When I originally left the UK to travel and ended up here down-under there was one Hard Rock band in the UK that just stood out from the pack – Skin. They were a band that no matter when I returned ‘home’ always seemed to be touring and I had many a great night watching the band over the years, even catching them when they reformed before they eventually called it a day in 2013. Myke Gray, their guitarist, wrote some wonderful songs over the years, not just with Skin but also with his previous band Jagged Edge and also Red White & Blues. Out of music for three years now he’s returned with a great fire and passion and produced a solo instrumental album that really hits the spot. We caught up with Myke to get a lowdown on his return. I’d personally like to thank Myke for taking the time and for producing music that inspires me each and every day.
Mark: Thanks you so much for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit today Myke, what can we say? ‘Shades of Gray’ is a real experience and it’s not very often an instrumental album connects with me but this one sure did!
Myke: Yeah, I mean I very seldom listen to instrumental albums myself I’ve always just gone for various tracks here and there but the way it came about – I kind of left music for three years because I had a period of time where some personal stuff happened that stopped me from playing music. But gradually I had this desire to play music again but the idea of putting a band together just seemed quite daunting at that moment in time. But I had a couple of musicians that reached out to me both of them drummers, one being Matthew Blakout (current Tigertailz drummer) who eventually played on the album and a guy called Rich Smith who is another fantastic drummer who plays in a band called Power Quest and they contacted me and just said did I fancy a jam, they reached out via Facebook and I’d never met Rich before but I’d met Matt a couple of times and because I had this guy feeling inside of me that I wanted to play music again I just went “Yeah, sure” and so they came up to my house which has got this little studio in there and we just started jamming. And I hadn’t played for three years so I was kind of appalled at my lack of ability! I couldn’t play really very well, and this frustrated me immensely because I just remembered how I used to be able to play and that was kind of the trigger behind it all. Initially I was just “How have I got this bad?” (laughs) so then it became my goal to get back to where I was. Then I eventually just went a little more overboard than that and I just kept playing and playing and all the things I was just practicing these little instrumental pieces just started to arrive. And Rich and Matthew would come up and jam and we would play this stuff and it just started to evolve into instrumentals, I didn’t have a desire to work with a singer again at that moment in time and that’s how it all came about and then gradually all of the things that had happened to me in my life and particularly in the three years I didn’t play started to be incorporated within the music that I was writing. So it was very organic it just came from a desire to play.it just came out that way, it’s not like I ever sat down and wanted to be this big instrumentalist or anything it was just the only thing I could play at this moment.
Mark: So really more I guess a journey of rediscovery for you?
Myke: Completely. And I remember watching a movie once which had Woody Harrelson in it, it had a massive break-up with him and Demi Moore I think it was and he was completely and utterly devastated as a human being and I remember in this movie he just went back to the beginning, he just went back to what he loved which was teaching and for me to come out of the particular dark area I was in I just felt like I needed to do something different so I just went back to the beginning and just went back to playing music for the love of playing. I remember when I was a kid listening to Randy Rhodes and Michael Schenker and Eddie Van Halen and Ronnie Montrose – I used to wake up every morning just wanting to listen to them play and I just wanted to go back to the kid again who just loved music. None of the nonsense that goes on within the music business or the nonsense that goes on with musicians I just wanted to go back to that purity of playing. And the album is very much, you know, that cathartic process put into music.
Mark: There’s a lot of musical styles on the album not just hard rock, there’s snatches of Celtic music even, but I think my favourite songs are the ones that make me think of landscapes in the way that someone like Joe Satriani does. What was your inspiration for some of those more complex pieces, was it to create an aural landscape the listener could find the selves in or walk through?
Myke: Very much on some of them, and it’s funny you should say that because I’m doing one video in the desert in Las Vegas and I did one on the beaches in Florida. One of the things I always loved about Jimmy Page and his riffs and his music is that he could take you to places. You know songs like ‘Kashmir’ they would paint this picture and Jimmy page was definitely one of my very early influences, so yes you’re absolutely right and it’s nice that you’ve picked up on – to create that side was an intention but there are so many influences on this album and within the notes of the album I’ve tried to make it very clear that the album is intended as a homage to the musicians that inspired me as a child. So Gary Moore is a big one, I remember as a kid I used to wake up in the morning, and I’ve always been a very obsessional human being, and so I’d get up in the morning and I wouldn’t go to school until I’d listened to ‘Black Rose’ by Thin Lizzy and I’d listen to ’Eruption’ by Van Halen and ‘Rock the Nation’ by Montrose. It was kind of like “I’m not going till I’ve heard these songs.” So I remember the effect that they had on me and I just wanted to create these little things that would maybe inspire some ten year old somewhere or some fourteen year old to pick up a guitar and play. When I listen to Randy Rhoads ‘Flying High Again’ guitar solo, and I must have heard this guitar solo a thousand times, but every time I hear it, it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time. So I wanted to create these little things that would potentially inspire musicians and hopefully give happiness to other people when they hear them.
Mark: I definitely get that especially on tracks like ‘I Love Guitars’ or ‘Maverick’ to name just two, they’re the sort of songs with the great riffs behind the that I almost found myself wanting to fit a vocal into them and sing along.
Myke: Yeah, that’s cool. It makes me happy that you said that.
Mark: You made a promise that if you sold the thousand copies of the album you made that you were potentially going to play some shows. Have you given any thought yet to what form those shows might take?
Myke: Yeah, I mean putting a band together and getting it to the level that you need to be at to play, it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of commitment and a lot of organisation. When I first made this record I said that I didn’t know if anyone in the world would be interested in it at all. So I took a risk and a gamble, I financed the whole thing myself and it’s been wonderfully received and it is actually approaching the 1000 CD’s being sold. And I’m good to my word, I will do some shows. I do have quite a big back catalogue of songs that I can pick from, even though I’ve played in other bands I’ve always been the songwriter so they’re my songs. So I would play a selection of (material). I’d probably split it – the opening part of the show would be instrumental and then with a singer we’d cherry-pick songs from Skin, songs from red White and Blues, songs from Jagged Edge and I can incorporate all of those into a live set. Songs like ‘Tower of Strength’, ‘Look But Don’t Touch’, ‘Take Me Down to the River’ and ‘House of Love’ these are all songs I’ve written so I do feel that I’m entitled to play them (laughs)
Mark: All songs that remind me of my youth from the days when I used to get out and see you.
Myke: we toured a lot back then and we met a lot of people on the road, it was fantastic times.
Mark: It’s wonderful to see that you’re back and you can really feel the love on the album, that you’ve fallen back in love with the guitar and it really comes through.
Myke: For me music is a really obsessional thing if I pick up a guitar I’m likely not to put it down again for another eight or ten hours. It’s a very all-consuming thing, it’s almost as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist. For me it can be a dangerous thing as well so I do have to be careful in terms of how I play. The album was a very cathartic process that came out of a very brutal divorce which was a big catalyst for me for not playing. But then I felt I had to play in order to come out of that again. I love playing guitar, but it is an obsessional thing more than something that brings me happiness, if that makes sense? People say to me “Oh you must be very happy with the album?” But on a song like “Shattered Illusion of Love’ I’m pouring my soul out here, showing the pain that losing someone you love can inflict upon you. And if you listen to the song the first two thirds of the song is very much trying to capture the feel of emptiness and loneliness that that sort of thing can make you feel, and then it goes into this transition thing and the final guitar solo basically says “No, this is not going to break me. I’m going to come out of this, I refuse to let this destroy me.” It’s not something you can jump about and sing and dance to, I’m trying to convey the pain and I hope trying to give some inspiration through the notes I’m playing. OK so it may sound very complex but when I’m playing these are the things that are going through my head.
Mark: I completely get that, especially on that song which is probably my favourite track on there – it starts off all delicate and dark and atmospheric, it’s almost as if the guitar is weeping…
Myke: Yeah, I remember when I was doing the takes on some of them I was just drifting, exhausted, because it was such an emotional thing to do. It’s just the way I play I don’t think it’s right or wrong. I’m just a very emotional person. And it all comes through in my playing I guess.
Mark: That’s a wonderful description. As we draw to a close we’ve just a couple of questions we like to ask everyone we talk to. If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any great album just to see how the magic happened what would it be and why? What’s the album that still resonates with you? What means the most?
Myke: Van Halen I. That was such a moment in my life. I discovered music really early I was hugely into Marc Bolan and the whole sort of David Bowie thing when I was a kid – I used to mime with tennis rackets apparently (laughs) and then I found ABBA! Apparently I was a big ABBA fan. And then I discovered Punk Rock and bands like the Sex Pistols and The Stranglers, I remember hearing the riff to ‘Pretty Vacant’ and it was just like a bolt that hit me, I knew that music existed and I enjoyed it but then I heard the start of that song and something happened. I have complete recall of the moment, I remember exactly where I heard it and hearing it come through the speakers it was almost as if it went inside me and went “this is it, you’ve found your thing.” This is it, this is all that matters. And I love Punk music because that was what was on TV and the Radio and then someone left a box of cassettes, and some people won’t eve remember what a cassette is, but there was this box of cassettes with all these random albums on them, and I just used to listen to them. Then one day I just pulled out this one cassette and on one side was Montrose – the first album, and on the second side it was Van Halen I. And I just put that on and tome that was just magic – this was the most important album of my life. I’ve listened to this album more than any other album ever and if I could go in and watch that album being recorded, my God I think I could die and go to heaven. The magic that is in those songs to me has never been captured by any band ever, it is the most perfect thing.
Mark: There are certainly albums out there that I don’t think anyone could ever match ad that would be certainly up there for me too! We always end with a really easy question though – what is the meaning of life?
Myke: Love. Love is the meaning of life. I find life very precious. I mean I’m a vegan and I’m completely against any form of cruelty not just to humans but also animals. And love can bring the most immense pain as well but without love we have nothing. Without love there’s no passion, all the great music and art and literature has been created through love. It’s a passion to create, a passion to leave something behind, to make someone think, to make someone laugh and cry. It all comes from the same thing which is love so for me it’s everything, everything. I love my work, I love meeting people, if there’s no love in my life I have no life. My love of music, I don’t know what my life would be without my love of music. To me it always comes back to that one thing, not to fear being loved and not to fear loving, it’s the purest thing you can have. It’s hard to find but you just have to let it flow and not be scared of being hurt.
Mark: That’s a perfect answer. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit today Myke it’s been an absolute pleasure, I can’t believe we’ve not spoken before and I’d love to catch up again and do a more extensive career spanning interview, maybe before you play those shows?
Myke: It would be my pleasure, you have my number now (laughs) And thank you the pleasure is really mine, I’m humbled that anyone has even listened to the album so the fact that someone is prepared to play it and let other people hear it you only have my gratitude, I’m humbled.
Mark: Thanks Myke that means a lot, it’s always a pleasure to share great music.
Myke: You take care my friend and thank you so much.
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