, but also, having a reputation, it hurt, too. Because people’s expectations were twice as high as (compared to) somebody else, an unknown off the street. So instead of saying, "Uh, Joe, there’s a guy out there I don’t know, he’s got a tape,” it was “Greg Giuffria’s out there with a tape—let’s take a listen.” “He from Angel!"

G: Yeah. So, impress us. It was that kind of thing. So I had 25 copies made and said, “Well, I might as well go and get a straight, honest answer. First.” Bruce put the tape on, stopped the tape after the second song. I said, “Oh, no, no...I can’t believe it, he doesn’t like it.” Y’know, honestly, before he even had a chance to say anything I was going to apologize. And he goes, “You got a deal.” And that was it—the meeting was at, like, 11:00, and the attorneys got together at 1:00 and then I signed a letter of intent at two and—

D: We had lunch at three.

G: Yeah, lunch at 3:00. And it was all pretty much set. And I ended up with 24 extra copies.

That’s it. Y’know, the story I’m telling is such a fairy tale story —so perfect how it worked out. ButMany bands will read this and take note.

G: But it can be done—things like this happen. And on top of that story—true part—I ran out of money in ’83; my girlfriend and myself were financing the project. In the business, you normally never spend your own money. Sometimes—when you really believe in it—you do. So, anyway, we exhausted our funds and I said, “Well, this is it. I’m goin’ down in California; I'm goin' under, I'm just gonna be one of those stories that you'll read a small paragraph about." (To himself) "Remember that guy, Gregg Glut Ina? Well, history. Went under; he's lost in the hills of L.A."

So I go out and buy a yacht. broke-on credit, I had great credit. A big boat, brand new, sleeps six people, the whole works. I said: "If I'm goin' under, let 'em repossess a house, a car and a boat." I take the boat out the first weekend it's delivered-the boat was delivered on a Wednesday-so I planned a trip to Catalina Island on Friday. I go to Catalina Island and, honest to God. a guy come up to me with a boat similar to mine and goes: "Dude"-very California-"Dude, what do you do? That boat's unbelievable. It looks cool, you're hap-pening... what kind of business are you in?" I go, "Well, I'm in the music business." He goes, "Oh, wow, I play guitar but I have another business. You need an investor? Or anything?" I went. "This can't be true."

D: It’s the God’s truth.

G: The honest-to-God truth. This is California; I thought it was California talk. So I tore off part of a check and he goes, "I want to get involved in any projects, anything you want to do.” I said, “Yeah, well, I have a project.” I was referring to my own, but I didn’t say that to him. So . we meet at the bank three days later and I said, “Uh, I don’t know.” So I call Dave up and say, "You've gotta come down and see this." Sure enough, the guy gave me a large sum of money. And that was the money that initially kicked off the financing of this. With the people involv-ed in a project like this, the financing is the real hard part of it. Lifting it off the ground is tough. But, anyway, after we were signed we went back into rehearsals and pre-production, did the album, the album was released-all this happened in ’84. Did a video and got the Deep Purple tour. The album hit the charts the same year the band was conceived. This business is indeed a bitch.

"My hair and the way I look makes me happy." — Gregg Giuffria

G: No, there were three real hard years I went through of some failures and projects I was putting together that just didn’t work.

Is it true that Blackmore wanted you off the tour because he didn't like what Goldy was playing?

D: He was attempting to throw us off the tour from the first night.

G: We technically quit. The last thing I said to him was, "See you later, we're going off to the Foreigner

tour"-Foreigner's album and our album were both higher on the charts than theirs when we left.

Well, you're not the first band this has hap-pened to.

G: Oh, I've known Ritchie for 14 years. It just didn't help much in this particular situation.

D: I don't think it shocked Gregg.

G: No.

What's his problem, anyway?

G: He has his own way of thinking about stuff. He does that stuff deliberately just to wind people up.

But what's the point? You're not directly competing with Deep Purple.

G: No. I'm from the old Neil Bogart school-and I refer to him a lot-"Give the kids their money's worth."

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G: Deep Purple? Oh, they told us what songs to play.

D: They dictated what songs we could play and we couldn’t do a guitar solo. And our set was shortened by 10 minutes. Go out there and knock ’em dead.

G: Yeah, go out there and don’t do the best you can. But that’s all right, what goes around comes around.

D: It was their territory. When in Rome, play like the Romans want you to.

G: The artistic end of it was a bit silly.

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Actually, it was ridiculous. Because they play “Smoke On The Water”—hey, I grew up on that, Ritchie.

D: You’re an old man, Ritchie.

G: He’s quite a character, quite a character. But he was quite shocked—I guess our guitar player—he’s very, very good, I think he’s the best there is. And that was the first album he’s ever played on. So, on this next album, he’ll be much more loose and fluid and more himself.

You guys are from L.A. If you're an American musician, should you just go ahead and move to L.A.?

D: I don’t think so. L.A. right now is really an oversaturated sponge. I think if somebody from middle America has people that he can contact, people he knows to give him a head start; yeah, go ahead and give it a shot. But to just go there and blindly think that by being in L.A. all these wonderful things are going to happen to you—I don’t know.

G: There’s two sides to the coin. Decisions in L.A. are made at lunch-time or in cars, listening to cassettes on their way to Beverly Hills. That’s where all the decisions are made. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?

G: No, but that’s Dave’s view on the thing about L.A.—but I think that for a band to make it, to close a deal: yeah, they practically do have to go to L.A. If you’re a band in Cleveland, they will come and see you if you really have luck on your side, but the odds are that you’ll have a better shot at it by going to Los Angeles. Playing a showcase. And plus, if you’re putting a band together, the odds of finding the right guys in your local town are real slim. Whereas L.A. is where everyone goes; it’s a meeting ground for rock 'n' roll.

You guys kind of look like you stepped out of the '70s.

G: Yeah.

Let’s be candid. You'll be criticized for actually looking like that.

G: Yeah, but see, the thing is—one thing that separates me from some other people is that I really like the way I look. The difference is that I know exactly what I want out of life. And my hair and the way I look makes me happy. So I’m not gonna change and run out because there are some wimpo’s in England who cut their hair.

But some of those people are thought of as being the vanguard of the industry.

G: Who is? Who?

Uh...the Smiths. Aztec Camera, Big Country.

G: Maybe writers are bored for new things to write about, but I think they’re hilarious. Those bands. Comical.

Musically?

G: Musically comical—hilarious. I’ve been playing classical piano since I was five years old—some of that stuff is hilarious. It’s so mindless that it’s hilarious.

Can you name some examples?

G: Well, God—some of the stuff I can only listen to one or two songs and I'll break into such laughter I can’t deal with it. There’s no depth to it. You’ve got two sides to the coin: those people—some of them are putting out the commercial, commercial stuff, like Wham! A perfect example. There’s a band that actually—I won’t say who said what—but actually called up saying they wanted to play stadiums in America. This summer, Wham! headlining in stadiums. The only thing is that every promoter in America said as long as the support act is the Rolling Stones, the Who or Van Halen, it was fine. So I’m saying some bands think on that level—that’s great. There’s a market for that kind of stuff and I like it. Out these other bands you mentioned—well, Big Country's got their own angle and style and I wouldn’t put them in a category with some of those others...Aztec Camera and so on.

D: U2 is great. They’re another part of the spectrum, they’re away from where we are. G: They’re making a statement and they have a direction.

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D: But they’re real good at it—they’re honest about it.

G: Then again, I can say they’re very ’60s with their political stuff. Their lyrics and their attitude towards what they write about. To me, that’s very ’60s. So when someone says to me, ‘‘You look very 70s,” I can say, “You look very '50s with your rockabilly and your melodies are very ’40s” and like that. Life is different outside L.A. and New York and sometimes people get locked into what’s going on in L.A. and New York. And they don’t realize that the rest of the country’s not like that. Or the English bands that come over and the only place they play is New York and L.A. Well, the little block in New York where they play is just like the little block in London. Now, were that band to be dropped off in, say, Missoula, Montana, and expected to fill the Civic Center there, they would get their assholes torn out.

D: The thing is that it all started here. They tend to definitely forget that.

G: I don't want to sound real negative about the thing, it’s just that —speaking very candidly once again—this band, we get along, we like each otner and the way we look...we all like the way we look, it’s fun.

D: I don’t look good in short hair.

G: I don’t, either. And I think it’s real comical. If they weren’t talking about the way you look, it’d be real bad. Hair’s too long, hair's too short, hair’s the wrong color—that’s kind of amusing, that part of it.

Tell me what "The Awakening" is all about.

G: That's a bad dream that I had. And I wrote it down—it's a dream.

You woke up and wrote it down?

G: Woke up and even before I had a cup of coffee in the morning, jotted it down on an envelope. Then I took it to the studio and said, ‘‘Well, I want to put this on tape.”

Who are those kids singing?

G: Friends, people's kids.

How many kids sang on that?

D: About...50 people total, 25 or 30 kids.

G: Some of them were Neil Bogart’s kids, record company kids.

D: I wish I had the picture—a big picture of this enormous choir of children.

I wondered if there was some cryptic reason it was the next-to-last song on the album.

G: Yeah, “The Awakening”—my last name, in Italian, means “the awakening” or “the new dawn”—plus, what it was about: it was a dream, but the sound at the end of it...where it sounds like a news thing, like the 6 o’clock news...there's explosions and kids singing and people running up and down doorways. It was just kind of a nightmare.

Then why are they singing "Everybody Loves Me"?

G: Because everyone kind of feels that. At some point; we're all selfish people in a way.

D: Children feel that way; hopefully, they do.

G: And everybody should. Plus I heard a nursery rhyme in my head, so I just wrote a little nursery rhyme.

D: And it preludes “Out Of The Blue,” which is based on one of Gregg’s and one of my bad dreams. Literally.

You guys must have a lot of bad dreams.

D: (Laughs) Well, towards the end of the album there were a lot of bad dreams.

G: On "Out Of The Blue” we wanted to write about a mental person or a crazy person who’s locked up in a room. They keep saying, “You

can’t help me, I’m too far gone.”

I kind of like the lyrics of that song.

D: We owe it all to bad dreams.

G: If was just a different aspect on that thing; painting a picture with words in fun.

Why is "Dance" in quotes on the album jacket?

G: What a strange song. The song was—

D: That song came like from all ponts of the compass.

G: (Sighs). Yeah, it wasn’t recorded right— it’s a good song, but it’s just a little out of context with the album.

Those seem to be the ones I like on your album.

G: Really? Well, the song wasn’t given as much time—from a production standpoint, I produced the album—towards the end.

D: It got kind of put on the back burner. How did everybody—and you also, Gregg— feel about you being the producer?

G: Fine. It’s much better to have somebody you know have a hold of the reins instead of five people.

D: Yeah, it’s not like we all fell of the truck yesterday. Especially from a songwriting standpoint. When we wrote the songs, we pretty much had an initial idea of where they were gonna go. Fortunately, we’re not 18,19 years old and we need that one cat.

G: If I ever reach that point where I’ve lost the spark, where I can’t produce the band, I’ll find someone else. After the songs are written, rehearsed, and we’re done with preproduction, I put on a different hat when we go in the studio. And I’m able to be objective and able to look at it differently. Whereas you can call in a great producer and the chemistry just doesn’t work.

D: And you’re stuck with a big fee and a lot of wasted time.

G: I’ve been through so many different producers in my career, from the famous ones to the not-so-famous ones, and the age-old saying is correct: when you want something done right, do it yourself.

Do you find you 're drawing more guys or more girls to your shows?

G: An interesting thing about this band is the female draw. The amount of girls we draw. What would you say is the ratio?

G: To some shows? The other night in Atlanta it was 80 percent.

That sounds good from a business point of view.

D: Well, yeah, because wherever the ladies are, the guys are eventually gonna be. They may hold out for awhile...

G: Quest For Fire, y’know what I mean? Why do you think that is?

D: Well, undoubtedly it’s our hair—we didn’t cut it.

G: Y’know what it is. Well, the band is—this will sound, I guess, weird in print—we’re very sincere in what we’re doing. We really are. I think that the sincerity shines through and I think that the band is a very physical band, live. And the second album, I hope, is gonna show more of that live energy.