Quiet Riot
Rehab
(Chavis Records) Interview with Kevin DuBrow - Vocals

    I’ll never forget the first time I saw Quiet Riot live. I was so freakin’ excited! I couldn’t believe I was finally getting a chance to see the coveted Metal Health line-up in action. Hell, I didn’t even mind that the show was being held at a repulsively dank local dive known more for it’s overpriced drinks (five dollars for a single beer?!) and exceptionally homely co-eds than it’s acoustics. I just wanted to Rock like it was 1983 again. When the day of the show finally arrived, I got to the club early, grabbed a spot front and center and dug my heels in, expecting to be totally blown away. Unfortunately, I ended up being totally disappointed. So what went wrong? Just about everything. Carlos played ridiculously bad, Rudy was so overpoweringly loud that he nearly drowned out both Kevin and Frankie and their sound man was apparently tone deaf.

    Now, nearly eight years later, having had the opportunity to catch the group on several more memorable and tuneful occasions (most notably on the fabled 2001 Glam Slam Metal Jam tour), my feelings have changed. Thus, when I was approached about writing a feature on Rehab, the group’s long-awaited (and painfully long-in-the-works) “comeback”, I was only more than happy to oblige.

    On the brilliant Rehab (2006), an expertly assembled eleven song collection of ingeniously executed Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, each track, beginning with the smoldering “Blind Faith”, and the impossibly raw “South Of Heaven”, immediately commands the rapt and undivided attention of all parties involved--myself most definitely included--with a mostly mid-tempo barrage of gritty vocals, searing fretwork and impressively solid rhythms. Wasting little--if any--time getting down to the proverbial business at hand (i.e. kicking your ass), the group gleefully engulfs the listener amid a deliciously quasi-retro ensemble undoubtedly guaranteed to inspire both multiple spins and win the veteran act more than a few new fans (and maybe even coerce a few that ran for the hills circa the Technicolor yawn that was “The Wild And The Young”).

    Continuing with the soulful (!), emotion-laden “Old Habits Die Hard”, and the driving, Michael Lardie co-penned “Beggars And Thieves”, the airtight “studio only” combination of vocalist Kevin DuBrow, guitarist Neil Citron (who also engineered, edited, mixed and mastered all material contained herein), bassist extraordinaire Tony Franklin (ex-The Firm and Blue Murder, to name only a precious few) and drummer Frankie Banali steamroll forward with a sickening ease. Armed with an undeniably impressive--if not outright surprising--array of ear-pleasingly abrasive, Blues-inflected hooks and grooves, the group swaggers as much as it stomps through each composition, effectively bridging the more than considerable distance between the group’s Platinum-encrusted past and the stripped down realism of the present.

    Produced by DuBrow and Banali (seriously…at this point, does a group of this stature even need an outside producer?), other standouts, including the maddeningly infectious, tongue-in-cheek “It Sucks To Be You”, and a smoldering, Glenn Hughes-fueled take on the Spooky Tooth classic “Evil Woman”, only add to an already overwhelmingly impressive overall package. Released via burgeoning independent upstarts Chavis Records (Azrael’s Bane, Hydrogyn), the group again seems poised to sink it’s razor sharp, silver-plated teeth into the jugular of an unsuspecting mainstream. Despite this, the question remains…is this truly the best record the group has ever recorded? Maybe not. But is it the group’s most musically ambitious and commercially viable effort since their mid ’80’s heyday? Abso-fuckin’-lutely!

    Okay, okay…so it’s not Metal Health, Part II. But then again, that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? Were you really expecting yet another Slade cover? Regardless, even if you somehow find yourself less than thrilled with the group’s seemingly unlikely decision to abandon the Pop Metal/Arena Rock formula of old (hey…it worked wonders on Guilty Pleasures), one must, at the very least, sincerely admire DuBrow and Banali’s bravery for attempting to reinvent themselves at this stage of their careers. Needless to say, if you are looking for a slightly ‘Old School’ yet musically relevant alternative to the mindless, pureed retro bullshit that is so often force fed en mass (have you seen the train wreck that has once again become Poison lately?) then this, my friends, might just be the cure for what ails you. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Recently, notoriously outspoken Quiet Riot frontman Kevin DuBrow was kind enough to take a break from his decidedly hectic schedule to speak with us regarding, among many other things, the release of the group’s latest opus Rehab…

Todd: What can you tell us about the new album?

Kevin DuBrow: “Well, it’s obviously different from any previous Quiet Riot release. And that was intentional. Frankie and I have always been capable of playing more than one kind of Rock ‘n’ Roll. It was just a matter of being able to write the right songs and play them with the right people to express that. …Frankie and I both had songs like this. We had specifically discussed going in the direction of a retro ’70’s type album, so we had to get the songs written. They weren’t sitting lying around. When people talk about material from that era from bands like Free, Spooky Tooth and Humble Pie…there’s a lost art to that kind of song writing. We had to have the songs and we had to have the right people to play them. It’s a certain kind of style. …Let’s say you wanted to play a guitar solo that sounded like Paul Kossof from Free. You can’t use someone that sounds like Eddie Van Halen and expect it to sound like Paul Kossof. It’s a different time and it’s a different feel. You have to have the right people for this kind of material. Tony Franklin is a super versatile bass player. Neil Citron can play anything from Steve Vai down to Paul Kossof. …If you have someone whose style is very limited, that wouldn’t work with the kind of material we wrote for this album. If you listen to some of the guitar playing on songs like “Evil Woman” or “Blind Faith”…it’s really a lost art, ya know?”

Todd: I have to admit…as impressed as I was with Neil’s playing, I had never actually heard of him before…

Kevin: “Yeah, because he’s from that Old School. All the stuff that I grew up with was like Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Paul Kossof…all that era. In the ’80’s, the school of thought was you were either Eddie Van Halen…or you were Randy Rhoads. As much as I loved playing with Randy in the ’70’s, it’s stuff that I’ve already done. I wanted to go very retro. The Blues-ier guys like Paul Kossof…they don’t exist anymore. (Bad Company guitarist) Mick Ralphs was one of the last guys to play in that style.”

Todd: Were you initially concerned that a certain aspect of your die-hard fans wouldn’t embrace the new recording?

Kevin: “We’ve haven’t sold multi-platinum in many, many years, so it doesn’t really make a difference. We made an album that we wanted to make for ourselves. We kept making the same record over and over again and that’s boring. In all honesty, as much as I like some of the songs on Guilty Pleasures, it’s an ear that had already been well traveled by us before. It would have been boring for us to have traveled it again. The only song on Rehab that’s like that is “It Sucks To Be You”. The only reason why we included it was because Frankie said we needed some small link to the past. It’s a classic in that style of music. I was hesitant to include it, but I suppose you do need to have some small link. …But it’s not where we want to go musically. We’re not trying to reinvent ourselves, we’re just trying to explore more areas of this one microcosm of Rock music. Of course getting Glenn involved was big for us because Glenn is just so versatile. You don’t realize how talented someone like Glenn Hughes is until you ask him to help you write a song and you see how quickly it flows out of him. …He’s so brilliant, ya know? It’s just effortless for him. That’s a true sing of how talented someone is. It takes no effort…boom and it just happens.”

Todd: What was the main motivation behind choosing to record a cover of “Evil Woman”?

Kevin: “Many time when you do you a cover, you’ll be doing it looking for radio airplay, but we weren’t doing it for that because the landscape of radio has changed so much over the years that it would be pointless. I talked about doing “Evil Woman” as a duet with Glenn. …The original was done as a suet, so it was an obvious choice to do with Glenn. …It has such a heavy riff…and we wanted the album to be more musical and more heavy, so it was perfect to finish the album with it. Also, we wanted to do more jamming because we do a lot of it live. I’m sure you noticed that a lot of the songs are longer in length…”

Todd: Yeah, I did notice that. I was particularly surprised when I notice that “Evil Woman” was over eight minutes long…

Kevin: “Yeah, but it works. …Doing my solo album taught me a lot. It taught me that I was capable of doing music from other…aspects of Rock music. But I had to play with people that shared my vision. Frankie has always shared my vision. He’s always loved the bands that I mentioned…Humble Pie, Free…bands of that era. Knowing that the two of us could do it together, it was matter of finding the right rhythm section because the rhythm sections from that era played very differently than the bands of today. Simon Kirke, John Bonham, Jerry Shirley…now that is a lost art. You don’t hear anyone play like that anymore. As far as bass players go, Chuck is one of the best bass players we’ve ever used and is perfect for Frankie, but we weren't working together at that particular time. We were actually working with a guy from here in Las Vegas who had completely lost all of his confidence by the time we got to the room, so we had to find somebody else in a hurry. Frankie’s had a long relationship with Tony Franklin so he asked him and he agreed. And the day after, Glenn agreed to do it, too. We already had Tony on board, so we used Glenn on “Evil Woman”.”

Todd: It must have been almost surreal to have the opportunity to work on a single recording with so much talent…

Kevin: “For me, as a Rock fan as well as a singer, it was fantastic because I was a huge fan of The Firm’s first album. When I first heard it, it was a real groundbreaker for bass playing. Not only was it groundbreaking, it was mixed louder than most album’s bass. Combining the…fretless style with Rock music was something no one else had thought of up until that point. …On “Old Habits Die Hard”, we had always wanted to do one of those girl singer, Hammond organ songs that had a real Blues base to it. It was impossible to do something like that in the previous incarnations of Quiet Riot. It was impossible because it wasn’t a Blues-based band. Frankie and I were Blues based, but the other guys weren’t really. It was based in something else. I’m not trying to say it was good or bad, it was just something else. It was what it was…but it was only one aspect of Rock music and was extremely limited. Eddie Van Halen is an example of an individual whose managed to do more than one thing while still retaining his own identity.”

Todd: Is the current version of the group better than the classic Metal Health era line-up?

Kevin: “Well, I don’t know why people call that line-up the classic line-up because to me, that line-up wasn’t classic at all. It just happened that those four people were in a band together when an album broke real big. The so-called classic line-up had some fun moments in the ’80’s for about ten minuets. When we got back together from 1997 to 2003, those were probably the six worst years of my life. …This is a musical band of nice people. Everybody gets along good and has the same sense of humor and it’s not self-serving for anybody on a personal level. …The only difference for Frankie and me with the old band is that Frankie has a tolerance for a lot of stuff that I won’t deal with. I don’t think he cared for it either, but a lot of people have fond memories of that band because they saw them on MTV. It’s like your first taste of pussy…there’s a lot better pussy out there. If you haven’t seen a lot of other Rock bands, the Metal Health line-up does seem like a good idea. But if you were in it, here were some not so good moments. …It was a fun ear, but we have a band now that can compete musically and visually with the band from that era. It’s much better musically, that’s for sure.”

Todd: Do you also feel it’s better than the version of the group that featured Randy Rhoads?

Kevin: “No doubt about it. Frankie Banali is untouchable. He’s one of the few Rock drummers who is identifiable by his sound and his style. Think about it…John Bonham, Cozy Powell, Keith Moon…these are guys who have distinctive drum styles. Frankie Banali falls into that category. That sound and groove he has on “South Of Heaven”…you don’t hear that anymore. Kelly Garney is one of my best friends and he’s a good bass player, but as far as that classic rhythm section John Paul Jones/John Bonham thing…that’s not where Kelly came from. He learned how to play bass from Randy, so he played bass like a guitar. You can’t compare Kelly and (original Quiet Riot drummer) Drew (Forsythe) to Frankie and Chuck or Frankie and Tony Franklin. …The less said about Drew the better. Comparing him to Frankie Banali…you just can’t. …And I wasn’t the greatest singer either. It was a fun band to go watch…but musically, the first Quiet Riot line-up was really primitive. I was twenty two years old at the time and was still listening to managers that were telling us to sound like whatever the flavor of the week was. …The end result of that was the band Angel because they had the same manager. Every time something new came along, they told Angel to sound like that. And I’m sure they had the same reaction. They wanted to do what they wanted to do. But you want a record deal so bad when you’re young that you tend to follow these business people. Randy always hated that. He had his own vision of what we should sound like.”

Todd: Realistically, what are you’re commercial expectations for Rehab?

Kevin: “None. We don’t really care. We wanted to make something that we like. We did it for ourselves for our own artistic fulfillment. Anybody who gets it and likes it speaks the same language. Anyone that doesn’t like it…we could care less. We love listening to old Free, Humble Pie and Led Zeppelin records and the love we get out of that inspired this record. …If you close yourself off from listening to us play another style of Rock music then you’ll be missing out on some pretty bad ass retro ’70’s style stuff.”

Todd: I guess I always considered Guilty Pleasures to be a retro album…

Kevin: “The Guilty Pleasures line-up wasn’t capable of doing anything else other than that. When we did Metal Health, that was that same style and that line-up can only function during those type of songs. It’s just the way that it is. That line-up could not have done songs like “Blind Faith” or “South Of Heaven” because they’re too groove orientated. A groove orientated song takes a Blues base and that band was not Blue-based. And I like Carlos, but he’s not a Blues-based player. He’s an Eddie Van Halen devotee. I like Eddie Van Halen, I like Carlos and I like Carlos’s guitar playing, but I wanted to do more than that with my career. I only have one life to live and I wanna do something that I enjoy more than “Bang Your Head”. I do enjoy “Bang Your Head”, but I wanna do other things. The next album will be even more unique.”

Todd: Once the recording process was finished, did you consider touring with anyone other than Alex and Chuck?

Kevin: “We hadn’t even thought about it at that point. We had made the record as a separate thing. We were using various different guys on those instruments because we had ended our contracts with Alex and Chuck. We were at a sort of crossroads and weren’t sure what to do. And we talked with Tracii Guns, of course and sorta made a premature announcement that he was in the group before we realized that it wouldn’t be a good idea for either side. I love Tracii, but Tracii and Quiet Riot have two completely different philosophies on how a bands should be run. And that’s not to say either side is correct…it’s just different. …He loves Randy Rhoads and we love that, but there’s more to being in this band than just playing like Randy Rhoads. There’s this whole internal chemistry that has to be good.”

Todd: Is it just my imagination or do you avoid playing material from Terrified?

Kevin: “We have in the past. We used to play three songs from it…“Cold Day In Hell”, “Terrified” and “Psycho City”. We got bored with it after a while. But you also won’t hear us playing anything from Alive And Well or Guilty Pleasures either because the album that sold the most is Metal Health and the second is Condition Critical. You have to play the stuff people are really familiar with and then play your current release. We only have a seventy five minute time allotment on any given night, so there are a certain amount of songs we have to play and songs that I want to play. …We played some songs from Guilty Pleasures for way too long and I absolutely cannot play them again. I’m not saying anything bad about them, but they overstayed their welcome in the set. I enjoyed the Terrified album very much, but again, you have your new releases…”

Todd: Are you able to get a fresh perspective on the older material with this line-up?

Kevin: “…We don’t put too much of a fresh perspective on it. We do it because that’s what the audience is interested in. We like playing the new stuff better than anything else, but we are required to play all the old hits. Glenn Hughes is probably one of the finest singers on the planet and he never had a hit single. As much of a shame as that is, it doesn’t limit what he plays in his live set. He could play his entire new record and his hardcore fans would think it’s just fine. Because we had such a huge record, we are required to play a good amount of Metal Health. …It’s a cross that we’ll always have to bear, but it’s not too heavy of a cross.”

Todd: Have you ever found yourself not wanting to play a song like “Slick Black Cadillac”?

Kevin: “Every night. I didn’t wanna play it in 1983. I had been playing since 1977...but it’s over so quickly, I don’t really think about it. I think these shows that we are doing are a gift. If there is a certain song I don’t like, I’m sorta being ungrateful towards my career. I enjoy what I do, I think I do it better than I did when I was younger and I’m glad to still have the opportunity to do it.”

Todd: Is there any chance the first two albums will ever be re-released domestically?

Kevin: “I wouldn’t know at this point because I am so present minded. I’m so involved with what I’m doing now, that it really hasn’t been a focus of mine. …The Rehab album turned our so well that my focus will continue to be new music. I see Kelly Ganey who played bass on the first two albums all the time. But I try to focus on what I’m doing now. I’m not hurting for anything in my life right now, so trying to throw something out there to make a quick buck is not where I’m at. …I mean I could write a book about that era, too, but you know what? Let other people with terrible memories. …I think the first requirement for people who write books that are biographical is a good memory and not everyone has one. Take my word for it. …I’ve had a great life. There’s some people that I’d rather forget, but I’ve moved on.”

Todd: At least you’re not sitting around giving bitter interviews to VH1...

Kevin: “Having said that, I probably won’t be doing anything more with them. …I’m sick of sitting around for three hours as a favor to them so they can use ten seconds. I have other things that I can do. …They don’t wanna talk about rehab or anything current because VH1 isn’t really about anything current. It’s all ’80’s this and ’80’s that. I could make my own ’80’s show. I would call it “The ’80’s Were Fun, But I Don’t Live There Anymore.” VH1 makes thousands of dollars of these shows and that’s great. I’m not expecting to get paid, but if you’re going to use me, I have more to say than just ‘…it was a good time and I got blown by a lot of girls…’. That’s about the extent of the depth of the sound bytes that they take. I doubt you’ll see me doing anymore of them.”

Todd: Is it true that they lost all of the old videotape footage you loaned to them?

Kevin: “…They say they don’t have it. Somebody stole it. The basic story is that a runner took them over to a copy house and kept the originals. And they’re not going to admit to it because who wants to be on the receiving end of that lawsuit, ya know? Every time I talk to them about it, they pass the responsibility off to someone else. Nobody seems to know what’s going on. They lost some amazing historical footage. …It really is a crime and having said that, I don’t belabor stuff like that anymore. I have to let go of things that drive me crazy because nothing really comes of it. …There’s a certain person that I used to play with that it’s pretty well known that I don’t like. I used to go on and on about it and one day Frankie said ‘…why do you talk about it? He’s out of your life…’. I told him I was venting and he said ‘…well stop venting. We’ve all heard enough of it…’ …And he’s right. To focus on something that you no longer have to deal with and is negative is pointless. That’s why I don’t focus on the whole VH1 thing. It’s not like I can go back. It’s pointless.”

Todd: Whatever became of the demos that you did with Greg Leon on guitar? Were those Quiet Riot demos or DuBrow demos?

Kevin: “…There are one set of demos…eleven songs. …They were DuBrow demos. They’re around somewhere, I guess. …They’re okay. They’re nothing groundbreaking. They’re a mix of early Quiet Riot and the Metal Health era of Quiet Riot. We did a cover version of The Temptations song “My Girl” Van Halen style that’s pretty cool. The rest of it was just okay. The band itself was just okay. It wasn’t a great band, it wasn’t a terrible band. It was just a mediocre Rock band. …You start with nothing and then you hopefully make it into something. I’ll be fifty one this weekend and I’m a much better singed now than I was when I was seventeen. It’s funny when I look at the stuff Paul Rodgers did when he was seventeen…if I had really thought about it, I don’t think I would have continued because it’s just so amazing. It took me a lot longer to get good and what I did… I’m happy where I’m at, but it was a long road to get there.”

Todd: How have you managed to keep your voice in such good shape?

Kevin: “I don’t smoke. Smoking to me is the number one killer of good Rock voices. I’ve also always had a strong voice. …I’ve channeled a lot of my energy towards not screaming. If you notice, there aren’t a lot of ad libs on this record. The yelps and the ‘…oh yeahs…’ weren’t there and you wanna know why? I was searching through all of my old records and I realized that real singers don’t do all that nonsense. I love “Runnin’ With The Devil” by Van Halen and all those ad libs Dave does fit perfectly for that song, but for the era we were trying to go from, Paul Rodgers, Steve Marriott and Glenn Hughes, you don’t hear those singers do all those ‘…oh yeahs…’, yelps gurgles and farts. Not doing them lets the song breather for itself. …I have every Glenn Hughes record and I was listening to them and realized Glenn doesn’t do any ad libs. He just sings and it’s good stuff. In my case, less is more and I wasn’t trying as hard.”

Todd: Do you think you have more control over your voice now?

Kevin: “…This kind of music requires a bit of musical restraint for it to be Bluesy. You’re not gonna come across Bluesy if your just constantly screaming every note there is. The Blues have a feel to them. Quiet Riot is not a Blues band, but we want to be Blues-based.”

Select Discography

Rehab (2006)

Live And Rare, Vol. 1 (2005)

Guilty Pleasures (2001)

Alive And Well (1999)

Down To The Bone (1995)

Terrified (1993)

QR III (1986)

Condition Critical (1984)

Metal Health (1983)

Quiet Riot II (1978) *

Quiet Riot (1977) *

* features guitarist Randy Rhoads

kevindubrow.com