As part of our new ‘Off the Record’ feature, after our May 2019 interview with Crazy Lixx’ Danny Rexon all about the new Crazy Lixx album ‘Forever Wild’ we took time out to dig deeper and throw a few curve balls. Read on to find out more about the voice behind the band…
Mark: Thanks for being my first ‘Off the Record’ interview Danny. Five minutes of random quick fire questions all about you, are you ready?
Danny: Let’s go!
Mark: OK then, getting straight to it… If you could trade places with any other band or artist, past or present, who would it be for you?
Danny: I think I’d really enjoy being a frontman of a band like Kiss, just experiencing the phenomenon, the immense fandom that they enjoy, I’d love that to happen. I’m not sure that that kind of thing will ever happen again for any band ever again probably, but that would be something I’d love to experience for a day.
Mark: That would be so cool! As someone who writes all their own songs is there an artist you would love to collaborate with on a recording one day?
Danny: When it comes to song-writing I’ve always been a huge fan of Desmond Child, especially the songs he wrote in the 80’s and 90’s and I know he’s always been a kind of Pop song-writer, and Pop for him just happened to be Hard Rock back in the day and I think that collaborating with Desmond Child in the kind of song writing mode he was in back in that late 80’s that would be phenomenal. We’d definitely write some awesome hits together, that would be something!
Mark: A great writer, and I must admit I see a bit of Desmond in your work as well.
Danny: Thank you, I don’t think that’s a coincidence, he’s been a huge influence on me (laughs)
Mark: If you could be credited with any song ever written, what song would you want your name attached to?
Danny: Oh that’s a hard one! You can look at it two ways, either from a straight financial view that would make you a lot of money…
Mark: (laughs)
Danny: …or something that really moves you, something creatively that you really like. I’m going to go for the second one, a song that I really love, maybe not a huge hit but one that is one of my all-time favourite songs by a band called Stage Dolls from Norway they did a song called ‘Love Cries’ which is just awesome, one of my favourite songs and has been for many years.
Mark: It is a wonderful song, I love that.
Danny: Oh you know it!
Mark: I love the Stage Dolls, a very underrated band.
Mark: tell us something we don’t know about you?
Danny: Something you don’t know? Well I’m not a very public person so I guess that there’s tons of stuff that people don’t know. I think that most people don’t know that I have a family – I have two children and a wife and that’s something that maybe not everyone knows. But there’s tons of stuff I guess (laughs).
Mark: Name a guilty musical pleasure, something that people would maybe be surprised if they caught you listening to?
Danny: Well lately I’ve been listening to a lot of ‘Synthwave’ (a genre of electronic music influenced by 80’s film soundtracks and video games) a kind of Retro synth music that I don’t think was very popular back in the day, not when I was growing up at least. In those days you more or less had to choose between synth and Hard Rock, there was a kind of war going on between them. But these days it seems almost OK to listen to the both and I, especially when I’m out running or exercising I really enjoy listening to that kind of retro synth music, I think it works very well with that. So it’s a kind of guilty pleasure but I’m not sure there’s as big of a stigma attached to it anymore.
Danny: I also like to listen to what I like to call the overly-produced kind of ‘Disney Rock’ albums!
Mark: (laughs)
Danny: Especially with female singers like Avril Lavigne, very light-hearted, Pop-driven, often overly produced records. Sometimes I’m just in the mood for that kind of stuff as well. (laughs) I guess that’s more of a guilty pleasure amongst the Hard Rock fans at least! (laughs)
Mark: Over the years we’ve spoken one question I’ve never had time to ask is what started it all for you? When did you realise music would play such an important role in your life?
Danny: I’ve been asked this question before and it’s quite hard to find an answer. I remember when I was four or five years old some of the first songs I remember were ‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe and ‘Here I go Again’ by Whitesnake and those came out what ’86 or ’87 so I was pretty young. And I remember performing as well, lip-synching with toy guitars at school and even kindergarten and so I guess it kind of grew naturally. But the moment I actually started to learn an instrument was the bass guitar at first, and that had a lot to do with my older brother who was really into music and he played with some friends who needed a bass-player, so they kind of forced me to learn the bass, I was more interested in learning the guitar or something cooler, but they needed a bass-player so that’s what I went for and that’s when I remember I got influenced by people like Steve Harris for example – and I’ve always been a big Iron Maiden fan s o I would say I was about ten or eleven when I actually started to learn an instrument properly. So I’m not sure at what point it actually started but it’s always been around. But I always say I didn’t choose this, I didn’t choose this genre to play, it kind of chose me, I didn’t have a choice.
Mark: Thank you so much for speaking to us today Danny and best of luck with everything. I just needed you to know how much I really enjoyed the album, it’s wonderful when you hear something like this. I really can’t see ‘Forever Wild’ not being my album of the year come December.
Danny: Awesome, thank you and cheers. Speak soon Mark.
‘FOREVER WILD’ CRAZY LIXX’ LATEST AND GREATEST ALBUM IS OUT ON FRONTIERS RECORDS ON 17th MAY 2019. FOR ROCKPIT READERS AND FACT FANS DANNY WAS OUR THIRD EVER INTERVIEW BACK IN 2009, WE HOPE YOU’VE ENJOYED THIS NEW FEATURE AS WELL AS OUR REVIEW AND THE ALBUM RELEASE INTERVIEW…
