The Dead Daisies brand of Classic Rock and Roll has been going down a storm on the recent Kiss and Bad Co. tours over in the US; and prior to that supporting greats like Aerosmith and ZZ Top downunder. This month they bring it to Australia and New Zealand. We caught up with Dizzy Reed to find out why it just might be one of the most essential tickets all year!
Mark: Hi, it’s Mark from The Rockpit in Perth, Western Australia, how are you?
Dizzy: I’m good man, how are you?
Mark: Good, thanks very much for talking to us today, it’s great to see you in Australia, how are the rehearsals going?
Dizzy: Rehearsals are good, I suppose, loud, like a good rock band should be, and sounding good and we’re getting ready to get out there and start playing!
Mark: That sounds great; you’re just about to embark on your first tour of Australia and New Zealand, in fact you’re probably about to fly out are you?
Dizzy: Yeah, we fly out to Auckland tonight, we’re also playing Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne, I was wondering why we hadn’t made it out to Perth yet, but we’re coming out there now, and we’re pretty stoked!
Mark: It’s a great place, and of course the last time you were here was with Guns N Roses at the Arena. You’re playing at The Rosemount here, on December 4th; it’ll be a great night. We actually saw Jon’s solo gig early last year, and he mentioned he was going to try and get The Dead Daisies out. It’s not often we get a band playing this type of music out in Australia, so it’s good to see so much promotion and effort being put in to it.
Dizzy: Yeah, I think it’s important we get out there, I’ve played in Perth a couple of times with GNR, and the crowds were great. I happened to have a day off there and I went and saw The Eagles play, and they were great, I love The Eagles! Joe Walsh is one of my favourite guitar players of all time, ever, and song writers. I love The Eagles, and to see the support they were getting is important, and of course Bon Scott was from out that way, so it’s important we get out and play some rock and roll music for everybody!
Mark: We are starved of that sort of thing over here. The sort of music the Dead Daisies play, you obviously came in to the band last year, so you weren’t involved in the writing for the first album, but that whole Bad Company, Faces thing, is that the sort of music you grew up listening to?
Dizzy: Absolutely, I think that’s one place where we all sort of connect, the gritty sounding, classic rock and roll; we all grew up on the same stuff. That’s the area where we connected really, with a lot of people, so it’s a blast to be able to channel that, and have an outlet for that. I’m really happy with all the things I’ve done with GNR, and that’s still my main gig, and I love contributing to that. But this is a little bit of an obsession, just to be able to have no limits, and still to do this free ball rock and roll man! It’s a lot of fun, we have a blast!
Mark: You’ve just come off the huge tour in the States with Kiss and Def Leppard, and did you did the cruise as well?
Dizzy: We did do the cruise, yeah!
Mark: How was that? Was it full of mad Kiss fans??
Dizzy: Yes! I mean first of all we did two weeks with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bad Company, opening for them, and then we jumped off that on to the Kiss/Def Leppard tour, and all those guys from those bands, across the board, couldn’t have been cooler or nicer, they treated us great, and we made a lot of fans, a lot of fans came back just to see us, and we really appreciate that, they were all fantastic, and it was very inspiring. Then, yes, we did do the cruise and it was a little bit hectic being on a boat with 3000 Kiss maniacs! But, that’s their thing, and they were so receptive to us on the boat, we ended up playing the last night after Kiss, they played two big shows on the third and fourth nights, for half the boat one night, and the other half the next night, and we closed things out in the atrium, and it was packed to the rafters! We were really in to it, and had a lot of great feedback, it was really cool of Kiss to have us come out and do that. It was good to know that I still haven’t lost my sea legs too!! We did a bowling promotion on there one night, they have a bowling alley on there, and bowling on a cruise ship is a little difficult, obviously the ship’s moving back and forth!! But, I figured out if you drink just enough, you begin to wobble in sync with the boat, and I bowled three strikes in a row!!
Mark: As I said before it’s great to see a band like The Dead Daisies here in Australia, and I hope you get a great response, and of course the tours named after the single, “Angel In Your Eyes” which is getting a lot of attention here. I had a question about one of my favourite songs off “Chinese Democracy” which is “Street of Dreams” which you wrote with Axl and Tommy.
Dizzy: Yeah, that was a bit of a group effort, we all had a bit of a song, and put them all together, and came up with a really good song, thank you, I appreciate that, I’m very proud of that track. It’s a good one to play live when we do it, but, yeah, it was definitely a group effort.
Mark: You are the second longest serving member of GNR, and it’s great to see that the perception of the revolving door in the band has changed over time as well. What’s the secret to your longevity do you think?
Dizzy: For myself, I don’t like to walk out of things, I don’t like to leave things unfinished, and I think with GNR we still have a lot left, we have a lot to prove and a lot more rock and roll to give to people and so I just want to see it through. I’ve been lucky enough to do this for this long, and I am very fortunate and blessed to be able to do this for a living, so I want to stick it out and see it through. Axl was cool enough to give me a shot back in the day, as a keyboard player and so I just want to return the favour and keep helping him get through all this, and keep rocking to the end basically!
Mark: The new DVD, which I’m not sure is out yet in Australia, is pretty cool as well.
Dizzy: Yeah, it’s great, in 3D!! They did a great job; it was a good night to capture it, doing the residency thing in Vegas. It’s a good thing for bands like us to camp out there, and deliver a killer show night after night.
Mark: A great venue too, I love The Hard Rock in Vegas. Getting back to the Dead Daisies, it’s interesting to see the line-up of the band now, you have Richard, who you play with in GNR, and then Marco who was in Thin Lizzy with Richard for a while, I think, and then there’s the Brian and Marco, Whitesnake connection, so it’s almost like the Americans are taking over the band!
Dizzy: I think rock and roll has always been a little bit incestuous, for lack of a better word!! We joked around that eventually there would be no other bands, there would just be us, with whoever was singing, but I think that’s just a reflection of how great, talented and dedicated those guys are. They are the top of the heap when it comes to bass player, drummer, and guitar! That’s it right there; you don’t get much better than that!
Mark: I definitely think so, it’s funny because I interviewed Richard when GNR were out, and I interviewed Marco when Thin Lizzy were here, and I interviewed Jon for The Dead Daisies, and now it’s time for the final piece in the Dead Daisies puzzle, which is of course speaking to you!! Thinking back to your earliest memories of music, what was it that made you decide you wanted to be in a rock and roll band?
Dizzy: Well, as far as listening to stuff, I think, my grandmother used to live upstairs from us in an apartment, and she had an organ, and she recognised that I had a bit of a talent for that, and I started getting in to rock and roll music, and my dad was really in to rock. He had a great record collection, and I remember going through it one day, and I put on an album by Booker T. & the M.G.’s, and I realised that, that’s the instrument that I play upstairs, and I can do this! And that’s what sort of got me in to wanting to be in a band, and then I heard Deep Purple, and it was all over after that!!
Mark: That’s a cool story! If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any great album, at any point in time, what would it have been for you and why?
Dizzy: I’ve got to say, maybe “Exile on Main Street” by The Stones, or “Sticky Fingers”, or if not one of those, “Machine Head” by Deep Purple.
Mark: Great selections. An easy one to end with, what is the meaning of life?
Dizzy: The meaning of life is to enjoy it while you can, because you just never know!
Mark: Good words to live by! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us today, we’ll see you at The Rosemount, on December 4th, have a great tour, and see you soon. Take care.
Dizzy: Awesome, Man, thank you, I appreciate it. Bye.
THE DEAD DAISIES TOUR DATES
Tuesday, 25th November* – Claudelands Arena, Hamilton
Saturday, 29th November* – Town Hall, Dunedin
Thursday, 4th December – Rosemount Hotel, Perth
Wednesday, 26th November* – ASB Theatre, Auckland
Sunday, 30th November – The Corner, Melbourne
Friday, 5th December – The Triffid Bar, Brisbane
Friday, 28th November* – Horncastle Arena, Christchurch
Wednesday, 3rd December – Governor Hindmarsh, Adelaide
Sunday, 7th December – Oxford Arts Factory, Sydney
* appearing with Jimmy Barnes
Tickets: thedeaddaisies.com
