I started my review of The Defiant’s new record ‘Zokusho’ with the line “If you crave the days when Rock was fun and a good time was had by all then this is your soundtrack” and I’m sticking to that. ‘Zokusho’ is a Japanese word meaning ‘sequel’ or ‘the next chapter’, and therefore fittingly is the title of The Defiants second release, due to hit the streets this month. The Defiants of course are the band put together by Paul Laine, Bruno Ravel, and Rob Marcello, band-mates in ’80s-’00s hard rockers ‘Danger Danger’. Its been four years since that wonderful debut which received rave reviews globally, capturing as it did that classic D2 sound. This time round though it’s even bigger with D2 drummer Steve West appearing as a special guest on drums. we caught up with Bruno Ravel to talk about the writing process for what surely must be a contender for Melodic rock album of the year. we even had time to talk about the 30th Anniversary of Danger Danger’s debut – one of the best releases of 1989.
Bruno: Mark how are you?
Mark: I’m good thanks Bruno, how are you?
Bruno: Things are good, just chugging along.
Mark: I love the new album, I’ve been hanging out to hear it and living with it on repeat for the last few days I have to say it’s only gotten better.
Bruno: Thank you I appreciate that.
Mark: It’s a little bit different too, you’ve tried a few new things on there which we’ll get to later. I saw on social media someone was saying “Oh it’s just Danger Danger again without Ted.”
Bruno: I know, it is. I think people are saying that because of the people involved and that Steve played drums so there’s bound to be all this “Oh it’s the second version of Danger Danger, but no it’s not, at least not to me or Paul and Rob ether. So no it’s a totally different thing. Danger Danger is me and Steve writing all the songs so we take a different approach and then the Defiants is Paul and myself, so totally different thing or at least for us.
Mark: I think last time we spoke would have been four years ago when the last album came out and over that time there haven’t been a lot of opportunities to play live, are we going to be seeing more of you out there for ‘Zokusho’?
Bruno: I have no idea, we’re hoping, we put the word out that we’d like to do shows but it’s a little bit of a logistical nightmare to get us all together in one place so we’ll see, but I’m hopeful that’s all I can say. It seems like these days the only time bands get to get together is at these AOR Festivals or on a Cruise ship or something like that – there’s no really that many tours going out especially for newer bands, you know what I mean, so we have feelers out there we’re trying to get some gigs, maybe we could do a short run in Europe or something like that. It’s a little bit tough.
Mark: I think that’s where it’s got to be really, Europe where people are still listening to new music and tours seem to be viable there still. In the rest of the world things seem to have been drying up a bit so people are forced to do the nostalgia trip to get people through the doors.
Bruno: I always say to me the whole spirit of Rock and Roll is a young man’s game and now that we’re older and the genre is older there hasn’t really been anyone in my opinion to move it on and carry it to the next generation. It does seem like it has kinda stalled as a genre and of course while the big legacy acts are still out there and touring and filling stadiums which is great, to me there’s nothing new for the new generation. So it has become a nostalgia genre.
Mark: And that’s sad because there are so many great new bands out there and when you listen to an album like this you know that there is plenty out there for Rock fans it’s just getting that critical mass moving that’s the real issue.
Bruno: That’s so true.
Mark: So who came up with the title ‘Zokusho’?
Bruno: I did, we were kinda having trouble finding a name for the record and I was getting a little frustrated because I didn’t want it to be a title for one of the songs, and we’re not that thought provoking as a band, you know we don’t try to send political messages out or anything like that so Paul wasn’t really concentrating on it so I was just walking around my house one day and for some reason the word ‘sequel’ came into my head and I thought “OK that’s what it is, it’s the next record, the next chapter in the book.” So I liked the idea ‘sequel’ I thought that was col, but I didn’t like the way it sounded in English so I kinda did some research and thought maybe it would be cool to say it in Japanese, I have a bunch of friends in Japan so I asked them, and I didn’t realise that there were about 20 ways to say it (laughs) Japanese is a pretty complex language so when I saw all the different ways to say it there was another word ‘Zokuhan’ and all these variations, and I kept looking down the list and then I saw ‘Zokusho’ and I liked the way it looked and I also liked the way it sounded, so my friends in Japan told me it was a kinda slang way to say it , more of a ‘street’ way. And I thought “even better” that’s the one I’m going with. So when I had that then the whole Anime thing came to me and I thought that would be cool, we’d be walking down the street in Tokyo, but it won’t be us, it would be these three mysterious dudes ‘The Defiants’ and that was cool, so that’s what we went with.
Mark: Great story, how that one idea kind of grows and grows.
Bruno: I kinda wanted that on the first record as well, but it turned out a bit different, Paul had this kinda ‘movie poster’ idea going and I kinda wanted it to be these three mysterious figures, but not necessarily us. That’s kinda the theme that I liked, I didn’t really want us to be on an album cover I wanted it to be like “Who are those guys?”
Mark: I suppose there’s a bit of a connection between the two covers the Japanese classic ‘The Seven Samurai’ became the ‘The Magnificent Seven’ so there’s a Japanese/Western cross-over there!
Bruno: (laughs) Yeah, I mean what else are you gonna do with an album cover (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) There’s some wonderful songs on there though, you guys must just find it so easy to write great songs?
Bruno: (laughs) Thank you. It is and it isn’t. The way Paul and I write, the thing I really like most about it is that we’re so, I mean we are critical of each other, but we’ve known each other for so long now that we kinda leave our egos at the door. Paul can tend to be very moody and once he gets set on an idea it’s kinda hard to change his mind, so I kinda have to play psychotherapist when dealing with him (laughs). You know I have to catch him in the right mood to present a certain idea, because if I don’t then it’s kinda set in stone. It really is kinda a unique, but at the same tie it works really well. In Danger Danger when I write with Steve it’s like either Steve has a strong idea or I have a strong idea and we just work on it, work on it, work on it till it’s done. With the Defiants we present ideas to each other and whether it’s me or Paul if one of us doesn’t gravitate towards it then it doesn’t become a song, that’s it. It’s very rare that either of us will have an idea and we kinda force it on each other. We don’t do that, we kinda let it happen naturally and sometimes that works out really well, but I’ll tell you what it does it makes the writing process very pleasurable in that there’s no stress, there’s no arguing all the time. There’s no fighting it’s just like “OK you don’t like that, onto the next one”
Mark: It’s great that you’ve got that way of working all sorted out. I did want to touch on some of the songs now and I’ve been watching social media to see what the fans are picking upon, and it’s a song I really liked and thought it was something a little different is ‘Alive.’
Bruno: That’s funny, Paul was saying that to me yesterday. Yeah, I guess it didn’t really start out like that. Initially it was like ‘verse-chorus’ and when we had that we kinda wanted to create a whole theme around, well more of a mood and then Rob introduced that arpeggiating guitar sound that might I guess remind you of U2 or something. And while it’s not necessarily our thing when I heard it I thought “Hey this is cool, I like it, let’s use it.” That’s kind of the way we do it, we don’t really try and put ourselves in a box and think ”This has to ne AOR” or “This has to be Heavy” or whatever. When I hear something as a producer, if it works for the song I go for it, whether it’s something like that or a keyboard part or intro that Paul may come up with that’s maybe a little left of centre, if it sounds good we use it. That’s the great thing about music now, we’re not trying to get on the radio! (laughs) we’re just trying to make music that we like, so there’s no rules.
Mark: (laughs) Though that song I can just hear on the radio!
Bruno: It’s funny because that song when we finished the record both Paul and I felt very strongly about it and so that’s why it’s further down the sequence. And it seems like everyone is kinda gravitating to it so that makes us happy.
Mark: I must admit I did mention the U2 part in my review, which by the way a couple of days in six and a half thousand people have read so far, so hopefully some of those people will pick up the record.
Bruno: Awesome. But you know what, there’s a lot of people who won’t take that next step of reaching into their wallets! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
Bruno: But I’m hopeful (laughs)
Mark: We’ve got to teach them the old ways!
Bruno: (laughs)
Mark: You always have a massive song to open the album, I think it was ‘Love and Bullets’ on the first album and this time it’s ‘Love is a Killer’ which is even bigger!
Bruno: Oh wow! Thank you. Yeah that one was a kinda tough song. That one I kinda had most of that song musically mapped out and I had melodies and the chorus and I had the title “Love is the killer” which I thought was a cool title and I kept singing that over the chorus but we couldn’t find a way to make it flow because it’s very kind of almost orchestral in its approach and very ‘choppy’ rhythmically, so Paul kept sending me different ideas that he had where he’d sing like different stuff over the chorus and it just wasn’t right. And so I said “You know what we have to go with the music on this one, we have to follow the riff.” And so that’s why when you listen to the chorus he’s singing the words on the beat, and on the chorus on the chord changes. And it ended up working, again when I heard the song in the end I thought “I like this, it has a great mood, it’s very ‘Defiant’s style’ but I wasn’t sure if people were gonna like that one either and they do, so again, very, very thrilled about that.
Mark: I think I actually prefer this record to the debut, there’s just a bit more in there and whilst there’s no ballads I love the slower ones too.
Bruno: Yeah you’re right there’s no proper ballad on this record that’s another thing that people haven’t really picked up on yet and that was also by design. For some reason I have something against sappy ballads, maybe it’s my old age, but when I listen to them I cringe! (laughs) I can’t stand them and I feel that most bands feel that they have to put one on their record, a sad song, a love song, but you know what we don’t have to. And Paul is great at that too so we totally could have killed it with a great ballad on the record but on purpose I said “No ballads.” (laughs) The slowest we’ll get is like ‘Hold on Tonite.’
Mark: That got you about half way there I think.
Bruno: (laughs)
Mark: Over the year I’ve been tracking people down who in my opinion released some of the best albums of 1989 and you released an album in 1989 I don’t know if you remember it?
Bruno: (laughs) I think we did!
Mark: I just wanted to ask you for a few memories about making that album as we’ve been talking about how pleasurable it seems to have made the latest Defiants. In ’89 Danger Danger had been together for a couple of years what was it like to get into the studio for your first record?
Bruno: Honestly that was a bitter pill to swallow for me making that record and bitter-sweet actually because we were so excited about getting a record deal and so excited about going into the studio but we knew nothing about the recording process or production. And while Lance Quinn our Producer was a very good Producer and still is, a very musical guy, he was a ‘my way or the highway’ type of Producer and so the experience of recording that record for a young band was not that pleasant musically. I mean in the end personally I’m a little bit disappointed about how that record came out because I felt like when I heard the demos and when I listen to them now they were so much different to the way that record turned out. So I could say that I wasn’t that happy about it, but it did very well and the fans love it, but for some reason every time I listen to that record, instead of listening to things that I should be grateful for and enjoy I always kinda focus on ‘Goddamn it Lance changed this and he changed that part, and this should have been the other way’ and all those kinda things. All those kinda memories come to me. But as far as just having fun and being in the studio and doing the usual studio pranks – we did a lot of that and that was a lot of fun. I would say that doing ‘Screw It’ was more of a pleasurable experience compared to the first, but the first one I will definitely have fond memories of it just from the prank part and it being our first time in the studio.
Mark: It was an interesting album in that at the time bands were writing three maybe three and a half minute songs but a lot of the track on Danger Danger were close to five minutes long.
Bruno: Yeah that was probably a mistake (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) I actually liked that aspect.
Bruno: I don’t know we just had too much to do musically we couldn’t fit it all into three minute songs! A lot of cool stuff.
Mark: And the partnership of you and Steve writing those songs is just perfect, one of my albums of one of the best years in Hard Rock.
Bruno: Oh thank you.
Mark: despite the fact that it wasn’t necessarily the most pleasurable experiences for you.
Bruno: Well for me personally. I was going through some personal stuff in my life and also just that any time I had I guess as an aspiring producer or aspiring song-writer, whatever I was at that time, it was kinda hard for someone I didn’t really resect at the time kinda stomp me down. Every time I had an idea, and Lance and I are good friends to this day, we still speak, I would say “Hey can we do this idea?” and he would say “Yeah you can do that just not on this record.” (laughs)
Mark: And maybe that’s why you’re so different as a producer?
Bruno: Maybe. I totally respect him, he taught me so much about music and production.
Mark: A great album thanks for sharing that Bruno. For me Danger Danger only got better with age, but controversially I think I actually prefer The Defiants.
Bruno: So do I, I’m appreciative of the whole Danger Danger experience and it obviously brought me to the place where I am now and I don’t know whether it’s because I’m in my 50’s and I’m listening with a different ear that I did when I was in my 20’s. But I do prefer the Defiants, I prefer the whole experience of the Defiants. The Danger Danger thing is way more stressful and there’s way more conflict and with this – it’s just fun and I think it comes out in the music for some reason you know what I mean.
Mark: I do. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us Bruno, I’ll let you get back to your renovations.
Bruno: Yes I have to get back to the construction! Swinging a hammer!
Mark: All the best with the album and take care with that hammer!
Bruno: Thank you I will. I hope to see you one day, maybe in Australia, if not tell Paul when you see him that you said Hi to me. Thanks a lot Mark take care, bye bye.
