Steve has played with a variety of great bands, including Keel, Wasp & for the last 20 years, L.A. Guns.

 L.A. Guns recently released their 2nd live CD, titled Loud & Dangerous. I spoke to Steve recently for an update. Check it out.

METAL HELL: What’s the latest news?

STEVE RILEY: We’ve got a new album that just came out about a week ago, it’s called LOUD & DANGEROUS & it’s a live album that we recorded at a couple of places in Hollywood at the beginning of the year.  We’re still riding on Tales From The Strip too. We got such great reviews for that album & it was so accepted that we’re still digging on that thing. We haven’t given up on Tales From The Strip but we’ve got this new live album out & it’s really nice. It’s got a couple of live CD Rom songs on it too. We’re getting ready to go out & do a bunch of shows to support this for the next 6 months or so.

MH: With the 2 songs on the CD-ROM was that whole show recorded? Any plans for a DVD?

SR: We’re not sure if we’re gonna do something like that but we have it in the can. We have the whole show filmed but we’re not sure if we’re gonna put the whole thing out as a DVD. It very well could be (released) at some point.

MH: How did you decide to do another live CD?

SR: Well we had Tales From The Strip come out last year & that was probably about August of 2005 & the shelf life on these independent records is not very long & they don’t have a lot of good distribution.

So it’s a real quick thing with these studio albums that we release & we knew that we weren’t ready to go in & do another studio album so we decided to record a couple gigs & see how they came out (&) add some of the new material from Tales From The Strip & Waking The Dead & the covers album. We figured that would be the best thing to do right now is try to put some kind of a fun show together as a live CD. This band right now with Phil, myself & Adam & Stacey, we’ve been together for a while now & we’ve done a couple of albums together & the live shows are so much fun to play. I think it’s a real good document of where the band is at right now. We stay true & faithful to the old material & we also have all of this new stuff that we’re putting together so it’s a nice mixture.

MH: ‘Ballad Of Jayne’ wasn’t played on most of the last tour. How was it decided to put it back in for the CD?

SR: Well it’s one of those songs that we have to do. When we don’t do it people mention it too. It was our biggest song & so they wanna hear it. It’s a great song, we love the tune & sometimes we try to get away without doing it cause we have so many other good ballads that we can play & we try to mix it up into something else but it always comes back with people saying I wish you did ‘Jayne’, so we made sure that we did it on this.

MH: How many other live songs were taped that didn’t make it onto the CD?

SR: There is some stuff that we didn’t put on there. We had a problem with the label, they were local shows & they were packed with friends & everybody & Phil had some swear words that he was saying within the songs & in between songs. He was just talking like he usually talks but there was a couple of fucks & this & that all over the place & we had to cut a bunch of stuff out because the label had a problem with any swear words on it, especially the European side of the label. So there were some songs that we did that didn’t make it on there & it was the usual stuff. I don’t even know which ones they were. I do remember we had to cut a couple out & we had to do it for time reasons. We also played “Vampire” & that didn’t make this live album either & that was because we had co-wrote that with another guy & there was contractual problems with it, so we didn’t put “Vampire” on there either. I believe    “I Wanna Be Your Man” was on there also & we cut that because Phil was swearing in it. One of the cover songs got bumped also cause of the words.

MH: Has writing begun for the next CD?

SR: We’re just getting going on that, we’re gonna play shows up to Christmas. In between those shows, we’re going to start next week with putting songs together & piecing songs together & seeing what we have.

Maybe into 2007 we’ll know where we’re gonna record & for what label. We’ll get a jump on it now but we put out a new album every year & we’re not really in a big rush to put out a studio album only because this live one just came out.

MH: Traci Guns has been out touring using the name ‘LA Guns 20th Anniversary’ or something. How do you feel about that?

SR: Here’s the thing, our fans; real L.A. Guns fans think it’s ridiculous. Just to be very blunt with you they think it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if me & Traci own the name L.A. Guns & we both have a right to take a band out called L.A. Guns, that’s not even the question. The question is, is that this band tried to do 3 albums without Phil Lewis & we had 3 good singers with Jizzy Pearl, Ralph Saenz & Chris Van Doll, we could not do it. This music is so close to Phil & his phrasing & his songwriting & the way he sang it that you just can’t insert a new singer in there to sing Phil’s stuff. I tried it for 3 different years with Traci, with 3 different singers while Phil was out of the band. Real L.A. Guns fans know that, they gotta have Phil singing these songs. It’s just the bottom line. He wrote the phrasing, he wrote the melodies, he wrote the words & he’s a British singer. We’re one of the only US bands that has a British singer & that gave Phil a whole different aspect that most singers just can’t fill in. All we’ve got to tell you is that we don’t have a problem with them going out saying it’s the 20th anniversary of L.A. Guns & taking out all the people that they had in the band when the band wasn’t signed. It’s when they’re out there trying to do the material that Phil sang on & it sounds horrible, these are reviews we’re reading & we’ve got a problem with that, that it’s confusing the fans. Everybody should be very well aware, if they wanna hear L.A. Guns & the songs that they heard on the radio & the videos that they saw, they wanna see it with Phil Lewis singing it. He’s the one guy that you cannot replace in L.A. Guns. I felt we were all really good musicians & we all brought something to the table with L.A. Guns, but even myself as a drummer; no matter how I think that I can play well or whatever, I can be replaced because there are so many good drummers. As far as Phil, you cannot replace that signature sound that he gave our songs, so they’re gonna struggle out there. There’s gonna be a backlash cause I’ve already done it without Phil & it’s a hard situation. We’re not worried about it at all man, people know that L.A. Guns is with Phil Lewis, Steve Riley, Adam Hamilton & Stacey, they know that & they also can smell a desperation job when they see it. It’s a desperation move completely & he’ll say differently anyways, he’ll try to cover his ass. The fact of it is it’s a desperation move. What-ever gigs he can’t get as Traci Guns Band, he’s gonna automatically say it’s L.A. Guns 20th Anniversary just to get that gig.

There are a lot of promoters around the country & club owners & theater owners & fans & they’re gonna smell it. Once they hear it they’re gonna know (& they’ll think) what the hell is this? This is not L.A. Guns, this doesn’t even sound like L.A. Guns, so it’s nothing off our back cause we kinow what we’re doing. We’re real confident in what we’re doing & we’ve been doing it steadily all the way through & like I said, we’ve got Phil Lewis. That’s the bottom line. That’s what you need with L.A. Guns.

MH: How do you generally feel about bands that tour with maybe one original member?

SR: I always felt that, especially since I had the experience of trying to do something without the original lead singer in a band, it’s all right to me as long as the original singer was in that band. I believe that there’s so many good guitar players, bass players & drummers that could fill in for original members & pull off their shtick & the whole thing, but you cannot do it without the original singer so if I see one of the 80’s bands with only 1 or 2 of the original members, as long as one is the singer I’m probably gonna get as close to those songs as I can possibly get & that’s the same thing with Phil. If you wanna hear L.A. Guns songs & get close to them the way you did & understand them the way you did, it’s with Phil singing them. So I never had a problem with 1 or 2 original members as long as that original singer is in there. When it’s a different singer  & maybe 1 original member on one of the instruments, it’s gonna be a different sound, absolutely.

MH: Like Foghat now, without Lonesome Dave.

SR: He sang so many of the songs! And he was such a signature voice in that band that it’s not like you can fill that slot very easy.

When I was touring with WASP in the early 80’s we did a tour with Black Sabbath & the lead singer was Glenn Hughes, who’s an amazing singer. I love the stuff that he’s done with Trapeze & with Deep Purple & the guy can sing like crazy, but he could not pull off Ozzy & I sat there on the side of the stage every night & it was my first taste of seeing something like that where a band tried to go out without the lead singer. Eric (Singer) did a tremendous job filling in for Bill Ward cause Eric’s a really good drummer & he could pull that off & he did pull it off, but Glenn on the other hand, struggled trying to do what Ozzy did. He’s probably a better singer than Ozzy Osbourne. But to try to do Ozzy’s lyrics & phrasing & singing in Sabbath, it’s a different story. That was my first taste of it & when I tried to do L.A. Guns without Phil Lewis I really knew what was going on. It doesn’t matter if you have Robert Plant singing, if it’s not that original singer it’s bogus.

 I still think that Glenn Hughes is one of the all time great singers of rock, it’s just that when you put even a great singer into a situation where they have to try to do something that’s so well known & people have heard it so much, it’s a bad situation because it’s almost an impossible thing to pull off.

MH: What do you think of the current state of music in 2006?

SR: I think there’s a lot of good stuff out there. The thing with rock & roll is you’ve gotta remember that it goes in cycles. If you’re old enough & mature enough to know that it goes in cycles then it’s not gonna bug you. If you were fortunate enough to make a name for yourself in the 80’s or when you first came out, so you can still keep playing, you’ve really lucked out, you’ve done something good that you can keep playing all over the world cause you’ve made a name for yourself & people have heard your material, but rock & roll is a young mans game, there’s no doubt about it. The youth bands that are coming up now that are playing metal & hard rock, we love ‘em. It’s not the same stuff that we did but we still think that they’re great & they’re doing a good service for rock. They’re out there making noise, so we’re all for it. We’re behind all of these bands that came out in the last 5 or 6 years that are rocking. We think metal is in a good state right now. It’s definitely turned into a live situation & there’s a lot of good bands out there playing we think.

 I think that it boils down to being able to write & play. I think the attitude & the personality is cool & we certainly had that when we came out but you have to be able to write songs.

 You’ve got to be able to write & that’s why we put out a new record almost every year because it doesn’t matter if it sells well or if it gets played on the radio, it’s in our blood. We have to write for ourselves. That’s what we do & we have to keep recording. It boils down to whether or not you can write songs. I really believe that it’s gonna get back to the basics of being able to write a good song with a hook.

 It’s almost a whole different game right now too. I think the fun in rock & roll is coming back somewhat. It was a little serious during the 90’s. Even though there was great music coming out with some of the stuff from Seattle. We thought Alice In Chains & Soundgarden & Nirvana were terrific, we thought they were great bands. If it changed the climate in L.A. it didn’t matter to us. They were great bands that wrote some really good stuff. So it’s changed & it’s a different atmosphere out there & it’s not such a party atmosphere & we still do that, that’s what our live shows are all about. It’s a happy, up situation (we) get the crowd involved & make it a party cause we feel like that’s really what rock & roll is all about.

MH: In the 80’s, metal was almost mainstream, did you look at things differently when grunge came along & fucked everything up?

SR: No, we really never did. I think we veered off a little bit, me & Traci, when we tried to do American Hardcore & it was definitely a harder album. It was some stuff that we had inside of us that we probably wouldn’t have done with the original band. We got that out & it was a bit of a detour to what we really sound like as L.A. Guns, but mainly we pretty much stay true to who we are. We don’t think that we’re Dream Theater & these MIT musicians that are gonna play these un-believe-able sick things. We’re basically what we always were. We’re a mixture of the Stones & Aerosmith & Deep Purple & Led Zeppelin & even Sabbath, but I don’t think we’ve changed that much. I think we still stay true to ourselves with our writing.

I think that we’re gonna probably follow our lead on what we’ve been doing all the way though. I think that when a band tries too hard they get ahead of themselves & I don’t think we’ve ever tried that hard to where we veered off. We’ve always experimented with L.A. Guns. We’ve done stuff that could be country, stuff that could be metal, some really hard rock & straight rock & roll, ballads, we’ve even done some reggae stuff. I think we’ve experimented anyways but we knew exactly who we were. We’re fortunate. We know what we wanna do.

MH: Anything you’d like to explore?

SR: If you had asked me that about 10-15 years ago in the midst of L.A. Guns doing really well I would’ve said that I’ve got this instrumental album that’s inside me that I wanna get all these people to play on. But right now things are so tough for rock that you have to keep your wits about you. Right now I’m just concentrating on L.A. Guns being able to work all the time & record all the time.

 If something changes & the climate changes & we get a real good roll going then maybe I’ll think about doing something outside of L.A. Guns but right now I can’t think of anything I wanna do other than a really good record with L.A. Guns & going out & playing.

MH: I think this line-up has a good chemistry.

SR: We do too bro. I feel like we lucked out, so does Phil Lewis. First of all we scored Adam Hamilton (bass) while Traci was still in the band & that guy is probably one of the best musicians I’ve ever played with, all around. He can play everything & he’s a wiz in the studio. He’s an all around killer musician & he can write songs. So we were really lucky to get Adam Hamilton in this band because he fills a big void & the other thing is when Traci left & we got Stacey Blades in the band, from Roxx Gang. We really lucked out there too because he plays all the old material faithfully & stays true to it.

MH: What else is planned for the future?

SR: I just want everybody to watch out for us because we’re gonna be playing a lot & we’ll be out there doing weekend shows. If they can’t find any of our albums in any stores, because the distribution is kind of lacking on all of these independent records, we’re gonna be bringing the live album and Tales From The Strip out on the road so anybody who couldn’t find it in the store, they can find it at our shows & that’s one of the big reasons why we do all of these albums too, is cause we know the distribution’s not gonna be good & we can bring it out there to the people & sell it out on the road.

MH: Any messages for your fans?

SR: Yeah, just to understand that we understand that there’s confusion out there right now with this double headed L.A. Guns going out (doing shows). If anybody ever sees L.A. Guns playing, with Phil Lewis & Steve Riley, it’ll be called just L.A. Guns. It won’t be tagged with any special anniversary tour, or the original L.A. Guns. We’re just L.A. Guns, we have been. W’ve been doing this constantly for the last 15-16 years & to just watch out for that & don’t be confused by anybody who’s taking out a cover band. It’s really important that people know that if they go see that other L.A. Guns that is out right now, that they’re gonna see a cover band & they’re not gonna hear the band the way that they wanted to hear it & it’s real important that they get that message.

 Because I’m a fan of L.A. Guns & I know that I don’t wanna hear it without Phil. I just do not wanna hear it. I wanna hear this guy sing those songs the way I’ve heard them all these years.

 * Joe D./MH '06