Detritus
Mini-Issue #427.5 - September 7, 2007
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*** CAST OF CHARACTERS ***
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Patrick Brower, Editor
patrickbrower@...

Sean P. Gahgan, Editor
lof@...
http://www.lakeoffire.net/

Tim Wadzinski, Owner
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Steve Shumake, Co-owner
vongoober@...
http://www.myspace.com/kdsteve

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*** LET IT BE KNOWN ***
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-This has taken a while to get published, but here at long last is
Neal's excellent interview with powerhouse drummer John Macaluso. Have
a great weekend! - Tim

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*** SPECIAL REPORT ***
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by Neal Woodall (MysticX9@...)

-Interview w/ John Macaluso
July 23, 2007

John Macaluso is one prolific musician. During a career spanning over
twenty years, John has played with some of the best in the business,
performing live and recording with such heavyweights as Yngwie
Malmsteen, TNT, Riot, Ark and Alex Masi while covering styles as
diverse as heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock and fusion.
Finally realizing a long held dream of releasing his own solo album,
John took time out of his busy schedule to talk with me about THE
RADIO WAVES GOODBYE, his colorful past and current projects. I had a
great time doing this interview as John is always honest, informal and
entertaining, so grab your favorite beverage and settle in for a read
I guarantee will be fun and informative...

DETRITUS: THE RADIO WAVES GOODBYE sounds like it took a long time to
record; has it been on your mind to do a solo album for awhile?

JOHN MACALUSO: Yeah, after I got done with the last Ark album BURN THE
SUN -- Jorn [Lande] and I had written the lyrics together -- and I was
kind of hooked on that, it was a successful record and I was really
happy with the result and I said "Sh*t man, I've got all these ideas
lyrically and of course I've been co-writing the music my whole life,
let me try to make a solo record!" True story, one night I came home
after hanging out with my buddies at a bar, I came home and e-mailed
everybody that I knew, every record company where I knew somebody
personally -- I didn't go to every record label but just the people I
knew -- and in the morning I woke up with a hangover and a record deal
(laughs) because I had responses from different people. I knew Lars
[Eric Mattsson] from Lion for awhile so I went with him and that was
it. After I did it though, after I signed the deal I said "Sh*t, now I
really have to make a record!" I had to write all the sh*t myself and
I've never done that, because I've always collaborated, so I thought
"How am I going to do this?" Then I started to put the plan together
to get my great buddies, people I have toured with and I can trust.
The first guys I had in mind were Randy Coven, Vitalij Kuprij, Marco
Sfogli, Mike DiMeo... (pauses) I had those guys in mind from the very
beginning. I have a saying: "You know who your friends are when you
move and when you have to make a solo record!" (laughs) That's the
truth man and everyone came through for me but yeah, I've had it in
mind ever since BURN THE SUN which was like 2001.

D: The album is great to listen to in headphones, there's a lot of
little subtleties going on in the music...

JM: Yeah, I did a lot of panning from left to right, a lot of weird
little voices in the back, really spent a lot of time on sh*t like
that, I'm really into that headphone music because I'm a Floyd
fanatic.

D: How do you go about composing material like that?

JM: The way I composed them was first I went into the studio and I
just had a title in mind, say for example "T-34" [which is a Russian
tank from World War II], and I had this vibe of getting a Prokofiev
classical feel, and I wanted to use all my Russian friends, Alex
Rastopskin, Vitalij Kuprij, Robert Katrikh -- I've got a lot of
friends around here that are amazing players from Russia -- and on
that one it ended up just me and Vitalij because it sounded so cool I
just went with that. So what we did is I recorded drums first with a
title in mind and an arrangement in mind, then I would take all the
files to where the person I wanted to record with was living, for
Vitalij I had to go to Pennsylvania -- and what I did with the song is
I wrote a chart out rhythmically [for all the drum rhythms], got
together with Vitalij, drank a bunch of vodka, and I said "Vitalij,
here's the scoop: I want it to be dark, like a hopeless Russian
winter, you got no shoes on your feet, you're starving, you know,
really dark" and he goes "Johnny, I get the vibe, I got the mood!" and
he just read my chart, listened to my drum part and he started to
write the notes over top, and before we knew it we woke up and the
tune was done, he's brilliant. The next day I went into the studio
with him and we recorded the whole thing, it's brilliant, he's amazing
to watch. Another example is I went over to Europe with the CD and me
and Marco Sfogli got together and collaborated on "Shimmering Grey"
and "Starring 'PAIN'" and it was pretty much the same way, I said
"Marco, here's the mood I would like" -- but with these, I came up
with the guitar riff because these were the first songs I had to
write; I was hanging out with Marco and he would ask "What do you want
me to play?" and I'd say to myself "Oh sh*t, I don't know man" so I
took a second, went into the other room, and came up with the riff for
"Starring 'PAIN'" in my head real quick, came back and sang it to him,
and he deciphered it the best he could and played it, so that's the
way we started writing the tunes. For lyrics, I wrote the lyrics and
then I would get everyone together an sing very badly into the
microphone and Mike DiMeo or Adrian Holtz for example, would decipher
what I was trying to do. They used my arrangement and melody and sang
it for real, and that's the way we did the whole thing.

D: I know you had particular people in mind to use on specific pieces;
did that work out the way you envisioned it or did you have to go back
and change around people who maybe weren't working out?

JM: Yeah, that's funny you say that because everybody pretty much
worked out but it was such a weird album to make because I had all
these people in mind since the beginning, and I tried to take them out
of their element, like for example Marco Sfogli who is like an amazing
technical and metal guitar player, but I also knew he had another side
which is like a world vibe where he can play crazy instruments like
bouzoukis and mandalino; so I took him out of his element, I said
forget the metal guitar for a second and let's try those world
instruments, so he ended up playing that on "T-34" and it came out
great. Or for example I used Randy Coven to do upright bass on "6 Foot
Under Happy Man" instead of where he is cookin' -- doing real
technical bass -- so I try to really take everybody out of their
element a little bit to put people on the edge so they are not doing
their standard singing or playing. Mike DiMeo for example is singing
on a jungle drum and bass track "Mother Illusion" -- that's something
he's never done. So it really worked out where everyone was kind of on
the edge a little bit, doing something they were totally not used to
and I think that gives the album a really cool feel. A couple of
people it didn't really work the way I wanted it to so I went back and
had somebody else do the part, but they are still on the album, it
wasn't like anybody got cut from the record, nobody's cut from the
wrestling team...

D: You just moved them around to more appropriate places.

JM: Exactly. A couple of my buddies got a little insulted, they were
like "Wait a minute, I thought I was on that track!" I was like "No
pride, no mercy in the studio man." (laughs)

D: Probably my favorite on the album is "Dissolved" with Adrian Holze
doing the vocals.

JM: Oh, Adrian's great!

D: The spacey, sci-fi sounding melody -- was that done with a theriman
or keyboards?

JM: I do play theriman, I have a friend of mine who built me a
theriman but Dimuti is my main co-writer, and a lot of the sounds you
are hearing, especially on "Dissolved," were all samples that we made;
we took wine glasses, you know, you rub your finger on the top of them
and you get that "woooooooooo," that type of sound, there's one thing
where I took a snare drum, a metal snare and took the head off, took a
little hammer and banged the side and it went "ding ding," and we used
that tone and put them all into his keyboard which is a Triton, and
then all these weird sounds now you can use them as sounds from your
keyboard.

D: Oh, OK. -- that's cool.

JM: Pretty much all the sci-fi sounds and the space sounds were made
by me and Dimuti making all these strange noises; he even had a
harmonica, and he went into a bathtub and played it -- we even ended
up using that sound, strange, weird things we did! (laughs) Yeah,
pretty much all the sounds on that were made by me and him, he's
brilliant man, a great co-writer because he hit it right on the head
of how I wanted to go -- I wanted to go in the Floyd zone but more
intense, an intense album with the Floyd mood instead of so much
guitar.

D: Kind of get away from the power metal/shredder thing?

JM: Yeah. It's funny because most of the reviews have been really
good, best I've ever got in my life but there was one Web site where
the reviewer wrote "John Macaluso tried to make a classic album but
failed!"

D: Oh man!

JM: He said "The reason he failed is because after all the great
guitar players he played with, he hardly put any guitar on the album,
it's not heavy enough and there's no shredding," and that's precisely
what I wanted to do!

D: Yeah, they missed the point, didn't they?

JM: They missed the point. If I put guitar all over "T-34" it would've
sounded like Malmsteen -- and why make another Malmsteen album, he
makes enough of 'em! (laughs)

D: Yeah! (laughs)

JM: I'm glad I went that route, and I'm glad you like "Dissolved"
because that's one of my favorites too.

D: With "Shimmering Grey" and "Starring 'PAIN'" you get a really good
atmosphere and some incredible vocals by Adrian Holtz...

JM: He's great man, Adrian was actually the singer we were going to
have for Ark after Jorn quit the band, we heard about this dude in
Boston that a friend of mine told me about so me and Tore [Ostby,
guitarist] went up to meet him and he was great, but he was busy in
another band at the time. We had plans where he was going to meet us
after the summer and we were going to start writing some stuff
together; in that time I ended up breaking up the band because it just
couldn't work anymore between me and Tore. So we never actually got
time to do the vocals with Adrian, but the album was almost done, the
drums and the guitar -- it would have been a great album, the third
album, but it just couldn't go on anymore. Adrian would've been
perfect though. On "Shimmering Grey," "Dissolved" and "Starring
'PAIN,'" he totally captures that mood -- I kept telling him, "Think
of David Bowie, Bono, and Peter Gabriel, and use those guys in your
head but more intensely" and that's where we kind of went.

D: Sounds like you did it!

JM: He's got this great gift where he can take a whacked song like my
sh*t and give it like a pop hook, know what I mean? He's really,
really f*ckin' great man.

D: "6 Foot Under Happy Man" is interesting -- reminds me of Zappa.

JM: Yeah, yeah -- I'm a Zappa fanatic man. The idea for that pretty
much came -- of course from Zappa -- but the whole "6 Foot Under Happy
Man" and that whole vibe, the dark, death thing, kind of making light
of it, pretty much came from "Throw Out Your Dead" from Monty Python.
It's morbid as hell but there's some humor to it. The moral of the
whole song is a "don't worry, be happy" type thing, try to just enjoy
yourself here. I do my lead vocal for the first time in my life on
that song and again, one of the reviewers said he "...loves the album
except for the painful three minutes of '6 Foot Under Happy Man.'"
(laughs) I don't think he got it, it was kind of like a joke!

D: (laughs) Yeah, that's too bad but I guess you have to expect that
here and there you are going to get some people who just aren't with
it...

JM: Of course, I'm way happy with what the responses have been
already, it couldn't bring me down, I'm really happy about it; but
yeah, "6 Foot Under Happy Man" is a cool one and I got my friend Don
Chaffin doing the backgrounds, he owns the studio and he also sang on
"Yesterday I'll Understand," -- he's a great, great singer.

D: Did you construct the solo for "Pretzel" or did you improvise that?

JM: "Pretzel" was kind of another Zappa-like intro, putting the comedy
in there. It's hard for me to take life serious so it's hard for me to
take an album so serious. Actually I was on tour with Powermad which
is a band that was in that movie "Wild At Heart," a David Lynch movie.
I was in that movie with them, it was like 1989 and we did a tour, it
was like great exposure, we opened up for Fates Warning, at the time
we were on tour with I think Sacred Reich and Forbidden, it was one of
these big metal tours in San Francisco, and I remember I played my ass
off, I was like "Oh man, I can't wait!" It was like one of these great
gigs, I came off the stage feeling good and some girl I was talking to
said "Hey, what did you think of the band?" and I said "What do you
mean?" and she says "They are a great band, right?" and I said "Yeah,
I was the drummer." (laughs) She says "Oh, you were?"

D: (laughs) Oh man.

JM: I was like "Holy sh*t!"

D: I've heard people say stuff like that.

JM: Yeah, thing is I'm f*cking sweatin' my ass off, I'm pouring sweat
so what did she think, I was just hot? (laughs)

D: (laughs) That's too funny!

JM: So the whole intro is kind of rippin' on that, like when the drum
solo comes it's time to go get a hot dog or a pretzel. Actually there
is a real club in Maryland called The Thunderdome, and they were
serving big pretzels there, so that's where I got that from. It's
actually the bass guitar player Randy Coven's girlfriend and that's
her real voice by the way.

D: You'll have to use her again on the next album.

JM: Yeah, she's going to be on all of 'em. As far as the drumming,
when I got the deal I said "What am I going to do, a drum solo
record?" and I thought nobody is going to want to listen to that
unless you are drumming; I want to make a vocal album but I've got to
still do the psychotic drumming, I really do because I'm doing mainly
song stuff. That's pretty much what I would do live, that solo. Since
I'm playing songs when I go for a solo I pretty much just rip but try
to make it musical. So that's where that whole thing comes from, it's
pretty much my live solo. I even called some people into the studio to
watch, not to ham it up but I felt like I needed the energy...

D: To get that live feel?

JM: Yeah, and I also feel that when people are watching you can't f*ck
up or otherwise I'd be going "One more time, just one more time, let's
try it again!" So I had some people come in and I just went for it and
that was a one-take thing. I love it, "Pretzel" came out cool...

D: Yeah it did, awesome playing on there!

JM: So that's that one, again kind of like a Zappa touch.

D: There's some really interesting lyrical topics on THE RADIO WAVES
GOODBYE; were these all inspired from personal experiences, or
reading?

JM: No, I don't read much anymore, I wish I did, I don't have time I'm
always f*ckin' playin! It comes from many personal... (pauses) You
know man, these days I'm kind of a loner, I spend a lot of time by
myself -- practicing, playing, writing -- and when you do that,
(laughs) there is some crazy sh*t that pops into your head, know what
I mean?

D: Yeah. (laughs)

JM: Because there's nobody to tell you what's right or wrong and I'm
traveling a lot. I usually tour as a studio drummer so sometimes I'll
get a gig and it's over in Norway or Finland or California, and I just
get flown over there by myself, do the gig and then I'm pretty much in
a hotel or I go out by myself and try and meet some people or just
hang. So it's personal experiences from just traveling around the past
couple of years, some fantasy sh*t, some sh*t I was thinking, some
real life stuff and a lot of spiritual sh*t too, pretty much the way I
live my life; not in a hokey way like he's gonna save us all but
spiritually like thinking... (pauses) It's really hard to explain, not
so scientific or factual is the way I try to live. There is some
higher power and there are some unexplainable things.

D: Definitely.

JM: Things that can't be explained by nature or science, know what I
mean? That's what I mean by spiritualistic, that's the way I really
believe and I really live. So pretty much personal experiences and
then a lot of hidden meanings and a lot of double meanings. Even the
title of the album is a double meaning -- the radio waves goodbye or
the radio waves goodbye like it's going away. There's a lot of double
meaning sh*t like "Yesterday I'll Understand," throughout the record
you got a lot of sh*t like that. Double entendre I think they call
that?

D: Yeah, that's right. I like stuff like that, "Yesterday I'll
Understand" had me thinking about it and going "Hmmm, that's very
interesting..."

JM: "Away With Words" is another one. "Yesterday I'll Understand" is a
cool one because it's kind of like there's a theme through the album,
you gotta go through the bad to get to the good, like on "Starring
'PAIN.'" On "Starring 'PAIN'" the idea came from Rami, who was a
Turkish philosopher from centuries ago, and he was so brilliant people
would follow him around and write down what he would blurt out, he
would just speak and people would write it down and say "Oh my God!"
and live with those words for centuries. One of them was "Who are you
running from, yourself? You can't run from yourself." One great one
was "Suffering is a gift box containing mercy." I thought that was so
brilliant, you've got to go through the bad to get to the good or you
don't even know what is good anymore. So I kind of switched around
that whole thing and I wrote "Pain stars in every story, to me it's a
gift withholding glory." That's where I got that from. The lyrics in
"Starring 'PAIN'" are pretty much how everybody's life is different
but we all gotta go through the same thing, you know, one guy is a
movie star, he's living this brilliant life, the other one's in
poverty, the other one is in love, but it doesn't matter because we
all have to go through the same experiences. "Yesterday I'll
Understand" is similar in a way, it's more about getting a second
chance in life and taking it. So it's like, you will understand why
that sh*t happened yesterday, it's kind of like a foreshadowing of the
future thing.

D: Cool, that's excellent. I understand you are already working on a
new Union Radio album?

JM: Yep.

D: What direction are you going to go in on the new one?

JM: Well this one definitely came from Floyd again, the Floyd vibe.
Hopefully I hit something with that where I'm putting the double bass
and the intensity inside of that Roger Waters/David Gilmour/Floyd mood
which I really love. I love the drummer of Pink Floyd too, Nick Mason;
I could never play in that band because I'm too wired. (laughs) This
album, THE RADIO WAVES GOODBYE, the mood was definitely from Pink
Floyd's ANIMALS. I owned every Floyd album that they had out but I
never owned ANIMALS until last year which is really flipped out -- I
got this record and it just really blew me away.

D: That's a great album.

JM: It's a treasure. You can even hear the influence on a lot of the
songs, for example "Dissolved." With the new album, I want to take the
same vibe but go more earlier Floyd, listen to some of the earlier
albums and get that mood, and of course try to make it as original as
possible. I listen to these albums constantly when I'm walking around,
just for the feel, because when you listen to certain music, even your
eye vision changes; you could be at the beach listening to a record
and all the sudden you put on a different band and the beach just
looks different to you. That's why I walk around for a couple of days
with these records on before I even get into writing a song because it
just changes the way things look, it changes the colors, it changes
the mood of everything. That's the beauty of music I think, it can
take you back somewhere, it can bring back bad memories: "Oh, I can't
hear that song again!" or you can be like "Oh man, weren't those times
cool!" The new album will I think go the same path, I want to use a
lot of the same people on the record too; definitely Marco Sfogli, who
is the guitar player I met with James LaBrie when I was on tour with
him, he's one of my favorite guitar players; definitely Alex
Rastopskin, who is a Russian guitar player, amazing. No doubt Vitalij
Kuprij and Adrian Holtz of course, I think he's going to be like the
main singer on a lot of sh*t, he's definitely going to be the singer I
use when I do the Union Radio thing live.

D: You've got to have Alex Masi on there again too...

JM: Masi no doubt, Masi is my best buddy! We're talking about doing a
new record but we're going to make a rock record again, that's a new
thing, and we have an MCM live album coming out -- MCM is me, Randy
Coven and Alex Masi -- but we're talking about me and him just doing
another rock album, which could be pretty cool...

D: Oh yeah!

JM: But I am going to use a lot of the same people and live I'm going
to use Adrian Holtz, Marco Sfogli on guitar, Ze Gray from Brazil on
bass, me on drums, Vitalij Kuprij, Dimuti who is pretty much the
everything man, he plays acoustic guitar, keyboards, everything. So I
think that's going to be the band.

D: Excellent, I can't wait to hear that!

JM: It's going to be flipped out!

D: You're going to do some stuff at ProgPower USA, tell me about
that...

JM: Yeah, ProgPower, I'm actually doing a drum clinic/show, because
what I'm going to do is, I went in the studio recently and I took all
the drums off my album THE RADIO WAVES GOODBYE, so I have all the
music with no drums. I'll have a click track in my ear so I know where
the hell I am in the song, and I'm going to perform songs from our
record live. I'm thinking "T-34," the big long one with Vitalij,
because it is ProgPower and that one's very proggy...

D: They will eat that up.

JM: Yeah, I'm gonna do that one, I'm gonna do "The Prayer Pill" which
is really moody and spaced-out, and I think I'm going to do "Soul In
Your Mind" with James LaBrie, those three tracks and then I've got a
new drum book called "Repercussions" that I'm about to put out, so I'm
going to do some examples of some of the beats and things I use in the
book. I'm going to show some different examples of beats and fills and
talk about the book a little bit, then I'm going to do like a question
and answer thing, and tell some stories, some road stories and studio
stories about how I might have gotten kicked out of the band and
why... (laughs)

D: (laughs)

JM: Just funny things that have happened, things you might run into.
I'll give advice too, on studio playing or how to survive on the road
for seven months at a time, just stories about being a drummer and
trying to do it out there for real. Then I'll do some examples of
different things, show some techniques and then solo, play some drum
solo sh*t and watch the rest of the people jam, I'm psyched to be down
there man.

D: Tell me more about this possible tour with Union Radio?

JM: I'm gonna try, I want to get the band on the road but these days
it ain't easy, financially and everything else, you know? I have kind
of a small record label but I have been getting really good reviews so
I think there may be a chance I could take the thing on the road.
That's the dream and that's what I'm really shooting to do. It looks
like there's a lot of interest, over in Europe especially. So like I
said, I want to take out Dimuti, Vitalij, Ze Gray, Adrian Holtz, me
and Marco Sfogli, that would be the band.

D: What would the setlist look like?

JM: From start to finish the whole album, just like it is. The "6 Foot
Under Happy Man" is going to be a tough one to do 'cause I'm too shy
to sing live, I like being behind the drum set. I don't know how
singers do it because it takes balls to stand up there and sing with
nothing in front of you!

D: Let me ask you about some of the other projects you've been
involved in. We talked a little about Alex Masi earlier, I love the
stuff you've done with him...

JM: Oh, Alex is great! MCM LIVE 1900 HARD TIMES is the name of our new
one, because MCM in Roman numerals is 1900. We did it pretty much all
over Europe, different shows, just me, Randy Coven and Alex Masi, and
the music is pretty freaky. We have a studio album out but the live
one is a lot different. It's totally new songs, a lot of improv but we
do it really tight and add in a lot of Eastern touches to it -- Alex
plays a lot of sitar and I do a lot of weird tabla rhythms and it's a
really great album. That's going to be out probably in a couple of
months. We also just released an album, actually the last Alex Masi
album, it's called...

D: LATE NIGHTS AT DESERT'S RIMROCK?

JM: Yeah, LATE NIGHTS AT DESERT'S RIMROCK. I think that came out real
cool.

D: That's one of my favorites from last year.

JM: The way we did that was I did the drums in New York, sent them
over to California where he lives and he did the guitars and sh*t,
everything else and that's how the album was done. I don't usually do
albums that way but that's the way it just worked out.

D: Think you'll do any live dates with him?

JM: Yeah, we're going to do MCM again, me, him and Coven. Alex is
probably one of my oldest friends.

D: Yeah, I did an interview with him and he told me he actually met
you in like 1986, I didn't know you guys went back that far.

JM: Yeah, I played on VERTICAL INVADER but before that in '86 I did
the tour for FIRE IN THE RAIN, his first record. I was the drummer on
the tour.

D: Oh, OK, I didn't know that.

JM: Yeah, we were roommates, we lived together in California, me, him
and like eight other people smashed into a little apartment, we had a
great time. Then we lost touch and he e-mailed me about eight years
ago, we started to hang again and every time I go to California I stay
at his haunted house. He lives in a haunted apartment.

D: Really?

JM: I'm serious, it's haunted man. I never had experiences with ghosts
or anything until I went to Alex's place, it's the scariest f*ckin'
place you'll ever go!

D: Sounds like it! (laughs)

JM: (laughs) I think he brought it on himself! He's the greatest
though.

D: I loved Ark -- I saw you at ProgPower USA in 2001. Guess there's no
chance of a reunion there?

JM: No reunion for Ark unfortunately, it just can't happen, me and
Jorn will never do it. I mean, me and Jorn will play together again
but we can't do it with the guitar player Tore; there comes a time --
and I don't want to talk bad about anybody -- but there comes a time
when way too many things happen that shouldn't happen.

D: It just becomes unworkable.

JM: Yeah, you realize you're dealing with something that just is not
going to happen, and if you do it, you're going to go through the same
mistakes again and you're going to kick yourself. Randy doesn't want
to do it with him either. Maybe with another guitar player, maybe it
could work that way but everyone is doing their own thing right now.
It sucks because that was my baby, that was my first band that I put
together.

D: Yeah, and you wrote a lot of that music didn't you?

JM: Yeah, a lot of time and work went into that. I'm really proud of
those albums, they are some of my favorite records but it's never
going to happen again unfortunately.

D: What's the current status of Starbreaker?

JM: Starbreaker, we are talking about a new album, me, Tony [Harnell]
and Magnus [Karlsson]. I don't know if Fabrizio [Grossi] is going to
produce or play bass, he's a good friend of mine. I'm not sure if he
is going to be on it, not sure what's happening with that but we're
talking about it, it might happen. STARBREAKER is a cool record, it
was the first time me and Tony got together in ten years, first time
we saw each other pretty much after TNT, and I'm real happy with that
record. The way we recorded it was, all the music was done first, then
the vocals all done to a drum machine, then I went in there later and
played over everything so it was kind of cool because I got to play
off Tony's vocals which you never get to do -- usually vocals are the
last thing done, so it was really a different album. I could really
play off the emotion of it more than the way albums are usually done
when the drums are down first, you know? So that was really cool.
We're talking about a new one, it might happen.

D: Do you keep up with any of the other guys in TNT?

JM: Only when I go over to Norway, we used to get together. I was
married to a Norwegian girl for a while and I used to go over there
all the time, every year and see them. Now I'm divorced from her so I
don't travel to Norway much anymore so I hardly see them but we're
buddies, we're definitely friends.

D: What about Yngwie?

JM: Yngwie!!! When you leave Yngwie's band you're an instant assh*le.
(laughs)

D: (laughs)

JM: I mean, I left the band but we got along me and Yngwie, we didn't
have problems; it was an incident you might know about with Jorn Lande
and Yngwie that happened in Cleveland where I just had to leave
because Jorn was too much of a good friend of mine and there was too
much chaos going on, some big thing happened where I just couldn't
continue with him anymore. It wasn't between me and Yngwie, it was
more like loyalty to my buddy and seeing the sh*t that was going on, I
couldn't see it happen this way anymore. I hate to talk in code but I
don't want to go insulting everybody. I had to split. But you never
know, if I saw Yngwie I'm sure we'd still be friends, I just haven't
seen him since then and he just seems to always move on to new people.
We got along good and we played great together, I mean that guy is an
amazing guitar player. The cool thing about Malmsteen too is when we
would tour, we did like really cool places -- we went to Korea,
Australia, New Zealand -- so it wasn't like your typical things, it
was kind of adventurous because we went to some really different
countries, you got to play two hours a night, big shows, it was a
great experience. On the albums he would just let me do my thing. He
would say "More is more!" In the end he always mixed them like sh*t,
that's what I hate about them.

D: Yeah, WAR TO END ALL WARS was pretty horrendous...

JM: When I got that it was a good Frisbee! (laughs) Funny thing is,
when I did that album I left Florida and I thought wow, this is some
of the best drumming, the sound is great! I don't know what happened
in the process but... (laughs)

D: I couldn't believe it the first time I heard it, I said "What the
hell?"

JM: Yeah, and they were cool songs but he got his hands on it. ALCHEMY
is a really cool album.

D: Yeah, I like that one a lot.

JM: That was my first record with him, first time meeting him
actually. We used to play this Al Di Meola song "Race With Devil On A
Spanish Highway" and me and him would just go over the riff, then all
the sudden he says "Hey I got an idea for this one tune" and it was
kind of like a Di Meola thing, and I would just solo over it and we'd
keep playing it so we recorded it and I thought he was going to leave
two bars for me to solo, but he left like ten minutes! So that was
cool, and from that I got the Vitalij Kuprij gig because Vitalij had
heard that record and he loved the ending, he was like "I want that
drummer, the guy who did the ending of that song!" So his manager
called me and told me about that and on a Vitalij album we do
something similar on I think a song called "Revenge," at the end I go
off like that with a similar type feel on the solo. Yeah Yngwie was a
great experience, there was a lot of craziness obviously. I did three
years, I did three years... (laughs)

D: You did your time! (laughs)

JM: I did my time.

D: I saw where you played with Chris Caffery recently.

JM: Yeah, Chris man! I met Chris on the Spread Eagle reunion tour
which I did because I did the Spread Eagle album OPEN TO THE PUBLIC in
1993. So they decided to do a reunion, we got together all my buddies,
Ray West and Rob DeLuca were really good friends, they said "Yeah,
[guitarist] Paul [DiBartolo] is not going to do it, he lives in India,
and we got this guy Chris Caffery from Trans-Siberian Orchestra." I
had never met Chris, I didn't know him, but we got together and we
became friends on from that tour. He was like "Macaluso, you gotta do
my tour, you gotta do all my tours!" So I said "Let's do it!" We went
to Europe with Timo Koltipelto which was great, we co-headlined and he
was a great guy with an amazing band. We did Europe, then we just did
the States with Doro, who is a great friend of mine too, all the guys
in the band. It was a good time man. Europe was better because we got
to play a lot more, this was kind of a real short opening spot that
Chris has for Doro. Yeah man, we're good buddies, he's a great guitar
player.

D: You've played on over 200 albums now, haven't you?

JM: Yeah, probably more now, I just did a couple of new ones. I tried
to count them once... (pauses) I was a studio musician most of my
life, I always did records because it's my passion, it wasn't for the
money or to be a whore, it's just 'cause I love playing different
styles of music, you get to meet new people and my favorite thing in
the world is to do a new album and sit back when it's finished and you
actually get to listen to it in the studio; usually when it comes in
the mail it always sounds different. You've got to enjoy it in the
studio because it's probably not going to come back to your house that
way. (laughs) That's the facts man.

D: Which ones did come back that way?

JM: A rare few, it's good you asked that because I was thinking about
that. Ark's BURN THE SUN couldn't have been better, that was just
great. My album is the best sound quality and it's exactly how I
wanted it. STARBREAKER came out great. Ark's first album came out
great for the budget, because we did it in a gymnasium.

D: Oh really?

JM: It wasn't even a real studio, it was a gymnasium and the first
track "Burning Down," if you know the song, I'm playing drum heads and
broken Heineken bottles on the floor of a gymnasium with a flanger!
That's why it goes "whooooosh" with that weird sound, it's Heineken
bottles and drum heads right on the floor, that's how we recorded it,
that's all on eight-track, like an eight-track Tascam. That's a good
job for what we had to go with. Then the real one [used for BURN THE
SUN] was a big studio with Tommy Newton and I was real happy with
that; then there is an album I did with Masterlast, it's a new one,
it's called MASTERY OF SELF and that came out real good, that one has
a female singer. Also I love Alex Masi's sound on LATE NIGHTS AT
DESERT'S RIMROCK, that one came out cool. There's a few but I'm really
critical. Vitalij's new one GLACIAL INFERNO has some cool stuff, cool
sounds. A lot of times I get a record back and they make my drum set
sound like tin or they put the tom down in the mix and you can't even
hear it, the bass drum is not being heard or the guitar is way too
loud. That's just my personal opinion, when the guitar player or the
artist might feel like that's the way it should sound. Sometimes they
just don't know what they're doing, it depends. (laughs)

D: (laughs)

JM: But yeah, I think those stick out in my mind as the best sounding
albums that I was really happy with.

D: Yeah, I'd agree with those and I liked your work on Riot's BRETHREN
OF THE LONG HOUSE.

JM: Oh yeah, Riot! I did the artwork on that too.

D: Oh, did you really?

JM: Yeah, my whole family is in the art field. I used to be good but I
kinda suck now because I can't draw anymore. That was my first graphic
arts venture -- I busted my arm and I couldn't play for like six
months -- and I got into graphic arts. I bought a computer, I got into
Photoshop, I thought "F*ck, what am I going to do?" The doctor said
"You'll never play again," and I was freaking out. I just got married
and this was all I did in my life, I didn't know anything, never went
to school. So I learned a new trade but thank God I practiced and
practiced and got to be a better drummer than I was [after] my arm
healed up. When I did the Riot album I said "Sh*t, I'll do your album
cover man!" So it was pretty cool. I got Mike DiMeo on my new record,
Mike's a great friend of mine, he sang amazing on the two tracks on my
record.

D: Yeah, he is awesome. I really like his vocals a lot.

JM: He's so good, he is versatile, he can do so many different style
of sh*t.

D: TNT's REALIZED FANTASIES was another one I liked your playing on.

JM: That was the disaster of my life.

D: You didn't like that one? (laughs)

JM: It was a disaster -- I didn't even write it on my credits. It was
my first TNT album and for some reason they changed producers and they
went with this dude that did Mariah Carey, he was like a vocal
producer, and he didn't really work much with live drums at all. He
was sampling everything and you know, I play kinda busy, and sampling
in those times, it was not easy to sample because everything was one
big shot; it's a lot more dynamic these days, technology is better.
But besides that I was the new guy, I was a kid, I was like 20 years
old, they had been around forever and were like "Play this, play this,
play this," and we were all great friends but when it came time to do
the music it was like Adolf Hitler: "Do that, do that, do that!" --
and I really couldn't play in that situation, it was really tough.
"Play one bass drum here, two here, hit that cymbal!" It was really
uncomfortable to do that record and overall when they mixed it it was
even worse. I think what is worse is the [THREE NIGHTS IN TOKYO] live
album mix, that was even worse. That's why it was cool we did
STARBREAKER, it came out so good, me and Tony were very happy that we
were both on an album we enjoyed, because I don't think Tony was too
happy with REALIZED FANTASIES either. It's funny because a lot of
people that love TNT say that's one of their favorites if not their
favorite; you can never tell on your own work, know what I mean?

D: It was one I didn't like when it first came out but I really like
it now.

JM: It's the first album that was like a street sound, a little more
raw, not so clean. It was the first album that had that rawness and
Tony wasn't singing so high, he was singing really raspy. So I can see
why people do dig it when they are fans of TNT. I hate to say, ahh...
sometimes I say "I hate that album!" and people go "What do you mean?"
and I'm like "Oh sh*t, sorry!" (laughs) I'm just overcritical of my
sh*t.

D: Well I know you are a big fan of bands like The Who and Pink Floyd;
think we'll ever hear another QUADROPHENIA or THE WALL?

JM: From those bands?

D: No, from anybody -- I guess those bands have already put their
masterpieces out but do you think we'll ever hear anything comparable
to that?

JM: I always say it man, "Will there ever be another QUADROPHENIA or
PHYSICAL GRAFFITI, or will there ever be another Led Zeppelin?" and I
think there wouldn't have been if the records companies had the hold
on everybody but now with the Internet and all the separate radio
stations, there can be man, there can be. If it will happen again, I
don't know. I mean, I was listening to the stuff as a kid but I wasn't
in the so-called business; I wonder if those guys were saying "Hey
man, this is not going to get on the radio, this is not going to make
money." I don't know if they were doing that because I think people
are so serious into business right now where no matter what, they want
to make money in music, they get worried about doing a song that is
too long, they got to cut it down to four minutes. I don't know man, I
think bands have to let loose more and just do it. I hope there will
be. I'm trying to make it man!

D: You're doing your part!

JM: I'm trying to make my QUADROPHENIA! (laughs) That's a great
question, I really pray, I hope so. I want to be a fan of a band
again. I was a fan of Soundgarden, then they broke up.

D: There's not much coming out, I mean there are good bands but
nothing really inspiring...

JM: Yeah, I like Muse, I think that's a cool band. I think Slipknot
was cool when I first heard them, I like... (pauses) Hmm, trying to
think... Tool I love, they are obviously famous and big right now but
I was into them since the beginning...

D: I read somewhere you really like Evergrey.

JM: I love Evergrey. We toured with them, they opened up for us with
LaBrie and they are so cool for one and they are such a good band,
f*ckin' great band. I didn't know them at the time but we did the same
ProgPower show in 2001. They were the coolest dudes man, every night
we partied and had a great time, really cool people and such a damn
good band, so solid, nobody overplays, they've got great songs -- I'm
a big fan of them.

D: Well John, anything you'd like to say in closing?

JM: If you want to check out my record you can get it at
http://www.johnmacaluso.com/ . I'm also putting out a drum book called
"Repercussions" which is my drum method book written about building
your own personal signature, getting your own personal style and
things that can help, recording tips, technique tips and sound tips --
that's going to be out real soon and thanks for listening! I'm glad
people are receptive to this record because it's my baby, my bambino.
Thank you Neal, thank you for doing this!

D: I enjoyed it. Thanks for taking all this time John and I look
forward to seeing you at ProgPower USA!

Relevant links:

Chris Caffery
http://www.chriscaffery.com/
http://www.myspace.com/chriscaffery

Tony Harnell
http://www.tonyharnell.com/

Vitalij Kuprij
http://www.vitalijkuprij.com/
http://www.myspace.com/vitalijkuprijofficialms

Lion Music
http://www.lionmusic.com/

John Macaluso
http://www.johnmacaluso.com/
http://www.myspace.com/johnmacaluso1
http://www.lionmusic.com/theradiowavesgoodbye.htm

Yngwie Malmsteen
http://www.yngwie.org/

Alex Masi
http://www.alexmasi.net/
http://www.myspace.com/alexmasi

Masterlast
http://www.masterlast.net/

ProgPower USA
http://www.progpowerusa.com/

Riot
http://www.riotsweb.com/
http://www.myspace.com/riotonline

Spread Eagle
http://www.myspace.com/spreadeaglenyc

Starbreaker
http://www.myspace.com/starbreaker

TNT
http://www.tnttheband.com/
http://www.myspace.com/tntonline

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