Janet Gardner last graced our shores a few years ago to rave reviews. Now she’s back with her band which includes ex-Tyketto bassist Justin James for Glam Fest Australia. Bringing a formidable band and playing not only her wonderful new material from her solo records and Gardner/James, but also teh classic Vixen standards – it’s a set not to miss! We caught up with Janet to find out all about her Top 5 Glam albums, updates on the new record and so much more…

Janet: Hey! Mark!

Mark: Hey Janet, how are you?

Janet: It’s great to see your face! We just can’t wait to get there!

Mark: (laughs) Yes we had a false start last year when we last caught up with an event that didn’t pan out, but we’re in safe hands here – what an event to come and play!?

Janet: I know, we’re excited, we’re coming and we’re going to have two great shows in Sydney and Melbourne.

Mark: It’s a great line-up and I’m sure you’ll have played with some of the bands before?

Janet: Oh, many times. And Justin was in Tyketto playing bass, so he and Danny are really great friends, I love Danny to death, is Melissa coming?

Mark: It’s funny Danny and I joked about people asking that question – she’s not sadly, it’s a bit of a whirlwind trip so she’ll stay at home. It will be great for you to have some time this time round?

Janet: Yes we’ll have Thursday in Melbourne as we don’t play until Friday, so we’ll do some fun stuff then and now we have the day between shows, It’ll be great.

Mark: The question I’ve been asking everyone this year is your Top 5 Glam albums, and you can take Glam any way you like, so I’ll leave that till later. Before we get to that one thing I don’t think we’ve ever asked you over the years is where it all began for you as far as music is concerned, was there a defining moment? A song that you heard?  Or did music seep into your life more slowly? Where did your love of music come from?

Janet: Well I always loved it growing up. My parents had certain music collections – my Mom liked Dionne Warwick, Aretha Frankin and stuff like that. My Dad liked Jazz, so he played a lot of Jazz in the house. And I also had four brothers who had way different tastes, some liked Rock, some liked Bluegrass, and Blues. So I was surrounded by all this different music and I loved it. My Mom played piano and she signed me up for piano lessons – I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it so I did that and then I begged and begged for a guitar. I really wanted a guitar so bad. So my Mom said “One more year of piano lessons, stick with it, practice and then I’ll buy you a guitar.” And that’s when things really went crazy when I got that guitar. I was in love with paying guitar and with singing. It gave me so much independence that I could accompany myself – I had my guitar and I was ready to go. So there was that, and also in Junior High when I was ten or eleven the first Heart album ‘Dreamboat Annie’ came out.

Mark: Wow!

Janet: That was life changing. I thought “I wanna do that!” It was so moving to me and so powerful, that was it, that was what I wanted to do! And then from there I fell in love with Aerosmith and then the first Boston album came out – and I was like “What is that!?” The guitar sounds were so rich, and the stacked vocals were in the stratosphere – I was like ‘Wow!’ That is great too. So, all of those things started to seep in over time and that’s how I came to be me, (Laughs)

Mark: It was a crazy wonderful time for music wasn’t it, and it’s hard for kids today to imagine being there at ground zero to hear records like that for the first time.

Janet: Oh, the late 70’s were the best!

Mark: I don’t think we’ll ever see a burst of creativity like there was in the 70’s again.

Janet: Oh no.

Mark: And Ann Wilson has to be one of my very favourite singers, she has it all.

Janet: She has the richness in the lower register and then the crazy power in the high range! I remember my mom knocking on the door and she opens the door and asked what I was listening to – so I told her it was this band called Heart from Seattle and kinda explained it to her and she asked ‘Are they black’ because she’d never heard a white woman sing with so much passion like the singers she loved!

Mark: (laughs)

Janet: She loved Aretha and all of a sudden there’s this white woman who toe to toe could match anyone on the planet.

Mark: And she still can, and they (Heart) are back this year.

Janet: I saw Ann on her own last year and she drew a great crowd, young people, old people and everyone in between, it was great to see that.

Mark: And that leads me to my next question for you as you are still sounding as good as ever: especially on ‘No Strings’ from last year. This all started off when I talked to John Waite and he told me he really didn’t do anything, but talking to other singers there’s lot’s that they do to keep things fine-tuned: what do you do to keep your voice in shape?

Janet: (Laughs) Well I think it has to do with your general health. If you don’t have the body and don’t have the breath to support it, its not going to sound great. And let’s face it we carry our instrument everywhere. So the body that supports it is super important. So I try to stay fit, get enough exercise, try to eat right, and your voice needs rest which is something I get a lot of because we don’t play too much anymore.  So I think that helps – if we were to do a three month tour of six days a week I know I would struggle. I saw Heart’s schedule and I thought “How’s she gonna do that?” I’m nervous for her.

Mark: (Laughs) I thought exactly that!

Janet: She’s ten years older than me and I would be nervous doing a tour like that right now – so she is amazing. But yah I think general health and getting enough rest and then just before we go we rehearse and I try to just warm it up gently and then go a little harder the next one and try not to damage anything in the process. But that’s it.

Mark: And it works.

Janet: But I do feel a difference. There was a time when I didn’t have to pay much attention to anything. If I didn’t sleep you get out there and it just comes out anyway!  (Laughs) Not so much anymore: if I don’t get enough sleep then I feel it on stage and I struggle. I guess it’s just as you get older you have to be more careful.

Mark: And I think you adapt to it too, you know what you can do and you know when you over reach!

Janet: Exactly! If I only get two hours sleep I’m feeling it.

Mark: And sometimes it’s a song as well, sometimes the hardest songs to sing are the big ones you play towards the end of the set! Like I was talking to Danny about ‘Forever Young’ you need soothing in the tank for that one!

Janet: Same for us ‘Edge of  Broken Heart’ is the song most people know and you don’t want to have to take a lower range or compromise because you want people to remember it – the song they love! So what we did as it’s towards the end of the set is have Anthony sing one right before it so I get a little break to recharge before the big song. You’ve gotta do what you gotta do to get through it and to deliver because the very last thing you want to do is to disappoint your fans. You don’t want to hear anyone say (Laughs) “Oh that wasn’t very good, I was looking forward to that and it kinda sucked!”

Mark: (laughs) I’m sure it will be fantastic when we see the set!

Janet: (Laughs) I’ll give it all I got! I guarantee it!

Mark: As you know, I’ve absolutely loved the last few albums you have put out.

Janet: Thank you that means so much Mark.

 

 

Mark: Can I ask is there going to be another one? How far advanced are we?

Janet: Well, we’re having discussions now. We’re thinking about just releasing them like singles now instead of just doing an album.

Mark: OK

Janet: And I hate that because I love albums, I love a collection of work. I love other people’s connections, you know, albums have a kind of a special pace to them and it delivers so much more than singles. So we’re kind of deciding whether to do singles as they come to us, or to wait and do another full album.  I wanna do another album.

Mark: I want another album, it can’t just be us?

Janet: But we are in the early stages. We have about five or six ideas that we’re kicking around. So we will see how it goes and see what the right thing to do is. Everyone is saying “You don’t really have to do albums anymore” or “Nobody cares, no one is going to buy albums anymore, just put your singles on Spotify and call it good” (Janet puts on a sad face)

Mark: I must admit though I never stream I do like both. I love a run of singles topped off by a great album, and I think there can be a happy medium. Everyone likes to be teased, and some attention spans are lower these days, so singles work well.

Janet: And we did that on the last couple of albums – we put out maybe three or four songs before the album came out. So we’re definitely not done that’s for sure.

Mark: That’s great to hear. How does inspiration come to you? How do the ideas appear? Can you pluck them out of the air, are you doing something normal and an idea creeps in or like Michael Sweet can you summon them at will?

Janet: It’s weird because I like to take little breaks where I’m just living and not thinking about music, because you have to get inspired from your life. That’s where it comes from – the things you do, the people you know, what you’re surrounded by, and what’s happening on the world – all of that. And that needs to kinda brew and collect in you before something comes to you and makes you feel a certain way.  And it’s the wanting to express that feeling in a song. But it does kinda come out of nowhere it’s weird how you just pluck it out of nowhere. But somethings Justin wil be noodling or fiddling and that’s where you start. He’ll have a cool riff or idea and then I’ll be inspired, and I’ll join in. Then we’ll write a chorus together. But for me the biggest thing is “What story am I telling? What is this about, you know? What do I have enough inside to make this mean something to someone else?” and “What do I need to say for someone to ‘get it’?” So if there’s an idea floating around and I’ve got nothing… Next! Because it’s not evoking any kind of meaning for me. So yeah sometimes it comes out of nowhere and sometimes literally a whole song will just come in my head: I’ll hear all of it – the melody, the guitar parts, everything. But most of the time it’s not like that – there’s lots of fiddling about and working through things before you hit on something that makes you think “Yes, I feel this now, let’s work with that.”

 

 

Mark: I for one would like to hear lots of songs from the newer albums in the set, what will the set look like a good mix of Vixen and Janet Gardner?

Janet: Well you know what there’s not a huge lot of Vixen standards, most Vixen fans only know four or five songs really well anyway and we’re not going to play any Vixen ‘deep cuts’ so there will be all the Vixen songs that people will expect and then there will be a couple of songs off each of our albums too.

Mark: You’ve made our day. I’ll be really happy. I actually played that first Vixen record last week, I’d not played it for a while and I looked at it and thought “Wow that’s 36 years ago!”

Janet: (Laughs) It is a while ago!

Mark: How do you look back on that record with it approaching 40 years. I guess looking back on the record that started it all? Does your relationship with an album like that change over the years?

Janet: The memories of it are still so vivid to me because it was such an amazing time, it was super exciting, (laughs) and super stressful. That was our moment! That was are shot – this was it! This was our chance to make something great and put it out there. So still to me that has some of the most vivid memories of my life really. The second album has different type of memories and I remember that pretty well, but the making of the first album was a monumental time in my life, So no, my thoughts and memories of it haven’t really changed that much at all. It still in a weird way seems fresh to me. It feels like yesterday! (Laughs) Even if I’m in ancient dinosaur age now!

Mark: The eighties as it was had a certain style of its own, nice and overblown which I still kinda love but listening again I always thought I’d love to hear a stripped back version of that record. Well some of the songs would sound really cool I think?

Janet: Well Justin and I play a version of ‘Edge of a Broken Heart’ acoustically which is totally a different take on it, almost like a whole other song. I wouldn’t mind now that you mention it doing that with a couple of other songs off that album, making it different. Having a different take on it because some of those songs are still really good. And I think maybe playing with them a little bit – people might like that.

Mark: And the question everyone’s been asking – will you have any merch?

Janet: We’re travelling pretty light with it just being the two shows so not really. Just the guitars and some equipment.

Mark: I shall have to bring a photo from last time for you to sign then.

Janet: You should then we can take another one! (Laughs)

Mark: For next time! (Laughs)

Janet: But now you said that we should bring some 8 by 10’s if someone wants an autograph and maybe a few CDs.

Mark: You should I remember they sold out completely last time.

Janet: OK we’ll bring them but it will be pretty minimal.

 

Mark: OK now it’s time to go back to those Top 5 Glam Albums, hopefully you’ve had some thoughts?

Janet: No because we’ve been chatting I haven’t been thinking about it. (Laughs) You know I would have to pick Def Leppard ‘Hysteria”, I have to go with Whitesnake ‘1987’, that was awesome, but that’s only two.

Mark: So we’re almost half way!

Janet: (Laughs) I also liked 80’s Heart.

Mark: I take it you mean late 80’s – so there’s the self-titled and ‘Bad Animals’?

Janet: Yeah, ‘Heart’ that’s the one. Now that’s three, I have to pick two more? I can’t pick another Def Leppard one can I? (Laughs)

Mark: You can, I’ll let you.

Janet: No that’s not fair. You know Bon Jovi I think is a very underrated storyteller so ‘Slippery When Wet’ was great. I’ll go with that, and I have one more. I know I’m missing something obvious. I love Aerosmith of the era and Van Halen but I don’t consider them Glam.

Mark: When I think of Glam the first bands that spring to mind are bands like T-Rex and The Sweet and Bowie.

Janet: That’s where it started for sure. So maybe Aerosmith and I don’t even mind which album and Van Halen – I love the Sammy stuff and the David Lee Roth, They’re both great. I loved Dave his voice fit his character and those little screams that he did, only he could do that. He had a lot going for him and as a front man – untouchable.

Mark: I remember seeing him in 1984 at my first Festival and he did a jump and almost did the splits in mid-air – I remember watching and thinking “I will never see that again” immediately followed by “I hope he landed OK” (Laughs)

Janet: (Laughs) And then you have the Sammy stuff which saw Eddie move in a different direction which was maybe why Dave left, more of a pop keyboard thing but with Sammy’s raspy voice in there it really worked.

Mark: It did. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit. I can’t wait to see you guys light up the stage at the Sydney show.

Janet: It will be great. We’re both looking forward to seeing you and we gotta have coffee or something.

Mark: We shall, it’s my shout as well this time.

Janet: (laughs) We’ll take you up on that. Thanks Mark, take care.

Mark: See you soon!

 

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