The Dead Daisies- Lock N’ Load

If you go all the way back to the beginning, when rock & roll was new and exciting, when a guitar solo was the epitome of Jimmy Page in dragon pants and you harnessed that cataclysmic feeling by just thinking what kind of band you could create in your adulthood.

“When we finished our song, all the girls were screaming for us,” remembered current Dead Daisies keyboard player Dizzy Reed about his first experience performing on a stage. “That was pretty much when I realized, I want to keep doing this.” For guitar player Richard Fortus, that moment came when he inherited some albums from his aunt: “[It] was the complete Beatles and Rolling Stones, T Rex and Humble Pie, Black Sabbath, Peter Frampton. And that stuff, to me, was like finding a treasure chest. I lived in those records for a good solid year; just obsessed over that stuff.”

It’s now 2013 and both Reed and Fortus are living in the jungle of rock & roll. Both have long-term gigs with Guns N Roses but their love for music keeps them spreading their wings with new bands that allow them to explore even more stimulating avenues of music. Both musicians can boast at least three other bands that they give their attentions to when time allows. But there is something special about their latest project which is starting to build quite a fire on the music scene.

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The Dead Daisies is the brainchild of former INXS singer Jon Stevens and guitar player David Lowy. “Dead Daisies started out with myself and David Lowy getting together and trying to write some songs,” explained Stevens during their stop in Phoenix while the band was part of the Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Festival. “We wrote a whole lot of songs very quickly and recorded them. From there we went back to Australia and somebody heard us and we did some shows with ZZ Top and Aerosmith at the time.”

Word began spreading like a wild fire. Divinyls drummer Charley Drayton entered the picture next. “Charley Drayton is an old friend,” Stevens continued. “We had talked about putting a band together and I asked Charley and Charley said he’d love to do it. And Charley mentioned Richard and we called Richard.” “Charley Drayton called me and asked if I was available,” Fortus affirmed. “Charley is one of the greatest musicians I’ve ever worked with and whenever I have an opportunity to play with him, I jump on it, because I know that I will walk away a better musician. I always learn something when I work with him.” “It was just sort of through the friends network,” added Stevens. “It really was that organic.”

It was while the Daisies were touring with GNR in Australia that Reed got a good taste of what was happening in the band and decided that he’d also like to be a part of the fun. “Richard Fortus was doing some shows with them on our off days,” Reed told me a few days following the last date of the Uproar tour. “I said, ‘You guys need a keyboard player?’” (laughs) When plans were first being made to jump on the summertime traveling festival, “Richard called me and they wanted me to come on board and I said, ‘Absolutely, for sure.’”

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Uproar turned out to be a sealant for the band, although there were some revolving door members. Drayton was replaced by Alex Carapetis, who ended up having to leave the tour due to unforeseen circumstances. His replacement was GNR drummer Frank Ferrer. “Luckily, we were in New York,” remembered Fortus, “and I called a few drummers and Frank was the first one to respond.” Then, with just a few Uproar shows left, Ferrer had to depart and Brian Tichy was brought in. “Tichy is amazing,” said Fortus. “He is a monster.”

“Dizzy Reed called me asking if I was available to fill in for a show which turned into four,” explained Tichy in Phoenix. “It’s a great band and Jon, the singer, is amazing, and Dizzy I’ve known for years. So it’s nice to come in with some buds and play as opposed to coming into a new band where you don’t know anybody.”

Marco Mendoza, bass player for Thin Lizzy (who recently changed their name to Black Star Riders), has also been a part of the Dead Daisies family, although Darryl Jones of the Rolling Stones will take over on bass while Mendoza rejoins BSR when the two bands tour the UK together in November and December. Drayton will also be back in the fold on drums. “Charley Drayton and Darryl Jones. It simply doesn’t get any better than that,” Fortus exclaimed happily.

I asked the guys what is was like playing on the recent Uproar Festival tour and these are the memories they shared with me:

Fortus: Getting to play with some great drummers (laughs). It’s been a marathon, a lot of shows in not a lot of time compared to the leisurely schedule I’m accustomed to (laughs)

Stevens: Doing it in that heat. Oh my God.

Fortus: Yeah, dealing with the heat

Reed: Phoenix was unbearably hot and that’s all I remember (laughs). In Phoenix, it was so hot that all the black keys on my keyboard were burning my fingers and my mic was burning my lips. That’s how hot it was. But it was a lot of fun.

Fortus: We were playing in Dallas and the generator that powers our stage blew. We were about two songs in and when the power went out the inflatable roof started to fall. So we literally brought the roof down – on ourselves.

Reed: We were in Boise and that show actually got cancelled and we were sitting on the bus just getting hailed on from this massive storm that was pretty intense.

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While playing in the late afternoon, when the sun was beaming down in it’s full intensity every day, I asked Stevens if that somehow made it difficult to sing:

Stevens: Not really

Fortus: Jon doesn’t warm up or cool down or anything. He just goes out and belts it out. I mean, his work ethic is unparalleled for a singer. I didn’t hear him cry and moan once (laughs). But as far as vocals, we’d rehearse every day and then he’d go out and do gigs at night and usually singers are like very precious about their instrument.

Stevens was also doing the tour in a cast after breaking his leg during a fishing accident, and not even that deterred the singer. He was often up off his stool, hopping around, throwing some boxing punches and literally enjoying his time in the sun. “I’m doing good,” the native New Zealander said with a hearty laugh. “I go back to Australia [when the tour ends] and get it x-rayed and we may have to operate on my leg but my thumb’s doing good.”

Stevens’ reputation as a singer, even before he joined INXS, has been stellar. His band Noiseworks had four Top 10 albums in Australia during the eighties and early nineties. And his time in Jesus Christ Superstar garnered him rave reviews and a #1 album. “I do do musical theatre but you’ve got to understand, it wasn’t ‘musical theatre’, it was arenas in front of ten thousand people,” Stevens explained regarding the difference between that and a regular rock concert. “But it’s more discipline. You got to be at the right place at the right time saying the right things in the right way (laughs). And it’s more like a house of cards because the thing I did with Jesus Christ Superstar, it’s so revered and well-known, the punters know every nuance, so if I fuck it up, everybody knows. That’s the only pressure.”

More pressure than stepping into the frontman shoes in INXS? “It’s quite different really cause in INXS we were all friends for many years. Michael Hutchence was a good friend of mine so we all knew each other. And Michael had been passed away for four years and the band had been told by all the critics and everyone that basically, you should give up. But they’re musicians, and three brothers in the band, they wanted to keep playing but they were without a leader so they asked me to become a singer and I said, ‘I’ll become a singer, I have no problem with it.’ Michael would be absolutely stoked if I was singing in that band. So three and a half years later, they didn’t do anything, so I left.”

The Daisies first single to hit the airwaves earlier this year was “Lock & Load,” featuring Stevens’ ballsy whiskey-laced vocals and Slash on guitar. A slow-burning sizzler of a song, it preceded an album filled with similar classic rock-type anthems that the band energized even more when playing live. But what really has the band excited at the moment is some new songs. “We’ve been writing songs, which has been really exciting,” Fortus said with a gleam in his eyes. “Yeah, we wrote some new songs and then we jumped off the tour for a couple days in New York and tracked them and then we finished them up here in LA,” Reed called in to tell me right after the Uproar tour ended. “And I got to say, it’s pretty exciting stuff. I think people are really going to dig it.”

Continued Reed, “The songs that we have out now, I love the songs, I think they’re great. That was another factor that made me want to go on tour with them. But I think maybe now they’re a little bit heavier and I think we went in more as a band. And when you have that energy, when you’ve been touring, if you can capture that energy in the studio that you have live, I think it’s a big positive, a plus, and it’s going to be a better record. And I think we definitely captured that.”

Reiterated Fortus, “The new songs are definitely darker and much heavier. It’s even more classic sounding. We all wrote these songs together as a band, as opposed to being written and recorded by only Jon and David, as the last record was. It’s definitely new music for classic rock fans. It has elements of The Faces, Humble Pie, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Doors, The Stooges, The Angels. You can really hear our early influences.”

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Speaking of influences, I asked the guys if the daydreams they had as kids of being rock stars was similar to the life they were leading in adulthood:

Fortus: Oh that fantasy was shattered years ago (laughs)

Stevens: Hell yeah

Fortus: Because for me, my career has been step-by-step-by-step and there was nothing meteoric about it. And I know Noiseworks were pretty big and it took off so that creates a different set of issues. To reach that type of success like that, like the original Gunners, to go out on tour and you come back a year later and when you left, you didn’t have a house, didn’t have an apartment, nothing. And you come back and you’re like, “Hey, you’re a millionaire. I guess I should buy a house.” But it must mess with you.

Stevens: For me, I’ve always been doing music since I can remember. I was twelve years old when I had my first band. Do the work, plug in and enjoy it.

Fortus: Yeah, it’s all an adventure

Stevens: We’re like pirates, modern day pirates

Fortus: But we’re also incredibly fortunate to be doing what we love.

For Reed, he had a similar answer: It’s nothing like what my fantasy was (laughs). The reality is I got into this business, wanted to do this, cause I really didn’t want to go to work every day. I didn’t want to have a nine-to-five job, you know. I wanted to wake up every morning and do something that I enjoy, which I do. But, to have any sort of longevity in this business and to be able to continue to do it, to be at the top of your game, you basically never stop working. I work now constantly. There is always something going on that is music related, business related, so I’m working a lot more than I ever thought I would. But at the same time, I’m doing something that I love and that’s cool. My kids are growing up now, I got divorced but I’m married again, so as life goes on, the dream changes basically. When you’re living the dream, it’s really not the dream you had. It never is.

Even Tichy weighed in on the question: It’s not the same at all, because you’re talking to me and not talking to a member of KISS or Led Zeppelin or Van Halen. The difference is, and I don’t know about anybody else, but the difference is, for me as a kid, I would look at Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, Van Halen and KISS, and they are the rock stars, they are the guys that we have the posters of on our walls. At that time there was no internet, there was no MTV, even though MTV made rock stars even bigger, I guess. But Angus Young is a fucking rock star, you know what I mean. For me personally, I’m just me.

For a band on the verge of breaking out, with members who have already tasted the fame and it’s spoils, being back at the beginning when rock & roll was fun and uncensored and carefree is what makes being in the Dead Daisies an experience they definitely want to hold onto.

Fortus: That’s what’s been really exciting for me, to feel excited about a project. Plus, to be playing live and feel like everyone is working towards a common goal, that we’re all building this new thing and it’s working and it’s exciting.

Stevens: And brand new. With all the experience in the band, it’s really refreshing cause we’re all like really excited about the potential of whatever the music dictates.

 For more of my interview with Dizzy Reed, check it out here.

 

 

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