I’ve seen so many great L.A. Guns shows over the years starting out on their very first tour of the UK and catching pretty much every early UK visit after that (The Skid Row, L.A. Guns and Love/Hate triple bill being my favorite). After the band split I managed to catch both versions of the band at various times, but now of course Tracii and Phil are back together and headed to Australia for the first time together (Phil has toured here with L.A. Guns and Tracii with Brides of Destruction previously). The great news is that their latest album ‘The Missing Peace’ has them sounding revitalized and ready to take on the world. The Rockpit got the chance to catch up with singer Phil Lewis, a guy who prior to joining L.A. Guns I caught with both his previous bands ‘Girl’ and ‘Torme’ I’d been waiting for years to ask him about that relocation to Los Angeles 30 years ago that saw him join one of the finest bands to grace the Sunset Strip…
Mark: Hi Phil, it’s Mark from Australia’s The Rockpit calling how are you?
Phil: I’m alright how are you doing?
Mark: Very good thank you, it’s great to see you coming down-under next month, are you looking forward to bringing Tracii over with you this time?
Phil: Well I’ve never been over there with Tracii Guns so this will be a first, I’ve been over with other versions of L.A. Guns and the first time was great and the second time was an unmitigated disaster so I’m hoping that the third time will be the charm and we’ll get it right.
Mark: I think so there’s a huge amount of anticipation over here. The new album ‘The Missing Peace’ is fantastic can you tell us bout the title? I wondered whether it was a general comment about the state of the world, or a comment about you guys getting back together again?
Phil: No it’s very personal, I like the idea but we’re not seeking to comment on or create world peace, or anything like that. No I did an interview once on TV and they asked me”So Phil, what are the chances of you and Tracii playing together again?” and my response was “Never.” So when we did start working together again e were using the ‘Never’ and we were going to call the record ‘Never Say Never’ but as we started working it became clear that would just be cynical title and something like ‘The Missing Peace’ spelt with an ‘e’ would do nicely, it was a better title and the prefect cherry on top of a great record. It was a great record to make and it’s a wonderful feeling to be getting the adulation that the record’s been getting. A lot of people, a lot of magazines and websites have rated it very favourably in their albums of 2017. I mean we know we’re not going to sell millions of copies like the old days, we’re not kidding ourselves, we know that but it’s still a great feeling to write something, create something from scratch and for it to be so well received, and its moments like now talking to you on completely the other side of the world that brings that home.
Mark: You’ve certainly got some fans over here and while I don’t think you’ve ever put out anything that’s been less than great I think ‘The Missing Peace’ is my favourite L.A. Guns for a few years now.
Phil: Thank you. Some have been better than others, but I think we can say that ‘The Missing Peace’ is that its a very classic sounding L.A. Gun record but it’s also very contemporary too. We didn’t really have a plan for the album as to what it would sound like and we weren’t really going for nostalgia, but me and Tracii, we’re children of the ’70’s and we grew up listening to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin and you can hear that: you can hear the Deep Purple in ‘Speed’ and you can hear The Animals in ‘The Flood’s the Fault of the Rain’ and we make no apologies for that We’ve all got our influences and we wear them on our sleeve, but we do them in out own way.It would have been so easy for us to cover ‘House of the Rising Sun’ but that’s boring as fuck so we kinda did our own version of it.
Mark: I think that’s one of my current favourites.
Phil: It’s certainly one of my favorites to perform. It’s great fun and it goes down very well, it’s not exactly a ballad is it? It’s kind of a mid tempo groove, and it works.
Mark: I can’t wait for you to play that one. So step us back a little and tell us how the album came together, did you all just turn up at the studio, ideas at the ready? How did it all happen, especially after so long?
Phil: You know me and Tracii we hadn’t seen each other in along time, something like 15 years and in the winter of 2014 there was an event taking place in Las Vegas -a charity event – ‘Toys For Tots’ and Tracii and his band had agreed to play the event. So the promoter called me and said “Look Tracii’s doing it, would you be interested in getting up and singing a couple of songs and making the event really special so we can raise some money for a good cause?”So of course I couldn’t say no. We didn’t rehearse, we didn’t sound-check, I just turned up ten or fifteen minutes before the set, we didn’t know what songs we were gonna do. And there I was suddenly on stage with someone I hadn’t seen or spoken to,somebody that was such a big part of my life all that time, and it was a little weird to be honest but it felt great and it sounded good and afterwards we talked and buried the hatchet,not in each other…
Mark: (laughs)
Phil: So I told him that the next week I gad a show, an acoustic solo show and I said “Come and play some songs with me”which he did and during the course of that day before the show I was over at this house and he played me some of his ideas, the demos that he was working on, and I was really impressed with the way it sounded and he asked if I’d sing a couple and I said “Of course”. And once we’d started working on it it became something more, I didn’t want anyone else to sing on it, so at that point, about a year after the charity event, everything made sense and we were locked in to a reunion… But not just a reunion, it’s not like Guns ‘n’ Roses, God bless them, they’re doing a reunion but there’s absolutely no talk of them doing a new record. And that’s fine for them, but me and Tracii, we’re graters, we like to work and putting out a new album was our way of justifying a reunion. We wanted something that the punters could say “Oh yeah, that’s for real”, so it does mean something.
Mark: I guess that sometimes it’s hard for fans to understand why bands break up, but if people take a moment to look at their own lives and personal relationships it might be a bit easier to understand that ebb and flow.
Phil: Of course, being in a band is a lot like being in a relationship, it’s an organisation and when personnel changes happen people can be upset when certain things go down, but being on the outside they don’t really understand what’s involved and how important chemistry is. If you’re in a band with somebody who doesn’t want to be in the band, that’s a kind of subtle nuance that most fans might not pick up on or understand.But if you’re in a band with someone who doesn’t want to be you know it, it’s like trying to run a marathon with a stone in your shoe,and it’s really hard to explain that to people who aren’t in the business. They want us to all be friends forever, bands to them are like extended families, and so I understand why they get upset when things go down, but that’s just the nature of the business I’m afraid.
Mark: I know you have a few dates in The States and then the M3 Festival before you come over to see us. With Michael leaving the band recently, and we won’t get into the ins and out of that, will you be replacing him before you get here?
Phil: Oh yes, we just announced it yesterday, Johnny Monaco is playing second guitar.
Mark: Johnny from Enuff Z’Nuff?
Phil: Yes he was in Enuff Z’Nuff hes a tremendous guitar player, great song-writer, good singer and he’s been a friend for years but we never actually played together, so he was an obvious choice. We wish Michael all the best in his endeavors and all he’s planning on doing, it was always understood that he would be a fill in. Him being as young as he is we didn’t see it being permanent, but with Johnny I can see him fitting in, and certainly being involved in the making of the next record.
Mark: He’s a great player, he’ll fit in right away. With an album like ‘The Missing Peace’ where there are so many great songs there’s obviously a lot of pressure to play the hits but how much of that album will you be playing for us?
Phil: we’re up to five songs now, but we don’t play the same five songs every night but we’re up to five and hopefully in the near future we will do most of it. Some of it like the more epic songs, there’s a lot of strings, a lot of stuff going on so we have to figure out if we can do it without losing something or maybe we can midi it in, but that’s on our agenda this summer. The songs that we do so far are ‘Speed’, ‘The Flood…’, we do ‘Fever’ we’ve done ‘Sticky Fingers’ and ‘Devil Made Me Do It’.
Mark: You seem to have covered off all my favourites there. That’s great.
Phil: So there’s plenty in there, but we wont play all five of those songs in a set unless it’s a short set and they just want to hear no stuff. Then we have to put in all the songs everyone wants to hear like ‘Sex Action’, ‘Never Enough’, ‘Electric Gypsy’, ‘Over the Edge’ you know those nuggets.
Mark: All the classics.
Phil: So there’s something for everyone, a great night out (laughs)
Mark: A great night will certainly be had by all. Winding the clock back just a little you were actually in the first band I ever saw live many years ago – ‘Girl’ when you supported Kiss at Stafford Bingley Hall a few years back now.
Phil: You were at that show! It’s a small world. Do you remember what 10,000 people sounded like booing when I told them to fuck off! (laughs)
Mark: (laughing)
Phil: Do you remember that sound, I’ll never forget that!
Mark: I was only around 12 at the time and that certainly stuck in my mind, I thought that all Rock shows were going to be that exiting! (laughs)
Phil: I wasn’t much older myself! (laughs)
Mark: It was a great introduction to rock and roll! First show, and there was swearing and we were stood in the middle of what I think was a cattle market during the day, I still remember the feint odour! (laughs)
Phil: (laughs) I think it was yes, a livestock market, and it was all downhill from there mate! (laughs)
Mark: Let’s step back even further then, what was it that inspired you growing up, what led you down the path to a life in music?
Phil: It was the late 70’s and I was leaving school and I really didn’t know what I wanted to do you know. I mean I had a real job, we all had real jobs, I worked in Oxford Street in one of the shops,but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do, I didn’t want to join the army, I certainly didn’t want to go to university and I was just really interested in music even though I wasn’t a trained musician. I listened to music a lot to the pint where I was obsessed with those bands I was telling you about like Led Zeppelin, and there were other bands like Humble Pie, Wishbone Ash, it was like a religion to me. I just thought whatever I can do to get into this business, whether its just setting up amplifiers or breaking down drums or putting strings on guitars, anything I could do to be involved in it. And gradually I got there.I loved guitars, I loved walking down Shaftsbury Avenue in London at night looking at all the guitar shops and all the guitars hanging in the windows, and like magic it beckoned me in. And as it turned out it was my salvation, and it’s served me well, I mean we’ve had highs and lows, but for the most part I don’t regret the decision at all. I’ve had a fantastic life and I’m having a fantastic life because of it. I would ave been happy if I’d been in a band that played three chord songs like Status Quo, but I just ended up working with musicians that had high aspirations and now looking back on my discography and the things that I’ve done it’s been pretty varied and I’m proud of myself for some of the recordings that I’ve made and some of the shows that I’ve done with good reason. And I’ll continue to do it,I’m still inspired, I still look forward to going on tour, I look forward to coming off tour as well (laughs) but it’s ingrained in me now, I tried to get away in the mid-nineties, I became a family man and I got a job, t didn’t kill me (laughs) but the road wasn’t ready to give me up: I was summoned back and I’ve been back since 2000, I’ve been back 18 years now. So I must be doing something right.
Mark: You certainly are Sir. You have one of those voices that has always resonated with me, I was digging though an old box the other day and I found a copy of a demo tape, something from your past: ‘The New Torpedoes.’
Phil: Wow, there you are the other side of the world, I’m so surprised that you’ve even heard that. That was something I did after ‘Girl’ before I joined ‘Torme’ – there was a lot of music happening in London around that time but the music scene was dominated by the record companies and they were looking for very family-oriented bands like ‘Bucks Fizz’; ‘The Thompson Twins’; ‘Howard Jones’ – people like that and rock and roll was definitely a dirty word.
Mark: (groans at the memory)
Phil: I couldn’t get arrested by a real label, you know. I had to move to America,I had to move to L.A. to do that. Even Guns ‘n’ Roses I doubt would have got signed in London at that time, it was just a shit place for Rock and Roll. It was definitely time for a change.
Mark: So what was it like landing in L.A. for that first time, that must have been what 30, 31 years ago?
Phil: It was magnificent, you never forget something like that it was great. To say that I’d died and gone to heaven isn’t that much of an exaggeration. London was cold it was raining, it was frustrating, I’d burnt bridges with my friends and with my relationships, out of sheer frustration I’d pretty much run myself into a corner. And then overnight, it was like getting beamed up like Scotty in Star Trek, then to be there standing in the middle of the Whiskey surrounded by beautiful girls and this amazing music that was on fire! All the venues were packed, watching bands that I loved, it was a scene it was like going from one extreme to the other, and I was so welcomed. Then to be in a band with these native Californian boys that knew L.A. like the back of their hands, they were like ‘street rats’ giving me the tour showing me the city and then eventually the whole country. You couldn’t ask for better guys and we played music and we made money and lived on tour buses, playing countless shows and not even knowing what days it was because we were so punch-drunk dizzy from the thrill of it all. It was amazing.
Mark: It was amazing, such a vibrant scene then. And then you came back to the UK to play I remember you playing a boxing day show and a triple bill with Skid Row and Love/Hate in tow. Great days.
Phil: Oh fantastic.
Mark: I hate it when it gets to this point, I could talk all day but we’ve just a few minutes left, so we have a few traditional closers: 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’s the album for you and why?
Phil: You know I’m a big Humble Pie fans and some of those albums like ‘Smokin” any of the early Humble Pie stuff, I’d love to have been in the room with these geniuses like Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton, Greg Ridley, Jerry Shirley, just to see how they wove that music. Aside from that I would have loved to have been in the Studio when they were making Deep Purple ‘In Rock’, I feel that I know Led Zeppelin II so well that I was actually there when they were recording it (laughs) but it would be real classic 70’s stuff in my list. And that of course is why I became so fond and trusting of Andy Johns our producer who sadly passed away a couple of years ago because he recorded all those records and it was always great to talk to him, listen to him talk about recording techniques, and hear his stories. This was the guy that recorded Robert Plant’s vocal on ‘Stairway to Heaven’ so if he tells me I could do better, or that was perfect I can really trust somebody with that amazing pedigree. And we miss him, there’s no doubt in me or Tracii’s mind that he would have produced ‘The Missing Peace’ but unfortunately he ‘fell off his perch’ so we had to do it ourselves. He would have approved and we dedicated the record to him.
Mark: He would have had some wonderful stories.
Phil: Oh my God he had so many stories it was hard to get work done! (laughs)
Mark: We always traditionally end with a really easy one – what is the meaning of life?
Phil: (laughs) To make the world a little bit better when you leave than when you arrived.
Mark: Great answer. And when you get here we’ll get to the bottom of he last time you were over here!
Phil: I’ll tell you all about that when we catch up, get a tape recorder ready ‘cos this is a good one!
Mark: (laughing) Will do mate thank you so much for talking to The Rockpit.
Phil: Thank you very much, I appreciate your support and we’ll see you soon. Bye.
