It seems like only a couple of days ago that we last caught up with Chip to Talk about Enuff Z’Nuff’s tribute to The Beatles – ‘Hard Rock Nite’ and now he’s back with a new solo record ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ and as he tells us there’s a new Enuff Z’Nuff record of original material just around the corner too! It’s like it used to be in days of old! So no time to waste – let’s dive right in!
Mark: How are you today Sir?
Chip: Good, how are you doing Mark?
Mark: Very good Chip, great to catch up again. Last time we spoke when ‘Hard Rock Nite’ was about to hit you told me the solo album was coming out and I’ve been listening to it all week!
Chip: I appreciate that, you doing good?
Mark: I’m very well thanks despite the 110 degree heat, how are you it looks cold there?
Chip: Yeah it is cold I’m running around on errands all day today. It’s ridiculous! I have a show, I’m on tour – we’re playing Downtown Chicago tonight at Livewire. I have all my Rock Star buddies coming out to see me and then tomorrow night we’re in my home town of Blue Island doing a special home-coming show.
Mark: That’s great, I’ve been talking to a lot of people from your part of the world recently – I just spoke to Rick (Nielsen) from Cheap Trick.
Chip: That’s fantastic. Anytime you’re spoken in the same breath as Cheap Trick it’s good words.
Mark: He’s a great guy and coming down to see us next week, that’ll be one of our first international acts back in Australia in two years, since we saw you!
Chip: Wow that’s incredible, I bet you’re happy to have it back.
Mark: Mate it feels like a huge part of my life has been given back!
Chip: (laughs)
Mark: There is a Cheap Trick connection with the solo record though – I see you have Rick’s son Dax on there as a guest!
Chip: Yah, I was able to bamboozle him to playing on the record! I tried to get the old man, I talked to Dax and he said “Send me a couple of tracks and I’ll see if I can get Pop to play on it’, but he had too much on his plate. (laughs) Rick complains when his son is playing on the records and nobody calls him but when we call him he’s too busy to play (laughs).
Mark: (laughs) We’ll have to see if we can twist his arm when we see him down here.
Chip: (laughs)
Mark: It’s a pretty special album ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ I always saw you as a band man though why the solo record?
Chip: That was down to the Record company, that was their choice. Frontiers wanted three more albums from Enuff Z’Nuff after ‘Clown’s Lounge’, ‘Diamond Boy’ and ‘Brainwashed Generation’ so I said “We can accommodate you there.” So I just hot the studio, the first one we recorded was the Beatles one ‘Hard Rock Nite’ and now this solo record I have called ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ and then the next one is a new Enuff Z’Nuff record that will come out some time in July, maybe August.
Mark: (laughs) That’s so incredibly prolific, it takes me back!
Chip: (laughs) It’s like the old days now bro’!
Mark: It is isn’t it!
Chip: Back in the Sixties and Seventies bands were putting out a record or two a year. And here we are now in the 21st Century and bands put records out every three or four years!
Mark: It’s all about being able to keep up the quality, and you certainly do that here. It’s a great album to listen to and definitely one the fans are going to love.
Mark: I’m going to start right at the end of the record though with one of my favourite bands ‘Mott the Hoople’ Tell us about the first time you an remember hearing them?
Chip: Oh Mark you can’t go wrong with Mott the Hoople! I was turned onto them back in teh early Seventies by my father, he was a big Mott the Hoople fan. When he served in the military, and he served in there for many years, a wonderful man, loves our Country and England too. He was serving over in Europe ad he got turned on to them over there. They were the first band to take out Queen to play with them. He was a big Queen fan, like I am now of course, you are what you eat. And I just started listening to them – early Mott the Hoople with Ian Hunter and Overend Watts! Just a fabulous band who had their own sound I think, their own landscape. And I’ll always be grateful to them because they took Queen out on tour first. Everyone knows them from ‘All the Young Dudes’ which was written by David Bowie, when Bowie was feeling generous. I always thought they were a band that deserves recognition here in the United States. They’re not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but they have put out tons of records and sold tens of millions of albums as well so they definitely deserve and inclusion. So I put the song on there because of that, and it also has Steven Adler out of Guns ‘n’ Roses playing on it. When he lived with me back in Blue Island years ago. I was going through the library and I heard the track and thought that it was something that the fans would really enjoy – hearing Steven out there on another record playing with me doing a Mott the Hoople cover. It’s a “win, win, win” all the way around there Bro’!
Mark: It is, and Chip I have to say that you are now the only man who has done a Mott the Hoople cover that I actually like!
Chip: (laughs) Thank you.
Mark: There’s just somethig magical about that band that is very hard to capture, but you managed it.
Chip: I tried too but it is challenging playing those Mott the Hoople songs. Ian has his own timbre but I did the best that I could and at the end of the day everybody seemed happy with it. So a Mott the Hoople song on a Chip Z’Nuff record I think that’s an interesting thing at the end of the day.
Mark: It’s a great thing and another interesting thing about the album is, and I didn’t realise until I heard it on the first play is that I love the ‘band’ version you’ve done of ‘Heroin which most people would know from the ‘Tweaked’ album.
Chip: Thank you I appreciate that, I put that one out there for a couple of reasons. The first reason was I always envisioned ‘My Heroin’ to be a song that had drums and guitars, so I wanted to beef it up a little bit and when I talked to Dax Nielsen from Cheap Trick he said he’d love to play on it. And that was it, it’s nice to have it on the solo records, it was a solo song when I put it on the Enuff Z’Nuff album years ago, so it’s only fitting that I put the real version out there – the Rock version of it.
Mark: I always loved that song, and it sound great the way you’ve repainted it! Then again the rest of the album is pretty solid too. One of my favourites at the moment, and I’ve played it a good few times now, is ‘3-Way’, I love that Bluesy guitar pattern it’s got going on in there.
Chip: Well it’s quite a promiscuous song that’s for sure! (laughs) not only by title but by the content. When I wrote that song it brought back memories of old Beatles, it had a nice swing to it, and I wanted to do something different on there so the guitar you like I thought why not try and get a Slash or a Joel Hoekstra on there, someone who knows their way around the guitar to take the song to the next level. So I called Joel as Slash was busy, as he always is, what a fabulous musician. So Joel stepped in and I asked if I could send him a couple of songs and he recorded them at his place. The first thing he said when he got the songs was “Chip these are great songs, thank you so much for including me”. He was really humble about it, and boy he brought the whole kitchen sink to that track!
Mark: He certainly did. What was the most enjoyable one to record.
Chip: I think for me it was ‘Welcome to teh Party’ – how the records starts off, the first track. And I’m looking at the world through my purple or rose coloured glasses on that one, it’s my love letter to the new generation, and it really touches upon what’s happening in the World right now. I prefer some of the promiscuous stuff, I’ve never been politically correct. I don’t have any handcuffs on, I’m very transparent and I say what I want at the end of the day. And most of these songs are what I see through my eyes and what’s happening in this country. And some of it’s good, it’s about hope and love and some of it is a little bit more aggressive, and that’s what Rock and Roll is all about, no rules, no regulations, who cares!
Mark: Exactly!
Chip: Let’s just get out there and celebrate any way we can while we’re here!
Mark: It is a very uplifting album as a whole though, it brings back some great memories and there’s some wonderful ‘Blue Sky’ Rock and Roll, as I call it. ;Heaven is a Bottle’ is another interesting track as well, just when we thought that we’d heard everything that you had in the drawer with ‘Never Enuff’ we get another one written by Donnie, and it fit’s real nicely on there.
Chip: Hey Mark I appreciate that, but there’s still a lot of subject matter hidden in those drawers at Enuff Z’Nuff house.
Mark: I was hoping you were going to say something like that!
Chip: I have a plethora of songs and they don’t stop coming out I find them all the time! And I’m sure there will be many more records featuring that material. But that was a track I wanted to re-do because I always liked it and we never put it on any records. Always thought it was a strong song with a good message and once again in the studio we have Dax Nielsen playing drums on it. I shot the video here in Chicago Illinois and I think I captured a little magic in the botte right there.
Mark: I think you did.
Chip: I’m really proud to have anther song on the record that features Donnie – a fabulous singer-songwriter. And maybe a movie soundtrack might pick up some of these songs down the line and help us pay some of our bills. I’d like to see that.
Mark: But it keeps coming ‘I still Hail You’ I love the storytelling in that, something a little bit different?
Chip: All I can say about that tune, is that I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. I’m singing about my friends and the people that have touched me in my life whether it’s musically or educationally. A strong rock track right there – very old school. I’m probably nicking from the Beatles and a bunch of other cats right there, who knows? I just feel good about telling that story. It’s always good to plug in your friends and your constituents on any songs, I certainly did on that one. I love the guitars in there, but for the most part it’s all about the story and that’s a good one in my eyes.
Mark: It’s a great one, I love the lyrics. Are you gonna get a chance to play any of these with the band live? Is that the intention? Will you have time, I know how much you play.
Chip: That’s the intention, we never play anything off the Strange Time record (Chip’s first solo record ) that we did on Cleopatra that came out in 2014. That one has Robin Zander, Steven Adler, Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons, a cast of great musicians on there playing with me. On this record we’ll see, I’d like to do a few of them, perhaps there will be some acoustic shows down the line but I’d prefer to Rock out and have the whole band. Only time will tell, and this next tour that we go out on, which is in June called the ‘Glam Slam Metal Jam’ tour – it’s us, Pretty Boy Floyd, Midnight Devils and another support band in there. All the bands were with major labels and put out great records and they’re all very colourful and flamboyant so I think it will be a Wonderful tour. That starts in June. I know there most of teh fans are going to want to hear the Enuff Z’Nuff songs and those off the latest record ‘Hard Rock Nite’ so I’m not sure if we will have time to fit any solo songs into an hour and a half set, but we will get those songs out there I promise you.
Mark: The record is out March 18th globally so everyone should get out and grab a copy. I have to ask you one question – I’ve seen you in many hats over the years and on the cover you’re wearing a particularly cool one – where did the big silver hat come from?
Chip: The big silver hat came from a fan on the road. I used to have a company out in Las Vegas that would take care of me for hats but they went out of business – I should have grabbed all their hats! (laughs) but the fans that come to me on the road, they bring me gifts, they bring me hats, all kinds of things and extracurricular activities, I got lucky on that my friend. But I still have the hat I wear it a the time – it’s called ‘showtime’ – that’s the name of the hat! When I put that one you know there’s going to be a gig coming up!
Mark: We’ve got a hat waiting for you the next time you come and see us, and we promise it’s not one of those with the corks hanging off it!
Chip: (laughs) Well I love to hear that Mark. You know that Australia is one of my favourite places to play and we all hail the trim and the cocktails and the extracurricular activities that Australia provides 24-7. We’ll be back there when you open up to support the ‘Hard Rock Nite’ album.
Mark: Well we’re fully opened up now even in the West where we are, it’s been a while – so long that one of the last International acts most people saw was Enuff Z’Nuff when you were over last!
Chip: i see a lot of the mandates and restrictions being pulled and here we are in March of 2022 two years later. I know masks are mandatory in most places, you can go and shop, it’s loosening up and we’re starting to realise that this is something we can deal with as a whole. think we’re through the worst of it, at least I hope so. In the UK they stopped all mandates and restrictions, so good things are happening and we can all get back in the game again.
Mark: Absolutely, and one of the first bands we get to see is Cheap Trick, let’s hope soon we’ll also get to see you guys.
Chip: I love their new record ‘Another World’ it harkens back to the old days and what they were all about – just plug in the guitars – no sequencers, no tapes, no synths, no guys back stage. Just five guys on stage kicking ass and I love the addition of Robin’s son. He’s a great singer and great addition to the band, wonderful guitar player, plays all the instruments. It’s a great band and I talked to their manager recently and maybe we’ll be playing a few shows with Cheap Trick in the future.
Mark: I’ll book my flight now!
Chip: (laughs)
Mark: Take care of yourself my friend, it’s always great to check in with you.
Chip: Good hearing your voice and seeing your mug Mark! And to all the Australian’s out there much love, Enuff Z’Nuff will see you some time in the near future, God bless you all be safe!
READ THE REVIEW OF ‘PERFECTLY IMPERFECT’ HERE
