Paradise Kitty is a band of five badass babes born and bred on Guns N’ Roses bombastic 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction. With serious metal honed chops and raucous reverence for the Sunset Strip warriors that took Hollywood and the world by storm, they are a sexy, smoldering, dead serious tribute that’s out to get GN’R fans far and wide. The Rockpit spoke to veteran LA drummer and Ex Femme Fatal member Rachael Rine just before their arrival in Australia to talk about their first ever tour to the country and about rock n’ roll in general.
Andrew: So how is everything with you and the band at the moment?
Rachael: Everything is good, we’re getting excited to get going!
Andrew: Yeah I believe the tour is this week so when do you touch down into the country?
Rachael: We leave here on Monday night and then we land there at 7am Australian time in Melbourne, I’m not sure which day though [laughs].
Andrew: [laughs] That’s alright! It’s obviously a long trip and I’ve done that trek myself a few times over the years. Are you good with flying on long travels like that?
Rachael: Yeah I’m fine with it. It’s a long flight but I’ve done it enough – not to Australia – but I’ve done long flights enough that you kind of get your rhythm down of when you eat, when you sleep, when you watch movies.
Andrew: So this is your first time in Australia then?
Rachael: Yeah none of us have been down there before.
Andrew: Wow so what have you heard about the country and is there anything in particular that you are looking forward to seeing or doing?
Rachael: I have heard from all of my friends that tour the world all the time, in different genres, all of them hands down say that Australia is their favorite place to play and do shows. So I am super excited to come down there and play so as I said some of these friends every weekend are in a different country so to them Australia is the best, I’m in so lets see!
Andrew: Definitely, looking forward to it as you have a good run of shows going on here. So what can the fans expect? I guess you focus more on the Appetite For Destruction album right?
Rachael: We do a lot of Appetite, we do stuff of Lies, we do a little bit of stuff off the Use Your Illusions. Unless we’re playing with a keyboard player, a lot of the Illusions stuff you need keys. So we’ve talked about adding someone in doing that but it doesn’t work for all shows.
Andrew: Sure obviously the Use Your Illusion stuff is quite different to the Appetite stuff where I guess that’s a bit more rock n roll. It’s a great album so what do you think of the fact that the album came out 31 years ago and they just celebrated the 30 years with a new boxset?
Rachael: I think it’s insane it’s been that long [laughs].
Andrew: Yeah it is!
Rachael: It’s a little hard to believe but it’s also really amazing and a testament to how strong those songs are, it’s 30 years later and that album is still causing such sensation. It’s one of those album from start to finish there’s not a bad song, there’s not a B-side. There’s not a moment where you don’t say this is amazing so it’s really hard to write a solid album like that, it’s rare for an entire album to be perfect and it’s amazing that it’s stood the test of time and kind of a testament to how amazing it is.
Andrew: What goes through your mind when you play these songs live? What is it like to give your take on these iconic tracks?
Rachael: Well I feel honoured that I get to play these songs. They’re great songs, I still love them and getting on stage, when things lock in just right and the crowd is locked in just right and everyone is connected, we’re all just a bunch of fans enjoying some great rock n roll together and it feels good.
Andrew: We saw Steven Adler a few months back where he did his first tour here in quite a long time and it was great to see him playing these legendary songs. Was Steven ever an influence on your drumming style at all?
Rachael: Yeah I mean all the things I grew up listening to were definitely an influence and Steven is an awesome person and a sweetheart and my old band Cockpit, we did a bit of touring with him back in the day so yeah Steve is awesome! He has a unique feel for how he plays so I’ve appreciated having to dig into that after having to learn his feel, he has a really unique feel that makes those songs swing in a way that is kind of necessary and feels really good.
Andrew: Yeah I hear the same thing, a lot of drummers say there’s a huge difference in what he did on that first album compared to what Matt Sorum and all that did afterwards so he obviously has his own unique style. Who were some of your own influences outside of what Steven Adler was doing and who got you into playing drums in the first place?
Rachael: The two guys that got me to start playing were Tommy Lee and Randy Castillo. Randy was a big inspiration to me in many ways since I was a kid because we came from the same area and so I grew up kind of thinking, ‘Well I can’t do that, I live in this little town in New Mexico’, and then this guy from New Mexico ended up in Ozzy and I was like, ‘Well if he can do that, why can’t I apply to this college or why can’t I…’. It just opened up the world and opened up any limiting beliefs I had on what I could do in my life so he was a big inspiration and then when I moved to Los Angeles we became friends and he was just an amazing sweet soul and I miss him dearly.
Andrew: That’s amazing! How does it feel to be influenced by someone and then all of a sudden go hang out and be friends with that person? That has to be a weird thing to have I guess!
Rachael: Yes and no, I mean as much as a fan as I am, even when I was young trying to meet musicians at my favorite show and this and that, to me they were never different than me. It was just my tribe, my people. Why shouldn’t we hang out together because I relate to you? So that’s just a kind of real natural flow for me of the artist that I have their posters on my walls so when we hang out I felt like they were my old best friend. It wasn’t like, ‘Ooh you’re in this band and you’re on this pedestal’. I think the only artist I would ever feel that way about would be David Bowie because I didn’t think he was human [laughs].
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah I think a lot of people would agree with that!
Rachael: But other than that they were just my bros and they just didn’t know it yet [laughs].
Andrew: I guess the LA music scene is kind of like a small community in that respect, everyone kind of knows each other in that sort of scene.
Rachael: Yeah absolutely, we all know each other and run into each other. I’ve been in LA now since 1998 and when I first moved here I quickly became friends wth a lot of people that like I said, used to have posters on my wall but to me they were just my bros. Years later I would play Vegas and one of them would come out to see me in the band now, we’re all just part of the same tribe like I said and it’s like a mutual respect and friendship thing.
Andrew: OK cool so you say you’ve been in LA for 20 years now, I was just in LA about 4 or 5 weeks ago and I came across some of those iconic venues like the Whiskey and stuff like that. From your point of view how has the whole LA music scene changed over the years?
Rachael: Well LA is going through a strange growth period right now but the scene, you watch it ebb and flow. You watch new kids come in and create a little bit of a scene and then they kind of dissipate and move away or grow up and do other things but the core of it doesn’t change. The same people are at the same shows, you take a place like The Rainbow and some of those regulars at the bar have been regulars like Lemmy was a regular for 40 years. Rock n rollers are lifers, it doesn’t come and go as a summer fad so you watch fads come and go and watch certain things change but this is still the heart of the American music industry in Hollywood and it really reflects in the type of shows you see and how shows are treated and the type of people that are at shows.
Andrew: That’s good to hear because you do hear stories about people saying that rock is dead and all this kind of stuff but even in the underground rock is always going to be alive in one way or another.
Rachael: Yeah those are just people that, I don’t know what their issue is but there will always be people like you and me like, I’ll go buy the new Anthrax album when it comes out [laughs].
Andrew: Exactly!
Rachael: The rest of us are lifers! I went to Rock On The Range this year here in the US and it was 60,000 people, sold out in a matter of days and it’s just wall to wall, sea of rock and metalheads and you’re telling me rock n roll is dead? If it is dead then we have a lot of ghosts running around!
Andrew: [laughs] So Paradise Kitty has been around for how long now? And how did you guys form together?
Rachael: About 3 years. The band is really just Jenna Syde, the singer and myself and then we bring in different members according to who is available and who is the right fit for whatever tour it is we’re doing because we do quite a bit of touring. Some of it is international and not everyone is able to do that. So the band came about, a mutual friend called her and I and asked if we wanted to start a Guns N’ Roses tribute band and it just seemed like a really good time to do it. So everyone was tasked in learning all of Appetite front to back, we had 4 rehearsals, 2 of which were auditioning members. When we went into rehearsals and played our first show we just kind of threw the boat in the water to see how it felt and to make sure that the original GNR guys were OK with us doing this because we don’t want to step on their toes. What we do is just to pay homage to them and respect what their doing so we got the thumbs up and then Jen and I just started really building from there.
Andrew: Have you got any feedback from the guys in GNR at all? Even from management or anything like that?
Rachael: Oh yeah they all love it. Slash is really supportive, Axl has tweeted about us telling people to go watch us play. I don’t think Steven Adler has seen any of us play but I’m determined to get him up to play a song with us at some point in time, Slash’s members from The Conspirators they jumped up and played with us. Dizzy Reed has done tours with us, when he plays the west coast he always wants us to open for him because he likes the way we play and my singer will jump up and sing with him, I’ll jump up and play drums, he’ll get up with us. It’s just a fun party among people who respect each other and are just cool and having a good time playing some great music.
Andrew: That’s fantastic to hear and great to see good feedback from all parties involved like that, it really cements the fact that you are doing something really cool and special I suppose.
Rachael: Yeah well a lot of tribute bands get up and they try to dress like the band and that works for them but what we do is a little different. I was talking with someone the other day and they said to me that calling us a tribute band would be like calling Steel Panther a cover band. What we do is a little different, we get up as ourselves and we do our thing playing these songs, it’s important to us that the songs are played right and they feel right. But Jenna doesn’t act like Axl on stage, every once in a while she’ll do a little snake dance but she has her own voice and her own persona. People know who I am as a drummer, I have my own stage thing so we each just kind of get up and do our thing. Our lead guitarist Ariel Bellvalaire gets up and does cool splits and back bends and all kinds of circus tricks on stage that you would never catch Slash doing. We don’t look at it as if we’re trying to be these guys or trying to mimic them, we’re just fans that come to a party with a bunch of other fans and it’s our job that everybody has a good time and has good rock n roll to listen to, that’s our job.
Andrew: That’s a great way to approach it. We’re definitely looking forward to seeing you guys for the first time, I really hope the tour is a success for you and I hope you enjoy your time here. So do you have any final words for the fans before you arrive here this week?
Rachael: Please come say hi, introduce yourselves! We are so excited to come and hang out with everyone and to get to meet everyone. I hear how amazing touring in Australia is all the time and I know all of my Australian friends are just wonderful, amazing people that love to have a good time so we are so excited to come down and be a part of that with all of you. So don’t be shy, introduce yourselves, say hi and have a drink with us and hang out because like I said, we are all just fans throwing a party together so let’s make it one hell of a party.
Touring Australia: September/October 2018
With special guests excluding Adelaide Poison’Us Australian Poison Tribute
Melbourne / Thu 27 Sept – Max Watt’s House of Music + Poison’Us , Looks That Kill – Mötley Crüe Tribute & ’80s rock DJ’s
Adelaide / Fri 28 Sept – Fowlers Live + Australian Mötley Crüe Show, PROPANE CANDY & ’80s rock DJ’s
Canberra / Sat 29 Sept – The Basement + Poison’Us & ’80s rock DJ’s
Sydney / Sun 30 Sept (pub hol eve) – The Factory Theatre + Poison’Us, Dave Eastgate and Boner Contention & ’80s rock DJ’s
Newcastle / Thu 4 Oct – The Small Ballroom + Poison’Us & ’80s rock DJ’s
Brisbane / Fri 5 Oct – Woolly Mammoth + Poison’Us & ’80s rock DJ’s
Tickets on sale now
http://silverbacktouring.com.au/paradisekitty
