Riffing It Up With Jake E. Lee (INTERVIEW)

It’s a quiet night in mid-December and Jake E Lee has been talking a long time. You can hear it in his voice. The vocal chords are becoming just a little tired but the enthusiasm shows no sign of wavering. Jake E Lee is back and every guitar hero worshiper in the modern world is salivating. Twenty years is a long time to live out of the spotlight and decide to come back and STILL have a baited-breath audience not only waiting but cheering.

Throwing himself back into a band configuration, instead of being simply Jake E Lee featuring some anonymous sidemen, the former Ozzy Osbourne guitar player is more comfortable as part of a whole. Never having been one to feed off the attention, he is content to shine a little to the side, as he did in his post-Ozzy band Badlands. So with Red Dragon Cartel, he stands evenly beside vocalist Darren James Smith, bassist Ronnie Mancuso and drummer Jonas Fairley despite the fans and press pushing Lee to the forefront. Hence, a day of talking and talking, answering the same questions we all want to know the answers to. “I’m sure you’ll ask the same questions and I’ll do my best to feign interest,” Lee tells me straight-faced before breaking into a big laugh. The man has a sense of humor and our interview ends up having that fun air about it.

Lee made his name with Ozzy Osbourne on the albums Bark at the Moon and The Ultimate Sin, two records long beloved by Ozzy fans following the death of Randy Rhoads. After his sudden “let-go,” he formed Badlands with the late Ray Gillen, a man whose bluesy pipes helped score them a hit debut record in 1989. A few records more, Gillen’s departure and sad death, and the band just lost heart and faded away. Lee played here and there, recorded several strong solo albums, and then just basically disappeared into life as a father and ordinary gentleman.

All along, though, Lee never really stopped playing guitar. He whipped up riffs and in-the-works compositions in his home studio and was perfectly content. Around 2011, Beggars & Thieves coaxed him into their “We Come Undone” video and Eddie Trunk persuaded him onto an episode of That Metal Show. And suddenly, Lee was getting a little itch which producer Kevin Churko and bass player Mancuso stimulated even more. And because of their persuasive powers, we now have Red Dragon Cartel coming out tomorrow, January 28.

The album features some powerful guitar work by Lee. He lets go several times and really comes alive on “Big Mouth,” “Fall From The Sky” and “War Machine.” Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander sings lead on the introductory single “Feeder,” and hasn’t sounded this delectably nasty in years; In This Moment’s Maria Brink snarls her way through “Big Mouth,” and Sass Jordan raises all kinds of hell on “Redeem Me.” Other notable guests include Todd Kerns and Brent Fitz from Slash’s Conspirators, Five Finger Death Punch’s Jeremy Spencer, former Pantera bassist Ron Brown, Scott Reeder of Kyuss and original Iron Maiden vocalist Paul Di’Anno. When I tell Lee that I think the album is fantastic, he replies happily, “I think it’s a pretty good album myself.”

Of course you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be talking to all of us.

Yeah, I’d just go hide away, re-retire.

Oh no, we’re not going to let you go away again. So tell us what it felt like being back in the studio again recording with a band again.

Hmm, interesting, well, I had been recording at home and writing music the whole time I was in retirement, not especially thinking it would ever reach anybody else’s ears. But I was fairly happy doing it that way and with the computer now you can just do everything yourself. And at first that’s really cool, cause you don’t get into arguments. “I want the song this way!” Ok (laughs) There’s nobody to argue with. So at first it was really cool but I admit after a couple of years, I sort of missed the interaction with other musicians, throwing ideas around, maybe getting a contribution from somebody to a song you thought was perfect and then finding out that, whoa, it’s even better now (laughs). I did start missing that.

So when I was approached to possibly do something, it was very noncommittal. I still wasn’t exactly sure that I was going to do anything because I was content – content with my career and didn’t feel like I needed to prove anything else. And I’m not a spotlight-seeker. I don’t particularly like it when I’m the center of attention. So I didn’t miss any of that. When I was approached by Kevin Churko and Ron Mancuso to possibly do a project, it was very noncommittal, like, “Dip your toe in the pool, see how it feels; write a couple of songs, see what it’s like. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want.” So I decided, yeah, I’ll give it a shot and see what happens.

And Ron and I, the first song we wrote was “Feeder,” and we’re listening back to it and Ron’s singing on it and Ron’s probably the worst singer in the world (laughs). He is really horrible (laughs). So we’re listening to it and of course realizing he can’t be the guy to sing on it, and just off the top of my head, well, “Robin Zander would sound great on this track.” Then Ron told me, “Well, I know Tom Petersson. He’s a friend of mine. Why don’t I call him and see if Robin would do it.” I got a little excited and said, “Really? Cool.” We sent him the song and he said he’d love to sing on it and he recorded his vocals in Florida, sent the tracks to Vegas. Well, not really like he sent them; he sent them through the internet (laughs). Anyway, he sent the tracks back. Ron was in the studio and he mixed his vocals into the song and said, “Come to the studio, you need to hear this.” I got there, he played it, and I’m listening to a song where Jeremy from Five Finger offered to play drums on it. Tom Petersson played bass on it. Robin Zander is singing on this song that I’d just written. And that’s when I realized, I do miss this. It makes me feel so alive and I was so excited. At that moment is when I just said, yeah, ok, I’m pulling my toe back out of the pool and I’m diving in head first. Let’s do this. I miss this, I do miss this.

I’ve heard that you had a lot of material and had been working on songs and riffs over the years. What was the elimination process like trying to figure out what goes on the album or what to work on?

That was mostly Ron cause, yeah, I had a backlog of, I don’t know, various bits, sometimes it was just a riff I had, like a ten second riff; sometimes I had pretty much a completed song but I probably had at least a hundred of these ideas, and I told Ron I wasn’t going to go through them (laughs). So I brought the hard drive and he went through them and whatever tickled his fancy is pretty much what we worked on.

What was the surprise song on here – the one that almost didn’t make it or it started off one way and turned out completely different?

I would probably say for me it would have been “Shout It Out” because that song is one riff from front to back. It’s basically (singing) ba-dam-a-bamp, with variations on it. If anybody looks at my songwriting, all my songwriting, I like to go different places, like, here’s what we do for the verse and now let’s come up with a bridge, that’ll be different going into a chorus that’s not the verse and then going to a middle eight. I kind of like it musically interesting to me whereas just playing a riff from start to finish isn’t interesting at all to me. But we worked on it and once there was a melody in place, and you can feel that song is very energetic, once you heard the energy and I heard the melody, that surprised me that that came out as well as it did. And it’s probably one of the stronger songs on the record.

Todd Kerns and Brent Fitz from Slash’s band play on the album.

Oh yes, Canucks (laughs). We had a lot of Canucks on the record. I don’t know how that happened (laughs). The song with Sass is all Canadian except for me, and with Kevin Churko, who is Canadian, as executive producer and mixed it, yeah, it is a lot of Canadians on this (laughs). I guess because they are all pretty nice people, it seems like. And Sass is a fantastic singer.

You have a long friendship with Warren DeMartini [Ratt] but I didn’t see him listed as a guest on the album.

Nay, I wanted to do all the guitars (laughs). I’m pretty stingy that way. In fact, I don’t think I really ever on any of the records – not Ozzy, not Badlands, not my solo stuff – Yeah, I’ve rarely recorded anything with another guitar player. In fact, well, I think the first time there has been another guitar player on one of my records is on “Big Mouth,” the song that Maria sings, cause at the very end of it, I trade solos with Chris Howarth, the guitar player with In This Moment, at the end of that song. And I think that’s the first time I’ve ever done that.

The last song, “Exquisite Tenderness,” is really beautiful. What inspired that?

Well, that song is forty – let me figure out my age here (laughs) – that song is forty-two years old. That was the first song I ever wrote. I started playing piano when I was six and I didn’t start playing guitar until I was twelve. So right around when I was thirteen or fourteen, on the piano, I just came up with that. That was the first song I ever wrote and I never knew what to do with it. I mean, it wasn’t an Ozzy song, it really didn’t seem like any song that you would put on a rock record, and I just never really knew what to do with it, but I always had it. The studio that Ron and I recorded in is right next to a restaurant that has a Jazz lounge in it and we were in there late at night and I saw a piano and I was like, I hadn’t seen one of these in a long time (laughs) so I sat down and I started playing that and Ron said, “What’s that?” And I said, “That’s the first song I ever wrote, never knew what to do with it.” And Ron said, “I know what to do with it” (laughs) and I said, “What?” and he says, “Let’s put it on the record.” “Really?” It just seemed really weird to me but he said, “I think it would be a great way to end a rock record, with something like that.” And I think he was right. I’m just thankful that after forty-plus years I’d finally be able to put that song on something.

How did you discover rock & roll?

I remember the exact moment, cause like I said, I grew up as a child playing classical piano and I was also surrounded by Jazz. My dad was a big Jazz enthusiast. So these are complex forms of music. The little bits of rock that I heard was always from my younger sister’s room and she was into the Monkees (laughs) and stuff like that and I’d walk by her room and just think, “God, what is this?” I was not a big rock fan at all until I was twelve years old and I’m walking down the hall, passing my sister’s room, and I heard the beginning of “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix. And my jaw dropped, like, Oh my God, what is this? And I got so excited hearing that song and I turned to my sister and said, “Who is that?” And she goes, “It’s Jimi Hendrix. Why? You going to make fun of me again?” (laughs) I said, “No” and she had an acoustic guitar, because she was more of a folky kind of a chick, a hippie chick, and I said, “No, no, not at all. Can I borrow your guitar?” And that’s why I started wanting to play guitar, after hearing “Purple Haze” and that turned me into a rock fan.

Who was the first real rock star you ever met?

I’m trying to think if I ever met any (laughs). Maybe Ronnie Dio, I think. I was in a LA band that eventually got managed by Wendy Dio, Ronnie’s wife, and yeah, I think Ronnie Dio would be the first rock star I met. But I’d say the biggest star, to me, the most exciting one was meeting Johnny Cash. I don’t know if he’d be rock but he was a biggie (laughs). It was really cool. I was in Ozzy and we were playing somewhere back East, I don’t know, Tennessee or wherever it is those people live (laughs) and we were playing there and it was after soundcheck, just before the show. I was walking in one of the corridors going to the dressing room and I walked by this guy wearing all black. He turned and I was like, Oh my God, is that Johnny Cash standing back here just standing there? So I turned around and I said, “You are Johnny Cash, you don’t know me but I’m in the band and it’s playing tonight and what can I do for you?” (laughs) “What do you want? What do you need? I’m here at your service.” And he was just very cool. He was with a couple of kids, one of them was his nephew, and Johnny said, “I know who you are. You’re Jake E Lee,” which to hear Johnny Cash say it, I just almost peed myself (laughs). Then he said, “Actually, we’re here to see you. My nephew here plays guitar and he tells me that you’re the best guitar player in the world. So we were hoping to meet you.” I was like, oh my God (laughs). But he was just very cool about it and he says, “Well, we don’t want to take up any of your time. I know how busy it is before a show. We’re just hoping to meet you and say hello and I’ll let you go.” He was very much a gentleman and it was really an honor to meet him.

What still excites you about playing music?

The same thing that always has and it goes back to me being selfish. I do it for me. Like I said earlier, I don’t particularly like the spotlight, don’t like being the center of attention, but I love when you’re in a band and you’re playing and you can be playing great but then every once in a while there’s just this magic moment where everything comes together and it’s hard to explain, you feel like you’re master of the universe. It’s this elation, this sublime feeling that you get every once in a while when everything is just working right. And that’s the reason I do it. That first time I heard “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix. That feeling I got, that’s what makes playing music exciting for me. And it’s nice to have a crowd that appreciates it. That doesn’t suck (laughs). But I do it for me because looking for that feeling is the best feeling in the world.

You’re getting ready to do a big tour. I hope you come to New Orleans.

I love ‘Nawlins. I got in a knife fight there (laughs)

Why?

Well, it was when Motley Crue was opening for Ozzy and it was right around Mardi Gras and a couple of the locals decided to take us to this biker bar and without getting into specifics, Nikki Sixx was being kind of naughty with some girl in the middle of the club and I remember one of the locals that we went there with tapped me on the shoulder and went, “That girl is one of the bouncers’ girlfriend” (laughs). And I think within a matter of a minute me and Nikki were in this huge fight, brawling with bouncers, and at some point one of them pulled a knife and we were lucky to get out of there alive. We’re not going back to New Orleans, I’m telling you now (laughs). I’m just joking (laughs) I mean, I’m not joking about the whole knife fight thing, that’s true, but I love New Orleans.

What songs are you looking to put in the setlist?

Right now, for this little three gig tour, we’re doing “Feeder,” “Shout It Out,” “Deceived” and “War Machine.” By the time we do these other dates, we might have learned another one or two (laughs).

Live photographs by Jo Anna Jackson