Detritus
Mini-Issue #282.5 - August 13, 2004
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*
*** LET IT BE KNOWN ***
*
-How better to celebrate Friday the 13th than to interview the Menace
To Society himself, Mr. Lizzy Borden! Uh, well, these days he's just
going by "Lizzy," and the axes and blood 'n' guys are gone, and he's
got a brand new glammy/fun/rockin' gig called Starwood. - Tim

*
*** SPECIAL REPORT ***
*
by Tim Wadzinski

-Interview w/ Lizzy (Starwood)
August 6, 2004

After fronting a shock-rock band of the same name throughout the '80s,
Lizzy Borden (the man) recorded the slightly darker solo album MASTER
OF DISGUISE and then dropped out of the public eye for much of the
'90s. During this time he re-teamed with drummer Joey Scott in Diamond
Dogs, but never released any albums. The Lizzy band reunited for the
phenomenal -- yet criminally overlooked -- DEAL WITH THE DEVIL in
2000, and everything seemed back on track. Longtime guitarist Alex
Nelson left to pursue a solo career in the spring of last year, but
the band continued working on new material. In the fall Diamond Dogs
guitarist Joe Steals, who also played a bit on DEAL WITH THE DEVIL,
stepped in.

Then late last year bassist Marten Andersson (who's also in Legacy)
announced he was joining ex-Dokken guitarist George Lynch's band for
some North American tour dates, but he was still with Lizzy. Earlier
this year a few on-line messages indicated the newest material being
worked on was actually for a new project altogether, not the Lizzy
Borden band. What was going on here?

This past May 17, tragically, Nelson died in a car crash. About this
time the new outfit, now known as Starwood, was gigging in California,
and they did a few Lizzy Borden band songs in honor of Nelson. But
after that Starwood -- Lizzy, Steals, Andersson, and Scott -- became
everyone's focus.

Metal Blade Records unleashed the rousing debut album IF IT AIN'T
BROKE, BREAK IT! on July 27. But why a new project, if the lineup is
basically just Lizzy Borden? What's it all about? What is the
mastermind thinking? Read on...

DETRITUS: The album's been out now for about 10-12 days.

LIZZY: Yeah, something like that.

D: How's the response so far?

L: It's been great. We've gotten five-star reviews and it's better
than I could've expected. It's really been accepted. I'm digging it.

D: I checked the Starwood Web site and it said tour dates will be
announced soon. What's in the works?

L: That's up in the air. We've had a couple of proposed tours brought
to us, but I think they just weren't the right bands. Like, we just
turned down a 40-city tour yesterday. I don't want to mention the band
but it just wasn't right for us. But we are looking for the right
thing right now. There's lots of things coming here and there. Any day
something could be announced, but nothing at the moment.

D: What's your goal? Will you try to stick to the West Coast and build
a following there, or will you try to go national right off the bat?

L: We really don't have a goal. We'd love everyone to hear the record
and we'd like to play everywhere we can play. Obviously we're in
Hollywood -- we live here -- so playing here is probably something
we're gonna do a lot, and hopefully we will build up a nice little
following out here. But like I said, tours are being offered here and
there, and if the right one comes along we'll definitely jump on it.

D: Is Marten still working with George Lynch's group? Would that be a
problem?

L: I don't think so. He just did that one tour as far as I know. I
don't know what else is going on with them. But no, if it comes down
to George Lynch or Starwood, Marten will be on the Starwood tour.

D: I thought I'd seen Michael Schenker/Uli Jon Roth/George Lynch dates
this fall, so I wondered if that'd conflict with Starwood's plans.

L: To tell you the truth, from what I heard I think he just plays
along with his records, by himself. I'm not sure, I could be wrong. He
might be assembling a band. I don't know.

D: Do you have plans for any singles or videos?

L: I'm meeting with a director on Sunday. We've actually got two
directors right now, one's doing one song and one's doing another.
We're filming probably in about two weeks. We're gonna film "All My
Girlfriends Have Boyfriends" first, and then back-to-back right after
that, "Subculture." Those are the two we're doing right off the bat.

D: Which will come out first?

L: It's a matter of... I really don't know. Both guys have different
treatments for their videos, and they both seemed like a lot of fun,
right up the band's alley. (laughs) It's just a matter of getting them
done, filming them and getting them done. One is a little more complex
than the other so I think that might take a little longer in the
editing room, and actually to film it. The other one, the first one,
is a two-day shoot so it's gonna be real simplistic. So I imagine
"Girlfriends" will be out three days after it's edited. The other
one's gonna be a little more complex so I imagine maybe a month after,
maybe a couple weeks after. I don't know.

D: Well, I would've thought "Girlfriends" would take forever because
you guys would take a really long time to audition the "metal babes"
that are undoubtedly going to be in it.

L: (laughs) We're still working on that. That video is gonna be a fun
video. It's gonna be real simplistic and real...I don't know. The
attitude behind it is really funny but at the same time it's pretty
cool. If it comes off like I think it's gonna come off, it's gonna be
great. Like I said, I'm meeting with the director on Sunday so we'll
have a little better idea of the exact details.

D: Will the singles be released just to radio, or also sold
commercially with B-sides and the whole nine yards?

L: No... This album is gonna start out really slow. We're on Metal
Blade Records, a small label, so we're starting out slow. But they did
hire a radio person who is working on it right now. That's something
they don't normally do because Metal Blade's bands usually don't get
radio. So they're working on that, and we just hired a publicist as
well. We're doing things a little differently than the normal Metal
Blade bands. More opportunities are opening up for us that are
different, than for the other bands that are on that label. So we
don't know how it's gonna work (laughs) because it's not the norm.
We're just waiting to see how it works out, but it's definitely going
to be a slow-building start that rises up, you know?

D: I don't know if people are putting a label on the "movement" yet,
but there are a lot of rock bands making waves again, like The
Darkness, Brides Of Destruction, and Velvet Revolver. Some of those
bands have members from the "old days" and some are new. How do you
see Starwood fitting in? Or are you separating yourselves from those
types of bands?

L: No, I mean, it's really kind of a cool, happy coincidence that all
those bands decided to do that at the same time. With us, I never
heard any of those bands while we were doing this record. I thought we
were gonna be one of the only ones out there just playing straight-up
rock, but it's kind of cool to hear all those other bands doing it.
Especially the success of The Darkness -- it's pretty amazing. There
was no market for a hard rock band really, but The Darkness just
plowed their way through, kind of like the way Quiet Riot did way back
when. There's always going to be that one band that manages to create
the market for a hard rock band, so I'm happy to be linked with all
those guys. And you know, touring-wise, it's going to be better,
because it's hard for us to play -- we're not gonna play with Korn
(laughs), we're not gonna play with those types of bands. You gotta
try to create a scene with some like-minded people that are playing
the same sort of music that you're playing. And there's not that many,
so the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned.

D: The Wildhearts from England are also getting a lot of buzz. Have
you heard them?

L: (excitedly) Oh yeah! I actually just got their new record [THE
WILDHEARTS MUST BE DESTROYED]. I love 'em. I'd never heard of them
before, and they've been around like 14 years. (laughs) I heard they
were opening up for The Darkness so I checked them out on their Web
site. I liked it so I went and bought the record, and I really like
it. Very good stuff.

D: (pauses to think) Please bear with me, with all these cool bands
we're talking about I'm trying to mentally assemble your ultimate tour
in my head...

L: There was talk about that, us and [The Wildhearts]. There was talk
they were coming here and we'd jump on with them and create a little
chaos. I don't know what's going on with that. I really have no idea
what their plans are. But I do like them. I think they're really good;
the one album I have is great.

D: Well, whatever you do please come play Chicago. (laughs)

L: I can pretty much guarantee that, if nothing else, we will be doing
some sporadic shows around the country. If we can't secure a tour we
will definitely be jumping around doing shows. I can pretty much
guarantee we'll be around there at some point.

D: I'll try not to focus on the past too much, but does any of the
Starwood material date back to the Lizzy Borden band days? Or is it
all fresh stuff?

L: None of it is Lizzy stuff. There was some stuff I wrote that I had
in Diamond Dogs. I don't know if you're familiar with that band, but
it was the band I had in the '90s. We never recorded an album but we
wrote hundreds of songs. Some of these Starwood songs were from those
but we changed them so much they're almost unrecognizable. They were a
little punkier back then, and we took *most* of the punk out of there
-- we still left the attitude there -- but we really wanted to make a
hard rock record. That was the goal.

D: Well since you brought them up, I did want to ask about Diamond
Dogs. I've heard a few songs on a tape but that's about it. It's hard
to get information on that band. Is that all in the past at this
point?

L: That was a band I put together during the '90s when heavy metal was
out of favor, and it was just an uphill battle more than usual. I
decided to do what I like, and [Joey and I] formed that band. That's
how we met Joe Steals, who's on the Starwood record. We wrote tons of
songs and all we did, really, was play around Hollywood. We didn't
really tour, we didn't put out a record, we didn't do anything. We
just had fun and wrote songs, you know. (laughs) So there's a *wealth*
of songs ready to go if we want to use them for Starwood, but we've
already started writing for the next record. I mean, we already have
like 20 songs. There's no shortage of material. We could probably
record 20 records.

D: Or a boxed set. There's nothing wrong with doing one album and then
a boxed set, is there? Was the Diamond Dogs lineup the same as
Starwood's? You just mentioned Joe Steals, and I know Joey was the
drummer. Was Marten in Diamond Dogs, too?

L: No, it was a guy named Michael White. He's a really great bass
player. He's in another band, I can't remember the name, but they're
out there playing on the circuit. He's a good friend of ours, but
yeah, he was in the Diamond Dogs band briefly. It was just one of
those things that ran its course. We were having fun but then it ran
its course.

D: You were saying you're from a metal background, then Diamond Dogs
was punkier, and now Starwood is more rock. What was the spark that
made you want to start this new band right now?

L: I always did. My influences were always hard rock bands like Cheap
Trick and early Alice Cooper and Kiss. I don't consider those "metal"
bands. Those were my influences. When I started Lizzy I tried as much
as I could to put those influences in there. That's why, even though
we're considered classic metal, we really had a strong hard rock
influence, which was what I brought into it. I never was a 100% metal
guy. I'm a metal singer but my influences were like Ian Gillan, who's
not a metal singer. All those hard rock bands were bands that
influenced me. So when it came time to do this, you know, I really had
a vision of what I wanted to do, and I wanted it to be straight-up
hard rock. I want it to be fun, rebellious, and all the cool stuff.
This is the band that I always wanted Lizzy to be, but you know, when
you're playing metal you kind of fit in that category and you're stuck
there. With this, there's so many elements. There's punk, there's pop,
there's a little bit of metal. But the thing that really binds it all
together is straight-up hard rock.

D: OK, time for a standard question. What are your two favorite songs
on the album?

L: You know, it's hard. I like all the songs for different reasons.
(pauses to think) "Subculture" is the one that's been around for a
while, that kinda has a lot of the lyrical elements that have the
attitude for Starwood. So lyrically, that's kind of the attitude of
the whole thing. So if I had to pick one that'd be the one. But I like
a lot of them. I like "Girlfriends" just for the fact that it has, in
my opinion, strong Cheap Trick elements in there that I really like.
But like I said, I like them all for different reasons.

D: Sure, of course. But now I have to ask about "Won't Back Down."
We're talking about influences here, and I've seen Kiss mentioned in
the album's press materials. That song has a strong Kiss vibe to begin
with, but is that a direct musical quote from "Shout It Out Loud" in
the breakdown section after the guitar solo?

L: (slyly) Uh, like I said, this band is *heavily* influenced by Kiss
and Cheap Trick, and I'd be surprised if you didn't hear more elements
of those bands. It's like a mesh of those bands, so yeah, you're gonna
hear different parts from other things in there because those our are
strong influences. You're not gonna hear a whole song that sounds like
another song but you're definitely gonna hear little pieces here and
there. There's little bits of Aerosmith in songs. There's little bits
of all different types of things that seeped into the writing, because
that's the music that we listen to.

D: I admit the album caught me off-guard at first, but it definitely
captures a vibe. I hear those '70s bands but with a modern production
and your twist, and it's a cohesive album rather than just a bunch of
songs. Would you agree?

L: Yeah, that was the whole point. We cut all the fat. We didn't put
32 songs on the record because we didn't want to have any song that
didn't speak for a certain point of view. The nine songs that are on
there really spoke about what the band is about. This is introducing
the band. It was really directed towards this "surprise attack," and
people hearing something they haven't heard a lot of lately...or ever.
That was the whole point of this whole thing. The albums to come will
experiment a little bit more, probably, but this one had an agenda.

D: Is part of recapturing that vibe the notion of releasing a lot of
albums in a short period of time?

L: I hope so. I remember Kiss used to put out two albums per year,
plus tour. Most people now don't put out one album every five years,
you know? (laughs) I would love to do that and we certainly have
enough material to do that, and we're working on it right now. The
first [gap between albums] is probably going to be the longest because
we're trying to build something, and trying to get people to hear our
record that's just coming out of the blue. It's one of those things
that we have to let build. It's gonna take a long time to build. We'll
have the second album ready to go way before we want to release it,
probably. We're ready to release it *now*, we're ready to go to the
second record now. But it's one of those things where it's a brand new
band and you have to kind of start out as a slow-building process so
everyone can get a handle on what the music's all about and what the
band is trying to do. And then there will be an assault of many
records after that, I hope.

D: So the "new band" excitement is there, despite the fact you guys
are grizzled veterans? The buzz and the butterflies are all there?

L: Oh, beyond anything that it ever was. When we started Lizzy there
was the rumbling of a metal scene in Hollywood -- it hadn't started
yet, just a few bands starting. It was such a slow build that we never
really got that excited, you know? But with Starwood we are jumping
right into the fire with it. It's really exciting. I'm playing guitar
on stage now, too, which changes the whole focus. The attitude and
everything about it between Starwood and Lizzy Borden are worlds away.
They couldn't be any more different. We're having a blast -- even at
rehearsals we're having a great time.

D: You have played -- at least, I *think* you have played -- guitar on
record in the past, under fake names. But is this the first time
you've played live?

L: When we started Lizzy Borden we were a four-piece and I played
then. But as soon as we added a guitarist, which was like six months
later, I stopped playing. I only played a short time live.

D: When Starwood plays live, since the album's relatively short [at 33
minutes] I assume you play the whole thing and even have some time
left over. Do you also stick in some older stuff, or some covers?

L: Oh, you just might get a couple Cheap Trick songs, or maybe New
York Dolls songs, you know, different types of things. We experiment
with a lot of different things an we're having fun just throwing
things around. But really the whole show -- it's turning into kind of
a "show" now (laughs) -- is pretty much the album at 45 minutes. But
there are a couple surprises that we do. And we'll be switching around
between shows, what songs we want to do, but definitely the whole
album.

D: One last thing... We here at Detritus want to express our
condolences to you and the band over what happened to Alex Nelson
earlier this year. We were sorry to hear about that.

L: (pauses) He would've loved to see all the people who were really
into him and what he's done, and his art and everything. He got
glimpses of it, but you know, I don't think he ever really knew.
Thanks for that.

D: Thanks for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it.

L: Gotta get the word out any way we can. That's what this is all
about. That's why we did this. I'm excited and honored to do anything
I can to make that happen.

-So the man truly is the "Master of Disguise," reinventing himself
once again with Starwood. We spoke a little more after I turned off
the recorder, and he said the lack of response to DEAL WITH THE DEVIL,
combined with that album's "catastrophic" tour with Yngwie Malmsteen,
soured the Lizzy Borden band. He assured me there *will* be another
album from that group, but right now the guys are 100% focused on, and
excited about, Starwood. I want to wish them the best of luck, and I'd
like to thank Michelle Ferraro at Metal Blade for setting up this
interview on really short notice.

Relevant links:

Lizzy Borden
http://www.lizzyborden.com/

Metal Blade Records
http://www.metalblade.com/

Starwood
http://www.starwood-band.com/

*
*** OUT ***
*

=====
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"Rock Hard With A Purpose"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/detritus/




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