RichRock
New Zealand Herald: “It’s a really weird thing,” says the singer, who turns 64 next week, “because what we did, we just did. We didn’t go, ‘Oh, we’re going to write this way, and we’re going to record that way, and it’s going to come out like this’. And 45 years up the road who would have thought it’s still going to be current and people were going to look upon it as the foundations of heavy metal?”
But then Osbourne, who’s in a chatty mood on the phone from Los Angeles ahead of Sabbath’s return to New Zealand next April for the first time in 40 years, is also still trying to get his head around that term “heavy metal”. He can’t stand it. “Because not everything Black Sabbath did was about the devil, or about heavy metal because Changes was a beautiful song. But all they ever remember is that I sing about the devil and Iron Man, you know.”
On new Sabbath material: “It’s been more than 30 years since I really seriously worked with the guys. We had a try a few years back but nothing came of it. But for some reason the timing is right and we’ve done about 15 songs. Black Sabbath is very unique in the respect that nothing is formulated. It’s very unpredictable. I just hope the people who have waited all these years aren’t disappointed.”
KNAC Interview with Armored Saint Frontman John Bush:
“At this point in my life, not playing that often and doing long, grueling tours where you do ten shows in a row, and then a day off, and then nine in a row. I see bands still doing that stuff and I just marvel at it, because I wouldn’t be able to do that any longer. It’s not the way I sing. I sing with a very aggressive approach and I’ve been told for years, ‘You gotta back off. Don’t push so hard.’ I try not to do that, because I really want to try not to suck, in all honesty. I also feel that I’m a better singer now than I ever was. I just think I’m more in touch with what I can and what I cannot do. My voice has found a good little area where it’s raspy but it’s strong, and I probably know how to sing better than I did 25 years ago, when I was just trying to sing high and try to emulate some of my heroes. I wasn’t really there. Rob Halford was always the king, but I couldn’t sing like him. I was more like a Steven Tyler-kind of singer. It was about finding my niche and my personality and letting that kind of shine through. And to me that’s the most important thing to being a musician as a whole, or really a singer, is to kind of let your personality be the thing that people can connect with. You know who somebody is by the tone of their voice, by the style of their singing, by the playing of their guitar. And that, to me, is more important than anything. I don’t know how great of a guitar player, in terms of technical abilities, someone like The Edge is, but it’s just undeniable when you hear his playing. That’s him.”
Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen is back with a new record titled ‘Spellbound’ set for release December 5, 2012. This latest effort does not feature singer Tim “Ripper” Owens who had been fronting the band the last four years (Owens is currently performing with the official Ronnie James Dio tribute band Dio Disciples).
‘Spellbound’ Track listing:
- Spellbound
- High Compression Figure
- Let’s Sleeping Dog Lie
- Repent
- Majestic 12 Suite 1,2 & 3
- Electric Duet
- Nasca Lines
- Poisoned Mind
- God Of War
- Iron Blues
- Turbo Amadeus
- From A Thousand Cuts
- Requiem For The Lost
You can sample all the tracks at Amazon.com.
Eddie Trunk’s “Friday Night Rocks” radio show on New York’s Q104.3 FM: Sebastian Bach on why a reunion of Skid Row’s classic lineup hasn’t happened yet: “There’s one dude out of five that doesn’t wanna do it; it’s so simple. That’s what’s happening.”
“I will always be the singer of Skid Row, no matter what. There’s no other guy. It’s like… John Corabi (who was briefly in Mötley Crüe as Vince Neil’s replacement in the mid-90’s), I love ya — it’s great — but where’s Vince? I mean, that’s the way it is. Walk down the street with me and count how many times, ‘Youth Gone Wild! Skid Row!’ It’s like people shout out of the cars.”
“Dude, if a promoter comes to me with a legitimate business offer, it’s very easy for me to walk on the stage and stand behind a mic and sing my own songs that I’ve been doing for 25 years.”
“If one dude wants to make all the fans that put us where we are happy… I mean, we all talk about KISS all the time. KISS makes the fans the boss. I mean, I think it’s kind of crazy. It’s like you take your football and you go home and the game is over, ’cause it’s your football. It’s like, ‘Can I borrow your football? ‘Cause we’ve got a game going here.'”
Metal Assault: About the new album: are we going to see a return to the progressive metal sound Queensrÿche had in the ’80s? And what kind of modern elements, if any, are we going to see in the new material?
Scott Rockenfield: What we’re trying to do, and what has been really interesting since Todd has jumped into the band, we’re trying to revisit the old Queensrÿche catalog — stuff off of the EP and “The Warning“. That’s always been a part of what we are, so yeah, definitely! I think in my opinion, we’re really revisiting that vibe of why that music was special back then for us. There will be a modern flair to it, though, just because we’re in the modern age. The fun thing about Jimbo (Barton) being a part of it is that he can help tie together the two sides. He does come from our past and some of the great records and some of the great sounds that we’re known for, but he’s also living in the modern age and doing some interesting things as well. I think it’s going to be a really great Queensrÿche record. People are going to go, “Wow, that’s Queensrÿche! That sounds just like what we’ve known them to be, and what we would expect them to now be.” That’s what I think people will get out of it.
Target Audience Magazine: Over the years, you’ve repeatedly said that you no longer feel inspired to sing selections from the earliest QUEENSRŸCHE albums, especially the most obscure tracks which have not been played on recent tours. Even if you had the inspiration to sing such QUEENSRŸCHE classics now — “Deliverance”, “Child Of Fire”, “Blinded” and “Roads To Madness”, to cite some examples — would you be able to sing them up to the level you once did, or would those notes and style of singing put too much strain on your voice?
Tate: Wow! This misconception is puzzling to me. If one starts at the beginning, my life and my interests can be traced through my music. I do admit, some of those early songs from the EP and the “Warning” album hold different meaning for me now, much like the “dungeons and dragons” of early adolescence now hold a different meaning for most adults. There are several gems on those early records that I still feel strongly about and, as most people who have attended a QUEENSRŸCHE show lately, we as a band picked every song on the set list to reflect our individual favorites and our audience’s favorites. In fact, over the years, we have conducted polls of our fans to get an accurate idea of what people wanted to hear live. I have very fond memories of playing “Rage For Order” in its entirety last year and also “Operation: Mindcrime” in its entirety at the end of our thirty-year-anniversary tour in December of 2011. In fact, the entire anniversary tour setlist was comprised of songs from all our albums.
Metal-Rules.com: The one thing which has been in the headlines lately is that one certain photo [of you and former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach]. You know what I’m talking about here?
Sabo: Right.
Metal-Rules.com: What’s the story behind that?
Sabo: I had flown into L.A. that day because Duff McKagan, whom I manage, was doing two shows at the Viper Room and… So I flew in and I went there and one of the guys, an assistant of ours told me, he goes, “Sebastian’s here,” and stuff like that. I’m like… I don’t mean… I mean, I hold no ill will or any bad blood or anything — everybody else can have that. I have no negativity in my life whatsoever. So at the end of the show, I was in the dressing room and it was very small at the Viper Room dressing room and I saw him standing across the stage and I… I mean, across the room, and he made a beeline over with his girlfriend, had his hand out, and I shook his hand, you know, “How you doing? How you doing?” Exchanged the pleasantries and stuff. It was all very cool and very cordial; no heavy talk, like, “Come on, dude, we got to put this band back together.” It was nothing like that, you know. It was like, “How’s your family doing?” “I’m sorry that you got divorced,” you know, and she was a lovely girl and asked me how the kids are, you know… showing pictures and everything like that, and he’s like… bunch of people shooting pictures and he’s goes, “Let’s take a picture together,” and sure enough, you know, it was, you know, that’s the one that ended up out there.
Metal-Rules.com: Yeah, that’s the way how gossips start…
Sabo: Yeah, that’s okay. I mean, other people keep talking, but it’s really, so… it’s far simpler than people are making it out to be, whereas you know we have a long history together. It was one of those things where I did not want to… I don’t know I didn’t want to sit there and be like an angry prick or anything like that. I mean, life goes on and you make the most of it and I keep all negativity away from me, so…
Metal-Rules.com: How did you like the comments he put out later on?
Sabo: What about in the future… you know what?! That’s him, you know, that’s him — you know I don’t know what to do… I… The way I look at it is, you know, I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring. I just… hopefully we’ll make it on the plane home, you know. I kind of look at life like that lately. It’s too short. I’d rather enjoy the moment. If something like that happens down the road, then it happens, then it’s supposed to be, and if it doesn’t, then it wasn’t supposed to be, you know?! That’s just the way… that’s life, you know. To me, it’s no… I’m not going to beat myself about the head over it and I’m not going to push for it or whatever. It’s like if little things present themselves in a way that.. that’s its conducive and everybody wants to do it, then that’s something to talk about, but right now it’s a non-issue.
Metal-Rules.com: He seems to be a kind of kind of guy who always says out loud what he thinks.
Sabo: Of course. I mean, that’s just, I guess, that’s just the way he’s always been, but, you know, going back to like us meeting again, something like that, I didn’t… again, because he was cool and he was sober and he wasn’t hyper and he was… he was nice, you know, it was a nice ten-minute… ten-, fifteen-minute conversation with him and it wasn’t any big deal, and I’m glad it wasn’t a big deal — I’m glad it was just as cordial as it was.
Hardrock Haven: (Megadeth Bassist David Ellefson)
“It was quite shocking actually, especially because we were just coming up the ranks and were not the big MTV icons at the time. That bass line has certainly been the subject of many great conversations over the years, that’s for sure!”
Dave Mustaine told Rolling Stone that he never received any royalties for their usage of ‘Peace Sells‘… “They didn’t give me a penny. They cut it off right before they’d have to pay me, which was very clever. I don’t think anybody with a conscience at MTV did that – it was probably somebody in their legal department.”
November 25, 2007: Quiet Riot frontman Kevin DuBrow’s body was found in his Las Vegas home… dead at age 52. He was believed to have died six days earlier of an accidental cocaine overdose.
Pasadena Star-News: (Keifer) began experiencing vocal troubles while touring in support of the group’s third album, “Heartbreak Station.”
“The onset of the problems was pretty sudden, almost overnight,” Keifer said. “It was towards the end of the tour. We only had a few weeks left when I noticed that my voice just started breaking and cracking, more in the middle register of my voice, and I couldn’t control the notes.”
The doctor went on to tell him that most singers don’t sing again or don’t sound like they did before. He also said that there wasn’t a cure, but with extensive therapy, working with speech pathologists and vocal coaches, Keifer might be able to teach his vocal cords to respond normally again.
It took Keifer more than three years of working with coaches to get enough strength to sing again. When it was time to record a new album (“Still Climbing”) his vocals were pieced together in the studio.
There have been other obstacles over the years, including vocal strain. Keifer also has had six surgeries on his throat to fix “collateral damage,” including several hemorrhages. But Keifer says his vocal paresis also has a good side.
“One of the positive things that came out of this whole mess is that from the voice training I learned a lot of things and developed different areas of my voice,” he said. “The middle part of my voice in particular, it’s probably a little stronger than it used to be, although it’s still volatile from day to day. But on a good day I can do things that maybe I couldn’t do before this.”