 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Recently, legendary Shock Rock icon Lizzy Borden, always a man of many words and interesting stories, was kind enough to take a break from his decidedly hectic schedule to speak with us regarding, among other things, the forthcoming release of the group’s latest theme-based masterpiece Appointment With Death…
Todd: What can you tell us about Appointment With Death?
Lizzy Borden: “It’s a theme-based record because that’s what we always do (laughs). I get to play death…it’s really just about death being in the room with the characters of each individual song. Every song is about death in one way or the other…death is about to happen in one way or the other. That’s the whole basic theme about it. …On Deal With The Devil, I got to play the devil. That was another theme-based record. The devil was involved in almost every aspect of the record in one way or the other.”
Todd: Have you ever seriously considered recording a record that isn’t theme-based?
Lizzy: “…Yeah, every time I start a record, I go ‘…I’m not gonna do a theme-based record. I’m just gonna write ten songs…’ (laughs). But it never works out that way. I start digging and digging, trying to find things that are interesting to me. Before I know it, I’m writing a theme-based record (laughs). …This is where I am and what I’m doing. I tried to fight it for a while, but now I just embrace it. Just about every record has been theme-based, so I don’t think there’s any stopping it at this point. …But we’re havin’ fun. As long as it turns out in the end the way we had planned it from the beginning, then I’m happy, ya know? I don’t like to think of them as concept records. I’ve never done a full concept record like (The Who classic) Tommy… …One day I’d like to try, but that’s a whole other ball game. …The only way you could really do it right would be to have actors come in and actually play the characters…I don’t know. I’d like to try. We’ll just have to see what happens. I’ve always thought about it, but those things either work or their horrible, ya know?”
Todd: What was the main motivation behind the seven year gap between the release of Deal With The Devil and Appointment With Death?
Lizzy: “Well, when we did Deal With The Devil, which was in 2000, we toured for a couple of years off and on. In 2003, we ended up recording a Lizzy Borden record that took a little over a year, but in the end, it just didn’t feel like a Lizzy Borden record, so we shelved it. So we wasted about a year and a half there. We didn’t really wanna go right back in and do another Lizzy record, so we created a band called Starwood. …I’ve always loved Cheap Trick and a lot of those bands from the ‘70’s that had that hard Rock ‘n’ Roll vibe with a Pop or commercial edge, so we created the band and did a record. …We went to Japan, did a little bit of touring here and there and then we went back in to do another Starwood record. Right about the time we had finished it...I just had backing vocals to put on it and had to mix it so it would be done...we started wanting to do Lizzy Borden again. We ended up going out last Summer with W.A.S.P., did that tour and then came back and started working on this record. This record took a little more time to make, but it needed the time to gel with our new guitar player and the whole thing.”
Todd: Is there any chance material from that shelved album will ultimately see the light of day? I’m sure there’s a lot of fans out there that would love to hear it…
Lizzy: “No. I think we dismantled it, really. We were just disappointed because we had spent so much time on it. We had no direction, no nothin’. We just started messin’ about in the studio and started coming up with different ideas. …I think there’s one song that ended up on Appointment With Death…it was actually a piece of one of those songs. But I don’t think you’ll ever hear anything from it. It’s just something that we left behind. We have hundreds and hundreds of different unfinished songs and finished songs just sitting around that we’ve recorded but never released, ya know? So you never know. We might do a box set one of these days where some of that stuff might appear. …As a matter of fact, our old sound man just E-Mailed me the other day sayin’ that he has a live board recording of us in Japan. Little things like that pop out from time to time…little gems that we keep and hideaway so we can use them later on something.”
Todd: Overall, how did the songwriting process for Appointment With Death compare to the group’s previous efforts?
Lizzy”…This one was surprisingly similar to the beginning because in the beginning, we wrote as a band…we’d hammer out the music together in the studio. With Master Of Disguise, I wrote the whole album on my own and then brought musicians in to play on it. For this one, it was a little bit of both. For six months, we wrote as a band and then for about a month, we just kinda wrote separately and then brought our stuff together. …So we did things a little differently. Because we wanted to try and make a full traditional Lizzy Borden record, we had to bring it together in a few different ways... I think the next record could be a little bit different because we’ll have gelled a little more with Ira Black, our new guitarist. We’re gonna go out on tour for probably a year and a half, I think, so by the time we get back, I think things will be a little bit different. I don’t know when the next record’s gonna be, but we’re already starting to work on ideas.”
Todd: With the untimely passing of (guitarist) Alex Nelson, was there ever any doubt in regards to whether or not the group should continue on without him?
Lizzy: “…Alex wasn’t an original member of the band. He came in a little later. He was only in the band for a year in the 80’s. Then he came back in on Master Of Disguise, so he was in and out of the band. We lived for the most part without him. He was there during that little moment in time when we recorded four albums in fourteen months… There was a doubt, but who knew, ya know? He had come and gone before, so we were like ‘…Okay, we know we can exist without him, but do we want to?’. He was such a huge part of what we were and we were such good friends and had so much fun working together that it was one of those things where we were like ‘…Can we find this magic again?’, ya know? Or ‘…Do we even want to?’. That was another reason why we did Starwood. We wanted to make that separation. When we came back to do it, we had clear heads and were able to approach it in a pure way, I think.”
Todd: So the formation of Starwood and the recording of If It Ain’t Broke, Break It! and the resulting shows were all part of the grieving process?
Lizzy: “Exactly. And we also didn’t wanna put out a false record or anything like that because Lizzy Borden is a Heavy Metal band and we wanted to stay true to that. We didn’t want it to be tired. We’re actual fans of Heavy Metal, so we wanted to make a record that we’d actually be a fan of, ya know? If you’re not thinking clearly, you’re not gonna do that, so we needed Starwood to bridge that gap.”
Todd: Taking into consideration the ‘…revolving door…’ of guitarists that have worked with the band in the past, did you find it difficult to find a legitimate replacement for Alex?
Lizzy: “We auditioned a lot of people. There were a couple of people, playing wise, that were amazing, but had no personality (laughs). And I didn’t wanna do that because I had done it before and it just becomes this thing where you’re just tryin’ to drag these gems out of these people because they don’t know how to translate it. But then Ira walked in… He learned like three or four Lizzy Borden songs, put his own stamp on them, but didn’t change them because he’s a Lizzy Borden fan. So he knew what we needed and what we were looking for. Once he started playing, we just offered him the job right then and there. It was one of those things where when the right guy comes in you know, ya know?”
Todd: With it having achieved such a strong cult following, how strong is the desire to attempt to the orchestral elements of Master Of Disguise?
Lizzy: “…It just seems so weird to me…we just did that tour with W.A.S.P. and there were all these fifteen year old kids comin’ up to me telling me Master Of Disguise was their favorite record (laughs). …It blows my mind that it’s been able to stand the test of time for all these years and really find a new audience. Out of all of the records, Master Of Disguise, has had the biggest impact as far as the fans I’ve been talking to. It’s pretty wild. …That album was like catching lightning in a bottle because that album, if we had done it on a major label, it would have cost no less than half a million dollars. We were on a small independent label and I just happened to have a great producer who was able to hire a full orchestra, hire the guy that scored the Grammy’s…and be able to do all the stuff that we wanted to do. All the stuff that I dreamed of doing, ya know? To be able to do it all on one record was just amazing. It was a huge undertaking. Our producer, anything I dreamed up, he delivered. Those are hard to come by, ya know? …I wrote those melodies in my bedroom, so to have all these accomplished violinists, cellists and all these people…make this great score…I was just blown away by the whole thing. And that what we were trying to show on the video that we were filming…it was just amazing to us.”
Todd: In hindsight, because of all of the different musicians you worked with, do you consider Master Of Disguise to be a solo effort?
Lizzy: “…When we did the Visual Lies album…that tour didn’t last very long…it only lasted a couple of months…and at that time, we could get any more touring booked because no one else was touring at the moment that we could get on with. So we just ended up standing because the guitar players were thinking…whatever they were thinking and it ended up not working out. So I just ended up getting a rehearsal space, I got an eight track and started writing all my own stuff. (Master Of Disguise) is what I came up with. …We just ended up using different musicians and figured we worry about putting a band together later. We asked people to come down and play on it and that’s what they did. It was a really strange experience for me because I had always been stuck within the confines of a band, having to tell a guitar player to play a certain way. Now, I didn’t even have to do that, so that kinda opened it up for me. We did Deal With The Devil kinda the same way, but we used a band, ya know? I wrote all the stuff and then brought in the players and said ‘…Play it like this…’, ya know? Both Deal With The Devil and Master Of Disguise were kinda solo records, ya know? …On the new record, there’s a lot of guests, but they’re playing stuff that we would have never even thought of just because they didn’t have to go through the process of writing all these songs. They would come in with fresh ears and say ‘…You know what? This song needs this…’ and would just rip off some lead that would blow us away and amaze us. …They added so much to the record that just wouldn’t have been there without them. It’s always a good thing to have those guests on there even though we have a full band together that’s more than competent. We wanted to add that much more to the album and make it that much more special.”
Todd: Once the touring in support of Appointment With Death officially begins, do you have any idea what type of set list you’ll be working with?
Lizzy: “…This is going to be the Appointment With Death tour, so naturally, we’ll be playing a lot of the new album, which I always do. There’s a lot of bands that when they put out a new record, they only play two songs…and then you’ve got bands that only play the new record and don’t play the old stuff. For us, we wanna do a little bit of both. We’re there to entertain, but we’re also there to show people that we have a new record out, so… We’re playing one or two songs off of each record. Right now, the set list is around seventeen or eighteen songs (laughs). I don’t know if that’s gonna get whittled down or not. …The set might be just about right for a headlining show. I think it runs the gamut of giving everyone what they want and giving us what we wants as far as playing new material. It’s so much fun for us to play new material, but at the same time, we realize people wanna hear all the old favorites, so we’re there for everything. The new show we’ve put together is absolutely going to be fun. I think people are gonna love it.”
Todd: I’m assuming you’ll once again be working with a variety of stage props…
Lizzy: “…There’s always going to be props. We have giant props that are coming for our headlining tour, which may not happen until next May because we’re doing some fly-in shows…and then we’re going straight to Europe, doing a mini European tour, which will end in the UK. That will take us to the end of the year. Then, in January, we might have the support slot for a major tour that’s like four months long, so…if we do that, we won’t be able to launch our headlining tour until next May. …We’re building the show right now and some of the bigger props we obviously can’t take on the plane with us, so… Once we do finally get that thing out, it’s gonna be great. There’s so many great things that we’re talking about and starting to build right now.”
Todd: After surviving this many years in the industry, do you regret releasing a live album so early in your career? That always seemed like such an odd decision to me…
Lizzy: “It was an opportunity, ya know? At that time, a lot of people weren’t doing that. It was one of those things where if we hadn’t done it then, we may never have gotten the chance to do it. …We just said ‘…Let’s do it…’. To this day, people think (the) Lizzy Borden (live show) is (like) that, but we’d only been together for a couple of years. We’ve done so many bigger and different shows since then, but people think of that because it’s the only thing that’s out there as far as our live shows are concerned. …The Visual Lies tour in ’87 was ten times bigger than that, but…we never shot a DVD. …So that’s why we did it back then. It was an opportunity, we took it and we did it. We never got another opportunity to do it again. It was one of those things where I don’t regret it, but it kinda put a stamp on our live show as far as what people though they were gonna see. We actually evolved from that really quickly.”
Todd: Prior to the recording of Deal With The Devil, was there any doubt which label you’d be working with? Did you ever consider ‘…shopping…’ the band to a few different labels?
Lizzy: “That was actually a newly signed deal. It was our first record on a new deal. The ‘90’s were not good to us (laughs). We were floatin’ around out there on our own without a label, so when it came time to do another record… I had been talking to (Metal Blade Records founder) Brian Slagel…went to a couple of hockey games and he was like ‘…You know you gotta do another Lizzy Borden record…’, so that’s how it came about. It was one of those things where I didn’t know how we were gonna put out the next record and he said ‘…Let’s do it on Metal Blade…’, so we ended up doin’ it there. We didn’t shop it (laughs). We’ve never really shopped. I think we tried once or twice and it just seemed like a nightmare (laughs). There’s very few people who knew what they’re doing. God knows what kind of band we would have turned into if someone kinda manipulated what we do. …It probably would have been something horrific (laughs).”
Todd: How did you keep yourself busy during the interim?
Lizzy: “Well, it was only a brief period because we toured on Master Of Disguise until the middle of ’92 and we played out first show back in ’98 in front of thirty thousand people in Germany, so it was just that brief little five year period. I had formed a band called Diamond Dogs that was kinda the first version of Starwood. We just kinda messed around with it trying to find a way to have fun with it that wasn’t Heavy Metal… So for that brief time, we messed around, caused chaos on the strip just had some fun for a change instead of hammerin’ out album after album. But then, when it came time to be serious again, we went right back at it.”
Todd: Musically, what are your influences?
Lizzy: “I’m kind split down the middle with my influences. I have theatrical bands like Kiss and Alice Copper and then I have my European influence with bands like Rainbow and Deep Purple and some bands like that and then I have my Rock ‘n’ Roll bands like Cheap Trick and all that. I’ve got some many different influences, ya know? And that all translates into what I do. That’s why I always tell people to not hone themselves after one character or one person. If you mix and match with a little bit of everything, what comes out is going to be that much more original. …Cheap Trick are masters of songwriting and for me, it’s all about the songwriting. It’s all about the song. I don’t wanna do ten instrumentals…everything is about the song. They’re so good at what they do, ya know? Even the early stuff, the Pop stuff, is really well done. The Rainbow influence was because their music was visual even though they weren’t. The music was very visual and they’re playing was very violent. The lyrics were storytelling…and the songs were really sorta epic. This album, Appointment With Death, is very epic, so that influence is in there too.”
Todd: Do you feel Appointment With Death is the definitive Lizzy Borden release?
Lizzy: “I hope not, ya know? We’re not done yet and I hope we can keep creating that one that does it, ya know? Look at a band like Green Day. You’d think they would have had their heyday with Dookie, but then they ended up making this last record and now that’s the definitive Green Day record, so who knows, ya know? I’m hoping this is not the pinnacle…I’m hoping we’ve still got some more in us. I’m really proud of this record. We did some things on it that I didn’t know we were capable of. My singing on this record I think is the best it’s ever been on any Lizzy Borden record… I hope the next one is even better than this one, ya know?”
Select Lizzy Borden Discography
Appointment With Death (2007) *
If It Ain’t Broke, Break It! (2004) **
Deal With The Devil (2000) *
Best Of (1994) *
Master Of Disguise (1989) *
Visual Lies (1987) *
Terror Rising (1987) *
Menace To Society (1986) *
The Murderous Metal Roadshow (1986) *
Love You To Pieces (1985) *
Give ‘Em The Axe (EP) (1984) *
Demo ’83 (1983) *
* as a member of Lizzy Borden
** as a member of Starwood