The Curious Musician
Hi I'm Robbie Gennet. I like to chat with people about curiosity, imagination and creativity. I also love exploring credits on vinyl albums and discussing the music and history of the players, arrangers and producers. Join me!
The Curious Musician
Curious Musician Interview: Jeff Scott Soto
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Greetings and welcome to The Curious Musician! This is a space where we will explore creativity and curiosity by interviewing a host of interesting and notable people for chewy conversations and some great concert stories too.
The new episode of the podcast is out this week featuring Jeff Scott Soto, whose soaring vocals have graced the music of such varied acts as Yngwie Malmsteen, Journey, Trans Siberian Orchestra and the lead singer of the band at the heart of the movie Rock Star. I hope you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation and help spread the word out there! The full interview is available at @Spotify and @Apple and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Hot tip: toggle the button on Apple to see the video of the episode!
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Link up at www.instagram.com/the.curiousmusician and YouTube!
Yeah. Alright, welcome to the Curious Musician. I'm Robbie Jeanette here with Jeff Scott Soto. Thank you so much for being here with me. Um, Jeff, I've known you a long time and I haven't seen you in a long time, but I remember meeting you in a parking lot of a hotel when I was on a fresh face kid on tour with Saigon Kick, and I asked you to sing I Am a Viking in the parking lot. But now I look back, I'm like, how could I do that? But you're awesome, and I loved uh I love that moment. But um what uh would you you've done so much stuff? I mean, I was looking down the resume of all the different albums you've sung on from backup vocals, lead vocals. What do people come up and and kind of recognize you most for?
SPEAKER_03Uh it starts with Ingve. Uh that's that's the main one everybody always remembers is the Ingve thing, and uh that's I guess what I'm most known for. The next one, believe it or not, is Rockstar, even though that you jump ahead quite a few years, mainly because anytime you get a movie that's got the mass appeal with the media and all that stuff, you're naturally going to get more traction from that. So people know the knowing that I provided the voice in the movie for uh the main lead singer in the movie, it's something it's one of the go-to's that uh that people know me from. And then of course you trickle on down to uh to journey and trans-Siberian Orchestra, not that it's trickling, it's uh yeah, it's still quite an accomplishment um uh in terms of uh all the attention that I'm able to garner. But I would say it starts with Ingve and TSO and Journey kind of a little lower than that because obviously I'm singing somebody else's vocals compared to when I started with Ingve, that was all original stuff for us, right?
SPEAKER_00Well, what do you wish people knew you more for?
SPEAKER_03You know what? Between my own solo career and the band Talisman, those those were the things that uh that meant the most to me in terms of my own personal career. Of course, later, like bands like Wet and uh and Soto, they mean a lot to me as well. But at the time, especially for the longevity, uh, as many albums that I've got with Talisman and the amount of years that I put with that band, that was one I was hoping would resonate more with uh with people around the world more. But we it was one of those daily dollar short situations, you know. By the time Talisman dropped, it was just before the whole grunge movement. And uh we we didn't stand a chance. We stood a chance for people, the purists that still love the hard rock, melodic rock kind of thing. And that's pretty much that's that's where our focus in our audience was.
SPEAKER_00Right on. And I want to come back later to Marcel and the that whole world. Um, I want to go back. You were born and raised in Brooklyn, yes?
SPEAKER_03Uh, not raised. Uh born in Brooklyn, we moved to LA when I was eight. And eight, okay. So I was pretty, yeah. Being 61 or almost 61, I would say I'm more native Californian. But it's funny because it even with the small amount of years that I lived in New York as a little kid, you put me in a situation with all the New Yorkers and uh it naturally comes out, you start talking like that and walk the dog and see you off in there. Yeah, so all that's still in me. It's it's something that'll never never be uh it never go away.
SPEAKER_00Now, did you as uh once you were uh playing and in music, did you go back and play like Lemours or any place back there to kind of like return?
SPEAKER_03Well, I was eight when uh when we moved here, so I didn't know of any of the clubs or any of the names, but yeah, the book we I played Lemoores twice, got to do the Beacon Theater in uh was it Passaic? Nice, I believe so, yeah. And so the only the only one I haven't done yet, and man, it was that close is the garden. Um that's you know, as a as a New Yorker and a Californian, it's the lifelong dream to play the the Forum or the Hollywood Bowl. I got the Hollywood Bowl, yeah, and the for and and the garden in uh in New York City. But uh we we were this close. We did when I was on the journey tour, the second leg of the maybe even the third leg, we're coming back around New York. I wasn't in the band when they played Jones Beach. And when we were coming back around New York, we were asked by management, hey, do you guys wanna you wanna do Jones Beach again? Obviously, that's for the money because if we played the garden, that's for the status. We're gonna be basically playing for free.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03And they waited, they sat on it, they slept on it, and like, and oh please garden, please garden, and they decided to go for the the money.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's business, you know. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03No, you know, and if I'm jumping ahead, but yeah, my time with Journey is something I'll I'll never forget. It was it was uh, you know, I'm singing these songs pretty much all of my adolescence anyway, in the shower and in bands, you know, rehearsals, and and just just because that was the soundtrack of my life, and to be able to do it with the guys that actually wrote it was an absolute dream come true.
SPEAKER_00Oh, for sure. Well, were there any songs uh from deep in the catalog that you kind of wanted to sing but they were not including in the set?
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, I mean when we did the tour with Def Leopard, that you it's a shorter set, it was like an 80-minute set, so you kind of have to concentrate on what they call the dirty dozen, yeah. The main 12 songs that people expect to hear, and then you could throw in a couple deep cuts, but nothing too deep. Uh, but when we did the headline tour in 2007, that's where I they they were very receptive, actually. I said I I'd love to do open the door from the infinity album, and we got to do that. Uh, I wanted to do Rubicon, but they threw that in.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_03Um there was another one, uh, After the Fall, another one from uh from the Frontiers album. So we got to throw in some deep cuts for me that uh I was really looking forward to hopefully someday doing, and we did them.
SPEAKER_00What did it take them a while to like pull those together? Were they like, oh, we know how to play it? Let's go.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, no. They they they sleep on it, they just kind of review it, and then next day that you hear them kind of you know cramming on it, doing their own homework, and then at soundcheck we'd knock it out and play it that night. La New Day was another one that uh we weren't doing early on, and I got to do. So yeah, there was actually quite a few of them. Line of fire, we got to throw in. Oh, awesome! Yeah, yeah. There's so many songs, and I really I wanted to do more of the uh the the Greg Rowley uh Steve Perry interchange. Yeah, and we we didn't, I think once or twice we did feeling that way or and and any time, but not as often as I I wanted to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, did you did you grow up uh listening to that captured cassette like me? I burned that thing.
SPEAKER_03Not only listened it attentively, I know every new, I know every word, spoken word when he's talking to the audience. And even when I repeat it, I do it in Steve Perry's pitch. So it's almost like I'm I'm trying to double track him. It's that's how sick I was with my obsession with journey.
SPEAKER_00So tell me, when you were uh young, you know, eight years in New York, and then you moved to LA, at what point did you discover, hey, I can sing?
SPEAKER_03Very early on, I to be honest with you, I I joke about it, but it's actually true. I I've been singing as long as I've been that I can remember talking. As as long as I've been able to just utter words, I'm I'm I've been actually singing and I've been emulating. And uh my earliest memories are listening to the Osmonds and listening to the Jackson 5 and seeing Donnie and Michael just maybe what eight years my senior, if even that, and me just saying, they're kids and they're singers and they're famous. I want to be a kid, I want to be, I mean, I'm a kid, I want to be a singer, I want to be famous, just like them as kids. So that was my first step in terms of I I didn't I didn't necessarily follow the adults yet. Those were my uh my two little teen idols that I was emulating back then.
SPEAKER_00And I I think people uh kind of underrate the Osmonds as far as talent as songwriters, yeah, performers, and singers, especially. But uh there's so much so much there, right?
SPEAKER_03You know, and and I you know I'm gonna say it here. It's uh I'm probably gonna get hate mail for it, but as the singers, the Osman brothers, take away Donnie and Michael, the Osman brothers are better singers than the Jackson brothers. I'm sorry, I said it.
SPEAKER_00That's you know, it's on record, you know. You can go back like you ever listened to The Plan, that record.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, they're very talented family. And you know, everybody tries to harp on the rivalry of Donnie and Michael, and they were actually really good friends, and yeah, they they were actually stepping stones for each other. It was especially the the whole black and white thing back then, the whole civil uh thing back then. Right. They they the coexisting and just showing that uh uh two in that category can dominate the pop charts together as opposed to one trying to dethrone the other. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I once I got old enough, I looked at at the Osmonds like crazy horses, sounded like what a song. It sounds like rock and roll you'd make when you don't do drugs, but you're trying to emulate the the feeling, you know? Mormon metal, Mormon metal, I like it. That's great. So um, is there a song that you remember like learning all the lyrics to when you were when you were young that you like had down sung like that? Was like the the first tune your parents were like, listen to this guy.
SPEAKER_03It would have had to be like uh greatest hits of the Jackson 5 at the time. I mean, not that there were many, because when I discovered them, they were still they they only had like two or three albums out, right? So, but obviously the hits were the ones I focused on most. Even today, if I listen to the full album of ABC or the full album of um I forgot the names of the titles, the original full versions of those albums. I don't know a lot of the songs, I only knew the the ones that obviously everybody knew because those ones you play over and over and over and over.
SPEAKER_00Were your parents musical, or did they at least put on music that uh that they exposed you to?
SPEAKER_03They were both singers and throughout high school, they were in glee clubs and they there was a vocal band that they were part of. And when my mom fell pregnant with my brother, that's when they decided, you know, it this is silly to try to pursue something we need to pursue making money and getting ready to raise a family. So they walked away from pursuing it, but they they kept singing in church, and that was always their passion to keep singing in church in the uh in the choir. And my mother still does it to this day. My father did it to the the you know to the day he passed. So they just didn't pursue it professionally, but there was always music in the house, and both my brother and I were very musical in terms of everything we did and pursued was all musical-based.
SPEAKER_00What would be a song you remember your dad singing in the car?
SPEAKER_03Well, unfortunately, I wasn't raised by my father. My parents split when I was two, so I don't have any of those memories, recollections. But for my mom, her go-to song was always Our Day Will Come, uh, Ruby and the Romantics, I think. Wow. I actually, because I was able to record a song with my dad, a duet with my dad, many years ago, especially before it passed. I always said I want to do a song with my mom before she leaves us. And we did that song. I got a version of that song and we we got to do it together. It was awesome.
SPEAKER_00That's tremendous. Is it available everywhere? It's just your private.
SPEAKER_03I just put it out on uh on my socials. I, you know, every like Mother's Day or whatever, her birthday, I I'll I'll share and put it out there.
SPEAKER_00Right on. So um, you moved out to LA. Obviously, when you were in New York, you probably didn't go see live music as a kid.
SPEAKER_03Nope, not at eight years old. No, my first concert, I was thinking I think I was 12 or 13. I went to go see the Bee Gees at Dodger Stadium uh with Andy Gibbs. It was the only show Andy played with the Bee Gees. And I got to see that that historical moment. If you see the documentaries, it's that was Dodger Stadium. So as a kid, just being in the in the throes of the audience and everything, for my first thought was I don't belong down here, I belong up there. And so that was always my intent. I always I I don't want to say that I'm a snob, but in in a way, I'm a I'm an audience snob. I don't want to be, you know, crushed and watching my concert this way. I don't enjoy it that way. I want to be watching the concert where I can move my arms and enjoy it and listen and really absorb it without people putting phones or yeah, you know, somebody standing at somebody's shoulders. That's why I knew I I need to be on the stage and even watching the show from the stage. That's just my my own snobbery and I I guess as well the ambition to to keep pursuing what I was doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and the bee gees. I mean, people nowadays don't really realize how big the bee gees were at that time, you know?
SPEAKER_03And we if you're gonna talk crazy horses uh from the Osmonds, you gotta talk about tragedy. But I mean, that's a rock song.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_03The green's open my screen. I hope I'm okay still in the visual here.
SPEAKER_00No, you're good. Uh you look fantastic. Um, you're looking good.
SPEAKER_03You look good, kid.
SPEAKER_00You look good, kid. So um, yeah, with the you know, sometimes you know, you don't understand the hysteria unless you were kind of there, but the bee Gees were humongous, and a lot of people talk about that movie Sergeant Peppers is ruining their career, but Spears Having Flown came out the next year, '79, I think. Tragedy, love you inside and out, too much heaven.
SPEAKER_03You know, first of all, first of all, I'll say the Bee Gees were my Beatles for my parents or my the generation before me, they were the Beatles were for them. That's what the Bee Gees were for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And to this day, obviously, Barry being the last surviving member, the last surviving brother, sibling, whatever, uh, I'm still working on one day thanking him in person. I've I've been able to get messages across to him because of my association with his son Steve. Uh, but from that, I'm also hoping that Steve will pull it together that uh I'll be able to shake the man's hand and give him a hug and say thank you from you know from my heart for all the inspiration and everything he's given me as an artist, because it really truly helped and molded what I do and what I did. It it I taught I learned how to sing harmonies because of the bee gees. I was I broke down the notes and followed their steps on how to how to actually build harmonies in songs. So that was my first steps in in terms of going that that direction. And so now you you tapped onto a very sore subject because it drives me nuts how everybody bashes that movie and soundtrack. The word having said the Bee Gees were my Beatles, again, I'm gonna be very blasphemous here, I'm gonna get hate mail, but there are version bee Gees versions of some of those Beatles songs that I prefer over the Beatles versions. I said it, I'm sorry. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00First of all, I don't want you to apologize. There are no guilty pleasures. Second of all, I agree with you 100%. And third of all.
SPEAKER_03Look at you. You see, I got that poster too. I just haven't mounted it. You know, it's the way uh even the way um Peter Frampton sang Golden Slumbers, the way Barry Gibb sang uh uh A Day in the Life, you know, there's certain projections that came out of the Bee Gees versions that I actually preferred better. And maybe it was it was the at that time, at that point in time, the updated tech technology behind it compared to the Beatles version.
SPEAKER_00I mean, look, they they were great singers, they were great players, but the Bee Gees are brothers, so you can't beat Brotherly Harmonies. And you have on the soundtrack to the Sgt. Peppers movie, George Martin producing, Jeff Emmerich engineering, you have a band. Jeff Bicaro on songs, the update Boogate, Bernard Purdy on drums, Wilbur Bascomb on bass, um, Max Middleton on Keys. It was the Jeff Beck uh blow-by-blow band without uh Phil.
SPEAKER_03I want to dive through my speak, my my camera, and give you a hug right now. The fact that you know all of this. All of it. I used to know all of it too, but you're just reminding me of everything I already knew because I was such a geek of the worthless information for Sergeant Pepper.
SPEAKER_00So here's what it was. That movie came out seven years after the end of the Beatles. So people who were big Beatles fans saw it as a terrible thing. Whereas kids growing up on that movie, it was the greatest Beatles indoctrination tool ever. And the fact that what galls me is that Peter Frampton and Barry Gibb don't recognize how many people love what they did and idolize them and how many of us wanted to be in music because of because I mean just look at look at come together, look at what Earth When in Fire did to got to get you into my life.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there were a couple bonk ones, you know, the uh Steve Martin doing a silver hammer.
SPEAKER_00But that was Steve Martin again, huge in a way that people nowadays don't understand, but that was completely in line.
SPEAKER_03It's comedy, yeah. But if you're not watching it, it doesn't translate. If you're just listening, you're going, What am I listening to? But I think I think I love Alice Cooper to death, yeah. But because is one of my favorite Beatles songs, and to hear him just kind of grunting over his like, no, don't try to get somebody who can sing the melody.
SPEAKER_00When you're a kid, he's father's son and he played that. You might not have even known his Alice Cooper, you know.
SPEAKER_03Again, when you're watching it, it totally worked. I mean, I I love the move to this day. I love that movie. It's my guilty pleasure. It's the one thing I will never apologize for for liking and loving. And again, I want to be able to tell Barry, hey, maybe everybody else panned it, but I loved it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, you know, he should hear that. Peter Frampton should hear that, and they should recognize they've gone through their whole life, their whole career, feeling like ashamed, like it was a bad thing, like it ruined them. And there's thousands, hundreds of thousands of people out, millions of people that are like, No, you are the dude.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. I I could talk about that movie. We could do a whole episode on that movie alone.
SPEAKER_00True. Well, what what other movie soundtracks, while we're on movies for a moment, what other movie soundtracks when you were coming up really hit you um beyond the movie itself, where the the music really big one because uh again, I not again, but in general, I've always been an old soul.
SPEAKER_03I I always loved my mother's music when she would she was always listening to Tom Jones and Johnny Mathis and all the shit, all those the soundtrack and the hit songs from the 50s. Yeah, you know, the the Chubby Checker, Fats Domino, that whole thing. So the soundtrack for American Graffiti was a huge one for me. Yes, that that one really impacted my life again. I knew all of those songs without even knowing who the bands were. I knew the names of the artists based on the songs, but I knew nothing else of them, and I didn't follow any, I didn't go into fandom with those artists, but I love those songs, you know, from why do fools fall in love to the twist and yeah, and and the even the whole Wolfman Jack uh contribution. Yeah that's all part of my my my youth, my upbringing. Yeah, so I when I listen to that stuff, I transfix myself into the 50s. I make I feel like I'm back in that time because I loved it, I lived and loved that music so much like it was current.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then, of course, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack that was a big one for me personally because uh and we're talking 380s. I listened to zero rock, zero point zero rock. Really, absolutely no rock. It was Queen and Journey that finally started me in the rock thing and sticks. That those were my gateways into metal and everything. But I hated rock to me, rock sounded like a bunch of noise, it just sounded like in my head. My friends listening to Kiss and Nugent and Cheap Trick. I thought, oh, how can you listen to this?
SPEAKER_00Of course, I bet that surprises people because you know you're known so much for hard rock and metal singing that you know.
SPEAKER_03Well, and and I think this is why, in general, even uh Mike Portnoy, for instance, made a statement doing an interview once during the Sons of Apollo era, where he said, What Jeff brings to Prague music is something we don't we don't we've never really heard. He brings soul, he's he's got so much soul and so much RB roots. Yeah, you hear that in his melodies in a prog band, and I never thought about it. Um I didn't realize I'm using those inflections, yeah, because it's just part of my DNA. Right. So I I really I'm so happy that even somebody else on the outside hears that the influence never went away. My Motown, my you know, the the BGs, the RB, everything that I grew up with in terms of pre-rock, I I was able to nurture in because those were the singers that that showed me you can inject both styles. Lou Graham with Foreigner, Bobby Kimball with Toto, you know, uh again Steve Perry bringing that whole Sam Cook thing into journey. Yes, you can have RB and soul with hard rock guitars, and all of a sudden the world opened up. Iron Maiden, Van Halen, right, you know, Judas Priest, Dio. So that's when that's when you discover this way more to what I was considering noise than you know, than it actually was. I mean, I hated ACDC and now I love them. It's it's just one of those things.
SPEAKER_00And so when you're you're in LA, you know, coming into the 1980s, and before you hook up with Ingve, obviously the sunset strip metal scenes coming up and whatnot. Um, as you kind of opened yourself up to rock, were you going out to some of those clubs?
SPEAKER_03Coconut not so much because I was uh I mean, I was I was still 18 when I joined Ngvei, so I was fresh out of high school. Yeah, I was out, I was out of high school not even a year when I got the Ingve gig. So there I I was too young to be going out, you know, high school. I can't go out during the week, uh, weekend, you know, I had curfews, couldn't I never drive even when I started driving at 16? I wasn't driving as far as Hollywood. So I didn't really hang out in the scene. I saw a few things here and there, but I never really enthralled myself in the scene. The furthest I would go is like the uh the country club in in uh Reseda. There was a really cool venue back in the 80s, and that was that was our watering hole. That was our kind of like our domain was the country club.
SPEAKER_00Did you see anybody in their larval stage before they got it? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Motley Crue was my that was my band. Nice. I saw I I had the original release of Too Fast for Love, and we watched the rise and the the the upswing of Motley Crue going from uh a big unsigned band to one of the biggest in the in the actual globe on the globe.
SPEAKER_00So did they sound pretty put together from the first time you heard them, or were they in my ears?
SPEAKER_03It's I I mean let's let's call them spade a spade. Yeah, Motley Crue is not they're not dream theater in terms of their musical skills, but in my ears for what they did and what they delivered, it was perfect. It was I I loved it. Mick Mars all the way on down to I mean Tommy Lee was an accomplished drummer, so you at least got that. And from that, we built on the fact that this badass drummer is the timekeeper for these killer songs and the image and everything. I I loved it all.
SPEAKER_00Um, were there bands from that era that you thought for sure were gonna make it that just disappeared?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I thought Hurricane would have been bigger than they actually um became. Um surprisingly warrant was bigger than I thought they would get. I thought Warrant might not have hit that stride, obviously, because of Cherry Pie in Heaven. But uh, and that's those those, you know, especially Cherry Pie, though that's the song that Janie Lane says he wishes he never wrote. Yeah, but granted the success came. That so more people got to hear him do the better crafted songs that he was known for that people actually respected him for later. He didn't get that respect while he was still alive. But yeah, Warrant had great songs.
SPEAKER_00I mean, they he got some respect. I mean, I saw Warrant in concert, and they definitely had screaming fans and people who knew all the words to every song.
SPEAKER_03You know, great. Why was another one? They they kind of got there and then they they stall mate and then they just kind of fell off. I thought after the once bitten, they could have actually gone up another curve, but uh yeah, and there's there's just so many. There was it was such a I don't want to say cluttered scene, but there was so much fighting for the same real estate back then. Yeah, yeah. And it was it there was no hope for it to survive and keep going and thriving the way it was. It had to kind of implode within implode within.
SPEAKER_00Well, Nirvana was gonna quickly put it into that in '91.
SPEAKER_03Um, yeah, and you know what? Everybody blames Nirvana or blames grunge, but I think people were just in general, they were they they want to change. They they were kind of this, they were sick of the same look, sound, uh kind of blueprint bitmap. Yeah, and that's why Nirvana was uh it was a breath of fresh air, as was Pearl Jam and the other ones. All that was stripped down and removed, and all of a sudden, hey, these are real guys again. Now we can get behind that. Even if girls follow them because they're good looking or because it resonated with them, it wasn't only following me because they were pretty boys, and now they wanted some some sustenance.
SPEAKER_00Well, to go from like cherry pie to smells like teen spirit, you know, that it's like a shift in a lot of things, but I think the what happened, it almost got too comical. You had the cowboy duster look, and then it just got very uh fandexy and watered down, and then and I get it.
SPEAKER_03And and in general, I think instead of completely destroying and killing off the genre, I think there was a way they could have kept it alive to to coexist, and it didn't have to compete, it didn't have to say, Oh, you're into that poser medal because they already had a lot of that, you know. They had in the early 80s, there was that when the thrash scene was starting to happen, you know, they were there was always a bashing on the posers, oh you fag, and all those words we can't use anymore.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03And uh and and that was that was already that rivalry, but yeah, everybody they persisted and they coexisted and everybody thrived and moved on. I think that could have actually happened with the hair metal scene, the grunge scene, if everyone just kind of toned it down a little bit, and and they did, you know, bands like Extreme, bands like Trickster, they they stripped away all the glitz and glam, yeah, and they looked a little more real, but by then people already associated with the uh the genre that was kind of fading.
SPEAKER_00And a lot of bands tried to change their sound, and that's a bit of a trap because when people get to know you for a sound and you're not evolving like David Bowie, where they just don't know what's next, that you do something that's too different and you lose people, and then you've lost what it made what made you you, even though you had to change, it's very tough, you know.
SPEAKER_03And that's the thing people don't understand or they don't realize what made you you when they first discovered you was you going through all those changes and shifts, anyways.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I listen, what my backstory if I only came from the Bee Gees and RB and Motown sound, there's no way you would have ever heard me singing I'm a Viking or I'll see the light tonight. Right. But because I did the moderate shift to that world, that was where my seed was planted. So clearly, when I go back and try to not force feed you, but kind of share what how I got there, right? People are going, I don't want to listen to that. That's that's not what that's not the sound that I got into you for. So of course the same happens when you try and reinvent yourself and try to go, I want to do something a little interesting and different. Like, no, stay in the same mode, stay in the same lane, then do an album like that, like, oh no, it's just releasing the same recycled crap. Like, I can't win.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's you know, you it's such a box and such a prison. Um, you know, I've known musicians and bands where they're talking about what the record label wants, what management expects, what the fans expect, what radio expects, and it's like really narrow. I mean, modern a genre like modern country, you have to narrow everything about you to fit in it, whereas rock and jazz have such a wide umbrella for things you can be and still be in considered that genre, you know.
SPEAKER_03And I I have the biggest respect for Ozzie Osborne. You think of the span, not only the the longevity that he's been able to, but even his sound changed, progressed, uh, experimented. There's so many listen to a song like Perry Mason or uh Mr. Tinker Train compared to Paranoid and Sweetleaf. There's so many vibes and styles that he was navigating, yeah, and people accepted it. People said it's Aussie, regardless of what style, whatever he's trying to do, or actually doing. And you got to give it up for somebody who's been able to have that level of success through all those decades.
SPEAKER_00I mean, like I was a big fan of the Randy Rhodes stuff and all that when No More Tears came out. That was like super cool. Absolutely. He transitioned 70s, 80s, 90s. Certain bands, Aerosmith, they came back after their 80s dip, and certain bands kind of transitioned through. I think it was those glam metal hair metal bands. Yeah, and I was gonna bring up a band. So we we're we'll talk a little bit about Saigon Kick. To me, Saigon Kick was a band that was post-Jane's addiction. Right. They still got sucked back in the hair metal because of the power ballad. Jane's addiction was one of those bands that if you would have been at the Roxy in 85 or 86 and seen these weird guys, you wouldn't have tagged him as going to make it or being influential. And yet, when we look back, bands that um were kind of post-Jane's addiction have something that enabled the music to me to continue. Sure. Um, so do you um when you were in LA, were you aware of Jane's addiction when they were like a club band?
SPEAKER_03Not really. Um by the time I was already pursuing my own career, I I gotta be honest, I wasn't really listening to or discovering new music. I think the last bands that I discovered and really loved and really resonated with me were Extreme and Living Color. And we're talking maybe at best late 80s, early 90s. And I still listened to Extreme, I still bought the records and I still followed them. Living Color after the album Stain, I kind of I kind of lost them because I was doing my own thing. I I also found that if I'm listening to too much new music, it's gonna start influencing me and it's gonna start changing me. Right. And I don't I I wanted my changes to be based on how I'm feeling musically and what if if I hear something, wow, I like that vibe, and I take or kind of borrow a little bit of something like that. But um I I just didn't find myself listening to a lot of new music. And I think Chili Peppers, when they were still in the rap mode, that was the last time I was listening even to their newer stuff.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_03So Food Fighters went right over my head, even. I just I got into Food Fighters much later. Nirvana was something I couldn't stand with a passion, but I ended up actually really enjoying because I stopped, I did the deep the deep dive after the hatred went away. Right. The hatred of hey, you ruined the metal scene, you moved it, you ruined the hair metal scene, blah blah blah blah blah. I was one of those that blamed them. And then once I stopped blaming them, just realized it was just time for a shift, anyways. Yeah, I dug back in and I realized, holy, well, I look what I was missing. Right. And I and now I understood why it took over, why why it kind of dominated what was already happening. So yeah, uh Janes just kind of went over my head, and and I I have to throw Saigon kick in that equation of bands that should have been skyrocketed and been up there, but I think part of that was because the demise of the original lineup, you know, to to lose Matt for better or worse, people identified the band with that. Yeah, it's very, very fluke situations where you can have a second life as big as the first life, like Iron Maiden was able to do ACDC, Van Halen, you know, just to name a few. Yeah, it's very difficult to have that next life where you know, Genesis situation where the one of the band members becomes the lead singer and everybody accepts it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, we could talk about we can have a whole side discussion about the greatness of Bill Collins.
SPEAKER_03But I I think Beeler is an absolute genius. He's uh he's uh definitely uh uh trying to think of a a better term than the idiot Savant because he's not slow in that sense, but he's not tech uh theoretically trained. He doesn't really sit there going, if I put the A613 over the minor Phrygian dominant, he's not one of those guys who thinks that or hears that. There's so many times I would be saying, Man, why are you singing major over minor? He doesn't realize it because to him it sounds good, so he does it. That's what matters, isn't it? That it sounds good, and from that, he's he's blown my mind, especially with the new stuff he's doing with the the von Bielski orchestra. He's blown my mind with how musical, how melodic he is, how technical he is without even knowing what he's putting together. It's mind-boggling. And I've always felt that about Jason.
SPEAKER_00It I remember watching uh one day at Soundcheck early on when I was playing with them, they started playing I'll see the light tonight by Engbe, and he was casually just shredding it. I'm going, what? Like he's I watched him night after night on that tour. Um, and you know, just watching him solo on Susie and just take it and take it and take it. Yeah, this guy is one of the most underrated guitar players to me.
SPEAKER_03Um, and a casual talent about it, just like oh and it's it's crazy because I'll I'll ask him, Hey, what let's do this song, uh so and so. And he goes, I don't know it. I go, Yeah, but you've heard it a million times. It should be one of those things you kind of cherry pick. Okay, if it's an A, I know that modulistically it's gonna go to uh an E and then it's gonna probably hit a D or maybe a C sharp minor. You you start thinking along the terms, but I think along the terms of that, he's like, I would literally have to sit down and listen bar by bar and learn the song that way. And it's like, man, it you but when he plays it, it sounds like he's a graduate from Berkeley. So yeah, it's mind-boggling how he his his process.
SPEAKER_00Do you do you have any formal or informal musical training?
SPEAKER_03Just in uh in in middle and high school, I was in band, but I was playing trumpet in middle school. I played trumpet. From that, I learned how to read music. I always played keyboards at home, just uh I was I taught myself by ear, and I taught myself, I never, even to this day, use the right fingering on the keyboard, but I can play the right chords and I can play the right notes because I had the ear and I was able to associate uh the tones with what I was hearing. And then once I learned how to read music, it all started making sense. And then I taught myself how to play guitar, I learned how to uh read tabs and that kind of thing. So I'm pretty much self-taught from what I got from music school, which thank God I got it when I got it, because there's so few music programs left in schools today.
SPEAKER_00Truly. Uh, what about vocal training? Did you do any work on that, or you're just kind of a natural flow with it kind of guy?
SPEAKER_03The radio was my vocal teacher, and unfortunately, um I I wish I'd taken lessons early on because I would have learned all the things from falsetto to mixed voice to uh head voice and all the things that would have helped me protect my voice that I pretty much thrashed it from uh when I joined the Boogie Knights in 1996 to 2001.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I and I I basically had two weeks off a year. I was singing pretty much five years in a row straight, yeah, nonstop. And I developed nodules because I was singing with uh without technique and obviously getting the surgery. I had to get the surgery because I couldn't take the it was easily six months of complete vocal rest and not doing anything. I couldn't afford that, and I there's no way I could leave the band hanging for six months.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03So I got the surgery and I came back with maybe 65-70% of my range, and I had to slowly build it back to what especially to sing the old stuff that people were used to me singing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03A lot of it I couldn't do anymore, and some of it I kind of learned how to use my mixed voice and learn how to kind of assist getting there, but it's it still never got there. And I gotta say, that's one of the things. Again, jumping ahead, uh, but also going back, because we already talked about journey. That's one of the things had I had that training, those songs would have come out so much easier when I got the gig in my 40s, because uh I was a natural tenor all my life until obviously between Boogie Nights and the nodule surgery, I was already brought down to a baritone by then.
SPEAKER_00Right. So, and now you feel like you've kind of gotten your mechanics back a little bit?
SPEAKER_03I still uh fake it till you make it kind of situation when I gotta hit some of those big notes or hold some of those notes out. Uh to this day, I I I mean, it on this current time frame in 2026. Yes, I'm finally lowering keys on certain songs.
SPEAKER_00It's okay.
SPEAKER_03It's it's it's a thing you gotta do it because what's the trade-off? Oh, look, he's singing it lower and he can't do it higher anymore. Well, no shit. And I'm doing it lower and crushing it as opposed to singing in the original key and cracking and not singing, and everybody going, Oh, poor guy, he lost it.
SPEAKER_00Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_03Which one are you gonna take?
SPEAKER_00Right. What um what singers out there do you feel have great mechanics and have lasted with their voice? Uh Ronnie James Dio up till the day he died always sounded like perfect. Guy just sounded great.
SPEAKER_03What other singers do you look at that have that still, that mechanic that allows them to there are a few I could name, but the two that just immediately before you even finish the question? There just there are two that immediately come to mind, and that's Glenn Hughes' Stevie Wonder, which ironically, Glenn Hughes is weaned off Stevie Wonder and that whole RB style and soulful way of singing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So whatever Stevie's do it, whatever Stevie's doing, Glenn is doing it the same way, and that's why they both just they both still deliver to this day. That's all it's a it is a freak show.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's it's hard when you are a young singer and you have a really high range, whether you're Axel Rose or Sebastian Bach, and you get older and you have to service those songs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's you. You know, I I balk about when people say, Am I a Rolling Stones fan? And go, No, you know, when if I were young and in the Rolling Stones, I would sing where my my voice and my register would take me. And Mick Jagger never did that. And now I say, What a smart guy, because in his 80s he could still sing that stuff he did in his 20s.
SPEAKER_00Yep, Jack Johnson's gonna be able to sing to like 120. Absolutely. Bob Dylan's the same. Yeah, I mean, his his voice, you know, it's interesting. There's certain people like that whose voice is characteristically not a great voice, but there's so much character and storytelling in the lyrics that if they overcome that. Neil Young, and you know, you can name some people.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh what um what bands do you think from the 20th century that people have in essentially essentially kind of forgotten about that you wish could have like a comeback of the music? You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03Well, I it's sad to say, but I kind of feel the Elvis legacy is kind of finally fading and dying off. Yeah, I don't find too many younger generation people. I'm like, not that they have it, just I want to see that the respect still remains from the younger generation and the influence, because the influence is is a huge thing. And I think Elvis will always be in the uh the the Chronicles of Country and the young ones coming up will always use Elvis as a stepping stone as well. Yeah, but on the rock and pop side, I think that influence of what he left behind is it it's kind of been tarnished by the whole the jumpsuit and the overweight and the what he became. A caricature, yeah. That the comical side of what he became started kind of tarnishing the legacy side. And I think that's what kind of put a wall into people going into the 20s and the third 2030s to be able to carry the legacy of Elvis. Um, the Beatles thankfully still have their they have their their uh their little uh little boost, you know. What they found that old song from John Lennon they completed as a Beatles track. Those little things always help the Beatles stay relevant, right? Somebody needs to do that a little more with Elvis because even the Elvis movie, I don't think, was enough to keep that uh that that that hype and that just that influence. The way even the Michael Jackson movies just completely destroyed all biopics in terms of box office. Yeah, that's gonna be a big boost to Michael's longevity and people remembering Michael.
SPEAKER_00It's uh and it's interesting because the image that's people have of somebody once they're gone, you know, Elvis, you see him, you know, painted in Mel's Diner or something with Monroe, and it becomes like is the music is not so much of an influence in modern culture. You can look back and say, Well, this person was influenced by this person who was influenced by Elvis, but right to hear Elvis's influence in any modern music, to hear the Beatles' influence in modern music.
SPEAKER_03I'm I'm gonna be so shocked that people accepted Boo Blay the way they did, and and he was able to bring back that whole rat pack, you know, swinger swinging kind of uh music that you know it kind of died off after the movie Swingers. You know it, the band uh uh what was that Brian Setzer's orchestra, that kind of stuff was had a nice little run for swing. Yeah, and then it Tony Bennett kind of was the last man standing in that genre, yeah. And some for uh for Boobalay to come along, and now you see even in the shows like The Voice and stuff like that, you still you see these kids still tapping into that whole world of the Rat Pack Sound. It's it's a great thing.
SPEAKER_00And then you see bands like you know, Foreigner out on the road or Leonard Skinner with increasingly no original members left. And it is it a tribute, or those people, some of those people have played in Foreigner for longer than the original members of Farner.
SPEAKER_03That's where my that's where my argument wins over somebody uh complaining that there are no original members. Somebody like Arnell Pineda, he's been in Journey for 19 years. That's more than double the the amount of years that Steve Perry, the man that brought all those hits in with that band that they wrote together, uh, was in the band. Um Jeff Pilson has been in Foreigner much longer than I forgot the bass player, bass player's name. No, the original bass. I was it Ian McDonald or some one of the Ians. And longer than he was in Docken. Well, yeah, but he's been in Foreigner longer than any original member. Amazing. So at that point, he becomes a long-standing member who should be able to use the name Foreigner. Yeah, even though there's no original original members. Hey, even once in a while they get Lou Graham to come out. To me, that's an original member, they have every right to keep doing that stuff. And the bottom line is if people want to come and see it, who's to say you don't have the right to do that or why you're doing it? Right. People want to see it, they want to hear the songs, let everybody enjoy the night, let everybody work, let the crew that work for them earn their keep. Everybody's happy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, why complain? Yeah, and why and the you know, the word tribute. I mean, you could say every classical performance is a tribute orchestra. Yeah, absolutely, a tribute band.
SPEAKER_03What I I've been with TSO for this will be my 18th year. Wow. It for me, it's a tribute because we're not doing the songs that I sang on the albums that I I was able to sing with them. I'm doing songs that were sung by other people, so I'm doing a tribute to those songs, I'm covering those songs for TSO. I can't say I'm the singer for those original songs, I'm the only the one delivering it, you know, currently. Right on. And that's and that's why people get up in arms. Like you walk around saying, I'm in Journey, I'm in foreigner. No, you're a member of what used to be journey or what used to be foreigner. It's like, come on, man, let give it a rest.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you know, look, people, when you're young and you miss those bands, if like rush this year coming around, I took my kids and like never thought I'd be able to do that. It's a wonderful thing when they're able to bring the music out because ultimately it's those songs. You're living with those songs, you want to hear them done right, you know.
SPEAKER_03I think Eric Singer's been in KISS longer than Peter Peter Chris was. So again, I don't look at Eric Singer as playing for Kiss, I look at Eric Singer as he's in KISS. He's a member, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Longstanding. Absolutely. Um, and you know, put in the time. Yeah, look, Kiss survived, and they did what they had to do in the 90s, and you know, to break free from the 80s, take the makeup off, and you know, bring it back on and reunite. You know, that was a weird time 80s into the 90s, you know.
SPEAKER_03Everybody speaking of this and Saigon Kick and Gibb, uh, Beeler made a funny uh comment when we played the last with the Saigon Kick shows recently this year. He actually said on the mic, and ironically enough, when he's introducing the guys in the band, ironically enough, Steve Gibb is the longest standing member of Saigon Kick. Wow, it's crazy because he's been he was in other configurations of the band, right? But without the band officially saying we're quit, we're broken up, right? That longevity, that that time span continued. So he's actually it's kind of funny longer than for Phil Rome because Phil was in and out enough times officially, right? That it kind of it's it stops your your time in the band.
SPEAKER_00And Phil's drum work on Love Is On the Way, I mean, still just breaks my heart to this day.
SPEAKER_03It put it put tears in Neil Peart's eyes.
SPEAKER_00So I want I wanted to ask you about a couple of one-off things. In 2000, you sang Dragon Attack with Brian May at Reading in the UK. Tell me, tell me about that.
SPEAKER_03It's uh it's it's hard to tell that story with because the the longer the short is it's it's it's difficult to tell that story without telling the full span of it. All right, I'll try to give the uh the abridged version. Um, it was the year prior. I think it might have even been uh 97. I'm trying to think. That gig was in 99, if I'm not mistaken. It said 2000 online, but no, I think that gig was 99 because uh yeah, it was is in Reading. Uh it was part of the it was part the Queen fan club put uh a Freddie Mercury birthday party for Freddie at uh at a convention center in Reading, England. And going back, if it was 99, I think in 97, I remember reading or hearing about Brian Mae putting out his second solo album. On the first solo album, he actually was the singer and they he toured for it. But in the Interview for his second album, Another World. They're asked him, Are you planning a tour? And he said, No, you know what? I realized how much comes with uh being the singer of a show nightly, playing guitar, having so much to have to worry and deal with and and and you know, sort through. Yeah, it it was so overwhelming to me to go on tour as a singer. So I don't think I'm gonna be touring for this one. I'm like, oh man, flashbulb. I should try to find a way to reach out to Brian May. Maybe I could talk him into doing a tour to promote that record. Yeah. But bringing a singer on the road so that they can do Queen Songs. He could sing a couple of his solo things without the stress of singing everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it could be a cool little thing. So I went online trying to find information, can't find anything where to send anything to Brian May. Right. No, no address to management, nothing. The only thing I came, and as I was looking, I opened up a link, said BBC announcing that year announced it was a recent interview or article stating that Queen were discussing the possibilities of finding a singer and continuing. I'm like, oh my God, forget about the Brian May solar tour. I'm going for that. So I was on a mission. And I finally scoured enough until I found the email address of the woman who runs their fan club since Freddie was alive, since they were relative. Yeah, they were relevant and active. And her name was Jackie. So I found her email. I sent an email introducing myself, explaining what I want to get something to her to play to give to the guys in the band if she would do me the honors. Yeah. Ignored. Wrote to her again. Ignored. Emailed her last time. Listen, I'm sorry, I don't mean to keep bothering you, but I'm really persistent here. As you can tell, I'm not just a blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03Finally, she wrote back and said, listen, nothing's happening. That that was a false rumor. Maybe they took from something one of the guys said and they turned it into clickbait. Nothing's happening. But sure, if you want to send me something, I'll I'll have a listen.
SPEAKER_00Right. Well, what did you say?
SPEAKER_03What could possibly go wrong? Right. I sent uh Talisman did um a cover of Let Me Entertain You on the on our truth album. Um I did a cover of Yeah, we did we did Darling, no, not Darling Nikki. Uh what's uh the dragon attack that you were talking about? I took that excerpt and put it on uh spurnt it on a CD. Yeah, and there was something else I can't remember, but there was something else that I had sung queen oriented that I put on there.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_03And then I also put in up an original song that Talisman had done that was very queen lace and oriented with big backings and everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So it was a four-song thing. I sent it by CD by regular mails of Royal Mail to the UK. And it was a couple weeks later I got this overwhelming email. Oh my god, I got your CD. Oh my god, I can't stop listening to it. Oh my god, I'm bringing this to Brian's house. I'm gonna hand deliver it to him. This is amazing. Can you do me a huge favor? I have no way of getting the songs off this. I'd love, can you send me another copy? She wanted just one to continue listening to because she was about to lose hers to Brian.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'm like, of course, you're gonna hand deliver it to Brian, bring it to his house. Of course, I'll do that. So again, fast forward um maybe a month later, I received a handwritten letter in the mail from Brian May. Wow. And of course, trembling, shaking, oh my God, I can't believe it replied. And he pretty much said what Jackie said, you know, nothing's really happening. We're not really uh we're not doing anything. I'm I'm going back into my my uh my bachelor's and then try to trying to get my I want to get my degree in uh astronomy and and just um just wasn't doing anything. And I'm like, oh man, well I at least I got a letter from Brian. I wrote back to him by letter and he wrote back a second letter. Awesome. So now I'm friends with Brian. So now we fast forward to 1990. It has to be ninety nine, because ninety-eight isn't ninety-nine. Hang on, how did this all come to pass? That's right, because I it was definitely ninety ninety. I want to say it's even ninety-eight, but for some reason. Because I met Brian in in 2001. This is the first time we met, and I'd already known Brian. I met Roger in 2001. So maybe that show was in 2000.
SPEAKER_00So it was and it was a it was a fan club set up Freddie Mercury birthday party. It was Freddie Mercury birthday party.
SPEAKER_03Brian May was invited to and said, He was invited to Spike Spike Edney's band The Cross. Well, it was Roger Taylor's band The Cross were playing, but I don't think Roger was playing. But they didn't bill it as the SAS band. They it was all the members that were in the band The Cross, which included Spike Edney, the keyboard player for Queen, and Spike's All-Stars, etc. And Spike did all the uh MDing for Brian May's solo things, all the Roger solo things. So uh Spike is extremely important in the Queen world. Yes. Um, so from that, basically I I was invited to sit in with a the Queen tribute band in in uh at the Queen fan club in England. Yes, there's a Queen tribute there. So that would have been in oh man, I I wish I had my dates in front of me. It's all right. But I sat in with that band at the Queen Convention from that, it was overwhelming. We want a full headline set from this guy. Yeah, so I did the full Queen Convention set with my band. That was in 2003. I had my band learning 40, 44 Queen songs, most of which they never learned because I went deep. I went deep cuts with a lot of that stuff. Yeah, because I knew that the Queen fans would love that. They're every trivia band, they they're just there do the dirty dozen with the yellow jacket, and it's basically Wembley Live. I wanted a spectacular of all those songs that a medley of ballads that they even Queen never did live. I I went for it. Good, that's cool. So before that, I sung with Queen with with Brian and Roger when they got to start Hollywood Walk of Fame. That was in 2001. I sang at the the Queen event in 2003, and I made a DVD out of that, and it was from that DVD that led me to have a much larger role in the Queen Circle and family. I that's how I got to sing in the Queen extravaganza, and yeah, and I did a lot of stuff with Brian and Roger on the side. We did a lot of corporate stuff together, so it was just one of those open doors. My persistence in in pushing and wanting to meet Brian and possibly singing for him, yeah, turned into so many other avenues and doors. And now, I mean, I we were just emailing last night. He's he I consider him a friend as well as a peer. And it's it's just an amazing feeling to have something, somebody that means so much to you as part of your your your life's blood, as part of your DNA, is part of your you know, my Rolodex, part of my my phone contacts, part of everything, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, that's that's really cool. And yeah, it's it's it's kind of a little bit of a validation in a way, you know?
SPEAKER_03It's it's a huge validation. It's and and on top of that, there's no other way I can thank him or them or anybody in that what in that in in my genre, in my world, in my music world. There's no better way to thank them than to show them how that influence paid off into me.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, a hundred percent. Um, I want to turn to Talisman for a moment and Marcel. Now, Marcel Jacob, you played with him in Ingve's band, right? Yeah. So how did you and he actually meet? Because whatever your meeting was, it started a great partnership that lasted through all these different years and projects.
SPEAKER_03Well, ironically, it wasn't until Talisman that our true relationship started because uh we didn't really have much of one during uh both our tenure with Ingve. He was uh if of all the guys, uh clearly I'm I'm American and I I came from the hair metal scene, the LA scene. I was very removed from this the even the way the other guys dressed to the way they carry themselves. I had more of the LA hair metal vibe and feel and personality and characteristic to me that really it kind of rubbed the wrong way. I kind of had to adapt and dummy down and adapt to their world for me to fit in a little more.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So Marceau, what I would have I would say was the most removed in terms of having anything in common or really sitting down and having heart-to-hearts or that kind of thing. He was he was more of uh the the kind of personality that would not look down at you, but he'd be kind of judging you. And it's not that he wouldn't get close to you, it's I guess that was kind of a wall that would provok it prevent you getting close to each other. So we met during the Ingve thing. Obviously, Ingve brought him in from Sweden right after I was inducted as the uh the actual singer. He brought him in for the rehearsals for the marching out album and for the tour that was about to start in '85. So uh I knew him during that time. I left first in in 85, and then Marcel left in 86. I came back in 86 and left in 87. During the time Marcel was back in Sweden, he linked up with John Norham, who recently left Europe. And he co-wrote pretty much every song on that first uh John Norham album. Wow. And so the the talisman sound was that album, the Total Control album from John Norham. You listen to a lot of those songs. They could, they could have and would have been talisman songs had they not been on that record. It was from that influence and style and writing, and John having a hit record with it, getting ready to do a second record. Um, there was talk that Marcel would not be invited to do it. They were going to be working with uh Glenn Hughes as the singer, but Glenn wanted to play bass on it, and Marcel was ousted. But Marcel was already writing new music for the second album, right? And those songs would be what turned into the first Talisman album.
SPEAKER_00So once you got to know Marcel and bonded with him in Talisman, when you look back on those early years with him where he was standoffish or judgmental, uh would do you understand his personality better to absolutely explain that more?
SPEAKER_03Part of the Swedish thing, yeah. Part of the rubber the disconnect would have been he probably didn't at that time, or maybe didn't pay attention, didn't respect me as a musician. He didn't know that I was so deep-rooted as a singer. When he saw me dressing with the the frayed t-shirt pieces and the all the colorful clothing and everything, he just saw me as wanting to be in poison of Motley Crew. Right. So somebody like Marcel, or even somebody from as an accomplished musician from Europe, they frowned on that, they looked down on that. So, in some ways, he looked down on me. It wasn't until he saw that I was influenced and not only influenced, but I actually had theory that I knew what I was talking about. I knew what I was doing when we we were doing what we talked about. And from that, he was now in the talisman, especially after the first album, he was now listening to what I was listening to, and he got influenced by what I was listening to. And the talisman sound shifted because of that change in influence. And just from that alone is why and how he became not only my brother, one of my best friends in the universe, but that's what finally broke that wall, that connection. I finally saw what musically what he was into, what made him tick. He finally saw what made me tick. We joined forces, and that became the new talisman sound.
SPEAKER_00Man, and so talisman put out what like six or seven albums?
SPEAKER_03Seven albums, yeah. Seven albums. The last album was called Seven. Seven studio albums, yeah. Yeah, there's a few best of you know, great hits kind of thing, and uh quite a few live albums, but it was seven studio records.
SPEAKER_00And when he died, were you active as talisman at the time?
SPEAKER_03We were a week away from starting the next album. Oh, yeah. Um, it was kind of chaotic because none of our former guitar players were coming back. We had discussed uh bringing my guitar player at the time, who's still in my band Soto, Jorge Salon. He was gonna actually play the next album, and then we would from there gonna consider touring and how we we wanted to see the reception first. We didn't want to force a tour just because of releasing an album. Yeah, and and I I I'll be frank with you, I don't think I've ever told the story to anyone. And if I have, I apologize for repeating it. But uh the story goes one of the reasons why Marcel took his life is because he was severely in debt. He owed the government so much money, he owed people money. He was having a lot of health issues, a lot of pains and things that were preventing him even from playing the bass the way people know of his bass playing or writing the kind of riffs and things that he was known for doing. So from that, it got to his head and a deep depression set in. And that's what led to him finally taking his own life. He just realized I'm never gonna be what I was once. I'm gonna be expected to be that, and I'm gonna be frowned at and looked at as I'm done and toast, and I wanna I want to go away in life, known for my uh my endeavors and what I was known for. So before so before that, the day before he took his life, and uh it takes me a minute to to talk about it because um he called me and said, listen, I know we're starting next week, and to receive the uh the advance from the label to to get the money, you know, start paying the studio and going to the studio. I'm in debt with the with the government. If any money comes into my account to meet immediately seized, and we have no album budget. We have we basically all that money is gonna go into what I owe the government, and wow we don't have and then we have no way to make the record. The last tour or with the last something that we did together, I took the big hit. I I collected the in the advance, I collected all the monies, but I wasn't incorporated yet. And I got audited and I paid out the butt for uh for taxes because of the last talisman outing. So I told him, hey, well, if I get it, I'm gonna have to pay the taxes on it, or I'm gonna have to sift money, which I don't know what it's gonna be. I it's complicated, I don't know what to do. And he goes, Well, we have to choose one of the lesser of the two evils. We lose all the money, or and I said, Well, I'll just call my accountant and I'll just ask what's the way to do this where I'm not gonna get hit for this and have to pay the taxes on it. So I said, and I was living in London at the time, so it's it's uh it's like four o'clock in the morning LA time. I said, when they wake up, I'll call and I'll get some information and and let's talk tomorrow and let's figure out how I'm gonna receive the money and we can start the the pre-production. Another thing I want to I'm I want to stress before I finish I asked him normally every single time he would send me songs, he would send me demos, he would send me even something just a dot with a riff, so I can kind of get a feel for where he's going musically, tempos, and I can kind of get a jump start of what I'm gonna be singing on it. He sent me nothing this time. And the last time he sent me nothing, he'd already been working with the band in Sweden. This time he's just he said, Everything's in my head, I want to record the album all together, write it all together based on everything that's in my head. I went away thinking when he passed because they scoured his laptop. I thought maybe he demoed some stuff, maybe we could even find some raw bass tracks that we could lift and and finish at least a song with him. Yeah, didn't demo anything, there was nothing new on there. I think he didn't have anything. I don't think mentally he was there. He was hoping, and I think he was not only hoping, but he felt he was promised in his head that if we got together we'd write that album. Yeah, but he I don't think he had anything yet.
SPEAKER_01Damn.
SPEAKER_03So it was the next morning. I went to the gym as I normally do, and I was waiting for my accountant to call me back or wait. I was reading the email that she sent me, and right I got a call from his sister that he was found in this apartment, took his life. Man.
SPEAKER_00Oh, and that leaves so many unanswered questions as it always does. Not much that you can.
SPEAKER_03Thankfully, he was of sound mind to leave a note to his best friend. Um, the guy that still runs the the the the talisman empire. Uh, I'll call it empire for lieu of better words. It's it's basically our discography, it's any business and videos, anything, trademarks, uh copyrights publishing. Christor is running the show there. Anytime we do reunion shows, he's the one involved booking it, basically overseeing everything because Marcel knew he could leave Christer entrusted with making sure we're taking care of on our dealings and everything that Marcel did for talisman.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Oh man, it's like it's sad, but the music still has an audience out there, and the fact that it's still being worked as a catalog is good for his memory and for all the work that you guys did.
SPEAKER_03And thankfully, it's out of everything in my life, musically, I'm not just saying it because he's gone because we don't have him and we don't have that level of talisman anymore. Thankfully, that music was the soundtrack of my career in terms of what I my what I'm concerned. Of course, everybody loves and likes the bits and pieces that they think and feel makes me the artist that they see me as. But for me, the artist I see me as all comes from Talisman because that was the one band I could put everything in. We on the Human Animal album, I said, let's do like an old 50s doo-op song. And Marcel said, Why not? Sure. There was never any hmm. Talisman was my queen for me in terms of, of course, we didn't go as crazy as Queen did, right? But Marcel allowed me to try everything with Talisman. There was nothing we didn't we didn't try that I wanted to try. We didn't leave any stone unturned. And again, I didn't go too crazy, but I got crazy enough to to let all my ayas out. And that was the band.
SPEAKER_00Do you have to fight for that kind of freedom in Sons of Apollo or in uh Soto? I mean, Soto's your band, so you could technically do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_03I'm not fighting because every everything has its place, everything has its reasons. I'm not gonna say, hey, uh, we we're Sons of Apollo's is a super group. Uh, why are we only doing dream theater songs? Why not we do why aren't we doing something from uh one of my albums or from Rockstar or from Talisman or Ingve? Because Sons of Apollo wanted to stand on its own legs, and it made sense having two two members of Dream Theater when we were when we hit the gate running. Yeah. With only one album. Of course, we're gonna throw in a couple covers. We do in Van Halen because that's the one one band that we all agreed on that we could pull off a song that had keyboards, yeah. And the Great Our Rock. There are other great Van Halen songs we could have done, but that's the one that had keyboard throughout, and it it we turned it into our our little uh encore moment. I mean, you gotta give Derek Sharinian something to do. Exactly. You can't have him playing uh doubling the guitar sound with his dirty organ sound, even though he does it, he does that great too.
SPEAKER_00He does. I mean, of all the people that like can get out and shred on like a like a B3 distorted, like he's got he's got that rock crown there. I give him full props.
SPEAKER_03Look at Derek's social medias on uh Eddie Van Hillen's and Brandy Rhodes' birthdays, and you'll hear him emulating one of their famous solos on a keyboard, and it sounds like the guitar. It's it's uncanny.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's no doubt why he's in your super group because you all you all are super. Well, let's let's say I'm in his.
SPEAKER_03It's Derek's and Mike's band. So I was we were in their band.
SPEAKER_00I like that. Um, so I want to wrap up with you. Um, what is next for you coming up? And of all the things that are next, what do you like? What's a hope or a dream or a wish of something that you'd like to be singing on that you have no plans for now, but that one day you'd love to go out and do?
SPEAKER_03Of course, I have my bucket lists. I've I've been able to complete most of them. I still have uh and and he knows, I'm sure by now he's heard it. And god damn it, Nuno. Wake up, man. It's time. No, Nuno Betancourt is is one of my favorite, he's been one of my favorite guitar players for a long time. Yeah, I don't I don't just say that now because he's kind of been past the baton. He's kind of the new goat in town, the the the go-to guy that everybody's gonna say he's the best out there at the moment. I've always felt that about him since Porto Graffiti. So uh I would love to do a song, a project, um, even just a show. I mean, we we got to sing Stone in Love Together at the uh the ultimate jam this year and at the Nam thing. And that that was so much fun to be up there with him and Billy for sure. And and and uh it just it was such a thrill to be able to sing something with Nuno because I respect the guys as a as an artist, as a musician, and as a writer and as a producer. Yeah, so I'd love to do something with him one day. So Nuno, wake the fuck up. It's time. Come on, Nuno, it's time. But yeah, I've I've my bucket list uh doing stuff with Brian May. I've I've been able to do that, Brian and Roger, and uh Sons of Apollo was a bit of a bucket list band for me because I've always wanted to do something with Billy and Mike, and I finally got to do that. And is that done or just on hiatus? That's kind of that's kind of my wish list. I I hope someday we're able to pull that back together, we do that again because we finally were we're hitting our stride. Yeah, the the pandemic pulled it from us, the pandemic was influential and things turning course. And if Mike was a he was already going back to Dream Theater, even if Sons of Apollo blew up and was successful, so be it. But at least from that, there might have been a course of just hold on, guys, we'll revisit that along the way somewhere in the future. Right. But honestly, I don't think there could be a world where both of those bands coexist because musically the two similar. Sons of a I would say I think Dream Theater is is even more progressive and more keyboard progressive oriented. Sons of Apollo is more prog power metal kind of thing, power rock. I would agree. So they're different in that respect, but just the complicated beats and Time signatures and stuff like that that Mike is already doing Dream Theater. I don't think it's something that uh they want to compete with. And I don't blame them. And I don't want to compete with it either. I I I always felt that the healthy competition in Dream Theater and Sons of Apollo should have been exactly that. You guys are fucking amazing what you do, and we are what we do. Yeah, but we're not trying to be you, you're not trying to be us, and that's that's where it should be left at.
SPEAKER_00Right on. Well, I I think that it's you know, the more music, the better for the world, you know, in some ways. Exactly. Um, well, I hope that all of your bucket list dreams come true. I love love spending time with you and seeing you. I hope we can hang in person someday.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Next year looks to be quite a busy year. It's it's things I can't quite uh there's some things that are booked, I just can't announce them yet. Once they're announced, I can talk about them. But yeah, it's some pretty interesting things that are happening next year that um I I can't wait to finally announce. Awesome. I'm gonna be doing some more stuff with Beeler. We'll probably do some more Saigon kick stuff here and there, hopefully. I hope you come to LA.
SPEAKER_00I want to see an LA show with you guys.
SPEAKER_03Working on uh slowly, slowly working on new soto material. We're not doing how we normally do, where we we just cram as many songs we can get together and get it out there and and then watch it flop. We're we're doing it really meticulously and slowly, and probably gonna go the the the new fangled. I'm gonna follow the way everybody's doing it now, one song at a time. Attraction bills, then you get a full album. Right. Attraction bills, then you get a tour. But no more of this. Record an entire album, takes you, you put all your love and your blood and your energy and sweat and tears, and then three weeks later, nobody cares. I'm done with that.
SPEAKER_00That's tricky. Um, I was gonna ask you, uh there's one thing I meant. Uh, I saw you once at the Roxy in a project. Was it called Romeo Blue? No, that was um, there was a project I saw you singing at the Roxy. It was very funky, almost kind of princey.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I think that was the band that played with us.
SPEAKER_00Slam. No, it's uh it was you singing, and I remember seeing you there, and it was kind of out of the metal character.
SPEAKER_03The band was it my band Slam?
SPEAKER_00It might have been.
SPEAKER_03Slam was about it was around the time that I I think when when did you come to California?
SPEAKER_00Uh 2001. So it would have been soon after that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Slam, I think, just ended by then.
SPEAKER_00Or maybe I saw you because I was out on tour with different bands in the late 90s, Seven Mary III and stuff. We played the previous or whatever. Um but it was a it was a it was a live show? It was a live show, and I remember I I kept thinking it was more like a prince-oriented thing than a metal or rock-oriented thing. And uh you were saying it. Yeah, maybe it was a dream, maybe I'm in my own dream theater in my life.
SPEAKER_03I I definitely had that kind of stuff in my head that I wanted to do, but I don't remember doing it. My band Slam was the closest to that because I I was so into Living Color and Extreme and King of the Hill at the time that I wanted a metal band with horns, and then we were doing that kind of stuff, but that would have been 80, blah blah blah. It would have been maybe 91 to 94. So you you might have actually thinks seen Slam. We had a rapper and everything.
SPEAKER_00Maybe. I mean, it could have been when I was out with Saigon. FM Station. Well, the Roxy was the first place I played with Saigon.
SPEAKER_03Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00Um, but I I don't know. Uh it might just be a mystery, maybe it's a dream in my head, but uh I wish I and you talking about all that 50s stuff, like I would love to see you do a set of that stuff.
SPEAKER_03Like the I mean you're you're such an accomplished pianist and you tap into so many different genres. We need to do something together. I'm here for it anytime. Anytime. You know what? Send me some songs. Let me listen, let me pick one and go, let's do this one together. All right, you got it. And let's let's go, let's let's go deep. Let's go outside either of our genres. It can either be Elton John meets uh um barber shopper or something, you know, something way out there. Because I know you I know you you you're everywhere, you're all over the map.
SPEAKER_00I do. Well, I feel like if you keep evolving and changing your style, then AI can't rip off your style.
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
SPEAKER_00You know, I mean we should do a swing song.
SPEAKER_03Add to the Michael Boo Blay things. Hey, Jeff Scott Soto's chasing that real estate now.
SPEAKER_00I mean, everything that everything that you do that's different, you know, it makes you as a vocalist not just one thing, not just the singer of Ingbe, but all these different things.
SPEAKER_03And that's the most important thing to me because I I need I need something that keeps challenging me because at some point you can get it can get stalemate. You can kind of stop creating and you just kind of just just digging from your own archives and re repeating yourself. Yeah, it's important to keep growing and keep utilizing influences you haven't let people here yet.
SPEAKER_00Agreed a hundred percent. Well, here's two uh some beautiful, bright things in the future. And uh man, I love hanging and talking with you. Let's uh thanks, thanks for this. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01All right, brother.
